Info on impeachment

This came as a response to a post I made over a year ago (those search engines?), but it has some good information.

Thanks

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

“THE ARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT AND INCARCERATION” against the Bush Administration, written by the Chief Justice Luis Y. Quijano, Chief Justice of the United States District Courts of Appeal and Oversight Courts is written in a book, available December 2008 or January 2009 through “Authorhouse.” (888) 728-8467 Luis Y. Quijano is the Protectorate of the United States, the Supreme Commanding General, “The Eagle.”

5:42 PM

Post a Comment

Links to this post

Season's Greetings

The Winter Celebration

[Editors Note: Last year, I reposted this as an antedote to Bush. Well, this year we have Obama who, by not being Bush, was awarded the Nodel peace prize. Upon being told this, he immediately set to work devising a way to emulate Bush by escalating in Afghanistan (Iraq would be plagarism, after all). Anyway, there does not seem to be as much Christmas "Cheer" this year, but there is still a need for the reminder. Also, at least one radio station, streaming online, will spend all of next week playing nothing but Beethoven. That's right, in Blagojevitch's home town. At least there is something to look forward to.)

This time of the year, especially this year, leaves less and less to celebrate. In fact, there is hardly and reason to celebrate anything anymore. There may be a few happy moments here and there, but the senseless killing that continues leaves no ritualistic period untouched. This particular week, we have seen only stock market reports and airline delays as well as major highway shutdowns and deaths on our interstate highway system, all precipitated by a few days off for those fortunate enough to still remain employed during which they are obligated out of habit to spend money they do not have to send things to people they have no real use for and whom they would just as soon never see again.

One wonders how many Beethovens, or potential Beethovens, or great artists have either been killed by war or aborted by poverty or economics. This winter solstice is the anniversary of Beethovin's premire performance of his fifth symphony, and his sixth, as well as his fourth piano concerto, all at the same concert, with Beethoven as conductor and pianist. How often in the history of the universe does a phenomenon such as that occur? Yet I know of no mass celebration of what is clearly one of the greatest accomplishments of humanity. Beethoven spent his life yearning for international peace and brotherhood and eventually expressed in in his 9th symphony which you may hear this season, complete with the text of Schiller's "Ode to Joy". I shudder to think how many people may sit through a performance of it out of a sense of duty.

Is it too much to believe that such accomplishments can be paralled? In 1595, in England alone, perhaps 100,000 people were able to read and write English, and this is being generous. Out of this came Edmund Spenser, Sir Philip Sidney, Nash, Greene, Sir Philip Sidney, Ben Jonson, William Shakespeare, Sir Francis Bacon, and many others whose literature survives and lives to this day. Imagine any city or town with a population of 100,000 and imagine what would come out of it today? In addition, at that time, 95% of everything written was written in Latin, the remaining 5% in the various "living languages." The King James version of the Bible was to follow as was John Milton.

And it was not a matter of these people, these great artists, being unrecognized in their own time. Beethoven himself was widely praised, most prominently by Haydn who had also praised Mozart. However, Goethe and Beethoven were reportedly walking together down a street and passersby would wave. Goethe lightly ovserved that these people should stop flattering him with the recognition and Beethoven reportedly asked "How do you know they are not waving at me?" There was no contradiction.

So we can think of Goethe and Beethoven, Shakespeare and Spenser, and look for our modern parallels. Perhaps Nietzsche was right when he said that Darwin had it wrong, that "survival of the mediocre" is the rule. Even more of a warning is the thought that they both were right -- the fittest are the mediocre.

Solstice.

Shoes from Shinola

Here is a reprint of a blog by Pierre Tristram.

No changes have been made.

Middle East Issues

Pierre's Middle East Issues Blog

By Pierre Tristam, About.com

Shoe Thing: In Defense of Muntadar al-Zaidi

Monday December 15, 2008

Can you blame the guy?

Stupid question. Of course you can. Muntadar al-Zaidi’s double-barreled shoe-throwing at President Bush in Baghdad yesterday is an event fit for an ecstasy of sanctimony (with apologies to Philip Roth, whose phrase this is). How dare a twenty-something Iraqi amateur journalist so brazenly offend the leader of the free world, after everything Bush has done for Iraq? How dare he so insolently break the surly bonds of decorum, on live television to boot? What’s with Iraqis not volunteering to kiss the president’s shoes? And so on.

O irony, where art thou?

The folks at Fox News must be having not a mere ecstasy but an orgy of sanctimony, livid as they must be at the sight of a mass of Iraqis and Arabs beyond Iraq actually turning Muntadar al-Zaidi into a folk hero (and forgetting that if, say, a twenty-something conservative had thrown a shoe at Bill Clinton back when he was president, the thrower would have had his own talk show before the shoe hit the floor). “Son of a shoe,” let’s be sure to note, is a more potent insult in the Arab world than the line’s more gender-bittered version in the United States.

Let’s also put things in perspective a bit. It was a pair of shoes. Just a pair of shoes. Yes, it could have been a pair of tomatoes or a pair of pretzels for that matter. The effect would have been the same: You don’t, supposedly, throw things at a visiting president. But it was an act more viscerally symbolic than intentionally violent. In that respect, as an act of protest that could not have possibly done damage to anything but Bush’s (and the United States’) sense of self-importance, it was, if not entirely defensible, at least excusable: Bush has done far worse than throw shoes at Iraq, far worse than treat the country like so much dirt under his legacy’s soles.

And the president, as always, was visiting uninvited. Had been for five years really. And what Bush was saying from his self-congratulatory podium held not a whit of the truth that Muntadar al-Zaidi was speaking and throwing: “This is a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people, dog,” was the first salvo’s continuo, and “This is for the widows and orphans and all those killed in Iraq” was the second salvo’s. To which Bush said: "I don't know what the guy's cause is."

I don't know what the guy's cause is.

Has there ever been as catastrophic a disconnect between assumption and reality? It's not an original question. It can be asked as the trailer to eight years of the Bush presidency. Yet every time Bush provokes the question, as he does with heroic consistency, it's impossible not to be startled by the fact that it still has occasion to be asked.

Of course he doesn't know, after almost six years, tens of thousands of deaths, hundreds of thousands of other casualties, 4 million refugees and a country in ruins, what the guy's cause is. That's why he had to have the cause hurled at him on the wings of a shoe.

There are, it is safe to say, a few hundred thousand widows and orphans who would not have been widows and orphans today had Bush not opted to be his own little dictator and pounce after the other one by choosing invasion, occupation and a condemnation of uncertainty that he now passes on to Barack Obama. Those aren’t symbolic slights Iraq has been suffering for five years.

To add insult to invasion, Bush has the temerity to presume that a farewell tour to Iraq and Afghanistan was his due. The reaction from the streets suggested otherwise. Yes, there were those who, speaking to western reporters, made sure to condemn the show-throwing as insulting. But you can be certain that the act spoke of a nation’s grief and resentment as eloquently as any eulogy for the latest innocents dead for nothing more than—what, exactly?

In the words of Mohamed al-Hili, a 35-year-old policeman, quoted by The Times: “I am happy for what happened because that will reflect how we do not like Bush. And our government has a different attitude and belief than ours. And I’d like to add that Mr. Muntader is a hero and he must be our president or at least P.M. We need to replace al-Maliki with the real Iraqi — Mr. Muntader.” The one unsettling problem with that quote is that it makes Muntader sound too much like Iraq’s version of Joe the Plumber, and we saw how disastrous that bit of theater turned out last November, though in Muntader’s defense, the plumber character never did anything so representative or daring.

Bush will always have his version of the story: he “liberated” Iraq. Iraqis finally found a version Bush can understand, even if he cannot, and never tried to, understand Arabic. It was all over Iraq on Monday, brandished more universally than any language could be, because it is instantly understood in every time zone and every latitude, and because it finally scores the rhetorical equalizer against Bush’s presumption: the shoe, brandished more tellingly than any legacy Bush can claim.

Shoe President, Shoe

THE ABSURD TIMES

Illustration: Thanks to Hugh Ralinowsky.


I was aware that it was a great insult in the culture to even sit down with the soles of your feet facing the other person. I never really understood why, but then the Bronx Cheer doesn't really have any rationale behind it either. Throwing shoes at someone is the ultimate insult, however, and also somewhat to Maliki. The thrower had a nice over-hand motion, a quick snap with lots of wrist, holding at the toes so the heel would lead and thus be more accurate.
The secret Service then detained him, showing an absolute lack of humor.
The anchor for the new station called for his release since democracy (that's what it is all about, right?) allows for freedom of expression.
Right now, thousands in Iraqis, especially in Baghdad are demonstration, carring signs, demanding his releases.
Although Bush ducked the tosses, the reporter was able to at least hit the flag.
In a later interview, Bush called the incident "weird".
He should know.

later

It's About Time -- Mumbai

Here's a good article by one of my favorites on the International Issues:

Tom Dispatch posted 2008-12-12 14:36:36 Tomgram: Arundhati Roy, The Monster in the Mirror The single omnipresent historical reference in the American media immediately in the wake of September 11, 2001, was, of course, "Pearl Harbor" -- and those code words for it, "infamy" and "day of infamy," splashed in mile-high letters across the front pages of papers. What we had experienced, it was commonly said then, was "the Pearl Harbor of the 21st century." And with that image of the Japanese attack that began the Second World War for the United States went powerful, if only half-conscious, memories of how that war ended, of nuclear holocaust, and so the place where the World Trade Center towers went down was promptly dubbed "Ground Zero," previously a term reserved for the spot where an atomic blast took place. Naturally, the idea that 9/11 was an "act of war," and that we were "at war," quickly and heavily promoted by the Bush administration, followed; and all of this would have been appropriate to a surprise attack by a nuclear-armed state, but not to an assault by 19 terrorists backed by a ragtag organization spread from Hamburg, Germany, to the backlands of Afghanistan. That the framework for taking in what had happened that day was so thoroughly askew mattered not a whit to most Americans at that time; and the rest, including the President's "Global War on Terror," came easily, if disastrously, in its wake. Now, "9/11" has become the "Pearl Harbor" of the twenty-first century, the antecedent and analogy of choice, and so, not surprisingly, it was on all but a few media lips, during the recent massacre and siege in Mumbai, India. Arundhati Roy, the Indian activist and author of the prize-winning novel The God of Small Things, was one of the earliest, strongest, sanest voices on this planet of ours to take on George W. Bush and his Global War on Terror. "The freshest voice on Earth," I called her back in 2003. She was an inspiration. Now, she turns to the events in her own country, in Mumbai, and explains just why using 9/11 as the analogy of choice there, as we once used "Pearl Harbor" here, will lead in no less terrible directions. The piece that follows was published by the superb magazine Outlook India, which is sharing it with TomDispatch.com. Tom 9 Is Not 11 (And November Isn't September) By Arundhati Roy We've forfeited the rights to our own tragedies. As the carnage in Mumbai raged on, day after horrible day, our 24-hour news channels informed us that we were watching "India's 9/11." And like actors in a Bollywood rip-off of an old Hollywood film, we're expected to play our parts and say our lines, even though we know it's all been said and done before. As tension in the region builds, U.S. Senator John McCain has warned Pakistan that, if it didn't act fast to arrest the "bad guys," he had personal information that India would launch air strikes on "terrorist camps" in Pakistan and that Washington could do nothing because Mumbai was India's 9/11. But November isn't September, 2008 isn't 2001, Pakistan isn't Afghanistan, and India isn't America. So perhaps we should reclaim our tragedy and pick through the debris with our own brains and our own broken hearts so that we can arrive at our own conclusions. It's odd how, in the last week of November, thousands of people in Kashmir supervised by thousands of Indian troops lined up to cast their vote, while the richest quarters of India's richest city ended up looking like war-torn Kupwara -- one of Kashmir's most ravaged districts. The Mumbai attacks are only the most recent of a spate of terrorist attacks on Indian towns and cities this year. Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Delhi, Guwahati, Jaipur, and Malegaon have all seen serial bomb blasts in which hundreds of ordinary people have been killed and wounded. If the police are right about the people they have arrested as suspects, both Hindu and Muslim, all are Indian nationals, which obviously indicates that something's going very badly wrong in this country. If you were watching television you might not have heard that ordinary people, too, died in Mumbai. They were mowed down in a busy railway station and a public hospital. The terrorists did not distinguish between poor and rich. They killed both with equal cold-bloodedness. The Indian media, however, was transfixed by the rising tide of horror that breached the glittering barricades of "India shining" and spread its stench in the marbled lobbies and crystal ballrooms of two incredibly luxurious hotels and a small Jewish center. We're told that one of these hotels is an icon of the city of Mumbai. That's absolutely true. It's an icon of the easy, obscene injustice that ordinary Indians endure every day. On a day when the newspapers were full of moving obituaries by beautiful people about the hotel rooms they had stayed in, the gourmet restaurants they loved (ironically one was called Kandahar), and the staff who served them, a small box on the top left-hand corner in the inner pages of a national newspaper (sponsored by a pizza company, I think) said, "Hungry, kya?" ("Hungry eh?"). It, then, with the best of intentions I'm sure, informed its readers that, on the international hunger index, India ranked below Sudan and Somalia. But of course this isn't that war. That one's still being fought in the Dalit bastis (settlements) of our villages; on the banks of the Narmada and the Koel Karo rivers; in the rubber estate in Chengara; in the villages of Nandigram, Singur, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa, Lalgarh in West Bengal; and the slums and shantytowns of our gigantic cities. That war isn't on TV. Yet. So maybe, like everyone else, we should deal with the one that is. Terrorism and the Need for Context There is a fierce, unforgiving fault line that runs through the contemporary discourse on terrorism. On one side (let's call it Side A) are those who see terrorism, especially "Islamist" terrorism, as a hateful, insane scourge that spins on its own axis, in its own orbit, and has nothing to do with the world around it, nothing to do with history, geography, or economics. Therefore, Side A says, to try to place it in a political context, or even to try to understand it, amounts to justifying it and is a crime in itself. Side B believes that, though nothing can ever excuse or justify it, terrorism exists in a particular time, place, and political context, and to refuse to see that will only aggravate the problem and put more and more people in harm's way. Which is a crime in itself. The sayings of Hafiz Saeed who founded the Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the Pure) in 1990 and who belongs to the hard-line Salafi tradition of Islam, certainly bolsters the case of Side A. Hafiz Saeed approves of suicide bombing, hates Jews, Shias, and Democracy, and believes that jihad should be waged until Islam, his Islam, rules the world. Among the things he said are: "There cannot be any peace while India remains intact. Cut them, cut them so much that they kneel before you and ask for mercy." And: "India has shown us this path. We would like to give India a tit-for-tat response and reciprocate in the same way by killing the Hindus, just like it is killing the Muslims in Kashmir." But where would Side A accommodate the sayings of Babu Bajrangi of Ahmedabad, India, who sees himself as a democrat, not a terrorist? He was one of the major lynchpins of the 2002 Gujarat genocide and has said (on camera): "We didn't spare a single Muslim shop, we set everything on fire… we hacked, burned, set on fire… we believe in setting them on fire because these bastards don't want to be cremated, they're afraid of it… I have just one last wish… let me be sentenced to death… I don't care if I'm hanged... just give me two days before my hanging and I will go and have a field day in Juhapura where seven or eight lakhs [seven or eight hundred thousand] of these people stay... I will finish them off… let a few more of them die... at least twenty-five thousand to fifty thousand should die." And where in Side A's scheme of things would we place the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh bible, We, or, Our Nationhood Defined by M. S. Golwalkar , who became head of the RSS in 1944. (The RSS is the ideological heart, the holding company of the Hindu fundamentalist Bharatiya Janata Party, BJP, and its militias. The RSS was founded in 1925. By the 1930s, its founder, Dr. K. B. Hedgewar, a fan of Benito Mussolini's, had begun to model it overtly along the lines of Italian fascism.) It says: "Ever since that evil day, when Moslems first landed in Hindustan, right up to the present moment, the Hindu Nation has been gallantly fighting on to take on these despoilers. The Race Spirit has been awakening." Or: "To keep up the purity of its race and culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races -- the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here... a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by." Of course Muslims are not the only people in the gun sights of the Hindu Right. Dalits have been consistently targeted. Recently, in Kandhamal in Orissa, Christians were the target of two and a half months of violence that left more than 40 dead. Forty thousand people have been driven from their homes, half of whom now live in refugee camps. All these years Hafiz Saeed has lived the life of a respectable man in Lahore as the head of the Jamaat-ud Daawa, which many believe is a front organization for the Lashkar-e-Taiba. He continues to recruit young boys for his own bigoted jihad with his twisted, fiery sermons. On December 11, the United Nations imposed sanctions on the Jamaat-ud-Daawa. The Pakistani government succumbed to international pressure and put Hafiz Saeed under house arrest. Babu Bajrangi, however, is out on bail and lives the life of a respectable man in Gujarat. A couple of years after the genocide, he left the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP, a militia of the RSS) to join the Shiv Sena (another rightwing nationalist party). Narendra Modi, Bajrangi's former mentor, is still the Chief Minister of Gujarat. So the man who presided over the Gujarat genocide was reelected twice, and is deeply respected by India's biggest corporate houses, Reliance and Tata. Suhel Seth, a TV impresario and corporate spokesperson, recently said, "Modi is God." The policemen who supervised and sometimes even assisted the rampaging Hindu mobs in Gujarat have been rewarded and promoted. The RSS has 45,000 branches and seven million volunteers preaching its doctrine of hate across India. They include Narendra Modi, but also former Prime Minister A. B. Vajpayee, current leader of the opposition L. K. Advani, and a host of other senior politicians, bureaucrats, and police and intelligence officers. And if that's not enough to complicate our picture of secular democracy, we should place on record that there are plenty of Muslim organizations within India preaching their own narrow bigotry. So, on balance, if I had to choose between Side A and Side B, I'd pick Side B. We need context. Always. A Close Embrace of Hatred, Terrifying Familiarity, and Love On this nuclear subcontinent, that context is Partition. The Radcliffe Line, which separated India and Pakistan and tore through states, districts, villages, fields, communities, water systems, homes, and families, was drawn virtually overnight. It was Britain's final, parting kick to us. Partition triggered the massacre of more than a million people and the largest migration of a human population in contemporary history. Eight million people, Hindus fleeing the new Pakistan, Muslims fleeing the new kind of India, left their homes with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Each of those people carries, and passes down, a story of unimaginable pain, hate, horror, but yearning too. That wound, those torn but still unsevered muscles, that blood and those splintered bones still lock us together in a close embrace of hatred, terrifying familiarity, but also love. It has left Kashmir trapped in a nightmare from which it can't seem to emerge, a nightmare that has claimed more than 60,000 lives. Pakistan, the Land of the Pure, became an Islamic Republic, and then very quickly a corrupt, violent military state, openly intolerant of other faiths. India on the other hand declared herself an inclusive, secular democracy. It was a magnificent undertaking, but Babu Bajrangi's predecessors had been hard at work since the 1920s, dripping poison into India's bloodstream, undermining that idea of India even before it was born. By 1990, they were ready to make a bid for power. In 1992 Hindu mobs exhorted by L. K. Advani stormed the Babri Masjid and demolished it. By 1998, the BJP was in power at the center. The U.S. War on Terror put the wind in their sails. It allowed them to do exactly as they pleased, even to commit genocide and then present their fascism as a legitimate form of chaotic democracy. This happened at a time when India had opened its huge market to international finance and it was in the interests of international corporations and the media houses they owned to project it as a country that could do no wrong. That gave Hindu nationalists all the impetus and the impunity they needed. This, then, is the larger historical context of terrorism on the subcontinent -- and of the Mumbai attacks. It shouldn't surprise us that Hafiz Saeed of the Lashkar-e-Taiba is from Shimla (India) and L. K. Advani of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is from Sindh (Pakistan). In much the same way as it did after the 2001 Parliament attack, the 2002 burning of the Sabarmati Express, and the 2007 bombing of the Samjhauta Express, the government of India announced that it has "incontrovertible" evidence that the Lashkar-e-Taiba, backed by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), was behind the Mumbai strikes. The Lashkar has denied involvement, but remains the prime accused. According to the police and intelligence agencies, the Lashkar operates in India through an organization called the "Indian Mujahideen." Two Indian nationals, Sheikh Mukhtar Ahmed, a Special Police Officer working for the Jammu and Kashmir Police, and Tausif Rehman, a resident of Kolkata in West Bengal, have been arrested in connection with the Mumbai attacks. So already the neat accusation against Pakistan is getting a little messy. Almost always, when these stories unspool, they reveal a complicated global network of foot soldiers, trainers, recruiters, middlemen, and undercover intelligence and counter-intelligence operatives working not just on both sides of the India-Pakistan border, but in several countries simultaneously. In today's world, trying to pin down the provenance of a terrorist strike and isolate it within the borders of a single nation state, is very much like trying to pin down the provenance of corporate money. It's almost impossible. In circumstances like these, air strikes to "take out" terrorist camps may take out the camps, but certainly will not "take out" the terrorists. And neither will war. Also, in our bid for the moral high ground, let's try not to forget that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the LTTE of neighboring Sri Lanka, one of the world's most deadly terrorist groups, were trained by the Indian Army. Releasing Frankensteins Thanks largely to the part it was forced to play as America's ally, first in its war in support of the Afghan Islamists and then in its war against them, Pakistan, whose territory is reeling under these contradictions, is careening toward civil war. As recruiting agents for America's jihad against the Soviet Union, it was the job of the Pakistani Army and the ISI to nurture and channel funds to Islamic fundamentalist organizations. Having wired up these Frankensteins and released them into the world, the U.S. expected it could rein them in like pet mastiffs whenever it wanted to. Certainly it did not expect them to come calling in the heart of the homeland on September 11. So once again, Afghanistan had to be violently remade. Now the debris of a re-ravaged Afghanistan has washed up on Pakistan's borders. Nobody, least of all the Pakistani government, denies that it is presiding over a country that is threatening to implode. The terrorist training camps, the fire-breathing mullahs, and the maniacs who believe that Islam will, or should, rule the world are mostly the detritus of two Afghan wars. Their ire rains down on the Pakistani government and Pakistani civilians as much, if not more, than it does on India. If, at this point, India decides to go to war, perhaps the descent of the whole region into chaos will be complete. The debris of a bankrupt, destroyed Pakistan will wash up on India's shores, endangering us as never before. If Pakistan collapses, we can look forward to having millions of "non-state actors" with an arsenal of nuclear weapons at their disposal as neighbors. It's hard to understand why those who steer India's ship are so keen to replicate Pakistan's mistakes and call damnation upon this country by inviting the United States to further meddle clumsily and dangerously in our extremely complicated affairs. A superpower never has allies. It only has agents. On the plus side, the advantage of going to war is that it's