Gareth Porter: Admiral Fallon blocked Bush's Plan to Atttack Iran

Is it possible that there remains in these United States (or the rest of the world) a force sufficinetly strong to counter Cheney's mad drive for a wider war? I'll see it when I believe it. Meanwhile there's actually some evidence for hope. --RB


IPS News
http://www.ipsnews.net/print.asp?idnews=37738
Commander's Veto Sank Threatening Gulf Buildup

by Gareth Porter*


WASHINGTON, May 15 (IPS) - Admiral William Fallon, then President George W. Bush's nominee to head the Central Command (CENTCOM), expressed strong opposition in February to an administration plan to increase the number of carrier strike groups in the Persian Gulf from two to three and vowed privately there would be no war against Iran as long as he was chief of CENTCOM, according to sources with access to his thinking.
Fallon's resistance to the proposed deployment of a third aircraft carrier was followed by a shift in the Bush administration's Iran policy in February and March away from increased military threats and toward diplomatic engagement with Iran. That shift, for which no credible explanation has been offered by administration officials, suggests that Fallon's resistance to a crucial deployment was a major factor in the intra-administration struggle over policy toward Iran.

The plan to add a third carrier strike group in the Gulf had been a key element in a broader strategy discussed at high levels to intimidate Iran by a series of military moves suggesting preparations for a military strike.

Admiral Fallon's resistance to a further buildup of naval striking power in the Gulf apparently took the Bush administration by surprise. Fallon, then Commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, had been associated with naval aviation throughout his career, and last January, Secretary of Defence Robert Gates publicly encouraged the idea that the appointment presaged greater emphasis on the military option in regard to the U.S. conflict with Iran.

Explaining why he recommended Fallon, Gates said, "As you look at the range of options available to the United States, the use of naval and air power, potentially, it made sense to me for all those reasons for Fallon to have the job."

Bush administration officials had just leaked to CBS News and the New York Times in December that the USS John C. Stennis and its associated warships would be sent to the Gulf in January six weeks earlier than originally planned in order to overlap with the USS Eisenhower and to "send a message to Tehran".

But that was not the end of the signaling to Iran by naval deployment planned by administration officials. The plan was for the USS Nimitz and its associated vessels, scheduled to sail into the Gulf in early April, to overlap with the other two carrier strike groups for a period of months, so that all three would be in the Gulf simultaneously.

Two well-informed sources say they heard about such a plan being pushed at high levels of the administration, and Newsweek's Michael Hirsh and Maziar Bahari reported Feb. 19 that the deployment of a third carrier group to the Gulf was "likely".

That would have brought the U.S. naval presence up to the same level as during the U.S. air campaign against the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq, when the Lincoln, Constellation and Kitty Hawk carrier groups were all present. Two other carrier groups helped coordinate bombing sorties from the Mediterranean.

The deployment of three carrier groups simultaneously was not part of a plan for an actual attack on Iran, but was meant to convince Iran that the Bush administration was preparing for possible war if Tehran continued its uranium enrichment programme.

At a mid-February meeting of top civilian officials over which Secretary of Defence Gates presided, there was an extensive discussion of a strategy of intimidating Tehran's leaders, according to an account by a Pentagon official who attended the meeting given to a source outside the Pentagon. The plan involved a series of steps that would appear to Tehran to be preparations for war, in a manner similar to the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

But Fallon, who was scheduled to become the CENTCOM chief Mar. 16, responded to the proposed plan by sending a strongly-worded message to the Defence Department in mid-February opposing any further U.S. naval buildup in the Persian Gulf as unwarranted.

"He asked why another aircraft carrier was needed in the Gulf and insisted there was no military requirement for it," says the source, who obtained the gist of Fallon's message from a Pentagon official who had read it.

Fallon's refusal to support a further naval buildup in the Gulf reflected his firm opposition to an attack on Iran and an apparent readiness to put his career on the line to prevent it. A source who met privately with Fallon around the time of his confirmation hearing and who insists on anonymity quoted Fallon as saying that an attack on Iran "will not happen on my watch".

Asked how he could be sure, the source says, Fallon replied, "You know what choices I have. I'm a professional." Fallon said that he was not alone, according to the source, adding, "There are several of us trying to put the crazies back in the box."

Fallon's opposition to adding a third carrier strike group to the two already in the Gulf represented a major obstacle to the plan. The decision to send a second carrier task group to the Gulf had been officially requested by Fallon's predecessor at CENTCOM, Gen. John Abizaid, according to a Dec. 20 report by the Washington Post's Peter Baker. But as Baker reported, the circumstances left little doubt that Abizaid was doing so because the White House wanted it as part of a strategy of sending "pointed messages" to Iran.

CENTCOM commander Fallon's refusal to request the deployment of a third carrier strike group meant that proceeding with that option would carry political risks. The administration chose not to go ahead with the plan. Two days before the Nimitz sailed out of San Diego for the Gulf on Apr. 1, a Navy spokesman confirmed that it would replace the Eisenhower, adding, "There is no plan to overlap them at all."

The defeat of the plan for a third carrier task group in the Gulf appears to have weakened the position of Cheney and other hawks in the administration who had succeeded in selling Bush on the idea of a strategy of coercive threat against Iran.

Within two weeks, the administration's stance had already begun to shift dramatically. On Jan. 12, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had dismissed direct talks with Iran in the absence of Tehran's suspension of its uranium enrichment programme as "extortion". But by the end of February, Rice had gotten authorisation for high level diplomatic contacts with Iran in the context of a regional meeting on Iraq in Baghdad.

The explanation for the shift offered by administration officials to the New York Times was that the administration now felt that it "had leverage" on Iran. But that now appears to have been a cover for a retreat from the more aggressive strategy previously planned.

Throughout March and April, the Bush administration avoided aggressive language and the State Department openly sought diplomatic engagement with Iran, culminating in the agreement confirmed by U.S. officials last weekend that bilateral talks will begin with Iran on Iraq.

Despite Vice President Dick Cheney's invocation of the military option from the deck of the USS John C. Stennis in the Persian Gulf last week, the strategy of escalating a threat of war to influence Iran has been put on the shelf, at least for now.

*Gareth Porter is an historian and national security policy analyst. His latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in June 2005. (END/2007)

Glen Greenwald and Josh Marshall: Podhoretz, Bush and Hitler

Josh Marshall and Glenn Greenwald take up the Podhoretz-Zakaria debate which was broadcast on 10.29.07 on PBS's Leherer News Hour regarding Bush's threatened war against Iran. Both liberal bloggers decried Podhoretz's wolf cry of Hitler Hitler Hitler at every opportunity despite Iran's evident military defenselessness in the face of US and Israeli military power.

But neither Marshall nor Greenwald -- among the most popular bloggers -- can bring himself to mention that it is Bush who has waged two of the most destructive wars in history, both very similar to Hitler's unprovoked aggression of 65+ years ago. The scariest similarity to Hitler, is the Bush-Cheney desire for destruction and endless war.

Marshall begins well by naming correctly Bush's desire to attack Iran as the most important issue we are facing by far. However he seems to stop there, not going on to make the critical point that Bush's evident agenda is to destroy civilization everywhere just as he has done to Iraq. The threatened bombing of Iran is so obviously catastrophic and can serve no possible advantage to Empire or even simple financial gain -- indeed quite the opposite, not to mention the disruption and destruction of oil supplies -- that the Bush-Cheney agenda of self destruction should be clear.
Ronald
***

Josh Marshall

Podhoretz v. Zakaria
10.29.07
By Josh Marshall
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/057323.php

As I've argued in other contexts today, Iran is the issue facing the country today. Some readers have warned me off this formulation, claiming I'm buying into the right-wing 'frame' by doing so. Nonsense. As long as George Bush is commander-in-chief of the US military and he and his advisers are intent on getting the US into a shooting war with Iran, Iran is the issue.

Tonight on The Newshour, Rudy Giuliani's foreign policy advisor and godfather of neoconservatism, Norman Podhoretz debated Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria on the question of whether or not to go to war with Iran. It's perhaps an apt commentary on the rightward, lunatic turn of this country's foreign policy that Fareed is taking what I guess must be called the left (?) in this debate. In any case, I really urge you to give this a look. And note a few things: one is the denigrating tone Podhoretz takes toward Zakaria. It's curdled and bitter. It jumped out at me and I wonder if it does for you as well. Second are the constant references to Hitler and the Munich agreement. Hitler has become such a throwaway reference or comparison for whatever penny-ante dictator we're up in arms about at the moment that the reference has been drained of much of its meaning and horror. But with the Munich agreement and how 'time is not on our side' and so forth, this is beyond nonsense.

It's almost an insult to what the world faced in the late 1930s. Germany, industrial powerhouse, with arguably the most powerful army in the world, at the forefront of technology, overawing and invading neighboring countries. Iran, minor economic power, second or third-rate military power, which may get a couple of small nuclear-weapons compared to the couple hundred high-end nuclear warheads in Israel's arsenal (plus, a robust second strike capacity, as Fareed notes) and the many thousands we have -- and our blue water navy, satellites, air force. Please. Time's running out for us? We're going to look back on this fifty years from now and see the non-podhoretz-loons as the Chamberlains of the day? I don't know what to say. Just watch ...

Glenn Greenwald
Tuesday October 30, 2007
Hitlers, Hitlers and more Hitlers

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/index.html

Norman Podhoretz -- Senior Foreign Policy Aide to Rudy Giuliani and leading advocate of a war with Iran -- was on PBS' Online News Hour last night with Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria (the author of an excellent article this week on the complete irrationality of warmongers like Podhoretz). Podhoretz's argument: "So that leaves us with only one terrible choice, which is either to bomb those facilities and retard [Iran's] program or even cut it off altogether or allow them to go nuclear. And I agree with what Senator McCain has said in the past: The only thing worse than bombing Iran is to allow Iran to get the bomb."

