No wonder the bloggers are winning
These gutless papers explain why more people are Googling than turning pages
By Robert Fisk
07/21/07 "The Independent" --- - I despise the internet. It's irresponsible and, often, a net of hate. And I don't have time for Blogopops. But here's a tale of two gutless newspapers which explains why more and more people are Googling rather than turning pages.
First the Los Angeles Times. Last year, reporter Mark Arax was assigned a routine story on the 1915 genocide of one and a half million Armenians by the Ottoman Turkish authorities. Arax's report focused on divisions within the local Jewish community over whether to call the genocide a genocide.
It's an old argument. The Turks insist - against all the facts and documents and eyewitness accounts, and against history - that the Armenians were victims of a civil war. The Israeli government and its new, Nobel prize-winning president, Shimon Peres - anxious to keep cosy relations with modern Turkey - have preferred to adopt Istanbul's mendacious version of events. However, many Jews, both inside and outside Israel, have bravely insisted that they do constitute a genocide, indeed the very precursor to the later Nazi Holocaust of six million Jews.
But Arax's genocide report was killed on the orders of managing editor Douglas Frantz because the reporter had a "position on the issue" and "a conflict of interest".
Readers will already have guessed that Arax is an Armenian-American. His sin, it seems, was that way back in 2005, he and five other writers wrote a formal memo to LA Times editors reminding them that the paper's style rules meant that the Armenian genocide was to be called just that - not "alleged genocide". Frantz, however, described the old memo as a "petition" and apparently accused Arax of landing the assignment by dealing with a Washington editor who was also an Armenian.
The story was reassigned to Washington reporter Rich Simon, who concentrated on Turkey's attempt to block Congress from recognising the Armenian slaughter -- and whose story ran under the headline "Genocide Resolution Still Far From Certain".
LA Times executives then went all coy, declining interviews, although Frantz admitted in a blog (of course) that he had "put a hold" on Arax's story because of concerns that the reporter "had expressed personal views about the topic in a public (sic) manner...". Ho ho.
Truth can be dangerous for the LA Times. Even more so, it seems, when the managing editor himself - Frantz, no less - once worked for The New York Times, where he referred to the Armenian massacres as, yes, an "alleged" genocide. Frantz, it turns out, joined the LA Times as its Istanbul correspondent.
Well, Arax has since left the LA Times after a settlement which forestalled a lawsuit against the paper for defamation and discrimination. His employers heaped praise upon his work while Frantz has just left the paper to become Middle East correspondent of the Wall Street Journal based in - of course, you guessed it - Istanbul.
But now let's go north of the border, to the Toronto Globe and Mail, which assigned columnist Jan Wong to investigate a college murder in Montreal last September. Wong is not a greatly loved reporter. A third-generation Canadian, she moved to China during Mao's "cultural revolution" and, in her own words, "snitched on class enemies and did my best to be a good little Maoist."
She later wrote a "Lunch With" series for the Globe in which she acted all sympathetic to interviewee guests to catch them out. "When they relax, that's when their guard is down," she told a college newspaper. "It's a trick, but it's legit." Yuk!
Wong's take on the Montreal Dawson College shooting, however, was more serious. She compared the killer to a half-Algerian Muslim who murdered 14 women in another Montreal college shooting in 1989 and to a Russian immigrant who killed four university colleagues in Montreal in 1992. "In all three cases," she wrote, "the perpetrator was not 'pure laine', the argot for a 'pure' francophone. Elsewhere, to talk of racial purity is repugnant. Not in Quebec."
Painfully true, I'm afraid. Parisians, who speak real French, would never use such an expression - pure laine translates literally as "pure wool" but means "authentic" - but some Montrealers do. Wong, however, had touched a red hot electric wire in "multicultural" Canada. Prime Minister Stephen Harper complained. "Grossly irresponsible," said the man who enthusiastically continued the policy of sending Canadian troops on their suicidal mission to Afghanistan.
The French-Canadian newspaper Le Devoir - can you imagine a British paper selling a single copy if it called itself "Duty"? - published a cartoon of Wong with exaggerated Chinese slanted eyes. Definitely not pure laine for Le Devoir. The hate mail was even more to the point. Some contained excrement.
But then the Globe and Mail ran for cover. Its editor-in-chief, Edward Greenspon, wrote a cowardly column in which he claimed that the offending paragraphs "should have been removed" from her story. "We regret that we allowed these words to get into a reported (sic) article," he sniffled. There had been a breakdown in what he hilariously called "the editorial quality control process".
Now I happen to know a bit about the Globe's "quality control process". Some time ago, I discovered that the paper had reprinted an article of mine from The Independent about the Armenian genocide. But they had tampered with it, altering my word "genocide" to read "tragedy".
The Independent's subscribers promise to make no changes to our reports. But when our syndication folk contacted the Globe, they discovered that the Canadian paper had simply stolen the article. They were made to pay a penalty fee. But as for the censorship of the word "genocide", a female executive explained to The Independent that nothing could be done because the editor responsible had "since left the Globe and Mail".
It's the same old story, isn't it? Censor then whinge, then cut and run. No wonder the bloggers are winning.
© 2007 Independent News and Media Limited
Full Version: Snuffysmith's Blog - June 26th - September 17th, 2007
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Yes to Recriminations against Iraq Policymakers
by Sheldon Richman, July 18, 2007 If, as President Bush claims, Iraq is a sovereign country and its government represents the people, then why are American officials ordering the parliament to cancel its August vacation and insisting that the al-Maliki government meet certain “benchmarks”? Is it sovereign or not? By what authority does the U.S. government dictate to it?
Something just doesn’t add up here. The Bush administration is also building a dozen military bases in that country and a new embassy larger than the Vatican. These look like the acts of an empire.
Just as ominous is the fact that some critics of the war, particularly Democrats in Congress, say the reason we ought to exit Iraq is that the government and people aren’t worthy of U.S. intervention. We should get out, but that’s the wrong reason.
This is a bad sign because it is apparently the beginning of the effort to let the Bush administration off the hook. His defenders will insist that things would have gone swimmingly if only the Iraqi politicians had been more responsible. “What are we supposed to do when you have to deal with people like that?” the war party is already asking.
This defense must be nipped in the bud. The disaster that is Iraq is the fault of Bush and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who stampeded the American people into war with tales of weapons of mass destruction, and the conservative intellectuals who pressed their case for an unprovoked imperial war so the United States could remake the Middle East. They unleashed the violence that takes place there now, having sent the military in without regard for the reaction a Western invasion and occupation would ignite. They are responsible for the deaths. As Randolph Bourne, a critic of U.S. entry into World War I, said, “Willing war means willing all the evils that are organically bound up with it.”
When the Vietnam war finally ended, “responsible leaders” said there should be no recriminations: The war was a mistake, they said, now let’s move on. That was wrong. The war was not a mistake. It was a crime that involved the murder — ultimately at the hands of the American warmakers — of two million Vietnamese and 58,000 Americans. The officials who were responsible for launching that violence should have been subject to recriminations. At the very least, a full public inquiry should have been held so that the culprits could have been properly disgraced and their crimes made clear to everyone.
The same should happen with the Iraq war. The Democrats came into power this year promising to do something and what have they done? Not a blessed thing, because they are afraid that anything they do will be used against them in next year’s elections. That is cowardice, pure and simple.
America’s presence in Iraq will continue to keep that country in turmoil. Bush wants us to think he is fighting al-Qaeda, but there was no al-Qaeda in Iraq before the United States got there, and al-Qaeda-in-Iraq is not Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda. Once again, Bush is lying to the American people.
The United States must leave Iraq at once. That should be the first step in a full withdrawal from the Middle East, a region American presidents have treated as their own at least since the end of World War II. No one believes the United States is an honest broker there. Pious calls for peace from an U.S. president are a joke, when Americans weapons have wrought so much death and destruction there.
The people of the region will need to figure things out for themselves. Real peace and freedom cannot be imposed by bayonets and bombs, especially when wielded by a foreign occupier.
Let’s leave the people of the Middle East alone and get our own house in order. No more foreign intervention. No more making enemies. We have much to do. Let’s start — with recriminations for those in Washington who got us into this mess.
Sheldon Richman is senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation in Fairfax, Virginia, author of Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the Welfare State, and editor of The Freeman magazine, and blogger at “Free Association” (www.sheldonrichman.com). Send him email.
by Sheldon Richman, July 18, 2007 If, as President Bush claims, Iraq is a sovereign country and its government represents the people, then why are American officials ordering the parliament to cancel its August vacation and insisting that the al-Maliki government meet certain “benchmarks”? Is it sovereign or not? By what authority does the U.S. government dictate to it?
Something just doesn’t add up here. The Bush administration is also building a dozen military bases in that country and a new embassy larger than the Vatican. These look like the acts of an empire.
Just as ominous is the fact that some critics of the war, particularly Democrats in Congress, say the reason we ought to exit Iraq is that the government and people aren’t worthy of U.S. intervention. We should get out, but that’s the wrong reason.
This is a bad sign because it is apparently the beginning of the effort to let the Bush administration off the hook. His defenders will insist that things would have gone swimmingly if only the Iraqi politicians had been more responsible. “What are we supposed to do when you have to deal with people like that?” the war party is already asking.
This defense must be nipped in the bud. The disaster that is Iraq is the fault of Bush and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who stampeded the American people into war with tales of weapons of mass destruction, and the conservative intellectuals who pressed their case for an unprovoked imperial war so the United States could remake the Middle East. They unleashed the violence that takes place there now, having sent the military in without regard for the reaction a Western invasion and occupation would ignite. They are responsible for the deaths. As Randolph Bourne, a critic of U.S. entry into World War I, said, “Willing war means willing all the evils that are organically bound up with it.”
When the Vietnam war finally ended, “responsible leaders” said there should be no recriminations: The war was a mistake, they said, now let’s move on. That was wrong. The war was not a mistake. It was a crime that involved the murder — ultimately at the hands of the American warmakers — of two million Vietnamese and 58,000 Americans. The officials who were responsible for launching that violence should have been subject to recriminations. At the very least, a full public inquiry should have been held so that the culprits could have been properly disgraced and their crimes made clear to everyone.
