Wednesday, March 30, 2005

Child Hunger in Iraq; The State of the Planet

Child hunger in Iraq has doubled to 8% for Children in Iraq since the war on Iraq began, according to a report prepared for the annual meeting of the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva. Concerns were also expressed with respect to North Korea and Darfur Province. So, it would seem the the picture is not as rosy as The Washington neocons would have us believe. What else is new?

In other shitty news, 1360 scientists from 95 countries have reported that "Humans are damaging the planet at an unprecedented rate and raising risks of abrupt collapses in nature that could spur disease, deforestation or "dead zones" in the seas,", according to Reuters Alertnet. Maybe this'll finally motivate us to act.

Tuesday, March 29, 2005

Interview with Scott Ritter

I have found on Raw Story an absoutely excellent interview with Scott Ritter. Emphasis is heavy on the nature of the neocons, its control of govnerment organs such as Congress, and hopes for the future. It is an informative and revealing interview. Here's a fair chunk of it:

So your implication is that in our current foreign policy the neocons have set the tone via thinktanks or supposed thinktanks?

Yes. Look at who funds the American Enterprise Institute, and the Heritage Foundation, and I think you'll have your answer.

The American Heritage Leninist

What do you think these institutions are trying to achieve? I know the public claim is conservative values, but there is a some speculation regarding what appears more like Leninist, even Trotskyite values, especially given the current domestic government involvement and control or attempt at control of almost every facet of society, economy, family, etc. Even the term Leninist was used by the Heritage Foundation to describe their approach to Social Security during the 1980s (read it here – PDF).

A high-level source, a neocon at that, within the system has said to me directly that 'John Bolton's job is to destroy the U.N., Rice's job is to destroy the State Department's and replace it with a vehicle of facilitation for making the Pentagon's national security policy.'

And what of Karen Hughes' appointment?
Hughes – she is a salesperson; she will sell the policy. She is irrelevant. She is nothing. Her appointment means nothing. Rice has already capitulated to the Pentagon and the White House, and Hughes' appointment is but a manifestation of that larger reality.

The neocons are parasites. They build nothing. They bring nothing. They don't have a foundation. They don't stand for business. They don't stand for ideology. They use a host to facilitate and grow their own power. They are parasites that latch onto oil until is no longer convenient. They latch on to democracy until it is no longer convenient.

Rice's appointment to the State Department is simply to reshape it into a neocon vehicle.

Why the State Department? Why Rice?

The State Department still has free thinkers in it. Rice is a dilettante. Anyone who was there during the Reagan era and her advising on Soviet policy knows how inept she is. She is not there because she is a brilliant secretary of state.

The media has bought into this, because the neocons cleverly put a woman, an African-American woman at that, into this position. So when Rice goes abroad, people do not look at the stupid things she says, they look at what she was wearing and such.

'Godless people who want power, nothing more'

So you believe the neocons are elitist parasites?
Yes, elitism is the perfect term.

Do you consider it localized or global elitism?

The neocons believe in what they think is a noble truth, power of the few, the select few. These are godless people who want power, nothing more. They do not have a country or an allegiance, they have an agenda. These people might hold American passports, but they are not Americans because they do not believe in the Constitution. They believe in the power of the few, not a government for or by the people. They are a few and their agenda is global.

You suggest the Republican Party is simply an organizational host. Is there any vestige left of the host or has the entire party been devoured?

The Republicans have been neutered by the neocons.

Your concept of neocons seems confusing because, using your host/parasite paradigm, they cannot tell between the host and the parasite which invades it.
I know people who have worked for George H. W. Bush, both when he was vice president and president. Bush Sr. called the neocons the 'crazies in the basement.' I think it is dangerous to confuse the two, because there are Americans who love their country and are conservatives who do not support what is going on. Until the host rejects the parasite, it is difficult to separate the two. Brent Scowcroft for example is not a neocon, yet people call him one. Scowcroft worked hard to reign in the 'crazies in the basement,' as did Reagan.

Many have defined the neocon movement based on the highly intellectual, albeit warped, musings of Strauss and Bloom. Yet one could hardly call the current leadership intellectual or even capable of digesting this philosophy. Even neocon thinkers are jumping off the ship. Do you believe this is simply trickle-down Machiavellianism in much the same way that Communism trickled down as an aberration of its original intent?

No plan survives initial contact with the enemy. The neocon ideology was always hypothetical in its pure application until now. What we are seeing today is what happens when theory (bad theory at that) makes contact with reality. You get chaos, through which the neocons are now trying to navigate.

Is Karl Rove a neocon?

Karl Rove is not part of the neo-conservative master group; he is a host.

Then who is steering the ship?

An oligarchy of 'public servant' classes who are drawn from business, and serve naked economic interests. This is true whether you are Democrat or Republican.

Patriot Enactment

Several insiders have expressed concern over possible oil shortage riots. Would the Patriot Act be put to use, in your opinion, to address such riots?
[The Patriot Act] is simply the neocons putting their judicial agenda in place by other means. It was a compilation of all of the conservative initiatives, not neocon initiatives, which the conservative Republicans have been pushing for, including a more conservative law enforcement element.

This is not unhealthy as long is it is done properly, through legislation, proper channels of debate and discourse. A lot of this had been submitted in the past, but was rejected. After 9/11 all of these initiatives were lumped together.

There are some things in the Patriot Act I agree with, but the Patriot Act requires a responsible society. The neocons they have no interest in a responsible society; they simply used the conservatives as a vehicle to push an agenda to assault the individual civil liberties.

As the Patriot Act is now, how it came about, is entirely un-American. It is extreme legislation that does nothing to address the issues it professes to, but moreover, it is as an existing law, un-American. What makes it un-American is that no one read it before they voted for it. So the process was un-American, and the motivation behind it was un-American. We cannot have a nation that is governed by fear. The patriot act is un-American simply because it exists.

So how do citizens address this situation since the very means of addressing it via Congress seem to have been closed off?

Congress has ceased to function as a viable tool of government. What is needed is for leaders of honor to resign in protest.

I have had this conversation with some in Congress and have asked about their thoughts on shutting down Congress and cleaning house. Their counter is that they are afraid to 'leave the crazies in control.'