In order to justify bombing Iran, Podhoretz, in response to Zakaria, talked about Hitler and how Zakaria didn't want to fight Hitler:
NORMAN PODHORETZ: Well, I'll tell you why. First, I want to say that I think the attitude expressed by Fareed Zakaria represents an irresponsible complacency that I think is comparable to the denial in the early '30s of the intentions of Hitler that led to what Churchill called an unnecessary war involving millions and millions of deaths that might have been averted if the West had acted early enough.
The next time he spoke, Podhoretz talked about Hitler and how Zakaria didn't want to fight Hitler:
Yes, let me respond to that. You know, similar arguments were made about Hitler in the early '30s, and it appalls me that this kind of attitude can still prevail after what we should have learned from the words of despots.
The next time Podhoretz spoke, he talked about Hitler and how Bush promised to fight Hitler:
JUDY WOODRUFF: I do want to ask you both, because I think it's important. Mr. Podhoretz, do you think that, as you wrote a few months ago, this administration, this president intends before he leaves office to strike Iran?

NORMAN PODHORETZ: Yes, I do believe he will, because he has said many times -- or at least two times that I know of in public -- that, if we allow Iran to get the bomb, people 50 years from now will look back at us the way we look back at the men who made the Munich pact with Hitler in 1938 and say, "How could they have let this happen?"
Then the show ended on this note:
FAREED ZAKARIA: I believe in just the way that we have deterred the Soviet Union, Mao's China, Kim Jong Il, history will prove that we can use deterrence and containment to contain the problem of Iran and that we do not need to launch a third unilateral invasion just to do that.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Fareed Zakaria and Norman Podhoretz...

NORMAN PODHORETZ: God help us if we follow that counsel.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Norman Podhoretz, we thank you. Fareed Zakaria, gentlemen, we thank you both very much.
That about covers the full set of arguments and knowledge of our nation's leading neoconservative war cheerleaders.

Whoever is next on the War List is always The New Hitler and the country they lead is always The New Nazi Germany. Anyone who wants the new war is the brave and glorious Churchill. Everyone who opposes the new war is the cowardly appeaser Chamberlain, willing to allow Hitler to Take Over the World and impose Caliphate and burquas and humiliation on everyone. That's the level of advice which both George Bush, the current President, and Rudy Giuliani, the leading GOP presidential candidate, have chosen to receive and -- by all appearances -- follow.
* * * * *
Josh Marshall has more on this, including video of the debate

Glenn Greenwald: Bush's mockery of his audience

Glenn Greenwald performs a great service by pointing out not only that Bush and Cheney are dumping on us and the world, but are laughing at us while they do it. Bush especially has a predilection, not merely for lying which all politicians and especially presidents do, but for mocking his audience, we the people. Greenwald gets it mostly right but he stumbles in the beginning by suggesting that Bush's speech writers are "knowingly satirizing him" meaning satirizing Bush. His speech writers are not satirizing Bush: they and Bush are mocking us.
They've started doing just that from the very beginning when they stole two elections: they understood that they were acting beyond the law and everything followed from that.
The interesting question about Greenwald's take is whether by misdirecting the satire to the speech writers, Greenwald is trying to soft peddle or avoid the harder question of the implications of Bush's mockery. Once we understand for example that the catastrophe that is Iraq did not happen by accident, that the destruction of the country was deliberately planned and intended, then we will have an idea of the extent of the criminal psychopathology of Bush-Cheney and the danger we still very much face.
(P.S.) Interestingly Greenwald has a note at the end from the McClatchy papers about the extent of Bush's financial profligacy, how he has exceeded the spending even of LBJ. Once again, Bush's trashing of the economy is a symptom of the sociopathology of Bush-Cheney who have embarked on a policy of bankrupting the US, in large part, I suspect, just as in the Reagan years, to weaken the power of government to assist the people in any meaningful way.
Ronald
***


Glenn Greenwald
Friday November 16, 2007
Self-satire scales new heights
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/11/16/bush/index.html

It's genuinely hard to believe that the writers of George Bush's speech last night to the Federalist Society weren't knowingly satirizing him. They actually had him say this:

When the Founders drafted the Constitution, they had a clear understanding of tyranny. They also had a clear idea about how to prevent it from ever taking root in America. Their solution was to separate the government's powers into three co-equal branches: the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary. Each of these branches plays a vital role in our free society. Each serves as a check on the others. And to preserve our liberty, each must meet its responsibilities -- and resist the temptation to encroach on the powers the Constitution accords to others.
Then they went even further and this came out:

The President's oath of office commits him to do his best to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." I take these words seriously. I believe these words mean what they say.

To top it all off -- by which point they must have been cackling uncontrollably -- they had him say this:

Others take a different view. . . . They forgot that our Constitution lives because we respect it enough to adhere to its words. (Applause.) Ours is the oldest written Constitution in the world. It is the foundation of America's experiment in self-government. And it will continue to live only so long as we continue to recognize its wisdom and division of authority.

Here is the still-valid and binding September 25, 2001 Memorandum, written by then-Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo, concerning Bush's view of his own power:

In both the War Powers Resolution and the Joint Resolution, Congress has recognized the President's authority to use force in circumstances such as those created by the September 11 incidents. Neither statute, however, can place any limits on the President's determinations as to any terrorist threat, the amount of military force to be used in response, or the method, timing, and nature of the response. These decisions, under our Constitution, are for the President alone to make.

That Memorandum also "conclude[d] that the Constitution vests the President with the plenary authority, as Commander in Chief and the sole organ of the Nation in its foreign relations, to use military force abroad" and hailed "the President's inherent constitutional powers to use military force" free of Congressional interference. It declared "the centralization of authority in the President alone . . . in matters of national defense, war, and foreign policy." And while the powers of Congress are virtually non-existent, "congressional concurrence is welcome." Thus:
The President's broad constitutional power to use military force to defend the Nation. . . would allow the President to take whatever actions he deems appropriate to pre-empt or respond to terrorist threats from new quarters.

And when the Gonzales-led Justice Department issued a 42-page single-spaced Memorandum in 2006 justifying the President's decision to spy on Americans in violation of our "laws," it was explained to us that the President is the "sole organ for the Nation in foreign affairs"; that "the President has independent authority to repel aggressive acts by third parties even without specific congressional authorization, and courts may not review the level of force selected"; and that statutes restricting the President's actions relating to war "could probably be read as simply providing 'a recommendation' that the President could decline to follow at his discretion." [That letter is here (.pdf)].

These are the still-valid premises that led the Constitution-revering George W. Bush to spend the last six years ignoring and violating statutes whenever he wanted to, keeping Congress completely in the dark about what he was doing, and issuing one signing statement after the next explaining why he has no obligation to comply with what Congress adorably calls their "laws."

Tonight the President will give a speech warning of the evils of torture. Tomorrow night he will speak out against the immorality of deficit spending. And on Sunday he will vigorously condemn those who preemptively attack other countries. Then, next week, Rudy Giuliani -- with his his ex-mistress (and now-third-wife) in the other room -- will explain how vital it is to protect the sanctity of marriage. Oh, wait -- that was last month.

UPDATE: I should really know better than to try to satirize the Bush administration. No matter how far you go, no matter how absurd of a caricature you depict, they always manage to surpass it. From earlier this week: "President Bush, delivering another budget veto to a Democratic-led Congress whose spending he calls out-of-control, accuses leaders of "acting like a teenager with a new credit card" (h/t Kitt).

From McClatchy last month:
George W. Bush, despite all his recent bravado about being an apostle of small government and budget-slashing, is the biggest spending president since Lyndon B. Johnson. In fact, he's arguably an even bigger spender than LBJ. . . .

Take almost any yardstick and Bush generally exceeds the spending of his predecessors. . . ."He has presided over massive increases in almost every category . . . . a dramatic change of pace from most previous presidents," said [Stephen] Slivinski, [the director of budget studies at Cato Institute].
The same hilarious speechwriters who wrote last night's Constitution-revering speech must have written the righteous line about Congress acting like a "teenager with a new credit card."

Pat Shannon: August 2007 Nuke Incident: Was it really an accident

The unanswered questions relating to the Aug 29-30 “bent spear” incident suggest that one possible explanation is that it was the result of a sinister U.S. operation that was somehow halted before the nukes could leave the U.S. The term 'bent spear' refers to a nuclear-weapons incident that is serious but does not include the threat of detonation.
The following is a summary of an article, “Official Air Force Version of Nuke ‘Mishandling’ Full of Gaping Holes, Unanswered Questions,” by Pat Shannon, in the American Free Press (11.19.07). Other media accounts I’ve seen don’t mention the anomalies detailed below. --RB



Summary of “Official Air Force Version of Nuke ‘Mishandling’ Full of Gaping Holes, Unanswered Questions,” by Pat Shannon, AFP, 11.19.07

The official report on the bent spear incident in which six nuclear weapons were mounted on six Advanced Cruise Missiles and improperly removed from a nuclear weapons storage bunker at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, then were improperly loaded on a B-52, and improperly flown to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana attributed the whole thing to a “mistake.”

The problem with the official explanation is that such weapons are supposedly protected against unauthorized transport or removal from bunkers by electronic anti-theft systems. This means that not one but two people had to be involved in deliberately disabling those alarms.

Since the Air Force report doesn’t explain how this anti-theft hurdle could have been surmounted by “mistake,” the report has to be considered a whitewash or a cover up.

