.RUNTOTHESUN.

Bush loses special trade powers as Democrats flex muscles

2007-07-01T20:55:00.001+08:00

US President George W. Bush lost his special trade power at midnight Saturday as opposition Democrats flexed their new grip on Congress and refused White House appeals to renew it.

Democrats, who wrested control of Congress from Republicans in January, were eager to reclaim the constitutional trade authority and set their own stamp on trade policy.

Hours before Bush's fast track authority expired at midnight, US and South Korean negotiators on Saturday inked a trade deal -- the biggest since the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). But congressional support for the agreement looked slim.

Under the TPA, Bush negotiated trade agreements that could only be approved or rejected by the legislature, but not amended.

Bush won a two-year extension in 2005 as US trade negotiators argued they needed the precision tool to advance the World Trade Organization's Doha Round.

The US and others had used the potential expiration of fast track as a prod to keep the WTO talks moving. Now that impetus is gone, hope dimmed for progress in the round.

"This removes a deadline that's useful" in keeping the trade talks moving, Edward Alden, a trade expert with the Council on Foreign Relations, a Washington-based think tank.

The Doha Round will be left in "limbo, probably for the next couple of years," he told AFP on the eve of the fast track expiration.

Alden suggested the US political situation was working against renewal of the fast track authority any time soon.

With the November 2008 presidential race already in full swing, it would be unlikely the next president would get fast track renewal unless a single party wins control of both the executive and legislative branches, he said.

The end of TPA also highlighted a waning appetite for free trade among Americans in the face of a burgeoning trade deficit. Critics blame a swelling multi-billion-dollar trade gap with China and others for the loss of thousands of US manufacturing jobs.

Democratic lawmakers hammered home Friday their newfound clout.

"Our legislative priorities do not include the renewal of fast-track authority," House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other leading Democrats said in a statement.

The House Democrats said they had a plan to improve US trade policy, while at the same time addressing increased economic insecurity felt by US families.

Among the steps to be taken is the introduction soon of legislation to address the growing US trade imbalance with China and strengthen overall enforcement of US trade agreements and US trade laws.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration made a last-ditch pitch to save the TPA.

"Its regrettable that Congress is letting this authority expire this weekend," Bush spokesman Tony Fratto said Friday.

"It will be damaging to our economy and our national security if Congress abandons Americas leadership role in trade and the global marketplace," he said.

On the bilateral trade front, House Democrats offered support Friday for free-trade agreements signed under TPA with Peru and Panama, but said they would oppose similar pacts with Colombia and South Korea.

The landmark free-trade deal with South Korea was inked on Capitol Hill Saturday, just hours before Bush's "fast track" authority expired.

The US president has called on Congress to ratify it anyway, saying it would bring "considerable benefit" to Americans and boost the US-South Korea partnership.

Industrial Warfare. Industrial Matrimony. Neo-liberalism's Big Products

2007-07-01T20:55:00.000+08:00

Jozef Hand-Boniakowski

Neo-liberalism is big business. Big business is big profit. War is big business. Volker Schneider and Marc Tenbuecken writing in Business and the State: Mapping the Theoretical Landscape (2002) write that the demands created by the free market are enforced by,

The state and the political system function as a form of an 'ideal all-around capitalist', who must uphold not just the society as such, but the 'capitalist element'.

The United States' exporting of "democracy" is the dissemination of global capitalism. Global capitalism, what much of the world calls neo-liberalism, demands huge and continued exploitation of natural resources. The mass production of goods and services for the purpose of ever-increasing profits requires that commodities be quickly available so that they may be exchanged for more excess capital, i.e., surplus value or profit. This cycle must be repeated over and over for profits to not only continue, but to increase. Elizabeth Martinez and Arnoldo García, writing in "What is neo-liberalism? A brief definition" (Global Economy 101, 2000) point out the five aspects of neo-liberalism:

> The rule of the market.

> Cutting expenditure for social services.

> Deregulation.

> Privatisation

> Eliminating the concept of "the public good" or "community".

The process of transforming money into commodities, then commodities into money necessitates that there exist a continual demand for the commodity. It does not matter whether the commodity is needed, only that that it be sold. That is, there needs to be a demand for the product. It does not matter whether the demand is real or contrived. The continuous demand for commodities requires that the consumption of the natural resources that make it possible not only continue, but that the rate of consumption continues to increase along with it. It does not matter that people die as a consequence of the commodity-money-commodity exchange.

War is a commodity as are the weapons that make it possible. It is inconsequential that civilians die in a war like Iraq which has been going in since 1991. "Shock and awe" showed the world that people are of little concern to neo-liberalism. What matters is that the supply of products that make war possible be consumed so that more war products can be produced. More war goods produced and sold means more profit. Fighting a nebulous unending war on "terrorism" insures that war and profit continue in perpetuity. "Terrorism" has replaced "communism" as a reason to continue the military industrial complex humming. Nations with economies that survive on for-profit war making are not bothered by the consequences of war, the collateral damage. It does not matter if one-half million Iraqi children die as a result of sanctions. It does not matter that people become contaminated with depleted uranium? It does not matter that hundreds-of-thousands, or millions of civilians die. It does not matter that US war casualties come home in boxes in the darkness of night. People who do not serve the neo-liberalism system are impediments to the continuous process of the commodity exchange system. Surplus value matters. Human beings do not.

Neo-liberalism establishes governing institutions that do will away with laws that present barriers to exploitation and profit. When resources are consumed or otherwise disappear, then neo-liberalism places maximum priority in finding other resources. Acquiring new natural resources is often, difficult. If need be, neo-liberalism will take what it needs. While exploitation of resources, including human beings, is not new, the extent of its worldwide scope is now unprecedented. Once a commodity, whatever it is, be it a depleted uranium shell, television set, or a meal, is sold, nothing else matters except the sale of the next depleted uranium shell, TV or meal. This is the case even if the shell causes death and destruction or the meal is not nutritious. Globalization is about dominating the globe's natural resources with few or no barriers. Neo-liberalism is about dominating everything so that the quest for capital becomes the universal human value. Human beings either acquiesce or perish.

Neo-liberalism is the industrialization of everything. From industrialized warfare to agriculture, from industrialized prisons and the "justice" system to the pharmaceutical and "health care" system, neo-liberalism creates a bland narrow band of products designed to control consumer's options while cleverly masquerading as choice. People insisting on alternatives to the "free-market" are considered as being out of the mainstream. They are viewed as not being normal. "If you are not with us, you are against us", is neo-liberalism's mantra. Neo-liberalism demands that people do not question nor complain. And so, we accept the advertising lies and claims, the proclamations of the "news" industry. We accept the fraud that products are not as advertised, or of poor quality. Free people do not accept the lies of the established order. Nor do they obediently accept their exploitation under the guise of patriotism. So why do we put up with neo-liberalism? Why do we accept the lies? Why do we accept the industrialization of everything? Why do we quietly accept the product that we purchase when it is inferior, broken, repulsive, dangerous or contrary to our own interests?

Matrimony. Just one more product.

JeanneE and I, like most couples. attend weddings. Most of them are cookie cutter productions, expensive corporate rites of passage that the bride and groom could, for the most part, do without. For the cost of these poorly staged events, the newlyweds or civil union couple could have a nice down payment on a house. Instead, cultural operative prevails. Just as we are indoctrinated into the mindset that the war will never be done away with, we think we cannot have a wedding outside the corporate model. The cultural operative dictates a public ceremony, typically including a minister, a reception with an obligatory meal, a bubbly toast, booze, a band, a DJ, a wedding cake and some kind of favor for the guests. A corporate recipe for yet another commodity. Like other commodities, the typical mass produced wedding is riddled with exploitation. Like unexploded ordnance that fails to deliver, the corporate wedding products that fail to deliver leave the buyers with little or no recourse. What to do if the wedding reception meal is so poor that guests cannot not eat it? What to do if the service is poor? For the most part, the guests, not wanting to offend the couple, say nothing. The bride and groom also have little recourse. Let the reader not doubt that wedding reception meals can be inedible. JeanneE and I have attended weddings where that is the case, not because we are vegetarians and there is no vegetarian option which happens often, but because both the meat and non-meat eaters cannot stomach the food.

The same industrial mindset that produces weapons of war produces wedding receptions. The business of war is selling products that people cannot use. The business of matrimony is selling couples the products they can do without. Matrimony, like war, is big business.

The Wedding Report http://www.theweddingreport.com/ reports that the "online wedding market" alone "is worth more than $7.9 billion". It further reports that the 2006 market is 2.3 million weddings at an individual wedding cost of $26,800. The cost of this average wedding would make a nice 10% down payment on the average house. The Wedding Report states that,

In 2006 consumers will spend $1,841.00 on Wedding Attire, $2,337.00 on their Wedding Ceremony, $1,104.00 on Wedding Favors & Gifts, $1,136.00 on Wedding Flowers, $1,739.00 on Wedding Jewelry, $922.00 on Wedding Music, $2,659.00 on Wedding Photography & Video, $13,692.00 on their Wedding Reception, $809.00 on Wedding Stationery, and $563.00 on Wedding Transportation.

In the past 26 years, JeanneE and I have attended weddings ranging from extreme excess costing $100,000 or more to simple weddings in living rooms or front porches, food ranging from potluck to chef catered, from delicious and beautiful, to where the food was unworthy of human consumption. What these affairs have in common is the notion that the weddings and receptions, as advertised in the matrimony marketplace, are necessities people cannot do without. Those that can afford the "necessities" often commit to excess, while those that cannot commit to a minimalist version of the wedding industry's standard. Why not reject both? Why let neo-liberalism control the blueprint for such a special event. It is just as possible to have a $0.00 budget wedding as it is to buy nothing on Buy Nothing Day (each year the Friday after Thanksgiving). While saying no to the military industry may involve risk, saying no to the corporate matrimony industry does not. All is takes is making the decision to do so.

Neil Shister, in "Queen for a Day", writes about the typical US wedding being an illusion for the pot of gold at the end of the neo-liberal rainbow.

This drama, I claim, stages a conventional, though suspect, cultural aspiration to upward mobility, disguising it as "high romance." Not everyone agrees. I've tried my theory out on several women, and they tend to object. One insisted that it's more about control, the wedding being the one day in her life the bride gets to call all the shots. Perhaps. But why these shots? The language is overwhelmingly about "taste and style," code words for class; "control," I suspect, is a subtext in a grander conversation about upward mobility...The popular fantasy is that on her wedding day, every bride is a member of that [uppermost leisure] class.

Neo-liberalism creates a world where if we don't spent money, we feel that we are getting our money's worth: nothing. Marketers convince us that we are cheating ourselves and our friends and family if we do not provide the best, or at least, the minimum, of wedding accommodations. This thinking comes from the same people who bring us war as the means of conflict resolution. These are the same people who convince us that just taking another pharmaceutical will make us whole, or erectile. The neo-liberal merchants and their propaganda will sell us anything and everything. Why not reject the sale for the sale's sake? If we do this, there might be fewer couples in debt over their weddings. There would be many more newlyweds living in their own homes. And perhaps, there might be fewer of neo-liberalism's wars for profit for our children to fight for and die in.

JeanneE and I were legally married on October 11, 1981 on the hearth in front of our woodstove in a small bungalow in Rumson, New Jersey. This was the same house in which our daughter was born. We were both barefoot. I wore white overalls and a marigold, my favorite flower. JeanneE wore a homemade gown that I sewed from a sheet the night before. If we had to do it all over again, we would do it the same way. We would also spend the next twenty-six years opposing neo-liberalism's militarism and war making just as we have.

They weren't really weddings, just long costume parties. (on three of her weddings). - Peggy Lee

Jozef Hand-Boniakowski is co-editor and co-publisher of Metaphoria along with his life partner and wife, JeanneE. He is 30-year veteran retired teacher and a member of Veterans For Peace. His writings have appeared in Metaphoria, After Downing Street, Buzzflash, Counterpunch, Thomas Paine's Corner, Rense.com, Omni Center, Rutland Herald, Times Argus, and others.

DEMOCRATS AFTER NOVEMBER

2007-03-29T21:12:00.000+08:00

By Mike Davisthe

With anti-war sentiment growing—if still passive—in the US, how will Democrats use their recapture of Congress? Mike Davis analyses likely outcomes on the questions—Iraq, corruption, economic insecurity—that confront a Party leadership hooked on corporate dollars, and myopically gazing towards 2008.

Was the November 2006 midterm election an epic political massacre or just a routine midterm brawl? In the week after the Democratic victory, partisan spinmeisters offered opinions as contradictory as those of the protagonists in Rashomon, Kurosawa’s famously relativistic account of rape and murder. On the liberal side, Bob Herbert rejoiced in his New York Times column that the ‘fear-induced anomaly’ of the ‘George W. Bush era’ had ‘all but breathed its last’, while Paul Waldman (Baltimore Sun) announced ‘a big step in the nation’s march to the left’, and George Lakoff (CommonDreams.org) celebrated a victory for ‘progressive values’ and ‘factually accurate, values-based framing’ (whatever that may mean). [1] On the conservative side, the National Review’s Lawrence Kudlow refused to concede even the obvious bloodstains on the steps of Congress: ‘Look at Blue Dog conservative Democratic victories and look at Northeast liberal gop defeats. The changeover in the House may well be a conservative victory, not a liberal one.’ William Safire, although disgusted that the ‘loser left’ had finally won an election, dismissed the result as an ‘average midterm loss’. [2]

I. VICTORY AND ITS WOES

But Safire doth spin too much. Although the Democratic victory in 2006 was not quite the deluge that the Republicans led by Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey and Tom DeLay unleashed in 1994 (see Table 1), it was anything but an ‘average’ result. Despite the comparatively low electoral salience of the economy, the opposition’s classic midterm issue, the Democrats managed to exactly reverse the majority in the House (the worst massacre of Republicans since 1974) and reclaim the Senate by one seat. Indeed, the Senate gained its first self-declared ‘socialist’, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats.

Democrats, for the first time ever, did not lose a single incumbent or open House seat. Independent voters (26 per cent of the electorate) swung to the Democrats by an almost two-to-one ratio—‘the biggest margin ever measured among independents since the first exit polls in 1976’. [3] With the strongest female leadership in American history, they outpolled Republicans among women 55 to 45 per cent in House races; but more surprisingly, they also managed to reduce the gop’s famous lead among white men (a staggering 63 per cent in the 1994 House contests) to 53 per cent. [4] According to veteran pollster Stanley Greenberg, one out of five Bush voters moved into the blue column; but none so dramatically as the electoral market segment of ‘privileged men’ (college-educated and affluent) where the gop’s 2004 margin of 14 per cent was transformed into a slim Democratic majority. Although the slippage among the gop hardcore—evangelicals and white rural and exurban voters—was slight, the party of the moral majority declined 6 per cent among devout Catholics, while angry Latinos, recoiling from the gop grass roots’ embrace of vigilantes and border walls, murdered Republicans in several otherwise close contests in the West. [5]

In state races, the Democrats demonstrated even more traction. On election eve, the gop boasted a majority of governorships (28 to 22) and a slight lead in control of state legislative chambers (49 to 47, with 2 tied). [6] Contrasted to overwhelming Democratic dominance in state legislatures before 1994, when Republicans controlled only 8 states, this rough parity—according to John Hood, the president of a North Carolina conservative think-tank—has been ‘one of the most significant and lasting products of the Republican Revolution’. But it is a legacy now lost as the Democrats have exactly reversed the partisan ratio of governors (leaving Republican executives in only 3 of the 10 most populous states), while winning control of 8 more state chambers (now 56 Democrat versus 41 Republican, with 1 tied). ‘What’s worse for the gop’, Hood points out, is that the majority parties in state legislatures will control congressional redistricting in the wake of the rapidly approaching 2010 Census. ‘If Democrats retain their current edge, the us House will get a lot more blue.’ [7]

Regionally, Republican candidates were decimated in the gop’s original heartland, New England—including notoriously conservative New Hampshire, where Democrats took over the legislature for the first time since the Civil War—and the Mid-Atlantic states, leading one prominent conservative to lament that ‘the Northeast is on its way to being lost forever to the gop’. [8] Democrats also made surprising gains in the Midwest and the ‘red’ interior West, especially in Colorado where hi-tech money leveraged a growing Latino vote. [9] Even in the South, the Democrats managed to arrest their long-term decline and claw back 19 seats in state legislatures. (Despite the prevalent myth of a solidly Republican South, the Democrats still retain a 54 per cent majority in Dixie state houses.) [10]

In Kansas—Tom Frank’s icon state of voter false consciousness [11]—Democrat Nancy Boyda defeated incumbent Jim Ryun (the former Olympic track star) in a congressional district that Bush had carried by 20 percentage points two years earlier. Popular Democratic Governor Kathleen Sebelius was easily re-elected, while the other top state offices, the lieutenant and attorney generalships, were won by former Republicans running as Democrats—a startling reverse in the trend of political conversion. The state’s foremost cultural conservative, the fanatically anti-abortion attorney general Phil Kline, was pulverized: receiving barely one-third of the vote in the usually Republican exurbs of Kansas City (Johnson County). [12] Nothing seemed particularly ‘wrong’ with Kansas in the fall of 2006.

Such results convincingly refute the legend of invincibility that had been woven around Karl Rove’s signature strategy of intensive base mobilization (usually stimulated by hysteria over some imperilled Christian value) and massive negative advertising (usually perpetuating some outright lie or slander against the opposition). According to Stanley Greenberg, ‘the Republican Party has ended up with the most negative image in memory, lower than Watergate’. But the Democratic pollster (writing in collaboration with Robert Borosage and James Carville) was adamant that Republican losses are not necessarily Democratic gains. ‘The Democratic Party also ended up being viewed more negatively during this election than in 2004 . . . Democrats have only modest advantages—and are chosen by fewer than 50 per cent on such key attributes as being “on your side”, “future-oriented” and “for families”.’ [13]

Thomas Edsall agrees that ‘Democratic triumphs are fragile’ and warns that they are ‘based far more on widespread dissatisfaction with the war in Iraq than on the fundamental partisan and ideological shift that was apparent in 1980 and 1994 Republican breakthroughs’. [14] Partisan registration remains closer to parity (38 per cent Democrat versus 37 per cent Republican) than at any time since the late nineteenth century, and control of the House is arbitrated by swings of just a few percentage points: the reason the Republicans have been so keen to undertake controversial midterm redistrictings and gerrymanders to buttress their power. [15]

The victors, moreover, share no consensus about the direction of their party. In contrast to 1994, when the gop was rapturously united around the programme of its congressional ‘revolution’, Democratic ideologues at the end of 2006 were fundamentally split. While progressives like Ezra Klein (American Prospect) fretted that Blue Dogs and dlc-ers were ready ‘to lock liberals out of the halls of power’, Christopher Hayes (Nation) applauded the ‘new Democratic populism’, and Michael Tomasky (American Prospect editor) argued that the party was cleverly moving to the centre and to the left simultaneously (‘the party managed to sustain this left–centre coalition and render the distinctions between the two groups less important’). [16] Hillary Clinton and her chorus of sycophantic voices boasted of the miracle of the ‘vital, dynamic centre’, while other Democrats pessimistically agreed with Safire’s acid prediction that the party was headed towards civil war.

In any event, the Democrats led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have two years to consolidate their enhanced electoral support and effectively arm Hillary Clinton for a very nasty brawl with either John McCain or Rudy Giuliani in 2008. [17] (Neither of the two mystery phenomena—Republican Mitt Romney and Democrat Barack Obama—are likely to survive the brutal scrutiny of the presidential primaries, although they may be recycled as vice-presidential timber.) [18] The 110th Congress will give the Democrats extraordinary opportunities to repeal the reactionary agendas established in 1994 by the ‘Republican Revolution’ and in 2001–02 by the ‘War on Terrorism’. But the Democrats will be torn between two categorical imperatives: on the one hand, to sink as many Republicans as possible with George Bush’s ship of state; and, on the other hand, to reclaim the mystic ‘centre’ and the support of corporate lobbyists. If the recent past is any guide, a seriously populist and ideologically combative Democratic politics is totally incompatible with the Clintonite project of making the Democrats the representatives par excellence of the knowledge economy and corporate globalization.

More specifically, the new Democratic majority must test its ambiguous promises of crusading populism and inclusive centrism against the recalcitrant realities of the four mega-issues that will inevitably dominate the new Congress: (1) the Iraq fiasco and the War on Terrorism; (2) the legacy of Republican congressional corruption and corporate fraud; (3) urgent, unmet social needs (including the reconstruction of the Gulf Coast) in the context of the huge Bush deficits; and (4) the growing unrest over the social costs of economic globalization. In each case, the hopeful expectations of last November’s voters for real changes in Washington are likely to be betrayed by the higher imperatives of electing Hillary and assuaging big business.

II. SMALLER OR BIGGER WAR

Unlike the 2004 presidential election and the controversy over the importance of ‘values voters’, there was nothing equivocal about the key issue that mobilized a majority of voters in November 2006. With the housing-bubble economy still puttering along (although a real-estate-induced recession may not be far away), and with Mexican- and gay-bashing failing to ignite significant national backlashes, the defining issue was the looming defeat of the us intervention in Iraq.

Six out of ten voters told pollsters that they were upset at Bush’s management of the war—the spiralling carnage in Baghdad and the paralysis in the White House—and had voted accordingly. Editorial page punditry, likewise, was united with exit-poll surveys in agreeing that Iraq was the Archimedean lever that had shifted independent voters so massively toward the Democrats. [19] Conservative ideologues and business lobbyists, meanwhile, were appalled to see their domestic agendas upstaged by the Frankenstein monster of Iraq. [20] Even that ‘wholly-owned subsidiary of the Republican Party’ (as columnist Rosa Brooks has called it), the military electorate, has begun to bolt the stable: Military Times polls show the percentage of soldiers identifying as Republicans declining from 60 per cent in 2004 to 46 per cent in late 2006. Only slightly more than one-third of gis currently approve of Bush’s handling of the war. [21]

After twelve years of arrogant majority rule in Congress, the gop has seemingly foundered on the contradictions of the new imperialism. Or has it? The irony of the anti-war vote, of course, was that it elected Democrats who are under no obligation to actually end the barbarous us occupation. Writing shortly after the election, Tom Hayden praised the citizen groups in Chicago and elsewhere who had fought to make the election a plebiscite on an increasingly unpopular war, but warned presciently that ‘neither party is prepared to accept that the war is a lost cause’ and that the Iraq Study Group report would offer the Democratic leadership common ground with congressional Republicans ‘to eliminate “immediate withdrawal” as an option’. [22]

Despite majority public belief that Iraq is a ‘bad war’ and the troops should come home, the current Democratic strategy is to snipe from the sidelines at Bush’s ruinous policies while avoiding any decisive steps to actually end the occupation. Indeed, from the standpoint of cold political calculus, the Democrats have no more interest in helping Bush extract himself from the morass of Iraq than Bush has had in actually capturing or killing Osama bin Laden. Accordingly, as the Los Angeles Times recently reported, ‘Pelosi and the Democrats plan no dramatic steps to influence the course of the war’. [23] Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean, who once claimed to be the very incarnation of the anti-war movement, now cautions that the most the public can expect from the new majority is ‘some restraint on the president’. [24] Likewise Pelosi has renounced from the outset the Democrats’ one actual power over White House war policy: ‘We will have oversight. We will not cut off funding’. [25]

The real Democratic opposition to the war (John Murtha’s highly publicized defection aside) has come from the ranks of the Black Caucus, whose members—including John Lewis, Charles Rangel and Barbara Lee—are also the chief instigators of the recently organized Out of Iraq Caucus, chaired by Los Angeles’s fiery Maxine Waters. The substantial overlap between the anti-war caucus (which also includes ten or so Latino representatives led by New York’s outspoken José Serrano) and the House membership most strongly committed to urban social programmes is expressive of a fundamental political trend that the media has all but ignored: the widespread consciousness in communities of colour that the interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan (costing more than $2 billion per week) are stealing critical resources from human needs in poorer inner cities and older suburbs, as well as putting immigrant communities under the shadow of disloyalty.

This new equation between urban needs, immigrant civil rights and anti-imperialism could become a potent counter-agenda in American politics if it were reinforced by grass-roots activism and consistent protest. But here is the rub. Although the Out of Iraq Caucus has grown to 74 members (more than one-fifth of Democratic House membership) in the wake of the November vote, its clout is considerably diminished by the absence of a national anti-war movement, as well as by the failure of the major progressive trade unions such as seiu, here-unite and the aft to make withdrawal a political priority.

Indeed the electoral landscape in November was shaped by the central paradox of soaring anti-war sentiment without a visible anti-war movement. In contrast to 1968 and 1972—or even, for that matter, 1916 and 1938—voter opposition to intervention overseas was not buttressed by an organized peace movement capable of holding politicians’ feet to the fire or linking opposition to the war to a deeper critique of foreign policy (in this case, the War on Terrorism). The broad, spontaneous anti-war movement of winter 2003—whose grass-roots energy filled the void of Democratic opposition to Bush’s invasion—was first absorbed by the Dean campaign in spring 2004 and then politically dissolved into the Kerry candidacy. The 2004 Democratic Convention, which should have been a forum for wide-ranging attacks on Republican foreign and domestic policies, was transformed into an obnoxious patriotic celebration of John Kerry as the Brahmin Rambo.

Although many activists hoped that an autonomous peace movement would re-emerge from the ruins of the Kerry campaign, there have been only a few regional pockets of sustained protest. One of Howard Dean’s principal assignments as national Democratic chair (and the major reason for his selection) has been to keep anti-war forces immobilized within a diffuse and hypocritical Anybody But Bush coalition. By making Bush and his political parents Cheney and Rumsfeld the paramount issues, Democratic sophistry has avoided a real debate on Iraq. Leading Democrats may bash the President for the chaos in Baghdad, but none of them has offered a critique of American responsibility for the larger anarchy that is rapidly engulfing a vast arc of countries from Pakistan to Sudan. There has been no debate on the Bush administration’s green light for the Israeli massacre of Lebanese civilians or, more recently, on the cia’s sinister role in instigating the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia and the us air strikes there. The Israeli right, meanwhile, knows that Hillary Clinton will be as intransigently supportive of its policies in Gaza and on the West Bank as any Texas fundamentalist eagerly awaiting Armageddon.

Indeed the Democratic leadership—the Black Caucus and a few notable progressives aside—has exploited domestic resentment against Bush policies in Iraq to consolidate, not debunk, the underlying Washington consensus about the War on Terrorism. Whereas a national anti-war movement would presumably have linked the apocalypse in Iraq with looming catastrophe in Afghanistan and a new regional war in the Horn of Africa, the Democratic platform, in contrast, reaffirmed commitment to the war against Islamists as part of a larger programme of expanding, not reducing, global counter-insurgency. ‘Bring the troops home now’ was not a Democratic plank, but doubling the size of the Special Forces ‘to destroy terrorist networks’ and increasing spending on homeland anti-terrorism are centrepieces of the Democrats’ ‘New Direction for America’ (a collection of sound bites and slogans that offers a pale shadow to Gingrich’s robust 1994 ‘Contract with America’). [26]

The Democratic leadership likewise has deliberately avoided a debate on the constitutional implications of the Patriot Act; not a single prominent Democrat has proposed the straightforward rollback of the totalitarian powers claimed by the presidency since 9/11. Indeed Hillary Clinton has signalled that she favours imprisonment without trial and even the use of torture in certain circumstances. Speaker Pelosi, meanwhile, has emphasized that the chief Democratic goals in the 110th Congress will be, first, to pick the uncontroversial, low-hanging fruit of mainstream reform (minimum wage, prescriptions, student loans and so on), then move quickly to pass an ‘innovation agenda’ for hi-tech industries. Foreign policy debates in the House—thanks to the hawkish counterweight of more than 100 New Democrats and Blue Dogs—will not reach beyond the bipartisan assumptions of the Baker–Hamilton Plan or whatever new, coercive strategy for Palestinian national self-liquidation is proposed by Condoleezza Rice.

What then has the anti-war vote actually won? At the end of the day, public disillusionment with the messianic politics of the neo-Conservatives has paved the way for a ‘Realist’ restoration under the aegis of the Baker–Hamilton plan that reconciles the foreign-policy establishments of Bush Senior and Clinton. The bloodbath in Iraq has opened every sarcophagus on the Potomac, disgorging a palsied army of ancient secretaries of state and national security advisors (Scowcroft, Eagleburger, Brzezinski and, of course, the chief mummy, Kissinger himself) eager to lecture Congress on ‘rational’ approaches to imposing American will on the rest of the world. Hillary Clinton, of course, is the Queen of the Realists (except when it conflicts with Israeli interests), and the new Democratic majority in the House is unlikely to stray very far from the already manifest script of her 2008 campaign. In future debates with Rudy Giuliani or John McCain (who has recently appointed himself saviour of ‘victory’ in Iraq), Hillary is poised to be a hard-muscled gi Jane, parrying every macho gesture with even tougher stances on al-Qaeda, Iran, Palestine and Cuba.

The silver lining, if it exists, is that the Democrats in Congress, with the Black Caucus and its allies lobbying for withdrawal, are more likely to be swayed by public anger as insurgency and civil war in Iraq continue to exhaust the resources of the Occupation. In a desperate gambit to appease Sunnis and defend a zone of control in Baghdad, the Bush administration is currently weighing an all-out assault (‘surge’ is its military precondition) on the slum militias of Muqtada al-Sadr. A new war with the Mahdi Army (hugely enlarged and better trained since its first battles with American troops in 2004) would open another Pandora’s box, risking unsustainable American casualties and an explosive response from the entire Shiite world. (Inevitable us air strikes on Sadr City would produce grim scenes reminiscent of the Israeli bombardment of southern Beirut.)

If Condoleezza Rice and Robert Gates sanction this ultimate escalation, they have a good chance of bringing some macho Democrats aboard (although they will almost certainly lose some leading Republicans). Senate leader Harry Reid has already demonstrated his epic confusion by endorsing and then quickly retracting support for the proposed ‘surge’ of 35,000 more us troops into Baghdad. In the Senate, the hawkish Joe Lieberman, who was re-elected as an independent after his defeat in the Democratic primary, will be a powerful swing vote in favour of escalation. Pelosi, at the time of writing, is considering resistance to new monies for the ‘surge’, but will not tamper with funding for existing troop levels.

What stance Pelosi and Reid ultimately assume, and how hard they actually push for the ‘phased withdrawal’ proposed in their six-plank November programme, will be largely determined by the resurgence—or not—of the anti-war movement. Last November’s voters certainly had fewer illusions than their candidates about the hopelessness of the situation (according to exit polls, ‘only about one in five voters say they think that either the President or the Democrats have a clear plan for Iraq’), [27] and public opinion may again find volcanic alternatives to an impotent Congress. Indeed, only mass protest, unfettered from theRealpolitik of Howard Dean and MoveOn.org, can shift the balance of power in Congress towards a decisive debate on withdrawal.

III. THE LIMITS OF INQUIRY

One of the most savoury moments of the November vote was the election of Nick Lampson to Tom DeLay’s old seat in the 22nd District of Texas. Lampson—a school teacher who was formerly the Democratic congressman from Galveston—had been one of the principal victims of DeLay’s infamous 2003 redistricting of Texas: an unprecedented mid-decade gerrymander that was made possible by the massive and illegally laundered corporate donations that the House Majority Leader had deployed to elect a Republican majority in the Texas Legislature the year before. Thanks to the courage of a local grand jury and Travis County da Ronnie Earle, DeLay was indicted for perjury in September 2005, and soon afterward, under federal investigation for his close ties to corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff, he was forced to resign his majority leadership, then his congressional seat.

DeLay, of course, was the Robespierre of the 1994 ‘Republican Revolution’, perhaps the most ruthless crusader for one-party government in us history. As one of the co-founders of the so-called ‘K Street Project’, [28] along with Rick Santorum and Grover Norquist, he was notorious for coercing huge campaign contributions from corporate lobbyists (as well as promises to hire only Republicans) in exchange for allowing them to directly write gop legislation. As Majority Leader (or ‘Hammer’ as he was known to Republicans as well as Democrats), he imposed unprecedented ideological discipline on the gop (even defying a White House attempt to give a small tax break to low-income families) while slashing at every vestige of bipartisanship and collegial civility. In partnership with the infamous Abramoff, he was also the advocate of the sleaziest causes in the Capitol, ranging from support for indentured labour in the sweatshop paradise of the Northern Marianas (a us territory without the protection of us labour laws) to under-the-table favours for a giant Russian corporation that in turn kicked back money to DeLay-related causes. [29]

After more than a decade of being roadkill in the wake of DeLay’s sleaze-financed campaign juggernaut (with Karl Rove as hit-and-run driver), the Democrats now have the opportunity to begin to roll back the Republican Revolution—which is to say, to break up the corrupt flows of money and power personified by DeLay and the K Street Project. Congress, of course, has always been about ‘pay to play’ and the lubrication of politics by lobbyists, but never before 1994 had the Republicans employed such stark coercion to impose themselves as the obligatory rather than simply the natural party of business. (In part, this was a reaction to Democratic successes in attracting support from bicoastal, new-economy sectors like entertainment, media, software, bio-tech and gaming.)

The exhilarating promise of the November victory is that a cadre of veteran liberal Democrats—Charles Rangel (Ways and Means), Barney Frank (Financial Services), Henry Waxman (Government Reform), David Obey (Appropriations), Ike Skelton (Armed Forces), and John Rockefeller iv (Senate Intelligence Committee)—will use their hard-won committee chairmanships to mount sweeping inquisitions of the Himalayan corruption and collusion of the DeLay years. With subpoena power finally in the hands of the opposition, the interlocking special interests that dominate the Bush administration will face the comprehensive exposure and accounting that they managed to elude in the aftermath of the Enron scandal. Indeed, as the skeletons come tumbling out of the Republican closet, and the public realizes how vast the extent of graft and fraud in the occupation of Iraq, the non-reconstruction of New Orleans, ‘homeland security’ boondoggles like the phony Bioshield programme, and the subsidization of the insurance, pharmaceutical and oil industries—then voters will overwhelmingly endorse a new regime of government oversight, renewed environmental and health-and-safety regulation, and serious campaign finance reform.

