Damning BP Memo Uncovers "3 Pigs" Strategy

As tar balls wash up on the white Pensacola beach sands, the Pensacola Independent News has uncovered an internal BP memo, obtained by attorney Brent Coon through discovery in his case against BP where he represents victims of the 2005 BP Texas Refinery explosion. The documents show that BP chose, knowingly and deliberately, to house workers in cheap, flimsy trailers next to the isomerization unit where the explosion occurred, rather than in safer, more solid and blast-resistent structures - solely because of their expense. And this same attitude has translated now to their response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Their mascots for arguing the case for trailers, favoring cost-cutting to life-saving? The 3 Little Pigs...

Mr. Coon originally used the "Three Little Pigs" story in court when speaking to the jury to illustrate his civil case against BP.

"We would ask the witnesses during depositions about the trailers. Whenever we used The Three Little Pigs' tale to describe the risks associated with the trailers versus brick and other structures, BP's attorneys objected."

Yet amazingly, BP used this same story themselves, as Coon found through discovery.

"Right there we found a presentation on the decision to buy the trailers that showed BP using The Three Pigs' fairy tale to describe the costs associated with the four options," Coon said. "I thought, You've got to be f_____g kidding me.' They even had drawings of three pigs on the report."

And what was their argument?

After analyzing the cost of four structures in descending order of blast-resistance and safety, in which the trailers were at the bottom, 100 times cheaper than the safer metal blast-resistant buildings, they merely needed a "cover story" to explain the obvious choice of the cheap buildings. So they estimated the cost of what would be predictably lost human lives - next to one of the most dangerous places in the facility - and callously compare "costs" in purely monetary terms.

"BP set the cost of claim for a lost life at $10 million," said Coon, "and determined it would be more cost effective to use the least expensive trailers and possibly lose a few workers than spend more money on the blast resistant structures."

In other words, they looked at the loss of a human life as an acceptable risk in the greater good of cutting costs. And this is the same attitude they show today, and showed leading up to the Deepwater explosion, in handling their responsibilities to the public, to human life, to the ecosystem that supports their workers, and to the earth itself. In leaving the cleanup to BP - especially leaving the determination of how much money will be spent and on what! - the Administration and the leadership of the Gulf Coast states are putting priceless treasure in the hands of a thief, whose only value system is his own private capital gain.

The Pensacola Independent News contacted BP for comment on these documents, and after some hounding, responded that the "culture" of BP has "fundamentally changed" and they have heavily invested in safety and raised their standards. They did not, interestingly, refer to the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

Coon's and other victims' lawsuits in the Texas Refinery explosion, which killed 15 and injured 170, resulted in $1.6 billion in settlements. Apparently their original calculations were off.

Now it looks they are still off in the Gulf. First, they decided NOT to buy a $500,000 acoustic valve trigger that would have shut down the well in case the blowout protector didn't work. Straw house didn't work so well there, either. And now they want to cut corners, for the same obviously failed financial reasons, in the cleanup operation.

Their plan is PR and cut. It's taking too long for Pres. Obama to figure this out. Maybe this memo will wake him up. He should listen to folks on the ground in the Gulf.

On May 24, Pensacola Councilman Larry Johnson grilled BP Civic Affairs Director Liz Castro about why her company didn't use Super Tankers to assist with oil recovery.

They had been successfully used off of Saudi Arabia in the '90's. Johnson's assessment was that BP felt they were too expensive, and didn't want to even entertain the idea. They'd rather throw "junk shots" and "top hats" at the spill, and leave containment to the booms. Good luck with that.

The Florida Congressional delegation has repeatedly asked BP to place $1 billion in an escrow account to reimburse states and counties for their cleanup costs. Instead, the states initially received $25 million in block grants. Later, an additional $70 million was forked over to help with advertising campaigns.

Why don't they try telling BP, and getting some legal clout here? Asking, begging, suggesting doesn't work. Where is the rule of law, now that we desperately need it? BP has no conscience. Now they need to pay the consequences - instead of our great-great grandchildren paying, in lives and loss of resources, for their unspeakable crimes.

It's my greatest hope that publicizing this memo will put on display BP's attitude towards human life - and everything else we hold dear - and convince all who have power (the President, the courts, the Governors of affected states) to exert extraordinary pressure on BP to not only pay for the "cleanup", not merely make "promises", but use every and all effective means, no matter how expensive, to clean up this catastrophic continuous oil disaster in the Gulf.

War as City-State: We Force-feed it, We Pay

This great post from Tomdispatch offers some mind-boggling numbers for materiel involved in the War in Iraq whose "drawdown" is described thusly:

the American drawdown will be the "equivalent, in personnel terms alone, of relocating the entire population of Buffalo, New York."

Now there's a thought. It's as if the whole war were a city-state in itself, complete with food, shelter, weapons, infrastructure - and of course, a nice big population.

Whether it’s 3.1 million items of equipment, or 3 million, 2.8 million, or 1.5 million, whether 341 “facilities” (not including perhaps ten mega-bases which will still be operating in 2011 with tens of thousands of American soldiers, civilians, and private contractors working and living on them), or more than 350 forward operating facilities, or 290 bases are to be shut down, the numbers from Iraq are simply out of this world.

The conduct of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is unprecented, and yet Americans are mostly oblivious, unaware that we are creating little islands in about the least compatible environments imaginable. What does this mean to the Iraqis and Afghans, to see not only war, but an entire set of city-states forcibly planted in their own beautiful and unrelated culture, shocking them without their participation in it.

In this way, our troops carry not just packs on their backs, but a total, transplantable society right down to the PXs, massage parlors, food courts, and miniature golf courses. At Kandahar Air Base in Afghanistan, there was until recently a “boardwalk” that typically included a “Burger King, a Subway sandwich shop, three cafes, several general stores, a Cold Mountain Creamery, [and an] Oakley sunglasses outlet.”

And of course, there's the staggering cost. The cost in lives, American, but far more Iraqis and Afghanis, is something we'll have to live down. And our children will have to live down. And our future generations, if we have any, will have to live down.

This is the second bubble, courtesy of Republican war strategy. "Down with Government, Up with War". As if war was waged by individuals, not a government. As if war led to freedom. As if war liberated people, instead of enslaving them to its consequences. The aftermath, the bloody, destructive aftermath of war is always littered with lies, claims of victory, claims of power, claims of valor.

But as the second bubble, the bubble of war, is already bursting, its inevitable failure becoming clearer even to a propaganda-numbed, not-very-free-minded (Texas schoolbooks, anyone?) American public, as this becomes then another collapse like the economic collapse, the collapse of the war machine will likewise have worldwide implications. That's because it's ultimately another economic collapse.

It's one thing to wage war. Bad enough. But to conduct war by imposing little city-states within sovereign nations is like forcing a rejected transplant without medication. It's unsustainable. Let's hope this drawdown is for real, and that we seriously draw down on ALL fronts, without leaving our unsustainable "islands" behind.

And by the way, thanks to a load of idiots on both the right and left, there's not much chance of that. Look for Collapse II. Doubt it'll be pretty.

War on Terror: An Israeli Fund-Raising Scheme?

Len Hart's great post on the Terror Racket is exactly what we need to hear, what I've been saying all along.

The whole War on Terror is an invention. Even the use of the word "terrorist" could be called an Israeli invention, a means of villainizing the Palestinian population and hence legitimizing their own oppression, disenfranchisement, and displacement of them. The latter has been systematic, and financed essentially by the IRS - the same folks who come after honest working U.S. citizens, who tax self-employed entrepreneurs at 15.3% even if they only make $401 a year and don't hire anybody. That money then goes - one could say forcibly - into the pot which, among many other things, is then "donated" to Israel, "one of the richest countries in the world", to finance their long-standing takeover of Palestinian lands, crops, cities, homes.

Now forward to the "War on Terror". Who are the "terrorists"?? This is not about the Red Army, the Basque Separatists, or South American groups. This is about - exclusively - Islamic terrorists. And Israel knows very well that they are the one galvanizing issue uniting all Muslims, regardless to whether they are Arabs, Pakistanis, East Indians, even Americans. It is the obvious oppression of a group of fellow Muslims, the ramrodding of this oppression and its financing by the ostensible Superpower, that galls Muslims. They don't really have an issue with Jews per se. Often anger at Israel flares into anti-Semitism, but this is something Israel will have to deal with - by positing themselves as the "Jewish State", an essentially racist concept, all denials notwithstanding, they open up this Pandora's box on themselves... After all, what's wrong with Palestinians, except being non-Jewish? It's their DNA, supposedly, their culture, not any criminal activity, that is being used to destroy them, to deprive them, to disenfranchise them.

The so-called "terrorists", then, however horrific their actions, are basically a small, international, ragtag group that could much more effectively have been handled by simply revving up already existing law enforcement agencies/structures. Instead, the U.S. created a gigantic, unweildy Department with its own budget, presumably much of it black, and uses it as a means of oppression of all sorts of non-terrorism-related sectors of the population - citizens who disagree with the government, liberals, populists, migrants. And it has been a monumental failure and a showpiece of extravagance and waste.

A little stat from Harper's Index:

Average number of arrests made each year since 2001 by all 4,000 Federal Marshals combined: 4. - Federal spending this represents per arrest: $200,000,000.

