Michael Scheuer's take on Osama's last tape

"I think his call for the West to convert to Islam is a prelude for him to issue new threats against them. He will then say 'I had offered you peace by asking you to convert' to justify the threats."
A shopkeeper in Cairo quoted by Reuters

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Michael Scheuer served as the Chief of the bin Laden Unit at the CIA's Counterterrorist Center from 1996 to 1999 and few westerners have a clearer, less distorted view and deeper understanding of Osama bin Laden and his context than Scheuer does. The bottom line is that bin Laden is alive and well six years after the attack on New York. Last night I heard an Arab affairs expert of a top Spanish think tank whose mother tongue is Arabic comment informally on the video and its message, he said, "I don't like it at all, it's just a feeling of mine, but its a very bad feeling." DS

Michael Scheuer: Analysis of Osama bin Laden's September 7 Video Statement - Jamestown Foundation

Abstract: The September 7 release of a new video statement by Osama bin Laden puts to rest, at least for now, widespread speculation that he is dead, retired, or has been pushed aside by his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri. With a newly trimmed and dyed beard, comfortable robes rather than a camouflage jacket, and a clear and patient speaking style, bin Laden achieved a major purpose of his speech before he said a word: he clearly showed Muslims and Americans that he was still alive, that he was healthy and not at death's door, that he spoke from secure surroundings unthreatened by the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan, and that he, al-Qaeda and their allies were ready to continue the war.(...) Western officials and journalists have also concluded that there is no "overt threat" in bin Laden's new message. Unless these experts truly believe that at some point in time bin Laden is going to explicitly state the time and location of an attack, it is hard to understand how they came to that conclusion. If Americans do not convert to Islam, said bin Laden—and he probably is not expecting many takers—our duty "is to continue to escalate the killing and fighting against you." That seems a clear threat. Moreover, bin Laden's prolonged discussion of his conversion offer is also clearly threatening in that it is an action demanded by the Prophet Muhammad of Muslims before they attack their enemy. As for another pre-attack requirement—multiple warnings—al-Zawahiri and Gadahn have fired a great number of warnings at the United States this year. READ IT ALL

Democratic "kidney failure"

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The center of the problem that Mearsheimer and Walt describe in their book, "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy ", is how politics is financed in the USA. Perhaps you remember this quote from M&W (taken from the Sunday Times):

They quote the experience of a Senate candidate who was invited to visit AIPAC early in his campaign for “discussions”. Harry Lonsdale described what followed as “an experience I will never forget. It wasn’t enough that I was pro-Israel. I was given a list of vital topics and quizzed (read grilled) for my specific opinion on each. Actually, I was told what my opinion must be . . . Shortly after that . . . I was sent a list of American supporters of Israel . . . that I was free to call for campaign contributions. I called; they gave from Florida to Alaska”.

That is really the nub of it, Lonsdale, who was running for the Senate in Oregon received donations from "Florida to Alaska". If people from all over the USA can contribute to local elections in other states, than that opens the door for special interest groups to control America's policies. Senators and congressmen are not representing the people they are said to represent... They can't, and they cannot reform the system either, because all the lobbies would gang together to save the system as it is.

This is a failure of the system and I think it is similar to kidney failure, the body poisons itself and all the other organs fail... and the patient dies.

This "democratic kidney failure" is why Americans are not only joined to Israel at the hip, it is why they have no universal health coverage and it is why the nation is awash is pistols and assault rifles... etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

Except for a massive, grassroots citizen's movement to reform campaign financing we are literally and without exaggeration looking at multiorganic failure and the death of American democracy. DS

Censorship in US prisons

Photo - D. Seaton

"Compared with other countries, the United States has among the highest incarceration rates in the world. More people are behind bars in the United States than any other country, according to available official figures. As of 2006, a record 7 million people were behind bars, on probation or on parole. Of the total, 2.2 million were incarcerated." Wikipedia

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I find this story from the NYT on the censoring of religious books in US prisons troubling. It bothers me especially because America has such a huge prison population, it bothers me also because of the way many of inmates got there. Here's what Wikipedia has to say:

"Some have criticized the United States for having a high amount of non-violent and victimless offenders incarcerated; half of all persons incarcerated under state jurisdiction are for non-violent offences, and 20% are incarcerated for drug offences. "Human Rights Watch believes the extraordinary rate of incarceration in the United States wreaks havoc on individuals, families and communities, and saps the strength of the nation as a whole." The United States spends an estimated $60 billion each year on corrections. The population of inmates housed in prisons and jails in the United States exceeds 2 million, with the per capita incarceration population higher than that officially reported by any other country. Because of its size and influence, the U.S. prison industry is often referred to as the prison-industrial complex. Criminal justice policy in the United States has also been criticized for the disproportionate representation of African Americans and other minorities."

Unlike most Americans, I have actually had the experience of observing a real dictatorship (Franco's) close up and believe me, the US is moving that way in a strange, crab-like fashion. Paranoia and repression are the trademarks of dictatorships and this story (and all the accompanying statistics) are dripping with it. Certainly there are people with a lot of power who are very afraid. It reminds me of the Duke of Wellington's remark to his aide de camp as they observed the British soldiers file onto the battlefield at Waterloo, "I don't know if Napoleon is afraid of these men, but by God I am!". DS