The same should happen with the Iraq war. The Democrats came into power this year promising to do something and what have they done? Not a blessed thing, because they are afraid that anything they do will be used against them in next year’s elections. That is cowardice, pure and simple.
America’s presence in Iraq will continue to keep that country in turmoil. Bush wants us to think he is fighting al-Qaeda, but there was no al-Qaeda in Iraq before the United States got there, and al-Qaeda-in-Iraq is not Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda. Once again, Bush is lying to the American people.
The United States must leave Iraq at once. That should be the first step in a full withdrawal from the Middle East, a region American presidents have treated as their own at least since the end of World War II. No one believes the United States is an honest broker there. Pious calls for peace from an U.S. president are a joke, when Americans weapons have wrought so much death and destruction there.
The people of the region will need to figure things out for themselves. Real peace and freedom cannot be imposed by bayonets and bombs, especially when wielded by a foreign occupier.
Let’s leave the people of the Middle East alone and get our own house in order. No more foreign intervention. No more making enemies. We have much to do. Let’s start — with recriminations for those in Washington who got us into this mess.
Sheldon Richman is senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation in Fairfax, Virginia, author of Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the Welfare State, and editor of The Freeman magazine, and blogger at “Free Association” (www.sheldonrichman.com). Send him email.
Impressive Iran Shows Its Dark Side
by Rami G. KhouriReleased: 21 Jul 2007BEIRUT -- Iran is at once impressive yet offensive. I want to embrace it, but it keeps pushing me away through its own misdeeds. Iran is widely demonized in the United States, much of Europe, and throughout Arab official circles and pockets of Arab society. Yet, it is also lionized among other quarters in the Middle East and the world. It is difficult these days to hear a nuanced view of Iran, because of the crush of absolute verdicts that see it as either historically virtuous or criminally evil.
I share this dilemma over Iranian policies and behavior. Is it possible -- even ideologically permissible -- to see both good and bad lurking in the same place? I think that in the case of Iran, we should make the effort. I am not an Iran expert and have never visited the country, so I speak from secondhand knowledge derived from much reading and speaking with Iranians and scholars of that land.
Any thinking citizen of the world must recognize that Iran matters in the Middle East, and increasingly in the world. It matters because of its size, wealth, location, ideological tenor, activist foreign policy, religious and ethnic links with its neighbors, and a continuing insistence on redressing historical grievances (especially Western coups and manipulation, and Arab mistreatment of Arab Shiites as well as Iran itself). It is a dramatic example of the modern legacy of Middle Eastern yo-yo nationalism -- sovereign countries that alternate between being close allies and then fervent foes of the United States, European powers and Israel.
Since the Iranian revolution and the creation of the Islamic Republic in 1979, Iran has been in the forefront of Middle Eastern resistance to Western power (and its Israeli adjunct), which generates for it much popular support throughout the Arab world and further afield. Iran in this period also has been one of the most dynamic examples of pluralistic and vibrant domestic culture, with a wide range of ideas, periodicals and popular movements that compete for public space and allegiance inside the country. Its ideologically managed local and national elections nevertheless have also been an endless source of national self-expression and surprises, including twice electing reformist President Mohammad Khatami, and the surprise victory of current populist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It has defied and challenged international double standards, and persists in building a full, allegedly non-military, nuclear industry on the basis of rights inherent in international conventions. There is much to admire in Iran and its people.
At the same time, Iran has been a model of Third World police state excesses. The bad things that Iran does are really bad. The regime has murdered hundreds of opponents or dissidents, jailed thousands, and driven tens of thousands into exile. Its economic mismanagement blurs the line between comic ineptitude and criminal incompetence. It has been accused of exporting revolutionary zeal, and promoting and practicing terror against civilians in other countries. It has much to answer for.
These days we witness another example of Iran at its most stupid or sinister, or simply as politically crude and cruel: the detention of several Iranian-Americans and their parading on television in an attempt to support accusations that they are fomenting revolution in Iran. Most prominent of the several detained people is Haleh Esfandiari of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in the United States. She and the other detainees, like many Iranians also detained in recent years, are accused of endangering Iran's national security because of their work in the world of civil society, which includes inviting lecturers, holding conferences and promoting research.
I stand with those who admire much about Iran but see these accusations as ludicrous and untenable. For unclear reasons, Iran goes through the charade of manufacturing threats based on long-standing and historically-anchored fears of Western coups against Iranian governments. We should not, however, confuse legitimate complaints against Washington with equally legitimate and honorable civil society and scholarly activities undertaken by individuals and institutes such as those that Iran now accuses of malicious intent.
I can only speak from personal experience of Haleh Esfandiari and the Woodrow Wilson Center, from whom I accepted an invitation to speak on developments in the Middle East a few years ago. I would do so again with pleasure, not only because Dr. Esfandiari is an honest and honorable person, but mainly because for open-minded people to gather and analytically discuss the condition and direction of their world is a vital aspect of pluralistic, democratic societies. Iran has done this on and off throughout its modern history, and now is passing through an “off” period.
Iran's detentions and accusations against Esfandiari and her colleagues are juvenile and irresponsible acts by an otherwise mature and impressive culture that insists now and then on showing its dark side.
Rami G. Khouri is an internationally syndicated columnist, the director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.
Copyright ©2007 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
by Rami G. KhouriReleased: 21 Jul 2007BEIRUT -- Iran is at once impressive yet offensive. I want to embrace it, but it keeps pushing me away through its own misdeeds. Iran is widely demonized in the United States, much of Europe, and throughout Arab official circles and pockets of Arab society. Yet, it is also lionized among other quarters in the Middle East and the world. It is difficult these days to hear a nuanced view of Iran, because of the crush of absolute verdicts that see it as either historically virtuous or criminally evil.
I share this dilemma over Iranian policies and behavior. Is it possible -- even ideologically permissible -- to see both good and bad lurking in the same place? I think that in the case of Iran, we should make the effort. I am not an Iran expert and have never visited the country, so I speak from secondhand knowledge derived from much reading and speaking with Iranians and scholars of that land.
Any thinking citizen of the world must recognize that Iran matters in the Middle East, and increasingly in the world. It matters because of its size, wealth, location, ideological tenor, activist foreign policy, religious and ethnic links with its neighbors, and a continuing insistence on redressing historical grievances (especially Western coups and manipulation, and Arab mistreatment of Arab Shiites as well as Iran itself). It is a dramatic example of the modern legacy of Middle Eastern yo-yo nationalism -- sovereign countries that alternate between being close allies and then fervent foes of the United States, European powers and Israel.
Since the Iranian revolution and the creation of the Islamic Republic in 1979, Iran has been in the forefront of Middle Eastern resistance to Western power (and its Israeli adjunct), which generates for it much popular support throughout the Arab world and further afield. Iran in this period also has been one of the most dynamic examples of pluralistic and vibrant domestic culture, with a wide range of ideas, periodicals and popular movements that compete for public space and allegiance inside the country. Its ideologically managed local and national elections nevertheless have also been an endless source of national self-expression and surprises, including twice electing reformist President Mohammad Khatami, and the surprise victory of current populist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It has defied and challenged international double standards, and persists in building a full, allegedly non-military, nuclear industry on the basis of rights inherent in international conventions. There is much to admire in Iran and its people.
At the same time, Iran has been a model of Third World police state excesses. The bad things that Iran does are really bad. The regime has murdered hundreds of opponents or dissidents, jailed thousands, and driven tens of thousands into exile. Its economic mismanagement blurs the line between comic ineptitude and criminal incompetence. It has been accused of exporting revolutionary zeal, and promoting and practicing terror against civilians in other countries. It has much to answer for.
These days we witness another example of Iran at its most stupid or sinister, or simply as politically crude and cruel: the detention of several Iranian-Americans and their parading on television in an attempt to support accusations that they are fomenting revolution in Iran. Most prominent of the several detained people is Haleh Esfandiari of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in the United States. She and the other detainees, like many Iranians also detained in recent years, are accused of endangering Iran's national security because of their work in the world of civil society, which includes inviting lecturers, holding conferences and promoting research.
I stand with those who admire much about Iran but see these accusations as ludicrous and untenable. For unclear reasons, Iran goes through the charade of manufacturing threats based on long-standing and historically-anchored fears of Western coups against Iranian governments. We should not, however, confuse legitimate complaints against Washington with equally legitimate and honorable civil society and scholarly activities undertaken by individuals and institutes such as those that Iran now accuses of malicious intent.
I can only speak from personal experience of Haleh Esfandiari and the Woodrow Wilson Center, from whom I accepted an invitation to speak on developments in the Middle East a few years ago. I would do so again with pleasure, not only because Dr. Esfandiari is an honest and honorable person, but mainly because for open-minded people to gather and analytically discuss the condition and direction of their world is a vital aspect of pluralistic, democratic societies. Iran has done this on and off throughout its modern history, and now is passing through an “off” period.
Iran's detentions and accusations against Esfandiari and her colleagues are juvenile and irresponsible acts by an otherwise mature and impressive culture that insists now and then on showing its dark side.
Rami G. Khouri is an internationally syndicated columnist, the director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.
Copyright ©2007 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
The insurgents' achilles heel
Sami Ramadani
July 20, 2007 8:30 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/sami_r...illes_heel.html
Yesterday's Guardian report on armed resistance organisations in Iraq and their plans to form a political front was a fresh and illuminating snapshot of the most dangerous and far-reaching conflict of our times. By eschewing the usual cliches and bundles of distortions about any Muslims bearing arms, the report enriches our understanding of the best organised of the resistance groups active in parts of Baghdad and the areas up to and including Mosul, north of the capital. What they say indicates a major shift in tactics and strategy, but also reveals these groups' achilles heels.
