Che and Elvis... caught in a trap

David Seaton's News Links
Finally Che Guevara can only be compared to Elvis Presley.

Biographers list Elvis's neurosis, his eating binges, his delusions of grandeur, his paranoia. Rumors even circulate that the King had a tiny dick... You name it.

But, you're in a shop or on the street or listening to your car radio and suddenly there is the voice and all the mystery of his charisma is upon you. That's the way it is with Che too, he connects with a collective dream.

Of course Che didn't die of a drug overdose like Elvis, he died fighting for his ideas and now those ideas are back in force where he died.

History is what Elvis would have called a "Mystery Train". DS

Che's legacy looms larger than ever - Los Angeles Times
Abstract: It was a long fight, but the Cubans have finally conquered this forlorn Andean hamlet, four decades after Ernesto "Che" Guevara was executed in the adobe schoolhouse here. Cuban physicians provide healthcare, Cuban educators oversee literacy classes, and the Cuban-donated library features Che-as-superhero comic books. A monumental bust of the beret-topped revolutionary who helped Fidel Castro seize power in Cuba dominates the central plaza.(...) Sympathizers from across the globe will make the trek to this remote corner of Bolivia this week to mark the 40th anniversary of the capture and killing of Guevara, militant leftist icon and global brand, the radical chic face adorning countless T-shirts, posters, album covers and tattoos. Today, the ideological legacy of this peripatetic militant may loom larger than ever in Latin America, abetted by the election of a "Pink Tide" of leftist governments from Nicaragua to Argentina. Socialism is in, the Cubans are on the march, and Che is the defiant embodiment of it all. To his critics, Guevara was a trigger-happy megalomaniac whose bloody example led thousands to their deaths in futile uprisings that only hardened military repression from Guatemala to Chile. But to the legions of devotees who subscribe to his personality cult, Guevara is forever the doomed idealist, the poetry- loving guerrillero and "most complete human being of our age," in the words of Jean-Paul Sartre.(...) "Finally, Che's dream is coming true," said former Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Casteñeda, a Guevara biographer who casts Che more as wayward fanatic than inspired visionary. "Cuba's export of revolution is finally succeeding in many countries in Latin America, thanks to Chavez and his oil."(...) But, 40 years later, Guevara has scored big in the contested battleground of memory, emerging as a kind of secular saint, freeze-framed at age 39 between the Summer of Love and the abyss of 1968. Hollywood sees box-office cachet in Che: Director Steven Soderbergh is filming a new biopic starring Che look-alike Benicio Del Toro. "Today Che is associated in the collective conscience with values -- his ethics, his principles, his willingness to lose his life for an ideal," biographer Pacho O'Donnell wrote recently in the Argentine weekly Veintitres.(...) "All my life we communist pioneers pledged to be like Che," said Jose Valledaris, 45, a Cuban engineer who was watering shrubbery inside the Guevara mausoleum at a former military airstrip in nearby Vallegrande, where the bodies of Guevara and six fellow combatants were dumped in a ditch 40 years ago and buried. "Now I'm here, in the footsteps of Che." READ IT ALL

What Marx called "contradictions" others call a belly laugh

David Seaton's News Links
This is what it really is all about. The Chinese have all our debt and all our cash. They are about to spend the money they have earned and call in the loans they have made and either they can buy what they want and can get paid in full or the system will break.

I think future Chinese historians will call this "Capitalism-Leninism", and I think Vladimir Ilyich must be rolling in his mausoleum with laughter (when the tourists aren't looking of course). DS

Niall Ferguson: Small stakes for Bush-Brown-Sarko - Los Angeles Times
Abstract: In Kissinger's heyday, the president of the United States really was a potentate. Like his opposite number, the general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, he had the power to kill tens of millions of people at the touch of a button. Even the British prime minister had real power in the 1980s: The power to send a fleet from Portsmouth to the other end of the Earth to expel invaders from the Falkland Islands. The leaders of the last generation had real economic power as well. Just over 25 years ago, the president of France had the power to nationalize the country's largest banks. It's not that today's politicians are inferior to their predecessors. It's their predicament that's changed. Not everyone sees this. Not everyone wants to see it. The news media, in particular, depend for their very existence on the notion that politicians are powerful. The politicians need the media to publicize their activities. No one understands this better than the new French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, whose whole life has become a performance for the benefit of Paris Match. We are told that Sarkozy is pondering a fundamental realignment of French foreign policy. Perhaps, after more than 40 years of semi-detachment, he will take France back into NATO's integrated command structure. Perhaps, after more than 50 years of attachment, he will loosen the ties between France and Germany.(...) From the mid-17th century until the mid-20th, relations between Britain and France truly were of vital importance to the stability of the world. Had it not been for Anglo-French conflict, the U.S. might have been suffocated at birth. Had it not been for Anglo-French cooperation, the German Reich might have conquered Europe. France, Britain, America: They each have had their era of hegemony. Now, however, they all belong to the club of developed debtors, with combined current account deficits of $970 billion last year. Other members of this club are Australia, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Portugal and Spain. Apart from Iceland, it reads like a list of ex-empires, with the former members of the British Empire (energy-rich Canada excepted) in the lead. Collectively, the developed debtors had to borrow about $1.3 trillion last year. On the other side of this great global equation is the club of emerging exporters. According to the International Monetary Fund, more than 40% of the developed debtors' funding requirement last year was met by China, Russia and the Middle East. The problem for the deficit countries is essentially that their people think the world owes them a living. Their politicians pander to this assumption by making a series of more or less incompatible promises: that expenditure on healthcare and education will always go up; that direct taxation will never go up; and that the assets against which voters borrow will never go down. The only way to fulfill these promises is to pump out ever more printed paper: bank notes, bills, bonds, stocks and the rest. The emerging exporters buy these. The net result must be a creeping transfer of financial ownership from West to East. This process is about to enter a new phase as China establishes its own sovereign wealth fund to join those operated by the likes of Kuwait, Abu Dhabi and Singapore. According to Morgan Stanley, these funds manage about $2.6 trillion. In 15 years, their assets could reach $27 trillion, giving them control of nearly 10% of total global financial assets. So the big question is not whether Sarkozy or Brown will get along better with Bush, but what China's sovereign wealth fund will buy when it embarks on its first investment spree. READ IT ALL

Che Guevara: “…burning the breeze…”

"Vienes quemando la brisa/ Con soles de primavera/ Para plantar la bandera/ Con la luz de tu sonrisa."

"You come burning the breeze/ With the spring sunlight/To plant the flag/ With the light of your smile"

"Hasta Siempre Comandante", Carlos Puebla

David Seaton's News Links
We are marking the 40^th anniversary of the death in La Higuera, Bolivia, of Ernesto “Che” Guevara: born in Argentina, hero of the Cuban revolution and a universal symbol of rebellion.