Prisons Purging Books on Faith From Libraries - New York Times

Abstract: Behind the walls of federal prisons nationwide, chaplains have been quietly carrying out a systematic purge of religious books and materials that were once available to prisoners in chapel libraries. The chaplains were directed by the Bureau of Prisons to clear the shelves of any books, tapes, CDs and videos that are not on a list of approved resources. In some prisons, the chaplains have recently dismantled libraries that had thousands of texts collected over decades, bought by the prisons, or donated by churches and religious groups. Some inmates are outraged. Two of them, a Christian and an Orthodox Jew, in a federal prison camp in upstate New York, filed a class-action lawsuit last month claiming the bureau’s actions violate their rights to the free exercise of religion as guaranteed by the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.(...) the agency was acting in response to a 2004 report by the Office of the Inspector General in the Justice Department. The report recommended steps that prisons should take, in light of the Sept. 11 attacks, to avoid becoming recruiting grounds for militant Islamic and other religious groups. The bureau, an agency of the Justice Department, defended its effort, which it calls the Standardized Chapel Library Project, as a way of barring access to materials that could, in its words, “discriminate, disparage, advocate violence or radicalize.”(...) But prison chaplains, and groups that minister to prisoners, say that an administration that put stock in religion-based approaches to social problems has effectively blocked prisoners’ access to religious and spiritual materials — all in the name of preventing terrorism. “It’s swatting a fly with a sledgehammer,” said Mark Earley, president of Prison Fellowship, a Christian group. “There’s no need to get rid of literally hundreds of thousands of books that are fine simply because you have a problem with an isolated book or piece of literature that presents extremism.” The Bureau of Prisons said it relied on experts to produce lists of up to 150 book titles and 150 multimedia resources for each of 20 religions or religious categories — everything from Bahaism to Yoruba.(...) The lists are broad, but reveal eccentricities and omissions. There are nine titles by C. S. Lewis, for example, and none from the theologians Reinhold Niebuhr, Karl Barth and Cardinal Avery Dulles, and the influential pastor Robert H. Schuller. The identities of the bureau’s experts have not been made public, Ms. Billingsley said, but they include chaplains and scholars in seminaries and at the American Academy of Religion. Academy staff members said their organization had met with prison chaplains in the past but was not consulted on this effort, though it is possible that scholars who are academy members were involved. The bureau has not provided additional money to prisons to buy the books on the lists, so in some prisons, after the shelves were cleared of books not on the lists, few remained. A chaplain who has worked more than 15 years in the prison system, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is a bureau employee, said: “At some of the penitentiaries, guys have been studying and reading for 20 years, and now they are told that this material doesn’t meet some kind of criteria. It doesn’t make sense to them. They’re asking, ‘Why are our tapes being taken, why our books being taken?’ ” Of the lists, he said, “Many of the chaplains I’ve spoken to say these are not the things they would have picked.” The effort is unnecessary, the chaplain said, because chaplains routinely reject any materials that incite violence or disparage, and donated materials already had to be approved by prison officials. Prisoners can buy religious books, he added, but few have much money to spend.(...) The plan to standardize the libraries first became public in May when several inmates, including a Muslim convert, at the Federal Prison Camp in Otisville, N.Y., about 75 miles northwest of Manhattan, filed a lawsuit acting as their own lawyers. Later, lawyers at the New York firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison took on the case pro bono. They refiled it on Aug. 21 in the Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York. “Otisville had a very extensive library of Jewish religious books, many of them donated,” said David Zwiebel, executive vice president for government and public affairs for Agudath Israel of America, an Orthodox Jewish group. “It was decimated. Three-quarters of the Jewish books were taken off the shelves.”(...) The lists have not been made public by the bureau, but were made available to The Times by a critic of the bureau’s project. In some cases, the lists indicate their authors’ preferences. For example, more than 80 of the 120 titles on the list for Judaism are from the same Orthodox publishing house. A Catholic scholar and an evangelical Christian scholar who looked over some of the lists were baffled at the selections. Timothy Larsen, who holds the Carolyn and Fred McManis Chair of Christian Thought at Wheaton College, an evangelical school, looked over lists for “Other Christian” and “General Spirituality.” “There are some well-chosen things in here,” Professor Larsen said. “I’m particularly glad that Dietrich Bonhoeffer is there. If I was in prison I would want to read Dietrich Bonhoeffer.” But he continued, “There’s a lot about it that’s weird.” The lists “show a bias toward evangelical popularism and Calvinism,” he said, and lacked materials from early church fathers, liberal theologians and major Protestant denominations. The Rev. Richard P. McBrien, professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame (who edited “The HarperCollins Encyclopedia of Catholicism,” which did make the list), said the Catholic list had some glaring omissions, few spiritual classics and many authors he had never heard of. “I would be completely sympathetic with Catholic chaplains in federal prisons if they’re complaining that this list is inhibiting,” he said, “because I know they have useful books that are not on this list.” READ IT ALL

It's not just Bush

Henrí Cartier-Bresson

The mainstream European view -- echoed by 46 percent of people polled -- is that the 2008 presidential election will have little impact on U.S.-European ties.

``Europeans are starting to wonder whether the factors that are driving the drift apart in relations are more enduring than personality,''

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Bush is not the cause, Bush is a symptom. The question is not why Bush is the way he is, the question is why he was nominated in the first place and than "elected" and then -- most of all -- re-elected.

Bush does have a cardinal virtue, he is so inept and so (fill in any adjective you like) that he has made a growing number of people stop and start to think that something is fundamentally wrong and needs to be fixed. In my view, anyone who makes you stop and think about the basics and causes you to consider your faults and mend your ways, is owed a debt of gratitude.

So here is to you, George W. Bush, who by your (fill in any adjective you like) have broken through America's nearly impenetrable crust of earnest superficiality and planted the idea in many heads that America's greatest enemies are very close to home. And that this realization may finally lead to a movement to save the Republic: Skol and amen! DS

Europeans Oppose Attack on Iran, Tire of Afghan War, Poll Says Bloomberg
Europeans are overwhelmingly against a potential U.S. military attack to thwart Iran's nuclear ambitions and are tiring of the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, a survey showed.

Americans are more willing to contemplate the use of force against Iran and remain in favor of the Afghan war, according to a poll released today by the German Marshall Fund of the United States and the Italian foundation Compagnia di San Paolo.

``Europeans are very skittish about the possibility of even maintaining the option of using military force,'' John K. Glenn, director of foreign policy at the German Marshall Fund, said in an interview from Washington.

While blaming President George W. Bush and the Iraq war for much of the foreign-policy discord between the U.S. and Europe, the survey's authors concluded that the gulf is likely to persist after Bush leaves the White House in 2009.

Europeans, led by Germans, are increasingly worried about terrorism and the menace of Islamic radicalism -- sharing many of the preoccupations Americans confronted in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Views diverge when it comes to dealing with threats. Only 18 percent of Europeans would back possible use of force against Iran in case diplomacy fails to dismantle the Islamic republic's nuclear program, compared to 47 percent of Americans.

Bush has refused to take the military option off the table, as the U.S. presses for stiffer United Nations sanctions to force Iran to halt uranium enrichment. The nuclear activities continue, though at a slower pace, the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency said last month.

European Skepticism

Europeans voiced skepticism about Afghanistan, where European and American forces are fighting side-by-side under NATO's mantle to beat back the resurgent Taliban, the radical Islamic movement chased from power by the U.S. in 2001.

U.S., British, Canadian and Dutch troops are doing the bulk of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's fighting against the Taliban, which is relying increasingly on suicide attacks in population centers.

Only 31 percent of Europeans back the military campaign against the Taliban, with opposition highest in France, Germany, Italy and Spain -- four countries that are keeping their troops in quieter sectors of Afghanistan.

``What it shows is just how cautious the European publics are today, after the last four years, after what we've seen in Iraq, after what we've seen in Afghanistan,'' Glenn said.

Only Britain, with 6,500 troops in active combat in southern Afghanistan, generated a bare majority in favor of the war, with 51 percent approval. Support in the Netherlands, the second European country in a frontline role, was at 45 percent.

Broad U.S. Support

While Bush and Democrats in Congress clash over how long to keep American forces in Iraq, the U.S. role in Afghanistan commands broad public support. Some 68 percent of Americans back the fight against the Taliban. The U.S. has 23,000 troops in Afghanistan, out of total allied forces of close to 50,000.

Europeans warmed to the Afghan mission when asked whether they favored putting troops in a non-combat role. Sixty-six percent endorsed using the military to help with economic rebuilding.(....)

(...) Bush's foreign policy attracted disapproval ratings of 77 percent from Europeans and 60 percent of Americans. Some 34 percent of Europeans blamed Bush himself and 38 percent blamed the U.S. management of the Iraq war for the deterioration in the trans-Atlantic climate. Only 4 percent named the treatment of terrorism suspects at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The mainstream European view -- echoed by 46 percent of people polled -- is that the 2008 presidential election will have little impact on U.S.-European ties.

``Europeans are starting to wonder whether the factors that are driving the drift apart in relations are more enduring than personality,'' Glenn said.

The survey of 13,000 people was conducted in the U.S., Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Poland, Turkey and six other European countries between June 4 and June 23. The margin of error is 3 percentage points. READ IT ALL

A hint of change?

Montgomery County’s ethics commission decided last month that council members are prohibited from traveling at the expense of the local Jewish community, even when funding is indirectly provided by a private foundation. A trip planned months in advance was subsequently canceled.

