Safe
by Rootsie
I heard a commentator today say that all substantive issues have drained out of the 2004 presidential election, and that the whole thing is boiling down to a few voters’ perception of which candidate will make them/keep them safe. It’s all come down to fear.
‘Safe.’ Now ain’t that a shame. And ironic, since America’s abiding myth is that we are a nation of risk-takers, as all of our heroes, from pioneers and warriors and adventurers to modern corporate pirates, attest.
Well what are we so afraid of? The barbarians at the gate, the terrorists. As obvious as it is that the media are masters at manipulating people through fear, their tactics wouldn’t work on a fearless people.
I know my writings might sound to some like a one-note song, but let’s look at some history. The first fraidy- cat Americans were the Puritans, those small people who braved the Atlantic in their small boats seeking some small measure of liberation, within the parameters of their starched-collar Protestantism.
What they sought: Zion in the Wilderness, the City on a Hill, a New Jerusalem. What they found: a frigid slate-gray ocean; a land dense and dark with ancient, and no doubt, to them, gloomy forests; hardscrabble soil that yielded little; wolves and bears and wildcats; and if that weren’t all discouraging enough, dark people. Lurking, hiding, skulking in the underbrush, liable to pop out at any minute with their expressionless faces and clothes made from skins. Wait a minute now: land of milk and honey? This was more like the Catholic Hell, and those strange dark people demons here to welcome them to their final home. They began to think that they must have gotten their theology wrong, and this the punishment.
They talked a big game, the Cotton and Increase Mathers, the William Bradfords. They perched their little gray villages at the edges of that great unknown darkness, whose vastness they must have sensed, raising storms of Old Testament thunder. But secretly they were appalled by how heinously they must have transgressed against their God to wind up in a place like this. This is the great fear that lies at the deep heart’s core of America.
The only possible response to this encounter with primeval darkness was light, light, and more light: clear the forests, cut down the animals and those irritating dark people, once they had outlived their usefulness. And look out to the sea, towards familiar places, establish a brisk maritime trade to bring familiar comforts, and from the beginning, slaves. Slaves to aid in the enlightening project, the pacification of the rough wilderness. Build and thrust, up and up and up, until gleaming towers scraped the skies. God himself became a vastly distant creature of light, way up there somewhere, not of much use, but demanding obeisance and frequent, fervent, mention.
The light of Liberty. The light of commerce, technology, progress… Well it wasn’t a City on a Hill when we got here, but we are surely making progress.
Simply put, America is afraid of the dark.
This plays out literally and figuratively in countless ways. Constant, virulent, racism. Anti-depressants. Clean lines, polished steel, tons of windows. A hatred of real intelligence, i.e. introspective types. America has never been much for looking at herself.
Carried away by her rhetoric about freedom and equality, America flirted for a brief moment with the idea of freeing the slaves and sending them back to Africa. But L’Ouverture’s rebellion in Haiti put a quick end to that. They will murder us in our beds, never mind that we might deserve it. That’s too much introspection. No one talked in those heady days of equality for the Indians; they were simply too much of a moral affront, and useless besides. Total eradication was the prescription for that problem.
So now it’s the A-rabs too. Nothing seems to constellate the deepest fears of Americans like dark-skinned human beings. And this bunch, unlike blacks and the remaining invisible Indians, really do seem to want to murder us in our beds. And so we are looking for a big daddy to make us feel safe. Too bad we banished God to some heaven of indeterminate location.
Could it be that the mighty, muscular, ostensibly light-bringing projects-- military, industrial, and technological, which so distinguish our history, have always been pre-emptive strikes against our fear, undertaken in order that we may feel some measure of ‘safe’?
Safe from what? Safe from history. Safe from the shattering of our great national myth of particular favor from God, whom we need to imagine as smiling down benevolently upon our grand experiment. From the first we doubted it.
Freedom. Justice. Equality. Funny how ill-suited those first small people were for such things. The Protestant ethic is not particularly conducive to expansive ideas about tolerance and human dignity, and for all of the rhetoric, those ideas have not taken firm root here. They simply have not. For all of the material excess and the mind-boggling technology and illusions of freedom, we are a fearful, profoundly unfree people: a depressed people, an addicted people, a murderously violent people.
We have tried to fight back the shadows. Our cities glow eerily in the distant darkness. Our rhetoric reflects our desperate craving for light. What you deny and deny comes back to get you in the end. We have made a monster out of that darkness, and it threatens to envelop the whole world.
Black is the color of the good earth; we poison it. Dark are the roots which nourish, which we deny. Black are the skins of people who built this place, whom we have murdered by the millions. We pretend that we just do not understand why ‘they’ hate us. We know. We know very well. All of this desperately gaudy Technicolor culture of ours we have constructed to distract us from all the things we know.
There is something so pathological about all of this. Physically speaking, Americans are pretty much the safest people in the world. And in terms of the intangibles of life, when does an overwhelming desire for safety get us anywhere? We admire and value courage and risk-taking , but only vicariously I guess. We are more than willing to render vast regions of the world unsafe for the people who live there for the sake of our own safety. So much for the selfless generosity of the American spirit. Another myth
Here we stand, the most terrifying menace the world has known, crying out for safety. Safety.
Tell it to Fallujah. To Gaza. To Pine Ridge. To South L.A.
rootsie on 10.23.04 @ 08:47 PM CST [
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Strong evidence as Mau Mau file suit against UK
by Patrick Mathangani
Plans by Mau Mau veterans to sue the British government for reparations have gathered momentum following the completion of the first stage of collecting evidence from former freedom fighters.
Nearly 100 former freedom fighters have recorded statements detailing a shocking catalogue of injuries, deaths and injustices meted by colonial forces in the 1950s, The Standard has established.
And excitement is building up among members of a team preparing the case, following the impending publication of the first book ever detailing the brutal torture of Mau Mau fighters by the colonial government.
The book, Imperial Reckoning – TheUntold Story of the End of the Empire in Kenya, is being hailed as a shot in the arm for the case because of the amount of torture evidence it reveals.
The bestiality of punishment detailed in the book by Harvard Professor Caroline Elkins has been compared to the infamous treatment of Iraqi prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.
Full Article:eastandard.netAbu Ghraib has set the gold standard for bestiality.
rootsie on 10.23.04 @ 11:38 AM CST [
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Traditional healers bewitch Africa's fight against Aids
by John Reed
Ibrahimo Soba, a traditional healer, sees patients in his one-room practice on the outskirts of Maputo, Mozambique's capital. As incense wafts and Brazilian telenovelas blare from a television set, he dispenses herbal remedies for an array of afflictions including tuberculosis, impotence and increasingly HIV/Aids.
For patients recently infected with HIV, Mr Soba prescribes a thrice-daily regimen of palm oil, rock salt and an indigenous herb called tondulo dissolved in water. He also slices their arms with a razor and administers a "vaccine".
It is made of HIV-infected dried blood burned first, he insists, "to avoid reinfecting people". Like many of his peers, he claims he can purge HIV from some infected patients' bodies, a feat not yet managed by western medicine.
Millions of Africans seeking health care or spiritual comfort turn first to traditional healers such as Mr Soba. The World Health Organisation estimates that up to 80 per cent of the continent's population uses traditional medicine.
Healers form an ancient and enduring part of the social fabric. They are trusted figures in areas where bewitchment or ancestral wrath are commonly believed to be causes of disease.
But the Aids epidemic has focused new attention and sparked a lively debate on the role of the largely unregulated sector. With life-prolonging antiretroviral (ARV) drugs available to only a minority of the estimated 25m Africans with HIV, traditional healers have been quick to step in. South Africa, with an estimated 5.6m with HIV, passed its first law regulating their work in September.
Authorities in Mozambique, where about 14 per cent of the population is HIV-positive, are trying to rein in unscrupulous practitioners who charge large sums for Aids "cures". In extreme cases traditional healers can endanger patients' health by re-using razor blades or concocting remedies using untreated water.
"Most traditional healers try to follow basic health rules," says Dr Joao Manuel Carvalho Fumane, director of Mozambique's National Institute of Health. "But we also realise we have charlatans people who claim they are a kind of god that can save people and solve all their problems."
Mozambican newspapers abound in advertisements promising to treat Aids or, in one commonly used euphemism, "incurable diseases".
Mozambique, unlike many other African countries, has an Aids treatment plan that aims to put up to 400,000 people on ARVs over five years. But given the limits of the health infrastructure Dr Carvalho Fumane estimates that ARVs will reach only about half the people who need them.
Full Article: ft.comI would suggest that superior Westerners who mock traditional medicine should keep their mouths shut until they find a cure for AIDS. Also, if they are so concerned about 'charlatans,' you'd think they would come up with enough ARV's to treat everyone. Pharmaceutical corporations have raised charlatanism to a high art: takes one to know one.
rootsie on 10.23.04 @ 11:30 AM CST [
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Friday, October 22nd
President Hugo Chavez Frias pledges to fight corruption on US$700-a-month
President Hugo Chavez Frias has declared war on still rampant corruption five years after he won the Presidency of the Republic of Venezuela on a ticket to get rid of more than forty years of endemic corruption that saw multi millionaires made out of the pseudo-democratic politicians and businessmen who had pillaged the country since the fall of the last military dictatorship in the mid fifties.
Pledging a "fight to the death" against corruption, 50-year-old Chavez Frias has urged his loyal supporters to give up their material possessions and give everything to their country to pull it back from the brink of bankruptcy in which it was left by octogenarian President Dr. Rafael Caldera in 1998.
The President's pledge came as anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International ranked Venezuela 114th in a survey of 146 countries suffering from serious levels of corruption.
Chavez has pulled no punches since winning a recall referendum in August, to accuse government ministers, army generals and many of his hangers-on of amassing to themselves a wealth which is well in excess of their government salaries.
Political opponents from among the disenfranchised political parties (Accion Democratica and the Christian Socialists) that corrupted Venezuela for nearly half a century has sniped at Chavez Frias social welfare and health programs for the poor as a "robo-lution" (robbery revolution) and in a reversal of their own roles in previous administrations are now claiming rampant corruption in the administration that replaced their own.
Chavez Frias supporters and independent observers of the Venezuelan domestic-political scene claim, however, that corruption was worse before Chavez took office in February 1999 and that Chavez has done much more than any previous President to ensure that oil wealth is distributed fairly to Venezuela's 80% poor and not spirited away to corrupt politicians' feather-bedded bank accounts in Florida et.al.
Chavez says: "Let's fight to the death against corruption ... I don't have a house or a car, nor do I want one ... when I leave this job I'll sling my hammock somewhere. ... I don't have a farm or cattle."
Full Article: vheadline.com
rootsie on 10.22.04 @ 11:23 PM CST [
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Consumption of Resources Outstripping Planet's Ability to Cope
by Jonathan Fowler
GENEVA - People are plundering the world's resources at a pace that outstrips the planet's capacity to sustain life, the environmental group WWF said Thursday.
In its regular Living Planet Report, the World Wide Fund for Nature said humans currently consume 20 percent more natural resources than the earth can produce.
Consumption of fossil fuels such as coal, gas and oil increased by almost 700 percent between 1961 and 2001, it said. But the planet is unable to move as fast to absorb the resulting carbon-dioxide emissions that degrade the earth's protective ozone layer.
"We are spending nature's capital faster than it can regenerate," said WWF chief Claude Martin, launching the conservation body's 40-page study.
"We are running up an ecological debt which we won't be able to pay off unless governments restore the balance between our consumption of natural resources and the earth's ability to renew them."
Populations of terrestrial, freshwater and marine species fell on average by 40 percent between 1970 and 2000, the study said. It cited destruction of natural habitats, pollution, overfishing and the introduction by humans of nonnative animals, such as cats and rats, which often drive out indigenous species.
"The question is how the world's entire population live with the resources of one planet," said Jonathan Loh, one of the report's authors.
