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AFP
January 6, 2005
JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was rushed back to the operating theatre for emergency surgery after doctors detected new bleeding in his brain.
Shlomo Moryussef, director of Jerusalem's Hadassah hospital, said "an area of bleeding" had been discovered when the 77-year-old underwent a brain scan to assess the damage caused by a massive haemorrhage. "During the CT (computed tomography) scan, a slight expansion in the brain chambers was discovered, as well as an area of bleeding," he told reporters Friday.
"With the combination of the CT scan and with the changes in the parametres that we are monitoring -- blood pressure and the pressure in his skull -- it was decided to transfer the prime minister to the operating theatre in order to deal with these two issues: to drain the bleeding and to reduce the pressure in his skull."
Sharon, who has been prime minister since February 2001, was admitted to the hospital on Wednesday, little more than two weeks after he suffered a minor stroke.
Doctors battled through the night to drain blood from his brain before he was placed in a medically-induced coma.
The downturn in Sharon's condition came after some of his closest allies acknowledged he is unlikely to ever return to office, while doctors have privately said that he may well have suffered irreversible brain damage.
One of the doctors at the hospital told the Maariv daily that "we cannot say this with certainty, but due to the location of the problem, we believe that the damage that the prime minister suffered is expected to cause paralysis and perhaps his speech will be affected to a certain extent".
Another of Sharon's doctors was quoted as telling the Haaretz daily that the damage was likely to be "extensive and irreversible".
The collapse of the prime minister's health came as he was seeking election to a third term in office as head of his new centrist Kadima party.
For the moment at least, officials have said a scheduled general election in Israel will go ahead as planned in three months' time on March 28.
Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Ehud Olmert has been named acting prime minister in accordance with the law.
However in the event of Sharon dying or being permanently incapacitated, Olmert's temporary appointment will have to be approved in a cabinet vote.
Olmert was to convene a meeting of Kadima MPs on Friday and meet with former Labour prime minister Shimon Peres who is now allied with Sharon.
Opinion polls have so far shown Kadima's support largely holding up, despite the loss of Sharon.
A survey for the Yediot Aharonot said an Olmert-led Kadima would win 39 of the Knesset's 120 seats against 20 for the centre-left Labour party and 16 for Sharon's old right-wing Likud.
Sharon's illness also comes amid rising chaos in the
West Bank and Gaza Strip ahead of a January 25 Palestinian legislative election which will also have far-reaching consequences for the peace process.
A White House spokesman stressed the Palestinian elections should go ahead as planned despite the uncertainity caused by Sharon's illness.
Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas on Thursday insisted the ballot would not be postponed.
Few Israelis have left such a mark on both the military and political landscape as the controversial Sharon over the past 50 years.
While Sharon lay fighting for his life, the Israeli media began publishing his political obituaries which all acknowledged his towering presence.
Haaretz said he deserved the nation's gratitude for showing courage by pulling out of the Gaza Strip as well as standing up to Palestinian violence.
"Sharon is completing his term as a revered leader who was able to stand up to enemies at home and abroad, and only faltered on the heroic battle for health," it said. |
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By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem
06 January 2006
Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, was today undergoing further surgery - fighting for his life as his closest allies began to realise that his political career was over.
He had been under heavy sedation and connected to a respirator after what was officially described as an "extensive" stroke, the second in three weeks, and a massive brain haemorrhage. The fresh surgery followed what doctors said was a "rise in cranial pressure". Mr Sharon's illness, which aides privately accept spells the end of his five-year premiership and more than a half a century of operating at the centre of Israeli military and political life, leaves the biggest political vacuum in the country since the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin a decade ago.
Insisting on anonymity, one of more than 30 close aides allowed to maintain a vigil next to the operating theatre during Mr Sharon's two sessions on Wednesday night and yesterday morning admitted the Prime Minister would never return to office. "Now the main question is whether the doctors will be able to save his life," he added.
Professor Shlomo Mor-Yosef, director of Jerusalem's Hadassah Ein Karem hospital, told reporters: "The Prime Minister is suffering from low intracranial pressure, and is heavily sedated. He will be ventilated for at least the next 24 hours, and perhaps even for the next few days."
Professor Mor-Yosef said he had come to refute rumours "flooding the country" that the Prime Minister had already died and sought to pre-empt suggestions that 77-year-old Mr Sharon was in a worse condition than doctors admitted. "As Hadassah's director, I am obligated to bring every change in the Prime Minister's condition to light through statements," he said.
Doctors refused to confirm Mr Sharon had suffered irreversible brain damage. The aide said he would stay under sedation for three or four days to allow his brain to recover from eight hours of surgery and added: "Nobody is able at this point to give a damage assessment, but we know that there has been a great deal of damage. The extent will not be determined until he is woken, if he's able to be woken."
There was also no confirmation of widespread reports that one factor that triggered the brain haemorrhage Mr Sharon had on Wednesday night may have been the blood-thinning medication he had been taking since his first stroke three weeks ago. Yesterday he was to have had a relatively routine procedure to close the small hole in the heart thought to have contributed to the first stroke.
Professor Mor-Yosef said Mr Sharon had emerged from surgery with vital signs showing "functional and stable" levels, and a CT scan showing the bleeding in his brain had been halted. But he acknowledged his condition remained "grave". Amid saturation print and broadcast coverage of the Prime Minister's illness, Israel's largest mass-circulation daily Yedhiot Ahronot proclaimed in a banner headline, "The final battle" .
Israel's two chief rabbis, representing the Ashkenazy and Sephardic communities, joined in calling for the people to recite five psalms, and goodwill messages poured into the Hadassah from international leaders and Israeli politicians across a wide spectrum of opinion. At a cabinet meeting convened by Ehud Olmert, his deputy and now acting replacement, an empty chair was left for the absent Prime Minister.
But amid the widespread sympathy for Mr Sharon, Israel was also gripped by immediate speculation over the country's political future without the man who has overwhelmingly dominated its public life for the past five years.
Meir Shetreet, the Transport Minister and a prominent member of Kadima, the centre party formed by Mr Sharon to fight the 28 March general election, said the new party's founding members should convene in the next 48 hours to decide the leadership. Mr Shetreet suggested the party should rally behind Mr Olmert as its new leader. Mr Shetreet acknowledged Mr Sharon's personal influence had been "decisive" in helping to put the party at the top of opinion polls but said he believed that people would continue to support it if it adhered to Mr Sharon's legacy.
Diplomats and leading Israeli analysts suggested the party could prevent itself imploding-and indeed maintain much of its support if it took a quick and unacrimonious decision to appoint a new leader to take on Labour's Amir Peretz and Likud's Benjamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister.
Uri Dromi, of the Israel Democracy Institute and a former senior aide to Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak when they were prime ministers, said Mr Olmert could well emerge as an effective potential prime minister in the three months up to the election, strengthening his pitch if endorsed by Kadima. " He is very capable and very shrewd and he can take decisions."
Mr Olmert, a former Likud hawk who, as mayor of Jerusalem, did much to foster controversial Jewish settlement in Arab East Jerusalem, is now the most "doveish" of Mr Sharon's immediate allies and has gone further in hinting at Iraeli withdrawals from the West Bank.
Mr Dromi said the electorate would be much less likely to take on trust the barely adumbrated Kadima programme, particularly on relations with the Palestinians, with a new leadership than it had been with Mr Sharon. But he said Mr Olmert would be capable of such a programme. "I think he can say, 'Guys, the dream of a greater Israel is dead' in a precise way Sharon wasn't willing to do. He can say, 'You all know you can't keep the Palestinian territories forever and remain a Jewish democratic state'."
Professor Yaron Ezrahi, a leading Hebrew University political scientist, said: "Under present circumstances, a coalition between the centre party and the left is most probable."
He said Mr Netanyahu would try to make a pitch to Kadima's centre ground but would be constrained by his support from the main settler organisation which backed him for the leadership, and by Likud's ultra-nationalist extremist Joseph Feiglin.
He rejected suggestions that Mr Netanyahu would be able to capitalise on his contention that security fared better under his premiership than under Mr Sharon's. He said Israelis would regard him as "unreliable" with problems such as internal Palestinian violence or the nuclear threat from Iran. "In the face of threats like this, the last person they want taking decisions is Benjamin Netanyahu," he said.
Recovery from serious strokes is unpredictable
Complete recovery from a stroke as serious as Ariel Sharon's is unlikely. The length of his operation - seven hours - itself carries risks and the damage is likely to be severe.
But the outcome is unpredictable and miraculous recoveries have been made. Giles Elrington, consultant neurologist at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London, said: "If I saw a person in his condition and with his history, I would say to the family, 'I don't think Dad is likely to go back to work after this'. But he is not a normal person; he is the leader of a country and he would be well supported."
Everything depended on whether the affected part of the brain was dead or only temporarily damaged, he said. "People will make the most incredible recoveries against the odds from stroke.
"Someone who appears badly affected in the early stages may come back, and someone who suffers slight damage may fail to progress.
"It is so variable. The wise clinician, even if he has seen the brain scans, will play his cards close to his chest."
Mr Sharon is being kept under deep sedation. The commonest stroke is an infarct or blockage in an artery in the brain caused by a blood clot, which accounts for 80 to 90 per cent.
The other kind are brain haemorrhages of the sort suffered by Mr Sharon, where there is a bleed into the brain. Sometimes brain haemorrhages follow infarcts.
Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor
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by Gilad Atzmon
InformationClearingHouse.info
5 Jan 06
“Laura and I share the concerns of the Israeli people about Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's health, and we are praying for his recovery. Prime Minister Sharon is a man of courage and peace…” George W Bush (US President and man of courage and peace)
“He has surprised, I think, everyone with the courage and statesmanship he has shown in recent years to work towards a long term peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.” Jack Straw (UK Foreign Affairs Minister and man of courage and statesmanship)
A man of peace is dying. Let us all pray for his quick recovery. A man that was just about to rejuvenate the Israeli political world, redeem for us all the Zionist state and its racist agenda. The great man is gravely ill. Oh dear Lord, save our messiah, oh dear Lord may you now be able to create a donkey so upright that it can carry his load.
A peaceful man is on his way to meet his Creator. The Lord may ask him, just as he enters the gate of heaven, “Hey Grandpa Arik, why are your hands so red?” Sometimes the Dear Lord pretends to be ignorant, he loves to give his chosen followers a chance to repent. Somehow, they tend to forget to do so while they are still amongst the living. But Grandpa Arik is not that silly, the Dear Lord isn’t going to fool him that easily. “What red, what blood? This is me painting your land in my favourite colour, I thought you'd like it". Grandpa Arik winks to the Lord. The Lord is left cold, unaffected. For more than a while, he seems to have been perplexed by the conduct his chosen followers.
Meanwhile, down on earth, the Israelites are praying for a new saviour, a new man of peace, a merciless general with a long-term agenda. A term that is so long that no one can ever see where it leads. The Israelites do not like to see a light in the end of the tunnel because it means that they live in a tunnel.
No, it isn’t easy to find a replacement for Grandpa. Indeed, as far as filling his shoes goes, the task seems slightly easier, but as far as the waistcoat is concerned, the mission is almost impossible. The whole of the Israelites can fit in. The whole of the Hebraic nation wants to wrap itself up in Grandpa Arik’s flak jacket. It is warm in the winter and it provides shadow in the summer. Somehow, it worked for him for many years. Nothing really touched him, nothing really stacked against the man; not the Qibya massacre, not Sabra and Shatila, not the death toll of thousands of Palestinian and Israeli civilians that took place under his direct command. Not even the bizarre death of his first wife and his son.
Grandpa has managed to get away with everything. On Earth.
Grandpa was the last and the best of his kind. He was a devoted Jewish Nationalist. For him peace wasn’t an end but rather a tactic. Arik was the last Hebraic warrior, he was the very last Israelite knight. All his followers are merely professional soldiers. They can kill if needed but they do not prefer to bathe in blood. They are spoiled. Thank you peace loving old man for teaching us what the Israelites are all about. Thank you peace loving old man for taking leave of us. Thank you especially for teaching us what Israelis love to love. It is a slight shame it took you so long but considering your talent to resurrect yourself from the dead, I would just say that it is never too late.
Raised as a secular Israeli Jew in Jerusalem, Gilad Atzmon witnessed and empathised with the daily sufferings of Palestinians and spent 20 years trying to resolve for himself the tensions of his background. Finally disillusioned, he moved away from Israel and went to England to study - philosophy. http://www.gilad.co.uk/ |
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Sunday February 4, 2001
The Observer
Fifty years ago Ariel Sharon terrorised a Palestinian village. Now he will lead Israel. In Qibya Jason Burke unravels his past At about eight o'clock on a warm autumn evening Ahmed al-Badoui was standing guard in a grove of olive trees on a rocky slope just beneath his village of Qibya. It was dusk and people were settling down for the night. Moonlight picked out the jagged limestone crags typical of the rolling hills and valleys north of Jerusalem. The city itself was only about 10 miles away but could not be seen. The first warning came when al-Badoui saw a dark shape flicker across the rocks at the edge of the olive field.
At first, he thought it was someone trying to steal olives. He gripped his wooden cudgel tightly and shouted a challenge. His answer came in a hail of bullets. One smashed into his wrist, another into his side. The impact of the heavy rounds knocked 22-year-old al-Badoui, a strapping 6ft farmer, into the dusty earth.
As he staggered to his feet he screamed to wake his village: 'The Jews are coming, the Jews are coming.'
It was mid-October 1953. Within eight hours al-Badoui's home was rubble. By dawn the next morning Israeli special forces would have dynamited much of the village and killed 69 people. Their leader was Ariel Sharon, the man who, unless the polls are outrageously inaccurate, seems certain to be Israel's Prime Minister by the middle of this week.
The attack was a typical Sharon operation. It was thorough, violent, ruthless, attention-grabbing and deeply controversial. His style has changed little from his first battles in the years after Israel's independence to the debacle in Lebanon that led to the deaths of hundreds of Israeli soldiers and more than 1,000 Palestinian civilians at the hands of Christian militiamen in 1982.
Sharon's motto has been the same - always escalate.
What that now means for the future of the Middle East peace process and for an Israel riddled with tensions is difficult to predict. But many are fearful. At a rally in the coastal town of Ashkelon last week, Sharon laid down the beliefs that worry so many. 'I will tell the Arabs that peace is no less important to you than it is to me. I have seen war and I know its horrors but the Jews have only one small country and it must be defended,' he said. 'Only I can bring you peace and security and protect Jerusalem. Because I know the Arabs and the Arabs know me.'
The people of Qibya certainly think they know Sharon. 'He is a man with killing in his blood,' al-Badoui told The Observer last week. 'I do not know why God has let him live.'
What happened in Qibya is still unclear. In the early 1950s, though the Israelis won the war of 1948 and established their state, the kingdom of Jordan occupied the so-called 'West Bank' and sponsored Palestinian raids into Israel itself in which hundreds of Israeli civilians were killed and wounded. The operation against Qibya, where a violent Palestinian partisan group was thought to be based, was designed to punish and chastise.
Safia Hussein Teeb, 83, remembers al-Badoui's screamed warnings as Sharon's crack troops poured through the olive groves. 'I was at home getting ready to go to sleep when I heard the shouting,' she said last week. 'Everything was confused and we hid downstairs where the animals were. All night we could hear explosions as the Israelis blew up houses. My daughter and her husband and my nephew were killed.'
Sharon's orders were to blow up some public buildings to make a point. He could, his superiors said, blow up a few houses as well if he felt it was really necessary. But the young commander had equipped his men with 600kgs of explosives and was determined to use them. In all, nearly 50 houses were destroyed. Most villagers died when their buildings were blown up.
Sharon has always said that his troops thought the houses were empty. But an inspection of ruined homes in Qibya last week revealed that all but the most cursory of checks would have found anyone hiding inside.
Two other little-known incidents from Sharon's early career have also surfaced. Earlier in 1953, Sharon led another punitive raid against an Egyptian-run refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. Interviews with participants reveal that even some of his own soldiers were uneasy at his ruthlessness and objected to the plan. But the attack went ahead and 15 people were killed.
Another alleged operation involved an ambush of women who were crossing Israel's border to get water from a village near Jerusalem. Sharon's supporters dismiss such stories as 'ancient history'.
His television advertisements have shown Sharon, 72, play up to what one aide said was the old warrior's 'Andrex image' - soft and strong. It seems to have worked. Polls published on Friday show he has a 20-point lead over Prime Minister Ehud Barak.
In the small cafe she runs in Kohav Yair, a small, beautifully maintained, suburban town in the middle of Israel, Daniella Lieberman takes another sip of her coffee and sighs. 'It's terrible,' she says. 'We don't want Sharon but after the last year how can we vote for Barak? It's a choice between evil or failure.'
Lieberman, 43, is exactly the sort of voter Barak needs to win over. She represents neither the hardcore right-wing Zionist and religious lobby nor the secular youth who pack the nightclubs of Eilat and Tel Aviv each Thursday night.
A package of concessions seen as at the limit of what the Israeli public would accept was rejected by Yasser Arafat, the president of the new semi-autonomous Palestinian government, last summer. Within months, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip exploded in violence that has so far left nearly 400 dead. The majority are Palestinians, but 50 Israelis have died, including many civilians.
A large number of Israelis - The Observer interviewed more than 70 last week - now feel that peace will not come through negotiation and believe that a harder line is needed. The economy is also languishing. 'The old collectivist spirit of sacrifice that motivated people in Israel 40 years ago has been replaced by something far more individualist,' said Tom Segev, a respected Israeli historian and journalist. 'Now whoever looks most likely to guarantee voters personal security - either physically or financially - will get their vote.'
A series of murders of Jews in the Palestinian areas occupied by Israel, and bombs in Israeli cities, have also hardened attitudes. Though many are voting for Sharon because he is the only alternative to Barak, important sections of Israeli society are fully behind the veteran right-winger. The million Russian immigrants absorbed by Israel in the past 10 years are key. Most back Sharon.
Sharon can also rely on the Jewish settlers in the occupied Palestinian territories and their supporters. 'The Lion of Israel', as he was dubbed for his daring military exploits in the wars of 1967 and 1973, was the architect of the first waves of settlement in the early 1970s and, as a Minister in various right-wing administrations, has done much to expand the contentious building programme.
Though there are fewer than 200,000 settlers, they command the support of a broad swathe of Israeli right-wingers. Barak was prepared forcibly to evacuate many of the settlements to gain peace. Sharon is likely to build more.
'The ultra Orthodox have more support than ever before,' said Galia Golan, a professor of political science at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. 'There is a creeping fundamentalism.'
By contrast Barak's re-election drive has faltered from the start. He has been hamstrung by a boycott - in protest at the killing of 13 young Israeli Arab demonstrators by police last year - by Palestinians living in the Jewish state. They have previously been a key vote bank for the Left.
Campaigning last week was lacklustre. Rallies were poorly attended and there were few signs on the streets that such a crucial vote was days away.
But it is clear that the poll last Tuesday is a crucial indicator of whether Israel will tend towards secular, progressive pluralism in the future, or the opposite. Last week The Observer watched as left-wing pro-peace activists confronted a group of ultra-Orthodox Jews celebrating the opening of a new building they had bought in the heart of the Muslim quarter of the old city of Jerusalem. In a narrow alley a few hundred yards from the religious complex known as the Temple Mount by Jews and as Al Haram al Sharif by Muslims, and sacred to both, heavily armed soldiers struggled to keep order.
A group of Palestinian youths silently watched the scuffles from nearby. The peaceniks came off worse. 'We have to struggle against these people and their ideas. They are not what Israel should be about,' said Noam Hofshteter, the head of the Jerusalem branch of Peace Now, a pressure group, as police moved him on. 'But it is a struggle we are losing.'
Above his head a huge Israeli flag fluttered from the roof of a house in the chill winter night breeze. Three other flags flew beside it - blatant provocations to 90 per cent of those living in the surrounding streets. But the owner of the house has never been bothered by such things in the past.
Whether that will change if he becomes Prime Minister remains to be seen. |
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by Robert Fisk
06 January 2006
Israel's Prime Minister was a ruthless military commander responsible for one of the most shocking war crimes of the 20th century, argues Robert Fisk. President George Bush acclaims Ariel Sharon as 'a man of peace', yet the blood that was shed at Sabra and Chatila remains a stain on the conscience of the Zionist nation. As Sharon lies stricken in his hospital bed, his political career over, how will history judge him?
I shook hands with him once, a brisk, no-nonsense soldier's grip from Sharon as he finished a review of the vicious Phalangist militiamen who stood in the barracks square at Karantina in Beirut. Who would have thought, I asked myself then, that this same bunch of murderers - the men who butchered their way through the Palestinian Sabra and Chatila refugee camps only a few weeks earlier - had their origins in the Nazi Olympics of 1936. That's when old Pierre Gemayel - still alive and standing stiffly to attention for Sharon - watched the "order" of Nazi Germany and proposed to bring some of this "order" to Lebanon. That's what Gemayel told me himself. Did Sharon not understand this. Of course, he must have done.
Back on 18 September that same year, Loren Jenkins of The Washington Post and Karsten Tveit of Norwegian television and I had clambered over the piled corpses of Chatila - of raped and eviscerated women and their husbands and children and brothers - and Jenkins, knowing that the Isrealis had sat around the camps for two nights watching this filth, shrieked "Sharon!" in anger and rage. He was right. Sharon it was who sent the Phalange into the camps on the night of 16 September - to hunt for "terrorists", so he claimed at the time.
The subsequent Israeli Kahan commission of enquiry into this atrocity provided absolute proof that Israeli soldiers saw the massacre taking place. The evidence of a Lieutenant Avi Grabovsky was crucial. He was an Israeli deputy tank commander and reported what he saw to his higher command. "Don't interfere," the senior officer said. Ever afterwards, Israeli embassies around the world would claim that the commission held Sharon only indirectly responsible for the massacre. It was untrue. The last page of the official Israeli report held Sharon "personally responsible". It was years later that the Israeli-trained Phalangist commander, Elie Hobeika, now working for the Syrians, agreed to turn state's evidence against Sharon - now the Israeli Prime Minister - at a Brussels court. The day after the Israeli attorney general declared Sharon's defence a "state" matter, Hobeika was killed by a massive car bomb in east Beirut. Israel denied responsibility. US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld traveled to Brussels and quietly threatened to withdraw Nato headquarters from Belgium if the country maintained its laws to punish war criminals from foreign nations. Within months, George W Bush had declared Sharon "a man of peace". It was all over.
In the end, Sharon got away with it, even when it was proved that he had, the night before the Phalangists attacked the civilians of the camp, publicly blamed the Palestinians for the murder of their leader, President-elect Bashir Gemayel. Sharon told these ruthless men that the Palestinians had killed their beloved "chief". Then he sent them in among the civilian sheep - and claimed later he could never have imagined what they would do in Chatila. Only years later was it proved that hundreds of Palestinians who survived the original massacre were interrogated by the Israelis and then handed back to the murderers to be slaughtered over the coming weeks.
So it is as a war criminal that Sharon will be known forever in the Arab world, through much of the Western world, in fact - save, of course, for the craven men in the White House and the State Department and the Blair Cabinet - as well as many leftist Israelis. Sabra and Chatila was a crime against humanity. Its dead counted more than half the fatalities of the World Trade Centre attacks of 2001. But the man who was responsible was a "man of peace". It was he who claimed that the preposterous Yasser Arafat was a Palestinian bin Laden. He it was who as Israeli foreign minister opposed Nato's war in Kosovo, inveighing against "Islamic terror" in Kosovo. "The moment that Israel expresses support...it's likely to be the next victim. Imagine that one day Arabs in Galilee demand that the region in which they live be recognised as an autonomous area, connected to the Palestinian Authority..." Ah yes, Sharon as an ally of another war criminal, Slobodan Milosevic. There must be no Albanian state in Kosovo.
Ever since he was elected in 2001 - and especially since his withdrawal of settlements from the rubbish tip of Gaza last year, a step which would, according to his spokesman, turn any plans for a Palestinian state in the West Bank into "formaldehyde" - his supporters have tried to turn Sharon into a pragmatist, another Charles de Gaulle. His new party was supposed to be proof of this. But in reality, Sharon had more in common with the putchist generals of Algeria.
He voted against the peace treaty with Egypt in 1979. He voted against a withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 1985. He opposed Israel's participation in the Madrid peace conference in 1991. He opposed the Knesset plenum vote on the Oslo agreement in 1993. He abstained on a vote for peace with Jordan in 1994. He voted against the Hebron agreement in 1997. He condemned the manner of Israel's retreat from Lebanon in 2000. By 2002, he had built 34 new Jewish colonies on Palestinian land.
And he was a man of peace.
There was a story told to me by one of the men investigating Sharon's responsibility for the Sabra and Chatila massacre, and the story is that the then Israeli defence minister, before he sent his Phalangist allies into the camps, announced that it was Palestinian "terrorists" who had murdered their newly assassinated leader, President-elect Gemayel. Sharon was to say later that he never dreamed the Phalange would massacre the Palestinians.
But how could he say that if he claimed earlier that the Palestinians killed the leader of the Phalange? In reality, no Palestinians were involved in Gemayel's death. It might seem odd in this new war to be dwelling about that earlier atrocity. I am fascinated by the language. Murderers, terrorists. That's what Sharon said then, and it's what he says now. Did he really make that statement in 1982? I begin to work the phone from Jerusalem, calling up Associated Press bureaus that might still have their files from 19 years ago. He would have made that speech - if indeed he used those words - some time on 15 September 1982.
One Sunday afternoon, my phone rings in Jerusalem. It's from an Israeli I met in Jaffa Street after the Sbarro bombing. An American Jewish woman had been screaming abuse at me - foreign journalists are being insulted by both sides with ever more violent language - and this man suddenly intervenes to protect me. He's smiling and cheerful and we exchange phone numbers. Now on the phone, he says he's taking the El-Al night flight to New York with his wife. Would I like to drop by for tea?
He turns out to have a luxurious apartment next to the King David Hotel and I notice, when I read his name on the outside security buzzer, that he's a rabbi. He's angry because a neighbour has just let down a friend's car tyres in the underground parking lot and he's saying how he felt like smashing the windows of the neighbour's car. His wife, bringing me tea and feeding me cookies, says that her husband - again, he should remain anonymous - gets angry very quickly. There's a kind of gentleness about them both - how easy it is to spot couples who are still in love - that is appealing. But when the rabbi starts to talk about the Palestinians, his voice begins to echo through the apartment. He says several times that Sharon is a good friend of his, a fine man, who's been to visit him in his New York office.
What we should do is go into those vermin pits and take out the terrorists and murderers. Vermin pits, yes I said, vermin, animals. I tell you what we should do. If one stone is lobbed from a refugee camp, we should bring the bulldozers and tear down the first 20 houses close to the road. If there's another stone, another 20 ones. They'd soon learn not to throw stones. Look, I tell you this. Stones are lethal. If you throw a stone at me, I'll shoot you. I have the right to shoot you.
Now the rabbi is a generous man. He's been in Israel to donate a vastly important and, I have no doubt, vastly expensive medical centre to the country. He is well-read. And I liked the fact that - unlike too many Israelis and Palestinians who put on a "we-only-want-peace" routine to hide more savage thoughts - he at least spoke his mind. But this is getting out of hand.
Why should I throw a stone at the rabbi? He shouts again. "If you throw a stone at me, I will shoot you." But if you throw a stone at me, I say, I won't shoot you. Because I have the right not to shoot you. He frowns. "Then I'd say you're out of your mind."
I am driving home when it suddenly hits me. The Old and New Testaments have just collided. The rabbi's dad taught him about an eye for an eye - or 20 homes for a stone - whereas Bill Fisk taught me about turning the other cheek. Judaism is bumping against Christianity. So is it any surprise that Judaism and Islam are crashing into each other? For despite all the talk of Christians and Jews being "people of the Book", Muslims are beginning to express ever harsher views of Jews. The sickening Hamas references to Jews as "the sons of pigs and monkeys" are echoed by Israelis who talk of Palestinians as cockroaches or "vermin", who tell you - as the rabbi told me - that Islam is a warrior religion, a religion that does not value human life. And I recall several times a Jewish settler who told me back in 1993 - in Gaza, just before the Oslo accords were signed - that "we do not recognise their Koran as a valid document."
I call up Eva Stern in New York. Her talent for going through archives convinces me she can find out what Sharon said before the Sabra and Chatila massacre. I give her the date that is going through my head: 15 September 1982. She comes back on the line the same night. "Turn your fax on," Eva says. "You're going to want to read this." The paper starts to crinkle out of the machine. An AP report of 15 September 1982. "Defence Minister Ariel Sharon, in a statement, tied the killing [of the Phalangist leader Gemayel] to the PLO, saying: "It symbolises the terrorist murderousness of the PLO terrorist organisations and their supporters."
Then, a few hours later, Sharon sent the Phalange gunmen into the Palestinian camps. Reading that fax again and again, I feel a chill coming over me. There are Israelis today with as much rage towards the Palestinians as the Phalange 19 years ago. And these are the same words I am hearing today, from the same man, about the same people.
In September 2000, Ariel Sharon marched to the Muslim holy places - above the site of the Jewish Temple Mount - accompanied by about a thousand Israeli policemen. Within 24 hours, Israeli snipers opened fire with rifles on Palestinian protesters battling with police in the grounds of the seventh-century Dome of the Rock. At least four were killed and the head of the Israeli police, Yehuda Wilk, later confirmed that snipers had fired into the crowd when Palestinians "were felt to be endangering the lives of officers". Sixty-six Palestinians were wounded, most of them by rubber-coated steel bullets. The killings came almost exactly 10 years after armed Israeli police killed 19 Palestinian demonstrators and wounded another 140 in an incident at exactly the same spot, a slaughter that almost lost the United States its Arab support in the prelude to the 1991 Gulf War.
Sharon showed no remorse. "The state of Israel," he told CNN, "cannot afford that an Israeli citizen will not be able to visit part of his country, not to speak for the holiest for the Jewish people all around the world." He did not, however, explain why he should have chosen this moment - immediately after the collapse of the "peace process" - to undertake such a provocative act. Stone-throwing and shooting spread to the West Bank. Near Qalqiliya, a Palestinian policeman shot dead an Israeli soldier and wounded another - they were apparently part of a joint Israeli-Palestinian patrol originally set up under the terms of the Oslo agreement. "Everything was pre-planned," Sharon would claim five weeks later. "They took advantage of my visit to the Temple Mount. This was not the first time I've been there..."
Jerusalem is a city of illusions. Here Ariel Sharon promises his people "security" and brings them war. On the main road to Ma'ale Adumim, inside Israel's illegal "municipal boundaries", Israelis drive at over 100 mph. In the old city, Israeli troops and Palestinian civilians curse each other before the few astonished Christian tourists. Loving Jesus doesn't help to make sense of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Gideon Samet got it right in Ha'aretz. "Jerusalem looks like a Bosnia about to be born. Main thoroughfares inside the Green Line... have become mortally perilous... The capital's suburbs are exposed as Ramat Rachel was during the war of independence..." Samet is pushing it a bit. Life is more dangerous for Palestinians than for Israelis. Terrorism, terrorism, terrorism. "I suggest that we repeat to ourselves every day and throughout the day," Sharon tells us, "that there will be no negotiations with the Palestinians until there is a total cessation of terrorism, violence and incitement."
Gaza now is a miniature Beirut. Under Israeli siege, struck by F-16s and tank fire and gunboats, starved and often powerless - there are now six-hour electricity cuts every day in Gaza - it's as if Arafat and Sharon are replaying their bloody days in Lebanon. Sharon used to call Arafat a mass murderer back then. It's important not to become obsessed during wars. But Sharon's words were like an old, miserable film had seen before. Every morning in Jerusalem, I would pick up the Jerusalem Post. And there on the front page, as usual, will be another Sharon diatribe. PLO murderers. Palestinian Authority terror. Murderous terrorists.
Within hours of the 11 September 2001 attacks on the United States, Ariel Sharon turned Israel into America's ally in the "war on terror", immediately realigning Yasser Arafat as the Palestinian version of bin Laden and the Palestinian suicide bombers as blood brothers of the 19 Arabs - none of them Palestinian - who hijacked the four American airliners. In the new and vengeful spirit that President Bush encouraged among Americans, Israel's supporters in the United States now felt free to promote punishments for Israel's opponents that came close to the advocacy of war crimes. Nathan Lewin, a prominent Washington attorney and Jewish communal leader - and an often-mentioned candidate for a federal judgeship - called for the execution of family members of suicide bombers. "If executing some suicide bombers' families saves the lives of even an equal number of potential civilian victims, the exchange is, I believe, ethically permissible," he wrote in the journal Sh'ma.
When Sharon began his operation "Defensive Shield", the UN Security Council, with the active participation and support of the United States, demanded an immediate end to Israel's reoccupation of the West Bank. President George W Bush insisted that Sharon should follow the advice of "Israel's American friends" and - for Tony Blair was with Bush at the time - "Israel's British friends", and withdraw. "When I say withdraw, I mean it," Bush snapped three days later. But he meant nothing of the kind. Instead, he sent secretary of state Colin Powell off on an "urgent" mission of peace, a journey to Israel and the West Bank that would take an incredible eight days - just enough time, Bush presumably thought, to allow his "friend" Sharon to finish his latest bloody adventure in the West Bank. Supposedly unaware that Israel's chief of staff, Shoal Mofaz, had told Sharon that he needed at least eight weeks to "finish the job" of crushing the Palestinians, Powell wandered off around the Mediterranean, dawdling in Morocco, Spain, Egypt and Jordan before finally fetching up in Israel. If Washington firefighters took that long to reach a blaze, the American capital would long ago have turned to ashes. But of course, the purpose of Powell's idleness was to allow enough time for Jenin to be turned to ashes. Mission, I suppose, accomplished.
Sharon's ability to scorn the Americans was always humiliating for Washington. Before the massacres of 1982, Philip Habib was President Reagan's special representative, his envoy to Beirut increasingly horrified by the ferocity of Sharon's assault on the city. Not long before he died, I asked Habib why he didn't stop the bloodshed. "I could see it," he said. "I told the Israelis they were destroying the city, that they were firing non-stop. They just said they weren't. They said they werent doing that. I called Sharon on the phone. He said it wasnt true. That damned man said to me on the phone that what I saw happening wasn't happening. So I held the telephone out of the window so he could hear the explosions. Then he said to me: 'What kind of conversation is this where you hold a telephone out of a window?'"
Sharon's involvement in the 1982 Sabra and Chatila massacres continues to fester around the man who, according to Israel's 1993 Kahan commission report, bore "personal responsibility" for the Phalangist slaughter. So fearful were the Israeli authorities that their leaders would be charged with war crimes that they drew up a list of countries where they might have to stand trial - and which they should henceforth avoid - now that European nations were expanding their laws to include foreign nationals who had committed crimes abroad. Belgian judges were already considering a complaint by survivors of Sabra and Chatila - one of them a female rape victim - while a campaign had been mounted abroad against other Israeli figures associated with the atrocities. Eva Stern was one of those who tried to prevent Brigadier General Amos Yaron being appointed Israeli defence attaché in Washington because he had allowed the Lebanese Phalange militia to enter the camps on 16 September 1982, and knew - according to the Kahan commission report - that women and children were being murdered. He only ended the killings two days later. Canada declined to accept Yaron as defence attaché. Stern, who compiled a legal file on Yaron, later vainly campaigned with human rights groups to annul his appointment - by Prime Minister Ehud Barak - as director general of the Israeli defence ministry. The Belgian government changed their law - and dropped potential charges against Sharon - after a visit to Brussels by US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the man who famously referred on 6 August 2002 to Israelis' control over "the so-called occupied territory" which was "the result of a war, which they won".
Rumsfeld had threatened that NATO headquarters might be withdrawn from Belgian soil if the Belgians didn't drop the charges against Sharon.
Yet all the while, we were supposed to believe that it was the corrupt, Parkinson's-haunted Yasser Arafat who was to blame for the new war. He was chastised by George Bush while the Palestinian people continued to be bestialised by the Israeli leadership. Rafael Eytan, the former Israeli chief of staff, had referred to Palestinians as "cockroaches in a glass jar". Menachem Begin called them "two-legged beasts". The Shas party leader who suggested that God should send the Palestinian "ants" to hell, also called them "serpents".
In August 2000, Barak called them crocodiles. Israeli chief of staff Moshe Yalon described the Palestinians as a "cancerous manifestation" and equated the military action in the occupied territories with "chemotherapy". In March 2001, the Israeli tourism minister, Rehavem Zeevi, called Arafat a "scorpion". Sharon repeatedly called Arafat a "murderer" and compared him to bin Laden.
He contributed to the image of Palestinian inhumanity in an interview in 1995, when he stated that Fatah sometimes punished Palestinians by "chopping off limbs of seven- and eight-year-old children in front of their parents as a form of punishment". However brutal Fatah may be, there is no record of any such atrocity being committed by them. But if enough people can be persuaded to believe this nonsense, then the use of Israeli death squads against such Palestinians becomes natural rather than illegal.
Sharon was forever, like his Prime Minister Menachem Begin, evoking the Second World War in spurious parallels with the Arab-Israeli conflict. When in the late winter of 1988 the US State Department opened talks with the PLO in Tunis after Arafat renounced "terrorism", Sharon stated in an interview with the Wall Street Journal that this was worse than the British and French appeasement before the Second World War when "the world, to prevent war, sacrificed one of the democracies". Arafat was "like Hitler who wanted so much to negotiate with the Allies in the second half of the second world war...and the Allies said 'No'. They said there are enemies with whom you don't talk. They pushed him to the bunker in Berlin where he found his death, and Arafat is the same kind of enemy, that with whom you don't talk. He's got too much blood on his hands."
Thus within his lifetime Sharon was able to bestialise Yasser Arafat as both Hitler and bin Laden. The thrust of Sharon's argument in those days was that the creation of a Palestinian state would mean a war in which "the terrorists will be acting from behind a cordon of UN forces and observers". By the time he was on his apparent death bed yesterday that Palestinian "state", far from being protected by the UN, was non-existent, its territory still being carved up in the West Bank by growing Jewish settlements, road blocks and a concrete wall.
Largely forgotten amid Sharon's hatred for "terrorism" was his outspoken criticism of Nato's war against Serbia in 1999, when he was Israeli foreign minister. Eleven years earlier he had sympathised with the political objective of Slobodan Milosevic: to prevent the establishment of an Albanian state in Kosovo. This, he said, would lead to "Greater Albania" and provide a haven for - readers must here hold their breath - "Islamic terror". In a Belgrade newspaper interview, Sharon said that "we stand together with you against the Islamic terror". Once Nato's bombing of Serbia was under way, however, Sharon's real reason for supporting the Serbs became apparent. "It's wrong for Israel to provide legitimacy to this forceful sort of intervention which the Nato countries are deploying... in an attempt to impose a solution on regional disputes," he said. "The moment Israel expresses support for the sort of model of action we're seeing in Kosovo, it's likely to be the next victim. Imagine that one day Arabs in Galilee demand that the region in which they live be recognised as an autonomous area, connected to the Palestinian Authority..."
NATO's bombing, Sharon said, was "brutal interventionism". The Israeli journalist Uri Avnery, who seized on this extraordinary piece of duplicity, said that "Islamic terror" in Kosovo could only exist in "Sharon's racist imagination". Avnery was far bolder in translating what lay behind Sharon's antipathy towards Nato action than Sharon himself. "If the Americans and the Europeans interfere today in the matter of Kosovo, what is to prevent them from doing the same tomorrow in the matter of Palestine?
"Sharon has made it crystal-clear to the world that there is a similarity and perhaps even identity between Milosevic's attitude towards Kosovo and the attitude of Netanyahu and Sharon towards the Palestinians." Besides, for a man whose own "brutal interventionism" in Lebanon in 1982 led to a Middle East bloodbath of unprecedented proportions, Sharon's remarks were, to say the least, hypocritical.
As Sharon sent an armoured column to reinvade Nablus, still ignoring Bush's demand to withdraw his troops from the West Bank, Colin Powell turned on Arafat, warning him that it was his "last chance" to show his leadership. There was no mention of the illegal Jewish settlements. There was to be no "last chance" threat for Sharon. The Americans even allowed him to refuse a UN fact-finding team in the occupied territories. Sharon was meeting with President George W Bush in Washington when a suicide bomber killed at least 15 Israeli civilians in a Tel Aviv nightclub; he broke off his visit and returned at once to Israel. Prominent American Jewish leaders, including Elie Wiesel and Alan Dershowitz, immediately called upon the White House not to put pressure on Sharon to join new Middle East peace talks. "This is a tough time," Wiesel announced. "This is not a time to pressure Israel. Any prime minister would do what Sharon is doing. He is doing his best. They should trust him." Wiesel need hardly have worried.
Only a month earlier, the Americans rolled out their first S-70A-55 troopcarrying Black Hawk helicopter to be sold to the Israelis. Israel had purchased 24 of the new machines, costing $211m - most of which would be paid for by the United States - even though it had 24 earlier-model Black Hawks. The log book of the first of the new helicopters was ceremonially handed over to the director general of the Israeli defence ministry, the notorious Amos Yaron, by none other than Alexander Haig - the man who gave Begin the green light to invade Lebanon in 1982.
Perhaps the only man who now had the time to work out the logic of this appalling conflict was the Palestinian leader sitting now in his surrounded, broken, ill-lit and unhealthy office block in Ramallah. The one characteristic Arafat shared with Sharon - apart from old age and decrepitude - was his refusal to plan ahead. What he said, what he did, what he proposed, was decided only at the moment he was forced to act. This was partly his old guerrilla training, a characteristic shared by Saddam. If you don't know what you are going to do tomorrow, you can be sure that your enemies don't know either. Sharon took the same view.
The most terrible incident - praised by Sharon at the time as a "great success" - was the attack by Israel on Salah Shehada, a Hamas leader, which slaughtered nine children along with eight adults. Their names gave a frightful reality to this child carnage: 18-month-old Ayman Matar, three-year-old Mohamed Matar, five-year-old Diana Matar, four-year-old Sobhi Hweiti, six-year-old Mohamed Hweiti, 10-year-old Ala Matar, 15-year-old Iman Shehada, 17-year-old Maryam Matar. And Dina Matar. She was two months old. An Israeli air force pilot dropped a one-ton bomb on their homes from an American-made F-16 aircraft on 22 July 2002.
What war did Sharon think he was fighting? And what was he fighting for? Sharon regarded the attack as a victory against "terror". Al-Wazzir, now an economic analyst in Gaza, believed that people who did not believe themselves to be targets were now finding themselves under attack. "There's a network of Israeli army and air force intelligence and Mossad and Shin Bet that works together, feeding each other information. They can cross the lines between Area C and Area B in the occupied territories. Usually they carry out operations when IDF morale is low. When they killed my father, the IDF was in very low spirits because of the first intifada. So they go for a 'spectacular' to show what great 'warriors' they are. Now the IDF morale is low again because of the second intifada."
Palestinian security officers in Gaza were intrigued by the logic behind the Israeli killings. "Our guys meet their guys and we know their officers and operatives," one of the Palestinian officials tells me. "I tell you this frankly - they are as corrupt and indisciplined as we are. And as ruthless. After they targeted Mohamed Dahlan's convoy when he was coming back from security talks, Dahlan talked to foreign minister Peres. "Look what you guys are doing to us," Dahlan told Peres. "Don't you realise it was me who took Sharon's son to meet Arafat?" Al-Wazzir understands some of the death squad logic. "It has some effect because we are a paternalistic society. We believe in the idea of a father figure. But when they assassinated my dad, the intifada didn't stop. It was affected, but all the political objectives failed. Rather than demoralising the Palestinians, it fuelled the intifada. They say there's now a hundred Palestinians on the murder list. No, I don't think the Palestinians will adopt the same type of killings against Israeli intelligence.
"An army is an institution, a system; murdering an officer just results in him the great war for civilisation 573 being replaced..." The murder of political or military opponents was a practice the Israelis honed in Lebanon where Lebanese guerrilla leaders were regularly blown up by hidden bombs or shot in the back by Shin Bet execution squads, often - as in the case of an Amal leader in the village of Bidias - after interrogation. And all in the name of "security".