They are already in control. If the people want to heal this country, the people have to purge the failing of this country. Vote them out, it might take two or three cycles, but it will happen and it will take time.

Everyone who voted for the war in Iraq should be voted out of office because it violated article six of the Constitution. Everyone who voted for the Patriot Act needs to go because they did not represent the people by voting on legislation they did not read. They have to go, regardless of party. They have through their actions decided who stays and who goes.

Hope, and worries, for the future

You suggest Americans vote out all who voted for these measures. If New Yorkers voted out Hillary, who voted for both the Patriot Act and the war in Iraq, and who is also leading pack of the Democratic Party for the 2008 nomination, what then?

Hillary is the manifestation of all that ails the Democratic Party. She stands for nothing. She has been compromised by her voting record ... how can she stand for anything worth supporting? And yet, she will be the Democratic nominee in 2008, thus guaranteeing another Neocon/Republican victory. 'Dump Hillary Now' would be the smartest move Dean could make as the new Democratic National Committee Chair. ... Like I said, it might take two or three cycles, but it will happen and it will take time.

What about Dean?
Dean has to be part of the process of rebuilding and that will take time. Dean cannot run for president, because Dean cannot run as a Democrat – the party is not set up to sustain someone like him. He is one of the exceptions in a corrupt party. He is also not corrupted by his voting record. He is someone who represents something, he did not vote for the war in Iraq, for example.

We talked about this current social crisis as a closed loop during the second installment. Have you ever seen a loop like this throughout the history of the U.S.? What does this mean?

The American experiment is much too complex to be destroyed by the neocons. In the end, the neocons will lose. It may take ten to twelve more years, and the costs will be horrific, but America will survive. There will be one hell of a mess to clean up, though, after the fall of the neocons.

Where do you see America, should things continue as is, in five years from now?
At war, bankrupt morally and fiscally, and in great pain ... and only half-way through the nightmare. Ten to twelve years is what we will have to get through, but we will get through it.

Sunday, March 27, 2005

Here's more on the National Defense Strategy.

Saturday, March 26, 2005

Nationl Defense Strategy

Here is the new US National Security Strategy. Also, Jim Lobe of Inter Press has some excellent commentary on it.

Orwellian goodies in this little bundle of joy include "global freedom to act", and "At the direction of the President, we will defeat adversaries at the time, place, and in the manner of our choosing setting the conditions for future security."

Friday, March 25, 2005

"Looking South"

Hey, this sounds like a good idea:

The Bush Administration in general, and Paul Wolfowitz in particular, would have you believe that 1,500 Americans have died, perhaps 100,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed, and more than $200 billion has been spent on invading and occupying Iraq, in the name of “democracy”.

Funny then that Paul Wolfowitz is now being promoted in a secret, opaque, closely held process that freezes out most of the world. Of special note, the selection of the new World Bank head freezes out the 1 billion people who live on less than $1 per day, and the 3 billion who live on less than $2 per day. It freezes out the entire Southern hemisphere­Africa, Asia, South America. In fact, it freezes out everyone who is not a Bush loyalist in the U.S., or a nervous European elite.

It is as if fighting world poverty were a ping-pong game between the U.S. and Europe, a game in which the poorer nations are not even allowed to enter.

But why? Why should the world’s poorest people be excluded from the process of selecting one of the most important leaders who will affect their lives? Why are the nations most controlled by World Bank and International Monetary Fund policies not allowed to nominate, or even participate in any meaningful way, in the selection of new leadership?

Is Nelson Mandela less qualified to run the World Bank than Paul Wolfowitz? Or how about one of the Brazilians behind the Lula government’s innovative proposal to eliminate hunger by taxing international arms sales? Or, since we know that the most direct route to fighting world poverty is to empower and educate poor women, why not a woman from the South to lead the World Bank, say, Arundhati Roy of India, or Nobel Prize winner Wangari Maathai of Kenya, two women who actually know something about helping poor people?


Why not choose representatives from the World Bank from the regions of the world that the World Bank is supposedly designed to serve. As Jesse points out, there are numerous people from those regions who are intelligent, knowledgeable, and dedicated. Furthermore, they would have a vested interest in having the World Banking acutally helping to bring them out of poverty and into something more comfortable, as opposed to exploiting them on behalf of Western countries.

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Ten questions for Canadians: my response

There's a bit of an uproar taking place in blogworld these days. First, Matthew Good asked ten questions of America. Many of them were phrased in a sarcastic manner. Conservative bloggers all over have been springing up to respond to these questions in force. A couple of them have written ten questions for Canadians, and as you can see on Matt's blog, he has responded to one of them. As a proud progressive Canadian, I will take the opportunity to respond as well to these questions.

Jake's Questions for Canadians

1. Why do Canadians put up with high unemployment and high taxes?

The unemployment rate is consistently higher in Canada than it is in the US. However, I wonder what prorportion of jobs are low-end, degrading jobs in the US as compared to Canada. The likely difference between the US in Canada is that the US provides degrading, low-end jobs which keep folks under the poverty line, and Canada provides social assistance (well, not so much anymore, which of course exaserbates the problem of homelessness) to Canadians under the poverty line. The problem in both countries is poverty, which is much higher than it is in Europe. In Sweden, I have heard, they don't even know what a food bank is.

We pay higher taxes so that we can have social programs which protect us economically, especially those of us who are poor,from unforseen catastrophes such as unemployment and sickness. It is something I am proud of and grateful for as a Canadian.

2. Why do Canadians put up with the worst healthcare in the Western World?

Worst according to who? Certainly not the 40 million poor in America who go without health insurance. We have a publicly funded health care system to ensure that no one, not even the poorest in our society, go without health care. The problems that have developed in our society have arisem from a lack of funding, patient's rights protection, and government safeguarding, not from the public nature of the system.


3. Why are there more MRIs in Minneapolis than there is in all of Canada?

As I said, there has been a problem of lack of funding in Canada. Of course, the number of MRIs in Minneapolis does nothing for those without health insurance in Minneapolis.

4. Why do the Canadians allow the government to stop the free flow of information into their country?

There is no problem with the flow of information here, believe me. We are saturated with commercial America trying to hawk their goods to us and telling us what to think.

