Ascend, Evolve, Expand.....2007-11-16T22:50:24ZUser 71http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v71/OrgSpace NewsLogFinally someone speaks out......Subject: Salt Lake City mayor's astonishing address: "We won't take it anymore!" .
History has demonstrated that our elected officials are not the leaders - the leadership has to come from us. If we don't insist, if we don't persist, then we are not living up to our responsibilities as citizen...Subject: Salt Lake City mayor's astonishing address: "We won't take it anymore!" .
History has demonstrated that our elected officials are not the leaders - the leadership has to come from us. If we don't insist, if we don't persist, then we are not living up to our responsibilities as citizens in a democracy - and our responsibilities as moral human beings. If we remain silent, we signal to Congress and the Bush administration - and to candidates running for office - and to the world - that we support the status quo . Democracy works for you if you work for democracy!
Salt Lake City Mayor says "We won't take it anymore!" October 27, 2007 City & County Building Salt Lake City, Utah Address by Mayor Ross C. "Rocky" Anderson
Today, as we come together once again in this great city, we raise our voices in unison to say to President Bush, to Vice President Cheney, to other members of the Bush Administration (past and present), to a majority of Congress, including Utah's entire congressional delegation, and to much of the mainstream media: "You have failed us miserably and we won't take it any more."
While we had every reason to expect far more of you, you have been pompous, greedy, cruel, and incompetent as you have led this great nation to a moral, military, and national security abyss." "You have breached trust with the American people in the most egregious ways. You have utterly failed in the performance of your jobs. You have undermined our Constitution, permitted the violation of the most fundamental treaty obligations, and betrayed the rule of law.
You have engaged in, or permitted, heinous human rights abuses of the sort never before countenanced in our nation's history as a matter of official policy. You have sent American men and women to kill and be killed on the basis of lies, on the basis of shifting justifications, without competent leadership, and without even a coherent plan for this monumental blunder.
We are here to tell you: We won't take it any more!
You have acted in direct contravention of values that we, as Americans who love our country, hold dear. You have deceived us in the most cynical, outrageous ways. You have undermined, or allowed the undermining of, our constitutional system of checks and balances among the three presumed co-equal branches of government. You have helped lead our nation to the brink of fascism, of a dictatorship contemptuous of our nation's treaty obligations, federal statutory law, our Constitution, and the rule of law.
Because of you, and because of your jingoistic false 'patriotism,' our world is far more dangerous, our nation is far more despised, and the threat of terrorism is far greater than ever before. It has been absolutely astounding how you have committed the most horrendous acts, causing such needless tragedy in the lives of millions of people, yet you wear your so-called religion on your sleeves, asserting your God-is-on-my-side nonsense - when what you have done flies in the face of any religious or humanitarian tradition. Your hypocrisy is mind-boggling - and disgraceful.
What part of "Thou shalt not kill" do you not understand? What part of the "Golden rule" do you not understand? What part of "be honest," "be responsible," and "be accountable" don't you understand? What part of "Blessed are the peacekeepers" do you not understand?
Because of you, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed, many thousands of people have suffered horrendous lifetime injuries, and millions have been run off from their homes. For the sake of our nation, for the sake of our children, and for the sake of our brothers and sisters around the world, we are morally compelled to say, as loudly as we can, 'We won't take it any more!' "
As United States agents kidnap, disappear, and torture human beings around the world, you justify, you deceive, and you cover up. We find what you have done to men, women and children, and to the good name and reputation of the United States, so appalling, so unconscionable, and so outrageous as to compel us to call upon you to step aside and allow other men and women who are competent, true to our nation's values, and with high moral principles to stand in your places - for the good of our nation, for the good of our children, and for the good of our world.
In the case of the President and Vice President, this means impeachment and removal from office, without any further delay from a complacent, complicit Congress, the Democratic majority of which cares more about political gain in 2008 than it does about the vindication of our Constitution, the rule of law, and democratic accountability.It means the election of people as President and Vice President who, unlike most of the presidential candidates from both major parties, have not aided and abetted in the perpetration of the illegal, tragic, devastating invasion and occupation of Iraq. And it means the election of people as President and Vice President who will commit to return our nation to the moral and strategic imperative of refraining from torturing human beings.
In the case of the majority of Congress, it means electing people who are diligent enough to learn the facts, including reading available National Intelligence Estimates, before voting to go to war. It means electing to Congress men and women who will jealously guard Congress's sole prerogative to declare war. It means electing to Congress men and women who will not submit like vapid lap dogs to presidential requests for blank checks to engage in so-called preemptive wars, for legislation permitting warrantless wiretapping of communications involving US citizens, and for dangerous, irresponsible, saber-rattling legislation like the recent Kyl- Lieberman amendment.
We must avoid the trap of focusing the blame solely upon President Bush and Vice-President Cheney. This is not just about a few people who have wronged our country - and the world. They were enabled by members of both parties in Congress, they were enabled by the pathetic mainstream news media, and, ultimately, they have been enabled by the American people - 40% of whom are so ill-informed they still think Iraq was behind the 9/11 attacks - a people who know and care more about baseball statistics and which drunken starlets are wearing underwear than they know and care about the atrocities being committed every single day in our name by a government for which we need to take responsibility.
As loyal Americans, without regard to political partisanship -- as veterans, as teachers, as religious leaders, as working men and women, as students, as professionals, as businesspeople, as public servants, as retirees, as people of all ages, races, ethnic origins, sexual orientations, and faiths -- we are here to say to the Bush administration, to the majority of Congress, and to the mainstream media: "You have violated your solemn responsibilities. You have undermined our democracy, spat upon our Constitution, and engaged in outrageous, despicable acts. You have brought our nation to a point of immorality, inhumanity, and illegality of immense, tragic, unprecedented proportions."
But we will live up to our responsibilities as citizens, as brothers and sisters of those who have suffered as a result of the imperial bullying of the United States government, and as moral actors who must take a stand: And we will, and must, mean it when we say 'We won't take it any more.
Silence is complicity. Only by standing up for what's right and never letting down can we say we are doing our part. Our government, on the basis of a campaign we now know was entirely fraudulent, attacked and militarily occupied a nation that posed no danger to the United States. Our government, acting in our name, has caused immense, unjustified death and destruction.
It all started five years ago, yet where have we, the American people, been? At this point, we are responsible. We get together once in a while at demonstrations and complain about Bush and Cheney, about Congress, and about the pathetic news media. We point fingers and yell a lot. Then most people politely go away until another demonstration a few months later.
How many people can honestly say they have spent as much time learning about and opposing the outrages of the Bush administration as they have spent watching sports or mindless television programs during the past five years? Escapist, time-sapping sports and insipid entertainment have indeed become the opiate of the masses. Why is this country so sound asleep? Why do we abide what is happening to our nation, to our Constitution, to the cause of peace and international law and order? Why are we not doing all in our power to put an end to this madness?
We should be in the streets regularly and students should be raising hell on our campuses. We should be making it clear in every way possible that apologies or convoluted, disingenuous explanations just don't cut it when presidential candidates and so many others voted to authorize George Bush and his neo-con buddies to send American men and women to attack and occupy Iraq.
Let's awaken, and wake up the country by committing here and now to do all each of us can to take our nation back. Let them hear us across the country, as we ask others to join us: "We won't take it any more!"
I implore you: Draw a line. Figure out exactly where your own moral breaking point is. How much will you put up with before you say "No more" and mean it? I have drawn my line as a matter of simple personal morality: I cannot, and will not, support any candidate who has voted to fund the atrocities in Iraq. I cannot, and will not, support any candidate who will not commit to remove all US troops, as soon as possible, from Iraq. I cannot, and will not, support any candidate who has supported legislation that takes us one step closer to attacking Iran. I cannot, and will not, support any candidate who has not fought to stop the kidnapping, disappearances, and torture being carried on in our name.
If we expect our nation's elected officials to take us seriously, let us send a powerful message they cannot misunderstand. Let them know we really do have our moral breaking point. Let them know we have drawn a bright line. Let them know they cannot take our support for granted - that, regardless of their party and regardless of other political considerations, they will not have our support if they cannot provide, and have not provided,principled leadership.
The people of this nation may have been far too quiet for five years, but let us pledge that we won't let it go on one more day - that we will do all we can to put an end to the illegalities, the moral degradation, and the disintegration of our nation's reputation in the world.
Let us be unified in drawing the line - in declaring that we do have a moral breaking point. Let us insist, together, in supporting our troops and in gratitude for the freedoms for which our veterans gave so much, that we bring our troops home from Iraq, that we return our government to a constitutional democracy, and that we commit to honoring the fundamental principles of human rights.
In defense of our country, in defense of our Constitution, in defense of our shared values as Americans - and as moral human beings - we declare today that we will fight in every way possible to stop the insanity, stop the continued military occupation of Iraq, and stop the moral depravity reflected by the kidnapping, disappearing, and torture of people around the world. ]]>http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v71/__show_article/_a000071-000141.htm2007-11-16T22:50:24Z2007-11-16T22:50:24ZThe lies that kill and wound.....Gov't struggles to cope with wounded Gis
By MARILYNN MARCHIONE, AP Medical Writer
More than 800 of them have lost an arm, a leg, fingers or toes. More than 100 are blind. Dozens need tubes and machines to keep them alive. Hundreds are disfigured by burns, and thousands have brain injuries an...Gov't struggles to cope with wounded Gis
By MARILYNN MARCHIONE, AP Medical Writer
More than 800 of them have lost an arm, a leg, fingers or toes. More than 100 are blind. Dozens need tubes and machines to keep them alive. Hundreds are disfigured by burns, and thousands have brain injuries and mangled minds.
These are America's war wounded, a toll that has received less attention than the 3,500 troops killed in Iraq. Depending on how you count them, they number between 35,000 and 53,000.
More of them are coming home, with injuries of a scope and magnitude the government did not predict and is now struggling to treat.
"If we left Iraq tomorrow, we would have the legacy of all these people for many years to come," said Dr. Jeffrey Drazen, editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine and an adviser to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. "The military simply wasn't prepared for its own success" at keeping severely wounded soldiers alive, he said.
Survival rates today are even higher than the record levels set early in the war, thanks to body armor and better care. For every American soldier or Marine killed in Iraq, 15 others have survived illness or injury there.
Unlike previous wars, few of them have been shot. The signature weapon of this war — the improvised explosive device, or IED — has left a signature wound: traumatic brain injury.
