"Nothing else in the world...is so powerful as an idea whose time has come." - Victor Hugo
Let's face it! The year 2006 was another hell on earth for the Palestinians. Since 1967, they have been suffering under the heel of the Zionist Death, Mayhem & Occupation Machine. Earlier this summer, as the situation grew desperate in Gaza, where 1.4 million people are trapped, Israel's Far Right Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, wisecracked: "Nobody dies from being uncomfortable." He lied! Six hundred and sixty Palestinians perished from the 24/7 siege by the Israeli Occupation Army (IOF). Of that number, 141 were children. (1) Enter ex-President Jimmy Carter and his best selling book, "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid." (2) Will this good and decent man from Georgia do for the Palestinians, what Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" did for African-Americans, who were then languishing under the crime of slavery? Can Carter light the fuse that leads to the liberation of the Palestinians from their cruel oppressors?
Meanwhile, America is in deep spiritual decline. I don't mean that in a religious sense. I do, however, mean it with respect to so many people not being in touch with their own humanity--their own souls. One of the ways this shows up is how we have historically subsidized, with little or no objections, the evildoings of the Zionist state of Israel. (1) According to the prestigious "Harvard Study," over $140 billion of our tax dollars have ended up there since 1967. (3) Three to four billion dollars is added each year to that total. (4) Now, Jimmy Carter is saying: "Stop!" The Israelis don't deserve our support because they have built a racist Apartheid-like enclave, symbolized by an Annexation Wall, on the backs of the indigenous people--the Palestinians. (1)
What is interesting to note in the Jimmy Carter/Zionist Israel brouhaha is how the former President, like so many others before him, is being subjected to an intense campaign of vilification by Israeli apologists in this country. (5) But surprise--the ubiquitous smear artists are falling on their collective faces! With every mean spirited insult, Carter sells another book. What his critics don't understand is this: Carter belongs to America. He is one of us! They, the Carter bashers, are not only deeply resented, but are being seen by growing numbers as arrogant, spiteful and shameless shills for a foreign power. Israel is the same two-faced foreign power who slaughtered Americans on the USS Liberty, bulldozed to death peace activist Rachel Corrie, and directed the traitor Jonathan Pollard to steal our military secrets. (6) Carter is not only helping Americans see what the Israelis have been doing to the Palestinians, he is also opening up the eyes of many here, to what the "Harvard Study" clearly documents: The Israel Lobby has exercised "unmatched power" over U.S. foreign policy, which hasn't been in "the national interest" of our country. (3) The hawkish Neocons are part, too, of the powerful Israel Lobby.
Thankfully, more Americans, daily, do know what is going on in the Israeli Occupied Territories. During 2006, I was privileged to cover events dealing with that issue and also Israel's unjust invasion of Lebanon. (7) I also heard human rights experts denounce the Israeli conduct in those two areas of combat as "War Crimes." (8) This includes the IOF's blood stained attack on the village of Qana and its dropping of over one million cluster bombs on the civilian population of Lebanon. (9) I also got a chance to interview some of the demonstrators at these spirited protest actions, and to put on the public record their strong moral and legal objections to Israel's serial wrongdoing. (10) At the same time, I had an opportunity to witness, close up, the nobility of the Palestinians. Ms. Laila El- Haddad and Mohammed Omer spoke volumes via their personal accounts of oppression by the IOF in Occupied Gaza.
Ms. El-Haddad, a Gaza resident, on June 23, 2006, at a forum on Capitol Hill sponsored by the Council for the National Interest, warned that the humanitarian outlook facing the people there was "extremely bleak." She spoke of the barbaric home demolitions by the IOF, the lack of access to food, and the fact that over 9,000 Palestinians are presently languishing in Israeli dungeons, many without any charges pending against them. (11) Mohammed Omer, a Gaza- based journalist, gave a talk at the Palestine Center on Nov. 28, 2006. He spoke of how his late brother, Hussam, was shot to death by an Israeli sniper. Omer knew Rachel Corrie. He related how the children of the Rafah refugee camp, who had grown to love her, "couldn't believe she was dead." (12)
On a related topic, when Professor William Fletcher lectured at the Palestine Center, on Dec. 1, 2006, he shared how the present state of Israel could easily be compared with the Apartheid-era South African regime. He labeled Israel a "rabid state," which was capable of a maniacal act, like "unleashing a nuclear weapon." (13) Now, that Israel's Olmert has admitted that Israel possesses Nukes, Professor Fletcher's concern becomes even more relevant.
When "Esquire" magazine ran a cover story (Jan. 2007) showing an Iraqi War vet, Sgt. Bryan Anderson, a triple amputee, I couldn't help but think of the Neocon, Richard Perle. (14). The last time I spotted him he was filling his mouth with chocolate chip cookies. He had just attended a memorial service for a fellow Iraqi War junkie, Philip Merrill Levine. (15) Perle is also the same hard core Zionist, who co- authored the hawkish "The Clean Break" document for Israel's Likud honcho--Benjamin Netanyahu. (16)
Neocons, like Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, et al, all knee jerk supporters of Israel, deserve strong censure for pushing our country into the war with Iraq. (17) As I write, over 3,000 American troops have died in that conflict, about 60 of them were from my home state of Maryland. And, despite the horror story that is the Iraqi War, with 655,000 Iraqis also reported dead, Netanyahu, is calling for a U.S. led war with Iran. (18) I couldn't help but reflect: The cunning Neocons urged sending our sons and daughters to die in Iraq based on a pack of rotten lies. Now, they, and their cronies, like Netanyahu, are looking for a war with Iran. Do these shameless war hucksters have any limits?
Getting back to Israel's Olmert and his crude remark: "Nobody dies from being uncomfortable." When you tie his callous comment to the significant loss of human life suffered in both Gaza and Lebanon this last summer, you need to be alarmed. Add this fact: His regime was charged with engaging in "collective punishment" tactics in those two campaigns. (8) To me, Olmert reflects a troubled man whose psyche has been unduly influenced by those vindictive Storm Gods of the ancient Canaanites. Like those deities, he too, acts like he is all powerful and omniscient, and without a conscience. Might, of course, excuses nothing. Olmert appears from his recent conduct incapable of reflecting on the morality of his own wrongdoing. He lacks wisdom, too. Is this why characters, like Olmert, are so ultra sensitive to any criticism? When you consider that this zealot has his finger on the trigger of a nuclear weapon, the world itself should shudder in fear. (19)
In any event, there is little chance that an authoritarian ideologue, like Olmert, will change on his own. What is important, however, is that ex-President Jimmy Carter's courageous voice condemning the endemic evil that is a racist, Israeli-dominated Apartheid Palestine, is being heard. If enough Americans change their attitudes towards Israel, then there can be some real hope that the occupation of Palestine might, mercifully, end soon.
By Charles Sullivan
01/03/06
"Information Clearing House"
But the trouble with sacred cows is that they tend to preclude critical examination and often escape the scrutiny of rational thinking and moral judgments. The premise of honorary military service thus goes virtually unchallenged, and often becomes the essence of dogma. But it seems to me that anyone contemplating a military career, especially since it may require killing other human beings and broad scale environmental destruction, should do so with open eyes and clear senses. They need to know who they are serving and whose interests they are protecting.
There is no escaping the fact that the U.S. is an imperialist nation conceived in genocide and racism that has continued through the ages, and worsened with the rise of modern technology and weaponry. With the advent of smart bombs came stupid and immoral leaders. Our litany of crimes against earth and humanity are concealed under layers of moral language, but the actual deeds belie the intent behind what is being done in our name. Ignorance, however, does not absolve anyone from culpability.
Anyone considering military service should deliberate upon the promises proffered by recruiters with extreme skepticism. Recruiters are trained to exalt war as the highest expression of patriotism and love of country; when, in fact, it is often the most debasing expression of our humanity that makes a shallow mockery of real service to god and country. The war resister and the conscientious objector may be the true patriot.
I will make no effort to conceal my contempt for military recruiters who prey upon unsuspecting and inexperienced youth, especially the poor and economically disadvantaged. No parent should expose their children to these predators. Recruiters are the moral equivalent of ambulance chasers, and they should be accorded no more respect than them, or the corporate con men who sell us goods that are detrimental to our health. These people are not concerned about the welfare of our children or the country; they are the representatives of imperialism, empire, and Plutocracy; and they are in search of cannon fodder.
Marketing militarism and war to society at large is no different than selling potato chips laced with trans-fats or carcinogenic chemicals, without regard to public health and its attendant social costs. It is all about managing public perception and providing widening profit margins to the corporations that are running the government. To hell with the public welfare and moral pronouncements, the plantation owner demands blood sacrifices as a show of loyalty and gratitude.
Thus it is not surprising that military sacrament is couched in the language of service to country, patriotism, and other noble causes that are as divorced from reality as the President is removed from sanity. The hypocrisy of righteous language contrasted to the actual deed is readily apparent to anyone who knows history. It is propaganda in the purest and most lethal form.
No doubt, the millions of men and women working in the armed forces today do so in the belief that they are heroically serving their country, as well as the cause of freedom and democracy. But in fact, they are serving the ruling clique, the Illuminati, and a few thousand wealthy investors, which represent less than 0.02% of the population. There must be no confusion that the financial interests of Halliburton, Bechtel, and the Bush dynasty are not the interests of America's citizens, especially those in the armed forces.
There is nothing noble or moral about invading defenseless sovereign nations and killing hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of innocent human beings. There is no morally justifiable way of making occupation and the outright theft of natural capital, such as oil, respectable or gallant. Genocide and theft are crimes against humanity, regardless how the corporate advertisers and public relations firms couch them; and the military is complicit in the commission of those crimes, whether they are ignorant of their role in them or not.
Consider, for example, the role the military has traditionally played in carrying out the plans of one imperial president after another. We have troops permanently stationed in 135 nations protecting America's corporate interests from democracy. Stifling democracy is quite different from nurturing it. Either most of our presidents are pathological liars or they do not know the difference between nurturing and destroying. America's record of imperialism speaks for itself; and it is something that, when critically examined, is not easily mistaken for anything other than what it is.
Similarly, the bogus war on terror is a contradiction in terms, as historian Howard Zinn has so aptly pointed out. War is terrorism. Terrorism begets terrorism, and nothing but terrorism. War does not, and cannot ever lead to peace.
Aided by the CIA and death squads trained at the School of the America's at Fort Benning, Georgia, the U.S. has crushed one fledgling democracy after another and replaced them with brutally oppressive right wing dictatorships friendly to American corporations and financial investors. Let us recall that Saddam Hussein was our man in Iraq until he converted from the dollar to the euro. From Iran to Chile there are hundreds, if not thousands, of cases that could be cited. For a more detailed analysis of these incursions, I refer readers to William Blum's provocative book, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions since World War Two.
Let us assume that the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq is a fairly typical example of imperial policies that have been in vogue for well over a century. Like previous military actions, the invasion of Iraq was based upon a litany of lies set forth by the president and his cabinet, and carried forth in the corporate media. Iraq did not pose a threat to America or to the interests of the American people, and both the President and the commercial media knew it. Their intent was to deceive and to garner support for unconscionable acts of aggression and terror that are not in the people's interest.
Thus our armed forces are in Iraq under false pretenses that have nothing to do with spreading democracy or liberating oppressed people from tyranny. They are there for reasons that are as nefarious as they are treasonous. More than anyone, the men and women in the armed forces need to know why they are in Iraq and what is expected of them by the commander in chief.
The Plutocratic interests in Iraq may be summarized as the use of technologically advanced military forces and high tech weaponry that provide incalculable wealth to a privileged few. In this context, soldiers are nothing more than a means to and end; a Machiavellian way of socializing costs and privatizing profits-the ultimate in corporate welfare. Well over $50 billion in profits have been hauled out of Iraq by 150 U.S. corporations, including the privatization of lucrative Iraqi oil. The profits and the death toll continue to rise simultaneously.
To date, some 700,000 Iraqi people have died in the war and occupation, and the violence is rapidly escalating. Most of the dead are civilians, many of them women and children. Over 3,000 American soldiers have died on the basis of lies and thousands more are permanently maimed and traumatized-all to enhance the bottom line of America's wealthiest and most privileged elite.
It is not well publicized in the western mainstream media that fourteen permanent military bases are under construction in Iraq. The occupation is growing deep tap roots that are drawing the life, and the oil, out of the region, and consuming it in a firestorm of self-perpetuating violence.
President Bush and his kind, always eager to exploit a photo opportunity, frequently pay homage to the troops stationed around the world and in return garner their respect and admiration, neither of which is deserved. Placing soldiers in peril when there is no threat to America or to national security is an expression of utter contempt for them; it is a treasonous offense worthy of the most severe punishment short of execution.
Aside from photo ops, Bush and his wealthy brethren do not associate with enlisted men, whose petty lives transpire far below the lofty socio-economic status the elite were born into. Enlisted men and women are permitted to wipe the cow dung from the president's cowboy boots, but they are not allowed to wear them or travel in the same social circles as their owner.
The parasites that are running the country produce nothing, and have no more loyalty to the American people or to the Constitution than Frito-Lay or Halliburton. Their only allegiance is to accruing ever more wealth and power to themselves by all possible means, including war. You see, America is also an occupied country.
Neither the Iraqi nor American people's interest is served by the military industrial complex. War is never in the interest of those who are fooled into fighting them. War benefits those who instigate them and reap their financial reward from the safety of posh offices and marbled halls. War is the century's old tradition of peasants doing the bidding of kings and queens. That is whose interest is being served by our soldiers.
The truth is that soldiering is a particularly virulent manifestation of America's unending class war; the continued exploitation of the working class by the ruling elite-the rich preying upon the poor. Now the President and his accomplices in Congress intend to send even more soldiers to Iraq, further escalating the violence, and acting contrary to public sentiment. The lives of these men and women mean nothing to the emperor and his minions. They are only so much excrement to be wiped from their boots; the sacrificial lambs of empire crawling beneath their ignoble gaze.
Despite my severe criticism, it is not my intention to disparage either soldiers or military service. However, these men and women are being duped and exploited, and someone has to tell them what they are killing and dying for. It will remain for each individual to weigh the evidence and decide whether it is right or wrong, courageous or foolish. Comment on this Editorial Editorial: Sacrifice Translates into More Dead People
Kurt Nimmo
Wednesday January 03rd 2007, 10:13 pm
Another Day in the Empire
Is John "Keating Five" McCain sincerely clueless? Or is he simply a politician playing a cynical numbers game with Iraq and thus eventually condemning to certain death more troops that should be here at home, protecting our borders?
McCain told General John Abizaid he didn't understand why the United States cannot "control" al-Anbar province and was flummoxed the general would suggest the "mission" is to train Iraqis to fight the "insurgency," actually a popular resistance against both occupation by foreign troops and their hand-picked Iraqi proxy.
McCain expressed frustration that said "insurgents" have taken back al-Anbar, thus demonstrating you can't teach an old dog new tricks, or at least teach him a bit of history and the inevitability of defeat for those who invade and attempt to occupy, as the French lost Vietnam at Diem Bien Phu and the British lost Afghanistan at the Gandamak pass. In Iraq, the Brits were unable to contain continual uprisings against occupation, even though they used mustard gas, a weapon favored Winston Churchill for the likes of "uncivilized" tribes. John McCain, the Manchurian candidate for president in 2008, does not even seem vaguely aware of such historical realities:
But forget al-Anar, the Pentagon can't even "secure" Baghdad, and will be unlikely to do so even if they send another 20,000, 30,000, or even 100,000 troops into the neocon constructed meat grinder.
Next, we are told, Bush will announce a smaller number than McCain has in mind-15,000 troops, not 20,000. "Instead of a surge, it is a bump," an anonymous person in Condi's State Department told McClatchy Newspapers, thus reducing, to a niggling degree, the severity of "sacrifice" (when neocons and one-world types start in talking about sacrifice, it is time to head for the hills).
As usual, Keith Olbermann, one of the only sane voices left in the corporate media, the other being Lou Dobbs, had a few choice words about this:
Olbermann, however, trumpets the "liberal" line, namely Bush (read: the neocons) has no idea what he is doing in Iraq.
Admittedly, Bush may not know what he is doing from one moment to the next, as he is a former drunk and drug abuser, and thus a mental graveyard, but his coterie of neocons most certainly know what they are doing-coming up with excuses to send more troops into Iraq, not to win that which cannot be won, as another basket case, McCain, would have us believe, but rather to see through "mission accomplished," the destruction and balkanization of Iraq. It's a work in progress, with horrifying results. For instance, last weekend, a series of car bombings killed more than 70 people in Shia neighborhoods in the hours after Saddam Hussein was lynched by a gaggle of puppets installed by the neocons.
"Americans are a patient lot and likely will give Bush the time and backing he needs to take another shot at getting a U.S. policy in Iraq that works," a scribbler over at the Associated Press avers. "And the new Democratically led Congress, which convenes on Jan. 4, probably won't block the commander in chief if he decides to briefly increase troop levels."
In other words, the American people can be expected to do nothing, or nothing effective, to put an end to the carnage, never mind the increasing flights of flag-draped coffins off-loaded at Dover Air Force Base. Of course, most Americans, many unable to find Iraq on a map, don't know a thing about the 650,000 plus Iraqis slaughtered, and even if they did a whole lot of them wouldn't care.
"I think there was a time when the death of Saddam Hussein would have given Bush the kind of political capital he needs to call for an increase in troops and an expansion of the military effort there, but I think we're past that time," said Julian Zelizer, a political historian at Boston University.
Such idiocy obviously makes Boston University a less than satisfactory place to send the kids for an education.
"The American people want to know whether we're going to win this war, and they're going to listen very carefully to whatever the president says," said the blowhard neocon Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute, where Bush scrapes up his "minds."
In fact, the American people, on average, don't give a wooden nickel about what their demented unitary decider says, although they should.
As for the American people wanting to "know whether we're going to win this war," most of them already know it is lost, or at least lost in a traditional sense. For as we know, the neocons, Kagan included, are all for the "surge" option, that is to say they are hot to pour meat into the grinder in an effort to realize their creative destruction game plan, no matter how many more Americans and Iraqis are sacrificed, as Bush demands.
Offing Saddam on the first day of the holy Eid holiday should have rung a bell with Americans, allowing them to realize the neocons, their leadership rife with Arab-hating Israel Firsters, will stop at nothing to turn up the heat of sectarian violence in Iraq.
"What the Shiite Arabs have to remember is that while the Sunni Arabs are a minority in Iraq, they in fact are a majority in the Arab world. They have the backing of the Sunni masses which form the basis of Arab nationalism," writes Ilnur Cevik for the New Anatolian. "What they are attracting is more Arab Sunni enmity which will be very dangerous for the future of Iraq. Iran, which acts like the mentor of the Arab Shiites in Iraq, should also take this into account. The way Saddam was humiliated and mishandled in his final minutes by his Arab Shiite executioners will be deeply entrenched in the minds of many Sunni Arabs, and not only those who had sympathies for Saddam."
If you think otherwise, I have an ice sculpture to sell you in the Mojave.
Of course, we can't expect Democrats-now taking up their places in the Great Corporate and Special Interest Whorehouse on the Potomac-to consider such nuances, as some of them, for instance Silvestre Reyes, the incoming chairman of the House of Representatives' Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, can't be bothered to tell crucial differences between the Sunni and Shia.
Neocons, naturally, know the difference, and that's why they do the things they do.
A titanic power struggle is being waged within the policy elite or power elite, or more simply the U.S. ruling class. The clash is taking place over the war on Iraq, U.S. policy toward Israel--and ultimately over the best way to run the U.S. empire. The war on Iraq is shaping up as such a disaster for the empire that it can no longer be tolerated by our rulers in its present form. The struggle is as plain as the nose on your face; nevertheless it draws little comment. One reason is that we are taught to view matters political through the prism of Democrat versus Republican, whereas this struggle among our rulers cuts across party lines. On the "Left," few so much as allude to this internecine war, much less use it to good effect. This is apparently due to a very rigid, very dogmatic view of how empires function, indeed how they "must" function, and due to a fear of being labeled anti-semitic and thus running afoul of the Israeli Lobby. In many cases this silence reflects an actual sympathy among "liberals" for neocon foreign policy, either out of a latter day do-gooder version of the White Man's Burden, or an attachment to Israel.
This struggle is in no way hidden and definitely not a secret conspiracy. It is out in the open, as it must be, since it is in great part a battle for the hearts and minds of the American public. This fact makes the absence of commentary about it all the more chilling. The fight among our rulers sets the neocons against other very important elements in the establishment: the senior officer corps, represented by Jack Murtha and Colin Powell; the old money like Ned Lamont; the oil men, like James Baker (With Baker against the war, how then can oil be the only reason for the war?); those who want to see the American imperium run effectively, like Lee Hamilton and Robert Gates of the Iraq Study Group; many in the CIA, both active duty and retired; policy makers like Zbigniew Brzezinski who has long opposed the war which he has ascribed to the influence of certain "ethnic" groups; and even former presidents Gerald Ford who kept his mouth shut and Jimmy Carter who has not and whose frustration with Israel and the neocons is all too clear in his book "Palestine, Peace Not Apartheid."
Influential voices tied to the ruling circles include some writers for the militantly anti-war publication of the Old Right, The American Conservative.
On the other side are the neocons, based in the Washington "Think" Tanks, in the civilian leadership of the pre-Gates Pentagon, in Dick Cheney's office, in large parts of both parties in Congress, and in the editorial and op-ed pages of the print media. Most of the House and much of the Senate is still under the control of the neocons thanks to the fund-raising exertions and threats from AIPAC and its minions. Hence, the most powerful political allies of the neocons are the leading Democrats, who indulge in the most intense and shallow anti-Bush rhetoric but are reliable allies in the neocon crusades in the Middle East. The neocon side has relied heavily on the power of ideas,. This in turn hinges on the second rate level of those writing for the mass media who think little for themselves and go along with whatever framework for policy discussion is put forward by the neocons. Good examples of this are most op-ed pages, TV programs like the Sunday morning talk shows, Weekend Edition on NPR and Washington Week in Review on PBS. The neocons have not dominated the weekly news magazines, with the exception of U.S. News and World Report, but they are working to remedy that. Witness, for example, the adoption of William Kristol as a star columnist at Time!
Given this balance of forces, it would seem that the neocons must lose but the outcome remains an open question. If they do prevail, that will be the end of our democracy and freedoms as we have known them. If you have any doubts about that, consult their philosopher, Leo Strauss. The neocons cannot be automatically counted out, even though their base is narrow, for they can draw on all the resources of a mighty nation state, Israel, a modern Sparta, with its vaunted intelligence services and special forces which span the world and operate in the U.S., as well as its ability, if it desires, to launder cash and deliver it to U.S. operatives. And of course the war profiteers like Halliburton and others love the Iraq adventure. The arms manufacturers may be less happy with it, since money is not being spent on profitable high-tech weapons which do not have to function but rather on highly unprofitable "boots on the ground."
The public forays of the anti-neocons in this struggle are well-known. James Wilson in the New York Times, accusing Bush of lying about uranium from Niger; Richard Clarke's expose on the incompetence behind 9/11; the exposure of Judith Miller as lying about WMD, thus corrupting the NYT reportage (even the Washington Post, dominated as its opinion pages are by the neocons did not allow its reporting to be undermined by the likes of Judith Miller); the antiwar stance of John Murtha indicating the unhappiness of the senior officer corps with the dominance of US Middle East policy by the Israel-first neocons; Mearsheimer and Walt's paper, as important for who wrote it as for its content, which finally took on the Israeli Lobby, the core adversary of the anti-neocons; and most recently Jimmy Carter's book which inevitably raises the question of the shedding of American blood to preserve Israeli apartheid and to lay waste every and any nation perceive by Israel to be a threat. Add to this the report of the Baker Commission and the near-simultaneous removal of Rumsfeld and his replacement with a member of the Baker Commission.
The biggest blow to the neocon agenda came from the people themselves, in the form of the 2004 election defeat of the Republicans. Unfortunately, this defeat amounted only to a registration of national disgust over the war in Iraq but not one which would result in policy changes since the establishment Dems are solidly neocon in their foreign policy especially when it comes to the Middle East and Israel. The same is true of many progressives. One looks in vain for a reference to the Lobby on the Michael Moore web site for example or in the missives from UFPJ or from "P"DA.
Two questions emerge. Are there advantages to be gained from this struggle for the peace movement? Most definitely. We are being provided with powerful testimony from the most unassailable sources Jimmy Carter, Richard Clarke and Mearsheimer and Walt to name a few. And we should not allow this important information to be discredited by the neocons. The leading anti-neocons are not anti-empire, but at least they want to end the bloody war on Iraq and the dominance of Israel over key segments of U.S. foreign policy. That is a step forward. And second, given the key power of the Israel Lobby, can the peace movement fail any longer to ignore it as though it were irrelevant? Absolutely not. We ignore it at our peril. And we must get rid of all fears of being labeled as anti-semites. Most Jewish Americans, much to their credit, oppose the policies of the Lobby, which in the long run may be responsible for stirring up considerable anti-semitism in the U.S. and around the world. Would it not be wonderful if an anti-Lobby organization of Jewish Americans emerged with a title like "Not in Our Name"?
Finally, given the balance of forces at play, it is difficult to discern what Bush is likely to do in the coming days and months. The punditry is now predicting an escalation of the war in Iraq (aka a "surge"), but Bush surprised once with the firing of Rumsfeld of which there was no advance hint quite the contrary. He is certainly under enormous pressure to alter course, and he may have to do so no matter how much he recoils from it. He may even do so after a "surge" which could be used as a smoke screen for a policy shift. But escalating the conflict even temporarily will sink his ratings below 30% and make him the most unpopular president in history. We shall see.
John V. Walsh can be reached at john.endwar@gmail.com.
by Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research
January 4, 2007
Throughout history, " wars of religion" have served to obscure the economic and strategic interests behind the conquest and invasion of foreign lands. "Wars of religion" were invariably fought with a view to securing control over trading routes and natural resources.
The Crusades extending from the 11th to the 14th Century are often presented by historians as "a continuous series of military-religious expeditions made by European Christians in the hope of wresting the Holy Land from the infidel Turks." The objective of the Crusades, however, had little to do with religion. The Crusades largely consisted, through military action, in challenging the dominion of the Muslim merchant societies, which controlled the Eastern trade routes.
The "Just War" supported the Crusades. War was waged with the support of the Catholic Church, acting as an instrument of religious propaganda and indoctrination, which was used in the enlistment throughout Europe of thousands of peasants, serfs and urban vagabonds.
America's Crusade in Central Asia and the Middle East
In the eyes of public opinion, possessing a "just cause" for waging war is central. A war is said to be Just if it is waged on moral, religious or ethical grounds.
America's Crusade in Central Asia and the Middle East is no exception. The "war on terrorism" purports to defend the American Homeland and protect the "civilized world". It is upheld as a "war of religion", a "clash of civilizations", when in fact the main objective of this war is to secure control and corporate ownership over the region's extensive oil wealth, while also imposing under the helm of the IMF and the World Bank (now under the leadership of Paul Wolfowitz), the privatization of State enterprises and the transfer of the countries' economic assets into the hands of foreign capital. .
The Just War theory upholds war as a "humanitarian operation". It serves to camouflage the real objectives of the military operation, while providing a moral and principled image to the invaders. In its contemporary version, it calls for military intervention on ethical and moral grounds against "rogue states" and "Islamic terrorists", which are threatening the Homeland.
Possessing a "just cause" for waging war is central to the Bush administration's justification for invading and occupying both Afghanistan and Iraq.
Taught in US military academies, a modern-day version of the "Just War" theory has been embodied into US military doctrine. The "war on terrorism" and the notion of "preemption" are predicated on the right to "self defense." They define "when it is permissible to wage war": jus ad bellum.
Jus ad bellum serves to build a consensus within the Armed Forces command structures. It also serves to convince the troops that the enemy is "evil" and that they are fighting for a "just cause". More generally, the Just War theory in its modern day version is an integral part of war propaganda and media disinformation, applied to gain public support for a war agenda.
The Battle for Oil. Demonization of the Enemy
War builds a humanitarian agenda. Throughout history, vilification of the enemy has been applied time and again. The Crusades consisted in demonizing the Turks as infidels and heretics, with a view to justifying military action.
Demonization serves geopolitical and economic objectives. Likewise, the campaign against "Islamic terrorism" (which is supported covertly by US intelligence) supports the conquest of oil wealth. The term "Islamo-fascism," serves to degrade the policies, institutions, values and social fabric of Muslim countries, while also upholding the tenets of "Western democracy" and the "free market" as the only alternative for these countries.
The US led war in the broader Middle East Central Asian region consists in gaining control over more than sixty percent of the world's supplies of oil and natural gas. The Anglo-American oil giants also seek to gain control over oil and gas pipeline routes out of the region. (See table and maps below).
Muslim countries including Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Yemen, Libya, Nigeria, Algeria, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, possess between 66.2 and 75.9 percent of total oil reserves, depending on the source and methodology of the estimate. (See table below).
In contrast, the United States of America has barely 2 percent of total oil reserves. Western countries including its major oil producers ( Canada, the US, Norway, the UK, Denmark and Australia) control approximately 4 percent of total oil reserves. (In the alternative estimate of the Oil and Gas Journal which includes Canada's oil sands, this percentage would be of the the order of 16.5%. See table below).
