|
 |
Monday, March 03, 2008
Guru Of Global Warming Shocker!
'Enjoy life while you can'
Climate science maverick James Lovelock believes catastrophe is inevitable, carbon offsetting is a joke and ethical living a scam. So what would he do?
Decca Aitkenhead
Saturday March 1 2008
The Guardian
In 1965 executives at Shell wanted to know what the world would look like in the year 2000. They consulted a range of experts, who speculated about fusion-powered hovercrafts and "all sorts of fanciful technological stuff". When the oil company asked the scientist James Lovelock, he predicted that the main problem in 2000 would be the environment. "It will be worsening then to such an extent that it will seriously affect their business," he said.
"And of course," Lovelock says, with a smile 43 years later, "that's almost exactly what's happened."
Lovelock has been dispensing predictions from his one-man laboratory in an old mill in Cornwall since the mid-1960s, the consistent accuracy of which have earned him a reputation as one of Britain's most respected - if maverick - independent scientists. Working alone since the age of 40, he invented a device that detected CFCs, which helped detect the growing hole in the ozone layer, and introduced the Gaia hypothesis, a revolutionary theory that the Earth is a self-regulating super-organism. Initially ridiculed by many scientists as new age nonsense, today that theory forms the basis of almost all climate science.
For decades, his advocacy of nuclear power appalled fellow environmentalists - but recently increasing numbers of them have come around to his way of thinking. His latest book, The Revenge of Gaia, predicts that by 2020 extreme weather will be the norm, causing global devastation; that by 2040 much of Europe will be Saharan; and parts of London will be underwater. The most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report deploys less dramatic language - but its calculations aren't a million miles away from his.
As with most people, my panic about climate change is equalled only by my confusion over what I ought to do about it. A meeting with Lovelock therefore feels a little like an audience with a prophet. Buried down a winding track through wild woodland, in an office full of books and papers and contraptions involving dials and wires, the 88-year-old presents his thoughts with a quiet, unshakable conviction that can be unnerving. More alarming even than his apocalyptic climate predictions is his utter certainty that almost everything we're trying to do about it is wrong.
On the day we meet, the Daily Mail has launched a campaign to rid Britain of plastic shopping bags. The initiative sits comfortably within the current canon of eco ideas, next to ethical consumption, carbon offsetting, recycling and so on - all of which are premised on the calculation that individual lifestyle adjustments can still save the planet. This is, Lovelock says, a deluded fantasy. Most of the things we have been told to do might make us feel better, but they won't make any difference. Global warming has passed the tipping point, and catastrophe is unstoppable.
"It's just too late for it," he says. "Perhaps if we'd gone along routes like that in 1967, it might have helped. But we don't have time. All these standard green things, like sustainable development, I think these are just words that mean nothing. I get an awful lot of people coming to me saying you can't say that, because it gives us nothing to do. I say on the contrary, it gives us an immense amount to do. Just not the kinds of things you want to do."
He dismisses eco ideas briskly, one by one. "Carbon offsetting? I wouldn't dream of it. It's just a joke. To pay money to plant trees, to think you're offsetting the carbon? You're probably making matters worse. You're far better off giving to the charity Cool Earth, which gives the money to the native peoples to not take down their forests."
Do he and his wife try to limit the number of flights they take? "No we don't. Because we can't." And recycling, he adds, is "almost certainly a waste of time and energy", while having a "green lifestyle" amounts to little more than "ostentatious grand gestures". He distrusts the notion of ethical consumption. "Because always, in the end, it turns out to be a scam ... or if it wasn't one in the beginning, it becomes one."
Somewhat unexpectedly, Lovelock concedes that the Mail's plastic bag campaign seems, "on the face of it, a good thing". But it transpires that this is largely a tactical response; he regards it as merely more rearrangement of Titanic deckchairs, "but I've learnt there's no point in causing a quarrel over everything". He saves his thunder for what he considers the emptiest false promise of all - renewable energy.
"You're never going to get enough energy from wind to run a society such as ours," he says. "Windmills! Oh no. No way of doing it. You can cover the whole country with the blasted things, millions of them. Waste of time."
This is all delivered with an air of benign wonder at the intractable stupidity of people. "I see it with everybody. People just want to go on doing what they're doing. They want business as usual. They say, 'Oh yes, there's going to be a problem up ahead,' but they don't want to change anything."
Lovelock believes global warming is now irreversible, and that nothing can prevent large parts of the planet becoming too hot to inhabit, or sinking underwater, resulting in mass migration, famine and epidemics. Britain is going to become a lifeboat for refugees from mainland Europe, so instead of wasting our time on wind turbines we need to start planning how to survive. To Lovelock, the logic is clear. The sustainability brigade are insane to think we can save ourselves by going back to nature; our only chance of survival will come not from less technology, but more.
Nuclear power, he argues, can solve our energy problem - the bigger challenge will be food. "Maybe they'll synthesise food. I don't know. Synthesising food is not some mad visionary idea; you can buy it in Tesco's, in the form of Quorn. It's not that good, but people buy it. You can live on it." But he fears we won't invent the necessary technologies in time, and expects "about 80%" of the world's population to be wiped out by 2100. Prophets have been foretelling Armageddon since time began, he says. "But this is the real thing."
Faced with two versions of the future - Kyoto's preventative action and Lovelock's apocalypse - who are we to believe? Some critics have suggested Lovelock's readiness to concede the fight against climate change owes more to old age than science: "People who say that about me haven't reached my age," he says laughing.
But when I ask if he attributes the conflicting predictions to differences in scientific understanding or personality, he says: "Personality."
There's more than a hint of the controversialist in his work, and it seems an unlikely coincidence that Lovelock became convinced of the irreversibility of climate change in 2004, at the very point when the international consensus was coming round to the need for urgent action. Aren't his theories at least partly driven by a fondness for heresy?
"Not a bit! Not a bit! All I want is a quiet life! But I can't help noticing when things happen, when you go out and find something. People don't like it because it upsets their ideas."
But the suspicion seems confirmed when I ask if he's found it rewarding to see many of his climate change warnings endorsed by the IPCC. "Oh no! In fact, I'm writing another book now, I'm about a third of the way into it, to try and take the next steps ahead."
Interviewers often remark upon the discrepancy between Lovelock's predictions of doom, and his good humour. "Well I'm cheerful!" he says, smiling. "I'm an optimist. It's going to happen."
Humanity is in a period exactly like 1938-9, he explains, when "we all knew something terrible was going to happen, but didn't know what to do about it". But once the second world war was under way, "everyone got excited, they loved the things they could do, it was one long holiday ... so when I think of the impending crisis now, I think in those terms. A sense of purpose - that's what people want."
At moments I wonder about Lovelock's credentials as a prophet. Sometimes he seems less clear-eyed with scientific vision than disposed to see the version of the future his prejudices are looking for. A socialist as a young man, he now favours market forces, and it's not clear whether his politics are the child or the father of his science. His hostility to renewable energy, for example, gets expressed in strikingly Eurosceptic terms of irritation with subsidies and bureaucrats. But then, when he talks about the Earth - or Gaia - it is in the purest scientific terms all.
"There have been seven disasters since humans came on the earth, very similar to the one that's just about to happen. I think these events keep separating the wheat from the chaff. And eventually we'll have a human on the planet that really does understand it and can live with it properly. That's the source of my optimism."
What would Lovelock do now, I ask, if he were me? He smiles and says: "Enjoy life while you can. Because if you're lucky it's going to be 20 years before it hits the fan."
To see this story with its related links on the guardian.co.uk site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2008/mar/01/scienceofclimatechange.climatechange
The Middle East
The Gaza Bombshell
After failing to anticipate Hamas’s victory over Fatah in the 2006 Palestinian election, the White House cooked up yet another scandalously covert and self-defeating Middle East debacle: part Iran-contra, part Bay of Pigs. With confidential documents, corroborated by outraged former and current U.S. officials, David Rose reveals how President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Deputy National-Security Adviser Elliott Abrams backed an armed force under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, touching off a bloody civil war in Gaza and leaving Hamas stronger than ever.
by David Rose April 2008
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and President George W. Bush, whose secret Palestinian intervention backfired in a big way.