Throughout the latest bloodletting, the one distinctive feature of the conflict - the illegal and continuing colonisation of occupied Arab land - was yet again a taboo subject, to be ignored, or mentioned in passing only when Jewish settlers were killed. That this was the world's last colonial conflict, in which the colonisers were supported by the United States, was undiscussable, a prohibited subject, something quite outside the brutality between Palestinians and Israelis which was, so we had to remember, now part of America's "war on terror". This is what Sharon had dishonestly claimed since 11 September 2001. The truth, however, became clear in a revealing interview Sharon gave to a French magazine in December of that year, in which he recalled a telephone conversation with Jacques Chirac. Sharon said he told the French president that: "I was at that time reading a terrible book about the Algerian war. It's a book whose title reads in Hebrew: The Savage War of Peace. I know that President Chirac fought as an officer during this conflict and that he had himself been decorated for his courage. So, in a very friendly way, I told him: 'Mr. President, you have to understand us, here, it's as if we are in Algeria. We have no place to go. And besides, we have no intention of leaving.'"
Sana Sersawi speaks carefully, loudly but slowly, as she recalls the chaotic, dangerous, desperately tragic events that overwhelmed her almost exactly 19 years ago, on 18 September 1982. As one of the survivors prepared to testify against the Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon - who was then Israel's defence minister - she stops to search her memory when she confronts the most terrible moments of her life. "The Lebanese Forces militia had taken us from our homes and marched us up to the entrance to the camp where a large hole had been dug in the earth. The men were told to get into it. Then the militiamen shot a Palestinian. The women and children had climbed over bodies to reach this spot, but we were truly shocked by seeing this man killed in front of us and there was a roar of shouting and screams from the women. That's when we heard the Israelis on loudspeakers shouting, "Give us the men, give us the men." We thought: "Thank God, they will save us." It was to prove a cruelly false hope.
Mrs Sersawi, three months pregnant, saw her 30-year-old husband Hassan, and her Egyptian brother-in-law Faraj el-Sayed Ahmed standing in the crowd of men. "We were all told to walk up the road towards the Kuwaiti embassy, the women and children in front, the men behind. We had been separated. There were Phalangist militiamen and Israeli soldiers walking alongside us. I could still see Hassan and Faraj. It was like a parade. There were several hundred of us. When we got to the Cité Sportive, the Israelis put us women in a big concrete room and the men were taken to another side of the stadium. There were a lot of men from the camp and I could no longer see my husband. The Israelis went round saying "Sit, sit." It was 11 o'clock. An hour later, we were told to leave. But we stood around outside amid the Israeli soldiers, waiting for our men."
Sana Sersawi waited in the bright, sweltering sun for Hassan and Faraj to emerge. "Some men came out, none of them younger than 40, and they told us to be patient, that hundreds of men were still inside. Then about four in the afternoon, an Israeli officer came out. He was wearing dark glasses and said in Arabic: "What are you all waiting for?" He said there was nobody left, that everyone had gone. There were Israeli trucks moving out with tarpaulin over them. We couldn't see inside. And there were Jeeps and tanks and a bulldozer making a lot of noise. We stayed there as it got dark and the Israelis appeared to be leaving and we were very nervous.
"But then when the Israelis had moved away, we went inside. And there was no one there. Nobody. I had been only three years married. I never saw my husband again."
The smashed Camille Chamoun Sports Stadium was a natural "holding centre" for prisoners. Only two miles from Beirut airport, it had been an ammunition dump for Yasser Arafat's PLO and repeatedly bombed by Israeli jets during the 1982 siege of Beirut so that its giant, smashed exterior looked like a nightmare denture. The Palestinians had earlier mined its cavernous interior, but its vast, underground storage space and athletics changing-rooms remained intact.
It was a familiar landmark to all of us who lived in Beirut. At mid-morning on 18 September 1982 - around the time Sana Sersawi says she was brought to the stadium - I saw hundreds of Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners, perhaps well over 1,000 in all, sitting in its gloomy, cavernous interior, squatting in the dust, watched over by Israeli soldiers and plainclothes Shin Beth agents and a group of men who I suspected, correctly, were Lebanese collaborators. The men sat in silence, obviously in fear.
From time to time, I noted, a few were taken away. They were put into Israeli army trucks or jeeps or Phalangist vehicles - for further "interrogation". Nor did I doubt this. A few hundred metres away, up to 600 massacre victims of the Sabra and Chatila Palestinian refugee camps rotted in the sun, the stench of decomposition drifting over the prisoners and their captors alike. It was suffocatingly hot. Loren Jenkins of The Washington Post, Paul Eedle of Reuters and I had only got into the cells because the Israelis assumed - given our Western appearance - that we must have been members of Shin Beth. Many of the prisoners had their heads bowed.
Arab prisoners usually adopted this pose of humiliation. But Israel's militiamen had been withdrawn from the camps, their slaughter over, and at least the Israeli army was now in charge. So what did these men have to fear?
Looking back - and listening to Sana Sersawi today - I shudder now at our innocence. My notes of the time contain some ominous clues. We found a Lebanese employee of Reuters, Abdullah Mattar, among the prisoners and obtained his release, Paul leading him away with his arm around the man's shoulders. "They take us away, one by one, for interrogation," one of the prisoners muttered to me. "They are Haddad militiamen. Usually they bring the people back after interrogation, but not always. Sometimes the people do not return." Then an Israeli officer ordered me to leave. Why couldn't the prisoners talk to me? I asked. "They can talk if they want," he replied. "But they have nothing to say."
All the Israelis knew what had happened inside the camps. The smell of the corpses was now overpowering. Outside, a Phalangist Jeep with the words "Military Police" painted on it - if so exotic an institution could be associated with this gang of murderers - drove by. A few television crews had turned up. One filmed the Lebanese Christian militiamen outside the Cité Sportive. He also filmed a woman pleading to an Israeli army colonel called "Yahya" for the release of her husband. The colonel has now been positively identified by The Independent. Today, he is a general in the Israeli army.
Along the main road opposite the stadium there was a line of Israeli Merkava tanks, their crews sitting on the turrets, smoking, watching the men being led from the stadium in ones or twos, some being set free, others being led away by Shin Beth men or by Lebanese men in drab khaki overalls. All these soldiers knew what had happened inside the camps. One, Lt Avi Grabovsky - he was later to testify to the Israeli Kahan commission - had even witnessed the murder of several civilians the previous day and had been told not to "interfere".
And in the days that followed, strange reports reached us. A girl had been dragged from a car in Damour by Phalangist militiamen and taken away, despite her appeals to a nearby Israeli soldier. Then the cleaning lady of a Lebanese woman who worked for a US television chain complained bitterly that Israelis had arrested her husband. He was never seen again.
There were other vague rumours of "disappeared" people. I wrote in my notes at the time that "even after Chatila, Israel's 'terrorist' enemies were being liquidated in West Beirut." But I had not directly associated this dark conviction with the Cité Sportive. I had not even reflected on the fearful precedents of a sports stadium in time of war. Hadn't there been a sports stadium in Santiago a few years before, packed with prisoners after Pinochet's coup d'état, a stadium from which many prisoners never returned?
Among the testimonies gathered by lawyers seeking to indict Ariel Sharon for war crimes is that of Wadha al-Sabeq. On Friday 17 September 1982, she said, while the massacre was still - unknown to her - under way inside Sabra and Chatila, she was in her home with her family in Bir Hassan, just opposite the camps. "Neighbours came and said the Israelis wanted to stamp our ID cards, so we went downstairs and we saw both Israelis and Lebanese forces on the road. The men were separated from the women." This separation - with its awful shadow of similar separations at Srebrenica during the Bosnian war - was a common feature of these mass arrests. "We were told to go to the Cité Sportive. The men stayed put." Among the men were Wadha's two sons, 19-year-old Mohamed and 16-year-old Ali and her brother Mohamed. "We went to the Cité Sportive, as the Israelis told us," she says. "I never saw my sons or brother again."
The survivors tell distressingly similar stories. Bahija Zrein says she was ordered by an Israeli patrol to go to the Cité Sportive and the men with her, including her 22-year-old brother, were taken away. Some militiamen - watched by the Israelis - loaded him into a car, blindfolded, she says.
"That's how he disappeared," she says in her official testimony, "and I have never seen him again since." It was only a few days afterwards that we journalists began to notice a discrepancy in the figures of dead. While up to 600 bodies had been found inside Sabra and Chatila, 1,800 civilians had been reported as "missing". We assumed - how easy assumptions are in war --that they had been killed in the three days between 16 September 1982 and the withdrawal of the Phalangist killers on 18 September, and that their corpses had been secretly buried outside the camp. Beneath the golf course, we suspected. The idea that many of these young people had been murdered outside the camps or after 18 September, that the killings were still going on while we walked through the camps, never occurred to us.
Why did we journalists at the time not think of this? The following year, the Israeli Kahan commission published its report, condemning Sharon but ending its own inquiry of the atrocity on 18 September, with just a one-line hint - unexplained - that several hundred people may have "disappeared around the same time". The commission interviewed no Palestinian survivors but it was allowed to become the narrative of history.
The idea that the Israelis went on handing over prisoners to their bloodthirsty militia allies never occurred to us. The Palestinians of Sabra and Chatila are now giving evidence that this is exactly what happened. One man, Abdel Nasser Alameh, believes his brother Ali was handed to the Phalange on the morning of 18 September. A Palestinian Christian woman called Milaneh Boutros has recorded how, in a truck-load of women and children, she was taken from the camps to the Christian town of Bikfaya, the home of the newly assassinated Christian President-elect Bashir Gemayel, where a grief-stricken Christian woman ordered the execution of a 13-year-old boy in the truck. He was shot. The truck must have passed at least four Israeli checkpoints on its way to Bikfaya. And heaven spare me, I had even met the woman who ordered the boy's execution.
Even before the slaughter inside the camps had ended, Shahira Abu Rudeina says she was taken to the Cité Sportive where, in one of the underground "holding centres", she saw a retarded man, watched by Israeli soldiers, burying bodies in a pit. Her evidence might be rejected were it not for the fact that she also expressed her gratitude for an Israeli soldier - inside the Chatila camp, against all the evidence given by the Israelis - who prevented the murder of her daughters by the Phalange.
Long after the war, the ruins of the Cité Sportive were torn down and a brand new marble stadium was built in its place, partly by the British. Pavarotti has sung there. But the testimony of what may lie beneath its foundations - and its frightful implications - will give Ariel Sharon further reason to fear an indictment.
I had been in the Sabra and Chatila camps when these crimes took place. I had returned to the camps, year after year, to try to discover what happened to the missing thousand men. Karsten Tveit of Norwegian television had been with me in 1982 and he had returned to Beirut many times with the same purpose. Lawyers weren't the only people investigating these crimes against humanity. In 2001, Tveit arrived in Lebanon with the original 1982 tapes of those women pleading for their menfolk at the gates of the Cité Sportive. He visited the poky little video shops in the present-day camp and showed and reshowed the tapes until local Palestinians identified them; then Tveit set off to find the women - 19 years older now - who were on the tape, who had asked for their sons and brothers and fathers and husbands outside the Cité Sportive. He traced them all. None had ever seen their loved ones again.
Extracted from The Great War For Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East, by Robert Fisk. Published by Fourth Estate on 3 October 2005 |
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SHARON'S OFFICIAL BIOGRAPHY FROM THE ISRAELI MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS:
With annotations from The Electronic Intifada.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's personal history is intertwined with war crimes and crimes against humanity. Cases such as those of Yugoslavian former president Slobodan Milosevic, the perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide, and others, provide compelling precedents for ending the impunity that Ariel Sharon has thus far enjoyed. Sharon should be indicted for the crimes in which he bears responsibility as the first step in a process of accountability that will bring justice to his victims and their families. Ariel Sharon was born in Kfar Malal in 1928.
He joined the Haganah at the age of 14. During the 1948 War of Independence, he commanded an infantry company in the Alexandroni Brigade.
In 1953, he founded and led the "101" special commando unit which carried out retaliatory operations.[1]
[1] The Electronic Intifada notes: As commander of the notorious Unit 101, Sharon led attacks on Palestinian villages in which women and children were killed. The massacre in the West Bank village of Qibya, on October 14, 1953, was perhaps the most notorious. His troops blew up 45 houses and 69 Palestinian civilians -- about half of them women and children -- were killed. The U.S. Department of State issued a statement on 18 October 1953, expressing its "deepest sympathy for the families of those who lost their lives" in the Qibya attack as well as the conviction that those responsible "should be brought to account and that effective measures should be taken to prevent such incidents in the future." (Department of State Bulletin, Oct. 26, 1953, p. 552).
Sharon was appointed commander of a paratroop brigade in 1956 and fought in the Sinai Campaign.[2]
[2] The Electronic Intifada notes: On 16 August, 1995, Ohad Gozani in Tel Aviv, writing for The Daily Telegraph, in an article entitled, "Israelis Admit Massacre", reported: "Reports of how Israeli paratroopers killed about 270 Egyptian prisoners of war 40 years ago are straining relations between the two countries. Egypt has demanded an investigation into the alleged atrocities, which date back to Israel's involvement in the 1956 Anglo-French campaign to take the Suez Canal. The killings were revealed in a paper on the Sinai campaign commissioned by the army's military history division. They were described in graphic detail in newspaper and television interviews.In all, 273 Egyptians, some of them Sudanese civilian road workers, were killed in three separate incidents, according to the accounts.
Arye Biro, a retired army general, admitted shooting the Sudanese at a quarry two days into the campaign at strategic Mitla Pass in central Sinai. Mr. Biro, then a company leader in the 890 Paratroop battalion, said the 49 terrified prisoners were taken into a quarry and shot dead. He said: "We couldn't take care of anything else before we got done with them. One escaped with bullets in the chest and in the leg, but came back on all fours because he was thirsty. He soon joined his [dead] comrades." Mr. Biro said he and his troops later killed 56 Egyptian soldiers and irregulars as they were advancing in a truck to the oil port of Ras-al-Sudr on the Gulf of Suez. "Six survived the initial bursts of gunfire," he said. "They later went to sleep with the rest. Blood was coming out of every hole in the flatbed truck and in huge quantities." A witness told the newspaper: "When the rear flap was lowered, all the bodies poured out in one mass. I couldn't bear the thought that we shot people without a fight." Another 168 Egyptian soldiers were cut down as the paratroopers headed South. Mr. Biro's commanding officers were Ariel Sharon and Rafael Eytan..."
In 1957 he attended the Camberley Staff College in Great Britain.
During 1958-62, Sharon served as an infantry brigade commander and then as Infantry School Commander.
He was appointed Head of the IDF Northern Command in 1964 and Head of the Army Training Department in 1966.
He participated in the 1967 Six Day War as commander of an armored division.
In 1969 he was appointed Head of the IDF Southern Command.[3]
[3] The Electronic Intifada notes: On 21 January 2001, Phil Reeves writing for The Independent, in an article entitled, "Sharon's return puts Wreckage Street in fear," reported: "In August 1971 alone, troops under Mr Sharon's command destroyed some 2,000 homes in the Gaza Strip, uprooting 12,000 people [Palestinian refugees] for the second time in their lives. Hundreds of young Palestinian men were arrested and deported to Jordan and Lebanon. Six hundred relatives of suspected guerrillas were exiled to Sinai. In the second half of 1971, 104 guerrillas were assassinated."
Sharon resigned from the army in June 1972, but was recalled to active military service in the 1973 Yom Kippur War to command an armored division and lead the crossing of the Suez Canal.
Ariel Sharon was elected to the Knesset in December 1973, but resigned a year later, serving as security adviser to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (1975).
He was again elected to the Knesset in 1977 on the Shlomzion ticket.
Appointed Minister of Agriculture in the first government created by Menachem Begin, he pursued agricultural cooperation with Egypt.
In 1981, Sharon was appointed Defense Minister, serving in this post during the Lebanon War, which brought about the destruction of the PLO terrorist infrastructure in Lebanon.[4]
[4] The Electronic Intifada notes: As minister of defense in 1982, Sharon orchestrated Israel's invasion of Lebanon, a military operation that killed tens of thousands of civilians as Israeli forces sought to destroy the Palestine Liberation Organisation's infrastructure in the region. According to the statistics published in the Third World Quarterly (Volume 6, Issue 4, October 1984, pp. 934-949), over 29,500 Palestinians and Lebanese were either killed or wounded from 4 July 1982 through to 15 August 1982, 40 percent were children. Israel's stated motive for its "Operation Peace for Galilee" invasion of Lebanon was to bring peace to frontline Israeli communities in Northern Galilee. In fact, the disastrous events of 1982-85 were the very catalysts of the Hizbullah Shi'a resistance movement in South Lebanon. Previous to Israel's military interventionism in the early 1980s, the Shi'a of south Lebanon had not professed any aggression or hostility towards the Israelis. Ariel Sharon is responsible for the massacre of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, on the southern outskirts of Beirut. The slaughter in the two contiguous camps at Sabra and Shatila took place from the evening of September 16, 1982 until the morning of September 18, 1982, in an area under the control of the Israeli armed forces. The perpetrators were members of the Phalange (Kata'eb, in Arabic) militia, the Lebanese force that was armed by and closely allied with Israel since the onset of Lebanon's civil war in 1975. Prior to the massacre, Sharon had meetings with the Phalange forces. For over 60 hours -- aided by an Israeli siege around the camps and guided by the light of Israeli flares -- forces belonging to the Israeli-allied Phalangist militia went through the camps, killing Palestinian and Lebanese civilians. Some were lined up against walls and mown down by machine-gun fire. Others were left in heaps on the floors of their homes or on the streets of the camps. Children were shot dead, women and girls were raped and mutilated and men were disembowelled prior to being executed. The precise number of victims of the massacre may never be exactly determined. The International Committee of the Red Cross counted 1,500 at the time of the massacre but by September 22 this count had risen to 2,400. On the following day 350 bodies were uncovered so that the total then ascertained had reached 2,750.
Israeli military intelligence estimated that 700 to 800 were killed. UN Resolution UNSC 521 (1982) of 19 September 1982 offered uneqivocal condemnation of the Sabra and Shatila Massacre, although it avoided naming any perpetrators at this early stage. The question of direct Israeli involvement in the massacre is one that has never been fully resolved. However -- despite denials -- it is not credible that Israeli troops surrounding the two camps were unaware of what was going on inside:
From 5-5.30 am low level flights of Israeli planes over Sabra and Shatila took place, after which shelling promptly commenced." (Source: The New York Times, 16 September 1982, quoting Dr. Witsoe, Gaza hospital.) "The Israelis established observation posts on top of multi-storey buildings in the north-west quadrant of the Kuwaiti Embassy. From these posts, the naked eye has a clear view of several sections of the camps, including those parts of Shatila where piles of bodies were found." (Source: Newsweek, 4 October 1982, Ray Wilkinson; The Guardian, 20 September 1982; and The New York Times, 26 September 1982.) "Throughout the night flares lit up the sky. They were fired at the rate of two a minute, as reported by an Israeli soldier from a mortar unit." (Source: The Jerusalem Post, 21 September 1982.) A Jewish-American registered nurse, Ms. Ellen Siegel, was working in Gaza hospital in the Sabra refugee camp in Beirut, where she and a medical team treated the first victims of the massacre. She and other health workers were lined up against a bullet-riddled wall by Phalangists who were about to execute them, with rifles aimed, when an Israeli officer came running to stop this possible execution. She told The Electronic Intifada that: "I spoke with Zeev Schiff [a military affairs correspondant for Ha'aretz newspaper] in person about this incident. The wall was located just outside the camp but obviously if the commander could see this, he could see other things. We were taken to the area of the FCP [Forward Command Post]. From there one could look down onto the camps. My understanding is that the IDF had sophisticated visual equipment. There was a BBC film made in '92 ("See No Evil"). In this film they interviewed Israeli soldiers who were at the camps. They clearly allude to knowing what was going on." An official Israeli commission of inquiry -- chaired by Yitzhak Kahan, president of Israel's Supreme Court -- investigated the massacre, and in February 1983 publicly released its findings. The Kahan Commission found that Ariel Sharon, among other Israelis, had responsibility for the massacre, although it carefully sidestepped any accusation of direct involvement in the massacre and chose not to attempt to reconcile much of the contradictory testimony. The commission's report stated in pertinent part: "It is our view that responsibility is to be imputed to the Minister of Defence for having disregarded the danger of acts of vengeance and bloodshed by the Phalangists against the population of the refugee camps, and having failed to take this danger into account when he decided to have the Phalangists enter the camps. In addition, responsibility is to be imputed to the Minister of Defence for not ordering appropriate measures for preventing or reducing the danger of massacre as a condition for the Phalangists' entry into the camps. These blunders constitute the non-fulfillment of a duty with which the Defence Minister was charged." The Commission also concluded: "[I]n his meeting with the Phalangist commanders, the Defence Minister made no attempt to point out to them the gravity of the danger that their men would commit acts of slaughter.... Had it become clear to the Defence Minister that no real supervision could be exercised over the Phalangist force that entered the camps with the IDF's assent, his duty would have been to prevent their entry. The usefulness of the Phalangists' entry into the camps was wholly disproportionate to the damange their entry could cause if it were uncontrolled." The Commission further noted: "We shall remark here that it is obstensibly puzzling that the Defence Minister did not in any way make the Prime Minister [Menachem Begin] privy to the decision on having the Phalangists enter the camps."
In the realm of international relations, he was instrumental in renewing diplomatic relations with the African nations which had broken off ties with Israel during the Yom Kippur War. In November 1981, he brought about the first strategic cooperation agreement with the U.S. and widened defense ties between Israel and many nations. He also helped bring thousands of Jews from Ethiopia through Sudan.
Between 1984 and 1990 Sharon served as Minister of Trade and Industry. In this capacity, he concluded the Free Trade Agreement with the U.S. in 1985.
In 1990-1992, he served as Minister of Construction and Housing. Following the fall of the Soviet Union and the waves of immigration from Russia, he initiated and carried out a program to absorb the immigrants throughout the country, including the construction of 144,000 apartments.[5]
[5] The Electronic Intifada notes: Sharon was a key player in the settlement explosion throughout the 1977-1992 Likud-era of Israeli government. This period was characterised by more land confiscation and more settlement activity than had ever been seen before in Israeli history. The number of settlers in the Occupied Palestinian Territories increased by over two thousand percent during this period, to approximately 110,000 people.
From 1992 to 1996, he served as a member of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
In 1996, Ariel Sharon was appointed Minister of National Infrastructure and was involved in fostering joint ventures with Jordan, Egypt and the Palestinians.[6]
[6] The Electronic Intifada notes: Yet again, Sharon was in charge of settlement construction. In the post-Oslo period, Israel established 30 new settlements and thus nearly doubled the settler population in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip from 109,000 in 1993 to nearly 200,000 in 1999 (figures exclude new settlements in the greater Jerusalem metropolitan area). Source: Foundation for Middle East Peace.
He also served as Chairman of the Ministerial Committee for Bedouin advancement.
In 1998 Ariel Sharon was appointed Foreign Minister and charged with conducting negotiations towards a final agreement with the Palestinian Authority. He accompanied Prime Minister Netanyahu to the Wye River Plantation as chief negotiator. While serving as Foreign Minister, Sharon met with U.S., European, Palestinian and Arab leaders to advance the peace process. [7]
[7] The Electronic Intifada notes: Sharon's concept of "advancing the peace process" remained somewhat flawed during this period. According to an Agence France Presse report of 15 November 1998, while addressing a meeting of militants from the extreme right-wing Tsomet Party, Foreign Minister Sharon stated: "Everybody has to move, run and grab as many hilltops as they can to enlarge the settlements because everything we take now will stay ours... Everything we don't grab will go to them."
He worked mostly to create and advance projects such as the Flagship Water Project funded by the international community to find a long-term solution to the region's water crisis and a basis to peaceful relations between Israel, Jordan, the Palestinians and other Middle Eastern countries.
Following the election of Ehud Barak as Prime Minister in May 1999, Ariel Sharon was called upon to become interim Likud party leader, and in September 1999 was elected Chairman of the Likud.
On February 6, 2001, Ariel Sharon was elected Prime Minister.[8] He presented his government to the Knesset on March 7, 2001, retaining also the Immigrant Absorption portfolio.
[8] The Electronic Intifada notes: Only four months before his election, the ever-confrontational Sharon visited al-Haram ash-Sharif, (One of Islam's holiest sites in Jerusalem), on 28 September 2000 and sparked off the Second Palestinian Intifada that has so far seen 393 Palestinians killed up to March 8th 2001, according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society. On 19 October 2000, the United Nations Human Rights Commission, meeting in an emergency session, adopted a resolution titled, "Grave and massive violations of the human rights of the Palestinian people by Israel," which condemned: "the provocative visit to Al-Haram al-Sharif on 28 September 2000 by Ariel Sharon, the Likud party leader, which triggered the tragic events that followed in occupied East Jerusalem and the other occupied Palestinian territories, resulting in a high number of deaths and injuries among Palestinian civilians." Sharon's visit to the third holiest site in Islam, guarded by -- according to the most conservative reports -- 1,000 armed Israeli soldiers, was overtly designed to demonstrate Israel's "sovereignty" over Jerusalem, especially over the Al-Haram Ash-Sharif (which most Israelis call "the Temple Mount") and provoke an angry response. It was also intended to impress the right wing of the Israeli public, who later castigated Labour Prime Minister Barak for his "restraint" in the face of the Palestinian uprising by electing Sharon, who sparked it off.
Sharon holds a degree in Law and Middle Eastern Studies from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1962). He has published a book and numerous articles in local and foreign newspapers.
He is widowed and has two sons.
A NOTE ON SHARON'S RECORD AND INTERNATIONAL LAW:
War crimes and crimes against humanity are particularly heinous crimes. Responding to the atrocities committed in the course of the second World War, the international community set itself an objective to combat such crimes. This ambition has found expression in a number of international treaties, notably under the aegis of the United Nations.
The 1998 request for the extradition of Augusto Pinochet and the legal battles that ensued demonstrated a heightened interest in bringing persons involved in grave crimes to justice. The Pinochet case reaffirmed the principle that human rights atrocities are subject to "universal jurisdiction" and can be prosecuted anywhere in the world. Two rulings by the House of Lords found that Pinochet was not immune from prosecution even though he was head of state at the time the crimes were committed.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's personal history is intertwined with war crimes and crimes against humanity. Cases such as those of Yugoslavian former president Slobodan Milosevic, the perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide, and others, provide compelling precedents for ending the impunity that Ariel Sharon has thus far enjoyed. Sharon should be indicted for the crimes in which he bears responsibility as the first step in a process of accountability that will bring justice to his victims and their families.
Judicial authorities in Israel have never shouldered their legal responsibilities and thoroughly investigated and prosecuted Ariel Sharon for the massacres and other crimes he committed. The failure of the Israeli legal system to act obligates the international community -- in particular the European Union since all its member states are High Contracting Parties of the Geneva Conventions -- to hold Ariel Sharon accountable, regardless of whether he is a private citizen of Israel, a cabinet minister, or the head of a government.
Article 146 of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War states that each High Contracting Party "shall be under the obligation to search for persons alleged to have committed, or to have ordered to be committed" grave breaches of the Convention, "and shall bring such persons, regardless of their nationality, before its own courts. It may also, if it prefers, and in accordance with the provisions of its own legislation, hand such persons over for trial to another High Contracting Party concerned, provided such High Contracting Party has made out a prima facie case." Article 147 of the Convention states that the grave breaches noted in Article 146 include willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments, willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement of a protected person, compelling a protected person to serve in the forces of a hostile Power, or willfully depriving a protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial prescribed in the present Convention, taking of hostages and extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly.  |
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UK Independent
06 January 2006
As the Prime Minister lies in hospital, the country faces a stark choice about his successor Benjamin Netanyahu
The charismatic but quixotic politician who became Ariel Sharon's bitterest rival is easily the most right-wing of the main candidates. He may try to trim to the centre during the campaign to suck votes back but will be severely constrained in how far he can do so before or after the election.
This makes him by a long way the least likely of the main players to prepare concessions, such as withdrawal from tracts of the West Bank, negotiated or unilateral. If he does so - perhaps under US pressure - he is likely to fall foul of right-wing groups such as the settlers' organisation, the Yesha Council, which supported him for the Likud leadership on the strength of his opposition to Gaza disengagement. His opportunistic resignation over the Gaza withdrawal did much to push Mr Sharon into abandoning Likud and forming his own party. Mr Netanyahu irritated Bill Clinton during his tenure as Prime Minister from 1996-99 for, in effect, abandoning the Oslo accords. If there is a Hamas victory in this month's Palestinian poll or an outbreak of serious Palestinian violence in the run-up to Israeli polling day in March, he will be under international pressure to make concessions.
Shimon Peres
The octogenarian former prime minister is more likely to be an éminence grise of Mr Sharon's new party, Kadima, than its leader. Fresh attempts may even be made to lure him back to the Labour Party. Although one poll has put him top of the list of preferred prime ministers after Mr Sharon, he has a record of failure in elections and most Kadima members are former Likudniks, who would prefer one of their own in the top job. As a Nobel Prize-winning architect of the Oslo accords, Mr Peres is likely to be keener than some of his more unilateralist Kadima colleagues on negotiations with the Palestinians. But whether he would go further than they would in making enough concessions to secure a lasting agreement is much more doubtful. Mr Peres has been accused of doing whatever it takes to stay in office. The best hope that he might be prepared to push for the leadership could be a desire to go down in history as a peacemaker - a role snatched from him by the collapse of Oslo.
Amir Peretz
Of all the potential candidates, the Morocco-born former union leader who spectacularly wrested the Labour leadership from Shimon Peres last November has the most deeply felt and long-standing commitment to a two-state solution. He has long articulated his belief that the costs for Israel in continuing to occupy the West Bank hurt Israel as well as the Palestinians. He was careful at the outset of his leadership to state his commitment to negotiations with the Palestinian leadership. By that he means talks on a "final-status" settlement. Like Mr Sharon, he would probably envisage keeping the main semi-urban settlement blocks under Israeli control; but some Labour officials are promoting a Hong Kong-style formula in which the settlements would be "leased" from the Palestinians in return for financial or territorial compensation.
Ehud Olmert
If the acting Prime Minister assumes the position permanently, he will promote the Sharon agenda. The big difference is that he will be under greater pressure than was Mr Sharon to clarify what that agenda is. Mr Olmert has been more explicit in saying that Israel cannot expect indefinitely to control the lives of Palestinians and in insisting that withdrawal from Gaza was not merely a means of hanging on to the West Bank. With Mr Olmert at its helm, the Kadima party will be pressed to say if it plans unilateral withdrawals from the West Bank should Mr Abbas fail to disable armed factions.
Mr Olmert was first elected to parliament at the age of 28, and served seven terms. He was investigated several times for corruption, but was never convicted. Elected Mayor of Jerusalem in 1993, he held the post for 10 years, supporting Israeli moves to settle in Palestinian-dominated areas of the city.
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By Haaretz Editorial
5 Jan 2006
In an open debate that took place this week in court at the request of James Schlaff, the police offered their reasons for seizing his personal computers and cellular telephones. On the same occasion, a document presented to the court indicated that police have prima facie evidence that brothers Martin and James Schlaff were involved in the transfer of $3 million to the prime minister's family, and that there is evidence showing that the money was paid as a bribe. Had the Schlaff brothers not opposed the seizing of the computers, the debate would not have taken place, and the public would not have been made aware of the information.
There will always be those who argue that the publication of such information on the eve of elections is tendentious. But such an argument is irrelevant vis-a-vis the crux of the matter - namely, the disconcerting suspicion that the prime minister took a bribe. The Sharon family has yet to enlighten the public regarding the source of the millions of dollars that flowed into its account, the identity of those who had an interest in giving such sums, and why the money did a world tour - through accounts in the Caribbean Islands, Austria, New York and Sderot - if there was never any intention to keep it under wraps. In this matter, known as the Cyril Kern affair, just as in the Greek island affair, what remains unclear is the puzzlement expressed by former state prosecutor Edna Arbel, who said: "We all have friends who give gifts, but I don't know friends who give gifts of huge sums [of money] without a reason and purpose... Someone whose bank account is found to be holding a large sum of money must be the one to prove where the money came from and what its purpose is."
These words hold true for every public official, and more so when it comes to the prime minister, whose son, Omri, already has been convicted of a criminal offense.
On the eve of the previous elections, then-attorney general Elyakim Rubinstein refrained from informing the public of the developments in the investigation into the Cyril Kern affair. The details became known only after they were leaked by state prosecutor Liora Glatt-Berkovich. Since the investigation is still ongoing and Ariel Sharon is again vying for the premiership, Attorney General Menachem Mazuz must publish an interim report detailing the findings amassed thus far.
The demand voiced by Sharon's associates to close the case because of the length of time that has passed is inappropriate, because we are dealing with a public official. Of all times, election eve is not the time for closing cases or concealing information from the public. Just as the public should be made aware of the health of a prime minister candidate, it is entitled to full transparency when it comes to criminal allegations.
The millions that have flowed into the Sharon family's bank accounts in recent years from wealthy individuals - including $640,000 that David Appel paid to Sharon's other son, Gilad, for consulting services, the promise of a bonus of another $3 million if the Greek island deal had come to fruition, and the $3 million transferred to the Sharon family from a bank account in Austria - are matters that the public must take into consideration when it goes to the polls.
Corruption may indeed not be a central issue in the eyes of the public, which has been accustomed to think that all politicians are bent. However, it is the duty of the press, the police, the state prosecution and the attorney general to combat this dangerous state of mind. |
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By Remi Kanazi
InformationClearingHouse.info
5 Jan 06
While those in the West and Israel naively labeled Sharon a new "man of peace" and fresh corruption charges surfaced, his political career was strong as ever. Sharon was running a one man show going into the March elections with his new Kadima (forward) party. Major polls showed the premier was a shoe-in, but now the question becomes which direction Israel will be headed politically. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suffered a severe stroke resulting in a cerebral hemorrhage on January 4, 2004. Paramedics rushed Sharon from his ranch in the Negev Desert to a Jerusalem hospital for life saving surgery. From the early news feeds and doctor’s comments things are not looking good. Internal bleeding after six hours of surgery led to another three hours in the operating room. After the second surgery doctors said his vital signs are stable, although his condition is still “grave.”
Pundits and analysts are already grabbing pen and pad to jot down their assessment.
Many believe Ariel Sharon's political career is over. Haaretz correspondent, Aluf Benn, stated, "even if he does recover, he will have a very hard time convincing the public of his ability to serve four more years, after undergoing two strokes in two and a half weeks." YNet contributor, Attila Somfalvi, was more forthright: “Following the prime minister's stroke, nothing will bring him back into the political game: Not the surging popularity, not the concern and aching heart of the public, and not even the waves of sympathy.”
While those in the West and Israel naively labeled Sharon a new "man of peace" and fresh corruption charges surfaced, his political career was strong as ever. Sharon was running a one man show going into the March elections with his new Kadima (forward) party. Major polls showed the premier was a shoe-in, but now the question becomes which direction Israel will be headed politically.
On one right you have the hard-line Binyamin Netanyahu. The Likud strongman dished out harsh criticism to Sharon and his “timid” policies concerning the Occupied Territories. Netanyahu fervently objected (and resigned from his post under the Sharon administration) to the "disengagement" of the Gaza Strip. He holds tight the Likud principals: keep the illegal settlers in the Occupied Territories, expand settlements at full pace, continue the Judiazation of Jerusalem and build the wall deep into Palestinian land. On the left you have Amir Peretz, the underdog that beat out Shimon Peres to head the Labor Party. Peretz, a Moroccan Jew, has promised to focus on social justice, the eradication of poverty and the needs of the average Israeli. He also claims to be determined on a two-state solution as a resolution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and is seen, in Palestinian circles, as much more dovish than his colleagues in the Labor Party. We mustn’t forget the possibility of another resurrection from Peres himself, the man in the middle, who has envied the premiership and has yet to win it legitimately. It is thought that the long time politician would be able to get a leg up through a strong Kadima victory, but one wonders if the movement will die before it ever gets off the ground. Nevertheless, this is just the left, right and middle, with many others looking to fill the shoes of a man who dominated Israeli politics for five years. Time will tell what the Israeli public's reaction will be and who they think should be the next leader of their state. Palestinians and the rest of the world will be watching closely as well to see what direction the Holy Land will be headed.
Remi Kanazi is the primary writer for the political website www.PoeticInjustice.net. He lives in New York City as a Palestinian American freelance writer and can reached via email at remroum@gmail.com |
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by Charles Sullivan
6 Jan 2006
Like Siamese twins, the United States and Israel are joined at the hip, both physically and philosophically. Collectively, the United States and Israel comprise the most prolific terrorist states on earth. The U.S. provides five billion dollars annually to Israel, which is the largest beneficiary of U.S. foreign aid on earth. Most of that money is used by the Israeli government to purchase high tech weapons, munitions, and other implements of terror and death. We do not help the world’s helpless and poor—we arm Israel. We do it because it is a lucrative business and it furthers our goal of hegemony in the Middle East.
Outside of the dumbed down American public, the rest of the world is well aware of the violent and brutal nature of US foreign policy. That policy has given rise to the widespread use of imprisonment, torture, assassination, political coups and a global network of CIA operated gulags. Abu Graiab and other US torture facilities smack of Israeli influence. This is what the state of Israel does to its political enemies and we are following suit. Both nations have a track record of extensive human rights violations; and both are appalling.
Because of its close ties with the US, Israel is essentially the fifty-first state of the US. Whatever the political aims of the US, it shares them in common with Israel. The Israeli influence upon US foreign policy is both profound and troubling. The Israeli political lobby in the US is deeply entrenched and active. Regardless how horribly Israel behaves toward Arabs; it is beyond reproach by the high priests of power and corruption operating the US government.
Richard Perle is one of the Israeli lobby’s chief operatives inside the Bush regime. Perle, like the true prince of darkness that he is, prefers to keep a low public profile. Those who do dark deeds prefer to avoid the light; and Richard Perle is such a man. But Perle’s finger prints are over the Bush regimes’ Middle East foreign policy. Make no mistake about it; Richard Perle is as virulent a malignancy as there is in the Bush regime. Given the menacing nature of the players involved, that takes some doing.
A word of caution seems in order at this point. While examining the nature of both the US and Israeli states, one has to be careful to separate the wheat from the chaff. It is important not to confuse the actions or inactions of a citizenry with those of the government that, in theory, at least, is supposed to represent them. The moral values of the citizenry may be the polar opposite of those of the government; or they may be virtually identical. The same applies to the people of Israel. When I refer to the US or Israel I am referring to their respective governments, not necessarily to the citizens themselves.
With the blessings of the US, and in full view of the world, Israel is engaged in a violent and malicious campaign of ethnic cleansing against the people of Palestine. Like the US in Iraq, Israel is an unlawful foreign occupier of Palestine. Few Americas can appreciate the harsh treatment, beatings, harassment and humiliation; and the frequent killings that the Palestinian people are routinely subjected to at the hands of the Israeli military. The violence and humiliation perpetrated upon the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip bears a striking similarity to that imposed upon the Iraqi people at the hands of an unlawful foreign invader—the United States. This is no accident. The commercial media in the US always portrays Israel in a positive light, while portraying the Palestinians as a group of blood thirsty, crazed fanatics incapable of respecting life.
That US made helicopter gun ships and munitions are routinely involved in the maiming and killing of Palestinians, many of them innocent women and children, is a fact that cannot be lost on them. US foreign policy in the Middle East, regardless of which party is in power, has never been even handed. It has never been just. It is utterly lacking moral authority and ethical integrity. That is why it has never succeeded at creating peace and stability in the region. Nor has that ever been its real intention either. Its intentions are more sinister—to pilfer the Arab owned oil reserves in the region; to arm and to use the Israeli military to impose martial law upon the region’s indigenous people; to extend the domain of US hegemony in the oil rich region. Every people have the right to defend themselves. However, Israel and the US are foreign occupiers in lands where they have no rights of ownership. The legitimate citizens of the occupied nations have an inherent right and moral obligation to resist foreign occupation, by any and all available means. Hence the quagmires we witness in the Gaza Strip and in Iraq. They are not going to go away in our lifetimes.
Charles Sullivan is a furniture maker, photographer, and free lance writer residing in the eastern panhandle of West Virgina. He welcomes your comments at earthdog@highstream.net |
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By SONJA BARISIC
Associated Press
January 5, 2006
 NORFOLK, Va. - Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson suggested Thursday that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's stroke was divine punishment for "dividing God's land."
"God considers this land to be his," Robertson said on his TV program "The 700 Club." "You read the Bible and he says `This is my land,' and for any prime minister of Israel who decides he is going to carve it up and give it away, God says, `No, this is mine.'" Sharon, who ordered Israel's withdrawal from Gaza last year, suffered a severe stroke on Wednesday.
In Robertson's broadcast from his Christian Broadcasting Network in Virginia Beach, the evangelist said he had personally prayed about a year ago with Sharon, whom he called "a very tender-hearted man and a good friend." He said he was sad to see Sharon in this condition.
He also said, however, that in the Bible, the prophet Joel "makes it very clear that God has enmity against those who 'divide my land.'"
Sharon "was dividing God's land and I would say woe unto any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course to appease the EU (European Union), the United Nations, or the United States of America," Robertson said.
In discussing what he said was God's insistence that Israel not be divided, Robertson also referred to the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who had sought to achieve peace by giving land to the Palestinians. "It was a terrible thing that happened, but nevertheless he was dead," he said.
The Anti-Defamation League issued a statement urging Christian leaders to distance themselves from the remarks. Robertson made similar comments as the Gaza withdrawal occurred, it said.
"It is outrageous and shocking, but not surprising, that Pat Robertson once again has suggested that God will punish Israel's leaders for any decision to give up land to the Palestinians," said Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the group, which fights anti-Semitism. "His remarks are un-Christian and a perversion of religion. Unlike Robertson, we don't see God as cruel and vengeful."
The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said a religious leader "should not be making callous political points while a man is struggling for his life."
"Pat Robertson has a political agenda for the entire world, and he seems to think God is ready to take out any world leader who stands in the way of that agenda," Lynn said in a statement.
Robertson spokeswoman Angell Watts said of critics who challenged his remarks, "What they're basically saying is, 'How dare Pat Robertson quote the Bible?'"
"This is what the word of God says," Watts said. "This is nothing new to the Christian community."
In August, Robertson suggested on "The 700 Club" that American agents should assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has long been at odds with U.S. foreign policy. Robertson later apologized for his remarks, saying he "spoke in frustration." |
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AP
6 Jan 06
WASHINGTON - The White House sharply criticized Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson on Friday for suggesting that Israeli Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon's stroke was divine punishment for "dividing God's land."
"Those comments are wholly inappropriate and offensive and really don't have a place in this or any other debate," presidential spokesman Trent Duffy said as Bush traveled to Chicago for a speech.
Robertson made his comments about
Israel and Sharon on his TV program, "The 700 Club." He said, "God considers this land to be his. You read the Bible and he says `This is my land,' and for any prime minister of Israel who decides he is going to carve it up and give it away, God says, `No, this is mine.'"
Sharon, who ordered Israel's withdrawal from Gaza last year, suffered a severe stroke on Wednesday. |
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By KATHLEEN and BILL CHRISTISON
Former CIA analysts
5 Jan 2006
In mid-November, Hillary Clinton visited Israel and, following a meeting with Ariel Sharon, in remarks that presaged the praise being heaped on the now-comatose Sharon, began her campaign for president by praising the Israeli as a "courageous" man who had taken "an incredibly difficult" step by withdrawing from Gaza.
The withdrawal, she claimed with remarkable disregard for reality, was intended as "a means of demonstrating that he is committed to trying to get back into a process" with the Palestinians.
Clinton also stopped for a photo op during her trip, in what constituted an equally monumental lie. She stood on a hilltop inside the Israeli settlement of Gilo, an illegal subdivision populated by 28,000 Israelis on the southern edge of Jerusalem overlooking Bethlehem. Gilo is in occupied Palestinian territory. It was built three decades ago, illegally according to international law, on approximately 700 acres of land confiscated from Palestinian ownership. It is just inside the expanded municipal limits of Jerusalem -- boundaries that Israel redrew when it captured the West Bank and East Jerusalem in 1967, then expropriated 25 square miles of Palestinian West Bank territory and annexed it, also illegally according to international law, to Israeli West Jerusalem.
