Bolton is a Bully

U.N. Pick Called Bully Who Abused His Power

The State Department's former intelligence chief testified Tuesday that John R. Bolton was a "serial abuser" of underlings who tried to remove an intelligence analyst who disagreed with him and was "a quintessential kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy."
But it appeared that the testimony of Carl W. Ford Jr., former assistant secretary of State for intelligence and research, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee had not changed any votes on Bolton's nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Republicans control the panel 10 to 8 and were seen as likely to approve him.


President Bush's choice of Bolton has alarmed Senate Democrats, who view the nominee as a foe of the U.N. and as a symbol of failed U.S. intelligence practices.
[...]
Biden said Bolton would be serving in the U.N. at a time when the objectivity and accuracy of U.S. intelligence was doubted around the world, and while his own credibility on intelligence matters was under fire. "This is the man who might have to take the case to the world on [North] Korea and Iran based on intelligence," Biden said. "I believe this is damaging to our national interest."

Its beyond my comprehension how abusive men like Bolton manage to get into responsible positions. I have to believe that many people in management are like this. I've met a few. But they are successful only as they mislead their masters with the work beaten out of those they supervise. Bolton does indeed fit the pattern. When he's in charge, the only people who won't know what really is going on is Bush.

Bush Thinks in Black and White

Bush can't get support for his boondoggle in Iraq from one of the countries who saw they had a lot to lose in the change of governments, and Dubya wants to take his football and go home. His tantrum upset our alliance with most of NATO but even more importantly with Turkey, its reliable NATO ally in the Middle East. Instead he enhances beyond all previous administrations the strategic alliance with Israel. Our support for Israel cost us the loss of the twice towers, hundreds of billions of dollars of deficit, and a new generation of jihadis itching for an opportunity for another strike at the US anytime in the rest of their life time.
I can't believe how badly this man has botched our world position. He has kick started the decline of super power USA.
Don't Write Off the Turks

Who lost Turkey? That's the theme of a rash of articles in the U.S. press over the last two months. Apparently, there's a growing consensus in Washington that our old ally has been gradually becoming more anti-American.


In 2003, Turkey denied Washington the use of Turkish bases only months before the war on Iraq began. Just recently, Vice President Dick Cheney blamed Turkey's noncooperation for many of the problems today with Iraqi insurgents.

That is so asinine. The administration botched all of the preparation for Iraq, botched the actual invasion causing many more casualties on both sides than was necessary, and then simply assumed the Iraqis would stand up and take over their country. And Rummie blames Turkey? He's the turkey.

A number of critics have pointed to the rise of anti-American public sentiment in Turkey over the last two years: The Marshall Fund found that 82% of the Turkish public was hostile to the U.S., one of the highest figures anywhere, especially for a NATO ally. A recent bestselling Turkish fictional thriller, "Metal Storm," portrays a U.S. war against Turkey. The Islam-oriented government in Ankara has harshly criticized close U.S. ally Israel for its occupation policies in the West Bank. And Turkey does not concur with Washington's efforts to pressure Iran and Syria.

Anyone in their right mind would criticize Israel for its armored assault on a civilian population and then stealing the land they drive the owners off because its "unoccupied".

Although these events indeed represent a new Turkish reality, it would be erroneous — indeed dangerous — to assume that Turkey's widespread opposition to many of the Bush administration's policies are symptomatic of a broader strategic hostility. And it would be exceptionally shortsighted for U.S.

The only thing Bush is planning for is the rapture. He wants the Middle East to blow up into a World War, just like Robertson and Falwell. Yet the only leader in the world who remotely resembles the anti-Christ is Bush himself. Or maybe Cheney.

North Korea Won't Negotiate Away Nuclear Bomb

International > Asia Pacific > North Korea Deals a Blow to Arms Talks" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/11/international/asia/11korea.html?th&emc=th">The New York Times > North Korea Deals a Blow to Arms Talks

The North Korean government has disavowed a commitment to negotiate a step-by-step elimination of its nuclear weapons program with the Bush administration but may freeze the production of nuclear bombs under strict conditions, said an American specialist on North Korea who completed a visit there this weekend.


The specialist, Selig S. Harrison of the Center for International Policy in Washington, said in an interview that he had been informed by several top-ranking North Korean leaders that the United States must pledge to respect the country's sovereignty and territorial integrity before any freeze could be discussed. The Bush administration has rejected conditions for resuming negotiations.

Why would North Korea disarm when the bomb is the only thing they believe prevents the US from pre-emptive strikes? Just how is it better that they feel the threat of the US military? I just don't see how saber rattling helps here, especially when everyone can see the US is bogged down in Iraq. And even if it weren't, why would it matter? China has been driven closer to North Korea with all the hubbub about nuclear and possible pre-emptive strikes.

Japan's Revisionist History

The escalation of tensions in the South China Sea is reaching a boil. Japan is in the process of shaking off its history. Unfortunately, rather than integrating the knowledge acquired from their past they are chosing to remove it from their history books.
This is very scary to me. Japan is a country with a history of belief in its genetic superiority. The rest of the peoples of east and southeast Asia were slaughtered whenever convenient as Japan built its empire during World War II. China and Korea have not forgotten. Indeed, the leadership of China has adopted an aggressive posture towards Japan and has been stoking a war fever in it's people while it builds up its war machine and prepares it's political and military leadership for war. Most of its sabre rattling has been at Taiwan, but with a US/Japan alliance in defense of Taiwan, they recognize their adversaries and allies. North Korea will do China's bidding. And now South Korea, may well its old foe Japan as a more palitable enemy than an ally in the upstart Taiwan with two HUGE armies to the north. Certainly all these countries know the US cannot protect Taiwan, Japan and South Korea.
Japan's Revisionist History

The United States, ever quick to criticize China for human rights abuses, has of late been remarkably silent about Japan's ethical lapses, current and historical. Japanese politicians and publishers have made a cottage industry of denying the 1937 Nanking Massacre in which the Japanese killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in the old Chinese capital. This is an offense to Chinese sensibilities comparable with Holocaust denial in Europe. In recent months, major publishers and broadcasters have been bullied to conform and self-censor in accord with the rising tide of resurgent militarism. That tacit government approval is given to such xenophobic, right-wing thinking can be seen in the latest Ministry of Education-approved school texts that erase or evade critical lessons drawn from Japan's bad behavior in its war of aggression.