This is the real opportunity to which the Democrats could rise in theory, but there is little chance that their leadership will actually allow congressional probes to follow money and corruption all the way upstream. Progressive hopes that Congress might return to the heroic days of Thurman Arnold’s anti-trust investigations of the late 1930s, or the Watergate Committee’s exposés of Republican law-breaking in the 1970s, are pipe dreams in face of Pelosi’s insistence that Democratic watchdogs be tightly leashed, in the interests of building ‘centrism’. She has already extracted humiliating loyalty oaths from the two senior Black Democrats most likely to rock the bipartisan boat: forcing John Conyers (chair of the Judiciary Committee) to recant his advocacy of impeachment (‘the country does not want or need any more paralysed partisan government’, he said recently) and making Charles Rangel, who has hammered Dick Cheney like no one else in Congress, sing a chorus or two of the company song (‘I have to take a leadership view’, he promised). [30] Even more diabolically, she has put Henry Waxman (‘White House Enemy No. 1’) in charge of ensuring (in the words of analyst Brian Friel) that congressional oversight does not ‘open Democrats up to charges of obstructionism and extremism in the next campaign cycle’. [31]

In the absence of relentless pressure from labour and environmental groups, the Democrats are unlikely to discomfort powerful business interests that they would otherwise delight in wooing away from the Republicans. Certainly there will be some reckoning with Halliburton and contract fraud in Iraq, and perhaps the perjury trial of Scooter Libby (Cheney’s indicted chief of staff) will be spiced with new revelations from Rockefeller and his Senate Intelligence Committee about the administration’s lies and fabricated evidence on the road to Baghdad; but a widening circle of exposure will meet increasing resistance, not simply from Republicans fighting for their lives, but from Democrats trying to protect their renewed ties to the very corporate groups at the core of corruption and scandal. The opportunity to expose and reform will be counter-balanced at each step by the temptation to make deals and collect campaign contributions. As the Economist cynically but accurately put it, ‘the new house chieftains do not see themselves as revolutionaries. Their goal, after all, is not to enact a specific agenda, but to prepare the ground for the presidential election of 2008.’ [32]

Because corporate lobbyists are scared of the subpoena power wielded by Rangel and Waxman (however constrained by Pelosi), they will happily seek refuge in Democratic campaign committees. The fusion between Corporate America and the Republican Party appears less permanent and unassailable than it did a year ago and, as BusinessWeek predicted shortly after the election, ‘companies will be rushing to stock up on lobbyists with Democratic credentials’. [33] The Democratic leadership, for its part, is brazenly cruising for cash. The next election cycle will be the most expensive in history, and Hillary Clinton is unlikely to relish congressional hearings into the crimes of the pharmaceutical, oil and military-construction industries that could unleash massive corporate retaliation against her in 2008. From a strategic perspective, it makes far more sense for the Democrats to concentrate congressional exposés on a handful of Administration villains, while quietly rebuilding parity of representation on K Street, where many of the winged monkeys are reputedly rejoicing at their recent liberation from DeLay, the wicked witch of Texas.

As BusinessWeek reassured nervous readers, any tendency toward populist excess in the new Congress would be counteracted by the millionaires, corporate lawyers and hi-tech entrepreneurs in the ranks of Democracy itself, especially the fervently pro-business New Democrat Coalition (the House arm of the Democratic Leadership Council) chaired by Rep. Ellen Tauscher of California. ‘In a narrowly divided Democratic House, Tauscher’s band of about 40 economic moderates would wield extraordinary power to influence tax, trade and budget policy.’ Moreover, ceos worried about possible indictment or evil corporations fearful of losing their lucrative federal contracts could always appeal to K Street’s new wonder, George Crawford, who as Nancy Pelosi’s former chief of staff has positioned himself to be Washington’s chief deal-maker. (‘In recent months,’ reveals BusinessWeek, ‘he has added Exxon Mobil Corp. and Amgen Inc. to his client roster.’) [34]

Beyond the uncontroversial agenda of the ‘100 hours’, few of the promised reforms that have attracted progressive voters to the Democrats are likely to make any headway against the coming hurricane of corporate lobbying and political fundraising organized by Crawford and other Democratic insiders. Energy policy, for example, has been one of the party’s highest-profile issues, and Senator Barbara Boxer (new chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee) has rallied a broad coalition of environmentalists around tough emissions and fuel economy standards for automobiles. But as journalist Richard Simon recently reported in the Los Angeles Times, the Detroit automakers and Texas oil men are surprisingly unworried. ‘We’re confident that there are plenty of Democrats who know and understand us’, a leader of the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association told him. [35]

The ‘understanding Democrats’ in the 110th Congress will include senators from energy-exporting states, such as Mary Landrieu (Louisiana) and Jeff Bingaman (New Mexico), as well as the powerful chair of the House Energy Committee, John Dingell (Michigan), who will fight to defend every last molecule of carbon dioxide emitted by a Ford Explorer or Chevy Suburban. Nancy Pelosi may take away some of the oil industry’s more outrageous tax breaks, but Barbara Boxer will never take away rich Americans’ suvs or reduce their dependence on foreign oil. No matter how many millions of people may be terrified by global warming’s ‘inconvenient truth’, there will always be Democrats to help filibuster any cap on greenhouse emissions or vote to preserve the oil industry’s special entitlements.

IV. DEFICITS AND DOG POUNDS

In contrast to most European parliamentary systems, the American party system is only partially ‘nationalized’, and regional and local agendas preserve exceptional salience in the operation of Congress. The 2006 election is a spectacular case in point: whether or not the electorate actually shifted left, congressional clout—in one of the most dramatic geographical power-shifts in memory—moved back to the Blue coasts. Texas, Florida, Virginia and Georgia (whose suburbs were the strategic pivots of the 1994 Republican revolution) are out, and California and New York (the pariahs of the age of Bush) are in. Or, to be more precise, Democrats representing the golden triangle of Wall Street, Hollywood and Silicon Valley now rule Congress.

Although California and New York (together with Massachusetts and Washington) hegemonize the knowledge economy and the us export of technologies, entertainment and financial services, they have become cash cows for regionally redistributive Republican policies since 1994. California is perhaps the extreme case. For fifty years, from Lend-Lease until the fall of the Berlin Wall, California’s aerospace and electronics industries had been irrigated by an aqueduct of defence dollars; since 1990 at the latest, fiscal subsidies have switched direction and California now exports its federal taxes to heavily Republican states. Whereas California once received $1.15 in federal expenditure for every dollar it paid in federal taxes, it now gets back only 79 cents. (The inequities are worse than depicted in Table 5, since California and New York are also the largest ports of entry for new immigrants and finance services that should be federal mandates.) Partly as a result of this shortfall, the world’s premier science-based regional economy is supported by scandalously decayed physical, social and educational (at least, primary and secondary school) infrastructures.

But the Democrats will have to fight themselves, and not just Republicans, if they want to reverse the relative decline of federal expenditure, especially in the ageing cities of the Bluest states. While the new Congressional leadership, especially Pelosi and Clinton, have individually lobbied with great ferocity for their own districts’ and states’ needs, they have collectively tied the party’s hands with a cargo-cultish commitment to deficit reduction and fiscal frugality. Although Iraq and political corruption were the most important issues amongst voters, that ancient Republican battle cry—‘fiscal responsibility’—was the programmatic centrepiece of the Democrats’ ‘New Direction for America’.

Despite claims in the Nation and elsewhere that the Democrats are now channelling their ‘inner populist’, the party remains completely in thrall to ‘Rubinomics’—the fervent emphasis on budgetary discipline rather than social spending that characterized the reign of former Goldman Sachs ceo Robert Rubin as Clinton’s Secretary of the Treasury. In practice, this translates not simply into a Democratic reluctance to undertake new spending, but also a refusal to debate the rollback of any of Bush’s $1 trillion in tax cuts for the affluent. ‘Tax and spend, tax and spend, tax and spend’, Senator Kent Conrad (chair of the Budget Committee) told the New York Times, ‘we’re not going there’. [36] The president can give away the Treasury to the super-rich and run up colossal debts as he invades the world, but the Democrats are now sworn to a path of anti-Keynesian rectitude that would have made Calvin Coolidge blush.

Indeed Congress’s most ‘rabid budget-balancers’ (this is the official description on their website) are the Blue Dogs, a caucus of conservative Democrats organized in 1995 in jealous emulation of Gingrich’s Republicans. Hailing mainly from rapidly growing smaller cities and exurbs such as Merced, Tallahassee and Hot Springs, the Blue Dogs cultivate a downhome guns-and-bibles image in contrast to the cappuccino-drinking New Democrats (who tend to represent wealthier suburbs in Connecticut and California). Although they share the hawkish politics of the dlc New Dems, they are less friendly to hedge funds and free-trade agreements. The real fire in the belly of the Blue Dogs is their demagogic opposition to state welfarism and, especially, federal aid to Black and Latino-majority big cities. With 44 members in their expanded ‘dog pound’ and plentiful allies on the Republican side, the Blue Dogs vow to cap spending in the next Congress, while gathering votes for a constitutional amendment to require an annually balanced federal budget. [37] One of their chief allies, South Carolina’s John Spratt, will be chair of the House Budget Committee and, with Pelosi’s blessing, the Party’s ‘chief enforcer’ of budgetary austerity. [38]

Terrified of the perceived electoral and financial repercussions of attempting to reform the current tax system, and with the Blue Dogs barking at their heels, the leadership prefers to let Republican deficits and tax cuts dictate Democratic policy. Karl Rove proposes to do precisely that and, in the New Year, Bush invited the Democrats to join him in balancing the budget, ‘a goal that would tie the hands of the Democrats’, leaving them ‘little or no room to manoeuvre their priorities through Congress’. [39]

V. NEW ORLEANS VERSUS SILICON VALLEY

The Democratic leadership’s public preference for balanced budgets over human needs is thus partly a reflection of the balance of power within the party, where the Blue Dogs (either alone or in combination with the New Dems) now claim de facto veto power over new legislation. It was presumably this pressure from conservative white Democrats that led congressional election strategists under the command of Illinois representative Rahm Emanuel to deliberately delete any mention of New Orleans from 2006 campaign advertising. [40]

The fate of New Orleans, of course, is one of the great moral watersheds in modern American history, but most Democrats shamelessly refused to make federal responses to Hurricane Katrina or the subsequent ethnic cleansing of the Gulf Coast central issues in the campaign. Although President Bush himself had declared in his Jackson Square speech that ‘we have a duty to confront this poverty [revealed by Katrina] with bold action’, the Democrats have shown no greater sense of ‘duty’ or capacity for ‘bold action’ than a notoriously hypocritical and incompetent White House. Their priorities were exemplified by the six-plank national platform in November that stressed deficits and troop buildups but failed to mention either Katrina or poverty.

Even the Black Caucus, with some individual exceptions, has been surprisingly listless in its response to an unending series of Bush administration provocations (including, most recently, the decisions to knock down 4,000 units of little-damaged public housing in New Orleans and abruptly end housing aid to thousands of Katrina refugees outside the city). Although Harlem’s Rangel has promised new congressional hearings on poverty in the light of the New Orleans catastrophe, he is unlikely to defy the leadership’s deficit-reduction fetish. It will be easier to hand out more blame (richly deserved, of course) to Republican policies than to roll back tax cuts for the rich to pay for new social spending.

But Nancy, Harry and Hillary do have one domestic crusade whose importance transcends other dogmas and constraints: the promotion of the ‘innovation agenda’ that the Democrats hope will dramatically solidify their support among hi-tech corporations and science-based firms across the country. If you wanted to find the missing urgency and passion that the Democrats should have focused on Katrina and urban poverty, it was evident last year in the rousing speeches that Pelosi and other leading Democrats delivered in tech hubs like Emeryville, Mountain View, Raleigh and Redmond.

Unlike bringing the troops home from Iraq or rebuilding homes and lives in New Orleans, the innovation agenda is a ‘real’ Democratic priority. Angry at the Republican failure to renew all-important r&d tax credits for Silicon Valley firms, tech industry leaders, including the ceos of Cisco and Genentech, worked with Pelosi and her Bay Area Democratic colleagues to develop a list of key demands—including new stock option accounting rules, permanent r&d credits, patent reforms, subsidies for alternative energy, a doubling of funding for the National Science Foundation, and ‘network neutrality’ for the internet—that the Democrats have promised to pass in 2007. [41] (Democrats have also long supported the h1-b visa programme that keeps Silicon Valley awash with cheap foreign engineers, most of whom do not have the right to join unions or organize.) [42]

The Democrats’ avid interest in patents and innovation was punctually rewarded with a 50 per cent increase (over 2004) in campaign contributions from hi-tech industries to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. [43] At the same time, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, while in 2000 the Republican share of Silicon Valley political money ‘was 43 per cent, now it’s 4 per cent’. [44] Since the first days of the Clinton administration, seducing the software and biotech sectors and their allied venture capitalists (along with deepening already profound ties to entertainment and media industries) has been the Democrats’ equivalent of the Republicans’ K Street Project. [45] Now, with Al Gore sitting on the boards of Google and Apple, and Pelosi plotting virtual futures with Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the Millennium has arrived. Indeed with the ascent of Bay Area Democrats to such commanding positions in Congress, New Orleans may continue to moulder in misery, but Silicon Valley and its outliers can now trade pork as equals with the oil men and defence contractors still bunkered inside the White House.

VI. DARK POPULISM

The Democrats, as Thomas Edsall frequently points out these days, represent two very different and largely incompatible population universes. Two out of five Democratic voters fit the stereotype of ‘well-educated, well-off, culturally liberal professionals’, but the rest of the party’s base are people who are ‘socially and economically disadvantaged’ in the new Gilded Age: the Black and Latino working classes, white women in lower-end information-sector jobs, and white men in traditional but rapidly shrinking industrial occupations. [46] The post-New Deal Party led by the Clintons is entirely mobilized to articulate and defend the interests of affluent knowledge workers and the globalized industries in which they work; the rest of the Democrats ride in the back of the bus on the cynical assumption that Blacks, immigrants and Rustbelt whites have nowhere else to go and thus are an automatic blue vote.

Since the rise and fall of Jesse Jackson’s electrifying ‘Rainbow Coalition’ campaign in 1984, there has been no serious challenge to the dominance of the New Democrats and their version of ‘Third Way’ ideology, alloying economic neoliberalism and cultural tolerance. Yet the dream of a new populist, anti-Yuppie uprising, fuelled by righteous blue-collar anger and rousing the party’s long neglected majority, has continued to inspire progressives and veterans of the Rainbow as they have suffered under the arrogant yoke of dlc centrists and economic globalizers.

Then, a few days after his stunning upset of George Allen in Virginia, Democratic senator-elect James Webb published an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal under the provocative headline ‘Class Struggle’. Webb, who was Secretary of the Navy under Ronald Reagan, warned that an ‘ever-widening divide’ of socio-economic inequality was plunging the United States back into ‘a class-based system, the likes of which we have not seen since the nineteenth century’. While their wages stagnated and social security declined, working-class Americans were diverted by carefully orchestrated hysteria about ‘God, guns, gays, abortion and the flag’. ‘The politics of the Karl Rove era’, warned the former leading Republican, ‘were designed to distract and divide the very people who would ordinarily be rebelling against the deterioration of their way of life.’ [47]

Webb’s column predictably shocked many wsj readers, but it delighted progressives, who recognized that he was quoting almost verbatim from What’s the Matter with Kansas? and endorsing Tom Frank’s call for the Democrats to reclaim the mantle of economic populism. Webb argued that the Democratic victory would ensure that ‘American workers [finally] have a chance to be heard’ in their legitimate complaints about the social costs of free trade and job export. ‘And our government leaders’, he intoned, ‘have no greater duty than to confront the growing unfairness in this age of globalization.’

Bombast or the manifesto for the long-awaited uprising? Writing in the Nation a few weeks later, Christopher Hayes argued that Webb’s born-again concern for working-class victims of corporate globalization was part of a genuine populist trend within the Democratic Party, whose standard-bearers also include congressional victor Heath Shuler in North Carolina and new Senator Sherrod Brown in Ohio. [48] Certainly their appeals to economic patriotism (Shuler accused his Republican congressional opponent of ‘selling out American families’) and strident denunciations of ‘internationalists’ and ‘free traders’ struck real sparks in Carolina and Virginia textile towns and the Appalachian counties of Ohio, where whole industries have died in the last decade. In 2004, John Kerry lost the mountains and piedmont (including hardcore Democratic West Virginia) because he had almost nothing to say about the regional jobs crisis; this time around, the Democrats fielded first-class demagoguery in a local drawl.

But as Hayes himself eloquently emphasizes, ‘economic populism has a dark side’, and he allows that other analysts

have raised the spectre of the rise of a ‘Lou Dobbs’-like wing of the party whose economic arguments are inextricably linked to a racialized nationalism, the kind of populism that’s equally comfortable bashing corporations that outsource jobs and ‘illegal aliens’ who take away Americans’ jobs here at home, and whose opposition to the Iraq War, like Pat Buchanan’s, is rooted in an America-first isolationism.
Although Hayes prefers to believe in the progressive trend of figures like Webb and Shuler, I think he is most accurate when he compares their politics to racist media demagogues like Dobbs and Buchanan. [49]

A careful reading of Webb’s ‘class struggle’ article, for example, reveals precisely his belief that Mexican gardeners and investment bankers are coequal exploiters of the native working class, with a ‘vast underground labour pool from illegal immigration’ waiting to drown American values and wages. A strange passage about the ‘unspoken insinuation’ that ‘certain immigrant groups have the “right genetics” and thus are natural entrants to the “overclass”’ can be decoded as a reference to the Yellow Peril fantasies that infuse Webb’s public utterances. As Secretary of the Navy he was one of the principal advocates of a continuing Cold War with China, which he later saw developing a ‘strategic axis with the Muslim world’, and he broke with Bush policies in Iraq precisely because he feared that Rumsfeld was criminally ‘empowering’ the real enemies—Iran and China. [50]

Heath Shuler, the former star quarterback for the Washington Redskins, likewise turns many hard hats his way with passionate screeds against North American Free Trade and the export of Heartland jobs. But like Webb’s, his populist message is poisoned by a nativism that includes television campaign ads depicting Shuler as a lone hero fighting against amnesty for illegal immigrants. Ezra Klein in American Prospect recently argued that liberals should not worry unduly about the jingoism of Webb and Shuler, or about their reactionary positions on gays and abortion. In a Congress dominated by Democrats, Klein explains, ‘they’ll have precious little opportunity to exercise their social conservatism. Their economic beliefs, however, will get more play in a Congress aching to, at long last, turn its attention to health care, jobs, inequality, corporate regulation and all the other domestic issues Democrats so love to address.’ [51]

Aside from Klein’s heroic assumptions about Democrats’ reforming intentions, he seriously underestimates the dangers posed by economic nationalism within Democratic ranks. Karl Rove and the White House, for their part, were dramatically blindsided over the last year by the explosion of anti-immigrant hysteria within the conservative grass roots; and the editors of American Prospect (the magazine of ‘progessive Democrats’) may yet rue their underestimation of Democratic xenophobia. At least half of the 30 seats that the Democrats took from Republicans were won by candidates with conservative positions on immigration. Throughout the South and Midwest, moreover, Democrats attacked Republicans for being ‘soft on illegal immigration’, and one Democratic senate campaign committee’s website even juxtaposed images of people scaling border fences with portraits of bin Laden and Kim Jong Il. The Blue Dogs, in particular, are avid supporters of a continental-scale border wall and the use of local police to enforce national immigration laws. [52]

In the new Congress it will be interesting to see how far the Webbs and Shulers travel with their ‘proletarian’ attacks on the free-trade principles held sacred by New Dems and Clintonians. (My hunch is that the hidden injuries of class will matter less to both politicians after they have had some heartwarming conversations with the wealthy hi-tech types in the Research Triangle and Beltway science parks.) On the other hand, there is a very real chance that the anti-immigrant and sinophobic aspects of their erstwhile populism will be amplified in synergy with like-minded Republicans. The Democrats can take temporary delight in the self-destruction of the Republicans’ ‘Latino strategy’, but they are not immune to such devils within their own party. In the worst-case scenario, the long-hoped-for New Populism would simply become midwife to a bipartisan regroupment of bigots and cranks, while the Democratic leadership continues to take its cues from Goldman Sachs and Genentech.
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[1] Bob Herbert, ‘Ms. Speaker and Other Trends’, New York Times, 9 November 2006; Paul Waldman, ‘A Big Step in Nation’s March to Left’, Baltimore Sun, 12 November 2006; and George Lakoff, ‘Building on the Progressive Victory’, CommonDreams.org, 14 December 2006.
[2] Lawrence Kudlow, ‘Reach Out to the Blue Dogs’, kudlowsmoneypolitics.blogspot.com, 8 November 2006; and William Safire, ‘After the Thumpin’’, New York Times, 9 November 2006.
[3] William Schneider, ‘Swing Time’, National Journal, 11 November 2006.
[4] Thomas Edsall, ‘White-Guy Rebellion’, National Journal, 11 November 2006.
[5] Robert Borosage, James Carville and Stanley Greenberg, The Meltdown Election: Report on the 2006 Post-Election Surveys, Democracy Corps, Washington dc, 15 November 2006, pp. 2–3.
[6] There are 98 partisan chambers in 50 states, but Nebraska, thanks to its great Progressive, George Norris, has had a unicameral, non-partisan legislature since 1937.
[7] John Hood, ‘gop Car Wreck’, National Review, 4 December 2006. Democrats doubled the number of states (from 8 to 16) where they control both the legislature and the governor’s mansion. See analysis in Tim Storey and Nicole Moore, ‘Democrats Deliver a Power Punch’, State Legislatures, December 2006.
[8] Jonathan Martin, ‘Damn Yankees’, National Review, 18 December 2006.
[9] For a hysterical view of ‘how liberal millionaires are buying Colorado’s politics’, see John Miller, ‘The Color Purple’, National Review, 4 December 2006.
[10] Storey and Moore, ‘Democrats’.
[11] Frank’s brilliantly written and highly influential 2004 book, What’s the Matter with Kansas?, portrays a white working class that has surrendered any rational calculation of its economic interests to hopeless, manipulated cultural rage. Like many other progressives, he calls for the Democrats to counter Rovian cultural populism with their own economic populism. My 2005 critique of Frank, ‘What’s Wrong with America?’ (prepared for a ucla debate) appears in In Praise of Barbarians: essays against empire, Chicago 2007.
[12] Peter Slevin, ‘Trounced at Polls, Kansas gop Is Still Plagued by Infighting’, Washington Post, 30 December 2006. Slevin argues that the culture wars—evolution and abortion particularly—have deeply, perhaps irreparably split the Kansas gop.
[13] Borosage, Carville and Greenberg, Meltdown Election. Republican pollster Frank Luntz agrees with Greenberg: ‘So much of it [the election] was a statement of disappointment in Republican leadership rather than an embrace of the Democratic alternative. The election was a referendum on the national gop.’ Storey and Moore, ‘Democrats’.
[14] Edsall, ‘White-Guy Rebellion’.
[15] The Senate, in which Wyoming with less than 500,000 people has the same representation as California with nearly 35 million, provides the Republicans (dominant in the rural, more thinly populated states) with a notorious advantage.
[16] Ezra Klein, ‘Spinned Right’, American Prospect online, 8 November 2006; Christopher Hayes, ‘The New Democratic Populism’, Nation, 4 December 2006; and Michael Tomasky, ‘Dems put the “big tent” back together’, Los Angeles Times, 12 November 2006.
[17] The backlash of independent voters against Bush pumped wind into the sails of both McCain and Giuliani, perceived as the only Republicans who can win that segment of the electorate; but even more dramatically, it increased the value of ‘Terminator’ futures. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose political fortunes collapsed in 2005 after a disastrous stint as a conservative Republican, has returned from the dead in a new, hugely popular incarnation as a big-spending stealth-Democrat. His backers are currently canvassing the possibility of a constitutional amendment that would allow the foreign-born actor to run for president in 2012.
[18] An Opinion Research/cnn poll of whom voters did not want to be their party’s 2008 candidate found Mitt Romney at 50 per cent among Republicans (just behind retired Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist) and Barack Obama at 38 per cent among Democrats (behind Al Gore and the luckless John Kerry). See ‘Poll Track’, National Journal, 2 December 2006.
[19] William Schneider was fascinated by an almost exact numerical correlation in every region between disapproval of the war and disapproval of the president: ‘Swing Time’. Charlie Cook, another well-known psephologist, gave Iraq credit for 70 per cent of the national shift from red to blue. Charlie Cook, ‘The War’s Wave’, National Journal, 11 November 2006.
[20] See Bara Vaida and Neil Munro, ‘Reversal of Fortunes’, National Journal, 11 November 2006.
[21] As Brooks emphasizes, the aggressive Republicanization of the professional military is a relatively recent phenomenon (since Reagan and the Second Cold War) that has been reinforced by gop policies that have shifted military bases and officer-training programmes to more conservative Sunbelt states. Rosa Brooks, ‘Weaning the military from the gop’, Los Angeles Times, 5 January 2007.
[22] Tom Hayden, ‘Election Interpretation’, handout to his class at Pitzer College, 9 November 2006.
[23] Noam Levey, ‘Democracy To-Do List is Modest at Outset’, Los Angeles Times, 2 January 2007.
[24] William Schneider, ‘Warring Sects’, National Journal, 18 November 2006.
[25] Levey, ‘Democracy To-Do List’. Pelosi echoes the position of chief Democratic Leadership Council ideologue, Will Marshall, that ‘those mindful of history [e.g., Vietnam] will shy away from trying to take over Iraqi policy by, for instance, cutting off funding for the war.’ James Kitfield, ‘Next Steps in Iraq’, National Journal, 11 November 2006.
[26] When the National Journal asked Ike Skelton, the new chair of the Armed Services Committee, about his priorities, he responded: ‘Are they getting jammers? Are they getting body armour? The infantry and the Special Forces need to be larger, better trained, and have better equipment.’ ‘Democrats to Watch’.
[27] Pew Research Center data cited in William Schneider, ‘The Price of Patience’, National Journal, 2 December 2006.
[28] ‘K Street’—after the office address of many corporate lobbyists—is the metonym for the revolving door that punctually turns former members of Congress (especially committee chairs) and their aides into highly-paid lobbyists for pharmaceutical companies, oil giants, real-estate brokers, arms dealers and foreign dictators. Although civics textbooks have yet to acknowledge its enormous importance, ‘K Street’ is truly the fourth, ‘financial’ branch of national government in the United States.
[29] See Lou Dubose and Jan Reid, The Hammer: Tom DeLay, God, Money, and the Rise of the Republican Congress, New York 2004.
[30] Richard Cohen, David Baumann and Kirk Victor, ‘Going Blue’, National Journal, 11 November 2006, p. 16; and ‘Democrats to Watch’.
[31] Brian Friel, ‘Junkyard Dogs, on a Leash’, National Journal, 11 November 2006.
[32] ‘Old dogs; few tricks’, Economist, 11 November 2006.
[33] Richard Dunham and Eamon Javers, ‘The Politics of Change’, BusinessWeek, 20 November 2006.
[34] Dunham and Javers, ‘Politics of Change’.
[35] Richard Simon, ‘Green laws no slam-dunk in new Congress’, Los Angeles Times, 18 December 2006.
[36] Edmund Andrews, ‘The Democrats’ Cautious Tiptoe Around the President’s Tax Cuts’, New York Times, 4 January 2007.
[37] Blue Dog Coalition, ‘12-Point Reform Plan for Curing Our Nation’s Addiction to Deficit Spending’, at www.bluedogdemocrat.org.
[38] ‘Democrats to Watch’.
[39] Joel Havemann, ‘Bush wants budget balanced by 2012’, Los Angeles Times, 4 January 2007.
[40] ‘It’s as if this year, Katrina was the subliminal issue.’ Michael Tisserand, ‘The Katrina Factor’, Nation, 1 January 2007.
[41] Jim Puzzanghera, ‘Pelosi likely to speak up for tech industry’, Los Angeles Times, 13 November 2006.
[42] David Bacon, ‘Immigrants Find Hi-Tech Servitude in Silicon Valley’, Labor Notes, September 2000.
[43] Puzzanghera, ‘Pelosi likely to speak up’.
[44] crp communications director Massie Ritsch in one of the National Journal’s ‘Technology Daily’ communiqués, August 2006.
[45] See Sara Miles, How to Hack a Party Line: The Democrats and Silicon Valley, New York 2001.
[46] Thomas Edsall, National Journal, 23 September 2006. He uses Pew Research Center data to characterize the Democratic electorate.
[47] James Webb, ‘Class Struggle: American workers have a chance to be heard’, Wall Street Journal, 15 November 2006.
[48] Hayes, ‘New Democratic Populism’.
[49] Hayes, ‘New Democratic Populism’. I leave aside for later discussion the emergent presidential campaign of John Edwards who, in a quest to outflank Hillary on the left, has seemingly embraced a more robust and authentic progressivism than the trick-populism that disappointed his followers in 2004. For an intriguing preview, see Perry Bacon, ‘The Anti-Clinton’, Time, 15 January 2007.
[50] James Webb, ‘What to do about China?’, New York Times, 15 June 1998; and ‘Heading for Trouble’, Washington Post, 4 September 2002.
[51] Klein, ‘Spinned Right’.
[52] Brian Friel, ‘Splits of Their Own,’ National Journal, 9 September 2006.

Latin America: 'Bush, get out!'

2007-03-26T12:40:00.000+08:00

Federico Fuentes

Shortly before leaving to inspect what was once viewed as the US’s backyard, US President George Bush told a March 5 event organised by the US Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, “I want to talk about [an] important priority for our country, and that is helping our neighbours to the south of us build a better and productive life”. Explaining that he was embarking on a trip to Brazil, Uruguay, Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico, Bush said: “These are countries that are part of a region that has made great strides toward freedom and prosperity. They’ve raised up new democracies, They’ve enhanced and undertaken fiscal policies that bring stability.

“Yet, despite the advance, tens of millions in our hemisphere remain stuck in poverty, and shut off from the promises of the new century. My message to those trabajadores y campesinos [workers and peasants] is, you have a friend in the United States of America. We care about your plight.”

Those present responded with a round of applause. Yet unsurprisingly, the reaction to Bush south of the border left no-one in Washington doubting that the neighbours are revolting.

In Brazil, Bush proposed that President Luis Inacio “Lula” da Silva join forces to create a new ethanol alliance, given that the two countries produce 70% of the planet’s supply between them. However Lula’s request for a reduction in tariffs on ethanol and agricultural products going into the US was rebuffed.

Lula responded by declaring, “We want to maintain this historic relation without us renouncing our greater commitment, which is this whole process of the strengthening of Mercosur [the Common Market of the South], the construction of the Community of South American Nations and the process of integration that we are engaged in.”

Meanwhile, tens of thousands took to the streets of Sao Paulo to say “Bush, get out!”

‘War criminal’

In Uruguay, not wanting to spoil his photo opportunities, Bush met with Uruguayan President Tabare Vasquez in a tiny tourist resort, well away from the massive demonstrations in the capital that denounced the presence of a “killer” and “war criminal”.

While the Frente Amplio government is generally referred to as part of the rise of leftist governments in the region, a demobilised population, along with a rightward shift internally within the FA and conflicts with Argentina over the proposed construction of a paper mill on their shared border seem to be pushing Uruguay into the orbit of the US. Yet Bush didn’t leave with much apart from some nice photos of his barbeque in Colonia.

Even in Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico, where the host governments are more firmly in the pocket of the US, Bush did not get the desired response. Focussing his intervention on defending the wall of shame being built to keep out Mexicans and others who want to cross the border to the US, and the forced deportation of more than 18,000 immigrants last year (780,000 Guatemalans are currently living and working without proper documentation in the US), Bush managed to put the locals offside — so much so that the after visiting a Mayan temple, the indigenous people carried out a cleansing ritual to warn off evil spirits.

This chain of events led Eduardo Dimas to write in Progreso Weekly, “Whenever the United States experiences a failure in its policy toward Latin America — and recently it has suffered plenty — experts, analysts and observers immediately begin to make statements to the effect that the problem is that the US government does not have a defined, ‘delineated’ policy toward the region.”

Yet according to Dimas, this view is wrong: “There is a policy toward Latin America, but it is an absolutely absurd one, overtaken long ago by events and time. Except for a few moments in history, the region … was the ‘safe backyard’ where US administrations could do and undo at will.

“The scheme of domination for the past 60 years — and even before — and the links of dependency between the Latin American oligarchies and the Empire have been overtaken by the reality they themselves created and perhaps do not understand.

“The truth is that many changes have occurred in Latin America in recent times, to the degree that the economic and social situation has awakened people, made them understand what their interests are, and — in some countries more, in some, less — that awakening has led to new nationalist or progressive, or openly leftist and socialist governments.”

New plan of action

This new situation was symbolised by the visit by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to Argentina — on the other side of the river to Colonia — the same day that Bush was in Uruguay. Addressing a mass rally at the Ferro Stadium, Chavez asked which direction the border was and, along with 40,000 others, turned to face it and shout “Gringo, go home!”

Luis Bilbao wrote in America XXI that the rejection of Bush’s tour “was not only manifested in the generalised rejection by the people”, which he said would multiply if Washington decided to attack Iran. “Now, the anti-imperialist clamor has a program and plan of action: the program of the Bolivarian revolution and the project of South American unity, which take form through the voice of the Venezuelan president.”

Writing about this new situation for the Canadian Socialist Voice, John Riddell commented that “Mass movements marked by a clear class polarization have given rise to governments that preside over a capitalist state and take measures for structural reform within capitalism. Such governments vary enormously in character. Some are prone to cave in to the pressures of imperialism and local pro-imperialist sectors. To some degree, and in some countries, there has been a shift in the locus of action from the streets to government.

“But the development as a whole is not a step backward. Rather, the counterattack against neoliberalism is profoundly progressive … Above all, Latin American countries are asserting and realizing their sovereignty against foreign domination. The Empire has been forced into retreat. Improved conditions are being won for national economic development. Even if this process does not go beyond capitalism, it creates better conditions of life and struggle for working people and deserves wholehearted support by socialists everywhere.”

