Chris Hedges, one of today’s moral beacons, contemplates supporting Ralph Nader, should he make another run for the Presidency:
These corporations, and their enraged and manipulated followers in the Christian right, tens of millions of them, if left unchecked will propel us into despotism. The corporate state has rigged our system, hollowed out our political process and steadily stripped citizens of constitutional rights, federal and state protection and assistance. This may be the twilight of American democracy. And it is better to stand up and fight, even in vain, than not to fight at all.
February 26th, 2007
Michael Klare, in TomDispatch, believes that the decision to attack Iran has already been made by President Bush:
Sometime this spring or summer, barring an unexpected turnaround by Tehran, President Bush is likely to go on national television and announce that he has ordered American ships and aircraft to strike at military targets inside Iran. We must still sit through several months of soap opera at the United Nations in New York and assorted foreign capitals before this comes to pass, and it is always possible that a diplomatic breakthrough will occur — let it be so! — but I am convinced that Bush has already decided an attack is his only option and the rest is a charade he must go through to satisfy his European allies. The proof of this, I believe, lies half-hidden in recent public statements of his, which, if pieced together, provide a casus belli, or formal list of justifications, for going to war.
In contrast, Noam Chomsky thinks such an attack is unlikely:
Shank: In the 2008 presidential election, how will the candidates approach Iran? Do you think Iran will be a deciding factor in the elections?
Chomsky: What they’re saying so far is not encouraging. I still think, despite everything, that the US is very unlikely to attack Iran. It could be a huge catastrophe; nobody knows what the consequences would be. I imagine that only an administration that’s really desperate would resort to that. But if the Democratic candidates are on the verge of winning the election, the administration is going to be desperate. It still has the problem of Iraq: can’t stay in, and can’t get out.
February 26th, 2007
Think Progress has a CNN interview with Sy Hersh, who elaborates on a point from his recent New Yorker article. In the administration’s zeal to counter Iran and associated Shia groups, they are covertly funneling money to Al Qaeda-linked jihadist groups in Lebanon:
This administration has made a policy change, a decision that they are going to put all of the pressure they can on the Shiites, that is the Shiite regime in Iran, the Shiite — and they are also doing everything they can to stop Hezbollah — which is Shiite, the Hezbollah organization from getting any control or any more of a political foothold in Lebanon.
So they essentially, I quote the — I saw Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, and he described it this way, as “fitna (ph),” the Arab word for “civil war.” As far as he is concerned, we are interested in recreating what is happening in Iraq in Lebanon, that is Sunni versus Shia. And in looking into that story, and I saw him in December, I found this. That we have been pumping money, a great deal of money, without congressional authority, without any congressional oversight, Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia is putting up some of this money, for covert operations in many areas of the Middle East where we think that the — we want to stop the Shiite spread or the Shiite influence.
They call it the “Shiite Crescent.” And a lot of this money, and I can’t tell you with absolute certainty how — exactly when and how, but this money has gotten into the hands — among other places, in Lebanon, into the hands of three — at least three jihadist groups. There are three Sunni jihadist groups whose main claim to fame inside Lebanon right now is that they are very tough. These are people connected to al Qaeda who want to take on Hezbollah. So this government, at the minimum, we may not directly be funneling money to them, but we certainly know that these groups exist.
My government, which arrests al Qaeda every place it can find them and send — some of them are n Guantanamo and other places, is sitting back while the Lebanese government we support, the government of Prime Minister Siniora, is providing arms and sustenance to three jihadist groups whose sole function, seems to me and to the people that talk to me in our government, to be there in case there is a real shoot-’em-up with Hezbollah and we really get into some sort of serious major conflict between the Sunni government and Hezbollah, which is largely Shia, who are basically — or as you know, there is a coalition headed by Hezbollah that is challenging the government right now, demonstrations, sit-ins.
February 26th, 2007
McClatchy Newspapers explains about the so-called “medical report” that the Iraqi Prime Minister used to discredit the alleged rape claim earlier this week:
The single sheet, apparently part of a multi-page report, said that there were “no vaginal lacerations or obvious injury.” An accompanying statement asserted that the medical report “confirmed” there had been no rape, but several rape experts in the United States said the report did no such thing.