the best way for India to avoid facing up to the serious trouble building on our home front. The Mumbai attacks were broadcast live (and exclusive!) on all or most of our 67 24-hour news channels and god knows how many international ones. TV anchors in their studios and journalists at "ground zero" kept up an endless stream of excited commentary. Over three days and three nights we watched in disbelief as a small group of very young men, armed with guns and gadgets, exposed the powerlessness of the police, the elite National Security Guard, and the marine commandos of this supposedly mighty, nuclear-powered nation. While they did this, they indiscriminately massacred unarmed people, in railway stations, hospitals, and luxury hotels, unmindful of their class, caste, religion, or nationality. (Part of the helplessness of the security forces had to do with having to worry about hostages. In other situations, in Kashmir for example, their tactics are not so sensitive. Whole buildings are blown up. Human shields are used. The U.S. and Israeli armies don't hesitate to send cruise missiles into buildings and drop daisy cutters on wedding parties in Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan.) But this was different. And it was on TV. The boy-terrorists' nonchalant willingness to kill -- and be killed -- mesmerized their international audience. They delivered something different from the usual diet of suicide bombings and missile attacks that people have grown inured to on the news. Here was something new. Die Hard 25. The gruesome performance went on and on. TV ratings soared. Ask any television magnate or corporate advertiser who measures broadcast time in seconds, not minutes, what that's worth. Eventually the killers died and died hard, all but one. (Perhaps, in the chaos, some escaped. We may never know.) Throughout the standoff the terrorists made no demands and expressed no desire to negotiate. Their purpose was to kill people, and inflict as much damage as they could, before they were killed themselves. They left us completely bewildered. Collateral Damage When we say, "Nothing can justify terrorism," what most of us mean is that nothing can justify the taking of human life. We say this because we respect life, because we think it's precious. So what are we to make of those who care nothing for life, not even their own? The truth is that we have no idea what to make of them, because we can sense that even before they've died, they've journeyed to another world where we cannot reach them. One TV channel (India TV) broadcast a phone conversation with one of the attackers, who called himself "Imran Babar." I cannot vouch for the veracity of the conversation, but the things he talked about were the things contained in the "terror emails" that were sent out before several other bomb attacks in India. Things we don't want to talk about any more: the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, the genocidal slaughter of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, the brutal repression in Kashmir. "You're surrounded," the anchor told him. "You are definitely going to die. Why don't you surrender?" "We die every day," he replied in a strange, mechanical way. "It's better to live one day as a lion and then die this way." He didn't seem to want to change the world. He just seemed to want to take it down with him. If the men were indeed members of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, why didn't it matter to them that a large number of their victims were Muslim, or that their action was likely to result in a severe backlash against the Muslim community in India whose rights they claim to be fighting for? Terrorism is a heartless ideology, and like most ideologies that have their eye on the Big Picture, individuals don't figure in their calculations except as collateral damage. It has always been a part of, and often even the aim of, terrorist strategy to exacerbate a bad situation in order to expose hidden fault lines. The blood of "martyrs" irrigates terrorism. Hindu terrorists need dead Hindus, Communist terrorists need dead proletarians, Islamist terrorists need dead Muslims. The dead become the demonstration, the proof of victimhood, which is central to the project. A single act of terrorism is not in itself meant to achieve military victory; at best it is meant to be a catalyst that triggers something else, something much larger than itself, a tectonic shift, a realignment. The act itself is theater, spectacle, and symbolism, and today the stage on which it pirouettes and performs its acts of bestiality is Live TV. Even as TV anchors were being condemned by other TV anchors, the effectiveness of the terror strikes was being magnified a thousand-fold by the TV broadcasts. Through the endless hours of analysis and the endless op-ed essays, in India at least, there has been very little mention of the elephants in the room: Kashmir, Gujarat, and the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Instead, we had retired diplomats and strategic experts debate the pros and cons of a war against Pakistan. We had the rich threatening not to pay their taxes unless their security was guaranteed. (Is it alright for the poor to remain unprotected?) We had people suggest that the government step down and each state in India be handed over to a separate corporation. We had the death of former Prime Minster V. P. Singh, the hero of Dalits and lower castes, and the villain of upper caste Hindus pass without a mention. We had Suketu Mehta, author of Maximum City and co-writer of the Bollywood film Mission Kashmir give us his version of George Bush's famous "Why They Hate Us" speech. His analysis of why religious bigots, both Hindu and Muslim, hate Mumbai: "Perhaps because Mumbai stands for lucre, profane dreams and an indiscriminate openness." His prescription: "The best answer to the terrorists is to dream bigger, make even more money, and visit Mumbai more than ever." Didn't George Bush ask Americans to go out and shop after 9/11? Ah yes. 9/11, the day we can't seem to get away from. A Shadowy History of Suspicious Terror Attacks Though one chapter of horror in Mumbai has ended, another might have just begun. Day after day, a powerful, vociferous section of the Indian elite, goaded by marauding TV anchors who make Fox News look almost radical and left-wing, have taken to mindlessly attacking politicians, all politicians, glorifying the police and the army, and virtually asking for a police state. It isn't surprising that those who have grown plump on the pickings of democracy (such as it is) should now be calling for a police state. The era of "pickings" is long gone. We're now in the era of Grabbing by Force, and democracy has a terrible habit of getting in the way. Dangerous, stupid oversimplifications like the Police are Good/Politicians are Bad, Chief Executives are Good/Chief Ministers are Bad, Army is Good/Government is Bad, India is Good/Pakistan is Bad are being bandied about by TV channels that have already whipped their viewers into a state of almost uncontrollable hysteria. Tragically this regression into intellectual infancy comes at a time when people in India were beginning to see that, in the business of terrorism, victims and perpetrators sometimes exchange roles. It's an understanding that the people of Kashmir, given their dreadful experiences of the last 20 years, have honed to an exquisite art. On the mainland we're still learning. (If Kashmir won't willingly integrate into India, it's beginning to look as though India will integrate/disintegrate into Kashmir.) It was after the 2001 Parliament attack that the first serious questions began to be raised. A campaign by a group of lawyers and activists exposed how innocent people had been framed by the police and the press, how evidence was fabricated, how witnesses lied, how due process had been criminally violated at every stage of the investigation. Eventually, the courts acquitted two out of the four accused, including S. A. R. Geelani, the man whom the police claimed was the mastermind of the operation. A third, Showkat Guru, was acquitted of all the charges brought against him, but was then convicted for a fresh, comparatively minor offense. The Supreme Court upheld the death sentence of another of the accused, Mohammad Afzal. In its judgment the court acknowledged that there was no proof that Mohammed Afzal belonged to any terrorist group, but went on to say, quite shockingly, "The collective conscience of the society will only be satisfied if capital punishment is awarded to the offender." Even today we don't really know who the terrorists that attacked the Indian Parliament were and who they worked for. More recently, on September 19th of this year, we had the controversial "encounter" at Batla House in Jamia Nagar, Delhi, where the Special Cell of the Delhi police gunned down two Muslim students in their rented flat under seriously questionable circumstances, claiming that they were responsible for serial bombings in Delhi, Jaipur, and Ahmedabad in 2008. An assistant commissioner of police, Mohan Chand Sharma, who played a key role in the Parliament attack investigation, lost his life as well. He was one of India's many "encounter specialists," known and rewarded for having summarily executed several "terrorists." There was an outcry against the Special Cell from a spectrum of people, ranging from eyewitnesses in the local community to senior Congress Party leaders, students, journalists, lawyers, academics, and activists, all of whom demanded a judicial inquiry into the incident. In response, the BJP and L. K. Advani lauded Mohan Chand Sharma as a "Braveheart" and launched a concerted campaign in which they targeted those who had dared to question the integrity of the police, saying to do so was "suicidal" and calling them "anti-national." Of course, there has been no enquiry. Only days after the Batla House event, another story about "terrorists" surfaced in the news. In a report submitted to a Sessions Court, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) said that a team from Delhi's Special Cell (the same team that led the Batla House encounter, including Mohan Chand Sharma) had abducted two innocent men, Irshad Ali and Moarif Qamar, in December 2005, planted two kilograms of RDX (explosives) and two pistols on them, and then arrested them as "terrorists" who belonged to Al Badr (which operates out of Kashmir). Ali and Qamar, who have spent years in jail, are only two examples out of hundreds of Muslims who have been similarly jailed, tortured, and even killed on false charges. This pattern changed in October 2008 when Maharashtra's Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), which was investigating the September 2008 Malegaon blasts, arrested a Hindu preacher Sadhvi Pragya, a self-styled God man, Swami Dayanand Pande, and Lt. Col. Purohit, a serving officer of the Indian Army. All the arrested belong to Hindu nationalist organizations, including a Hindu supremacist group called Abhinav Bharat. The Shiv Sena, the BJP, and the RSS condemned the Maharashtra ATS, and vilified its chief, Hemant Karkare, claiming he was part of a political conspiracy and declaring that "Hindus could not be terrorists." L. K. Advani changed his mind about his policy on the police and made rabble rousing speeches to huge gatherings in which he denounced the ATS for daring to cast aspersions on holy men and women. On November 25th, newspapers reported that the ATS was investigating the high profile VHP chief Pravin Togadia's possible role in the blasts in Malegaon (a predominantly Muslim town). The next day, in an extraordinary twist of fate, Hemant Karkare was killed in the Mumbai attacks. The chances are that the new chief, whoever he is, will find it hard to withstand the political pressure that is bound to be brought on him over the Malegaon investigation. While the Sangh Parivar does not seem to have come to a final decision over whether or not it is anti-national and suicidal to question the police, Arnab Goswami, anchorperson of Times Now television, has stepped up to the plate. He has taken to naming, demonizing, and openly heckling people who have dared to question the integrity of the police and armed forces. My name and the name of the well-known lawyer Prashant Bhushan have come up several times. At one point, while interviewing a former police officer, Arnab Goswami turned to the camera: "Arundhati Roy and Prashant Bhushan," he said. "I hope you are watching this. We think you are disgusting." For a TV anchor to do this in an atmosphere as charged and as frenzied as the one that prevails today amounts to incitement, as well as threat, and would probably in different circumstances have cost a journalist his or her job. So, according to a man aspiring to be the next prime minister of India, and another who is the public face of a mainstream TV channel, citizens have no right to raise questions about the police. This in a country with a shadowy history of suspicious terror attacks, murky investigations, and fake "encounters." This in a country that boasts of the highest number of custodial deaths in the world, and yet refuses to ratify the international covenant on torture. A country where the ones who make it to torture chambers are the lucky ones because at least they've escaped being "encountered" by our Encounter Specialists. A country where the line between the underworld and the Encounter Specialists virtually does not exist. The Monster in the Mirror How should those of us whose hearts have been sickened by the knowledge of all of this view the Mumbai attacks, and what are we to do about them? There are those who point out that U.S. strategy has been successful inasmuch as the United States has not suffered a major attack on its home ground since 9/11. However, some would say that what America is suffering now is far worse. If the idea behind the 9/11 terror attacks was to goad America into showing its true colors, what greater success could the terrorists have asked for? The U.S. military is bogged down in two unwinnable wars, which have made the United States the most hated country in the world. Those wars have contributed greatly to the unraveling of the American economy and who knows, perhaps eventually the American empire. (Could it be that battered, bombed Afghanistan, the graveyard of the Soviet Union, will be the undoing of this one too?) Hundreds of thousands of people, including thousands of American soldiers, have lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. The frequency of terrorist strikes on U.S. allies/agents (including India) and U.S. interests in the rest of the world has increased dramatically since 9/11. George W. Bush, the man who led the U.S. response to 9/11, is a despised figure not just internationally, but also by his own people. Who can possibly claim that the United States is winning the War on Terror? Homeland Security has cost the U.S. government billions of dollars. Few countries, certainly not India, can afford that sort of price tag. But even if we could, the fact is that this vast homeland of ours cannot be secured or policed in the way the United States has been. It's not that kind of homeland. We have a hostile nuclear-weapons state that is slowly spinning out of control as a neighbor; we have a military occupation in Kashmir and a shamefully persecuted, impoverished minority of more than 150 million Muslims who are being targeted as a community and pushed to the wall, whose young see no justice on the horizon, and who, were they to totally lose hope and radicalize, will end up as a threat not just to India, but to the whole world. If 10 men can hold off the NSG commandos and the police for three days, and if it takes half a million soldiers to hold down the Kashmir valley, do the math. What kind of Homeland Security can secure India? Nor for that matter will any other quick fix. Anti-terrorism laws are not meant for terrorists; they're for people that governments don't like. That's why they have a conviction rate of less than 2%. They're just a means of putting inconvenient people away without bail for a long time and eventually letting them go. Terrorists like those who attacked Mumbai are hardly likely to be deterred by the prospect of being refused bail or being sentenced to death. It's what they want. What we're experiencing now is blowback, the cumulative result of decades of quick fixes and dirty deeds. The carpet's squelching under our feet. The only way to contain -- it would be naïve to say end -- terrorism is to look at the monster in the mirror. We're standing at a fork in the road. One sign says "Justice," the other "Civil War." There's no third sign and there's no going back. Choose. Arundhati Roy was born in 1959 in Shillong, India. She studied architecture in New Delhi, where she now lives, and has worked as a film designer, actor, and screenplay writer in India. A tenth anniversary edition of her novel, The God of Small Things (Random House), for which she received the 1997 Booker Prize, will be officially published within days. She is also the author of numerous nonfiction titles, including An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire. This piece was published by Outlook India, which is sharing it with TomDispatch.com. Copyright 2008 Arundhati Roy