Clinton stood on this spot and, striking an elaborate pose, gazing pensively off to the side, had her photo taken with the 26-foot-high concrete monstrosity that is Israel's separation wall in the near distance behind her. Where she stood, the wall, like Gilo itself, is built on confiscated Palestinian land. On the other side of the wall, in the middle distance, was the dying little town of Bethlehem, now partially encircled by the wall and cut off from Jerusalem, its religious and cultural twin.
Already surrounded by nine Israeli settlements, including Gilo, by a network of roads restricted to Israeli use, and by what the UN estimates are 78 Israeli checkpoints and other physical obstacles to Palestinian movement, Bethlehem has had only limited access to its surroundings for years. Completion of the wall on its northern and western sides, separating it from Jerusalem, is the final closure on Bethlehem's breathing room. A huge terminal went into operation in November, requiring travelers entering and leaving Bethlehem to pass through multiple turnstiles, x-ray scans, and permit checks. Palestinians must have hard-to-obtain permits to leave Bethlehem. The terminal is manned by both Israeli military and civilians. It functions like nothing so much as an international border, except that the guards and soldiers on both sides of this border are Israeli.
If you know Palestine, Clinton's photo-op beggars the imagination. She no doubt knows nothing of the history of the area; she might even be excused for not knowing that Gilo is in occupied territory. But one would like to assume that she is a thinking, feeling human being, able to see at a glance the huge concreteness of the wall and the scar it leaves across the land and across Palestinian humanity. Yet her ability to stand in front of the wall and sing its praises is clear testimony to the power of denial, and the power of politics. Clinton made it clear that she had no intention of visiting "Palestinian areas" -- by which she meant Palestinian areas where Israelis do not yet live -- and her promise was triumphantly repeated in Israeli press coverage of her visit. Her constituents in New York and among Democrats eager for her presidential candidacy were undoubtedly also pleased that she refused to associate with those people, the Palestinians.
The wall, Clinton announced in its shadow, coyly mislabeling it a fence, "is not against the Palestinian people," only against the terrorists. As if she knew. As if she knew anything about the situation on the ground. As if the wall selectively disrupts only the plans of a few terrorists and does not destroy the property, the land, the homes, the livelihoods, the very lives of 500,000 innocent Palestinians. In a statement posted on her website following the trip, Clinton affirmed her "strong" support for Israel's "right" to ensure the safety and security of its citizens and to build a "security barrier to keep terrorists out," and boasted that she had "taken the International Court of Justice to task for questioning Israel's right to build the fence." Apparently, we are supposed to be edified by Clinton's cheek in taking an international court to task. Such steely determination on Israel's behalf plays well in the U.S. political arena, where the utter immorality of the wall is of little import.
Squeezed in Nu'man
What Hillary Clinton does not know about the wall, about the Palestinian lives it affects, about anyone's security, would fill a large volume. Take the little village of Nu'man, whose 200 or so inhabitants have lived throughout the 38 years of Israel's occupation in a strange kind of limbo and are now facing the total destruction of their homes and entire village. We visited Nu'man in September and heard its story from the elderly mother of the village leader and her nephew, a young man who is also a leader in the village.
Nu'man lies a few miles northeast of Bethlehem, not more than five miles as the crow flies from where Clinton stood admiring the wall. Few people in Israel and the U.S. had ever heard of Nu'man until just recently when Ha'artez correspondent Gideon Levy revealed that Israeli Border Police, a notoriously vicious lot, had probably tied a Nu'man resident, father of nine children, to his donkey and then spooked the donkey so that it ran and dragged the helpless man to his death. Although the Border Police deny any culpability, the practice is common enough, according to Palestinians, to have acquired a name, "the donkey procedure." Ha'aretz thought to publish an editorial criticizing Israelis for the kind of apathy that allows this sort of thing to happen frequently to Palestinians without anyone noticing, but the criticism is at least 38 years late.
The small village of Nu'man is in a rural area just inside the municipal limits of Jerusalem, but in 1967 when Israel required all residents of the recently captured territories to register and obtain residency cards, Nu'man's inhabitants were given West Bank IDs, meaning it is illegal for them even to be in Jerusalem -- to be in their homes, to live where they live, to have been born where they were born. This anomaly was never a major problem until the 1990s, at the height of the so-called peace process, when Israel imposed closure on the West Bank and Gaza and required that Palestinians have permits before they could enter Israel, including annexed Jerusalem.
Until this point, Nu'man's children had attended schools in Jerusalem, but eight years ago they were barred from Jerusalem and required to go to school in Bethlehem. Like hundreds of tiny rural villages throughout the West Bank, Nu'man depends on other nearby towns and villages, in this case Bethlehem and surrounding villages, for virtually all vital services -- not only schools, but medical services and groceries. But the village is gradually being squeezed on all sides and cut off from its neighbors. To the north, Jerusalem is no longer accessible. The wall, which encircles the village on the east and south, has separated it from several neighboring villages and, when completed, will cut it off from Bethlehem. On the west, the large Israeli settlement of Har Homa is encroaching on village land. Israeli authorities have informed the village that the settlement intends to expand to a hillside literally only a stone's throw away from Nu'man's homes, all of which have been issued demolition orders.
Israel's contention is that these homes, a few of which have already been demolished, were built without permits. And of course this is true. The village, whose inhabitants are Bedouin, has existed since the early 19th century, well before Israel was created and about a century and a half before Israel invaded and occupied the West Bank in 1967, annexed a large swath of land to Jerusalem, and began imposing its own permit regulations, its own laws, and its own expansionist ambitions on another people. Several years ago, Israel tried to buy Nu'man's land, but the villagers refused. The Israelis then cut off the village's water and electricity, but the people existed on wells and were able to get electricity from Bethlehem. When these steps failed to empty the village, Israel began encircling and squeezing it.
Fatma, the village leader's mother, and her nephew explained all this to us matter-of-factly, with remarkably little emotion. Our friend Ahmad interpreted for us. But near the end of our meeting, Fatma began to tell a long story that we did not at first understand, until tears began to roll down her cheeks as she talked. As Ahmad explained the story, one of Fatma's sons, a lawyer, is married to a woman, also a lawyer, who has a Jerusalem ID card. About a year ago, their five-year-old daughter became ill and Fatma's son went into Jerusalem, carrying his West Bank ID card, to buy medicine for the girl. He was arrested for illegally being in Jerusalem and was held for six months, under Israel's occupation "law," which allows Israel to detain anyone for six-months without bringing charges. The day before Fatma's son was to be released, the Israelis imposed a second six-month sentence, and just two days before we met her, after the family had prepared a welcome-home celebration for him, her son was sentenced for a third six-month period.
While we sat somewhat mute, unable to react adequately to this (typical) example of Israel's nightmarish occupation, Fatma's nephew Yussuf struck a hopeful note. Noting that Nu'man, and the Palestinians in general, have neither airplanes nor tanks nor guns, he said they will fight non-violently. Nu'man's story is getting out, he said -- a Swedish film crew was in the village this very day -- and "maybe this will give us power."
This puts us sadly in mind of a video we recently saw of a group of teenage folk dancers from the Ibdaa Cultural Center at Dheisheh Refugee Camp in Bethlehem, in which one boy comments that foreigners come all the time to Dheisheh to help the Palestinians, but nothing ever changes. We could not share Yussuf's optimism. Nor did our friend Ahmad, who commented after we left, "It doesn't help if you're a lawyer like her son, or a professor. It only helps if you're a Jew." Harsh but true. Nu'man is not a threat to Israelis. It's just in the way -- in the way of expansion plans for Israeli Jews.
Hillary Clinton will most likely never hear about Nu'man. Even she would have some trouble justifying Nu'man's treatment as something that ensures the "safety and security" of Israelis, so she deliberately chose not to see it, not to see Palestine or Palestinians at all.
Cut Off in Qalqilya
If you're Jewish in Israel or Palestine, or an ambitious whistle-stopping American politician, it is easy not to see the wall. To see it figuratively, you have to be open-minded, a rare quality where seeing Palestinians is involved. To see the huge concrete structure literally, you have to be in Palestinian areas, in East Jerusalem or deeper in the West Bank, so not many Israelis or their political visitors see where the wall cuts a village off from its land, or runs down the middle of a busy commercial street, or cuts directly across a street, or winds through a residential neighborhood, looming right outside the front door of a private home. So hardly anyone except Palestinians and their friends truly knows about the wall. Where it comes near Israeli settlements, as in Gilo, Israelis are able to see it, but usually only on the settlement's outskirts. In the few places where the wall runs along Israel's border, attractive landscaping on Israel's side hides its ugliness from Israelis.
On the Israeli side of Qalqilya, for instance, the principal Palestinian city in the agricultural heart of the West Bank, the wall can barely be seen. Qalqilya sits adjacent to the Green Line, just inside the West Bank, and it used to be an agricultural and commercial center for the area, a place where both Israelis and Palestinians came to shop and do business. But the wall, erected here almost three years ago, encloses the city on three sides and most of the fourth, cutting it off completely from Israel, placing almost 2,000 acres of its land on the Israeli side, and leaving only one road out of the town, to the east. This road was closed except to permit holders until about a year ago. Now it is still controlled by Israeli soldiers and movement is restricted. Israelis can still not come to shop.
Last February, during the usually life-giving winter rainy season, the entire Qalqilya area flooded after seven consecutive days of rain because the concrete wall prevented runoff. Backed-up sewage caused by the wall created a further problem. According to the armistice agreement that established the Green Line between Israel and the West Bank in 1949, Israel provides an outlet to the sea for sewer water from the Qalqilya region. Because the wall has blocked the drainage channels, a system of gates was established to provide for runoff. These are controlled by the Israelis, but Israeli attention to the gates is at best spotty (as is also the case with the gates controlling farmers' access to their land), and during the period of heavy rains and floods, the gates went unmanned for three days. As a result, sewage mixed with flood waters, and an estimated 200 acres of land was polluted, causing a devastating crop loss for hundreds of farm families.
When we met with Qalqilya's deputy mayor, Hashim al-Masri, in September, he described an economically devastated city. Qalqilya once had three principal sources of income, now totally cut off or severely limited by the wall. Approximately 12,000 residents once worked inside Israel; now only about 300 sneak in to work illegally. The town was also an agricultural market center, selling fruits and vegetables to Israelis as well as Palestinians. Now 80 percent of this market has been lost because most of Qalqilya's land is on the Israeli side of the wall. Produce from the Qalqilya fields that ended up on Israel's side of the wall is now being sold all over the West Bank by Israelis, al-Masri said, with the result that what Qalqilya is still able to grow and sell goes very cheaply. Finally, the town was once a business and commercial center for both Israelis and Palestinians, with what al-Masri said was a business capacity more than three times what was needed for the town itself. Now less than 25 percent of that capacity is left. Israelis cannot get into the town, shops are closed, commerce is dying.
Al-Masri estimated that Qalqilya had lost more than 65 percent of its economy. Approximately 12 percent of the residents have left to move farther into the West Bank. The city's distress is evident in streets lined with closed shops, in a market area obviously not thriving, and in the prevalence of donkey carts used for ordinary transport by people unable any longer to afford cars.
Steven Erlanger of the New York Times visited Qalqilya in November, but his principal concern was not what the wall has done to Qalqilya -- he mentioned the "separation barrier" only in passing, as the only thing that separates Qalqilya from the Israeli town of Kfar Sava. He was more interested in the fact that al-Masri and his four fellow members of the city council are all members of Hamas and what this means for Israel. Hamas swept the local elections in June; al-Masri is serving as acting mayor because the mayor, another Hamas man, was elected while in an Israeli prison, where he has been languishing, without charges, for over three years.
"A lot of eyes are fixed on Qalqilya" because both Fatah and Israel are shocked at the Hamas victory, Erlanger wrote earnestly. He went out in search of ordinary Qalqilyans in the market who would discuss al-Masri's performance, and he found enough dissatisfaction with Hamas' restrictive rule to make an article. Erlanger himself was concerned about Hamas' attitude toward Israel, noting early in the article that Hamas "advocates Israel's destruction" and asking al-Masri about what he called the Hamas "commitment" to establishing a Palestinian state in all of Palestine and thereby destroying Israel. Wondering about the kind of threat Hamas might pose to Israel from a small town sitting besieged and helpless behind a massive concrete wall would seem to be a serious upending of reality, certainly out of proportion to any actual danger to Israel. But this was clearly Erlanger's principal concern; he seemed unable to conceive of an Israeli threat to the Palestinians. He mentioned nothing about the floods of February, or the jobs lost to the wall, or the fields left fallow, or the huge agricultural loss, or the general economic strangulation.
Another example, like that of Hillary Clinton, of not seeing the wall even when it and its consequences stare you in the face.
Bil'in: A Sequel
We wrote in September ("Travels in Palestine, Part One: Horror Story,") about meeting with the mayor in the small village of Bil'in; he is actually head of the village council, a man named Ahmad Issa Yassin. Bil'in has lost three-quarters of its land to the separation wall and has staged non-violent anti-wall protests every Friday since February, with the participation of hundreds of Palestinians from Bil'in and nearby villages, Israeli peace activists, and internationals. The protests are continuing even though almost no one in the West or the Western media sees these either, any more than they do in Gilo or Qalqilya. Israel's violent response to the peaceful protests also continues, also more or less unseen.
Steven Erlanger did finally record the protests for the New York Times in October, eight months after they had begun, but he managed to minimize the significance of the protests and of the village's loss of land to the wall. Calling the interplay between protesters and Israeli soldiers "almost joyful" and likening the confrontation to a kabuki dance, Erlanger emphasized that the Israeli military has backed off from its earlier confrontational mode and now only wants to "protect" the "barrier" from the protesters. He quoted an Israeli commander as saying, with a straight face, "We don't want to bother them in the village or the fields" -- as if the wall and the confiscation of the village's agricultural land that it entails are themselves no "bother." In a remarkable verbal circumlocution, Erlanger noted that the Israelis had become concerned that their earlier use of batons, stun grenades, rubber bullets, and tear gas against protesters "made it look as if" Israel was repressing dissent. Well, duh. Erlanger did not see fit to interview any Palestinians, not even village leader Yassin.
At about the time Erlanger was making excuses for them, the Israelis began resorting to middle-of-the-night raids to arrest and intimidate village residents. Erlanger did not see these either. Since October, several young men from the village have been seized in the nighttime raids and detained for various periods for "damaging the foundation" of the wall. Two of Ahmad Issa Yassin's nine children are among those arrested during multiple raids on Yassin's house in November. Both sons were among about a dozen fined $200 each and sentenced to four months in jail. One son is 28 years old, married with two children and a third on the way. The other is only 14. We met this boy, Abdullah, in September and thought him even younger -- a smiling, clean-cut boy, who is Yassin's youngest child. He is at Israel's notorious Ofer military detention center.
Bil'in's residents are continuing their struggle undeterred. Just before Christmas, they acquired a trailer and set it up on village land lying on the Israeli side of the wall, proclaiming it an "outpost" of Bil'in, much as wildcatting Israeli settlers establish settlement outposts on nearby hillsides and live there in trailer villages. Israeli soldiers immediately dismantled the Bil'in "outpost," using sledgehammers and a crane, but villagers replaced it with a tent and a few days later moved another trailer onto the same spot and built a small shed to mark their claim. Israeli soldiers removed this trailer too, but the shed remains for now, under threat of demolition.
When we visited him in September, Yassin pointed to his now-jailed son Abdullah and expressed his worry about the kind of future that lay ahead for his children and grandchildren, and for the future of an entire village being strangled by Israel. Yassin himself is without a job or a livelihood, having lost his permit to work in Israel when the intifada began in 2000 and now having lost his productive olive trees to the wall. We gave him a button carrying a quote from Howard Zinn: "There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people." Yassin was quite taken with the quote and asked if we had more of the buttons that he could pass out. "We are people who want a future to live in peace," he said. "We don't want war and blood and killing."
But Bil'in is in the way of Israel's plans, and in the West Bank that's all that counts. Until Israeli leaders and the American politicians who toady to them begin to see what is happening right before their eyes, begin to see the human lives that they and their occupations and their walls are destroying, nothing will change. Ahmad Issa Yassin's children will remain in jail.
Bill Christison was a senior official of the CIA. He served as a National Intelligence Officer and as Director of the CIA's Office of Regional and Political Analysis.
Kathleen Christison is a former CIA political analyst and has worked on Middle East issues for 30 years. She is the author of Perceptions of Palestine and The Wound of Dispossession.
They both can be reached at christison@counterpunch.org. |
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Friday January 06th 2006, 8:53 am
As usual, the corporate media is ignoring the larger picture, this time in regard to the criminal Jack Abramoff. Sure, Abramoff is a political sleazoid who “defrauded his Indian tribal clients of millions of dollars and used improper influence on members of Congress,” as the Washington Post explains. “Tribes represented by the lobbyist contributed millions of dollars in casino income to congressional campaigns,” including the Bush administration and the poster child of the Republican party, Tom DeLay, aka The Hammer. But, as the blogger Juan Cole, professor of History at the University of Michigan, tells it Abramoff represents something far more sinister and threatening: he is a “super-Zionist,” according to Mike Issikoff of Newsweek, and not only did he spread his illicitly gained money around the halls of Washington, but the illegally occupied territories of the West Bank as well.
“Abramoff’s dense network of illicit finances and phony charities might end some political careers in the United States,” writes Cole. “But the investigation into his activities by the FBI also shed light on the ways in which rightwing American Jews have often been involved in funding what are essentially terrorist activities by armed land thieves in Palestinian territory…. Indeed, it was this terror funding of Israeli far right militiamen that tripped Abramoff up, since the FBI discovered that he had misled Indian tribes into giving money to the Jabotinskyites, and then began wondering if he had defrauded the tribes in other ways.” In other words, as Cole points out, the “Super Zionist” Abramoff scammed a long ago “dispossessed indigenous people” to fund the current dispossession of another people. In fact, Abramoff’s sleaziness is so brazen and off the charts as to be quite remarkable. As Issikoff reported last May, Abramoff funneled $140,000 from a charity to benefit inner-city youths to rabid Zionist Israeli settlers in the West Bank colonial outpost of Beitar Illit. “Among the expenditures,” Issikoff notes, “purchases of camouflage suits, sniper scopes, night-vision binoculars, a thermal imager and other material described in foundation records as ’security’ equipment,” but as we know (consistently underplayed by the Zionist-friendly corporate media) this sort of equipment is used by the rabid land-grabbing settlers to attack and often kill Palestinians, including Palestinian children. In other words, Jack Abramoff—if the FBI allegations are correct—is guilty of facilitating mass murder of Palestinian Arabs, not surprising since that’s what “super Zionists” do and have done for more than sixty years.
Abramoff spokesman Andrew Blum told Issikoff that his boss “is an especially strong supporter of Israel and has tried to find ways to help Israelis and others to be less susceptible to terrorist attacks.” Of course, “terrorist attacks” is code for the Palestinians defending themselves (and retaliating) against the encroachment and violence of Jack’s sociopathic friends who invade and shoot up Arab villages with Uzis (often courtesy of the Israel Defense or rather Occupation Forces) and “shoot solar panels on roofs of buildings, torch automobiles, shatter windowpanes and windshields, destroy crops, uproot trees, abuse merchants and owners of stalls in the market,” and other various forms of terrorist activity (see B’Tselem for more disgusting details).
It should be no secret to those who pay attention that extremely (and fanatically) strong supporters of Israel control the foreign policy of the United States government. Unfortunately, a whole lot of Americans don’t pay attention. It takes an Israeli commentator to point out the unvarnished truth: the Straussian neocons, Akiva Eldar wrote in Haaretz, “are walking a fine line between their loyalty to American governments and Israeli interests.” Uri Avnery, Israeli peace activist, believes there is little difference between the neocons and the Jabotinsky Zionists in Israel. “I have absolutely no proof that the Bushies got their ideas from [Ariel Sharon]. But the style is the same,” writes Avnery. Of course, all of this is about as obvious as the nose on your face, regardless of the herculean efforts of the corporate media to obfuscate the truth.
Jack Abramoff, “super Zionist,” is emblematic of the indisputable fact that Jabontinsky Likudites have subverted our government, although the corporate media would have you believe all of this is simply a garden variety corruption scandal. Moreover, it should come as no surprise that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee is able to steal American secrets and fork them over to Israel and this act of treason is essentially little more than a blip in the corporate media news cycle. As Juan Cole notes elsewhere, AIPAC has a virtual stranglehold over the government in the United States:
All this can happen because there is a vacuum in U.S. political discourse. A handful of special interests in the United States virtually dictate congressional policy on some issues. With regard to the Arab-Israeli conflict, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and a few allies have succeeded in imposing complete censorship on both houses of Congress. No senator or representative dares make a speech on the floor of his or her institution critical of Israeli policy, even though the Israeli government often violates international law and UN Security Council resolutions (it would violate more such resolutions, except that the resolutions never got passed because only one NSC member, the U.S., routinely vetoes them on behalf of Tel Aviv.) As the Labor Party in Israel has been eclipsed by the Likud coalition, which includes many proto-fascist groups, this subservience has yoked Washington to foreign politicians who privately favor ethnic cleansing and/or aggressive warfare for the purpose of annexing the territory of neighbors.
In essence, the “proto-fascist groups” in Israel and burrowed deeply inside the Bush administration are in the process of subverting the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, as the NSA “scandal” regarding massive snooping of Americans indicates. Unfortunately, most Americans are blissfully unaware of the true nature of these crimes, as they are unaware of the obvious fact the “war” in Iraq was waged in the name of Israel, a small outlaw nation where people who think and act like Jack Abramoff are the rule and not the exception. |
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Wall Street Journal
5 Jan 2006
Excerpted from today's Wall Street Journal:
Making the bribery case especially striking -- and worrisome for members of Congress -- is that some of its elements include transactions that occur in Washington every day. It is commonplace for lawmakers to solicit campaign donations from lobbyists, who routinely offer them in hopes of gaining advantage. Yet Mr. Abramoff also went far beyond routine practice by furnishing lawmakers with lavish trips, free meals and entertainment as well.
It remains unclear which lawmakers prosecutors are looking at, and also how persuasive Mr. Abramoff could be in helping to make potential cases against any of them stick. A onetime chairman of College Republicans -- a close ally of such party luminaries as Tom DeLay, Ralph Reed and Grover Norquist -- Mr. Abramoff says he has information that could implicate 60 lawmakers.
"The case is significant and the corruption scheme with Mr. Abramoff is very extensive," said Alice Fisher, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's criminal division, at a news conference. She said prosecutors "will continue to follow it wherever it leads." |
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By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
January 6, 2006
The Texas prosecutor who secured an indictment of Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) on money-laundering charges broadened the scope of his inquiry into election spending yesterday, demanding documents related to funds that passed through a nonprofit organization, the U.S. Family Network.
The group, which was founded in 1996 by DeLay's then-chief of staff, Edwin A. Buckham, received $500,000 in 1999 from the National Republican Congressional Committee and used some of the money to finance radio ads attacking Democrats. The Federal Election Commission fined the party in 2004 for its role in the funding. The prosecutor, Ronnie Earle, sent subpoenas yesterday to Buckham; the group's former president, Christopher Geeslin; the NRCC; and the treasurer of DeLay's leadership political action committee, Americans for a Republican Majority.
The subpoenas asked for all documents related to the $500,000 contribution, including any correspondence involving DeLay or Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to bribe public officials and other crimes this week. The Washington Post reported Saturday that the largest donors to the U.S. Family Network were all associated with Abramoff. They contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to the group before it folded in 2001.
Earle, an elected district attorney in Travis County, Tex., did not reveal in the subpoenas why he believes he has jurisdiction over the campaign spending. Carl Forti, a spokesman for the NRCC, told the Associated Press, "I'm going to call Roswell and warn them that Ronnie Earle is on the witch hunt for the Martians they have there," referring to the New Mexico city famous for an alleged UFO landing.
DeLay is awaiting trial in Texas for allegedly conspiring to launder corporate donations sent to a group he organized, Texans for a Republican Majority, for use in the 2002 state legislative elections. He has denied any wrongdoing. |
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By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
05 January 2006
"It is not our job to seek peaceful coexistence with the Left. Our job is to remove them from power permanently."
- Jack A. Abramoff
All of official Washington is at this moment waiting with bated breath for the avalanche. Jack Abramoff, the disgraced super-lobbyist, has made a plea agreement in the massive prosecution against him and his cronies. Every talking head who has spoken on the subject has stated bluntly that the fallout from this plea deal will almost certainly result in the largest scandal to hit the capital in decades.
The questions, of course, are straightforward: Who is involved? Who took money from this guy? Who is on his pad? Most significantly, who did Abramoff name when he decided to sing to the prosecutors?
Republicans, nervous about the bad noise to come, have attempted to paint this as an equal-opportunity crime. To wit, the Democrats are into Abramoff as deeply as the GOP. The facts, however, do not bear this out. According to campaign donation information gathered by the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics, the following officeholders and candidates have received political donations from Abramoff since 2000: Tom DeLay (R-Texas).
John Ashcroft (R-Mo.).
Frank A. LoBiondo (R-NJ).
Eric Cantor (R-Va.).
Arlen Specter (R-Pa.).
John Ensign (R-Nev.).
Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.).
Charles H. Taylor (R-NC).
Chris Cannon (R-Utah).
Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa).
Mark Foley (R-Fla.).
Richard Pombo (R-Calif.).
Christopher S. "Kit" Bond (R-Mo.).
Curt Weldon (R-Pa.).
Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.).
Doug Ose (R-Calif.).
Ernest J. Istook (R-Okla.).
George R. Nethercutt Jr. (R-Wash.).
Jim Bunning (R-Ky.).
Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.).
Tom Feeney (R-Fla.).
Dan Burton (R-Ind.).
Eric Cantor (R-Va.).
Suzanne Terrell (R-La.).
Rob Simmons (R-Conn.).
Charles W. "Chip" Pickering Jr. (R-Miss.).
Connie Morella (R-Md.).
Gordon H. Smith (R-Ore.).
James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.).
James M. Talent (R-Mo.).
John T. Doolittle (R-Calif.).
John Thune (R-SD).
Tim Hutchinson (R-Ark.).
Bob Smith (R-Fla.).
Bob Ney (R-Ohio).
CL. "Butch" Otter (R-Idaho).
Carolyn W. Grant (R-NC).
Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.).
Elizabeth Dole (R-NC).
Heather Wilson (R-NM).
J. Randy Forbes (R-Va.).
Jack Kingston (R-Ga.).
James V. Hansen (R-Utah).
John Cornyn (R-Texas).
Kimo Kaloi (R-Hawaii).
Marilyn Musgrave (R-Colo.).
Mike Ferguson (R-NJ).
Mike Simpson (R-Idaho).
Ralph Regula (R-Ohio).
Ric Keller (R-Fla.).
Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.).
Ted Stevens (R-Alaska).
Thad Cochran (R-Miss.).
Dave Camp (R-Mich.).
Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.).
Tom Young (R-Ala.).
Bill Janklow (R-SD).
Craig Thomas (R-Wyo.).
Spencer Abraham (R-Mich.).
William L. Gormley (R-NJ).
Bill McCollum (R-Fla.).
Bill Redmond (R-NM).
Bob Riley (R-Ala.).
Claude B. Hutchison Jr. (R-Calif.).
Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.).
Francis E. Flotron (R-Mo.).
George Allen (R-Va.).
Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.).
Walter B. Jones Jr. (R-NC).
Paul Ryan (R-Wis.).
Bob Smith (R-Fla.).
Joe Pitts (R-PA).
Charles H. Taylor (R-NC).
Bob Ehrlich (R-Md.).
Charles R. Gerow (R-Pa.).
Ed Royce (R-Calif.).
Elia Vincent Pirozzi (R-Calif.).
Jerry Weller (R-Ill.).
Mark Emerson (R-Utah).
Tom Davis (R-Va.).
Van Hilleary (R-Tenn.).
Also:
Americans for a Republican Majority, Leadership PAC of Tom DeLay (R-Texas).
Republican Majority Fund, Leadership PAC of Don Nickles (R-Okla.).
Keep Our Majority PAC, Leadership PAC of Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.).
Leadership PAC, Leadership PAC of Michael G. Oxley (R-Ohio).
Rely on Your Beliefs, Leadership PAC of Roy Blunt (R-Mo.).
Friends of the Big Sky, Leadership PAC of Conrad Burns (R-Mont.).
Senate Victory Fund, Leadership PAC of Thad Cochran (R-Miss.).
American Liberty PAC, Leadership PAC of Bob Ney (R-Ohio).
Battle Born PAC, Leadership PAC of John Ensign (R-Nev.).
Fund for a Free Market America, Leadership PAC of Phil Crane (R-Ill.).
Team PAC, Leadership PAC of J.D. Hayworth (R-Ariz.).
The Republican Party of New Jersey.
Also:
George W. Bush (R).
Notice anything similar? Each and every name listed, each and every PAC, has an (R) after it. The Center for Responsive Politics does not have one Democrat - not one - listed as having received a donation from Jack Abramoff. The amounts given to the Republicans listed above amounts to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
In extremis, Republicans have taken to bandying about the name of Byron Dorgan, Democratic Senator from North Dakota, as evidence that this Abramoff thing is a two-party scandal. Dorgan received $67,000 from Native American tribes represented by Abramoff - not from Abramoff himself - and has since returned the money. Furthermore, he got the money before the tribes had any dealings with Abramoff. In short, Dorgan's so-called involvement in the matter is a red herring.
As for Mr. Bush, he has given the Abramoff money he received to charity, according to the White House. DNC Chairman Howard Dean pegged the total amount Bush received from Abramoff at $100,000.
Abramoff attended three Hannukah receptions at the Bush White House - Hannukah? What happened to fighting the War on Christmas? - but Bush denies knowing him.
"The president does not know him and does not recall meeting him," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan. "It is possible that he could have met him at a holiday reception or some other widely attended event."
Heh. Sounds like what we heard from Bush about Kenny "Boy" Lay.
It is going to be an interesting year.
William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know and The Greatest Sedition Is Silence. |
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By Tom Engelhardt
4 Jan 06
As 2006 begins, we seem to be at a not-completely-unfamiliar crossroads in the long history of the American imperial presidency.
It grew up, shedding presidential constraints, in the post-World War II years as part of the rise of the national security state and the military-industrial complex.
It reached its constraint-less apogee with Richard Nixon's presidency and what became known as the Watergate scandal -- an event marked by Nixon's attempt to create his own private national security apparatus which he directed to secretly commit various high crimes and misdemeanors for him.
It was as close as we came -- until now -- to a presidential coup d'etat that might functionally have abrogated the Constitution. In those years, the potential dangers of an unfettered presidency (so apparent to the nation's founding fathers) became obvious to a great many Americans. As now, a failed war helped drag the President's plans down and, in the case of Nixon, ended in personal disgrace and resignation, as well as in a brief resurgence of congressional oversight activity. All this mitigated, and modestly deflected, the growth trajectory of the imperial presidency -- for a time.
The "cabal," as Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's chief of staff at the State Department, has called Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and various of their neoconish pals, stewed over this for years, along with a group of lawyers who were prepared, once the moment came, to give a sheen of legality to any presidential act. The group of them used the post-9/11 moment to launch a wholesale campaign to recapture the "lost" powers of the imperial presidency, attempting not, as in the case of Nixon, to create an alternate national security apparatus but to purge and capture the existing one for their private purposes. Under George Bush, Dick Cheney, and their assorted advisers, acolytes, and zealots, a virtual cult of unconstrained presidential power has been constructed, centered on the figure of Bush himself. While much has been made of feverish Christian fundamentalist support for the President, the real religious fervor in this administration has been almost singularly focused on the quite un-Christian attribute of total earthly power. Typical of the fierce ideologues and cultists now in the White House is Cheney's new Chief of Staff David Addington. The Washington Post's Dana Milbank described him this way back in 2004 (when he was still Cheney's "top lawyer"):
"[A] principal author of the White House memo justifying torture of terrorism suspects... a prime advocate of arguments supporting the holding of terrorism suspects without access to courts[,] Addington also led the fight with Congress and environmentalists over access to information about corporations that advised the White House on energy policy. He was instrumental in the series of fights with the Sept. 11 commission and its requests for information... Even in a White House known for its dedication to conservative philosophy, Addington is known as an ideologue, an adherent of an obscure philosophy called the unitary executive theory that favors an extraordinarily powerful president."
For these cultists of an all-powerful presidency, the holy war, the "crusade" to be embarked upon was, above all, aimed at creating a President accountable to no one, overseen by no one, and restricted by no other force or power in his will to act as he saw fit. And so, in this White House, all roads have led back to one issue: How to press ever harder at the weakening boundaries of presidential power. This is why, when critics concentrate on any specific issue or set of administration acts, no matter how egregious or significant, they invariably miss the point. The issue, it turns out, is never primarily -- to take just two areas of potentially illegal administration activity -- torture or warrantless surveillance. Though each of them had value and importance to top administration officials, they were nonetheless primarily the means to an end.
This is why the announcement of (and definition of) the "global war on terror" almost immediately after the 9/11 attacks was so important. It was to be a "war" without end. No one ever attempted to define what "victory" might actually consist of, though we were assured that the war itself would, like the Cold War, last generations. Even the recent sudden presidential announcement that we will now settle only for "complete victory" in Iraq is, in this context, a distinctly limited goal because Iraq has already been defined as but a single "theater" (though a "central" one) in a larger war on terror. A war without end, of course, left the President as a commander-in-chief-without-end and it was in such a guise that the acolytes of that "obscure philosophy" of total presidential power planned to claim their "inherent" constitutional right to do essentially anything. (Imagine what might have happened if their invasion of Iraq had been a success!)
Having established their global war on terror, and so their "war powers," in the fall of 2001, top administration officials then moved remarkably quickly to the outer limits of power -- by plunging into the issue of torture. After all, if you can establish a presidential right to order torture (no matter how you manage to redefine it) as well as to hold captives under a category of warfare dredged up from the legal dustbin of history in prisons especially established to be beyond the reach of the law or the oversight of anyone but those under your command, you've established a presidential right to do just about anything imaginable. While the get-tough aura of torture may indeed have appealed to some of these worshippers of power, what undoubtedly appealed to them most was the moving of the presidential goalposts, the changing of the rules. From Abu Ghraib on, the results of all this have been obvious enough, but one crucial aspect of such unfettered presidential power goes regularly unmentioned.
As you push the limits, wherever they may be, to create a situation in which all control rests in your hands, the odds are that you will create an uncontrollable situation as well. From torture to spying, such acts, however contained they may initially appear to be, involve a deep plunge into a dark and perverse pool of human emotions. Torture in particular, but also unlimited forms of surveillance and any other acts which invest individuals secretly with something like the powers of gods, invariably lead to humanity's darkest side. The permission to commit such acts, once released into the world, mutates and spreads like wildfire from top to bottom in any command structure and across all boundaries. You may start out with a relatively small program of secret imprisonment, torture, spying or whatever, meant to achieve limited goals while establishing certain prerogatives of power, but in no case is the situation likely to remain that way for long. This was, perhaps, the true genius of the American system as imagined by its founders -- the understanding that any form of state power left unchecked in the hands of a single person or group of people was likely to degenerate into despotism (or worse), whatever the initial desires of the individuals involved.
Sooner or later, the hubris of taking all such powers up as your own is likely to prove overwhelming and then many things begin to slip out of control. Consider the developing scandal over the National Security Agency's wiretapping and surveillance on presidential order and without the necessary (and easily obtained) FISA court warrants. In this case, the President has proudly admitted to everything. He has essentially said: I did it. I did it many times over. We are continuing to do it now. I would do it again. ("I've reauthorized this program more than 30 times since the September the 11th attacks, and I intend to do so for so long as our nation is -- for so long as the nation faces the continuing threat of an enemy that wants to kill American citizens.") In the process, however, he has been caught in a curious, potentially devastating Presidential lie, now being used against him by Democratic pols and other critics.
While in Buffalo, New York, for his reelection campaign in April 2004, in one of those chatty "conversations" -- this one about the Patriot Act -- that he had with various well-vetted groups of voters, the President said the following:
"There are such things as roving wiretaps. Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution."
By that time, as he has since admitted, the President had not only ordered the warrantless NSA wiretapping and surveillance program and recommitted to it many times over, despite resistance from officials in the Justice Department and even, possibly, from then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, but had been deeply, intimately involved in it. (No desire for classic presidential "plausible deniability" can be found here.) So this, as many critics have pointed out, was a lie. But what's more interesting -- and less noted -- is that it was a lie of choice. He clearly did not make the statement on the spur of the moment or in response to media questioning (despite the claims in some reports). He wasn't even "in conversation" in any normal sense. He was simply on stage expounding in a prepared fashion to an audience of citizens. So it was a lie that, given the nature of the event (and you can check it out yourself on-line), had to be preplanned. It was a lie told with forethought, in full knowledge of the actual situation, and designed to deceive the American people about the nature of what this administration was doing. And it wasn't even a lie the President was in any way forced to commit. No one had asked. It was a voluntary act of deception. Now, he is claiming that these comments were meant to be "limited" to the Patriot act as the NSA spying program he launched was "limited" to only a few Americans -- both surely absurd claims. ("I was talking about roving wiretaps, I believe, involved in the Patriot Act. This is different from the N.S.A. program. The N.S.A. program is a necessary program. I was elected to protect the American people from harm. And on Sept. 11, 2001, our nation was attacked. And after that day, I vowed to use all the resources at my disposal, within the law, to protect the American people, which is what I have been doing, and will continue to do.")
In other words, by his own definition of what is "legal" based on that "obscure philosophy" (and with the concordance of a chorus of in-house lawyers), but not on any otherwise accepted definition of how our Constitution is supposed to work, the President has admitted to something that, on the face of it, seems to be an impeachable act -- and he has been caught as well in the willful further act of lying to the American people about his course of action. Here, however, is where – though so many of the issues of the moment may bring the Nixon era to mind -- things have changed considerably. Our domestic politics are now far more conservative; Congress is in the hands of Republicans, many of whom share the President's fervor for unconstrained party as well as presidential power; and the will to impeach is, as yet, hardly in sight.
In his news conference defending his NSA program, the President took umbrage when a reporter asked:
"I wonder if you can tell us today, sir, what, if any, limits you believe there are or should be on the powers of a President during a war, at wartime? And if the global war on terror is going to last for decades, as has been forecast, does that mean that we're going to see, therefore, a more or less permanent expansion of the unchecked power of the executive in American society?"
"To say ‘unchecked power,'" responded an irritated Bush, "basically is ascribing some kind of dictatorial position to the President, which I strongly reject."
How the nation handles this crossroads presidential moment will tell us much about whether or not "some kind of dictatorial position" for our imperial, imperious, and impervious President will be in the American grain for a long, long time to come.
Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com ("a regular antidote to the mainstream media"), is the co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of American triumphalism in the Cold War. His novel, The Last Days of Publishing, has just come out in paperback.
Copyright 2005 Tom Engelhardt |
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RAW STORY
January 5, 2006
Rep. John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) and 22 other House members sent a letter to President Bush today requesting that he provide a range of information concerning the controversial warrantless surveillance program by the NSA, RAW STORY has learned.
In light of recent disclosures by NBC that CNN Reporter Christiane Amanpour's telephone calls may have been intercepted by the Bush Administration -- a fact caught by AmericaBLOG's John Aravosis. The Democrats asked for information regarding whether any reporters or other members of the media have had phone calls intercepted under the NSA program.
The congressmembers also asked the President to propose statutory language that would specifically authorize the program so that it could be considered as part of a possible extension of the USA PATRIOT Act scheduled to sunset Feb. 3.
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The text of the letter follows: January 5, 2006
The President
The White House
Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President:
We write to you regarding the National Security Agency's use of warrantless surveillance involving people in the United States. While we believe it is critical that communications with Al Qaeda representatives be scrutinized, it is also imperative that it be done in a manner that respects the law and the privacy rights of individuals in this country, and as has been done by prior Administrations.
As you know, since this program was first disclosed by The New York Times on December 16, 2005, it has caused a firestorm of controversy. Among other things, concerns have been raised that not only is the program constitutionally problematic; but also that it is inconsistent with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act ("FISA") and not authorized by any subsequently passed law (including the September 18, 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force); it included within its sweep calls solely within the United States; the intelligence information was widely disseminated without adequate controls; and that it involved tapping into telecommunication data and voice networks, thereby intercepting a large volume of telephone and Internet communications. Concerns about the program were not only raised by Members of the Intelligence Committees and Members of the FISA Court (one of whom resigned in protest), but by then-Deputy Attorney General Comey and, reportedly, by then-Attorney General Ashcroft.
Perhaps the most significant concern many of us have is that such a program could be utilized with the Executive Branch acting in the role of attorney, judge, and jury in deciding whether or not the surveillance was justified or appropriate. This is particularly perplexing given the ease with which your and other Administrations have been able to obtain FISA warrants in the past, and the fact that such warrants can even be obtained on a retroactive basis.
Given the controversy and myriad legal concerns raised by the surveillance program, we would ask that you forward to us proposed statutory language authorizing the program so that the Members can consider the same as part of our review of those provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act scheduled to sunset on February 3, 2006.
In addition, so that we may better understand the nature of the program, we would ask that you forward to us the following:
* Any and all legal opinions and memorandum concerning the lawfulness of the program
* Any and all orders authorizing and reauthorizing the program
* Any and all records and information indicating the number of U.S. persons for whom such surveillance was authorized
* Any and all records and information indicating the number of U.S. persons for whom communication to or from them were intercepted
* Any and all records and information indicating the number of intercepted communications occurring completely within the U.S.
* Any and all records identifying any members of the U.S. press, other U.S. media or Members of Congress for whom communications to or from them were intercepted
* Any and all records and information indicating how the information concerning U.S. persons was stored, shared among various agencies and departments, and whether, when and how such information is to be destroyed.
To the extent any of the above includes classified information, we would be willing to discuss a means by which certain information can be redacted.
Thank you for your time and attention to this matter.
Sincerely,
Rep. John Conyers, Jr.; Rep. Bobby Scott; Rep. Lofgren; Rep. Nadler; Rep. Tauscher; Rep. Jackson Lee; Rep. McDermott; Rep. Meehan; Rep. Olver; Rep. Wexler; Rep. Inslee; Rep. Schakowsky; Rep. Doggett; Rep. Kucinich; Rep. McCollum; Rep. Berman; Rep. Baldwin; Rep. Van Hollen; Rep. David Price; Rep. Tom Udall; Rep. Ackerman; Rep. Wasserman Shultz; Rep. Sabo; Rep. Tierney; Rep. Hinchey; Rep. Sanders
Update: Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has also signed onto the letter. |
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By SCOTT SHANE
NY Times
January 6, 2006
WASHINGTON - In a sign of growing partisan division over domestic eavesdropping, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday defended the Bush administration's limited briefings for Congress on the secret program and accused the committee's top Democrat of changing her position on the issue.
Also Thursday, 27 House Democrats sent a letter to President Bush asking for information about the National Security Agency eavesdropping program, including whether communications from or to members of Congress and journalists were intercepted.The Intelligence Committee chairman, Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, was responding to a statement Wednesday by Representative Jane Harman, Democrat of California, that the law requires that the full House and Senate Intelligence Committees be informed of the N.S.A. program. By briefing only the Republican and Democratic leaders of both houses and of the committees, the administration violated the law, Ms. Harman wrote in a letter to the president.
In a letter to Ms. Harman, Mr. Hoekstra said the briefings were in compliance with the National Security Act of 1947, which says the committees should be informed of intelligence activities, though "with due regard for" the need to protect secrets.
"The committee has been informed, in good faith by the president of the United States," through briefings he and Ms. Harman attended, Mr. Hoekstra wrote.
He said he was "surprised and somewhat bewildered" by Ms. Harman's letter because she had not previously complained about the briefings. Mr. Hoekstra told Ms. Harman that he found her letter to the president "completely incongruent" with her previous position.
"In the past," he said, "you have been fully supportive of this program and the practice by which we have overseen it."
The security agency's program, disclosed last month in The New York Times, involves eavesdropping without court warrants on the telephone calls and e-mail messages of people in the United States who officials say have been linked to terrorism suspects overseas.
Ordinarily, the law requires a warrant from a special intelligence court for such eavesdropping. But Mr. Bush has said he authorized the intercepts under his power as commander in chief.
Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, released the 27 Democrats' letter. It asks for copies of all legal opinions on the spying program; the numbers of Americans singled out; and the names of agencies getting the information the agency collected.