And this is a very small segment of the monolith called Homeland Security. Which makes the following even more alarming:

Former Secretary of State Shultz 'credited' Netanyahu for 'effecting a change in American policies on terrorism'. That's 'political speak' for 'Israel extorted billions of dollars in aid by raising the specter of 'terrorism'. Fear of 'terrorism' is responsible for the transfer of billions of dollars to Israel because the U.S. tax payer is brainwashed, literally trained to fear anyone with a tan wearing a turban. Terrorism is how the moneys 'given' to Israel are officially justified. What is 'terrorism' but the practice by the U.S. and its client state, Israel, to extort billions from U.S. taxpayers?

So who's idea was the War on Terrorism in the first place? Israel's? And what does that say about the autonomy of the U.S. government, when it is so powerfully influenced by a small, rather distant, ostensibly foreign nation. A nation that has no problem committing assassinations for political purposes in the name of security, as the Dubai incident shows.

And what do we have to show for all our "largesse" toward this Utopian "Dream State" called Israel, this Holy of Holies? As this Canadian post so succinctly states:

The set of deliberately misleading and discredited assumptions followed by the proponents of the War on Terror must be repudiated. The government is wasting 10s of billions of dollars, propping up this sham, in the wake of the enforced fearmongering that has crept in since 9/11. In return for the tax dollars that pay for blooding our hands, we had habeas corpus struck down, arbitrary “no-fly lists” are implemented, our government is perpetrating terror hoaxes on the people, and over 100 Canadian soldiers have died fighting what Stephen Harper admits is an unwinnable war.

With the economy in the shambles it is, and with economic and even survival conseque4nces for the whole world, I think it is time for the whole world to take a good, hard look at the U.S.-Israeli cozy relationship. Is this the way we want our money spent? It's not just an "Islamic" issue, or a U.S. issue, any more. And if the U.S. is indeed The Superpower. what does it say about the balance of power on this planet, and the future of its inhabitants, that the Biggest Bro on the Block is run by the special interests of a small, well-to-do elite nation whose citizenship is based on DNA, and hence, excludes the vast majority of earthlings? Is this the future?

At least for the foreseeable future in the U.S., even blatant building of new settlements on Palestinian lands - a direct rebuff to anything called "peace process" - is not cause for reviewing the massive "aid" the U.S. bestows on Israel, no questions asked. The truth is that not assassinations, not settlements, not bombing an unarmed civilian population - in the Gaza, in Lebanon (an independent nation, or so we're told), or wherever else they seest that they need - no atrocity is too bad to say "no" to Israel.

This is how the United States lost their conscience, and are actively working to prevent its return. Doubletalk, hypocrisy, and meaningless posturing are, and will always be, the order of the day.

So if you like your planet back, maybe you'll need to review some history of Haiti - where a population of slaves literally overthrew their masters, including the armies of France and England. Even though subsequent economic slavery brought them to the horrific situation they are now in, the lesson remains: people can get things done by never giving up.

So why should voices of reason remain silent? Are we really voiceless, helpless in America? Those who see current U.S. rubber-stamp policy with Israel where they can do no wrong, we will corrupt all our ideals to make them happy, and be happily bled by a racist client state, as anathema, as unconscionable, should finally speak up. And who will fight to the death for my right to say this???

Drone War on Pakistan Parallels Nixon's Bombing of Cambodia

This article should give pause on the latest strategy in the so-called War on Terror, Pakistan Front, involving the use of drones as a military tactic - in a country, Pakistan, against which we have not declared war:

Like President Obama today, Nixon had come to power promising stability in an age of unrest and with a vague plan to bringing peace to a nation at war. On the day he was sworn in, he read from the Biblical book of Isaiah: "They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks." He also spoke of transforming Washington’s bitter partisan politics into a new age of unity: "We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another, until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices.

Sound familiar? The description of Nixon's bombing of Cambodia, ostensibly to "target" the "headquarters" of enemies bent on "harming Americans" sounds just like Obama's drone war in Pakistan - both, notably, targeted areas inhabited by civilians, both were against a nation against whom we were not at war in order to target a supposed leadership of a supposed group against whom we were at war...

In the late 1960s, Cambodia was ruled by a “neutralist” king, Norodom Sihanouk, leading a weak government that had little relevance to its poor and barely educated citizens. In its borderlands, largely beyond its control, the North Vietnamese and Vietcong found “sanctuaries.”

But it gets worse, if the comparison is taking to its ultimate conclusion.

In the meantime, sheltered by local villagers in distant areas of rural Cambodia was a small insurgent group, little-known communist fundamentalists who called themselves the Khmer Rouge. (Think of them as the 1970s equivalent of the Pakistani Taliban who have settled into the wild borderlands of that country largely beyond the control of the Pakistani government.) They were then weak and incapable of challenging Sihanouk -- until, that is, those secret bombing raids by American B-52s began. As these intensified in the summer of 1969, areas of the country began to destabilize (helped on in 1970 by a U.S.-encouraged military coup in the capital Phnom Penh), and the Khmer Rouge began to gain strength.

Ahhh, the drone war, if this analogy works, could lead to a Taliban strengthening, perhaps a win, or a new killing field...

Just to get the idea, think about how the invasion of Iraq became a motivating tool for Al-Qaeda in Iraq (not to mention elsewhere). Think about how the American drone attacks on civilians in Afghanistan alienated those civilians. And think about how drone attacks on civilians in Pakistan could alienate Pakistani civilians, living under a weak ruler in an unstable political environment, where things are going not-so-good. Then look at history:

Like the Taliban of today, many of the Khmer Rouge were, in fact, teenaged villagers who had responded, under the pressure of war and disruption, to the distant call of an inspirational ideology and joined the resistance in the jungles.

If you ask me why I joined the Khmer Rouge, the main reason is because of the American invasion," Hun Sen, the current prime minister of Cambodia, has said. "If there was no invasion, by now, I would be a pilot or a professor."

What's worse was of course the Khmer Rouge's genocide of its own population, starting with enemy number one, those who are educated. It's a sort of war of resentment. And who do you think the Taliban would want to eliminate first? Then ask, does the war in Pakistan, conducted, like Nixon's "Operation Breakfast", at arm's length in the cold, dispassionate, calculating distance of the gamer (referred to commonly as strategist) where human lives don't bleed in your face...is that drone-safe war really a war on terror? Or a seed? Is it, in reality, the instigator, the generator of terror?

Are we really fighting a war on terror? Or are we just playing with guns, posturing for political - international and domestic - power, and in the process victimizing all the soldiers involved in one big, testesterone-fueled, destructive, destabilizing, demoralizing, planet-threatening, hope-and-change-eliminating, peace-blasting runaway train to hell?

Activism Works: IMF Changes Haiti Loan to a Grant

As reported in my last post, the IMF was offering a loan to Haiti with strings attached, including such downers as raising the cost of electricity for Haitians. Now due to much international pressure, IMF is changing this to a grant. According to Naomi Klein's post:

In response to the wave of criticism, the IMF has just issued a statement saying that they will try to turn the $100-million loan to Haiti into a grant. This is unprecedented in my experience and shows that public pressure in moments of disaster can seriously subvert shock doctrine tactics. They are also now saying that they will not put conditions on the emergency loan--another popular victory, since this is not what they were saying last week. Of course people have to keep up the pressure to make sure Haiti's debts really are cancelled as the IMF is now predicting they will be. Something to hold them to!

Haiti: The West-made Tragedy before the Earthquake

Before the catastrophic earthquake struck Haiti on January 12, 2010, Haiti was already a disaster area, home to the world's worst poverty, thanks not to Voodoo rites, as some would say, but to the heavy-handed West.

Haiti's vulnerability to natural disasters, its food shortages, poverty, deforestation and lack of infrastructure, are not accidental. To say that it is the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere is to miss the point; Haiti was made poor--by France, the United States, Great Britain, other Western powers and by the IMF and the World Bank.

Aside from the reasons for this, after the devastating earthquake, Haiti has become the locus for this gigantic media blitz:

Soon after almost every disaster the crimes begin: ruthless, selfish, indifferent to human suffering, and generating far more suffering. The perpetrators go unpunished and live to commit further crimes against humanity. They care less for human life than for property. They act without regard for consequences.

I’m talking, of course, about those members of the mass media whose misrepresentation of what goes on in disaster often abets and justifies a second wave of disaster. I’m talking about the treatment of sufferers as criminals, both on the ground and in the news, and the endorsement of a shift of resources from rescue to property patrol. They still have blood on their hands from Hurricane Katrina, and they are staining themselves anew in Haiti.

The issue referred to here is the media's use of the word "looter" and the juxtaposition of Western (U.S./Australian/Euro,etc) "angels" helping pull survivors out in various "miracles" to the Haitians' crimes, gangs and absence of "effective government". This sort of reporting only serves to reinforce preconceived notions about the people of Haiti, whose survival and help for each other is the most amazing and underreported story here, as well as the massive loss of life as it overwhelms the rare survival story.