Corruption My Ass -- Blagojevich

THE ABSURD TIMES

I haven't got time for this, but someone had to point it out. There is no such thing as corruption in Chicago. Corruption is a deviation from contemporary community standards. He fits perfectly into business as usual in Illinois and especially Chicago and it's none of any Republican's business, the party of Herbert Hoover.
See, Chicago one wanted a reform Mayor, so they elected Kenelly (top). After two terms of that, Chicago had enough and wanted to get back to business as usual and hence the second most powerful politician in the United States, Richard Daley, was elected (above, left).
I remember walking in downtown Chicago as a kid with my father and, as we approached the courthouse, the police were leading a man out, a car drove by, and gunned him down. My Dad gave me a great moral lesson: "See? Dat's professionals -- not a single civilian hit. Dat's how to do tings."
Blagojevich, the current Governor (we imprison a Governor every ten years), has been called corrupt for withholding millions of dollars from the Tribune Corporation, owner of over a dozen newspapers, several television and zadio stations, and the Chicago Cubs. He wanted it to fire an editor, and not Jim Warren who actually was pretty good, but John McCormick (who cares?). The Tribune was a Herbert Hoover Newspaper, the one that announced that Dewey beat Truman, wrote nasty things about my father and a few lies about me, wanted a tax waiver on the Cubs, and decided all unions and anti-war protestors were "communists". These are the same people who took away the name Wrigley Field. What a crock.
The children's hospital? He did get 8 million to them, but wanted the CEO to donate 50K. He didn't. The hospital still got the money.
Now they are trying to use him against Obama. His quote about Obama? "Fuck him." See, Obama left the political field of Chicago for the safety of running for President and would not make Blago an ambassador in return for the right pick for senate.

Now, back to work.

the election and what next

THE ABSURD TIMES

    I'm taking a break from this as I am occupied with another project and will be for a few weeks.  Here are two interesting entries from Noam Chomsky -- one article and one interview by an Arabic Language Newspaper -- interesting how the American press runs away from him.
    Meanwhile, feel free to browse the archives, listed in the left hand column.

The Election, Economy, War, and Peace

November, 25 2008

By Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky's ZSpace Page
Join ZSpace

The Election

 

The word that immediately rolled off of every tongue after the presidential election was "historic." And rightly so. A Black family in the White House is truly a momentous event.

 

There were some surprises. One was that the election was not over after the Democratic convention. By usual indicators, the opposition party should have had a landslide victory during a severe economic crisis, after eight years of disastrous policies on all fronts including the worst record on job growth of any post-war president and a rare decline in median wealth, an incumbent so unpopular that his own party had to disavow him, and a dramatic collapse in US standing in world opinion. The Democrats did win, barely. If the financial crisis had been slightly delayed, they might not have.

 

A good question is why the margin of victory for the opposition party was so small, given the circumstances. One possibility is that neither party reflected public opinion at a time when 80% think the country is going in the wrong direction and that the government is run by "a few big interests looking out for themselves," not for the people, and a stunning 94% object that government does not attend to public opinion. As many studies show, both parties are well to the right of the population on many major issues, domestic and international.

 

It could be argued that no party speaking for the public would be viable in a society that is business-run to an unusual extent. Evidence for that is substantial. At a very general level, evidence is provided by the predictive success of political economist Thomas Ferguson's "investment theory" of politics, which holds that policies tend to reflect the wishes of the powerful blocs that invest every four years to control the state. More specific illustrations are numerous. To mention just one, for 60 years the US has failed to ratify the core principle of international labor law, which guarantees freedom of association. Legal analysts call it "the untouchable treaty in American politics," and observe that there has never even been any debate about the matter. And many have noted Washington's dismissal of conventions of the International Labor Organization as contrasted with the intense dedication to enforcement of monopoly pricing rights for corporations ("intellectual property rights"). There is much to explore here, but this is not the place.

 

The two candidates in the Democratic primary were a woman and an African-American. That too was historic. It would have been unimaginable forty years ago. The fact that the country has become civilized enough to accept this outcome is a considerable tribute to the activism of the 1960s and its aftermath.

 

In some ways the election followed familiar patterns.  The McCain campaign was honest enough to announce clearly that the election wouldn't be about issues. Sarah Palin's hairdresser received twice the salary of McCain's foreign policy adviser, the Financial Times reported, probably an accurate reflection of significance for the campaign. Obama's message of "hope" and "change" offered a blank slate on which supporters could write their wishes. One could search websites for position papers, but correlation of these to policies is hardly spectacular, and in any event, what enters into voters' choices is what the campaign places front and center, as party managers know well.

 

The Obama campaign greatly impressed the public relations industry, which named Obama "Advertising Age's marketer of the year for 2008," easily beating out Apple. The industry's prime task is to ensure that uninformed consumers make irrational choices, thus undermining market theories.  And it recognizes the benefits of undermining democracy the same way.

 

The Center for Responsive Politics reports that once again elections were bought: "The best-funded candidates won nine out of 10 contests, and all but a few members of Congress will be returning to Washington." Before the conventions, the viable candidates with most funding from financial institutions were Obama and McCain, with 36% each. Preliminary results indicate that by the end, Obama's campaign contributions, by industry, were concentrated among Law Firms (including lobbyists) and financial institutions. The investment theory of politics suggests some conclusions about the guiding policies of the new administration.

 

The power of financial institutions reflects the increasing shift of the economy from production to finance since the liberalization of finance in the 1970s, a root cause of the current economic malaise: the financial crisis, recession in the real economy, and the miserable performance of the economy for the large majority, whose real wages stagnated for 30 years, while benefits declined. The steward of this impressive record, Alan Greenspan, attributed his success to "growing worker insecurity," which led to "atypical restraint on compensation increases" - and corresponding increases into the pockets of those who matter. His failure even to perceive the dramatic housing bubble, following the collapse of the earlier tech bubble that he oversaw, was the immediate cause of the current financial crisis, as he ruefully conceded.

 

Reactions to the election from across the spectrum commonly adopted the "soaring rhetoric" that was the hallmark of the Obama campaign. Veteran correspondent John Hughes wrote that "America has just shown the world an extraordinary example of democracy at work," while to British historian-journalist Tristram Hunt, the election showed that America is a land "where miracles happen," such as "the glorious epic of Barack Obama" (leftist French journalist Jean Daniel). "In no other country in the world is such an election possible," said Catherine Durandin of the Institute for International and Strategic Relations in Paris. Many others were no less rapturous.

 

The rhetoric has some justification if we keep to the West, but elsewhere matters are different. Consider the world's largest democracy, India. The chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, which is larger than all but a few countries of the world and is notorious for horrifying treatment of women, is not only a woman, but a Dalit ("untouchable"), at the lowest rung of India's disgraceful caste system.

 

Turning to the Western hemisphere, consider its two poorest countries: Haiti and Bolivia. In Haiti's first democratic election in 1990, grass-roots movements organized in the slums and hills, and though without resources, elected their own candidate, the populist priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The results astonished observers who expected an easy victory for the candidate of the elite and the US, a former World Bank official.

 

True, the victory for democracy was soon overturned by a military coup, followed by years of terror and suffering to the present, with crucial participation of the two traditional torturers of Haiti, France and the US (contrary to self-serving illusions). But the victory itself was a far more "extraordinary example of democracy at work" than the miracle of 2008.

 

The same is true of the 2005 election in Bolivia. The indigenous majority, the most oppressed population in the hemisphere (those who survived), elected a candidate from their own ranks, a poor peasant, Evo Morales. The electoral victory was not based on soaring rhetoric about hope and change, or body language and fluttering of eyelashes, but on crucial issues, very well known to the voters: control over resources, cultural rights, and so on. Furthermore, the election went far beyond pushing a lever or even efforts to get out the vote. It was a stage in long and intense popular struggles in the face of severe repression, which had won major victories, such as defeating the efforts to deprive poor people of water through privatization.

 

These popular movements did not simply take instructions from party leaders. Rather, they formulated the policies that their candidates were chosen to implement. That is quite different from the Western model of democracy, as we see clearly in the reactions to Obama's victory.

 

In the liberal Boston Globe, the headline of the lead story observed that Obama's "grass-roots strategy leaves few debts to interest groups": labor unions, women, minorities, or other "traditional Democratic constituencies." That is only partially right, because massive funding by concentrated sectors of capital is ignored. But leaving that detail aside, the report is correct in saying that Obama's hands are not tied, because his only debt is to "a grass-roots army of millions" - who took instructions, but contributed essentially nothing to formulating his program.

 

At the other end of the doctrinal spectrum, a headline in the Wall Street Journal reads "Grass-Roots Army Is Still at the Ready" - namely, ready to follow instructions to "push his agenda," whatever it may be.

 

Obama's organizers regard the network they constructed "as a mass movement with unprecedented potential to influence voters," the Los Angeles Times reported. The movement, organized around the "Obama brand" can pressure Congress to "hew to the Obama agenda." But they are not to develop ideas and programs and call on their representatives to implement them. These would be among the "old ways of doing politics" from which the new "idealists" are "breaking free."

 

It is instructive to compare this picture to the workings of a functioning democracy such as Bolivia. The popular movements of the third world do not conform to the favored Western doctrine that the "function" of the "ignorant and meddlesome outsiders" - the population -- is to be "spectators of action" but not "participants" (Walter Lippmann, articulating a standard progressive view).

 

Perhaps there might even be some substance to fashionable slogans about "clash of civilizations."

 

In earlier periods of American history, the public refused to keep to its assigned "function." Popular activism has repeatedly been the force that led to substantial gains for freedom and justice. The authentic hope of the Obama campaign is that the "grass roots army" organized to take instructions from the leader might "break free" and return to "old ways of doing politics," by direct participation in action.