Full Article:commondreams.org
rootsie on 10.22.04 @ 09:17 PM CST [
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A Teacher's Account of How Recruiters Preying on Students:
by Jesse Sharkey
We first began to realize something was wrong when teams of teams of men with suits and clipboards began walking through the halls of our high school during the first week of classes. We had heard that the U.S. Navy was planning to open a "Naval Academy" on Chicago's North Side, but it never occurred to us that they would try to put it in our building. After all, we were already using our building!
Nonetheless, it became clear that the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) was in fact targeting our school after we crashed a meeting at the 48th ward alderman's office--and discovered that CPS was planning a "community forum" at Senn to sell the idea.
In some ways, Senn High School is a pretty typical "inner-city" school. Ninety-two percent of our students are poor. We don't have lots of resources, our building needs paint, and our students are not the ones who test into the fancy magnet programs.
But in other ways, our school is a remarkable community resource, with plenty of morale. Our students come from 70 nationalities, speak 57 different languages and still maintain a sense of unity and mutual respect. Senn students have performed 70,000 hours of community service over the past five years and have been recognized with a national service award. Senn has also developed some of the city's most successful academic programs for at-risk kids.
So instead of waiting for the ax to fall, we began to fight back. We researched the effect that the military takeover would have on our school and community, and wrote fact sheets. We made flyers about our concerns and put up 3,500 of them, with another 500 in Spanish. We reached out and met with community organizations, launched a Web site, wrote press releases and organized to get people out to support us. On October 5, we brought about 700 people out to the CPS forum at our school.
The mood in the room was electric. Students had been preparing all week--they had written speeches, drawn dozens of handmade signs and brought along many of their parents. When CPS officials tried to show us a slick promotional video about the Navy ROTC program, the room rebelled. The entire audience stood up and turned its back to the presentation.
David Pickens, the deputy chief of staff for schools CEO Arne Duncan, glared at the angry crowd for the next five minutes in a dramatic standoff, while the heckling grew louder. Then someone in the audience started to chant "We say no," and soon, the whole crowd was booming its opposition.
counterpunch.org
rootsie on 10.22.04 @ 09:13 PM CST [
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Hostage Hassan pleads for her life
A video showing Margaret Hassan, the kidnapped director of aid agency Care International, pleading for British troops to be withdrawn from Iraq was today broadcast on Arabic television.
The al-Jazeera channel screened footage showing the Dublin-born Ms Hassan, who has lived in Iraq for more than 30 years, weeping as she appealed for help.
"Please help me," she begged. "This might be my last hour. Please help me. The British people, tell Mr Blair to take the troops out of Iraq and not bring them here to Baghdad. That's why people like myself and Mr [Kenneth] Bigley have been caught. Please, please, I beg of you."
Ms Hassan's appeal was aired three days after she was abducted by gunmen on her way to work in western Baghdad.
"I don't want to die like Bigley," she said, again referring to the British hostage whose execution was shown in a video posted on an Islamist website this month.
An editor at al-Jazeera, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Associated Press that the network had received the tape today, but refused to say who had handed it to them. He said the tape did not include any claim of responsibility, and did not show any of the kidnappers.
Dozens of foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq over the last year, and at least 32 of those have been killed.
Full Article: Guardian UK
rootsie on 10.22.04 @ 09:08 PM CST [
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Israel May Have Iran in Its Sights
by Laura King
JERUSALEM — Increasingly concerned about Iran's nuclear program, Israel is weighing its options and has not ruled out a military strike to prevent the Islamic Republic from gaining the capability to build atomic weapons, according to policymakers, military officials, analysts and diplomats.
Israel would much prefer a diplomatic agreement to shut down Iran's uranium enrichment program, but if it concluded that Tehran was approaching a "point of no return," it would not be deterred by the difficulty of a military operation, the prospect of retaliation or the international reaction, officials and analysts said.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites) and his top aides have been asserting for months that a nuclear-armed Iran would pose a clear threat to Israel's existence. They have repeatedly threatened, in elliptical but unmistakable terms, to use force if diplomacy and the threat of sanctions fail.
Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz told the Yediot Aharonot newspaper last month that "all options" were being weighed to prevent Iran from achieving nuclear weapons capability. The army chief of staff, Moshe Yaalon, declared: "We will not rely on others."
news.yahoo.com/LA Times
rootsie on 10.22.04 @ 09:05 PM CST [
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A Look at Lawsuits Ahead of Election
Many states are facing legal challenges over possible voting problems Nov. 2. A look at some of the developments Friday:
COLORADO:
- The state's top election official told The Associated Press that Colorado could be one of several states that may hold up the results of the presidential election for days or even weeks because of new voting rules and potential legal fights. Political experts have expressed similar concerns about Colorado in recent weeks.
- Several voters have sued election officials in Boulder County, accusing them of violating the state constitution by printing serial numbers and bar codes on ballots. The voters believe the ballots could lead to an invasion of privacy. But officials say voters will not be matched to the serial numbers.
MARYLAND:
A federal judge blocked electronic voting opponents from stationing people at polling places to watch for problems with the state's machines on Election Day. The opponents claim the state has covered up problems with e-voting machines.
OHIO:
- The U.S. Justice Department got involved in a court fight over provisional ballots in Ohio, siding with the Republican secretary of state in a legal dispute that could have national implications. The battleground state's handling of provisional ballots could prove key in a close election.
- Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader asked the U.S. Supreme Court to order his name placed on the ballot in Ohio. The filing follows two defeats for the Nader campaign in courts in Ohio.
PENNSYLVANIA:
Republican lawmakers have accused Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell of trying to suppress military votes for President Bush by failing to push for an extension of the deadline to accept overseas military and civilian ballots. Democrats said there wasn't a ``single shred of evidence'' to back up the claim.
SOUTH DAKOTA:
The attorney general said six Republican notary publics face misdemeanor charges for illegally notarizing absentee ballot applications filled out on college campuses. The attorney general said there's no evidence of fraud, but the applications in question will likely be challenged in court.
Guardian UK
rootsie on 10.22.04 @ 09:00 PM CST [
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S.Africa Defends Ties with Israel Amid Protests
PRETORIA (Reuters) - South Africa on Friday defended its warming of relations with Israel, criticized by pro-Palestinian groups, and said it would play an even hand in its attempt to help find a solution to the Middle East conflict.
President Thabo Mbeki met Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Pretoria on Friday behind closed doors as part of a series of meetings by Mbeki's black-led government with factions in the Palestinian conflict.
South Africa says it hopes to use its experience in negotiating the end of white rule to help bring peace in Israel, but has also been a vocal critic of Israel's security polices.
``It's not a question of warming up of relations, it's a continuation, so that we can extend out contacts with factions of the Israeli society,'' Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad said after Mbeki and Olmert posed for photographers.
``We are not mediators, we want to use our own experience to help them,'' he told a news conference. ``We will criticize actions, for instance of Israeli defense forces occupying territories and at the same time criticize actions of the Palestinian groups, such as suicide bombing.''
He said South Africa wanted to see a legitimate Palestinian state living side by side with Israel behind secure borders.
Pahad said talks to discuss broad issues covering peace in the Middle East would continue later in the day.
South Africa's willingness to talk to the Israeli government, and its position as Israel's largest trading partner in Africa, has angered some pro-Palestinian activists drawn mainly from its economically influential Muslim minority.
The Palestinian Solidarity Group this week accused Pretoria of ``squandering the moral high ground'' by forging links with Israel, while other activists accused South Africa of purposely keeping Olmert's visit a hush-hush affair to limit protests.
Full Article: Reuters
rootsie on 10.22.04 @ 08:57 PM CST [
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Aristide Denies Ties to Violence in Haiti and Calls for Dialogue
JOHANNESBURG, Oct. 20 - The exiled former president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, angrily denied accusations on Wednesday that he was fomenting violence in his homeland and accused Haiti's interim leader of brutally suppressing dissent.
Gang and political violence has killed more than 50 Haitians in the past two weeks.
"Latortue, stop the lying, stop the killings," Mr. Aristide said in a statement from South Africa directed at Gérard Latortue, Haiti's interim prime minister.
"True dialogue is the only solution. With the lives of millions at stake, public officials must act responsibly," he said in the statement.
Mr. Aristide has been in South Africa since May after he was forced into exile in February in what he says was a coup engineered by the United States.
The statement was his first public reaction to an attack from Mr. Latortue last Sunday. In it, Mr. Latortue accused Thabo Mbeki, the president of South Africa, of allowing Mr. Aristide to direct a violent campaign in Haiti by his supporters.
Full Article: Reuters
rootsie on 10.22.04 @ 08:52 PM CST [
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Bush faces nuclear fallout in Nevada over £60bn mountain of radioactive waste
by Dan Glaister
Roadworks slow progress along the strip in Las Vegas. In the distance, poking between the mock Eiffel Tower and the mock pyramid at Luxor, cranes stand out against the autumn sky, building the next phase of America's seemingly permanent boom town.
But 95 miles north-east of this city, the powerhouse of Nevada with 36 million visitors a year, lies another construction site.
Yucca Mountain, projected to cost around $60bn (£32.8bn), has been chosen by the Bush administration to be the nation's nuclear waste repository, set to hold the existing 40,000 tons of waste produced to date by the country's nuclear power stations.
"This material is the deadliest substance known to mankind," said Peggy Maze Johnson, executive director of Citizen Alert, a local group that has campaigned against the repository. "It's one million times more radioactive when it comes out of the reactor core than when it went in."
In February 2002, just over a year after taking office, President Bush recommended the Yucca Mountain site to Congress. But many voters remembered that, as a candidate in September 2000, Mr Bush promised not to approve the site until it had been "deemed scientifically safe", a formulation that is credited with helping him win the state.
Full Article: Guardian UK
rootsie on 10.22.04 @ 08:49 PM CST [
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Thursday, October 21st
Bolivia a Year After the October Insurrection
by Lina Britto and Lucia Suarez
Translated by Forrest Hylton
Leaning against a concrete tombstone, nine men dressed in denim overalls of various colors drink beer and soda, taking care to pour the first sip on the dry and dusty ground as an offering to the Pacha Mama -- Mother Earth. A few meters away, on the high plain that extends between the two hills covered with crosses and tombs, coffins of equal size are spread out in a row. Together with them, almost a hundred men, women, and children, seated and standing, most dressed entirely in black, mourn the dead for a second time. "On a day like today, October 12, the armed forces fired on unarmed people," a young man with brown skin and straight black hair says to the assembled through a microphone marred by static. "It is time, as relatives, to show that this is not over, that we are mourning our dead again," concludes Nestor Salinas, the president of the Association of the Relatives of the Fallen Martyrs in the so-called "Gas War" in El Alto, sister city of La Paz. Then Salinas passes "the word" to a priest who, in mixed Spanish and Aymara, presides over the Eucharist that begins the exhumation ceremony for twenty-two of the sixty-seven people who died during "Black October."
Dug Up from the BowelsExactly a year ago, a caravan of tanks, truckloads of soldiers, and trucks full of gas passed through the better part of El Alto, leaving in their dusty path thirty-one dead and twelve injured. Five days after the military incursion, in a country exploding with protest, hunger strikes, and indignation, what had seemed impossible happened: then-President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, a leading member of the political-economic elite and the second-richest man in Bolivia, flew to Miami after presenting his resignation to Congress, due to the non-negotiable demand of the majority of the country's inhabitants, who refused to stand for the government's brutal repression of protests against the export of Bolivian gas to California via a Chilean port.
Now, a year later, the hundred or so people gather around the coffins of their dead to summon up energy and hope so that the impossible happens; so that Sánchez de Lozada is extradited to Bolivia to receive punishment for genocide -- among other charges, including corruption -- that will be presented now that Congress has approved the "trial of responsibilities." As relatives and volunteers from the different organizations tried to convince the nine men in overalls to charge the widow of the last body exhumed eighty Bs. ($10), Nestor Salinas made the position of alteños abundantly clear: "Now we'll see who's for and who's against the people," he said, referring to the parliamentary vote that would take place the following day, October 13.