The report didn’t disprove the woman’s allegations, the experts said, and it indicated that the woman suffered extensive injuries, including at least eight bruises on the front of her thighs consistent with a sexual assault.
“Generally it occurs when the suspect is holding the victim’s legs open and the victim is attempting to close her legs,” said Tara Henry, a former head of the sexual assault unit at Alaska Regional Hospital in Anchorage, who reviewed the report at the request of McClatchy Newspapers….
Most rape victims, especially those who already are sexually active, don’t suffer vaginal injuries during an assault, said Dr. Dan Sheridan, the coordinator of the forensic nursing program at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
Other experts said the report indicates that medical personnel took numerous X-rays and CT scans, perhaps bolstering Sunni claims that the woman had been beaten.
“They did a CT scan of the head, the pelvis, and the neck. These tests would not have shown if someone was sexually assaulted, so there had to have been some kind of other trauma that they found,” said Dr. Karen Simmons, medical director of the Rape Treatment Center in Miami, Fla.
“It shows that she was brought into a trauma unit in bad shape,” said Joshua Weintraub, an attorney who once ran the sexual crimes office of the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office.
At this point, it is clear that no investigation occurred before al-Maliki dismissed the claims and gave honors to the alleged rapists. Where’s Congress and the Democrats on support for a government that honors alleged rapists?
February 23rd, 2007
revere at Effect Measure doesn’t think the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) are really that bad: MPAA: not as bad as Kissinger or Bush.
There are a lot of things, organizations and people worse than MPAA and RIAA. They aren’t war criminals or in charge of Bush administration foreign policy. But that’s about the best I can say about them.
February 21st, 2007
Monday brought news of a Sunni Iraqi woman taking the unusual step of going public with her accusation that she wa raped by Iraqi security forces. This accusation created outrage among the Iraqi Sunni community, as can be seen in this post by Riverbend: The Rape of Sabrine…:
As I write this, Oprah is on Channel 4 (one of the MBC channels we get on Nilesat), showing Americans how to get out of debt. Her guest speaker is telling a studio full of American women who seem to have over-shopped that they could probably do with fewer designer products. As they talk about increasing incomes and fortunes, Sabrine Al-Janabi, a young Iraqi woman, is on Al Jazeera telling how Iraqi security forces abducted her from her home and raped her. You can only see her eyes, her voice is hoarse and it keeps breaking as she speaks. In the end she tells the reporter that she can’t talk about it anymore and she covers her eyes with shame.
She might just be the bravest Iraqi woman ever. Everyone knows American forces and Iraqi security forces are raping women (and men), but this is possibly the first woman who publicly comes out and tells about it using her actual name. Hearing her tell her story physically makes my heart ache. Some people will call her a liar. Others (including pro-war Iraqis) will call her a prostitute- shame on you in advance.
I wonder what excuse they used when they took her. It’s most likely she’s one of the thousands of people they round up under the general headline of ‘terrorist suspect’. She might have been one of those subtitles you read on CNN or BBC or Arabiya, “13 insurgents captured by Iraqi security forces.” The men who raped her are those same security forces Bush and Condi are so proud of- you know- the ones the Americans trained. It’s a chapter right out of the book that documents American occupation in Iraq: the chapter that will tell the story of 14-year-old Abeer who was raped, killed and burned with her little sister and parents….
I look at this woman and I can’t feel anything but rage. What did we gain? I know that looking at her, foreigners will never be able to relate. They’ll feel pity and maybe some anger, but she’s one of us. She’s not a girl in jeans and a t-shirt so there will only be a vague sort of sympathy. Poor third-world countries- that is what their womenfolk tolerate. Just know that we never had to tolerate this before. There was a time when Iraqis were safe in the streets. That time is long gone. We consoled ourselves after the war with the fact that we at least had a modicum of safety in our homes. Homes are sacred, aren’t they? That is gone too.
