Serbia Turning Away From Europe, Toward Russia

Russia is moving quickly to consolidate it's gains in view of the power vacuum created by the US bogged down in Iraq. Central Asia has drift back towards Russia. Russia has felt strong enough to rein in Belarus and will do the same with Ukraine if given a chance. Serbia Nationalists have always felt an ethnic tie to Russia.
The current shared government that includes pro-European and pro-nationalist politicians is unlikely to continue it's flirtation with joining the EU. To maintain a stable government, it will have to steer a course away from Europe and towards Russia. Russia in turn is supporting Serbia's ambition to hold onto it's last predominantly Muslim/Albanian province Kosovo.
International Crisis Group

Serbia finally has a new government but one that is deeply divided between pro-Western and nationalist forces. Facing two difficult issues – Kosovo status and cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) – its choice is between moving towards European integration or on to a more isolationist path. The government’s composition, deep mistrust among many of its members and the parliament’s nationalist majority suggest it will follow the second option. Pro-Western forces have suffered a significant setback, the government is vulnerable to manipulation by the security services and oligarchs, and the system of divided responsibility for the security services renders unlikely serious cooperation with the ICTY, especially the arrests of Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic. Although Kosovo independence could destabilise the government, it may surprise and last far longer and prove more stable than expected. The West should prepare for Serbia turning increasingly away from Europe and towards Moscow.


[..]Brussels and Washington should resist the temptation of appeasing Serbia further in a misguided effort to purchase acceptance of Kosovo’s independence. Since February 2007, the EU has been saying that it is willing to restart Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) talks and no longer insist on as a precondition the arrest of the most notorious war criminals. The requirement set during the long haggling over a new government – that Tadic and the DS control the power ministries – is not guaranteed under the new coalition. Some in the EU still believe that by re-engaging Serbia via the SAA they can encourage pro-European forces and ease the pain of Kosovo’s formal loss, but this is misguided. The new government will choose Kosovo over Europe; appeasement would weaken, not strengthen pro-Western forces; and in the short term at least, security structures are unlikely to arrest war criminals.


The new government does plan to continue gradual economic reforms but social and political change risks bogging down in disputes between the DS and DSS. The real point of contention between the two will be foreign policy, as the latter attempts to continue nationalist and confrontational policies. Kostunica is likely to try to hide his Milosevic-era nationalist policies behind Tadic’s pro-Western inclinations, making it difficult for Washington and Brussels to confront Serbia effectively on key issues, though it is uncertain how long Tadic will permit himself to be used to defend the Kostunica line, particularly on the ICTY and Kosovo.


The squabbling over a government deepened the DS-DSS rift. Radical leader Tomislav Nikolic’s five days as parliament speaker exposed a serious weakness in the new constitution – the possibility of a parliament-authorised dictatorship – that could become a real threat following a Kosovo status decision. The West may well have to accustom itself to a Serbia that for a number of years is anti-Europe, pro-Russia and unrepentant in its dangerously self-destructive nationalism.

The Rich and the Wage Slaves

While the term "class warfare" has become politically incorrect, it seems that it also has become much more obvious, even blatant. What we are witnessing is doublethink on a cultural scale. It's not just Dubya who is into doublethink.
The incomes of CEOs have topped out, at over 250% of his third in command. But real income for the workers has been receding. Even worse, some of the professions are experiencing a glut of qualified workers that is depressing wages beyond belief. Then there is the real story of modern slavery, yes, in the US.
AlterNet

Recent findings shed new light on the increasingly unequal terrain of American society. Starting at the top executive level: You may have thought, as I did, that the guys in the C-suites operated as a team -- or, depending on your point of view, a pack or gang -- each getting his fair share of the take. But no, the rising tide in executive pay does not lift all yachts equally. The latest pay gap to worry about is the one between the CEO and his -- or very rarely her -- third in command.


According to a just-reported study by Carola Frydman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Raven E. Saks at the Federal Reserve, 30-40 years ago, the CEO's of major companies earned 80 percent more, on average, than the third-highest-paid executives. By the early part of the 21st century, however, the gap CEO and the third in command had ballooned up to 260 percent.


Now take a look at what's happening at the very bottom of the economic spectrum, where you might have pictured low-wage workers trudging between food banks or mendicants dwelling in cardboard boxes. It turns out, though, that the bottom is a lot lower than that.


On May 16, a millionaire couple in a woodsy Long Island suburb was charged with keeping two Indonesian domestics as slaves for five years, during which the women were paid $100 a month, fed very little, forced to sleep on mats on the floor, and subjected to beatings, cigarette burns and other torments.


This is hardly an isolated case (see my book, Global Woman: Nannies, Maids and Sex Workers in the New Economy, co-edited with Arlie Hochschild.) If the new "top" involves pay in the tens or hundreds of millions, a private jet and a few acres of Nantucket, the new bottom is slavery.


Some of America's slaves are captive domestics, like the Indonesian women in Long Island. Others are factory workers, and at least 10,000 are sex slaves lured from their home country to American brothels by promises of respectable jobs. CEOs and slaves: these are the extreme ends of American class polarization.


But a parallel kind of splitting is going in many of the professions. Top-ranked college professors, for example, enjoy salaries of several hundred thousand a year, often augmented by consulting fees and earnings from their patents or biotech companies. At the other end of the professoriate, you have adjunct teachers toiling away for about $5000 a semester or less, with no benefits or chance of tenure. There was a story a few years ago about an adjunct who commuted to his classes from a homeless shelter in Manhattan, and adjuncts who moonlight as waitresses or cleaning ladies are legion.


Similarly, the legal profession, which is topped by law firm partners billing hundred of dollars an hour, now has a new proletariat of temp lawyers working for $19-25 an hour in sweatshop conditions. On sites like http://temporaryattorney.blogspot.com/, temp lawyers report working 12 hours a day, six days a week, in crowded basements with inadequate sanitary facilities. According to an article in American Lawyer, a legal temp at a major New York firm reports being "corralled in a windowless basement room littered with dead cockroaches," where six out of seven exits were blocked.

Northern Iraq Begins to Unravel

Ethnic cleansing takes on a new seriousness and demonstrates Iraq teetering on the brink of partitian. Arabs are being driven out of Kirkuk, Kurds from Mosul. It seems likely that Turkey is supporting the Arab move in Mosul, hoping to weaken the Kurdish hold on their border areas. Turkey has stated they will not tolerate a Kurdish independent state on their border.
Partition is just a matter of time in Iraq. A united Iraq is only a vague concept in a minorities thoughts, no one seems capable of acting in a nation's interest.
New York Times

Sunni Arab militants, reinforced by insurgents fleeing the new security plan in Baghdad, are trying to rid Mosul of its Kurdish population through violence and intimidation, Kurdish officials said.


Mosul, Iraq’s third largest city, with a population of 1.8 million, straddles the Tigris River on a grassy, windswept plain in the country’s north. It was recently estimated to be about a quarter Kurdish, but Sunni Arabs have already driven out at least 70,000 Kurds and virtually erased the Kurdish presence from the city’s western half, said Khasro Goran, the deputy governor of surrounding Nineveh Province and a Kurd.


The militants “view this as a Sunni-dominated town, and they view the Kurds as encroaching on Mosul,” said Col. Stephen Twitty, commander of the Fourth Brigade, First Cavalry Division, which is deployed in Nineveh. Some Kurdish and Christian enclaves remain on the east side, though their numbers are dwindling. Kurdish officials say the flight has accelerated in recent months, contributing to the wider ethnic and religious partitioning that is taking place all over Iraq.


Nineveh is Iraq’s most diverse province, with a dizzying array of ethnic and religious groups woven into an area about the size of Maryland. For centuries, Arabs, Kurds, Christians, Turkmens, Yezidis and Shabaks lived side by side in these verdant hills, going to the same schools, bartering in the same markets, even intermarrying on occasion.


But what took generations to build is starting to unravel in the shadow of the Sunni Arab insurgency, which is tapping into several wells of ethnic resentment.

Time to Defend Our Freedom of Information

Concerned about protecting our freedom of speech and access to information? The FCC is about to give our rights away to the huge tele-coms who have demonstrated their intent to control our access and expression of information.
This may be our last chance to save the internet from corporate control.

The FCC is on the verge of turning over a large chunk of the public airwaves to the same giant phone and cable companies that control high-speed Internet access for 96 percent of American home users.


This public "spectrum" could revolutionize the Internet in America. Its wireless signal passes through concrete buildings and over mountains; it can connect tens of million of Americans that are now being bypassed by Internet providers like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast.


Don't let the FCC turn over these airwaves to the same price-gouging network giants that control wired access. We need a new alternative to DSL and cable. The FCC must use this wireless opportunity to connect more Americans to an open, neutral and accessible Internet.


Save the Internet

Diary of a Christian Terrorist

Here is a profile of a student at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University. While I'm sure that University officials will disavow any knowledge of his actions. Here is a good example of what sort of Right Wing Christian terrorists are being produced in the Bible belt today.
AlterNet

Visitors to Mark David Uhl's Myspace page will quickly learn that Uhl is a student at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, that he is a devoted Christian, that his name means "Mighty Warrior" -- and that he likes Will Smith's saccharine tear-up-the-club track, "Switch." Uhl reveals his career ambitions on his page as well: "I will join the Army as an officer after college." Already, Uhl was preparing in Liberty's ROTC program.