The largest share of the World's oil reserves lies in a region extending (North) from the tip of Yemen to the Caspian sea basin and (East) from the Eastern Mediterranean coastline to the Persian Gulf. This broader Middle East- Central Asian region, which is the theater of the US-led "war on terrorism" encompasses according to the estimates of World Oil, more than sixty percent of the World's oil reserves. (See table below).
Iraq has five times more oil than the United States.
Muslim countries possess at least 16 times more oil than the Western countries.
The major non-Muslim oil reserve countries are Venezuela, Russia, Mexico, China and Brazil. (See table)
Demonization is applied to an enemy, which possesses three quarters of the world's oil reserves. "Axis of evil", "rogue States", "failed nations", "Islamic terrorists": demonization and vilification are the ideological pillars of America's "war on terror". They serve as a casus belli for waging the battle for oil.
The Battle for Oil requires the demonization of those who possess the oil. The enemy is characterized as evil, with a view to justifying military action including the mass killing of civilians. The Middle East Central Asian region is heavily militarized. (See map). The oil fields are encircled: NATO war ships stationed in the Eastern Mediterranean (as part of a UN "peace keeping" operation), US Carrier Strike Groups and Destroyer Squadrons in the Persian Gulf and the Arabian deployed as part of the "war on terrorism".
The ultimate objective, combining military action, covert intelligence operations and war propaganda, is to break down the national fabric and transform sovereign countries into open economic territories, where natural resources can be plundered and confiscated under "free market" supervision. This control also extends to strategic oil and gas pipeline corridors (e.g. Afghanistan).
Demonization is a PSYOP, used to sway public opinion and build a consensus in favor of war. Psychological warfare is directly sponsored by the Pentagon and the US intelligence apparatus. It is not limited to assassinating or executing the rulers of Muslim countries, it extends to entire populations. It also targets Muslims in Western Europe and North America. It purports to break national consciousness and the ability to resist the invader. It denigrates Islam. It creates social divisions. It is intended to divide national societies and ultimately trigger "civil war". While it creates an environment which facilitates the outright appropriation of the countries' resources, at the same time, it potentially backlashes, creates a new national consciousness, develops inter-ethnic solidarity, brings people together in confronting the invaders.
It is worth noting that the triggering of sectarian divisions and "civil wars" is contemplated in the process of redrawing of the map of the Middle East, where countries are slated to be broken up and transformed into territories. The map of the New Middle East, although not official, has been used by the US National War Academy. It was recently published in the Armed Forces Journal (June 2006). In this map, nation states are broken up, international borders are redefined along sectarian-ethnic lines, broadly in accordance with the interests of the Anglo-American oil giants (See Map below). The map has also been used in a training program at NATO's Defense College for senior military officers.
The Oil Lies in Muslim Lands
The oil lies in Muslim lands. Vilification of the enemy is part and parcel of Eurasia energy geopolitics. It is a direct function of the geographic distribution of the World's oil and gas reserves. If the oil were in countries occupied predominantly by Buddhists or Hindus, one would expect that US foreign policy would be directed against Buddhists and Hindus, who would also be the object of vilification..
In the Middle East war theater, Iran and Syria, which are part of the "axis of evil", are the next targets according to official US statements.
US sponsored "civil wars" have also been conducted in several other strategic oil and gas regions including Nigeria, the Sudan, Colombia, Somalia, Yemen, Angola, not to mention Chechnya and several republics of the former Soviet Union. Ongoing US sponsored "civil wars", which often include the channelling of covert support to paramilitary groups, have been triggered in the Darfur region of Sudan as well as in Somalia, Darfur possesses extensive oil reserves. In Somalia, lucrative concessions have already been granted to four Anglo-American oil giants.
"According to documents obtained by The Times, nearly two-thirds of Somalia was allocated to the American oil giants Conoco, Amoco [now part of BP], Chevron and Phillips in the final years before Somalia's pro-U.S. President Mohamed Siad Barre was overthrown and the nation plunged into chaos in January, 1991. Industry sources said the companies holding the rights to the most promising concessions are hoping that the Bush Administration's decision to send U.S. troops to safeguard aid shipments to Somalia will also help protect their multimillion-dollar investments there." (America's Interests in Somalia, Global Research, 2002)
Globalization and the Conquest of the World's Energy Resources
The collective demonization of Muslims, including the vilification of Islam, applied Worldwide, constitutes at the ideological level, an instrument of conquest of the World's energy resources. It is part of the broader economic, political mechanisms underlying the New World Order.
ORIGINAL Comment on this Editorial Editorial: OPEN LETTER: To Our U.S. Senators: Show Me the Money
by ERICA BALK
Baltimore Chronicle
3 Jan 07
Dear U.S. Senators:
I myself rarely take the time to communicate with my elected representatives. But I'm beginning to feel that we all must take the time out of our lives to let you all know how we feel.
We have so many problems here in Michigan that aren't being addressed at all. I'm a Finance Manager for the Public Works Department in Lansing. We work pretty closely with the State, and I can tell you we're in deep trouble over here. Before you go blaming it all on our dependence on the automotive industry (which admittedly has put us at a disadvantage for the current economic environment), let me point out that our governor is doing a lot to bring in technology-based industries and reduce that dependence. In the meantime, we're bleeding jobs, and therefore bleeding revenues that we need to keep the infrastructure of the community going. We're looking at a 25% reduction in Act 51 funds this coming year, which means less money to fix the roads, and even more importantly, less money to clear snow and ice during bad weather. The City of Lansing is running a $13 million deficit, and the State of Michigan is running a $1 billion deficit. Five years ago we were in the black-had surpluses in fact.
Lack of revenues due to an economy on the downslide is one factor, but do you know what's really killing us in City government? Healthcare, plain and simple. We paid $25 million for employee healthcare benefits (for a work force of fewer than 2000 employees) in 2005. In 2006, that went up another 10%. Our current fringe rate is 112%. So an employee making $25K annually is costing another $28K in benefits. That's projected to increase another 25% in the coming year. We're looking at laying off about one quarter of our regular work force. Police and Fire are political hotbuttons, so they won't be touched. But the folks who keep the City clean, maintain the roads and sewers, keep our water clean, and work in revenue-generating sectors such as Parks and Rec, Parking, Income Tax and Treasury, are all on the block. When those people are laid off, they will no longer have health benefits, along with thousands of others in this state that are in the same predicament. When that happens, these folks will go to the doctor only when they're sick, probably to the ER. They won't be able to pay for it, but the cost will get passed on to those people who are insured. This will cause insurance premiums to rise again. Fewer employers will be able to afford the cost, so more people will lose their insurance benefits. And the cycle continues.
Is it any wonder that major employers who can move their operations outside of the U.S. do so? Even if they pay the exact same wages to foreign employees, they're going to increase their bottom line by 10% off the bat by not paying these benefits.
And insurance companies aren't alone in this. The drug companies that proclaim that prices must be so high so they may fund more research and development, spend billions on advertising. Next time you're in a restaurant or at a retailer, see if the pen they hand you to sign your credit card receipt doesn't have a drug name on it. When you get a sample of a drug from your doctor, how elaborate is the packaging? And when you turn on your television, how many commercials for specific drugs go across the screen in an hour?
I was hospitalized in November for less than 72 hours. The bill was $8000. I am fortunate to be insured, but I do get the itemized bill. I was charged $14 for two regular-strength run-of-the-mill Tylenol. Another drug they gave me cost $38.50 per pill. I was sent home without my problem being resolved, and told to monitor my diet. This is insane!
There seems to be a competition between the insurance companies and drug companies (in their glass and steel palaces...some of the most costly buildings in the world) to see who can make the most money. And the patient gets the short end of the stick. Advertising by drug companies should be illegal. Advertising by insurance companies is questionable, but more understandable given that they are in direct competition for the consumer dollar. Drug companies, however, should be limiting their advertising to health care providers, who should be the ones making the decisions about what medications to prescribe, not the patients themselves. Capitalism needs to be removed from healthcare. This one issue is going to bankrupt this country, and we're the only advanced country in the world that runs our healthcare system this way. The money being spent in Iraq on a monthly basis could fund a public health care system. But that would take a lot of money out of a lot of people's pockets, wouldn't it?
So to circle back to my original statement, I'm not naive enough to believe that the United States can function as an island. We can't. But we don't need to have our fingers in every little pie around the world. And stop lying to us about this "war on terror." That is such a ridiculous concept. We won't end terrorism by making war on any one country. People who commit acts of terror exist in every country in the world, and there's no way to prevent every possible act. And taking leaders who promote terrorism out of power won't stop it either. Most of the terrorists who are really commited have their basis in extremist religious doctrine, not in political power bases. You've been getting away with it by preying on the fears of a largely uneducated American public. And we breed our own terrorists right here in the good old U S of A, but they tend to be white males between the ages of 25 and 45, or have we already forgotten Timothy McVeigh, the Unabomber, the abortion clinic bombings in the South and in Boston...need I go on?
And how can we continue to give money to other governments? I manage our personal finances, as well as those of my employer. When my checkbook's in the red, I tell charities that I just can't afford to give. The bills need to be paid and I need to buy groceries first. That only makes sense. But our government seems to operate on the concept that as long as there are checks in the checkbook, we can go on spending.
I am a true Public Servant. Everything I do goes directly to the health and safety of the Citizens of Lansing. I'm a good steward. I cut costs wherever I can, and attempt to maintain the funding to provide the same high level of service to our public. My staff spends absolutely no money that isn't absolutely necessary, and they work their tails off. Due to staff cuts I've got one employee who is doing three people's jobs. She's a single mother with three children at home. Yet she never complains, or shows frustration to the citizens she serves. She is a true public servant. I am commited to the concept that the citizens are my employer, and I owe them the best possible job I can do. I'm even willing to take a pay cut to accomplish it. How about all of you in Washington? Are you public servants, or political servants? I'm hoping for the former, but I fear it's the latter.
There are so many other issues at home I would like to see addressed...education, job training, homelessness..I could fill a book. But then it would be too long for you to read, and I would accomplish nothing. So here's hoping for change in 2007. God knows we need it!
"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root." ~ Thoreau
Lake dweller Henry David Thoreau enjoyed an enviable, pastoral life in the pre-industrial age. Living in the woods on the shore of the 60 acre Walden Pond, a mile from the village of Concord, Massachusetts , Henry had ample time to dwell on the topic of good and evil.
The year was 1845. Slavery existed then in America . The Mexican War had not yet begun but would very soon. The War Between The States (for some unknown reason called a civil war) was 15 years in the future, but the issues drove many men into a frenzy. Most of the native tribes, "Indians," living west of the Missouri River, hadn't yet been eradicated. And all of these topics and hundreds more caught the attention of Thoreau. Like Tolstoy, 50 years later, Thoreau dwelt on the topic of good and evil, (among many others), trying to determine the clearest definition of the two in a so-called civilized society.
What he discovered was what most folks discover. Nobody much gives a damn about good and evil. Most folks were just too busy. At any moment, anywhere in the Western world, most men simply want to work and relax, "get paid and laid," as my younger brother so clearly defined the focus of most civilizations. The only root most men want to strike lies between their legs.
Good? Evil? Can anyone define the terms? The Seven Deadly Sins your definition of evil? What about a flag-waving series of wars based on lies? Is that good for some people and evil for others? Most folks prefer their Congressmen or televangelist or talk show host to define good and evil and do all their thinking for them. Never mind that these televangelists and US Representatives seem to represent themselves, rather than any declared ethic, and instead rapturously rubberstamp those wars.
"What is hateful to yourself, do not do to another . . . That is the whole law," Jewish rabbi Hillel taught about 2,000 years ago. But how many top Jewish leaders today make foreign or domestic policy with that wisdom in mind? How many so-called Christian leaders conduct their lives with the Sermon on the Mount in mind? Nobody in Congress that I know, aside from Ron Paul. Otherwise, how could so many hypocrites have voted for the Iraq War?
One hundred and sixty years ago, Henry Thoreau protested the flag-waving imperial war of his day. He protested a poll tax by going to jail. (See Mass Moments: Henry David Thoreau Spends Night in Jail) Who would do that today? One out of a hundred people, maybe? One of a thousand?
Can a person protest evil?
Several years ago, I got off my fat ass and protested a war. I spent Saturdays and Sundays in the weeks before the war, standing on a busy street corner in Coral Springs , Florida with my sign. "War $200 Billion-Peace Priceless." Nobody joined me. A few people gave me the finger. Several people honked and waved and one or two even stopped to ask me what the hell I was doing.
What could I tell them? What does the protest of one person accomplish? Opposing evil? What a laugh. Two weeks before the war, the drumbeats growing louder, only a fool would have predicted that American politicians and the collaborative media would seek a peaceful way. So I stood there, filled with self-doubts, wishing I was getting paid and laid, aware of my futile gesture. Striking at the roots of evil? Hardly. Probably not even striking at the branches.
Thoreau defended the Abolitionist John Brown for attacking and occupying the arsenal at Harper's Ferry, West Virginia. For his efforts, Brown and his co-conspirators-or heroes-got hanged. What did Brown accomplish? Did John Brown hack at the roots of evil? Did Thoreau? A large number of people were killed in the raid on the arsenal. What did Brown accomplish but agitate a hornet's nest that eventually led to the Confederacy and the War of Secession and a half million dead? Arguably, taking up arms against evil might then become a greater evil. Nuclear retaliation-or Mutually Assured Destruction-comes to mind.
The Root and Branches of Evil
How does a person recognize the so-called greater good and the greater evil? When I define 9-11 as the root of evil that led to the imperial wars in the Middle East, I assert my belief that a conspiracy of evil conspired to create a false flag event by the state. Was 9-11 a root of evil? Or a single branch of a greater evil? Because a state grown wholly out of control, branching out in a thousand directions, without remorse or ethical qualm, cannot be anything but evil. The 911 conspiracy might have been only a larger branch that I continue hacking at.
Tolstoy (an admirer of Thoreau) spent the last years of his life writing short stories and moral essays: "What Then Must We Do?" "What Men Live By." "How Much Land Does A Man Need?" The essays dealt with good and evil, the moral duty of a man, the lassitude of society.
Not surprisingly, Tolstoy determined that evil has plagued humans since some men asserted control and others let them. He wrote: "Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us . . . . In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful."
Is the war-loving state the stem of evil, while the root cause is a society's willing surrender to it? Or are humans predisposed to evil? My buddy Bill, a former Philly cop, believes humans possess damaged DNA and act accordingly. Not sure if that defense would hold up in a court of law but the evidence-that humans are flawed--is overwhelming.
"There are two basic reasons why people commit evil," wrote Fred E. Foldvary, in "The Origins of Evil." "Some people are simply amoral. They lack sympathy and don't think there is any morality. To them their victims are like rabbits. They think, if someone is weak or foolish enough to be a victim, they deserve no better . . . . But most evil is committed by people who believe they are doing good."
Presto. Or by people too lazy or programmed to reflect upon their actions.
Like most folks, I'll continue hacking at the branches of evil, and tell myself it is a good thing to do. After all, to strike at the root might require I get my hands dirty and acquire the proper digging tools. Who wants to do that? Most importantly, however, I would need the wisdom and ability to recognize the root when I see it and not mistake it for a fallen leaf.
Richard Dawkins
January 3, 2007
RichardDawkins.net
The obvious objections to the execution of Saddam Hussein are valid and well aired. His death will provoke violent strife between Sunni and Shia Muslims, and between Iraqis in general and the American occupation forces. This was an opportunity to set the world a good example of civilized behaviour in dealing with a barbarically uncivilized man. In any case, revenge is an ignoble motive. The usual arguments against the death penalty in general apply. If Bush and Blair are eventually put on trial for war crimes, I shall not be among those pressing for them to be hanged. But I want to add another and less obvious reason why we should not have executed Saddam Hussein. His mind would have been a unique resource for historical, political and psychological research: a resource that is now forever unavailable to scholars.
Imagine, in fancy, that some science fiction equivalent of Simon Wiesenthal built a time machine, travelled back to 1945 and returned to the present with a manacled Adolf Hitler. What should we do with him? Execute him? No, a thousand times no. Historians squabbling over exactly what happened in the Third Reich and the Second World War would never forgive us for destroying the central witness to all the inside stories, and one of the pivotal influences on twentieth century history. Psychologists, struggling to understand how an individual human being could be so evil and so devastatingly effective at persuading others to join him, would give their eye teeth for such a rich research subject. Kill Hitler? You would have to be mad to do so. Yet that is undoubtedly what we would have done if he hadn't killed himself in 1945. Saddam Hussein is not in the same league as Hitler but, nevertheless, in a small way his execution represents a wanton and vandalistic destruction of important research data.
Saddam Hussein could have provided irreplaceable help to future historians of the Iran/Iraq war, of the invasion of Kuwait, and of the subsequent era of sanctions culminating in the current invasion. Uniquely privileged evidence on the American government's enthusiastic arming of Saddam before they switched loyalties is now snuffed out at the tug of a rope (no doubt to the relief of Donald Rumsfeld and other guilty parties - it is surely no accident that the trial of Saddam neglected those of his crimes that might - no, would - have implicated them).
Political scientists of the future, studying the processes by which unscrupulous leaders arise and take over national institutions, have now lost key evidence forever. But perhaps the most important research in which a living Saddam Hussein could have helped is psychological. Most people can't even come close to understanding how any man could be so cruel as Hitler or Saddam Hussein, or how such transparently evil monsters could secure sufficient support to take over an entire country. What were the formative influences on these men? Was it something in their childhood that turned them bad? In their genes? In their testosterone levels? Could the danger have been nipped in the bud by an alert psychiatrist before it was too late? How would Hitler, or Saddam Hussein have responded to a different style of education? We don't have a clear answer to these questions. We need to do the research.
Then again, are there lots of Saddams and lots of Hitlers in every society, but most of them end up as football hooligans wrecking trains rather than dictators wrecking countries? If so, what singles out the minority that do come to power? Or were men such as these truly unusual? What can we do to prevent them gaining power in the future? Are there changes we could make to our democratic and other political institutions that would make it harder for men of Hitler's or Saddam Hussein's psychological types to take them over?
These questions are not just academically fascinating but potentially of vital importance for our future. And they cannot be answered by prejudice or preconception or intuitive commonsense. The only way to answer them is by research. It is in the nature of research on ruthless national dictators that the sample size is small. Wasn't the judicial destruction of one of the very few research subjects we had - and a prime specimen at that - an act of vandalism?
Saddam Hussein was hanged on the orders of a US sponsored Kangaroo court. Who has the authority to hang Bush, Blair and company for their crimes?
A kangaroo court (the so-called High Iraqi Tribunal) had sentenced Saddam Hussein, his half-brother Barzan Ibrahim, and the former chief justice of the Revolutionary Court Awad Hamed Al-Bandar to be hanged within 30 days. Yet the US administration, in a rash decision, pressured the Al-Maliki government to hang Saddam on Saturday the 30th of December, the first day of Islamic religious Addha holiday, in a blatant violation of the religious beliefs and laws of all Islamic countries, which ban the execution of any criminal during this holiday. The hanging also violated the Christian spirit of Christmas, and the Iraqi constitution penned down by Bremer. It exhibited spirit of vengeance. Sparing the life of Ibrahim and Al-Bandar clearly shows that Saddam's hanging was intent on demonizing Muslims in Iraq and around the World as well as inciting increased sectarian violence within Iraq.
Saddam's death sentence was decided a long time ago, in the late 1980's when he refused to open up Iraqi assets (and oil reserves) to Western corporations, when he invaded Kuwait, and when he subsequently took the decision to convert Iraq's reserve funds from Dollars into Euros.
Several assassination attempts had been planned, but failed miserably. The failed Dujail assassination attempt was one of such attempts, which resulted in the execution of 148 Shiites. Finally under the lies of alleged possession of WMD, "the freeing of Iraqis", and the "spreading of American democracy" British and American forces invaded Iraq in 2003.
Saddam was originally a CIA asset, recruited to assassinate the previous Iraqi president Abdel-Karim Qassem, who started taxing British and US oil companies as a first step in an attempt to nationalize Iraq's oil resources. After failing to assassinate Qassem, and being wounded in the process, Saddam escaped to Egypt, where he routinely visited the US embassy in Cairo.
Later when the CIA was able to topple Qassam's presidency, Saddam was sent back to Iraq to take on the position of Head of National Security. He later became president with the backing of the US. Saddam installed as head of State to prevent the nationalization of Iraq's oil industry as well as to quell the Arab Nationalist Movement in Iraq, integrated by Shi'a, Kurdish and Sunni Iraqis.
In the wake of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Saddam was pressured by Washington to wage war on Iran. Kissinger's famous statement "let them kill each other" describes the real nature of this eight years' war. The US administration supported both sides. It provided Saddam with weapons and intelligence, while also covertly supporting Iran. The US military industrial complex profited tremendously from the Iraq-Iran war.
The Arab Gulf rulers supported Saddam and handed him the necessary money to pay for his war against Iran. When the war was over Kuwait refused to forgive Saddam's wartime debt. It also opposed to increase the price of oil, as Saddam had proposed in OPEC with a view to financing Iraq's war debts. This confrontation ultimately led to the invasion of Kuwait and the 1991 Gulf War I carpet bombing of withdrawing Iraqi troops. Although it was possible to topple Saddam's regime at that time, the US adminstration feared this would break their alliance with the frontline Arab states.
There is no question that Saddam was a ruthless dictator, like most of the Arab rulers, who were handed their political positions after WWII to keep the Arab World divided and separated, and to subdue their people. Yet with all his ruthlessness and despotic rule he enjoyed public support for the political positions he took. He built Iraq into the most technologically advanced Arab country. Next to the Palestinians, Iraqis were the most educated in the Arab world. Primary education was compulsory, higher education was free. Women's rights progressed in the context of secular Muslim state. Unlike the rest of the Arab rulers, the Iraqi government provided real homes rather than dirty refugee camps for Palestinian refugees. He also sent money to Palestinian fighters resisting Israeli occupation. Besides his support to Palestinians, Saddam stood defiant towards Israel, the US and Iran; he dispatched Iraqi tanks to protect Syria from Israeli attacks, gave Jordan support in the form of monetary and oil grants, resisted US demands in the wake of the Gulf War.
Although Saddam was ruthless towards any form of political opposition, much like most Arab rulers, whose crimes and tortures have not yet been exposed, his government, nonetheless, provided for the average Iraqi citizen.
The Hussein regime formally provided "security and safety" where people could walk the streets without fear of crimes.
The government also provided food rations while under the US sponsored sanctions regime following Gulf War I. Within a few months after the end of the first Gulf War, the Hussein government started rebuilding Iraq's civilian infrastructure, which had been destroyed by US bombings. This included roads and bridges, power stations, water desalination facilities, educational centers, and governmental services.
Saddam was tried by a kangaroo Iraqi Special Tribunal, whose judges had been specially assigned by the US military authorities. Its judges had been changed few times, and several of Saddam's lawyers were assassinated. This Tribunal convicted Saddam for crimes allegedly perpetrated in Dujail against 148 Iraqis, who were originally tried and sentenced to death by a legal Iraqi court for their alleged assassination attempt against president Saddam. The Tribunal overlooked Saddam's other more severe crimes, often perpetrated in cooperation with successive US administrations, which supplied his regime with weapons and intelligence.
Bush/Blair War Crimes
There can be no double standards in assessing war crimes. Hanging should also be the sentence for Bush and Blair, for:
1. causing the death of almost 700 thousands mostly civilian Iraqis during the last three years of US occupation, the destruction of all Iraqi civilian infrastructures,
2. the collapse of all civilian services,
3. triggering the departure into several hundred thousand Iraqis, fleeing Iraq and becoming refugees in foreign countries,
4. the bombings of various religious shrines,
5. the tearing of the Iraqi social fabric and the incitment of civil war,
6. the theft of Iraqi's oil national resources,
7. the looting of cultural treasures,
8. the massacre of civilians including women and children,
9. the use of illegal weapons, such as depleted uranium and phosphorus bombs, against whole cities and the burying thousands of victims in massive graveyards,
10. the nightly raids against civilian homes and the kidnapping of people including women and children,
11. the spreading of terror, insecurity and chaos within cities,
12. the imprisonment of thousands of innocent people in massive encampments, torturing, humiliating, raping, and murdering of innocent civilian prisoners, and many other war crimes.
The invasion of Iraq, in itself, is a war crime. The invasion was based on lies and fabrications; Iraq did not have WMD, did not support terrorists, and did not pose any threat to its neighboring countries or to the Western world as claimed by the US administration.
"Freeing Iraqis" and "spreading American democracy" were the underlying falsehoods used to justify a terrorist war against Iraq. and its population. The UN Secretary Kofi Annan, in his resignation speech, called the war on Iraq an "illegal act that contravened the UN charter", thus making the war a supreme international crime. Annan also declared that Iraq under the rule of dictator Saddam was much better off than under the American democracy.
Bush and Blair. waged an illegal war, with a view to steeling Iraqis natural resources including its extensive oil reserves. They, and their administrations, caused the deaths of almost a million people within a period of three years.
They had caused the destruction of a whole country. They spread terror not only in Iraq but in the entire Middle Eastern region. They legalized torture, rape, and murder of prisoners.
They kidnapped citizens of other nations and sent them to be tortured in prisons scattered around the world.
They not only terrorized and caused the deaths of citizens of other nations, they also terrorized their own citizens,
They derogated their human and civil rights through imposing draconian laws such as the Patriot Act,
They legalized surveillance and ethnic profiling, the imprisoned their own citizens, based on ethnic on religious background labeling them "foreign combatants', trying them with undisclosed evidence, terrorizing their citizens with imaginary enemies.
They sent their young men and women to fight an illegal war in iraq and Afghanistan..
They dramatically curtailed all types of social services, while channelling tax dollars to the military industrial complex.
Billions of dollars from the public purse, financed by tax payers, allegedly designated to financing "postwar reconstruction" and "spreading American democracy", were channelled into the bank accounts of large corporations such as Halliburton and Bechtel.
Saddam Hussein was hanged on the orders of a US sponsored Kangaroo court. Who has the authority to hang Bush, Blair and company for their crimes?
Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab writer of Palestinian descent, born in the town of Beit-Jala. Currently he lives in the US.
Dr. Mahathir Mohamad
Member of the International Committee
For the Defence of President Saddam Hussein
30th December 2006
On the Holy day of Eid, the world watched in horror at the barbaric lynching of President Saddam Hussein of Iraq, allegedly for crimes against humanity. This public murder was sanctioned by the War Criminals, President Bush and Prime Minister Blair.
This sadistic act broadcasted to the whole world is a travesty of justice, and was meant to demonstrate the imperial power of the United States and serves as a warning to peace loving peoples that we must either bow to the dictates of the Bush regime or face the consequences of a public lynching.
The lynching was also an insult to all Muslims, as it occurred on the Holy Day of Eid, whereby Muslims devote themselves to prayer and forgiveness. It is all too clear that the war criminal Bush has no sensitivities whatsoever for Muslims on their pilgrimage to Mecca. This barbaric act is a sacrilege!
The entire trial process was a mockery of justice, no less a Kangaroo Court. Defence counsels were brutally murdered, witnesses threatened and judges removed for being impartial and replaced by puppet judges. Yet, we are told that Iraq was invaded to promote democracy, freedom and justice.
A peaceful country has now been turned into a war zone. Over 500,000 children died as a result of the criminal economic sanctions, and the latest findings by the medical journal, Lancet reveals that over 650,000 Iraqis have died since the illegal invasion of 2003.
The War Criminal Bush has killed more Iraqis than President Saddam ever did, if in fact he was guilty of any crime. If President Saddam Hussein is guilty of war crimes, then the world must find Bush, Blair and Howard equally guilty and the International Criminal Court cannot but prosecute these war criminals. The inaction thus far by the International Criminal Court against Bush, Blair and Howard exposes the double standard of the said Court, when it does not hesitate to prosecute war crimes committed in Dalfur, Rwanda and Kosovo.
If we support human rights and justice, we must condemn this barbaric lynching of President Saddam Hussein. There can be no excuse whatsoever for this injustice under any circumstances. War Criminal Bush and the puppet regime in Iraq have made a mockery of the Rule of Law.
The murder of ex-President Saddam Hussein in Baghdad was perhaps the worst example of political blindness shown by the inept, incompetent and incapacitated Bush regime.
From the beginning, the war in Iraq lacked one fundamental precept: legality. From the beginning, the kangaroo court hurriedly set up to try Saddam Hussein and other members of the Ba'athist Party lacked one fundamental precept: legality, as expressed by numerous international experts.
From the very beginning, the foreign policy launched by the Bush regime (the lies of Colin Powell at the UNO, the lies of George Bush, who knew not only that Iraq had WMD but even knew exactly where they were, the shock and awe campaign which was no more than a criminal act of butchery) proved to be wholly out of tune with the rest of Humankind, a sort of Hitlerian spasm which humanity appears to suffer from every so many years.
The criminal act of invading a sovereign nation outside the UN auspices, of targeting civilian structures with military hardware, of removing a State so irresponsibly, has sent Iraqi society back three centuries in three years. Women, for instance, have lost any rights they gained under Saddam, and now are unable to venture out without a veil and religion is no longer a private matter, but a cause to be killed for, while the Kurds fight to keep Saria law out of their constitution. This is the Iraq of George Bush.
