A Video Series on World Agriculture: Monsanto, Part 5

Posted on August 16, 2008 by RagBlog

The World According to Monsanto (Part 5 of 8)

Right now, there is probably no other company that is doing more to endanger the health of this planet, and it’s inhabitants, than Monsanto. With Nazi-like attitude, they are leading the world in shear destructive evil greed. First they were a drug company, and then they expanded to become a drugs and genetic engineering company, and now Monsanto is attempting to acquire water rights in countries with water shortages in a move to control the people’s basic means of survival, and production of the global food supply. Giant transnational corporations like Monsanto, in collusion with the World Bank and the World Trade Organization, seek to commodify and privatize the world’s water and put it on the open market for sale to the highest bidder. Millions of the world’s citizens are being deprived of this fundamental human right, and vast ecological damage is being wrought as massive industry claims water once used to sustain communities and replenish nature.

Click here for more information.

Thanks to Diane Stirling-Stevens / The Rag Blog

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Just As the Hangman Partners with the Condemned Man

Posted on August 16, 2008 by RagBlog


Saving the World to Save Some of Ourselves
By Case Wagenvoord / August 16, 2008

Dear George,

The high point of my day is getting off on the National Security Strategy for the United States (NSS). This is the baby that tells the world just how we’re going to fuck with them. It beats porn any day.

The NSS leads with that fundamental biblical truth, “Economic freedom is a moral imperative,” even if some must die so we can protect it. The right to own property is fundamental to human nature (our kind). Economic freedom promotes social stability by keeping the masses so impoverished and weakened that their sole concern is survival, not political agitation.

Free governments govern their states through the marginalization of the poor, which is why the best form of government is Authoritarian Democracy in which a free people freely elect the tyrant of their choice.

America does not attack free nations, which we define as any nation that allows us to shamelessly exploit it. Nations that resist this exploitation are evil and may be attacked preemptively. This is how we protect the American (corporate) people and preserve the American (corporate) way.

The NSS proposes a new Cold War whose aim is to spread Authoritarian Democracy to the world. Condi calls it “transformational democracy.” She elaborates by adding, “The fundamental character of regimes now matters more than the international distribution of power.”

So it’s in with paranoia and out with the balance of power diplomacy that has governed international relations since the Peace of Westphalia. It matters not that the world is against us as long as it’s our kind of world.

We don’t oppress; we partner, just as the hangman partners with the condemned man.

We must muster all of our assets for the struggle to come, from our missiles to our tanks to our prisons to our waterboards to our electrodes. Ours is the noblest mission the world has seen since the Europeans spread Christianity with the rack and the stake.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones

Source / Open Letters to George W. Bush from His Ardent Admirer, Belacqua Jones

Thanks to Diane Stirling-Stevens / The Rag Blog

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Iraq Report: The US Hegemonic View of the SOFA

Posted on August 16, 2008 by RagBlog

Nouri al-Maliki

IRAQ: U.S. Officials Admit Worry over a ‘Difficult’ al-Maliki
By Gareth Porter / August 15, 2008

WASHINGTON — U.S. officials privately admit being concerned that Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al- Maliki has become “overconfident” about his government’s ability to manage without U.S. combat troops, according to an Iraq analyst who just returned from a trip to Iraq arranged by U.S. commander General David Petraeus.

Colin Kahl, a fellow at the Centre for a New American Security (CNAS) — which has supported a long-term U.S. military presence in Iraq — told the press this week that there was “a certain degree of grudging respect for al- Maliki” among officials with whom we met, “but more often concern about his emerging overconfidence which is making it difficult to interact with him.”

That assessment contrasts with statements of George W. Bush administration officials implying that al-Maliki’s public demands for a timetable for U.S. military withdrawal are merely negotiating ploys or political grandstanding.

U.S. officials admitted that al-Maliki’s overconfidence has influenced the status of forces negotiations, according to Kahl. None of the U.S. officials in Baghdad would “lead off with badmouthing the prime minister,” Kahl said in an interview with IPS, but upon probing further, “you get a sense they are concerned that the al-Maliki regime has an inflated sense of his power.”

The Bush administration hoped negotiations with al-Maliki on a status of forces agreement would legitimise a long-term U.S. military presence in Iraq and control over a number of military bases, but the Iraqi leader refused to go along with an agreement that lacked a timetable for withdrawal of all U.S. troops.

Al-Maliki’s new sense of confidence has been accompanied by a new political identity as a nationalist foe of the occupation, according to Kahl. “He is successfully fashioning himself as an Iraqi hero who kicked the Americans out. That makes him difficult to negotiate with.”

One of the consequences of al-Maliki’s perception of the new power relations in Iraq is that he is even less inclined than before to make accommodations with former Sunni insurgents now on the U.S. payroll in the militias called ‘Sons of Iraq’.

Kahl said in the briefing that, of the 103,000 Sunnis belonging to those militias, the Iraqi government had promised to take into the security forces only about 16,000. But in fact, it has approved only 600 applicants thus far, according to Kahl, and most of those have turned out to be Shi’a rather than Sunni militiamen.

“There’s even some evidence that [al-Maliki] wants to start a fight with the Sons of Iraq,” said Kahl. “Al-Maliki doesn’t believe he has to accommodate these people. He will only do it if we twist his arm to the breaking point.”

Kahl said al-Maliki has made a series of moves that have consolidated his personal power position within the state apparatus as well as in relation to various armed groups in the country. He has put intelligence agencies directly under his control and has set up major military operation centres around the country which report directly to the prime minister’s office.

Even more important, however, Al-Maliki’s power position has also been bolstered by the decisions by nationalist Shiite leader Moqtada al-Sadr not to launch a concerted military resistance to U.S. and Iraqi government campaigns to weaken his Mahdi Army in 2007 and then to give up his political-military power positions in Basra, Sadr City and Amarah in 2008 without having been militarily defeated.

Petraeus and the U.S. military command in Iraq have asserted that al-Sadr’s decisions reflected the fact that the Mahdi Army had been weakened by U.S. military pressures. However, the broader set of developments over the past year suggests that the primary reason for Sadr’s willingness to give up military resistance was a strategic understanding with Iran to shift to political and diplomatic resistance to the U.S. military presence.

High officials in the al-Maliki regime asserted repeatedly last fall that it was Iran’s intervention with al-Sadr that brought about the unilateral ceasefire of Aug. 27, 2007. Sadr’s decisions to give up military control of Basra and Sadr City before his forces were defeated were taken in the context of Iranian mediation between al-Sadr and the al-Maliki regime.

Iran’s strategic relationship with al-Sadr accomplished what the U.S. military never believed would be possible even in its most optimistic scenario — the neutralisation of the most potent political-military threat to the regime’s stability. The ability of Iran to deliver that benefit to al-Maliki — as part of a broader shift to an anti-occupation regime policy — almost certainly strengthened the case that Iran made to al-Maliki for a demand for a timetable for U.S. troop withdrawal in the status of forces negotiations.