Uhl waited until he was offline, however, to reveal his plot to kill the family of itinerant Calvinist provocateur Fred Phelps (famous for their "Fag Troops" rallies outside soldiers' funerals). The Phelpses planned to protest Falwell's funeral, a bizarre stunt designed to highlight Falwell's somehow insufficiently draconian attitude towards homosexuals. Uhl made several bombs and allegedly told a family member he planned to use them to attack the Phelps family.


He was arrested soon after and charged with manufacturing explosives. On the surface, Uhl appears to be the latest version of Virginia Tech rampage killer (and "Richard McBeef" author) Cho Seung-Hui. Indeed, both Uhl and Cho were alienated young men who conceived or carried out campaigns of mass murder on college campuses.


But there is a crucial difference between Uhl and Cho: while Cho's motives remain a source of intense debate, Uhl was an a devout evangelical Christian who advocated religious violence in the name of American nationalism. Uhl's blog, featured on his Myspace page, offers a window into the political underpinnings of his bomb plot. In one post, Uhl implores Christians to die on the battlefield for "Uncle Sam." He justifies his call to arms by quoting several Biblical passages and reminding his readers that the "gift of God" is eternal life.


"Christians, we have been given life after death and we should help others receive it and not sit here in our big buildings and sing to ourselves so we can go home and feel good about ourselves," Uhl writes. "Christians, fear of death, fear of death. The fear of death shows you don't believe."


Uhl concludes, "God needs soldiers to fight so his children may live free. Are you afraid??? I'm not. SEND ME!!! "

US Media Distorting Truth About Chavez

The sad thing is, we can no long trust our mainstream media sources. The owners and sponsors of mainstream media are distorting the truth to further their political agenda. And their politics are inconsistency with freedom of speech. Our democracy is in grave danger.
The issue here is the control the multi-national corporations have through the World Bank and via globalization. Chavez has instituted trade policies that favor the Venezuelan people, rather than the multi-nationals.
Fair: Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting

The story is framed in U.S. news media as a simple matter of censorship: Prominent Venezuelan TV station RCTV is being silenced by the authoritarian government of President Hugo Chavez, who is punishing the station for its political criticism of his government.


[...]RCTV and other commercial TV stations were key players in the April 2002 coup that briefly ousted Chávez's democratically elected government. During the short-lived insurrection, coup leaders took to commercial TV airwaves to thank the networks. "I must thank Venevisión and RCTV," one grateful leader remarked in an appearance captured in the Irish film The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. The film documents the networks’ participation in the short-lived coup, in which stations put themselves to service as bulletin boards for the coup—hosting coup leaders, silencing government voices and rallying the opposition to a march on the Presidential Palace that was part of the coup plotters strategy.


On April 11, 2002, the day of the coup, when military and civilian opposition leaders held press conferences calling for Chávez's ouster, RCTV hosted top coup plotter Carlos Ortega, who rallied demonstrators to the march on the presidential palace. On the same day, after the anti-democratic overthrow appeared to have succeeded, another coup leader, Vice-Admiral Victor Ramírez Pérez, told a Venevisión reporter (4/11/02): "We had a deadly weapon: the media. And now that I have the opportunity, let me congratulate you."


That commercial TV outlets including RCTV participated in the coup is not at question; even mainstream outlets have acknowledged as much. As reporter Juan Forero, Jackson Diehl's colleague at the Washington Post, explained (1/18/07), "RCTV, like three other major private television stations, encouraged the protests," resulting in the coup, "and, once Chávez was ousted, cheered his removal." The conservative British newspaper the Financial Times reported (5/21/07), "[Venezuelan] officials argue with some justification that RCTV actively supported the 2002 coup attempt against Mr. Chávez."


As FAIR's magazine Extra! argued last November, "Were a similar event to happen in the U.S., and TV journalists and executives were caught conspiring with coup plotters, it’s doubtful they would stay out of jail, let alone be allowed to continue to run television stations, as they have in Venezuela."


When Chávez returned to power the commercial stations refused to cover the news, airing instead entertainment programs—in RCTV's case, the American film Pretty Woman. By refusing to cover such a newsworthy story, the stations abandoned the public interest and violated the public trust that is seen in Venezuela (and in the U.S.) as a requirement for operating on the public airwaves. Regarding RCTV's refusal to cover the return of Chavez to power, Columbia University professor and former NPR editor John Dinges told Marketplace (5/8/07):

What RCTV did simply can't be justified under any stretch of journalistic principles…. When a television channel simply fails to report, simply goes off the air during a period of national crisis, not because they're forced to, but simply because they don't agree with what's happening, you've lost your ability to defend what you do on journalistic principles.

Patrick McElwee of the U.S.-based group Just Foreign Policy:

The RCTV case is not about censorship of political opinion. It is about the government, through a flawed process, declining to renew a broadcast license to a company that would not get a license in other democracies, including the United States. In fact, it is frankly amazing that this company has been allowed to broadcast for 5 years after the coup, and that the Chávez government waited until its license expired to end its use of the public airwaves.

US Ties Trade Conflict with China to Taiwan

Typical of the militarist actions of the Bush Administration, they have somehow decided that the implicit trade competition with China is one sphere of conflict. When trade talks fail to make progress, the Pentagon sends a threatening message defensive of Taiwan.
In their twisted view of the world, somehow the huge in indebtedness to China must also have some calculation in the process. Perhaps the threat of defaulting on the loans to China has some coercive power. At any rate, the Chinese will certainly take this threat seriously and will also escalate their defensive posture and offensive rhetoric.
washingtonpost.com

In the report, the Defense Department explicitly describes what would happen if China should attack Taiwan, the self-governing democratic island that Beijing claims as its own. It says China does not yet have "the military capability to accomplish with confidence its political objectives on the island, particularly when confronted with the prospect of U.S. intervention."


An attack could severely damage China's economy and lead to international sanctions, spur a Taiwan insurgency that could tie up the Chinese military for years, and possibly cause Beijing to lose its coveted hosting rights for the 2008 Olympics, the report said.


"Finally, China's leaders recognize that a conflict over Taiwan involving the United States would give rise to a long-term hostile relationship between the two nations _ a result that would not be in China's interests," the report said.


[...]The report comes after high-level U.S.-China economic meetings this week failed to reach any breakthrough on the countries' biggest economic dispute: China's currency, which American manufacturers say is undervalued by as much as 40 percent. That makes Chinese products cheaper for Americans and U.S. goods more expensive in China.


The Pentagon report also said the People's Liberation Army has been acquiring better missiles, submarines and aircraft and should more fully explain the purpose of a military buildup that has led some to view China as a threat. It noted, however, that "the PLA remains untested in modern warfare."


Loren Thompson, a defense analyst with the Lexington Institute, said China's military still is relatively modest, despite the country's huge population and booming economy.


"There really isn't much in China's military programs that would lead you to the conclusion that they want to do anything beyond being influential in East Asia," he said.


If the Bush administration were truly worried about the possibility of a Chinese military challenge, he said, it would be rethinking the vibrant trade ties between the countries, which it has yet to do.


"If China was really a threat, would we be moving our factories there at the rate of one a day?" he asked. "During the Cold War, nobody in America ever proposed building television sets or cars in Russia."

Dark Deeds Alleged of Cheney

Recently the President signed an executive order formulating a plan to take dictatorial powers should there be a national emergency. The nature of that emergency was not defined. Nine more ships including two aircraft carriers have entered into the Persian Gulf. Although I've not found confirmation, but I believe that makes four carriers in operating distance of the Gulf. That is the same number that was needed to invade Iraq.
CIA sources have allegedly leaked that Bush has authorized covert operations against Iran. I seriously doubt the CIA would aid the Bush Administration in any such way. This leak serves the Administration's policy and increases pressure on Iran.
Now comes a startling but believable allegation that Cheney has gone rouge. Clearly, there has been entirely too much Israeli access to US foreign policy. In fact, I believe that Israeli agents planted part of the information that the Bush Administration use to justify the invasion of Iraq with the long range intent to confront Iran.
The Washington Note

Multiple sources have reported that a senior aide on Vice President Cheney's national security team has been meeting with policy hands of the American Enterprise Institute, one other think tank, and more than one national security consulting house and explicitly stating that Vice President Cheney does not support President Bush's tack towards Condoleezza Rice's diplomatic efforts and fears that the President is taking diplomacy with Iran too seriously.


This White House official has stated to several Washington insiders that Cheney is planning to deploy an "end run strategy" around the President if he and his team lose the policy argument.


The thinking on Cheney's team is to collude with Israel, nudging Israel at some key moment in the ongoing standoff between Iran's nuclear activities and international frustration over this to mount a small-scale conventional strike against Natanz using cruise missiles (i.e., not ballistic missiles).