At the same time, Western financial powers are back at business-as-usual when it comes to Haiti:

To great fanfare, the IMF announced a new $100 million loan to Haiti on Thursday. In one crucial way, the loan is a good thing; Haiti is in dire straits and needs a massive cash infusion. But the new loan was made through the IMF's extended credit facility, to which Haiti already has $165 million in debt. Debt relief activists tell me that these loans came with conditions, including raising prices for electricity, refusing pay increases to all public employees except those making minimum wage and keeping inflation low. They say that the new loans would impose these same conditions. In other words, in the face of this latest tragedy, the IMF is still using crisis and debt as leverage to compel neoliberal reforms.

Creating and perpetuating debt in Haiti to "Western" powers and financial organizations takes power from Haitians to govern themselves, make a living, provide services and infrastructure, and form a coherent, functioning society. Instead of that, they become essentially slaves to their creditors. Now to property-obsessed Westerners, it may seem unfair to let Haiti "get away with" unpaid loans. But in the real world, where human beings actually live, Haitians originally owned the land and it was basically usurped by the French and others, who also stole free labor from the Haitians by enslaving them. That's much worse than an unpaid loan.

And now in the aftermath of the earthquake, the West again puts property over human values. Even in media reporting, as Rebecca Solnit so eloquently discusses, the use of the word "looting" should be banned, because it criminalizes what any rational person under the circumstances would do to survive. Not to mention that the emphasis on "security" takes resources away from the very people they are supposed to help, by presuming "chaos", "panic" and "looting" are a huge threat, a threat to property, while the many stories of Haitians cooperating and showing great altruism go largely unreported.

They also deploy the word panic wrongly. Panic among ordinary people in crisis is profoundly uncommon. The media will call a crowd of people running from certain death a panicking mob, even though running is the only sensible thing to do. In Haiti, they continue to report that food is being withheld from distribution for fear of “stampedes.” Do they think Haitians are cattle?

The belief that people in disaster (particularly poor and nonwhite people) are cattle or animals or just crazy and untrustworthy regularly justifies spending far too much energy and far too many resources on control -- the American military calls it “security” -- rather than relief. A British-accented voiceover on CNN calls people sprinting to where supplies are being dumped from a helicopter a "stampede" and adds that this delivery “risks sparking chaos.” The chaos already exists, and you can’t blame it on these people desperate for food and water. Or you can, and in doing so help convince your audience that they’re unworthy and untrustworthy.

To know how the West really adds insult to injury, one must understand something about how debt and slavery produced the disaster area that is Haiti today. After the French enslaved them, Haitians fought back and won their liberty - no small feat. But due to economic conditions imposed by the West (France & the US among them), the Haitians in 1825 agreed to pay 150 million francs to the French in reparations for having been freed! To do this, they borrowed heavily from France, the U.S. & Germany. The debt was finally repaid...in 1947 - 122 years later! Imagine the interest the West collected on that. But that's not called "looting", is it?
Ah, but then...

In 2003, then-President Aristide called on France to pay restitution for this sum--valued in 2003 dollars at over $21 billion. A few months later, he was ousted in a coup d'etat; he claims he left the country under armed pressure from the US.

Nothing like a little political strong-arming to get those nasty backwater states off your financial back, eh? Right. If France - and actually due to their complicity, the U.S. too, and maybe Germany too - owe Haiti over 21 billion dollars in reparations, now that would really help Haiti out. So why not pay now?

No, they only fork over another 100 million bucks as a loan - to keep them down, where they want 'em. So who's looting whom?? And how precious, how kindly, the West is to help poor little ol' Haiti, who can't even get their act together... or can they??

Bush Team Torture Crony Charged with Wife-Strangulation

John Farren, former "W" White House Counsel, may not be a torture-legalizing headliner like John Yoo, but he had his hands in the jerry-rigging of White House legal policies to override such impediments to Cheney's torture agenda (aka "robust interrogation") as the Geneva Convention and the U.S. Army field manual. Now he's been arrested for the strangling and attempted murder of his wife Mary Farren - while his own children were in the home. Could it be that there's a link between draconian legal opinion and a propensity to cross the line oneself? Whether or not that's the case, it certainly is another black smudge on the already discredited Bush legal team.

And this was no run-of-the-mill wife-beating, where one hopes at some point the husband realizes what he's doing and leaves her bruised and battered. This was full-scale attempted murder, although it's not yet being charged exactly that way. Some details:

Farren tackled her in a bedroom at their New Canaan, Connecticut home and ripped out a clump of her hair. Then he beat her with a metal flashlight until Mary lost consciousness. When she woke up, he was still pounding away.

Mary Farren was beaten and strangled by her husband in front of their children at their Connecticut home
​He began to strangle her as she was again losing consciousness. Despite barely being able to see, she managed to trigger the home's alarm system.

Farren started beating her again and threatened to slit his wrists. He grabbed a large knife and went to the bathroom, coaxing his wife to follow. But Mary instead ran to her daughter's bedroom yelling "Daddy's trying to kill me!" according to a police report.

Mary managed to escape with her 7-year-old daughter and the couple's baby. She fled in a BMW before stopping at a home to call police.

Mary Farren also reported that she greatly feared her husband's violent anger, that her filing for divorce triggered this latest outburst, and that this was not the first incident in which he beat her. And to think he was writing policy for the President of the United States. So much for Republican family values...

Miracle in Turkey: How the Road to Peace Can Be Islamic

Turkey has long been seen as something of a "bridge" between The West and The Islamic World, even as those 2 cultural worlds have undergone major changes and political transformations. But none of those transformations can rival that of Turkey.

Before Prime Minister Erdogan's AK Party came to power, Turkey was almost manically secular, thanks to the tradition began by Kamal Ataturk, who sought to erase what he believed to be the "backwardness" of religion, including Islamic culture. Of course, "cultural revolution" sounds rather like many of the socialist movements, including China's, that became government tyrannies under the guise of enforcing social justice. With this same style of heavy hand, Turkey also became rabidly nationalistic, and embarked on a long and brutal cultural and political suppression of ethnic Kurds and others. The AK party, branded "Islamic" (ooooh, danger! orange!) by the West, has undertaken a total rejection of such oppressive and wasteful policies. One rarely hears in the press about how the Islamic-leaning AK party has turned from war and suppression to diplomacy and reconciliation in their dealings with the Kurds as well as their neighbors. There are no calls for antagonizing or attacking those of non-Muslim or other religious persuasions, not to mention nationalities. Note that this is in stark contrast to the stereotype of Muslims as being always on the jihad warpath against enemies - religious, ethnic, or those who diverge from some dogma du jour.

Under the old nationalist government much-adored-but-not-befriended by the West, the Turkish lire was famous for being almost worthless. Twenty years ago, you could go into Istanbul, for example, and need cash for bribes just to get around, meet lots of destitute and unhappy-looking people, see run-down buildings beside crumbling historical sites, wonder how people managed to live, and generally notice a sense of general desperation, corruption, over which the human spirit of the people had to struggle to rise.

Now it is as if Turkey has awakened from a bad dream. Landfills have been transformed into gardens with recreational areas for children and sports facilities for others. Bridges, tunnels, sewers, new roads, tram lines have been built. Hospitals, schools, libraries, training facilities, sports facilities, playgrounds, clinics, elderly care facilities and more have been established and are functioning not only in Istanbul and Ankara, but cities around the country. The government has invested $22.6 billion in five years for civil services such as health care and infrastructure in Istanbul alone. At the same time, crime and punishment have been revamped to provide equal enforcement of the law and to make public officials just as accountable as private citizens, and to strengthen and enforce anti-bribery laws. Corruption has died down while political life has been encouraged in many ways, including the establishment of centers where people can discuss political issues.

Both the government and Turkish charities have revived efforts to help the poor, including subsidized bread, access to health care, and money for immediate needs. Local councils have been established to which people can address their needs.

Importantly, money that would have been spent on the military and on skirmishes with neighbors is being spent on the needs of Turkish society. Taking after this same attitude, a more balanced approach in terms of religious freedom is worth looking at.
The previous nationalist government tried to use religion against freedom in an inverted way, by making religious expression illegal and socially "anti-Turkish". Erdogan had many problems to overcome in changing the status quo.

The one that caused the most problems for Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was the lifting of the headscarf ban. A relic of the Kemalist era, the ban on headscarves in Universities has deprived millions of female students of the right to education. While espousing values like freedom of choice and expression, the Turkish secular establishment saw nothing contradictory in not allowing students to cover their hair if they wished to. Erdogan’s measure that promoted true secularism was derided as Islamism by his critics. His choice for the President too was condemned as the future First lady preferred to wear a headscarf. Erdogan resigned in the face of such criticism and called for fresh elections to seek a direct mandate from the people. He returned to power with the greatest margin ever in Turkey. This only served to infuriate the opposition who almost succeeded in having his party disbanded by the Constitutional Court.

Which Turkey would serve as a better role model for the Muslim World?? A nationalist and oppressive regime which emphasizes military aggression and almost fanatic secularism? Or a government that favors Islamic principles of democracy and justice and fairness without making dogma and military enforcement of such the centerpiece of their power? A government that prefers cooperation and peaceful development over military might should be a role model not just for the Muslim World, but for the West, and in fact, for the planet and all its political players, east or west.

Pres. Obama promised to make domestic development superceded the international adventurism of Republican nationalism and cultural evangelism. Those same "forces" have influenced his hand in Afghanistan and driven him from the hope of a promised change of agenda. Maybe he should take a good look at Turkey.