Soldiers hit in the head or knocked out by blasts — "getting your bell rung" is the military euphemism — sometimes have no visible wounds but a fog of war in their minds. They can be addled, irritable, depressed and unaware they are impaired.
Only an estimated 2,000 cases of brain injury have been treated, but doctors think many less obvious cases have gone undetected. One small study found that more than half of one group of wounded troops arriving at Walter Reed Army Medical Center had brain injuries. Around the nation, a new effort is under way to check every returning man and woman for this possibility.
Some of those on active duty may have subtle brain damage that was missed when they were treated for more visible wounds. Half of those wounded in action returned to duty within 72 hours — before some brain injuries may have been apparent. The military just adopted new procedures to spot these cases, too.
Back home, concerns grow about care. The Walter Reed hospital scandal and problems with some VA nursing homes have led Republicans and Democrats to call for better care for this new crop of veterans.
A lucky few get Cadillac care at one of the VA's four polytrauma centers, where the most complex wounds are treated with state-of-the-art techniques and whiz-bang devices like "power knee" or "smart ankle" prosthetics. Others battle bureaucracy to see doctors or get basic benefits in less ideal settings.
Mental health problems loom large. More than a third of troops received psychological counseling shortly after returning from Iraq, and a third of those were diagnosed with a problem, a recent Pentagon study found. The government plans to add 200 psychologists and social workers to help treat post-traumatic stress disorder and other issues.
No one knows what the ultimate cost will be. Harvard University economist Linda Bilmes estimates the lifetime health-care tab for these troops will be $250 billion to $650 billion — a wide range but a huge sum no matter how you slice it.
Who are the wounded?
Lee Jones, 24, of Lumberton, N.C., was severely burned on the face, hands, feet and legs when his Humvee was hit with an IED two years ago. A partial amputee with speech and other problems from a severe brain injury, he now does work therapy delivering mail at a VA hospital and tries to re-establish life in a nearby apartment with a wife and baby daughter.
Marine Cpl. Joshua Pitcher, 22, from upstate New York, is a Purple Heart recipient who returned to Iraq after he was shot in 2005. Half of his skull was removed to allow his brain to swell as he now recovers from a brain injury and shrapnel wounds from a grenade blast in February.
Maj. Thomas Deierlein, 39, is a New York City marketing executive who served five years after graduating from West Point. Twelve years later, called up as a reservist, he nearly died of bullet wounds that shattered his pelvis, leaving him with a colostomy and learning to walk again.
Joseph "Jay" Briseno, 24, of Manassas Park, Va., was shot in the back of the neck by an Iraqi in the early months of the war. One of the most severely wounded, he is now a quadriplegic, on a breathing machine, blind and unable to speak, but aware of what has happened to him.
"The mistake in Vietnam was, we hid the injured away from folks so they didn't get to tell their stories. Now it's important that we let them tell their stories to the public," said Dr. Steven Scott, director of the Polytrauma Rehabilitation Center at the Tampa VA Medical Center in Florida.
Counting the wounded can be contentious. Earlier this year, the Department of Defense changed how it tallies war-related injuries and illness, dropping those not needing air transport to a military hospital from the bottom-line total.
Bilmes, the economist, thinks this is disingenuous.
"An accident that happens while they're there is a cost of war, particularly when you factor in the length of deployment" and injury-inducing conditions like very hot weather, carrying heavy packs, and more vehicle accidents because it is not safe to walk anywhere, she said.
As of June 2, 25,830 troops had been wounded in action. Of these, 7,675 needed airlifts to military hospitals and the rest were treated and remained in Iraq.
There were another 27,103 non-battle-related air transports. Of those, 7,188 had injuries. Most occurred from vehicle accidents, training or work-related accidents. Ten percent were sports injuries, said Dr. Michael Kilpatrick, who tracks this information for the Defense Department.
Nearly 20,000 of these "non-hostile" airlifts were for illnesses or medical issues: general symptoms like fever or pain needing tests or evaluation; back problems; psychological problems adjusting to being in a war zone; "affective psychoses" (not able to function or care for themselves); neuroses; respiratory or chest symptoms; depression; head and neck problems (including traumatic brain injury); epilepsy; infections, and muscle pulls and strains.
"I don't want to try to say these are not war-related. Being in the military is a very physically demanding job," Kilpatrick said.
For stress-related problems, the military tries "three hots and a cot" — warm meals and a chance to sleep. Most of the time it works and troops return to their unit, Kilpatrick said.
Of the troops air evacuated to the military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, 20 percent return to Iraq and 80 percent go back to the United States for more care or disability discharge.
Of the half-million troops who have left active duty and are eligible for VA health care, about one-third have sought it. The most complicated cases end up at one of the four polytrauma centers, in Tampa, Fla.; Richmond, Va.; Palo Alto, Calif.; and Minneapolis.
These were formed after doctors realized they were missing problems — amputees who were confused and unable to put on their prosthetics because of undiagnosed brain injuries, and guys who could remember their therapy dog's name but not their doctor's, or who could carry on a conversation but not recall what they had for breakfast.
Troops at these hospitals have an average of six major impairments and 10 specialists treating them.
"The important thing to realize is you could have all of them at once" — trouble speaking, seeing, walking, hearing, etc., Scott said.
Most of these injuries are caused by IED blasts, which send a pressurized air wave through delicate tissues like the brain, sometimes send it smacking against the inside of the skull and shearing fragile nerve connections that control speech, vision, reasoning, memory and other functions. Lungs, eardrums, spinal cords — virtually anything — can be damaged by the pressure wave. Injuries also come from collapsing buildings, flying debris, heat, burns or inhaled gases and vapors.
"Many of these you can't see on an X-ray," such as glass shards that can cause internal bleeding, Scott said.
In prior wars, one of every five to seven troops surviving a war-related wound had a traumatic brain injury, the military estimates. It's much higher in this war.
A pilot project at Walter Reed in 2003 to screen 155 patients returning from Iraq found that 62 percent had a brain injury.
"This is a very rapidly evolving area as a disease," with no screening test, agreed-upon set of symptoms for diagnosis, or even a billing code, said Kilpatrick, the military doctor.
Much needs to be learned about how to treat these injuries, he said, but credited the military medical staff for having the chance.
"It's just amazing to me every day when I look at these numbers," he said. "The good news is that the majority of these people who become ill or injured ... are going to survive and are going to be able to return either to the military or to civilian life and be productive."
___
On the Net:
Government casualty data: http://siadapp.dmdc.osd.mil/personnel/CASUALTY/castop.htm
State breakdowns: http://siadapp.dmdc.osd.mil/personnel/CASUALTY/STATE_OEF_OIF.pdf
Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center: http://www.dvbic.org
Department of Veterans Affairs: http://www.va.gov/
Department of Defense: http://www.defenselink.mil/
]]>http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v71/__show_article/_a000071-000140.htm2007-06-23T20:33:13Z2007-06-23T20:33:13ZSupport Our Troops!!!
Active-duty US troops voice opposition to the Iraq war
By Joanne Laurier
26 October 2006
More than 100 serving members of the US military have to date sent “Appeals for Redress” to members of Congress, urging “the prompt withdrawal of all American military forces and bases from Iraq.”
... Active-duty US troops voice opposition to the Iraq war
By Joanne Laurier 26 October 2006
More than 100 serving members of the US military have to date sent “Appeals for Redress” to members of Congress, urging “the prompt withdrawal of all American military forces and bases from Iraq.”
Under the Military Whistle-Blower Protection Act, active-duty military, National Guard and reservists are allowed to file and send a protected communication to a member of Congress on any subject without reprisal.
The action represents the first time that serving military personnel are petitioning Congress to end the Iraq war. The organizations sponsoring the effort are Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out and Veterans for Peace.
Until a few days ago, some 65 servicemen and servicewomen had sent appeals to Congress. The number of petitioners has now reached nearly 350, with more than 125 of them on active duty.
Under military regulations, service members can speak out only while off duty and out of uniform, making clear that they are not speaking for the military. In addition, they cannot say anything disrespectful about their commanders or the president.
Two active-duty servicemen have taken the risky step of publicly representing the campaign: Jonathan Hutto, a Navy seaman stationed in Norfolk, Virginia, and Liam Madden, a Marine Corps sergeant in Quantico, Virginia. Madden spent six months in Iraq.
Hutto and Madden, as well as a female member of the military who remained anonymous, spoke at a media teleconference yesterday.
Hutto told the media that he had come up with the idea for the appeals drive in January 2006. While deployed in a ship off the coast of Iraq he read a copy of David Cortright’s Soldiers in Revolt: GI Resistance During the Vietnam War.
The GI movement, explained Hutto, was comprised of “active-duty, sailors, marines and soldiers in the military during the Vietnam War who advocated and fought to end that war and bring the troops home.... By 1971, over 250,000 of these active-duty service people” had petitioned their political leaders.
Today’s appeal, said the sailor, states “that the Iraq war should come to an end and that we should end the occupation and bring the troops home.” He believes that the resources being spent on the war should be redirected to solving the economic and social problems at home.
Madden, 22, added: “I oppose the war in Iraq and I feel it is my duty not as a Marine but as an informed citizen to tell other service members that there’s a powerful tool available to them.... The real grievances are: why are we in Iraq if the weapons of mass destruction are not found, if the links to Al Qaeda are not substantiated?
“If democracy is our goal, I believe we’re going about it all wrong and the occupation is perpetuating more violence. I think it’s the biggest destabilizing thing we can do in the Middle East. Furthermore, it’s costing way too many Iraqi civilian and service members’ lives.... The only people who benefit in my eyes—visibly see the benefit—are corporations, such as Halliburton....
“If people want to support the troops, then they should support our coming home.”
Commenting on the tremendous stress faced by military families over multiple redeployments, Madden asserted, “The real deal is that it’s an economic situation. People are staying [in the military] despite the hardship of getting deployed over and over and over again because it’s what’s best for their families and until there’s another viable source of income, they’re going to stay in the military.” He stated that fundamental to the appeal is that “people are getting harmed and lives are getting severely damaged because of this war.”
The servicewoman explained that “the reason I am calling anonymously is because of fear of reprisal for my involvement even though it is legal. Anyone who’s been involved in the military does know that there are informal means of punitive actions that circumvent the legal system, which are often used in different means to intimidate soldiers.”