5. Why don't the Canadians celebrate that 50,000,000 people have the right to vote in the Middle East for the first time

In and of itself, having the right to vote is not a bad thing. But that's not demcracy. Democracy the the right to determine your own future, which the people of Iraq certainly do not have right now, or as long as the US continues to occupy and have their puppet Allawi in power. I think we're also mourning the fact that an estimated 100,000 Iraqis died unnecessarily for this fraud that had nothing to do with Bush's real or even originally stated reasons for going to war. I wish neocons would quit obfuscating the facts with the hopes that people will forgot that it was a war based on lies.


6. Why didn't Canadians object when their government actively worked to stop freedom movements in El Salvador, Chile, Colombia, Guatemala, Iraq, Iran and Cuba.

Canadians will object when its government opposes a genuine freedom movement, as opposed to a phony one which is constructed by the US military-industrial complex.


7. Why do Canadians allow the French government to have a colony within Canada?

I can't believe this is a serious question.

8. Why can't Canadians win at hockey anymore?

With respect to Canadian NHL teams, it is because the economics of the league are tilted in favour of the large market teams. Let us not forget that Canada has one all major world championships since 2002.

9. Why do terrorists believe that there is nothing worth blowing up in Canada?

Because we don't attack poor, defenseless countries. We're with the rest of the world against a tiny minority of countries which support the Bush administration.


10. Why did the Canadian government cut and run in Rwanda thereby allowing 800,000 Tutsis to be slaughtered by men armed only with machetes?

Nice try. As often happens, right-wingers in the US try to demonize Canada and the UN, conveniently overlooking the fact that the US effectively controls the UN security council, under whose auspices Romeo Dallaire was working. If was the UN security council who refused to classify Rwanda as a genocide.

Watch the documentary "Shake Hands with the Devil." Dallaire pleaded with the security council for extra help in Rwanda, but none was forthcoming.

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

The legacy of George Kennan

The death of George Kennan, that great foreign policy analyst, at 101, is worth noting. If his foreign policy advice had been followed over the last 50 years, how different would our current reality be. Here's James Carroll of the Boston Globe, ruminating on that very subject:

The civil war on the Korean peninsula would not have been magnified into a transcendent East-West clash, licensing the permanent Stalinism of the north.

Washington would have seized the diplomatic opportunity offered by the death of Stalin, supporting the emergence of reform-minded leaders in Moscow before the arms race began in earnest.

The United States would have refrained from testing and deploying the hydrogen bomb, with notice to Moscow that such grave escalation to a genocidal weapon would take place only if the Soviets went first.

The revolutionary movements of the Third World would have been seen as rejection of colonialism and normal nationalism instead of as global conspiracy centered in Moscow.

There would have been no American war in Vietnam.

The US crusade for ''freedom" would have been mitigated by a sense of modesty, with respect for the differing political impulses of other cultures.

Washington would have remained faithful to the post-World War II American sponsorship of structures of international cooperation, centered in the United Nations.

How we remember the past determines the shape of the future. If Kennan's life reminds us that there was nothing inevitable about the militarized confrontation of the Cold War, it can also help us see an alternative to the belligerent course now being set by Washington. Here is what a Kennan-like preference for political and diplomatic responses over military ones would mean today:

An aggressive movement away from US dependence on nuclear weapons, which is the best way to check proliferation.

Avoiding the militarization of conflict with China, which can needlessly lead to a new Cold War, complete with a rekindled arms race, only now rushing into space.

A prompt end to the war in Iraq, the first step of which is a withdrawal of American forces, paired with a renunciation of all US military bases in the Middle East.

Depriving terrorists of their raison d'etre by defusing Arab and Islamic resentment of American intrusions in the Middle East.

Meeting the gravest threat to national security, which is the global degradation of the environment, by renewing structures of international cooperation.

Bush administration policies run in an exactly opposite direction from the way shown by the life of George Kennan.

As with communism in the early days of the Cold War, we have made a transcendent enemy for ourselves with ''terrorism," imagining a globally organized, ideologically driven threat that far exceeds what actually exists. We have made an idol of a particular notion of ''freedom," forgetting again that freedom from hunger and disease is what the vast majority of humans long for. Once more, we fail to see the ways in which American-style freedom includes dehumanized elements (violence, prurience, greed) that others might properly resist.

In Iraq, we reenact the perverse American script that saves by destroying. In Korea, once again (Secretary Condoleezza Rice resplendent in a military bunker), we imagine that saber rattling helps. As for international institutions like the United Nations and the World Bank, we express our contempt by appointing as representatives their sworn enemies.

George F. Kennan was a good man. Despite himself, he helped launch his nation down a dangerous road. In regretting that, he spent his life calling for another way. The ultimate ''realist," he legitimized the idealist's dream. War is not the answer. America can honor this prophet by heeding him at last.

Friday, March 18, 2005

back in a few

I'm going to be away for a few days, while I move to Vancouver. I'll need to secure a new internet connection.

Thursday, March 17, 2005

Chalmers Johnson on US-China-Taiwan relations

Here is Chalmers Johnson, author of "Sorrows of Empire", which details the military-industrial complex, and in particular the expansion of US military bases worldwide, talking about US-China relations, particularly as it pertains to Taiwan.

Japan may talk a lot about the dangers of North Korea, but the real objective of its rearmament is China. This has become clear from the ways in which Japan has recently injected itself into the single most delicate and dangerous issue of East Asian international relations -- the problem of Taiwan. Japan invaded China in 1931 and was its wartime tormentor thereafter as well as Taiwan's colonial overlord. Even then, however, Taiwan was viewed as a part of China, as the United States has long recognized. What remains to be resolved are the terms and timing of Taiwan's reintegration with the Chinese mainland. This process was deeply complicated by the fact that in 1987 Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists, who had retreated to Taiwan in 1949 at the end of the Chinese civil war (and were protected there by the American Seventh Fleet ever after), finally ended martial law on the island. Taiwan has since matured into a vibrant democracy and the Taiwanese are now starting to display their own mixed opinions about their future.