Sectarian violence is rife and increasing and civilian casualties are reaching shocking proportions of tens of thousands a year. So what did the Bush regime wish to achieve with the murder of Saddam Hussein?
Does George Bush believe that two wrongs make a right? He should know, after all Saddam Hussein was hanged for signing 148 death warrants for high treason, while George Bush signed 152 as Governor of Texas, for lesser crimes.
With the Sunni community deploring this wanton act of cruelty and the Shiite community celebrating, how much nearer to open civil war does the Bush regime wish to push Iraq?
The hurried way in which Saddam Hussein was dispatched raises the suspicion that there was something to hide. After all, why were we not shown the footage of the trial? Why did 99 per cent of the proceedings take place in secrecy? What did Saddam Hussein say in his defence? Who sold him the weapons? Who sold him the gas? Upon whose orders? Did Iraq gas the Kurds or was it some other neighbouring state with a Kurdish question to solve at a moment when it would be easy to blame someone else?
These are questions to which we will never know the answer because the Government of the United States of America was unable or unwilling to face the truth. The murder of Saddam Hussein was therefore a criminal act of cowardice which created a martyr out of a man who could easily have been portrayed as a monster and which underlines the criminal, murderous traits of George Bush the man and the Presidency of the USA today. The monster, after all, sits in the Oval Office, Washington, the scene of many lurid acts in recent years.
It was never meant to be a public execution. But two and a half minutes of jerky footage, shot with a mobile phone, brought the hanging of Saddam Hussein into living rooms across the world. By yesterday, it had provoked a wave of international condemnation, and put the question of capital punishment under renewed scrutiny.
"Welcome to the sordid world of the execution chamber, brought to you by the YouTube generation," Amnesty International said. More than half of all countries have abolished the death penalty in law or practice; Iraq has now rejoined the small number of countries where executions are routine and justice uncertain. That roll call includes China, Saudi Arabia, the US and Iran, where more than 90 per cent of executions are committed.
A total of 128 countries have abolished the death penalty in law or practice. Although 69 other countries retain the death penalty, the number of countries that actually execute prisoners in any year is much smaller.
Saddam's Iraq was notorious for arbitrary killings. He used torture, murders, targeted assassinations, and court-ordered executions to maintain an iron grip. One respected human rights organisation reported how he ordered public beheadings of women accused of being prostitutes. Their heads were publicly displayed near signs reading, "For the honour of Iraq".
His execution has come at a time when the death penalty is under more pressure than it has been for years. No less a figure than Governor Jeb Bush of Florida - whose brother, President George Bush, is a noted supporter of capital punishment - has just ordered a moratorium on executions in the state after a botched lethal injection in which the prisoner took twice as long as usual to die and is believed to have been in agony.
Executions have been suspended in California and Missouri after judges ruled lethal injection unconstitutional because the pain it causes amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.
And a special commission in New Jersey yesterday recommended that the state become the first to abolish the death penalty since the US Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976.
In the United States, new medical research that suggests lethal injection, the execution method in all but one state, is an extremely painful way to die, has reopened the debate.
Around the world, capital punishment is losing ground. In 2005, Mexico and Liberia became the latest countries to abolish the death penalty, bringing the number of countries that have no death penalty to 86; in 1977 there were 16.
Although thousands are still executed every year, just four countries account for 94 per cent of all executions: China, the US, Iran and Saudi Arabia. China accounts for most executions, sentencing people to death not only for murder, but for crimes including tax fraud, minor drug offences and non-violent theft. It has dropped its practice of forcing the relatives of the executed to pay for the bullet with which they are killed.
In Iran and Saudi Arabia, executions are still public. Criminals are beheaded with the sword in Saudi Arabia, and hanged from cranes in Iran, where children under the age of 18 are still executed.
Other countries that still commit significant numbers of executions include Vietnam, where information on how many death sentences have been carried out is classified as a state secret, and Pakistan. Now Amnesty International is warning of growing concern over the number of people being executed in Iraq.
Saddam executed thousands of Iraqis during his time in power. But in the end, the video of his own brutal execution may be two and a half minutes that reopened the debate on capital punishment.
Capital punishment across the world 53 The number of executions in the United States in 2006
10 The number of states which have put executions on hold after the botched execution of Angel Nieves Diaz in Florida last month. He took 34 minutes to die from a lethal injection
31 The number of years that one US citizen has been on death row. The Texan prisoner is scheduled to be executed this year for murder
68 The number of crimes carrying the death penalty in China. They include non-violent crimes such as tax fraud, embezzlement and drugs offences
86 The number of prisoners executed in Saudi Arabia last year - almost half of whom were foreign nationals
4 The number of people executed in Japan on Christmas Day
94 The percentage of all known executions which took place in China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the US
6 The number of methods of execution: beheading (in Saudi Arabia, Iraq); electrocution (US); hanging (Egypt, Iran, Japan, Jordan, Pakistan, Singapore and others); lethal injection (China, Guatemala, Philippines, Thailand, US); shooting (Belarus, China, Somalia, Taiwan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam and others) and stoning (Iran and Afghanistan)
18 The minimum age for the application of the death penalty according to international treaty
8 The number of child offenders executed in Iran in 2005
2,148 The total number of people executed in 2005, in 22 countries
The person believed to have recorded Saddam Hussein's execution on a mobile phone camera was arrested today, an adviser to Iraq's prime minister said.
The adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, speaking on condition of anonymity, did not identify the person. But he said it was "an official who supervised the execution" and who is "now under investigation."
"In the past few hours, the government has arrested the person who made the video of Saddam's execution," the adviser said.
Iraqi state television aired an official video of the hanging, which had no audio and never showed Saddam's actual death. But the mobile phone video showed the deposed leader being taunted in his final moments, with witnesses shouting "go to hell" before he dropped through the gallows floor and swung dead at the end of a rope.
The unruly scene aired on Al-Jazeera television and was posted on the internet, prompting a worldwide outcry and big protests among Iraq's minority Sunnis, who lost their preferential status when Saddam was ousted in the US-led invasion of March 2003.
Al-Maliki yesterday ordered his Interior Ministry to investigate the video - who made it and how it reached television and websites for public viewing.
Today, an Iraqi prosecutor who was also present at the execution denied a report that he had accused the country's national security adviser of possible responsibility for the leaked video.
"I am not accusing Mowaffak al-Rubaie (the national security adviser), and I did not see him taking pictures," Munqith al-Faroon, an Iraqi prosecutor in the case that sent Saddam to the gallows, told The Associated Press.
"But I saw two of the government officials who were ... present during the execution taking all the video of the execution, using the lights that were there for the official taping of the execution. They used mobile phone cameras. I do not know their names, but I would remember their faces," al-Faroon said in a telephone interview.
The prosecutor said the two officials were openly taking video pictures, which are believed to be those which appeared on Al-Jazeera satellite television and a website within hours of Saddam's death by hanging shortly before dawn on Saturday.
The New York Times today reported that al-Faroon told the newspaper " one of two men he had seen holding a mobile phone camera aloft to make a video of Mr Hussein's last moments up to and past the point where he fell through the trapdoor was Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Mr. Maliki's national security adviser."
The Times said it had been unable to reach al-Rubaie for comment. AP also could not reach him today.
Al-Faroon said there were 14 Iraqi officials, including himself and another prosecutor, as well as three hangmen present for the execution. All the officials, he said, were flown by US helicopter to the former military intelligence facility where Saddam was put to death in an execution chamber used by his own security men for years.
The prosecutor said he believed all mobile phones had been confiscated before the flight and that some of the officials' bodyguards, who arrived by car, had smuggled the camera phones to the two officials he had seen taking the video pictures.
Some of the last words Saddam heard, according to the leaked mobile phone video, were a chant of "Muqtada, Muqtada, Muqtada," a reference to Muqtada al-Sadr, the radical anti-American Shiite cleric, whose Mahdi Army militia is believed responsible for many of this year's wave of killings that have targeted Sunnis and driven many from their homes.
Al-Sadr's father was killed by Saddam. The militant cleric is a key al-Maliki backer.
Alastair Macdonald and Claudia Parsons
Reuters
Wed Jan 3, 2007 12:54 PM ET
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. forces had no role in Saddam Hussein's hanging, but would have handled it differently, a U.S. general said on Wednesday as Iraqi authorities questioned a guard over a video of officials taunting Saddam on the gallows.
National Security Adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie said a committee investigating who had illicitly filmed and leaked a video of the hanging was questioning one of the guards at the prison facility where Saddam was hanged at dawn on Saturday.
There were conflicting reports of whether Saddam's two co- defendants, including his half-brother Barzan, would be hanged on Thursday at dawn. Rubaie said the date had not been set.
As the White House said President George W. Bush had not seen the video, Major General William Caldwell urged the Iraqi government to reach out to disillusioned Sunni Arabs, who have warned that the execution and film are blows to the Shi'ite-led government's efforts at national reconciliation.
Caldwell said U.S. forces, who had physical custody of Saddam for three years, left all security measures at Saddam's hanging, including access to the execution chamber, to Iraqis.
"Had we been physically in charge at that point we would have done things differently," Caldwell told a news conference.
"At this point the government of Iraq has the opportunity to take advantage of what has occurred and really reach out now in an attempt to bring more people back into the political process and bring the Sunnis back," he said, singling out a need to ease restrictions on former members of Saddam's Baath party.
"It's a real critical juncture."
In unusually direct advice from the U.S. military to Iraqi leaders, Caldwell said the country's government and parliament "will have to rise above past divisions".
"This will entail difficult decisions ... and hard compromises necessary for national reconciliation."
VIDEO STIRS ANGER
Caldwell said there had been a lull in violence over the Eid al-Adha holiday which started on Saturday, but U.S. forces were braced for a possible violent backlash still to come.
Thousands of Saddam's fellow Sunni Arabs have marched to vent anger at the execution in Sunni Arab strongholds. More mourners came to visit his grave in his home village of Awja on Wednesday, and other towns also saw further demonstrations.
In Falluja, in western Iraq, posters were plastered on walls promising revenge for the "martyr" Saddam.
The unofficial video of the hanging, apparently filmed on a mobile phone, showed Shi'ite officials mocking Saddam just before he was hanged, inflaming sectarian passions in a country already on the brink of sectarian civil war.
Rubaie blamed the video on people trying to raise tension.
"Whoever leaked this video meant to harm national reconciliation and drive a wedge between Shi'ites and Sunnis," said Rubaie, one of some 20 official witnesses at the hanging.
Sadiq al-Rikabi, an adviser to the prime minister, told Iraqiya state television that a number of guards at the facility had been taken in for questioning and investigators had identified a person suspected of filming the hanging.
Prosecutor Munkith al-Faroon, heard appealing for order on the video, told Reuters on Tuesday that two senior officials had filmed the hanging, challenging government claims guards did it.
TIMING
The timing of the execution, just four days after an appeal failed and on the first day of Eid, shocked many, both in Iraq and in the rest of the Muslim world.
A senior U.S. official told the New York Times Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was concerned that if Saddam was not hanged quickly he would somehow escape the noose.
"His concern was security, and that ... maybe there would be a mass kidnapping to bargain for Saddam Hussein's release," he said. "He was concerned that he might somehow get free."
Rubaie confirmed that Iraqi officials had been concerned Saddam might escape justice: "The question is not 'Why the rush in the execution?' The question is 'Why the delay?'
"Some people were talking about the Americans, saying they might take him to one of these islands controlled by the United States and exile him there."
Rubaie, Faroon and Sami al-Askari, a senior aide to Maliki, all said the date had not been set for the hanging of Barzan al -Tikriti, Saddam's half brother and former intelligence chief, and Awad al-Bander, a former chief judge, despite other officials telling media they would hang on Thursday at dawn.
Before Saddam's hanging, there were similarly conflicting reports about when it would happen and the government took the final decision only a few hours before the dawn execution.
By Andrew Grice, Political Editor
UK Independent
04 Jan 07
Downing Street has welcomed the Iraqi government's decision to hold an inquiry into the fiasco over the execution of Saddam Hussein and admitted that mistakes had been made.
But No 10 declined to endorse comments by John Prescott who said the unauthorised filming and taunting of the former Iraqi dictator by guards who told him to "go to hell" was "deplorable" and that those responsible should be "ashamed." A spokeswoman said the Deputy Prime Minister was giving his "personal" view.
When he returns from his holiday in Miami, Mr Blair will come under pressure to condemn the way Saddam was executed last Saturday. He has so far avoided any public comment.
Yesterday George Bush who said he had not seen the illicit video of the hanging because he was focused on the "way forward" in Iraq dodged questions about the execution as the Americans sought to distance themselves from the way it was handled. Major General William Caldwell said in Baghdad that the US would have carried it out "differently" and did not play a role in the proceedings. "If you're asking me, would we have done things differently, yes, we would have," he said. "But that's not our decision. That's a government of Iraq decision."
He said a US military team only transported Saddam to the site of his execution, and the Iraqi government maintained custody of the former leader throughout. After delivering Saddam to the Iraqi Ministry of Justice's As-Buratha prison, American personnel "withdrew from the building, back from the whole location", he added.
In Britain, MPs believe the controversy risks turning Saddam into a martyr. His execution is sensitive for Mr Blair because the Government opposes the death penalty. Downing Street declined to say whether Britain would back Italian calls for a worldwide moratorium on capital punishment via the United Nations but reaffirmed the Government's opposition to it.
The spokeswoman said: "The Iraqi government is going to conduct an inquiry into the manner in which the execution was conducted. We fully support that decision and believe it is the right thing to do. As they have said, there were obviously things that went wrong."
She insisted that Margaret Beckett, the Foreign Secretary, had spoken on behalf of the whole Government by saying the UK was against the death penalty but that Saddam had been "held to account".
No 10 backed Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister, who said in an interview that he would not seek a second term and wished he could leave office before his four-year term is up and would not run again. "I didn't want to take this position," Mr Maliki told the Wall Street Journal. "I only agreed because I thought it would serve the national interest, and I will not accept it again."
Amnesty International warned that Saddam's execution was just one of a fast-rising number in Iraq, claiming at least 54 were carried out last year. Tim Hancock, its UK campaigns director, said: "Iraq had a chance to turn its back on the cruelty of the Saddam years and respect human rights, pursuing real justice with fair trials and humane punishment of those found guilty."
Iraqi authorities have not yet set a date to hang Saddam Hussein's half-brother, Barzan al-Tikriti, and a former judge, Awad al-Bander, convicted with him for crimes against humanity.
Saddam Hussein was made into "a martyr" by the manner of his execution, the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, warned today, saying he had urged Washington not to hang him during the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha.
In an interview with an Israeli newspaper, Mr Mubarak said that when it became clear the former Iraqi dictator was about to be hanged he sent a message to president George Bush asking to get it postponed. "Don't do it at this time," Mr Mubarak told the US leader, he recounted in an interview with the Yediot Ahronot newspaper.
"Why is it necessary to hang (him) just at the time when people are saying the holiday prayers?"
Mr Mubarak, who was interviewed at the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheik ahead of a meeting there with the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, who also condemned the manner in which Saddam was put to death.
Footage shot on a mobile phone camera, which appeared on television and websites just hours after Saddam was hanged on Saturday, showed him facing sectarian taunts from hooded guards before he was placed in the noose.
Mr Mubarak labelled the video footage of Saddam's death as "shocking pictures, primitive pictures," adding, "It was disgraceful and very painful".
"I'm not going to say whether Saddam deserved the death penalty or not," Mr Mubarak said. "I'm also not going to go into the question of whether that court is legal under the occupation.? "When all's said and done, nobody will ever forget the circumstances and the manner in which Saddam was executed. They have made him into a martyr, while the problems within Iraq remain."
Egypt is a key US ally in the Middle East, and has signed a peace deal with Israel. However, it also had friendly relations with Saddam's regime before his invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
The manner of Saddam's execution has been condemned around the world, with Mr Bush admitting he "wished proceedings had gone in a more dignified way".
Tony Blair, who was on holiday when Saddam was hanged, has yet to comment. His deputy, John Prescott, labelled the way it was carried out as "deplorable".
In Hyderabad, leftist and Muslim political parties protested against the execution of Saddam Hussein. The Vatican, through its newspaper, condemned the hanging of Saddam, saying it was a crime to distribute the video of his hanging. In North Africa, Yemen, Mecca (Makkah), and even in Dubai, the sentiment among Sunni Muslims across the world is anger and spite for the US and its President, George W. Bush. Is Saddam more dangerous dead than alive?
The US propaganda machine got it all wrong once again. Thinking that the Saddam hanging would make the world celebrate the New Year with greater frenzies, the US has in fact divided the world into pro-US and anti-US.
While Malaysia, Indonesia and the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) showed their real fear of the US by 'accepting' the hanging, other nations did not fail to point the wrong timing, the bad video and the sectarian taunting during Saddam's last moments alive.
Editors in Mauritius (see world futures for the article on Saddam City) the tiny Indian Ocean Island called the hanging an unfortunate event that made Saddam a martyr despite his wrongdoings. The day of Eid el Adha, chosen for the killing of Saddam by the Shiite majority government in Iraq, will only turn Saddam into a household hero in Iraq's Sunni homes wrote other editors in the Middle East.
The Arab streets are boiling with anti-US sentiments while in Palestine there has been extensive mourning for the fallen leader who is now considered a martyr. A Muslim is said to be a martyr if he is killed by his foes. Many Palestinians believe the fact that Saddam is heard reciting the act of Islamic faith and died while calling the name of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) makes him a martyr.
In Hyderabad, President Saddam Hussein's execution by the Iraq government on Saturday 30th December 2006 was received with shock.
Political parties, including left-wing parties and Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, took out rallies and burnt effigies of US President George W Bush, while religious institutions condemned the execution.
MIM MP Asaduddin Owaisi said, "The trial was a farce. The US showed its total insensitivity by executing Saddam Hussein on a holy day. These days are holy for the Muslims. They are busy in prayers and celebrating Id."
Hundreds of left activists took out a rally from L B Stadium to Basheerbagh crossroads and later burnt Bush's effigy. They also raised slogans against the US government.
"Saddam's hanging is hanging of justice," they shouted. CPM activists took out a black flag rally from Golconda crossroads to Musheerabad crossroads and later burnt the effigy of the US president. TDP president N Chandrababu Naidu termed the execution of Saddam as an 'unfortunate' event.
"The execution will have far-reaching consequences on the law and order situation internationally," Naidu said in a press release.
Religious bodies Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) and Jamiatul Ulama (JU) were more vocal in their reaction. JI president for AP and Orissa Abdul Basith Anwar, in a statement, expressed regret and said the execution was carried out when Muslims were preparing for Fajar (morning) prayer.
"If execution is the punishment for Saddam Hussein for what he had done to his people and the country, then President Bush and his ally British Prime Minister Tony Blair deserve worse treatment for what they are doing in Afghanistan, Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq," he added.
JU state president Hafiz Peer Shabbir Ahmed described the US as the biggest terrorist on the face of earth. The hanging of Saddam will have dangerous repercussions. The US should realise this, he warned.
However, Shia Personal Board general secretary Maulana Raza Agha said Saddam Hussein was the biggest tyrant and Muslims should learn a lesson in his execution
India dissapointed
Describing the execution of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein as 'unfortunate', India on Saturday said it was 'disappointed' over the development.
New Delhi, which had earlier opposed Hussein's execution, hoped that the event will not affect the process of reconciliation and restoration of peace in the trouble-torn country.
"We had already expressed the hope that the execution would not be carried out. We are disappointed that it has been (carried out)," External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee said in a statement.
U.N. approves of Saddam's killing
The United Nations, through its new Secretary General failed to condemn the hanging of Saddam. New U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon ran into trouble on his first day of work Tuesday over Saddam Hussein's execution when he failed to state the United Nations' opposition to the death penalty and said capital punishment should be a decision of individual countries.
In a blunt and shocking statement, Ban Ki-moon showed his intolerance and possibly the new image of the SG of the UN by stating it was alright to hang Saddam.
On their part, Malaysia and Indonesia approved of the hanging despite the general feeling among Malaysian and Indonesian Muslims that it was wrong to do so. The two South East Asian Muslim majority nations have de-facto approved of the US illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 with this tacit approval of Saddam's killing.
Perhaps Mahathir Mohamad, former Premier of Malaysia, voiced what most Muslims in the world are feeling when he said Saddam's hanging was a lynching and that George W. Bush and Tony Blair were criminals.
In the UK, the Independent Newspaper criticized the hanging of Saddam saying it made the 'monster a martyr' and it will fuel wider sectarian violence in Iraq.
The Iraqi government said yesterday it will execute two of Saddam Hussein's henchmen despite a call from the UN to refrain from hanging them.
"Nobody can stop the carrying out of court verdicts," said Sami al-Askari, an adviser to prime minister Nouri al-Maliki.
"The court's statute does not allow even the president of the republic or the prime minister to commute sentences, let alone grant a pardon. Therefore, no pressure can stop the executions," he told the BBC's Arabic service.
Louise Arbour, the UN high commissioner for human rights, had appealed to Iraq not to execute the two men, Barzan Ibrahim, Saddam's half brother and former intelligence chief, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, former head of Iraq's revolutionary court.
They were convicted and sentenced to death along with Saddam for the killings of 148 Shia from Dujail in the 1980s.
Their executions were initially postponed until after the Eid al-Adha holiday. Although Wednesday was the last day of the holiday for Iraq's Shia community the government has declared a public holiday lasting until Saturday.
Bahaa al-Araji, an MP for the radical Shia group headed by Moqtada al-Sadr, said he believed the likely execution date was Sunday.
Following the rowdy scenes at Saddam's hanging, the US called yesterday for due diligence in the forthcoming executions. "We expect Iraqi officials to handle their business with appropriate care," White House spokesman Tony Fratto told reporters.
According to Mr Askari, investigators have identified two guards as having illicitly filmed Saddam's execution using mobile phones. However, a prosecutor who attended the execution told Reuters he had seen two officials filming the hanging, prompting suggestions that the guards might be used as scapegoats.
The "humiliating" manner in which the execution was carried out clearly violated human rights law, said Philip Alston, an independent expert with the UN Human Rights Council. He described the legal proceedings as a "tragically missed opportunities to demonstrate that justice can be done, even in the case of one of the greatest crooks of our time."
The hanging of Saddam Hussein was an act of barbarism that makes a mockery of President Bush's claim it was "an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy."
Someone has to say it: The hanging of Saddam Hussein was an act of barbarism that makes a mockery of President Bush's claim it was "an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy."
Instead, the rushed, illegal and unruly execution of a former U.S. ally after his conviction in a kangaroo court blurred the line between terrorist and terrorized as effectively as Saddam's own evil propaganda ever did.
In the most generous interpretation, the frantic killing of Saddam abetted by the United States was the third act in a morality play of misplaced vengeance for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks -- in which the first act was the invasion of Iraq, based on trumped-up lies linking it to al-Qaida, and the second was the killing of the tyrant's sons, whose bloody corpses were hypocritically displayed to the world like war scalps.
At worst, the handling of Saddam is just another example of an Imperial America under President Bush that recognizes no boundaries of national sovereignty or any restraint of international law. A nation that posed no threat to U.S. security was conquered for a range of base motives, from oil plunder to industrial profits to naked political gain. Of course, these are the same rationales that despots always use to explain their murderous wars, such as Saddam's genocidal invasion of Iran and greedy occupation of Kuwait.
The president says the execution was warranted because Saddam received a fair trial even after Bush decided to bypass an international tribunal designed to handle such trials of national rulers and instead turn Saddam over to Iraq's dominant partisan faction in the midst of a nascent civil war. While Saddam's guilt of "crimes against humanity" may have been accurate, it was not, in fact, established by his trial, which was pushed through even as his lawyers were being assassinated. This, quite opposite to the spirit of the Nuremberg war crime trials (established by the United States but not repeated today by President Bush), where the accused had competent and unintimidated attorneys, free to make a complete case.
The trial dealt only with alleged crimes that occurred in the Shiite village of Dujail after an assassination attempt on Saddam. His bloody reprisals occurred 15 months before Donald Rumsfeld, then President Ronald Reagan's emissary, traveled to Baghdad to initiate an alliance with Saddam. Rumsfeld conceded in classified memos that he was familiar with Saddam's unsavory past, yet advocated forming an alliance with the dictator.
In fact, the most heinous crimes allegedly committed by Saddam, including the use of poison gas against Shiite Iraqis he suspected of being sympathetic to his Shiite enemies in Iran, were carried out during the years that he was our ally. With the United States having now put Iraqi Shiites with long political, military and ideological ties to those same Iranian ayatollahs into power in Baghdad, the bizarre circle of this foreign policy disaster is now complete, with Saddam's broken neck a fitting coda.
The video images now broadcast widely on the Internet show, as The New York Times reported, that the execution proceedings deteriorated "into a sectarian free-for-all that had the effect . . . of making [Saddam] appear dignified and restrained, and his executioners, representing Shiites, who were his principal victims, seem like bullying street thugs." As the executioners chanted "Moqtada! Moqtada! Moqtada!," in reference to death squad leader Moqtada al Sadr, Saddam may have claimed for his Sunni followers an undeserved martyrdom.
"Is that how real men behave?" Saddam asked, smiling contemptuously. In the end, Sadr was presented figuratively with the head of Saddam by reluctant U.S. officials -- the former dictator was in U.S. custody, after all -- in order to placate the Shiite radicals running Iraq, even though Iraqi law bans executions on this past weekend's religious holiday and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani refused to sign a decree upholding the death sentence, as is required by the country's new constitution.
Fittingly, U.S. officials appeared in this spectacle as hapless Keystone Kops, morally implicated by their tepid support of a lynch mob. It perfectly mirrors decades of U.S. meddling in the history of Iraq, beginning with U.S. support for Saddam's Baath Party when it overthrew Iraqi nationalist Abdul Karim Qassem because we feared he was tilting ever so slightly to the Soviets. In fact, Saddam, like Osama bin Laden and the other Islamist fanatics our CIA recruited and helped to wage holy war against the Soviets, was a monster at least partially of our creation.
Those deeply unsavory connections between Saddam and the United States would have been exposed in any honest trial. Presumably, this is the real reason why the Bush administration so assiduously undermined any equitable judicial accounting of Saddam's criminality, right through his shamefully and illegally rushed execution.
Robert Scheer is the co-author of The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq. See more of Robert Scheer at TruthDig.
How Bush and Blair's choices have led to disaster in Iraq, culminating in a chaotic execution that is fuelling civil war.
It takes real genius to create a martyr out of Saddam Hussein. Here is a man dyed deep with the blood of his own people who refused to fight for him during the United States-led invasion three-and-a-half years ago. His tomb in his home village of Awja is already becoming a place of pilgrimage for the five million Sunni Arabs of Iraq who are at the core of the uprising.
During his trial, Saddam himself was clearly trying to position himself to be a martyr in the cause of Iraqi independence and unity and Arab nationalism. His manifest failure to do anything effective for these causes during the quarter of a century he misruled Iraq should have made his task difficult. But an execution which vied in barbarity with a sectarian lynching in the backstreets of Belfast 30 years ago is elevating him to heroic status in the eyes of the Sunni - the community to which most Arabs belong - across the Middle East.
The old nostrum of Winston Churchill that "grass may grow on the battlefield but never under the gallows" is likely to prove as true in Iraq as it has done so frequently in the rest of the world. Nor is the US likely to be successful in claiming that the execution was purely an Iraqi affair.
Many Iraqis recall that the announcement of the verdict on Saddam sentencing him to death was conveniently switched last year to 5 November, the last daily news cycle before the US mid-term elections. The US largely orchestrated the trial from behind the scenes. Yesterday the Iraqi government arrested an official who supervised the execution for making the mobile-phone video that has stirred so much controversy.
The Iraqi Shia and Kurds are overwhelmingly delighted that Saddam is in his grave. But the timing of his death at the start of the Eid al-Adha feast makes his killing appear like a deliberate affront to the Sunni community. The execution of his half-brother Barzan in the next few days will confirm it in its sense that it is the target of an assault by the majority Shia.
Why was the Iraqi government of Nouri al-Maliki so keen to kill Saddam Hussein? First, there is the entirely understandable desire for revenge. Members of the old opposition to Saddam Hussein are often blamed for their past ineffectiveness but most lost family members to his torture chambers and execution squads. Every family in Iraq lost a member to his disastrous wars or his savage repressions.
There is also a fear among Shia leaders that the US might suddenly change sides. This is not as outlandish as it might at first appear. The US has been cultivating the Sunni in Iraq for the past 18 months. It has sought talks with the insurgents. It has tried to reverse the de-Baathification campaign. US commentators and politicians blithely talk about eliminating the anti-American Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and fighting his militia, the Mehdi Army. No wonder Shias feel that it is better to get Saddam under the ground just as quickly as possible. Americans may have forgotten that they were once allied to him but Iraqis have not.
When Saddam fell Iraqis expected life to get better. They hoped to live like Saudis and Kuwaitis. They knew he had ruined his country by hot and cold wars. When he came to power as president in 1979, Iraq had large oil revenues, vast oil reserves, a well-educated people and a competent administration. By invading Iran in 1980 and Kuwait in 1990, he reduced his nation to poverty. This was made worse by the economic siege imposed by 13 years of UN sanctions.