The loading of nuclear-armed missiles or bombs onto an American bomber has been barred since 1991, even for practice or training purposes. The carrying of nuclear weapons by bombers flying over U.S. airspace has been banned for 40 years.

The evidence suggests that in addition to the intentional and authorized removal of the nukes from the bunker in Minot the loading of the nukes onto the plane and their flight to Barksdale must also have been authorized.

The Air Force maintains that some low ranking ground crew personnel at Minot AFB simply walked out of a nuclear bunker with six nuclear armed Advanced Cruise Missiles, not knowing what they were carrying, and labored for eight hours to mount those missiles and their launch pylon on the wing of a B-52 strategic bomber without ever noticing that they were armed with nuclear weapons. Moreover not one of the electronic alarm and motion sensors built into the system went off during the whole process.

Strangely there have been no demands for public hearings into this incident. No one in authority seems to want to know who authorized this clumsy operation, or who disabled the alarm systems on those weapons and on the bunker itself; and who mounted six nuclear weapons on the noses of six cruise missiles and put those missiles onto a B-52 launch platform?

[Pat Shannon might also have asked who approved the flight plan? Besides the pilot(s) were there any other officers in Minot or Barksdale who had knowledge of the particulars of the fight?]

And why, asks Shannon, were the nukes being moved to Barksdale, the main staging base for B-52s flying to the Middle East?

I Am Dick Cheney: Destruction, Destruction, Destrurction

This is an interactive, collaborative poem. Add your own lines. Be creative. Reflect reality.

I am Dick Cheney

I am the darkness
Destruction, destruction, destruction

The pot is boiling
Musharraf is squirming
The dollar is falling
Gas prices are rising
Iraq is stewing
Syria is convulsing, Lebanon a basket case
Iran is next
And so is the U.S.
(We didn’t steal two elections for nothing.)
Look at our deficit –it’s impressive, no?

You want chaos? You want pandemonium?
We did it in Iraq. It’s happening in Afghanistan,
It’s happening on the Turkish border
(Who gave the Turks permission to elect a Muslim government?
Not on our watch!)

We –me and lil Bushie -- are rubbing our hands in glee
(Karl is in a corner sucking his thumb and Rummy and John are
cheering from the sidelines)

Destruction, destruction, destruction
Iraq civil society gone – poof!!
(Who do you think blew up UN HQ and terminated with
Extreme prejudice
That troublemaker Sergio Vieira de Mello)

Destruction, destruction, destruction

Iraq mired in ethnic conflict
(Who do you think ordered the Samarra bombing
That insured an unending communal bloodbath?)

Destruction, destruction, destruction

I am the darkness, I devour the light.

I am Dick Cheney

Cindy Sheehan asks for 10,000 handwritten letters to Pelosi demanding that she proceed with Impeaching VP Cheney

This campaign to get 10,000 hand written letters to Nancy Pelosi’s desk via Cindy Sheehan reminds me of that scene from the movie Malcolm X where Malcolm was thrown into a local jail on trumped up charges. In a short time there were hundreds of his membership impeccably dressed standing outside the police station in quiet protest. Soon after Malcolm was freed.

It’s that kind of power and moral authority in the hands of a reformer – someone challenging the status quo – that had to be eliminated. And that’s why,after they killed our leaders in the 60s, we’ve had only a record of pusillanimity for the most part from the Democratic leadership.

Well here’s our chance to help create such a leader. If you can copy the short letter below and send it today, it’s better than doing it tomorrow. And tomorrow is better than doing it after Thanksgiving, etc.

Also, if you take the trouble to visit Cindy’s website, and you have $10 or $20 to spare, remember that money – and money from many of us – talks very loudly. It may even get some media coverage.
Ronald

***
Cindy Sheehan asks for 10,000 HANDWRITTEN letters to Nancy Pelosi demanding she proceed w/ IMPEACH CHENEY, put HR333 back ON the table

House Resolution 333 for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney is off the House floor, and has instead been sent to the Judiciary Committee for "further study." This maneuver, organized by Pelosi and the Democratic leadership, is consistent with their mantra that impeachment is "off the table." But, we are told Nancy Pelosi is reported to have replied to the question of impeachment that if she received 10,000 hand written letters she would proceed with it. What are we waiting for?

Cindy Sheehan wrote:

Dear Friends:

Instead of sending your impeachment letters for Dick Cheney to Nancy Pelosi's office, send them to my office so we can get an official count.

Please send them to:Nancy Pelosi
c/o Cindy Sheehan
RE: Impeach Dick Cheney
1260 Mission Street
San Francisco, Ca 94103

Please pass this around and have them sent by Friday, November 16th and we will have them delivered to her office in San Francisco before Thanksgiving.

Spread this far and wide so we can take sacks of letters to her.

Don't include anything besides the letter.

Love
Cindy


Here's Dan Elliot's letter which I liked and copied.

Nancy Pelosi
c/o Cindy Sheehan
RE: Impeach Dick Cheney
1260 Mission Street
San Francisco, Ca 94103

Dear Speaker Pelosi:
Please move immediately to proceed with HR 333 and thereby initiate the process of impeaching Vice President Richard Cheney.
Please follow up by taking all necessary steps to initiate the Impeachment of Geo W. Bush. Meanwhile, please see that no legislation authorizing further funding of the Iraq fiasco reaches the floor of the House.
Thank you,
Dan Elliott Sacramento, CA 95838
***


Cindy Sheehan's Website
http://www.cindyforcongress.org/

From Cindy Sheehan's Blog for Oct 25, 2007


http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/1590/t/523/blog/comments.jsp?blog_entry_KEY=21048&t=

Pete, Nancy, George and WWIII
"You don't have money to fund the war or children. But you're going to spend it to blow up innocent people if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the president's amusement.? Pete Stark (D-Ca) ?While Members of Congress are passionate about their views what Congressman Stark said during the debate was inappropriate." Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, (D-Ca) ?But this -- we got a leader in Iran who has announced that he wants to destroy Israel. So I've told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have (sic) the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.? George Bush, War Criminal I cheered inside my head when I heard, Rep. Stark unbelievably utter his words condemning the murderous acts of BushCo on the House floor and I was impressed with his candor, compassion and what I consider an appropriate amount of rage and honesty. How many of us were not thinking the same thing about the S-CHIP votes? I knew, however, that it would not be long until Pete Stark had to apologize and it happened today. I believe that Speaker Pelosi?s comments about Rep. Stark were utterly inappropriate and out of line. I believe that when she said that impeachment was ?off the table,? her remarks were not only inappropriate but also antithetical to our Constitution and directly in opposition to why the people of this country put Democrats back in power.

Badruddin Khan: Musharraf's Collapse and the Israel Lobby

Khan has so many good things to say in his short article and he highlights perhaps the second most important policy issue currently facing the world: Israel's interest in chaos, tension and war in the Middle East and the Lobby's interest in furthering that interest. The most important issue facing humankind (which I didn't notice that Khan addressed directly): Bush and Cheney's psychopathic, criminal intention to destroy civilization by means of permanent war.

One quibble goes to the heart of Khan's thesis that it's the Lobby which has determined or at least influenced Bush-Cheney's policy on Pakistan. I'd like to see some of the evidence. Musharraf has been smart enough not to cross Israel in any significant way that I've seen so far. And for their part, you'd think that the Israelis would have an interest in a stable nuclear-armed Pakistan, keeping said nukes pointed at Delhi rather than Tel Aviv.

The Bush-Cheney Pakistan policy has been the same as it's been everywhere (the one thing they're good at is consistency): do as much harm and cause as much suffering as possible.

One could guess that Musharraf would have been smart enough, if left to his own devices, to plan from the earliest possible date, for the transition back to Pakistan's version of democracy, and making it a point to leave his civilian office at the peak of popularity, so that, afterwards, when the time inevitably came to remove yet another corrupt civilian government, the country would once again be looking to him as a savior.

But enter from stage right, Bush and Cheney, warning him not to leave until they decide to allow him to leave, i.e., never. And the White House of course holds all the cards, seeing as how they've become the Paki Army's indispensable paymaster, not to mention bodyguard. Who knows but that close call assassination attempt in December 2003 was not one of the CIA/ISI's warning shots to ensure that Musharraf stays in line.

And as a result we are presented with the current chaotic situation in Pakistan, deteriorating by the day -- which once again suits the psychopaths just fine. The situation reminds me of the last Lebanon war of 2006 where Israel (Olmert) was begging Bush to call for an early cease fire so that they could say they won. And now Bush-Cheney and Elliott Abrams are rubbing their hands in anticipation of the coming Lebanon Civil war. It just occurred to me that they may not have to bomb, bomb, bomb Iran after all. Pakistan and Lebanon blowing up will do nicely instead, thank you, and the White House will suffer less pushback domestically and internationally. They won't even be seen to be blamed for it.
Ronald

November 9, 2007

Monopoly Power
Pakistan and the Israel Lobby
By BADRUDDIN KHAN
www.counterpunch.org

Recent events in Pakistan should serve as a wake up call. There is more to the Mideast region than Israel and its Arab antagonists. The Israel Lobby has been successful in inducing the United States into mis-allocating its resources to protect Israeli interests, and this is now having a profound and lasting impact. It is time for supporters of the Israel Lobby to face up to the fact that what is good for Israel is not necessarily good for the United States. The Mideast is not best viewed through Israeli interests, and there is much more at stake than Israel's welfare.

