Bush Efforts in Somalia Likely to Create More Terrorists

The Bush Administration just doesn't learn from experience. While attempting to counter an Al-Qaeda presense in Mogadishu, they are allowing a level of excess in repression and dirty tactics that threatens to recruit new terrorists to the Al Qaeda cause.
Why am I not surprised?
International Crisis Group

...away from the spotlight, a quiet, dirty conflict is being waged in Somalia: in the rubble-strewn streets of the ruined capital of this state without a government, Mogadishu, al-Qaeda operatives, jihadi extremists, Ethiopian security services and Western-backed counter-terrorism networks are engaged in a shadowy and complex contest waged by intimidation, abduction and assassination. The U.S. has had some success but now risks evoking a backlash. Ultimately a successful counter-terrorism strategy requires more attention to helping Somalia with the twin tasks of reconciliation and state building.

[...]
Since 2003, Somalia has witnessed the rise of a new, ruthless, independent jihadi network with links to al-Qaeda. Based in lawless Mogadishu and led by a young militia leader trained in Afghanistan, the group announced its existence by murdering four foreign aid workers in the relatively secure territory of Somaliland between October 2003 and April 2004. Western governments, led by the U.S., responded to the threat of terrorism in and from Somalia by building up Somali counter-terrorist networks headed by faction leaders and former military or police officers, and by cooperating with the security services in Somaliland and neighbouring Puntland. The strategy has netted at least one key al-Qaeda figure, and as many as a dozen members of the new jihadi group are either dead or behind bars.


Despite these successes, counter-terrorism efforts are producing growing unease within the broader public. Few Somalis believe there are terrorists in their country, and many regard the American-led war on terrorism as an assault on Islam. Unidentified surveillance flights, the abduction of innocent people for weeks at a time on suspicion of terrorist links, and cooperation with unpopular faction leaders all add to public cynicism and resentment. Without public support, even the most sophisticated counter-terrorism effort is doomed to failure.

[...]
The threat of jihadi terrorism in and from Somalia is real. But attempts by the new Somali leadership and its regional allies to exploit this threat for short-term political gain risk plunging the country into even greater crisis. Several key leaders in the deeply divided transitional government are notorious for smearing adversaries and critics with allegations of terrorist linkages -- conduct that threatens to deepen the schisms within the government. More alarmingly, the faction of the TFG aligned with the interim president has tried to use the threat of terrorism to justify deployment of a regional intervention force to Somalia -- a widely unpopular and deeply divisive proposition that would not only irrevocably split the government and trigger renewed conflict, but would also dramatically strengthen the jihadis.


Ultimately, the threat of jihadi terrorism from Somalia can only be addressed through the restoration of stable, legitimate and functional government. Dealing with that threat requires Somalia's friends to do more to assist in bringing Somali society together again and rebuilding the state. But such assistance must be carefully planned and finely calibrated in order to ensure that it does not empower one faction of the TFG at the expense of another or otherwise destabilise a fragile peace process.


A successful counter-terrorism campaign requires more engagement with the broader public, including civil society organisations and more moderate Islamist groups. Somalis must be persuaded not only that some individuals guilty of terrorism are indeed in their country but also that the counter-terrorism agenda does not involve subjugation by factional or foreign interests. At the same time, Somalia's partners must become involved with the peace process, helping to overcome the TFG schisms and to forge a genuine government of national unity. If they fail to do so, jihadis will gradually find growing purchase among Somalia's despairing and disaffected citizenry, and it will only be a matter of time before another group of militants succeeds in mounting a spectacular terrorist attack against foreign interests in Somalia or against one of its neighbours.

London's Terrorists Are Homegrown

In a chilling escalation of terrorism, young men and a teen of Pakistani descent, citizens of Britain had been recruited to be suicide bombers.
Crime : app5" href="http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/article298807.ece">Independent Online Edition

The terrorists responsible for the Tube and bus attacks in London have been revealed as home-grown suicide bombers.


The four young British men, all thought to be of Pakistani origin, are believed to have blown themselves up with rucksack bombs on Thursday, killing at least 52 people.


Three of the bodies of the terrorists responsible for what was the first suicide bombing in western Europe have been identified, while a fourth is thought to be among the remains in the wreckage on the Piccadilly line between King's Cross and Russell Square.


Police raids at six homes in north Yorkshire yesterday also led to one arrest. But senior security sources warned last night that they suspected al-Qa'ida planners, bomb-makers and organisers were still at large and further suicide bombings were likely. The four men, including one teenager, all from Leeds and Dewsbury in West Yorkshire, were not considered Islamic extremists and were not thought to have significant links with terrorism.

This is bad news for Muslims of Middle Eastern descent in the west, civil liberties for everyone in the west. Bush has gotten a bump in the polls apparently the result of the London attack. The opposition to the Patriot Act may see some retreat. There is no doubt who is winning the war on terror. Terrorists often seek to scare it's opponent into exposing it's hidden fascistic sentiments in a bid to show the world who is the greater threat. Indeed, Europe sees Bush as the greatest threat.
Too many Americans just don't get it. Conflicts in the Baltics, the Caucuses and the Middle East have gone on for hundreds of years. Revenge and counter revenge goes on interminably until both sides are capable of great atrocities and insensitivity, driven to the brink of insanity by anger and fear.
An eye for an eye blinds both sides. Someone has to step above the blood feud and call it off.

Some Good News from London's Terror

Muslim leadership from around the world, from organizations associated with terror has universally condemned the attack on civilians in London. A coordinated fatwa by multiple Muslim leaders from Sunni's and Shiites has condemned targetting civilians. While it's not a time for celebration, the actions in the Muslim world is certainly worthy of gratitude.
Khaleej Times Online

The other important difference between the London bombings and 9/11 has been the response of the world of Islam. For months after 9/11, I kept writing that it was sad and disturbing that Muslims were reluctant to condemn the attacks. This time is different. Major Muslim groups in Britain have unambiguously denounced the bombings. Even the so-called fundamentalist organisations have condemned it. The Muslim Association of Britain, a hard-line group with alleged ties to militants in the Middle East, called the bombings "heinous and repulsive" and urged Muslims to help the emergency services and police. "We have faith in Britain and British people that we as a country will not be defeated by this," said its spokesman, Anas Altikriti.


The response outside Britain has also been much stronger than ever before. The grand imam of Al-Azhar, Shaikh Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi, condemned the bombers but went further, rejecting the argument that this attack could be justified as an attempt to force Britain out of Iraq. "This is illogical and cannot be the motive for killing innocent civilians," he said. More striking have been the condemnations from radical groups like Hamas, Hizbullah and Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, all of which have denounced the bombings. Many of them have, of course, coupled their attacks on the terrorists with denunciations of American and British policies in the Middle East, particularly regarding Iraq and the Palestinian territories. But that kind of rhetoric is old news. What is new here is the fact that no one, not even Hamas, can continue to condone or even stay silent about these barbarities. September 11 shocked the Arab psyche. For months afterward, Arabs and many Muslims went through phases recognisable to psychologists: shock, denial, anger. (Remember those absurd claims that 9/11 was a Mossad plot?) They are finally, slowly, moving toward recognising that there is a great dysfunction in the world of Islam, which has allowed Muslims to concoct wild conspiracy theories, blame others for their problems and, worst of all, condone grotesque violence.


