market efficiency hokum:
By providing huge cash infusions to ease credit and reignite "animal spirits," the Fed and other central banks showed they aren't listening. It proves what Ralph Nader said in his August 19 Countercurrents article called "Corporate Capitalists: Government Comes To The Rescue" that's also on CounterPunch titled "Greed and Folly on Wall Street." With "corporate capitalists' knees" a bit shaky, Nader recalled what his father once explained years ago when he asked and then told his children: "Why will capitalism always survive? Because socialism will always be used to save it." Put another way, the American business ethic has always been socialism for the rich, and, sink or swim, free market capitalism for the rest of us.
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Friday, August 24, 2007
the forgotten vietnam-iraq parallel:
The Republicans are showing an uncanny ability to control the public debate. Remember just a couple of months ago, when it was Democratic Party gospel that this was indeed a war we couldn’t win? Somehow the gospel is being rewritten. As the Washington Post reports, the Dem party line now says that we are indeed “making progress” on the military front. Our troops are doing a superb job. It’s just those incompetent Iraqi politicians — looking for “power, revenge, and personal advantage,” Hillary Clinton says — who are blocking the path to a glorious victory.
(...) Long ago, historians of the Vietnam war noted that the intense debate about the war that gripped America rarely made much reference to the suffering of the Vietnamese people. Only “peaceniks” on the far left paid much attention to the two million or more Vietnamese who died, to the corpses and torched villages and napalmed children that were the living — and dying — reality of the war. In the mainstream, where the “serious” discussion unfolded, the only question that mattered was: What is this war doing to the USA? Is it to our benefit to keep on fighting, or are we better off withdrawing?
(...) Is it Bush and Cheney or their antiwar critics who are wearing the white hats? That’s for you to decide. In either case, political leaders and the mainstream media make it clear that you are deciding for a particular vision of what America is all about, what makes America great, and what direction America should take in the future. What happens to the people of Iraq is mentioned only in passing, if at all.
(...) Sad to say, this is probably a fairly accurate reflection of U.S. public opinion. Most people here don’t care too much what happened to the people of Vietnam or what is happening to the people of Iraq. A recent poll showed that the average American thinks under 10,000 Iraqi civilians have died in this war — a vast underestimate. More importantly, the number of Iraqi dead scarcely figures into the public debate. As with the Vietnam war, it’s all about what is happening to us.
(...) That is why Bush’s speechwriters could take the gamble of raising the specter of Vietnam, and why they may very well win. Since the war was turned into a fictional drama, few people know, or care, what really happened in Vietnam. Therefore, it’s easy to change the story around. Few can refute Bush’s absurd version, in which the forecast “bloodbath” supposedly actually happened, and the U.S. withdrawal triggered the Khmer Rouge outrages in Cambodia.
(...) On all those counts, the yarn Bush is spinning could easily prove a winner. It says that we were close to winning in Vietnam. But then the antiwar “cut and run” crowd snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. That let loose a bloody tide of chaos that engulfed southeast Asia, humiliated the U.S., and emboldened the terrorists, who now want to make Iraq a home base from which to launch their next attack upon us. But we have a chance to right all those wrongs — to stem the tide of chaos, regain our pride, crush the terrorists, keep our children safe, and show what America is really made of — if only we have the courage to fight for God’s truth.
The Republicans are showing an uncanny ability to control the public debate. Remember just a couple of months ago, when it was Democratic Party gospel that this was indeed a war we couldn’t win? Somehow the gospel is being rewritten. As the Washington Post reports, the Dem party line now says that we are indeed “making progress” on the military front. Our troops are doing a superb job. It’s just those incompetent Iraqi politicians — looking for “power, revenge, and personal advantage,” Hillary Clinton says — who are blocking the path to a glorious victory.
(...) Long ago, historians of the Vietnam war noted that the intense debate about the war that gripped America rarely made much reference to the suffering of the Vietnamese people. Only “peaceniks” on the far left paid much attention to the two million or more Vietnamese who died, to the corpses and torched villages and napalmed children that were the living — and dying — reality of the war. In the mainstream, where the “serious” discussion unfolded, the only question that mattered was: What is this war doing to the USA? Is it to our benefit to keep on fighting, or are we better off withdrawing?
(...) Is it Bush and Cheney or their antiwar critics who are wearing the white hats? That’s for you to decide. In either case, political leaders and the mainstream media make it clear that you are deciding for a particular vision of what America is all about, what makes America great, and what direction America should take in the future. What happens to the people of Iraq is mentioned only in passing, if at all.
(...) Sad to say, this is probably a fairly accurate reflection of U.S. public opinion. Most people here don’t care too much what happened to the people of Vietnam or what is happening to the people of Iraq. A recent poll showed that the average American thinks under 10,000 Iraqi civilians have died in this war — a vast underestimate. More importantly, the number of Iraqi dead scarcely figures into the public debate. As with the Vietnam war, it’s all about what is happening to us.
(...) That is why Bush’s speechwriters could take the gamble of raising the specter of Vietnam, and why they may very well win. Since the war was turned into a fictional drama, few people know, or care, what really happened in Vietnam. Therefore, it’s easy to change the story around. Few can refute Bush’s absurd version, in which the forecast “bloodbath” supposedly actually happened, and the U.S. withdrawal triggered the Khmer Rouge outrages in Cambodia.
(...) On all those counts, the yarn Bush is spinning could easily prove a winner. It says that we were close to winning in Vietnam. But then the antiwar “cut and run” crowd snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. That let loose a bloody tide of chaos that engulfed southeast Asia, humiliated the U.S., and emboldened the terrorists, who now want to make Iraq a home base from which to launch their next attack upon us. But we have a chance to right all those wrongs — to stem the tide of chaos, regain our pride, crush the terrorists, keep our children safe, and show what America is really made of — if only we have the courage to fight for God’s truth.
the iraqis dont deserve us:
Now we are at work in Iraq. Those pesky Iraqis don’t deserve our sacrifice, it seems, because their elected leaders are not doing what we want them to do.
Now we are at work in Iraq. Those pesky Iraqis don’t deserve our sacrifice, it seems, because their elected leaders are not doing what we want them to do.
bush rewrites history:
“The price of America’s withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens,” he told the Veterans of Foreign Wars. By the way, he’s counting the victims of the Khmer Rouge, who came to power only after the U.S. ruined Cambodia.
(...) he’s not counting the three million people the U.S. killed in Southeast Asia during that war.
“The price of America’s withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens,” he told the Veterans of Foreign Wars. By the way, he’s counting the victims of the Khmer Rouge, who came to power only after the U.S. ruined Cambodia.
(...) he’s not counting the three million people the U.S. killed in Southeast Asia during that war.
my super sweet 16 and everything that's wrong with america:
The top 1% of Americans control 19% of the wealth.
The top 1% of Americans control 19% of the wealth.
bush, vietnam, and 14 more GIs dead:
Naturally, Mr. Bush fails to note that if the United States had never been in Vietnam, there would not have been the need to add these terms to "our vocabulary." It was the decision by Washington to refuse the right of the Vietnamese to hold countrywide elections as agreed to in the 1954 Geneva agreements and the subsequent machinations by the US military and intelligence agencies to install a client government in southern Vietnam that created the situation that precipitated all of the newly termed phenomena.
Naturally, Mr. Bush fails to note that if the United States had never been in Vietnam, there would not have been the need to add these terms to "our vocabulary." It was the decision by Washington to refuse the right of the Vietnamese to hold countrywide elections as agreed to in the 1954 Geneva agreements and the subsequent machinations by the US military and intelligence agencies to install a client government in southern Vietnam that created the situation that precipitated all of the newly termed phenomena.
the ongoing tragedy of afghanistan:
But to understand why Afghanistan was and remains so important to US strategic interests is to understand the role it has played throughout its history in the global struggle for empire and hegemony waged by the great powers. This mystical land, occupying a strategic location along the ancient Silk Route between the Middle East, Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent, has been the subject of fierce rivalry between global empires since the 19th century, when the then British and Russian Empires vied for control of the lucrative spoils to be found in the subcontinent of India and in Central Asia in what came to be known as the 'Great Game.' The British desired to control Afghanistan as a buffer against Russian influence in Persia (Iran) in order protect its own interests in India, which at that time was the jewel in the crown of an empire that covered a full third of the globe. Two Anglo-Afghan wars were fought during this period. The first saw the complete annihilation of a 16,000-strong British army in 1842, the second resulted in the withdrawal of British forces in 1880, though the British retained nominal control over Afghanistan's foreign affairs. This control lasted through to 1919, when after a third Anglo-Afghan war the British signed the Treaty of Rawalpindi, heralding the beginning of complete Afghan independence from Britain.
(...) [for counterpoint, see eqbal ahmed] That said, there was a point in Afghanistan's tortured history when the future looked bright, when a determined effort to lift the country and its people out of backward agrarian feudalism almost succeeded. It began with the formation of the communist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) back in the sixties, which opposed the autocratic rule of King Zahir Shar. The growth in popularity of the PDPA eventually led to them taking control of the country in 1978, after a coup removed the former Kings' cousin, Mohammed Daud, from power.
(...) By the late 1980s half of all university students in Afghanistan were women, and women made up 40 percent of the country's doctors, 70 percent of its teachers, and 30 percent of its civil servants. In John Pilger's 'New Rulers Of The World' (Verso, 2002), he relates the memory of the period through the eyes of an Afghan woman, Saira Noorani, a female surgeon who escaped the Taliban in 2001. She said: "Every girl could go to high school and university. We could go where we wanted and wear what we liked. We used to go to cafes and the cinema to see the latest Indian movies. I tall started to go wrong when the mujaheddin started winning. They used to kill teachers and burn schools. It was sad to think that these were the people the West had supported."
(...) Under the pretext that the Afghan government was a Soviet puppet, which was false, the then Carter Administration authorised the covert funding of opposition tribal groups, whose traditional feudal existence had come under attack with these reforms. An initial $500 million was allocated, money used to arm and train the rebels in the art in secret camps set up specifically for the task across the border in Pakistan. This opposition came to be known as the mujaheddin, and so began a campaign of murder and terror which, six months later, resulted in the Afghan government in Kabul requesting the help of the Soviet Union, resulting in an ill-fated military intervention which ended ten years later in an ignominious retreat of Soviet military forces and the descent of Afghanistan into the abyss of religious intolerance, abject poverty, warlordism and violence that has plagued the country ever since.
(...) Despite ruling a country in which women were stoned to death for adultery, in which men were tortured and had their limbs amputated for misdemeanour crimes, in which music and television was banned, in which it was illegal for girls to attend school, these high-ranking representatives of the Taliban were given the red-carpet treatment put up in a five-star hotel and even accorded a VIP visit to Disneyworld in Florida. However, after they left it was felt that they could not be trusted and the plan for the pipeline was shelved.
But to understand why Afghanistan was and remains so important to US strategic interests is to understand the role it has played throughout its history in the global struggle for empire and hegemony waged by the great powers. This mystical land, occupying a strategic location along the ancient Silk Route between the Middle East, Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent, has been the subject of fierce rivalry between global empires since the 19th century, when the then British and Russian Empires vied for control of the lucrative spoils to be found in the subcontinent of India and in Central Asia in what came to be known as the 'Great Game.' The British desired to control Afghanistan as a buffer against Russian influence in Persia (Iran) in order protect its own interests in India, which at that time was the jewel in the crown of an empire that covered a full third of the globe. Two Anglo-Afghan wars were fought during this period. The first saw the complete annihilation of a 16,000-strong British army in 1842, the second resulted in the withdrawal of British forces in 1880, though the British retained nominal control over Afghanistan's foreign affairs. This control lasted through to 1919, when after a third Anglo-Afghan war the British signed the Treaty of Rawalpindi, heralding the beginning of complete Afghan independence from Britain.
(...) [for counterpoint, see eqbal ahmed] That said, there was a point in Afghanistan's tortured history when the future looked bright, when a determined effort to lift the country and its people out of backward agrarian feudalism almost succeeded. It began with the formation of the communist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) back in the sixties, which opposed the autocratic rule of King Zahir Shar. The growth in popularity of the PDPA eventually led to them taking control of the country in 1978, after a coup removed the former Kings' cousin, Mohammed Daud, from power.
(...) By the late 1980s half of all university students in Afghanistan were women, and women made up 40 percent of the country's doctors, 70 percent of its teachers, and 30 percent of its civil servants. In John Pilger's 'New Rulers Of The World' (Verso, 2002), he relates the memory of the period through the eyes of an Afghan woman, Saira Noorani, a female surgeon who escaped the Taliban in 2001. She said: "Every girl could go to high school and university. We could go where we wanted and wear what we liked. We used to go to cafes and the cinema to see the latest Indian movies. I tall started to go wrong when the mujaheddin started winning. They used to kill teachers and burn schools. It was sad to think that these were the people the West had supported."
(...) Under the pretext that the Afghan government was a Soviet puppet, which was false, the then Carter Administration authorised the covert funding of opposition tribal groups, whose traditional feudal existence had come under attack with these reforms. An initial $500 million was allocated, money used to arm and train the rebels in the art in secret camps set up specifically for the task across the border in Pakistan. This opposition came to be known as the mujaheddin, and so began a campaign of murder and terror which, six months later, resulted in the Afghan government in Kabul requesting the help of the Soviet Union, resulting in an ill-fated military intervention which ended ten years later in an ignominious retreat of Soviet military forces and the descent of Afghanistan into the abyss of religious intolerance, abject poverty, warlordism and violence that has plagued the country ever since.
(...) Despite ruling a country in which women were stoned to death for adultery, in which men were tortured and had their limbs amputated for misdemeanour crimes, in which music and television was banned, in which it was illegal for girls to attend school, these high-ranking representatives of the Taliban were given the red-carpet treatment put up in a five-star hotel and even accorded a VIP visit to Disneyworld in Florida. However, after they left it was felt that they could not be trusted and the plan for the pipeline was shelved.
palestine, a policy of desperate blindness:
The number of Jewish settlers in the Palestinian territories doubled from 1994 to 2000. As many Israelis have settled in the West Bank since the Oslo accords of 1993 as in the previous 25 years.
(...) There is a huge gap between what is said because we want to hear it (local withdrawals, easing of travel restrictions, removal of one checkpoint out of 20, a change of tone) and what is being done on the ground, which we don’t want to see (interlinking of settlements, construction of bridges and tunnels, encirclement of Palestinian towns, expropriation of land, destruction of houses). Some would describe that gap as duplicity, others as ambiguity. The gradual encroachment happens out of sight of the cameras, without causing a stir and without an explicit colonial diktat. Nobody makes a formal complaint, even supposing they can find out what’s going on – difficult if you haven’t grown up locally. Israeli maps and school textbooks refer to the West Bank as Judea and Samaria and, following the Knesset’s recent rejection of a proposal from a Labour education minister, obliteration of the 1967 green line is now a legal fait accompli.
(...) since it was possible to withdraw settlements from Gaza, it should be possible in the near future in the West Bank. That is to ignore the fact that the withdrawal of 8,000 settlers from one place in Gaza was soon followed by the unpublicised installation of 20,000 settlers in another (the West Bank/Jerusalem). Gaza is not part of the promised land, whereas Judea and Samaria are its backbone. Sharon did not make any secret of the fact that withdrawal on the margins would be compensated by strengthening the Israeli presence elsewhere (438,000 settlers to date, including 192,910 in East Jerusalem);
(...) What is taking shape is not the Palestinian state announced and desired by all: it is an as yet unperceived Israeli territory enclosing three self-governing Palestinian enclaves.
The number of Jewish settlers in the Palestinian territories doubled from 1994 to 2000. As many Israelis have settled in the West Bank since the Oslo accords of 1993 as in the previous 25 years.
(...) There is a huge gap between what is said because we want to hear it (local withdrawals, easing of travel restrictions, removal of one checkpoint out of 20, a change of tone) and what is being done on the ground, which we don’t want to see (interlinking of settlements, construction of bridges and tunnels, encirclement of Palestinian towns, expropriation of land, destruction of houses). Some would describe that gap as duplicity, others as ambiguity. The gradual encroachment happens out of sight of the cameras, without causing a stir and without an explicit colonial diktat. Nobody makes a formal complaint, even supposing they can find out what’s going on – difficult if you haven’t grown up locally. Israeli maps and school textbooks refer to the West Bank as Judea and Samaria and, following the Knesset’s recent rejection of a proposal from a Labour education minister, obliteration of the 1967 green line is now a legal fait accompli.
(...) since it was possible to withdraw settlements from Gaza, it should be possible in the near future in the West Bank. That is to ignore the fact that the withdrawal of 8,000 settlers from one place in Gaza was soon followed by the unpublicised installation of 20,000 settlers in another (the West Bank/Jerusalem). Gaza is not part of the promised land, whereas Judea and Samaria are its backbone. Sharon did not make any secret of the fact that withdrawal on the margins would be compensated by strengthening the Israeli presence elsewhere (438,000 settlers to date, including 192,910 in East Jerusalem);
(...) What is taking shape is not the Palestinian state announced and desired by all: it is an as yet unperceived Israeli territory enclosing three self-governing Palestinian enclaves.
pakistan's wildcard justice:
The army not only commands 600,000 men and 50 nuclear warheads. It is the major stakeholder in Pakistan's economy, owning a colossal $60 billion's worth of manufacturing, agricultural and other assets. Evidence of the gulf between the rulers and ruled can be seen in cities like Rawalpindi, where the garrison's smooth roads and leafy suburbs suddenly give way to teeming slums and open sewers.
The army not only commands 600,000 men and 50 nuclear warheads. It is the major stakeholder in Pakistan's economy, owning a colossal $60 billion's worth of manufacturing, agricultural and other assets. Evidence of the gulf between the rulers and ruled can be seen in cities like Rawalpindi, where the garrison's smooth roads and leafy suburbs suddenly give way to teeming slums and open sewers.
al-qaeda and the modernist wall:
I shall discuss an approach I have termed the "modernist wall", which seeks to deconstruct the ethical and epistemological structure of jihadist mentality, with an eye to obtaining a better grasp of what shapes it and how it works.
