The Rag Blog

BAGHDAD — Guided by American legal advisers, the Iraqi government has canceled a controversial development contract with the Russian company Lukoil for a vast oil field in Iraq’s southern desert, freeing it up for potential international investment in the future.

In response, Russian authorities have threatened to revoke a 2004 deal with creditor nations to forgive $13 billion in Iraqi debt, a senior Iraqi official said.

The field, West Qurna, has estimated reserves of 11 billion barrels, the equivalent of the worldwide proven oil reserves of Exxon Mobil, America’s largest oil company. Hussain al-Shahristani, the Iraqi oil minister, said in an interview that the field would be opened to new bidders, perhaps as early as next year.

The contract, which had been signed and later canceled by the Saddam Hussein government, had been in legal limbo since the American invasion. But the Kremlin remained hopeful it could be salvaged until this September, when al-Shahristani traveled to Moscow to inform officials there that the decision to cancel it was final, he said.

The Russian government, newly emboldened in international affairs by its expanding oil wealth, is still backing Lukoil’s claim and protesting what it considers selective enforcement of contracts in Iraq.

“We will defend our interests,” Dmitri Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said in a telephone interview. “It is the government’s obligation to defend the interests of our companies in foreign countries.”

One Iraqi official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was discussing a confidential diplomatic exchange, described Russia’s response as, “If you do the deal, we can muster the political muscle to forgive the debt.”

We must imagine a new way of life in order to avoid the devastating environmental crises that face humanity, argues the visionary founder of the Bioneers conference.

The nature of nature is change. Sometimes it hurtles into fast forward, tripping radical shifts. Think of it as nature’s regime change. For the first time, people are causing it on a planetary scale.

Andrew Revkin reported in the New York Times that “The physical Earth is increasingly becoming what the human species makes of it. The accelerating and intensifying impact of human activities is visibly altering the planet, requiring ever more frequent redrawing not only of political boundaries, but of the shape of Earth’s features themselves.”

Mick Ashworth, editor-in-chief of the annual Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World, said his staff of 50 cartographers now updates their databases every three and a half minutes. Commented the editor, “We can literally see environmental disasters unfolding before our eyes.”

Environmental disasters are always human disasters. Satellite pictures of Burma over the past three years have recorded the extermination of over 3,000 villages of the indigenous Karen people and nearby tribes, displacing half a million people. The main culprit is the corporate hunger for oil and gas, backed by the murderous local military junta.

Google Earth will leave you google-eyed. An overrun resource base is visibly shrinking at the same time our population keeps growing. Honey, we shrunk the planet.

The bottom line, of course, is we’re living beyond our means. Nearly two thirds of the life-support services provided to us by nature are in decline worldwide and the pace is quickening. We can’t count on the ability of the planet’s ecosystems to sustain future generations. This is new territory.

The big wheels of ecological governance are turning. Regime change is the actual technical term some ecologists use — for instance, when the climate flips from one state to another. It can be irreversible, at least on a human time frame. These evolutionary exclamation points unleash powerful forces of destruction and creation, collapse and renewal.

We do have a compass of sorts during these cycles of creative destruction. As Charles Darwin observed, “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change.”

Change is not linear, and sudden shifts sometimes remake the world in the blink of an eye. We know we’re approaching mysterious thresholds that mark the tipping points of ecological regime change, and we may have already crossed some. The closer we get to each threshold, the less it takes to push the system over the edge, where the degree of damage will be exponentially greater. Societies slide into crisis when slammed by multiple shocks or stressors at the same time. Climate change is propelling both natural and human systems everywhere toward their tipping points.

When huge shocks transform the landscape, structures and institutions crumble, releasing tremendous amounts of bound-up energy and resources for renewal and reorganization. Novelty emerges. These times belong to those who learn, innovate and adapt. Small changes can have big influences. It’s a period of creative ferment, freedom and transformation.

Ecological regime change means a radical realignment of the human enterprise with nature’s governance. We stand at the threshold of a singular opportunity in the human experiment: to re-imagine how to live on Earth in a good way that lasts.

The name of the game is resilience. It means the capacity of both human and ecological systems to absorb disturbance and still retain their basic function and structure. Resilience does not mean just bouncing back to business-as-usual. It means assuring the very ability to get back. But if regime change happens, resilience means having sufficient capacity to transform to meet the new management.

A network of ecologists and social scientists called the Resilience Alliance outlined some of the rules of the road in their book “Resilience Thinking.” The first principle of resilience thinking is systems thinking: It’s all connected, from the web of life to human systems. “You can only solve the whole problem,” says Huey Johnson of the Resource Renewal Institute. Manage environmental and human systems as one system. Taking care of nature means taking care of people, and taking care of people means taking care of nature. Look for systemic solutions that address multiple problems at once. Watch for seeds of new solutions that emerge with changing conditions.

Resilience thinking means abandoning command-and-control approaches. We’re not remotely in control of the big wheels of ecological governance or complex human systems. Greater decentralization can provide backup against the inevitable failure of centralized command-and-control structures. Think decentralized power grids, more localized food systems, and the Internet. Always have a backup. Redundancies are good failsafe mechanisms, not the waste portrayed by industrial efficiency-think.

The USA’s military spending is now close to $2 billion a day. This fall, the country will begin its seventh year of continuous war, with no end in sight. On the horizon is the very real threat of a massive air assault on Iran. And few in Congress seem willing or able to articulate a rejection of the warfare state.

While the Bush-Cheney administration is the most dangerous of our lifetimes — and ousting Republicans from the White House is imperative — such truths are apt to smooth the way for progressive evasions. We hear that “the people must take back the government,” but how can “the people” take back what they never really had? And when rhetoric calls for “returning to a foreign policy based on human rights and democracy,” we’re encouraged to be nostalgic for good old days that never existed.

The warfare state didn’t suddenly arrive in 2001, and it won’t disappear when the current lunatic in the Oval Office moves on.

Born 50 years before George W. Bush became president, I have always lived in a warfare state. Each man in the Oval Office has presided over an arsenal of weapons designed to destroy human life en masse. In recent decades, our self-proclaimed protectors have been able — and willing — to destroy all of humanity.

We’ve accommodated ourselves to this insanity. And I do mean “we” — including those of us who fret aloud that the impact of our peace-loving wisdom is circumscribed because our voices don’t carry much farther than the choir. We may carry around an inflated sense of our own resistance to a system that is poised to incinerate and irradiate the planet.

Maybe it’s too unpleasant to acknowledge that we’ve been living in a warfare state for so long. And maybe it’s even more unpleasant to acknowledge that the warfare state is not just “out there.” It’s also internalized; at least to the extent that we pass up countless opportunities to resist it.

Like millions of other young Americans, I grew into awakening as the Vietnam War escalated. Slogans like “make love, not war” — and, a bit later, “the personal is political” — really spoke to us. But over the decades we generally learned, or relearned, to compartmentalize: as if personal and national histories weren’t interwoven in our pasts, presents and futures.

One day in 1969, a biologist named George Wald, who had won a Nobel Prize, visited the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — the biggest military contractor in academia — and gave a speech. “Our government has become preoccupied with death,” he said, “with the business of killing and being killed.”

That preoccupation has fluctuated, but in essence it has persisted. While speaking of a far-off war and a nuclear arsenal certain to remain in place after the war’s end, Wald pointed out: “We are under repeated pressure to accept things that are presented to us as settled — decisions that have been made.”

Today, in similar ways, our government is preoccupied and we are pressurized. The grisly commerce of killing — whether through carnage in Iraq and Afghanistan or through the deadly shredding of social safety-nets at home — thrives on aggressive war and on the perverse realpolitik of “national security” that brandishes the Pentagon’s weaponry against the world. At least tacitly, we accept so much that threatens to destroy anything and everything.

As it happened, for reasons both “personal” and “political” — more accurately, for reasons indistinguishable between the two — my own life fell apart and began to reassemble itself during the same season of 1969 when George Wald gave his speech, which he called “A Generation in Search of a Future.”

Political and personal histories are usually kept separate — in how we’re taught, how we speak and even how we think. But I’ve become very skeptical of the categories. They may not be much more than illusions we’ve been conned into going through the motions of believing.

We actually live in concentric spheres, and “politics” suffuses households as well as what Martin Luther King Jr. called “The World House.” Under that heading, he wrote in 1967: “When scientific power outruns moral power, we end up with guided missiles and misguided men. When we foolishly minimize the internal of our lives and maximize the external, we sign the warrant for our own day of doom. Our hope for creative living in this world house that we have inherited lies in our ability to re-establish the moral ends of our lives in personal character and social justice. Without this spiritual and moral reawakening we shall destroy ourselves in the misuse of our own instruments.”

While trying to understand the essence of what so many Americans have witnessed over the last half century, I worked on a book (titled “Made Love, Got War”) that sifts through the last 50 years of the warfare state… and, in the process, through my own life. I haven’t learned as much as I would have liked, but some patterns emerged — persistent and pervasive since the middle of the 20th century.

The warfare state doesn’t come and go. It can’t be defeated on Election Day. Like it or not, it’s at the core of the United States — and it has infiltrated our very being.