Now things are changing. The day before the London bombs, a conference of 180 top Muslim shaikhs and imams, brought together under the auspices of Jordan’s King Abdullah, issued a statement forbidding that any Muslim be declared kafir — an apostate. This is a frontal attack on Al Qaeda’s theological methods. Declaring someone kafir and thus sanctioning his or her death is a favourite tactic of Bin Laden and his ally in Iraq, Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi.


The conference’s statement was endorsed by 10 fatwas from such big Islamic scholars as Tantawi; Iraq’s Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani; Egypt’s mufti, Ali Jumaa, and the influential Shaikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Signed by adherents of all schools of fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), it also allows only qualified Muslim scholars to issue edicts. The Islamic Conference’s statement, the first of its kind, is a rare show of unity among the religious establishment against terrorists and their scholarly allies.

The "Chosen" People

LA Times

The Muslim world is obsessed with the Jews and with annihilating the one Jewish state, an obsession analogous to that of the Nazis.


In the words of Catholic scholar Father Edward Flannery, "the Jews carry the burden of God in history." Most Jews do not believe this (or almost any Jewish religious doctrine, for that matter). And many Jews dislike talk of chosenness because they fear it will increase anti-Semitism. They may be right.


But it doesn't alter the fact that the worldwide obsession with one of the smallest countries and smallest peoples on Earth, and the unique hatred of the Jews and the Jewish state by the world's most vicious ideologies, can be best explained only in transcendent terms. God, for whatever reason, chose the Jews.

This article is quite scary and probably represents why some Jews feel a comraderie towards the Christian Right. This man's logic is seriously flawed and egocentric. He tries to make the point that being "chosen" is not racism. Technically the allegations of "racism" are incorrect since emetic people include many Jews and Arabs. More correctly the word prejudice should be used.
He seems to miss entirely that the issue of racism comes up most often with radial Zionism which seeks to eliminate the Arab population in Israel, one way or another. The other form of prejudice is the laws within Israel that apply differently to Israelis and Palestinians based solely on genetic heritage. Even some Jews are said to be "less Jewish" than others. There is a multi-tiered set of rights and privileges based on heritage. By definition, that is prejudice. From Merriam-Webster Online, prejudice is:

...preconceived judgment or opinion...an irrational attitude of hostility directed against an individual, a group, a race, or their supposed characteristics.

The prejudice in this article is directed at the "Muslim World". The truth is the Muslim world is no more obsessed about what they see as a cruel invader than any other people. The title of the article, "Evil targets God's chosen" implies the "Muslim World" is evil. Pat Robertson has been quoted saying the same.
For those who are having trouble with this argument, let me describe a analogous situation. Lets say a tribe Native Americans establish a relationship with the Chinese in 100 years. China, who has advanced it's technology well beyond the rest of the world as the new "super power", has given superior military technology to the tribe. The tribe now decides it wants back it's ancestral land which just happens to include Washington DC and much of the central east coast. They take the land, forcibly, and set about defending it from a furious American population. But because of their military inferiority, they are unable to take back their capital.
Would attempts by Americans to take back their capital at whatever cost be considered prejudice? Very likely in the heat of war politics, Americans would say many times they will "sweep them into the sea", "wipe them from the face of the earth". Would this make it prejudice?
Would the tribe be considered prejudiced because they took back the land? Naturally, many of the Americans would be displaced by the war, many would become refugees. There would be much conflict within the community where rebellious residents would harass and be harassed. But would this conflict be called prejudice?
Now if the tribe threw out Americans just because of their "American-ness", restricted their rights, and went after criminals and terrorists within the American community with little regard for innocent bystanders, prejudice would apply.
If Americans started killing Native Americans of other tribes, regardless of their peacefulness, prejudice would apply.
Suppose the tribe started calling all Americans "evil" because they wanted to wipe out their new country. That is prejudice.
If Americans started targeting Chinese where ever or whoever they were for murder, and sent a commando raid to Beijing to blow up the largest building full of people, they too would be acting on prejudice.
Prejudice was not what started the conflict in the Middle East. It was a classic clash of cultures where one culture with superior military power imposed it's will on another. This is a process that has repeated itself over and over again in history. In all of history's clashes of culture, prejudice very likely developed after the war, while the dominant culture imposed it's will on the population within it's new territory. It is truly a natural part of history.
But that doesn't make it right.

Karl Rove On The Hotseat

Valerie Plame was exposed as a CIA employee after her husband, Joseph Wilson, made an unfavorable assessment of Saddam's search for Uranium in Africa. He said it didn't happen. All of a sudden not only is his wife's career as an undercover operative with the CIA over, all intelligence from Iran is compromised just as the Bush Administration is ramping up the spotlight on Iran as a rogue nation preparing to join the nuclear weapons family. The loss to US intelligence assets was very significant. It apparently led to the resignation of Jim Pavitt from the CIA, Valerie Plame’s superior. His work had been destroyed by Plame's outing.
The story that Rove was at least involved was leaked a week ago. Newsweek published the details in tomorrow's edition.
Newsweek - MSNBC.com

The e-mails surrendered by Time Inc., which are largely between Cooper and his editors, show that one of Cooper's sources was White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, according to two lawyers who asked not to be identified because they are representing witnesses sympathetic to the White House. Cooper and a Time spokeswoman declined to comment. But in an interview with NEWSWEEK, Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, confirmed that Rove had been interviewed by Cooper for the article. It is unclear, however, what passed between Cooper and Rove.


The controversy began three days before the Time piece appeared, when columnist Robert Novak, writing about Wilson's trip, reported that Wilson had been sent at the suggestion of his wife, who was identified by name as a CIA operative. The leak to Novak, apparently intended to discredit Wilson's mission, caused a furor when it turned out that Plame was an undercover agent. It is a crime to knowingly reveal the identity of an undercover CIA official. A special prosecutor was appointed and began subpoenaing reporters to find the source of the leak.


Novak appears to have made some kind of arrangement with the special prosecutor, and other journalists who reported on the Plame story have talked to prosecutors with the permission of their sources. Cooper agreed to discuss his contact with Lewis (Scooter) Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's top aide, after Libby gave him permission to do so. But Cooper drew the line when special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald asked about other sources.


