ATTACKING IRAN FOR ISRAEL?

By Ray McGovern, The Consortium













Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is at her mushroom-cloud hyperbolic best, and this time Iran is the target.

Her claim last week that “the policies of Iran constitute perhaps the single greatest challenge to American security interests in the Middle East and around the world” is simply too much of a stretch.

To gauge someone’s reliability, one depends largely on prior experience. Sadly, Rice’s credibility suffers in comparison with that of the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohammed El Baradei, who insists there is no evidence of an active nuclear weapons program in Iran.

If this sounds familiar, ElBaradei said the same thing about Iraq before it was attacked. But three days before the invasion, American nuclear expert Dick Cheney told NBC’s Tim Russert, “I think Mr. ElBaradei is, frankly, wrong.”

Here we go again. As in the case of Iraq, U.S. intelligence has been assiduously looking for evidence of a nuclear weapons program in Iran; but, alas, in vain.

Burned by the bogus “proof” adduced for Iraq—the uranium from Africa, the aluminum tubes—the administration has shied away from fabricating nuclear-related “evidence.”

Are Bush and Cheney again relying on the Rumsfeld dictum, that “the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence?” There is a simpler answer.

Cat Out of the Bag

The Israeli ambassador to the U.S., Sallai Meridor, let the cat out of the bag while speaking at the American Jewish Committee luncheon on Oct. 22. In remarks paralleling those of Rice, Meridor said Iran is the chief threat to Israel.

Heavy on the chutzpah, he served gratuitous notice on Washington that effectively countering Iran’s nuclear ambitions will take a “united United States in this matter,” lest the Iranians conclude, “come January ’09, they have it their own way.”

Meridor stressed that “very little time” remained to keep Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. How so?

Even were there to be a nuclear program hidden from the IAEA, no serious observer expects Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon much sooner than five years from now.

Truth be told, every other year since 1995 U.S. intelligence has been predicting that Iran could have a nuclear weapon in about five years.

It has become downright embarrassing — like a broken record, punctuated only by so-called “neo-conservatives” like James Woolsey, who last summer publicly warned that the U.S. may have no choice but to bomb Iran in order to halt its nuclear weapons program.

Woolsey, self-described “anchor of the Presbyterian wing of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs,” put it this way: “I’m afraid that within, well, at worst, a few months; at best, a few years; they [the Iranians] could have the bomb.”

The day before Meridor’s unintentionally revealing remark, Vice President Dick Cheney reiterated, “We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”

That remark followed closely on President George W. Bush’s apocalyptic warning of World War III, should Tehran acquire the knowledge to produce a nuclear weapon.

The Israelis appear convinced they have extracted a promise from Bush and Cheney that they will help Israel nip Iran’s nuclear program in the bud before they leave office.

Never mind that there is no evidence that the Iranian nuclear program is any more weapons-related than the one Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld persuaded President Gerald Ford to approve in 1976 for Westinghouse and General Electric to install for the Shah (price tag $6.4 billion).

With 200-300 nuclear weapons in its arsenal, the Israelis enjoy a nuclear monopoly in the Middle East. They mean to keep that monopoly and are pressing for the U.S. to obliterate Iran’s fledgling nuclear program.

Anyone aware of Iran’s ability to retaliate realizes this would bring disaster to the whole region and beyond. But this has not stopped Cheney and Bush before.

The rationale is similar to that revealed by Philip Zelikow, confidant of Condoleezza Rice, former member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, and later executive director of the 9/11 Commission. On Oct. 10, 2002, Zelikow told a crowd at the University of Virginia:

“Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I’ll tell you what I think the real threat is—it’s the threat to Israel. And this is the threat that dare not speak its name...the American government doesn’t want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell.”

Harbinger?

The political offensive against Iran coalesced as George W. Bush began his second term, with Cheney out in front pressing for an attack on its nuclear-related facilities.

During a Jan. 20, 2005, interview with MSNBC, just hours before Bush’s second inauguration, Cheney put Iran “right at the top of the list of trouble spots,” and noted that negotiations and UN sanctions might fail to stop Iran’s nuclear program.

Cheney then added with remarkable nonchalance:

“Given the fact that Iran has a stated policy that their objective is the destruction of Israel, the Israelis might decide to act first, and let the rest of the world worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess afterwards.”

Does this not sound like the so-called “Cheney plan” being widely discussed in the media today? An Israeli air attack; Iranian retaliation; Washington springing to the defense of its “ally” Israel?

A big fan of preemption, Cheney has done little to disguise his attraction to Israel’s penchant to preempt, such as Israel's air strike against the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak in 1981.

Ten years after the Osirak attack, then-Defense Secretary Cheney reportedly gave Israeli Maj. Gen. David Ivri, commander of the Israeli Air Force, a satellite photo of the Iraqi nuclear reactor destroyed by U.S.-built Israeli aircraft. On the photo Cheney penned, “Thanks for the outstanding job on the Iraqi nuclear program in 1981.”

Nothing is known of Ivri’s response, but it is a safe bet it was along the lines of “we could not have done it without U.S. help.”

Indeed, though the U.S. officially condemned the attack (the Reagan administration was supporting Saddam Hussein’s Iraq at that point), the intelligence shared by the Pentagon with the Israelis made a major contribution to the success of the Israeli raid.

With Vice President Cheney calling the shots now, similar help may be forthcoming prior to any Israeli air attack on Iran.

It is no secret that former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon began to press for an early preemptive strike on Iran in 2003, claiming that Iran was likely to obtain a nuclear weapon much earlier than what U.S. intelligence estimated.

Sharon made a habit of bringing his own military adviser to brief Bush with aerial photos of Iranian nuclear-related installations.

More troubling still, in the fall of 2004, retired Gen. Brent Scowcroft, who served as national security adviser to President George H.W. Bush and as Chair of the younger Bush’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, made some startling comments to the Financial Times.

A master of discretion with the media, Scowcroft nonetheless saw fit to make public his conclusion that Sharon had Bush “mesmerized;” that he had our president “wrapped around his little finger.”

Needless to say, Scowcroft was immediately removed from the advisory board.

An Unstable Infatuation

George W. Bush first met Sharon in 1998, when the Texas governor was taken on a tour of the Middle East by Matthew Brooks, then executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition. Sharon was foreign minister and took Bush on a helicopter tour over the Israeli occupied territories.