Continental unity

Today in Latin America, the unfolding rebellion is taking the form of a movement towards continental unity, which Bush's tour was aimed at countering. While the struggle may not be one for socialism in the first instance, the Venezuelan revolution, which has explicitly made socialism its goal, shows how these rebellions against imperialism and its local quislings can develop into open confrontation with the capitalist system. As they do, those leading the struggles are forced to decide which side of the class divide they are on.

Projects such as the Bank of the South, Petrosur, the strengthening of Mercosur and its incorporation of new member countries, while far from socialist, shift the balance of forces in favour of the oppressed nations against imperialism. They can help create the conditions for the popular movements to strengthen their anti-imperialist consciousness and pursue more audacious objectives.

That is why, as Alberto Muller Rojas, who from retirement was reinstated by Chavez as an active general in the Venezuelan army and is now also on the committee to help set up Venezuela’s new unified socialist party, wrote on March 3: “The objective of the Yankees is to hold back the process of South American integration, whose final result depends on the alliance between Argentina and Brazil. That is what presents a threat to the empire.

“The hostility of the neoconservatives to the Caracas regime is only an indirect maneuver to impede the political unification of the subcontinent, made effective by the catalysing role that [the Venezuelan] government plays, which has allowed the acceleration of this dynamic ... [This] offers the possibility of converting the region, at least as it is known today, into a grand autonomous participant in the international system.”

Venezuela is showing today — as Cuba has for the past six decades — that only socialism can present a real future for this movement. Each step forward in this direction deserves our support and solidarity.

Support the Troops By Sending Them to War! How can the Democratic leadership say that with a straight face?

2007-03-26T12:38:00.000+08:00

By Kevin Zeese

As the United States enters the fifth year of the quagmire of the Iraq war and occupation the Capitol Hill leadership claims: we need to continue to fund the war to support U.S. troops. Does this claim pass the straight face test? Is this what the troops want?

Do we support the troops when we send them to die and kill? Do we support the troops when we send them into a quagmire without adequate armor?

Three troops a day are killed in Iraq, each month approximately 500 are listed as casualties (ten times more are unlisted casualties who suffer physical, emotional and mental injuries from Iraq) and countless numbers of Iraqis are killed every day. So, when the Democrats call for a withdrawal by August 31, 2008 it means there will be 1,500 more U.S. troops killed, more than 8,000 officially injured and many tens of thousands of Iraqi children, women and men killed. In 2007, if the supplemental passes, Congress will have appropriated $165 billion, and in 2008 it is likely much more will be spent.

And, the loopholes in the House Democratic supplemental are large enough to ensure that even after the deadline President Bush will be able to keep as many troops as he wants in Iraq. For example, troops can stay to capture or kill members of Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups. We have approximately 140,000 troops in Iraq doing that right now. With the wording of this supplemental that will continue after the so-called withdrawal date. And, the supplemental does nothing to prevent a military attack on Iran.

This supplemental is more likely to lead to a larger war in the Middle East than it is a withdrawal from Iraq.

How does this support the troops?

On the Fourth Anniversary of the war military families, Iraq War Vets, Gold Star family members and active duty troops held a press conference with a simple message displayed behind the speakers:

“DE-FUND THE WAR TO SUPPORT THE TROOPS”

These are the members of the mere 1.6% of the U.S. citizenry who bear the daily burden of the Iraq War and occupation. The military and their families who live with this war every hour of every day understand that sending troops into a civil war, that is not supported by the American people or the Iraqi people, is no way to support the troops. They realize that inadequate funding for the Veterans Administration while at the same time flooding it with new casualties is no way to support the troops. They have lived not only with battlefield deaths and life changing injuries, but with suicide, the dysfunction of PTSD, the guilt of killing women and children, and broken families – all the result of Congress supporting the troops by sending them to war.

The claim that the only way to get Veterans benefits or armor for the troops is by supporting the supplemental is patently false. The Democrats should have said that Bush’s supplemental was dead on arrival and drafted their own – a supplemental that would have supported the troops, funded the VA, provided for the rebuilding of Iraq by Iraqis, the funding of a regional stabilization force and a diplomatic surge in the region. That would have been an appropriation that would have really supported the troops.

Some of the speakers at the military family’s press conference included Joyce and Kevin Lucey of Belchertown, MA whose son Cpl. Jeffrey Michael Lucey, a Marine Reservist, served in Iraq in 2003, and took his own life after being released and refused treatment at a VA hospital in 2004. Also speaking was Tina Richards of Salem, Missouri a mother of a Marine who is suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and other injuries but may be sent on a third deployment to Iraq. She recently had a chance meeting in the Halls of Congress with Rep. David Obey, the Chair of the appropriations committee, where he described war opponents as “idiot liberals” who “must be smoking something.” She has a column in the Milwaukee Sentinel Journal urging “We owe it to the troops and their families to end the war now.” Corey VanBuskirk of Greeley, PA whose husband is a Marine serving his second tour in Iraq. He was deployed 12 days after the two were married. Stacy Bannerman of Kent, Washington whose husband served for a year in Iraq with the Washington Army National Guard, received a mental health exam eight months after serving at the most attacked base in Iraq, and, almost one year from that exam was notified by the military of his diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

These speakers at the Military Families Speak Out press conference describe the real stories of soldiers in Iraq. Rep. Jack Murtha described the Iraq War as more intense combat than Vietnam or World War II citing a survey that found that 93% of soldiers had been shot at and 86% knew someone who had been shot.

The opposition to the war shown by these soldiers and their families is consistent with polls of soldiers. More than a year ago a Zogby poll showed that 73% of soldiers in Iraq believed the U.S. should come home within a year. And a poll by Military Times found that their readers, who are generally more senior and career military, found a majority opposed the war.

So, if the Democratic leadership wants to support the troops, why don’t they listen to the troops?

A group of soldiers and their families went to find out what the Democratic leadership was thinking after the press conference. Tina Richards led a delegation of 30 people to the offices of Speaker Nancy Pelosi after the press conference. Richards has been trying to see Pelosi since November 8th – as soon as the Democrats knew they had won majority control of both Houses of Congress.

Richards had worked on a Democratic congressional campaign in Missouri and had made small donations to Democrats across the country thinking that when they were in the majority they would end the war. She has telephoned, written and visited the Speaker’s office seeking to meet her. Last Friday, before she broke through to the national media with an appearance on Hardball, she received a call from the Speaker’s office saying they would set up a meeting as soon as possible with Pelosi. But since that time she has received no phone calls from the Speaker’s office and one reporter told her that the Speaker had decided not to meet with her.

So, along with other military family members, vets and active duty soldiers she went to the Speakers office to ask when she could meet with Nancy Pelosi. She did not receive an answer despite her repeated contacts. She and other members of the delegation insisted on meeting with Pelosi. TV cameras from networks and citizen news groups monitored the discussion despite a Pelosi rule that no cameras are allowed in her office (whatever happened to “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of the press!).

The receptionist told Tina and the others that someone from their press office would be coming to meet with them. Of course, a media spokesperson was more to do damage control with the media in attendance than to communicate with the vets, soldiers and their families.

Terry McCullough, the Chief of Staff for Speaker Pelosi, finally came out of her office and after urging by those in attendance suggested a meeting with her. During the meeting families, vets and active soldiers spoke about their opposition to the supplemental that extended the war, their experiences with the VA denying them basic health care, and the challenges they have coming home from the war with no jobs or housing. They spoke about the impact of depleted uranium poisoning. One couple described the suicide of their son when the VA refused to provide him treatment for post traumatic stress disorder.

Ms. McCullough could not answer for Speaker Pelosi. She did not even attempt to explain how sending troops to war – a war the Speaker says she opposes – is supporting the troops. Ms. McCullough promised to convey the messages of the delegation but wouldn’t it have been better if the Speaker would meet with this type of delegation? Listen to their experiences? Understand their reaction to the supplemental? Hear their disappointment with the lack of leadership of the Democratic majority?

President Bush refused to meet with Cindy Sheehan to explain to her for what noble cause her son was killed. Will Tina Richards and other soldiers, vets and military families have to camp out in front of Speaker Pelosi’s office to finally get to talk to her? If so what does that say about the lack of difference between Democrats and Republicans?

If the Democrats want to “support the troops” shouldn’t they at least talk to military families about their concerns regarding the continuation of this war?

For more information visit:

Tina Richards website www.GrassrootsAmerica4us.org Military Families Speak Out www.mfso.org. Iraq Veterans Against the War www.ivaw.org

Kevin Zeese is director of DemocracyRising.US and co-founder of VotersForPeace.US.

Interview with Count Hans-Christof von Sponeck: United Nations Implications in War Crimes

2007-03-26T12:37:00.000+08:00

By Silvia Cattori

For Hans Christof von Sponeck, the former assistant secretary-general of the UN, the United Nations, far from garding the respect for international law and the consolidation of peace, have themselves become a factor of injustice. Thus, the sanctions imposed on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq caused a human disaster, whereas treaties such as the nuclear non-proliferation treaty are used to ensure the domination of certain powers and to threaten others. It is time to change the system completely.

Count Hans-Christof von Sponeck, born in Bremen in 1939, has been working for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) for 32 years. Appointed by Kofi Annan in 1998 as United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq, with the status of UN Assistant to the Secretary General, Mr. von Sponeck resigned in March 2000 in protest against the sanctions, which had led the Iraqi people to misery and starvation. It is with sorrow and bitterness that he speakes about the sufferings endured by the Iraqis, a people he knew well and learned to love, and he appeals to the political leaders responsible for the catastrophe in a moving interview he gave to Silvia Cattori.

Silvia Cattori: In your book ”A Different War: The UN Sanctions Regime in Iraq”, [1] you denounced openly the fact that the Security Council betrayed the principles of the UN Charter. Could you give us specific examples where the UN Secretariat behaved in an especially condemnable way?

Hans von Sponeck: The Security Council must follow the UN Charter and it must not forget the Convention on the rights of the child and the general implications of these conventions. Moreover, if the Security Council knows that conditions in Iraq are inhuman - people of all ages have been in deep trouble, not because of a dictator, but because of the policies around the ’oil for food programme’ - and it decides not to act, or not to do enough to protect the people against the impact of its policy, then one can argue very easily that the Security Council is to be blamed, for the very strong increase in the mortality rates in Iraq.

A definite example is that during the 1980s, under the government of Saddam Hussein, UNICEF identified 25 children per thousand under the age five years of age that were dying in Iraq for various reasons. During the years of sanctions, from 1990 to 2003, there was a sharp increase from 56 per thousand children under five years of age in the early 1990s to 131 per thousand under five years of age at the beginning of the new century. Now everyone can easily understand that this was due to the economic sanctions, so it is out of the question that the Security Council preferred to ignore the consequences of its policies in Iraq under the pressure excercised by the major intervening parties including, and in particular, the United States and Great Britain.

Silvia Cattori: How could the Security Council neglect to consider the fact that these sanctions allowed the superpowers to misuse their position and uniquely pursue their war objectives, when it voted for other resolutions, like for example resolution 1559 which was particularly intended to provide the United States and Israel with a cover for future military strikes? Does that mean that the Security Council and the UN Secretariat, supposed to defend the people, have become mainly responsible for humanitarian catastrophes?

Hans von Sponeck: I would say, only those who either are ignorant, or those who cannot accept the defeat, will continue to argue that the humanitarian drama in Iraq was largely not due – not exclusively but to a large extent –to an erroneous policy, a policy of punishment. The Iraqi people were punished for having accepted the government in Baghdad, even though they were completely innocent.

Silvia Cattori: Our political leaders, who are present in all international bodies, knew perfectly well that these sanctions would have disastrous consequences. Does that mean that, by remaining silent, they have accepted innocent civilians to be killed, tortured, and starved?

Hans von Sponeck: I would say, unless the international community has a very bad memory, we cannot forget that, either there was silence or there was connivance, support, or there was a deliberate effort to promote conditions of the kind that prevailed in Iraq during thirteen years of sanctions. Therefore, you get different levels of accountability, of political accountability. Not only the Prime Minister of Great Britain and the President of the United States and their governments are responsible, but others as well; Spain and Italy played a supportive role that means the former governments are responsible as well. Mr Aznar in Madrid and Mr Berlusconi in Italy are very much responsible for having contributed to the humanitarian disaster that evolved in Iraq. They will not accept this responsibility but the evidence is there.

Silvia Cattori: If the manipulation of the Security Council by the United States is the main problem and if the US continues to commit crimes pretending that they have a UN mandate, what can be done to correct that unacceptable situation?

Hans von Sponeck: I think that this is a very important question. It is relevant for the debate about what kind of United Nations we need to protect the international community or to protect the 192 member governments from the danger that certain other governments misuse their authority, their information, their finances and their power to serve their own interest, but against the interests of peace, the interests of justice and the interests of mankind.

Silvia Cattori: How did you react to the execution of Saddam Hussein and his co-defendants, sentenced to death by a tribunal established by the USA?

Hans von Sponeck: I would say, first of all, that I was not surprised. This was the ultimate objective of those in power in Baghdad and of those who occupy Iraq. It is impossible to defend Saddam Hussein, but we can respond to the fact that there was no due process, but a masquerade. It was a tribunal that hid a prearranged death sentence under the cover of respectability. Saddam Hussein, like any other person, deserved the right to a fair trial, but he was not given a fair trial. And therefore I was upset by this obvious act, although we have international law, despite the fact that the European nations, the US and Canada as well as other western nations repeatedly express their intention to maintain justice, that they in fact did not protect justice.

Silvia Cattori: You wrote to President Bush and asked him to free Tarek Aziz. Did you get an answer?

Hans von Sponeck: I did not get an answer. I wrote this letter because I know Mr Tarek Aziz. My predecessor and I both think he is a person with whom we had a correct relationship, a person who – despite what we read in the mainstream media – tried to look to the Iraqi people. He was ready and willing to consider proposals for the improvement of the humanitarian aid programme. From our perspective, from my perspective, he was a correct person. I cannot judge what Mr Tarek Aziz did in Iraq outside my fields of responsibility, but all I want to ask for is that a person, who is ill, if for no other than humanitarian reasons, should be treated with dignity, should be allowed to obtain medical care while having a fair trial. Just like Saddam Hussein, Tarek Aziz deserved, and deserves, to be treated in accordance with international law, in accordance with The Hague and the Geneva Conventions. I object to the fact that over three years after he voluntarily turned himself in to the occupation forces, he has not even been charged, and still remains in custody while he is badly in need of medical care.

Silvia Cattori: While the situation created by the occupation of Iraq is frightening, it is to be feared that the Resolution against Iran will be used by the United States to strike that country. The German Navy – formally under UN mandate – is in place in the Eastern Mediterranean. Is it because you know to what extent your country is involved in the projects of war of the United States that you recently wrote an open letter to Mrs Angela Merkel asking her to refuse all use of violence against Iran?

Hans von Sponeck: That is correct. I feel very strongly that, gradually, Germany and other European countries are getting involved into power policy defined in Washington by power-hungry people. This is becoming more serious because these power-hungry people begin to realize that they cannot, on their own, implement a policy of domination. So they need the help of other governments now, and these others seem to be Central-European and Eastern European governments from Lithuania to Great Britain. They also try to politicise NATO and make it an instrument, which to a large extent has in fact already become a US instrument.
Therefore, just like any normal individual in this world, I cannot accept the attempts – supported by Chancellor Merkel during the recent NATO summit – to provide this military alliance with a political mission. NATO is an instrument of the Cold War; for many years NATO was looking for a new mission, for a new role. The only thing the allies knew was that they have a military responsibility but, with the end of the Cold War in Europe, that responsibility no longer existed and was no longer necessary. So there was this desperate search for a new role.

I personally think that it is extremely dangerous that NATO now presents itself as a democratic instrument for western democracies while, in fact, it is a tool in the hands of the United States to implement the Project for the ‘New American Century’. Neoconservatives in the United States made this famous proposal in the 1990s – while the Bush administration converted it into its national security strategy of 2002 and subsequent years - and NATO is supposed to assist its implementation. The responsible politicians that recently met in Munich should have rejected this concept.
Mr Vladimir Putin, the Russian President for once did not mince his words and expressed plainly what many of us feel. Of course, those who follow a different agenda rejected his suggestions. However, there is a reality in what Mr Putin said.

I am convinced that, due to this militarised politicisation of NATO, we will have taken a big step backwards to what is not only a Cold War atmosphere between major powers, but also, and this is the tragedy, to an increase in defence spending in many countries including China, Russia, and Western Europe. This spending has already been greatly increased in numerous countries, and it can serve no other purpose than escalating the polarisation between different groups around the world.
The world beyond Central Europe and North America is no longer willing to accept a western one-sided policy. The public no longer accepts the requirements of last century’s military and economic powers. Their days are over and, if we do not take this into account, we will only make things worse.
To me, the key words at the moment are dialogue and diplomacy. We have to accomplish this in a clearly multilateral spirit, not in the spirit of a superpower, which is anything but a superpower be it economically, politically or morally, let alone ethically.
Even if there is a little bit of superpower spirit left in the United States because of its military power, it is not going to be enough to save the ‘Pax Americana’. ‘Pax Americana’ is a thing of the past and the sooner we recognise this in Europe and prepare ourselves for multilateral cooperation – which is something different from the bilateral or NATO type cooperation – the better it will be.

Silvia Cattori: NATO is taking part in wars of occupation – in contradiction to its own Charter – and, in collaboration with the CIA, it is involved in secret criminal operations: What I think of in this context are the abductions of suspects to secret prisons. If Europe continues to submit itself to and accepts the installation of American anti-missile systems in NATO member states, might this not lead to confrontation, or even to the return to the worst days of Cold War?

Hans von Sponeck: It is insane. There is no excuse, and Condoleezza Rice’s argument according to which Russia had no reason to worry about ten anti-missile systems to be stationed in Poland and in the Czech Republic is so dishonest. If ten can be placed today, twenty might be placed tomorrow. The very fact that these antimissile systems are positioned at the border of the former USSR, or Russia, is already enough to augment the reasons for confrontation between Russia and the West, let alone China.

We are creating and we are shaping tomorrow’s enemy. I, and with me many others around the globe, cannot accept this development. We do not count, however, we are weak, we are considered naïve, we are considered ’blue-eyed people’, as the Americans have often called us, who do not understand the ‘global vision’.

Well, if we are living in a democracy, then I have the right to understand this ‘global vision’, but I am not informed about it. I am just asked to rely on the good will and on the good intentions of a government like the one in Washington. But I cannot do so, we cannot do so, because we have been disappointed over and over again by misinformation, by brutal dishonesty, by power politics that only served one party. I am far from accepting this and, therefore I regard the whole policy of convincing the Czech and Polish governments to have these antimissile systems as extremely dangerous and misplaced. That is nothing but blatant and brutal power politics, which we do not need and which we will fight against. Peace, future internationalism and the consolidation of nations and progress – in the spirit of the UN Charter and other international laws – don’t have any need of that.

Silvia Cattori: You were in Kuala Lumpur in February, to attend a conference on war crimes. There was, in the West, very limited media coverage on this important event. If such meetings, which denounce the drifts of NATO and the violations of the UN Charter, are ignored, how can a debate be opened for reforming these organisations? Don’t you feel like speaking in a desert while the media, the UN, the States, go on lying and ignore your struggle?

Hans von Sponeck: Well, you know, one should not be discouraged by the fact that the media ignore us. Most of the time, when citizens tried to convince their leaders to change direction, they have been ignored. Well, should that be the end of the effort? I do not think so. The very fact that people, not just fools, not just misguided dreamers, but very realistic people who have an overall view on the world, who understand the political processes, come together to debate in a serious way the conditions and misuse of power, gives important evidence that the international conscience is alive, that an international conscience exists. Kuala Lumpur did not make it to the headlines; Hollywood makes it to the headlines, cheap emotionalism, and cheap quality media events like the Big Brother programme in London make headlines.

The fact that 5000 people got together in Kuala Lumpur to discuss war as a crime, against the background of all the global sufferings that these illegal wars have caused, did not make it to the headlines is regrettable, but it should not make people less willing to speak out. Those attacted by these crimes should notice it. Every one of us, as an individual, has a responsibility to observe, has to make his or her views known. In addition, I am sure that the Kuala Lumpur meeting has created more awareness in many circles around the world, which will ultimately be transferred into a greater resistance against these feint and selfish and one-sided policies that the West tries to enforce.

I am not anti-West, I am a ’Westerner’ but that does not mean that I cannot critically look at the one-way street which has developed, the one-way traffic on which international power, international trade, international culture are travelling. That, as I have said before, cannot continue because it is no longer acceptable, and Kuala Lumpur brought together people from all over the world, who are of the same opinion. So this has, I am sure, added to an awareness, and a willingness to invest time in order to make views known. And if that does not hit the headlines today and bring about a change immediately, it may do so tomorrow, and if it is not tomorrow, then the next day.

Silvia Cattori: Voices who, like Mr Jimmy Carter’s and Mr John Dugard’s denounce the crimes of Israel in Palestine, voices who, like Mr Dennis Halliday’s [2] and your own voice put the finger on UN’s drifting off course in Iraq, all these voices are demanding for an immense respect. However, these are rare voices, which can be easily marginalised by the political powers. Aren’t you disappointed that hardly anybody or only a few people at your level follow your example and take position against these state crimes and abuses?

Hans von Sponeck: Of course, I am disappointed. You know, these days, every day, I am waiting anxiously for a senior American general, a senior American political personality to come out and say: enough is enough, I will not continue to support insanity, I will not go on supporting illegality, I will no longer support policies that have led us into deep difficulties and deep violations of anything that a civilised person should stand for. Of course, one is disappointed, but in view of what has happened during the last few decades, particularly during the years when Mr Bush has been in power, we cannot allow ourselves to be idle. This is an appeal for the international peace movement which should be oriented towards a better coordination, i.e. much better networking, much more combined effort, much more joint declarations. People from all over the world should join hands and demonstrate to themselves and to the larger public that they have the firm intention not to accept what has led us into a world in which the gulf is wide open between those who have nothing – and that is a very, very large majority, over one billion people out of the six and a half billion people on our planet living with less than one dollar a day – and the top ten percent who are living in unimaginable luxury and well being.

This cannot continue. And if some people who listen to our conversation may say ’here is really a very naïve person’, and others say ’look this is a communist, terrible, he is asking for equality for everybody’, I will tell them ’no, I am not’. First of all I do not think I am naïve, secondly, I do not think I am a communist in the traditional sense. I am a person who, in 32 years of work for the United Nations and beyond, has learned to accept the fact that all of us are not equal, but that all of us should have equal opportunities to develop our own contribution to peace. It is not a question of lack of money, there is plenty of money for everybody but, what is missing is the will to share the resources and to do more than pay lip service to this wonderful body of instruments that has been established by good people after the Second World War. Over the last sixty years, this body has tried to lay the basis for greater justice and for socioeconomic progress for everybody.

Silvia Cattori: All the hope that you feed must make you suffer, as you are well aware that for the Muslim peoples that the West is humiliating, the worst is still to come?

Hans von Sponeck: Of course. If you read and if you see, what is happening in the Middle East, there is no single day on which you do not feel ashamed, you do not feel the humilitation that strikes us when we see these poor people suffering hard, people from Palestine to Iraq and in other parts of the Middle East as well. The human language is not, at least for me, capable of expressing the feelings that I really have. It is horrifying. I come from a country, which experienced and caused this horrible Second World War. It lasted for five years, and we still talk about it. What about the many years in Iraq, thirty years of dictatorship, and thirteen years of sanctions, and now three and a half years of occupation: how much can an individual, how much can a nation endure? And if you see – I think of the universities I visited was in Baghdad, Mustanseriya University, Baghdad College, Baghdad University – that these institutions where young innocent people are supposed to prepare for life, were destroyed by bombs. When I was in Iraq, I saw people living peacefully in integrated neighbourhoods! I never heard a conversation like “I am a Shiite, you are a Sunnite, and you are a Turcoman” at that time.

Baghdad is the largest Kurdish city of the world with over one million Kurds, and there were many problems, for sure, there was a dictator, there were political murderers but, compared with what we see today, that was nothing. The sectarian confrontation that exists now was created by this illegal war. And the threat towards the Al-Maliki government is the limit of dishonesty: “If you do not bring security to Iraq, then we, the Americans, will reconsider to what extend we will continue our support”. What is this? Who established these kinds of conditions? Who is responsible for this chaos and the sectarian confrontation?

Silvia Cattori: Western countries condemn Iran that has signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, for a bomb that it does not have. They do not condemn Israel that did not sign this treaty, and that has nuclear bombs. Choosing between Israel that does not conceal preparing for waging a pre-emptive nuclear war, and Iran who wants to have a civil nuclear industry, is not Israel the one that is really threatening world peace, and is not Iran the target? How do you react to this denial of justice?

Hans von Sponeck: I have only one immediate response: it is a classical example of a double standard. We have a demand for a nuclear free zone: It is the Security Council’s resolution 687 of April 1991 which in paragraph 14, calls for a nuclear free zone for the complete Middle East. Israel has not even signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran may have intentions that are against the long-term international interests, but Iran has not yet passed the red line. Mister El-Baradei, the director of the International Atomic Agency did not say that Iran had passed that line. All he did was to say that Iran has not fully disclosed, not transparently enough, its intentions and that Iran has put more centrifuges into operation.

But what an extraordinary demonstration of double standards, not to point the finger at Israel and others! What about Pakistan, what about India? And about the US itself which is openly working on a new generation of nuclear weapons, totally in violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty of which the US is an initiator. So this is a disastrous double standard. If I were an Iranian, I would say: ’Sorry, take yourself measures to put into practice of what you say is the norm and then we can talk, let’s sit down at the table, at the same eye level, with no preconditions.’

I accept the Iranian demand for dialogue. I think it is absolutely the right thing to do. Iran says: ’You have a disagreement, so let’s meet, but do not come and tell me before I can meet you, that I must have fulfilled certain conditions that you want me to fulfil; I am sorry, we come, we meet, we talk, and we lay the cards on the table. And what we discover when we look at reality is a frightening attempt to keep up a double standard.

Silvia Cattori: What message would you like to give to those political leaders who do not care about human rights who wage wars and violating international and human rights? What message would you like to give to the populations who are, at present, exposed to the terror of occupying states? And what message would you like to give to those who oppose these wars but do not know how to stop them and are grieving over the inaction of the political parties?

Hans von Sponeck: To those who are violating human rights, I would say: You must live with your own guilty conscience, and how can you, in the light of all the evident damage, live with your guilty conscience? Don’t you think that there are better ways to protect your interests by at the same time allowing others to benefit from existing opportunities?

To those who are victims and those who are concerned, I would say: Never give up, just try your best, we all live in freedom, as healthy individuals, to make our contribution small as they may be. If we gather for that aim, if we cooperate, if we network, if we try to make our views known to those in power, we can make a contribution. We can use our votes –those of us who live in countries with free elections – let us make use of our votes but not in a mechanical way. For it is a great act of responsibility to cast a vote. Know your political candidates, put pressure on them, hold them accountable, check their records and, when there is a re-election, if you are not satisfied, encourage those who deserve your confidence to run for office. What else can we do?

Silvia Cattori
Swiss journalist

One Million Iraqi Deaths Since the 2003 US Invasion

2007-03-26T12:33:00.000+08:00

By Gideon Polya

Four years after the illegal US-UK-Australian invasion of Iraq, how many Iraqis have died post-invasion?

Post-invasion Occupied Iraqi excess deaths (avoidable deaths, deaths that did not have to happen) now total ONE MILLION as of March 2007, after 4 years of war and as estimated from data from the top US medical epidemiology group in the World’s top Public Health School (the Nobel Laureate-containing Bloomberg School of Public Health) at the top US Johns Hopkins University, published peer-reviewed in the top UK medical journal The Lancet and endorsed by 27 top Australian medical experts. [1-3]

Consonant with post-invasion excess deaths in the Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories totalling 1.0 million and 2.4 million, respectively, the post-invasion under-5 year old infant deaths total 0.5 million and 1.9 million, respectively; the number of refugees total 3.8 million and 3.8 million, respectively; and, according to WHO, the annual per capita medical expenditures permitted by the Occupiers are $64 and $23, respectively, as compared to $2,874 (Australia), $2,389 (UK) and $5,711 (US). [4-10]

The accrual cost (i.e. the long-term committed cost) of the Bush Iraq and Afghan Wars is now $2.5 TRILLION, this estimate coming from 2001 Economics Nobel Laureate and former Chief Economist of the World Bank US Professor Stiglitz (Columbia) and Professor Linda Bilmes (Harvard), who also estimate a cost of $6.5 million for each US soldier killed. Assuming the “all men are created equal” this leads to a Reparations Bill of $ 6.5 million x 3.4 million = $22 trillion. [11 -12]

These horrendous outcomes indicate gross violation by the US Alliance of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (notably Articles 38, 55 and 56), UN Genocide Convention (specifically Article 2) as well as of the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Rights of the Child Convention. Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity. We are inescapably obliged to inform everyone about horrendous abuses of humanity. [13-16]
Yours sincerely,

Key references:
[1] http://www.thelancet.com/webfiles/images/journals/lancet/s
0140673606694919.pdf
[2] http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/the-iraq-deaths-study-was-valid-and-correct/2006/10/20/1160851135985.html
[3] http://mwcnews.net/content/view/12904/42/
[4] http://esa.un.org/unpp/
[5] http://www.unicef.org/index.php
[6] http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1986147,00.html
[7] http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/country?iso=afg
[8] http://www.who.int/en/
[9] http://mwcnews.net/content/view/11968/42/
[10] http://mwcnews.net/content/view/12741/42/
[11] http://www.newstatesman.com/200703120024
[12] http://mwcnews.net/content/view/13099/42/
[13] http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/instree/y4gcpcp.htm
[14] http://www.preventgenocide.org/law/convention/text.htm
[15] http://gpolya.newsvine.com/
[16] http://mwcnews.net/content/view/1375/247/
Dr Gideon Polya, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Credentials: Dr Gideon Polya published some 130 works in a 4 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text "Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds" (Taylor & Francis, New York & London, 2003), and is currently editing a completed book on global avoidable mortality (numerous articles on this matter can be found by a simple Google search for "Gideon Polya" and on his websites: http://globalavoidablemortality.blogspot.com/ , http://gpolya.newsvine.com/ and http://mwcnews.net/content/view/1375/247/ ). As a radical alternative to dispassionate scientific analysis on behalf of humanity, he has painted some huge paintings demanding respect for Woman and Mother and Child: Sydney Madonna: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/10865/26/ , Manhattan Madonna: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/10766/26/ , Truelove: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/11031/254/ and Qana: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/9547/26/ .

Activists to Rally for Impeachment

2006-12-10T13:17:00.000+08:00

Nathan Burchfiel
Staff Writer

CNSNews.com) - Impeachment may be "off the table" for the Democrats' incoming congressional leadership, but left-wing activists will rally across the nation Sunday calling on Congress to impeach President Bush and Vice President Cheney for what they consider to be human rights abuses and war crimes.

More than 50 demonstrations are planned from Connecticut to New Mexico on Sunday, the anniversary of the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was signed Dec. 10, 1948. The anniversary has been dubbed "Human Rights Day."

Protesters will lobby their elected officials in Congress for investigations and impeachment and will encourage their local officials to pass resolutions in support of impeachment, organizers said.

According to ImpeachPAC, the left-wing group organizing the protests, at least 28 city and town councils have passed resolutions in support of impeachment, although no statewide legislatures have done so.

The group gave $32,100 to seven candidates in 2006. None of them won. In fact, only one of a total of 21 candidates the group endorsed won - Democrat Keith Ellison of Minnesota, who will become the first Muslim in Congress.

Supporters of impeachment argue that Bush and Cheney, along with other key figures such as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, engaged in a conspiracy to deceive the American people to justify the Iraq war.

Some of the rallies will feature long-time anti-war activists like Col. Ann Wright, a former State Department official who resigned amid the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, and Cindy Sheehan, who began protesting the war after her son, Spc. Casey Sheehan, was killed in Iraq in 2004.

Impeachment advocates face an uphill battle, even with the newly elected Democratic majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, which has the authority to impeach the president.

In interviews before the election, incoming Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said impeachment was "off the table," because it was "a waste of time." She said a Democratic impeachment of Bush and Cheney would give Republicans something to rally around.

Dani Doane, director of congressional relations at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said Friday Pelosi would be "getting pressure from all sides" of the liberal spectrum to enact various agendas. It would be up to her "to find the middle ground from all of this."

Several liberal groups have already launched efforts to get their legislative agenda pushed through Congress. Through a coalition called Change America Now (CAN), 31 liberal interest groups from labor unions to environmentalists are urging Democrats to keep the promises they made to those groups leading up to the elections.

CAN will press House and Senate Democrats to pass legislation implementing the 9/11 Commission recommendations, raise the minimum wage, reform health care and repeal tax cuts.

Doane said liberal activists have "salivated at the idea of a Democratic Congress for 12 years" - since Democrats last controlled the legislature - and that all groups will be seeking victories.

But she was skeptical of whether Pelosi's bipartisan image would play out in the legislation the Democratic Congress produces.

While Pelosi had pledged not to impeach Bush and Cheney, Doane said, Democrats were "still going to do investigations."

"If they happen to find something during their good-government-making-sure-everybody's-working-for-the-good-of-the-people investigations," they would be happy to seek impeachment, she predicted.

WAKE-UP AND SMELL THE OIL: The True Agenda Behind Relentless Zionist-US-EU Campaign to Invade Oil-Rich Darfur

2006-10-29T08:37:00.000+08:00

By Keith Harmon Snow

Challenge and Protest Mythmakers on “Genocide”—and Sweatshop Promoter—New York Times Columnist Nicholas Kristof and Smith College English Professor Eric Reeves.

THIS IS NOT A SHOW OF SUPPORT FOR THE GOVERNMENT OF SUDAN NOR AN APOLOGY FOR THE GOVERNMENT OF SUDAN! IT IS A CHALLENGE TO CARING WESTERNERS TO WAKE-UP AND SMELL THE INTERESTS AND SEE THAT IT IS A WAR, AND IT INVOLVES HUMANITARIAN CONCERN AS A TOOL OF STATECRAFT.