“A Dirty War”
The Al Deira Hotel, in Gaza City, is a haven of calm in a land beset by poverty, fear, and violence. In the middle of December 2007, I sit in the hotel’s airy restaurant, its windows open to the Mediterranean, and listen to a slight, bearded man named Mazen Asad abu Dan describe the suffering he endured 11 months before at the hands of his fellow Palestinians. Abu Dan, 28, is a member of Hamas, the Iranian-backed Islamist organization that has been designated a terrorist group by the United States, but I have a good reason for taking him at his word: I’ve seen the video.
It shows abu Dan kneeling, his hands bound behind his back, and screaming as his captors pummel him with a black iron rod. “I lost all the skin on my back from the beatings,” he says. “Instead of medicine, they poured perfume on my wounds. It felt as if they had taken a sword to my injuries.”
On January 26, 2007, abu Dan, a student at the Islamic University of Gaza, had gone to a local cemetery with his father and five others to erect a headstone for his grandmother. When they arrived, however, they found themselves surrounded by 30 armed men from Hamas’s rival, Fatah, the party of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas. “They took us to a house in north Gaza,” abu Dan says. “They covered our eyes and took us to a room on the sixth floor.”
The video reveals a bare room with white walls and a black-and-white tiled floor, where abu Dan’s father is forced to sit and listen to his son’s shrieks of pain. Afterward, abu Dan says, he and two of the others were driven to a market square. “They told us they were going to kill us. They made us sit on the ground.” He rolls up the legs of his trousers to display the circular scars that are evidence of what happened next: “They shot our knees and feet—five bullets each. I spent four months in a wheelchair.”
Abu Dan had no way of knowing it, but his tormentors had a secret ally: the administration of President George W. Bush.
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/04/gaza200804
Posted at 02:38 pm by Psychomike
Sunday, March 02, 2008
How Peace Came To Ireland
Chavez Orders Troops to Colombian Border
President Hugo Chavez on Sunday ordered thousands of troops to the border with Colombia after Colombia's military killed a top rebel leader.
Chavez told his defense minister: "Move 10 battalions for me to the border with Colombia, immediately." He also ordered the Venezuelan Embassy in Colombia closed and said all embassy personnel would be withdrawn.
The announcements by Venezuela's leftist leader pushed relations to their tensest point of his nine-year presidency, and Chavez warned that Colombia could spark a war in South America.
He called the U.S.-allied government in Bogota "a terrorist state" and labeled President Alvaro Uribe "a criminal."
The leftist leader warned that Colombia’s slaying of rebel spokesman Raul Reyes could spark a war.
“It wasn’t any combat. It was a cowardly murder, all of it coldly calculated,” Chavez said.
“We pay tribute to a true revolutionary, who was Raul Reyes,” Chavez said, recalling that he had met rebel in Brazil in 1995 and calling him a “good revolutionary.”
Chavez: Colombia "the Israel" of Region
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/030208X.shtml
UN: Refugees Fleeing New Attacks In DarfurMonday, 3 March 2008, 9:59 am
Press Release: United Nations |
As West Darfur continues to be scourged by a new wave of air and ground attacks, the United Nations refugee agency estimated today that more than 13,000 Sudanese have fled to a remote area of Chad that is beset by its own inter-ethnic strife.
According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), just this week an additional 3,000 refugees arrived in eastern Chad's volatile Birak area, where an assistance mission was cancelled yesterday after armed men on horseback were spotted, along with black smoke rising from a burning village. http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0803/S00005.htm
Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean stepped up his verbal assault on Republican presidential front-runner John McCain on Sunday, questioning the Arizona senator's integrity.
"Here's a guy who has a typical situation ethicist. He runs on his integrity, but he doesn't seem to have any," Dean told CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer."
The Democratic chairman has spent a week pounding McCain — one of the architects of 2001's McCain-Feingold campaign finance law — over his attempt to opt out of public financing for his Republican primary campaign. In a complaint to the Federal Election Commission last week, Dean accused McCain of using the promise of federal funds to obtain a bank loan and automatic ballot access for his presidential bid while dodging federal spending limits.
"John McCain has a history of doing what it takes, regardless of what the ethics of this are," Dean said. "I think he's going to be a flawed candidate."
There was no immediate response to Dean's broadside from McCain's campaign. http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/03/02/dean-hits-mccains-integrity-he-doesnt-seem-to-have-any/
Dmitry Medvedev was elected as Russia's next president, early results showed on Sunday, after a vote that will preserve the power of his mentor President Vladimir Putin but which opponents said was unfair.
Medvedev, a 42-year-old former lawyer who has worked at Putin's side since the 1990s, will take over the trappings of the presidency from his patron in May but it was still unclear which of the two men would really be in charge.
Showing off the double act that will be at the helm of the vast, nuclear-armed country, Medvedev and Putin walked side by side out of the Kremlin gates and climbed onto the stage at a victory concert on Red Square.
"We can preserve the path that President Putin has proposed and I am convinced that we have every chance of doing that", a smiling Medvedev, dressed in jeans and a black leather jacket, said from the stage.
Opponents complained the contest was a stage-managed by Putin, a former KGB spy. "This is a secret service KGB operation to transfer power from one person to another," said ex-premier Mikhail Kasyanov, who was disqualified from the ballot.
But Russia voters are enjoying the biggest economic boom in a generation and most see Medvedev as the best hope of prolonging their new prosperity.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/latest/2008/03/02/putin-medvedev-side-by-side-after-poll-victory-89520-20338120/
The price of peace
In the run-up to the tenth anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, BBC reporter John Ware looks back at how peace was brokered in Northern Ireland.
President Bush's former special envoy to Ireland has signalled his distaste for what he regarded as No. 10 Downing Street's indulgence of IRA demands during the Northern Ireland peace process.
Dr Mitchell Reiss says he had "some pretty violent disagreements" with No. 10 over how much "pain to inflict" on Sinn Fein to push them into delivering their side of the Good Friday Agreement.
Reiss believes Sinn Fein had become used to No. 10 "doling out benefits" in the face of Republican demands in exchange for decommissioning of weapons, ending criminality and endorsing the new Police Service of Northern Ireland.
Sinn Fein signed up to the Belfast Agreement ten years ago next month, but it took Gerry Adams and Martin McGuiness nearly nine years to deliver on decommissioning and policing - both pre-requisites for the unionist leader Rev Ian Paisley's historic decision to form today's power sharing Executive with Sinn Fein.
Although Adams and McGuinness raised the spectre of dissident splits whenever the IRA was pushed to deliver progress, Irish security sources have said that threat was limited and intelligence showed Adams to be in "uncontested control" of the republican movement.
Reiss's comments to the BBC echo those of the former Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Mandelson who has said Tony Blair was "always saying 'give more, do more, concede more'," despite "excessive and unreasonable" republican demands.
Jonathan Powell - Mr Blair's chief of staff and peace process fixer will give his version of events in his book to be published next month.
Tom Kelly, No 10's spokesman at the time, denies that Blair and Powell were too solicitous of the IRA.
A former senior Irish government official, however, says that No. 10 "love-bombed Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness" citing Powell's invitation to Adams and McGuinness to a post-wedding party last summer although they did not attend.
The former unionist leader David Trimble was also invited but says he had "transport difficulties".
Following his appointment as special envoy to Ireland in 2004, Reiss and other US and Irish government officials became concerned at what they saw as a relaxed attitude by No. 10 to IRA criminality, including a string of IRA armed robberies culminating in the £26.5m stolen from the Northern Bank in Belfast and the murder of Robert McCartney in a bar brawl involving several Sinn Fein supporters who also wiped away the forensics.
Reiss knew Paisley's bottom line for a power-sharing deal with Sinn Fein was their endorsement of the police.
But the IRA had yet to get rid of its weapons, even though nearly seven years had passed since Adams and McGuiness had signed the Belfast Agreement.
'Red lines'
So Reiss decided to "put down some red lines" by crossing Adams off the guest list of the White House's St Patrick's Day celebration in March 2005 and imposed a fundraising restriction on Sinn Fein visas.
By July, the IRA had formally ordered all units to dump their arms. Even so, a former senior Irish government source says at the 11th hour the IRA had threatened to call off the deal unless some senior members were allowed to keep weapons for their personal protection.
The source says that during the wrangling over decommissioning, No. 10 had been prepared to "accept that 95% was pretty good." Tom Kelly says: "I don't believe that is an accurate reading."
