From Stratfor:
War, Psychology and Time
By George Friedman
There are moments in history when everything comes together. Today is the sixth anniversary of the al Qaeda attack against the United States. This is the week Gen. David Petraeus is reporting to Congress on the status of the war in Iraq. It also is the week Osama bin Laden made one of his rare video appearances. The world will not change this week, but the convergence of these strands makes it necessary to pause and take stock.
To do this, we must begin at the beginning. We do not mean Sept. 11, 2001, but the moment when bin Laden decided to stage the attack -- and the reasoning behind it. By understanding his motives, we can begin to measure his success. His motive was not, we believe, simply to kill Americans. That was a means to an end. Rather, as we and others have said before, it was to seize what he saw as a rare opportunity to begin the process of recreating a vast Islamic empire.
The rare opportunity was the fall of the Soviet Union. Until then, the Islamic world had been divided between Soviet and American spheres of influence. Indeed, the border of the Soviet Union ran through the Islamic world. The Cold War between the United States and Soviet Union created a tense paralysis in that world, with movement and change being measured in decades and inches. Suddenly, everything that was once certain became uncertain. One half of the power equation was gone, and the other half, the United States, was at a loss as to what it meant. Bin Laden looked at the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and saw a historical opening.
His problem was that contrary to what has been discussed about terrorist organizations, they cannot create an empire. What they can do is seize a nation-state and utilize its power to begin shaping an empire. Bin Laden had Afghanistan, but he understood that its location and intrinsic power were insufficient for his needs. He could not hope to recreate the Islamic empire from Kabul or Kandahar. For bin Laden's strategy to work, he had to topple an important Muslim state and replace it with a true Islamist regime. There were several that would have done, but we suspect his eye was on Egypt. When Egypt moves, the Islamic world trembles. But that is a guess. A number of other regimes would have served the purpose.
In bin Laden's analysis, the strength of these regimes also was their weakness. They were all dependent on the United States for their survival. This fit in with bin Laden's broader analysis. The reason for Muslim weakness was that the Christian world -- the Crusaders, as he referred to them -- had imposed a series of regimes on Muslims and thereby divided and controlled them. Until these puppet regimes were overthrown, Muslims would be helpless in the face of Christians, in particular the current leading Christian power, the United States.
The root problem, as bin Laden saw it, was psychological. Muslims suffered from a psychology of defeat. They expected to be weaker than Christians and so they were. In spite of the defeat of the atheist Soviets in Afghanistan and the collapse of their regime, Muslims still did not understand two things -- that the Christians were inherently weak and corrupt, and that the United States was simply another Crusader nation and their enemy.
The 9/11 attack, as well as earlier attacks, was designed to do two things. First, by striking targets that were well-known among the Muslim masses, the attack was meant to demonstrate that the United States could be attacked and badly hurt. Second, it was designed to get a U.S. reaction -- and this is what bin Laden saw as the beauty of his plan: If Washington reacted by doing nothing effective, then he could argue that the United States was profoundly weak and indecisive. This would increase contempt for the United States. If, on the other hand, the United States staged a series of campaigns in the Islamic world, he would be able to say that this demonstrated that the United States was the true Crusader state and the enemy of Muslims everywhere. Bin Laden was looking for an intemperate move -- either the continued impotent responses to al Qaeda attacks in the 1990s or a drastic assault against Islam. Either one would have done.
For the American side, 9/11 did exactly what it was intended to do: generate terror. In our view, this was a wholly rational feeling. Anyone who was not frightened of what was coming next was out of touch with reality. Indeed, we are always amused when encountering friends who feel the United States vastly exaggerated the implications of four simultaneous plane hijacks that resulted in the world's worst terrorist attack and cost thousands of lives and billions in damage. Yet, six years on, the overwhelming and reasonable fear on the night of Sept. 11 has been erased and replaced by a strange sense that it was all an overreaction.
Al Qaeda was a global -- but sparse -- network. That meant that it could be anywhere and everywhere, and that searching for it was like looking for a needle in a haystack. But there was something else that disoriented the United States even more. Whether due to disruption by U.S. efforts or a lack of follow-on plans, al Qaeda never attacked the United States again after 9/11. Had it periodically attacked the United States, the ongoing sense of crisis would not have dissipated. But no attack has occurred, and over the years, actions and policies that appeared reasonable and proportionate in 2001 began to appear paranoid and excessive. A sense began to develop that the United States had overreacted to 9/11, or even that the Bush administration used 9/11 as an excuse for oppressive behavior.
Regardless of whether he was a one-trick pony or he did intend, but failed, to stage follow-on attacks, the lack of strikes since 9/11 has turned out to be less damaging to bin Laden than to the Bush administration.
Years of vigilance without an indisputable attack have led to a slow but systematic meltdown in the American consensus that was forged white hot on Sept. 11. On that day, it was generally conceded that defeating al Qaeda took precedence over all other considerations. It was agreed that this would be an extended covert war in which the use of any number of aggressive and unpleasant means would be necessary. It was believed that the next attack could come at any moment, and that preventing it was paramount.
Time reshapes our memory and displaces our fears from ourselves to others. For many, the fevered response to 9/11 is no longer "our" response, but "their" response, the response of the administration -- or more precisely, the overreaction of the administration that used 9/11 as an excuse to wage an unnecessary global war. The fears of that day are viewed as irrational and the responsibility of others. Regardless of whether it was intentional, the failure of al Qaeda to mount another successful attack against the United States in six years has made it appear that the reaction to 9/11 was overblown.
The Bush administration, however, felt it could not decline combat. It surged into the Islamic world, adopting one of the strategies bin Laden hoped it would. There were many reasons for this, but part of it was psychological. Bin Laden wanted to show that the United States was weak. Bush wanted to demonstrate that the United States was strong. The secretary of defense at the time, Donald Rumsfeld, used the term "shock and awe." That was precisely the sense the United States wanted to deliver to the Islamic world. It wanted to call bin Laden's bet -- and raise it.
That was more than four years ago. The sense of shock and awe, if it was ever there, is long gone. Rather than showing the Islamic world the overwhelming power of the United States, the United States is now engaged in a debate over whether there is some hope for its strategy. No one is arguing that the war has been a slam dunk. Whatever the complex reasons for invading Iraq, and we have addressed those in detail, time has completely undermined the psychological dimension of the strategy. Four years into the war, no one is shocked and no one is awed. The same, it should be added, is true about Afghanistan.
Time has hammered the Bush administration in two ways. In the first instance -- and this might actually be the result of the administration's success in stopping al Qaeda -- there has been no further attack against the United States. The justification for the administration's measures to combat al Qaeda, therefore, is wearing thin. For many, a state of emergency without any action simply does not work after six years. It is not because al Qaeda and others aren't out there. It is because time wears down the imagination, until the threat becomes a phantom.
Time also has worn down the Bush administration's war in Iraq. The Islamic world is not impressed. The American public doesn't see the point or the end. What was supposed to be a stunning demonstration of American power has been a demonstration of the limits of that power.
The paradox is this: There has been no follow-on attack against the United States. The United States did dislodge Saddam Hussein and the Taliban, and while the war goes badly, the casualties are a small fraction of those lost in Vietnam. Most important, bin Laden's dream is gone. No Muslim state has been overthrown and replaced with a regime that bin Laden would find worthy. He has been marginalized by both the United States and by his rival Shiite radicals, who have picked up the mantle that he dropped. His own jihadist movement is no longer under his effective control.
Bin Laden has been as badly battered by time as Bush. Unable to achieve any of his political goals, unable to mount another attack, he reminds us of Che Guevara after his death in Bolivia. He is a symbol of rebellion for a generation that does not intend to rebel and that carefully ignores his massive failures.
Yet, in the end, Guevara and bin Laden could have become important only if their revolutions had succeeded. There is much talk and much enthusiasm. There is no revolution. Therefore, what time has done to bin Laden's hopes is interesting, but in the end, as a geopolitical force, he has not counted beyond his image since Sept. 11, 2001.
The effect on the United States is much more profound. The war, both in Iraq and against al Qaeda, has worn the United States down over time. The psychology of fear has been replaced by a psychology of cynicism. The psychology of confidence in war has been replaced by a psychology of helplessness. Exhaustion pervades all.
That is the single most important outcome of the war. What happens to bin Laden is, in the end, about as important as what happened to Guevara. Legends will be made of it -- not history. But when the world's leading power falls into the psychological abyss brought about by time and war, the entire world is changed by it. Every country rethinks its position and its actions. Everything changes.
That is what is important about the Petraeus report. He will ask for more time. Congress will give it to him. The president will take it. Time, however, has its price not only in war but also psychologically. And if the request for time leads to more failure and the American psychology is further battered, then that is simply more time that other powers, great and small, will have to take advantage of the situation. The United States has psychologically begun tearing itself apart over both the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq. Whatever your view of that, it is a fact -- a serious geopolitical fact.
The Petraeus report will not address that. It is out of the general's area of responsibility. But the pressing issue is this: If the United States continues the war and if it maintains its vigilance against attacks, how does the evolution of the American psyche play out?
Wrap....
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
BushCo: "Chutzpah on stilts"...
From Huffington Post via truthout.org :
Gary Hart | J'Accuse
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/091207M.shtml
Gary Hart writes for Huffington Post: "This administration stands indicted for incompetence and mendacity. That it still commands the loyalty of even a quarter of our fellow citizens is testament to the persistence of willful ignorance. Against all the facts assembled in this indictment, that the administration's operatives can still make claims on strength, security, and determination is chutzpah on stilts.
That the media still treat these operatives and spokespersons, and indeed the president himself, seriously is witness to their desire for 'access' and 'sources' rather than their commitment to the truth."
[Use link above to continue reading]
Wrap...
Gary Hart | J'Accuse
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/091207M.shtml
Gary Hart writes for Huffington Post: "This administration stands indicted for incompetence and mendacity. That it still commands the loyalty of even a quarter of our fellow citizens is testament to the persistence of willful ignorance. Against all the facts assembled in this indictment, that the administration's operatives can still make claims on strength, security, and determination is chutzpah on stilts.
That the media still treat these operatives and spokespersons, and indeed the president himself, seriously is witness to their desire for 'access' and 'sources' rather than their commitment to the truth."
[Use link above to continue reading]
Wrap...
STUPID Americans and Russian procreation....
From American Progress:
Think Fast...
"Six years after the 9/11 terror attacks on the U.S., it seems the media still have some educational work to do. A new CBS/New York Times poll reveals that even today, 1 in 3 Americans believe that 'Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the September 11th, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.'"
The Bush administration's top intelligence officials have notified a federal appeals court that "a July ruling requiring the government to disclose virtually all its information on Guantanamo detainees could cause 'exceptionally grave damage to the national security.'" The ruling was a victory for detainee lawyers, piercing the government's shield of secrecy.
57: Percentage New Orleans's black population dropped after Hurricane Katrina, while the city's white population declined by 36 percent, according to a new analysis of U.S. census data.
An economic forecast by UCLA predicts "the nation's economy will be so sluggish well into next year that any major hiccup could tip it into recession. ... The forecast presents a gloomier outlook for jobs and the housing market."
A U.S. military official reported that Israel conducted an airstrike "deep into Syria" yesterday. Military officials said Israel is "keeping troops along the Syrian border on high alert. The officials said there have been no signs that Syria is preparing for war after the alleged incident," though Syria did complain to the U.N. about Israeli "aggression and violation of sovereignty."
ABC's Brian Ross reports that wealthy Saudi Arabians are "filling al Qaeda's coffers." "If I could somehow snap my fingers and cut off the funding from one country, it would be Saudi Arabia," said Stuart Levey, the under secretary of the Treasury in charge of tracking terror financing.
According to a poll of Pakistanis, al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is more popular in Pakistan than President Pervez Musharraf, a key U.S. ally." According to poll results, "bin Laden has a 46 percent approval rating. Musharraf's support is 38 percent. U.S. President George W. Bush's approval: 9 percent."
And finally: Happy Day of Conception! Gov. Sergei Morozov, head of the central Russian region Ulyanovsk, has given couples the day off to procreate. "Couples who give birth nine months later on Russia's national day - June 12 - receive money, cars, refrigerators and other prizes."
Wrap...
Think Fast...
"Six years after the 9/11 terror attacks on the U.S., it seems the media still have some educational work to do. A new CBS/New York Times poll reveals that even today, 1 in 3 Americans believe that 'Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the September 11th, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.'"
The Bush administration's top intelligence officials have notified a federal appeals court that "a July ruling requiring the government to disclose virtually all its information on Guantanamo detainees could cause 'exceptionally grave damage to the national security.'" The ruling was a victory for detainee lawyers, piercing the government's shield of secrecy.
57: Percentage New Orleans's black population dropped after Hurricane Katrina, while the city's white population declined by 36 percent, according to a new analysis of U.S. census data.
An economic forecast by UCLA predicts "the nation's economy will be so sluggish well into next year that any major hiccup could tip it into recession. ... The forecast presents a gloomier outlook for jobs and the housing market."
A U.S. military official reported that Israel conducted an airstrike "deep into Syria" yesterday. Military officials said Israel is "keeping troops along the Syrian border on high alert. The officials said there have been no signs that Syria is preparing for war after the alleged incident," though Syria did complain to the U.N. about Israeli "aggression and violation of sovereignty."
ABC's Brian Ross reports that wealthy Saudi Arabians are "filling al Qaeda's coffers." "If I could somehow snap my fingers and cut off the funding from one country, it would be Saudi Arabia," said Stuart Levey, the under secretary of the Treasury in charge of tracking terror financing.
According to a poll of Pakistanis, al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is more popular in Pakistan than President Pervez Musharraf, a key U.S. ally." According to poll results, "bin Laden has a 46 percent approval rating. Musharraf's support is 38 percent. U.S. President George W. Bush's approval: 9 percent."
And finally: Happy Day of Conception! Gov. Sergei Morozov, head of the central Russian region Ulyanovsk, has given couples the day off to procreate. "Couples who give birth nine months later on Russia's national day - June 12 - receive money, cars, refrigerators and other prizes."
Wrap...
Privacy violated BIG TIME....
From The LA Times:
David Lazarus:
Consumer Confidential
Your loss of privacy is a package deal
September 12 2007
The all-you-can-eat packages of voice, video and Internet services offered
by phone and cable companies may be convenient, but they represent a
potentially significant threat to people's privacy.
Take, for example, Time Warner Cable, which has about 2 million customers in
Southern California. The company offers a voice-video-Net package called
"All the Best" for $89.85 for the first 12 months.
But for anyone who has the wherewithal to read Time Warner's 3,000-word
California privacy policy, you discover that not only does the company have
the ability to know what you watch on TV and whom you call, but also that it
can track your online activities, including sites you visit and stuff you
buy.
Remember all the fuss when it was revealed last year that Google Inc. kept
voluminous records of people's Web searches, and that federal authorities
were demanding a peek under the hood? Multiply that privacy threat by three.
Internet, TV, phone -- it's hard to imagine a more revealing glimpse of your
private life.
"All your eggs are in one communications basket," said Beth Givens, director
of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse in San Diego. "If a company wants to, it
can learn a great deal about you -- and it probably wants to."
More often than not, it'll also want to turn a fast buck by selling at least
a portion of that info to marketers.
All leading telecom companies are aggressively pushing these bundled service
plans after investing billions of dollars in high-speed digital networks.
For consumers, the upside is often a hefty savings compared with acquiring
the same services from multiple providers.
The downside is that you're making intimate details of virtually all your
network activities available to a single company -- and possibly government
officials.
[Use link below to continue reading]
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-lazarus12sep12,0,827991,full.column
Wrap...
David Lazarus:
Consumer Confidential
Your loss of privacy is a package deal
September 12 2007
The all-you-can-eat packages of voice, video and Internet services offered
by phone and cable companies may be convenient, but they represent a
potentially significant threat to people's privacy.
Take, for example, Time Warner Cable, which has about 2 million customers in
Southern California. The company offers a voice-video-Net package called
"All the Best" for $89.85 for the first 12 months.
But for anyone who has the wherewithal to read Time Warner's 3,000-word
California privacy policy, you discover that not only does the company have
the ability to know what you watch on TV and whom you call, but also that it
can track your online activities, including sites you visit and stuff you
buy.
Remember all the fuss when it was revealed last year that Google Inc. kept
voluminous records of people's Web searches, and that federal authorities
were demanding a peek under the hood? Multiply that privacy threat by three.
Internet, TV, phone -- it's hard to imagine a more revealing glimpse of your
private life.
"All your eggs are in one communications basket," said Beth Givens, director
of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse in San Diego. "If a company wants to, it
can learn a great deal about you -- and it probably wants to."
More often than not, it'll also want to turn a fast buck by selling at least
a portion of that info to marketers.
All leading telecom companies are aggressively pushing these bundled service
plans after investing billions of dollars in high-speed digital networks.
For consumers, the upside is often a hefty savings compared with acquiring
the same services from multiple providers.
The downside is that you're making intimate details of virtually all your
network activities available to a single company -- and possibly government
officials.
[Use link below to continue reading]
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-lazarus12sep12,0,827991,full.column
Wrap...
What you say, what you write...They've got it...
From Secrecy News:
DoJ: NEW SURVEILLANCE LAW COULD BE "MISCONSTRUED"
Critics of the new Protect America Act who wonder if it will be used to
conduct warrantless surveillance of Americans have misunderstood the
legislation, according to a Department of Justice official, but he also
admitted the law may be susceptible to such a misunderstanding.
"Contrary to some reports, the new legislation does nothing to change
FISA's prohibition against targeting a person in the United States for
surveillance without a court order," said Assistant Attorney General
Kenneth L. Wainstein at a hearing of the House Intelligence Committee
last week.
At the same time, he indicated that ambiguities in the language of the
law may lend themselves to just such an interpretation.
"To the extent that the statute could be construed to allow
acquisitions of domestic communications, we would be willing to
consider alternative language," Mr. Wainstein said in his prepared
statement (at page 10).
A copy of Mr. Wainstein's September 6 statement is here:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2007_hr/090607wainstein.pdf
The text of his oral remarks is here:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2007_hr/090607wainstein-oral.pdf
The ambiguities in the Protect America Act are far more extensive than
what has yet been officially acknowledged, according to Morton H.
Halperin of the Open Society Institute. (The Open Society Institute
helps fund Secrecy News.)
"Congress enacted legislation the meaning of which is simply not
deducible from the words in the text," he told the House Judiciary
Committee last week.
Will the new law "lead to the interception of phone calls and emails
that the intelligence community should not be reading"?
"I have no idea if that is the case or not but neither does anyone else
in the public and most of the Congress," said Mr. Halperin. "That very
uncertainty is simply unacceptable and a threat to both our liberty and
our security."
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2007_hr/090507halperin.pdf
[Use links above to continue reading]
Wrap...
DoJ: NEW SURVEILLANCE LAW COULD BE "MISCONSTRUED"
Critics of the new Protect America Act who wonder if it will be used to
conduct warrantless surveillance of Americans have misunderstood the
legislation, according to a Department of Justice official, but he also
admitted the law may be susceptible to such a misunderstanding.
"Contrary to some reports, the new legislation does nothing to change
FISA's prohibition against targeting a person in the United States for
surveillance without a court order," said Assistant Attorney General
Kenneth L. Wainstein at a hearing of the House Intelligence Committee
last week.
At the same time, he indicated that ambiguities in the language of the
law may lend themselves to just such an interpretation.
"To the extent that the statute could be construed to allow
acquisitions of domestic communications, we would be willing to
consider alternative language," Mr. Wainstein said in his prepared
statement (at page 10).
A copy of Mr. Wainstein's September 6 statement is here:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2007_hr/090607wainstein.pdf
The text of his oral remarks is here:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2007_hr/090607wainstein-oral.pdf
The ambiguities in the Protect America Act are far more extensive than
what has yet been officially acknowledged, according to Morton H.
Halperin of the Open Society Institute. (The Open Society Institute
helps fund Secrecy News.)
"Congress enacted legislation the meaning of which is simply not
deducible from the words in the text," he told the House Judiciary
Committee last week.