What we’ve tolerated has become part of us. What we accept, however reluctantly, seeps inward. In the long run, passivity can easily ratify even what we may condemn. And meanwhile, in the words of Thomas Merton, “It is the sane ones, the well-adapted ones, who can without qualms and without nausea aim the missiles and press the buttons that will initiate the great festival of destruction that they, the sane ones, have prepared.”

The triumph of the warfare state degrades and suppresses us all. Even before the weapons perform as guaranteed.

America’s national pastime is not really baseball but football. Unlike baseball, which is equally popular in Japan, Taiwan and many Latin American countries, no one else shares America’s pigskin passion, a sport in which collective rage is ritualized and celebrated, a colorful spectacle of cool violence, an American specialty.

There are 246 foreign born players in Major Leagues Baseball, compared to only a handful in the NFL. This is only appropriate in a country that invented the assembly line. Streamlining the production of objects, it also systematized and homogenized the behaviors of men, turned them into seething robots. Manning an assembly line at Boeing, Frank Perdue or McDonald’s, a person becomes just as uniform as the jet engines, drum sticks or freedom fries he’s cranking out. If stockholders had their wishes, he could be switched off at the end of his shift, given a cursory wipe and a pat on the head, then flipped back on the next morning, the costs of his daily upkeep automatically deducted from his debit card. Fuck healthcare.

With his steel head, invisible face and angular, padded shoulders, a football player resembles nothing so much as a robot, a hulking steel humanoid, impervious to pain yet eager to dispense it. Knights in armor also appeared robot-like, but that was only cosplay for the elites. Only the Ringo Starrs and Elton Johns of their days were allowed to dress up like proto-robots. Not so, football players. Even the lowest American could aspire to become a tackling, blocking robot, provided he’s not a wussified, pencil-necked, tanka-composing creep, with barely enough facial hair to not shave.

Like cars, robots are super cool. Tom Brady and LaDainian Tomlinson are also cool. Cool is where it’s at. Americans who lose their cool must do it online, in the dark or out of sight, preferably in another country, while on vacation or in uniform. Criminals or trash, they’re only shown on TV to be ridiculed. Real Americans keep their cool. Stay cool, keep cool, be cool, act cool, even as one is suffering or inflicting pain. It’s only shock and awe, y’all. All football players are cool.

I’d be very surprised to learn of another language that uses cool as a blanket substitute for all positive qualities. Hot also appears frequently in American English, but not nearly as often as cool. Hot’s not really American. Yankees are cool, Latinos hot. If you’re an American man, don’t even think of blurting in public that LaDainian Tomlinson is hot, for example. Humans are supposed to be warm, machines cool. Americans are definitely cool.

Cyborgs, androids, gynoids, American fictional robots include the Six Million Dollar Man, The Bionic Woman, Star Trek’s Data and many, many more. The ultimate American robot is The Terminator, an indestructible killing machine that stops at nothing. Outside of his role, Arnold Schwarzenegger also projects a machine-like hardness and coolness. No reflections, no irony, no moods. No method actor, Schwarzenegger.

The ultimate self-made immigrant, Arnold Schwarzenegger governs the most mythologized state of the union, brightly lit, plastic, hardly real, a self-parody, with San Francisco a foggy aberration. Don’t ever confuse him with that other beef jerky, Sylvester Stallone. Arnold would never consent to mouth such a lame ass question like, “Do we get to win this time?” Sylvester sounded like a hurt little boy asking his mom if he could go outside and play. That’s not American, dipshit. What’s next, approval from congress?! Just kick ass, like Schwarzenegger. Instead of asking stupid questions, The Terminator just threatened, promised, “I’ll be back,” like General McArthur, the last American with truly depleted uranium gonads.

If only America had a mile-long assembly line to crank out millions of Schwarzeneggers, its army wouldn’t be short of robotic soldiers. Desperate, it’s accepting foreigners, middle-aged fatsos, drug addicts, Aryan Nation, Blood, Crisp, Latin Kings and Tiny Rascals members, not to mention borderline retards. One overzealous recruiter even crossed into Mexico, to track down two potential suckers in a Tijuana high school. A female soldier has to be 28-week pregnant before they send her home. On May 23, 2003, a 33 year-old Marine even gave birth to a baby boy on the USS Boxer, deployed near Kuwait.

The Pentagon thought it had landed a poster robot in Pat Tillman, a square-jawed football player who turned down three million bucks to go zap terrorists, payback time, except that Tillman actually had a brain and a heart. Sent to Afghanistan, then Iraq, he said to a fellow soldier as they witnessed the bombing of a town, “You know, this war is so fuckin’ illegal.” He urged other soldiers to vote against Bush, and even asked his mother to arrange a meeting with Noam Chomsky, of all people. No robot, Tillman was morphing into a fire-breathing dissident in front of his handlers’ eyes, so they had three shots blasted into his forehead from ten yards away, then declared him a hero. Case closed. Even after the criminal details had leaked out, the mainstream, corporate media gave this sensational story only a cursory glance, leaving his family and the alternative press to pick through the sordid facts. In the absurd funhouse that’s contemporary America, Ellen DeGeneres’ dog is more newsworthy.

Robotic soldiers are only a stopgap measure until real robots could be perfected. Although they may not be as well-spoken as Arnold Schwarzenegger, they won’t feel pain, hunger and fatigue. Israel already employs bulldozer robots and, on the border with Gaza, a series of wall-mounted machine guns remote-controlled by female soldiers. South Korea uses SGR-A1 robots along its border with North Korea. According to Samsung, the robots’ manufacturer, “the system is designed to replace a human-oriented guards, overcoming their limitation of discontinuous guarding mission due to its severe weather condition or fatigue, so that the perfect guarding operation is guaranteed.” Leading the field is the USA, of course, with 5,000 robots deployed in Iraq alone, everything from a nine-pound Dragon Runner, a “throwbot” that can be tossed over a wall, out a three-story window or up a flight of stairs, to the Special Weapons Observation Remote Reconnaissance Direct Action System (SWORDS), armed with an M249 rifle. All these systems are still controlled by a human, but that will soon change. Noel Sharkey wrote recently in The Guardian:

[F]ully autonomous robots that make their own decisions about lethality are high on the US military agenda. The US National Research Council advises “aggressively exploiting the considerable warfighting benefits offered by autonomous vehicles.” They are cheap to manufacture, require less personnel and, according to the navy, perform better in complex missions. One battlefield soldier could start a large-scale robot attack in the air and on the ground.

This is dangerous new territory for warfare, yet there are no new ethical codes or guidelines in place. I have worked in artificial intelligence for decades, and the idea of a robot making decisions about human termination is terrifying.

The Pentagon is taking its cue from a 1995 dystopian movie, Screamers, which features a fighting robot called Autonomous Mobile Sword. A self-replicating crawling machine, it tracks a living pulse, then leaps to dismember its target. A small problem: it cannot distinguish between friends or foes, civilians or soldiers, men, women or children, primary or collateral damages. It sounds like we’re already there. Cool!

The latest October Reuters/Zogby Index shows record low approval ratings for George Bush and Congress – 24% for the president that looks almost giddy compared to the bottom-scraping 11% level for the nation’s lawmakers. It’s more evidence that the criminal class in Washington is bipartisan and hoping November, 2008 will change things is pure fantasy.

A voter groundswell sent a message last November to end the Iraq war and occupation. Instead, the Democrat-led 110th Congress continues to fund it generously. In May, the House overwhelmingly passed HR 1585, the FY 2008 National Defense Authorization Act. It calls for $506.8 billion for DOD plus $141.8 billion (of the $150.5 billion White House request) for ongoing Iraq and Afghanistan operations. The Senate followed with a similar bill on October 1 with only three opposing votes against it. Neither bill proposed an Iraq withdrawal timeline, and final legislation has yet to be sent to the president.

Add on further amounts like George Bush’s latest $46 billion request putting FY 2008 supplemental war-funding above $196 billion and rising. Congress will approve it and more in spite of Democrats signaling a protracted budget showdown ahead. The only showdown will be over how much pork will be added to the final appropriation and for what purpose.

Democrats also back the administration’s push to attack Iran by echoing what the Israeli Lobby calls “The Iranian Threat.” War with Iran is AIPAC’s top priority, and key Democrats in Congress are on board hyping a non-existent threat to prepare the public for what may be coming. Earlier in March, Speaker Pelosi removed a provision from an appropriations bill that would have required George Bush to get congressional approval before attacking Iran. Then in July, the Senate unanimously (97 – 0) passed the Lieberman amendment that practically endorses war if it’s declared. It affirmed George Bush’s baseless charges that Tehran funds, trains and arms Iraqi resistance fighters “who are contributing to the destabilization of Iraq and are responsible for the murder of members of the United States Armed Forces.”

The House added its voice on September 25 by voting 397 – 16 for the Iran Counter-Proliferation Act of 2007 that imposes sanctions on non-US companies investing in Iran’s oil sector. The next day the Senate acted again by overwhelmingly (79 – 22) passing the Kyl-Lieberman amendment that calls for US policy to “combat, contain and (stop Iran by use of) diplomatic, economic, intelligence and military instruments.” Other bellicose language in the resolution stated:

— “the United States should designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp as a foreign terrorist organization….and place (it) on the list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists….it should be the policy of the United States to stop inside Iraq the violent activities and destabilizing influence of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, its foreign facilitators such as Lebanese Hezbollah, and its indigenous Iraqi proxies.”