Having recently returned from a year in Iraq, she described some of her experiences. “I’ve seen friends injured and I’ve been affected by the deaths within my brigade and unit.” Being in the crossfire of a civil war, she said, further added to the frustration that soldiers felt from risking their lives on a daily basis without really understanding the reason for the risk or possessing the ability to “question what’s going on in the [political and military] upper echelons.”
All three spoke about the pervasive opposition to the war within the ranks of the military. “I don’t think the American public realizes just how many soldiers and service members in general really do have reservations about the actions going on over there,” said the servicewoman. “Obviously fear is one of the main reasons that people are not stepping forward, but that does not preclude them from having these feelings. I start seeing momentum going forward and more and more soldiers coming out....
“Military service people are not supposed to organize groups so this [campaign] is just word of mouth. We’re not talking about mass phone calls or mass mailings. It’s one person talking to another—the snowball effect.”
Hutto revealed that of the 20 sailors he approached, all but one gave their support. This despite the fact that, as Madden asserted, “You’re told from the day you come into [the military] that you don’t have any rights. That the Constitution that you’re defending does not apply to you. It’s a culture [which stresses] that you don’t get engaged in the process, that you’re there to receive orders and get those orders done, that you don’t get engaged and don’t raise any views at all.”
He ended by stating that “what we’re doing is untraditional, unorthodox and unprecedented.”
See Also: Brother of Pat Tillman denounces Iraq War and Bush administration [24 October 2006] Parents of soldier who refused deployment to Iraq speak in California [7 October 2006]
The WSWS invites your comments.
Copyright 1998-2006 World Socialist Web Site All rights reserved]]>http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v71/__show_article/_a000071-000139.htm2006-10-26T19:34:57Z2006-10-26T19:34:57ZPrayer for a Good DeathTo the sender of this message,
I want to compliment you on this group of messages which are so incredibly true and necessary. No doubt that the general public reaction to them is a very stupid one, which only goes to further reinforce the main point being made. I for one however, fully apprec...To the sender of this message,
I want to compliment you on this group of messages which are so incredibly true and necessary. No doubt that the general public reaction to them is a very stupid one, which only goes to further reinforce the main point being made. I for one however, fully appreciate this mailing. It is by far the best I've received in years. It would be a particular pleasure to speak with the person who wrote that prayer to the Great Spirit, for it is filled with the kind of true humility, intelligence and wisdom befitting a real spiritual practitioner, not all these phoney-baloney new age fakirs.
My thanks also for the honor of including one of my articles in conjunction with these great works. Hopefully that inclusion will actually accomplish such noble aims as the author/compiler sought to establish in the public mind.
If you would like to correspond I would actually be enthusiastic in doing so, even though I've recently stopped mailing and writing because of the general impression that "no one gives a damn". Obviously at least a few people truly care as evidenced by the great honesty of these writings. Whoever composed them evidently cares more for telling the unvarnished truth than for public approval, and for that I am imminently grateful.....
**********************
Prayer for a Good Death
Great Spirit, I am unworthy; My species has disgraced itself. Of all the species that live, or have ever lived, Mine is the lowliest.
Lower than the flowers who fill the air with sweet pollen, Lower than the trees who encircle the Earth with their roots, Lower than the insects, rulers of Earth
Since the beginning of time, Lower than the darting fish, Lower than the soaring birds, Lower than the four-legged creatures, Who are the beating heart of the living Earth.
Great Spirit, my shame is as deep as the ocean, And my sadness is unbearable. I pray for enlightenment, But fear that my prayer is too late.
Great Spirit, if this be so, then I pray for extinction. Let my species become extinct, and vanish from the Earth. Let my loins be barren, Let my seed not sprout, Let the race of men fall like leaves. Let my fields grow wild, Let my fences crumble, Let my cities turn to dust, and become forests. Let the grass drink my blood; Let my body be food for worms. Great Spirit, let me die, that the Earth may live.
************************* "IT IS DISTANCE AND FOR THAT REASON DIFFICULT BUT IS NOT SO DISTANCE"
"Global Warming": If I had a child today. My grand child born today will be old as I am today 2062. It is not far away in terms of generations of people that are around. You can care about this issue because of the people you know. If not what is the use of having children as they won't be able to survive because of our greed and matter worshipping. We are in the fossil field era of human history. If human kind is going to have a future on this planet it is absolutly inevitable that we are going to find a new energy source or humankind is on a destructive suicidal path to oblivion with the "ECOCIDE." President Bush abandoning the "Kyoto Protocol" that aims at reducing industrial emission link to "Global Warming"but in his statement says, " The hell with the future generations. I and my corporate buddies already have ours and the hell with the planet. I have to take care of the American economy and my elite backers of industry. We follow the "Vile Maxim" of the Masters of Mankind: All for ourselves and nothing for other people for we want ours now and to enjoy it now!"
It is distance when the environment is finally forced to file for bankruptcy because its resource base have been polluted, degraded, dissipated and irretrievably compromised and the economies of the world will go down with it...so what does that say about the future of "Capitalism" as we know it.
Human happiness, and certainly human fecundity are not as important as a wild and healthy planet. There are scientists who remind us that people are a part of nature, but it isn't true. Somewhere along the line--at about a billion years ago maybe half that we as a species quit the contract and became a cancer. We have become a plague upon ourselves and upon the "Earth". It is cosmically unlikely that the developed world will choose to end its orgy of fossil (U.S.A., China, India etc). Energy consumption and the "Third World" its suicidal consumption of landscape is devastating to the eco-system...until such time as Homo Sapiens should decide to rejoin nature - some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along for growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the Cancer Cell*. Good planet are hard to find. David M. Graber - National Park Service
*Cancer Cell: It is as if cancer cells have been heavily indoctrinated with the ideology of individualism and personal achievement: Imagine a mass of cancerous tissue and the cells of which enjoyed consciousness...would they not be full of self-congratulatory sentiments at their independence than their more advanced level of development..their rapid rate of growth (GNP)? Would they not sneer at their more primitive cousins who were bound into a static and unfree existence with limited aspirations subject to heavy group constraint and obviously "Going Nowhere"? Would they not rejoice in their control over their destiny and cheer the conversion of more and more normal cells as convincing proof of the validity of their own way of life? Would they not in fact feel increasingly triumphant right up to the moment the organism on which they fed expired? ]]>http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v71/__show_article/_a000071-000138.htm2006-08-22T18:44:50Z2006-08-22T18:57:16Zfree of sufferingFrom another newslog....
"May all sentient beings be happy and free of suffering".
[The Buddha]
what appears to be left unsaid is this....unless you are Muslim, Arabic, of different culture, different religion, different color, (many different aspects could be mentioned here) or disagree wi...From another newslog....
"May all sentient beings be happy and free of suffering". [The Buddha] what appears to be left unsaid is this....unless you are Muslim, Arabic, of different culture, different religion, different color, (many different aspects could be mentioned here) or disagree with "me" in any way. Let's stop the hypocracy people and look at the truth of our woes in the world.
Does anyone dare to be honest? Don't you know that nature is there for everyone...NO ONE owns land or has claim to it. Nature cares not who "was there first".
Let's also be honest about the superior technology of one country over another. Us/Israel against Lebanon is almost like nukes against catapult. How can you begrudge the Lebanese their "techniques" of suicide bombers or use of the internet? What else can they do? They don't have the same caliber (if any) fighter jets with nuclear missles...
So how about it? any honest person out there? Anyone have any inkling that we are all one and all these differences and disputes are petty on a cosmic basis? I've got news for all of you....the Universe doesn't revolve around any of us and the truth doesn't change or disappear just because we would like it to.
FYI...
WSWS : News & Analysis : Middle East
WSWS : News & Analysis : Middle East
Refugees flood back to devastated southern Lebanon By Rick Kelly 18 August 2006
Hundreds of thousands of refugees have returned to what is left of their homes in Lebanon in defiance of Israeli warnings and threats to stay away. Openly expressing their support for Hezbollah, residents have rushed to reclaim their land in a display of mass opposition to US-Israeli aggression.
Developments since the UN-sponsored ceasefire took effect on Monday have underscored the failure of the US and Israel to achieve their war aims. The Bush administration and the Israeli government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert hoped to destroy the Hezbollah militia, reduce Lebanon to the status of a semi-colonial protectorate, and drive out the predominantly Shiite population from an Israeli-occupied “buffer zone” in the south.
None of this has eventuated. Lebanese refugees have made their way past destroyed roads and bridges, despite the dangers posed by unexploded cluster munitions and other ordinance, to return to their land. People fear becoming permanent refugees and losing their homeland to Israeli annexation, and are determined not to suffer what the Palestinians experienced. The Lebanese population has first-hand knowledge of the Israeli dispossession of Palestinians—hundreds of thousands of refugees flooded into the country in 1948 and again in 1967.
Returning refugees angrily denounced Israel and the US for the destruction wreaked during the 34-day bombardment. In Beirut’s southern suburbs, almost every building was either destroyed or seriously damaged. Over the ruins of one collapsed structure, a resident hung a banner which read, “Made in the USA”. Another banner in a southern Lebanese village had the words, “Rice, they will not see your new Middle East”. This was a reference to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s now infamous statement on July 22 in Beirut that the war represented the “birth pangs of a new Middle East”.
Almost one million people—a quarter of Lebanon’s population—were forced to flee their homes during the conflict. According to Lebanese estimates, Israeli warplanes carried out more than 4,500 bombing raids. An estimated 35,000 homes and businesses were destroyed by missiles and artillery shells, along with 400 miles of roads and highways, and about 150 bridges and interchanges, one out of every four in the country.
“Southern Lebanon is a travelogue of destruction: town after town pummelled by bombs and mortars that left them in shambles,” the Los Angeles Times reported. Entire towns and villages have been turned to rubble. In Siddiqine, local businessman Ali Bakri described the scene. “It’s like a tsunami, or a second Hiroshima,” he told the Christian Science Monitor.
Almost 1,200 Lebanese were killed, though this figure will probably rise, as corpses are still being pulled from the rubble of destroyed buildings. In Srifa, scene of two Israeli massacres of civilians, another 32 bodies have been recovered. Authorities in Tyre yesterday buried more than 120 victims in a mass grave. In Ainata, Red Cross workers found 18 bodies, including children. The stench of decomposing bodies forced rescue workers to wear multiple facemasks as they travelled between Ainata and Bint Jbeil, scene of much of the heaviest fighting.