Full Article: counterpunch.org
rootsie on 10.21.04 @ 06:02 PM CST [
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Private Investors Abroad Cut Their Investments in the U.S.
by Eduardo Porter
Flow of foreign capital contracted in August as private investors lost some of their appetite for American stocks and bonds, underscoring the United States' increasing dependence on financing from central banks in Asia.
The Treasury Department reported yesterday that net monthly capital flows from the rest of the world fell for the sixth time this year, declining to $59 billion from $63 billion in July.
Private investment from abroad fell by nearly half - to $37.4 billion in August from $72.9 billion the month before. Investors appear to be concerned over cooling growth and a rising American trade deficit.
The only reason that the contraction was not more pronounced was that official financing, mainly from Asian central banks, jumped to nearly $23 billion in August from just over $6 billion in July.
Washington has demanded that China end a policy of buying dollars to reduce the value of its currency, the yuan, and make its exports more competitive in American markets. But the new data accentuated how dependent the United States has become on purchases of dollar securities by the Chinese and other Asian governments with links to the dollar.
"Foreign central banks saved the dollar from disaster," said Ashraf Laidi, chief currency analyst of the MG Financial Group. "The stability of the bond market is at the mercy of Asian purchases of U.S. Treasuries."
Net foreign purchases of United States Treasury bonds fell 35 percent, to roughly $14.5 billion, an 11-month low. Foreign governments left a particularly large footprint in this market, stepping up their net purchases to about $19 billion even as private investors sold about $4.5 billion worth.
Holdings of Treasury bonds by Japan, where the central bank has also been intervening to keep the value of its currency from rising, increased by $26 billion in August, to $722 billion. Chinese official holdings rose more than $5 billion, to $172 billion.
The decline in foreign investment seems to have unsettled some investors in the bond and currency markets, who have been on tenterhooks as the American trade deficit has soared to nearly 6 percent of the nation's economic output, requiring foreign investment to finance it.
Through the first quarter of the year, financial flows into the United States exceeded the trade deficit by well over 50 percent. Last month, they barely covered the $54.2 billion deficit.
As private capital flows declined, the American financial balance has been poised precariously. As private financing dwindled, most of this coverage has been provided by foreign government finance.
"If all we have funding our current account imbalance is the good graces of foreign central banks, we are on increasingly thin ice," said Stephen S. Roach, the chief economist at Morgan Stanley. Of Washington's call for China to stop interfering in currency markets, he cautioned, "That could come back and bite us."
Full Article: NY TimesJust a reminder that the US is broke and in terrific debt to maintain its status as the big dog of the world, while all it takes is the Chinese refusal of US Treasury bills to bring the whole house of cards down.
rootsie on 10.21.04 @ 05:13 PM CST [
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Wednesday, October 13th
Greenpeace Calls For Stepped Up Action to Protect Iraqis from Looted Nuclear Items
by Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON -- The environmental group Greenpeace has echoed a call by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to permit the UN watchdog to return in force to Iraq to track nuclear-related materials looted after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion there and help protect and treat the population from exposure to deadly radiation.
The group’s appeal followed a report released by the IAEA Tuesday that found that significant quantities of specialized equipment and material in Iraq that could be used to build a nuclear or radioactive bomb had disappeared from sites monitored by the agency before the invasion.
In a letter to the UN Security Council, IAEA director Mohamed el-Baradei said his agency was concerned both with the “widespread and apparently systematic dismantlement of sites linked to Iraq’s nuclear program and with the health of Iraqis living around the main nuclear facility at Tuwaitha."
Greenpeace, whose mission to Tuwaitha in June, 2003, alerted the world to the extent of post-war looting of nuclear-related material and the possible health threats that may have resulted from it, charged that the response of both the U.S. occupation authorities and the new interim Iraqi government to the problem of looting and possible radiation exposure has been inadequate to date.
“Nothing has been done to date,” the group said about providing medical help to the surrounding communities. It also stressed that that the new regime in Baghdad has apparently failed to follow up on repeated offers by the IAEA to advise the authorities in Iraq on the safety and security of nuclear and other radioactive materials, although it has reportedly asked the agency to facilitate the sale of equipment it has recovered.
Full Article: commondreams.org
rootsie on 10.13.04 @ 07:37 PM CST [
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Kurd Demos Spark Ethnic Conflict Concerns
The call for a referendum on the right to self-determination by thousands of Kurdish demonstrators last week has sparked concern over their region’s fate.
Some protestors at the rallies, which took place both in Kurdistan and in Europe, even called for a completely independent Kurdistan – with oil-rich Kirkuk as its capital.
The demonstrations renewed concerns over potential ethnic conflict in Kirkuk, with Mohammed Khalil, an Arab representative on the Kirkuk city council, warning the situation would be “impossible to control” if unrest was triggered.
The Kurdish Referendum movement was established last year by prominent Kurds, who launched a widespread campaign to collect signatures demanding a vote on self-determination.
According to organisers, as many as two million signatures were collected, and letters outlining the goals of the campaign have been sent to the Kurdish parliament, Iraqi president Sheikh Gazi al-Yawer, British premier Tony Blair, US president George Bush, and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, among others.
But little has come of it all, and Almaz Fadhil, a lawyer and organiser of last week’s demonstration in Kirkuk, expressed her resentment over the policies of the interim Iraqi government.
“We are annoyed and upset,” she said. “They [the government] have not achieved anything for the Kurds up to now.”
Fadhil said she has demanded the return of tens of thousands of Kurds who were deported from Kirkuk by the former regime of Saddam Hussein.
But the Turkomen Shiite Council, TSC, the country’s largest group of Muslim Turkomen, claims the Kurds already are “enjoying facilities and privileges from the occupiers and the government”.
In Kirkuk, with its mixed ethnicity of Arabs, Kurds, Turkomen and Assyrians, the issue of the deported Kurds remains troublesome and complicated.
Full Article: oneworld.net
rootsie on 10.13.04 @ 07:31 PM CST [
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George Bush, The Worst Mexican President Ever
by El Fisgón
Free-trade globalization has produced some exceedingly strange phenomena: China, the last socialist power, is glad to provide slave labor to multinationals; a firm in India fills the tax forms of an American corporation that produces vodka in Peru and then sells it to Polish immigrants who are constructing a British-financed building in Madrid; an enterprise which specializes in biotechnology tries to copyright the DNA of an isolated tribe from the Amazon, and George Bush has become the worst Mexican president ever.
Globalization tends to blur or erase all economic, geographic, and cultural boundaries, leaving high technology to coexist with primitive forms of exploitation: Taiwan sells watches to the Swiss; Brazil exports technology to Germany; and all evidence suggests that George Bush has stolen his ruling style from old-fashioned Mexican politicians.
Mexican political culture has very defined features and the President of the United States has absorbed them all: The classical Mexican political boss usually inherits his power from his father. The typical Mexican cacique has a love for guns as well as an inclination toward violence and cruelty; he despises legality and intellectual activity, has a personal history of alcoholism and dissipation, lies systematically, and declares himself a faithful servant of God. (Did we miss anything?)
According to Mexican tradition, politicians always reach their positions thanks to a fraudulent electoral process and then surround themselves with a clique which uses its power to conduct "business" on a staggering scale while in office. The Florida electoral thievery and Halliburton's Iraq contract are classic examples of Mexican corruption.
Based on a complex pyramid of political bosses, a totalitarian presidential regime flourished in Mexico. It was organized around a political party whose name remains a monument to paradox: the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI). Names aside, the PRI model was so efficient (for the PRI, of course) that the party was able to hold power for more than seventy years. The Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa called it "the perfect dictatorship."
This dictatorship was a mark of shame for all Mexicans. Only Mexico's political cartoonists were able to benefit from it. The profuse manifestations of cynicism and obsequiousness it produced were a delight for us. In the Mexican court, dialogues like the following were not uncommon and completely irresistible:
The President asks: "What time is it?"
His minister replies: "Whatever time you say, Mister President.
Full Article: tomdispatch.com
rootsie on 10.13.04 @ 07:24 PM CST [
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Investigative Journalist Seymour Hersh Spills the Secrets of the Iraq Quagmire and the War on Terror
by Bonnie Azab Powell
BERKELEY – The Iraq war is not winnable, a secret U.S. military unit has been "disappearing" people since December 2001, and America has no idea how irreparably its torture of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison has damaged its image in the Middle East. These were just a few of the grim pronouncements made by Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter Seymour "Sy" Hersh to KQED host Michael Krasny before a Berkeley audience on Friday night (Oct. 8).
The past two years will "go down as one of the classic sort of failures" in history, said the man who has been called the "greatest muckraker of all time" and (paradoxically) the "enfant terrible of journalism for more than 30 years." While Hersh blamed the White House and the Pentagon for the Iraq quagmire and America's besmirched world image, he was stymied by how it all happened. "How could eight or nine neoconservatives come and take charge of this government?" he asked. "They overran the bureaucracy, they overran the Congress, they overran the press, and they overran the military! So you say to yourself, How fragile is this democracy?"
From My Lai to Abu GhraibThat fragility clearly unnerves him. Hersh summarizes his mission as "to hold the people in public office to the highest possible standard of decency and of honesty…to tolerate anything less, even in the name of national security, is wrong." He tries his best. More than any other U.S. journalist alive today, he embodies the statement that "a patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government," a belief defined by the conservationist Edward Abbey.
Full Article: commondreams.org
rootsie on 10.13.04 @ 07:19 PM CST [
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James Baker's Double Life
by Naomi Klein
When President Bush appointed former Secretary of State James Baker III as his envoy on Iraq's debt on December 5, 2003, he called Baker's job "a noble mission." At the time, there was widespread concern about whether Baker's extensive business dealings in the Middle East would compromise that mission, which is to meet with heads of state and persuade them to forgive the debts owed to them by Iraq. Of particular concern was his relationship with merchant bank and defense contractor the Carlyle Group, where Baker is senior counselor and an equity partner with an estimated $180 million stake.
Until now, there has been no concrete evidence that Baker's loyalties are split, or that his power as Special Presidential Envoy--an unpaid position--has been used to benefit any of his corporate clients or employers. But according to documents obtained by The Nation, that is precisely what has happened. Carlyle has sought to secure an extraordinary $1 billion investment from the Kuwaiti government, with Baker's influence as debt envoy being used as a crucial lever.
The secret deal involves a complex transaction to transfer ownership of as much as $57 billion in unpaid Iraqi debts. The debts, now owed to the government of Kuwait, would be assigned to a foundation created and controlled by a consortium in which the key players are the Carlyle Group, the Albright Group (headed by another former Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright) and several other well-connected firms. Under the deal, the government of Kuwait would also give the consortium $2 billion up front to invest in a private equity fund devised by the consortium, with half of it going to Carlyle.
Full Article: thenation.com
rootsie on 10.13.04 @ 07:11 PM CST [
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Tuesday, October 12th
Chavez Supporters Pull Down Statue of Columbus
CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Supporters of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez celebrated Columbus Day on Tuesday by toppling a statue in Caracas of the explorer whom Chavez blames for ushering in a ``genocide'' of native Indians.
Police firing tear gas later recovered parts of the broken bronze image, which was dragged by the protesters to a theater where the Venezuelan leader was due to speak.
Two years ago, Chavez rechristened the Oct. 12 holiday -- commemorated widely in the Americas to mark Christopher Columbus' 1492 landing in the New World -- ``Indian Resistance Day.''
The new name honored Indians killed by Spanish and other foreign conquerors following in the wake of the Italian-born Columbus who sailed in the service of the Spanish crown.
As the left-wing nationalist president led celebrations on Tuesday to honor Indian chiefs who resisted the Spanish conquest, a group of his supporters conducted a mock trial of a statue of Columbus in central Caracas.
They declared the image guilty of ``imperialist genocide,'' looped ropes around its outstretched arm and neck and heaved it down from its marble base. No police or other authorities intervened as the protesters drove off in a truck yelling, ``We've killed Columbus!''