This measure helped smooth the way for George Bush’s October 25 unilateral imposition of sanctions discussed below. It was an unprecedented move against another nation’s military Senator Jim Webb (voting no) said provides “a backdoor method of gaining congressional validation for military action, without one hearing (or) serious debate (and that the action) is Dick Cheney’s fondest pipe dream.”

George Bush acted provocatively twice. At his October 17 news conference, he menacingly said he believes Iran “want(s) to have the capacity, the knowledge in order to make a nuclear weapon….it’s in the world’s interests to prevent them from doing so….If Iran had a nuclear weapon, it would be a dangerous threat to world peace….So….if you’re interested in avoiding World War III” this possibility must be prevented implying war (potentially using first-strike nuclear weapons) is the way to do it.

On October 25 Bush acted again to counter China and Russia’s opposition to sweeping UN Security Council measures. He unilaterally imposed harsh new sanctions against Iran’s Revolutionary Guard (IRGC), its Quds Force, three state-owned banks and over 20 Iranian companies. The IRGC was named as “proliferators of weapons of mass destruction,” and the Quds Force was called a “supporter of terrorism.”

Democrats buy this stuff and ignore IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei’s latest October 28 statement that repeated his earlier ones. He said he had no evidence Iran is building or seeks to build nuclear weapons and accused the Bush administration of adding “fuel to the fire” with its bellicose rhetoric. The “loyal opposition” prefers instead to accept White House press secretary Dana Perino’s October 29 charge that Iran “is a country that is enriching and reprocessing uranium and the reason one does that is to lead towards a nuclear weapon.”

This accusation and new administration sanctions ratchet up tension further and amount to what one analyst called “a warning shot across the bow (that stops short of) a signal we’re going to war,” but it’s got other observers thinking the likelihood is greater than ever with Congress on board. The move also caught Vladimir Putin’s attention in Lisbon where he was attending an EU leader summit. “Why worsen the situation and bring it to a dead end” with sanctions or military action,” he said. He then added a pointed reference to George Bush stating: “Running around like a madman with a razor blade, waving it around, is not the best way to resolve the situation.”

Newly imposed sanctions won’t affect US companies. They’re already barred from doing business directly in Iran, but they do target their foreign subsidiaries and other foreign-based ones with threats of penalties and exclusion from the US market. It remains to be seen how effective they’ll be as key EU countries as well as China, Russia, India and others have growing economic ties to Iran. They won’t be eager to sever them or join the US campaign for a wider Middle East war. In addition, Iran is a major oil supplier. With the price of crude touching $96 a barrel on November 1 (and December futures up to $125), any cutoff or severe reduction of supply guarantees it’ll top $100 and make a global economic slowdown or recession much more likely.

Nonetheless, the Bush war machine presses on with congressional Democrats aboard. Presidential candidates from both parties support Bush’s move, and Democrat front runner Hillary Clinton is as hawkish as Joe Lieberman and John McCain. They both endorse attacking Iran, and McCain believes striking Iran’s nuclear sites “is a possibility that is maybe closer to reality than we are discussing tonight.”

Clinton is just as bellicose, is close to AIPAC, and in an earlier speech said: “The security and freedom of Israel must be decisive and remain at the core of any American approach to the Middle East. (We dare not) waver from this (firm) commitment.” She was also quoted in the current issue of Foreign Affairs saying: “Iran poses a long-term strategic challenge to the United States, our NATO allies and Israel. It is the country that most practices state-sponsored terrorism, and it uses its surrogates to supply explosives that kill US troops in Iraq….(Iran) must not not be permitted to build or acquire nuclear weapons. If Iran (won’t comply with) the will of the international community, all options must remain on the table.”

The only give in her position (that’s hardly any at all) is wanting congressional approval for any future military action. Up to now, that’s been pro forma rubber stamp. It’ll be no different if George Bush orders an attack as congressional Democrat leaders, including Hillary Clinton, have already signaled their approval.

John Richardson wrote on October 18 in Esquire.com that two former high-ranking Bush administration National Security Council officials fear the worst. They’re Middle East experts Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann, and they’re reacting publicly. They believe war with Iran has been in the cards for years, and we’re “getting closer and closer to the tripline.” Key for them was the unprecedented move to name Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Quds Force a terrorist organization.

Richardson lays out what they think will happen: UN diplomacy will fail because Russia and China won’t agree to harsh sanctions. Iran’s policies won’t change without “any meaningful incentive from the US. That will trigger a….White House (response with) a serious risk (George Bush) would decide to order an attack on the Iranian nuclear installations and probably a wider target zone.” This, in turn, “would result in a dramatic increase in attacks on US (Iraq) forces, attacks by proxy forces like Hezbollah, and an unknown reaction from….Afghanistan and Pakistan, where millions admire Iran’s resistance.” Attacking Iran “could engulf America in a war with the entire Muslim world.” The article also quotes former CIA officer and author Robert Baer (from Time magazine) saying an unnamed highly placed White House official believes “IEDs are a casus belli for this administration. There will be an attack on Iran.”

The London Times raised the betting odds further for one in its October 21 report. Columnist Michael Smith wrote: UK defense sources disclosed that “British (Special Air Service – SAS) forces have crossed into Iran several times (along with other special forces, the Australian SAS and American special-operation troops) as part of a secret border war against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s Al-Quds special forces.” They engaged in “at least half a dozen intense firefights” along the Iran-Iraq border in what looks like deliberate US-UK efforts to provoke Iran into providing justification for a major American attack.

Speculation one looms has been around for some time, and if it comes, it won’t surprise observers like Iran expert Gary Sick. He was a military advisor to three US presidents and was recently quoted in Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine saying: The recent shift in US emphasis to “Iran’s support for terrorism in Iraq….is a complete change and is potentially dangerous.” That’s because it’s much easier proving (true or not) Iran supports Iraqi resistance fighters than it poses an imminent nuclear threat to the world.

Der Spiegel also reports on a leak “by an official close to” Dick Cheney that he’s “already asked for a backroom analysis of how a war with Iran might begin (and in) the scenario concocted by (his) strategists, Washington’s first step would be to convince Israel to fire missiles at Iran’s (Natanz) uranium enrichment plant.” That would provoke Iran to retaliate and give the Bush administration the excuse it needs “to attack military targets and nuclear facilities in Iran.” That’s OK with Democrats if it comes including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Black Agenda Report writer Margaret Kimberly calls a “Quisling” and an “absolute disaster for the Democrat Party and….the entire nation (because of her) eagerness to cooperate with the Bush regime (and) her incompetence in leading Congress.”

Other key Democrats share those qualities and that assures extremist Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey’s confirmation won’t be challenged. That’s in spite of reports top Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats Chairman Leahy and Majority Whip Durbin say their votes depend on his admitting waterboarding is torture. During his confirmation hearing, Mukasey was evasive and noncommittal.

When asked during questioning, he incredulously claimed not to know what waterboarding is even though it’s been around for centuries and what it entails is common knowledge. Mukasey would only say “IF (waterboarding) is torture, it is unconstitutional.” He then repeated the White House line “We don’t torture” even though he knows DOJ legal opinions confirm the Bush administration condones the practice by endorsing “the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.”

He should also know about the ACLU’s new “Administration of Torture” book based on FOIA requested evidence. It documents that “marching orders” for torture came from Donald Rumsfeld so the White House had to be involved as well. That includes George Bush and Alberto Gonzales, who in 2002 as White House Counsel, called the Geneva Conventions “quaint” and “obsolete” and as Attorney General authorized physical and psychological brutality as official administration policy.

Mukasey promises business as usual as AG and confirmed it by claiming “I don’t think (Guantanamo prisoners) are mistreated.” He also supports the president’s right to imprison US citizens without charge and deny “unlawful enemy combatants” their habeas rights, but that’s OK with Democrats on the Judiciary Committee with a large party majority sure to agree.

In a follow-up letter Senator Leahy requested, Mukasey was just as evasive and noncommittal as during his confirmation hearing. He sidestepped commenting on presidential surveillance powers limits beyond what FISA allows and continued to avoid admitting waterboarding is torture. Instead he said: ….”there is a real issue (whether) the techniques presented and discussed at the hearing and in your letter are even part of any program of questioning detainees.”

He then added if confirmed he’ll concentrate on “solving problems cooperatively with Congress,” advise George Bush appropriately on any “technique” he determines to be unlawful, and the president is bound by constitutional and treaty obligations that prohibit torture. This man and the president defile the law and practically boast about it, but Democrats will confirm him anyway as the next Attorney General.

House Democrats Pass New Terrorism Prevention Law

Almost without notice, the House overwhelmingly (404 – 6) passed the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 (HR 1955) on October 23 some are calling “the thought crime prevention bill.” It now moves to the Senate where if passed and signed by George Bush will establish a commission and Center of Excellence to study and act against thought criminals.