 

 

 

Latin America

 

In Bolivia, as in Haiti, efforts to promote democracy, social justice, and cultural rights, and to bring about desperately needed structural and institutional changes are, naturally, bitterly opposed by the traditional rulers, the Europeanized mostly white elite in the Eastern provinces, the site of most of the natural resources currently desired by the West. Also naturally, their quasi-secessionist movement is supported by Washington, which once again scarcely conceals its distaste for democracy when it does not conform to strategic and economic interests. The generalization is a staple of serious scholarship, but does not make its way to commentary about the revered "freedom agenda."

 

To punish Bolivians for showing "the world an extraordinary example of democracy at work," the Bush administration cancelled trade preferences, threatening tens of thousands of jobs, on the pretext that Bolivia was not cooperating with US counter-narcotic efforts. In the real world, the UN estimates that Bolivia's coca crop increased 5 percent in 2007, as compared with a 26 percent increase in Colombia, the terror state that is Washington's closest regional ally and the recipient of enormous military aid. AP reports that "Cocaine seizures by Bolivian police working with DEA agents had also increased dramatically during the Morales administration."

 

"Drug wars" have regularly been used as a pretext for repression, violence, and state crimes, at home as well.

 

After Morales's victory in a recall referendum in August 2008, with a sharp increase in support over his 2005 success, rightist opposition turned violent, leading to assassination of many peasants supporting the government. After the massacre, a summit meeting of UNASUR, the newly-formed Union of South American Republics, was convened in Santiago Chile. The summit issued a strong statement of support for the elected Morales government, read by Chilean President Michelle Bachelet. The statement declared "their full and firm support for the constitutional government of President Evo Morales, whose mandate was ratified by a big majority" -- referring to his overwhelming victory in the referendum a month earlier. Morales thanked UNASUR for its support, observing that "For the first time in South America's history, the countries of our region are deciding how to resolve our problems, without the presence of the United States."

 

A matter of no slight significance, not reported in the US.

 

 

 

The Administration

 

Turning to the future, what can we realistically expect of an Obama administration? We have two sources of information: actions and rhetoric.

 

The most important actions to date are selection of staff. The first selection was for vice-President: Joe Biden, one of the strongest supporters of the Iraq invasion among Senate Democrats, a long-time Washington insider, who consistently votes with his fellow Democrats but not always, as when he supported a measure to make it harder for individuals to erase debt by declaring bankruptcy.

 

The first post-election appointment was for the crucial position of chief of staff: Rahm Emanuel, one of the strongest supporters of the Iraq invasion among House Democrats and like Biden, a long-term Washington insider.  Emanuel is also one of the biggest recipients of Wall Street campaign contributions, the Center for Responsive Politics reports.  He "was the top House recipient in the 2008 election cycle of contributions from hedge funds, private equity firms and the larger securities/investment industry." Since being elected to Congress in 2002, he "has received more money from individuals and PACs in the securities and investment business than any other industry"; these are also among Obama's top donors. His task is to oversee Obama's approach to the worst financial crisis since the 1930s, for which his and Obama's funders share ample responsibility.

 

In an interview with an editor of the Wall Street Journal, Emanuel was asked what the Obama administration would do about "the Democratic congressional leadership, which is brimming with left-wing barons who have their own agenda," such as slashing defense spending (in accord with the will of the majority of the population) and "angling for steep energy taxes to combat global warming," not to speak of the outright lunatics in Congress who toy with slavery reparations and even sympathize with Europeans who want to indict Bush administration war criminals for war crimes. "Barack Obama can stand up to them," Emanuel assured the editor. The administration will be "pragmatic," fending off left extremists.

 

Obama's transition team is headed by John Podesta, Clinton's chief of staff. The leading figures in his economic team are Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers, both enthusiasts for the deregulation that was a major factor in the current financial crisis. As Treasury Secretary, Rubin worked hard to abolish the Glass-Steagall act, which had separated commercial banks from financial institutions that incur high risks. Economist Tim Canova comments that Rubin had "a personal interest in the demise of Glass-Steagall." Soon after leaving his position as Treasury Secretary, he became "chair of Citigroup, a financial-services conglomerate that was facing the possibility of having to sell off its insurance underwriting subsidiary... the Clinton administration never brought charges against him for his obvious violations of the Ethics in Government Act."

 

Rubin was replaced as Treasury Secretary by Summers, who presided over legislation barring federal regulation of derivatives, the "weapons of mass destruction" (Warren Buffett) that helped plunge financial markets to disaster. He ranks as "one of the main villains in the current economic crisis," according to Dean Baker, one of the few economists to have warned accurately of the impending crisis. Placing financial policy in the hands of Rubin and Summers is "a bit like turning to Osama Bin Laden for aid in the war on terrorism," Baker adds.

 

The business press reviewed the records of Obama's Transition Economic Advisory Board, which met on November 7 to determine how to deal with the financial crisis. In Bloomberg News, Jonathan Weil concluded that "Many of them should be getting subpoenas as material witnesses right about now, not places in Obama's inner circle." About half "have held fiduciary positions at companies that, to one degree or another, either fried their financial statements, helped send the world into an economic tailspin, or both." Is it really plausible that "they won't mistake the nation's needs for their own corporate interests?" He also pointed out that chief of staff Emanuel "was a director at Freddie Mac in 2000 and 2001 while it was committing accounting fraud."

 

Those are the actions, at the time of writing.  The rhetoric is "change" and "hope."

 

 

 

Health Care

 

The primary concern for the administration will be to arrest the financial crisis and the simultaneous recession in the real economy. But there is also a monster in the closet: the notoriously inefficient privatized health care system, which threatens to overwhelm the federal budget if current tendencies persist. A majority of the public has long favored a national health care system, which should be far less expensive and more effective, comparative evidence indicates (along with many studies). As recently as 2004, any government intervention in the health care system was described in the press as "politically impossible" and "lacking political support" - meaning: opposed by the insurance industry, pharmaceutical corporations, and others who count. In 2008, however, first Edwards, then Obama and Clinton, advanced proposals that approach what the public has long preferred. These ideas now have "political support." What has changed? Not public opinion, which remains much as before. But by 2008, major sectors of power, primarily manufacturing industry, had come to recognize that they are being severely damaged by the privatized health care system. Hence the public will is coming to have "political support." There is a long way to go, but the shift tells us something about dysfunctional democracy.

 

 

 

International Relations

 

Internationally, there is not much of substance on the largely blank slate. What there is gives little reason to expect much a change from Bush's second term, which stepped back from the radical ultranationalism and aggressive posture of the first term, also discarding some of the extreme hawks and opponents of democracy (in action, that is, not soothing words), like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz.

 

Israel-Palestine

 

The immediate issues have to do mostly with the Middle East. On Israel-Palestine, rumors are circulating that Obama might depart from the US rejectionism that has blocked a political settlement for over 30 years, with rare exceptions, notably for a few days in January 2001 before promising negotiations were called off prematurely by Israel. The record, however, provides no basis for taking the rumors seriously. I have reviewed Obama's formal positions elsewhere (Perilous Power), and will put the matter aside here.

 

After the election, Israeli president Shimon Peres informed the press that on his July trip to Israel, Obama had told him that he was "very impressed" with the Arab League peace proposal, calling for full normalization of relations with Israel along with Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories - basically, the long-standing international consensus that the US-Israel have unilaterally blocked (and that Peres has never accepted - in fact, in his last days as Prime Minister in 1996 he held that a Palestinian state can never come into existence). That might suggest a significant change of heart, except that the right-wing Israeli leader Binyamin Netanyahu said that on the same trip, Obama had told him that he was "very impressed" with Netanyahu's plan, which calls for indefinite Israeli control of the occupied territories.

 

The paradox is plausibly resolved by Israeli political analyst Aluf Ben, who points out that Obama's "main goal was not to screw up or ire anyone. Presumably he was polite, and told his hosts their proposals were `very interesting' - they leave satisfied and he hasn't promised a thing." Understandable, but it leaves us with nothing except his fervent professions of love for Israel and dismissal of Palestinian concerns.

 

Iraq

 

On Iraq, Obama has frequently been praised for his "principled opposition" to the war. In reality, as he has made clear, his opposition has been entirely unprincipled throughout. The war, he said, is a "strategic blunder." When Kremlin critics of the invasion of Afghanistan called it a strategic blunder, we did not say that they were taking a principled stand.

 

By the time of writing, the government of Iraq seems close to accepting a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with Washington on the US military presence in Iraq - with reservations, according to Prime Minister Maliki, who said that this is the best Iraq could get and it was at least "a strong beginning." The talks dragged on, the Washington Post reports, because Iraq insisted on "some major concessions, including the establishment of the 2011 withdrawal date instead of vaguer language favored by the Bush administration [and] also rejected long-term U.S. military bases on its soil." Iraqi leaders "consider the firm deadline for withdrawal to be a negotiating victory," Reuters reports: Washington "long opposed setting any timetable for its troops to withdraw, but relented in recent months," unable to overcome Iraqi resistance.

 

Throughout the negotiations, the press regularly dismissed the obstinate stance of the Maliki government as regrettable pandering to public opinion. US-run polls continue to report that a large majority of Iraqis oppose any US military presence, and believe that US forces make the situation worse, including the "surge." That judgment is supported, among others, by Middle East specialist and security analyst Steven Simon, who writes in Foreign Affairs that the Petraeus counterinsurgency strategy is "stoking the three forces that have traditionally threatened the stability of Middle Eastern states: tribalism, warlordism, and sectarianism. States that have failed to control these forces have ultimately become ungovernable, and this is the fate for which the surge is preparing Iraq. A strategy intended to reduce casualties in the short term will ineluctably weaken the prospects for Iraq's cohesion over the long run." It may lead to "a strong, centralized state ruled by a military junta that would resemble the Baathist regime Washington overthrew in 2003," or "something very much like the imperial protectorates in the Middle East of the first half of the twentieth century" in which the "club of patrons" in the capital would ‘dole out goods to tribes through favored conduits." In the Petraeus system, "the U.S. military is performing the role of the patrons -- creating an unhealthy dependency and driving a dangerous wedge between the tribes and the state," undermining prospects for a "stable, unitary Iraq."

 

The latest Iraqi success culminates a long process of resistance to demands of the US invaders. Washington fought tooth and nail to prevent elections, but was finally forced to back down in the face of popular demands for democracy, symbolized by the Ayatollah Sistani. The Bush administration then managed to install their own choice as Prime Minister, and sought to control the government in various ways, meanwhile also building huge military bases around the country and an "embassy" that is a virtual city within Baghdad - all funded by congressional Democrats. If the invaders do live up to the SOFA that they have been compelled to accept, it would constitute a significant triumph of nonviolent resistance. Insurgents can be killed, but mass nonviolent resistance is much harder to quell.

 

Within the political class and the media it is reflexively assumed that Washington has the right to demand terms for the SOFA. No such right was accorded to Russian invaders of Afghanistan, or indeed to anyone except the US and its clients. For others, we rightly adopt the principle that invaders have no rights, only responsibilities, including the responsibility to attend to the will of the victims, and to pay massive reparations for their crimes. In this case, the crimes include strong support for Saddam Hussein through his worst atrocities on Reagan's watch, then on to Saddam's massacre of Shiites under the eyes of the US military after the first Gulf War; the Clinton sanctions that were termed "genocidal" by the distinguished international diplomats who administered them and resigned in protest, and that also helped Saddam escape the fate of other gangsters whom the US and Britain supported to the very end of their bloody rule; and the war and its hideous aftermath. No such thoughts can be voiced in polite society.