According to Mitchell Reiss, however, the Irish Justice Minister Michael McDowell stood firm against the IRA's 11th hour demands for weapons, likening him to "Horatio on the bridge." The IRA then backed down. Gerry Adams denied there were any demands to hold on to guns.
In November 2005, Adams asked Reiss to lift the fundraising ban in recognition of the IRA having decommissioned. Adams wanted to attend a fundraising gala event in New York. Reiss refused because Sinn Fein was still refusing to recognise the police and the IRA was still engaged in criminality.
Adams contacted No. 10 and, according to Reiss, persuaded them to telephone the White House to argue for the ban being lifted. Reiss only discovered this when No. 10 telephoned him as a courtesy 30 minutes before the call was due to be made.
This, says Reiss, made him "extraordinarily angry." He was at a New York City airport and "got into a shouting match over my cell phone" with No. 10 "with everybody else in the waiting room wondering who this maniac was screaming at the top of his voice to try to turn around a decision."
Had No. 10 made the call, says Reiss "it would have sent exactly the wrong message to Sinn Fein - and through Sinn Fein to the IRA - about policing and violence, and I think that would have set back the cause of peace, not advanced it."
One US official says relations with No. 10 became "open and nasty" because Reiss insisted the fundraising ban should stay. They believed No.10 was preparing to fudge on policing. But because Reiss knew that policing was a pre-requisite for Paisley's agreement to power sharing, he maintained the ban.
Finally, in December 2006 Adams did recognise the police. Ian Paisley then agreed to go into government with Sinn Fein headed by him and the former IRA Chief of Staff Martin McGuiness as First Ministers with equal status.
Sticks or carrots?
So, was it American sticks or British carrots that finally pushed Sinn Fein and the Paisleyites across the finishing line?
All parties to the peace process, Reiss included, agree that a lasting settlement wouldn't have been achieved without Powell and Blair's intense involvement. But Reiss also believes his hard line helped play a "decisive" role in clinching the final agreement.
Reiss says No. 10 - and he means Powell - "felt that the United States was messing up the peace process." "Many" British officials "weren't reluctant to share their anger with me."
But, says Reiss, "in one of my last meetings at No.10... very gracefully, very graciously, people admitted that they had been mistaken and that the American way forward was the right way." It will be interesting to see if, in his book, Powell agrees.
John Ware presents The Price of Peace on Radio 4 at 1330GMT on Sundays from 2 March, or afterwards at the Radio 4 website. http://www.bbc.co.uk
Posted at 05:05 pm by Psychomike
MI5 targets Ireland's al-Qaeda cells
A secret unit is working with police on both sides of the border to monitor Islamist extremists
MI5 has set up a dedicated team to monitor suspected al-Qaeda activists and supporters in Ireland.
The Observer has learnt that an eight-strong unit is spying on Islamists based in Belfast, Lisburn and mid-Ulster, but is also liaising via the Police Service of Northern Ireland with the Garda Siochana across the border. The revelation coincides with the arrest yesterday of a suspected Islamist terror unit in Co Kerry. Three Afghans were in custody after the Garda swooped on an apartment in Tralee and found devices they believe could be used to make bombs.
The new unit at MI5's regional headquarters at Holywood, on the outskirts of Belfast, also monitors inbound US military flights to Shannon airport in case of an Islamist terror attack on Irish soil.
All reports on suspected al-Qaeda activities across Ireland are to be handed over to the head of MI5 in Northern Ireland, Trevor Harper. He is based at the new £20m headquarters inside Palace military barracks. Last week The Observer revealed that, in the event of a major terror attack on MI5's HQ at Thames House in London, command of the security services would be switched to Holywood.
Security sources said al-Qaeda 'sleeper cells' in Northern Ireland were being watched in particular, because of suspected links to other cells in Britain. 'They operate a very tight structure, just like the IRA. There are possible links to cells on the mainland,' one source said.
A cell in Lisburn, Co Antrim, has been under investigation for almost two years after it was found to be operating out of a housing estate close to the town. Another cell believed to be operating in the Mid-Ulster area has planted roots around Portadown, Lurgan and Craigavon.
A number of suspects are believed to be working in restaurants which are being monitored. And there are said to be ongoing inquiries into those suspected of being linked to a Belfast cell controlled by Kafeel Ahmed, said to have been a leading light in al-Qaeda in Ulster. Ahmed is believed to have arrived in Northern Ireland in 2001 and enrolled at Queen's University to study aeronautical engineering, graduating in 2003. The 27-year-old stayed on at the campus as a paid researcher.
In July 2007, Ahmed was 'activated' to carry out an alleged suicide bomb attack on Glasgow airport. A second man, Iraqi doctor Bilal Talal Samad Abdullah, was in the car which burst into flames on impact at the airport terminal. Abdullah survived and was later charged with conspiracy to cause explosions. Ahmed suffered 90 per cent burns and died several days later in the Royal Alexandra hospital in Paisley.
Security sources said the new MI5 complex coordinates intelligence on all al-Qaeda cells operating on both sides of the border. It liaises via the PSNI with the Garda's special detective unit, which monitors subversive organisations and foreign nationals suspected of being involved in international terrorism.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/02/alqaida.ireland
Too bad we don't have a MI5 type group in the U.S., because of anti-Joe McCarthy sentiments most Americans don't even believe in "cells" of spies and terrorists.
Israeli forces killed 61 people in the Gaza Strip on Saturday, the bloodiest day for Palestinians since an uprising against Israeli occupation began in 2000.
Almost half the dead were civilians, including children.
Israel, which lost two soldiers, seemed ready to press home its fiercest air and ground assault since it pulled troops back to the borders of the coastal enclave in 2005. It blamed rocket attacks by the Islamist Hamas movement for provoking four days of fighting, in which 96 Palestinians have been killed.
The U.N. Security Council prepared to meet in emergency session. A U.N. official in Gaza appealed for international action to end the "inhuman suffering" of its 1.5 million people and said killing women and children would not help Israel.
U.S. President George W. Bush sounded more supportive of his Israeli allies. While regretting all loss of life, his spokesman said: "There is a clear distinction between terrorist rocket attacks that target civilians and action in self-defence."
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a sworn enemy of the Islamist militant group Hamas which took control of Gaza from his forces in June, called the attack "more than a holocaust". Aides to Abbas said fighting could wreck new U.S.-backed peace talks. Israeli officials said Palestinian chief negotiator Ahmed Qurie called his Israeli counterpart, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, to call off a meeting due on Monday. But Abbas's aides said no decision to suspend the process had been taken.
Bush hopes for a deal on founding a Palestinian state before he leaves office in January. Many view that as very optimistic.
http://wiredispatch.com/news/?id=67434
Hamas vowed on Saturday to keep up armed resistance against Israel even if the Jewish state launched an all-out invasion of Gaza.
Palestinian fighters battling Israeli forces in the coastal strip had little option but to keep firing rockets on the Jewish state and resist "Israeli aggression", exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal said in the Syrian capital.
"No one in his right mind would like to see Israel invade Gaza, but the battle has been forced on us. The rockets are a reaction. Israeli aggression came first," Meshaal said.
"We won't surrender. Rockets are the arsenal we have to protect our people. The only option in front of us is resistance and self-defence," Meshaal told reporters.
Israel killed 41 Palestinians on Saturday in its deadliest and deepest incursion into the Gaza Strip since pulling out in 2005, stoking fears of a broader conflict that could derail renewed U.S.-backed peace talks.
It said it was responding to cross-border rockets, which killed an Israeli man in the border town of Sderot on Wednesday and wounded others in the southern city of Ashkelon.
At least 76 Palestinians have been killed since Wednesday in intense Israeli air strikes and ground raids in the tiny Hamas-controlled territory, home to 1.5 million people, bordering Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean.
Two Israeli soldiers were also killed and seven wounded, the army said -- its first casualties in four days of fighting.
Meshaal dismissed suggestions that Hamas should declare a truce, saying similar moves by the Islamist movement between 2003 and 2006 had not helped end Israeli attacks.
He told Israel what he believed it would face if it mounted an invasion: "I say to the Zionist leaders, if they decided to raid Gaza, they will not be fought by dozens of fighters but they will be fought by 1.5 million people." http://wiredispatch.com/news/?id=67065
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's office lashed out Friday at the Iraqi presidential council for refusing to approve the executions of two of the three men sentenced to hang for the genocidal campaign against Iraq's ethnic Kurdish minority under Saddam Hussein.