For many he is only a face on a T-shirt, but in Miami he’s still considered a blood thirsty murderer, while in Evo Morales‘s Bolivia many Indians pray to “San Ernesto de La Higuera”. Diego Maradona has a tattoo of Che on his right shoulder and Oscar winning actor, Benicio Del Toro who is playing Che in a film, described his appeal to the New York Times, “Che symbolizes not selling out,” he said, “staying true to what you believe in.”

The few surviving people who actually fought alongside Ernesto Guevara, or fought against him, are very old. For example: Mario Teran, the Bolivian army sergeant who shot Che dead forty years ago just had his cataracts removed by Cuban doctors working in Bolivia. Quoted by the BBC, the Cuban Communist Party's official newspaper Granma proclaimed. "Four decades after Mario Teran attempted to destroy a dream and an idea, Che returns to win yet another battle." That’s right, there are doctors from Castro’ Cuba working where Che Guevara was hunted down and killed by American trained Bolivian soldiers forty years ago.

If Che’s ghost still walks the streets of La Higuera, as its inhabitants believe, the specter’s silent laughter must ring through the hills, Bolivia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Ecuador are all on the path of what is being called, “Twenty-first century socialism”. This has been possible because Che’s obsession, the United States of America, has no energy or attention left to control its restless southern neighbors, bogged down as it is in two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that it can neither win nor finish and with Washington insiders considering an American attack on Iran imminent.

America’s foremost investigative reporter, Seymour Hersh, writing in the New Yorker, quoted US foreign policy guru Zbigniew Brzezinski as saying that Iran would likely react to an American attack “by intensifying the conflict in Iraq and also in Afghanistan, their neighbors, and that could draw in Pakistan. We will be stuck in a regional war for twenty years.” If that happens Che’s dream of the “hundred Vietnams” will have come true. South America will find itself without an “imperial tutor” for the first time in its history.

In the 1990s the Russians lost control of their traditional spheres of influence; the world witnessed the seemingly magic disintegration of the czarist empire that Russia had maintained through world wars and revolution since the 17th century. The similarities to the deflation of US power in Latin America are striking. DS

Burma: what we don't know we don't know

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One of the principal problems we have commenting on Burma is that none of us have much idea what we are talking about. This article from the Los Angeles Times is about the best I've read so far on the subject.

It seems to me that the guiding principal would be, with a seller's market in place, that countries. agreeable and disagreeable alike, which possess valuable natural resources tend to exercise their sovereignty. DS

Don't blame China for Myanmar - Los Angeles Times
Abstract: These are supposed to be humbling times for foreign policy analysts -- chaos in Iraq having made it harder to cast the United States as omnipotent, omniscient and self-actualizing. But judging by the reactions to the recent protests in Myanmar, also known as Burma, the commentariat hasn't stopped ascribing otherworldly powers to ambitious governments. It's just that they're choosing different governments. The "shame and misery of the Burmese junta," claimed Christopher Hitchens in Slate, will endure just "as long as the embrace of China persists." Hitchens isn't the only pundit casting China as puppeteer to the junta. "China must use its 'special relationship' with the junta," explained Nobel Peace Prize winner Jody Williams in the Wall Street Journal, "to arrange the release of Ms. [Aung San] Suu Kyi and hundreds -- if not thousands -- of other political prisoners." Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) has expressed similar sentiments, and various human rights groups are calling for the United States and Europe to boycott the Summer Olympics in Beijing. But how much sway do Chinese leaders actually hold over Myanmar's famously intransigent, xenophobic military? "They actually have very limited leverage, as all foreigners do," said William Overholt, who advised the pro-democracy coalition of 21 tribal groups that created the Provisional Revolutionary Government in Burma in 1989 and is now director of Rand's Center for Asia Pacific Policy. "The whole theory of this government is to cut itself off from the world so no one can influence it." That certainly comes through in the propaganda, which I saw much of during the year and a half I spent living and working in Yangon. Under Burmese law, all printed material must contain a government statement of Burmese nationalist principles under the heading "people's desire." Principle No. 1? "Oppose those relying on external elements, acting as stooges, holding negative views." That message applies to China too: Stooges come in many stripes.(...) The truth is that no one really understands what makes Myanmar tick. It is an information vacuum, characterized by a surreptitious, paranoid political culture suspicious of all things foreign. The world is watching footage of Myanmar's protests in a way that would have been impossible in 1988, but it's not as if C-SPAN can set up shop in the Ministry of Home Affairs. The generals' decision-making process remains a mystery, and pundits fill the void with their a priori commitments. Exiles push sanctions; isolationists advocate restraint; China hawks blame China. But China is not the cause of Myanmar's backwardness. It may not even be much of an accomplice. In the late 1960s, China began openly supporting the Communist Party of Burma, contributing to a long and bloody civil war. "Burmese generals remember the bitter civil war, with China on the other side, and China doesn't really trust those erratic guys," said Bertil Lintner, a former correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review and a Myanmar expert who has been blacklisted by the government. "They are new allies."(...) China is not Myanmar's biggest trading partner; Thailand is. "You keep seeing these references to Chinese oil and gas assets in Burma," Overholt said. "The reality is that they're trivial. China's attitude toward Burmese gas is that the Thais have already signed up for most of it and the Indians want the rest." China is building an oil and gas pipeline -- but the gas it will carry will flow to the Middle East. This is weak stuff to hang a boycott on; Overholt calls the idea "nutty." So why all the focus on Beijing? The West has been repeatedly frustrated in its attempts to influence a small group of secretive generals; a decade of sanctions has not brought Myanmar closer to democracy. It may be that leaning on China -- a country we expect to respond rationally to incentives -- channels the need to "do something" in the same way embassy protests, candlelight vigils and online petitions do. It may also be that China is a locus of negativity already, ripe for scapegoating. Western companies with valuable oil holdings in Myanmar have attracted less attention than has China. The point isn't that wealthy nations have no role to play in coaxing Myanmar forward, or that applying pressure is futile. But casting the world in terms of all-powerful actors and weak client states is no more likely to lead to smart policymaking than casting it in terms of good and evil. READ IT ALL

God's country and how we blew it

David Seaton's News Links

The United States has always been a dream country, with its easily defensible borders, its navigable rivers, its fertile agriculture, its natural resources of every kind, its large, energetic and relatively well educated population.... You name it. As Chuck Berry sang, "Anything you want, we got right here in the U.S.A.".

So, what's the problem?

The problem is political. The people themselves know what to do, but the system cannot do it. And the system cannot deliver because of the way politics is financed.

William Pfaff, in the article below, gives the key; the problem is that the

"Supreme Court-imposed doctrine that money spent on television political advertising is constitutionally protected free speech, has created a presidential election industry concerned totally with profit and virtually nothing with principle."

As I like to say, future Chinese historians will find this fatal flaw a fascinating subject to study, a sure fire doctoral thesis, like learning that the Roman Empire collapsed because the lead pipe plumbing made the Roman matrons infertile and thus decimated the patrician class.