F.B.I. agents and N.S.A. employees have been warned by their bosses not to discuss the program.
The warnings at the security agency, which were sent after the Times article appeared, came in two e-mail messages dated Dec. 16 and Dec. 22 from Lt. Gen. Keith B. Alexander, the agency's director, to the N.S.A. work force. They were released on Thursday to The Times in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.
In the Dec. 16 message, General Alexander wrote, "Rest assured that any operation, regardless of sensitivity, is conducted within the law and in the best interest of our nation."
He reminded the employees in the same message that the program remained classified.
"We do not comment on intelligence operations, actual or alleged - to do so is professionally irresponsible and may put Americans or allied personnel in peril," he wrote. |
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The Boston Phoenix
6 Jan 06
Fearful that his presidency could be swept into the same historical dustbin as Richard Nixon’s, an unrepentant President George W. Bush seems intent on prosecuting the sources who leaked to the New York Times the details of his administration’s warrantless domestic spying. But does Bush have the chutzpah to go after the Times itself?
A variety of federal statutes, from the Espionage Act on down, give Bush ample means to prosecute the Times reporters who got the scoop, James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, as well as the staff editors who facilitated publication. Even Executive Editor Bill Keller and Publisher Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger Jr., could become targets — a startling possibility, just the threat of which would serve as a deterrent to the entire Fourth Estate.
Legal means are one thing, but political will is another. If Bush goes after the Times, he could spark a conflagration potentially more destructive to a free press — or to his administration — than Nixon’s 1971 Pentagon Papers machinations, which included efforts to stop publication of the classified study of the Vietnam War, the aborted prosecution of leaker Daniel Ellsberg, and the intention to prosecute newspapers (and their employees) that ran the document. All backfired on Nixon. Many believe that the Times performed an incalculably valuable service when it reported last month on a top-secret National Security Agency program — almost certainly unlawful — involving presidentially (but not court-) approved electronic surveillance of message traffic between people in this country and locations abroad. The leak investigation by the Department of Justice (DOJ) has begun. What has received virtually no attention is that the Times and its reporters, editors, and publisher are at serious risk of indictment by a vengeful White House concerned not so much with disclosure of national secrets as with revelation of its own reckless conduct.
TARGETING THE TIMES
The Times’ December 16 front-page exposé made headlines around the world. The warrantless eavesdropping the newspaper uncovered is an almost certain violation of Americans’ privacy rights and is very likely a crime. Diverting questions about the highly suspect program, the administration repeatedly makes the absurd claim that this disclosure has tipped off the terrorists that their electronic communications are being monitored. In truth, it’s been well-known for decades by the terrorists and just about anyone else with even glancing knowledge of intelligence-gathering that such surveillance is done lawfully with an order issued by a top-secret national-security court that rarely turns down a government request. That the surveillance under Bush is done unlawfully hardly will change the terrorists’ communications practices.
The DOJ announced on December 30 that it has opened a criminal-leak investigation. The announcement was greeted with only muted criticism from media and civil-liberties circles, perhaps because it looked like nothing more than a replay of the still-ongoing Valerie Plame–outing fiasco. Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU, and Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, welcomed an investigation but suggested that the object should be the warrantless surveillance program, not those within the government who leaked it. Neither seemed to sense the threat to yet another target: the newspaper that published the story.
Those who don’t see the danger in the DOJ probe of the leaks underestimate how far zealous federal prosecutors can carry such an investigation. Prosecutors’ enormous discretionary latitude, derived from the extraordinary range of narrow, broad, and in some instances dangerously vague criminal statutes that control the disclosure of supposed national-security secrets, renders any such investigation dangerous to a free press.
Forget for a moment the fate of leakers who could be subject to prosecution for anything from disseminating stolen government property to mail and wire fraud, espionage, or even to the capital crime of treason. Instead, consider the lot of the paper that had the courage to spotlight the administration’s potentially criminal conduct: it now faces the prospect of criminal indictment. (When asked directly if the investigation extended to the publication of the information, a DOJ official remarked broadly to reporters that he could not comment on any aspect of the investigation.)
There is little reason to suppose that the administration would refrain from indicting the newspaper, its reporters, and its higher-ups unless the political downside was too substantial. Indeed, with undoubted additional deep and dark secrets not yet exposed, one assumes that the administration would like to go beyond terrorizing leakers and reach those who report leaks to the public. Historical and legal precedent that suggests the legal viability of such a prosecution has gone largely unnoticed in the public arena — though not likely at the DOJ.
That precedent comes from the Nixon administration, which contemplated indicting the three newspapers that published excerpts from The Pentagon Papers in the waning years of the Vietnam War — namely the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and the Washington Post — along with some of the individuals involved. Indeed, when the Supreme Court in 1971 turned down the Nixon DOJ’s request for an injunction against publication, there were three justices (Burger, Harlan, and Blackmun) who thought the court should have prevented publication altogether, and three (White, Stewart, and, again, Blackmun) who went out of their way to suggest that the DOJ consider indicting the newspapers after publication. The Nixon administration’s failure to prevent publication, warned justices White, Stewart, and (agreeing in his separate opinion) Blackmun, "does not measure its constitutional entitlement to a conviction for criminal publication." In other words, although the First Amendment might prevent a prior restraint on publication, this did not mean that publishing was legal or that the publishers could escape criminal prosecution.
The White-Stewart opinion, approved by Blackmun, proceeded to list numerous statutes arguably rendering such publication criminal, including the Espionage Act and a plethora of laws prohibiting communication of documents relating to the national defense, as well as the "willful publication" of any classified information concerning "communication intelligence activities" of the United States. Two justices (Burger and Harlan) did not specifically address the question of post-publication criminal prosecution of the newspapers, but their endorsement of the idea can be inferred from the fact that they approved of an injunction against publication in the first place.
So let’s not kid ourselves: five of the nine justices would have approved of criminal prosecution of the newspapers in the Pentagon Papers case, even though a majority would not authorize a pre-publication injunction. Therefore, this often-touted victory for freedom of the press was in fact quite limited and foreshadowed a battle of monumental proportions.
NIXON UNBOUND
In his authoritative 1972 book, The Papers and the Papers, Sanford J. Ungar concluded that the main reason Nixon and Attorney General John N. Mitchell did not prosecute media targets was because by that time the Watergate scandal had broken. (Disclosure: I represented Ungar during the Pentagon Papers episode.) Nixon was on his way to impeachment or resignation while Mitchell was on his way to indictment and federal prison. Later, Whitney North Seymour, the moderate Republican US attorney for New York at the time of the Pentagon Papers imbroglio, wrote in his autobiography that the DOJ sent emissaries to enlist the cooperation of Seymour’s office in securing an indictment of the newspapers and of individual employees, but that Seymour responded "Not in this District." Soon thereafter, Watergate came to the rescue.
But it is not far-fetched to assume that the current administration — just as obsessed with secrecy as Nixon’s and equally determined to cover up its derelictions and crimes, and with few if any voices of moderation the likes of Seymour’s — will pick up the cudgel the Nixon team abandoned.
Such an indictment could be brought in short order. It would be unnecessary for the DOJ to complete the leak investigation before indicting media defendants, since the mere publication of the story would be the alleged crime regardless of the identity of the leakers. Nor would the Times’ publisher, editors, and reporters be able to claim ignorance of the top-secret nature of the information published: surely the president and his aides made that very clear at a meeting held with Keller and Sulzberger in the Oval Office last year. Besides, the Times’ voluntary postponement of publication for a year prior to that meeting could readily be spun as indicating knowledge that harm to national interests was possible.
This is not to say that prosecution would be a cakewalk for the DOJ. Although it easily could obtain an indictment, getting a conviction is another story. The media defendants would doubtless be represented by top-flight lawyers — this time, however, by criminal-defense lawyers skilled at convincing ordinary people, rather than First Amendment counsel arguing nice legal points to judges as was the case in the Pentagon Papers conflict as well as in the disastrously unsuccessful Plame "reporter’s privilege" battle. In addition, the case likely would be tried in either New York or Washington, DC, where prosecutors would be confronted with those cities’ famously skeptical and independent — even ornery — jurors, who would be required to agree unanimously in order to convict.
Defense lawyers would doubtless argue, probably effectively, that their clients performed a public service by exposing official wrongdoing at the highest levels of government. Bush would, in effect, be placed on trial, along with the New York Times. One can imagine defense counsel quoting Thomas Jefferson that "between a government without newspapers or newspapers without government, I would surely choose the latter." It would be one helluva fight — the fight that we never got to see between Nixon and the media.
Harvey Silverglate, a lawyer and frequent "Freedom Watch" contributor, represented several parties in the Pentagon Papers litigation. Samuel A. Abady and Dustin Lewis assisted in the preparation of this piece. |
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By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
06 January 2006
He may have heard few home truths, and changed few minds. But at least George Bush can now claim to be hearing other points of view on his unpopular policy on Iraq.
In a remarkable White House occasion, a president frequently accused of being surrounded by a coterie of advisers who tell him only what he wants to hear, summoned to the Roosevelt Room more than a dozen former secretaries of state and defence, Republicans and Democrats, to ask their advice. The most recent of them was Colin Powell, Mr Bush's increasingly unhappy secretary of state during his first term. The most venerable was Robert McNamara, now almost 90, occupant of the Pentagon under presidents John F Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson and an architect of the Vietnam war to which Iraq is often compared.
The group included not only supporters, but also outspoken critics of his handling of the war, among them Madeleine Albright, General Powell's predecessor under the Democrat president, Bill Clinton.
The assembling of such political and intellectual firepower was part of the new White House PR strategy, to show Mr Bush was open to all shades of opinion on Iraq, and prepared to admit big problems remained. But there is scant sign the session will change his policies.
The President promised to "take to heart" their suggestions, only to reiterate his double-track strategy of keeping US troops in Iraq, while helping Iraqis to build their own democracy and the security forces needed to defend it.
Afterwards, participants were coy about what was said. "He heard some things he liked, and some things he didn't like," said Melvin Laird, the defence secretary under Richard Nixon, and a supporter of the Iraq war. "That's the sort of meeting you want."
But everything seems to have been very gentlemanly and polite. Lawrence Eagleburger, the secretary of state under Mr Bush's father, told reporters after the meeting: "When you are in the presence of the President of the United States, I don't care if you've been a devout Democrat for the past 100 years, you're likely to pull your punches to some degree." |
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By Manuel Valenzuela
InformationClearingHouse.info
5 Jan 06
Festering in our midst like a toxic cloud of pollution the army of good Americans exists, living and working among us, inhabiting our neighborhoods and cities, co-existing peacefully with us, though perceiving an utterly different conception of reality than the rest of us.
Their numbers, though dwindling more every day with the almost weekly revelations of corporatist lies built upon corporatist lies and government deceptions meshed with corporate criminality, remain high, thanks to those unable to escape the clouds of 9/11 and the manipulative propaganda of the corporatist media.
The Kool-Aid drinking brigades remain strong, still ardent supporters of frivolous, fictitious and diminishing deceptions, still hypnotized to the dim-witted, slurred speech of their great Commander in Chief, still spewing the talking points they hear emanating from the corporatist media and still clinging to the ingrained and unenlightened selfishness that permeates their existence. Today they are harder to recognize than in previous years, their once proud bumper stickers and car magnets on pickup trucks and SUVs praising their Dear Leader now nowhere to be seen, evaporating like a morning fog, thrown into trash bins or stored inside closets, lest they be fingered as part of the ignorant legions of automatons that helped steer America directly towards its present predicament. Gone are the large W’s emblazoned on their vehicles, that blue “Wastika” showcasing blind loyalty to criminality and fascism, while advertising mental fragility and propensities to be the followers of incompetence.
Missing from the giant trucks and monstrous SUV’s masking quite apparent deficiencies below the belt are the plethora of patriotism-laced and nationalism-filled slogans that reeked of machismo yet betrayed delicate insecurity, now conveniently hidden from view as their precious war for fictitious democracy and freedom continues its decent into quagmire and debacle.
Yet this vast army of sheeple lingers throughout the American landscape, for they have not quite surrendered to truth or reality, two concepts as unfamiliar to them as reason and logic. They have simply retreated back to the canopied forests where barbarians live, crawling under rocks and boulders, returning home only to await the beckoning calls of further war through the trumpets of fear and hatred.
Like fair-weathered fans, hiding at the first sign of defeat, rising with the arrival of victory, wanting only to be seen with winners and associated with success, this army of followers abandons ship when trouble can be seen and defeat smelled, forgetting that a war and quagmire exists in Iraq, evading their complicity in furtherance of criminality, finding it easy to whitewash from their minds war crimes and the murder of over 120,000 Iraqi and American lives.
For they are the Army of Good Americans, fearing what they do not know or understand, easily led into the dark expanses of human nature, ignorant to the ease with which they are manipulated and made blind to the power they willingly cede to the criminals and murderers in power.
Birthed from the rubble of the World Trade Center, rising like a phoenix on 9/11 to claim dominion over America, this army has been the oxygen-rich blood maintaining alive the criminals in office. They are the defenders of war crimes and the apologizers of corruption. Filled with the emotions and passion of mammalian instinct, making them unthinking, uncritical, illogical and without reason, the army of good Americans has become the key used by corporatists to unlocking imperial aspirations abroad and destroying freedoms and rights at home. It is this army – a large part of American society – that has become an oasis to corporatists whose ambitions would have otherwise perished in the deserts of the Middle East.
Their legions, marching lock step behind their Dear Leader, filled to the rafters with the fear, hatred, xenophobia and patriotism needed by authoritarian regimes to thrive, have become the conduits of destruction, violence, rape and murder, the co-conspirators of illegality and death. Easily they answered the call to scapegoat and hate that which they did not know, their fear magnified and manipulated by their puppeteers, becoming the pawns of expendability and the tools of power, their emotions abused, their religious beliefs manipulated, their vote exploited, their majority numbers used to invade and occupy foreign lands and pilfer the treasury at home.
To them 9/11 was their call to arms, that transcendental moment where imploding towers falling birthed trance-like obedience and blind faith to criminals, though preferring the cowardice of chicken hawks, the timidity of yellow elephants and the comfort of armchair warriors rather than the bravery of enlistment and deployment. After all, in the demented mind of the army of good Americans, those less fortunate, those relegated to the lower castes of society due to the weaknesses espoused by the failed theories of social Darwinism are destined to become the cannon fodder of America, returning either dead or maimed for life serving their role where “survival of the fittest” governs.
Sitting comfortably on their couches, engorging themselves with microwave dinners, watching reality television and the latest exploits of sensationalist news reports while thousands of innocents die in order to appease their thirst for vengeance, the army of good Americans pretends to support the troops through car magnets and ribbons, hiding behind the red, white and blue, hiding insecurities through the bravado of tough talk, yet in reality sacrifices nothing both for a war they asked for or for the soldiers their loud voices sent to hell on Earth.
Instead, they bask in the glow of American comfort, kneeling down and praying nightly to the monitor in the center of their households, becoming the obedient drones of propaganda, absorbing and taking as their own the cocktail of talking points spewed by corporate media and its clusters of lackeys and hacks. On weekends they can be spotted playing with the many adult toys purchased through maxed out credit cards, thinking themselves beneficiaries of the mirage called the American Dream, not realizing their role in exponentially increasing the debt they will forever be enslaved to pay. After work they can be seen visiting the famed cathedrals of consumerism, those monstrous malls of materialism surveying suburbia, teeming with the products of overindulgence and the goods of escapism, sadly having become the center of American society and culture.
It is this army of good Americans that will, upon the next happenstance bogeyman atrocity, once again rise up in a fear-induced, hate-engendered frenzy, waving Old Glory, hiding behind its colors, its xenophobia metastasized to a rabid-filled, vengeance-seeking wickedness of blindness of reason and deafness of wisdom, asking, begging government and its corporatist masters to further usurp its civil liberties, freedoms and rights, gladly sacrificing the future of their children for the chance to be protected and be made secure from evildoers, both real and concocted, demanding, in its infinite ignorance, the full spectrum of the American police state.
Bubbles of Comfort and Fantasies of Deception
The army of good Americans would rather live in the slavery of ignorance rather than the freedom of knowledge, preferring shackles of fiction to the liberty of reality. Loyal followers to lies and deceit, easily manipulated and corralled, addicted to being misled and loving the exploitation of their emotions, they would rather not know truth than stop believing in fantasy, choosing to remain inside the bubble of comfortable deceptions rather than sit atop the mountain of concerns. Merrily they drink the Kool-Aid that enables them to remain unknowing, unconcerned and unrepentant sheeple, wishing to remain embedded into the same system that abuses, exploits and subjugates them. They would rather subsist in ignorance than thrive in truth, preferring to maintain the illusions and fictions manufactured by propagandists that allow them to escape the reality that is the human condition.
In the fantasy conjured up by their masters they see only the reality they want to believe in, the altered existence that they would much rather be part of. Weak minded in character, needing to be dominated and led, searching for a master to guide and exploit them, more likely to believe in the fables of archaic stories and fictions of metaphysical gods, and searching the periphery of the world for answers they do not know or understand, they will forever be made to believe any lie or manipulation or deception thrown at them, for they crave leadership, whether malignant or benign, and are in desperate need to place blind faith in fictional leadership, whether that of invisible gods or incompetent presidents. For this army follows, it does not lead, it relies on commands, not its own internal minds, and it appropriates the thoughts of others, incorporating them as their own, regurgitating them as if they have even a basic comprehension of the much broader issues.
The army of good Americans, like their counterpart in 1930’s Germany, blindly follows and seldom asks questions, always with a wink and a nod turning a blind eye to criminality, rapidly forgetting morality and humanity, pretending not to know the actions of their government and later, when the consequences to those actions finally arise, saying they did not understand, denying complicity and accepting ignorance. Yet purposefully they cover their eyes when it is convenient, but not when it is suitable to their wants and needs, when their fears and hatreds have fed on the vicarious crimes against humanity committed by their leaders. Through quiet acquiescence to the crimes of their masters they become complicit actors to the actions of madmen, their psyches becoming a vacuum devoid of virtue and morality, their failure to speak out or act against the crimes they allow to continue making them as guilty as those committing them.
Since 9/11 the crimes of the Bush administration have been known to all, yet to the army of good Americans, rabid with a hunger for Arab blood and entangled with the enraptured desire to inflict pain on that which is unknown and most feared, the crimes against humanity and the war crimes committed in their name are free to continue, allowed to permeate the conscious of America and enter the imagination of our once innocent children. The use of malevolent torture, false imprisonment, cruel and unusual punishment and dehumanization are seen as virtues that must be inflicted on Arabs and Muslims, lest the debauchery of American culture be laid to waste. The infliction of collective punishment, mass bombings, destruction of homes and lives, assassinations, shootings and suffering is seen as a necessary means to achieve victory, regardless of the amounts of innocent blood spilled and the level of misery spawned, for the full might of America’s military must be shown off and utilized.
To the army of good Americans, many of them undereducated and unenlightened, many filled with the hatred and fear becoming of all great pawns, unwise to long-term consequences and possessing the myopic lens of short-term satisfaction, war against brown-skinned peoples is a consequence of deep rooted racism and xenophobia, a chance to unleash the mightiest army in the world upon third world sub-humans who have conveniently been made scapegoats by those who decide reality. Lacking the fundamental precepts of humanity, empathy inside them as rare as underground fields of oil in New York City, unable to place Iraq and the Middle East on a world map, made unaware of alien cultures and of history itself, good Americans epitomize the ugly American, that creature molded by America’s degraded education system, reared by television and not parents, reprogrammed through fiction and not reality, unable to comprehend the world outside its bubble or the existence of cultures different than its own.
Sadly, it is the ugly American – millions of which comprise the army of good Americans – that would have no problem incinerating the Middle East with nuclear weapons, killing millions of Arabs in the process. Such was the thought process of the good Germans of yesteryear. Inside the minds of many ugly Americans, though they would deny it upon questioning, lives the growing desire to rid the nation of Arabs and Muslims and gays and all brown-skinned immigrants, for America is a “white, Christian nation,” their fear, hatred and xenophobia rising like a giant wave of testosterone, resurrecting a hypocrisy and bigotry lying dormant for decades.
Their buttons pushed expertly by hate radio, miscreant politicians and vitriol filled so-called men of god, the ugly American is a manifestation of frustrations and inner anger, of impotence of character, of deep seated insecurities and of malignant fundamentalist religions, born in ignorance and in a capitalist system espousing social engineering and social Darwinism, the worst of America, a creation that should not exist in a nation of such wealth and splendor.
An Army, Used and Abused
The army of good Americans is easily controlled through television, made to believe everything it hears, manipulated with the greatest of ease thanks to its inability to think on its own. No longer a free thinking individual, soldiers in this army depend on the stenographers of the state and the propagandists of the corporatists to feed him with information and opinion, lest he be left out in the wilderness, unable to think or understand, unable to spew talking points, susceptible to those wishing to pop his bubble of comfortable surroundings. He is a product of an education system now designed to make subservient to the state all students, indoctrinating the mechanisms of servitude and allegiance into young minds, no longer creating independent minds but rather robotic psyches both through standardized teaching and the purposeful bankruptcy of financial resources.
Taught to never question superiors or to analyze a situation using reason or logic, the good American is but a hollow figment of what used to be a human mind. He has become a producer and a consumer, trained from birth to desire the fruits of materialism and never question the evils of American capitalism. He has as responsibility allegiance to government and undying loyalty to corporations and their products. He is to blindly follow leadership, no matter how corrupt or criminal it might be, no matter how detrimental to his life it is. He is taught that the actions of government or of leaders are always right, never wrong. Blind faith and belief in the goodness of America’s government must always exist, for the Christian god has blessed America as a nation superior to all other lands, and its people have thus been made to be direct conduits of the Almighty itself.
The good American has been reared to never deviate away from the illusions concocted by his masters, for in these chimeras of control the population is better managed and manipulated. Purposefully made ignorant to the lands and cultures of the world, unable to understand the complexities of human civilization, the good American naturally is made to fear that which he does not understand, for fear of the unknown is a great harbinger of human warfare. Fear of the unknown is a tool of control, a reality of the human condition, and, therefore, it is of great importance that the good American be made to know as little about nothing as possible, lest fear be controlled and the unknown understood.
With blind faith enveloping his existence, with every lie and deception and manipulation told by governance taken as true, the good American can easily be molded to fear and hate any scapegoat or bogeyman created and enemy manufactured, for if his bubble of comfort is said to be threatened, if his way of life is in any way said to be compromised, he can be made to become mesmerized to threats real and created, transforming an ordinary citizen into an agitated piston serving to embolden the engines of war. In this way, one more soldier of hate is molded from the clay of those in control and one more slave of power is created, joining millions more as pawns in the games those at the top play.
Manipulating the ingrained hatred, fear and xenophobia of good Americans, the elite concoct a potent army of political power that allows them unfettered control over the direction of the nation. With the loyal allegiance of the most ignorant, unenlightened, gullible, naďve, weak-minded and easily led, by controlling the racists, bigots and the most faithful and religious, those that will never question and never challenge authority, an entire army of good Americans can be manufactured, combining an amalgam of personalities and characters, fusing them to the dictates of power, creating an easily manipulated army of citizens that will remain quiet, complacent and subservient, even when lies and deceptions become readily apparent, when the corruption and incompetence of leadership is made known and even when the worst war crimes upon innocents become manifest. For in the army of good Americans, like the good Germans of decades long past, the crimes of leaders are known and the wickedness is apparent, yet in the silence and failure to act complicity and acquiescence is inferred.
In spite of the tangled web of lies and deceptions by the corporatists having been exposed, despite the vast assortment of war crimes being uncovered, regardless of the enormous betrayal and exploitation of emotions of the citizenry by those in power, and notwithstanding the blatant corruption and incompetence by government that has been apparent for years, a vast percentage of the army of good Americans still refuses to deviate from its beliefs, maintaining its grand illusion of the fantasy concocted for its consumption, reluctant to escape the bubble of comfort it would rather not deviate away from.
Even with the obvious criminality and the apparent debauchery of its heroes and leaders, in spite of what truth and reality have uncovered, good Americans still cling to the belief in an illusion they have been living in since 9/11, that the president is an honorable man, not the immoral deviant he appears to be, that he has restored integrity to the White House, not brought the quite evident level of incompetence and criminality, and that he has their best interests at heart, not those of the corporate world that owns him. They fail to escape their insulated bubble of infallible circumstances, unable to see that their devout faith has been exploited, their fears abused and their ignorance fomented, all for their precious vote and political allegiance, failing to comprehend that their emotions have been molded to enable the corporatists in power to maintain hegemony over the nation. In furtherance of criminality and corruption they have been manipulated, falling for the propaganda of the keepers at the gate, still to this day unable to see that their blind faith and loyalty to the same government damaging their interests is inevitably eroding the fabric of the country and the freedoms and rights both of themselves and their progeny.
They are being used and abused, becoming the pawns of power, a citizenry robbed of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, without their knowledge or understanding, the clandestine pillage of their rights taking place with their silent acquiescence, dragging all of us down with them. They are a large segment of American culture whose metamorphosis is transforming them from placid citizens to legions of soldiers helping to cement their own downfall. Living in the denial that has caressed them for years, becoming the comfort their insecure lives depend on, they fail to see a reality afforded to billions of human beings the world over. This army of good Americans, like their German predecessors before them, believes itself the voice of sanity in a battle of fear and insecurity, of good versus evil, yet the exact opposite is true. They are the paranoid and psychotic fire whose flames sustain the insanity and wickedness emanating from America’s present government. Through their political power and influence the criminality in government can continue eviscerating the nation’s freedoms, rights and treasure; their denial sustains the growing division between supporters of the cabal of criminality and those opposed.
Their Own Worst Enemy
The seeds planted on 9/11 by the new Pearl Harbor have grown into a pestilence of weeds spreading like wildfire throughout the lands of the free and the home of the brave, causing a great rift among the peoples of America. Slowly this vast field of weed dries up the further away from reality it travels, the more denial it reaches for the more its branches turn crisp brown and attractive to the fire raging from Atlantic to Pacific that threatens the America both of good Americans and the rest of us.
The army of good Americans is its own worst enemy, yet it refuses to escape the denial enveloping its collective mind that like a parasite refuses to excrete itself from its host. Easily its members blame everything but themselves for their diluted thoughts; the fantasy they are made to believe in cannot be altered, its flawless truth is smeared by the “liberal media”; everyone is to blame for the Iraq debacle except George the Lesser; in every corner they find scapegoats to blame for the afflictions demonizing the nation; France is to be blamed for everything that goes wrong with America; blind faith and loyalty makes them unable to visualize and analyze the much broader issues haunting our current troubles, failing to see outside the parameters of the box that sits like a golden calf in their living rooms, speaking and preaching to them on a nightly basis while spellbound they sit, staring at its images, absorbing its sounds, believing its fables.
Sadly, this army, thinking itself righteous and loyal, and no doubt full of decent, law abiding people, yet unable to see beyond the limits of its own fear, hatred and paranoia, is dragging America down into the periphery of a most ominous black hole. Refusing to think outside the box of what they have been programmed to see, reluctant to question the authority they have been trained to always follow, hesitant to form opinion based on reason and logic, instead of regurgitating the programmed responses of talking heads and professional deceivers, the army of good Americans fails to understand the ramifications upon their lives and the future of their cherished nation.
In thinking themselves patriots loyal to the Bush administration, believing the corporatists in power have their interests at heart, refusing to see reality or hear truth, maintaining their illusion of embedded propaganda and deceit, being unable to escape their bubble of comfort and of consumerist escapism they are giving comfort and assistance to the enemy of all American people, a cabal of criminality lurking within our shores, hidden in the hallways of governance, having hijacked the levers of power, commandeering American society straight towards the iceberg called fascism, its benign-looking top hiding a most dangerous underside.
Without the army of good Americans the corporatists in power cannot survive, for the legions obedient and loyal to them act as the buffer of protest, dissent and debate. They are a great wall holding waves of truth and reality at bay, creating a nation living under two distinct and separate realities, cementing division and animosity, fracturing friends and family, causing rumbles in the underbelly of American culture, maintaining in elected office the lackeys and prostitutes protecting those at the highest echelons of corruption, and governance. Without the army of good Americans the criminals drunk with power would have no mandate, no power or ability to steer the nation and its people to ruination.
It is this army that grants Bush, Cheney and the corporatists the energy to declare absolute power, regressing the nation backwards towards a veritable state of fascist affairs, enabling the continued, planned and systematic erosion of civil liberties and eviscerated freedoms along with the gutting of a democracy that has mutated into a charade full of smoking mirrors, broken glass and compromised electronic voting machines, becoming the illusion normally reserved for the peoples of the third world, those ruled by dictators and despots. Like no army to ever march in the United States, the army of good Americans has granted life to criminals, corruptors, corporatists, autocrats and murderers, allowing human wickedness to flourish, becoming, in the span of four years, the bodyguards of tyranny abroad and criminality at home, the brainwashed automatons granting validity to torture, kidnappings, illegal renditions, bombings, depleted uranium, cluster bombs, collective punishment, gulags, misery, false imprisonment, rapes, murder and utter destruction in the Middle East while enabling the onslaught upon civil liberties, the decimation of due process, the erosion of the Bill of Rights, the disregard of the Constitution, the senseless death and maiming, both physically and mentally, of tens of thousands of American soldiers for a war based on lies and criminality, and the rise of the police state inside America. The army of good Americans has become the tool used to implode the foundations of the republic.
The America before 9/11 and the America afterwards have, thanks in large part to the army of good Americans, with their lust for Arab blood, their omnipresent fear, their enraptured hatred of chosen scapegoats and their addiction to being led by corrupt, immoral and incompetent corporatists, become two different distinct nations, separated by paradigm shifts and societal tremors, by abdications of citizenry and usurpations of what used to be the People’s government. The army of good Americans is willingly sacrificing its rights and liberties as well as those of the rest of us to appease its fears and insecurities, exchanging freedom for authoritarianism, democracy for corporatism.
Thinking that in allowing for warrantless wiretaps and NSA eavesdropping because they have nothing to hide will not affect them, they have helped seal their own fates, for in the evisceration of rights of minorities those of the majority are next to follow. In granting dictatorial powers to their Dear Leader, in the misguided belief that only he can protect them from bogeymen, the army of good Americans is opening the doors to the coming police state, for in such a place those apologizers of criminality soon find themselves on the receiving end of what they helped engender. In pushing for the extension of the Patriot Act, in the naďve belief that its laws only affect bogeymen, the army of good Americans is conditioning its children to a future of less freedom and rights, for the future will never miss what they never had.
This group will in the next few years become the eyes and ears of the police state, informers, spies, snitches and narks spawning fear, mistrust and insecurity, helping to maintain tyranny inside a nation that once fought to eviscerate it. It is in their character, their selfishness and lack of empathy assisting in persecuting neighbors, customers, friends and relatives. They will have become traitors to the republic they claim to love and the freedoms they swore to protect, becoming betrayers to its principles and founding vision, to its citizens and to the ideals of the Founding Fathers. Yet the hand that feeds them will inevitably come back to haunt them, for they will invariably cannibalize each other, seeking the favor of authority yet receiving as payback that which they helped birth.
One day, in the not too distant future, in the middle of the night, a knock will come at their door, it being not a dream nor a fantasy, its noise an ominous reminder of the police state now upon America, coming to serve power on those who thought they had nothing to fear by sacrificing liberty and freedom for so-called security. When that day arrives, the army of good Americans will look back to the past, afraid to peer at the future, wishing for the days of old, contemplating memories of what used to be, the life that was taken for granted, unsure what they were thinking when in their fear and hatred-filled days they released the valves that opened the flood of corporatist rule upon their children, ashamed of themselves for allowing such a fate to devour what was once a great and shining beacon on a hill.
Manuel Valenzuela is a social critic and commentator, international affairs analyst and Internet columnist. His articles as well as his archive can be found at his blog, http://www.valenzuelasveritas.blogspot.com and at http://www.informationclearinghouse.info as well as at other alternative news websites from around the globe. Mr. Valenzuela is also author of Echoes in the Wind, a fiction novel. Mr. Valenzuela welcomes comments and can be reached at manuel@valenzuelas.net.
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By DEB RIECHMANN
Associated Press
Thu Jan 5, 11:05 PM ET
WASHINGTON - President Bush's decision to bypass the Senate in filling posts at the State Department, Federal Election Commission and National Labor Relations Board drew protests Thursday from lawmakers and advocacy groups.
Under the Constitution, the president may avoid the Senate confirmation process and make appointments while the chamber is in recess. Such appointments usually are short-term, expiring at the end of next congressional session.
But because the Senate held a pro forma session Tuesday and then adjourned, the White House contends the second session of the 109th Congress has begun. Therefore, the White House believes Bush's nearly 20 recess appointments are valid until the following session, which won't conclude until the end of 2007.White House press secretary Scott McClellan said the appointments were necessary to fill vacancies, and that a few posts were empty because some lawmakers "are playing politics with the nomination process."
However, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said the regular confirmation process should be used so the Senate can be assured that nominees are qualified.
Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., protested Hans von Spakovsky's appointment to the FEC. Kennedy said von Spakovsky, a Justice Department lawyer who was Republican Party chairman in Fulton County, Ga., worked toward requiring Georgia voters to have a photo identification — a requirement critics said would harm black voters.
Kennedy also contended that von Spakovsky was involved in a decision that rejected a recommendation of career Justice Department lawyers in a Texas redistricting case. Those lawyers had concluded that the redistricting plan violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965 because it eliminated several districts where minorities had substantial voting power and illegally diluted black and Hispanic voting power.
The president also appointed to the FEC Robert Lenhard, who was part of a legal team that challenged the constitutionality of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, and Steven Walther, a lawyer with ties to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
Reid, Kennedy and AFL-CIO President John Sweeney all expressed disappointment with Bush's recess appointment of Peter Kirsanow to the National Labor Relations Board, citing his record as a member of the Commission on Civil Rights.
"He is an ardent foe of basic worker protections, including the minimum wage and prevailing wage laws, and is a vehement opponent of affirmative action," Kennedy said.
Bush's appointment of Ellen Sauerbrey to be assistant secretary of state for refugees, population and migration, was opposed by advocacy groups that say she lacks experience on refugee issues. Currently, Sauerbrey is U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Commission on the status of women.
"Sauerbrey's record at the United Nations has been a relentless effort to foist the administration's anti-choice agenda onto international bodies dealing with population and reproductive health and rights," said Jodi Jacobson, director of the Center for Health and Gender Equity, a group that advocates for the health and rights of women and girls across Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., said he was disturbed by the recess appointments of Julie Myers to head the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Tracy Henke to lead the Homeland Security Department's office of state and local preparedness. Myers' confirmation was stalled because of concerns that she lacks experience to head immigration and customs enforcement, the federal government's second-largest investigative force.
Lieberman complained that the president appointed Henke before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee had a chance to vote on her nomination. "The recess appointment power should be sparingly used, and not merely to avoid having to put administration nominees to a vote," Lieberman said.
The senator had earlier expressed concern about Henke's decision at the Justice Department to delete statistics about racial disparities in traffic stops from a draft press release — an action that Lieberman said "may have undermined the office's reputation for objectivity and independence."
Henke said she edited the press release because it didn't accurately portray information in a report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. |
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by John in DC
AmericaBlog
1/04/2006
FURTHER UPDATE: NBC has now deleted the paragraphs of the interview dealing with Amanpour. Very very interesting.
UPDATE: Read our follow-on to this story here.
From NBC News:
New York Times reporter James Risen first broke the story two weeks ago that the National Security Agency began spying on domestic communications soon after 9/11. In a new book out Tuesday, "State of War," he says it was a lot bigger than that. Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Andrea Mitchell sat down with Risen to talk about the NSA, and the run-up to the war in Iraq....
Mitchell: Do you have any information about reporters being swept up in this net?
Risen: No, I don't. It's not clear to me. That's one of the questions we'll have to look into the future. Were there abuses of this program or not? I don't know the answer to that
Mitchell: You don't have any information, for instance, that a very prominent journalist, Christiane Amanpour, might have been eavesdropped upon?
Risen: No, no I hadn't heard that. |
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By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
5 Jan 2006
The members of a secret federal court that oversees government surveillance in espionage and terrorism cases are scheduled to receive a classified briefing Monday from top Justice Department and intelligence officials about a controversial warrantless-eavesdropping program, according to sources familiar with the arrangements.
Several judges on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court said they want to hear directly from administration officials why President Bush believed he had the authority to order, without the court's permission, wiretapping of some phone calls and e-mails after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Of serious concern to several judges is whether any information gleaned from intercepts by the National Security Agency was later used to gain their permission for wiretaps without the source being disclosed. The court is made up of 11 judges who, on a rotating basis, hear government applications for surveillance warrants. But only the presiding judge, currently Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, was notified of the government eavesdropping program. One judge, James Robertson, who also serves on the federal bench in Washington, resigned his seat on the surveillance court in protest shortly after the wiretapping was revealed by the New York Times in mid-December.
Kollar-Kotelly began pressing for a closed government briefing for the remaining members of the court on Dec. 19, the day she learned of Robertson's concerns. Other judges wanted to know, as Robertson had, whether the administration had misled their court about its sources of information on possible terrorism suspects.
Kollar-Kotelly had privately raised concerns in 2004 about the risk that the government could taint the integrity of the court's work by using information it gained via wiretapping to obtain warrants from judges under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
On Friday, an attorney for Seifullah Chapman, one of the men convicted as part of the "Virginia jihad network," formally asked federal prosecutors in Virginia to determine whether warrantless NSA wiretaps were used to gain information about his client. Chapman, who is serving a 65-year sentence for conspiring to provide material support to a foreign terrorist group, was the subject of a secret FISA warrant.
"My feeling is they are a very professional organization. They would be equally concerned that my client's rights are protected, and they'll want to find out themselves," said John Zwerling, Chapman's attorney.
Some judges who spoke on the condition of anonymity yesterday said they want to know whether warrants they signed were tainted by the NSA program. Depending on the answers, the judges said they could demand some proof that wiretap applications were not improperly obtained. Defense attorneys could have a valid argument to suppress evidence against their clients, some judges said, if information about them was gained through warrantless eavesdropping that was not revealed to the defense.
Yesterday, Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, sent a letter to Bush charging that the limited nature of congressional briefings on the monitoring program violated the National Security Act. The White House informed the chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence oversight committees and the two ranking Democrats about the program.
The National Security Act requires the president to keep all members of the two committees fully informed of intelligence activities with the exception of those conducted covertly overseas. "In my view, failure to provide briefings to the full congressional intelligence committees is a continuing violation of the National Security Act," Harman wrote.
Staff writer Dafna Linzer contributed to this report.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company |
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Scott Shane
New York Times
January 5, 2006
Washington -- The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee said Wednesday that the limited congressional briefings the Bush administration has provided on a National Security Agency eavesdropping program violated the law.
In a letter to President Bush, the representative, Jane Harman of Rancho Palos Verdes (Los Angeles County), said the briefings did not comply with the National Security Act of 1947. That law requires the House and Senate Intelligence Committees to be "kept fully and currently informed" about the spy agencies' activities.
The briefings on the program under which Americans and other people in the United States are selected for eavesdropping without court warrants were limited to the so-called Gang of Eight. That consists of the Republican and Democratic leaders of each house and of the Intelligence Committees. Because of turnover in those positions, 14 members of Congress attended one or more briefings.
Harman wrote in her letter that the law allows briefings to be limited to the eight leaders only in cases of covert action. The National Security Agency program does not qualify as a covert action, which the law says does not include activities whose "primary purpose is to acquire intelligence," she wrote.
Bush and his senior national security aides have said appropriate members of Congress were briefed more than a dozen times about the NSA's domestic surveillance operations, which Bush first approved the month after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Asked about the letter, a spokesman for the National Security Council, Frederick Jones, said, "We believe Congress was briefed appropriately on this matter."
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino gave a nearly word-for-word response to the letter.
Unlike some Democrats, Harman has defended the eavesdropping, which focuses on people in the United States who officials believe have possible links to terror suspects overseas. In a statement on Dec. 21, she said she believed that the program was "essential to U.S. national security and that its disclosure has damaged critical intelligence capabilities."
She has also called for a full briefing and open hearings on NSA activities.
The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., has said that the briefings made clear that Americans would be targets of some of the eavesdropping and that Democrats had offered at least tacit approval.
Responding in writing to Harman, Hoekstra said she had never previously raised concerns about the number of people briefed on the program.
"In the past, you have been fully supportive of this program and the practice by which we have overseen it," he wrote. "I find your position now completely incongruent."
Many details about the scope of the electronic surveillance program remain unknown. However, Bush and his aides have asserted that the monitoring -- without court warrants -- is narrowly targeted to eavesdrop on calls and e-mails of people who are inside the United States and suspected of communicating with al Qaeda or its affiliates.
Vice President Dick Cheney said Wednesday that the program helped to prevent possible terrorist attacks against the American people: "This program is critical to the national security of United States."
The Associated Press contributed to this report. |
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hereinreality.com
It all started with Prescott Bush, George W. Bush's grandfather. In 1918 it is said that he robbed the grave and stole the skull of the Native American warrior Geronimo as part of an initiation into Yale's Skull and Bones Society. The Skull and Bones society has long been important to the Bush Family. George Bush Sr. and George W. Bush were also members of this secret society.
Prescott Bush had a bit of trouble back in the 1940s. While American soldiers were fighting the Nazis in WWII, a few of the companies Prescott managed were seized under the Trading with the Enemy Act because they were fronts for Nazi Industrialist Fritz Thyssen, a financier of Hitler's Third Reich.
Click link above to view photo album. |
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by Mick Youther
6 Jan 2006
“The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter--it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.” --Mark Twain, 1888
As a writer, I am constantly searching for the “right word” to express what I want to say. For almost three years, I’ve been looking for the right word to describe the Presidency of George W. Bush.
I should mention that any time I refer to something Bush has said or done, I am actually referring to the carefully orchestrated appearance of reality that we know as George W. Bush. This illusion is the product of an elite team of pollsters, propagandists, and media manipulators. There would be no George W. Bush, as we know him, without the people that make his decisions, write his speeches, teach him his sound bites, and point him toward the podium.
There are a lot of words that could be used to describe the Bush Presidency, but I wanted to find that one perfect word that best expresses its essence. This is how I found the right word. I knew that any description of Bush had to include the hypocrisy and deceit that permeates everything he says and does. From his cowboy act to his concern for the military families, it is all deception. His words are chosen carefully, using false arguments and false associations to frighten and mislead as many people as possible. Even when Bush is not telling outright lies, he seems incapable of speaking without stretching, bending, twisting or somehow perverting the truth. In his defense; how would you like to try to justify the war in Iraq and Bush’s fiscal policies without lying?—It can’t be done.
Bush’s most apparent personal characteristic is his ignorance. Will Rogers said, “…everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.” The question is—what is Bush’s subject? I believe he was a history major in college, but he doesn’t even seem to remember historic events that took place in his lifetime—thus condemning us to repeat them. He has already involved us in another Viet Nam, and it looks like another Watergate is on the way. A question that is often asked, “Is his ignorance feigned or real?” Rumors are regularly leaked from the White House that Bush isn’t as dumb as he seems, but I bet when the Congressional hearings start to investigate him, he will proudly plead ignorance.
Bush describes himself as a Christian. He fits the narrow definition of “one who professes a belief in Jesus Christ”, but if you extend the definition to include motives and behavior, you start running into some troubling questions: What kind of Christian authorizes the execution of a fellow Christian and mocks her pleas for mercy? Or exhibits delight just before he unleashes a rain of death and destruction down on innocent Iraqis? Who would Jesus torture?
His passion for war is another of Bush’s less admirable traits. He and a good number of his Administration are Chickenhawks—they supported the war in Viet Nam, they just didn’t care to participate. Bush said he didn’t want to have to shoot himself in the foot to avoid going, so he jumped to the head of the line and got into Texas Air National Guard. Even then, he disappeared for a year and failed to fulfill his military obligation.
It eventually became clear that sometimes there is just no word to describe a thing—especially something as complex as Bush. Even if there was a word that adequately described Bush today, it would soon be obsolete because he is continually adding to his repertoire of high crimes and misdemeanors. He is a liar, a hypocrite, a demagogue. He is the law. He is judge, jury and executioner. He is a spymaster and a torturer. He is Commander in Chief. He is the man who would be king, or dictator, or emperor.