Pakistan is for all practical purposes under martial law. This is hardly a surprise outcome. Management of the "war on terror" was delegated by the Bush administration to strongman General Pervez Musharraf, who quickly fell in line after being presented with the alternative of Pakistan being bombed into the stone-age. Musharraf has managed the situation as well as he could, given his pre-condition that he stay in power (the economy, for example, has grown nicely during his tenure). This pre-condition, however, is clearly not acceptable to Pakistanis, and he is now being forced into elections. For the US, the shift in focus from Afghanistan, Bin Laden, and Al Qaeda to Iraq, Iran, and Israel's interests has proved to be seriously distracting.

Our Mideast strategy is managed directly or indirectly by the Israel Lobby. This Lobby functions as a "monopoly" in the manner of Microsoft. Until recently, no alternate viewpoints were seriously considered, and the Israel Lobby has represented itself as the establishment. Monopolies, however, corrupt the system; Microsoft distorted the software industry, and the Israel Lobby is corrupting our body politic. We are now seeing clear and tangible evidence of the consequences of this betrayal of American interests. Rather than pursue Bin Laden, vanquish the Taliban, and guide Pakistan towards democracy, the Bush administration was misdirected into attacking Iraq, and US power is now being targeted at Israel's perceived enemies such as Iran.

The Israel Lobby has labored at caricaturizing Muslims as natural enemies of the United States. It has succeeded in skillfully amplifying Israel's contempt and fear of Arabs, into contempt and fear of Muslims by mainstream Americans. This has required a sustained campaign, and the results speak for themselves: after 9/11 80%+ of Muslims the world over were pro-US, and today a similar percentage is anti-US. Such swings in public opinion are not accidental, and reflect US actions under the "war on terror", and a calculated strategy to provoke an adversary into being.

There are now numerous excellent and well documented books that describe the Israel Lobby, its machinations, and the detrimental impact of its pervasive influence. It is time for us to switch our priorities to other countries that are being neglected at our peril, foreign policy things that matter, reduce the importance of Israel and its concerns, and refocus to American interests.

Badruddin Khan lives in San Francisco. He can be reached at: bkhan@hotmail.com

Bruce Cumings (and IF Stone): South Korea and US Started the Korean War

Many of us learned from IF Stone's indispensable The Hidden History of the Korean War that it is far from clear that the Korean was started because of an invasion by the North as advertised. Now I come to find that Professor Bruce Cumings has written extensively on the matter suggesting, as Stone indicated, that the matter was far more complicated. In a letter to the NYRB, he cogently summarizes some of the evidence indicating that the war was essentially started by the South Korean military leadership, put in place and supported, as we learned from Stone by the US (MacArthur).

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20840
New York Review of Books
Bruce Cumings writes:
To the Editors:

In his review of David Halberstam's book on the Korean War, The Coldest Winter [NYR, October 25], Richard Bernstein mentions the thesis "advanced in particular by Bruce Cumings" that Syngman Rhee or the South Korean military might have provoked Kim Il Sung's attack in June 1950. In a long chapter entitled "Who Started the Korean War?" I examined just about every thesis on how the war started including this thesis, first advanced not by me but by I.F. Stone in his Hidden History of the Korean War. I used formerly secret archival documents in English and Korean (including a large captured North Korean archive) to conclude this chapter by saying that all the theses were wrong, because civil wars do not start, they come along after years or even decades of internecine conflict—as in Korea.

Because the top US commander in Korea had secretly told his superiors that South Korean military forces started the majority of fighting along the 38th parallel in 1949, with attacks from the South beginning in May and ending in December and with a near war in August, it was incumbent upon me to examine Stone's thesis in any event. The South Korean commander of the parallel in the summer of 1949 was Kim Sok-won, a quisling who had chased after Kim Il Sung and other guerrillas in Manchuria in the 1930s, on behalf of the Japanese Kwantung Army—an army well known for provoking incidents, such as the one resulting in Japan's invasion of Manchuria in 1931. My main point, though, was that the commanders of the respective Korean armies had chosen different sides in the long anticolonial struggle against Japan, and it should not have been surprising that once they had the means to do so, they would again clash with each other. What is more surprising is the direct American role, during the US occupation of Korea from 1945 to 1948, in putting in power an entire generation of Koreans in the military and the national police who had served Japanese imperialism.

David Halberstam and I spent an afternoon together before his tragic death, talking about this war, and his warmth and generosity did not hide the fact that he was entirely unaware of what might be found in an archive, apart from selected documents that came out after the Soviet Union collapsed. Neither is Richard Bernstein, whose last review lauded a completely shoddy book on North Korea by Jasper Becker, Rogue Regime [NYR, March 1], a book rife with elementary errors and thus a laughingstock among scholars. I don't believe The New York Review would treat many other fields of scholarship as if anyone can come along and offer their judgments without the slightest evidence that they know what they are talking about.

Bruce Cumings
Professor and Chair, History Department
University of Chicago
Chicago, Illinois

Esquire: US Squelched Negotiations with Iran so that war can proceed

A nice long article from Esquire (I couldn't find the name of a particular author) that reviews the history of the Bush Cheney pursuit of war with Iran. It also contains some new tidbits as to how they managed to shut down Powell's efforts and others. There's also the powerful description of a meeting with the Saudi monarch.

The article also conveys how Bush and Cheney have intimidated former high level officials to keep them from revealing even more.

Another tidbit: Even Kissinger understood (does he still?) that war with Iran is total madness. Another clue as to the real intentions of the White House.

No gang, Bush's wars are not for oil. You'd think that $100/barrel would be a sufficient clue.And they are only partly for Israel. Their purpose is simply war and the destruction of civilization and they make use of Israel's similar interest in perpetual war to make extending the war first to Iraq and now Iran possible.

Ronald

http://www.esquire.com/features/iranbriefing1107

Esquire -- November 2007


The Secret History of the Impending War with Iran That

the White House Doesn't Want You to Know


Two former high-ranking policy experts from the Bush

Adminstration say the U.S. has been gearing up for a

war with Iran for years, despite claiming otherwise.

It'll be Iraq all over again.

In the years after 9/11, Flynt Leverett and Hillary

Mann worked at the highest levels of the Bush

administration as Middle East policy experts for the

National Security Council. Mann conducted secret

negotiations with Iran. Leverett traveled with Colin

Powell and advised Condoleezza Rice. They each played

crucial roles in formulating policy for the region

leading up to the war in Iraq. But when they left the

White House, they left with a growing sense of alarm --

not only was the Bush administration headed straight

for war with Iran, it had been set on this course for

years. That was what people didn't realize. It was just

like Iraq, when the White House was so eager for war it

couldn't wait for the UN inspectors to leave. The steps

have been many and steady and all in the same

direction. And now things are getting much worse. We

are getting closer and closer to the tripline, they

say.

"The hard-liners are upping the pressure on the State

Department," says Leverett. "They're basically saying,

'You've been trying to engage Iran for more than a year

now and what do you have to show for it? They keep

building more centrifuges, they're sending this IED

stuff over into Iraq that's killing American soldiers,

the human-rights internal political situation has

gotten more repressive -- what the hell do you have to

show for this engagement strategy?' "

But the engagement strategy was never serious and was

designed to fail, they say. Over the last year, Rice

has begun saying she would talk to "anybody, anywhere,

anytime," but not to the Iranians unless they stopped

enriching uranium first. That's not a serious approach

to diplomacy, Mann says. Diplomacy is about talking to

your enemies. That's how wars are averted. You work up

to the big things. And when U.S. ambassador to Iraq

Ryan Crocker had his much-publicized meeting with his

Iranian counterpart in Baghdad this spring, he didn't

even have permission from the White House to schedule a

second meeting.

The most ominous new development is the Bush

administration's push to name the Iranian Revolutionary

Guards a terrorist organization.

Read more:

http://www.esquire.com/features/iranbriefing1107

Some hope re Iran War: 30 Democratic Senators Warn Bush against attacking Iran

Thanks to Laura Rozen of the indispensable warandpeice.com this posting below on Mother Jones blog (has anyone seen this anywhere else?) with the news that 30 Democratic Senators sent a sharp warning to Bush about his and Cheney's unrestrained rhetoric on Iran and consequently? in a speech afterwards Cheney failed to mention Iran.

Rozen noticed that Barak Obama didn't sign, Neither did Harry Reid or Joe Biden. Obama is a surprise outlier. You'd think he'd have sufficient cover with Clinton signing, not to mention Dodd. Needless to say, one can suspect the Israel lobby had something to do with the missing senators, especially the presidential candidates, but it would be nice to have some evidence.--RB

http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2007/11/6035_senators_warn_w.html

Laura Rozen wrote:
Among the thirty members who signed, Senators James Webb, John Kerry, Robert Byrd, Dick Durbin, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Chris Dodd, Patrick Leahy, Dianne Feinstein, Herb Kohl, Byron Dorgin, Jack Reed, Max Baucus, Debbie Stabenow, Claire McCaskill, Barbara Boxer, Daniel Akaka, Tom Harkin, Thomas Carper, Amy Klobuchar, Jay Rockefeller, Robert Casey, Maria Cantwell, Patty Murray, Sheldon Whitehouse, Sherrod Brown, John Tester, Ron Wyden, Bernie Sanders, and Barbara Mikulski. [I counted 29. Why didn't Rozen give us the last name? --RB]

Senators Warn White House on Iran

Thirty Senators have signed a letter sent to President Bush today, expressing concern with the administration's increasingly bellicose rhetoric on Iran.

"We are writing to express serious concern with the provocative statements and actions stemming from your administration with respect to possible U.S. military action in Iran," the letter states. "These comments are counterproductive and undermine efforts to resolve tensions with Iran through diplomacy."

"We wish to emphasize that no congressional authority exists for unilateral military action against Iran," it continues.

