Reflection On America
by Chris Marlowe
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Stolen from a comment with links added by b.
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There is a certain irony in the Bush administration's attempt to "isolate Syria" by complaining about Pelosi's visit to Damascus. Many Americans don't seem to understand it, but on the international stage, America under the Bush administration is about as popular as Typhoid Mary.
Sure, everyone wants to do business with Americans, but that's about it. Hollywood films are not as popular as they once were, and American culture and appeal has lost its gloss. Coca-Cola and McDonald's symbolize cheap and unhealthy junk food, not fashionable trends. Americans are thought of generally as consumption hogs, driving big cars and eating cheap unhealthy foods and as being overweight, arrogant and ignorant.
The industries America is best well-known for, such as media and entertainment, are crumbling under the assault of the Internet, which represents a whole new world which cannot be so easily dumbed and controlled by four media conglomerates. Many of my acquaintances celebrate the collapse of the old media model.
Moreover, American consumerism can no longer dominate the global economy as it once did. Now there are Asian and European economies which are growing at faster rates. The American economy is no longer the engine of world growth. It is major and important, but the world economy no longer depends on it.
And it is plain for all to see that American economic growth and the standard of living will soon begin to fall. The number of poor will increase, while the rich get richer. The Republicans do not seem to fear that US society will fracture along class, and maybe even worse, ethnic lines. The press does not even discuss the possibility that the US will turn into a version of Lebanon. Christianity has been turned from a religion into a business and political tool by the likes of Karl Rove, Gary Bauer, Ralph Reed, Grover Norquist, Pat Robertson and AIPAC.
Of course, this American behavior of arrogance and ignorance meshes very well with the image the Bush administration has been putting out. After all, more than 59M Americans voted for W in Bush in 2004. In spite of a major terrorist attack in 2001, and the invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, most Americans remain just as ignorant, if not even more ignorant of the world outside America's borders. Lou Dobbs has built a whole media career (and maybe later political career) around anger at poor, Hispanic people who come to the US to do jobs other people won't do. And he gets good ratings over his coverage of this "problem".
When America was the sole leading world power, that worked. But that is no longer the case. When will Americans realize that America is no longer an island they can withdraw to; it is part of a globalized world economy where they are just one player among many? My guess is that this whole globalized WTO world will fall apart in recriminations among the many players, and that governments will try to become isolationist, but that will become impossible because communications and technology have made total isolation impossible.
The whole problem with Republicans and Democrats is that no one has answers to the real problems. American elections have all the relevance of who wins "American Idol".
Right now, the president is a mean-spirited version of Sanjaya Malakar who goes through the motions of being a statesman, but can't even carry a tune. It took many Americans more than four years to figure it out. American society seems to be in a death spiral of arrogance, ignorance and stupidity.
America and Bush, they go together...
Posted by b on March 31, 2007 at 19:29 UTC | Permalink | Comments (114)
News & Views ...
Open Thread ...Posted by b on March 31, 2007 at 7:15 UTC | Permalink | Comments (60)
Iraq Update
Unfortunately Today in Iraq seems dead. Folks from there, dancewater, friendly fire, if you need help to get it up again please let me know.
As I left in comments somewhere here today, the LA Times had a regular piece on Iraq that included deep down this sentence:
There has been a surge in bombings in Iraqi towns and cities as American and Iraqi forces have launched a crackdown on insurgents in the capital.
That involuntary description of The Surge certainly fits.
The surge of U.S. troops has been reported, though not widely distributed, to go up for now to 175,000 U.S. troops inside Iraq. One must add 100,000 contractors to that, though most of them are foreign cooks and janitors not U.S. managers (there is a slaughter coming for them - nobody will officially care when tens of thousand of Asian $1/day folks will try to run home.)
Outside of Iraq but nearby are another 100,000 U.S. troops - paper and pallet pushers. That is about the maximum that is sustainable without a draft and without stripping a few thousand irrelevant additional combat troops from South Korea and other possible hotspots.
So the U.S. is now about as committed on the ground as it gets, though Air Force capacity ex transport is still available in abundance (Iran - watch out for those.)
The U.S. surge had the temporary effect of moving some unfriendly folks out of Baghdad and into the villages around the city. Now resistance induced casualties of Iraqis, usually reported as sectarian fighting, have gone up again to 100+ a day.
There have been two recent attempts I have read about to overrun U.S. installations. There will be ten or twenty such attempts in the next weeks and some will succeed without any U.S. troops surviving. The Green Zone is btw under siege too.