Will the new law "lead to the interception of phone calls and emails
that the intelligence community should not be reading"?
"I have no idea if that is the case or not but neither does anyone else
in the public and most of the Congress," said Mr. Halperin. "That very
uncertainty is simply unacceptable and a threat to both our liberty and
our security."
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2007_hr/090507halperin.pdf
[Use links above to continue reading]
Wrap...
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Looking forward to films and books on the way...
From Publishers Lunch Weekly:
FICTION/MYSTERY, CRIME:
Chuck Barris's WHO KILLED ART DECO?, about a Jewish PI in the south who take on a case which looks to be a suicide, again to Sarah Hochman at Simon & Schuster, by Jennifer Lyons at the Jennifer Lyons Literary Agency (world; excl. Germany).
GENERAL/OTHER:
Town House author Tish Cohen's INSIDE OUT GIRL, about an overprotective single mom who runs "Perfect Parent" magazine; a single dad harboring a terrible secret; and a punk teenage daughter aching for the girl next door -- whose lives are turned inside out by a beautiful little girl who is anything but perfect, again to Alison Callahan at Harper Perennial, and Iris Tupholme for Harper Canada, by Daniel Lazar at Writers House (NA).
THE ELECTRIC CHURCH author Jeff Somers's THE DIGITAL PLAGUE, in which a plague decimates the entire Eastern seaboard, a plague that can be traced back to killer-for-hire Avery Cates, to Devi Pillai at Orbit, in a nice deal, for publication in April 2008, by Janet Reid at Imprint Agency.
Father's Day author Philip Galanes's EMMA'S TABLE, pitched as in the vein of Meg Wolitzer and Tom Perrotta, featuring a celebrity decorator and merchandising mogul recently returned from a stint in jail for tax fraud whose struggle to redeem herself, by Jennifer Barth at Harper, in a pre-empt, by Betsy Lerner at Dunow, Carlson & Lerner (world).
FILM:
Film rights to Chad Kultgen's debut novel THE AVERAGE AMERICAN MALE, to Fox Atomic, with Betty Thomas attached to produce and direct, by CAA.
NYT bestselling authors Don Piper and Cecil Murphey's 90 MINUTES IN HEAVEN, in which Baptist minister Piper recounts his death, passage to heaven, and return to earth where he endures a long and grueling recovery and spiritual awakening, to Dawn Parouse Productions (PRISON BREAK, TRU CALLING) for a feature film, by Sean Daily at Hotchkiss and Associates, on behalf of Deirdre Knight at The Knight Agency.
NON-FICTION..HEALTH:
Dr. Marianne Legato's WHY MEN DIE FIRST, a primer on the contemporary woman's behavior, language conception, and diseases through the lens of genetics, biochemistry, and the gendered brain, to Airie Stuart at Palgrave, in a very nice deal, by Frank Weimann at the Literary Group International.
HISTORY/POLITICS/CURRENT AFFAIRS:
Jean-Vincent Blanchard's HIS EMINENCE: The Life and Times of Cardinal Richelieu, a new look at the 17th century political mastermind, to George Gibson at Walker, by Will Lippincott at Lippincott Massie McQuilkin (NA).
Sixth term Democratic Congressman Robert Wexler's A HOUSE DIVIDED…WHY PEOPLE ARE RIGHT TO HATE CONGRESS AND WHAT THE LEFT SHOULD DO ABOUT IT, revealing the inside story of Congress as seen through the events of the last decade, to Thomas Dunne at Thomas Dunne Books, in a very nice deal, by Frank Weimann at The Literary Group.
Son of filmmaker Werner Herzog, Rudolph Herzog's HEIL HITLER! THE PIG IS DEAD: Comedy and Humor in the Third Reich, an illustrated book that reveals how Germans, including Jews, used humor as a way to cope with the abuse of the Nazi regime even though it could mean death if they were caught, and, based on jokes about Dachau and other Nazi abuses, shatters the myth that Germans were not aware of the extent of the Nazi program, to Dennis Loy Johnson at Melville House, in a nice deal, by Jutta Willand at Eichborn Verlag (World English).
dlj@mhpbooks.com
MEMOIR:
Journalist Luisita Lopez Torregrosa's A NEW AMERICAN FAMILY SAGA, chronicling the life of a multigenerational Latino family in America -- grandparents, parents, siblings, cousins, grandchildren -- telling the story of the family's various paths to this country, their fortunes and misfortunes, the conflicts among and within families (including between the working class and the middle class), and their struggle to take a seat at the American table, to Jennifer Hershey at Random House, by Kathy Robbins of The Robbins Office (NA).
Journalist and author of RED CHINA BLUES Jan Wong's BEIJING CONFIDENTIAL, about the author's return to China to search for a woman she betrayed when they were students there 34 years ago and about the enormous physical and psychic changes Beijing has gone through since then, to Rebecca Saletan at Harcourt, by John Pearce at Westwood Creative Artists.
Canadian rights previously sold to Doubleday Canada. Australian rights just sold to Harper Australia, by Natasha Daneman of Westwood Creative Artists.
Wrap...
FICTION/MYSTERY, CRIME:
Chuck Barris's WHO KILLED ART DECO?, about a Jewish PI in the south who take on a case which looks to be a suicide, again to Sarah Hochman at Simon & Schuster, by Jennifer Lyons at the Jennifer Lyons Literary Agency (world; excl. Germany).
GENERAL/OTHER:
Town House author Tish Cohen's INSIDE OUT GIRL, about an overprotective single mom who runs "Perfect Parent" magazine; a single dad harboring a terrible secret; and a punk teenage daughter aching for the girl next door -- whose lives are turned inside out by a beautiful little girl who is anything but perfect, again to Alison Callahan at Harper Perennial, and Iris Tupholme for Harper Canada, by Daniel Lazar at Writers House (NA).
THE ELECTRIC CHURCH author Jeff Somers's THE DIGITAL PLAGUE, in which a plague decimates the entire Eastern seaboard, a plague that can be traced back to killer-for-hire Avery Cates, to Devi Pillai at Orbit, in a nice deal, for publication in April 2008, by Janet Reid at Imprint Agency.
Father's Day author Philip Galanes's EMMA'S TABLE, pitched as in the vein of Meg Wolitzer and Tom Perrotta, featuring a celebrity decorator and merchandising mogul recently returned from a stint in jail for tax fraud whose struggle to redeem herself, by Jennifer Barth at Harper, in a pre-empt, by Betsy Lerner at Dunow, Carlson & Lerner (world).
FILM:
Film rights to Chad Kultgen's debut novel THE AVERAGE AMERICAN MALE, to Fox Atomic, with Betty Thomas attached to produce and direct, by CAA.
NYT bestselling authors Don Piper and Cecil Murphey's 90 MINUTES IN HEAVEN, in which Baptist minister Piper recounts his death, passage to heaven, and return to earth where he endures a long and grueling recovery and spiritual awakening, to Dawn Parouse Productions (PRISON BREAK, TRU CALLING) for a feature film, by Sean Daily at Hotchkiss and Associates, on behalf of Deirdre Knight at The Knight Agency.
NON-FICTION..HEALTH:
Dr. Marianne Legato's WHY MEN DIE FIRST, a primer on the contemporary woman's behavior, language conception, and diseases through the lens of genetics, biochemistry, and the gendered brain, to Airie Stuart at Palgrave, in a very nice deal, by Frank Weimann at the Literary Group International.
HISTORY/POLITICS/CURRENT AFFAIRS:
Jean-Vincent Blanchard's HIS EMINENCE: The Life and Times of Cardinal Richelieu, a new look at the 17th century political mastermind, to George Gibson at Walker, by Will Lippincott at Lippincott Massie McQuilkin (NA).
Sixth term Democratic Congressman Robert Wexler's A HOUSE DIVIDED…WHY PEOPLE ARE RIGHT TO HATE CONGRESS AND WHAT THE LEFT SHOULD DO ABOUT IT, revealing the inside story of Congress as seen through the events of the last decade, to Thomas Dunne at Thomas Dunne Books, in a very nice deal, by Frank Weimann at The Literary Group.
Son of filmmaker Werner Herzog, Rudolph Herzog's HEIL HITLER! THE PIG IS DEAD: Comedy and Humor in the Third Reich, an illustrated book that reveals how Germans, including Jews, used humor as a way to cope with the abuse of the Nazi regime even though it could mean death if they were caught, and, based on jokes about Dachau and other Nazi abuses, shatters the myth that Germans were not aware of the extent of the Nazi program, to Dennis Loy Johnson at Melville House, in a nice deal, by Jutta Willand at Eichborn Verlag (World English).
dlj@mhpbooks.com
MEMOIR:
Journalist Luisita Lopez Torregrosa's A NEW AMERICAN FAMILY SAGA, chronicling the life of a multigenerational Latino family in America -- grandparents, parents, siblings, cousins, grandchildren -- telling the story of the family's various paths to this country, their fortunes and misfortunes, the conflicts among and within families (including between the working class and the middle class), and their struggle to take a seat at the American table, to Jennifer Hershey at Random House, by Kathy Robbins of The Robbins Office (NA).
Journalist and author of RED CHINA BLUES Jan Wong's BEIJING CONFIDENTIAL, about the author's return to China to search for a woman she betrayed when they were students there 34 years ago and about the enormous physical and psychic changes Beijing has gone through since then, to Rebecca Saletan at Harcourt, by John Pearce at Westwood Creative Artists.
Canadian rights previously sold to Doubleday Canada. Australian rights just sold to Harper Australia, by Natasha Daneman of Westwood Creative Artists.
Wrap...
From 9/11 tributes to Rep Skelton's "a-holes" whisper to Duncan Hunter...
From American Progress:
Think Fast...
In New York City, "the firefighters and first responders who helped rescue New Yorkers" -- and later recovered the dead -- from the World Trade Center, will "read the victims' names for the first time Tuesday at the sixth anniversary ceremony." Tributes are also planned in Shanksville, PA, where Flight 93 went down and in Washington, D.C.
Six years after 9/11, just three in 10 Americans "believe that the U.S. and its allies are winning the war on terrorism," according to a new CNN poll. That number is down from 41 percent "when the same question was asked at the beginning of last year."
A group of Baghdadis watching the testimony of Gen. David Petraeus and Amb. Ryan Crocker yesterday were "unimpressed." "I don't think this will change anything in our country because the Americans will never leave Iraq," said Saleh Adnan, a car mechanic. "For me, the main report will be the one which announces the American departure."
Contradicting President Bush's homeland security adviser Frances Fragos Townsend, who recently called Osama bin Laden "virtually impotent," "U.S. intelligence and law enforcement chiefs and a Cabinet member said Monday that Osama bin Laden remained the most dangerous terrorist threat to the United States six years after the 9-11 attacks."
A new AP poll finds that the "public sees the Iraq war as a failure and thinks the U.S. troop buildup there has not worked." By "59 percent to 34 percent, more people said they believe history will judge the Iraq war a complete or partial failure than a success."
Yesterday while Gen. David Petraeus and Amb. Ryan Crocker testified to Congress about progress in Iraq, nine U.S. troops in Iraq were killed. Additionally, a "truck bomb killed 10 people and wounded 60 in northern Iraq, police said."
In an "effort to show that the Justice Department engaged in political prosecutions," House leaders "are beginning an investigation this week of the prosecution of Don Siegelman, the former Democratic governor of Alabama who was imprisoned in June on federal corruption charges."
46: Number of senators, including six Republicans, who yesterday called on President Bush "to rescind new administrative restrictions that will make it harder for states to expand their popular State Children's Health Insurance Program."
And finally: The "highly anticipated hearing before the Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees" yesterday was marked with "outbursts from CODEPINK protesters and snafus with witnesses' microphones." "That really pisses me off, Duncan," said chairman Ike Skelton (D-MO), not realizing his mic was still on. When Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) "leaned in" to talk about the protestors, Skelton could be heard stating, "Those a--holes."
Wrap...
Think Fast...
In New York City, "the firefighters and first responders who helped rescue New Yorkers" -- and later recovered the dead -- from the World Trade Center, will "read the victims' names for the first time Tuesday at the sixth anniversary ceremony." Tributes are also planned in Shanksville, PA, where Flight 93 went down and in Washington, D.C.
Six years after 9/11, just three in 10 Americans "believe that the U.S. and its allies are winning the war on terrorism," according to a new CNN poll. That number is down from 41 percent "when the same question was asked at the beginning of last year."
A group of Baghdadis watching the testimony of Gen. David Petraeus and Amb. Ryan Crocker yesterday were "unimpressed." "I don't think this will change anything in our country because the Americans will never leave Iraq," said Saleh Adnan, a car mechanic. "For me, the main report will be the one which announces the American departure."
Contradicting President Bush's homeland security adviser Frances Fragos Townsend, who recently called Osama bin Laden "virtually impotent," "U.S. intelligence and law enforcement chiefs and a Cabinet member said Monday that Osama bin Laden remained the most dangerous terrorist threat to the United States six years after the 9-11 attacks."
A new AP poll finds that the "public sees the Iraq war as a failure and thinks the U.S. troop buildup there has not worked." By "59 percent to 34 percent, more people said they believe history will judge the Iraq war a complete or partial failure than a success."
Yesterday while Gen. David Petraeus and Amb. Ryan Crocker testified to Congress about progress in Iraq, nine U.S. troops in Iraq were killed. Additionally, a "truck bomb killed 10 people and wounded 60 in northern Iraq, police said."
In an "effort to show that the Justice Department engaged in political prosecutions," House leaders "are beginning an investigation this week of the prosecution of Don Siegelman, the former Democratic governor of Alabama who was imprisoned in June on federal corruption charges."
46: Number of senators, including six Republicans, who yesterday called on President Bush "to rescind new administrative restrictions that will make it harder for states to expand their popular State Children's Health Insurance Program."
And finally: The "highly anticipated hearing before the Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees" yesterday was marked with "outbursts from CODEPINK protesters and snafus with witnesses' microphones." "That really pisses me off, Duncan," said chairman Ike Skelton (D-MO), not realizing his mic was still on. When Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) "leaned in" to talk about the protestors, Skelton could be heard stating, "Those a--holes."
Wrap...
Monday, September 10, 2007
Knew nothing about Iraq...Know nothing about Iran...
From Information Clearing House:
Iran is nothing like the image presented in US narratives:
American pundits and policymakers tend to betray a stunning level of ignorance about Iran. Scores of them have made doomsday predictions about what is likely happen if President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "gets his hands on a nuclear weapon.
http://tinyurl.com/2vsx3e
[Use link above to continue reading]
Wrap...
Iran is nothing like the image presented in US narratives:
American pundits and policymakers tend to betray a stunning level of ignorance about Iran. Scores of them have made doomsday predictions about what is likely happen if President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "gets his hands on a nuclear weapon.
http://tinyurl.com/2vsx3e
[Use link above to continue reading]
Wrap...
How'd the Governor end up in jail????
From NY Times via truthout.org :
Adam Cohen | The Strange Case of an Imprisoned Alabama Governor
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/091007S.shtml
In The New York Times, Adam Cohen says, "Alberto Gonzales is out as attorney general, but there is still a lot of questionable Justice Department activity for Congress to sort through. The imprisonment of Don Siegelman, a former Democratic governor of Alabama, should be at the top of the list.
Jill Simpson, an Alabama lawyer and Republican operative, is heading to Washington this week to tell Congressional investigators that she heard prominent Republicans plotting to use the United States attorneys' offices to remove Mr. Siegelman as a political threat. The case should be the focus of a probing Congressional hearing this fall."
[Use link above to continue reading]
Wrap...
Adam Cohen | The Strange Case of an Imprisoned Alabama Governor
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/091007S.shtml
In The New York Times, Adam Cohen says, "Alberto Gonzales is out as attorney general, but there is still a lot of questionable Justice Department activity for Congress to sort through. The imprisonment of Don Siegelman, a former Democratic governor of Alabama, should be at the top of the list.
Jill Simpson, an Alabama lawyer and Republican operative, is heading to Washington this week to tell Congressional investigators that she heard prominent Republicans plotting to use the United States attorneys' offices to remove Mr. Siegelman as a political threat. The case should be the focus of a probing Congressional hearing this fall."
[Use link above to continue reading]
Wrap...
Congress CAN stop Iraq Occupation...if they want to...
From David Sirota:
http://www.workingassetsblog.com/2007/09/the_innocent_bystander_fable_g.html
The Innocent Bystander Fable Goes Into Overdrive
By David Sirota
Working Assets, 9/10/07
The Washington Post is the latest Establishment media organ to push
what I have called the Innocent Bystander Fable (memorialized at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7raAL3Wld0
{http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7raAL3Wld0}).
This is the myth that Democrats have no power to stop the war,
despite controlling both houses of Congress. The Post writes,
"Democrats began their fight against what came to be called the surge
with public opinion on their side, but with virtually no real weapons
to force Bush to change."
For reference, here is Article 1, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution:
"No money shall be drawn from the treasury, but in consequence of
appropriations made by law."
Translated into vernacular, that's the part of the Constitution that
says the Congress - and only the Congress - has the power of the
purse. If congressional leaders decided to NOT use that power of the
purse, this war would be over.
And let's be clear on one more thing. You know how we're hearing all
this talk of "we don't have 60 votes, much less 67 votes" to pass a
bill to end the war? The Post regurgitates it, claiming that "because
of a Senate rule requiring 60 votes to shut off debate and 67 votes to
overturn a veto, Reid faced an almost impossible challenge" to end the
war.
Just stop for a moment and flip the argument around. The argument
inherently admits that all you need is 40 votes to stop a blank check
from passing the U.S. Senate (and this says nothing of the simple fact
that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid or House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
could simply refuse to bring another blank check war spending bill to
the floor of their respective houses of Congress).
So while you may or may not agree that Congress should use its power
of the purse to end the war, there is no debate that Congress does,
in fact, have the power of the purse to end the war - and thus
Democrats who control Congress do have a very "real weapon to force
Bush to change."
Now, I understand why Democratic politicians in Washington are
pushing the Innocent Bystander Fable. Facing polls that show the vast
majority of Americans want an end to this war, they need to come up
with an excuse as to why they refuse to end the war - and so their
excuse is the Innocent Bystander Fable's claim that they just don't
have the power.
But now the Innocent Bystander Fable is being taken up by the Beltway
media as an assumed fact. It is being woven into the political
narrative as something as concretely true as water being wet.
Reporters have, in other words, become totally complicit with
scheming politicians who want to pretend that the U.S. Constitution
quite literally does not exist.
Such irresponsible behavior by the press rivals its complicity in
pushing the nation to war by refusing to ask questions about pre-war
intelligence. Only this time, it's arguably worse. Whereas
beforehand, reporters could at least sound vaguely credible by
arguing that they were "fooled" and didn't have access to the raw
intelligence, this time, it's impossible to pretend they don't know
what the U.S. Constitution is or didn't have access to a copy of it.
And the result is basically the same: Casualties mount and American
national security is weakened all because the folks in Washington
refuse to ask our political leaders the most basic questions about
the most basic facts.
Wrap...
http://www.workingassetsblog.com/2007/09/the_innocent_bystander_fable_g.html
The Innocent Bystander Fable Goes Into Overdrive
By David Sirota
Working Assets, 9/10/07
The Washington Post is the latest Establishment media organ to push
what I have called the Innocent Bystander Fable (memorialized at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7raAL3Wld0
{http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7raAL3Wld0}).
This is the myth that Democrats have no power to stop the war,
despite controlling both houses of Congress. The Post writes,
"Democrats began their fight against what came to be called the surge
with public opinion on their side, but with virtually no real weapons
to force Bush to change."
For reference, here is Article 1, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution:
"No money shall be drawn from the treasury, but in consequence of
appropriations made by law."
Translated into vernacular, that's the part of the Constitution that
says the Congress - and only the Congress - has the power of the
purse. If congressional leaders decided to NOT use that power of the
purse, this war would be over.