Hezbollah militants have openly re-emerged in the south and their banners and flags are again visible to Israeli residents living on the border. Refugees flew Hezbollah flags from their vehicles and homes and expressed their determination to resist Israeli aggression against their country. Numerous media reports have acknowledged the mass support Hezbollah now enjoys. “We are not terrorists,” Faras Jamil, a 39-year-old resident of Aita Shaab, told the Los Angles Times. “My wife is Hezbollah. My children are Hezbollah. Hezbollah is all the people from this town.”
The demonstrations exposed the US-Israeli lie that Hezbollah is nothing but a terrorist arm of Syria and Iran. As is evident from news reports, the organisation has become the focal point for the anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist sentiments of the Lebanese and Arab masses. Hezbollah has a mass base among Lebanon’s Shiites, for whom it provides education, health, and other social services, and has won widespread support among Sunni, Christian, and Druze Lebanese for its resistance to the Israeli offensive.
Hezbollah is also leading the reconstruction efforts. It has promised to provide a year’s rent and new furniture for every family whose home was destroyed. Hundreds of refugees in Beirut have spent the past few days queuing to register for assistance. “There is no central government presence here,” Hamed Harab, a local government official, admitted. “Hezbollah is doing everything.”
The situation is similar in the south. “There is no government here,” Abdul Muhsen Husseini, a government official in Tyre, said. “At least [Hezbollah] are on the ground helping. If you call them at midnight, they come out to help. They are the government.”
There is little prospect of Hezbollah disarming and withdrawing from south of the Litani River, as the Bush administration and the Olmert government demand. The Israeli military was unable to eliminate Hezbollah fighters during the month-long war, and no one expects that either the Lebanese army or the 15,000-strong multinational force being readied will be in a position to enforce US and Israeli dictates.
The Lebanese government has indicated that it will not order the army to disarm Hezbollah. Such a move would risk provoking a civil war throughout the country and a mutiny within the military. “The Shiite population in Lebanon is almost 50 percent,” Yiftach Shapir, of the Jaffee Centre for Strategic Studies, told Israeli Arutz Sheva Radio. “In the army the proportion is even greater, particularly among the officers. Those numbers reach about 60 percent. While not all of them are extremists, the question is whether or not they would have any desire to violently confront Hezbollah.”
European countries preparing to contribute troops to the UN force have insisted that they will not be responsible for taking on guerrilla fighters. “It is wrong to say that our soldiers are going to disarm Hezbollah,” Italian foreign minister Massimo D’Alema said yesterday. Italy has promised to deploy 3,000 soldiers. France was expected to send about 5,000 troops to Lebanon and lead the UN operation, but President Jacques Chirac has refused to commit more than 200 French forces until clear rules of engagement with Hezbollah militants are established.
Condoleezza Rice was forced to acknowledge the European powers’ concerns. “I don’t think there is an expectation that this [UN] force is going to physically disarm Hezbollah,” she told USA Today. “I think it’s a little bit of a misreading about how you disarm a militia. You have to have a plan, first of all, for the disarmament of the militia, and then the hope is that some people lay down their arms voluntarily.”
The setback suffered in southern Lebanon has heightened the political crisis in Washington and Tel Aviv but it is already clear that the Bush administration intends to pursue its broader strategic plans to subjugate the Middle East. Washington was closely involved in Israel’s plans for invading Lebanon, and for weeks blocked demands for a ceasefire. As journalist Seymour Hersh recently revealed in the New Yorker, the Bush administration welcomed the war as a preliminary step towards an attack on Iran.
In comments in the USA Today, Secretary of State Rice ominously pointed out that the UN resolution on Lebanon imposed an international arms embargo and thus a ban on foreign states supplying arms to Hezbollah. The provision gives the Bush administration ample pretexts for new diplomatic and military provocations against Iran and Syria.
In Israel, Haaretz published an op-ed piece today by Avraham Tal, titled “Preparing for the next war now”. “A war that has ended in a tie and without an agreement between the sides being signed is destined to flare up again, sooner or later,” Tal wrote. “In the conflict between Israel and Iran, by means of its proxy, Hezbollah, neither side achieved its strategic aim... One must start from the working assumption that the next confrontation will erupt relatively soon; for purposes of the discussion, let us assume two years from the eruption of the previous confrontation and to act in all areas as though this will happen with absolute certainty. Possibly there will be another round in the format of the second Lebanon war, but we must prepare for the possibility of something larger and more dangerous: an all-out war with regular armies, including the army of a regional power.”
The current ceasefire remains uncertain and fighting could quickly erupt again. Israel still has thousands of soldiers occupying southern Lebanon and is maintaining its illegal naval blockade of the country. In these conditions, it would not be difficult for the Olmert government to resume the war by staging a provocation and declaring that Hezbollah had breached the ceasefire terms.
See Also: The president gives a press conference [16 August 2006] Recriminations erupt in Israel in aftermath of Lebanon ceasefire [16 August 2006] On eve of Lebanon ceasefire deadline: US, Israel face political debacle [14 August 2006] ]]>http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v71/__show_article/_a000071-000137.htm2006-08-18T18:27:25Z2006-08-18T18:27:25Zmore positive reasonsWSWS : News & Analysis : Middle East
US-Israeli onslaught on Lebanon intensifies
By Mike Head
3 August 2006
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Backed by the Bush administration, Israel has poured thousands more troops into Lebanon and escalat...WSWS : News & Analysis : Middle East
US-Israeli onslaught on Lebanon intensifies
By Mike Head
3 August 2006
Use this version to print | Send this link by email | Email the author
Backed by the Bush administration, Israel has poured thousands more troops into Lebanon and escalated its aerial bombardment in its bid to crush all resistance and take control of the south of the country. With the US blocking all calls for an immediate ceasefire—to give the Israeli military more time to complete the job—Israeli leaders have openly declared that the offensive will continue for weeks.
Aided by the lack of any opposition from the UN and the European Union, the objectives set by the US and Israel from the outset of the war are being pursued methodically and with barbaric devastation. Hezbollah’s capture of two Israeli Defence Force (IDF) soldiers has been used as a pretext to attempt to kill or drive out the population of south Lebanon and bring the entire country under its political sway.
Up to 20,000 IDF troops have invaded Lebanon on multiple fronts, backed by tanks, military bulldozers and ferocious air power. There is no indication that the offensive will necessarily stop at the Litani River, the northern border of Israel’s self-proclaimed “security zone”. IDF infantry have already crossed the river in several places, going beyond the territory that Israel occupied for 18 years from 1982 to 2000.
Throughout southern Lebanon, south Beirut and the eastern Bekaa Valley, the IDF is pursuing a scorched earth policy, reducing towns and villages to rubble, leaving the remaining residents—those too old or weak to escape—without water and food. Far from “surgical incursions” to dismantle Hezbollah command posts, as claimed by Israel, the operation is systematically blowing up and bulldozing houses, apartment buildings, community facilities and essential services to make whole areas uninhabitable.
Following the end of the 48-hour cessation of air strikes, Israeli war planes carried out a wave of bombings throughout Lebanon on Wednesday. Air strikes resumed in the battered outskirts of Beirut in the early hours of today. Residents heard the impact of large explosions about every five minutes starting at 2.30 a.m. as missiles hit Dahieh, a Shiite Muslim suburb that has been repeatedly shelled by Israel since fighting began three weeks ago.
Yesterday IDF commandos provocatively landed near the eastern city of Baalbeck, 100 kilometres into Lebanon and close to the Syrian border. Seizing a Hezbollah-run hospital, they captured several alleged Hezbollah militants under the cover of an Israeli bombardment that killed at least 19 civilians, including five children. Lieutenant General Dan Halutz, the IDF chief of staff, told reporters at a briefing that the raid was intended to show that Israel could strike anywhere in Lebanon.
There is open speculation in the US media that the ground war will not be limited to the south but could lead to a wider military operation if Israel decides to push toward Beirut. Brigadier General Shuki Shahar, the deputy chief of the military’s Northern Command, was quoted saying: “The farther north we can push them, the fewer Israeli citizens they can put under threat with these rockets.”
Further south, in Tyre, the mass burial planned for 90 victims of the Qana massacre and other atrocities had to be postponed because of the intensity of the Israeli missile barrage. Tens of thousands of people are streaming out of the ancient Mediterranean city. In recent days, its population had swollen to 100,000 because of the influx of refugees from villages inland. By Tuesday, only about 15,000 remained.
It is now obvious that the slaughter of innocents at Qana was part of a wider plan to terrorise and force people to flee. With the official Lebanese civilian death toll already nearing 1,000 and the number of displaced people one million—a quarter of the country’s population—Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert yesterday boasted that this was a mark of success in the war. “All the population, which is the power base of the Hezbollah in Lebanon, was displaced,” he declared.
In other words, the strategy—agreed with Washington from the start—is the systematic de-population of south Lebanon, where the three-week onslaught has only increased popular support for Hezbollah as a national resistance movement. With IDF troops meeting further fierce opposition and Hezbollah firing more rockets into Israel on Wednesday than on any previous day of the 22-day-old war, Olmert declared that the army would not stop fighting or withdraw until a “robust” international force moved into southern Lebanon on Israel’s terms.
His government is confident that this could take weeks or more because of the insistence of the US, joined by Britain and Germany, that no truce be permitted until Israel has conquered the area. A cabinet minister, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, said on army radio he expected the offensive to take up to two weeks. Israeli generals are publicly predicting an even longer war. Brigadier General Alon Friedman of Israel’s Northern Command said seizing control of south Lebanon could take a week, and securing it “could take from three to eight weeks, depending on the size of the area.”
Israel is intent on retaining a free hand to carry out military operations throughout Lebanon even after a peace-keeping force is put in place. Writing in Haaretz today, Israeli military analyst Ze’ev Schiff commented: “Meanwhile, there is a delicate situation emerging over the mandate of the future multinational force... The danger is that sanctions will apply to both sides. This may make it very difficult for Israel to defend itself, even if it argues self-defence.”
Whatever tactical differences exist with France over the timing and composition of the planned international “stabilisation force,” there is no disagreement over its basic function, which will be to obliterate all opposition to Lebanon being reduced to a protectorate, completely subservient to US and Israeli interests.