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Now this is what is called "grass roots" politics! Hats off to the ethics committee of Montgomery County, Maryland.

This news confirms my belief that American politics, should it ever be regenerated, will be regenerated from the local level. Micro-financing and hands-on citizen participation are the answer to the corruption of the political process.

When power is delegated too far away and in too few hands it makes it easy for a small group of highly focused, well funded operators to game the system. This is how and why so many Americans have no health insurance and are awash in firearms. This also explains America's relationship with Israel. DS

Ban on Political Junkets to Israel Deals Blow to Lobbying Efforts - Forward

In a challenge to one of the most powerful lobbying tactics used by the Jewish community, a county in Maryland decided last week that local legislators could no longer go on sponsored trips to Israel.

Montgomery County’s ethics commission decided last month that council members are prohibited from traveling at the expense of the local Jewish community, even when funding is indirectly provided by a private foundation. A trip planned months in advance was subsequently canceled.

“We were stunned by the commission’s decision,” said Ron Halber, executive director of the Greater Washington Jewish Community Relations Council, which organized the trip.(...)

The decision has such weight because sponsored trips to Israel are widely used by Jewish groups both nationally and locally to build support for Israel among non-Jewish leaders and to cultivate one-to-one relationships between American and Israeli leaders. On a national level, the trips have recently come under scrutiny amid the scandals surrounding Washington lobbyists and their relationships with lawmakers. The Montgomery County decision now brings the dilemma to the local level, as communities face the need to adjust to the changing winds in Washington and growing concerns about the power of lobbyists.

Hadar Susskind, Washington director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, called the Montgomery County decision “mistaken.” Susskind said that his organization has already begun looking into the decision in order to check if it represents a wider trend that could affect other Jewish communities.

“If it will become a widespread phenomenon, that would be misguided and unfortunate,” he said. According to Susskind, the trips to Israel are seen as an important tool for educating local leaders on issues relating to Israel and for building ties between Israeli and American leaders on the local level.

The attention given to lobbying trips to Israel has caused a number of organizations to make a formal separation between their lobbying arm and the branch in charge of sponsoring travel to Israel. Groups such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee have founded subsidiary organizations that deal with taking lawmakers, officials and journalists to Israel. As accompanists for trips to Israel, other organizations now have dedicated staffers who are not registered lobbyists.

The concern about the trips has already seeped down to the local levels where policies tend to depend on state and county ethics rules. Many JCRCs have turned to private foundations to cover the costs, and some have given up funding the trips altogether.

In Boston, the JCRC has asked since 1999 that trip participants pay their own way, covering an estimated $3,200 in travel costs. A Massachusetts ethics commission approved the community’s funding of the trip, but the local JCRC decided to drop the funding anyway, according to executive director Nancy Kaufman.(...)

“It would not be fair to ask elected officials to pay from their own pocket,” an official with a major Jewish group said.

For the local Jewish community, the trips help forge stronger ties with the lawmakers and government officials and help to make them aware of the political issues relating to Israel.

In Maryland, each and every member of congress and most of the local officials have taken part in trips to Israel. Many of them later moved on to higher positions on the local and national scene. READ IT ALL

Lady Mearsheimerley's Lover

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I apologize right off for the horrible pun on Mearsheimer and "Lady Chatterley", but as I read all the commentary about Mearsheimer and Walt's book, "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" I suddenly had a flashback to when D. H. Lawrence's book came out in the states.

I was a high school freshman when the book was finally allowed to be published and I still remember the scandal around the book and reading a hidden copy of it one summer and how arousing it was then to read in cold print, forbidden language that today is normal currency among eight year old girls.

The same gasping prurience and pussy footing is now hanging around M&W's book as the authors use the "forbidden words" describing what most of world sees as perfectly obvious.

I imagine that before too long, after the taboo is broken, its thesis will be common currency at every level in America and it will be fun to see how the politicians, who are desperate for campaign contributions, will try to avoid mentioning something that everyone else, everywhere, is talking about.

Read the NYT review of M&W:
The reviewer, William Grimes, would obviously like to rip their hearts out, but he cannot dismiss them in Dershowitz fashion. Finally his arguments are reduced to whimpering and whining, here is a sample:

(...)"The general tone of hostility to Israel grates on the nerves, however, along with an unignorable impression that hardheaded political realism can be subject to its own peculiar fantasies. Israel is not simply one country among many, for example, just as Britain is not. Americans feel strong ties of history, religion, culture and, yes, sentiment, that the authors recognize, but only in an airy, abstract way.

They also seem to feel that, with Israel and its lobby pushed to the side, the desert will bloom with flowers. A peace deal with Syria would surely follow, with a resultant end to hostile activity by Hezbollah and Hamas. Next would come a Palestinian state, depriving Al Qaeda of its principal recruiting tool. (The authors wave away the idea that Islamic terrorism thrives for other reasons.) Well, yes, Iran does seem to be a problem, but the authors argue that no one should be particularly bothered by an Iran with nuclear weapons. And on and on.

“It is time,” Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt write, “for the United States to treat Israel not as a special case but as a normal state, and to deal with it much as it deals with any other country.” But it’s not. And America won’t. That’s realism."(END QUOTE)

That for the "gray lady" is the equivalent of throwing in the towel: they cannot ignore or really trash the book, they would like to, but they can't...

Trying to compare Israel to Britain is really a pitiful ploy... Do you know how many times the USA nearly went to war with the UK? We actually went to war twice. Do you know how much we charged them for the "lend-lease destroyers" when they had their backs to the wall in WWII? Do you know how "special" England is for Irish Americans? What a load of rubbish!

I would say then that it's "official", the book cannot be "ignored". The NYT is America's newspaper of reference and they have not been able to ignore it and Grimes has gingerly waltzed around the charge of antisemitism... hinting around it by calling the analysis, "cold".

Not only is the book not to be ignored, its hot, hot, hot. The Israelis better start their war soon, by next week it might be too late. DS

"The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy ": a dangerous road

David Seaton's News Links
What strikes me most on reading all the Mearsheimer-Walt and Finkelstein material is the almost superhuman amount of effort, work and treasure involved in the Lobby's keeping this lead balloon full of bullshit airborn for so many years: really fooling "all of the people, all of the time".

Now the cat is out of the bag, and soon everybody will be nodding and winking and nudging each other every time a Foxman or a Dershowitz opens his mouth, but at the same time all the media support and the campaign financing will still be in place. That will mean that nobody in congress will dare move a muscle. Everybody in the country will be talking about this, at work, at dinner, but no presidential candidate will dare mention it and all of this will then turn into a huge joke. The general public will hold the political class in open, sniggering, contempt.

Of course this will find some political expression somehow... what, I don't know, but it will have to be outside the major parties. If we go to war with Iran and it turns out to be the mother of disasters (imagine an aircraft carrier sunk for starters), something that triggers a severe economic downturn, one that has a sizable quotient of "financial engineering", with poor people being thrown out of their homes, than a sizable part of the American population will lay that disaster square at the feet of the American Jewish community. It has happened before.