``This isn't a historical heritage. ... Columbus is the symbol of a conquest that was a globalization by blood and fire, a cultural massacre,'' said Vitelio Herrera, a philosophy student at Venezuela's Central University.
Outside the Teresa Carreno theater, the protesters hung the statue from a tree and then let it fall to the ground. Police arrested several of them.
Chavez has called Latin America's Spanish and Portuguese conquerors ``worse than Hitler'' and the precursors of modern-day ``imperialism'' he says is now embodied by the United States, the biggest buyer of his country's oil.
The base of the toppled statue was daubed with slogans such as ``Columbus - Bush. Out!''
Full Article: Reuters
rootsie on 10.12.04 @ 09:50 PM CST [
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Women Barred from Saudi Vote, Election Body Says
RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia's election committee said on Tuesday women will not take part in the country's first nationwide vote, blaming problems over special polling arrangements for women in the conservative Muslim kingdom.
The widely expected announcement marks a victory for Saudi Arabia's religious establishment, alarmed by even modest reforms in the birthplace of Islam.
``Because of the shortage of time it is difficult to create favorable conditions for women to participate,'' Prince Mansour bin Mutib bin Abdul Aziz, head of the general municipal elections committee, told a news conference.
Full Article: Reuters
rootsie on 10.12.04 @ 09:46 PM CST [
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Two Women Sentenced to Death by Stoning in Nigeria
BAUCHI, Nigeria (Reuters) - Islamic courts in Nigeria sentenced two women to death by stoning for having sex out of wedlock, but two men whom they said they slept with were acquitted for lack of evidence, authorities said on Tuesday.
Both sentences, which were passed within the last month in the northern state of Bauchi, have to be confirmed by the state governor before being carried out, and they are open to appeal.
Nobody has been lawfully stoned to death in Nigeria since 12 northern states introduced Islamic Sharia law in 2000, because all such sentences have been overturned on appeal.
Hajara Ibrahim, a 29-year-old woman, was sentenced on Oct. 5 by an Islamic Sharia court in the Tafawa Balewa area of the state, having confessed to having sex with 35-year-old Dauda Sani and becoming pregnant, the court said in a statement.
``The court has however handed the woman convict to her guardian to take care of her until she delivers the baby before the sentence will be executed by stoning her to death according to the provisions of the Sharia penal code,'' the court said.
``There is no evidence to link him with the allegation and consequently the court acquitted him for lack of evidence.''
Full Article: Reuters
rootsie on 10.12.04 @ 09:42 PM CST [
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Violence in Haiti Claims at Least 46 Lives
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) - Violence in Haiti's capital has claimed at least 46 lives, with hospital records showing Tuesday that 17 victims were killed this week. The United States accused supporters of an ousted president of trying to destabilize the interim government.
Port-au-Prince has been beset by gunbattles and beheadings since a Sept. 30 demonstration marking the 1991 coup that first overthrew President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. In February, the former priest fled the country again after a three-week revolt led by a street gang and former soldiers.
Tensions still are simmering with Aristide supporters demanding his return and an end to the ``invasion'' by foreign troops. U.S. Marines arrived in Haiti the day Aristide left and were replaced by U.N. peacekeepers sent in June to stabilize the country.
Full Article: Guardian UK"Marines arrived the day Aristide left" is newspeak for COUP
rootsie on 10.12.04 @ 09:25 PM CST [
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Nuclear items missing in Iraq
Equipment and materials that could be used to make nuclear weapons have disappeared from Iraq, the UN's nuclear watchdog warned yesterday.
Satellite imagery and investigations of nuclear sites in Iraq have caused alarm at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
The agency found that in some cases entire buildings housing high-precision nuclear equipment had been dismantled; equipment that could be used to make a bomb, such as high-strength aluminium, had vanished from open storage areas, the agency said.
In a report to the UN security council yesterday, the IAEA's director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, said the agency "continues to be concerned about the widespread and apparently systematic dismantlement that has taken place at sites previously relevant to Iraq's nuclear programme and sites previously subject to ongoing monitoring and verification by the agency".
Guardian UK
rootsie on 10.12.04 @ 09:21 PM CST [
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Terror-Fearing Sen. Shuts Office
CBS/AP) Sen. Mark Dayton said Tuesday he is closing his Washington office because of a classified intelligence report that made him fear for the safety of his staff.
Dayton, D-Minn., said the office will be closed while Congress is in recess through Election Day, with his staff working out of his Minnesota office and in Senate space off Capitol Hill.
"I take this step out of extreme, but necessary, precaution to protect the lives and safety of my Senate staff and my Minnesota constituents, who might otherwise be visiting my Senate office in the next three weeks," he said on a call with reporters.
"I feel compelled to do so because I will not be here in Washington to share what I consider to be an unacceptably greater risk to their safety," he said.
Full Article: cbsnews.com
rootsie on 10.12.04 @ 09:18 PM CST [
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Monday, October 11th
Iraq Disaster Will Haunt Future Generations: Unforgivable Betrayals and Broken Promises
by Robert Fisk
I am writing a book about our need to escape from history--or rather about our inability to escape the effects of the decisions taken by our fathers and grandfathers. My father was a soldier in the First World War or, as it says on the back of his campaign medal, "The Great War for Civilisation''--which is the title I've chosen for my book. In the space of just 17 months after my father's war ended, the victors had drawn the borders of Northern Ireland, Yugoslavia and most of the Middle East. And I have spent all my professional life watching the people inside those borders burn.
I once sat down with old Malcolm Macdonald, Britain's former colonial secretary, to discuss his handover of the Irish treaty ports to De Valera before the Second World War, thus depriving Britain of three great harbours during the Battle of the Atlantic. It was a step which earned Macdonald the undying contempt of Winston Churchill. Inevitably, though, we ended up talking about his vain attempts to solve the "Palestine problem" in the 1930s. In the Commons, Churchill angrily condemned Macdonald for restricting Jewish immigration to Palestine. I still have my notes of what Macdonald said to me.
"We have a terrific argument in House of Commons, and when we met in the division lobby afterwards, Churchill accused me of being pro-Arab. He said that Arabs were savages and that they ate nothing but camel dung. I could see that it was no good trying to persuade him to change his views. So I suddenly told him that I wished I had a son. He asked me why, and I said I was reading a book called My Early Life by Winston Churchill, and that I would want any son of mine to live that life. At this point, tears appeared in Churchill's eyes and he put his arms round me, saying, 'Malcolm, Malcolm.' The next day a package arrived for me from Churchill containing a signed copy of his latest volume of the life of Marlborough.''
My father worshipped Churchill, and pleaded with a friend to ask Churchill to sign a book for him; which is why I have in my library today Marlborough: His Life and Times, with the words "Inscribed by Winston S Churchill 1948" in the great man's own hand.
I still take the book out from time to time to look at that handwriting and to reflect that this was a man who sent our armies to Gallipoli, who shook hands with Michael Collins, who stood alone against Adolf Hitler, who campaigned for Zionism in Palestine and sent King Faisal to Iraq as a consolation prize for losing Syria to the French.
"The situation that confronted HM Government in Iraq at the beginning of 1921 was a most unsatisfactory one,'' Churchill would write in his The World Crisis: The Aftermath, of the insurgency against British rule. His friend Gertrude Bell--and here I am indebted to HVF Winstone's splendid and revised biography of Britain's "oriental secretary" in Baghdad--was that same year trying to set up an "Arab government with British advisors'' in Baghdad so that Britain's army of occupation could leave Iraq.
"I don't know what hanky panky the Allies are up to about the mandates,'' she wrote, "but I am all on the side of the League of Nations in protesting that they must be made public ... everyone from the Euphrates provinces says the people there won't accept Sunni officials and the (provisional) Council goes on blandly appointing them ... a Shia of Karbala (sic) has at last accepted the Ministry of Education ...''
Bell attended Churchill's famous--or infamous--Cairo conference where the British decided the future of most of the Middle East. TE Lawrence was there, of course, along with just about every Brit who thought he or she understood the region. "I'll tell you about our conference,'' Bell wrote to a friend in her jolly hockey-sticks way. "It has been wonderful. We covered more work in a fortnight than has been got through in a year. Mr Churchill was admirable ...''
It quite takes the breath away; the British thought they could fix the Middle East in 14 days. And so we laid the borders of Iraq and laid out the future for what Churchill would, much later, refer to as the "hell disaster'' of Palestine. I'll always remember the way that Macdonald, talking to me in his Sevenoaks home 26 years ago, turned to me during our conversation. "In Palestine, I failed,'' he said. "And that is why you are in Beirut today.''
And he was right, of course. Had we really "fixed" the Middle East, I wouldn't have spent the last 29 years of my life travelling from one bloody war to another amid the lies and deceit of our leaders and the surrogates they appointed to rule over the Arabs. Had we really "fixed" the Middle East, Ken Bigley would not have been murdered in Iraq last week.
Can we escape? Can we one day say--both the West and the peoples of the Middle East--"Enough! Let us start again!'' I fear we cannot. Our betrayals and our broken promises--to Jews as well as Arabs--have created a kind of irreversible disease, something that will not go away and cannot and will not be forgiven for generations.
Full Article: counterpunch.org
rootsie on 10.11.04 @ 06:01 PM CST [
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Iraqis Fearing a Sunni Boycott of the Election
by Dexter Filkins
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 10 - Leaders of Iraq's crucial Sunni Arab minority say they have failed to generate any enthusiasm for nationwide elections scheduled for January, and are so fearful of insurgent violence and threats that they can meet only in private to talk about how - or even whether - to take part.
The leaders among the Sunni Arabs, which had dominated Iraqi politics since the nation's birth in 1920, also said in interviews here that many prospective Sunni voters were so suspicious of the American enterprise in Iraq, and so infuriated by the chaotic security situation in the Sunni-dominated areas, that they were likely to stay away from the polls in large numbers.
Sunni participation is crucial to the election. While a Sunni boycott remains far from certain and some Sunni leaders still hold out hope for a turnaround, American officials fear that if large numbers of Sunnis do not vote, the election will be regarded as illegitimate and may even feed the insurgency that has gripped much of the country.
While American military commanders say they intend to open up many predominantly Sunni areas now under the control of insurgents, some Sunni tribal and religious leaders say that so far the campaign appears to be having the opposite effect, alienating the people it is supposed to liberate.
Full Article: NY Times
rootsie on 10.11.04 @ 11:31 AM CST [
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Sharon Rejects Army Bid to Wind Down Gaza Offensive
ERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel's Ariel Sharon has rejected his army's request to scale back its Gaza offensive, seeking to avoid any show of weakness after deadly bombings hit Egyptian resorts crowded with Israelis, security sources said.
The prime minister decided a pullout from the besieged Jabalya refugee camp would encourage Palestinian militants to resume rocket fire into Israel and ``send the wrong message'' so soon after the Sinai bombings, a source said on Monday.
Sharon's order to keep up the massive 12-day-old campaign also appeared aimed at mollifying hard-liners before a parliamentary speech on Monday in which he will try to soften opposition to his plan to evacuate Gaza settlements next year.
If Sharon brings his ``disengagement'' plan to its first vote in parliament in coming weeks as he has promised, a key far-right coalition partner could bolt, forcing him to reshape his government or call early elections.
Sharon's Gaza plan has been complicated by Palestinian rocket fire into border towns, which triggered Israel's biggest offensive in the occupied strip in four years of conflict.
Israel has killed 92 Palestinians since sending tanks into northern Gaza, including Jabalya, a militant stronghold, after a Hamas rocket attack killed two toddlers in southern Israel. Three Israelis have also died since the raid began.
Army chief Moshe Yaalon asked Sharon on Sunday for permission to redeploy outside Jabalya, saying the army had driven back rocket crews and the longer troops stayed in the densely populated camp the greater the risk, sources said.
Despite low-key U.S. pressure to end the operation, Sharon ordered the army to press on, saying leaving Jabalya at this point could spur militants to resume the firing of makeshift Qassam missiles into the Jewish state. ``He told the army to continue the operation at the same level,'' a source said.
