Hooray for Scotland. I believe Spain has already done all or much of a conversion to wind/solar.
The USA has done nothing because, I believe, [1] our educational and news (propaganda) system is lousy or corrupt and [2] our political system responds to campaign money rather than to human needs (and corporations and the vfery rich are concerned with very short-term things such as current profits rather than withn long-term things like GLOBAL WARMING and NATIONAL DEBT and ECONOMY (never mind how much they talk, they don't mean it!)
But wouldn't it fit the history (considering AIPAC's power) for Israel to strike Iran far enough before the election that Obama would either have to "help out" (like it or not) or refuse to help out and suffer the withdrawal of funds from AIPAC and of (some) Jewish votes [I expect that Evangelical votes will go republican anyhow] for his "anti-Zionism"?
I foresee a wonderful game of chicken between Bibi and Obama, with Bibi perhaps cementing/protecting his own position by an earlier election in Israel.
Would Obama rather get into a stupid war rather than say out loud to the American people, "I will not be railroaded into a war that does USA no good by Israel and its allies -- AIPAC -- in the USA." {I fear it.}
It is good to be reminded that, in days when there were few people on earth, one person's death might be a time for personal responses only: wine-drinking, sorrow, praise, religious sentiments, etc.
Today, with catastrophes of many sorts entwined around us -- aggressive wars fought to control the dollar-denomination of oil, Israel's attempt to recapture ancient dreams, world population rising out of control while many "religious" folks praise the abundance of life as an unmixed "good", global warming, the run-out of easy oil (leading to expenses) even as global warming warns us away from oil altogether -- one man's death pales in comparison.
When I am gone, though, and before that, lift a glass!
The USA has trained its citizens to watch and gobble-down ads. Also twinkies, fattening thises and thatses, and fear. The USA's admen understand selling fear. The USA sells fear of Iran's bomb. JUST AS IF it somehow threatened anyone at all, esp. the USA. Americans are taught/conditioned to believe ads, not to question them.
Feel good! Feel hungry! Feel FEAR!
Look for a tall, dark, handsome WAR in your future.
JC: "I think blockading a civilian population for the purpose of instituting regime change in a state toward which no authorization of force has been issued by the UN Security Council may well be a war crime. Even advocating a war crime can under some circumstances be punishable, as happened at the Nuremberg trials."
Perhaps you are right. How about blockading a country to persuade its citizens and their government to stop engaging in war crimes? Even w/o UNSC blessing?
I envision a BDS action against Israel, with nations cutting off trade and so forth as pressure to end the illegal occupation (siege, settlements, settlers, wall, internal checkpoints, water-stealing, etc.)
IF the 99% could regain control of government in the USA and also if the 99% are tired of stupid and unnecessary and extremely costly wars, THEN (in both the logical sense and the time sense) we could avoid this war.
But the time-scales seem wrong. The 99% has 20-50 years to go and the war is on a short fuse.
(Put on our helmets?) (Put our cars in storage -- no gs?)
JC, you write a carefully-hedged: "Now that Rick Santorum has announced that his foreign policy plan is to bomb Iran, the more level-headed elements in New York’s financial community are surely scared to death of him".
Who are these "more level-headed elements in New York’s financial community" that you mention?
What I wonder (as we all must) is whether there are any POWERFUL 1%-ers who dislike war. If so, how and when do we hear from them?
With BIG-OIL and BIG-ARMS presumably favoring all the USA's wars in the middle east, to say nothing of BIG-ZION (aka AIPAC), there does not appear to have been any countervailing force whatever urging the USA to stay out of wars. BIG-BANKs could (had they wished) been very forceful for preventing the Iraq war (planned well before 9-11), but I cannot see that they tried.
CONTINUED: As to the actual candidates, I wish commentators would pick up on Ron Paul's (asserted) incorruptibility (if only to contrast it with everyone else, of whom it is by no means asserted) and on his anti-war, anti-empire.
(He has some other positions that only a mother or some republicans could love.)
"Some have been spitting on the girls, and have beaten up non-Haredis who support the school.They complain that Zionists have invaded their neighborhood (most Haredis reject Zionism or Jewish nationalism on the grounds that it is impudent for Jews to establish a state before the Messiah comes.)"
I am confused about "establish a state before the messiah comes". I believe that non-Christians are pretty well agreed that we are in that (perhaps regrettable) time-period. OK, then, for the pious Jews, establishing a state in Zion is forbidden.
Is it forbidden for pious Jews to exercise the power of a state by -- for instance -- establishing orthodox Jewish rules as the practical laws of a present-day territory?
If Jews such as these Haredi are still in exile, must they not follow Talmud and, therefore, bow to the laws and customs of the (goyish) state in which they happen live -- even if that goyish state is, today, Israel (a state primarily of people who are not orthodox Jews -- even as it was earlier an Ottoman state or a British-controlled state?
I'd appreciate a re-do of the map: red for USA bases; green for USA bombing/attack; purple for both; blue for Israeli bombing/attack; yellow for Israeli bases (hmm, Sheba'a Farms?); black for both; STRIPES for countries touched by both Israel and the USA.
The issue of this essay is not to criticize NASA or any particular discovery.
The issue is to RESIST the tendency of the USA's MSM -- its MEGAPHONES-of-the-1% -- who will use any story, any idea, any distraction (sports, popular music, movies, fancy new consumer technology) TO TAKE PEOPLE'S MINDS OFF THE REAL PROBLEMS.
The issue is to RE-DIRECT ATTENTION WHERE IT BELONGS.
Global warming is THE ISSUE of our times, and has been had we but known since 1980 or so.
The big banks got away with it all. Riches when tricks worked, bail-outs when they didn't, and never a whiff of grape (i.e., hint of prosecutions). ALSO no renewal of Glass Steagall.
As for the people, police round demonstrators up -- but not bankers. Police defend ORDER (of a kind) but not LAW.
Yes, and a lot of drugs make people sick. For a mild example of this: Lipitor, I am told, which many elderly people take for years and years, causes muscle damage in some people.
On the whole there is a deal of make-new-business with drugs.
NYC downtown is covered by many "security" video cameras (police cameras, I imagine). Wonder if any of those cameras recorded the police action and whether, in that case, the film was destroyed.
I don't understand international banking (or national, either: what's a bank doing with credit default swaps anyhow?) but -- as to Iran -- I wonder:
Why doesn't Iran sell its oil for Yuan (Chinese currency) and begin the movement away from the dollar as the international exchange mechanism for oil? Could they? Would China like that? Can Iran easily spend dollars? Would such a step take them out of the web of banking institutions controlled by the USA?
Perhaps Newt could enlighten us all about the decline in numbers of Christians in Palestine/Israel and let us know whether, in his opinion, the outflow of Christians which began about 1948 was due to the Arab Spring or due to -- could it be? -- another cause.
Addendum: And, consider the apparent criminal aspects of BIGs: too big to jail. With morality like this, who can imagine the USA's "system" dealing morally with ANYTHING? (Another case in point: Palestine).
The political problem is that -- in USA, as you have noted -- the oligarchy makes sensible behavior nearly impossible by politicians individually and especially collectively.
Which BIG wants to abandon fossil fuels today? Possibly BIG INSURANCE, but that is not sure because they can raise rates. with BIG OIL and BIG GAS and BIG COAL pushing forward on fossil fuels, and no-one pushing back, the answer is pre-determined. SADLY, THAT'S HOW OUR SYSTEM WORKS. Neither brains nor charity nor care-for-future-generations nor any soft virtue motivates the BIGs, Look at the BIG BANKS and note that Glass-Steagall still hasn't been reinstated.
I disagree with you, Juan, about the need for arm-twisting as to Canada and Australia.
These countries seem to have their own reasons for extreme knee-jerk pro-Israelism by government and establishment -- perhaps they enjoy the beneficent services of their own AIPAC, I don't know. But their records suggest an ideological (the government's or the local AIPAC branch's, doesn't much matter) anti-Palestine mind-set rather than a result of arm-twisting.
Good summary of the reasons for world disgust with Israel.
The USA has no talent for "playing well with other children." If we will "play" at all, we want to be the leader. If the other children stop doing what we want them to do, we either make war on them (Iraq, Afghanistan, Grenada, Panama, Vietnam) or take our marbles and go home (UNESCO and UN).
Our diplomacy is all a mask for command and control, not a mechanism for coming to mutually agreeable compromises. To listen to our politicians and diplomats publicly "laying down the law" to other countries is to be appalled at USA arrogance.
If we are good at giving orders, we are also good at taking orders. Thus the predominance in USA of the BIGs (BIG BANKS, BIG OIL, BIG ARMAMENTS, BIG PHARMA, BIG ISRAEL) and our politicians have so thoroughly learned to take orders from these folks that they do not even see anything wrong or questionable when they do so. The 987 kow-tows that Congress gave Bibi in the USA's Knesset shows the lack of anything like back-bone or honor in the USA's politican establishment.
Time for the USA to think these things through, and come out with a better result. Revoking the "no-money to UN" law might be a good place to start.
Interesting story. One wonders, naturally, how "proof" of "facts" ever develops in the murky world of " " intelligence " " (I use double quotes to indicate my doubt of the appropriateness of this title, especially in the USA). Perhaps INTERPOL will be a help?
A small step (in comparison to the massive VENUS step) may nevertheless be an enormous step in comparison to where we are today, if flooding, far more extreme storms (hurricanes already doing small amounts of damage), changes in growing seasons and precipitation and VERY IMPORTANT changes in where and how plants and insects grow and in the uniform-versus-non-uniform provision of water in rivers to cities (as snowfall and glaciers change and more water falls as rain or quick-melt snow than as long-melt snow. People whose agricultural adn industrial and city water supplies dry up for most of the year (due to quick-melt snow as their local climate warms up) might well "have" enough water but "have" it all of a sudden and not for the rest of the year.
Don't need VENUSIAN temperatures to make life even more uncomfortable than it already is in many places.
If the price of oil rose "astronomically", because of Saudi action, the USA would either have to employ military action to replace the Saudi regime -- and enslave the Saudi people -- or admit that all those armies in the oil-producing region that we've been paying for through all these years are paper tigers (at least today), put in place more to enrich MIC (war-profiteers) than to advance any (other) USA "national" interest. Not a choice that the MIC would want to see made.
Nice analysis of the USA's "democracy". My guess is that, in all societies, if there is both an elite and a democracy, the elite will find a way to overcome the democracy, to "capture" it. As you say, it surely happened here, both via LOBBYING (leading to "administrative capture" -- capture of the regulators by the regulated) and "legislative and executive capture", capture of the legislative organs of state by the very rich.
Yes, how do you know? Are we to trust murderers sent to perform assassination to tell the truth? And were they on oath? And so on.
As to do I want Bachmann or Perry to have sole discretion to assassinate anyone at all, anywhere at all, on any grounds or no grounds at all, and all without any court intervention ("due" or not).
Warning: the groveling US S/C might, if asked, rule that there was NO process "due" to any person whatever accused by any other person whatever of being a "terrorist" and that, therefore, punishment, even the death penalty, may be imposed BY THE GOVERNMENT at will, all "due process" having been (trivially) satisfied. However, this court has not, to my knowledge, been asked to rule on this one.
Americans have been made more than merely docile by our consumption-oriented, entertainment-oriented, individual-over-collective-oriented culture.
Until we all got poor, people only thought about "me, me, me" and "buy, buy, buy" and not about "us, us, us."
OK. so, consumerism. Consumerism without political involvement.
Now there is massive unemployment, underemployment, no jobs for new graduates or much of anyone else, and THE PEOPLE DO NOT HAVE A FEELING FOR ORGANIZING.
The Wall Street Event is nice, but SO SMALL! How will Americans "take back" the constitution, the government, etc.? HOW WILL LIBERAL/PROGRESSIVE ANGER overcome the ANGER-FROM-FRUSTRATED-PRIVILEGE which we see in the Tea Party?
If women's rights are indeed relics of pre-Islamic tribal customs, then perhaps the varieties of "modest dress" requirements imposed by various Islamic societies (or imams) are also tribal and ancient relics rather than well-argued outcomes of interpreting Islamic requirements.
The whole-body covering of some countries is so very different from the veil and/or hair-covering of some others, that it seems likely that ALMOST ALL these modern customs are non-Islamic in origin, but picked up 1400 years ago and CALLED Islamic.
NO, Arabs do not favor democracy more than we do, but all citizens value it equally, and all governments try to subvert it in the interest of the power of big-money.
USA (pols, media) refuse to look at how we offend and injure other people, because to look at it is to spoil our USA-ONLY-IMAGE of nice guys.
Americans love their "democracy" but do not know that it was stolen from them by the government-for-sale system that works so well in the USA to [1] make government responsive to big-money interests and so unresponsive to people's needs and [2] make the slogan-word "democracy" a lie (in the USA).
Egyptians and Palestinians and others also like the slogan and have high hopes and fervent desire of getting an actually democratic government. (So do I, here in USA, or if not high hopes then at least fervent desire).