(...) this process of metamorphosis could not have brewed and regenerated itself in the absence of a major ingredient: the West's extremism in posing itself as the ultimate way of life, denigrating all other alternatives and forcing anyone who differs into having to choose either between identifying with it fully, at the cost of his religious and personal persona, or to turn fully and thoroughly against it.
(...) [dawkins fits here] The predicament of positivists, according to Gray, is that they believe that the more science advances, the more people will share the same values and, by extension, the solider will become the embodiment of the ethics of secularism, enlightenment and peace. Al-Qaeda essentially destroyed this hypothesis, not so much because of Al-Qaeda itself but because the persistence in promoting this hypothesis breeds violent organisations bent on destroying it. Such is the case with "end of history" theories, which implicitly put paid to the notion of cultural coexistence. These have become an important source for generating and fuelling "exclusionist" cathartic movements set upon seizing the helm of history and steering it towards "redemption". All jihadist movements in the Islamic world have been motivated by the sense that the West is relentlessly attacking their history and civilisation with the purpose of effacing them and supplanting them with its own. It is little wonder, therefore, that the Islamist revivalist creed perpetuates itself so easily, feeding as it does on the very substance of Western modernism.
I shall discuss an approach I have termed the "modernist wall", which seeks to deconstruct the ethical and epistemological structure of jihadist mentality, with an eye to obtaining a better grasp of what shapes it and how it works.
(...) this process of metamorphosis could not have brewed and regenerated itself in the absence of a major ingredient: the West's extremism in posing itself as the ultimate way of life, denigrating all other alternatives and forcing anyone who differs into having to choose either between identifying with it fully, at the cost of his religious and personal persona, or to turn fully and thoroughly against it.
(...) [dawkins fits here] The predicament of positivists, according to Gray, is that they believe that the more science advances, the more people will share the same values and, by extension, the solider will become the embodiment of the ethics of secularism, enlightenment and peace. Al-Qaeda essentially destroyed this hypothesis, not so much because of Al-Qaeda itself but because the persistence in promoting this hypothesis breeds violent organisations bent on destroying it. Such is the case with "end of history" theories, which implicitly put paid to the notion of cultural coexistence. These have become an important source for generating and fuelling "exclusionist" cathartic movements set upon seizing the helm of history and steering it towards "redemption". All jihadist movements in the Islamic world have been motivated by the sense that the West is relentlessly attacking their history and civilisation with the purpose of effacing them and supplanting them with its own. It is little wonder, therefore, that the Islamist revivalist creed perpetuates itself so easily, feeding as it does on the very substance of Western modernism.
reading arendt in caracas:
I did want to write this piece, but I had to remind myself (and now you, my reader) where my short-term observation post was located--that is, in and around predominantly anti-Chavista groups. My Observatorio hosts were all anti-Chavista to one degree or another, ranging from disillusioned former Chavistas to academics with ties to European center-left groups like the British Euston Manifesto signers. My association with the Observatorio was complicated by the fact that they had accepted an offer from the US Embassy's speaker's program to fund my visit. Although no pressure was put on me, the Embassy, of course, would have been glad to hear the word "totalitarian" applied to Chávez. Some of the anti-Chavista Observatorio members would also have been glad for Chávez to be called totalitarian, but they would not have wanted to be thought pro- American or in the Embassy's embrace, even though they are critics of the blanket anti-Americanism that is key to Chávez's rhetoric.
I did want to write this piece, but I had to remind myself (and now you, my reader) where my short-term observation post was located--that is, in and around predominantly anti-Chavista groups. My Observatorio hosts were all anti-Chavista to one degree or another, ranging from disillusioned former Chavistas to academics with ties to European center-left groups like the British Euston Manifesto signers. My association with the Observatorio was complicated by the fact that they had accepted an offer from the US Embassy's speaker's program to fund my visit. Although no pressure was put on me, the Embassy, of course, would have been glad to hear the word "totalitarian" applied to Chávez. Some of the anti-Chavista Observatorio members would also have been glad for Chávez to be called totalitarian, but they would not have wanted to be thought pro- American or in the Embassy's embrace, even though they are critics of the blanket anti-Americanism that is key to Chávez's rhetoric.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
why iraqis oppose u.s.-backed oil law:
Iraq has a long labor history. Union activists, banned and jailed under the British and their puppet monarchy, organized a labor movement that was the admiration of the Arab world when Iraq became independent after the revolution of 1958. When Saddam Hussein came to power, though, he drove its leaders underground, killing or imprisoning the ones he could catch.
(...) The al-Maliki government has seized all union funds and turned its back on a wave of assassinations of union leaders. After the June strike, Iraq's oil minister ordered oil industry officials to refuse to recognize or bargain with the oil worker unions. Iraq's oil industry was nationalized in the 1960s, like that of every other country in the Middle East. The Iraqi oil union became, and remains, the industry's most zealous guardian.
(...) The unions have vowed to strike if the law is implemented. At the occupation's end, the government in Baghdad will need control of the oil wealth to rebuild a devastated country. That gives Iraqis a big reason to fight to protect public ownership and control of the oil industry.
Iraq has a long labor history. Union activists, banned and jailed under the British and their puppet monarchy, organized a labor movement that was the admiration of the Arab world when Iraq became independent after the revolution of 1958. When Saddam Hussein came to power, though, he drove its leaders underground, killing or imprisoning the ones he could catch.
(...) The al-Maliki government has seized all union funds and turned its back on a wave of assassinations of union leaders. After the June strike, Iraq's oil minister ordered oil industry officials to refuse to recognize or bargain with the oil worker unions. Iraq's oil industry was nationalized in the 1960s, like that of every other country in the Middle East. The Iraqi oil union became, and remains, the industry's most zealous guardian.
(...) The unions have vowed to strike if the law is implemented. At the occupation's end, the government in Baghdad will need control of the oil wealth to rebuild a devastated country. That gives Iraqis a big reason to fight to protect public ownership and control of the oil industry.
iraq, the unavoidable global trauma:
On August 10th 2007 the non-profit group Just Foreign Policy, claimed the number of Iraqis killed as a result of the US invasion stands at a shocking and sobering 1,000,985. On July 30th 2007 a report released by Oxfam and the NGO Coordination Committee in Iraq said that around 8 million Iraqis are in urgent need of water, sanitation, food and shelter, and said that more than 2 million people - mostly women and children - have been displaced within Iraq and have no reliable income, while another 2 million Iraqis have fled the country as refugees, mostly to neighbouring Syria and Jordan.
On August 10th 2007 the non-profit group Just Foreign Policy, claimed the number of Iraqis killed as a result of the US invasion stands at a shocking and sobering 1,000,985. On July 30th 2007 a report released by Oxfam and the NGO Coordination Committee in Iraq said that around 8 million Iraqis are in urgent need of water, sanitation, food and shelter, and said that more than 2 million people - mostly women and children - have been displaced within Iraq and have no reliable income, while another 2 million Iraqis have fled the country as refugees, mostly to neighbouring Syria and Jordan.
the "gift" that keeps on bleeding:
And how have the Democrats treated their gift now that they control Congress? The Democratic House and Senate have continued to fund the war while posturing against it. For example Hillary Clinton, who pollsters regard as the Democratic frontrunner for her party's presidential nomination, told the New York Times that when she is elected she would keep troops in Iraq but run a smarter operation. The public's opinion of Congress has plummeted with no end in sight to the bloody occupation.
And how have the Democrats treated their gift now that they control Congress? The Democratic House and Senate have continued to fund the war while posturing against it. For example Hillary Clinton, who pollsters regard as the Democratic frontrunner for her party's presidential nomination, told the New York Times that when she is elected she would keep troops in Iraq but run a smarter operation. The public's opinion of Congress has plummeted with no end in sight to the bloody occupation.
beneath the pall of misery, a new movement is born:
Heathrow is already the busiest international airport on earth. The new runway and the terminal and approach roads it needs would demolish around 1200 homes(1). One primary school will be flattened; six others will be permanently blighted by noise. Separated from the rest of Heathrow, this would, in effect, be a second airport.
(...) Already the planes and their associated traffic have been breaching the EU's limits for nitrogen dioxide pollution, which suggests that current airport activities are unlawful (remember that when you hear ministers fulminating about our illegal protest)(10). Now we are expected to believe that air pollutants can be reduced to below the legal limits while the number of flights almost doubles. It looks as if our civil servants will be busy with what they call "statisitical interpretations of the target"(11). The rest of us call it lying.
(...) Of course we cannot put climate change to one side. In a previous article I showed that, depending on whether you believe the government's figures or those produced by academic researchers, by 2050 the greenhouse gases produced by the UK's air passengers will equate to between 91% and 258% of the carbon dioxide the government says the whole economy should be producing(12). Its airport expansion plans, in conjunction with those of other nations, will cause runaway climate change even if we were to spend the rest of our lives shivering in the dark. So much for the economic benefits of new runways.
(...) The people seeking to prevent this expansion know that when the government supports a development, explaining your objections at its public inquiries is about as much use as shaking your fist at the sky. An elaborate theatre of consultation and democracy is designed only to hide the fact that the decision has already been made.
Heathrow is already the busiest international airport on earth. The new runway and the terminal and approach roads it needs would demolish around 1200 homes(1). One primary school will be flattened; six others will be permanently blighted by noise. Separated from the rest of Heathrow, this would, in effect, be a second airport.
(...) Already the planes and their associated traffic have been breaching the EU's limits for nitrogen dioxide pollution, which suggests that current airport activities are unlawful (remember that when you hear ministers fulminating about our illegal protest)(10). Now we are expected to believe that air pollutants can be reduced to below the legal limits while the number of flights almost doubles. It looks as if our civil servants will be busy with what they call "statisitical interpretations of the target"(11). The rest of us call it lying.
(...) Of course we cannot put climate change to one side. In a previous article I showed that, depending on whether you believe the government's figures or those produced by academic researchers, by 2050 the greenhouse gases produced by the UK's air passengers will equate to between 91% and 258% of the carbon dioxide the government says the whole economy should be producing(12). Its airport expansion plans, in conjunction with those of other nations, will cause runaway climate change even if we were to spend the rest of our lives shivering in the dark. So much for the economic benefits of new runways.
(...) The people seeking to prevent this expansion know that when the government supports a development, explaining your objections at its public inquiries is about as much use as shaking your fist at the sky. An elaborate theatre of consultation and democracy is designed only to hide the fact that the decision has already been made.
the struggle for bolivia's future:
On one side stand the pro-imperialist business elites from the eastern department of Santa Cruz, with direct ties to gas transnationals, large agribusiness, and the U.S. embassy. Their public face is the Santa Cruz civic committee and the four opposition-controlled governorships of the east. Through a concerted campaign they have begun to win over sections of Bolivia’s important middle classes, many of whom voted for Morales but backed opposition parties for the departmental governors.
(...) On the other side stand the combative indigenous and social movements rooted in the western highlands and the center of Bolivia, but which also reach into the east. Together with the middle classes they elected Bolivia’s first indigenous president in 2005. Morales’s victory on December 18, 2005, with 54.7 percent of the vote, was a product of two interlinked factors. First, after five years of intense social struggle, it marked the coming together of Bolivia’s oppressed classes and the eruption of a national revolution, led for the first time by the country’s indigenous majority. Second, it heralded the opening of a path out of the historic crisis of the Bolivian state, a consequence of internal colonization and imperialist domination.
(...) This new wave of struggle was the result of the three components of the historic crisis of the Bolivian state—the lack of economic development, due to its submission to imperialism, the social exclusion of the indigenous people, and the lack of any real popular representation through the existing political party structures.
(...) Instead, it was the platform of Evo Morales and Alvaro Garcia Linera (now vice-president), calling for a constituent assembly and the nationalization of gas, that provided an outlet for those seeking a way out of the crisis. MAS’s program was to promote a process of the decolonization of power, and renationalization of the economy and the state. The results of the December 18 congressional and presidential elections, where MAS received over 90 percent of the vote in the Chapare, around 80 percent in the El Alto and the altiplano, a surprising 30 percent in Santa Cruz, and a clean sweep of all the middle-class seats in La Paz, demonstrated the unification of Bolivia’s oppressed behind a national project of liberation spearhead by the indigenous, campesino, and cocalero movements. It was an unambiguous expression of the desires and hopes of the indigenous majority, who had drawn large sectors of the other oppressed classes behind them, to begin to chart a new path for Bolivia.
(...) Morales was quick to point out there existed the huge problem of the “colonial state”: winning government was not the same as decisively winning power. Morales explained, “After hearing the reports of the commission of transition, I have been able to see how the state does not control the state, its institutions. There is a total dependency, as we have seen in the economic sphere, a transnationalised country.”
(...) Crucially, Morales has continued to organize and shore up his support amongst his main social base. Central to this strategy has been moving forward in the economic sphere—the nationalization of gas, a measure supported by over 80 percent of the population. While some have criticized the measure for being too moderate, Morales has continued to point out that the nationalization is a process aimed at rebuilding the state petroleum company, YPFB, expanding state intervention to the entire productive chain, and increasing the industrialization of gas. Morales has stated that the process can only move forward with the continued mobilization of the people. To ensure this, Morales has made sure personally to deliver the fruits of the nationalization, traveling each week to numerous rural areas to hand out land and tractors, and to inaugurate new literacy and health care programs.
(...) The biggest flashpoint has been the Constituent Assembly, through which the movements hope to “constitutionalize” the steps forward taken so far, and out of which they hope to construct a new Bolivia. This new Bolivia would be based on recognition of the indigenous majority through a united, pluri-national, decentralized, social, and communitarian state. Decision-making power would be exercised by the indigenous and social movements through the creation of communitarian social power.[11] Such a state would “be the principal actor in economic planning and production, imposing a policy of equal distribution of the benefits” and would control all nonrenewable resources together with the indigenous communities that live in those regions. Fundamentally, the aim is the creation of a new state power through which the indigenous majorities can play their rightful role in Bolivian society.
(...) Confronted with this dilemma, the Morales leadership has opted for a change of tack reflected in the growing weight of the line of Garcia Linera: avoid unnecessary radical discourse, work toward achieving consensus in order to move forward, and win back the middle classes.
On one side stand the pro-imperialist business elites from the eastern department of Santa Cruz, with direct ties to gas transnationals, large agribusiness, and the U.S. embassy. Their public face is the Santa Cruz civic committee and the four opposition-controlled governorships of the east. Through a concerted campaign they have begun to win over sections of Bolivia’s important middle classes, many of whom voted for Morales but backed opposition parties for the departmental governors.
(...) On the other side stand the combative indigenous and social movements rooted in the western highlands and the center of Bolivia, but which also reach into the east. Together with the middle classes they elected Bolivia’s first indigenous president in 2005. Morales’s victory on December 18, 2005, with 54.7 percent of the vote, was a product of two interlinked factors. First, after five years of intense social struggle, it marked the coming together of Bolivia’s oppressed classes and the eruption of a national revolution, led for the first time by the country’s indigenous majority. Second, it heralded the opening of a path out of the historic crisis of the Bolivian state, a consequence of internal colonization and imperialist domination.
(...) This new wave of struggle was the result of the three components of the historic crisis of the Bolivian state—the lack of economic development, due to its submission to imperialism, the social exclusion of the indigenous people, and the lack of any real popular representation through the existing political party structures.
(...) Instead, it was the platform of Evo Morales and Alvaro Garcia Linera (now vice-president), calling for a constituent assembly and the nationalization of gas, that provided an outlet for those seeking a way out of the crisis. MAS’s program was to promote a process of the decolonization of power, and renationalization of the economy and the state. The results of the December 18 congressional and presidential elections, where MAS received over 90 percent of the vote in the Chapare, around 80 percent in the El Alto and the altiplano, a surprising 30 percent in Santa Cruz, and a clean sweep of all the middle-class seats in La Paz, demonstrated the unification of Bolivia’s oppressed behind a national project of liberation spearhead by the indigenous, campesino, and cocalero movements. It was an unambiguous expression of the desires and hopes of the indigenous majority, who had drawn large sectors of the other oppressed classes behind them, to begin to chart a new path for Bolivia.
(...) Morales was quick to point out there existed the huge problem of the “colonial state”: winning government was not the same as decisively winning power. Morales explained, “After hearing the reports of the commission of transition, I have been able to see how the state does not control the state, its institutions. There is a total dependency, as we have seen in the economic sphere, a transnationalised country.”
(...) Crucially, Morales has continued to organize and shore up his support amongst his main social base. Central to this strategy has been moving forward in the economic sphere—the nationalization of gas, a measure supported by over 80 percent of the population. While some have criticized the measure for being too moderate, Morales has continued to point out that the nationalization is a process aimed at rebuilding the state petroleum company, YPFB, expanding state intervention to the entire productive chain, and increasing the industrialization of gas. Morales has stated that the process can only move forward with the continued mobilization of the people. To ensure this, Morales has made sure personally to deliver the fruits of the nationalization, traveling each week to numerous rural areas to hand out land and tractors, and to inaugurate new literacy and health care programs.
(...) The biggest flashpoint has been the Constituent Assembly, through which the movements hope to “constitutionalize” the steps forward taken so far, and out of which they hope to construct a new Bolivia. This new Bolivia would be based on recognition of the indigenous majority through a united, pluri-national, decentralized, social, and communitarian state. Decision-making power would be exercised by the indigenous and social movements through the creation of communitarian social power.[11] Such a state would “be the principal actor in economic planning and production, imposing a policy of equal distribution of the benefits” and would control all nonrenewable resources together with the indigenous communities that live in those regions. Fundamentally, the aim is the creation of a new state power through which the indigenous majorities can play their rightful role in Bolivian society.