This strategy would sidestep controversies over bomber aircraft and overflight rights over other Middle East nations and could be expected to trigger a sufficient Iranian counter-strike against US forces in the Gulf -- which just became significantly larger -- as to compel Bush to forgo the diplomatic track that the administration realists are advocating and engage in another war.


There are many other components of the complex game plan that this Cheney official has been kicking around Washington. The official has offered this commentary to senior staff at AEI and in lunch and dinner gatherings which were to be considered strictly off-the-record, but there can be little doubt that the official actually hopes that hawkish conservatives and neoconservatives share this information and then rally to this point of view. This official is beating the brush and doing what Joshua Muravchik has previously suggested -- which is to help establish the policy and political pathway to bombing Iran.


The zinger of this information is the admission by this Cheney aide that Cheney himself is frustrated with President Bush and believes, much like Richard Perle, that Bush is making a disastrous mistake by aligning himself with the policy course that Condoleezza Rice, Bob Gates, Michael Hayden and McConnell have sculpted.


According to this official, Cheney believes that Bush can not be counted on to make the "right decision" when it comes to dealing with Iran and thus Cheney believes that he must tie the President's hands.


On Tuesday evening, i spoke with a former top national intelligence official in this Bush administration who told me that what I was investigating and planned to report on regarding Cheney and the commentary of his aide was "potentially criminal insubordination" against the President. I don't believe that the White House would take official action against Cheney for this agenda-mongering around Washington -- but I do believe that the White House must either shut Cheney and his team down and give them all garden view offices so that they can spend their days staring out their windows with not much to do or expect some to begin to think that Bush has no control over his Vice President.

A Coherent Voice in the Darkness

John Edwards stands taller every day in my view. Most recently, he's reputiated the Democratic leadership capitulation to the Bush Iraq policy. Secondly, he notes the problem with whole concept of the "War on Terror" and the need the address the underlying cause: global poverty.
John Edwards for President

Russia's direction is critically important to America's national security—from non-proliferation and energy security to the spread of HIV/AIDS. And as our report's title made clear, Russia has been headed in the wrong direction, whether in its de-democratization or by bullying its neighbors.


Unfortunately, we have not been able to concentrate sufficient energy on critical issues like getting our relationship with Russia right. Instead, we've been distracted by larger problems created by this president's military and national security policy.


The core of this presidency has been a political doctrine that George Bush calls the "Global War on Terror." He has used this doctrine like a sledgehammer to justify the worst abuses and biggest mistakes of his administration, from Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, to the war in Iraq. The worst thing about the Global War on Terror approach is that it has backfired—our military has been strained to the breaking point and the threat from terrorism has grown.


[..]Iraq has done tremendous damage to the U.S. interests in the Middle East, our military, and to our moral authority to lead. It has also completely consumed our country's foreign policy debate. In Congress and the White House, the focus has been on when to get out, how to get out, and how quickly. Too little consideration has been given to what happens after we get out—and that is the very least we owe to the men and women of the U.S. armed forces and their families, who have sacrificed so much.


I believe that once we are out of Iraq, the U.S. must retain sufficient forces in the region to prevent a genocide, deter a regional spillover of the civil war, and prevent an Al Qaeda safe haven. We will most likely need to retain Quick Reaction Forces in Kuwait and in the Persian Gulf. We will also need some presence in Baghdad, inside the Green Zone, to protect the American Embassy and other personnel. Finally, we will need a diplomatic offensive to engage the rest of the world in Iraq's future—including Middle Eastern nations and our allies in Europe.


[..]As we all saw six years ago, on September 11, America's greatness alone does not protect us from very real threats.


At that moment, the president could have sent a message of swift justice but also moral leadership. He could have told us where destroying Al Qaeda fit into the broader challenges America faces in the new century. He could have asked all Americans to sacrifice in this new struggle, inviting a hopeful new era of citizenship as the ultimate answer to the terrorists' cynical, evil attack.


But he didn't. Instead, he adopted the most short-sighted, ideological policies available. His strategy has put severe strain on our military... tarnished our moral standing in the eyes of the world... and emboldened our enemies.


It is now clear that George Bush's misnamed "war on terror" has backfired—and is now part of the problem.


The war on terror is a slogan designed only for politics, not a strategy to make America safe. It's a bumper sticker, not a plan. It has damaged our alliances and weakened our standing in the world. As a political "frame," it's been used to justify everything from the Iraq War to Guantanamo to illegal spying on the American people. It's even been used by this White House as a partisan weapon to bludgeon their political opponents. Whether by manipulating threat levels leading up to elections, or by deeming opponents "weak on terror," they have shown no hesitation whatsoever about using fear to divide.


But the worst thing about this slogan is that it hasn't worked. The so-called "war" has created even more terrorism—as we have seen so tragically in Iraq. The State Department itself recently released a study showing that worldwide terrorism has increased 25% in 2006, including a 40% surge in civilian fatalities.


By framing this as a "war," we have walked right into the trap that terrorists have set—that we are engaged in some kind of clash of civilizations and a war against Islam.

Read on for a comprehensive review of Edward's foreign policy ideas. He is truly a breath of fresh air.

Gore Hasn't Ruled Out Running for President

Since Barry Goldwater, politicians have decided that being too honest will get you rejected by the voters. Because of dishonest politicians, our country is in grave danger of losing it's democracy.
Perhaps, the greatest statesman of our time is speaking out. Having already lost an election being percieved as "wishy washy" waffling on the issues, he's been bluntly honest ever since. Perhaps because of that, he's not running for President.
But would he accept a draft from the floor of the convention? I'd bet my paycheck he would.
New York Times Blog

On whether he may run for president again, and what it would take for him to run:


“I’m not looking for factors that will cause me to run. I’m not – some people here have heard me answer this question enough times that I worry about being repetitious. It’s true that I haven’t completely ruled it out, I don’t think it’s necessary to do that. I don’t expect to run, so I don’t know how to answer that question.”


“Maybe at some point in the future I will have some interest in doing that again. But I don’t feel that right now.”


On whether he believed the Supreme Court stole the 2000 presidential election with its decision in Bush v. Gore:


“I’ve chosen not to challenge the rule of law, because in our system there really is no intermediate step between a Supreme Court decision and violent revolution. When the Supreme Court makes a decision, no matter how strongly one disagrees with it, one faces a choice –are we, in John Adams’ phrase, a nation of laws, or is it a contest made on raw power?”


On whether he believes he won the state of Florida in 2000:


“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll write another book about that.”


On the state of American democracy:


“Mark my words: it is in danger today, it has been weakened to a very dangerous degree. The politicians are paralyzed. The system is not going to right itself until we, all of us, take a much greater responsibility in participating as citizens.”

Oil Law Debate in Iraq Headed for Disaster

All the hoohaa about the surge appears to be headed for naught. This think tank which in my experience is middle of the road and seldom emphatic, is quite blunt about the incompetence of the diplomatic efforts by the US with the Iraqis on the oil law that could heal most wounds. It's predicted to fail here. The whole article is worth the read.
PINR

It now appears impossible for Iraq's parliament to pass the national oil law by the government-imposed deadline of May 31, 2007. The immediate cost of this failure will be economic -- while many of the Western majors would not invest in Iraq due to the remaining security risks, Eastern and smaller oil firms appear willing if the political risks were first removed through legislation.


However, the long-term damage done by the failure to reach a consensus on the oil law will be a hardening of the sectarian fractures in Iraq's political landscape. The debates surrounding the oil law do not center on what is best for the country as a whole, but only on what is best for each sectarian group. By defining the debate as yet another zero sum competition, Iraq's politicians have made it impossible to emerge from the negotiations without at least one group feeling like the losers. The U.S. Embassy in Iraq has only encouraged this situation by insisting on a greater role for foreign firms in future investments.


[..]Iraq's national oil law has become an important factor in gauging the country's progress on political reconciliation. Judging by the debate surrounding the oil law, such a reconciliation will not be in the offing any time soon. Each sectarian and political group brings to the debate its own agenda, and these are incompatible with each other. Rather than looking for areas where compromise might be found, each group has dug in and looks to demand further concessions before voting for the oil law.


This puts Washington and al-Maliki in the precarious position of pushing for any law to be passed, even if it may be against their interests in the long term. Washington has hinged its military surge on progress from al-Maliki's government to pass measures demonstrating the political reconciliation of Iraq's sectarian groups. In turn, al-Maliki must push for the passage of such measures out of fear of losing support from Washington.


This is a situation that the Kurdish, Sunni, and al-Sadr-led groups would like to use to their advantage. Because the debate has been framed in these zero-sum terms, there will invariably be a loser. This, by definition, makes the possibility of Iraq's oil law leading to national reconciliation zero. It is likely that the law will be passed in some form in the next few weeks, but its passage will only hasten rather than slow Iraq's drift toward factionalism.