 

The Iraqi government spokesman said that the tentative SOFA "matches the vision of U.S. President-elect Barack Obama." Obama's vision was in fact left somewhat vague, but presumably he would go along in some fashion with the demands of the Iraqi government. If so, that would require modification of US plans to ensure control over Iraq's enormous oil resources while reinforcing its dominance over the world's major energy producing region.

 

Afghanistan, Pakistan...

 

Obama's announced "vision" was to shift forces from Iraq to Afghanistan. That stand evoked a lesson from the editors of the Washington Post: "While the United States has an interest in preventing the resurgence of the Afghan Taliban, the country's strategic importance pales beside that of Iraq, which lies at the geopolitical center of the Middle East and contains some of the world's largest oil reserves." Increasingly, as Washington has been compelled to accede to Iraqi demands, tales about "democracy promotion" and other self-congratulatory fables have been shelved in favor of recognition of what had been obvious throughout to all but the most doctrinaire ideologists: that the US would not have invaded if Iraq's exports were asparagus and tomatoes and the world's major energy resources were in the South Pacific.

 

The NATO command is also coming to recognize reality publicly. In June 2007, NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer informed a meeting of NATO members that "NATO troops have to guard pipelines that transport oil and gas that is directed for the West," and more generally to protect sea routes used by tankers and other "crucial infrastructure" of the energy system. That is the true meaning of the fabled "responsibility to protect." Presumably the task includes the projected $7.6-billion TAPI pipeline that would deliver natural gas from Turkmenistan to Pakistan and India, running through Afghan's Kandahar province, where Canadian troops are deployed. The goal is "to block a competing pipeline that would bring gas to Pakistan and India from Iran" and to "diminish Russia's dominance of Central Asian energy exports," the Toronto Globe and Mail reported, plausibly outlining some of the contours of the new "Great Game."

 

Obama strongly endorsed the then-secret Bush administration policy of attacking suspected al-Qaeda leaders in countries that Washington has not (yet) invaded, disclosed by the New York Times shortly after the election. The doctrine was illustrated again on October 26, when US forces based in Iraq raided Syria, killing 8 civilians, allegedly to capture an al-Qaeda leader. Washington did not notify Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki or President Talabani, both of whom have relatively amicable relations with Syria, which has accepted 1.5 million Iraqi refugees and is bitterly opposed to al-Qaeda. Syria protested, claiming, credibly, that if notified they would have eagerly apprehended this enemy. According to Asia Times, Iraqi leaders were furious, and hardened their stance in the SOFA negotiations, insisting on provisions to bar the use of Iraqi territory to attack neighbors.

 

The Syria raid elicited a harsh reaction in the Arab world. In pro-government newspapers, the Bush administration was denounced for lengthening its "loathsome legacy" (Lebanon), while Syria was urged to "march forward in your reconciliatory path" and America to "keep going backwards with your language of hatred, arrogance and the murder of innocents" (Kuwait). For the region generally, it was another illustration of what the government-controlled Saudi press condemned as "not diplomacy in search of peace, but madness in search of war."

 

Obama was silent. So were other Democrats. Political scientist Stephen Zunes contacted the offices of every Democrat on the House and Senate Foreign Relations Committees, but was unable to find any critical word on the US raid on Syria from occupied Iraq.

 

Presumably, Obama also accepts the more expansive Bush doctrine that the US not only has the right to invade countries as it chooses (unless it is a "blunder," too costly to us), but also to attack others that Washington claims are supporting resistance to its aggression. In particular, Obama has, it seems, not criticized the raids by Predator drones that have killed many civilians in Pakistan.

 

These raids of course have consequences: people have the odd characteristic of objecting to slaughter of family members and friends. Right now there is a vicious mini-war being waged in the tribal area of Bajaur in Pakistan, adjacent to Afghanistan. BBC describes widespread destruction from intense combat, reporting further that "Many in Bajaur trace the roots of the uprising to a suspected US missile strike on an Islamic seminary, or madrassa, in November 2006, which killed around 80 people." The attack on the school, killing 80-85 people, was reported in the mainstream Pakistani press by the highly respected dissident physicist Pervez Hoodbhoy, but ignored in the US as insignificant. Events often look different at the other end of the club.

 

Hoodbhoy observed that the usual outcome of such attacks "has been flattened houses, dead and maimed children, and a growing local population that seeks revenge against Pakistan and the US." Bajaur today may be an illustration of the familiar pattern.

 

On November 3, General Petraeus, the newly appointed head of the US Central Command that covers the Middle East region, had his first meeting with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, and other high officials. Their primary concern was US missile attacks on Pakistani territory, which had increased sharply in previous weeks. "Continuing drone attacks on our territory, which result in loss of precious lives and property, are counterproductive and difficult to explain by a democratically elected government," Zardari informed Petraeus. His government, he said, is "under pressure to react more aggressively" to the strikes. These could lead to "a backlash against the US," which is already deeply unpopular in Pakistan.

 

Petraeus said that he had heard the message, and "we would have to take [Pakistani opinions] on board" when attacking the country. A practical necessity, no doubt, when over 80% of the supplies for the US-NATO war in Afghanistan pass through Pakistan.

 

Pakistan developed nuclear weapons, outside the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), thanks in no small measure to Ronald Reagan, who pretended not to see what his ally was doing. This was one element of Reagan's "unstinting support" for the "ruthless and vindictive" dictator Zia ul-Haq, whose rule had "the most long-lasting and damaging effect on Pakistani society, one still prevalent today," the highly respected analyst Ahmed Rashid observes. With Reagan's firm backing, Zia moved to impose "an ideological Islamic state upon the population." These are the immediate roots of many of "today's problems - the militancy of the religious parties, the mushrooming of madrassas and extremist groups, the spread of drug and Kalashnikov culture, and the increase in sectarian violence."

 

The Reaganites also "built up the [Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, ISI] into a formidable intelligence agency that ran the political process inside Pakistan while promoting Islamic insurgencies in Kashmir and Central Asia," Rashid continues. "This global jihad launched by Zia and Reagan was to sow the seeds of al Qaeda and turn Pakistan into the world center of jihadism for the next two decades." Meanwhile Reagan's immediate successors left Afghanistan in the hands of the most vicious jihadis, later abandoning it to warlord rule under Rumsfeld's direction. The fearsome ISI continues to play both sides of the street, supporting the resurgent Taliban and simultaneously acceding to some US demands.

 

The US and Pakistan are reported to have reached "tacit agreement in September [2008] on a don't-ask-don't-tell policy that allows unmanned Predator aircraft to attack suspected terrorist targets" in Pakistan, according to unidentified senior officials in both countries. "The officials described the deal as one in which the U.S. government refuses to publicly acknowledge the attacks while Pakistan's government continues to complain noisily about the politically sensitive strikes."

 

Once again problems are caused by the "ignorant and meddlesome outsiders" who dislike being bombed by an increasingly hated enemy from the other side of the world.

 

The day before this report on the "tacit agreement" appeared, a suicide bombing in the conflicted tribal areas killed eight Pakistani soldiers, retaliation for an attack by a US Predator drone that killed 20 people, including two Taliban leaders. The Pakistani parliament called for dialogue with the Taliban. Echoing the resolution, Pakistani foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said "There is an increasing realization that the use of force alone cannot yield the desired results."

 

Afghan President Hamid Karzai's first message to president-elect Obama was much like that delivered to General Petraeus by Pakistani leaders: "end US airstrikes that risk civilian casualties." His message was sent shortly after coalition troops bombed a wedding party in Kandahar province, reportedly killing 40 people. There is no indication that his opinion was "taken on board."

 

The British command has warned that there is no military solution to the conflict in Afghanistan and that there will have to be negotiations with the Taliban, risking a rift with the US, the Financial Times reports.  Correspondent Jason Burke, who has long experience in the region, reports that "the Taliban have been engaged in secret talks about ending the conflict in Afghanistan in a wide-ranging 'peace process' sponsored by Saudi Arabia and supported by Britain."

 

Some Afghan peace activists have reservations about this approach, preferring a solution without foreign interference. A growing network of activists is calling for negotiations and reconciliation with the Taliban in a National Peace Jirga, a grand assembly of Afghans, formed in May 2008.  At a meeting in support of the Jirga, 3,000 Afghan political and intellectuals, mainly Pashtuns, the largest ethnic group, criticized "the international military campaign against Islamic militants in Afghanistan and called for dialogue to end the fighting," AFP reported.

 

The interim chairman of the National Peace Jirga, Bakhtar Aminzai, "told the opening gathering that the current conflict could not be resolved by military means and that only talks could bring a solution. He called on the government to step up its negotiations with the Taliban and Hizb-i-Islami groups." The latter is the party of the extremist radical Islamist warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a Reagan favorite responsible for many terrible atrocities, now reported to provide core parliamentary support for the Karzai government and to be pressing it towards a form of re-Talibanization.

 

Aminzai said further that "We need to pressure the Afghan government and the international community to find a solution without using guns." A spokeswoman added that "We are against Western policy in Afghanistan. They should bury their guns in a grave and focus on diplomacy and economic development." A leader of Awakened Youth of Afghanistan, a prominent antiwar group, says that we must end "Afghanicide -- the killing of Afghanistan." In a joint declaration with German peace organizations, the National Peace Jirga claimed to represent "a wide majority of Afghan people who are tired of war," calling for an end to escalation and initiation of a peace process.

 

The deputy director of the umbrella organization of NGOs in the country says that of roughly 1,400 registered NGOs, nearly 1,100 are purely Afghan operations: women's groups, youth groups and others, many of them advocates of the Peace Jirga.

 

Though polling in war-torn Afghanistan is a difficult process, there are some suggestive results. A Canadian-run poll found that Afghans favor the presence of Canadian and other foreign troops, the result that made the headlines in Canada. Other findings suggest some qualifications. Only 20% "think the Taliban will prevail once foreign troops leave." Three-fourths support negotiations between the Karzai government and the Taliban, and more than half favor a coalition government. The great majority therefore strongly disagree with the US-NATO focus on further militarization of the conflict, and appear to believe that peace is possible with a turn towards peaceful means. Though the question was not asked, it is reasonable to surmise that the foreign presence is favored for aid and reconstruction.

 

A study of Taliban foot soldiers carried out by the Toronto Globe & Mail, though not a scientific survey as they point out, nevertheless yields considerable insight. All were Afghan Pashtuns, from the Kandahar area. They described themselves as Mujahadeen, following the ancient tradition of driving out foreign invaders. Almost a third reported that at least one family member had died in aerial bombings in recent years. Many said that they were fighting to defend Afghan villagers from air strikes by foreign troops. Few claimed to be fighting a global Jihad, or had allegiance to Taliban leader Mullah Omar. Most saw themselves as fighting for principles - an Islamic government -- not a leader. Again, the results suggest possibilities for a negotiated peaceful settlement, without foreign interference.

 

A valuable perspective on such prospects is provided by Sir Rodric Braithwaite, a specialist on Afghanistan who was UK ambassador to Moscow during the crucial 1988-92 period when the Russians withdrew (and the USSR collapsed), then becoming chair of the British Joint Intelligence Committee. On a recent visit, Braithwaite spoke to Afghan journalists, former Mujahideen, professionals, people working for the US-based "coalition" - in general, to "natural supporters for its claims to bring peace and reconstruction." In the Financial Times, he reports that they were "contemptuous of President Hamid Karzai," regarding him as another one of the puppets installed by foreign force. Their favorite was "Mohammad Najibullah, the last communist president, who attempted to reconcile the nation within an Islamic state, and was butchered by the Taliban in 1996: DVDs of his speeches are being sold on the streets. Things were, they said, better under the Soviets. Kabul was secure, women were employed, the Soviets built factories, roads, schools and hospitals, Russian children played safely in the streets. The Russian soldiers fought bravely on the ground like real warriors, instead of killing women and children from the air. Even the Taliban were not so bad: they were good Muslims, kept order, and respected women in their own way. These myths may not reflect historical reality, but they do measure a deep disillusionment with the `coalition' and its policies."