In the 19th century, when empire and colonialism were WELL RESPECTED in England, Europe, USA, media and pols could still tell the truth about their doings in the world to their own citizens.
Now, imperialism and colonization are still in great favor with some powerful governments (USA, Israel prominent among them) but not in favor with USA citizens and so USA's media, busily protecting the government against the citizens, must conceal what we do (and what Israel does).
So, NO, Arabs do not favor democracy more than we do, but all citizens value it equally, and all governments try to subvert it in the interest of the power of big-money.
If USA were rational about its own well-stated problems (over-spending, over-borrowing) and its "ally"-'s demand (and actual agreement), we'd get outta Iraq by 12/31 (perhaps leaving behind much expensive military equipment, etc. (As Gaddafi has done in abandoning Libya) and making a mockery of the world's largest USA embassy.
If soldiers are a "jobs" program, bring 'em home and let them repair bridges in Vermont and damage in Louisiana from earlier hurricanes.
But USA is not rational -- the leaders have a dream, a wonderful dream of a vast military empire, infinite money available to pay its extremely high costs, no necessity to justify either its costs or its existence (other than national macho pride for the USA's militants).
Israel: "According to him, our security situation has never been better". And yet the siege of Gaza continues, presumably being necessary to (and helping to provide) Israel's security. And the small tiff with Turkey is not to be worried about. Oh, happy Israel.
USA is not alone in suffering from too-high military spending. Here is Gideon Levy on Israel
Light tension has in recent weeks entered our relations with the neighboring state, though these relations remain excellent - thanks for asking. Their leaders may feel a twinge, as the far tips of their wings are clipped; but the damage is not serious. Since its establishment, the state of the Israel Defense Forces has lived amicably alongside the State of Israel. Borders between the two states are well-known, and are defensible. Ambassadors of this other state carry out their roles successfully within the State of Israel; they lobby and apply pressure, typical in relations between delegates of one regional power and those of another.
How about fair (high marginal) taxes for the rich, and prayer-breakfasts for the rich at which they can examine the enormous wealth which will remain to them after paying those taxes?
And let's keep a list of the topics that are "unspeakable" in the (im)polite society of American politics?
Reducing the vast military empire (and its costs) by 50%?
Global warming responses in place of dithering (and this means no more exploration or production of tar-sands oil, frakked gas, etc.)
Ending USA's permission to Israel to violate international law by keeping settlers ANYWHERE within territories occupied in 1967, whether or not Israel intends to demand to keep these particular parts of the OPTs after a peace.
Whether the low-low-low capital requirements for banks makes any sense after the calamities we've already seen (and not only inside the USA) due to this gambling-encouraging low-margin system.
Appointment of judges is a very difficult problem.
Appointment of judges by governors and legislators is, indeed, political. Election, however, is also very, very political and involves judges in corruption (they must get election-campaign funds from somewhere, at least where such funds are necessary -- as in USA). And as to "extremists", consider well the pro-DEATH PENALTY judges in states such as Texas (where, usually, the death penalty is overwhelmingly applied to racial minorities).
Appointment of judges by other judges? Might be OK if the original population of judges was OK. But how would that happen? and how would you know if it had happened?
Appointment of judges by bar associations? Who do their members mostly represent?
The CIA said they did not REPORT against (or w.r.t.) Cole, but said nothing about if they were ASKED TO DO SO or if THEY DID ANY INVESTIGATION of him. Their answer was careful and non-complete and leads a careful reader to suppose they DID some sort of investigation. (An investigation would presumably have been OK, or more nearly OK, if it looked only at his commumications with non-Americans not on USA-soil).
Yes, when USA's policy is determined not by the needs of the American people but by the desires (usually very short-term) of corporations (the BIGS: BIG BANKS, BIG ARMS, BIG AGRI, BIG OIL, BIG ISRAEL, etc ad naus) there are two sorts of extremely negative fall-out.
First, these BIGs have no "brief" to look at or to understand the BIG PICTURE; they desire quick profits for themselves. That means that there is nobody (nobody of importance, that is) looking at the BIG PICTURE. The USA car rushes along the highway with one BIG controlling the gas pedal, another the brakes, a third the windows, a fourth the mirrors; but no-body driving tthe car knows or cares where the car is going.
Second, because the USA has graciously allowed the "leadership" of the BIGs to be exercised through the expenditure of money (campaign finance contributions, largely) andd since the USA pays thes BIGs so well, they can skim a small part off their profits and use that small part to purchase (as I see it) other and further and continuing influence over the government.
The USA pays the BIGS lavishly to bribe the USA a good deal less than lavishly.
GLOBAL WARMING HAS BEEN IGNORED IN THIS COUNTRY BECAUSE NO-ONE IS MINDING THE STORE. And also because BIG OIL, BIG COAL, BIG GAS oppose stopping the exploration for and production and sale of fossil fuels.
It's rather as if a patient with cancer (over-use of fossil fuels) goes to the doctor only to find that the doctor has been paid by the cancer o refuse treatment.
Thanks for this showing of the PROFOUND EVENTS and SENSIBLE REPORTING in the Middle East and the SMALL EVENTS and RIDICULOUS REPORTING here.
Non-reporting by USA's MSM is a major form of pro-imperial corruption, as it prevents USA's people from knowing what's what out there in order to inform political activity here. Of course.
Non-reporting by USA's MSM of continuous peaceable uprisings against Israeli occupation are another aspect of pro-imperial (Israeli empire, here) corruption.
For years I have wondered when (if ever) people would (again) talk about over-population. I'm still wondering, or waiting. Too much CO2 and methane? Surely it would go down if the number of people went down, especially in high-CO2-producing countries like the USA. Too little food? Ditto.
Nothing is served by an increasing population adn much would be served by a steeply decreasing population.
How to do it? Well, EITHER by deliberate-rational-humane-decision-making; OR by starvation, war, etc., brought onto (usually helpless) people by the failure of humane behavior of the world's leaders.
When you look at the working of the oligarchic political system so favored by free-market-capitalism (in which the buying and selling of legislative votes plays so great a part), it is hard to imagine the circumstances under which the path of starvation-war-emigration-atrocity so very, very much favored (in effect) by the capitalist masters will ever be replaced by anything humane.
Seems to be something in the (macho, male ?) psyche that leaps, positively leaps, to the idea of the propriety of torture whenever a victim who dislikes you enough can be found. Then they argue "ticking bombs". then they decide they don't even need "ticking bombs", they just love torture so much. "Oh goody, torture. Please, mommy, can I have one?"
Obama seems no different. While one never knows who it is that LOVES torture, they evidently love it enough to scare other people (who may not love it) enough to quieten them. Obama must run an ENORMOUS BEHEMOTH MIC and cannot really afford to turn significant parts of it off. (Remember Kennedy.)
I'm an old curmudgeon living (sometimes uncomfortably) in the (non-late) 20th century: I have no cellphone, no iXXX, etc. Therefore I have not faced these problems. (My problem, often, is finding a payphone.)
As to 4th amendment, already in tatters under the merciless onslaught of the S/C in service of the police-state (did the founding fathers really provide the 4th with a love of the police-state? Wasn't there an unpleasant memory of the British "writs of assistance" to make unwarranted searching deeply abhorrent to Americans?), computer files may look like "effects", but to me they also look like "papers", also purportedly protected by the 4th ["The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures"]). The Court has whittled the 4th away to not much by reducing the meaning of "unreasonable", arguing that in various contexts people have no reasonable expectation of privacy. As when, I suppose, crossing national borders.
I've heard of "suicide watches", but "Casio watches"? And these are what passes for "information" or "intelligence" sufficient to be presented as a sufficient justification for arrest? for holding? for transportation? and maybe for conviction (but of what?).
Imagine trying to cut the world's use of coal/oil/gas (from concern for greenhouse gas emission) when the great powers (USA, UK, BP, EXXON, and similar) are so determined to continue this madness that they were willing to engage in a $1T war (Iraq) to further their own (private and narrowly political) ends.
The strangle-hold that the big corporations have on world politics would not be so bad if the corporations only had something like a leaven of good sense or good intention. (Democracy is so imperfect that oligarchic control could, in principle, be an improvement).
But nothing suggests that the big corporate interests are capable of entertaining a thought relating to the "general good", be it deficit reduction, mild-normal-environmental-protection, or horrendous-environmental-disaster-prevention (global warming, maybe BP's various big oil spills).
We live in a world of 1000-lb gorillas (the corporations, the politicians) which appear to have no more than the moral capacity of a butterfly between them.
There is a tendency, in USA's courts, to limit constitutional limits on government action in times when people (and courts) are scared, and then to return to (or merely toward) the earlier limits after the emergency is over.
However, where, as with GWB etc., the "scare" is endless (war to the end of time), the constitution has a particularly hard time.
It's time for people to get up on their hind legs and tell the government that we prize our liberties and are (therefore) willing to take (some) chances with enemies, terrorists, etc. Otherwise "The baby has already been thrown out with the bathwater."
Same deal with the government's use of "state secret privilege" to decline to provide evidence to non-state-parties (and thereby make them lose their cases!).
It is painful to see the eclipse of any useful sort of democracy in the USA. Read Matt Taibbi's "Griftopia" (2010) for a racy take on how the Billionaire's, fronted for by Alan Greenspan and assisted by the Tea Partiers, managed this trick.
In the context of this web-site, so concerned with Muslim matters, it is interesting that the problems of the USA's economy (and the world's) began with "bubbles" in internet stocks and housing, bubbles funded by interest-free money churned out by the "Fed" -- whereas Islamic theory (I am sure I don't know the practices) forbids interest (usury) and could not (I imagine) produce a bubble worth many, many trillions of dollars (as the Greenspan and Bernanke, Bush and Obama government-of-for-and-by billionaires has done).
Maybe someone could translate Jefferson's seminal democratic thought into English, so it would be available to remind American audiences what we are busy losing, as the GWOT becomes a AWOL (down with American liberties) in our bright and shining security-state.
"Someone please drive a stake through the heart of this tyrannical and unconstitutional Act."
Someone has already driven a stake through the heart of our Supreme Court. My sense is that "state secret" and "national security" do not appear in the text of the USA Constitution. But common law is a wonderful invention which gives judges the right to invent law. The law is (always) what the judges say the law is.
Hence : Money is Speech and Corporations (who own the money) are Persons -- and therefore enjoy free (political) speech.
Hence: criminal investigations are sometimes acts of war (if the alleged or suspected criminal is described by some low-level low-life -- not necessarily even a government law enforcement type -- as a "terrorist") (labeling is wonderful, so powerful!).
I'm all for it. Together with a healthy dose of (voluntary) family-size and thus human-population-size management (reduction). A free iPod (or something) to any female who agrees to be sterilized (also free)? (Sorry to be sexist, but males cannot have babies.)
How houses now heated by gas or fuel oil burning will be heated by electricity is a bit of a problem, as is how airplanes will fly without jet fuel. But these are small problems compared to the costs of continuing to flood the atmosphere with greenhouse gases.
If King will demand that extremist Zionists (American supporters of Israel's occupation, settlement project, and siege of Gaza, all three illegal at international law and grotesque violations of Palestinian human rights) recant and speak against these atrocious Israeli practices, I will hear with favor his demands on American Muslims (who do not, by and large, support terrorism anywhere by anyone) to strengthen their voices within the general American cry against terrorism. Not until then.
IRA is old hat. There are major, major illegalities going on today, and the acts of a few terrorists are the least of them.
I'd like to see Egypt (which imagine, perhaps incorrectly, to be far more powerful militarily than Libya) intervene either on humanitarian grounds or as an ally of the rebels or as a self-protective measure. But I've heard nothing of Egyptian intervention.
I wrote about Egypt coming to Libya's rescue, humorously, here, but neither intervening nor remaining aloof is a clearly useful, safe, correct, etc., role for Egypt.
When you need a friend! (Reminds me of the Spanish Civil War, Hitler and Mussolini eager to help one side, USA communists and USSR anxious to help the other, USA making it ILLEGAL for USA citizens to arm or fight for the anti-Franco forces.
7. Protesters march every week in occupied Palestine. Israel arrests Israeli Jews, Palestinian Arabs, and internationals constantly for making peaceful demonstrations denouncing the settlements and outrages in East Jerusalem. Much was, in fact made of these demonstrations and these arrests at the opening ceremonies for the "J-Street" conference in Washington, DC, this weekend.
I'd respectfully request that any "To Do" list for the Middle East include an item for Israel/Palestine even if the "What To Do" may be rather unclear. This one is NOT going away.
This is my take, too, reluctantly, because I permitted myself to believe that he would be different. It may be simply that he is by personality not equipped to say "NO" to anyone strong -- billionaires, the US Military, the CIA, the military-industrial-mercenary-outsourcing-Congressional-MSM-university-thinktank complex, you name it.
Well, these are very, very powerful social phenomena, and presidents have been assassinated (Kennedy) perhaps because they thought to oppose part of all this.
But your bottom line is not about the causes for President Obama's behavior, but the behavior itself, which is surely reactionary in the extreme.
