The End of Bonapartism and the War on Terror

Juan does not like Tom Friedman. He provides a very interesting spin on Friedman's column today that has a very cynical title: "9/11 Is Over".
Informed Comment

NYT columnist Tom Friedman's column, "9/11 is over," sounds the death knell for the Neoconservative use of 9/11 and is in particular an attack on Rudy Giuliani.


Friedman's main arguments are that the Bush administration's approach to dealing with al-Qaeda has so damaged the US image abroad, has so inconvenienced foreign travelers and visiting business investors, and has so diverted spending from essential US infrastructure such as bridges and airports, that it risks making the US economically backward in a globalizing world.


The column is significant because it argues that Bushism- Cheneyism is bad for business. The United States is the world's foremost business society, and virtually everything in the society (low taxes on the wealthy, no health care for the middle classes and poor, no protections for labor organizers, favoring of certain kinds of international trade over lower middle class job security, etc.) is arranged for the convenience of the business classes. If Friedman's conviction becomes widespread in that community, the pressures to abandon the 'War on Terror' will be irresistible.


[...]In other words, the Iraq War was a business investment, which was a bit of a risk but entirely justifiable at the time (you can hear the nervous CEO explaining to the Board of Directors). But the investment has gone south, isn't working out, and no successful businessman throws good money after bad.


The attack on Giuliani comes because he is still attached to the new acquisition and does want to go on hemorrhaging funds.


It is time, Friedman argues in contrast, to cut our losses and sell off this white elephant of an acquisition (the whole 'War on Terror' including Iraq), which is bleeding money, hurting the firm's image, scaring off investors, and forestalling needed new investments in key growth sectors.


USA, Inc. is moving on.

Northern Ireland, South Africa in Secret Iraq Peace Talks

The Nation

Sunni and Shi'a leaders began a potential peace process at secret meetings with leaders of the new Northern Ireland and South Africa one month, signing draft set of principles which resemble the protocols that guided the peace settlements in those two countries.


Chairing the closed meetings near Helsinki were Martin McGuinness, the former Irish Republican Army commander, lead negotiator with the British, and now Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, and Roelf Meyer, former leader of the pro-apartheid National Party in South Africa's peace negotiations. The Irish delegation also included former IRA hunger striker Leo Green, minister Jeffrey Donaldson, former Stormont speaker Lord Alderdice, and former loyalist paramilitary leader Billy Hutchison. South African participants included ANC leaders Mac Maharaj and Rashid Ismail, key participants in the military and political negotiations in South Africa. [Read more "here.]

Names of the Iraq delegations' have not been released but reportedly included six Sunni and nine Shi'a who signed a statement of principles. About thirty Iraqis were present, including Akram al-Hakim, minister of national reconciliation for the Baghdad government, representatives of Moktada al-Sadr, Sunni leader Adnan al-Dulaimi, and Humam Hammoudi, the Shi'a chairman of the Baghdad parliament's foreign affairs committee.


There is no doubt that American and British authorities knew about and approved the meeting, though they were excluded from attending. Instead, the meeting was facilitated and funded by the Finnish Crisis Management Initiative [CMI] and the McCormack Graduate School at the University of Massachusetts.


At this point, virtually no American media outlets have reported the meeting, despite the importance of the parties in attendance.


Irish political consultant Quentin Oliver, who directed the successful referendum on the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, summed up the significance in a South Africa Star report: "The Iraqis saw the dynamics from us. Apartheid removed. Troubles accomodated. Baghdad next. They did it, not us. We only helped."


The Iraqis saw former military enemie--McGuinness and Hutchison, for example, or South African apartheid leaders and ANC guerilla commanders--chairing meetings together on how sharply divided communities can coexist.


The key question for the Iraqis, who are circulating the draft at home, is whether the major parties believe their armed strategies have reached a stalemated point of no return, or whether one side [and foreign sponsors like the US and UK] still hopes for a military victory. In South Africa and Northern Ireland, secret peace discussions were initiated while the wars were proceeding, but eventually grew into the peace processes as the rival parties concluded that armed struggle [or military occupation] had reached its limits.


South Africa was first to settle its war, in 1994, and the ANC became close advisers to the IRA as the Irish peace process was being evaluated. At one point, President Nelson Mandela even presided over discussions in South Africa between republican and unionist/loyalist leaders who would not sit in the same rooms together.


The Finnish role in the current process stems from former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari's past involvement with the independent decommissioning agency established in Northern Ireland.


The key moments at the meeting were when Irish and South African representatives told stories of how their militarized strategies ultimately led to stalemate and the prospect of endless war. "The most remarkable impression on the Iraqis was McGuinness, once evil incarnate to the Protestants", who now sits as vice-minister to First Minister Ian Paisley, the right-wing fundamentalist preacher trained at Bob Jones University who swore that the Catholic Church was the "whore of Babylon." A meaningful peace process "only emerged in both countries when all parties agreed that those who adhered to violence had to be brought into negotiations, and that those parties adhering to violence had accepted that violence could never lead to accomodation. One could see Iraq heads nod in agreement." [Padraig O'Malley: September 24 op-ed piece in the Boston Globe]


The so-called "Helsinki principles" which were agreed to, with each Iraqi signatory praying "In-sha'Allah" as they signed their names, are very general and appear utopian, but so were the early framework agreements in Ireland and South Africa. Most importantly, all parties agreed to continue the discussions towards a settlement.


The agreement commits all parties "to work towards a robust framework for a lasting settlement [and] a set of recommendations to start negotiations to reach national reconciliation...The principles of inclusivity, power-sharing and a commitment to removing the use of violence as a means of resolving political differences were among the most urgent concerns agreed."


The twelve principles and nine "political objectives" include:

• to resolve all political issues through nonviolence and democracy;


• to form an independent commission approved by all parties to supervise the process of disarmament in a verifiable manner;
  
• to commit to accept the result of the negotiations with no party subjected to threats of force; •to establish an independent consultative body to explore ways to deal with the legacy of the past in a way that will unite the nation;
  
• "a common vision for all Iraqi political entities on the importance of termination of the presence of foreign troops in Iraq through the completion of national sovereignty and rebuilding a national army and security apparatus according to a national vision within a realistic timetable";
  
• "to convince political groups that are currently outside the political process to initiate and activate a constructive dialogue to reach common understandings";
  
• "to deal with armed groups which are not classified as terrorist, encouraging them to use peaceful political mens to address the conflict and to provide their members with jobs and opportunities within state administrations";
  
• "the cessation of the violation of the human rights of Iraqi citizens and their properties by continuous bombardment and military actions by foreign forces";
  
• l"to be rational in political speeches, for the national interest, and to move away from sectarian and ethnic dispute";
  
• "to bring an end to the displacement of Iraqi people and work to take care of those displaced, and secure their safe return, with guarantees of their safety by the national forces in cooperation with political parties and tribal leaders."
  

Senate Partitions Iraq

These headlines could play in a parody, if it were 2003. Unfortunately, it's all true.
Informed Comment

The US Senate voted for a soft partition of Iraq on Thursday. First they messed up Iraq by authorizing Terrible George to blow it up, now they want to further mess it up by dividing it. It makes no sense to me; the US Senate doesn't even have the authority to divide Iraq. Wouldn't that be for the Iraqi parliament?

The Iraqi political elite roundly condemned the Senate vote. Note that among the more vocal denunciations came from Shiite Vice President Adil Abdul Mahdi, whose own party, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), favors the creation of a Shiite superstate in the south.

Iraq expert Reidar Vissar dissects the Senate vote and says it is, in Iraqi terms, unconstitutional.


The Iraqi government is incapable of even rudimentary auditing and corruption-fighting, according to a US embassy in Baghdad report. The difficulties range from the poor security situation to violent militia elements inside government ministries.

Historian Roger Owen explains why Iraq is doomed to warlord rivalry and chaos in the short to medium term, whatever the US military does in that country.

At the Global Affairs blog, Part four of Barnett Rubin's excellent series on counter-narcotics policy in Afghanistan.

Attack on Iran Said To Be Imminent

The New York Sun

In a sign that U.N. Security Council-based diplomacy is losing steam, a number of sources are reporting that a military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities may be imminent. France and America also are pushing for tighter economic sanctions against Tehran, without U.N. approval.


Yesterday's edition of Le Canard Enchaîné, a French weekly known for its investigative journalism, reported details of an alleged Israeli-American plan to attack Iran's nuclear facilities. The frontpage headline read: "A report sent to the Elysée — Putin tells Tehran: They're going to bomb you!"


The Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, also expressed concerns to reporters in New York that an attack on Iran might be imminent.


Like most stories in the French paper, the article was based on unnamed sources who said that in order to reduce casualties, the attack against Iran is planned for October 15, the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Israel would bomb the first targets while America would orchestrate a second wave of strikes, the report said.

Bush, Oil and Moral Bankruptcy

TomPaine.com

[Author of this article,] Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington. He was an analyst with the CIA for 27 years and is now on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).