Full Article: Reuters
rootsie on 10.11.04 @ 11:27 AM CST [
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US seizes webservers from independent media sites
by Rachel Shabi
American authorities have shut down 20 independent media centres by seizing their British-based webservers.
On Thursday a court order was issued to Rackspace, an American-owned web hosting company in Uxbridge, Middlesex, forcing it to hand over two servers used by Indymedia, an international media network which covers of social justice issues and provides a "news-wire", to which its users contribute.
The websites affected by the seizure span 17 countries.
It is unclear why, or to where, the servers have been taken. The FBI, speaking to the French AFP, acknowledged that a subpoena had been issued but said this was at the request of Italian and Swiss authorities.
"It is not an FBI operation," said its spokesman, Joe Parris.
Guardian UK
rootsie on 10.11.04 @ 11:02 AM CST [
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Surprise CO2 rise may speed up global warming
by Michael McCarthy
The rate at which global warming gases are accumulating in the atmosphere has taken a sharp leap upwards, leading to fears that the devastating effects of climate change may hit the world even sooner than has been predicted.
Atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide (CO2 ), the principal greenhouse gas, have made a sudden jump that cannot be explained by any corresponding jump in terrestrial emissions of CO2 from power stations and motor vehicles - because there has been none.
Some scientists think instead that the abrupt speed-up may be evidence of the long-feared climate change "feedback" mechanism, by which global warming causes alterations to the earth's natural systems and then, in turn, causes the warming to increase even more rapidly than before.
Such a development would mean the worldwide droughts, agricultural failure, sea-level rise, increased weather turbulence and flooding all predicted as consequences of climate change would arrive on much shorter time-scales than present scenarios suggest, and the world would have much less time to co-ordinate its response.
Full Article: Independent UKWell hell then let's drill for oil in the North Pole. May as well take advantage of all that melted ice.
rootsie on 10.11.04 @ 10:56 AM CST [
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Sunday, October 10th
The Genome in Black and White (and Gray)
By Robin Marantz Henig
...Some critics worry that the more we find out about genetic differences among people of different racial groups, the more such information will be misinterpreted or abused. Already there are fears that the biological measures of racial differences might lead to pronouncements about inherent differences in such complex traits as intelligence, athletic ability, aggressiveness or susceptibility to addiction. Once such measures are given the imprimatur of science, especially genomic science, loathsome racist stereotypes can take on the sheen of received wisdom.Imagine that you have heart failure. What can medicine do for you? It depends: are you white or black? If you're white, your doctor may prescribe one of the drugs that seem to ease the symptoms, maybe a beta-blocker or an ACE inhibitor. And if you're black, your doctor may still prescribe those drugs, but they might not really help.
That's about to change. In the not-too-distant future, if you're black and have heart failure, drug-company researchers predict you'll be able to go to the doctor and walk out with a prescription tailor-made for you. Well, not tailor-made, exactly, but something that seems to work in people a lot like you. Well, not a lot like you, exactly, except that they're black, too. In this not-too-distant future, if you're black, your doctor will be able to prescribe BiDil, the first drug in America that's being niche-marketed to people of a particular race -- our first ethnic medicine.
BiDil, expected to be approved early next year by the Food and Drug Administration, is on the leading edge of the emerging field of race-based pharmacogenomics. It signals a shift in perception, a new approach to medicine that has at its core an idea at once familiar and incendiary: the assumption that there are biological differences among the races.
New York Times Magazine
rootsie on 10.10.04 @ 12:30 PM CST [
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Nobel peace laureate claims HIV deliberately created
Kenyan ecologist Wangari Maathai, the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, today reiterated her claim that the AIDS virus was a deliberately created biological agent.
"Some say that AIDS came from the monkeys, and I doubt that because we have been living with monkeys (since) time immemorial, others say it was a curse from God, but I say it cannot be that.
"Us black people are dying more than any other people in this planet," Ms Maathai told a press conference in Nairobi a day after winning the prize for her work in human rights and reversing deforestation across Africa.
"It's true that there are some people who create agents to wipe out other people. If there were no such people, we could have not have invaded Iraq," she said.
"We invaded Iraq because we believed that Saddam Hussein had made, or was in the process of creating agents of biological warfare," said Ms Maathai.
"In fact it (the HIV virus) is created by a scientist for biological warfare," she added.
"Why has there been so much secrecy about AIDS? When you ask where did the virus come from, it raises a lot of flags. That makes me suspicious," Ms Maathai said.
Full Article:abc.net
rootsie on 10.10.04 @ 11:51 AM CST [
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New science undermines oldest notions about race
by James Roylance
...Advances in genetics are undermining some of our oldest notions about the nature and biology of race. And the scientists whose intellectual forebears helped establish those notions say it's time to set the record straight.
"Race as an explanation for human biological variation is dead," says Alan H. Goodman, president-elect of the American Anthropological Association.
The truth emerging from modern genetics, scientists say, is that we're 99.9 percent identical. Thanks to our common origins, and our natural eagerness to exchange DNA, our genes are thoroughly scrambled. And what patterns do emerge bear little resemblance to our traditional, geographically rooted notions of "race."
Researchers say this new, deeper understanding should silence those who argue that some innate inferiority -- or superiority -- lies behind persistent racial disparities in such things as school achievement, poverty or incarceration rates, or infant mortality.
"That just doesn't wash," says Goodman, a professor of biological anthropology at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass. "It takes ... a gun out of the hand of racists."
'Race has real effects'
But it doesn't end the discussion. Race still exists as what scientists call a "social construct," an invention of society which we begin to learn by the age of 3 or 4.
"Race has real effects. It has material effects," Goodman says. "If you talk of differences in voting patterns in the U.S., differences in health care, education, housing, differences in school behavior -- that structure between racial groups is real. But it's not biological."
These realizations sparked anthropologists, who gathered recently in Alexandria, Va., to begin what they see as a badly needed public conversation about the biological and social realities of race in America.
They also want to put to rest some ghosts in their own history. It was one of their own -- German scientist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, often called the father of physical anthropology -- who proposed in 1795 that mankind was divided into five races based on geography, physical attributes and traits. He called them Caucasian, Negro (or Ethiopian), American, Mongolian and Malayan.
The notion stuck, and it influenced the thinking of many 19th- and 20th-century scientists whose theories often confused science with cultural biases and value judgments.
"This led to errors and misapplications and, much more seriously, to the abuse of biology as a means of achieving power over others," says University of Pennsylvania anthropologist Frank Johnston. Nazi atrocities, apartheid in South Africa and "one drop of blood" rules, once used to assign race and expand slavery and oppression during America's antebellum and Jim Crow years, were all rationalized by misplaced theories of racial biology.
...For social anthropologists, race is entrenched in American society. "And the racism that comes from that is something that we deal with every day," says Moses.
She worries that the death of biological race might become an excuse to ignore the impact of racism. "The concern is that by saying race doesn't exist biologically, it will fall off the radar screens of policy-makers and leaders who really need to understand the impact that social race continues to have," she says.
"Unless we acknowledge that, and understand how we've institutionalized racism and attributed behavior to people based on their skin color, for example, then we can't get to a colorblind society, where color doesn't matter.
"Because color does matter in this society."
Full Article: africaspeaks.com
rootsie on 10.10.04 @ 11:45 AM CST [
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Saturday, October 9th
Spurning Haiti
AMERICA'S MILITARY and political interventions in Haiti have never been backed by sufficiently sustained or vigorous efforts to ease the country's crippling poverty. In Congress's pre-adjournment hours, Republican leaders in the House of Representatives have a chance to modestly redress that balance for the hemisphere's most destitute nation.
The question is whether Washington should help Haiti to cultivate one of its few economic bright spots -- the assembly and export of cheap apparel such as T-shirts to the United States -- after a quota system expires at the end of this year. A bill passed by the Senate would do so, providing duty-free access for Haitian apparel manufacturers to as much as 1.5 percent of the U.S. market, an amount that would double over three years and, Haitian officials say, support some 100,000 jobs. But a House version of the Haitian Economic Recovery Opportunity Act, known as H.E.R.O., is far less heroic. Bowing to pressure from U.S. textile manufacturers (for most Haitian apparel is made from cheap material imported from Asia), the House bill would all but eliminate duty-free access to U.S. markets; it would do almost nothing to provide employment to a country where 80 percent of the population lives in extreme poverty and a single job can support a half-dozen people or more. By closing off duty-free access for Haitian apparel, the stingy House bill all but guarantees that investors would write off Haiti and take their business elsewhere.
Full Article: Washington PostOh I see: the problem with Haiti is that there have not been ENOUGH interventions. And now it's all come down to cheap t-shirts. 'The question' is buried far beneath the assumptions that allow completely distorted views to be put forward without question. That first paragraph is a classic example. Haiti needs 'interventions.' It needs charity and trade breaks due to its essential inferiority. Those 'stingy' Republicans have hearts of stone.
Haiti has never been allowed the breathing space to develop itself since the slave rebellion which gave birth to it shocked and horrified Britain, France, and the US 200 years ago. And they have been sure that Haiti has been punished hard, and often, ever since.
rootsie on 10.09.04 @ 10:07 AM CST [
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Nobel peace prize for woman of 30m trees
by John Vidal
Wangari Maathai, the Kenyan who created a women's movement which has planted more than 30m trees in 20 countries, became the first African woman to win the Nobel peace prize yesterday.
The award to recognises an effort which began in 1977 when she walked into the ministry of forests in Nairobi and asked for 15m tree seedlings to stop soil erosion, provide fuel and improve the lot of the poorest communities.
The director laughed in her face, but told her she could have as many as she wanted.
Less than a year later he had to withdraw his offer because the demand was so great.
...Prof Maathai, 64, says she turned to trees to give Kenyan women self-confidence.
In 1989 she told the Guardian: "[We] are overwhelmed by experts who sap confidence. People [have been made to] believe they are ignorant, inexperienced, incapable and backward. The idea of setting up the Green Belt Movement is to create local expertise to create confidence."
..."The growth of an impersonal concrete jungle directly leads to the psychosis, neuroses, maniacal and freakish behaviour evident in the major cities of the so-called developed world," she said.
Full Article: Guardian UK
rootsie on 10.09.04 @ 09:42 AM CST [
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Afghan Election Ends; Confusion After Boycott
KABUL (Reuters) - Afghanistan's historic presidential election closed on Saturday without any of the feared large-scale violence but the vote was thrown into turmoil instead by a boycott called by most of the candidates.
All 15 of President Hamid Karzai's rivals said they were withdrawing from the election because systems to prevent illegal multiple voting had gone awry. The move effectively left Karzai as the only candidate in the fray.
Election officials nevertheless refused to halt the process, which appeared to have gone smoothly across the rugged Islamic nation despite fears that many Afghans would be too afraid to participate.
``Halting the vote at this time is unjustified and would deny these individuals the right to vote,'' said election official Ray Kennedy.
The impoverished nation was voting to choose its first elected president and perhaps end over a quarter-century of war.
It was not immediately clear how much credibility the poll would have after the boycott or whether it would lead to further divisiveness in the country, a patchwork of ethnic groups and often warring tribes held together for the past three years by the U.S.-backed interim government.
Fears of sabotage by Taliban militants who had vowed to disrupt the polls were overtaken halfway through the voting day when it became clear some workers were using the wrong pen to mark people's fingers after they voted.
This meant the ink could just be washed off and the voter could potentially cast a ballot again.
During the campaign, some candidates expressed surprise that as many as 10.5 million out of the country's 28 million people had registered to vote, and said they believed many people had received multiple voter cards. The indelible ink was aimed at preventing them from voting more than once.
Full Article: ReutersI just heard a radio report that said people are voting two and three times. Oh well, Rumsfeld said it wouldn't be 'perfect.'
rootsie on 10.09.04 @ 09:29 AM CST [
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Friday, October 8th
Sidelined Neo-Cons Stoke Future Fires
by Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - Sidelined by their failed predictions for Iraq and U.S. President George W Bush's efforts to reassure voters he is not a warmonger, prominent neo-conservatives and their Christian Right allies are nonetheless trying hard to prepare the ground for future U.S. adventures in the Middle East.