Among the thirty members who signed, Senators James Webb, John Kerry, Robert Byrd, Dick Durbin, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Chris Dodd, Patrick Leahy, Dianne Feinstein, Herb Kohl, Byron Dorgin, Jack Reed, Max Baucus, Debbie Stabenow, Claire McCaskill, Barbara Boxer, Daniel Akaka, Tom Harkin, Thomas Carper, Amy Klobuchar, Jay Rockefeller, Robert Casey, Maria Cantwell, Patty Murray, Sheldon Whitehouse, Sherrod Brown, John Tester, Ron Wyden, Bernie Sanders, and Barbara Mikulski.

You can read it here.

Meantime, as David Kurtz points out, it is notable that Vice President Cheney gave a speech today at the American Legion in Indiana in which he did not once mention Iran. An accidental omission? I doubt it.

More here and here.

Update: Now Barack Obama has introduced his own Iran measure. "Obama introduced a Senate resolution late Thursday that says President George W. Bush does not have authority to use military force against Iran, the latest move in a debate with presidential rival Hillary Rodham Clinton about how to respond to that country's nuclear ambitions."

for more and for the links, go to:
http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2007/11/6035_senators_warn_w.html

A.K. Gupta: Is the US Committing Genocide in Iraq?

Is the U.S. Committing Genocide in Iraq?
By A.K. Gupta
From the October 7, 2007 issue
www.indypendent.org/2007/10/19/is-the-us-committing-genocide-in-iraq/

By A.K. Gupta

There is a simple rule that defines the U.S. occupation of Iraq: no matter how bad a situation may seem the reality is far worse.

Take torture. Individual accounts began surfacing in the fall of 2003 at U.S.-run prisons, but the Abu Ghraib scandal that erupted the following spring unmasked a regime of industrial-scale torture.

Or take the number of Iraqi dead. By 2004 it was believed to be in the thousands but no one thought, as two rigorous studies found, that some 98,000 Iraqis had died by the fall of ’04 or that a mind-boggling 655,000 had died by June 2006.

Or take refugees. The U.S. military and ethnic militias are known to have caused massive displacement, but few could imagine that nearly one in five Iraqis, at least 4.7 million people, would have been driven from their homes by the fall of 2007.

Then there’s “random killings.” Two new revelations point to how many killings stem from systemic forces. Foreign mercenaries are called the most-hated men in Iraq, but who knew that Blackwater, the most notorious hired gun in Iraq, had been involved in “nearly 200 shootings in Iraq since 2005”? Mercenary killings could number in the thousands as Blackwater’s record does not appear to be out of line with the 100 other mercenary outfits in Iraq. The Washington Post reported in June that “one security company reported nearly 300 ‘hostile actions’ in the first four months” of 2007.

And there are killings by U.S. forces, which happen at checkpoints, on patrol and during home raids. Now it seems these killings are a matter of policy in some instances. Reports indicate that military commanders pressed troops to rack up “body counts,” despite declamations otherwise. Some snipers were apparently instructed to leave weaponry lying around and shoot anyone who picked it up.

Despite this hell we’ve created, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama reject a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq before 2013 — the end of the next presidential term. They appear committed to ensuring the conflict becomes the longest-running war in U.S. history.

But they couldn’t advocate a never-ending war unless a majority of the public believed G.I.s are there to protect Iraqis. One of the great myths of the Iraq War is that the U.S. military buffers religious and ethnic factions who have been at each others’ throats since time immemorial.

What’s curious is that many opponents of the Iraq War, a group marked by its loathing of Bush, essentially accept his latest rationale for staying the course: that a “humanitarian nightmare” could result if U.S. forces withdrew. They are in effect arguing that we must continue to slaughter Iraqis for years on end lest someone else possibly do so in the future.

To maintain that U.S. troops are there to protect civilians, it is necessary to discredit the enormity of the killing. This is a problem within the peace movement as many shy away from discussing the impact of the Iraq War except to discuss how it affects “us.” For example, United for Peace & Justice has easily accessible information on its website about U.S. casualties and the financial costs of the war, but nothing about the extent of Iraqi deaths.

According to a study published in the British medical journal The Lancet in October 2006, some 655,000 excess Iraqi deaths occurred from the March 2003 invasion to June of 2006. In 45 percent of cases of violent death, the perpetrator was listed as unknown, 31 percent was attributed to “the coalition” and 24 percent to “other.” Thus, U.S. and U.K. forces were responsible for the deaths of 185,000 Iraqis in barely three years. Air strikes were responsible for about 78,000 deaths.

A more recent survey by ORB, a British polling firm, is more shocking still. It reported in September that it polled 1,499 Iraqi adults and came up with a figure of 1.22 million dead. The scale of the killing is so great that it raises the question: Is the United States committing genocide in Iraq?

This issue has dominated the response to the Darfur conflict. In an influential essay last March titled “The Politics of Naming: Genocide, Civil War and Insurgency,” African scholar Mahmood Mamdani likened the violence in the Sudan region to U.S.-occupied Iraq, noting that in Iraq “it is said to be a cycle of insurgency and counter-insurgency; in Darfur, it is called genocide.” Mamdani does not say so, but the implication is clear: If Darfur is genocide, then why not Iraq?

Numbers do not a genocide make. Intent is needed. And that’s where things get fuzzy (and political). According to the U.N. Convention on Genocide, one standard is “intent to destroy, in whole or in part” of a group. Iraq, then, is most definitely genocide — this is what happened in Fallujah. More than that, virtually all the Sunni Arab regions have been subjected to extreme levels of violence.

I contacted some of the researchers involved in the two Lancet studies on excess mortality in Iraq, Gilbert Burnham and Richard Garfield (who was involved in only the 2004 study), and statistician, Shannon Doocy. They found in the second study that the excess death rate amounted to 7.8 per thousand per year in a population of 27 million.

In the 2006 study, they stated “the highest death rates [are] much where they would be expected, in the Sunni Arab provinces.” Garfield, a professor at Columbia University, added the death rates were highest in these provinces because “that’s where most of the military-reported deaths were occurring.”

This backs up reports that it is the U.S. war that has killed more Sunni Arabs. The strategy has been to depopulate towns and cities or at least large swaths — Fallujah, Tal Afar, Al Qaim, Ramadi, Samara and others — through blockades, cutting off food, fuel and electricity, mass arrests and aerial bombardment. The goal was to turn these towns into free-fire zones where anyone left could be killed, no questions asked.

In the case of Fallujah, during the November 2004 razing, an AP photographer watched entire neighborhoods turned to rubble from a bombardment so devastating civilians were too afraid to even step outside — implying many never fled. When he tried to leave the city, he witnessed “U.S. helicopters firing on and killing people who tried to cross the river,” including a family of five. From this and other anecdotal accounts, the goal appeared to be wholesale extermination.

With a scarcity of independent reporting from other towns that the U.S. military turned into battlefields, it’s not known what the effects were. So I asked the researchers to crunch the numbers for 13 “clusters” in the four Sunni Arab-majority provinces — Anbar, Diyala, Ninewa and Salah al-Din.

The researchers used a method called “cluster-sample survey.” Garfield says 20 to 25 are needed “to get a representative sample,” but they choose 50 clusters to give added precision. Iraqi surveyors sampled 40 houses in each cluster, which were spread around the country.

They cautioned a smaller sample meant a larger margin of error. But aggregating the four does reduce some of the added uncertainty. It appears that the excess death rate for the four Sunni Arab provinces is nearly twice the national rate of 7.8 — 14.5 per thousand per year. This may mean that almost 1.5 percent of people in these provinces, mainly Sunni Arabs, are being killed year after year.

It’s also probable that Sunni Arabs are being displaced at a higher rate. Much has been made of an alleged drop in civilian casualties in September, but this maybe more due to widespread ethnic cleansing. One recent report noted that in Baghdad, home to one-quarter of Iraq’s population, “U.S. military officers say [the capital] has gone from being 65 percent Sunni to being 75 percent Shiite.”

Seymour Hersh argues that “The surge means basically that, in some way, the president has accepted ethnic cleansing.” This works two ways. Reporter Rick Rowley, who just returned from Anbar Province, says that some of the Sunni militias being set up and armed by the Pentagon have been violently displacing thousands of Shiites.

This is where intent starts to creep in. Ahmed Hashim, author of Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency in Iraq, writes that the Bush administration “thought that the Sunnis could be treated with disdain, discounted and swept aside with little in the way of adverse reaction.”

This is a long way from genocide, but this is the attitude that defined the beginning of the occupation, which progressed into collective punishment, mass detentions, torture, massacres such as Haditha, “baiting” programs, Fallujah and possibly 1.2 million dead Iraqis.

What many in the antiwar movement fail to see is that by raising the question that the occupation may be genocidal in nature, we allow the myth of U.S. benevolence to live on in future wars, such as the looming one against Iran. Peace activists have shied away from talking about Iraqi deaths; the focus is mainly on U.S. casualties. But this historical narcissism ensures that the public remains primed for war after war.

Representative Pete Stark: Iraq Forever:: Blowing Up Kids for the President's Amusement

Most people, I suspect, think Representative Stark's comments are hyperbole. Little do they know --does Stark himself know? -- that he's stating the simple truth. Or does everyone know? The part that's still not acknowledged in most places is that Bush and Cheney  want to make war on the whole world. The Zionists are very happy with Bush because they see him as advancing their pro-Israel and militarist agenda. They don't yet understand yet that Bush is using them just as he uses every retrograde force in order to destroy every aspect of civilization within reach.
-- Ronald

Thursday, October 18, 2007
Rep. Pete Stark: We’re Raising Kids To Get Their Heads Blown Off For The President’s Amusement

I yield myself two minutes. Madam speaker, I, first of all, I’m just amazed that they can’t figure out—the Republicans are worried that they can’t pay for insuring an additional 10 million children. They sure don’t care about finding $200 billion to fight the illegal war in Iraq. Where are you going to get that money? Are you going to tell us lies like you’re telling us today? Is that how you’re going to fund the war? You don’t have money to fund the war on children. But you’re going to spend it to blow up innocent people if he can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the President’s amusement.