The resistance trick to use chlorine trucks for bombs is quite nifty. It has no serious immediate combat value but two very serious degrading effects:
a. Some 4-star general will order every U.S. troop in Iraq to carry ABC-equipment all the time, adding some pounds to their already too high package weights during the Iraqi summer,
b. Many U.S. Captains will order their troops to stop and kill any chlorine truck driving around with the effect of denying any safe chlorinated water source to Iraqi civilians.
That's how you breed resistance recruits while hampering your own force.
The unwillingness of the U.S. people to take casualties in their empire efforts will thereby defeat the empire attempts.
Maybe stupid and late, but better late than never and fine with me anyway - I have no need for any empire.
Al-Sadr has called for an Iraq wide demonstration for the 9th of April. He asked every household to raise the Iraqi flag as a sign against the occupation. You'll not see those flags on CNN or Fox, but it certainly will have a wide effect in Iraq and the secondary effects will be broadcasted for their gore.
The time is becoming ripe for a Tet like effort by the resistance. Meanwhile, the people, including me, will be glued to their screens to follow some Waxman hearing or Kabuki performances of presidential candidates.
Posted by b on March 30, 2007 at 20:11 UTC | Permalink | Comments (16)
Some Treats
Prof. Cutler has more musing on the House of Saud: Trouble with Abdullah. The Cheneys and Likudniks must hate the recent steps taken by the Saudi king and Abdullah has some internal opposition. Such has solved before:
In the 1970s, there was a previous Saudi King from the “Faisal” branch. In 1975, he was assassinated, under murky circumstances, by a nephew recently returned from the United States.
Imagine the mess ...
Another mess will happen says Stephen Roach. He smells protectionism coming with The Ghost of Reed Smoot. Some protectionist Congress acts are being prepared right now. If you think inflation is already too high, just wait until the China bashers put tariffs on Chinese goods. Prices would go up, China would put less money into U.S. securities and rates would therefore go up too. If you think U.S. housing market is in bad shape now, imagine it with basic rates north of 15%. The protectionist Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930 is credited for launching the great depression. Do we really need to go there again?
I haven't seen the movie "300" and don't plan to. But as I read it depicts some Spartan warriors as heroes while they are losing a battle against a Persian army. It can be interpreted in various parallels to current history. But as a German I see a different story. Sparta was a true fascist state and therefore often used by the Nazi's in Germany as an example. This was especially visible in the all involving ideological / military training of the youth (including the homoerotic parts.) Goebbels later compared the defeat at Stalingrad to the noble defeats of the Spartans. If such a film lauding the Spartan fight for freedom gets big numbers, I am getting worried about freedom.
William Lind draws another Greek history comparison in Operation Anabasis. Once a Greek army was in big trouble in Persia and fought a long retreat through Kurdistan and Turkey back home. That may be the same route the U.S. Army will have to go when the Shia in Iraq have no more use for it. That script may run live on TV so you will need no movie ticket for that history lesson.
Posted by b on March 30, 2007 at 16:25 UTC | Permalink | Comments (18)
Kool-Aid Bad For Memory
Smoking grass is not really good for one's memory. Alcohol is even worse. Still, nothing beats the kool-aid.
By recent Congress hearing witnesses:
I have no recollection ..., I don't remember ..., I'm not aware ..., to the best of my recollection ..., never my understanding ..., in hindsight, that wasn't a good idea ..., only generally aware ..., no specific knowledge ..., I don't know ..., I believe I ..., I believe that I believe ..., I have no reason to doubt that ..., at the best of my memory ..., at some point somone may ..., as best as I can remember ..., can you say that again ..., my role was to aggregate and present, but I forgot what information was provided to me by whom and when and I kept no file of any of that ...,
On can feel the sword of damocles perjury dangling over their heads.
Posted by b on March 29, 2007 at 21:49 UTC | Permalink | Comments (9)
Blair's Faked Border
As former British ambassador Craig Murray points out, the British seem to have faked a maritime boundary.
The British Ministry of Defense has released coordinates where fifteen British sailors and marines were picked up by Iranians after searching a merchant ship:
"As shown on the chart, the merchant vessel was 7.5 nautical miles south east of the Al Faw Peninsula and clearly in Iraqi territorial waters. Her master has confirmed that his vessel was anchored within Iraqi waters at the time of the arrest. The position was 29 degrees 50.36 minutes North 048 degrees 43.08 minutes East.
The MoD asserts that this position is within Iraqi waters:
This places her 1.7 nautical miles inside Iraqi territorial waters. This fact has been confirmed by the Iraqi Foreign Ministry.
Additionally the MoD provides a map with the position marked and with a line labeled "Iraq / Iran Territorial Water Boundary". I have taken this map and made two circles with the ship-position the MoD marked as the center. This is a part of the graph.