It reads a helluva lot better than it plays though. DS

William Pfaff: Dehumanizing America's Presidential Candidates
Abstract: Americans will soon near the end of the first year of the 2008 presidential campaign, which actually began before the congressional mid-term election of 2006. The candidates of both parties have already lost much if not most of their human recognizability and have increasingly come to resemble synthetic creatures uttering programmed opinions that relate to a virtual rather than real national and international society.(...) It is as if they might already be experiencing near-death out-of-body episodes, floating above the audiences or television studios and incredulously witnessing themselves answering the same meaningless questions for the millionth time, with a million more times to come before the campaign ends a year from November, and already near madness. The presidential campaign is an ordeal we should not inflict on sentient beings, even laboratory rats. It is a phenomenon of what Marx would not have recognized as post-modern capitalism, since this degree of dehumanization of individuals would have been unimaginable in a nineteenth century economic or political system. But today, the United States, under the Supreme Court-imposed doctrine that money spent on television political advertising is constitutionally protected free speech, has created a presidential election industry concerned totally with profit and virtually nothing with principle.(...) The process takes groups of originally diverse and intelligent individuals, imprudent or courageous enough to wish to become the Democratic candidate for the United States presidency (to take that party example), intending to represent an electorate that voted overwhelmingly in 2004 to end the Iraq war and withdrew from that country, and thereafter cease to meddle in the affairs of distant countries, and it remakes them. All these individuals at the start had individual convictions about how to accomplish such goals. The election industry with all but unvarying success turns them into people who say exactly the same things about everything,(...) On Iraq, each of those candidates whom the Washington press, and national editorialists, have (already) selected as electable, now says that the U.S. must stay in Iraq or the surrounding region with large military forces, not just after the 2008 election, but that of 2016 – beyond two more presidential terms – so as to “prevent chaos,” prevent Iraq from becoming “a terrorist hotbed and training ground,” foster democratic government, centralize (or decentralize) Iraq (the apparent disagreement on this is unimportant because it is a matter the Iraqis will eventually decide for themselves), foster the regional stability that the United States destroyed by invading Iraq, preserve America’s interests in Arab oil, and protect Israel from Iran, Syria, and perhaps eventually from the Palestinians. This is largely indistinguishable from the Bush administration program (probably leaving out the Bush people’s commitment to torture) because it is the consensus view of the American foreign policy community in Washington, and any deviation from this consensus is considered by the presidential election industry as disqualifying the candidate. The dissident will have revealed himself or herself as less than a strong leader, a policy irresponsible, and not presidential material. The problem in American foreign policy today is that an ideological orthodoxy has emerged within the intellectual and political community concerned with foreign relations, and this orthodoxy now is imposed upon everyone who wishes to shape national policy at the Washington political and media level. READ IT ALL

Osama bin Laden and Fritz

David Seaton's News Links
Fritz G is a whitebread German who converted to Islam and was planning to plant a bomb. Here is the number one western security nightmare: suicide bombers who are not subject to "racial profiling".

Islam, like any other of the great world religions is in conflict with the values of capitalism: individualism and greed, and there is no reason that brown skin goes invariably with the Shahadah.

Where else could alienated and disaffected young people turn today if they are looking for a revolution? DS

Among the Believers - Die Zeit - Wall Street Journal
Abstract: It had to be Fritz. A name can't get much more German than that. And of all places it had to happen in Sauerland, a remote region in Germany that invokes about as much the specter of a "parallel society" as a gardening club. The amount of explosives 28-year-old Fritz G., 22-year-old Daniel S. and Adem Y., a 28-year-old Turkish-German, had prepared in an inconspicuous vacation home would have been many times more destructive than the Madrid and London bombs.(...) In comparison to Great Britain, Spain or France, Germany thought itself comparatively safe. First, because it was not involved in the Iraq war, it hoped al Qaeda would grant the country some sort of bonus. Second, because most of the roughly three million Muslims in Germany come from Turkey, where the separation of religion and politics is state doctrine. They were thus thought to be more or less inoculated against extremism. How different, one thought, from the U.K., where the majority of Muslims come from Pakistan, a country founded in religious conflict and an exporter of fundamentalism. Or France, which made its Muslims citoyens but whose Algeria war still preoccupies the minds of the present immigrant generation. Given the alarming fact that a son of Turkish immigrants was involved in the Sauerland plot, the inoculation can no longer be considered absolute. What's more, it looks as though the home-grown phenomenon has not only reached Germany, but has even skipped a developmental stage. Fritz G. and Daniel S. did not become extremists through cultural Islam. They took the direct route to political Islam. The phenomenon of extremist converts should worry us for it shows that Islam can be decoupled from its native religious and cultural background. Al Qaedism is becoming a universal, radical ideology of protest. Young Westerners in search for the most brutal anti-Western position find Osama bin Laden's ideas seductive because they are ethically hermetic.(...) (bin Landen) has very consciously begun fishing for supporters who share the backward concept of Islamism for non-religious reasons. The secular religions of climate rescue and globalization criticism meet bin Laden's doctrine of divine salvation. Disillusioned of the world, unite! "Wherever the believer happens to be, he is part of a virtual society, with which he shares the same set of norms," writes the French Islam expert Olivier Roy about the attraction of Islamism. "Only two radical protest movements in the West still claim to be internationalist: the anti-globalization movement and radical Islamists.... Al Qaeda has clearly occupied an existing space of anti-imperialism and protest.... Al-Qaeda is a successor to the ultra-left and third-world movements." READ IT ALL

Is our children lost their mojo?

David Seaton's News Links
A major part of US charisma has always been its cheerful air of "can do" competence. With Iraq, this has gone with the wind.

Today's American narrative would have Neal Armstrong step out of the Apollo and fall flat on his face. Henry Ford would have to recall all the Model Ts. Cole Porter would write like Bush speaks... You catch my drift. I find this directly attacks my self-image as an American... I resent it like hell.

This is not only a loss for the United States, it is a loss for the world similar to a child losing its belief in Santa Claus. For the rest of your life there is what Sartre would call "a Santa Claus shaped hole" in your life. The world won't miss American imperialism, but it will sure miss the cheerful, confident and competent, "can do", American. I miss me already. DS