The public dispute highlighted the persistent rancor between Iraq's major ethnic and religious factions, which continues to paralyze the highest levels of government nearly five years after Saddam's fall.
Al-Maliki, a Shiite Muslim, has pressed for speedy executions for the three men, who were convicted in June of genocide and other crimes for their roles in a late-1980s military crackdown of the Kurds, known as the al-Anfal campaign, or Spoils of War, which killed as many as 180,000 Kurds.
Earlier Friday, senior government aides said the three-member Presidency Council, which consists of President Jalal Talabani and his two vice presidents, had signed off on the execution of Saddam's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali," for ordering the use of poison gas against villages said to be harboring Kurdish guerrillas.
The decision was the last legal obstacle to carrying out the sentence, which must be done within 30 days.
But an aide said Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi who, like the defendants, is a Sunni, would not endorse the executions of the two military leaders who helped carry out the deadly attacks: Defense Minister Sultan Hashim Ahmad Jabburi Tai and the ex-deputy head of army operations, Hussein Rashid Mohammed.
Execution orders require the signatures of all three members of the Presidency Council under Iraqi law.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/world/5583545.html Posted at 09:24 am by Psychomike
Saturday, March 01, 2008
Serb Tanks @ Kosovo Border
Of all the bankrupt Clinton policies, to enforce the seccession of Kosovo may prove to be a bigger mistake than occupying Iraq. Kosovo is backed by Iran, is Islamist and is corrupted by drugs. As Serb tanks mass on the border I have to ask, what were we thinking?
Tensions rise as Serbs push into KosovoKosovo border police have reported Serb tanks are taking positions near the Kosovo-Serb border. On Friday police in Kosovo's northern city of Mitrovica held off thousands of Serb protesters who were trying to cross the bridge dividing the Serb and Albanian sides of the city.
Hundreds of ethnic Serbs have arrived in the province to show their support for the Serbian minority living there. Kosovan authorities have already introduced restrictions preventing Serbs from entering the region.
http://www.russiatoday.ru/news/news/21256
Kosovo is major transit point of heroin destined for Western European Countries: US report
|
Kosovo is primarily a transit point for heroin originating in Turkey and Afghanistan and destined for Western European countries, and it also has a small and reportedly growing domestic narcotics market. Kosovo faces serious challenges in its battle against narcotics trafficking. Its borders are porous, there is reported corruption among its Border Police and Customs officers, and its unique status under UNSCR 1244 as a United Nations-administered territory prevents it from entering into most bilateral, multilateral and international agreements,
The Government of Kosovo is just beginning to address the narcotics problem, and there is no national counternarcotics strategy.
There have been no arrests for high-level narcotics-related corruption in Kosovo. There are reports of corruption among Border Police and Customs officers, but the KPS and UNMIK Customs Service say they are attempting to address it. Cases reportedly tend to involve officers turning a blind eye to narcotics trafficking or accepting bribes to allow narcotics to get through border or administrative boundary line gates.
|
 |
|
|
|
© 2008 All rights reserved. Reproducing this website’s contents requires obligatory reference to FOCUS Information Agency!
IS LIBERALISM AN ILLNESS? NEW BOOK IS A SHOCKER
Are Liberals Out of Their Minds? Why do modern liberals think and act as they do? The radical left's politics and its destructive effects on our basic freedoms have provoked many to speculate on what makes these people tick. The Liberal Mind answers the question. This book is the first systematic analysis of the political madness that now threatens to destroy the West's greatest achievement: the American dream of civilized liberty. In his penetrating analysis, Dr. Rossiter reveals modern liberalism's assaults on: The freedom of adults to make good lives for themselves by cooperating with others, The ability of families to raise children to be self-reliant and mutual, and The morals, rights and laws that protect our freedoms. Modern liberalism's irrationality can only be understood as the product of psychopathology. So extravagant are the patterns of thinking, emoting, behaving and relating that characterize the liberal mind that its relentless protests and demands become understandable only as disorders of the psyche. The Liberal Mind reveals the madness of the modern liberal for what it is: a massive transference neurosis acted out in the world's political arenas, with devastating effects on the institutions of liberty.
About the Author
Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr., M.D. received his medical and psychiatric training at the University of Chicago. He is board certified in both general and forensic psychiatry and has diagnosed and treated mental disorders for more than forty years. He has been retained by numerous public offices, courts, and private attorneys as a forensic psychiatrist and has consulted in more than 2700 civil and criminal cases in both state and federal jurisdictions.
| Posted at 09:29 am by Psychomike
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
William F. Buckley Has Died
William F. Buckley Jr. (1925-2008) [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
I’m devastated to report that our dear friend, mentor, leader, and founder William F. Buckley Jr., died overnight in his study in Stamford, Connecticut.
After year of illness, he died while at work; if he had been given a choice on how to depart this world, I suspect that would have been exactly it. At home, still devoted to the war of ideas.
As you might expect, we’ll have much more to say here and in NR in the coming days and weeks and months. For now: Thank you, Bill. God bless you, now with your dear Pat. Our deepest condolences to Christopher and the rest of the Buckley family. And our fervent prayer that we continue to do WFB’s life’s work justice. http://corner.nationalreview.com/
President Bush ran for office as a "compassionate conservative." And he continues to nurture his conservative base — even issuing his first veto this week against embryonic stem cell research.
But lately his foreign policy has come under fire from some conservatives — including the father of modern conservatism, William F. Buckley.
CBS Evening News Saturday anchor Thalia Assuras sat down for an exclusive interview with Buckley about his disagreements with President Bush.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/07/22/eveningnews/main1826838.shtml
Milton Friedman, R.I.P.
By William F. Buckley Jr.
It isn’t right to rail against fortune when death comes to a friend, or a hero—in this case, both—at the high age of 94. Still, we are free to choose, and there was grief when word came to us of the death of Milton Friedman. We were on board a large ship, where a week of seminars at sea was being guided by a dozen celebrants of conservative doctrine. One was to have been Friedman himself, but when the boat pulled away from San Diego, bound for Mexico, Friedman was in a hospital in San Francisco.
What struck the band of brothers who came together last Friday afternoon to devise an impromptu tribute to our missing seminarist was in fact exactly that—grief, never mind that he had lived 94 years. Although Professor Friedman engaged himself to the end, in tandem with his brilliant wife, Rose, in academic and philosophical work, it was not the discontinuation of this that caused the pang aboard the S.S. Oosterdam. If the word had come that Friedman would never again write an academic paper, or a book or column, we’d have tightened our belts, and perhaps reminded ourselves of the million words that are there in print, and will always be there, to reread and to ponder. But what we felt was not so much the discontinuation of that great wellspring of liberal and penetrating thought. It was grief for the loss of a person.
It is inevitably so that the end of life of a central intellectual or political or indeed theatrical figure can be felt personally only by a comparative few, because only a few can have known any historical figure. The legion of admirers at a remove—those who felt for him, without ever having met him, admiration, devotion, even love—is something different, more detached. But there was also the impact of his person on individual students and friends and coadjutors, and on Thursday, November 16, we felt a wholly personal loss.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=Nzg3MThlMDVhZDEwNTUxMThhOWM3M2E3NWNjMjA4NDE= Posted at 10:56 am by Psychomike
Osama Luvs Clueless Candidates
Clueless Candidates Make Osama's Day
|
| by Michael Scheuer |
While McCain, Obama, and Clinton attend services of their choice on Sunday, all worship at the shrine of intervention-that-spurs jihad the rest of the week. Just in the past month, all three have pushed an interventionist agenda in Pakistan and Kosovo, and, notwithstanding claims by Obama and Clinton, to a great extent in Iraq. At day's end, each is ready to intervene abroad to champion abstractions such as democracy rather than U.S. interests; each is ready to spend the lives of soldiers and Marines to do so; and each advances the Islamist cause by failing to see that Muslim hatred is motivated by U.S. interventionism more than any other factor.
In Pakistan, we are seeing the last stage of the destruction of our most important anti-Islamist ally, Pervez Musharraf. Here is a man who helped us destroy his nation's ally, the Taliban; caused al-Qaeda to mark him for death; and brought his nation near to civil war by sending Pakistan's army into the tribal region. True enough, he has received billions in return and at times duped us, but what other U.S. ally has done so much that is counter to its national interests? The answer is none; most of our allies have deserted the Iraq and Afghan coalitions.