White House spokesman Tony Snow said an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon was not on the agenda, and downplayed differences with France on the urgency of ending the fighting. “An immediate ceasefire is something that at this point doesn’t seem to be in the cards. Neither side is headed that way,” he told a press briefing.
The truth is that Washington is urging the Israelis to get on with the slaughter as quickly as possible, as Schiff alluded to in his Haaretz comment yesterday. A fervent advocate of the war, he complained that the Olmert government had not yet provided the US with the “military cards” it needed to ensure the permanent eradication of Hezbollah.
“US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is the figure leading the strategy of changing the situation in Lebanon, not Prime Minister Ehud Olmert or Defense Minister Amir Peretz. She has so far managed to withstand international pressure in favor of a ceasefire,” he wrote.
The Lebanese government has continued to denounce Israel’s war crimes. Foreign Minister Fawzi Salloukh called Tuesday for an immediate ceasefire and the creation of an international tribunal to try the Israeli officials. Speaking of Qana, Justice Minister Charles Rizk said: “Israel committed a hideous crime against children, women and elderly and [there should be] an international and independent committee to probe the crime.”
In Beirut, Lebanon’s High Relief Committee (HRC) said it had counted 828 people killed and 3,200 wounded so far. “These are identified bodies, and the toll does not count the people still believed to be under the rubble,” an HRC spokesman said. The number of displaced has reached 913,760. Economic losses caused by the destruction of the country’s infrastructure are now estimated at $4 billion.
Such is the “new Middle East” promised by the White House. The barbaric war on Lebanon, alongside the worsening bloodletting in US-occupied Iraq, are the product of a neo-colonial policy directed at suppressing all resistance to American dominance of the region’s massive oil and gas reserves and US imperialism’s wider goal of achieving unchallenged global hegemony.
See Also: Slaughter in Lebanon enters fourth week What way forward in the struggle against war? [2 August 2006] Following Qana massacre Israel escalates Lebanon offensive with US backing [1 August 2006] The Qana massacre: Slaughter of innocents in Lebanon [31 July 2006] Rice leaves bloody footprints in Lebanon [26 July 2006] The real aims of the US-backed Israeli war against Lebanon [21 July 2006] ]]>http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v71/__show_article/_a000071-000136.htm2006-08-03T18:54:58Z2006-08-03T18:54:58ZPositive reasons....For those of you who think that "We are all one" is a meaningless platitude to be toyed with because there are "good" reasons to ignore it, I offer you more "POSITIVE" reasons to see yourselves as separate and continue to compete, abuse, fight and kill....
I'd like to hear what you would say if...For those of you who think that "We are all one" is a meaningless platitude to be toyed with because there are "good" reasons to ignore it, I offer you more "POSITIVE" reasons to see yourselves as separate and continue to compete, abuse, fight and kill....
I'd like to hear what you would say if you were living on the other side of the bigger/biggest military powers in the world. It stands to reason that you would hate just as much or more than they do and probably want to do worse then their efforts of suicide bombers and the like....
Today ---------- 2 August 2006
News & Analysis ----------------------------------------- Slaughter in Lebanon enters fourth week What way forward in the struggle against war? http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/aug2006/leba-a02.shtml
Tel Aviv and the Qana massacre: anatomy of a propaganda campaign http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/aug2006/qana-a02.shtml
Fierce fighting escalates in Sri Lanka http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/aug2006/sril-a02.shtml
Over a million march to demand recount in Mexican election http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/aug2006/mexi-a02.shtml
Blair, Murdoch and the oligarchy http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/aug2006/murd-a02.shtml
Bad-faith Democratic Party effort further exposed Examination of SEP petitions begins in Illinois http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/aug2006/illi-a02.shtml
Workers Struggles ----------------------------------------- Workers Struggles: The Americas http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/aug2006/wkrs-a02.shtml
Correspondence ----------------------------------------- A letter from Morocco on the Qana massacre http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/aug2006/moro-a02.shtml
Letters on the Israeli war against Lebanon http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/aug2006/corr-a02.shtml
Letters on the Queens and St. Louis blackouts http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/aug2006/blck-a02.shtml
***********
and for your continued viewing...more positive and wonderful reasons to deny, lie and fight...
WSWS : News & Analysis : Middle East
Slaughter in Lebanon enters fourth week
What way forward in the struggle against war? Statement of the Socialist Equality Party
2 August 2006
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This article is available as a PDF leaflet to download and distribute
As the brutal US-Israeli war against the Lebanese people enters its fourth week, there is no sign that the massacre of innocent civilians is about to end. On the contrary, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), backed by air strikes and artillery fire, are pressing deeper into Lebanon, with the apparent aim of advancing 18 miles to the Litani River, either killing or driving out the entire population between it and the Israeli border.
Israeli ground forces have also entered the Bekaa Valley, near Lebanon’s border with Syria.
There is every reason to believe that the horrors of the past three weeks—the bombardments that have reduced much of south Lebanon and southern Beirut to rubble and crippled a large part of the country’s infrastructure, claiming some 700 lives, wounding thousands more and turning over three quarters of a million people into refugees—is only the prelude to an even greater slaughter. The war crime that claimed the lives of more than 60 people—most of them children—in the village of Qana is to be repeated throughout the region in the coming days and weeks.
The Israeli government has already ended the so-called 48-hour bombing moratorium declared in the wake of the Qana massacre—which it largely ignored by continuing to strike targets at will—proceeding on Wednesday morning with the resumption of a full-scale air war against Lebanon. For the first time, Israeli warplanes dropped leaflets even north of the Litani warning villagers that they too could expect to be struck by bombs and missiles if they did not flee their homes.
Witnesses in the Bekaa Valley town of Baalbek have reported that Israeli helicopter gunships bombed a hospital filled with people wounded in earlier attacks.
Israeli Trade Minister Eli Yshai, a member of the government’s security cabinet, told army radio that there was little danger that the United Nations would vote on a ceasefire this week, and even if it did, Israel would ignore it.
“Israel is not obliged to stand at attention and cease its operations if the United Nations decide on a ceasefire,” he declared. He said the Israeli government had no intention of accepting any ceasefire “except on our conditions,” and added that “our American friends will veto in such a case,” referring to Washington’s power as a permanent member of the UN Security Council to veto any resolution. He and other Israeli officials indicated that the war of aggression will continue for at least several more weeks.
The Israeli regime has every reason to be confident that its patron in Washington will continue to back its war against Lebanon. There is every indication that the Bush administration is not merely backing Israel, but prodding it to escalate its offensive until it achieves the stated aim of smashing the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah movement.
What has shocked world opinion even more than the savage character of Israel’s military offensive is the shameless and unqualified support Washington has provided for a war that has inflicted 30 Lebanese civilian casualties for every one suffered by Israel, and has set Lebanon as country back by decades.
Even prominent former officials of the Bush administration, such as Richard Armitage, the former deputy secretary of state, and Richard Haass, the State Department’s head of policy and planning during Bush’s first term, have expressed dismay at the administration’s failure to maintain even a pretense of even-handed diplomacy.
Again and again, Bush and other top US officials have declared their opposition to an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon, calling instead for a “sustainable peace.” This means that an end to hostilities is acceptable only on the basis of the US and Israel achieving their war aims in full. Similar “ceasefires” were imposed by the Third Reich in Poland, France and elsewhere in the 1930s and 1940s.
It is by now clear to all but the willfully blind that Hezbollah’s capture of two Israeli soldiers July 12 was not the cause of the present war, but merely the pretext for launching a long-planned aggression. Nor was this war simply determined by the government of Israel, with Washington providing its blessing after the fact. On the contrary, it represents an extension and deepening of the US imperialist intervention in the Middle East launched with the invasion of Iraq more than three years ago.
The aims of this war are not merely to secure Israel against Hezbollah, but to further US strategic goals in Central Asia and the Middle East, using the so-called “global war on terrorism” as the justification for a predatory policy directed at establishing Washington’s stranglehold over the oil reserves concentrated in the region. This, in turn, is seen as critical to US imperialism’s goal of achieving global hegemony.
With the Bush administration’s unqualified support for the war against Lebanon, US imperialism has dropped the democratic and pacifist pretensions with which it has historically cloaked its real objectives. War and the slaughter of innocent civilians are once again being legitimized as tools of foreign policy.
All of the talk of Bush and Cheney about “preemptive war” and “the new wars of the twenty-first century” now can be seen in their true light. The invasion of Iraq was only the beginning of a far broader utilization of military violence and terror to secure the global interests of America’s corporate and financial elite.
US support for the Israeli war against Lebanon is merely a stepping stone for future military campaigns aimed at bringing about “regime change” in Syria and Iran. Washington intends to allow no regime that poses even a potential challenge to its global ambitions to remain in power.
In the wake of the Second World War and the horrific crimes carried out by fascism and imperialism in Europe and Asia, the world’s powers formally foreswore military aggression as a means of furthering national interests. The United Nations was established, declaring in its founding charter that it would “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind,” and vowing that “armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest.”
These lofty words are now a dead letter. War has once again been legitimized by the world’s premier power as an acceptable means of achieving political aims. The slaughter of innocent children is to be duly regretted in hypocritical statements to the press, but dismissed in practice as mere “collateral damage,” an inevitable and acceptable price to be paid for the realization of strategic objectives.
In a very real sense the historic clock has been turned back. The methods of international lawlessness, aggression and militarism that dominated world affairs during the 1930s, in the run-up to the Second World War, have been revived with a vengeance.
This is not merely a matter of Bush, Cheney and a cabal of “neoconservatives” imposing some deviant and reactionary policy upon the US government. The Democrats, the ostensible party of opposition, have attempted to outdo the administration in their support for Israel’s war, in some cases criticizing the administration from the right. Politicians such as Senator Hillary Clinton of New York declare their unconditional support for Israel’s “right of self-defense,” explicitly endorsing any and all actions by the Zionist regime, even as it is slaughtering women and children.
There is a no significant opposition within the American political establishment. Within the media, support for the continuation of the war is nearly unanimous. The Wall Street Journal, reflecting the views of US finance capital and the Bush administration, declared Tuesday: “We hope that, while [Secretary of State] Rice pursues diplomatic options, privately Mr. Bush is telling [Israeli Prime Minister] Olmert that Israel must finish the job he started against Hezbollah—including a ground invasion of southern Lebanon if that’s what it takes.” It added only that Israel must demonstrate “the will to prevail as rapidly as militarily possible.”