This announcement calls for protests against Nicholas Kristof (lectured Tuesday Oct. 3 at Amherst College) and for a widespread challenge to the works of Darfur genocide “expert” Eric Reeves. Nicholas Kristof is willingly deceiving the American public and openly calling for slavery in Africa. This is the latest foray in the ongoing campaign to invade and overthrow the Government of another sovereign, and Islamic, country. Eric Reeves has been deceiving the US public a decade.

In at least 20 major pieces that have appeared in the New York Times, columnist Nicholas Kristof has peddled disinformation about “genocide” in Darfur, Sudan. Kristof is promoting a corporate military line that seeks to overthrow the government of Sudan and seize strategic resources. Smith College English Professor Eric Reeves has been published almost everywhere, and repeatedly.

Nicholas Kristof is also aggressively advocating that ruthless multinational corporations should set up sweatshops in Africa to exploit poor black people. Claiming that “only no exploitation is worse than exploitation,” Kristof is furthering the racist discourse that suggests that Africans “choose and would prefer to be exploited” rather than “abandoned” to their own fate: being Africans in Africa. This is dishonest, deceptive, and blatant racism, and it is not far from the immoral and unethical agenda of pharmaceutical companies that intend to use live Africans for experimentation.

Nicholas Kristof hides the fact that multinational corporations are already involved in slavery all over Africa, and the public relations campaigns that Kristof serves @ New York Times never illuminate the pitiful slavery, despair and death which insures that diamonds, gold, coffee, chocolate, timber, oil and countless other resources are freely pillaged from Africa, while markets are expropriated, the environment is destroyed, and local people die like flies. Kristof hides the massive extractive mining operations ongoing in Africa, including coltan and cobalt, two of the most strategic resources found in abundance in the Congo and Zambia. Most of this infrastructure of exploitation operates under the protection of private military companies—mercenaries—and clandestine “rebels”—proxy armies—that are funded, armed and trained by corporate interests connected to the US, UK, Europe and Israel—even to trustees and alumnae of Amherst College.

Like erstwhile Sudan “expert” Eric Reeves, Nicholas Kristof is intellectually dishonest. Both dismiss the resource grab for Darfur—the geopolitical flashpoint of the entire war for Sudan. Even New York Times insider, bureau chief and journalist Howard French, author of Africa: A Continent for the Taking, has conceded (interview) that Dr. Eric Reeves has been willfully dishonest.

African Union forces are trained and armed by the US and Israel. AU forces from Rwanda and Nigeria have committed massive war crimes and crimes against humanity in their own regions. Rwandan troops have pillaged and massacred in Congo and—if we apply the same standards used to define “genocide” in Sudan—have committed genocide against Hutus. Dyncorp and Military Professional Resources Inc., two ruthless Pentagon-connected mercenary outfits, are training Nigerian troops loyal to the Obasanjo Government, and these shock troops are at war with the indigenous people of the Niger River Delta: that too is all about oil, and it is no more, and no less, a genocide. But all the Christians have abandoned the Ogoni crusade, now, because they got rid of the unpredictable dictator, Abacha the butcher, and installed the businessman, Obasanjo the Obedient.

US military objectives in Darfur—and the Horn of Africa more widely—are being served at present by the US/NATO backing of the African Union. In Darfur, NATO provides ground and air support for AU troops ever categorized as “neutral” and “peacekeepers,” but AU troops are another fighting force involved in the conflagration. Sudan is at war on three fronts, and each involves countries with a significant US military presence and ongoing military programs: Uganda, Chad, and Ethiopia. War in Sudan involves both US covert operations and U.S. and Israeli trained “rebel” factions coming in from South Sudan, Chad, Ethiopia and Uganda.

The Judeo-Christian front against Sudan is linked to right-wing think tanks and policy institutes in the USA, including Zionist groups and the Christian Coalition, and the “genocide” theme has its origins in these institutions, not in the realities on the ground in Sudan. These religious groups, with backing from the Holocaust industry in the US and the Jewish Affairs Council, from Henry Kissinger and Samantha Power, have today constituted a massive public relations campaign in an ongoing Holy War against the Islamist government of Khartoum, and Islamic people more generally. This is an affront to Holocaust victims and survivors, and it is all about money, power and it is founded on the fear and manipulation of Holy War.

Of course, innocent men, women and children are caught in the middle, the victims caught in the middle of this nasty Western campaign aimed—as Dr. Eric Reeves from Smith College has openly advocated (Washington Post August 2004)—at regime change in Sudan. In their many columns and forums advertising the “genocide” in Darfur, these advocates of aggressive US foreign policies hide from the public the evidence of a massive resource grab in the Darfur region and the country as a whole. At stake in Sudan are vast petroleum reserves coveted by Exxon-Mobil, Total, Halliburton, Schlumberger and Chevron, and the entire Darfur region is one vast concession that is being fought over today. Almost the whole of Sudan is awash in oil: see it for your self on the oil industry maps at www.traprockpeace.org and www.allthingspass.com. Israel seeks to control the uranium reserves of Darfur. Coke and Pepsi and Pfizer and Merck and Unilever (owns Ben & Jerry’s) seek to control the Gum Arabic plantations of Darfur: home to some 80% of world supply and the best quality Gum Arabic in the world—and the source of USAID research projects in the 1980’s that were cancelled when the Sudanese decided to control their own destiny, and their own resources. When the Sudan government defends itself or fights back it is automatically committing genocide, no matter who actually does the killing, or who else is involved in the war. He same thing happened in Rwanda in the early 1990’s. The Rwandan Patriotic Front shot its way to power, but it was only the then government of Rwanda, who was justifiably defending itself from a foreign invasion, who was responsible for atrocities: the genocide label was discussed as early as 1989, and that occurred in Washington, at a meeting organized by US Committee for Refugees head Roger Winter. Winter, today, is head of USAID in Sudan. Recalling the darkened desert image above, there is a chilling winter in Sudan, indeed.

Jihad, these children are being educated to become Islamic fundamentalist terrorists.

This is simply not acceptable to the Christian Right, or the Zionist movement, who

pursue religious fundamentalisms of their own, and a Holy War against Islam.

Finally, these are victims of “genocide” whose bodies (and souls) must be saved—

from the Islamic terrorists, and never from the clandestine and covert military

interests from the West, who, as all the media make invisible, are not even there.

It was from his office at Smith College in the late 1990’s that Dr. Eric Reeves decided that “genocide” was being committed in South Sudan (not Darfur). This was NEVER substantiated, because it wasn’t true. Indeed, the “genocide in Darfur” claims originated from USAID operative Roger Winter, who has been feeding Dr. Reeves, and the theme first appeared based on Dr. Reeve’s imaginative, but corporatized, agenda advocating Holy War against the government of Khartoum. In this Holy War the victims have always been the Christians of the “beleaguered” south—where the US has maintained a massive covert war through their proxy forces the Sudan People’s Liberation Army. Indeed, Sudan People’s Liberation Army leader John Garang was trained at Ft. Benning Georgia, the School of America’s killing and torture academy. Never have Reeves or Kristof publicized the atrocities committed by this or any other western-backed faction, and it is true today of their writings on “genocide” in Darfur: never are the US interests identified, never is anyone from the West involved, never are the clandestine military crusaders held accountable for their role in dismembering Sudan and wiping out her people. We instead get Nicholas Kristof holding up photos of dead and decaying bodies—the Secret Genocide Archive—that have been taken completely out of context. Like a criminal hiding his own role in a killing, Kristof—on the “irrefutable” pages of the New York Times—points the American public toward the Government of Sudan and screams: they did it.

While the media has widely sold the “genocide” theme, progressives in the US have widely bought it. This includes women’s organizations, peace activists, religious groups, even Amy Goodman and Michael Moore. For experts on Sudan, Amy Goodman continues to look to Dr. Eric Reeves and Samantha Power, and she knows better. Democracy Now! recently ran a speech by Madeleine Albright about the importance of “humanitarian” intervention in Darfur. Albright’s mentors include Zbigniew Brzezinski and Henry Kissinger, and Albright ran the Clinton show for the invasions of both Yugoslavia and Congo. These are war criminals. Amy Goodman is failing us, and when she appears at Mt. Holyoke Wednesday night she deserves to be challenged as well.

George Clooney illustrates the Pentagon’s power over Hollywood. Turns out that the agency with the lucrative contract for Clooney’s publicity and management, Creative Artists Agency, was founded by William Haber, who is also on the board of directors of Save the Children, another agency with multi-millions-of-dollars-of-business concerns in the Sudan/Chad conflict. Count the corporate media connections on the Save the Children board and maybe you conclude that is why Save Dafur! is running so widely. These institutions won’t benefit the people of Sudan, they are tools of foreign policy, throwing crumbs to crying children, providing lush salaries for white “professionals”. It’s no coincidence that Save the Children gets funding from Exxon-Mobil to build a road connecting to the Darfur area, or that George Clooney has suddenly become concerned about starving Africans, or that the Save the Children board is stocked with media professionals from almost every major media corporation. If George Clooney really cared about human life he would think twice about investing in another three billion dollar entertainment complex, with strip tease poles planned for every room, in places like Las Vegas. If women’s groups care about the rights and freedoms of women, they should challenge George Clooney, not applaud him.

While using the face of suffering as a tool to manipulate the US public, these advocates of “intervention” in Sudan are not revealing their hidden agendas, or the people and organizations that they are linked to, or advocating for. Indeed, “humanitarian” relief in Sudan is a billions of dollars business, and the World Food Program, for example, is merely a conduit for dumping of polluted, spoiled, or surplus grain stocks, often genetically modified, purchased by the USDA from nasty agribusiness corporations like Cargill, ConAgra, Monsanto and—National Public Radio sponsor— Archer Daniels Midland—ADM—the “supermarket to the world.” This is why people are starving to death.

Running cover for big business, using food as a weapon, are “friends” of Africa like former Senator Bob Dole and former Ambassador Andrew Young, and organizations like the Bread for the World and Partnership to Cut Hunger and Poverty in America, which have exclusive access to Congressional Hearings on pertinent issues. Bob Dole’s campaign is financed by ADM. Affiliated with both of the above, Bob Dole is also on the Committee On Conscience at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum—“responding, today, to threats of genocide”—and a leading cheerleader to Save Darfur. But these are not programs to cut poverty and hunger, but partnerships in plunder and profit, in the name of God.

It should be no surprise that Robert Dole and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni are Partners Against Hunger and Poverty in Africa: Museveni has supported US/UK military and economic imperatives since he shot his way to power (1985). And if there is a genocide in Sudan there is also one in both Congo and Uganda, but it is always those tribal elements—or the fanatical Christian’s of the Lord’s Resistance armies—that are doing the killing, never the US-backed factions, because these—thanks to the Kristofs and Reeves of the world—are not even there. War in Africa, indeed, proceeds in a vacuum. Or else we get tribals, drugged and naked, marching backward into war, impervious to bullets, with bathroom fixtures mounted on their heads, just like Newsweek tells us.

Any just accounting of events in Africa should instead challenge Amherst College students to explore and expose the role of trustees and alumnae like Edward N. Ney—a member of the board of directors of Barrick Gold Corporation, a G.H.W. Bush interest. Barrick is behind the brutal war in neighboring Congo—where at least seven million people have died—and is currently plundering gold reserves in nine Third World Countries (six in Africa). Barrick directors also include former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and former US Senator Howard Baker. Mulroney is also a director of Archer Daniels Midland. Goodworks International, the consulting firm of Andrew young, counts both ADM and Barrick Gold as clients. Barrick Gold interests are clearly connected to the ongoing campaign to deconstruct Darfur and dole out the resources. Amherst College affiliate Edward N. Ney is also the director of Burson-Marsteller, perhaps the world’s most secretive and massive public relations corporation. Their product? PERCEPTION MANAGEMENT. He is also on the American Ad Council board. Wake-up and smell the oil, and take appropriate action to hold the US and Israel accountable for war crimes in Darfur, Sudan, and every neighboring country in the region. Boycott the New York Times, and its agents, for what they are: purveyors of deception, despair and death.

For the innocent victims— and I have just scratched the surface.

keith harmon snow
www.allthingspass.com

Keith Harmon Snow has worked on the Horn of Africa as a consultant on genocide and humanitarian aid for the United Nations (2005), and he worked in Ethiopia, Sudan and the Congo as a human rights researcher and genocide investigator for Genocide Watch (2004, 2005) and Survivors Rights International (2004, 2005). A journalist and four-time PROJECT CENSORED award-winner, keith has also worked extensively (2004-2006) with the multinational peacekeeping forces of the United Nations Observers Mission for Congo (M.O.N.U.C.). In 2001 he reported from the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda, and he has worked or reported from 17 countries in Africa. In 2006 he has been working in Congo and Afghanistan: keith.harmon.snow@gmail.com .

KOREA: US provokes nuclear crisis

2006-10-18T12:40:00.000+08:00

Iggy Kim

On October 9, North Korea announced it had successfully carried out its first nuclear-weapons test, six days after announcing it intended to conduct such a test. The test was the culmination of nearly two years of hostility and provocation by the United States.

The February 13, 2005 New York Times revealed the existence of a US National Security Council “toolkit” for destabilising North Korea. It was based on the financial interdiction techniques developed in the “war on terror”.

Then, on September 19, 2005, Washington signed off on an agreement reached through the six-party talks involving China, Japan, North Korea, Russia, South Korea and the US. Under the deal, Washington agreed work to normalise its relations with North Korea, with which it has been officially at war since 1950 (a ceasefire was agreed in 1953).

In exchange, North Korea agreed to abandon its nuclear weapons program and return to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which it had left in 2003 in the face of a campaign of mounting hostility from Washington.

As part of his regime's preparations for invading oil-rich Iraq in March 2003, in his January 2002 State of Union address US President George Bush branded North Korea, Iraq and Iran “an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world” with “weapons of mass destruction”.

In October 2002, Washington demanded that North Korea end its uranium enrichment program as a condition for any future dialogue between the two governments.

Under the NPT, North Korea was legally entitled to enrich uranium to provide fuel rods for its two small nuclear power plants at its Yongbyon nuclear research centre.

Two months later, the US suspended shipments of heavy oil fuel to North Korea, shipments that Washington had agreed in 1994 to supply in exchange for Pyongyang’s agreement to shut down its Yongbyon reactors.

North Korea responded in January 2003 by announcing plans to reactivate the dormant Yongbyon reactors, to withdraw from the NPT and to extract plutonium from spent nuclear fuel rods to create a “workable nuclear deterrent”.

Washington entered into the six-party talks in August 2003 hoping to rally Beijing and Moscow against Pyongyang, but over the course of the following two years Washington was pressed by Beijing, Moscow and Seoul into the September 2005 agreement.

Four days after its signing however Washington struck back, activating the National Security Council “toolkit” against North Korea. The US accused North Korea of producing counterfeit US$100 notes and moved to pressure banks around the world to stop dealing with North Korea.

By November 2005, the six-party talks lay in ruins. When Seoul asked Washington for evidence of its accusations against North Korea, it was not until the following January that a junior US Treasury department official was dispatched to convince the South Koreans.

Seoul was not convinced by the case presented. Nor was the European Business Association which, in April, called on the US to end its financial sanctions against North Korea unless the counterfeiting allegations could be proven in court.

Such dubious accusations of criminality are the latest in a long series of campaigns by the US and its allies to demonise North Korea. In 2003, for example, Australia's corporate media ran a frenzied scare campaign against alleged attempts by North Korea to smuggle heroin — after the drug was found in a grounded North Korean cargo ship off the Victorian coast. However, after a seven-month trial and 10 days' deliberation, a Victorian Supreme Court jury in March found the ship's crew innocent of charges of drug trafficking.

In late June, the US conducted its largest military exercises in the western Pacific since the end of its war against Vietnam in 1975, mobilising 22,000 troops, 280 warplanes and 28 warships. These exercises involved stationing two guided missile cruisers off the North Korean coast.

On July 5, Pyongyang responded — conducting multiple missile launch tests. Several short-range missiles and a long-range Taepodong-2 rocket were test fired.

A flurry of diplomatic manoeuvres and pressure followed, including condemnation by the UN Security Council and criticism by Pyongyang's allies, China and Russia. Japan's right-wing government responded by asserting Tokyo’s right to pre-emptive strikes against North Korea, a position spearheaded by Shinzo Abe, who was then cabinet secretary and who became Japan's new PM on September 26.

Pyongyang is playing the nuclear card to try to force Washington to engage in bilateral talks as a prelude to the resumption of the six-party talks. With Beijing and Moscow backing this call following its October 3 announcement of its plan to conduct a nuclear test, Pyongyang undoubtedly felt it had nothing to lose and perhaps much to gain by demonstrating that it has some nuclear chips to bargain with.

For that is all Pyongyang's Stalinist regime has ever wanted since the US first stoked up the confrontation over North Korea's nuclear program back in November 1991. At that time, while then US war secretary Dick Cheney was visiting Seoul, Colin Powell, at that time Washington's top military officer, told reporters that if Pyongyang had “missed Desert Storm, this is a chance to catch a rerun”.

But desperation is not limited to North Korea. Washington needs to continually stir up crises in northeast Asia for reasons that go to the heart of US military and geopolitical strategy. Essentially, Washington must continue to legitimise a large military presence in this strategically vital area of the world.

Northeast Asia is where the US imperialist rulers' only nuclear-armed rival military powers — China and Russia, which now regard each other as “strategic partners” — share a border. It is also the homeland of a major rival imperialist economic superpower, Japan.

A US military foothold on the Korean peninsula, which lies at the heart of this region, is also vital as a bridgehead into the eastern side of the vast Eurasian landmass.

However, recent geopolitical and economic developments in the region have put pressure on the US presence. China's booming capitalist economy threatens to create a new economic axis for regional industrial growth, including for South Korea which has traditionally been dependent on access to the US market.

The liberal wing of South Korea's capitalist ruling class has transformed domestic and inter-Korean politics in the last decade, consolidating a stable parliamentary democracy with power firmly entrenched in a civilian state bureaucracy rather than, as previously, in a military bureaucracy closely tied to the US occupation forces.

Over the past five years, this has deepened into a liberal makeover of politics and culture. Kim Dae-jung's “Sunshine Policy” towards North Korea was stubbed into the dust by Bush junior, but Kim's successor, current President Roh Moo-hyun, has persisted with a policy of dialogue and economic relations. Last year, trade between the two Korean states topped the US$1 billion mark for the first time.

Seoul and Washington are currently wrangling over the terms of the US military presence in South Korea. Seoul is pushing for eventual command over its own forces in any war on the peninsula. This is a further sign of the desire of the now-dominant wing of the South Korean capitalist class to free itself from Washington's heavy-handed tutelage.

It is also reflected at the popular level. A February survey of 1000 South Koreans aged between 18 and 23 found nearly half believed Seoul should side with Pyongyang in the event of any US military attack on North Korea's nuclear facilities. Another 40% advocated neutrality.

US provocation in the region is most obviously directed against Pyongyang, but it also seeks to dampen Seoul's power of initiative in peninsular geopolitics and, in the process, revive the political fortunes of the anti-Pyongyang, pro-US wing of the South Korean ruling class in preparation for South Korea's December 2007 presidential election.

However, it is a gambit that may backfire on the US rulers, as those living in the region better appreciate the relationship of forces each faces. In such a delicate geopolitical confluence, no single power can prevail untrammelled.

Northeast Asia is not a gigantic US petrol bowser, like the Middle East; nor is it economically powerless. Indeed, it remains to be seen whether Beijing and Seoul can devise a counter-diplomacy that reduces the US role.

Ultimately, if Washington's influence in the region's diplomacy can be removed or at least neutralised, the other powers stand to gain from a peaceful reunification of Korea.

Pyongyang would like nothing more than to engage in the kind of controlled restoration of capitalism seen in neighbouring China. According to the October 9 Australian, a report recently prepared by the US Citigroup, the world's biggest bank, argues that North Korea's “progress” in preparing for China-style “economic reforms has been way beyond our expectations”.

However, Korean reunification could also unleash a significant advance in the level of social struggle in Korea. A dramatic rise in social expectations in the north could combine with the decades-long accumulation of mass democratic and worker struggle experiences and victories in the south to produce peninsula-wide movements that reverberate around northeast Asia and the world.

In the wake of North Korea’s nuclear test, Washington, with Tokyo’s support, began trying to laying the basis for another, even more reckless, provocation against North Korea.

The UN Security Council’s July resolution bans international trade in ballistic missiles and nuclear technology with North Korea. However, it lacks any enforcement provision. On October 10 Washington began pressing the Security Council to adopt a resolution authorising US-led “inspections” of ships entering and leaving North Korea’s ports.

Democracy at a price, any price!

2006-10-17T16:38:00.000+08:00

By Tariq A. Al-Ma'eena

President George Bush is telling everybody who cares to listen and believe in him that he is promoting democracy in Iraq. That was his reason for invading Iraq, to rid it of a brutal dictator. And he intends to occupy Iraq until he achieves that goal. This is the current spin.

For the easily gullible, it sounds like a wise plan. The skeptics though will recall those drumbeats of over three years ago interlaced with the ominous threats of WMD’s that were to strike at the heart of America. Then, there was no talk of democracy. Only that America was facing a direct threat from Iraq’s mighty arsenal of weaponry that would have reduced Kansas City or Detroit to shambles. And his constituents blindly sucked it in, hook line and sinker!

Newer approaches to their war strategies allowed the current US administration to maintain this sham for quite some time. Embedded reporters, or those discreetly on the government’s payroll allowed this deception of the masses to fester. The invasion would be welcomed en mass by a downtrodden Iraqi people, the US public was told. The weapons of mass destruction would be seized and destroyed before they had a chance to make their way across the Atlantic and strike at the heartland of America. The marching troops would be welcomed in with singing and dancing in the streets, and those infamous ‘garlands of flowers’.

But it wasn’t long before we heard of the resistance of this unlawful invasion by Iraqis who were quickly dubbed as insurgents. ‘Insurgents’ who have since graduated to ‘militants’, and later ‘terrorists’ by the same media who have continued to promote and participate in this façade, and who have consistently downplayed the human death toll as a result of the aggression.

But in a scientific study recently concluded, an estimated 655,000 people have died in Iraq as a result of Mr. Bush’s war. That is well above 2.5 % of the entire Iraqi population, and previous death tolls under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein literally pale in comparison when placed alongside these figures.

Gilbert Burnham and associates at Johns Hopkins University in the US, and Al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad conducted the joint study. Now anything coming out of John Hopkins is something I would deem more credible than the Pentagon paid-for press dispatches flowing out of Iraq. Critics may quickly term those involved in the research as being democrats with an axe to grind, but rest assured, their fellow associates at the university in Baghdad do not hold any such US party affiliations.

In their findings using scientific evaluation of their survey in all but 2 of Iraq’s governorates, the researchers have found that the death rate prior to the invasion was a consistent 5.5 per thousand people per year. Since March 2003, when Mr. Bush’s grand adventure into Iraq began, the death rate has risen steadily every year since the invasion, this year reaching an ominous 19.8 per thousand people per year, almost 400% over levels that prevailed prior to the invasion.

So who would you rather believe? Respected researchers using real data in a scientific study, or an administration who has been consistent in its fabrication of evidence and the truth, as countless instances over the past three years have proven. It shouldn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that one out.

655,000 people including over 3300 American boys in uniform is an enormous and tragic number! And there are many many more who today remain alive but brutally maimed and in perpetual physical discomfort in Iraq. And while the death toll continues unabated every day, Mr. Bush parades around with his ‘promotion of democracy’ line. Is Mr. Bush’s warped vision of democracy worth over half a million members of the human race, now deceased?

Iraqis and the rest of the civbilized world have indeed discovered the weapons of mass destruction. They are in the guise of Mr. Bush and his administration. Just who will weep for those lost souls? And just who shall be held accountable for it?

Israeli War on Lebanon: A Foreplay for the Rape of Iran

2006-10-10T13:13:00.000+08:00

By Dick Mazess

The Attack on Lebanon:

There is simply no question in the international press: the attacks on Lebanon by the Israeli armed forces constitute war crimes comparable or worse than those perpetrated by Nazi Germany on defenseless civilians (ex Belgium) in WWII. Amnesty International has documented the deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure, as well as attacks on civilians, and called for a war crimes investigation. [For more information see the follow articles: the Guardian and the New York Times]

While Europeans are appalled, the Arab street is celebrating what they see as a successful military effort by Hizbullah against one of the world's best equipped and trained armies, essentially a division of the US armed forces but with far superior soldiers than ours. About 100-150 Hizbullah fighters were killed in the Israeli war on Lebanon, similar to the number of dead Israeli soldiers (officially 118 killed by enemy fire). The big difference is that 1200 Lebanese civilians were killed by Israeli shells and bombs, while only 30 or so Israeli civilians were killed by Hizbullah rockets. Hizbullah basically held Israel to a standoff despite the massive destruction of civilian infrastructure (bridges, hospitals, gas stations, factories, warehouses, apartment houses), the massacre of civilians, including those escaping from the south, and the creation of an ecological disaster.

Villages in southern Lebanon were carpeted with US-made cluster bombs, which are basically anti-civilian weapons, and this was done even days immediately before the cease-fire. The true magnitude of the atrocity has been covered in the Israeli press, which documented the use of over a million cluster bombs, and white phosphorus, (both banned by international law) ; the US press has been silent until recently when hundreds of Lebanese civilians were killed or maimed. Several thousand Lebanese also are expected to die from the short-term effects of the destroyed infrastructure.

Are there Winners and Losers?

The Bush administration and the parroting US media, are perhaps the only sources who view the attack as a victory for Israel; because of media spin the American public supports Israel more than Europeans, who view the Israeli attack as much like the US attack on Iraq i.e. an illegal "preemptive" war.

In contrast the Israeli public views the war as a defeat; the commanding general was replaced and the military leadership is under serious review. The Olmert government is likely to fall because, as the Jerusalem Post puts it, "There is a widespread perception that this war, by not producing a definitive outcome, has certainly not prevented the next war, and may have even laid the groundwork for it". A few days after a ceasefire was agreed to Israeli forces violated it by conducting an unsuccessful raid into Lebanon prompting a warning by Kofi Anan. One measure of the pro-Israel bias of the US media is its failure to note that last raid violated the agreed-upon UN ceasefire agreement!

The Israeli assault on the civilian population and infrastructure of Lebanon has set back Islamic moderates everywhere by 20 years; it has strengthened the fundamentalists and exacerbated jihadist sentiments in Iran and Syria. One major blowback has been the promotion of Hizbullah (and of Iran) as the leadership of the Arab world, and the uniting of Moslems everywhere against the US "crusade" which officially deems them as "Islamic fascists". [Also see the New York Times]. The debacle in Lebanon, coming on the heels of the US wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, has launched Iran as the overwhelmingly dominant power in the mid-east. A major UK report points out that Iran has rapidly moved into the power vacuum created by the removal of the Taliban and the toppling of the Hussein regime.

Hizbullah itself not only emerged the conflict more powerful than ever, but its rapid response to reconstruction and medical care of the injured has earned it widespread support from the previously uncommitted Shia population (according to Beirut resident Robert Fisk). A recent demonstration in Beirut brought out hundreds of thousands to celebrate the appearance of Hizbullah chief Shaikh Nasrallah. He claimed that Hizbullah now had more weaponry than before the conflict, despite attempts by Israel to prevent re-supply.

Was the US Involved in the Attack?

Seymour Hersh claimed that Washington did not directly order the Israeli attack on Lebanon but that the Bush administration had long sought a military solution to Hizbullah forces since missile attacks on Israel could be part of the retaliatory response in the event of long-planned US attacks on Iran.. Others believe not only that the attack was developed and approved by the US (certainly the Department of Defense, but not necessarily the Department of State) perhaps as long as a year or two in advance,

but that the US supplied both the armaments (precision bombs, cluster bombs, shells), intelligence intercepts, and satellite imaging of targets [see Information Clearing House]. Clearly the Israeli Defense Force is a major arm of the US military, with annual military financing of $3 to$4 billion and closely coordinates all activity with the US Department of Defense.

The Message of Lebanon was a Warning to Iran

Analysts and pundits have attempted to understand why there was such a disproportionate military response to the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers. Noam Chomsky discussed the attack in relation to a half-century of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The public rationale was response to the capture of two Israeli soldiers, but both sides have been capturing isolated individuals over the years and then arranging prisoner exchanges. The latest Hizbullah capture of soldiers was done to facilitate exchange for thousands of Lebanese captured and held long-term in Israeli "Guantánamos" without charge. The best possible explanation is that the massive retaliation was a warning to Iran of US intentions should it continue to disregard US concerns. Leaders in Israel, as well as US politicians, view Hizbullah as a branch of the Iran military just as leaders in the Moslem world view the Israeli forces as a branch of the US military.

Both the Republican and the Democratic Party Support Attacks on Iran

Both major parties have, for the last few decades, been the maidservants to AIPAC, the lobbying group of hawkish American Jews. There is obvious support for Israel, and against Iran, by Republicans but key Democrats also are hawkish. This is especially true for east coast politicians, and is obvious in the bellicose pronouncements of prominent senators, like Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton. However, even congressional opponents of the Iraq occupation, with rare exception, are unwilling to speak out against attacking Iran, and progressive lapdogs, like MoveOn are equally cowardly. The US House passed a bill in September 2006 supporting unilateral sanctions against Iran and those doing business with Iran even as the administration was seeking to refer the issue to the UN Security Council.

On the other hand traditional power brokers are less enthusiastic about military meddling. The fact that the Middle East has become even more unstable than in the past has led the world elite (Trilateral Commission, Bilderberg Group, Council on Foreign Relations) to repudiate the neo-con preference for military solutions to political problems. The former president of Morgan Stanley called Israel's war on Lebanon a "catastrophe", and he asserts the Democrats made a "huge mistake" in backing the Republican administration's Israel policy. In his view "democracy" has become a codeword--and not a good codeword--in the Middle East.”

Leading Democratic politicians supported the Israeli attack on Lebanon, just as they back the most odious of administration positions including: the continued occupation of Iraq, the "Patriot Act", torture of prisoners, repeal of habeas corpus, and military confrontation with Iran. A House resolution supporting the Israeli attack and condemning Hizbullah was approved with 410 for, 8 against (7 Democrats and Ron Paul), 4 present (including Kucinich), and 10 not-voting. Only 11 House Democrats voted against the invasion of Iraq in 2002. The leaders of the Democratic Party attempt to obscure their positions by claiming that the Bush administration is inept, and/or corrupt, and by calling for the resignation of its demonic leaders (Don Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales, Dennis Hastert et al) but they do not repudiate the policies.

The Coming Attack on Iran

There has been much concern that the joint US-Israeli attack on Lebanon is the first step to a wider war that would involve Iran and Syria, with one justification being Iran's refusal to terminate its program for nuclear power generation. The Iran story has been developing over the past six months and briefly became a prominent cause when it was leaked to the press that the administration was considering nuclear bombs to destroy underground installations in Iran. Noted expert James Bamford produced a detailed story on the possible attack on Iran. Only a few analysts believe more pragmatic voices will prevail.

The Bush administration has been spreading the story that Iran is close to having nuclear weapons, a story reminiscent of the supposed WMD of Iraq, as a justification for a "preemptive" attack. Again, as in the case of Iraq, the misinformation stems from the Pentagon and the Vice-President’s office. The “story” is being amplified by the same propaganda machine. the administration used to create frenzy for the invasion of Iraq. There has been vocal opposition to the administration exaggerations about Iran, by both intelligence experts and UN inspectors. The International Atomic Energy Agency said a House report on Iran’s nuclear program was not only erroneous and misleading but “outrageous and dishonest” as well. As a consequence of the propaganda tirade against Iran two-thirds of the American public believes it is a threat not only to Israel but to the US. Even young adults, who generally view the Iraq occupation more adversely than older adults, also view the use of military force against Iran or North Korea as justified.

As in the case of Iraq, the US public is being prepped for an attack based on Iranian intransigence. Time magazine actually ran a cover story on the potential US "preemptive attack". Retired air force colonel Sam Gardiner indicates that the first phase of the war would be intensive air raids lasting about five nights, but would be followed by a second wave of more extensive air raids as well as attempts at eliminating political and military leadership. Gardiner also outlines potential Iranian responses, and notes that US attacks could result in a fundamentalist overthrow in Pakistan.

Former US Senator Gary Hart believes an attack on Iran will come as the October surprise that Karl Rove promised GOP insiders. Some evidence for a near-term war on Iran is the recent call up of "inactive" forces who have already served their maximum service-time. On October 1 Michel Chossudovsky produced a detailed summary of the military actions recently undertaken by US naval forces. The timetable well may be late October as two naval strike groups have been ordered to the Persian Gulf., and one is already there. Strike Force 8 (including the aircraft carrier Eisenhower with a full load of Cruise missiles) left from Norfolk, VA for arrival at Iran on Oct 21 Strike Group 5 group is sailing out of San Diego and the west coast; a Canadian ship is joining them.

An October attack would rally the US public around the currently unpopular Republican Congress and undercut the hapless Democratic Party whose virtually only appeal is "anti-Bush". It would also undermine the attempt of Iran to establish its oil bourse, a move that would bring Iran an additional $10 billion in revenues, and that some think would help undermine the US dollar as the world reserve currency. The US invasion of Iraq took place in 2003 just as an Iraqi oil bourse based on the euro was being established.

Will the Attack use Nuclear Weapons?

The only question remaining is whether and to what extent nuclear bombs will be used. The excuse will be to destroy underground installations. Paul Craig Roberts opines that the nuclear option is required because the armed forces have in essence "lost the wars" (failed in establishing a stable occupation) in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The true rational will be to demonstrate to our adversaries that America will do whatever it takes to assert hegemony. Roberts states:

"Neo-cons believe that a nuclear attack on Iran would have intimidating force throughout the Middle East and beyond. Iran would not dare retaliate, neo-cons believe, against US ships, US troops in Iraq, or use their missiles against oil facilities in the Middle East. Neo-cons have also concluded that a US nuclear strike on Iran would show the entire Muslim world that it is useless to resist America's will. Neo-cons say that even the most fanatical terrorists would realize the hopelessness of resisting US hegemony. The vast multitude of Muslims would realize that they have no recourse but to accept their fate".