Provoking Iran: Leaked "Covert" Ops against Iran and Two Carrier Battle Groups Join Two Already in Gulf

I think we are seeing the predicted hard play to provoke Iran into defending it's honor with two major moves. Special Ops have been in Iran since at least late 2004. So the most recent leak is very likely disinformation designed to provoke Iran into acting when the US has the strongest hand available, four carrier battle groups in the Gulf.
Last month, some were asserting that as soon as there are four carrier battle groups in the Gulf, look for a provocation to Iran, a "Gulf of Tonkin" incident designed to make it appear that Iran started the fight.
Well, there are now four carriers in the Gulf. One has been scheduled to be relieved, and another was a last minute addition for the "exercises".
Al Jazeera

Nine US warships carrying 17,000 personnel have entered the Gulf in a show of force off Iran's coast. Navy officials said on Wednesday that this was the largest daytime assembly of ships since the 2003 Iraq war. The group of ships crossed the Straits of Hormuz at roughly 03:55 GMT on Wednesday.


Rear Admiral Kevin Quinn, the group leader, said the ships would conduct exercises as part of a long-planned effort to assure regional allies of US commitment to Gulf security. Navy officials said the decision to send a second aircraft carrier was made at a last minute, without giving a reason.

It's interesting to see the comments below this post slamming ABC for releasing "secret" information. Bush gets a double punch, Iran gets provoked and ABC gets a black eye. These are scary times.
The Blotter

The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert "black" operation to destabilize the Iranian government, current and former officials in the intelligence community tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com.

US Muslims Are Overwhelmingly Against Civilian Bombing

I found it interesting how different mainstreet sources deliberately distorted this piece of news to grab a headline by featuring the first line below. Note that the catagory includes often, sometimes, and rarely, an answer so broad that concievably many people took the sarcastic definition of "rarely" to mean never or nearly so.
It is notable that 53% of American Muslims have had a more difficult life since 9/11. But again, the question seems of dubious value. The majority of Americans of all ethnic orientations would say life has been more difficult since 9/11.
National Post

The survey found 26 percent of younger Muslims believed suicide bombings are often, sometimes or rarely justified, compared with 69 percent who believed such attacks can never be accepted. By contrast, 13 percent of all U.S. Muslims felt suicide attacks could be justified often, sometimes or rarely, while 78 percent completely rejected the deadly tactic that has been used by Al Qaeda and other Islamist militants. The poll, conducted from Jan. 24 to April 30 in four languages, had a 5 percent margin of error.


"It's not something they see themselves engaging in. It's more of them seeing what's happening abroad and ... feeling that in these situations, suicide bombings are justified for others," said Farid Senzai of the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, a Michigan-based research group that studies U.S. domestic and foreign policy. Mr. Senzai attended the news conference as a member of the Pew survey project's outside advisory board.


Experts said the level of Muslim youth support for suicide bombings was similar to patterns seen in Europe. Support in some degree for suicide bombings among younger European Muslims ranged from 22 percent in Germany to 29 percent in Spain, 35 percent in Britain and 42 percent in France, according to a May 2006 Pew poll.


Pew estimates that there are 2.35 million Muslims living in the United States, a tiny fraction of an overall U.S. population of 300 million people. But Muslim population estimates vary widely, ranging as high as 7 million, because the U.S. Census Bureau does not ask about religious affiliations in its national surveys.


Pollsters said they were surprised to find that only 40 percent of U.S. Muslims believed Arabs carried out the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington. The survey suggested 53 percent of Muslims believe their life has become more difficult since the 2001 attacks because of discrimination or government surveillance. But the findings also showed that 78 percent of U.S. Muslims are either "pretty happy" or "very happy" with their lives.

Stop Gasoline Price Gouging

Do you believe that the price of gasoline reflects a market driven price? Or do you believe there is rampant price gouging. And since oil companies have failed for many years to build more refineries, despite billions of dollars of profits, they have fixed the price artificially high. Oil companies are no different than electric or other utility companies. They need to be highly regulated to prevent abuse of power.
You can do your part.
MoveOn.org

Stop Price Gouging


Gasoline prices are predicted to be even higher than last summer, even though Big Oil just announced record profits. Enough is enough! A bill in the House would make gasoline price gouging a federal crime, and it could pass this week! Can you help be sure it does? A compiled petition with your individual comment will be presented to your Representative.

Al Gore, uncensored, in 'The Assault on Reason'

Al Gore is a man who's presidency was stolen from him. Rather than being bitter, he leads. His new book tells the world what he's been thinking. Knowing that honesty does not a president elect, he lays it all out in black and white for those who dare to read. Hopefully, a many uninformed Americans will read and become informed. Our way of life is threatened to the very core. And he is the only person telling us from a national bully pulpit.
BOOK REVIEW - Los Angeles Times

What he is telling us today — with the moral authority of a man who many believe was wrongly barred from the presidency — is that American democracy and indeed American society are in danger from the authoritarians of the right. Without much polite varnish, he warns that self-serving plutocrats and self-righteous theocrats have nearly banished reason from the public square; their machinations disable us as we try to confront the enormous problems that threaten our future. According to Gore, Americans cannot adequately protect the nation from terrorism because our ideas about national security have been distorted by fear and falsehoods. Nor can we address what he calls "the carbon crisis," potentially "the worst catastrophe in the history of human civilization," because the truth about global warming has been obscured by industrial and government propaganda.


[..]His insistence on detail and thoroughness, which may seem like a personal tic in an era of sound bites, is rooted in his conviction that most Americans have little understanding of the world in which they live. He worries that mass alienation from politics and immersion in the entertainment culture along with poor civic education have created a population that is woefully uninformed.


He cites polls and studies showing that the majority of citizens know almost nothing about the Constitution or the system of checks and balances that forms the basic structure of American government.


In his same concluding chapter, however, he suggests that the Internet, a text-based medium that encourages participation rather than passivity, may still save us, if we only have the wit to preserve it from corporate encroachment. For someone who became intimately aware of the system's worst flaws, he remains remarkably optimistic that the emerging technologies will enable democracy's advocates to triumph.

Update: PLO OKs Army to Enter Refugee Camp near Tripoli

Xinhua

Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) representative in Lebanon Abbas Zaki on Monday pledged "cooperation" with the Lebanese state and its army to wipe out the militants fighting with the army in a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon.


After talks with Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Seniora at the Grand Serail (the premier's office) Monday, Zaki stressed the need to enhance "full cooperation" with the Lebanese state and its army to resolve what he termed Fatah al-Islam's "phenomenon."


Some 30,000 displaced Palestinians live at the camp. Under a 38-year-old deal, Lebanese police and soldiers can not enter the camp.


Seniora had been negotiating a break of the rule and seeking to get into the camp to wipe out the Islamic militants. Zaki said he left it up to Seniora to decide whether to send the army into the camp, but warned that "entering the camp does not mean it will be easy to get rid of this phenomenon."


"We are open... to all the demands of the Lebanese state. We hope to cooperate in order to eliminate the Fatah al-Islam phenomenon, on the condition innocent civilians do not pay a high price," said Zaki.

Lebanon Is a Powder Keg

Hezbollah are supported by the Iranians. Now Fatah al-Islam apparently supported by Syria with loose Al Qaeda ties, trained and hardened in the Iraq war, have returned to the Palestinian refugee camps to recruit and arm. The Lebanese Army is forbidden to enter the camps to prevent civilian slaughter. Now Fatah al-Islam has taken to the streets to confront the Lebanese Army directly and apparently to kill Christian civilians.
The legacy of Israel's refusal of the right of return for Palestinian refugees rears it's ugly head again. The problem ignored festers and threatens to ignite another civil war in Lebanon.
New York Times

Fierce clashes erupted between Lebanese Army soldiers and Islamic militants in the vicinity of a Palestinian refugee camp here on Sunday, leaving 22 Lebanese soldiers and 17 militants dead and dozens injured in one of the most significant challenges to the army since the end of Lebanon’s bloody civil war.


The confrontation with the Islamist group, Fatah al-Islam, raised fears of a wider battle to rout militants in the rest of Lebanon’s 12 refugee camps, where radical Islam has been gaining in recent years. That, in turn, raised the possibility of a deadly conclusion to the crisis, placing strains on the embattled government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.


While anxious not to seem weak in the face of the militant challenge, military experts say, the government and the military also want to avoid any scenes that might draw comparisons to the Israeli attacks on Palestinian camps in the West Bank and Gaza.


Many of the complex crosscurrents of Lebanon’s politics were on display in the crisis. The army, under an agreement with the Palestinian leadership and Arab countries, was not allowed to enter the camp. Lebanese citizens, who hold the Palestinians responsible for sparking the civil war in 1975, cheered the army on the streets of Tripoli and outside the camp.


Syria, which Lebanon accuses of backing Fatah al-Islam, closed several border crossings in the area. And the fighting broke out just as the Security Council had taken up a resolution to try suspects tied to the February 2005 assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri. Syria has been accused in previous investigations of ordering the killing, but vigorously denies any connection.


Tensions rose further late Sunday night when a car bomb exploded in a nearly empty parking lot in a Christian section of eastern Beirut, killing one person, wounding 12 others and sparking fears of an orchestrated terrorist campaign. Last month, Lebanese authorities charged four members of Fatah al-Islam with bombing two commuter buses carrying Lebanese Christians in another Christian district.


Fatah al-Islam has been a growing concern for security authorities in Lebanon and much of the region. Intelligence officials say it counts between 150 and 200 fighters in its ranks and subscribes to the fundamentalist precepts of Al Qaeda.