The Bush policy toward the Middle East is at the same time consistent with, and a marked departure from, the U.S. approach since the end of World War II. Given ever-growing U.S. dependence on imported oil, priority has always been given to ensuring the uninterrupted supply of oil, as well as securing the state of Israel. The U.S. was by and large successful in achieving these goals through traditional diplomacy and commerce. Granted, it would overthrow duly elected governments, when it felt it necessary—as in Iran in 1953, after its president nationalized the oil. But the George W. Bush administration is the first to start a major war to implement U.S. policy in the region.


Just before the March 2003 attack, Chas Freeman, U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia for President George H.W. Bush, explained that the new policy was to maintain a lock on the world’s energy lifeline and be able to deny access to global competitors. Freeman said the new Bush administration "believes you have to control resources in order to have access to them" and that, with the end of the Cold war, the U.S. is uniquely able to shape global events—and would be remiss if it did not do so.


This could not be attempted in a world of two superpowers, but has been a longstanding goal of the people closest to George W. Bush. In 1975 in Harpers, then-secretary of state Henry Kissinger authored under a pseudonym an article, "Seizing Arab Oil." Blissfully unaware that the author was his boss, the highly respected career ambassador to Saudi Arabia, James Akins, committed the mother of all faux pas when he told a TV audience that whoever wrote that article had to be a "madman." Akins was right; he was also fired.


In those days, cooler heads prevailed, thanks largely to the deterrent effect of a then-powerful Soviet Union. Nevertheless, in proof of the axiom that bad ideas never die, 26 years later Kissinger rose Phoenix-like to urge a spanking new president to stoke and exploit the fears engendered by 9/11, associate Iraq with that catastrophe, and seize the moment to attack Iraq. It was well known that Iraq’s armed forces were no match for ours, and the Soviet Union had imploded.


Some, I suppose, would call that Realpolitik. Akins saw it as folly; his handicap was that he was steeped in the history, politics, and culture of the Middle East after serving in Syria, Lebanon, Kuwait, Iraq, as well as Saudi Arabia—and knew better.


The renaissance of Kissinger’s influence in 2001 on an impressionable young president, together with faith-based analysis by untutored ideologues cherry picked by Cheney explain what happened next—an unnecessary, counterproductive war, in which over 3,800 U. S. troops have already been killed—leaving Iraq prostrate and exhausted.

Iraq War Vet to Limbaugh: You're the Phony

AlterNet: Jon Stolz

As Media Matters reported today, Rush Limbaugh, on his show said that those troops who come home and want to get America out of the middle of the religious civil war in Iraq are "phony soldiers." I'd love for you, Rush, to have me on your show and tell that to me to my face.


Where to begin?


First, in what universe is a guy who never served even close to being qualified to judge those who have worn the uniform? Rush Limbaugh has never worn a uniform in his life -- not even one at Mickey D's -- and somehow he's got the moral standing to pass judgment on the men and women who risked their lives for this nation, and his right to blather smears on the airwaves?


Second, maybe Rush doesn't much care, but the majority of troops on the ground in Iraq, and those who have returned, do not back the President's failed policy. If you go to our "Did You Get the Memo" page at VoteVets.org, there's a good collection of stories, polls, and surveys, which all show American's troops believe we are on the wrong track, not the right one, in Iraq.


Does Rush believe, then, that the majority of the US Armed Forces are "phony?"


Third, the polls and stories don't even take into account the former brass who commanded in Iraq, who are incredibly critical of the Bush administration, and it's steadfast refusal to listen to those commanders on the ground who have sent up warning after warning. Major Generals John Batiste and Paul Eaton left the military and joined VoteVets.org for that very reason.


Does Rush believe that highly decorated Major Generals are "phony soldiers?"


Finally, as Media Matters notes, just recently, members of the 82nd Airborne in Iraq wrote a New York Times op-ed, very critical of the course in Iraq, and suggesting it was time to figure out the exit strategy. Two of them just died. Will Rush call up their grieving parents and tell them that they should stop crying, because they were just "phony soldiers?"


Get the point here, Rush?


You weren't just flat out wrong, you offended a majority of those of us who actually had the courage to go to Iraq and serve, while you sat back in your nice studio, coming up with crap like this.


My challenge to you, then, is to have me on the show and say all of this again, right to the face of someone who served in Iraq. I'll come on any day, any time. Not only will I once again explain why your comments were so wrong, but I will completely school you on why your refusal to seek a way out of Iraq is only aiding Al Qaeda and crippling American security.


Ball's in your court.

Courageous Judge Restores Rule of Law

Patriot Act Provisions Voided - washingtonpost.com

A federal judge in Oregon ruled yesterday that two provisions of the USA Patriot Act are unconstitutional, marking the second time in as many weeks that the anti-terrorism law has come under attack in the courts.


In a case brought by a Portland man who was wrongly detained as a terrorism suspect in 2004, U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken ruled that the Patriot Act violates the Constitution because it "permits the executive branch of government to conduct surveillance and searches of American citizens without satisfying the probable cause requirements of the Fourth Amendment."


"For over 200 years, this Nation has adhered to the rule of law -- with unparalleled success," Aiken wrote in a strongly worded 44-page opinion. "A shift to a Nation based on extra-constitutional authority is prohibited, as well as ill-advised."


The ruling in Oregon follows a separate finding on Sept. 6 by a federal judge in New York, who struck down provisions allowing the FBI to obtain e-mail and telephone data from private companies without a court-issued warrant. The decision also comes amid renewed congressional debate over the government's broad powers to conduct searches and surveillance in counterterrorism cases. Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said last night that the administration "will consider all our options" in responding to yesterday's ruling.


Aiken's ruling came in the case of Brandon Mayfield, a lawyer who was arrested and jailed for two weeks in 2004 after the FBI bungled a fingerprint match and mistakenly linked him to a terrorist attack in Spain. The FBI used its expanded powers under the Patriot Act to secretly search Mayfield's house and law office, copy computer files and photos, tape his telephone conversations, and place surveillance bugs in his office using warrants issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.


In a settlement announced in November 2006, the U.S. government agreed to pay $2 million to Mayfield and his family and it apologized for the "suffering" that the case caused him. But the pact allowed Mayfield to proceed with a legal challenge to the constitutionality of the Patriot Act, resulting in yesterday's ruling by Aiken, who was nominated to the bench by President Bill Clinton in 1997.


Mayfield's attorneys said in a statement that Aiken "has upheld both the tradition of judicial independence, and our nation's most cherished principle of the right to be secure in one's own home."


The Oregon and New York rulings are the latest in a series of lower-court rulings that have called into question provisions of the Patriot Act, which Congress approved after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Lawmakers have since amended the law, partly in reaction to some earlier rulings.

Myanmar Forces Fire on Protesters

New York Times

Government security forces in Myanmar cracked down for a second day today on nationwide protests, firing shots and tear gas, and raiding at least two Buddhist monasteries, where they beat and arrested dozens of monks, according to reports from the city of Yangon.


Further casualties were reported today, following at least half a dozen deaths on Wednesday.


[..]The government of Myanmar began a violent crackdown on Wednesday after tolerating more than a month of growing protests in cities around the country. Facing its most serious challenge since taking power in 1988, the ruling junta is attempting to contain the uprising by the tens of thousands of monks protesting economic hardships and the political repression of the military junta.


Security forces have clubbed and tear-gassed protesters, fired shots into the air, or according to an Associated Press report today, into a crowd, and arrested hundreds of the monks, who are at the heart of the demonstrations.


According to reports, crowds on the streets were larger than on Wednesday, despite the crackdown.


On Wednesday, in a chaotic day of huge demonstrations, shooting, tear gas and running confrontations between protesters and the military, many people were reported injured and half a dozen were reported to have been killed, most of them by gunshots.


A government announcement said security forces in Yangon, the country’s main city, fired at demonstrators who failed to disperse, killing one man. Foreign news agencies and exile groups reported death tolls ranging from two to eight people.


Despite threats and warnings by the authorities, and despite the beginnings of a violent response, tens of thousands of chanting, cheering protesters flooded the streets, witnesses reported. Monks were in the lead, like religious storm troopers, as one foreign diplomat described the scene.


In response to the violence, the United Nations Security Council called an emergency meeting on Wednesday to discuss the crisis, but China blocked a Council resolution, backed by the United States and European nations, to condemn the government crackdown.

Al Jazeera English

Uppekha is Buddhist monk and member of the All Burma Buddhist Monks Alliance, one of the groups that has led the wave of anti-government protests in Myanmar.


Based at a monastery in the northern city of Mandalay, Uppekha said he and other monks at the monastery wanted to join the protests, but that their monastery had been surrounded by soldiers.


Speaking by telephone from inside the monastery, he told Al Jazeera of the measures the monks were calling for:

There are three steps that we want.

• The first step is to reduce all commodity prices, fuel prices, rice and cooking oil prices immediately.


• The second step – release all political prisoners, including Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, and all detainees arrested during ongoing demonstrations over the fuel price hike.


• The third step – enter a dialogue with pro-democracy forces for national reconciliation immediately, to resolve the crisis and difficulties facing and suffered by the people.