The use of atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima is considered by scholars to have been militarily unnecessary, but rather served as a warning to the Soviet Union. The paradoxical effect, however, was that it hastened the acquisition of nuclear weaponry by the Soviet Union and other nations. A nuclear attack on Iran would not only alienate European allies and make the US a pariah state but likely would stimulate nuclear proliferation worldwide.

There are several groups that are organizing against US intervention, including:

Stop War on Iraq, Campaign Iran, and Action Iran.

This article was originally published on http://www.democracyrising.us/ as part of their efforts to prevent a U.S. military attack on Iran.

US urges UN action against N Korea

2006-10-10T13:00:00.000+08:00

George Bush, the US president, has branded North Korea's nuclear test "a threat to international peace and security" and called for an immediate response by the UN Security Council.

Bush's response follows China's condemnation of North Korea's nuclear test, who described it as "brazen". The Japanese prime minister called the test "unpardonable".

Bush declined to confirm Pyongyang's claim to have carried out such a test but said that he had spoken to the leaders of China, South Korea, Russia and Japan about the response.

"All of us agreed that the proclaimed actions taken by North Korea are unacceptable and deserve an immediate response by the United Nations Security Council," said the US president.

"Such a claim itself constitutes a threat to international peace and security. The United States condemns this provocative act."

John Bolton, the US ambassador to the UN, was drawing up a draft Security Council resolution, which includes 13 elements that members are considering. But it is not clear whether Russia and China will impose sanctions, although they condemned the testing.

Among the US proposals are an arms embargo, the freezing of financial assets connected with weapons of mass destruction - and even a ban on luxury items, according to a document read to Reuters.

The UN Security Council also robustly condemned the communist state's first nuclear weapons test, saying it was in defiance of a UN resolution.

Japan's UN envoy Kenzo Oshima, the current council president, read out a statement urging North Korea "to refrain from further testing" and return to six-nation disarmament talks.

North Korea pulled out of the talks with South Korea, China, the US, Japan and Russia in November.

Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, expressed deep concern, saying the test would aggravate tensions on the divided Korean peninsula.

Ban Ki-Moon, the next UN secretary-general and South Korea's foreign minister, reacted with similar alarm, describing the test as a "grave and direct threat to peace and stability on the Korean peninsula and in Northeast Asia".

He added that the Seoul government "will be firm and resolute in adhering to the principle of no tolerance for a nuclear North Korea".

Chinese opposition

China's foreign ministry said in a statement: "On October 9, the DPRK (North Korea), ignoring the general opposition of the international community, brazenly undertook a nuclear test. The Chinese government expresses its resolute opposition.

"China strongly demands the DPRK side to undertake its commitments to the non-nuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula, and stop all actions that can lead to the deterioration of the situation."

China called on North Korea to return to the six-party talks on Pyongyang's nuclear programme that were abandoned last year.

China also urged nations to react peacefully to the nuclear test.

"The Chinese government calls on all sides to deal with this calmly and seek consultations to peacefully resolve the issue."

Test unpardonable

For his part, Shinzo Abe, the Japanese prime minister, said North Korea's test was unpardonable.

Abe, who arrived in Seoul on Monday from Beijing for a summit with Roh Moo-Hyun, the South Korean president, made the remarks during a lunch with Han Myeong-Sook, the country's prime minister.

Abe said: "North Korea's nuclear weapons test can never be pardonable. But we should collect and analyse more intelligence on the matter in a cool-headed manner.

"Whatever provocation by North Korea should be dealt with with a cool head. Maintenance of bilateral relations [between Japan and South Korea] is important."

Russia said it had detected an explosion of between five and 15 kilotonnes - more powerful than the US atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945.

Vladimir Putin, the president, said Russia "unconditionally condemned" the test. He added it had caused "huge damage" to the nuclear non-proliferation process.

Iranian call

Iran also commented on the test as world powers are due to discuss sanctions against Iran over its own nuclear programme.

Mohammad Ali Hosseini, a foreign ministry spokesman, said: "Iran's position is clear and Iran on principle believes in a world free of nuclear weapons.

"Iran is hopeful that negotiations on North Korea's nuclear activities can go ahead in the interest of both North Korea and the international community," he added.

Iran has always denied US allegations that it is seeking nuclear weapons, saying the pursuit of such arms goes against Islam.

It insists its nuclear programme is for energy generation.

Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the UN International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, said the test, if confirmed, would represent a grave threat to world security.

It "creates serious security challenges not only for the East Asian region but also for the international community", he said, calling for a legally binding universal ban on nuclear testing.

Let us be rational

2006-10-03T21:33:00.000+08:00

By Abdelwahab El-Affendi

The Muslim overreaction to the pope's remarks may go to support his point about Muslim's problems with rationality.

Had Pope Benedict XVI omitted the citation of Emperor Manuel II Paleologus's remarks about Prophet Muhammad bringing only what is "evil and inhuman" to the world, a quote he himself admits was "marginal" to his argument, then he would have focused attention on his real offence in that scholarly talk: his shoddy scholarship on Islam.

He would have also permitted a more healthy focus on his central argument, that modern secular rationalism needs to heed the contribution of faith to enable it to break out of the narrow confines of positivism and empiricism.

The skeleton of the pope's argument can be summed up in the following syllogism: Islam is faith devoid of reason; modern secularism is reason devoid of faith; Christianity is a dynamic wedding of faith to reason.

Both faith without reason and reason without faith can be very destructive. Ergo, both Islam and modern secularism should learn from Christianity the art of the mutual enrichment between faith and reason.

This line of argument has as many holes in it as a chunk of Swiss cheese, starting with the substandard scholarship on Islam, in which the archaic, careless and insensitive quote was not the most serious lapse.

This said, however, the phenomenal overreaction of Muslim leaders and masses around the world to the pope's remarks may prove that we as Muslims do indeed have a problem with rationality.

Most of those who reacted have certainly not read the pope's speech in full, and, even if they had, the proper response should not have been demonstrations on the street and salvos fired at political rallies, but scholarly rebuttal and calls for dialogue.

No purpose is served by stirring anger among the masses who should have no input in such an exchange, and who are certainly responding to what their leaders are telling them about the remarks and what they signify.

There is no doubt that remarks made by the head of a religious community carry more weight than remarks made by lesser mortals, and this puts a great responsibility on leaders to choose their words carefully.

There is also no doubt that the pope was wrong, not only about both Muslim theology and history, but also about modern realities.

His central point of connecting Islam and violence appears to imply that the main problem of our time is the presence of Muslim armies at the gates of Europe poised to spread Islam by force.

Not even Osama bin Laden is making such claims. The Palestinian, Lebanese or Chechen jihadists of today are not indicating a desire to spread Islam, but national territory.

If there are armies on the loose today claiming to spread something, it is the Western (Christian?) armies in Iraq and Afghanistan, claiming to spread democracy.

The pope's remarks, if they are to be relevant, should have been directed to that endeavour, not to presumed medieval invasions.

He happens to be wrong on the medieval part as well.

The Turks did not act to spread Islam by force when they occupied parts of Europe. In fact, the recurring crises in the Balkans have their roots in the fact that the Turks did not practice the same ruthless ethnic and religious cleansing the pope's co-religionists had practiced during the same period he had referred to in Sicily, Portugal and Spain.

If the pope wanted examples of forced religious conversions, he should have cited those, or the more recent colonial expansion which brought Christianity (and genocide) to many parts of the world at gunpoint. There is no record in history of forced conversions to Islam anywhere in the world.

The pope's remarks about the banishment of reason from Islamic theology are also mistaken and, for a former theology professor, astonishing.

The rarefied theoretical reflections of professional theologians about whether God has the right to commit injustice and do evil things are beside the point, referring as they do to mere hypothetical situations.

They do not reflect on what God has actually told us he would do, and they are certainly irrelevant to what is demanded of human beings, who are not supposed to have God's status.

In citing the ideas ascribed to to the 11th-century Andalusian theologian Ibn Hazm, the pope projects the false impression that his were mainstream views within Islam. This is done by omitting even to mention the man's full name, Ibn Hazm al-Zahiri (the Literalist), a reference to the "literalist" school of thought to which he belonged, and which has no adherents among Muslims anywhere today, and had never had a substantial following anyway. Ibn Hazm was celebrated more as a literary figure than as a theologian.

In contrast to mere speculation, the texts are quite categorical about God's rationality, mercy and justice.

The Just, Wise, Merciful are so central to the Muslim conception of God that they are counted among God's Holy Names.

The texts categorically make it clear that God does not act irrationally or unjustly.

These points are not disputed even by those who speculate that God could have indeed chosen to act otherwise. And in any case, even those who indulge in such ruminations do not accept that human beings are allowed to commit evil or act irrationally.

The protection of reason is the second of the five basic principles accepted by Muslim theologians as the central objectives of revelation, coming after the protection of faith and before the protection of life.

Of more interest to Muslims and others is the pope's spirited defence of the "European-ness" of Christianity. It was extraordinary for the reputedly traditionalist leader of the traditionally conservative Catholic Church to spring to the defence of the Greek input into Christian doctrine (which admits had a distorting impact on the original Christian message) and dismiss the calls of those who want to reassert Christ's original message through de-Hellenisation.

This stance sheds important light on his defence of Europe's Christian identity, which he had argued should exclude Turkey. For here, we find him actually defending Europe against any attempt to re-link it to Christianity's roots in the East.

This is as remarkable as his apparent exclusive linking of rationality to Greek thought, as if the rest of humanity had no access to rationality independent of Greek texts. It would appear here that it is European exclusivity he is defending, rather than Christianity.

But this leaves his Holiness with a slight problem: Most of what he describes as Greek rational thought has originated in today's Turkey.

This said, however, the vociferous and intemperate reactions among Muslims to the pope's remarks remain ill advised and do more harm than good to the already damaged image of Muslims worldwide.

In order to prove the pope wrong (a rather difficult proposition, given that he is infallible) Muslims should react to his remarks in a rational and measured way. His speech should be studied by specialists and responded to calmly on the intellectual level.

More important, it is necessary to rebuild the proper Muslim civil institutions which could have both the capability and authority to respond effectively and in a measured way to challenges facing Muslims today.

Like terrorism, the spontaneous (and sometimes orchestrated) reactions to perceived attacks on Islam reflect the general inadequacy of the state and civil organisations, which lack both the authority and the effectiveness in dealing with the perceived challenges.

In less dysfunctional systems, violence should be the monopoly of the state, while speaking on religious issues should be the function of competent authorities.

The fact that these issues are dealt with by people on the streets is an indication of a very serious pathology that needs to be remedied as a matter of urgency.

Dr Abdelwahab El-Affendi is a senior research fellow and co-ordinator of the Islam and Democracy Programme at the Centre for the Study for Democracy, University of Westminster, London.

A Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy?

2006-10-03T21:22:00.000+08:00

By Mike Whitney

When Hillary Clinton said that her husband Bill was the target of “a vast right-wing conspiracy”, her critics just laughed at her. No one is laughing now.

Next week, President Bush will sign the “Military Commissions Act of 2006” into law. The new legislation will repeal the central tenets of the U.S. Constitution which require the state to charge a man with a crime before putting him in jail, as well as the 8th amendment’s prohibition of “cruel and inhuman” punishment. The law will allow Bush to imprison anyone he chooses and abuse them as he sees fit. It places Bush above the law, our first American monarch.

The march towards tyranny has been calculated and relentless. Hillary was right; it is a conspiracy. Prominent right-wing organizations have worked tirelessly to push the country toward authoritarian government and they are very close to succeeding. The alphabet soup of conservative think tanks and foundations have strategically aligned themselves with the major players in the corporate, media and banking establishments and removed most of the obstacles to absolute power. The Military Commissions Act just adds the final touches by eliminating habeas corpus.

The new law is designed to deprive terror suspects of internationally-recognized human rights. It tip-toes around the Geneva Conventions and permits Bush to use his own judgment as to the precise meaning of “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment. It reinforces Bush’s interpretation of “enemy combatant” which now includes anyone who “has purposely and materially supported hostilities against the United States”. By this definition, Bush is free to imprison American citizens who may merely disagree with his analysis of the war on terror. For example, Bush recently attacked his critics for reiterating the findings of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) which states that the war in Iraq is creating more terrorists. The document draws the obvious conclusion that Iraq has become a “recruiting sergeant” for violent jihad. Bush lashed out at his detractors saying that they had “selectively quoted” the NIE and were “buying into the enemy’s propaganda”. The question is: Can a citizen be arrested for “materially supporting hostilities against the United States” by professing belief in the conclusions of the NIE if the president says that it is “propaganda”?

Can that be construed as “aiding the enemy”?

Bruce Ackerman clarifies this point in an article in this week’s LA Times. He says the new legislation “authorizes the president to seize American citizens as enemy combatants, even if they have never left the United States. And, once thrown into military prison, they cannot expect a trial by their peers or any of the other normal protections of the Bill of Rights.”

Bush’s sweeping new powers have been carefully withheld from public scrutiny. In fact, in the nearly 800 articles which appeared on Google News, not one of them indicated in their headline that the new law repeals habeas corpus (although many articles on liberal web sites refer to habeas to the title) The vast majority of mainstream articles appear under the rubric of “Detainee Treatment Laws” which is deliberately misleading and intended to minimize the grave effect the law will have on our constitutional form of government. Again, the media has shown itself to be a steadfast ally to its friends in power and an enemy to basic principles of democracy.

The new bill also allows secret or coerced evidence to be used in military tribunals against terror suspects and provides legal immunity for military and CIA agents who engaged in torture before the end of 2005. (Despite the fact that retroactive law has no legal foundation)

The Military Commissions Act is the culmination of 6 years of vigorous attacks on the Bill of Rights. From the very beginning, administration attorneys have set about to dismantle the basic protections which limit presidential power. This has resulted in a long list of systematic violations to international law including secret detentions, disappearances, torture, humiliating treatment, indefinite detention without charge, and criminal rendition. All of these activities are transparently illegal and beyond any conventional sense of human decency.

The pattern is unmistakable; the administration is contemptuous of our laws and will not respect any restrictions on the power of the executive. All of this is preparation for the New World Order and the end of American democracy.

The far-right fanatics in the administration correctly focussed on habeas corpus as the cornerstone of the American judicial system. If the president has the statutory authority to incarcerate citizens or non-citizens without filing charges the rest of the Bill of Rights is irrelevant. This is the primary lever of tyrannical rule and it explains why Bush has tried to undo habeas since the arrest of Jose Padilla (American citizen) in May, 2002. The government kept Padilla in a military brig for 3 and a half years without charging him with a crime in an obvious attempt to savage habeas and allow the president to decide who is entitled to “inalienable rights” and who is not. Under the new legislation, “inalienable rights” will be reduced to "provisional gifts" from the president which can be arbitrarily rescinded by executive edict.

When Bush signs The Military Commissions Act of 2006 into law, America, as we know it, will cease to exist. The fundamental safeguards of due process, judicial review and the presumption of innocence will no longer be guaranteed. The heart-and-soul of the constitution will be eviscerated leaving us exposed to the erratic and aggressive behavior of the state. Traditionally, the state has always been the greatest threat to personal liberty. We expect that same rule will apply here as well.

Kebab Philosophy of the Britons

2006-09-28T21:15:00.000+08:00

By Gilad Atzmon

Five years of intense war against terror and Britain is far from becoming Islamophobic to the degree that Blair and his Zionist friends would have expected it to. Five years of Anglo-American war against Islam, it is actually British Jews who insist on that there has been an alarming increase in Anti-Jewish feelings. More than one year after 7/7 the British public keeps refusing to endorse Blair’s distinction between ‘reactionary Islam’ and a ‘good’ kind.

Though the British Government, the Home Office and the security forces do everything they can to split the British society by spreading fear, maintaining intense pressure on British Muslims through legislation, raids, and the creation of some phantasmic terror alerts, the British people remain totally apathetic to Blair’s call. If anything, the Brits are now convinced that there is something wrong with Blair and that he is actually the dangerous one. They want Blair out of the picture. Interestingly enough, it was Blair’s fateful support of Israel’s murderous attack against the Lebanese people that happened to be the last nail in the Prime Minister’s coffin.

One may ask why the Brits fail to follow their Ziophilic PM.

Kebab is my answer, as simple as that. In the wee small hours, all you can eat in Britain is Kebab: Chicken Shish, Lamb Shish, Lamb Doner, Chicken Doner and Shwarma. Seemingly, it is at the Kebab places as well as small corner shops where Brits encounter the Muslim community. In most places it is a young Mediterranean or Asian male with a foreign accent who is there to take care of one’s needs. Medium or Large? He will ask, salad? Garlic sauce, chili sauce?

It isn’t a secret anymore, merging into Britain is assimilating into its cuisine. Balti cuisine is now ‘Britain’s National Dish’. Kebab is on the verge of replacing the old Fish and Chips shops all over the country. Gefilte Fish, how to say it, is still foreign terminology in English. You may find it on Israeli imported tins at the Kosher section at Tesco and M&S or in NW London but nowhere else.

Kebab, on the other hand, is now scattered all over Britain. You will find it in every high street. If you happen to visit a Kebab shop located in an Arab-populated quarter such as Edgware Road, you may even be lucky enough to get invited for a Shisha session. And this is basically it. Once you have had your Kebab settling in your belly, your mind embraces the Orient. It has actually nothing to do with the taste or the nutritional value of Kebab. It is actually the outcome of a fundamental metaphysical principal: ‘human beings happen to trust people who put food on their table’. You don’t trust, you don’t eat. And this is something that even Tony Blair hasn’t managed to change.

Ok, you may think to yourself, this explains why the British failed to follow Blair’s Islamophobic agenda, yet, it doesn’t explain the alleged ‘rise of Anti-Semitism’ .

Although British Gentiles do not rush to Blooms en masse, one may have to admit that in the wee small hours, Golders Green, the official London shtetle, is indeed buzzing. It is open for visitors. More than a few Jewish bakeries and bagel machers are selling their goodies. Yet, it is mainly members of the Jewish community who you find there. Unlike Edgware Road that has already become London’s No 1 late night cultural melting pot where everybody is hanging out either in Ranush, Maroush or Al-Dar, Golders Green is a Kosher social setting. If you happen to stop at Karmeli for a Burekas or a rogalah, the only people you meet there are big men with skullcaps hanging around with their Kosherly dressed spouses. Goyim do not feel welcomed at Karmeli, Tabun, Blooms or in any of the other Kosher delis around.

One may ask oneself where the Brits meet their Jewish fellow countrymen. Like in the case of Muslims, they probably meet them in very many places. In the arts, in the music business, in academia, in the hospital, in the market, in the financial world. The Brits meet many Jews and Muslims without even being aware of it. Yet the more interesting question to be asked is where Britons meet the ‘stereotypical Jew’.

First they meet him in the press, mostly in the shape of Zionists who happen to be the loudest (obviously) supporters of Blair’s criminal wars. The Zionist, a politically orientated Jew, insists upon presenting a phoney argument for violence in the name of humanism and democracy. He would advocate killing in the name of world peace. In short, he is the Neocon Ambassador to the UK. Considering the emerging colossal defeat in the War Against Terror as well as that in Iraq, it is rather obvious that some Jews are now regretting the early war mongering by their ideologically motivated brothers. Yet, it is exactly this initial manifested support for the war that makes Jews feel so unsafe in Britain at the very moment.

But obviously it isn’t the press alone, in fact the Brits have a clear image of the ‘stereotypical Jew’. ‘The Jew’ is by now an image of a very gifted, shrewd and skilled man. ‘The Jew’ is the one you need when you consider buying a new home but lack the necessary funds to do so. ‘The Jew’ is the one you need to speak to when you seek a mortgage broker who knows how to ‘build a financial portfolio’ and ‘curve the sharp corners’. When the Briton needs to sort out his inland revenue bill, it is again ‘The Jew’ accountant that at least stereotypically, does it better than anyone else. When the Brit needs some legal aid it is again ‘the Jew’ who possesses the reputation for the most appropriate qualities.

At least stereotypically, ‘the Jew’ is there to do the things the Briton hesitates doing on his own. Surely this shouldn’t be a problem. 'The Jew’ has an established role in British society. He is there to trace the legal loopholes, to teach you how to save on your taxes, how to work less and earn more. He’s there to set up your ‘off-shore bank accounts’, to help you win a legal case even when you yourself aren’t so sure you deserve such a victory. Stereotypically at least, ‘the Jew’ is the ultimate in shrewdness and this is exactly where the Jewish modern tragedy starts. The better the job ‘the Jew’ is doing on your behalf, the less highly you think of him as a fellow human being. The more successful he is at winning your case, the less trustworthy he becomes. The better he serves you, the less you want him to be your friend.

Once the Britons had been pulled into the Zionist inflicted Judeo-Islamic conflict and were asked to take sides, it was the Kebab boy rather than the accountant who happened to win their hearts. Seemingly, it is the young struggling foreign man, who unpretentiously makes a living that finds his way, accepted into British society, while modern ‘Nathan The Wise’ is fading into an inevitable social detachment.

But ‘Kebab philosophy’ doesn’t stop there, it goes at least one step further: It is an established fact that Britons are basically a bunch of devoted holiday makers. What they really love is just to fly away. They love to be close to the sun and as far away as they can from ‘London’s congestion charge’. But in order to do so, they first have to visit the airport terminal. Once in the terminal already on their way to the Duty Free, the Brits are stripped of their drinks and they are asked to take off their shoes as well. It occurred to me a few days ago, that just their holding their shoes in their hands, stripped of alcohol, marching triumphantly and cheerfully in stocking feet, the Brits resemble Muslims entering a mosque in Kabul, Baghdad or anywhere else. No doubt, due to their PM’s recent wave of colonial Zio-centric zeal, the Britons are now adopting some deep and meaningful Muslim rituals. But how to say it, while Muslims take off their shoes out of respect to Allah, the Brits take theirs off out of respect to Bin Laden, Al Qaeda or any other CIA fictional terror network. What can I say? I better confess, Tony, if this is what you had in mind, you may have been on the right track all the way through. If this is indeed the case we may ask you to stay in office forever.

Elections won't threaten Aceh peace - analysts

2006-09-28T21:13:00.000+08:00

By Ahmad Pathoni

Peace in Indonesia's once-restive Aceh province should hold even if former separatist rebels running in December's local elections fail to win any posts, analysts said on Thursday.

Acehnese are due to vote in the region's first direct elections for governor and other local offices on December 11, more than a year after Jakarta signed a peace deal with the separatist Free Aceh Movement (GAM) to end decades of bloodshed.

The accord paves the way for limited self-rule in Aceh, which was devastated by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

Sidney Jones, Southeast Asia director for the International Crisis Group, said GAM was not focusing on the December polls because it had set its sights on parliamentary elections in 2009 which it would contest as a political party.

GAM seeks to win control of the provincial parliament in 2009 and use that power as a vehicle to push a political agenda, she said.

"I think there will be irritation, disappointment, frustration, resentment and all the above if they come out with nothing, but because of the higher goal of 2009 it may not have a particularly destabilising effect more generally," she told a news conference.

The latest public opinion survey shows former Aceh acting governor Azwar Abu Bakar, backed by two national Islamic parties, is the favourite gubernatorial candidate.

Paul Rowland, head of the Indonesia operation of U.S.-based think-tank National Democratic Institute, said Aceh voters would support a candidate who offers programmes addressing practical issues such as jobs and post-tsunami reconstruction.

"I don't think we'll find a particularly radicalised electorate," he said.

The military may try to prevent GAM candidates from winning by throwing its support to other candidates but is unlikely to resort to intimidation or violence, Jones said.

Former Aceh military chief Djali Yusuf is among those running for governor but has a slim chance of winning given the army's poor human rights record in the province, Jones said.

Indonesia's parliament passed a landmark law in July giving Aceh wide-ranging autonomy.

The Aceh peace accord, signed in Helsinki last August, marked the end of a separatist insurgency in which more than 15,000 people, mostly civilians, had died since 1979.

The pact was the result of months of talks spurred by the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that left around 170,000 Acehnese dead or missing.

The Helsinki agreement followed GAM's decision to drop its demand for an independent Aceh state. Jakarta in turn promised to allow local political parties, including any group set up by GAM, to operate in Aceh, although that contradicted Indonesian laws.

Existing national laws require parties to have branches in more than half the country's 33 provinces, and individuals to obtain party endorsements before they run in elections.

What Or Who Is “incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul"

2006-09-27T15:15:00.000+08:00

By Ali Al-Hail

There’s almost entirely, no single doubt that, the Pope Benedict XVI, and the whole Catholic Vatican, are pones in the Bush Administration’s presumed “war on terror”. There are precedences, and observations which support this.

The Vatican has never criticized the US conduct of bombing campaigns on innocent civilians in Afghanistan, and Iraq. Occasionally, it does Under street pressure, (albeit, by touching on the periphery of the matter).

Even after it was made public that, Saddam had nothing to do with Al-Qaeda, and WMD, upon which the war on Iraq was launched on March 20th, 2003, no word from the Vatican was heard, questioning the merits, and ethics behind the war. Though the Vatican is perceived by many as the guardian of ethics.

No detection of referring to the US, Britain, or their other EU allies, in a direct and clear language, has been found. Similarly, despite the daily Israeli occupation brutality in the Palestinian lands, where there are also Palestinian Christians, the Papal condemnation is virtually, absent.

During the one month-long Israeli war on Lebanon, a country which is a home to 1.5 million Christians, the Vatican role at least in issuing a statement, passing on a remark on the barbaric Israeli assault on innocent Christian, and Muslim Lebanese, has been of a surprise.

Having said that, however, no single Muslim would argue with the Pope that, "violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul". Had the Pontiff, who is apparently, another consumer from the hypermarket of trading with the Holocaust been in touch with events, he would have certainly, by now gathered that, the daily atrocities by Israeli occupation forces against innocent Palestinian civilians, including children, and women is “incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul".

Had Benedict XVI from his castle in the ‘Roman’ Vatican been a good student of history of “violence”, he would absolutely, by now have known that, removing Palestinian people from their home country Palestine by the West, and replacing it with the state of Israel is ““incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul".

Had the Pope of the Vatican been a good citizen of his home country, Germany, he would have undoubtedly, been aware after 8 decades that, the holocaust against fellow Jews, which was committed by Nazi Europe headed by Nazi Germany, is “incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul".

Had the Pontiff been a good audience, he would have learnt from ‘objective-informative’ media about the killing of hundreds of thousands of civilians, including women, and children in Iraq, and Afghanistan, by American\Anglo, and their EU\European allies that, is “incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul".

Had the supposedly, guardian of human values visited hospitals in Iraq, and Afghanistan, he would have seen maimed children by what’s called the “war on terror”, which is “incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul".

Had the pontiff read, listened to or watched, or even told about the nearly, 11,000 Palestinian prisoners, including 140 children, and 360 women in Israeli jails, he would have realized that, is “incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul". Bearing in mind that, according to UN human rights organizations 60% of these Palestinian had been jailed for years without charges, or trials.

Had benedict XVI made a browse in Abugrabe, Bagram, Guantenamo, and other scattered prisons allover Europe, and elsewhere, full of Arab\Muslim prisoners, and detainees held without trials, and some of them held without charges, he would have had a clue that, is “incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul".

All these forms of violence which is rightly, so “incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul", had been committed by the West, and the West’s funded Israel. Since independence, Arab\Muslim resistance (violence in the Pope’s statement) has been totally, counter-violence i.e., a reaction to the violence action by the West, and Israel. This is also, ingrained in West’s thinkers, and analysts, including Israelis.

The Pope is unfortunately, told what the West want him to hear, and he is not told what the West doesn’t want him to hear. This is a fact from his Papal STATEMENT.

The Pope quoted the 1391 speech in the winter barracks near Ankara - by the erudite Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus, in which he had mentioned that, "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

Then Arabs\Muslims were in Al-Andalus ( now Spain). Had the pontiff referred to history, he would have known that, during this era, Europe was enlightened more or less, in every field, by the Arab\Muslim presence in Spain, according to Western ‘objective’ thinkers. This is an aspect of what Mohammed Peace Be Upon Him (PBUH) have taught his followers from across all human race, to deliver to human race.

According to Western ‘objective’ historians (e.g., Arnold Twinby, Story of Civilization ), the Emperor wasn’t happy about this teaching. He, as a matter of fact was not pleased with other Christians-Non Catholic, and Jews. Arabs\Muslims, non-Catholic Christians, and Jews as a matter of fact had suffered by his racist, and prejudice army. This interprets why Arabs\Muslims, non-Catholic Christians, and Jews fled Spain together, feared executing by the Emperor, during late 15th century.

Since Benedict 16th quoted the 14th century Emperor, means he had been in agreement with the quote. It has to be said to the Pope that, show me just what the what’s called the “war on Terror” in which he is a pone brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as the West’s command to spread by the bombing the notion of Americanization\Europeanization\Israelization (Genevieve Cora Frazer, Zaman, Turkish Newspaper, September 23rd , 2006, www.zaman.com) on the Arab\Muslim World, which has drastically, failed so far, and that what is, “incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul".

Professor, Dr. Ali Al-Hail, Professor of Mass Communication, Twice Fulbright Award Winner, Fulbright Visiting Scholar, and Board Member of AUSACE ASC, IABD, NEBAA, BEA, IMDA and EAJMC American Associations. Can be contacted via: pdaah90@hotmail.com

Britain's Blair rocks party faithful with farewell

2006-09-27T15:09:00.000+08:00

By Katherine Baldwin

MANCHESTER, England (Reuters) - It was a fitting farewell for a man who once dreamed of being a rock star.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair's final speech as leader to his party's annual rally on Tuesday had all the carefully crafted razzmatazz of his first landslide victory and was greeted with the same euphoria among the Labour faithful.

Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair speaks during his keynote speech on the third day of the Labour Party's annual conference in Manchester, northern England, September 26, 2006. (REUTERS/Phil Noble)
He left no doubt that he will be a tough act to follow.

Some critics may have balked at his wistful tone or his familiar puns, but many agreed he gave an effortless display of the skills that helped the Labour Party win three straight elections.

"Love him or loathe him, it was a leader's speech," said Tony Woodley, general Secretary of the Transport and General Workers' Union, a frequent thorn in the premier's side.

As Blair bounded onto the stage, trendy music from popular boy band "Take That" filled the cavernous conference hall, reminding Labour of the "Cool Britannia" message that helped it sweep to power in 1997.

"Never forget where you've come here from. Never pretend that it's all real. Some day soon this will be someone else's dream," went the lyrics as the Labour love-in began.

Moments earlier, groups of delegates in the audience held up placards reading "We love you! Yeah, yeah, yeah!", "Too Young to retire!", "Tony, you made Britain better" and "Winner".

The accolades contrasted with the hostile reception recently given to Blair at a trade union conference where a group of activists walked out bearing placards saying "Tony must go!".

Blair's youth and boundless enthusiasm earned him lofty popularity ratings at the start of his premiership.

But his standing has taken a nosedive in past years following his support for the 2003 U.S.-led war on Iraq and amid public disillusionment with nearly a decade of his government.

There was no hint of the recent infighting over the Labour leadership at this stage-managed event however. There was no abuse and certainly no protests over the Iraq war.

Blair's jokes brought the house down, especially when he waded in to a controversy over something his wife reportedly said that has stolen the spotlight in this northern town.

Cherie Blair reportedly accused finance minister Gordon Brown of lying when he told the rally on Monday he had considered it a privilege to work with the prime minister.

She denies the slur although her hostility towards Brown, who is anxious to succeed her husband, is widely reported.

"At least I don't have to worry about her running off with the bloke next door!" joked Blair, who aspired to being a different kind of performer when he played the guitar in student band "Ugly Rumours".

Blair and Cherie, after one encore, made their exit to rapturous applause, leaving many in the crowd wondering if their next leader could create the same winning formula.

In search of a moderate Muslim

2006-09-26T12:19:00.000+08:00

By Abdus Sattar Ghazali

The Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission has finally voted to reaffirm its selection of Muslim leader Dr. Maher Hathout for a human relations award, ending a bitter, two-week battle that many lamented has seriously set back the region's Muslim-Jewish relations.

The furious fight on the selection process was sparked when the Zionist Organization of America and some other Jewish groups charged that Hathout, a 70-year-old retired cardiologist, has denounced Israel as an apartheid state and supported Hizbullah as a movement of freedom fighters.

Dr. Hathout's long years of interfaith work prompted him to invite the Muslim leader to meet Pope John Paul II during his visit to Los Angeles in 1987 and to deliver a eulogy during the pontiff's memorial service.

Interestingly, the vote for Dr. Hathout came two days after the American Jewish Congress honored another resident of California, Tashbih Sayyed, and four other 'moderate' Muslims for what it sees as their friendly attitudes toward Israel.

Sayyed was honored along with Satanic Verses-famed author Salman Rushdie, who received the AJC's highest honor, the Stephen Wise Humanitarian Award. The three other Muslims honored by the AJC were: Salim Mansur, Nonie Darwish and Wafa Sultan. The honoring ceremony was billed as "Profiles in Courage: Voices of Muslim Reformers in the Modern World."

Gary Ratner, executive director of the Congress' Western region office in Los Angeles, says his group believes support for Israel 's right to exist as a Jewish state is central to the definition of a moderate.

The definition Mr. Ranter implies that a moderate Muslim should support:

Israel's occupation of the Palestinian land.

Israel's occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights.

Israel's killing of unarmed Palestinian men, women and children.

Israel's right to imprison some 10,000 Palestinians.

Israel's right to imprison elected government of the Palestinians.

Israel's attack on civilian targets in Lebanon killing hundreds of innocent men, women and children.

Israel's sole right to have nuclear weapons in the Middle East.

Israel's right to defy all the UN Security Council resolutions while Arab and Muslim states should comply.