Initially, Fitzgerald's focus was on Novak's sourcing, since Novak was the first to out Plame. But according to Luskin, Rove's lawyer, Rove spoke to Cooper three or four days before Novak's column appeared. Luskin told NEWSWEEK that Rove "never knowingly disclosed classified information" and that "he did not tell any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA." Luskin declined, however, to discuss any other details. He did say that Rove himself had testified before the grand jury "two or three times" and signed a waiver authorizing reporters to testify about their conversations with him. "He has answered every question that has been put to him about his conversations with Cooper and anybody else," Luskin said. But one of the two lawyers representing a witness sympathetic to the White House told NEWSWEEK that there was growing "concern" in the White House that the prosecutor is interested in Rove. Fitzgerald declined to comment.

Rove's lawyer speaks first. That certainly is a statement about what sort of trouble he thinks he's in. Of course he say's he's done nothing wrong. So what did he do? Reading the words of Cooper's emails tell the real story.
Newsweek - MSNBC.com

In a brief conversation with Rove, Cooper asked what to make of the flap over Wilson's criticisms. NEWSWEEK obtained a copy of the e-mail that Cooper sent his bureau chief after speaking to Rove. (The e-mail was authenticated by a source intimately familiar with Time's editorial handling of the Wilson story, but who has asked not to be identified because of the magazine's corporate decision not to disclose its contents.) Cooper wrote that Rove offered him a "big warning" not to "get too far out on Wilson." Rove told Cooper that Wilson's trip had not been authorized by "DCIA"—CIA Director George Tenet—or Vice President Dick Cheney. Rather, "it was, KR said, wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip." Wilson's wife is Plame, then an undercover agent working as an analyst in the CIA's Directorate of Operations counterproliferation division.


Nothing in the Cooper e-mail suggests that Rove used Plame's name or knew she was a covert operative. Nonetheless, it is significant that Rove was speaking to Cooper before Novak's column appeared; in other words, before Plame's identity had been published. Fitzgerald has been looking for evidence that Rove spoke to other reporters as well. "Karl Rove has shared with Fitzgerald all the information he has about any potentially relevant contacts he has had with any reporters, including Matt Cooper," Luskin told NEWSWEEK.

Now you tell me. If you found that someone you know worked for the CIA, wouldn't you assume that this person could be a spy? Would you be talking about this possible spy to a reporter? Wouldn't a smart guy like Rove know he could be costing the US big time in intelligence?
And now they are saying he may not have committed a crime?
At this point, there appears to be no reason beyond revenge for Rove's actions. Rove is the kinda guy you want in government. He'll put national security at risk just to settle a grudge. Just apposing Rove's candidate in an election is enough to get you labled as a pedophile. It's an outrageous and believable story.

Syrian Opposition To Unite?

There is some encouraging news from Syria. Will President Bashar Assad allow a real opposition? I suspect we will find out soon.
SyriaComment.com

"There will a televised announcement tonight from London uniting ALL the strands of the opposition." This is what Deborah Amos of National Public Radio in the United States told me this morning. Deborah is in Damascus to report on the opposition; She was told this by "one of the chief "Damascus Spring" guys." As Deborah remarked, "If true, it should cause a huge stir here." Deborah has been following this story like a hawk. She was in London last week talking to Syrians.


If this story is true, it will go so some way to explain the recent crack down on the opposition: the inexplicable closing of the Attasi forum last Saturday, the killing of Khasnawi, the hushing up of several noted opposition members, etc. Opposition members of every stripe have been calling for the formation of a "broad national front" for months now. This means bringing together the secular opposition with the Islamic currents, particularly the Moslem Brotherhood in London.

The time of revenge has come

Juan Cole outlines the mistakes of the Bush Administration in a concise fashion. This is not rocket science. It's been obvious to me since the war began. I started writing about it last fall.
Salon.com

From the point of view of a serious counterinsurgency campaign against al-Qaida, Bush has made exactly the wrong decisions all along the line. He decided to "unleash" Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon rather than pressing for Israeli-Palestinian peace and an end to Israeli occupation of the territories it captured in 1967. Rather than extinguishing this most incendiary issue for Arabs and Muslims, he poured gasoline on it. His strategy in response to Sept. 11 was to fight the Afghanistan War on the cheap. By failing to commit American ground troops in Tora Bora, he allowed bin Laden and al-Zawahiri to escape. He reneged on promises to rebuild Afghanistan and prevent the reemergence of the Taliban and al-Qaida there, thus prolonging the U.S. and NATO military presence indefinitely. He then diverted most American military and reconstruction resources into an illegal war on Iraq. That war may have been doomed from the beginning, but Bush's refusal to line up international support, and his administration's criminal lack of planning for the postwar period, made failure inevitable.


Conservative commentators argue that Iraq is a "fly trap" for Muslim terrorists. It makes much more sense to think of it as bin Laden's fly trap for Western troops. There, jihadis can kill them (making the point that they are not invulnerable), and can provoke reprisals against Iraqi civilians that defame the West in the Muslim world. After Abu Ghraib and Fallujah, many Muslims felt that Bin Laden's dire warnings to them that the United States wanted to occupy their countries, rape their women, humiliate their men, and steal their assets had been vindicated.

Juan Cole On the New Caliphate: Islamic Empire

It's nice to have my comments seconded by one of the experts on the Middle East.
Informed Comment

An interview with me by Deborah Caldwell about the possibility that an al-Qaeda-linked group was behind the London bombings is at beliefnet.com. An excerpt:


What was the aim of this particular terrorist attack?


"The Al Qaeda ideology believes that the Muslim world is weak and oppressed and dominated by the wealthy capitalist West. And that this West uses things like the establishment of Israel or the setting of Muslim against Muslim in Iraq or Afghanistan as a way of keeping the Muslim world weak. Ideally, all the Muslims should get together and establish a United States of Islam, which would revive the Caliphate. (In medieval Islam the Caliph was a kind of pope figure, a central spiritual authority.) Under the Caliphate, you’d have the wealthy Egyptian writers and engineers and you’d have the wealthy oil states come together to make the Muslim world into a united superpower.


Does that dream spring specifically from Salafi theology?


No, you could be a Salafi and not share that particular ideology.


So where does the idea come from?


It goes back to the 19th century. The Ottomans, when they were facing British and French incursion, put together this idea of pan-Islam back in the 1880s. They think that for the last 200 years or so, since Bonaparte invaded Egypt in 1798, Europe has been invading their countries, raping their women, subjecting their men, and stealing their wealth.


So they have a two-fold plan. In order to establish a united Muslim country, you’d have to overthrow the individual secular regimes that now exist—Algeria and Egypt, and so forth. Then you’d have to unite them all under Salafi Islam. And every time they’ve tried to overthrow the Egyptian government, they’re checked, in part because the Americans back [Egyptian President] Hosni Mubarak.