An Aug. 3, 2006, McClatchy wire story by Ron Hutcheson quotes Matthew Brooks:

“If there’s a starting point for George W. Bush’s attachment to Israel, it’s the day in late 1998, when he stood on a hilltop where Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount, and, with eyes brimming with tears, read aloud from his favorite hymn, ‘Amazing Grace.’ He was very emotional. It was a tear-filled experience. He brought Israel back home with him in his heart. I think he came away profoundly moved.”

Bush made gratuitous but revealing reference to that trip at the first meeting of his National Security Council on Jan. 30, 2001.

After announcing he would abandon the decades-long role of “honest broker” between Israelis and Palestinians and would tilt pronouncedly toward Israel, Bush said he would let Sharon resolve the dispute however he saw fit.

At that point he brought up his trip to Israel with the Republican Jewish Coalition and the flight over Palestinian camps, but there was no sense of concern for the lot of the Palestinians.

In Ron Suskind’s Price of Loyalty, then-Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, who was at the NSC meeting, quotes Bush: “Looked real bad down there,” the president said with a frown. Then Bush said it was time to end America’s efforts in the region. “I don’t see much we can do over there at this point,” he said.

O’Neill also reported that Colin Powell, the newly minted but nominal secretary of state, was taken completely by surprise at this nonchalant jettisoning of longstanding policy.

Powell demurred, warning that this would unleash Sharon and “the consequences could be dire, especially for the Palestinians.” But according to O’Neill, Bush just shrugged, saying, “Sometimes a show of strength by one side can really clarify things.” O’Neill says that Powell seemed “startled.”

It is a safe bet that the vice president was in no way startled.

What Now?

The only thing that seems to be standing in the way of a preemptive attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities is foot-dragging by the U.S. military.

It seems likely that the senior military have told the president and Cheney: This time let us brief you on what to expect on Day 2, on Week 4, on Month 6—and on the many serious things Iran can do to Israel, and to us in Iraq and elsewhere.

CENTCOM commander Admiral William Fallon is reliably reported to have said, “We are not going to do Iran on my watch.” And in an online Q-and-A, award-winning Washington Post reporter Dana Priest recently spoke of a possible “revolt” if pilots were ordered to fly missions against Iran. She added:

“This is a little bit of hyperbole, but not much. Just look at what Gen. [George] Casey, the Army chief, has said...that the tempo of operations in Iraq would make it very hard for the military to respond to a major crisis elsewhere. Beside, it's not the ‘war’ or ‘bombing’ part that's difficult; it's the morning after and all the days after that. Haven't we learned that (again) from Iraq?”

How about Congress? Could it act as a brake on Bush and Cheney? Forget it.

If the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) with its overflowing coffers supports an attack on Iran, so will most of our spineless lawmakers. Already, AIPAC has succeeded in preventing legislation that would have required the president to obtain advance authorization for an attack on Iran.

And for every Admiral Fallon, there is someone like the inimitable, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney, a close associate of James Woolsey and other “neo-cons.”

The air campaign “will be easy,” says McInerney, a Fox News pundit who was a rabid advocate of shock and awe over Iraq. “Ahmadinejad has nothing in Iran that we can’t penetrate,” he adds, and several hundred bombers, including stealth bombers, will be enough to do the trick:

“Forty-eight hours duration, hitting 2,500 aim points to take out their nuclear facilities, their air defense facilities, their air force, their navy, their Shahab-3 retaliatory missiles, and finally their command and control. And then let the Iranian people take their country back.”

And the rationale? Since it will be a hard sell to promote the idea, against all evidence, of an imminent threat that Iran is about to have a nuclear weapon, the White House PR machine is likely to focus on other evidence showing that Iran is supporting those “killing our troops in Iraq.”

The scary thing is that Cheney is more likely to use the McInerneys and Woolseys than the Fallons and Caseys in showing the president how easily it can be done.

Madness

It is not as though we have not had statesmen wise enough to warn us against foreign entanglements, and about those who have difficulty distinguishing between the strategic interests of the United States and those of other nations, even allies:

“A passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation facilitates the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, infuses into one the enmities of the other, and betrays the former into participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification.”
(George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796)

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OTHER PEOPLE’S LIVES

by Malik Isasis























As the Republicans find themselves in the political dumpster they are fingering through Bush’s bag of tricks, showing how tough they are with other people’s lives. The Republican Party are in the lab working tirelessly to create the next Frankenstein monster. Meanwhile, the corporate media goose steps along with the Republicans as they shamelessly promote the next rape (see here and here).

The Republican Party has opened the windows from their dark lair and commanded the flying monkeys to do whatever it takes to win the next elections for the Republicans and their conservative cabal. The neocon political mercenaries fly high over the masses dropping shit-bombs to divert attention away from the inept handling of the Iraq occupation by picking on Iran. The American public appears wide-awake and is not being fooled by the trickery. Baghdad is covered in blood and destruction and the American public has taken notice. After Hurricane Katrina, America saw the Bush Administration for who they really are…frauds. It’s like they create crises, in order to pretend to be doing something about them. The Bush Administration’s and the neocons’ one-act play has run its course and they look oxymoronic, with more emphases placed on moron as they recite tired and hacked slogans to produce fear.

They’ve tapped the well of fear too often, leaving Americans fear-fatigued and skeptical of the false prophets of Capitalism and their Gears of War and Destruction. The level of fear that was created by Bush and Co. after September 11, 2001 and through two wars and now two occupations was not sustainable, but the Republicans are still in the trenches with forked sticks looking for any signs of fresh fear to be tapped.

Followers Not Leaders

What is interesting about the Republican Party is the dept of their delusion. They have become so septic and foul that they don’t even try to hide the contempt that they have for the American people.

Since the Democratic congress swept into the Congress, the Republicans have maintained their K-9 fidelity to Bush’s twisted morality. The Republicans will follow the Pied Piper of Death, George Bush right off the cliff like rats. It is never about the people with the Despotic Republican Party, its power for the sake of power and that means death for the sake of wealth and influence. Other people’s lives are the commodity of the Republican Party. They are snake oil salesmen who sale racist sympathy to the xenophobic, a right to life to pro-life activists, and tax breaks for the middle class. And yet the only entity that benefits when Republicans’ are in power are corporations and their unfettered access to the federal government’s resources.

Republicans with the help of a weak and willful Democratic Party have successfully allowed the corporations to set up an indentured servant class. We are born into debt. If we get injured or sick we accrue more debt from the medical bills. If we go to college we graduate in debt. Since we are in debt, we get credit cards to put ourselves further in debt. Before we know it, we are owned by a corporate entity such as Master Card. We are slaves and don’t even know it.