Politically, one of the most telling statements was from the spokesperson of a faction of the Ansar al-Sunna resistance group:
One of the least sectarian of the seven groups forming the new alliance is the 1920 Revolution Brigades, whose leader, Harith al-Dhari, was assassinated recently by al-Qaida, according to Muthanna al-Thari, spokesperson of the very influential Association of Muslim Scholars. The leader of the AMS, Sheikh Harith al-Dhari, is the assassinated leader's uncle and the most influential of the anti-occupation Sunni cleric. Reversing earlier statements, Sheikh Dhari, has also become very critical of al-Qaida. His and other recent anti al-Qaida statements are fuelled by the enormous loathing that Iraqis of all sects and ethnicities have for al-Qaida and all sectarian attacks. Indeed, popular opinion in the streets of Iraq habitually accuse the occupation of backing al-Qaida to spread sectarian divisions and split the struggle against the occupation.
The seven groups are not only anti al-Qaida but also keen to distance themselves from the Saddamist wing of the Ba'ath party, led by Izz'at al-Douri, Saddam Hussein's deputy until the 2003 invasion.
Such political credentials should in theory make the task of unity with Muqtada Sadr's movement less difficult. However, the resistance leaders who talked to the Guardian accuse Sadr's Mahdi army of sectarian killings while ignoring the fact that most of the sectarian attacks have been aimed at Sadr City, Najaf, Kufa and Karbala. For his part, Sadr has conceded that his movement has been infiltrated by its enemies, including the occupation authorities. Referring to the climate of chaos and occupation presence, Sadrist spokesmen have often referred to "the ease with which sectarian crimes could be committed by anyone wearing black and claiming to be from the Mahdi army."
Following the second attack on the Samarra Shia shrine, Sadr accused the occupation of being behind the attack - a position echoed by Sunni clergy and secular forces - and stressed unity with Sunnis. He later accused the US of sabotaging his attempts to unite with Sunnis. While it obviously suits the US to divide the opposition to its occupation of the country, Sadr's own tactics are attacked for being one of the biggest obstacles to greater anti-occupation unity. These tactics include on-off participation in the government and the Sadrists' presence in parliament (in the sect-based Coalition List that won most of the seats in the January 2006 occupation-controlled elections).
Though some of the criticisms of Iranian policies by the resistance leaders interviewed by the Guardian are based in fact, the seven groups' hostility to Iran is still trapped within the old Saddamist-style anti-Iranian chauvinism that fuelled his eight-year war against Iran following the 1979 overthrow of the US-backed Shah regime. Racist propaganda against the Iranian people lasted for a quarter of a century and permeated Iraqi society and its educational system. The US-led propaganda campaign against Iran has thus fallen on receptive ears. The US is happy to see Iraqis directing their wrath against the fictitious "presence of hundreds of thousands of Iranians fighting alongside the US forces to evict Sunnis from Baghdad and replace them with Shia" - in the words of one Iraqi victim of the occupation who, with her daughter, was forced to leave Iraq after the murder of her brother.
The seven resistance groups don't appear to be facing up to the fact that effectively by far the biggest organised armed resistance group in Iraq is Sadr's Mahdi army, estimated to be well over 100,000 strong - or that, in the absence of strong non-religious anti-occupation organisations, millions of people across Iraq are supporters of Muqtada Sadr's anti-occupation message. US jets and helicopters are daily bombarding Sadr City in Baghdad and towns south of Baghdad. Thousands of Sadrists are in jail and the US is acutely aware that the Sadrists remain one of the biggest obstacles to controlling Iraq.
Last but not least, when talking about the resistance in Iraq it's important to remember that most of the thousands of military operations that the Pentagon reports are carried out monthly against the occupation forces go unclaimed by any organisation. This confirms the impression that I and many Iraqis have that most of the armed resistance to the occupation is conducted by localised groups in the villages and cities of Iraq. Armed resistance to the occupation has much deeper and more popular roots than the politicians in Washington and London dare to admit. For admitting it, at least in public, means abandoning their much trumpeted "exit strategy", otherwise known as having your cake and eating it. Having a pro US government in Baghdad, withdrawing most of the troops but keeping military bases in Iraq is not what Iraqis mean by ending the military and economic occupation of Iraq. Such an exit strategy will not stop the resistance and the sea of popular support that feeds and protects it.
For even those who are engaged in anti-occupation political and trade union activities in Iraq do not hide their support for the "al-muqawama al-sharifa" ("the honourable resistance" as distinct from terrorism). And it is these deep Iraqi roots which are likely, sooner or later, to produce the united front that rises above the differences based on religion or ethnicity. A slogan gaining momentum in the streets of Iraq reflects this popular mood:"La lil ihtilal; la lil ta'iffia; la lil irhab": "No to the occupation; no to sectarianism; no to terrorism."
Sami Ramadani
July 20, 2007 8:30 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/sami_r...illes_heel.html
Yesterday's Guardian report on armed resistance organisations in Iraq and their plans to form a political front was a fresh and illuminating snapshot of the most dangerous and far-reaching conflict of our times. By eschewing the usual cliches and bundles of distortions about any Muslims bearing arms, the report enriches our understanding of the best organised of the resistance groups active in parts of Baghdad and the areas up to and including Mosul, north of the capital. What they say indicates a major shift in tactics and strategy, but also reveals these groups' achilles heels.
Politically, one of the most telling statements was from the spokesperson of a faction of the Ansar al-Sunna resistance group:
"Resistance isn't just about killing Americans without any aims or goals ... Our people have come to hate al-Qaida, which gives the impression to the outside world that the resistance in Iraq are terrorists. Suicide bombing is not the best way to fight because it kills innocent civilians. We are against indiscriminate killing - fighting should be concentrated only on the enemy. They [al-Qaida] believe that all Shia are kuffar [unbelievers]- and most of the Sunnis as well ... The Americans magnify their role, even though they are responsible for a minority of resistance operations - remember that the Americans brought al-Qaida to Iraq."The statement is significant in two respects. One is the fact that al-Qaida is being denounced openly, and the second is that the man making the statement is from Ansar al-Sunna, one the organisations that gained notoriety in its indiscriminate methods of fighting and sectarian ideology. Equally significant is the fact that the other faction of Ansar al-Sunna is being accused of working with al-Qaida.
One of the least sectarian of the seven groups forming the new alliance is the 1920 Revolution Brigades, whose leader, Harith al-Dhari, was assassinated recently by al-Qaida, according to Muthanna al-Thari, spokesperson of the very influential Association of Muslim Scholars. The leader of the AMS, Sheikh Harith al-Dhari, is the assassinated leader's uncle and the most influential of the anti-occupation Sunni cleric. Reversing earlier statements, Sheikh Dhari, has also become very critical of al-Qaida. His and other recent anti al-Qaida statements are fuelled by the enormous loathing that Iraqis of all sects and ethnicities have for al-Qaida and all sectarian attacks. Indeed, popular opinion in the streets of Iraq habitually accuse the occupation of backing al-Qaida to spread sectarian divisions and split the struggle against the occupation.
The seven groups are not only anti al-Qaida but also keen to distance themselves from the Saddamist wing of the Ba'ath party, led by Izz'at al-Douri, Saddam Hussein's deputy until the 2003 invasion.
Such political credentials should in theory make the task of unity with Muqtada Sadr's movement less difficult. However, the resistance leaders who talked to the Guardian accuse Sadr's Mahdi army of sectarian killings while ignoring the fact that most of the sectarian attacks have been aimed at Sadr City, Najaf, Kufa and Karbala. For his part, Sadr has conceded that his movement has been infiltrated by its enemies, including the occupation authorities. Referring to the climate of chaos and occupation presence, Sadrist spokesmen have often referred to "the ease with which sectarian crimes could be committed by anyone wearing black and claiming to be from the Mahdi army."
Following the second attack on the Samarra Shia shrine, Sadr accused the occupation of being behind the attack - a position echoed by Sunni clergy and secular forces - and stressed unity with Sunnis. He later accused the US of sabotaging his attempts to unite with Sunnis. While it obviously suits the US to divide the opposition to its occupation of the country, Sadr's own tactics are attacked for being one of the biggest obstacles to greater anti-occupation unity. These tactics include on-off participation in the government and the Sadrists' presence in parliament (in the sect-based Coalition List that won most of the seats in the January 2006 occupation-controlled elections).
Though some of the criticisms of Iranian policies by the resistance leaders interviewed by the Guardian are based in fact, the seven groups' hostility to Iran is still trapped within the old Saddamist-style anti-Iranian chauvinism that fuelled his eight-year war against Iran following the 1979 overthrow of the US-backed Shah regime. Racist propaganda against the Iranian people lasted for a quarter of a century and permeated Iraqi society and its educational system. The US-led propaganda campaign against Iran has thus fallen on receptive ears. The US is happy to see Iraqis directing their wrath against the fictitious "presence of hundreds of thousands of Iranians fighting alongside the US forces to evict Sunnis from Baghdad and replace them with Shia" - in the words of one Iraqi victim of the occupation who, with her daughter, was forced to leave Iraq after the murder of her brother.
The seven resistance groups don't appear to be facing up to the fact that effectively by far the biggest organised armed resistance group in Iraq is Sadr's Mahdi army, estimated to be well over 100,000 strong - or that, in the absence of strong non-religious anti-occupation organisations, millions of people across Iraq are supporters of Muqtada Sadr's anti-occupation message. US jets and helicopters are daily bombarding Sadr City in Baghdad and towns south of Baghdad. Thousands of Sadrists are in jail and the US is acutely aware that the Sadrists remain one of the biggest obstacles to controlling Iraq.
Last but not least, when talking about the resistance in Iraq it's important to remember that most of the thousands of military operations that the Pentagon reports are carried out monthly against the occupation forces go unclaimed by any organisation. This confirms the impression that I and many Iraqis have that most of the armed resistance to the occupation is conducted by localised groups in the villages and cities of Iraq. Armed resistance to the occupation has much deeper and more popular roots than the politicians in Washington and London dare to admit. For admitting it, at least in public, means abandoning their much trumpeted "exit strategy", otherwise known as having your cake and eating it. Having a pro US government in Baghdad, withdrawing most of the troops but keeping military bases in Iraq is not what Iraqis mean by ending the military and economic occupation of Iraq. Such an exit strategy will not stop the resistance and the sea of popular support that feeds and protects it.