The bill’s language hides its true intent as “violent radicalization” and “homegrown terrorism” are whatever the administration says they are. Violent radicalization is defined as “adopting or promoting an extremist belief system (to facilitate) ideologically based violence to advance political, religious or social change.” Homegrown terrorism is used to mean “the use, planned use, or threatened use, of force or violence by a group or individual born, raised, or based and operating primarily with the United States or any (US) possession to intimidate or coerce the (US) government, the civilian population….or any segment thereof (to further) political or social objectives.”

Along with other repressive laws enacted post-9/11, HR 1955 may be used against any individual or group with unpopular views – those that differ from established state policies even when they’re illegal as are many under George Bush. Prosecutors henceforth will be able to target anti-war protesters, believers in Islam, web editors, internet bloggers and radio and TV show hosts and commentators with views the bill calls “terrorist-related propaganda.”

If this legislation becomes law, which is virtually certain, any dissenting anti-government action or opinion may henceforth be called “violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism” with stiff penalties for anyone convicted. This bill now joins the ranks of other repressive post-9/11 laws like Patriot I and II, Military Commissions and Protect America Acts that combined with this one are grievous steps toward a full-blown national security police state everyone should fear and denounce.

Blame it on Congress and the 110th Democrat-led one that was elected to end these practices but just made them worse….and there’s still 14 months to go to the term’s end with plenty of time left to vaporize Iran and end the republic if that’s the plan.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Apparently there is one set of rights for Blackwater mercenaries and another for the rest of us. Normally when a group of people alleged to have gunned down 17 civilians in a lawless shooting spree are questioned, investigators will tell them something along the lines of: “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.” But that is not what the Blackwater operatives involved in the September 16 Nisour Square shooting in Iraq were told. Most of the Blackwater shooters were questioned by State Department Diplomatic Security investigators with the understanding that their statements and information gleaned from them could not be used to bring criminal charges against them, nor could they be introduced as evidence. In other words, “Anything you say can’t and won’t be used against you in a court of law.”

ABC News obtained copies of sworn statements given by Blackwater guards in the immediate aftermath of the shootings, all of which begin, “I understand this statement is being given in furtherance of an official administrative inquiry,” and that, “I further understand that neither my statements nor any information or evidence gained by reason of my statements can be used against me in a criminal proceeding.” Constitutional law expert Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, says the offering of so-called “use immunity” agreements by the State Department is “very irregular,” adding he could not recall a precedent for it. In normal circumstances, Ratner said, such immunity is only granted after a Grand Jury or Congressional committee has been convened and the party has invoked their 5th Amendment rights against self-incrimination. It would then be authorized by either a judge or the committee.

Military law expert Scott Horton of Human Rights First says, “What the State Department has done in this case is inconsistent with proper law enforcement standards. It is likely to undermine an ultimate prosecution, if not make it impossible. In this sense, the objective of the State Department in doing this is exposed to question. It seems less to be to collect the facts than to immunize Blackwater and its employees. By purporting to grant immunity, the State Department draws itself more deeply into the wrongdoing and adopts a posture vis-a-vis Blackwater that appears downright conspiratorial. This will make the fruits of its investigation a tough sell.”

Ratner says that while what was offered the Blackwater operatives is not immunity from prosecution, prosecutors would need to prove they did not use the sworn statements as part of their investigation. “Even though the person can be prosecuted if independent evidence is relied upon, often this is hard to demonstrate,” he says. As an example of the problems such immunity can pose, Ratner points to the case of Oliver North. “He had been granted ‘use immunity’ and was then prosecuted, supposedly on the basis of independent evidence,” Ratner says. “However, his conviction was reversed in the court of appeals because it could not be demonstrated that all of the evidence against him had an independent source outside of his own testimony.”

Aside from the fundamental problem that there is quite possibly no legal framework for charging the Blackwater shooters under any legal system–US civilian law, military law or Iraqi law–legal analysts and a former federal prosecutor say the State Department has already tainted the Nisour Square criminal investigation in several ways. The FBI was not dispatched to investigate the case until two weeks after the shootings occurred, meaning that the initial investigation was in the hands of a non-law enforcement agency that just happens to be Blackwater’s employer. By the time actual law enforcement, the FBI, was sent to Baghdad, the crime scene had been tainted and some of the perpetrators questioned with the alleged immunity provision. “To rely on non-law enforcement to conduct sensitive law enforcement activities makes no sense if you want impartial justice,” says Melanie Sloan, a former federal prosecutor who currently serves as Executive Director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “This investigation has already taken so long and it looks like the State Department has impeded the possibility of a successful criminal investigation.” The Washington Post reported that “Some of the Blackwater guards have subsequently refused to be interviewed by the FBI, citing promises of immunity from State.”

This is hardly the first indication that the government’s investigation of the Nisour Square shootings was lacking in integrity and impartiality. The State Department’s initial report on the shooting was drafted by a Blackwater contractor on official US government stationary. The FBI team initially dispatched to Baghdad to investigate Blackwater was to be guarded by Blackwater until Sen. Patrick Leahy raised questions about the arrangement forcing the Bureau to announce it would be guarded by official personnel and not personnel from the same company it was investigating.

Perhaps the most disturbing part of this story (aside from the loss of Iraqi civilian life) is that even if Blackwater was not so politically connected to the White House and even if there was a truly independent US Justice Department and even if immunity had not been offered and even if there was an aggressive investigation, it may all be totally irrelevant. When Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently dispatched a team to Baghdad led by veteran diplomat Patrick Kennedy to review the department’s private security force, the team returned with the conclusion that it “is unaware of any basis for holding non-Department of Defense contractors accountable under US law.”

While there are currently moves afoot in the US Congress to adjust language in the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act to allow for prosecutions of State Department contractor crimes in US civilian courts and although there is a debate over whether the court martial system could be applied, the reality is that the political will to prosecute contractors has been totally absent since day one of the Iraq occupation. Not a single armed contractor has ever been prosecuted for crimes committed in Iraq–not under US civilian law, not under military law and certainly not in Iraqi courts, which have been banned by the US occupation authorities from going after private contractors.

What is so often lost in this new debate on accountability and oversight is this fact: private contractors now outnumber regular soldiers on the Iraq battlefield. The military–with its massive bureaucracy–has been unable or unwilling to effectively monitor the actions of its soldiers and prosecute them for crimes. Who will effectively oversee the 180,000-strong shadow corporate army? Will FBI teams really be running around Iraq chasing allegations (ever increasing) of contractor crimes and misconduct? Who will guard the investigators? Who will interview Iraqi witnesses? Where will the funding come from? Who will arrest the heavily-armed mercenary alleged to have committed a crime, particularly when he was doing exactly what he was supposed to do in keeping VIP US officials alive in Iraq?

While there may be some token prosecutions that stem from the recent uptick in reporting on contractor crimes in Iraq, the reality is that without private forces from Blackwater and its ilk, the US occupation of Iraq would be untenable. Nothing will be done that would actually jeopardize the use of such forces in the war zone. While Blackwater’s conduct in Iraq is horrifying, it is important to remember that US ambassadors–all four who have served under the Iraq occupation–owe their lives to Blackwater’s shoot-first-and-never-ask-questions cowboy tactics. They are the reason the company can brag it has never lost an American life it was protecting. Blackwater does its job and while it is essential to prosecute its operatives for their crimes, the ultimately responsible party is the entity that hired them and deployed them armed and dangerous in Iraq.

Meeting Resistance, portrays a side of the Iraqi insurgency President Bush doesn’t want the world to see.

11/02/07 “ICH ” — – On one of those beautiful, fall Sunday mornings that can make you feel all is right with the world, filmmakers Molly Bingham and Steve Connors discussed their new documentary about Iraqis fighting the U.S. occupation, “Meeting Resistance,” 84 minutes of unflinching wallop destined to unhinge the way millions of Americans see their country’s role in the world.

In May 2003, the same month that George W. Bush stood on an aircraft carrier off California declaring “Mission Accomplished,” and a month after Iraqis began organizing a grassroots armed resistance, Bingham, was on assignment in Baghdad’s Adhamiya district, hot on the trail of the last sighting of Saddam Hussein.

While there, the 39 year-old photojournalist got a tour of the largest Sunni mosque in Baghdad, named after the seventh century imam, Abu Hanifa. Bingham recalled that, as she drove away from the mosque, her translator mentioned that one of the men they’d just met said he was with the resistance. She filed this away in the back of her mind.

Before returning to the U.S. the next month, Bingham watched news reports, trying unsuccessfully to find out who was beginning to violently oppose the U.S. occupation and why. She talked with a photographer-colleague, Steve Connors, a former British Army MP, who had observed the same lack of coverage.

Between them they had 33 years experience covering conflict zones and decided to collaborate on reporting what till now has been the most visibly under-reported story of the Iraq war. By August they were back in Iraq for another 10 months, Connors to film and Bingham to write.

“This film is seen as somehow really radical,” the 48 year-old Connors said. “I’ve covered 10 conflicts and this is the first time I’ve heard it’s radical to cover the other side. As a German friend of mine asked, ‘Americans consider this news?’”

Bingham added, “It’s just a really important story. If your work is covering conflict, it’s just what you do. You cover both sides, or in some cases three or four sides.”