In 2000, the Taiwanese people ended a long monopoly of power by the Nationalists and gave the Democratic Progressive Party, headed by President Chen Shui-bian, an electoral victory. A native Taiwanese (as distinct from the large contingent of mainlanders who came to Taiwan in the baggage train of Chiang's defeated armies), Chen stands for an independent Taiwan, as does his party. By contrast, the Nationalists, together with a powerful mainlander splinter party, the People First Party headed by James Soong (Song Chuyu), hope to see an eventual peaceful unification of Taiwan with China. On March 7, 2005, the Bush administration complicated these delicate relations by nominating John Bolton to be the American ambassador to the United Nations. He is an avowed advocate of Taiwanese independence and was once a paid consultant to the Taiwanese government.

In May 2004, in a very close and contested election, Chen Shui-bian was reelected, and on May 20, the notorious right-wing Japanese politician Shintaro Ishihara attended his inauguration in Taipei. (Ishihara believes that Japan's 1937 Rape of Nanking was "a lie made up by the Chinese.") Though Chen won with only 50.1% of the vote, this was still a sizeable increase over his 33.9% in 2000, when the opposition was divided. The Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs immediately appointed Koh Se-kai as its informal ambassador to Japan. Koh has lived in Japan for some 33 years and maintains extensive ties to senior political and academic figures there. China responded that it would "completely annihilate" any moves toward Taiwanese independence -- even if it meant scuttling the 2008 Beijing Olympics and good relations with the United States.

Contrary to the machinations of American neo-cons and Japanese rightists, however, the Taiwanese people have revealed themselves to be open to negotiating with China over the timing and terms of reintegration. On August 23, 2004, the Legislative Yuan (Taiwan's parliament) enacted changes in its voting rules to prevent Chen from amending the Constitution to favor independence, as he had promised to do in his reelection campaign. This action drastically lowered the risk of conflict with China. Probably influencing the Legislative Yuan was the warning issued on August 22 by Singapore's new prime minister, Lee Hsien-loong: "If Taiwan goes for independence, Singapore will not recognize it. In fact, no Asian country will recognize it. China will fight. Win or lose, Taiwan will be devastated."

The next important development was parliamentary elections on December 11, 2004. President Chen called his campaign a referendum on his pro-independence policy and asked for a mandate to carry out his reforms. Instead he lost decisively. The opposition Nationalists and the People First Party won 114 seats in the 225-seat parliament, while Chen's DPP and its allies took only 101. (Ten seats went to independents.) The Nationalist leader, Lien Chan, whose party won 79 seats to the DPP's 89, said, "Today we saw extremely clearly that all the people want stability in this country."

Chen's failure to capture control of parliament also meant that a proposed purchase of $19.6 billion worth of arms from the United States was doomed. The deal included guided-missile destroyers, P-3 anti-submarine aircraft, diesel submarines, and advanced Patriot PAC-3 anti-missile systems. The Nationalists and James Soong's supporters regard the price as too high and mostly a financial sop to the Bush administration, which has been pushing the sale since 2001. They also believe the weapons would not improve Taiwan's security.

On December 27, 2004, mainland China issued its fifth Defense White Paper on the goals of the country's national defense efforts. As one long-time observer, Robert Bedeski, notes, "At first glance, the Defense White Paper is a hard-line statement on territorial sovereignty and emphasizes China's determination not to tolerate any moves at secession, independence, or separation. However, the next paragraph . . . indicates a willingness to reduce tensions in the Taiwan Strait: so long as the Taiwan authorities accept the one China principle and stop their separatist activities aimed at ‘Taiwan independence,' cross-strait talks can be held at any time on officially ending the state of hostility between the two sides."

It appears that this is also the way the Taiwanese read the message. On February 24, 2005, President Chen Shui-bian met for the first time since October 2000 with Chairman James Soong of the People First Party. The two leaders, holding diametrically opposed views on relations with the mainland, nonetheless signed a joint statement outlining ten points of consensus. They pledged to try to open full transport and commercial links across the Taiwan Strait, increase trade, and ease the ban on investments in China by many Taiwanese business sectors. The mainland reacted favorably at once. Astonishingly, this led Chen Shui-bian to say that he "would not rule out Taiwan's eventual reunion with China, provided Taiwan's 23 million people accepted it."

If the United States and Japan left China and Taiwan to their own devices, it seems possible that they would work out a modus vivendi. Taiwan has already invested some $150 billion in the mainland, and the two economies are becoming more closely integrated every day. There also seems to be a growing recognition in Taiwan that it would be very difficult to live as an independent Chinese-speaking nation alongside a country with 1.3 billion people, 3.7 million square miles of territory, a rapidly growing $1.4 trillion economy, and aspirations to regional leadership in East Asia. Rather than declaring its independence, Taiwan may try to seek a status somewhat like that of French Canada -- a kind of looser version of a Chinese Quebec under nominal central government control but maintaining separate institutions, laws, and customs.

The mainland would be so relieved by this solution it would probably accept it, particularly if it could be achieved before the 2008 Beijing Olympics. China fears that Taiwanese radicals want to declare independence a month or two before those Olympics, betting that China would not attack then because of its huge investment in the forthcoming games. Most observers believe, however, that China would have no choice but to go to war because failure to do so would invite a domestic revolution against the Chinese Communist Party for violating the national integrity of China.

Wednesday, March 16, 2005

Crying Wolfowitz

As the World Peace Herald says, both his lack of economic experience and his poor performance as Rumsfeld's undersecretary are strong reasons not to appoint Wolfowitz as World Bank President.

Even before Wolfowitz's nomination was confirmed, Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning former chief World Bank economist, warned that Wolfowitz's appointment would be "highly controversial" and ultimately against the interest of both the agency and the United States, especially with his lack of experience in development economics and financial markets.

Meanwhile, many would argue that his record as Donald Rumsfeld's deputy has been far from stellar. The neoconservative scholar headed Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in Washington before his third and latest position at the Pentagon, where he became one of the most vocal proponents for toppling Saddam Hussein's regime, accusing the Middle Eastern dictator of maintaining large caches of weapons of mass destruction and also arguing that U.S. forces would be welcomed by Iraqis as liberators once Saddam was ousted.

"His history in dealing with the Middle East is the most troubling," said one bank staff member, adding that the mood in the institution following the announcement of Wolfowitz's nomination is "like a cemetery."