Apparently another factor in AJC's choice of honorees is that at least three of them have renounced their faith. Salman Rushdie is a self-described atheist while Wafa Sultan and Nonie Darwish say they left their faith years ago.

If you are not convinced, here are some more takes on the credentials of the six honorees:

The less said the better about the Indian-born British author Salman Rushdie. Contrary to the basic Islamic belief that the Quran is a revealed book, Rushdie subscribes to the Rand Corporation criteria for a moderate Muslim that he/she believes that the Quran is a historical document. While honoring Rusdhdie, the AJC said "Mr Rushdie is among the great minds of today that can help us learn how to understand and combat terrorism."

Egypt-born Nonie Darwish is the founder of Arabs for Israel and author of Now They Call Me an Infidel. She blames Arabs and Palestinians for all the strife and killings in the Middle East.

Syria-born Wafa Sultan is a resident of California who came into prominence for her bitter attack Islam in her TV on Al Jazeera in February this year. She believes that the Muslims are the ones who began the so-called clash of civilizations.

Pakistan-born Tashbih Sayyed is editor of 'Pakistan Today' weekly that is supported by a number of Jewish groups because Muslims declined to give ads when he published pro-Israeli and anti-Palestinian articles. Sayyed says it is debatable that Islam was spread by the sword and Prophet Muhammad's actions were divinely inspired.

India-born Salim Mansur is one of the leading members of Canadians Against Suicide Bombing (CASB). Mansur, a political science professor at the University of Western Ontario, Canada, argues that the Muslim world must stop blaming the West for all its own ailments, including poverty, illiteracy, injustice or extremism.

Now the question is why the AJC wants to honor such Muslims whose only qualification is criticism of the Islamic faith and of course, support for Israel. The reason is obvious. The Jewish groups have been trying to promote alternative Muslim leaders in America who are friendly to Israel though they may enjoy little following among the Muslims. In this drive they are helped by the mainstream media.

In the post-9/11era, we see efforts by many Jewish groups to discredit and dislodge the established American Muslim organizations, such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC). While leaders of these groups are being accused of promoting 'extremism' and 'terrorism' for their stance on the Arab-Israeli conflict some fringe groups are encouraged and promoted to make the voice of the 7-million strong American Muslim community. One such group – the Progressive Muslim Union of North America – was launched in November 2004 amid wide media publicity. However, the group lost steam when many of its disappointed founding members resigned.

A recent article over the controversy of Dr. Hathout's nomination, the Los Angeles Times poses an interesting question: Who is a moderate Muslim? Is it Maher Hathout, the Los Angeles Muslim leader who has promoted interfaith relations and women's equality but denounced Israel as a brutal apartheid regime? Is it Tashbih Sayyed, a journalist based in Alta Loma, Calif., who praises Israel's behavior toward Palestinians as tolerant and criticizes Muslims for corrupting Islam?

Surely, the answer will depend on who is reading the question; a supporter of the Israeli atrocities against Palestinians and Lebanese or a sympathizer of the besieged Palestinians and Lebanese victims of the recent Israeli rampage.

Abdus Sattar Ghazali is the Executive Editor of the online magazine, American Muslim Perspective: www.amperspective.com

Pope to meet Muslim diplomats

2006-09-25T14:36:00.000+08:00

Pope Benedict XVI is due to meet Muslim diplomats in Rome as part of the Catholic church's latest effort to mend relations with the Islamic world.

Federico Lombardi, Benedict's spokesman, said the meeting on Monday, at the Vatican's summer residence, was "certainly a sign that dialogue is returning to normal after moments of ... misunderstanding."

The meeting aims to address widespread Muslim anger at a speech the pope made on September 12, when he quoted the words of a Byzantine emperor who said some of the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad were "evil and inhuman," particularly "his command to spread by the sword the faith."

Benedict has said that his remarks were taken out of context that he regretted that Muslims were offended.

Since the speech, many Muslim nations and religious figures have called on the pope to apologise for linking Islam and violence.

In Palestine, Muslim demonstrators burnt several churches in protest.

In Somalia a Muslim gunmen shot dead a Catholic nun in an attack that has been linked to the pope's speech.

Diplomats invited

Among the countries expected to send representatives were Iran, Iraq and Egypt.

Also expected were diplomats from Indonesia, where Christian-Muslim tensions were further heightened last week by the execution of three Catholics for their roles in anti-Muslim rioting.

Benedict last month had appealed for the men's lives to be spared.

Turkey also accepted the invitation. Benedict has said he hopes to go in November to the predominantly Muslim but officially secular country, whose officials were among the first to vigorously protest the Regensburg remarks.

The medieval Byzantine empire was based in the Mediterranean. It's capital was Constantinople, present day Istanbul, until the city was conquered by Muslim armies in 1453. To this day, Istanbul remains the home of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople [the worldwide headquarters of the Greek Orthodox church].

Vatican Radio said that it would cover the meeting live, and the speeches were scheduled to be shown to journalists on closed-circuit Vatican TV.

War As Human Defect. Faith As Disease

2006-09-25T14:27:00.000+08:00

Jozef Hand-Boniakowski

There are two five-year old dogs in our family. Both are rescue dogs who were abused and abandoned. The short-hair, chocolate Labrador retriever, named Berrigan after the peace activist, Father Phil Berrigan, has been with us almost three years. He came our way the same year that Phil passed away. The other dog, Geordie, a long-hair chocolate lab and golden retriever mix came from a bankrupt farm in Ohio. Geordie has been with us for about 6 months. He came our way a few days after we put our long-time companion, Willie, a fifteen year old, pale yellow, Labrador retriever to rest a hundred feet behind our Vermont home. Every once in a while, I get overwhelmed over the loss of Willie dog. The only down side of having dogs is the shortness of their lives and the pain of their passing.

As I feel the pain of Willie's loss I cannot help thinking of the people in Middle East who have lost loved ones, friends and family. People are daily experiencing the excruciating pain of war. I find it unfathomable that I kept diabetic Willie dog alive and well for many years, giving him insulin injections, while thousands of miles away, people were willingly dropping bombs, firing rockets and slaughtering each other. 1,187 civilians in Lebanon killed, 3,600 wounded. 44 civilians dead in Israel, 100 wounded. 150,000 casualties in Iraq. Thousands in Afghanistan. More dead in Somalia. Dozens of people blown up by people who blow themselves up. Tank fire in one direction. RPG fire in the other. Prisoner abuse. Torture. Soldiers killing a family, and raping a girl. Depleted uranium. Blood spilled on the sad earth, ad nauseum. And on, and on, and on. The absurdity and insanity of it all. Just before the cease fire in the Israel-Hezbollah war went into effect at 0500 hours GMT, 14 August, there was a final push for maximizing destruction and death. Last licks, before time runs out. The maximization of casualties is not the characteristic of a sophisticated and highly developed species. Quite the contrary.

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines violence as:

The intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment or deprivation.

Capsi A, McClay J, Moffitt TE, et al. in the Role of genotype in the cycle of violence in maltreated children, (Science 2002) state that a "universal risk factor" for antisocial behavior is maltreatment during childhood. If they are correct, then what can we expect a dozen years from now when the oppressed, bombed and abused youth in the Middle East become adults? The combination of nurture (abuse) and nature (human defect) will continue to exacerbate the cycle of human violence.

In Violence—a noxious cocktail of genes and the environment, Mariya Mosajee, journal of The Royal Society of Medicine, (2003 May; 96(5): 211–214) writes,

In the past, violence was regarded as an obvious infringement of basic human law and self-control, but now there are strong pressures to medicalize...there is mounting evidence that violent behaviour has a pathological basis...

Antiwar Folks and the Human Defect

In the United States, many in the anti-war movement advocate violent resistance as a way to stop aggression. They sympathize with the oppressed making excuses for violent resistance saying there is no other way to resolve conflict. Criticizing pacifists for being non-violent, some anti-war folk say that non-violence by the oppressed only leads to more oppression and violence. They blame non-violence for violence. Using violence to end violence does not make sense to me. This only adds to people's misery and perpetuates humanity being stuck in the jungle mentality where fight or flight are the only options. The defect of violence has overwhelmed the people of planet Earth, being passed on generation after generation. And, it is just as prevalent in the anti-war movement as anywhere else. It is normal for humans to engage in mass destruction. It is normal for humans to maximize the kill, to bomb indiscriminately, use depleted uranium shells, drop thousands of cluster bomblets, to blow themselves up in suicide attacks in restaurants and buses. It is normal to seek revenge by death. It is normal for people to be stuck in this failed mindset, even though the outcome is always the same: more violence, war, destruction, disease and death. Violence is accepted as normal human behavior.

Katha Kelly, writing from Beirut in Approaching a Ceasefire (Common Dreams Aug 14, 2006) says,

If equipping an area with weapons, including nuclear weapons, was a reliable way to ensure security, Israel and Palestine would be paradise by now.

As we know, they are not.

More of the Same

Increasing population and population density are stretching the planet's natural resources and threatening the environment. These pressures bring about increased tensions which require creative resolutions. Yet the world's greatest super-power persists in staying the course, mistakenly thinking that its incredible military might is the answer. The events of the recent past are further evidence that violence only begets violence. People continue to suffer and die. A great super-power, however, should know better. A super-power's greatness is not measured by its ability to destroy, but by its ability to lead the world away from destruction.

George W. Bush, the supposed leader of the supposedly Free World, refused to call for an immediate cease fire in war in Lebanon. He insisted that a "lasting peace" was more important than immediate peace. Mr. Mission Accomplished cares very little about the suffering of poor and working people, especially when his agenda is on the line. George W. Bush, the poster child for the war-making defect that plagues humanity, has yet to attend a single funeral for any of the over two-thousand U.S. soldiers killed in action in Iraq and Afghanistan. What do tens of thousands of Iraqi civilian lives, or several thousand civilian lives in Lebanon or Afghanistan, matter? What does it matter that thousands upon thousands of illegal cluster bombs were dropped, or that unexploded clusterets continue killing children who play with them? It does not matter not at all. The U.S. public is spared the horror of its complicity in Bush's war crimes. Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt offers the following "advice to Iraqis who see TV images of innocent civilians killed by coalition troops: 'change the channel' " (Iraq Body Count). Just change the channel. Have faith. Believe anything the administration puts out.

Faith As Disease

When one listens to Bush supporters, one becomes witness to the same psychological phenomenon that Bush exhibits. Many Bush supporters, like Bush himself, have faith. Bush has faith in religion. Bush supporters have faith in the man that has faith in his religion in addition to their own faith in their religion. G.W. Bush, perhaps the most incurious president in United States history, is not much interested in pursuing knowledge. In a complex, fast-paced, ever-changing world, Bush prefers absolute answers. Religion satisfies his emotional need for making sense of the world by providing respite from and answers for just about everything. Many believers cannot go beyond their emotion-satisfying belief system. Their minds become entrapped within religion's fabrications. This mental complacency and stagnation is a pathology of limited options. The disease responsible for it is faith, a psychological crutch that affects the vast majority of humanity, a crutch responsible for creating intense and immense suffering throughout the ages. Keeping the faith often means staying the course. To the Bush regime and its supporters it means not letting go of the promise of pie in the sky.

On September 18, 2006, Frank J. Ranelli, in the OpEdNews.com website in an article entitled, "How Bush Failed Jesus and the Return of the Christian Crusade", writes:

As the government of the United States ostensibly wages an unbounded and ceaseless war with Islamic religious fundamentalists, our current President, George W. Bush, has proclaimed he senses a "third awakening of religious devotion" within America. This "third awakening" that Bush cloaks, but does not conceal, is the return of Christianity as a crusade. The sheer oddity of pronouncing a rebirth of a feverish religion, in a country founded on a secular government and not a spiritual one, is the tenable reality that we have become what we most fervently oppose, despise, and scorn -- a society ruled by theocracy and not democracy.

Peter Baker, in Bush Tells Group He Sees a 'Third Awakening' (Washington Post, Sep 13, 2006) writes that Bush senses a " 'Third Awakening' of religious devotion in the United States that has coincided with the nation's struggle with international terrorists..." Bush said that,

A lot of people in America see this as a confrontation between good and evil, including me...There was a stark change between the culture of the '50s and the '60s -- boom -- and I think there's change happening here...It seems to me that there's a Third Awakening.

Bush has it right when he says, "There was a stark change between the culture of the '50s and the '60s". Bush has drawn many members of his regime, those who are destroying the United States Constitution, from his predecessor in crime and corruption, Richard M. Nixon. These include Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.

According to Peter Baker, Bush refrains from framing the so-called war on terror in religious terms. However, in 2001, he had to apologize for using the term "crusade". The use of that term is revealing. The apology was only a political move. Bush flies by faith as do many Bush followers, regardless of their denials. Bush also has it right more than he knows when he says that there is an awakening taking place. There is, indeed. That awakening, however, is the recognition by ever-increasing numbers of people that Bush and his corrupt partners have exceeded the crimes committed by Richard Nixon. Nixon had the war in Vietnam. George W. Bush has what he is calling World War III. If that appears as alarmist, consider that Newt W. Gingrich, the orchestrator of the Republican "revolution" in 1994, already running for president in 1998, said that he would,

Insist that Congress immediately pass legislation "that recognizes that we are entering World War III and serves notice that the U.S. will use all its resources to defeat our enemies -- not accommodate, understand or negotiate with them, but defeat them. (Inter Press Service, Sept 13., 2006).

The neo-cons have their faith. They have declared their dogma. It is a dogma of perpetual war for perpetual power and profit. People who adopt a proclaimed type of religious faith, such as Evangelical Christianity, must accept the dogma of the neocons' faith. To be opposed to war is to be against them. How far this pathology will spread remains to be seen. Humanity's defect, its proclivity to violence, and the pathology of faith, may be more than the species can handle. Time will tell. Meanwhile, I will hug my dogs. I will mourn and grieve for the suffering and dead, the multitudes in pain as a result of the twin human barbarisms of violence and faith. I will work for the overcoming of the human defect and surviving the pathology of faith. There is little choice, and little time.

Jozef Hand-Boniakowski is co-editor and co-publisher of Metaphoria along with his life partner and wife, JeanneE. He is 30-year veteran retired teacher and a member of Veterans For Peace. His writings have appeared in Metaphoria, After Downing Street, Buzzflash, Counterpunch, Thomas Paine's Corner, Rense.com, Omni Center, Rutland Herald, Times Argus, and others.

World Sceptical Of News Of Osama's 'Death'

2006-09-25T14:23:00.000+08:00

PARIS (AFP) - A French intelligence memo suggesting Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden might have died of typhoid has been met with scepticism around the world, including the highest levels of the French government.

France, the United States, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia all said they had no evidence to support the assertion in the memo, which was published Saturday in the French regional newspaper l'Est Republicain and Sunday in Le Parisien. "To my knowledge, Osama bin Laden is not dead. It is quite simple," French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy told French television on Sunday.

French President Jacques Chirac on Saturday confirmed the memo was genuine, stating he was "surprised" it had been made public and ordering an investigation into its leak. But he stressed that the information it gave was "in no way confirmed".

However, persistent reports that bin Laden was struck with illness fueled speculation about his fate. The confidential document, drafted by the French foreign intelligence service DGSE and dated September 21, stated that according to a normally reliable source Saudi Arabia's intelligence services were "convinced that Osama bin Laden is dead".

It said the 49-year-old Saudi Islamic militant, who has been held responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, succumbed to typhoid fever in Pakistan between August 23 and September 4. The Saudis were seeking evidence of bin Laden's death, notably by looking for his remains, the memo said.

In response, the Saudi embassy in Washington issued a two-sentence statement saying "the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has no evidence to support recent media reports that Osama bin Laden is dead". "Information that has been reported otherwise is purely speculative and cannot be independently verified," the statement stressed. It did not, however, address the French intelligence memo nor say whether its evaluation of what Saudi intelligence believed was inaccurate.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice simply said: "No comment, and no knowledge." Several US intelligence officials told US media they had noticed no unusual Internet or communications "chatter" which would likely follow such a momentous development.

Pakistan's interior minister, Aftab Sherpao, told AFP in Islamabad: "No, we do not have any such information with us." Security officials hunting Al-Qaeda in Pakistan rejected the report.

A senior official told AFP on condition of anonymity that "no such information has been shared" by the Saudis and that it was "inconceivable that an event of this nature would remain unnoticed in Pakistan".

Bin Laden has several times been rumoured to have died in the past, only to appear later in audio or video recordings. The last verified message from bin Laden was posted on the Internet on July 1, accusing Iraqi Shiites of waging "genocide" against Sunnis.

A US official said the message was deemed authentic. The last time images of him were seen was in October 2004, in a videotape delivered to the Arab television network Al Jazeera.

Born in Saudi Arabia to a wealthy family with close ties to the royals, bin Laden allegedly funded and directed the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington that killed around 3,000 people. His Al-Qaeda organisation has also been linked to several other attacks, including the 1998 US embassy bombings in Africa, a 2000 suicide bomb attack on a US warship off Yemen, and the 2004 Madrid train bombings.

He has successfully avoided capture despite the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan, which toppled the Taliban regime that had provided him refuge and protection, and a 25-million-dollar bounty on his head. Reports have regularly surfaced that the Al-Qaeda leader is in poor health.

The latest came from the US newsmagazine Time and the television network CNN -- both owned by Time Warner -- which reported on the weekend that bin Laden had fallen ill with an unspecified waterborne illness. Both stopped short of saying he was dead, however.

Time said "a well placed source in Washington" believed the hypothesis of bin Laden's death originated with "some Saudi intelligence analysts with no hard evidence to back it up. No one at a high level is satisfied it's true".

Legally empower the poor, unlock human potential

2006-09-25T14:12:00.000+08:00

Naresh Singh, Washington

Last week, The Jakarta Post reported on the efforts of ojek drivers in Jakarta to become an official form of public transportation. An executive of the Jakarta-based Indonesian Motorized Ojek Association (Pomsi), John Kornelis, was quoted as saying "ojek drivers face the usual problems faced by any mass transportation operator, but we don't have any access to legal rights."

The release of the National Socioeconomic Survey-based poverty estimates by the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) showing an increase in the head count index of poverty from 15.97 percent to 17.75 percent of total population across Indonesia, has received significant coverage in the press recently. The increase in poverty has raised the legitimate question of what needs to be done to alleviate poverty. Is economic growth alone sufficient? How does one ensure equitable distribution of growth? What factors impact on poverty?

One factor that is inextricably linked to poverty is the lack of legal protections for the poor. Over 70 percent of the workers in the developing world survive in the informal economy. Without basic legal protection their homes, assets and hard work are not recognized. Without property rights, they live in fear of forced eviction. Without access to a justice system, they are victims of corruption and violence. Without enforceable labor laws, they suffer unsafe and abusive work conditions.

Conversely, extending legal protections, such as property rights and labor rights to the poor can provide them with greater certainty, access to capital and incentives to work their way out of poverty. Enforceable legal rights give the poor the security to invest in their future rather than live from day to day.

The majority of the world's three billion poor people live their lives outside the rule of law. The efforts of the ojek drivers to legitimize their business highlights the fact that they wish to participate in a system that doesn't discriminate between the rich or poor, and that they see this as a key to improving their livelihoods.

Four key areas need to be addressed to legally empower the poor and help them move out of poverty:

First, better access to the formal justice system and the rule of law is required. A number of research projects on access to justice in Indonesia highlight the fact that villagers perceive the formal justice system as having one set of rules for the rich and one for the poor. As one village leader in Lampung commented "our legal system is like a spider's web: if it's a little insect that flies past it will be caught, but if it's a bird that comes along, it will just break the web."

As a result of this, the poor are much more likely to turn to informal dispute resolution systems. They see informal mechanisms as being cheaper, quicker and easier to use than the formal system.

Second, an inclusive system of property rights is required. Hernando de Soto's seminal work, The Mystery of Capital, showed that many of the world's poor possess assets of some kind. What they lack is a formal way to protect and exploit the full potential of these possessions as wealthy property owners do.

They are therefore stuck in the 'informal economy.' Creating an enabling system of property rights, obligations and enforcements will enable the poor to protect their assets and use them to create trust, obtain credit, access markets and raise their productivity.

Third, labor rights need to encourage the poor to move to the formal labor system. Employment in the formal sector provides the poor with the protections of a minimum wage, insurance and job security. There needs to be clearer understanding on the constraints that limit participation in the formal economy and the challenges to enforcing labor rights. The lack of enforcement of labor protections reduces the incentives of the poor to enter the formal system.

Finally, the entrepreneurial efforts of the poor need to be acknowledged and encouraged. The emergence of ojek drivers following the banning of becak (pedicab) drivers in 1994, as highlighted in The Jakarta Post's article of last week, is replicated throughout Indonesia and globally. When market opportunities appear, the poor have consistently proved they are capable of capitalizing on them.

Whether it is the street vendors throughout Jakarta selling whiteboards, plants and an array of other goods or villagers repairing damaged roads in rural Indonesia in exchange for contributions from passing motorists, these innovative entrepreneurial pursuits persist despite the lack of support from formal systems.

In an effort to unlock this human potential of the poor, the Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor was launched in January 2006. The Commission aims "to make legal protection and economic opportunity not the privilege of the few, but the right of all."

It promotes a wholly different approach to the poverty debate -- the inextricable link between pervasive poverty and the absence of legal protections for the poor. Co-chaired by former U.S. Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright and Peruvian economist, Hernando de Soto, the Commission's members include eminent policymakers from around the world.

The four areas identified above form the core of the Commission's work. Separate working groups, bringing together experts from around the world, have been established to assess what has and hasn't worked in empowering the poor in these areas. The working groups will develop a tool kit drawing on examples of best practice to support the reform process.

The outcomes of the working groups will be underpinned by a series of regional and national consultations. These consultations will document best practice and highlight areas that require reform.

In Indonesia, a national consultation is planned for November of this year. It is being organized by a consortium of civil society organizations, with Yayasan Lembaga Bantuan Hukum Indonesia (YLBHI or the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation) acting as a secretariat. Commission Member Erna Witoelar, UN Special Ambassador for the Millennium Development Goals in Asia and the Pacific, is facilitating the consultation.

The Commission is working to address the problems experienced by Jakarta's ojek drivers and the millions of poor both in Indonesia and throughout the world, who continue to live and work outside the rule of the law.

The writer is the Executive Director of the Commission for Legal Empowerment of the Poor.

The World's Survival Vs. Israel's Survival: The Real World Order

2006-09-20T11:49:00.000+08:00

By Gary Schofield

I had my first actual malignant cancer surgery done on my upper lip recently: The first real step of mortality. For the first time in my adult life, I am without health insurance. Oh, so this is what it feels like. As I sit in the waiting room for the results of the biopsy, I think to myself, this is nothing compared to the victims of the Middle Eastern wars, human bodies: Burned, poisoned, crushed and severed. I can’t get the picture out of my mind. Claude Thomas’s (the Vietnam vet/Buddhist who wrote At Hell’s Gate: A Soldier’s Journey) talks of the complicity between the military apparatus of a country and that country’s civilians. The blood is on our hands.

The worst part of the operation was sitting in the waiting room reading today’s magazines. If you were wondering about Collin Powell—he’s doing just great [featured in AAPP’s magazine]. Outside of his one little UN fiasco, his career in civilian life is flourishing. He should be in Abu Ghraib, seriously! Now I’m forced to read one of Israel’s leading imbedded journalists, Thomas Friedman. I think of Friedman’s interview on Terry Gross’s NPR some years ago: “The Mother’s Milk of the Arab child is to hate Israel and the United States”. I thought someone could be arrested for shouting fire in the theater? “The US and Israel are inextricably linked at the hip”. His enemy [Islam] has morphed into my enemy. Friedman finally delivers the psyopps hook in yesterday’s editorial [NYT 08/10/06]: “ In the end, Israel will do whatever it has to do to prevail”. In today’s national propaganda editorial, the other imbedded journalist, Dr. Strangelove Krauthammer [Washington Post 08/11/06] talks of the optimism of this years anti-war democrat: “But beyond that, it will be desolation”. These guys are scary.

So I am feeling that the window is closing in real time. Look at the fall agenda for the US military [www.falseflagnews.com] in terms of war games; Britain’s current severe terror alert; the USA is on a partial code red; Al Gore’s movie is significantly understated [2006 temperatures already exceeding 2005]; the US-based central bank is printing tons of eroding dollars to finance the global acquisition plans; BP and Iran are closing down the oil flow; our children are stumbling from a growing list of psychiatric disorders; and there is a movement afloat to radically restructure the internet. The land has an eerie dark Vietnam feeling to it. We are back on the path of MAD [mutually assured destruction].

Why is the Lebanon thing different than Afghanistan and Iraq? Isn’t it really just business as usual? It is different because in this one they took the gloves of deception off. This is a straight up in your face hostile takeover with the shock and awe strategy of civilian warfare. We are watching a real live genocide. The genocide also applies to Afghanistan and Iraq, but there was the pretext of 911 and WMD before those wars started. In this situation, there’s no real attempt to build a pretext [two captured soldiers?]. This is why it’s so dangerous. It is a type of Nazi psyopps operation. The perpetrators now blatantly demonstrate to their current and future victims how badly they intend to harm them. They drop the pretense. If there’s no reaction, nor willingness to fight back, then the battle for control is already won. We become compliant Germans. Live free or die.

So the master plans are out there for all to see. Israel’s A Clean Break: The New Strategy for Securing the Realm was published prior to 2000. It very specifically addresses: Iraq, Lebanon, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran; a break from America’s controlling influence; preemptive military operations and transcending Israel’s enemies. Goggle it, it’s only 6 pages long. It lays out the scenario for what is happening in Lebanon right now. America’s PNAC’s Rebuilding American Defense: Strategic Forces and Resources for a New Century was published in September of 2000. Some key players were involved in writing both plans. PNAC’s document [which later became the USA National Security Policy] essentially defines a USA manifest destiny vision with preemptive war as the tool of implementation. We’ve got to do something fundamental and we’ve got to do it now.

In my mind, the world community is going to have to consider undoing what some of our global members initiated back in 1947 [UN partitioning of Palestinian thereby creating Israeli]. I think the very legitimacy of Israel has got to be placed on the negotiating table for the global community to consider. Israel has taken it upon itself, with help from its enablers, to direct the geopolitics of the Middle East. Israel is seeking to establish the Greater Israel, which is requiring ongoing military invasions into neighboring nations [real estate, oil and water]. Israel is an unregulated major nuclear military power with an unknown capacity and an unknown nuclear strategy. Israel has now initiated a conflict where there is no return. In a very real sense, global politics is being reduced to the survival of tiny Israel or the survival of the rest of the world. From the US perspective, official accounts put the cumulative cost of supporting Israel at $138 billion. It is probably twice that, and if we were to include opportunity costs [goodwill, brand, networks, markets, security, etc.] the financial impact is in the trillions. What do we get from the relationship?

Israel has got to go back to the boundaries of 1967, the release of all political prisoners, pay war reparations for all civilian damages, and be committed to the sharing and co-development of regional resources. The Israeli government will have to abide by international law and UN resolutions. I’m saying that we put Israel on notice that its legitimacy is no longer considered god given and it must earn its place amongst the mature nations of mankind. If it is not willing to abide by international law and the spiritual laws of the global community then the discussion as to its on going viability will have to be put on the table.

We are running out of time and must act now. There is much to be said, proved and disproved, the history, the holocaust, the victimization, the Talmud, Zionism, anti-semiticism, Israel’s desire for racial purity, etc., etc., but we don’t have the time. It is becoming my story, the world’s story; we are caught in the quest of G-d’s chosen people. Why are we willing to go over the precipice for this little country, which is costing us so much to befriend and is acting so belligerently. How does America benefit from this relationship? We’re got to put his issue into the proper perspective. Israel must join the rest of humanity if is to survive as a legal entity. If she is unwilling, then as with my incidence of cancer, the world community may have to remove a very small but dangerous malignancy to keep the larger organism healthy.

Gary Schofield, MBA The Resource Group

Listening to the speech of Pope Benedict XVI

2006-09-20T11:48:00.000+08:00

Al Makin, Heidelberg

During his visit to his home country Germany, Pope Benedict XVI (formerly Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) dropped in on Thursday Sept. 12, 2006, at his former Regensburg University.

From 1969 to 1977 he was a professor of dogmatics at the school and this year he delivered a speech there, broadcast live on many German TV channels. More than 25,000 people in the hall of the university welcomed him and after the long formalities and various choirs, he spoke about Glaube, Vernunft und Universitedt (Faith, Reason and Universality).

The speech drew my interest as a Muslim, who by accident had turned on the TV and watched the live broadcast. The original text of the pope's speech can be read at www.oecumene.radiovaticana.org/ted/Articolo.asp?c=94864.

During his speech, the pope raised at least three concepts that seemed related directly to the current Muslim world and its relationship to the West. First, he mentioned three important scriptures in the modern world: the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Koran. He clearly stated that they were "drei gesetze (three rules/laws)."

Second, he said the readers of the scriptures, the Christians and Muslims, should understand them through reasoning, not violence. To quote him directly, "Der Glaube ist Frucht der Seele, nicht des Kvrpers (faith is an expression of the soul not the body)." Taking an example, he said that to believe in the existence of God is to think with reason, not to use threats.

Therefore, any use of violence, war or weapons in the relations among believers of the same -- or different -- religion is unacceptable. God, he said, should be understood with "logos/words."

In doing so, the pope defined how and why God exists. In the Muslim tradition, logos may be equated to the kalam of both the classical and modern Muslim intellectuals. In both logos and kalam, people are told to exercise their intellectual facilities, to think of the theology rather than take up arms. As a Muslim, I totally agree with this, and I think nobody would argue it.

Then the pope raised the interfaith dialog issue. In his careful words and wisdom, he made an example of the dialog in the past between Byzantium Caesar Manuel II Palaeologos in 1391 and an educated Persian about relations between Islam and Christianity. In short, the dialog led to a conclusion that the use of reasoning should be put higher than violence in matters of faith. Accordingly, the dialog should not be performed by using weapons or threats. The parties involved should exercise their commonsense to understand others, the pope said.

Listening to the pope's speech one may also relate this issue to the contemporary crisis in the current world, in the Middle East or even in Indonesia. Although the pope mentioned the word jihad in his speech, he did not comment further on the issue.

After listening to the speech as a whole, one might question why the peace of the world is under threat.

It is because people tend to use weapons to solve problems rather than sitting down together and talking. The former is violence, whereas the latter is reasoning.

In the past, during the Renaissance, many people argued against the existance of religions, especially against the Church. Religion was far from a reasoned ideal of humanity, people were told. People repeatedly questioned the role of faith in society and was not strange that a figure like Friedrich Nietzsche emerged.

In many of his works he provoked us to think about the origin of humanity, good, evil and religion. That was then, this is now. The current world situation seems to be little about deep thinking and more about politics; with religion used to justify violence for political ends.

One example is United States President George W. Bush's speech commemorating the five-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, which is also available at www.iht.com. He described when the terrorists ".... murdered people of all colors, creeds, and nationalities -- and made war upon the entire Free World."

The speech was made in the context of the numerous victims of the collapse of the twin towers. It was delivered on a day of mourning and it stressed that the security of the nation should be a top priority. It, of course, was Bush's right and duty to say this as a politician.

After that, the president spoke about the actions taken against the people responsible for the disaster: "Since that day, America and her allies have taken the offensive in a war unlike any we have fought before." During recent days the popularity of Bush and his Republican Party has been under extreme pressure and the Democrats will take any chance to lead public opinion, as the mid-term elections draw nearer. Bush reminded his people that "Dangerous enemies have declared their intention to destroy our way of life."

It would be misleading to compare the speech of the pope to that of the U.S. president; each serves its own purpose and has its own context. The first speaker is a religious leader, while the second is a head of state.

However, one thing is relevant. Both spoke about violence and enmity. Although the pope does not single out specific parties for using violence, reading his speech most people will understand that every war is violence. The pope delivered a clear message of peace.

The writer is a lecturer at the Sunan Kalijaga State Islamic University in Yogyakarta and Ph.D candidate at the Seminar fur Sprachen und Kulturen des Vorderen Orients, Heidelberg University, Germany. He can be reached at makin@stud.uni-heidelberg.de.

Struggle for civilisation, says Bush

2006-09-20T11:40:00.001+08:00

The US president gave warning to Osama bin Laden that "America will find you", as he marked five years since the September 11 attacks with a call for American unity and support for the Iraq war.

In an Oval Office address on Monday that came amid an election-year debate over whether America is safer five years after 9/11, George Bush said: "Whatever mistakes have been made in Iraq, the worst mistake would be to think that if we pulled out, the terrorists would leave us alone.

"The safety of America depends on the outcome of the battle in the streets of Baghdad."

Criticised by some Democrats for not getting bin Laden when there was a chance in late 2001, Bush renewed his pledge to track down the leader of al-Qaeda.

"Osama bin Laden and other terrorists are still in hiding. Our message to them is clear: No matter how long it takes, America will find you, and we will bring you to justice."

Bush spoke a day after The Washington Post reported that the search for bin Laden, believed to be hiding in the mountains along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, had gone "stone cold" with no credible leads in more than two years.

Political harmony

The September 11 attacks brought Americans together behind their untested president; but many parted ways with him when the Iraq war turned out to be far costlier in lives and money than forecast.

President Bush

Today, Bush's job approval ratings have only barely climbed out of a deep trough, and he is fighting to keep his Republicans from being defeated in November elections in which Democrats see their best opportunity in years to take control of one or both chambers of the US Congress.

Bush said the war on terrorism was only in its "early hours" and described it as a "struggle for civilisation".

He said: "Our nation has endured trials - and we face a difficult road ahead.

"Winning this war will require the determined efforts of a unified country. So we must put aside our differences, and work together to meet the test that history has given us."

Same theme

Bush's argument for staying in Iraq amounted to the same theme he has been using on the campaign trail, that it would be wrong to pull out of Iraq before the government in Baghdad is stable, which many Americans increasingly see as a fleeting prospect.

Democrats see the Iraq war as a distraction from the war on terrorism. Some would like a phased redeployment of US troops from Iraq by the year's end, forcing Bush to make his case to Americans weary of the war that the troops must stay.