But life did not get better after 2003. Face-to-face interviews with 2,000 Iraqi adults by the Iraq Centre for Research and Strategic Studies in November revealed that 90 per cent of them said the situation in their country had been better before the US-led invasion. Only 5 per cent of people said it was better today. The survey was carried out in Baghdad, in the wholly Sunni Anbar province and the entirely Shia Najaf province. It does not include the Kurds, who remain favourable to the occupation.
This does not mean that Iraqis want Saddam back. But it is clearly true that the chances of dying violently in Iraq are far greater today everywhere in the country outside the three Kurdish provinces than they were in 2002. The myth put about by Republican neoconservatives that large parts of Iraq enjoyed pastoral calm post-war but were ignored by the liberal media was always a fiction. None of the neocons who claim that the good news from Iraq was being suppressed ever made any effort to visit those Iraqi provinces which they claimed were at peace.
Saddam should not have been a hard act to follow. It was not inevitable that the country should revert to Hobbesian anarchy. At first the US and Britain did not care what Iraqis thought. Their victory over the Iraqi army - and earlier over the Taliban in Afghanistan - had been too easy. They installed a semi-colonial regime. By the time they realised that the guerrilla war was serious it was too late.
It could get worse yet. The so-called "surge" in US troop levels by 20,000 to 30,000 men on top of the 145,000 soldiers already in the country is unlikely to produce many dividends. It seems primarily designed so that President George Bush does not have to admit defeat or take hard choices about talking to Iran and Syria. But these reinforcements might tempt the US to assault the Mehdi Army.
Somehow many senior US officials have convinced themselves that it is Mr Sadr, revered by millions of Shia, who is the obstacle to a moderate Iraqi government. In fact his legitimacy in the eyes of ordinary Shia Iraqis, the great majority of the population, is far greater than the "moderate" politicians whom the US has in its pocket and who seldom venture out of the Green Zone. Mr Sadr is a supporter of Mr Maliki, whose relations with Washington are ambivalent.
An attack on the Shia militia men of the Mehdi Army could finally lead to the collapse of Iraq into total anarchy. Saddam must already be laughing in his grave.
Patrick Cockburn is the author of The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq, which is published by Verso
'I felt quite sickened, appalled and disgusted'
A S Byatt
Booker Prize-winning author
The only absolute moral value I have is that the death penalty is wrong. And I think that it's wrong not because of the sanctity of the life of the dead person but because of the evil it does to the executioners. Of course it has now turned Saddam into a kind of martyr because people have now started to imagine what was actually done to him. The death penalty produces a kind of horror in me that not even paedophilia can. I think it is the absolute evil thing that humans do.
Sir Crispin Tickell
Former British ambassador to the United Nations and permanent representative to the Security Council
I thought the way the execution was carried out was quite disgraceful. But then the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath has, as we know, been a disaster. Everything that I feared has, sadly, come true. I am against the death penalty and thus I was against this execution. Having said that, this one death, in the context of all the others in Iraq, probably will not have such a huge impact on the long term.
Louise Christian
Solicitor for former Guantanamo Bay detainees
I felt quite sickened, appalled and disgusted by what we saw. I hate everything that Saddam Hussein stood for and wanted him brought to justice. This [his death] is the worst kind of outcome.I think the prosecutor should have stopped it. It sends the message that it is revenge by the Shias and not impartial justice. I would support an international moratorium on the death penalty but we need all international leaders to sign up to it.
Nitin Sawhney
Musician
The killing was barbaric. I find it strangely coincidental that it happened at Eid - a time when Muslims are trying to celebrate. Instead, a brown-skinned man with a noose around their neck dominated the front page of every newspaper. George Bush, himself a historically prolific perpetrator of capital punishment, described the execution as "a milestone"; which is equally as abhorrent. I wonder what
message this action of internationally condoned murder sends out to children across the world during Christmas, Eid and the New Year. The situation is so extreme: I feel incredibly angry - and emotional - about so many things around it.
Ann Widdecombe
Former Home Office minister
I have no problem with the decision to execute Saddam, but I have an enormous problem with the way it was made into a public spectacle. I didn't see the slightest justification for the official pictures. I know the justification was that if they didn't take pictures, people may not believe the execution had happened, but there are 5,000 ways of getting around that. Things went from bad to worse with the informal footage. Yes, I voted for the death penalty in this country, particularly for police killers.
HOUSTON - Police and family members said a 10-year-old boy who died by hanging himself from a bunk bed was apparently mimicking the execution of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
"It appears to be accidental," Claunch said. "Our gut reaction is that he was experimenting."
An autopsy of the fifth-grader's body was pending.
Julio Gustavo, Sergio's uncle, said the boy was a happy and curious child.
He said Sergio had watched TV news with another uncle on Saturday and asked the uncle about Saddam's death.
"His uncle told him it was because Saddam was real bad," Gustavo said. "He (Sergio) said, 'OK.' And that was it."
Sergio's mother, Sara Pelico DeLeon, was at work Sunday while Sergio and other children were under the care of an uncle, Gustavo said. One of the children found Sergio's body in his bedroom.
Police said the boy had tied a slipknot around his neck while on a bunk bed. Police investigators learned that Sergio had been upset about not getting a Christmas gift from his father, but they don't believe the boy intentionally killed himself.
Clinical psychologist Edward Bischof, of California, said children Sergio's age mimic risky behaviors they see on TV -- such as wrestling or extreme sports -- without realizing the dangers. He said TV appeared to be the stimulant in Sergio's case.
"I would think maybe this kid is trying something that he thinks fun to act out without having the emotional and psychological maturity to think the thing through before he acts on it," Bischof said.
Family members held a memorial for the boy Wednesday in the apartment complex activity center. Gustavo said the family is trying to put together enough money to send Sergio's body to Guatemala for burial.
"I don't think he thought it was real," Gustavo said of Saddam's hanging. "They showed them putting the noose around his neck and everything. Why show that on TV?"
(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
Kolkata, India - A 15-year-old girl from eastern India hanged herself in response to the execution of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, police and family members said on Thursday.
"She said they had hanged a patriot. We didn't take her seriously when she told us that she wanted to feel the pain Saddam did during the execution," the girl's father, Manmohan Karmakar, told AFP by phone from the town of Kharda.
He said his daughter, called Moon Moon, had become extremely depressed after watching Saddam's execution on television.
"She kept watching the scene over and again and didn't take food on Saturday and Sunday to protest the hanging," he said.
Police superintendent Pravin Kumar confirmed the suicide, saying the girl had strung herself up from a ceiling fan and was found dead early on Wednesday.
The communist-ruled state of West Bengal has condemned Saturday's execution of Saddam, with thousands of people taking to the streets.
Americans owe a debt to former President Jimmy Carter for speaking long hidden but vital truths. His book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid breaks the taboo barring criticism in the United States of Israel's discriminatory treatment of Palestinians. Our government's tacit acceptance of Israel's unfair policies causes global hostility against us.
Israel's friends have attacked Carter, a Nobel laureate who has worked tirelessly for Middle East peace, even raising the specter of anti-Semitism. Genuine anti-Semitism is abhorrent. But exploiting the term to quash legitimate criticism of another system of racial oppression, and to tarnish a principled man, is indefensible. Criticizing Israeli government policies - a staple in Israeli newspapers - is no more anti-Semitic than criticizing the Bush administration is anti-American.
The word apartheid typically evokes images of former South Africa, but it also refers to any institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over another. Carter applies the term only to Israel's rule of the occupied Palestinian territories, where it has established more than 200 Jewish-only settlements and a network of roads and other services to support them. These settlements violate international law and the rights of Palestinian property owners. Carter maintains that "greed for land," not racism, fuels Israel's settlement drive. He is only partially right.
Israel is seizing land and water from Palestinians for Jews. Resources are being transferred, under the guns of Israel's military occupation, from one disempowered group - Palestinian Christians and Muslims - to another, preferred group - Jews. That is racism, pure and simple.
Moreover, there is abundant evidence that Israel discriminates against Palestinians elsewhere. The "Israeli Arabs" - about 1.4 million Palestinian Christian and Muslim citizens who live in Israel - vote in elections. But they are a subordinated and marginalized minority. The Star of David on Israel's flag symbolically tells Palestinian citizens: "You do not belong." Israel's Law of Return grants rights of automatic citizenship to Jews anywhere in the world, while those rights are denied to 750,000 Palestinian refugees who were forced or fled in fear from their homes in what became Israel in 1948.
Israel's Basic Law of Human Dignity and Liberty establishes the state as a "Jewish democracy" although 24 percent of the population is non-Jewish. Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, counted 20 laws that explicitly privilege Jews over non-Jews.
The government favors Jews over Palestinians in the allocation of resources. Palestinian children in Israel attend "separate and unequal" schools that receive a fraction of the funding awarded to Jewish schools, according to Human Rights Watch. Many Palestinian villages, some predating the establishment of Israel, are unrecognized by the government, do not appear on maps, and thus receive no running water, electricity, or access roads. Since 1948, scores of new communities have been founded for Jews, but none for Palestinians, causing them severe residential overcrowding.
Anti-Arab bigotry is rarely condemned in Israeli public discourse, in which Palestinians are routinely construed as a "demographic threat." Palestinians in Israel's soccer league have played to chants of "Death to Arabs!" Israeli academic Daniel Bar-Tal studied 124 Israeli school texts, finding that they commonly depicted Arabs as inferior, backward, violent, and immoral. A 2006 survey revealed that two-thirds of Israeli Jews would refuse to live in a building with an Arab, nearly half would not allow a Palestinian in their home, and 40 percent want the government to encourage emigration by Palestinian citizens. Last March, Israeli voters awarded 11 parliamentary seats to the Israel Beitenu Party, which advocates drawing Israel's borders to exclude 500,000 of its current Palestinian citizens.
Some say that Palestinian citizens in Israel enjoy better circumstances than those in surrounding Arab countries. Ironically, white South Africans made identical claims to defend their version of apartheid, as is made clear in books such as Antjie Krog's Country of My Skull.
Americans are awakening to the costs of our unconditional support of Israel. We urgently need frank debate to chart policies that honor our values, advance our interests, and promote a just and lasting peace in the Middle East. It is telling that it took a former president, immune from electoral pressures, to show the way.
The debate should now be extended. Are Israel's founding ideals truly consistent with democracy? Can a state established in a multiethnic milieu be simultaneously "Jewish" and "democratic"? Isn't strife the predictable yield of preserving the dominance of Jews in Israel over a native Palestinian population? Does our unconditional aid merely enable Israel to continue abusing Palestinian rights with impunity, deepening regional hostilities and distancing peace? Isn't it time that Israel lived by rules observed in any democracy - including equal rights for all?
George Bisharat (bisharat@uchastings.edu) is a professor of law at University of California Hastings College of the Law. He writes frequently on law and politics in the Middle East.
They said they wanted to teach her to be a "good Jew" as she sat with her arms handcuffed to the legs of her chair for 16 hours a day.
But if Tali Fahima was not prepared to be a good Jew then Shin Bet, the Israeli secret service, was determined to put her in jail for as long as possible regardless of what she did.
Ms Fahima, 30, was released from jail on Wednesday after serving almost 30 months in jail for travelling to the West Bank, meeting an enemy agent and translating a simple army document.
"My first crime was that I refused to work with Shin Bet, the second was that I insisted on going to see the Palestinians and the third was that I protested against the Israeli policy of assassination," Ms Fahima told the Guardian in her first interview since her release.
For nine months of her incarceration she was kept in isolation, without access to any distractions such as books or television. "I used to lie on my bed and think about Jenin, the people I met and wonder how things were going there. I never get bored on my own," she said.
Eventually, Ms Fahima was persuaded by her lawyer to agree to a plea bargain which would mean her serving only 10 months more than the 19 she had already served. It could take as long as a year to be found innocent, she was advised.
She is unbowed by her experience. "I learnt about the nature of Shin Bet, how they terrorise us, both the Israelis and Palestinians. I learnt about the nature of the government, how they do not want us to see what is going on in our name," she said.
Ms Fahima had been an apathetic legal secretary who voted for the rightwing Likud party and carried Israeli prejudices about Palestinians until in 2003 she decided she wanted to understand why the Palestinians were attacking Israel.
She began making regular visits to Jenin, which had been devastated in an Israeli raid earlier that year. She talked to hundreds of people including Palestinian militants and for the first time heard the Palestinian view of the intifada and the difficulty of life under Israeli occupation.
Her meetings with one militant, Zakaria Zubeidi, stood out. Zubeidi was the leader of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade in Jenin whose mother and brother had been killed by the Israelis that year. In countless interviews with journalists, including Israelis, he described how he and his mother had been involved in an Israeli-Palestinian theatre project which was the basis of an internationally-acclaimed Israeli documentary, Arna's Children.
A week before Ms Fahima was arrested in August 2004 she received a phone call from a Shin Bet agent who inquired how she was finding life without work before inviting her to a meeting at her local police station in Kiryat Gat in the south of Israel. She decided not to go. In the month-long interrogation that followed her arrest she was questioned about the people she had met and asked for information which Ms Fahima said she did not have. During this period Shin Bet agents briefed Israeli journalists she had been having an affair with Zubeidi, who was well known to Israelis from newspaper interviews.
"It was a Shin Bet tactic to make me and him seem bad and to delegitimise us both," she said, adding that while it was obvious to some that it was malicious, many, including friends, believed it.
When she was finally charged she was accused of translating an army document which apparently detailed an arrest operation that was due to take place.
"In the wake of the explanations of the accused," read the charge sheet, "Zubeidi later ordered the wanted persons to hide until the conclusion of the military operation and the wanted persons, who carried out Zubeidi's directive and hid, were not detained."
The document contains three aerial maps of Jenin, and four photographs of wanted men, including Zubeidi, with a short description of each. Zubeidi speaks and reads Hebrew after years of work and imprisonment in Israel.
Timeline
August 8 2004 Tali Fahima arrested
September 2004 Placed under administrative detention
December 2004 Charged with "assistance to the enemy at time of war"
January 2005 Tel Aviv district rules Ms Fahima should be placed under house arrest during the trial
January 2005 Jerusalem's high court overrules district court saying she "identifies with an ideological goal"
December 2005 Ms Fahima pleads guilty to meeting and aiding an enemy agent and entering Palestinian territory
January 2006 Ms Fahima released
By Eric Silver in Jerusalem
UK Independent
05 Jan 07
Israeli undercover troops, backed by helicopters, armoured cars and bulldozers, killed four Palestinians and wounded 25 others in a gun battle in Ramallah. One Israeli soldier was wounded.
Yesterday's clash in the West Bank administrative capital came as Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, flew to the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh for talks with the Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak, in an attempt to revive the stagnant Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The summit ended inconclusively.
At a joint press conference, Mr Olmert apologised if innocent civilians were killed or wounded in Ramallah. He said that was not Israel's intention, but that it had to continue pursuing those who wanted to harm its citizens.
Two Israeli television stations reported last night that Mr Olmert was preparing to remove Amir Peretz as Defence minister and offer him another senior post. If he did not go quietly, the reports said, Mr Olmert would dismiss him. Mr Peretz, a former trade union boss, has been widely criticised for his handling of last summer's Lebanon war.
Mr Olmert felt free to move after parliament passed the 2007 state budget earlier this week. Mr Peretz's leadership of the Labour Party has been weakened by disenchantment over Israel's failure to win an outright victory over Hizbollah, but Mr Olmert will try to finesse things so that his biggest partner does not leave the ruling coalition.
An army spokesman said yesterday that the raiding force entered Ramallah to arrest wanted militants. They were greeted by a hail of stones from bystanders, followed by automatic fire that quickly developed into heavy exchanges. The Israelis said their helicopters raked an open space with "deterrent fire," though Palestinians claimed they also hit a building.
Arab television news footage showed bulldozers and armoured vehicles shunting aside parked cars near the city-centre Manara Square while dozens of civilians fled for their lives. Troops were also seen firing teargas. It was the biggest raid on Ramallah in six months. The Israelis captured four wanted men before withdrawing.
An Israeli-Palestinian ceasefire, agreed in late November, covered the Gaza Strip, but has not been extended to the West Bank. Israel has continued daily arrest operations there, but has refrained so far from retaliating for the persistent launching of Qassam rockets from Gaza into southern Israel.
In northern Gaza yesterday, a Hamas security man was shot dead and two other people were wounded in fire fights between Fatah forces loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas and supporters of the Islamist government. On the West Bank, Fatah kidnapped the Hamas deputy Health minister, Bashar Karmi, in El Bireh and torched the car of another Hamas politician.
Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas Prime Minister, called for an end to the fighting. "These clashes must stop," he insisted on his return to Gaza from Mecca.
By Eric Silver in Jerusalem
UK Independent
04 Jan 07
Tali Fahima, an Israeli peace activist, has been freed on parole after serving two-thirds of her three-year jail sentence for aiding Zakaria Zubeidi, one of the most wanted gunmen in the West Bank.
As a condition for her early release, the 30-year-old Tel Aviv office worker was barred from travelling abroad for a year, contacting enemies of the state or visiting the Palestinian territories. She emerged defiant from Neve Tirtzah women's prison yesterday and told family and supporters: "I don't regret anything. I will continue to work against the occupation and for peace."
Fahima has always denied involvement in violence but said in 2004 that she was ready to serve as a human shield for Zubeidi, the target of three failed Israeli assassination attempts. She contacted him after talking to Arabs on the internet and was arrested after a clandestine meeting in Jenin.
After a year in custody, she pleaded guilty in December 2005 when more serious charges were dropped.
There was outrage in Israel when it was revealed that a Jewish woman had befriended the commander of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade in the Jenin refugee camp, a man accused of planning suicide bombings. Like many descendants of north African immigrants, she and her single-parent mother had always voted for the right-wing Likud party. She had also seen military service.
"I was brought up to consider Arabs as something that should not be here," she told Ha'ir, a Tel-Aviv weekly paper. "One day I understood there were many gaps in my information, things that are not in the media. I realised that it's about human beings, and that we have to take responsibility for the way their life looks."
* A Peruvian photographer, Jaime Razuri, 50, was kidnapped yesterday by Pales-tinian militants in Gaza.
Conal Urquhart
Thursday January 4, 2007
The Guardian
An Israeli woman whose attempts to better understand Palestinians led to a campaign of vilification and charges of treason was released yesterday after serving more than two years in jail.
Tali Fahima, 30, said she had no regrets and insisted that she had done nothing to harm the state of Israel as she left prison to the cheers of a hundred supporters.
Ms Fahima, a legal secretary, was arrested in August 2004 after the last of a series of visits to Jenin, which were publicised in the media. She was detained without trial after the defence minister said she "took part in planning a terrorist attack in Israel".
She was attacked in the Israeli press as a "terrorist's whore" after journalists were briefed that she had an affair with a Palestinian militant, Zakaria Zubeidi, who is often described as Israel's most wanted man.
Ms Fahima said there was no truth in any of the allegations and said she was only arrested after she declined to work for Shin Bet, Israel's secret service.
When she was tried no evidence was presented of her involvement in a terrorist attack, although she admitted reading an Israeli army document that soldiers lost on patrol.
Ms Fahima pleaded guilty to meeting enemy agents and passing information to them as part of a plea bargain in December 2005.
The charges could have led to a life sentence but Ms Fahima was offered the opportunity to serve only a further 10 months in return for a guilty plea.
As part of the condition of her release she is "banned from leaving the country in the coming year, contacting a foreign agent or entering unauthorised territories", the Israeli prison service said in a statement.
She said she had no plans to visit Jenin and Zubeidi but said she wanted to continue to fight Israel's occupation of the territories.
Backed by armoured cars, undercover Israeli forces stormed the centre of Ramallah in the West Bank on Thursday, sparking a gun battle in a main marketplace that left at least four Palestinians dead.
Hospital officials said 25 people were wounded during the Israeli operation to arrest wanted militants. Many of the wounded were in critical condition, the officials said.
There were no reports of Israeli troops being wounded in the exchange.
As plumes of smoke rose above the mostly deserted Manara Square in the Palestinian Authority's capital, live footage at the scene showed smashed or overturned cars that had been cleared out of the way by armoured personnel carriers and bulldozers, during what Israeli forces described as "routine arrest activity."
The clash erupted when Israeli forces entered the open-air vegetable market to try to arrest fugitives with the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, the Associated Press reported, quoting an anonymous Palestinian security official. The militant group is affiliated with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party.
An Israeli army spokeswoman was quoted as saying four Palestinian militants were detained in the raid.
Israel routinely conducts arrest raids in the West Bank, but usually avoids such operations in downtown Ramallah, where the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority is located.
The raid came as Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was in talks with Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak to find ways to restart Mideast peace talks that have been stalled for more than six years and to free an Israeli soldier held by Hamas-allied militants in Gaza.
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said Thursday's action violated a promise Olmert made in a rare summit with Abbas last month to work toward peace.
And in a statement read by a spokesman, Abbas said: "This operation proves that Israeli calls for peace and security are false."
Separately, a new round of factional fighting broke out Thursday between the rival Hamas and Fatah groups in the Gaza Strip, leaving two Palestinians dead.
A member of a Hamas security force was killed when his car came under fire from unidentified assailants in the Jebaliaya refugee camp, a security official said. Hamas accused Fatah of the attack, but Fatah denied involvement.
Hamas gunmen surrounded the house of a Fatah-linked security commander in Beit Lahiya and exchanged fire with guards, leaving a Fatah member dead and 14 other people wounded, witnesses and security officials said.
Clashes erupted during the funeral for three Fatah loyalists killed in gun battles with Hamas on Wednesday, wounding five people.
Assailants also targeted three senior Hamas officials in the West Bank, kidnapping one, torching the car of a second and shooting in the air as a third emerged from a mosque, security officials said.
GAZA (Reuters) - Unidentified gunmen shot dead a Muslim cleric after he delivered a sermon in the Gaza Strip on Friday calling for an end to fierce factional fighting between Hamas and Fatah, hospital officials and local residents said.
The cleric's shooting in central Gaza came hours after Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas said he and President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah had agreed to keep rival gunmen off Gaza's streets after clashes in which eight were killed.
Tension remained high across the coastal strip as thousands of Palestinians loyal to Fatah took part in funeral marches for a commander killed in a barrage of rocket-propelled grenades fired by Hamas gunmen on Thursday.
Brushing aside Haniyeh's plea for calm, Fatah issued a harshly worded statement in Gaza: "Blood for blood and aggression for aggression... and all the sons of the movement should retaliate to each aggression openly."
The Muslim cleric, who was in a car when the gunmen opened fire, was affiliated with neither Hamas nor Fatah. No group claimed responsibility for the shooting, which occurred after services at a mosque in the Maghazi refugee camp.
Residents said the cleric had sharply criticized internal fighting in his Friday sermon.
At one of the funeral marches, members of Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades threatened to assassinate Foreign Minister Mahmoud al-Zahar and Interior Minister Saeed Seyam of Hamas.
"Zahar and Seyam, you have to leave Gaza. We will tear your bodies to pieces," an al-Aqsa member screamed through a megaphone as gunmen fired into the air.
Overnight, Hamas-controlled militants and police forces stormed the house of senior Fatah leader Sufian Abu Zaida in northern Gaza Strip, smashing furniture. Abu Zaida, a former cabinet minister, was unhurt.
Factional fighting has surged in Gaza and the occupied West Bank since Abbas challenged the ruling Hamas faction by calling for early parliamentary and presidential elections after talks on forming a unity government failed.
Haniyeh said after late-night emergency talks with Abbas, their first meeting in two months, that they had agreed to "withdraw all gunmen from the streets and deploy police forces to keep law and order".
Abbas made no public comment, but a diplomat who attended the talks and declined to be identified confirmed an agreement had been reached.
Similar pacts in the past have quickly been shattered by violence and Gazans said they feared another eruption of bloodshed later in the day when Thursday's dead are buried.
In a move that could fuel tension, Washington will provide $86 million to strengthen security forces loyal to Abbas, expanding U.S. involvement in Fatah's power struggle with Hamas.
In fighting between rival Palestinian groups in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, Fatah gunmen killed a policeman loyal to Hamas.
Hamas gunmen, blaming the shooting on bodyguards of Colonel Mohammed Ghareeb of the Preventive Security Service, besieged his home in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya, killing Ghareeb and six of his men and wounding his wife.
Some Fatah gunmen expressed anger at Abbas for not sending forces to save Ghareeb, who had pleaded for help on Palestinian television.
The fighting spread overnight to the occupied West Bank, where gunmen critically wounded a Hamas activist near the city of Nablus, Hamas officials said.
"Hamas and Fatah, you are brothers, please stop the fighting," cried an elderly woman as Ghareeb's funeral passed her house in the Jabalya refugee camp.
Haniyeh told reporters: "The battle is not an internal battle, it is a battle against the occupation."
Earlier on Friday, Israeli forces raided the village of Attil near the West Bank town of Tulkarm. The army said two members of Islamic Jihad were seized.
On Thursday, Israeli forces mounted a rare raid into the West Bank city of Ramallah in which hospital officials said four Palestinians were killed and at least 25 wounded.
In Moscow, the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement it welcomed the Abbas-Haniyeh meeting but considered Israel's raid into Ramallah inflammatory. "This operation led to new victims among peaceful Palestinian citizens," it said.
(Additional reporting by Ari Rabinovitch in Jerusalem; Mohammed Assadi in Ramallah and Atef Sa'ad in Nablus)
Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz Correspondent, and News Agencies
Fri., January 05, 2007
Haaretz
Senior Hamas official Mushir al-Masri blamed the United States on Friday for attempting to promote a revolt against the Hamas government, after U.S. documents showed that the Bush administration will provide $86.4 million to strengthen security forces loyal to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
"We demand that Abbas postpones this U.S. policy, which is tearing the Palestinian people apart," he said.
The new policy would expand U.S. involvement in Abbas' power struggle with Hamas.
Fighting between Abbas's Fatah faction and Hamas has surged since talks on forming a unity government collapsed and Abbas called for early parliamentary and presidential elections. Hamas accused Abbas of mounting a coup.
The U.S. money will be used to "assist the Palestinian Authority presidency in fulfilling PA commitments under the road map to dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism and establish law and order in the West Bank and Gaza," a U.S. government document obtained by Reuters said.
Speaking to reporters after Friday prayers in Gaza City, Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh urged Palestinians not to let the violence spill over to the West Bank and to focus on fighting Israel. "Our fight is not an internal one, it's against the occupation," Haniyeh said.
Haniyeh's words were echoed by senior West Bank Fatah official Jibril Rajoub,speaking in the town of Bilin to supporters celebrating the movement's 42nd anniversary.
"Our battle with Hamas is not a battle of assassination, kidnapping or
revenge. Our battle with Hamas is a democratic moral battle," he told a crowd of about 100. "Our battle is with the occupation, not with each other."
Thousands of Palestinians carried bodies draped in yellow flags through pouring rain Friday in a funeral procession for seven Fatah men killed in the bloodiest single battle in weeks of factional fighting in the Gaza Strip.
Dozens of Fatah gunmen marched in the procession, firing in the air and
calling for vengeance against the rival Hamas group, which is locked in a
power struggle with Fatah over control of the Palestinian government.
Hamas critic gunned-down in Gaza
A local religious leader who was a frequent critic of the Islamic militant group Hamas was killed in a drive-by shooting Friday as he walked out of a Gaza mosque, witnesses and medical officials said.
There was no claim of responsibility in the death of Adel Nasar, who was shot by gunmen who were waiting in a car outside the mosque in the Mughazi refugee camp in central Gaza. Nasar was not openly affiliated with any political party, but he was a well-known in the refugee camp and often spoke against Hamas in his sermons.
Haniyeh, Abbas agree to defuse tensions
Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said on Friday he and Abbas had agreed at emergency talks to keep gunmen from their rival Hamas and Fatah factions off Gaza's streets after six people were killed and 18 were wounded.
"We have expressed our regret and sorrow for these incidents that do not reflect our struggle," Haniyeh told reporters at Abbas's office at the end of their first meeting in two months.
Haniyeh said he and Abbas agreed to "withdraw all gunmen from the streets and deploy police forces to keep law and order."
Abbas made no public comment after the session, but a diplomat who attended the talks and declined to be identified confirmed an agreement had been reached.
Similar pacts in the past have been shattered swiftly by violence and Gazans said they feared another eruption of bloodshed later in the day when Thursday's dead are buried.
Gunbattles broke out between forces loyal to Abbas and the Hamas government in northern Gaza on Thursday, killing six people and wounding 18 other people, witnesses said.
In the northern Gaza Strip, a senior Palestinian security officer allied with Fatah was killed when Hamas militants laid siege to his house, engaging in a protracted gun battle with his guards, and then attacked it with grenades and a dozen rockets, Palestinian officials and witnesses said.
The officer, Colonel Mohammed Ghayeb, was on the phone to Palestine TV just moments before his death and appealed for help as his house came under attack. Ghayeb's wife was seriously wounded in the attack, in which Hamas fired assault rifles and rockets at the building.