Applebaum: Would You Follow the Country That Bungled Iraq? - Washington Post
Abstract: Why don't they like us as much as they used to? "They" in this latter question are our very, very closest allies. By this I don't mean France, or even Canada,(...) No, the more interesting question is why support for American leadership has declined among our traditional friends: Britain, Poland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands. And it has declined -- drastically. Since 2002, according to the latest German Marshall Fund " transatlantic trends" survey, support for "U.S. leadership in world affairs" -- that's whether they want to follow our political lead, not whether they think we're nice -- has plunged by 30 percentage points in Germany, 26 points in Italy, 24 points in Poland, 23 points in the Netherlands and 22 points in Britain. More generally, support for U.S. leadership, which was at 64 percent across Europe in 2002, is now at 36 percent (though that figure includes the touchier countries).(...) Europeans worry about global warming than Americans, but the difference (85 percent vs. 70 percent) is not as great as one might think. And we all worry about everything else -- international terrorism, a nuclear Iran, global epidemics -- in almost equal measure. This last point strikes me as most interesting: For in fact, it indicates that what our closest friends really dislike is not our traditional pushiness, our violent movies or even our current president (though they don't like him much) but our incompetence. A full third blame the perceived decline of the transatlantic alliance on the "mismanagement of Iraq." Not the invasion of Iraq, the "mismanagement" of Iraq. Which makes sense: If you're really worried about Iran, do you want to put your faith in the United States, the country that bungled Iraq? If you really care about Islamic fundamentalism, do you want to be led by the country that, distracted by Iraq, failed to predict the return of the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan?(...) Countries that would once have supported American foreign policy on principle, simply out of solidarity or friendship, will now have to be cajoled, or paid, to join us. Count that -- along with the lives of soldiers and civilians, the dollars and equipment -- as another cost of the war. No one wants to be on the losing team. READ IT ALL

China's aging population

David Seaton's News Links
An aging population is a problem, but it is also a sign of other more positive factors: it show that less children are needed because infant mortality is low and fewer need be born in order to reach adulthood and that women are educated and can thus control how many babies they have. It shows that general health and medical services are good and thus people live longer.

It is safe to infer that good health and education services are the product of an educated and energetic populace.

A low birthrate and a large number of older people shows a society where there has been a great improvement in health and educational services in only a few generations. Obviously, if fewer babies are born in developed countries, in only a few generations the problem will have solved itself. The old people will gradually die off and there will be fewer younger people to replace them, but better educated and more productive.

In the article I quote below, Niall Ferguson gives India's 46% population increase by 2050 as a plus for India. Really? What sort of education will they have? How healthy and energetic will they be? What kind of contribution will they be able to make?

No matter how much it "shrinks", China, where education is not confined only to the upper castes as in India, will surely have a huge mass of literate people by 2050. As one observer put it, "if you are one in a million in China, there are a thousand like you". There are more "honor students" in China than normal students in the USA. The most probable outcome will be that by 2050 there will be a lot of young Africans and Indians doing unskilled jobs in China and paying into the Chinese social system. I wouldn't count the Chinese out, not just yet. DS

Niall Ferguson: Will an aging population defang China? - Los Angeles Times
Abstract: The rise of China is the single most important historical phenomenon of our time. A fifth of humanity is on the march -- or, rather, behind the wheel. Yet there is a need to look closely at Chinese power before concluding that it is all over for the West and our dreams of a free world with a stable climate. A few weeks ago, I wrote about the environmental damage China is inflicting on itself in the breakneck dash for industrialized wealth. Now let's consider the demographic side of the story. On close inspection, China's population of 1.3 billion may not be as big a source of power as many commentators assume. According to U.N. projections, the world population will increase from 6.5 billion to 9.2 billion between now and 2050. But China will account for just 4% of that increase. The most rapid growth will be elsewhere. In sub-Saharan Africa and the Muslim world, the population will more than double; India's will be up 46%; and the United States, up by more than a third. India's population will overtake that of China around 2025. As well as ceasing to be the world's most populous country, China will become almost as elderly a society as Europe. Today, less than 8% of China's population is 65 or older. By 2050, that proportion could rise to as high as 24%. The equivalent figure for Europe is 28%, and for the U.S., 21%. In sub-Saharan Africa, by contrast, the proportion will rise from 3% to less than 6%. READ IT ALL

Bush has a plan: Sy Hersh in the New Yorker

"We will be stuck in a regional war for twenty years."
Zbigniew Brzezinski

David Seaton's News Links
Seymour Hersh, America's foremost investigative reporter with his amazing sources and impeccable attitude, has brought out another of his meticulously researched articles that will be invaluable aids to future Chinese historians investigating the decline and fall of the United States of America.

Now, when I say the United State will "fall", I must add that I know (believe) it will get right back up again.

Look at Russia. Huge countries with enormous natural resources and a gifted, hard working population, don't just lie there, but, as we have observed with Russia, its a painful journey from up to down and back and I am not at all confident that America's democracy or whatever is left of it, will survive the trip. DS

Seymour M. Hersh: The Administration’s plan for Iran. - New Yorker
Abstract:(...) “They’re moving everybody to the Iran desk,” one recently retired C.I.A. official said. “They’re dragging in a lot of analysts and ramping up everything. It’s just like the fall of 2002”—the months before the invasion of Iraq, when the Iraqi Operations Group became the most important in the agency. He added, “The guys now running the Iranian program have limited direct experience with Iran. In the event of an attack, how will the Iranians react? They will react, and the Administration has not thought it all the way through.” That theme was echoed by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national-security adviser, who said that he had heard discussions of the White House’s more limited bombing plans for Iran. Brzezinski said that Iran would likely react to an American attack “by intensifying the conflict in Iraq and also in Afghanistan, their neighbors, and that could draw in Pakistan. We will be stuck in a regional war for twenty years.”(...) The Iranian leadership is feeling the pressure. In the press conference after his U.N. speech, Ahmadinejad was asked about a possible attack. “They want to hurt us,” he said, “but, with the will of God, they won’t be able to do it.” According to a former State Department adviser on Iran, the Iranians complained, in diplomatic meetings in Baghdad with Ambassador Crocker, about a refusal by the Bush Administration to take advantage of their knowledge of the Iraqi political scene. The former adviser said, “They’ve been trying to convey to the United States that ‘We can help you in Iraq. Nobody knows Iraq better than us.’ ” Instead, the Iranians are preparing for an American attack. The adviser said that he had heard from a source in Iran that the Revolutionary Guards have been telling religious leaders that they can stand up to an American attack. “The Guards are claiming that they can infiltrate American security,” the adviser said. “They are bragging that they have spray-painted an American warship—to signal the Americans that they can get close to them.” (I was told by the former senior intelligence official that there was an unexplained incident, this spring, in which an American warship was spray-painted with a bull’s-eye while docked in Qatar, which may have been the source of the boasts.) “Do you think those crazies in Tehran are going to say, ‘Uncle Sam is here! We’d better stand down’? ” the former senior intelligence official said. “The reality is an attack will make things ten times warmer.” READ IT ALL

The simplest test of hypocrisy

David Seaton's News Links
So much of what is said in defense of Israel centers around the Holocaust. Lets talk about it a little.

First let me say that I have no doubts at all that it happened just the way it is portrayed (Raul Hilberg version at least).

Furthermore when I was only seven, the aged lady doctor with a heavy accent who walked several miles through a Midwestern blizzard to give me a lifesaving penicillin shot when I had gone into coma from double pneumonia, after my own pediatrician had refused to make the house call, had one of the tattoos on her arm. The next day, when I had awakened, I asked her about the numbers on her arm and my mother told me to shut up. So I am not a negationist. I loved that old lady and I owe my life to her.