For even those who are engaged in anti-occupation political and trade union activities in Iraq do not hide their support for the "al-muqawama al-sharifa" ("the honourable resistance" as distinct from terrorism). And it is these deep Iraqi roots which are likely, sooner or later, to produce the united front that rises above the differences based on religion or ethnicity. A slogan gaining momentum in the streets of Iraq reflects this popular mood:"La lil ihtilal; la lil ta'iffia; la lil irhab": "No to the occupation; no to sectarianism; no to terrorism."
One crisis after another for Pakistan
By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Pakistan - A week-long campaign of suicide bombings that has killed more than 130 people across Pakistan has seriously demoralized security personnel in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan. These areas are a safe haven for the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
!-- if (!document.phpAds_used) document.phpAds_used = ','; phpAds_random = new String (Math.random()); phpAds_random = phpAds_random.substring(2,11); document.write (""); //--> Directed at police and army targets, the bombings are believed to have been carried out to avenge last week's storming of the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) in Islamabad, an operation in which 75 pro-Taliban militants were killed, according to official figures. The
bombings were also to protest the support given by President General Pervez Musharraf to the "war on terror" prosecuted by the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Afghanistan.
The unrest coincides with a growing political crisis for Musharraf over his suspension in March of Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, the chief justice. The 13-judge bench of the Supreme Court was due on Friday to hear Chaudhry's appeal for reinstatement and the quashing of the case brought against him by Musharraf for alleged misconduct.
Since Chaudhry's suspension, the country has seen widespread protests by the legal profession, opposition politicians and civil-rights groups. On Tuesday, 18 people were killed in a suicide bomb attack at a rally in support of Chaudhry in Islamabad.
Whatever the verdict in the appeal, it is unlikely to ease the pressure on Musharraf. If Chaudhry is successful, the opposition will be emboldened. If it fails, the protests can be expected to grow in intensity.
Defense lawyer Ali Ahmaed Kurd said on Friday that nothing but the reinstatement of the chief justice would be acceptable. He hinted that if the court gave the "wrong" decision, it would mean it was under duress from the military establishment.
Tribal troubles
After suffering the heaviest casualties ever sustained by Pakistani security forces during peacetime, many security personnel in the tribal areas have gone on long leave or are going about their work in plain clothes.
"We are scared to be seen in our uniforms. The militants are better equipped than we are. And there is no way to stop suicide bombers," said a police constable in Swat, North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). He said the threat was real enough for senior officials to approve the idea of police performing their duties in plain clothes.
NWFP has a total of 35,000 police for a population of 22 million, while the Federally Administered Tribal Agency (FATA) has 7,000 khasadar (local police) for about 4 million people. These forces are considered inadequate, although the NWFP can also call on the services of the 17,000-strong Frontier Constabulary.
About 80,000 regular army troops are also deployed along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan to check cross-border movements by militants. But the army is being held back by a ceasefire agreement made with tribal leaders last September that the government is keen to keep going.
"Our forces lack proper training, equipment, vehicles and weaponry, due to which their preparedness is very low," a high-ranking police official said. He confirmed that hundreds of police officers had applied for leave out of fear for their safety.
Most of the attacks over the past week have taken place in NWFP, with at least 70 of the 110 people who have died being soldiers. "It is mostly in the tough areas of Swat, Tank and Dera Ismail Khan that our men have to avoid wearing uniforms," said a police official.
On Thursday, in the latest attack, a bomb-laden car exploded in Hub, about 30 kilometers west of Karachi, killing 26 people, seven of them policemen. Six more police officers and civilians were killed at a police training center in the town of Hangu in the NWFP, officials said.
The bombings are the most serious challenge yet to the eight-year military government of Musharraf, who seized power in a coup in 1999 and who has successfully staved off domestic and international demands for the restoration of democracy through his usefulness in the Afghanistan campaign.
The attacks on troops in the northwest came after tribal leaders unilaterally renounced the September peace deal under which the Pakistan Army was withdrawn from the tribal areas in return for pledges to stop Taliban and al-Qaeda militants from carrying out cross-border raids into Afghanistan.
This year, Pakistan has seen 21 suicide attacks that have killed 225 people. The suicide bombers have targeted police, army and other paramilitary personnel with some degree of precision.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has time and again accused Pakistan of being covertly involved in training and sending suicide bombers into his country, but increasingly targets are being sought within Pakistan.
The United Nations recently asked its staff in FATA and NWFP to avoid getting close to installations of the police or the army. All UN bodies have halted their activities.
Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao had a narrow escape when a suicide bomber blew himself up at his public meeting on March 18 in Charsadda, NWFP. Earlier, two top police officials were killed in separate incidents in Peshawar, the capital of the NWFP.
"The militants want to scare policemen and army soldiers, and they have succeeded in their mission," said Ashraf Ali, who is working on a doctorate on the Taliban at the Area Study Center, University of Peshawar.
He said Musharraf now feels politically isolated and is trying desperately to please the US. "The only way for Musharraf to get US approval is to fight the militants," said Ali.
The Awami National Party (ANP), a pro-Pashtun political outfit, on Wednesday appealed to the militants and the Taliban to stop suicide attacks on innocent people and members of the law-enforcement agencies.
"This situation is the handiwork of Pakistan's secret agencies. They had planted the mujahideen [Taliban] against the Russian army in Afghanistan [in the 1980s]. Now, the Taliban are being targeted in the name of 'war on terror'," said Ghulam Ahmad Bilour, senior vice president of the ANP.
Political analyst Afrasiab Khattak, an expert on Afghanistan affairs, said that ideally the government should take the local population into its confidence by engaging them in talks if it is serious about tackling militant activity in their midst.
"All the decisions regarding the 'war on terror' are being taken by a few individuals in Islamabad. People in NWFP and FATA are not taken into confidence, which is why the situation has come to such a sorry pass," Khattak said.
(Inter Press Service)
By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Pakistan - A week-long campaign of suicide bombings that has killed more than 130 people across Pakistan has seriously demoralized security personnel in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan. These areas are a safe haven for the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
!-- if (!document.phpAds_used) document.phpAds_used = ','; phpAds_random = new String (Math.random()); phpAds_random = phpAds_random.substring(2,11); document.write (""); //--> Directed at police and army targets, the bombings are believed to have been carried out to avenge last week's storming of the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) in Islamabad, an operation in which 75 pro-Taliban militants were killed, according to official figures. The
bombings were also to protest the support given by President General Pervez Musharraf to the "war on terror" prosecuted by the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Afghanistan.
The unrest coincides with a growing political crisis for Musharraf over his suspension in March of Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, the chief justice. The 13-judge bench of the Supreme Court was due on Friday to hear Chaudhry's appeal for reinstatement and the quashing of the case brought against him by Musharraf for alleged misconduct.
Since Chaudhry's suspension, the country has seen widespread protests by the legal profession, opposition politicians and civil-rights groups. On Tuesday, 18 people were killed in a suicide bomb attack at a rally in support of Chaudhry in Islamabad.
Whatever the verdict in the appeal, it is unlikely to ease the pressure on Musharraf. If Chaudhry is successful, the opposition will be emboldened. If it fails, the protests can be expected to grow in intensity.
Defense lawyer Ali Ahmaed Kurd said on Friday that nothing but the reinstatement of the chief justice would be acceptable. He hinted that if the court gave the "wrong" decision, it would mean it was under duress from the military establishment.
Tribal troubles
After suffering the heaviest casualties ever sustained by Pakistani security forces during peacetime, many security personnel in the tribal areas have gone on long leave or are going about their work in plain clothes.
"We are scared to be seen in our uniforms. The militants are better equipped than we are. And there is no way to stop suicide bombers," said a police constable in Swat, North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). He said the threat was real enough for senior officials to approve the idea of police performing their duties in plain clothes.
NWFP has a total of 35,000 police for a population of 22 million, while the Federally Administered Tribal Agency (FATA) has 7,000 khasadar (local police) for about 4 million people. These forces are considered inadequate, although the NWFP can also call on the services of the 17,000-strong Frontier Constabulary.
About 80,000 regular army troops are also deployed along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan to check cross-border movements by militants. But the army is being held back by a ceasefire agreement made with tribal leaders last September that the government is keen to keep going.
"Our forces lack proper training, equipment, vehicles and weaponry, due to which their preparedness is very low," a high-ranking police official said. He confirmed that hundreds of police officers had applied for leave out of fear for their safety.
Most of the attacks over the past week have taken place in NWFP, with at least 70 of the 110 people who have died being soldiers. "It is mostly in the tough areas of Swat, Tank and Dera Ismail Khan that our men have to avoid wearing uniforms," said a police official.
On Thursday, in the latest attack, a bomb-laden car exploded in Hub, about 30 kilometers west of Karachi, killing 26 people, seven of them policemen. Six more police officers and civilians were killed at a police training center in the town of Hangu in the NWFP, officials said.
The bombings are the most serious challenge yet to the eight-year military government of Musharraf, who seized power in a coup in 1999 and who has successfully staved off domestic and international demands for the restoration of democracy through his usefulness in the Afghanistan campaign.
The attacks on troops in the northwest came after tribal leaders unilaterally renounced the September peace deal under which the Pakistan Army was withdrawn from the tribal areas in return for pledges to stop Taliban and al-Qaeda militants from carrying out cross-border raids into Afghanistan.
This year, Pakistan has seen 21 suicide attacks that have killed 225 people. The suicide bombers have targeted police, army and other paramilitary personnel with some degree of precision.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has time and again accused Pakistan of being covertly involved in training and sending suicide bombers into his country, but increasingly targets are being sought within Pakistan.
The United Nations recently asked its staff in FATA and NWFP to avoid getting close to installations of the police or the army. All UN bodies have halted their activities.
Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao had a narrow escape when a suicide bomber blew himself up at his public meeting on March 18 in Charsadda, NWFP. Earlier, two top police officials were killed in separate incidents in Peshawar, the capital of the NWFP.
"The militants want to scare policemen and army soldiers, and they have succeeded in their mission," said Ashraf Ali, who is working on a doctorate on the Taliban at the Area Study Center, University of Peshawar.