As thanks, Washington strengthened Pakistan's Indian enemy, hectored Musharraf for not doing all of America's dirty work, and generally blamed our coming defeat in Afghanistan on his refusal to destroy his nation to help us. McCain, Obama, and Clinton endorsed all this, and they were as aggressive as President Bush in demanding Musharraf reestablish democracy via an election that further eroded stability and will open the country's treasury to Pakistan's biggest thieves, Nawaz Sharif and Asif Zadari. This "success" will force America to spend more money and lives in Afghanistan, because we neutered a vital ally for an abstract, unachievable goal – a secular Pakistani democracy. Only al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and their Pakistani allies benefit.
And then there is Kosovo. Again, McCain, Obama, and Clinton joined Bush in gleefully applauding Kosovo's declaration of independence from Serbia. And what has that action yielded? It lit the fuse burning toward a new Balkan war because America's bipartisan political class wants to peddle its version of democracy even if it means stripping the most politically sacred portion of Christian Serbia and giving it to a Muslim regime that will be a magnet for support from al-Qaeda, other Islamists, and America's jihad-supporting Arab Peninsula allies. Bush and the three candidates have committed America's prestige in a region where no U.S. interests exist. These interventionists will eventually waste the lives of U.S. troops in a bloody attempt to protect "U. S. credibility" by trying to stop Serbia's inevitable Russian-backed recovery of Kosovo and the attendant slaughter of Muslim Kosovars. When the Balkans' smoke clears, only the Islamists will be victorious.
And finally, Iraq. Bush's stay-the-course doctrine is stridently echoed by McCain and rhetorically opposed by Obama and Clinton, but the difference is more apparent than real. Moqtada al-Sadr has extended his cease-fire surge for another six months; the U.S. military can now continue killing Sunnis so Sadr will have fewer to kill later. Sadr's brilliant, Machiavellian surge keeps U.S. casualties down, gives a false sense of increasing Iraqi stability, and allows McCain to rattle his saber while permitting Obama and Clinton to begin hedging their demand for withdrawal to avoid appearing as lefty surrenderistas this fall.
Flash ahead to Inauguration Day, 2009. Now in power, the new president – be it McCain, Obama, or Clinton – will begin seeing "nuances" that require America to stay in Iraq: to fight terrorism; to prevent civil war; to continue the Awakening; to plant deeper democratic roots. The list of mitigating nuances given Americans will be both endless and false.
What the new president will find is that three decades of U.S. intervention in other peoples' wars – in this case the Arab-Israeli conflict – has locked us in Iraq because leaving would undermine Israel's security. As I recently argued in the Jamestown Foundation's Terrorism Focus, al-Qaeda has secured its goal in Iraq, a base to project influence and terror into the Levant and Israel and is already doing so. If America leaves Iraq, al-Qaeda's base will solidify and Israel's security will deteriorate; pro-Israel American campaign funders will demand McCain, Obama, or Clinton defend the Jewish state by staying in Iraq no matter the cost; and each will do so because each operates under the delusion that U.S. and Israeli national-security interests are identical. And the Islamists will have another win.
So vote as they will, these candidates offer Americans no chance of a foreign policy that accurately gauges the Islamist threat, let alone defeats it. Indeed, the debate over which candidate is experienced enough to be commander in chief is farcical; each candidate is an interventionist and will simply abide by the dogma kept in place by America's political class for 30-plus years. After all, it takes no experience whatsoever to follow a script whose pages are now discolored by both age and the blood of America's soldiers and Marines.
And on Inauguration Day, 2013, Americans will find our ruling interventionists – Republican or Democrat – have U.S. forces fighting in Iraq; have more forces fighting in Afghanistan; have committed forces in places like the Balkans and Darfur; and have motivated millions more Muslims to join the jihad by their policies' impact. For bin Laden and the Islamists, McCain, Obama, or Clinton equals precisely the same thing – game, set, and, perhaps, match. | http://www.antiwar.com/scheuer/?articleid=12424 Posted at 08:35 am by Psychomike
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
How Ron Paul/Nader Could Win
The GOP is pleased that Ralph Nader has joined the frey, envisioning a split occuring in the Democratic Party after the Superdelegates select Hillary. But should they be so happy?
On the subject of immigration, Nader or Paul have a huge hole to drive a truck thru the other two parties. All 3 major candidates support amnesty. Paul could say we should determine how many illegal immigrants we need and issue visas to that many and still retain his libertarianism. Nader could just say close the borders. I believe that would attract people from both parties and have a far greater impact on the election than any third party has since the early 20th Century. The American public is militantly anti-amnesty. When they discover items like this:
MojoPojo sends us this pamphlet from the Mexican government on how to sneak into America. No, I'm not kidding.
they tend to get really mad. If the candidate took a stand against amnesty and siphoned off 25% from EACH party (and such a stance would hit BOTH parties not just one) we could be looking at the emergence of a new party and the end of one.
The Clinton Years Revisited
|
| Philip Giraldi |
As bad as the past eight years have been, it may be fruitful to remember what U.S. national security policy was like under Bill Clinton, as it is very possible that Washington will soon be returning to that gold standard for underachievement. Under Bill, Serbia was bombed in 1999, killing more than 500 civilians in support of no identifiable U.S. national interest. The result of that bombing and its aftermath has been the forceful and quite likely illegal creation of Kosovo, a predominantly Muslim state in the heart of Europe that harbors more than its share of terrorists, drug dealers, and weapons smugglers. Clinton also arranged for a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant to be attacked to turn the public's attention away from the stains on a blue dress. He vetoed several plans to capture or kill Osama bin Laden and instead pulverized a number of Afghan mud huts with cruise missiles at a half million dollars a pop after two U.S. embassies and the Khobar Towers were blown up by terrorists. If Hillary Clinton is campaigning on Bill Clinton's record, and she is, there is not a whole lot to celebrate except for the fact that Bill did not invade Iraq (though he did think about it, according to his secretary of state).
A number of Clinton relics continue to appear on talk shows and write op-eds for leading newspapers, which suggests that they are still dangerous. Richard Holbrooke, a hawkish Democrat who was heavily involved in the Balkan misadventure, is Hillary's principal foreign policy adviser, and it is widely believed that he will be secretary of state if she is elected. Several others have gravitated toward their natural home at pro-Israel think tanks. Dennis Ross, for example, is counselor and fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), which was founded in 1985 by Martin Indyk when he was the director of research for AIPAC. WINEP claims to be impartial on the subject of the Middle East, but it rarely deviates from pro-Israel advocacy.
In an astonishing testament to the resiliency of the Clinton era neocon-lites, several of the better-known examples have recently surfaced in Doha. Qatar hosts an annual conference called the U.S.-Islamic World Forum, which was just concluded, running from Feb. 16-18. This year, for the first time, there was a co-sponsor, the Saban Center of Washington's Brookings Institute. The Saban Center, far from an objective observer of the Middle East, is funded by Israeli-American billionaire Haim Saban, who said in a 2004 interview, "I'm a one-issue guy, and my issue is Israel." Saban is extremely close to the Clintons and is also reported to be the largest contributor to the Democratic National Committee. When Bill was in office, Saban and his wife slept in the Lincoln bedroom on a number of occasions. Like its founder, the Saban Center is Israel-centric in its policy analysis, sponsoring bilateral meetings in Jerusalem to discuss issues of common concern.
Saban is headed by Martin Indyk, who opened the U.S.-Islamic World conference. Other Doha speakers included Clinton alumni Madeleine Albright and Sandy Berger. It should be recalled that Indyk was born in England, became an Australian citizen, and eventually wound up in Washington as a full-time advocate for Israel, first as research director of AIPAC and then as the founder and first executive director of WINEP. In spite of his tenuous claim to American citizenship and possible concerns that his actual loyalty might not be to the United States, Indyk was naturalized by Congress in 1995 so that Bill Clinton could name him U.S. ambassador to Israel. Former Secretary of State Albright is famous for her judgment that the deaths of half a million Iraqi children due to U.S. enforced sanctions were "worth it."