In the "New History Textbook," the Nanking Massacre is dismissed as a controversial "incident." And the war of invasion is no longer termed an invasion. New textbooks drop references to "comfort women," sex slaves of mostly Chinese and Korean origin who were forced to service Japanese fighting men in the field. To borrow a phrase from the late writer Iris Chang, the abused women are being raped a second time, this time by defenders of the Japanese army who attempt to erase them from memory.

Anti-Japan Fury Spreads Through China's Streets

Fueled by anger over unfinished historical business, an anti-Japanese wave continued rippling across China on Sunday, a stone-throwing, flag-burning rampage that shows the grip old grievances and violence still hold over Asia's greatest powers. Japan called in China's ambassador in Tokyo to demand an apology and compensation for vandalism against Japanese targets in several Chinese cities. But the widening anger of the Chinese street against Japan, which most observers say has arisen with the tacit consent of Beijing, represents a collision of nationalist forces in both countries.


Fury has been building in China as well as in South Korea since last week, when Tokyo approved new junior high history textbooks that soften previous descriptions of Japan's wartime brutality across Asia. Both countries complain that Japan is methodically recanting admissions of guilt for crimes committed during its imperial conquests of the first half of the 20th century. "For some reason, the Japanese just can't seem to stop themselves from picking at all these historical scabs," said a senior Western diplomat who has served in Seoul and Tokyo and who requested anonymity. "They don't grasp how deeply this stuff wounds the Koreans."


The debate in the Japanese media has focused more on the anti-Japanese backlash than on the forces that triggered it. Newspapers and magazines have matched the hardening national mood in recent years, with the powerful conservative Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper calling Seoul's complaints "interference in the internal affairs of Japan." Observers note that many Japanese believe that the Chinese and South Korean governments are merely stoking public animosity to divert attention from their own political problems.


"Japanese people and the Japanese media talk only about the reaction of the Koreans and Chinese," said Takesato Watanabe, author of a just-published book on Japan's media called "A Public Betrayed." "We need the historical facts about how these issues are born in the first place if we are ever going to settle anything peacefully in Asia."


The first casualty of the furor may be Japan's bid for a U.N. Security Council seat. Tokyo is the second-largest contributor to the U.N. after Washington, and has allied itself with Germany, India and Brazil, the other rising regional powers, in pushing for permanent status on the world body's inner council.

"Death to America!" Echoes Through the Streets of Baghdad

I'm sure Bush and the Neocons never expected to see their "liberation" of Iraq result in the ominous words "Death to America!" chanted in the streets of Baghdad. But it was predictible from the start based on the facts of the Shiite majority strongly aligned with Iran. How could they miss this? Truly here, placed before us in the media for all to see, is the political manifestation of the failure of the Bush Doctrine.
Livid Iraq Protesters Tell U.S. to Get Out

Chanting "Death to America!" and burning effigies of President Bush and Saddam Hussein, tens of thousands of Iraqis flooded central Baghdad on Saturday in what police called the largest anti-American protest since the fall of Baghdad exactly two years ago. The peaceful demonstration by followers of Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr underscored the United States' accomplishments and its failures since the end of the war. Once staunch supporters of the U.S. invasion to oust the dictator who ruthlessly suppressed them, many Shiite Arabs in Iraq have grown so frustrated by the lingering military occupation, with its checkpoints, raids and use of force, that they took to the streets to demand a deadline for the withdrawal of troops.

I question that the Shiites were staunch supporters of the invasion. If they were, they would have come to the streets and welcomed the troops, even volunteered to help. They didn't. They remembered that after the last invasion of Iraq in 1991, the Shiites resisted Sadaam's attempt to retake control of southern Iraq expecting support from the US. The support never came and hundreds of thousands were killed.
On the other hand, this huge orderly protest, the largest since 1958, with no insurgents obvious suggests some real progress towards an indigenous democratic process. Iraqi Christians were present with signs saying, "We support the call of Sayyid Muqtada for national unity." The Association of Muslim Scholars brought out thousands of Sunnis in Ramadi in a parallel protest that supports the message of American withdrawl, but continued isolation of the Sunni's from the majority process.
Informed Comment has more:

...the crowds in downtown Baghdad protesting the US troop presence in the country may have been as large as 300,000. If it were even half that, these would be the largest popular demonstrations in Iraq since 1958! To any extent that they show popular sentiment shifting in Shiite areas to Muqtada al-Sadr's position on the American presence, they would indicate that he is winning politically even though the US defeated his militia militarily. Big demonstrations were also held in Ramadi and in Najaf. In Baghad, Shaikh Mu'ayyad al-Khazraji, a Sadr aide, said that the demonstrations would continue, to pressure the parliament to demand a US withdrawal.

Al-Hayat reports that Muqtada urged his followers not to bear arms and were not to reply with gunfire if they were shot at by the Americans, saying that God would be responsible for defeating the Occupiers." The demonstrators demanded a swift trial of Saddam Hussein, a timetable for US withdrawal, the release of Iraqis detained by the US, and an end to the marginalization of the opposition. The demonstrators carried effigies of Saddam Hussein, President Bush and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, each labeled "International Terrorist." Ash-Sharq al-Awsat says that the crowds also demanded an end to torture in Iraqi prisons.
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In a sermon read for him, Muqtada accused the United States of double standards-- allowing Israel to have the bomb but bothering Muslim powers who have a nuclear program.

The demonstration's magnitude appears to have convinced prime minister designate, Ibrahim Jaafari of the Dawa Party, to begin speaking once again of a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops.

Muqtada Sadr, a firebrand cleric with close ties to Iran, who is credited with organizing this protest, points the double standard of the US for allowing Israel to have nuclear weapons. This is an ominous development indeed. It shows both Iran's pervasive influence in Iraq, its continuing interest in going nuclear and the popular interest in nuclear weapons in the Middle East.
Not only has the US policy replaced Afghanistan with Iraq as a training ground for jihadis, they've provided them with outstanding experience fighting a modern army, they've strengthened Iran's influence in the Middle East, and gave them a strong case to develop nuclear weapons and given many other nations worried about the dominance of America in their neighborhood reasons to look at the nuclear options as well. The invasion of Iraq may well play out as the biggest mistake in foreign policy in this century, setting a tone for another generation of jihadis focused on attacking America and Britain.
Thank you Bush and the Neocons!