The False Prophet

Corporations pulls the strings like Geppetto and the marionettes in the political theatre dance and distract so the American people can’t see the strings.

Who stands to benefit from another war and occupation, the American people or American corporations? It is not their families who sacrifice their lives. Bush has never made a sacrifice, but he would surely sacrifice your life to please the False Prophets.

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ARAB WHISPERERS

by Malik Isasis























Israel has shut off the power in the Gaza Strip in a response to Qassam rocket attacks from across the Gaza Strip. The Israeli government continues its campaign of 10,000 eyes for an eye, collectively punishing the whole of the Palestinian population to bring them undercontrol.

Another form of sanctions that will be utilized is significantly cutting the volume of fuel, particularly gasoline, allowed into the Gaza Strip.

I find the total subjugation of the Palestinian people abhorrent. Particularly as the collective punishment by Israel against the Palestinian people e.g. bulldozing homes, bombing campaigns, and outright occupation hasn’t worked in the past. The strategy of overreacting isn’t meant to work. The strategy is to break the Palestinians’ will and for demands of statehood and that way, Israel can hold on to the land it has already stolen.

The Brethren

The neoconservatives in Israel’s Likud Party, for instance Benjamin Netanyahu have been on a non-stop campaign to convince not the American public, who gives a shit about them, but American officials in both the Republican and Democratic Parties, that Iran is a nuclear threat not only to Israel but the Unites States as well. The Israeli neocons have successfully triangulated the United States into an illegal invasion and Occupation of Iraq, a bombing campaign in Lebanon, and now a build up to war with Iran. American and Israeli neocons work in tandem to deceive both American and Israeli citizenry, through a campaign of dehumanizing Arab people, and discrediting progressive opposition by making Arabs and Muslim (and now Persian) people monsters.

George Bush has taken Israel’s recipe for disaster and has created his very own upside down cake. Now, the United States has its very own country of occupied Arabs its government is trying to domesticate through pure, unadulterated violence.

Semitism

The complete arrogance, and white supremacist policies of Israel is pathetic as they show the world how to domesticate unarmed, broken infrastructure, and military less Arab people. What’s more, is that the world stands by giving Israel a freehand so as not to seem anti-Semitic for the cultural and slow-burn genocide or democide that is occurring in Palestine against the Palestinians.

As Arabs are Semitic people too, it’s anti-Semitic for the world to stand by and do absolutely nothing, right?

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The Imperial Presidency

by Ralph Nader, Common Dreams























Mired in the disastrous Iraq quagmire, opposed by a majority of Americans, George W. Bush has reached new depths of reckless, belligerent bellowing. At a recent news conference, he volunteered that he told our allies that if they’re “interested in avoiding World War III,” Iran must be prevented from both developing a nuclear weapon or having “the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.”

To what level of political insanity has this Washington Caesar descended? Only two countries can start World War III-Russia and the United States. Is Bush saying that if Russia, presently opposed to military action against Iran, persists with its position, Bush may risk World War III? If not, why is this law-breaking warmonger, looking for another war for American GIs to fight, while his military-age daughters bask in the celebrity lime light?

Why is he using such catastrophic language?

Surely he does not think Iran could start World War III. His own intelligence agencies say that, even assuming that the international inspectors are wrong and Iran is moving toward developing the “knowledge” of such weapons, it can’t build its first such weapon before 3 to 5 years at the earliest.

Why would a regime ruling an impoverished country risk suicide, surrounded as it is by countries armed to the nuclear teeth, such as Israel and the United States? This nation of nearly 80 million people hardly needs to be reminded that the U.S. overthrew its popular premier in 1953, installing for the next 27 years the brutal regime of the Shah.

They recall that President Reagan and his Vice President, George Herbert Walker Bush urged, funded and equipped Saddam Hussein in his invasion of Iran-a nation that has not invaded any country in over 250 years-which took around 700,000 Iranian lives.

Moreover, the undeniable historical record shows that U.S. companies received licenses from the Department of Commerce, under Reagan, to ship Saddam the raw materials necessary to make chemical and biological weapons. Saddam used such lethal chemical weapons, with the tolerance of Reagan and Rumsfeld, on Iranians to devastating effect in terms of lives lost.

Then George W. Bush labels Iran a member of the “axis of evil” along with Iraq, ignoring a serious proposal by Iran in 2003 for negotiations, and shows what his language means by invading Iraq.

The authoritarian Iranian government is frightened enough to hurl some defiant rhetoric back at Washington and widen its perimeter defense. Seymour Hersh, the topflight investigative reporter for the New Yorker magazine has written numerous articles on how the crowding of Iran, including infiltrating its interior, has become an obsession of the messianic militarist in the White House.

The Pentagon is more cautious, worrying about our already drained Army and the absence of any military strategy and readiness for many consequences that would follow Bush’s “bombs away” mentality.

Then there is the matter of the Democrats in Congress. After their costly fumble on Iraq, the opposition Party should make it very constitutionally clear, as recommended by former New York Governor, Mario Cuomo in a recent op-ed, that there can be no funded attacks on any country without a Congressional declaration of war, as explicitly required by the framers of our Constitution.

But the Democrats are too busy surrendering to other Bush demands, whether unconstitutional, above the law or just plain marinated in corporate greed. Some of this obeisance was all too clear in the Democrats questioning of Bush’s nominee for Attorney General, Michael B. Mukasey.

After the two days of hearings, no Democrat has yet announced a vote against Mukasey, even after he evaded questions on torture and argued for the inherent power of the President to act contrary to the laws of the land if he unilaterally believes he has the inherent constitutional authority to do so.

This position aligns Mukasey with the imperial views of Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft and Gonzales on the “unitary Executive.” In short, reminiscent of the divine right of Kings, the forthcoming Attorney General believes Bush can say that ‘he is the law’ regardless of Congress and the judiciary.

After two recent lead editorials demonstrating its specific exasperation over the Democrats’ kowtowing to the White House, the New York Times added a third on October 20, 2007 titled “With Democrats Like These…” The editorial recounted the ways Democrats, especially in the Senate, have caved on critical constitutional and statutory safeguards regarding the Bush-Cheney policies and practices of spying on Americans without judicial approval and accountability.

Accusing the Democrats of “the politics of fear,” the Times concluded: “It was bad enough having a one-party government when the Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of Congress. But the Democrats took over, and still the one-party system continues.”