The Washington Post, just days after the Qana massacre, lamented the “predictable focus by media outlets around the world on Israel’s mistakes and excesses,” and urged a continuation of a war until victory. “The trick is determining how much of this should be left to Israel’s ongoing military campaign, how much to the international force the United Nations will be asked to authorize for Lebanon,” the Post editorial stated.
It continued by giving voice to the wider objectives of the Lebanon war: “In the coming weeks both the Iranian and Syrian governments need to hear a consistent message: A decision to cooperate in stabilizing the Middle East, from Iraq to Lebanon and Gaza, will ease their present isolation. But attempts to acquire weapons of mass destruction or wage proxy war through groups such as Hezbollah will be answered with strength, not appeasement.”
In other words, submit to US-Israeli diktat or face the same fate as Lebanon.
The major international institutions have proven absolutely impotent in opposing the US-Israeli war drive. The United Nations resembles nothing so much as the League of Nations, to which Ethiopia’s Haile Selassie appealed in vain when his country was overrun by Italian fascism in the 1930s.
The European Union confirmed the spinelessness of the European bourgeoisie when it failed Tuesday to pass a resolution demanding a ceasefire in Lebanon, instead bowing to Bush’s principal ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, in opting to call for a “cessation of hostilities,” an ambiguous formulation meant to give the Israeli military weeks more to conduct its scorched-earth campaign.
The events in Lebanon have the most ominous implications for working people not only in the Middle East, but in the United States and internationally.
How long will it be before the draft is reinstated in the US and young people are dragooned into the army to fight Washington’s ever-widening wars of aggression abroad?
How long will it be before nuclear weapons are used against one of Washington’s chosen enemies—an option already proposed within the administration in relation to Iran’s nuclear program—raising the specter of a real-life Armageddon?
And how long will it be before the militarization of US society leads to the outright suspension of democratic rights, the jailing of political opponents, and the use of martial law powers against the American people?
Every day there are new indications that such a shift in the methods of rule by America’s corporate and financial elite is approaching. The mood within the US government found noxious expression at a White House press conference last Friday. Responding to an unusually aggressive question from a reporter who asked why US influence was waning in the Middle East, Bush said it was the fault of the “terrorists,” adding, “They kill innocent people to achieve their objectives... They get on TV screens and they get people to ask questions about, well, this, that or the other.”
The clear implication was that any journalist who questions the policies of the administration in the Middle East is an accomplice of terrorism. The logical conclusion is that they should be jailed and their publications shut down.
This follows the revelation that the Bush administration is promoting legislation that would extend the methods of Guantánamo—indefinite detention and trials by drumhead military commissions—to American citizens as well as “enemy combatants.”
If the tragedies that befell humanity in the 1930s—global war and fascism—are not to be repeated on an even more horrific scale, the working class must advance its own alternative. It is not enough to feel revulsion for the killing that is being carried out every day in Iraq and Lebanon and the lies that are told to justify it. Neither is it enough to protest these crimes. A new political force must be created that can put a stop to them.
This can be accomplished only through the building of new political movement of the working class, independent of the existing big business parties and based on the perspective of uniting working people internationally—including the Arab and Jewish workers of the Middle East—in a common struggle for the socialist transformation of society.
This is the fundamental objective of the campaign being waged by the Socialist Equality Party in the United States in the November midterm elections. Our candidates are running to give voice to the deep-rooted opposition that exists within the working class to the policies of war, social inequality and political reaction that characterize both the Democratic and Republican parties.
We urge all those who oppose the bloodbaths in Iraq and Lebanon and want to take action to bring them to a halt to study the program of the Socialist Equality Party, participate in the campaign to place our candidates on the ballot, and join with our party in the fight to build a new revolutionary leadership in the working class.
See Also: Following Qana massacre Israel escalates Lebanon offensive with US backing [1 August 2006] The Qana massacre: Slaughter of innocents in Lebanon [31 July 2006] Rice leaves bloody footprints in Lebanon [26 July 2006] The real aims of the US-backed Israeli war against Lebanon [21 July 2006] ]]>http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v71/__show_article/_a000071-000135.htm2006-08-02T17:19:19Z2006-08-02T17:19:19ZDeclassified archives....From wsws.com
Declassified archives document ties between CIA and Nazis
By Andre Damon
27 July 2006
On June 6, the US national archives released some 27,000 pages of secret records documenting the CIA’s Cold War relations with former German Nazi Party members and officials.
The file...From wsws.com
Declassified archives document ties between CIA and Nazis
By Andre Damon
27 July 2006
On June 6, the US national archives released some 27,000 pages of secret records documenting the CIA’s Cold War relations with former German Nazi Party members and officials.
The files reveal numerous cases of German Nazis, some clearly guilty of war crimes, receiving funds, weapons and employment from the CIA. They also demonstrate that US intelligence agencies deliberately refrained from disclosing information about the whereabouts of Adolf Eichmann in order to protect Washington’s allies in the post-war West German government headed by Christian Democratic leader Konrad Adenauer.
Eichmann, who had sent millions to their deaths while coordinating the Nazis’ “final solution” campaign to exterminate European Jewry, went into hiding in Buenos Aires after the fall of the Third Reich. Utilizing friendly contacts in the Catholic Church and the Peron government in Argentina, Eichmann was able to reside in the South American country for 10 years under the alias of Ricardo Klement. He was abducted in 1960 by Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, put on trial in Israel and executed in 1962.
The documents show that the CIA was in possession of Eichmann’s pseudonym two years before the Mossad raid. The CIA received this information in 1958 from the West German government, which learned of Eichmann’s alias in 1952. Both the CIA and the Bonn government chose not to disclose this information to Israel because they were concerned that Eichmann might reveal the identities of Nazi war criminals holding high office in the West German government, particularly Adenauer’s national security adviser Hans Globke.
When Eichmann was finally brought to trial, the US government used all available means to protect its West German allies from what he might reveal. According to the declassified documents, the CIA pressured Life magazine into deleting references to Globke in portions of Eichmann’s memoirs that it chose to publish.
In addition to the revelations regarding Eichmann, the documents chronicle the CIA’s creation of “stay-behind” intelligence networks in southwestern Germany and Berlin, labeled “Kibitz” and “Pastime,” respectively. The Kibitz ring involved several former SS members. In the early 1950s, the CIA provided these groups with money, communications equipment and ammunition so that they could serve as intelligence assets in the event of a Soviet invasion of West Germany.
The CIA documents were reviewed by Timothy Naftali, a historian with the National Archives Interagency Working Group, the government body that oversaw their declassification and release. According to an article published by Naftali, the stay-behind program was dissolved “in the wake of public concerns in West Germany about the resurgence of Neo-Nazi Groups.” Specifically, the Kibitz-15 group, led by an “unreconstructed Nazi,” became a potential source of public embarrassment for the US, as its members were broadly involved in Neo-Nazi activity. [1]
The CIA terminated the program by 1955 and arranged for many of its contacts to be resettled in Canada and Australia. According to the documents, Australia provided funds for relocation while the CIA provided its ex-assets with a “resettlement bonus.”
The CIA employed Gustav Hilger, a former adviser to Nazi Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop. As an employee of the German foreign office, Hilger was present at the negotiation of the Stalin-Hitler pact in 1939. The CIA deemed his experience with the USSR sufficiently valuable to free him from incarceration at Fort Meade in Maryland and employ him as an intelligence evaluator in West Germany.
In 1948, Hilger moved to the United States and obtained a position at the CIA’s K Street building in Washington as a researcher and expert on the USSR. Hilger eventually left the CIA to work for the West German foreign office.
According to a paper analyzing the CIA documents published by Robert Wolfe, a former senior archivist at the US National Archives, “it is beyond dispute that Hilger criminally assisted in the genocide of Italy’s Jews.... During the roundup of Italian Jews in late 1943, a note signed ‘Hilger’ recorded Ribbentrop’s concurrence that the Italians be asked to intern the Jews in concentration camps in Northern Italy, in lieu of immediate deportation. The SS intended thereby that the Italian Jews and their potential Italian protectors should believe that internment in Italy was the final destination, rather than eventual deportation to the murder mills in Poland to be immediately murdered or gradually worked to death. The stated purpose of this ruse was to minimize the number of Italian Jews who would go into hiding to avoid deportation to Poland” [2]
In another instance, the CIA employed Tscherim Soobzokov, a former Nazi gendarme and Waffen SS lieutenant, who, according to a paper published by Interagency Working Group Director of Historical Research Richard Breitman, “participated in an execution commando [combat group detailed to executing Jews and Communists en masse] and had searched North Caucasian villages for Jews.”
Soobzokov was employed by the CIA for seven years. Over this period, he repeatedly used his intelligence contacts to avoid investigation by the FBI and the US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) in regard to his complicity in war crimes.
According to Breitman’s paper, CIA examiners noted that Soobzokov was an “incorrigible fabricator” who repeatedly lied about his past in order to conceal his participation in criminal activity. Nevertheless, the CIA shielded him against investigation, at one point sending the INS a document asserting that Soobzokov had never worked for the Nazis. [3]
Prior to the outbreak of war, a significant section of the American ruling elite had favored cooperation with the Nazis as a European hedge against the spread of Bolshevism. Henry Ford was notorious for his anti-Semitism and his political affinity for German Fascism, and a number of major American companies retained their business ties with the Third Reich. Notably, IBM sold Germany the punch cards that were used to catalog the “final solution.” (See: “How IBM helped the Nazis IBM and the Holocaust”)
However, as one European nation after another fell before Hitler’s onslaught, the threat of German imperialist dominance in Europe spurred the American ruling class to enter the European theater.
US imperialism mobilized popular support in its war against the Nazi regime by appealing to the democratic and anti-fascist sentiments of the American people. After the defeat of Germany, it organized, together with its World War II allies—Britain, the Soviet Union and France—the Nuremburg trials to prosecute top Nazi officials for their complicity in war crimes.
However, with the start of the Cold War, the United States reversed its policy of identifying, trying and executing prominent Nazi war criminals. As is starkly demonstrated in the case of Eichmann, the knowledge possessed by many of these individuals made trying them inconvenient.
Regardless of its limited persecution of upper-echelon Nazis, the United States had no qualms about recruiting Nazi Party members and war criminals into its military research apparatus. Prominent German military developers such as Werner Von Braun and Bernhard Tessmann were assimilated into the US rocketry program, while Kurt Blome, a Nazi scientist who experimented on concentration camp prisoners, was employed by the US to develop chemical weapons.