(...) Confronted with this dilemma, the Morales leadership has opted for a change of tack reflected in the growing weight of the line of Garcia Linera: avoid unnecessary radical discourse, work toward achieving consensus in order to move forward, and win back the middle classes.
change in cuba:
Some Fidelistas and ardent supporters of the Cuban revolution will object that it is all caused by the US embargo. It is true that Washington's draconian blockade spanning more than four decades and 10 US presidents, has inflicted incalculable damage. The government estimates that since the sanctions were first imposed in the 1960s, Cuba has lost an average of $1.8bn dollars a year from exports denied, damage to production, from financial blocks on Cuban dollar accounts held with banks in third countries, and exorbitant extra shipping costs.
(...) Shortages of some medicines, and the high price of imported goods and machinery is rightly blamed on Washington's undeclared war on Cuba, but this does not account for the erratic supply of eggs, the high price of good-quality Cuban coffee in the shops, and the scarcity of fish, to name but a few home-made irritations inflicted on the good citizens of Havana.
(...) One of the revolutionary heroes of the urban underground in Santiago de Cuba 1959, Professor Jose Guzman, has expounded on the need for: "A decentralised cooperatives controlled by local communities." He has sent his research on this to party leaders.
(...) The changes that are coming are unlikely to fulfil the entrepreneurial hunger of investor groups that descend in droves on newly opened-up economies. Cuba is not eastern Europe. The Cuban objective appears to be to inject more flexibility and rationality into the existing economy, rather than capitulate to a neoliberal world.
Some Fidelistas and ardent supporters of the Cuban revolution will object that it is all caused by the US embargo. It is true that Washington's draconian blockade spanning more than four decades and 10 US presidents, has inflicted incalculable damage. The government estimates that since the sanctions were first imposed in the 1960s, Cuba has lost an average of $1.8bn dollars a year from exports denied, damage to production, from financial blocks on Cuban dollar accounts held with banks in third countries, and exorbitant extra shipping costs.
(...) Shortages of some medicines, and the high price of imported goods and machinery is rightly blamed on Washington's undeclared war on Cuba, but this does not account for the erratic supply of eggs, the high price of good-quality Cuban coffee in the shops, and the scarcity of fish, to name but a few home-made irritations inflicted on the good citizens of Havana.
(...) One of the revolutionary heroes of the urban underground in Santiago de Cuba 1959, Professor Jose Guzman, has expounded on the need for: "A decentralised cooperatives controlled by local communities." He has sent his research on this to party leaders.
(...) The changes that are coming are unlikely to fulfil the entrepreneurial hunger of investor groups that descend in droves on newly opened-up economies. Cuba is not eastern Europe. The Cuban objective appears to be to inject more flexibility and rationality into the existing economy, rather than capitulate to a neoliberal world.
smashing capitalism:
I wish I could report that the current attack on capitalism represents a deliberate strategy on the part of the poor, that there have been secret meetings in break rooms and parking lots around the country, where cell leaders issued instructions like, "You, Vinny -- don't make any mortgage payment this month. And Caroline, forget that back-to-school shopping, OK?" But all the evidence suggests that the current crisis is something the high-rollers brought down on themselves.
(...) When, for example, the largest private employer in America, which is Wal-Mart, starts experiencing a shortage of customers, it needs to take a long, hard look in the mirror. About a century ago, Henry Ford realized that his company would only prosper if his own workers earned enough to buy Fords. Wal-Mart, on the other hand, never seemed to figure out that its cruelly low wages would eventually curtail its own growth, even at the company's famously discounted prices.
(...) It gets worse though. While with one hand the high-rollers, H. Lee Scott among them, squeezed the American worker's wages, the other hand was reaching out with the tempting offer of credit. In fact, easy credit became the American substitute for decent wages. Once you worked for your money, but now you were supposed to pay for it. Once you could count on earning enough to save for a home. Now you'll never earn that much, but, as the lenders were saying -- heh, heh -- do we have a mortgage for you!
(...) Pay day loans, rent-to-buy furniture and exorbitant credit card interest rates for the poor were just the beginning. In its May 21st cover story on "The Poverty Business," BusinessWeek documented the stampede, in the just the last few years, to lend money to the people who could least afford to pay the interest: Buy your dream home! Refinance your house! Take on a car loan even if your credit rating sucks! Financiamos a Todos! Somehow, no one bothered to figure out where the poor were going to get the money to pay for all the money they were being offered.
(...) in the long term, a system that depends on extracting every last cent from the poor cannot hope for a healthy prognosis. Who would have thought that foreclosures in Stockton and Cleveland would roil the markets of London and Shanghai? The poor have risen up and spoken; only it sounds less like a shout of protest than a low, strangled, cry of pain.
I wish I could report that the current attack on capitalism represents a deliberate strategy on the part of the poor, that there have been secret meetings in break rooms and parking lots around the country, where cell leaders issued instructions like, "You, Vinny -- don't make any mortgage payment this month. And Caroline, forget that back-to-school shopping, OK?" But all the evidence suggests that the current crisis is something the high-rollers brought down on themselves.
(...) When, for example, the largest private employer in America, which is Wal-Mart, starts experiencing a shortage of customers, it needs to take a long, hard look in the mirror. About a century ago, Henry Ford realized that his company would only prosper if his own workers earned enough to buy Fords. Wal-Mart, on the other hand, never seemed to figure out that its cruelly low wages would eventually curtail its own growth, even at the company's famously discounted prices.
(...) It gets worse though. While with one hand the high-rollers, H. Lee Scott among them, squeezed the American worker's wages, the other hand was reaching out with the tempting offer of credit. In fact, easy credit became the American substitute for decent wages. Once you worked for your money, but now you were supposed to pay for it. Once you could count on earning enough to save for a home. Now you'll never earn that much, but, as the lenders were saying -- heh, heh -- do we have a mortgage for you!
(...) Pay day loans, rent-to-buy furniture and exorbitant credit card interest rates for the poor were just the beginning. In its May 21st cover story on "The Poverty Business," BusinessWeek documented the stampede, in the just the last few years, to lend money to the people who could least afford to pay the interest: Buy your dream home! Refinance your house! Take on a car loan even if your credit rating sucks! Financiamos a Todos! Somehow, no one bothered to figure out where the poor were going to get the money to pay for all the money they were being offered.
(...) in the long term, a system that depends on extracting every last cent from the poor cannot hope for a healthy prognosis. Who would have thought that foreclosures in Stockton and Cleveland would roil the markets of London and Shanghai? The poor have risen up and spoken; only it sounds less like a shout of protest than a low, strangled, cry of pain.
howard zinn on terror in nyt:
These words are misleading because they assume an action is either “deliberate” or “unintentional.” There is something in between, for which the word is “inevitable.” If you engage in an action, like aerial bombing, in which you cannot possibly distinguish between combatants and civilians (as a former Air Force bombardier, I will attest to that), the deaths of civilians are inevitable, even if not “intentional.” Does that difference exonerate you morally? The terrorism of the suicide bomber and the terrorism of aerial bombardment are indeed morally equivalent. To say otherwise (as either side might) is to give one moral superiority over the other, and thus serve to perpetuate the horrors of our time.
These words are misleading because they assume an action is either “deliberate” or “unintentional.” There is something in between, for which the word is “inevitable.” If you engage in an action, like aerial bombing, in which you cannot possibly distinguish between combatants and civilians (as a former Air Force bombardier, I will attest to that), the deaths of civilians are inevitable, even if not “intentional.” Does that difference exonerate you morally? The terrorism of the suicide bomber and the terrorism of aerial bombardment are indeed morally equivalent. To say otherwise (as either side might) is to give one moral superiority over the other, and thus serve to perpetuate the horrors of our time.
america and venezuela: constitutional worlds apart:
----------America-----------
Although imperfect, no country anywhere is closer to a model democracy than Venezuela under President Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias. In contrast, none is a more shameless failure than America, but it was true long before the age of George W. Bush. The difference under his regime is that the mask is off revealing a repressive state masquerading as a democratic republic. This article compares the constitutional laws of each country and how they're implemented. The result shows world's apart differences between these two nominally democratic states - one that's real, impressive and improving and the other that's mostly pretense and under George Bush lawless, corrupted, in tatters, and morally depraved.
(...) The Constitution falls far short of a "masterpiece of political architecture," but it's even worse than that. It was the product of very ordinary scheming politicians (not the Mt. Rushmore types they're portrayed as in history books) and their friends crafting the law of the land to serve themselves while leaving out the greater public that was nowhere in sight in 1787 Philadelphia. Unlike the Venezuelan Constitution, discussed below, "The People" were never consulted or even considered, and nothing in the end was put to a vote beyond the state legislative bodies that had to ratify it. In contrast to popular myth, the framers crafted a Constitution that didn't constrain or fetter the federal government nor did they create a government of limited powers.
(...) The Constitution can easily be read in 30 minutes or less and just as easily be misunderstood. The opening Preamble contains its sole myth referring to "We the people of the United States of America." The only people who mattered were white male property owners. All others nowhere entered the picture, then or mostly since, proving democracy operatively is little more than a fantasy. But try explaining that to people today thinking otherwise because that's all they were taught from the beginning to believe.
(...) Popular myth aside, the 55 delegates who met in Philadelphia from May to September, 1787 were very ordinary self-serving, privileged, property-owning white men. They weren't extraordinarily learned, profound in their thinking or in any way special. Only 25 attended college (that was pretty rudimentary at the time), and Washington never got beyond the fifth grade.
(...) The delegates came to Philadelphia in May, 1887, assembled, did their work, sent it to the states, and left in a despondent mood. They disliked the final product, some could barely tolerate it, yet 39 of the 55 attendees knowingly signed a document they believed flawed while we today extoll it like it came down from Mt. Sinai. The whole process we call a first-class historical event was, in fact, an entirely routine uninspiring political caucus producing no "prodigies of statecraft, no wonders of political (judgment), no vaulting philosophies, no Promethean vistas." Contradicting everything we've been "indoctrinated from ears to toes" to believe, the notion that the Constitution is "a document of salvation....a magic talisman," or a gift to the common man is pure fantasy.
(...) The constitutional convention ended September 17, 1787 "in an atmosphere verging on glumness." Of the 55 attending delegates, 39 signed as a pro forma exercise before sending it to the states with power to accept or reject it. Again, "The People" were nowhere in sight in Philadelphia or at the state level where the real tussle began before the founders could declare victory.
(...) Key to understanding the American system is that "government is completely autonomous, detached, (and) in a realm of its own" with its "main interest (being) economic (for the privileged) at all times."
(...) With or without this power, Lundberg makes a powerful case overall that the constitutional story comes down to a question of money and money arrangement - who gets it, how, why, when, where, what for, and under what conditions. Also addressed is who the law leaves out. The story has nothing whatever to do with guaranteeing life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (Jefferson's Orwellian language meaning property); establishing justice; upholding the rule of law equitably for everyone; promoting the general welfare; or securing the blessings of freedom for "The People" unconsidered, unimportant and ignored by the three branches of government serving monied and property interests only, of which they are a part.
(...) Lundberg's theme is clear and unequivocal. Under US constitutional law, the President is the most powerful political official on earth, bar none under any other system of government. "The office he holds is inherently imperial," regardless of the occupant or how he governs, and the Constitution confers this on him. Unlike the British model, with the executive as a collectivity, the US system "is absolutely unique, and dangerously vulnerable" with one man in charge fully able to exploit his position. "The American President (stands) midway between a collective executive and an absolute dictator (and in times of war like now) becomes, in fact, quite constitutionally, a full-fledged dictator." Disturbingly, the public hasn't a clue about what's going on.
(...) Further, it's pure myth that the government is constrained by limited powers. Quite the opposite is true "which at the point of execution (resides in) one man," the President. In addition, "Until the American electorate creates effective political parties (which it never has done), Congress....will always be pretty much under (Presidents') thumb(s)." Under the "American constitutional system (the President) is very much a de facto king," and under George Bush a corrupted, devious, criminal and dangerous one.
(...) In sum from the above, the US system of constitutional law is full of flaws and faults. "The People" were deliberately and willfully left out of the process proving the Constitution doesn't recognize democracy in America in spite of the commonly held view it does. In addition, the President, at his own discretion, can usurp dictatorial powers and end republican government by a stroke of his pen. That should awaken everyone to the clear and present danger that any time, for any reason, the President of the United States can declare a state of emergency, suspend the law of the land and rule by decree.
---------Venezuela------------
(...) [Chavez] established a model humanistic participatory social democracy, unimaginable in the US, providing real (not imagined) checks and balances in the nation's five branches of government. They comprise the executive, legislative and judicial ones plus two others. One is the independent national electoral council that regulates and handles state and civil society organization electoral procedures to assure they conform to the law requiring free, fair and open elections. The other is a citizen or public power branch functioning as a unique institution. It lets ordinary people serve as ombudsmen to assure the other government branches comply with constitutionally-mandated requirements. This branch includes the attorney general, the defender of the people, and the comptroller general.
(...) Articles 71 - 74 establish four types of popular national referenda never imagined or held in America outside the local or state level where they're often non-binding. The US is one of only five major democracies never to have permitted this type citizen participation. In Venezuela under Hugo Chavez, the practice is mandated by law and institutionalized to give people at the grass roots a say in running their government.
(...) Chavez also wants other changes to strengthen the nation's participatory democracy at the grassroots. He stresses "one of the central ideas is my proposal to open, at the constitutional level, the roads to accelerate the transfer of power to the people" in an "Explosion of Communal (or popular) Power." It's already there in more than 26,000 democratically functioning grassroots communal councils. They're government-sanctioned, funded, operating throughout the country, and may double in number and be strengthened further under proposed constitutional changes. Chavez wants "Popular (people) Power" to be a "State Power" along with the Legislature, Executive, Judicial, Citizen and Electoral ones and considers this constitutional change the most important one of all. If it happens, various sovereign powers and duties now handled at the federal, state and municipal levels will be transfered to local communal, worker, campesino, student and other councils. This will strengthen Venezuela's bedrock participatory democracy making it even more unique and impressive than it already is.
----------America-----------
Although imperfect, no country anywhere is closer to a model democracy than Venezuela under President Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias. In contrast, none is a more shameless failure than America, but it was true long before the age of George W. Bush. The difference under his regime is that the mask is off revealing a repressive state masquerading as a democratic republic. This article compares the constitutional laws of each country and how they're implemented. The result shows world's apart differences between these two nominally democratic states - one that's real, impressive and improving and the other that's mostly pretense and under George Bush lawless, corrupted, in tatters, and morally depraved.
(...) The Constitution falls far short of a "masterpiece of political architecture," but it's even worse than that. It was the product of very ordinary scheming politicians (not the Mt. Rushmore types they're portrayed as in history books) and their friends crafting the law of the land to serve themselves while leaving out the greater public that was nowhere in sight in 1787 Philadelphia. Unlike the Venezuelan Constitution, discussed below, "The People" were never consulted or even considered, and nothing in the end was put to a vote beyond the state legislative bodies that had to ratify it. In contrast to popular myth, the framers crafted a Constitution that didn't constrain or fetter the federal government nor did they create a government of limited powers.
(...) The Constitution can easily be read in 30 minutes or less and just as easily be misunderstood. The opening Preamble contains its sole myth referring to "We the people of the United States of America." The only people who mattered were white male property owners. All others nowhere entered the picture, then or mostly since, proving democracy operatively is little more than a fantasy. But try explaining that to people today thinking otherwise because that's all they were taught from the beginning to believe.
(...) Popular myth aside, the 55 delegates who met in Philadelphia from May to September, 1787 were very ordinary self-serving, privileged, property-owning white men. They weren't extraordinarily learned, profound in their thinking or in any way special. Only 25 attended college (that was pretty rudimentary at the time), and Washington never got beyond the fifth grade.
(...) The delegates came to Philadelphia in May, 1887, assembled, did their work, sent it to the states, and left in a despondent mood. They disliked the final product, some could barely tolerate it, yet 39 of the 55 attendees knowingly signed a document they believed flawed while we today extoll it like it came down from Mt. Sinai. The whole process we call a first-class historical event was, in fact, an entirely routine uninspiring political caucus producing no "prodigies of statecraft, no wonders of political (judgment), no vaulting philosophies, no Promethean vistas." Contradicting everything we've been "indoctrinated from ears to toes" to believe, the notion that the Constitution is "a document of salvation....a magic talisman," or a gift to the common man is pure fantasy.
(...) The constitutional convention ended September 17, 1787 "in an atmosphere verging on glumness." Of the 55 attending delegates, 39 signed as a pro forma exercise before sending it to the states with power to accept or reject it. Again, "The People" were nowhere in sight in Philadelphia or at the state level where the real tussle began before the founders could declare victory.
(...) Key to understanding the American system is that "government is completely autonomous, detached, (and) in a realm of its own" with its "main interest (being) economic (for the privileged) at all times."
(...) With or without this power, Lundberg makes a powerful case overall that the constitutional story comes down to a question of money and money arrangement - who gets it, how, why, when, where, what for, and under what conditions. Also addressed is who the law leaves out. The story has nothing whatever to do with guaranteeing life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (Jefferson's Orwellian language meaning property); establishing justice; upholding the rule of law equitably for everyone; promoting the general welfare; or securing the blessings of freedom for "The People" unconsidered, unimportant and ignored by the three branches of government serving monied and property interests only, of which they are a part.
(...) Lundberg's theme is clear and unequivocal. Under US constitutional law, the President is the most powerful political official on earth, bar none under any other system of government. "The office he holds is inherently imperial," regardless of the occupant or how he governs, and the Constitution confers this on him. Unlike the British model, with the executive as a collectivity, the US system "is absolutely unique, and dangerously vulnerable" with one man in charge fully able to exploit his position. "The American President (stands) midway between a collective executive and an absolute dictator (and in times of war like now) becomes, in fact, quite constitutionally, a full-fledged dictator." Disturbingly, the public hasn't a clue about what's going on.
(...) Further, it's pure myth that the government is constrained by limited powers. Quite the opposite is true "which at the point of execution (resides in) one man," the President. In addition, "Until the American electorate creates effective political parties (which it never has done), Congress....will always be pretty much under (Presidents') thumb(s)." Under the "American constitutional system (the President) is very much a de facto king," and under George Bush a corrupted, devious, criminal and dangerous one.
