Killing Time

Project X

2007-08-06T10:29:00.000Z

Since absolutely no one has expressed any interest, I thought I'd keep everyone informed about my toings and froings and the mysterious 'Project X' I talked about a while back. Basically I have been far too busy to post recently as have been doing about three jobs, but from mid August this situation should resolve itself. Also, 'Project X', which got started, then stopped, might be becoming activated again. Or not. I will post as soon as I know. If it goes ahead then this blog will become much more of the music and arts type blog it was meant to be, and politics will be shifted off to another home.

Meanwhile I am going to attempt to post some music cos that's what Atrios does and he my hero. Enjoy. Or not .

Divide and Conquer

2007-02-09T10:55:00.000Z

This should all be borne in mind when we hear bleating about civil rights and so forth in Venezuela and Bolivia.

'On January 25, Uruguay signed a Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) with the United States that could ultimately dismantle Mercosur and isolate Uruguay in the southern cone....A TIFA, many practiced trade experts say, is often the prelude to a Free Trade Agreement (FTA). If Uruguay ultimately decides to sign a FTA with the U.S.— an option now being heavily debated and which Uruguayan officials have not ruled out—it would come in direct violation of Montevideo’s membership terms in Mercosur. Due to this dispute, Mercosur stands precariously at the brink of unraveling at a time when bilateral disputes and diverging agendas of the five full members seem to be taking center stage at the expense of their solidarity and all-important economic cohesion.....Despite Vázquez’s provocative TIFA signing with the U.S., opposition to a U.S.-Uruguay trade deal remains strong within his own country. Reinaldo Gargano, Uruguay’s foreign minister, strongly opposes a FTA with the U.S. In his support of Uruguay’s ongoing allegiance to Mercosur, Gargano stressed “I continue working for a better Common Market of the South.”.....The question still remains why the U.S. is pushing so emphatically for trade arrangement with Uruguay, with which, relatively speaking, it has only a negligible volume of trade. With a GDP of just $13 billion, a bilateral deal between Uruguay and the U.S. would be, according to the Financial Times, “economically insignificant for the US.” Yet the U.S. still pushes the merger. In truth, the major incentive behind the U.S. desire to sign a FTA with Uruguay may be less about what’s best for the small nation and more about working to unravel Mercosur and build up White House diplomatic and economic leverage in the southern cone.....Unquestionably, Mercosur is viewed by Washington as posing a threat to U.S. interests in South America. The bloc directly and successfully thwarted the now floundering U.S.-planned Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA), designed to unite all of Latin America and North America (except Cuba) in a hemispheric trade arrangement. Mercosur prohibits its members from signing FTAs with the U.S., and it is actively recruiting a South American trade bloc that would unify all of the region’s nations. The proposed Bank of the South, one of the potential projects of Mercosur, would offer an alternative source of finance to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other multilateral organizations—such as the World Bank—which do not necessarily have the best track record in favoring genuine development initiatives in Latin America.....Mercosur’s international influence is rising, and, so long as all its members play on the same team, it is likely to continue in this direction. The five full members of the trade group alone represents 250 million people over a span of 4.9 million square miles, with a GDP of $1 trillion. Whatever its shortcomings, the bloc provides its smaller members the ability to compete in the international community for more equal trade agreements.....If Mercosur fails in South America, it will open up the entire region to the possibility of being cherry picked (on a one-by-one basis) by individual trade agreements with the U.S. In its effort to sign an FTA with Uruguay, the U.S. may be taking advantage of a small, disenchanted Mercosur member in hopes of compromising South America’s existing trade bloc structure and shattering many of the region’s important aspirations.....An FTA between Uruguay and the U.S. would destroy the last indigenous economic bloc powerful enough to prevent the U.S. from extending its fingers into all of Latin America. The world has seen what happens to small scale entrepreneurs, be they farmers or businessmen, as well as the fate of some of the smaller and weaker nations, when the U.S. is granted free trade rights within these less developed nations’ borders. Being placed under the mantle of FTA’s far from guarantees a mutually beneficial relationship. Newspaper dailies run recurrent stories about Mexican farmers and small businesses entrepreneurs who are unable to effectively compete with U.S. multinationals, and who are at times forced out of business by their highly competitive U.S. counterparts. Mercosur exists to unite South America under its own collective terms and to give smaller nations like Uruguay the necessary leverage to make substantial demands upon its trade partners. The U.S. is pushing for a South America that trades on the White House’s terms, under a FTAA. Uruguay is but the next step for it to project that influence.'

News from a different land...oh hold on it's our land.

2007-02-08T15:09:00.000Z

The American colony, Jordan, tends to be ignored in the Western media. However, here is a piece that not only mentions but but draws attention to some salient facts that are rarely noted in our wonderful free press.

'Although the Mukhabarat (note: Jordan's Gestapo) may (note: or may not) be less brutal than its counterparts in Ba'athist Iraq or Syria, it has been accused of abuses, harassment and torture. "Half the country is working for the Mukharabat," said Naim al-Haddad, a Palestinian mechanic. "People are afraid to talk." Thus the anxious faces at the sight of strangers asking questions in Irbid.

There are suspicions too, despite the bombings, that the terrorist threat is exaggerated. Jordanians and foreigners remain sceptical about the official version of an al-Qaida plot in 2004 to attack Mukhabarat and other government premises, and the US embassy, with toxic chemicals....

(Jordan's) links with Washington are a fact of life for the political elite - the Mukhabarat works closely with the CIA and Mossad, as well as MI6 - though increasingly unpopular with ordinary people....

Jordan, population 5.6 million, is often described as an uneasy kingdom, caught in the crossfire of conflicts involving Israel, the Palestinians and Iraq. King Hussein lost a large chunk of his most fertile territory to Israel in 1967 and crushed Palestinian guerrillas in "Black September" 1970 but gave up Jordan's claim to the occupied West Bank in 1988.

He abandoned his pro-western instincts in 1990 by backing Saddam Hussein over the invasion of Kuwait. In 1994 he made peace with Israel. King Abdullah, right, in power since 1999, allowed US special forces into Jordan and Iraqi police now train on his territory. Real power resides with the monarchy, though some dissent is tolerated. He declared a "war on extremism" after the Amman bombings.'

'War on extremism'? Don't you mean a 'war on terror'?

Israelis retaliate after attack by Lebanese Army

2007-02-08T08:31:00.000Z

Aren't subeditors great? Read this article

'Israeli tanks shelled Lebanese Army positions late last night after coming under fire as they joined an operation to comb the border area for explosive devices placed by Hizbollah guerrillas.

The Israel Defence Forces said early today that an engineering force had been searching for further devices after finding four along the border on Monday, when it came under fire from Lebanese Army units.

It said that the Lebanese units had fired warning shots towards IDF forces operating within Israeli sovereign territory, though north of the perimeter fence, despite an official warning to the United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon [Unifil] that it would be conducting a sweep of the area.

The IDF said that despite warnings to stop, the Lebanese troops then fired at the Israeli forces who then returned fire. As Unifil now strengthened as an international force after the end of last summer's Lebanon war sought to mediate, the Israeli military said that it was not aware of any injuries, although there were unconfirmed reports of Lebanese troops being wounded.'

Uncomfirmed by whom? Well by the I"D"F presumably. Of course the headline does not state, accurately: 'Israelis claim they were attacked by Lebanese Army'.

In any case, I thought the Israelis had a problem with the mysterious country of Hizbollahstan, not the Arabic democracy of Lebanon? After all, the Israelis are desperate for democracy to take root in the Arabic world, so they can have a 'partner for peace'. I mean, consider how happy they were at the last Palestinian elections.

And remember, the best thing about Japan is it is so crime free.

2007-02-07T13:24:00.000Z

'The fatal shooting of a senior gangster in Tokyo has sparked fears of an all-out turf war between two of Japan's fiercest underworld organisations.
Police have arrested two members of a gang affiliated to the Sumiyoshi-kai, Japan's second-biggest crime syndicate, on suspicion of firing shots at the office of a rival gang in apparent retaliation for the killing of Ryoichi Sugiura, a senior member of a Sumiyoshi affiliate.
One of the suspects was quoted by police as saying that he and his accomplice had targeted a group linked to the Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan's most powerful crime syndicate, in apparent retaliation for Sugiura's death, according to the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper.'

'At the height of the Cold War in the early 1980s, Yasuhiro Nakasone, then prime minister of Japan, reaffirming his country's strong commitment to its supreme ally the United States against Soviet threats, declared that Japan would serve as an "unsinkable aircraft carrier" in the Pacific. Now that the lone superpower is once again facing security threats and waging a war against the so-called "axis of evil", it requires an unwavering commitment to its purpose and direction from its allies. It is indeed very fortunate to have received that commitment, not from one but from two of its most trusted allies in the Pacific. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan and his Australian counterpart John Howard, both conservative and strongly committed to the US, have offered all possible assistance to US President George W Bush....'

Moderates, extremists, terrorists, democrats...oh it's all so confusing.

2007-02-06T11:14:00.000Z

'The fact is, of course, that by "moderate" and "extremist," the Bush administration really means "those who do what the U.S. and Israel want" and "those who don't do what the U.S. and Israel want." The idea that Saudi Arabia, land of Wahhabism, public beheadings and 15 of 19 9/11 attackers, is "moderate" is ridiculous. Egypt? Back when Bush was still talking about democracy and pressuring President Mubarak to reform his corrupt and autocratic government, it would have taken a face of brass to call it "moderate." But now that we realize that democracy means the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, democracy isn't such a big deal, and U.S.-friendly autocrats are suddenly "moderate."'

At last.....

2007-02-06T09:36:00.000Z

Something that bears a remote relationship to the truth is published in a UK paper. It doesn't go far enough: it fails to describe the origins of these regimes (mainly in Sykes-Picot, and the innumerable Western backed coups and 'interventions' since), and she describes Jordan as ' the state closest to the western ideal' ('Human Rights Watch found that Jordan’s General Intelligence Department (GID) frequently carries out arbitrary arrests and abuses suspects in its own detention facility and that many suspects are held in incommunicado detention but never charged with a crime.' ). But it's a start.

'Western leaders have simply chosen a few Arab rulers they believe are still saleable to western audiences. And, as the word moderate has been repeated by western leaders and echoed in the international media, these rulers have begun to believe their own billing. But who are they, and are they moderate? Their selection has been fluid at the periphery but solid at the core. Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt clearly qualify, whereas Syria, an ally during the 1990-91 Gulf war, was once at the periphery but fell out of step with US interests after 9/11. Likewise, after the death of Arafat and the victory of Hamas, Fatah became moderate, while Iran, moderate under the shah, became "radical" after the 1979 Islamic revolution.