There is more grist coming for the Times’ editorial mill. Last week, the first African-American chair of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, Charles Rangel (D-NY), declared that Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson, Jr., fresh from Wall Street, had persuaded him, during a decade of increasing record profits, to lower the porous corporate income tax rate from 35% to 25%.

“We can live with that,” Chairman Rangel declared.

Would the working families in his District, who would be paying a higher tax rate on their modest income, agree?

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The Difference Between Black Brazil and Black U.S.

by Italo Ramos, Black Agenda Report
















African Americans sometimes embarrass themselves, often without know it, by assuming that others from the Diaspora see the world in the same way as themselves. Blacks from other nations are also frequently puzzled and confused by U.S. Black behavior, and even the concept of Blackness that prevails in the United States. Afro-Brazilian journalist Italo Ramos shares his notebook of impressions on the ways being Black - and the assumptions of whites - are different in the two countries. One example: in Brazil, affirmative action in education is spreading like wildfire, while in the U.S. it is under whithering assault. The author explores the reasons why.

In the 16th Century, the colonizers that went to Africa came from the same continent, a vast and diverse Europe, as we know. But, despite their different origins and cultures, they had two things in common. First, their two main motivations: 1) to pillage free natural resources; and 2) to appropriate free labor. Second: they thought they had the right to do these things, because, in their minds, they were superior human beings. This is a history that didn't change, as racist whites have the same mindset even today about pillage and slavery.

Although their motivations were the same, European colonizers couldn't escape their cultural differences, and so, the resulting contemporary racial relations in two countries, Brazil and the US, couldn't be more different. Today, the American newspapers' editions, as they report the contemporary history of US racial questions, are full of very good examples of these two radically different streams of racial consciousness. (In fact, the daily editions are, themselves, one of the big differences, because it is not so easy to find news about black and white differences in Brazilian newspapers.)

From reading American newspapers. I discovered that Mr. Juan Williams, a correspondent, news analyst and writer, wrote an article complaining that he has been attacked since he published a book about racial issues, that holds today's civil rights leaders accountable for serious problems inside black America. He went on to say that "75% of black America is taking advantage of 50 years of new opportunities...to create the largest black middle class in history...."

Now and then, the businessman and former University of California Regent Ward Connerly appears in the pages proclaiming satisfaction because "the demise of affirmative action in America is fast approaching."

Then came all the racial viciousness at Los Angeles' Laugh Factory with Michael Richard, followed by the idea of banning the "N" word. In this particular case, Noam Chonsky, the linguist, certainly would approve this movement, as he, more than anyone else, knows the dangerous power of cultural and political domination the language has.

More recently, I read an article written by Vikram Amar and Richard H. Sander, two professors from UC Davis School of Law and UCLA, respectively. They call our attention to what they called the "mismatch effect" - the possibility that Affirmative Action (AA) is not functioning to blacks benefit. Citing some researchers, they say that "50% of the black law students end up in the bottom 10th of their classes...." In Brazil, on the contrary, the students with AA help, are at the first rank of their classes, ahead of white students. So, white people cannot claim that AA can be bad for blacks. Instead, they say that it will be bad for the whole society, by separating people by color and, thus, "creating a racist country."

All this reminds me of five years ago, when I first came to Los Angeles intending to do some research on racial relations, and had my first shocking personal experience of the differences I am writing about. Walking down Sunset Boulevard, I was surprised by a white, slightly pink and widely smiling old lady who greeted me with: "Oh, you're good-looking! How are you doing, today?," she asked. I'm not so naïve as to suppose that she wanted an answer, so, while silently smiling back, my memory was free to send me back to my country, where an old white lady in the streets of Rio de Janeiro or Sao Paulo would never have greeted me like that. And I thought: Well, as I know I'm not that good-looking, maybe she is just a racist feeling vulnerable by my black appearance and trying to determine if I am really a threat, by observing my reaction to her greetings. Was I right? Or maybe she was just a liberal white woman. Well, I will never know.

But there is one thing I do know. In that old lady's attitude there was something I see in many whites, in the predominantly white community where I live, in Brazil. It is something too charming, extremely pleasant, excessively easy, that always makes me uncomfortably distrustful. This something is artificially forged by education, by politeness - the kind of civilized behavior that prevented the old lady from being gratuitously hostile or, at least, ignoring my existence. In fact, a kind of hypocrisy. But living in LA for some months every year, I quickly learned that those attitudes can be seen as a sign of education, yes, but must not be confused with liberalism.

Reading all this news about race in the US, more than just to learn about American racial complexity, I could make sense of how big the differences are between Brazil and the US, in terms of racial questions. Here are some of them:

All the space taken up in newspapers to debate black "affairs" would be unbelievable in Brazil. As a matter of fact, the media, in general, thinks and acts as if Brazil is a "racial democracy." So, for them, the work done by our black movement - which is growing although still weak, considering the huge weight of our racism - is an antipatriotic attempt to import American-style racial hate.

We don't blame national black leaders for inefficiency or inaccuracy, because we don't have any. There are so many blacks in Brazil that to be anti-black is the same as being against gravity, as they are everywhere. But without leadership, they are not organized, not mobilized and, just like gravity, not a force, compared to the American black movement. We have some black leaders in local communities, but none of them nationally known. Our greatest leader, Zumbi dos Palmares, fought against slavery, which ended one hundred years ago. Today, we have some black politicians, in the Congress, fighting for laws to benefit black population. And we have some black secretaries in the government, like the singer Gilberto Gil. But they don't lead any national black organization or movement.

In the US, black leaders may commit errors, not doing something they should or not doing anything to stop some abuses, but, at least in principle, black people believe in them as honest individuals. In Brazil, black people always look at an emerging leader suspiciously, believing that he is not sincere and only wants to take personal advantage based on his race. So, if someone black wants to run for a political position, it is better not to ask for votes saying "I'm a black man and will fight for racial progress," because no one will vote for him.

Brazil has the second largest black population in the world, only after Nigeria. Still, black history is a very recent discipline in schools. The country is considered one of the most unequal societies, where blacks are 90% in the poorest classes. But, nonetheless, we don't attack government programs that benefit black people, because we don't have them on such a large scale as the US has. And they are new programs, as almost everything done to benefit blacks has come in recent years.

