October 28th, 2005 in General

The whole picture

Patrick Cockburn, Independent journalist in Baghdad, issued this dispatch on October 26. The headline, “Bush and Blair say things are improving. It’s not true: they’re getting worse by the day”, sums it up:

“It is not true when George Bush, Tony Blair and Jack Straw say that things are improving. They are getting worse by the day. It was announced yesterday that Iraqis had voted in favour of the new constitution. No doubt this will be lauded in Washington and London as an encouraging glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.

“But viewed from Baghdad, there is something absurd about the idea that a new constitution – the rules of the game under which the state will be governed – should be taken so seriously abroad when nobody in Iraq obeys the law and in any case there is no state.

“Iraq is full of phoney milestones. The US government is congratulating itself this week on training 200,000 army, police and paramilitary forces. But half of the 80,000-strong Iraqi army consists of “ghost” battalions in which commanders pocket the salaries of non-existent troops.”

Read the whole article…and wonder why our media isn’t giving us the real picture.

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October 28th, 2005 in General

Making mistakes

Today’s story in the Sydney Morning Herald – a terrorism mistaken identity case – makes for disturbing reading. The facts of the incident are bad enough, but under the government’s proposed anti-terror laws, journalists would be unable to report any details.

Abuse of power is a virtual inevitability and accountability will be lost.

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October 27th, 2005 in General

Fresh bigotry

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for Israel to be “wiped off the map.”

“The skirmishes in the occupied land are part of a war of destiny. The outcome of hundreds of years of war will be defined in Palestinian land,” he said.
Worldwide condemnation for the comments has been swift. Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister said he wanted to “vigorously condemn the remarks made by Iran’s president. We are in the 21st century. Canada will never accept such hatred, intolerance and anti-Semitism. Never.”

The comments should be condemned in the strongest possible terms. They are anti-Semitic, vicious, counterproductive and immoral.

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October 27th, 2005 in General

"This government is more terrorist than the Maoists"

The Nepalese government engages in some good old fashioned state terrorism and Radio Free Nepal discusses a country that seems to be regularly ignored by the world media.
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October 27th, 2005 in General

Preaching ethics

This intriguing report, from October 21, is revealing:

“A Republican congressman criticized the State Department on Friday for allowing a U.S. lobbying firm to work for Sudan while the Bush administration is trying to tighten sanctions on the African country over the bloody conflict in its Darfur region.

“Rep. Frank Wolf of Virginia said he was “shocked” that the department granted a waiver from an order barring U.S. companies from doing business with Sudan. “This allows this guy to lobby for Sudan, which the Congress and the administration have said is complicit in genocide,” he said.”

Wolf should be shocked but it’s nothing new. The Washington Post reported in 2001 that Halliburton, Dick Cheney’s now former company, did business with Iran and Libya…and Iraq during the Saddam years:

“During last year’s presidential campaign, Richard B. Cheney acknowledged that the oil-field supply corporation he headed, Halliburton Co., did business with Libya and Iran through foreign subsidiaries. But he insisted that he had imposed a ‘firm policy’ against trading with Iraq.

“‘Iraq’s different,’ he said.

“According to oil industry executives and confidential United Nations records, however, Halliburton held stakes in two firms that signed contracts to sell more than $73 million in oil production equipment and spare parts to Iraq while Cheney was chairman and chief executive officer of the Dallas-based company.”

The US government preaches to the world about morality but if there is a buck to be made…

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October 27th, 2005 in General

A helping hand

The media ethics charity, MediaWise, argues that governments across Europe should assist journalists fleeing persecution and provide greater support. The report highlights the important work being done by NGOs and media unions across the continent.
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October 27th, 2005 in General

Stalling

Amira Hass, Haaretz, October 26:

“Will James Wolfensohn succeed where others have failed and cause Israel to release its grip on Palestinian freedom of movement?

“The Quartet’s special envoy on disengagement affairs didn’t mince words last week when he expressed his frustration and disappointment with the stalling of the talks on the matter of the crossing points and Palestinian movement.

“The Israeli policy of preventing freedom of movement for all the Palestinians and granting it, as a privilege, to a few began in 1991 (long before the suicide terror attacks). Israel has always known how to present this policy as a security “response.” However, this policy combines well with the Israeli plan to dismember the Palestinian territory that international resolutions have intended for a Palestinian state, i.e., the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, on the borders of June 4, 1967. The Israeli plan as it has been implemented since 1994 is effectively to cut off Gaza from the West Bank and allow the Palestinians in the West Bank to live in between the expanding Jewish settlement blocs, in a few enclaves, between which the transportation connection is subject to Israel’s mercies.”