This minuet of political marketing may play well in the west, but not in the Arab world, where the double standards and manipulation are all too plain to see. The Saudi Wahhabis are, after all, fanatics; Egypt's Hosni Mubarak is intolerant of dissent; and Jordan, the state closest to the western ideal, is a marginal player. These countries' appalling human rights records, lack of transparency and repression rank them among the world's least moderate. Is there such a thing as a "moderate public beheading"? For the US and UK governments there clearly is, because all departures from the ideals of liberal democracy and social justice are rooted in "tradition". Hence bribes, beheadings and the oppression of women and minorities are traditional, and because whatever is traditional is not radical, it must be moderate.'

As someone once said: read the whole thing.

Dissidents, sorry I meant terrorists, arrested.

2007-02-05T15:56:00.000Z

'Ten men arrested in Saudi Arabia on suspicion of funding terrorism include known political activists detained in the past over calls for reform in the absolute monarchy, a lawyer said yesterday.

The Interior Ministry said on Saturday it had arrested 10 people, including a foreign resident, for collecting donations and giving them to “suspicious elements”.

It said the arrests were part of police operations against “funding terrorism”.

Bassem Alem, a lawyer representing some of the men, said they were reformers who had recently been warned by the Interior Ministry, overseen by hawkish Prince Nayef bin Abdulaziz, to halt their meetings and petitions.'

Tony Blair is expected to lead the prosecution, by explaining that the Saudi Junta have 'their culture, their way of life.'

Terrorists in Iran

2007-02-03T20:29:00.001Z

'A controversial exile movement cited by President George W. Bush as a source of information on Iran's nuclear ambitions is condemned for psychologically and physically abusing its own members in a new report by Human Rights Watch.'

Nemesis

2007-02-01T10:11:00.000Z

'The combination of huge standing armies, almost continuous wars, an ever growing economic dependence on the military-industrial complex and the making of weaponry, and ruinous military expenses as well as a vast, bloated "defense" budget, not to speak of the creation of a whole second Defense Department (known as the Department of Homeland Security) has been destroying our republican structure of governing in favor of an imperial presidency. By republican structure, of course, I mean the separation of powers and the elaborate checks and balances that the founders of our country wrote into the Constitution as the main bulwarks against dictatorship and tyranny, which they greatly feared.

We are on the brink of losing our democracy for the sake of keeping our empire. Once a nation starts down that path, the dynamics that apply to all empires come into play -- isolation, overstretch, the uniting of local and global forces opposed to imperialism, and in the end bankruptcy.'

The Devil's Game

2007-01-31T13:01:00.000Z

And the Devil is us.

' I wrote Devil’s Game to fill in a gap amid the millions of words that have been written about political Islam and U.S. policy since September 11, 2001.

In the 1950s, the United States had an opportunity to side with the nationalists (like Nasser and Mossadeq), and indeed many U.S. policymakers did suggest exactly that, as my book explains. But in the end, nationalists in the Third World were seen as wild cards who couldn’t be counted on to join the global alliance against the USSR. Instead, by the end of the 1950s, rather than allying itself with the secular forces of progress in the Middle East and the Arab world, the United States found itself in league with Saudi Arabia’s Islamist legions.

Choosing Saudi Arabia over Nasser’s Egypt was probably the single biggest mistake the United States has ever made in the Middle East.

A second big mistake that emerges in Devil’s Game occurred in the 1970s, when, at the height of the Cold War and the struggle for control of the Middle East, the United States either supported or acquiesced in the rapid growth of Islamic right in countries from Egypt to Afghanistan. In Egypt, Anwar Sadat brought the Muslim Brotherhood back to Egypt. In Syria, the United States, Israel, and Jordan supported the Muslim Brotherhood in a civil war against Syria. And, as described in a groundbreaking chapter in Devil’s Game, Israel quietly backed Ahmed Yassin and the Muslim Brotherhood in the West Bank and Gaza, leading to the establishment of Hamas.

Still another major mistake was the fantasy that Islam would penetrate the USSR and unravel the Soviet Union in Asia. It led to America’s support for the jihadists in Afghanistan. But as Devil’s Game shows, America’s alliance with the Afghan Islamists long predated the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and had its roots in CIA activity in Afghanistan in the 1960s and in the early and mid-1970s. The Afghan jihad spawned civil war in Afghanistan in the late 1980s, gave rise to the Taliban, and got Osama bin Laden started on building Al Qaeda.'

(Note: Mark Curtis also makes clear the influence the British had in the creation of Hezbollah. Other note: I should have made clear in earlier in earlier versions of this post that the Hezbollah I was referring to was not the Lebanese Hezbollah, but the Turkish Hezbollah. And the British help was via Turkey. But the basic point remains. )

Churchillian Rhetoric.

2007-01-30T22:19:00.000Z

'On March 6, 1947, ... Winston Churchill rose to speak in the House of Commons, to denounce plans to leave India as a 'cut-and-run' philosophy he called "Operation Scuttle." "How can one suppose that the thousand-year gulf which yawns between Muslim and Hindu will be bridged[...]?... How can we walk out of India [...] and leave behind us a war between 90 million Muslims and 200 million caste Hindus? ... Let us not add--by shameful flight, by a premature, hurried scuttle--to the pangs of sorrow many of us feel, the taint and smear of shame." '

(Note: slight change in wording to make passage clearer: also, emphasis added).

The tyranny of the subeditor.

2007-01-29T08:36:00.000Z

'The problem is that Israel defines itself as a "Jewish and democratic state" -- but has not reconciled the apparent contradiction in being both "Jewish" and "democratic." In reality, Israeli Arabs are in many ways seen and treated as second-class citizens. And now, there are signs that a long-simmering tension between Israeli Arabs and Jews may be rising to a boiling point. In December, a broad coalition of Israeli Arab leaders and intellectuals published a document titled "The Future Vision of Palestinian Arabs in Israel," which called for cultural autonomy and the right to veto government decisions concerning Israeli Arabs. It also declared a vision of Israel not as a Jewish state granting them full civil rights, but as a "state of all its citizens." Unsurprisingly, the document was denounced as dangerous and treacherous by many Israeli Jews.'

Note, incidentally (as Medialens have pointed out) how the subeditor 'frames' the piece (which is actually quite good), giving it the headline 'Israel's Arab problem hits home'. Note again ' Israel's Arab Problem.'

The gospel according to Condi

2007-01-28T00:49:00.000Z

On one hand, the forces of darkness: Syria, the quasi democracy of Iran, and the political parties of Hamas and Hizbollah. On the other hand, the forces of light, human rights, feminism and democracy: Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan.

"They're broken men, so don't let them take us to a new war"

2007-01-28T00:42:00.000Z

So the hawks in the West will begin the slow drumbeat for a first strike. Indeed, it has already started. For some weeks, the Daily Telegraph has been running a series of what, in my opinion, are extremely dubious stories all attributed to mysterious 'European defence officials' and 'senior Western military sources'. A front-page story last week suggested that North Korea has offered to help Iran with a nuclear test within the year. Apart from these shadowy spokesmen, it could offer no evidence, which is why the story was only seriously picked up in Israel.

In Israel, it is believed that the Iranians may be able to launch a nuclear warhead into its territory within three, not five, years. Former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has asked who will defend the Jews from a genocidal government in Iran if they do not themselves.'

(Note: the fact that most nuclear weapons are genocidal in intent is only sayable when the nuclear weapons in question belong to 'them'. Our nuclear weapons only kill bad guys, sparing women and children).

Incidentally here is a amazing quote from that Renaissance man Benny Morris. As well as being a renowned historian Morris has also managed to teach himself the mystical art of precognition. . 'One bright morning in five to 10 years, perhaps a regional crisis, a day or a year or five years after Iran's acquisition of the bomb, the mullahs in Qom will convene in secret session... and give President Ahmadinejad the go-ahead.'

(Note that Morris is also under the impression that Ahmadinejad will still be in power in, and I quote, ten years time. Perhaps George Bush, who will, presumably, also still be in power in 10 years time, will have to take action against him?).

Iran's efforts to produce highly enriched uranium are in chao

2007-01-28T00:36:00.000Z

'Iran's efforts to produce highly enriched uranium, the material used to make nuclear bombs, are in chaos and the country is still years from mastering the required technology.Iran's uranium enrichment programme has been plagued by constant technical problems, lack of access to outside technology and knowhow, and a failure to master the complex production-engineering processes involved. The country denies developing weapons, saying its pursuit of uranium enrichment is for energy purposes.....Despite Iran being presented as an urgent threat to nuclear non-proliferation and regional and world peace - in particular by an increasingly bellicose Israel and its closest ally, the US - a number of Western diplomats and technical experts close to the Iranian programme have told The Observer it is archaic, prone to breakdown and lacks the materials for industrial-scale production.'

But the sub editor makes clear: 'Boasts of a nuclear programme are just propaganda, say insiders, but the PR could be enough to provoke Israel into war.' Note the 'provoke' as though nuking a state with no nuclear weapons (and which has no technical ability to make any anytime soon) is a reasonable response.

The endgame in Iraq that can't succeed

2007-01-26T22:42:00.000Z

'There was not a chink of light between the British and American positions in Iraq, said a White House spokesman on Wednesday night. No, indeed. What there is is growing darkness. The US President has announced a "new strategy" to send 20,000 more US troops to Iraq. No one knows whether the Senate will grant the money, what the extra troops are actually for and how long they'll be there, or whether the British are part of it or embarked on a withdrawal all of our own.

So confused is the discussion that there is now a whole new theory that the additional American forces are not there to bring security to Iraq at all. They're there to face off Iran for the moment when Washington, or more likely Jerusalem, decides to launch the bombers.'

And the winner is.....

2007-01-26T20:13:00.000Z

First, the obvious. The Iraq war is over and Iran won.

'

The Washington Post tells us two things about Iran today, one that we knew and one that we didn't. First, the obvious: "Tehran's Influence Grows as Iraqis See Advantages." Second, the secret: "Troops Authorize to Kill Iranian Operatives in Iraq." It appears, startlingly, that the US raid of an Iranian consulate and the arrest of six Iranians in northern Iraq a few weeks back was no exception. Indeed, since last summer the Administration has adopted what the Post, in a matter of understatement, called a "more confrontational approach."

On CNN on Wednesday, Wolf Blitzer asked Dick Cheney: "How worried are you of this nightmare scenario -- that the US is building up this Shiite-dominated Iraqi government with an enormous amount of military equipment, sophisticated training, and then, in the end, they're going to turn against the United States?"

Cheney replied, "Wolf, that's not going to happen."

But CNN correspondent Brian Todd reported a day later, "Several military and political analysts say it very well could." He then added: "Still, one former American military adviser says if US forces don't train the Iraqis, someone else will, namely, Iran."