There have been three countries in "Christendom" where the Jews have lived "golden ages": Spain, Germany and the United States. Massive waves of antisemitism nearly destroyed the first two. The Spanish have a saying, "When you see your neighbor's beard on fire, put your beard to soak". What is imperative is that we "do nuances", the sheep must be separated from the goats, the wheat from the chaff and babies must not be thrown out with the bath water. The situation that Mearsheimer and Walt present must be clarified and corrected, but without frightening old "Mrs. Goldberg" that owns the corner 'delly' for even a moment. The future of the United States as country any civilized person would care to ever live in hangs in the balance. DS

Bromwich: Iraq, Israel, Iran - Huffington Post
Abstract: The chief orchestrater of the second neoconservative war of aggression is Elliott Abrams. Convicted for deceptions around Iran-Contra, as Lewis Libby was convicted for deceptions stemming from Iraq--and pardoned by the elder Bush just as Libby had his sentence commuted by the younger--Abrams now presides over the Middle East desk at the National Security Council. All of the wildness of this astonishing functionary and all his reckless love of subversion will be required to pump up the "imminent danger" of Iran. For here, as with Iraq, the danger can only be made to look imminent by manipulation and forgery. On all sober estimates, Iran is several months from mastering the nuclear cycle, and several years from producing a weapon. Whereas Israel for decades has been in possession of a substantial nuclear arsenal. How mad is Elliott Abrams? If one passage cited by Mearsheimer-Walt is quoted accurately, it would seem to be the duty of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to subject Abrams to as exacting a challenge as the Senate Judiciary Committee brought to Alberto Gonzales. The man at the Middle East desk of the National Security Council wrote in 1997 in his book Faith or Fear: "there can be no doubt that Jews, faithful to the covenant between God and Abraham, are to stand apart from the nation in which they live. It is the very nature of being Jewish to be apart--except in Israel--from the rest of the population." When he wrote those words, Abrams probably did not expect to serve in another American administration. He certainly did not expect to occupy a position that would require him to weigh the national interest of Israel, the country with which he confessed himself uniquely at one, alongside the national interest of a country in which he felt himself to stand "apart...from the rest of the population." Now that he is calling the shots against Hamas and Hezbollah, Damascus and Tehran, his words of 1997 ought to alarm us into reflection. Among many possible lines of inquiry, the senators might begin by recognizing that the United States has other allies in Asia besides Israel. One of those allies is India; and there is a further point of resemblance. In a distinct exception to our anti-proliferation policy, we have allowed India to develop nuclear weapons; just as, in an earlier such exception, we allowed Israel to do the same. But suppose we read tomorrow a statement by the director of the South Asia desk of the National Security Council which declared: "There can be no doubt that Hindus are to stand apart from any nation in which they live. It is the very nature of being Hindu to be apart--except in India--from the rest of the population." Suppose, further, we knew this man still held these beliefs at a time of maximum tension between India and Pakistan; and that he had recently channeled 86 million dollars to regional gangs and militias bent on increasing the tension. Would we not conclude that something in our counsels of state had gone seriously out of joint? The Mearsheimer-Walt study of American policy deserves to be widely read and discussed. It could not be more timely. If the speeches and saber-rattling by the president, the ambassador to Iraq, and several army officers mean anything, they mean that Cheney and Abrams are preparing to do to Iran what Cheney and Wolfowitz did to Iraq. They are gunning for an incident. They are working against some resistance from the armed forces but none from the opposition party at home. The president has ordered American troops to confront Iran. Sarkozy has fallen into line, Brown and Merkel are silent, and outside the United States only Mohamed ElBaradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency stands between the war party and a prefabricated justification for a war that would extend across a vast subcontinent. Unless some opposition can rouse itself, we are poised to descend with non-partisan compliance into a moral and political disaster that will dwarf anything America has seen. READ IT ALL

Defeating militarism: America's secret weapon

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The idea behind the article that I am calling your attention to today is, that because of the cost of caring for the aging baby boomers, the United States will no long have enough money to rule the world and the solution is to cut the pensions and the Medicare of all these citizens who have spent their lives contributing with their work and tax money to keep the country afloat. I should make it clear that I am not in agreement with the author of this article as to the remedies for the problem that he correctly identifies. Who exactly is the country supposed to be for... if not for its own citizens? Is the military-industrial complex that has been devouring America's young for decades in Saturn-like fashion, now going to devour the aged too?

I am almost led to believe that the article is a satire similar to Jonathan Swift's "A modest proposal". Probably Swift would have suggested boiling our senior citizens down for soup in order to feed the homeless schizophrenics and the prison population.

The problem with professor Haas's remedies is that older people are the segment of the population that abstains least in elections. They vote. So the cost of caring for an aging population will inevitably force America to cut back on its mastodontic military establishment. As long as America maintains some semblance of a democracy, (....?) its days as a hegemonic military power are limited.... And this article, while lamenting the burden of caring for the aged, does not even mention caring for America's decaying infrastructure which, if not repaired and restored soon will lead to a Minneapolis bridge a week in only a few years. Something has got to give. DS

America's golden years? - The Boston Globe (reprinted IHT)
Abstract: Although the aging crisis is less severe in the United States than in the other great powers, the challenges arising from this crisis are far from trivial. The Congressional Budget Office projects that by 2015, spending on the elderly in the United States will total almost $1.8 trillion - nearly half of the anticipated federal budget. For the United States, healthcare costs are the biggest problem presented by an aging population. America spends more than twice as much per capita in this area than any other industrialized state. By conservative estimates, absent reforms, the costs of Medicare alone will be at least $2.6 trillion in 2050 in today's dollars - roughly the size of the current U.S. federal budget. To pay for the massive fiscal costs associated with its aging population, the United States is likely to have to scale back its international policies. America will be less able in the future to dedicate significant resources to preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, financing nation-building, and engaging in humanitarian interventions. So at the same time that global aging will help prevent the rise of great power competitors, this phenomenon may jeopardize other vital U.S. international interests. To protect its international security, the United States needs to maintain its enviable demographic position. Specifically, it should reduce Social Security and Medicare payments to wealthier citizens, raise the retirement age to reflect increases in life expectancies, maintain largely open immigration policies, and, above all, restrain the rising costs of its healthcare system. A defining political question of the 21st century is whether American leaders have sufficient political will and wisdom to implement these and related policies. Failure to do so will significantly jeopardize future levels of America's global influence and safety. READ IT ALL

Mearsheimer and Walt

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Mearsheimer and Walt both belong to the "realist" school of power politics. In this view of world affairs, nations have permanent "interests", not permanent allies. If a country is useful to the USA at any moment it is protected and if not it isn't. We support a military dictator in Pakistan because it useful to do so and we strangle Cuba because it opposes our policies.

America's permanent interests in the Middle East are: access to oil at a reasonable price, free movement of goods and warships through the Suez canal and more recently that its regimes not export terrorists to the United States and its "clients".

During the Cold War, specifically after the Six Day war of 1967 where Israel thrashed, trashed and humiliated the Soviet Union's clients, Israel was seen to be a valuable asset for the USA in the Middle East and much interest was shown in fostering the relationship. Perhaps the most important dividend of supporting Israel was to woo Egypt, the most important country in the region, away from its alliance with the USSR. Israel then became America's "watchdog" in the ME.

What is more curious is Norman Finkelstein's theory that these American Jewish elites themselves only really became interested in Israel when the Jewish state became a major strategic asset for the USA. (Before 1967, Zionists were seen to be too socialist for American elite taste) These Jewish elites, again according to Finkelstein, have used their role as "intermediaries" of Israel as a tool to pry open the doors of American power elites and join the WASP elites at the trough.