Israeli Extremists Raise the Ante

The new security threat in Israel is the extremist Jewish fundimentalists. They are seeking to sabatoge peace negotiations, the withdrawl from Gaza and the closing of ANY settlements in the Palestinian territories. Haaretz has this:

The Shin Bet security service has raised the level of alert in Jerusalem amid indications that extremist Jews are planning to carry out an attack on the mosques of the Temple Mount, and on the basis of new intelligence has beefed up police and security around the site in the heart of the Old City.
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Channel One reported Wednesday night that these security concerns have been made known to the political echelon. The radical rightists apparently aim to attack the mosques in the hope that they will disrupt the implementation of the disengagement plan.
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A senior security source said recently that the mosques of the Temple Mount, known to Muslims as Haram el Sharif, have become a "hot topic" among radicals, on the assumption that an attack on the mosques would shock the Muslim world, drag Israel into a new war and prevent the disengagement. The source defined the chances of the threat against the mount being actualized as greater than the threat to the prime minister's life, where the security risk remains stable at 6, largely because of the difficulty of protecting the mount.

Al-Ahram has the report of rampaging violence and harassment of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza by extremist settlers:

The Palestinian Authority (PA) is calling on the international community, including the "Quartet" (the US, EU, Russia and the UN), to pressure Israel to put an end to nearly daily pogrom-like attacks by messianic Israeli terrorists on defenseless Palestinian villagers throughout the West Bank. Attacks have mushroomed recently as extremist Israeli settlers vow to commit acts of "unprecedented violence" to thwart Israel's planned "disengagement" from the Gaza Strip. "We urge the international community to intervene immediately to stop this unprovoked and unjustified aggression against our civilians," said Ahmed Subh, deputy minister of information in the PA.
[...]
A spokesman for the Israeli army told the Weekly that responsibility for "keeping law and order" lied with the police, not the army. A high-ranking army officer admitted, however, that settlers were upping the ante in the West Bank. "The situation will only intensify. We see a trend of radicalisation in the actions of the extremists. Attacks against Palestinians have increased," he said. Palestinian official Subh is worried the worst is yet to come. "We are afraid that the Israeli government's inaction towards the settlers might embolden them to commit real massacres against our people."

If the Jewish extremists can't be contained, any hope for peace could be scuttled. It seems fundementalists of all denominations are undermining world peace, all in the name of God, Allah, or whoever they are worshipping these days. Religious freedom and tolerance also means not imposing your religion on others. Whatever happened to that concept?

Our Independent Judiciary is in Grave Danger

An independent judiciary is one of the checks and balences that prevent our government that has been an example for the world from degenerating into a plutocracy, government by the rich.
Justice Kennedy, a Reagan appointee, has been singled out by the the extremists leading the Republican Party, led by Tom DeLay.
Already, we have people being elected with hidden agendas to serve the rich. The best example is Doublethink Dubya. The doublethink is all about his hidden agenda. What he says has nothing to do with what he does.
Our news media is dominated by the advertisers. Each year a smaller more powerful group of businessmen control our media sources. The electorate can't exersize its voting rights with any independence if its totally dependent on information twisted to serve a hidden agenda rather than the truth.
Congress is lobbied like never before with the largest budget ever spent on influencing politics. Congress is elected with an ever increasing amount of money to campaign. The US is looking more and more like it is degenerating into a plutocracy. An independent judiciary's role is to slow the process of political change, to ensure continuity with the intent of the founding fathers. If Judges are intimidated into changing their verdicts for fear of being impeached, or worse yet impeached for coming to the "wrong" decisions, politics and the almighty dollar will control everything we have in this country. Politics will have reverted to the scandalous corruption of the "robber barons" over one hundred years ago at the peak of American Industrization.
And the Verdict on Justice Kennedy Is: Guilty (washingtonpost.com)

Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy is a fairly accomplished jurist, but he might want to get himself a good lawyer -- and perhaps a few more bodyguards. Conservative leaders meeting in Washington yesterday for a discussion of "Remedies to Judicial Tyranny" decided that Kennedy, a Ronald Reagan appointee, should be impeached, or worse. Although Justice Anthony M. Kennedy was named to the Supreme Court by President Ronald Reagan, he drew the ire of conservatives at a forum on the judiciary.


Phyllis Schlafly, doyenne of American conservatism, said Kennedy's opinion forbidding capital punishment for juveniles "is a good ground of impeachment." To cheers and applause from those gathered at a downtown Marriott for a conference on "Confronting the Judicial War on Faith," Schlafly said that Kennedy had not met the "good behavior" requirement for office and that "Congress ought to talk about impeachment."

[...]
Not to be outdone, lawyer-author Edwin Vieira told the gathering that Kennedy should be impeached because his philosophy, evidenced in his opinion striking down an anti-sodomy statute, "upholds Marxist, Leninist, satanic principles drawn from foreign law." Ominously, Vieira continued by saying his "bottom line" for dealing with the Supreme Court comes from Joseph Stalin. "He had a slogan, and it worked very well for him, whenever he ran into difficulty: 'no man, no problem,' " Vieira said. The full Stalin quote, for those who don't recognize it, is "Death solves all problems: no man, no problem." Presumably, Vieira had in mind something less extreme than Stalin did and was not actually advocating violence. But then, these are scary times for the judiciary. An anti-judge furor may help confirm President Bush's judicial nominees, but it also has the potential to turn ugly.

India is the Prettiest Girl at the Ball

The US and China are in a relatively high stakes competition for a favored relationship with India. But truly, why would India join the US in competing with China when they simply have to wait and they and China will make the world multilateral again when they become a superpower somewhere in the next few decades?
First the US, now China tries to woo India | csmonitor.com
First the US, now China tries to woo India
China's Wen Jiabao arrives in India Saturday to talk trade, borders, and better ties.
By Scott Baldauf | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Like the prettiest girl at a fairy-tale ball or in a Bollywood movie, India suddenly has lots of suitors calling.