Echoing increasingly threatening noises from the government of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon about preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, neo-cons are calling for Washington to undertake covert action, at the very least, to oust what some of them call the ''terror masters'' in Tehran as part of a more general ''World War IV'' against alleged Arab and Islamic extremism.
A growing number of observers, particularly in the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), are coming to the conclusion that the neo-cons may actually enjoy greater influence if Bush wins re-election.
Some neo-cons are even complaining that if Bush had been serious about the ''war on terrorism'', he should have taken on Iran after Afghanistan, rather than Iraq.
''Had we seen the war for what it was, we would not have started with Iraq, but with Iran, the mother of modern Islamic terrorism, the creator of Hezbollah, the ally of al-Qaeda, the sponsor of Zarqawi, the longtime sponsor of Fatah and the backbone of Hamas'', wrote part-time Pentagon consultant Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) this week.
His article also reprised an argument he first made three years ago -- that the Iranian people were already rising up against the mullahs and needed only a little nudge from Washington to succeed.
Neo-conservatives are also busy stoking tensions with Syria, even amid indications that Washington and Damascus are feeling their way toward some kind of ”modus vivendi” that may even include joint military patrols along the latter's porous border with Iraq.
Full Article: commondreams.org
rootsie on 10.08.04 @ 08:33 PM CST [
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there are about 800,000 fewer jobs - overall - than when Bush took office in January 2001.
Full Article:myway.com
rootsie on 10.08.04 @ 11:29 AM CST [
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Blair's mission on Africa
Tony Blair yesterday proposed a 15,000-strong European Union battle force, including British troops, dedicated to intervening in African conflicts and deployable within 10 days of a political instruction. He said the force should be ready next year.
Mr Blair made the bold proposal just 24 hours after the Iraq Survey Group reported that no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq. The talk of battle plans underlined the fact that despite the controversy over Iraq, Mr Blair has not lost his fervour for human rights-driven military interventions.
The proposal formed part of a wider package to tackle the crisis across Africa, including generous debt and aid proposals designed to take the continent out of its cycle of poverty, disease and instability.
Full Article: Guardian UKSee, Africa is to the Europeans a place you DO things to. The British have had more than anyone else to do with CREATING a 'cycle of poverty, disease, and instability.' Now they propose to TAKE Africa OUT of these conditions. The collossal arrogance, the deliberate ignorance of history, the 'white man's burden' tone of nobility and charity...we must 'TACKLE' the 'crisis'---please it's sick.Geldof flies the flag for the poor Full Article: Guardian UK
rootsie on 10.08.04 @ 11:22 AM CST [
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Wednesday, October 6th
Israel: Palestinian State Shelved with U.S. Blessing
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel's plan to withdraw from some occupied territory aims to rule out a Palestinian state indefinitely, with full U.S. approval, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's chief of staff said on Wednesday.
Dov Weisglass's remarks on the move to give up the Gaza Strip next year while keeping large chunks of the West Bank surprised U.S. diplomats, who said Washington remained dedicated to a ``road map'' peace plan for a Palestinian state.
Sharon, wary of alienating Israel's key ally, said later he still backed the ``road map'' effectively dismissed by Weisglass.
Palestinians, whose calls for road map talks have been spurned by Israel's ruling right, condemned Weisglass's message.
``I believe he has revealed the true intentions of Sharon. We told the quartet (of U.S.-led peace mediators) eight months ago that the Gaza plan was designed to undermine their road map,'' said Negotiations Minister Saeb Erekat said.
Weisglass's message, coinciding with a big Israeli offensive in Gaza, could help Sharon win over far-right foes opposed to abandoning the territory and challenging his grip on power.
``The significance of our (unilateral) disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process. It supplies the formaldehyde necessary so there is no political process with Palestinians,'' Weisglass said in an interview published in the Haaretz daily.
``When you freeze the process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state ... Effectively, this whole package called a Palestinian state, with all it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda,'' Weisglass said.
Full Article: Reuters
rootsie on 10.06.04 @ 09:24 PM CST [
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Dear Mike, Iraq sucks
From: RH
To: mike@michaelmoore.com
Sent: Monday, July 12, 2003 4:57 PM
Subject: Iraqi freedom veteran supports you
Dear Mr Moore,
I went to Iraq with thoughts of killing people who I thought were horrible. I was like, "Fuck Iraq, fuck these people, I hope we kill thousands." I believed my president. He was taking care of business and wasn't going to let al Qaeda push us around. I was with the 3rd Squadron, 7th Cavalry, 3rd Infantry division out of Fort Stewart, Georgia. My unit was one of the first to Baghdad. I was so scared. Didn't know what to think. Seeing dead bodies for the first time. People blown in half. Little kids with no legs. It was overwhelming, the sights, sounds, fear. I was over there from Jan'03 to Aug'03. I hated every minute. It was a daily battle to keep my spirits up. I hate the army and my job. I am supposed to get out next February but will now be unable to because the asshole in the White House decided that now would be a great time to put a stop-loss in effect for the army. So I get to do a second tour in Iraq and be away from those I love again because some guy has the audacity to put others' lives on the line for his personal war. I thought we were the good guys.
Full Article: Guardian UK
rootsie on 10.06.04 @ 09:05 PM CST [
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Africa must negotiate as one bloc: Museveni
Herald Reporters
Africa has got the resources and what is needed is for the continent to identify the stimulus to transform its economies, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who arrived in Harare yesterday for a three-day State visit, said.
Speaking at a banquet hosted for him by President Mugabe at State House last night, Mr Museveni said the continent could initiate this transformation without being continuously lectured on cliches such as development, sustainable development and Millennium Development Goals.
He said Zimbabwe and Uganda enjoy good relations despite being on opposite sides in the Democratic Republic of Congo conflict.
"In spite of this little misunderstanding, we have always worked together. I come here to show to you that we are brothers. Historically speaking, we are on the same side; we must work together," he said.
President Museveni noted that Zimbabwe was among some of the Southern African Development Community member states that have understood and supported Uganda’s concern at Sudan’s policies in the southern part of that vast country.
He said Africa would be powerful if it negotiates as a bloc rather than as individual countries on global, economic and trade issues.
Full Article:herald.co.zw
rootsie on 10.06.04 @ 08:59 PM CST [
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Why Don't Americans Care?
...Most Americans, in other words, have no idea what the hell a Halliburton is. Or a Karl Rove. Or a Donny "Shriveled Soul" Rumsfeld. Or a Lockheed Martin. Or a Carlysle Group. Or have any idea that Saddam had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11. Or that WMDs were never found. Or that President Bush has taken more vacation time than any president in U.S. history. Or that Jesus thinks Dubya is "sort of a dink." Or where Iraq is on a map.
Fact is, in the past decade, TV-news ratings -- cable and network, combined -- has shrunk to a fraction of its former numbers. Newspaper subscriptions have been either flat or dropping for just about as long. Newsmagazines, radio, historical nonfiction: flat or dropping fast. Even the Internet, that vast teeming customizable firestorm of news and info streaming in from all over the planet, even the awesome Net draws far more people to its porn and gossip and shopping departments than any e-news joint could ever wet dream.
Is this unfair? Does it sound elitist and biased? It's not. There have been studies. And reports. And alarming indicators of all kinds telling us time and again that, for example, fully 50 percent of eligible Americans don't even bother to vote (a 15 percent drop since 1964), and many have no idea who's on the Supreme Court or what Congress does, and many can't even point to France on a globe.
Voter turnout, comparatively, in Italy, Spain, the U.K., or Germany? Anywhere from 75 to 92 percent, every time. The sad fact is, the United States ranks 139th out of 172 countries in voter turnout. Wave that flag proudly, baby.
You've seen the headlines. Alarming numbers of American high school students can't even identify the current vice president, much less name a half dozen presidents from history. Far too many citizens can't name the capital of their own home state or recognize their own senators, much less discern how Bush's environmental policy is poisoning their water or how Ashcroft wants to scan their email and tap their phones and suck the pith from their souls.
A recent report by the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development states that upward of 60 percent of Americans ages 16-25 are 'functionally illiterate', meaning they can't, for example, fill out a detailed form or read a numerical table (like a time schedule). A recent Florida study shows at least 70 percent of recent high school graduates need remedial courses -- that is, basic reading and math -- when they enter community college. These are kids who, you can be assured, think Colin Powell is that nasty British dude on "American Idol."
Full Article: sfgate.comIt is crucial to understand who isn't voting, who isn't performing in school, who can't read. It is those who are most immediately and seriously impacted by the disastrous policies of the government, and this makes a mockery of any pretension to 'democracy' that exists in this country. Are the poor and non-white being deliberately mis-educated and un-educated? Because the educational system reflects the values and prerogatives of privilege: which is above all about the upholding of the status quo, there need not be malicious intent on the part of workers in the system. The system will reliably and regularly fail marginalized people just the same. It is a moral failure on the part of those who see what the system does to kids to continue to do nothing.
Illiteracy and miseducation include the inability to critically view government and media, and this means a susceptibility to propaganda. And it's more often NOT those at the bottom who fall prey to this. Oneofthe downsides of privilege is that the brain gets lazy because you don't have to work it that hard-your survival doesn't depend on it. As long as people don't have to care in terms of their immediate need-and-wish-fulfillment, they probably won't.
Certainly, character development is exactly what is needed. The US has been so morally degraded by an unacknowledged history (which remains untaught to the children) that few people will understand or embrace this, including those who are very 'well-educated' indeed. Because to really see what's happening is to realize that for our salvation nothing less is required than getting up off the privilege.
rootsie on 10.06.04 @ 04:29 PM CST [
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Monday, October 4th
Two Peoples, One State
by Michael Tarazi
srael's untenable policy in the Middle East was more obvious than usual last week, as the Israeli Army made repeated incursions into Gaza, killing dozens of Palestinians in the deadliest attacks in more than two years, even as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon reiterated his plans to withdraw from the territory. Israel's overall strategy toward the Palestinians is ultimately self-defeating: it wants Palestinian land but not the Palestinians who live on that land.
As Christians and Muslims, the millions of Palestinians under occupation are not welcome in the Jewish state. Many Palestinians are now convinced that Israeli support for a Palestinian state is motivated not by a hope for reconciliation, but by a desire to segregate non-Jews while taking as much of their land and resources as possible. They are increasingly questioning the most commonly accepted solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict - "two states living side by side in peace and security," in the words of President Bush - and are being forced to consider a one-state solution.
To Palestinians, the strategy behind Israel's two-state solution is clear. More than 400,000 Israelis live illegally in more than 150 colonies, many of which are atop Palestinian water sources. Mr. Sharon is prepared to evacuate settlers from Gaza - but only in exchange for expanding settlements in the West Bank. And Israel is building a barrier wall not on its land but rather inside occupied Palestinian territory. The wall's route maximizes the amount of Palestinian farmland and water on one side and the number of Palestinians on the other.
Yet while Israelis try to allay a demographic threat, they are creating a democratic threat. After years of negotiations, coupled with incessant building of settlements and now the construction of the wall, Palestinians finally understand that Israel is offering "independence" on a reservation stripped of water and arable soil, economically dependent on Israel and even lacking the right to self-defense.
As a result, many Palestinians are contemplating whether the quest for equal statehood should now be superseded by a struggle for equal citizenship. In other words, a one-state solution in which citizens of all faiths and ethnicities live together as equals. Recent polls indicate that a quarter of Palestinians favor the secular one-state solution - a surprisingly high number given that it is not officially advocated by any senior Palestinian leader.
Support for one state is hardly a radical idea; it is simply the recognition of the uncomfortable reality that Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories already function as a single state. They share the same aquifers, the same highway network, the same electricity grid and the same international borders. There are no road signs reading "Welcome to Occupied Territory" when one drives into East Jerusalem. Some government maps of Israel do not delineate Israel's 1967 pre-occupation border. Settlers in the occupied West Bank (including East Jerusalem) are interspersed among Palestinian towns and now constitute nearly a fifth of the population. In the words of one Palestinian farmer, you can't unscramble an egg.