 

Specialists on the region urge that US strategy should shift from more troops and attacks in Pakistan to a "diplomatic grand bargain -- forging compromise with insurgents while addressing an array of regional rivalries and insecurities" (Barnett Rubin and Ahmed Rashid in Foreign Affairs, Nov.-Dec. 2008). They warn that the current military focus "and the attendant terrorism" might lead to the collapse of nuclear-armed Pakistan, with grim consequences. They urge the incoming US administration "to put an end to the increasingly destructive dynamics of the Great Game in the region" through negotiations that recognize the interests of the concerned parties within Afghanistan as well as Pakistan and Iran, but also India, China and Russia, who "have reservations about a NATO base within their spheres of influence" and concerns about the threats "posed by the United States and NATO" as well as by al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The immediate goal should be "Lowering the level of violence in the region and moving the global community toward genuine agreement on the long-term goals," thus allowing Afghans to confront their internal problems peacefully. The incoming US president must put an end to "Washington's keenness for `victory' as the solution to all problems, and the United States' reluctance to involve competitors, opponents, or enemies in diplomacy."

 

It appears that there are feasible alternatives to escalation of the cycle of violence, but there is little hint of it in the electoral campaign or political commentary. Afghanistan and Pakistan do not appear among foreign policy issues on the Obama campaign's website.

 

Iran

 

Iran, in contrast, figures prominently -- though not of course as compared with effusive support for Israel; Palestinians remain unmentioned, apart from a vague reference to a two-state settlement of some unspecified kind. For Iran, Obama supports tough direct diplomacy "without preconditions" in order "to pressure Iran directly to change their troubling behavior," namely pursuing a nuclear program and supporting terrorism (presumably referring to support for Hamas and Hezbollah). If Iran abandons its troubling behavior, the US might move towards normal diplomatic and economic relations. "If Iran continues its troubling behavior, we will step up our economic pressure and political isolation." And as Obama informed the Israeli Lobby (AIPAC), "I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon" - up to nuclear war, if he meant what he said.

 

Furthermore Obama will strengthen the NPT "so that countries like North Korea and Iran that break the rules will automatically face strong international sanctions." There is no mention of the conclusion of US intelligence with "high confidence" that Iran has not had a weapons program for 5 years, unlike US allies Israel, Pakistan, India, which maintain extensive nuclear weapons programs in violation of the NPT with direct US support, all unmentioned here as well.

 

The final mention of Iran is in the context of Obama's strong support for Israel's "Right to Self Defense" and its "right to protect its citizens." This commitment is demonstrated by Obama's co-sponsorship of "a Senate resolution against Iran and Syria's involvement in the war, and insisting that Israel should not be pressured into a ceasefire that did not deal with the threat of Hezbollah missiles." The reference is to Israel's US-backed invasion of Lebanon in 2006, with pretexts that are hardly credible in light of Israel's regular practices. This invasion, Israel's fifth, killed over 1000 Lebanese and once again destroyed much of southern Lebanon as well as parts of Beirut.

 

This is the sole mention of Lebanon among foreign policy issues on Obama's website. Evidently, Lebanon has no right of self defense. In fact who could possibly have a right of self defense against the US or its clients?

 

Nor does Iran have such rights. Among specialists, even rational hawks, it is well understood that if Iran is pursuing a weapons program, it is for deterrence. In the conservative National Interest, former CIA weapons inspector David Kay speculates that Iran might be moving towards "nuclear weapons capability," with the "strategic goal" of countering a US threat that "is real in Teheran's eyes," for good reasons that he reviews. He notes further that "Perhaps the biggest agitator of all in this is the United States, with its abbreviated historical memory and diplomatic ADD." Wayne White, formerly deputy director for the Near East and South Asia in State Department intelligence, dismisses the possibility that Supreme Leader Khamenei and the clerical elite, who hold power in Iran, would throw away the "vast amounts of money" and "huge economic empires" they have created for themselves "in some quixotic attack against Israel with a nuclear weapon," if they had one. The probability of that is virtually undetectable, he points out.

 

White agrees that Iran might seek weapons capability (which is not the same as weapons) for deterrence. He goes on to suggest Iran might also recall that Saddam Hussein had no nuclear weapons program when Israel bombed its Osiraq reactor in 1981, and that the attack led him to initiate a program using nuclear materials it had on hand as a result of the bombing. At the time, White was Iraq analyst for State Department intelligence, with access to a rich body of evidence. His testimony adds internal US intelligence confirmation to the very credible evidence available at once, later strengthened by reports of Iraqi defectors, that the Israeli bombing did not terminate, but rather initiated, Saddam's pursuit of nuclear weapons. US or Israeli bombing of Iranian facilities, White and other specialists observe, might have the same effect. Violence consistently elicits more violence in response.

 

These matters are well understood by informed hardliners. The leading neoconservative expert on Iran, Reuel Marc Gerecht, formerly in the CIA Middle East division, wrote in 2000 that:

 

Tehran certainly wants nuclear weapons; and its reasoning is not illogical. Iran was gassed into surrender in the first Persian Gulf War; Pakistan, Iran's ever more radicalized Sunni neighbor to the southeast, has nuclear weapons; Saddam Hussein, with his Scuds and his weapons-of-mass-destruction ambitions, is next door; Saudi Arabia, Iran's most ardent and reviled religious rival, has long-range missiles; Russia, historically one of Iran's most feared neighbors, is once again trying to reassert its dominion in the neighboring Caucasus; and Israel could, of course blow the Islamic Republic to bits. Having been vanquished by a technologically superior Iraq at a cost of at least a half-million men, Iran knows very well the consequences of having insufficient deterrence. And the Iranians possess the essential factor to make deterrence work: sanity. Tehran or Isfahan in ashes would destroy the Persian soul, about which even the most hard-line cleric cares deeply. As long as the Iranians believe that either the U.S. or Israel or somebody else in the region might retaliate with nuclear weapons, they won't do something stupid.

 

Gerecht also understands very well the real "security problem" posed by Iranian nuclear weapons, should it acquire them:

 

A nuclear-armed Islamic Republic would of course check, if not checkmate, the United States' maneuvering room in the Persian Gulf.  We would no doubt think several times about responding to Iranian terrorism or military action if Tehran had the bomb and a missile to deliver it. During the lead-up to the second Gulf War, ruling clerical circles in Tehran and Qom were abuzz with the debate about nuclear weapons. The mullahs...agreed: if Saddam Hussein had had nuclear weapons, the Americans would not have challenged him. For the "left" and the "right," this weaponry is the ultimate guarantee of Iran's defense, its revolution, and its independence as a regional great power.

 

With appropriate translations for the doctrinal term "Iranian terrorism," Gerecht's concerns capture realistically the threat posed by an Iran with a deterrent capacity (Iranian military action is quite a remote contingency).

 

While as usual ignored as irrelevant to policy formation, American public opinion is close to that of serious analysts and also to world opinion. Large majorities oppose threats against Iran, thus rejecting the Bush-Obama position that the US must be an outlaw state, violating the UN Charter, which bars the threat of force. The public also joins the majority of the world's states in endorsing Iran's right, as a signer of the NPT, to enrich uranium for nuclear energy (the position endorsed also by Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Kissinger and others when Iran was ruled by the tyrant imposed by US-UK subversion). Most important, the public favors establishment of a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle East, which would mitigate and perhaps eliminate this highly threatening issue.

 

Popular Influence

 

These observations suggest an interesting thought experiment. What would be the content of the "Obama brand" if the public were to become "participants" rather than mere "spectators in action"? It is an experiment well worth undertaking, and there is good reason to suppose that the results might point the way to a saner and more decent world.

---

From:	Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives
URL:	http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/19749

*******************************************

Noam Chomsky On The Economy, Democracy and the American Presidential Elections

Noam Chomsky Interviewed by Assaf Kfoury

December, 01 2008

By Noam Chomsky
and Assaf Kfoury


Noam Chomsky's ZSpace Page
Join ZSpace

AK: The economic crisis is felt acutely in the US, but has now spread to the entire world, even to countries (in South America, for example) that initially thought they would be spared. And the American presidential campaign and elections cannot but concern people everywhere, given the dominant role of the US globally. The simultaneous unfolding of the two -- the crisis and the presidential campaign -- has naturally elicited considerable discussion outside the US. In the Middle East, in particular, there has been a kind of speculation, perhaps wishful thinking, be it from the left or from the right. Some Arab commentators have speculated that an Obama administration will follow less aggressive policies. Some other Arab commentators want to see the economic crisis as the sign of an imminent American global decline, and warn pro-American governments and parties to stop doing the bidding of a doomed North American hegemon. What is your response to this kind of thinking? More generally, in relation to the Middle East, what direction is US policy likely to take with the coming Obama administration in the wake of the economic crisis?

NC: I think that US hegemony will continue to decline as the world becomes more diverse. That process has been underway for a long time. US power peaked at the end of World War II, when it had literally half the world's wealth and incomparable military power and security. By 1970, its share of global wealth had declined by about half, and it has remained fairly stable since then. In some important respects, US domination has weakened. One important illustration is Latin America, Washington's traditional "backyard." For the first time since European colonization 500 years ago, South America is making significant progress towards integration and independence, and is also establishing South-South relations independent of the US, specifically with China, but elsewhere as well. That is a serious matter for US planners. As it was discussing the transcendent importance of destroying Chilean democracy in 1971, Nixon's National Security Council warned that if the US cannot control Latin America, it cannot expect "to achieve a successful order elsewhere in the world" -- that is, to control the rest of the world. Controlling Latin America has become far more difficult in recent years.

It is important to recognize that these goals were explicitly and clearly articulated during World War II. Studies of the State Department and Council on Foreign Relations developed plans, later implemented, to establish a "Grand Area," in which the US would "hold unquestioned power," displacing Britain and France and ensuring the "limitation of any exercise of sovereignty" by states that might interfere with its global designs. Planners called for "an integrated policy to achieve military and economic supremacy for the United States" in the Grand Area, which was to include at least the Western hemisphere, the former British Empire, and the Far East. As the war progressed, and it became clear that Soviet military power was crushing the Nazi war machine, Grand Area planning was extended to include as much of Eurasia as possible. Since that time fundamental policies have changed more in tactics than in substance. And there is little reason to expect any change of goals with a new US administration, though the possibilities of realizing them are declining in a more complex and diverse global system.

With regard to the Middle East, policy has been quite stable since World War II, when Washington recognized that Middle East oil supplies are "a stupendous source of strategic power" and "one of the greatest material prizes in world history." That remains true. It is interesting that as the pretexts for invading Iraq become more difficult to sustain, mainstream commentary is beginning to concede the obvious reasons for the invasion, and the need for the US to maintain control of Iraq, to the extent that it can. Thus when Obama called for shifting the focus of US military operations from Iraq to Afghanistan, the Washington Post editors instructed him that he was making a serious mistake, since Afghanistan's "strategic importance pales beside that of Iraq, which lies at the geopolitical center of the Middle East and contains some of the world's largest oil reserves." Propaganda about WMD and democracy is fine to keep the domestic public quiet, but realities must be recognized when serious planning is at stake.