And let's be clear on one more thing. You know how we're hearing all
this talk of "we don't have 60 votes, much less 67 votes" to pass a
bill to end the war? The Post regurgitates it, claiming that "because
of a Senate rule requiring 60 votes to shut off debate and 67 votes to
overturn a veto, Reid faced an almost impossible challenge" to end the
war.
Just stop for a moment and flip the argument around. The argument
inherently admits that all you need is 40 votes to stop a blank check
from passing the U.S. Senate (and this says nothing of the simple fact
that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid or House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
could simply refuse to bring another blank check war spending bill to
the floor of their respective houses of Congress).
So while you may or may not agree that Congress should use its power
of the purse to end the war, there is no debate that Congress does,
in fact, have the power of the purse to end the war - and thus
Democrats who control Congress do have a very "real weapon to force
Bush to change."
Now, I understand why Democratic politicians in Washington are
pushing the Innocent Bystander Fable. Facing polls that show the vast
majority of Americans want an end to this war, they need to come up
with an excuse as to why they refuse to end the war - and so their
excuse is the Innocent Bystander Fable's claim that they just don't
have the power.
But now the Innocent Bystander Fable is being taken up by the Beltway
media as an assumed fact. It is being woven into the political
narrative as something as concretely true as water being wet.
Reporters have, in other words, become totally complicit with
scheming politicians who want to pretend that the U.S. Constitution
quite literally does not exist.
Such irresponsible behavior by the press rivals its complicity in
pushing the nation to war by refusing to ask questions about pre-war
intelligence. Only this time, it's arguably worse. Whereas
beforehand, reporters could at least sound vaguely credible by
arguing that they were "fooled" and didn't have access to the raw
intelligence, this time, it's impossible to pretend they don't know
what the U.S. Constitution is or didn't have access to a copy of it.
And the result is basically the same: Casualties mount and American
national security is weakened all because the folks in Washington
refuse to ask our political leaders the most basic questions about
the most basic facts.
Wrap...
From next US Atty Gen to children's health...
From American Progress:
Think Fast...
"President Bush is expected to name an attorney general soon - perhaps this week. The five finalists: Michael Mukasey, Theodore B. (Ted) Olson, Laurence H. Silberman, George J. Terwilliger and Larry D. Thompson." Olson appears to be emerging as the frontrunner.
60 percent: Americans who say we "should set a timetable to withdraw forces 'and stick to that timetable regardless of what is going on in Iraq.'"
The White House's decision to send Rosh Hashanah greetings a week early elicited "a quizzical reaction around town among the president's Jewish friends and supporters." Former RNC chairman Ken Mehlman, who, like White House chief of staff Josh Bolten, is Jewish, "sent Bolten an e-mail asking why the White House had seemingly flubbed the date."
Barry Jackson, one of Karl Rove's key replacements in the White House, is seen as a "highly partisan go-getter." An acquaintance of Jackson's said he isn't interested "'let's get along' kind of stuff."
The Pentagon is preparing to build its first base for U.S. forces near the Iraqi-Iranian border, a major new effort to curb the flow of advanced Iranian weaponry to Shiite militants across Iraq. "The base will be located about four miles from the Iranian border and will be used for at least two years."
In a new study of the neurobiology of politics, "scientists have found that liberals tolerate ambiguity and conflict better than conservatives because of how their brains work. " The study found that "liberals were 4.9 times as likely as conservatives to show activity in the brain circuits that deal with conflicts."
"US regulators will on Monday present results of a year-long inquiry into investment scams that are fleecing retirees out of their life savings. The Securities and Exchange Commission will report on the growing phenomenon of 'free lunch' seminars that financial advisers offer to older people."
9/11 Commission co-chairs Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton write: "Two years ago, we and our colleagues issued a report card assessing the U.S. government's progress on the bipartisan recommendations in the 9/11 commission report. We concluded that the nation was not safe enough. Our judgment remains the same today: We still lack a sense of urgency in the face of grave danger."
And finally: At an event promoting children's health insurance legislation, Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) "noted that the bill would insure 12 million more kids and pointed out that President Bush 'used to be for this.'" "But let me tell you something about him," Dingell continued. "I knew him before he was a virgin." Dingell provided no further context for his "virgin" comment.
Wrap...
Think Fast...
"President Bush is expected to name an attorney general soon - perhaps this week. The five finalists: Michael Mukasey, Theodore B. (Ted) Olson, Laurence H. Silberman, George J. Terwilliger and Larry D. Thompson." Olson appears to be emerging as the frontrunner.
60 percent: Americans who say we "should set a timetable to withdraw forces 'and stick to that timetable regardless of what is going on in Iraq.'"
The White House's decision to send Rosh Hashanah greetings a week early elicited "a quizzical reaction around town among the president's Jewish friends and supporters." Former RNC chairman Ken Mehlman, who, like White House chief of staff Josh Bolten, is Jewish, "sent Bolten an e-mail asking why the White House had seemingly flubbed the date."
Barry Jackson, one of Karl Rove's key replacements in the White House, is seen as a "highly partisan go-getter." An acquaintance of Jackson's said he isn't interested "'let's get along' kind of stuff."
The Pentagon is preparing to build its first base for U.S. forces near the Iraqi-Iranian border, a major new effort to curb the flow of advanced Iranian weaponry to Shiite militants across Iraq. "The base will be located about four miles from the Iranian border and will be used for at least two years."
In a new study of the neurobiology of politics, "scientists have found that liberals tolerate ambiguity and conflict better than conservatives because of how their brains work. " The study found that "liberals were 4.9 times as likely as conservatives to show activity in the brain circuits that deal with conflicts."
"US regulators will on Monday present results of a year-long inquiry into investment scams that are fleecing retirees out of their life savings. The Securities and Exchange Commission will report on the growing phenomenon of 'free lunch' seminars that financial advisers offer to older people."
9/11 Commission co-chairs Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton write: "Two years ago, we and our colleagues issued a report card assessing the U.S. government's progress on the bipartisan recommendations in the 9/11 commission report. We concluded that the nation was not safe enough. Our judgment remains the same today: We still lack a sense of urgency in the face of grave danger."
And finally: At an event promoting children's health insurance legislation, Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) "noted that the bill would insure 12 million more kids and pointed out that President Bush 'used to be for this.'" "But let me tell you something about him," Dingell continued. "I knew him before he was a virgin." Dingell provided no further context for his "virgin" comment.
Wrap...
Leaks of Classified Info....can hurt...
From Secrecy News:
LEAKS LED TO IMPRISONMENT OF SOURCE, CIA SAYS
Unauthorized disclosures of classified information in the press led to
the imprisonment of a CIA source and other damaging consequences, said
Central Intelligence Agency Director Michael Hayden in a speech last
week.
"Some say there is no evidence that leaks of classified information
have harmed national security. As CIA Director, I'm telling you there
is, and they have," Hayden told the Council on Foreign Relations.
"Let me give you just two examples: In one case, leaks provided
ammunition for a government to prosecute and imprison one of our
sources, whose family was also endangered. The revelations had an
immediate, chilling effect on our ability to collect against a
top-priority target."
"In another, a spate of media reports cost us several promising
counterterrorism and counterproliferation assets. Sources not even
involved in the exposed operation lost confidence that their
relationship with us could be kept secret, and they stopped reporting."
"More than one foreign service has told us that, because of public
disclosures, they had to withhold intelligence that they otherwise
would have shared with us. That gap in information puts Americans at
risk."
"Those who are entrusted with America's secrets and break that trust by
divulging those secrets are guilty of a crime. But those who seek such
information and then choose to publish it are not without
responsibilities."
In his comments on unauthorized disclosures, Director Hayden did not
address wrongful withholding of information, and did not acknowledge
any reasons why American might be skeptical of CIA disclosure policies.
"CIA acts within a strong framework of law and oversight," he said.
The text of his September 7, 2007 speech is here:
http://www.fas.org/irp/cia/product/dcia090707.html
While leaks have been a perennial problem from the government's point
of view, it does not follow that new legislation to combat them is a
fitting solution.
"I am not aware of a single case involving the unauthorized disclosure
of classified information that would have been prosecuted but could not
be because of the lack of statutory coverage," said Attorney General
John Ashcroft in testimony prepared for the Senate Intelligence
Committee in 2001.
The Ashcroft testimony, dated September 5, 2001, represents a missing
link between the testimony of Janet Reno on the same subject on June
14, 2000, and a subsequent report to Congress on leaks that was
submitted by Mr. Ashcroft in October 2002.
The testimony was approved by the White House Office of Management and
Budget, according to a handwritten notation on the document, but the
scheduled Intelligence Committee hearing was cancelled and the Ashcroft
testimony was never delivered.
A copy of the text was obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by
Michael Ravnitzky.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/ashcroftleaks.pdf
[Click links above to continue reading]
Wrap...
LEAKS LED TO IMPRISONMENT OF SOURCE, CIA SAYS
Unauthorized disclosures of classified information in the press led to
the imprisonment of a CIA source and other damaging consequences, said
Central Intelligence Agency Director Michael Hayden in a speech last
week.
"Some say there is no evidence that leaks of classified information
have harmed national security. As CIA Director, I'm telling you there
is, and they have," Hayden told the Council on Foreign Relations.
"Let me give you just two examples: In one case, leaks provided
ammunition for a government to prosecute and imprison one of our
sources, whose family was also endangered. The revelations had an
immediate, chilling effect on our ability to collect against a
top-priority target."
"In another, a spate of media reports cost us several promising
counterterrorism and counterproliferation assets. Sources not even
involved in the exposed operation lost confidence that their
relationship with us could be kept secret, and they stopped reporting."
"More than one foreign service has told us that, because of public
disclosures, they had to withhold intelligence that they otherwise
would have shared with us. That gap in information puts Americans at
risk."
"Those who are entrusted with America's secrets and break that trust by
divulging those secrets are guilty of a crime. But those who seek such
information and then choose to publish it are not without
responsibilities."
In his comments on unauthorized disclosures, Director Hayden did not
address wrongful withholding of information, and did not acknowledge
any reasons why American might be skeptical of CIA disclosure policies.
"CIA acts within a strong framework of law and oversight," he said.
The text of his September 7, 2007 speech is here:
http://www.fas.org/irp/cia/product/dcia090707.html
While leaks have been a perennial problem from the government's point
of view, it does not follow that new legislation to combat them is a
fitting solution.
"I am not aware of a single case involving the unauthorized disclosure
of classified information that would have been prosecuted but could not
be because of the lack of statutory coverage," said Attorney General
John Ashcroft in testimony prepared for the Senate Intelligence
Committee in 2001.
The Ashcroft testimony, dated September 5, 2001, represents a missing
link between the testimony of Janet Reno on the same subject on June
14, 2000, and a subsequent report to Congress on leaks that was
submitted by Mr. Ashcroft in October 2002.
The testimony was approved by the White House Office of Management and
Budget, according to a handwritten notation on the document, but the
scheduled Intelligence Committee hearing was cancelled and the Ashcroft
testimony was never delivered.
A copy of the text was obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by
Michael Ravnitzky.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/ashcroftleaks.pdf
[Click links above to continue reading]
Wrap...
Sunday, September 09, 2007
NAO described Committee Hearing...Bad Bad Bad...
From Daily Kos via Information Clearing House:
Big Brother IS Watching You, Starting October 1st :
Beginning in October 2007 the Department of Homeland Security will open a new office called the National Applications Office (NAO) charged with civil/domestic intelligence gathering
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/9/9/51544/46359
[Use link above to continue reading]
Wrap...
Big Brother IS Watching You, Starting October 1st :
Beginning in October 2007 the Department of Homeland Security will open a new office called the National Applications Office (NAO) charged with civil/domestic intelligence gathering
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/9/9/51544/46359
[Use link above to continue reading]
Wrap...
Saturday, September 08, 2007
Iran and the Holocaust...
From Wall St Journal via Information Clearing House:
Iran's "Unlikely" TV Hit:
Show Sympathetic to Plight Of Jews During the Holocaust Draws Millions Each Week
http://tinyurl.com/3bu4ux
Wrap...
Iran's "Unlikely" TV Hit:
Show Sympathetic to Plight Of Jews During the Holocaust Draws Millions Each Week
http://tinyurl.com/3bu4ux
Wrap...
DOJ one hell of a mess...
From truthout.org :
Mrs. Ashcroft and the Hospital "Tongue" Lashing
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/090807C.shtml
Brian Ross and Maddy Sauer reported in a segment aired on ABC News Nightline Thursday evening that former Justice Department official Jack Goldsmith "says he found the legal basis for the country's most important counterterrorism policies, including those for the CIA's interrogation techniques, to be deeply flawed and sloppily reasoned" when he started his job as head of the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel in the fall of 2003.
[Use link above to continue reading]
Wrap...
Mrs. Ashcroft and the Hospital "Tongue" Lashing
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/090807C.shtml
Brian Ross and Maddy Sauer reported in a segment aired on ABC News Nightline Thursday evening that former Justice Department official Jack Goldsmith "says he found the legal basis for the country's most important counterterrorism policies, including those for the CIA's interrogation techniques, to be deeply flawed and sloppily reasoned" when he started his job as head of the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel in the fall of 2003.
[Use link above to continue reading]
Wrap...
Friday, September 07, 2007
From Petraeus to Bush...
From American Progress:
Think Fast...
Though Gen. David Petraeus has told President Bush "that he wants to maintain heightened troop levels in Iraq well into next year," a senior U.S. official says the general is willing to consider a slight drawdown of "between 3,500 and 4,500 U.S. troops from Iraq early next year."
Rep. Mike Simpson (R-ID) lashed out at Senate Republican leaders yesterday over their efforts to force Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) to resign. "I hope I never stub my toe and they throw me under the bus," said Simpson. "It kind of makes you wonder what party you want to be a member of," he added, noting he has no intention of switching parties.
"American intelligence agencies are expecting Osama bin Laden to issue a triumphant message to Al Qaeda followers on the sixth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks boasting of Al Qaeda's growing numbers and success in the Middle East and Southeast Asia." The al Qaeda leader has not appeared in new video footage since October 2004.
"Seven U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq, including four in the western province of Anbar, the U.S. military said on Friday." The deaths increase to more than 3,750 the number of U.S. soldiers killed since the start of the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
Yesterday, the head of the Justice Department's civil division announced that he will be leaving in two weeks. His departure "will leave only two of the department's six key litigation divisions headed by Senate-confirmed officials." Once Alberto Gonzales steps down, all three of the Justice Department's top positions will also be filled by "acting" officials.
"The Arctic ice cap is melting faster than scientists had expected and will shrink 40 percent by 2050 in most regions, with grim consequences for polar bears, walruses and other marine animals," according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
"More than 260 doctors from around the world have launched an unprecedented attack on the American medical establishment for its failure to condemn unethical practices by medical practitioners at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba."
And finally: "Even for someone as gaffe-prone as U.S. President George W. Bush, he was in rare form on Friday." He thanked Australia for hosting the OPEC -- instead of APEC -- summit, even though Australia has never been a member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. He also brought up the "Austrian troops in Iraq," even though there are Australian, but not Austrian, troops serving there.
Wrap...
Think Fast...
Though Gen. David Petraeus has told President Bush "that he wants to maintain heightened troop levels in Iraq well into next year," a senior U.S. official says the general is willing to consider a slight drawdown of "between 3,500 and 4,500 U.S. troops from Iraq early next year."
Rep. Mike Simpson (R-ID) lashed out at Senate Republican leaders yesterday over their efforts to force Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) to resign. "I hope I never stub my toe and they throw me under the bus," said Simpson. "It kind of makes you wonder what party you want to be a member of," he added, noting he has no intention of switching parties.
"American intelligence agencies are expecting Osama bin Laden to issue a triumphant message to Al Qaeda followers on the sixth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks boasting of Al Qaeda's growing numbers and success in the Middle East and Southeast Asia." The al Qaeda leader has not appeared in new video footage since October 2004.
"Seven U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq, including four in the western province of Anbar, the U.S. military said on Friday." The deaths increase to more than 3,750 the number of U.S. soldiers killed since the start of the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
Yesterday, the head of the Justice Department's civil division announced that he will be leaving in two weeks. His departure "will leave only two of the department's six key litigation divisions headed by Senate-confirmed officials." Once Alberto Gonzales steps down, all three of the Justice Department's top positions will also be filled by "acting" officials.
"The Arctic ice cap is melting faster than scientists had expected and will shrink 40 percent by 2050 in most regions, with grim consequences for polar bears, walruses and other marine animals," according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
"More than 260 doctors from around the world have launched an unprecedented attack on the American medical establishment for its failure to condemn unethical practices by medical practitioners at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba."
And finally: "Even for someone as gaffe-prone as U.S. President George W. Bush, he was in rare form on Friday." He thanked Australia for hosting the OPEC -- instead of APEC -- summit, even though Australia has never been a member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. He also brought up the "Austrian troops in Iraq," even though there are Australian, but not Austrian, troops serving there.
Wrap...
Thursday, September 06, 2007
An APEC free trade zone? Oh-oh....
From Stratfor:
APEC: The Price of Success
By Bart Mongoven
Leaders of governments representing nearly 60 percent of the world's economy are meeting this week at the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Sydney, Australia. Despite APEC's growing clout, however, the summit is getting little attention from the world's leading nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and international institutions -- groups that have major stakes in the event's outcome.
It is becoming a cliche to say that the Atlantic no longer is the center of the world, but few major global policy institutions appear ready to grasp what it means for the Pacific Rim to be the Atlantic's replacement. This is evident in the fact that NGOs and international institutions still pay more attention to meetings of the G-8, World Trade Organization (WTO), World Bank and most other major global institutions than they pay to APEC. What these organizations, and others focused on the development of global public policies, are missing is that many of the most important rules for global commerce are being developed quietly at APEC. The question is whether they will figure this out before they have missed a critical time in the development of global policies.
APEC, founded in 1989 to promote free trade, is an organization of 21 Pacific Rim countries, including the three largest economies in the world: the United States, China and Japan. The organization, however, has faced criticism in recent years from those, especially business leaders, who say it is not fulfilling its mission. The critics say APEC once focused on big issues such as economics and trade but now also discusses a raft of security, political and policy issues.
In fact, this criticism is the price of success. APEC is more important now than ever, and though its role in some realms remains modest -- security is the most glaring example -- in other areas it is emerging as the global decision-making body. To that extent, APEC's growing power is most clearly on display when it tackles issues such as climate change and consumer product safety.
APEC's Growing Importance
At the time of its founding, at Australia's urging, APEC was seen as Australia and New Zealand's answer to the ongoing talks on the North American Free Trade Agreement and the creation of the European Union. Back then, the Pacific Rim was responsible for less than 50 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP), so APEC was widely seen as a small, but possibly important, trade bloc.
As Asia grew, so did APEC's importance. Its 1993 meeting served as a springboard for stalled global free trade talks, bringing together representatives from large industrialized countries such as the United States and Japan, large developing countries such as China and South Korea and a host of smaller developing countries. In 1994, the members pledged to work toward an APEC-wide free trade area. This pledge, the Bogor Goals, remains an ongoing concern, though progress on it has slowed.
Efforts toward an APEC-wide free trade area have stalled for a number of reasons, beginning with the Asian financial crisis of 1997 and the resulting U.S. disinterest in the region. The rise of China in the following years led to a re-engagement by the United States, although many Pacific countries now fear the United States uses APEC as a bulwark against successful regional economic integration.
Even as free trade talks have slowed, however, the region's global economic importance has grown. Thus, decisions made by APEC members have global consequences for commerce. This power has led to an increased focus on developing common languages and rules, which tends to overshadow the slow work toward trade integration.
APEC and Climate Change
APEC's power to set global public policy is most clearly evident in its role in the climate change negotiations. APEC climate talks, which have been going on for more than a year, are designed more to make a statement than to develop a specific policy -- though the statement APEC makes in the coming 12 months will dictate the future of global climate negotiations.
APEC's importance has grown because a new international climate treaty, to replace the Kyoto Protocol, is inevitable. In the United States, the political winds have changed and the next presidential administration will oversee a national climate policy. For the United States to meet whatever climate policy emerges, it will need to take part in an international regime -- one that offers a robust emissions-trading mechanism. For a number of reasons, the United States has not joined the existing Kyoto-based system. Instead, it envisions a Pacific-focused international climate regime, one that uses the APEC countries as its base.