Certainly, the second-in-command at the Pentagon has more enemies than allies in the Middle East, and his heavy-handed approach to foreign policy in general will be a sore point for the aid agency that depends on consensus-building among its 184 member nations. In fact, while many liberals have criticized Bush's decision to appoint fellow neocon John Bolton as the U.S. representative to the United Nations, Bolton will be in New York as the voice of the Bush administration, while Wolfowitz must act beyond U.S. national interest and strive to bring the diverse range of interest to agreement on policy issues of concern to the World Bank.

Still, the latest nomination may well be a trigger for the international agency to reconsider some of its unwritten rules, including the long-standing tradition of appointing a U.S. national to be its head, while the neighboring International Monetary Fund has always appointed a European national since the two institutions were founded following World War II. The United States remains the single-largest shareholder in both agencies, which has been the reason why, unlike the United Nations, the Bretton Woods institutions have always limited the nationalities of their respective leaders. As a result, while Wolfowitz's nomination must be approved by the World Bank's board members, it is already safe to assume that his appointment is a done deal.

"How can advice on democratic reforms be taken seriously when the multilateral institutions that offer it do not subscribe to the same standards of openness, transparency and participation they advocate?" asked Stiglitz.

He added that given Wolfowitz's record in Iraq and leaving the United States in a quagmire in the already politically turbulent Middle East, "choosing the wrong (leader for the bank) surely enhances the chances of failure."


Another prominent development economist, Jeffrey Sachs, has also spoken out on this nomination. "It's a very surprising and in many ways an inappropriate nomination," he said.

"Hundreds of millions of people depend for their lives and livelihood on the efforts of professionals to fight extreme poverty," he said, adding that he was speaking as a development expert and not as a United Nations official.

Top 10 Reasons Why Paul Wolfowitz Would Make a Good World Bank Presiden

It has been announced that neocon and PNAC mastermind Paul Wolofitz is Bush's nominee for President of the World Bank. Fresh from the Institute for Plocy Studies, here are the 10 reasons why Wolfowitz would make a good World Bank president:

(drum roll please)

1. He would follow in the great tradition of World Bank president Robert McNamara, who also helped kill tens of thousands of people in a poor country most Americans couldn’t find on a map before getting the job.
2. It helps to be a good liar when you run an institution with employees who earn over $100,000 a year to pretend to help billions of people who live on less than $1 a day.
3. With all his experience helping U.S. companies grab Iraq ’s oil profits, he's got just the right experience for doling out lucrative World Bank contracts to U.S. businesses.
4. After predecessor James Wolfensohn blew millions of dollars on "consultations" with citizen groups to give the appearance of openness, Wolfowitz's tough-guy style is just what’s needed to rid the World Bank of those irritating activists.
5. Unlike former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, another one of the four leading candidates, at least Wolfowitz hasn't failed at running a Fortune 500 company.
6. Unlike the Treasury Department’s John Taylor, another leading candidate, at least Wolfowitz doesn't want to get rid of the institution he would head.
7. While earning a University of Chicago Ph.D. , he was exposed to the tenets of market fundamentalism that have reigned at the World Bank for decades.
8. He has experience in constructing echo chambers where only the advice he wants to hear is spoken.
9. He knows some efficient private contractors who build echo chambers for only a few hundred billion dollars (cost plus, of course).
10. He can develop a pre-emptive poverty doctrine where the World Bank could invade countries that fail to make themselves safe for U.S. business, modeled on the U.S. pre-emptive war doctrine he helped craft.

Monday, March 14, 2005

Defending Arabs and Muslims

The problem of anti-Arab and anti-Islam discrimination and violence has surfaced again and again since 9/11 and their is no excuse for it. It is a hate crime. Even worse is the fact that a number of such crimes are perpetuated by officers of the law, whose duty it is to dispense justice fairly to all regardless of race, religion etc. To support the rights of Muslims support CAIR, or CAIR-Canada. To defend Arab rights in America, support the Arab American Institute. In Canada, support the Canadian Arab Federation. Thanks

Bob Geldof: Africa has become a living wound

Bob Geldof on the plight of Africa, and the UK Commission for Africa's response to it:

Eat your dinner, they told me as a boy, think about the poor starving children in India.

In those far-off days the concern of the adult world was for Asia. It had a huge population and gloomy prospects in the eyes of economists.

The people of Africa were poor, too, but they had riches in the form of gold, diamonds and copper - and ground so fertile that plants grew overnight wherever you dropped a seed the day before. Africans earned double what Asians did. Africa would be all right.

Forty years on and things are not all right. Africa has stagnated while Asia has seen an astonishing turnaround. First the tiger economies of east Asia leapt ahead. Now India and Bangladesh have followed. Today Asians earn double what Africans do. And life expectancy in Africa is now 17 years less than in India. Why has Africa fallen so far behind?

What we have done on the Commission for Africa - as our declaration in The Independent today tells the world - is analyse the situation, define the real problem and come up with a plan for change.

Our report is being launched in the year that Britain is in the chair at two of the world's most powerful economic groupings - the European Union and the G8. Many of those serving on the commission are political leaders in power. That means it offers the chance of real change.

If other nations can be persuaded to adopt Britain's plan then poverty in Africa could be on the way to eradication. Tony Blair has called Africa a "scar on the conscience of the world". But it is not just a scar. It is a living wound - one which causes one in six African children to die before their fifth birthday. And millions more to go to bed hungry every night.

Our report tries to tackle that. The question we set ourselves was simple: why? The answer, we found, is a complex cocktail of causes: war, and a lack of mechanisms to stop conflict which are taken for granted in developed economies; bad government; corruption.

But the most damaging problem is not the most dramatic. It is what, in the opaque jargon of development, is called "lack of capacity". That means poor roads, broken-down lorries, telephones that don't connect and power grids that regularly black out. It means civil servants who do not have the skills, training, money and basic equipment - let alone the computers - to collect data, formulate sound policies and then deliver the services that ordinary people require.

That is not all. Africa's parliaments, newspapers and judges do not have the ability to hold the continent's governments up to proper scrutiny. Crumbling clinics and schools deprive people of health and education - and their nations of a skilled, healthy workforce. It's an economic climate in which companies and individuals are afraid to invest their money to create jobs.

On top of that Africa cannot produce enough goods of the right quality, or - ironically - cheaply enough, to compete on world markets. And what it does sell is subject to scandalous unfair taxes and tariffs imposed by rich nations.