Israel's Future Is Gaza's Shadow

Israel is a nation that likes to think of itself as being founded on a dream. It likes to think of itself as a righter of wrongs, a homeland of justice for Jews after their horrific suffering under the Nazi extermination and torture program, the Holocaust. But they do not like to look at facts on the ground today, and try to balance this dream - which now looks more like propaganda than inspiration - with the nightmare of what Israel is actually doing to human beings in a little space of earth called "Gaza" in which fellow humans are routinely, collectively starved to death or near-death, or forced to suffer in unconscionable ways, family by family, child by child, home by home. This is Gaza's shadow, and it will soon completely overcast Israel's dream and Israel's future. It is not just the demographic threat so frequently mentioned as The Threat - it is the moral ground irreparably lost by a nation supposedly founded on nothing less than... its moral ground.

In this reference, Heathlander's post "The Betrayal of Gaza", is required reading.

Next week will mark the one year anniversary of ‘Operation Cast Lead‘, the three week orgy of killing and destruction that left more than 1,400 Palestinians dead, the vast majority of them civilians, including hundreds of children.

Beside the civilian casualties - were they all really a threat to Israel's existence? who, outside of Pat Robertson and other deluded liars, believes that? - Gaza's ability to function as an abode for human life was decimated.

During the massacre Gaza’s civilian infrastructure was systematically targeted. Entire residential areas were “almost completely flattened”, dozens of hospitals and clinics were severely damaged, hundreds of schools were destroyed or damaged and 700 private businesses were either partially or totally destroyed. In total a full third of all public buildings [.pdf] and perhaps 14% of all buildings [.pdf] in Gaza were affected.

And since then, Israel blocks the flow of supplies both for rebuilding what was destroyed and for feedling those who survived, down to below the level of a trickle.
Almost 80% of Gazans must rely on foreign aid to survive in the most basic sense. Think of it. They would be far better off in a jungle, or some wilderness. This even beyond collective punishment. It is mass, national imprisonment. Is there a word for mass incarceration? It's a form of slavery.

But there will be repercussions. Not in the form of terrorism, bombs, or the usual suspects. If "what goes around, comes around" has any meaning or truth, this kind of mass crime cannot go without consequences. This is the very moral ground on which Israel claims to have been founded! And now Israel will have to deal with the karma their own actions have brought upon them. There is no justice, no balance, no peace, no human value, no morals, no consideration coming from the policies that led to this overkill in Gaza. What peace were they looking to find - and what has happened to the dream of "never again" genocide, when the people of that dream themselves have perpetrated their own taboo?????

The Surge to the Sinkhole

It's as if the American public believe that the President's main calling is Commander-in-Chief, to wage wars, and wage 'em real good. Why else would the number one quick fix for sagging popularity for any U.S. President be the Macho Maneuver: start or "rev up" a war? Of course, as Bushes I & II can attest, this pumped-up poll surge generally gives a fast, short-lived high, followed by a much-longer depressed state - unless the war is itself short-lived, euphoric, & sanitizable - e.g., Grenada. Afghanistan, Obama's albatross, is none of the above.

Granted, he gave fair warning during the campaign, stating that we oughta get out of Iraq and concentrate on Afghanistan where, as the story goes, the "real war on Terror" is fought. But Obama also promised to use diplomacy when at all possible instead of blanket military solutions; to listen to "folks on the ground", meaning seeing beyond the perhaps ego-laden views of top commanders; to use his considerable intelligence to weigh events as they occur in real time, and not apply old solutions inappropriately to new problems. In all of these more serious promises, Obama has been a huge let-down.

There is the omnipresent refrain, "if we leave Afghanistan, it will become a haven for terrorists." Same was said about Iraq. Same was said about Vietnam, inserting "communists" - the enemy du hour - for "terrorists." The truth on the ground is that an invasion is an invasion. You can never reconstruct it as a "liberation". Semantics don't feed the hungry, lay down arms, or grow crops. Those words are obvious lies and propaganda.

People in Afghanistan must have been thinking, "What are the Americans doing?" The answer seemed to be (from their viewpoint), killing people and enforcing a corrupt central government. The Taliban - unpopular during the invasion - has started to look like a People's Movement, albeit with nasty tactics. The "unaligned" middle ground of Afghanistan, which includes various tribal leaders, city-dwellers, and large numbers of people who just want their children to survive, may not see the wisdom of drones "surgically striking" homes where "insurgents" live with their wives & kids.

These are essentially foreign troops fighting people whose homeland is Afghanistan. It's very hard to change that fact to "win the hearts and minds" of those unaligned masses. Military action is the least effective way to do it - as it inevitably must disrupt civilian life in the most traumatic ways.

And as to the "terrorist haven" argument: such havens are created not by lack of well-trained foreign troops to target guys in the mountains - but rather by an overwhelming sense of oppression felt to be caused somehow by the West or the U.S. Military action only exacerbates this. They say people will always remember how you made them feel...

The real reason for the "surge" is not "liberation" or Afghan security or the war on terror. The terrorist threat from Afghanistan is no greater than the terrorist threat from, say, Pakistan, Indonesia, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, or Egypt. Why don't we fight all six at once?? Of course, that is suicidal or, at best, absurd. But so is the war on the Taliban. And no, it doesn't work as an "example" for all the other potential "havens" on the possibly-ever-expanding list. After Iraq, I'm sure they've noticed the U.S. is a sucker for overkill. The terrorists' tactic is the most basic of martial arts - get the "bully" or attacker to charge with all his weight - then get out of the way and watch him fall all over himself, collapsing in defeat. Use his weight against him. And the U.S. typically, is biting the bait. Obama, don't you remember LBJ and Vietnam? Happy replay.

The significant parallels between Vietnam and Afghanistan are starkly presented in Thomas Johnson's incisive article in Foreign Policy magazine, notably the point where we, the Big Guys, don't get the nature of the war we're supposedly fighting:

In Afghanistan, the United States still insists on fighting a secular counterinsurgency, while the enemy is fighting a jihad. The intersection of how insurgencies end and how jihads end is nil. It's hard to defeat an enemy you don't understand, and in Afghanistan, as in Vietnam, this fight is being played out in a different war.

A refusal to learn from Vietnam and to understand the nature of the war has to have its reasons. Especially considering the supposed goal of "nation-building" and "helping the Afghani people", you'd think by now someone in power would've figured out that military action is NOT the way to do it. As Johnson points out, just as in Vietnam's stated goals of "helping" and "liberating" the Vietnamese:

Almost exactly the same percentage of personnel in Afghanistan has rural reconstruction as its primary mission (the Provincial Reconstruction Teams) as had "pacification" (today's "nation-building") as their primary mission in Vietnam, about 4 percent. The other 96 percent is engaged in chasing illiterate teenage boys with guns around the countryside, exactly what the enemy wants us to do.

And as in Vietnam, our "puppet" government in Kabul looks, tastes, and smells like Saigon, as Johnson describes:

Contemporary descriptions of the various Saigon governments read almost exactly like descriptions of the Karzai government today. Notwithstanding all the fanfare over this week's presidential voting in Afghanistan, the Kabul government will never be legitimate either, because democracy is not a source of legitimacy of governance in Afghanistan and it never has been. Legitimacy in Afghanistan over the last thousand years has come exclusively from dynastic and religious sources. The fatal blunder of the United States in eliminating a ceremonial Afghan monarchy was Afghanistan's Diem Coup: afterwards, there was little possibility of establishing a legitimate, secular national government.

We can't "democratize" people against their will, nor can we "free" them against their will because this is an oxymoron or worse - the very meaning of freedom and democracy holds that people are allowed their own free will to be enacted. And that means it can't be "our way" or our terms. So this cannot justify the surge.

No, the real reason for the Surge is pride. Military pride: "We can't be defeated! We're No. 1!" - Collective, patriotic pride: "America is The Superpower! USA! USA" - Political: who votes for a loser? or a yellow-bellied coward who backs down from a fight? - Simplistic: "To hell with the consequences! We gotta win!" - and Personal: "I'm not gonna go down as the Commander-in-Chief who backed down, who blinked." A chorus of Republican nasties are taunting already in the bleachers: "Are ya gonna GIVE UP? Are ya gonna LET ALL THOSE DEATHS OF PATRIOTS BE IN VAIN? Isn't America worth anything to you? WE wouldn't back down - we'd die with our boots on."
Etc., etc...

And pride is the downfall of nations, when it gets in the way of reason, logic, sense, or...principle. When it causes armies to invade other countries and call it liberation, in order to take revenge against a rag-tag group who are not in fact citizens of either of the two invaded countries. When it ignores or denies the fact that this invasion will cause the deaths of many innocent civilians, including women and children, not to mention thousands of men who were never involved in the original "triggering" crime - that pride has become conceit. When it causes a nation to use the methods of torture it banned and condemned, that pride has become conceit. When it causes the use of military might to take sides in other nations' civil internal strife or domestic issues, even claiming that this (invasion) will resolve economic and social problems - this is no longer pride, but at best, raw conceit. These are lies in action, and lies in action cannot create peace, prosperity, or the common good.

Conceit is false pride, pride taken to the level where it betrays its own principles. And America has reached that point. Maybe quite awhile ago.