The complete bigger graph is here
The blue line is the circle centered in the given position and touching the nearest point of the Iranian coast. The green line is the circle centered in the given position and touching the nearest point of the Iraqi coast. The distance from the given position to Iraqi land is considerably larger than that to Iranian land.
But the MoD map also says "positions for illustrative purposes", so let's not rely on them. The next map is copied from Microsoft Encarta. The maps there include latitude and longitude lines. Using such and the MoD coordinates I interpolated by pixel-count and marked that position in red.
The complete bigger graph is here
The blue line is the circle centered in the given position and touching the nearest point of the Iranian coast. Again it is obvious that the position is more near to the Iranian than the Iraqi coastline.
Which leads to the obvious question. On what basis are the British asserting that the line they painted in their graphic is indeed the "Iraq / Iran Territorial Water Boundary."
That boundary is simply not well defined and Iran and Iraq have fought several wars about the Shatt al-Arab and its waterways. There is no binding or otherwise recognized international agreement about the maritime boundaries.
If one would use a maritime boundary defined by equidistance from the Iraqi and Iranian coastlines, as is commonly (see Art.7) done in such cases, the result would be something like this purple line.
The complete bigger graph is here
The merchant vessels position as given by the British and the British forces themselves would then have been well in Iranian waters.
Tony Blair should get some sense and tone down the hype over this. The British sailors and marines certainly will soon be returned to their homeland.
To rely on dubious boundaries that are not supported by the geography but drafted by his own Ministry of Defense is certainly not a strong argument for further agressions.
Posted by b on March 29, 2007 at 14:21 UTC | Permalink | Comments (78)
Kabuki Over Iraq
Balkinization has posted the House and Senate bills on the Iraq war financing. The brouhaha about these bills somehow restricting Bush seems overdone. The House bill will retract troops other than are needed for:
(1) Protecting American diplomatic facilities and American citizens, including members of the U.S. Armed Forces.
(2) Serving in roles consistent with customary diplomatic positions.
(3) Engaging in targeted special actions limited in duration and scope to killing or capturing members of al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations with global reach.
(4) Training members of the Iraqi Security Forces.
The Senate bill is not much different. It would abolish troops but for:
(2) COMMENCEMENT OF PHASED REDEPLOYMENT FROM IRAQ.--The President shall commence the phased redeployment of United States forces from Iraq not later than 120 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, with the goal of redeploying, by March 31, 2008, all United States combat forces from Iraq except for a limited number that are essential for the following purposes:
(A) Protecting United States and coalition personnel and infrastructure.
(B) Training and equipping Iraqi forces.
(C) Conducting targeted counter-terrorism operations.
"Redeployment" is NOT the word for getting troops back "home", but describes to move them somewhere around the Middle East. But that is not the big trick here - that is in the excepted tasks.
Some hundreds of troops are in "roles consistent with customary diplomatic positions", some thousands are "training and equipping Iraqi forces" and is not every current kinetic action of U.S. troops in Iraq described as "conducting targeted counter-terrorism operations?" Add to those forces the needed GIs that are "protecting ... American citizens, including members of the U.S. Armed Forces" or in the Senate version "protecting United States and coalition personnel and infrastructure" and where do you end?
By the way - does the "infrastructure" include the four huge bases the U.S. has built? Of course it does and what about those oil wells?
So if you start a tally you will end up with some 15,000 to 20,000 in the primary role of diplomacy, training and counter-terrorism and about three to four times that number to protect these. Additionally one will need the logistic components to get all these folks their lobster tails and ice-cream and those logistics will need some protection too.
Which leads to a total, according to the scribble on my blotter, somewhere quite north of 100,000 troops - maybe 150,000 - staying in Iraq and about the same number nearby.
The showdown between the President and Congress over this is just for the public theater. The proposed restrictions are all virtual. The Dems have certainly not made a serious attempt to get the U.S. out of its illegal operation in Iraq.
"We'll use this for 2008 and then we will fix the mess," is their intended play. It will take them some more years and Iraq some hundredthousands of lives to understand, and then acknowledge, that there is nothing fixable left.
Posted by b on March 28, 2007 at 19:31 UTC | Permalink | Comments (12)
Time For A New Initiative
The Cheney administration made an effort to "realign" the Middle East with an Arab front of moderate dictators. They were to deliver an Israel friendly solution on Palestine and a united front against Iran. The effort has faltered.
This was first visible when the Saudis fixed a deal for a unity government between the Abbas' Fatah and Hamas. With this done in Mekka, I suggested the Saudis were in a bind and had to deliver or lose their cred in the proverbial Arab street.