“Imagine if all the reporting from Chechnya was done through Russia’s point of view,” Connors interjected, “Or if all the news about Palestine came through Israel? In broader terms it’s a ridiculous notion.”

“We still apply a healthy dose of journalistic skepticism,” Bingham said. “We didn’t take at face value everything we were told. That’s why when people say to us, ‘This is biased, it only presents one side,’ we say yes, it does only present one side but it’s as honest as we can get. Most of the time we’re bombarded by one-sided coverage from the U.S. point of view.” Finished Connors, “Even including who from the other side gets quoted.”

One example of how much difference perspective makes, Connors said, can be as simple as the usage of the term “Sunni triangle.”

“I never heard that term from an Iraqi. There are many Sunnis living there, but that area is majority Shia, so Iraqis would never call it that. It’s another example of how all our news comes from the lens of the military.”

“Yes. America,” Connors quickly answered when asked if the pair had a particular audience in mind when they made “Meeting Resistance.” Added Bingham, “This is basic journalism. We want to make it available to whoever can get their hands on it.”

One audience the film was made available to was a roomful of active duty soldiers, officers and enlisted, in Baghdad earlier this month. ABC News was there and asked two young soldiers who patrol Baghdad nearly every day with the Third Infantry Division, what they thought after seeing the documentary.

Sgt. Mike Kelley told ABC, “When you try to be compassionate and see things from their point of view, this is sort of reinforcing that, saying yeah, this really is how they feel. They’re normal people and they’re pissed off because we’re here and we’re not welcome.”

Added Specialist Travis Barnes, “We just don’t know all the rich details that make these people up and tell us who they are and why they behave the way they behave, and their history. It’s stuff we need to know.”

One thing that surprised the filmmakers as they were in the midst of their project was how quickly a decentralized resistance developed against the occupation.

Bingham recalled that, “We didn’t know what to expect at all, but what we found was that the vast majority of people we spoke with didn’t wait to see how the administration of Baghdad was going to go. They just saw they were being occupied and that occupation required a response. Most of the people we interviewed were organizing within a week (of the fall of the Saddam Hussein government in early April, 2003), finding people to work with.”

“None of these people required leadership,” Connors submitted. “No one told them what to do; they did it as an act of personal conscience. And if you follow that line of thought you can see that a leader in that situation is simply someone who has a few more skills than you do. If, after a while, he veers off from opposing the occupation he might get killed, or in some fashion you settle with him and get another leader. In a strange way, it’s almost democratic.”

One factor that may explain the relative quickness of the Sunni resistance, Bingham surmised, was that “Sunnis have more of what we would call a ‘Protestant’ view of their religion. They knew they were right because of their individual interpretation of the Koran; whereas the Shia have a more Catholic relationship with God, with a worldly spiritual leader who interprets the Koran for them.”

Both journalists acknowledged that the process of making their seminal film left its mark on them.

“It’s given me a sense of empowerment,” Connors offered. “There are of course many difficulties – raising money and all that, but we’ve done it all without the resources of a major corporation. To be at as many screenings as we can to answer questions, night after night, is one way of demonstrating ‘We are not a corporation…here’s what we found, take it or leave it.’ Theoretically, you always know you can do that, but to actually do it and go up against all established thought, that’s strengthening.”

Bingham observed that she learned how much of a challenge a project like this is and how important it is to have someone to work with who feels just as strongly.

“We’ve been called intrepid, insistent and dogged,” the Louisville, Kentucky native explained. “When you cover conflict, especially when your country is involved, giving up is unacceptable. But if I was doing this by myself I think I would have given up.”

She added that “To see how our policies are carried out overseas; to be on the sharp end of that, you get a very different view of how we’re perceived…and how I perceived my own country. You know, the myth of the democratic and free America is somewhat real on some level, but when you are faced with the hypocrisy of our actions in light of those values, it’s a really tough thing to reconcile. I found I was trying to hold the both of those realities together or consider perhaps one may not be true. It truly challenges your core beliefs.”

An example of that was when a heckler in New York tried to put her into a corner by demanding to know if she was “an American or a journalist?” “If you’re gonna make me choose,” Bingham answered him, “I’d say ‘a journalist.’”

Asked if she would have answered that way a few years ago, she thought a moment and replied, “Yes, but not as quickly.”

Her collaborator interjected, “Six years ago that question would never have been asked. Now certainly, we’ve heard allegations of treason.”

Considering another project is premature, Connors explained. “We feel committed to getting this film to where the discussions we have after each screening are happening all over the country. Then we can feel like we can take a rest and look at another project.”

Bingham concluded by looking beyond the particular message of “Meeting Resistance.” “This film is clearly about Iraq; it is clearly shaped by the culture, religion and history of Iraq. But it is also a film about the human condition under occupation as seen through this history…we shouldn’t be surprised.”

11/02/07 “ICH” — — It is clear that the US media moguls would have us believe that the catastrophic invasion and occupation of Iraq was a sincere effort to promote freedom and democracy in the Middle East, gone awry. But we must remember that everything associated with capitalism is about marketing: making the people believe that things and events are the opposite of what they really are, and creating artificial wants that neither benefit the individual nor society, while simultaneously embellishing corporate profits.

This understanding would have been equally evident in the mainstream media’s buildup to the war had we a less propagandized, better read, and more informed citizenry. Even the politically naïve should have known that Saddam Hussein’s threat to the US, so vividly hyped in the media, was pure marketing propaganda.

But the majority of the people bought it, and now we have no choice but to live with our purchase. Short of a major social upheaval, we are going to be in Iraq for a very long time, and the death toll will continue to rise, especially for the Iraqis—the unwilling recipients of our corporate benevolence delivered through carpet bombs, terror, and torture. For these are the undeniable legacy of our foreign policies, and the illegal, amoral, acquisition of property by blunt force trauma.

If we are to survive as a republic, we must appreciate that capitalism and its cousin, global corporatism—not Saddam Hussein, not Communism or Socialism, nor Islamic terrorists, are the greatest threats to democracy. Zionism and Christian fundamentalism, which attempt to provide the flimsy moral basis for our Middle East policy, also pose significant obstacles to world peace by denying justice to others and promoting ethnic cleansing.

It is beguiling that we have yet to learn this fundamental lesson, that we know so little about our own history, and the role that mass ignorance plays in determining the future.

The narcotic of state sponsored propaganda has a powerful and hypnotic effect on our collective senses, and it is rending asunder the fabric of what is supposed to be a free and civil society. We believe what we are told and accept what we are given, without demanding truth, justice or accountability.

It is imperative for the purveyors of war to maintain a cloak of secrecy and a façade of public support where, if the truth were known, none would exist. It is necessary to keep the truth concealed in order to throw the public off the scent of the corruption that is the guiding principle of corporate governance and plutocracy, fomented by morally bankrupt men and women; a system that causes irreparable harm and suffering to its innocent victims and then profits from the misery and suffering it inflicts.

These days it is popular to describe the events occurring in Iraq as the result of incompetence, mismanagement, miscalculation, and benevolent bungling; to characterize them as a well intentioned mistake on the road to freedom and democracy, rather than the moral abomination they are. What we have in Iraq is not the result of any of these phenomena. It is the intended consequence of cold calculation to bomb Iraq into submission, to thoroughly disorient its people, and to apply economic shock therapy before they can recognize what is being done to them.

The intent is to invade sovereign nations either militarily, economically, or both; and to force unbridled capitalism on them. This means, of course, that we must first overthrow the existing governments—many of them democracies, and replace them with ruthless dictatorships willing to betray their own people, and amenable to opening up their countries to corporate exploitation and privatization.

So called free market capitalism requires corrupt leadership on the receiving end that is willing to accept bribes while becoming a puppet to the US. This is how some of the must brutal regimes in the world came into power. Corporate America is always beating the drums of war in search of profits and ever increasing shares of the world’s markets. Enough is never enough—they want it all.

Aside from overthrowing popularly elected governments, the unspoken objective of mature capitalism, guided by the doctrine of economic shock therapy, is to turn once sovereign nations into totally deregulated corporate states, answerable to no one.

This objective will be accomplished by privatizing the nationalized infrastructure, inviting in foreign investors, removing tariffs that protect local business and cooperatives from predatory multinational corporations, and downsizing the workforce; by eliminating social spending, and removing all forms of corporate controls. In short, by conducting a fire sale of each nation’s stolen assets and auctioning them off at bargain basement prices to wealthy multinational investors.

The intent is to create an unfettered corporate state in which the market, driven solely by profit, is the final arbiter of all things; an Orwellian world in which human rights, labor laws, environmental protections, and social justice do not even exist, much less enter into market equations.

Aided by the World Bank and the IMF, we are rapidly arriving at a state of global corporate fascism—the free market reform of manic capitalism, greed on steroids; a horrible economic monster unleashed upon unsuspecting people the world over, masquerading as democracy and free trade. And it is occurring in blatant contradiction to everything that is free, decent, and fair; a monstrosity utterly devoid of humanity and empathy for those struggling to survive.

But behind the marketing façade of a beneficent capitalism that is more oxymoronic than real, the skeleton of Reaganism, free marketry, and trickle down economics is exposed for all to see. We are witnessing naked greed unleashed upon the world like a swarm of locusts the size of North America. The fabulously wealthy are realizing obscene profits, while the majority of the world’s people are forced into economic servitude, many of them living in abject poverty, scratching out a bleak existence on sweatshop wages under horrendous conditions.