"They are killers," he said of the Hamas gunmen. "They are targeting the house, children are dying, they are bleeding. For God's sake, send an ambulance, we want an ambulance, somebody move."
The battle outside the house raged for much of the day and killed four of Ghayeb's guards and a Hamas gunman. About three dozen people, including eight children, were also wounded.
Ghayeb was the chief of the Preventive Security Service in northern Gaza, and his killing was expected to trigger revenge attacks by the men under his command.
During the standoff outside Ghayeb's home in Beit Lahiya, dozens of women rushed into the streets in protest, chanting "Spare the bullets, shame, shame."
One resident, Amina Abu Saher, told the local Al Quds radio station that it was difficult for her to see Palestinians fighting each other and said she and the other women were determined to stop the internal fighting.
Haniyeh called for calm in the wake of the renewed internal violence. Five people were killed on Wednesday in fighting.
"These clashes must stop, this bloodshed must end. Let all of you love one another, let's resolve differences through dialogue and not with weapons," Haniyeh told reporters after returning from making the Haj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia. "Weapons must only be directed against the Israeli occupation," he added.
The two sides declared the truce in an attempt to end violence that surged after Abbas challenged Hamas by calling for early parliamentary and presidential elections after unity government talks failed.
Also Thursday, unknown gunmen fired on mourners at a funeral for three security officers loyal to Abbas who were among those killed the day before.
Fatah sources and medical officials said two mourners were wounded during the funeral march in central Gaza when gunmen shot at the procession.
A senior Hamas member was also kidnapped by unidentified gunmen in Gaza City, the Islamists said.
Abbas met with leaders of political factions in Gaza on Thursday night. The smaller Islamic Jihad group, which has stayed out of the fighting, was to propose another round of unity talks, this time between Abbas and Hamas' supreme leader, Khaled Meshal, rather than between lower-level envoys.
As the fighting worsened, Haniyeh of Hamas cut short a tour of Arab nations and returned to Gaza on Thursday. His next stop was to have been Jordan, which has offered to host a meeting between Haniyeh and Abbas, in an attempt to defuse the tensions.
Ari Shavit, Haaretz Correspondent
Thu., January 04, 2007
Haaretz
Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer thinks that Israeli banks are too kind to the rich and too hard on ordinary families.
In an interview appearing in this Friday's Haaretz Magazine, Fischer said: "The banks' profits from companies are very low compared with the international scene, but their profits from households are high."
According to Fischer, this is the root of the feelings of anger and exploitation experienced by ordinary account-holders.
"In comparison to the international sphere, the big companies get credit at very good terms," he said. "Someone else pays for that. It's a case of cross-subsidization. The margin in one sector would appear to fund the margin in the second sector and subsidize it."
Do the banks in Israel behave as though they are a cartel?
"Your question has legal implications and therefore I am unable to reply to it. We need to take into account that when there are very few players in the market, it's difficult for them to behave in a manner that looks competitive."
What are you, as governor, doing about this?
"I'm trying to bring in a foreign bank. Every time I am abroad, I go to the chairmen of the big banks and try to persuade them to open a branch here. If we succeed in getting foreign banks to work here on the retail side, it will be a major accomplishment for the country. That will solve the problem."
The complete interview will appear in Friday's Magazine.
By rights, Binyamin Netanyahu, who every poll says is by far the most popular politician in Israel, should be ranked with Jean Le Pen, Jorge Haider and the rest of the Western world's racist demagogues.
But he won't be, because anti-Arab racism in Israel is either supported or strategically ignored by the mainstream of the Jewish world, and pretty much taken for granted by the gentile world.
What Netanyahu said Tuesday night was not new for him; he was reported to have made the same appeal to the same sort of audience - haredi political leaders - a couple of years ago as finance minister.
Then, as now, he was apologizing for the way his child welfare cuts had hurt large haredi families, while at the same time asking the haredim to look at the bright sides of that policy.
"Two positive things happened," he told a conference of haredi government officials in Nir Etzion this week. "Members of the haredi public seriously joined the workforce. And on the national level, the unexpected result was the demographic effect on the non-Jewish public, where there was a dramatic drop in the birth rate." (Quoted in Ynet, Yediot Aharonot's Web site. The speech was also reported in Haaretz.)
The once-and-possibly-future prime minister of Israel says publicly that he's sorry his welfare cuts made life harder for Jewish families who are "blessed," as he put it, with many children, but isn't it "positive" that these cuts resulted in fewer Arab children being born? Then Netanyahu went on to suggest a national remedy for the victims of his economic policies - but for Jewish victims only, not Arab victims.
"I don't think that the Jewish Agency should refrain from helping part of the Jewish public in the state," he said, "and it is possible that additional non-governmental bodies could have done so."
IMAGINE IF any gentile government official in the world cited the lowering of the Jewish birthrate in his country as an accomplishment, then recommended that his country's founding institution raise money to help poor gentile families, but not poor Jewish families. How would the Jewish world, starting with Israel, characterize such an individual? What sort of pressure would the Jewish world apply to get him or her fired, blackballed and, if possible, indicted?
Yet everyone knows the speech in Nir Etzion will not hurt Netanyahu at all - even though, again, this is not the first time he's said this, and even though the statements are perfectly in line with his standing as Israel's number one fear-monger on the Israeli Arab "demographic threat." (On second thought, Netanyahu is probably only number two - Avigdor Lieberman, his former right-hand man and alter ego, is number one. When it comes to the subject of Israeli Arabs, it's hard to tell where Netanyahu ends and Lieberman begins.)
The worst that will happen to Netanyahu from this is that maybe another liberal commentator or two will denounce him, and there will be a press release from some civil rights organization. Maybe not even that. If, on the other hand, we're really, really lucky, the attorney-general might have a word to say. (FYI, even if there was a chance of it happening, I wouldn't want to see Netanyahu indicted. If every Israeli who made racist remarks in public had to stand trial, the courts would collapse under the load.)
The only political parties that might censure Netanyahu are the left-wing parties, and nobody cares about them; in fact, a bad word from Meretz can only help the Likud leader in the polls.
The Anti-Defamation League won't say anything, and neither will the other Diaspora Jewish organizations. Bibi is just too big, too popular, too important, too much a symbol of Israel for the Diaspora Jewish establishment to say a word against him, let alone accuse him of being a shameless bigot.
Two positive things happened: Members of the haredi public seriously joined the workforce. And on the national level, the unexpected result was the demographic effect on the non-Jewish public, where there was a dramatic drop in the birth rate.
That's the Israeli people's overwhelming choice for prime minister talking. I hope The New York Times, CNN and every other major news medium in the world picks up this story and doesn't let it go until Israel and Diaspora Jewry are shamed into dumping this guy once and for all.
On second thought, exposure as an anti-Arab racist by the international media could cause Netanyahu some problems overseas, but at home, it would only increase his appeal.
Ilene R. Prusher
January 05, 2007
The Christian Science Monitor
MASKIOT, WEST BANK - Tucked into a remote cluster of hills is a rather rare species these days: a new Israeli settlement taking shape.
As advocates are keen to point out, there has been an Israeli presence here since 1982, including an army base and military prep school. Two decades ago, in 1986, Maskiot's plot of "state land" was given an approval to become a bona fide settlement.
For a smattering of reasons political or bureaucratic, it never happened, and Maskiot's existence was hardly known outside the 20 other small Jewish settlements in the Jordan Valley. But last week, the Israeli defense ministry announced that it had authorized construction of 30 new homes here - for settlers who were evacuated from the Gaza Strip.
The decision confirmed a concern that some observers had about former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's disengagement plan, which pulled 8,000 settlers from their homes in the Gaza Strip after Israel's 38-year-long occupation of the territory.
Skeptics wondered if Mr. Sharon would move many of the settlers from Gaza into the West Bank, a place which - in religious, historic, and strategic terms - Israel has always held in higher regard. Settler leaders in this region, in fact, claim that Sharon promised them he would relocate some of the Gaza evacuees here.
New push for peacemaking
Any move to allow new - or expand old - settlements in the West Bank could complicate efforts already under way to give Middle East peacemaking a fresh push.
On Thursday, in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert met with Egypt's president, Hosni Mubarek, to discuss a potential deal on a prisoner release and restarting peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
Meanwhile, internecine Palestinian tensions appear to be worsening as kidnappings and shootings between armed gangs affiliated with Hamas and Fatah continued in Gaza and spilled into part of the West Bank.
Israel's Peace Now organization, a group that tracks Israeli settlement expansion, charged that any move to put Israelis in a new settlement over the Green Line (Israel's pre-1967 boundary) would be a mistake, and one which, like the settlements in Gaza, was likely to be removed in the long run.
"We're taking a place that was an abandoned military place and making it a civilian settlement," says Yariv Oppenheimer, a spokesman for Peace Now. "It's an extreme right-wing decision and it's not something we expected from this government. I don't think that the government should give in to the pressure of the settlers to live there. It's against the promises of the roadmap and promises to the international community."
Amid the controversy over the issue, Israeli officials said this week the decision is still under consideration.
"It's not a new site in any case, but given the sensitivity of the issue, it's being reviewed," says Israeli government spokeswoman Miri Eisin. The Defense Ministry, which issued the permit a week ago, declined to comment. An official who asked not to be quoted said that a final decision has not yet been made.
Here in Maskiot, there is a sense that a new settlement - or at least a significantly expanded one - is not merely being considered, but is already taking root.
There are currently a few dozen young post-high school men living here, studying in a religious preparatory program before their induction into the army. Two of the families who were evacuated some 16 months ago from Gaza have already moved in; they refused to speak to a visiting reporter.
The families are two of at least 16 families who plan to settle here, and are part of a narrative that seems problematic for people of all political stripes. Moved out of Gaza in August 2005, the Israeli government never found a permanent community for them. And because their settlement in Gaza wasn't officially recognized by the government, they didn't qualify for some of the same relocation benefits other settlers did.
"This is my place now. My bones will be buried here," says Binyamin Rabinovich, as he was busy fixing a car. It's so remote that there's hardly any cell phone reception, and when there is, the phones pick up Jordanian rather than Israeli signals.
"I'm disappointed in our government, that they would agree to freeze this because of pressure from the US," he says. "The Land of Israel is ours and we need to develop it."
Searching for a home
About 10 minutes down the winding road from Maskiot is the settlement of Hemdat, where nine of the 16 families who had lived in the Gaza settlement of Shirat Hayam are now living in a cluster of mobile homes on the side of hill. Shirat Hayam's name means "Song of the Sea," a reference to a biblical poem, which is depicted as a song sung by the Israelites just after their exodus from Egypt.
The analogies are not coincidental. Here, people take an extraordinary long view of history. They don't use the word disengagement or withdrawal so much as gerush, which means expulsion and is reminiscent of the Spanish Inquisition.
The leader of the group of temporary settlers, waiting for what they now expect will be their new homes in Maskiot, says they've taken shelter in five different places since being evacuated by Gaza.
"We wanted to build our new community as quickly as possible. It's already more than a year and we're still not in our homes," says Yosef Hazut, a young father of two, after tramping through the rainy season's red mud between the boxy trailer homes.
"It's not so easy to start a new community over the Green Line," says Mr. Hazut. There they looked in the less populated parts of the country that Israel has long expressed hopes to develop, such as the Negev and the Galilee. They face only obstacles and delays, he says, and decided to come here.
Still, the dislocation of being moved out and around has not discouraged them from resettling in the West Bank. The fact that they don't believe there's too great a likelihood they'll be evacuated yet again is a window into how Israelis see this area, which they refer to as the Jordan Valley, but not the West Bank. Polls have shown that the majority of Israelis think they should maintain control of this area, even if only for defense purposes.
"We're people of faith," says Hazut. "And I think there's only a very small chance there would ever be a disengagement from the Jordan Valley. "For most Israelis, the Jordan Valley is a red line: giving up the Jordan Valley means to return the whole of Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] and allow the establishment of a terrorist state here, just the way we're seeing in Gaza."
Evolving view of the West Bank?
The gap between how most Israelis view the West Bank and how it is viewed elsewhere appears to be widening. As a case in point, Education Minister Yuli Tamir introduced a plan to change Israeli school textbooks to include the Green Line on maps of the country. Her proposal was voted down earlier this week, 8-2, by a Knesset education committee panel that disagreed and painted her as a radical with a extreme left agenda.
Rather than this being a conscience decision to build up settlements in the Jordan Valley, some analysts here say, the government is taking an ad hoc, policy-less approach to which settlements grow and where.
"Maskiot was a kind of military settlement a few years ago and they want to kind of reestablish it," says Hillel Cohen, an expert on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Truman Center for the Advancement of Peace.
"I think the point is the Israeli government doesn't really know where it's going to," says Professor Cohen. "I don't see that they have any plan. They just deal with problems from day to day. Where they want us to be in five years isn't clear. So if they have a group that wants to settle in the Jordan Valley, they say OK, go settle there.
"I don't think [that] the government really thought about it and they didn't think the US would say much about it, either."
One of the reasons for this view, he says, is that in the 1970s, Israeli military strategist and foreign minister Yigal Allon proposed a plan to give West Bank Arabs autonomy but keep the Jordan Valley forever under Israeli sovereignty. The plan is unacceptable to all known Palestinian political factions.
But Mr. Allon, from the same left-leaning Labor Party that later signed a historic peace deal with the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, was once seen as a bulwark of the security-conscious mainstream. He encouraged settlements in the Jordan Valley, and drew many agriculturalists there. Today, some 70 percent of the current residents are secular people from liberal backgrounds, unlike the religious nationalist population that dominates in other areas of the settlements.
"In the heart of people in the Labor Party, we know that there are places which seem more logical or legal to settle, and this is one of them," says Cohen. "Also today, I think that if there is a plan of the Israeli government, it does include keeping at least part of the Jordan Valley as part of the future Israeli state."
Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz Correspondent and News Agencies
Fri., January 05, 2007
Haaretz
Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said on Friday he and President Mahmoud Abbas had agreed at emergency talks to keep gunmen from their rival Hamas and Fatah factions off Gaza's streets after six people were killed.
"We have expressed our regret and sorrow for these incidents that do not reflect our struggle," Haniyeh told reporters at Abbas's office at the end of their first meeting in two months.
Haniyeh said he and Abbas agreed to "withdraw all gunmen from the streets and deploy police forces to keep law and order".
Abbas made no public comment after the session, but a diplomat who attended the talks and declined to be identified confirmed an agreement had been reached.
Similar pacts in the past have been shattered swiftly by violence and Gazans said they feared another eruption of bloodshed later in the day when Thursday's dead are buried.
Gunbattles broke out between forces loyal to Abbas and the Hamas government in northern Gaza on Thursday, killing six people and wounding 18 other people, witnesses said.
In the northern Gaza Strip, a senior Palestinian security officer allied with Fatah was killed when Hamas militants laid siege to his house, engaging in a protracted gun battle with his guards, and then attacked it with grenades and a dozen rockets, Palestinian officials and witnesses said.
The officer, Colonel Mohammed Ghayeb, was on the phone to Palestine TV just moments before his death and appealed for help as his house came under attack. Ghayeb's wife was seriously wounded in the attack, in which Hamas fired assault rifles and rockets at the building.
"They are killers," he said of the Hamas gunmen. "They are targeting the house, children are dying, they are bleeding. For God's sake, send an ambulance, we want an ambulance, somebody move."
The battle outside the house raged for much of the day and killed four of Ghayeb's guards and a Hamas gunman. About three dozen people, including eight children, were also wounded.
Ghayeb was the chief of the Preventive Security Service in northern Gaza, and his killing was expected to trigger revenge attacks by the men under his command.
During the standoff outside Ghayeb's home in Beit Lahiya, dozens of women rushed into the streets in protest, chanting "Spare the bullets, shame, shame."
One resident, Amina Abu Saher, told the local Al Quds radio station that it was difficult for her to see Palestinians fighting each other and said she and the other women were determined to stop the internal fighting.
Haniyeh, a senior Hamas leader, called for calm in the wake of the renewed internal violence. Five people were killed on Wednesday in fighting.
"These clashes must stop, this bloodshed must end. Let all of you love one another, let's resolve differences through dialogue and not with weapons," Haniyeh told reporters after returning from making the Haj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia. "Weapons must only be directed against the Israeli occupation," he added.
The two sides declared the truce in an attempt to end violence that surged after Abbas challenged Hamas by calling for early parliamentary and presidential elections after unity government talks failed.
Also Thursday, unknown gunmen fired on mourners at a funeral for three security officers loyal to Abbas who were among those killed the day before.
Fatah sources and medical officials said two mourners were wounded during the funeral march in central Gaza when gunmen shot at the procession.
A senior Hamas member was also kidnapped by unidentified gunmen in Gaza City, the Islamists said.
Abbas met with leaders of political factions in Gaza on Thursday night. The smaller Islamic Jihad group, which has stayed out of the fighting, was to propose another round of unity talks, this time between Abbas and Hamas' supreme leader, Khaled Meshal, rather than between lower-level envoys.
As the fighting worsened, Haniyeh of Hamas cut short a tour of Arab nations and returned to Gaza on Thursday. His next stop was to have been Jordan, which has offered to host a meeting between Haniyeh and Abbas, in an attempt to defuse the tensions.
Gunmen target 3 senior Hamas men
Assailants targeted three senior Hamas officials in the West Bank, kidnapping one, torching the car of a second and shooting in the air as a third emerged from a mosque, officials said Thursday.
Although there was no immediate claim of responsibility, the attacks came a day after four supporters of the rival Fatah group were killed in factional fighting in the Gaza Strip. Gaza is a Hamas stronghold, while Fatah dominates in the West Bank.
Late Wednesday, gunmen stormed the home of Deputy Health Minister Bashar Karmi in the West Bank town of El Bireh and seized him. Arab satellite TV stations reported that he was released Thursday morning, but the report could not immediately be confirmed independently.
Mohammed Barghouti, a Hamas Cabinet minister, held Fatah responsible. "It is obvious who kidnapped him," Barghouti said. "People are trying to bring the fighting from Gaza to the West Bank."
Karmi's wife, Suhad al-Kubaj, said the gunmen took a laptop, numerous compact discs and 600 shekels from his wallet before abducting him.
"He told me they tied his hands and blindfolded him, and passed him from one car to the next" during his 5 and a half hours in captivity, she said.
"They released him with a warning: What happens in Gaza between Hamas and Fatah can happen here, in the West Bank," she added.
In the town of Jenin, assailants torched the car of Prisoner Affairs Minister Wasfi Kabaha of Hamas, security officials said. It was the third attack on a car owned by Kabaha.
In the village of Jabaa, gunmen fired in the air as the local prayer leader and senior Hamas activist, Nasser Al Awna, emerged from the mosque. He was not harmed.
Smuggling tunnel between Gaza and Egypt collapses
A smuggling tunnel under the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt collapsed Thursday morning, Palestinian security officials said.
There were no immediate reports of casualties or details on who might have been inside at the time of the collapse, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Palestinian smugglers use hundreds of tunnels dug under the border to bring weapons and contraband goods into Gaza from Egypt.
Israel says antitank missiles, tons of explosives and thousands of rifles have reached militants in Gaza through the tunnels. Palestinian militants claim to have smuggled in long-range Katyusha rockets, as well as the materials needed to upgrade their homemade rockets to reach deeper into Israel.
Five killed in intense gunfighting in Gaza
Fighting between Fatah and Hamas gunmen intensified Wednesday in the Gaza Strip and claimed the lives of five Palestinians.
Four of the dead were Fatah militants and one was a civilian caught in the cross-fire.
In the bloodiest incident, three members of Fatah's Preventive Security Service were shot dead in Khan Yunis when their vehicle came under attack by gunmen. Fatah blamed Hamas for the attack.
Earlier, a 22-year-old Palestinian woman, Mona Salha, was killed when a bullet struck her in the head during an exchange of fire between Fatah and Hamas gunmen at the Jabalya refugee camp near Gaza City. A dozen other people were injured in those clashes.
Intense gun battles continued throughout the afternoon in Jabalya, but there were no reports of further casualties.
At noon, gunmen shot and killed a member of Fatah in Beit Lahiya, in the northern Gaza Strip. Eyewitnesses said that the Fatah man was on the roof of a residential building when he was shot.
Hamas said that two of its men were injured, one seriously, while patrolling in a vehicle belonging to a security organization affiliated with the radical Islamic group.
Palestinian security sources said Wednesday that they had urged all foreign nationals to evacuate the Gaza Strip because of threats to kidnap them. However, foreign organizations in Gaza said that they were not aware of such an announcement by the Palestinian security forces.
With Saddam out of the way, israel throws all its weight into jumpstarting a war with Iran.
In a stark statement published on Saturday Brigadier General Oded Tira observed, "President Bush lacks the political power to attack Iran. As an American strike in Iran is essential for our existence, we must help him pave the way by lobbying the Democratic Party (which is conducting itself foolishly) and US newspaper editors.
We need to do this in order to turn the Iranian issue to a bipartisan one and unrelated to the Iraq failure."
Because of the dramatic loss of political power of the Bush-Cheney administration, General Tira urges the Israel Lobby to, "turn to Hillary Clinton and other potential presidential candidates in the Democratic Party so that they support immediate action by Bush against Iran."
In another move designed to strengthen Bush politically, General Tira urges the Israel Lobby to exert its influence on European countries so that, "Bush will not be isolated in the international arena again."
As if all of that Israel-lobbying in America and Europe were not enough, General Tira proposes an even more aggressive political tactic, "We must clandestinely cooperate with Saudi Arabia so that it also persuades the US to strike Iran.
For our part, we must prepare an independent military strike by coordinating flights in Iraqi airspace with the US.
We should also coordinate with Azerbaijan the use of airbases in its territory and also enlist the support of the Azeri minority in Iran.
In addition, we must immediately start preparing for an Iranian response to an attack."
Based on the urgency of General Tira's extraordinary pleas, it is immediately apparent that he has been shocked by the turn of political events inside America.
By this time, he has learned from official US sources that the long-anticipated attack against Iran has been shelved because of tectonic shifts in American politics.
Apparently, General Tira did not realize that President Bush has become the most deeply unpopular president in American history and that it was his subservience to the dictates of the Israel Lobby and its demands for wars against Iraq and Iran that led him into the political prison where he now finds himself isolated and impotent.
Neither does General Tira realize that the Republican Party is no longer unified in its support of President Bush's deeply unpopular war in Iraq or his plans for expanding the war by a sustained bombing campaign against Iran. Since General Tira did not publish any remarks about the Iraq Study Group headed by former US Secretary of State, James Baker, he may be oblivious to the political facts now in place in 2007 America.
Instead of the bipartisan commitment to broaden Bush's unpopular war as General Tira proposes, there is now a broadening bipartisan movement to reign in the US losses in Iraq. No major American politician has voiced any enthusiasm for broadening Bush's war into Iran as General Tira beseeches the US to do.
General Tira's outburst suggests that the official channels for news and the analysis of public affairs in Israel are not working as efficiently as they should in the 21st century. Perhaps, someone should provide the General with a subscription to Ha'aretz and the International Herald Tribune for starters.
---------------
Michael Carmichael is Chairman & Chief Executive Officer, The Planetary Movement, Oxford, United Kingdom
Expect a ruthless last ditch attempt by israel to plunge the world headlong into war.
Anchorage, Alaska - It snowed all day in Anchorage Wednesday. A combination of snow, fog and ice contributed to more than 100 cars becoming stuck in ditches and snow berms across the city. The Anchorage Police Department said accidents occurred at a pace of a collision every 10 minutes today. A snow advisory remains in effect and the job of digging out is only beginning.
Midtown resident Linda Rinard just returned from vacation.
"I just flew in at 9 a.m. from Las Vegas; two weeks and sunny Las Vegas," she said.
Sherri Stein picked up Rinard from Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport and brought her to Stein's driveway. Rinard and Stein are among the army of folks with shovels and snow blowers digging out, but only making room for more snow to take its place. The constantly falling snow and fog make it difficult for drivers to see the road.
Some ended up stuck in a snow bank like Jennifer Alger.
"I was just driving down the road and everything all looked the same, just all white. And my tires caught the snow bank, just went right through it, so my car's completely stuck," she said.
The worst of the snow-related accidents happened on the Glenn Highway this morning. Five cars were involved in an early-morning accident that resulted in two people being taken to the hospital. Traffic was forced to reroute on the Hiland Road exit.
Some of those in the ditch say they dove for it as they tried to avoid other cars.
"I just decided to get in the ditch rather than hit them in the middle of the road," said Shannon Overstreet, who was stuck in a ditch.
Four cars mixed it up on Lake Otis Parkway, near Tudor Road. Anchorage police closed the southbound lanes for about an hour.
The only ones smiling through all of this mess were wrecker drivers, who consider all of the weather-related wrecks like these as payday.
"Unfortunate, yes, but yeah, got to pay the bills you know," said Alaska Towing and Wrecking wrecker driver Greg Head.
At Stein's driveway, the ladies make progress. But they realize once the driveway is done, it's time to contemplate the roof.
"It's kind of nice to have some on the top because it does help to insulate. But then it gets to the point where you need to take it off, and I think it's at that point," Stein said.
It's how you get through these tough weather days: one step at a time.
State workers in Anchorage went home early today and the city closed libraries and several parks and recreational facilities early at 6 p.m.
Today was a record snowfall day for the Anchorage area. The National Weather Service has recorded 9.6 inches at its forecast offices as of 5:15 p.m. However, a lot more snow has fallen in other parts of town.
The following amounts have been recorded around Anchorage over the last 24 hours, as of 5:15 p.m. today:
O'Malley and Hillside - 22.0 inches
Mid-Hillside - 17.0 inches
Upper DeArmoun - 17.0 inches
Abbott Loop Road - 15.0 inches
Glen Alps - 12.0 inches
Eagle River - 4.5 inches
So far, Anchorage has accumulated 57.60 inches of snow this winter, a new record for snowfall as of Jan. 3.
Snow advisories are in effect until 9 p.m., but the Southcentral region should be seeing an end to the snow later tonight.
Bill Weigle's tree service in Lyndeborough, N.H., usually delivers five to 10 cords of firewood a day this time of year. He's sold only one in the past two weeks.
Business is "dead," Weigle says. "I've never seen it like this ... I feel like the Maytag man."
This winter's curiously warm weather across the Northeast and much of the Midwest has played havoc with more than seasonal businesses. In Washington, D.C., springlike temperatures have faked out flora, causing dogwoods and daffodils to bloom. PREDICTION: El Niño, greenhouse gases making '07 hot
"There's been weird weather all across the United States," says Kevin Trenberth, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, which was walloped by two major snowstorms last month. He blames an El Niño warming pattern in the Pacific for dry and warm conditions elsewhere.
"Another big player is what we call the 'long-term trend,' " said Heidi Cullen of The Weather Channel. "That's a euphemism for global warming."
The combination of El Niño and global warming prompted Britain's Meteorological Office to say Thursday that 2007 could become the hottest year ever recorded. It said there is a 60% chance to break the record set in 1998, when global temperatures were 1.2 degrees warmer than the long-term average.
The balmy temperatures have smashed records. International Falls, Minn., which averages a high of 13 degrees this time of year, hit record highs of 41 degrees Wednesday and 37 Thursday. Buffalo has had more than three weeks of above-average temperatures, and all-time highs are likely Saturday in New York City and Richmond, Va.
The warm wave has had a silver lining for consumers and taxpayers. Electric heating bills were down 7.35% for Pepco customers in Washington and its Maryland suburbs. In Syracuse, N.Y., acting Public Works Commissioner Jeff Wright says the city could shave as much as $1 million off the annual $3.2 million snow-removal budget.
The picture is more mixed for sportsmen. Golfers in some areas are enjoying more time on the links.
In Michigan, two dozen people took advantage of late Octoberlike temperatures at the Traverse City Golf & Country Club on Thursday. "Normally we're closed," says Roger Bliss, the club's golf pro. "It's the first time anyone can remember playing golf in January."
Thin ice in Minnesota's lakes, however, has canceled ice fishing tournaments and put organizers of the annual St. Paul Winter Carnival, which starts Jan. 26, in a bind. Carnival spokeswoman Mary Huss says officials will decide next week whether to haul 56 flatbed truckloads of 300-pound ice blocks from northern Minnesota lakes or use plastic blocks to build a giant ice maze.
The tepid temperatures have been more than a nuisance, though. In Maine, it proved deadly Sunday when a college professor drowned after falling through thin ice on usually frozen Rangeley Lake.
NEW IBERIA, La. - Powerful storms that killed at least two people and ripped apart mobile homes in Louisiana headed into Alabama on Friday, where tornado watches were posted across the state.
A flash-flood watch was still in effect Friday morning for parts of southeast Louisiana and southern Mississippi after the heavy rain.
Some of the worst damage from Thursday's storms was in Louisiana's Iberia Parish after what appeared to be a tornado hit in the New Iberia area just before 4 p.m.
A woman and six-year-old girl were killed in their home as the storm hit, the Iberia Parish Coroner's Office said. At least 15 other people were injured, and several mobiles homes were blown over, Sheriff Sid Hebert said.
"We were just sitting and watching a movie, and then all of a sudden the wind started blowing and it got really bad," said Joyce Firmin of Iberia Parish. "It just sounded like a bunch of trucks or an airplane or something was coming toward the house."