He said Musharraf now feels politically isolated and is trying desperately to please the US. "The only way for Musharraf to get US approval is to fight the militants," said Ali.
The Awami National Party (ANP), a pro-Pashtun political outfit, on Wednesday appealed to the militants and the Taliban to stop suicide attacks on innocent people and members of the law-enforcement agencies.
"This situation is the handiwork of Pakistan's secret agencies. They had planted the mujahideen [Taliban] against the Russian army in Afghanistan [in the 1980s]. Now, the Taliban are being targeted in the name of 'war on terror'," said Ghulam Ahmad Bilour, senior vice president of the ANP.
Political analyst Afrasiab Khattak, an expert on Afghanistan affairs, said that ideally the government should take the local population into its confidence by engaging them in talks if it is serious about tackling militant activity in their midst.
"All the decisions regarding the 'war on terror' are being taken by a few individuals in Islamabad. People in NWFP and FATA are not taken into confidence, which is why the situation has come to such a sorry pass," Khattak said.
(Inter Press Service)
The Antiwar, Anti-Abortion, Anti-Drug-Enforcement
-Administration, Anti-Medicare Candidacy of Dr. Ron Paul
By CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL Published: July 22, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/22/magazine/22Paul-t.html
-Administration, Anti-Medicare Candidacy of Dr. Ron Paul
By CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL Published: July 22, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/22/magazine/22Paul-t.html
Iraq isn't Vietnam, Henry
By Max Boot
As Congress debates the war in Iraq, it's becoming clear that many lawmakers
want to bring the troops home while avoiding the likely consequences -- a
ruinous civil war and a calamitous victory for Iran and Al Qaeda. This has led
to much pining for some kind of negotiated solution -- what the Iraq Study Group
called a "new diplomatic offensive" -- that might allow us a graceful exit.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/eBT...Io30G2B0ImGV0El
By Max Boot
As Congress debates the war in Iraq, it's becoming clear that many lawmakers
want to bring the troops home while avoiding the likely consequences -- a
ruinous civil war and a calamitous victory for Iran and Al Qaeda. This has led
to much pining for some kind of negotiated solution -- what the Iraq Study Group
called a "new diplomatic offensive" -- that might allow us a graceful exit.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/eBT...Io30G2B0ImGV0El
Double edge to US sanctions bid on Iran
By Khody Akhavi
WASHINGTON - As the United States and its allies in the United Nations plan to push for stiffer economic sanctions on Iran over its refusal to halt its nuclear program, an Iran sanctions bill making its way through Congress includes several key measures that may threaten US diplomacy toward Tehran and split key allies on the issue, including Russia.
The Iran Counter Proliferation Act of 2007 (HR 1400), introduced by Democrat Tom Lantos in March, aims to increase economic pressure on Iran by eliminating President George W Bush's ability to waive sanctions against foreign companies that invest in the country's energy industry. The bill would also restrict US nuclear cooperation with countries such as Russia that assist Iran's nuclear and weapons programs.
"Our goal must be zero foreign investment - let me repeat this, zero foreign investment - in Iran's energy sector. That is the only formula that can prevent Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons," said Lantos in statement released by the House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs, which he chairs.
But critics argue that the bill jeopardizes Russian-US cooperation at a time when Washington needs Moscow's support to confront Iran on the international stage.
"Any deterioration of cooperation with Moscow in this sphere could ultimately diminish successful US-Russian collaboration in the effort to secure and dismantle weapons of mass destruction and their associated infrastructure in former Soviet Union states," according to a statement by Israel Policy Forum, a Zionist peace group based in Washington. "The Russian issue does not belong in this bill."
While maintaining a powerful position - and veto power - on the UN Security Council, Russia has cultivated close ties with Tehran, building a nuclear power plant near Iran's southern port of Bushehr. In February, Russian officials confirmed that Russia had delivered more than US$700 million worth of air-defense systems to help protect Iran's nuclear sites from attack, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.
"We don't think Iran should feel itself encircled by enemies," Russian President Vladimir Putin told the Arab satellite news station Al-Jazeera. "The Iranian people and the Iranian leadership should feel they have friends in the world."
Relations between Washington and Moscow are already strained over US plans for a missile-defense system in former Soviet-bloc countries in eastern Europe. Washington says the system is meant to protect Europe from a possible Iranian nuclear missile strike, but Russia says the US system is aimed at its nuclear arsenal.
In 2006, Congress withheld 60% of US foreign aid assistance to Russia because of its continued assistance to Iran's nuclear and ballistic missiles programs.
Russian politicians also expressed dismay over the proposed bill, arguing that "both the letter and spirit" of it are in conflict with international law. "It cannot but cause disappointment and regret, because this bill requests that Russia stop all assistance to Iran and that it does not supply Iran with any improved conventional arms or missiles," Konstantin Kosachev, head of the State Duma's (parliament's) Committee for International Affairs, told the Russian news agency Interfax.
The legislation would also reimpose import sanctions on certain Iranian exports to the United States, such as foodstuffs and Persian carpets, and call for the Bush administration to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a terrorist organization.
The IRGC, established by the late ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as a parallel force to the military during Iran's Islamic Revolution in 1979, has been accused by the US of training Lebanon's Hezbollah, supplying Shi'ite militias in Iraq and participating in insurgent attacks on US troops.
The IRGC's leadership is so politically and financially powerful that any Iranian leader is likely to demand that the US repeal that provision as a precondition for negotiations on the nuclear issue.
The Bush administration has been rhetorically steadfast in its opposition to Iran's nuclear aspirations, and has continually emphasized its desire to see "regime change" in Iran.
"The world has spoken and said, 'You know, no nuclear-weapons programs.' And yet [Iran is] constantly ignoring the demands," Bush said during a recent news conference. "My view is that we need to strengthen our sanctions regime."
HR 1400 is just one of several bills in Congress and state legislatures to respond to a grassroots campaign calling for divestment in companies that do business with countries that the State Department considers state sponsors of terrorism.
In the past year, state lawmakers in California, Missouri, Florida and New Jersey have introduced bills that specifically seek to ban investment in Iran's oil and natural-gas infrastructure. The "terror-free" investment movement - spearheaded by the neo-conservative think-tank Center for Security Policy - aims to force mutual funds, pension funds and endowments to pull their investments from international companies that do business with Iran.
The divestment effort has also gained attention because of the involvement of pro-Israel interest groups. The "Divest Iran" campaign was one of the main messages delivered at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee convention in Washington in March.
Yet officials within the State Department appear resistant to any legislation that may undermine the executive branch's power and direction over US foreign policy.
"If the focus of the United States' effort is to sanction our allies and not sanction Iran, that may not be the best way to maintain this very broad international coalition that we have built up since March of 2005," Under Secretary Nicholas Burns told members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee in March, regarding HR 1400.
Similar sanctions against Iran were recently slipped into a 2008 defense appropriations bill in the Senate, and were met with similar resistance.
"While these proposals are certainly well intended, they could have significant counterproductive policy implications," said Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Robert Kimmitt, during a speech at the Institute for Near East Policy in May.
While the Bush administration appears confident it can persuade countries such as Russia to support stiffer sanctions against Iran, the critical question will be how much congressional legislation will complicate the Bush administration's relationship to key international players and what that will portend for US "diplomacy" toward Iran.
(Inter Press Service)
By Khody Akhavi
WASHINGTON - As the United States and its allies in the United Nations plan to push for stiffer economic sanctions on Iran over its refusal to halt its nuclear program, an Iran sanctions bill making its way through Congress includes several key measures that may threaten US diplomacy toward Tehran and split key allies on the issue, including Russia.
The Iran Counter Proliferation Act of 2007 (HR 1400), introduced by Democrat Tom Lantos in March, aims to increase economic pressure on Iran by eliminating President George W Bush's ability to waive sanctions against foreign companies that invest in the country's energy industry. The bill would also restrict US nuclear cooperation with countries such as Russia that assist Iran's nuclear and weapons programs.
"Our goal must be zero foreign investment - let me repeat this, zero foreign investment - in Iran's energy sector. That is the only formula that can prevent Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons," said Lantos in statement released by the House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs, which he chairs.
But critics argue that the bill jeopardizes Russian-US cooperation at a time when Washington needs Moscow's support to confront Iran on the international stage.
"Any deterioration of cooperation with Moscow in this sphere could ultimately diminish successful US-Russian collaboration in the effort to secure and dismantle weapons of mass destruction and their associated infrastructure in former Soviet Union states," according to a statement by Israel Policy Forum, a Zionist peace group based in Washington. "The Russian issue does not belong in this bill."
While maintaining a powerful position - and veto power - on the UN Security Council, Russia has cultivated close ties with Tehran, building a nuclear power plant near Iran's southern port of Bushehr. In February, Russian officials confirmed that Russia had delivered more than US$700 million worth of air-defense systems to help protect Iran's nuclear sites from attack, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.
"We don't think Iran should feel itself encircled by enemies," Russian President Vladimir Putin told the Arab satellite news station Al-Jazeera. "The Iranian people and the Iranian leadership should feel they have friends in the world."
Relations between Washington and Moscow are already strained over US plans for a missile-defense system in former Soviet-bloc countries in eastern Europe. Washington says the system is meant to protect Europe from a possible Iranian nuclear missile strike, but Russia says the US system is aimed at its nuclear arsenal.
In 2006, Congress withheld 60% of US foreign aid assistance to Russia because of its continued assistance to Iran's nuclear and ballistic missiles programs.
Russian politicians also expressed dismay over the proposed bill, arguing that "both the letter and spirit" of it are in conflict with international law. "It cannot but cause disappointment and regret, because this bill requests that Russia stop all assistance to Iran and that it does not supply Iran with any improved conventional arms or missiles," Konstantin Kosachev, head of the State Duma's (parliament's) Committee for International Affairs, told the Russian news agency Interfax.
The legislation would also reimpose import sanctions on certain Iranian exports to the United States, such as foodstuffs and Persian carpets, and call for the Bush administration to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a terrorist organization.