(...) In sum from the above, the US system of constitutional law is full of flaws and faults. "The People" were deliberately and willfully left out of the process proving the Constitution doesn't recognize democracy in America in spite of the commonly held view it does. In addition, the President, at his own discretion, can usurp dictatorial powers and end republican government by a stroke of his pen. That should awaken everyone to the clear and present danger that any time, for any reason, the President of the United States can declare a state of emergency, suspend the law of the land and rule by decree.
---------Venezuela------------
(...) [Chavez] established a model humanistic participatory social democracy, unimaginable in the US, providing real (not imagined) checks and balances in the nation's five branches of government. They comprise the executive, legislative and judicial ones plus two others. One is the independent national electoral council that regulates and handles state and civil society organization electoral procedures to assure they conform to the law requiring free, fair and open elections. The other is a citizen or public power branch functioning as a unique institution. It lets ordinary people serve as ombudsmen to assure the other government branches comply with constitutionally-mandated requirements. This branch includes the attorney general, the defender of the people, and the comptroller general.
(...) Articles 71 - 74 establish four types of popular national referenda never imagined or held in America outside the local or state level where they're often non-binding. The US is one of only five major democracies never to have permitted this type citizen participation. In Venezuela under Hugo Chavez, the practice is mandated by law and institutionalized to give people at the grass roots a say in running their government.
(...) Chavez also wants other changes to strengthen the nation's participatory democracy at the grassroots. He stresses "one of the central ideas is my proposal to open, at the constitutional level, the roads to accelerate the transfer of power to the people" in an "Explosion of Communal (or popular) Power." It's already there in more than 26,000 democratically functioning grassroots communal councils. They're government-sanctioned, funded, operating throughout the country, and may double in number and be strengthened further under proposed constitutional changes. Chavez wants "Popular (people) Power" to be a "State Power" along with the Legislature, Executive, Judicial, Citizen and Electoral ones and considers this constitutional change the most important one of all. If it happens, various sovereign powers and duties now handled at the federal, state and municipal levels will be transfered to local communal, worker, campesino, student and other councils. This will strengthen Venezuela's bedrock participatory democracy making it even more unique and impressive than it already is.
the sole superpower in decline:
we are already witnessing the rise of a multipolar world in which new powers are challenging different aspects of American supremacy -- Russia and China in the forefront, with regional powers Venezuela and Iran forming the second rank. These emergent powers are primed to erode American hegemony, not confront it, singly or jointly.
(...) there are other explanations -- unrelated to Washington's glaring misadventures -- for the current transformation in international affairs. These include, above all, the tightening market in oil and natural gas, which has enhanced the power of hydrocarbon-rich nations as never before; the rapid economic expansion of the mega-nations China and India; the transformation of China into the globe's leading manufacturing base; and the end of the Anglo-American duopoly in international television news.
(...) In 2005, Russia overtook the United States, becoming the second largest oil producer in the world. Its oil income now amounts to $679 million a day. Russia is also the largest producer of natural gas on the planet, with three-fifths of its gas exports going to the 27-member European Union (EU).
(...) the Bush administration finds its area of maneuver woefully limited when dealing with a rising hydrocarbon power. To the insults that Chavez keeps hurling at Bush, the American response has been vapid. The reason is the crippling dependence of the United States on imported petroleum which accounts for 60% of its total consumed. Venezuela is the fourth largest source of U.S. imported oil after Canada, Mexico, and Saudi Arabia; and some refineries in the U.S. are designed specifically to refine heavy Venezuelan oil.
(...) [is this the multipolarity that will birth the world we want?] An alarmed Washington had already noted an 18% increase in China's 2007 defense budget. Attributing the rise to extra spending on missiles, electronic warfare, and other high-tech items, Liao Xilong, commander of the People's Liberation Army's general logistics department, said: "The present day world is no longer peaceful and to protect national security, stability and territorial integrity we must suitably increase spending on military modernization." China's declared budget of $45 billion was a tiny fraction of the Pentagon's $459 billion one.
we are already witnessing the rise of a multipolar world in which new powers are challenging different aspects of American supremacy -- Russia and China in the forefront, with regional powers Venezuela and Iran forming the second rank. These emergent powers are primed to erode American hegemony, not confront it, singly or jointly.
(...) there are other explanations -- unrelated to Washington's glaring misadventures -- for the current transformation in international affairs. These include, above all, the tightening market in oil and natural gas, which has enhanced the power of hydrocarbon-rich nations as never before; the rapid economic expansion of the mega-nations China and India; the transformation of China into the globe's leading manufacturing base; and the end of the Anglo-American duopoly in international television news.
(...) In 2005, Russia overtook the United States, becoming the second largest oil producer in the world. Its oil income now amounts to $679 million a day. Russia is also the largest producer of natural gas on the planet, with three-fifths of its gas exports going to the 27-member European Union (EU).
(...) the Bush administration finds its area of maneuver woefully limited when dealing with a rising hydrocarbon power. To the insults that Chavez keeps hurling at Bush, the American response has been vapid. The reason is the crippling dependence of the United States on imported petroleum which accounts for 60% of its total consumed. Venezuela is the fourth largest source of U.S. imported oil after Canada, Mexico, and Saudi Arabia; and some refineries in the U.S. are designed specifically to refine heavy Venezuelan oil.
(...) [is this the multipolarity that will birth the world we want?] An alarmed Washington had already noted an 18% increase in China's 2007 defense budget. Attributing the rise to extra spending on missiles, electronic warfare, and other high-tech items, Liao Xilong, commander of the People's Liberation Army's general logistics department, said: "The present day world is no longer peaceful and to protect national security, stability and territorial integrity we must suitably increase spending on military modernization." China's declared budget of $45 billion was a tiny fraction of the Pentagon's $459 billion one.
refusing to be silent:
Locking up Aboriginal people who are not prepared to ignore the atrocities of the state or suffer silently is certainly not without precedent in this country. In 1924 the Canadian Government employed the military to kill one Mohawk traditional Chief in an effort to break the Iroquois Confederacy and bring the Mohawks under the control of the current Indian Act Band Council system. Many others Chiefs were imprisoned for a total of seven seasons without valid charges. My husband is just completing the end of his first season behind bars and says: “I should sit with pride and honour sit for six more to equal the sacrifice my ancestors made for us, so that we might have a chance to exist.”
Locking up Aboriginal people who are not prepared to ignore the atrocities of the state or suffer silently is certainly not without precedent in this country. In 1924 the Canadian Government employed the military to kill one Mohawk traditional Chief in an effort to break the Iroquois Confederacy and bring the Mohawks under the control of the current Indian Act Band Council system. Many others Chiefs were imprisoned for a total of seven seasons without valid charges. My husband is just completing the end of his first season behind bars and says: “I should sit with pride and honour sit for six more to equal the sacrifice my ancestors made for us, so that we might have a chance to exist.”
what is holding up the delivery of the long-awaited iraqi oil law?:
External influences were for the most part, behind the approval of a draft of the oil law, which will be the first and major step in the privatization of Iraqi oil wealth and will ensure that the oil will be produced and marketed by the IOCs with enormous profit to them.
(...) Neither the US Republican administration nor the Democrats had any disagreement with this policy and made the approval of the oil law a benchmark for future US strategy in Iraq within the Iraqi Study Group report.
(...) The IMF made the approval of the oil law one of the main conditions for reducing the Iraqi international debts, as declared in December 1, 2005 in the Paris meetings between the IMF and representatives of the Iraqi Government.
(...) More and more MPs are calling for the law to be carefully studied before its approval. The Iraqi parliament has gone into summer recess without discussing the oil law, but up until now the only members who are openly standing against the oil law are the MPs from Sadr's Movement and some individual members from the "Iraqi Accord," the Dawa Party and some independent MPs.
(...) The latest Oil poll, which was carried out in June and July 2007 by KA Research, has shown that the Iraqis oppose plans to open the country's oil fields to foreign investment by a factor of two to one (63% oppose to 31% for).
(...) The Bush Administration and their Ambassador in Baghdad had openly threatened to replace Al-Maliki's government with a new government, headed by their man in Iraq -- the old Baathist, Iyad Allawi. Al-Maliki has openly accused Allawi in several speeches of attempting to overthrow his government with the help of some units of the Iraqi army and security generals including the head of the Iraqi security forces, the old Baathist general Mohammed Al-Shahwani. These generals were appointed to their positions during Allawi's appointed government by the last US official administrator Paul Bremer back in May 2004, and are still taking their orders directly from the US embassy in Baghdad.
(...) The US administration recognized that a US-led military coup d'etat would not result in any laws being recognized as legitimate by the international community if parliament were to be dissolved. They therefore moved to a new policy, which involved direct interference with the political process in Iraq through their more reliable allies to reorganize the political alliance on which the government relied in order to achieve their goals. They finally succeeded in achieving the establishment of such a front, which was called the "The front of the moderates" on August 15, between the two main Kurdish parties (KDP and PUK), two of the Shiite parties (the SCIRI and Al-Dawa party -- the Al-Maliki wing is called the "External organization"), with negotiations still ongoing to persuade the Islamic Party/Accord front -- the main Sunni party -- to join this new alliance.
(...) The claim of the US Administration that the oil and gas law will allow all Iraqis to share the oil revenue is no more than another peace of misinformation, as the "Revenue Sharing Law" is a separate federal revenue law which is still being negotiated between the different Iraqi parties representing all sectors of Iraqi society.
(...) The latest oil poll which was carried out in June and July 2007 by KA Research has shown that the vast majority of Iraqis (91%) did not feel informed enough about the oil law. This included the 33% who said they knew a little information on the law, 30% who said that they were not very informed and 28% that stated that they knew nothing about it.
External influences were for the most part, behind the approval of a draft of the oil law, which will be the first and major step in the privatization of Iraqi oil wealth and will ensure that the oil will be produced and marketed by the IOCs with enormous profit to them.
(...) Neither the US Republican administration nor the Democrats had any disagreement with this policy and made the approval of the oil law a benchmark for future US strategy in Iraq within the Iraqi Study Group report.
(...) The IMF made the approval of the oil law one of the main conditions for reducing the Iraqi international debts, as declared in December 1, 2005 in the Paris meetings between the IMF and representatives of the Iraqi Government.
(...) More and more MPs are calling for the law to be carefully studied before its approval. The Iraqi parliament has gone into summer recess without discussing the oil law, but up until now the only members who are openly standing against the oil law are the MPs from Sadr's Movement and some individual members from the "Iraqi Accord," the Dawa Party and some independent MPs.
(...) The latest Oil poll, which was carried out in June and July 2007 by KA Research, has shown that the Iraqis oppose plans to open the country's oil fields to foreign investment by a factor of two to one (63% oppose to 31% for).
(...) The Bush Administration and their Ambassador in Baghdad had openly threatened to replace Al-Maliki's government with a new government, headed by their man in Iraq -- the old Baathist, Iyad Allawi. Al-Maliki has openly accused Allawi in several speeches of attempting to overthrow his government with the help of some units of the Iraqi army and security generals including the head of the Iraqi security forces, the old Baathist general Mohammed Al-Shahwani. These generals were appointed to their positions during Allawi's appointed government by the last US official administrator Paul Bremer back in May 2004, and are still taking their orders directly from the US embassy in Baghdad.
(...) The US administration recognized that a US-led military coup d'etat would not result in any laws being recognized as legitimate by the international community if parliament were to be dissolved. They therefore moved to a new policy, which involved direct interference with the political process in Iraq through their more reliable allies to reorganize the political alliance on which the government relied in order to achieve their goals. They finally succeeded in achieving the establishment of such a front, which was called the "The front of the moderates" on August 15, between the two main Kurdish parties (KDP and PUK), two of the Shiite parties (the SCIRI and Al-Dawa party -- the Al-Maliki wing is called the "External organization"), with negotiations still ongoing to persuade the Islamic Party/Accord front -- the main Sunni party -- to join this new alliance.
(...) The claim of the US Administration that the oil and gas law will allow all Iraqis to share the oil revenue is no more than another peace of misinformation, as the "Revenue Sharing Law" is a separate federal revenue law which is still being negotiated between the different Iraqi parties representing all sectors of Iraqi society.
(...) The latest oil poll which was carried out in June and July 2007 by KA Research has shown that the vast majority of Iraqis (91%) did not feel informed enough about the oil law. This included the 33% who said they knew a little information on the law, 30% who said that they were not very informed and 28% that stated that they knew nothing about it.
Friday, August 17, 2007
deepening divisions:
The Sunni, about 20 per cent of Iraq's 27 million population and the dominant community for hundreds of years, supported armed resistance to the US from the beginning. The Shia, 60 per cent of Iraqis, did not resist the occupation so long as they could take power through elections as they believe they deserved to do as a majority. This attitude to the US may now be changing. Only the Kurds, also 20 per cent of Iraqis, fully back the US presence. Ethnic and sectarian animosities in Iraq were always deeper than most Iraqis admitted but divisions have turned into chasms. There are fewer and fewer mixed neighborhoods in Baghdad. The Shia, probably three-quarters of the capital's population, are pushing back the Sunni into the south-west corner. Some 4.2 million Iraqis have fled their homes, becoming refugees either inside or outside the country according to the UN refugee agency UNHCR.
The Sunni, about 20 per cent of Iraq's 27 million population and the dominant community for hundreds of years, supported armed resistance to the US from the beginning. The Shia, 60 per cent of Iraqis, did not resist the occupation so long as they could take power through elections as they believe they deserved to do as a majority. This attitude to the US may now be changing. Only the Kurds, also 20 per cent of Iraqis, fully back the US presence. Ethnic and sectarian animosities in Iraq were always deeper than most Iraqis admitted but divisions have turned into chasms. There are fewer and fewer mixed neighborhoods in Baghdad. The Shia, probably three-quarters of the capital's population, are pushing back the Sunni into the south-west corner. Some 4.2 million Iraqis have fled their homes, becoming refugees either inside or outside the country according to the UN refugee agency UNHCR.
laboratory for a fortressed world:
Here’s another theory: Israel’s economy isn’t booming despite the political chaos that devours the headlines, but because of it. This phase of development dates back to the mid-nineties, when Israel was in the vanguard of the information revolution – the most tech-dependent economy in the world. After the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, Israel’s economy was devastated, facing its worst year since 1953. Then came 9/11, and suddenly new profit vistas opened up for any company that claimed it could spot terrorists in crowds, seal borders from attack and extract confessions from closed-mouthed prisoners.
(...) Within three years, large parts of Israel’s tech economy had been radically repurposed. Put in Friedmanesque terms: Israel went from inventing the networking tools of the “flat world” to selling fences to an apartheid planet. Many of the country’s most successful entrepreneurs are using Israel’s status as a fortressed state, surrounded by furious enemies, as a kind of twenty-four-hour-a-day showroom—a living example of how to enjoy relative safety amid constant war. And the reason Israel is now enjoying supergrowth is that those companies are busily exporting that model to the world.
(...) Discussions of Israel’s military trade usually focus on the flow of weapons into the country—US-made Caterpillar bulldozers used to destroy homes in the West Bank and British companies supplying parts for F-16s. Overlooked is Israel’s huge and expanding export business. Israel now sends $1.2 billion in “defense” products to the United States—up dramatically from $270 million in 1999. In 2006 Israel exported $3.4 billion in defense products—well over a billion more than it received in US military aid. That makes Israel the fourth-largest arms dealer in the world, overtaking Britain. Much of this growth has been in the so-called “homeland security” sector. Before 9/11 homeland security barely existed as an industry. By the end of this year, Israeli exports in the sector will reach $1.2 billion—an increase of 20 percent. The key products and services are high-tech fences, unmanned drones, biometric IDs, video and audio surveillance gear, air passenger profiling and prisoner interrogation systems – precisely the tools and technologies Israel has used to lock-in the occupied territories.
(...) Israel has learned to turn endless war into a brand asset, pitching its uprooting, occupation and containment of the Palestinian people as a half-century head start in the “global war on terror.”
(...) So in a way Friedman is right: Israel has struck oil. But the oil isn’t the imagination of its techie entrepreneurs. The oil is the war on terror, the state of constant fear that creates a bottomless global demand for devices that watch, listen, contain and target “suspects.” And fear, it turns out, is the ultimate renewable resource.
Here’s another theory: Israel’s economy isn’t booming despite the political chaos that devours the headlines, but because of it. This phase of development dates back to the mid-nineties, when Israel was in the vanguard of the information revolution – the most tech-dependent economy in the world. After the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, Israel’s economy was devastated, facing its worst year since 1953. Then came 9/11, and suddenly new profit vistas opened up for any company that claimed it could spot terrorists in crowds, seal borders from attack and extract confessions from closed-mouthed prisoners.
(...) Within three years, large parts of Israel’s tech economy had been radically repurposed. Put in Friedmanesque terms: Israel went from inventing the networking tools of the “flat world” to selling fences to an apartheid planet. Many of the country’s most successful entrepreneurs are using Israel’s status as a fortressed state, surrounded by furious enemies, as a kind of twenty-four-hour-a-day showroom—a living example of how to enjoy relative safety amid constant war. And the reason Israel is now enjoying supergrowth is that those companies are busily exporting that model to the world.
(...) Discussions of Israel’s military trade usually focus on the flow of weapons into the country—US-made Caterpillar bulldozers used to destroy homes in the West Bank and British companies supplying parts for F-16s. Overlooked is Israel’s huge and expanding export business. Israel now sends $1.2 billion in “defense” products to the United States—up dramatically from $270 million in 1999. In 2006 Israel exported $3.4 billion in defense products—well over a billion more than it received in US military aid. That makes Israel the fourth-largest arms dealer in the world, overtaking Britain. Much of this growth has been in the so-called “homeland security” sector. Before 9/11 homeland security barely existed as an industry. By the end of this year, Israeli exports in the sector will reach $1.2 billion—an increase of 20 percent. The key products and services are high-tech fences, unmanned drones, biometric IDs, video and audio surveillance gear, air passenger profiling and prisoner interrogation systems – precisely the tools and technologies Israel has used to lock-in the occupied territories.