The Sydney APEC summit will offer the first glimpse of U.S. President George W. Bush's proposed climate regime. It will likely include binding emissions-reduction targets for every signatory. The emissions reductions likely will be framed in terms of emissions per unit of GDP, with the objective being to promote economic growth that is less carbon-intensive than it otherwise would be. It also is likely to call for a continuation of the emissions trading system and Clean Development Mechanism developed under Kyoto. By defining the emissions cap in terms of growth and by keeping a clean development mechanism, the agreement would address the complaint by developing countries that climate change policies are a way for industrial giants to force poor countries to pay equally for damage done primarily by industrialized countries.
The APEC agreement on climate change is a severe challenge to the Kyoto Protocol and to the European Union, which favors Kyoto and envisions a new follow-on agreement that serves European needs specifically. However, other than Indonesia and occasionally Japan, APEC countries are not especially fond of the Kyoto Protocol, so the perpetuation of Kyoto is not a particularly popular idea. Furthermore, in the wake of Russian threats to shut off oil and natural gas to EU countries, the union needs to spur development of alternative energy paths far more than it needs the perfect climate pact. In the final analysis, the European Union is being forced by geopolitics to cut emissions, and it does not want to lose its competitiveness to countries whose emissions are not bound by international agreements. Therefore, it can least afford for there not to be a deal -- but the other countries necessary to make the system work do not approve of what the union is selling.
In the eyes of environmentalists, the only reason a Pacific-based climate system can effectively counter Kyoto is that the Pacific Rim is the center of global greenhouse gas emissions, so if avoiding disastrous climate change requires reducing carbon emissions, the APEC nations must be involved. More than two-thirds of the world's greenhouse gas emissions come from APEC nations. The world's leading carbon emitter, China, has an economy that (reportedly) is growing at 10 percent per year. The second leading emitter, the United States, has slower growth, but it has grown far more quickly since Kyoto was signed than has Europe, Japan or most other major greenhouse gas-emitting nations.
Product Safety
Another major APEC issue is product safety. The APEC draft on the issue was released the same day that toymaker Mattel announced a recall of an additional 800,000 toys manufactured in China, citing fears of lead in the paint used. The past two months have seen a number of scares about China's food and consumer products, and even Beijing is beginning to search for ways to solve the quality assurance problems. Other major manufacturers of consumer products in Asia are likely sighing in relief that China is the target because their manufacturers face many of the same problems as their Chinese counterparts -- primarily personal alliances that cement business relationships rather than competition on price and safety. In other words, although the world's attention is on Chinese goods, products from Vietnam, Cambodia and Indonesia likely have similar problems.
So the question for each of the major manufacturing countries is how to dramatically improve quality assurance while maintaining a level playing field in terms of costs. The APEC secretariat, multinational companies and some APEC governments see international standards as the answer to food and product safety, meaning either a regional quality assurance standard or a regional commitment to follow global standards. At APEC, the heads of state will agree on the creation of an APEC-wide "food safety cooperation forum" that will harmonize food safety with global standards, such as those offered by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO)'s ISO-22000 and the Codex Alimentarius Commission. Presumably, this forum will be designed to help both national regulators and corporations in the APEC region apply international standards to their operations. It likely will also help establish best practices for regulators working at points of export and import to help find flaws or safety hazards in goods.
The Power of Size
APEC is responsible for more than half of the world's global exports. China has surpassed Germany as the world's leading exporter, while the United States is the world's third-largest. Food exports from Asia remain slight -- the United States imported only $8 billion in food from China in 2006 -- but the percentage of consumer products made in Asia is tremendous. While Asian governments have largely ignored ISO and Codex until recently, how Asian manufacturers and auditors interpret these standards will determine what these standards really mean.
Similarly, because it is the center of greenhouse gas emissions growth -- and because China has said it will not take part in a Kyoto system that requires emissions reductions but hinted it would join a U.S.-centered system -- opposition to the APEC climate process has been mild.
Still, it is unclear from either rhetoric or behind-the-scenes activity whether the major players in product safety debates or climate change advocacy understand the depth and breadth of the Pacific Rim's power. NGOs of all stripes have tickets and hotel rooms reserved for the November meeting in Bali, Indonesia, where the next treaty within the Kyoto system will be discussed. Few mention APEC or the successor meeting in September in Washington, hosted by Bush.
Similarly, while people are well aware that Chinese products are to blame for various scares in consumer products, few are calling for increased attention to Codex and ISO. Instead, they halfheartedly hope Beijing and Hanoi can develop better regulations to ensure safety.
APEC and the WTO
Finally, a side note in the documents being signed in Sydney is the vow by the various governments to continue to press for both an acceleration of the Doha round of WTO negotiations and for the continued work toward an APEC free trade pact. APEC agreed in 1994 to work toward the development of a free trade zone. While the move toward this has been slowed by the dramatic increase in the seriousness of APEC's role in the world, the mission continues.
Nothing makes this clearer than APEC's standing opposition to India's membership in the organization. The countries active in APEC view India as a major impediment to progress toward free trade, since India's government has long stood for economic nationalism and protection of indigenous industries. As much as APEC would benefit from the economic heft India would add, it is not worth the pain. It is clear, then, that as long as APEC keeps India out, the members still intend to follow through on the plan to create a free trade agreement.
The other issues being discussed in Sydney should highlight the message an APEC free trade zone would send to Europe and India. APEC's share of global output could reach 65 percent within 10 years, and it could create an economy that could easily exist without the rest of the world. As with climate change, the European Union might find that it needs the Pacific far more than the Pacific needs Europe. The region is becoming the most important place for trade and commercial policy development, and APEC is currently acting as the venue where this power is most clearly expressed. Before APEC can reach its full potential, however, its Asian members must begin to trust that the primary reason for U.S. involvement is not to hold back Asian integration. If the trust issue is resolved, Asian nations could see that the power they gain through policy and economic alliances with the United States makes continued pursuit of APEC's long-term goals a worthwhile gamble.
Wrap...
APEC: The Price of Success
By Bart Mongoven
Leaders of governments representing nearly 60 percent of the world's economy are meeting this week at the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Sydney, Australia. Despite APEC's growing clout, however, the summit is getting little attention from the world's leading nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and international institutions -- groups that have major stakes in the event's outcome.
It is becoming a cliche to say that the Atlantic no longer is the center of the world, but few major global policy institutions appear ready to grasp what it means for the Pacific Rim to be the Atlantic's replacement. This is evident in the fact that NGOs and international institutions still pay more attention to meetings of the G-8, World Trade Organization (WTO), World Bank and most other major global institutions than they pay to APEC. What these organizations, and others focused on the development of global public policies, are missing is that many of the most important rules for global commerce are being developed quietly at APEC. The question is whether they will figure this out before they have missed a critical time in the development of global policies.
APEC, founded in 1989 to promote free trade, is an organization of 21 Pacific Rim countries, including the three largest economies in the world: the United States, China and Japan. The organization, however, has faced criticism in recent years from those, especially business leaders, who say it is not fulfilling its mission. The critics say APEC once focused on big issues such as economics and trade but now also discusses a raft of security, political and policy issues.
In fact, this criticism is the price of success. APEC is more important now than ever, and though its role in some realms remains modest -- security is the most glaring example -- in other areas it is emerging as the global decision-making body. To that extent, APEC's growing power is most clearly on display when it tackles issues such as climate change and consumer product safety.
APEC's Growing Importance
At the time of its founding, at Australia's urging, APEC was seen as Australia and New Zealand's answer to the ongoing talks on the North American Free Trade Agreement and the creation of the European Union. Back then, the Pacific Rim was responsible for less than 50 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP), so APEC was widely seen as a small, but possibly important, trade bloc.
As Asia grew, so did APEC's importance. Its 1993 meeting served as a springboard for stalled global free trade talks, bringing together representatives from large industrialized countries such as the United States and Japan, large developing countries such as China and South Korea and a host of smaller developing countries. In 1994, the members pledged to work toward an APEC-wide free trade area. This pledge, the Bogor Goals, remains an ongoing concern, though progress on it has slowed.
Efforts toward an APEC-wide free trade area have stalled for a number of reasons, beginning with the Asian financial crisis of 1997 and the resulting U.S. disinterest in the region. The rise of China in the following years led to a re-engagement by the United States, although many Pacific countries now fear the United States uses APEC as a bulwark against successful regional economic integration.
Even as free trade talks have slowed, however, the region's global economic importance has grown. Thus, decisions made by APEC members have global consequences for commerce. This power has led to an increased focus on developing common languages and rules, which tends to overshadow the slow work toward trade integration.
APEC and Climate Change
APEC's power to set global public policy is most clearly evident in its role in the climate change negotiations. APEC climate talks, which have been going on for more than a year, are designed more to make a statement than to develop a specific policy -- though the statement APEC makes in the coming 12 months will dictate the future of global climate negotiations.
APEC's importance has grown because a new international climate treaty, to replace the Kyoto Protocol, is inevitable. In the United States, the political winds have changed and the next presidential administration will oversee a national climate policy. For the United States to meet whatever climate policy emerges, it will need to take part in an international regime -- one that offers a robust emissions-trading mechanism. For a number of reasons, the United States has not joined the existing Kyoto-based system. Instead, it envisions a Pacific-focused international climate regime, one that uses the APEC countries as its base.
The Sydney APEC summit will offer the first glimpse of U.S. President George W. Bush's proposed climate regime. It will likely include binding emissions-reduction targets for every signatory. The emissions reductions likely will be framed in terms of emissions per unit of GDP, with the objective being to promote economic growth that is less carbon-intensive than it otherwise would be. It also is likely to call for a continuation of the emissions trading system and Clean Development Mechanism developed under Kyoto. By defining the emissions cap in terms of growth and by keeping a clean development mechanism, the agreement would address the complaint by developing countries that climate change policies are a way for industrial giants to force poor countries to pay equally for damage done primarily by industrialized countries.
The APEC agreement on climate change is a severe challenge to the Kyoto Protocol and to the European Union, which favors Kyoto and envisions a new follow-on agreement that serves European needs specifically. However, other than Indonesia and occasionally Japan, APEC countries are not especially fond of the Kyoto Protocol, so the perpetuation of Kyoto is not a particularly popular idea. Furthermore, in the wake of Russian threats to shut off oil and natural gas to EU countries, the union needs to spur development of alternative energy paths far more than it needs the perfect climate pact. In the final analysis, the European Union is being forced by geopolitics to cut emissions, and it does not want to lose its competitiveness to countries whose emissions are not bound by international agreements. Therefore, it can least afford for there not to be a deal -- but the other countries necessary to make the system work do not approve of what the union is selling.
In the eyes of environmentalists, the only reason a Pacific-based climate system can effectively counter Kyoto is that the Pacific Rim is the center of global greenhouse gas emissions, so if avoiding disastrous climate change requires reducing carbon emissions, the APEC nations must be involved. More than two-thirds of the world's greenhouse gas emissions come from APEC nations. The world's leading carbon emitter, China, has an economy that (reportedly) is growing at 10 percent per year. The second leading emitter, the United States, has slower growth, but it has grown far more quickly since Kyoto was signed than has Europe, Japan or most other major greenhouse gas-emitting nations.
Product Safety
Another major APEC issue is product safety. The APEC draft on the issue was released the same day that toymaker Mattel announced a recall of an additional 800,000 toys manufactured in China, citing fears of lead in the paint used. The past two months have seen a number of scares about China's food and consumer products, and even Beijing is beginning to search for ways to solve the quality assurance problems. Other major manufacturers of consumer products in Asia are likely sighing in relief that China is the target because their manufacturers face many of the same problems as their Chinese counterparts -- primarily personal alliances that cement business relationships rather than competition on price and safety. In other words, although the world's attention is on Chinese goods, products from Vietnam, Cambodia and Indonesia likely have similar problems.
So the question for each of the major manufacturing countries is how to dramatically improve quality assurance while maintaining a level playing field in terms of costs. The APEC secretariat, multinational companies and some APEC governments see international standards as the answer to food and product safety, meaning either a regional quality assurance standard or a regional commitment to follow global standards. At APEC, the heads of state will agree on the creation of an APEC-wide "food safety cooperation forum" that will harmonize food safety with global standards, such as those offered by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO)'s ISO-22000 and the Codex Alimentarius Commission. Presumably, this forum will be designed to help both national regulators and corporations in the APEC region apply international standards to their operations. It likely will also help establish best practices for regulators working at points of export and import to help find flaws or safety hazards in goods.
The Power of Size
APEC is responsible for more than half of the world's global exports. China has surpassed Germany as the world's leading exporter, while the United States is the world's third-largest. Food exports from Asia remain slight -- the United States imported only $8 billion in food from China in 2006 -- but the percentage of consumer products made in Asia is tremendous. While Asian governments have largely ignored ISO and Codex until recently, how Asian manufacturers and auditors interpret these standards will determine what these standards really mean.
Similarly, because it is the center of greenhouse gas emissions growth -- and because China has said it will not take part in a Kyoto system that requires emissions reductions but hinted it would join a U.S.-centered system -- opposition to the APEC climate process has been mild.
Still, it is unclear from either rhetoric or behind-the-scenes activity whether the major players in product safety debates or climate change advocacy understand the depth and breadth of the Pacific Rim's power. NGOs of all stripes have tickets and hotel rooms reserved for the November meeting in Bali, Indonesia, where the next treaty within the Kyoto system will be discussed. Few mention APEC or the successor meeting in September in Washington, hosted by Bush.
Similarly, while people are well aware that Chinese products are to blame for various scares in consumer products, few are calling for increased attention to Codex and ISO. Instead, they halfheartedly hope Beijing and Hanoi can develop better regulations to ensure safety.
APEC and the WTO
Finally, a side note in the documents being signed in Sydney is the vow by the various governments to continue to press for both an acceleration of the Doha round of WTO negotiations and for the continued work toward an APEC free trade pact. APEC agreed in 1994 to work toward the development of a free trade zone. While the move toward this has been slowed by the dramatic increase in the seriousness of APEC's role in the world, the mission continues.
Nothing makes this clearer than APEC's standing opposition to India's membership in the organization. The countries active in APEC view India as a major impediment to progress toward free trade, since India's government has long stood for economic nationalism and protection of indigenous industries. As much as APEC would benefit from the economic heft India would add, it is not worth the pain. It is clear, then, that as long as APEC keeps India out, the members still intend to follow through on the plan to create a free trade agreement.
The other issues being discussed in Sydney should highlight the message an APEC free trade zone would send to Europe and India. APEC's share of global output could reach 65 percent within 10 years, and it could create an economy that could easily exist without the rest of the world. As with climate change, the European Union might find that it needs the Pacific far more than the Pacific needs Europe. The region is becoming the most important place for trade and commercial policy development, and APEC is currently acting as the venue where this power is most clearly expressed. Before APEC can reach its full potential, however, its Asian members must begin to trust that the primary reason for U.S. involvement is not to hold back Asian integration. If the trust issue is resolved, Asian nations could see that the power they gain through policy and economic alliances with the United States makes continued pursuit of APEC's long-term goals a worthwhile gamble.
Wrap...
From Al Gore to America the Beautiful...
From American Progress:
Think Fast...
Al Gore is working on a new environmental book entitled The Path to Survival, a sequel to An Inconvenient Truth that offers a blueprint on what can be done to fight global warming. The book will be released on Earth Day, April 22, 2008.
Intelligence analysts dispute the Bush administration's claims that sectarian violence has dropped in Iraq, noting the selective way the military categorizes deaths. "If a bullet went through the back of the head, it's sectarian," a senior intelligence official said. "If it went through the front, it's criminal."
Global warming "is already affecting the nation's parks, forests, marine sanctuaries and monuments" and the federal government needs to do a "better job" addressing the issue, according to a new Government Accountability Office report to be released today.
"[T]he program devised to rebuild Iraq at the provincial level has gone through three directors in the past four months, and much of the staff hired to organize the effort in Baghdad has left." Just "29 of the 610 people deployed in Iraq as part of the provincial reconstruction program have extensive knowledge of Arabic culture, history and language."
"One day after Rep. John Doolittle's (R-Calif.) top two aides revealed that they had been subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury" in the Jack Abramoff corruption probe, "Alisha Perkins, Doolittle's office manager, told the chamber Wednesday that she too had been called by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to give testimony."
Identifying 171 "performance expectations," a new report from the Government Accountability Office concludes that the "Homeland Security Department has failed to meet even half its performance expectations in the four years it has been in existence."
And finally: Move over, Singing Senators. Seven House members "backed up gospel singer BeBe Winans in a rendition of 'America the Beautiful'" on Wednesday during a tribute to music legend Quincy Jones. One observer reported that Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) "ducked into the event to give Jones a bear hug that seemed to last eons."
Wrap....
Think Fast...
Al Gore is working on a new environmental book entitled The Path to Survival, a sequel to An Inconvenient Truth that offers a blueprint on what can be done to fight global warming. The book will be released on Earth Day, April 22, 2008.
Intelligence analysts dispute the Bush administration's claims that sectarian violence has dropped in Iraq, noting the selective way the military categorizes deaths. "If a bullet went through the back of the head, it's sectarian," a senior intelligence official said. "If it went through the front, it's criminal."
Global warming "is already affecting the nation's parks, forests, marine sanctuaries and monuments" and the federal government needs to do a "better job" addressing the issue, according to a new Government Accountability Office report to be released today.
"[T]he program devised to rebuild Iraq at the provincial level has gone through three directors in the past four months, and much of the staff hired to organize the effort in Baghdad has left." Just "29 of the 610 people deployed in Iraq as part of the provincial reconstruction program have extensive knowledge of Arabic culture, history and language."
"One day after Rep. John Doolittle's (R-Calif.) top two aides revealed that they had been subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury" in the Jack Abramoff corruption probe, "Alisha Perkins, Doolittle's office manager, told the chamber Wednesday that she too had been called by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to give testimony."
Identifying 171 "performance expectations," a new report from the Government Accountability Office concludes that the "Homeland Security Department has failed to meet even half its performance expectations in the four years it has been in existence."
And finally: Move over, Singing Senators. Seven House members "backed up gospel singer BeBe Winans in a rendition of 'America the Beautiful'" on Wednesday during a tribute to music legend Quincy Jones. One observer reported that Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) "ducked into the event to give Jones a bear hug that seemed to last eons."
Wrap....
John Edwards calls it right...
From truthout.org :
Edwards Calls on Congress to Force Bush to Change Course on Iraq
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/090607O.shtml
Foon Rhee reports for The Boston Globe: "John Edwards said today that Congress, instead of arguing with the White House over whether benchmarks have been met for progress in Iraq, should force President Bush to change policy by setting the start of troop withdrawals in war funding bills. 'It's time for the Congress to stand its ground,' he said on a conference call with reporters. 'If there's no timetable, there should be no funding.'"
[Use link above to continue reading]
Wrap...
Edwards Calls on Congress to Force Bush to Change Course on Iraq
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/090607O.shtml
Foon Rhee reports for The Boston Globe: "John Edwards said today that Congress, instead of arguing with the White House over whether benchmarks have been met for progress in Iraq, should force President Bush to change policy by setting the start of troop withdrawals in war funding bills. 'It's time for the Congress to stand its ground,' he said on a conference call with reporters. 'If there's no timetable, there should be no funding.'"
[Use link above to continue reading]
Wrap...
Rahm Emanuel...for the CONSERVATIVES....
From truthout.org :
Special Report: Democratic House Officials Recruited Wealthy Conservatives
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/090607J.shtml
Matt Renner writes for Truthout, "According to Democratic candidates who ran for House of Representative seats in 2006, Rahm Emanuel, then head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, took sides during the Democratic primary elections, favoring conservative candidates, including former Republicans, and sidelining candidates who were running in favor of withdrawal from Iraq."
[Use link above to continue reading]
Wrap...