Then there is debt. For every £2 we send them in aid they have to send £1 back in debt repayments - on debts which are odious as well as onerous.

That's the bad news. The good news is that the Commission for Africa has come up with suggestions which can make significant improvements in each of these areas. But it will need strong action from Africa, and strong backing from us in the rich world.

Change has already begun in Africa, though the rest of world has hardly yet noticed. Now industrialised economies must do three things. We must end the furtive and immoral practices which hinder growth in Africa - scrapping subsidies from the Common Agricultural Policy and US Farm Bill. We must abolish the tariffs that prevent Africa's products from entering our markets on equal terms. And we must do away with the debt that clings like a heavy parasite to the body of every man turning the soil in his field, every woman carrying a heavy pot of water from the well, and every child who cannot go to school.

When we have stopped doing the things which harm Africa we can work on improving the way we help. We must improve the quality of our aid (the commission's 400-page report suggests in detail how). And we should double the aid we give Africa - from $25bn (£13bn) to $50bn a year within five years - and then, if that has proved effective, treble it to $75bn a year.

We have produced a package which will stretch governments in Africa and the rich world. It is for others to use words like historic. But I have a hunch that if our plan is adopted this could be the decade when, with our help, Africa's fortune turns. The tide of misery can become a tide of opportunity.

Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have ensured that the issue of Africa will be there on the top table when the world's most powerful men meet at the forthcoming summit at Gleneagles in Scotland in July. The job of the rest of us is to push them to adopt the plan. If they do, the legacy of our times need not be fly-covered children dying on our television screens every night.

Instead we can imagine for the children of Africa the kind of future that every mother and father in this country takes for granted for their own children: that they go healthy and happy to school; in a nation that can feed itself and trade fairly with the world; under a government that makes life better not worse; in a country which is part of a prosperous, safe and secure world. That is the common interest of us all. As Gary Gilmore said: "Let's do it".

THE DECLARATION FROM THE COMMISSION FOR AFRICA

The commission for Africa finds the condition of the lives of the majority of Africans to be intolerable and an affront to the dignity of all mankind. We insist upon an alteration of these conditions through a change of policy in favour of the weak.

Having analysed and costed how this may be achieved, we call for our conclusions to be implemented forthwith in the cause of right and justice and in the name of our shared humanity. On the edge of this new century, in an age of unprecedented wealth and economic progress by all continents, it is unacceptable that Africa drifts further from the rest of the world, unseen in its misery and ignored in its pain.

The commission, its members acting in their capacity as individuals, has assimilated the analysis of years and all extant reports into our findings. These clearly show how things may have been otherwise.

However, we exist in contemporary realities. The world is vastly different to that of 20 years ago when we forcefully acknowledged the pity of the great african famine of 1984-85. The world, then locked into its Cold War political stasis, remained rigid in its competitive ideologies. The breaking of this deadlock, and the increase in global trade that followed, allied to new technologies and cultural shifts, have created a more fluid, less predictive yet more interdependent world.

This world in flux has brought great opportunities along with confusion, change and anxiety. But such change poses great possibilities for us all and especially for Africa, that great giant finally beginning to stir itself from its enforced slumber. We need, then, to seek to understand these newer forces in play about us, attempt to define them and in so doing set the framework for policies that favour the poor.

The great nations of the world, in alliance with their African neighbours, must now move together, in our common interest. How they may proceed will be determined by each nation's needs and desires. But all must immediately begin the journey that leads us to the ultimate common destination of a more equitable world.

Our task was the first step. It is done.

Sunday, March 13, 2005

Chinese anti-secession law

The government of China has passed an anti-secession law which authorizes the use offorce against Taiwan. The law contains two central concepts - 1) that there is only on China, encompassing mainland China and Taiwan, and 2):

In the event that the "Taiwan independence" secessionist forces should act under any name or by any means to cause the fact of Taiwan's secession from China, or that major incidents entailing Taiwan's secession from China should occur, or that possibilities for a peaceful reunification should be completely exhausted, the state shall employ non-peaceful means and other necessary measures to protect China's sovereignty and territorial integrity.


Taiwanese government reaction has been expectedly critical. VP Annette Lu points out that the law contradicts US-China understandings that difference with Taiwan ought to be resolved "in a peaceful manner."

From the Tawain News:
We strongly encourage the Chen administration to accurately weigh international reactions and concerns and ensure that any responses or countermeasures to the PRC law are adopted and designed to protect our democracy and are not being made merely for the sake of domestic consumption.

By adhering to the principles of democracy and peace, Taiwan can contrast its principled response with Beijing's unilateral and callous anti-democratic maneuver. Besides correcting our long-distorted image as a "trouble maker" in cross-strait relations, a pragmatic response will show the world that it is Beijing that is actually rocking the boat or "pushing the envelope" in the Taiwan Strait.

Furthermore, Taiwan can take this opportunity to persuade the world that what really "separates" the PRC and Taiwan is not so much the matter of sovereignty but the degree to which democratic values and institutions have taken root and become consolidated.

As a "goodwill response" to Washington's appeal to both sides to "avoid risking igniting a cycle of reaction and counter-reaction," Taiwan should continue to appeal to the universal values of peace and democracy as the most effective tools to garner international support.

President Chen himself must show his leadership by personally addressing the nation on why domestic unity is so necessary now and on how the DPP administration aims to systematically deal with the situation.

Moreover, the DPP administration should launch an intensive international campaign to explain to the world community that the Taiwanese public virtually unanimously objects to the anti-separation law and why.

Since the "anti-secession law" poses a "clear and present" danger and threat not only to the people of Taiwan but also to regional peace and stability, the DPP government should also ask for more explicit support from the international community, especially the U.S. and Japan, to protect our hard-won democracy in the face of Beijing's militarism and unilateralism.

Incorporation of Taiwan into the U.S.-Japan security dialogue and the passage of proactive legislation to safeguard Taiwan's security in the face of this qualitatively new threat are steps that should be fostered.

The success of the March 26 demonstration "for democracy and peace and to protect Taiwan," which will no doubt attract the attention of the world community, is also crucial.