Kahl is sympathetic to the official U.S. concerns about al-Maliki. Both Kahl and CNAS have called for negotiation of a U.S. military presence in Iraq going well beyond the 2010 deadline for complete U.S. withdrawal that al-Maliki has put forward publicly.

In an unpublished paper for CNAS last April, Kahl advocated that the U.S. should keep 60,000 to 80,000 troops in Iraq into late 2010 in what he called a “sustainable over-watch posture”.

Despite the change in the power situation, Kahl and CNAS still takes the position that Iraq needs long-term U.S. support so badly that the Bush administration should use its leverage to get the al-Maliki regime to make the political accommodations necessary to achieve longer-term stability in the country. For example, the Iraq government’s need for U.S. help in recovering illegally exported funds and properties, which were included in the statement of principles governing the negotiations last November at Iraqi insistence.

Then there is the threat of immediate troop withdrawal if al-Maliki does not toe the line. Kahl said he was told in Iraq that, in one of the regular videoconferences Bush holds with al-Maliki, he said, “If the negotiations crash and burn, I will be forced to pull out all U.S. troops by Jan. 1.”

That Bush threat “got al-Maliki’s attention,” Kahl believes. He advocates the use of such threats to force al-Maliki to accommodate the interests of the Sunnis as well as those of the Sadrists, in order to bring them fully into the political system. Otherwise, Kahl argues, the security gains of 2007 and 2008 will ultimately be reversed.

Al-Maliki is no longer dependent on Washington as he was a year or two ago. That major shift in power relations — now reluctantly acknowledged by the Bush administration — has brought into sharper relief the contradictions between the interests of the Iraqi government and those of the administration.

The al-Maliki regime is a Shiite-dominated government that views its Sunni Arab neighbours — who have generally opposed Shiite rule in Iraq — with intense distrust and looks to Iran for support against them. The Bush administration, on the other hand, has forged closer relations with Sunni regimes against Iran. The short-term Shiite dependence on the U.S. occupation to establish Shiite control of the state apparatus is giving way to a more fundamental distrust toward U.S. power in Iraq and the region.

Source / IPS News

The Rag Blog
* Note: SOFA = Status of Forces Agreement

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A Flash from the Past – Interview with Ben Morea

Posted on August 16, 2008 by RagBlog

With the US government on a permanent war footing overseas whilst simultaneously cracking down on civil liberties and dissent at home it sometimes seems as if the left wing movements of the 1960s never existed. What do you see as the legacy of groups like Black Mask and the New Left in general?

Ben Morea: Part of the reason I re-emerged [after more than 30 years of anonymity] to talk about what we did back in the 1960s is the fact that things have gotten so bad in the US. It’s at a point where you can’t ignore it, it’s worse than ever.

I figured that I’d start letting people know about our history and then go from there. All I can tell people is that when it looked pretty dismal in the past we took action and it did have an effect. A lot was achieved and yet a few years beforehand no one would have expected that we could take on the behemoth of American capitalism. It’s counter-productive to sit back and say “You can’t do anything.” It’s not my place to tell people exactly what they should do, but there is always some way to respond and take action, just look around.

Up Against The Wall Motherfucker! – Interview with Ben Morea
By Ret Marut / March 17, 2008

Morea talks of the 1960s Black Mask and Up Against The Wall Motherfucker! groups and their activities – such as busting into the Pentagon during an anti-war protest, and “assassinating” a famous poet. He also discusses friendships with various characters, including the late Valerie Solanas – who shot Andy Warhol and wrote the SCUM Manifesto.

Morea has a blog at http://e-blast.squarespace.com/

========

Ben Morea: An Interview

Ben Morea was interviewed by lain McIntyre in 2006.

Tell us about your background and how you came to find yourself involved in the radical scenes of New York during the 1960s.

Ben Morea: I was raised mostly around the Virginia/Maryland area and New York. When I was ten years old my mother remarried and moved to Manhattan. I was basically a ghetto kid and got involved in drug addictions as a teenager spending time in prison. At one point when I was in a prison hospital I started reading and developed an interest in art. When I was released I completely changed my persona. In order to break my addiction I made a complete break from the kids I grew up with and the life I knew.

In the late 1950s I went looking for the beatniks because they seemed to combine social awareness with art. I met the Living Theatre people and was highly influenced by their ideas despite never being theatrically oriented myself. Judith Malina and Julian Beck were anarchists and they were the first people to put a name to the way I was feeling and leaning philosophically.

I also met an Italian-American artist named Aldo Tambellini who was very radical in his thinking and who channelled all of that into his art rather than social activism. He would only hold shows in common areas like churchyards and hallways in order to bring art to the public. He influenced me a lot in seeing that having art in museums was a way of rarefying it and making it a tool of the ruling class.

I’m self educated and continued my pursuit of anarchism and art through reading and correspondence. I became aware of Dada and Surrealism and the radical wing of twentieth century art and sought out anyone who had information about it or who had been involved. I really felt comfortable with the wedding of social thought with aesthetic practice. I corresponded quite a bit with one of the living Dadaists Richard Huelsenbeck who was living in New York, but whom I never met.

At the same time I became friendly with the political wing of the anarchists meeting up with people who had fought in Spain, from the Durutti Brigade and other groups. They were all in their 60s and I was in my 20s.

I was also a practising artist working at my own art and aesthetic. I was mainly painting in an abstract, but naturalistic form as well as doing some sculpture. There was some influence from the American expressionists, but Zen was also an influence.

When did Black Mask come together as a group? How were you organised and who was involved?

Ben: It’s hard to say whether we started in 1965 or 1966, but the magazine definitely started in 1966. Black Mask was really very small. It started off with just a few people. As anarchists, and not very doctrinaire ones, we had no leadership although I was the driving force in the group. Both Ron Hahne and I had already been working together with Aldo doing art shows in public to promote the idea of art as an integral part of everyday life, not an institutionalised thing. Ron and I became close friends and found that we had a more socially polemical view than Aldo in wanting to go closer to the political elements of Dada and Surrealism as well as to the growing unrest in Black America. We wanted to find a place where art and politics could coexist in a radical way. Once we started publishing Black Mask and holding actions other artists and people on a similar wavelength were attracted to what we were doing. I’ve always favoured an organic approach where you don’t have meetings and people just associate informally rather than having a hierarchy and recruiting members.

Over time Ron became less interested in the political sphere and I became more interested in working with the people who were involved in fighting for civil rights and against the Vietnam war. I can honestly say that in both Black Mask and then later The Family we never held a meeting where we consciously sat down to decide our direction or exactly how we would deal with a particular action or situation. It all developed as a very spontaneous, organic outgrowth of whatever we thought was appropriate at the time.

One of Black Mask’s first actions was to shut down the Museum Of Modern Art (MOMA). Tell us about what happened and the group’s approach to direct action in general.