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October 26th, 2005 in General

Milestone

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October 26th, 2005 in General

Living in fantasy land

Conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan, October 25:

“I have to say that as someone who trusted the administration not to consciously lie or mislead about their evidence for Saddam’s WMDs, I’d be pretty pissed if it turned out they did. We have no solid evidence for that, though. Yet.”

Sullivan’s unholy belief in the truthfulness of the American government is telling and naive in the extreme, but few conservative writers have been as transparent as Sullivan in documenting the Bush administration’s sanction of torture, rendition and growing Republication hatred of homosexuals. Check his blog for a man constantly challenging his own views and realising the cronyism and corruption at the heart of the world’s only superpower.

With the announcement today that 2000 American soldiers have died in Iraq – with many more injured and maimed and tens of thousands of Iraqis murdered – the US has asked journalists to not view the milestone as, er, a milestone.

U.S. Army Lt. Col. Steve Boylan, director of the “Coalition’s” combined press centre, has sent an email to reporters (note to readers: this is not satire masquerading as the US army):

“I ask that when you report on the events, take a moment to think about the effects on the families and those serving in Iraq. The 2,000 service members killed in Iraq supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom is not a milestone. It is an artificial mark on the wall set by individuals or groups with specific agendas and ulterior motives.

“Celebrate the daily milestones, the accomplishments they have secured and look to the future of a free and democratic Iraq and to the day that all of our troops return home to the heroes welcome they deserve.”

Boylan’s deluded propaganda should be seen for the folly that it is. No doubt, some pro-war news organisations will respect his request.

So where to from here? The International Institute for Strategic Studies has released a report that says American troops will likely remain for years to come, with little reduction of the 140,000 currently stationed there. The Iraqi army is, quite simply, incapable of independence.

The American people – and to a lesser extent the British and Australian populations – will not tolerate an extended and indefinite military commitment.

Now is the time to increase pressure on docile politicians thinking of withdrawal.

Australia’s proposed anti-terror laws may make opposition to illegal military operations a punishable offence, so let it be said once again: the Iraq quagmire has made us a greater terrorist target and has created the perfect breeding ground for Islamists with a grievance against the West and its arrogance. The defeat of America and its allies in Iraq is vital to ensure similiar acts are not carried out again.

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October 26th, 2005 in General

News bytes

- Tell me something I don’t know. Who knew stenography paid so well?

- The neo-cons are restless. Here’s Lawrence Kaplan, senior editor at The New Republic, discovering that freedom, democracy and roses won’t be coming any time soon in Iraq (perhaps he should have left his ideology at the door before and realised it was never going to happen):

“Gone is the hope that Iraq would be a liberal democratic beacon for the rest of the Arab world. Gone, too, is the hope that liberal democrats would triumph even within Iraq.”

- Brit Hume, Fox News commentator: “By historic standards, these casualties [2000 American dead in Iraq] are negligible.”

- An Australian playwright tackles the Palestinian issue.

- The Australian Federal Police assisted the Indonesian police in arresting nine Australians with drug possession and trafficking, leading inevitably to a possible death sentence. Australia should be against the death penalty in all cases, all the time, anywhere in the world.

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October 26th, 2005 in General

Book club

Ariel Sharon recommends a book.

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October 26th, 2005 in General

The cabal

Juan Cole examines the tangled web between the New York Times, Rupert Murdoch, a post 9/11 America and patriotism in the run-up to Iraq war:

“The NYT had no sources to speak of inside the Bush administration, a real drawback in covering Washington, because it was a left of centre newspaper in a political environment dominated by the Right. Miller had sources among the Neoconservatives, with whom she shared some key concerns (biological weapons, the threat of Muslim radicalism, etc.) So she could get the Washington “scoops.” And her perspective skewed Right in ways that could protect the NYT from charges that it was consistently biased against Bush. Of course, in retrospect, Bush’s world was a dangerous fantasy, and giving it space on the front page of the NYT just sullied the Grey Lady with malicious prevarications.”

And the price for such cosiness? Over 2000 American dead and tens of thousands of Iraqis murdered (Iraqi Body Count claims over 30,000 but the figure is likely to be much higher.)

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