So it strikes me as incongruous that with so much concern about the Holocaust that:

"an umbrella group of Holocaust survivor organizations in Israel estimated that about one-quarter of Israel’s 250,000 survivors are living in poverty."

according to the Jewish Telegraph Agency.

With billions of dollars of American aid going to Israel every year, and all the endless hoohah about the Shoa: the monuments and memorials, the TV programs, the university endowments, the books etcetera... that these poor, old people who are actually all that is humanly left of the Holocaust are lacking in even simple comforts makes me want to puke.

I would think until those that brandish the Holocaust at every turn, to justify Israel, actually do something to help these survivors live tranquilly and in comfort for the little time they have left, they should shut up.

They are fakes, the Shoa was real, but they are fakes and everything they are selling is fake.

The next thing you are going to hear - mark my words - is that Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez are making a fund to help these old people. I'm not joking. DS

Hiding behind the charge of antisemitism

David Seaton's News Links

Probably the most grotesque and malignant antisemitic fabrication of all time is the ancient, "Blood Libel", which briefly put, accuses the Jews of using the blood of Christian children to make Passover matzo. Of course it isn't true, but it is about the worst lie ever made up about the Jews. It is considered the height of antisemitic poison.

How does this grotesque falsehood compare with reality?

For many years the entire world has been watching Israeli soldiers shooting small boys who have been tossing rocks at them. The world doesn't approve. Those who protest loudly are labeled antisemitic.

How do a few nonexistent matzos compare with all those dead, little rock throwing Palestinian boys?

That is what Pipes and Dershowitz are trying to cover up when they hide behind the accusation of antisemitism. DS

Meet Rudy's Middle East advisor

Daniel Pipes

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Meet Daniel Pipe. Look at his face. This is his official photograph BTW, this is not some shot that somebody took of him in a off moment. No sir, this how he wants to look! Look at the expression in his eyes. I mean Osama bin Laden himself looks like a rather distinguished, well balanced, "regular" sort of guy alongside Pipes.

Look at him carefully, because this man is whispering advice about America's role in the Middle East into the ear of Rudy Giuliani, who may very well be the next president of the United States... especially if he gets to run against Hillary Clinton.

Some people say (to use a bushism) that he is an "extremist", but Daniel Pipes is not just an "extremist", he is a wild eyed fascist, and to think that Rudy Giuliani who may be the next president of the USA, is taking "advice" from someone as sinister as Pipes confirms my belief that things can get much worse in the future than they are with Bush today, much, much worse... much, much, much worse.

Inter feces profundis sumus, as the Romans would have put it.

It can be said in Pipes' favor, however that rarely do evil people ever look as evil as they are, but if Pipes were cast as the villain in old silent, melodrama as Simon Legree, tying the farmers daughter to the railroad track, Victorians would probably have thought the casting over the top or the makeup rather too crude. DS

Ken Silverstein. Pipes Joins Up With Giuliani - Harpers
Add another neoconservative adviser on the Middle East to an already impressive roster–Daniel Pipes signed on with Rudy Giuliani’s campaign today. I’d heard Pipes was advising Giuliani and asked him about it yesterday. He told me by e-mail that he had “close relations with several people in the campaign,” but said that he did not have “official connection to it.” He e-mailed back just now to say that, as of today (August 28, 2007), he has officially signed up with the campaign.

I think it’s fair to say that Pipes is even further out ideologically than Norman Podhoretz, another Giuliani adviser. Readers unfamiliar with Pipes can check out his profile at Wikipedia. For a representative sampling of his work, consider a 2006 article he wrote in the Jerusalem Post (not available online):

Iraq’s plight is neither a coalition responsibility nor a particular danger to the West. Fixing Iraq is neither the coalition’s responsibility, nor its burden. When Sunni terrorists target Shi’ites and vice versa, non-Muslims are less likely to be hurt. Civil war in Iraq, in short, would be a humanitarian tragedy, but not a strategic one.

The monks march up, the monks march down, the monks march around and around...

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The monks march up, the monks march down, the monks march around and around... What does it all mean?

Condoleezza Rice is scandalized by the lack of democracy in Burma, Bush is pushing for sanctions. That alone should put us on our guard.

As we saw in pre-war Iraq, international sanctions only hurt the ordinary people of the country sanctioned, the leaders of such countries are hardly inconvenienced at all. I agree with this reading of the Burmese situation from the German business daily Handelsblatt:

"The sanctions, demanded by human rights activists and increased gradually over the last two decades by the West, have proven themselves to be largely useless. They merely crippled the economy and hurt ordinary people. For those in power, the sanctions have been like water off a duck's back; they continue to flog Burma's oil, gas, gemstones and rain forests off on China. Beijing expresses its gratitude with weapons and with vetoes against threatening UN resolutions. Out of fear that its neighbor will turn into a Chinese protectorate, India has also been courting the junta instead of supporting the opposition as it used to do. Thailand and Russia are likewise eagerly trading with the pariah state."

"It is naïve to hope that all countries might join in an effective embargo. But especially now that internal opposition is raising its head, the world should take the opposite tack and integrate the isolated country into world trade and into the processes of globalization. Western countries wouldn't just be able to help minimize poverty. They would also provide a better example than the Chinese when it comes to fair treatment of workers and the environmentally sustainable exploitation of resources. But Western democracies score more points on the home front with permeable embargoes than with politically motivated trade agreements. But trade has, on the long term, more promise of success -- and will cause less damage to the innocent. For the moment, in any case, Burma is so poor and so isolated from the global economy that its dictators have little to lose from sanctions."

Some think that with the Beijing Olympics just around the corner the Chinese will discourage a brutal response from the Burmese regime. I think that the exact opposite could very well be true. A great part of recent Chinese geopolitical success is due to their willingness to trade with countries the United States and the European Union sanction for their human rights abuses, such as Iran, Sudan and Zimbabwe. Supporting the Burmese junta through thick and thin would send a message to commodity-rich authoritarians that they can always count on China in a pinch and since unfortunately many of the countries of the world most endowed with natural resources are cursed with nasty regimes this could be an immensely profitable stance. DS

US will stand down 'cause they can't stand us

"Contractors shall not be subject to Iraqi laws or regulations in matters relating to the terms and conditions of their contracts… Contractors shall be immune from Iraqi legal processes with respect to acts performed by them pursuant to the terms and conditions of a Contract or any sub-contract thereto… Certification by the Sending State that its Contractor acted pursuant to the terms and conditions of the Contract shall, in any Iraqi legal process, be conclusive evidence of the facts so certified…" CPA Order 17, dated June 27, 2004

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The Blackwater story makes clear that the entire American invasion and occupation of Iraq is not only illegal and immoral, but also futile and absurd because Iraq will finally only be reunited by its desire to expel the Americans. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps over a million, human beings have died, been mutilated or lost their homes to come to this. As the Spanish ask, "did we need so much luggage for such a short trip?" DS