Both Democrats and Republicans accept the principle that the US is an outlaw state, entitled to violate the UN Charter at will, whether by threatening force against Iran (an explicit violation of the Charter) or by carrying out aggression (the "supreme international crime," in the words of the Nuremberg Tribunal). They also accept the principle that the US not only has the right to invade other countries if it chooses, but also to attack any country that it alleges is supporting resistance to its aggression. Here the guise is "the war on terror." Murderous attacks by US drones in Pakistan are one illustration. The recent US cross-border raid from Iraq, on October 26, on the town of Bukamal in Syria is another. The editors of the Lebanese Daily Star are quite right in warning that the attack on Syria is another contribution to the "loathsome legacy" of the Bush II administration. But it is not just Bush II, and there is, currently, no substantial basis for expecting any significant change under a new administration with regard to Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Israel-Palestine, or any other crucial issue involving the Middle East.

AK: Some on the left in the US have warned that, as American economic power wanes and with it the political influence that follows, the US will rely more on military force to assert itself. So, unless there is a concomitant drop in Washington's drive to remain the dominant global power, there will be more military provocations and a far more dangerous world. However, the US military is already over-stretched -- in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and elsewhere -- and many former military officers have recently gone public in expressing their concerns about a broken army. So, is this kind of speculation unduly alarmist?

NC: I am frankly somewhat skeptical. For one thing, though ground forces are indeed overstretched, the US military is awesome in scale and power. US military spending is roughly comparable to the rest of the world combined, and the military is far more advanced technologically. It is rather striking that a small client state, Israel, claims to have air and armored forces that are larger and technologically more advanced than any NATO power, apart from the US. And the US is alone in the world in having a global basing system and naval and air forces that allow it to carry out violent action virtually everywhere. It is also alone in developing capacities for space warfare, over the strong objections of the rest of the world.

In the economic sphere, for about thirty years the world has been tripolar, with powerful centers in North America, Europe, and East Asia. The diversification of the global economy has proceeded since, and may be somewhat accelerated by the current financial crisis, though that is not obvious. The US has enormous advantages in the economic domain, though also substantial weaknesses, like severe indebtedness. Europe could become an independent force in world affairs, but has chosen to subordinate itself to Washington. It has readily accepted extreme provocations, among them, Clinton's expansion of NATO to the East in violation of firm promises by the Bush I administration to Gorbachev, when he made the astonishing concession of allowing a united Germany to join a hostile military alliance. Some recent consequences in the Caucasus of this policy of expansion to the East have been on the front pages. The Asian countries have accumulated huge financial reserves, so much so that Japan, despite its stalling economy, is purchasing major US assets. In principle, China and Japan could diversify their currencies away from dollars. The effects could be dramatic, but it is not likely, for one reason because of their reliance on the US market, for another, because of US power, which they do not want to confront.

It is true that Bush II has severely harmed the interests of those who own and run the society, one reason why he has come under such intense criticism within the mainstream. But it has hardly been a lethal blow. There is much talk about India and China becoming the major powers of the next century. No doubt they will continue to gain economic power, but they have enormous internal problems, unknown in the West. One indication is given by the UN Human Development Index, in which China ranks 81st and India 128th (unchanged through the period of its partial liberalization and rapid growth). And there is much more.

AK: There is a relation you have mentioned in some of your recent writings, between neo-liberal economics and the diminishing space for democratic participation. This is something that is rarely discussed, even by commentators on the left, as if proponents of financial liberalization coincidentally happen to be anti-democratic. The connection is at best observed, but not articulated. In fact, the neo-liberal economists have always advocated their policies in the name of democracy and swear by their commitment to it. Would you explain the mechanism of this connection and how it worked in past decades?

NC: It is true that the relation is ignored, apart from some of the professional literature. But it is straightforward, and highly significant.

After World War II, the victors established a global economic order, the Bretton Woods system: Britain was represented by John Maynard Keynes, the US by Harry Dexter White. A core principle was constraints on capital. Governments were permitted to control capital flight, a principle that still is in the IMF rules, though ignored. And currencies were regulated within a narrow band. The motives were twofold. The first was economic: Keynes and White believed that these measures would stimulate economic growth and trade. The second was sociopolitical: both understood that unless governments are able to regulate capital, they will not be able to carry out social democratic (welfare state) measures. These had enormous support among populations that had been radicalized by the Great Depression and the anti-fascist war (World War II).

The basis for the sociopolitical motive is straightforward. Free capital movement establishes what international economists have called a "virtual parliament" of investors and lenders, who carry out a "moment-by-moment referendum" on government policies. The "virtual parliaments" can "vote" against these policies if it considers them irrational: enacted for the benefit of people, rather than profit for concentrated private power. They can "vote" by capital flight, attacks on currencies, and other devices offered by financial liberalization. Keynes considered the most important achievement of Bretton Woods to be establishment of the right of governments to restrict capital movement.

Keynes regarded speculation as destructive. His basic insight is well described by Indian economist Prabhat Patnaik, at the UN conference of October 30 on the global financial crisis. Patnaik explains that Keynes "had located the fundamental defect of the free market system in its incapacity to distinguish between `speculation' and `enterprise.' Hence, it had a tendency to be dominated by speculators, interested not in the long-term yield on assets but only in the short-term appreciation in asset values. Their whims and caprices, causing sharp swings in asset prices, determined the magnitude of productive investment and, therefore, the level of aggregate demand, employment and output in the economy. The real lives of millions of people were determined by the whims of 'a bunch of speculators' under the free market system." The replacement of governmental "demand management" by "bubble booms" created by speculators is a prime cause of the current financial crisis, Patnaik argues plausibly, supporting Keynes's analysis.

Both motives of the Bretton Woods planners -- the economic and the sociopolitical -- proved well justified. The following years, until the system was dismantled in the 1970s, are described by economic historians as the "golden age" of capitalism (more accurately, state capitalism). Since financial liberalization and the related neo-liberal programs were introduced in the 1970s, there has been considerable deterioration where the programs have been adopted, though there has been rapid growth where they have been mostly ignored, notably in East Asia. The same has been true of the sociopolitical motive. The Bretton Woods years were the era of substantial progress in establishing basic social and democratic rights, which have been under attack during the neo-liberal/financial liberalization period. To take just the United States for illustration, during the Bretton Wood years, economic growth was not only unusually rapid but also egalitarian: the poorest quintile did as well as the richest. And social indicators, general measures of the health of the society, closely tracked growth. Since the late 1970s, for the majority of the population real incomes have stagnated, work hours have increased, benefits have declined, and social indicators not only did not track growth, but in fact steadily declined.

It is instructive to see how the basic issues are described in the serious literature of economic history. In his standard scholarly history of the international monetary system, Barry Eichengreen points out that in the 19th century, the public had not been much of a problem. Governments had not yet been "politicized by universal male suffrage and the rise of trade unionism and parliamentary labor parties." Therefore the severe costs imposed by the "virtual parliament" could be transferred to the general population, who could do nothing but suffer in silence. But with the success of popular struggle in achieving some level of democracy, and the radicalization of the general public during the Great Depression and the anti-fascist war, that luxury was no longer available to private power and wealth. Hence in the Bretton Woods system, "limits on capital mobility substituted for limits on democracy as a source of insulation from market pressures."

It is only necessary to add the obvious corollary: with the dismantling of the system from the 1970s, functioning democracy is restricted. It has therefore become necessary to control and marginalize the public in some fashion. These processes are particularly evident in the more business-run societies like the United States. One illustration is the management of electoral campaigns by the Public Relations industry, to ensure that the public is effectively marginalized. As many studies demonstrate, the two political parties -- essentially, two factions of the ruling business party -- are well to the right of the public on many major issues, so there is a good reason for party managers to keep issues sidelined and to concentrate on personalities, "values," character, and so on. The nature of the electoral extravaganzas in American presidential campaigns is well symbolized by the fact that Sarah Palin's hairdresser is paid twice as much as John McCain's foreign policy adviser -- and her role is twice as important, for the party managers and the handlers of the candidates.

The population is not unaware of their marginalization, and naturally do not like it. 80% of the American public feel that the government is run "by a few big interests looking out for themselves," not for the benefit of the public. And a remarkable 95% object that the government does not respond to public opinion -- as is demonstrably the case.

AK: Looking ahead, if a retreat from financial liberalization will open up some space for democratic participation, in what sectors of American society is this likely to happen? The labor movement in the US has gradually weakened since World War II, and will probably take some time to rebuild its base and reassert itself. This is a little speculative, but where do you think genuine democratic participation is likely to start from in the US?

NC: US labor history has been very violent, by comparative standards. By the 1920s, the very lively and popular labor movement had virtually been destroyed, by means that shocked even right-wing observers in England and Australia. During the Depression and World War II, the labor movement revived and became a significant force. Immediately after the war, a corporate-led offensive was launched, with government support, to destroy the unions. The scale was quite remarkable. There are good scholarly studies, but the history is scarcely known. The reason why unions are targeted is straightforward: they not only enable working people to gain basic rights, but they are also an instrument of democratization, providing a means for people with limited resources to come together to formulate plans and to enter the political arena to implement them. Naturally, democracy and worker's rights are regarded as a serious threat by concentrated power. In the 1980s, the Reagan administration informed the business world that the government would not enforce the laws, dating from the New Deal (initiated by President Roosevelt in the 1930's to counter the effects of the Great Depression), which protected workers attempting to organize. Illegal firing of union organizers tripled. In the Clinton years, NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) served the same function. When workers sought to organize, management could threaten to move to Mexico. The threat is illegal, but when the government refuses to enforce the laws, it can be quite effective. Other devices have been developed to crush unions. The media (press, cinema, etc.) have also been mobilized to the cause.

It should be recognized that the leaders of the business world are dedicated Marxists in that they are constantly fighting a bitter class war to control their popular enemy. And since they largely control government and media, the war is quite effective. By now, private sector unionization is very low, though a majority of workers favor unionization. A telling comparison is that in the public sector, where means to destroy unions are less available, unionization remains far higher.

Revitalization of the labor movement is not out of the question. It has happened before, back to the 19th century, after the business classes and their intellectual chorus had spoken confidently of the end of history in a utopia of the masters. But there are also other forces. The country has become much more civilized as a result of the activism of the '60s and its aftermath -- one reason why the '60s period is so bitterly condemned and vilified. The 2008 election is an illustration. The top Democratic candidates were a woman and a black. The Republican vice-presidential candidate is a woman. Independently of what one might think about them, it is important to recall that anything like this would have been unthinkable before the activism of the 60s had its impact. That impact extends quite broadly: to rights of minorities and woman and human rights generally, to concern for future generations (the environmental movement), to recognition of some of the crimes of history that had been suppressed or even glorified, like virtual extermination of the native population; and to many other areas, including opposition to aggression. Though it is not widely understood, opposition to the Iraq invasion has been far higher than to the invasion of Indochina, at a comparable stage. And the opposition has limited the ability of the state to resort to violence.

Some of the most active and important popular movements are more recent. The third-world solidarity movement, which has roots in mainstream America, is a product of the 80s, and has expanded since; it is worth remembering that it is a new development in the history of Western imperialism. The global justice movement -- ludicrously called "anti-globalization" -- developed in the North in the past decade, though its origins in the South are much deeper and more rich. These are potential sources for democratic participation, if they can overcome the success of the business world in atomizing the population, and driving people to individual concerns rather than social engagement -- a very large and important topic that I cannot go into here.


[This interview, except for the last question and answer, first appeared in Arabic in the Beirut daily, as-Safir, of 27 November 2007.]

---

From:	Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives
URL:	http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/19801