Either the new Iraqi army, dominated by Shia and Kurds, aligns with Iran. Or the new Iraqi army is trained by Iran. Whichever way you look at it, Iran wins.'

It is in this context that one should interpret Bush's new plans.

(It is also the context in which the increasingly deranged ramblings of George Bush's best bitches, Olmert and Blair, should be considered).

Remember, the rules down on Animal Farm: Cowardice consists of standing up to the US. Bravery consists of getting down on your knees and taking what George has to give you.

News from Nowhere

2007-01-26T13:48:00.000Z

'Six Saudis have reportedly been jailed in connection with an attack on actors taking part in a play critical of hardline religious attitudes.

Reports from Riyadh say one person was sentenced to two months in jail, while five others received shorter sentences.

A number of others were acquitted, according to the reports, which have not been officially confirmed.

The play, in a cultural festival last November, had to be abandoned after Islamists stormed the theatre.'

Where is Tony Blair when you need him to explain that Saudi Arabia is a friend of the civilised world and that 'they have their culture, their way of life'?

Love Me I'm a Liberal

2007-01-23T10:57:00.000Z

Benny Morris: 'There is a deep problem in Islam. It's a world whose values are different. Human life doesn't have the same value as it does in the West. They are barbarians ... something like a cage has to be built for them. I know that sounds terrible. It is really cruel. But there is no choice. There is a wild animal there that has to be locked up.'

Martin Amis: 'The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order.” What sort of suffering? Not letting them travel. Deportation—further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they’re from the Middle East or from Pakistan. . . . Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community.'

Christopher Hitchens: 'This is not to deny (Mark) Steyn’s salient point that demography and cultural masochism, especially in combination, are handing a bloodless victory to the forces of Islamization. His gift for the illustrative anecdote and the revealing quotation is evident, and if more people have woken up to the Islamist menace since he began writing about it, then the credit is partly his. Muslims in one part of England demand the demolition of an ancient statue of a wild boar, and in another part of England make plots to blow up airports, buses, and subway trains. The two threats are not identical. But they are connected, and Steyn attempts to tease out the filiations with the saving tactic of wit.'

Fascinating Fact.

2007-01-23T10:52:00.000Z

Vladimir Putin is the most popular leader on Earth.

'On the evidence of comparative opinion polls, Putin is the most popular national leader alive today. Since he came to power six years ago, he has enjoyed the continuous support of over 70 per cent of his people, a record no other contemporary politician begins to approach. For comparison, Chirac now has an approval rating of 38 per cent, Bush of 36 per cent, Blair of 30 per cent.'

2007-01-22T20:05:00.000Z

Now I have hopefully got the comments sorted (I had the settings wrong...apologies for anyone who couldn't post) time for more news from hell....

But oh gosh and oh golly where to begin? With the stunning insight that Bush's 'surge' will make things worse? (Gee d'you think?) With increasing rumours of war with Iran? With the ongoing disintegration of the democracy of Lebanon? With the return of 'extremists' to power in Serbia? (Note: 'extremist nationalists' are only ever voted in to power in countries 'we' don't like. Did anyone ever describe extremist nationalist George Bush as an extremist nationalist?). Or should we highlight the news that our loyal ally Pakistan is perhaps aiding the Afghanistan insurgency? (Never forget that in the eyes of the clever white boys at the Guardian, every single one of these insurgents is a card carrying member of the Taliban. None of them have girlfriends, and they all hate gays. How do they know this and you do not? Well because they are obviously whiter and cleverer than you).

But no. I think I should greet the new year with the news that 'the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff thanked Colombia's leaders here yesterday for using their country's long experience in its counter-drug effort to help the Afghan government fight a similar battle.... Pace said Colombia has set a model for countering drug trafficking and narcoterrorism that could work for Afghanistan, too.

Under that model, Colombia's armed forces have cleared specific areas of terrorists, and the government has followed in those areas with projects that have brought electricity, water and jobs to the people, Pace said. '

Well what more do you want to know? Obviously 'we' will defeat 'Islamism' in the same way 'we' defeated drugs. Remember when people used to take drugs? Back before 'we' won the war on drugs?

Or perhaps we could use as a model Bush's war on evolution by natural selection? And when Bush won that then everything stopped evolving. Any colds or viruses you might think you have suffered from since then are nothing but a figment of your Communo-Islamist imagination. This will be the model that takes us to victory. Onwards and downwards. Semper fi. Thank you and goodnight.

Zen politics

2006-12-20T11:29:00.000Z

Like the Zen master, Bush is 'neither winning nor losing' in Iraq. And if a country disintegrates where CNN cannot report from it, do the screaming millions make a sound?

Cash for Honours

2006-12-18T10:42:00.000Z

'The Times newspaper reported on Monday that police were investigating aides to Prime Minister Tony Blair and Labour Party officials on suspicion of withholding evidence in a probe into party funding.

Prosecutors have advised detectives to look into suspected attempts to pervert the course of justice by impeding an investigation that aims to establish whether state honours were awarded by parties in return for cash, the paper said.

Blair was himself questioned by police on Thursday as a witness in the 9-month-old inquiry.

The police are still waiting to receive some emails and documents, while others have "disappeared", the Times said.

Neither Blair's Downing Street office nor the Metropolitan Police in London would comment on the report.'

The epic battle begins

2006-12-13T16:34:00.000Z

And now, the epic battle of 2008 (2009? 2010?) begins, and at last we can see what the sides will be. Sunni versus Shia. Or, to put it another way: Saudi Arabia versus Iran. Backing the anti-semitic, woman hating Saudi dictatorship: Israel, the US, Hariri Incorporated, the other little US client states of the region (Jordan, UAE, etc.). On the other side: Syria, Hizbollah, (most of) Iraq, Iran and Shias everywhere.

Sharp eyed readers (ha!) will no doubt see that this new prediction goes part of the way to explain why I was so far off in my belief that the last Israeli invasion of Lebanon would end in occupation. The answer: it didn't but the next one might.

The prize for victory: control over the entire middle east, and world oil supplies. Watching from the sidelines: China, India, South American (especially Venezuela and Brazil), Russia.

Iran

2006-12-13T16:30:00.000Z

'Iran's anti-Western President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad faces the first test of his popularity since coming to power 16 months ago with elections on Friday for local councils and a powerful clerical assembly.

The former Revolutionary Guardsman, who sparked fresh international outcry this week by hosting a conference questioning the Holocaust and by predicting Israel's imminent demise, hopes the vote will consolidate his grip on power.

But reformists, driven from elected posts in a series of elections since 2003 by conservatives allied to Ahmadinejad, are betting high voter turnout and disenchantment with rising prices for basic goods will spark a reversal in their fortunes.'

Pinochet is dead

2006-12-13T16:21:00.000Z

"This is how Pinochet tortured me: they took me prisoner with my father and my fifteen year-old brother Tato . . . it was an impressive operation [and] they took us to a house where the Military Intelligence Service was stationed.

. . . they threw me on the floor covered with water and applied electric shot to my entire body, but especially the breasts, vagina, anus, eyes, mouth, and neck.

. . . then they called my father and began to torture him in front of me so that I would speak, all the while beating me . . . then they called my brother and did that same to him.

. . . they pulled my nipples and made cuts with knives and razors. They violated my vagina with their filthy hands, bottles, fingers, sticks, things made out of metal, and then again, with electric shocks.

They took me out and pretended to shoot me.

Along with a woman who was five months pregnant, I was one of the most tortured prisoners in Tejas Verdes . . . I was left for dead. I believe many people were killed in Tejas Verdes, but I do not know how many, or their names; I was always unable to communicate.

Between the daily tortures . . . they tied me to a table, binding each hand and each foot, stretching me . . . two men would open my legs and put rats inside my vagina, all the while stretching my body."

"Former Prime Minister Baroness Thatcher is "greatly saddened" by the death of Augusto Pinochet, said a spokesman."

Press Freedom Dies in Iraq

2006-12-01T11:47:00.000Z

Doubtless many press men and women are also dying.

I blame the victims.

2006-12-01T11:40:00.000Z

'The Post story quoted Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., declaring at a recent congressional hearing, "We should put the responsibility for Iraq's future squarely where it belongs—on the Iraqis." '

Kurdistan

2006-11-30T10:30:00.000Z

Hooray for the Kurds (of Iraq). They have established a sort of de facto independence. But where they go from here on is not at all obvious. They want Kirkuk: but the Iraqis (er...I meant other Iraqis) don't want them to have it. They (probably) want Turkish Kurdistan, but Turkey doesn't want them to have it. But they can't go back. Result stasis...until something happens. But something always does.

Genius Dead

2006-11-21T20:25:00.000Z

Robert Altman is dead. And George Bush is still alive.

Altman on the film stars scared to fly after September 11: "They're so swell-headed they think they're actually targets, which they should be"

Bush defeat might make attack on Iran more, not less likely.

2006-11-21T11:07:00.000Z

"Many in the White House and the Pentagon insist that getting tough with Iran is the only way to salvage Iraq. “It’s a classic case of ‘failure forward,’” a Pentagon consultant said. “They believe that by tipping over Iran they would recover their losses in Iraq—like doubling your bet. It would be an attempt to revive the concept of spreading democracy in the Middle East by creating one new model state.”"

Sleeping With The Devil

2006-11-21T10:17:00.000Z

"Saudi Arabia sits on 25 percent of the world's proven oil reserves. Although the Saudi Kingdom has more than eighty active oil and gas fields, half of its proven reserves -- 12.5 percent of all the known oil in the world -- is contained in eight fields. "

"The Serious Fraud Office is on the brink of obtaining information from Swiss banks which may implicate the Saudi royal family in secret arms-deal commissions of more than £100m, sources close to the attorney general's office confirmed yesterday.

The SFO has been inquiring for three years, in some secrecy, into allegations of systematic corruption in international deals arranged by Britain's biggest arms company, BAE Systems".

"Saudi Arabia sees Israel as a likely ally".

News from Nowhere (well, Russia)

2006-10-26T12:21:00.000Z

From Crooked Timber.

A link to Exile

One of the better exile related newpapers/blogs/journals.

Some highlights: American journalist's use and misuse of the death of Anna Politkovskaya.

Note: these guys are nasty (especially the war nerd, Gary Brecher) but then these are nasty times in which we live.

Iraq's transition from democracy to American client state almost complete.

2006-10-23T11:08:00.000Z

"President George W Bush met his top generals to discuss the deteriorating situation in Iraq as it was reported that America is considering punishing Baghdad if it fails to meet deadlines to stop the violence.

The new policy would mark a dramatic shift from the previous position that progress could only be determined by the "situation on the ground"."

Bush takes dump on Iraq, wipes ass with the Constitution

2006-10-23T09:56:00.000Z

The Military Commisions Act (AKA 'Death of Habeas Corpus' act) 2006.