(...) Israel has learned to turn endless war into a brand asset, pitching its uprooting, occupation and containment of the Palestinian people as a half-century head start in the “global war on terror.”
(...) So in a way Friedman is right: Israel has struck oil. But the oil isn’t the imagination of its techie entrepreneurs. The oil is the war on terror, the state of constant fear that creates a bottomless global demand for devices that watch, listen, contain and target “suspects.” And fear, it turns out, is the ultimate renewable resource.
naomi klein, from think tanks to battle tanks:
unlike Jeffrey Sachs, I actually don't believe that what is lacking is political will at the highest levels, cooperation between world leaders. I don't think that if we could just present our elites with the right graphs and PowerPoint presentations -- no offense -- that we would finally convince them to make poverty history. I don't believe that. I don't believe we could do it, even if that PowerPoint presentation was being delivered Angelina Jolie wearing a (Product) Red TM Gap tank top and carrying a (Product) Red cell phone. Even if she had a (Product) Red iPhone, I still don't think they would listen. That’s because elites don't make justice because we ask them to nicely and appealingly. They do it when the alternative to justice is worse. And that is what happened all those years ago when the income gap began to close. That was the motivation behind the New Deal and the Marshall Plan. Communism spreading around the world, that was the fear. Capitalism needed to embellish itself. It needed to soften its edges. It was in a competition. So ideas aren't the problem, and money is not the problem, and I don't think political will is ever the problem.
(...) We are missing movement power. That’s what we’re missing. “The best lacked all convictions,” Yeats wrote, “while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” Think about it. Do you want to tackle climate change as much as Dick Cheney wants Kazakhstan’s oil? Do you? Do you want universal healthcare as much as Paris Hilton wants to be the next new face of Estee Lauder? If not, why not? What is wrong with us? Where is our passionate intensity?
(...) it’s worth remembering when these pronouncements were being made that what was failing was not Scandinavian social democracy, which was thriving, or a Canadian-style welfare state, which has produced the highest standard of living by UN measures in the world, or at least it did before my government started embracing some of these ideas. It wasn't the so-called Asian miracle that had been discredited, which in the ’80s and ’90s built the Asian “tiger” economies in South Korea and Malaysia using a combination of trade protections to nurture and develop national industry, even when that meant keeping American products out and preventing foreign ownership, as well as maintaining government control over key assets, like water and electricity. These policies did not create explosive growth concentrated at the very top, as we see today. But record levels of profit and a rapidly expanding middle class, that is what has been attacked in these past thirty years.
(...) Now, what was interesting and never quite stated in this formulation was that you basically had two streams: you had democracy, which you can use to vote for your leaders, and then you had a single economic model. Now, the catch was that you couldn't use your vote, you couldn't use your democracy to reshape your economy, because all of the economic decisions had already been decided. There was only -- it was the final endpoint of ideological evolution. So you could have democracy, but you couldn't use it to change the basics of life, you couldn’t use it to change the economy. This moment was held up as a celebration of victory for democracy, but that idea, that democracy cannot affect the economy, is and remains the single most anti-democratic idea of our time.
(...) So, you know, Jeffery Sachs talks about these model villages that he’s building in Africa. And many of them, you know, are making tremendous progress. But I can't help thinking back to these field trips that we made in Porto Alegre to MST villages, where it was the people themselves, the landless people themselves, who were showing us their own model villages and were asking for our solidarity. And I think as sociologists, you understand this key distinction, that it was the actors who were the protagonists of their history, and that was what was historic. It was breaking the charity model in a very real way.
(...) it does feel that we have moved backwards in many areas. Talk of fixing the world has become an astonishingly elite affair. Davos -- now, Porto Alegre was in rebellion against the Davos Summit every year in January. This was the anti-Davos. Davos has been re-legitimized, and now solving the world's problems appears to be a matter between CEOs and super-celebrities. And the idea that we don't need to challenge these mass disparities, what we need is sort of noblesse oblige on a mass scale, that is very different than what we were talking about in Porto Alegre those years ago.
(...) Rather than the ’90s approach of selling off existing public companies, like water and electricity, the Bush team was creating a whole new framework for its actions. That framework was and is the war on terror, which was built to be private, privately managed from the start. The Bush administration played the role of a kind of a venture capitalist for the startup security companies, and they created an economic boom on par with the dotcom boom of the 1990s. But we didn’t talk about it, because we were too busy talking about security. Now, this feat required a kind of two-stage process, which was using 9/11, of course, to radically increase the surveillance and security powers of the state, concentrated in the executive branch, but at the same time to take those powers and outsource them to a web of private companies, whether Blackwater, Boeing, AT&T, Halliburton, Bechtel, the Carlyle Group. Now, in the ’80s, the goal of privatization -- and in the ’90s -- was devouring the appendages of the state. But what was happening now is it was the core that was being devoured, because what is more central to the very definition of a state of a government than security and disaster response? Now, this is one of the great ironies of the war on terror, is that it proved such an effective weapon to furthering the corporate agenda precisely because it denied that it has, and continues to deny that it has, a corporate agenda at all.
(...) a correspondence between Henry Kissinger and Nixon, in which Kissinger says very bluntly that the problem with Allende’s election is not what they were saying publicly, which was that he was aligned with the Soviets, that he was only pretending to be democratic, but that he was really going to impose a totalitarian system in Chile. That was the spin at the time. What he actually wrote was, “The example of a successful elected Marxist government in Chile would surely have an impact on -- and even precedent value for -- other parts of the world…The imitative spread of similar phenomena elsewhere would in turn significantly affect the world balance and our own position in it.” So that alternative, that other world, had to be blasted out of the way, and extreme violence was used in order to accomplish that.
(...) was in Poland in 1989. June 4th was the day of the historic elections in Poland that elected Solidarity as the new government. They hadn't had elections there in decades. And this was the event that really set off the domino -- what’s now referred to as the domino effect in Eastern Bloc countries -- and ultimately resulting in the breaking apart of the Soviet Union. But it’s worth remembering what it actually looked like in June of 1989. In Poland, people didn’t think that history was over, because they had just elected Solidarity as their government. They thought that history was just beginning and that they were finally going to be able to implement what the movement, which was a labor movement, had always seen as the third way, the third way not taken. Now, Solidarity's vision was not a rejection of socialism. They said that they were calling for “real socialism,” as socialists often do, and it was a rejection of the Communist party. They were everything that the party was not: dispersed where it was centralized, democratic where it was authoritarian, participatory where it was bureaucratic. And Solidarity had ten million members, which gave them the power to completely shut down the state. ... Now, did they get the chance to try that, to act on that vision of a worker cooperative economy as the centerpiece of the economy, to have democratic elections but still have socialism? Did they get that chance when they voted for Solidarity? No, they didn't. What they got was an inherited debt, and they were told that the only way that they would get any relief from that debt and any aid is if they followed a very radical shock therapy program. Now, I would be remiss if I didn't point out that the person who prescribed that shock therapy program was Jeffery Sachs. And I -- no, I say that because I really had hoped that we could debate these different worlds, because there are differences, there are real differences that we must not smooth over.
(...) Now, in 2006, 40% of young workers in Poland were unemployed, 40%, last year. That’s twice the EU average. And Poland is often held up as a great success story of transition. In 1989, 15% of the Poland’s population was living below the poverty line. In 2003, 59% of Poles had fallen below the line. That’s that opening of that gap. That’s what these economic policies do.
(...) And I think we can see, actually, that it’s inevitable that this would be the case, because they tried communism, they tried capitalism, they tried democratic socialism, but they got shock therapy instead. After you’ve tried all that, there really isn't a whole lot left but fascism. It’s dangerous to suppress democratic alternatives when people invest their dreams in them. It’s risky business.
(...) Another one of these powerful dreams was Tiananmen Square, and it’s a sort of a very sad fluke of history that on the same day that Solidarity won those historic elections and that dream was betrayed, what they voted for was betrayed, tanks rolled in Tiananmen Square, and that was the day of the massacre: June 4, 1989. It was another bloody end to a moment of effervescent possibility. Now, the way those protests were always reported on in the West was that students in Beijing just wanted to live like in the United States. And they, you know, put a goddess to democracy that looked a lot like the Statue of Liberty. So it was reported on CNN as just kind of pro-American–style democracy protests. But in recent years, an alternative analysis of those events has emerged. And what we’re starting to hear from what’s being called China's New Left, and people like Wang Hui, who’s a wonderful academic, is that this was a vast oversimplification of what was driving the pro-democracy movement in 1989 in China. What was driving it was that the government of Deng Xiaoping was radically restructuring the economy along with the lines that had been prescribed by Milton Friedman -- economic shock therapy -- and people were seeing their quality of life devalued. Workers were losing their rights. And they were taking to the streets and demanding democratic control over the economic transition.
(...) Now, I say this because this was one of those worlds that wasn't chosen, one of those paths that wasn't chosen. And I spent the past four years pulling these stolen and betrayed alternatives out of the dustbin of our recent history, because I think it matters. I think it matters that we had ideas all along, that there were always alternatives to the free market. And we need to retell our own history and understand that history, and we have to have all the shocks and all the losses, the loss of lives, in that story, because history didn't end. There were alternatives. They were chosen, and then they were stolen. They were stolen by military coups. They were stolen by massacres. They stolen by trickery, by deception. They were stolen by terror.
(...) We who say we believe in this other world need to know that we are not losers. We did not lose the battle of ideas. We were not outsmarted, and we were not out-argued. We lost because we were crushed. Sometimes we were crushed by army tanks, and sometimes we were crushed by think tanks. And by think tanks, I mean the people who are paid to think by the makers of tanks. Now, most effective we have seen is when the army tanks and the think tanks team up. The quest to impose a single world market has casualties now in the millions, from Chile then to Iraq today. These blueprints for another world were crushed and disappeared because they are popular and because, when tried, they work. They're popular because they have the power to give millions of people lives with dignity, with the basics guaranteed. They are dangerous because they put real limits on the rich, who respond accordingly. Understanding this history, understanding that we never lost the battle of ideas, that we only lost a series of dirty wars, is key to building the confidence that we lack, to igniting the passionate intensity that we need.
unlike Jeffrey Sachs, I actually don't believe that what is lacking is political will at the highest levels, cooperation between world leaders. I don't think that if we could just present our elites with the right graphs and PowerPoint presentations -- no offense -- that we would finally convince them to make poverty history. I don't believe that. I don't believe we could do it, even if that PowerPoint presentation was being delivered Angelina Jolie wearing a (Product) Red TM Gap tank top and carrying a (Product) Red cell phone. Even if she had a (Product) Red iPhone, I still don't think they would listen. That’s because elites don't make justice because we ask them to nicely and appealingly. They do it when the alternative to justice is worse. And that is what happened all those years ago when the income gap began to close. That was the motivation behind the New Deal and the Marshall Plan. Communism spreading around the world, that was the fear. Capitalism needed to embellish itself. It needed to soften its edges. It was in a competition. So ideas aren't the problem, and money is not the problem, and I don't think political will is ever the problem.
(...) We are missing movement power. That’s what we’re missing. “The best lacked all convictions,” Yeats wrote, “while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” Think about it. Do you want to tackle climate change as much as Dick Cheney wants Kazakhstan’s oil? Do you? Do you want universal healthcare as much as Paris Hilton wants to be the next new face of Estee Lauder? If not, why not? What is wrong with us? Where is our passionate intensity?
(...) it’s worth remembering when these pronouncements were being made that what was failing was not Scandinavian social democracy, which was thriving, or a Canadian-style welfare state, which has produced the highest standard of living by UN measures in the world, or at least it did before my government started embracing some of these ideas. It wasn't the so-called Asian miracle that had been discredited, which in the ’80s and ’90s built the Asian “tiger” economies in South Korea and Malaysia using a combination of trade protections to nurture and develop national industry, even when that meant keeping American products out and preventing foreign ownership, as well as maintaining government control over key assets, like water and electricity. These policies did not create explosive growth concentrated at the very top, as we see today. But record levels of profit and a rapidly expanding middle class, that is what has been attacked in these past thirty years.
(...) Now, what was interesting and never quite stated in this formulation was that you basically had two streams: you had democracy, which you can use to vote for your leaders, and then you had a single economic model. Now, the catch was that you couldn't use your vote, you couldn't use your democracy to reshape your economy, because all of the economic decisions had already been decided. There was only -- it was the final endpoint of ideological evolution. So you could have democracy, but you couldn't use it to change the basics of life, you couldn’t use it to change the economy. This moment was held up as a celebration of victory for democracy, but that idea, that democracy cannot affect the economy, is and remains the single most anti-democratic idea of our time.
(...) So, you know, Jeffery Sachs talks about these model villages that he’s building in Africa. And many of them, you know, are making tremendous progress. But I can't help thinking back to these field trips that we made in Porto Alegre to MST villages, where it was the people themselves, the landless people themselves, who were showing us their own model villages and were asking for our solidarity. And I think as sociologists, you understand this key distinction, that it was the actors who were the protagonists of their history, and that was what was historic. It was breaking the charity model in a very real way.
(...) it does feel that we have moved backwards in many areas. Talk of fixing the world has become an astonishingly elite affair. Davos -- now, Porto Alegre was in rebellion against the Davos Summit every year in January. This was the anti-Davos. Davos has been re-legitimized, and now solving the world's problems appears to be a matter between CEOs and super-celebrities. And the idea that we don't need to challenge these mass disparities, what we need is sort of noblesse oblige on a mass scale, that is very different than what we were talking about in Porto Alegre those years ago.
(...) Rather than the ’90s approach of selling off existing public companies, like water and electricity, the Bush team was creating a whole new framework for its actions. That framework was and is the war on terror, which was built to be private, privately managed from the start. The Bush administration played the role of a kind of a venture capitalist for the startup security companies, and they created an economic boom on par with the dotcom boom of the 1990s. But we didn’t talk about it, because we were too busy talking about security. Now, this feat required a kind of two-stage process, which was using 9/11, of course, to radically increase the surveillance and security powers of the state, concentrated in the executive branch, but at the same time to take those powers and outsource them to a web of private companies, whether Blackwater, Boeing, AT&T, Halliburton, Bechtel, the Carlyle Group. Now, in the ’80s, the goal of privatization -- and in the ’90s -- was devouring the appendages of the state. But what was happening now is it was the core that was being devoured, because what is more central to the very definition of a state of a government than security and disaster response? Now, this is one of the great ironies of the war on terror, is that it proved such an effective weapon to furthering the corporate agenda precisely because it denied that it has, and continues to deny that it has, a corporate agenda at all.
(...) a correspondence between Henry Kissinger and Nixon, in which Kissinger says very bluntly that the problem with Allende’s election is not what they were saying publicly, which was that he was aligned with the Soviets, that he was only pretending to be democratic, but that he was really going to impose a totalitarian system in Chile. That was the spin at the time. What he actually wrote was, “The example of a successful elected Marxist government in Chile would surely have an impact on -- and even precedent value for -- other parts of the world…The imitative spread of similar phenomena elsewhere would in turn significantly affect the world balance and our own position in it.” So that alternative, that other world, had to be blasted out of the way, and extreme violence was used in order to accomplish that.
(...) was in Poland in 1989. June 4th was the day of the historic elections in Poland that elected Solidarity as the new government. They hadn't had elections there in decades. And this was the event that really set off the domino -- what’s now referred to as the domino effect in Eastern Bloc countries -- and ultimately resulting in the breaking apart of the Soviet Union. But it’s worth remembering what it actually looked like in June of 1989. In Poland, people didn’t think that history was over, because they had just elected Solidarity as their government. They thought that history was just beginning and that they were finally going to be able to implement what the movement, which was a labor movement, had always seen as the third way, the third way not taken. Now, Solidarity's vision was not a rejection of socialism. They said that they were calling for “real socialism,” as socialists often do, and it was a rejection of the Communist party. They were everything that the party was not: dispersed where it was centralized, democratic where it was authoritarian, participatory where it was bureaucratic. And Solidarity had ten million members, which gave them the power to completely shut down the state. ... Now, did they get the chance to try that, to act on that vision of a worker cooperative economy as the centerpiece of the economy, to have democratic elections but still have socialism? Did they get that chance when they voted for Solidarity? No, they didn't. What they got was an inherited debt, and they were told that the only way that they would get any relief from that debt and any aid is if they followed a very radical shock therapy program. Now, I would be remiss if I didn't point out that the person who prescribed that shock therapy program was Jeffery Sachs. And I -- no, I say that because I really had hoped that we could debate these different worlds, because there are differences, there are real differences that we must not smooth over.
(...) Now, in 2006, 40% of young workers in Poland were unemployed, 40%, last year. That’s twice the EU average. And Poland is often held up as a great success story of transition. In 1989, 15% of the Poland’s population was living below the poverty line. In 2003, 59% of Poles had fallen below the line. That’s that opening of that gap. That’s what these economic policies do.
(...) And I think we can see, actually, that it’s inevitable that this would be the case, because they tried communism, they tried capitalism, they tried democratic socialism, but they got shock therapy instead. After you’ve tried all that, there really isn't a whole lot left but fascism. It’s dangerous to suppress democratic alternatives when people invest their dreams in them. It’s risky business.
(...) Another one of these powerful dreams was Tiananmen Square, and it’s a sort of a very sad fluke of history that on the same day that Solidarity won those historic elections and that dream was betrayed, what they voted for was betrayed, tanks rolled in Tiananmen Square, and that was the day of the massacre: June 4, 1989. It was another bloody end to a moment of effervescent possibility. Now, the way those protests were always reported on in the West was that students in Beijing just wanted to live like in the United States. And they, you know, put a goddess to democracy that looked a lot like the Statue of Liberty. So it was reported on CNN as just kind of pro-American–style democracy protests. But in recent years, an alternative analysis of those events has emerged. And what we’re starting to hear from what’s being called China's New Left, and people like Wang Hui, who’s a wonderful academic, is that this was a vast oversimplification of what was driving the pro-democracy movement in 1989 in China. What was driving it was that the government of Deng Xiaoping was radically restructuring the economy along with the lines that had been prescribed by Milton Friedman -- economic shock therapy -- and people were seeing their quality of life devalued. Workers were losing their rights. And they were taking to the streets and demanding democratic control over the economic transition.