But in this de facto state, 3.5 million Palestinian Christians and Muslims are denied the same political and civil rights as Jews. These Palestinians must drive on separate roads, in cars bearing distinctive license plates, and only to and from designated Palestinian areas. It is illegal for a Palestinian to drive a car with an Israeli license plate. These Palestinians, as non-Jews, neither qualify for Israeli citizenship nor have the right to vote in Israeli elections.
In South Africa, such an allocation of rights and privileges based on ethnic or religious affiliation was called apartheid. In Israel, it is called the Middle East's only democracy.
Most Israelis recoil at the thought of giving Palestinians equal rights, understandably fearing that a possible Palestinian majority will treat Jews the way Jews have treated Palestinians. They fear the destruction of the never-defined "Jewish state." The one-state solution, however, neither destroys the Jewish character of the Holy Land nor negates the Jewish historical and religious attachment (although it would destroy the superior status of Jews in that state). Rather, it affirms that the Holy Land has an equal Christian and Muslim character.
For those who believe in equality, this is a good thing. In theory, Zionism is the movement of Jewish national liberation. In practice, it has been a movement of Jewish supremacy. It is this domination of one ethnic or religious group over another that must be defeated before we can meaningfully speak of a new era of peace; neither Jews nor Muslims nor Christians have a unique claim on this sacred land.
The struggle for Palestinian equality will not be easy. Power is never voluntarily shared by those who wield it. Palestinians will have to capture the world's imagination, organize the international community and refuse to be seduced into negotiating for their rights.
But the struggle against South African apartheid proves the battle can be won. The only question is how long it will take, and how much all sides will have to suffer, before Israeli Jews can view Palestinian Christians and Muslims not as demographic threats but as fellow citizens.
Michael Tarazi is a legal adviser to the Palestine Liberation Organization.NY Times
rootsie on 10.04.04 @ 09:25 PM CST [
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Kerry, Newest Neocon
by William Safire
As the Democratic Whoopee Brigade hailed Senator Kerry's edge in debating technique, nobody noticed his foreign policy sea change. On both military tactics and grand strategy, the newest neoconservative announced doctrines more hawkish than President Bush.
First, on war-fighting in Iraq: Hard-liners criticized the Bush decision this spring not to send U.S. troops in to crush Sunni resistance in the Baathist stronghold in Falluja. Our forces wanted to fight to win but soft-liners in Washington worried about the effect of heavier civilian casualties on the hearts and minds of Iraqis, and of U.S. troop losses on Americans.
Last week in debate, John Kerry - until recently, the antiwar candidate too eager to galvanize dovish Democrats - suddenly reversed field, and came down on the side of the military hard-liners.
"What I want to do is change the dynamics on the ground," Kerry volunteered. "And you have to do that by beginning to not back off of Falluja and other places and send the wrong message to terrorists. ... You've got to show you're serious." Right on, John! Although he added his standard softener of "sharing the stakes" with "the rest of the world," he issued his radically revised military policy: wipe out resistance in terrorist strongholds like Falluja, which requires us to inflict and accept higher casualties.
...Next, to grand strategy: Kerry was asked by Jim Lehrer, "What is your position on the whole concept of pre-emptive war?" In the past, Kerry has given a safe never-say-never response, but last week he gave a Strangelovian answer: "The president always has the right and always has had the right for pre-emptive strike." He pledged never to cede "the right to pre-empt in any way necessary'' to protect the U.S.
But in embracing his right to pre-empt - always derided in horror by the two-minutes-to-midnight crowd as impermissible "preventive war" - Kerry felt the need to interject: "That was a great doctrine throughout the cold war. And it was one of the things we argued about with respect to arms control."
Hold on; nuclear pre-emption was never America's "great doctrine" during confrontation with the Soviets. Our strategic doctrine, which some of us remember, was at first "massive retaliation," later "mutual assured destruction.'' Maybe arms control negotiators listed pre-emption or preventive war as a dangerous notion of extremists, but only kooks portrayed by the likes of Peter Sellers called for a nuclear final solution to the Communist problem...
Full Article: NY Times
rootsie on 10.04.04 @ 09:20 PM CST [
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More Troubles for Diebold
Diebold, the much-criticized electronic voting machine company, got another black eye last week. A federal court in California ruled that it had violated federal law when it falsely charged two students with violating its copyrights by posting critical information about its voting machines on the Internet. The case raises more questions about Diebold's honesty and its commitment to transparency.
The story began early last year when someone - it is unclear who - posted internal Diebold e-mail messages on the Internet that discussed flaws in the company's electronic voting machines. Two students from Swarthmore College then posted those messages on various Web sites. Diebold sent out a flurry of cease-and-desist letters claiming that the postings violated its copyrights. The students sued, charging that Diebold knowingly misrepresented its rights under copyright law.
The United States District Court for the Northern District of California agreed. Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, it is illegal to send a cease-and-desist letter while knowing that the claim of copyright infringement is false. The court held that Diebold knew that its e-mail messages "discussing possible technical problems" with its voting machines were not copyrighted, but went ahead anyway.
NY Times
rootsie on 10.04.04 @ 09:09 PM CST [
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Denmark to Claim North Pole, Hopes to Strike Oil
COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Denmark aims to claim the North Pole and hunt for oil in high Arctic regions that may become more accessible because of global warming, the Science Ministry said on Monday.
It said Denmark would send an expedition to try to prove the seabed beneath the Pole was a natural continuation of Greenland, the world's biggest island and a Danish territory whose northern tip is just 450 miles from the Pole.
Science Minister Helge Sander said last week success would give Denmark access to ``new resources such as oil and natural gas.''
The potential return would outweigh the 150 million crowns ($25 million) that Denmark has allocated to the investigation.
The Danish bid rests on a U.N. convention allowing coastal nations to claim rights to offshore seabed resources. Countries that ratify it have 10 years to prove they have a fair claim to the offshore territory and its resources.
``First we have to make the scientific claim. After that there will be a political process with the other countries,'' said Science Ministry official Thorkild Meedom.
Other claimants to the area, with the Pole itself, include Russia, Canada and Norway. The United States may also make a claim.
``We're seeing a growing focus on and fight for the resources in the Arctic, especially as the global warming makes the region more accessible,'' said Samantha Smith, director of the WWF environmental group's Arctic Program.
Full Article: ReutersOk. How insane is this?
rootsie on 10.04.04 @ 09:04 PM CST [
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Sunday, October 3rd
US 'hyping' Darfur genocide fears
by Peter Beaumont
American warnings that Darfur is heading for an apocalyptic humanitarian catastrophe have been widely exaggerated by administration officials, it is alleged by international aid workers in Sudan. Washington's desire for a regime change in Khartoum has biased their reports, it is claimed.
The government's aid agency, USAID, says that between 350,000 and a million people could die in Darfur by the end of the year. Other officials, including Secretary of State Colin Powell, have accused the Sudanese government of presiding over a 'genocide' that could rival those in Bosnia and Rwanda.
But the account has been comprehensively challenged by eyewitness reports from aid workers and by a new food survey of the region. The nutritional survey of Sudan's Darfur region, by the UN World Food Programme, says that although there are still high levels of malnutrition among under-fives in some areas, the crisis is being brought under control.
'It's not disastrous,' said one of those involved in the WFP survey, 'although it certainly was a disaster earlier this year, and if humanitarian assistance declines, this will have very serious negative consequences.'
The UN report appears to confirm food surveys conducted by other agencies in Darfur which also stand in stark contrast to the dire US descriptions of the food crisis.
The most dramatic came from Andrew Natsios, head of USAID, who told UN officials: 'We estimate right now, if we get relief in we'll lose a third of a million people and, if we don't, the death rates could be dramatically higher, approaching a million people.'
A month later, a second senior official, Roger Winter, USAID's assistant administrator, briefed foreign journalists in Washington that an estimated 30,000 people had been killed during the on-going crisis in Darfur, with another 50,000 deaths from malnutrition and disease, largely among the huge populations fleeing the violence. He described the emergency as 'humanitarian disaster of the first magnitude'.
By 9 September Powell was in front of the Congressional Foreign Relations Committee accusing Sudan of 'genocide', a charge rejected by officials of both the European and African Unions and also privately by British officials.
'I've been to a number of camps during my time here,' said one aid worker, 'and if you want to find death, you have to go looking for it. It's easy to find very sick and under-nourished children at the therapeutic feeding centres, but that's the same wherever you go in Africa.'
Another aid worker told The Observer : 'It suited various governments to talk it all up, but they don't seem to have thought about the consequences. I have no idea what Colin Powell's game is, but to call it genocide and then effectively say, "Oh, shucks, but we are not going to do anything about that genocide" undermines the very word "genocide".'
While none of the aid workers and officials interviewed by The Observer denied there was a crisis in Darfur - or that killings, rape and a large-scale displacement of population had taken place - many were puzzled that it had become the focus of such hyperbolic warnings when there were crises of similar magnitude in both northern Uganda and eastern Congo.
Full Article: Guardian UK
rootsie on 10.03.04 @ 03:38 PM CST [
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Doubt over Zarqawi's role as ringleader
by Adrian Blomfield
American intelligence obtained through bribery may have seriously overstated the insurgency role of the most wanted fugitive in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
US agents in Baghdad and Fallujah have revealed a series of botched and often tawdry dealings with unreliable sources who, in the words of one, "told us what we wanted to hear".
"We were basically paying up to $US10,000 ($A13,700) a time to opportunists, criminals and chancers who passed off fiction and supposition about Zarqawi as cast-iron fact, making him out as the linchpin of just about every attack in Iraq," one agent said.
"Back home this stuff was gratefully received and formed the basis of policy decisions. We needed a villain, someone identifiable for the public to latch on to, and we got one."
Officials in Washington have linked Zarqawi to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda, casting the Jordanian extremist as leader of the insurgency, mastermind of suicide bombings and the man behind the abduction of foreign hostages.
But some critics of the war say the Bush Administration has deliberately skewed the level of Zarqawi's involvement in an attempt to portray the insurgency as a war waged by foreign Islamic terrorists.
Full Article: fairuse.1accesshost.com
rootsie on 10.03.04 @ 03:31 PM CST [
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Gunmen Attack Mauritania Security Chief's Home
NOUAKCHOTT (Reuters) - Unidentified gunmen opened fire on the house of Mauritania's national security chief early Sunday, police in the coup-prone West African country said.
``They got out of a Mercedes and shot at the house. They machine-gunned three vehicles in front of the building,'' a police officer on the scene said.
Deddahi Ould Abdallahi, director of national security and a close confidant of the president, told Reuters he was not at home at when the shooting happened at around 0200 GMT. He said his wife and children were in the house but were not injured.
``Apparently it was a car which did not have number plates with four people on board who shot at my house,'' Ould Abdallahi said in front of the single storey villa, surrounded by around a dozen uniformed and other plain clothes police officers.
The Islamic republic, a poor, mostly desert country that hopes to get rich from offshore oil, said in August it had foiled an attempted putsch.
Full Article: Reuters'Coup prone' huh? Like hurricane-prone, disease prone...inexplicable, a baffling force of nature...this is how we are encouraged to see Africa.
rootsie on 10.03.04 @ 03:26 PM CST [
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Militant Cleric Considers Entry Into Iraqi Politics
by Dexter Filkins
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 2 - The Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr has begun laying the groundwork to enter Iraq's nascent democratic process, telling Iraqi leaders that he is planning to disband his militia and possibly field candidates for office.
After weeks of watching his militia wither before American military attacks, Mr. Sadr has sent emissaries to some of Iraq's major political parties and religious groups to discuss the possibility of involving himself in the campaign for nationwide elections, according to a senior aide to Mr. Sadr and several Iraqi leaders who have met with him.