We elected Obama to swallow that pride and lead us on a path of reason, principle, and inspiration. The road to Afghanistan takes him and us in the diametrically opposite direction.

An Better Mideast Strategy: Independent Democracies, Sans Israel

The Muslim World faces a dilemma, a forced choice between two alternatives, each worse than the other, and none freely determined by Muslims themselves in anything approaching "normal circumstances". In the so-called "War on Terror", they are called upon to "choose" between "Islamist" extremists, aka "terrorists" (the quote doesn't mean I dispute that there is terror here, just that it's loosely applied to a whole scope of movements), and brutal dictatorships sponsored largely by the West and/or Israeli interests represented by the governments of developed nations.

Are you "with us" - i.e., supportive of your repressive, non-democratic, dictatorial, brutal, economy-busting regimes - or "against us" - i.e., supportive of "terrorists", who are the only guys out there standing up to the West/Israel's overwhelming power plays??? And the "West" claims that it is "fighting for freedom" and "pro-democracy". So which group looks more democratic - the ragtag fighters who consider themselves to be, in Afghanistan for example (Battlefield I, you could say), fighting for their country, their families, and their right to self-govern and protect themselves from invaders? Or, say, Hosny Mubarak, the U.S.'s client in Egypt, whose brutality does not exclude rape, political prisoners en masse, police terror, torture and other crimes against basic rights??

Everyone knows that Mubarak's election is a sham. He plainly embarrasses his U.S. supporters. They are not happy with him, because his obvious corruption and totally failed government shines a bad light on anyone who supports him. But he does do one thing. And that is appear as a nominal "Arab" and (for all Muslims, now's the time for pepto-bismol) "Muslim" in so-called "peace negotiations" regarding the Palestinian issue. He is the supreme lackey in international politics. He will do whatever it takes to maintain the charade of a "peace process" without actually making Israel in the least uncomfortable. And what else does the U.S. really want than a lackey who provides pillows for Israel's every nervous breakdown?

Does the U.S. want peace in the Middle East?? Sort of. It sure would be nice. Intellectually, we want it! Rhetorically, we want it! All we ask for is that beautiful thing called "parity". First, Israel must be fully armed, including nuclear arms, no questions asked. Second, whatever they want, arms, money, aid, they must get because they are our "friends" - which means taxpayer-supported womb-dwellers. Peace would mean delivery. They would have to be actually born. They would no longer be a dream. Anathema! Real countries compromise. Real countries can't be racially exclusive. Real countries have to accept real circumstances of real people, not some imagined religious dream that, in application, means applying the ideals of the Third Reich, only with Jews substituting for Germans. No, the U.S. doesn't want Israel to get real, because Israel won't let the U.S. want that. And Peace means Getting Real. So the U.S. doesn't want real actual REAL peace in the Mideast. No.

No, the U.S. sets up and supports client dictators in almost all Muslim countries. Except for the Hated Mr. Ahmedinejad of that nasty country, Iran, which unfortunately for the "democracy-loving West", is a democracy, albeit with a theocratic backdrop. Many, especially conservatives, in America pine for the days of the Shah - who executed and tortured innocent women and political prisoners. We don't see any hatefests here denouncing Hosny Mubarak, let alone the Saudi regime (would the petroleum industry seriously stand for that??). Nobody was particularly upset about Sukarno when he ruled Indonesia. The Gulf principalities/emirates are go-to guys for U.S. interests. And money keeps their low-population-density citizens happy. Hamid Karzai isn't looking too good either, with his tainted election. Gee, we just can't seem to pick the right rulers for the countries whose resources we want to control, or whose proximity to Israel we need to rein in. As for Syria's Assad dynasty - well, it seems Muslims have a problem of their own in working toward a democracy.

Which should be puzzling, considering Islam, the religion. Its original principles are highly democratic. In the early days of the Prophet Mohammad, all Muslims had a vote (all men, that is - remember women's suffrage is only a 20th C thing in the US), elections were held, wealth was shared by law (not in a communist-type model, but with a tax whose proceeds are dedicated to the poor), usury was prohibited, free trade was encouraged, "jihad" meant self-control and self-defense (and offense if it is determined to be necessary for defense - ask any military strategist), there was religious freedom (it was illegal to force anyone to adopt any religion, including Islam), freedom of speech, standards of ethics and common decency, and measures for the elimination of slavery which was viewed as wrong, but given time to change. But as certain families were given more power than others, and wealth built up as well as power within Muslim society, corruption and schisms also appeared, until a more autocratic-style government gradually became the norm. It is not Islamic. The so-called dream of a "caliphate" is not in itself Islamic. What should be the "dream" would be a resurgence of the highest values, mentioned in part above - but that, at the moment, seems impossible.

The "terrorists", seen against the backdrop of corrupt and brutal regimes, look much more democratic. Anyone is welcome to join, regardless of race or national origin. (Women are welcome, too, but in a different, "traditional" role as support people.) They come off as a people's movement, challenging the West, the moneybags of their oppressors - or, of late, the Invaders of their Homeland. What the West calls "Extremists" come off in the Muslim world as a movement against corruption and oppression, pro-family values, pro-religion, patriotic. Because the West has consistently aligned itself with dictators for their own profit at the expense of the citizen-victims, they cannot expect sympathy from the Muslim population in general.

In fact, the "West" has consistently fought AGAINST democratic movements in the Middle East. In the case of Saudi Arabia, a budding, and passionate democratic movement by a Dr. Faqih, residing in the UK, had to put up with his assets being frozen and even personal arrests and attacks by UK authorities at Saudi behest. His crime? Speaking out against Saudi abuses. Oil interests absolutely trump human rights and democracy. "Freedom-loving"? Hardly. Some attempts to provide another party (the Tomorrow party) in Egypt were met with Mr. Mubarak's infamous bulldozer-n-bury government machine. The U.S.'s choice, on his own without any support except ethereal cheerleading, has entered the Land of the Disappeared. Even the Muslim Brotherhood, very popular in Egypt, would at least be far better than what is going on now. Is it not better to have an actual government that works than anarchy controlled by a police state? No - because anything with the name "Islam" tacked onto it is - and this Republican paradigm is still dogma and doctrine - flash some red lights, please - "Terrorism" with a cap T.

But there is something more insidious here. Why is Ahmedinejad constantly demonized but not Mubarak? Because Mubarak doesn't badmouth the Holocaust or say nasty things about Israel. Because Mubarak does not openly support the Palestinians in any meaningful way. Because Mubarak openly supports Israel in principle. And Israel plays a bigger role in international politics than people here generally think. In fact, US Mideast policy is a virtual extension of Israeli security, an obvious fact not lost on most Mideast nations. And Israeli security is seen, by Israel itself, as being so dire that it requires all Arab and/or Islamic nations be weak, or under Western control/influence as much as possible. To this end, dictatorships can be useful insofar as they are amenable to Israeli interests, as is the case with Mubarak, the Saudi regime, the Gulf states, Jordan, and in some weird inverse way, Syria. After all, it was none other than Syrian dictator Hafez el-Asad who slaughtered 20,890 Muslims who were considered Muslim Brotherhood sympathizers and nationalists who wanted to fight for the re-patriation of the Golan Heights. With help like that, why play the Bad Guy? Israel can just stand and watch the Arabs slaughter each other.

Except for those nasties, those terrorists - ah, that wonderful word, "terrorist"! - the Palestinian nationalists, now cornered as Hamas, and their Lebanese sympathizers (as well as Lebanese nationalists), Hezbollah. And their sole supporters in the Middle East, Iran. There you have it. Satan's legions are the anti-Israeli, democracy-seeking, freedom-seeking, independence-seeking, evil Palestinian & Lebanese nationalists who won't kowtow to Israel's "security" policies, and their one powerful ally, democratic, free-speech-daring Iran. Speak against Israel? Dare to speak against Israel? That's not free speech, we say. That's genocide.

But to slaughter women, children, old, young, and helplessly disarmed, deliberately starved people in Gaza over a couple of ineffectual rocket attacks - however unnerving they may be - is not genocide. It's not even overkill. It's self-defense.

Meanwhile, what is Israel? Israel is a race-based state. It is a Jewish homeland. It is not homeland to Palestinians who are the land's indigenous people, Jews having been imported from various locales around the world. Palestinians are 2nd class citizens, barely tolerated in Israel. The nation was founded for one race, and one race only - the Jews. Sound like a Third Reich with the roles reversed? Strange coincidence, isn't it? And who dares to say such a horrible thing? Only the reviled devil, Ahmedinejad, apparently. And what if the Palestinians procreate faster than the Jews? It's a real problem, it's happening now, and everyone knows it.

Right now, Palestinians are living in an open-air prison, supervised by Israeli Jews. The so-called "territories" are in fact a gulag archipelago overseen by cruel armed guards who often shoot to kill. Palestinians are called "terrorists", and viewed by Israelis as inferior, evil, enemies, threatening. Is that neighborly behavior, I ask you? Am I saying Palestinians are angels? What idiot insists that if someone is not a devil, he must then be an angel? We're asking for human/human relations to rise above this degenerate level of race-based politics. And if anti-semitism is a form of racism, then so is Zionism, if Zionism means setting up an exclusively Jewish nation. The concept of exclusivity to one race in one nation is no longer a viable idea. One would have hoped that Nazi Germany was that idea's last stand.