There also appears to be some kind of mysterious, indefinable power that separates and protects Bush from reality. Otherwise: How can Bush fail to react to numerous warnings of attacks before 9/11, and then base his next campaign on the proposition that only he can keep America safe? How can a draft dodger make himself seem tougher than a war hero? How can someone, who has been wrong about absolutely everything in Iraq, continue to speak with an air of infallible certainty and expect to be believed without question? How can Bush talk about fiscal responsibility, while turning a record surplus into a record deficit—borrowing two billion dollars every day, just to keep things running?
Reflecting on these contradictory events, I thought to myself—It’s downright Orwellian. That is when the answer hit me. Here is a single word, Orwellian, which can represent life in the world of “Big Brother"—as described in George Orwell’s novel, 1984. And there’s the word Machiavellian: a single word that describes the political principles and methods advocated by Niccolo Machiavelli, a Florentine Statesman, in 1517.
It was clear. The convergence of circumstances and conditions, brought about by George W. Bush’s presidency can only be described by a word derived from the name of its creator. Following the form of the previous examples, the word would be “Bushian”; but I wanted something that sounded a little more modern, so I propose a new definition for the word—“Bush”.
Bush (boosh) adj. 1. of or relating to George W. Bush. –n. 1. a person elevated by money and powerful interests to a position far above his abilities. 2. an amoral, deceitful, self-righteous hypocrite: COMPASSIONATE CONSERVATIVE 3. an inarticulate nincompoop, who believes himself to be amusing. 4. a corrupt, scheming demagogue, ruling an Orwellian world using Machiavellian principles. –v. 1. To screw up everything—completely. 2. to use the vast resources of the government to attack and malign those who oppose you.
Be sure to use it in a sentence today. (e.g., He is a real Bush.[or] Anybody that Bush ought to be in jail.)
Mick Youther is an American citizen, an independent voter, a veteran, a parent, a Christian, a scientist, a writer, and all-around nice guy who has been aroused from a comfortable apathy by the high crimes and misdemeanors of the Bush Administration. |
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By John Pilger
InformationClearingHouse.info
5 Jan 06
On Christmas Eve, I dropped in on Brian Haw, whose hunched, pacing figure was just visible through the freezing fog. For four and a half years, Brian has camped in Parliament Square with a graphic display of photographs that show the terror and suffering imposed on Iraqi children by British policies. The effectiveness of his action was demonstrated last April when the Blair government banned any expression of opposition within a kilometre of Parliament. The High Court subsequently ruled that, because his presence preceded the ban, Brian was an exception.
Day after day, night after night, season upon season, he remains a beacon, illuminating the great crime of Iraq and the cowardice of the House of Commons. As we talked, two women brought him a Christmas meal and mulled wine. They thanked him, shook his hand and hurried on. He had never seen them before. "That's typical of the public," he said. A man in a pin-striped suit and tie emerged from the fog, carrying a small wreath. ""I intend to place this at the Cenotaph and read out the names of the dead in Iraq," he said to Brian, who cautioned him: "You'll spend the night in cells, mate." We watched him stride off and lay his wreath. His head bowed, he appeared to be whispering. Thirty years ago, I watched dissidents do something similar outside the walls of the Kremlin.
As night had covered him, he was lucky. On 7 December, Maya Evans, a vegan chef aged 25, was convicted of breaching the new Serious Organised Crime and Police Act by reading aloud at the Cenotaph the names of 97 British soldiers killed in Iraq. So serious was her crime that it required 14 policemen in two vans to arrest her. She was fined and given a criminal record for the rest of her life. Freedom is dying.
Eighty-year-old John Catt served with the RAF in the Second World War. Last September, he was stopped by police in Brighton for wearing an "offensive" T-shirt, which suggested that Bush and Blair be tried for war crimes. He was arrested under the Terrorism Act and handcuffed, with his arms held behind his back. The official record of the arrest says the "purpose" of searching him was "terrorism" and the "grounds for intervention" were "carrying placard and T-shirt with anti-Blair info" (sic).
He is awaiting trial.
Such cases compare with others that remain secret and beyond any form of justice: those of the foreign nationals held at Belmarsh prison, who have never been charged, let alone put on trial. They are held "on suspicion". Some of the "evidence" against them, whatever it is, the Blair government has now admitted, could have been extracted under torture at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. They are political prisoners in all but name. They face the prospect of being spirited out of the country into the arms of a regime which may torture them to death. Their isolated families, including children, are quietly going mad.
And for what? From 11 September 2001 to 30 September 2005, a total of 895 people were arrested in Britain under the Terrorism Act. Only 23 have been convicted of offences covered by the Act. As for real terrorists, the identity of two of the 7 July bombers, including the suspected mastermind, was known to MI5, and nothing was done. And Blair wants to give them more power. Having helped to devastate Iraq, he is now killing freedom in his own country.
Consider parallel events in the United States. Last October, an American surgeon, loved by his patients, was punished with 22 years in prison for founding a charity, Help the Needy, which helped children in Iraq stricken by an economic and humanitarian blockade imposed by America and Britain. In raising money for infants dying from diarrhoea, Dr Rafil Dhafir broke a siege which, according to Unicef, had caused the deaths of half a million under the age of five. The then Attorney-General of the United States, John Ashcroft, called Dr Dhafir, a Muslim, a "terrorist", a description mocked by even the judge in his politically-motivated, travesty of a trial.
The Dhafir case is not extraordinary. In the same month, three US Circuit Court judges ruled in favour of the Bush regime's "right" to imprison an American citizen "indefinitely" without charging him with a crime. This was the case of Joseph Padilla, a petty criminal who allegedly visited Pakistan before he was arrested at Chicago airport three and a half years ago. He was never charged and no evidence has ever been presented against him. Now mired in legal complexity, the case puts George W Bush above the law and outlaws the Bill of Rights. Indeed, on 14 November, the US Senate effectively voted to ban habeas corpus by passing an amendment that overturned a Supreme Court ruling allowing Guantanamo prisoners access to a federal court. Thus, the touchstone of America's most celebrated freedom was scrapped. Without habeas corpus, a government can simply lock away its opponents and implement a dictatorship.
A related, insidious tyranny is being imposed across the world. For all his troubles in Iraq, Bush has carried out the recommendations of a Messianic conspiracy theory called the "Project for a New American Century". Written by his ideological sponsors shortly before he came to power, it foresaw his administration as a military dictatorship behind a democratic façade: "the cavalry on a new American frontier" guided by a blend of paranoia and megalomania. More than 700 American bases are now placed strategically in compliant countries, notably at the gateways to the sources of fossil fuels and encircling the Middle East and Central Asia. "Pre-emptive" aggression is policy, including the use of nuclear weapons. The chemical warfare industry has been reinvigorated. Missile treaties have been torn up. Space has been militarised. Global warming has been embraced. The powers of the president have never been greater. The judicial system has been subverted, along with civil liberties. The former senior CIA analyst Ray McGovern, who once prepared the White House daily briefing, told me that the authors of the PNAC and those now occupying positions of executive power used to be known in Washington as "the crazies". He said, "We should now be very worried about fascism".
In his epic acceptance of the Nobel Prize in Literature on 7 December, Harold Pinter spoke of "a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed". He asked why "the systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities, the ruthless suppression of independent thought" of Stalinist Russia was well known in the west while American state crimes were merely "superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged".
A silence has reigned. Across the world, the extinction and suffering of countless human beings can be attributed to rampant American power, "but you wouldn't know it," said Pinter. "It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest."
To its credit, the Guardian in London published every word of Pinter's warning. To its shame, though unsurprising, the state television broadcaster ignored it. All that Newsnight flatulence about the arts, all that recycled preening for the cameras at Booker prize-giving events, yet the BBC could not make room for Britain's greatest living dramatist, so honoured, to tell the truth.
For the BBC, it simply never happened, just as the killing of half a million children by America's medieval siege of Iraq during the 1990s never happened, just as the Dhafir and Padilla trials and the Senate vote, banning freedom, never happened. The political prisoners of Belmarsh barely exist; and a big, brave posse of Metropolitan police never swept away Maya Evans as she publicly grieved for British soldiers killed in the cause of nothing, except rotten power.
Bereft of irony, but with a snigger, the BBC newsreader Fiona Bruce introduced, as news, a Christmas propaganda film about Bush's dogs. That happened. Now imagine Bruce reading the following: "Here is delayed news, just in. From 1945 to 2005, the United States attempted to overthrow 50 governments, many of them democracies, and to crush 30 popular movements fighting tyrannical regimes. In the process, 25 countries were bombed, causing the loss of several million lives and the despair of millions more." (Thanks to William Blum's Rogue State, Common Courage Press, 2005).
The icon of horror of Saddam Hussein's rule is a 1988 film of petrified bodies in the Kurdish town of Halabja, killed in a chemical weapons attack. The attack has been referred to a great deal by Bush and Blair and the film shown a great deal by the BBC. At the time, as I know from personal experience, the Foreign Office tried to cover up the crime at Halabja. The Americans tried to blame it on Iran. Today, in an age of images, there are no images of the chemical weapons attack on Fallujah in November 2004. This allowed the Americans to deny it until they were caught out recently by investigators using the internet. For the BBC, American atrocities simply do not happen.
In 1999, while filming in Washington and Iraq, I learned the true scale of bombing in what the Americans and British then called Iraq's "no fly zones". During the 18 months to 14 January, 1999, US aircraft flew 24,000 combat missions over Iraq; almost every mission was bombing or strafing. "We're down to the last outhouse," a US official protested. "There are still some things left [to bomb], but not many." That was six years ago. In recent months, the air assault on Iraq has multiplied; the effect on the ground cannot be imagined. For the BBC it has not happened.
The black farce extends to those pseudo-humanitarians in the media and elsewhere, who themselves have never seen the effects of cluster bombs and air-burst shells, yet continue to invoke the crimes of Saddam to justify the the nightmare in Iraq and to protect a quisling prime minister who has sold out his country and made the world more dangerous. Curiously, some of them insist on describing themselves as "liberals" and "left of centre", even "anti-fascists". They want some respectability, I suppose. This is understandable, given that the league table of carnage of Saddam Hussein was overtaken long ago by that of their hero in Downing Street, who will next support an attack on Iran.
This cannot change until we, in the west, look in the mirror and confront the true aims and narcissism of the power applied in our name: its extremes and terrorism. The traditional double-standard no longer works; there are now millions like Brian Haw, Maya Evans, John Catt and the man in the pin-striped suit, with his wreath. Looking in the mirror means understanding that a violent and undemocratic order is being imposed by those whose actions are little different from the actions of fascists. The difference used to be distance. Now they are bringing it home.
John Pilger's new book, Freedom Next Time, will be published in June by Bantam Press.
First published in the New Statesman – www.newstatesman.co.uk
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By DOUG THOMPSON
Publisher, Capitol Hill Blue
Jan 6, 2006,
The ever-widening Jack Abramoff scandal gives Americans a glimpse of just how the money game is played in politics but influence peddling goes far beyond one disgraced lobbyist.
Money, someone once said, is the mother’s milk of politics and our elected officials have been sucking on the tits of political motherhood for a long, long time.
I know. I was one of those who bought and sold politicians. For five years, I ran the political programs division of the giant National Association of Realtors, an 800,000 plus member association with a multi-million dollar political action committee that could lavish incredible largesse on elections.
In 1988, we gave the maximum contributions allowed by law to 432 out of 435 Congressional races and every Senate race contested that year. We spent another $1.7 million on “independent expenditure” campaigns that helped determine the outcome of three Senate and four Congressional races.
The Realtors were a feared political force, an 800-pound gorilla that could muster money and manpower in any state or congressional district.
In 1987, a member of the House Ways & Means Committee casually mentioned to one of our lobbyists that they were considering repealing mortgage interest tax deductibility, a sacred cow to the real instate industry. So we went into the district of every member of the committee, buying massive amounts of drive-time radio ads saying:
“Did you know Congress is thinking about repealing one of the major benefits you get from owning a home – the right to deduct the interest you pay on your mortgage on your taxes? We don’t think that’s good for you or America and we bet you don’t either. If you agree, why not call (insert name of Congressman) at (phone number) and tell them to oppose repeal of your benefits of home ownership.”
We booked two weeks of airtime but pulled the ads after just three days because the chairman of the committee called our chief lobbyists and said “call off the dogs. This sucker is dead.”
Of course, we argued the value of tax deductibility as if it were some divine right, saying it contributed to America’s ranking as the country with the third-highest per capita home ownership in the world while never mentioning that the first and second countries (Canada and Australia) did not allow deduction of mortgage interest for tax purposes.
Having that kind of power is Washington is a heady experience and, for too long, I got caught up in the adrenaline rush that comes from successfully buying votes and support. But a six-figure income and a power-tripping lifestyle could not stave off the realization that what I and others did subverted democracy and corrupted the process of government.
Democracy is not served by fatcat lobbyists and associations who buy access through large campaign donations, lavish trips for elected officials and other gifts. Likewise, electing, and re-electing, those who seek and accept such things in exchange for support and votes bastardizes the process.
Although I rationalized my involvement in big money politics with dismissive fake justifications like “I didn’t make the rules, I just play the game,” the sad fact remains that I was just as guilty of helping corrupt the very system that should serve the voters, not the well-heeled politically connected.
In 1989, I debated Congressman Guy VanderJact, chairman of the National Republican Campaign Committee, at a campaign forum on the effect of money in politics.
“As far as I’m concerned, political action committees are just a bunch of whores,” VanderJact said.
“There’s something wrong with that analogy,” I responded. “Where I come from, whores aren’t the ones who pay. Whores are the ones with their hand out, asking for money in advance for a service they are only, at the time, promising to deliver. I think that when you pay out money under such circumstances, the very best you’re ever going to get is screwed.”
It made a nice sound bite but it doesn’t erase the fact that when you lie down with dogs you get up with fleas and I’m itching like hell.
© Copyright 2006 by Capitol Hill Blue |
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By DEROY MURDOCK
Jan 6, 2006
What's the big idea? Don't ask me. At least in this column, there is none.
Republicans at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue last year tied their own shoelaces together while tackling big ideas. Despite President Bush's valiant efforts, his attempt to modernize Social Security stalled amid Democratic intransigence and GOP cowardice. Meanwhile, greater presidential boldness might have yielded a dramatic reform of the Tax Code. Instead, a blue-ribbon panel offered an uninspiring mish-mash that quickly lulled the nation to sleep. And in Congress, wholesale attempts to reign in runaway spending floundered as the Republican appetite for pork proved strong enough to light a thousand barbecue pits.
While America still needs personal retirement accounts, a low-rate flat tax, and massive reductions in federal outlays, perhaps Republicans this year should pass measures that would be slight in size but significant in restoring the party's shattered image as the purveyors of limited government and free markets. Here are four proposals that should help the GOP get its groove back.
First, Congress should adopt a rule requiring constitutional justification for all the legislation it considers. Every bill should begin, "Pursuant to U.S. Constitution Article X Clause, Y, Congress hereby enacts..." Senators and House members may fall back upon the "General Welfare" clause, but at least doing so would remind legislators that America still has a Constitution that is supposed to guide and restrain federal action. As Fred Smith of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free market think tank, likes to say: "The Constitution isn't perfect, but it's better than what we have now."
Second, before the next mid-term election, Congress should approve grants to states to finance free photo identification cards for poor voters who otherwise lack ID. In exchange, states should require citizens to show photo ID in federal elections.
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court last Oct. 27 blocked a Georgia law that required photo ID at polling stations, saying the card's $35 cost was just too much to ask of the poor and elderly. So why not let low-income and older people cash checks and board 747s without photo ID? If mandating picture ID at every precinct on Nov. 7 requires Washington to reimburse states for giving free IDs to the handful of voters who lack them and cannot afford them, Republicans should propose that trade off.
Elections free of phantom and repeat voters should be expected in Earth's leading democratic republic. Such an anti-vote-fraud measure likely would benefit the GOP, which too often suffers at the hands of union-controlled, big-city, political machines. If Congressional Democrats balk at such a deal, make them stand up and explain why they oppose free photo IDs for voters who need them.
Third, the Senate and House should adopt a rule barring federal funding for new projects that bear the names of living and, even worse, sitting politicians. One must die before appearing on a U.S. postage stamp. Why, then, does California boast the Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International Airport, named after America's still-breathing Transportation Secretary? One of Alaska's notorious "bridges to nowhere" would be dubbed "Don Young's Way" after the GOP House Transportation Chairman who champions it. Naming public works after politicians who are alive and even in office reeks of Pyongyang.
This shady practice also gives incumbents an unfair advantage over their challengers. While his potential opponents for the U.S. Senate struggle to boost their name identification, Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., enjoys taxpayer-funded advertising every time voters see the Robert C. Byrd Federal Courthouse or travel the Robert C. Byrd Expressway. These monuments to vanity are unbecoming and deserve no further federal support. If GOP legislators can gather a pound of principle among themselves, they should apply the postage-stamp rules to bridges and highways.
Fourth, Congress should bar federal farm supports and business subsidies to any American who earns more than $1 million. "No welfare for millionaires" is an idea that will help Republicans show some sorely needed fiscal restraint. If Democrats disagree, let them explain why rich people deserve free stuff.
If Washington Republicans can steady themselves, they should think big. Barring that, it might help them in this election year to think wisely, but also to think small.
(Deroy Murdock is a columnist with Scripps Howard News Service and a senior fellow with the Atlas Economic Research Foundation in Fairfax, Va. E-mail him at deroy.murdock(at)gmail.com.) |
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AFP
Friday January 6, 4:23 PM
Treasury Secretary John Snow denied that China has the United States in an economic stranglehold but renewed demands for greater currency flexibility from Beijing.
Addressing a call-in show on the C-SPAN television network, Snow was asked whether China's heavy holdings of US government bonds left Washington vulnerable if Beijing were to flex its military or diplomatic muscles.
"No, I don't think so, and I don't think that's the way it would play out," the Treasury chief said.
"Remember, people who own US securities have an interest in seeing that paper, whether it's equities or debt paper, sustain its value," he said. "China is a large holder, a sizeable holder of US paper. But it's not large relative to the whole market. If the value of our paper were to fall, they would find they had a large loss of net wealth. It's not in their interests."
Much of the dollar income that China has amassed from its booming exports has been recycled back into US Treasuries, prompting disquiet among some here that Beijing could one day exert economic pressure on the United States.
At the end of October, China held 247.6 billion dollars in Treasury bonds, second only to Japan's 681.6 billion, according to US government figures.
Snow said that even if China were ever tempted to dump some of its Treasury holdings, the United States would easily find other sources of investment.
"There's no other market in the world like the US Treasury market. And people invest in it because it is such an attractive market," he said.
"So it's a good investment for them (China) and I discount very much the prospect you raise."
Snow repeated US calls for China to let market forces play a greater role in setting the value of its currency, the yuan, which critics say remains overvalued against the dollar despite a July revaluation.
"That was an important step. But now they need to move further. They need to move to greater flexibility," Snow said, recalling that he pressed Chinese leaders on the issue during an October visit to the country.
"And I found that they are putting in place mechanisms to allow the currency to have greater flexibility," such as new foreign exchange trading systems, Snow said.
"So I think we are on the right course." |
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By Geoff Dyer in Shanghai and Andrew Balls in Washington
Financial Times
January 6 2006 02:43
China indicated on Thursday it could begin to diversify its rapidly growing foreign exchange reserves away from the US dollar and government bonds – a potential shift with significant implications for global financial and commodity markets.
Economists estimate that more that 70 per cent of the reserves are invested in US dollar assets, which has helped to sustain the recent large US deficits. If China were to stop acquiring such a large proportion of dollars with its reserves – currently accumulating at about $15bn (€12.4bn) a month – it could put heavy downward pressure on the greenback. In a brief statement on its website, the government's foreign exchange regulator said one of its targets for 2006 was to "improve the operation and management of foreign exchange reserves and to actively explore more effective ways to utilise reserve assets".
It went on: "[The objective is] to improve the currency structure and asset structure of our foreign exchange reserves, and to continue to expand the investment area of reserves."
"We want to ensure that the use of foreign exchange reserves supports a national strategy, an open economy and the macro-economic adjustment."
The announcement came from the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (Safe). It gave no more details about whether this meant a big shift in the investment strategy for Chinese reserves, which according to local press reports reached nearly $800bn at the end of last year and are expected by economists to near $1,000bn this year.
The regulator also said it would end quotas on the amount of foreign currency Chinese companies can acquire to invest in overseas assets, a decision that removes a bureaucratic hurdle facing companies that plan to make international acquisitions.
The statement comes at a time of growing debate in China on how the reserves are invested. Some economists have called on Beijing to use the funds to finance infrastructure investment and clean up state-owned companies, or to invest in higher-yielding assets rather than financing US borrowing.
Snow said that even if China were ever tempted to dump some of its Treasury holdings, the United States would easily find other sources of investment.
"There's no other market in the world like the US Treasury market. And people invest in it because it is such an attractive market," he said.
However, according to Stephen Green, economist for Standard Chartered in Shanghai, although the language was "vague", Thursday's statement was the first time Safe has publicly indicated a shift away from dollar assets.
" It is a subtle but clear signal that they are interested in moving away from the US dollar into other currencies, and are interested in setting up some kind of strategic commodity fund, maybe just for oil, but maybe for other commodities," he said.
The Group of Seven leading industrialised economies has repeatedly called for an adjustment in global trade imbalances, including a rise in the renminbi. The US has expressed frustration that China has not allowed its currency to rise significantly after last July’s 2 per cent revaluation. That saw China move from a dollar peg to managing its currency against a basket of currencies, potentially allowing the renminbi to rise against the dollar.
John Snow, US Treasury secretary, speaking earlier on Thursday, repeated his call for China to allow the renminbi to rise against the dollar. “The trade deficit is influenced by lots of things, differential growth rates, differential savings rates and investment rates and so on. But clearly, getting the [Chinese currency] more appropriately valued will be helpful to the global adjustment process,” he said.
However, some economists believe it would be a mistake for China to shift its reserves into domestic investment or other asset classes. |
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By Glenn Somerville
Reuters
Friday January 6, 10:20 PM
WASHINGTON - U.S. employers added a smaller-than-expected 108,000 new jobs in December but that followed a much stronger wave of hiring than previously thought in November when rebuilding after hurricanes was getting under way, a government report on Friday showed.
In its monthly report on employment, the Labor Department said the unemployment rate fell in December to 4.9 percent from 5 percent in November.
The December new-jobs total was well below Wall Street forecasts for 200,000 jobs. But it came after an upwardly revised 305,000 new jobs in November -- the strongest hiring month since April 2004 -- instead of 215,000 that the department reported a month ago. Analysts saw the report as reinforcing chances that the Federal Reserve was on course for a relatively early end to rate rises after hiking the federal funds rate 13 times since mid-2004 to 4.25 percent.
"The report is probably a shade on the weak side and it increases the chance that the Fed is more likely to stop raising rates at 4.75 percent at the middle of the year, rather than going higher," said Cary Leahey, senior managing director at Decision Economics in New York.
There also was a revision in the October jobs totals -- to an increase of 25,000 rather than 44,000 -- but for the two months October and November the net effect was 71,000 more jobs than the government previously had estimated.
On average over 2005, some 168,250 new jobs were created each month -- a steady if unspectacular pace of growth.
U.S. manufacturers hired 18,000 new employees in December on top of 8,000 in November and 13,000 in October -- the first time since March-May 2004 that manufacturers have hired for three months in a row. But construction jobs declined by 9,000 last month, a reversal from November's 42,000-job addition. [...] |
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Campaign for America's Future
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
JANUARY 5, 2006
WASHINGTON - An analysis released today by the Institute for America's Future finds that retail behemoth Wal-Mart Inc. sucked more than $20 billion out of local economies across America this holiday season.
Despite slower-than-projected revenue growth for November and December, Wal-Mart still brought in a record $66 billion for the holiday season - more than five times the revenue of its next- largest competitor. Looking more closely, Wal-Mart's siphoning means a loss of billions in wages and benefits paid, lost purchases of inventory, supplies and services from other local businesses, lost tax revenue to local government and lost contributions to local charities.
"America, as we know it, can't afford Wal-Mart," said Robert Borosage, president of the Institute for America's Future. "People across America are starting to realize the stark reality: Wal-Mart's triumph is the defeat of middle-class America. If Wal- Mart sets the pace, Americans will pay the price, in declining wages, rising health care costs, longer hours, worsening workplace conditions and rising personal taxes to offset soaring corporate subsidies.
The Institute for America's Future analysis combines today's December retail sales report from Wal-Mart to its previously reported November sales to define the company's overall holiday sales. The report applies that holiday sales total to research done by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance to calculate the cost to local communities.
According to a report by the Institute for Local Self- Reliance, $100 spent in locally owned businesses provides the town and surrounding area $44.60, while large retail chains only give back $14.10 to local communities, mainly in the form of wages and service. Therefore, local communities lose at least $30.50 for every $100 spent at Wal-Mart.
For this holiday season, Wal-Mart's record-breaking sales mean staggering losses for Main Street, U.S.A.: $20.3 billion. Had that $66 billion been spent at locally owned businesses, it would have generated some $29.7 billion for local communities. However, thanks to Wal-Mart, that $66 billion translates to only $9.4 billion going into local economies.
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By Adam Tanner
Reuters
Thu Jan 5, 2006 9:11 PM ET
SACRAMENTO - A year after picking a bitter fight with legislators that he ended up losing at the polls, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger unveiled a massive 10-year spending plan on Thursday aimed at winning back Californian support ahead of his November re-election effort.
Addressing legislators in his annual "state of the state" address, the Republican governor proposed $222.6 billion in spending on schools and infrastructure over the next decade that would include a record $68 billion of new debt. Speaking at the state capitol before a legislature dominated by Democrats he once ridiculed as "girlie men," the former movie star and bodybuilding champion outlined a long-term vision of spending to improve and expand the state's schools, roads, water supply and public safety.
"The people, who always have the last word, sent a clear message: Cut the warfare, cool the rhetoric, find common ground and fix the problems together. To my fellow Californians I say -- message received," Schwarzenegger said.
The underpinning of the plan is a desire to return the nation's most populous state to what he has described as a golden era of prosperity in the 1960s that he saw as a young immigrant from Austria.
"If you talked about the Illinois dream or the Delaware dream or the Kentucky dream, no one would know what you meant," Schwarzenegger said. "But our dream, the California dream, that means something. It is the means to a better life, where anything is possible."
TO TURN TO VOTERS AGAIN
The Schwarzenegger infrastructure debt plan would require legislative approval, as well as voter backing over a series of future elections for new bond issues.
Voters could be asked to back an initial $25.2 billion in debt as early as June.
"The big question is, can we afford $25 billion bond this year," Steve Westly, the Democratic state controller who is running for governor, told Reuters. "What this is going to do is add probably $2.2 billion in debt service cost that is going to have to come out of the budget."
California's annual budget is now $114 billion, but the state has long spent more than it takes in revenue. [...] |
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by James Glaser
lewrockwell.com
5 Jan 2006
But I’m telling you we are not even close to winning Bush’s war in Iraq. We have been in Iraq almost three years, and American troops are still in a lock down. No American trooper can take a stroll down the streets of Baghdad or any other Iraqi city.
George Bush is so afraid of the truth coming out about his war in Iraq, and the position we are in over there, that he has resorted to name-calling of anyone who speaks his mind. President Bush stated in a speech to the nation on December 18, 2005:
Yet there is a difference between honest critics who recognize what is wrong, and defeatists who refuse to see anything right… Defeatism may have its partisan uses, but it is not justified by the facts. For every scene of destruction in Iraq, there are more scenes of rebuilding and hope. For every life lost, there are countless more lives reclaimed. And for every terrorist working to stop freedom in Iraq, there are many more Iraqis and Americans working to defeat them. My fellow citizens: Not only can we win the war in Iraq, we are winning the war in Iraq.
Sounds Good. One has to admit that George Bush is pretty slick with his speeches (either that or his speech writers are), but every time he talks he makes it an "us against them" position.
Right off the bat George says the people who disagree with him and his war are "partisans." Merriam Webster defines a partisan as "one who exhibits blind, prejudiced and unreasoning allegiance." George is hinting that those "partisans" who disagree with him are just Democrats who are trying to tear him down and the country with him. What George Bush does not realize is that many of the people who now believe that George Bush’s Iraq War was a mistake from the start and a war we can’t win, do have an allegiance, but that allegiance is not to the Democrat party or even the Republican party, but to the American Constitution, and to the American troops George has sent on this fool’s mission.
When George Bush says, "For every life lost, there are countless more lives reclaimed," he has no basis for that statement. America has told the world that "we don’t do body counts." According to the Secretary of Defense and his top generals, we have no idea of how many Iraqis we have killed and using the number "countless lives reclaimed" is so nebulous that it has no meaning at all.
George claims that there is more rebuilding going on in Iraq than scenes of destruction. Watch the evening news and look at the videos they show, and see if you can spot this massive rebuilding effort. The Iraqi people have fewer than 12 hours of electricity a day and on many days fewer than six. We, the United States of America, destroyed the civilian infrastructure of Iraq at the start of this war. That is a war crime. The fact is that Iraq produces less electricity today than before we attacked. Iraq pumps less oil and refines less gasoline than before we attacked, and they now must import fuel from other countries. Without electricity, drinking water does not get purified, and sewage treatment comes to a halt
Bush goes on to state the obvious – we have more troops than the terrorists have. What is also obvious is that most of the people fighting us are not terrorists, but Iraqi citizens trying to kick our troops out of their country.
It is a fact that our troops can not walk or even ride around Iraq on their off-duty time. Iraq is a total combat zone for American troops. Our military command and our embassy staff are locked up in a place called the Green Zone in Baghdad, where extraordinary security is provided because of the constant threat of attack by insurgents – insurgents who are thought of by many Iraqis as patriots.
I must give George Bush a bit of a break though. George Bush never went to war. George was the right age when his country put out a "call to arms" looking for patriotic Americans to defend our country, but George never heard that call. Because George Bush never went to war, he is really in the dark when it comes to understanding what is going on in Iraq. Bush has no idea of the suffering we are inflicting on the Iraqi people nor is he able to understand what he is asking of our troops. Without knowing what war and combat entail, George Bush does not possess the knowledge needed to claim that we are winning.
George Bush is trying to paint a rosy picture about Iraq, and the help we are getting from the Iraqi people. That might have been true in the euphoria of defeating Saddam Hussein, but we have been fighting there too long, and we have worn out our welcome. The British Sunday Telegraph reports about attacks on coalition troops:
The poll, undertaken for the Ministry of Defence and seen by The Sunday Telegraph, shows that up to 65 per cent of Iraqi citizens support attacks and fewer than one per cent think Allied military involvement is helping to improve security in their country.
Other views, moreover, are more negative: Fewer than half, 46 percent, say the country is better off now than it was before the war. And half of Iraqis now say it was wrong for U.S.-led forces to invade in spring 2003, up from 39 percent in 2004.
The number of Iraqis who say things are going well in their country overall is just 44 percent, far fewer than the 71 percent who say their own lives are going well. Fifty-two percent instead say the country is doing badly.
There's other evidence of the United States' increasing unpopularity. Two-thirds now oppose the presence of U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq, 14 points higher than in February 2004. Nearly six in 10 disapprove of how the United States has operated in Iraq since the war, and most of them disapprove strongly. And nearly half of Iraqis would like to see U.S. forces leave soon.
Two thirds of Iraqis oppose our presence in Iraq, and George Bush says we are winning this war. Of course many in George Bush’s administration told us before we attacked, that the Iraqi people would lay flower petals in our troops’ path. That didn’t happen. Instead they laid down hidden explosive devices and killed and wounded almost 20,000 of our troops.
Think about these facts: 2,180 American Soldiers and Marines are dead, 16,155 are wounded, and tens of thousands have psychological problems after their return from the combat zone. Somewhere between 35,000 and 110,000 innocent Iraqis are dead, tens of thousands more are maimed (we really don’t keep a count) and still more are displaced. Iraq was a pitiful third-world country when we attacked. They had no navy, no air force, outdated weapons, and poorly trained troops. It is now almost three years later, and no American is safe any place in Iraq, and George Bush says we are winning.
George Bush is the "partisan" here, not me. I just don’t know what faction he is giving his blind allegiance to, but I do know it is not to our troops, or our nation’s Constitution, or the truth.
Jim Glaser, a Marine Corps Vietnam War veteran and Commander of American Legion Post 499, works to educate the American public on the consequences of war. His personal website is James-Glaser.com. |
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AFP
Fri Jan 6, 1:39 AM ET
MIAMI - US terror suspect Jose Padilla, detained for over three years without charges as an "enemy combatant," appeared in court for the first time after being flown to Miami from a military prison. Dressed in an orange jumpsuit and wearing handcuffs and leg shackles, Padilla replied "yes, I do," when asked by federal magistrate Barry Garber whether he understood his rights.
The subject of a fierce tug-of-war between the administration of President George W. Bush and civil liberties groups, Padilla was flown to the preliminary hearing at a heavily guarded federal courtroom in Miami from a naval brig in South Carolina.
Prosecutors said they would request that Padilla be held on a "no bond status," meaning he could not be released pending trial.
Thursday's appearance only lasted about five minutes, and an arraignment, when Padilla will be formally charged, was set for 4:00 pm (2100 GMT) on Friday.
Arrested in Chicago's O'Hare airport in May 2002 after returning from Pakistan, Padilla was alleged by federal officials to be a member of Al-Qaeda and to have plotted to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" on US soil.
They maintained since then that as an "enemy combatant" in a time of war, Padilla did not have to be produced in court and could be detained indefinitely.
In September, a US appeals court ruled that Bush had the powers to hold Padilla under those conditions.
But, after Padilla's lawyers moved to challenge his military detention in the Supreme Court, in an abrupt reversal in November, US authorities unveiled a civilian indictment against him, which made no mention of the alleged bomb plot.
He is now charged with conspiracy to "murder, kidnap and maim" abroad. His case was added to an existing civilian criminal indictment against an alleged US and Canada-based terror cell charged with supporting foreign jihadists.
That led the same appeals court to block the transfer to civilian hand for trial. The court pointed out that the government had failed to explain why the civilian indictment made no mention of the acts for which Padilla purportedly needed to be held in military detention.
However, the Supreme Court on Wednesday overruled the lower court, clearing the way for his transfer to Miami.
That was seen as a victory for the Bush administration, as it was able to avert a Supreme Court battle based on the Padilla case over the president's power to hold US citizens as "enemy combatants."
The Supreme Court is expected to decide within two weeks whether to hear that case, but Attorney General Alberto Gonzales declared there now was no longer any reason for a hearing, because Padilla was being placed in civilian custody.
Padilla, alias Abdullah al-Mujahir, was born in Brooklyn, New York. A former member of a Chicago street gang, he is a convert to Islam. |
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by David Swanson
6 Jan 2006
A town hall forum hosted by Congressman Jim Moran and featuring Congressman Jack Murtha packed a large room in Arlington, Va., Thursday evening, and filled an overflow room, and had to turn away another 500 people. The media was well represented. Both Moran and Murtha spoke strongly in support of ending the war as quickly as possible and pulling all U.S. troops out of Iraq. Murtha complained repeatedly that the Bush Administration contributes only "rhetoric" and no "substance" to this debate.
"Sixty to eighty percent of Iraqis want us out," Murtha said. "And 45 pecent say it's justified to kill Americans. The State Department's own polls say the same thing. It's time to let Iraqis take over this effort. Let them solve their own problems, as we did in the revolutionary war."
"A number of senators running for president called me," Murtha added. "I told them there were two policies. One is redeployment. The other is the President's 'stay the course.' And they're in between. I told them they're missing an opportunity to show leadership. They're so hesitant to take a position."
Two long lines formed behind two microphones through which members of the audience could pose questions. One man asked what the real reason had been for the war. Murtha replied that he himself had believed there were WMDs, that he had been misled by the CIA, that Bush ought to have fired George Tenet, and that at this point it doesn't matter what the reason was for the war.
Moran said that he did not support the war because he didn't trust the intelligence about the WMDs: "It was not verifiable. It wasn't even current." Also, Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the attack on the U.S., Moran said, and "There were no terroirist operations going on in Iraq.... And you don't go to war without a plan to win the peace."
Someone asked: "Are we building permanent military bases in Iraq?" Murtha said no. Moran said no, but we have spent $700 million on an embassy.
In response to another question, Moran addressed the idea that withdrawal would result in chaos. "The insurgents are primarily Iraqis," he said. "And foreign terrorists will be booted out once it's not in the Sunnis' interest to have them there."
A veteran of the war asked "How come there hasn't been an investigation of the fraudulent lead-up to the war by this administration? Murtha gave a nonanswer.
Another vet asked "Why not impeach Bush-Cheney?" That question resulted in by far the loudest and longest applause of the evening -- an extended period of foot-stomping, hooting, and hollering. Murtha gave a nonanswer. Moran replied that "impeachment is inconsistent with the democratic process." When this led to boos and hisses and shouts of "It's in the Constitution!" Moran added that impeachment "is not going to happen" in the current Congress, as if he were watching from the stands and not himself a Member of Congress.
Another member of the audience asked whether either congressman supported Congressman Dennis Kucinich's bill to create a cabinet-level Department of Peace. Both gave non-answers.
At one point, Murtha said, "I support what we did in Fallujah, because we're saving American lives."
Another questioner asked about the Downing Street Memo and whether Democrats might consider making a lot of noise about the fact that "the intelligence wasn't wrong, it was a lie." According to this person, "people might then back the Democrats."
Murtha agreed, and said "The Democrats need to get off their hind legs and not be afraid to speak!"
136 Events Like This One All Over Country on Saturday:
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/event
http://www.davidswanson.org
DAVID SWANSON is a co-founder of After Downing Street, a writer and activist, and the Washington Director of Democrats.com. He is a board member of Progressive Democrats of America, and serves on the Executive Council of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, TNG-CWA. He has worked as a newspaper reporter and as a communications director, with jobs including Press Secretary for Dennis Kucinich's 2004 presidential campaign, Media Coordinator for the International Labor Communications Association, and three years as Communications Coordinator for ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Swanson obtained a Master's degree in philosophy from the University of Virginia in 1997. |
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By Mark Benjamin
salon.com
5 Jan 2006
More U.S. soldiers than ever are sustaining serious brain injuries in Iraq. But a significant number of them are being misdiagnosed, forced to wait for treatment or even being called liars by the Army. After fighting in heavy combat during the initial invasion of Iraq, Spc. James Wilson reenlisted for a second tour of duty. Now 24 years old, he loved the life of a soldier.
In the fall of 2004, his 1st Cavalry Division was mostly fighting in Sadr City, a volatile sector of Baghdad. On Sept. 6, Wilson was manning a .50-caliber machine gun atop a Humvee when a bomb or bombs went off directly under the vehicle, rocking his head forward and slamming it into the machine gun. A fellow soldier told Wilson that his Kevlar helmet had been split open by the impact. The heat from one blast felt like "a hair dryer" on his skin, multiplied "times 20," Wilson later wrote in his diary. To the best of his recollection, the force of the blast also knocked the gun from its mount, smashing it into his leg.
Although battered in the attack, Wilson didn't appear badly hurt -- on the outside, at least. But in the days that followed, the young soldier from Albany, Ga., says he often felt "really dizzy, lightheaded and dazed." Two weeks after the battle, Army medics felt Wilson was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and evacuated him out of Iraq for medical evaluation. Wilson was first flown to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, where wounded troops are stabilized, and then sent to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., in October 2004.
After arriving at Walter Reed, Wilson repeatedly told doctors that he had experienced a hard blow to the head during combat in Iraq. He suffered from symptoms strongly associated with a traumatic brain injury, which occurs when the brain is rocked violently inside the skull, tearing nerve fibers: seizures, short-term memory loss, severe headaches with eye pain, and dizzy spells that have made him vomit. During a visit to the Pentagon around Christmas 2004, Wilson got so dizzy he vomited "all over" the carpet while meeting Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz in his office.
Despite Wilson's description of his injury and his symptoms, Walter Reed officials repeatedly questioned his mental state and the authenticity of his combat story. In a June 2005 memorandum from an Army Physical Evaluation Board, some Walter Reed doctors stated that Wilson exhibited "conversion disorder with symptoms of traumatic brain injury." Conversion disorder holds that symptoms such as seizures arise from a psychological conflict rather than a physical disorder. Col. James F. Babbitt, president of the Physical Evaluation Board, accused Wilson of being a liar. "I believe that the preponderance of the evidence available to the Board supports an alternative diagnosis … one of malingering," Babbitt wrote in that memo.
Wilson and his wife, Heidi, who has been staying with him at the hospital, vigorously fought the psychological diagnosis and furiously sought medical treatment. The malingering charge was especially painful. "I want my dignity, pride and respect back," Wilson says. After serving his country, being accused of misleading doctors, he says, "is the worst thing in the world."
Today, Wilson is thin and has a shaved head. He often clenches his eyes shut, as if to squeeze at the pain in his skull, or search out an elusive word or memory. Whenever a dim detail of his combat duty bubbles up in his mind, he types it into his diary. He holds his hands awkwardly, with his thumbs folded over his palms. His speech is at times slow and slurred. "I have been dealing with this all year because no one would help me," he says.
On Dec. 19, 2005, more than a year after he was admitted, Walter Reed finally sent Wilson to a neurological center to be treated for traumatic brain injury. Neuropsychological testing done at Walter Reed on Oct. 11, 2005, led officials to conclude that "there was no indication of malingering." According to a neurosurgeon with extensive experience treating combat head injuries, an October 2004 MRI of Wilson, combined with a description of his symptoms, showed that he should have been treated for a traumatic brain injury right then. Medical experts say the failure to treat a brain-injury victim promptly could hinder recovery.
Spc. Wilson is not alone among Iraq veterans who have been misdiagnosed or waited for treatment for traumatic brain injury. Other soldiers interviewed at Walter Reed with apparent brain injuries say they too have been deeply frustrated by delays in getting adequately diagnosed and treated. The soldiers say doctors have caused them anguish by suggesting that their problems might stem from other causes, including mental illness or hereditary disease. According to interviews with military doctors and medical records obtained by Salon, brain-injury cases are overloading Walter Reed. As a result, a significant number of brain-injury patients are falling through the cracks from a lack of resources, know-how, and even blatant neglect.
Exactly how many brain-injured patients are being missed, going without care, or left waiting, as opposed to those who get prompt, top-shelf treatment, is difficult to say. Walter Reed officials and doctors say the Army is getting better at treating brain-injured patients but admit cases like Wilson's are a significant problem.
A November 2003 report from the Army News Service states that because brain injuries aren't always obvious, they "may be neglected, or even pushed aside as merely psychological." Patients with traumatic brain injuries "are suffering as much, but may not get the same support as someone who has an observable injury like a bullet wound or a broken leg," says Dr. Louis French, a neuropsychologist at Walter Reed, in the article.
One thing is certain: Due to today's military technology and insurgent tactics in the Iraq war, more U.S. soldiers than ever before are sustaining and surviving serious head injuries. In fact, traumatic brain injuries are a major problem among soldiers arriving at Walter Reed. According to the hospital's brain injury center, 31 percent of battle-injured soldiers admitted between January 2003 and April 2005 -- 433 patients -- had traumatic brain injuries. Half of those had what the hospital calls a "moderate, severe or penetrating brain injury."
In past wars, brain-trauma rates among combat casualties hovered around 20 percent, according to the Army. The rate of brain injuries among troops wounded in Iraq has shot much higher because the bomb, rather than the bullet, is the weapon of choice for insurgents. In addition, today's better body armor and helmets save soldiers' lives in explosions that would have otherwise killed them.
Through a spokesperson, Walter Reed and other Army officials, including Col. Babbitt, who accused Wilson of malingering, declined to be interviewed. "We cannot discuss specific cases with anyone except the Soldier due to the Privacy Act and HIPAA [the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act], nor could we address the case or responsibilities of the president of the [Physical Evaluation Board] without violating some portion of HIPAA," wrote Lt. Col. Kevin V. Arata, an Army public affairs officer, in an e-mail. "Therefore, I cannot arrange an interview."
But according to a written statement that hospital officials provided to Salon, Walter Reed does have a plan to identify and treat brain-trauma patients. The military has a network of eight brain-injury rehabilitation programs under the rubric of the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center.