Economic slavery and burdensome debt, not freedom and democracy, is what we are imposing upon Iraq, aided by the most powerful military in history and, all too often, with the blessings of an oblivious and propagandized citizenry. Aside from the fierce resistance to the occupation, the US is achieving all of its major objectives in Iraq.

Like flies circling piles of stinking excrement, the lords of unfettered capitalism are buzzing around the bloated corpse of what is left of the world. And they have no intentions of stopping at Iraq. Iran and Syria are waiting in the wings: war that will not end in our lifetime.

If the world were as enamored with capitalism as its adherents proclaim, there would be no need to masquerade it as anything other than what it is—economic self interest for the privileged, driven by insatiable greed, funded by the public treasure. There would be no need to impose it on the world through high tech militarism and occupation, preceded by elaborate propagandistic media blitzes and tricks. All people would seek it out, as they seek water to slake their thirst and nourishment for their bodies.

So we must ask ourselves: When has it ever been in the pubic interest to over feed the rich and starve the poor? When has it ever been in the public interest to destroy the earth for the sake of profits? When has it ever been in the public interest to promote war and injustice over peace and shared prosperity?

Just people everywhere must resist evil or run the risk of being complicit in it. Neutrality, indifference and apathy, are untenable responses to what is being done in our name. Somehow, we must awaken from this media induced cultural stupor. We must do so under the prying eyes of government and private security contractors who are protecting corporate investors from democracy, and from people like us. Each of us is being diminished just as the Declaration of Independence states: “harass our people and eat out their substance.”

Every citizen is faced with a simple choice: organize or perish. The storm clouds of World War Three are looming on the horizon. These are extraordinary times that demand something from every one of us.

USAF Struck Syrian “Nuclear” Site

11/02/07 “JPost” — — The September 6 raid over Syria was carried out by the US Air Force, the Al-Jazeera Web site reported Friday. The Web site quoted Israeli and Arab sources as saying that two strategic US jets armed with tactical nuclear weapons carried out an attack on a nuclear site under construction.

The sources were quoted as saying that Israeli F-15 and F-16 jets provided cover for the US planes.

The sources added that each US plane carried one tactical nuclear weapon and that the site was hit by one bomb and was totally destroyed.

At the beginning of October, Israel’s military censor began to allow the local media to report on the raid without attributing their report to foreign sources. Nevertheless, details of the strike have remained clouded in mystery.

On October 28, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told the cabinet that he had apologized to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan if Israel violated Turkish airspace during a strike on an alleged nuclear facility in Syria last month.

In a carefully worded statement that was given to reporters after the cabinet meeting, Olmert said: “In my conversation with the Turkish prime minister, I told him that if Israeli planes indeed penetrated Turkish airspace, then there was no intention thereby, either in advance or in any case, to – in any way – violate or undermine Turkish sovereignty, which we respect.”

The New York Times reported on October 13 that Israeli planes struck at what US and Israeli intelligence believed was a partly constructed nuclear reactor in Syria on September 6, citing American and foreign officials who had seen the relevant intelligence reports.

According to the report, Israel carried out the report to send a message that it would not tolerate even a nuclear program in its initial stages of construction in any neighboring state.

On October 17, Syria denied that one of its representatives to the United Nations told a panel that an Israeli air strike hit a Syrian nuclear facility and added that “such facilities do not exist in Syria.”

A UN document released by the press office had provided an account of a meeting of the First Committee, Disarmament and International Security, in New York, and paraphrased an unnamed Syrian representative as saying that a nuclear facility was hit by the raid.

However, the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency, SANA said media reports, apparently based on a UN press release, misquoted the Syrian diplomat.

When the facts change,
I change my mind.
What do you do, sir?
John Maynard Keynes

“The wicked flee when no man pursueth:
but the righteous are bold as a lion.”
Proverbs 28:1

It appears that the Syrian nuclear program came as a surprise to both the Israelis and the Americans. Neither had previously acted or spoken as though Syria had nuclear ambitions, and both acted awfully peculiar after the air strike. This would explain Israeli silence, namely that Syria had been working on it for years and the Israelis had not noticed until very recently. It would also explain the complete incoherence of the US leakint in the weeks after the event. If the US had already had a file on the place, the place name would have come out pretty fast, along with a coherent explanation for what it was, but this was not the case. The sequence of events in the news coverage suggests that the US took the better part of September and October to figure out what was going on and figure out how they missed it.

Syria said its air defences reportedly opened fire on Israeli warplanes flying over the northeast of the country in the early hours of Thursday 06 September 2007. Very few facts are known about the alleged incident. Local residents were reported to have claimed to have heard the sound of five or more planes above the Tal al-Abiad area on Syria’s border with Turkey, around 160 km (100 miles) north of the Syrian city of Rakka. One Syrian official was quoted by Reuters on 07 September 2007 as saying: “They dropped bombs on an empty area while our air defenses were firing heavily at them.”

The Syrian official news agency SANA stated that Israeli aircraft had “infiltrated Syrian airspace through the northern border coming from the direction of the Mediterranean and headed towards northeastern territory, breaking the sound barrier. … The Syrian Arab Republic warns the government of the Israeli enemy and reserves the right to respond according to what it sees fit…” Syria warned that it was weighing its response to the Israeli “aggression”. Syrian Information Minister Mohsen Bilal told Al-Jazeera television that his country was “giving serious consideration to its response… to this aggression … This shows that Israel cannot give up aggression and treachery”.

On 08 September 2007 Turkey asked Israel for clarification after finding two fuel tanks on its territory near the Syrian border allegedly belonging to Israeli warplanes. The jettisoned fuel tanks were discovered late on Thursday 06 September 2007 in the Turkish provinces of Hatay and Gaziantep, near the Syrian border. This came a few hours after Damascus had accused Israel of bombing its territory.

The Israeli government and military initially remained silent about the incident. The Israeli military spokesman’s office said in a statement: “It is not our custom to respond to these kinds of reports.” But the office typically has commented on such reports. In October 2003 Israeli warplanes bombed an empty Palestinian militant training camp in Syria. And in June 2006, Israeli warplanes flew over a palace in northern Syria while President Bashar al-Assad was inside, in what Damascus condemned as an “act of piracy”. These operations were confirmed by the Israeli military. It appeared the government imposed a news blackout on the issue. A spokeswoman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert stated that there would be no comment beyond the military statement.

Analysts were initially divided over whether the [unconfirmed] flight was a tactic of intimidation, or a reconnaissance mission of some sort, or operation intending to test Syrian air defense systems. Other hypotheses have posited that Israel was on an intelligence-gathering mission, scouting an air corridor for a future strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

On 10 September 2007 a [background source] started pitching a story that the air strike had destroyed a uranium pilot enrichment plant that Syria had obtained from North Korea. As far as can be detected, this story did not have legs at that time and no news organization moved it. Michael Corleone [From the Godfather] observed: “it insults my intelligence — and makes me very angry.”

On 11 September 2007 a US government official confirmed [on background] that Israeli warplanes were targeting weapons from Iran and destined for Hizballah militants in Lebanon. On 12 September 2007 Mark Mazzetti and Helene Cooper in The New York Times reported that “Officials in Washington said that the most likely targets of the raid were weapons caches that Israel’s government believes Iran has been sending the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah through Syria. Iran and Syria are Hezbollah’s primary benefactors, and American intelligence officials say a steady flow of munitions from Iran runs through Syria and into Lebanon.”

On 13 September 2007 Glenn Kessler reported in the Washington Post that ” … a former Israeli official said he had been told that it was an attack against a facility capable of making unconventional weapons.”

On 15 September 2007 Glenn Kessler reported in the Washington Post that American sources said that Israel had recently provided the US with evidence — code named “Orchard” — that the DPRK had been cooperating with Syria on a nuclear facility. “The evidence, said to come primarily from Israel, includes dramatic satellite imagery … The new information, particularly images received in the past 30 days, has been restricted to a few senior officials … ” According to one source for this report, the 06 September 2007 air strike appeared to have been linked to the arrival at the Syrian port of Tartus on 03 September 2007 [three days prior to the strike], of a ship carrying material [“labeled as cement”] from North Korea. According to this source, the target of the attack was a Syrian facility “agricultural research center” located “on the Euphrates River, close to the Turkish border”. Israel had reportedly been monitoring the facility in the belief that Syria was “using it to extract uranium from phosphates” at that location.

On 16 September 2007 the UK newspaper The Observer reported that Israel’s strike against Syria involved as many as eight aircraft, including F-15s and F-16s equipped with Maverick missiles and 500 pound bombs, along with an electronic intelligence gathering aircraft. On 16 September 2007 the Sunday Times reported that an IAF commando team arrived on the ground several days before the attack to direct laser beams at the target for the jets.