The IRGC, established by the late ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as a parallel force to the military during Iran's Islamic Revolution in 1979, has been accused by the US of training Lebanon's Hezbollah, supplying Shi'ite militias in Iraq and participating in insurgent attacks on US troops.
The IRGC's leadership is so politically and financially powerful that any Iranian leader is likely to demand that the US repeal that provision as a precondition for negotiations on the nuclear issue.
The Bush administration has been rhetorically steadfast in its opposition to Iran's nuclear aspirations, and has continually emphasized its desire to see "regime change" in Iran.
"The world has spoken and said, 'You know, no nuclear-weapons programs.' And yet [Iran is] constantly ignoring the demands," Bush said during a recent news conference. "My view is that we need to strengthen our sanctions regime."
HR 1400 is just one of several bills in Congress and state legislatures to respond to a grassroots campaign calling for divestment in companies that do business with countries that the State Department considers state sponsors of terrorism.
In the past year, state lawmakers in California, Missouri, Florida and New Jersey have introduced bills that specifically seek to ban investment in Iran's oil and natural-gas infrastructure. The "terror-free" investment movement - spearheaded by the neo-conservative think-tank Center for Security Policy - aims to force mutual funds, pension funds and endowments to pull their investments from international companies that do business with Iran.
The divestment effort has also gained attention because of the involvement of pro-Israel interest groups. The "Divest Iran" campaign was one of the main messages delivered at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee convention in Washington in March.
Yet officials within the State Department appear resistant to any legislation that may undermine the executive branch's power and direction over US foreign policy.
"If the focus of the United States' effort is to sanction our allies and not sanction Iran, that may not be the best way to maintain this very broad international coalition that we have built up since March of 2005," Under Secretary Nicholas Burns told members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee in March, regarding HR 1400.
Similar sanctions against Iran were recently slipped into a 2008 defense appropriations bill in the Senate, and were met with similar resistance.
"While these proposals are certainly well intended, they could have significant counterproductive policy implications," said Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Robert Kimmitt, during a speech at the Institute for Near East Policy in May.
While the Bush administration appears confident it can persuade countries such as Russia to support stiffer sanctions against Iran, the critical question will be how much congressional legislation will complicate the Bush administration's relationship to key international players and what that will portend for US "diplomacy" toward Iran.
(Inter Press Service)
Weekend Edition
July 21 / 22, 2007
July 21 / 22, 2007
Beyond Euphemism
How to Read a National Intelligence Estimate
By WERTHER
Much notice has attended the release of the unclassified version of the latest National Intelligence Estimate [NIE] titled "The Terrorist Threat to the US Homeland." It contains the rectified juices of all sixteen of our intelligence agencies. Federal statute prohibits disclosing the numbers of employees or the budgets of these agencies, but in aggregate there are well over 100,000 placemen, and unofficial estimates of the combined budgets come to over $40 billion annually. Given the avalanche of "temporary" spending on Iraq and Afghanistan in supplemental appropriations, we would estimate that a figure of $60-$70 billion is closer to the mark. That is a lot of Bentley Arnages for people like Marc Rich, Victor Bout, and our other dubious intelligence contacts.
This gallimaufry of sleuths is nominally presided over by the newly minted Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell. A retired admiral, he might fairly be described as our Canaris in the coal mine: he massages the collective wisdom of the vast intelligence bureaucracy to warn Ma and Pa Kettle of the likelihood of their being extinguished by a bolt of thunder out of darkest Araby.
The public version of the NIE contains only seven pages, and of that, five consist entirely of mumbo-jumbo describing how painstakingly constructed NIEs are. This, one must infer, is the standard backside-covering disclaimer beloved of corporate auditors to avoid shareholder law suits. The meat of the public NIE is barely one and one-half pages.
The title of the NIE itself will be of interest to future generations of historians. It refers, not to terrorist threats to the United States, but to "the US Homeland." The word "homeland," which resonates sinisterly like das Vaterland in German or rodina in Russian, was virtually unused before 9/11, and despite its relentless repetition by the Bush administration (to include the name of a cabinet agency), it has thus far refused to lodge itself in colloquial American English. One can hardly imagine an American businessman at an airport bar in Tegucigalpa telling a compatriot, "I'm taking the 9:17 flight to the homeland." Indeed, while Vaterland or rodina have non-ideological colloquial roots and were expropriated by Hitler and Stalin, "homeland" is a purely ideological construct of Bush administration. The page-and-a-half "Key Judgments" section uses the word "homeland" nine times.
To spare readers the pain and confusion of reading a document assembled by a committee, we will reproduce excerpts of the "Key Judgments" section and annotate them by translating them into ordinary English. Please be warned, however, that in order to faithfully reproduce the reasoning that goes on in government bureaucracies, we are forced to depart from our usual decorum. Unlike Karen Hughes claiming that President Bush never uses profanity, we prefer accuracy to euphemism.
* We assess that greatly increased worldwide counterterrorism efforts over the past five years have constrained the ability of al-Qa'ida to attack the US Homeland again and have led terrorist groups to perceive the Homeland as a harder target to strike than on 9/11. These measures have helped disrupt known plots against the United States since 9/11."We've got to come up with boilerplate to protect the administration from the public perception that Iraq is a dangerous distraction from the real threat emanating from the border areas of Pakistan."
* We are concerned, however, that this level of international cooperation may wane as 9/11 becomes a more distant memory and perceptions of the threat diverge."Our allies aren't on board with disasters like Iraq or our saber-rattling with Iran. The U.S. public despises foreigners anyway and will welcome a sideswipe at them."
* Al-Qa'ida is and will remain the most serious terrorist threat to the Homeland, as its central leadership continues to plan high-impact plots, while pushing others in extremist Sunni communities to mimic its efforts and to supplement its capabilities. We assess the group has protected or regenerated key elements of its Homeland attack capability, including: a safehaven in the Pakistan Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), operational lieutenants, and its top leadership."We blew it when George, Dick, and Rummy took their eye off the ball in Afghanistan in order to invade Iraq. Furthermore, the shit we stirred up in Iraq makes Sunnis everywhere vulnerable to recruitment by Al Qa'ida. And this Musharraf guy in Pakistan is playing us for suckers. Now, how do we say that in an NIE to save our historical reputations without having Cheney fire our asses and wiretap our families? Call re-write to fuzz it up!"
* Although we have discovered only a handful of individuals in the United States with ties to al-Qa'ida senior leadership since 9/11, we judge that al-Qa'ida will intensify its efforts to put operatives here. As a result, we judge that the United States currently is in a heightened threat environment."We need to give the administration some red meat here that they can stoke up the fear factor with. They're already crawling all over our backs and this will mollify them and save our jobs. In any case, intelligence agencies never go wrong when they make a pessimistic assessment of a threat, and suppose something bad actually happens? Plus, it's artfully ambiguous to say the United States is currently in a heightened threat environment. Since when? 9/11? Since we invaded Iraq? Since the Democrats took over Congress?"
* Of note, we assess that al-Qa'ida will probably seek to leverage the contacts and capabilities of al-Qa'ida in Iraq (AQI), its most visible and capable affiliate and the only one known to have expressed a desire to attack the Homeland."I know, guys. But did you see this memo from the Veep's office practically ordering us to link Osama with the insurgents in Iraq? I'll bet not one single reporter catches that bit about how none of al Qa'ida's other affiliates is even known to have expressed a desire to attack the United States."
* We assess that al-Qa'ida will continue to try to acquire and employ chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear material in attacks and would not hesitate to use them if it develops what it deems is sufficient capability."The good old car bomb is by far the most feasible and reliably lethal instrument of terrorism. And we've given whole cadres of car-bombers on-the-job training in Iraq. But the public is far more paranoid about nukes, germs, and gas. Hell, why shouldn't they be? There's a whole cottage industry of think-tank "experts" and contractor parasites making a good living off selling the fear factor to the chumps."
* We assess that al-Qa'ida's Homeland plotting is likely to continue to focus on prominent political, economic, and infrastructure targets with the goal of producing mass casualties, visually dramatic destruction, significant economic aftershocks, and/or fear among the US population. The group is proficient with conventional small arms and improvised explosive devices, and is innovative in creating new capabilities and overcoming security obstacles."Well, duh! Do you think they're going to blow up a tree stump in the Ozarks if they can bring down the Golden Gate Bridge? That's why we're the intelligence professionals."
* We assess Lebanese Hizballah, which has conducted anti-US attacks outside the United States in the past, may be more likely to consider attacking the Homeland over the next three years if it perceives the United States as posing a direct threat to the group or Iran."Ya think? What would we do if a threatening country were getting ready to clobber one of our NATO treaty allies - or us? That's why Cheney's Iran obsession is so insane: we're creating enemies faster than we can kill them."
* We assess that the spread of radical-especially Salafi-Internet sites, increasingly aggressive anti-US rhetoric and actions, and the growing number of radical, self-generating cells in Western countries indicate that the radical and violent segment of the West's Muslim population is expanding, including in the United States. The arrest and prosecution by US law enforcement of a small number of violent Islamic extremists inside the United States- who are becoming more connected ideologically, virtually, and/or in a physical sense to the global extremist movement-points to the possibility that others may become sufficiently radicalized that they will view the use of violence here as legitimate. We assess that this internal Muslim terrorist threat is not likely to be as severe as it is in Europe, however."This is something any well-informed newspaper reader could infer, but let's put it in because it sounds sinister and authoritative."
* We assess that other, non-Muslim terrorist groups-often referred to as "single-issue" groups by the FBI-probably will conduct attacks over the next three years given their violent histories, but we assess this violence is likely to be on a small scale."The West Wing wanted us explicitly to mention eco-terrorists and the nuts who damage animal experiment labs because Big Pharma and the timber interests keep reminding Bush how they own him. But we managed to win on this one. I just reminded them that some people think Operation Rescue is a terrorist group."
* We assess that globalization trends and recent technological advances will continue to enable even small numbers of alienated people to find and connect with one another, justify and intensify their anger, and mobilize resources to attack-all without requiring a centralized terrorist organization, training camp, or leader."This one drove DOD nuts. They said it makes a big, expensive conventional military like ours about as obsolete as a Curve Dash Oldsmobile. I wonder if anyone on the Hill will pick up on this?"