The group’s leader, Shakir al-Abssi, is a fugitive Palestinian and former associate of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the former leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia who was killed last year in Iraq. Both men were sentenced to death in absentia for the 2002 murder of an American diplomat, Lawrence Foley, in Jordan.


In the six months since he arrived from Syria, Mr. Abssi has established a base of operations at the Nahr al Bared Palestinian refugee camp on the northern outskirts of this city, and the scene of the fighting on Sunday.

Bush Willing to Defy the Law for Wiretaps

Maybe this is the smoking gun that will eventuallly take down Gonzales. Even our past AG Ashcroft wasn't willing to defy the law to give Bush what he wanted. He made a death bed stand against a Bush/Gonzales assault on rule of law. Ashcroft's deputy Mr. Comey, acting AG at the time, gives a vivid depiction of the bedside confrontation. It's a stunning video of a story told by a very honest former deputy AG.
washingtonpost.com

Mr. Comey's vivid depiction, worthy of a Hollywood script, showed the lengths to which the administration and the man who is now attorney general were willing to go to pursue the surveillance program. First, they tried to coerce a man in intensive care -- a man so sick he had transferred the reins of power to Mr. Comey -- to grant them legal approval. Having failed, they were willing to defy the conclusions of the nation's chief law enforcement officer and pursue the surveillance without Justice's authorization. Only in the face of the prospect of mass resignations -- Mr. Comey, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III and most likely Mr. Ashcroft himself -- did the president back down.


As Mr. Comey testified, "I couldn't stay, if the administration was going to engage in conduct that the Department of Justice had said had no legal basis." The crisis was averted only when, the morning after the program was reauthorized without Justice's approval, President Bush agreed to fix whatever problem Justice had with it (the details remain classified). "We had the president's direction to do . . . what the Justice Department believed was necessary to put this matter on a footing where we could certify to its legality," Mr. Comey said.


The dramatic details should not obscure the bottom line: the administration's alarming willingness, championed by, among others, Vice President Cheney and his counsel, David Addington, to ignore its own lawyers. Remember, this was a Justice Department that had embraced an expansive view of the president's inherent constitutional powers, allowing the administration to dispense with following the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Justice's conclusions are supposed to be the final word in the executive branch about what is lawful or not, and the administration has emphasized since the warrantless wiretapping story broke that it was being done under the department's supervision.


Now, it emerges, they were willing to override Justice if need be. That Mr. Gonzales is now in charge of the department he tried to steamroll may be most disturbing of all.

The Department of Defense -- Bringing Historical Revisionism to a High School Near You

People have manipulated history for a long time. When I was young, the history of American Indian was absent from our text books. I suspect this was an error of omission motivated by collective guilt rather than a deliberate attempt to manipulate the masses.
Recently, the Right Wing-nut Christians have been attempting to influence the history of America to one more consistent to their goal of decreasing the separation of Church and State. Here is a disturbing story about high school textbooks approved by the Department of Defence for ROTC programs all over America. Read the whole story. An excerpt can not do justice to the complexity of the content.
Talk To Action

In his book What If America Were A Christian Nation Again?, D. James Kennedy presents the following inaccurate explanation of Thomas Jefferson's famous "wall of separation" letter -- an explanation concocted decades ago to make the reason for Jefferson's letter fit the notion that what he meant by this phrase was a one-way wall to keep the government out of the church, but not the church out of the government, and that the only thing the Establishment Clause was intended to prevent was the establishment a national religion.

"...Late in 1801, while he was president, he received a letter from the Association of Baptists in Danbury, Connecticut, who were concerned about the threat of the newly formed federal government. This `leviathan,' they feared, could become a great danger to their Christian faith and to their churches."


"...On the first day of the year 1802, Jefferson wrote back to the Danbury Baptists. In this letter, he said that he was greatly impressed that the American people, through the First Amendment had, in effect, erected a `wall of separation between the church and the state,' so the Baptists didn't need to fear that the federal government was going to intrude upon their religion or in any way disturb their faith."

This sort of historical revisionism might be expected in homeschools and at Christian high schools, such as D. James Kennedy's own Westminster Academy, and the spreading of it by these means is bad enough. But now, bit by bit, this same historical revisionism is making its way into our public schools. I've already written extensively about how this is being accomplished via the National Council On Bible Curriculum In Public Schools (NCBCPS) course. The NCBCPS, however, is not the only source of bad history in our public high schools. There is another, which, unlike the NCBCPS, is not produced by a private organization, but by the Department of Defense -- for the JROTC program.


[..]Why is the issue of separation between church and state in this chapter in the first place? The lessons in this chapter teach the cadets to decide on a position on an issue by majority rule, and then form a plan to promote that position. This is appropriate for the other examples that follow in the textbook, such as whether or not the voting age should be lowered to sixteen, but to foster the notion that a fundamental principle like church/state separation is subject to majority rule is incredible. To present what is described as "one perspective" on this issue when that "perspective" is based on inaccurate history is beyond incredible.

Iran courts the US at Russia's expense

With all the threats and counter threats traded by the Bush Administration and Ahmadinejad
over the past week, the Asia Times Online tells a totally different story of the strategy that may lie behind the scenes of the planned negotiation between the US and Iran over the fate of Iraq. Perhaps the Bush Administration has a hidden motivation to come to some sort of agreement with Iran because of the Russian-US drift towards another cold war.
The US has been losing ground in virturally every foreign policy agenda. It's about time the Bush Administration can pursue a mutually beneficial course with a potential enemy.

"Iran's foreign policy is moving in the direction of constructive engagement on all fronts," a member of Iran's parliament, the Majlis, announced, adding that the resumption of relations with Egypt will have "positive effects on the whole region".


It is now up to Egypt to bury the hatchet and respond to Ahmadinejad's significant policy announcement. According to some Tehran political analysts, however, there are some voices within the Egyptian government who prefer the status quo, whereby Egypt can capitalize on foreign assistance as a result of its role as a counterweight to Iran, given the growing reliance of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) on "out of area" Egypt.


On the other hand, Iran's GCC policy, of pushing the arch of the common or collective security arrangement by all the Gulf states based on the principle of self-reliance, undermines Egypt's attempt to insert itself in the region's security calculus. Similarly, the US is disquieted by official GCC pronouncements that echo Iran's call for the withdrawal of foreign forces from the region.


Should Iran remain consistent on the present pattern of regional policy and succeed in helping with the security nightmare in Iraq, then the US/Israeli policy of creating a Sunni-led anti-Iran alliance in the Arab world would vanish into thin air. The process of confidence-building between Iran and the GCC states, which are in dispute with Iran over the three islands of Abu Moussa and Little and Big Tunb, is a long one, however, and Tehran must be careful not send any "mixed signals" that would eradicate the present gains. The GCC comprises Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.


[..]A shrewd "geo-economic" master stroke by Moscow, this and other energy-based initiatives aimed at making Europe rather helplessly dependent on Russia as a main energy provider undermine the United States' post-Cold War global strategy, and this is precisely where the resolution of the Iraq crisis and possibility of a detente between Iran and the US play a key role.


It is, in fact, instructive that not everyone in Moscow is thrilled about that possibility, and that may explain why Russia may be inclined to stall on a nuclear compromise, in light of alarmist commentaries by various Russian experts about the threat of a nuclear Iran. The question, then, becomes: Who has more to fear of a nuclear-armed Iran, Washington or Moscow? The answer depends to some extent on developments on the US-Russia front - will they take a turn for the better or worse?


Lest we forget, Moscow is designing a new Middle East policy and has been trying to get closer to the GCC states, and this is not necessarily in harmony with Iran's foreign policy either. From Tehran's vantage point, Russia's refusal to deliver nuclear fuel to Iran and to complete the Bushehr power plant, or to enter Iran's bidding for new power plants, has left a bitter taste with the Iranians for a long time to come, and the damage cannot be undone overnight.


The trick for Tehran is how to exploit the Washington-Moscow rift to its maximum advantage and pursue its own regional security objectives, eg, by building timely bridges with the Arab world, without sacrificing anything.


Given the UN sanctions and the continuing nuclear standoff, the answer to this question is not simple or straightforward, and the absence of the slightest balance or delicate nuance might backfire on the whole edifice of Iran's foreign policy. Iran must move all its chips on the multiple tables of diplomacy - with Arab and non-Arab neighbors, Russia, Europe and the US, in tandem with one another.


This is an exceedingly difficult task, akin to playing multiple games of chess simultaneously, with each move impacting the picture on the other chessboards. For now, there is a growing consensus that Tehran has overcome some of the basic deficiencies of a "one-dimensional" foreign policy under former president Mohammad Khatami, which pushed the arch of cooperation without adequate resort to Iran's hard power and attendant tough diplomacy.


The challenge for Ahmadinejad as he re-embraces some of the wisdom of the Khatami era by putting the accent on peaceful co-existence and dialogue is how not to recycle either that past or the more recent past of his incipient months in office, when unreconstructed sloganism appeared to have gained the upper hand.