But with Israel fighting for its ideological survival, apparently to the death, to the tune of how many Palestinians and others, it seems that idea is still gasping for breath.

In fact, the so-called War on Terror is an Israeli construct, an Israeli idea. Yes, you can bring out 9-11, al-Qaeda, and all that. But these are a rag-tag troupe of right-wing extremists left over from the U.S.'s failed strategy to get the USSR/Russia out of Afghanistan when it was their war. The U.S. created the force called the Taliban and their nationalistic jihadi bent to counter Russia. Now Russia is out - and the U.S. is in - fighting those very same warriors. And so what's Israel got to do with it? Israel is playing this card for all it's worth, to make the word "terrorist" a household word, to make anti-Islamic sentiment a knee-jerk Western posture (and especially an American posture), and to paint Arabs and Muslims generally as untrustworthy enemies, uncivilized, and hence, in need of Western control and suppression. In contrast, Israel will thereby appear as the Knight in Shining Anti-Terrorist Armor, out to Save Us From Evil.

This is nothing new. The Iran-Iraq War was one of their ideas, to wear down the two countries Israel feared most in a deadly fight with one another. But when U.S. help to Iraq in that war bolstered Saddam's regime, and Saddam began to bluster and bray anti-Israeli rhetoric, that was it for him. The Gulf War was another manufactured war, created by lies ("The Rape of Kuwait"), intrigue (luring Saddam to invade Kuwait), and Israeli urging. Bush Sr's son just finished the job in the Iraq War, which has ended dismally as a total failure, even by Israeli standards. In fact, all facets of the War on Terror can be linked to Israeli security policy, and its insistence on being in a continuous state of war with Muslims and/or Arabs. And the U.S. never, never fails to totally comply with this in every respect possible, both in funds and blood. Excuses and rhetoric vary, but the facts are obvious.

On the other hand, the American public have a romanticized notion of Israel and the Holocaust. There is no logical basis to presume that the slaughter of millions of victims necessarily must be redressed by the removal of another population from some spot of land, and the importation of those ethnically related to the original victims to replace the indigenous population. In other words, as Ahmedinejad often repeats, what do the Palestinians have to do with the Holocaust? Why must they pay the price for the crimes of the Nazis? They are and were not Nazis. It is not their crime. Why, then, must they be removed?

It is true that the British share great responsibility in this injustice. It is true that "well, now, it's happened, and what can we do now? We can't turn back time." Yes, but we can stop oppression and redress wrongs. We can admit what wrongs were made. We can start to act as if justice has a place in international relations. But we absolutely will not. The U.S. has no stomach for justice in matters relating to Israel. Why? Well, it's in too deep...

And so look at who Israel is today. What is Israel now? It is the country that slaughered people in Gaza whom it first starved to near-death, who have no means to make a living or even obtain basic supplies, who are not armed to be mentioned. It is the country with nuclear weapons, armed to the teeth. Genocide is not abhorrent to them, as long as they are not the victims. In fact, they have no problem killing Palestinians with no just cause, in a manner that is abominable. World opinion means nothing to them. Obviously, the Israelis are the first to forget the Holocaust. And who is America to remind them? Who are the Israelis to cause all these wars, all this death and destruction, this outrageous expense, even to Americans? You shall know them by their fruits.

And so what is the Muslim world supposed to do, support radical extremists - and risk having a destabilized country run by possible autocrats posing as Islamic populists, not to mention being unable to come up with a legitimate government - or support pro-Western dictators who make life impossibly miserable and oppressive? This is not a choice at all. And yet many in the West, particularly Republicans and their ilk, bombastically blame Islam and Muslims for some alleged instrinsic disability and disinclination for democracy. If what the West, as imposed by Israeli security policy, offers is limited to these choices, then to hell with them.

Democracy is universal, after all. Those who fight against it cannot lead in the fight for it. If the U.S. cannot stand on its own ideological two feet, then the Muslim world needs to reject them completely and stand for themselves. After all, the Qur'an has a better definition of democracy than the Bible: "The Rule of Law is determined by mutual agreement between you (all)." It's time to mutually agree that dictatorship has gotta go, and extremism is not the only way out. And that democracy does not require recognition of or sympathy with Israel to be viable, free, and independently worthy of recognition.

What if Israel were to become a nation like any other nation, even a refuge preferring Jews but not excluding Palestinians? Israel would not then be a separate issue - it is now the West that has overtly presented the Islamic world with two untenable choices: stand with the West, which often appears to mean standing against one's country, one's survival, one's honor, and one's religion or ethnic identity - especially in the case of the Palestinians - or join the terrorists, the "Islamists", in a desperate last-ditch battle for God and country and honor and all that good stuff - but in the most horrific, thoughtless way that may - or may not - end up destroying all one is fighting for.

On the one hand, we have West-aligned dictatorships that are doing nothing but terrorizing their civilian population, or at best, decimating their economy and lives. On the other hand, we have extremists who defy the Qur'an and the Prophet by bombing fellow Muslims and destroying mosques and basically decimating the people's economy and lives. A good decision requires some objectivity, some careful consideration of the two sides or, hopefully, a better way than either of them. When the knife is at your children's throats, who, I ask, has time or guts for that?

The West, permeated by hypocrisy, lies, and false promises and platitudes, will never come out the winner if they pursue the same demands and same false dichotomy. Israel cannot survive under its current demanding, petulant modus operandi. Islamic countries cannot be viable if they are not free to make their own decisions, both as people and as governments. The human race, civilization, and all that we hold dear - whoever we are - is at stake. Is it not far past time to work toward better choices?

Israel Needs Moral Compass - And This Is a Tough Sell?

First post in what seems like a century. Have changed my priorities and am blogging less, if at all. But some important things still keep popping up. Like Israel's inhumanity. And look at where U.K. weapons go:

UK weapons are still being used against civilian populations.

Ministers confirmed to the MPs that British-built components were almost certainly used as part of Israeli weapons systems against the Palestinians in Gaza.

What about U.S. weapons? Goes without saying. And what is Israel defending? Children, perhaps? Read this post:

Former Israeli military commander Efran Efrati recently testified to the BBC that Palestinian children are ‘routinely ill-treated’ by Israeli soldiers:

“You take the kid, you blindfold him, you handcuff him, he’s really shaking… Sometimes you cuff his legs too. Sometimes it cuts off the circulation.

“He doesn’t understand a word of what’s going on around him. He doesn’t know what you’re going to do with him. He just knows we are soldiers with guns. That we kill people. Maybe they think we’re going to kill him.

“A lot of the time they’re peeing their pants, just sit there peeing their pants, crying. But usually they’re very quiet…

“When the kid is sitting there in the base, I didn’t do it, but nobody is thinking of him as a kid, you know – if there is someone blindfolded and handcuffed, he’s probably done something really bad. It’s OK to slap him, it’s OK to spit on him, it’s OK to kick him sometimes. It doesn’t really matter.”

When will the lessons of the Holocaust ever be learned? When will people ever learn anything? I guess power is a very addictive drug, and it kills the conscience.

Iran: The Crushing Significance of Little Things

That what was once, just before the election, a sign of hope, of genuine discussion and democracy, of exchange between two sides, the pro-Ahmedinijad side and the pro-Moussavi side, as reported by Joe Klein in Time, now has degenerated into a violent confrontation that threatens to undermine the very legitimacy of Iran's system of government - this is a study in the crushing significance of little things.

The Iranians weren't asking all that much: both sides simply want free and fair elections. The bugaboo here is not America's favorite whipping boy, Ahmedinejad, so much as it is the Ayatollah Khamanei, whose Friday speech changed the tone from possibly resolvable to totally insoluble conflict between two sides, framed by obvious lies about Iranian unity. By choosing the lie and forced violation of basic human rights, which is always a violation of a nation's sense of security, in this one speech, those few words, this apparently "small" moment of time has transformed a budding democracy into a totalitarian nightmare acting under the veneer of what had been its democracy. I do not believe this is the aim of Ahmedinejad, who has played the Robin Hood of Iran's underclasses whose more "fundamental" and fatalistic view of religion was a riveting political force and remains so. He actually accomplished some "democratizing" things during his mixed-record tenure. But it is the crackdown and the grip on power evidenced by Khamanei that has unleashed the Basij and other paramilitary/police forces as arms of brutal totalitarian acts of violence and suppression that has brought the world's condemnation and horror at what has happened to Iran.

This is particularly weird when viewed in the light of who the opposition is: Moussavi was a trusted aide of the late Ayatollah Khomeini, father of the Islamic Republic. Khamanei appears to have reached the egotistical point of seeing anyone who appears to threaten his perceived "divine" grip on power as Enemy, and hence he has become more than what his title has previously entailed. He has become, as Supreme Leader, Iran's de facto dictator, with Ahmedinejad as his politically savvy enabler/front man. I hope this situation will change, but it appears to be getting worse.

Jihad: Another Right-Wing Tactic?

Abukar Arman's insightful article, "Jihad Against the Abuse of Jihad" spotlights problems on both sides of the "jihad" issue, and how this concept is abused by both Muslims on the extreme "right-wing" (my term) and their right-wing counterparts, sworn enemies in the West.