A week after US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice came to India, talking of India's growing strategic and economic importance on the global stage, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao will make his first-ever visit to New Delhi with virtually the same message.

In talks starting Saturday, China and India aim to resolve 43-year-old boundary disputes and set the stage for a growing cooperation on trade and security issues.

Yet beneath the surface of this seeming popularity, there is a larger game at work. Neither the US nor China can afford to ignore a growing regional player like India, or to have it working directly against them. Beijing in particular has reason to be wary of Delhi, as the US courts India to be a counterweight to a rising China. But many Indian officials and scholars say the future of Indo-Chinese relations may be less competitive and aimed more at allowing each other to grow large enough to make the world multilateral once more.

New York Times Editorial Independence is Compromised

I'm greatly saddened by what I found on Juan Cole's Informed Comment. The NYT has joined the trend and established its editorial bias in this great polarization of America. I doubt the NYT can report objectively about Israel. They have joined those with the extremely narrow view that anyone who disagrees with Israel is an anti-Semite. And now Columbia University, a beacon of academic freedom my entire life, is under withering political pressure like that of universities in Florida under the doublethink legislation titled "Academic Freedom Bill of Rights":
New York Times Supports McCarthyite Witch Hunt

The New York Times editorial board went over to the Dark Side on Thursday, with an editorial that blasted the end results of a panel at Columbia University that investigated whether students had been intimidated by professors at Columbia University. The panel found that there was no evidence of any such thing, that no students had been punished for their views by lowered grades, that there was no evidence of racial bigotry.


The NYT nevertheless praised the neo-McCarthyite "film" (actually it is large numbers of films that are constantly re-edited and have never been publicly shown) produced by the shadowy anti-Palestinian "David Project." But the "film" is not an objective document. I could interview on film lots of people who ascribed all sorts of bad behavior to the editors of the New York Times and call it a "damning documentary." Students, including Israelis, who have actually taken classes in Middle East studies at Columbia dispute the films' allegations.

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Academic teaching is not about balance or "fairness" or presenting "both sides" of an issue. It is about teaching people to reason analytically and synthetically about problems. The NYT approach would ruin our ability to do this and would impose a particular version of history on us all by fiat. It even implies that some committee should sanction anyone critical of Israel.


Universities are about skewering sacred cows. Anyone who doesn't want their views challenged or their feelings hurt should stay away from them. If you can't handle an intellectual challenge, you shouldn't be on campus. And you certainly shouldn't be editing a major newspaper.


[...]
Links:



Rashid Khalidi on Democracy Now..



Links to the report and to Joseph Massad's response.


Baruch Kimmerling, the eminent Israeli sociologist, denounces the witch hunt at Columbia. The Chronicle of Higher Education, which hasn't done squat for professors faced with the New McCarthyism, rejected Kimmerling's piece, and they are another good candidate for cancelled subscriptions.


Scott Sherman in the Nation, "The Mideast Comes to Columbia."

The controversy at Columbia is about Arab professors who express their viewpoints in class. I can't possibly agree with Juan more, an university is not the place for the feint of heart or an official view of history. It is a place where freedom of speech is practiced, where anyone who is sensitive to viewpoints that are different than their own do not belong. It's a place for debate, for exchange, and ultimately a place for inquiry, analysis, and synthesis of ideas, where good ideas are enhanced by diverse perspectives and evolve under the bright light of public discourse into better ideas. There is a shrinking pool of progressive news media in America.

Afghanistan is One Huge US Jail

Here is a story every American should read. Afghanistan is not an functioning democracy, it's an occupied country held under martial law by US Troops.
Meanwhile Doublethink Dubya tells the world when it comes to the Syrian occupation of Lebanon...democratic elections shouldn't be run in an occupied country. Thanks to Tom Engelhardt for the link. Check out his article that provides a summary of conditions in Afghanistan.
Guardian Unlimited | One huge US jail

Outside Kabul, Afghanistan is bleaker, its provinces more inaccessible and lawless, than it was under the Taliban. If anyone leaves town, they do so in convoys. Afghanistan is a place where it is easy for people to disappear and perilous for anyone to investigate their fate. Even a seasoned aid agency such as Doctors Without Borders was forced to quit after five staff members were murdered last June. Only the 17,000-strong US forces, with their all-terrain Humvees and Apache attack helicopters, have the run of the land, and they have used the haze of fear and uncertainty that has engulfed the country to advance a draconian phase in the war against terror. Afghanistan has become the new Guantanamo Bay.


Washington likes to hold up Afghanistan as an exemplar of how a rogue regime can be replaced by democracy. Meanwhile, human-rights activists and Afghan politicians have accused the US military of placing Afghanistan at the hub of a global system of detention centres where prisoners are held incommunicado and allegedly subjected to torture. The secrecy surrounding them prevents any real independent investigation of the allegations. "The detention system in Afghanistan exists entirely outside international norms, but it is only part of a far larger and more sinister jail network that we are only now beginning to understand," Michael Posner, director of the US legal watchdog Human Rights First, told us.


When we landed in Kabul, Afghanistan was blue with a bruising cold. We were heading for the former al-Qaida strongholds in the south-east that were rumoured to be the focus of the new US network. How should we prepare, we asked local UN staff. "Don't go," they said. None the less, we were able to find a driver, a Pashtun translator and a boxful of clementines, and set off on a five-and-a-half-hour trip south through the snow to Gardez, a market town dominated by two rapidly expanding US military bases.


There we met Dr Rafiullah Bidar, regional director of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, established in 2003 with funding from the US Congress to investigate abuses committed by local warlords and to ensure that women's and children's rights were protected. He was delighted to see foreigners in town. At his office in central Gardez, Bidar showed us a wall of files. "All I do nowadays is chart complaints against the US military," he said. "Many thousands of people have been rounded up and detained by them. Those who have been freed say that they were held alongside foreign detainees who've been brought to this country to be processed. No one is charged. No one is identified. No international monitors are allowed into the US jails." He pulled out a handful of files: "People who have been arrested say they've been brutalised - the tactics used are beyond belief." The jails are closed to outside observers, making it impossible to test the truth of the claims.