Affirmative Action is a very new expression in Brazil, borrowed from the US vocabulary. It started being practiced in 2003, not in any federal institution, but by the initiative of the Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, with a quota of 40% for black students. And while in the US AA is being more and more contested and losing its strength, in Brazil, today, only four years after being adopted, it is a volcano, expelling quotas around the whole country. Americans can say it is not the best kind of AA, but it is what Brazilian black people are depending on to go to university. And in 2007, there are 40 universities adopting the quota system.

We don't have any part of the society taking advantage of new opportunities. First, because new opportunities are very few; second, because we don't have a black middle class. Blacks amount to 49% of a population of 180 million people, but it is impossible to create a middle class without education and with salaries 51% less than the salaries of whites.

We never had a Ku Klux Klan, but until today we have thousands of Samuel H. Bowers (the assumed former KKK leader who died in prison) in many owners of industries, commercial shops, hotels, and restaurants, ready to discriminate against black people at the entrance.

As anyone can see, these are very important differences, as they show how little black consciousness there is in Brazil. But there is one that is the biggest.

The most significant aspect to distinguish Brazilian and American racism, in its most generalized form, is the concrete nature of American racism, in contrast with the subjective character, the fluid state, the invisibility of Brazil's. The difference is that, in the US, nobody would dare to deny its existence, but in Brazil, racism is the essence of a substantive very...abstract. For a massive majority in Brazilian society, it just doesn't exist. For many blacks, too. But, more fantastic than that: At the same time it is invisible, it is naturally practiced by the majority of the white population. And they don't even notice what they are doing.

There are two reasons for me to list invisibility as the most significant difference between American and Brazilian racism: First, because invisibility is a secular, regular, ordinary custom, the most common form through which discrimination spreads among the population against black people. Brazilian society practices "non-existent" racism, as part of a collective bad character of Brazilian moral life. And its main property is to be diffuse, underground, disguised, treacherous and, so, very difficult to combat. How does one fight against a ghost? In general, Brazilian society believes so little in the existence of racism that some white people get offended when confronted with their own racist practices, as they like to say and believe that they are liberals. The second reason: being so, it is the best example to show how deep racism is in Brazilian whites. It is so entrenched in everyday life that nobody who is white will bother about being polite, educated, with Black people. We all know that, in the US, blacks sometimes are "invisible," but, in Brazil, invisibility is the real racism.

The millions of signs of racism in schools, at work or in the streets - the common use of the word "crioulo" is a good example - mean so little that the latest book, written this year, about racial questions, has the title "Nao Somos Racistas" (We Are Not Racists). And I keep thinking that something makes it necessary to write that book.

It is not that white Brazilian society is all racist. Of course, there are many that take advantage of discrimination, but who don't hate black people and don't think they are inferior. These ones are opportunists, like the cheap thief that takes our wallet while we're not looking. And there is that majority thinking that racism doesn't exist. These ones can be sincere, and I would dare to say innocent. The problem is that black people have failed in giving white Brazilians the real image of the world they live in. There are some attempts, mainly on the academic level, but without the necessary frequency and wide national repercussions. One of the most recent was given by a professor at the Universidade do Rio de Janeiro, the economist and sociologist Marcelo Paixao. He published his dissertation in 2004, with some data proving, once more, that the color of poverty is black. That is not a new fact, but he exposed it in a very surprising and intelligent way. He split Brazilian society in two parts, black and white, and applied to them, separately, the human development program launched by the UN in 1990 to measure the quality of life in 173 countries - income per capita, life expectancy, and scholarship. This index, that has "Happiness Index" as its nickname, was created by the Nobel Prize laureate American economist Paul Samuelson, in the 1970s, as the social counterpart of the National Growth Product (NGP), which measures economic development. According to the UN, in 2002, Brazil, as a whole, was in 63rd place, one step behind Namibia. Paixao's two countries, one white one black, were compared, and the result is that if Brazil were a country with only white people, it would be in 44th place. If it were populated only with blacks, it would be the 105th. Paixao's study goes on, showing that between 1992 and 2001, while the number of Brazilian poor people decreased by 5 million, the number of poor black people increased by 500,000, demonstrating that, while the whites got richer, the blacks got poorer.

The biggest Brazilian university, Universidade de Sao Paulo (USP), as its name says, is located in the country's richest state, with a population of more than 30 million. Although the state's black population is 27,4%, the black students at USP are only 1,4%. In 2005, USP adopted a quota for black students in the masters programs of its law school. But it was the Ford Foundation that proposed it and gave the money to be used for scholarships. So, if there is the money, why not?

Personally, I don't think that Mr. Juan Williams is a sellout, as his critics used to call him. On the contrary, considering all he has written, he is a good black man. But there are two things I don't understand in his thoughts. First: When he suggests that many black people are capable of helping themselves, as a black man, he is legitimizing the white racist arguments against Affirmative Action. Why does he do that? Well, maybe that is why he is being attacked, because, if "75% of black Americans are taking advantages of 50 years of new opportunities," it is also true that there is a large number of blacks in need of them in the other 25%, and so, his mathematics becomes a very difficult social equation. Second: When he pinpoints education as a pre-requirement to achieve racial progress, what is he thinking racial progress is? My point is: On the white side of society, education does not seem able to cure racism; instead, it simply gives to white persons a hypocritical, insincere attitude. If so, education cannot prevent black people from being a target of racism, too. So, where is the progress? Is education only a shield to protect black people against poverty and discrimination, or is it so effective that is capable of assuring racial progress? After all, Hitler was surrounded by very educated people. Well, if we don't put education in its place, we'll be at risk of creating a society with undesirable black families and workers, and full of white educated racists just like the Third Reich was. Education is very important, who can deny it? But racism is a behavioral disturbance, located in the moral terrain, although, in the whole of Mr. Williams' article we cannot find the word morality one single time. That might go without saying, but, maybe, that's another reason why he is being attacked.

As we Brazilians don't have another good example, the adoption of AA in education is the first step in Brazil to follow the path the US has been taking all these years, since the 60s. But, being such a different society, my question is: are we going the right way?

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COWBOY UP

by Malik Isasis






















George W. Bush in a press conference on Wednesday, October 17, 2007 came out as petulant as ever, ridiculing the press for asking questions. The press continued to lick his ass like a lollipop as they have over the past 7 years and he still treats them like the paper he uses to wipe his ass. He has shown his contempt toward them, as well as the American people by telling us not to believe our eyes and ears. To Bush we are what is left behind in his toilet bowl.


During the press conference as usual with this character, flies flew out of his mouth from the death of the truth that lay rotting in the back of his throat. This pathological liar lies every time he opens his mouth and the press just giggles nervously. The dog and pony show is shameful, but neither party has shame as they shuck and jive with one another as if something meaningful is happening.