On 16 September 2007 the Sunday Times quoted an Israeli source as saying that Syria had been planning a “devastating surprise” for Israel, in the wake of reports that the Israel Air Force carried out an air strike against a North Korean nuclear shipment to Syria. The paper reported that Israeli sources said planning for the strike began in late spring 2007 when Mossad director Meir Dagan presented Prime Minister Ehud Olmert with evidence that Syria was seeking to buy a nuclear weapon from North Korea. This news account implies but never actually asserts that the target of the Israeli attack was in fact a North Korean nuclear weapon.

On 16 September 2007 former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton said “it will be very unusual for Israel to conduct such a military operation inside Syria other (than) for a very high value target and certainly a Syrian effort in nuclear weapon area will qualify. … I think this is a clear message not only to Syria, this is a clear message to Iran as well that its continued efforts to acquire nuclear weapons are not going to go unanswered…” Bolton never claims direct knowledge of the facts of the matter, only that a strike against Syrian nuclear capabilities would be in the interest of Israel.

On 16 September 2007 it was reported by AFP that military intelligence chief Amos Yadlin told parliament’s Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee that Israel had recovered its “deterrent capability” after the air strike in Syria. “The new situation affects the entire region, including Iran and Syria,” local media reported. But Tzachi Hanegbi, chairman of the parliamentary committee, told reporters he instructed the military intelligence chief to avoid any mention of Syria at a committee meeting. And Yadlin’s statement to the meeting, “Israel’s deterrence has been rehabilitated since the Lebanon war, and it affects the entire regional system, including Iran and Syria …” seems to have far more to do with an assessment of the July 2006 Op Change of Direction than it did to striking purported Syrian nuclear capabilities.

When the Yediot Aharonot poll asked Israeli Jews “According to foreign media reports, Israel attacked nuclear targets in Syria. Do you support or oppose this action?”. 78% supported it, only 10% were opposed. (The rest gave no opinion.)

By 20 September 2007 the Washington Post editorialized “Media accounts are beginning to converge on a report that Israel bombed a facility where it believed Syria was attempting to hatch its own nuclear weapons program with North Korea’s assistance. … is beginning to look as if Israel may have carried out the boldest act of nuclear preemption since its own 1981 raid against Iraq’s Osirak nuclear complex. If so, its silence is shrewd. It has allowed Syria to avoid a military response … The non-news has boosted the previously rock-bottom poll numbers of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. “

Writing in the Washington Post on October 7, 2007, Jim Hoagland reported that ” … highly classified U.S. intelligence reports say that the Israelis destroyed a nuclear-related facility and caused North Korean casualties at the site, which may have been intended to produce plutonium, according to a senior official with access to those reports. The Israelis have provided the United States with photographs, physical material and soil samples from the site — taken both before and after the raid — according to two independent sources.”

Writing in the Washington Post on October 7, 2007, David Ignatius reported that an “informed official” had told him that “…. Israel’s Sept. 6 strike against a target in Syria … was an attack on nuclear materials supplied to Syria by North Korea, and that the United States and Israel had shared information before the raid … the message to Iran is clear: America and Israel can identify nuclear targets and penetrate air defenses to destroy them.”

On 10 October 2007 Syria took journalists on a tour of the site at Dayr az Zawr, Syria that Israel had allegedly bombed. The New York Times reported the visit on 11 October 2007, stating that there was no evidence of either a nuclear program or an Israeli air strike at the facility. Ron Ben-Yishai, a reporter for the daily Yediot Acharonot had visited the site some days previously, and reported that the government facility here was the one attacked during the raid. The Arab Center for the Studies of Arid Zones and Dry Lands is a government agricultural research center at Deir ez Zor in eastern Syria.

On 14 October 2007 The New York Times reported that the 09 September 2007 Israeli airstrike in Syria was directed against ” … a partly constructed nuclear reactor, apparently modeled on one North Korea has used to create its stockpile of nuclear weapons fuel… the American and foreign officials said. They said it would have been years before the Syrians could have used the reactor to produce the spent nuclear fuel … The partly constructed Syrian reactor was detected earlier this year by satellite photographs… It is possible, some officials said, that the transfer of the technology occurred several years ago.”

Google Earth imagery coverage of the town itself is only available at 10-meter resolution. This imagery depicts small towns on either side of the border between Turkey to the North [Akcakale] and Syria to the South [Tall al Abyad al`Atiq]. The most noteworthy feature is the roughly 500 meter wide vegetation anomaly that is the area devoid of agricultural activity in the no-mans land between the two countries. Higher resolution imagery is present for some adjacent areas, but it is equally un-remarkable.

WASHINGTON (AP) – Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and some of President Bush’s top foreign policy advisers must testify about their conversations with pro-Israel lobbyists, a federal judge ruled Friday in a trial over the misuse of classified information.

Two former American Israel Public Affairs Committee lobbyists accused of passing classified information to an Israeli official and the press. They argue, however, that the U.S. regularly uses the pro-Israel group to send back-channel communications to others, and they say Rice can verify that unofficial but sanctioned role.

Lobbyists Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman subpoenaed Rice, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams and a dozen others to testify.

Prosecutors unsuccessfully challenged the subpoenas. If the officials ultimately testify, the trial in federal court in suburban Alexandria, Va. could offer a behind-the-scenes look at the way U.S. foreign policy is crafted.

The lobbyists are accused of receiving classified information from a now-convicted Pentagon official and relaying it to an Israeli official and the press. The information included details about the al-Qaida terror network, U.S. policy in Iran and the bombing of the Khobar Towers dormitory in Saudi Arabia, federal prosecutors said.

But defense attorneys argued that top U.S. officials regularly used the lobbyists as a go-between as they crafted Middle East policy. If so, attorneys say, how are Rosen and Weissman supposed to know the same behavior that’s expected of them on one day is criminal the next?

U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III said the lobbyists have a right to argue that “they believed the meetings charged in the indictment were simply further examples of the government’s use of AIPAC as a diplomatic back channel.”

Rosen’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, cheered the ruling.

“For over two years, we have been explaining that our clients’ conduct was lawful and completely consistent with how the U.S. government dealt with AIPAC and other foreign policy groups,” Lowell said on behalf of both defendants. “We look forward to the trial.”

“This is what goes on in the foreign policy establishment every day in Washington,” Weissman’s attorneys, John Nassikas and Baruch Weiss, added in a statement.

Ellis, an appointee of President Reagan, left open the possibility that the Bush administration may challenge the subpoenas on the grounds they would reveal privileged information. But the judge said his ruling Friday “may trump a valid governmental privilege.”

If so, that could force the government to decide whether to allow the testimony or drop the case.

Neither the State Department nor the Justice Department would comment on the ruling.

Among those subpoenaed in the case were: former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz; former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage; and Marc Grossman, former undersecretary of state for political affairs.

Don’t be fooled by NY Times Magazine’s feature story this weekend about the religious right’s nice, new image. Christian power is not about holding hands and thinking good thoughts.

Is the religious right ready to get their hands out of America’s underwear? Is the shame margin not paying off the way it used to?

New York Times reporter David Kirkpatrick takes apart “The Evangelical Crackup” in this past Sunday Magazine, in what is sure to be one of the most talked-about stories of the pre-election season.

He interviews a number of pastors and politicos from the conservative churches — the bedrock of the “Moral Majority” and the base that won the Bush family their votes.

This is the movement that could be relied upon to do anything at the flick of an abortion-shaming or homo-hating switch. Get them on their high horse, with a sexy leather crop in their hands, and you had them sweating and frothing their way to the finish line.

By Kirkpatrick’s assessment, the coalition is now blown to smithereens, for a number of reasons. I was disappointed with his analysis, but the raw material is fascinating to review:

1. The Oedipal Split. The old dudes of the Moral Majority are dying, or at least creaking — and the hip young pastors coming up can’t wait to dethrone the old poops. The younger congregations — which are the only ones growing — don’t wanna listen to grandpa scream “Get Thee Behind Me, Satan” — they’re embarrassed by him. They don’t want to look stupid about evolution. They wish they were as cool as The Daily Show.

2. The religious right got tied like a tin can to the tail of the GOP, and lately, that’s like being dragged through the streets on a bed of nails. The new line among the moderate church folk is, “We shouldn’t have gotten involved in politics in the first place.” They say the religious community should be a pure covenant that doesn’t take partisan sides. Besides, the current crop of Republican presidential weirdos candidates make their stomachs hurt.

3. “Be the first one on your block to have your boy come home in a box.” The War is unpopular, and everyone blames Bush. The Fundie rank and file have seen their kids killed and maimed, and they don’t see the Bush clan making any sacrifices. Meanwhile, the oil profiteering is hurting everyone who doesn’t have a major share in Halliburton. The class divisions between the have-nots, have-littles, and the White House are finally deep enough to hurt, and all the flag-waving and fag-bashing won’t make it go away.

Kirkpatrick got a lot of the young ministers on the record speaking about how they didn’t want to be known for what they were against, they want to be associated with positive efforts, like fighting poverty and racism in their own communities. Taking global warming and environmental issues seriously! Promoting peace rather than blood or oil thirst. He even got one pastor to admit he didn’t think having an an abortion or being gay was necessarily going to send anyone to hell. My, my!