Blackwater Shooting Crisis Rallies Baghdad - Wall Street Journal
Abstract: An escalating controversy over the alleged shooting of Iraqi civilians by a U.S. security firm has triggered the strongest challenge yet to legal immunity for some foreigners in Iraq, while providing a rare rallying cry for the country's polarized factions. But the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has managed to galvanize broad-based opposition to an order issued in the waning days of direct American rule in Iraq that lays out broad immunity from criminal prosecution for U.S. diplomats, troops and private contractors operating in Iraq. It is known as Order 17, issued by the U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority in 2004. Iraqi officials have long chafed at the law, viewing it as an encroachment on Iraqi sovereignty. But until now, no serious effort has been made to revise it. The central government, unpopular on the streets and worried about being marginalized, appears to be using the Blackwater crisis to counter U.S. criticism that it is ineffective and to show ordinary Iraqis that it can stand up to Washington.(...) the shooting has brought together Iraq's three biggest and mostly hostile factions -- Sunni Muslim Arabs, Shiite Muslim Arabs and ethnic Kurds. This is a very good point on which everyone agrees," says Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish member of Iraq's Parliament. "We cannot continue to have the Iraqi-American relationship solely on the basis of Order 17," says Mithal al-Alusi, a Sunni member of Parliament. The united front is a surprising turnabout.(...) Iraqis have long been outraged by what they often say is a heavy hand used by security outfits such as Blackwater, and the firms' seeming immunity against repercussions for their actions. "This is really an unfortunate situation, but it happened many times before," says Zuhair Hummadi, an adviser to Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi. "This time it got out of hand." In December, a Blackwater employee shot and killed one of the vice president's guards without provocation, Iraqi officials say. The employee left Iraq and no longer works for Blackwater. Mr. Maliki himself cited six incidents involving Blackwater before the Sept. 16 shooting. "Order 17 supercedes the Iraqi law," Mr. Hummadi says. "What we need now is a new treaty." READ IT ALL

Out of the fryingpanstan and into Waziristan

People you don't want to fuck with

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You could argue that now things are much worse with Al Qaida safe in Pakistan than they were with Al Qaida safe in Taliban Afghanistan. The Taliban didn't have the atomic bomb and NATO could have bombed and raided Al Qaida camps in Afghanistan on a piecemeal, case by case basis for years and thus have interrupted and contained Al Qaida... Now Al Qaida cannot be touched without violating Pakistan's sovereignty, which is something that might stimulate Islamist generals (there are said to quite a few) to conspire (if they aren't conspiring already). DS

Pakistan backs off Al Qaeda pursuit - Los Angeles Times
Abstract: Political turmoil and a spate of brazen attacks by Taliban fighters are forcing Pakistan's president to scale back his government's pursuit of Al Qaeda, according to U.S. intelligence officials who fear that the terrorist network will be able to accelerate its efforts to rebuild and plot new attacks. The development threatens a pillar of U.S. counter-terrorism strategy, which has depended on Pakistan to play a lead role in keeping Al Qaeda under pressure to reduce its ability to coordinate strikes. President Pervez Musharraf, facing a potentially fateful election next month and confronting calls to yield power after years of autocratic rule, appears too vulnerable to pursue aggressive counter-terrorism operations at the behest of the United States, the intelligence officials said. At the same time, the Pakistani military has suffered a series of embarrassing setbacks at the hands of militants in tribal areas bordering Afghanistan where Osama bin Laden and other Al Qaeda figures are believed to be hiding. U.S. intelligence officials said the conditions that have allowed Al Qaeda to regain strength are likely to persist, enabling it to continue training foreign fighters and plot new attacks.(...) "In the next few days, we're probably going to see a withdrawal of forces that the Pakistanis put there," the intelligence official said, adding that the move could solidify a "safe haven, where the [Al Qaeda] leadership is secure, operational planners can do their business, and foreigners can come in and be trained and redeploy to the West." Meanwhile, Bin Laden declared war on Musharraf in a new audiotape released last week, a message that experts said was timed to take advantage of the political turmoil.(...) The unfolding situation has put Washington in the conflicted position of either pressing for democratic reforms in a nation where doing so is likely to undermine efforts to apprehend Bin Laden, or pushing to shut down terrorist camps linked to a series of plots against Western targets. Polls in Pakistan suggest that Bin Laden is more popular than many of the Muslim nation's politicians, and analysts say it is extremely difficult for the beleaguered Musharraf to remain aligned with the U.S. "From a domestic politics perspective, sustained Pakistani action against Al Qaeda in [the tribal areas] would be suicidal," said Seth Jones, an expert on terrorism and Pakistan at Rand Corp. "It would only increase hatred against his regime at the precise moment when he is politically weakest."(...) Authorities in Germany who disrupted an alleged bombing plot this month said at least five of the suspects had traveled to the tribal regions of Waziristan to receive training in the use of chemical explosives and detonators. The suspected German cell was rolled up in part because U.S. intelligence had intercepted suspicious communications between Pakistan and the German city of Stuttgart. READ IT ALL

Globalization versus Islam: the unspeakable versus the inedible

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There is a movement afoot in the world's Muslim community, sometimes violent, sometimes democratic, at its center it is "anti-imperialist".

"Imperialism" here is taken to mean the domination of non-Christian, non-European peoples, by European or Euro-American-Christians (since roughly the 1950s the Jewish people of the United States under the neologism, "Judeo-Christian" have been given the status of "honorary Christians", in much the same way that the Japanese were considered "honorary whites" under the former apartheid regime of South Africa). Certainly for the inhabitants of Muslim countries the distinction between Zionists (read Jews) and "crusaders" (read Christians) has become rather blurred over time.

At first the political tools used by "third world" countries to resist this domination were nationalism (emphasizing local sovereignty, UN seat, nationalized-socialized economy, etc.) and in many cases simultaneous alignment with the Soviet block in "national liberation struggles". In order to weaken the allure of left-wing nationalism the United States and her allies often encouraged Islamic fundamentalism and encouraged the growth of movements such as the Taliban, Hamas and Hizbullah. With the fall of the Soviet Union and the advent of globalization, secular nationalism and socialism lost practically all their usefulness as tools for loosening the grip of aliens on the economies, lives and customs of non-"European" peoples.