But the presence of Sandy Berger in Doha is even more astonishing than that of Albright or Indyk. Berger, an international trade attorney who was a principal lobbyist for China, was named deputy national security adviser by Clinton in 1993 and national security adviser in 1997. While deputy national security adviser in 1996, Berger was informed that China had acquired designs for a number of U.S. nuclear warheads, considerably enhancing its military capabilities. The information was presumably obtained through successful espionage, with serious security implications, but Berger inexplicably failed to tell the president about the discovery until more than a year later.
In November 1997, Berger was fined $23,000 for his failure to divest himself of stocks that would have caused a potential conflict of interest due to his position in the government. He claimed that he "forgot." In 2003, after he left office, he was observed at the United States National Archives stuffing official documents into his trousers. He was convicted of stealing classified material and fined $50,000, and his security clearance was suspended for three years. Many felt that the sentence was little more than a slap on the wrist, as Berger could well afford the fine, and the remainder of the punishment only amounted to a misdemeanor. Berger may have been deliberately destroying and altering documents because the records in question detailed Clinton administration mistakes in dealing with terrorism prior to 9/11. In one instance, he took all five copies of a single report, suggesting that he was interested in altering the official record permanently. He reportedly smuggled the reports out of the Archives in his trousers and then hid them under equipment at a construction site, picking them up later. Several documents were destroyed by cutting them up with scissors. Berger's incredible behavior has been sometimes viewed as symptomatic of the culture of personal irresponsibility that was part and parcel of the Clinton regime. In May 2007, Berger gave up his law license, reportedly under pressure, claiming that he hadn't used it in 15 years.
Berger lives in Georgetown and is the chairman and owner of a company called Stonebridge International that works as an advisory service for investors seeking opportunities in a number of countries overseas. He also sits on several boards and is reportedly doing quite well financially.
In light of his conviction for theft and destruction of classified documents relating to the historical record, Berger would appear to be a particularly poor choice to be selected to speak in Doha, or anywhere else. To be fair, the organizers of the conference included many diverse voices on the panels and as speakers, including the University of Maryland's Shibley Telhami, but one must wonder about having Saban as a partner for any kind of dialogue on U.S.-Islamic relations. Indyk provided opening remarks, Albright spoke on "The Conflicts That Divide Us," and Berger spoke twice, on the "Presidential Candidates' Foreign Policy Agendas" and "Managing Global Insecurity."
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/giraldi.php?articleid=12418 | Posted at 08:06 am by Psychomike
Monday, February 25, 2008
How's And Why's Of Kosovo
|
CLINTON'S FOLLY COMES HOME TO ROOST: KOSOVO BLOWBACK HITS ENTIRE REGION FROM TURKEY TO IRAQ!, NONE DARE CALL IT TREASON: WHO IS STEALING OUR NUCLEAR SECRETS?, WHY LEFT SHOULD RE-EVALUATE CASTRO
THE SHOCKING STORY OF HOW WE GOT INVOLVED IN KOSOVO/ SERBIA
|
|
|
Clinton Had A Chance To Avoid Kosovo Bombing |
|
by Alan J. Parrington |
| |
| Now that Slobodan Milosevic has been voted out of office, many in the Clinton Administration will be celebrating the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia as a completed moral victory. We were told after all, that the war was fought for humanitarian reasons - to stop genocide and ethnic cleansing - and that it was started only after all diplomatic efforts had failed. With Kosovo free and Milosevic vanquished, the war is finally won. It was a good war.
As the U.S. Air Attaché in London at the time, I saw a different war, one not so flattering or altruistic. I saw a war of underlying motives, missed diplomatic opportunities, misguided military strategies and questionable outcomes. Worst of all, the war never need happened: Milosevic conceded major U.S. demands two weeks before the war began.
On the evening of March 11, 1999, I was confronted by the Yugoslavian Defence Attaché to the Court of St. James at a British diplomatic reception and told, "Milosevic has decided to accept international, even NATO, troops in Kosovo, but he must first have (a) letter from Clinton explaining the benefits Yugoslavia will receive (in exchange)." I stood there silent, somewhat dumbfounded, as the deployment of foreign troops had been the sticking point in negotiations. The Serb colonel repeated his statement verbatim, questioning if I had understood the import of his message.
"Yes," I assured him, "I understand perfectly, but what benefits are you talking about?"
"I myself do not know," he answered, "But Holbrooke knows!"
Richard Holbrooke, author of the Dayton Accord on Bosnia, had been shuttling back and forth to Belgrade trying to find a peaceful solution to the Kosovo crisis. He had left Belgrade the day before to consult with Washington and was due back in Yugoslavia that weekend. He apparently carried with him a detailed brief of the Milosevic offer.
The timing, place and presence of other diplomats cut short my discussion with the Serb, but by coincidence I had dinner with him at the home of a fellow attaché a few days later. I asked if he had learned any more about the benefits he had spoken of during our last encounter. "I can only speak for myself," he answered, "but there are only three things Yugoslavia must have: Yugoslavia must keep sovereignty over Kosovo, the terrorists (i.e. the Kosovo Liberation Army) must be disarmed, and the referendum (on independence for Kosovo) must be removed." It was apparently too much for the Clinton Administration to accept as Holbrooke's shuttle diplomacy failed and the bombing began March 24.
The war that was supposed to last three days ran into weeks, then months, and had all the appearances of lasting well into the future when, ironically, Russia stepped in and brokered a peace. The war ended June 10 with the United Nations accepting responsibility for Kosovo. When I read the agreement, I was not surprised to see the three Yugoslavian demands had been met or that each side had spun the agreement into a victory for their side. Such is the nature of 20th-century politics. But I began to wonder why it had the taken so much blood to come back to the same starting point as before the war began. There were lots of explanations I reasoned, but none that fit the scenario comfortably, save one.
I came to the conclusion - hypothesis really - that the war had not been about humanitarian issues at all. Like most wars it had been about politics. In this case, the objective all along had been to get rid of Milosevic, Europe's last reigning communist, and whose virulent nationalism had set the region ablaze, sending millions of refugees fleeing to the West where they were not wanted or welcomed.
It was difficult to gauge when Milosevic became the target of the administration's Balkan policy, perhaps as early as 1995 following the debacle in Bosnia. State appointments and initiatives from that time seem to support that theory. In any case, it all hinged on cornering the Serb leader in a war he could not win and for whom capitulation or defeat would spell disaster. Milosevic's Waterloo was thought to be Kosovo, his Achilles heel to be bombing. This is where the strategy went awry.
It is one of the enduring myths of the 20th century that strategic bombing will compel a weak power to throw in the towel and dump an unpopular leader. In practice, the opposite has always been true and even the most unpopular dictators have been made into national heroes by the symbiotic logic that befalls strategic bombardment. Most American administrations, captured by the omnipotence of their own polls, have been slow to grasp this reality and have repeatedly reached for the strategic bomber or missile as an easy way to avoid hard choices.
The Clinton administration was no different. Three days at most, it was claimed, and Milosevic will be history. But in Yugoslavia, as in Iraq and elsewhere, the bombing backfired and rallied disparate Serbian political parties around a common foreign enemy. After 11 weeks of bombing, the administration, running short of precision weapons and faced with the prospect of a bloody ground war, abandoned the bombing strategy and asked the Russians to broker a deal based upon Milosevic's antebellum offer. The war achieved no more than was offered by Milosevic at the beginning and only inflamed ethnic passions for generations to come.
It is a Pyrrhic victory to now claim that the bombing served its purpose. Kosovo remains a part of Yugoslavia, the independence referendum has been cancelled, ethnic cleansing continues (albeit reversed in terms of nationalities), and NATO has been stuck with the impossible task of disarming the KLA. As one KLA leader told me, "One day the Serbs will be selling us guns to shoot at NATO!" Even new Yugoslavian President Vojislav Kostunica has been quoted as saying, "We cannot forget what some countries did to us last year during the NATO bombing."
Benjamin Franklin believed that there is no such thing as a good war, nor is there a bad peace. Democratic forces brought about Milosevic's demise, not bombs or bullets. Milosevic was widely hated before the war ever began. Advocates of the Clinton doctrine might think on these dilemmas and well consider the old sage's advice before launching any new moralistic adventures. War is at best a necessary evil that should be invoked only in the most extreme of situations. Getting rid of Milosevic was not one of them.