A stunning turn around

2006-10-23T09:29:00.000Z

Fascist dictator seizes power and then refuses to give it back. Whoever heard of such a thing?

Mea Culpa again

2006-10-20T16:59:00.000Z

Dedicated readers (ha ha ha) will still no doubt be waiting with baited breath for my explanation as to why I got it so wrong about the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Like most people, I expected the Israelis to win more or less immediately, and then 'ethnically cleanse' Lebanon up until to the Litani river. This may well be the final aim, and they may yet achieve it, but this seems less and less likely. Instead the Israelis (much to my surprise) met with a complete and humiliating defeat. How could I get it is so wrong? (Apart from the fact that I am stupid, of course). And how could they? (Apart from the fact that they are stupid). This article helps to explain.

same old same old

2006-10-16T07:43:00.000Z

"A commission formed to assess the Iraq war and recommend a new course has ruled out the prospect of victory for America, according to draft policy options shared with The New York Sun by commission officials.
Currently, the 10-member commission — headed by a secretary of state for President George H.W. Bush, James Baker — is considering two option papers, "Stability First" and "Redeploy and Contain," both of which rule out any prospect of making Iraq a stable democracy in the near term.
More telling, however, is the ruling out of two options last month. One advocated minor fixes to the current war plan but kept intact the long-term vision of democracy in Iraq with regular elections. The second proposed that coalition forces focus their attacks only on Al Qaeda and not the wider insurgency.
Instead, the commission is headed toward presenting President Bush with two clear policy choices that contradict his rhetoric of establishing democracy in Iraq. The more palatable of the two choices for the White House, "Stability First," argues that the military should focus on stabilizing Baghdad while the American Embassy should work toward political accommodation with insurgents. The goal of nurturing a democracy in Iraq is dropped."

They have slanted eyes and yellow skin.

2006-10-14T10:21:00.000Z

"The Foreign Ministry on Friday condemned remarks by the Israeli ambassador to Australia in which he told Haaretz that the two countries are white sisters amid "the yellow race" of Asia."If the article is accurate, this is a grave and unacceptable remark," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement. The ministry said it will not return to business as usual if an internal examination confirms that the ambassador, Naftali Tamir, in fact made the comments attributed to him.Tamir said that due to what he characterized as the racial similarities between Israel and Australia, the two countries should work together to enhance ties with other Asian countries.
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"Israel and Australia are like sisters in Asia," Tamir said in an interview with Haaretz during a visit to Israel this week. "We are in Asia without the characteristics of Asians. We don't have yellow skin and slanted eyes. Asia is basically the yellow race. Australia and Israel are not - we are basically the white race. We are on the western side of Asia and they are on the southeastern side.""

The Lancet Study

2006-10-14T09:34:00.000Z

In which numbers are bandied around, arts graduates suddenly learn statistics (almost overnight, it seems) and I get called a liar. All in under 200 posts! Read and enjoy the cut and thrust of intellectual life.

We have created a poppy field and we call it 'peace'

2006-10-13T16:53:00.000Z

"The Taliban are seen as chemotherapy".

As well as this: Jack Straw's new found feminist views should be seen in the context of the treatment of women by the occupiers.

Immortalised at last

2006-10-13T08:54:00.000Z

Their courage will never be forgotten.

Christopher HItchens to world: fuck off.

2006-10-12T18:37:00.000Z

At a dinner party: ""Fine, now that I know that, to you, medical ethics are nothing, you've told me all I need to know. I'm not trying to persuade you. Do you think I care whether you agree with me? No. I'm telling you why I disagree with you. That I do care about. I have no further interest in any of your opinions. There's nothing you wouldn't make an excuse for. You know what? I wouldn't want you on my side. I was telling you why I knew that Howard Dean was a psycho and a fraud , and you say 'That's O.K.' Fuck off. No, I mean it: fuck off. I'm telling you what I think are standards and you say, 'What standards? It's fine, he's against the Iraq War.' Fuck. Off. You're MoveOn.org. Any liar will do. He's anti-Bush. Fuck off...Save it sweetie, for someone who cares. It will not be me. You love it, you suck on it. I now know what your standards are, and now you know what mine are, and that's all the difference -- I hope -- in the world."

Here's one we broke earlier.

2006-10-12T15:11:00.000Z

Another triumph for Western diplomacy although the slavishly pro-Tony Guardian tries to make it all the fault of those beastly Serbs and not to be trusted Russians (drink too much Vodka, big beards, don't speak English, Slavic tendencies, you get the picture).

For what it's worth.

2006-10-11T14:57:00.000Z

With what seems to me to be the key point highlighted.

"I understand from a friend in Washington that, contrary to the report in The Nation that's being going round the blogs, retired Colonel Sam Gardiner does not believe an 'October surprise' military strike on Iran is imminent. Gardiner, who who has war-gamed air strikes on Iran independently of the Bush administration, thinks an attack is likely at some point before Bush leaves office; but it is still some way off. The Eisenhower carrier is going to the Gulf as part of normal rotation - to replace another big ship there that is due to return. Were it to stay on, this might be more of a sign of an early attack. With respect to the deployment orders The Nation

quotes Gardiner as referring to, these are to do with minesweepers which could be used to clear the Straits of Hormuz in the event of an attack. If they are deployed, however, it would be as an exercise in deterring the Iranians from thinking they could close the Straits, rather than a sign of war. It's forward planning, rather than the preparation of an early strike."

More regime change?

2006-10-11T09:45:00.000Z

The overthrow of tyrannies apparently having proven far too easy, what with Iraq being such a success and all, the US has now apparently moved on to overthrowing democracies: in Haiti, Venezuela and now Palestine.

Deja Vu All Over Again

2006-10-11T09:40:00.000Z

Does the 2003 revival start here?

'Deception is the norm in political life, and the hope, to say nothing of the expectation, of establishing a politics that can dispense with it is the exception.'

Also: 'Co-founded in 1995 by investigative journalist and activist Kenneth Timmerman, the Foundation (for Democracy in Iran) is among the oldest of a constellation of advocacy groups -- including the now defunct Coalition for Democracy in Iran established by Michael Ledeen, James Woolsey, and former AIPAC director Morris Amitay – that have sprung up to push a hard line on Iran. “We are not in a political debate with this regime,” Timmerman has said. “We are in the business of overthrowing them.” Timmerman’s group, like the Iran Policy Committee, supports aiding Iranian opposition groups to bring down the regime. Timmerman, according to his Web site, is also working with the families of 9/11 victims to put together a class action suit against the Iranian government “because of its direct, material involvement in the al Qaeda plot to attack America.”'

Golly.

Read the Whole Thing

2006-10-10T13:24:00.000Z

No, but really.

Like some 'best of bukkake' video, the article seems to drown the reader with money shots, but some amongst many.

'Since September 11, 2001, George W. Bush and his top officials have aggressively advanced into the world under the banner of spreading not stability, but democracy (at cruise-missile point). But they defined the freedom to vote (as the recent Palestinian elections showed) only as the freedom to vote as they wished the vote to go -- and it generally didn't. Meanwhile, at home, the Republican Party was practicing an advanced form of gerrymandering, election financing, smear advertising, and voter-suppression tactics that made a mockery of the electoral process. Everyone was to vote gloriously, but matters were to be prepared -- geographically, financially, and in terms of public opinion -- so that the vote would be nothing but a confirmation of what already was. What, after all, do you call it when, in what is considered the most wide-open election for the House of Representatives in more than a decade, only perhaps 40-50 of 435 seats are actually competitive (and that's considered extraordinary). Since 1998, 98% of House incumbents have won reelection, while in the last "open" election in 1994, when a Republican "revolution" took the House in what the New York Times calls "a seismic realignment," 91% of incumbents were nonetheless reelected. '

'Unitary Executive Theory: This isn't a theory, but a long-planned grab for tyrannical control under the President's "commander-in-chief" powers in a carefully redefined "wartime" situation that will not stop being so in our lifetimes. This "theory" was meant to give a gloss of Constitutional legality to any conceivable presidential act. What the "unitary" meant was "no room for you" when it came to Congress and the courts. The "executive" was, as former Secretary of State Colin Powell's Chief of Staff Larry Wilkinson put it, rule by a "cabal," a cult of true believers inside the presidential bubble, impermeable to outside opinion or pressure. They were eager -- when it came to torture, unlimited forms of surveillance, and the ability to define reality -- to invest individuals secretly with something like the powers of gods.'

'Regime Change, Shock and Awe, Decapitation, Cakewalk: Ah, Iraq. What a field of linguistic fantasy play for Bush administration officials. "Regime change" was the global order of the day, if that "axis of evil" (and perhaps 60 other nations rumored to harbor terrorists) didn't attend to us. "Shock and awe" was what we would bring to Iraq, thereby humbling the whole "axis of evil" in a single awesome rain of destruction from the skies. As the planet's most dazzling military power, we would then go on a "cakewalk" (a high-strutting dance) to Baghdad and beyond, reorganizing the whole Middle East to our taste. "Decapitation" would be what would happen to Saddam's regime.
Behind such words lay inside-the-Beltway dreams of absolute global domination, of imposing a planetary Pax Americana by force of arms. It was the sort of scheme that once would have been the property of some "evil empire" we stood against. Behind it all, for an administration deeply linked to the energy business, lay control over the oil heartlands of the planet, known to this administration as "the arc of instability." Oil, or what George Bush referred to before launching his invasion as "Iraq's patrimony," was of such interest that the only places our troops guarded in those first "post-war" days of looting were oil fields and the Oil Ministry building in Baghdad. Of course, what Bush and his friends succeeded in visiting on the region was ever-spreading chaos. Since 2001, in its own version of the rectification of names, the Bush administration has actually been creating a genuine "arc of instability" stretching from Central Asia to Lebanon. The grenades are indeed now in the cockpit.'

And so on.

Will he or won't he?

2006-10-10T07:34:00.000Z

Whichever way you look at it's a very interesting dilemma.

'The Nation has learned that the Bush Administration and the Pentagon have moved up the deployment of a major "strike group" of ships, including the nuclear aircraft carrier Eisenhower as well as a cruiser, destroyer, frigate, submarine escort and supply ship, to head for the Persian Gulf, just off Iran's western coast. This information follows a report in the current issue of Time magazine, both online and in print, that a group of ships capable of mining harbors has received orders to be ready to sail for the Persian Gulf by October 1.'

A brief interruption

2006-10-09T15:04:00.000Z

There will now be a brief interruption from your daily diet of news about Jade Goody, Jack Straw and the veil, Kate Moss, and just what Tom Cruise's baby really looks like, while we mention the trivial facts relating to the Abolition of Parliament Bill. Just to remind everyone that it is still overwhelmingly likely that this bill will become law sometime in 2007. Thank you. You may now return to Pop Idol and I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here!.