Special Report: Democratic House Officials Recruited Wealthy Conservatives
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/090607J.shtml
Matt Renner writes for Truthout, "According to Democratic candidates who ran for House of Representative seats in 2006, Rahm Emanuel, then head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, took sides during the Democratic primary elections, favoring conservative candidates, including former Republicans, and sidelining candidates who were running in favor of withdrawal from Iraq."
[Use link above to continue reading]
Wrap...
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
Up-coming books....
From Publishers Lunch Weekly:
GENERAL/OTHER:
John Vernon's LUCKY BILLY, a postmodern take on Billy the Kid, to Anton
Mueller at Houghton Mifflin, for publication in February 2009, by Susan
Wyler at King Hill Productions (NA).
Young-ha Kim's EMPIRE OF LIGHT, Manhae Prize-winning novel about a day
in the life of a North Korean spy who is recalled from the South and
must decide to either give up his family there or return to an uncertain
fate in the North, to Jenna Johnson at Harcourt, by Barbara Zitwer
Agency (NA).
CHILDRENS'/YOUNG ADULT:
Sarah Rees Brennan's debut urban fantasy trilogy starting with THE
DEMON'S LEXICON, about two brothers hunted throughout England by a
powerful magician's circle after their mother steals a charm and when
the eldest is marked by a demon, the younger uses swords and dark arts
in an effort to save him but unwittingly uncovers the darkest of
secrets, to Karen Wojtyla at Margaret K. McElderry Books, at auction, by
Kristin Nelson at Nelson Literary Agency (world English).
knelson@nelsonagency.com
Translation: wlee@fieldingagency.com
Film: EvashevskiK@unitedtalent.com
Barry Lyga's HERO-TYPE, in which a 16-year-old boy goes from hero to
zero in his small town after he is seen removing "Support the Troops"
magnets from his new car, to Margaret Raymo at Houghton Mifflin
Children's, for two books, for publication in Fall 2008, by Kathleen
Anderson at Anderson Literary Management (NA).
MEMOIR:
Essayist, lawyer and activist Ali Eteraz's CHILDREN OF DUST: AN ISLAMIC
CHILDHOOD, a memoir in the spirit of Naipaul and Azar Nafisi that
chronicles coming of age in the fundamentalist milieu of rural Pakistan,
shedding light on the madrassa system and the abuse and violence of
religious extremism while evoking the laughter and hope prevalent among
believers, providing a reflection on the possibilities of reform in
contemporary Islam, to Eric Brandt at HarperOne, in a pre-empt, by
Andrew Stuart at The Stuart Agency (World).
Hunter College professor Lynne Greenberg's THE BODY BROKEN, detailing
the author's struggle coping with extreme chronic pain as a way of daily
life, to Susan Mercandetti at Random House, on an exclusive submission,
by Michael Carlisle of Inkwell Management (world English).
NYT Metro desk news assistant Jennifer Mascia's memoir recounting the
author's gradual discovery of her father's criminal past and her
mother's involvement in it, a story she first told in a widely-read
"Modern Love" column, to Bruce Tracy at Villard, in a pre-empt, by Alice
Martell of Alice Martell Agency (NA).
Academy Award winner Ernest Borgnine (Marty, The Wild Bunch, McHale's
Navy) on his sixty-year career, from the early days of live TV in the
1950s to voiceovers on Spongebob Squarepants, to Gary Goldstein at
Citadel, in a nice deal, by Mike Hamilburg at the Mike Hamilburg Agency
(world).
NARRATIVE:
NYT bestselling author Ben Mezrich's RIGGED, the true story of a Harvard
kid from the streets of Brooklyn who takes on the wild, uncharted world
of high-stakes oil, to Mauro DiPreta at William Morrow, by Michael
Harriot at Vigliano Associates (NA), and to Mike Jones at Bloomsbury UK,
at auction, by Kirsten Neuhaus at Vigliano Associates (UK).
POP CULTURE:
Vanity Fair editorial associate and writer John Ortved's THE SIMPSONS:
An Uncensored, Unauthorized History, an oral history of television's
longest-running sitcom, drawing on interviews with veterans of the show,
including Conan O'Brien, Rupert Murdoch, Barry Diller, Hank Azaria, and
Ricky Gervais, to Denise Oswald at Faber & Faber/Farrar, Straus,
at auction, for publcation in 2009 (the show's 20th anniversary season),
by David Kuhn at Kuhn Projects (NA).
UK and European translation rights: Sara Fisher at A.M. Heath
sara.fisher@amheath.com
billy@kuhnprojects.com
SPORTS:
Chief Running Officer at Runner's World Magazine known as "The Mayor of
Running" Bart Yasso's MY LIFE ON THE RUN, written with journalist
Kathleen Parrish, a gathering of his reflections about the rewards and
challenges of running, filled with practical lessons, to Nancy Hancock
at Rodale, in a very nice deal, by Stephen Hanselman of LevelFiveMedia
(World).
Wrap...
GENERAL/OTHER:
John Vernon's LUCKY BILLY, a postmodern take on Billy the Kid, to Anton
Mueller at Houghton Mifflin, for publication in February 2009, by Susan
Wyler at King Hill Productions (NA).
Young-ha Kim's EMPIRE OF LIGHT, Manhae Prize-winning novel about a day
in the life of a North Korean spy who is recalled from the South and
must decide to either give up his family there or return to an uncertain
fate in the North, to Jenna Johnson at Harcourt, by Barbara Zitwer
Agency (NA).
CHILDRENS'/YOUNG ADULT:
Sarah Rees Brennan's debut urban fantasy trilogy starting with THE
DEMON'S LEXICON, about two brothers hunted throughout England by a
powerful magician's circle after their mother steals a charm and when
the eldest is marked by a demon, the younger uses swords and dark arts
in an effort to save him but unwittingly uncovers the darkest of
secrets, to Karen Wojtyla at Margaret K. McElderry Books, at auction, by
Kristin Nelson at Nelson Literary Agency (world English).
knelson@nelsonagency.com
Translation: wlee@fieldingagency.com
Film: EvashevskiK@unitedtalent.com
Barry Lyga's HERO-TYPE, in which a 16-year-old boy goes from hero to
zero in his small town after he is seen removing "Support the Troops"
magnets from his new car, to Margaret Raymo at Houghton Mifflin
Children's, for two books, for publication in Fall 2008, by Kathleen
Anderson at Anderson Literary Management (NA).
MEMOIR:
Essayist, lawyer and activist Ali Eteraz's CHILDREN OF DUST: AN ISLAMIC
CHILDHOOD, a memoir in the spirit of Naipaul and Azar Nafisi that
chronicles coming of age in the fundamentalist milieu of rural Pakistan,
shedding light on the madrassa system and the abuse and violence of
religious extremism while evoking the laughter and hope prevalent among
believers, providing a reflection on the possibilities of reform in
contemporary Islam, to Eric Brandt at HarperOne, in a pre-empt, by
Andrew Stuart at The Stuart Agency (World).
Hunter College professor Lynne Greenberg's THE BODY BROKEN, detailing
the author's struggle coping with extreme chronic pain as a way of daily
life, to Susan Mercandetti at Random House, on an exclusive submission,
by Michael Carlisle of Inkwell Management (world English).
NYT Metro desk news assistant Jennifer Mascia's memoir recounting the
author's gradual discovery of her father's criminal past and her
mother's involvement in it, a story she first told in a widely-read
"Modern Love" column, to Bruce Tracy at Villard, in a pre-empt, by Alice
Martell of Alice Martell Agency (NA).
Academy Award winner Ernest Borgnine (Marty, The Wild Bunch, McHale's
Navy) on his sixty-year career, from the early days of live TV in the
1950s to voiceovers on Spongebob Squarepants, to Gary Goldstein at
Citadel, in a nice deal, by Mike Hamilburg at the Mike Hamilburg Agency
(world).
NARRATIVE:
NYT bestselling author Ben Mezrich's RIGGED, the true story of a Harvard
kid from the streets of Brooklyn who takes on the wild, uncharted world
of high-stakes oil, to Mauro DiPreta at William Morrow, by Michael
Harriot at Vigliano Associates (NA), and to Mike Jones at Bloomsbury UK,
at auction, by Kirsten Neuhaus at Vigliano Associates (UK).
POP CULTURE:
Vanity Fair editorial associate and writer John Ortved's THE SIMPSONS:
An Uncensored, Unauthorized History, an oral history of television's
longest-running sitcom, drawing on interviews with veterans of the show,
including Conan O'Brien, Rupert Murdoch, Barry Diller, Hank Azaria, and
Ricky Gervais, to Denise Oswald at Faber & Faber/Farrar, Straus,
at auction, for publcation in 2009 (the show's 20th anniversary season),
by David Kuhn at Kuhn Projects (NA).
UK and European translation rights: Sara Fisher at A.M. Heath
sara.fisher@amheath.com
billy@kuhnprojects.com
SPORTS:
Chief Running Officer at Runner's World Magazine known as "The Mayor of
Running" Bart Yasso's MY LIFE ON THE RUN, written with journalist
Kathleen Parrish, a gathering of his reflections about the rewards and
challenges of running, filled with practical lessons, to Nancy Hancock
at Rodale, in a very nice deal, by Stephen Hanselman of LevelFiveMedia
(World).
Wrap...
How low can the Major Media go?
From Editor & Publisher:
Will the Press Again Serve as 'Surge Protectors'?
Everyone remembers the media failures in the run-up to the war. But nearly as tragic was the performance by the press in the weeks before the "surge" was announced in January. Now what will happen over the next few days?
By Greg Mitchell
(September 05, 2007) -- Over the next week, much will be written, pro and con, about General Petraeus’s report on the progress of the “surge” in Iraq and President Bush’s response. Since both men have pretty much already announced, or at least rehearsed, what they are going to say, the suspense is not exactly crippling. I’ll be writing more later, but for now I’d simply like to address the media’s responsibility to address, over the next few days, this key moment in our recent history with a steady gaze – which, as I will recount, was sadly lacking last winter in the weeks before the “surge” was announced.
Essentially, that Bush decision – and his rejection of the Iraq Study Group's recommendations at that time -- was the most tragic turn in this war since the original invasion, and like its overall performance in the run-up to the 2003 attack, the press (with notable exceptions) failed miserably.
Starting last November, some of us warned that Bush was bent on sending more troops to Iraq, but leading pundits and editorialists didn’t seem very alarmed about the prospect, embracing the notion that Bush, instead, would embrace the Iraq Study Group report as a face-saver -- even though the White House was already talking about sending more troops. When they did start to take that seriously, the media largely bought into the White House’s “surge” slogan rather than the more appropriate “escalation,” which some Democrats promoted....
[Click link below to continue reading]
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003635087
Wrap...
Will the Press Again Serve as 'Surge Protectors'?
Everyone remembers the media failures in the run-up to the war. But nearly as tragic was the performance by the press in the weeks before the "surge" was announced in January. Now what will happen over the next few days?
By Greg Mitchell
(September 05, 2007) -- Over the next week, much will be written, pro and con, about General Petraeus’s report on the progress of the “surge” in Iraq and President Bush’s response. Since both men have pretty much already announced, or at least rehearsed, what they are going to say, the suspense is not exactly crippling. I’ll be writing more later, but for now I’d simply like to address the media’s responsibility to address, over the next few days, this key moment in our recent history with a steady gaze – which, as I will recount, was sadly lacking last winter in the weeks before the “surge” was announced.
Essentially, that Bush decision – and his rejection of the Iraq Study Group's recommendations at that time -- was the most tragic turn in this war since the original invasion, and like its overall performance in the run-up to the 2003 attack, the press (with notable exceptions) failed miserably.
Starting last November, some of us warned that Bush was bent on sending more troops to Iraq, but leading pundits and editorialists didn’t seem very alarmed about the prospect, embracing the notion that Bush, instead, would embrace the Iraq Study Group report as a face-saver -- even though the White House was already talking about sending more troops. When they did start to take that seriously, the media largely bought into the White House’s “surge” slogan rather than the more appropriate “escalation,” which some Democrats promoted....
[Click link below to continue reading]
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003635087
Wrap...
Obama's last shot...
From ABC:
For Obama, It's Now or Never
Email
Share September 05, 2007 4:24 PM
ABC News' Jonathan Greenberger Reports: Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., said Wednesday that this may be his last chance at running for president.
Asked if his '08 bid was just a strategic move to position himself for a run in 2012, Obama said he didn't think his wife would allow him to run again if it doesn't work out this time.
"Well, I'm not sure- I don't think my wife's going to let me do this twice. So let me be clear about that," Obama said while campaigning in Iowa.
Obama also sought to answer charges from his Democratic rivals that he is too inexperienced to be president, by pointing to his experience in the Illinois state legislature.
"I've been in elected office longer than John Edwards or Hillary Clinton," said Obama. "I've passed more bills I'm sure than either of them --certainly in the state legislative level."
Obama served eight years in the Illinois state Senate before his 2004 election to the United States Senate. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., is in her second term as a United States senator, following eight years she spent in the White House married to former President Bill Clinton. When Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., left the Senate following his 2004 vice presidential run, he had only served one six-year term.
Obama also took aim at Clinton's work on health care, arguing that the "closed" nature of the task force she led undermined the chances for reform.
"What the president can do," said Obama, "is shine the spotlight on the process and mobilize the American people to keep the pressure on. And that's something that didn't happen. And in some ways, in '93 that didn't happen because it was a closed process. And not everybody understood what was taking place, so when the insurance companies and the drug companies starting airing those Harry and Louise ads, you know, nobody really knew what was what. And that's why the American people have to be involved."
Obama's remarks come on the heels of a new ad, "Change," which seeks to position him as the anti-Washington and anti-lobbyist candidate.
Wrap...
For Obama, It's Now or Never
Share September 05, 2007 4:24 PM
ABC News' Jonathan Greenberger Reports: Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., said Wednesday that this may be his last chance at running for president.
Asked if his '08 bid was just a strategic move to position himself for a run in 2012, Obama said he didn't think his wife would allow him to run again if it doesn't work out this time.
"Well, I'm not sure- I don't think my wife's going to let me do this twice. So let me be clear about that," Obama said while campaigning in Iowa.
Obama also sought to answer charges from his Democratic rivals that he is too inexperienced to be president, by pointing to his experience in the Illinois state legislature.
"I've been in elected office longer than John Edwards or Hillary Clinton," said Obama. "I've passed more bills I'm sure than either of them --certainly in the state legislative level."
Obama served eight years in the Illinois state Senate before his 2004 election to the United States Senate. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., is in her second term as a United States senator, following eight years she spent in the White House married to former President Bill Clinton. When Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., left the Senate following his 2004 vice presidential run, he had only served one six-year term.
Obama also took aim at Clinton's work on health care, arguing that the "closed" nature of the task force she led undermined the chances for reform.
"What the president can do," said Obama, "is shine the spotlight on the process and mobilize the American people to keep the pressure on. And that's something that didn't happen. And in some ways, in '93 that didn't happen because it was a closed process. And not everybody understood what was taking place, so when the insurance companies and the drug companies starting airing those Harry and Louise ads, you know, nobody really knew what was what. And that's why the American people have to be involved."
Obama's remarks come on the heels of a new ad, "Change," which seeks to position him as the anti-Washington and anti-lobbyist candidate.
Wrap...
A terrible loss to the world...
From Reuters:
Pavarotti unconscious, family gathers: report Wed Sep 5, 3:35 PM ET
Luciano Pavarotti's health has deteriorated sharply and the 71-year-old tenor is at home, unconscious and suffering from kidney failure, a television station reported on Wednesday.
Family and friends went to Pavarotti's home to be near the singer, considered one of the greatest tenors of his generation, E' TV Antenna Uno television station in Modena, the tenor's home town, reported.
In July 2006 Pavarotti underwent surgery in New York for pancreatic cancer and retreated to his villa in Modena. He had to cancel his first planned public reappearance a few months later.
Taken to hospital with a fever last month, Pavarotti was released from hospital in Modena on August 25 after undergoing more than two weeks of tests and treatment. Italy's AGI news agency said cancer specialists were treating Pavarotti at home, and described his condition as "very serious."
One of Pavarotti's friends contacted by Reuters said she had also heard the singer was in "serious" condition.
A spokesman at the Modena hospital declined to comment.
Wrap...
Pavarotti unconscious, family gathers: report Wed Sep 5, 3:35 PM ET
Luciano Pavarotti's health has deteriorated sharply and the 71-year-old tenor is at home, unconscious and suffering from kidney failure, a television station reported on Wednesday.
Family and friends went to Pavarotti's home to be near the singer, considered one of the greatest tenors of his generation, E' TV Antenna Uno television station in Modena, the tenor's home town, reported.
In July 2006 Pavarotti underwent surgery in New York for pancreatic cancer and retreated to his villa in Modena. He had to cancel his first planned public reappearance a few months later.
Taken to hospital with a fever last month, Pavarotti was released from hospital in Modena on August 25 after undergoing more than two weeks of tests and treatment. Italy's AGI news agency said cancer specialists were treating Pavarotti at home, and described his condition as "very serious."
One of Pavarotti's friends contacted by Reuters said she had also heard the singer was in "serious" condition.
A spokesman at the Modena hospital declined to comment.
Wrap...
From Bush to Gonzo...
From American Progress:
Think Fast...
A recent poll finds 52 percent of Australians believe President Bush is the worst U.S. president ever, primarily due to his Iraq war policy. Yesterday, Australian Prime Minister John Howard told Bush he would not reduce the 1,600 Australian forces in Iraq.
The nation's Medicaid directors yesterday told the Bush administration that its new restrictions on the federally funded State Children's Health Insurance Program will limit the number of children covered. In a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, the National Association of State Medicaid Directors "said the new standards reduce flexibility, making it difficult for states to expand coverage."
"A half-hour before his Saturday news conference announcing his plans to resign, Sen. Larry Craig left a voice mail -- at a number he apparently didn't intend to dial -- stating his intent to possibly rethink the decision.' Listen to the audio here.
The Americans Against Escalation in Iraq have released a new ad calling out President Bush's suggestion that he will reduce troop levels. "Do they really mean it this time?" Watch the ad here.
By a vote of 69-24, the Senate approved Jim Nussle to replace Rob Portman as the director of the Office of Management and Budget. Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND) voted against Nussle's confirmation because he feared Republicans could portray a yes vote "as a sign of support for the president's failed fiscal policy."
"His speech will be noticeably slower and he'll be zipping around in a motorized wheel chair, but Sen. Tim Johnson (D-SD) will do something on Wednesday that did not seem possible last December -- he'll give an address on the Senate floor."
The controversial docudrama Path to 9/11 has hit a snag in its plans for a nationwide DVD release. The $40-million, five-hour ABC miniseries "is for now on the path to nowhere." Cyrus Nowrasteh, the conservative activist who produced the series, is blaming the Hillary Clinton campaign for the stalled release.
And finally: Al Gore (No. 1) tops President Bush (No. 2) -- at least in the second annual "Harvard 100" ranking, recognizing the university's most influential living alumni. "Interestingly enough, newly resigned Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales finished last on the list at No. 100."
Wrap...
Think Fast...
A recent poll finds 52 percent of Australians believe President Bush is the worst U.S. president ever, primarily due to his Iraq war policy. Yesterday, Australian Prime Minister John Howard told Bush he would not reduce the 1,600 Australian forces in Iraq.
The nation's Medicaid directors yesterday told the Bush administration that its new restrictions on the federally funded State Children's Health Insurance Program will limit the number of children covered. In a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, the National Association of State Medicaid Directors "said the new standards reduce flexibility, making it difficult for states to expand coverage."
"A half-hour before his Saturday news conference announcing his plans to resign, Sen. Larry Craig left a voice mail -- at a number he apparently didn't intend to dial -- stating his intent to possibly rethink the decision.' Listen to the audio here.
The Americans Against Escalation in Iraq have released a new ad calling out President Bush's suggestion that he will reduce troop levels. "Do they really mean it this time?" Watch the ad here.