However, by now, many Muslims have discovered that, for better or worse, Islam is the one idea, culture and "way of life" that cannot be dissolved or co-opted by the omnivorous powers of synthesis and the economic and military hegemony of the "New World Order". Thus, as day follows night, with nowhere else to turn, "Islam is the Answer" has now become the default slogan of anti-imperialism among Muslims and may, who knows, begin to resonate among disaffected, heretofore non-Muslims, that find themselves helpless victims of American-led globalization. DS

Democracy, not terror, is the engine of political Islam - Guardian
Abstract: Six years after 9/11, throughout the Muslim world political Islam is on the march; the surprise is that its rise is happening democratically - not through the bomb, but the ballot box. Democracy is not the antidote to the Islamists the neocons once fondly believed it would be. Since the US invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, there has been a consistent response from voters wherever Muslims have had the right to vote. In Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Palestine, Pakistan, Egypt, Turkey and Algeria they have voted en masse for religious parties in a way they have never done before. Where governments have been most closely linked to the US, political Islam's rise has been most marked.(...) in concentrating on the violent jihadi fringe, we may have missed the main story. For if the imminent Islamist takeover of western Europe is a myth, the same cannot be said for the Islamic world. Clumsy and brutal US policies in the Middle East have generated revolutionary changes, radicalising even the most moderate opinion, with the result that the status quo in place since the 1950s has been broken. Egypt is typical: at the last election in 2005 members of the nominally banned Muslim Brotherhood, standing as independents, saw their representation rise from 17 seats to 88 in the 444-seat people's assembly - a five-fold increase, despite reports of vote-rigging by President Mubarak's ruling National Democratic Alliance. The Brothers, who have long abjured violence, are now the main opposition. The figures in Pakistan are strikingly similar. Traditionally, the religious parties there have won only a fraction of the vote. That began to change after the US invasion of Afghanistan. In October 2002 a rightwing alliance of religious parties - the Muttahida Majlis Amal or MMA - won 11.6% of the vote, more than doubling its share, and sweeping the polls in the two provinces bordering Afghanistan - Baluchistan and the North West Frontier Province - where it formed ultra-conservative and pro-Islamist provincial governments. If the last election turned the MMA into a serious electoral force, there are now fears that it could yet be the principle beneficiary of the current standoff in Pakistan. The Bush administration proclaimed in 2004 that the promotion of democracy in the Middle East would be a major foreign policy theme in its second term. It has been widely perceived, not least in Washington, that this policy has failed. Yet in many ways US foreign policy has succeeded in turning Muslim opinion against the corrupt monarchies and decaying nationalist parties who have ruled the region for 50 years. The irony is that rather than turning to liberal secular parties, as the neocons assumed, Muslims have lined up behind parties most clearly seen to stand up against aggressive US intervention.(...) the religious parties tend to be seen by the poor, rightly or wrongly, as representing justice, integrity and equitable distribution of resources. Hence the strong showing, for example, of Hamas against the blatantly corrupt Fatah in the 2006 elections in Palestine. Equally, the dramatic rise of Hizbullah in Lebanon has not been because of a sudden fondness for sharia law, but because of the status of Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbullah's leader, as the man who gave the Israelis a bloody nose, and who provides medical and social services for the people of South Lebanon, just as Hamas does in Gaza. READ IT

Osama bin Laden, poste restante, Pakistan

Man with a plan

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Pakistan is one of world’s eight nuclear powers and as Arnaud de Borchgrave reported for the United Press agency, “Pakistan is in the throes of a national upheaval that dwarfs both Iraq and Afghanistan as threats to regional peace and stability.” Fact: Osama bin Laden, the world’s most famous terrorist lives and works in Pakistan. The former CIA agent in charge of the bin Laden file, Michael Scheuer, now of the Jamestown foundation, wrote of bin Laden’s last video, “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.”

One of the difficulties in trying to get a focus on Al Qaeda is concentrating attention exclusively on their identity as terrorists and not giving enough to their existence as a movement with clear objectives which are being patiently and methodically pursued. A subversive movement with a social base, even a small one, can resist decades of the most intense pressure, both military and political. Al Qaeda has a growing social base in a world-wide community of 1.3 billion people. As de Borchgrave writes, polls show that, “almost half of Pakistan approves of Bin Laden and al-Qaida while Bush and Musharraf are in the single digits.” The London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies was quoted in the Guardian, "Al Qaida’s ideology appears to have taken root to such a degree that it will require decades to eradicate."

Michael Scheuer writes of bin Laden’s aims, “It is imperative, from bin Laden's perspective, that Muslims worldwide see U.S. disaster in Iraq and Afghanistan as Allah-granted victories for Islam and faithful Muslims. This perspective of "God's victory" will further erode defeatism in the Muslim world and galvanize far more support for the jihad.” As in Pakistan, in many Muslim countries Osama bin Laden is more popular than the local chief of state. Terrorism, pales in significance to the mobilization of masses for which terrorist activity is merely an advertising campaign. Once a movement is constituted it can be used for many things and like a fat lady in a little boat, when an activated mass moves in any direction, the "boat" tips. It is the movement of that mass, more than the terrorist actions committed to arouse them, that will give the west its most serious problems in the future. DS

Sharon/Iraq: for want of a nail

"In the 1920s, Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky called for Israel to rule “from the Nile to the Euphrates,” as the famous slogan went, by smashing the fragile mosaic of its Arab neighbors into ethnic fragments, then seizing the oil riches of Arabia. So Israel’s far Right and its American neocon fellow travelers are perfectly happy to see Iraq divided de facto into its three component ethnic parts: Shia, Sunni Arab, and Kurd. Better a feeble Iraq broken into weak cantons, like post-1975 Lebanon, than a nation united, even under a U.S.-run regime." Eric S. Margolis (hat to Christoher Guida)

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Over the last couple of days Norman Finkelstein, who I admire very much, and Alan Greenspan who I don't, have both voiced the opinion that Israel was not behind the American invasion of Iraq.

I could hardly ever disagree with Norman Finkelstein, who is one of the bravest of American intellectuals about anything, but on the causes of the invasion of Iraq, I regretfully have to differ with him.

It is/was all about Israel, because Israel really is in a desperate situation. The entire flow of world affairs is going against Israel and the Israelis and the "friends of Israel" are pulling out all the stops trying to remake the Middle East in their favor while America is still the hegemon.

I am of the opinion that the destruction of Iraq as a functioning state -- its being broken up into separate, nonthreatening (for Israel,) mini-states -- as is happening now, was not an unforeseen eventuality. It was in fact one of the primary objectives of the war.

For Israel, Kurdistan, bordering hostile Iran, Syria and Turkey and totally dependent on American and Israeli support for its existence, is an enormous strategic asset.

The next step after the "shock and awe" was to move directly on a supposedly terrified Iran and provoke regime change in that country... Iran was always the objective -- Iraq was a stepping stone to that objective. "Anybody can go to Baghdad, real men go to Tehran". With both Iraq and Iran neutralized Israel would be free to deal with the rest of the Muslim world as it wished, ad infinitum.

From the Israeli point of view all this makes sense. It is from the American point of view that things don't add up.

What none of the perps suspected is how wrong it would all go, or that the Republican Guard would just take off their uniforms and start effective guerrilla warfare.

I believe that the brains behind all of this were Ariel Sharon's. He is/was the only person in this story with enough strategic vision and Gordian Knot decisiveness to have come up with something as "game changing" as this debacle. We are looking at an evolution of such daring concepts as his crossing the Suez Canal in 1973, which saved Israel from defeat, his invasion of Lebanon in 1982 to obliterate Arafat and the OLP, or his creating today's Palestinian Bantustans behind walls and calling it peace. Only Sharon always looks to deliver the one punch knockout in every round. He is/was always on the brink of disaster, always tightrope walking out.