For one million Taiwanese to take to the streets to protest the PRC's provocative and unilateral attempt to undermine our sovereignty and democracy could stand as an even more significant global event than the momentous march by 500,000 Hong Kong residents on July 1, 2003 to object to Beijing's scheme to impose repressive revisions in the Basic Law.

If the Hong Kong people can say "no" to China and force Beijing to back down, scenes of even more Taiwanese "voting with their feet" for democracy and against annexation will be even more embarrassing for PRC leaders in Zhongnanhai.


I have many friends in Taiwan, and am concerned about them. I will be following this story closely.

More on Bolton

More on Bolton:

He was with the Project for a New American Century.

He was a senior vice president at the American Enterprise Institute.

He served as a "senior member of George Bush's legal team in Florida after the 2000 election," as Jim Lobe of Inter Press Service notes.

And Bolton was an aide to Jesse Helms. According to Lobe, Helms heaped praise on the man: "John Bolton is the kind of man with whom I would want to stand at Armageddon, if it should be my lot to be on hand for what is forecast to be the final battle between good and evil in this world."

Bolton is part of the cabal that is now running U.S. foreign policy.

As undersecretary of state for arms control and international security affairs, Bolton was known as Powell's minder at the State Department, the neocon mole who reported back to Cheney and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz if Powell was straying too far from their agenda.

And he tried to impose their agenda even when it ran opposite of Powell's.

While Powell was trying to calm relations with North Korea, Bolton called Kim Jong Il a "tyrannical dictator," which didn't help matters any, even if true.

And Bolton played to the far right crowd in Florida when in May 2002 he, apropos of nothing, said Castro had "at least a limited offensive biological warfare research and development effort" and had "provided dual-use biotechnology to other rogue states." Days later, Powell himself backed off Bolton's remarks.

Bolton was extremely hostile to the creation of the International Criminal Court, and Lobe notes that Powell let Bolton sign the formal notification to Kofi Annan that the U.S. was pulling out. According to Lobe, Bolton told The Wall Street Journal that was "the happiest moment of my government service."

Bolton is particularly ill equipped to be US ambassador to the United Nations because he's on record as saying "there's no such thing as the United Nations" and that "it wouldn't make a bit of difference" if the UN building "lost 10 stories."

Writing in the Weekly Standard on October 4, 1999, he denounced what he called "Kofi Annan's UN Power Grab." And he said that President Clinton, in defending NATO's intervention in the Balkans, should have rejected Annan's claim that the United States should have come to the Security Council. "The correct American response, for those who supported the NATO campaign, is: "We did not need the Security Council's permission to act." That's familiar language. In fact, it's the Bush Administration mantra.

Cheney and the neocons believe they don't need anybody's permission to act. Cheney was quoted in The Washington Post on January 20 as saying that Bush Senior didn't even need Congress's approval to go to war against Iraq back 1991.

In April 2000 at the American Enterprise Institute, Bolton presided over a conference entitled "Trends in Global Governance: Do They Threaten American Sovereignty?" The agenda was stacked from the outset. The goal of the conference was to "address the extent to which America's freedom of action internationally and its own internal governance--its sovereignty and its constitutionalism--should be constrained by international organizations and agreements."

John Bolton

Jeez. I come back after a couple of weeks away, and I find out that neocon John Bolton is Bush's nominee for ambassador to the UN. Here are some questions that Phyllis Bennis says should be asked at his confirmation hearing:

1. In 1994 you said "There is no United Nations." Do you still believe that the international community, and the world's premiere multilateral organization, are illusions?

2. You also said "When the United States leads, the United Nations will follow. When it suits our interest to do so, we will do so. When it does not suit our interests we will not." Do you still believe that the U.S. should approach the United Nations only in a tactical way, treating it as a tool of U.S. foreign policy?

3. Do you think that the United Nations represents a threat to U.S. sovereignty, and therefore do you think we should simply stop paying dues to the UN?

4. The United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, both of which the U.S. has signed and ratified, form the cornerstones of international law. Do you believe the U.S. would be better off if it "unsigned" those two treaties?

5. While you were heading the Bush administration's arms control efforts, you fought for the U.S. to withdraw from the ABM treaty. Do you believe that because the U.S. military is so dramatically more powerful than that of any other country or group of countries in the world, that it's easier if we simply dictate to other nations what weapons they can or can't have rather than worrying about complicated multi-lateral agreements?

6. The U.S. was one of the original drafters of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Do you think we have any obligation to fulfill the terms of that treaty regarding the rights of nuclear weapons states, or is it really something that only the non-nuclear signatories are accountable to?

7. Do you think the U.S. should ever sign on to any treaty that holds us accountable to the same limits (of arms, nukes, etc.) as other countries around the world? Do you think we should refuse to sign on to a strengthened global treaty on bio-weapons, for instance, if it required the U.S. to allow the same kind of international inspections that we require of other countries?

8. Was "unsigning" the Rome Treaty creating the International Criminal Court the "happiest moment" of your government service? What other treaties do you think the U.S. should "unsign"?

9. Despite claims to the contrary by numerous intelligence and military officials, do you still think Cuba is producing biological weapons?

10. Former Senator Jesse Helms described you as ''the kind of man with whom I would want to stand at Armageddon …[at] the final battle between good and evil in this world." Do you see your role at the United Nations as fighting that same battle between good and evil?

teach-ins

Add one more to the list of ideas as to where the global peace movement must go from here: teach-ins. This speaks to the importance of educating folks not only about the reality in Iraq and the ultimate goals of the Bush crazies, but also to the fear of some about "what if we withdraw?" I would respond by asking, "what if we stay?:

Building A Plan

First, the assembly affirmed that we must broaden and deepen our base to catalyze public sentiment for bringing the troops home to reach a tipping point. According to a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll taken after the Iraq elections, 59 percent of the public believes the United States should pull its troops out of Iraq in the next year. Yet the ranks of those actively demanding that the president produce an exit strategy from Iraq are slim. The peace movement must find fresh ways to stir untapped allies so that, in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, our conscience leaves us--no other choice--but to act.