"It makes a person think there should be rule that no one can run for the presidency who didn’t have a proper father figure in his or her life (Bill Clinton, W., Obama), since apparently once they get into office they start thinking the billionaires are their long-lost parent, whom they have to bend over backward to please."
Was G.H.W.Bush a "father figure for G.W.Bush? I don't know. The "trap", it seems to me, is not a search for undeserving father figures by presidents, but a determination to be re-elected (and a consequent search for bags of money) that sends politicians to court the billionaires.
The "best Congress that money can buy" was no joke when first uttered and no joke today, embracing our own "father figure", the president pro tem, Barack Obama today.
That is why I proposed he give up on re-election in order to free himself to act like a statesman.
The PLO/PA/Fatah is corrupt in much the same way, being on the payroll of USA/Israel/EU/Quartet and should -- to act in a statesmanlike manner -- resign and let Israel run things again, concentrating on making good relations with Turkey, China, the South Americans, etc., and seeking salvation in UNSC or, failing that, the UNGA.
In every country, people (formerly the poor, nowadays the poor and middle-class) wish for a government dedicated to their good rather than to the good of foreigners, the very rich, etc.
Here, in USA, we see the bankers and various other of the very rich getting ridiculously richer -- and getting bailed out when they have screwed up -- while everyone else is static or worse, and the national debt increasing as if without limit, and still the government (and pols of both major parties) treat our nuttily expensive military-imperium as a "sacred cow" that cannot be touched, cannot be reduced, even as it is seen to do no good whatever.
Americans should be feeling envious of the Egyptians who, if they have nothing else, have at least their pride and their revolution.
You write: "The Obama administration appears to be rethinking its position in the region, worried that if popular revolts like that of Tunisia spread and succeed, the US will suffer from its support of the dictators unless it now at least urges them to democratize."
Many people wonder whether the Obama administration has a master plan, a theory of foreign policy, or whether (as the above suggests) IT SHOOTS FROM THE HIP, MORE OR LESS CLUELESS.
Also, it may be that where you have an immense bureaucracy (OK, DoS is small compared to DoD, but still large), re-directing it is like re-directing an oil-tanker -- very difficult because a lot of momentum, momentum from the BUSH ERA. (And it doesn't help that a lot of Bush-era political appointees have been kept on).
THIS SUBJECT -- IS THERE A PLAN, AND WHO IS RUNNING THINGS, SHOULD BE A CONTINUING THREAD HERE.
Fatah has long been accused, by Palestinians, of corruption. Thus the (comparatively recent) electoral victory of Hamas. These revelations merely show what corrupt politicians may be forced to do in order to keep the goodies-from-Israel-to-themselves coming.
Perhaps they rationalized that the proposed giveaways would never materialize because [1] the ratifying plebecite would reject such dreadful terms and [2] in any case, Israel would never accept EVEN these abject peace proposals. Perhaps, that is, it was all smoke and mirrors, shadow puppetry.
However, Israel's strategy (never a secret, mind, but never so clearly stated, either) is now manifest: no peace, no 2SS.
The time has come (and the way has been made clear, the underbrush removed) for the international community to speak roughly to their little child and beat it when it sneezes. Israel has sneezed. A UNSC resolution (the first of a graduated series of increasing puissance, I hope) is ready for passage.
Obama offered to veto unpleasant UNSC votes, and Israel refused his offer. OK. time for UNSC to get serious.
"It is not impossible that such a development, i.e.Hizbullah dominance, could lead to US and Israeli action against the new government, whether a covert action or a military attack."
"I'd prefer "might well be used by USA and/or Israel as a pretext to make an unprovoked attack" rather than what you said, "could lead". Somehow, the colorless language of "could lead" camouflages the nature of the agency involved. Would the USA or Israel be "forced" to attack? No. Justified in law? No.
Language matters. There is a world of difference between "John died of a gunshot would to the head:" and "I shot John, without provocation, and he died of his wounds."
I suspect that most people who commit violent crime are a bit (or more than a bit) different mentally from the great number of people who do not. If claimed Mental Illness were relevant to crime (e.g., an exoneration), the jails would empty. A good thing?
But the epithet "Mental Illness" is thrown around too easily. Perhaps all those folks that the USA actually calls terrorist (and not just the people who fit various reasonable definitions of terrorist) are as aptly labelable as "Mentally Ill". But if we do not use that label with Arab, Muslim, Columbian, Basque terrorists, then we (and Prof. Cole among us) should not use it with "White Terrorists."
Graham is not alone in having been wrong about everything in the Middle East for a decade and a half. One could say that about the US (and UK) as well.
And he is (part of) the US government that some (misguided?) people think will or should impose peace on Israel and Palestine? Can a know-nothing or dishonest "broker for peace" be an honest or honorable or knowledgeable "imposer of peace"?
As the USA slid into national serfdom (and groveling servitude) to the large corporations and other sources of great wealth (and not merely oil companies), it voluntarily gave up any sort of responsible stewardship for the environment, human rights, fair economic rules, etc. In short, it gave up on an active and involved and thoughtful concern for the good of the people of the USA and of the world. Perhaps a great benefit of WikiLeaks is that bit points this up.
A recent report states that the USA has been transferring nuclear materials to Israel (2010 !) to augment Israel's nuclear weapons capabilities. Is there any way to verify this? Could be an anti-Israeli (and anti-USA) hoax. But this story, if true, belongs as a part of the present essay.
"the filthy rich and the US Republican Party (there, I’ve been redundant)."
Oh, come on! Do you say that no Democrats suck at the same teat? Why then has Obama gone all ga-ga about the very rich, those oh so deserving few (indeed, very, very few) who own (what is it?) 25%, 30% of USA's wealth already and need tax breaks (income and tax and inheritance tax) so badly if they are going to be able to get to the magic 50% before "the people" catch up to them?
give us a break@! (But I know what you meant: by Reublicans you meant "politicians").
The refusal of the Obama Administration to investigate and prosecute violations (now openly confessed) of American laws by Bush&Co is as ugly a stain on the USA as any other recent one, of which there are many. However, this refusal (and the running of applicable American statutes of limitations, if any) should energize all ICC-like universal-jurisdiction efforts to arrest these splendid examples of American manhood. How this would play out in light of the very many anti-ICC treaties the USA has forced on the world remains to be seen.
Americans -- some of us -- are yearning for a government that does not break the law itself (as by torture), which punishes those who do (Bush, Cheney, et al.), and which seeks to use its courts (and court-like commissions) to secure justice rather than seeking to punish its enemies. But others seek almost the opposite.
Obama has so little to look forward to legislatively or by way of re-election that the best path (or at least the statesmanlike path) would be to abandon re-election and legislation (and thus all personal need for fund-raising and concomitant slavery) and then use the UNSC to gather international pressure on Israel to either end the occupation or make its "legal" by removal of all settlers, dismantlement of all settlements and the wall, etc., say within 1-year (or 6-months).
I cannot think of any step which would be more roundly applauded by peaceable Americans or American admirers of the rule-of-law. And I cannot think of any step so apparently anodyne (just enforcing the law, nothing arbitrary here, no dictation of peace terms here) so likely to make the Israelis see that making a just and lasting peace was in their interest.
And conversely, I can think of nothing so likely to stiffen the Israeli back against a just and lasting peace (if that is presently possible) as to condone any settlements, and especially those in so-called Jerusalem.
God gave mankind (and individuals) a free hand, free will, the opportunity to opt for evil, to be resolutely ignorant, to be resolutely egoistic. Many people have chosen all these paths, and many more act (or fail to act, much the same thing) because their education was lousy and their on-going education (MSM, etc.) fails to tell them of their options and the perils that face mankind and themselves.
President Obama (like all presidents, past as well) COULD tell it like it is (as Al Gore more or less did in his movie about global warming), but they don't. I imagine that the personality traits that make for a good candidate are the opposite of the traits that make for a good conservator of the earth. they (like most of us) are too busy being busy to take time out for the really important, the long-term.
Excellent article. USA sinking. "Spurlos versenkt". And continuing fighting in Afghanistan because India demands it (but doesn't pay for it?).
And dear, dear Hillary, with that little-girl smile, pretending to "do" foreign policy when the USA has forgotten how to co-operate but has outgrown its self-image as superpower, has over-spent, and has so little power (other than war-fighting power) that it cannot even control its supposed ally, Israel.
They're all laughing at us, and Juan tells it like it is.
Thanks for posting the statute. Makes it a smidge harder for USA to ignore the ACLU's call. (BTW, is ACLU sponsoring a petition for this?).
Doing torture is a "perk" for some government employees (or contract mercenaries). Most government "servants" are satisfied (as to "perks") to make tons of money (as contractors or via the revolving door, usually) from mis-directing the USA, but some need the heady rush of adrenaline that comes from torturing others, the heady rush that many rapist seek. Human rights? USA is as unconcerned with H/R as anyone else, as any dictator, and merely mouths platitudes occasionally as a form of politesse or 'political correctness'. Preventing terrorism? Come on! The USA practices terrorism and supports many regimes that do. And the USA's military-industrial-Congressional-academia complex NEEDS terrorism (in the absence of any other "enemies'). Our wars and war-fighting techniques and practices are manufacturing enemies and terrorists on an industrial scale. IT IS FALSE that the USA seeks to reduce terrorism. The torture was for "kicks", not part of a coordinated plan to protect Americans.
And not to excuse the idiot Congressmen) but * * * the CO2 and CH4 we put up there now will still be there for years and years, doing greenhouse duty, and unless some magic comes along, we cannot call it back. In other words, the ill effects come LONNNGGGG after the dirty deeds are done, and many people cannot believe in a tragedy of their own making which has so long a lead-time that they cannot "see" cause and effect.
Same thing applies to over-population. A local drought can really be hard to take if you've built up the population on the assumption of continuous plenty (of drinking water, of food).
There are reports of Chinese-Iranian-Turkish cooperation on various projects, oil/gas-related and defense-related. To what extent do the USA's sanctions against Iran sit well with China? Surely a time will come when the USA's vainglorious I-rule-the-world-as-of-right (because I am a light unto the nations, I suppose) will grow a bit thin, and then where will we be? And what will the tea-partyers say then?
Well argued. The USA belief in war as an economic panacea (Broder) or as a macho thing to do (many: millions for defense, not a dime in tribute -- my country right or wrong, my mother drunk or sober -- USA and Israel rise or fall together -- a lot of people are easily energized for war, especially with a "volunteer" army in which they need not serve, paid for by ever-growing debt to China as our economy appears ever less successful) is not evidence-based. It is a religion, whether of the economists or of the sabre-rattlers.
One bad effect of all our wars (and of our bad economy) is that the USA seems incapable of stepping out of its spoiler role w.r.t. global warming; it is as if we are saying, "don't bother me, I'm busy" when the threat described by scientists as the likely and even the present-day effects of global warming is real and immense and the reasons for starting (and for continuing) war with Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran are trumped-up, silly, ephemeral, ideological.
My model for these things (climate, Israel) always includes this question: where are the "Good Germans"? That is, given that there is wide awareness of a (moral, political, blah-blah) problem, and limiting attention to those who DO know (but don't all literate people know about climate change by now? and about Israel's destruction and siege of Gaza and the UN report?), what proportion are ignoring the situation and pursuing other goals (where will I get a good cup of coffee? what shall I buy for my next car? how can I act politically to reduce my taxes?) and what proportion are trying, in some way, to ameliorate a bad situation, to act responsibly? And guess which are the "Good Germans".
Suzuki is saying that shortage of food will precede (as a dominating world-catastrophe) the on-rushing shortage of potable and agricultural water (but this is part of the food problem) and the ill effects of global warming.
Each of these is an obvious consequences of over-human-population of the world, especially in high-consumption places (such as North America and Europe and, coming soon to theaters near you, China).
Planning for reducing world population by 1/4 ("it takes 1.3 years to replace what humans exploit in a year") (doing the arithmetic: 0.75 * 1.3 = .975) should be taks-number-1 (that is, planning and DOING it). But as with so many important problems, this one goes without discussion.
A list of the topics which the powerful of the world will themselves to be silent about, which power suppresses as mere topics, would be scary reading. Many thanks to David Suzuki and Juan Cole for calling this particular one to our attention.
BTW, and not as an important criticism, that "1.3" is suspiciously one-dimensional, and hides a lot of details. Fisheries or the amount of arable soil or the amount of water available for agriculture may be diminishing faster (or slower) than that "1.3" suggests. But the idea of working hard (and soon) to deliberately and HUMANELY reduce human populations (before they are reduced by the violence of and likely to attend food and water shortages). For starters, we could all support voluntary means for avoiding unwanted births world-wide. We could also start talking about all this. As a 70-year old, I am willing to start the discussion of elders supporting youngers by clearing ourselves out of the way. But like others, I am selfish and am not ready to ask my doctor for a pill yet.
"Secretary of State Hillary Clinton condemned the massive leak on grounds that it will endanger US troops." An oddly revealing comment! She's evidently talking (as usual) to herself, her colleagues (in that self-protective cocoon called the USA establishment), maybe the American people.