So then they put forward the theory in the 1990s of hitting the foreign enemy first. Basically there are two major impediments to their plan. One is the local secular military governments, which resist being dissolved into this Islamic state. The other is the Western superpowers that back the military regimes. So they became convinced that in order to go forward with their plans, they would have to find a way of pushing the United States and the other powers out of the Middle East—make them timid about intervening, make them pick up stakes and go home, leaving Mubarak and others to their fate. So the attack on London is part of this strategy—getting the British out of Iraq and Afghanistan, weakening British resolve for having a strong posture in the Middle East a la supporting the United States. Having gotten rid of Western dominance, they believe, they can then polish off the secular enemies and go forward with their plans for a revolution of the global south.


If the West pulled out of Iraq and Afghanistan, would that end the terrorism or slow it down?


The people who already hold these ideas are unlikely to have their minds changed. They look around and see Western influence everywhere. Certainly the U.S. occupation of Iraq is a great recruiting tool for Al Qaeda. They can go to the mosques and find unemployed angry young men and say they are oppressed by Westerners and say, “Look what they’re doing in Fallujah.” So the images are very good recruitment tools.


Why do they think terrorism will work, since it’s unlikely Britain will change its policies?


The British were already planning to draw down their troops from 9,000 to 2,000 in the next nine months. I think the British will do that, and these bombings will not change British policy. The British have been bombed before and have not been timid; they’ve soldiered on in their activities. I don’t think Spain withdrew from Iraq mainly because of the Madrid bombings, either. The Iraq war had always been enormously unpopular—-92 percent of the population didn’t want it.


But these people don’t do these bombings for immediate political purposes. Sacred terror has a lot to do with symbology. They’re like big theatrical events. As I said, they couldn’t even operate in Cairo; they would be arrested. So they feel very powerless. All the powers in the world are against them, and they feel very sure God is with them. What do you do if you’re a tiny fringe who is completely right and indeed only if your plan succeeds is the world saved? And you’re opposed by all of these massive states and powers? One of the things they’re doing is giving themselves heart. They’re saying we can make a difference, we can intervene in history, the enemy is not invulnerable, and we can strike it . . ."

American Workers Are Not Only Scourged by Unemployment, but Stagnated Wages

The Bush Administration excesses could not have come at a worse time for the American worker. The real of effect of globalization means increased competition for the jobs from overseas and so suppressing real wages in the US. Even though the US is in an era of increasing productivity, for the first time in modern history, American workers are not compensated for increase productivity.
This has always been the consequence of globalization and free trade. While in an egalitarian sense, its only fair the same work brings the same pay. But the real shock is to the American worker who is still paid on average much better, even relative to cost of living.
It is becoming apparent that this transition best absorbed over the long run, is instead hitting full force during what is already a bad time for workers. This can only mean more of the same for the forseeable future. Unemployment is going to stay high for the forseeable future. Wages are likely to continue to stagnate or even retreat in the face of global competition.
Meanwhile, the US tax base, heavily shifted to the middle class with Bush's policies continues to slip relative to the national debt and promised Social Security payments. The Republicans appear to have gotten their wish for "starving the beast" of government. The middle class will be uninterested in raising taxes with raises falling behind cost of living. That means very little money left for government after paying on the National Debt and even more pressure on Medicare. Even rolling back the tax cuts for the rich won't make up for the short fall.
It's hard to imagine a worse scenario for the American worker.
Morgan Stanley

The stagnation of earned labor income reflects a breakdown of the relationship between worker pay and productivity.

[...]
This shortfall of organic labor income generation is all the more unusual in a period of rapid productivity growth.

[...]
...the divergence between productivity and pay was most glaring outside of manufacturing --- construction, mining, and services.

[...]
While there are many factors that may be accounting for this squeeze on worker compensation, I continue to believe that globalization is playing the most important role. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that America is currently in the midst of the weakest recovery of both employment and worker compensation on record. Nor do I believe that it is a coincidence that the disconnect between worker pay and productivity has been concentrated in the services sector. And I certainly don’t think it is a coincidence that the new squeeze on services is occurring at a time when e-based connectivity is taking off -- disseminating the knowledge-based output of information workers around the world at hyper speed. Long shielded from global competition, services now are exposed to global forces as never before.

[...]
Needless to say, the implications of this development are profound. Three big conclusions jump off the page: One, American consumers are, indeed, as income-constrained as I had previously thought. Broadening the focus to compensation only underscores the key point that labor earnings are behaving very differently than might be expected of a high-productivity growth economy. Two, US policymakers -- especially the Fed -- have responded by providing stimulus to asset markets in order to provide a substitute for lagging organic income generation. Increasingly wealth-dependent consumers then drive their income-based saving rates lower -- leading to an ever-wider current-account deficit and ever-mounting global imbalances. Meanwhile, asset markets go to excess and bubbles become the rule, not the exception. Three, as the angst of economic insecurity has spread from concerns over jobs to wages, and as the US trade deficit mounts, the risks of politically inspired protectionism rise. Washington’s focus on China bashing is in fashion these days for precisely these reasons.

London Under Attack

Juan Cole has some very interesting comments about the terror attack in London. He notes comments by Michael Scheurer, a former CIA bin Ladin expert who is (was) "Anonymous", author of a couple of books critical of the Bush Administration, the FBI counter-terrorism and the CIA. The books include the soon-to-be-published Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror and Through Our Enemies’ Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America. The Boston Phoenix has an interesting story about how the CIA made Scheurer renounce authorship of the books and to this day requires him to deny he is the author. "Anonymous" appears to be another one of those well kept CIA "secrets".
Informed Comment

I heard Michael Scheuer, the former CIA Bin Laden analyst, a couple of times this morning, once on NPR's Morning Edition and once on the Diane Rehm show. I thought his comments compelling.


He found the statement issued by a "secret jihad" web site similar in form and content to typical al-Qaeda communiques, including the threats against other countries (Italy and Denmark). He was sure this was an al-Qaeda operation. He noted that Bin Laden had called off any ceasefire and had several times threatened to hit the United Kingdom.

[...]
Scheuer believes that al-Qaeda is an insurgent ideology focused on destroying the United States and its allies, because its members believe that the US is trying to destroy them. Al-Qaeda members see the Israeli occupation and oppression of the Palestinians, backed by the US; US support for military regimes like those of Pakistan and Egypt; and US military occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq as evidence of a US onslaught on Islam and Muslims aimed at reducing them to neo-colonial slavery. That is, specific Western policies are the focus of al-Qaeda response, not a generalized "hatred" of "values."

In the past I've talked about the long-term dream for an Islamic empire by Al Qaeda and Arab nationalists have had a wish for Arab unity, even a supercountry for a long time. I suspect the central core of leadership hopes to see a worldwide caliphate, but the average Jihadi recruit feels like neo-colonial slave and will do anything to strike back at America.

One point I haven't heard so far: The trial of Abu Hamza Misri began a couple of days ago, and I suspect has something to do with all this.