San Franciso Chronicle: Continent-size toxic stew of plastic trash fouling swath of Pacific Ocean

Continent-size toxic stew of plastic trash fouling swath of Pacific Ocean
Justin Berton, Chronicle Staff Writer

Friday, October 19, 2007


At the start of the Academy Award-winning movie "American Beauty," a character videotapes a plastic grocery bag as it drifts into the air, an event he casts as a symbol of life's unpredictable currents, and declares the romantic moment as a "most beautiful thing."

To the eyes of an oceanographer, the image is pure catastrophe.

In reality, the rogue bag would float into a sewer, follow the storm drain to the ocean, then make its way to the so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch - a heap of debris floating in the Pacific that's twice the size of Texas, according to marine biologists.

The enormous stew of trash - which consists of 80 percent plastics and weighs some 3.5 million tons, say oceanographers - floats where few people ever travel, in a no-man's land between San Francisco and Hawaii.

Marcus Eriksen, director of research and education at the Algalita Marine Research Foundation in Long Beach, said his group has been monitoring the Garbage Patch for 10 years.

"With the winds blowing in and the currents in the gyre going circular, it's the perfect environment for trapping," Eriksen said. "There's nothing we can do about it now, except do no more harm."

The patch has been growing, along with ocean debris worldwide, tenfold every decade since the 1950s, said Chris Parry, public education program manager with the California Coastal Commission in San Francisco.

Ocean current patterns may keep the flotsam stashed in a part of the world few will ever see, but the majority of its content is generated onshore, according to a report from Greenpeace last year titled "Plastic Debris in the World's Oceans."

The report found that 80 percent of the oceans' litter originated on land. While ships drop the occasional load of shoes or hockey gloves into the waters (sometimes on purpose and illegally), the vast majority of sea garbage begins its journey as onshore trash.

That's what makes a potentially toxic swamp like the Garbage Patch entirely preventable, Parry said.

"At this point, cleaning it up isn't an option," Parry said. "It's just going to get bigger as our reliance on plastics continues. ... The long-term solution is to stop producing as much plastic products at home and change our consumption habits."

Parry said using canvas bags to cart groceries instead of using plastic bags is a good first step; buying foods that aren't wrapped in plastics is another.

After the San Francisco Board of Supervisors banned the use of plastic grocery bags earlier this year with the problem of ocean debris in mind, a slew of state bills were written to limit bag production, said Sarah Christie, a legislative director with the California Coastal Commission.

But many of the bills failed after meeting strong opposition from plastics industry lobbyists, she said.

Meanwhile, the stew in the ocean continues to grow.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is particularly dangerous for birds and marine life, said Warner Chabot, vice president of the Ocean Conservancy, an environmental group.

Sea turtles mistake clear plastic bags for jellyfish. Birds swoop down and swallow indigestible shards of plastic. The petroleum-based plastics take decades to break down, and as long as they float on the ocean's surface, they can appear as feeding grounds.

"These animals die because the plastic eventually fills their stomachs," Chabot said. "It doesn't pass, and they literally starve to death."

The Greenpeace report found that at least 267 marine species had suffered from some kind of ingestion or entanglement with marine debris.

Chabot said if environmentalists wanted to remove the ocean dump site, it would take a massive international effort that would cost billions. [STOP THE CRIMINAL WARS IN IRAQ/AFGHANISTAN, SAVE BILLIONS, AND CLEAN THE OCEAN! ELEMENTAL!!]

But that is unlikely, he added, because no one country is likely to step forward and claim the issue as its own responsibility.
Instead, cleaning up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is left to the landlubbers.

"What we can do is ban plastic fast food packaging," Chabot said, "or require the substitution of biodegradable materials, increase recycling programs and improve enforcement of litter laws.

"Otherwise, this ever-growing floating continent of trash will be with us for the foreseeable future."

How to help
You can help to limit the ever-growing patch of garbage floating in the Pacific Ocean. Here are some ways to help:

Limit your use of plastics when possible. Plastic doesn't easily degrade and can kill sea life.

Use a reusable bag when shopping. Throwaway bags can easily blow into the ocean.

Take your trash with you when you leave the beach.

Make sure your trash bins are securely closed. Keep all trash in closed bags.

Trash is also a problem in parts of San Francisco Bay. For an interactive map showing some of the worst locations, go to www.savesfbay.org/baytrash.

- Justin Berton jberton@sfchronicle.com
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/10/19/SS6JS8RH0.DTL


This article appeared on page W - 8 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Arnon Soffer, Israeli advisor: Kill, Kill, Kill, Kill

Canadian blogger Xymphora -- indefatigable researcher and web browser -- found this. --RB

Insanity and sanity
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
http://xymphora.blogspot.com/

Xymphora writes:

If you ever start feeling sorry for the Israelis, read this article on Arnon Soffer, a geostrategist from the University of Haifa and head of research for the IDF’s National Defense College:

“Ruthie Blum: In our previous interview, you made many assertions about what could and should be expected to happen following the disengagement from Gaza. You claim now that everything has played out the way you said it would.

Soffer: Yes. I said, ‘The pressure at the border will be awful. It’s going to be a terrible war. So, if we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill.’

That statement caused a huge stir at the time, and it’s amazing to see how many dozens of angry, ignorant responses I continue to receive from leftists in Israel and anti-Semites abroad, who took my words out of context. I didn’t recommend that we kill Palestinians. I said we’ll have to kill them.

I was right about mounting demographic pressures. I am also entitled to defend myself and my country. So today, I would update the headline you gave my last interview and call this one: ‘It’s the demography and anti-Semitism, stupid.’”


Note how Soffer instinctively uses the slur to defend himself against a completely justified criticism for advocating mass killing of Palestinians. Note how his other line of defense, also predictable (the Zionists are like robots!), is self-defense. This isn’t some marginal nut: he’s a key advisor to the Israeli government:

“We are living in a 100-year period of terrorism, and we have another 100 years of terrorism ahead of us. We will forever be forced to live by the sword. We are not wanted in the Middle East, which is why we will have to continue to fight.

The purpose of disengagement was not to put an end to terrorism or Kassam fire. Its purpose was to stop being responsible for a million and a half Arabs who continue to multiply in conditions of poverty and madness. I am thrilled that we are out of there. The Kassams do not constitute a strategic threat, and the Palestinians will get the blow they deserve - though we do have to be cautious, because the situation is complex.”

And, shades of ‘no dogs or niggers’:

“Our government has woken up. The only ones making noise are leftists and so-called human rights lawyers who only care about the well-being of cats, dogs and Palestinians, but never about Jews.”

He continues with a completely clear statement on the purpose of the apartheid wall:

“Thanks to this completely crazy security fence [here he points to another map, and runs his finger along the jagged line delineating it], we have succeeded in reducing the suicide bombings to zero. This by itself is a huge accomplishment. But [former prime minister Ariel] Sharon’s real achievement, which the public doesn’t appreciate, is having included Modi’in, Betar Illit and Ma’aleh Adumim in Israel. In other words, 180,000 Jews remain within greater Jerusalem with American support.

Today there are 270,000 settlers in the territories, and their numbers are increasing, through natural growth and due to Bnei Akiva members moving there. Through Sharon’s cleverness, Jerusalem remains in Israel and 210,000 settlers are within the fence. Only 60,000 remain outside. In other words, 86% of the settlers are at home. This is an unbelievable victory.”

Revelations about a conspiracy involving the American State Department:


“So, now you’re asking me - and rightly so - whether we have to evacuate the rest of the territories. Since our last interview, I have changed my mind about the Jordan Valley. I said then that we were probably going to have to relinquish it. I had been persuaded that there was no longer an eastern-front threat, now that Iraq had become friendly, that Syria was rusty and that our strategic peace with Jordan was sound. But then, suddenly, in November 2005, there was a suicide attack in Amman, which showed that there are al-Qaida cells there.

I also said that we would have to hold on to the Philadelphi Corridor in order to prevent an Egyptian-Gazan connection. Now, if we put our hands to our hearts, we have to admit that the IDF failed to secure Philadelphi - a 200-meter wide and 10-kilometer long area, on one side of which is a terrible country like Egypt, and on the other side of which is Iran. According to reliable sources, Iran was already in Gaza 10 months before disengagement. Why am I bringing this up in connection with the Jordan Valley? [President of the Council on Foreign Relations] Richard Haass, who was director of policy planning for the US State Department at the time, told me personally: ‘We’ll allow Israel to establish a ‘Philadelphi Corridor’ in the Jordan Valley, to guarantee the neutralization and demilitarization of Judea and Samaria.’”

Destroy, destroy and destroy:

“It’s because the IDF failed that we made that deal. That’s why today I think we have to retain control of both the Philadelphi Corridor and the Jordan Valley.


And if we return to Philadelphi, it will no longer be a mere 200 meters. It will have to be widened at the expense of the refugee camps in Rafah, which we will have to destroy, destroy and destroy.”

Israeli thinking on Iran (note that the suggestion would also destroy the world economy):


“I want to tell you: Two missiles on the Iranian islands of Karaj and Siri, and Iran’s entire oil revenue drops from $60 billion to zero. Iran is so weak and vulnerable that it’s unbelievable.”