Ben: We felt that art itself, the creative effort, was an obviously worthwhile, valuable and even spiritual experience. The Museum and gallery systern separated art from that living interchange and had nothing to do with the vital, creative urge. Museums weren’t a living house, they were just a repository. We were searching for ways to raise questions about how things were presented and closing down MOMA was just one of them.

The action was a success. We’d announced our plans in advance and they closed the museum in fear of what we might do. A lot of people stopped and talked with us about what we were doing and this action and others attracted radical artists to our fold.

At other times we disrupted exhibitions, galleries and lectures. Most of these actions were just thought up on the spot and a lot of what we did was part of a learning process. Things weren’t completely thought out, but were a way for us to develop an understanding of our place in the ongoing struggle. A lot of political groups would have these big grandiose strategies and plans, but for us the actions were just a way of expressing ourselves and seeing how we could make a dent in society.

In 1966 the group also targeted the Loeb Centre at New York University (NYU). What happened with that action?

Ben: We had a strong sense of humour and of guerrilla theatre. I used to disrupt art lectures at NYU to raise issues other than those that the lecturers wanted to discuss. As a result I was challenged to a debate by some of the academics. I remember that particular event had such a pretentious approach that we had to do something. It was incredibly stratified and only meant for the elite and it seemed like they’d done everything possible to keep it away from the public at large. We handed out loads of leaflets advertising this free event with food and alcohol and they had to block off the streets all around because so many people showed up. We went down to the Bowery and handed out flyers so that all the drunks and street people would show up.

Black Mask clearly drew inspiration not only from the Dadaists, Surrealists and avant-garde movements of the past, but also from the contemporary black insurrections and youth movements of the 1960s. Tell us a little more about these influences and about your ideas and approach to politics and art in general.

Ben: From my perspective and that of the people I worked with we saw a need to change everything from the way we lived to the way we thought to the way we even ate. Total Revolution was our way of saying that we weren’t going to settle for political or cultural change, but that we want it all, we want everything to change. Western society had reached a stalemate and needed a total overhaul. We knew that wasn’t going to happen, but that was our demand, what we were about.

It also meant seeing that you need all types of people involved, not just political activists. Poets and artists are just as important. Revolution comes about as a cumulative effect and part of that is a change in consciousness, a new way of thinking.

How did Black Mask fit into the New York political and arts scenes because it seems as if you went out of your way to ridicule and challenge ideologues of all stripes?

Ben: A lot of political people questioned what we did saying we should only attack society on the political front and that we shouldn’t care about art. However we felt it was best to take action in the place where you were and that as artists these issues were important to us.

Many of the hippies distrusted us and the politicos hated us because they couldn’t control us or understand what we were doing. As for the people in the art world I’m sure most of them thought we were crazy.

Black Mask seems to have issued various challenges to the peace movement in criticising the moderates for their lack of militancy whilst also attacking the Left for its unconditional support of the National Liberation Front (NLF). Many radicals from the 1960s are now somewhat regretful or appear reticent to speak about their support for the North Vietnamese regime.

Ben: We supported the right of the Vietnamese people to resist American invasion, but were not going to support the North Vietnamese government’s own oppressive behaviour. It was a subtle point and most of the left couldn’t understand it. We knew the history of Spain where both the Francoists and Stalinists executed anarchists. We refused to support one side or the other.

I hated the knee jerk reaction of much of the Left who delighted in waving the NLF flag around. We didn’t cheer the killing of American troops who were stuck over there as cannon fodder like some others did.

In a sense we didn’t fit in anywhere and that meant we became a pole of attraction for all those other people who weren’t interested in a dogmatic or pacifistic approach. Much of the later evolution of Black Mask into The Family came about through more and more of these people joining with us and affecting where we were going.

Black Mask and later The Family were some of the first groups to encourage the concept of affinity groups as a way of organising. One Family member famously defined an affinity group as a “street gang with analysis.” How did this approach develop and the use of term come about?

Ben: Although we associated in similar circles with Murray Bookchin our group was always very different because we were very visceral and he was very literate. Murray was keen on using the Spanish term aficionado de vairos to describe these non-hierarchical groupings of people that were happening. We said “Oh my god, can you really imagine Americans calling themselves aficionado de vairos?” (laughter) “Use English, call them affinity groups.”

Tell us about the Black Mask magazine you produced which ran from 1966 to 1968 and spanned ten issues.

Ben: Ron and I mainly put the magazine together, but there was a. wider group who helped produce, print and distribute it. We sold it for a nickel, which wasn’t much money, but we figured if people had to pay for it then they would actually want and read it rather than just take one look and throw it in the trash.

We tended to sell it on the Lower East Side, which was the most fertile ground for us as there were many artists and activists. We occasionally went up town as well although that was more to stir the pot.

Black Mask was one of the first groups to take on countercultural figures like Timothy Leary and Allen Ginsberg for their timidity, orientation towards religion and status seeking, labelling them at one point “The New Establishment.” From 1967 onwards it seems as if Black Mask moved a lot of its critique away from the arts establishment and towards the growing hippy movement and New Left.

Ben: Although we were critical of them I was close to Allen Ginsberg and became close to Timothy Leary years later. What we were trying to say at that moment was that they were allowing themselves to be used as a safety valve. We wanted to attack the core of society and believed they weren’t doing that. At the time we thought they were being used by the likes of Time and Life magazine although in hindsight Time and Life probably wish they had never covered them, especially Timothy.

We were always trying to shake things up, to push everyone else as well as ourselves. There was always a lot of interchange with all sorts of other radicals and sometimes there was fratricide in that we would strike out at people we otherwise liked just to make a point.

Read all of it here. / LibCom.org

Thanks to Mariann Wizard / The Rag Blog

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Explanations That Do Not Mollify Anti-War Activists

Posted on August 16, 2008 by RagBlog

“Doctored” photo courtesy Moonbattery.com, a radical conservative site

The Why-Haven’t-You Impeached-the-President Tour
By CARL HULSE / August 15, 2008

WASHINGTON — When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi set out to promote her new motivational book this month, she simultaneously touched off her national why-haven’t-you-impeached-the-president tour.

As she made the coast-to-coast rounds of lectures, television interviews and radio chats the past two weeks, Ms. Pelosi found herself under siege by people unhappy that she has not been motivated to try to throw President Bush out of office – even if only a few months remain before he leaves voluntarily.

In Manhattan and Los Angeles, at stops in between, on network television and on her home turf of Northern California, Ms. Pelosi has been forced to defend her pronouncement before the 2006 mid-term elections that impeachment over the administration’s push for war in Iraq was off the table.

Pressed on ABC’s “The View” about whether she had unilaterally disarmed, the author of “Know Your Power: A Message to America’s Daughters” said she believed the proceedings would be too divisive and be a distraction from advancing the policy agenda of the new Democratic majority.

Then she added this qualifier: “If somebody had a crime that the president had committed, that would be a different story.”