By a vote of 69-24, the Senate approved Jim Nussle to replace Rob Portman as the director of the Office of Management and Budget. Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND) voted against Nussle's confirmation because he feared Republicans could portray a yes vote "as a sign of support for the president's failed fiscal policy."
"His speech will be noticeably slower and he'll be zipping around in a motorized wheel chair, but Sen. Tim Johnson (D-SD) will do something on Wednesday that did not seem possible last December -- he'll give an address on the Senate floor."
The controversial docudrama Path to 9/11 has hit a snag in its plans for a nationwide DVD release. The $40-million, five-hour ABC miniseries "is for now on the path to nowhere." Cyrus Nowrasteh, the conservative activist who produced the series, is blaming the Hillary Clinton campaign for the stalled release.
And finally: Al Gore (No. 1) tops President Bush (No. 2) -- at least in the second annual "Harvard 100" ranking, recognizing the university's most influential living alumni. "Interestingly enough, newly resigned Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales finished last on the list at No. 100."
Wrap...
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
Wondering about Laura Bush....
From In These Times:
Views > August 28, 2007
How Does Laura Bush Sleep at Night?
By Susan J. Douglas
Laura provides PR cover for George, pretending that they're helping children while he screws them through 'No Child Left Behind.' With the passing of Lady Bird Johnson, we are reminded that First Ladies used to stand for something. She was not as beautiful as Jackie Kennedy, and in the mid-1960s with the war in Vietnam escalating, beautifying America’s highways may have seemed a trivial goal. It wasn’t. Lady Bird Johnson—a successful businesswoman in her own right—combined a disdain for the spread of commercial clutter with a love for the environment that today seems positively progressive in a first lady. She helped her husband advance the Head Start program and civil rights; she spoke publicly in support of the Equal Rights Amendment.
By contrast, what does Laura Bush stand for? Well, at first it was “literacy” and the merits of being a stay-at-home wife who gets her husband (allegedly) to quit drinking. Then she was going to combat the influence of gangs on school children. (Her husband subsequently eliminated this program.) Then there was some hand-waving about women’s heart disease. Her very glitzy website also cites “Gulf Coast Rebuilding” (no comment) and “Global Diplomacy” as top Laura priorities. All of these are advanced with a smile as lock-jawed as Nurse Ratched’s.
As one of the scant 15 percent of likely voters who has a “very unfavorable” assessment of Mrs. Bush (and who finds her high approval ratings a complete mystery), I would like to suggest that she may be the worst First Lady in recent memory. Here are the reasons: First, she has had no consistent program or agenda that has changed anything for the better. Second, she provides PR cover for her husband so she can pretend they’re doing one thing, like helping school children, while he can do another, like screwing them and their teachers through disasters like “No Child Left Behind.” (Another example of being a beard for Bush, she promotes awareness about women’s heart disease while he proposes slashes in Medicaid, 70 percent of whose recipients are poor women.) Third, she has taken absolutely no stand against her husband’s relentless, Shermanesque march across women’s rights. Last and most damning, she is an utter hypocrite, especially when it comes to global rights for women.
Remember how Laura Bush claimed that one of the main reasons for the war in Afghanistan was to liberate women from their burkas? To “kick off a world-wide effort to focus on the brutality against women and children by the al-Qaeda terrorist network and the regime it supports,” she opined in a November 2001 radio address. “The fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women.” Really? Seven months later, her husband withheld more than $200 million in funding for programs to support women and to combat AIDS in Afghanistan.
And where has Laura Bush been since, when it was made clear that women would play virtually no role in the post-Taliban government? Where was she when Human Rights Watch reported in July 2003 that violence against girls and women in Afghanistan, including rape, was increasing? Well, in the spring of 2005 she went to visit Afghani women for six hours where she offered “the very best wishes of the American people.” Upon her return, she told Jay Leno things were “very encouraging” for them.
Meanwhile, this mother of two daughters has remained mute during her husband’s six-and-a-half year assault on women’s rights. In addition to appointing two deeply conservative, anti-choice zealots to the Supreme Court, Bush enacted a domestic gag rule in 2004 which allowed HMOs, hospitals and the like to prohibit doctors from providing abortion referrals or even information about abortion. One of his first acts in office was to reinstate a global gag rule, which forbade any agency that got funds from the U.S. Agency for International Development from using those or any other funds (including their own!) to provide or promote abortions. Within a year, there were shortages of contraceptives, clinics had closed, and 16 developing countries (including Afghanistan, which Laura cares so much about) had seen shipments of supplies cut off.
Two months after his inauguration, Bush closed the White House Office for Women’s Initiatives and Outreach. He then made sure that information about issues like pay equity and childcare were removed from the Department of Labor’s website—25 such publications vanished from the Women’s Bureau website alone. Instead, new bogus information, such as the claim that there was a link between having an abortion and getting breast cancer, appeared on the National Cancer Institute’s website. In 2005, the Bush administration weakened the standards for compliance with Title IX (maybe the Bush girls were too busy partying to play any sports).
As one reviews this record and the cynical gaps between Mrs. Bush’s pro-woman-pronouncements and her husband’s determination to keep as many of us as possible barefoot and pregnant, it is hard to imagine how she lives with him. Or herself.
******************************
Susan J. Douglas is a professor of communications at the University of Michigan and author of The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How it Has Undermined Women.
Wrap...
Views > August 28, 2007
How Does Laura Bush Sleep at Night?
By Susan J. Douglas
Laura provides PR cover for George, pretending that they're helping children while he screws them through 'No Child Left Behind.' With the passing of Lady Bird Johnson, we are reminded that First Ladies used to stand for something. She was not as beautiful as Jackie Kennedy, and in the mid-1960s with the war in Vietnam escalating, beautifying America’s highways may have seemed a trivial goal. It wasn’t. Lady Bird Johnson—a successful businesswoman in her own right—combined a disdain for the spread of commercial clutter with a love for the environment that today seems positively progressive in a first lady. She helped her husband advance the Head Start program and civil rights; she spoke publicly in support of the Equal Rights Amendment.
By contrast, what does Laura Bush stand for? Well, at first it was “literacy” and the merits of being a stay-at-home wife who gets her husband (allegedly) to quit drinking. Then she was going to combat the influence of gangs on school children. (Her husband subsequently eliminated this program.) Then there was some hand-waving about women’s heart disease. Her very glitzy website also cites “Gulf Coast Rebuilding” (no comment) and “Global Diplomacy” as top Laura priorities. All of these are advanced with a smile as lock-jawed as Nurse Ratched’s.
As one of the scant 15 percent of likely voters who has a “very unfavorable” assessment of Mrs. Bush (and who finds her high approval ratings a complete mystery), I would like to suggest that she may be the worst First Lady in recent memory. Here are the reasons: First, she has had no consistent program or agenda that has changed anything for the better. Second, she provides PR cover for her husband so she can pretend they’re doing one thing, like helping school children, while he can do another, like screwing them and their teachers through disasters like “No Child Left Behind.” (Another example of being a beard for Bush, she promotes awareness about women’s heart disease while he proposes slashes in Medicaid, 70 percent of whose recipients are poor women.) Third, she has taken absolutely no stand against her husband’s relentless, Shermanesque march across women’s rights. Last and most damning, she is an utter hypocrite, especially when it comes to global rights for women.
Remember how Laura Bush claimed that one of the main reasons for the war in Afghanistan was to liberate women from their burkas? To “kick off a world-wide effort to focus on the brutality against women and children by the al-Qaeda terrorist network and the regime it supports,” she opined in a November 2001 radio address. “The fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women.” Really? Seven months later, her husband withheld more than $200 million in funding for programs to support women and to combat AIDS in Afghanistan.
And where has Laura Bush been since, when it was made clear that women would play virtually no role in the post-Taliban government? Where was she when Human Rights Watch reported in July 2003 that violence against girls and women in Afghanistan, including rape, was increasing? Well, in the spring of 2005 she went to visit Afghani women for six hours where she offered “the very best wishes of the American people.” Upon her return, she told Jay Leno things were “very encouraging” for them.
Meanwhile, this mother of two daughters has remained mute during her husband’s six-and-a-half year assault on women’s rights. In addition to appointing two deeply conservative, anti-choice zealots to the Supreme Court, Bush enacted a domestic gag rule in 2004 which allowed HMOs, hospitals and the like to prohibit doctors from providing abortion referrals or even information about abortion. One of his first acts in office was to reinstate a global gag rule, which forbade any agency that got funds from the U.S. Agency for International Development from using those or any other funds (including their own!) to provide or promote abortions. Within a year, there were shortages of contraceptives, clinics had closed, and 16 developing countries (including Afghanistan, which Laura cares so much about) had seen shipments of supplies cut off.
Two months after his inauguration, Bush closed the White House Office for Women’s Initiatives and Outreach. He then made sure that information about issues like pay equity and childcare were removed from the Department of Labor’s website—25 such publications vanished from the Women’s Bureau website alone. Instead, new bogus information, such as the claim that there was a link between having an abortion and getting breast cancer, appeared on the National Cancer Institute’s website. In 2005, the Bush administration weakened the standards for compliance with Title IX (maybe the Bush girls were too busy partying to play any sports).
As one reviews this record and the cynical gaps between Mrs. Bush’s pro-woman-pronouncements and her husband’s determination to keep as many of us as possible barefoot and pregnant, it is hard to imagine how she lives with him. Or herself.
******************************
Susan J. Douglas is a professor of communications at the University of Michigan and author of The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How it Has Undermined Women.
Wrap...
Where'd the food in grocery store brands come from?
From AP via truthout.org :
Outsourcing Complicates Food Recalls
By Andrew Bridges
The Associated Press
Sunday 02 September 2007
Washington - Try searching for a culprit in the 90 brands caught up in the recent recall of canned chili, stew and other products, and you weave back to a single manufacturer.
That also was the case in recalls of spinach, pet food and frozen meat.
Companies increasingly are paying others to make the foods we eat - or the ingredients in them - and then selling it under multiple brand names. And that has prompted a growing debate about food safety.
"If people cannot trace a product back to a supplier, the supplier has no incentives to keep their processes as clean and effective, in terms of food safety, as possible," said Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of food safety for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer group.
But the food industry and regulators chalk up to coincidence the rash of recent major food safety recalls and the consolidation of food production
"One reason we are seeing this is because it's becoming a common industry practice," said Dr. David Acheson, who leads the Food and Drug Administration's food safety efforts. Acheson said he knew of no evidence that outsourcing production is inherently less safe than traditional arrangements in which companies make what they sell.
Outsourcing makes financial sense for companies unwilling or unable to establish or expand manufacturing operations. Established manufacturers can use excess capacity to fill orders for others.
For some specialty products that require expensive machinery - like pet food - a limited number of contract manufacturers, such as Menu Foods, make products that are sold under dozens of brands.
"Being able to develop a product without having to sink a lot of money into fixed, tangible capital is every entrepreneur's dream," said Michael Sykuta, director of the Contracting and Organizations Research Institute at the University of Missouri-Columbia.
Store-brand or private-label products account for much of the growth in the food outsourcing business. Supermarkets, drug stores and mass merchandisers ring up more than $65 billion in store brand sales annually.
That amounts to one in every five items they sell, according to the Private Label Manufacturers Association.
But critics of the outsourcing of production warn that it creates increased vulnerability of the food supply. The manufacturer no longer is directly accountable to consumers, but to other companies, they maintain.
That makes for a long supply chain with several stops before a product reaches consumers, said Jean Kinsey, co-director of the Food Industry Center at the University of Minnesota. "And not everyone along the way has the same vested interest in its safety."
The Grocery Manufacturers Association counters that there would be no reason for co-manufacturers or co-packers to skimp on food safety.
"If we use the classic term, 'barking up the wrong tree,' that would be the case here," said Craig Henry, who helps oversee scientific and regulatory activities at the industry group.
But some food safety advocates say that when problems arise with foods made under contract, sorting out who made what can delay recalls or public health warnings.
Last month, the FDA for hours delayed issuing a consumer warning about botulism contamination in canned food products, until it could sort out the brands under which the Castleberry's Food Co. product was sold. The recall was further hampered by confusion over which brands were involved.
This spring's rolling series of recalls of cat and dog food made with chemically tainted ingredients from China began in mid-March and stretched to late May.
"I'm not telling you it is a system that is optimal for consumers. What we are trying to do is make the response part faster," says the FDA's Acheson.
He expressed concern about a recall "dribbling on for two months" but said that's better "than not saying anything and waiting for two months."
Generally, the identities of contract manufacturers remain secret for reasons of commercial confidentiality. So how can consumers learn where their food comes from?
"The truth of the matter is today, to a large degree, you can't ... and efforts to improve on it have been beaten back," said Jean Halloran, director of food policy initiatives for Consumers Union.
For example, she said, there has been a long delay in requiring that imported fruits and vegetables be labeled with their country of origin.
The difficulty of linking a product back to a particular lot or manufacturer has been a major problem in some food safety cases, say consumer advocates.
When salmonella contamination led ConAgra Foods Inc. to recall Peter Pan-brand peanut butter earlier this year, it also recalled Great Value peanut butter it made for Wal-Mart Stores Inc. The FDA said at the time that other Great Value peanut butter, made by other manufacturers, wasn't affected by the recall.
In the peanut butter case, the lids of the jars - regardless of brand - were consistently marked in a way that made it easy to find the specific product code being recalled, DeWaal said.
That's not always the case.
"Traceability is critical to ensuring processors use the highest standards of care," DeWaal said. "When their identities are hidden behind multiple labels and poor traceability information, they can use whatever practices they want because they're probably not going to get caught."
Among other recalls that involved consolidated production:
Fresh spinach, recalled last September because of E.coli contamination was processed and packaged by Natural Selection Foods LLC, but sold under more than two dozen brand names.
Pet food recalled last spring was made by Menu Foods Income Fund and other companies using chemically spiked ingredients, but sold under nearly 200 brands.
About 5.7 million pounds of meat was recalled in June by United Food Group LLC because of possible E.coli contamination, but was sold under six brands.
For the companies that put their names on products made for them, the inevitable spate of lawsuits that have followed recent outbreaks likely will force them to more closely scrutinize suppliers, said Cornell University professor of food science Robert Gravani.
"The lesson for everyone is: Know your supplier," said Douglas Powell, scientific director of the International Food Safety Network at Kansas State University.
Wrap...
Outsourcing Complicates Food Recalls
By Andrew Bridges
The Associated Press
Sunday 02 September 2007
Washington - Try searching for a culprit in the 90 brands caught up in the recent recall of canned chili, stew and other products, and you weave back to a single manufacturer.
That also was the case in recalls of spinach, pet food and frozen meat.
Companies increasingly are paying others to make the foods we eat - or the ingredients in them - and then selling it under multiple brand names. And that has prompted a growing debate about food safety.
"If people cannot trace a product back to a supplier, the supplier has no incentives to keep their processes as clean and effective, in terms of food safety, as possible," said Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of food safety for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer group.
But the food industry and regulators chalk up to coincidence the rash of recent major food safety recalls and the consolidation of food production
"One reason we are seeing this is because it's becoming a common industry practice," said Dr. David Acheson, who leads the Food and Drug Administration's food safety efforts. Acheson said he knew of no evidence that outsourcing production is inherently less safe than traditional arrangements in which companies make what they sell.
Outsourcing makes financial sense for companies unwilling or unable to establish or expand manufacturing operations. Established manufacturers can use excess capacity to fill orders for others.
For some specialty products that require expensive machinery - like pet food - a limited number of contract manufacturers, such as Menu Foods, make products that are sold under dozens of brands.
"Being able to develop a product without having to sink a lot of money into fixed, tangible capital is every entrepreneur's dream," said Michael Sykuta, director of the Contracting and Organizations Research Institute at the University of Missouri-Columbia.
Store-brand or private-label products account for much of the growth in the food outsourcing business. Supermarkets, drug stores and mass merchandisers ring up more than $65 billion in store brand sales annually.
That amounts to one in every five items they sell, according to the Private Label Manufacturers Association.
But critics of the outsourcing of production warn that it creates increased vulnerability of the food supply. The manufacturer no longer is directly accountable to consumers, but to other companies, they maintain.
That makes for a long supply chain with several stops before a product reaches consumers, said Jean Kinsey, co-director of the Food Industry Center at the University of Minnesota. "And not everyone along the way has the same vested interest in its safety."
The Grocery Manufacturers Association counters that there would be no reason for co-manufacturers or co-packers to skimp on food safety.
"If we use the classic term, 'barking up the wrong tree,' that would be the case here," said Craig Henry, who helps oversee scientific and regulatory activities at the industry group.
But some food safety advocates say that when problems arise with foods made under contract, sorting out who made what can delay recalls or public health warnings.
Last month, the FDA for hours delayed issuing a consumer warning about botulism contamination in canned food products, until it could sort out the brands under which the Castleberry's Food Co. product was sold. The recall was further hampered by confusion over which brands were involved.
This spring's rolling series of recalls of cat and dog food made with chemically tainted ingredients from China began in mid-March and stretched to late May.
"I'm not telling you it is a system that is optimal for consumers. What we are trying to do is make the response part faster," says the FDA's Acheson.
He expressed concern about a recall "dribbling on for two months" but said that's better "than not saying anything and waiting for two months."
Generally, the identities of contract manufacturers remain secret for reasons of commercial confidentiality. So how can consumers learn where their food comes from?
"The truth of the matter is today, to a large degree, you can't ... and efforts to improve on it have been beaten back," said Jean Halloran, director of food policy initiatives for Consumers Union.
For example, she said, there has been a long delay in requiring that imported fruits and vegetables be labeled with their country of origin.
The difficulty of linking a product back to a particular lot or manufacturer has been a major problem in some food safety cases, say consumer advocates.
When salmonella contamination led ConAgra Foods Inc. to recall Peter Pan-brand peanut butter earlier this year, it also recalled Great Value peanut butter it made for Wal-Mart Stores Inc. The FDA said at the time that other Great Value peanut butter, made by other manufacturers, wasn't affected by the recall.
In the peanut butter case, the lids of the jars - regardless of brand - were consistently marked in a way that made it easy to find the specific product code being recalled, DeWaal said.
That's not always the case.
"Traceability is critical to ensuring processors use the highest standards of care," DeWaal said. "When their identities are hidden behind multiple labels and poor traceability information, they can use whatever practices they want because they're probably not going to get caught."
Among other recalls that involved consolidated production:
Fresh spinach, recalled last September because of E.coli contamination was processed and packaged by Natural Selection Foods LLC, but sold under more than two dozen brand names.
Pet food recalled last spring was made by Menu Foods Income Fund and other companies using chemically spiked ingredients, but sold under nearly 200 brands.
About 5.7 million pounds of meat was recalled in June by United Food Group LLC because of possible E.coli contamination, but was sold under six brands.
For the companies that put their names on products made for them, the inevitable spate of lawsuits that have followed recent outbreaks likely will force them to more closely scrutinize suppliers, said Cornell University professor of food science Robert Gravani.
"The lesson for everyone is: Know your supplier," said Douglas Powell, scientific director of the International Food Safety Network at Kansas State University.
Wrap...
United States and Israel....
From Stratfor:
The Israel Lobby in U.S. Strategy
By George Friedman
U.S. President George W. Bush made an appearance in Iraq's restive Anbar province on Sept. 3 -- in part to tout the success of the military surge there ahead of the presentation in Washington of the Petraeus report. For the next month or two, the battle over Iraq will be waged in Washington -- and one country will come up over and over again, from any number of directions: Israel. Israel will be invoked as an ally in the war on terrorism -- the reason the United States is in the war in the first place. Some will say that Israel maneuvered the United States into Iraq to serve its own purposes. Some will say it orchestrated 9/11 for its own ends. Others will say that, had the United States supported Israel more resolutely, there would not have been a 9/11.
There is probably no relationship on which people have more diverging views than on that between the United States and Israel. Therefore, since it is going to be invoked in the coming weeks -- and Bush is taking a fairly irrelevant pause at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Australia -- this is an opportune time to consider the geopolitics of the U.S.-Israeli relationship.