Alan J. Parrington, of Monument, Colorado, served as U.S. air attaché to the Court of St. James in London during the Kosovo campaign. He retired from the Air Force with the rank of colonel at the beginning of this year. |
Serbia back on Kosovo offensive, with Russian help
Serbia was back on the offensive over Kosovo's independence on Sunday, blaming the United States for crisis in the Balkans while its ally Russia accused the Americans of destroying "world order".
Three days after young rioters in Belgrade embarrassed the country by attacking Western embassies and looting shops, Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said it is Washington that is threatening peace and stability.
In a strongly worded statement from Moscow, Russia also accused Washington of trampling on international law.
"The United States must annul the decision to recognize a false state on the territory of Serbia," Kostunica said. "It must reaffirm U.N. Security Council resolution 1244, which guarantees Serbia's sovereignty and territorial integrity."
"Continuation of the policy of force will deepen the crisis that undermines the foundations of world order and threatens peace and stability in the Balkans," he said. Serbia has expressed official regret for riots last Thursday during which the U.S. embassy was attacked and set on fire. The mission sent dependents and support staff to Croatia for safety.
This week, Serbia is getting high-level support from Moscow. Kostunica is due to host Russian President Vladimir Putin's likely successor, Dmitry Medvedev, on Monday.
The Russian foreign ministry, in a statement, again demanded a "compromise" on Kosovo, which diplomats believe is headed for partition, although Serbia has never formally proposed it.
"Do support for the Kosovo Albanian side alone, contempt for law for the sake of so-called 'political expediency', and indifference to the fate of a hundred thousand Serbs who... are effectively being driven into a ghetto not amount to flagrant cynicism?" it said.
"Is it not cynical that the Serb people is being openly humiliated while Belgrade is being promised a Euro-Atlantic future if it agrees to the carve-up of Serbia?"
The foreign ministry statement recalled that Russia had a peacekeeping contingent in Kosovo from 1999 to 2004, under the aegis of the NATO-led KFOR force which has 17,000 troops there.
"It was withdrawn due to our fundamental disagreement with bias favouring one side in Kosovo matters..." the ministry said.
Instead of supporting Kosovo Albanian independence and other actions "destroying world order", there must be a "a decision based on law and compromise between Belgrade and Pristina", the ministry statement said. http://wiredispatch.com/news/?id=58012
Kosovo, the Kremlin, and the Kurds
|
| by Justin Raimondo |
The violent reaction from the Serbian "street" to Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence is "blowback" – as the writer Chalmers Johnson terms it – with a vengeance, and we have not yet experienced the worst of it.
The U.S. attack on Kosovo has come back to haunt Washington, and not just with the burning of the American embassy in Belgrade. A chain reaction is setting in, and its effects cannot be confined to the Balkans. The unrest is already spreading to Austria – and beyond.
For if the Kosovars can have their own "nation," then why not the South Ossetians? Why not the Abkhazians? Why not the Transdniester Republic? And why not the Kurds?
The rule the U.S. has set up is as follows: restive peoples who find themselves transferred from one great "prison house of peoples" to newer, U.S.-supported prisons named Georgia – and Iraq – have no right to self-determination. The Kosovars have a special status: they enjoy the protection of the EU and the U.S. armed forces, and the West recognizes their national aspirations. The others, however, must endure being ruled by a central authority that has the support of the U.S. government.
Why? Because Washington says so.
This is the new essence of "international law" – an edict from Washington. The UN, the EU, and other international bodies all must rubber-stamp decisions made essentially by the American president and his advisers.
Yet peoples yearning for freedom and self-determination are not about to cave in the face of this arbitrary power. The Serbs of northern Kosovo, who have been all but pushed out of their ancient land, are in open rebellion. They, too, want the right of self-determination. Will the U.S. and its allies use force to keep them in the newly independent state of Kosovo? If the American president sends troops to the Balkans – again – to enforce his will, Americans will begin to ask questions, and they are not going to like the answers.
As 8,000 Turkish soldiers pour into Iraq's Kurdish region, hunting down guerrilla fighters of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), the consequences of American support for Kosovo's declaration of independence are clear. America's alliance with Turkey is threatened, as is the tenuous stability of the Iraqi government – and U.S. occupation forces have made new enemies out of their only reliable Iraqi friends. The Christian Science Monitor reported that "Peshmerga Gen. Muhammad Mohsen took down his American flag, folded it up, and placed it in his office corner Sunday, reflecting the growing anger in Iraq's Kurdish north with U.S. support for Turkey's campaign against separatist rebels operating in the region." http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=12415
The European Union (EU) civilian mission is to cover the whole territory of Kosovo, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said here Monday.
Solana made the remarks at a joint press conference with NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer after talks on Kosovo and Afghanistan.
"Our mission, as agreed by member states, covers the whole territory of Kosovo," Solana said, pledging that the EU mission, composed of more than 2,000 police officers, judges and prosecutors, would cooperate with NATO forces in Kosovo to maintain stability there and the whole Balkan region.
The EU withdrew staff, who had been preparing for the deployment of the EU mission, from the northern Kosovo city of Mitrovica after violent protests by the Serb minority against Kosovo's declaration of independence on Feb. 17.
In ethnic Albanian-dominated Kosovo, Mitrovica is inhabited by half of the region's 120,000 minority Serbs, who have been protesting against Kosovo's independence from Serbia and the deployment of the EU mission. http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/200802/26/content_7669089.htm
In an extraordinary statement Harriet Harman, Deputy leader of the Labour Party, says that she believes Fidel Castro to be a "hero of the left".
Here are the top ten reasons why she is wrong.
1. Hero of the left? In the 1960s, Cuba sent homosexuals to forced labour camps. Raul Castro was particularly active in this policy, reputedly because he looked effeminate at the time and wanted to seem more macho
2. Hero of the left? In 2003, Castro oversaw the execution of three men who had hijacked a ferry in a bid to escape from the island. Sounds pretty left wing to me.
3. Hero of the left? During the Cuban missile crisis, Castro urged Khrushchev to launch a nuclear first strike on the American mainland. This is never mentioned by the anti-war campaigners who admire Castro.
4. Hero of the left? According to the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, in 2006 there were 316 political prisoners in Cuba.
5. Hero of the left? Independent labour unions are illegal in Cuba. Has Harriet told Jack Dromey?
6. Hero of the left? On January 19, 2003, an election was held for the Cuban National Assembly. There were 609 candidates —all supported by the regime— vying for 609 seats.
7. Hero of the left? The purchase of computers and access to the internet is severely restricted with many citizens using black market sources.
8. Hero of the left? In 2003, state security forces raided 22 independent libraries and sent 14 librarians to jail with terms of up to 26 years.
9. Hero of the left? Castro personally has been one of the most conservative forces in the Cuban government. Castro was fiercely opposed to economic reforms of Gorbachev. At the 4th Cuban Communist Party Congress in 1991, there was a movement for modest liberalisation of the economy - allowing limited market in agricultural products. Fidel immediately scotched any suggestion of it.
10. Hero of the left? Castro’s admirers talk about how the deployment of troops to Angola in 1975 helped defeat apartheid in South Africa. But they don’t discuss the other aspects of his Africa adventures. Notably, how he supported the despicable Mengistu in Ethiopia, which cost enormous number of lives during the war with Somalia.
Harriet Harman has made a dreadful error. She should apologise. http://timesonline.typepad.com/comment/2008/02/in-an-extraordi.html
|
None Dare Call It Treason
Who is stealing our nuclear secrets – and why are they being shielded by the authorities? |
| by Justin Raimondo |
The Valerie Plame case is, by journalistic standards, ancient history, and naturally any follow-up on a once-important story is considered bad form. Yet there is an interesting – and rather scary – new twist to the narrative. It turns out that Scooter Libby and friends weren't the first to "out" CIA agent Plame, whose alleged employer, a company known as Brewster Jennings, was really a cover for a CIA unit investigating nuclear proliferation issues.
The London Times reveals that a former top U.S. State Department official tipped off Turkish agents about Brewster Jennings' CIA connection, according to Sibel Edmonds, a former FBI translator assigned to produce English-language transcripts of intercepted conversations of Turkish targets – in this case recordings of Turkish embassy officials and a top State Department official discussing, among other things, Brewster Jennings' relationship to the CIA.