Unfortunately for the game plan, if not the world at large, Sharon's brain is now in never-never land and none of the clods left behind in Jerusalem or Washington can fill his shoes, much less his suits. There is no one left with enough of his evil moxie to sort this mess out.

"For want of a nail the shoe was lost.

For want of a shoe the horse was lost.

For want of a horse the rider was lost.

For want of a rider the battle was lost.

For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.

And all for the want of a nail."

DS

One man's Mao is another man's Washington

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It is interesting that in Russia, both Lenin and even Stalin are still revered and that in China Mao Tse-Tung remains the symbol of the nation, its power and its unity.

Book after book has appeared in the west, year after year denouncing Lenin, Stalin and Mao: their crimes, sexual perversions and even in Mao's case the subject of his personal hygiene (the "great helmsman" was apparently allergic to soap and water), but still the people that suffered them most still revere their memory.

Americans refer to other nation's patriotism as "nationalism" and see that as a bad thing. Great American patriots and founders of the nation like Washington and Jefferson owned slaves and Jefferson's only descendants are black because he sexually exploited the slave girls at his mercy. Revisionist historians are now trying to prove that Abraham Lincoln was gay. Still Americans revere them for the same reason this article in the Los Angeles Times says that the Chinese revere Mao: because "he won the civil war and united China" and "he is remembered for uniting China and setting it on a course for prosperity". The lesson would be that, if you treasure your identity, with a little imagination you will understand that others treasure theirs too... even Iraqis. DS

Mao marches on - Los Angeles Times
Abstract: During a recent visit to Beijing, I was looking at the sky on a clear night when I was startled to see the ghost of Mao Tse-tung staring down at me. The legendary tyrant's mellow, moon-like visage sparkled above a spanking-new shopping center while a hidden PA system amplified his high-pitched Hunan accent: "The Chinese people have stood up!"(...) Mao's space at The Place is both ironic and dead serious. Mao, who branded China with a sharp and cutting anti-capitalist philosophy, is now a brand name in his own right, bestowed with the pride of place in an opulent urban mall, occupying center stage in a slick piece of visual propaganda drawn from archival footage. The Mao show, exalting the lineage of China's Communist Party leadership as an important party congress approaches, is sure to stir a flutter of reflexive pride in the casual passerby, well-heeled shopper and barefoot rag-picker alike. Deng Xiaoping, the late strongman who overturned Mao's legacy and put the workers' paradise on the road to being a shoppers' paradise, is conspicuous by his absence.(...) By and large, the Mao statues that were once so ubiquitous in Beijing are gone, but Mao never really went away. In fact, one can hardly make a purchase in China without seeing his dreamy visage, especially on the 100-yuan bill, the bill of all bills at a time when making money is truly the lifeblood of China.(...) There have been periodic bouts of nostalgia for Mao before, none more potent than the spontaneous popular uprising at Tiananmen in 1989. The demonstrators, despite their media-pleasing democratic rhetoric, had a decidedly Maoist cast. No one understood this better than Deng, the man who ordered the crackdown in fear of being deposed in a second Cultural Revolution. Both Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, though anointed by Deng for succession, have done much to stabilize and secure Mao's reputation, in no small part to bolster their own communistic legitimacy while freeing themselves from the Dengist straitjacket. Mao might have been a tyrant, as aloof as an emperor, but he won the civil war and united China, not unlike a ruthless predecessor he was said to admire. China's founding emperor, Qin Shihuangdi, was not a nice man by any reckoning, but he is remembered for uniting China and setting it on a course for prosperity. Every time we utter the word China -- "land of Qin" -- we inadvertently invoke the tyrant's legacy. And so too will Mao's legacy be invoked again and again, rough edges gradually smoothed out over time, reduced to a rounded pebble in a turbulent, ever-changing stream. READ IT ALL

Washington: Life among the tweedles

"After a debacle such as Iraq, you might expect some of the fundamental assumptions underpinning American foreign policy to be questioned. On the evidence of the presidential election, you would be disappointed." Gideon Rachman

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For me, finding American democracy a hollow shell is the most disturbing aspect of the war and its aftermath. "Political autism" is the name I give it. It is as if the American political system had set out to illustrate the theories of Herbert Marcuse.

The only positive aspect of the war has been the awakening it is bringing about. The system has been failing the people it is supposed to represent in every area imaginable. Only a micro-financed, grassroots movement that converted the citizens into a pressure group -- which in fact is what democracy is supposed to be -- can ever correct this rot. DS

Gideon Rachman: Many contenders but just one voice - Financial Times
Abstract: On a whole range of issues that remain very controversial even among close American allies in Europe and Asia, there is a broad American consensus. This spans Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards on the Democratic side to Rudolph Giuliani, Mitt Romney, John McCain and Fred Thompson among the Republicans. All of the main candidates want to build up the American military rather than shrink it. (Senator Clinton wants to add 80,000 troops to the army). They all agree that the US has the right to take pre-emptive military action in the “war on terror”. They all still argue that the US should be promoting democracy around the world. None would accept the idea that the UN could ever constrain America, if vital national interests were at stake. They are all strong supporters of Israel. And they are all talking tough on Iran.Even on Iraq – despite the bitter rhetoric – the mainstream Democratic and Republican positions are closer than either side would care to acknowledge. President George W. Bush announced last week that troops will start withdrawing later this year. The “surge” is over. But none of the main Democratic candidates endorses the anti-war left’s call for an immediate and complete pull-out. So the debate comes down to an argument about the scale and pace of troop withdrawals. This is not an insignificant question. The answers range from Senator Obama’s ambition to get most American troops out by the end of 2008 while retaining a “residual force” to attack al-Qaeda, to Senator McCain’s suggestion that some US troops may stay in a pacified Iraq for decades. But all the candidates are responding to the public desire to wind the war down, in as “responsible” a fashion as possible. The fact that the candidates’ rhetoric and positions are converging does not, however, mean they would govern identically. While everybody says it is unacceptable for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, the candidates have different instincts. All of the Democrats and Mr Romney on the Republican side are disinclined to bomb; but Messrs Giuliani and McCain might well seek to “take out” Iranian nuclear facilities, if Mr Bush has not got there first. And despite the many areas of bipartisan consensus, there are a few important differences between Republicans and Democrats. All of the Democrats talk a lot about global warming. The Republicans – with the exception of Mr McCain – do not seem too bothered. And while all of the candidates have to sound sceptical of the UN, the Republicans are much warier of international institutions and treaties. But, as an outsider, it is still the broad agreement among the candidates that is more striking than their disagreements. After a debacle such as Iraq, you might expect some of the fundamental assumptions underpinning American foreign policy to be questioned. On the evidence of the presidential election, you would be disappointed. READ IT ALL