It is not yet clear how far the Saudis will really go to support the Pals, but the recent steps taken are certainly unfriendly to Cheney's agenda. As Jim Hoagland reports, Saudi King Abdullah has canceled a state dinner at the White House:
Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi national security adviser, flew to Washington last week to explain to Bush that April 17 posed a scheduling problem. " 'It is not convenient' was the way it was put," says one official.
and if it rains ...
Jordan's King Abdullah, who has spent more time in George W. Bush's Washington than any other foreign leader, has let the White House know that he can't make that state visit discussed for September.
The President of the United Arab Emirates had this to say:
Shaikh Khalifa reiterated that the UAE totally rejects the use of its land, air and territorial waters to attack any country. “We have reiterated to our Iranian brothers in a letter delivered recently by the foreign minister that we are not a party to the conflict between Iran and the United States and that we shall never allow the use of our soil for any military, security or intelligence activities against them,” he said.
On the Palestinian issue, where Rice tried to revive the 2002 Arab plan for peace for land with Israeli modifications, i.e. without any Israeli concessions, the Shaikh had equally clear words:
He urged the summit, which opens tomorrow in the Saudi capital, to maintain a solid stance on the issue of the right of return of the Palestinian refugees as contained in the Arab Peace Initiative.
Another snub from the Arab side had come through Egypt a few days earlier, when any help to pressure Darfur was denied.
The Israeli side is not interested in any Cheney admin activity, other than paying their bills, either. The same day Rice was negotiating about useless future Olmert/Abbas meetings, she was snubbed by Olmert when Israeli settlers with official Army protection reoccupied a settlement in the West Bank. Abbas was certainly not impressed either:
Her delegation found the Israelis sour and resistant, prone to finger-jabbing, and the Palestinians just as sullen. Advisers to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas say that once he brusquely interrupted Rice, saying: "You've come to me with a list of Israeli demands. Where is your list of our demands for the Israelis?"
Steve Clemons frames these issues as a split in the Bush/Cheney team, with Cheney undermining Rice by influencing Bush. That's hogwash in my view - I do not see any split there at all - Rice is just part of the team.
But the gang has a huge problem. They have absolutely no soft power left in the Middle East. Not one of the usual dictators is following the orders anymore - not on Israel/Palestine, not on Iran, not on anything - this is unprecedented.
At home, with chaos increasing in Iraq, even proven Washington D.C. whitewashers like Gen. McCaffrey are turning away. Republican Senators did not filibuster the Iraq war bill, leaving the White House alone on the issue. Meanwhile Congressional committees are investigating scandal after scandal and there is more dirt than anyone could reasonably have expected.
So what is the administration to do? Sit back and wait for more rain to pour in Washington and more uncontrolled movement abroad? Or can it start one new initiative that changes the headlines in Washington, the situation in the Middle East and brings back some "Mission Accomplished" glory?
Posted by b on March 28, 2007 at 18:02 UTC | Permalink | Comments (21)
OT 07-24
News & views ...
Posted by b on March 28, 2007 at 8:11 UTC | Permalink | Comments (36)
Attack On Iran Starting Soon?
Now I have to confess that I do get a bit nervous about an imminent start of a war on Iran.
Maybe inducing nervousness is what is intended and nothing immediate is planned, but there are some actions done that make a war now likely, even if unintended. Some ominous signs:
Tony Blair is hyping the capture of some British soldiers that crossed or did not cross some undefined border to Iran to check for possibly smuggled cars. Why are cars "smuggled" into Iraq the Brits' business anyway? Didn't Bremer's economic laws allow for free imports?
The New York Times today delivers a long piece about alleged Iranian support for some bombs in Iraq - no news, lots of words and no proof at all. So why print this now at all?
Some Russian Col.-General last week said that a U.S. attack will start on April 6th. Today the Russian news agency RIA Novosti cites a Russian military intelligence officer:
"The latest military intelligence data point to heightened U.S. military preparations for both an air and ground operation against Iran," the official said, adding that the Pentagon has probably not yet made a final decision as to when an attack will be launched.
The same time the U.S. is starting
its largest demonstration of force in the Persian Gulf since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, led by a pair of aircraft carriers and backed by warplanes flying simulated attack maneuvers off the coast of Iran.
Over 100 planes in the confined international air space of the Persian Gulf is a guarantee that some accidents and/or mis-navigations will happen.
With the public prepared through some outrage about the British sailors, wouldn't that be a fine excuse for Cheney to launch a real full fledged attack?
Posted by b on March 27, 2007 at 19:37 UTC | Permalink | Comments (35)
Incentive Pay
In a consulting gig today, I had yet another discussion on incentive pay. "Can we motivate these people stronger by increasing the bonus part of their pay," I was asked. I recommended to abolish incentive payments at all. There are technical arguments against it and more serious philosophical reasons.