US Military Official: Blackwater May Be Worse Than Abu Ghraib

AlterNet: Blogs

To describe the ongoing Blackwater scandal as a fiasco would be a dramatic understatement. Not only do we have a situation in which private security contractors stand accused of killing Iraqi civilians without provocation, we also have deep divisions brewing between the Pentagon and the State Department, coupled by State stonewalling a congressional investigation.

A confrontation between the U.S. military and the State Department is unfolding over the involvement of Blackwater USA in the shooting deaths of Iraqi civilians in a Baghdad square Sept. 16, bringing to the surface long-simmering tensions between the military and private security companies in Iraq, according to U.S. military and government officials.


In high-level meetings over the past several days, U.S. military officials have pressed State Department officials to assert more control over Blackwater, which operates under the department's authority, said a U.S. government official with knowledge of the discussions. "The military is very sensitive to its relationship that they've built with the Iraqis being altered or even severely degraded by actions such as this event," the official said.

"This is a nightmare," said a senior U.S. military official. "We had guys who saw the aftermath, and it was very bad. This is going to hurt us badly. It may be worse than Abu Ghraib, and it comes at a time when we're trying to have an impact for the long term."


At this point, the State Department seems to be treating Blackwater contractors as the agency's own private army, accountable to no one outside the department. The Maliki government believes Blackwater is a criminal enterprise, the Iraqi people resent Blackwater's presence, the Pentagon believes Blackwater is lying about the Sept. 16 incident in Nisoor Square, and congressional Democrats have questions about what has transpired -- which the State Department refuses to answer.


This is a debacle so severe and humiliating, only the Bush administration could pull it off.
[..]Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice not only refuses to cooperate, her office has also ordered Blackwater not to answer any questions from lawmakers.

A Culture of Violence

GlobalResearch.ca

What do you call a country that glorifies wars and violence in the name of peace. One that's been at war every year in its history against one or more adversaries. It has the highest homicide rate of all western nations and a passion for owning guns, yet the two seem oddly unconnected. Violent films are some of its most popular, and similar video games crowd out the simpler, more innocent street play of generations earlier. Prescription and illicit drug use is out of control as well when tobacco, alcohol and other legal ones are included.


It get's worse. It's society is called a "rape culture" with data showing:

• one-fourth of its adult women victims of forcible rape sometime in their lives, often by someone they know, including family members;


• one-third of them are victims of sexual abuse by a husband or boyfriend;


• 30% of people in the country say they know a woman who's been physically abused by her husband or boyfriend in the past year;


• one in four of its women report being sexually molested in childhood, usually repeatedly over extended periods by a family member or other close relative;


• its women overall experience extreme levels of violence; an astonishing 75% of them are victims of some form of it in their lifetimes;


• domestic violence is their leading cause of injury and second leading cause of death;


• statistically, homes are their most dangerous place if men are in them as millions experience battering by husbands, male partners or fathers;


• for most women with children, there's no escape for lack of means and because male assailants pursue them causing greater harm;


• adding further injury, its society is often unsupportive; it affords women second class status, privileges and redress when they're abused so many suffer in silence fearing coming forward may cause more harm than help;


• its children are abused as well; millions suffer serious neglect, physical mistreatment and/or sexual abuse; many get relief only through escape to dangerous streets; they end up alone, more vulnerable and at greater danger away than at home where there, too, families act more like strangers or predators forcing young kids to flee in the first place.

What country is it where things like these are normal and commonplace; where peace, tranquility and safety are illusions; where they're crowded out by foreign wars and violence at home in communities, neighborhoods, schools, throughout the media and in core families. What kind of country glorifies mass killing, assaults and abuse; one that looks down on pacifist non-violence as sissy or unpatriotic, yet claims to be peace loving. It's not in the third world, under dictatorship or controlled by religious extremists. It's the "land of the free and home of the brave, America the Beautiful" where human rights, civil liberties, common dignity and personal safety are more illusion than fact. More on this below.


Mahdi Nazemroaya writes in his August 29 "War and the 'New World Order' " article on Global Research.ca that war is "the ultimate (and most effective) economic shock therapy (that can) change societies and reshape nations," and that America today is embarked on achieving a long-standing vision for "global ascendancy" and supremacy. For the Trilateral Commission of "powerful" US, EU and Japanese "elites," its operative 1973 founding goal was a "New International Economic Order." For George HW Bush it became the "New World Order," and for GW Bush a permanent state of war for global hegemony.


Nazemroaya writes America's "foreign policy is based on economic interests" with military might used to enforce them. He states various US administrations have pursued "An (unbroken) agenda of perpetual warfare and violence (for) global domination through economic means." George Bush's current "war on terrorism" in the Middle East and Central Asia are just "stepping stones" toward that "global order" unipolar Pax Americana vision under which no nation is exempt.


It's nearly always been this way in a nation addicted to war and a culture of violence that's as commonplace at home as in foreign conflicts. It's in our DNA, our schools and reinforced through the media with seductive symbols and slogans glorifying wars for peace, their warriors, and righteousness of waging them. They're packaged as liberating ones, promoting democracy, and spreading the benefits of western civilization. [MORE]

Iran: Infantile Nation

Patrick J. Buchanan

Does this generation possess the gravitas to lead the world? Considering the hysteria that greeted the request of Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to lay a wreath at Ground Zero, the answer is no. What is it about this tiny man that induces such irrationality? Answer: He is president of a nation that is a "state sponsor of terror," is seeking nuclear weapons, and is moving munitions to the Taliban and insurgents in Iraq.


But Libya was a "state sponsor of terror," and Col. Ghadafi was responsible for Pan Am 103, the Lockerbie massacre of school kids coming home for Christmas. And President Bush secretly negotiated a renewal of relations in return for Ghadafi giving up his nuclear program and compensating the families of the victims of that atrocity. Has Ahmadinejad ever committed an act of terror like this?
Richard Nixon went to Moscow and concluded strategic arms agreements while Moscow was the arms supplier of the enemy we were fighting in Vietnam that used, at Hue, mass murder as a war tactic. Nixon went to Beijing to toast Mao Zedong, the greatest mass murderer in history, responsible for the deaths of 37,000 Americans in Korea, who was, in 1972, persecuting and murdering dissidents in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution run by his crazed wife, and transshipping Russian weapons into Vietnam. And Nixon is today hailed as a statesman for having gone there.


In 1959, President Eisenhower rode up Pennsylvania Avenue in an open convertible with Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin's gauleiter in Ukraine, who, three years before his tour of the United States, had sent tanks into Budapest to butcher the patriots of the Hungarian Revolution.


What has Ahmadinejad done to rival these monsters? It would be an obscenity, we are told, if Ahmadinejad were allowed to place a wreath at Ground Zero. This is a public-relations stunt that should never be permitted. That the Iranian president has PR in mind is undoubtedly true. Much of what national leaders do is symbolic. But that wreath-laying would have said something else, as well. It would have said that, to Iran, these Americans were victims who deserve to be honored and mourned and, by extension, the men who killed them were murderers. Bin Laden celebrates 9/11. So do all America-haters. By laying a wreath at Ground Zero, the president of Iran would be saying that in the war between al-Qaeda and the United States, he and his country side with the United States.


How would we have been hurt by letting him send this message? To the hysterics, Ahmadinejad is the new Hitler and we are all at Munich, and we should behave like Churchill and gird for war. This is absurd.


True, as the Washington Times charges, Ahmadinejad invited David Duke to Tehran to a conference of Holocaust deniers, and his minions chant "Death to America" and "Death to Israel." But every mob in the Middle East shouts such slogans. And Duke was the Republican candidate for governor of Louisiana in 1991 and got a majority of the white vote. And Holocaust deniers meet regularly in the United States. Yet we seem to survive.


Far more serious was the threat of Khrushchev in 1956 to rain down rockets on Britain in the Suez crisis and his "We-will-bury-you" rant. Still, JFK met him in Vienna and negotiated a test-ban halt. Far more serious was Mao's talk, after the Cuban missile crisis, of accepting "300 million dead" in a nuclear war – talk that scared even Khrushchev. Fidel Castro reportedly urged the Russians to fire their rockets rather than give them up. Those were deadly serious times.


Hitler could destroy the Jewish population of Europe because he was able to conquer Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals. Iran has no air force or navy we could not dispatch in a week and no nukes. Israel has 200 to 300 nuclear warheads and, if it believed its survival was at stake, could turn Tehran into toast in 10 minutes.


Why does Iran want nuclear weapons if it doesn't want to use them? For the same reason Israel wanted them: deterrence. After seeing what America did to its non-nuclear neighbor Iraq, which had done nothing to America, and after hearing Bush call them an axis-of-evil nation and prime candidate for U.S. preemptive strikes, a not-unreasonable ayatollah might conclude they need nuclear weapons, or the Americans will be dictating to them forever.