The program was created in 1992 to prevent brain-injured soldiers from being misdiagnosed as mentally ill, or missing treatment completely. Some brain injury patients get treatment from neurologists or neurosurgeons; others get treatment from physical, occupational and speech-language therapists. The hospital says it screens for brain trauma all patients who arrive at the hospital who were injured in blasts, vehicle wrecks or falls, or who have obvious, penetrating head wounds.
There are many success stories, says John DaVanzo, clinical director at Virginia Neurocare, a rehabilitation center in Charlottesville, Va., where Wilson is receiving treatment. "Yes, there are soldiers being missed," DaVanzo admits, but many others with brain injuries, who would've been overlooked in past wars, are being identified and treated. Still, working in partnership with Walter Reed, DaVanzo has seen the strain on the system during the Iraq war. "There is a massive influx of injured soldiers," he says. "People are overworked."
Walter Reed hospital is renowned for state-of-the-art technology and certain kinds of care. One Walter Reed physician tells Salon that the care for amputees at the hospital is "amazing," and praises the work of colleagues, adding that the nurses "work their butts off." However, the physician is worried that a distressing number of patients at the hospital with brain injuries aren't getting adequate screening and care, and says many doctors at the hospital know little about brain injuries and are prone to making a wrong diagnosis.
"A lot of things are missed because the doctors are swamped," the physician says. Many military doctors are away serving in Iraq or Afghanistan, and some patients are forced to wait too long for surgeries they need. "We're overwhelmed in terms of resources," the physician says. (Salon agreed to withhold the identity of the physician, who was not authorized to speak to the media, and feared retribution from the hospital.)
The delay in proper diagnosis and treatment for Wilson and others with apparent brain injuries is particularly troubling because patients tend to benefit from a prompt response. An April 13, 2005, article about brain trauma from the Department of Defense's own press service says that "if the injury is detected and treated early, most victims can recover full brain function, or at least return to relatively normal lives."
Traumatic brain injury can come from a car wreck, or when the sudden pressure from shock waves from an explosion collide with the fluid-filled cavity around the brain. Diagnosis can be tricky because the memory loss, personality change or depression that can accompany traumatic brain injury can also mimic other combat injuries connected with mental health, including post-traumatic stress disorder.
But Dr. Gene Bolles, a former chief of neurosurgery at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, says it is plain wrong to place the burden of proof on wounded soldiers. Soldiers coming out of combat who say they've suffered a head blow and who show symptoms of traumatic brain injury should be treated for it, says Bolles. "You do what you can for them," he says flatly. "You believe them."
Bolles reviewed a summary of Wilson's October 2004 MRI from Walter Reed. He says it showed "evidence of loss of blood supply" to the brain and was "compatible with a head injury." Alongside Wilson's story and symptoms, he says, "This sounds like typical head injury syndrome to me; you can make that diagnosis."
He notes that the "shearing effect" on nerve tissue that comes with a serious head blow can be invisible to MRIs and CAT scans and that "there are no definitive tests that prove this syndrome." But soldiers even remotely suspected of having a brain injury, he says, should be treated aggressively for it, rather than with skepticism.
Bolles, who now practices at Denver Health Medical Center, treated U.S. soldiers evacuated from Iraq and Afghanistan for two years at Landstuhl. While many soldiers get good treatment, in other cases "the system is kind of like you have to prove yourself with an injury before anyone believes you," he says. "I wish we would accept the word of a patient if a patient says, 'This is what I'm feeling,' rather than trying to prove somebody is malingering." It is better to treat soldiers for what they say is wrong with them, he says, even if that means a few cheaters get through the system.
Annette McLeod says her husband, Spc. Wendell McLeod Jr., was belatedly diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury. McLeod landed at Walter Reed in August after being hit by a truck in Iraq but was not diagnosed with a brain injury until December. "If you come in and are missing a limb, they know how to handle you," says Annette McLeod. "Anybody with injuries you can't see is shoved to the side."
McLeod says that to her knowledge her husband, Wendell, was not initially screened for brain injury, even though he'd been hit by a truck. But his behavior was so erratic and his memory was so horrible, she says, that she badgered doctors until they ran some tests that identified his problem. "I knew there was something wrong because of the changes in him," she says. "He kept saying, 'I can't remember. I can't remember.' This is a man who used to remember everything."
McLeod, 40, arrived at Walter Reed last August with a fractured vertebra, a chipped vertebra, four herniated discs in his back, and a shoulder injury. He also began suffering from bizarre mood swings. "I can't hardly remember anything," he says. Annette, who is staying with him at Walter Reed, took McLeod to the supermarket recently. "He walked down the aisle three times and could not remember what I asked him to get," she says. She makes her husband sit in the back seat of the car because ever since his accident he wildly grabs at the steering wheel.
McLeod was tested for traumatic brain injury in September but did not hear anything about the results until he was diagnosed in the first week of December. In the meantime, McLeod was told by officials that he might have been born with his brain problem. "They tried to say it was inherited," McLeod says. Annette says they were also told it could be psychological. The misdiagnosis and delays have been excruciating, she says angrily, with a lot of "just waiting around and waiting around and waiting around."
Sgt. Steve Cobb, age 46, tells a similar story. Injured in an armored personnel carrier accident in Iraq in 2004 while serving with the West Virginia National Guard, a head blow left him with short-term memory loss, hearing loss and the loss of peripheral vision in his left eye. He slurs his words and is so dizzy that he walks with a cane. Medics in Iraq first missed his brain problem completely and gave him aspirin. He served another eight months after the accident.
Cobb arrived at Walter Reed last May. In July, he was diagnosed with traumatic brain injury, but did not start getting therapy until September. He says that he, too, was told by hospital officials that he may have been born with his problem. "They said it was hereditary," Cobb says with disgust.
His memory is so bad that his wife, Natalie, is afraid he can't take care of himself. She has left her 13- and 19-year-old kids at home with family in West Virginia to be with her husband at Walter Reed. "We heard it was brain disease. We heard it was hereditary," she says over dinner one evening at a restaurant near the hospital. "I feel that they are letting the traumatic brain-injury patients slide through the cracks."
The stress of being misdiagnosed can further harm soldiers, says Bolles, the neurosurgeon, especially if patients get stuck in a pattern where doctors are denying that their injuries exist. "That in and of itself becomes a disability to these people if they get angry and frustrated," Bolles says. "That alone makes it worth treating these people early."
Wilson came back from Iraq a totally different man, according to his wife Heidi. In a photo of the couple from before his injury, the two are sitting on the edge of a fountain. Wilson stares squarely at the camera with a deft, slight smile. Heidi, in a white dress, sits in his lap, holding a bouquet.
Wilson's injury has left him so sensitive to light that his room at Malogne House, a residential facility behind the main hospital at Walter Reed, looks cavelike, lighted only by two dim bulbs. Looking at bright light, Wilson says, "is like welding without your mask on." Sometimes even the dim bulbs are too much. "It kills him," Heidi says one evening in the room. "He puts little blankets over them." Heidi says her husband's brow turns a deep red during his worst headaches, which he says feels like his eyes are being sucked back into his skull. "I just want to take a drill and drill into my head," he says.
Sometimes Wilson remembers events from long ago, but not what happened five minutes ago. He still writes bits in his diary, attempting to piece his memory back together. He used to enjoy cooking Cajun food but now that's gone. "Everything tastes like rubber," he says. "I look at stuff I want to taste. I feel like I remember what it tastes like, but I can't." When Heidi is away for a few days, his memory loss and olfactory problems collide, though he tries to keep a sense of humor about it. "If she is away, I may not take a bath for six days, until she gets back," he says. Heidi nods vigorously. "I'll get his bath ready and say, 'Time to get in the tub,'" she says.
But when the conversation returns to Wilson's treatment, their smiles quickly fade. It's hard for them to believe, after two hard tours of duty, that this is the kind of treatment he has received. "I just want to be taken care of," he says. "I just want healthcare." |
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By Ross Colvin
Reuters
6 Jan 2006
BAGHDAD - Thursday was one of the bloodiest days for U.S. forces in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, with 11 soldiers dying in a fresh spasm of violence that also killed 130 Iraqis, the U.S. military said on Friday.
Roadside bombs, favored by the insurgents but feared by U.S. soldiers for their devastating effectiveness, accounted for seven of the American deaths.
U.S. commanders have expressed concern in recent months at the growing use of more powerful and sophisticated bombs. George W. Bush and his Republican party face pressure at home over the rising American death toll, but the U.S. president said on Wednesday a cut in troops would be based on the situation on the ground and decisions by military commanders, not a timetable imposed from Washington.
The United States hopes the formation of a coalition government encompassing leaders of Iraqi's Shi'ite, Kurdish and Sunni groups after last month's election will help undermine the Sunni Arab-led insurgency and pave the way for a troop withdrawal.
Thursday's deaths take the number of U.S. fatalities since the start of the war to oust Saddam Hussein to 2,193, according to Reuters figures.
It was the highest daily U.S. death toll since December 1, when 11 U.S. soldiers were also killed, and was also the deadliest day in Iraq overall for four months.
In the worst incident on Thursday for the Americans, five soldiers died in Baghdad when a roadside bomb hit their patrol. Two more were killed in a similar incident elsewhere in Baghdad.
In Falluja, a Sunni Arab stronghold, two Marines were killed by small-arms fire in separate attacks, the U.S. military said in a statement on Friday.
Two U.S. soldiers and scores of Iraqi police recruits were killed when a suicide bomber blew himself up in the western city of Ramadi as 1,000 men queued to be security-screened at a glass and ceramics works used as a temporary recruiting center.
Hospital sources said 70 people died and 65 wounded.
Bush said on Wednesday a reduction of U.S. troops planned after the December election was under way and would result in a net decrease of several thousand troops below the pre-election level of 138,000.
He has refused to set a schedule, saying that would only embolden the enemy, and that a pullout would be dictated by the progress of Iraqi forces in taking over security.
Thursday's suicide bombers killed 123 people and wounded more than 200 in all in attacks near a Shi'ite holy shrine and the Ramadi recruiting statio |
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By Mark Coultan
Sydney Morning Herald Correspondent in New York
January 5, 2006
THE CIA had evidence from 30 Iraqi weapons scientists that Saddam Hussein had abandoned its weapons of mass destruction programs long before the US invaded, an explosive new book on America's spying operations says.
James Risen, national security writer for The New York Times, also says that in 2004 a CIA officer mistakenly sent one of its Iranian agents data that could be used to identify virtually the entire spy network in Iran. The book's main revelation, that the US has been conducting a large-scale covert domestic spying operation on American citizens in apparent breach of the law, has already set off a political firestorm in Washington. President George Bush has maintained that his presidential powers give him the authority to conduct domestic spying operations without a warrant.
The book, State of War, Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration, reveals that Iraq tried to open a back channel to the US before the war to tell the Americans it had no weapons of mass destruction.
Risen says a Lebanese-American businessman called Imad Hage flew to Baghdad and met the head of the Iraqi intelligence service.
"He told Hage that Iraq had no WMD, and to prove it the regime was willing to let the Americans in to look for themselves," Risen writes. Mr Hage flew to London and met Richard Perle, an influential Pentagon hawk and key member of the Defence Policy Board Advisory Committee. Mr Perle called a senior CIA officer, who told him the only message they had for the Iraqis was that "we will see them in Baghdad".
The book uses largely anonymous sources to make the case that American intelligence in the Middle East was weak, before and after the Iraq war.
The CIA issued a statement on Tuesday saying the book contained errors in every chapter.
Risen uses the case of an Iraqi-American anaesthesiologist, Sawsan Alhaddad, to illustrate that the CIA ignored evidence in 2002 that Iraq had abandoned its weapons program.
The CIA had persuaded Dr Alhaddad to travel to Iraq and contact her brother, a weapons scientist. The book said her brother was stunned by her questions about the nuclear program. He just kept saying "there is nothing", she said.
When Dr Alhaddad reported back, the CIA did not believe her brother. Dr Alhaddad was one of about 30 contacts with Iraq scientists run by a CIA assistant director, Charlie Allen.
According to Risen, the CIA ignored their unanimous reports that there were no weapons of mass destruction and refused to distribute the information to senior policy-makers in the Bush Administration.
Of the Iran spy network snafu, Risen writes that the Iranian turned out to be a double agent who turned over the information to Iranian security officials, which allowed them to "roll up" the CIA agent network throughout the country.
"It left the CIA virtually blind in Iran, unable to provide any significant intelligence on one of the critical issues facing the United States - where Tehran was about to go nuclear," he writes. |
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By Kim Sengupta, Ben Russell and Terri Judd
05 January 2006
MPs and soldiers' families have demanded an explanation from the Government after a U-turn over claims that Iran was complicit in the killing of British soldiers in southern Iraq.
Britain has dropped the charge of Iranian involvement after senior officials had repeatedly accused the Tehran regime of supplying sophisticated explosive devices to insurgents. Government officials now acknowledge that there is no evidence, or even reliable intelligence, connecting the Iranian government to the infra-red triggered bombs which have killed 10 British soldiers in the past eight months.
The twist comes three months after British officials first made strong assertions, widely reported in the media, of an Iranian hand in killing British soldiers. The highly publicised allegations emerged as America was locked in tense confrontation with Iran over its nuclear policy. It led to a major row and the US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, warned Tehran of the consequences of continuing interference in Iraq. The allegations had also been confirmed by Tony Blair at a joint press conference in Downing Street with Iraq's President Jalal Talabani. Mr Blair told reporters: "There is no justification for Iran or any other country interfering in Iraq."
The apparent U-turn last night prompted the mother of a young soldier killed in Iraq to accuse the Government of making political capital out of her son's death. Pte Phillip Hewett, 21, died alongside 2nd Lt Richard Shearer and Pte Leon Spicer when their patrol was hit by an improvised explosive device at al-Amarah, north of Basra, last July.
Pte Hewett's mother, Sue Smith, 44, said: "They don't like Iran and they are using this for sympathy towards their attitudes, claiming that they were involved in the murder of our sons. I had the impression from the moment they made that statement that it was purely bully-boy tactics against Iran. It makes me really angry. They should be dealing with the people who killed our sons and not using it as a weapon. The way I look at it, it was just an excuse for another invasion. They have a foothold in the Middle East and they want to go further."
Michael Moore, the defence spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, said: "Clumsy diplomacy can only make the situation in Iraq worse that it already is. There should be an early statement on Iran's involvement in the insurgency so that Parliament can assess what the real situation is and how the Government is responding to it."
A former Labour defence minister, Peter Kilfoyle, accused the Blair government of following President George Bush's obsession with Iran. "Is this intelligence or is it propaganda?" he asked. "This is what happened in Iraq. I have a deep, abiding mistrust of what is put out by the Government and a deep, abiding mistrust of what is put out by the intelligence services. This is part of an almost unconscious urge to support whatever the American policy of the moment might be."
British officials claimed that, as well as supplying explosives, Tehran was running "terror camps" for bombers.
The Iranian government had denied all the charges and subsequently claimed British involvement in a series of blasts on its territory.
British military and diplomatic officials in London and Iraq will now only say that the technology of the explosive devices, which has since proliferated in other parts of Iraq, is similar to that used by the Lebanese Hizbollah group which has strong ties with Iran and Syria.
Military sources state that, although items for making bombs may have been smuggled across the porous Iranian border, there is no firm intelligence that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, which is close to the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, were the suppliers.
The new position adopted by London contradicts the views of the US and Iraqi military in Baghdad which maintains that Iran is playing a significant part in fomenting violence in Iraq through supplying weapons to insurgents. |
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by Paul E. Schroeder
Washington Post
Jan. 3, 2006
Early on Aug. 3, 2005, we heard that 14 Marines had been killed in Haditha, Iraq. Our son, Lance Cpl. Edward "Augie" Schroeder II, was stationed there. At 10:45 a.m. two Marines showed up at our door. After collecting himself for what was clearly painful duty, the lieutenant colonel said, "Your son is a true American hero."
Since then, two reactions to Augie's death have compounded the sadness.
At times like this, people say, "He died a hero." I know this is meant with great sincerity. We appreciate the many condolences we have received and how helpful they have been. But when heard repeatedly, the phrases "he died a hero" or "he died a patriot" or "he died for his country" rub raw.
"People think that if they say that, somehow it makes it okay that he died," our daughter, Amanda, has said. "He was a hero before he died, not just because he went to Iraq. I was proud of him before, and being a patriot doesn't make his death okay. I'm glad he got so much respect at his funeral, but that didn't make it okay either."
The words "hero" and "patriot" focus on the death, not the life. They are a flag-draped mask covering the truth that few want to acknowledge openly: Death in battle is tragic no matter what the reasons for the war. The tragedy is the life that was lost, not the manner of death. Families of dead soldiers on both sides of the battle line know this. Those without family in the war don't appreciate the difference. This leads to the second reaction. Since August we have witnessed growing opposition to the Iraq war, but it is often whispered, hands covering mouths, as if it is dangerous to speak too loudly. Others discuss the never-ending cycle of death in places such as Haditha in academic and sometimes clinical fashion, as in "the increasing lethality of improvised explosive devices."
Listen to the kinds of things that most Americans don't have to experience: The day Augie's unit returned from Iraq to Camp Lejeune, we received a box with his notebooks, DVDs and clothes from his locker in Iraq. The day his unit returned home to waiting families, we received the second urn of ashes. This lad of promise, of easy charm and readiness to help, whose highest high was saving someone using CPR as a first aid squad volunteer, came home in one coffin and two urns. We buried him in three places that he loved, a fitting irony, I suppose, but just as rough each time.
I am outraged at what I see as the cause of his death. For nearly three years, the Bush administration has pursued a policy that makes our troops sitting ducks. While Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that our policy is to "clear, hold and build" Iraqi towns, there aren't enough troops to do that.
In our last conversation, Augie complained that the cost in lives to clear insurgents was "less and less worth it," because Marines have to keep coming back to clear the same places. Marine commanders in the field say the same thing. Without sufficient troops, they can't hold the towns. Augie was killed on his fifth mission to clear Haditha.
At Augie's grave, the lieutenant colonel knelt in front of my wife and, with tears in his eyes, handed her the folded flag. He said the only thing he could say openly: "Your son was a true American hero." Perhaps. But I felt no glory, no honor. Doing your duty when you don't know whether you will see the end of the day is certainly heroic. But even more, being a hero comes from respecting your parents and all others, from helping your neighbors and strangers, from loving your spouse, your children, your neighbors and your enemies, from honesty and integrity, from knowing when to fight and when to walk away, and from understanding and respecting the differences among the people of the world.
Two painful questions remain for all of us. Are the lives of Americans being killed in Iraq wasted? Are they dying in vain? President Bush says those who criticize staying the course are not honoring the dead. That is twisted logic: honor the fallen by killing another 2,000 troops in a broken policy?
I choose to honor our fallen hero by remembering who he was in life, not how he died. A picture of a smiling Augie in Iraq, sunglasses turned upside down, shows his essence -- a joyous kid who could use any prop to make others feel the same way.
Though it hurts, I believe that his death -- and that of the other Americans who have died in Iraq -- was a waste. They were wasted in a belief that democracy would grow simply by removing a dictator -- a careless misunderstanding of what democracy requires. They were wasted by not sending enough troops to do the job needed in the resulting occupation -- a careless disregard for professional military counsel.
But their deaths will not be in vain if Americans stop hiding behind flag-draped hero masks and stop whispering their opposition to this war. Until then, the lives of other sons, daughters, husbands, wives, fathers and mothers may be wasted as well.
This is very painful to acknowledge, and I have to live with it. So does President Bush. |
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By ZOLTAN GROSSMAN
January 5, 2006
The U.S. Occupation of Iraq has entered its fourth calendar year. As criticism of the Iraq War intensifies across the political spectrum, its supporters are deploying new arguments (or repackaged old arguments), in order to defend the war. In December, President Bush delivered a series of speeches to build public support for the Occupation. His speeches were such a failure that they could easily be repackaged and released as a DVD under the title "How to Lose a War in 10 Days."
Yet even some of the Democratic and Republican critics of Bush's policy are not advocating an end to the war, but rather proposing a change in the war's form, or a shift in its focus. Instead of ending the violence, some of their arguments could be used to justify continuing (or even intensifying) violence against Iraqis. Some of the arguments they are making against Bush's Iraq policy can easily be manipulated or twisted by his Administration to prolong the war. Specifically, the arguments that U.S. troops should be redeployed to neighboring countries, and that the chaos in Iraq could lead to a civil war or Shi'ite theocratic rule, are now being reinterpreted to justify rather than end the war. In this shifting political environment, the peace movement should be extremely cautious that its original arguments against the war do not become a justification of a new phase of the war, or even fodder for a new war.
The "civil war" argument
The growing call for a withdrawal of U.S. troops has reinvigorated the old argument that the troops need to stay to "prevent a civil war." Bush claims that if American forces leave Iraq, chaos will follow. His claim evokes the reign of Louis XV, whose followers proclaimed "Apres moi, le deluge" (After me, the flood).
Yet this argument is made not only by Bush, but across the political spectrum--from Fox News to Hillary Clinton. It is even accepted by some liberals who opposed the invasion of Iraq, and blame Bush for worsening internal divisions among Iraqis, but justify the Occupation as a way to keep those divisions from erupting into war.
The "civil war" argument is at best a self-fulfilling prophecy that is actually helping to stimulate a civil war among Iraqis. At worst, it is based on a racist image of savage uncontrollable Middle Easterners, who need a Great White Father to keep them from slitting each other's throats. The fact is that many of the ethnic and religious divisions in the Middle East have been widened, not narrowed, by foreign control. Since the colonial era, outsiders have tended to worsen internal differences, not improve them, and have exacerbated internal tensions to the point of triggering civil wars.
The reasons are rather simple. Colonial rulers have always tended to side with one internal faction against another. They need native leadership to help them carry out indirect rule, and often offer advantages to leadership from a particular ethnic or religious group. Belgian colonial rule over Rwanda constructed the resentment of Tutsis by Hutus, much as British colonial rule over India exacerbated tensions between Hindus and Muslims. During the 1920-32 British mandate in Iraq, the colonial rulers installed Sunni Arab rulers, and repressed Kurdish and Shi'ite Arab insurgents, laying the groundwork for their own defeat (and for Saddam's later Sunni dictatorship).
The American tendency to select "good guys" to fight "bad guys" in internal conflicts strongly resembles this colonial history. The U.S. entered Somalia in 1992 as a "peacekeeping" force to keep warring clan militias apart, but took sides against one warlord, and paid the consequences. In former Yugoslavia, U.S. interventions opposed Serbian nationalists, but sided with Croatian and Albanian nationalists. The massive expulsion of Kosovar Albanians in 1999 started after NATO began bombing the Serbs, and was followed by a reverse expulsion of the Serbs and others. Outside intervention in Kosovo and Bosnia brought a "peace" based only on this successful "ethnic cleansing."
Since the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, it has been following the same pattern, siding with Kurdish militias and fighting a Sunni Arab insurgency. Its stance toward the majority Shi'ite Arabs has been almost schizophrenic, marked by wild swings between empowering and fighting the Shi'ite militias. U.S. efforts to integrate Sunnis into the government have been mainly public relations moves to undercut the insurgency. As long as Bush equates "democracy" with "majority rule," the minority Sunnis will remain afraid. The inconsistency of Bush's approach is helping to stimulate an actual civil war. Any group that he supports has the stigma of being seen by Iraqis as American puppets.
It is simply not inevitable that in the absence of Western troops, Iraqis will naturally want to kill each other. Despite their ethnic and religious diversity, Iraqis have a set of common experiences that have helped construct a state identity over the past century. Iraqis' resistance to Turkish and British colonial rule, and the overthrow of their pro-Western monarch, were only the beginning. In recent decades, Iraqis have also together faced Saddam's harsh repression, a brutal border war with Iran, and bombing, sanctions, and occupation by the Americans and British. Iraqis have more in common with each other than with foreign rulers or exiles.
On December 12, Bush reiterated and contradicted the "civil war" argument at the same time, with his odd statement that "It took a four-year civil war and a century of struggle after that before the promise of our Declaration was extended to all Americans. It is important to keep this history in mind as we look at the progress of freedom and democracy in Iraq."
Would Bush have argued that British troops should have stayed in the Thirteen Colonies because regional divisions among Americans could lead to a "four-year civil war"? Iraqis could easily turn his statement around: Americans fought for their independence from foreign occupation and domination even though they were torn by internal differences. The suggestion that full self-determination should be delayed due to the risk of civil war is not one we would make to ourselves.
Indeed, the British did use the fact that the colonists were divided by sectional loyalties as an argument against American independence. For example, a British resident of New York, stated in a letter in London's Morning Chronicle on February 2, 1775 that "should the liberty side get the better, it will end in the destruction of the colonies, as New England only wants to grind the other provinces. Most sensible people here, people of propertyare of this opinion, and say that one master is better than a thousand, and that they would rather be oppressed by a King than by a rascally mob."
Of course, the British did withdraw and the Americans did have a Civil War, 78 years later. Would the British have been a neutral peacekeeping force between North and South? The question is moot because no Americans advocated in 1861 that the British should back send the redcoats to prevent our own bloody civil war.
If Americans would not want an foreign military presence to prevent our own regional or ethnic strife, why would Iraqis? Contradictions in a sovereign state sometimes lead to a civil war, but denying full sovereignty is not a solution. Frustrated by outside control they cannot change, Iraqis are taking out their frustrations on each other. Our continued military presence in Iraq may not prevent a civil war, but instead guarantee one. The only way it may ultimately be preventing a civil war is by turning Iraqis of all backgrounds against us.
The "redeployment" argument
Rep. John Murtha's call for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq opened a wider debate on the war, but his actual call was misinterpreted by all sides in the debate. Murtha advocated not an end to the war, but a "redeployment" of troops to neighboring countries and aircraft carriers, from which they could continue to combat the Iraqi insurgency. While the Occupation would end, the air strikes that began in 1991 would not end, nor would armed raids made at the "request" of the Iraqi government.
Another parallel exists between the Iraq War debate and old British debates over the American colonies. In 1766, British Secretary at War William Barrington proposed to redeploy troops from the Thirteen Colonies to Canada and Florida (and for some to return home), in order to save costs, "remove an irritant and serve as a conciliatory gesture," in a way that the forces could return to the eastern seaboard in case of a rebellion. His plan was ultimately rejected by General Thomas Gage, who felt the troops would be "too far away for prompt action in the event of serious trouble."
Rep. Murtha's redeployment argument is being rejected for the same reasons by Donald Rumsfeld, who is at the same time trying to defuse Murtha's call by gradually withdrawing some troops. A full-scale withdrawal, Rumsfeld claims, would undercut the Iraqi government and hand a victory to the insurgents.
Of course, Rumsfeld's arguments are merely old napalm in a new bottle. In September 1963, President Kennedy told CBS that in South Vietnam "....it is the people and the Government itself who have to win or lose this struggle. All we can do is help, and we are making it very clear. But I don't agree with those who say we should withdraw. That would be a great mistake." He later told NBC "What I am concerned about is that Americans will get impatient and say, because they don't like events in Southeast Asia or they don't like the Government in Saigon, that we should withdraw. That only makes it easy for the Communists. I think we should stay." Had JFK withdrawn U.S. forces in 1963, he could have avoided a war that needlessly stretched on for 12 more years.
Yet the experience of Vietnam also offers other, more sinister lessons. The peace movement's sincere exhortations to "support the troops-bring them home" may be manipulated by an administration not to wind down a war but to intensify it. Withdrawing troops is not the same as ending a war, because the war may be continued in a way that causes even more deaths.
During the Vietnam War, the Nixon Administration undertook the program of "Vietnamization," by training South Vietnamese troops to take over the fight against the Viet Cong insurgency, allowing a phased withdrawal of U.S. ground troops. Nixon was responding to the fixation of the mainstream peace movement on American casualties and the draft. Yet the rest of the antiwar movement criticized "Vietnamization" as using "brown bodies" as cannon fodder in a U.S.-sponsored war.
At the same time, Nixon stepped up the Air War, resulting in many deaths among Vietnamese civilians, largely out of sight of the media. Although fewer Americans came home in body bags, more Vietnamese civilians died from aerial bombings. It was not until the U.S.-created South Vietnamese army collapsed in 1975 that the American war finally came to an end.
During the late 1970s and 1980s, the Pentagon generally avoided large-scale commitments of U.S. troops because of the "Vietnam Syndrome," or the public fear of losing Americans in an "unwinnable" quagmire. Instead, the Reagan/Bush Administrations launched smaller-scale invasions of Grenada and Panama, trained troops to fight rebels in El Salvador and the Philippines, trained rebels as proxies against Nicaragua and Angola, and lobbed bombs, shells and missiles against Libyans, Syrians, and Iranians. When the U.S. lost troops in a civil war, as in Lebanon (and later in Somalia), the reaction was to quickly withdraw the rest of the ground forces.
Soon after Saddam Hussein launched his invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, President Bush initiated the largest deployment of U.S. troops since Vietnam. The U.S. peace movement failed to learn the lessons of the Nixon and Reagan years, and largely focused on the prospect of bodybags coming back from the Persian Gulf, rather than on the threat of war to Iraqi civilians, and to their self-determination to oust their own dictator.
Our movement did not understand how changes in high-tech weaponry and tightened media control would sanitize the public view of the Gulf War after it began in January 1991. The media depicted the air war as a series of "surgical strikes" that both avoided American deaths and spared Iraqi civilians. Relatively few Americans were killed in the 100-hour ground war. For the first time in world history, an image was painted of warfare in which the invader took on little or no risk to its own forces.
This new image of sanitized war was reinforced during the Clinton Administration of the 1990s. The U.S. bombed Yugoslavia during the 1999 Kosovo War, and incurred zero casualties. From 1993 to 2000, Clinton repeatedly bombed Iraq, and enforced harsh sanctions against the country, again with little or no cost to American lives. Yet global public opinion turned against the sanctions and bombings as harming civilians more than Saddam.
After 9/11, when the new Bush Administration launched an air war against Afghanistan, some global media attention was paid to the civilian casualties, with precious little attention within the U.S. But when Bush began to rattle his sabre at Iraq, a powerful movement grew in opposition to the new war. Mindful that the first Gulf War and sanctions mainly hurt Iraqi civilians, the new movement put their concerns front and center. Since it did not fixate only on potential American casualties, the U.S. movement was able to integrate itself with the global outcry against the war, and become part of a worldwide campaign. For the first time since Vietnam, Americans were actively opposing a war mainly because it would hurt and kill other people.
Despite its unprecedented strength, the movement failed to stop Bush's determination to invade Iraq in 2003. The media was corralled into Pentagon-controlled pools, trumpeted the triumphs of the invaders, and portrayed any dissent as being "against the troops." By the time the peace movement was able to regroup, it was diverted into a presidential campaign of a candidate who had backed the invasion, and who fearfully softpedaled any criticism of the Occupation. The fixation on American casualties crept back into the peace movement's lexicon as the number of GI deaths crept upwards.
Bush and Rumsfeld are beginning to to respond to this concern, by gradually redeploying or withdrawing some troops. They are trying to create an image of a war that is winding down, even as they intensify violence in insurgent zones such as Anbar Province. The war could grow smaller but more efficient, with an even higher Iraqi death toll.
The effects of the war (from all sides) on Iraqi civilians should not be separated from the terrible effects of the war on U.S. troops and their families. Withdrawing U.S. ground troops without ending the war could actually inflict more pain on Iraqi civilians, if it means increased bombing, and less media and public attention to the consequences. People are just as dead if they are hit by a bomb as by a bullet. Either Iraqis are human beings worthy of the same care and protection as Americans, or they're not.
A mere return to the constant bombing of the Clinton Administration will not solve the underlying political conflicts of Iraq, which can only be solved by complete Iraqi self-determination. This kind of "redeployment" will not win America any more friends, either in Iraq or the rest of the world, and could simply set a process of "re-invasion" into motion all over again. The only guarantee of saving face in Iraq would be a withdrawal of U.S. troops and bombers from the region, and a guarantee that the U.S. would not keep control of Iraq's oil economy or military bases, or interfere in its internal reconciliation.
The "Shi'ite bloc" argument
A new argument that is being heard from both conservative and liberal circles is that the Shi'ites have become the main threat to U.S. interests in the region. The argument is based on a truth, that Arab Iraq is falling under theocratic Muslim rule, and is moving away from any prospect of secular democracy. The recent election results lend support to this view of Iraqi politics.
Yet some Fox News commentators are claiming to see an emerging "Shi'ite bloc" of Iran, southern Iraq, Alawite-ruled Syria, and Lebanese Hezbollah. Some Republican neo-cons may even urge Bush to pull back support for elected Iraqi Shi'ite leaders, as he takes a harder line on Iran's nuclear and human rights policies. They are being joined by some Democrats, who criticize Bush for choosing the "wrong target"-invading Iraq instead of Iran. They also rightfully criticize Bush's invasion for inadvertently strengthening the hand of Iran in the region.
Yet the risk is that they may be steering Bush toward just what he desires: the expansion of his war into Iran, the second pivot of his "Axis of Evil." Destabilizing Iran, or Iraq's Shi'ite parties, would not lessen the level of violence in the region, but increase it. Already, the war in Iraq's Shi'ite region is bleeding over into Iran's Arab Shi'ite province of Khuzestan. A military strike against Iran (whether for its nuclear program, its support for Iraqi Shi'ites, or oppression of its own Arab minority), will doom any democratic aspirations in Iran or Iraq.
The "Shi'ite bloc" argument is based on a false premise: that Iraqi Shi'ite parties are merely puppets of Iran. Iraqi Shi'ite clerics distance themselves from the Iranian model. They understand from Iran's experience that clerics should not run a government, because misrule could alienate reform-minded youth from religion. The argument also fails to grasp the lasting animosity of the Iran-Iraq War, in which state loyalties trumped religious and ethnic loyalties.
The argument revives the fear of Shi'ite revolution that caused the U.S. to back Saddam's Sunni dictatorship in the 1980s. If the U.S. shifts back to favoritism toward the Sunnis, such as rehabilitating some hated Ba'athist party hacks, it will simply generate more religious conflict. It is too late to correct the mistakes of the past, by making new mistakes. The best help that the U.S. could offer to secular parties is to end the Occupation and the war.
Iraqi Arabs are rejecting secular politicians not simply because they are secular, but because they view many many of the former exiles as American stooges. They are voting for the parties they see as most likely to push for U.S. withdrawal. American neo-cons are opposing Iraqi Shi'ite rule not because Shi'ite parties are religious or tilt toward Iran, but because they may eventually call for a full U.S. withdrawal.
If the new Iraqi government kowtows to the Americans, it may be ousted by the Iraqi people. If it confronts the Americans, and calls for full Iraqi control over the country's oil economy and military bases, it may be destabilized by Washington. Everyone in the region knows that the CIA ousted Iranian leader Mohammed Mossadegh in a 1953 coup because he had nationalized Iran's oil industry.
A U.S. intervention against Iraqi Shi'ites is not a far-fetched prospect. In fact, it has already happened. In 2004, U.S. troops were locked in battle with the militia led by the nationalist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who is now cooperating with the Shi'ite-dominated government. In 2005, British troops in Basra clashed with Shi'ite police, whom they had earlier trained. As Bush and Blair accuse Iran of aiding Iraqi Shi'ite parties and militias, they are setting the stage for war against the new Iraq that their invasion created.
In the Philippines in 1898, the U.S. invaded the country to "liberate" it from oppression, but then ended up fighting against the very Filipinos it had "liberated." In Iraq in 2003, the U.S. invaded to "liberate" the country from Saddam, but has ended up fighting against Saddam's worst enemies. If the identity of America's "enemy" shifts from Ba'athists and Sunni Islamists to the Shi'ites, the war in Iraq will grow and mutate beyond anyone's control.
It is one thing to point out that the current war has failed to bring democracy to Iraq, and has increased the risk of civil war in Iraq. But the peace movement should not let criticism of the invasion become a justification for increased U.S. interference in Iraqis' internal affairs, nor for a troop redeployment that would step up the bombing and claim more Iraqi lives. It is one thing to point out that the Occupation has heightened the regional ambitions of Iran and prospects for theocratic rule in Iraq. But we should not inadvertently let our criticisms of the last war to become the seeds of a new war.
Dr. Zoltan Grossman is a member of the faculty at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. He earned a Ph.D. in Geography at the University of Wisconsin, and is a longtime peace and justice organizer. His other writings can be found at http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz |
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By ANNE GEARAN,
AP Diplomatic Writer
January 5, 2006
The Bush administration signaled Thursday that time is running out for Iran to avoid being taken before the U.N. Security Council over its disputed nuclear program. Officials also condemned new anti-Israel remarks from Iran's president.
"We are moving into a period of time with Iran where I think we're going to have to, the world is going to have to make some decisions," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said. Rice avoided declaring an end to negotiations between Tehran and European nations that are intended to avert punishment at the U.N. Her skepticism about progress in the talks was clear, however, and she chose unusually blunt language to lay out the probable next step.
"When it's clear that negotiations are exhausted, we have the votes" to take Iran before the Security Council for possible punishment, Rice told reporters. "There is a resolution sitting there for referral. We'll vote it."
Separately, the State Department and the White House reacted harshly to reported remarks from Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The president said Thursday that he hoped for the death of Israel's ailing prime minister, Ariel Sharon. It was the latest anti-Israeli comment by Ahmadinejad, who already has drawn international scorn for suggesting that Israel be "wiped off the map."
"Hopefully, the news that the criminal of Sabra and Chatilla has joined his ancestors is final," Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying by the semiofficial Iranian Students News Agency.
Sharon, as defense minister in 1982, directed Israel's ill-fated invasion of Lebanon. An Israeli commission found him indirectly responsible for a massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Chatilla refugee camps.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Ahmadinejad's remarks were "hateful and disgusting."
"And this is a man who wraps himself in the cloak of a peaceful religion, Islam, and yet you hear remarks like this coming from him," McCormack.
McCormack said the Iranian people "are suffering as much as anybody else from this particular regime. This regime has isolated the Iranian people from the rest of the world in a matter of months - through its actions and its statements."
In the past two months, Ahmadinejad also has called the Holocaust a "myth" and said if Europeans insist it did occur, then they should give some of their own land for a Jewish state, rather than the one in the Middle East.
"I think that his continued outrageous comments only further underscore the concerns that the international community about Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said.
"Iran's statements and actions only continue to further isolate themselves from the international community," McClellan said. "If they continue on the path that they are going, and the negotiations continue to run their course, then we will have no option, the international community that is, will have no option but to look to the Security Council."
The United States accuses Iran of using a program to develop nuclear power plants as a way of disguising ambitions to build nuclear weapons. Iran denies the accusation and has threatened to resume some nuclear research that was suspended during talks with the Europeans.
The U.S. is not a party to the talks, but is supporting European efforts to divert Iran from pursuing technology that could be used for bomb-making. The U.S. has no diplomatic relations with the nation that stormed the American Embassy in Tehran, the capital, in 1979 and held Americans hostage for more than a year.
The U.S. repeatedly has threatened Security Council action against Iran, without setting any deadlines. Rice acknowledged that, but said the latest stern language isn't mere "saber rattling."
"I don't have any doubt that at the right time, a time of our choosing, we're going to go to the Security Council if the Iranians are not prepared to do what they say they want to do, which is to pursue peaceful nuclear energy," Rice said. |
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by Michel Chossudovsky
January 3, 2006
GlobalResearch.ca
The launching of an outright war using nuclear warheads against Iran is now in the final planning stages.
Coalition partners, which include the US, Israel and Turkey are in "an advanced stage of readiness".
Various military exercises have been conducted, starting in early 2005. In turn, the Iranian Armed Forces have also conducted large scale military maneuvers in the Persian Gulf in December in anticipation of a US sponsored attack.
Since early 2005, there has been intense shuttle diplomacy between Washington, Tel Aviv, Ankara and NATO headquarters in Brussels.
In recent developments, CIA Director Porter Goss on a mission to Ankara, requested Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan "to provide political and logistic support for air strikes against Iranian nuclear and military targets." Goss reportedly asked " for special cooperation from Turkish intelligence to help prepare and monitor the operation." (DDP, 30 December 2005).
In turn, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has given the green light to the Israeli Armed Forces to launch the attacks by the end of March: All top Israeli officials have pronounced the end of March, 2006, as the deadline for launching a military assault on Iran.... The end of March date also coincides with the IAEA report to the UN on Iran's nuclear energy program. Israeli policymakers believe that their threats may influence the report, or at least force the kind of ambiguities, which can be exploited by its overseas supporters to promote Security Council sanctions or justify Israeli military action.
(James Petras, Israel's War Deadline: Iran in the Crosshairs, Global Research, December 2005)
The US sponsored military plan has been endorsed by NATO, although it is unclear, at this stage, as to the nature of NATO's involvement in the planned aerial attacks.
"Shock and Awe"
The various components of the military operation are firmly under US Command, coordinated by the Pentagon and US Strategic Command Headquarters (USSTRATCOM) at the Offutt Air Force base in Nebraska.
The actions announced by Israel would be carried out in close coordination with the Pentagon. The command structure of the operation is centralized and ultimately Washington will decide when to launch the military operation.
US military sources have confirmed that an aerial attack on Iran would involve a large scale deployment comparable to the US "shock and awe" bombing raids on Iraq in March 2003:
American air strikes on Iran would vastly exceed the scope of the 1981 Israeli attack on the Osiraq nuclear center in Iraq, and would more resemble the opening days of the 2003 air campaign against Iraq. Using the full force of operational B-2 stealth bombers, staging from Diego Garcia or flying direct from the United States, possibly supplemented by F-117 stealth fighters staging from al Udeid in Qatar or some other location in theater, the two-dozen suspect nuclear sites would be targeted.
Military planners could tailor their target list to reflect the preferences of the Administration by having limited air strikes that would target only the most crucial facilities ... or the United States could opt for a far more comprehensive set of strikes against a comprehensive range of WMD related targets, as well as conventional and unconventional forces that might be used to counterattack against US forces in Iraq
(See Globalsecurity.org
In November, US Strategic Command conducted a major exercise of a "global strike plan" entitled "Global Lightening". The latter involved a simulated attack using both conventional and nuclear weapons against a "fictitious enemy".
Following the "Global Lightening" exercise, US Strategic Command declared an advanced state of readiness (See our analysis below)
While Asian press reports stated that the "fictitious enemy" in the Global Lightening exercise was North Korea, the timing of the exercises, suggests that they were conducted in anticipation of a planned attack on Iran.
Consensus for Nuclear War
No dissenting political voices have emerged from within the European Union.
There are ongoing consultations between Washington, Paris and Berlin. Contrary to the invasion of Iraq, which was opposed at the diplomatic level by France and Germany, Washington has been building "a consensus" both within the Atlantic Alliance and the UN Security Council. This consensus pertains to the conduct of a nuclear war, which could potentially affect a large part of the Middle East Central Asian region.
Moreover, a number of frontline Arab states are now tacit partners in the US/ Israeli military project. A year ago in November 2004, Israel's top military brass met at NATO headqaurters in Brtussels with their counterparts from six members of the Mediterranean basin nations, including Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria and Mauritania. A NATO-Israel protocol was signed. Following these meetings, joint military exercises were held off the coast of Syria involving the US, Israel and Turkey. and in February 2005, Israel participated in military exercises and "anti-terror maneuvers" together with several Arab countries.
The media in chorus has unequivocally pointed to Iran as a "threat to World Peace".
The antiwar movement has swallowed the media lies. The fact that the US and Israel are planning a Middle East nuclear holocaust is not part of the antiwar/ anti- globalization agenda.
The "surgical strikes" are presented to world public opinion as a means to preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
We are told that this is not a war but a military peace-keeping operation, in the form of aerial attacks directed against Iran's nuclear facilities.
Mini-nukes: "Safe for Civilians"
The press reports, while revealing certain features of the military agenda, largely serve to distort the broader nature of the military operation, which contemplates the preemptive use of tactical nuclear weapons.
The war agenda is based on the Bush administration's doctrine of "preemptive" nuclear war under the 2002 Nuclear Posture Review.
Media disinformation has been used extensively to conceal the devastating consequences of military action involving nuclear warheads against Iran. The fact that these surgical strikes would be carried out using both conventional and nuclear weapons is not an object of debate.
According to a 2003 Senate decision, the new generation of tactical nuclear weapons or "low yield" "mini-nukes", with an explosive capacity of up to 6 times a Hiroshima bomb, are now considered "safe for civilians" because the explosion is underground.