Prostitutes and Cheese

2006-10-01T18:22:00.000Z

"American taxpayers would be stunned to hear where their tax dollars were actually going, the CorpWatch report says: beyond being wasted on failed projects, it helped pay for "contractors' prostitutes and imported cheeses." The CorpWatch investigators spent months monitoring the flow of international funds and concluded that business-savvy representatives of donor nations rather than Afghans were the real beneficiaries."

Letter to the Editor.

2006-09-29T13:54:00.000Z

Dear Sir....

'Eugene Goodheart asks whether I am familiar with two statements he attributes to Hizbullah’s secretary-general, Sayed Hassan Nasrallah (Letters, 7 September). Goodheart uses the inflammatory quotations to accuse Nasrallah of being ‘an anti-semite with fantasies of genocide’. If I am unfamiliar with the statements, it is because they are in all likelihood fabrications. The first (‘If they [the Jews] all gather in Israel it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide’) was circulated widely on neo-con websites, which give as its original source an article by Badih Chayban in Beirut’s English-language Daily Star on 23 October 2002. It seems that Chayban left the Star three years ago and moved to Washington. The Star’s managing editor writes of Chayban’s article on Nasrallah, that ‘I have faith in neither the accuracy of the translation [from Arabic to English] nor the agenda of the translator [Chayban].’ The editor-in-chief and publisher of the Star, Jamil Mrowe, adds that Chayban was ‘a reporter and briefly local desk sub and certainly did not interview Nasrallah or anyone else.’ The account of Nasrallah’s speech in the Lebanese daily As Safir for the same day makes no reference to any anti-semitic comments. Goodheart’s second quotation – ‘They [the Jews] are a cancer which is liable to spread at any moment’ – comes from the Israeli government’s website at http://tinyurl.com/99hyz. For the record, a Hizbullah spokeswoman, Wafa Hoteit, denies that Nasrallah made either statement.
Goodheart wonders whether, as a former captive of Hizbullah, I may have succumbed to Stockholm syndrome; may I ask in return whether he is succumbing to the disinformation that passes for scholarship and journalism in certain quarters in the United States?'

Alf Garnett for President

2006-09-29T09:56:00.000Z

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush barely mentioned the war in Iraq when he met with Republican senators behind closed doors in the Capitol Thursday morning and was not asked about the course of the war, Sen. Trent Lott, R-Mississippi, said.

"No, none of that," Lott told reporters after the session when asked if the Iraq war was discussed. "You're the only ones who obsess on that. We don't and the real people out in the real world don't for the most part."

Lott went on to say he has difficulty understanding the motivations behind the violence in Iraq.

"It's hard for Americans, all of us, including me, to understand what's wrong with these people," he said. "Why do they kill people of other religions because of religion? Why do they hate the Israeli's and despise their right to exist? Why do they hate each other? Why do Sunnis kill Shiites? How do they tell the difference? They all look the same to me."

US legalises torture, disappearances. The populace yawns and reaches for the remote.

2006-09-29T09:47:00.000Z

Gosh isn't this like anti-democratic or something?

'The Senate approved legislation this evening governing the interrogation and trials of terror suspects, establishing far-reaching new rules in the definition of who may be held and how they should be treated....The legislation sets up rules for the military commissions that will allow the government to prosecute high-level terrorists including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, considered the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. It strips detainees of a habeas corpus right to challenge their detentions in court and broadly defines what kind of treatment of detainees is prosecutable as a war crime.' (note: the answer to the question 'what kind of treatment' seems to be 'any kind we goddamn want')

Things can only get better....oh they just have.

2006-09-21T17:21:00.000Z

Orwell wrote occasionally about the 'cognitive dissonance' he felt between his own subjective feelings that the world was going to hell in a handbasket, and the objective data you get from statistics which showed that the world is actually getting better. And I feel much the same. Despite the horrors of Iraq and Afghanistan, the unctuous lies of New Labour and the terrifying fact that George Bush is not yet in jail (and might never be...gulp), we have to remember a few simple facts.

'Despite the daily headlines about violence and death in Iraq, Darfur and elsewhere, the statistics suggest that in many ways the world is a safer place now than in 1956. The number of conflicts around the globe has been dropping more or less steadily since the second world war.
According to the Human Security Report, an exhaustive round-up published by the Canadian-based Human Security Centre, even since 1992 the number of wars has dropped by more than 40%.
Still more dramatically, the average number of battle-deaths per conflict per year - a measure of the deadliness of warfare - has plummeted from 38,000 in 1950 to just 600 in 2002.'

What is interesting is that I am not alone in my believe that Oh Christ we're all going to die screaming.

'According to a new survey almost three-quarters of Britons think the world is a more dangerous, war-like place than it was 50 years ago.

Conducted to mark the UN Peace Day today, the poll found 74% of the public believes the globe is more violent now than it was in 1956 while 63% think the situation will get worse in the next 50 years.'

It is worth while having a sense of proportion and remembering who would benefit if it was widely believed that we live in a uniquely violent age (which is to say an age in which old fashioned things like freedom of speech and habeas corpus might have to be dispensed with).

The window period

2006-09-19T08:58:00.000Z

Bush has a window period: well, actually, he has two. The first one is between now and the elections. The second is between now and when, finally, he leaves office. The question is: how much chaos can he cause in the remaining time left to him? It is no great secret that Bush is itching to invade Iran. The question is: will he succeed (does he have the 'political capital') in doing so? Up until about a week or so ago, I thought the answer was 'no'.
But then I read this. (via Atrios) Hey there's life in the old dog yet!

Memento mori and all that.

2006-09-11T09:46:00.000Z

Because it will annoy people who deserve to be annoyed.

'You trip over one fundamental idiocy of the 9/11 conspiracy nuts -- -- the ones who say Bush and Cheney masterminded the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon -- in the first paragraph of the opening page of the book by one of their high priests, David Ray Griffin, The New Pearl Harbor. “In many respects,” Griffin writes, “the strongest evidence provided by critics of the official account involves the events of 9/11 itself… In light of standard procedures for dealing with hijacked airplanes… not one of these planes should have reached its target, let alone all three of them.”
The operative word here is “should”. One characteristic of the nuts is that they have a devout, albeit preposterous belief in American efficiency, thus many of them start with the racist premise that “Arabs in caves” weren’t capable of the mission. They believe that military systems work the way Pentagon press flacks and aerospace salesmen say they should work. They believe that at 8.14 am, when AA flight 11 switched off its radio and transponder, an FAA flight controller should have called the National Military Command center and NORAD. They believe, citing reverently (this is from high priest Griffin) “the US Air Force’s own website”, that an F-15 could have intercepted AA flight 11 “by 8.24, and certainly no later than 8.30”.
They appear to have read no military history, which is too bad because if they did they’d know that minutely planned operations – let alone responses to an unprecedented emergency -- screw up with monotonous regularity, by reason of stupidity, cowardice, venality, weather and all the other whims of providence.
According to the minutely prepared plans of the Strategic Air Command, an impending Soviet attack would have prompted the missile silos in North Dakota to open, and the ICBMs to arc towards Moscow and kindred targets. The tiny number of test launches actually attempted all failed, whereupon SAC gave up testing. Was it badly designed equipment, human incompetence, defense contractor venality or… CONSPIRACY? (In that case, presumably, a Communist conspiracy, as outlined by ancestors of the present nuts, ever intent on identifying those who would stab America in the back.) ...

As discussed in Wayne Barrett and Dan Collin’s excellent book Grand Illusion, about Rudy Giuliani and 9/11, helicopter pilots radioed warnings nine minutes before the final collapse that the South Tower might well go down and, repeatedly, as much as 25 minutes before the North Tower’s fall.
What Barrett and Collins brilliantly show are the actual corrupt conspiracies on Giuliani’s watch: the favoritism to Motorola which saddled the firemen with radios that didn’t work; the ability of the Port Authority to skimp on fire protection, the mayor’s catastrophic failure in the years before 9/11/2001 to organize an effective unified emergency command that would have meant that cops and firemen could have communicated; that many firemen wouldn’t have unnecessarily entered the Towers; that people in the Towers wouldn’t have been told by 911 emergency operators to stay in place; and that firemen could have heard the helicopter warnings and the final Mayday messages that prompted most of the NYPD men to flee the Towers.
That’s the real political world, in which Giuliani and others have never been held accountable. The nuts disdain the real world because, like much of the left and liberal sectors, they have promoted Bush, Cheney and the Neo-Cons to an elevated status as the Arch Demons of American history, instead of being just one more team running the American empire, a team of more than usual stupidity and incompetence (characteristics I personally favor in imperial leaders.) The Conspiracy Nuts have combined to produce a huge distraction, just as Danny Sheehan did with his Complaint, that mesmerized and distracted much of the Nicaraguan Solidarity Movement in the 1980s, and which finally collapsed in a Florida courtroom almost as quickly as the Towers. '

Turning and Turning in the Widening Gyre.....

2006-09-07T14:07:00.000Z

THE future of Iraq as a sovereign nation has been jeopardised with the introduction to parliament of a new law that would enable the country to break up into semi-autonomous regions.
If passed, a self-ruling Shiite state is likely to emerge in the south, based on the autonomous region that Kurds have established in the north.
The Shiite state would not only be able to levy its own taxes and govern itself but, Shiite politicians say, it would have its own armed guards along its borders. Iraq's Sunnis, most of who bitterly oppose the law, have warned it would mark the first step in the break-up of the country and could lead to the south of Iraq becoming a satellite of Iran.
The introduction of the law was marked by a plea from the Speaker of parliament that delegates must compromise and find agreement on the prospect of federalism, otherwise the country risked not only collapsing but descending into anarchy.
"We have three to four months to reconcile with each other," said Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, a Sunni. "If the country does not survive this it will go under."

Mea Culpa

2006-09-05T10:02:00.000Z

Yeah I know I haven't posted for ages, but I have been planning a long ish post about why my predictions about the Israel-Lebanon situation were so catastrophically inaccurate, and yet, (in typical dishonest blogger stylee) basically right after all. So again, apologies.

Meanwhile mull over this:

'THREATENED by a potentially nuclear-armed Tehran, Israel is preparing for a possible war with both Iran and Syria, according to Israeli political and military sources.
The conflict with Hezbollah has led to a strategic rethink in Israel. A key conclusion is that too much attention has been paid to Palestinian militants in Gaza and the West Bank instead of the two biggest state sponsors of terrorism in the region, who pose a far greater danger to Israel’s existence, defence insiders say...Advocates of political engagement believe a war with Syria could unleash Islamic fundamentalist terror in what has hitherto been a stable dictatorship. Some voices in the Pentagon are not impressed by that argument.
“If Syria spirals into chaos, at least they’ll be taking on each other rather than heading for Jerusalem,” said one insider. '

Yes Mr Insider, you are clearly a strategic genius. Why on earth would you not want to put your name to that insightful analysis? Stupid bastard.