America and Iran have great differences, but also common interests. Among the latter, no Taliban in Kabul, no restoration of a Sunni Ba'athist dictatorship in Baghdad, and support for the present governments. Iran cannot want a Sunni-Shia war in the region, which would make her an enemy of most Arabs, and she cannot want a major war with America, which could lead to the destruction and breakup of the nation where only half the people are Persians. That is plenty to build a cold peace on, if the hysterics do not stampede us into another unnecessary war.

Confrontation Seems Inevitable in Myanmar

One of the most oppressive regimes is about to crush a movement of Buddhist monks seeking democracy. China is the governments major supporter and likely the only country who can persuade them to do differently. It seems unlikely that will happen given the history of Tiananmen Square.
NDTV.com

Five truckloads of soldiers were seen heading downtown in Myanmar's largest city Tuesday soon after tens of thousands of people led by Buddhist monks defied orders to stay off the streets and marched in another peaceful anti-government protest.


Monks have taken over leadership of anti-government protests that began over a month ago, leading marches for the past eight days that are the largest anti-government protests since a 1988 pro-democracy uprising was brutally suppressed by the military.


The soldiers' movements in Yangon followed announcements by the junta earlier in the day warning monks not to take part in the demonstrations and the public to stay at home or risk arrest. Two army divisions were either already in or moving toward Yangon from outlying areas, including the 22nd, which took part in the suppression of the 1988 uprising, according to diplomats and ethnic guerrillas. ''They (the 22nd) are leaving Karen State to go to Yangon. They could get there pretty quickly. By tomorrow, maybe today,'' said Col Ner Dah Mya, a leader of the Karen National Union, which is fighting the central government. The 77th Division was already in Yangon but not yet deployed, according to an Asian diplomat in the city who demanded anonymity, citing protocol.


The maroon-robed monks, accompanied by cheering supporters, marched for the eighth day of peaceful protests from Yangon's golden Shwedagon Pagoda, while similar shows of defiance were held in the country's second largest city, Mandalay, and the ruby mining town of Mogok.


A monk who addressed the crowd vowed the protests would continue until the government apologizes for mistreating monks at an earlier demonstration in northern Myanmar. ''The protest is not merely for the well-being of people but also for monks struggling for democracy and for people to have an opportunity to determine their own future,'' one monk told The Associated Press. ''People do not tolerate the military government any longer.''


The Asian Human Rights Commission, a private organization based in Hong Kong, said the protesters were being threatened with a colonial-era law under which the junta can ''command any unlawful assembly to disperse'' and if it does not to ''proceed to disperse such assembly by (military) force.'' An assembly of more than five can amount to breaking the law.


The protests in Yangon reached 100,000 on Monday and were the largest since the pro-democracy uprising 19 years ago. The authorities did not stop the protests, even as they built to a scale and fervor that rivaled the 1988 uprising, when the military fired on peaceful crowds and killed thousands, terrorizing the country.

The Sino-Russian Alliance: Challenging America's Ambitions in Eurasia

There is a great article at GlobalResearch.ca that effectively summarizes the global disaster of the Bush Administration foreign policy as well as giving an overview of the new realities for America. So you think the days of the Cold War were a hostile world? It's much worse now. All of our former foes have created a grand alliance thanks to the stupidity of the Bush/Neocon led cabal.

“But if the middle space [Russia and the former Soviet Union] rebuffs the West [the European Union and America], becomes an assertive single entity, and either gains control over the South [Middle East] or forms an alliance with the major Eastern actor [China], then America’s primacy in Eurasia shrinks dramatically. The same would be the case if the two major Eastern players were somehow to unite. Finally, any ejection of America by its Western partners [the Franco-German entente] from its perch on the western periphery [Europe] would automatically spell the end of America’s participation in the game on the Eurasian chessboard, even though that would probably also mean the eventual subordination of the western extremity to a revived player occupying the middle space [e.g. Russia].”

-Zbigniew Brzezinski (The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, 1997)


Sir Isaac Newton’s Third Law of Motion states that “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” These precepts of physics can also be used in the social sciences, specifically with reference to social relations and geo-politics.


America and Britain, the Anglo-American alliance, have engaged in an ambitious project to control global energy resources. Their actions have resulted in a series of complicated reactions, which have established a Eurasian-based coalition which is preparing to challenge

“Today we are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper use of force – military force – in international relations, force that is plunging the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts. As a result we do not have sufficient strength to find a comprehensive solution to any one of these conflicts. Finding a political settlement also becomes impossible. We are seeing a greater and greater disdain for the basic principles of international law. And independent legal norms are, as a matter of fact, coming increasingly closer to one state’s legal system. One state and, of course, first and foremost the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way.”

-Vladimir Putin at the Munich Conference on Security Policy in Germany (February 11, 2007)


What American leaders and officials called the “New World Order” is what the Chinese and Russians consider a “Unipolar World.” This is the vision or hallucination, depending on perspective, that has bridged the Sino-Russian divide between Beijing and Moscow.


China and Russia are well aware of the fact that they are targets of the Anglo-American alliance. Their mutual fears of encirclement have brought them together. It is no accident that in the same year that NATO bombarded Yugoslavia, President Jiang Zemin of China and President Boris Yeltsin of Russia made an anticipated joint declaration at a historic summit in December of 1999 that revealed that China and the Russian Federation would join hands to resist the “New World Order.” The seeds for this Sino-Russian declaration were in fact laid in 1996 when both sides declared that they opposed the global imposition of single-state hegemony.


Both Jiang Zemin and Boris Yeltsin stated that all nation-states should be treated equally, enjoy security, respect each other’s sovereignty, and most importantly not interfere in the internal affairs of other nation-states. These statements were directed at the U.S. government and its partners.


The Chinese and Russians also called for the establishment of a more equitable economic and political global order. Both nations also indicated that America was behind separatist movements in their respective countries. They also underscored American-led amibitions to balkanize and finlandize the nation-states of Eurasia. Influential Americans such as Zbigniew Brzezinski had already advocated for de-centralizing and eventually dividing up the Russian Federation.


Both the Chinese and Russians issued a statement warning that the creation of an international missile shield and the contravention of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM Treaty) would destabilize the international environment and polarize the globe. In 1999, the Chinese and Russians were aware of what was to come and the direction that America was headed towards. In June 2002, less than a year before the onslaught of the “Global War on Terror,” George W. Bush Jr. announced that the U.S. was withdrawing from the ABM Treaty.


On July 24, 2001, less than two months before September 11, 2001, China and Russia signed the Treaty of Good-Neighbourliness and Friendly Cooperation. The latter is a softly worded mutual defence pact against the U.S., NATO, and the U.S. sponsored Asian military network which was surrounding China. [1]


The military pact of the Shanghai Treaty Organization (SCO) also follows the same softly worded format. It is also worth noting that Article 12 of the 2001 Sino-Russian bilateral treaty stipulates that China and Russia will work together to maintain the global strategic balance, “observation of the basic agreements relevant to the safeguard and maintenance of strategic stability,” and “promote the process of nuclear disarmament.” [2] This seems to be an insinuation about a nuclear threat posed from the United States.


Iran, India, Pakistan, and Mongolia are all SCO observer members. The observer status of Iran in the SCO is misleading. Iran is a de facto member. The observer status is intended to hide the nature of trilateral cooperation between Iran, Russia, and China so that the SCO cannot be labeled and demonized as an anti-American or anti-Western military grouping.


The stated interests of China and Russia are to ensure the continuity of a “Multi-Polar World.” Zbigniew Brzezinski prefigured in his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and the Geostrategic Imperatives and warned against the creation or “emergence of a hostile [Eurasian-based] coalition that could eventually seek to challenge America’s primacy.” [3] He also called this potential Eurasian coalition an “‘antihegemonic’ alliance” that would be formed from a “Chinese-Russian-Iranian coalition” with China as its linchpin. [4] This is the SCO and several Eurasian groups that are connected to the SCO.


In 1993, Brzezinski wrote “In assessing China’s future options, one has to consider also the possibility that an economically successful and politically self-confident China — but one which feels excluded from the global system and which decides to become both the advocate and the leader of the deprived states of the world — may decide to pose not only an articulate doctrinal but also a powerful geopolitical challenge to the dominant trilateral world [a reference to the economic front formed by North America, Western Europe, and Japan].” [5]


Brzezinski warns that Beijing’s answer to challenging the global status quo would be the creation of a Chinese-Russian-Iranian coalition: “For Chinese strategists, confronting the trilateral coalition of America and Europe and Japan, the most effective geopolitical counter might well be to try and fashion a triple alliance of its own, linking China with Iran in the Persian Gulf/Middle East region and with Russia in the area of the former Soviet Union [and Eastern Europe].” [6] Brzezinski goes on to say that the Chinese-Russian-Iranian coalition, which he moreover calls an “antiestablishmentarian [anti-establishmentarian] coalition,” could be a potent magnet for other states [e.g., Venezuela] dissatisfied with the [global] status quo.” [7]


Furthermore, Brzezinski warned in 1997 that “The most immediate task [for the U.S.] is to make certain that no state or combination of states gains the capacity to expel the United States from Eurasia or even to diminish significantly its decisive arbitration role.” [8] It may be that his warnings were forgotten, because the U.S. has been repealed from Central Asia and U.S. forces have been evicted from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.