World War III

"We've got a leader in Iran who has announced that he wants to destroy Israel," [Bush] he said. "So I've told people that, if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon."

85% of communication is body language. Bush smiled as he discussed the possibility of World War III with Iran. He smiled as he talk about Blackwater. (currently under investigation for murdering Iraqi civilians) He stated that “a firm like Blackwater provides a valuable service, they protect people’s lives.”

WASHINGTON -- President George W. Bush said Wednesday that the White House is "making it very clear" to Turkey not to launch a cross-border military strike against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq.

"We don't think it's in their interest to send more troops in," Bush said at a news conference.

Now that Turkey wants to invade Northern Iraq for a bombing in south Turkey, Bush has stated that it is not a good idea. He completely has no self-awareness of the paradoxes that dribble out of his foul mouth. He is currently discussing a possible plan of World War III, yet he is warning Turkey not to invade Occupied Iraq.

The corporate media leaves Bush’s press conference and cover him as they report back to America by making him appear much more knowledgeable than he actually is.

Blackwater

WASHINGTON (AP) — A State Department review of private security guards for diplomats in Iraq is unlikely to recommend firing Blackwater USA over the deaths of 17 Iraqis last month, but the company probably is on the way out of that job, U.S. officials said.

Reporter: Are you satisfied with their performance and how are you going to satisfy yourself?

Bush: I will be uh, anxious to see uh, the uh, analysis of their performance. Uh, there’s a lot of studyin’ goin’ on inside Iraq and out as to whether or not people violated rules of engagement—I will tell you though that a firm like Blackwater provides a valuable service. They protect people’s lives and I uh, uh and I appreciate the sacrifice the Blackwater employees have made…”

If you strike out all the bullshit from Bush’s exchange with the reporter on Blackwater and focus on “Blackwater provides a valuable service” you’d understand that Bush has communicated that nothing would happened to Blackwater for the atrocities committed against Iraqi people. The corporate whores went along with it, because it’s what they do.

Responsibility

Bush laid all of his policy failure in the laps of the Democrats. The Democrats like the press, gives Bush cover and in return he fucks them over. They keep hoping Bush will do the right thing even in the face of overwhelming evidence that Bush is sociopath.

The Democrats although happily accepting Bush’s charges, do not accept responsibility of impeaching Bush, or ending the Occupation Of Iraq. Instead, they would rather be safe because of the eternalized fear of not being liked by the Republicans. News flash: too late.

Between the press and the Democratic Party, Bush has been able to turn the United States into a Banana Republic.

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STUPOR POWER

by Malik Isasis

















Humanity has always been on the precipice of total collapse, there’s nothing new there. Modernity however has made it much easier for us to accelerate our demise. Like in Thelma and Louise, Bush has punched the pedal to the medal and we’re heading right off the cliff. This is Bush’s way of bringing us closer to his God. The Corporate God, which propagandizes the government as the enemy of the people and sees the government purely as a tool to wash its bloody money.


Superpowers are delusional by nature because they truly believe that they can hold onto power and keep others from obtaining it. It is in this delusion that all empires rise and fall. They believe that what happened to their predecessors will not happen to them. For example, the ethos of American exceptionalism--that the United States is benign and benevolent, keep Americans from accepting the systemic failure in governance and the certainty of economic and military collapse due to non-sensical foreign policies.

Occupying and trying to colonize Iraq is not exceptional to United States’ history, yet our politicians want us to believe that our occupation of Iraq is not like that of Europe’s occupation and colonization of African, Latin, and Asian nations, which was brutal and inhumane—not to mention, leaving behind tragic consequences that has bloomed into genocides and decades of civil unrest.

The State Department

What is the purpose of Condoleezza Rice? Yes, she’s the Secretary of State, the official face of American diplomacy but the more she talks, the worse the world becomes. She has the Sadim touch, the opposite of Midas touch. The only thing she has accomplished is her position is the ability to crank the Gears of War. Sending a chimp over to meet world leaders would have been more effective.

Maybe her failure is because Bush has contracted out diplomacy in the form of Blackwater.

WASHINGTON -- The State Department, which is facing growing criticism of its policy on private security contractors, overlooked repeated warnings from U.S. diplomats in the field that guards were endangering Iraqi civilians and undermining U.S. efforts to win support from the population, according to current and former U.S. officials.

Illusions of Grandeur

The United States has a long history of colonization in its short existence from the Philippines, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, Samoa, Virgin Islands to Hawaii. Since the rise of the Military Industrial Complex at the end of World War II, the United States has been in a state of perpetual war--starting with Korea 1950-53, Indonesia, 1950-53, Guatemala 1950-53, Congo 1964, Cuba 1959-61 Vietnam 1961-73, Peru 1965, Laos 1964-73, Cambodia 1969-70, Lebanon 1982-83, Grenada 1983, El Salvador 1980, Libya 1986, Nicaragua, Bosnia, Iraq 1990-currently.

The United States’ hubris stems from its historical roots of white supremacy, which it inherited from its ancestor Great Britain. It is hard for politicians in this country to grasp that people do not want to be occupied—but that doesn’t matter does it? The United States knows what is best for the natives, and will give the Iraqis democracy whether they want it or not.

As America trips and falls into the pile of bodies of former empires, the baton will be caught by China. Will China prove any different from the any number of empires throughout history? Probably not, the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.

Maybe empirism is nature’s way of recycling superpowers.

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THE 33%

by Malik Isasis






















The Ghost of former President Richard Nixon has lived comfortably within Karl Rove’s political hackery over the past six years. Former Deputy Chief of Staff and right wing savant, Rove otherwise known as Turd Blossom—how fitting, was the brain behind George Bush, and during Bush’s tenure Rove was able to take Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy to the next level.

The Southern Strategy was designed by Nixon and the Republicans to comfort the bigotry, sexism and prejudices of Southern white men who felt disenfranchised by the Democratic Party’s tacit support of minorities’ and women’s challenge to the white male paradigm. The Democratic Party’s embrace of civil rights and civil liberties in the 60s during the empowerment movements caused a mass exodus of disenfranchised Southern white men.

The Nixon Doctrine was not adopted to address the misperceptions or heal the grievances of these so-called disenfranchised but to build a voting block of white men by pitting their interests against those of people of color and women. Although all of the disenfranchised shared more in common than not, the Southern Strategy was a euphemism for divide and conquer. This tried and true strategy works because it fractures communities by individualizing them, if people are fighting rather than discussing their shared grief, a collective revolution is less likely. Politicians and dictators the world over understand this concept.