If the by any chance Israel were ever to be seen as a gross liability to US interests (as it seems to be now to many observers here and abroad), and that for the Jewish elites being seen to promote Israel a handicap to their access to those corridors of power, than these Jewish elites might suddenly cool off toward Israel considerably. I remember an article written by Charles Krauthammer (sorry no link) during last summer's war in Lebanon where he bluntly and nastily (Krauthammer the antisemite?) warned the Israelis that military failure would have such an effect on the "special relationship".

This why I think that the book will not be "ignored", just as Mearsheimer and Walt's LRB article was not ignored. Because although the Jewish elites of America are very powerful and influential, they are not the only powerful and influential ones in America and I think that a lot of coldblooded, thin lipped, rich old WASPs of the Brent Scowcroft, James Baker variety have come to the conclusion that Israel, far from being a strategic asset, is now a geopolitical millstone around America's neck. And these "old, white men" want these views fully aired and debated and the more effort Foxman and Dershowitz (to name two) make to "silence" the book, the more it will sell and the more people will talk about it. That is why the professors were encouraged to write the article and that's why the book is getting a top publisher.

As this collides with the neocon fall campaign to start a war with Iran, I think we are going to see one of the nastiest political seasons in Washington since the late 1850s. DS

Vacations End

David Seaton's News Links
A long month of peace and quiet has finished for me, and much rested and refreshed, I'm back staring at this screen and trying to figure out what's going to happen next and what it means.

The first thing that seems to be on our plate in the next few weeks is the conflict between a neocon drive to start a war with Iran ASAP and the publication of Mearsheimer and Walt's seminal book, "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" to be in book store shelves in the next few days.

These two campaigns are on a collision course. Whatever the rights and wrongs of all of this are, I can see that something of train wreck like proportions is going to happen and after it has happened the United States will be another country and not a very pleasant one, I fear.

Anyhow , it's nice to be back and I hope you are well, bright eyed and bushy tailed and ready for another year of endless war, Bush and his gang of idiot's nauseating mendacity and the nightmare like feeling of paralyzed helpless as disaster unfolds in slow motion. DS

A summer treat for the News Links faithful

Summer light in the Sierra de Guadarrama

David Seaton's News Links
On Wednesday, August first, God willing, I will start one of the month long European vacations that are the envy of the entire world. I'm not going very far, really, just to my weekend place in the Guadarrama mountains outside of Madrid, with no running water and only solar electricity, where I hope to read, sleep, think, write, walk in the woods and generally repair my mind, soul and body from reading, thinking and writing all year long about that evil fool, George W. Bush and all who sail in him. If all goes well, I shall be back, full of piss and vinegar at the end of August.

I began this blog in November of 2006 and according to my Google tracker in that time I've had 62,222 unique vistors who have spent an average of eight minutes on my site. I have no idea how good that is, but I am grateful for each and every visit and each and every second of their time.

My tracker(s) also show me that I have a "hard core" of readers that visit me on a daily basis from all over the world; and of course I am especially grateful to them for their kind attention and perseverance. Needless to say that the faithful attendance of that hardy band is the greatest motivator to continue in the effort of producing the News Links blog.

In appreciation, I would like to leave the readers of News Links a little gift to keep them busy till we meet again in September.

I got my start as a political commentator producing dossiers of articles for corporate clients and I continue to produce them. At the end of the year (for me the year ends in August) I produce several rather huge PDF collections of "must reads" for these corporate customers. One of these is called, "The Best of Season" and consists of approximately one article a week from September to July. These are articles that at the end of the season still look timely or even prophetic and should be read again or read with especial attention if the reader missed them the week they were recommended.

So to cut to the chase, I have uploaded this 78 page (8 point) dossier to the internet as a zipped PDF and invite you to download it and read it at your leisure. I'll be in town and online till midday Tuesday, so if there is any glitch or hitch in downloading or unzipping the file, please tell me right away.

This is the link

I hope you all have a wonderful August and I hope to see you all again in September. DS

Professional sport scandals ... a return to the small town

David Seaton's News Links

NBA, Tour de France, Formula One... We live where two vectors cross: big money and this village-like movement of information.... Everybody's on the take and everything gets found out quickly. Either they shut down the information system or we are all going to have to walk the straight and narrow... just like people in a small town have always had to do. All the old ladies lurking behind the lace curtains watching everything. DS

NBA-WSJ: Toronto Star columnist Dave Feschuk says that not only whistle-blowers are vulnerable to greed and gambling. "Donaghy's is a rare case that will likely only illustrate how easy it is to earn large sums of money with the power of a whistle," Mr. Feschuk writes. "The truth is, many athletes and coaches are possessed of similar powers of influence over any given game. People say salaries are too large for today's athletes to risk their livelihoods by laying bets, and someone at yesterday's press conference asked Stern if the referees might be due raises to reduce the incentive to bet. Stern pointed out that Donaghy made $260,000 (U.S.) last season, and you only have to look at the gambling habits of wealthy athletes -- many engage in it, and often -- to understand it's not necessarily about needing the money. They crave action. And it's not difficult to foresee, for those most susceptible to bad decisions, how the debts might mount up, how the lines might become blurred, how the life-wrecking mistakes might get made."

Tour - BBC: Tour de France leader Michael Rasmussen has been sacked by his Rabobank team and kicked out of the race.(...) Rasmussen's sacking follows the high-profile positive drugs test on pre-race favourite Alexandre Vinokourov in a dramatic 24 hours for the Tour. Vinokourov's Astana team were asked to withdraw from the race and Cofidis have also pulled out following the positive test on their rider, (...) Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme said: "The important thing is not that he has been sacked by his team but that he will not be at the start of the stage tomorrow. (...) "One cannot mock the Tour de France impunitively like those riders," he added, referring to Rasmussen, Moreni and Vinokourov. T-Mobile rider Patrick Sinkewitz crashed out of the race in stage eight days before he was revealed to have failed a drug test in training before the race began.

Ferrari Spies - Guardian: Ferrari's lawyers have claimed that it is "likely" McLaren are leading the world championship only because their chief designer had access to the Italian team's secrets. In a document obtained by the Guardian and the Milan-based daily Corriere della Sera, Ferrari say that losing the title would cost them well over €5.5m. The document, lodged with the high court in London last Friday relating to an ongoing case taken out by Ferrari against McLaren's chief designer, Mike Coughlan, sets out in greater detail than ever before their accusations in the sabotage scandal that has divided formula one.(...) They add that if McLaren wins this year "Ferrari will suffer loss of at least €5.5m" in payments under the agreement that governs the constructors' championship. But, in addition, they "may suffer loss in respect of damage to the Ferrari brand" - sponsorship and sales. However, the team's claim does not put a figure on the damages that Ferrari is seeking from the British couple. The next stage will be for Coughlan and his wife to submit their defence to the court. Trudy Coughlan is claimed to have arranged for documents belonging to Ferrari to be scanned to disk. They allegedly contained a wealth of detail about the Maranello team's operations - down to "freight rates, which would enable a competitor to evaluate the amount of material shipped from Ferrari's headquarters in Italy to each grand prix".

Hugo Chávez, the man who ate Dubya's lunch

David Seaton's News Links
A friend of mine, who is a top executive in Spain's giant oil firm, Repsol and who has been traveling all over Latin America and especially in Venezuela for over 20 years, tells me that the loss of US influence in South America since 9-11 is unbelievable for a veteran observer like he is. Spanish bank executives, who dominate the financial sector in Latin America, tell me the same story.