[..]Zbigniew Brzezinski warned years before 2001 that “a coalition allying Russia with both China and Iran can develop only if the United States is shortsighted enough to antagonize China and Iran simultaneously.” [12] The arrogance of the Bush Jr. Administration has resulted in this shortsighted policy.


According to The Washington Post, “Just after the lightning takeover of Baghdad by U.S. forces three years ago [in 2003], an unusual two-page document spewed out of a fax machine at the Near East bureau of the State Department. It was a proposal from Iran for a broad dialogue with the United States, and the fax suggested everything was on the table — including full cooperation on nuclear programs, acceptance of Israel and the termination of Iranian support for Palestinian militant groups.” [13]


The White House impressed by what they believe were “grand victories” in Iraq and Afghanistan merely ignored the letter sent through diplomatic channels by the Swiss government on behalf of Tehran.


However, it was not because of what was wrongly perceived as a quick victory in Iraq that the Bush Jr. Administration pushed Iran aside. On January 29, 2002, in a major address, President Bush Jr. confirmed that the U.S. would also target Iran, which had been added to the so-called “Axis of Evil” together with Iraq and North Korea. The U.S. and Britain intended to attack Iran, Syria, and Lebanon after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In fact immediately following the invasion, in July 2003, the Pentagon formulated an initial war scenario entitled “Theater Iran Near Term (TIRANNT).”

Here is another very enjoyable article of the same bent.
Informed Comment: Global Affairs

If I were a politician, for instance, I might say something like this:


The Bush-Cheney administration has surrendered much of Afghanistan to the Taliban and much of Pakistan to al-Qaida. They have turned most of Iraq over to Iran, creating the very danger over which they now threaten another disastrous war; they have strained the U.S. Armed Forces to the point of exhaustion, turned the Defense Department over to private contractors, the Justice Department over to the Republican National Committee, and the national debt over to foreign creditors, while leading a party whose single most basic belief is supposed to be that individuals must take personal responsibility for their actions. And they dare to lecture us on national security?

US Starts Manning Iran-Iraq Border

Despite finding a worth role in preventing regional war, US troops are refocusing their attention from Iraq to Iran.
Just as in Afghanistan, when the US initiated it's exit strategy, it was already focused on it's next goal, Iraq. All resources were transferred from duties in Afghanistan prematurely and now the Taliban have changed the equations and are back in strength. Opium poppy cultivation has again become the primary source of income in many parts of the country.
The situation in Iraq is likely to fall apart as soon as the US moves on. Bush's next target is clearly Iran.
Star Tribune

The area has attracted new U.S. attention as the military steps up allegations that Tehran is aiding Shiite extremists who have killed hundreds of American troops with powerful bombs known as explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, believed to be brought in from Iran. Tensions between the two countries also have been rising over Iran's nuclear program and the recent detentions of each others' citizens.


Mueller, 48, from Yorktown, Va., is the commander of the 3rd Infantry Division's border transition team at the heart of an intensified U.S. push to stop the smuggling. The strategy is similar to American efforts elsewhere in Iraq - build up the infrastructure and train the Iraqi forces to take over eventually.


The 900-mile border between the two countries, however, is laced with ancient smuggling routes and tribes who spent decades bringing in weapons to fight Saddam Hussein's regime and are now believed to be making their living from Shiite militias. The problem is particularly stark along the 90-mile section in predominantly Shiite Wasit province, southeast of Baghdad.


Mueller acknowledges the virtual impossibility of securing such a border but says the U.S. forces can at least disrupt the flow of weapons into the capital.


[...]The top commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, also said this month that he had solid evidence, including the explanations of captured Iranian agents, that Iran was behind lethal attacks in Iraq. Petraeus warned Congress that the U.S. already was fighting a "proxy war'' with Iran.

US Buts into Intra-Shia War

The natural course of events in Iraq seems to be unfolding despite the presence of US troops. Seemingly, having a new understanding of how little influence the US has in Iraq, the policy has switched quite significantly to tapping into resources already present in the communities in turmoil. The strategy is to pick an ally and appoint them in charge of security and give them support and weapons. This essentially is what would happen if the US pulls out, except, the support would be smuggled into the country by Saudi Arabia and Iran risking a regional conflagration.
Perhaps Bush has finally settled on an exit strategy: prevent regional war, empower the local militias to take over security, and hope things stabilized in a quasi-friendly way to the US.
I think the chance of that are remote, but preventing a regional war is a worthy goal.
Robert Dreyfuss

[Friday], two more Sistani aides were killed, one in Basra and another in Diwaniya. That makes five since August.


During that time, a war in Basra has broken out pitting Sadr, SIIC, and Fadhila forces and various gangs against each other. And two SIIC governors of southern provinces have been killed. Not to mention the armed clash that erupted in Karbala a couple of weeks ago, in which more than 50 Iraqis were killed. That clash pitted Sadr's forces against SIIC paramilitaries.


My own view is that Sadr's forces are a lot stronger than SIIC's. The army and police are bigger than either, of course, but who controls that, ultimately, is anybody's guess. If I were the United States, I'd bet on Sadr, and indeed there is talk of a U.S-Sadr dialogue underway. Then we read (in David Ignatius' column in the Post yesterday) that the United States has quietly given the green light to SIIC's Badr thugs to take control of Nasiriyah:

The American plan now, apparently, is to extend the Anbar model and create "bottom-up" solutions throughout Iraq. For example, I'm told that U.S. commanders met recently with the Shiite political organization known as the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council and gave a green light for its Badr Organization militia to control security in Nasiriyah and some other areas in southern Iraq and thereby check the power of Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. We're interposing ourselves here in an intra-Shiite battle we barely understand.

Don't Let TV Kill the Internet

The issue of access to the Internet is more important than most people know. It's about retain our freedom of speech, our freedom of information free from the censorship of the tel com companies. Vice President Gore has been warning us about this struggle since 2005. They have demonstrated their willingness to censure. It's all about money and monopoly over the news, what we see for sale, and what information we can get access to.
Free Press

What if I told you we could use empty TV channels to connect millions of Americans to the Internet?

New technology would do just that. But the powerful TV broadcast lobby is standing in the way with a multimillion-dollar misinformation campaign.

The Federal Communications Commission is about to make a critical choice: support innovation or side with the broadcasters and let the United State slide further behind the rest of the world in Internet access.

Tell the FCC: Open the Internet for Everyone

The fight for universal Internet access is now being waged over "white spaces" -- empty frequencies between television channels on the public airwaves. New devices can use these vacant airwaves to connect millions to the information superhighway, including many people still stuck on dial-up -- or without any service at all.

Here's the problem. The National Association of Broadcasters wants to keep white spaces for themselves. This week, they're blitzing Washington with television ads and lobbyists. They're making outright false claims that any new devices will interfere with over-the-air TV broadcasts.

Their scare tactics are aimed at convincing the FCC and Congress to stifle new technologies that can revolutionize our airwaves. Unless we act now, the FCC could side with the broadcasters and deny us one of our last opportunities to deliver a better Internet to more people.

Take Action: Open White Spaces for Everyone

It's a familiar story. Big media companies will use any means to squash new ideas that threaten their control. For too long, our policymakers put the narrow interests of a few conglomerates before innovation, competition and the public good.

Last year we sent 1.5 million letters to Congress and halted the phone and cable industry efforts to kill Net Neutrality. This year, we're fighting to make the Internet available and affordable to everyone. Opening up white spaces is key to creating the healthy competition, consumer choices and technological innovation we need to provide an open Internet to all.

We can win this fight. Take action to open white spaces today.

Timothy Karr
Campaign Director
Free Press
www.freepress.net
www.savetheinternet.com

White House in Contempt

ConyersBlog | John Conyers for Congress

I wanted to take the opportunity to update you on the status of the contempt of Congress resolution in the House of Representatives.


As you may know, the Judiciary Committee passed a resolution before the August recess holding the White House and Harriet Miers in contempt of Congress for their failure to provide documents and appear before the committee as legally required by subpoena.


The information we have received to date from the Justice Department from our U.S. Attorneys investigation indicates the White House played a central role in the firing of the nine federal prosecutors. Yet, the White House has stonewalled and consistently refused to cooperate with inquiries into this matter.


At the heart of our investigation is the evidence uncovered suggesting that the nine U.S. Attorneys were fired for politically-motivated reasons, while others may have been retained because they were pursuing partisan investigations.


We have also discovered that job candidates' political contributions and affiliations were considered in hiring decisions for nonpartisan positions in the Department of Justice. Our job has been made more difficult by apparent misleading testimony from the Attorney General and other Department of Justice officials.


This politicization of our judicial system cannot be tolerated. Our citizens have a right to expect that federal prosecutions will be conducted in a fair and nonpartisan manner.


There are many steps we can take in this confrontation with the White House. Some are more extreme than others. What we must first do is get the facts that show who made these decisions in the White House. Only once we have this evidence can we adequately pursue justice.