He said: "If we yield Iraq to men like bin Laden, our enemies will be emboldened. They will gain a new safe haven, and they will use Iraq's resources to fuel their extremist movement. We will not allow this to happen.

"America will stay in the fight."

Thai coup: One night in Bangkok

2006-09-20T11:40:00.000+08:00

By Philip Golingai

BANGKOK: An hour after news broke that tanks had rolled into the capital in a military takeover and television stations being seized, I had my first taste of a coup d’etat.

At The Nation office in the suburb of Bangna, 20 minutes from here, a group of heavily armed soldiers turned up at the newspaper office, where I am based as The Star correspondent.

They were there to "secure the newspaper building" where more drastic actions had been taken including taking control of seven Thai television and radio stations.

A journalist from the newspaper, which has been known for its hard-hitting articles against Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, appeared unperturbed by the political drama unfolding in the capital.

"They are just friendly forces, who told us that they have come to protect us," he said, as his colleagues watched closely the movement of the men in green fatigue who stood guard at various spots in the six-storey building.

Outside The Nation building, I saw Thai soldiers carrying M-16 assault rifles with yellow ribbon tied to the barrel. The soldiers were friendly and spoke to the journalists outside the office.

My 28-year-old building manager, Supitch Buaseng, called me to warn that "the soldiers have taken over. Please don’t go out of the apartment."

Just earlier, the News Editor had despatched the reporters to various parts of the capital as word went out that the anti-Thaksin military faction had taken control of the city with tanks stationed at the Rachadamnoen Road and the Royal Plaza, close to the Royal Palace and government offices.

Soldiers were also seen patrolling at the Erawan Hotel, a major tourist area near the famed Four-Faced Buddha, while more soldiers were seen at major intersections.

The talk at the newsroom was that there could be a possible clash between rival camps in the army.

There was also talk that Deputy Prime Minister Chitchai Wannasathit and Defence Minister Thammarak Isaragura na Ayuthaya – two close loyalists of Thaksin – had been arrested.

The fate of Thaksin, who is now in New York for the United Nations general assembly, hangs in the balance.

But even as the international news network reported news of the coup, ordinary Bangkok city folk and tourists appeared unaware that a coup was in progress.

Foreigners were still seen packing bars and clubs, oblivious to what was taking place but some hawkers and traders were seen closing their stalls earlier than usual, apparently worried by the uncertainties ahead.

At 11pm, the main tourist spots of Sukhumvit, Silom and Rachada were busy as usual. Most Thais found out about the coup through the television.

Ruangkhao Chanchai, a 25-year-old investment banker, said she was watching Kofi Annan giving a speech in New York on CNN at 10.20pm.

"Suddenly I saw a breaking news announcement that said troops were moving into Bangkok," she said.

"I turned to the Thai television channels but there was no ‘live’ news on what was happening. I’m shocked. I don’t know what is going on. All I know is that the Prime Minister has declared a state of emergency," Ruangkhao added.

By 11pm, Thai television channels announced that the anti-Thaksin military faction had taken over.

Army-owned Channel 15 interrupted regular broadcasts with patriotic music and pictures of the King.

A Malaysian, who stayed at Chaophya Park Hotel near the international airport, said the CNN transmission at the hotel seemed to "have been jammed".

At 2am, The Nation was informed by the Thai military that all telecommunication and internet connections in the country would be shut down in two hours’ time.

For now, many Thais appeared thankful that the coup, the first military intervention in Thai politics since 1992, had been a bloodless one although many were unsure what would take place over the next 24 hours.

Arab American Writers Condemn the US-EU-Israeli Economic Blockade of Gaza, Demand Lifting It Immediately

2006-09-20T11:35:00.000+08:00

RAWI Condemns the Economic Blockade of Gaza, Calls on the US, EU, and Israel to Lift It Immediately

The Radius of Arab American Writers, Inc. [RAWI] deplores the ongoing economic blockade by Israel and its sponsor, the United States, of the Gaza Strip, home to 1.4 million Palestinians. We call on Israel, the United States, and the European Union to end this blockade immediately in order to alleviate Gaza’s economic collapse and the resultant widespread starvation.

According to the New York Times, the majority of Gaza’s child population is now malnourished and most of Gaza’s families have been reduced to planting vegetables in sand in order to feed themselves. The Independent of London reports that the residents of Gaza are “struggling to survive in the face of an economic blockade.”

The effects of this blockade have been worsened by the fact that in its recent invasion of Gaza, which went largely unreported in American media, Israel destroyed whatever remained of Gaza’s infrastructure in addition to killing at least 146 civilians, many of them children.

We condemn not only the poor timing and strategic foolishness of this economic blockade, but also its immorality. A reaction to the Palestinians’ selection of Hamas to a parliamentary majority in a free and fair election, the economic blockade appears to collectively punish innocent people for doing nothing more than exercising their democratic rights. RAWI views as shocking, preposterous, and racist the justifications for this blockade based on the indemonstrable notion that Hamas endeavors to destroy Israel, a position articulated recently on the New York Times letters page: “If the [Palestinian] electorate wants a government run by a party that is sworn to destroy Israel, it shouldn’t be a surprise when Israel cuts off financing in response.”

We would point out in response to this sort of logic that elections in the United States and Israel produced right-wing governments that seek the destruction of Palestine (and, unlike the Palestinians, have the power to act on this impulse, a situation evident today in Gaza).

Therefore, as a community of Arab American writers and scholars we would like to bring to the attention of our American compatriots the fact that the United States government is more dangerous to the Palestinians than the Palestinians’ government ever possibly could be to Americans.

All reasoning underlying the continuation of the economic blockade of Gaza, then, is dubious politically, strategically, and morally. RAWI calls for its immediate cessation and for an investigation by an international governing body of widespread human rights abuses by Israel in the Gaza Strip.

We also call on fellow writers and scholars to raise their voices as individuals and institutions in opposition to this humanitarian disaster.

Carol Rae Bradford
Member, RAWI

Mahathir blames 9/11 on Israel

2006-09-15T13:18:00.000+08:00

Malaysia’s former prime minister said international Islamic terrorism was a result of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians.

Mahathir Mohamad, who drew censure for making anti-Semitic comments during his 22-year rule, said Thursday that the Sept. 11 attackers were motivated by sympathy for the Palestinians.

“They had no direct link but there is a great deal of sympathy for the sufferings of the people of Palestine,” Mahathir told Reuters.

“What is happening today has got nothing to do with religion. It has got to do with territorial disputes, mainly the dispute over Palestinian land.”

The 81-year-old former premier also said that there is no such thing as a “moderate” Muslim.

“We follow the true teachings of the religion and the true teachings do not teach us to bomb and kill people without reason,” he said.

Dr M: No such thing as a moderate Muslim

2006-09-15T13:15:00.000+08:00

The Sun

ASTANA: There is no such thing as a moderate Muslim and US President George W. Bush is mistaken in casting his war on terror in terms of a "struggle for civilisation", former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad says.

Mahathir, who is known for his frequent barbs against what he has called Western double standard, said he believed even the Sept 11, 2001 attacks on the US were at root linked to Israel's occupation of Palestinian land.

"What is happening today has got nothing to do with religion. It has got to do with territorial disputes, mainly the dispute over Palestinian land," he told Reuters after a religious congress here.

He said Bush's description of America's "war on terror" as "a struggle for civilisation" on the fifth anniversary of the attacks was flawed, as was the West's hope that moderate Muslims would have a dominant voice.

"There is no such thing as a moderate Muslim," he said. "We are fundamentalists in Malaysia. We follow the true teachings of the religion and the true teachings do not teach us to bomb and kill people without reason."

On Bush's comments, Mahathir, 81, said: "He's not civilised, he shouldn't be talking about civilising others."

Although most of the men who carried out the Sept 11 attacks were Saudis, Mahathir - whom Israel has in the past dubbed anti-Semitic - said he saw the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands as the root cause of Islamist extremism.

"They (the hijackers) had no direct link but there is a great deal of sympathy for the sufferings of the people of Palestine," he said.

"Maybe that is because they are co-religionists but it is not because their religion urges them to do so. The West tends to blame religion, they blame Islam for whatever happens and associate Islam with terrorism," he said.

He said he believed dubbing a fight against Islamic extremism as a struggle for civilisation risked becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

"(Muslims) are without arms, they are weak and they are pushed into a corner. If you are pushed into a corner and the only thing you can do is bite, you bite," he said.

The tactics used by the US and allies such as Britain were an attempt to "out-terrorise the terrorists" and would therefore fail, Mahathir said. - Reuters

"Saddam Hussein terrorised his people, he killed many people. But how many did he kill compared to the numbers the Americans have caused to be killed?" he asked.

"They have opened a Pandora's Box and you have a civil war." Mahathir provoked controversy throughout his long career. In 2003 he said Jews ruled the world by proxy, prompting condemnation from Israel and Western countries.

The jailing of his former deputy Anwar Ibrahim in 1998 on sodomy charges that Anwar said were trumped up caused many western democracies to shun Mahathir.

But he has also been widely hailed as the architect of modern Malaysia and a strong voice among Muslim and developing countries.

"When you target Muslim countries, other Muslims get angry and they try to retaliate the only way they can, by bombing or maybe attempts to blow up aircraft and so you think that these Muslims are really bad," Mahathir said.

"But think first what you have done to them and then you will realise that if you were in their position you would do the same thing."

The politics of fear in US elections

2006-09-15T13:12:00.000+08:00

By Abdus Sattar Ghazali

If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy: James Madison - The fourth U.S. president, 1751-1836.

Six days before the 9/11 commemoration, President George Bush opened the fall election campaign season with a hard hitting speech on national security amid flagging public support for the war in Iraq. In a sharp rhetoric, President Bush said that Al-Qaeda and its allies were intent on global domination and creating a "radical Islamic empire" that stretches from Spain to Iraq. While comparing Bin Laden with Hitler, he said: "Bin Laden and his terrorist allies have made their intentions as clear as Lenin and Hitler before them." To send the message home, Bush mentioned Bin Laden 17 times in the 44-minute speech. Ironically, any mention of Osama bin Laden was absent from the White House report, titled "National Strategy for Combating Terrorism" released the same day.

President Bush's comments came just eight weeks before the midterm elections with the GOP control of the House and Senate hanging in the balance. Bush's approval ratings have been sagging and he has come under fire from conservative critics who have argued that his "war on terror" was too squishy, and losing impact with mainstream America.

According to Harris Interactive Poll, President Bush's approval rating is just 34%. President Bush's approval rating is 38% in a Newsweek poll. Harris Poll also indicated that if elections for Congress were held today, 45% of Americans say they would vote for the Democratic candidate and 30% would vote for the Republican. The Newsweek Poll indicates that right now 53 percent of Americans would like to see the Democrats win control of Congress, compared to just 34 percent who want the Republicans to retain control. Most Americans are angry about "something" when it comes to how the country is run, and they are more likely than in previous years to vote for a challenger this November, according to a CNN poll of Sept. 4.

Hence, in an effort to bolster sinking public opinion about the unpopular war in Iraq and other national issues, President Bush and Republican leaders see "national security" or "fear factor" as their biggest advantage over Democrats.

Three things can be expected from Bush's speech, according to a new study by three Columbia University researchers: The media will repeat the president's remarks. Public fear of terrorism will increase. And the president's poll numbers will rise. Those have been the effects of presidential pronouncements on terrorism since the Sept. 11 attacks, they added.

Officials in government and law enforcement also can have an effect on the public's perception of terror risk when their statements are magnified by the media. In February 2003, for example, the percentage of people saying they were very worried about a terror attack "soon" stood at 18 percent. One month later, after the alert had been raised and lowered, it stood at 34 percent.

The official with the greatest ability to shift opinion on terrorism, the researchers found, is Bush, whose statements in the media about terrorism correlated highly with increases in the public's perception of terrorism as a major national problem -- and with increases in his approval ratings.

At the beginning of July 2002, for example, approval of the president's handling of terrorism was around 79 percent. After television coverage of one statement by Bush and seven public statements by administration officials about the terrorist threat, the president's rating rose to 83 percent.

In June 2004, approval for the president's handling of terrorism had fallen to 50 percent. One month later, after an increase in television coverage of Bush's comments on terrorism, that number had risen to 57 percent.

Larry Beutler, director of the National Center on the Psychology of Terrorism in Palo Alto argues that there are findings suggesting that the administration's use of the alert system increased inordinately before the election and each time it did, Bush's numbers went up about 5 percent.

The Columbia University research is seen a "damning indictment of the media's bloodlust." Matthew T. Felling, media director for the Center for Media and Public Affairs in Washington, D.C. says: "When you have media organs viewing fear-mongering as a payday, senior politicians seeing fear-mongering as sound political strategy, and terrorists considering fear-mongering as a victory unto itself, where are citizens expected to find a voice of reason?"

However, Yaeli Bloch-Elkon, one of the researchers pointed out: "This public panic benefits the terrorists whose work is made easier by an overactive government response that magnifies their efforts. In an odd way this puts the government and the terrorists in league with one another," he said. "The main loser, alas, is the terrified public."

"The real new thing here is the mere threat, heavily mass mediated, achieves at least part of what actual terrorism achieves," Nacos said. "(Terrorists) want to intimidate, they want to spread fear and anxiety, and they want to take influence through the public on government officials."

While the President warns of enduring terror threat, the Democrats are playing up the fear-factor albeit in a different way.

A group of top Democrats held a press conference just before Mr. Bush's speech to release a report that they said showed the president's approach to terrorism to be a failure. "Under the Bush administration and this Republican Congress, America is less safe, facing greater threats, and unprepared for the dangerous world in which we live,'' said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader in the Senate. "This new report is a stunning indictment of Bush foreign policy, and it makes a clear case for the new direction we need to keep America safe."

Sharon Burke, director of the Third Way National Security Project that compiled the report, said that the study showed that the number of al Qaeda members had grown from about 20,000 in 2001 to about 50,000 today, and that terrorist attacks worldwide were up sharply. The number and power of insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan are also on the rise, she said, while the strength and readiness of the American military have been drained by the war in Iraq . "The numbers show that the president's strategy is not working,'' she said.

The one point on which both reports agreed is the growth of small terrorist cells that operate outside of centralized organizations like al Qaeda.

A new counterterrorism strategy released on Sept. 5 by the White House compares the fight to the long struggle against Communism during the decades-long Cold War, and shifting the focus from Al Qaeda to decentralized networks of extremists. It describes al-Qaeda as a significantly degraded organization, but outlines potent threats from smaller networks and individuals motivated by al-Qaeda ideology, a lack of freedom and "twisted" propaganda about U.S. policy in the Middle East.

The National Strategy for Combating Terrorism reflects the intelligence community's latest analysis of the evolving nature of the threats from widely dispersed "Islamic extremists" who are often isolated and linked by little more than the Internet. It describes President Bush's "freedom agenda" of promoting democracy as the leading long-term weapon against them.

The document describes the influence of U.S. policy in the Middle East as minimal, portraying the Iraq war and the renewed Arab-Israeli strife as sources of deceptive propaganda for terrorist ideologues. Terrorism, it says, "is not simply a result of hostility to U.S. policy in Iraq . . . Israeli-Palestinian issues . . . [or] our efforts to prevent terror attacks."

"The terrorism we confront today" springs from several sources, including an "ideology that justifies murder" and that blames "perceived injustices from the recent or sometimes distant past," the strategy says. That ideology, it says, preys upon populations that "see no legitimate way to promote change in their own country" and whose "information about the world is contaminated by falsehoods and corrupted by conspiracy theories."

Amid the stepped up rhetoric on national security, a Bush Administration proposed legislation was introduced in the congress on September 7 aimed at protecting the officials authorizing cruel, inhuman treatment retrospectively. The new legislation will apply to any conduct by any U.S. personnel, whether committed before or after the law is enacted.

Under the proposed law, the administration could potentially subject any non-citizen accused of supporting terrorist activity, anywhere in the world, to the second-class justice system of military commissions. This is because there is no requirement that those brought before the proposed military commission have any relationship to an actual armed conflict as commonly understood. According to the Human Rights Watch, under this legislation, even the proverbial old lady in Switzerland who gave money to a charitable arm of a terrorist organization could be declared an "unlawful enemy combatant," placed in military custody, and tried by a military commission for providing "material support to terrorism."

The Bush administration is in a hurry to pass this legislation before the November elections in which the Republicans fear losing control of the congress.

Abdus Sattar Ghazali is the Executive Editor of the online magazine American Muslim Perspective: www.amperspective.com

Muslim leaders condemn Pope's speech, want apology

2006-09-15T13:10:00.001+08:00

CAIRO (Reuters) - Muslim leaders on Thursday condemned Pope Benedict over comments he made about Islam on a visit to Germany and demanded he apologise.

The head of the Egyptian-based Muslim Brotherhood called on Islamic countries to threaten to break off relations with the Vatican unless the pontiff withdrew his remarks.

A top religious figure in Turkey suggested the pope should reconsider a trip he is planning to Turkey later this year.

The Vatican issued a statement to say the Pope had never meant to offend Islam.

In his speech at the University of Regensburg on Tuesday, Benedict quoted criticism of Islam and the Prophet Mohammad by 14th century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus, who wrote that everything Mohammad brought was evil and inhuman, "such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached".

Benedict, who used the terms "jihad" and "holy war", repeatedly quoted Manuel's argument that spreading the faith through violence is unreasonable, adding: "Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul."

The head of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Mahdi Akef, whose organisation is one of the oldest, largest and most influential in the Arab world, said the pope "aroused the anger of the whole Islamic world and strengthened the argument of those who say that the West is hostile to everything Islamic".

"The general guide (Akef) expressed his surprise that such comments should come from someone who sits at the summit of the Catholic Church and who has an influence over public opinion in the West," said a statement on the Muslim Brotherhood's official Web site, www.ikhwanonline.com.

The Vatican press office said in a statement the pope had not intended to carry out an in-depth study of jihad (holy war) and Muslim thinking about it, "even less to offend the sensitivity of the Muslim faithful".

"It is clear that the Holy Father's intention is to cultivate a position of respect and dialogue towards other religions and cultures, and that clearly includes Islam," the statement by chief Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said.

He said a careful reading of the Pope's lecture would show that "what really matters to the Holy Father is a clear and radical rejection of religious motives for violence".

In Turkey, the Anatolian state news agency quoted Ali Bardakoglu, the head of Ankara's Directorate General for Religious Affairs, as describing the Pope's words as "extremely regrettable".

"I do not see any use in somebody visiting the Islamic world who thinks in this way about the holy prophet of Islam. He should first rid himself of feelings of hate," NTV's Web site quoted Bardakoglu as saying.

Bardakoglu, whose directorate controls all imams in Turkey and sends prayer leaders to Turkish communities abroad, recalled atrocities committed by Roman Catholic Crusaders during the Middle Ages in the name of their faith against Orthodox Christians and Jews as well as Muslims.

Benedict is due to visit Turkey, an avowedly secular state whose population is predominantly Muslim, in November at the invitation of President Ahmet Necdet Sezer.

In Qatar, prominent Muslim scholar Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi rejected the Pope's comments and said Islam was a religion of peace and reason.

"Muslims have the right to be angry and hurt by these comments from the highest cleric in Christianity," Qaradawi told Al Jazeera television. "We ask the pope to apologise to the Muslim nation for insulting its religion, its Prophet and its beliefs."

Muslim leaders condemn Pope's speech, want apology

2006-09-15T13:10:00.000+08:00

Nationalists rally in Moscow

2006-09-15T13:06:00.000+08:00

Nationalist activists have held a rally in Moscow to demand the tightening of registration rules for migrants.

Members of the Movement Against Illegal Immigration gathered in Moscow city centre to hand over a petition to the education ministry urging it to tighten controls over migrants from the Caucasus living in university halls.

They also demanded that the government cancel provisions encouraging students from other ex-Soviet nations to enter Russian universities.

Some reports say that about 100 activists were detained by police while other accounts say more than 200 were arrested.

Police were deployed in large number around the rally site, but several dozen nationalists were allowed to hold the rally - a soft approach by the Russian authorities who usually move quickly to disperse unsanctioned demonstrations.

Mob violence

The Movement Against Illegal Immigration received attention earlier this month when a wave of racial mob violence in the northern town of Kondopoga was triggered by a restaurant fight that left two local residents dead. Angry crowds, blaming local Chechens for the killings, burned the restaurant and stores owned by Chechens and other migrants from the Caucasus region, and demanded their eviction.

Alexander Belov, the movement's leader, visited Kondopoga and urged authorities to take tougher action against migrants. Some people, including Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya's Moscow-backed prime minister, blamed Belov for inciting the mob violence - an accusation he has denied.

While authorities sought to downplay the racial element in the Kondopoga violence, it has raised fears that similar rampages could spread to other Russian cities where increasingly aggressive nationalist groups target people from Russia's Caucasus provinces and neighboring ex-Soviet nations.

Russia has seen a marked rise in xenophobia and racism in recent years, with a series of attacks on foreigners, Jews and dark-skinned migrants from the impoverished Caucasus region and ex-Soviet Central Asia.

Let Them Eat Candy: Of War Criminals, Enablers, and the Decreasing Significance of We the People

2006-09-14T12:48:00.000+08:00

By Jason Miller

Remember the archaic notion that freedom of speech and peaceable assembly are guaranteed by a document the Bush Regime is rendering as “quaint” as the Geneva Conventions?

Here is a reminder:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Since the “leader of the free world” has established a consistent pattern of over-riding, circumventing, or simply ignoring both the Constitution and judicial rulings, the hallowed basis for our Constitutional Republic has nearly been reduced to a “God-damn piece of paper”.

As the mass murderer guilty of egregious war crimes descended upon Kansas City via Air Force One on 9/8, approximately 450 of us dissidents gathered to exercise what First Amendment rights we still have.

Bush and his entourage were arriving to raise funds for Jim Talent, Missouri’s junior US Senator who is up for re-election in November and who has marched in virtual lock-step with the Bush Regime.

Where was this revolting spectacle to take place?

Envision a setting encompassing picturesque multi-million dollar villas, sprawling lush lawns, and the obscenely expensive retail establishments of the world renowned Country Club Plaza.

A study conducted at the University of Chicago in the 1950’s called this corridor "the Ward Parkway and Mission Hills Gold Coast."

The same study concluded:

The "blue bloods," "the uppercrust," "the Society Crowd," and "the topnotchers" were said to live in this area. A man who could afford one of these mansions was assumed to be "one of the big industrialists," "a leading man of commerce," "a well-to-do executive," "a top-ranking lawyer or doctor" or "one of the big shots among the real estate boys and stocks and bonds brokers." This was the area thought to supply most of the members of the elite country clubs, leaders in the Chamber of Commerce, and board members of various cultural institutions.

And little has changed since that study was published. Many of Kansas City’s members of the United States’ de facto aristocracy still reside along Ward Parkway and in Mission Hills.

Bush’s and Talent’s host, candy magnate Scott Ward, is one such denizen of Kansas City’s “Gold Coast”. Brothers Scott and Tom Ward inherited and share controlling interest in the privately held Russell Stover, Inc. Russell Stover is the third largest candy manufacturer in the United States, lagging behind only Mars and Hershey’s. With 4500 employees and an estimated $450 million in sales in 2005, Russell Stover co-presidents Scott and Tom Ward wield far more power and influence than the 99% of We the People who comprise the “lower classes”.

(As an aside, please pause for a moment to reflect on the three billion human beings who live on less than two dollars per day, the 13% of the population in the United States that lives in poverty, the three million homeless people in the United States, and the millions slaughtered over the years by the American Empire. Their involuntary sacrifices have enabled the existence of palatial estates, obscene wealth, conspicuous consumption, and the concentration of power into the hands of the plutocracy of the United States. If you are amongst the tiny percentage of humanity on the side of the wealth chasm which possesses most of the gold and makes most of the rules, or perhaps are simply a “wannabe” who thrives on Horatio Alger fairy tales, at least say a prayer of thanks for those who are suffering or have suffered needlessly on your behalf.)

What was the truly urgent aspect of Bush’s agenda in visiting the “Candy Man” to stump for Republican Senator Jim Talent’s re-election? To evade impeachment and possible prosecution for his numerous violations of domestic and international law, Bush needs a Republican majority in Congress. Nixon and Clinton both faced impeachment proceedings for committing far less egregious crimes than Bush has. Clearly, partisan politics trump the “lesser considerations” of legality and morality, even in “one nation, under God… with liberty and justice for all.”

And on 9/8/06, Scott Ward abused his inherited wealth and status to aid and abet George W. Bush, a man responsible for the annihilation of over a hundred thousand innocent civilians, in his frantic bid to continue killing with impunity.

Jim Talent, another Bush enabler, is the consummate crusader for the “rights” of corporations and the wealthy to engage in rapacious behaviors. His campaign contributors include Jack Abramoff, Tom Delay’s ARMPAC, and three major tobacco companies. An examination of Talent’s voting record in Congress clearly demonstrates that he is neither representing nor serving the interests of a majority of We the People.

Consider these facts:

1. the NEA gave him a 27% for his “support” of public education

2. the US Chamber of Commerce rated him a 100% supporter of business interests

3. the League of Conservation Voters scored him at 5% for his abysmal voting record on the environment

4. the American Public Health Association rated him at zero percent on health care issues

5. SANE (now part of Peace Action) also placed him at 0% for his unwavering support of the military industrial complex

6. the AFL-CIO awarded him a goose egg to highlight his deep hostility toward unions

7. and the Alliance for Retired Americans determined that he deserved a ranking of zero for failing to represent the interests of seniors

Like Bush, Talent has a very narrow constituency he truly supports. It is not difficult to imagine George, Jim, and Scott gently clinking Baccarat Vence Champagne Flutes filled with Clos du Mesni to toast the wealthy elite. In deference to Scott’s candy empire located in Jim’s state, their toast would of course include their version of a quote often falsely attributed to Marie Antoinette. In unison the three would jubilantly proclaim:

“Let them eat candy!”

As this merry trio and their elite cronies prepared to assemble at Scott’s mansion, we proponents of social justice, peace, economic justice, human rights, and the preservation of the environment arrived at the intersection of 55th and Ward Parkway to call for an end to the Iraqi Occupation, the eradication of gross economic injustices in the United States, and Bush’s impeachment.

Corralled into a grassy median by police tape and a contingency of about thirty Kansas City police officers, we who dared to dissent learned our place under the Bush Regime. Yet despite the government restricting us to an area where we were invisible to the ruling elite and were not even an inconvenience to them, we were fortunate to even get our “free speech zone”.

Potent resistance to virtually any individual or group that threatens the power of the moneyed class or corporations has been an ugly reality throughout much of the United States’ history. Those who agitate for changes that would decrease profits, level the playing field, impede capitalist expansion, or curb US militarism are vilified, marginalized, arrested, and sometimes killed. Those calling for economic justice are dismissed as Socialists or Communists (the favorite “villains” of rapacious Capitalism’s mythology). Nuclear weapons protestors like Mike Palecek go to prison. “Suspected” terrorists are tortured and imprisoned indefinitely. Minority activists like MLK and Malcolm X who become too powerful “wind up on the wrong end of a gun”.

Perpetrating one of the world’s biggest hoaxes for an unprecedented period of time, the ruling class has beguiled the masses in the United States into believing they live in a bottom-up “participatory democracy”. The stark reality is that about 1% of the population holds most of the wealth, power, and influence in the United States.

With two million incarcerated individuals, the “land of the free” leads the world in prison population. Members of the virtually omnipotent Duopoly, most of whom represent the interests of the ruling elite because they come from among them or have accepted their bribes in one form or another, are often the only viable options at the voting booths. (Greens, Socialists and Libertarians can barely make it on the ballot, let alone truly compete). Corporate-controlled media sources pelt the populace with a steady barrage of revisionist history and propaganda (asserting the benevolence and moral exceptionalism of the United States). As their ace, the ruling elite have ultimate control of the most potent military force and arsenal in human history. We the People are at a distinct disadvantage on many levels.

Suppression of dissent has risen to new heights under the Bush administration. And 9/8 was yet another example. Bush’s carefully orchestrated appearance included a bevy of security forces to ensure he would be insulated from verbal confrontations with dissenters and even the sight of those opposing his rule, neither of which he has the capacity to endure.

The police sealed off the public street passing in front of the Ward home. When I approached her, a Kansas City police officer told me I would be arrested before I set foot on 55th Street if I attempted to take the protest in front of the “Candy Man’s” home. I asked her how they would justify such an arrest. She told me that there were no sidewalks on 55th Street and they wanted to prevent trespassing on private lawns or people walking in the street and getting hit by traffic. Evidently the only legal way to travel on 55th Street in Kansas City’s “Gold Coast” is by car.

[Note: A positive aspect to our “free speech zone” was that it was in the median of Ward Parkway, a heavily-trafficked street which afforded our protest high visibility. Had we been protesting in front of the Ward home, we would have been out of the public eye.]

As the Bush motorcade approached, the police closed down Ward Parkway. The sight of the fleet of black SUV’s and limos rounding the corner about a block north of us raised the emotions of our anti-Bush group to a fever pitch. We began chanting “no Bush” and “impeach Bush”. Seeing the caravan bearing the man ultimately responsible for the deaths of over 1800 human beings in New Orleans, 2700 US service people in Iraq, and hundreds of thousands of civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and the Palestinian prison states instantly escalated my emotional state from simmering moral indignation to boiling rage. Several police officers moved toward us as we shouted our disapproval and disdain. The approaching officers reminded me of Nazi thugs with their close-cropped hair, Terminator sunglasses, neatly pressed uniforms, and menacing expressions. Several clutched fire-extinguisher sized canisters of what appeared to be tear gas.

I pointed toward the Bush motorcade and yelled to the officers that they needed to arrest the mass murderer instead of wasting their time restraining law-abiding citizens. I called them fascists. I crossed the police tape and stepped out into Ward Parkway. An officer came and told me I needed to get back behind the “barrier”. I asked him why. He told me I was in the road and could get hit by a car. I reminded him of the obvious point that they had stopped traffic for Bush. He told me they were reopening Ward Parkway soon. The exchange continued until I tired of arguing and reasoned that my arrest would serve no valid purpose. I belligerently informed the officer that he was a fascist and that I hoped he felt good about protecting a murderer. I then stepped back into the quarter acre of Kansas City where the First Amendment was not under siege by the threat of arrest or brute force.

Once Bush’s entourage had passed, I walked around a bit and encountered a woman who had brought her nine year old son dressed in a US Marines shirt. As they had been moving through the crowd of peace activists, he had been incessantly chanting, “Go Bush”. I listened briefly while a wheel-chair bound veteran politely conversed with this woman. A mother who was programming her son to become cannon fodder for the American Empire. She admitted she was not very educated on political or historical matters, that her son’s room was filled with Marine posters, and that she would support his decision to join “the Corps” someday. I asked her if she knew the United States had killed millions of innocent civilians in wars over the years. She said no. Pressing further, I questioned whether she thought “collateral damage” was morally justified, specifically referring to children in Iraq. She said that their lives did not matter since “our security” was involved. I had come face to face with a hubristic, ignorant, self-absorbed “Ugly American”. And I told her so.

Fortunately, I also had a chance to visit briefly with local activists for peace and social justice like Carol Huhs (of the 63rd Street Patriots), Gene DeVaux (Chairman of the Greenwood Citizens for Responsible Government), and Janice Matthews (the Executive Director of 9/11 Truthout.org).

Janice reminded me that attending protests is of little value if that is essentially all a person does toward subverting the dominant paradigm of predatory capitalism, militarism, corporatism, and rising fascism in the United States. Protesting does serve its purposes, but people need to do more than attend rallies of dissent. Janice offered me two tangible and potentially powerful ways to oppose the malignant forces which continue to raise the “collateral damage” count, impoverish much of humanity, and rape the Earth.

One way is to continue to press for the truth behind 9/11. ABC is preparing to air a “docudrama” to crystallize the public’s belief in the wild-eyed conspiracy theory that 19 militant Islamic men armed with box-cutters carried out the devastating attacks that day. And, are you ready for this? They expect us to believe that these 19 men accomplished this without the direct complicity of the Bush administration or, at the very least, without Neocon indirect complicity by intentionally “looking the other way” (as the Pearl Harbor they so desperately needed to initiate the PNAC fell into their laps). Even hard-core conspiracy theorists would have a hard accepting such wild assertions. For more on debunking the government’s 9/11 conspiracy theory, visit http://www.911truth.org/index.php.

Janice’s second suggestion to me for those desiring to strike a blow for economic justice and to empower We the People was to participate in a day of mass resistance on October 5th. The World Can’t Wait organization is calling upon people to exercise the power of our vastly superior numbers to severely cripple the socioeconomic system. It is quite simple. On 10/5/06, employees, students, and consumers across the United States need to unite and sabotage the machine by refusing to work, attend school, or shop. For more details, go to http://www.worldcantwait.org/. As Janice reminded me, we need to at least find a way to seriously inconvenience the ruling class if we want to effect significant change.

As a member of the Fifth Column, I do as much as I can within my limitations to help counter the predation of humanity and the Earth which the United States, its few remaining allies, and its mimics are collectively perpetrating in the name of the pernicious American Way of consumerism, obsession with money, and perpetual war. I challenge those of you who still blindly support the prevailing social, economic and political systems to examine your conscience and apply your powers of reasoning as you consider the effects the American Way is truly having on the world. Once you have recognized the utter moral depravity and lack of sustainability of our present course, I encourage you to join the struggle for humanity and the Earth against the miniscule percentage of the population which thrives on the exploitation of the rest of us and the planet that sustains us.

Meanwhile, if you live in Missouri, vote against Talent. His record in Congress offers proof that he is an enemy of the working class, the poor, the disabled, children, and seniors. And the next time you buy candy, remember that one of Russell Stover’s principal share-holders and co-presidents offered aid and comfort to a man whom history will remember as a war criminal and wanton slaughterer of innocent civilians.

Talent's voting record:

http://www.ontheissues.org/Senate/Jim_Talent.htm
Jason Miller is a wage slave of the American Empire who has freed himself intellectually and spiritually. He writes prolifically and his essays have appeared widely on the Internet. He welcomes constructive correspondence at willpowerful@hotmail.com or via his blog, Thomas Paine's Corner, at http://civillibertarian.blogspot.com/.

