The right-wing, pro-war position of the Democratic Party was on full display Tuesday as the party leadership presented a new report that criticizes the Bush administration for failing to adequately defend the interests of American militarism.

Over the past several weeks, top Bush administration officials have given a series of speeches marking the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks. These speeches, laced with historical falsifications and other lies, have been designed to intimidate opponents of the war in Iraq, castigating them as appeasers of a new fascistic ideology.

The response from the Democratic Party is to argue that they, not the Republicans, are the more consistent proponents of American “national security” and “defense,” i.e., domestic repression and war. From the Democratic Party there has been no criticism of the basic line of the administration, which has used the pretext of the September 11 attacks to escalate a policy of neo-colonialism, particularly in the Middle East. Rather, the Democrats are seeking to argue that they will be better at prosecuting the “war on terror” by confronting supposed threats like Iran and North Korea.

wsws.org

MIRANSHAH, North Waziristan – With a truce between the Pakistani Taliban and Islamabad now in place, the Pakistani government is in effect reverting to its pre-September 11, 2001, position in which it closed its eyes to militant groups allied with al-Qaeda and clearly sided with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

While the truce has generated much attention, a more significant development is an underhand deal between pro-al-Qaeda elements and Pakistan in which key al-Qaeda figures will either not be arrested or those already in custody will be set free. This has the potential to sour Islamabad’s relations with Washington beyond the point of no return.

On Tuesday, Pakistan agreed to withdraw its forces from the restive Waziristan tribal areas bordering Afghanistan in return for a pledge from tribal leaders to stop attacks by Pakistani Taliban across the border.

Most reports said that the stumbling block toward signing this truce had been the release of tribals from Pakistani custody. But most tribals had already been released.

The main problem – and one that has been unreported – was to keep Pakistan authorities’ hands off members of banned militant organizations connected with al-Qaeda.

Thus, for example, it has now been agreed between militants and Islamabad that Pakistan will not arrest two high-profile men on the “most wanted” list that includes Osama bin Laden, his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri and Taliban leader Mullah Omar.

Saud Memon and Ibrahim Choto are the only Pakistanis on this list, and they will be left alone. Saud Memon was the owner of the lot where US journalist Daniel Pearl was tortured, executed and buried in January 2002 in Karachi after being kidnapped by jihadis.

Pakistan has also agreed that many people arrested by law-enforcement agencies in Pakistan will be released from jail.

Importantly, this includes Ghulam Mustafa, who was detained by Pakistani authorities late last year. Mustafa is reckoned as al-Qaeda’s chief in Pakistan. (See Al-Qaeda’s man who knows too much, Asia Times Online, January 5. As predicted in that article, Mustafa did indeed disappear into a “black hole” and was never formally charged, let alone handed over to the US.)

Asia Times Online contacts expect Mustafa to be released in the next few days. He was once close to bin Laden and has intimate knowledge of al-Qaeda’s logistics, its financing and its nexus with the military in Pakistan.
asiatimes.com

yesterday they’re vowing to crush the Taliban in Afghanistan, and today…what is up?

THE future of Iraq as a sovereign nation has been jeopardised with the introduction to parliament of a law that would enable the country to break up into semi-autonomous regions.

A self-ruling Shiite state would emerge in the south, based on the autonomous region that Kurds have established in the north.

The Shiite state would not only be able to levy taxes and govern itself but, Shiite politicians say, would have its own armed guards along its borders. Sunnis, most of who bitterly oppose the law, have warned it would mark the first step in the break-up of the country and could lead to the south becoming a satellite of Iran.

The introduction of the law was marked by a plea from the Speaker of parliament that delegates must compromise and find agreement on the prospect of federalism, otherwise the country risked not only collapsing but descending into anarchy.

smh.com.au

MEXICO CITY — Felipe Calderon was declared president-elect Tuesday after two months of uncertainty, but his ability to rule remained in doubt, with Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador saying he’ll lead a parallel leftist government from the streets.

The unanimous decision by the Federal Electoral Tribunal rejected allegations of systematic fraud and awarded Calderon the presidency by 233,831 votes out of 41.6 million cast in the July 2 elections — a margin of 0.56%. The ruling can’t be appealed.

Calderon now must win over millions of Mexicans angry that President Vicente Fox didn’t make good on promises of sweeping change — and fend off thousands of people who say they’ll stop at nothing to undermine his presidency.