(...) Now, I say this because this was one of those worlds that wasn't chosen, one of those paths that wasn't chosen. And I spent the past four years pulling these stolen and betrayed alternatives out of the dustbin of our recent history, because I think it matters. I think it matters that we had ideas all along, that there were always alternatives to the free market. And we need to retell our own history and understand that history, and we have to have all the shocks and all the losses, the loss of lives, in that story, because history didn't end. There were alternatives. They were chosen, and then they were stolen. They were stolen by military coups. They were stolen by massacres. They stolen by trickery, by deception. They were stolen by terror.
(...) We who say we believe in this other world need to know that we are not losers. We did not lose the battle of ideas. We were not outsmarted, and we were not out-argued. We lost because we were crushed. Sometimes we were crushed by army tanks, and sometimes we were crushed by think tanks. And by think tanks, I mean the people who are paid to think by the makers of tanks. Now, most effective we have seen is when the army tanks and the think tanks team up. The quest to impose a single world market has casualties now in the millions, from Chile then to Iraq today. These blueprints for another world were crushed and disappeared because they are popular and because, when tried, they work. They're popular because they have the power to give millions of people lives with dignity, with the basics guaranteed. They are dangerous because they put real limits on the rich, who respond accordingly. Understanding this history, understanding that we never lost the battle of ideas, that we only lost a series of dirty wars, is key to building the confidence that we lack, to igniting the passionate intensity that we need.
the one clear solution:
Isn't it amazing that discussions of this sort could arise at a time when the Palestinians and their cause against the colonialist apartheid system in Palestine are in such a tragic plight? While the Palestinians are mired in turmoil and confusion, their friends in South Africa and elsewhere are in a quandary over whether to be more Palestinian than the Palestinians: Should they support Hamas or Fatah? Is it right to boycott Israel when the Palestinian leadership, itself, is busily normalising relations with the Israeli government? One can understand their predicament. However, they should bear in mind that in Palestine this "normalisation" is taking place before any deal has been struck and that whatever deals are in the works do not aim to alter the existing racist order.
(...) So what are friends of the Palestinian people supposed to do if they feel that racism and colonialism are universal moral questions and not foreign or domestic policy issues in this day and age? Here are Israel and the Palestinian Authority on the verge of producing some vague declaration of principles that will offer the Palestinians even less than what Barak proposed in Camp David II. There's a conference in the works that the Americans tentatively called a "meeting" (so as to spare the participants any embarrassment and so as to keep people from pinning too high expectations on what is essentially a PR gambit). But the contours of the outcome of that meeting have been clear for quite a while. They have been shaped by current balances of power. There will be no right of return for Palestinian refugees; East Jerusalem will not be the Palestinian capital; and there will be no dismantlement of all Israeli settlements and no return to pre-June 1967 borders. At the same time, the Zionist regime will remain fully intact and its inherent racism will become a domestic issue.
Isn't it amazing that discussions of this sort could arise at a time when the Palestinians and their cause against the colonialist apartheid system in Palestine are in such a tragic plight? While the Palestinians are mired in turmoil and confusion, their friends in South Africa and elsewhere are in a quandary over whether to be more Palestinian than the Palestinians: Should they support Hamas or Fatah? Is it right to boycott Israel when the Palestinian leadership, itself, is busily normalising relations with the Israeli government? One can understand their predicament. However, they should bear in mind that in Palestine this "normalisation" is taking place before any deal has been struck and that whatever deals are in the works do not aim to alter the existing racist order.
(...) So what are friends of the Palestinian people supposed to do if they feel that racism and colonialism are universal moral questions and not foreign or domestic policy issues in this day and age? Here are Israel and the Palestinian Authority on the verge of producing some vague declaration of principles that will offer the Palestinians even less than what Barak proposed in Camp David II. There's a conference in the works that the Americans tentatively called a "meeting" (so as to spare the participants any embarrassment and so as to keep people from pinning too high expectations on what is essentially a PR gambit). But the contours of the outcome of that meeting have been clear for quite a while. They have been shaped by current balances of power. There will be no right of return for Palestinian refugees; East Jerusalem will not be the Palestinian capital; and there will be no dismantlement of all Israeli settlements and no return to pre-June 1967 borders. At the same time, the Zionist regime will remain fully intact and its inherent racism will become a domestic issue.
how the democrats blew it in only 8 months:
Led by Democrats since the start of this year, Congress now has a "confidence" rating of 14 percent, the lowest since Gallup started asking the question in 1973 and five points lower than Republicans scored last year.
(...) The voters put the Democrats in to end the war, and it's escalating. The Democrats voted the money for the surge and the money for the next $459.6 billion military budget. Their latest achievement was to provide enough votes in support of Bush to legalize warrantless wiretapping for "foreign suspects whose communications pass through the United States." Enough Democrats joined Republicans to make this a 227-183 victory for Bush. The Democrats control the House. Speaker Nancy Pelosi could have stopped the bill in its tracks if she'd wanted to. But she didn't. The Democrats' game is to go along with the White House agenda while stirring up dust storms to blind the base to their failure to bring the troops home or restore constitutional government.
(...) It didn't take an antiwar movement to make the people antiwar. People looked at the casualty figures and the newspaper headlines and drew the obvious conclusion that the war is a bust. Their attention is already shifting to the economic crisis: housing meltdown, car sales meltdown, credit crisis, threats from the Chinese to destroy the dollar. What war? The left is as easily distracted, currently by the phantasm of impeachment. Why all this clamor to launch a proceeding surely destined to fail, aimed at a duo who will be out of the White House in sixteen months? Pursue them for war crimes after they've stepped down. Mount an international campaign of the sort that has Henry Kissinger worrying at airports that there might be a lawyer with a writ standing next to the man with the limo sign.
Led by Democrats since the start of this year, Congress now has a "confidence" rating of 14 percent, the lowest since Gallup started asking the question in 1973 and five points lower than Republicans scored last year.
(...) The voters put the Democrats in to end the war, and it's escalating. The Democrats voted the money for the surge and the money for the next $459.6 billion military budget. Their latest achievement was to provide enough votes in support of Bush to legalize warrantless wiretapping for "foreign suspects whose communications pass through the United States." Enough Democrats joined Republicans to make this a 227-183 victory for Bush. The Democrats control the House. Speaker Nancy Pelosi could have stopped the bill in its tracks if she'd wanted to. But she didn't. The Democrats' game is to go along with the White House agenda while stirring up dust storms to blind the base to their failure to bring the troops home or restore constitutional government.
(...) It didn't take an antiwar movement to make the people antiwar. People looked at the casualty figures and the newspaper headlines and drew the obvious conclusion that the war is a bust. Their attention is already shifting to the economic crisis: housing meltdown, car sales meltdown, credit crisis, threats from the Chinese to destroy the dollar. What war? The left is as easily distracted, currently by the phantasm of impeachment. Why all this clamor to launch a proceeding surely destined to fail, aimed at a duo who will be out of the White House in sixteen months? Pursue them for war crimes after they've stepped down. Mount an international campaign of the sort that has Henry Kissinger worrying at airports that there might be a lawyer with a writ standing next to the man with the limo sign.
hillary's pro-nuclear stance:
What in the world was Sen. Hillary Clinton thinking when she attacked Sen. Barack Obama for ruling out the use of nuclear weapons in going after Osama bin Laden? And why aren't her supporters more concerned about yet another egregious example of Clinton's consistent backing for the mindless militarism that is dragging this nation to ruin?
(...) Sen. Clinton has treated the military budget as primarily a pork-barrel target of opportunity for jobs and profit in New York state, supports increased money for missile defense and every other racket the military-industrial complex comes up with, and still feels no obligation to repudiate her vote for the disastrous Iraq war.
(...) Just exactly how does one make a compelling case to other nations against the proliferation of nuclear weapons when members of the nuke club, particularly the president of the one nation that has killed hundreds of thousands of people with two of these ungodly weapons, will not, at the very least, promise to abstain from first use of a weapon that could quite easily eliminate most life on this planet?
(...) Great, so forget the hope that a woman president might prove to be more enlightened than macho men in the matter of peacemaking, and instead rest assured that Hillary would have the cojones to "push the button" that would kill us all. Once again, the old Clintonian tactic of triangulation: positioning oneself politically instead of taking a position of integrity.
What in the world was Sen. Hillary Clinton thinking when she attacked Sen. Barack Obama for ruling out the use of nuclear weapons in going after Osama bin Laden? And why aren't her supporters more concerned about yet another egregious example of Clinton's consistent backing for the mindless militarism that is dragging this nation to ruin?
(...) Sen. Clinton has treated the military budget as primarily a pork-barrel target of opportunity for jobs and profit in New York state, supports increased money for missile defense and every other racket the military-industrial complex comes up with, and still feels no obligation to repudiate her vote for the disastrous Iraq war.
(...) Just exactly how does one make a compelling case to other nations against the proliferation of nuclear weapons when members of the nuke club, particularly the president of the one nation that has killed hundreds of thousands of people with two of these ungodly weapons, will not, at the very least, promise to abstain from first use of a weapon that could quite easily eliminate most life on this planet?
(...) Great, so forget the hope that a woman president might prove to be more enlightened than macho men in the matter of peacemaking, and instead rest assured that Hillary would have the cojones to "push the button" that would kill us all. Once again, the old Clintonian tactic of triangulation: positioning oneself politically instead of taking a position of integrity.
florida's gun laws:
it's clear that these laws really aren't about gun rights at all. They're about the practical application of a moral philosophy of good and evil: There are good people and bad people in the world, and the way to deal with the bad people is to arm the good people to the teeth.
it's clear that these laws really aren't about gun rights at all. They're about the practical application of a moral philosophy of good and evil: There are good people and bad people in the world, and the way to deal with the bad people is to arm the good people to the teeth.
israel's conscious crimes:
This week marks a year since the end of hostilities now officially called the Second Lebanon War by Israel. A month of fighting -- mostly Israeli aerial bombardment of Lebanese civil infrastructure and residential areas, and rocket attacks from the Shia militia Hizbullah on northern Israel in response -- ended with more than 1,000 Lebanese civilians and a small but unknown number of Hizbullah fighters dead, as well as 119 Israeli soldiers and 43 Israeli civilians.
(...) Other recent reports have revealed that one of the main justifications for Hizbullah's continuing resistance -- that Israel failed to withdraw fully from Lebanese territory in 2000 -- is now supported by the UN. Last month its cartographers quietly admitted that Lebanon is right in claiming sovereignty over a small fertile area known as the Shebaa Farms, still occupied by Israel. Israel argues that the territory is Syrian and will be returned in future peace talks with Damascus, even though Syria backs Lebanon's position. International media has ignored the UN's admission.
(...) A shocking aspect of the war was Israel's firing of at least a million cluster bombs, old munitions supplied by the US with a failure rate as high as 50 per cent, in the last days of fighting. The tiny bomblets, effectively small land mines, were left littering south Lebanon after the UN-brokered ceasefire, and are reported so far to have killed 30 civilians and wounded at least another 180. Israeli commanders have admitted firing 1.2 million such bomblets, while the UN puts the figure closer to three million.
(...) An initial report by the army, leaked to the Israeli media, discovered that the cluster bombs had been fired into Lebanese population centres in gross violation of international law. Udi Adam, head of the Northern Command at the time, apparently gave the order. A US State Department investigation reached a similar conclusion.
(...) Another claim, one that Israel hoped might justify the large number of Lebanese civilians it killed during the war, was that Hizbullah fighters had been regularly hiding and firing rockets from among south Lebanon's civilian population. Human rights groups found scant evidence of this, but a senior UN official, Jan Egeland, offered succour by accusing Hizbullah of "cowardly blending". There were always strong reasons for suspecting the Israeli claim to be untrue. Hizbullah had invested much effort in developing an elaborate system of tunnels and underground bunkers in the countryside, that Israel knew little about, in which it hid its rockets and from which fighters attacked Israeli soldiers as they tried to launch a ground invasion. Also, common sense suggested that Hizbullah fighters would be unwilling to put their families, who live in south Lebanon's villages, in danger by launching rockets from among them. Now Israeli front pages are carrying reports from Israeli military sources that put in serious doubt Israel's claims. Since the war's end, Hizbullah has apparently relocated most of its rockets to conceal them from the UN peacekeepers that have been carrying out extensive searches of south Lebanon to disarm Hizbullah under the terms of Resolution 1701. According to the UN, some 33 of these underground bunkers -- or more than 90 per cent -- have been located and the Hizbullah weapons discovered there, including rockets and launchers, destroyed. The Israeli media has noted that the Israeli army calls these sites "nature reserves"; similarly, the UN has made no mention of finding urban-based Hizbullah bunkers. Relying on military sources, Haaretz reported last month: "Most of the rockets fired against Israel during the war last year were launched from the 'nature reserves'." In short, even Israel is no longer claiming that Hizbullah was firing its rockets from among civilians.
(...) Hizbullah's movement of some rockets into villages should be condemned. But not by Israel, whose army is breaking international law by concealing its weapons in civilian areas on a far grander scale.
(...) As a first-hand observer of the fighting from Israel's side of the border last year, I noted on several occasions that Israel had built many of its permanent military installations, including weapons factories and army camps, and set up temporary artillery positions next to -- and in some cases inside -- civilian communities in the north of Israel. Many of those communities are Arab: Arab citizens constitute about half of the Galilee's population.
(...) Human Rights Watch, however, has argued that, because Hizbullah's rockets were not precise, every time they were fired into Israel they were effectively targeted at civilians. Hizbullah was therefore guilty of war crimes in using its rockets, whatever the intention of the launch teams. In other words, according to this reading of international law, only Israel had the right to fire missiles and drop bombs because its military hardware is more sophisticated -- and, of course, more deadly.
(...) The evidence so far indicates that Israel: first, established legitimate grounds for Hizbullah's attack on the border post by refusing to withdraw from the Lebanese territory of the Shebaa Farms in 2000; second, initiated a war of aggression by refusing to engage in talks about a prisoner swap offered by Hizbullah; third, committed a grave war crime by intentionally using cluster bombs against south Lebanon's civilians; fourth, repeatedly hit Lebanese communities, killing many civilians, even though the evidence is that Hizbullah fighters were not to be found there; and fifth, put its own, mainly Arab, civilians in great danger by making their communities targets for Hizbullah attacks and failing to protect them.
This week marks a year since the end of hostilities now officially called the Second Lebanon War by Israel. A month of fighting -- mostly Israeli aerial bombardment of Lebanese civil infrastructure and residential areas, and rocket attacks from the Shia militia Hizbullah on northern Israel in response -- ended with more than 1,000 Lebanese civilians and a small but unknown number of Hizbullah fighters dead, as well as 119 Israeli soldiers and 43 Israeli civilians.
(...) Other recent reports have revealed that one of the main justifications for Hizbullah's continuing resistance -- that Israel failed to withdraw fully from Lebanese territory in 2000 -- is now supported by the UN. Last month its cartographers quietly admitted that Lebanon is right in claiming sovereignty over a small fertile area known as the Shebaa Farms, still occupied by Israel. Israel argues that the territory is Syrian and will be returned in future peace talks with Damascus, even though Syria backs Lebanon's position. International media has ignored the UN's admission.
(...) A shocking aspect of the war was Israel's firing of at least a million cluster bombs, old munitions supplied by the US with a failure rate as high as 50 per cent, in the last days of fighting. The tiny bomblets, effectively small land mines, were left littering south Lebanon after the UN-brokered ceasefire, and are reported so far to have killed 30 civilians and wounded at least another 180. Israeli commanders have admitted firing 1.2 million such bomblets, while the UN puts the figure closer to three million.
(...) An initial report by the army, leaked to the Israeli media, discovered that the cluster bombs had been fired into Lebanese population centres in gross violation of international law. Udi Adam, head of the Northern Command at the time, apparently gave the order. A US State Department investigation reached a similar conclusion.
(...) Another claim, one that Israel hoped might justify the large number of Lebanese civilians it killed during the war, was that Hizbullah fighters had been regularly hiding and firing rockets from among south Lebanon's civilian population. Human rights groups found scant evidence of this, but a senior UN official, Jan Egeland, offered succour by accusing Hizbullah of "cowardly blending". There were always strong reasons for suspecting the Israeli claim to be untrue. Hizbullah had invested much effort in developing an elaborate system of tunnels and underground bunkers in the countryside, that Israel knew little about, in which it hid its rockets and from which fighters attacked Israeli soldiers as they tried to launch a ground invasion. Also, common sense suggested that Hizbullah fighters would be unwilling to put their families, who live in south Lebanon's villages, in danger by launching rockets from among them. Now Israeli front pages are carrying reports from Israeli military sources that put in serious doubt Israel's claims. Since the war's end, Hizbullah has apparently relocated most of its rockets to conceal them from the UN peacekeepers that have been carrying out extensive searches of south Lebanon to disarm Hizbullah under the terms of Resolution 1701. According to the UN, some 33 of these underground bunkers -- or more than 90 per cent -- have been located and the Hizbullah weapons discovered there, including rockets and launchers, destroyed. The Israeli media has noted that the Israeli army calls these sites "nature reserves"; similarly, the UN has made no mention of finding urban-based Hizbullah bunkers. Relying on military sources, Haaretz reported last month: "Most of the rockets fired against Israel during the war last year were launched from the 'nature reserves'." In short, even Israel is no longer claiming that Hizbullah was firing its rockets from among civilians.
(...) Hizbullah's movement of some rockets into villages should be condemned. But not by Israel, whose army is breaking international law by concealing its weapons in civilian areas on a far grander scale.
(...) As a first-hand observer of the fighting from Israel's side of the border last year, I noted on several occasions that Israel had built many of its permanent military installations, including weapons factories and army camps, and set up temporary artillery positions next to -- and in some cases inside -- civilian communities in the north of Israel. Many of those communities are Arab: Arab citizens constitute about half of the Galilee's population.