Let's begin with some obvious political points. There is a relatively small Jewish community in the United States, though its political influence is magnified by its strategic location in critical states such as New York and the fact that it is more actively involved in politics than some other ethnic groups.
The Jewish community, as tends to be the case with groups, is deeply divided on many issues. It tends to be united on one issue -- Israel -- but not with the same intensity as in the past, nor with even a semblance of agreement on the specifics. The American Jewish community is as divided as the Israeli Jewish community, with a large segment of people who don't much care thrown in. At the same time, this community donates large sums of money to American and Israeli organizations, including groups that lobby on behalf of Israeli issues in Washington. These lobbying entities lean toward the right wing of Israel's political spectrum, in large part because the Israeli right has tended to govern in the past generation and these groups tend to follow the dominant Israeli strand. It also is because American Jews who contribute to Israel lobby organizations lean right in both Israeli and American politics.
The Israel lobby, which has a great deal of money and experience, is extremely influential in Washington. For decades now, it has done a good job of ensuring that Israeli interests are attended to in Washington, and certainly on some issues it has skewed U.S. policy on the Middle East. There are Jews who practice being shocked at this assertion, but they must not be taken seriously. They know better, which is why they donate money. Others pretend to be shocked at the idea of a lobbyist influencing U.S. policy on the Middle East, but they also need not be taken seriously, because they are trying to influence Washington as well, though they are not as successful. Obviously there is an influential Israel lobby in Washington.
There are, however, two important questions. The first is whether this is in any way unique. Is a strong Israel lobby an unprecedented intrusion into foreign policy? The key question, though, is whether Israeli interests diverge from U.S. interests to the extent that the Israel lobby is taking U.S. foreign policy in directions it wouldn't go otherwise, in directions that counter the U.S. national interest.
Begin with the first question. Prior to both World wars there was extensive debate on whether the United States should intervene in the war. In both cases, the British government lobbied extensively for U.S. intervention on behalf of the United Kingdom. The British made two arguments. The first was that the United States shared a heritage with England -- code for the idea that white Anglo-Saxon Protestants should stand with white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. The second was that there was a fundamental political affinity between British and U.S. democracy and that it was in the U.S. interest to protect British democracy from German authoritarianism.
Many Americans, including President Franklin Roosevelt, believed both arguments. The British lobby was quite powerful. There was a German lobby as well, but it lacked the numbers, the money and the traditions to draw on.
From a geopolitical point of view, both arguments were weak. The United States and the United Kingdom not only were separate countries, they had fought some bitter wars over the question. As for political institutions, geopolitics, as a method, is fairly insensitive to the moral claims of regimes. It works on the basis of interest. On that basis, an intervention on behalf of the United Kingdom in both wars made sense because it provided a relatively low-cost way of preventing Germany from dominating Europe and challenging American sea power. In the end, it wasn't the lobbying interest, massive though it was, but geopolitical necessity that drove U.S. intervention.
The second question, then, is: Has the Israel lobby caused the United States to act in ways that contravene U.S. interests? For example, by getting the United States to support Israel, did it turn the Arab world against the Americans? Did it support Israeli repression of Palestinians, and thereby generate an Islamist radicalism that led to 9/11? Did it manipulate U.S. policy on Iraq so that the United States invaded Iraq on behalf of Israel? These allegations have all been made. If true, they are very serious charges.
It is important to remember that U.S.-Israeli ties were not extraordinarily close prior to 1967. President Harry Truman recognized Israel, but the United States had not provided major military aid and support. Israel, always in need of an outside supply of weapons, first depended on the Soviet Union, which shipped weapons to Israel via Czechoslovakia. When the Soviets realized that Israeli socialists were anti-Soviet as well, they dropped Israel. Israel's next patron was France. France was fighting to hold on to Algeria and maintain its influence in Lebanon and Syria, both former French protectorates. The French saw Israel as a natural ally. It was France that really created the Israeli air force and provided the first technology for Israeli nuclear weapons.
The United States was actively hostile to Israel during this period. In 1956, following Gamal Abdul Nasser's seizure of power in Egypt, Cairo nationalized the Suez Canal. Without the canal, the British Empire was finished, and ultimately the French were as well. The United Kingdom and France worked secretly with Israel, and Israel invaded the Sinai. Then, in order to protect the Suez Canal from an Israeli-Egyptian war, a Franco-British force parachuted in to seize the canal. President Dwight Eisenhower forced the British and French to withdraw -- as well as the Israelis. U.S.-Israeli relations remained chilly for quite a while.
The break point with France came in 1967. The Israelis, under pressure from Egypt, decided to invade Egypt, Jordan and Syria -- ignoring French President Charles de Gaulle's demand that they not do so. As a result, France broke its alignment with Israel. This was the critical moment in U.S.-Israeli relations. Israel needed a source of weaponry as its national security needs vastly outstripped its industrial base. It was at this point that the Israel lobby in the United States became critical. Israel wanted a relationship with the United States and the Israel lobby brought tremendous pressure to bear, picturing Israel as a heroic, embattled democracy, surrounded by bloodthirsty neighbors, badly needing U.S. help. President Lyndon B. Johnson, bogged down in Vietnam and wanting to shore up his base, saw a popular cause in Israel and tilted toward it.
But there were critical strategic issues as well. Syria and Iraq had both shifted into the pro-Soviet camp, as had Egypt. Some have argued that, had the United States not supported Israel, this would not have happened. This, however, runs in the face of history. It was the United States that forced the Israelis out of the Sinai in 1956, but the Egyptians moved into the Soviet camp anyway. The argument that it was uncritical support for Israel that caused anti-Americanism in the Arab world doesn't hold water. The Egyptians became anti-American in spite of an essentially anti-Israeli position in 1956. By 1957 Egypt was a Soviet ally.
The Americans ultimately tilted toward Israel because of this, not the other way around. Egypt was not only providing the Soviets with naval and air bases, but also was running covert operations in the Arabian Peninsula to bring down the conservative sheikhdoms there, including Saudi Arabia's. The Soviets were seen as using Egypt as a base of operations against the United States. Syria was seen as another dangerous radical power, along with Iraq. The defense of the Arabian Peninsula from radical, pro-Soviet Arab movements, as well as the defense of Jordan, became a central interest of the United States.
Israel was seen as contributing by threatening the security of both Egypt and Syria. The Saudi fear of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was palpable. Riyadh saw the Soviet-inspired liberation movements as threatening Saudi Arabia's survival. Israel was engaged in a covert war against the PLO and related groups, and that was exactly what the Saudis wanted from the late 1960s until the early 1980s. Israel's covert capability against the PLO, coupled with its overt military power against Egypt and Syria, was very much in the American interest and that of its Arab allies. It was a low-cost solution to some very difficult strategic problems at a time when the United States was either in Vietnam or recovering from the war.
The occupation of the Sinai, the West Bank and the Golan Heights in 1967 was not in the U.S. interest. The United States wanted Israel to carry out its mission against Soviet-backed paramilitaries and tie down Egypt and Syria, but the occupation was not seen as part of that mission. The Israelis initially expected to convert their occupation of the territories into a peace treaty, but that only happened, much later, with Egypt. At the Khartoum summit in 1967, the Arabs delivered the famous three noes: No negotiation. No recognition. No peace. Israel became an occupying power. It has never found its balance.
The claim has been made that if the United States forced the Israelis out of the West Bank and Gaza, then it would receive credit and peace would follow. There are three problems with that theory. First, the Israelis did not occupy these areas prior to 1967 and there was no peace. Second, groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah have said that a withdrawal would not end the state of war with Israel. And therefore, third, the withdrawal would create friction with Israel without any clear payoff from the Arabs.
It must be remembered that Egypt and Jordan have both signed peace treaties with Israel and seem not to care one whit about the Palestinians. The Saudis have never risked a thing for the Palestinians, nor have the Iranians. The Syrians have, but they are far more interested in investing in Beirut hotels than in invading Israel. No Arab state is interested in the Palestinians, except for those that are actively hostile. There is Arab and Islamic public opinion and nonstate organizations, but none would be satisfied with Israeli withdrawal. They want Israel destroyed. Even if the United States withdrew all support for Israel, however, Israel would not be destroyed. The radical Arabs do not want withdrawal; they want destruction. And the moderate Arabs don't care about the Palestinians beyond rhetoric.
Now we get to the heart of the matter. If the United States broke ties with Israel, would the U.S. geopolitical position be improved? In other words, if it broke with Israel, would Iran or al Qaeda come to view the United States in a different way? Critics of the Israel lobby argue that, except for U.S. support for Israel, the United States would have better relations in the Muslim world, and would not be targeted by al Qaeda or threatened by Iran. In other words, except for the Israel lobby's influence, the United States would be much more secure.
Al Qaeda does not see Israel by itself as its central problem. Its goal is the resurrection of the caliphate -- and it sees U.S. support for Muslim regimes as the central problem. If the United States abandoned Israel, al Qaeda would still confront U.S. support for countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. For al Qaeda, Israel is an important issue, but for the United States to soothe al Qaeda, it would have to abandon not only Israel, but its non-Islamist allies in the Middle East.
As for Iran, the Iranian rhetoric, as we have said, has never been matched by action. During the Iran-Iraq War, the Iranian military purchased weapons and parts from the Israelis. It was more delighted than anyone when Israel destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981. Iran's problem with the United States is its presence in Iraq, its naval presence in the Persian Gulf and its support for the Kurds. If Israel disappeared from the face of the Earth, Iran's problems would remain the same.
It has been said that the Israelis inspired the U.S. invasion of Iraq. There is no doubt that Israel was pleased when, after 9/11, the United States saw itself as an anti-Islamist power. Let us remind our more creative readers, however, that benefiting from something does not mean you caused it. However, it has never been clear that the Israelis were all that enthusiastic about invading Iraq. Neoconservative Jews like Paul Wolfowitz were enthusiastic, as were non-Jews like Dick Cheney. But the Israeli view of a U.S. invasion of Iraq was at most mixed, and to some extent dubious. The Israelis liked the Iran-Iraq balance of power and were close allies of Turkey, which certainly opposed the invasion. The claim that Israel supported the invasion comes from those who mistake neoconservatives, many of whom are Jews who support Israel, with Israeli foreign policy, which was much more nuanced than the neoconservatives. The Israelis were not at all clear about what the Americans were doing in Iraq, but they were in no position to complain.
Israeli-U.S. relations have gone through three phases. From 1948 to 1967, the United States supported Israel's right to exist but was not its patron. In the 1967-1991 period, the Israelis were a key American asset in the Cold War. From 1991 to the present, the relationship has remained close but it is not pivotal to either country. Washington cannot help Israel with Hezbollah or Hamas. The Israelis cannot help the United States in Iraq or Afghanistan. If the relationship were severed, it would have remarkably little impact on either country -- though keeping the relationship is more valuable than severing it.
To sum up: There is a powerful Jewish, pro-Israel lobby in Washington, though it was not very successful in the first 20 years or so of Israel's history. When U.S. policy toward Israel swung in 1967 it had far more to do with geopolitical interests than with lobbying. The United States needed help with Egypt and Syria and Israel could provide it. Lobbying appeared to be the key, but it wasn't; geopolitical necessity was. Egypt was anti-American even when the United States was anti-Israeli. Al Qaeda would be anti-American even if the United States were anti-Israel. Rhetoric aside, Iran has never taken direct action against Israel and has much more important things on its plate.
Portraying the Israel lobby as super-powerful behooves two groups: Critics of U.S. Middle Eastern policy and the Israel lobby itself. Critics get to say the U.S. relationship with Israel is the result of manipulation and corruption. Thus, they get to avoid discussing the actual history of Israel, the United States and the Middle East. The lobby benefits from having robust power because one of its jobs is to raise funds -- and the image of a killer lobby opens a lot more pocketbooks than does the idea that both Israel and the United States are simply pursuing their geopolitical interests and that things would go on pretty much the same even without slick lobbying.
The great irony is that the critics of U.S. policy and the Israel lobby both want to believe in the same myth -- that great powers can be manipulated to harm themselves by crafty politicians. The British didn't get the United States into the world wars, and the Israelis aren't maneuvering the Americans into being pro-Israel. Beyond its ability to exert itself on small things, the Israel lobby is powerful in influencing Washington to do what it is going to do anyway. What happens next in Iraq is not up to the Israel lobby -- though it and the Saudi Embassy have a different story.
Wrap...
The Israel Lobby in U.S. Strategy
By George Friedman
U.S. President George W. Bush made an appearance in Iraq's restive Anbar province on Sept. 3 -- in part to tout the success of the military surge there ahead of the presentation in Washington of the Petraeus report. For the next month or two, the battle over Iraq will be waged in Washington -- and one country will come up over and over again, from any number of directions: Israel. Israel will be invoked as an ally in the war on terrorism -- the reason the United States is in the war in the first place. Some will say that Israel maneuvered the United States into Iraq to serve its own purposes. Some will say it orchestrated 9/11 for its own ends. Others will say that, had the United States supported Israel more resolutely, there would not have been a 9/11.
There is probably no relationship on which people have more diverging views than on that between the United States and Israel. Therefore, since it is going to be invoked in the coming weeks -- and Bush is taking a fairly irrelevant pause at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Australia -- this is an opportune time to consider the geopolitics of the U.S.-Israeli relationship.
Let's begin with some obvious political points. There is a relatively small Jewish community in the United States, though its political influence is magnified by its strategic location in critical states such as New York and the fact that it is more actively involved in politics than some other ethnic groups.
The Jewish community, as tends to be the case with groups, is deeply divided on many issues. It tends to be united on one issue -- Israel -- but not with the same intensity as in the past, nor with even a semblance of agreement on the specifics. The American Jewish community is as divided as the Israeli Jewish community, with a large segment of people who don't much care thrown in. At the same time, this community donates large sums of money to American and Israeli organizations, including groups that lobby on behalf of Israeli issues in Washington. These lobbying entities lean toward the right wing of Israel's political spectrum, in large part because the Israeli right has tended to govern in the past generation and these groups tend to follow the dominant Israeli strand. It also is because American Jews who contribute to Israel lobby organizations lean right in both Israeli and American politics.
The Israel lobby, which has a great deal of money and experience, is extremely influential in Washington. For decades now, it has done a good job of ensuring that Israeli interests are attended to in Washington, and certainly on some issues it has skewed U.S. policy on the Middle East. There are Jews who practice being shocked at this assertion, but they must not be taken seriously. They know better, which is why they donate money. Others pretend to be shocked at the idea of a lobbyist influencing U.S. policy on the Middle East, but they also need not be taken seriously, because they are trying to influence Washington as well, though they are not as successful. Obviously there is an influential Israel lobby in Washington.
There are, however, two important questions. The first is whether this is in any way unique. Is a strong Israel lobby an unprecedented intrusion into foreign policy? The key question, though, is whether Israeli interests diverge from U.S. interests to the extent that the Israel lobby is taking U.S. foreign policy in directions it wouldn't go otherwise, in directions that counter the U.S. national interest.
Begin with the first question. Prior to both World wars there was extensive debate on whether the United States should intervene in the war. In both cases, the British government lobbied extensively for U.S. intervention on behalf of the United Kingdom. The British made two arguments. The first was that the United States shared a heritage with England -- code for the idea that white Anglo-Saxon Protestants should stand with white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. The second was that there was a fundamental political affinity between British and U.S. democracy and that it was in the U.S. interest to protect British democracy from German authoritarianism.
Many Americans, including President Franklin Roosevelt, believed both arguments. The British lobby was quite powerful. There was a German lobby as well, but it lacked the numbers, the money and the traditions to draw on.
From a geopolitical point of view, both arguments were weak. The United States and the United Kingdom not only were separate countries, they had fought some bitter wars over the question. As for political institutions, geopolitics, as a method, is fairly insensitive to the moral claims of regimes. It works on the basis of interest. On that basis, an intervention on behalf of the United Kingdom in both wars made sense because it provided a relatively low-cost way of preventing Germany from dominating Europe and challenging American sea power. In the end, it wasn't the lobbying interest, massive though it was, but geopolitical necessity that drove U.S. intervention.
The second question, then, is: Has the Israel lobby caused the United States to act in ways that contravene U.S. interests? For example, by getting the United States to support Israel, did it turn the Arab world against the Americans? Did it support Israeli repression of Palestinians, and thereby generate an Islamist radicalism that led to 9/11? Did it manipulate U.S. policy on Iraq so that the United States invaded Iraq on behalf of Israel? These allegations have all been made. If true, they are very serious charges.
It is important to remember that U.S.-Israeli ties were not extraordinarily close prior to 1967. President Harry Truman recognized Israel, but the United States had not provided major military aid and support. Israel, always in need of an outside supply of weapons, first depended on the Soviet Union, which shipped weapons to Israel via Czechoslovakia. When the Soviets realized that Israeli socialists were anti-Soviet as well, they dropped Israel. Israel's next patron was France. France was fighting to hold on to Algeria and maintain its influence in Lebanon and Syria, both former French protectorates. The French saw Israel as a natural ally. It was France that really created the Israeli air force and provided the first technology for Israeli nuclear weapons.
The United States was actively hostile to Israel during this period. In 1956, following Gamal Abdul Nasser's seizure of power in Egypt, Cairo nationalized the Suez Canal. Without the canal, the British Empire was finished, and ultimately the French were as well. The United Kingdom and France worked secretly with Israel, and Israel invaded the Sinai. Then, in order to protect the Suez Canal from an Israeli-Egyptian war, a Franco-British force parachuted in to seize the canal. President Dwight Eisenhower forced the British and French to withdraw -- as well as the Israelis. U.S.-Israeli relations remained chilly for quite a while.
The break point with France came in 1967. The Israelis, under pressure from Egypt, decided to invade Egypt, Jordan and Syria -- ignoring French President Charles de Gaulle's demand that they not do so. As a result, France broke its alignment with Israel. This was the critical moment in U.S.-Israeli relations. Israel needed a source of weaponry as its national security needs vastly outstripped its industrial base. It was at this point that the Israel lobby in the United States became critical. Israel wanted a relationship with the United States and the Israel lobby brought tremendous pressure to bear, picturing Israel as a heroic, embattled democracy, surrounded by bloodthirsty neighbors, badly needing U.S. help. President Lyndon B. Johnson, bogged down in Vietnam and wanting to shore up his base, saw a popular cause in Israel and tilted toward it.
But there were critical strategic issues as well. Syria and Iraq had both shifted into the pro-Soviet camp, as had Egypt. Some have argued that, had the United States not supported Israel, this would not have happened. This, however, runs in the face of history. It was the United States that forced the Israelis out of the Sinai in 1956, but the Egyptians moved into the Soviet camp anyway. The argument that it was uncritical support for Israel that caused anti-Americanism in the Arab world doesn't hold water. The Egyptians became anti-American in spite of an essentially anti-Israeli position in 1956. By 1957 Egypt was a Soviet ally.
The Americans ultimately tilted toward Israel because of this, not the other way around. Egypt was not only providing the Soviets with naval and air bases, but also was running covert operations in the Arabian Peninsula to bring down the conservative sheikhdoms there, including Saudi Arabia's. The Soviets were seen as using Egypt as a base of operations against the United States. Syria was seen as another dangerous radical power, along with Iraq. The defense of the Arabian Peninsula from radical, pro-Soviet Arab movements, as well as the defense of Jordan, became a central interest of the United States.
Israel was seen as contributing by threatening the security of both Egypt and Syria. The Saudi fear of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was palpable. Riyadh saw the Soviet-inspired liberation movements as threatening Saudi Arabia's survival. Israel was engaged in a covert war against the PLO and related groups, and that was exactly what the Saudis wanted from the late 1960s until the early 1980s. Israel's covert capability against the PLO, coupled with its overt military power against Egypt and Syria, was very much in the American interest and that of its Arab allies. It was a low-cost solution to some very difficult strategic problems at a time when the United States was either in Vietnam or recovering from the war.