Excellent post on the non photo scandal

2006-08-12T10:43:00.000Z

Jim Lewis nails it.

'Two days ago, the AP got caught sending out a crudely—and nonsensically—altered photo of an Alaskan oil pipeline worker; last month, the Charlotte Observer fired a photographer for changing the color of the sky in a picture of a firefighters; the same week, the Spanish-language edition of the Miami Herald acknowledged that a picture of prostitutes in Havana had been cobbled together from two different shots; in 2003 the Los Angeles Times sacked a photographer for combining two pictures from Iraq, taken moments apart, into one. In fact, it's beginning to look as if every major institution that prints photos has printed doctored or manipulated photos: Time and Newsweek, the New York Times and USA Today, Harvard University and Science magazine, and the 2004 Bush campaign. (There's a good rogue's gallery here.) Some of these were quite serious attempts to mislead the public, and some were relatively trivial, but all of them undermine the public's trust in the reality of photographs. And so much the better, because that trust is badly misplaced....What, after all, do we believe when we believe that a photograph is true? That it mimics what we would see with our own eyes, if we were standing where the camera was placed? But a camera sees quite differently: For one thing, to take only the most obvious features, photos are rectangular, whereas the human eye's visual field is an ovoid blob. Moreover, "normal" vision is roughly equivalent to what you get from a 35 mm camera lens set somewhere between 42 mm and 50 mm zoom. Anything longer than that shows details no human eye could see; anything shorter shows an unnaturally broad vista. And cameras are notoriously crude when it comes to dynamic range: Highlights get blasted and dark areas become muddy. Can we countenance using Photoshop to draw otherwise invisible details out of shadows (a correction it can make almost magically, with two mouse clicks), so a photo better approximates what an eyewitness would have perceived? How far can we take this? What about using zoom and contrast enhancement, Blowup-style, to reveal elements that would be lost to the naked eye? Should that be prohibited? As far as I can tell, the news world's answer is, "Maybe. Sometimes." Then maybe we should ban photos taken through microscopes. And so you see how quickly this criterion fails.'

I would really have thought that after 25 years of the attack on 'realism' by French post-structuralists amongst many others, we would all have realised by now that photographs do not in any sense provide a neutral 'window' into the world. All photography is selection, is artifice. And all photographers do it. Get real.

Genocide watch

2006-08-10T15:47:00.000Z

One in an occasional series in which members of the American Right call for the extermination of every last Muslim man, woman and child. Perhaps they hate their freedoms.

'"The depth of the Moslem world's failure to adjust to modernity, the profundity of its need for scapegoats, the seeming boundlessness of its willingness to accept the death and destruction of its own in exchange for the 'honor' of 'revenge,' are difficult for Americans to acknowledge."
"Meanwhile, short of a preemptive war, Iran is bound to get the bomb."
"The entire Western world now stands in a position roughly analogous to that of Israel: locked in an essentially permanent struggle with a foe it is impossible either to placate, or to entirely destroy — a foe who demands our own destruction, and whose problems are so deep they would not be solved even by victory."
"The West is on a collision course with Iran."
Stanley Kurtz ROCKS. If you didn't read his "Hawkish Gloom" piece on yesterday's NRO (from which all the above quotes are taken), go read it now. Then, read it again. Read the links too.
Stanley's notion of the Israelization of the West — the slow change of opinion here from deep dove-hawk, lib-con differences to a glum, grim, pessimistic consensus, is spot on.
I only wonder — as of course I would — if Stanley is gloomy enough. There is a nightmare here, lurking just out of sight behind all the thoughts and articles of the gloomy-cons. The nightmare is so appalling to any civilized person I cannot bring myself to mention it. I'll just call it the g-word. Us or them. Please may it not come to that. I need a cup of coffee. '

Me too.

Alternatively.........

2006-08-10T11:06:00.000Z

There are a number of dates coming up for you all to put in your diaries that are of cardinal importance in the way that things go in the Middle East. Needless to say, if we make it to Christmas then we should probably make it to Summer 2007, although strikes on Iran in the Autumn of that year are not out of the question.

Nevertheless, I still think that we are rapidly approaching the most dangerous period right now. Dates to remember, therefore: August 22nd (see below). Labour Party Conference 24-28 September. It is highly unlikely that Blair will want Israeli/US strikes on Iran going on while his conference goes down the toilet around him. Therefore, either he will want the strikes before this (unlikely, given the risk of escalation) or afterwards. Which brings us to October. And then November when there are the 7th November elections: Senate and Representatives. Bush is unlikely to do well in these elections (unless something happens.....) and this might leave him as a 'lame duck' president, his ability to act severely curtailed. Therefore he will either want to get what he wants done, done by then, or he will try and ensure that he does well in these elctions.

So October is the month (especially the last two weeks). This will also give him all of September to try and get a Security Council resolution against Iran, and Lebanon might well be spinning completely out of control by that time.

Therefore.....

(since) 'the Bush administration retains the fundamental belief that Iran simply cannot be allowed to have even the technical capability of diverting resources from civil to military nuclear programmes. That remains the bottom line and should never be underestimated.
Second, it is probable that by the end of 2006 the Iranians will have moved towards a fully-fledged pilot-scale uranium enrichment capability at Natanz, while the Bushehr nuclear reactor may be ready for fuelling. These developments may still be within the terms of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and under the eyes of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors; they may not involve any moves towards producing nuclear weapons; but they will almost certainly take Iran further than the Bush administration is prepared to allow.
Third, the US political leadership, especially in the form of the office of the vice-president, may consider that a concerted US military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities is likely to be highly effective in the short term (in a similar way to the termination of the Saddam Hussein regime, with George W Bush's "mission accomplished" speech following three weeks later).
Iran certainly does have a wide variety of opportunities to retaliate - in Iraq, the Gulf and Afghanistan for a start - but these would take weeks and months, rather than days, to develop. It follows that the most likely period for US military action would be in late October, just before the mid-term elections. The scenario would be of US attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities, declarations of success, plenty of TV footage of destroyed nuclear plant, and a "mission accomplished" speech -all in the space of a week or so, culminating in the elections. It is, in (Republican) political terms, a seductive prospect.'

This is the sort of stuff that the Americans are being fed.

2006-08-10T10:00:00.000Z

All eyes turn to August 22nd. The month following this could be one of the most dangerous for the world since the Russian invasion of Afghanistan.

'Is Iran planning an apocalyptic strike against Israel and/or the United States for August 22? If so, what should the U.S. do to protect Americans and our ally? Such questions are worrying a growing number of officials in the White House, at the CIA, and at the Pentagon, and for good reason. '

Etc. etc. etc.

The author is: 'a one-time aide to former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Deputy Prime Minister Natan Sharansky, (and) a New York Times best-selling author of Middle East-based political thrillers. His new novel is The Copper Scroll. His forthcoming non-fiction book is entitled Epicenter: Why The Current Rumblings In The Middle East Will Change Your World.'

Nasarallah speaks.

2006-08-09T21:48:00.000Z

'I say to the Zionists, I hope they can still hear me under the recent utter control of the media means: you are the victims, likewise the Lebanese and Palestinians, of a complex that exists at your Prime Minister Olmert. What is this complex? Everyone pays the cost of this complex. Olmert wants to prove that he is a great leader, and that he is like Sharon, Rabin, and the historic leaders that ruled this usurping entity. In this domain, I can say that he succeeded in one issue and failed in another. He succeeded in being like Sharon, Rabin, Begin, and those resembling them, when he perpetrated the massacres and the daily killing of women and children as well as destroying the houses in Palestine and Lebanon. Yes, I acknowledge this issue for him in this field; he is no lesser than them regarding this field.

On the other hand, regarding the field of the political command, military conception, administration, and performance, until now, he [Olmert] has proven that he is the most failure (sic), hopeless and stupid Prime Minister ever to rule the entity of the Zionist enemy....

[However, despite this] I want to be very clear. The killings, massacres, destruction, atrocities and barbarism that have taken place since the first day of the war and continue to be, Bush and his US administration are the first ones to be blamed. In our opinion, Olmert and his government are mere executive tools of this war. I want to stress on this meaning and say that the blood of the women and children in Qana as well as the blood of all the old people and innocent civilians whose blood was shed in Lebanon are tainting the faces of Bush, Rice, Rumsfeld, Cheney and this US administration. This administration is the assassin, murderer and assailant. Until now, this administration has been thwarting all attempts to stop the aggression and it is designing the terms and trying to dictate these terms. This issue must be clear to each Lebanese, each Moslem and Christian, and each noble person in this world. We are explaining this issue to eliminate any confusion.

I repeat to all Lebanese, today we are at war; but the war ends and it will end. I do not want you to ever forget that this US administration, the friend, ally and love of Lebanon, whose heart is aching for the nation of Lebanon and wants it to live in an oasis of security and peace, and wants it to be a democratic example in this region, this US administration may become the gamble of some people in the future, knowing that it has been the gamble of some people in the past. I hope that we will never forget this issue for our coming days, months and years. At this point, I want to confirm, regardless of the outcomes of this war, Lebanon will never be American or Israeli. Lebanon will never be part of the New Middle East which Bush seeks with Rice.'

Further comment would be superfluous

2006-08-09T11:59:00.000Z

But safey to say that the following will happen in the next few months.

1: There will be no ceasefire in Lebanon.

2: The Israelis will occupy and begin to ethnically cleanse Lebanon up to the Litani river.

3: Iran and Syria's economies will become more and more entwined with Hizbollah (as Hizbollah will shortly begin to run out of ammunition and rockets, it will need resupplying from these two countries: specifically Iran. It will also need more money to pay feed and pay its fighters).

4. With the rest of the international community increasingly outraged at the behaviour of Israel, the US (and Britain) will become increasingly close to Israel (this is the meaning of Blair's constant reiterations that he will not leave office for another year. Blair will not leave office until Bush's plans for the Middle East have progressed to the point where there is no stopping them).

5: This will end in an attack on Iran by the US by 2008 at the latest.

Dan Plesch points out the obvious:

'American intentions towards Iran are fairly clear. If diplomacy and sanctions fail to halt Iran's nuclear ambitions then military force must be used. No one should be shocked that William Kristol, the neoconservative leader, has already called for a military strike on Iran in response to Hizbullah's attack on Israel.
Seymour Hersh's articles (for the New Yorker) claim that President Bush ordered war against Iran shortly after the President's re-election in 2004. His claim that Bush is determined not to leave Iran to a future president and that he has support from leading Democrats is born out by numerous conversations I have had with colleagues in Washington. As a senior staffer to Senator Kerry put it: "why should people object if we carry out disarmament militarily?"
There are plenty more reports that war with Iran is either underway or in preparation.'