The Neocon Ally in Uzbekistan Tortures "Thousands A Year"

President Karimov of Uzbekistan has been described in the press as a dictator who mistreats the population to contain an Islamic insurgency. Here is an excerpt from an interview of Craig Murry, a career diplomat who was recently rather unceremoniously removed from his position for reasons some say were more related to his agitating for human rights in one of the most brutal regimes on Earth.
Not surprising to me, but this government is being propped up by the millions of dollars that come its way because of its willingness to house a US military base. Where is Doublethink Dubya when there is a real need to export Democracy?
Craig Murray, Britain’s former ambassador to Uzbekistan:

I’d had about three weeks of briefing in London, which concentrated very largely on security aspects, questions of Uzbekistan’s geo-strategic position, and the war on terror – human rights weren’t emphasised at all. After two or three weeks in Tashkent, I attended the trial of [Iskander] Khudaiberganov (who was later sentenced to death). He was charged, with five others, with involvement in a variety of crimes including plotting to overthrow the state, terrorism, the murder of two policemen and armed robbery. There was a range of charges and different combinations of the defendants were charged with different ones. Several charges were recycled. Eleven other people had already been convicted of the murder case.


This was the tactic of taking a genuine crime – someone had killed two policemen – and using that to imprison and perhaps execute a number of people. The defendants were held in a cage surrounded by armed guards with submachine guns and they were harangued from the bench by a judge who made anti-Islamic remarks viewed as great witticisms by his cronies in the court. Khudaiberganov’s real crime, I think, was that he had been taught in an Arabic school – one of a number that had been opened with Saudi Arabian money in Uzbekistan in the early/mid-1990s. These were closed following the bombings in Tashkent in 1999. People who had attended these schools were being arrested and charged. A large number are now in jail.


• Your involvement with dissidents in Uzbekistan grew deeper?


My diplomatic colleagues took the view that because of Uzbekistan’s role as a close ally of the US in the war on terror we didn’t mention its human rights record. When I called on the French or German ambassador, for example, I’d say, ‘The things I’m seeing here are absolutely appalling.’ They explicitly stated that there was an understanding that we didn’t broach these things because of the US-Uzbek alliance. No one in London had said to me there was any such understanding: I was under no instruction from any British minister not to mention these things so I decided we would. When I started to do things like go to the Khoudaiberganov trial, take notice of the photographs of Avazov and Azimov – who had been boiled to death – or get pathology reports - this was a tremendous ray of hope for the Uzbek human rights movement. Once people saw I took a genuine interest they started coming to me on a regular basis – particularly families of people arrested, tortured or wrongfully accused. We became a kind of focal point for the oppressed.

[...]
On the other hand, young people are being radicalised by lack of hope. The extraordinary economic policies of the government, aimed at diverting economic activity into the hands of the very few, either through state monopolies or private monopolies enforced by the state, are causing a great deal of poverty and hardship. People are desperate. They don’t see any future in Uzbekistan and they don’t see a democratic opposition. So they are starting to turn to more radical Islamic doctrine. Most Uzbeks who don’t live in major cities would never see any anti-government material. They’d have no access to anything other than official media and official views, except perhaps for an underground mosque or a local radical cleric. The danger is that lack of democracy will cause Central Asia to be radicalised.

[...]
I remember a case of a Jehovah’s Witness prosecuted last year; JWs are also much prosecuted and imprisoned in Uzbekistan. There was a long list of banned documents he had on his person like The Watchtower but, absurdly, they threw in some Hizb-ut-Tahrir leaflets for good measure.

[...]
But almost anyone who comes into the hands of the security services gets tortured, no matter where they come from. It wasn’t as bad in Soviet days as it is now. Certainly it has become more brutal and the police and the SNB (the secret police) act with no fear of reprisal at all. Torture is used to terrorise any potential political opponent. Thousands of people are tortured every year – not tens or dozens. There’s virtually nobody in Uzbekistan who doesn’t know somebody who has been tortured. It’s a regime that rules by fear.

[...]
After the March 2004 bombings in Tashkent, public opinion held that the government almost certainly did it. People made a point of coming and telling me their views, literally in the street. There may come a stage when desperation overcomes fear to some extent. There is more rumbling of discontent than previously, perhaps, but the broad façade of fear still holds.

[...]
• If the information gained from torture is being used to help shape British and US policies, where do we fit into all this?


We mustn’t fall for it, or accept Karimov’s line that he’s besieged by the same fundamentalists who are threatening London or New York. It worries me that there are those in the West who have an interest in accepting hyped up intelligence material. The existence of an external threat justifies the size and funding of the intelligence services, so it’s in their interest to accept material which unrealistically exaggerates the threat.


That’s what the Butler report shows happened over Iraq and those non-existent weapons of mass destruction. Western intelligence services were prepared to accept intelligence that turned out to be nonsense. Historically, since the fall of the Soviet Union, we know that western estimates of the strength, capability and numbers of the Soviet armed forces were vastly overestimated. There is a tendency by the intelligence services to welcome information that exaggerates a threat and not subject it to the scrutiny it deserves.

Russia in Danger of Collapse?

Is Russia in danger of further break up? Chechnya and the Caucasus region has been restive since the time of the Czars. It seems unlikely they will change now. But the threat from Siberia? I've not heard that one before. "Immigrants" from years past, the survivors of Stalin's gulags likely make up a large proportion of the population. They may not be very interested in responding to a government in Moscow. But that is speculation.
Kremlin Fears A Break Up - The St. Petersburg Times

A rift among national power brokers threatens the country with disintegration that could have even more violent consequences than the collapse of the Soviet Union, Kremlin chief of staff Dmitry Medvedev warned in a wide-ranging interview published Monday.
[...]
Liberal politicians said Monday that Medvedev's calls for the elites to close ranks could pave the way for a crackdown on opposition and dissent, Ekho Moskvy radio reported Monday. Irina Khakamada, leader of the liberal party Our Choice, or Nash Vybor, said Medvedev wanted to scare officials out of supporting dissenting groups, the radio reported.