That assertion only threw fuel on the impeachment fire as advocates of removing Mr. Bush cited the 35 articles of impeachment compiled by Representative Dennis Kucinich, Democrat of Ohio, as well as accusations in a new book by author Ron Suskind of White House orders to falsify intelligence, an accusation that has been denied.

“There’s an opportunity now for us to come forward and to lay all the facts out so that she can reconsider her decision not to permit the Judiciary Committee to proceed with a full impeachment hearing,” Mr. Kucinich said in an interview with the Web site Democracy Now!

Mr. Kucinich, long a proponent of starting hearings to impeach both Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, earlier this week applauded signals that the Judiciary Committee would look into the claims made by Mr. Suskind in his book.

While the Judiciary Committee might do exactly that, the chances that such an inquiry would culminate in an impeachment proceeding are, according to top Democratic officials, virtually nil.

At the moment, the House is officially scheduled to meet for less than three weeks in September before adjourning for the elections and perhaps the year – hardly enough time to mount an impeachment spectacle even if top Democratic lawmakers wanted one.

And they do not.

Despite whatever resonance pursuing the president might have in progressive Democratic circles, it is not the message Democrats want to carry into an election where they need to appeal to swing voters to increase their Congressional majorities and win the White House. They would rather devote their final weeks to pushing economic relief and health care, even if they thought Mr. Bush and the conduct of the war merited impeachment hearings.

And leading Democrats argue anyway that Mr. Bush has already been tried and convicted in the court of public opinion.

“He has been impeached by current history,” said Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. “He is going down as the worst president ever. The facts are in.”

Republicans have previously shown some appetite for luring Democrats into what they see as an impeachment trap, a set of hearings they could use to portray Democrats as bitter partisans. But Republican strategists also recognize the political danger in getting too deep in defending Mr. Bush right before the election or in justifying the buildup to the Iraq war. They might not be as eager as they once were for an impeachment fight.

Both parties know full well that the Republican push to impeach President Bill Clinton in 1998 did not work out for Republicans in the way they had hoped, giving many lawmakers pause when it comes to gaming out the political ups and downs of such an action.

The impeachment unrest among progressives dovetails with their profound disappointment that Democrats failed to cut off spending for the war in Iraq or impose a timetable for withdrawal after winning control of Congress in 2006. It is a disappointment that Ms. Pelosi has acknowledged she shares and one she attributes to the thin Democratic majority in the Senate and Republican determination to support Mr. Bush on the war, explanations that do not mollify staunch anti-war activists.

The disillusionment has crystallized in a challenger for Ms. Pelosi in the person of Cindy Sheehan, the anti-war activist whose son was killed in Iraq. Ms. Sheehan and her allies collected more than 17,000 signatures to qualify her as an independent for the November ballot in San Francisco.

While Ms. Pelosi has been navigating the impeachment issue on her book tour, House Republicans have been assailing her on the floor for refusing to allow a vote on lifting a ban on oil drilling along much of the nation’s coast. Democrats are back-tracking a bit on that stance, opening the door to a September vote on relaxing the restrictions on drilling as part of a broader energy bill that would also include Democratic initiatives to reduce subsidies for oil companies and encourage more use of natural gas.

These have not been easy weeks for Ms. Pelosi as she juggled promoting her book with defending her impeachment stance and fending off the Republicans. But party strategists say she’s in a strong enough political position to weather the attacks, while taking some of the political heat off more vulnerable Democrats. She might be under fire from the left and the right, but there is no talk of impeaching her.

Source / The New York Times

Thanks to Diane Stirling-Stevens / The Rag Blog

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Yugoslavia : Precursor to the Bloodbaths in Afghanistan and Iraq

Posted on August 15, 2008 by RagBlog

Kosova Liberation Army (KLA) regulars

John Pilger digs beneath the received wisdom for the break-up of Yugoslavia and points to a largely ignored memoir by the former chief prosecutor in The Hague – and an echo from current events in the Caucasus.

Don’t Forget Yugoslavia
By John Pilger / August 15, 2008

Even as Blair the war leader was on a triumphant tour of “liberated” Kosovo, the KLA was ethnically cleansing more than 200,000 Serbs and Roma from the province

The secrets of the crushing of Yugoslavia are emerging, telling us more about how the modern world is policed. The former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia in The Hague, Carla Del Ponte, this year published her memoir The Hunt: Me and War Criminals. Largely ignored in Britain, the book reveals unpalatable truths about the west’s intervention in Kosovo, which has echoes in the Caucasus.

The tribunal was set up and bankrolled principally by the United States. Del Ponte’s role was to investigate the crimes committed as Yugoslavia was dismembered in the 1990s. She insisted that this include Nato’s 78-day bombing of Serbia and Kosovo in 1999, which killed hundreds of people in hospitals, schools, churches, parks and tele vision studios, and destroyed economic infrastructure. “If I am not willing to [prosecute Nato personnel],” said Del Ponte, “I must give up my mission.” It was a sham. Under pressure from Washington and London, an investigation into Nato war crimes was scrapped.

Readers will recall that the justification for the Nato bombing was that the Serbs were committing “genocide” in the secessionist province of Kosovo against ethnic Albanians. David Scheffer, US ambassador-at-large for war crimes, announced that as many as “225,000 ethnic Albanian men aged between 14 and 59” may have been murdered. Tony Blair invoked the Holocaust and “the spirit of the Second World War”. The west’s heroic allies were the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), whose murderous record was set aside. The British foreign secretary, Robin Cook, told them to call him any time on his mobile phone.

With the Nato bombing over, international teams descended upon Kosovo to exhume the “holocaust”. The FBI failed to find a single mass grave and went home. The Spanish forensic team did the same, its leader angrily denouncing “a semantic pirouette by the war propaganda machines”. A year later, Del Ponte’s tribunal announced the final count of the dead in Kosovo: 2,788. This included combatants on both sides and Serbs and Roma murdered by the KLA. There was no genocide in Kosovo. The “holocaust” was a lie. The Nato attack had been fraudulent.

That was not all, says Del Ponte in her book: the KLA kidnapped hundreds of Serbs and transported them to Albania, where their kidneys and other body parts were removed; these were then sold for transplant in other countries. She also says there was sufficient evidence to prosecute the Kosovar Albanians for war crimes, but the investigation “was nipped in the bud” so that the tribunal’s focus would be on “crimes committed by Serbia”. She says the Hague judges were terrified of the Kosovar Albanians – the very people in whose name Nato had attacked Serbia.

Indeed, even as Blair the war leader was on a triumphant tour of “liberated” Kosovo, the KLA was ethnically cleansing more than 200,000 Serbs and Roma from the province. Last February the “international community”, led by the US, recognised Kosovo, which has no formal economy and is run, in effect, by criminal gangs that traffic in drugs, contraband and women. But it has one valuable asset: the US military base Camp Bondsteel, described by the Council of Europe’s human rights commissioner as “a smaller version of Guantanamo”. Del Ponte, a Swiss diplomat, has been told by her own government to stop promoting her book.