What is now required is for the House to pass these contempt of Congress citations and pursue legal action against the White House and Harriet Miers for their failure to meet the requirements of the subpoenas. Hopefully this contempt of Congress resolution will soon have a vote on the floor of the House. I am not prepared to allow this administration to operate above the law.


Thank you for your continued support for a better democracy.


John Conyers, Jr.

Abizaid: World could abide nuclear Iran

Boston.com

Every effort should be made to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, but failing that, the world could live with a nuclear-armed regime in Tehran, a recently retired commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East said Monday.


John Abizaid, the retired Army general who headed Central Command for nearly four years, said he was confident that if Iran gained nuclear arms, the United States could deter it from using them.


"Iran is not a suicide nation," he said. "I mean, they may have some people in charge that don't appear to be rational, but I doubt that the Iranians intend to attack us with a nuclear weapon."


The Iranians are aware, he said, that the United States has a far superior military capability. "I believe that we have the power to deter Iran, should it become nuclear," he said, referring to the theory that Iran would not risk a catastrophic retaliatory strike by using a nuclear weapon against the United States.


"There are ways to live with a nuclear Iran," Abizaid said in remarks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank. "Let's face it, we lived with a nuclear Soviet Union, we've lived with a nuclear China, and we're living with (other) nuclear powers as well."

Rice Upset With IAEA Chief On Iran

Everyone is trying to do the others job, I wonder why?
Al Jazeera English

Rice, who has previously accused ElBaradei of "muddying the message" to Iran, voiced strong irritation with the IAEA chief. "The IAEA is not in the business of diplomacy. The IAEA is a technical agency that has a board of governors of which the United States is a member."


Washington and its European allies argue that IAEA moves divert attention away from UN Security Council demands that Iran suspend uranium enrichment and grant broader inspections. "It is not up to anybody to diminish or to begin to cut back on the obligations that the Iranians have been ordered to take," Rice said.


The UN Security Council has passed two sanctions resolutions against Iran. The United States is pushing for a third, harsher round of measures, which China and Russia oppose, arguing that the IAEA should be given more time before either further sanctions or military action are considered.


ElBaradei has urged Western powers to be patient and has been critical of talk of future military action by the United States and others against Tehran, telling nations opposed to his efforts to learn from the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

While Sec'y is technically correct, the IAEA is not a diplomatic mission, the Bush administration has a proven track record of ignoring, even covering up the truth in order to push it's agenda. That has included character assassination of El Baradei in hopes of circumvention of his technical role, and avoiding diplomatic options, such as meeting face to face with the Iranians.
Someone has to be the diplomat in this situation, especially if Bush continues to sabotage diplomacy.

French Foreign Minister Threatens War with Iran

Update!
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner chose interesting timing to make a threat. Could he be attempting to hold off an imminent move by the US to attack Iran? That is my suspicion. By acknowledging that it may be on France's agenda to go to war with Iran, the Bush Administration might hold off in hopes of a coalition effort.
The Daily Star

Iran accused French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner on Monday of stoking a crisis after he said France must prepare for the possibility of war over Tehran's nuclear program. The official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini as saying Kouchner's remarks were not in line with European Union policy.


"Using crisis-making words is against France's high historical and cultural position and is against France's civilization," Hosseini said in a statement.


Kouchner said in an interview on Sunday that France must prepare for the possibility of war against Iran over its nuclear activities. But he said he did not believe that such action was imminent. He also told RTL radio and LCI television that the world's major powers should use further sanctions to show they were serious about stopping Tehran from getting atom bombs. The minister said France had asked French firms not to bid for work in Iran.


France followed up the warning on Monday. Prime Minister Francois Fillon said tensions with Iran are now "extreme," intensifying the diplomatic storm caused by Kouchner.


"Everything must be done to avoid war," Fillon told reporters on a visit to the town of Angouleme in western France. "France's role is to lead toward a peaceful solution of a situation that would be extremely dangerous for the rest of the world.


He said Kouchner was right to say the situation was dangerous and should be taken seriously.

Not surprising, Kouchner started a firestorm of criticism. Here is attempts to make it clear his threat was to bring the Iranians and presumably the US back to the table.
IOL

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner tried to distance himself from statements he had made that the Iranian nuclear crisis could lead to war by saying that he was in favour of a negotiated settlement, the daily Le Monde reported on Tuesday.


"I do not want it said that I'm a warmonger. My message was one of peace, serious and determined," Kouchner said on the aircraft taking him to Moscow.


He was reacting to a storm of criticism he had unleashed by saying late Sunday, in regard to Iran's nuclear program, "It is necessary to prepare for the worst," and added, "The worst, sir, is war."

Israel adds it's voice and differs with a more hurried tone, noting they see time as not on their side.
IOL

Israel called on Thursday for a toughening of sanctions on its arch-foe Iran and urged private companies around the world to stop doing business with the Islamic republic.


The statements came as mystery continued to shroud an apparent Israeli air strike a week ago inside another foe, Syria, which reports say was aimed at weapons financed by Tehran.


"The sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council are not sufficient," Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told public radio. "They have to be toughened and made more efficient by involving the private sector."


"The private sector should stop doing business with Iran, even if this goes against its interests, as the world cannot accept a country like Iran getting access to nuclear arms."


"Time is playing against us, the world cannot allow itself to wait," she said.


Israel, widely considered to be the Middle East's sole if undeclared nuclear power, fears that Iran is developing atomic weapons under the guise of its civilian nuclear programme, a charge Tehran vehemently denies.


Ahmadinejad said in an interview with British television on Wednesday that Iran did not want the bomb. "We are against bombs, actually," he said through a translator. "From a political point of view, it's not useful... Why do we want a bomb?... What's the use of it? We don't need it."

Yet, I've not seen any US headlines or heard CBS network news reporting on this very significant event. Are we seeing a news black out in the US?
Update: Reuters

China also condemned Kouchner's weekend remarks. "We believe the best option is to peacefully resolve the Iranian nuclear issue through diplomatic negotiations, which is in the common interests of the international community," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said at a briefing. "We do not approve of easily resorting to threatening use of force in international affairs," Jiang said.

Former KGB Assassin Runs for Russian Parliament

Lugovoi appears to be seeking his reward for poisoning Alexander Litvinenko last November with polonium 210 in London. What does that say about Putin's Russia? Doesn't sound like there has been much change in Russia since the USSR fragmented.
StarTribune.com

The former KGB officer accused in Britain of fatally poisoning a Kremlin foe in London with a radioactive isotope said Sunday he was seeking a seat in Russia's parliament.


The accused former officer, Andrei Lugovoi, said on state TV that he would run as a member of the ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party led by Vladimir Zhirinovsky. If elected, Lugovoi would be immune from prosecution in Russia.


Britain's Crown Prosecution Service has sought the extradition of Lugovoi, whom it accused in May of killing Alexander Litvinenko last November with polonium 210. Litvinenko, also a former KGB officer, was a self-styled whistleblower and a harsh critic of the Kremlin and of Russian President Vladimir Putin. His wife and associates have said his killing was ordered by the Kremlin and that Lugovoi poisoned Litvinenko about three weeks before his death by slipping polonium into his tea when the men met at a London hotel.


Both the Kremlin and Lugovoi have repeatedly denied a role in the killing. Russia has formally refused to extradite him. In an interview broadcast Sunday, he said he had not wanted a life in politics but now was seeking one "due to the disgusting actions toward me by the United Kingdom's justice system."

John Edwards - Response to President Bush

YouTube

Greenspan Concedes Responsibility in Subprime Mortgage Scandal

Finally, Greenspan concede culpability in the subprime mortgage debacle. He kept interest rates unnaturally low, suggested a looser policy towards subprime loans and let the problem run rampant. He still claims there was little he could do at the time. WRONG!
SFGate.com

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan acknowledges he failed to see early on that an explosion of mortgages to people with questionable credit histories could pose a danger to the economy.


In an upcoming interview, Greenspan said he was aware of "subprime" lending practices where homebuyers got very low initial rates only to see them later jacked up, causing severe payment shock. But he said he didn't initially realize the harm they could do.


"While I was aware a lot of these practices were going on, I had no notion of how significant they had become until very late," he said in a CBS "60 Minutes" interview to be broadcast Sunday. "I really didn't get it until very late in 2005 and 2006," Greenspan said.


An excerpt of the interview was released Thursday.


A meltdown in the subprime mortgage market has rocked Wall Street. Foreclosures and late payments have soared and lenders have gone out of business. Nervous financial institutions tightened credit standards, making it harder for even more creditworthy borrowers to get financing. This has increased chances the economy might slide into a recession.

More on the Roll-out to War With Iran

Informed Comment Global Affairs

80-page study by Dr. Dan Plesch and Martin Butcher of the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies. They summarize their principal findings:

The study concludes that the US has made military preparations to destroy Iran’s WMD, nuclear energy, regime, armed forces, state apparatus and economic infrastructure within days if not hours of President George W. Bush giving the order. The US is not publicising the scale of these preparations to deter Iran, tending to make confrontation more likely. The US retains the option of avoiding war, but using its forces as part of an overall strategy of shaping Iran’s actions.