(...) Human Rights Watch, however, has argued that, because Hizbullah's rockets were not precise, every time they were fired into Israel they were effectively targeted at civilians. Hizbullah was therefore guilty of war crimes in using its rockets, whatever the intention of the launch teams. In other words, according to this reading of international law, only Israel had the right to fire missiles and drop bombs because its military hardware is more sophisticated -- and, of course, more deadly.
(...) The evidence so far indicates that Israel: first, established legitimate grounds for Hizbullah's attack on the border post by refusing to withdraw from the Lebanese territory of the Shebaa Farms in 2000; second, initiated a war of aggression by refusing to engage in talks about a prisoner swap offered by Hizbullah; third, committed a grave war crime by intentionally using cluster bombs against south Lebanon's civilians; fourth, repeatedly hit Lebanese communities, killing many civilians, even though the evidence is that Hizbullah fighters were not to be found there; and fifth, put its own, mainly Arab, civilians in great danger by making their communities targets for Hizbullah attacks and failing to protect them.
interview in al-ahram:
On Tuesday, Lebanon commemorated one year after the end of the 33-day US- backed Israeli war last summer that left 2,023 civilians dead and 3,740 wounded, razing to the ground entire villages and towns in south Lebanon. Lebanon's Shia population were made to pay the heaviest price during the war. The ostensible goal was to break its support and sympathy for Hizbullah, destroying the resistance movement's social and political base.
(...) The reverse effect occurred. Qasim says that the party's popularity in the aftermath of the war was never higher. "Sympathy for the party grew during and after the war, and so too our popularity. We have full support from our constituency." Qasim points out that Hizbullah has been inundated with requests, most from Lebanese youth, to join the resistance.
(...) "No one in Hizbullah's leadership made a statement about changing or amending the Taif Agreement," Qasim responds. "Our discourse has always been one of honouring Taif because it is an agreement that Lebanon reached after a period of suffering that lasted for 15 years, and therefore we cannot talk about a new agreement. In Hizbullah we believe that what is needed is to implement Taif and not to amend it."
On Tuesday, Lebanon commemorated one year after the end of the 33-day US- backed Israeli war last summer that left 2,023 civilians dead and 3,740 wounded, razing to the ground entire villages and towns in south Lebanon. Lebanon's Shia population were made to pay the heaviest price during the war. The ostensible goal was to break its support and sympathy for Hizbullah, destroying the resistance movement's social and political base.
(...) The reverse effect occurred. Qasim says that the party's popularity in the aftermath of the war was never higher. "Sympathy for the party grew during and after the war, and so too our popularity. We have full support from our constituency." Qasim points out that Hizbullah has been inundated with requests, most from Lebanese youth, to join the resistance.
(...) "No one in Hizbullah's leadership made a statement about changing or amending the Taif Agreement," Qasim responds. "Our discourse has always been one of honouring Taif because it is an agreement that Lebanon reached after a period of suffering that lasted for 15 years, and therefore we cannot talk about a new agreement. In Hizbullah we believe that what is needed is to implement Taif and not to amend it."
jockeying for power:
The US may have succeeded in toppling the Iraqi regime, but Iran succeeded in placing its allies in positions of power in Baghdad in the post-invasion phase. Iran won its influence in Baghdad not only through its political, sectarian, economic, military and intelligence presence in Iraq, but also through its skill at capitalising on the momentous bungling of the neo-conservative administration in Washington. In 15 years it reversed the outcome of the Iraq-Iran war (1980-1988). From near military defeat it has now scored almost total political victory. It is perhaps no coincidence, therefore, that Al-Maliki's visit was timed to coincide with the anniversary of the Iraq-Iran war.
(...) All three parties appear to be operating on a tacitly agreed-upon premise: a compromise solution will only work if each party does what it takes to ensure that the other parties' worst nightmares do not come true. Riyadh's nightmare is that Iran will succeed in securing a large base of operations in the area of southern Iraq adjacent to the Saudi Arabian borders, within a stone's throw of Saudi oil fields. Tehran fears the emergence of a central government in Baghdad which owes its primary allegiance to Washington and which could eventually build up a strong enough army to threaten Iran again in the future. Washington is cringing at the spectre of a forced withdrawal without face-saving agreements and, therefore, having to sustain the internal and external fallout from an unequivocal defeat while Tehran is left to crow over its political victory in Iraq.
The US may have succeeded in toppling the Iraqi regime, but Iran succeeded in placing its allies in positions of power in Baghdad in the post-invasion phase. Iran won its influence in Baghdad not only through its political, sectarian, economic, military and intelligence presence in Iraq, but also through its skill at capitalising on the momentous bungling of the neo-conservative administration in Washington. In 15 years it reversed the outcome of the Iraq-Iran war (1980-1988). From near military defeat it has now scored almost total political victory. It is perhaps no coincidence, therefore, that Al-Maliki's visit was timed to coincide with the anniversary of the Iraq-Iran war.
(...) All three parties appear to be operating on a tacitly agreed-upon premise: a compromise solution will only work if each party does what it takes to ensure that the other parties' worst nightmares do not come true. Riyadh's nightmare is that Iran will succeed in securing a large base of operations in the area of southern Iraq adjacent to the Saudi Arabian borders, within a stone's throw of Saudi oil fields. Tehran fears the emergence of a central government in Baghdad which owes its primary allegiance to Washington and which could eventually build up a strong enough army to threaten Iran again in the future. Washington is cringing at the spectre of a forced withdrawal without face-saving agreements and, therefore, having to sustain the internal and external fallout from an unequivocal defeat while Tehran is left to crow over its political victory in Iraq.
musharraf's last straw:
"You don't need a state of emergency to fight the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in the tribal areas. The army already has emergency powers there," says military analyst Hasan Askari Rizvi. "Any state of emergency in Pakistan is irrelevant to the 'war on terror'. It has everything to do with Musharraf preserving his hold on power."
(...) his stock among ordinary Pakistanis is rock bottom, says human rights lawyer, Asma Jahangir. "There is a sense his time is up. He should make an honourable exit rather than increase polarisation in Pakistan. There is not single person who believes a [state of] emergency is necessary for this country. They see it for what it is -- the last straw a dictator clings to."
"You don't need a state of emergency to fight the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in the tribal areas. The army already has emergency powers there," says military analyst Hasan Askari Rizvi. "Any state of emergency in Pakistan is irrelevant to the 'war on terror'. It has everything to do with Musharraf preserving his hold on power."
(...) his stock among ordinary Pakistanis is rock bottom, says human rights lawyer, Asma Jahangir. "There is a sense his time is up. He should make an honourable exit rather than increase polarisation in Pakistan. There is not single person who believes a [state of] emergency is necessary for this country. They see it for what it is -- the last straw a dictator clings to."
is iraq's government falling apart?:
While many Shia accuse Al-Maliki of incompetence for his failure to end attacks by Sunni factions, especially by Al-Qaeda, Sunni groups blame him for failure to crackdown on Shia extremists, such as the Al-Mahdi militia, which is charged with torture, assassinations and execution-style slayings.
While many Shia accuse Al-Maliki of incompetence for his failure to end attacks by Sunni factions, especially by Al-Qaeda, Sunni groups blame him for failure to crackdown on Shia extremists, such as the Al-Mahdi militia, which is charged with torture, assassinations and execution-style slayings.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
barack obama war-mongering:
"When I am President, we will wage the war that has to be won, with a comprehensive strategy with five elements: getting out of Iraq and on to the right battlefield in Afghanistan and Pakistan," Obama told the foreign policy establishment. The sovereignty of Pakistan will not be respected, under an Obama presidency. "If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will."
"When I am President, we will wage the war that has to be won, with a comprehensive strategy with five elements: getting out of Iraq and on to the right battlefield in Afghanistan and Pakistan," Obama told the foreign policy establishment. The sovereignty of Pakistan will not be respected, under an Obama presidency. "If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will."
the CIA's successors and collaborators:
The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) was created in 1983, ostensibly as a non-profit-making organisation to promote human rights and democracy. In 1991 its first president, the historian Allen Weinstein, confessed to The Washington Post: "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA" (1)
(...)In its first 10 years, the NED distributed $200m among 1,500 projects to support friends of the US (10). Since 1988 it has taken a significant interest in Venezuela. Philip Agee said: "There was a quiet operation against the Bolivarian revolution. It began under President Clinton and intensified under George Bush Jr. It's like the campaign against the Sandinistas, but so far without the terrorism or the economic embargo: promote democracy, keep an eye on elections and support public life." The US lawyer Eva Golinger discovered from official documents that between 2001 and 2006 the NED and USAID gave more than $20m to Venezuelan opposition groups and private media (11). On 25 April 2002 The New York Times revealed that Congress had ordered a quadrupling of the NED budget for Venezuela just a few months before the failed coup against President Hugo Chávez.
(...) Washington's idea of democracy is elections and business walking hand in hand. In his January 2004 State of the Union address, President Bush announced that he would be asking Congress "to double the budget of the National Endowment for Democracy, and to focus its new work on the development of free elections, and free markets, free press, and free labour unions in the Middle East"; ideological work would accompany military action. Hitherto the NED's involvement in the region had been minimal. It moved into Afghanistan in 2003. According to its website, it decided "to establish and strengthen business associations inside Afghanistan to ensure a more sustained and diversified effort to build democracy and market economy". It funded emerging NGOs.
(...) In 1996, to justify increasing the NED's budget, an enlightening report was submitted to Congress: "The US cannot afford to discard such an effective instrument of foreign policy at a time when American interests and values are under sustained ideological attack from a wide variety of anti-democratic forces around the world... [They] remain threatened by deeply entrenched communist regimes, neo-communists, aggressive dictatorships, radical nationalists, and Islamic fundamentalists. Given this reality, the US cannot afford to surrender the ideological battlefield to these enemies of a free and open society." (14). Three years later, Benjamin Gilman, the president of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, took the same line.
The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) was created in 1983, ostensibly as a non-profit-making organisation to promote human rights and democracy. In 1991 its first president, the historian Allen Weinstein, confessed to The Washington Post: "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA" (1)
(...)In its first 10 years, the NED distributed $200m among 1,500 projects to support friends of the US (10). Since 1988 it has taken a significant interest in Venezuela. Philip Agee said: "There was a quiet operation against the Bolivarian revolution. It began under President Clinton and intensified under George Bush Jr. It's like the campaign against the Sandinistas, but so far without the terrorism or the economic embargo: promote democracy, keep an eye on elections and support public life." The US lawyer Eva Golinger discovered from official documents that between 2001 and 2006 the NED and USAID gave more than $20m to Venezuelan opposition groups and private media (11). On 25 April 2002 The New York Times revealed that Congress had ordered a quadrupling of the NED budget for Venezuela just a few months before the failed coup against President Hugo Chávez.
(...) Washington's idea of democracy is elections and business walking hand in hand. In his January 2004 State of the Union address, President Bush announced that he would be asking Congress "to double the budget of the National Endowment for Democracy, and to focus its new work on the development of free elections, and free markets, free press, and free labour unions in the Middle East"; ideological work would accompany military action. Hitherto the NED's involvement in the region had been minimal. It moved into Afghanistan in 2003. According to its website, it decided "to establish and strengthen business associations inside Afghanistan to ensure a more sustained and diversified effort to build democracy and market economy". It funded emerging NGOs.
(...) In 1996, to justify increasing the NED's budget, an enlightening report was submitted to Congress: "The US cannot afford to discard such an effective instrument of foreign policy at a time when American interests and values are under sustained ideological attack from a wide variety of anti-democratic forces around the world... [They] remain threatened by deeply entrenched communist regimes, neo-communists, aggressive dictatorships, radical nationalists, and Islamic fundamentalists. Given this reality, the US cannot afford to surrender the ideological battlefield to these enemies of a free and open society." (14). Three years later, Benjamin Gilman, the president of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, took the same line.
separation of oil and state:
Author Ellen Willis has written that "the fundamental fallacy of right libertarianism is that the state is the only source of coercive power." They don't recognize "that the corporations that control most economic resources, and therefore most people's access to the necessities of life, have far more power than government to dictate our behavior and the day-to-day terms of our existence."[11]
Author Ellen Willis has written that "the fundamental fallacy of right libertarianism is that the state is the only source of coercive power." They don't recognize "that the corporations that control most economic resources, and therefore most people's access to the necessities of life, have far more power than government to dictate our behavior and the day-to-day terms of our existence."[11]
mechanistic destruction:
To a critical but scarcely exclusive sense, the Pentagon's penchant for military toys makes an ambitious, aggressive foreign policy essential. Without enemies and conflicts, real or potential, there is no reason to spend money, and this reality often colored its definition of Soviet goals after 1947 – despite the objections of senior CIA analysts. But the Defense Department, and national security establishments in general, are immense and all kinds of constituencies exist in them: there are procurement experts who draw up budgets and go after equipment mindlessly, people who have always dominated its actions, but thinkers too. Each does their own thing and they are often very different. It has always had these contradictions.
(...) There is a very profound consensus between the two parties on arms spending, which began under the Democrats a half-century ago and it will not go away – no matter how neglected the bridges and infrastructure, health, or the like. Arms lobbies are not only very powerful in Washington but create crucial jobs in most states and military spending keeps the economy afloat. Weapons producers make money regardless of whether the Pentagon wins or loses its wars – and making money is their only objective. It is surely a key causal factor even if it is far from being the sole explanation of why the U.S. intervenes where it shouldn't.
To a critical but scarcely exclusive sense, the Pentagon's penchant for military toys makes an ambitious, aggressive foreign policy essential. Without enemies and conflicts, real or potential, there is no reason to spend money, and this reality often colored its definition of Soviet goals after 1947 – despite the objections of senior CIA analysts. But the Defense Department, and national security establishments in general, are immense and all kinds of constituencies exist in them: there are procurement experts who draw up budgets and go after equipment mindlessly, people who have always dominated its actions, but thinkers too. Each does their own thing and they are often very different. It has always had these contradictions.
(...) There is a very profound consensus between the two parties on arms spending, which began under the Democrats a half-century ago and it will not go away – no matter how neglected the bridges and infrastructure, health, or the like. Arms lobbies are not only very powerful in Washington but create crucial jobs in most states and military spending keeps the economy afloat. Weapons producers make money regardless of whether the Pentagon wins or loses its wars – and making money is their only objective. It is surely a key causal factor even if it is far from being the sole explanation of why the U.S. intervenes where it shouldn't.
israel boycott campaign:
In a July 25 article for Electronic Intifada, Margaret Aziza Pappano points out the hypocrisy of those calling for academic freedom for Israeli academics while failing to call for corresponding freedoms for Palestinians: "Surely if university presidents are up in arms over a proposed boycott of Israeli academics, they must have something to say about the shutting down of universities, jailing and shooting of students and faculty, daily impeding of students and faculty from getting to classes, denial of student permits to attend universities, and revoking of visas to visiting scholars and researchers that characterizes academic life in Palestine. If a boycott of academic institutions is considered unfair, what does one call the methodical destruction of an educational system?"
(...) [silence as complicity] Tom Hickey, who led the proposal for an academic boycott, points out that Israeli universities are not neutral institutions but rather are actively complicit in perpetuating the occupation. "No Israeli college or university has publicly condemned what is being done in the occupied territories in the name of every Israeli citizen. Some Israeli educational institutions have established campuses for settlers on illegally confiscated land; others conduct archaeological digs on land from which Palestinian farmers have been expelled."
In a July 25 article for Electronic Intifada, Margaret Aziza Pappano points out the hypocrisy of those calling for academic freedom for Israeli academics while failing to call for corresponding freedoms for Palestinians: "Surely if university presidents are up in arms over a proposed boycott of Israeli academics, they must have something to say about the shutting down of universities, jailing and shooting of students and faculty, daily impeding of students and faculty from getting to classes, denial of student permits to attend universities, and revoking of visas to visiting scholars and researchers that characterizes academic life in Palestine. If a boycott of academic institutions is considered unfair, what does one call the methodical destruction of an educational system?"
(...) [silence as complicity] Tom Hickey, who led the proposal for an academic boycott, points out that Israeli universities are not neutral institutions but rather are actively complicit in perpetuating the occupation. "No Israeli college or university has publicly condemned what is being done in the occupied territories in the name of every Israeli citizen. Some Israeli educational institutions have established campuses for settlers on illegally confiscated land; others conduct archaeological digs on land from which Palestinian farmers have been expelled."
still waiting for a raise:
in 1996, when President Bill Clinton shamed House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Congress into raising the minimum wage, Republican lawmakers sided with restaurant industry lobbyists and excluded tipped workers by permanently freezing their minimum wage at $2.13. This resulted in a tipped-worker minimum wage that is worth less and less every year, forcing them to rely almost entirely on tips to make ends meet. Ultimately, it's meant lower and less certain pay for millions of Americans.
(...) Restaurant industry lobbyists defend their position by focusing on waiters and waitresses at high-end restaurants who earn a lot of money in tips. But such workers are the exception, not the rule. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average waiter or waitress in the U.S. makes just over $17,000 per year including tips--hardly enough to support a family, as many of these women and men struggle to do. And other tipped workers--like car wash attendants and delivery workers--make even less.
in 1996, when President Bill Clinton shamed House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Congress into raising the minimum wage, Republican lawmakers sided with restaurant industry lobbyists and excluded tipped workers by permanently freezing their minimum wage at $2.13. This resulted in a tipped-worker minimum wage that is worth less and less every year, forcing them to rely almost entirely on tips to make ends meet. Ultimately, it's meant lower and less certain pay for millions of Americans.