Yugoslavia was a uniquely independent and multi-ethnic, if imperfect, federation that stood as a political and economic bridge in the Cold War. This was not acceptable to the expanding European Community, especially newly united Germany, which had begun a drive east to dominate its “natural market” in the Yugoslav provinces of Croatia and Slovenia. By the time the Europeans met at Maastricht in 1991, a secret deal had been struck; Germany recognised Croatia, and Yugoslavia was doomed. In Washington, the US ensured that the struggling Yugoslav economy was denied World Bank loans and the defunct Nato was reinvented as an enforcer. At a 1999 Kosovo “peace” conference in France, the Serbs were told to accept occupation by Nato forces and a market economy, or be bombed into submission. It was the perfect precursor to the bloodbaths in Afghanistan and Iraq.

www.johnpilger.com

Source / Information Clearing House

The Rag Blog

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Drug Policy: Dictated by Tabloid Irrationality

Posted on August 15, 2008 by RagBlog

Although this article is about British drug policy, its basic content and conclusions apply perfectly to US drug policy. Richard Jehn / The Rag Blog


The Case is Overwhelming: All Experts Agree: Legalize Drugs
By JULIAN CRITCHLEY / August 15, 2008

Eight years ago, I left my civil service job as director of the UK Anti-Drug Co-Ordination Unit. I went partly because I was sick of having to implement policies that I knew, and my political masters knew, were unsupported by evidence. Yesterday, after a surreal flurry of media requests referring to a blog I wrote that questioned the wisdom of the UK’s drug policies, I found myself in the thick of the debate again, and I was sorry to discover that the terms hadn’t changed a bit.

I was being interviewed on the BBC World Service, and after I tried to explain why I believe that drugs should be decriminalised, the person representing the other side of the argument pointed out that drugs are terrible, that they destroy lives. Now, I am a deeply boring, undruggy person myself, and I think the world would be a better place without drugs. But I think that we must live in the world as it is, and not as we want it to be. And so my answer was, yes, I know that drugs are terrible. I’m not saying that drugs should be decriminalised because it would be fun if we could all get stoned with impunity. I’m saying that we’ve tried minimising harm through a draconian legal policy. It is now clear that enforcement and supply-side interventions are largely pointless. They haven’t worked. There is evidence that this works.

Unfortunately, evidence is still not a major component in our policy. Take cannabis. When I was in the Anti-Drug Unit, the moves towards making it a class C drug began, and I hoped that our position on drugs was finally moving in a rational direction. But then Gordon Brown ignored his scientific advisers to make it a class B again. It was a decision that pandered to the instincts of the tabloids, and it made no sense whatsoever.

There is no doubt at all that the benefits to society of the fall in crime as a result of legalisation would be dramatic. The argument always put forward against this is that there would be a commensurate increase in drug use as a result of legalisation. This, it seems to me, is a bogus point: tobacco is a legal drug, whose use is declining, and precisely because it is legal, its users are far more amenable to Government control, education programmes and taxation than they would be otherwise. Studies suggest that the market is already almost saturated, and anyone who wishes to purchase the drug of their choice anywhere in the UK can already do so. The idea that many people are holding back solely because of a law which they know is already unenforceable is ridiculous.

Ultimately, people will make choices which harm themselves, whether they involve diet, smoking, drinking, lack of exercise, sexual activity or pursuit of extreme sports. In all these instances, the Government rightly takes the line that if these activities are to be pursued, society will ensure that those who pursue them have access to accurate information about the risks; can access assistance to change their harmful habits should they so wish; are protected by a legal standards regime; are taxed accordingly; and – crucially – do not harm other people. Only in the field of drugs does the Government take a different line.

The case is overwhelming. But I fear that policy will not catch up with the facts any time soon. It would take a mature society to accept that some individuals may hurt, or even kill themselves, as a result of a policy change, even if the evidence suggested that fewer people died or were harmed as a result. It would take a brave government to face down the tabloid fury in the face of anecdotes about middle-class children who bought drugs legally and came to grief, and this is not a brave government.

I think what was truly depressing about my time in the civil service was that the professionals I met from every sector held the same view: the illegality of drugs causes far more problems for society and the individual than it solves. Yet publicly, all those people were forced to repeat the mantra that the Government would be “tough on drugs”, even though they all knew that the policy was causing harm.

I recall a conversation I had with a Number 10 policy advisor about a series of announcements in which we were to emphasise the shift of resources to treatment and highlight successes in prevention and education. She asked me whether we couldn’t arrange for “a drugs bust in Brighton” at the same time, or “a boat speeding down the Thames to catch smugglers”. For that advisor, what worked mattered considerably less than what would play well in the right-wing press. The tragedy of our drugs policy is that it is dictated by tabloid irrationality, and not by evidence.

Julian Critchley was the former director of the UK Anti-Drug Co-Ordination Unit.

Source / CounterPunch

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A Video Series on World Agriculture: Monsanto, Part 4

Posted on August 15, 2008 by RagBlog

The World According to Monsanto (Part 4 of 8)

Right now, there is probably no other company that is doing more to endanger the health of this planet, and it’s inhabitants, than Monsanto. With Nazi-like attitude, they are leading the world in shear destructive evil greed. First they were a drug company, and then they expanded to become a drugs and genetic engineering company, and now Monsanto is attempting to acquire water rights in countries with water shortages in a move to control the people’s basic means of survival, and production of the global food supply. Giant transnational corporations like Monsanto, in collusion with the World Bank and the World Trade Organization, seek to commodify and privatize the world’s water and put it on the open market for sale to the highest bidder. Millions of the world’s citizens are being deprived of this fundamental human right, and vast ecological damage is being wrought as massive industry claims water once used to sustain communities and replenish nature.

Click here for more information.

Thanks to Diane Stirling-Stevens / The Rag Blog

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The US Is a Bankrupt Farce Run by Imbeciles

Posted on August 15, 2008 by RagBlog


Two Morons: Bush and Saakashvili: “President Bush, Will You Please Shut Up?”
By Paul Craig Roberts / August 13, 2008

The neoconned Bush Regime and the Israeli-occupied American media are heading the innocent world toward nuclear war.

Back in the Reagan years the National Endowment for Democracy was created as a cold war tool. Today the NED is a neocon-controlled agent for US world hegemony. Its main function is to pour US money and election-rigging into former constituent parts of the Soviet Union in order to ring Russia with American puppet states.

The neoconservative Bush Regime used the NED to intervene in Ukrainian and Georgian internal affairs in keeping with the neoconservative plan to establish US-friendly and Russia-hostile political regimes in these two former constituent parts of Russia and the Soviet Union.

The NED was also used to dismember the former Yugoslavia with its interventions in Slovakia, Serbia, and Montenegro.

Allen Weinstein, who helped draft the legislation establishing NED, told the Washington Post in 1991 that much of what the NED does “today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”

The Bush Regime, having established a puppet, Mikhail Saakashvili, as president of Georgia, tried to bring Georgia into NATO.