The truth will set you free

2006-08-08T10:17:00.000Z

Which is why they will never let you have it. Anyway. I dislike 'monocausal' explanations of complex phenomena: and the current invasion of Lebanon by the US/Israel is a case in point. It is obvious what the US gets out of it: Iraq swept off the front pages, Iran 'weakened' (assuming of course that Hizbollah is indeed being seriously hurt), the beginning of serious military movies against Iran and Syria, which paves the way for direct military action against them (Iran at least) by 2008 at the latest. But what does Israel get out of this? The key point that must be understood is that Israel is an imperialist power: it desires more land than it has. In world terms of course, the land it seeks is not a huge amount, but that's not the point. The point is that Israel covets the West Bank (amongst other places). And one of the other places it seeks is South Lebanon.

'Officially, Israel's ground invasion of Lebanon is an act of self-defense against Hezbollah's threat, aimed at creating a security buffer zone until the arrival of a "multinational force with an enforcement capability". But increasingly, as the initial goal of a narrow strip of only a few kilometers has now been extended up to the Litani River deep in Lebanon, the real motives behind Israel's invasion are becoming crystal-clear. It's about (de facto) annexation, stupid. This is a war to annex a major chunk of Lebanese territory without necessarily saying so, under the pretext of security buffer and deterrence against future attacks on Israel. Already, since the Six Day War, Israel has annexed the Sheba Farms, considered part of the Syrian Golan Heights, although the government of Lebanon has long complained that the 25-square-kilometer area was a part of Lebanon. Now the Israeli army is sweeping the area south of the Litani River as a temporary occupation. '

Make no mistake. The reason that the South Lebanese had leaflets dropped on them, encouraging them to move, was not to protect their lives. It was to tell them to get out of South Lebanon. This is ethnic cleansing. And the parallels are obvious: not just with the German seizure of the Sudetenland, but with the Serbian (Yugoslavian) desire to hold on to Kosova and the Russian desire to hold onto Chechnya. In all three cases, despite the pretexts, the key point is that the imperialist power intends to have 'hegenomy' (which may or may not amount to annexation) permanently.

If Hezbollah is defeated, then Israel will get away with it, and it won't stop there. That will be the effective end of the idea of a Palestinian state.

What a great example this sets

2006-08-08T09:46:00.000Z

Turkey said yesterday that Israel's action in Lebanon to stop Hezbollah attacks meant it should be allowed to take similar steps against Kurdish guerrillas operating from northern Iraq against its forces.
Despite strong opposition from America, its military is now drawing up plans for either an air or ground assault. "Whatever step needs to be taken will be taken," the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said.
Fifteen Turkish soldiers, police, and security guards have been killed in the southeast of the country in the last week in clashes with fighters from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
It has long been a concern in Turkey that the growth of Kurdish nationalism in northern Iraq, where the country's instability has permitted a Kurdish semiautonomous state to assume near independence, would inflame Kurdish radicals inside Turkey's borders.
Already this year has seen at least 87 PKK rebels and 51 members of the Turkish security forces killed. A similar rise in attacks by Kurdish armed groups targeting Iran's Kurdish regions resulted in Iranian troops crossing the border earlier this year to wipe out guerrilla bases in northern Iraq.
So far American concern that any armed intervention by Turkey would only destabilize Iraq's north, at present by far the most peaceful part of the country, has prevented similar action being conducted by Turkey, a military ally as a member of NATO.
There would also be strong opposition to an attack from within the European Union, which Turkey hopes to join. The European Union has encouraged the government in Ankara to be as inclusive as possible toward its Kurdish minority as an element of its preparation for talks on E.U. entry.
Any military incursion into Iraq would come at a time when Turkey's prospective accession to the European Union is under particular scrutiny.
But Israel's attacks in Lebanon have led to new demands by the Turkish government that it be allowed to follow suit if American and Iraqi forces do not act quickly against the Kurdish guerrillas, who are believed to be based in northern Iraq's rugged Qandil mountains.
The intervention plans are reported to range from limited artillery barrage and airstrikes to attacks by commando forces.'

Blair's Wars

2006-08-07T15:38:00.000Z

Who to blame in this nightmare? The Israelis? Perhaps. But who enables the Israeli economy to function? Who 'sells' them weapons (actually since US 'aid' is actually almost all spent on US weaponry, in effect Israel gets the weapons for free)? And those with whom the Israelis discuss their foreign policy, and without whose 'green light' there would BE no foreign policy?

This is why calls for a boycott of Israel is so pointless and beside the point. So what if a boycott begins? The Israeli economy is so tightly bound up with the US economy (in a way the South African economy wasn't) that an financial shortfall can easily be made up by the US.

Which brings us (by a slightly circuitous route) to little Tony Blair. What role does he play in all these actions of Empire?

'Israel's assault on Lebanon is, in many respects, as disastrous as the war in Iraq. But at least then the pre-war hubris and deceit were played out in parliament and at the UN. This latest act of folly took place suddenly, with only the barest of attempts to justify it to global public opinion. And it stems from the core Middle East problem: the decades-old conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians. I am told that the Israelis informed George W Bush in advance of their plans to "destroy" Hezbollah by bombing villages in southern Lebanon. The Americans duly informed the British. So Blair knew. This exposes as a fraud the debate of the past week about calling for a ceasefire. Indeed, one of the reasons why negotiations failed in Rome was British obduracy. This has been a case not of turning a blind eye and failing to halt the onslaught, but of providing active support. Blair, like Bush, had no intention of urging the Israelis to slow down their bombardment, believing somehow that this struggle was winnable. Israel has a right to self-defence, but it could have responded to the seizure of its soldiers, and to the rocket attacks, by the diplomatic route. That would have ensured greater sympathy. Now, growing numbers in Israel itself realise that military action will bring no long-term solution.'

Certainly true. But it will have consequences, which will not be good for Britain, the US, Israel, Lebanon or the Middle East as whole.

Incidentally: 'A record of conflict: the death toll from wars Britain has fought under Tony Blair: 71, 617 deaths in 9 years in power'. (note: this is the absolute minimum number: some estimates of fatalities from Iraq go far higher).

The horror....the horror.....

2006-08-06T13:01:00.000Z

Short but essential post on Charlie Wilson's Little War (soon to be a major motion picture! With Tom Hanks!). As seems to be the case with everything in US history, it's all much worse than you could possibly imagine. The book is here, for those of you for whom Wolf Creek just wasn't gory, frightening, bleak and depressing enough.

Paranoid lunacy from Ha'aretz

2006-08-05T10:25:00.000Z

Well if the Guardian once gave a comment slot to Osama Bin Laden, then I suppose Ha'aretz is entitle to give a slot to this guy.

'Now we are in the midst of the storm. The second Lebanon war sometimes looks like a repeat of the past, but in truth it is the flash of the future. An Iranian Cuba was established on our northern border. If the Iranian Cuba is not disarmed, it will threaten us continuously and intolerably. However, our present effort to disarm the Iranian Cuba looks more and more like the Bay of Pigs fiasco.'

It has been obvious for some years that many Americans (mainly in Congress) are under the strange misapprehension that they live in Israel. It now seems that many Israelis are under the equally strange misapprehension that they live in the United States, or, even more interestingly, that Israel is actually a part of the United States. Just as, therefore, the terrified masses of the US live in fear of the inevitably onslaught from Castro's mighty military machine, it now seems that Israelis now live in fear of the massed hordes of Hizbollah, which has well over 3,000 fighters. Over 3,000! Just imagine. That's as many as demonstrated in favour of Iceland in May! In the demonstration that shook the world! Frightening stuff.

I have no idea if this is made up or not

2006-08-03T10:27:00.000Z

But if it's true, it brings new meaning to the tag line of the joke 'Someone who makes you an offer you can't understand'*. Or in this case, 'our demands are opaque and incomprehensible, and if you don't meet them immediately we will kill you (or 'deconstruct you').

*(The joke is, what do you get if you cross a continental theorist with the Mafia?)

Vicious Palestinian protesters

2006-08-03T10:14:00.000Z

Adopting a brutal campaign of whining and pleading against peace loving armed Israel soldiers, callously allow themselves to be shot and (tear) gassed in order to make propaganda points.

I don't agree with all of this

2006-08-02T15:34:00.000Z

But it has three killer paragraphs that are worth highlighting. They make three key points.

Point one: The shifting (and shrinking) 'goals' of the invasion.

' The campaign's goals have been reduced and shrunk during these three weeks. From restoring Israel's power of deterrence, eliminating Hezbollah, and disarming it immediately -- after three weeks we have arrived at the present goal, which is the dismantling of the forward outposts of Hezbollah and the deployment of an international force to defend the North of Israel from the possibility of a repeat attack. '

Point two: the demolition of the reputation of the IDF.

'Is this how we are restoring the IDF's power of deterrence? Haven't we accomplished exactly the opposite? Hasn't it become clear to the entire world that our "invincible" air force not only failed for three weeks to end the barrage of rockets, but also even needs an emergency airlift of war materiel, as during the 1973 Yom Kippur War?'

And point three: the real killer....the nature of the 'threat'.

' If several thousand guerrilla fighters do constitute an existential danger to a country with a strike force and weaponry that are unparalleled in this part of the world, how is it that during the past five or six years we heard nothing to that effect from government leaders? '

Is anyone seriously suggesting.........?

2006-08-01T13:08:00.000Z

Is anyone seriously suggesting, even in a fantasy, that if the IDF had kidnapped two members of the Lebanese Army (perhaps who were working with Hizbollah....they do that you know) then Lebanon would have been justified in invading Israel?

Does Lebanon have a right to self-defence?

Why secular democrats should support Hizbollah.........

2006-08-01T08:55:00.000Z

Ermm....ok not the most intuitive of headlines but bear with me. The question: why should secular, non anti-semitic non-nationalists support an anti-semitic extremist party like Hizbollah, at least in the current conflict? The answer is not simple, but makes sense. When you think it through.

'If Hezbollah can fight Israel to a standstill or withstand its bombardment with much of its weaponry intact, it will be strengthened within the Lebanese political establishment.
Ironically that will allow the Saniora government -- no real friend to Hezbollah -- to push Israel and the United States for a comprehensive agreement between the various parties, which could include the release of prisoners and an Israeli withdrawal from Chebaa farms, a tiny strip of land captured from Syria in 1967, but which Hezbollah and Berri say are occupied Lebanese land. The territory is often cited by Hezbollah as proof that Lebanon is still occupied and that Hezbollah's resistance wing is still necessary.
With such a deal in hand, the interrupted political process of transitioning Hezbollah to a mainstream political party could continue, its dignity intact and its mission to liberate all of Lebanon completed.