Firmin's daughter Jaci, 14, said she could hear branches snapping and power lines popping during the storm. "My ears were popping a lot," she said. "Then we came out, everything was down."
Steven Bruno described from a hospital how he was flipped over twice while furniture and glass flew around his mobile home. His girlfriend, who is six months pregnant, was hospitalized for fetal monitoring.
Whether it was a tornado won't be determined until storm surveys are conducted.
Damage was less serious as the storm continued through the state, although the heavy rain flooded roads, and windows were blown out and roofs ripped off homes in the New Roads area, National Weather Service meteorologist Jim Vasilj said.
In Mississippi, at least nine people were hurt in Kemper County and eight homes damaged when the storm hit there late Thursday and early Friday, according to the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency. Five more homes and business were damaged in Stone County.
City workers in New Orleans had been dispatched early to clean drains and prepare for possible flooding ahead of the heavy rain.
The area has been pounded by major storms that bumped its December rainfall total to more than 25 centimetres, nearly twice the normal average.
Forecasters on Friday warned that more rain was coming.
"More showers and thunderstorms are on the way Saturday afternoon and evening as we get another cold front coming through. We're in a progressive pattern - almost like clockwork, every three days we'll get a front through," said weather service forecaster Kent Kuyper.
LONDON - A resurgent El Nino and persistently high levels of greenhouse gases are likely to make 2007 the world's hottest year ever recorded, British climate scientists said Thursday.
Britain's Meteorological Office said there was a 60 percent probability that 2007 would break the record set by 1998, which was 1.20 degrees over the long-term average.
"This new information represents another warning that climate change is happening around the world," the office said.
The reason for the forecast is mostly due to El Nino, a cyclical warming trend now under way in the Pacific Ocean. The event occurs irregularly - the last one happened in 2002 - and typically leads to increased temperatures worldwide.
While this year's El Nino is not as strong as it was in 1997 and 1998, its combination with the steady increase of temperatures due to global warming from human activity may be enough to break the Earth's temperature record, said Phil Jones, the director of the Climatic Research unit at the University of East Anglia.
"Because of the warming due to greenhouse gases, even a moderate warming event is enough to push the global temperatures over the top," he said.
"El Nino is an independent variable," he said. "But the underlying trends in the warming of the Earth is almost certainly due to the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere."
El Nino can sometimes lead to milder weather, such as in the in the northeastern United States or the Atlantic Ocean, which is likely to see fewer hurricanes this year. However, it can also increase the severity of weather-related disasters, such as typhoons in the Philippines or drought in southern Africa and Australia, a country that is already suffering through its longest dry spell on record.
Environmental groups said the report added weight to the movement to control greenhouse gases.
"The evidence that we're doing something very dangerous with the climate is now amassing," said Campaign against Climate Change coordinator Philip Thornhill.
"We need to put the energy and priority (into climate change) that is being put into a war effort. It's a political struggle to get action done - and these reports help," Thornhill said.
As British meteorologists announced that the world will probably be the warmest on record in 2007, Torontonians will get a burst of that heat today as the city is expected to "obliterate" record temperatures.
The mercury is due to reach 13C today, breaking the 1997 record of 10.1 degrees, according to Environment Canada.
Yesterday, British scientists announced that there's a 60 per cent chance globally that 2007 will be the same or hotter than 1998, the warmest year on record, due to the effect of El Niño in the Pacific Ocean and greenhouse gases.
"It's another important addition to the ever-increasing body of evidence that climate change is real, it's happening now, and it's getting worse," said, Keith Allott, head of the climate change program at World Wildlife Federation (UK).
The past few weeks have been warmer than normal, said David Phillips, senior climatologist for Environment Canada. Nationally, December was the warmest month on record.
While it's easier to predict global weather patterns, said Phillips, he believes it will probably be another warm year for Canada and the GTA.
"I wouldn't bet the family farm or the fishing fleet on it. I'd maybe bet a couple loonies on it," said Phillips, who noted forecasters have been wrong on their hurricane predictions in the past two years, underestimating in 2005 when Katrina killed more than 1,300 people in the Gulf Coast and overestimating last year.
The effect of this balminess is most evident on ski hills, where the ground is making unwanted appearances.
"Conditions are starting to deteriorate. It's getting warmer and warmer, and brown patches are starting to come out," said Caroline Yli-Luoma, co-owner of Dagmar Ski Resort, who added that business has dropped 30 per cent. "It can be frightening. These are huge operations that we run. They're very expensive."
She said the resort hasn't been able to regularly employ its 200 seasonal staff. But it's surviving, making snow whenever temperatures dip low enough, which is infrequent. Ice wine producers in the Niagara region are also hoping for just a few days of frigid temperatures for their ice wine production. Barry Katzman, president of the Creekside Estate Winery, said they need just a few days of minus 8C weather for the crop.
On the other hand, the weather has been great for table wines, he said. "Severe winter conditions damage and hurt the grapes that we harvest for our regular wines - that's 80 to 90 per cent of all grapes out there."
Gardeners would also like to see a cold snap. Sara Katz, a landscape designer who owns Wild at Heart Design, said warm weather could have damaging effects on the garden. The lack of snow robs the ground of insulation and moisture. A lack of cold means garden pests and diseases won't be killed off.
"A lot more spores and fungus will survive in the ground," Katz said.
Elsewhere, the Toronto Stock Exchange had its second day of triple-digit declines yesterday, largely because of balmy North American temperatures.
The biggest drag on the TSX yesterday was energy and "that is clearly a weather-related story, with oil prices falling," said Mark Levesque, a fixed income strategist at TD Securities.
Warmer weather means less demand for oil for heating purposes. Home-heating demand in the northeast United States will be 40 per cent lower than normal in the coming week, Bloomberg News reported.
In the last two days, the price of crude oil has had its biggest drop in two years.
MIAMI - Frustrated with people and politicians who refuse to listen or learn, National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield ends his 34-year government career today in search of a new platform for getting out his unwelcome message: Hurricane Katrina was nothing compared with the big one yet to come.
Mayfield, 58, leaves his high-profile job with the National Weather Service more convinced than ever that U.S. residents of the Southeast are risking unprecedented tragedy by continuing to build vulnerable homes in the tropical storm zone and failing to plan escape routes.
He pointed to southern Florida's 7 million coastal residents.
"We're eventually going to get a strong enough storm in a densely populated area to have a major disaster," he said. "I know people don't want to hear this, and I'm generally a very positive person, but we're setting ourselves up for this major disaster."
More than 1,300 deaths across the Gulf Coast were attributed to Hurricane Katrina, the worst human toll from a weather event in the United States since the 1920s.
But Mayfield warns that 10 times as many fatalities could occur in what he sees as an inevitable strike by a huge storm during the current highly active hurricane cycle, which is expected to last another 10 to 20 years.
His apocalyptic vision of thousands dead and millions homeless is a different side of the persona he established as head of the hurricane center.
Mayfield attained national celebrity status during the tempestuous 2004 and 2005 seasons, appearing on network television with hourly updates as hurricanes Charley, Ivan, Frances and Wilma bore down on the Caribbean and the Southeast. His calm demeanor and avuncular sincerity endeared him to millions of TV viewers seeking survival guidance.
And he argues that his dire predictions don't have to become reality.
The technology exists to build high-rise buildings capable of withstanding hurricane-force winds and tropical storm surge more powerful than those experienced in the last few years. Much of Hong Kong's architecture has been built to survive typhoons, and hotels and apartments built in Kobe, Japan, after a 1995 earthquake devastated the city are touted as indestructible, he said.
What is lacking in the United States is the political will to make and impose hard decisions on building codes and land use in the face of resistance from the influential building industry and a public still willing to gamble that the big one will never hit, he said.
"It's good for the tax base" to allow developers to put up buildings on the coastline, Mayfield said in explaining politicians' reluctance to deter housing projects that expose residents to storm risks.
"I don't want the builders to get mad at me," he said, "but the building industry strongly opposes improvement in building codes."
Consumers also have yet to demand sturdier construction, Mayfield added. A builder gets a better return on investment in upgraded carpet and appliances than for safety features above and beyond most states' minimal requirements, he said.
As a senior civil servant, Mayfield was prohibited from making job inquiries in the private sector while still in the government's employ. But he said on Tuesday, his last day in office, that he hoped to launch a second career as a consultant in emergency planning and disaster response. He has particular interest in a potential public-private initiative to mine natural disaster scenes for their educational value.
He envisions a natural disaster assessment service like the National Transportation Safety Board, which probes the causes and consequences of aviation and other transport accidents.
"If the NTSB finds some structural problem is the cause of an air crash, you would never see that plane continue to be built with the same problems," he said.
With natural disasters, though, the same mistakes that put lives at risk are repeated year after year in unsafe construction and inadequate planning, he said.
Mayfield said he also was pondering collaboration with advocates of tougher building standards and land use rules.
"It's not just about the forecasting. Whatever I do, I want to help change the outcome," he said, conceding frustration with persistent public disregard of federal and local government campaigns to boost hurricane awareness and preparation.
Even after the devastating hurricane seasons of 2004 and 2005, he said, fewer than 50% of those living in storm-prone areas have a hurricane evacuation plan.
While he has been critical of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's response to Katrina's devastation of New Orleans, he warns against depending on the federal government after natural disasters. He was dismayed to see federal agencies handing out water and ice in South Florida after Hurricane Wilma hit in October 2005, when stores were open and tap water was usable.
"You don't want the federal government to be your first-responders," he said. "The government can't do everything for people and it shouldn't, or else you create a culture of dependence."
Mayfield praises the Florida state government for its well-oiled disaster-response program and steps toward improving building safety, in contrast with other states along the Gulf of Mexico that he says still have no statewide building standards.
Though Mayfield's name and face recognition are the envy of some presidential hopefuls, he laughs out loud at the notion of running for office.
"Oh, good gosh, no! That is just not my thing," he says.
At the hurricane center on the Florida International University campus, Mayfield will be succeeded by Bill Proenza, the National Weather Service's director for the Southern region. Home to 77 million, the region has "the most active and severe weather in the world," according to the weather service's parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Proenza, 62, began his meteorological career at the Miami office as an intern in 1963. As director of 50 regional offices and 1,000 employees in the Southern region for the last eight years, he has long experience collaborating with the hurricane center staff on forecasts and tracking.
"That's why I don't have any problem walking out the door," said Mayfield, declaring himself fearful that the mild 2006 hurricane season left those in the storm zone ever more complacent.
Read any report on climate change and, chances are, that date will stare back at you.
It's frequently set as the year when we can expect a long, frightening list of devastating impacts, including decimation of the oceans' fish and the planet's forests; an ice-free Arctic; hordes of starving environmental refugees seeking new homes; and the extinction of a million animal species.
But Canada's main political parties and the governments of many countries also cite 2050 as the target by which to achieve massive cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.
Why that year?
Part of its appeal is that it's a middling distance into the future.
It's soon enough that the majority of people alive today can still expect to be breathing then. That makes it real. Despite professions of concern for future generations, it's difficult to stir passions or action about something that will happen a century or two or three from now.
As well, most of the things we build, including generating stations, roads and major industries, last 40 or 50 years. So what we do now will play a large part in determining what the Earth is like in 2050.
"It's a useful year to focus on," Matthew Bramley, director of climate change at the Pembina Institute, which does environmental policy research, said in an interview from Ottawa. "It's far enough away to be a year when real change is both necessary and possible."
Anyway, longer-term forecasts are likely irrelevant.
If we make the wrong decisions now, scientists warn, by 2050 the planet will either be a mess or irretrievably on course to become one. Viewed from the opposite direction, it's when major changes must be completed if we're to avoid disaster.
So, what will the Earth be like 43 years from now?
While most general predictions are consistent, details remain a bit of a guess. Much depends on whether we make a concerted effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and other pollution between now and then, and on what steps we take to adjust to the new environment.
It's certain the world will be warmer. With all of the carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere, the planet is, on average, 0.6C warmer than at the start of the Industrial Revolution - when we began burning fossil fuels in vast quantities - and there's no way to keep it from climbing another half a degree. The stuff stays intact for about a century, and we're stuck with it.
Even with very stringent emissions cuts, scientists say the average temperature by the end of the century will be at least 2C above pre-industrial levels. In fact, they say, that's the best we can hope for.
It's a small number but a substantial increase, and it will cause hardship for many people. Still, with effort, we could adapt to the changes in temperature, precipitation and water supply that would likely result.
To stay within that limit would require major changes in technology. Current crystal balls show lines of giant wind turbines and machines that generate electricity from wave power a few kilometres off ocean coasts; massive centralized power stations fuelled by coal that capture all their greenhouse gas emissions and pump them deep into the ground; well-insulated homes heated or cooled by underground geothermal energy; solar panels everywhere; zero-emission cars.
Of course, technology changes rapidly and often in surprising ways, so we might go off in totally unexpected directions to meet our inevitably soaring energy demand and be much better off than anyone now hopes.
But we're also resisting change, which makes it more difficult to curb the warming trend. Bare land and open water absorb much more heat than earth covered in trees or snow, or frozen seas. Melting permafrost could release immense amounts of methane, a very potent greenhouse gas.
So most predictions for 2050 assume we'll zip past the two-degree target. As now, we'll gradually use energy more efficiently. But those gains will be far outstripped by population and economic growth.
These attempts at future gazing, too, contain considerable guesswork. Experts plug numbers into sophisticated and massive computer programs that often take months to spit out results. Others look at history and trends, and make assumptions.
Forecasts for the entire planet are considered the most accurate. Precision decreases along with the size of the area being studied.
With all of this in mind, what follows is a picture of the world in 2050, a picture compiled from a wide variety of reports and interviews.
Up to one-third of the global population - about 9 billion in 2050 - lacks water. The shortages are worst in the areas of Asia and South America that get their supply from melting glaciers in the Himalayas and Andes mountain systems. Those rivers of ice have melted away.
Some parts of Earth, including much of Canada and Europe, get more rain, but others - notably southern Africa, Australia and the Mediterranean Basin - are parched by drought.
Mediterranean tourism has withered away; the beaches are blistering hot. But people flock to toasty warm northern Europe and Britain, where they can sit under palm trees and munch on locally grown olives.
And if it's business as usual?
It's warmer in most places, particularly in winter. In the first couple of decades after 2007, a few areas here and there cooled down from time to time, as natural cycles asserted themselves over human-caused climate change. By 2050, though, that kind of impact is history: Climate change rules.
The biggest temperature increases are in the Arctic and over Africa and the Middle East.
The poles get more precipitation, the mid-latitudes less. Drought threatens southern Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, northern South America, and the central and southeast United States.
We've just seen the first summer with no ice at the North Pole. Canada's High Arctic is, on average, a huge 5C or 6C hotter than in the past. Ships can now ply the Arctic with relative ease.
Inuit have many more weeks in which to zip across the waves in boats, but they no longer see polar bears or walruses, and seals are rare. With Arctic winter temperatures 5C to 8C higher than in recent history, ice conditions are treacherous and travel dangerous.
Most of British Columbia and the Prairies have the least warming, winter and summer, but even they are two or three degrees above the late-20th-century average. They'll also get less precipitation.
In Toronto, winters are mild and drier. Outdoor ice rinks are distant memories. Summers are hot and sticky - three or four degrees above the turn-of-the-century average. Smog blankets the city almost every day, although the cruddy haze is often shredded by violent thunderstorms, which overwhelm the sewer system, causing floods and erosion and flushing vast amounts of human and toxic wastes into Lake Ontario.
The Humber, Don and Rouge rivers are increasingly erratic, and with the intense bursts of rainfall, it's no longer news when they overflow their banks.
With increased evaporation and slightly reduced precipitation, the levels of Lake Ontario and the other Great Lakes have dropped a metre or two. Storm-whipped water and occasional flash floods make living near the shore a dicey proposition.
Farmers are frustrated. Their crops should be thriving on the feast of carbon dioxide in the air and the longer growing season. But the heat is often too scorching: Even worse, precipitation comes in violent, damaging storms that punctuate prolonged droughts.
In the tropics, the growing season has actually been shortened by heat, and crops are parched.
Around the world, about 1 million land-based plant and animal species have gone extinct. More than 90 per cent of the oceans' coral reefs, including Australia's Great Barrier, have died off. The sea species we eat have virtually disappeared from the oceans, and farmed fish can't fill the void.
The "bread basket" of the United States - the Great Plains of the Midwest - is now too hot for wheat and other cereal crops. The prime growing area has shifted. It begins in the northern U.S., covers almost all of Canada's prairie provinces and stretches up to the southern Northwest Territories. Unfortunately, much of the land is the Canadian Shield, with thin soil that can't support grains. But there are pockets of good growing land.
Much of the vast boreal forest that once covered the rocky shield has disappeared; it simply couldn't survive the hot, dry climate. Forest fires are larger and more frequent. The decline of the boreal has been the death knell for the woodland caribou, wolverine, Canada Jay and many other species.
Other forests have been decimated by disease and insects that are no longer killed off by cold winters. Pests have a longer growing season in which to attack trees and produce offspring. That produces yet another feedback, since dying and dead trees stop storing carbon.
On average, everyone on Earth is 20 per cent poorer. But the economic burden isn't spread equally. Places like sub-Saharan Africa that are already impoverished fare even worse.
Rising sea levels and the spread of deserts have forced as many as 200 million people to seek new homes as environmental refugees. They're flooding into Europe, North America and Australia.
Malaria is spreading because mosquitoes that carry it can survive in more areas, but the disease hasn't yet reached Canada.
International tourism will have shrivelled because of restrictions on air travel - which by now is one of the major sources of greenhouse gases.
Warm winters long ago wiped out Europe's ski industry. Now, Rocky Mountain resorts in Canada and the U.S. are going under.
The Netherlands, after centuries of wresting land from the sea, has had to give much of it back. Thousands of people are living in floating communities.
BEIJING -- Climate change will harm China's ecology and economy in the coming decades, possibly causing large drops in agricultural output, said a government report made public Wednesday.
The report, issued by six government departments including the State Meteorological Bureau, the China Academy of Sciences and the Ministry of Technology, comes several days after state media said 2006 was hotter than average with more natural disasters than normal.
"Climate change will increase the instability of agricultural production," the report said, according to the official Xinhua News Agency on Wednesday. "If no measures are taken, in the latter half of the century production of wheat, corn and rice in China will drop by as much as 37 percent."
It said that average temperatures in China would rise by 2 or 3 degrees Celsius in the next 50 to 80 years, and that this would cause "the speed of change to accelerate."
The report did not say what measures should be taken to combat climate change. It added that evaporation rates for some inland rivers would increase by 15 percent. China already faces a severe water shortage, especially in the northern part of the country.
On Sunday, the state Xinhua News Agency reported that temperatures in 2006 were on average 1 degree higher than in normal years. Meteorological officials were quoted as saying there was less rain than normal, down 16 millimeters (half an inch) from an average year.
Dong Wenjie, director of the Beijing Climate Center, said the high temperatures were caused by global warming, while the annual meteorological report released by the China Meteorological Administration said 2006 had been a disastrous year for loss of life and property damage.
Typhoons, floods and droughts killed 2,704 people and caused economic losses of 212 billion yuan (US$27.2 billion; euro20.65 billion) in 2006, second only to 1998 when an extremely severe flood swept the country, the report said.
China's size and geography make it prone to natural disasters. Every year, natural disaster affect 400 million people and 50 million hectares (123.6 million acres) of farmland, with economic losses equal to 1 percent to 3 percent of gross domestic product, Xinhua said.
BEIJING, Jan. 5 (Xinhuanet) -- Recently completed research reveals warmer oceans caused by global warming is making it more difficult for eelpouts to breath and survive.
Biologists have known for years declining fish stocks are connected to global warming, but a new study of eelpouts -- big-headed fish that resemble eels -- is the first to go deeper and see how warmer seas are connected to how fishes take in oxygen.
Scientists at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Germany studied the relationship between sea temperature and eelpouts counts in the Southern North Sea, combining data from the field with lab investigations of eelpout physiology.
The researchers not only found the oxygen levels in the waters of the North and Baltic seas have dropped because of increasing temperatures over the past 50 years -- a factor that reduces fish populations -- they also discovered eelpouts need more oxygen in warmer waters, a second factor that is reducing their numbers.
A key factor in the diminishing size of fish stock is increased difficulty in absorbing oxygen via respiration and blood circulation caused by the warming waters.
The study, published in the Jan. 5 issue of the journal Science, also noted the population of eelpouts dropped as average summer temperatures increased. The impact was also observed in the short term such that eelpout numbers decreased the year immediately after a warm summer.
Animals tolerate a limited range of environmental conditions. Anything out of their tolerance window can cause damage. Fish in the North Sea have evolved to tolerate a wider range of temperatures than fish elsewhere because of the large seasonal fluctuations there.
However, warming waters and their impact on oxygen supply can stress fish to the point their thermal tolerance range is thrown off and they perish, the scientists said.
In the future, eelpouts could prove to be important bioindicators that would help experts assess what might happen to other marine species in the region, the scientists explained.
Worldwide, warming waters can be expected to strain species that require lots of oxygen, forcing them to either relocate to cooler waters or face extinction, the authors write.
Now 2007 is upon us, but not the white-fin dolphin. It's gone, too. Another year, another species.
A team of 25 scientists recently searched the Yangtze River, the dolphin's only home, and could find not a one. That was not a great surprise. The species was known to be in trouble. The last sighting was in 2004.
Perhaps the search missed one or two of the dolphins. If so, no matter. The species is done for. The United Nation's environmental unit has declared the Yangtze a dead zone.
This fresh-water dolphin had been on Earth 20 million years. Imagine that: 20 million. Geologic epochs came and went. The dolphin had taken the worst that volatile and violent nature could throw at them. They were no match for a man-made environment of overfishing, industrial development and intense shipping.
Is it really necessary to rehearse what ought to be the obvious? There's an alarm going off here, adding to the many already clanging and wailing.
Genesis had God giving humankind dominion over the Earth. This was not a favor. It was a task. Dominion must suppose stewardship.
There is a bitter irony in our failures at the job. Bitter because, if we were paying attention, we would notice that when we knuckle down and, crucially, if it's not too late, we can stop and sometimes reverse the damage from our neglect and despoliation. Environmentalism works.
Thirty-five years of reasonably serious attention to air and water quality in the United States has improved both. And timely alertness to imminent species extinctions has led to rescues.
The bald eagle is to be taken off the endangered species list in February; its population has increased 15-fold since 1963. The whooping crane, down to 15 in 1941, now number 518. The loss and degradation of migration habitat remains a challenge, but this is the first time in more than a century that the population exceeds 500.
It is the overwhelming, international judgment of scientists in the relevant disciplines that the Earth is warming and that the warming is man-made, not part of a natural cycle. There are a million arguments over details but that's the big picture and it is not in serious question among serious people.
The Bush White House, which shrugs energy conservation off as perhaps nice for personal virtue but useless as policy, first denied global warming is occurring, then grudgingly admitted it is but swore the administration couldn't for the life of it figure out why, so what's a poor body to do?
To act would inconvenience automotive, fossil-fuel and other industries and abrade the political right, which holds, as doctrine, that global warming is lefty hoax created to smash free markets and spit on Adam Smith's grave.
Yet word has slipped out from the administration that the polar bear may soon be listed as endangered, the first species designated as a potential victim of the global warming that the White House says we shouldn't try to do anything about.
Dolphins are mammals, like us, a thought that often charms us. Maybe we should pay more notice to the fact that we're mammals. Like dolphins.
Tom Teepen writes for Cox Newspapers. His e-mail address is teepencolumn@earthlink.net
By Steve Connor, Science Editor
UK Independent
02 January 2007
Why are we asking this question now?
As 2006 drew to a close, the polar bear was about to be classified as a threatened species by the United States Government. Melting Arctic sea ice could significantly reduce numbers of the world's largest terrestrial carnivore over the next 50 years. And, just before Christmas, a 38-day search for the Yangtze River dolphin ended without finding a single member of the species. It is feared that the aquatic mammal may be the latest in a long line of extinct animals.
Extinction is as old as life on Earth - about 3.5 billion years - but scientists calculate that we are losing species at a rate of somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000 times higher than the natural "background" rate of extinction. This means that technically we are going through a period of "mass extinction", the sixth that we know about over the hundreds of millions of years of the fossil record. But unlike the previous five mass extinctions, this one is largely caused by the actions of a single species - Homo sapiens.
How many species have gone extinct in the past 100 years?
This is a notoriously difficult question to answer, due in part to the difficulty in recording the declining populations of a particular animal or plant, and in part to the technical definition of an extinction. Experts estimate there are 15,589 species threatened with extinction. But a species is only accepted to have become extinct if exhaustive surveys in its known habitat range have failed to find any record of the individual.
So even if scientists strongly suspect that an animal has gone extinct it cannot be defined as extinct until some time has elapsed since an individual was last observed - which can mean 30 or 50 years for some species.
The decline and eventual extinction of an animal or plant may take many decades or even centuries and the final stages are seldom observed. This make it difficult to decide when something has completely died out.
Conservationists calculate that since 1500 there have been more than 800 recorded extinctions. However, the true number of extinctions is likely to be much larger because of what is known about the rate at which habitats are being lost or broken up.
What groups of animals or plants are at the highest risk?
In general, the more we know about a particular group of species, the more we realise that they are at risk. One in four mammals and one in every eight birds is threatened. Half of all tortoises and freshwater turtles are similarly endangered.
Amphibians - frogs, toads, newts and salamanders - are perhaps the largest group of animals at serious risk.
About one in three species of amphibians are seriously endangered in some way or other and more than 120 species are thought to have died out over the past 25 years.
Amphibian specialists believe that a combination of factors may be involved, such as habitat loss and the spread of a deadly fungus, aided by the human trade in an African toad, a known carrier of the disease.
Up to 2,000 species of amphibians - the first vertebrates to conquer the land - are classified as endangered. The group is thought to be particularly vulnerable because their life cycles generally depend on two habitats, terrestrial and aquatic, for survival.
How many species are still alive?
Again, this is another notoriously difficult question. About 1.5 million animals and plants have been identified and formally or informally named. However, the true number of species alive today is likely to fall within the range of between five million and 15 million, although some scientists suggest even higher numbers - perhaps 30 million species in total.
According to studies of the fossil record, which gives a good indication of the diversity of life on Earth over the past 600 million years, only between about 2 and 4 per cent of the species that have ever lived are believed to survive today - the disappearances of the earlier species occurred long before the arrival of the first humans some two million years ago.
Do species have a natural 'lifetime'?
Some species are better than others at surviving for long periods of time. Some adapt to changing environmental conditions and evolve into new species.
Most species eventually become extinct. Animals without backbones, the invertebrates, have an average evolutionary "lifetime" of five to 10 million years. Mammals, on the other hand, are thought to have a lifetime of one or two million years.
However, scientists say that the current lifetimes of some birds and mammals are much shorter than natural lifetimes based on the fossil record. One scientist calculated that the lifetime of a typical bird or mammal species is now about 10,000 years - significantly shorter than the natural average lifetime.
What caused the previous mass extinctions?
We know about the previous five mass extinctions from the fossil record. Studies of the number of marine families over the past 600 million years show five points in time when large numbers of species disappeared abruptly.
The last was 65 million years ago, in which the dinosaurs became extinct, and is thought to have resulted from an asteroid hitting the Earth and causing a dramatic change in the climate. In fact all previous mass extinctions are thought to have been caused by some large-scale geo-physical process, such as supervolcanic eruptions or the sudden release of vast quantities of greenhouse gases from the seabed.
The biggest mass extinction of all occurred some 251 million year ago, when about 90 per cent of marine life and 70 per cent of land species vanished. One theory is that something happened to the Earth's atmosphere at the end of the Permian period, robbing it of vital oxygen.
It has happened before, so why worry?
There are several reasons we should be concerned. The first is that in the past it has taken life on Earth between 10 million and 100 million years to recover from a mass extinction. The second is that for all our technology, we still rely on the delicate ecological balance of the natural world for our survival. The Earth's biodiversity provides us with clean air, drinking water, food and even new drugs - upsetting it too much could cause the collapse of this vital life-support system.
The third reason is philosophical. If we conserve works of art, why should we not also conserve nature? The extinction of a humble beetle is no less important than the wilful destruction of a Rembrandt or a Picasso?
Should we be concerned about the rapid extinction of the Earth's species?
Yes...
* Life is a delicate web of inter-related species: destroy too many and the entire fabric can come apart
* The natural world is the planet's only life-support system, and if we lose that we lose our own lives as well
* Protecting biodiversity is the moral equivalent to preserving human culture for future generations - it is not ours to destroy
No...
* There are millions of species on Earth and the loss of a few won't matter too much
* Life has bounced back in the past when there have been similar mass extinctions
* We can live in a world of fewer species, provided we keep the ones that matter to us
Mark Townsend and Paul Harris in New York
The Observer
22 Feb 04
- Secret report warns of rioting and nuclear war
- Britain will be 'Siberian' in less than 20 years
- Threat to the world is greater than terrorism
Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters..
A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.
The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.
Article continues
'Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,' concludes the Pentagon analysis. 'Once again, warfare would define human life.'