On the face of it, these developments are very touching, and they reflect the changes I see in my own small town. The white Christian churches in Santa Cruz have thrown themselves into helping people with drug rehab, especially those suffering from the meth scourge. The old-school surfing community here is divided between dealers and born-again’s, and the Xtians have really gained a lot of ground. They do food fund-raising drives, the pastors are famous for their marital counseling services, they clean up the beaches. They sponsor straight-edge hardcore music shows. They are supportive to families who’ve been devastated by the war, and the obvious sentiment is, “This was so unnecessary, Jesus doesn’t like it.”

But.

I think this “kind” face is the one the church puts on whenever they’re in trouble.

The sex shame has not gone away; I meet the causalities all the time: the young women looking for a way out of a secret pregnancy who “can’t tell anyone” and hate themselves for it. The painful closet cases who hide behind “purity pledges” and the threat of “porn addiction” as a way to keep anyone from seeing that they’re queer, and as horny, as any other human being. The revolving door between drug addiction and choir practice because the underlying problems are never addressed.

The church can’t help these poor sinners, no matter how “nice” they are, because fundamentally, they have sinned. If you believe in that shit, even if you’re not getting a straight ticket to hell, purgatory’s flames are burning your hair off anyway.

Successful missionary work encourages conceit, and aggression. It always does. When it was “fun” to be a Bush Family supporter, when W. was a “winner,” then being a fag-bashing bully and killing a few more abortion doctors was righteous. Bomb Iraq! Your credit card is limitless! Gas is cheap! National Guard duty is a cakewalk! Jesus did a lot of kicking ass and taking names.

Of course the elite like Ralph Reed, Falwell, Dobson, et. al., sold out to the corporate GOP cash trough long ago. Year after year, the Republican economic and military policies destroyed their own base. But the Fundie Kings were distracted by all their velvet cushions and private jets. A scandal here, a scandal there — they just couldn’t be bothered to take it seriously.

The only candidate who could save them now would be a wholesome middle-of-the-roader who promises to end the war, and put some major money in working-class (i.e., debt slave) pockets. Like Hillary. Or Barak. And those two are pumping out the prayer breakfasts to prove that very point. The leading Democrats aren’t campaigning to get religion out of politics, they’re encouraging it.

Dobson may still be screaming in his piss-pot about how children need to be beaten harder to turn out right, but he shook Hillary Clinton’s hand a few weeks ago. What does that say about the two of them?

There is no such thing as religion staying out of politics; I find it incredible any reporter can let a whopper like that slip through without rebuttal. Christian power is not about holding hands and thinking good thoughts about the little people. Instead, what we have is a very tense waiting game.

Kirkpatrick describes one dethroned older minister, Pastor Terry Fox, who got ejected from his Wichita Baptist mega-church by the younger deacons, and is now holding small gatherings in a Best Western hotel room.

“Hell is just as hot as it ever was,” he reminded [his remaining congregation]. “It just has more people in it.”

“… I think the religious community is reflective of the rest of the nation — it’s divided right now. This election process is going to reveal a lot about where the religious right and the religious community is. It will show unity or the lack of it.”

But liberals, he said, should not start gloating. “Some might compare the religious right to a snake,” he said. “We may be in our hole right now, but we can come out and bite you at any time.”

“So, ironically, in the end it does come down to us after all. There’s nothing left but that long-term cultivation — person by person, moment by moment — plowing on despite our utter abandonment by the national leaders and civic institutions that could have stopped or slowed the horror of the present and the horror to come. We will have to go through it now.” – Chris Floyd

How does it become a man to behave toward this American government to-day? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it. — Henry David Thoreau

Every day it becomes clearer that Thoreau’s answer is the only basis for a genuinely effective resistance to the accelerating depredations of the Bush-Cheney regime. Disassociation, boycott, filibuster, strike — call it what you will, but the Gandhian tag might be the best: “non-cooperation with evil.” The corruption and authoritarian tyranny that the regime has imposed on the nation are evil. The war of aggression it has launched against Iraq is evil. The war of aggression it is fomenting against Iran is evil. If you would not be complicit in evil, then you must not cooperate with it, and you must not acknowledge its power as rightful or legitimate (however powerless you may be to resist its application by brute force).

If there is to be any way out of the nation’s death spiral into darkness, ruin and dishonor, this noncooperation must begin at the top. There is not enough time left now for a broad movement from the general public to rise up and force the ouster of these criminals. Naturally, any and all efforts to raise consciousness of the dire situation and mobilize the public against the regime are welcome and should continue. But even putting aside the mass lethargy and media-addled distraction and indifference that have characterized public reaction to the filth heaped upon them by the regime year after year, it is simply a logistical and organizational impossibility to put together the kind of unprecedented outpouring of street protest and civil disobedience it would require for a grass-roots effort to dislodge the regime in its remaining time in office. Yet in that time, the regime will have mired the nation so much more deeply in intractable evil that even the most well-intentioned successor will be left with nothing but monstrous choices between atrocious and somewhat less atrocious outcomes, with each decision drenched in innocent blood.

So while we can all hope and work to see such noncooperation and dissent spread throughout the general public — a long-term cultivation looking toward the harvest of a better, more honorable society down the line — the immediate evil embodied in the crooked Bush-Cheney regime can only be thwarted by action on the institutional level. As I’ve noted elsewhere, Thoreau’s answer should be taken up by every person in public life, beginning with the senators and representatives in Congress. There should be noncompliance, nonrecognition of this illegitimate authority, disassociation from taking part in its workings. No Bush appointees should be approved; indeed, they have already shown their unfitness for office by agreeing to work under the criminal regime in the first place. All legislation offered by the regime should be rejected outright; it is dishonorable to treat with a faction whose unprovoked, unnecessary “war of choice” in Iraq has now killed more Americans than were murdered on 9/11. The only “negotiation” acceptable with such bloodstained wretches is settling the terms of their exit from power.

For above all, impeachment should be moved to the top of the congressional agenda. It should be the overriding, all-consuming priority of the people’s representatives. For this is the inescapable, stone-cold truth: nothing, absolutely nothing but impeachment, will stop the Bush-Cheney regime from carrying out its criminal agenda.

We have seen in recent days some heartening moves toward restraining the regime. The effort led by Sen. Christopher Dodd to put a hold on legislation that would excuse the telecoms’ complicity in Bush’s illegal surveillance schemes is a welcome development. And as Jonathan Schwarz reports, MoveOn.org is launching a major public awareness campaign to try to head off a war with Iran. These are very small straws in a howling wind — but then again, it only takes a few straws to start a fire. And as noted above, all efforts to put fetters on the regime should be encouraged. But the history of the past seven years has proved over and over and over again that the Bush-Cheney regime will simply ignore any attempt by Congress or the courts to limit its rapacious agenda and its exercise of arbitrary power.

Congress passes laws forbidding torture; Bush and Cheney ignore them. Congress issues subpoenas and demands documents for its corruption probes; Bush and Cheney ignore them. Bush’s “signing statements” explicitly state that he will follow only those parts of the law that suit him. Congress could vote tomorrow that Iran cannot be attacked without a formal declaration of war, and Bush would attack whenever he chooses anyway, calling it an extension of the congressionally authorized action in Iraq, a “defensive” action to protect the troops. Congress can pass any law it wants, but if you have an executive branch that considers itself above the law — as this one demonstrably does — then it doesn’t matter. As long as Bush and Cheney remain in power, their criminal enterprise will go on.

Thus impeachment is not a “distraction” from efforts to end the war in Iraq, or stop a new war with Iran, or quell the vast and sickening corruption of the regime. It is their prerequisite. And even if impeachment is “politically impossible in the present circumstances,” as Bush enablers like the pusillanimous Nancy Pelosi likes to tell us, it should be shoved to the forefront of national debate nonetheless. Let us have a “constitutional crisis;” let us bring our festering sickness to a boil. Let’s lay it all out, and let people declare once and for all where they stand. Are you for the republic, or do you hold with tyranny, torture and mass murder? Let’s draw the line at last, and be done with all pretense.

But we know that what should be done will not be done. We see that the Democrats have taken impeachment “off the table.” We see that far from stopping or curtailing the war in Iraq, Pelosi and the Democratic leadership punish those among their number who dare speak the truth: that Bush has indeed sent American soldiers to have their heads blown off for his amusement, for his aggrandizement, for his radical agenda of loot and dominion. We see that far from stopping the rush toward a new war with Iran they are instead abetting it, declaring their overwhelming assent to the deceitful casus belli Bush has offered. We see, with despair, that the national Democrats share the regime’s radical agenda of endless militarism and hegemonic sway, differing only on a few points of style and decorum, and a desire to see more “competence” in Iraq and “future wars.”

So, ironically, in the end it does come down to us after all. There’s nothing left but that long-term cultivation — person by person, moment by moment — plowing on despite our utter abandonment by the national leaders and civic institutions that could have stopped or slowed the horror of the present and the horror to come. We will have to go through it now.

But in closing, I’d like to quote something I wrote a few weeks ago that sums up my feeling about where we stand and what we are called upon to do in this bleak historic hour:

Yet we must keep sounding the alarm, even in the face of almost certain defeat. What else is our humanity worth if we don’t do that? And if, in the end, all that we’ve accomplished is to keep the smallest spark of light alive, to help smuggle it through an age of darkness to some better, brighter time ahead, is that not worth the full measure of struggle?