Lopez Obrador has said he won’t recognize the new government and pledges to block Calderon from taking power Dec. 1. Protesters outside the tribunal wept as the decision was announced and set off firecrackers that shook the building.

“We aren’t going to let him govern!” Thomas Jimenez, a 30-year-old law student, screamed as hundreds of protesters threw eggs and trash at the courthouse.

The decision by the seven judges — who have split their votes in disputes about other elections — also found that Fox endangered the election by making statements that favored Calderon, and that business leaders broke the law by paying for ads against Lopez Obrador, who promised to govern on behalf of poor people.

But the problems weren’t serious enough to annul the results, they said. “There are no perfect elections,” Judge Alfonsina Berta Navarro Hidalgo said.

The court’s president, Leonel Castillo, urged Mexicans to unite. “I hope we conclude this electoral process leaving confrontation behind,” he said.

Revolution ‘only way’ to change

But the decision was unlikely to end the demonstrations that have crippled Mexico City’s center or heal the nation’s political divide.

Lopez Obrador’s campaign pledge — “the poor come first” — resonated in southern states, where he won about half of the vote, compared with a national average of 35%. About half of Mexico’s 103 million people can’t afford food, clothing or housing, according to a government study.

In the Zocalo plaza, thousands of people in a month-old protest camp chanted: “If there is no solution, there will be revolution!”

“Taking up arms is the only way,” said Angel Sinsun, 80. “They’ll never give us power with peaceful resistance or with negotiations.”

Lopez Obrador has urged his followers to remain peaceful.

His movement has become increasingly radicalized since the election, and polls indicate he lost support after lawmakers from his party blocked Fox’s last State of the Nation address Friday.

Lopez Obrador adviser Manuel Camacho said the court’s recommendation “does not take into account what is actually happening in the country.”

“The court is going to be questioned seriously about its decision,” he said, adding: “We have the responsibility to conduct ourselves peacefully.”

For others, decision is perfect

No violence was reported, but police surrounded the headquarters of Calderon’s National Action Party, where businesswoman Susanna Rivera was among a few drivers honking in support of the conservative former energy secretary.

“It’s marvelous. It’s perfect,” she said of the court’s decision. “We are happy because he is a decent, educated person.” She said Lopez Obrador’s supporters would never accept Calderon because “they are a bunch of crazies.”

Neither candidate attended the court session. Lopez Obrador ate breakfast with lawmakers, then went to his protest tent in the Zocalo plaza, where he’s been sleeping for nearly two months.

Supporters greeted him with calls of “You are not alone!”

detroitfreepress

Al-Jazeera TV broadcast an audiotape Thursday that was said to be the first released by the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, who succeeded the militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. In the tape, Abu Hamza al-Muhajer said he was confident that victory will be achieved and called on all mujahedeen to unite on the battlefield, the station reported.

It played a brief excerpt from the tape, in which the speaker said, “Our enemy has unified its ranks against us. Isn’t it time to get together, worshippers of God?”

Al-Muhajer, a previously unknown militant, became the leader of Iraq’s most feared insurgent group after al-Zarqawi was killed in a U.S. airstrike in June. U.S. officials say they believe al-Muhajer is an Egyptian.

yahoo.com

 Yeah, and the Egyptians said a few months back that old boy’s in JAIL, and has been for years! I always know that when a story has the words ‘al Zarqawi’ in it it is going to be a)amusing, and b)total crap.

“President Likens Dewey to Hitler as Fascist Tool.”

So ran the New York Times headline, Oct. 26, 1948, after what Dewey biographer Richard Norton Smith called a “particularly vitriolic attack in Chicago” by Harry Truman.

What brings this to mind is President Bush’s assertion that we are “at war with Islamic fascism” and “Islamofascism.”

After the transatlantic bomb plot was smashed, Bush said the plotters “try to spread their jihadist message—a message I call, it’s totalitarian in nature—Islamic radicalism, Islamic fascism, they try to spread it as well by taking the attack to those of us who love freedom.”

What is wrong with the term Islamofascism?

First, there is no consensus as to what “fascism” even means. Orwell said when someone calls Smith a fascist, what he means is, “I hate Smith. ” By calling Smith a fascist, you force Smith to deny he’s a sympathizer of Hitler and Mussolini.