Let's start with the technical problems:
In its simplest form you pay the guy who makes the nuts more if he produces more nuts. You do the same thing with the girl who makes the bolts. The guaranteed outcome will be either too many nuts or too many bolts and more money spent than needed to make an equal and sufficient number of nuts and bolts.
In more complex knowledge worker jobs there are simply no measurable outcomes one could tie an incentive to. The number of lines of codes written by a programmer says nothing about the quality of the code or its long term maintainability (and costs.)
In one job I was told to better the productivity (value of output/cost of input) by 10% per year to increase my income by 10%, but the variables to do so, like moving the department out of an outrageous expensive office location, were out of my bounds. (The managing board of that media company also did of course not understand the mathematic limit value of "by 10% per year".)
In other situations there are general market interferences. You may well be the best in your trade and in an economic downturn the one who loses the least money. But most incentive pay systems will give you zero for achieving this.
The response to the above calamities is usually to make the system of benchmarking more complex. Lots of consultants make piles of money for presenting such fine tuning. But the inevitable outcome will be either totally confused and unmotivated workers or folks who start gaming a not supervisable system.
In a young company I was with, the head of the marketing department had his salary changed from fixed to variable to reflect the number of new subscribers he could bring in. Before the change he was quite successful in helping the company into a profitable realm. After the change the number of new subscribers per month soared, as did his income. A year later it turned out that most of these new subscribers left as soon as they could. The retention rates were catastrophic because the marketing campaigns were designed to maximize intake of subs, not to keep them once they were on board.
People who believe in incentives assume that money is the main human motivational factor. Rational people, they say, will always work more and work better if this leads to better pay. Essentially they think everybody is corrupt and they cite lots of examples to prove this point.
But that is not true. The fallacy here is to mistake cause and effect.
If one pays people a fair fixed amount for doing their job, they have no reason to game the system. To make them do a better job, some smiles, ice cream surprises on hot days and a bottle of good wine for Christmas will usually have the desired effect.
But as soon as you start to offer incentive pay you urge them to move away from doing a "better job" to doing a "more profitable job" - more profitable for them that is. This is planting the seeds of corruption where none need to be.
The philosophy behind incentive pay is that of humans as rational beings - rational understood in the very reduced sense of a homo economicus, a useful mathematical model for economic science theorists, but without much resemblance to living creatures.
Adam Curtis makes this point in a much wider sense in his new three part BBC series The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom. He is on to something and I hope to have more on the thoughts he tells in future pieces.
Today the folks I talked to were not immediately convinced, but I did get them to think about the issue. The funny moment I needed came when I refused to make an offer for designing a "better incentive pay system" for them. I said: "such offer would only benefit me and deeply hurt your company." Somehow, that answer seemed to be unexpected.
Posted by b on March 26, 2007 at 18:37 UTC | Permalink | Comments (27)
A Ynetnews Exclusive
Ynetnews, the website run by the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth - "Israel’s most-read newspaper", comes up with an "Exclusive" currently at the top of its main-page. The Telegraph's Con Coughlin will be certainly jealous of this scoop.
Next to the picture of a big explosion it is revealed that - Iranian scientists research fuel-gas bombs:
A document obtained by Ynetnews, jointly authored by three Iranian scientists, "seems to contain military applications for fuel-gas bombs," an expert on Iran said.
During a fuel-gas explosion, a cloud of fuel is set alight by a detonator to produce an explosion. The resulting wave flattens all objects close to the proximity of the epicenter, and produces widespread damage beyond the area of the cloud.
Sounds very dangerous to me - like some thermobaric weapon or fuel-air-explosives used in the Israeli Carpet system or the US BLU-73, BLU-95, BLU-96, CBU-55 or CBU-72 bombs.
How frightening if the Iranians would be researching such. But as the story goes, we learn that they are not really doing so:
The document is a thesis which examines the "injection-velocity effects" resulting from fuel vapor clouds, and was authored by three Iranian scientists from the Imam Hossein University, the Sharif University of Technology, and the Iran University of Science and Technology.
"The large number of vapor-cloud explosions in the past, which involve severe damages, clearly indicates the need to consider this problem," the thesis's introduction said. "Preventing such events from happening requires a good knowledge of gas explosion and the way of reducing the frequency and consequence of its occurrence," it added.
Does not sound much like weapon research to me, rather like safety research to prevent accidents like the 1974 disaster in Flixborough or the BP refinery fire in Texas 2005. But Ynetnews has an expert on this:
Commenting on the thesis, Professor Raymond Tanter, who heads the Washington-based Iran Policy Committee (IPC), said: "Although seemingly innocent and only for scientific purposes, the document seems to contain military applications for fuel-gas bombs."