Steady at 33%

Bush’s support in the polls will always hover between 30%- 33% no matter what he does because the foundation was laid down by Nixon, and turned into fundamentalist right-wing ideology by the Turd Blossom. During the Republican Party’s rise to absolute power, Turd Blossom used so-called “wedge issues” to introduce prejudiced, paranoia into the 2002, 2004 and 2006 election cycles. These “wedge-issues” were gay marriage, sexist propaganda such as the feminization of America, abortion and fear mongering such as the invasion of the US territory by Mexicans. The “wedge issues” were used to keep the American public asleep while the federal government was being used as a money laundering service for Bush and his corporate raiders.

The neocons’ propaganda machine has created a simple narrative, not simple in the pejorative sense, but simple in a brilliant way. The neocons’ fictional narrative folds neatly into America’s white supremacy values. It is in this brilliant strategy that the Republicans are able to get people to vote against their own interests.

The neocon narrative tells Southerners that their moral and religious values are superior, beyond reproach—they are the moral compass of America, the corporate media coddles this folklore by persistently referring to this voting block as “Values Voters” (see here) If they are Value Voters what does that make the rest of us?

The Disconnect

There is an interesting dichotomy with the 33% in which the corporate media glosses over, take for example, the abortion and the culture of life propaganda; some voters vote Republican on abortion alone (The Turd Blossom understood this), it is their only issue. However, these same voters are supporting the Occupation in Iraq, which has killed hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children.

The Republican presidential candidates are twisting themselves into pretzels, trying to out do one another to see who can become more primitive. The regression of John McCaine, Rudy Guiliani, and other once social progressive Republicans are the canaries in the mine--the representation of just how despotic and puerile the political system has become. Their catering to the religiosity of the 33% right wing ideology is shameful, and they’re shameless.

The corporate media’s responsibility in all of this is that they have bought into using the “Values Voters” as a gold standard to marginalize the Democratic Party, and liberals. The neocons have been successful at getting the corporate media to portray conservatism as the only value on the political spectrum. Conservatism is the new center.

The corporate media’s worship of this false idol has legitimized bigotry, xenophobia and sexism and has made it easier for the Southern voting block to operate proudly in their ignorance, completely unaware of the moral conflicts and consequences that their voting patterns have on domestic and foreign policy.

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DESMOND TUTU SILENCED

by Margaret Kimberley, Black Report Agenda























Freedom of speech - except when it comes to Israel. That's the reality on many of America's campuses and throughout the corporate media. The lockdown of discussion of all things that might reflect negatively on the Jewish State is far more pervasive in the United States than in Israel, itself. Even revered human rights figures such as former South African archbishop Desmond Tutu have no rights to freedom of speech if their words arouse the ire of the Israel lobby. Former president Jimmy Carter can't hype his book if it causes "hurt" to those who think Israel is a sacred subject, but vile hate speech directed against any other group is kosher on the campus.

"Perhaps more sinister is why is there no outcry in the United States about the Israeli siege in the West Bank? You see the harrowing images of what suicide bombers have done, something we all condemn, but we see no scenes of what the tanks are doing to Palestinian homes and people." - Archbishop Desmond Tutu, 2002

Aside from the Bushite assaults on civil liberties, there is another dangerous threat to free speech in this country. That threat falls on anyone who dares to criticize the Israeli government or America's foreign policy towards Israel. Simply put, there is no right to free speech where discussion of Israel is concerned. Critics of Israel are censored and silenced, regardless of prior reputation or professional standing.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu won the Nobel Peace prize in 1986 for his efforts to peacefully end apartheid in his South African homeland. He served for many years as Archbishop of Cape Town and is one of the most highly respected Christian clergyman in the world. Tutu recently returned from a fact finding mission to Darfur that also included Jimmy Carter.

None of the accolades, honors, or awards bestowed on Tutu over the years were enough to protect him from the power of the pro-Israeli lobby. Tutu was invited to speak at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. The event, scheduled to take place in the spring of 2008, was sponsored by a youth group dedicated to practicing non-violence.

What followed has now become all too familiar. The university president, Father Dennis Dease, withdrew the invitation after a local organization, the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas, protested. The JCRC said that Jews were "hurt" about Tutu's comments on Israel. Father Dennis Dease, the university president, uses this claimed hurt as his reason for canceling the speech.

The JCRC and Father Dease falsely claim that in a 2002 speech Tutu compared Israel to Hitler's Germany. That assertion is a lie. Tutu said no such thing. He did point out that powerful nations can fall. "The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer exists. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, Milosovic, and Idi Amin were all powerful, but in the end they bit the dust."

The meaning of Tutu's words are clear to anyone who is interested in honest intellectual debate. The Israeli lobby has no such interest. Their goal is to silence Israel's critics. They may deny tenure to academics such as Norman Finkelstein, or make certain that Stephen Walt, John Mearsheimer and Jimmy Carter are all denied venues to speak or promote their books. The cowardly acquiescence by the University of St. Thomas was obviously due to direct political pressure and fear of future repercussions.

DePaul University behaved in a similar manner when they were lobbied to deny tenure to Norman Finkelstein. It didn't matter that Norman Finkelstein is himself Jewish, and the son of holocaust survivors. He is an outspoken critic of the Israeli government and of efforts to use past Jewish suffering to gain political and economic advantage, which he documents in his ground breaking book The Holocaust Industry. He described his situation and presciently that of Tutu with the University of St. Thomas:

". . . the university found itself forced to choose between ‘a long-term catastrophe and a short-term catastrophe' - the short-term catastrophe being the publicity about his case, the long-term catastrophe ‘having me on this faculty for another 20 years, and every time I open my mouth or say something about Israeli policy, the hysteria starting up again, and they see their money disappear.' "

Because of the fear of disappearing money and political support that every university needs, Jewish "hurt" supersedes everyone else's.

The University of St. Thomas has no problem inviting speakers who openly express beliefs that hurt other groups. The internment of Japanese Americans during World War II was certainly hurtful to them. Yet after writing a hate filled screed, In Defense of Internment, right wing propagandist Michelle Malkin spoke at the University of St. Thomas. The hurt of white supremacist hate speech wasn't an issue with Father Dease or other university officials.