As a concept, writes Arnold Beichman of the Hoover Institution, “fascism … has no intellectual basis; its founders did not even pretend to have any. Hitler’s ravings in Mein Kampf … Mussolini’s boastful balcony speeches, all can be described, in the words of Roger Scruton, as ‘an amalgam of disparate conceptions.’”

Richard Pipes considers Stalinism and Hilterism to be siblings of the same birth mother: “Bolshevism and fascism were heresies of socialism.”

Since the 1930s, “fascist” has been a term of hate and abuse used by the Left against the Right, as in the Harry Truman campaign. In 1964, Martin Luther King Jr. claimed to see in the Goldwater campaign “dangerous signs of Hitlerism.” Twin the words, “Reagan, fascism” in Google and 1,800,000 references pop up.

Unsurprisingly, it is neoconservatives, whose roots are in the Trotskyist-Social Democratic Left, who are promoting use of the term. Their goal is to have Bush stuff al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran into an “Islamofascist” kill box, then let SAC do the rest.

The term represents the same lazy, shallow thinking that got us into Iraq, where Americans were persuaded that by dumping over Saddam, we were avenging 9/11.

But Saddam was about as devout a practitioner of Islam as his idol Stalin was of the Russian Orthodox faith. Saddam was into booze, mistresses, movies, monuments, palaces, and dynasty. Bin Laden loathed him and volunteered to fight him in 1991, if Saudi Arabia would only not bring the Americans in to do the fighting Islamic warriors ought to be doing themselves.

And whatever “Islamofascism” means, Syria surely is not it. It is a secular dictatorship Bush I bribed into becoming an ally in the Gulf War. The Muslim Brotherhood is outlawed in Syria. In 1982, Hafez al-Assad perpetrated a massacre of the Brotherhood in the city of Hama that was awesome in its magnitude and horror.

As with Khaddafi, whom Bush let out of the penalty box after he agreed to pay $10 million to the family of each victim of Pan Am 103 and give up his nuclear program, America can deal with Syria, as Israel did after the Yom Kippur War—for an armistice on the Golan has stuck, as both sides have kept the deal.

America faces a variety of adversaries, enemies, and evils. But the Bombs-Away Caucus, as Iraq and Lebanon reveal, does not always have the right formula. Al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran all present separate challenges calling forth different responses.

Al-Qaeda appears to exist for one purpose: plot and perpetrate mass murder to terrorize Americans and Europeans into getting out of the Islamic world. Contrary to what Bush believes, the 9/11 killers and London and Madrid bombers were not out to repeal the Bill of Rights, if any ever read it. They are out to kill us and we have to get them first.

Hamas and Hezbollah have used terrorism, but like Begin’s Irgun and Mandela’s ANC, they have social and political agendas that require state power to implement. And once a guerrilla/terrorist movement takes over a state, it acquires state assets and interests that are then vulnerable to the U.S. military and economic power.

Why did the Ayatollah let the American hostages go, as Reagan raised his right hand to take the oath? Why has Syria not come to the rescue of Hezbollah? Why has Ahmadinejad not rocketed Tel Aviv in solidarity with his embattled allies in Lebanon? Res ipsa loquitur. The thing speaks for itself. They don’t want war with Israel; they don’t want war with the United States.

“Islamofascism” should be jettisoned from Bush’s vocabulary. It yokes the faith of a billion people with an odious ideology. Imagine how Christians would have reacted had FDR taken to declaring Franco’s Spain and Mussolini’s Italy “Christo-fascist.”

amconmag.com

Buchanan is interesting for his mixture of truth and propoganda…sort of like the right-wing Chomsky, I’m afaraid…

Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani is the “best” candidate in the 2008 race for Israel, a panel of eight Israeli experts assembled by Haaretz has determined.

Giuliani is followed by former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, Arizona Senator John McCain and New York Senator Hillary Clinton. Ranking bottom of the list is Illinois Senator Barack Obama.

As part of a new project, The Israel Factor: Ranking the presidential candidates” the panel will rank the candidates every month, up until the 2008 election, awarding them marks out of 10 on a series of questions that will determine which candidates are “best” for Israel.