Tanter is by trade an expert, but on political science. He is also a member of the Committee on the Present Danger, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and various other neocon infested likudnik outlets. The Iran Policy Committee which he founded is shilling for regime change in Iran and promotes the anti-Iranian People's Mujahedin Organization (MEK) terrorist cult.
There are also rumours that Tantler's MEK friends have found proof for some very dangerous stink-bombs Iran is developing. His careful scientific interpretation of the Iranian veterinarian paper on "injection-velocity effects" of bovine flatulence will certainly be another worthy exclusive for Ynetnews.
Reading the comments to that article, unfortunately such propaganda - ridiculous as it may be - does what it is expected to do.
Posted by b on March 25, 2007 at 19:19 UTC | Permalink | Comments (19)
Rambling 07-001
You can't see the Smithian invisible hand because it doesn't exist.
Posted by b on March 24, 2007 at 19:59 UTC | Permalink | Comments (22)
"Not Involved"
Gonzales, likening himself to a chief executive who delegates responsibility to others, said he knew few details about how Sampson was orchestrating the prosecutors' removal.
"I was not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussions about what was going on," he said. "That's basically what I knew as the attorney general."
Gonzales: 'Mistakes Were Made', March 14, 2007
The President acknowledged that he had "made a mistake" in not more closely supervising campaign activities.
...
But the tapes can be heard, he said, and will prove that he was not involved in the Watergate cover-up, he insisted.
Nixon Tells Editors, 'I'm Not a Crook', November 18, 1973
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and senior advisers discussed the plan to remove seven United States attorneys at a meeting last Nov. 27, 10 days before the dismissals were carried out, according to a Justice Department calendar entry disclosed Friday.
Gonzales Met With Advisers on Dismissals, March 23, 2007
Posted by b on March 24, 2007 at 7:09 UTC | Permalink | Comments (16)
Weekend OT
News & views ...Posted by b on March 24, 2007 at 6:43 UTC | Permalink | Comments (57)
Psych War On Iran
The Iranians snatched some British sailors that were controlling ships in the Iraqi/Persian Shatt-al-Arab. Such has happened before and was solved without much trouble.
Maybe the UK boats really were in Persian waters, maybe they were not - maybe there was some intent for a conflict on either side, maybe not - who knows or will ever know for sure. Anyhow, this is certainly no reason to start a war.
Another piece of anti-Iranian propaganda was launched today via the BBC:
Col Masherevski said "local information" indicated that "the vast majority of the violence against us is inspired from outside Iraq".
"The people here very much believe that is Iran," he said.
"All the circumstantial evidence points to Iranian involvement in the violence here in Basra which is disrupting the city to a great extent."
The standard of weapons being used against British troops was such that it could only have come from outside Iraq, he said.
There are absolutely no facts in the BBC piece and that mysterious Colonel (zero(!) Google hits for his name) has nothing to provide but rumours.
The sea incident is more usable than the Colonel and so this will be taken up as part of the propaganda campaign to put pressure on Iran and to further the western agenda of disabling Iran by sanctions - "been there done that," Madeleine Albright would say.
This is part of the pattern of threats and intimidation directed against Iran as the very astute badger documents.
There is quite some noise now, though not reflected in the western press, by the non-permanent UN Security Council members to tone down the next resolution on Iran:
South Africa’s proposal aimed to drop all the key sanctions proposed by the major powers, including an arms embargo and financial bans on an Iranian state bank and the Revolutionary Guards, and to suspend all other sanctions for 90 days to allow for more talks with Teheran.
The amendments were offered despite an earlier agreement by Germany and the five permanent members of the 15 member council -- The United States, Russia, China, France and Britain -- on the wording of the draft resolution.
Pahad said South Africa was within its rights to suggest changes to the draft document, which he said had only been presented to other Security Council members at the last minute.
“The draft resolution was never shown to us, so it’s not wrong for us to make our views known,” he said.
Indeed most countries do support Iran's right of civil nuclear development:
National leaders of the 118-state Non-Aligned Movement concluding their Havana summit approved a statement on Iran that "reaffirmed the basic and inalienable right of all states, to develop research, production and use of atomic energy for peaceful purposes."
But the war-mongers are cheating the non-permanent, non-aligned UN members on the content of the resolution:
South Africa's ambassador, Dumisani Kumalo, this month's council president, expressed dismay.
"They told us we would be negotiating a give and take," he told reporters on Thursday. "They are doing exactly what they said they weren't going to do."