If Hezbollah is defeated, however, any deal -- which almost certainly would include the disarmament of Hezbollah as called for in United Nations' Security Council Resolution 1559 -- will be seen as being imposed by outsiders and would threaten Saniora's government by allowing Hezbollah to paint it as a puppet in the service of Lebanon's enemies. '

So: if Hizbollah wins we have at least the chance of a just fair peace on the Lebanon/Israeli border, the disarmament of Hizbollah (remember the message of the IRA disarmament: paramilitary groups will only disarm from a position of strength) and peace in the region. If Israel wins on the other hand we have the possibility of civil war, and the increased possibility of a wider conflagration in the region. It's as simple as that.

All true friends of Israel should be hoping and praying that Israel 'loses' (i.e. does not win) in this battle, or the next stage will be even less pleasant.

Josh Marshall gets it right

2006-07-31T12:24:00.000Z

In this post here.

' There are persistent signs that the US is egging Israel on to bring the war to Damascus....

And there are other ominous indications of the US pressing for expansion the Israelis don't seem to want.

There's more here than the US not wanting a ceasefire before meaningful changes on the ground have happened in south Lebanon. Or at least I fear there is. This started because Israel doesn't want and won't tolerate a menacing militia building up on their northern border and lashing out with occasional raids or missile attacks, especially in the context of withdrawals from other areas.

The world has sat by for six years and let Hizbullah's anamolous position in south Lebanon be Israel's problem. Whether their response was wise or just, I'll set aside for the moment. It's not about totalitarianism or Afghanistan or Iraq, at least not in an operational sense, or dingbat fantasies about Freedom and Terror. But there do appear to be forces in Washington -- seemingly the stronger ones, with Rice just a facade -- who see this whole thing as an opportunity for a grand call of double or nothing to get out of the disaster they've created in the region. Go into Syria, maybe Iran. Try to roll the table once and for all. No failed war that a new war can't solve. Condi's mindless 'birth pangs' remark wasn't just a gaffe -- or perhaps it was a gaffe in the Kinsleyan sense of inopportunely saying what you really think. That seems to be the thinking -- transformation through destabilization.'

So to qualify my last post: the current invasion of Lebanon is not really about Lebanon, and it never was. It is not about Hezbollah and it never was. It is about Iran and Syria. End of story.

No fucking shit, sherlock

2006-07-30T11:31:00.000Z

The L.A. Times has the stunning insight that 'Iran Is Bush's Target in Lebanon'

'To President Bush, the conflict in Lebanon is more than a campaign by Israel to protect its citizens from Hezbollah missiles. Instead, it is "a moment of opportunity" for the United States — with the most important target not Hezbollah or even neighboring Syria, but distant Iran.

When Bush talks publicly about the 18-day-old campaign, he often makes the point of blaming Iran, one of Hezbollah's main sponsors. Aides say that's a reflection of what he has said in private: that Israel's battle with Hezbollah is merely part of a larger struggle between the U.S. and Iran for influence across the Middle East.'

Etc. etc. etc.

Why Hizbollah is winning

2006-07-29T11:58:00.000Z

Which, remarkably enough, is very similar to why American is losing in Iraq, too.

'Bombing people causes overwhelming anger at the bombers. It is the triumph of hope over experience that Israeli bombs dropping on Lebanese people will cause them to be angry at Hezbollah rather than the Israelis.

Both politically and militarily, Israel seems to be making this up as it goes along. Maybe that’s why Charles Krauthammer said on the “Beltway Boys” last night that Israel seems not yet to have implemented a strategy.

But Hezbollah has. Like Robert E. Lee fighting U.S. Grant, Hezbollah wins as long as it doesn’t lose. Conversely, Israel loses if it does not win. Today, sixteen days into the war, Israel has carried the fight into Hezbollah’s territory, but is not making obvious progress on the ground. Israel has wreaked incredible destruction upon Lebanon’s infrastructure, but there is no obvious connection between the deep air campaign and the progress, or lack of it, on the ground.

Christ we're all fucking doomed

2006-07-27T16:20:00.000Z

Unless the flying spaghetti monster will come to save us.

'With Kyra Phillips's discussion of the Apocalypse and the Middle East conflict with Christian authors Jerry Jenkins and Joel C. Rosenberg -- who share the view that the Rapture is nigh -- CNN has, for the second time in three days, featured a segment on the potential coming of the Apocalypse, as indicated by current conflicts in the Middle East.'

The Middle East is South America

2006-07-27T16:12:00.000Z

....in the '50s and '60s. The whole region is run by the United States (a 'sphere of influence') who took over from the British. The current situation there cannot be understood unless it is seen that the Americans talk of democracy is a sham and a lie.

'The recent support of the US government for the death and destruction in Lebanon does not come as a surprise. Nor is it a surprise to see the silence of the European governments (especially UK). What is surprising, however, is the belief that the Arab streets still do not matter...Where does the US think the Al Qaeda fighters and supporters come from? From the country of Al Qaeda-istan? It is also a folly to rely on Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan to keep the people under control. These countries’ rulers are part of the problem rather than the solution. In Saudi Arabia, the House of Saud rules like an old feudal lord. In Egypt, the President-for-Life Husni Mubarak crushes all dissent and is planning to install his son in power. In Jordan, King Abdollah II appoints and dismisses prime ministers and ministers. ...The people in these countries are fed-up with totalitarian and corrupt regimes. It is no wonder that Al Qaeda’s money, leadership and top lieutenants come mainly from these three countries. The people, rightly or wrongly, see the US support of these regimes as the source of their problems and constant humiliation....The Arabs should know that they can not rely on US for democratic change. The constant talk about democracy coming out of Washington is for US public consumption and not the Arab people. The Arabs have to rely on themselves and not wait for external help otherwise they will wait for another 50 years. Perhaps Arabs should listen to what Malcolm X said in 1965: “Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you're a man, you take it.”'

The biggest surprise of all!

2006-07-24T13:04:00.000Z

'The Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, meets Tony Blair in London today as violence in Iraq reaches a new crescendo and senior Iraqi officials say the break up of the country is inevitable.
A car bomb in a market in the Shia stronghold of Sadr City in Baghdad yesterday killed 34 people and wounded a further 60 and was followed by a second bomb in the same area two hours later that left a further eight dead. Another car bomb outside a court house in Kirkuk killed a further 20 and injured 70 people.
"Iraq as a political project is finished," a senior government official was quoted as saying, adding: "The parties have moved to plan B." He said that the Shia, Sunni and Kurdish parties were now looking at ways to divide Iraq between them and to decide the future of Baghdad, where there is a mixed population. "There is serious talk of Baghdad being divided into [Shia] east and [Sunni] west," he said. '

Tra la la. Still as long as we are spreading democracy in the middle east.

Meanwhile, Iraq teeters on the brink

2006-07-24T09:23:00.000Z

'The Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, left Baghdad yesterday for talks with Tony Blair and George Bush about deteriorating security, on a day when more than 60 people died in bomb attacks.
The US and Iraqi forces are to pour more troops into the capital over the next few weeks to shore up Mr Maliki's high-profile security clampdown, which has so far failed to reduce violence. Bombs in the main Shia district of Baghdad killed 42 civilians, while a blast in the northern city of Kirkuk killed at least 20.
Mr Maliki, who became prime minister two months ago, has said his government represents the last chance for Iraq. The Foreign Office says privately that it is about 50-50 on whether Mr Maliki can produce a semblance of order to prevent the country sliding into civil war and eventually breaking up into three parts.'

But not as surprising as this

2006-07-24T09:14:00.000Z

'The U.S. method of pacifying Iraq after Saddam Hussein's fall actually may have spurred an anti-American insurgency, The Washington Post reported Sunday.
The setup of the post-Hussein U.S. presence undercut the mission, the newspaper said, citing "a review of thousands of military documents and hundreds of interviews with military personnel." '

Stunning insights there from the guardian of the once proud American journalistic tradition.

This is the most surprising thing ever.

2006-07-24T09:10:00.000Z

The Iraqi government has called for an investigation after New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report released on Sunday that US military personnel regularly torture and abuse Iraqi detainees under interrogation.
"We urge the US government to explain the accusations present in the HRW report and punish severely those who have used torture," said Ahmed Abdel-Kareem, a senior official at the Ministry of Human Rights. "Since the Abu Ghraib scandal in 2004, the US military has claimed that it had abandoned such procedures and that serious investigations were underway. But now we see that the problem has only worsened."
According to the report, which covered the period from 2003 to 2005, Iraqi prisoners were routinely mistreated while under interrogation by US forces. John Sifton, author of the 53-page report and a senior researcher on terrorism at HRW, says that the US military command in Iraq actually condones such methods. "These accounts rebut US government claims that torture and abuse in Iraq was unauthorised and exceptional," said Sifton. "On the contrary, it was condoned and commonly used."

Wot no lobby?

2006-07-21T08:46:00.000Z

The current invasion of the Lebanon by Israel leads to a number of interesting questions. Not least of which is: whither the Mearsheimer and Walt thesis? I mean, in light of this? 'Tony Blair is publicly highly supportive of Israel and has declined to call for an immediate ceasefire. But some in the Foreign Office are now privately urging greater restraint by Israel amid concern that the scale of the bombardment is counter-productive, disproportionate, and undermining the political stability of the Lebanese government.' Tony Blair has been the most pro-Israel PM...well.....ever. And yet, where is the Israel lobby in the UK? We know that Blair leans towards the US. But where is the US lobby?

I don't know the netiquette

2006-07-20T17:04:00.000Z

But Aron Trauring's blog seems to sum up the catastrophe in the Lebanon best: 'Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 and bombed it to smithereens. At the time there was no Hezbollah to rain down rockets on northern Israel. 18 years, thousands of dead people later, Israel left Lebanon, with its tail between its legs and Hezbollah, a well trained, well armed guerilla movement, left behind as a potent force in Lebanon.

So now, when Israel seems bent on repeating the mistakes of the past (and despite the disclaimers, it looks like Israel will invade Lebanon and recreate the failed "buffer zone"), even before the invasion there are large numbers of casualties on the Israeli side. Does any rational person truly believe Israel can defeat the Hezbollah militarily, when it failed to do so for 18 years? Jews think of themselves as being smart. But the mind-numbing display of blind stupidity displayed by the so-called "pro-Israel" camp, takes one's breath away.'

Welcome

2006-07-20T11:06:00.000Z

After a number of disastrous and embarassing starts in the blogosphere this will hopefully be my semi-permanent home at least until time gets me. But then it gets us all, in the end.