As usual, the Iraqi government took decisive action. The “Prime Minister” announced an investigation. He obviously was vying to get into the Guinness Book of World Records for Fastest Investigation. A few hours later the PM announced the results of the investigation:
Hours later, Maliki reversed course, issuing another statement calling the woman an impostor and a criminal with three outstanding warrants.
“After confirming the falsehood of these claims,” it said, Maliki “has ordered that these distinguished officers be honored.” It did not identify the officers or explain why the accolades were justified.
Presumably, in the interests of “justice,” the woman will now be hunted down and turned over to these distinguished officers for the “punishment she deserves.” At this point, she’s either in hiding or dead.
Every Sunni woman is now a target for the Shiite militias. By tomorrow, Shia women will be targets for the Sunni insurgents. Thus is democracy built, rape by rape. Another great victory for Iraqi justice and democracy. And another myth of injustice added to Fallujah, Abu Ghraib, and the Death Squads.
UPDATE: Riverbend on Maliki’s exoneration:
No Iraqi woman under the circumstances- under any circumstances- would publicly, falsely claim she was raped. There are just too many risks. There is the risk of being shunned socially. There is the risk of beginning an endless chain of retaliations and revenge killings between tribes. There is the shame of coming out publicly and talking about a subject so taboo, she and her husband are not only risking their reputations by telling this story, they are risking their lives….
This is meant to discourage other prisoners, especially women, from coming forward and making claims against Iraqi and American forces. Maliki is the stupidest man alive (well, after Bush of course…) if he believes his arrogance and callous handling of the situation will work to dismiss it from the minds of Iraqis. By doing what he is doing, he’s making it more clear than ever that under his rule, under his government, vigilante justice is the only way to go. Why leave it to the security forces and police? Simply hire a militia or gang to get revenge. If he doesn’t get some justice for her, her tribe will be forced to… And the Janabat (the Al Janabis) are a force to be reckoned with.
Maliki could at least pretend the rape of a young Iraqi woman is still an outrage in todays Iraq…
February 21st, 2007
In a new article, Dr. Eyad El-Sarraj , director general of the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, discusses The Psychosocial causes for the Palestinian Factional War. I has glad to see his acknowledgment that the suicidal power struggle ripping apart Palestinian society is pathological. Dr. El-Sarraj is not afraid to confront the dangerous effects of the Palestinian myth of the purgative effects of violence.
Many questions even after Mecca meeting remain … what has become of us? Our people have suffered for 59 years from displacement, homelessness, discrimination, impoverishment and expatriation, but they withstood that suffering and never killed each other; so what happened to us? The late Arafat rejected a plan to kill Abu Nidal, who had already killed a number of Palestinian leaders, and said, “If we start this series of killings, we will never stop.” So what happened? I have heard stories about new forms of cold-blooded and callous murder, and about Palestinians denigrating and holding as infidel other Palestinians or accusing them of heresy and bigotry as a prelude to ostracizing or murdering them. I have also heard numerous stories about children who have been horrified and traumatized and have fallen victims to nightmares, loss of appetite, insomnia and fear of street-walking. What is happening to us? How could things amount to assaulting homes, mosques and universities?
Politics and political difference alone do not provide the answer. There are several additional social and psychological factors for what is befalling this society. A safe and stable environment is one that produces normal children, while the environment we have been living in since the occupation is one in which violence proliferates and becomes rampant.
He discusses the after-effects of torture of Palestinian prisoners by Israelis, the effects of violence in the Intifadas on children, the abysmal performance of the Palestinian National Authority, and the absence of a common enemy as contributing factors.
His:
Conclusion
The systematized repression and torture that the Palestinian people was subjected to under the Israeli occupation, the poor performance of the PNA as embodied in the absence of law and justice and maladministration all led the youth to seek and cling to a new identity which is different from that of their helpless parents and which holds that naked force is the only means to avenge themselves over the suppression they have long been subjected to.