According to analysts, however, the interview was the Kremlin's response to growing discontent among politicians, business people and intellectuals with Putin's policies. Vladimir Pribylovsky, head of the Panorama think tank, said Medvedev could be trying to engage regional and national elites that feel sidelined by Putin's retinue, which mainly consists of his former colleagues in the administration of former St. Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak. "The current authorities do not represent all elites," he said. "Many of them do not like that they are being oppressed."

Alternatively, Pribylovsky said, Medvedev could be sending a message to various groups in the presidential administration including the siloviki, the St. Petersburg economists and the St. Petersburg lawyers. These groups have been at odds recently over control of economic assets, he said.

In his interview, Medvedev - a 39-year-old lawyer by profession who graduated from Putin's old law school in St. Petersburg - admitted differences among administration members. "We are not the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and we do not campaign for unity of thought," he said. "The main thing is not to lose your ability to criticize yourself, and not to stoop to using primitive management schemes, forgetting about the real goal of statecraft."

Some analysts have speculated that members of Putin's administration have been split over what to do with the spoils of the state takeover of Yukos' main production unit, Yuganskneftegaz. Kremlin deputy chief of staff Igor Sechin is chairman of state-owned Rosneft, which acquired Yugansk after last December's auction, while Medvedev is chairman at Gazprom, which is due to merge with Rosneft. The two companies have openly bickered over control of assets under the terms of their merger.

Pribylovsky said the threat of Russia's disintegration was a very powerful argument, because "80 percent of people believe that should not be allowed." But Pribylovsky took issue with Medvedev's analysis, saying that the primary threat to Russia's unity was the ongoing conflict in Chechnya and instability in the North Caucasus as a whole, a subject Medvedev did not touch upon in his interview.

Medvedev said another problem that endangered Russia's territorial integrity was the insufficient development of sparsely populated Siberia and the Far East. "If we don't develop the east, Russia will not be unified," he said.

The new pan-Arabism thrives on negativity

Finally, someone has said something about the blind path pan-arab nationalism has traveled most recently. This article is a breath of fresh air, this time from Lebanon.
The Daily Star - The new pan-Arabism thrives on negativity

On February 12, Palestinian security officials reported that they had received death threats against Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, warning him against going down the track of peace negotiations with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Those threats did not come from Palestinian groups opposed to talks with Israel, but from Lebanon's Hizbullah. Similarly, the February 18 suicide bombing in a Tel Aviv nightclub, which killed four Israelis and left Sharon on the brink of pulling out of talks with the Palestinians, was claimed by the Damascus branch of Islamic Jihad. In Iraq, the satellite television station Al-Jazeera was accused by interim Interior Minister Falah al-Naqib of "encouraging the criminals and gangsters to increase their activities."


What do all these incidents have in common? Palestinians and Iraqis are suffering because the rest of the Arab world feels it owns them and their causes. This misguided sense of ownership emerges from pan-Arabism, which echoes the far older idea of a pan-Islamic umma, or community. Pan-Arabism rests on solid foundations. It speaks to a community united by language, culture and faith, and often also by ethnicity. Its precepts are reflected in the not-too-distant past: The 20th century saw the creation of the Arab Federation of Iraq and Jordan and the United Arab Republic of Egypt and Syria (both established in 1958 and both short-lived), and the more successful United Arab Emirates which exists to this day.


But if pan-Arabism is based on the idea of a rightful and legitimate union of the Arab world, the idea took on a negative political impetus since it defined itself as against the West (even if the West's behavior has often been a uniting force among the Arabs). Pan-Arabism's "light unto the nations" principles have been entirely replaced by anti-Westernism, which, justified or not, has had very damaging consequences for the Middle East as a whole. This neopan-Arabism today is a hypocritical religion since it implicitly contends that the Arab world is incapable of sorting out its own problems. There is no distinguishing between West-blamers or West-haters in the Arab world, who would have America take sole responsibility for the ills of the region, and those many Westerners who consider the West somehow superior to the Arabs. Both sides are implicitly neocolonialist. With neopan-Arabism, it is the nation state that suffers, which is exactly what is happening in Iraq and Palestine.

The Political Pope: John Paul II - 1920-2005

Juan Cole has an outstanding post on the other side of Pope Paul II. Pope John Paul II was a study in contrasts. He was very much a modern pope, a pope with a political background from a formerly communist client-state of the USSR. This Polish pope made the papacy more politically relevent than it has been in many years. I remain disappointed that he didn't not modernise the churches views on the equality of women, sexuality, birth control and abortion, positions which I believe remain the Churches' greatest liability as a credible social force in the world. However, his positions on social issues were tantamount to endorsing the Latin American Jesuit political agenda. For that, the world owes him an honored place in history. Time will tell if his use of the bully pulpit will have a broader effect. Here is excerpts from Juan's post:
War:

War is never just another means that one can choose to employ for settling differences between nations. As the Charter of the United Nations Organization and international law itself remind us, war cannot be decided upon, even when it is a matter of ensuring the common good, except as the very last option and in accordance with very strict conditions, without ignoring the consequences for the civilian population both during and after the military operations.

The Penal System:

The problem must be viewed in the context of a system of penal justice ever more in line with human dignity and thus, in the end, with God's plan for man and society. The primary purpose of the punishment which society inflicts is "to redress the disorder caused by the offence."(46) Public authority must redress the violation of personal and social rights by imposing on the offender an adequate punishment for the crime, as a condition for the offender to regain the exercise of his or her freedom. In this way authority also fulfills the purpose of defending public order and ensuring people's safety, while at the same time offering the offender an incentive and help to change his or her behaviour and be rehabilitated. It is clear that, for these purposes to be achieved, the nature and extent of the punishment must be carefully evaluated and decided upon, and ought not go to the extreme of executing the offender except in cases of absolute necessity: in other words, when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society. Today however, as a result of steady improvements in the organization of the penal system, such cases are very rare, if not practically non-existent.

The Environment:

The Holy Father said that environmental dangers force world leaders in science, industry, and government to find new ways to use the earth's resources responsibly. The key challenge, he said, is "not only to limit the damage which has already been done, and apply remedies, but especially to find approaches to development which are in harmony with respect and protection for the natural environment.