The findings will prove humiliating to the Bush administration, which has repeatedly denied that climate change even exists. Experts said that they will also make unsettling reading for a President who has insisted national defence is a priority.
The report was commissioned by influential Pentagon defence adviser Andrew Marshall, who has held considerable sway on US military thinking over the past three decades. He was the man behind a sweeping recent review aimed at transforming the American military under Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Climate change 'should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern', say the authors, Peter Schwartz, CIA consultant and former head of planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and Doug Randall of the California-based Global Business Network.
An imminent scenario of catastrophic climate change is 'plausible and would challenge United States national security in ways that should be considered immediately', they conclude. As early as next year widespread flooding by a rise in sea levels will create major upheaval for millions.
Last week the Bush administration came under heavy fire from a large body of respected scientists who claimed that it cherry-picked science to suit its policy agenda and suppressed studies that it did not like. Jeremy Symons, a former whistleblower at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), said that suppression of the report for four months was a further example of the White House trying to bury the threat of climate change.
Senior climatologists, however, believe that their verdicts could prove the catalyst in forcing Bush to accept climate change as a real and happening phenomenon. They also hope it will convince the United States to sign up to global treaties to reduce the rate of climatic change.
A group of eminent UK scientists recently visited the White House to voice their fears over global warming, part of an intensifying drive to get the US to treat the issue seriously. Sources have told The Observer that American officials appeared extremely sensitive about the issue when faced with complaints that America's public stance appeared increasingly out of touch.
One even alleged that the White House had written to complain about some of the comments attributed to Professor Sir David King, Tony Blair's chief scientific adviser, after he branded the President's position on the issue as indefensible.
Among those scientists present at the White House talks were Professor John Schellnhuber, former chief environmental adviser to the German government and head of the UK's leading group of climate scientists at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. He said that the Pentagon's internal fears should prove the 'tipping point' in persuading Bush to accept climatic change.
Sir John Houghton, former chief executive of the Meteorological Office - and the first senior figure to liken the threat of climate change to that of terrorism - said: 'If the Pentagon is sending out that sort of message, then this is an important document indeed.'
Bob Watson, chief scientist for the World Bank and former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, added that the Pentagon's dire warnings could no longer be ignored.
'Can Bush ignore the Pentagon? It's going be hard to blow off this sort of document. Its hugely embarrassing. After all, Bush's single highest priority is national defence. The Pentagon is no wacko, liberal group, generally speaking it is conservative. If climate change is a threat to national security and the economy, then he has to act. There are two groups the Bush Administration tend to listen to, the oil lobby and the Pentagon,' added Watson.
'You've got a President who says global warming is a hoax, and across the Potomac river you've got a Pentagon preparing for climate wars. It's pretty scary when Bush starts to ignore his own government on this issue,' said Rob Gueterbock of Greenpeace.
Already, according to Randall and Schwartz, the planet is carrying a higher population than it can sustain. By 2020 'catastrophic' shortages of water and energy supply will become increasingly harder to overcome, plunging the planet into war. They warn that 8,200 years ago climatic conditions brought widespread crop failure, famine, disease and mass migration of populations that could soon be repeated.
Randall told The Observer that the potential ramifications of rapid climate change would create global chaos. 'This is depressing stuff,' he said. 'It is a national security threat that is unique because there is no enemy to point your guns at and we have no control over the threat.'
Randall added that it was already possibly too late to prevent a disaster happening. 'We don't know exactly where we are in the process. It could start tomorrow and we would not know for another five years,' he said.
'The consequences for some nations of the climate change are unbelievable. It seems obvious that cutting the use of fossil fuels would be worthwhile.'
So dramatic are the report's scenarios, Watson said, that they may prove vital in the US elections. Democratic frontrunner John Kerry is known to accept climate change as a real problem. Scientists disillusioned with Bush's stance are threatening to make sure Kerry uses the Pentagon report in his campaign.
The fact that Marshall is behind its scathing findings will aid Kerry's cause. Marshall, 82, is a Pentagon legend who heads a secretive think-tank dedicated to weighing risks to national security called the Office of Net Assessment. Dubbed 'Yoda' by Pentagon insiders who respect his vast experience, he is credited with being behind the Department of Defence's push on ballistic-missile defence.
Symons, who left the EPA in protest at political interference, said that the suppression of the report was a further instance of the White House trying to bury evidence of climate change. 'It is yet another example of why this government should stop burying its head in the sand on this issue.'
Symons said the Bush administration's close links to high-powered energy and oil companies was vital in understanding why climate change was received sceptically in the Oval Office. 'This administration is ignoring the evidence in order to placate a handful of large energy and oil companies,' he added.
WASHINGTON - President Bush on Thursday welcomed German Chancellor Angela Merkel's proposal to prod the Middle East peace process and said he was open to new ideas to combat global warming.
"I believe there is a chance now to put behind us the old stale debates of the past," Bush said at a joint White House news conference with the German leader.
It was a reference to past differences between Bush and European allies on the Kyoto accords, an international agreement to reduce pollution that causes global warming. It has not been ratified by the United States.
He also praised her for her efforts to put the so-called quartet- the United States, the EU, Russia and the United Nations - at the center of a revived Israeli-Palestinian peace effort.
"Madame Chancellor had a good idea to convene the quarter," Bush said. He said that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would soon be going to the region to try to revive the process.
"We're strongly committed to a two-state solution. Two democracies supporting each other's rights to exist," Bush said. He said, however, that he was unwilling to expand the quartet.
The two leaders conferred on issues ranging from war and energy problems to the economy and global warming.
Merkel's visit came just days after Germany assumed the presidencies of the 27-nation European Union and the Group of Eight major industrialized democracies.
While Bush and Merkel are strong allies on many issues, there also are differences, including steps to combat global warming.
"We talked about climate change, and I assured the chancellor I'm committed to promoting new technologies that will promote energy efficiency and do a better job protecting the environment," Bush said.
For her part, Merkel said she believed there was "wide scope for further talks about this." She said that while "on the one hand we obviously need economic growth," it was also important to protect the environment from so-called greenhouse gases.
DANVILLE, Pa. - A 12-year-old special education student was charged with disorderly conduct after authorities said she deliberately wet her pants at school.
The girl's mother said she urinated only because the principal frightened her. The mother said in Thursday's Press Enterprise that the incident occurred last month, after the girl, classmates and teachers ate a holiday lunch at Danville Middle School.
The girl was told to go to the kitchen to wash some pots and pans, but refused, wet her pants after teachers summoned Principal Kevin Duckworth, the mother said.
The newspaper withheld the names of the girl and her mother.
Police Chief Eric Gill said school officials were at "wit's end" with the girl, and they believe her actions were deliberate.
Duckworth did not return calls for comment. School Superintendent Steve Keifer said only that police are generally called in only after "all other alternatives are exhausted."
Police told the girl's parents they could probably avoid a fine if they agree to have the girl do community service.
In 1997, as the government listened in on their phone call, Adham Hassoun, a computer programmer in Broward County, Fla., proposed a road trip to Jose Padilla, a low-wage worker there. The excursion to Tampa would be his treat, Mr. Hassoun said, and a chance to meet "some nice, uh, brothers."
Mr. Padilla, 36, a Brooklyn-born Puerto Rican who had converted to Islam a few years earlier, knew Mr. Hassoun, an outspoken Palestinian, from his mosque. Still, according to a transcript of the conversation obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Padilla equivocated as Mr. Hassoun exhorted.
"We take the whole family and have a blast," Mr. Hassoun said. "We go to, uh, our Busch Gardens, you know ... You won't regret it. Money-back guarantee."
Mr. Padilla, laughing, suggested that they not discuss the matter over the phone.
"Why?" Mr. Hassoun said. "We're going to Busch Gardens. What's the big deal!"
That conversation took place five years before Mr. Padilla, a United States citizen accused of plotting a "dirty bomb" attack against this country, was declared an enemy combatant. Given that Mr. Padilla and Mr. Hassoun are now criminal defendants in a terrorism conspiracy case in Miami, it sounds suspicious, as if Mr. Hassoun were proposing something more sinister than a weekend at the amusement park. He well may have been - but maybe, too, he was sincere or joking about a Muslim retreat.
Deciphering such chatter in order to construct a convincing narrative of conspiracy is a challenge. Yet, prosecutors say, the government will rely largely on wiretapped conversations when it puts Mr. Padilla, Mr. Hassoun, and a third defendant, Kifah Jayyousi, on trial as a "North American support cell" that sent money, goods and recruits abroad to assist "global jihad."
Tens of thousands of conversations were recorded. Some 230 phone calls form the core of the government's case, including 21 that make reference to Mr. Padilla, prosecutors said. But Mr. Padilla's voice is heard on only seven calls. And on those seven, which The Times obtained from a participant in the case, Mr. Padilla does not discuss violent plots.
But this is not the version of Mr. Padilla - Al Qaeda associate and would-be bomber - that John Ashcroft, then the attorney general, unveiled in 2002 when he interrupted a trip to Moscow to trumpet Mr. Padilla's capture. In the four and a half years since then, as the government tested the limits of its power to deal with terrorism outside the traditional law enforcement system, Mr. Padilla is the only accused terrorist to have gone from enemy combatant to criminal defendant.
His criminal trial, scheduled to begin late this month, will feature none of the initial claims about violent plotting with Al Qaeda that the government cited as justification for detaining Mr. Padilla without formal charges for three and a half years. Those claims came from the government's overseas interrogations of terrorism suspects, like Abu Zubaydah, which, the government said, Mr. Padilla corroborated, in part, during his own questioning in a military brig in South Carolina.
But, constrained by strict federal rules of evidence that would prohibit or limit the use of information obtained during such interrogations, the government will make a far more circumscribed case against Mr. Padilla in court, effectively demoting him from Al Qaeda's dirty bomber to foot soldier in a somewhat nebulous conspiracy.
The initial dirty bomb accusation did not disappear. It quietly resurfaced in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The government filed the dirty bomb charges against Mr. Padilla's supposed accomplice, an Ethiopian-born detainee, at about the same time it indicted Mr. Padilla on relatively lesser offenses in criminal court.
A Change in Strategy
The change in Mr. Padilla's status, from enemy combatant to criminal defendant, was abrupt. It came late in 2005 as the Supreme Court was weighing whether to take up the legality of his military detention and the Bush administration, by filing criminal charges, pre-empted its review. In a way, Mr. Padilla's prosecution was a legal maneuver that kept the issue of his detention without charges out of the Supreme Court. After apprehending him at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago in May 2002, the Bush administration made a choice: to detain Mr. Padilla militarily, in order to thwart further plotting, rather than to follow him in order to gather evidence that might serve a criminal prosecution.
Now that Mr. Padilla has ended up a criminal defendant after all, the prosecution's case does not fully reflect the Bush administration's view of who he is or what he did.
Senior government officials have said publicly that Mr. Padilla provided self-incriminating information during interrogations, admitting, they said, to undergoing basic terrorist training, to accepting an assignment to blow up apartment buildings in the United States, and to attending a farewell dinner with Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected master planner of the Sept. 11 attacks, before he flew to Chicago in 2002.
But any confessions by Mr. Padilla while he was detained without charges and denied access to counsel - whether or not he was mistreated, as his lawyers claim - would not be admissible in court.
And it is unlikely that information obtained during the harsh questioning of Al Qaeda detainees would be admissible, either - and, further, the government is disinclined to expose sensitive intelligence or invite further scrutiny of secret jails overseas.
Probably as a consequence, the current criminal case zeroes in on what the government sees as an earlier stage of Mr. Padilla's involvement with terrorism. It focuses primarily on the other defendants' support during the 1990s for Muslim struggles overseas, especially in Bosnia, Kosovo and Chechnya. Mr. Padilla, who was appended to their pre-existing case, in which he had been an unnamed co-conspirator, is depicted as their recruit.
Although prosecutors have declined to discuss the government's strategy, their filings and statements in court provide a picture of the case they are expected to present at trial.
The most tangible allegation against Mr. Padilla is that in 2000 he filled out, under an alias, an Arab-language application to attend a terrorist training camp. That application is expected to be offered into evidence alongside the wiretapped conversations, but Mr. Padilla's lawyers say they will contest its admissibility, challenging the government's assertion that the "mujahideen data form" belonged to their client.
Robert Chesney, a specialist in national security law at Wake Forest University, called the prosecution a pragmatic one, analogous to "going after Al Capone on tax evasion."
But Deborah Pearlstein, a lawyer with Human Rights First who has consulted with Mr. Padilla's defense, said that his will never be an ordinary, pragmatic prosecution. "If Jose Padilla were from Day 1 just charged and tried, then maybe," she said. "But this is a case that comes after three and a half years of the most gross deprivation of human rights that we've seen in this country for a long time."
Further, Ms. Pearlstein noted, the government has reserved the option, should the prosecution fail, of returning Mr. Padilla to the military brig. This, she said, "casts a shadow" over the current prosecution.
The Bush administration's military case against Binyam Mohamed, 28, the Ethiopian detainee at Guantánamo, put the current proceedings in a different light, too.
In December 2005, Mr. Mohamed was referred to the military commission in Guantánamo on accusations that he conspired with Mr. Padilla on the dirty bomb plot. It was little noticed at the time.
But accusations against Mr. Padilla that are nowhere to be found in the indictment against him filled the pages of Mr. Mohamed's charging sheet, with Mr. Padilla repeatedly identified by name. The sheet referred to the two men meeting in Pakistan after Sept. 11, 2001, studying how to build an improvised dirty bomb, discussing the feasibility of a dirty bomb attack with Al Qaeda officials and agreeing to undertake the mission to blow up buildings.
Mr. Mohamed's lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, said that these charges were based on a forced confession by Mr. Mohamed, who, he said, was tortured overseas into admitting to a story that was fed to him. "Binyam was told all along that his job was to be a witness against Padilla, Abu Zubaydah and Khaled Sheikh Mohammed," Mr. Stafford Smith said, adding that his client "has no conscious knowledge that he ever met" Mr. Padilla.
The charges against Mr. Mohamed and other Guantánamo detainees who were headed for prosecution there have been suspended temporarily as a result of the Military Commissions Act passed by Congress in October. Those charges are likely to be reinstated, a Pentagon official said yesterday.
That Mr. Mohamed faced dirty bomb charges and Mr. Padilla does not speaks to the central difference between being a terrorism suspect in Guantánamo and a criminal defendant charged with terrorism offenses in the United States.
In Guantánamo, the military commission system that deals with foreign-born terrorism suspects is expected to allow, with some exceptions, the use of information obtained through coercion.
"Federal court rules are restrictive," Professor Chesney of Wake Forest University School of Law said. "The very essence of why they're trying to have that separate military system was to create rules to use information that is deemed by the intelligence community to be trustworthy but wouldn't make it under the federal rules of evidence."
David Cole, a professor of law at Georgetown University and author of books on terrorism and civil liberties, sees the difference between the two systems more critically: "What this says clearly is that they feel that they can get away with using tainted evidence in the military commission system that they can't use in the criminal court system."
The Wiretapping Case
The criminal case against Mr. Padilla has its roots in the prosecution of Sheikh Omer Abdel Rahman, the blind Egyptian cleric who was convicted in 1995 of conspiring to blow up the United Nations and other New York landmarks.
In the early 1990s, Sheikh Rahman's telephone was tapped, and Mr. Hassoun and Dr. Jayyousi, a Jordanian-born American citizen who holds a doctorate in civil engineering, came to the government's attention through phone calls to or from his line. Then the government, under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, began to eavesdrop on them, which eventually pulled Mr. Padilla into their net, too.
The government presents the three defendants as "joined at the hip," as one prosecutor put it in a hearing last summer. But Judge Marcia G. Cooke of Federal District Court, noting that Mr. Padilla was appended to a case well under way, asked the government, "If they are so joined at the hip, why is Mr. Padilla so late to the dance?"
Dr. Jayyousi, a former school system administrator in both Detroit and Washington, D.C., never met Mr. Padilla, his lawyer, William Swor, said.
It is Mr. Hassoun, the government said, who recruited Mr. Padilla. But both Mr. Hassoun's and Mr. Padilla's lawyers deny that Mr. Padilla was recruited.
Seven Taped Phone Calls
Mr. Padilla's lawyers and relatives say that he left South Florida for Egypt in September 1998 on a spiritual journey. A former juvenile offender, he converted to Islam as part of an effort to straighten out his life, they say. His mosque in Fort Lauderdale sponsored his travel, he told friends, relatives and F.B.I. agents who interviewed him in 2002. Mr. Hassoun belonged to that mosque, and the telephone transcripts seem to indicate that Mr. Hassoun helped, at the least, with Mr. Padilla's travel plans.
The seven taped phone calls that bear Mr. Padilla's voice involve conversations with Mr. Hassoun from 1997 to 2000.
On those calls, Mr. Padilla, unlike some of the other defendants, does not employ what the government says is coded language. According to the government, other defendants refer to their jihad-related plans as "getting some fresh air," "participating in tourism," "opening up a market," "playing football," and so on. This leads to silly-sounding exchanges where "the brothers" discuss going on "picnics" in order "to smell fresh air and to eat cheese" or using $3,500 to buy "zucchini."
In contrast, Mr. Padilla's seven conversations with Mr. Hassoun range from straightforward - Mr. Hassoun tells Mr. Padilla that his grandmother has died; Mr. Padilla tells Mr. Hassoun that he has found himself an 18-year-old Egyptian bride who is willing to wear a veil - to vaguely suggestive or just odd.
In one phone call, the two men talked about a dream. It appeared to be the dream that Mr. Padilla, according to his relatives, cites as having played a crucial role in inspiring him to convert to Islam: the vision of a man in a turban, surrounded by the swirling dust of a desert.
Mr. Hassoun brought it up and told Mr. Padilla that he himself had experienced the same vision. "What do you mean you saw the same dream?" Mr. Padilla asked.
"I saw the dream of the uh ... person with the turban," Mr. Hassoun said.
Mr. Hassoun explained how, in his dream, the turban was wrongly wrapped and so he thought the man might be a spy, in which case, he was prepared "to split his body apart." But then, he said, he understood that "the brother ... was a good one."
"Yeah?" Mr. Padilla said.
In three of the seven conversations, Mr. Padilla made statements that the government has identified as "overt acts" in furtherance of the accused conspiracy.
In the first, Mr. Hassoun asked, "You're ready, right?" and Mr. Padilla said, "God willing, brother, it's going to happen soon." That was the summer of 1997, a year before Mr. Padilla left South Florida for Egypt.
In the second, Mr. Padilla told Mr. Hassoun, during a 1999 conversation from Egypt, that he had asked his ex-wife in the United States to arrange for him to receive an army jacket, a book bag and a sleeping bag, supplies that he had requested because "there was a rumor here that the door was open somewhere." In the third, Mr. Padilla told Mr. Hassoun in April 2000, that he would need a recommendation to "connect me with the good brothers, with the right faith" if he were to travel to Yemen.
Prosecutors say Mr. Padilla is mentioned, although by his Muslim name Ibrahim or by another alias, on 21 additional tapes. One of them refers to Ibrahim as being "in the area of Usama," which the government takes to mean that he was near Osama bin Laden. But Mr. Padilla's lawyers contest that interpretation.
"That is just nonsensical, Your Honor, that these men who for years, according to the government, have been talking in code all of a sudden are going to throw Osama bin Laden's name around," Michael Caruso, a federal public defender, said in court.
Mr. Padilla has pleaded not guilty. But before his case goes before a jury, his fitness to stand trial will be evaluated. On the basis of Mr. Padilla's lawyers' assertion that he is mentally damaged as a result of his prolonged isolation and his interrogation in the brig, Judge Cooke has ordered a psychiatric evaluation by a Bureau of Prisons doctor to be completed this week.
The radical Christian Right is coming dangerously close to its goal of taking over the country's military and law enforcement.
The drive by the Christian right to take control of military chaplaincies, which now sees radical Christians holding roughly 50 percent of chaplaincy appointments in the armed services and service academies, is part of a much larger effort to politicize the military and law enforcement. This effort signals the final and perhaps most deadly stage in the long campaign by the radical Christian right to dismantle America's open society and build a theocratic state. A successful politicization of the military would signal the end of our democracy.
During the past two years I traveled across the country to research and write the book "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America." I repeatedly listened to radical preachers attack as corrupt and godless most American institutions, from federal agencies that provide housing and social welfare to public schools and the media. But there were two institutions that never came under attack -- the military and law enforcement. While these preachers had no interest in communicating with local leaders of other faiths, or those in the community who did not subscribe to their call for a radical Christian state, they assiduously courted and flattered the military and police. They held special services and appreciation days for all four branches of the armed services and for various law enforcement agencies. They encouraged their young men and women to enlist or to join the police or state troopers. They sought out sympathetic military and police officials to attend church events where these officials were lauded and feted for their Christian probity and patriotism. They painted the war in Iraq not as an occupation but as an apocalyptic battle by Christians against Islam, a religion they regularly branded as "satanic." All this befits a movement whose final aesthetic is violence. It also befits a movement that, in the end, would need the military and police forces to seize power in American society.
One of the arguments used to assuage our fears that the mass movement being built by the Christian right is fascist at its core is that it has not yet created a Praetorian Guard, referring to the paramilitary force that defied legal constraints, made violence part of the political discourse and eventually plunged ancient Rome into tyranny and despotism. A paramilitary force that operates outside the law, one that sows fear among potential opponents and is capable of physically silencing those branded by their leaders as traitors, is a vital instrument in the hands of despotic movements. Communist and fascist movements during the last century each built paramilitary forces that operated beyond the reach of the law.
And yet we may be further down this road than we care to admit. Erik Prince, the secretive, mega-millionaire, right-wing Christian founder of Blackwater, the private security firm that has built a formidable mercenary force in Iraq, champions his company as a patriotic extension of the U.S. military. His employees, in an act as cynical as it is deceitful, take an oath of loyalty to the Constitution. These mercenary units in Iraq, including Blackwater, contain some 20,000 fighters. They unleash indiscriminate and wanton violence against unarmed Iraqis, have no accountability and are beyond the reach of legitimate authority. The appearance of these paramilitary fighters, heavily armed and wearing their trademark black uniforms, patrolling the streets of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, gave us a grim taste of the future. It was a stark reminder that the tyranny we impose on others we will one day impose on ourselves.
"Contracting out security to groups like Blackwater undermines our constitutional democracy," said Michael Ratner, the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights. "Their actions may not be subject to constitutional limitations that apply to both federal and state officials and employees -- including First Amendment and Fourth Amendment rights to be free from illegal searches and seizures. Unlike police officers they are not trained in protecting constitutional rights and unlike police officers or the military they have no system of accountability whether within their organization or outside it. These kind of paramilitary groups bring to mind Nazi Party brownshirts, functioning as an extrajudicial enforcement mechanism that can and does operate outside the law. The use of these paramilitary groups is an extremely dangerous threat to our rights."
The politicization of the military, the fostering of the belief that violence must be used to further a peculiar ideology rather than defend a democracy, was on display recently when Air Force and Army generals and colonels, filmed in uniform at the Pentagon, appeared in a promotional video distributed by the Christian Embassy, a radical Washington-based organization dedicated to building a "Christian America."
The video [Watch it HERE], first written about by Jeff Sharlet in the December issue of Harper's Magazine and filmed shortly after 9/11, has led the Military Religious Freedom Foundation to raise a legal protest against the Christian Embassy's proselytizing within the Department of Defense. The video was hastily pulled from the Christian Embassy website and was removed from YouTube a few days ago under threats of copyright enforcement.
Dan Cooper, an undersecretary of veterans affairs, says in the video that his weekly prayer sessions are "more important than doing the job." Maj. Gen. Jack Catton says that his being an adviser to the Joint Chiefs of Staff is a "wonderful opportunity" to evangelize men and women setting defense policy. "My first priority is my faith," he says. "I think it's a huge impact. ... You have many men and women who are seeking God's counsel and wisdom as they advise the chairman [of the Joint Chiefs] and the secretary of defense."
Col. Ralph Benson, a Pentagon chaplain, says in the video: "Christian Embassy is a blessing to the Washington area, a blessing to our capital; it's a blessing to our country. They are interceding on behalf of people all over the United States, talking to ambassadors, talking to people in the Congress, in the Senate, talking to people in the Pentagon, and being able to share the message of Jesus Christ in a very, very important time in our world is winning a worldwide war on terrorism. What more do we need than Christian people leading us and guiding us, so, they're needed in this hour."
The group has burrowed deep inside the Pentagon. It hosts weekly Bible sessions with senior officers, by its own count some 40 generals, and weekly prayer breakfasts each Wednesday from 7 to 7:50 a.m. in the executive dining room as well as numerous outreach events to, in the words of the organization, "share and sharpen one another in their quest to bridge the gap between faith and work."
If the United States falls into a period of instability caused by another catastrophic terrorist attack, an economic meltdown or a series of environmental disasters, these paramilitary forces, protected and assisted by fellow ideologues in the police and military, could swiftly abolish what is left of our eroding democracy. War, with the huge profits it hands to businesses and right-wing interests that often help bankroll the Christian right, could become a permanent condition. And the thugs with automatic weapons, black uniforms and wraparound sunglasses who appeared on street corners in Baghdad and New Orleans could appear on streets across the U.S. Such a presence could paralyze us with fear, leaving us unable to question or protest the closed system and secrecy of an emergent totalitarian state and unable to voice dissent.
"The Bush administration has already come close to painting our current wars as wars against Islam -- many in the Christian right apparently have this belief," Ratner said. "If these wars, bad enough as imperial wars, are fought as religious wars, we are facing a very dark age that could go on for a hundred years and that will be very bloody."
Chris Hedges is the former Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times and the author of "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning."
Dan Froomkin
Thursday, January 4, 2007; 12:38 PM
Washingtonpost.com
The New York Daily News today reports on a signing statement President Bush quietly issued two weeks ago, in which he asserts his right to open mail without a warrant.
Signing statements have historically been used by presidents mostly to explain how they intend to enforce the laws passed by Congress; Bush has used them to quietly assert his right to ignore those laws.
James Gordon Meek writes about the latest: "President Bush has quietly claimed sweeping new powers to open Americans' mail without a judge's warrant, the New York Daily News has learned.
"The President asserted his new authority when he signed a postal reform bill into law on Dec. 20. Bush then issued a 'signing statement' that declared his right to open people's mail under emergency conditions.
"That claim is contrary to existing law and contradicted the bill he had just signed, say experts who have reviewed it. . . .
"Most of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act deals with mundane reform measures. But it also explicitly reinforced protections of first-class mail from searches without a court's approval."
The signing statement said, in part:
"The executive branch shall construe subsection 404(c) of title 39, as enacted by subsection 1010(e) of the Act, which provides for opening of an item of a class of mail otherwise sealed against inspection, in a manner consistent, to the maximum extent permissible, with the need to conduct searches in exigent circumstances, such as to protect human life and safety against hazardous materials, and the need for physical searches specifically authorized by law for foreign intelligence collection."
Meek notes that White House spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore denied Bush was claiming any new authority.
Here is the signing statement in question. Here is information on the bill in question.
It shouldn't be a surprise that although Meek was almost two weeks late with this story -- which was a matter of public record -- he still got a scoop.
Bush's signing statements have been widely ignored by the traditional media, with the significant exception of Boston Globe reporter Charlie Savage, who is on book leave right now.
And sadly, most of the questions about signing statements that I raised in a Nieman Watchdog essay last June still remain unaddressed. Foremost among them: Are these signing statements just a bunch of ideological bluster from overenthusiastic White House lawyers -- or are they actually emboldening administration officials to flout the laws passed by Congress? If the latter, Bush's unprecedented use of these statements constitutes a genuine Constitutional crisis.
The other day, the college-age daughter of a friend received an e-letter from a Marine Corps Officer Selection Officer, inviting her to "an awesome summer training program called the Platoon Leader's Course." Think of it as Marine Corps summer camp. No uniforms ("This is not ROTC!"), but reasonable amounts of moolah. Here's some of what was on offer to her, part of a desperate military's Iraq-era appeal to citizenly duty:
"You will earn approximately $2,400 (six weeks) or $4,000 (ten weeks) plus room and board during the training. How's that for a summer job?.... You will not incur any obligation to the Marine Corps even after completing the training. (You can choose whether or not to continue with the program).... Tuition assistance will be available to you after you complete training this summer. You could potentially earn $8,000 to $25,000 for school, depending on graduation date."
Imagine! The Marine Corps is willing to pay young people to go to a uniform-less summer camp to test their "leadership potential," with no commitment to the Corps necessary. Consider that; then consider what was certainly the President's only significant decision of the holiday season past--to permanently expand the US military by as many as 70,000 troops.
Now, as in some old math problem, the question is: How do you connect these two points. (Hint: Not with a straight line.)
Faced with a December shot across the bow in testimony before Congress by Army Chief of Staff Peter J. Schoomaker, who warned that the Army "will break" under present war-zone rotation needs, President Bush responded by addressing the "stressed" nature of the US Armed Forces. He said, "I'm inclined to believe that we do need to increase our troops--the Army, the Marines. And I talked about this to Secretary [Robert A.] Gates, and he is going to spend some time talking to the folks in the building [the Pentagon], come back with a recommendation to me about how to proceed forward on this idea." All this was, he added, "to meet the challenges of a long-term global struggle against terrorists."