* The ability to detect broader and more diverse terrorist plotting in this environment will challenge current US defensive efforts and the tools we use to detect and disrupt plots. It will also require greater understanding of how suspect activities at the local level relate to strategic threat information and how best to identify indicators of terrorist activity in the midst of legitimate interactions."That jackass Addington insisted we put that in there to justify the illegal wiretapping."
Werther is the pen name of a Northern Virginia-based defense analyst.
Weekend Edition
July 21 / 22, 2007
July 21 / 22, 2007
CounterPunch Diary
Giuliani and the Dogs of War
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
Even as the Iraq war claims yet another casualty, in the form of Senator John McCain, another Republican sets himself up for political destruction by insisting that America, should persist in this unpopular enterprise. McCain, once hailed as his party's all-but-inevitable nominee for the presidency, is near the end, out of money and firing senior members of his campaign staff, who retaliate by denigrating those left on the sinking ship.
It's been obvious for months that the path to the White House in 2008 does not lie in endorsing Bush's disastrous enterprise. Yet McCain did so and is now having to pay the bill, voyaging to Iraq and insinuating from inside a vast security cordon, his venerable torso encased in body armor, that it was as safe to stroll around Baghdad and its suburbs as Phoenix, in his home state of Arizona. Most Americans scoffed with incredulity at this claim, one so obviously at odds with reality that CounterPunch coeditor Jeffrey St Clair speculated to me that McCain was setting the stage for a sudden turnaround on the war in the fall, saying that though he'd given Bush every chance, quitting time was here.
But, as often in life, satisfactory explanations from the pages of Machiavelli are no match for the bray of confident miscalculation. Flag-wagging isn't a vote-getter this campaign season, at least yet. Most Americans don't like the war, want the troops out, will vote for politicians who promise to get them home and punish those who don't. John McCain's treasury is empty. Money is flowing into the campaign accounts of the libertarian Republic peace candidate, Ron Paul, a remote outsider whose polling numbers shoot up on the rare occasions he can shoulder his way into the Republican debates.
Now, undeterred by McCain's impending political extinction as a the prime pro-war candidate, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani is seizing the battle standard from the senator's stricken hand. Giuliani named his list of foreign policy advisers last week. This is an important political ritual, whereby political commentators can run their eyes down the list and assess at a glance what sort of headway the candidate is making in winning the support of the political establishment, starting with Henry Kissinger. Giuliani's list is heavily freighted with pro-war types, including the apex neo-con, Norman Podhoretz.
No candidate lofting tossing the name Podhoretz into the laptops of the press corps, is aiming at the peace vote. Podhoretz is former editor of the American Jewish Committee's Commentary magazine, the neocons' in-house journal. He's been touting war on Islam and pretty much everywhere on the planet else barring Israel ever since the mid-70s, when he worried that America would quit its support for Israel just as it slunk out of Vietnam. He denounced the Democrats as pro-Arab, pro-gay, pro-terror pinkoes and stumped for Reagan. His wife, Midge Decter, became a moving spirit in the Committee on the Present Danger, his so-in-law Elliot Abrams went to work for Reagan, plead guilty to lying to Congress about the US role in the Reagan-era shuttle of arms and money, labeled the Iran-Contras scandal. These days Elliot in the Bush White House and Norman is now at Giuliani's elbow.
By publicly identifying Podhoretz as one of his foreign policy advisers, Giuliani is not only emphasizing his view that the United States should stay in Iraq for the long haul. He's saying that he esteems the counsel of a man who is calling for an immediate attack on Iran. In "The Case for Bombing Iran", an essay in the June edition of Commentary, Podhoretz trundled his mid-70s arsenal of calumny out of the museum, rehabbed for current conditions: "Looking at Europe today," he wailed, "we already see the unfolding of a process analogous to Finlandization [a vintage neo-con slur from the Cold War years]: it has been called, rightly, Islamization." Podhoretz set for the choices in what he calls the Fourth World War. Either bomb Iran now, or "we could wake up one morning to find that Iran is holding Berlin, Paris or London hostage to whatever its demands are then."
Given their track record it's not implausible to argue, as many do, that by attacking Iran at some point in the coming months Bush and Cheney will try to revive their administration's fortunes and the presently abysmal prospects of Republican candidates--not just the presidential candidate--in the 2008 elections. Even though the ordinary folk are not enthused, there's considerable bipartisan support for such an attack among the political elites.
The Israel lobby has been publicly pushing for it for over a year. Senator Joseph Lieberman recently put up a resolution in Congress stigmatizing Iran as the prime instigator of the deaths of US personnel in Iraq and such supposed Democratic liberals as California's two senators--Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer--voted for it. Last week, around 70 Democrats let it be known they could not approve any plan for Iraq that didn't schedule an immediate start to withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. Good for them, but that leaves two thirds of the Democrats in the House NOT supporting such a plan. Plus every Republican except Ron Paul, the only Republican in the House to vote with the 70-odd Democrats on this issue.
Giuliani--now vying with Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts and the (to me) entirely unconvincing former Tennessee senator and actor Fred Thompson for the front-runner's spot on the Republican side for the presidential nomination--seems to have realised soon enough that waving the Iraqi battle standard isn't a vote-getter in the sticks. No sooner had he fronted Poddy as the Wise Man at his elbow than he also attacked Bush's strategy in Iraq, saying it was draining resources and attention from the true war on terror--which is the default option for Democratic contenders such as HRC. Staking his future on the war option, even as McCain's bier is hauled from the field, is a posture that may play well in New York and Washington, but probably not in the hinterlands of New Hampshire and Iowa, where Giuliani will have first to make his mark.
Vick, Pit Bulls and Pigs
The federal indictment of Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick on conspiracy charges associated with his pit bull breeding and training operation at Bad Newz Kennels in Smithfield, Virginia, contains searing descriptions of dreadful cruelty towards these creatures. Tears stained the venerable cheeks of Senator Bobby Byrd as the former Klan Grand Cyclops* bewailed the monstrous conduct of the black football star and his co-conspirators.
Indeed, the cruelties as laid out in the indictment are horrible and Vick and his coconspirators deservedly face serious penalties, if convicted on the charges. But there are the usual double standards lightly vaulted over by those busy savaging Vick.
Judi Giuliani, the current wife of a candidate, hasn't caught much heat for her infamous past as a dog torturer and killer. Judi's job at US Surgical was allegedly to demonstrate her company's staple stitches' efficacy on cuts made on drugged dogs. According to Patricia Feral, president of the Connecticut-based Friends of Animals, US Surgical's reps did sales-demonstration stapling on hundreds of dogs through the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Feral says the dogs were "either put to death following the sales demonstrations because they can't recover from them, or they die during them." The stapling had to be done on live dogs because, as one US Surgical CEO put it back in the 1980s, "A dead dog doesn't bleed. You need real blood-flow conditions, or you get a false sense of security."
For institutionalized cruelty to animals, consult any book on the meatpacking business. I recommend Dead Meat, put out in the mid-1990s by Four Stories, Eight Windows Press. It contained Sue Coe's extraordinary paintings and drawings of slaughter houses, along with the journal of this intrepid artist as she and her sister traveled from one abattoir to the next, at considerable risk to their lives. I wrote a 17,000 word introduction ( "A Short, Meat-Oriented History of the World, From Eden to the Mattole") to this volume, an essay ultimately published in its most complete form in New Left Review in 1996 which you can find in NLR's online archive. Here's a paragraph from it to remember next time you slice into your pork chop:
Such is the swollen empire of pork in North Carolina. Its reeking lagoons surround darkened warehouses of animals trapped in metal crates barely larger than their bodies, tails chopped off, pumped with corn, soy beans and chemicals until, in six months, they weigh about 240 pounds, at which point they are shipped off to abattoirs to be killed, sometimes by prisoners on work release from the county jail. Near the town of Tar Heel, in Smithfield's Carolina Foods abattoir, half the workforce are Latin American immigrants; a number of others are prisoners. The sows are killed after about two years or whenever their reproductive perfor- mance declines. It takes maybe eight to ten people to run a sow factory, overseeing two thousand sows, boars and piglets. A computerized 'fin- ishing' farm, where the pigs are fattened, may just require a part-time caretaker to check the equipment and clean up between arriving and departing cohorts of hogs. The noise in these factories is ghastly, and many workers wear ear pads against the squealing and crashing of the animals in their cages. When the Raleigh News and Observerdid a series on North Carolina's pig barons in early 1995-following a pioneering arti- cle in Southern Exposure in 1992-readers were told they could call the paper's number in Raleigh, 5495100, extension 4647and listen to a recording of this terrible sound. Thus do we travel toward necropolis from Olmsted's visit to Porkopolis nearly a century and a half ago.Just how high or low on the Klan totem pole is Grand Cyclops? As far as I can see, they were regional grandees. Here's the Klan's definition, in its "Order and Principles of the Ku Klux Klan, 1868:
Titles: Section 1.A Big Mile Marker on our March into the Police State
The officers of this Order shall consist of a Grand Wizard of the Empire and his ten Genii; a Grand Dragon of the Realm and his eight Hydras; a Grand Titan of the Dominion and his six Furies; a Grand Giant of the Province and his four Goblins; a Grand Cyclops of the Den and his two Night Hawks; a Grand Magi, a Grand Monk, a Grand Scribe, a Grand Exchequer, a Grand Turk, and a Grand Sentinel.
Section 2. The body politic of this Order shall be known and designated as "Ghouls."
Territory and Its Divisions
Section 1. The territory embraced within the jurisdiction of this Order shall be coterminous with the states of Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee; all combined constituting the Empire.
Section 2. The Empire shall be divided into four departments, the first to be styled the Realm and coterminous with the boundaries of the several states; the second to be styled the Dominion and to be coterminous with such counties as the Grand Dragons of the several Realms may assign to the charge of the Grand Titan. The third to be styled the Province and to be coterminous with the several counties; provided, the Grand Titan may, when he deems it necessary, assign two Grand Giants to one Province, prescribing, at the same time, the jurisdiction of each. The fourth department to be styled the Den, and shall embrace such part of a Province as the Grand Giant shall assign to the charge of a Grand Cyclops.