Second, we must support and amplify the pressure coming from within the ranks of the military. Military families and veterans hold the moral authority to successfully communicate with the U.S. public the reality on the ground in Iraq and the disillusion soldiers are facing. Iraq War veterans and military families need help putting a human face on the 1,500 soldiers who have been sent to their graves and the thousands more who are suffering the physical and mental scars of war. It's also crucial to expose how the war has dangerously overextended the U.S. military, the National Guard and our military reserve units.

Third, we must seize on Bush's greatest vulnerability--the war's astronomical cost, set to surpass $200 billion in the coming weeks. Bush's mounting deficit from reckless war spending is already squeezing out community programs that serve millions.

And fourth, we must expose the hypocrisy of Bush's war of liberation and present viable alternatives to promote genuine democracy and economic sovereignty in Iraq.

Back To Movement Roots

Founded in 2002, UFPJ is the glue that will continue to link 1,400 organizations together around these strategies to oppose Bush's Iraq War and its domestic consequences. Since its inception, this diverse and dynamic coalition has mobilized hundreds of thousands of people through global demonstrations like the 'World Says No to War' actions on Feb. 15, 2003, national actions such as the high-profile protests during the Republican National Convention in August 2004, and hundreds of smaller-scale actions that sustained opposition to this war since 2003.

What's ahead for the peace movement? For our part, UFPJ seeks to expand our base through a sustained education campaign set to launch March 24, the 40th anniversary of the first Vietnam teach-in. Simultaneous teach-ins will kickoff the campaign in Washington D.C., California, and at the site of the first Vietnam teach-in in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Our goal is to generate momentum and infrastructure for a long-term education movement that promotes fresh models for reaching beyond the choir to engage clergy, youth, immigrants and others about the real axis of evil—racism, poverty and war—set forth by Martin Luther King in 1967.

Most importantly, the teach-in campaign will speak to the large slice of the 59 percent of the public who thinks the troops should be brought home but are paralyzed with fear about the consequences for Iraq. Our task is to illustrate the facts--the longer the United States occupies Iraq, the more deadly and costly this war will be.

Coupled with the education campaign is a strategy to highlight the domestic consequence of war in our organizing. Missouri taxpayers, who hosted the UFPJ conference, for example, are on the verge of paying $1.1 billion more to fund the Iraq War once Congress passes Bush's requested $82 billion emergency Iraq supplemental funding package. Missouri’s share of the impending budget bill could be directed, instead, to provide health care to more than 485,000 children in the state. With statistics like this in mind, the assembly backed a plan to partner with allies such as poverty groups, education advocates and health care coalitions who are leading fights to save vital programs that are getting burned by Bush’s skyrocketing deficits and budget cuts. This initiative will link the mushrooming number of local fights to save essential public services and the $1.5 billion-a-week sinkhole of Iraq War funding.

Work On The Ground

UFPJ has set in motion a strategy to hold lawmakers’ feet to the fire for their inertia on this failing war. The coalition is both asking Congress to cut the purse strings for military operations in Iraq and developing a nationally coordinated strategy to pressure Congress and other elected officials to bring the troops home immediately. This multi-year Congressional pressure strategy—which will draw lessons from the Vietnam-era campaign around the McGovern-Hatfield Amendment—seeks to expedite the war's end. The campaign is drawing its strength from grassroots organizing and will link street actions with other types of pressure, like direct advocacy, to make ending the war a practical priority for elected officials. With more than 1,400 local member groups from across the country representing hundreds of thousands of people, UFPJ is an untapped political powerhouse.

This muscle will also be channeled into a state-by-state campaign to halt the use and abuse of the U.S. National Guard in Iraq. Just one week after the conference, on March 1, a total of 49 Vermont towns led the charge by passing resolutions asking their state legislators and congressional delegation to investigate the use of the Vermont National Guard in Iraq. The town hall resolutions also called on the president and Congress to "take steps to withdraw American troops from Iraq." The campaign, spearheaded by Military Families Speak Out, will build on the Cities for Peace resolution model that led to 165 'No War' resolutions by the March 2003 invasion.

This amazing victory in Vermont, which had been in the works for months, will inspire hearings in other state legislatures and city councils toward building the political will to pass resolutions to halt the use of National Guard in Iraq. While the short-term goal is to educate local lawmakers and the public about the unfair treatment of the National Guard, the campaign will also expose the overextension of military personnel and the de facto backdoor draft that funnels low-income youth to serve in disproportionately high numbers.

In the short term, UFPJ will continue to build on what it does best: mobilize. The coalition is supporting a mass protest rally near Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, N.C., on March 19 to coincide with the second anniversary of the U.S. invasion. Military families and veterans' groups are leading the effort to organize a powerful action that honors the memories of more than 50 soldiers from that base who have been killed, while demanding that the president stop sending soldiers and civilians to their graves.

On the anniversary, dozens of groups, under the leadership of the Iraq Pledge of Resistance, will urge the American public to join a campaign of 'civil resistance' to ratchet up the significance and types of actions undertaken to end the war--particularly nonviolent civil disobedience.

Chomsky on Nonviolent Resistance

I'm back. Anyway, I decided to take a look at Noam Chomsky's blog, and found this:

It has been compelled to accept elections, to accept the defeat of its chosen favorite, to allow Iraqis to write a constitution. The state of the outrageous and illegal economic conditions imposed by the CPA is uncertain. A leading plank of the winning Shi’ite alliance was a timetable for withdrawal of the US-UK forces. Both Washington and London flatly refuse, and the US has already announced that its forces will stay into 2007. The elected leadership is under plenty of pressure to accept what the Wall St Journal calls “vague promises” of eventual withdrawal. But it’s uncertain whether the US can sustain it’s long-term plan to keep Iraq under US military control, by means of a dependable client state.

The main factor that has caused the US to back down is mass non-violent resistance, including huge demonstrations, Sistani fatwas, etc. It should be regarded as a triumph of non-violence, I think. The “insurgents” are not a major problem for US planners. The US has such overwhelming reserves of violence that in that arena it will never have much trouble. But nonviolent resistance is a different matter.

What can we do here? Anything we like: educational programs, protests, demonstrations,....—you name it. I don’t know of any situation exactly like this, though there are others that have some similarity, and they have shown that an organized activist public can impose conditions that power simply cannot ignore. The Vietnam war, though a radically different situation, did once again support that conclusion.

During the past year the US has been compelled to back down step by step from its plans for Iraq.