For readers too young to know, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was a military alliance between the US and Western European countries to resist any Soviet move into Western Europe [and to ensure European countries lined up behind the US, and bought its weapons systems. Editors] . There has been no reason for NATO since the Soviet Union’s internal political collapse almost two decades ago. The neocons turned NATO into another tool, like the NED, for US world hegemony. Subsequent US administrations violated the understandings that President Reagan had reached with Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, and have incorporated former parts of the Soviet empire into NATO. The neocon goal of ringing Russia with a hostile military alliance has been proclaimed many times.

Western European members of NATO balked at the admission of Georgia, as they understood it as a provocative affront to Russia, on whom Western Europe is dependent for natural gas. Western Europeans are also disturbed at the Bush Regime’s intentions to install ballistic missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic as the consequence will be Russian nuclear cruise missiles targeted on European capitals. Europeans don’t see the advantage of helping the US block Russian nuclear retaliation against the US at the expense of their own existence. Ballistic missile defenses are not useful against cruise missiles.

Every country is tired of war except for the US. War, including nuclear war, is the neoconservative strategy for world hegemony.

The entire world, except for Americans, knows that the outbreak of armed conflict between Russian and Georgian forces in South Ossetia was entirely due to the US and its Georgia puppet, Saakashvili. Americans, alone in the world, are unaware that the hostilities were initiated by Saakashvili, because Bush, Cheney and the Israeli-occupied American media have again lied to them.

Everyone else in the world knows that the unstable and corrupt Saakashvili, who proclaims democracy and runs a police state, would not have taken on Russia by attacking South Ossetia unless given the go-ahead by Washington.

The purpose of the Georgian attack on the Russian population of South Ossetia is twofold:

To convince Europeans that their action in delaying Georgia’s NATO membership is the cause of “the Russian aggression” and that to save Georgia from conquest Georgia must be given NATO membership.

To ethnically cleanse South Ossetia of its Russian population. Two thousand Russian civilians were targeted and killed by the US-equipped and trained Georgian Army, and tens of thousands fled into Russia. Having achieved this goal, Saakashvili and his puppet-masters in Washington quickly called for a cease fire and a halt to “the Russian invasion.” The hope is that the Russian population will be afraid to return or can be prevented from returning, thus removing the secessionist threat.

No doubt the Bush Regime can con the American population, just as it did with Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, Iranian nukes, and 9/11 itself, but the rest of the world is not buying it, not even America’s bought-and-paid-for European allies.

Writing in the Asia Times, Ambassador M. K. Bhadrakumar, a former career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service, notes the disinformation that is being peddled by the Bush Regime and the US media and reports that “at the outbreak of violence, Russia had tried to have the United Nations Security Council issue a statement calling on Georgia and South Ossetia to immediately lay down weapons. However, Washington was disinterested.”

Amb. Bhadrakumar notes that the American and Georgian resort to violence and propaganda has brought an end to the Russian government’s belief that diplomacy and good will can bring about a settlement of the South Ossetia issue. If Russia wished, Russia could terminate Georgia’s existence as a separate country at will, and there is nothing the US could do about it.

It is certain that the Georgian invasion of South Ossetia was a Bush Regime orchestrated event. The American media and the neocon think tanks were ready with their propaganda blitzes. Neocons had ready a Wall Street Journal editorial page article for Saakashvili that declares “the war in Georgia is a war for the West.”

Faced with the collapse of his army when Russia sent in troops to protect South Ossetians from the Georgian troops, Saakashvili declared: “This is not about Georgia any more. It is about America, its values.”

The neocon Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., quickly called a conference hosted by warmonger Ariel Cohen, “Urgent! Event: Russian-Georgian War: A Challenge for the U.S. and the World.”

The Washington Post hosted neocon Robert Kagen’s war drums, “Putin Makes His Move.”

Only a fool like Kagen could think that if Putin intended to invade Georgia he would do so from Beijing, or that after sending the American-trained Georgian army in flight, he would not continue and conquer all of Georgia in order to put an end to American machinations on Russia’s most sensitive border, machinations that are likely to eventually end in nuclear war.

The New York Tiimes hosted Billy Kristol’s rant, “Will Russia Get Away With It?” Kristol thunders against “dictatorial and aggressive and fanatical regimes” that “seem happy to work together to weaken the influence of the United States and its democratic allies.” Kristol presents a new axis of evil–Russia, China, North Korea and Iran–and warns against “delay and irresolution” that “simply invite future threats and graver dangers.”

In other words, “attack Russia now.”

Dick Cheney, the insane American Vice President telephoned Saakashvili to express US solidarity with Georgia in the conflict with Russia and declared: “Russian aggression must not go unanswered. Only an idiot would tell Saakashvili anything other than “to cease immediately.”

What must be the effect on US Intelligence services and the US military of Cheney’s propagandistic and irresponsible statement of US support for Georgia’s war crimes? Does anyone really believe that the CIA or any US intelligence service told the vice president that Russia opened the conflict with an invasion? Russian troops arrived in South Ossetia after thousands of Ossetians had been killed by the Georgian attack and after tens of thousands of Ossetians had fled into Russia to escape the Georgian attack. According to news reports, Russian forces have captured Americans who were with the Georgian troops directing their attack on civilians.

The US military certainly has no resources for a war against Russia on top of lost wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a planned war with Iran.

With its Georgian venture, the Bush Regime is guilty of a new round of war crimes. What will be the consequence?

Many will reply that having got away with 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, and with its preparations for attacking Iran, the Bush Regime will get away with its Georgian venture as well.

Possibly, however, this time the Bush Regime has overreached.

Certainly Russia now recognizes that the US is determined to exert hegemony over Russia and is Russia’s worst enemy.

China realizes the US threat to its own energy supply and, thereby, economy.

Even America’s European allies, chafing under their role of supplying troops for America’s Empire, must now realize that being an American ally is dangerous and has no benefits. If Georgia becomes a NATO member and renews its attack on South Ossetia, it must drag Europe into a war with Russia, a main supplier of energy to Europe.

Moreover, if Russian troops are sent across European frontiers, there is nothing to stop them.

What does America offer Europe, aside from the millions of dollars it pays to buy off Europe’s political leaders to insure that they betray their own peoples? Nothing whatsoever.

The only military threat that Europe faces comes from being dragged into America’s wars for American hegemony.

The US is financially bankrupt, with budget and trade deficits that exceed the combined deficits of the rest of the world together. The dollar has wilted. The American consumer market is dying from the offshoring of American jobs and, thereby, incomes, and from the wealth effect of the real estate and derivatives collapses. The US has nothing to offer Europe. Indeed, American economic decline is killing European exports by driving up the value of the euro.

America long ago lost the moral high ground. Hypocrisy has become America’s best known hallmark. Bush, the invader of Afghanistan and Iraq on the basis of lies and deception, thunders at Russia for coming to the defense of its peacekeepers and Russian citizens in South Ossetia. Bush who ripped Kosovo out of Serbia’s heart and handed it to the Muslims, has taken an adamant stand against other separatist movements, especially the South Ossetians who wish to be part of the Russian Federation.