It's very interesting that mainstream media hasn't picked this tid-bit up. It seems an obvious association and has received good coverage in Britain:
Newsday.com

He faces trial on 15 counts, including nine of soliciting the murder of others, "namely a person or persons who did not believe in the Islamic faith." Three of the charges add: "in particular Jewish people." He also faces four counts of using threatening or abusive language designed to stir racial hatred, one count of possessing threatening or abusive recordings and one count of possessing a document likely to be useful in terrorism -- the "Encyclopedia of the Afghani Jihad." Al-Masri pleaded innocent to all charges at a hearing in January.


"From my point of view and Abu Hamza's point of view, we don't see Muslims as terrorists, we see the Western governments as the real terrorists," al-Masri's spokesman, Abu Abdullah, said in a telephone interview.


British prosecutors charged al-Masri on Oct. 19, pre-empting a U.S. bid to extradite him on terrorism-related charges. His extradition hearing had been due to start the same day. Under British law the domestic charges, which carry a maximum sentence of life in prison, take precedence over the extradition case. The United States plans to resume extradition proceedings once he is convicted or cleared of the British charges.


Al-Masri, 47, is former head preacher at London's Finsbury Park mosque, which has been linked to terrorist suspects including alleged Sept. 11, 2001, plotter Zacarias Moussaoui and "shoe bomber" Richard Reid.


The Egyptian-born cleric -- who has one eye and hooks for hands, which he says were lost fighting Soviet troops in Afghanistan in the 1980s -- has called the Sept. 11 attacks a Jewish plot and the invasion of Iraq a war on Islam. He denies involvement in violence and says he is only a spokesman for political causes.

This guy is not friendly and has a pretty well documented connection to Al Qaeda.
Juan Cole made a statement that surprised me and I find myself in the unusual position of disagreeing with him. Scheurer has a viewpoint that the US needs to have a active counter-terrorism (I presume, not counter-insurgency) effort.

Scheuer opposes any attempt to configure the struggle against al-Qaeda as simple crime-fighting. He believes that they must be addressed through a thorough-going counter-insurgency effort. All of this seemed sensible to me, and more sensible than most other analysts I heard.

I find it hard to believe Cole would openly support a position that the The Boston Phoenix describes as advocating a slash and burn approach to counter-terror:

...a military campaign that includes "killing in large numbers" and "a Sherman-like razing of infrastructure" as part of "relentless, brutal and blood-soaked defensive military action until we have annihilated the Islamists who threaten us."

Juan, did you miss this little detail? Or are you joining the Crusaders?

Bush's Favorite "Allies" Have an Arrangement

Asia Times Online

In 2003, Musharraf paid a visit to Saudi Arabia, and former Pakistani premier Zafarullah Khan Jamali visited the kingdom twice. But the US had warned Pakistan for the first time in December 2003 against providing nuclear assistance to Saudi Arabia. Concerns over possible Pakistani-Saudi nuclear cooperation intensified after the October 22-23, 2003, visit of Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler, Crown Prince Abdullah, to Pakistan. The pro-US Saudi Defense Minister Prince Sultan, who is next in line to succeed to the throne after Abdullah, was not part of the delegation. During that visit, American intelligence circles allege, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia concluded a secret agreement on nuclear cooperation that was meant to provide the Saudis with nuclear-weapons technology in exchange for cheap oil.


However, in 2005, the US claims to have acquired fresh evidence that suggests a broader government-to-government Pakistani-Saudi atomic collaboration that could be continuing. According to well-placed diplomatic sources, chartered Saudi C-130 Hercules transporters made scores of trips between the Dhahran military base and several Pakistani cities, including Lahore and Karachi, between October 2003 and October 2004, and thereafter, considerable contacts were reported between Pakistani and Saudi nuclear scientists. Between October 2004 and January 2005, under cover of the hajj (pilgrimage), several Pakistani scientists allegedly visited Riyadh, and remained "missing" from their designated hotels for 15 to 20 days.


The closeness between Islamabad and Riyadh has been phenomenal and it is not without significance that the first foreign tour of Musharraf, who ousted Sharif in October 1999, was to Saudi Arabia. Moreover, Sharif himself, his younger brother, Shehbaz Sharif and their families live in Saudi Arabia after a secret exile deal between Musharraf and Sharif, in which Riyadh had played a key role. During Sharif's prime ministerial tenure, the Americans believe, Saudi Arabia had been involved in funding Islamabad's missile and nuclear program purchases from China, as a result of which Pakistan became a nuclear weapon-producing and proliferating state. There are also apprehensions that Riyadh was buying nuclear capability from China through a proxy state, with Pakistan serving as the cut-out.

Here is another example on how incredibly stupid the Bush Administration has been with Foreign Policy. Bush goes into the Middle East with a carrot and stick approach. Of course, every country wants the honor of being an ally of the US, even if that means the US will publically criticize the regime in charge.
Bush's two priorities in foreign policy has been terrorism and nuclear proliferation. The world today has many more trained terrorists interested in damaging the US than anytime in history. And both allies and enemies of the US have gotten all they need to build nuclear bombs from a US strategic "ally", some of it under Bush's watch.
Bush has given enemies and allies alike the most persuasive reason to go nuclear:

1. Blindly supporting Israel, who regularly attacks and threatens his neighbors, and who operates the only country I know of who operates a functioning apartheid government with separate rights and penalties based on religion.
2. Bush becomes the 300 ton gorilla in several parts of the world, invading, threatening and destabilizing. There is only one way to stop the US from invading and controlling any country in the world is nuclear weapons.

Iraq and Iran Start a New Strategic Relationship

Informed Comment

Iraqi Minister of Defense Saadoun Dulaimi is now in Iran for consultations with his opposite number, in preparation for the visit next week of Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari to Tehran. Sources close to Jaafari told al-Hayat that Jaafari and Dulaimi will be offering Iran a pledge that Iraqi soil will not be used as a base for any American attack on Iran. They will affirm that Baghdad "is not a part of any American enmity toward Tehran." The sources said that Dulaimi's consultations concern in part better Iranian policing of the border so as to prevent the infiltration of militants into Iraq. He will also discuss the Iranian role in training Iraqi armed forces.


I repeat: Dulaimi is discussing with the Iranians their training of Iraqi troops! The Iranian Revolutionary Guards did train the Badr Corps paramilitary, the main militia of the Iraqi Shiite community. But surely the Americans cannot want such strong Iranian influence in the new Iraqi military.

Anyone who didn't expect this is naive indeed. The majority of the Iraqi government has strong historic ties to Iran. Contrary to Bush Administration "intellegence", they wish to create a theocracy of their own in Iraq. While many are showing the kind of restraint that Iran hasn't in the areas of tolerance and civil liberties, there could be no question that a new central government in Iraq would have strong ties to Iran. The Iranians already have considerable political clout in Iraq. Training the army will only reinforce publicly what is already going on the behind the scenes. But such open cooperation however will have political consequences to voters in America. This will not make Bush happy. However, other than protesting, even the Iraqi's clearly believe that in the long run an alliance with Iran will be more in their interests than a love-hate relationship with the US.