• Any attack is likely to be on a massive multi-front scale but avoiding a ground invasion. Attacks focused on WMD facilities would leave Iran too many retaliatory options, leave President Bush open to the charge of using too little force and leave the regime intact.




• US bombers and long range missiles are ready today to destroy 10,000 targets in Iran in a few hours.




• US ground, air and marine forces already in the Gulf, Iraq, and Afghanistan can devastate Iranian forces, the regime and the state at short notice.




• Some form of low level US and possibly UK military action as well as armed popular resistance appear underway inside the Iranian provinces or ethnic areas of the Azeri, Balujistan, Kurdistan and Khuzestan. Iran was unable to prevent sabotage of its offshore-to-shore crude oil pipelines in 2005.

Neil Bush Cashes In on No Child Left Behind

AlterNet: Blogs

Recently, a three-month investigation by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) revealed that schools are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, including No Child Left Behind funds, on Neil Bush's COWs. "It is astonishing that taxpayer dollars are being spent on unproven educational products to the financial benefit of the president's brother," CREW's executive director, Melanie Sloan, said in a press release.


[..] the Education Department's Inspector General "should investigate whether children's educations are being sacrificed so that Neil Bush can rake in federal funds," considering that Neil Bush was also on the receiving end a couple years back of cash donated by his mother, Barbara, to a Hurricane Katrina relief fund co-operated by his father, George H.W.--cash specifically earmarked for purchase of his COWs for storm ravaged schools--I'm gonna go ahead and say the answer is yes.

NY Sun: Kim Jong Calls Israel's Attack on Syria "Dangerous"?

And from another neocon mouthpiece: The New York Sun

A rare statement by Kim Jong Il's regime, which denounced Israel's incursion into Syria last week, raised speculations about a possible North Korean role in Middle East tensions. Pyongyang rarely issues public statements about world affairs, but on Tuesday, it became the only non-Muslim country to condemn Israel, calling its alleged air operation in Syria "a very dangerous provocation." The rare statement came just as press reports from Washington said Israel had recently used its air force in an attempt to document alleged transfers of North Korean nuclear technology to Syria.

I have to seriously doubt this information. Why would Kim Jong stupidly expose his secret dealings?

Starting a Middle East War

Why would Bolton be seeking to undermine US foreign policy to scuttling the agreement with North Korea and provoking an attack on Syria? Is this all disinformation, part of a plot external to the Secretary of State and the President to undermine current foreign policy initiatives? Is this part of Cheney's alleged plot?
Haaretz

In a telephone conversation, the former U.S. ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, said North Korea may be using Syria and Iran as "safe havens" for its nuclear activity.


Bolton, now affiliated with the "American Enterprise Institute" in Washington, served Bush in his first term as Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security. In that capacity, as well as later, he clashed with other officials, most notably from CIA, regarding Syria's nuclear plans.


On Thursday, a U.S. official was quoted as saying Damascus may be building a nuclear facility with North Korean assistance, a week after Syria claimed Israeli aircraft violated its airspace and dropped munitions within its territory,


According to a Washington Post report, a U.S. official talking on condition of anonymity said recent satellite images gathered over the past six months mostly by Israeli sources indicate Syria may be building such a facility.


Access to the information has been heavily restricted to a team headed by security adviser Stephen J. Hadley, leaving many in the intelligence community unaware of the reports' significance, the U.S. newspaper quoted sources as saying.


Israel has refused to comment on Syria's allegations, but a former Israeli official had said he had heard the attack had been carried out against a facilitiy capable of producing unconventional weapons.

Solution for US Healthcare: Out Source to Cuba

Cuba runs health care the way US HMOs advertise their services. The difference is that Cuban health care does what it promises.
UNDERNEWS

According to the World Health Organization a Cuban man can expect to live to 75 and a woman to 79. The probability of a child dying aged under five is five per 1,000 live births. That is better than the US and on a par with the UK. Yet these world-class results are delivered by a shoestring annual per capita health expenditure of $260 - less than a 10th of Britain's $3,065 and a fraction of America's $6,543. There is no mystery about Cuba's core strategy: prevention. From promoting exercise, hygiene and regular check-ups, the system is geared towards averting illnesses and treating them before they become advanced and costly.

DoJ Trying to Purge Voter Rolls

AlterNet

Now the Department of Justice, like the Republican Party, wants fewer registered voters in 2008.


The Department of Justice's Voting Section is pressuring 10 states to purge voter rolls before the 2008 election based on statistics that former Voting Section attorneys and other experts say are flawed and do not confirm that those states have more voter registrations than eligible voters, as the department alleges.


Voting Section Chief John Tanner called for the purges in letters sent this spring under an arcane provision in the National Voter Registration Act, better known as the Motor Voter law, whose purpose is to expand voter registration. The identical letters notify states that 10 percent or more of their election jurisdictions have problematic voter rolls. It tells states to report "the subsequent removal from rolls of persons no longer eligible to vote."


"That data does not say what they purport it says," said David Becker, People for the American Way Foundation's senior voting rights counsel and a former Voting Section senior trial attorney, after reviewing the letters and statistics used to call for the purges. "They are saying the data shows the 10 worst voter rolls. They have a lot of explaining to do."


"You are basically seeing them grasping at whatever straws are possible to make their point," said Kim Brace, a consultant who helped the U.S. Election Assistance Commission prepare its 2004 National Voter Registration Act report, which contains the data tables cited by the Voting Section letter to identify the errant states.


The Justice Department would not comment for this report, despite repeated requests.


The 10 states receiving Voting Section purge letters are Iowa, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Carolina, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Vermont. Since 2005, the Section has also sued six other states or cities -- Indiana, Maine, New Jersey, Philadelphia and Pulaski County, Arkansas -- where purging voter rolls was part of the resulting settlement. Only Missouri fought a Voting Section suit, winning in federal court, although that decision has been appealed.

Wes Clark: Engagement with Iran is the Right Course

Wesley Clark - Independent Online Edition

Rumour in the region says the recent US-Sunni alliances in al-Anbar Province, of which President Bush made a great deal on his recent visit, are more the result of financial emoluments of outside Sunni powers than US activities, and are in preparation not for support of the central government, but rather for blocking Iranian-Shiite consolidation when the Americans depart.


[..] The isolating of Iran and occasional sabre-rattling is not an adequate response. Nor is the febrile, repeated efforts at diplomatic sanctions. Instead, the US will have to take the lead, with its allies in support. An effective strategic response must begin with an intensified dialogue within the region, and real, sustained and in-depth conversations with the Iranian leadership at multiple levels. Regional allies such as Saudi Arabia and Jordan must be included, not just informed. Principles must be developed, and consequences made plain, both positive and negative. The way ahead will be tortuous. There will be threats and counterthreats, blandishments and promises, crises and imminent conflict. Economic pressures will intensify.


But this is the path to be followed if we want to try to avoid conflict with Iran and at the same time head off its nuclear capability. The time remaining is short. There are alternatives to war, far better alternatives. But if all we can discuss is troop strength in Iraq, we won't find them.

Cutting a Deal with Taliban?

Informed Comment Global Affairs

Even as the U.S. has escalated claims that Iran is aiding the Taliban, Iranian diplomats privately warn the U.S. against making a political deal with the Taliban.


Such a deal could constitute a rough Afghan equivalent of U.S. policy in Anbar Province, Iraq. In 2001-2002, the U.S. cooperated with Iran to use the Northern Alliance to occupy the ground vacated by the Taliban and to bolster the authority of the new Afghan administration. While the Northern Alliance's ties to Iran are weaker and more purely pragmatic than those of Iraq's Shi'a leaders, Iran and the U.S. both see them as potential (though unreliable) Iranian assets in Afghanistan. Whether or not the U.S. has in view such a strategic shift toward "moderate" Taliban (I have no direct evidence of it), Iran will surely suspect that it does and react accordingly. In the context of rising tensions with the U.S. over Iraq and Tehran's nuclear program, such political changes could link the two wars even more closely, mostly (as usual) to the detriment of the aspirations of Afghans for a semblance of a normal life after decades of war.


It is worth exploring indications that those currently fighting the Afghan government, NATO, and US in Afghanistan are willing to adopt a national political agenda that could, in principle, be a subject of negotiation. But if Bin Laden's support base among Taliban in the tribal territories of Pakistan continues to grow, and if the Pakistani state continues to disintegrate, the incentives for maximalist positions will grow as well. If tensions between the U.S. and Iran escalate, the result may be reconfigured war rather than peace. And if the U.S. presses on with aggressive opium poppy eradication in southern Afghanistan, efforts at consolidating government authority in the vulnerable areas bordering what Rashid calls Pakistan's "badlands" may collapse.