The dictates of Iran's survival in the tough international milieu have imposed a new realism that is beginning to generate a new harvest of foreign-policy pluses for the country.

Bio Fuels Are Not a Solution

Bio Fuels threatens the homes, livelihoods, and food resources of the poorest of the poor in this world. Already, while we have food enough to feed the world, the cost of distribution prevents the hungry from being fed. The more arable land devoted to bio fuel, the less food their will be. And the less subsistence communities there will be in the third world.
How many people are we willing to starve for bio fuel?
Al Jazeera

The natives of Indonesia and Malaysia are among 60 million indigenous people facing the threat of being driven off their lands to make way for an expansion of biofuel crops around the world, the head of a UN panel has said.


Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, chairwoman of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, said the explosion of biofuel crop cultivation threatened to destroy native cultures by forcing them into big cities.


Indonesia and Malaysia are among those most at risk because together they produce 80 per cent of the world's palm oil - one of the crops used to make biofuels.


Tauli-Corpuz said that in one Indonesian province, West Kalimantan, the UN had identified five million indigenous people who were likely to be displaced because of the expansion in the production of biofuel crops.


Indigenous people who depend on forests almost entirely for their survival are being forced to migrate to already overcrowded cities, where many of them end up living in slums with limited access to services and poor housing, Ida Nicolaisen, an expert in indigenous cultures and member of the UN forum, said.

Multinational Hegemony Challenged

Blog from Bolivia
It is an institution little known outside the world of international corporate attorneys, but it can assert power greater than national governments. It is called the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ISCID), a secretive trade court operated by the World Bank in Washington.
This week three Latin Governments began the process of unraveling its powers. At a summit meeting the governments of Bolivia, Venezuela, and Nicaragua announced that they were ending their participation in ICSID. They are pulling out. The move is an important event in the evolving politics of global trade.
ICSID is the same trade court handpicked by the U.S. Bechtel Corporation, in its unsuccessful effort to sue Bolivians for $50 million in the aftermath of the Cochabamba Water Revolt that ousted the company. The ICSID process is highly secretive. The public and the media aren't allowed to know when or where case tribunals meet, who testifies or what they say. An international pressure campaign waged by more than 300 groups in 43 countries eventually led Bechtel officials to drop their case in January 2006, for a token payment equal to thirty cents. Read more about the case here.
The three Latin American governments declared at a summit in Merida, Venezuela, "[We] emphatically reject the legal, media and diplomatic pressure of some multinationals that ... resist the sovereign rulings of countries, making threats and initiating suits in international arbitration."
The Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies and Food & Water Watch just released a report analyzing how the World Bank/ICSID dispute resolution process "has given global companies unprecedented power to undermine governments’ authority to protect human rights and natural resources and pursue national development strategies." That report can be read here.

Wilkerson Sees Grounds For Impeachment of Bush/Cheney

Powell's Chief of Staff Wilkerson is loyal to the truth, and the spirit that was the once honored Secretary of State and Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US Armed Forces.
Powell was loyal to his President, a President who didn't deserve him. In that way, Powell was the good soldier. But as Secretary of State, he had another job: representing the US to the world. While he bucked the Administration on a lot of issues, when push came to shove about Iraq, he buckled under pressure of Rumsfeld and Cheney. The cabal then left him without much of a role at State. The cabal was running diplomacy, the Department of State had been effectively sidelined. Powell knew it. I suspect he buckled hoping he could still make a difference, if not in Iraq, maybe Jerusalem. Thus he stayed on well beyond his welcome, meeting with Israeli and Palestinian representatives. But Bush gave him no support. Powell had the power to talk, nothing else. Nothing was done.
AfterDowningStreet.org

"I really do think that our founding fathers, Hamilton, Washington, Monroe, Madison, would all be astounded that over the course of our short history as a country, 200 plus years, we haven't used that little two to three lines in Article II of the Constitution more frequently, the impeachment clause. I do believe that they would have thought had they been asked by you or whomever at the time of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia 'Do you think this will be exercised?' they would have said 'Of course it will, every generation they'll have to throw some bastard out'. That's a form of accountability too. It's ultimate accountability."


After an interruption, Wilkerson continued: "The language in that article, the language in those two or three lines about impeachment is nice and precise – it's high crimes and misdemeanors. You compare Bill Clinton's peccadilloes for which he was impeached to George Bush's high crimes and misdemeanors or Dick Cheney's high crimes and misdemeanors, and I think they pale in significance."


Ashbrook asked for some examples of such high crimes and misdemeanors, and Wilkerson replied: "I think that the caller was right. I think we went into this war for specious reasons. I think we went into this war not too much unlike the way we went into the Spanish American War with the Hearst press essentially goading the American people and the leadership into war. That was a different time in a different culture, in a different America. We're in a very different place today and I think we essentially got goaded into the war through some of the same means."

The Pope Rewrites History, Condemns Marxism and Unbridled Capitalism

All religions at one time or another have rewritten history in hopes of containing dissent. Benedict, showing his colors as the "Inquisition Pope" rewrites the history of the European invasion of the New World. In a what appears to be an endorsement of the blatantly racist "The White Man's Burden" first expressed in a poem by the English poet Rudyard Kipling. "At face value it appears to be a rhetorical command to white men to colonize and rule people of other nations for their own benefit (both the people and the duty may be seen as representing the "burden" of the title), and because of this has become symbolic of Eurocentrism."
I'm sure the people of Montezuma's empire would see it differently. Cortez imposed Christianity in the context of a blood bath and theft of gold and other treasures of the Aztec empire.
Telegraph

Pope Benedict XVI condemned globalization and Marxism as the causes of many of Latin America’s ills on the final day of his trip to Brazil, and lamented the wide gap between the region’s small elite and its poor masses.


“The Marxist system, where it found its way into government, not only left a sad heritage of economic and ecological destruction, but also a painful destruction of the human spirit,” the pope told a bishops’ conference on Sunday before flying back to Rome after a five-day visit to the country with the largest Catholic population in the world.


Benedict also lashed out at unbridled capitalism and globalization. He warned the two could give “rise to a worrying degradation of personal dignity through drugs, alcohol and deceptive illusions of happiness.”


The pope did not name any countries in his criticism of capitalism and Marxism, but Latin America has become deeply divided in recent years amid a sharp tilt to the left - with the election of leftist leaders in Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua and the re-election of President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.


Marxism also still influences some grassroots Catholic activists in Latin America, remnants of the liberation theology movement Benedict moved to crush when he was a cardinal.


Liberation theology holds that the Christian faith should be reinterpreted specifically to deliver oppressed people from injustice.


Touching on a sensitive historical episode, Benedict said Latin American Indians had been “silently longing” to become Christians when Spanish and Portuguese conquerors took over their native lands centuries ago.


“In effect, the proclamation of Jesus and of his Gospel did not at any point involve an alienation of the pre-Columbus cultures, nor was it the imposition of a foreign culture,” he said.


Many Indians, however, say the conquest of Latin America by Catholic Spaniards and Portuguese lead to misery, enslavement and death.

Sometimes The Truth Hurts

Despite the suffering the Jews experienced under the black cloud of fascism, the treatment they have imposed on the Palestinians has been compared many times to apartheid in So. Africa and fascism. Here, a South African who should know says the occupation of Palestine has been worse than apartheid.
Citizen.co.za

South African Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils Thursday accused Israel of conducting a policy against the Palestinians that was worse than apartheid.


Speaking on the sidelines of a UN meeting on the situation in the Palestinian territories, Kasrils said South Africa’s townships had never been attacked by helicopter gunships and tanks, in contrast to the military means employed by Israel.
“The analogy between apartheid and Israel’s occupation of Palestine is often made. It is not the same thing. The occupation is absolutely worse,” Kasrils told reporters.


“It is important that we tell the Israeli authorities they are behaving like fascists when they do certain things, although we are not calling it a fascist state.”


Kastrils called on the United States and European Union to lift their economic and political embargo of the Palestinian Authority now that Hamas and Fatah have joined in a government of national unity.

Child Soldiers

The Nation

Possibly the world's most unrecognized form of child abuse, child soldiering has become a defining feature of modern warfare. This horrifying new face of armed conflict is the subject of three important recent books--Briggs's Innocents Lost, P.W. Singer's Children at War and Ishmael Beah's A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier.
Singer's study leaves little doubt about just how prevalent the phenomenon has become. The statistics he presents speak for themselves. In more than three-fourths of armed conflicts around the world today there are significant numbers of child combatants. At any one time, there are more than 300,000 child soldiers serving with nonstate armed groups. In addition, more than fifty states actively recruit hundreds of thousands of soldiers under 18, in contravention of international law. It is in Africa, considered to be the epicenter of the child soldier phenomenon, that child soldiering is most widespread. Where there is conflict on the continent, one can be sure that children will be found right in the middle of it. In the 1991-2001 civil war between Sierra Leone's government and the rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF), as many as 80 percent of all fighters were between the ages of 7 and 14. In the two waves of civil war that engulfed Liberia between 1989 and 2003, up to 70 percent of government and rebel combatants were children.