If you haven't checked out the executive orders flowing from Bush's White House like sewage into a pig-rearing lagoon, try this appalling order, signed by Bush on July 17. I remarked here last week that the sort of solidarity work done in the 1980s here in relation to Nicaragua and El Salvador would have one instantly facing serious federal conspiracy charges today. Bush's dictats have thus far aroused only trivial commentary in the press.
"Executive Order: Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq," White House Office of the Press Secretary, July 17, 2007
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, as amended (50 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.)(IEEPA), the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.)(NEA), and section 301 of title 3, United States Code,
I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, find that, due to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by acts of violence threatening the peace and stability of Iraq and undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq and to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people, it is in the interests of the United States to take additional steps with respect to the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13303 of May 22, 2003, and expanded in Executive Order 13315 of August 28, 2003, and relied upon for additional steps taken in Executive Order 13350 of July 29, 2004, and Executive Order 13364 of November 29, 2004. I hereby order:
Section 1.
(a) Except to the extent provided in section 203((1), (3), and (4) of IEEPA (50 U.S.C. 1702(
(i) to have committed, or to pose a significant risk of committing, an act or acts of violence that have the purpose or effect of:
(A) threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq; or(ii) to have materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, logistical, or technical support for, or goods or services in support of, such an act or acts of violence or any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order; or
(
(iii) to be owned or controlled by, or to have acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order.
(
(i) the making of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services by, to, or for the benefit of any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order, andSec. 2.
(ii) the receipt of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services from any such person.
(a) Any transaction by a United States person or within the United States that evades or avoids, has the purpose of evading or avoiding, or attempts to violate any of the prohibitions set forth in this order is prohibited.
(
Sec. 3. For purposes of this order:
(a) the term "person" means an individual or entity;
(
© the term "United States person" means any United States citizen, permanent resident alien, entity organized under the laws of the United States or any jurisdiction within the United States (including foreign branches), or any person in the United States.
Sec. 4. I hereby determine that the making of donations of the type specified in section 203(
Sec. 5. For those persons whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order who might have a constitutional presence in the United States, I find that, because of the ability to transfer funds or other assets instantaneously, prior notice to such persons of measures to be taken pursuant to this order would render these measures ineffectual. I therefore determine that for these measures to be effective in addressing the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13303 and expanded in Executive Order 13315, there need be no prior notice of a listing or determination made pursuant to section 1(a) of this order.
Sec. 6. The Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, is hereby authorized to take such actions, including the promulgation of rules and regulations, and to employ all powers granted to the President by IEEPA as may be necessary to carry out the purposes of this order. The Secretary of the Treasury may redelegate any of these functions to other officers and agencies of the United States Government, consistent with applicable law. All agencies of the United States Government are hereby directed to take all appropriate measures within their authority to carry out the provisions of this order and, where appropriate, to advise the Secretary of the Treasury in a timely manner of the measures taken.
Sec. 7. Nothing in this order is intended to affect the continued effectiveness of any rules, regulations, orders, licenses, or other forms of administrative action issued, taken, or continued in effect heretofore or hereafter under 31 C.F.R. chapter V, except as expressly terminated, modified, or suspended by or pursuant to this order.
Sec. 8. This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right, benefit, or privilege, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, instrumentalities, or entities, its officers or employees, or any other person.
GEORGE W. BUSH
THE WHITE HOUSE,
July 17, 2007.
You can find this online at http://www.whitehouse.gov/
Here's Bush's simultaneous message to the Congress:
"Message to the Congress of the United States Regarding International Emergency Economic Powers Act," White House Office of the Press Secretary, July 17, 2007This is to be found at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/
Pursuant to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, as amended (50 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.)(IEEPA), I hereby report that I have issued an Executive Order blocking property of persons determined to have committed, or to pose a significant risk of committing, an act or acts of violence that have the purpose or effect of threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq or undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people. I issued this order to take additional steps with respect to the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13303 of May 22, 2003, and expanded in Executive Order 13315 of August 28, 2003, and relied upon for additional steps taken in Executive Order 13350 of July 29, 2004, and Executive Order 13364 of November 29, 2004. In these previous Executive Orders, I ord ered various measures to address the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by obstacles to the orderly reconstruction of Iraq, the restoration and maintenance of peace and security in that country, and the development of political, administrative, and economic institutions in Iraq.
My new order takes additional steps with respect to the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13303 and expanded in Executive Order 13315 by blocking the property and interests in property of persons determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, to have committed, or to pose a significant risk of committing, an act or acts of violence that have the purpose or effect of threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq or undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people. The order further authorizes the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, to designate for blocking those persons determined to have materially assisted, sponsored, or provi ded fi nancial, material, logistical, or technical support for, or goods or services in support of, such an act or acts of violence or any person designated pursuant to this order, or to be owned or controlled by, or to have acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order.
I delegated to the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, the authority to take such actions, including the promulgation of rules and regulations, and to employ all powers granted to the President by IEEPA as may be necessary to carry out the purposes of my order. I am enclosing a copy of the Executive Order I have issued.
GEORGE W. BUSH
The White House,
July 17, 2007.
Go from this executive order to the exchanges between Hilary Clinton and under-secretary of defense Eric Edelman, described by Gary Leupp in his piece on this site today. Clinton had asked Defense Secretary Gates for information on contingency plans for withdrawal from Iraq.
"Given the express will of the Congress to implement a phased redeployment of United States forces from Iraq and the importance of proper contingency planning to achieve that goal, I write to request that you provide the appropriate oversight committees in Congress---including the Senate Armed Services Committee---with briefings on what current contingency plans exist for the future withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. Alternatively, if no such plans exist, please provide an explanation for the decision not to engage in such planning."Edelman replied, to the Senate committee:
"Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia. [S]uch talk understandably unnerves the very same Iraqi allies we are asking to assume enormous personal risks."Note the words "reinforces enemy propaganda" That could easily fall among the indictable conspiracies the Executive Order has in mind.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_ji...for_not_wai.htm
July 22, 2007
The Case for Not Waiting Out This Presidency
By Jim Freeman
It’s almost too apparent to compare current refusals-to-submit of the Bush-Cheney White House with the bad old days of Richard Nixon stonewalling similar inquiry. Both used ‘executive privilege’ as an excuse to ward off the evil minions who would do them dirt—dastardly organizations like the House of Representatives, the Senate and the courts.
Both stood in front of the cameras, fighting to sound logical in the face of confused, disconnected and garbled argument. Both had Cheney, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld in their administrations; young zealots under Nixon and harnessed again as old experienced hands under Bush. Both had their arrogant positions denied in the courts and both sought to circumvent the courts in their last days of desperate decline. Both ultimately came up against Congress, as the founding fathers require, to be checked and balanced.
Impeachment, which is now on everyone’s table except Nancy Pelosi’s, has been brilliantly put into focus by John Nichols. John is the author of The Genius of Impeachment and recently the guest of Bill Moyers on PBS. Moyers devoted a full hour to the subject and Nichols makes the point that we have wrongly stated the case;
“Impeachment is not a constitutional crisis, impeachment is the cure for a constitutional crisis.”
Nixon resigned rather than face impeachment. Bush thinks he can ride it out and fully intends to do so. But this president has been wrong in virtually every judgment he has made over the course of his six and a half years in office.
The circle wasn’t properly closed on Nixon and that was a mistake that must not be made again. Congress felt the need to try him even after he resigned, but President Ford was perhaps too quick with a pardon and the point became moot. That necessary constitutional circle hasn’t even been drawn on Bush-Cheney.
Cheney says he isn’t liable to oversight because he’s not of the executive and not of the legislative, although he occupies an office in each and the Constitution has named his office as executive. Absurd on the face of it, but law is not law until and unless it is enforced.
Bush claims the Attorney General’s Office may not prosecute any purported crime that has its source within privileged discussion. Not surprisingly, all discussion of all issues falls under his definition of executive privilege and thus an entire two-term presidency is (in his view) exempt from oversight.
July 22, 2007
The Case for Not Waiting Out This Presidency
By Jim Freeman
It’s almost too apparent to compare current refusals-to-submit of the Bush-Cheney White House with the bad old days of Richard Nixon stonewalling similar inquiry. Both used ‘executive privilege’ as an excuse to ward off the evil minions who would do them dirt—dastardly organizations like the House of Representatives, the Senate and the courts.
Both stood in front of the cameras, fighting to sound logical in the face of confused, disconnected and garbled argument. Both had Cheney, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld in their administrations; young zealots under Nixon and harnessed again as old experienced hands under Bush. Both had their arrogant positions denied in the courts and both sought to circumvent the courts in their last days of desperate decline. Both ultimately came up against Congress, as the founding fathers require, to be checked and balanced.
Impeachment, which is now on everyone’s table except Nancy Pelosi’s, has been brilliantly put into focus by John Nichols. John is the author of The Genius of Impeachment and recently the guest of Bill Moyers on PBS. Moyers devoted a full hour to the subject and Nichols makes the point that we have wrongly stated the case;
“Impeachment is not a constitutional crisis, impeachment is the cure for a constitutional crisis.”
Nixon resigned rather than face impeachment. Bush thinks he can ride it out and fully intends to do so. But this president has been wrong in virtually every judgment he has made over the course of his six and a half years in office.
The circle wasn’t properly closed on Nixon and that was a mistake that must not be made again. Congress felt the need to try him even after he resigned, but President Ford was perhaps too quick with a pardon and the point became moot. That necessary constitutional circle hasn’t even been drawn on Bush-Cheney.
Cheney says he isn’t liable to oversight because he’s not of the executive and not of the legislative, although he occupies an office in each and the Constitution has named his office as executive. Absurd on the face of it, but law is not law until and unless it is enforced.
Bush claims the Attorney General’s Office may not prosecute any purported crime that has its source within privileged discussion. Not surprisingly, all discussion of all issues falls under his definition of executive privilege and thus an entire two-term presidency is (in his view) exempt from oversight.