The formation of those political, partisan and religious identities and the view that ultimate force is the model of heroism are the major cause of the status quo of Palestinian armed conflict which finds its fuel in many causes such as division, hatred, and vindictiveness of a generation that rebels against the declining family system and the chaotic PNA.
[Thanks to Gilbert Achcar for sending this.]
February 20th, 2007
George Monbiot reminds us how fantastic, silly, and harmful the 9/11 conspiracy folks are:
To qualify as a true opponent of the Bush regime, you must also now believe that it is capable of magic. It could blast the Pentagon with a cruise missile while persuading hundreds of onlookers that they saw a plane. It could wire every floor of the twin towers with explosives without attracting attention and prime the charges (though planes had ploughed through the middle of the sequence) to drop each tower in a perfectly timed collapse. It could make Flight 93 disappear into thin air, and somehow ensure that the relatives of the passengers collaborated with the deception. It could recruit tens of thousands of conspirators to participate in these great crimes and induce them all to have kept their mouths shut, for ever.
In other words, you must believe that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and their pals are all-knowing, all-seeing and all-powerful, despite the fact that they were incapable of faking either weapons of mass destruction or any evidence at Ground Zero that Saddam Hussein was responsible. You must believe that the impression of cackhandedness and incompetence they have managed to project since taking office is a front. Otherwise you are a traitor and a spy.
Moniot speculates that the driving force behind the conspiracy beliefs is a desire for powerlessness:
The obvious corollorary to the belief that the Bush administration is all-powerful is that the rest of us are completely powerless. In fact it seems to me that the purpose of the “9/11 truth movement” is to be powerless. The omnipotence of the Bush regime is the coward’s fantasy, an excuse for inaction used by those who don’t have the stomach to engage in real political fights.
Let me give you an example. The column I wrote about Loose Change two weeks ago generated 777 posts on the Guardian Comment is Free website, which is almost a record. Most of them were furious. The response from a producer of the film, published last week, attracted 467. On the same day the Guardian published my article about a genuine, demonstrable conspiracy: a spy network feeding confidential information from an arms control campaign to Britain’s biggest weapons manufacturer, BAE Systems. It drew 60 responses. The members of the 9/11 cult weren’t interested. If they had been, they might have had to do something. The great virtue of a fake conspiracy is that it calls on you to do nothing.
The 9/11 conspiracy theories are a displacement activity. A displacement activity is something you do because you feel incapable of doing what you ought to do. A squirrel sees a larger squirrel stealing its horde of nuts. Instead of attacking its rival, it sinks its teeth into a tree and starts ripping it to pieces. Faced with the mountainous challenge of the real issues we must confront, the chickens in the “truth” movement focus instead on a fairytale, knowing that nothing they do or say will count, knowing that because the perpetrators don’t exist, they can’t fight back. They demonstrate their courage by repeatedly bayoneting a scarecrow.
Monbiot makes clear how dangerous he feels these folks are:
The 9/11 truthers remind me of nothing so much as the climate change deniers, cherry-picking their evidence, seizing any excuse for ignoring the arguments of their opponents. Witness the respondents to my Loose Change column who maintain that the magazine Popular Mechanics, which has ripped the demolition theories apart, is a government front. They know this because one of its editors, Benjamin Chertoff, is the brother/nephew/first cousin of the US homeland security secretary Michael Chertoff. (They are, as far as Benjamin can discover, unrelated, but what does he know?)
Like the millenarian fantasies which helped to destroy the Levellers as a political force in the mid-17th century, this crazy distraction presents a mortal danger to popular oppositional movements. If I were Bush or Blair, nothing would please me more than to see my opponents making idiots of themselves, while devoting their lives to chasing a phantom. But as a controlled asset of the new world order, I would say that, wouldn’t I? It’s all part of the plot.
February 20th, 2007
revere at Effect Measure uses a recent Gallop Poll to point out what we atheists have long know: This is a society full of religious bigots. Only 45% of the population would vote for an otherwise qualified nominee of their own party if (s)he was an atheist! The comparable figures for mormons and Jews are 72% and 92%.
February 19th, 2007