But Wikileaks is not responsible to the USA government (or people). It was trying to give the people of the world ammunition to defend itself against the USA.
If she merely meant to criticize whoever made the initial leaks, well, she'd be on sounder ground to criticize that brave soul for breaking USA law. Because the leaker undoubtedly wanted to protect the world from the USA military machine, and not the other way around.
Zionism's justifications may have been pretexts, but a lot of people believed them THEN and a lot (more) believe the REVISED PRETEXTS that have sprung up to continue to justify Zionism (sometimes retroactively) -- much as GWBush adduced so many reasons (PRETEXTS) (and probably never the real reason) for starting the Iraq war.
My hope is that even those who believe that the Holocaust (unknown to Herzl in 1896 and to Jabotinsky in 1920) justifies the stealing of ADEQUATE territory for a national home for Jews -- that even those will come to conclude that it does not justify taking ALL of that land (a in 2010), or even as much as was taken in 1948 (altho I do not expect anyone seriously to ask Israel to give "back" any of the pre-1967 territory, e.g., to the (then world-agreed) UN-181 proposed boundaries.
This article seems correct. One cautionary observation, though.
Unless the world is to have a steadily increasing human population forever, there must be a model (and, later, a reality) of either a steady-state or a decreasing world human population. And the same, I suppose, goes for particular countries, especially "western" or "industrialized" or "global-warming-contributing-more-than-their-share" countries.
So, even as politicians (who all seem to have short-term time horizons) try to increase the tax-base which pays for the retirement of their elderly-who-will-be-subsidized by bringing in more young workers (by birth or immigration or both), this is not a "solution" to all the world's ills which will "fly" forever.
Chile enjoyed the attention of the USA when Salvador Allende was ejected in favor of Augusto Pinochet; it was widely thought that the USA encouraged this regime-change. Perhaps that laid ground-work for the mine disaster as also for other labor/management relations.
The USA's military (and CIA) has often been used to invade or change governments in small countries for the apparent purpose of protecting the interests of (American?) corporations doing business there. (For example, the use of USA forces to protect United Fruit Company in so-called "Banana Republics" as if they contained nothing of interest other than bananas for export to the USA.) The anticipated reward to such corporations from such interventions is obvious. The anticipated reward to the USA (e.g., from taxes collected attributable to the by-intervention-increased income of the corporations) is undisclosed. Whether such increased taxes would pay the costs of the interventions has never been openly discussed. Whether such increased taxes, in toto, would pay for the grotesquely enormous USA military-and-intelligence establishment, year-in-and-year-out, has never been disclosed but -- I would seriously doubt it.
We USAers pay for this army, etc, but the benefits of its use go to a few corporations and we citizens pay -- it would seem -- far, far too much for these services.
And, then, there are the problems of the people who actually live in countries which have suffered USA imperial interventions. Let us recall that we often treat our own people better than we treat foreigners; and then think of all the mine disasters here in the USA. As a clue to USA concern and intervention w.r.t. mine-workers in such countries.
I do not expect to see purple cows exhibiting concerns for human rights, nor do I expect to see corporatists or imperialists exhibiting concerns for human rights. It is simply beyond the pale, not to be thought of.
I agree with you that, among all media people, Stewart is perhaps the least deserving of a blast for racism or the like.
And I agree that Jews generally in the USA are a minority, occasionally still oppressed.
What Sanchez seems to have meant, however, is that the Jews with cushy jobs in media, and the Jewish multi-millionaires who own or control so many media outlets -- that these people, even if a minority (and the entire class of millionaires is a tiny minority of Americans after all!), are not an oppressed minority (even if they are a minority and part of the larger and occasionally still oppressed minority of Jewish Americans).
What's going on here? The USA, said to be a democracy, cannot act on global warming (CO2 and methane reduction) because the people have not been taught to see it as an emergency and because the corporations (ever short sighted and short-term-bottom-line oriented) interfere with useful action. And, as most fear, the corporations have much more to say about USA governance than the people, anyway.
OK, what about the dictatorships? Is China doing any better? Apparently, yes, it is doing better, but it is not doing enough because it has a huge population eager to live "the good life" (i.e., in effect, to produce high amounts of CO2 and methane per capita).
And no-one wants to take hard steps unless others will do so as well.
Juan Cole, Thanks for this. Many Americans have watched the USA's retreat from concern with the RULE OF LAW in international affairs (and even at home) with outrage, sadness, and fear. The 43-year ignoring and effective trashing (by USA and Israel) of the Fourth Geneva Convention is a case (and an important case) in point. The USA (that is, most of its "leaders" and the money-men behind those often puppet-like "leaders") believes itself "too big to fail" meaning, among other things, immune from prosecutions (as to itself, its leaders, armed forces, etc.) under international law. So far those who believe this have nothing to complain of.
We Americans are to our national body politic like cells in a human body corrupted (elsewhere) by cancer. We are not ourselves sick, nor are we ourselves a cause of the decline of the body of which we are a part, but the cancer is spreading and we will ultimately suffer for it.
Actually, there is a big difference between Democrats and Republicans.
Republicans dance to the tune of the big-money boys and do so by "leaders" (or actors) (aka politicians) who appeal to unrealistic and ideological fears (such as fear that families will somehow not remain intact or sacrosanct--hence stress on the importance of "family values" and opposition to birth control, abortion, homosexuality) (fear of military insecurity) (and also appeal to fear of witchcraft, fear of goblins, fear of dark corners) but do not publicly reveal their true purposes (further enrichment of the already unreasonably rich).
Their stated purposes rarely conflict directly with their hidden purposes. Thus, they are unconflicted. They know where they are going, know what they must do to get there, know who pays the freight, and as errand-boys are fearless in doing what must be done.
Democrats, too, dance to the tune of the big-money boys and do so by "leaders" (or actors) (aka politicians) who must disguise this real program. In this the two parties are the same.
Democrats, however, often appeal to the middle class and poor on purely practical grounds of dispelling quite realistic fears (fear of lack of medical care, fear of impoverished old age, fear of being discriminated against, as examples) and in a rather disorganized fashion sometimes tepidly push forward social legislation. But, like Republicans, Democrats do not publicly reveal their true purposes (further enrichment of the already unreasonably rich). Their stated social-program purposes often conflict directly with their hidden purposes. Thus, they are conflicted. And tepid in their public pronouncements.
Democrats don't really know where they are going, don't know what they must do to get there, do always know who pays the freight, and are tugged back and forth between the need to avoid scaring the big-money boys and the conflicting need to give a progressive message to the voters. They have no idea what must be done. Lately Democrats have moved "toward the middle" and away from social programs, thereby making themselves less conflicted and less distinguishable from Republicans.
Hooray for American-style democracy (and a special cheer for the Supreme Court for reminding us that it is the corporations, the real seats of wealth, which do and should control America).
The lack of anti-burning rallies outside Afghanistan is indeed noteworthy.
Whether this would change if the Kur'an were actually burned as (earlier) proposed remains to be determined.
Would it matter, BTW, if the books in question were actually burned but were written wholly in English? Would this lead to their being viewed as less holy? And does the (slight) USA government opposition to the proposed burning reduce the Muslim grievance against the USA?
BLOG" "Terry Jones is deploying the tactics of terrorism without actually harming anyone, a sort of psy-ops terrorism. He is attempting to coerce people by threatening symbolic violence."
Psy-ops? Like crying "FIRE" in a crowded theater? With millions of (rightly) touchy Muslims ready to react to apparent anti-Islamic acts in USA (e.g., in Afghanistan) and millions more of cranky Americans ready to jump on the apparently jingoistic bandwagon (and most USA politicians afraid to support the building of the community center). Remember the publication in Europe of unpleasant cartoons of Muhammad and the after effects?
Psy-Ops? If you will, but VERY dangerous and USA politicians should have been unanimous to oppose this cranky culty "cleric" -- but weren't.
When has the USA ever been either sensible or ethical (whatever this particular "should" was intended to mean)? Our rulers' actions like their speeches are calculated to satisfy (as far as may be) the loose coalition of special interests which constitute the "establishment", not to make sense (or, heaven forbid, be ethical).
How about, "The USA should require Israel to comply with the Fourth Geneva Convention", hmmm? (Well, it is ethical, it is the law, and it would promote peace. But so what?
Professor Cole: Did removal of Saddam Hussein really accomplish "good"?
As with Marshall Tito in Yugoslavia, Saddam was a strong (and cruel and despotic) ruler who held together an artificially forced-together country whose constituent communities (Shia, Sunni, Kurd) have considerable antagonisms and then-incipient, now-actualized power struggles. (Lebanon had the same and had inter-communal war for many years). The USA attacked, removed the army, removed Saddam, removed the (cruel) "glue" that held the country together. Creating chaos.
From a USA perspective, "our" chaos may be better than Saddam's "law and order" (though the USA has supported so many cruel dictators that I wonder why anyone would way that the USA dislikes cruelty or dictators), but perhaps Iraqis would disagree?
Here's an idea resp. BP. If USA treats BP as a "corporation" under USA law, BP's liability is limited (thank the best Congress money can buy!).
However, BP has caused (by deliberate steps to economise in face of a well-known possibility of disaster) a disaster far, far worse than "9/11" ever was. BP is at least an "enemy" (as well as a "corporation") and maybe even a "terrorist" (aren't we in the USA always over-eager to apply the term "terrorist"? Generaous, one might say, with the appellation.)
OK, if BP is an "enemy" (in this age of non-state opponents), threat 'em as an enemy. Exact reparations for war-damage. forget the corporation-protective law. Anyway, law, schmaw. This is war!
If Israel does not "produce" to the international community the media (videos) which it confiscated from the Mavi Marmara, then no-one should grant any evidentiary weight to Israel's own media (videos), on the principle that spoliation of evidence should result in conclusions adverse to the party working the spoliation.
"Targeting photographers suggests suppression of evidence of a crime, not self-defense. "
Indeed. And stealing (and suppressing publication of) films made by the Mavi Marmara activists even more suggests suppression (spoliation of evidence). See my essay touching on spoliation. No court, and no-one else, should allow any evidence whatever produced by Israel until the flotilla's films are returned to the activists (so they may be submitted in evidence).
As to: "continued US Predator drone strikes on Pakistani soil by covert operatives and sometimes by Blackwater-Xe contractors."
Why "covert operatives" etc.? Would they be better or different if the Army or Air Force was doing the targeting, the aiming, the trigger-pulling? Does this make the "covert operatives" or perhaps the expensive weapons they direct "illegal" (in the sense that irregular combatants -- out of uniform or not under an organized military command hierarchy are illegal)? Do these "covert operatives and sometimes by Blackwater-Xe contractors" belong in a Guantanamo-lookalike somewhere constructed and run by someone for the holding of people who are "irregular combatants"?
Does this make the US a terrorist state, in the sense that it supports and employs irregular combatants in warfare? And who cares. really? Are the Pakistani villagers any more or less dead or maimed on this account than if bombs were dropped upon them by a regulation Air Force airplane flying at 30,000 feet, its pilot wearing a uniform (invisible from 30,000 feet) and responsive if following orders carefully to a military command hierarchy? Even if the target was specified by, oh! dreadful thought, "covert operatives etc."?
If by "covert operatives" is meant CIA-types, then perhaps they, too, are mercenaries, spies-for-hire -- it is not only soldiers whom the USA hires in order to replace part of the expensive "big government" that some Americans say they dislike with a far more expensive replacement by non-civil-service "temps" as the military mercenaries and CIA replacement folks surely are.
And maybe the US strategy of fighting a war in Afghanistan (or fighting it in this way) is a decision made by mercenaries (or by the people who believe that American decision-making is best made by corporate decision-makers).
Hooray for Scotland. I believe Spain has already done all or much of a conversion to wind/solar.
The USA has done nothing because, I believe, [1] our educational and news (propaganda) system is lousy or corrupt and [2] our political system responds to campaign money rather than to human needs (and corporations and the vfery rich are concerned with very short-term things such as current profits rather than withn long-term things like GLOBAL WARMING and NATIONAL DEBT and ECONOMY (never mind how much they talk, they don't mean it!)
Juan,
Many others might wish to sign this petition.
If it is still open, can you give a URL to it? I saw no signatures marked "Law school" for instance.
Thanks.
But wouldn't it fit the history (considering AIPAC's power) for Israel to strike Iran far enough before the election that Obama would either have to "help out" (like it or not) or refuse to help out and suffer the withdrawal of funds from AIPAC and of (some) Jewish votes [I expect that Evangelical votes will go republican anyhow] for his "anti-Zionism"?
I foresee a wonderful game of chicken between Bibi and Obama, with Bibi perhaps cementing/protecting his own position by an earlier election in Israel.
Would Obama rather get into a stupid war rather than say out loud to the American people, "I will not be railroaded into a war that does USA no good by Israel and its allies -- AIPAC -- in the USA." {I fear it.}
It is good to be reminded that, in days when there were few people on earth, one person's death might be a time for personal responses only: wine-drinking, sorrow, praise, religious sentiments, etc.