Hugo Chávez is living proof that all the talk about America's unique, hegemonic superpower status is so much horse manure. The world is already multi-polar and soon will be more so. The war in Iraq has undressed the United States. The cold war will be seen as a garden party compared to what is coming. DS

The Holocaust denier, the radical socialist, and their axis of unity - Guardian
Abstract: A billboard of Hugo Chávez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad looms over a motorway in Venezuela, marking the entrance to a factory designed to produce three things: tractors, influence and angst.(...) The influence, less visible but real enough, is for Mr Chávez and Mr Ahmadinejad, two presidents who hope this and other ventures will project their prestige and power. The angst, if all goes to plan, is for Washington. Veniran might be tucked away in the backwater provincial capital of Ciudad Bolívar but it is part of a wider attempt by Mr Chávez to forge a common front against the United States. The socialist radical is using Venezuela's vast oil wealth to strike commercial and political deals with countries that challenge the US such as Iran, Belarus, Russia and China, as well as much of Latin America and the Caribbean, to rebuff what he refers to as the "empire". "Chávez is a global player because right now he has a lot of money that he is prepared to spend to advance his huge ambitions," said Michael Shifter, an analyst with the Inter-American Dialogue thinktank. "He has worked tirelessly to upset US priorities in Latin America."(...) Supporters say he has worked tirelessly to support the poor and marginalised, for example through a $250,000 (£121,000) loan to help farmers in Bolivia's lowlands build a coca industrialization plant, part of an effort to turn the leaf into cakes, biscuits and other legal products instead of cocaine. "For years we have wanted to do this but no one would support us," said Leonardo Choque, leader of the Chimoré federation of coca growers. "Then the Venezuelans come and offer us a loan with very low interest rates. And no conditions." Venezuela is also funding a new university nearby. In contrast the US is accused of bullying Andean nations into destroying coca crops without promoting equally lucrative alternative livelihoods - a big stick and a small carrot.(...) Iran is to help build platforms in a $4bn development of Orinoco delta oil deposits in exchange for reciprocal Venezuelan investments. The 4,000 tractors produced annually in Ciudad Bolívar are small beer in comparison but they have a symbolic value as agents of revolutionary change. Most are given or leased at discount in Venezuela to socialist cooperatives that have seized land, with government blessing, from big ranches and sugar plantations. Dozens have also been sent to Bolivia to support President Evo Morales, a leftwing radical and close Chávez ally, and last week dozens more began to be shipped north to Nicaragua, whose president, Daniel Ortega, is another Chávez ally and longtime bugbear for Washington. The first batch was timed to coincide with the 28th anniversary of the Sandinista revolution.(...) A colleague who asked not to be named said the Iranians had been warmly welcomed. "I love it here. It's hot and sunny and they eat rice, just like back home. Except here I go out salsa dancing." Mr Chávez inaugurated the factory in 2005 with the then Iranian president, Mohammad Khatami. He has struck up a friendship with his successor, Mr Ahmadinejad, and hailed their "axis of unity". "The relationship is fundamentally geopolitical rather than economic," said Mr Shifter. "It tells the world that Iran, an international pariah, is welcome in Latin America, which is traditionally regarded as the strategic preserve or 'back yard' of the United States." READ IT ALL

Spain's Willy Sutton caught

David Seaton's News Links
It's probably unfair to America's legendary, master bank robber Willy Sutton to compare him to Spain's Jaime Jimenez Arbe, known until yesterday only as "El Solitario". Willy never harmed a hair on anybody's head and "The Loner" is a diagnosed paranoiac and an ice cold killer. You could only make the comparison because of the length of time he has been operating and the elaborate care Jimenez Arbe has taken in disguising himself. He made partial latex masks to disguise his eyebrows and cheeks, wore Scotch tape on his finger tips, carried a metal crutch to fool the metal detectors and wore a bullet proof vest to work. He pulled over thirty robberies since 1993 and once machine gunned two Guardia Civil traffic cops, who pulled him over... probably only because they saw him without a disguise.

He lives in nice house in an affluent suburb of Madrid and has a large collection of Eric Clapton records. Police think that he planned that the job in Portugal, where he was caught, to be his "farewell performance"... He was about to retire to Brazil where a Brazilian girlfriend is waiting for him. Spanish law is not very punitive, he'll probably be out in 12 years. DS

Spain's most wanted robber, "The Loner", arrested - Reuters
LISBON (Reuters) - Spain's most wanted robber, accused of killing three policemen and holding up more than 30 banks disguised in a false beard and a wig, was arrested on Monday in Portugal, Spanish and Portuguese police said. The man known until now only by his nickname "The Loner" was in disguise and armed with a submachinegun in preparation for another bank robbery when he was arrested in Figueira da Foz, a coastal city 200 km north of Lisbon, police said. "We're very pleased. He's the most wanted criminal in Spain, a very cruel criminal," Spanish Interior Minister Alfredo Rubalcaba told reporters in Lisbon. Police named The Loner as 51-year-old Jaime Jimenez Arbe. Rubalcaba said police had trailed him for weeks and Spain would request his extradition. The Loner, whose heavily disguised face has graced Spanish news bulletins for years thanks to footage from security cameras, would enter banks with a metal crutch and a submachinegun hidden under a bulky jacket. Despite a varying wardrobe of long, dark wigs, police had suspected that the man probably in his 40s, was bald and really lightly built underneath layers of clothing and a flak jacket.

Iraq: crime and punishment

David Seaton's News Links
This article from the New York Review of Books by Peter W. Galbraith is about as clear and complete an analysis of America's disaster in Iraq and Iraq's disastrous encounter with America that you are likely to find anywhere. If you can still stand reading about it, a must read.

However having said that, I have to insist that this otherwise fine article is obviating what for me is a key point: the criminal nature of America's intervention in Iraq and the necessity of a catharsis that determines the criminal responsibilities of those who led the country to war and punishes them with a severity corresponding to their crimes.

It should be pointed out to those who are unmoved by the sufferings of the people of Iraq, that America's young men and women who have been maimed or killed in Iraq, have not just "died in vain", which is an absurd idea. (Is an automobile accident or colon cancer "dying in vain"?) What has happened to them is far, far worse: they have been mutilated or killed while carrying out a criminal enterprise, as if they had been shot while robbing a gas station or a convenience store. That should not be allowed to stand. DS