The project is part of Rosner’s Domain, and is moderated by Haaretz Chief U.S. Correspondent, Shmuel Rosner. Professor Camil Fuchs of Tel Aviv University, who is also the Haaretz pollster, is responsible for the statistical analysis of the rankings.

The panel also concluded that the chances of any of the candidates ordering future military action in Iran were not very high. Giuliani scored highest on this question, followed by Gingrich and McCain.

Clinton was the candidate the panel considered most likely to engage more vigorously in mediating a peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. She was followed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former presidential candidate John Kerry.
haaretz.com

The hero of 9-11…indeed.

Pakistan, criticized by some Afghan leaders over cross-border infiltration by the Taliban, vowed on Wednesday to help its neighbor fight terrorism as Afghanistan battles its worst violence in five years.

After lengthy talks with his Afghan counterpart, Hamid Karzai, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said he was committed to crushing the Taliban, their al Qaeda allies and “Talibanisation,” a reference to the spread of hardline Islam.

“The best way to fight this common enemy is to join hands, trust each other and form a common strategy,” he told reporters in Kabul, days before the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks that prompted the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan.

yahoo.com

Well since Pakistan created them I guess they can crush them, right?

The Senate on Wednesday rejected a move by Democrats to stop the Pentagon from using cluster bombs near civilian targets and to cut off sales unless purchasers abide by the same rules.

On a 70-30 vote, the Senate defeated an amendment to a Pentagon budget bill to block use of the deadly munitions near populated areas. The vote came after the State Department announced last month that it is investigating whether Israel misused American-made cluster bombs in civilian areas of Lebanon.

Unexploded cluster bombs — anti-personnel weapons that spray bomblets over a wide area — litter homes, gardens and highways in south Lebanon after Israel’s 34-day war with Hezbollah militants

yahoo.com

Mexican President Vicente Fox had to cancel his final state of the union speech before the country’s Congress September 1, after legislators protested a massive police/military mobilization against anti-government demonstrators by seizing the podium. This is the first time in modern Mexican history that a sitting president has been prevented from addressing the opening session of the legislature on September 1.

Fox provoked the conflict by ordering the deployment of thousands of troops to block a demonstration by supporters of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the presidential candidate of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), who was declared the loser in the July 2 vote by a narrow margin of 240,000 votes.

The PRD candidate has rejected preliminary rulings of the federal election tribunal in favor of Felipe Calderon, the candidate of Fox’s conservative National Action Party (PAN). The tribunal is expected to declare Calderon the victor officially on September 6, clearing the way for his inauguration as Fox’s successor December 1.

The military occupation, unprecedented in modern Mexican history, opens up a dangerous stage in Mexico’s political and social crisis. The PAN government, through this measure, delivered a message to Lopez Obrador to give up his demands for a recount and accept the decision to declare Calderón the president-elect. This security operation represents a serious warning to the Mexican working class of the government’s intentions to repress economic and social struggles.

axisoflogic.com

Why Mexico Matters

Mexico matters because the people and leaders knew election problems were coming and they did something about it. They protested in massive numbers, again and again. The Mexican people are offering the largest resistance to election fraud in modern history. Think of the demonstrations in the Ukraine, Belarus, the Georgia Republic, or any other post election protest. Over a period of 15 days, there were three Assemblies sponsored by Lopez-Obrador and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). These demonstrations attract over a million people (in a nation of 100 million). The corporate media tried to downplay the crowd size with Bloomberg News failing to mention a 1.1 million estimate it got on July 16 from police authorities. These are vibrant, involved people who work with their leaders, particularly Presidential candidate Lopez-Obrador, to develop plans and fend off attacks by the ruling party.

Mexico matters because the people and leaders refused to give up when the system failed to give them a real recount. The independent election institute tried to pass off a Calderon victory without investigating the numerous and substantial allegations of election fraud. For example, the institute tried to announce a victory by President Vincente Fox’s hand-picked candidate, Calderon, until an audience member pointed out ballots that they failed to count — at least 2.5 million of them. That type of “error” is rarely an error; rather, it shows bias and intent to deceive. The electoral tribunal resisted but was ultimately pressured into a recount of 9% of the vote. The tribunal then refused to order a total recount of the paper ballots even though it found that 130,000 were either missing or invalid — in only 9% of the precincts! The projected total for 100% of the precincts would be over 1.3 million ballots. Yet the full recount failed to materialize.