Today, with catastrophes of many sorts entwined around us -- aggressive wars fought to control the dollar-denomination of oil, Israel's attempt to recapture ancient dreams, world population rising out of control while many "religious" folks praise the abundance of life as an unmixed "good", global warming, the run-out of easy oil (leading to expenses) even as global warming warns us away from oil altogether -- one man's death pales in comparison.
When I am gone, though, and before that, lift a glass!
The USA has trained its citizens to watch and gobble-down ads. Also twinkies, fattening thises and thatses, and fear. The USA's admen understand selling fear. The USA sells fear of Iran's bomb. JUST AS IF it somehow threatened anyone at all, esp. the USA. Americans are taught/conditioned to believe ads, not to question them.
Feel good! Feel hungry! Feel FEAR!
Look for a tall, dark, handsome WAR in your future.
JC: "I think blockading a civilian population for the purpose of instituting regime change in a state toward which no authorization of force has been issued by the UN Security Council may well be a war crime. Even advocating a war crime can under some circumstances be punishable, as happened at the Nuremberg trials."
Perhaps you are right. How about blockading a country to persuade its citizens and their government to stop engaging in war crimes? Even w/o UNSC blessing?
I envision a BDS action against Israel, with nations cutting off trade and so forth as pressure to end the illegal occupation (siege, settlements, settlers, wall, internal checkpoints, water-stealing, etc.)
I'd appreciate your thoughts on this.
The Persian miniatures are representations of people, etc., not the mere (Islamic) decorative calligraphy of the Al-Hamra.
Did Islam vary (over time, over place) as to the strictures about wine-drinking and picture-making, or were these things pre-Islamic?
IF the 99% could regain control of government in the USA and also if the 99% are tired of stupid and unnecessary and extremely costly wars, THEN (in both the logical sense and the time sense) we could avoid this war.
But the time-scales seem wrong. The 99% has 20-50 years to go and the war is on a short fuse.
(Put on our helmets?) (Put our cars in storage -- no gs?)
JC, you write a carefully-hedged: "Now that Rick Santorum has announced that his foreign policy plan is to bomb Iran, the more level-headed elements in New York’s financial community are surely scared to death of him".
Who are these "more level-headed elements in New York’s financial community" that you mention?
What I wonder (as we all must) is whether there are any POWERFUL 1%-ers who dislike war. If so, how and when do we hear from them?
With BIG-OIL and BIG-ARMS presumably favoring all the USA's wars in the middle east, to say nothing of BIG-ZION (aka AIPAC), there does not appear to have been any countervailing force whatever urging the USA to stay out of wars. BIG-BANKs could (had they wished) been very forceful for preventing the Iraq war (planned well before 9-11), but I cannot see that they tried.
CONTINUED: As to the actual candidates, I wish commentators would pick up on Ron Paul's (asserted) incorruptibility (if only to contrast it with everyone else, of whom it is by no means asserted) and on his anti-war, anti-empire.
(He has some other positions that only a mother or some republicans could love.)
Someone on radio said the republicans can beat Obama 2012 even if they run Mickey Mouse. If this is so, I'd prefer MM to some of the other bozos.
"Some have been spitting on the girls, and have beaten up non-Haredis who support the school.They complain that Zionists have invaded their neighborhood (most Haredis reject Zionism or Jewish nationalism on the grounds that it is impudent for Jews to establish a state before the Messiah comes.)"
I am confused about "establish a state before the messiah comes". I believe that non-Christians are pretty well agreed that we are in that (perhaps regrettable) time-period. OK, then, for the pious Jews, establishing a state in Zion is forbidden.
Is it forbidden for pious Jews to exercise the power of a state by -- for instance -- establishing orthodox Jewish rules as the practical laws of a present-day territory?
If Jews such as these Haredi are still in exile, must they not follow Talmud and, therefore, bow to the laws and customs of the (goyish) state in which they happen live -- even if that goyish state is, today, Israel (a state primarily of people who are not orthodox Jews -- even as it was earlier an Ottoman state or a British-controlled state?
I'd appreciate a re-do of the map: red for USA bases; green for USA bombing/attack; purple for both; blue for Israeli bombing/attack; yellow for Israeli bases (hmm, Sheba'a Farms?); black for both; STRIPES for countries touched by both Israel and the USA.
The issue of this essay is not to criticize NASA or any particular discovery.
The issue is to RESIST the tendency of the USA's MSM -- its MEGAPHONES-of-the-1% -- who will use any story, any idea, any distraction (sports, popular music, movies, fancy new consumer technology) TO TAKE PEOPLE'S MINDS OFF THE REAL PROBLEMS.
The issue is to RE-DIRECT ATTENTION WHERE IT BELONGS.
Global warming is THE ISSUE of our times, and has been had we but known since 1980 or so.
"THE END OF THE WORLD IS NIGH" is no joke. Here is a SATIRICAL TREATMENT of USA's governance as to this and other matters.
Thank you, Juan Cole.
The big banks got away with it all. Riches when tricks worked, bail-outs when they didn't, and never a whiff of grape (i.e., hint of prosecutions). ALSO no renewal of Glass Steagall.
As for the people, police round demonstrators up -- but not bankers. Police defend ORDER (of a kind) but not LAW.
"Dum Spiro Spero," I suppose, he said weakly.
Yes, and a lot of drugs make people sick. For a mild example of this: Lipitor, I am told, which many elderly people take for years and years, causes muscle damage in some people.
On the whole there is a deal of make-new-business with drugs.
NYC downtown is covered by many "security" video cameras (police cameras, I imagine). Wonder if any of those cameras recorded the police action and whether, in that case, the film was destroyed.
And Bahrain? Pourquoi pas?
Juan: Some more explanation would be helpful.
I don't understand international banking (or national, either: what's a bank doing with credit default swaps anyhow?) but -- as to Iran -- I wonder:
Why doesn't Iran sell its oil for Yuan (Chinese currency) and begin the movement away from the dollar as the international exchange mechanism for oil? Could they? Would China like that? Can Iran easily spend dollars? Would such a step take them out of the web of banking institutions controlled by the USA?
Perhaps Newt could enlighten us all about the decline in numbers of Christians in Palestine/Israel and let us know whether, in his opinion, the outflow of Christians which began about 1948 was due to the Arab Spring or due to -- could it be? -- another cause.
Addendum: And, consider the apparent criminal aspects of BIGs: too big to jail. With morality like this, who can imagine the USA's "system" dealing morally with ANYTHING? (Another case in point: Palestine).
The political problem is that -- in USA, as you have noted -- the oligarchy makes sensible behavior nearly impossible by politicians individually and especially collectively.
Which BIG wants to abandon fossil fuels today? Possibly BIG INSURANCE, but that is not sure because they can raise rates. with BIG OIL and BIG GAS and BIG COAL pushing forward on fossil fuels, and no-one pushing back, the answer is pre-determined. SADLY, THAT'S HOW OUR SYSTEM WORKS. Neither brains nor charity nor care-for-future-generations nor any soft virtue motivates the BIGs, Look at the BIG BANKS and note that Glass-Steagall still hasn't been reinstated.
I disagree with you, Juan, about the need for arm-twisting as to Canada and Australia.
These countries seem to have their own reasons for extreme knee-jerk pro-Israelism by government and establishment -- perhaps they enjoy the beneficent services of their own AIPAC, I don't know. But their records suggest an ideological (the government's or the local AIPAC branch's, doesn't much matter) anti-Palestine mind-set rather than a result of arm-twisting.
Good summary of the reasons for world disgust with Israel.
The USA has no talent for "playing well with other children." If we will "play" at all, we want to be the leader. If the other children stop doing what we want them to do, we either make war on them (Iraq, Afghanistan, Grenada, Panama, Vietnam) or take our marbles and go home (UNESCO and UN).
Our diplomacy is all a mask for command and control, not a mechanism for coming to mutually agreeable compromises. To listen to our politicians and diplomats publicly "laying down the law" to other countries is to be appalled at USA arrogance.
If we are good at giving orders, we are also good at taking orders. Thus the predominance in USA of the BIGs (BIG BANKS, BIG OIL, BIG ARMAMENTS, BIG PHARMA, BIG ISRAEL) and our politicians have so thoroughly learned to take orders from these folks that they do not even see anything wrong or questionable when they do so. The 987 kow-tows that Congress gave Bibi in the USA's Knesset shows the lack of anything like back-bone or honor in the USA's politican establishment.
Time for the USA to think these things through, and come out with a better result. Revoking the "no-money to UN" law might be a good place to start.
Green means environmental,. means DOLLARS, and means Islamic (to me anyhow): what would be a good color for OWS?
Maybe bright RED (we are bleeding; STOP wall street, stop Wall street control 0f government).
Interesting story. One wonders, naturally, how "proof" of "facts" ever develops in the murky world of " " intelligence " " (I use double quotes to indicate my doubt of the appropriateness of this title, especially in the USA). Perhaps INTERPOL will be a help?
Who, then, will guard the USA embassy, said to be the largest in the world? With no marines left, is it a case of "let them eat mahmoul"?
A small step (in comparison to the massive VENUS step) may nevertheless be an enormous step in comparison to where we are today, if flooding, far more extreme storms (hurricanes already doing small amounts of damage), changes in growing seasons and precipitation and VERY IMPORTANT changes in where and how plants and insects grow and in the uniform-versus-non-uniform provision of water in rivers to cities (as snowfall and glaciers change and more water falls as rain or quick-melt snow than as long-melt snow. People whose agricultural adn industrial and city water supplies dry up for most of the year (due to quick-melt snow as their local climate warms up) might well "have" enough water but "have" it all of a sudden and not for the rest of the year.
Don't need VENUSIAN temperatures to make life even more uncomfortable than it already is in many places.
If the price of oil rose "astronomically", because of Saudi action, the USA would either have to employ military action to replace the Saudi regime -- and enslave the Saudi people -- or admit that all those armies in the oil-producing region that we've been paying for through all these years are paper tigers (at least today), put in place more to enrich MIC (war-profiteers) than to advance any (other) USA "national" interest. Not a choice that the MIC would want to see made.
Nice analysis of the USA's "democracy". My guess is that, in all societies, if there is both an elite and a democracy, the elite will find a way to overcome the democracy, to "capture" it. As you say, it surely happened here, both via LOBBYING (leading to "administrative capture" -- capture of the regulators by the regulated) and "legislative and executive capture", capture of the legislative organs of state by the very rich.
Yes, how do you know? Are we to trust murderers sent to perform assassination to tell the truth? And were they on oath? And so on.
As to do I want Bachmann or Perry to have sole discretion to assassinate anyone at all, anywhere at all, on any grounds or no grounds at all, and all without any court intervention ("due" or not).
Warning: the groveling US S/C might, if asked, rule that there was NO process "due" to any person whatever accused by any other person whatever of being a "terrorist" and that, therefore, punishment, even the death penalty, may be imposed BY THE GOVERNMENT at will, all "due process" having been (trivially) satisfied. However, this court has not, to my knowledge, been asked to rule on this one.
Americans have been made more than merely docile by our consumption-oriented, entertainment-oriented, individual-over-collective-oriented culture.
Until we all got poor, people only thought about "me, me, me" and "buy, buy, buy" and not about "us, us, us."
OK. so, consumerism. Consumerism without political involvement.
Now there is massive unemployment, underemployment, no jobs for new graduates or much of anyone else, and THE PEOPLE DO NOT HAVE A FEELING FOR ORGANIZING.
The Wall Street Event is nice, but SO SMALL! How will Americans "take back" the constitution, the government, etc.? HOW WILL LIBERAL/PROGRESSIVE ANGER overcome the ANGER-FROM-FRUSTRATED-PRIVILEGE which we see in the Tea Party?
The cover-up by USA's MSM of Israel's illegalities in the occupied (Palestinian) territories (never forget the Golan, though) is a scandal. I write about it at http://123pab.com/blog/2011/09/The-four-levels-of-reaction-by-US-and-EU-to-Israeli-settlements.php
If women's rights are indeed relics of pre-Islamic tribal customs, then perhaps the varieties of "modest dress" requirements imposed by various Islamic societies (or imams) are also tribal and ancient relics rather than well-argued outcomes of interpreting Islamic requirements.
The whole-body covering of some countries is so very different from the veil and/or hair-covering of some others, that it seems likely that ALMOST ALL these modern customs are non-Islamic in origin, but picked up 1400 years ago and CALLED Islamic.
Is this discussed?
NO, Arabs do not favor democracy more than we do, but all citizens value it equally, and all governments try to subvert it in the interest of the power of big-money.
USA (pols, media) refuse to look at how we offend and injure other people, because to look at it is to spoil our USA-ONLY-IMAGE of nice guys.
Americans love their "democracy" but do not know that it was stolen from them by the government-for-sale system that works so well in the USA to [1] make government responsive to big-money interests and so unresponsive to people's needs and [2] make the slogan-word "democracy" a lie (in the USA).
Egyptians and Palestinians and others also like the slogan and have high hopes and fervent desire of getting an actually democratic government. (So do I, here in USA, or if not high hopes then at least fervent desire).