The occupation of the Sinai, the West Bank and the Golan Heights in 1967 was not in the U.S. interest. The United States wanted Israel to carry out its mission against Soviet-backed paramilitaries and tie down Egypt and Syria, but the occupation was not seen as part of that mission. The Israelis initially expected to convert their occupation of the territories into a peace treaty, but that only happened, much later, with Egypt. At the Khartoum summit in 1967, the Arabs delivered the famous three noes: No negotiation. No recognition. No peace. Israel became an occupying power. It has never found its balance.
The claim has been made that if the United States forced the Israelis out of the West Bank and Gaza, then it would receive credit and peace would follow. There are three problems with that theory. First, the Israelis did not occupy these areas prior to 1967 and there was no peace. Second, groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah have said that a withdrawal would not end the state of war with Israel. And therefore, third, the withdrawal would create friction with Israel without any clear payoff from the Arabs.
It must be remembered that Egypt and Jordan have both signed peace treaties with Israel and seem not to care one whit about the Palestinians. The Saudis have never risked a thing for the Palestinians, nor have the Iranians. The Syrians have, but they are far more interested in investing in Beirut hotels than in invading Israel. No Arab state is interested in the Palestinians, except for those that are actively hostile. There is Arab and Islamic public opinion and nonstate organizations, but none would be satisfied with Israeli withdrawal. They want Israel destroyed. Even if the United States withdrew all support for Israel, however, Israel would not be destroyed. The radical Arabs do not want withdrawal; they want destruction. And the moderate Arabs don't care about the Palestinians beyond rhetoric.
Now we get to the heart of the matter. If the United States broke ties with Israel, would the U.S. geopolitical position be improved? In other words, if it broke with Israel, would Iran or al Qaeda come to view the United States in a different way? Critics of the Israel lobby argue that, except for U.S. support for Israel, the United States would have better relations in the Muslim world, and would not be targeted by al Qaeda or threatened by Iran. In other words, except for the Israel lobby's influence, the United States would be much more secure.
Al Qaeda does not see Israel by itself as its central problem. Its goal is the resurrection of the caliphate -- and it sees U.S. support for Muslim regimes as the central problem. If the United States abandoned Israel, al Qaeda would still confront U.S. support for countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. For al Qaeda, Israel is an important issue, but for the United States to soothe al Qaeda, it would have to abandon not only Israel, but its non-Islamist allies in the Middle East.
As for Iran, the Iranian rhetoric, as we have said, has never been matched by action. During the Iran-Iraq War, the Iranian military purchased weapons and parts from the Israelis. It was more delighted than anyone when Israel destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981. Iran's problem with the United States is its presence in Iraq, its naval presence in the Persian Gulf and its support for the Kurds. If Israel disappeared from the face of the Earth, Iran's problems would remain the same.
It has been said that the Israelis inspired the U.S. invasion of Iraq. There is no doubt that Israel was pleased when, after 9/11, the United States saw itself as an anti-Islamist power. Let us remind our more creative readers, however, that benefiting from something does not mean you caused it. However, it has never been clear that the Israelis were all that enthusiastic about invading Iraq. Neoconservative Jews like Paul Wolfowitz were enthusiastic, as were non-Jews like Dick Cheney. But the Israeli view of a U.S. invasion of Iraq was at most mixed, and to some extent dubious. The Israelis liked the Iran-Iraq balance of power and were close allies of Turkey, which certainly opposed the invasion. The claim that Israel supported the invasion comes from those who mistake neoconservatives, many of whom are Jews who support Israel, with Israeli foreign policy, which was much more nuanced than the neoconservatives. The Israelis were not at all clear about what the Americans were doing in Iraq, but they were in no position to complain.
Israeli-U.S. relations have gone through three phases. From 1948 to 1967, the United States supported Israel's right to exist but was not its patron. In the 1967-1991 period, the Israelis were a key American asset in the Cold War. From 1991 to the present, the relationship has remained close but it is not pivotal to either country. Washington cannot help Israel with Hezbollah or Hamas. The Israelis cannot help the United States in Iraq or Afghanistan. If the relationship were severed, it would have remarkably little impact on either country -- though keeping the relationship is more valuable than severing it.
To sum up: There is a powerful Jewish, pro-Israel lobby in Washington, though it was not very successful in the first 20 years or so of Israel's history. When U.S. policy toward Israel swung in 1967 it had far more to do with geopolitical interests than with lobbying. The United States needed help with Egypt and Syria and Israel could provide it. Lobbying appeared to be the key, but it wasn't; geopolitical necessity was. Egypt was anti-American even when the United States was anti-Israeli. Al Qaeda would be anti-American even if the United States were anti-Israel. Rhetoric aside, Iran has never taken direct action against Israel and has much more important things on its plate.
Portraying the Israel lobby as super-powerful behooves two groups: Critics of U.S. Middle Eastern policy and the Israel lobby itself. Critics get to say the U.S. relationship with Israel is the result of manipulation and corruption. Thus, they get to avoid discussing the actual history of Israel, the United States and the Middle East. The lobby benefits from having robust power because one of its jobs is to raise funds -- and the image of a killer lobby opens a lot more pocketbooks than does the idea that both Israel and the United States are simply pursuing their geopolitical interests and that things would go on pretty much the same even without slick lobbying.
The great irony is that the critics of U.S. policy and the Israel lobby both want to believe in the same myth -- that great powers can be manipulated to harm themselves by crafty politicians. The British didn't get the United States into the world wars, and the Israelis aren't maneuvering the Americans into being pro-Israel. Beyond its ability to exert itself on small things, the Israel lobby is powerful in influencing Washington to do what it is going to do anyway. What happens next in Iraq is not up to the Israel lobby -- though it and the Saudi Embassy have a different story.
Wrap...
Our gutless wonders had best listen to Bill Moyers...
From the Backbone Campaign:
Citizens Aping Returning Congress?
Backbone Campaign & Code Pink Challenge Returning Representatives to Represent
WASHINGTON- September 1- Congress is polling at an 18% (Gallup 8-16-07) approval rating, more than 10 percentage points lower than that of 32% (Gallup 8-16-07) rating of a disintegrating, lame duck Bush Administration. Dissatisfaction with Congress's inability to effect Iraq policy and defund the occupation, their unwillingness to hold the current administration accountable, and their recent complicity on authorizing further domestic spying has their base and others throwing up their arms. With a "Throw the bums out" attitude gaining momentum across the country, many in Congress are likely to feel that their jobs can no longer be taken for granted.
As Congress returns from their August recess, members of these two progressive grassroots organizations will be greeting the returning members with "Gorilla theater" of a roving picket line, beginning outside the Capitol South metro station in Washington, DC Tuesday morning at 8 AM.
"We are not monkeying around," says Bill Moyer Executive Director of the Backbone Campaign. "This Congress has failed to live up to their oath of office, not to mention the mandate for change handed to them by voters in 2006. With their public approval rating in the sewer, we think it's about time they either represent or resign. Americans are sick of the state of affairs in this country. We demand a new strategy," Moyer continues.
According to Moyer that strategy would include:
Redeployment of funds from the Iraq war and occupation to diplomacy and reconstruction;
Replacing threats of bombing Iran with facilitating a regional Nuclear Free Zone;
Restoration of our civil liberties;
Setting a precedent of accountability for abuses by this rogue administration through impeachment;
Invigorating America with a rejuvenated, clean and verifiable election system, and investments in healthcare, education, and infrastructure for a green economy with living wage jobs.
"Unless Congress begins to put aside convoluted political calculus and start living up their oath of office they should expect to be fired by the American people in the coming election." Moyer concludes, "We have no more time for rubber stamps or spineless wimps - we'd be way better off with a bunch of chimps."
---------------x----------------
The Backbone Campaign and it's Progressive Government project awaken and inspire Americans to build a progressive movement, reclaim our government, and secure a future worthy of our children. They provide creative visibility and accountability tools to citizens and organizations, reward political courage, while propelling the progressive movement toward running the country by identifying and promoting leaders who articulate and champion a progressive agenda.
Wrap...
Citizens Aping Returning Congress?
Backbone Campaign & Code Pink Challenge Returning Representatives to Represent
WASHINGTON- September 1- Congress is polling at an 18% (Gallup 8-16-07) approval rating, more than 10 percentage points lower than that of 32% (Gallup 8-16-07) rating of a disintegrating, lame duck Bush Administration. Dissatisfaction with Congress's inability to effect Iraq policy and defund the occupation, their unwillingness to hold the current administration accountable, and their recent complicity on authorizing further domestic spying has their base and others throwing up their arms. With a "Throw the bums out" attitude gaining momentum across the country, many in Congress are likely to feel that their jobs can no longer be taken for granted.
As Congress returns from their August recess, members of these two progressive grassroots organizations will be greeting the returning members with "Gorilla theater" of a roving picket line, beginning outside the Capitol South metro station in Washington, DC Tuesday morning at 8 AM.
"We are not monkeying around," says Bill Moyer Executive Director of the Backbone Campaign. "This Congress has failed to live up to their oath of office, not to mention the mandate for change handed to them by voters in 2006. With their public approval rating in the sewer, we think it's about time they either represent or resign. Americans are sick of the state of affairs in this country. We demand a new strategy," Moyer continues.
According to Moyer that strategy would include:
Redeployment of funds from the Iraq war and occupation to diplomacy and reconstruction;
Replacing threats of bombing Iran with facilitating a regional Nuclear Free Zone;
Restoration of our civil liberties;
Setting a precedent of accountability for abuses by this rogue administration through impeachment;
Invigorating America with a rejuvenated, clean and verifiable election system, and investments in healthcare, education, and infrastructure for a green economy with living wage jobs.
"Unless Congress begins to put aside convoluted political calculus and start living up their oath of office they should expect to be fired by the American people in the coming election." Moyer concludes, "We have no more time for rubber stamps or spineless wimps - we'd be way better off with a bunch of chimps."
---------------x----------------
The Backbone Campaign and it's Progressive Government project awaken and inspire Americans to build a progressive movement, reclaim our government, and secure a future worthy of our children. They provide creative visibility and accountability tools to citizens and organizations, reward political courage, while propelling the progressive movement toward running the country by identifying and promoting leaders who articulate and champion a progressive agenda.
Wrap...
Monday, September 03, 2007
Dictating events through force...
From truthout.org :
Chris Hedges
The Next Quagmire
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/090307B.shtml
Chris Hedges writes for Truthdig: "We live in an age where dialogue is dismissed and empathy is suspect. We prefer the illusion that we can dictate events through force. It hasn't worked well in Iraq. It hasn't worked well in Afghanistan. And it won't work in Iran.
But those who once tried to reach out and understand, who developed expertise to explain the world to us and ourselves to the world, no longer have a voice in the new imperial project. We are instead governed and informed by moral and intellectual trolls."
[Use link above to continue reading]
Wrap...
Chris Hedges
The Next Quagmire
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/090307B.shtml
Chris Hedges writes for Truthdig: "We live in an age where dialogue is dismissed and empathy is suspect. We prefer the illusion that we can dictate events through force. It hasn't worked well in Iraq. It hasn't worked well in Afghanistan. And it won't work in Iran.
But those who once tried to reach out and understand, who developed expertise to explain the world to us and ourselves to the world, no longer have a voice in the new imperial project. We are instead governed and informed by moral and intellectual trolls."
[Use link above to continue reading]
Wrap...
Sunday, September 02, 2007
Middle class home foreclosures make scary neighborhoods....
From International Herald Tribune:
The fallout from foreclosures begins to engulf middle-class communities
By Nelson D. Schwartz Published: September 2, 2007
MAPLE HEIGHTS, Ohio: Tammi and Charles Eggleston never took out a risky mortgage, never borrowed more than they could afford and never missed a monthly payment on their neat, three-bedroom colonial home in the Cleveland suburbs. But that has not prevented them from getting caught in the undertow of the subprime mortgage mess now submerging this town.
Over the last 18 months, the Egglestons have watched one house after another on their street, Gardenview Drive, end up foreclosed and vacant.
Although lawns are still tidy and empty homes are not boarded up and stripped as they are in inner-city Cleveland, the Egglestons say Maple Heights no longer feels safe after dark.
Nor do they have the confidence they had when they moved in a decade ago that this is the ideal place to raise their 6-year-old twin girls, Sydney and Shelby. So, in May 2006, they put their home on the market in order to move closer to Tammi Eggleston's parents in another middle-class Cleveland suburb, Richmond Heights.
They have had no takers. Although they lowered the asking price to $99,000 from $109,000, no one has even come to look at it in more than six weeks.
"My heart panics every time I drive down the street and I see another for-sale sign," she says, pointing past the placards in front of her porch to others that dot surrounding yards like lawn furniture. "Some people on the street couldn't pay, so they just left. The competition to sell is just ridiculous."
It is a scene being repeated in cities and towns across America as loans that were made to borrowers with little or no credit history, many of whom could not even afford a down payment, fail in ever-growing numbers.
What was once a problem confined mostly to economically struggling areas is quickly becoming a national phenomenon. Last year, there were 1.2 million foreclosure filings in the United States, up 42 percent from 2005, according to RealtyTrac, a firm that analyzes such data.
http://www.iht.com:80/articles/2007/09/02/business/town.php?WT.mc_id=newsalert
[Use link above to continue reading]
Wrap...
The fallout from foreclosures begins to engulf middle-class communities
By Nelson D. Schwartz Published: September 2, 2007
MAPLE HEIGHTS, Ohio: Tammi and Charles Eggleston never took out a risky mortgage, never borrowed more than they could afford and never missed a monthly payment on their neat, three-bedroom colonial home in the Cleveland suburbs. But that has not prevented them from getting caught in the undertow of the subprime mortgage mess now submerging this town.
Over the last 18 months, the Egglestons have watched one house after another on their street, Gardenview Drive, end up foreclosed and vacant.
Although lawns are still tidy and empty homes are not boarded up and stripped as they are in inner-city Cleveland, the Egglestons say Maple Heights no longer feels safe after dark.
Nor do they have the confidence they had when they moved in a decade ago that this is the ideal place to raise their 6-year-old twin girls, Sydney and Shelby. So, in May 2006, they put their home on the market in order to move closer to Tammi Eggleston's parents in another middle-class Cleveland suburb, Richmond Heights.
They have had no takers. Although they lowered the asking price to $99,000 from $109,000, no one has even come to look at it in more than six weeks.
"My heart panics every time I drive down the street and I see another for-sale sign," she says, pointing past the placards in front of her porch to others that dot surrounding yards like lawn furniture. "Some people on the street couldn't pay, so they just left. The competition to sell is just ridiculous."
It is a scene being repeated in cities and towns across America as loans that were made to borrowers with little or no credit history, many of whom could not even afford a down payment, fail in ever-growing numbers.
What was once a problem confined mostly to economically struggling areas is quickly becoming a national phenomenon. Last year, there were 1.2 million foreclosure filings in the United States, up 42 percent from 2005, according to RealtyTrac, a firm that analyzes such data.
http://www.iht.com:80/articles/2007/09/02/business/town.php?WT.mc_id=newsalert
[Use link above to continue reading]
Wrap...
Spies on their own share of the internet....
From The New York Times:
Logged In and Sharing Gossip, er, Intelligence
By SCOTT SHANE
Published: September 2, 2007
AMERICA’S spies, like America’s teenagers, are secretive, talk in code and get in trouble if they’re not watched closely.
It’s hard to imagine spies logging on and exchanging “whuddups” with strangers, though. They’re just not wired that way. If networking is lifeblood to the teenager, it’s viewed with deep suspicion by the spy.
The intelligence agencies have something like networking in mind, though, as they scramble to adopt Web technologies that young people have already mastered in the millions. The idea is to try to solve the information-sharing problems inherent in the spy world — and blamed, most spectacularly, for the failure to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks.
In December, officials say, the agencies will introduce A-Space, a top-secret variant of the social networking Web sites MySpace and Facebook. The “A” stands for “analyst,” and where Facebook users swap snapshots, homework tips and gossip, intelligence analysts will be able to compare notes on satellite photos of North Korean nuclear sites, Iraqi insurgents and Chinese missiles.
A-Space will join Intellipedia, the spooks’ Wikipedia, where intelligence officers from all 16 American spy agencies pool their knowledge. Sixteen months after its creation, officials say, the top-secret version of Intellipedia has 29,255 articles, with an average of 114 new articles and more than 4,800 edits to articles added each workday.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/weekinreview/02shane.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all
[Use link above to continue reading]
Wrap...
Logged In and Sharing Gossip, er, Intelligence
By SCOTT SHANE
Published: September 2, 2007
AMERICA’S spies, like America’s teenagers, are secretive, talk in code and get in trouble if they’re not watched closely.
It’s hard to imagine spies logging on and exchanging “whuddups” with strangers, though. They’re just not wired that way. If networking is lifeblood to the teenager, it’s viewed with deep suspicion by the spy.
The intelligence agencies have something like networking in mind, though, as they scramble to adopt Web technologies that young people have already mastered in the millions. The idea is to try to solve the information-sharing problems inherent in the spy world — and blamed, most spectacularly, for the failure to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks.
In December, officials say, the agencies will introduce A-Space, a top-secret variant of the social networking Web sites MySpace and Facebook. The “A” stands for “analyst,” and where Facebook users swap snapshots, homework tips and gossip, intelligence analysts will be able to compare notes on satellite photos of North Korean nuclear sites, Iraqi insurgents and Chinese missiles.
A-Space will join Intellipedia, the spooks’ Wikipedia, where intelligence officers from all 16 American spy agencies pool their knowledge. Sixteen months after its creation, officials say, the top-secret version of Intellipedia has 29,255 articles, with an average of 114 new articles and more than 4,800 edits to articles added each workday.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/weekinreview/02shane.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all
[Use link above to continue reading]
Wrap...
Katrina screw-up timeline...
From truthout.org :
Windfall: How Conservatives, Contractors, and Developers Cashed In on Katrina
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/090207C.shtml
In Mother Jones, Jean Casella and James Ridgeway report on "a timeline of how disaster became opportunity" for the Bush administration and its allies.
[Use link above to continue reading]
Wrap...
Windfall: How Conservatives, Contractors, and Developers Cashed In on Katrina
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/090207C.shtml
In Mother Jones, Jean Casella and James Ridgeway report on "a timeline of how disaster became opportunity" for the Bush administration and its allies.
[Use link above to continue reading]
Wrap...
Saturday, September 01, 2007
Everything on Blackwater USA West...
From www.citizensoversight.org :
View videos published by Citizens' Oversight Projects. These videos include Blackwater related meetings, Covert Canyon tour, "Wind Zero" presentation, and others!
Blackwater Mercenary Camp - Blackwater USA, one of the largest private military contractors in the world, has proposed "Blackwater West" to be built in a valley just north of the small town of Potrero, in East San Diego County. Please visit the Project Page for all information related to this insane proposal.
[Use link above to continue reading]
Wrap...
View videos published by Citizens' Oversight Projects. These videos include Blackwater related meetings, Covert Canyon tour, "Wind Zero" presentation, and others!
Blackwater Mercenary Camp - Blackwater USA, one of the largest private military contractors in the world, has proposed "Blackwater West" to be built in a valley just north of the small town of Potrero, in East San Diego County. Please visit the Project Page for all information related to this insane proposal.
[Use link above to continue reading]
Wrap...
3-day war on Iran...
From Information Clearing House:
Pentagon 'Three-Day Blitz' Plan For Iran
By Sarah Baxter
THE Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians' military capability in three days, according to a national security expert.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18290.htm
***************************************************************
The War Criminal in the Living Room
By Paul Craig Roberts
The media is silent, Congress is absent, and Americans are distracted as George W. Bush openly prepares aggression against Iran. - US war doctrine has been altered to permit first strike nuclear attack on Iran and other non-nuclear countries.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18287.htm
Wrap...
Pentagon 'Three-Day Blitz' Plan For Iran
By Sarah Baxter
THE Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians' military capability in three days, according to a national security expert.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18290.htm
***************************************************************
The War Criminal in the Living Room
By Paul Craig Roberts
The media is silent, Congress is absent, and Americans are distracted as George W. Bush openly prepares aggression against Iran. - US war doctrine has been altered to permit first strike nuclear attack on Iran and other non-nuclear countries.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18287.htm
Wrap...
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