Iraq: The Way to Go - New York Review of Books
Abstract: The Iraq war is lost. Of course, neither the President nor the war's intellectual architects are prepared to admit this. Nonetheless, the specter of defeat shapes their thinking in telling ways. The case for the war is no longer defined by the benefits of winning—a stable Iraq, democracy on the march in the Middle East, the collapse of the evil Iranian and Syrian regimes— but by the consequences of defeat. As President Bush put it, "The consequences of failure in Iraq would be death and destruction in the Middle East and here in America." Tellingly, the Iraq war's intellectual boosters, while insisting the surge is working, are moving to assign blame for defeat. And they have already picked their target: the American people. In The Weekly Standard, Tom Donnelly, a fellow at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute, wrote, "Those who believe the war is already lost—call it the Clinton-Lugar axis—are mounting a surge of their own. Ground won in Iraq becomes ground lost at home." Lugar provoked Donnelly's anger by noting that the American people had lost confidence in Bush's Iraq strategy as demonstrated by the Democratic takeover of both houses of Congress. (This "blame the American people" approach has, through repetition, almost become the accepted explanation for the outcome in Vietnam, attributing defeat to a loss of public support and not to fifteen years of military failure.) Indeed, Vietnam is the image many Americans have of defeat in Iraq. Al-Qaeda would overrun the Green Zone and the last Americans would evacuate from the rooftop of the still unfinished largest embassy in the world. President Bush feeds on this imagery.(...) But there will be no Saigon moment in Iraq. Iraq's Shiite-led government is in no danger of losing the civil war to al-Qaeda, or a more inclusive Sunni front. Iraq's Shiites are three times as numerous as Iraq's Sunni Arabs; they dominate Iraq's military and police and have a powerful ally in neighboring Iran. The Arab states that might support the Sunnis are small, far away (vast deserts separate the inhabited parts of Jordan and Saudi Arabia from the main Iraqi population centers), and can only provide money, something the insurgency has in great amounts already. Iraq after an American defeat will look very much like Iraq today—a land divided along ethnic lines into Arab and Kurdish states with a civil war being fought within its Arab part. Defeat is defined by America's failure to accomplish its objective of a self-sustaining, democratic, and unified Iraq. And that failure has already taken place, along with the increase of Iranian power in the region.(...) In laying out his dark vision of an American failure, President Bush never discusses Iran's domination of Iraq even though this is a far more likely consequence of American defeat than an al-Qaeda victory. Bush's reticence is understandable since it was his miscalculations and incompetent management of the postwar occupation that gave Iran its opportunity. While opposing talks with Iran, the neoconservatives also prefer not to discuss its current powerful influence over Iraq's central government and southern region, persisting in the fantasy—notwithstanding all evidence to the contrary—that Iran is deeply unpopular among Iraq's Shiites and clerics. (At the same time, US officials accuse Iran of supplying Iraqi Shiite militias with particularly lethal roadside bombs.)(...) In the parts where we can accomplish nothing, we should withdraw. But there are still three missions that may be achievable—disrupting al-Qaeda, preserving Kurdistan's democracy, and limiting Iran's increasing domination. These can all be served by a modest US presence in Kurdistan. We need an Iraq policy with sufficient nuance to protect American interests.Unfortunately, we probably won't get it. READ IT ALL

Iran's bomb... the skinny

David Seaton's News Links
The Persians, though strict in their religious practice, are eminently rational. They are just as rational as Khrushchev's USSR. They would not start an atomic exchange that would mean the annihilation of their country. The biggest problem brought on by the Iranians having a bomb would be that all the other countries in the region would want one too. That would not mean an atomic free for all, but it would mean that Israel's freedom of action would be forever curtailed. It would be impossible for the USA to encourage Israel to continue a war like the one against Hezbollah last summer until it "finished the the job". Any action by Israel that could remotely lead to a general war in the Middle East would have to be snuffed out at the first whiff of smoke. This would certainly cramp their style, and many Israelis would not tolerate that restraint. DS

The riddle of Iran - Economist
Abstract: “The Iranian regime is basically a messianic apocalyptic cult.” So says Israel's once and perhaps future prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu. If he is right the world is teetering on the edge of a terrifying crisis. While the world has been distracted by Iraq, Afghanistan and much else, Iran has been moving relentlessly closer to the point where it could build an atomic bomb. It has converted yellowcake into uranium hexafluoride gas. Now it is spinning the gas through thousands of centrifuges it has installed at the underground enrichment plant it built secretly in Natanz, south of Tehran. A common guess is that if it can run 3,000 centrifuges at high speed for a year, it will end up with enough fuel for its first bomb.(...) If Iran really is no more than the “messianic cult” of Mr Netanyahu's imagination, it would be worth running almost any risk to stop it acquiring nuclear weapons. But as our special report argues, Iran is not that easy to read. Iran is a self-proclaimed theocracy. Yet it has conducted foreign relations since the revolution of 1979 in a way that seems perfectly rational even if it is not pleasant. Its president, the Holocaust-questioning Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is widely reported to have threatened to “wipe Israel off the map”. But in fact he may never have uttered those precise words, and there is both ambiguity and calculation behind the bluster. Look closer and Mr Ahmadinejad is vague about whether he means that Iran should destroy Israel or just that he hopes for Israel's disappearance. Knowing that a nuclear attack on Israel or America would result in its own prompt annihilation, Iran could probably be deterred, just as other nuclear powers have been. Didn't Nikita Khrushchev promise to “bury” the West? Since Israel has memories of a real Holocaust, it may not set much store by that “probably”. This newspaper continues to believe that even for Israel containment of a nuclear Iran would be less awful than a risky pre-emptive attack that would probably cause mayhem, strengthen the regime and merely delay the day Iran gets a bomb. Yet the whole world still has a huge interest in preventing that day from coming. Even if Iran never used its bomb, mere possession of it might encourage it to adopt a more aggressive foreign policy than the one it is already pursuing in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. READ IT ALL

Unoriginal title - Baghdad/Saigon: dejá vue, all over again

David Seaton's News Links
Bush can prattle on about "victory" till he is blue in the face, but this news item from the Washington Post says all that needs to be said about the direction the war in Iraq is taking... taking with breakneck speed. DS

Envoy Urges Visas For Iraqis Aiding U.S. - Washington Post
Abstract: The American ambassador in Baghdad, Ryan C. Crocker, has asked the Bush administration to take the unusual step of granting immigrant visas to all Iraqis employed by the U.S. government in Iraq because of growing concern that they will quit and flee the country if they cannot be assured eventual safe passage to the United States. Crocker's request comes as the administration is struggling to respond to the flood of Iraqis who have sought refuge in neighboring countries since sectarian fighting escalated early last year. The United States has admitted 133 Iraqi refugees since October, despite predicting that it would process 7,000 by the end of September. "Our [Iraqi staff members] work under extremely difficult conditions, and are targets for violence including murder and kidnapping," Crocker wrote Undersecretary of State Henrietta H. Fore. "Unless they know that there is some hope of an [immigrant visa] in the future, many will continue to seek asylum, leaving our Mission lacking in one of our most valuable assets."(...) Overall estimates of the number of Iraqis who may be targeted as collaborators because of their work for U.S., coalition or foreign reconstruction groups are as high as 110,000. The U.N. refugee agency has estimated that 20,000 Iraqi refugees need permanent resettlement. In the cable he sent July 9, Crocker highlighted the plight of Iraqis who have assumed great risk by helping the United States. Since June 2004, at least nine U.S. Embassy employees have been killed -- including a married couple last month. But Iraqi employees other than interpreters and translators generally cannot obtain U.S. immigrant visas, and until a recent expansion that took the annual quota to 500 from 50, interpreter-translator applicants faced a nine-year backlog. As a result, Crocker said, the embassy is referring two workers per week to a U.S. asylum program. Outside analysts and former officials say the number of Iraqi staffers at the embassy has fallen by about half from 200 last year, while rough estimates place the number of Iraqi employees of the U.S. government in the low thousands. A 43-year-old former engineer for the U.S. Embassy who gave his name as Abu Ali said Iraqis working with Americans at any level must trust no one, use fake names, conceal their travel and telephone use, and withhold their employment even from family members. Despite such extreme precautions, he said they are viewed as traitors by some countrymen and are still mistrusted by the U.S. government. "We have no good end or finish for us," said Ali, who quit the embassy in June and moved to Dubai with his four children. READ IT ALL

Turkey: The Islamist Paradox

David Seaton's News Links
This article from the New York Times is chock full of paradoxes if you follow the Bernard Lewis, neocon reading of Islam.