In the 19th century, when empire and colonialism were WELL RESPECTED in England, Europe, USA, media and pols could still tell the truth about their doings in the world to their own citizens.
Now, imperialism and colonization are still in great favor with some powerful governments (USA, Israel prominent among them) but not in favor with USA citizens and so USA's media, busily protecting the government against the citizens, must conceal what we do (and what Israel does).
So, NO, Arabs do not favor democracy more than we do, but all citizens value it equally, and all governments try to subvert it in the interest of the power of big-money.
If USA were rational about its own well-stated problems (over-spending, over-borrowing) and its "ally"-'s demand (and actual agreement), we'd get outta Iraq by 12/31 (perhaps leaving behind much expensive military equipment, etc. (As Gaddafi has done in abandoning Libya) and making a mockery of the world's largest USA embassy.
If soldiers are a "jobs" program, bring 'em home and let them repair bridges in Vermont and damage in Louisiana from earlier hurricanes.
But USA is not rational -- the leaders have a dream, a wonderful dream of a vast military empire, infinite money available to pay its extremely high costs, no necessity to justify either its costs or its existence (other than national macho pride for the USA's militants).
No arguing with dreams.
Israel: "According to him, our security situation has never been better". And yet the siege of Gaza continues, presumably being necessary to (and helping to provide) Israel's security. And the small tiff with Turkey is not to be worried about. Oh, happy Israel.
USA is not alone in suffering from too-high military spending. Here is Gideon Levy on Israel
Light tension has in recent weeks entered our relations with the neighboring state, though these relations remain excellent - thanks for asking. Their leaders may feel a twinge, as the far tips of their wings are clipped; but the damage is not serious. Since its establishment, the state of the Israel Defense Forces has lived amicably alongside the State of Israel. Borders between the two states are well-known, and are defensible. Ambassadors of this other state carry out their roles successfully within the State of Israel; they lobby and apply pressure, typical in relations between delegates of one regional power and those of another.
How about fair (high marginal) taxes for the rich, and prayer-breakfasts for the rich at which they can examine the enormous wealth which will remain to them after paying those taxes?
And let's keep a list of the topics that are "unspeakable" in the (im)polite society of American politics?
Reducing the vast military empire (and its costs) by 50%?
Global warming responses in place of dithering (and this means no more exploration or production of tar-sands oil, frakked gas, etc.)
Ending USA's permission to Israel to violate international law by keeping settlers ANYWHERE within territories occupied in 1967, whether or not Israel intends to demand to keep these particular parts of the OPTs after a peace.
Whether the low-low-low capital requirements for banks makes any sense after the calamities we've already seen (and not only inside the USA) due to this gambling-encouraging low-margin system.
And, I should imagine. many more.
Appointment of judges is a very difficult problem.
Appointment of judges by governors and legislators is, indeed, political. Election, however, is also very, very political and involves judges in corruption (they must get election-campaign funds from somewhere, at least where such funds are necessary -- as in USA). And as to "extremists", consider well the pro-DEATH PENALTY judges in states such as Texas (where, usually, the death penalty is overwhelmingly applied to racial minorities).
Appointment of judges by other judges? Might be OK if the original population of judges was OK. But how would that happen? and how would you know if it had happened?
Appointment of judges by bar associations? Who do their members mostly represent?
The CIA said they did not REPORT against (or w.r.t.) Cole, but said nothing about if they were ASKED TO DO SO or if THEY DID ANY INVESTIGATION of him. Their answer was careful and non-complete and leads a careful reader to suppose they DID some sort of investigation. (An investigation would presumably have been OK, or more nearly OK, if it looked only at his commumications with non-Americans not on USA-soil).
Yes, when USA's policy is determined not by the needs of the American people but by the desires (usually very short-term) of corporations (the BIGS: BIG BANKS, BIG ARMS, BIG AGRI, BIG OIL, BIG ISRAEL, etc ad naus) there are two sorts of extremely negative fall-out.
First, these BIGs have no "brief" to look at or to understand the BIG PICTURE; they desire quick profits for themselves. That means that there is nobody (nobody of importance, that is) looking at the BIG PICTURE. The USA car rushes along the highway with one BIG controlling the gas pedal, another the brakes, a third the windows, a fourth the mirrors; but no-body driving tthe car knows or cares where the car is going.
Second, because the USA has graciously allowed the "leadership" of the BIGs to be exercised through the expenditure of money (campaign finance contributions, largely) andd since the USA pays thes BIGs so well, they can skim a small part off their profits and use that small part to purchase (as I see it) other and further and continuing influence over the government.
The USA pays the BIGS lavishly to bribe the USA a good deal less than lavishly.
GLOBAL WARMING HAS BEEN IGNORED IN THIS COUNTRY BECAUSE NO-ONE IS MINDING THE STORE. And also because BIG OIL, BIG COAL, BIG GAS oppose stopping the exploration for and production and sale of fossil fuels.
It's rather as if a patient with cancer (over-use of fossil fuels) goes to the doctor only to find that the doctor has been paid by the cancer o refuse treatment.
Same for war. Same for Israel/Palestine.
Thanks for this showing of the PROFOUND EVENTS and SENSIBLE REPORTING in the Middle East and the SMALL EVENTS and RIDICULOUS REPORTING here.
Non-reporting by USA's MSM is a major form of pro-imperial corruption, as it prevents USA's people from knowing what's what out there in order to inform political activity here. Of course.
Non-reporting by USA's MSM of continuous peaceable uprisings against Israeli occupation are another aspect of pro-imperial (Israeli empire, here) corruption.
For years I have wondered when (if ever) people would (again) talk about over-population. I'm still wondering, or waiting. Too much CO2 and methane? Surely it would go down if the number of people went down, especially in high-CO2-producing countries like the USA. Too little food? Ditto.
Nothing is served by an increasing population adn much would be served by a steeply decreasing population.
How to do it? Well, EITHER by deliberate-rational-humane-decision-making; OR by starvation, war, etc., brought onto (usually helpless) people by the failure of humane behavior of the world's leaders.
When you look at the working of the oligarchic political system so favored by free-market-capitalism (in which the buying and selling of legislative votes plays so great a part), it is hard to imagine the circumstances under which the path of starvation-war-emigration-atrocity so very, very much favored (in effect) by the capitalist masters will ever be replaced by anything humane.
Seems to be something in the (macho, male ?) psyche that leaps, positively leaps, to the idea of the propriety of torture whenever a victim who dislikes you enough can be found. Then they argue "ticking bombs". then they decide they don't even need "ticking bombs", they just love torture so much. "Oh goody, torture. Please, mommy, can I have one?"
Obama seems no different. While one never knows who it is that LOVES torture, they evidently love it enough to scare other people (who may not love it) enough to quieten them. Obama must run an ENORMOUS BEHEMOTH MIC and cannot really afford to turn significant parts of it off. (Remember Kennedy.)
I'm an old curmudgeon living (sometimes uncomfortably) in the (non-late) 20th century: I have no cellphone, no iXXX, etc. Therefore I have not faced these problems. (My problem, often, is finding a payphone.)
As to 4th amendment, already in tatters under the merciless onslaught of the S/C in service of the police-state (did the founding fathers really provide the 4th with a love of the police-state? Wasn't there an unpleasant memory of the British "writs of assistance" to make unwarranted searching deeply abhorrent to Americans?), computer files may look like "effects", but to me they also look like "papers", also purportedly protected by the 4th ["The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures"]). The Court has whittled the 4th away to not much by reducing the meaning of "unreasonable", arguing that in various contexts people have no reasonable expectation of privacy. As when, I suppose, crossing national borders.
I've heard of "suicide watches", but "Casio watches"? And these are what passes for "information" or "intelligence" sufficient to be presented as a sufficient justification for arrest? for holding? for transportation? and maybe for conviction (but of what?).
Phooey. American justice, kerplunk.
Imagine trying to cut the world's use of coal/oil/gas (from concern for greenhouse gas emission) when the great powers (USA, UK, BP, EXXON, and similar) are so determined to continue this madness that they were willing to engage in a $1T war (Iraq) to further their own (private and narrowly political) ends.
The strangle-hold that the big corporations have on world politics would not be so bad if the corporations only had something like a leaven of good sense or good intention. (Democracy is so imperfect that oligarchic control could, in principle, be an improvement).
But nothing suggests that the big corporate interests are capable of entertaining a thought relating to the "general good", be it deficit reduction, mild-normal-environmental-protection, or horrendous-environmental-disaster-prevention (global warming, maybe BP's various big oil spills).
We live in a world of 1000-lb gorillas (the corporations, the politicians) which appear to have no more than the moral capacity of a butterfly between them.
There is a tendency, in USA's courts, to limit constitutional limits on government action in times when people (and courts) are scared, and then to return to (or merely toward) the earlier limits after the emergency is over.
However, where, as with GWB etc., the "scare" is endless (war to the end of time), the constitution has a particularly hard time.
It's time for people to get up on their hind legs and tell the government that we prize our liberties and are (therefore) willing to take (some) chances with enemies, terrorists, etc. Otherwise "The baby has already been thrown out with the bathwater."
Same deal with the government's use of "state secret privilege" to decline to provide evidence to non-state-parties (and thereby make them lose their cases!).
It is painful to see the eclipse of any useful sort of democracy in the USA. Read Matt Taibbi's "Griftopia" (2010) for a racy take on how the Billionaire's, fronted for by Alan Greenspan and assisted by the Tea Partiers, managed this trick.
In the context of this web-site, so concerned with Muslim matters, it is interesting that the problems of the USA's economy (and the world's) began with "bubbles" in internet stocks and housing, bubbles funded by interest-free money churned out by the "Fed" -- whereas Islamic theory (I am sure I don't know the practices) forbids interest (usury) and could not (I imagine) produce a bubble worth many, many trillions of dollars (as the Greenspan and Bernanke, Bush and Obama government-of-for-and-by billionaires has done).
Maybe someone could translate Jefferson's seminal democratic thought into English, so it would be available to remind American audiences what we are busy losing, as the GWOT becomes a AWOL (down with American liberties) in our bright and shining security-state.
Probably Too Late Department:
"Someone please drive a stake through the heart of this tyrannical and unconstitutional Act."
Someone has already driven a stake through the heart of our Supreme Court. My sense is that "state secret" and "national security" do not appear in the text of the USA Constitution. But common law is a wonderful invention which gives judges the right to invent law. The law is (always) what the judges say the law is.
Hence : Money is Speech and Corporations (who own the money) are Persons -- and therefore enjoy free (political) speech.
Hence: criminal investigations are sometimes acts of war (if the alleged or suspected criminal is described by some low-level low-life -- not necessarily even a government law enforcement type -- as a "terrorist") (labeling is wonderful, so powerful!).
I'm all for it. Together with a healthy dose of (voluntary) family-size and thus human-population-size management (reduction). A free iPod (or something) to any female who agrees to be sterilized (also free)? (Sorry to be sexist, but males cannot have babies.)
How houses now heated by gas or fuel oil burning will be heated by electricity is a bit of a problem, as is how airplanes will fly without jet fuel. But these are small problems compared to the costs of continuing to flood the atmosphere with greenhouse gases.
If King will demand that extremist Zionists (American supporters of Israel's occupation, settlement project, and siege of Gaza, all three illegal at international law and grotesque violations of Palestinian human rights) recant and speak against these atrocious Israeli practices, I will hear with favor his demands on American Muslims (who do not, by and large, support terrorism anywhere by anyone) to strengthen their voices within the general American cry against terrorism. Not until then.
IRA is old hat. There are major, major illegalities going on today, and the acts of a few terrorists are the least of them.
I'd like to see Egypt (which imagine, perhaps incorrectly, to be far more powerful militarily than Libya) intervene either on humanitarian grounds or as an ally of the rebels or as a self-protective measure. But I've heard nothing of Egyptian intervention.
I wrote about Egypt coming to Libya's rescue, humorously, here, but neither intervening nor remaining aloof is a clearly useful, safe, correct, etc., role for Egypt.
Get involved? Israel is sending mercenaries to help Qadhafi
When you need a friend! (Reminds me of the Spanish Civil War, Hitler and Mussolini eager to help one side, USA communists and USSR anxious to help the other, USA making it ILLEGAL for USA citizens to arm or fight for the anti-Franco forces.
Top-5 ?? Top-6?? I'd put this one first:
7. Protesters march every week in occupied Palestine. Israel arrests Israeli Jews, Palestinian Arabs, and internationals constantly for making peaceful demonstrations denouncing the settlements and outrages in East Jerusalem. Much was, in fact made of these demonstrations and these arrests at the opening ceremonies for the "J-Street" conference in Washington, DC, this weekend.
I'd respectfully request that any "To Do" list for the Middle East include an item for Israel/Palestine even if the "What To Do" may be rather unclear. This one is NOT going away.
Ending the outrages of the settlers would be a good place to start.