Likewise, the early stages of the Cold War saw high-level Nazi cadres drafted into the US intelligence machine and deployed in Europe, the Middle East and the Americas. According to the Department of Justice Office of Special Investigations (OSI), the bureau assigned to investigate German war criminals living within the US, at least 10,000 Nazis entered the US between 1948 and 1952. Of the thousands of German Nazis who fled—or were brought—to the United States, only some 100 have been prosecuted by the OSI.
Notes: 1. Timothy Naftali, “New Information on Cold War CIA Stay-Behind Operations in Germany and on the Adolf Eichmann Case” http://www.fas.org/sgp/eprint/naftali.pdf 2. Robert Wolfe, “Gustav Hilger: From Hitler’s Foreign Office to CIA Consultant” http://www.fas.org/sgp/eprint/wolfe.pdf 3. Richard Breitman, “Tscherim Soobzokov” http://www.fas.org/sgp/eprint/breitman.pdf
See Also: Newly released files show: Postwar German government and CIA shielded Adolf Eichmann [3 July 2006] ]]>http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v71/__show_article/_a000071-000134.htm2006-07-28T00:39:06Z2006-07-28T00:39:06ZThe real aims.....
World Socialist Web Site
The real aims of the US-backed Israeli war against Lebanon
Statement of the Editorial Board
21 July 2006
As the onslaught against Lebanon enters its tenth day, Israeli troops are poised for a full-scale invasion that has been prepared by murderous aerial bombar... World Socialist Web Site
The real aims of the US-backed Israeli war against Lebanon
Statement of the Editorial Board 21 July 2006
As the onslaught against Lebanon enters its tenth day, Israeli troops are poised for a full-scale invasion that has been prepared by murderous aerial bombardment, and the far-reaching imperialist aims of the war have become all too clear.
With the full political, financial and military backing of the United States, the Zionist regime is attempting to transform Lebanon into an Israeli protectorate. This military operation is a continuation and escalation of the imperialist geo-political restructuring of the Middle East and Central Asia that began with the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and whose goal is the establishment of US domination of the entire region.
The immediate aim of this war—the elimination of Hezbollah as a military and political force within Lebanon—is directed against all mass resistance to Israeli and American domination of the country. The Bush administration and its allies in Jerusalem see this as an essential step toward: 1) the removal of the Syrian Baathist regime, and 2) the launching of a full-scale war against Iran.
While the Israeli government and the Bush administration endlessly repeat propaganda claims that the attack on Lebanon is an act of “self defense” prompted by the seizure of two soldiers, this assertion enjoys no credibility among knowledgeable observers.
As the Financial Times of London wrote in its lead editorial of July 17, “Israel’s massive bombardment of Lebanon by land, sea and air in response to Hezbollah’s cross-border raid last week is now about a great deal more than recovering two Israeli soldiers seized by Islamist guerrillas—and it probably always was.”
Similar assessments have been published in the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, as well as numerous newspapers internationally. They simply state what is by now obvious: the Israeli attack on Lebanon is the realization of a long-planned act of aggression.
Recent events have placed in clearer perspective the significance of the February, 2005 assassination of the Lebanese multi-billionaire and former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
Hariri was killed by a massive explosion that destroyed his motorcade in Beirut four months after he resigned his post as prime minister in protest against the decision of Emile Lahoud, an ally of Syria, to extend his term as president of Lebanon. The United States and France, the country’s former colonial ruler, immediately blamed Hariri’s death on Damascus. Their anti-Syrian allies within Lebanon, predominantly based on the more affluent social layers, seized upon Hariri’s killing to launch the so-called Cedar Revolution, which resulted last year in the withdrawal of Syrian troops, which had occupied Lebanon since the 1970s.
If, in fact, the Syrian regime was behind the killing, it carried it out because it had become convinced that Hariri had lent his support to a US-Israeli plan to drive Syria out of Lebanon, in preparation for an assault on the Hezbollah movement, which enjoys mass support among the impoverished Shiite population and dominates the south of Lebanon. It was well aware that this would be followed by an offensive against the Baathist regime in Damascus itself.
It is, on the other hand, eminently possible that the killing was a provocation organized by Israeli or American intelligence agencies for the purpose of creating a pretext for carrying through the same plan.
In either case, the current Israeli offensive is the implementation of precisely such an operation. The Cedar Revolution itself produced disappointing results in the eyes of the Israelis and Americans. Under the terms of a United Nations Security Council resolution co-sponsored by Washington and Paris, Syria was obliged to withdraw its troops from Lebanon. The power of its Hezbollah ally, however, remained intact.
Indeed, at the height of the anti-Syrian agitation, marked by well-publicized demonstrations in Beirut organized by Maronite Christian forces and other Lebanese parties aligned with Washington, Hezbollah organized far larger counter-demonstrations that brought hundreds of thousands into the streets of the capital. With the specter of a new civil war before it, the government that emerged from the Cedar Revolution felt obliged to make a settlement which included the admission of Hezbollah representatives into the cabinet.
In an article published July 20, the New York Times reflected the frustration within the Bush administration and American ruling circles: “Despite the hopes raised by the so-called Cedar Revolution, which ended nearly three decades of Syrian control, the government remains trapped in the sectarian straitjacket of a system that apportions political offices by religion.” (The Times has no similar objections to the “sectarian straitjacket” of Lebanon’s neighbor to the south, which not only apportions all political power to representatives of one religion, but defines itself as a “Jewish state”).
This comment points to the real purpose of the current onslaught against the Lebanese people. Its aim is a thoroughgoing political restructuring of the country, in which the fiercely pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli sentiments of the Shiite masses are to be crushed and the power of right-wing, pro-US forces—above all, the Christian Phalange—vastly expanded.
This is an attempt to reverse the outcome of the Lebanese civil war, which raged from 1975 until 1990. The US, Israel and other imperialist powers, notably France, played a central role in inciting that long and bloody conflict and keeping it going, including the introduction of American and French military forces and an Israeli invasion in 1982 that was followed by an 18-year Israeli occupation of the south. Washington’s chief ally was the fascistic Phalange, which headed a coalition of right-wing forces arrayed against an alliance of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Lebanese Left.
Imperialist intrigue and intervention succeeded in driving the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) from Lebanon, but the eventual settlement curtailed the power of the Phalange, on the one hand, and saw the rise of the Iranian and Syrian-backed Hezbollah on the other. This is what Washington is determined to change. Significantly, the current Israeli offensive has enabled the US to move its military forces into Lebanon for the first time since they were withdrawn in the aftermath of the bombing of the US Marine barracks in Beirut in October of 1983.
The historical background
Israel has a long history of attempting to transform Lebanon, through a combination of military pressure and political alliances with right-wing forces in that country, into a virtual protectorate.
In March 1978, in the midst of the Lebanese civil war, Israel sent military forces across the border into Lebanon, justifying its actions as a response to PLO terrorist activity. Though compelled by international pressure to withdraw after its military operations had resulted in more than 2,000 Lebanese deaths, Israel maintained control of a 12-mile strip north of the border by sponsoring a right-wing militia, dubbed the South Lebanon Army, under the proxy leadership of one Major Saad Haddad.
Four years later, in 1982, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and his defense minister, Ariel Sharon, set into motion a far more ambitious plan to take political control of all Lebanon and expel the PLO from the country. Once again, a convenient pretext was found when an Israeli ambassador was wounded in London by a Palestinian assassin in June 1982. Though intelligence experts acknowledged that the PLO had nothing to do with this incident, the Begin government used the event as a pretext to invade Lebanon. In an operation entitled, with consummate cynicism, “Peace for Galilee,” Israeli troops swept north toward the outskirts of Beirut, which was subjected to protracted bombing.
The war forced the PLO’s expulsion from Lebanon and led to the Israeli-sanctioned slaughter of thousands of Palestinian refugees by Lebanese fascist militiamen.
The United States also became involved in the subjugation of Lebanon, with the Reagan administration stationing Marines in Beirut. But direct US participation in attacks on the poorer neighborhoods of Beirut (which were shelled by American naval vessels) created deep hostility, leading to the suicide bombing in which nearly 250 Marines were killed. The Reagan administration decided to cut its losses and withdraw from Lebanon.
The Israeli regime, however, sought to maintain control over substantial portions of south Lebanon. It was out of the popular resistance to the occupation that Hezbollah emerged as a powerful military and political force. The guerrilla war conducted by Hezbollah eventually forced Israel to withdraw its forces in 2000.
Israeli military tactics
The current war is not only about wiping out Hezbollah, but destroying any resistance within Lebanon to US and Israeli domination. This desired end goes a long way in explaining the means that are being employed. Israel is carrying out an indiscriminate bombardment of the south, the home of the poor Shiite population and the main base of support for Hezbollah. The Israeli military is deliberately targeting the entire civilian population, destroying whole villages and making the entire region uninhabitable.
The Washington Post reported Thursday that Israel has ordered all Lebanese living in the southern sector below the Litani River to evacuate the region within 24 hours.
The goal is to turn south Lebanon into a no man’s land so as to prepare the ground for the entry of either Israeli troops or a combination of Israeli and American forces, with perhaps other national contingents operating as an “international peace keeping force” with the imprimatur of the United Nations.
The Israeli offensive is above all a war against the Lebanese poor. The more affluent residential neighborhoods of Beirut and other parts of the country have been largely spared. This is in keeping with US and Israeli policy during the civil war, when they were allied with the Phalange against the Shiite masses and the Palestinian refugee population.
The unleashing of death and destruction against southern Lebanon is combined with a bombing campaign aimed at the Shiite southern suburbs of Beirut and against airports, ports, roads, bridges and power stations in the rest of the country. The objective is to wreck the country’s infrastructure. In order to remake Lebanon politically, it first must be gutted physically. This gives some idea of what US imperialism and its junior partner, Israel, have in store for the people of Syria, Iran and beyond.
Nor is there any reason to believe Israel’s disavowals of plans for a full-scale ground invasion. The more Israeli leaders discount such a move, the more likely it becomes. While the scale of the bombing in south Lebanon is sufficient to kill many thousands of people, it will not achieve Israel’s aims of destroying Hezbollah as a military and political force, and converting Lebanon into a Zionist protectorate.