Repackaging Al Qaeda

Bin Laden appears to be better connected than Bush would have us see. He is wisely responding to his recent well publicized recruiting pool: the anti-Globalization petit bourgeois. These are the young college aged upwardly mobile sons and daughters of the business elite from the Muslim Third World who now pursue their education in Europe and Britain as first or second generation immigrants. Many of them have been recruited via the Internet. With the exception of the geography of their homeland, this is the same class of people who stood with Lenin and who drove the American and French revolution with their bodies in the streets and fields. This is the young intelligencia who have driven every successful revolution in the past several centuries.
Informed Comment Global Affairs

Bin Laden is no longer just seeking to lead Muslims in a jihad against "Crusaders and Zionists"; he is proclaiming to the whole world that the genuine revolutionary alternative to imperialism, capitalism, global warming, genocide, moral decay, confused sex roles, the decline of the family, commercialism, and whatever else ails us is Islam. In this sense Bin Laden is indeed seeking to don the mantle of the last century's false prophets.


One of the clearest indicators is the social origin of new recruits to al-Qa'ida. As Olivier Roy writes in his forthcoming Le Croissant et le Chaos:

The map of the origin of al-Qaida recruits does not match the map of Middle East conflicts. The recruits consist predominantly of second-generation European young Muslims and converts, not Palestinians or Afghans, and very few people coming from the Middle East.

This quote comes from an electronic file dated in July, but it perfectly matches the profile of those arrested in Germany last week: the sons of Turkish guest workers and a German convert.


This quote comes from an electronic file dated in July, but it perfectly matches the profile of those arrested in Germany last week: the sons of Turkish guest workers and a German convert.


Just what are these "converts" converting to? They are not converting to anything that most Muslims would recognize as Islam. They do not integrate into the religion and culture of Islamic civilization and then gradually develop political views that correspond to their new milieu. On the contrary: they are radicalized opponents of the global order who find that al-Qa'ida has become the most genuine anti-globalization revolutionary organization. "Conversion" is just part of the initiation ritual.


In his latest speech he even abandons the usual anti-Semitic claims that "Zionists" control the government and press in the U.S. in favor of the populist trope that the government serves capital, which wants oil. Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust. Bin Laden acknowledges the Holocaust and blames it on Western Civilization. Bin Laden even poses, amazingly, as the heir of the tolerance of classical Islam, the last time that Islam posed a global alternative:

The holocaust of the Jews was carried out by your brethren in the middle of Europe, but had it been closer to our countries, most of the Jews would have been saved by taking refuge with us. And my proof for that is in what your brothers, the Spanish, did when they set up the horrible courts of the Inquisition to try Muslims and Jews, when the Jews only found safe shelter by taking refuge in our countries. And that is why the Jewish community in Morocco today is one of the largest communities in the world. They are alive with us and we have not incinerated them.

It is ironic to say the least that Bin Laden claims credit for the policies of Muslim rulers that his predecessors, the Salafis of the day (the Muwahhidin, known in Spain as Almohade), considered to be apostates.


Bin Laden's message has little or no appeal to Muslims in Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, or elsewhere engaged in their national struggles for identity, legitimacy, or power. He engages, as Roy writes, "les migrants, les réfugiés, la seconde génération, les nouvelles classes sociales, ou bien . . .les tribus en mutation sociale." (He attracts "migrants, the second generation, new social classes, or tribes undergoing social change.")

No Child Left Behind Law A Disaster for Inner City Schools

UNDERVIEWS

The poisonous essence of [the federal education law No Child Left Behind] lies in the mania of obsessive testing it has forced upon our nation's schools and, in the case of underfunded, overcrowded inner-city schools, the miserable drill-and-kill curriculum of robotic "teaching to the test" it has imposed on teachers, the best of whom are fleeing from these schools because they know that this debased curriculum would never have been tolerated in the good suburban schools that they, themselves, attended.


The justification for this law was the presumptuous and ignorant determination by the White House that our urban schools are, for the most part, staffed by mediocre drones who will suddenly become terrific teachers if we place a sword of terror just above their heads and threaten them with penalties if they do not pump their students' scores by using proto-military methods of instruction -- scripted texts and hand-held timers -- that will rescue them from doing any thinking of their own. There are some mediocre teachers in our schools (there are mediocre lawyers, mediocre senators, and mediocre presidents as well), but hopelessly dull and unimaginative teachers do not suddenly turn into classroom wizards under a regimen that transforms their classrooms into test-prep factories.


The real effect of No Child Left Behind is to drive away the tens of thousands of exciting and high-spirited, superbly educated teachers whom our urban districts struggle to attract into these schools. There are more remarkable young teachers like this coming into inner-city education than at any time I've seen in more than 40 years. The challenge isn't to recruit them; it's to keep them. But 50% of the glowing young idealists I have been recruiting from the nation's most respected colleges and universities are throwing up their hands and giving up their jobs within three years.


When I ask them why they've grown demoralized, they routinely tell me it's the feeling of continual anxiety, the sense of being in a kind of "state of siege," as well as the pressure to conform to teaching methods that drain every bit of joy out of the hours that their children spend with them in school.


"I didn't study all these years," a highly principled and effective first-grade teacher told me -- she had studied literature and anthropology in college while also having been immersed in education courses -- "in order to turn black babies into mindless little robots, denied the normal breadth of learning, all the arts and sciences, all the joy in reading literary classics, all the spontaneity and power to ask interesting questions, that kids are getting in the middle-class white systems." At a moment when black and Hispanic students are more segregated than at any time since 1968 (in the typical inner-city school I visit, out of an enrollment that may range from 800 to 4,000 students, there are seldom more than five or six white children), NCLB adds yet another factor of division between children of minorities and those in the mainstream of society. In good suburban classrooms, children master the essential skills not from terror but from exhilaration, inspired in them by their teachers, in the act of learning in itself. They're also given critical capacities that they will need if they're to succeed in college and to function as discerning citizens who have the power to interrogate reality. They learn to ask the questions that will shape the nation's future, while inner-city kids are being trained to give pre-scripted answers and to acquiesce in their subordinate position in society.


In the wake of the calamitous Supreme Court ruling in the end of June that prohibited not only state-enforced but even voluntary programs of school integration, No Child Left Behind -- unless it is dramatically transformed -- will drive an even deeper wedge between two utterly divided sectors of American society.

The Truth About Iraq

McClatchy

[..] According to the Iraqi Ministry of Interior, 984 people were killed across Iraq in February, and 1,011 died in violence in August. No July numbers were released because the ministry said the numbers weren't clear.


But an official in the ministry who spoke anonymously because he wasn't authorized to release numbers said those numbers were heavily manipulated.


The official said 1,980 Iraqis had been killed in July and that violent deaths soared in August, to 2,890[..]


Services haven't improved across most of the capital — the international aid group Oxfam reported in July that only 30 percent of Iraqis have access to clean water, compared with 50 percent in 2003 — and tens of thousands of Iraqis are fleeing their homes each month in search of safety.


[..]Oxfam estimates that 28 percent of Iraqi children are malnourished, compared with 19 percent before the U.S. invasion.


Baghdad has become more segregated. Sunni Muslims in the capital now live in ghettos encircled by concrete blast walls to stop militia attacks and car bombs. Shiite militias continue to push to control the city’s last mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhoods in the southwest, by murdering and intimidating Sunni residents and, sometimes, their Shiite neighbors.


[In Baghdad] the push to drive Sunnis from Shiite neighborhoods continues in a city that U.S. military officers say has gone from being 65 percent Sunni to being 75 percent Shiite.


Unidentified bodies continue to show up daily in Baghdad, though the pace is lower than it was last December, when 1,030 bodies were found [..] dropping [..] to 428 in August. Some military officials and many residents attribute the generally lower numbers not to the U.S. security plan, but to the purges in mixed neighborhoods that have left militants with fewer people to kill.


Of an estimated 1 million Iraqis who’ve fled their homes since February 2006, 83 percent are from Baghdad, the IOM says.


Sunni militants remain openly active in the north. Three weeks ago, fighters for the Islamic State of Iraq, an al Qaida in Iraq front organization, paraded through the streets of Mosul, the capital of Nineveh province, said tribal sheik Fawaz Mohammed al Jarba. "It's very bad," Jarba said. "There are so many attacks that never make it in the media.


In the Shiite-dominated south, violence is rising as Shiite militias vie with one another for control. At least 52 people were killed this month when fighting broke out between the Mahdi Army and the rival Badr Organization during a religious festival in Karbala. In Basra, the strategic port city on the Persian Gulf, those militias and one from the Fadhila party have fought pitched battles for control, with the death toll rising throughout the year, from 59 in January to 134 in May. In August, 90 people died there.


[..]Maliki’s cabinet still has nearly as many vacancies as it has sitting ministers, and no major legislation governing Iraq’s major issues, including a militia disarmament program, has made it to the floor of the Iraqi parliament. Last week, the parliament, back from its summer vacation, barely had a quorum in its first meetings. . .


[..]No Iraqi McClatchy spoke to in preparation for this article said he or she had confidence in the government.

Thanks to Informed Comment for the heads up.