On Unbridled Capitalism:

...the danger of treating work as "merchandise" -or as an impersonal "work force"-remains as long as economics is understood in a materialistic way. It is this one-sided approach that concentrates on work as the prime thing, leaving the worker in a secondary place. This is a reversal of the order laid down in the book of Genesis. The worker is treated as a tool whereas the worker ought to be treated as the subject of work, as its maker and creator.

On Relationships Between Christians and Muslims:

It is my ardent hope that Muslim and Christian religious leaders and teachers will present our two great religious communities as communities in respectful dialogue, never more as communities in conflict. It is crucial for the young to be taught the ways of respect and understanding, so that they will not be led to misuse religion itself to promote or justify hatred and violence. Violence destroys the image of the Creator in his creatures, and should never be considered as the fruit of religious conviction.

Kyrgyzstan's Democratic Revolt Turns Out to Be a Plain, Old Coup

So much for democracy in Kyrgyzstan. Slick politicians again win the day.
International > Asia Pacific > Kyrgyzstan's Shining Hour Ticks Away and Turns Out to Be a Plain, Old Coup" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/03/international/asia/03kyrgyzstan.html">The New York Times > International > Asia Pacific > Kyrgyzstan's Shining Hour Ticks Away and Turns Out to Be a Plain, Old Coup

A malaise is settling over this country as the uprising a week ago begins to look less like a democratically inspired revolution and more like a garden-variety coup, with a handful of seasoned politicians vying for the spoils of the ousted government. "Let's not pretend that what happened here was democratic," said Edil Baisalov, one of the country's best-known democracy advocates, speaking to clearly disheartened students beneath huge Soviet-era portraits of Lenin, Marx and Engels in the auditorium of what has been the American University since 1997. Mr. Baisalov bemoaned what he said Kyrgyzstan lost out on when the presidential palace was stormed and President Askar Akayev fled: the kind of cathartic national experience that he witnessed in Ukraine as its Orange Revolution unfolded. That was a slow-building, well-organized event that took two months to reach a successful conclusion.


But as it seems to be turning out, the Kyrgyz experience could have a chilling effect on political freedoms in the region at least equal to its inspiration of pro-democracy activists. The squabbling that came out of the country's "revolution" reveals a clearly visible fracture dividing northerners from southerners, and many less obvious fissures fragmenting those groups even more. People who have won a measure of influence, meanwhile, are appointing family and friends to jobs in keeping with Kyrgyzstan's age-old tribal customs. Kyrgyzstan's political analysts say that some good is still likely to emerge. They say the country's future leaders have been put on notice that popular political movements are possible and that the mechanisms to make them happen are in place. But such an outcome is far from the hopes that drove the uprising. It started as separate revolts in the country's southern provinces, where clans of politicians disqualified from the recent parliamentary elections occupied government buildings. The discontent spread to other parts of the country as the flawed elections unfolded, and opposition politicians in the north channeled the upset into a national movement.

Sunni Clerics in Iraq Authorize Joining the Military and Police

There is a development in Iraq that could have a positive effect. It appears that Sistani has been busy behind the scenes talking to Sunni clerics. They have issued effectively a joint fatwa encouraging cooperation and joining the Iraqi military and police to secure the Country. Now the purely secular Iraqi's in the insurgency and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi may find themselves very much alone. Here is a quote from Juan Cole at Informed Comment.

Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani gave a fatwa Friday saying that cooperation with the forces charged with safeguarding security in Iraq is "obligatory" on all Iraqis, "as long as the principles of Islamic law are observed."

[...}
At the same time, 64 Sunni clerics gave a fatwa that for Iraqis to join the military and police is permitted. Indeed, they called for Iraqis to join these forces, saying that they are national in character and not a militia pertaining to a particular sect. The signatories included prominent members of the Association of Muslim Scholars and the Iraqi Islamic Party, including Shaikh Abd al-Ghafur al-Samarra'i, the prayer leader at the Umm al-Qura Mosque in Baghdad, Shaikh Ahmad Hasan al-Taha, leader of the Abu Hanifa mosque and a member of AMS, and Shaikh Ziyad Mahmud al-Ani, rector of the Islamic College in Baghdad and a member if the IIP.
Unlike Sistani's this ruling does potentially change things. The Sunni clerics seem to have figured out that boycotting the new government is just a form of self-marginalization, and if Sunnis aren't in the army and police, then those forces will be largely Shiite and Kurdish.

Hamas Joins the PLO

Hamas and Islamic Jihad have agreed in principle to join the PLO. Sharon's political posturing while he consolidates power and property on the West Bank has led to an unprecidented unity of opinion and purpose within the Palestinian people. From Al-Ahram:

Hamas leaders say the movement always wanted to join the PLO and was only repulsed by the insolence of the PLO leadership. "Our decision to participate in the PLO is not new. It is a long-standing and clear decision," Mahmoud Al-Zahhar told reporters in Gaza this week.

[...]
"We are convinced that Israel is only using the so-called peace process as a rubric for consolidating its occupation and colonisation in the West Bank," Al-Zahhar said. "What is happening now," he continued, "and what will go on for many years to come, is not a real political process. It is actually no more than public relations and crisis management; the Americans know it, the Zionists know it and even the PA knows it."

[...]
Al-Zahhar further argued that President Bush's vision for a Palestinian state living side-by-side with Israel was a deception. "Bush speaks about a viable Palestinian state and at the same time he has told Sharon that he can keep half of the West Bank in the context of any final status agreement. What kind of state is he talking about?"

Unfortunately, this means Sharon will have political justification for continuing to steal land from the West Bank with the ultimate intent of removing large parts of the West Bank from the negotiation table. Sharon will continue to bully Palestinians off of their land, forbid their return, annex the property for being "unoccupied" and build more settlements.
Will the Intifada restart? It seems inevitable that the ceasefire will end sooner or later unless Israel changes it's tune.