The Coming US Deflationary Depression

Morgan Stanley

Another new theory has been concocted to rationalize unsustainable excesses. The notion of a “global saving glut” has been proposed -- and quickly accepted -- as a new and important excuse for mounting global imbalances. It is also thought to explain why interest rates are so low -- resolving the great conundrum of our time by stressing the mismatch between excess capital and limited investment opportunities. Finally, this theory implies that global imbalances are more benign than malign -- drawing into question the urgency for any rebalancing.

[...]
That the leading apostle of this new theory -- Ben Bernanke -- was, until recently, a governor of the Federal Reserve is all the more curious. In my view, no one has a bigger stake in dismissing the perils of the Asset Economy than its architect, the Fed. This brings up an alternative explanation to the savings-glut thesis: It hinges on the role of the US central bank. By condoning the equity bubble of the late 1990s, a case can be made that the Fed set in motion a post-bubble defense strategy of extraordinary monetary accommodation that all but insured a steady stream of “echo bubbles” -- from bonds and credit to emerging-market debt and property. Given the shortfall of labor income generation evident in this jobless and wageless recovery, US consumers have turned to asset-driven wealth effects as both a supplement to saving and as the principal means to fund the greatest consumption binge in modern history. By anchoring interest rates at the short end of the yield curve at close to zero in real terms, this same excess monetary accommodation not only supports overvaluation in asset markets but also enables homeowners to go deeply into debt in order to extract purchasing power from assets in order to fund the US consumption binge. By focusing on the saving glut, Bernanke conveniently offers a revisionist history and theory that all but exonerates the Greenspan Fed from any culpability in spawning the world’s unprecedented imbalances. Such a mindset ignores the mounting pitfalls of yet another post-bubble shakeout -- this one dominated by the downside of overvalued property markets and the concomitant unwinding of a potentially lethal debt cycle.


All this is not to deny one very important aspect of the global saving glut story -- the surplus of saving that exists throughout Asia and parts of Europe. In my view, this is traceable to a seemingly chronic shortfall of domestic private consumption -- from Japan and China to Korea and Germany. While the reasons behind this trend are as diverse as the economies themselves, the common thread is a lack of job and income security brought about by ongoing restructuring (Japan), reforms (China), or the threat of both on still rigid economies (Germany). But that raises the possibility of an even greater challenge for the United States: As restructuring and reforms run their course in nations with current account surpluses, their excess saving should eventually be absorbed and translated into renewed emphasis on consumption. That would then make it all the more difficult for America to fund its massive current account deficit at today’s asset prices and foreign exchange value of the dollar.


Implicit in the saga of the global saving glut is yet another effort at scapegoating -- in effect, pinning the blame on the world’s savers while exonerating American consumers and the US central bank from fostering mounting global imbalances. Unfortunately, by failing to face up to its own excesses, the United States does itself and the rest of the world a huge disservice. I’ve said it from the start: Global rebalancing is an urgent and shared responsibility. The sooner the world seeks a collective resolution of its problems, the less likely a disruptive endgame.

The Bush Administration is ignoring economic policy. They have a more important agenda of building an American empire to control sufficient oil supplies to keep it's oil hunger happy, transfering past, present, and future business taxes to business to pay back support and to build capital in large multi-nationals that will eventually create jobs. Unfortunately, most of the jobs created have been overseas, so the US has a "jobless, wageless recovery" as Roach calls it. Not only that, the excess savings in Asia, produced by deficit spending in America will eventually be used up. In the US, a massive correction will occur, interest rates will increase dramatically, housing prices will crash, and loan defaults will go sky high. Recession will give way to deflation. Wages and prices will drop. The only people who will benefit are the multi-nationals that will now have a new highly efficient and cheap labor force to invest in.
The US wage earner will find globalization means a sudden loss in purchasing power, huge unemployment, and a labor market very much like Asia in the US. We all know what got us out of the last Depression: WWII. So we'll need a war with China to get a wage recovery.
Doesn't that sound appealing? This is what Bush and his cronies have in mind: a return to the Pre-FDR Hoover economy.

Central Asia Asking US to Set Timetable for Withdrawl

Christian Science Monitor

A six-nation security bloc comprised of China, Russia, and four former Soviet states has urged the US-led coalition in Afghanistan to set a deadline for withdrawing troops from member states, reports BBC. Meeting in the Kazakh capital of Astana, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) - which includes Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, China, and Russia - issued a joint statement saying the active military phase of the Afghan operation was coming to an end and calling on the US-led coalition to agree to a deadline for ending the temporary use of bases and air space in member countries.


There are about 18,000 coalition forces in Afghanistan, and the US has hosted bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan since the anti-Taliban operations began in 2001.

[...]
"Speeches at the summit by the leaders of China and Uzbekistan included veiled criticism of Western influence in the region and they follow hawkish comments by Russian officials criticizing attempts by unspecified foreign forces to destabilize Central Asia," according to MosNews. "Correspondents say the statement appears to reflect increasing concerns that the US is encouraging the overthrow of Central Asia's authoritarian governments," reports BBC.


Radio Free Europe writes "the summit highlights China's continuing efforts to build influence in Central Asia – and gain greater access to its energy resources – by making common cause with Russia and the Central Asian states against militant groups." Beijing, the major force behind the SCO, has poured more resources into maintaining it than have any of the other member states. And often, Beijing has found itself trying to push the others along in its efforts to develop the SCO into a major regional alliance. RFE points out that a Kazakh oil pipeline to China with up to 20 million tons capacity is due to be completed by December.

The Bush Administration can't do much anything right in foreign policy. The US gets invited to build military bases in the areas in which they want permanent influence, paying millions to the client states. Then, in Bush's second term emphasis on "democracy", they actively destabilize the regimes they've strengthened with financial support and the economic boom the military bases provide in hopes of installing a more friendly regime. Not surprisingly, the client states, now strong enough to stand up for themselves, want the US out. They call upon the neighboring military powers of China and Russia to stand behind them.
So Bush can either quickly undermine the local governments and cross his fingers that fundamentalist Muslims don't take over, or he can take his dollars and go home.
Bush's foreign policy is ill conceived from a narrow ideology and a naive and overly simplistic sense of how to influence events. Because of wholey inadequate intelligence, policy implementation is internally and externally inconsistent with the facts on the ground and so impossible to carry out successfully. It creates little more than an house of cards where even the local "small" players can knock over with little effort.
Dubya behaves like a toddler in a big sandbox. He smilingly slides close to other toddlers, offering to share toys. But then he wants to direct play and tell everyone what to do. Toddlers, not known for "cooperative play", start throwing sand at Dubya. Dubya has little choice but to break all the toys and pee in the sand to drive out his rivals, or take his toys and go home.
Given his track record, what do you think he will do?