According to those Iraqis, Mr. Sadr says he intends to disband his militia, the Mahdi Army, and endorse the holding of elections. While Mr. Sadr has made promises to end his armed resistance before, some Iraqi officials believe that he may be serious this time, especially given the toll of attacks on his forces.
Mr. Sadr's aides say his political intentions have been endorsed by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country's most powerful Shiite religious leader.
NY Times
rootsie on 10.03.04 @ 03:19 PM CST [
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Saturday, October 2nd
Debt Forgiveness for Poorest Nations Only a First Step
WASHINGTON, Oct 1 (IPS) - Poor countries might need increased grants and an end to lending conditions imposed by public lenders like the World Bank (news - web sites) and IMF (news - web sites) if a proposal to cancel their debts is to really work towards ending poverty, say analysts.
The United States, the most powerful of the Group of Seven (G7) most industrialised countries that control Third World debt and whose governments dominate the executive boards of public lenders, said publicly for the first time Thursday that it is pushing for expanded debt relief for poor countries.
...In 2002, developing countries in Africa, Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean received 58 billion dollars in loans and development aid, but paid 324 billion dollars to service debts from old loans, according to the World Bank and IMF.
...Sachs says that asking poor nations to continue to repay their debts so that the World Bank can loan them the same money again or lend it to another impoverished country ”makes no sense.”
”The only thing that makes sense is the net transfer of resources from rich to poor countries, not the transfer of resources from impoverished countries to other impoverished countries,” he added.
...The same sentiment was echoed by Britain's 'Economist' magazine. ”The truth is that poor countries need more resources from the rich,” it said.
”If competition to sound most generous leads rich countries to put more money in the aid pot, then it is worth pursuing. But HIPC debt relief alone is no panacea,” added the magazine.
Full Article:yahoonews.com'Generous.' Yeah right.
rootsie on 10.02.04 @ 01:46 PM CST [
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European Public Uneasy Over Turkey's Bid to Join Union
by Elaine Sciorino
MSTERDAM, Oct. 1 - There are no minarets at the Ayasofya Mosque in Amsterdam, no marble atrium, no crystal-chandeliered prayer room. The biggest Turkish mosque here operates out of a dark, rusting hulk of a warehouse that was once a car repair and supply service.
It is a place more for meeting than for prayer. It sells subsidized groceries and meals, advertises jobs for pizza makers and factory cleaners, and offers its floors as temporary sleeping space for new migrants. It is, in other words, just the sort of place that makes many Europeans view Turks as truly foreign.
On Wednesday, the 25-member European Union is poised to take a small but important step toward deciding whether Turkey will be the first Muslim country to join its ranks. The organization's executive committee will vote on a report stating that Turkey has reformed itself enough to merit entry talks.
If the committee's recommendation is accepted unanimously by the member nations in December, there will begin a negotiating process that could drag on for a decade or more. Even then, it might not gain Turkey full membership in the union, the world's largest trading bloc.
But just the prospect of admitting a Muslim country of 71 million people - far larger than most members and with a per capita income much lower than any member - has set off a fierce, even ugly, debate over the nature of European identity.
Polls throughout Europe suggest that many share the fear first expressed by former President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing of France that Turkey is not a European country and that Turkish membership would mean "the end of Europe."
Full Article: NY TimesEurope has always felt the need to define itself according to 'the other,' and really since the Crusades the great favorite has been 'the Orient,' defined first as the Muslim world, and then as colonial domination expanded, as India and East Asia. The Orientalists even split Egypt off from the rest of Africa. But since they fancied themselves the great definers, even to the point of insisting that only they could make the 'Orient' visible to itself, they did not feel they had to pay any attention to geography, much less to the people themselves. The early Orientalists, the linguists and historians, understood that this same Near Eastern Orient was the immediate source of much of their culture, their religious and philosophic and scientific traditions, but they regarded the people themselves as incapable of self-reflection, self-control, and certainly incapable of freedom. They needed the Europeans to mediate their own cultures for them, to bring them to 'modernity,' to offer them enlightened models of government. Sound familiar? It's because exactly the same things were being said about 'the Arabs' in 1800 as are being said today, and the beginnings are far earlier in the paranoid condemnation of Mohammed and Islam. The European 'problem' with the Muslim Orient has always had to do with religion, and GW Bush is the best representative we have today of that ancient European view.
So this fretting about 'the end of Europe' reflects a long tradition of xenophobia and racism. To acknowledge Turkey as part of Europe signals to the Europeans as some disastrous defeat, the Ottomans in Austria all over again. Just check the map: 'Europe' is this embattled little white bastion in the far northwest corner of a vast landform that ends at China in the east, and at South Africa. The ferocity, the aggressive attempts to expand its borders, the philosophic and scientific traditions that attempt to prove white superiority, these all stem in large part from the precarious geographical position of Europe. They view the lands and peoples outside their 'borders' as one monolithic 'them', intent on destruction. For many centuries, they used their words to convince themselves that they had the upper hand: later they used their great volumes of studies and judgements in the service of their aggressive interventions.
Edward Said's Orientalism is an indispensable text for anyone who wants to get a bigger view of American and US preoccupations. They are bigger, and deeper, than oil and gas.
rootsie on 10.02.04 @ 01:25 PM CST [
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Mr. Tall and Mr. Small
by Greg Palast
Our President told the debate audience, "You cannot lead if you send mexxed missiges." I certainly hope not.
But that's exactly what we got. You watch our President, the nervous hand-hiding, the compulsive water-glass-fondling, the panicked I-wish-I-had-a-whiskey look, and you think, "My god, this is the guy who's supposed to save us from al Qaeda."
And how are we going to win the War on Terror, Mr. President? "First of all, of course I know Osama bin Laden attacked us. I know that," he said. Well, that's a start, I suppose.
But it doesn't have to stay this way. This is America, home of the brave and where, I remember from school, we could vote for president and the votes would count. So we looked to the tall man next to him to show us the way out.
In Iraq, "We don't have enough troops there," said the tall one. Really, Senator? We should send MORE? Not exactly: Mr. Tall's got a plan to get our troops out. He'll have a big meeting of "allies," and after he talks with them, they will all jump up and volunteer to send THEIR kids to Fallujah. France and Indonesia and Kuwait can't wait to ship in soldiers and extra body bags. Right. We love you, John, but there's no band of Hobbits coming to the rescue -- that's just a movie.
Full Article: commondreams.org
rootsie on 10.02.04 @ 12:10 PM CST [
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Israeli tanks start to reoccupy northern Gaza
by Chris McGreal
Israeli tanks and troops yesterday began the largest reoccupation of northern Gaza since the start of the Palestinian uprising four years ago.
Ariel Sharon ordered the tanks in to prevent Hamas from scuppering his plan to withdraw Jewish settlers from the territory and impose an emasculated state on the Palestinians.
The Israeli offensive follows a Hamas rocket attack that killed two small children in the Israeli town of Sderot. Israel radio quoted Mr Sharon as telling his cabinet: "What can we do? The Jews, too, have a right to live. If this entails difficulties for the Palestinians, that is part of the price."
Hundreds of soldiers backed by about 200 tanks, armoured vehicles and helicopters reoccupied the towns of Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun and took control of a 9km-wide area along the border.
The army also strengthened its force in Jabaliya refugee camp, where soldiers faced stiff resistance when they entered the Hamas and Islamic Jihad stronghold on Thursday that left nearly 30 people dead in some of the bloodiest fighting of the intifada.
At least five Palestinians were killed in Israeli rocket strikes on Jabaliya yesterday. An Israeli missile killed two Hamas fighters on a motorbike. A second rocket left three people dead, apparently all civilians, near a school.
The Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qureia, called the Israeli offensive "state terror" and called for international intervention.
Full Article: Guardian UK
rootsie on 10.02.04 @ 12:27 AM CST [
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UN Council Approves 5, 900 More Troops for Congo
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously on Friday to send another 5,900 peacekeepers to the Congo, less than half of what U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan had requested.
The U.N. mission in the vast Democratic Republic of the Congo now has a ceiling of 10,800 troops and police. Annan had wanted to add another 13,100 troops but the United States, which pays more than 25 percent of the cost, scaled down the numbers.
Expressing dismay, Annan told the 15-nation council after the vote that U.N. officials would have to review the scope of their plans, particularly in reinforcing the peace process in Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
``I continue to believe that the total military and police strength recommended in my (report) is the minimum required to effectively meet the current challenges in the DRC,'' Annan said.
But with demand for U.N. peacekeepers soaring, the Bush administration pushed hard for cuts, and approved troops only for Congo's volatile eastern regions, along the border with Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania and Uganda. France and Britain then agreed to the compromise.
After Annan spoke, U.S. representative Stuart Holliday said the increase in troops met the ``missions's current needs.''
He also said it was his understanding that the peacekeepers, which do not include American personnel, would not cooperate with the Hague-based International Criminal Court or the United States would ask for some money back.
Full Article:Reuters
rootsie on 10.02.04 @ 12:22 AM CST [
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Kissinger Cool to Criticizing Juntas in '76
by Diana Jean Schemo
WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 - In June 1976, three months after the military seized power in Buenos Aires, Henry A. Kissinger, then secretary of state, learned that the American ambassador, Robert C. Hill, had just cautioned the country's new government over its wholesale violations of human rights. Mr. Kissinger was unhappy with the warning.
"In what way is it compatible with my policy?" he asked his top official for Latin America, Harry W. Shlaudeman.
"It is not," Mr. Shlaudeman replied.
"How did it happen?" Mr. Kissinger asked.
"I will make sure it doesn't happen again," Mr. Shlaudeman promised.
"If that doesn't happen again, something else will," Mr. Kissinger persisted and then asked who had given the ambassador the instruction to lodge his complaint. "I want to know who did this and consider having him transferred."
The exchange comes from 3,216 transcripts of telephone conversations, released some 27 years after Mr. Kissinger stepped down as secretary of state in 1977. The transcripts, obtained by the nonprofit National Security Archive, appear to document in the most explicit fashion yet a reluctance on the part of Mr. Kissinger to criticize directly the military governments in Chile and Argentina, and a behind-the-scenes hostility toward forceful demands from United States diplomats that the dictators uphold civil liberties and human rights as they eliminated leftist insurgents and, more broadly, political opponents.
Mr. Kissinger was traveling and could not be reached for comment.
Full Article: NY Times
rootsie on 10.02.04 @ 12:18 AM CST [
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Freed Italian Says Rebel War Is Justified
by Ian Fisher
ROME, Oct. 1 - One of the two Italian aid workers freed after three weeks in captivity in Iraq said the fight against American troops and their allies there was not terrorism but legitimate resistance to occupation.
"I distinguish between terrorism and resistance," the woman, Simona Torretta, told an Italian daily newspaper, Corriere della Sera, in an interview published Friday. "The guerrilla war is justified, but I am against the kidnapping of civilians."
Ms. Torretta and Simona Pari, both 29, were welcomed home on Tuesday with great fanfare by a nation distraught at their kidnapping and horrified that even aid workers opposed to the war could be targets for kidnapping.
In the interview, Ms. Torretta said she believed that she and her colleague were released because they were able to convince their captors that they were opposed to the war and that they helped ordinary Iraqis.
She added, "This was a very religious and very political group, and at the end it was convinced that we were not enemies."
Ms. Torretta said she did not know anything about reports, denied by the government here though widespread in the Italian news media, that $1 million had been paid to the kidnappers. "If a ransom was paid, I am very sorry," she said. "But I know nothing about it."
Ms. Torretta, who had worked in Iraq since 1997, repeated her call for Italy to pull its 3,000 troops from Iraq, and said that neither the election called for January nor the interim government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi was legitimate. Dr. Allawi's government, she said, is "a puppet in the hands of the Americans."
Since their release, both the women have said they wanted to return to Iraq. In the interview, Ms. Torretta said she would not do so anytime soon. "I have to wait until the end of the American occupation," she said.
NY Times
rootsie on 10.02.04 @ 12:13 AM CST [
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