Despite What The Administration Says, Bush Has Put The Whole World Economy At Risk

Global: Sputtering - Stephen Roach (New York)

A global slowdown was inevitable in 2005 -- in my view, it was just a question of degree. The 4.8% spurt of world GDP growth in 2004 -- equaling the sharpest increase in 20 years -- was an outgrowth of the extraordinary stimulus that was put in place in 2003 as the world veered dangerously toward deflation. That stimulus obviously achieved considerable traction in 2004, but in doing so undoubtedly borrowed from gains in the future. That future is now. Unfortunately, the payback could well be exacerbated by two new global headwinds -- sharply elevated energy prices and the coming normalization of real interest rates.


An unbalanced global economy is a vulnerable global economy. As the world’s imbalances have continued to mount -- underscored by the sharp recent widening of the US current-account deficit -- those perils have only grown larger. A serious pitfall was averted in 2003 when the authorities opted for a major reflationary policy gambit. But the impacts of those efforts have now worn off. That leaves an unbalanced world with little choice other than to face up to the imperatives of global rebalancing. A slower US growth dynamic is an integral part of that rebalancing. It is up to the rest of the world as to whether there are any compensating offsets. For the time being, that does not appear to be the case. And so an unbalanced global economy is now beginning to sputter.

So where was I when the world was at risk for deflation? Since I don't read the Wall Street Journal, it seems there wasn't much press about the risk that occurred in 2003. At the worst point of the recession we are still scratching our way out of, deflation was a real risk. It in fact is occurring in Japan even now.
With America so far in debt, personally and as a government, deflation would be a risky prospect indeed. The average American with significant mortgage and credit card debt would see their equity shrink and their real debt increase even though their still making payments. I can't think of a better way to kill off demand. House prices, already high, could head downward. Incomes would begin to drop, but house payments would stay the same. Defaults on loans would increase. Investment would fall with little promise of profit. We could very quickly find unemployment skyrocketing. Of course, Bush's "base" would the least hurt by deflation. But as Roach points out, the tax cuts and deficit spending of 2003/4 continuing in 2005 have just postponed a downturn. As Roach says, "I remain in the “old school” that insists savings, deficits, and debt matter."

The "Rebuilding" of Afghanistan Has Taken a "Haliburton"-like Turn

It seems to be a common tactic of the Bush Administration to pour future taxpayer's money into the pockets of his "base". All the US contractors are making obscene profits in Afghanistan, just like in Iraq, while the infrastructure in the country remains dysfunctional and the people lose faith in the American's who claim to rescue them, then fill the pockets of the contractors while the Countries languish in their own poverty and uranium dust. And of course the US media has nothing about it.
Afghanistan: The Aid Swindle - SPIEGEL ONLINE

"Where are the billions for the Afghans?" asks Abduh Waleh, editor-in-chief of the Kabul Times newspaper. "Where is all the money from the international community going to" the outraged traditional newspaper Anis asks? Already, donor nations have pumped at least $4 billion into the war-torn country. With the exception of Iraq, that's more money than is being invested in any other crisis region. Meanwhile, Kabul is packed with foreigners, who tear through the streets in four-wheel drive Toyota Land Cruisers. But three years after the United States toppled the Taliban, even some of the most basic accoutrements of modern life still have not been provided to most Afghans. Electricity is still only available for a few hours each day if at all. The sewers don't work and even in the best neighborhoods, water only occasionally flows from the taps. With few exceptions, the streets have remained little more than a patchwork of pot holes.


But, in the villa-filled Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhood, generators buzz night and day to produce electricity and deliver water. Here, where the foreign aid workers reside, houses now rent for an average of $8,000 per month.


Planning Minister Bachardoust wanted to know how the NGOs [Non-government Organizations i.e. contractors] were actually spending the money allocated to them -- how much for the rents and salaries, for their cars and how much they were actually using for their projects. He demanded that the organizations open their books to the government, but few were prepared to do so. Only 437 out of a total of 2,355 organizations obliged his request. Then Bachardoust threatened, somewhat overzealously, to close their offices in December.



President Hamid Karzai stopped him. He didn't want a fight with the NGOs or with representatives of the countries that back them. After all, they were collectively planning to invest $15 billion through 2009 for Afghanistan's reconstruction -- in many cases through the very organizations the planning minister had so sharply attacked, among them American, Japanese and European. Some of Germany and Britain's most important NGOs also got a tongue-lashing.


A novice to politics, an angered Bouchardoust resigned from his ministry post, returned his company car and left the president's palace. When he speaks, his French-accented voice is tinged with anger. "It's a corrupt system that helps the rich."

A Strategic Alliance with Pakistan

Juan Cole has an analysis of the importance of a broad-based US-Pakistani relationship. While I must say I don't trust Musharraf and his history of play both sides of the issues of jihadis and Kashmir. But Cole gives a very persuasive argument that Al Qaeda has been trying to kill Musharraf and he has been pretty effective in containing the threat within his own country and forms a bridge to other countries in the region. Well worth reading the whole article.
Informed Comment

US Ambassador to Pakistan Ryan Crocker emphasized that the United States wants a broad-based and long-term engagement with Pakistan. Honest and straightforward diplomat that he is, Crocker admitted that the US had in the past sometimes allied with Pakistan on a single issue and then just walked away afterwards. Crocker is a career diplomat who knows the Muslim world intimately and has developed a reputation as an effective combatant against al-Qaeda in the field. The US could do with a couple hundred more of him.


On what basis can there be a broad-based US-Pakistani relationship?


1. Pakistani intelligence is on the front lines in the fight against al-Qaeda. If anyone finds Bin Laden, it will likely be them. Al-Qaeda's capacity to strike US targets in South Asia and neighboring regions has been crippled because of the effectiveness of the Pakistanis.


2. Pakistan is a counter-weight to Iran in the region. A nuclear power with twice Iran's population and a professional military some 400,000 strong, Pakistan is in geopolitical competition with Tehran for influence in Afghanistan and Central Asia, as well as in the eastern Arab world. President Musharraf is a Turkish-style secularist and Pakistan has been moving back to parliamentary governance, so that it could develop as among the biggest Muslim democracies.


3. Pakistan is an important back channel to China, with which it has had a longstanding and close alliance.


4. Pakistan's cooperation is key to finding a peaceful and mutually satisfactory solution to the Kashmir issue, which is among the global flashpoints the US government must help resolve for the sake of US and world security.