Citing the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, NBC’s evening news program reported Thursday that several thousand Israeli troops have begun crossing the border into southern Lebanon.
The role of the United States
The United States is playing a decisive role in the war. It sanctioned the war in advance and is working in the closest collaboration with the Israeli military’s US-made and American-financed war machine to carry it out.
On the diplomatic level, the Bush administration is openly aligning its moves with the military objectives and political calculations of the Israeli government. Washington is coordinating US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s impending visit to the region with Israel to give the Israeli military all the time it wants to inflict maximum possible destruction in south Lebanon. As the New York Times reported on July 19, “American officials signaled that Ms. Rice was waiting at least a few more days before wading into the conflict, in part to give Israel more time to weaken Hezbollah forces.”
There is no precedent for the US government’s open opposition to a ceasefire. The Wall Street Journal, in a fairly frank assessment of US policy published July 19, began by recalling Washington’s diplomatic role when the last major conflict erupted between Israel and Hezbollah:
“Ten years ago, when Hezbollah and Israeli forces engaged in a multiweek bloodbath, President Clinton sent Secretary of State Warren Christopher to the region for six days of intensive shuttle diplomacy between Damascus and Jerusalem. In the end, he won a cease-fire deal that ended the fighting, at least temporarily.
“Today, the Bush administration has a starkly different approach.”
The US is fully and openly legitimizing war as an instrument of foreign policy. This is a continuation of its military aggression in Iraq, and an anticipation of future aggression against Syria, Iran, and other countries. It is bound up with the Bush doctrine of “preemptive war,” which has been embraced by the entire American political establishment and both parties of American imperialism—the Democrats as well as the Republicans.
Washington’s determined effort to allow Israel to continue the slaughter in Lebanon underscores that the current war is part of US imperialism’s drive, by any and all means, to establish American supremacy throughout the Middle East.
Whether this reckless and criminal military adventure will, in the short term, further this objective or lead Washington into an even deeper debacle in the region remains to be seen.
See Also: American media unquestioningly defends Israeli violence [21 July 2006] Western diplomacy supports Israel's war of aggression [19 July 2006] G8 powers sanction Israeli aggression in Lebanon [18 July 2006] US gives Israel a blank check to wage war [17 July 2006] ]]>http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v71/__show_article/_a000071-000133.htm2006-07-21T19:26:29Z2006-07-21T19:26:29ZRise and Fall of the American EmpireThe corruption and social crisis which dominate this society are coming to a boil. If anyone had any doubt up to now as to the validity of Modern Americana, such revelations as these ought to put them to rest permanantly.
Do you share the same values in your own life as those which underlie ...The corruption and social crisis which dominate this society are coming to a boil. If anyone had any doubt up to now as to the validity of Modern Americana, such revelations as these ought to put them to rest permanantly.
Do you share the same values in your own life as those which underlie this corruption, (greed and egotism)?
*************
From WSWS:
Constitutional crisis over FBI raid on US congressman By Joe Kay and Barry Grey 26 May 2006
The conflict between the US Congress and the Bush administration over the FBI raid on US Representative William Jefferson’s congressional office has rapidly escalated into a constitutional crisis. The episode highlights the contempt with which the Bush administration views such fundamental issues as the separation of powers and the autonomy of the legislative branch. It also reveals the atmosphere of crisis and tension which pervades the American political system.
The May 20 raid was carried out by more than 15 FBI agents, who barred the House of Representatives general counsel and the sergeant at arms from the rooms they were searching. It was the first federal search of a sitting congressman’s office in US history.
Denunciations of the Justice Department by Republican as well as Democratic legislators reached such a pitch by Thursday that President Bush felt obliged to directly intervene. The previous day, the Republican speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, and the Democratic minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, issued a joint statement denouncing the raid as unconstitutional and demanding that the Justice Department return all of the documents and records removed by the FBI.
Bush sought to mollify congressional critics while insisting that the raid was legal and that the Justice Department had every right to use documents and records seized in the 18-hour search to pursue an investigation of Jefferson on allegations of bribe-taking.
In a remarkable acknowledgment of the sharpness of the confrontation between the executive and legislative branches, Bush said, “Our government has not faced such a dilemma in more than two centuries.” He noted that the “bipartisan leadership of the House of Representatives believes this search violated the constitutional principle of separation of powers and the speech and debate clause of the Constitution.”
He announced that the documents seized would be sealed for 45 days, during which time investigators would be prevented from examining them, and called for negotiations between congressional leaders and the Justice Department to work out a protocol for obtaining such documents in connection with federal criminal investigations. He insisted, however, that any resolution to the dispute had to ensure “that materials relevant to the ongoing criminal investigation are made available to prosecutors...”
He then declared, “Those who violate the law—including a member of Congress—should be held to account”—an utterance of stunning hypocrisy from a president who has demonstrated contempt for both US and international law during his entire tenure. This bit of cynicism was designed to uphold the pretext for the administration’s assertion of virtually limitless executive power and its denigration of Congress: That the raid was carried out in order to root out corruption and uphold the law.
Corruption—bribe-taking, influence peddling, fraud—is indeed rampant in Washington, where corporate lobbyists routinely reward their congressional minions with money and other favors in return for voting the “right” way, and seats in the House and the Senate are purchased for vast sums, collected as campaign donations from corporate sponsors. Both parties are involved, and there is no reason to believe that New Orleans Congressman Jefferson, a Democrat, is any less corrupt than his colleagues.
But corruption has long been a feature of American politics, and no previous administration has raided the office of a sitting congressman in the name of conducting a criminal probe. The reasons for the raid on Jefferson’s office have nothing to do with fighting corruption, and everything to do with the drive by the clique around Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney to intimidate and silence critics, forestall any investigation into the administration’s own illegal actions, and move toward the establishment of a form of presidential dictatorship.
Hastert and Pelosi welcomed Bush’s announcement on Thursday and said the House counsel was ready to begin negotiations with the Justice Department over the dispute. However, other Republican congressmen predicted the matter would end up before the US Supreme Court, and House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, a Republican, announced he would hold hearings next Tuesday under the heading: “Reckless Justice—Did the Saturday Night Raid of Congress Trample the Constitution?”
Jefferson, for his part, filed a motion in US District Court demanding the return of the material—two boxes of documents and a computer hard drive—confiscated during the search.
The rapidity with which the dispute has escalated reflects the intensity of the political crisis that underlies it.
Jefferson has been under investigation for months and was videotaped in a sting operation apparently accepting bribes from an FBI informant. The Justice Department raided two of his residences last August and issued subpoenas for documents, but Jefferson has challenged the subpoenas.
The provocative nature of the decision to raid his office is underscored by the fact that the House counsel was handling his legal dispute with the Justice Department over the contested documents. Thus the legal wrangle between Jefferson and the Bush administration had already become an institutional standoff between the executive and legislative branches when the administration decided to dramatically assert its supremacy by raiding the congressman’s office.
Only hours after Wednesday’s joint statement by Hastert and Pelosi, ABC World News Tonight, citing unnamed US law enforcement officials, reported that Hastert was under investigation by the FBI in connection with the influence peddling and bribery scandal surrounding convicted Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Hastert immediately issued a statement branding the ABC News report as false and demanding that the network retract it. The Justice Department soon after issued its own statement declaring the ABC News report to be false and saying Hastert was not under investigation.
The following morning, however, Hastert gave an interview to WGN radio in Chicago in which he charged that the ABC News report had been deliberately leaked by someone in the Bush administration to intimidate him and retaliate for his denunciation of the FBI raid on Jefferson.
“This is one of the leaks that come out to try to, you know, intimidate people,” he said. He essentially reiterated the allegation later in the day Thursday. When asked if he thought the Justice Department was retaliating against him by leaking the report, Hastert replied, “All I’m saying is, here are the dots. People can connect any dots they want to.” He added, “I thought it was an interesting sequence of events.”
ABC News has refused to retract its Wednesday night report, and Hastert has threatened to sue the network for defamation. For its part, ABC reported on its web site that the Justice Department statement was intended to deny that Hastert was a formal target or subject of the investigation, but federal officials had confirmed to the network that various members of Congress “including Hastert, are under investigation.”
Hastert’s remarks are indicative of the bitter in-fighting and the atmosphere of fear, intrigue and crisis that pervade official Washington.
The tensions between Hastert and the White House reflect divisions, in particular, within the Republican Party. With Bush’s poll numbers continuing to fall as popular opposition to the Iraq war and the economic situation mounts, Republican leaders in Congress are increasingly concerned that their party may lose control of one or both houses in this November’s midterm election, and forfeit the White House in 2008.
This is certainly one reason why the same Republicans, such as Hastert, who have supported all of Bush’s anti-democratic measures—from the Patriot Act, to the Homeland Security Department, to massive domestic spying programs—have reacted so sharply to a precedent they fear could be used against them should the Democrats gain control.
Long-time columnist and Republican insider Robert Novak published a column May 18 on Hastert’s relations with the White House that gives some sense of the poisoned state of relations within the Republican Party and the political establishment as a whole. Novak reported that Hastert “engaged in a high decibel rant” in a meeting with Vice President Cheney after he learned that his former House colleague and friend Porter Goss was being forced out as CIA director.
Cheney was so alarmed he immediately scheduled a meeting between Hastert, himself and Bush in the president’s living quarters.
“But Hastert’s discontent goes beyond the CIA,” Novak noted. “The GOP mood on Capitol Hill, particularly the House, is poisonous. With pessimism rising over a contemplated loss of their majority in the 2006 elections, Republican lawmakers blame their parlous condition on Bush’s performance.” Novak went on to say that there was “basically non-communication between Bush and his fellow Republicans in Congress.”
Hastert’s assumption that the ABC News report was an act of intimidation and retaliation by the Bush administration—even were it to prove unfounded—says a great deal about the state of American politics. The titular head of the House of Representatives takes as a given that the top figures in the executive branch, and the leaders of his own party, would not hesitate to employ blackmail, character assassination and the threat of criminal prosecution to silence him and anyone else who stood in their way.
It is an open secret in Washington, discussed in private but concealed from the American people, that the US is heading in the direction of a police state, and that those who wield both corporate and political power have no democratic scruples.
See Also: FBI stages unprecedented raid on congressman's office [24 May 2006] ]]>http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v71/__show_article/_a000071-000131.htm2006-05-26T15:31:13Z2006-05-26T15:31:13Z
To the sender of this message,