Iraq Slips Towards Civil War

Iraq seems to slip towards civil war day by day. Tensions have peaked before, but religious leaders have spoke up to calm the waters. Now however, feeling the pressure of their constituents, political leaders are speaking out Shia vs Sunni. Religious leaders must also feel the pressure. At some point they will have to cave into the will of the masses or face loss of influence. Here are some of the most recent omminous events.
Informed Comment

In Tikrit, according to al-Zaman, 3000 Sunni Arab demonstrators rallied Sunday in front of the Governor's mansion to vow revenge on the (Shiite) Badr Corps, and threatening to cut off water and electricity to Baghdad, in response to the arrest by the Ministry of the Interior of Col. Muzhir Taha al-Ghannam, the provincial chief of police. The head of Interior (similar to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation) is Bayan Jabr, a long-time political representative of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), for which the Badr Corps functions as a private party militia. The deputy governor of Salahuddin, Abdullah Husain Jabbarah, said that al-Ghannam had been detained because of his background in working for the old Baath military as an intelligence officer concerned with combatting Iranian influence in Iraq. (Since SCIRI was the main agent of Iranian influence in Baathist Iraq, the Interior Minister presumably has an old grudge with Ghannam). The demonstrators charged that the Badr Corps was now purging from the Iraqi army all officers who fought bravely against Iran during the Iran-Iraq War, 1980-1988. During that war, SCIRI was based in Tehran and the Badr Corps carried out what many Iraqis considered terrorist attacks against Iraq. That it did so from enemy territory is still held against it by many. (It would be sort of as though the Christian Coalition had planned and carried out bombings of abortion clinics from Hanoi in the early 1970s).

More and more Sunnis are being radicalized by what they see as a purge of the Army by the Shia. The Army is the largest employer in Iraq, and one of the few places Sunnis can find work. Now the arrest of a Baathist leader charged with monitoring the Iranian influence in Iraq, tells a story of old tensions from the Iraqi-Iranian war feeding the new tensions. I suspect in fact, Iranian attempts to meddle in south Iraq were one of the major considerations of Saddam's invasion of Iran sparking the war.
Guardian Unlimited

A senior Shiite politician, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, appealed for calm, telling the 2,000-strong crowd that Sunnis and Shiites must live in peace together. Yet he had sent a very different message just two days before, suggesting Shiites set up vigilante groups to track down ``terrorists'' in the Sunni-led insurgency and report them to security authorities, which are dominated by Shiites.


Tensions between Shiite Arabs and the Sunni minority are rapidly worsening, pushing Iraq closer to a civil war that could disrupt its young democracy and lead to its breakup.


Since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime more than two years ago, tensions have flared several times. But each time, historical ties binding the two groups and appeals for calm from religious leaders have averted conflict. In the face of spiraling violence, however, anti-Sunni sentiments among Shiite leaders are being articulated publicly, with impunity and tacit approval from powerful political circles.

[...]
Shiite-Sunni tensions were most palpable at the June 26 ceremony marking the bombing deaths in Karradah and Shula. It was held at the offices of Iraq's biggest Shiite party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Many in the 2,000-strong crowd cheered the Badr Brigade - a Shiite militia associated with al-Hakim's party and which many Sunnis accuse of targeting their community. Most of their ire was directed at sheik Harith al-Dhari, leader of the Association of Muslim Scholars, an influential Sunni group known to have ties to the Sunni-dominated insurgency.

[...]
[In the south] ...a growing desire in the oil-rich, mainly Shiite south of Iraq for autonomy modeled on Iraqi Kurdistan. There, 14 years of self-rule have reduced Baghdad's authority to virtually nothing. Replicated in the south, it could spell the breakup of Iraq, a country that has existed in its present shape for less than a century.

Mob actions in the streets is the one thing every leader has to attend to, political or religious. The people are letting the leaders know they are gaining the inclination to act even against their own leaders.
New York Times

In the shifting landscape of the new Iraq, Ur, with a population more than 80 percent Shiite, is a troubling example of how lethal the sectarian divide can become. Since late March, at least 12 religious Sunnis, most of them worshipers at Ur mosques, have been killed, according to relatives of the dead and to Sheik Ahmed al-Ani, an imam from Ur who is tracking the deaths. Tallied together with an adjoining neighborhood - Shaab - the death toll is 26.


It is a quiet kind of killing, beneath the radar of car bombs and other headline-grabbing violence. But block by block, battle lines are being drawn, with religious Sunnis and Shiites lining up on opposite sides.


In the past, Ur, made up of tidy, treeless blocks, was, like most other Baghdad neighborhoods, the domain of Sunnis. Shiites endured decades of repression and killing under Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Arab, and were treated as second-class citizens. Now, with an Iraqi insurgency driven mostly by the fringes of the Sunni Arab community, Shiites bear the brunt of the attacks. Insurgents have driven car bombs into Shiite mosques and restaurants.


But attacks are carried out quietly against Sunnis as well, particularly in mixed neighborhoods, like Ur. Since March, some 56 families, according to Sheik Ani's count, have moved from Ur to areas where Sunnis predominate.

I would bet this story of Ur is being repeated many times over all over central Iraq. There is evidence of Kurds cleansing Kirkuk, even duping American troops into helping them. You can bet there is plenty of ethnic cleansing going on in the hottest parts of the Sunni Triangle where Sunnis are looking for Shia spies under every rock.

The New World Order

Much of the world has lost faith in America. The "Home of the Free and the Brave" has become an empire builder in their view. 9/11 represented the first act of war against the US by a foreign entity since the War of 1812. The rest of the world has a history of war going back hundreds even thousands of years before our Country was born. Many in Europe in particular have learned the lessons of war and empires. The English, the French, the Spanish, the Portugese, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Italy have all had expansionary periods they now look back at with a mixture of nostalgia, embarassment and regret. Those with a sense of history look at the US recent moves with alarm. Clearly Bush and the Neo-cons intend for the US to become an empire, one with geographic influence around the world capable of arm twisting influence, crushing coersion, and military projection around the world. It prepares us with an eventual show-down with China, a country whose population boasts one-quarter of the world.
My only hope is that our recent failures in Iraq will dissuade the voting public from supporting the Bush Doctrine before the electorate loses it's power to narrowing crush of propaganda.
The New York Review of Books: The New World Order

Historians and pundits who leap aboard the bandwagon of American Empire have forgotten a little too quickly that for an empire to be born, a republic has first to die. In the longer run no country can expect to behave imperially—brutally, contemptuously, illegally—abroad while preserving republican values at home. For it is a mistake to suppose that institutions alone will save a republic from the abuses of power to which empire inevitably leads. It is not institutions that make or break republics, it is men. And in the United States today, the men (and women) of the country's political class have failed. Congress appears helpless to impede the concentration of power in the executive branch; indeed, with few exceptions it has contributed actively and even enthusiastically to the process.