The neocon nightmare is that democracy might mean Islam in the Muslim universe. Certainly if Turkey becomes a democracy by becoming more rather than less Muslim, it will shoot a million holes in the neocon narrative. It will also mean that no matter how moderate an Islamist Turkish government is, a government not run by the army and more responsive to the people's opinion will certainly be more pro-Palestinian and less hand in glove with Israel than the "secular" governments have been to date.

In short, Sunday's elections in Turkey may change the face of the Mediterranean and the Middle East... and beyond. DS

Turkey’s Election May Prove a Watershed - New York Times
Abstract: For 84 years, modern Turkey has been defined by a holy trinity — the army, the republic and its founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Each was linked inextricably to the others and all were beyond reproach. But a deep transformation is under way in this nation of 73 million and elections this Sunday may prove a watershed: liberal Turks, once the principal political supporters of the nation’s ruling secular elite, are turning their backs on it and pledging their votes to religious politicians as well as a broad new array of independents. They say they are fed up with attempts by the elite to use religion to divide Turks and that Turkey, a predominantly Muslim democracy with a rapidly growing economy, needs to relax its controlling approach towards its own citizens in order to become a modern democracy. “This election is a power struggle between those who want change and those who don’t,” said Zafer Uskul, a prominent constitutional lawyer and human rights advocate who is running from Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamic-inspired party in southern Turkey. “Religion is just an excuse.”(...) Now, as the election approaches, unleashing a power struggle between the nation’s secular elite and a group of religious politicians who draw their support from Turkey’s lower and middle classes, a vocal new civil society may just tip the balance, and help offset the danger of rising nationalism. The number of independent candidates running have more than tripled compared to the last election, many of them members of smaller parties that would not clear a 10 percent hurdle. “You heat water to 99 degrees, and it’s still water,” said Baskin Oran, an opinionated political science professor running as an independent candidate in Istanbul. “You heat it one more degree and it’s not water any more. This one degree is the year 2007.”(...) Inherent in Turkey’s progress was a strange contradiction. The state excluded religion from public life, and looked down upon religious, traditional Turks as backward — yet when those people became more integrated in public life, it condemned them as enemies of the state. “Secular urban forces headed by the army look at these people as if they were aliens from outer space,” said Dogu Ergil, a sociology professor at Ankara University. “But they are the products of the very regime that left them out.” READ IT ALL

What a useless bunch

US Senate

David Seaton's News Links

It wouldn't be correct to say that words are inadequate in describing the United States Senate's failure to do anything effective in bringing the war in Iraq to a close. Here for example is handy list from synonym. com:

Similarity of adj useless
2 senses of useless
Sense 1
useless (vs. useful)
=> cast-off(prenominal), discarded, junked, scrap (prenominal), waste
=> futile, ineffectual, otiose, unavailing
=> inutile, unprofitable
=> unserviceable, unusable, unuseable
Also See-> ineffective#1, uneffective#1, ineffectual
#2; unprofitable#1; unserviceable#1
Sense 2
useless
=> unhelpful (vs. helpful)
In the words of the immortal Sam Cooke, ".... Hunh! ...reckon that ought to get it!" DS

Eurabia

"Rebellions can be made by 2 per cent active in a striking force, and 98 per cent passively sympathetic" TE - Lawrence

David Seaton's News Links
The vast majority of the victims of Islamist terrorism are Muslims themselves and most attacks occur in Muslim countries. For every non-Muslim, killed or wounded literally thousands of Muslims have died all over the world. Islamist terrorism is basically an Islamic problem of which the west receives only the overflow because of the its direct interference in the affairs of those countries. There appears to be a revolution in the making in the Islamic countries against what are perceived there as repressive regimes, regimes which are at the same time subservient to western -- read American -- interests. Islam is seen by many as and effective "iindigestible" defense against western domination. Of course, practically everything that the Bush administration is doing and has done to fight even peaceful Islamic movements is making things much worse. The behavior of the Bush administration is disturbingly similar to previous administration's activities in Central and South America in the 70s, and 80 and many of the people involved are the same.

As an ideological cover for the counter revolution America's neocons have substituted "Islamo-fascism" for communism and invented the racist term "Eurabia", to describe a decadent Europe, invaded and soon to dominated by violent, primitive, and especially more fertile Muslims. This is simply rubbish. If there are many Muslims in Europe today it is for historical and economic reason: long standing European colonialism in the Magreb and Africa, poverty in their countries of origin and Europe's need for cheap labor. This is not an "invasion".

The agitpropism "Eurabia" is one of the most sinister and counterproductive ideas being shopped around by the neocons. The eminent orientalist, Bernard Lewis is the neocon's guiding star in all things Muslim. As Gideon Rachman (who so happens to be Jewish) wrote in the Financial Times, "Mr Lewis equates Osama bin Laden and Muslim immigrants. They are all part of the same attack on Europe. This seems a little rough on many of my neighbours in London. My local postman, hairdresser and convenience store owner are all Muslims. So are the schoolgirls who play football at my children's school - incongruously clad in headscarves and shorts. As far as I can tell, none of these people is intent on destroying western civilisation from within."

If this seems to be simply a soft, morally relativist, multiculturist view, it also extremely practical. As TE Lawrence (of Arabia) said, "Rebellions can be made by 2 per cent active in a striking force, and 98 per cent passively sympathetic". This struggle is about information. What is vital for western countries, in order to avert attacks, is to have very good advance information about who is a potential bomber and who isn't and who their contacts are and where their funds come from... and that information is only in the mosques and in the Muslim communities themselves. If the Muslim community in general perceives indiscriminate hostility toward themselves from non-Muslims of the sort that the "Eurabia" thesis implies, then it will be difficult for peaceful Muslims (Lawrence's 98%) to communicate with non-Muslims and logically that information about "suspicious" members of their community (Lawrence's 2%) will not be easily forthcoming, and that will mean that more attacks will succeed and that in turn will create more indiscriminate hostility and therefore less information will be forthcoming... A vicious circle if ever there was one.

So right after Al Qaeda itself, the most dangerous enemy of European security is the neocon's Islamo-fascist, paranoia scenario. DS

Beckham to LA... a note from Madrid

David Seaton's News Links
David Beckham has left Real Madrid to play for the Los Angeles Something or Another.

When he came to Madrid, Real was European champion and while he was here, Madrid won absolutely nothing at all... if you don't count the current first division championship which Barcelona literally threw away and Madrid was able to pick up off the floor in the last game of the season after playing dreadful football all year long.

Becks was hired originally as a marketing coup and he sold a lot of Real Madrid tee-shirts to young Japanese girls, he also displaced a far superior player, Luis Figo.... one could go on and on. The bottom line is that Real Madrid made a lot of money and didn't win anything. A veteran British sportscaster once described David Beckham as having a "good right foot and a horrible wife" and I think that is bang on. Los Angeles is perfect for them... I don't think they'll ever leave. DS

PS. I almost forgot, in the four years he was in Spain he never learned two words of Spanish.