Through a propaganda campaign which has enlisted the support of "authoritative" nuclear scientists, the mini-nukes are being presented as an instrument of peace rather than war. The low-yield nukes have now been cleared for "battlefield use", they are slated to be used in the next stage of America's "war on Terrorism" alongside conventional weapons:
Administration officials argue that low-yield nuclear weapons are needed as a credible deterrent against rogue states.[Iran, North Korea] Their logic is that existing nuclear weapons are too destructive to be used except in a full-scale nuclear war. Potential enemies realize this, thus they do not consider the threat of nuclear retaliation to be credible. However, low-yield nuclear weapons are less destructive, thus might conceivably be used. That would make them more effective as a deterrent. ( Opponents Surprised By Elimination of Nuke Research Funds Defense News November 29, 2004)
In an utterly twisted logic, nuclear weapons are presented as a means to building peace and preventing "collateral damage". The Pentagon has intimated, in this regard, that the ‘mini-nukes’ (with a yield of less than 5000 tons) are harmless to civilians because the explosions ‘take place under ground’. Each of these ‘mini-nukes’, nonetheless, constitutes – in terms of explosion and potential radioactive fallout – a significant fraction of the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. Estimates of yield for Nagasaki and Hiroshima indicate that they were respectively of 21000 and 15000 tons
In other words, the low yielding mini-nukes have an explosive capacity of one third of a Hiroshima bomb.
The earth-penetrating capability of the [nuclear] B61-11 is fairly limited, however. Tests show it penetrates only 20 feet or so into dry earth when dropped from an altitude of 40,000 feet. Even so, by burying itself into the ground before detonation, a much higher proportion of the explosion energy is transferred to ground shock compared to a surface bursts. Any attempt to use it in an urban environment, however, would result in massive civilian casualties. Even at the low end of its 0.3-300 kiloton yield range, the nuclear blast will simply blow out a huge crater of radioactive material, creating a lethal gamma-radiation field over a large area.
Gbu 28 Guided Bomb Unit-28 (GBU-28)
The new definition of a nuclear warhead has blurred the distinction between conventional and nuclear weapons:
'It's a package (of nuclear and conventional weapons). The implication of this obviously is that nuclear weapons are being brought down from a special category of being a last resort, or sort of the ultimate weapon, to being just another tool in the toolbox,' said Kristensen. (Japan Economic News Wire, op cit)
We are a dangerous crossroads: military planners believe their own propaganda.
The military manuals state that this new generation of nuclear weapons are "safe" for use in the battlefield. They are no longer a weapon of last resort. There are no impediments or political obstacles to their use. In this context, Senator Edward Kennedy has accused the Bush Administration for having developed "a generation of more useable nuclear weapons."
The international community has endorsed nuclear war in the name of World Peace.
"Making the World safer" is the justification for launching a military operation which could potentially result in a nuclear holocaust.
But nuclear holocausts are not front page news! In the words of Mordechai Vanunu,
The Israeli government is preparing to use nuclear weapons in its next war with the Islamic world. Here where I live, people often talk of the Holocaust. But each and every nuclear bomb is a Holocaust in itself. It can kill, devastate cities, destroy entire peoples. (See interview with Mordechai Vanunu, December 2005).
Space and Earth Attack Command Unit
A preemptive nuclear attack using tactical nuclear weapons would be coordinated out of US Strategic Command Headquarters at the Offutt Air Force base in Nebraska, in liaison with US and coalition command units in the Persian Gulf, the Diego Garcia military base, Israel and Turkey.
Under its new mandate, USSTRATCOM has a responsibility for "overseeing a global strike plan" consisting of both conventional and nuclear weapons. In military jargon, it is slated to play the role of "a global integrator charged with the missions of Space Operations; Information Operations; Integrated Missile Defense; Global Command & Control; Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance; Global Strike; and Strategic Deterrence.... "
In January 2005, at the outset of the military build-up directed against Iran, USSTRATCOM was identified as "the lead Combatant Command for integration and synchronization of DoD-wide efforts in combating weapons of mass destruction."
To implement this mandate, a brand new command unit entitled Joint Functional Component Command Space and Global Strike, or JFCCSGS was created.
JFCCSGS has the mandate to oversee the launching of a nuclear attack in accordance with the 2002 Nuclear Posture Review, approved by the US Congress in 2002. The NPR underscores the pre-emptive use of nuclear warheads not only against "rogue states" but also against China and Russia.
Since November, JFCCSGS is said to be in "an advance state of readiness" following the conduct of relevant military exercises. The announcement was made in early December by U.S. Strategic Command to the effect that the command unit had achieved "an operational capability for rapidly striking targets around the globe using nuclear or conventional weapons." The exercises conducted in November used "a fictional country believed to represent North Korea" (see David Ruppe, 2 December 2005):
"The new unit [JFCCSGS] has 'met requirements necessary to declare an initial operational capability' as of Nov. 18. A week before this announcement, the unit finished a command-post exercise, dubbed Global Lightening, which was linked with another exercise, called Vigilant Shield, conducted by the North American Aerospace Defend Command, or NORAD, in charge of missile defense for North America.
'After assuming several new missions in 2002, U.S. Strategic Command was reorganized to create better cooperation and cross-functional awareness,' said Navy Capt. James Graybeal, a chief spokesperson for STRATCOM. 'By May of this year, the JFCCSGS has published a concept of operations and began to develop its day-to-day operational requirements and integrated planning process.'
'The command's performance during Global Lightning demonstrated its preparedness to execute its mission of proving integrated space and global strike capabilities to deter and dissuade aggressors and when directed, defeat adversaries through decisive joint global effects in support of STRATCOM,' he added without elaborating about 'new missions' of the new command unit that has around 250 personnel.
Nuclear specialists and governmental sources pointed out that one of its main missions would be to implement the 2001 nuclear strategy that includes an option of preemptive nuclear attacks on 'rogue states' with WMDs. (Japanese Economic Newswire, 30 December 2005)
CONCEPT PLAN (CONPLAN) 8022
JFCCSGS is in an advanced state of readiness to trigger nuclear attacks directed against Iran or North Korea.
The operational implementation of the Global Strike is called CONCEPT PLAN (CONPLAN) 8022. The latter is described as "an actual plan that the Navy and the Air Force translate into strike package for their submarines and bombers,' (Ibid).
CONPLAN 8022 is 'the overall umbrella plan for sort of the pre-planned strategic scenarios involving nuclear weapons.'
'It's specifically focused on these new types of threats -- Iran, North Korea -- proliferators and potentially terrorists too,' he said. 'There's nothing that says that they can't use CONPLAN 8022 in limited scenarios against Russian and Chinese targets.'(According to Hans Kristensen, of the Nuclear Information Project, quoted in Japanese economic News Wire, op cit)
The mission of JFCCSGS is to implement CONPLAN 8022, in other words to trigger a nuclear war with Iran.
The Commander in Chief, namely George W. Bush would instruct the Secretary of Defense, who would then instruct the Joint Chiefs of staff to activate CONPLAN 8022.
CONPLAN is distinct from other military operations. it does not contemplate the deployment of ground troops.
CONPLAN 8022 is different from other war plans in that it posits a small-scale operation and no "boots on the ground." The typical war plan encompasses an amalgam of forces -- air, ground, sea -- and takes into account the logistics and political dimensions needed to sustain those forces in protracted operations.... The global strike plan is offensive, triggered by the perception of an imminent threat and carried out by presidential order.) (William Arkin, Washington Post, May 2005)
The Role of Israel
Since late 2004, Israel has been stockpiling US made conventional and nuclear weapons systems in anticipation of an attack on Iran. This stockpiling which is financed by US military aid was largely completed in June 2005. Israel has taken delivery from the US of several thousand "smart air launched weapons" including some 500 'bunker-buster bombs, which can also be used to deliver tactical nuclear bombs.
The B61-11 is the "nuclear version" of the "conventional" BLU 113, can be delivered in much same way as the conventional bunker buster bomb. (See Michel Chossudovsky, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO112C.html , see also HERE)
Moreover, reported in late 2003, Israeli Dolphin-class submarines equipped with US Harpoon missiles armed with nuclear warheads are now aimed at Iran. (See Gordon Thomas, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/THO311A.html
Late April 2005. Sale of deadly military hardware to Israel. GBU-28 Buster Bunker Bombs:
Coinciding with Putin's visit to Israel, the US Defence Security Cooperation Agency (Department of Defense) announced the sale of an additional 100 bunker-buster bombs produced by Lockheed Martin to Israel. This decision was viewed by the US media as "a warning to Iran about its nuclear ambitions."
The sale pertains to the larger and more sophisticated "Guided Bomb Unit-28 (GBU-28) BLU-113 Penetrator" (including the WGU-36A/B guidance control unit and support equipment). The GBU-28 is described as "a special weapon for penetrating hardened command centers located deep underground. The fact of the matter is that the GBU-28 is among the World's most deadly "conventional" weapons used in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, capable of causing thousands of civilian deaths through massive explosions.
The Israeli Air Force are slated to use the GBU-28s on their F-15 aircraft.
(See text of DSCA news release
Extension of the War
Tehran has confirmed that it will retaliate if attacked, in the form of ballistic missile strikes directed against Israel (CNN, 8 Feb 2005). These attacks, could also target US military facilities in Iraq and Persian Gulf, which would immediately lead us into a scenario of military escalation and all out war.
At present there are three distinct war theaters: Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine. The air strikes against Iran could contribute to unleashing a war in the broader Middle East Central Asian region.
Moreover, the planned attack on Iran should also be understood in relation to the timely withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon, which has opened up a new space, for the deployment of Israeli forces. The participation of Turkey in the US-Israeli military operation is also a factor, following last year's agreement reached between Ankara and Tel Aviv.
More recently, Tehran has beefed up its air defenses through the acquisition of Russian 29 Tor M-1 anti-missile systems. In October, with Moscow`s collaboration, "a Russian rocket lifted an Iranian spy satellite, the Sinah-1, into orbit." (see Chris Floyd)
The Sinah-1 is just the first of several Iranian satellites set for Russian launches in the coming months.
Thus the Iranians will soon have a satellite network in place to give them early warning of an Israeli attack, although it will still be a pale echo of the far more powerful Israeli and American space spies that can track the slightest movement of a Tehran mullah’s beard. What’s more, late last month Russia signed a $1 billion contract to sell Iran an advanced defense system that can destroy guided missiles and laser-guided bombs, the Sunday Times reports. This too will be ready in the next few months. (op.cit.)
Ground War
While a ground war is not envisaged under CONPLAN, the aerial bombings could lead through the process of escalation into a ground war.
Iranian troops could cross the Iran-Iraq border and confront coalition forces inside Iraq. Israeli troops and/or Special Forces could enter into Lebanon and Syria.
In recent developments, Israel plans to conduct military exercises as well as deploy Special Forces in the mountainous areas of Turkey bordering Iran and Syria with the collaboration of the Ankara government:
Ankara and Tel Aviv have come to an agreement on allowing the Israeli army to carry out military exercises in the mountainous areas [in Turkey] that border Iran.
[According to] ... a UAE newspaper ..., according to the agreement reached by the Joint Chief of Staff of the Israeli army, Dan Halutz, and Turkish officials, Israel is to carry out various military manoeuvres in the areas that border Iran and Syria. [Punctuation as published here and throughout.] [Dan Halutz] had gone to Turkey a few days earlier.
Citing certain sources without naming them, the UAE daily goes on to stress: The Israeli side made the request to carry out the manoeuvres because of the difficulty of passage in the mountain terrains close to Iran's borders in winter.
The two Hakari [phonetic; not traced] and Bulo [phonetic; not traced] units are to take part in the manoeuvres that have not been scheduled yet. The units are the most important of Israel's special military units and are charged with fighting terrorism and carrying out guerrilla warfare.
Earlier Turkey had agreed to Israeli pilots being trained in the area bordering Iran. The news [of the agreement] is released at a time when Turkish officials are trying to evade the accusation of cooperating with America in espionage operations against its neighbouring countries Syria and Iran. Since last week the Arab press has been publishing various reports about Ankara's readiness or, at least, agreement in principle to carry out negotiations about its soil and air space being used for action against Iran.
(E'temad website, Tehran, in Persian 28 Dec 05, BBC Monitoring Services Translation)
Concluding remarks
The implications are overwhelming.
The so-called international community has accepted the eventuality of a nuclear holocaust.
Those who decide have swallowed their own war propaganda.
A political consensus has developed in Western Europe and North America regarding the aerial attacks using tactical nuclear weapons, without considering their devastating implications.
This profit driven military adventure ultimately threatens the future of humanity.
What is needed in the months ahead is a major thrust, nationally and internationally which breaks the conspiracy of silence, which acknowledges the dangers, which brings this war project to the forefront of political debate and media attentiion, at all levels, which confronts and requires political and military leaders to take a firm stance against the US sponsored nuclear war.
Ultimately what is required are extensive international sanctions directed against the United States of America and Israel.
Michel Chossudovsky is the author of the international best seller "The Globalization of Poverty " published in eleven languages. He is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Center for Research on Globalization, at www.globalresearch.ca . He is also a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His most recent book is entitled: America’s "War on Terrorism", Global Research, 2005.,
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Reuters
5 Jan 06
NEW YORK - A federal judge rejected the U.S. Defense Department's argument for not disclosing the names of detainees at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but stopped short of ordering that the names be released.
Judge Jed S. Rakoff's order on Wednesday was a victory for the Associated Press, which sued the Pentagon in April 2005 seeking the names of detainees and transcripts of hearings held by the U.S. military to determine whether they were properly classified as enemy combatants. The Pentagon tried to block the Associated Press' attempt to report the names of Guantanamo detainees, arguing that doing so could imperil the families of the detainees or the detainees themselves should they be released and return to their home countries.
In a six-page order, Rakoff wrote, "The Department of Defense has failed on this motion to establish ... any cognizable privacy interest on the part of the detainees. ... Accordingly, the defendant's summary judgment motion is denied."
Lt. Col. Mark Ballesteros, a Pentagon spokesman on detainee matters, said, "We're reviewing the order with the Department of Justice." He declined further comment.
A lawyer for AP welcomed the ruling.
"Many of these detainees are begging for the world to know where they are," said Dave Tomlin, AP's assistant general counsel. "The court was right to reject the government's pose as guardian of privacy rights when what it's really guarding is its own secrecy."
In August, the judge ordered the Defense Department to poll the 317 detainees who had undergone enemy combatant hearings to see whether they objected to having their names published.
Of those, 63 said they wanted their names released, 17 said they didn't, and the rest did not answer.
"The only privacy interest it (the Defense Department) purports to assert ... is that of the defendants; but of the 317 detainees in issue, only 17 have asserted a desire to have their identifying information kept confidential," the judge wrote.
Lawyers for both sides were called to meet in court on Thursday to determine the next step. |
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AFP
January 6, 2006
DOGUBEYAZIT, Turkey - Turkey said a third child from the same family had died of bird flu, in a sign that the deadly disease that has already killed scores in Southeast Asia and China has now spread westwards closer to Europe. The successive deaths triggered accusations that the government had failed to prevent the spread of the virus, but Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan insisted the authorities had not delayed taking the necessary action.
The latest victim, 11-year-old Hulya Kocyigit, died early Friday in a hospital in the eastern city of Van after spending several days in intensive care, said Huseyin Avni Sahin, the chief doctor at the hospital.
Her death comes a day after her 15-year-old sister Fatma succumbed to the disease in the same hospital.
Their 14-year-old brother, Muhammet Ali, perished on Sunday, becoming the first known human casualty of bird flu outside Southeast Asia and China where it has killed more than 70 people since late 2003, nearly 40 of them in 2005 alone.
Sahin said 26 other people, including a fourth member of the Kocyigit family, were being treated in the hospital for bird-flu symptoms.
Three of the patients were in intensive care and one of them was in a "critical condition", he added Friday.
It was not yet clear whether the deaths were caused by the H5N1 strain of bird flu blamed for the other fatalities.
But a spokeswoman in Geneva for the World Health Organization (WHO) said Thursday, following the first two deaths, that the strain considered highly dangerous to humans was the likely culprit.
The Kocyigit family is from the impoverished remote eastern town of Dogubeyazit where many families depend on poultry breeding for their livelihoods and live close to their animals, making it harder to contain the spread of the virus.
The Kocyigit children were hospitalised last week after coming into contact with ill chickens that they lived with in the same house.
The family killed and ate the chickens when they fell sick, with press reports claiming that the siblings played with the heads of dead chicken.
Currently humans only contract bird flu if they come into close contact with infected birds, but scientists fear millions around the world could die if the virus crosses with human flu strains to become highly contagious.
Many Dogubeyazit residents thronged the local hospital on Friday, fearful of having caught bird flu, while others accused authorities of failing to properly inform them on the disease.
"I ate chicken four days ago and I now feel very sick," Ozlem Ates, a teenager about 15 years of age, said in between bouts of vomiting in the corridors of the town's dilapidated looking hospital.
"I fear I have bird flu," she added before being taken away by staff for a check.
The Turkish press ran angry headlines, accusing the government of not acting fast enough to contain the disease.
"Who will account for this?," asked the mass circulation Hurriyet daily on its front page, while the liberal Radikal daily said: "It is spreading!"
"The health ministry says there is no delay," Erdogan told reporters in capital Ankara. "All the relevant ministries are taking the necessary precautions".
Dogubeyazit is less then 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the town of Aralik, which was quarantined last week after poultry there tested positive for H5 bird flu.
Officials were still awaiting the results of further tests being conducted in London to determine whether any of the thousands of birds slaughtered in the village suffered from the H5N1 strain.
As veterinary experts swooped down on both towns, culling poultry and disinfecting the area, Turkish Agriculture Minister Mehdi Eker on Thursday confirmed at least four new outbreaks of bird flu in poultry in the eastern provinces of Igdir and Erzurum, and the southeastern province of Sanliurfa.
The first case of H5N1 in birds in the country was uncovered in October at a turkey farm in Kiziksa, a village in the western province of Balikesir abutting a wildlife reserve that is a well-known stopover for migratory birds blamed for transporting the virus.
Officials announced on December 9 that they had eradicated the disease. |
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By JOE McDONALD
Associated Press
6 Jan 2006
Microsoft Corp. has shut down the Internet journal of a Chinese blogger that discussed politically sensitive issues including a recent strike at a Beijing newspaper.
The action came amid criticism by free-speech activists of foreign technology companies that help the communist government enforce censorship or silence dissent in order to be allowed into China's market.
Microsoft's China-based Web log-hosting service shut down the blog at the Chinese government's request, said Brooke Richardson, group product manager with Microsoft's MSN online division at the company headquarters in Redmond, Washington. Though Beijing has supported Internet use for education and business, it fiercely polices content. Filters block objectionable foreign Web sites and regulations ban subversive and pornographic content and require service providers to enforce censorship rules.
"When we operate in markets around the world we have to ensure that our service complies with global laws as well as local laws and norms," Richardson said.
Richardson said the blog was shut down on Dec. 30 or 31 but wouldn't give any other details about the reason.
But the blog, written under the pen name An Ti by Zhao Jing, who works for the Beijing bureau of The New York Times as a research assistant, touched on sensitive topics such as China's relations with Taiwan. Last week, he used the blog to crusade on behalf of a Beijing newspaper.
Reporters at the Beijing News, a daily known for its aggressive reporting, staged an informal one-day strike after their chief editor was removed from his post. The editor's removal and the strike attracted comments on Chinese online bulletin boards, which censors then erased.
Online bulletin boards and Web logs have given millions of Chinese an opportunity to express opinions in a public setting in a system where all media are government-controlled.
But service providers are required to monitor Web logs and bulletin boards, erase banned content and report offenders.
Foreign companies have adopted Chinese standards, saying they must obey local laws.
Microsoft's Web log service bars use of terms such as "democracy" and "human rights." On the China-based portal of search engine Google, a search for material the Dalai Lama, Taiwan and other sensitive topics returns a message saying "site cannot be found."
Last year, Web portal Yahoo! was the target of criticism when it was disclosed that the company provided information that was used to convict a Chinese reporter on charges of revealing state secrets.
Reporter Shi Tao was sentenced to 10 years in prison based on an e- mail that he had sent abroad with details of a memo read out at his newspaper about media controls.
In September, a Chinese journalist was sentenced to seven years in prison on subversion charges after writing articles that appeared on Web sites abroad that are blocked in China.
China also is in the midst of a crackdown on online smut. The police ministry said last month that it had shut down 598 Web sites with sexually explicit content and arrested 25 people.
David Wolf, a Beijing-based technology consultant, said that while Microsoft might be hurt abroad by controversy over its actions in China, Chinese Internet services routinely exercise similar censorship.
"They simply do it as a matter of course," said Wolf, managing director of Wolf Group Asia. "When you're looking around China, there is nothing that Microsoft and Yahoo have to do that is any different from what Chinese companies already are doing." |
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By Benjamin Kang Lim
Reuters
6 Jan 2006
BEIJING (Reuters) - A blind activist in China and his family have been placed under house arrest for four months and he was beaten by thugs when he tried to venture out, after exposing forced abortions in his home province on the east coast.
Club-wielding goons believed to be hired by local authorities have been posted outside Chen Guangcheng's one-storey brick home in Dongshigu, a farming village in Shandong province, since September 6 to prevent him, his wife and 71-year-old mother from leaving, Chen said.
"China is lawless," the 34-year-old activist told Reuters by telephone. "They're worried I will expose more of their crimes."
"Do (President) Hu Jintao and (Premier) Wen Jiabao know? If they know, why have they not done anything?" Chen asked. Authorities have jammed signals to and from Chen's mobile phone but they could not block calls on Friday due to a power failure. His home phone has also been cut.
Up to 30 people have been guarding Chen's house in each shift round the clock. The only visitor allowed is Chen's older brother.
Chen and his family have survived on food bought by the goons, who have beaten him at least twice when he tried to leave his home. He was denied medical treatment.
The goons once dragged Chen's 30-year-old wife, who gave birth to a girl last July, back into the house when she tried to go out, he said.
Chen's whistleblowing prompted the government to sack and detain several officials in Shandong's Linyi city, state media have said.
But Chen said he has not heard of any punishment.
Officials from Yinan county, which administers Dongshigu, forcibly brought back Chen to his home from a hiding place in Beijing last September.
His freedom was restricted with officials accusing him of providing "intelligence" to foreigners about forced abortions and sterilization's as part of strict family planning rules.
Several civil rights campaigners have been either beaten or jailed in the past year.
Guo Feixiong, an adviser to a law firm, was released without charges in December after being held for more than three months for helping residents of Taishi village in the southern province of Guangdong vote out their elected chief over allegations of corruption. He staged a month-long hunger strike.
Another activist, Lu Banglie, was beaten by thugs last October when he tried to help a British reporter from the Guardian newspaper enter Taishi to interview villagers.
Taishi erupted in a confrontation between villagers and police last September. Villagers accuse local officials of selling off 2,000 mu of valuable land, while paying them few benefits. |
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Mustafa Barghouti
Al-Ahram
Issue 771
The on-the-ground reality of Israel's moral bankruptcy in its genocidal policies towards the Palestinians remains as clear as ever...
What is the current situation on the ground in Palestine? The Israeli narrative that continues to dominate the international media presents an image that is absolutely at odds with reality. The Gaza redeployment was spun as the beginning of a peace process; a great retreat by General Ariel Sharon, who was portrayed as a man of peace. Yet the fact remains that Palestine is 27,000 square kilometres, of which the West Bank constitutes only 5,860 square kilometres, and the Gaza Strip, just 360 sq km. This is equal to only 1.3 per cent of the total land of historic Palestine. So even if Sharon really had withdrawn from Gaza, this would amount to just 5.8 per cent of the occupied territories. But the Israelis did not get out of Gaza. A big fuss was created about the great sacrifice Israel was making and how painful it was for settlers to leave. If you steal a piece of land and keep it for 20 years, of course it becomes painful to leave it but it is still something stolen that should be returned to its owners. Prior to the disengagement, a total of 152 settlements existed in the occupied territories: 101 in the West Bank, 30 in East Jerusalem, and 21 in the Gaza Strip. These figures do not include the settlements that Sharon and the Israeli army have created in the West Bank without officially recognising them. With the disengagement, and the evacuation of settlements in Gaza and four small settlements in the Jenin area of the West Bank, 127 settlements have been left in place.
The total population of settlers -- illegal under international law, and under the 2004 ruling of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which states that the separation wall and every settlement in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem must be removed -- numbers some 436,000: 190,000 in Jerusalem, and 246,000 in the West Bank. Just 8,475, or two per cent of the total number of illegal settlers in the occupied territories were removed from the Gaza Strip and Jenin area. Yet in the same period, the settlement population in the West Bank has grown by a massive 15,800.
So why remove settlers from Gaza if the disengagement was simply an exercise in relocation? Firstly, Israel never really wanted to keep them there. They were a bargaining chip to use when the time came to talk about the future of the occupied territories. But providing security for this relatively small number of settlers through a sustained military presence in the Gaza Strip was proving costly.
Secondly, Israel had already exhausted the water resources in Gaza by tapping the flow of underground water east of Gaza -- resulting in the seepage of seawater into Gaza's coastal aquifer -- and through the over-pumping of the existing aquifer by Israeli settlements. As such, Gazans have been left with brackish water resources that cause high rates of kidney failure. The maximum accepted level of chloride in drinking water, as set by World Health Organisation standards, is 250 mg per litre. In most areas of Gaza, the level stands between 1,200 and 2,500 mg per litre.
A further myth that Israel has been so successful in sustaining is that the withdrawal of its settlers has signalled an end to the occupation of Gaza. Yet the Strip is still as occupied as it used to be. What has changed is only the structure of occupation. Freed of the responsibility of maintaining a physical presence inside Gaza in order to "protect" its settlers, it is now much easier, and less costly for Israel to control the Gaza Strip from a distance using its state of the art military technology.
The Israeli army is located in the Erez area, in northern Gaza. From here, it continues to occupy a strip of land along the eastern border of Gaza some 900 metres to one kilometre deep -- again, all in an area of only 360 square kilometres -- and maintains control over Gaza's airspace, coastline and territorial waters. All entry and exit points to the Strip remain under Israeli control, and it is Israel that decides whether hundreds of patients who are in urgent need of treatment are allowed to leave the Gaza Strip or not. Despite the latest agreement brokered by Condoleezza Rice on the opening of the Gaza-Egypt border crossing, Israel retains complete control over the passage of goods and its right to monitor the movement of Palestinians; responsibilities it has frequently abused in the past.
Gaza remains a huge prison, and prospects for economic development in such a context are gloomy. The risk that Israel's continued control over Gaza will only deepen long-term efforts to sever it from the West Bank, destroying the unity and linkage between Palestinians, and the right of Palestinians to be in one unified state in the future, is a serious concern.
Sharon is using the redeployment from Gaza, which was exaggeratedly portrayed as an epic concession, to unilaterally impose the future of this area. The construction of his ignominious wall and the expansion of settlements will eventually result in the total annexation of no less than 50 per cent of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the destruction of any potential for a coherent, contiguous, and viable Palestinian state.
The wall cuts as deep as 35 kilometres into the West Bank. Its construction has already resulted in the annexation of 9.5 per cent of the land of the West Bank. The area expropriated for settlement adds another eight per cent to this figure, while the building of the eastern wall in the Jordan Valley will allow Israel to annex a further 28.5 per cent of the West Bank.
The wall is being built at very high speed, regardless of the ICJ advisory opinion. It will be around 750 kilometres in length: three times as long and twice as high as the Berlin Wall. Over 1,060,000 trees -- mainly olive trees -- have been uprooted by Israeli bulldozers in the West Bank. This wall is not built inside Israeli territory, nor along 1967 borders, but inside the occupied territories, separating Palestinians from Palestinians, and not Palestinians from Israelis as Sharon claims.
This wall will isolate no less than 250,000 Palestinians in Jerusalem alone. At least 50-70,000 other Palestinians with Jerusalem ID cards will end up outside the wall, unable to access Jerusalem freely, and will lose access to health and educational services. This is the beginning of a process that will end up with taking away their IDs and forcing them to be outside the area of Jerusalem to which they belong.
In some places, the wall cuts houses into two. In Jerusalem, near Anata, the wall cuts off the playground and fields of a school from the school building itself. In the city of Qalqilya, 46,000 people are surrounded by the wall from all directions, leaving only one passage, a road 8m wide with a gate, through which they can pass. Israeli soldiers have the key to this gate, and can shut off the city whenever they choose.
A permit is required to cross the wall; one that is near impossible to obtain. And even if you succeed in obtaining this permit, you still have to negotiate unaccommodating gate opening times. In the Jayous area, you can cross between 7.40am and 8am, between 14pm and 14.15pm, and between 18.45pm and 19pm: a total of 50 minutes per day. Sometimes the army "forgets" to open the gates, and schoolchildren, teachers, farmers, patients and other ordinary people are left to wait indefinitely.
If the 1947 UN partition plan had been implemented, there would be two states: a Palestinian state on 45 per cent of the land of historic Palestine, and an Israeli state on 55 per cent. In 1967, the Israeli state constituted 78 per cent of this land. What remained was the West Bank and Gaza Strip; what Palestinians came to terms with in 1988 when the Palestinian National Council accepted a two-state solution. This represented an unprecedented compromise for Palestinians as it effectively gave up more than half of what was assigned to them by the UN.
What was offered to Arafat by Ehud Barak at Camp David in 2000 was no different from Sharon's plan, in that he wanted to retain the Jordan Valley, Jerusalem and big parts of the settlements. Having brought the Palestinians to their worst ever economic and humanitarian condition, Sharon has created a situation whereby he can act independently to decide the shape any future "peace process" will take. His plan, if he finishes his wall, and if he succeeds in his unilateral action to impose a solution, which is hailed and appreciated by so many leaders in the international community, will transform the idea of a Palestinian state into something that can only be described as Bantustans and clustres of ghettos.
Herein lies the real motivation behind the wall. Far from being built for security reasons, it symbolises a pre-determined plan by the army to annex the occupied territories and determine the outcome of the so-called peace process. The Israeli army has re- imposed closures and severe movement restrictions in the West Bank, declaring that main roads are barred to Palestinian vehicles, with the exception of some public transport. Instead, these roads have been designated for use by Israeli settlers and the army only, reflecting an element of segregation that did not even happen at the height of apartheid in South Africa.
Ordinary Palestinians cannot go to work, women who are pregnant cannot get to hospital to give birth, patients who are in serious need of kidney dialysis or urgent treatment for heart attacks could die at home without being able to reach a hospital, and the Palestinian economy is completely paralysed.
Where is the peace process in all of this, and when Sharon refuses to recognise the presence of a Palestinian partner, and the idea of an international peace conference? Sharon claims that there is no place for negotiations about Jerusalem, the Jordan Valley, settlements, and that he will decide the future unilaterally without any Palestinian or international participation. And if there are negotiations, they are taking place between the right-wing Likud Party leadership and the more extreme right-wing leadership represented by Netanyahu, or between Sharon and the settlers.
Our demand is for an international peace conference where resolution to the conflict would be returned to its basis in international law, and where the ICJ advisory ruling would be addressed.
What is happening on the ground is the creation of a system of apartheid. Of 960 million cubic metres of water that is generated in the West Bank, Palestinians are allowed to use only 109, one-tenth of our water. The rest goes to Israel. On average, a Palestinian citizen in the West Bank is allowed to use no more than 36 cubic metres of water per year, while Israeli settlers in the West Bank can use up to 2,400 cubic metres. We are not allowed to use our own roads and streets. We are not allowed to build houses. We are not allowed to move freely. Our GDP per capita is less than $1,000 while Israel's is almost $20,000, and still we have an imposed tax and market union which obliges us to buy products at the same cost as Israelis.
This is well illustrative of the severe imbalance of power on the ground, one that cannot be redressed without the intervention and support of the international community.
One way to correct this situation is to do what was done very successfully in the case of South Africa, which is to impose sanctions. A key aspect of this lies in the discontinuation of military ties with Israel, the fourth largest military exporter in the world. We need a movement of military non- cooperation that concentrates on divestment and connects economic agreements with Israel's abidance by international law and the implementation of international resolutions.
The Palestinians deserve to be freed from the long- term suffering they have endured through 600 years of foreign rule, 58 years of dispossession and 38 years of a military occupation that has become the longest in modern history. The Israelis themselves will never be truly free unless they end this suppression of the Palestinian people.
There comes a time in people's lives when they can no longer bear injustice. This time has come for Palestinians. We aspire to be free, and we will be free.
* The writer is secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative |
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John Carr in Athens
London Times
5 Jan 2006
A photograph purporting to be Britain's top MI6 agent in Greece was published today on the front page of an Athens newspaper, as controversy continues over the alleged role of British agents in the arrest and supposed abuse of a group of Pakistanis living in Athens.
The left-of-centre national daily Eleftherotypia ran a photograph of a middle-aged man running a marathon race, claiming he was both a British embassy diplomat and the head of the supposed clandestine arresting team. More than one Greek newspaper has named the diplomat, drawing fire from the Greek and British governments, which say that such acts endanger the security apparatus of both countries. The Pakistani embassy in Athens has also expressed its displeasure.
The diplomat in question was hurriedly recalled to London late last month.
Eleftherotypia said that the photo came from Frangiskos Rangoussis, a lawyer for 28 Pakistanis who in recent weeks came forward with stories of midnight arrests and days of interrogation, including instances of abuse, in undisclosed locations.
Some said that they were repeatedly kicked in the head, while others said they were hooded and manacled for long periods, in interrogations not long after the July 7 terrorist bombings in London.
The Athens Classic Marathon is an annual autumn event that draws many expatriates with athletic inclinations. Covering the original 41-kilometre route, it is partly sponsored by the Greek state sporting federation. All participants finishing the race have their photos routinely taken.
The alleged MI6 chief is shown squinting into the camera in the sunlight, his face contorted with effort, wearing a white T-shirt.
The newspaper, which generally plays up news that is potentially embarrassing to Britain and America, headlined its top story "The Long-Distance Kidnapper."
Evidence from the Pakistanis themselves has been confusing. Shortly before the new year they partly retracted the charges of abuse, and hinted that they had no proof that any of the agents who arrested them was British, as they all appeared to speak good Greek.
Earlier this week some news reports said that only six Pakistanis, and not 28, were involved. No known evidence has emerged linking any of those arrested to the London attacks.
Mr Rangoussis last week was rapped over the knuckles by the Athens Bar Association, which said that his frequent flamboyant appearances and loose talk on evening television talk shows was casting discredit on the legal profession.
The Greek Parliament meets on January 11 to debate the Pakistani issue. George Voulgarakis, the Public Order Minister, is expected to field tough questions from the opposition leftwing benches. The Greek Government so far has aligned itself with London, insisting that the Pakistanis' allegations are unfounded. |
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London Times
6 Jan 2006
Images of a 16-mile (26km) crater on the southeastern surface of Mars, captured by an orbiting spacecraft, have been released by scientists.
The European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter took the photographs of the elliptical impact crater, right, as it passed over the Hesperia Planum region of the planet.
The image was captured in May 2004 using a high-resolution stereo camera, during the spacecraft ’s 368th orbit of the planet. The mission was launched in June 2003.
Scientists said that the crater had probably been caused by a collision with debris. Mars Express was the first European spacecraft to be sent to the planet. Data collected from it is transmitted to a station near Perth, Australia, and sent on to the European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany. |
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Wednesday, January 04, 2006
By Kristoffer Larsson
"I consider Zionism to be a mental illness which makes otherwise decent folks behave like Nazis or Afrikaners"
Jeff Blankfort
After wiping Palestine off the map and expelling over 700,000 Palestinians from their homes, confiscating the land they've lived on for generations, Israel still had a considerable Palestinian minority within its borders. Set to realise the dream of creating a state for Jews only had obviously failed, and Apartheid laws were imposed in order to make the non-Jewish citizens of the Jewish state to leave.
Many leading human rights defenders have correctly referred to the situation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as Apartheid. Collective punishment, house demolitions, settlements for Jews only, prices on electricity and water several times higher for Palestinians than Jewish settlers; the Apartheid on the occupied territories is obvious.
Still, I find it strange that the inequality for the Palestinians within the state of Israel is neglected. In some perspectives, their rights within Israel proper today are more limited than in the territories conquered in 1967.This is due to the way the state of Israel is set up. When people hear Israel being referred to as a 'Jewish state', they tend to interpret it as if Israel is a state with a Jewish majority. That's true. But there's more to it. The principle of a Jewish state says that Israel 'belongs to' the Jewish people, meaning that every Jew has a right to immigrate to Israel while non-Jews don't (unless they marry an Israeli Jew). As a result of this, Israel does not 'belong to' any non-Jew, not even its non-Jewish citizens. [1]
In fact, the Jewish state does not recognise an Israeli nationality. The Israeli ID-card has a clause marking the 'nationality' of the holder [2]. However, among the 140 nationalities Israel recognises, 'Israeli' is not one of them. Rather, the ID-card marks ethnicity, revealing if you are a 'Jew', 'Arab', 'Druze', or whatever the holder is registered as at the Ministry of Interior. Just this shows that Israel has a need of defining who is a Jew and who isn't. Note that one doesn't have to be religious in a way to be a Jew, or even feel Jewish. A Jew is a Jew because he has a Jewish mother. Arab, American, Asian, Africa or Swedish - it doesn't matter. A Jew is a Jew through his or her blood. Obviously, the Zionists think the Jew should have different rights from the non-Jew (at least in Israel/Palestine), just because of his blood. This proves that the Zionists feel a need to distinguish Jews from non-Jews. And if they didn't think Jews were different from non-Jews through the blood, they wouldn't adopt discriminating laws against non-Jews in Israel/Palestine [3].
It's truly amazing to see how Jewish survivors of World War II (on good grounds) demand to be compensated for property that was confiscated by the Nazis, while they themselves however do not mind living on stolen Palestinian land. It is as if international law doesn't apply to the Jewish National Home. Zionist Jews are in general supporters of democracy and equal rights everywhere in the world - except for the Holy land. This is what Zionism is all about - a 'Jewish' state solely for Jews. Scary perhaps, but evident to whoever has studied Zionism.
Israel adopted a Basic Law [4] in 1985 prohibiting parties to participate in the elections if they are opposed to "the existence of the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish people."[5] Note that it isn't opposition to Israel's existence that causes banning; it is disbelief in "the state of the Jewish people." In other words, those who don't want the state to be only for the Jews, but instead for all its citizens, are hence forbidden from running for office. It is the same as if South Africa would have had adopted a Basic Law forbidding candidates to run for office if they opposed the White Apartheid system.
In his book Jewish History, Jewish religion - The Weight of Three Thousand Years, late Professor Israel Shahak noted:
"In 1956 I eagerly swallowed all of Ben-Gurion's political and military reasons for Israel initiating the Suez War, until he (in spite of being an atheist, proud of his disregard of the commandments of Jewish religion) pronounced in the Knesset on the third day of that war, that the real reason for it is 'the restoration of the kingdom of David and Solomon' to its Biblical borders. At this point in his speech, almost every Knesset member spontaneously rose and sang the Israeli national anthem. To my knowledge, no zionist politician has ever repudiated Ben-Gurion's idea that Israeli policies must be based (within the limits of pragmatic considerations) on the restoration of the Biblical borders as the borders of the Jewish state. Indeed, close analysis of Israeli grand strategies and actual principles of foreign policy, as they are expressed in Hebrew, makes it clear that it is 'Jewish ideology', more than any other factor, which determines actual Israeli policies."
This 'Jewish ideology', or Judaism as interpreted by Zionists, states that only the Jews "have the right over the entire Land of Israel," to quote Yitzhak Rabin [6]. Non-Jews are prevented from buying or renting land on more than 80% of the state of Israel within the Green Line (this also applies to land under Israeli control in the occupied territories). 93.7% of the land in Israel is defined as 'Israel lands' [7] and is either owned by the Israeli state, the Development Authority or the Keren Kayemeth Le-Israel (The Jewish National Fund, JNF). This national land is property that was confiscated by the Zionists - except for a few per cent which was bought by the JNF - and the Palestinians nowadays only own about 3.5% of the land in Israel, which is half of the private-owned land.
The JNF acts by the principle that only Jews are allowed to live on its land. However, cases where the right of Palestinians to live on JNF-owned land have been tried and (at least in recent years) they have been won by the Palestinians, thus given even non-Jewish citizens access to the land [8].
But if there is no legal problem for Palestinians to live on all land in Israel, why are they then in practise prevented from residing on over 80% of the soil? I can only come up with one logical explanation: mere racism. Jewish landlords simply don't rent to Israeli citizens registered as 'Arab'. I can't help thinking that the term 'Judeo-Nazi' as coined by Professors Yeshayahu Leibowitz and Israel Shahak is an appropriate description for this fascism.
This Apartheid policy is strictly followed in most parts of the country, with Jerusalem being a good example. Sharon was clear when he said that Israel "will not negotiate Jerusalem" and that the city is "the Israeli capital, which is united and indivisible for eternity."
In 1980, the Knesset adopted a Basic Law saying that "Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel."[9] 'Complete and united' cannot mean anything but including East Jerusalem, which matches the route of the Apartheid Wall (in fact, it also incorporates part of the West Bank, creating a Jerusalem greater - and perhaps more Jewish - than ever before).
The 'Judaizing' of Jerusalem is another word ethnically cleansing it, making it as Jewish as possible.[10] A Palestinian born in East Jerusalem who has moved abroad isforbidden to return, while a Jew who has never sat foot in the city can move back and forth as he likes. Can you picture Jews being forbidden to return to Washington DC just because they are Jews? Probably not, and that's good. The question is how Israel gets away with it. And why does almost no newspaper or magazine in Europe and North America ever write about it?
Following the racist set-up in Israel, the living conditions for Arab Israelis are not surprisingly much lower than for Jews. In fact, almost half the Arab Israeli families are poor (48%). A third of the Israeli children live in poverty, while the figure reaches a terrifying 60% among Palestinian Israeli children.[11] The Palestinians are constantly encouraged to leave.
Professor of Political Science at Haifa University and a true supporter of the Palestinians, Ilan Pappe in an interview well summarised the racist laws against the Palestinians in Israel:
"For example, the law of the land, which says that 94% of the land in Israel belongs to the Jewish people alone, not to the state of Israel, and therefore 20% of the population - the Arabs - are barred from this land. Although the Arab population in Israel tripled compared to the Jewish population, there has not been one new Arab settlement or village built, while there are hundreds of new Jewish, towns, villages and settlements. So this is discrimination on the basis of ethnicity on land rights. You cannot exist in an agricultural society like the Arab one, if you are not allowed to expand according to your demographic group. That's one law.
Then there is the law of citizenship, which says that Palestinians who may have brothers and sisters and relatives all over the Arab world are not allowed to reunite with their families, but Jews all around the world have all the rights to come and become full citizens from the moment they are born.
The third one is the law of social welfare, which says that only people who have served in the army are entitled to the full welfare social system. Now, the Arabs are not allowed to serve in the army [with few exceptions, as with the Druze], and therefore they are not allowed full social services. And these are just the formal laws. There are many de facto manifestations of apartheid in the way towards the Arab population in the way that the budget is distributed; in the basic treatment by the authorities; the police; and so on."[12]
One questions remains: How the hell does Israel get away with all this? Why is Israel, time after time, being called 'the only democracy in the Middle East', while its non-Jewish Arab citizens are forbidden to live on 80% of its land? How come almost no newspaper ever mentions that Jerusalem is being ethnically cleansed?
To some extent, I believe this is because of the image of Israel that has dominated Western media during the last 60 years. Non-Jews being banned from land just because of who they are sounds so unthinkable that very few are able to believe it.
But there's another factor that cannot be overseen: Criticising Israel is likely to damage a journalist's career. The power of the lobby is often ignored or (in best case) underestimated. Editors are afraid of being accused of 'bias' by the pro-Israeli lobbyists. If you would have asked me a year ago, I would have said that this is pure rubbish. But after witnessing how editor after editor, publisher after publisher, are being targeted and forced to fold back, I have realised how bad the situation really is. Even if the media isn't owned by Jews, as in most cases, defending Palestinian rights is a politically incorrect act that likely means trouble.