[...]
Kumalo had also proposed a 90-day "time out" in imposing the sanctions, ..
No chance for that sane moment to happen. The U.S. will continue to bribe and threaten its will through the Security Council and use all of its propaganda outlets to justify its moves and discourage any opposition.
Millions of U.S. government $'s will make sure that the U.S. weapon and oil industry has at least another decade to prosper. Someone, most probably your children, will have to pay for this.
Posted by b on March 23, 2007 at 20:52 UTC | Permalink | Comments (12)
Hypocrisy of Genocide
The LA Times had sent staff reporter Edmund Sanders to report from Sudan. Unlike the usual black and white media installments his reports catch some of the complexities of the conflict.
Some of the latest are: Search for oil raises the stakes in Darfur, Rebels pose a new threat to Darfur's displaced and In Darfur, gritted teeth behind smiles.
Today LAT publishes Sanders' latest - Darfur's less-known victims:
Arabs in the western Sudanese region of Darfur are usually depicted as the aggressors in a conflict with black African ethnic groups, but many Arabs now find themselves caught up in the violence, forced into camps by intertribal fighting and cut off from traditional migration routes they've relied upon for centuries to survive.
...
The recent clashes are raising the broader question of what will happen to the more than 2 million Arab nomads, people who have lived in Darfur for centuries. Arab leaders here say only a fraction of the Arab population, from 10% to 20%, has participated in the government-led attacks. Most Arabs have remained neutral and some have even sided with Darfur's rebels, the leaders say.
The typical picture painted by Save Darfur libruls are "Islamist Arab government thugs are killing innocent peaceful Africans." But the conflict is neither Arab versus African, nor Muslim against non-Muslim - all these characteristics are utterly mixed and indistinguishable in Darfur.
The conflict started over arable land after drought diminished the available resources used by farmers as well as nomads. From the point of view of the Sudanese government a rebellion in the
far western part of the country threatened the national unity and sovereignty.
The possibly rich oil and uranium deposits there are of national
importance. The government sent some troops and hired local thugs security contractors to tame the rebellion. Then various interests tried to use and expand the conflict to further their specific purpose.
No non-local intervention force will ever have the language capabilities and understanding of the complex tribal societies involved to be able to find and implement a lasting solution. As sad as it may be for some - such conflicts are not solvable by enlightened peacekeepers but only by the involved people themselves. Could Chinese peacekeepers have prevented the American civil war?
The conflict in Darfur is not a genocide. That concept is well defined in international law by a United Nations convention. The legal premise for genocide is "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group." Only if such were to happen, and according to various UN commisions such did not happen in Darfur nor is it likely, international intervention in a national conflict would be legally justified.
If Sudan had oil contracts with major western companies, the conflict would be a welcome and underreported "anti-terrorist security operation." As Sudan has oil contracts with China, the conflict is labeled by the U.S. as a genocide.
This hypocrisy is well captured in a recommendable piece by Professor Mahmood Mamdani in the London Review of Books: The Politics of Naming: Genocide, Civil War, Insurgency
The history of colonialism should teach us that every major intervention has been justified as humanitarian, a ‘civilising mission’. [...] Now, as then, imperial interventions claim to have a dual purpose: on the one hand, to rescue minority victims of ongoing barbarities and, on the other, to quarantine majority perpetrators with the stated aim of civilising them. Iraq should act as a warning on this score. The worst thing in Darfur would be an Iraq-style intervention. That would almost certainly spread the civil war to other parts of Sudan, unravelling the peace process in the east and south and dragging the whole country into the global War on Terror.
Posted by b on March 22, 2007 at 17:39 UTC | Permalink | Comments (42)
Not The Fight They Planned For
With subpoenas authorized, but not yet issued, for Rove and others, the stage is set for a possible fight in front of the Supreme Court over executive privilege. In 1974 the SC set a precedent:
The court, in a unanimous decision by Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, also said the case for executive privilege was strongest where there was a need “to protect military, diplomatic or national security secrets.”
The Cheney government has prepared for such a fight all along:
In fact, when it comes to deploying its Executive power, which is dear to Bush's understanding of the presidency, the President's team has been planning for what one strategist describes as "a cataclysmic fight to the death" over the balance between Congress and the White House if confronted with congressional subpoenas it deems inappropriate. The strategist says the Bush team is "going to assert that power, and they're going to fight it all the way to the Supreme Court on every issue, every time, no compromise, no discussion, no negotiation."
With the current makeup of the SC the Cheney administration certainly would have a good chance to win, if the issue would be in the realms of national security.