[...]
The American people have a touching faith in the invulnerability of their republic. It would not occur to most of them even to contemplate the possibility that their country might fall into the hands of a meretricious oligarchy; that, as Andrew Bacevich puts it, their political "system is fundamentally corrupt and functions in ways inconsistent with the spirit of genuine democracy." But the twentieth century has taught most other peoples in the world to be less cocksure. And when foreigners look across the oceans at the US today, what they see is far from reassuring.


For there is a precedent in modern Western history for a country whose leader exploits national humiliation and fear to restrict public freedoms; for a government that makes permanent war as a tool of state policy and arranges for the torture of its political enemies; for a ruling class that pursues divisive social goals under the guise of national "values"; for a culture that asserts its unique destiny and superiority and that worships military prowess; for a political system in which the dominant party manipulates procedural rules and threatens to change the law in order to get its own way; where journalists are intimidated into confessing their errors and made to do public penance. Europeans in particular have experienced such a regime in the recent past and they have a word for it. That word is not "democracy."

Sign on to the ONE campaign

Sign on to the ONE campaign by asking President Bush to fight poverty at the G8 Summit.
The ONE Campaign

Dear President Bush,


Because:

• ONE billion people around the world live on less than ONE dollar a day;


• The US government spends less than ONE percent on overcoming global AIDS and poverty;


• Citizens are uniting as ONE across political and religious divides to support action to overcome the emergency of global AIDS and extreme poverty.

At the G8 leaders meeting on July 6th we urge you to:

• Help the poorest people of the world fight poverty, AIDS and hunger at a cost equal to just ONE percent more of the US budget on a clear timetable;


• Cancel 100% of the debts owed by the poorest countries;


• Reform trade rules so poor countries can earn sustainable incomes.

We urge you to lead an historic deal with other nations to help Africa and the poorest nations overcome global AIDS and extreme poverty. Together as ONE, we can Make Poverty History this July.

Then watch live8 by clicking here: Live 8

BUSH REGIME TORTURING CHILDREN

The New York Times

Under international law, the line between childhood and maturity is 18. In communications with Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, the Pentagon has lowered the cutoff to 16. For this reason among others, we don't know exactly how many Iraqi children are in American custody. But before the transfer of sovereignty from the Coalition Provisional Authority to an Iraqi interim government a year ago, the International Committee of the Red Cross reported registering 107 detainees under 18 during visits to six prisons controlled by coalition troops. Some detainees were as young as 8.


Since that time, Human Rights Watch reports that the number has risen. The figures from Afghanistan are still more alarming: the journalist Seymour Hersh wrote last month in the British newspaper The Guardian that a memo addressed to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld shortly after the 2001 invasion reported "800-900 Pakistani boys 13-15 years of age in custody."


Juvenile detainees in American facilities like Abu Ghraib and Bagram Air Base have been subject to the same mistreatment as adults. The International Red Cross, Amnesty International and the Pentagon itself have gathered substantial testimony of torture of children, bolstered by accounts from soldiers who witnessed or participated in the abuse.

[...]
Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, formerly in charge of Abu Ghraib, told Maj. General Fay about visiting a weeping 11-year-old detainee in the prison's notorious Cellblock 1B, which housed prisoners designated high risk. "He told me he was almost 12," General Karpinski recalled, and that "he really wanted to see his mother, could he please call his mother." Children like this 11 year old held at Abu Ghraib have been denied the right to see their parents, a lawyer, or anyone else. They were not told why they were detained, let alone for how long. A Pentagon spokesman told Mr. Hersh that juveniles received some special care, but added, "Age is not a determining factor in detention." The United States has found, the spokesman said, that "age does not necessarily diminish threat potential."

Torture is one thing, proven in legitimate research as reliably getting unreliable information. People who are tortured will lie about anything to get the torture to stop.
Imprisoning children under 16 yo is quite another. US justice takes very seriously juvenile protections. But torturing children under 16yo, as young as age 8 is totally unconscienable. And yet this administration is considered the right-wing Christian's best hope to overturn abortion. Its ok to torture children, but abortion is murder. Figure it out. The Christian right-wing wants to share in the political power of a fascistic America.

Rove Leaked CIA Agents Name in Political Retribution

The Washington Monthly

PLAMEGATE ABOUT TO BREAK?....The big news for today is that Lawrence O'Donnell says he knows who leaked Valerie Plame's name to the press:

I revealed in yesterday's taping of the McLaughlin Group that Time magazine's emails will reveal that Karl Rove was Matt Cooper's source. I have known this for months but didn't want to say it at a time that would risk me getting dragged into the grand jury.


....Since I revealed the big scoop, I have had it reconfirmed by yet another highly authoritative source. Too many people know this. It should break wide open this week. I know Newsweek is working on an 'It's Rove!' story and will probably break it tomorrow.

This wouldn't be a big surprise, of course. We all remember what Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, said two years ago:

At the end of the day, it's of keen interest to me to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs. And trust me, when I use that name, I measure my words.

Based on this and other tidbits of information, Rove and "Scooter" Libby have been the prime suspects for a while. What's more, the White House knows it. So if Newsweek does break this story on Sunday, what do you think their reaction will be? They've had plenty of time to prepare for this day, after all.


My guess would be: furious counterattack. Karl did nothing wrong. Everybody knew about Plame already. Wilson is on a witch hunt. Patrick Fitzgerald is out of control. Liberals are just trying to get even for Clinton. Etc.

The truth is this was a major leak and compromised intelligence at a critical time in the CIAs monitoring of Iran. Here is at link to Whitley Strieber's view on the damage that was done.
This is a classic Karl Rove move. He is a political player of hard ball without ethics. This man is tenatious as an ally and absolutely ruthless as an enemy. If it will further his cause, he'll destroy a person's career, family life, and put him in jail on trumpted up charges. And he's on the Administrative team of our religious president.

One in six countries facing food shortage: Climate change main reason

One in six countries facing food shortage: Climate change main reason: -DAWN - International

One in six countries in the world face food shortages this year because of severe droughts that could become semi-permanent under climate change, UN scientists have warned. In a stark message for world leaders who meet in Gleneagles next week to discuss global warming, Wulf Killman, chairman of the UN food and agriculture organisation’s climate change group, said the droughts that have devastated crops across Africa, central America and south-east Asia in the past year are part of an emerging pattern.


“Africa is our greatest worry,” he said. “Many countries are already in difficulties ... and we see a pattern emerging. Southern Africa is definitely becoming drier and everyone agrees that the climate there is changing. We would expect areas which are already prone to drought to become drier with climate change.”


The food and agriculture organisation and the US government, both of which monitor global food shortages, agree that 34 countries are now experiencing droughts and food shortages and others could join them. Up to 30 million people will need assistance because of the droughts and other natural disasters such as the Asian tsunami.

This is just the beginning of the coming changes. Unfortunately, these changes don't have devastating effects on the primary polluters of greenhouse gases that produce global warming. The US heads the list. For more information on Global Warming, this site has a comprehensive list of articles.