Accusing Professor Noam Chomsky of disregarding the influence of the lobby, writer and radio show host Jeff Blankfort decided to ask Professor Shahak for his opinion on the matter. Shahak answered:
"I had the same, only greater, differences of opinion with Noam Chomsky, who is my personal friend for quite a time, on the subject of AIPAC and the influence of the Jewish lobby in general as you have. What is more, a number of mutual friends of Chomsky and me have also tried to influence him, in vain, on that point.
I am afraid that he is, with all his wonderful qualities and the work he does, quite dogmatic on many things. I have no doubt that his grievous mistake about the lack of importance of AIPAC, which he repeats quite often, helps the Zionists very much as you so graphically described."[13]
War crimes on occupied territories is to some extent legitimate news to report on (under the condition that it isn't too 'biased' or 'anti-Israeli'), but exposing Israel's Apartheid and plain racism is still restricted area. Bishop and Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu wrote:
"But you know as well as I do that, somehow, the Israeli government is placed on a pedestal [in the US], and to criticise it is to be immediately dubbed anti-semitic, as if the Palestinians were not semitic. I am not even anti-white, despite the madness of that group. And how did it come about that Israel was collaborating with the apartheid government on security measures?
People are scared in this country [the US], to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful - very powerful. Well, so what? For goodness sake, this is God's world! We live in a moral universe. The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer exists. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, Milosevic, and Idi Amin were all powerful, but in the end they bit the dust."[14]
Let's hope the Bishop's prophecy will come to pass.
[1] Law of Return, by Kristoffer Larsson; IMEMC, August 4, 2005;http://www.imemc.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=13065&Itemid=0[2] The Hebrew term used in the ID-card is 'leom', which means 'nation' or 'people'. Another word for nationality is 'netinut'.
[3] I don't use the term 'Israeli Arab' here because 1) the majority of Arabs in Israel are Jews and not Palestinians and 2) the racist laws in Israel are not discriminatory against Arabs, but against non-Jews. The reason to why 'Israeli Arab' (or 'Arab Israeli') is commonly used is that a non-Jewish Arab Israeli is registered as 'Arab' at the Israeli Ministry of Interior, while an Arab Jew is registered as 'Jew'.[4] Israeli Basic Laws is by Shahak referred to as 'Constitutional laws', which he defines as "a law overriding provisions of other laws, which cannot be revoked except by a special procedure." They are called Basic Laws as Israel lacks a constitution. Read more on: http://www.knesset.gov.il/description/eng/eng_mimshal_yesod.htm[5] Basic Law: The Knesset; http://www.knesset.gov.il/laws/special/eng/basic2_eng.htm[6] Analysis of Israeli Policies: The Priority of the Ideological Factor, by Israel Shahak; http://www.nimn.org/Perspectives/israeli_voices/000242.php?section=Israeli Voices[7] Basic Law: Israel Lands; http://www.knesset.gov.il/laws/special/eng/basic13_eng.htm[8] Report by Adalah; http://www.adalah.org/eng/intladvocacy/CESCR-land.pdf[9] Basic Law: Jerusalem, Capital of Israel; http://www.knesset.gov.il/laws/special/eng/basic10_eng.htm[10] Sharon's Final Solution, by Kristoffer Larsson; peacepalestine, October 27, 2005; http://peacepalestine.blogspot.com/2005/10/sharons-final-solution-by-kristoffer.html[11] 60% of Arab Israeli children are poor; Globes online, August 10, 2005.
[12] Ilan Pappe Interview by Don Atapattu; peacepalestine documents, July 13, 2005; http://peacepalestinedocuments.blogspot.com/2005/09/ilan-pappe-interview-by-don-atapattu.html[13] Damage Control: Noam Chomsky and the Israel-Palestine Conflict, by Jeffrey Blankfort; Left Curve no. 29; http://www.leftcurve.org/LC29WebPages/Chomsky.html[14] Apartheid in the Holy Land, by Desmond Tutu; The Guardian, April 29, 2002; http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4403427,00.html
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Jan. 06, 2006
The earthquake of 7 magnitude under the Richter scale hit Russia's Chita Region at 04:56 a.m. MSK, the Regional News Service reports.
The village of Kalanguy, Olovyaninsky District of the region, was the earthquake focus, while the local center experienced only two shocks of 4.6 magnitude. The strongest vibration was noted near a hydroelectric power plant. Tenants of high-rise buildings in Severny neighborhood saw their ceiling lamps shaking and things falling from the closets.
There was no major demolition, according to the Emergency Ministry. But the plaster on the walls of a raft of two-storey houses in Nerchinks-town blew out and their main walls might have been damaged, the Regional News Service reported. |
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Valery Bolotin
Utro (Russian Morning News)
6 Jan 06
The following article is in Russian, in a respected journal (not "The National Enquirer). We are presenting a machine translation with slight editing. Essentially, what it says is; that the Catastroph IS coming, it's unavoidable, and nothing will be "normal" again for 100,000 years. The article says that the data shows that we are on the verge of the same catastrophe that visited Earth 55 million years ago. Europe and North America will be under ice for a very long time. There is the opinion that history has a form of spiral, and everything, which is awaiting us in the future, already has occurred in the distant past, and possibly, more than once. This concerns also the famous global warming, of which terrifying consequences scientists are warning us about for a period of several years. According to their opinion, we are guilty in bringing on this unavoidable apocalypse.
It is said, harmful ejections into the atmosphere, the greenhouse effect and other not very pleasant side-effects of industrial civilization have placed the planet on the edge, after which it awaits the ecological catastrophe: climate variation, the deluge, swift temperature drop and almost death of everything living.
However, this state of affairs is nothing new for the Earth, and all these subjects, worthy of the pen of science fiction writer, concern rather the genre of historical novel.
As American scientists explained, in the history of planet Earth, there were already periods of global warming, and global freezing. The soul-freezing scenario is naturalistically shown in the blockbuster movie "Day After Tomorrow", has already occurred in the historical "day before yesterday" - 55 million years ago.
In those distant times everything developed exactly according to the same scenario as contemporary scientists have projected for the nearest future.
The key link in the chain of events in both cases is the flow of the Gulf Stream, or more accurately - its break-down, which is going to bring terrible cold into Europe and North America.
Here is the scenario: global warming will lead to the melting of ice at the poles, as a result of which tremendous masses of fresh water will pour into the Atlantic Ocean which will change the direction of water circulation.
The work of the Gulf Stream, which usually takes away cold water from the north into the southern hemisphere, and on the way back delivers to the north warm water from the south, in this way warming the northern continents, will be disrupted. And as a result Europe and America will be totally under the domination of cold currents, that also indicates the onset of the legendary "day after tomorrow".
Thus, 55 million years ago everything occurred exactly the same, even if the causes were different. Because humanity with its progress - toxic waste belching factories and the vomiting of tons of dioxides by automobiles - existed only in the form of "God's Ideas".
55 Million years ago climate variation began because of the extraordinary volcanic activity, which, as it seemed, was the cause of the death of the dinosaurs. As written in the journal Nature, the scientist, Richard Norris from the California institute of oceanology, in the past, global warming released methane, which was waiting to play its role in the thickness of ocean floor.
The gas which escaped, became the reason for a sharp increase in the temperature of water, heating oceans to 6-8 degrees higher. The consequences were truly catastrophic.
The order of the circulation of water masses from the south to the north and from the north to the south, which was stable for thousands of years, was swept away, and for the next 5 thousand years the oceans did the most unexpected things, directing the streams of water backwards.
On the land, it's not difficult to imagine what was happeing - to represent is not complicated. It is enough to say that for things to return to normal, Nature needed 100 thousand years were required by nature.
Let us note that this period twice as long as the period of existence of modern man on Earth.
For those who think that our planet is able to manage the ecological vandalism that is a product of bad stewardship of humanity, they should think twice. The real question is whether there will be any human beings who will be alive at the "happy end" when this scenario plays out. |
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EDITORIAL
NRC Handelsblad - The Netherlands
Translated By Iris Reijnen
December 31, 2005
There are a number of good reasons for Europe to launch a new global navigation system, including the need for a back-up to America's GPS, greater accuracy and increased capability of a new system. But according to this editorial from NRC Handelsblad of The Netherlands, the inescapable fact is that the E.U.'s decision is, 'one more signal that the rest of the world no longer accepts American dominance.' Is it really necessary, a European owned satellite navigation system? Yesterday the Giove-A was launched, which is the first of thirty satellites that will comprise the Galileo navigation system. The network is expected to be operational in 2010. For mass applications it will be accurate up to one meter, and it can both send and receive data, which makes it useful for many more applications than just passively determining one’s position on the earth.
Galileo, costing more than €4 billion, will be competing with the American GPS-system that dominates the market today, as does the less advanced Russian Glonass-system. From a consumer perspective, Galileo is more than welcome. An increasing amount of activity, varying from transport to security, depends heavily on an accurate determination of one’s geographic position. Essential services, whether it concerns energy supplies or information science, are impossible without backup systems. Looking at it that way, it is amazing that GPS, used by air traffic controllers since 1983 and by the rest of the world since 1990, operates without any kind of backup.
Obviously, owning a competing commercial navigation system is not Europe’s only goal. Essentially, the American GPS system is a military system that is also utilized for commercial or civilian purposes. During the American-British invasion of Iraq in 2003, one of the fears was that the U.S. would limit civilian the use or accuracy of their GPS-system to allow its military forces the maximum use of the system, while at the same time making it more difficult for the enemy to make use of GPS. Recently, President Bush himself announced that in case of a terrorist attack, the GPS-system could be turned-off for these same reasons.
When it comes to the ever-increasing importance of satellite navigation, it is clear that the major cities of Europeans don’t want to be in a position where they are subject to the whims of the Americans. In 2001, French President Chirac warned that without Galileo, which was then still in its infant stages, European countries would be puppets in the hands of the US. However you look at it, military independence is one of the main goals behind Galileo. From that perspective, it is not surprising that China joined Galileo. But the fact that countries like Canada and Australia are also now aboard says a lot about the level of trust within the Western union.
Although Galileo is very welcome from a commercial perspective, from a military standpoint it arouses mixed feelings. No matter how reasonable the wish to be militarily autonomous is, a rival to America's satellite navigation system is one more signal that the rest of the world no longer accepts American dominance. The Italian scientist Galileo Galilei suggested four centuries ago, based on his own observations and Copernicus’ theory, that not the earth but the Sun was the center of the solar system. By doing so, he completely turned the world order of that time upside down.
Hopefully, that is not the intent behind the participation of some who are taking part in the satellite system that carries the scientist’s name. |
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By Jamie McGeever
Reuters
Thu Jan 5, 7:57 PM ET
NEW YORK - Forgetting computer passwords is an everyday source of frustration, but a solution may literally be at hand -- in the form of computer chip implants.
With a wave of his hand, Amal Graafstra, a 29-year-old entrepreneur based in Vancouver, Canada, opens his front door. With another, he logs onto his computer.
Tiny radio frequency identification (RFID) computer chips inserted into Graafstra's hands make it all possible. "I just don't want to be without access to the things that I need to get access to. In the worst case scenario, if I'm in the alley naked, I want to still be able to get in (my house)," Graafstra said in an interview in New York, where he is promoting the technology. "RFID is for me."
The computer chips, which cost about $2, interact with a device installed in computers and other electronics. The chips are activated when they come within 3 inches of a so-called reader, which scans the data on the chips. The "reader" devices are available for as little as $50.
Information about where to buy the chips and readers is available online at the "tagged" forum, (http://tagged.kaos.gen.nz/) where enthusiasts of the technology chat and share information.
Graafstra said at least 20 of his tech-savvy pals have RFID implants.
"I can't feel it at all. It doesn't impede me. It doesn't hurt at all. I almost can't tell it's there," agreed Jennifer Tomblin, a 23-year-old marketing student and Graafstra's girlfriend.
'ABRACADABRA'
Mikey Sklar, a 28-year-old Brooklyn resident, said, "It does give you some sort of power of 'Abracadabra,' of making doors open and passwords enter just by a wave of your hand."
The RFID chip in Sklar's hand, which is smaller than a grain of rice and can last up to 100 years, was injected by a surgeon in Los Angeles.
Tattoo artists and veterinarians also could insert the chips into people, he said. For years, veterinarians have been injecting similar chips into pets so the animals can be returned to their owners if they are lost.
Graafstra was drawn to RFID tagging to make life easier in this technological age, but Sklar said he was more intrigued by the technology's potential in a broader sense.
In the future, technological advances will allow people to store, transmit and access encrypted personal information in an increasing number of wireless ways, Sklar said.
Wary of privacy issues, Sklar said he is developing a fabric "shield" to protect such chips from being read by strangers seeking to steal personal information or identities.
One advantage of the RFID chip, Graafstra said, is that it cannot get lost or stolen. And the chip can always be removed from a person's body.
"It's kind of a gadget thing, and it's not so impressive to have it on your key chain as it is to have it in you," Sklar said. "But it's not for everyone."
Sklar's girlfriend, Wendy Tremayne, has yet to be convinced. She said she probably would not inject the computer chip into her body unless she thought it was a "necessity."
"If it becomes more convenient, I may," said the 38-year-old artist and yoga teacher. "(But) I'd rather have an organic life." |
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By Dana Milbank
WAshington Post
January 6, 2006
Do not be surprised if, at some point during next week's confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, a trumpet blast is sounded in the hearing room, winged angels descend, and Democrats on the Judiciary Committee turn into pillars of salt.
This undoubtedly would be the wish of the Rev. Rob Schenck, president of the National Clergy Council. He held a news conference outside the Hart Office Building yesterday to announce that he would "consecrate Room 216 Hart" -- the hearing room -- in hopes of having, in the sacred words of Fox News, "a fair and balanced hearing." The Rev. Rob Schenck, right, president of the National Clergy Council, and the Rev. Patrick Mahoney, director of the Christian Defense Coalition, have sought divine guidance for the Alito hearings.
"By dedicating it to God, we look to God to orchestrate and direct the activities that take place at that location," Schenck, who provided similar blessings for John G. Roberts's confirmation, explained to the television cameras. It's unclear if this would violate Senate rules, which give Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) sole authority to direct activities in the hearing room.
With four days to go until Alito's confirmation hearings, the rush to judgment was in the home stretch yesterday. Senators and interest groups of all stripes were competing madly to prejudge the judge.
The day began at 9 a.m. with a gathering of groups, including Law Students Against Alito. An hour later at the National Press Club, a group of Women Against Alito crashed a meeting of Women for Alito and heckled the participants with chants of "Women will die!" While that fracas ensued, a group of Law Professors Against Alito was meeting down the hall. At noon at the press club, political consultants behind the Swift Boat campaign against John F. Kerry wheeled out the African Americans for Alito.
Pat Robertson set the tone for the week when he said on Tuesday God had told him that Alito would be confirmed and another justice -- a liberal! -- will retire this year. "The president is going to strengthen, and Alito is going to get confirmed," Robertson prophesied, provoking the liberal Americans United group to wonder if Robertson "is confusing his wish-list for God's will."
The left, meanwhile, has been burying Alito with paper. On Wednesday, People for the American Way issued a 155-page report denouncing everything about the nominee. Ninety minutes later, another liberal group, Alliance for Justice, came out with its anti-Alito report -- 168 pages, besting its rival by 13.
The senators who will decide Alito's fate have been only marginally more restrained. Virtually all of the majority Republicans will vote for him and most of the minority Democrats will oppose him. But each side claims to be open-minded while accusing the other of prejudging.
Last month, the office of Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), put this phenomenon to verse.
'Twas one month before the hearings, and all through the city
Not many Democrats were waiting, not even some on the committee
The office of Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) retaliated:
On Alito, they say, he deserves confirmation,
But don't wait for hearings, just accept coronation.
The committee members were busily promoting an appearance of open-mindedness yesterday.
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), hosting a morning roundtable with reporters, had nothing nice to say about Alito. "We here in the United States are not going to stand for monarchial tyranny," he said, protesting Alito's support for "unfettered, unlimited power of the executive." He faulted Alito for belonging to a group that was "anti-black and also anti-women." Kennedy wondered if "the average person is going to be able to get a fair shake" under Alito.
Briefly, Kennedy rewrote the outcome of the 1964 election. "This nominee was influenced by the Goldwater presidency," he said. "The Goldwater battles of those times were the battles against the civil rights laws." Only then did Kennedy acknowledge that "Judge Alito at that time was 14 years old."
A questioner pointed out that Kennedy sounded like a sure bet against Alito. "I haven't reached a final conclusion," the senator demurred.
Next up: Schumer, who gave an afternoon speech to the liberal Center for American Progress. Schumer argued that Alito articulated "a radical theory of executive power" under which "we couldn't have a 9/11 commission." He further mentioned the judge's "extreme views" and said one of his arguments "can't be taken seriously by any serious person." The senator judged that Alito "is in worse shape today than the day he was nominated."
So is that a "no" vote? "No," Schumer said. "We want to hear his views."
Cornyn hosted a conference call to counter the Democrats' unofficial opposition to Alito with his unofficial support. Cornyn said that Alito is "solidly within the judicial mainstream" and that attacks on him are "specious and far-fetched." This followed Cornyn's earlier descriptions of Alito as "highly qualified, extremely fair, and a man of unquestioned integrity."
Then we'll take that as a "yes" vote? Not necessarily. "Based on what I know now, I support the nomination," Cornyn said, but "there is certainly a possibility I would change my mind." |
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www.chinaview.cn 2006-01-06 17:39:12
WASHINGTON, Jan. 5 (Xinhuanet) -- The U.S. State Department announced a plan on Thursday to boost teaching and learning "critical need" foreign languages from Kindergarten through university as part of an effort to "further strengthen national security and prosperity in the 21st century."
The plan, "the National Security Language Initiative," would dramatically increase the number of Americans learning "critical need" foreign languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Hindi and Farsi, the department said in a statement. President George W. Bush would request Congress for 114 million U.S. dollars in fiscal 2007 budget to fund the project.
The statement said an essential component of U.S. national security in the post-Sept.11 world was "the ability to engage foreign governments and peoples, especially in critical regions, to encourage reform, promote understanding, convey respect for other cultures."
To this end, "we must be able to communicate in other languages, a challenge for which we are unprepared," the statement said.
Lack of proficient people in foreign languages "negatively affects our national security, diplomacy, law enforcement, intelligence communities and cultural understanding," the statement said.
This also "prevents us from effectively communicating in foreign media environments, hurts counter-terrorism efforts, and hamstrings our capacity to work with people and governments in post-conflict zones and to promote mutual understanding," the statement added.
The comprehensive national plan had three broad goals: expanding the number of Americans mastering "critical need" languages and starting at a younger age; increasing the number of advanced-level speakers of foreign languages, with an emphasis on critical need languages, and increasing the number of foreign language teachers.
In addition, the Pentagon said that in a separate program it intended to spend 750 million dollars, over a span of five years beginning in fiscal 2007, on efforts to increase foreign language proficiency within the military. |
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by Sheila Samples
6 Jan 2006
Those of us who know Bush is raving mad, destructively impulsive and totally incompetent suspect he was lining up former heavyweights to take the blame when the melt-down comes. The good news is this is Alexander Haig's last chance to be "in charge."
January 5th was the bloodiest day in Iraq since Bush's illegal invasion. As many as 140 were killed, including 11 US servicemen, and many more injured. Bush responded by suddenly summoning all living secretaries of state and defense to the White House for a skull session and photo op on what to do in the Middle East before he is completely overtaken by even more catastrophic success. He's willing to share the glory, and said he would "listen and take to heart" any suggestions offered, even from Democrats.
Except an exit plan, of course, and any suggestions of how to better equip or protect the "troops" who are thrown into an exploding nightmare where it's every man for himself. Good luck, soldier. Get out there and make us proud that you died for a noble cause...
Those of us who know Bush is raving mad, destructively impulsive and totally incompetent suspect he was lining up former heavyweights to take the blame when the melt-down comes. The good news is this is Alexander Haig's last chance to be "in charge."
Haig will probably jump at it, even though he knows that he and his renowned counterparts are being set up as "patsies" for Bush's great madcap adventure in Iraq. This mess is so big, it's going to take more than a "few bad apples" to cover it up. I can just hear Bush now -- "I asked them what we should do, and they all agreed that I was doing a heckuva job, and we should stay the course. Don't blame me. They had the same information I had..."
This "meeting" was nothing but another PR trick in Bush's announced campaign to whip the public back into line behind his "strategery" for winning the war and to con people into believing he plans to eventually bring what is left of our ground troops home. As soon as the cameras were turned off, the meeting was over and Bush, Rice, Cheney and Rumsfeld fled, leaving the former VIPs to find their own way out. It was a pitiful sight, and I can't help thinking it served them right for allowing themselves to be used in such a shoddy way.
But the media loved it. Associated Press writer Jennifer Loven crowed, "He (Bush) gambled that one-time high-level public officials, when personally summoned by the president, would resist temptation to be too critical. He was right." Loven assured us that Bush got support for his mission -- along with a few concerns -- and the right to claim that he was "reaching out."
Yeah. This guy is a real uniter, not a divider.
In his statement to the media, Bush said, "Not everybody around this table agreed with my decision to go into Iraq. I fully understand that. But these are good solid Americans who understand that we've got to succeed now that we're there. I'm most grateful for the suggestions they've given."
One "constructive idea" the secretaries broached, according to the White House, was to make sure that the military, not politicians in Washington, are determining troop levels in Iraq and making other on-the-ground calls.
Does anybody doubt that the secretary who came up with this bleak plan was none other than Donald Rumsfeld himself? Which, of course, means that it's business as usual, and the troops won't begin to come home until Rumsfeld says they can...
Meanwhile, the Green Zone in Baghdad finally has all the theaters, restaurants, hotels, swimming pools and golf courses it needs, so Bush is cutting off the promised reconstruction money for Iraq.
Except, of course, for the new billion-dollar embassy that will be more secure than the Pentagon. According to the UK Mirror, "The embassy will be guarded by 15ft blast walls and ground-to-air missiles and the main building will have bunkers for use during air offensives."
It gets better. "The grounds will include as many as 300 houses for consular and military officials. And a large-scale barracks will be built for Marines who will protect what will be Washington's biggest and most secure overseas building."
The source also said that the Bush administration has plans for four super bases across the country.
It doesn't matter if the crusty old New World Order patsies knew Bush has no intention of leaving Iraq until the last drop of oil is sucked from the region when they wandered out of the White House. Bush doesn't care what they think, so it also doesn't matter whether they advised against it if they did know.
That old adage must be true -- when you're in as deep as every single one of them is -- you can't go home again.
Mission Accomplished.
N%2FA
Sheila Samples is an Oklahoma writer and a former civilian US Army Public Information Officer. She is a regular contributor for a variety of Internet sites. Contact her at: rsamples@sirinet.net |
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he Associated Press
January 4, 2006
OKLAHOMA CITY -- A pastor who has spoken out against homosexuality was arrested after propositioning a male undercover police officer outside a hotel, authorities said.
As the Rev. Lonnie Latham, 59, left jail Wednesday, he said "I was set up. I was in the area pastoring to police." Latham, a member of the Southern Baptist Convention's executive committee, was arrested Tuesday and charged with offering to engage in an act of lewdness, Capt. Jeffrey Becker said.
Calls to Latham and his South Tulsa Baptist Church were not returned for comment.
Latham has supported a convention directive urging members to befriend gays and lesbians and try to convince them that they can become heterosexual "if they accept Jesus Christ as their savior and reject their 'sinful, destructive lifestyle.'"
The Southern Baptist Convention is the nation's largest Protestant denomination. Messages left for the convention were not returned. |
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By BETSY HART
Jan 6, 2006
Now I'm REALLY depressed.
December's Journal of Health and Social Behavior, published by the American Sociological Association, reported on a study that said being a parent is, well, depressing.
All the stuff you've read about how having a family makes one happier? Forget about it. According to researchers Ranae Evenson of Vanderbilt University and Robin Simon of Florida State University in their article, "Clarifying the Relationship Between Parenthood and Depression," you're apparently better off if you're like yuppies Todd and Margot, who lived next door to family man Clark Griswold in the movie "Christmas Vacation." Think about it. He had a nervous breakdown before he caused theirs.
Here's what the study reported: The authors looked at analyses from the first results of the National Survey of Families and Households, which sampled 13,000 adults. The researchers of this study examined the relationship between parenthood and depression. And _ bummer _ all types of parents reported more depression than all types of people without children. The least-depressed parents, those married moms and dads living with their minor biological children, were still more depressed than non-parents.
And, according to the study, if you are a single parent or have adult children living at home, you are REALLY hurting.
Now I'm as tempted as anyone to jump all over this study and suggest that this is just more of the anti-child spin in which our culture regularly indulges. Kind of the same thing as people suggesting that one or two kids, maybe even three, is fine, but more than that and you must be really kooky and "not fulfilling yourself" or something. Part of me wants to come up with anything to avoid saying, "Wait a minute, I thought having and raising children was to be the happiest experience of my life _ it turns out I'm going through all this craziness and the payoff is a big downer?"
I'm guessing these authors would suggest that based on their data I, as a single mother with sole custody of four young kids, should be ready to jump out an eighth-story window or something.
(OK, maybe I haven't considered the eighth-story window, but when I traveled with all the kids to the East Coast last week I did briefly fantasize about putting them on one plane and myself on another, bound for Puerto Rico. I thought it possible the kids wouldn't notice until it came time to fight over turns at the window seats and they started looking for me with whines of "Mom!!!" But I also thought the separate vacations might be a tough one to explain when I give talks on parenting, so I decided not to chance it.)
Anyway, rather than attack the study, I have to admit I think it makes at least some sense. Yes, there may be too many parents who make their own lives (ital) about (end ital) their children, or about raising near-"perfect" children, and it seems to me it would be hard for anyone to be happy in that situation.
But even for parents who have a healthy orientation toward parenting, the fact remains that anything really worth having, anything really important, anything that really matters, is worth getting pretty wrapped up in. In this case, our kids.
We pour ourselves into them, we invest in them in so many ways, precisely because they matter so much. Sometimes, that's an incredibly difficult, stressful, if often wonderful and rewarding job that could, and apparently inevitably does, put just about every parent on some kind of an emotional roller coaster. Let's face it: Our kids probably make us more emotionally vulnerable than just about anything else we can imagine.
As I've written before, what helps me on this journey is reminding myself that my ultimate goal for my children is heaven, not Harvard. If they go through Harvard on the way (and there's no indication any of mine are headed there), that's a fine thing. But if I reverse that equation and make all my perseverance for them about achieving something in this world, that's bound to magnify every failure or setback on their part or mine and be really depressing.
What also helps is remembering that roller coasters can be nerve-wracking and frightening _ but also exhilarating, and so much fun!
(Betsy Hart is the author of "It Takes a Parent: How the Culture of Pushover Parenting is Hurting Our Kids _ and What to Do About It." She can be reached at www.betsyhart.net.) |
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By Andrew Buncombe in Washington
06 January 2006
Several of the 12 trapped miners who died in West Virginia left messages for their families to assure them they were not suffering in their final hours.
A relative said some wrote notes to say they were not in pain. "They said they weren't suffering, they were just going to sleep," said Peggy Cohen, whose father, Fred Ware, was among the dead. She said medical officials told her notes found on several bodies carried similar messages reading, "Your dad didn't suffer". Some relatives are considering legal action against International Coal Group (ICG), which owns the Sago mine in Tallmansville. Amber Helms, whose father Terry died, said relatives would be probably pursue a lawsuit. "It's the biggest thing that's going to happen after these miners are put to rest," she told the NBC television network.
Mr Helms was the first victim found. His family did not have to endure the false euphoria others experienced after it was wrongly reported that 12 of the men were alive. A note was also left on Mr Helms' body, saying he had died peacefully. "We don't know who left the note," said his sister, Judy Shackleford.
State officials said post-mortem examinations would show what killed the men as well as when they died. How much of that information will be released is unclear.
Doctors say there was little change in the condition of the one survivor from the disaster, the worst of its kind in the US for four years. Randy McCoy, 26, remains in a coma, suffering a collapsed lung and dehydration.
The cause of Monday's explosion as well as how the incorrect information was relayed to relatives is being investigated. ICG has admitted relatives and friends were allowed to believe for hours that the men were alive although officials suspected that they were not. It has apologised. |
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By James Moore
HuffingtonPost
5 Jan 2006
There are times in which it is easy to be suspicious. We can get to that feeling fairly quickly if we even pay slight attention. I've been trying to get over this odd emotion for at least a year. I can't find any rationale for letting it go, though I want desperately not to have these thoughts.
This week last year I was preparing for a trip to Ohio to conduct interviews and research for a new book I was writing. My airline tickets had been purchased on line and the morning of departure I went to the Internet to print out my boarding pass. I got a message that said, "Not Allowed." Several subsequent tries failed. Surely, I thought, it's just a glitch within the airline's servers or software. I made it a point to arrive very early at the airport. My reservation was confirmed before I left home. I went to the electronic kiosk and punched in my confirmation number to print out my boarding pass and luggage tags. Another error message appeared, "Please see agent."
I did. She took my Texas driver's license and punched in the relevant information to her computer system.
"I'm sorry, sir," she said. "There seems to be a problem. You've been placed on the No Fly Watch List."
"Excuse me?"
"I'm afraid there isn't much more that I can tell you," she explained. "It's just the list that's maintained by TSA to check for people who might have terrorist connections."
"You're serious?"
"I'm afraid so, sir. Here's an 800 number in Washington. You need to call them before I can clear you for the flight."
Exasperated, I dialed the number from my cell, determined to clear up what I was sure was a clerical error. The woman who answered offered me no more information than the ticket agent.
"Mam, I'd like to know how I got on the No Fly Watch List."
"I'm not really authorized to tell you that, sir," she explained after taking down my social security and Texas driver's license numbers.
"What can you tell me?"
"All I can tell you is that there is something in your background that in some way is similar to someone they are looking for."
"Well, let me get this straight then," I said. "Our government is looking for a guy who may have a mundane Anglo name, who pays tens of thousands of dollars every year in taxes, has never been arrested or even late on a credit card payment, is more uninteresting than a Tupperware party, and cries after the first two notes of the national anthem? We need to find this guy. He sounds dangerous to me."
"I'm sorry, sir, I've already told you everything I can."
"Oh, wait," I said. "One last thing: this guy they are looking for? Did he write books critical of the Bush administration, too?"
I have been on the No Fly Watch List for a year. I will never be told the official reason. No one ever is. You cannot sue to get the information. Nothing I have done has moved me any closer to getting off the list. There were 35,000 Americans in that database last year. According to a European government that screens hundreds of thousands of American travelers every year, the list they have been given to work from has since grown to 80,000.
My friends tell me it is just more government incompetence. A tech buddy said there's no one in government smart enough to write a search algorithm that will find actual terrorists, so they end up with authors of books criticizing the Bush White House. I have no idea what's going on.
I suppose I should think of it as a minor sacrifice to help keep my country safe. Not being able to print out boarding passes in advance and having to get to the airport three hours early for every flight is hardly an imposition compared to what Americans are enduring in Iraq. I can force myself to get used to all that extra attention from the guy with the wand whenever I walk through the electronic arches. I'm just doing my patriotic duty.
Of course, there's always the chance that the No Fly Watch List is one of many enemies lists maintained by the Bush White House. If that's the case, I am happy to be on that list. I am in good company with people who expect more out of their president and their government.
Hell, maybe I'll start thinking of it as an honor roll.
Copyright 2005 © HuffingtonPost.com, LLC |
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By KRISTIE RIEKEN
Associated Press
Jan 5, 2006
HOUSTON - Edward Allen's reaction to being on the government's "no-fly" list should have been the tip-off that he is no terrorist.
"I don't want to be on the list. I want to fly and see my grandma," the 4-year-old boy said, according to his mother.
Sijollie Allen and her son had trouble boarding planes last month because someone with the same name as Edward is on a government terrorist watch list.
"Is this a joke?" Allen recalled telling Continental Airlines agents Dec. 21 at Houston's Bush Intercontinental Airport. "You can tell he's not a terrorist." She said it took several minutes of pleading and a phone call by the ticket agent to get on the plane to New York.
Allen, a Jamaican immigrant, said workers at La Guardia Airport were even more hard-nosed before their Dec. 26 flight home. She said a ticket agent told her: "You're lucky that we're letting you through instead of putting you through the other process."
The Transportation Security Administration's "no-fly" list was established immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to prevent people who may have terrorist ties from boarding commercial flights.
"I know the government is trying to protect because of the terrorist attacks, but common sense should play a role in it," Allen said. "I don't think he should go through the trouble of being harassed and hindered."
TSA regional spokeswoman Carrie Harmon said the agency tells airlines not to deny boarding to children under 12 or select them for extra security checks even if their names match ones on the list.
"We do not require ID for children because there are no children on the list," Harmon said. "If it's a child, ticket agents have the authority to immediately de-select them."
Continental spokesman Dave Messing said Thursday that the airline would not discuss its security policies.
Other people with common names who have encountered "no-fly" list problems at airports include Rep. John Lewis (news, bio, voting record), D-Ga., and actor David Nelson from "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet." Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (news, bio, voting record), D-Mass., has said he had to make several calls to federal officials before his name was separated from the one on the list. |
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by Andrew Bard Schmookler
6 January 2006
It is often said that artists pick up on the underlying realities of their era, and that in their works one can find manifestations of what's happening in a society below the awareness of people generally. Sometimes the awareness of the artist is at a conscious level, but sometimes also-- according to this way of thinking-- what the artist manifests in his/her work are realities beneath the conscious knowledge not only of the wider society but even of the artist him/herself.
One famous example of this comes from the realm of painting during the later years of the Weimar period in Germany during the late 20s and early 30s. Later critics have believed that visible in many of these paintings are premonitions of the nightmare of destruction soon to descend on that country.
In the late 90s, I was struck by how often the movies of that decade depicted the destruction of major American buildings and cities. (Think, for example of Independence Day, though there were many other instances-- Armegeddon, Deep Impact, etc..) Maybe, I thought at the time, it was just the development of new digital technologies that made it possible to create such arresting images. Or maybe something else was going on.
That striking motif in the films of the 90s came back to my mind in September, 2001, when the whole nation watched --horror-struck, awe-struck, struggling to realize it was not just a movie-- as two of the most famous and substantial buildings in America collapsed into rubble on national TV. Was there some connection, I wondered, between the images in the films of the previous decade, and what had then actually happened in New York?
Another link between the world of film and the deeper movements in American consciousness may be visible today in recent blockbusters. I am not the only one who believes it's more than coincidence that George Lucas portrayed, in the final installment of this recent Star Wars series, a leader who uses war to arrogate unchecked power unto himself. If I recall, Lucas has denied any connection between his film and contemporary events in America, and I suppose it is possible that he was sincere in his denial. But I doubt that, and even if he were sincere, I expect that at least unconsciously the connection was there: the leader has used lies, and created a war that is not what it is made to appear to be, in order to remove the constitutional limits to his power and to create an imperial dictatorship. Gee, have we ever seen anything like that in the real world?
More interesting to me is the recent return of Tolkien's world of The Lord of the Rings to capture the world's imagination. In this epic fantasy, Tolkien creates a drama in which the modest but heroic forces of goodness and decency battle the amassed and dominating forces of evil.
It is generally recognized that it was not mere coincidence that Tolkien wrote this drama about the struggle between good and evil at a time when fascist forces were taking hold in Europe, and when historical events were in fact laying the stage for the greatest battle in the history of humankind, a struggle that --more than most human wars-- could be seen as one against the forces of darkness.
And I suspect it is not coincidence that this fantasy became in the past few years a global phenomenon, just as fascistic forces have been seizing hold of the world's dominant nation, the country that --only a few years ago-- could plausibly be called "the world's indispensable nation."
Our imaginative life affords us a way of confronting issues that people may not feel prepared to confront directly. It can help us prepare to meet challenges that lie ahead.
In that context, I would like to think that there may be millions of movie-goers who learned from The Lord of the Rings saga the lesson that even Hobbits --i.e. little people, who have no great eagerness for battle or for heroics, who like nothing better than to live their own comfortable, decent, bourgeois lives-- have it in them to rise up and confront and defeat the awesome and repellant power of entrenched and organized evil.
Postscript: The imaginative life also allows people to face fears through fantasies that they might not be prepared to face directly. In this context, I think also of Steven Spielberg's recent very frightening blockbuster-- The War of the Worlds.
Recall how The War of the Worlds became news once before in history-- when, for thousands of listeners, Orson Wells radio broadcast of H.G. Wells' story leaked out of fantasy and became a mass nightmare. So realistic was the broadcast that listeners did not realize that it was just a fantasy and believed that the invasion by these killer Martians was actually occurring.
But it likely was not just the realism of the broadcast that explains the panic that seized those listeners. It is likely no coincidence that this mass hysteria over a radio broadcast occurred on the eve of world war.
And I'm wondering if it is also no coincidence that this story of mass destruction by mechanized and ruthless invaders has been resurrected in our imaginative life at this moment in our history, when all our truly humane and life-affirming values are under assault from a ruthless set of forces that have coalesced and risen to power in America.
http://nonesoblind.org/
Andrew Bard Schmookler has just launched his website –www.nonesoblind.org —devoted to understanding the roots of America’s present moral crisis and the means by which the urgent challenge of this dangerous moment can be met. Dr. Schmookler is also the author of such books as The Parable of the Tribes: The Problem of Power in Social Evolution (SUNY Press) and Debating the Good Society: A Quest to Bridge America’s Moral Divide (M.I.T. Press). He also conducts regular talk-radio conversations in both red and blue states. Schmookler can be reached at andythebard@comcast.net |
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MediaMatters
4 Jan 2006
On CBS' Late Show with David Letterman, Bill O'Reilly resurrected his false claim that a Wisconsin elementary school banned the singing of the Christmas hymn "Silent Night," erroneously attributing the school's changed lyrics to political correctness. In fact, the new lyrics were merely part of a 1988 Christmas play called The Little Tree's Christmas Gift. Later in the interview, Letterman admonished O'Reilly, asserting, "I have the feeling about 60 percent of what you say is crap." On the January 3 edition of CBS' Late Show with David Letterman, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly appeared as a guest and resurrected his false claim that a Wisconsin elementary school banned the singing of the Christmas hymn "Silent Night." As he discussed his Christmas crusade with Late Show host David Letterman, O'Reilly told Letterman that the school "[k]nocked out the words [to "Silent Night"] and told the little kids to sing" alternative lyrics. According to O'Reilly, this incident "proves there are pinheads at the Ridgewell [sic] Elementary School in Wisconsin. That's what it proves."
But as the weblog Think Progress first noted, O'Reilly and others have falsely attributed the changed lyrics to political correctness. For example, on the December 9 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, O'Reilly stated that Ridgewood Elementary School in Dodgeville, Wisconsin, "forced the kids to sing" the different lyrics. The conservative legal group Liberty Counsel condemned what it called the "secularized rendition" of the song, which it claimed "mocks one of the world's best-known Christmas songs," and threatened to sue the school district.
In fact, the new song lyrics are part of a 1988 Christmas play called The Little Tree's Christmas Gift, in which a scraggly Christmas tree is informed it may not be sold and will instead become firewood, prompting it to croon the revised version of "Silent Night" while lamenting its situation. Think Progress further explained that the play's creator, Dwight Elrich, is the musical director of the New Covenant Singers at Bel Air Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles -- which a December 20 Washington Post article noted was "former president Ronald and Nancy Reagan's church in California" -- and his play has been performed by churches across the country. According to Elrich's website, his products "make it easy for you to produce a fantastic Kids Christmas Musical Program." Elrich told the Post: "I'm just flabbergasted. I'm a choir director in a church! I perform 'Silent Night' 40 or 50 times each year! I thought the play was a really charming, wonderful, positive story about love and acceptance ... removing it from the Christian tradition was something I never thought anyone could ever come up with. We were telling a story about a little tree, so we used a familiar tune to help the kids get it."
A December 27 article in the Wisconsin State Journal by columnist Susan Lampert Smith reported that the uproar over the adapted lyrics, spurred on by Moral Majority Coalition founder and chairman Jerry Falwell and Liberty Counsel, ultimately forced the school to sing the original version of "Silent Night." For the winter concert, the elementary students performed "Silent Night" along with other Christmas carols and then, during the play, the child playing the sad tree merely recited the changed lyrics.
Later in the interview, Letterman admonished O'Reilly, asserting "I have the feeling about 60 percent of what you say is crap. ... I don't think that you represent an objective viewpoint," to which O'Reilly replied, "I respect your opinion, you should respect mine." But O'Reilly had apparently been aware of Letterman's unrelenting style. In a 2001 column titled "The Letterman Experience," O'Reilly praised Letterman's interviewing abilities:
The late-night program hosted by David Letterman is the toughest interview show on television.
That's because Mr. Letterman is a smart guy who can spot a phony with telescopic accuracy and expects his guests to bring something to the table. If a guest begins to sink on this show, the bottom is a long way down.
From the January 3 edition of CBS' Late Show with David Letterman:
LETTERMAN: I -- I wasn't aware that this had happened.
O'REILLY: You weren't aware of the big giant controversy over Christmas?
LETTERMAN: Well, I ignore stuff like that. It doesn't really affect me. I go ahead and do what I want to do. And, you know, I say, "Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy New Year, Happy Hanukkah."
O'REILLY: Here's why it matters. You with me on this?
LETTERMAN: Yeah.
O'REILLY: OK. Ridgewood Elementary School in Dodgeville, Wisconsin. Song, "Silent Night." "Silent Night," you know? Knocked out the words and told the little kids to sing, "Cold in the night. No one in sight. Winter winds whine and bite. How I wish I was happy and warm. Safe with my family out of the storm." They replaced the words to "Silent Night" with that. Now, with all due respect, I think even think the baby Jesus would say, "Give me a break." You know? You want another one?
LETTERMAN: No. But what I don't --
O'REILLY: Whoa, whoa. Great tradition --
LETTERMAN: But what does this prove? It proves that one can --
O'REILLY: It proves there are pinheads at the Ridgewell [sic] Elementary School in Wisconsin. That's what it proves.
LETTERMAN: Right, right.
O'REILLY: Here's another one. Do you want another one, or are you bored with this?
LETTERMAN: I'm -- kind of think we should move on. I mean, but isn't this the kind of thing where, like, once or twice every 20 years somebody gets outraged and says, "Oh, my god, we've got to put diapers on horses"? Isn't it just about, is this like, "So what? Let it go. It'll take care of itself"?
O'REILLY: No. There, there is a movement in this country by politically correct people to erode traditions. And this Christmas tradition is the most cherished in the country. Look, how absurd is it --
LETTERMAN: But I don't, for some reason -- I don't -- I don't --
O'REILLY: That you can't go to a department store --
LETTERMAN: I don't feel threatened.
O'REILLY: No, it's not a matter of feeling threatened --
LETTERMAN: I don't -- I don't think this is an actual threat. I think this is something that happened here and it happened there, and so people like you are trying to make us think that it's a threat.
O'REILLY: Wrong.
LETTERMAN: Because nobody said "Happy Holidays" to me and then said, "Oh, Merry Christmas. Oh, I can't say Merry Christmas."
[...]
LETTERMAN: I'm not smart enough to debate your point to point on this, but I have the feeling -- I have the feeling -- I have the feeling about 60 percent of what you say is crap. But I don't know that for a fact.
PAUL SHAFFER (Late Show music director): Sixty percent.
LETTERMAN: Sixty percent, that's just a -- I'm just spitballing here now.
O'REILLY: Listen, I respect your opinion, you should respect mine.
LETTERMAN: Well, I -- I -- OK.
O'REILLY: Our analysis is based on the best evidence we can get.
LETTERMAN: Yeah, but I think there's something, this fair and balanced, I'm not sure that it's -- I don't think that you represent an objective viewpoint.
O'REILLY: You have to give me an example if you're going to make those statements.
LETTERMAN: Well, I don't watch your show, so that would be impossible.
O'REILLY: Then why would you come to that conclusion if you don't watch the program?
LETTERMAN: Because of things that I've read, things that I know.
O'REILLY: You're going to take things that you've read? Do you know what they've said about you? Come on. Watch it for -- look, look, watch it for a half an hour, you'll get addicted, you'll be a Factor fan. We'll send you a hat.
LETTERMAN: They'll send me a hat. Yeah, well, send [anti-war protester] Cindy Sheehan a hat.
O'REILLY: I'd be happy to.
LETTERMAN: Bill, it's always a pleasure. |
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