The neoconned Bush Regime is furious that the Russian bear was not intimidated by the US supported aggression of the American puppet state, Georgia. Instead of accepting the act of American hegemony that the neocon script called for, Russia sent the Americanized Georgian army fleeing in fear.

Having failed with weapons, the Bush Regime now unleashes the rhetoric. The White House is warning Russia that failure to acquiesce to US hegemony could have a “significant, long-term impact on relations between Washington and Moscow.”

Do the morons who comprise the Bush Regime really not understand that short of a surprise nuclear attack on Russia there is nothing whatsoever the US can do to Moscow?

The Bush Regime owns no Russian currency that it can dump. The Russians own US dollars.

The Bush Regime owns no Russian bonds that it can dump. The Russians own US bonds.

The US can cut Russia off from no energy supplies. Russia can cut America’s European allies off from energy.

President Reagan negotiated the end of the cold war with Soviet President Gorbachev.,The neoconservatives, whom Reagan fired and drove from his administration, were furious. The neocons had hoped to win the cold war, thereby establishing American hegemony.

The Republican Establishment reestablished its hegemony under Bush 1st that it had lost to Ronald Reagan. With this feat, intelligence was driven from the Republican Party.

The neocons engineered their comeback with the First Gulf War and their propaganda, pure lies, that Iraqi troops bayoneted Kuwait babies in hospitals.

The neocons made a further comeback with President Clinton, whom they convinced to bomb Serbia in order to permit separatist movements to become independent states dependent on America.

With Bush 2nd, the neocons took over. Their agenda, American world hegemony, includes Israeli hegemony in the Middle East.

So far the schemes of these ignorant and dangerous ideologues have come a cropper. Iraq, formerly in the hands of secular Sunnis who were a check on Iran, is, after the American invasion and occupation, in the hands of religious Shi’ites allied with Iran.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban are resurgent, and a large NATO/US army there is unable to control the situation.

One consequence of the neocons’ Afghan war has been the loss of power of the American puppet president of Pakistan, a Muslim country armed with nuclear weapons. The puppet president now faces impeachment, and the Pakistani military has informed the Americans to stop conducting military operations in Pakistani territory.

The American puppets in Egypt and Jordan might be next to fall.

In Iraq, the Shi’ites, having completed their ethnic cleansing of Sunnis from neighborhoods, have declared a cease fire in order to contradict the US propaganda that American withdrawal would lead to a blood bath. Negotiations on withdrawal dates are now underway between the Americans and the Iraqi government, which is no longer behaving like a puppet.

Last year Hugo Chavez ridiculed Bush before the UN. Russia’s Putin ridiculed Bush as Comrade Wolf.

On August 12, 2008, Pravda ridiculed Bush, “Bush: Why don’t you shut up.”

Americans may think they are a superpower before whose presence the world trembles. But not the Russians.

Those Americans stupid enough to think that America’s “superpower” insures its citizens from danger need to read the total contempt shown for President Bush in Pravda:

“President Bush,

Why don’t you shut up? In your statement on Monday regarding the legitimate actions of the Russian Federation in Georgia, you failed to mention the war crimes perpetrated by Georgian military forces, which American advisors support, against Russian and Ossetian civilians

“President Bush,

Why don’t you shut up? Your faithful ally, Mikhail Saakashvili, was announcing a ceasefire deal while his troops, with your advisors, were massing on Ossetia’s border, which they crossed under cover of night and destroyed Tskhinvali, targeting civilian structures just like your forces did in Iraq.

“President Bush,

Why don’t you shut up? Your American transport aircraft gave a ride home to thousands of Georgian soldiers from Iraq directly into the combat zone.

“President Bush,

Why don’t you shut up? How do you account for the fact that among the Georgian soldiers fleeing the fighting yesterday you could clearly hear officers using American English giving orders to “Get back inside” and how do you account for the fact that there are reports of American soldiers among the Georgian casualties?

“President Bush,

Why don’t you shut up? Do you really think anyone gives any importance whatsoever to your words after 8 years of your criminal and murderous regime and policies? Do you really believe you have any moral ground whatsoever and do you really imagine there is a single human being anywhere on this planet who does not stick up his middle finger every time you appear on a TV screen?

Do you really believe you have the right to give any opinion or advice after Abu Ghraib? After Guantanamo? After the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens? After the torture by CIA operatives?

Do you really believe you have any right to make a statement on any point of international law after your trumped-up charges against Iraq and the subsequent criminal invasion?

“President Bush,

Why don’t you shut up? Suppose Russia for instance declares that Georgia has weapons of mass destruction? And that Russia knows where these WMD are, namely in Tblisi and Poti and north, south, east and west of there? And that it must be true because there is ‘magnificent foreign intelligenc’ such as satellite photos of milk powder factories and baby cereals producing chemical weapons and which are currently being ‘driven around the country in vehicles’? Suppose Russia declares for instance that ‘Saakashvili stiffed the world’ and it is ‘time for regime change’?

Nice and simple, isn’t it, President Bush?

“So, why don’t you shut up? Oh and by the way, send some more of your military advisors to Georgia, they are doing a sterling job. And they look all funny down the night sight, all green.”

The US is not a superpower. It is a bankrupt farce run by imbeciles who were installed by stolen elections arranged by Karl Rove and Diebold. It is a laughing stock, that ignorantly affronts and attempts to bully an enormous country equipped with tens of thousands of nuclear weapons.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com.

Source / CounterPunch

Paul Craig Roberts on the Alex Jones Show: Shut Up Bush! Part 1

Thanks to Diane Stirling-Stevens / The Rag Blog

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Quote of the Day

Posted on August 15, 2008 by RagBlog

Minimum wage is your boss’s way of saying, “I’d pay you less, but it’s illegal.” Erich Seifert, Port Angeles, Washington baker

The Rag Blog

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Iraq Report: This Does Not Look Like "Victory"

Posted on August 15, 2008 by RagBlog

John Tirman questions the GOP’s victory narrative about Iraq. It is a measure of the Orwellian state of the US media and politics that he should have to bother. I mean, the place is a burned out hulk where hundreds die every month in political violence, where armed militias are ubiquitous, where nearly 5 million people remain displaced from their homes, where you have unemployment rates of 50% in some major cities, and where pro-Iranian Shiite fundamentalists face off against Sunni Arab nationalists and Salafis and Kurdish separatists. If this is a success, I’d hate to see a failure.

Juan Cole / Informed Comment

What counts as ‘success’ in Iraq?
By John Tirman / August 15, 2008

A VOLUBLE attempt to describe the Iraq war as a success is widely apparent, and will increase as the Republican National Convention nears. John McCain is staking his campaign on this assertion. There is little doubt that the level of violence in Iraq has subsided noticeably in the last 12 months. But is this “victory”?