Soffer sounds like a madman, but he represents mainstream Israeli strategic thinking. Ran HaCohen visits the ‘peace plan’ of the Israeli right, which is essentially the complete ethnic cleansing of the Occupied Territories together with the formalization of the apartheid process to cover Arabs in Israel proper (so that they may be ethnically cleansed in due course). As he points out, the craziest ideas of the Israeli right are the ideas of the IDF, and since Israel is a military dictatorship, soon become mainstream Israeli thinking.

Finally, the American Establishment, in a fight to the death with Jew-control in Washington, finally describes a reasonable settlement to the Palestinian problem, following their recent epiphany that such a settlement is necessary for real American interests. Too bad they didn’t come up with this twenty years ago.

Left I on the News blogger has it right. Virtually all the influential Democrats are supporting -- or can't be seen not to be supporting -- a US attack on Iran. As many are warning, such an attack is likely to have a devastating effect on what is left of the US republic -- and for many many millions, that will be the least of the horrors.

Left I doesn't get into the reason that such a fanatical Zionist as Senator Lieberman can summon extensive political support for such a catastrophic undertaking. But as a advocate for Palestinian human and civil rights, LeftI probably wouldn't disagree that such potentially destructive legislative underwriting of Bush-Cheney warmongering is made possible or demanded by the powerful Zionist lobby which has been demonizing Iran as an existential threat with increasing persistence.

The mechanism of such demonizing is the same as has been pursued by leaders ever since there were human groups or tribes that coveted the resources of other human groups. Politicians soon learned that a quick and easy way to stay in power and to control a restive population was to promote fear and hatred of the Other (see Orwell's 1984).

Since 9/11 we have become even more tightly bound captives of this leadership requirement/desire for war in large part, because of the power and authority of one man, Dick Cheney, in a way that is perhaps unprecedented in US history. The Bush-Cheney leadership understands that in order to facilitate their pathological desire for endless war they can harness the power of Zionist interest in dominating the Middle East through constant tension and threats of war. Thus the devastation of Iraq and the current threats -- perhaps to be carried out early next year -- against Iran.

It’s not clear whether someone as clever as Senator Lieberman is driven more by arrogance or by denial in his refusal to recognize that his desire for an attack on Iran is likely to result in a disaster for both the US and Israel, and more likely in the short term rather than the middle or long term.

Our reality today is that the pathology and the ideology of those who were considered crazies only a few short years ago is present in the White House, the most powerful and darkly effective military machine the world has ever seen. And all this is supported and enabled by those who actively or tacitly support a Jewish state in the former Palestine. It's a little weird that our very civilization should be threatened by such a project and that this should be the moment in our history when the proverbial manure will find its way to reaches heretofore untouched.

In a footnote that might be helpful to those seeking evidence of the power that Zionism today has over the U.S. political system, one can find in a very useful and important newly published book by the redoubtable London based Palestinian activist and writer, Dr. Ghada Karmi, in her chapter on "Why Does the West Support Israel?" a quote from a campaign speech that Senator John Kerry made in 2004: He said:

“We are not secure while Israel, the one true democracy in the [Middle Eastern] region, remains the victim of an unrelenting campaign of terror…American leadership is needed to bolster Israel’s security at home as well as in the region.”

It should -- but doesn’t necessarily -- go without saying that Kerry has it exactly 180 degrees wrong: it is Israel which has been threatening the security of many if not all of its neighbors at one time or another or ever since it was implanted into the neighborhood.

That our leading politicians are forced to parrot the myth of Israeli insecurity as a regular staple in our campaign seasons and at all other relevant moments ought to be evidence enough of where is the tail and who is the dog.

As it happens, Dr Karmi is coming to the States in early November to publicize her new book, Married to Another Man: Israel’s Dilemma in Palestine . Those interested in learning about her appearances should contact me or Manal Ramadan : manalramadan2023@yahoo.com who is arranging her schedule.
Ronald
***


Blogger Left I on the News wrote:
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
The meaning of Lieberman-Kyl

http://lefti.blogspot.com/

There's been a lot written about the Lieberman-Kyl amendment that passed the Senate the other day 76-22, with Hillary Clinton voting for it and Barack Obama shamefully absenting himself from the vote. Most of the attention has been on its designation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a "terrorist organization" and the implications that has for the possibility of a war against Iran (since the Senate has already given its approval for a "war on terror"). Amazingly, some Democrats are even bragging about how sections 3 and 4 were excised from the amendment before its passage:
(3) that it should be the policy of the United States to combat, contain, and roll back the violent activities and destabilizing influence inside Iraq of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, its foreign facilitators such as Lebanese Hezbollah, and its indigenous Iraqi proxies;

(4) to support the prudent and calibrated use of all instruments of United States national power in Iraq, including diplomatic, economic, intelligence, and military instruments, in support of the policy described in paragraph (3) with respect to the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its proxies;
But these deletions, while some kind of improvement, still don't detract from what the amendment accomplished in giving an imprimatur to war against Iran. Consider point 2 for example, which remains:
(2) that it is a vital national interest of the United States to prevent the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran from turning Shi'a militia extremists in Iraq into a Hezbollah-like force that could serve its interests inside Iraq, including by overwhelming, subverting, or co-opting institutions of the legitimate Government of Iraq;
After all, if this is our "vital national interest," then whatever it takes to defend that "national interest" is surely acceptable.


So, even as amended, there can be no doubt that this amendment was a strong endorsement by the Senate, including half of the Democrats, for war against Iran. But actually, the reason I'm writing here is to call attention to the one section of the amendment which has been pretty much overlooked - section 1:
(1) that the manner in which the United States transitions and structures its military presence in Iraq will have critical long-term consequences for the future of the Persian Gulf and the Middle East, in particular with regard to the capability of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran to pose a threat to the security of the region, the prospects for democracy for the people of the region, and the health of the global economy;
What does that mean to you? I tell you what it means to me - that the Senate has just endorsed not just war against Iran, but an indefinite presence in Iraq, now justified as preventing Iran from "posing a threat to the security of the region."
***

Sara Roy's review of a book on Hamas Censored

Don't miss the details below of how Sara Roy's review of a book on Hamas was censored. Yet another instance of Zionist censorship, this time of an article by a highly regarded academic who has written definitive books on life in Gaza and on life for the Palestinians under Israeli occupation.

The interesting thing is that in so many less than high profile cases, an Alan Dershowitz is not required to silence any semblance of an anti-Zionist, or anti Israeli policy, or simply objective position. All that is required in these cases is a pro Israeli faculty member or two to notice that this or that review, this or that associate professor is not good for the Jews, not good for Zionism.