Women Under Attack: The Talibanization of Iraq

At one time, Iraq was the most progressive place for women in the Muslim world. Now it has been nearly completely Talibanized.
Thank you George W. Bush.
AlterNet

"We live in a state of continuous fear -- if our hair shows on the street, if we're not veiled enough at work," says Mohammed, 47. "It's a new experience for women in Iraq. After four years, it's turned into Afghanistan under the Taliban."


Throughout much of recent history, Iraq was one of the most progressive countries in the Middle East for women. These rights diminished somewhat after the 1991 Gulf War, partly because of Saddam Hussein's new embrace of Islamic tribal law as a way of consolidating power, and partly due to the United Nations' sanctions against the regime. Still, as bad as it was during Saddam's time, women's well-being and security have sharply deteriorated since the fall of his regime.


Furthermore, extremists in both Sunni and Shiite areas have taken over pockets of the country and imposed their own Taliban-like laws on the population. Women college students are stopped and harassed on campuses, so going to school is a risk. Islamist "misery gangs" regularly patrol the streets in many areas, beating and harassing women who are not "properly" dressed or behaved.

When Class Warfare Goes Local

Montana and Minnesota share an issue these days. Very likely so does the rest of the country. With all the head way the super rich have made in the past 8 years of the Bush Administration, they continue to squeeze the rest of us on the local level. Sometimes even the issues stand out as obscenely unfair.
But the rich count on controlling government by pinching the working class until they are too busy and stressed to pay attention to the political process. Then the lobbyists get busy padding the pockets of legislators.
The only solution is watchful vigilence. And it would help to tax the rich until they are too tight to pay for political adventures.
SFGate.com

Our story begins in the Montana legislature, though it could be anywhere, as this lawmaking body is a microcosm of America's ideological divides. Democrats pushed to boost education spending and give each resident homeowner a $400 property tax rebate. To fund the plan, they proposed closing tax loopholes and strengthening tax enforcement in a state where roughly half of all Fortune 500 companies doing business get away with paying less than $500 a year in taxes.


But such a move offends conservative politicians and the corporate lobbyists who crowd the hallways of state capitols like the one in Helena -- and these types don't take lightly to being offended.


The GOP-controlled Montana House pressed a tax cut for corporations financed by spending cuts, including one eliminating all public-health programs. When last week it came time to negotiate a compromise, Republican class warriors dug in further, offering amendments to kill Democrats' proposal to beef up corporate tax enforcement.

It's a little less obvious in Minnesota, but it's still about the super rich soaking the rest of us.
Postbulletin.com

Property taxes have risen more than $2 billion over the past four years and will rise by another $500 million if we adopt the governor's budget plan. That is unacceptable.


To pay for ongoing property tax cuts, the bill increases the tax on high levels of taxable income. Income above $400,000 for a couple or $226,000 for a single filer would be taxed at 9 percent instead of the current 7.85 percent, so a couple earning half a million dollars per year would see an increase of $1,150 on their income tax bill.


To further reduce property taxes, the bill also includes more than $1 million in additional Local Government Aid for Rochester and $2.7 million in school levy reduction aid for Rochester public schools. The proposal is "revenue neutral" because all of the money raised in additional income taxes from 1 percent of Minnesotans would go toward property tax cuts.


Is it fair to raise the taxes of the top 1 percent to give cuts to 90 percent of Minnesotans? You be the judge. A recent report from the Minnesota Department of Revenue shows that middle income Minnesotans pay 12.3 percent of their income in state and local taxes while the top 1 percent pay only 9.6 percent of theirs. Without a change in law the gap will be even wider by 2009. The House tax bill is not just property tax cuts; it is a step toward tax fairness.

Majority of Iraqi Legislators Want US Out

Your nightly news is not telling you what you need to know. Just like the US Congress, Iraqi legislators pass a non-binding resolution for the US to set a time table for withdrawl.
The other part you don't know is that, contrary to what is tells us, the Bush Administration has been backing those that favor partitioning Iraq into largely independent sectarian based regions. Much of the sectarian conflict amounts to the kind of "ethnic cleansing" that was common in the break up of Yugoslavia.
Those leading the Shia death squads are supposedly US allies. Those Shia militias that are being armed by Iran are those the Bush Administration has been supporting in Iraq.
If you were wondering what was wrong in Iraq, the convoluted cross purposed alliances set up by an insular neocon bent in the Bush Administration represent the core of irrationality in US foreign policy. Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, and Bolton, all largely influenced by Richard Perle, had preconcieved notions about the power and influence of the US in the world and a lack of basic knowledge of the varied Middle East cultures involved. The pragmatic strategies lacked a coherent ideological or sometimes even rational basis that the regional leaders could grasp and support. This lack of coherence and support largely explains the failure of US policy, not only in Iraq, but all over the world. Bush foreign policy has been based on a grandiose neocon fantasy that never existed but in the minds of it's proponents.
AlterNet

On Tuesday, without note in the U.S. media, more than half of the members of Iraq's parliament rejected the continuing occupation of their country. 144 lawmakers signed onto a legislative petition calling on the United States to set a timetable for withdrawal, according to Nassar Al-Rubaie, a spokesman for the Al Sadr movement, the nationalist Shia group that sponsored the petition.


It's a hugely significant development. Lawmakers demanding an end to the occupation now have the upper hand in the Iraqi legislature for the first time; previous attempts at a similar resolution fell just short of the 138 votes needed to pass (there are 275 members of the Iraqi parliament, but many have fled the country's civil conflict, and at times it's been difficult to arrive at a quorum).


Reached by phone in Baghdad on Tuesday, Al-Rubaie said that he would present the petition, which is nonbinding, to the speaker of the Iraqi parliament and demand that a binding measure be put to a vote. Under Iraqi law, the speaker must present a resolution that's called for by a majority of lawmakers, but there are significant loopholes and what will happen next is unclear.


What is clear is that while the U.S. Congress dickers over timelines and benchmarks, Baghdad faces a major political showdown of its own. The major schism in Iraqi politics is not between Sunni and Shia or supporters of the Iraqi government and "anti-government forces," nor is it a clash of "moderates" against "radicals"; the defining battle for Iraq at the political level today is between nationalists trying to hold the Iraqi state together and separatists backed, so far, by the United States and Britain.


The continuing occupation of Iraq and the allocation of Iraq's resources -- especially its massive oil and natural gas deposits -- are the defining issues that now separate an increasingly restless bloc of nationalists in the Iraqi parliament from the administration of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose government is dominated by Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish separatists.


By "separatists," we mean groups who oppose a unified Iraq with a strong central government; key figures like Maliki of the Dawa party, Shia leader Abdul Aziz Al-Hakeem of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq ("SCIRI"), Vice President Tariq Al-Hashimi of the Sunni Islamic Party, President Jalal Talabani -- a Kurd -- and Masoud Barzani, president of the Kurdish Autonomous Region, favor partitioning Iraq into three autonomous regions with strong local governments and a weak central administration in Baghdad. (The partition plan is also favored by several congressional Democrats, notably Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware.)


Iraq's separatists also oppose setting a timetable for ending the U.S. occupation, preferring the addition of more American troops to secure their regime. They favor privatizing Iraq's oil and gas and decentralizing petroleum operations and revenue distribution.


But public opinion is squarely with Iraq's nationalists. According to a poll by the University of Maryland's Project on International Public Policy Attitudes, majorities of all three of Iraq's major ethno-sectarian groups support a unified Iraq with a strong central government. For at least two years, poll after poll has shown that large majorities of Iraqis of all ethnicities and sects want the United States to set a timeline for withdrawal, even though (in the case of Baghdad residents), they expect the security situation to deteriorate in the short term as a result.

This Great Objectivity Scam

I tripped over a great article at, where else, AlterNet on media objectivity. It lays out the issue quite well. What is objectivity in media? What is fair and balenced? Those are subjects that are difficult if not impossible to define. Consider 60 Minutes piece on Lou Dobbs of CNN.
AlterNet

CBS 60 Minutes' piece on Lou Dobbs last night told us a lot more about traditional journalism's biases than it did Dobbs' on any given issue he covers. Throughout the interview, CBS correspondent Leslie Stahl (who I actually think is quite a decent reporter) seems appalled at the entire concept of "advocacy" journalism, essentially asserting that a reporter having any opinion whatsoever offends the Principles of Journalism sent down from Mt. Olympus. Not only does her surprise display a stunning lack of basic education about the history of the very journalism profession she works in (Leslie - please google the terms "muckraker" and "penny press"), her own 60 Minutes piece about Dobbs displays her own very subjective opinions. The only difference is that while Dobbs is honest and admits to his biases, Stahl - and other traditional journalists - mask their very subjective world views in the veneer of objectivity, making their own advocacy far more devious than Dobbs could ever be.


Take, for instance, this line in the 60 Minutes piece, delivered as an authoritative, nonpartisan, objective fact:


"Dobbs is full of contradictions: he’s pro-abortion rights, but against gun control; a fiscal conservative who supports government regulation."