(...) Restaurant industry lobbyists defend their position by focusing on waiters and waitresses at high-end restaurants who earn a lot of money in tips. But such workers are the exception, not the rule. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average waiter or waitress in the U.S. makes just over $17,000 per year including tips--hardly enough to support a family, as many of these women and men struggle to do. And other tipped workers--like car wash attendants and delivery workers--make even less.
peace is not presidential:
Since President Bush came into office in 2001, the Pentagon’s budget has increased by more than one-third. The $481 billion proposed for 2008 - the $459 billion appropriations plus the nuclear weapons programs of the Department of Energy - is a jump of more than 10% over current spending. To be clear, this is a huge figure even before factoring in the costs of military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere in under the “Global War on Terror.” A recent analysis of the emergency supplemental budgets to pay for the war by the Congressional Research Service finds that (so far) a total of another $607 billion has been spent since September 11, 2001.
(...) The United States is currently spending more on the military than at the height of the Reagan military build-up (when we had a nuclear-armed superpower rival) or during the Vietnam or Korean wars. Thanks to the Bush administration, the United States now spends about as much on its military as the rest of the world spends collectively, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
Since President Bush came into office in 2001, the Pentagon’s budget has increased by more than one-third. The $481 billion proposed for 2008 - the $459 billion appropriations plus the nuclear weapons programs of the Department of Energy - is a jump of more than 10% over current spending. To be clear, this is a huge figure even before factoring in the costs of military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere in under the “Global War on Terror.” A recent analysis of the emergency supplemental budgets to pay for the war by the Congressional Research Service finds that (so far) a total of another $607 billion has been spent since September 11, 2001.
(...) The United States is currently spending more on the military than at the height of the Reagan military build-up (when we had a nuclear-armed superpower rival) or during the Vietnam or Korean wars. Thanks to the Bush administration, the United States now spends about as much on its military as the rest of the world spends collectively, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
the FBI in peace and war:
The CIA also collected files. In 1982, in response to an FOIA request, the Agency sent me copies of letters I had written to and received from friends in the Soviet Union and Cuba. From the 1950s on, the CIA spied on thousands of U.S. citizens. In June 1970, President Nixon brought together Hoover, CIA Director Richard Helms and other intelligence heavies to expand and “coordinate efforts against domestic dissenters,” (Verne Lyon, former CIA undercover operative, Covert Action Information Bulletin, Summer 1990.)
(...) According to ABC's “The Blotter,” a recent unclassified report told Congress that the FBI, driven by a 2004 directive from President Bush, wants to recruit more than 15,000 informants in the U.S., entailing a complete overhaul of its database systems at a cost of around $22 million. The FBI apparently wants to maximize the information provided by "more than 15,000" informants. Many of the new and old informants will apparently be U.S. citizens and residents, but the FBI also wants to go overseas.
The CIA also collected files. In 1982, in response to an FOIA request, the Agency sent me copies of letters I had written to and received from friends in the Soviet Union and Cuba. From the 1950s on, the CIA spied on thousands of U.S. citizens. In June 1970, President Nixon brought together Hoover, CIA Director Richard Helms and other intelligence heavies to expand and “coordinate efforts against domestic dissenters,” (Verne Lyon, former CIA undercover operative, Covert Action Information Bulletin, Summer 1990.)
(...) According to ABC's “The Blotter,” a recent unclassified report told Congress that the FBI, driven by a 2004 directive from President Bush, wants to recruit more than 15,000 informants in the U.S., entailing a complete overhaul of its database systems at a cost of around $22 million. The FBI apparently wants to maximize the information provided by "more than 15,000" informants. Many of the new and old informants will apparently be U.S. citizens and residents, but the FBI also wants to go overseas.
destination darfur:
Eighty per cent of the oil reserves discovered between 2001 and 2004 come from West Africa, where the U.S. currently procures only 12 per cent of its total supply. West Africa is a crucial site for U.S. interests, so much so that the U.S. is willing to be openly hypocritical about its promotion of democracy and human rights when it comes to the region.
(...) In April 2006, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warmly welcomed her “special friend”, Equatorial Guinea’s man of all seasons and many decades, Teodoro Obiang. Her own department annually chastises Obiang’s regime for corruption, human rights violations and electoral fraud. Despite being home to some of the poorest people in Africa, Equatorial Guinea is the third largest oil producer in the continent, whose oil the U.S. government hopes will flow across the Atlantic to power the U.S. The U.S. has been loath to put pressure on Nigeria for the very same reasons.
(...) Resource wars in the Congo (over diamonds and coltan) and in West Africa (over oil) have set the continent on fire. The U.S. has thus far engaged with these conflicts through Africa’s national armies, who have increasingly become the praetorian guards of large corporations. None of this can be justified directly as protection of the extraction of resources, so it has increasingly been couched in the language of the War on Terror.
(...) The Heritage Foundation lobbied for the creation of AFRICOM for several years, and arguably its work moved Donald Rumsfeld to consider an African Command. In a 2003 study entitled “U.S. Military Assistance for Africa: A Better Solution”, the Heritage Foundation argued: “Creating an African Command would go a long way towards turning the Bush Administration’s well-aimed strategic priorities for Africa into a reality.” Rather than engage Africa diplomatically, it is better to be diplomatic through the barrel of a gun. “America must not be afraid to employ its forces decisively when vital national interests are threatened,” the study said. Nevertheless, the U.S. will not need always to send its own soldiers. “A sub-unified command for Africa would give the U.S. military an instrument with which to engage effectively in the continent and reduce the potential that America might have to intervene directly.” AFRICOM would analyze intelligence, work “closely with civil-military leaders”, coordinate training and conduct joint exercises. In other words, the U.S. would make the friendly African military forces “inter-operatable” not only with U.S. hardware but also with U.S. interests. When AFRICOM became a reality, Heritage’s Brett Schaefer welcomed the “long overdue” move.
(...) In January, the Chinese Foreign Ministry released a White Paper that pointed out that unlike U.S. and European investment, Chinese finance for Africa would be driven by equity and sustainable development. Technology transfer, the entry of African goods into the Chinese market without barriers, and the entry of Chinese finance for development projects are the main elements of the Chinese strategy (also the main features of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation and the Addis Ababa Action Plan of 2004-06). With the U.S. and European aid at a low point and with resistance from the U.S. and Europe to compromise on the debt burden of African states, the Chinese proposal was welcomed in many parts of Africa.
(...) For people in the Heritage Foundation and in the White House, AFRICOM is as much a response to China as it is to the increased anti-terrorist efforts in the continent.
(...) China is not in Africa for altruistic reasons. A quarter of China’s crude oil imports already come from Africa. African governments are well aware of the competition between the US and China, and they have used that standoff to their partial advantage (when the U.S. would not act fast enough to get Nigeria’s armed forces 200 patrol boats and funds, the Nigerian government turned to China).
(...) China blocked votes in the United Nations Security Council on the ongoing violence in Darfur, although global pressure has now forced Beijing to appoint a special envoy to Darfur and put some modest pressure on Khartoum. The close relationship between the US and the leaders of Equatorial Guinea or Nigeria is repellent but not half as dubious as that between the Chinese and Sudanese governments. The U.S. government has, therefore, a potent weapon to wield against Beijing’s claim to be in favor of African development.
(...) Since 1984-85, the western Sudanese province of Darfur has been in a prolonged crisis. The drought of those years made it hard for pastoralists to find grazing ground for their camel herds. Battles over land went on for two decades before an embattled and split Islamist government in Khartoum armed the most impoverished of the tribes (who had begun to regain their self-respect through a virulently supremacist ideology promoted by a group called Tajamu al Arabi, or the Arab Gathering).
(...) These tribes began an onslaught against their settled neighbors, with Khartoum’s support. In a few years over a million people were driven out of their homes to neighboring Chad (the U.N. estimates that around 70,000 have been killed). (These numbers, incidentally, are dwarfed by the death toll and the population displacement forced by the U.S. occupation of Iraq.) The U.N. called the Sudan situation a “crime against humanity”, while the U.S., uncharacteristically, labeled it genocide. For a while the African Union was able to stabilize the situation, although it did not succeed in crafting a political solution to the problem. The African Union, created in 1999, has neither the financial ability to pay its troops nor the logistical capacity to do the job. The European Union, which paid the troops’ salaries, began to withhold funds on grounds of accountability, and this gradually killed off the peacekeeping operations.
(...) Professor Mahmood Mamdani of Columbia University (one of the world’s leading experts on contemporary Africa), says of this: “There is a concerted attempt being made to shift the political control of any intervention force inside Darfur from inside Africa to outside Africa”. In other words, the U.S. and Europe are eager to control the dynamics of what happens in Africa and not allow an indigenous, inter-state agency to gain either the experience this would provide or the respect it would gain if it succeeds. The African Union has been undermined so that only the U.S. can appear as the savior of the beleaguered people of Darfur, and elsewhere.
(...) Meanwhile, it suits the U.S. that the campaigns to save the people of Darfur concentrate on the role of China and on what is often framed as an “Arab” assault on “Africans.” The Save Darfur Coalition in the U.S., for instance, has a report on the “Deadly Partnership” between Sudan and China but says nothing of the role of the U.S. in undermining the African Union’s attempts. The Coalition is more sophisticated than can fit into the Arab-African stereotypes, but its members include groups that are less careful (the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America, for instance, is an organizational member; it has not yet tried to distance itself from its parent organization's role in the Gujarat pogroms).
(...) The Save Darfur Coalition, which is the largest U.S. umbrella organization, was formed in 2004 through the work of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the American Jewish World Service. People who have been motivated by the efforts of the group are aware of what is happening in Darfur. This is a worthwhile goal, particularly if it is able to bring a ceasefire and an eventual peace settlement in Darfur. But, the movement seems to have no viable strategy to do this beyond putting pressure on China and pleading with the U.S. government to take “tough” stands against Khartoum. The complexity on the ground is irrelevant.
(...) The heads of the Save Darfur Coalition and the Genocide Intervention Network (set up by the Center for American Progress) are all liberal Democrats who played some kind of a role in the Bill Clinton administration. The Darfur campaign enables them to distance themselves from the excesses of the Bush regime and yet preserve an essential element of the Clinton foreign policy arsenal, “humanitarian intervention” (as in the Kosovo war of 1999). For that reason, these groups have begun to offer the slogan, “Out of Iraq and Into Darfur”. At a forum in New York City on July 15, a young woman asked why the U.S. could not use its superior firepower to defeat the Janjaweed in Sudan. At the same event, the documentary film The Devil Came on Horseback shows the former U.S. Marine Brian Steidle photograph a band of Janjaweed militia leave a village and wish he could exchange his telephoto lens for a gun-scope to “end it now”. Private mercenary armies such as the International Peace Operations Association and DynCorp International clamor to cross the Chad border and conduct operations against the Janjaweed.
(...) That the first head of AFRICOM is the former commander of the battalion that led Operation Restore Hope in Somalia in 1993 is an ominous sign. Would a cruise missile strike on Khartoum (a replay of 1998) and an invasion of Darfur create a solution to the current crisis, or would it only create an Iraq in Africa?
Eighty per cent of the oil reserves discovered between 2001 and 2004 come from West Africa, where the U.S. currently procures only 12 per cent of its total supply. West Africa is a crucial site for U.S. interests, so much so that the U.S. is willing to be openly hypocritical about its promotion of democracy and human rights when it comes to the region.
(...) In April 2006, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warmly welcomed her “special friend”, Equatorial Guinea’s man of all seasons and many decades, Teodoro Obiang. Her own department annually chastises Obiang’s regime for corruption, human rights violations and electoral fraud. Despite being home to some of the poorest people in Africa, Equatorial Guinea is the third largest oil producer in the continent, whose oil the U.S. government hopes will flow across the Atlantic to power the U.S. The U.S. has been loath to put pressure on Nigeria for the very same reasons.
(...) Resource wars in the Congo (over diamonds and coltan) and in West Africa (over oil) have set the continent on fire. The U.S. has thus far engaged with these conflicts through Africa’s national armies, who have increasingly become the praetorian guards of large corporations. None of this can be justified directly as protection of the extraction of resources, so it has increasingly been couched in the language of the War on Terror.
(...) The Heritage Foundation lobbied for the creation of AFRICOM for several years, and arguably its work moved Donald Rumsfeld to consider an African Command. In a 2003 study entitled “U.S. Military Assistance for Africa: A Better Solution”, the Heritage Foundation argued: “Creating an African Command would go a long way towards turning the Bush Administration’s well-aimed strategic priorities for Africa into a reality.” Rather than engage Africa diplomatically, it is better to be diplomatic through the barrel of a gun. “America must not be afraid to employ its forces decisively when vital national interests are threatened,” the study said. Nevertheless, the U.S. will not need always to send its own soldiers. “A sub-unified command for Africa would give the U.S. military an instrument with which to engage effectively in the continent and reduce the potential that America might have to intervene directly.” AFRICOM would analyze intelligence, work “closely with civil-military leaders”, coordinate training and conduct joint exercises. In other words, the U.S. would make the friendly African military forces “inter-operatable” not only with U.S. hardware but also with U.S. interests. When AFRICOM became a reality, Heritage’s Brett Schaefer welcomed the “long overdue” move.
(...) In January, the Chinese Foreign Ministry released a White Paper that pointed out that unlike U.S. and European investment, Chinese finance for Africa would be driven by equity and sustainable development. Technology transfer, the entry of African goods into the Chinese market without barriers, and the entry of Chinese finance for development projects are the main elements of the Chinese strategy (also the main features of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation and the Addis Ababa Action Plan of 2004-06). With the U.S. and European aid at a low point and with resistance from the U.S. and Europe to compromise on the debt burden of African states, the Chinese proposal was welcomed in many parts of Africa.
(...) For people in the Heritage Foundation and in the White House, AFRICOM is as much a response to China as it is to the increased anti-terrorist efforts in the continent.
(...) China is not in Africa for altruistic reasons. A quarter of China’s crude oil imports already come from Africa. African governments are well aware of the competition between the US and China, and they have used that standoff to their partial advantage (when the U.S. would not act fast enough to get Nigeria’s armed forces 200 patrol boats and funds, the Nigerian government turned to China).
(...) China blocked votes in the United Nations Security Council on the ongoing violence in Darfur, although global pressure has now forced Beijing to appoint a special envoy to Darfur and put some modest pressure on Khartoum. The close relationship between the US and the leaders of Equatorial Guinea or Nigeria is repellent but not half as dubious as that between the Chinese and Sudanese governments. The U.S. government has, therefore, a potent weapon to wield against Beijing’s claim to be in favor of African development.
(...) Since 1984-85, the western Sudanese province of Darfur has been in a prolonged crisis. The drought of those years made it hard for pastoralists to find grazing ground for their camel herds. Battles over land went on for two decades before an embattled and split Islamist government in Khartoum armed the most impoverished of the tribes (who had begun to regain their self-respect through a virulently supremacist ideology promoted by a group called Tajamu al Arabi, or the Arab Gathering).
(...) These tribes began an onslaught against their settled neighbors, with Khartoum’s support. In a few years over a million people were driven out of their homes to neighboring Chad (the U.N. estimates that around 70,000 have been killed). (These numbers, incidentally, are dwarfed by the death toll and the population displacement forced by the U.S. occupation of Iraq.) The U.N. called the Sudan situation a “crime against humanity”, while the U.S., uncharacteristically, labeled it genocide. For a while the African Union was able to stabilize the situation, although it did not succeed in crafting a political solution to the problem. The African Union, created in 1999, has neither the financial ability to pay its troops nor the logistical capacity to do the job. The European Union, which paid the troops’ salaries, began to withhold funds on grounds of accountability, and this gradually killed off the peacekeeping operations.
(...) Professor Mahmood Mamdani of Columbia University (one of the world’s leading experts on contemporary Africa), says of this: “There is a concerted attempt being made to shift the political control of any intervention force inside Darfur from inside Africa to outside Africa”. In other words, the U.S. and Europe are eager to control the dynamics of what happens in Africa and not allow an indigenous, inter-state agency to gain either the experience this would provide or the respect it would gain if it succeeds. The African Union has been undermined so that only the U.S. can appear as the savior of the beleaguered people of Darfur, and elsewhere.
(...) Meanwhile, it suits the U.S. that the campaigns to save the people of Darfur concentrate on the role of China and on what is often framed as an “Arab” assault on “Africans.” The Save Darfur Coalition in the U.S., for instance, has a report on the “Deadly Partnership” between Sudan and China but says nothing of the role of the U.S. in undermining the African Union’s attempts. The Coalition is more sophisticated than can fit into the Arab-African stereotypes, but its members include groups that are less careful (the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America, for instance, is an organizational member; it has not yet tried to distance itself from its parent organization's role in the Gujarat pogroms).
(...) The Save Darfur Coalition, which is the largest U.S. umbrella organization, was formed in 2004 through the work of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the American Jewish World Service. People who have been motivated by the efforts of the group are aware of what is happening in Darfur. This is a worthwhile goal, particularly if it is able to bring a ceasefire and an eventual peace settlement in Darfur. But, the movement seems to have no viable strategy to do this beyond putting pressure on China and pleading with the U.S. government to take “tough” stands against Khartoum. The complexity on the ground is irrelevant.
(...) The heads of the Save Darfur Coalition and the Genocide Intervention Network (set up by the Center for American Progress) are all liberal Democrats who played some kind of a role in the Bill Clinton administration. The Darfur campaign enables them to distance themselves from the excesses of the Bush regime and yet preserve an essential element of the Clinton foreign policy arsenal, “humanitarian intervention” (as in the Kosovo war of 1999). For that reason, these groups have begun to offer the slogan, “Out of Iraq and Into Darfur”. At a forum in New York City on July 15, a young woman asked why the U.S. could not use its superior firepower to defeat the Janjaweed in Sudan. At the same event, the documentary film The Devil Came on Horseback shows the former U.S. Marine Brian Steidle photograph a band of Janjaweed militia leave a village and wish he could exchange his telephoto lens for a gun-scope to “end it now”. Private mercenary armies such as the International Peace Operations Association and DynCorp International clamor to cross the Chad border and conduct operations against the Janjaweed.
(...) That the first head of AFRICOM is the former commander of the battalion that led Operation Restore Hope in Somalia in 1993 is an ominous sign. Would a cruise missile strike on Khartoum (a replay of 1998) and an invasion of Darfur create a solution to the current crisis, or would it only create an Iraq in Africa?
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