The Zionists have the power, they know they have the power and they know they are free to exercise their power with minimal chance of pushback or consequence. So the niceties of fair play, academic freedom, of speech, don't apply. (Would we do the same thing if we had the power?) The same can be said of the "war on terror."Freedom of speech, due process doesn't apply to those who are perceived as terrorists, enemies, real or imagined of the US and/or Israel, as long as they are Muslims.
Ronald
***>
> BOOK REVIEW
>
> Hamas: Politics, Charity and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad by
> Matthew Levitt. Yale University Press, in cooperation with the
> Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2006. 324 pages, $26.00,
> hardcover.
>
> Sara Roy
> Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University
> http://mepc.org/journal_vol14/0707_roy.asp
>
> Author's Note:
> This review, published here in its entirety, was originally
> commissioned by The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, the official
> foreign-policy journal at the Fletcher School at Tufts University.
>
> Between the time I was invited to write the review and the time I was
> told it would be published, over two months had passed during which I
> had had several exchanges, some of them difficult, with the editorial
> staff. However, by the end of the process the editor-in-chief, with
> whom I had been working, was pleased with the review, and so was I. He
> sent me an e-PDF of the review as it would appear in the journal
> (Volume 31:1 Winter 2007). The PDF version of the page proofs revealed
> that the editor had excerpted two relevant sentences (featured in
> sidebars) to highlight observations that I had offered in the review:
>
> 1. "While there can be no doubt that, since its inception, Hamas has
> engaged in violence and armed struggle, and has been the primary force
> behind the horrific suicide bombings inside Israel, Levitt's
> presentation reduces this increasingly complex and sophisticated
> organization to an insular, one-dimensional...entity dedicated solely
> to violence...and Israel's destruction."
> 2. "The ability of Hamas to reinterpret itself over time through
> processes of radicalization, de-radicalization, de-militarization, and
> re-radicalization is a pronounced and common theme in its historical
> evolution."
> During a subsequent exchange the editor-in-chief wrote, "Thank you for
> your hard work as well. It's a good review." I believed that was the
> end of the matter. Just a few days later, I received the following
> e-mail message from the same editor-in-chief:
>
> Dear Ms. Roy:
> ?After careful review and much consideration of the merits of your
> piece, we have decided that we are ultimately unable to publish your
> review for this edition. Your review was evaluated by several of our
> editors and an external editor for objectivity. Unfortunately, they
> disagreed with my decision to publish your review for the following
> reasons: despite their agreement with many of your points, all
> reviewers found the piece one-sided. This one-sidedness dissuaded
> readers from reading the piece to the end; ultimately, this last point
> is the most important. Although I found your arguments valuable, if
> readers consistently feel this way, I am unable to move forward with a
> piece. My apologies for the way in which this process was carried out,
> and for the time that you spent on editing the piece. Thank you once
> again for your submission and your efforts. If you would like to
> discuss this further, please feel free to e-mail me.
>
> In more than 20 years of writing and publishing I have never
> experienced such behavior or encountered what to me, at least, is so
> blatant a case of censorship. I am therefore extremely grateful to
> Anne Joyce and Stephen Magro for agreeing to publish the review in
> Middle East Policy.
>
> ===
>
> At the beginning of the first Palestinian uprising, I was living in
> Gaza and spent much time in the refugee camps interviewing families
> about the political and socioeconomic changes taking place around
> them. Despite the harsh living situation, Palestinians were filled
> with a palpable sense of hope and possibility that has since
> evaporated. Hamas was then struggling to create a popular
> constituency, despite overwhelming support among Palestinians for
> secular nationalism. That was 18 years ago, and neither I nor anyone
> else ever thought that Hamas would one day emerge as a major political
> actor: democratically winning legislative elections, defeating the
> majority Fatah party and heading a Palestinian government.
>
> In his recent book, Matthew Levitt, who is deputy assistant secretary
> for intelligence and analysis at the U.S. Department of the Treasury
> and an expert in financial counterterrorism, argues that Hamas is
> strictly a terrorist organization that is not only a domestic threat
> but a global one, a part of an international jihad network with links
> to al-Qaeda that must be met with force. He further argues ? and this
> is the core of his book ? that despite the existence of differentiated
> political, social and military sectors within Hamas, they are all part
> of the same "apparatus of terror."
>
> Levitt devotes significant attention to attacking the Islamist social
> sector (dawa) and Hamas's charitable institutions. It is the principle
> aim of his book to show how Hamas uses its extensive social-service
> network-mosques, schools, kindergartens, orphanages, hospitals,
> clinics, sports clubs, youth clubs-to further its primary political
> agenda, which he claims is the destruction of Israel. He argues that
> through its social support structure and services, "Hamas leverages
> the appreciation (and indebtedness) it earns through social welfare
> activities to garner support ? both political and logistical ? for its
> terrorist activities." Levitt summarizes his argument as follows: "The
> general deprivation of the Palestinian people in the Israeli-occupied
> territories predisposes them to favor the much-needed social support
> that Hamas provides." He continues, "In addition to purchasing
> goodwill, charities also create a built-in logistical support umbrella
> underneath which terrorist operations are sheltered and operate." He
> explains that the dawa network operationally supports terrorism
> through recruitment, employment and financing and by providing
> institutional legitimacy.
>
> His evidence, at times interesting, particularly with regard to
> Hamas's external sources of financing, is more often than not based on
> assumption, extrapolation and generalization. For example, as evidence
> for how religious organizations raise money for Palestinian terrorism,
> Levitt quotes from a pamphlet produced by a Quranic memorization
> center that was sponsored by the Ramallah-al Bireh charity committee.
> The pamphlet listed 30 ways to enter heaven, including "Jihad for the
> sake of Allah by fighting with one's soul and money."
>
> In another example of how hospitals are used to support terrorism,
> Levitt briefly describes the Dar al-Salam Hospital: "According to
> information cited by the FBI," the hospital is considered a Hamas
> institution because it was founded with "Hamas funds and protection."
> But Levitt fails to provide any real evidence of these funds or how
> and why they are considered "Hamas." The assumption is that these
> ties, even if they are shown to exist, are inherently evil and can be
> nothing else.
>
> In a chapter on how the dawa teaches terror and radicalizes
> Palestinian society, Levitt writes, "Recipients of Hamas financial aid
> or social services are less likely to turn down requests from the
> organization such as allowing their homes to serve as safe houses for
> Hamas fugitives, ferrying fugitives, couriering funds or weapons,
> storing and maintaining explosives, and more." He cites as evidence
> for this sweeping statement one resident of Jabalya refugee camp in
> Gaza who fed Hamas militants daily. The possibility that Palestinians
> receive support from Hamas institutions without preconditions or that
> popular support requires more than the lure of financial incentives
> and free social services does not enter Levitt's argument. Levitt also
> claims, "When angry, frustrated or humiliated Palestinians regularly
> listen to sermons in mosques in which Jews, Israelis and even
> Americans are depicted as enemies of Islam and Palestine, Hamas's
> official policy may not restrain individual enthusiasm." One wonders
> how Mr. Levitt knows these things, given that he appears never to have
> stepped inside a Hamas institution in Gaza or the West Bank or to have
> conducted any fieldwork at all.
>
> While these arguments are oft-repeated in today's media, Levitt does
> little to address research that supports a very different conclusion
> regarding the Hamas dawa. Some of the key findings of this research
> point to institutional features that demonstrate no preference for
> religion or politics over other ideologies, particularly in
> programmatic work; an approach to institutional work that advocates
> incrementalism, moderation, order and stability; a philosophical and
> practical desire for productivity and professionalism that shuns
> radical change and emphasizes community development and civic
> restoration over political violence; and no evidence of any formal
> attempt to impose an Islamic model of political, social, legal or
> religious behavior, or to create an alternative Islamic or Islamist
> conception of society.
>
> While there can be no doubt that, since its inception, Hamas has
> engaged in violence and armed struggle and has been the primary force
> behind the horrific suicide bombings inside Israel, Levitt's
> presentation reduces this increasingly complex and sophisticated
> organization to an insular, one-dimensional and seemingly mindless
> entity dedicated solely to violence, terrorism and Israel's
> destruction. To fully understand the current political stature of
> Hamas, it is necessary to closely examine the dramatic transitions
> that have occurred within the organization itself, among Palestinians
> with respect to their society, and in Palestine's relationship with
> Israel.
>
>> From the point of view of Hamas, Palestine is an Arab and Islamic land
> that fell to colonial control with the demise of the Ottoman Empire.
> The establishment of the State of Israel is viewed as a way to
> perpetuate colonial authority over the Muslim homeland and is
> therefore illegitimate. As victims of colonialism, Hamas argues that
> Palestinians have the right to resist and struggle to regain their
> homeland and freedom, viewing this as a local and nationalist
> struggle. Now, almost two decades after its birth, Hamas has grown in
> size and popularity. While changes have not been made to its frame of
> reference or objectives, its political discourse has become more
> refined and streamlined, particularly with regard to its relations
> with local groups, political factions, other religious communities and
> other nations.
>
> Unfortunately, Matthew Levitt's book does not address the critical
> evolutionary processes ? particularly with regard to its
> organizational structure and political, social and economic role in
> Palestinian society ? that have characterized the Palestinian Islamist
> movement and Hamas's rise to power. The ability of Hamas to
> reinterpret itself over time through processes of radicalization,
> de-radicalization, de-militarization and re-radicalization is a
> pronounced and common theme in its historical evolution. Levitt
> neglects to address the significance behind this commitment to
> reinterpretation. His analysis aims simply to demonize Hamas, and he
> discounts the critical connections between changing patterns of
> protest and structures of society, competing visions of a Palestinian
> social and political order, and contesting Islamic and secular
> definitions of meaning and legitimacy. The synergy among these forces
> has characterized the history and growth of Palestinian Islamism.
>
> Israel's military occupation, which has long been the defining context
> for Palestinian life, is almost absent from Levitt's book. Hamas's
> popularity and growing empowerment derive from its role as a
> resistance organization, fighting against an occupation that is now 40
> years old. Israel's steady expropriation, fragmentation and division
> of Palestinian lands; settlement construction and expansion; closure
> restrictions and destruction of the Palestinian economy are not part
> of Levitt's discussion, nor is the right of the Palestinians to resist
> these measures. In those few instances where the occupation is
> mentioned, it is couched in terms that acknowledge Palestinian
> hardship ? a reality exploited by Hamas ? but justified as a response
> to terrorism. In the absence of any serious examination of Israel's
> occupation, Levitt's portrayal of the rise of Hamas is completely
> detached from the context within which it was produced and shaped.
>
> Despite evidence to the contrary, the organization is also described
> as a movement incapable of transformation, ignoring the improvements
> in Hamas's political discourse regarding political compromise with the
> State of Israel and resolution of the conflict. During the period of
> the Oslo peace process, for example, some dramatic changes occurred
> within Hamas. The organization was moving away from the extreme and a
> position of confrontation towards one that was more centrist and
> moderate. This shift was characterized by a reorientation in policy
> and strategic emphasis from political/military action to social works
> and community development. Accompanying this shift was a redefinition
> of the nature of the Palestinian struggle, which was no longer for
> political or military power per se but for defining new social
> arrangements and appropriate cultural and institutional models that
> would meet social needs without resort to violence. Similarly, the
> Islamist movement was not advancing a policy of isolation but was
> calling for greater accommodation and cooperation with both domestic
> and international actors.
>
> Since Hamas's victory in the January 2006 legislative elections, there
> has been a further evolution in its political thinking ? as evidenced
> in some of its key political documents ? characterized by a strong
> emphasis on state-building and programmatic work, greater refinement
> with regard to its position on a two-state solution and the role of
> resistance, and a progressive de-emphasis on religion. (See Khaled
> Hroub, "A `New Hamas' Through Its New Documents," Journal of Palestine
> Studies, 34 (4) (Summer 2006)). These are absent from Levitt's
> discussion. Levitt also overlooks questions that are vital to any
> analysis of Hamas, especially at present. To name just a few, what
> were Hamas's ideological, philosophical and structural boundaries? How
> and why were they reset and expanded? What is the role of religion as
> opposed to politics in Islamist thought and practice, particularly in
> the public sphere? Are religion and politics truly unified? Can Hamas
> reconcile faith and ideology with a demand for a place in the
> political system?
>
> Levitt's book has many serious flaws and merits a detailed critique
> that extends well beyond the scope of this review. His is not a work
> of analysis or scholarship, to say the least, and despite certain
> points that are interesting and accurate, anyone wishing to gain a
> substantive, reasoned and critical understanding of Hamas would do
> well to look elsewhere.
>
> *********************************************************************