Iranian nuclear issue putting the region, global peace at risk

2006-09-14T12:46:00.000+08:00

Anak Agung Banyu Perwita, Bandung

Many analysts believe the Iran nuclear issue will become one of the crucial issues in international security in 2006. Many analysts even believe that Iran has had the capability to produce weapons mass destruction. Of course this issue has raised many questions. What role can the Muslim world and particularly Indonesia play in helping seek a solution to the Iranian nuclear issue?

In the Muslim world, Iran's hard-line stance has received mixed support. Many leaders of Arab countries are concerned over Iran's rising power and influence while many Muslims across the globe support Iran's position against the United States.

Historically, Iran's effort to develop nuclear power began in 1957. During that period, relations between the U.S. and Iran under the government of Shah Reza Pahlevi were very amicable, marked by cooperation in the development of nuclear power as part of a program Atom for Peace. Through this agreement, the U.S. would provide technical assistance such as uranium enrichment, and research cooperation in nuclear energy usage for peaceful purposes. In 1968, Iran signed an agreement of NPT and since then Iran has claimed that it has the unalienable right to use and develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

The outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war from 1980 to 1988 and the nuclear tests conducted by Pakistan and India in May 1998 pushed Iran to consider the ownership of nuclear weapons as an authorized capital for its national defense. The growing political problems in the Middle East, especially the existence of Israel nuclear capability has also increasingly pushed Iran to consider possessing nuclear weapons. The U.S. Ambassador for IAEA, Gregory L. Schulte estimates that Iran now has -- to quote the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) -- at least 85 metric tons of uranium which can be converted into nuclear weapons in less than a year.

From the government's perspective, the motivation and ambition to have a nuclear program is pushed by at least two important aspects.

First, the nuclear program serves as a deterrent and as a balancer in international relations. Nuclear technology is not solely seen as providing domestic energy, but it also serves as an important instrument of Iran's foreign policy in its interactions in the international system. Further, this deterrent is the main tool of its defense policy in protecting its national security interests.

The second aspect is related to its international prestige, social mobility and bargaining power at the regional level where Iran is encircled by nations that also have nuclear technology like Israel.

As the biggest Muslim country in the world with close relations with Iran, the Indonesian government has made efforts to seek a peaceful solution to the Iranian crisis. Indonesia needs to campaign for the importance of efforts to avoid open conflict that could harm global peace as part of the constructive approach in dealing with the issue.

The Indonesian government has also expressed a clear position on the Iranian nuclear issue, saying that Iran should have the right to utilize nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, and that Iran's nuclear program should remain in the corridor of peace. However, Indonesia should also emphasize the need for Iran to abide by all provisions set by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda has stated that Indonesia would only support Iran's nuclear program if it was intended for peaceful purposes. Iran itself has repeatedly said that the nuclear program is for nonmilitary purposes.

Indonesia's stand in connection with the nuclear tension was to encourage all parties to give maximum support to the talks between Iran and three members of the EU, namely Britain, France and Germany. The role of the EU in this issue is very important. If Iran, for example, can get the support of the EU, then Iran will win this diplomatic war, mainly because the U.S. and EU will be able to ask Russia to join them in isolating Iran.

On the other hand, Indonesia should also ask Iran to accept an offer from Russia to enrich uranium in Russia, in a bid to diminish suspicions of western countries that Iran is developing nuclear energy for military purposes. Meanwhile, if the EU does not stay on the same side as the U.S., the effort to isolate Iran will not succeed. Furthermore Iran would have a chance to renew its bargaining position with the U.S. A military option also should be avoided by accelerating diplomatic efforts.

To put it in another way, nuclear power for military purposes will not only put the stability of the region in jeopardy, but will also be a threat to global peace.

The writer is the dean at the School of Social and Political Sciences, Parahyangan Catholic University, Bandung.

Malaysia Urges U.S., Israel To Recognise Palestinian Unity Govt

2006-09-14T12:44:00.000+08:00

From Mokhtar Hussein

HAVANA, Sept 14 (Bernama) -- Malaysia is of the view that efforts to set up a Palestinian national unity government should be supported and recognised by the United States and the Israeli regime.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said the recognition towards power sharing between Fatah and Hamas was crucial because it could bring about stability in the Middle East.

"We (Malaysia) hope (the United States of) America will be able to cooperate in recognising the government even though Hamas will be part of it.

"This is a government that is truly the Palestinian unity government which represents all the Palestinian people," he told Malaysian journalists covering the G15 (Group of 15 developing nations) and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) Summit here.

Abdullah said this after making a courtesy call on Cuban Acting President and the country's first Vice President Raul Castro, younger brother of President Fidel Castro who is resting after undergoing treatment.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was reported to have reached an agreement with Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas to share power by setting up a unity government aimed at ending the international aid embargo.

The United States and its allies have boycotted the Hamas-led Palestinian government because it refuses to recognise Israel. They also demand Hamas to end violence.

So far, the European Union has shown a positive attitude to support the coalition government while the United States and Britain continue to press Palestine to recognise Israel.

"I'd like to welcome and encourage the Palestinian leaders' effort to create a national unity government in Palestine. It will actually stabilise Palestinian politics and with it, a leadership lineup representing all parties can emerge," said Abdullah who is also the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) chairman.

He said the support and recognition of all parties would give strength to the Palestinian government.

On the meeting with Raul at the International Conference Centre, the prime minister said the acting Cuban president had informed him that President Castro was recovering after undergoing treatment but the doctor had advised him to continue to rest.

Abdullah said the question whether he would be able to visit Castro was up to the Cuban government and the condition of the longest serving state leader.

Early this week, Cuban newspapers carried pictures of Fidel Castro on the front page and quoted him as saying that he was ready to meet national guests.

However, there are no signs so far whether the 80-year-old leader would appear alongside heads of delegation during the NAM conference.

The prime minister said that during the meeting, Raul had expressed Cuban's hope that initiatives started by Malaysia would be continued.

Present at the meeting were Foreign Minister Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Albar, Women, Family and Community Development Minister Datuk Seri Shahrizat Abdul Jalil and Information Minister Datuk Zainuddin Maidin.

On the Cuban side were Information Minister Ramiro Valdes Menendez; Foreign Minister Filipe Perez Roque; and Ambassador to Malaysia Pedro Monzon Barata.

Abdullah, who is NAM chairman, also said Malaysia would continue to be active in playing its role especially as the movement's troika member together with the new chair, Cuba, and next chair, Egypt.

Malaysia will officially hand over the NAM chairmanship to Cuba at the movement's summit here.

He said, each task that had been distributed must be carried out by the countries responsible, and Malaysia had completed its job.

For NAM, he said, Malaysia should be proud because it had been successful in its effort to revive the movement and implementing its plans.

Abdullah will attend the NAM summit here tomorrow.

On the G15 summit today, Abdullah said Malaysia would press for a review of its role with a view to strengthening it.

Cuba denies developing biological or chemical weapons

2006-09-14T12:42:00.000+08:00

HAVANA (AP) - Cuban scientists at the Nonaligned Movement summit on Wednesday denied any effort to develop biological or chemical weapons, dismissing U.S. allegations that Cuba's biotechnology center doubles as an undercover weapons factory.

"We have no ties to anything related to biological weapons, it has nothing to do with what we focus on,'' said Luis Herrera Martinez, director of the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology.

For years, U.S. officials have raised suspicions about the center. John Bolton, now the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, alleged in 2002 the communist state had "at least a limited offensive biological warfare.''

But Herrera said his scientists would have to be "stupid'' to develop biological or chemical weapons.

"We don't have the money to be dedicated to that, and and we are not interested,'' Herrera said.

"We would have to be stupid to be doing what these accusations imply, we wouldn't even be able to do anything like that. It doesn't make any sense, it does not go with our work ethic or interests.''

Herrera said the center makes 91 products, including 33 drugs developed to fight infectious diseases, and that Cuba has 12,000 registered scientists, impressive for a relatively poor nation, reflecting the importance the Cuban government places on medicine and science.

Annan: Iraq war a disaster for region

2006-09-14T12:24:00.000+08:00

Most Middle East leaders view the US-led invasion of Iraq as a disaster for the region, the UN secretary-general has said.

Kofi Annan, fresh from a two-week tour of the region, told a news conference on Wednesday that most of the leaders he had spoken to felt the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath had been a "real disaster for them".

"They believe it has destabilised the region," he said.

However, Annan said that leaders in the region were split over whether the US-led force in Iraq should now pull out or stay.

"Many leaders think the US has to stay in Iraq until things improve, and that, having created the problem, they cannot walk away," he said.

Annan went on to explain the other school of thought: "Iran believes the presence of the US is a problem and that the US should leave. And if the US were to decide to leave, they would help them leave."

In Washington, Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, said he disagreed with Annan's characterisation of the situation.

"If you take a look at what's gone on in the region, you have attempts to establish democracies in Lebanon, you have an attempt to establish a democracy in the Palestinian areas, you have democracies now up and gaining their footing in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"And those are developments that are positive," Snow said.

Annan has angered Washington in the past by calling the Iraq-invasion "illegal" because it was launched without the approval of the UN Security Council, and by saying that the war had "not left the world a safer place".

Mahathir criticises Lebanon troop offer

2006-09-13T21:52:00.000+08:00

The former leader of Malaysia has criticised his country's offer of sending 1,000 troops to support the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon.

Mahathir Mohamad said on Monday that the offer siginified an implicit backing for Israel's aggression in the Middle East.

The government is still awaiting UN approval for the force Israel itself has objected to, as Malaysia does not recognise Israel.

Mahathir, a staunch supporter of the Palestinian cause during his 22-year rule that ended with retirement in 2003, accused the current prime minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's government of softening its foreign policy to support the US and Israel.

"America has made it possible for Israel to attack Lebanon and destroy the cities there with weapons supplied by America," he told supporters.

"Liar" slur

"We are helping to save Israel by sending our troops to curb Hezbollah's activities ... Is our foreign policy veered towards supporting America and Israel? To help Britain and Australia?" he asked.

Malaysia is currently chair of the 56-nation Organization of Islamic Conference, the world's largest Muslim bloc.

Mahathir has clashed repeatedly with his successor in recent months, calling him a liar and pledging to continue a campaign against him.

The national news agency quoted Abdullah, who is currently in Helsinki, as urging the UN to recruit more peacekeepers from Muslim nations including Malaysia, Bangladesh and Indonesia, rather than just taking in European troops.

Indonesia - which similarly has no ties with Israel - has said it will send up to 1,000 troops to Lebanon after Israel dropped its objection to its peacekeepers.

EU, Iran to hold new talks to end nuclear crisis

2006-09-13T21:40:00.000+08:00

The European Union is to issue new calls to Iran to suspend uranium enrichment, after the six world powers trying to strike a nuclear deal with Tehran failed to agree on a joint statement at a UN atomic agency meeting here.

In another development on Wednesday, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana scheduled new talks with Tehran's top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani for Thursday in a bid to end the crisis, a spokeswoman said in Brussels.

Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States have offered Iran talks on trade and other benefits if Tehran will first suspend uranium enrichment, the process that makes nuclear reactor fuel but also atom bomb material.

The United States, which charges that Iran is hiding secret work to make nuclear weapons, is pushing for United Nations sanctions against Iran for failing to honor a UN resolution that set an August 31 deadline for Tehran to halt the strategic nuclear fuel work.

Finland, speaking for the 25 European Union states, was to urge Iran at a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna to suspend enrichment not as "a voluntary confidence-building measure, but as an international obligation," according to a copy of a statement seen by AFP.

The EU statement also mentions the possibility of sanctions if Iran does not comply and "notes with concern" that Iran has failed to cooperate fully with an almost four-year-old IAEA investigation that has been unable to rule that the Iranian nuclear program is strictly peaceful.

The so-called EU-3 group of Britain, Germany and France, which have led negotiations with Iran since 2003, also agreed on a joint statement calling on Iran to suspend enrichment, diplomats told AFP Wednesday.

But it was not clear if the Iranian debate, expected to begin at the IAEA in the afternoon, would wrap up or extend into Thursday.

Meanwhile, Solana's spokeswoman Cristina Gallach said in Brussels: "We can confirm the meeting (with Larijani) for tomorrow, and we will confirm the venue this afternoon or tomorrow morning."

Solana is talking with the Iranians in the name of the six major powers -- the five permanent UN Security Council members and Germany -- to convince Tehran to suspend uranium enrichment as a way to start talks on the benefits package.

The six failed to agree Tuesday on a joint statement at the IAEA meeting because "the United States was too tough," a Western diplomat told AFP.

Larijani had offered to consider a temporary halt in uranium enrichment in talks with Solana in Vienna at the weekend and this has raised hopes that a negotiated solution can be found, diplomats said.

But they noted that this was only an offer to consider a halt, not to implement it, and that there were conditions attached, such as the UN ceasing action against Iran, which made it unacceptable to the West.

The US State Department Tuesday denied reports of an Iranian offer, with a spokesman saying "they have not agreed to suspend uranium enrichment activities for any length of time."

US ambassador to the IAEA Gregory Schulte told AFP that the six world powers remained united.

The six all "want to see a full and verified suspension and that means that we would expect all the enrichment activities to be suspended."

Schulte said that if Iran does not suspend, "the Security Council has already made it clear its intention to move forward with sanctions."

A Western diplomat said Russia and China want to see how the Larijani-Solana talks play out.

"This is what Iran wants with its tactics, to divide the international community," the diplomat said.

Non-aligned countries sitting on the IAEA board were set to issue a statement backing Iran's right to peaceful use of uranium enrichment under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Russia, like China a key trading ally of Iran, warned Tuesday against rushing to punish Tehran.

Five years on, Americans mark 9/11 attacks

2006-09-12T13:16:00.000+08:00

By Tabassum Zakaria

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Americans stood in silence and leaders paid their respects on Monday, five years after hijackers crashed airliners into icons of U.S. power in the deadliest attack on American soil.

From the urban landscape of New York to the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field, tearful ceremonies honored the nearly 3,000 victims of the al Qaeda attacks, stirring traumatic memories.

President George W. Bush, trying to revive public support for the unpopular Iraq war in a congressional election year, urged renewed American resolve and unity in the war on terrorism, which he called a "struggle for civilization."

"Winning this war will require the determined efforts of a unified country. So we must put aside our differences, and work together to meet the test that history has given us," Bush said in a nationally televised address from the Oval Office.

"We face an enemy determined to bring death and suffering into our homes. America did not ask for this war, and every American wishes it were over. So do I. But the war is not over, and it will not be over until either we or the extremists emerge victorious," he said.

Throughout the day, politicians laid wreaths and bagpipes wailed mournfully. Jarring images of Sept. 11 - smoke billowing from the World Trade Center towers, New Yorkers crying in the streets, debris falling -- dominated television broadcasts.

"It's hard to believe that it's been five years. It's always going to seem like yesterday," said Felicia Cappo, who lost a brother in the World Trade Center's south tower.

Bush and his wife, Laura, stood at New York's Fort Pitt firehouse and bowed their heads for two moments of silence, first at 8:46 a.m. EDT (1246 GMT), the moment American Airlines Flight 11 flew into the north tower, and again at 9:03 a.m. EDT (1303 GMT), when the south tower was hit by United Flight 175.

Then they went to Shanksville, Pennsylvania, for a wreath-laying ceremony in the placid countryside where United Flight 93 slammed into the ground after a passenger revolt stopped the plane from attacking Washington. Forty passengers and crew were killed.

Tears welled in Bush's eyes as he hugged and whispered soothing words to family members of those killed at the Pentagon, hit by American Airlines Flight 77, after placing a wreath next to a blackened stone left in a rebuilt wall.

At Ground Zero, where the 110-story twin towers collapsed, New York police and firefighters marched down a ramp into the pit for a flag-waving ceremony on a day of crisp, clear blue skies, eerily similar to Sept. 11 five years ago.

Spouses and partners of victims read out the names of all 2,749 people who died at the World Trade Center.

ELECTION-YEAR DEBATE

The anniversary sharpened an election-year debate over whether America, caught in a vicious conflict in Iraq and apparently no closer to capturing al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, is any safer.

Though billed by White House aides as a non-political speech, Bush's address was heavily laden in defense of his Iraq policy. Bush also used his speech to issue a warning to the elusive bin Laden that "no matter how long it takes America will find you and we will bring you to justice."

Despite fierce partisan debate over the war and who can best secure the country, Republicans and Democrats stood together on the U.S. Capitol steps -- just as they did five years ago -- to show common resolve against terrorism.

Underlining the lingering threat from al Qaeda, its deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahri used the anniversary to urge Muslims to hit Western interests and said U.S. allies Israel and the Gulf Arab states would be the next targets.

"We took our eye off the ball," New York Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton told CBS' "Early Show." "I mean, we diverted resources and attention to Iraq and we didn't finish the job."

Facing the prospect that Democrats could wrest control of the U.S. Congress from his fellow Republicans in the November election, Bush has been pushing his national security credentials as he did during his 2004 reelection campaign.

At the Pentagon, where 184 people were killed on Sept. 11, Vice President Dick Cheney, a lightning rod of criticism over the Iraq war, told a memorial gathering: "We have no intention of ignoring or appeasing history's latest gang of fanatics trying to murder their way to power."

His comment came two weeks after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld angered Democrats by comparing critics of the war to appeasers of Nazi Germany.

(Additional reporting by Kristin Roberts, Will Dunham, Jeremy Pelofsky, David Morgan, Matt Spetalnick and Thomas Ferraro in Washington and Christine Kearney and Dan Trotta in New York)

5 Years After 9/11: What Has Changed?

2006-09-12T13:13:00.000+08:00

By Ali Al-Hail

Undoubtedly, 9/11 attacks whoever was the perpetrator were an end of an era, and a beginning of another. Certainly, it is very much so, as regard to the already volatile relations up to 9/11 between Arab\Muslim Worlds, and the US\West. Accordingly, judging a half a decade post September11 era, whether right or wrong, good or bad, fair or unfair requires evaluating a number of ‘sub’-events.

The way by which the Bush Administration ‘changed’ to the worse or to the better, the Middle East positively, or negatively, had profoundly, ignited those ‘sub’-events that, breaded by\and as a direct result of the atrocities of 9/11. In view of a long lived dominating theory about an alleged part of Al-Qaeda in 9/11, and what happened to the American\Western perceived ‘terror’ in the Middle East and beyond, it’s worthwhile to review this, and other hypothesis, addressed by thinkers in the US itself and elsewhere.

Also, a number of questions should be raised in the context of assessing post 9/11 era. Amongst them for example; were the collapses of Taliban’s state in Afghanistan, and Saddam’s regime in Iraq, healthy signs of a ‘promising positive change’ in the Middle East? Has the Hamas democratically, elected government in the Palestinian lands uncovered the real Machiavellian face of both the US and the EU? Is the World in a more secure status now as compared to pre-9\11? What has changed since Sept 11? Was the what’s called ‘War on terror’ actually, decreased terror? Or it had increased it remarkably? Why does the Bush Administration consistently, rejects an international conference on defining ‘terror’? Where could the line be drawn between ‘terror’ and resistance to an occupation, any occupation, which is an obvious right given by the international law to an occupied nation, any nation? Isn’t the absence of such a clear definition add to our ‘human’ huge crisis of definitions, and becoming more troubling, the more it’s ignored, and neglected? Has the ‘American-imposed democracy paradigm’ succeeded? Or rather, it’s a total failure? To which extent was the Bush Administration’s call for democracy in the Middle East a disappointment, in a good number of Arab\Muslim countries? Why, according to observations is there too much hate against the Bush Administration in the region? Had the post 9/11 era been conducted differently, would have the hate lessened significantly?

Having clarified all of that, it’s now half a decade since 9/11. whether or not was there an Arab\Muslim’s linkage to the event has ever since been extremely, controversial. Whether or not was September 11 a planed pretext by the Israeli Lobby in the US to weaken the Arab and Muslim Worlds in favor to Israel’s national security has, since then remained within its theoretical circles. Many analysts, including those of the US still debate both and many more other theories.

In order to open an inquest into all of that, and respond to all these inquires, selective samples of views have to be considered, as has been mentioned. By following such a procedure it hopes that, could assist with comprehending the post 9\11 epoch.

Many argue that, the alleged Al-Qaeda’s attack on Washington and New York was fueled by the presence of American’s military bases in Saudi Arabia prior to the atrocity (Fisk, 2002, p. 2; Al-Nofaisi, 2002.) Other observers put the presumed attack by Al-Qaeda in the context of the second uprising (Intifada) in the Palestinian lands. On September 28th 2000, less than a year ahead of 9\11\2001 Sharon, the former Israeli PM provoked Palestinians and Arabs\Muslims when he visited Al-Aqsa Mosque. The American heavy bombing in late 1998 during Clinton’s administration on Iraq was also, perceived by many as a further igniter to the assumed role of Al-Qaeda on 9\11.

Early reports of the Oklahoma bombing from within the US, on April 19th, 1995 indicated that Muslims\Arab Middle Easterners were behind the assault. Following the 9/11 crashes, Osama Bin Laden had “within 48 hours been transferred from being suspect number 1 to accused number 1” (Kennedy, 2002, p. 4).

Hence, the aim of this study in drawing such a connection partially, is to raise awareness that resentment is “human” and leaders of countries should work to eradicate the very factors that plant resentment in peoples’ minds. The U.S. has a special role to play. For once the American government plays its natural (and impartial) role as the ‘supposedly’, leader of the ‘free world’, much of this resentment would hopefully vanish. Thus, this article joins other efforts in the field aimed at alerting American leaders to the urgency of making possible this goal of creating a better world to live in.

Nonetheless, Bruce Kennedy, in his article “A Year Later: Osama Bin Laden, Still Not Guilty,” appearing in Al-Moltaqa Al-Islami (2002), an English-language internet journal, dismisses the capability of Bin Laden to launch such an assault. He accuses the American government of inventing the 9/11 terror as a pretext to dislodge the Taliban from power in revenge presumably for Kabul’s refusal to assist building an oil pipeline linked across the former Soviet Union Asian states. According to Kennedy (2002) the Americans warned the Taliban that they either expect a “carpet of flowers or a carpet of bombing.”

Yet, research carried out in the West particularly, in the USA itself appears to underestimate the Bin Ladin and Al-Qaeda’s capability to undertake such a heavy weight offensive. It insinuates instead to the probability that the Israeli Mossad used some of Al-Qaeda’s ‘elements’ by infiltrating the organization and they, who played the major role in the assault (Duke,2004, Private). Although writers such as David Duke did not confirm that, Israel was confidently behind the attack, he referred to his experience in researching the Mossad and Israel's massive infiltration of resistance organizations.

Consequently, Duke personally believes that high placed Israeli agents came up with the idea and directed Al Qaeda elements towards this plan. He also pinpoints certain U.S. Government documents that, found Israeli Mossad agents were embarking on surveillance and wiretapping at least half of the hijackers for weeks before the attacks. Duke continued by concluding that, “They certainly knew of the attacks ahead of time and why were they there, I think, they were actually shepparding the attacks, they desperately wanted the attacks to occur, and of course, when they occurred, Israel and Sharon reaped big benefits. In fact, it is arguable that the year before 9\11 was the worst year of Israel's public relations in its entire existence” (Duke, 2004), because of the Israeli brutal reactions to Palestinians’ second uprising, as stated before

Yet, a question arises in the view of the latter, whether Bin Ladin actually, took the credit for the terror attack for the purpose of marketing him self as an Arab\Muslim hero or else he is truly, the true perpetrator? Certainly, one of Bin Ladin’s motivating forces was as Jon Alterman asserts (2004) that, by striking at America Bin Ladin was trying to ‘stun Muslims into revolting against their own governments’ which derive their means of survival from the USA. Without backing or endorsing terrorism in any way, these ‘assumed’ theories need to be examined simply, because this issue had caused a huge mess and created a real cultural crisis between two great nations and the more attempts researchers carry out the more the world would hopefully, become closer to the truth that has not been allowed to be told yet. Bin Ladin’s apparent consciousness of the notion that the American Administration regards itself as the global minder of the world’s democracy. Having said that, when it comes to Saudi Arabia nevertheless (of which Bin Laden is a citizen) and other tyrannical establishments in the Arab world, the American government loses its credibility by defeating its own argument. Bin Laden and others do feel bitter about the fact that the USA positions its own interests with these regimes above the essential confiscated human rights of the people in the region (Bodansky, 2001; Al-Nofaisi, 2002, Al-Hail, 2004).

While all that seem to be onboard, other researchers in the US\West tend to go beyond an individual Islamic state into a broader perspective affected by 9\11. They indicate to the thoroughgoing and meticulous scrutiny, to which the Arab\Muslim World have been subjected by the US\West since 9\11.

They seem to identify this situation as an unprecedented measure in the history of relations between the two nations. In particular, they refer to Muslims’ capitals namely, ideology, values, culture and politics that, have been under attack ever since. These capital in their view, had because of 9\11 become in direct ‘opposition’ to those of the West (e.g., Aart and Al-Kahfaji, 2004, Al-Hail, 2004).

There are on one hand, ‘skeptical’ theories of clash between the two cultures on which both civilizations were based and came into direct contact during different phases in history, while on the other, some observers in the West talk of a clash between Islam and modernity.

Thus, Muslims living in the West have been since 9/11 under frequent and continual surveillance. Based on manipulative media reports, stereotype images and moral panics and judgment, rumors seem to fly almost every day speculating that Arab\Muslim Americans\Westerners have a connection with Bin Ladin.

Representatives of Arab and Muslim Americans\Westerners quite often report miseries threats and feared retaliation. As a result, these issues, among others should be discussed systematically, in an academic and objective fashion rather than a subjective one which is, extremely fundamental and essential, at least from human conditions outlook.

There are arguably two interrelated factors urging such a study ; (1) The liaison between the two cultures have always been traditionally and historically, haunted by moral panics, moral judgment and irrational emotions; (2) The anti-Islam extensive and increasing propaganda in terms of theosophy and ideology among other related features most notably, after September 11’s terrorist attacks.

Whilst this view does not seem completely baseless because of some Muslim individuals’ ‘unislamic’ behavior, it is proved by reality that, an accommodation could be made between Arabic\Islamic culture and American\Western culture. Islam, which is a way of life, is an accommodating and adaptable religion and it does not prevent Muslims from being open to other national cultures i.e., American culture.

To conclude such a controversial topic, one could say that, despite vested interests in the US\West to conceal, to confuse and to deny any other connection to 9/11 but Muslims’ and Bin Ladin’s, is utterly, misleading. There are still so many people in the US\WEst and else where seem to be convinced that Muslims have been manipulated, and used as a pretext to invade Muslim countries in order to achieve and yield strategic and economic advantages.

The latter has drastically, failed. An aspect of this perceived failure may well be seen in the avenge the 9/11 by the Bush Administration, on the assumption that, invading, removing certain Muslim\Arab states, and chasing alleged Muslim\Arab ‘terrorists’ here or there would make the US\West and the World Safer. The unilateral Anglo\American war on Afghanistan on October 17th, 2001 nearly, 6 weeks after 9\11\2001 began though, dislodged Taliban from office in Kabul, after five years Taliban is now the one which dictates the scene and events in Afghanistan.

Field reports by the AP, BBC, CNN and Al Jazeera TV, during this outgoing Summer and this ongoing Autumn, talk about hundreds of American\NATO, mainly Canadian and British killed, wounded and maimed. Most notably, the NATO has recently, called for more forces to encounter Taliban in Southern Afghanistan. In a military language this simply, means that, Taliban has the upper hand, and the NATO is stuck in a deep mud. More of the Official US trained Afghani Army flee frequently, for joining Taliban. Only last week a brigade leader from the Afghani Army with seven of his soldiers abandoned the army and decided to fight with Taliban against American and NATO paratroops. Mainly, because most of the promises to improve the lives of ordinary Afghans by the US and its puppet regime led by Hamied Karzai were not met. Plus, bombing and killing innocent poor Afghans, including children and women, has made majority of Afghans lose interest in the US. Moreover, Taliban during Spring this year has threatened of a hell of Summer, and so it was. The observed collapsing of American\Western\NATO credibility in the country has unquestionably, helped Taliban carry out the threat.

In Iraq, the American model of democracy faces a huge setback. The resistance multiplies and varies on a daily basis. American official reports speak about more or less 3000 American marines and soldiers killed since march 20th, 2003. Last week 12 American marines and paratroops were killed in 48 hours. Wounded American service men and women exceed, according to media reports a hundred thousand (100, 000). Psychological war related (Iraq Syndrome) is horrifying, amongst American and British troops. The civil war is fierce despite denials between Shi’is and Sunnis. Indications point these days to a possible civil war against the Kurds in Northern Iraq. By whom? By those who oppose folding the Iraqi flag two weeks ago, and replacing it with the Kurdish flag, by the Kurd self governing regime. A legitimate question arises here, has the removal of Saddam’s regime (albeit cruelty) played any role in alleviating terror, or making the US\West more secured? Bearing in mind that, Saddam’s regime was proved by the US itself not to have had any links with Al-Qaeda or the Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). What had his removal to do with 9/11? This issue also, is added to the rapid deteriorating in American\Western credibility in the region.

This observed failure to the American Great Middle East in Afghanistan, the Eastern gate to the Islamic World, and in Iraq, the Eastern gate to the Arab Gulf oil rich states has presumably, pushed the Bush Administration to reciprocate in Lebanon. Its green light to Israel encouraged the Israeli Army to launch a war on Lebanon. Hezbollah’s resistance, confrontation and the high fatalities it had inflicted upon the Israeli army during the month-long war (July 12th-August 14th), blocked the apparently, last American front of hoping for a great Middle East.

Needless to comment here that, the Israeli\American failure to destroy Hezbollah has dramatically, strengthened the Iranian stance on Uranium Enrichment, and its Nuclear file altogether. This yet, is another area in which the US\West plan to control the Middle East has apparently, malformed.

The pre-conclusion point here is that, after five (5) years from 9/11, the US\West have achieved virtually, nothing significant. Instead, their scandals of Bagram, Abu-Graibe, Guantanamo, and other secretive prisons allover branded Americans\Westerners as immoral, unethical and inhumane. Their soldiers barbaric assault of raping and vandalizing in Iraq, and Afghanistan had for years to come, portrayed American and British troops as zombies. Bombing and slaughtering hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, including children and women in Iraq and Afghanistan under the banner of targeting ‘terrorists’ made the whole World, much less Arabs\Muslims disappointed in US\West as liberators.

Al-Qaeda and Taliban in Afghanistan upon which, the October 17th 2001 war was instigated, are very much in control. This note registers that, the US has after five years since 9\11 not achieved its goals of launching the war. Moreover, Taliban are still reported to have been in full command, and pose a hazard to the US\West. In Iraq, the resistance is ‘fancy free, and foot loose’. Despite intensive American, British and other ‘coalition’ presence, along with the most sophisticated available weaponries on earth, the resistance is still capable of planting road bombs, exploding vehicles, causing huge fatalities, and making an enormous headache to the Bush Administration, and the rest of the ‘coalition’.

The striving American attempts since 9/11 to install ‘democracy’ has worked out against its interests in the region. Hamas, an opponent (an enemy even) to the US, won a slide victory in the January 25th election in the Palestinian lands. In Egypt, the Muslim brothers, another rival to the American policies in the region scored a result record in the Parliamentary voting. The same had followed in Bahrain, Kuwait, Morocco, Turkey, Iran, Indonesia, Malaysia, and many more right across the Muslim\Arab Worlds.

Hence, more neutral examination into 9\11 should be carried out for the sake of peace amongst human being instead of jumping to hasty and moral conclusions. Thus; until and unless the USA stops its double standard policy not only in regard to the Palestinian-Israeli dispute, but adopts this important perception of the merit and importance of human life in the Gulf, many in the Middle East particularly, the Arab part of it will feel rebellious and be open to violence. I pray the greatest common attribute and quality between these distinguished and great cultures will not turn out to be lack of satisfactory and deprivation, unfairness and injustice, chauvinism and prejudice and other related complaints and grievances as ingredients for rejection of the USA and recipes for disasters. It is the hope of this study that many more people of similar competence and imminence become more concerned and involved in the processes culturally, socially and politically to bring the human world together in positive common and mutual wellbeing and interest. (Al-hail, 2004). There are certain American thinkers for instance, refer to anti-Muslim elements in the Christian right in the USA (Duke, 2004, Private). Partly, because of American media ‘biased’ reports and coverage of Islam as ideology and people which, seems to exert this extraordinary ideological control over the world. This view should be criticized because it leads to widening the already big gap between the two cultures. Since ‘the War on Terrorism’ was launched on October 17, 2001, only five weeks away from 9\11, the world began to see another pattern of American politicized media that it tends to underestimate developing countries especially Arab\Muslim countries. It underestimates the intelligence of people in those countries and also their ability to take on and use American media in their own ways and for their own purposes.

REFERENCES

Aart, P. “Introduction into ‘Tormented Birth’, University of Amsterdam, Nether Land, 2004.

Al-Hail, Mohammad A.; and Teel, Ray L. Al-Jazeera and the CNN: News Or Propaganda? Paper presented at Broadcast Education Association (BEA) 47th Convention, Las Vegas, USA, April 14, 2002.

Al-Kahfaji, I. “Tormented Births”, University of Amsterdam, Nether Land, 2004. Alterman, J. Feed Back on “ Bin Mcveigh Bin Ladin…”, Private, October, 2004, USA.

Al-Nofaisi, Fahd A. Interview. Without Boundaries Program. Al-Jazeera Satellite TV (Doha, Qatar), September 13, 2002 Duke, D.” Mossad and Al Qaeda”, Pivate, October, 2004, USA.

Bodansky, Y. Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America.

Roseville, CA: Prima Publishing, 2001.

Professor, Dr. Ali Al-Hail, Professor of Mass Communication, Twice Fulbright Award Winner, Fulbright Visiting Scholar, and Board Member of AUSACE ASC, IABD, NEBAA, BEA, IMDA and EAJMC American Associations. Can be contacted via: pdaah90@hotmail.com