As the Times reports, the recordings were made "between the summer and autumn of 2001. At that time, foreign agents were actively attempting to acquire the West's nuclear secrets and technology. Among the buyers were Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan's intelligence agency, which was working with Abdul Qadeer Khan, the 'father of the Islamic bomb,' who in turn was selling nuclear technology to rogue states such as Libya."
Plame and her unit were onto a black market nuclear network, run as a cooperative effort by the intelligence agencies of Pakistan, Turkey, and Israel. Accordingly, the Turks were lured into hiring Brewster-Jennings as "consultants," but when the high U.S. official learned of this, says Edmonds, he "contacted one of the foreign targets and said … you need to stay away from Brewster Jennings because they are a cover for the government. The target … immediately followed up by calling several people to warn them about Brewster Jennings. At least one of them was at the ATC [American Turkish Council]. This person also called an ISI person to warn them."
The Israeli connection is what's interesting about this covert operation, because it involves U.S. citizens, high government officials who have been part of an ongoing investigation that dates back to at least 1999, the earliest year mentioned in the AIPAC indictment. As Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay of McClatchy News Service reported in 2004:
"Several U.S. officials and law-enforcement sources said yesterday that the scope of the FBI probe of Pentagon intelligence activities appeared to go well beyond the [Larry] Franklin matter. http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=12276
Pilgrims killed as al-Qa'ida resume Iraq attacks
A suicide bomber detonated an explosive belt in a tent filled with Shia pilgrims walking to one of their holiest shrines south of Baghdad, killing at least 40 of them and wounding 60.
The attack shows that al-Qa'ida has restarted its bombings of Shia Iraqis, whom it sees as heretics, and remains capable of launching numerous suicide attacks on the same day in different parts of Iraq.
The claim by the US military of a significant drop in violence in Iraq is being dented by a rise in sectarian killings and by the Turkish invasion of Iraqi Kurdistan last Thursday in pursuit of Turkish Kurd PKK guerrillas. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/pilgrims-killed-as-alqaida-resumes-attacks-on-iraqi-shia-786772.html | | Posted at 10:53 am by Psychomike
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Will Hillary Destroy Dems?
THOUGHTS ON AN OSCAR NIGHT: NEXT STEP FOR CUBA, WILL HILLARY BRING DOWN HER PARTY!?!
When this video first appeared on the net portraying Hillary Clinton as Big Brother http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6h3G-lMZxjo it was clear that many Democrats were not happy with the idea of the return of the Clinton team. Not that they were against the sanctions against Iraq over WMD that took 1 million lives under Bill, WACO and the use of the military against the Constitution, the slanders against the women who said they were involved and 1 woman said raped by Bill, the bombings of Iraq and Serbia- all of that was fine. But the word CHANGE has replaced NEW as the new political buzzword, and Obama has that word sewn up.
What has been the big shocker is the $150 million dollar incoherent, rambling and problem filled campaign that Hillary has run. Even with Bill's top advisers, she is restricted by her own beliefs from asking Obama why he did nothing to stop police torture in Chicago, why he accepted a house and money from a known mob guy, why helping the poor in Chicago turned out to be building a football stadium addition, if he was so pro- poor why did he do nothing as Chicago gentrified and pushed the poor out - if Obama can't stop those things in his city, how on earth can he get the nation united and change anything? There. I just wrote it. I will probably get emails saying I'm racist for saying that. But I'm not a liberal, so I don't care. Hillary CAN'T say these things. Nor could any other Democrat running for office. Their belief systems forbid them to bring up the Obama record.
So Hillary goes after him in ways that can't be called racist. He is accused of plagiarizing a speech ( he was actually using a high school debate tactic, yawn) and other nit picking items. God forbid anyone look at these two peoples records. The press hasn't and the party won't.
Hillary has literally less than a few weeks to stop the destruction of her party, she has three options.
First, she could make a deal to have Obama be her VP. This would be obvious to about 1/3 of Obama's supporters as an obvious hack move, but 2/3 would fall for it. It would avoid a 1968 style Convention riot, though lose all the new voters Obama has signed up.
Second, she could quit. She could bow out gracefully and give up the dream she and Bill had since college.
This website predicted months ago that Ralph Nader was waiting in the wings to decide whether or not to run based on if he believed she would take option 3 and he would then be there to gather up the angry. So he clearly doesn't think the second point is an option.
Third, she could go into the convention with the Superdelegates and have the police bust some heads. It's quite clear Nader thinks she is headed in that direction. She and Bill are entitled.
The next 20 days will tell the tale.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Now that Raul Castro is in charge of Cuba, it is doubtful there will be any change by the U.S. until the announcement that Castro is dead has been made ( and I reveal the toast of the day).
Cuba has a huge black-market economy, wages are nowhere near prices, prostitution is considered as normal now as cab driving (which is also illegal). The poverty and conditions of the Cuban people stand in stark contrast to Chile and other Latin American countries. The Russian mob has been there quietly since the 1960's buying up coast properties, Cuba is an economic mess. Hospitals lack proper equipment, and Cubans were angry when Castro and Chavez opened up a brand new eye surgery hospital for Venezuelan tourists in Cuba next to a maternity hospital that has had nothing new added in 35 years.
The second Castro's death is announced, I believe we should lift the embargo and announce open trade and travel with Cuba.
If Raul declines this deal, the Cuban people should know it was turned down- and rejected by their government. This is where our otherwise useless propaganda efforts in Cuba could finally have a goal and reason.
There is actually a 50-50 chance Raul would say no- and the world would see who was at fault. Posted at 05:50 pm by Psychomike
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Ron Paul Update
When Ron Paul, in effect, announced the suspension of his presidential campaign after Super-Tuesday, many of his supporters—myself among them—were about as deflated as real estate prices, if not more so. Now that Republican discontent with John McCain is cresting, and there may be hints of a major McCainiac scandal in the making, we get this from Paul HQ, as noted by the Los Angeles Times:
“Wait, hold on! Don’t toss those Ron Paul signs quite yet.
“The 72-year-old, 10-term Republican congressman has just vowed to continue his current campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.There’s been some confusion in recent days since Paul sounded like he was, in effect, withdrawing to refocus his political efforts on a well-funded House primary challenger in his home Texas district near Houston on March 4.... But Wednesday he struck a different note. ‘I will stay in as long as my supporters want me to,’ the Texas congressman promised CNN. ‘And I say as long as the number of volunteers continues to grow, and the money comes in, and there are primaries out there, and they want me to be involved, I am going to stay involved.’
“And if, say, there’s a scandal or illness among the two remaining Republican candidates ahead of Paul in delegates, he’ll be in a pretty good political position for the convention in St. Paul.”
I’m not too sure about that latter statement: it’s all about delegates, and how many of those Ron has is somewhat in dispute. I would guesstimate no more than 45, probably lower. Not enough, in my view, to make a difference. However, there is one asset Paul has plenty of, as the Times notes:
“Also, guess what The Times’ campaign finance guru Dan Morain just discovered.... tonight in records of the Federal Election Commission? Of all the Republican candidates left in the field at the end of January none other than Ron Paul had the most cash in hand—some $6 million. And, like a true conservative, Paul reported not a penny in debt.”
He’s got the money, he’s got the grassroots organization, and his supporters are full of frustrated energy and ready to go to work for the cause. Is it written in stone that he won’t run as a third party candidate, as I urged here? He could easily change his mind—especially if he loses the congressional primary to Chris Peden, a candidate who was praising Paul yesterday and today says quite the opposite. The neocons over at “Pajamas Media” are chortling up a storm at the prospect—but they’ll be laughing out of the other side of their mouths when a third party Paul campaign denies the McCainiac the White House.
If Ron loses his seat in Congress, it won’t be the first time the War Party targeted him and thought he was out of the picture—but he has always come back to bite them in the ... well, whatever. It’s little short of a miracle that someone with such well-defined, angular views has managed to win ten terms as a Republican congressman representing a rural district in Texas. It speaks well of the people of the Galveston area, where Ron has been a practicing doctor lo these many years, that they aren’t easily fooled by Washington spin-meisters and neocon pundits sitting in Manhattan. I only hope that they hold steady in their uniquely American orneriness. And if Ron wins, he should still run as a third party candidate (although, frankly, it’ll be less like)—because the nation needs to hear what he is saying. Posted at 12:53 am by Psychomike
|
|
|