In light of the rampant extremism and militarism around the world, nothing proves more dangerous than the manipulation of truth for political ends. This tactic facilitates the demonization process that blurs ideologies and beliefs in both the West and the Islamic world. And, no concept is more abused by both sides than the concept of Jihad.

To Muslim extremists and their cronies, Jihad is a narrowly defined license to fight their perceived enemies (including Muslims, as is the case in Somalia) even if that leads to atrocities against civilians. And to Western extremists and their cronies, Jihad is a religiously sanctioned, perpetual holy war led by militant non-state actors sworn to destroy Western values and civilization.

As Robin Wright wrote in Newsweek, a "soft Islamic revolution" is afoot among Muslim masses, seeking a more centrist (?), socially modern way to both be Muslim and a reasonable participant in the world and its trade, views, education, science, etc. That means being true to one's principles, but otherwise, neither Western nor extremist.

So in describing the meaning of the word "jihad", Mr. Arman goes for the heart of the issue:

While the concept carries different relevance for different people, the Arabic word means to strive or struggle toward achieving a higher aim, which includes the "struggle in the way of God." It can also mean to defend oneself, or to strive against injustices. Finally, Jihad means the attainment of the ultimate goal of Tazkiyatul Nafs, or purification of the soul - morally, spiritually and ethically. Indeed, it is this latter aspect, the Jihad with oneself as one resists temptations and strives against his/her evil tendencies, which Prophet Muhammad referred to as "the Greater Jihad." The purification of the soul, or simply self-purification, is an around-the-clock process of deep introspection.

Despite great achievements in the fields of science and technology; in the compilation and standardization of knowledge; and, yes, in the art of its dissemination, humanity still remains in an embryonic, if not an imbecilic, stage when it comes to morality and ethics.

As for that last point, witness the GOP...

And their creation of The Perfect Enemy out of the Muslim world would be Exhibit A for total imbecility.

In the past eight years of global political discontent, one persistent warning has been systematically ignored: When militant politics takes over the stage, reason makes a run for the exit. This was a period when people were generally herded toward one side of the argument or the other. Two nihilistic manifestos dominated the political discourse and brought the world closer to a self-fulfilling prophecy known as the "clash of civilizations": the global war on terror and the global Jihad.

The former was based on an erroneous premise that "political Islam" in all its manifestations is anti-democratic and anti-Western, and, as such, should never be afforded a space in the marketplace of ideas. Proponents of this view insisted that such movements were dangerous fronts for Muslim militants with sinister "Jihadist ambition," intent on destroying the West because of its freedom and economic success. Therefore, they were to be met at their incubation place: with "preemptive" force if they were based in foreign lands and by draconian policies if they were stationed in the West.

And Muslims didn't do any better, falling for the same sort of right-wing lies:

The concept of "global Jihad," on the other hand, was based on an opposite yet equally erroneous premise - that the West is collectively bent on destroying Islam by occupying the Islamic world: exploiting its natural resources, oppressing its peoples and Westernizing Islamic values. And as such Jihad against them is not only right, but the moral thing to do.

The proponents of this manifesto, such as Al Qaeda, selectively use the confrontational rhetoric often used by their counterparts in the West - secularist and evangelical Zionists - to lend credence to their claim. And they, too, work hard to conceal two particular realities: that Muslims are afforded more rights in the West than in most of the so-called Islamic countries when it comes to practicing their religion freely and establishing Islamic institutions; and that the Obama administration is adamant about its desire to improve relations with the Muslim world.

Note that both sides are male-dominated drives to simplify all life to a fight-to-the-death struggle against ideological Enemies. Maybe it's time for women to not only take more of the helm, but to show men that, well...

Real Men talk before they shoot. And if they do poetry, so much the better. At some point, don't men prefer to live with women and children, too? It's time to change what "jihad" means on all sides of all fences.

Is Obama Repackaging Bush's War on Terror?

Andy Worthington's done it again. This time, asking if Obama is really just repackaging Bush's war on terror.

Changing the names of things was a ploy that was used by the Bush administration in an attempt to justify some of its least palatable activities. In response to the 9/11 attacks, for instance, the nation was not involved in a limited pursuit of a group of criminals responsible for the attacks, but instead embarked on an open-ended “War on Terror.” In keeping with this “new paradigm,” prisoners seized in this “war” were referred to as “detainees,” and held neither as criminal suspects nor as prisoners of war, protected by the Geneva Conventions, but as “enemy combatants,” without any rights whatsoever. Later, when the administration sought new ways in which to interrogate some of these men, the techniques it endorsed were not referred to as torture -- even though many of them clearly were -- but were instead described as “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

Read more...

Why "Invisible" Geno-Rape in Africa Is Everyone's Disaster

Now that the world is mostly connected by internet, satellite, air travel and more - now that the economy's meltdown means the global economy's meltdown - now that drought in, say, China, is a concern to people in, say, Kansas - and party affiliation is irrelevant - now when doing what's "good" for America has to also be somehow "good" for the rest of the planet - now we look at the "Invisible War", the unreported war, the conflict in the Congo where mass atrocities are a way of life, in a manner so unspeakable that it defies language.

The object of these atrocities are women. Women on a scale of sheer totality. The Democratic Republic of Congo's roving militias have essentially declared war against the Female in her totality. Any and all women are fair game. There appears to be no rhyme or reason to it, except unabashed, drug-fueled, abuse and poverty-driven, depravity and cruelty. In Bob Herbert's NYT op-ed, he describes some of these horrors:

This sustained campaign of mind-bending atrocities, mostly in the eastern part of the country, has been one of the strategic tools in a wider war that has continued, with varying degrees of intensity, since the 1990s. Millions have been killed.

Women and girls of all ages, from old women to very young children, have been gang-raped, and in many cases their sexual organs have been mutilated. The victims number in the hundreds of thousands. But the world, for the most part, has remained indifferent to their suffering.

How much coverage has this gotten in the media? How much outrage? A few articles last January, overwhelmed by economic and election news, not to mention the ugly Israeli massacre of Gazan civilians. These women have no spokespeople, no connections to us. When you read a title displaying the word "Congo" or "Congolese", do you seriously jump on the link, or, riveted, read the article? It's on the planet, but not particularly significant to most people's worlds. It's time for that to change. This is not just a war. It's a holocaust.

The war itself, between many groups, is over control of the country's wealth, and has been going on since the '90's. It is also directly linked to the famously genocidal war in Rwanda. In fact, news surfaced awhile back of its child soldiers, and at this moment war trials are being held in the Hague over previously reported atrocities. But the extent to which the war has brutalized women and families has just been released in a report by two humanitarians.

The report, "Women's Rights Violations During the Conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo," was written by Lisette Banza Mbombo and Christian Hemedi Bayolo of the Association for the Rebirth of Human Rights in Congo, based in Kinshasa, the capital. It might have gone unnoticed outside the country had it not come to the attention of the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development in Montreal, an independent body created by the Canadian Parliament.

Women almost never get redress for rapes, and the devastating effect on children and families cannot be quantified, let alone remedied, avenged, or somehow alleviated.

The Congo report describes graphically the horrific abuses of a war fought out of sight, where the number of international peacekeepers is impossibly small. Mass rapes, often to demoralize enemies, seem to take place everywhere, the authors found. In the eastern region of South Kivu, the report said, a Congolese rebel army allied to Rwanda had buried women alive after ramming sticks into their vaginas, to terrorize the local population.

International organizations estimate that 2 million people may have died in the Congo war; this report speculates that women account for many of the victims.

The goal of the perpetrators was to humiliate and torture their victims, but also, apparently, to annihilate their humanity. And in that sense, their humanity's annihilation is ours - if we ignore it. The brutalizers cannot be left to gain power or get away with such atrocities. This goes beyond what most people think of as criminal behavior. It is the unspeakable - about which we should, in all conscience, be compelled to speak. Or as Bob Herbert reported,

“These women are raped in front of their husbands, in front of their children, in front of their parents, in front of their neighbors,” said Dr. Denis Mukwege, a gynecologist who runs a hospital in Bukavu that treats only the women who have sustained the most severe injuries.

In some cases, the rapists have violated their victims with loaded guns and pulled the triggers. Other women have had their organs deliberately destroyed by knives or other weapons. Sons have been forced at gunpoint to rape their mothers. Many women and girls have been abducted and sexually enslaved.

It is as if, in these particular instances, some window to what we think of as our common humanity had been closed.

It not only destroys the women's sense of their own humanity or worth as beings, but it does the same for everyone around them.

“The second consequence is that the whole family and the entire neighborhood is traumatized by what they have seen. The ordinary sense of family and community is lost after a man has been forced to watch his wife being raped, or parents are forced to watch the rape of their daughters, or children see their mothers raped.

“Neighbors are witnesses to this. Many flee. Families are dislocated. Social relationships are lost. There is no more social network, village network. Not only the victims have been destroyed; the whole village is destroyed.”

As we read this report, we too become witnesses to an unspeakable crime, about which we must speak. Our very humanity, our bond with eachother and with the earth, has been hainously violated. It must not pass without consequence to the guilty.

All this horror for wealth and power? Is this not the "profit motive" gone awry? Is this not the anarchy at the end of extreme anti-government ideology? With the world's resources vanishing under a prolifirating horde of humanity, we need to get honest about values, what is sacred and what is ridiculous. Or we too, may be fighting a war against ourselves, our families, against women, against children, against anything that has real meaning or purpose.