This is my take, too, reluctantly, because I permitted myself to believe that he would be different. It may be simply that he is by personality not equipped to say "NO" to anyone strong -- billionaires, the US Military, the CIA, the military-industrial-mercenary-outsourcing-Congressional-MSM-university-thinktank complex, you name it.
Well, these are very, very powerful social phenomena, and presidents have been assassinated (Kennedy) perhaps because they thought to oppose part of all this.
But your bottom line is not about the causes for President Obama's behavior, but the behavior itself, which is surely reactionary in the extreme.
Very sorry to agree with you. American under the oligarchs is a sad place.
"It makes a person think there should be rule that no one can run for the presidency who didn’t have a proper father figure in his or her life (Bill Clinton, W., Obama), since apparently once they get into office they start thinking the billionaires are their long-lost parent, whom they have to bend over backward to please."
Was G.H.W.Bush a "father figure for G.W.Bush? I don't know. The "trap", it seems to me, is not a search for undeserving father figures by presidents, but a determination to be re-elected (and a consequent search for bags of money) that sends politicians to court the billionaires.
The "best Congress that money can buy" was no joke when first uttered and no joke today, embracing our own "father figure", the president pro tem, Barack Obama today.
That is why I proposed he give up on re-election in order to free himself to act like a statesman.
The PLO/PA/Fatah is corrupt in much the same way, being on the payroll of USA/Israel/EU/Quartet and should -- to act in a statesmanlike manner -- resign and let Israel run things again, concentrating on making good relations with Turkey, China, the South Americans, etc., and seeking salvation in UNSC or, failing that, the UNGA.
From your mouth to God's ear, as it is said; but how will be get President Obama EVEN TO READ THIS?
Like the thugs that (USA police allowed to) disrupt labor unions (mostly fairly long ago).
In every country, people (formerly the poor, nowadays the poor and middle-class) wish for a government dedicated to their good rather than to the good of foreigners, the very rich, etc.
Here, in USA, we see the bankers and various other of the very rich getting ridiculously richer -- and getting bailed out when they have screwed up -- while everyone else is static or worse, and the national debt increasing as if without limit, and still the government (and pols of both major parties) treat our nuttily expensive military-imperium as a "sacred cow" that cannot be touched, cannot be reduced, even as it is seen to do no good whatever.
Americans should be feeling envious of the Egyptians who, if they have nothing else, have at least their pride and their revolution.
Not all of us can read Arabic. Could you translate?
You write: "The Obama administration appears to be rethinking its position in the region, worried that if popular revolts like that of Tunisia spread and succeed, the US will suffer from its support of the dictators unless it now at least urges them to democratize."
Many people wonder whether the Obama administration has a master plan, a theory of foreign policy, or whether (as the above suggests) IT SHOOTS FROM THE HIP, MORE OR LESS CLUELESS.
Also, it may be that where you have an immense bureaucracy (OK, DoS is small compared to DoD, but still large), re-directing it is like re-directing an oil-tanker -- very difficult because a lot of momentum, momentum from the BUSH ERA. (And it doesn't help that a lot of Bush-era political appointees have been kept on).
THIS SUBJECT -- IS THERE A PLAN, AND WHO IS RUNNING THINGS, SHOULD BE A CONTINUING THREAD HERE.
Fatah has long been accused, by Palestinians, of corruption. Thus the (comparatively recent) electoral victory of Hamas. These revelations merely show what corrupt politicians may be forced to do in order to keep the goodies-from-Israel-to-themselves coming.
Perhaps they rationalized that the proposed giveaways would never materialize because [1] the ratifying plebecite would reject such dreadful terms and [2] in any case, Israel would never accept EVEN these abject peace proposals. Perhaps, that is, it was all smoke and mirrors, shadow puppetry.
However, Israel's strategy (never a secret, mind, but never so clearly stated, either) is now manifest: no peace, no 2SS.
The time has come (and the way has been made clear, the underbrush removed) for the international community to speak roughly to their little child and beat it when it sneezes. Israel has sneezed. A UNSC resolution (the first of a graduated series of increasing puissance, I hope) is ready for passage.
Obama offered to veto unpleasant UNSC votes, and Israel refused his offer. OK. time for UNSC to get serious.
"It is not impossible that such a development, i.e.Hizbullah dominance, could lead to US and Israeli action against the new government, whether a covert action or a military attack."
"I'd prefer "might well be used by USA and/or Israel as a pretext to make an unprovoked attack" rather than what you said, "could lead". Somehow, the colorless language of "could lead" camouflages the nature of the agency involved. Would the USA or Israel be "forced" to attack? No. Justified in law? No.
Language matters. There is a world of difference between "John died of a gunshot would to the head:" and "I shot John, without provocation, and he died of his wounds."
I suspect that most people who commit violent crime are a bit (or more than a bit) different mentally from the great number of people who do not. If claimed Mental Illness were relevant to crime (e.g., an exoneration), the jails would empty. A good thing?
But the epithet "Mental Illness" is thrown around too easily. Perhaps all those folks that the USA actually calls terrorist (and not just the people who fit various reasonable definitions of terrorist) are as aptly labelable as "Mentally Ill". But if we do not use that label with Arab, Muslim, Columbian, Basque terrorists, then we (and Prof. Cole among us) should not use it with "White Terrorists."
Graham is not alone in having been wrong about everything in the Middle East for a decade and a half. One could say that about the US (and UK) as well.
And he is (part of) the US government that some (misguided?) people think will or should impose peace on Israel and Palestine? Can a know-nothing or dishonest "broker for peace" be an honest or honorable or knowledgeable "imposer of peace"?
As the USA slid into national serfdom (and groveling servitude) to the large corporations and other sources of great wealth (and not merely oil companies), it voluntarily gave up any sort of responsible stewardship for the environment, human rights, fair economic rules, etc. In short, it gave up on an active and involved and thoughtful concern for the good of the people of the USA and of the world. Perhaps a great benefit of WikiLeaks is that bit points this up.
A recent report states that the USA has been transferring nuclear materials to Israel (2010 !) to augment Israel's nuclear weapons capabilities. Is there any way to verify this? Could be an anti-Israeli (and anti-USA) hoax. But this story, if true, belongs as a part of the present essay.
Perhaps it is no more than this report of old transfers
"the filthy rich and the US Republican Party (there, I’ve been redundant)."
Oh, come on! Do you say that no Democrats suck at the same teat? Why then has Obama gone all ga-ga about the very rich, those oh so deserving few (indeed, very, very few) who own (what is it?) 25%, 30% of USA's wealth already and need tax breaks (income and tax and inheritance tax) so badly if they are going to be able to get to the magic 50% before "the people" catch up to them?
give us a break@! (But I know what you meant: by Reublicans you meant "politicians").
Exactly, which is why Obama-statesman would be so very different from Obama-politician.
See my 123pab.com/blog/2010/11/Advice-to-President-Obama-after-the-election-become-explainer-general-and-act-unilaterally.php.
The refusal of the Obama Administration to investigate and prosecute violations (now openly confessed) of American laws by Bush&Co is as ugly a stain on the USA as any other recent one, of which there are many. However, this refusal (and the running of applicable American statutes of limitations, if any) should energize all ICC-like universal-jurisdiction efforts to arrest these splendid examples of American manhood. How this would play out in light of the very many anti-ICC treaties the USA has forced on the world remains to be seen.
Americans -- some of us -- are yearning for a government that does not break the law itself (as by torture), which punishes those who do (Bush, Cheney, et al.), and which seeks to use its courts (and court-like commissions) to secure justice rather than seeking to punish its enemies. But others seek almost the opposite.
Obama has so little to look forward to legislatively or by way of re-election that the best path (or at least the statesmanlike path) would be to abandon re-election and legislation (and thus all personal need for fund-raising and concomitant slavery) and then use the UNSC to gather international pressure on Israel to either end the occupation or make its "legal" by removal of all settlers, dismantlement of all settlements and the wall, etc., say within 1-year (or 6-months).
I cannot think of any step which would be more roundly applauded by peaceable Americans or American admirers of the rule-of-law. And I cannot think of any step so apparently anodyne (just enforcing the law, nothing arbitrary here, no dictation of peace terms here) so likely to make the Israelis see that making a just and lasting peace was in their interest.
And conversely, I can think of nothing so likely to stiffen the Israeli back against a just and lasting peace (if that is presently possible) as to condone any settlements, and especially those in so-called Jerusalem.
God gave mankind (and individuals) a free hand, free will, the opportunity to opt for evil, to be resolutely ignorant, to be resolutely egoistic. Many people have chosen all these paths, and many more act (or fail to act, much the same thing) because their education was lousy and their on-going education (MSM, etc.) fails to tell them of their options and the perils that face mankind and themselves.
President Obama (like all presidents, past as well) COULD tell it like it is (as Al Gore more or less did in his movie about global warming), but they don't. I imagine that the personality traits that make for a good candidate are the opposite of the traits that make for a good conservator of the earth. they (like most of us) are too busy being busy to take time out for the really important, the long-term.
Excellent article. USA sinking. "Spurlos versenkt". And continuing fighting in Afghanistan because India demands it (but doesn't pay for it?).
And dear, dear Hillary, with that little-girl smile, pretending to "do" foreign policy when the USA has forgotten how to co-operate but has outgrown its self-image as superpower, has over-spent, and has so little power (other than war-fighting power) that it cannot even control its supposed ally, Israel.
They're all laughing at us, and Juan tells it like it is.
Thanks for posting the statute. Makes it a smidge harder for USA to ignore the ACLU's call. (BTW, is ACLU sponsoring a petition for this?).
Doing torture is a "perk" for some government employees (or contract mercenaries). Most government "servants" are satisfied (as to "perks") to make tons of money (as contractors or via the revolving door, usually) from mis-directing the USA, but some need the heady rush of adrenaline that comes from torturing others, the heady rush that many rapist seek. Human rights? USA is as unconcerned with H/R as anyone else, as any dictator, and merely mouths platitudes occasionally as a form of politesse or 'political correctness'. Preventing terrorism? Come on! The USA practices terrorism and supports many regimes that do. And the USA's military-industrial-Congressional-academia complex NEEDS terrorism (in the absence of any other "enemies'). Our wars and war-fighting techniques and practices are manufacturing enemies and terrorists on an industrial scale. IT IS FALSE that the USA seeks to reduce terrorism. The torture was for "kicks", not part of a coordinated plan to protect Americans.
And not to excuse the idiot Congressmen) but * * * the CO2 and CH4 we put up there now will still be there for years and years, doing greenhouse duty, and unless some magic comes along, we cannot call it back. In other words, the ill effects come LONNNGGGG after the dirty deeds are done, and many people cannot believe in a tragedy of their own making which has so long a lead-time that they cannot "see" cause and effect.
Same thing applies to over-population. A local drought can really be hard to take if you've built up the population on the assumption of continuous plenty (of drinking water, of food).
There are reports of Chinese-Iranian-Turkish cooperation on various projects, oil/gas-related and defense-related. To what extent do the USA's sanctions against Iran sit well with China? Surely a time will come when the USA's vainglorious I-rule-the-world-as-of-right (because I am a light unto the nations, I suppose) will grow a bit thin, and then where will we be? And what will the tea-partyers say then?
Well argued. The USA belief in war as an economic panacea (Broder) or as a macho thing to do (many: millions for defense, not a dime in tribute -- my country right or wrong, my mother drunk or sober -- USA and Israel rise or fall together -- a lot of people are easily energized for war, especially with a "volunteer" army in which they need not serve, paid for by ever-growing debt to China as our economy appears ever less successful) is not evidence-based. It is a religion, whether of the economists or of the sabre-rattlers.
One bad effect of all our wars (and of our bad economy) is that the USA seems incapable of stepping out of its spoiler role w.r.t. global warming; it is as if we are saying, "don't bother me, I'm busy" when the threat described by scientists as the likely and even the present-day effects of global warming is real and immense and the reasons for starting (and for continuing) war with Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran are trumped-up, silly, ephemeral, ideological.
My model for these things (climate, Israel) always includes this question: where are the "Good Germans"? That is, given that there is wide awareness of a (moral, political, blah-blah) problem, and limiting attention to those who DO know (but don't all literate people know about climate change by now? and about Israel's destruction and siege of Gaza and the UN report?), what proportion are ignoring the situation and pursuing other goals (where will I get a good cup of coffee? what shall I buy for my next car? how can I act politically to reduce my taxes?) and what proportion are trying, in some way, to ameliorate a bad situation, to act responsibly? And guess which are the "Good Germans".
Suzuki is saying that shortage of food will precede (as a dominating world-catastrophe) the on-rushing shortage of potable and agricultural water (but this is part of the food problem) and the ill effects of global warming.
Each of these is an obvious consequences of over-human-population of the world, especially in high-consumption places (such as North America and Europe and, coming soon to theaters near you, China).
Planning for reducing world population by 1/4 ("it takes 1.3 years to replace what humans exploit in a year") (doing the arithmetic: 0.75 * 1.3 = .975) should be taks-number-1 (that is, planning and DOING it). But as with so many important problems, this one goes without discussion.