Ah... that makes things clearer.
Of course, to get those new "volunteer" officers and men, who have generally been none too eager to volunteer for the Army and the Marines in the midst of a disastrous, far-away, increasingly incomprehensible set of double wars, you'll have to pay even more kids more money to go to no-commitment summer camp; and, while you're at it, you'll have to lower standards for the military radically. You'll have to let in even more volunteers without high school diplomas but with "moral" and medical "waivers" for criminal records and mental problems. You'll have to fast-track even more new immigrants willing to join for the benefits of quick citizenship; you'll have to ramp up already high cash bonuses of all sorts; you'll have to push the top-notch ad agency recently hired on a five-year contract for a cool billion dollars to rev up its new "Army Strong" recruitment drive even higher; you'll certainly have to jack up the numbers of military recruiters radically, to the tune of perhaps a couple of hundred million more dollars; and maybe just for the heck of it, you better start planning for the possibility of recruiting significant numbers of potential immigrants before they even think to leave their own countries. After all, it's darn romantic to imagine a future American all-volunteer force that will look more like the old French Foreign Legion--or an army of mercenaries anyway. All in all, you'll have to commit to the fact that your future soldier in your basic future war will cost staggering sums of money to hire and even more staggering sums to retain after he or she has had a taste of what "leadership potential" really entails.
Put another way, as long as Iraq remains a classic quagmire for the Army and Marines, any plan to expand the U.S. military in order to make it easier to fight such wars in the future, threatens to become a classic financial quagmire as well. In other words, Iraq and military expansion don't fit together well at all. And yet, looking at the state of our military in Iraq in a certain light, expansion seems so... well, logical.
After all, the American military, now at just over 500,000 troops, stood, at the time of the First Gulf War, at 703,000. (Of course, no one now counts the quite expensive hired mercenaries who envelop our military -- the privatized, Halliburton-style adjuncts, who cook the food, build the bases, do the cleaning, deliver the mail and supplies, perform interrogation duties, and so on, and whose increase has been striking as has the growth of rent-a-mercenary corporations whose armed employees are, for instance, all over Iraq.) In addition, it has long been clear that the Armed Forces could not take the strain of failing wars in Central Asia and the Middle East forever, not to speak of increased "commitments" in the Persian Gulf and the normal massive global basing and policing that the Pentagon regularly refers to as our "footprint" on the planet. Added to this, the President seems to be leaning towards increasingly the pressure on military manpower needs by "surging"--the Vietnam era word would, of course, have been "escalating"--up to 30,000 troops into Baghdad and al-Anbar province, while naval and air forces (with an obvious eye to Iran) are simultaneously ramped up in the Persian Gulf.
In light of Iraq, military manpower needs cry out to be dealt with. In light of Iraq, dealing with them any time soon will be prohibitively expensive.
In Washington, this conundrum leads nowhere in particular. Instead, in the spirit of imperial-mission logic (and with the urge to bash the Bush administration for being late to such an obvious support-our-troops position), Democrats simply leaped onto the expand-the-military bandwagon even faster than Republicans. In fact, leading Democrats had long been calling for just this sort of expansion. ("I am glad [the President] has realized the need for increasing the size of the armed forces... but this is where the Democrats have been for two years," commented Rep. Rahm Emanuel, the new House Democratic Caucus chairman.) The Democratic leadership promptly pledged to make such an expansion one of its top reform priorities in the New Year.
To get those numbers significantly higher will, it's estimated, take a decade and unimaginable sums of money (as well as those lowered standards). And, if the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan worsen, as they almost certainly will, and American casualties rise with no end in sight, you can start going through your multiplication tables. This could be considered but a form of ongoing blowback from American imperial shock-and-awe tactics in Iraq and presents some curious choices to our leaders. After all, to take but one example, those most eager to expand the military, with their eyes on the imperial future, should be eager to liquidate the Iraqi mission as soon as possible.
But a far more basic choice lurks--one rarely alluded to in the mainstream. If we voted on such things--and, in truth, we vote on less and less that matters--the choice that actually lies behind the Marine e-letter to my friend's daughter might be put this way: Expand the military or shrink the mission?
This is the essential question that goes largely unmentioned--and largely unthought as well. In the meantime, money will continue to pour into military recruitment ad campaigns, bonuses, and summer camps. In the meantime, those Marine e-letters will continue to go out. In the meantime, money will continue to pour into the Pentagon and the national security world generally. In the meantime, we will continue to build our near billion-dollar embassy, the largest on the planet, in the heart of Baghdad's Green Zone. In the meantime, the imperial and military paths will continue to fuse, and the Pentagon will continue to take on new roles, even outside "declared war zones," in intelligence, diplomacy, "information operations," and other "self-assigned missions"; so that, as Mark Mazzetti of the New York Times recently described it, even our embassies will increasingly be militarized outposts in the global war on terror.
Shrinking the mission--choosing some path other than the imperial one (in part by redefining what exactly our national interests are)--would, of course, address many problems. It would make paying young people thousands of dollars to test their leadership potential or thinking about scouring Central America for a future Foreign Legion far less necessary. But no one in Washington--not in the Bush administration, not in James A. Baker's Iraq Study Group, which recently captured the Inside-the-Beltway "middle ground" on Iraq policy, not in the Democratic leadership--is faintly interested in shrinking the American global mission. No one in Washington, where a kind of communal voting does go on, is about to vote "no" to that mission, or cast a ballot for democracy rather than empire.
Expanding the military may seem like a no-brainer in response to the Iraq crisis. As it happens, it's anything but. Unfortunately, few ever discuss (as, for instance, Chalmers Johnson did in his book, The Sorrows of Empire) the 700-plus military and intelligence bases we retain around the world or ask why exactly we're garrisoning the planet. No one, in these last years, has seriously challenged the ever expanding Pentagon budget; nor the mushrooming supplemental requests for Iraq and Afghanistan, including the record-setting latest for almost $100 billion; nor, generally, the fact that paying for actual war-fighting is no longer considered an appropriate part of the Pentagon's normal budget process.
No one challenged it when, in 2002, the United States gained a new North American Command (Northcom), making U.S. citizens but another coequal part of the Pentagon's division of its imperial world, along with those who live in regions covered by Centcom, Paccom, and the just authorized Africa Command (Africom). No one challenged the vast expansion of Pentagon intelligence activities. No one offered a challenge as the military took on ever more civilian domestic duties, including planning for the potential arrival of a pandemic disease on our shores or for future Katrinas. No one seriously challenges the plans the Pentagon has on the drawing boards for exotic, futuristic hardware meant to come on line decades from now that, along with futuristic military tactics already being worked out, will help predetermine the wars most Americans don't even know we are going to fight--from the vast mega-slum-cities of the Third World to the borderlands of space.
No one considers what the Pentagonization of our world and the Homeland Securitization of our country is doing to us, because militarism here has never taken on the expectable forms--few vast military parades or displays (despite the almost full-scale militarization of Presidential funerals); few troops in the streets; no uniforms in the high councils of government. In fact, it's one of the ironies of our particular form of militarization that when our military--no longer really a citizen army--goes to war and troops begin to die, less Americans are touched by this than perhaps at any time in our recent history.
Shrink the mission or expand the military? Your choice?
In his new book Capitalism 3.0, Peter Barnes writes that the costs of our current capitalist system are clear: inequality, stressful lives and a dwindling financial safety net. But how do we revise such a complex system?
Since the dawn of capitalism, people have been in awe of both its productive and destructive capacities. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels expressed their own wonderment in a widely quoted passage from the Communist Manifesto, published in 1848.
"The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature's forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalization of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground. What earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labor?"
Prodigious production, however, imposed an equally prodigious cost on nature and humanity. And humanity did not go quietly into the dark industrial night. So long as people could survive on the land, however minimally, they rarely chose to become industrial laborers. As Karl Polanyi explained in The Great Transformation, they became "Labor" because they had to.
The driving force that made them have to was the enclosure movement. English law and custom were reshaped to segregate and privatize land formerly available to all for grazing and farming. With less and less access to the Commons, impoverished peasants moved into the cities. Over many decades, they became a reluctant and restive industrial workforce.
In his brilliant and so very needed new book Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons, (Berrett-Koehler) Peter Barnes argues that each stage of capitalism spawns its own operating system, its own set of rules and institutions that reflect its historical situation. The enclosures laws reflected a time of shortages and scarcity he calls Capitalism 1.0.
Beginning in the late 19th century and increasingly evident in the late 20th century, we have moved into a period Barnes calls Capitalism 2.0. This era is characterized by surplus, not scarcity. The central economic problem no longer is increasing supply, but soliciting new demand. An increasing portion of the GDP is spent to persuade people to want increasingly superfluous output and to provide them the credit to buy it. Regulations curb corporate excesses; incentives ameliorate the damage caused by those corporations.
Capitalism 2.0 spawns a political battle that focuses on how the enormous wealth generated by capitalism's prodigious engines should be distributed. That battle gives birth to a new set of rules and institutions, including the regulation of corporate behavior, environmental regulations, and the creation of a safety net(minimum wage and maximum hour laws, Social Security, and universal health care -- everywhere but in the U.S.)
To Barnes, the costs of Capitalism 2.0 on humanity are clear: growing inequality, increasingly stressful lives, ever-widening holes in the safety net as capital spills across borders and corporate revenues and power begin to exceed those of many nations.
We need a new set of operating instructions, Barnes argues, that will usher in and guide the creation of Capitalism 3.0. In a remarkably brief 166 pages, Peter addresses and rather astonishingly, largely answers his question, "How do you revise a system as vast and complex as capitalism? And how do you do it gracefully, with a minimum of pain and disruption?"
Capitalism 3.0 grew out of a life of social and political activism and market entrepreneurialism. In the 1970s, Barnes started a profitable solar energy company. In the 1980s, he helped launch the much more profitable and enduring Working Assets phone and financial company. He opens his book with this self-description. "I'm a businessman. I believe society should reward successful initiative with profit. At the same time, I know that profit-seeking activities have unhealthy side effects. They cause pollution, waste, inequality, anxiety and no small amount of confusion about the purpose of life."
Barnes' key solution to the unhealthy side effects of profit-seeking behavior is to revive the idea of -- and reclaim the value -- of the Commons. Over the last few years, hundreds of meetings and thousands of conversations have taken place among those who are actively involved in protecting the popular culture from the encroachment of private intellectual property, those who are involved in trying to maintain the internet as a public network, and those who are trying to curb corporate power and restrain the increasing tendency by cities and states to privatize public goods.
Many of these conversations have been stimulated by a small California-based organization called the Tomales Bay Institute, aided and abetted by its increasingly well-visited web site. Among its fellows are David Bollier, Harriet Barlow, Jonathan Rowe, and Peter Barnes. Capitalism 3.0 is the first comprehensive book on the Commons issued by the Institute.
The Commons, Barnes insists, should no longer be viewed simply as a pasture where animals graze, but rather as a generic term, comparable to the terms "market" or "state". The Commons is the gifts we inherit or create together. "A gift is something we receive as oppose to something we earn," Barnes writes. "A shared gift is one we receive as members of a community as opposed to individually".
Think of the Commons as a broad river fed by three principal tributaries: nature, community, and culture. This river precedes and surrounds capitalism and adds immense value to it, and to us.
The land as Commons is an idea that has had its advocates from the earliest days of the American Republic. For Thomas Paine, "there are two kinds of property. Firstly, natural property, or that which comes to us from the Creator of the universe -- such as the earth, air, water. Secondly, artificial or acquired property -- the invention of men." In the natural property, Paine maintained, "all individuals have legitimate birthrights ... Since such birthrights were diminished by enclosure, there ought to be an 'indemnification for that loss." Paine propose the establishment of a national permanent fund where every person at the age of twenty-one would receive money as partial compensation for his or her loss of "natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property."
In the late 19th century, economist Henry George launched an influential movement also based on the concept of the Commons. That movement argued that the value of land is almost entirely derived, not from the landowner's investment, but from public actions. Value comes from easy transportation access, good parks and schools, quiet and safe streets. All of which are created from public investment. George and his followers advocated a significant tax on unimproved land, to compensate the public for its investment that created that land's market valuable.
In the modern lingo, Henry George was the first to advocate an anti-givings movement. In the last twenty years the United States has witnessed the rise of its evil twin, the anti-takings movement. This movement has gained considerable political traction. Several states have adopted laws that require government to compensate private landowners if public actions diminish the value of private property. If, for example, government downzones land to require a lower building density, the landowner should receive compensation for any loss in his property value.
But what if the government upzones the land to allow for higher concentration? What if it builds a freeway near the land? What if it transforms an unsightly section of the neighborhood into a park? All these actions would substantially increase the value of the land. Shouldn't the public be compensated for its investment? Even a cursory investigation suggests that the level of givings in this country is 100, perhaps even 1000 times greater than the level of takings.
Barnes is reluctant to rely on governments to protect the Commons, especially on an ongoing basis. Governments change. Laws, regulations, and taxes are easily rescinded or weakened when powerful financial interests get involved. The public interest rarely if ever is represented with the same level of resources and feral energy as the private interest. This imbalance is inherent in the costs and rewards of involvement. An individual gains little by stopping private interests from encroaching on the Commons. An individual corporation, on the other hand, is handsomely rewarded when it enables poaching.
The timber industry spent $8 million in campaign contributions to preserve a logging road subsidy worth $458 million, a return on their investment of 5,725 percent, former Republican strategist Kevin Phillips observes. Glaxo Wellcome invested $1.2 million in campaign contributions to obtain a l9 month patent extension on Zantac worth $1 billion, a return of 83,333 percent.
Rather than relying on government, Barnes argues for the creation of a new institution, a commons trust, based on a new property right in the Commons. Unlike government policies, he maintains, property rights tend to endure, as do the institutions that own them. When government is deciding what to do with a public asset like the spectrum, or the national parks, or the air, Barnes' advice is, "Propertize, don't privatize".
Barnes briefly lists many kinds of possible trusts: watershed trusts, air trusts, children's opportunity trust, an American Permanent Fund based on a waste absorption tax on corporate profits.
These new trusts would serve as stewards of the Commons for future generations, and would distribute revenue gained from creating a property right in the Commons. Barnes argues that a trust could conceivably generate large sums, which, if distributed on a per capita basis, could ameliorate poverty. Not only would there be a redistribution from rich to poor within countries, but an even larger redistribution between richer and poorer countries when the Commons in question is global, like the atmosphere.
A significant test for this new approach to the Commons may come as we develop strategies to combat global warming. Europe and, several American states, are beginning to embrace a cap on carbon emissions, ratcheting the cap down over time to eventually reach a point where no further global warming from human activities would occur.
Such a cap creates an environmental market value for carbon. How should this new value be distributed? Europe distributed carbon emission credits in proportion to the amount of pollution a company emitted! The result? Billions of dollars in increased corporate income with little or no reduction in pollution. The new Governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer, has suggested that 100 percent of the credits created by a New York carbon cap on electricity generation should be auctioned off.
Barnes would consider this a major step in the right direction, but he would go further. In Capitalism 3.0, and in his previous book, Who Owns the Sky? Barnes argues that carbon emission credits should be distributed on a per capita basis. We might issue a certificate to every person that allows him or her 5 tons of annual carbon emissions.
Corporations, and households that generate higher carbon emissions would have to buy credits. Each five years, as governments ratchet downwards the carbon cap, increasing the market value of an individual credit rises, creating a higher incentive for companies to improve energy efficiency and shift to no and low carbon energy sources and a greater income to individual households.
Capitalism 3.0 is an important and timely book. Blessedly brief and simply written, it elaborates an argument for profound social and economic change while offering a pragmatic strategy for achieving that change with a minimal amount of disruption and bureaucracy. Read it to understand why the word Commons is slowly but surely permeating political conversations.
David Morris is co-founder and vice president of the Institute for Local Self Reliance in Minneapolis, Minnnesota and director of its New Rules project.
From the "what you already knew but couldn't put a number to" files ...
The good folks at the Center for Economic Policy and Research (make sure you get the "and" in their name) have issued a study titled: "Dropping the Ax: Illegal Firings During Union Election Campaign." You can get a PDF of the report, authored by economists John Schmitt and Ben Zipperer, here.
From the press release:
"Aggressive actions by employers -- often including illegal firings -- have significantly undermined the ability of U.S. workers to unionize their workplaces," said John Schmitt, CEPR senior economist and lead author of the paper. "With the legal penalties for such actions being so slight, employers can break the law to head-off organizing efforts and face almost no real repercussions."
The paper finds that firings of pro-union workers involved in union election campaigns are approaching the peak reached during the 1980s of 1 in 42. The current probability of a pro-union worker being fired - a 1 in 53 chance - is far greater than the rate at the end of the 1990s, when it was only 1 in 87. The paper also finds that the number of successful union elections have significantly declined, partly as a result of the increase in illegal firings. If only ten percent of pro-union workers are active campaign organizers, almost 1 in 5 union activists were fired illegally in 2005. Using annual data from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on its determinations of "discriminatory discharges" in the context of union-election campaigns, Schmitt and Zipperer were able to estimate the probability of a pro-union worker being fired illegally in connection with a union-organizing election, and to calculate other aspects of employer behavior and success rates in union-organizing elections.
I'm going to have more on this topic in the next few weeks.
Joshua Holland is a staff writer at Alternet and a regular contributor to The Gadflyer.
By Jeff Stein
CQ National Security Editor
1 Dec 06
It's amazing what you can find if you turn over a few rocks in the anti-terrorism legislation Congress approved during the election season.
Take, for example, the John W. Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2006, named for the longtime Armed Services Committee chairman from Virginia.
Signed by President Bush on Oct. 17, the law (PL 109-364) has a provocative provision called "Use of the Armed Forces in Major Public Emergencies."
The thrust of it seems to be about giving the federal government a far stronger hand in coordinating responses to Katrina-like disasters.
But on closer inspection, its language also alters the two-centuries-old Insurrection Act, which Congress passed in 1807 to limit the president's power to deploy troops within the United States.
That law has long allowed the president to mobilize troops only "to suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy."
But the amended law takes the cuffs off.
Specifically, the new language adds "natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident" to the list of conditions permitting the President to take over local authority - particularly "if domestic violence has occurred to such an extent that the constituted authorities of the State or possession are incapable of maintaining public order."
Since the administration broadened what constitutes "conspiracy" in its definition of enemy combatants - anyone who "has purposely and materially supported hostilities against the United States," in the language of the Military Commissions Act (PL 109-366) - critics say it's a formula for executive branch mischief.
Yet despite such a radical turn, the new law garnered little dissent, or even attention, on the Hill.
One of the few to complain, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., warned that the measure virtually invites the White House to declare federal martial law.
It "subverts solid, longstanding posse comitatus statutes that limit the military's involvement in law enforcement, thereby making it easier for the President to declare martial law," he said in remarks submitted to the Congressional Record on Sept. 29.
"The changes to the Insurrection Act will allow the President to use the military, including the National Guard, to carry out law enforcement activities without the consent of a governor," he said.
Moreover, he said, it breaks a long, fundamental tradition of federal restraint.
"Using the military for law enforcement goes against one of the founding tenets of our democracy."
And he criticized the way it was rammed through Congress.
It "was just slipped in the defense bill as a rider with little study," he fumed. "Other congressional committees with jurisdiction over these matters had no chance to comment, let alone hold hearings on, these proposals."
No matter: Safely tucked into the $526 billion defense bill, it easily crossed the goal line on the last day of September.
Silence
The language doesn't just brush aside a liberal Democrat slated to take over the Judiciary Committee come January. It also runs over the backs of the governors, 22 of whom are Republicans.
The governors had waved red flags about the measure on Aug. 1, sending letters of protest from their Washington office to the Republican chairs and ranking Democrats on the House and Senate Armed Services committees.
No response. So they petitioned the party heads on the Hill - Sens. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., and Harry Reid, D-Nev., Speaker of the House J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and his Democratic opposite, Nancy Pelosi of California.
"This provision was drafted without consultation or input from governors," said the Aug. 6 letter signed by every member of the National Governors Association, "and represents an unprecedented shift in authority from governors . . .to the federal government."
"We urge you," they said, "to drop provisions that would usurp governors' authority over the National Guard during emergencies from the conference agreement on the National Defense Authorization Act."
Again, no response from the leadership, said David Quam, the National Governors Association's director of federal relations.
On Aug. 31, the governors sent another letter to the congressional party leaders, as well as to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who had met quietly with an NGA delegation back in February.
The bill "could encroach on our constitutional authority to protect the citizens of our states," they protested, complaining again about how the provision had been dumped on a midnight express.
"Any issue that affects the mission of the Guard in the states must be addressed in consultation and coordination with governors," they demanded.
"The role of the Guard in the states and to the nation as a whole is too important to have major policy decisions made without full debate and input from governors throughout the policy process."
More silence.
"We did not know until the bill was printed where we stood," Quam said.
That's partly the governors' own fault, said a Republican Senate aide.
"My understanding is that they sent form letters to offices," she said. "If they really want a piece of legislation considered they should have called offices and pushed the matter. No office can handle the amount of form letters that come in each day."
Quam disputed that.
"The letter was only the beginning of the conversation," he said. "The NGA and the governors' offices reached out across the Hill."
Blogosphere
Looking back at the government's chaotic response to Katrina, it's not altogether surprising that the provision drew so little opposition in Congress and attention from the mainstream media.
And of course, it was wrapped in a monster defense bill related to the emergency in Iraq.
But the blogosphere, of course, was all over it.
A close analysis of the bill by Frank Morales, a 58-year-old Episcopal priest in New York who occasionally writes for left-wing publications, spurred a score of liberal and conservative libertarian Web sites to take a look at it.
But a search of The Washington Post and New York Times archives, using the terms "Insurrection Act," "martial law" and "Congress," came up empty.
That's not to say the papers don't care: There's just too much going on in the global war on terror to keep up with, much less write about such a seemingly insignificant provision. The martial law section of the Defense Appropriation Act, for example, takes up just a few paragraphs in the 591-page document.
What else is in there? More intriguing stuff, it looks like - and I'm working my way through it.
BACKCHANNEL CHATTER
Putin on the Risk: Don't be too quick to finger Russian president Vladimir Putin in the radiation rub-out of disaffected former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko in London Nov. 23, says a retired CIA operative who spent a career trying to outwit his Soviet opposites. "I see it all as a little too pat," says Milt Bearden, a 30-year CIA veteran and chief of its Soviet/East European Division when the Kremlin crumbled in 1990.
"Is Putin insane or stupid? I think not," Bearden e-mailed me last week.
"I tilt toward a setup," Bearden said. The villain? "Someone with the [scientific] resources of a state," a large research laboratory, perhaps, with connections to the criminal underworld.
"This story has legs," Bearden went on, "just what Putin would not want if he was behind it."
Stay tuned...
More on Torture Law: Most legal analysts, as reported here last week, believe that the new law setting up Military Commissions will exempt U.S. officials from prosecution for abusing prisoners, by narrowing the definitions of torture in the 1997 War Crimes Act. But at least one eminent jurist begs to differ.
"Even as retroactively amended and narrowed, a person whose actions caused 'serious' or 'severe' mental or physical suffering at any time after 1997 committed a felony violation of the War Crimes Act and can be prosecuted," maintains Stephen Rickard, a former top State Department official, foreign policy adviser to the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., and prominent Washington lawyer with a speciality in human rights.
"I don't like the definitions of 'torture' and 'cruel and inhuman' conduct," Rickard e-mailed me last week, "but even with all of their flaws, I don't see how they exempt interrogators from potential punishment, especially for the harshest, most controversial techniques."
These days Rickard is the director of the Washington Office of the liberal Open Society Institute.
By ARNAUD DE BORCHGRAVE
UPI Editor at Large
2 Jan 07
WASHINGTON -- Through history, rulers, despots, nations and empires have humbled and humiliated, and with the advent of Adolph Hitler, massacred Jews by the millions. From the Exodus from ancient Egypt to the First Crusade, which didn't distinguish between Jews and Arabs, to the Spanish Inquisition under Tomas de Torquemada, to Czarist pogroms, to the World War II Nazi genocide, some historians calculate that had Jews been treated like other citizens through the ages, they would number at least 200 million today. They now number less than 15 million. And from right to left, the five million Jews in Israel now feel threatened with extinction yet again.
In today's Israel, the overwhelming majority is now convinced Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is synonymous with a 2nd holocaust. "We stood idly by as we were led to slaughter in Hitler's concentration camps and gas chambers in the 1930s and 40s," is a refrain frequently heard in Israel these days, "but never again." In a New Year's Day message, superhawk and former Prime Minister Netanyahu Binyamin accused Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of the kind of appeasement that threatened Israel's very existence.
Ahmadinejad recently held an international conference of holocaust deniers. And Israelis are now reminded daily that the Iranian president is a new Hitler who has to be terminated "with maximum prejudice" before a Persian nuclear weapon terminates Israel. The existential threat to Israel looms even larger, in Netanyahu's view, with the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group (ISG) report. His critique's main points:
- The ISG report smacks of rank appeasement when it recommends talking to Syria and Iran at a time when Iran has been handed the whip hand in Iraq by the U.S. with a U.S.-facilitated, pro-Iranian Shiite-led government.
- ISG says a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a sine qua non to stabilizing the rest of the Middle East. The implied suggestion that it's now up to Israel to make further concessions to the Palestinians is yet another manifestation of appeasement. Israel must reject any perceived sign of weakness.
- In reality, if the problem of Iran, which Israel's enemies call "the strategic backbone of Hezbollah and Hamas," were solved by the forceful elimination of its nuclear facilities, or a highly unlikely voluntary return to nuclear power for peaceful purposes under U.N. inspection, the conflict with the Palestinians would become easier to tackle.
- Hezbollah and Hamas are rapidly arming themselves thanks to the Israeli government's decision to refrain from further action against them. Since the cease-fire was declared, dozens of Kassam rockets have been fired at targets in the western Negev.
- If Olmert's government reacts limply to Iran's statements about its intentions to destroy Israel, "why should we expect the world to act against them?"
- ISG says, "The majority of the political establishment in Israel has grown tired of a continuous state of a nation at war." When even Israel's leadership sends out a message of fatigue and weakness, "why should we be surprised that the world agrees?"
Netanyahu then said Israel "must immediately launch an intense, international, public relations front first and foremost on the U.S. The goal being to encourage President Bush to live up to specific pledges he would not allow Iran to arm itself with nuclear weapons. We must make clear to the government, the Congress and the American public that a nuclear Iran is a threat to the U.S. and the entire world, not only Israel."
There are signs this is already happening in Washington. Before the invasion of Iraq, the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld troika decided the ousting of Saddam Hussein had to become an integral part of the "war on terror." Eventually 60 percent of Americans thought Saddam was behind 9/11, even though there was no link between the two. Today, the Bush-Cheney team faces the same spin scenario: how to weave the global war on terror and the Shiite powers that be in Iran. This one is relatively simple: Iran trains and funds Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Palestinian territories.
Anticipating the new line, Sen. Joe Lieberman (Independent-CT) referred to "Iran and al-Qaida" on Wolf Blitzer's Sunday program on CNN. That Iran is Shiite and al-Qaida Sunni becomes irrelevant in the new game plan that will most probably lead to U.S. air strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities in 2007/08. Can a Democratic Congress be bypassed under a blanket authorization already secured to hunt down transnational terrorists wherever they may be hiding?
The "neocons" who work closely with Netanyahu on what could be the next phase of a nascent regional war in the Middle East, say Bush has the authority to take out Iran's nuclear threat. Because it has only one purpose -- to take out Israel. One Hiroshima-type nuclear weapon and Israel ceases to exit.
There is little doubt president Bush's geopolitical legacy as it stands today is unacceptable to someone who identifies with Winston Churchill roaring against appeasement in the 1930s. Iraq is either an unmitigated or mitigated disaster. And year-end analyses widely published at home and abroad listed Bush among the four worst presidents in U.S. history.
And if Bush doesn't take on Iran, prominent Israelis are speculating that president Clinton 2 (Hillary) will do so. Oded Tira, the chairman of Israel's Association of Industrial Manufacturers, and former chief artillery office in the IDF, said, "Bush lacks the political power to attack Iran. As an American air strike in Iran is essential for our existence, we must help pave the way by lobbying the Democratic Party, which is conducting itself foolishly, and U.S. newspaper editors."
Writing in Ynet News (online Yedioth Ahronoth), Tira said, "We need to turn the Iranian issue to a bipartisan one and unrelated to the Iraq failure. Hillary Clinton and other potential presidential candidates in the Democratic Party (must) publicly support immediate action by Bush again Iran."
As for target Iran, Tira voiced widespread belief in Israel that the Jewish state must coordinate strikes with the U.S. -- "and prepare for the Iranian response." Fearless forecast: It will be formidable.
Comment: What a bunch of evil drivel. Don't these people get it that it is the Zionists that are manipulating politics so that they can rule the world? As they have done again and again; each time resulting in a backlash?
How did we get to a place where a president can blatantly lie us into a war - and get away with it?
How did we get to a place where crooks can wrap themselves in the flag and rob the country blind - and no one challenges them?
How did we get to a place where a country once known for innovation and generosity can degenerate into a front of corruption and mindless viciousness - and life goes on as if normal?