Stahl would have us believe that believing the consistent libertarianism inherent in the dual beliefs that government shouldn't dictate decisions between a woman and her doctor nor decisions about who should own a gun is a "contradiction." She would also have us believe that being a fiscal conservative (aka. for less government spending and balanced budgets) is a "contradiction" for someone who supports government regulation (aka. consumer protections, environmental laws, etc.). She offers no proof of these claims. Factually, of course, they are absurd, meaning at best such claims are Stahl's own (very odd) opinions. Yet, her opinion is portrayed as non-partisan objective fact akin to stating that water is wet.


Same thing with the entire frame of the piece. Stahl decides to focus almost the entire piece on Dobbs' crusade against illegal immigration, to the exclusion of the other major issues Dobbs covers, such as free trade, job outsourcing, corporate crime and America's narcotics problem. While it is certainly true that illegal immigration has been an important and controversial issue for Dobbs, Stahl would have us believe that is the only thing Dobbs really covers, when in fact one of the most important stories about the rise of Lou Dobbs Tonight is its position as the only show on corporate-owned television that consistently questions Corporate America on a whole host of economic issues. But because that's not what's interesting in Stahl's personal opinion (or, perhaps, that's not a topic area that's looked on kindly at the Viacom-owned CBS network), the 60 Minutes piece is framed narrowly to create a distorted picture.


This Great Objectivity Scam - the assumption that traditional reporting is automatically "objective" while advocacy journalism is automatically not - joins other omniscient and equally dishonest Establishment-backed assumptions like the Great Education Myth and the Great Labor Shortage Lie that I have written about in the past. In the same way we all laugh at Fox News's claim to being "fair and balanced," we all know that there simply is no such thing as real "objectivity" - even in the highest echelons of Establishment journalism. From the moment a writer starts reporting a story, their subjective opinions on what is and is not important are affecting their stories.

So, is the solution open and honest opinions and bias? This guy doesn't think so.

Comments:
What would you rather?
Posted by: particle on May 7, 2007 10:17 AM


"Would you rather get your news from those who admit their biases or those who claim they have none?"


Actually I'd rather get my news from those who admit their biases but are more interested in advancing professional rigor than in advancing an agenda. You know getting at the truth of a matter regardless of whether it flies in the face of one's hobby horse. Reality can be interesting too.

Sure sounds appealing, but is professional rigor defined? By whom? The truth is modified by omissions and choice of word. An open handed approach like Lou Dobbs may well better ensure the public knows the difference between opinion and news.
What does another journalist think?

There are constraints
Posted by: Jesse on May 7, 2007 12:49 PM


and they aren't just the corporate ownership of media. One of the things you learn as a reporter (I am one) is that you seek out stories where there's a narrative. That is, a kind of from-here-to-there story you can tell. That automatically biases what you do.


Let's give an example: I could write a long essay on the causes of crime in the streets of Washington DC, but my editor would nix it. There has to be a story to hang it on. The news peg, as it is known, tends to favor the "if it bleeds it leads" kind of stuff.


It isn't that peope are lazy. It's just that constructing a story around complicated issues is hard to do. Laziness per se is not the problem here--not everybody has David Halberstam's talent. Just as with any other profession, most people aren't that good, but they aren't that bad either. Just average guys trying to make a living.

I can't think of a better argument to open up opinion within news. Details are plucked for presentation, there is no interest in getting the facts out, just grabbing the ratings. I think Lou has it right. I just don't listen to him. He is constantly promoting himself and his book. I'd rather get some news.

Somalia Collapsing, Regional Conflict May Result

Thanks to the debacle in Iraq, the US and EU are distracted from the events in Africa. Neglect has now evolved into funding proxy battles, fueling sectarian conflict all over the Horn of Africa. Where have we heard that before? The Bush Administration may succeed in destabilizing a second highly populated region where Islamic fundamentalism is pandemic and Al Qaeda has representatives and simpathizers everywhere.
One can't win an insurgency without the support of the people. TGF, the western recognized government of Somalia has no support or military capability. Ethiopia has it's own problems that are threatening to get worse.
PINR

Having made taking effective control over Mogadishu the test of its ability to exert authority over Somalia, the T.F.G. was constrained by the pressure of Western donor powers to make good on its project and to secure the city in advance of a planned National Reconciliation Conference (N.R.C.) aimed at reaching a political resolution to the country's conflicts.


[..]The Ethiopian-T.F.G. offensive, which included artillery shelling of and tank incursions into the districts in the north and south of Mogadishu where the insurgency was concentrated, broke the tense stasis between the opposing sides that PINR had noted in its April 12 report on Somalia.


[..]The operations to crush the insurgency, which began on April 18 and concluded on April 26, appear to have succeeded, at least temporarily, with a cessation of violence and T.F.G. forces in the streets securing key roads and positions. On May 2, AMISOM peacekeepers were patrolling the city for the first time since their arrival. The insurgents, however, have not surrendered, but have drawn back and are reported to be regrouping, promising suicide bombings, targeted assassinations, kidnappings and attacks on hotels housing T.F.G. officials.


According to the calculations of the United Nations, local human rights groups and the Hawiye clan, the offensive resulted in at least 1,000 deaths and drove the total of internally displaced persons from Mogadishu to 400,000. Journalists reported extensive destruction of buildings in the city, hospitals were stretched beyond their limits to care for the wounded, bodies rotted in the streets, aid deliveries to refugees were blocked by the T.F.G. and people fell victim to cholera-like diseases.


[..]As the T.F.G. and Ethiopia concentrated their attention on Mogadishu, instability surfaced elsewhere in Somalia. The T.F.G. lost control of the key southern port city of Kismayo in a struggle between two sub-clans of the Darod clan family, armed conflict broke out in the north between forces of the sub-states of Puntland and Somaliland, a crime wave continued in the unpoliced Lower and Middle Shabelle regions, and there was unrest in the transitional capital Baidoa in the south-central Bay region, leading to the imposition of a curfew. The conflict spread to Ethiopia on April 24, when the Ogaden National Liberation Front (O.N.L.F.) attacked a Chinese oil exploration site in the country's Somali Regional State, leaving nine Chinese workers and 65 Ethiopian workers and guards dead.


Although the T.F.G. and Ethiopia have expressed confidence that they have broken the insurgency and are on the way to stabilizing Somalia, the situation on the ground presents a less promising picture. It is far from clear that the insurgency has been neutralized, instability is increasing outside Mogadishu, and low-level conflicts beyond southern and central Somalia are intensifying. There is a genuine possibility that a regional conflict will erupt.


[..]The Ethiopian-T.F.G. offensive in Mogadishu has broken the stasis, but has not stabilized Somalia and the Horn of Africa. Divisions and tensions are surfacing and deepening within and between actors at all levels, making further conflict and fragmentation likely. The actors do not appear to have the political will to surmount their differences.


International and regional paralysis is partly due to the support of the T.F.G. by external actors and partly to the fact that Somalia is lower on the agenda of the Western powers than other issues. By leaving Somalia to collapse, however, Western powers are inviting its instability to spread beyond its borders. Washington, in particular, has staked its wager on Addis Ababa, which might turn out to be a "bad choice of allies."


With splits running from the intra-clan to the inter-state levels, the conjuncture of powers and interests enveloping Somalia is out of any single actor's or group of actors' control. The sense of crisis is not delusory.

Bush is Still Spying on Americans Without Court Oversight

New York Times

Senior Bush administration officials told Congress on Tuesday that they could not pledge that the administration would continue to seek warrants from a secret court for a domestic wiretapping program, as it agreed to do in January.
Rather, they argued that the president had the constitutional authority to decide for himself whether to conduct surveillance without warrants.
As a result of the January agreement, the administration said that the National Security Agency’s domestic spying program has been brought under the legal structure laid out in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires court-approved warrants for the wiretapping of American citizens and others inside the United States.
But on Tuesday, the senior officials, including Michael McConnell, the new director of national intelligence, said they believed that the president still had the authority under Article II of the Constitution to once again order the N.S.A. to conduct surveillance inside the country without warrants.

FindLaw: U.S. Constitution: Article II
The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to Grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.
FindLaw: U.S. Constitution: Article II: Annotations pg. 8 of 18#3
As against an enemy in the field, the President possesses all the powers which are accorded by international law to any supreme com mander. ''He may invade the hostile country, and subject it to the sovereignty and authority of the United States.'' 178 In the absence of attempts by Congress to limit his power, he may establish and prescribe the jurisdiction and procedure of military commissions, and of tribunals in the nature of such commissions, in territory occupied by Armed Forces of the United States, and his authority to do this sometimes survives cessation of hostilities. 179 He may employ secret agents to enter the enemy's lines and obtain information as to its strength, resources, and movements. 180 He may, at least with the assent of Congress, authorize intercourse with the enemy. 181 He may also requisition property and compel services from American citizens and friendly aliens who are situated within the theatre of military operations when necessity requires, thereby incurring for the United States the obligation to render ''just compensation.'' 182 By the same warrant, he may bring hostilities to a conclusion by arranging an armistice, stipulating conditions which may determine to a great extent the ensuing peace. 183 He may not, however, affect a permanent acquisition of territory, 184 th though he may govern recently acquired territory until Congress sets up a more permanent regime. 185