A list of the topics which the powerful of the world will themselves to be silent about, which power suppresses as mere topics, would be scary reading. Many thanks to David Suzuki and Juan Cole for calling this particular one to our attention.
BTW, and not as an important criticism, that "1.3" is suspiciously one-dimensional, and hides a lot of details. Fisheries or the amount of arable soil or the amount of water available for agriculture may be diminishing faster (or slower) than that "1.3" suggests. But the idea of working hard (and soon) to deliberately and HUMANELY reduce human populations (before they are reduced by the violence of and likely to attend food and water shortages). For starters, we could all support voluntary means for avoiding unwanted births world-wide. We could also start talking about all this. As a 70-year old, I am willing to start the discussion of elders supporting youngers by clearing ourselves out of the way. But like others, I am selfish and am not ready to ask my doctor for a pill yet.
"Secretary of State Hillary Clinton condemned the massive leak on grounds that it will endanger US troops." An oddly revealing comment! She's evidently talking (as usual) to herself, her colleagues (in that self-protective cocoon called the USA establishment), maybe the American people.
But Wikileaks is not responsible to the USA government (or people). It was trying to give the people of the world ammunition to defend itself against the USA.
If she merely meant to criticize whoever made the initial leaks, well, she'd be on sounder ground to criticize that brave soul for breaking USA law. Because the leaker undoubtedly wanted to protect the world from the USA military machine, and not the other way around.
Zionism's justifications may have been pretexts, but a lot of people believed them THEN and a lot (more) believe the REVISED PRETEXTS that have sprung up to continue to justify Zionism (sometimes retroactively) -- much as GWBush adduced so many reasons (PRETEXTS) (and probably never the real reason) for starting the Iraq war.
My hope is that even those who believe that the Holocaust (unknown to Herzl in 1896 and to Jabotinsky in 1920) justifies the stealing of ADEQUATE territory for a national home for Jews -- that even those will come to conclude that it does not justify taking ALL of that land (a in 2010), or even as much as was taken in 1948 (altho I do not expect anyone seriously to ask Israel to give "back" any of the pre-1967 territory, e.g., to the (then world-agreed) UN-181 proposed boundaries.
This article seems correct. One cautionary observation, though.
Unless the world is to have a steadily increasing human population forever, there must be a model (and, later, a reality) of either a steady-state or a decreasing world human population. And the same, I suppose, goes for particular countries, especially "western" or "industrialized" or "global-warming-contributing-more-than-their-share" countries.
So, even as politicians (who all seem to have short-term time horizons) try to increase the tax-base which pays for the retirement of their elderly-who-will-be-subsidized by bringing in more young workers (by birth or immigration or both), this is not a "solution" to all the world's ills which will "fly" forever.
Chile enjoyed the attention of the USA when Salvador Allende was ejected in favor of Augusto Pinochet; it was widely thought that the USA encouraged this regime-change. Perhaps that laid ground-work for the mine disaster as also for other labor/management relations.
The USA's military (and CIA) has often been used to invade or change governments in small countries for the apparent purpose of protecting the interests of (American?) corporations doing business there. (For example, the use of USA forces to protect United Fruit Company in so-called "Banana Republics" as if they contained nothing of interest other than bananas for export to the USA.) The anticipated reward to such corporations from such interventions is obvious. The anticipated reward to the USA (e.g., from taxes collected attributable to the by-intervention-increased income of the corporations) is undisclosed. Whether such increased taxes would pay the costs of the interventions has never been openly discussed. Whether such increased taxes, in toto, would pay for the grotesquely enormous USA military-and-intelligence establishment, year-in-and-year-out, has never been disclosed but -- I would seriously doubt it.
We USAers pay for this army, etc, but the benefits of its use go to a few corporations and we citizens pay -- it would seem -- far, far too much for these services.
And, then, there are the problems of the people who actually live in countries which have suffered USA imperial interventions. Let us recall that we often treat our own people better than we treat foreigners; and then think of all the mine disasters here in the USA. As a clue to USA concern and intervention w.r.t. mine-workers in such countries.
I do not expect to see purple cows exhibiting concerns for human rights, nor do I expect to see corporatists or imperialists exhibiting concerns for human rights. It is simply beyond the pale, not to be thought of.
I agree with you that, among all media people, Stewart is perhaps the least deserving of a blast for racism or the like.
And I agree that Jews generally in the USA are a minority, occasionally still oppressed.
What Sanchez seems to have meant, however, is that the Jews with cushy jobs in media, and the Jewish multi-millionaires who own or control so many media outlets -- that these people, even if a minority (and the entire class of millionaires is a tiny minority of Americans after all!), are not an oppressed minority (even if they are a minority and part of the larger and occasionally still oppressed minority of Jewish Americans).
What's going on here? The USA, said to be a democracy, cannot act on global warming (CO2 and methane reduction) because the people have not been taught to see it as an emergency and because the corporations (ever short sighted and short-term-bottom-line oriented) interfere with useful action. And, as most fear, the corporations have much more to say about USA governance than the people, anyway.
OK, what about the dictatorships? Is China doing any better? Apparently, yes, it is doing better, but it is not doing enough because it has a huge population eager to live "the good life" (i.e., in effect, to produce high amounts of CO2 and methane per capita).
And no-one wants to take hard steps unless others will do so as well.
Human race, kiss it goodbye.
Juan Cole, Thanks for this. Many Americans have watched the USA's retreat from concern with the RULE OF LAW in international affairs (and even at home) with outrage, sadness, and fear. The 43-year ignoring and effective trashing (by USA and Israel) of the Fourth Geneva Convention is a case (and an important case) in point. The USA (that is, most of its "leaders" and the money-men behind those often puppet-like "leaders") believes itself "too big to fail" meaning, among other things, immune from prosecutions (as to itself, its leaders, armed forces, etc.) under international law. So far those who believe this have nothing to complain of.
We Americans are to our national body politic like cells in a human body corrupted (elsewhere) by cancer. We are not ourselves sick, nor are we ourselves a cause of the decline of the body of which we are a part, but the cancer is spreading and we will ultimately suffer for it.
Actually, there is a big difference between Democrats and Republicans.
Republicans dance to the tune of the big-money boys and do so by "leaders" (or actors) (aka politicians) who appeal to unrealistic and ideological fears (such as fear that families will somehow not remain intact or sacrosanct--hence stress on the importance of "family values" and opposition to birth control, abortion, homosexuality) (fear of military insecurity) (and also appeal to fear of witchcraft, fear of goblins, fear of dark corners) but do not publicly reveal their true purposes (further enrichment of the already unreasonably rich).
Their stated purposes rarely conflict directly with their hidden purposes. Thus, they are unconflicted. They know where they are going, know what they must do to get there, know who pays the freight, and as errand-boys are fearless in doing what must be done.
Democrats, too, dance to the tune of the big-money boys and do so by "leaders" (or actors) (aka politicians) who must disguise this real program. In this the two parties are the same.
Democrats, however, often appeal to the middle class and poor on purely practical grounds of dispelling quite realistic fears (fear of lack of medical care, fear of impoverished old age, fear of being discriminated against, as examples) and in a rather disorganized fashion sometimes tepidly push forward social legislation. But, like Republicans, Democrats do not publicly reveal their true purposes (further enrichment of the already unreasonably rich). Their stated social-program purposes often conflict directly with their hidden purposes. Thus, they are conflicted. And tepid in their public pronouncements.
Democrats don't really know where they are going, don't know what they must do to get there, do always know who pays the freight, and are tugged back and forth between the need to avoid scaring the big-money boys and the conflicting need to give a progressive message to the voters. They have no idea what must be done. Lately Democrats have moved "toward the middle" and away from social programs, thereby making themselves less conflicted and less distinguishable from Republicans.
Hooray for American-style democracy (and a special cheer for the Supreme Court for reminding us that it is the corporations, the real seats of wealth, which do and should control America).
Goblins! Scary!
The lack of anti-burning rallies outside Afghanistan is indeed noteworthy.
Whether this would change if the Kur'an were actually burned as (earlier) proposed remains to be determined.
Would it matter, BTW, if the books in question were actually burned but were written wholly in English? Would this lead to their being viewed as less holy? And does the (slight) USA government opposition to the proposed burning reduce the Muslim grievance against the USA?
BLOG" "Terry Jones is deploying the tactics of terrorism without actually harming anyone, a sort of psy-ops terrorism. He is attempting to coerce people by threatening symbolic violence."
Psy-ops? Like crying "FIRE" in a crowded theater? With millions of (rightly) touchy Muslims ready to react to apparent anti-Islamic acts in USA (e.g., in Afghanistan) and millions more of cranky Americans ready to jump on the apparently jingoistic bandwagon (and most USA politicians afraid to support the building of the community center). Remember the publication in Europe of unpleasant cartoons of Muhammad and the after effects?
Psy-Ops? If you will, but VERY dangerous and USA politicians should have been unanimous to oppose this cranky culty "cleric" -- but weren't.
Agreed -- we should be able to see ALL the graphs. Are they available? can they be made available? What are the (public) data-sources?
"Should" ?
When has the USA ever been either sensible or ethical (whatever this particular "should" was intended to mean)? Our rulers' actions like their speeches are calculated to satisfy (as far as may be) the loose coalition of special interests which constitute the "establishment", not to make sense (or, heaven forbid, be ethical).
How about, "The USA should require Israel to comply with the Fourth Geneva Convention", hmmm? (Well, it is ethical, it is the law, and it would promote peace. But so what?
Professor Cole: Did removal of Saddam Hussein really accomplish "good"?
As with Marshall Tito in Yugoslavia, Saddam was a strong (and cruel and despotic) ruler who held together an artificially forced-together country whose constituent communities (Shia, Sunni, Kurd) have considerable antagonisms and then-incipient, now-actualized power struggles. (Lebanon had the same and had inter-communal war for many years). The USA attacked, removed the army, removed Saddam, removed the (cruel) "glue" that held the country together. Creating chaos.
From a USA perspective, "our" chaos may be better than Saddam's "law and order" (though the USA has supported so many cruel dictators that I wonder why anyone would way that the USA dislikes cruelty or dictators), but perhaps Iraqis would disagree?
Wonderful, wonderful article.
Here's an idea resp. BP. If USA treats BP as a "corporation" under USA law, BP's liability is limited (thank the best Congress money can buy!).
However, BP has caused (by deliberate steps to economise in face of a well-known possibility of disaster) a disaster far, far worse than "9/11" ever was. BP is at least an "enemy" (as well as a "corporation") and maybe even a "terrorist" (aren't we in the USA always over-eager to apply the term "terrorist"? Generaous, one might say, with the appellation.)
OK, if BP is an "enemy" (in this age of non-state opponents), threat 'em as an enemy. Exact reparations for war-damage. forget the corporation-protective law. Anyway, law, schmaw. This is war!
- The Israeli Ministry of Truth
Another example of Orwellian newspeak is targeted assassination.
If Israel does not "produce" to the international community the media (videos) which it confiscated from the Mavi Marmara, then no-one should grant any evidentiary weight to Israel's own media (videos), on the principle that spoliation of evidence should result in conclusions adverse to the party working the spoliation.
The 9 activists killed last Monday were shot 30 Times
"Targeting photographers suggests suppression of evidence of a crime, not self-defense. "
Indeed. And stealing (and suppressing publication of) films made by the Mavi Marmara activists even more suggests suppression (spoliation of evidence). See my essay touching on spoliation. No court, and no-one else, should allow any evidence whatever produced by Israel until the flotilla's films are returned to the activists (so they may be submitted in evidence).
As to: "continued US Predator drone strikes on Pakistani soil by covert operatives and sometimes by Blackwater-Xe contractors."
Why "covert operatives" etc.? Would they be better or different if the Army or Air Force was doing the targeting, the aiming, the trigger-pulling? Does this make the "covert operatives" or perhaps the expensive weapons they direct "illegal" (in the sense that irregular combatants -- out of uniform or not under an organized military command hierarchy are illegal)? Do these "covert operatives and sometimes by Blackwater-Xe contractors" belong in a Guantanamo-lookalike somewhere constructed and run by someone for the holding of people who are "irregular combatants"?
Does this make the US a terrorist state, in the sense that it supports and employs irregular combatants in warfare? And who cares. really? Are the Pakistani villagers any more or less dead or maimed on this account than if bombs were dropped upon them by a regulation Air Force airplane flying at 30,000 feet, its pilot wearing a uniform (invisible from 30,000 feet) and responsive if following orders carefully to a military command hierarchy? Even if the target was specified by, oh! dreadful thought, "covert operatives etc."?
If by "covert operatives" is meant CIA-types, then perhaps they, too, are mercenaries, spies-for-hire -- it is not only soldiers whom the USA hires in order to replace part of the expensive "big government" that some Americans say they dislike with a far more expensive replacement by non-civil-service "temps" as the military mercenaries and CIA replacement folks surely are.
And maybe the US strategy of fighting a war in Afghanistan (or fighting it in this way) is a decision made by mercenaries (or by the people who believe that American decision-making is best made by corporate decision-makers).