This was the plan:
- set up a conflict with Congress over NSA spying or some other issue in the national security realm so that a successful claim for executive privilege can be made,
- fight this up to the SC and, with the support of all Republicans and the media, win a confirmation for the privilege,
- use the mark set by the SC judgement to deter Congress from further inquiries.
But incompetence and/or recklessness in the dismissals of U.S. attorneys have now led to a different setup. The case is certainly not about national security but about cronyism and obstruction of justice. The victims here are not some anonymous Iraqis or terrorists but strong Republicans with a loud public voice.
To assert executive privilege over handling this issue is quite a stretch. More so after parts of the internal deliberation, except for the critical 18 days, have already voluntarily been released to the public.
So the original plan, I assume, is now in jeopardy. While a court fight about executive privilege in the realm of national security would have full Republican and media backing, the public and party support now will be much smaller and a confirming court verdict would be hardly assured.
If as likely this case is lost in court, Congress would be emboldened in further inquiries. To lose now would emphazise Congress' rights and boost it for the next salvo against the "unitary executive." Bush declaration of war against Congress yesterday was a fake. I seriously doubt this is the fight the White House inhabitants yearned for. They will therefor pull back and settle for a negotiated solution.
Let's hope the Democrats in Committee positions understand this and keep up the pressure for the release of all relevant documents and for full testimonies under oath.
Posted by b on March 21, 2007 at 17:32 UTC | Permalink | Comments (14)
What's up with Bushehr?
This morning the NYT reported: Russia Gives Iran Ultimatum on Enrichment. I was curious and wondered what might have changed the Russian position against further pressure on Iran. The NYT piece gives no real reason:
Russia has informed Iran that it will withhold nuclear fuel for Iran’s nearly completed Bushehr power plant unless Iran suspends its uranium enrichment as demanded by the United Nations Security Council, European, American and Iranian officials say.
Where is the Russian official confirming this?
Later today a rumour was distributed:
Russia is pulling out its experts from the Iranian nuclear reactor site they were helping build, U.S. and European officials said Tuesday.
Again, there is no Russian source.
The Russian news agencies say the stories are wrong: RIA Novosti writes on the first issue:
Russia's Security Council has denied reports in the U.S. media that Moscow issued an ultimatum to Iran over its uranium enrichment activities, the council's press service said Tuesday.
...
"The allegations made in The New York Times that Russia delivered an ultimatum during Russian-Iranian consultations March 12 in Moscow have no relation to reality," the service said.
and on the second one:
Russian contractor Atomstroyexport has denied foreign media reports that many Russian specialists have left the Bushehr nuclear power plant construction site in southern Iran.
Both reports confirm a known dispute between Iran and Russia about timely payment for the reactors progress. ITAR-TASS has a similar report while Interfax has nothing.
So what is up? Are the Russians stalling the Bushehr work? If so, is this a financial issue between Iran and Russia? What would Russia get, or avoid, for pressing on Iran?
I am a bit suspicious of "American and European sources in Vienna", i.e. U.S. and British delegates to the IAEA, cited in the NYT. These sources were often used in the run up to the war on Iraq and usually were simply propaganda distribution points. On the other side, the Russians could be shortsighted and really go for the fast buck, by pressing Iran and/or by demanding bribes from the U.S.
Any opinions?
Posted by b on March 20, 2007 at 21:40 UTC | Permalink | Comments (16)
10 1/2 Hours of "Strong backing"
7:15am today: Gonzales has "strong backing" of Bush
5:45pm today: Bush statement on the AG
If, like everybody expects, Bush announces Gonzales resignation, those were ten and a half hours of "strong backing". The presidents support for Michael Brown and Donald Rumsfeld had more stamina. Rove and Cheney - next please ...
President Bush sent a powerful message of support Tuesday for embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, calling his longtime friend to express unwavering support in the face of calls for his resignation.
...
Bush called Gonzales from the Oval Office at 7:15 a.m. EDT and they spoke for several minutes about the political uproar over the firings of eight U.S. attorneys, an issue that has thrust the attorney general into controversy and raised questions about whether he can survive. The White House disclosed Bush's call to bolster Gonzales and attempt to rally Republicans to support him. "The president reaffirmed his strong backing of the attorney general and his support for him," Perino said. "The president called him to reaffirm his support."
Bush Affirms Support for Gonzales
THE PRESIDENT WILL MAKE A STATEMENT ON THE U.S. ATTORNEY MATTER SHORTLY AFTER RETURNING FROM KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI AT 5:45 PM, EDT, TODAY, MARCH 20, 2007, IN THE DIPLOMATIC RECEPTION ROOM
White House announcement
Posted by b on March 20, 2007 at 20:23 UTC | Permalink | Comments (16)