This is your world without "liberal" compassion, without functioning government, all guns, guts, and "glory".... all dysfunctional holocaust.

Thinkbridge Is Back - Let's Hope Torture Is Not

It's been over 10 days, the news is excreting at a rate that is positively diarrheal, and here is this blogger, stuck in a constipated time warp. There's the wonderful news that Obama signed a ban on torture and a return to the Army Field Manual. Add to that his order to close Gitmo. Tempered by that nasty court case indicated that the reversal won't be so clear-cut.

But Slumdog Millionaire's rise to the top of the Oscars is seen in the slums of Mumbai as a victory for them. Let's hope the same happens for the rights of the criminally accused, war on terror or otherwise. There's no such thing as an untouchable, and there's no such thing as an "unconventional" human being. An accusation is just that. An accusation. It's not a conviction. There's always the possibility that the accused could be innocent. Yet GW Bush was hell-bent on torturing - I repeat, torturing - the accused, even though the U.S. has always maintained that such torture doesn't produce a real, admissible confession.

"Unconventional". That was the Republicans' excuse for torturing the accused and throwing away the presumption of innocence. These were not human beings. These were unconventional human beings. I suppose it goes with the appellation of "aliens" as applied to migrants. Words are important. So when a man is called a "terrorist", regardless of whether he actually committed or contributed to any acts of terrorism,
it whets the appetite for revenge, hence torture.

Torture is not reasonable. It's an emotional "punishment". It is not a technique. It's a way of dehumanizing another human being, when their humanity is disturbing, when it gets in the way, when it threatens the severity of one's rage, one's ego, one's quest for superiority and control over others. And Bush, more than Cheney, was ruled by emotions. He was no thinker. He ruled from the gut. Cheney did not "rule" him, as many think. He brought out that "gut" into the realm of ruthless application.

Let's hope the vestiges of that horrific legacy are truly gone forever, and Obama will really abolish them, and not let the spectre of "national security" (remember the Nazis!) allow dehumanizing humans back into th e realm of social acceptibility.

Bush-Grown Prisons Need Profit-bringing Detainees

National Public Radio gives us this report on local resistence to and protests against the intrusion of excessive detention centers - prisons - into their communities. Immigration Detention Centers.

Here's the deal. First, Bushco builds prisons-for-profit creating a "New Industry".
Then, to complete the capitalist circle, "customers" have to be "created" for the New Industry. And who are these "customers"? Well, we can't create more actual criminals than already exist. But we can create new laws and legal snafus that "snare" customers into these awaiting "detention centers". Presumably, if they continue on their current path, they will one day be called "Border Recovery & Retention Processing Facilities." The keyword "border" clueing in the cognoscenti that this is an immigration issue. Ah yes! That's the perfect "customer base" - non-citizens!

According to NPR:

The immigration crackdown of recent years has been possible, in part, because the Bush administration has greatly expanded its detention space. This is set to continue in next year's budget, with new centers planned in several states. But some are meeting local resistance.

So in these economically recessed times, the prison business is booming! Or is it a bubble?? Is there too much space? Note that immigration has slowed down, due to draconian border-control techniques and that clincher, the criminalization of migration. Yes, that human tendency that brought Asians to the Americas, and Africans to Europe, and basically assisted homo sapiens' survivability by mixing up the gene pool - migration - is now a criminal act in the United States. Unless one has "proper documentation".

Since the latter is a bureaucratic nightmare involving lots of money, migrants are easy targets. So those empty prisons CAN be filled - with massive arrests of "illegal aliens" - and what a great title that is! Problem is - it begs the issue of human rights. Something Republicans hate.

It's a typical Republican industry really. It's xenophobic: they're not Americans! It's corporate-friendly: the prison business is Big Business. It's abusive of human rights: no bleeding hearts! It's heavy-handed security: lock 'em up now! It's all about greed: let them make money out of punishment! It's anti-government: let's privatize justice! And above all, it's useless, fantasy-based: we don't really need these prisons.
And the sad part is, it's still going on. When are we going to stop being pushovers to losers?

Torture Evidence Withheld from Obama: Who's in Charge?

In this great diary, Valtin exposes a situation where the Pentagon has blacked-out an entire two pages of material showing evidence of torture in the case of Binyam Mohamed. We're talking "medieval-type" torture. Without even knowing if the guy was really guilty. He's a citizen of Ethiopia. Why are they hiding this from their own Commander in Chief? What will his reaction be?

In a shocking revelation just posted at UK Guardian, Binyam Mohamed's attorney Clive Stafford Smith, who is also director of the legal charity Reprieve, reports that "substantial parts" of a memo, attached to a letter to Barack Obama, documenting evidence of Mohamed's torture at the hands of CIA agents and their extraordinary rendition proxies, were blanked out so the president could not read them. Who did that?

US defence officials are preventing Barack Obama from seeing evidence that a former British resident held in Guantánamo Bay has been tortured, the prisoner's lawyer said last night, as campaigners and the Foreign Office prepared for the man's release in as little as a week....

Stafford Smith tells Obama he should be aware of the "bizarre reality" of the situation. "You, as commander in chief, are being denied access to material that would help prove that crimes have been committed by US personnel. This decision is being made by the very people who you command."

Valtin quotes Smith's letter to Obama:

Dear President Obama:

I am writing with great urgency concerning the rendition and torture of a Guantanamo Bay prisoner represented by our charity. His name is Binyam Mohamed, and he is a British resident.

You will doubtless have been informed about Mr. Mohamed's torture -- he was abused in truly medieval ways over a period of more than two years in Pakistan (at the behest of the US), then again in Morocco (where he had been rendered by the CIA), and then in the Dark Prison in Kabul.

There has been a firestorm in the media of our closest ally, the United Kingdom because, according to two British judges, the Bush Administration "threatened" to withdraw national security cooperation with the UK if the judges ordered the release of materials concerning the torture of Mr. Mohamed in US custody.

The British judges bowed to this 'threat'-- but suggested at the end of their judgment that your administration might reconsider the position taken by your predecessors....

Since we, at Reprieve, are US lawyers with appropriate security clearances, we have access to this classified material. We have therefore assembled a memorandum that collates the evidence of torture in question. It is attached.

... for now, to deal with the British judges' request, we are submitting this information to you with no reference to any agent's name, or even the location of the abuse. Thus, as the British judges suggested, there is nothing in the memo that divulges material that should be considered classified.

We are submitting this letter and attachment to the Privilege Review Team established by the Department of Defense to deal with these issues....

If the DOD is unwilling to forward this material to you, then we will send you only what we are allowed to send you -- which will be a copy of this letter and a redacted version of the memo illustrating the extent to which it has been censored.

And here's a copy of the letter, all blacked-out except for the header. What does this mean? Who's censoring the President? Why?

And if this doesn't get you angry, how about this description of how Mohammad was tortured from Scott Horton at Harper's:

Binyam Mohamed is a 30-year-old Ethiopian who was granted political asylum in Britain in 1994. In 2002, he was seized by Pakistani authorities and turned over to American intelligence officials in connection with the Bush Administration’s extraordinary renditions program. He was shuttled between CIA-operated facilities in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Morocco. During this period of American-sponsored detention, according to court papers, Binyam Mohamed was "routinely beaten, suffering broken bones and, on occasion, loss of consciousness. His clothes were cut off with a scalpel and the same scalpel was then used to make incisions on his body, including his penis. A hot stinging liquid was then poured into open wounds on his penis where he had been cut. He was frequently threatened with rape, electrocution, and death." He is now reported to be close to death in a prison cell in Guantánamo.

Note that Mohamed was not even convicted yet! What purpose does a presumption of guilt, followed by torture, without due process, serve? It serves the salacious thirst for revenge on the part of the lowest level of unthinking dehumanized bestiality. Is that why we elected Barack Obama? Or was his campaign, and indeed his first days and weeks in office, marked by fulfilment of his campaign promise to reverse the dehumanizing process started by the Republican Bush-Cheney administration by closing Guantanamo Bay and stopping torture? That certainly was right up there with Job One.

So what does it mean that some operatives at the Pentagon are censoring Obama's mail? To protect him politically? Or to keep him in the lap of Cheney's evil web of criminal atrocities, by putting blinders on him?

Are we going to let atrocities committed in the name of the United States continue? Or go unpunished? What the hell is the difference between this atrocity and anyone else's atrocity? Hypocrisy. We claim to be better. And so we are far worse. Obama was elected to get rid of this kind of hypocrisy and cruelty in the name of fear and security. Is someone trying to prevent him to do just that? And if so, can't the Commander-in-Chief fire these low-life torture-mongering fear-groveling go-to Cheney-lovin' guys?

President Obama, it's time to take America back. Insubordination to the president elected by the people, for the people, is insubordination to democracy itself. No, torture is never justified by any ends. It defines the very principles by which one lives and organizes society. Its presence means no democracy, no respect for human rights exists. Its absence is the beginning of hope and change. Remember? The majority voted for hope and change, not coverups for torture and other abuses - but transparency.

Transparency begins with the President and what information he receives. This is no small matter. Our very future and moral standing depend on this point.