Two notions are in play. First is whether what exists now, or will in the near term, is a favorable and sustainable outcome and is due particularly to the “surge” of US troops since early 2007. Second is whether the price of this outcome is acceptable.

On the first matter, the reductions in violence are mainly due to the withdrawal of Moqtada al-Sadr’s militia and the cooperation of many Sunni tribes in ridding Iraq of foreign extremists. A fervent debate among experts is indecisive about why Iraqis pulled back from the wicked killing of 2006 and early 2007. Some is due to a change in US strategy. But all the actors with explosives began to see the futility of their tactics, apparently, and have altered course.

No one knows how sustainable these gains might be. Will Sadr reenter the fray once US troops are drawn down? Will Sunnis return to resistance if Shia political dominance continues?

Civil wars of long standing tend to persist if a broad and enforceable political settlement cannot be reached, and so far none is in sight in Iraq. So the prognosis for more armed conflict, perhaps many years in duration at a low level, remains troubling.

One outcome that seems irreversible is the primacy of Iran. This was widely predicted before the war was started, and it is now apparent. All of Iraq’s leaders, including the president, a Kurd, are friendly with Iran and regard it as an important ally. In Bush circles, this new prominence for Iran is never linked to the war, as if occurring by itself.

So the visible political outcome in Iraq (setting aside the original target of the invasion, the nonexistent WMDs) is not usefully described as a success. There is a level of violence and political fragmentation that in other places would not be hailed as victory. And these recent gains may be temporary.

Perhaps more important are the costs of the venture. The facts are sobering. About 5,000 Americans have been killed, including military personnel, contractors, and aid workers. Another 30,000 or more are wounded, and estimates of those with post-traumatic stress disorder are as high as 300,000. The financial costs are estimated to reach $3 trillion eventually.

For Iraqis, of course, the costs are colossal. While there is a dispute among experts about how many Iraqis have died as a result of the war, the numbers range from 200,000 to one million, and very likely a mid-range estimate is correct. The Iraqi government reports one million or more war widows. About 3.5 million Iraqis have been displaced by the war, most of them living in difficult circumstances in Jordan and Syria. A new study from the Brookings Institution labels the refugees – many impoverished – as a “looming crisis” for the entire region.

More than half the school-age children in Iraq cannot attend school, due to a lack of security, and 40 percent have no access to safe water. A survey conducted in 2006 by the Ministry of Health found a doubling of mortality, much of it due to violence but about an equal amount to disease and accidents, indicating a gradual collapse of the healthcare system.

Globally, the run-up in oil prices is attributable in part to the war, which not only devastates developing countries but has also contributed to a food crisis worldwide. The war has distracted the United States from other issues, as the recent Russian muscle-flexing in the Caucasus illustrates.

Since the war is not over, no one can predict where all these gruesome figures and trends will end up. But the price everyone has paid for this war so far has been exceptionally high. The actual political results for Iraqis remain doubtful. To a dispassionate observer, this does not look like “victory.”

John Tirman is executive director and principal research scientist at the MIT Center for International Studies. He is coauthor and coeditor of “Terror, Insurgency, and the State: Ending Protracted Conflicts.”

© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.

Source / Boston Globe

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Geoff Boucher :
Jackson Browne Sues John McCain for Using ‘Running on Empty’ in Ad

Posted on August 15, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer
photo of Jackson Browne

Jackson Browne performs at concert for John Edwards this year.

‘The McCain campaign has a track record of using music without permission’

By Geoff Boucher | August 14, 2008

Jackson Browne is suing John McCain for using the song “Running on Empty” in a campaign ad — and the veteran rocker is also calling the candidate a great pretender when it comes to standing up for constitutional rights.

Browne, one of rock music’s most famous activists for liberal causes, is “incensed” that the presumptive Republican candidate for president has been using Browne’s signature 1977 song “Running on Empty” in campaign commercials, according to the singer-songwriter’s attorney. Browne filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against both McCain and the Republican National Committee on Thursday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles seeking a permanent injunction prohibiting the use of the forlorn arena anthem or any other Browne compositions, as well as damages.

They may be suing the wrong people. McCain spokesman Brian Rogers tells our colleague Seema Mehta in Colorado that the ad in question is not a McCain campaign ad but one put together by the Ohio Republican Party.

But Browne’s attorney, Lawrence Y. Iser, says they have the right defendants. “We have sued the Ohio Republican Party as well, and we have been informed and believe that McCain and his campaign were well aware of the ad. We are also informed and believe that the ad was broadcast on television in Ohio and Pennsylvania…. The fact that it appears on the Internet means it also reaches an audience well beyond those states.”

Iser said the lawsuit “is not politically motivated. It’s a copyright infringement lawsuit, pure and simple, but the fact that Sen. McCain has used this song in a hit-piece on Barack Obama is anathema to Jackson.”

Iser claims the McCain campaign has a track record of using music without permission.

“They used a John Mellencamp song until he made them stop and he used an ABBA song and a Frankie Valli song — it’s ridiculous and it’s setting a terrible example,” Iser said. “It’s shocking that they don’t even attempt to get permission. There’s no copyright difference between using a song to sell cars or by people running for president. The music industry continues to suffer due to lack of respect for intellectual property rights, and a candidate for president has a duty to lead by example and ensuring their campaign does as well. The copyright protections are derived from the Constitution itself.”

In the commercial in question, Barack Obama is mocked for suggesting that the country conserve gas through proper tire inflation. The suit claims that use of the song violates the Lanham Act by falsely implying that Browne is associated with or endorses the McCain candidacy. The suit also claims the commercial violates Browne’s right of publicity under California law.

Browne declined comment through Iser. The 59-year-old singer is one of the most politically immersed artists of his generation. He performed at the No Nukes concerts in 1979 and, in the years after, his albums shifted strongly toward political messaging, such as his 1986 album, “Lives in the Balance,” and its harsh appraisal of the Ronald Reagan years.

There have been a number of instances through the years when performers have been angered by the use of their music by a politician. Bruce Springsteen, another No Nukes performer, cried foul when Reagan, running for re-election, invoked the patriotic imagery of “Born in the U.S.A.,” a song that is actually a dark essay on the fractured American dream.

Our colleague Dan Morain, who spends most of his time tracking campaign money, passes along some of Browne’s contribution history. No surprise: Browne likes Democrats. Morain reports that Browne, a modest campaign donor over the years, gave Obama $2,000 shortly after he won his Senate seat in 2004 and another $2,300 in March. Browne also has given about $5,500 to MoveOn.org, $5,266 to Rep. Lois Capps of Santa Barbara. And he’s sent $1,000 to Al Franken, the Democratic Senate candidate in Minnesota, $500 to Ned Lamont for his 2006 run for Joe Lieberman’s Senate seat in Connecticut.

In the 2000 election, though, he went with Ralph Nader, giving the once and future presidential contender $2,000 for a race many Democrats still think cost Al Gore the White House.

Source / LA Times Blogs

Thanks to Jon Ford / The Rag Blog

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