Archbishop Tutu should directly address this assault on his reputation. He should not only refute the lies told about him but he should also force the university to respond. They think they are off the hook because the event will be held at another school in St. Paul. Tutu should make it clear that moving him across town will not silence him. His voice is respected and it is sorely needed. The influence of one group will do even more damage to this country and to the world if it is not confronted.

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Democrats Signal New Spying Cave-in

by Robert Parry, Consortium News

An intriguing part of the Washington political dynamic is that the more the Democrats think they might win an upcoming election, the more timid they become – fearful that they will give the powerful right-wing media machine some issue that will destroy their victory dreams.


What often happens, however, is that once the Democrats slip into their four-corner stall offense, their lack of a clear purpose – or discernable principle – can become the lethal political issue that they so desperately wanted to avoid. John Kerry’s “flip-flopping” or Hillary Clinton’s “triangulations” can prove just as deadly as a controversial stand.

The Democrats appear to be sliding into just such a calculation as they signal a new willingness – especially in the Senate – to give George W. Bush pretty much whatever he wants on a new spying bill and to push for a more belligerent approach toward Iran.

As the New York Times reported on Oct. 9, “two months after insisting they would roll back broad eavesdropping powers won by the Bush administration, Democrats in Congress appear ready to make concessions that could extend some crucial powers given to the National Security Agency.

“Administration officials say they are confident they will win approval of the broadened authority that they secured temporarily in August as Congress rushed toward recess. Some Democratic officials concede that they may not come up with enough votes to stop approval.” [NYT, Oct. 9, 2007]

Indeed, congressional Democrats may end up granting the administration even more power than they did when they crumbled under political pressure in August and rushed through the loosely worded “Protect America Act of 2007.”

Along with granting President Bush broad new surveillance powers, the law gave legal immunity to telecommunications companies that assist the government’s spying in the future. But the administration now is sensing that it also can secure amnesty for companies that have collaborated with government eavesdropping orders in the past and are facing lawsuits from customers complaining that their rights were violated.

While retreating in the face of fears that they otherwise will be dubbed "soft on terror," the congressional Democrats have narrowed their hopes to possibly inserting an increased role for the secret court created by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in overseeing the spying.

Broader Law

Though sold last summer as an important anti-terror law, the “Protect America Act” doesn’t actually mention the word “terrorism” nor is it the narrowly constructed revision of the FISA law that it was called in much of the press coverage in early August.

The supposed fix that the administration said it wanted was to let the NSA intercept messages from two foreign entities whose communications went through a U.S. switching station. That could have been easily corrected with a narrow amendment.

Instead, with the Democrats fretting that the Republicans would bash them for taking an August recess without first closing this security gap, the Bush administration rammed through a much broader law.

The “Protect America Act” granted the NSA sweeping powers to spy on anyone “reasonably believed to be outside the United States” who might possess “foreign intelligence information,” defined as anything that could be useful to U.S. foreign policy.

In other words, the Bush administration’s controversial post-9/11 decision to forego court warrants when intercepting electronic communications when one party is outside the United States and the other is inside was effectively legalized retroactively.

The law’s language didn’t even require that the person outside the United States have any alleged connection to terrorism or that the person be a foreigner. All that was required was a sign-off by the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence, two Bush political appointees.

When the scope of the Democratic cave-in became apparent to Americans concerned about constitutional protections, a furor erupted. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office reported receiving more than 200,000 angry e-mails.

Stung by the reaction, Democratic leaders promised that the spying law would be revisited once Congress returned from its summer recess, rather than waiting around for a required reauthorization of the law in February 2008. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “New Spy Law Broader Than Thought.”]

Second Roll-Over

However, it now appears that congressional Democrats are setting the stage for a second capitulation out of fear that the Republicans would paint any rollback in the spying law as “soft on terror” and that the right-wing media would smear Democrats with a broad brush in Campaign 2008.

The national Democrats worry that the “soft on terror” charge could jeopardize their prospects for holding – and possibly expanding – their congressional majorities and for reclaiming the White House under their expected nominee, Sen. Hillary Clinton.

Given the unpopularity of President Bush and the disarray within the Republican Party, the Democratic leaders see a golden opportunity in Election 2008. So, they don’t want to take what they regard as undue political risks.

This “play-it-safe” pattern fits with Democratic behavior in 2002 when the strategy was to give President Bush his Iraq War authorization – thus blunting the “softness” charge – and then hope to prevail in the election based on domestic issues.

Despite the Democratic cave-in on Iraq, Bush’s right-wing allies still bashed the Democrats as weak on national security – even likening triple-amputee Vietnam veteran and Georgia Sen. Max Cleland to Osama bin Laden. The Republicans rolled up majorities in both the House and Senate.

In Campaign 2004, the Democrats turned to Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, a Vietnam War hero who was considered somewhat safe because he had voted to give Bush authority to invade Iraq. The Republicans, however, didn’t miss a beat, questioning Kerry’s Vietnam War heroism and dismissing him as a weak-kneed flip-flopper on Iraq.

Campaign 2006 was a divergence from the Democratic pattern, with the party’s congressional candidates taking a tougher stance against Bush and bashing the Republican majorities in Congress as the President’s rubber stamp. The result was a surprising Democratic victory in both the House and Senate.

Since then, however, as Democratic prospects brightened for further gains in 2008, the leadership has chosen to play it safe, avoiding a serious showdown with Bush over Iraq War funding and rejecting rank-and-file demands for impeachment hearings.

Now, as Hillary Clinton consolidates her lead in the 2008 Democratic presidential race, she appears to be eyeing a similar strategy, shifting back toward the “tough-guy/gal” positions that she adopted in supporting the Iraq War from 2002 to 2005.

She joined other senior Democrats in backing a resolution co-authored by neoconservative Independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut calling on Bush to designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a “terrorist organization,” a move that Sen. Jim Webb, D-Virginia, warned could be a prelude to a wider Mid-east war. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Hillary Prods Bush to Go After Iran.”]

The Democrats may think that by giving Bush new spying powers they also can finesse the “soft on terror” charge in 2008. More likely, however, a new cave-in will simply demoralize the Democratic base and make the Democratic candidates look weak and indecisive to voters who are concerned about the nation projecting a strong image in a dangerous world.

One way to address this recurring political dynamic would be for American progressives to invest much more heavily in their own media infrastructure, so it can begin to match up with the juggernaut that the Right has built over the past three decades.

But the Left continues to pay insufficient attention to the nation’s media imbalance, apparently hoping against hope that the mainstream corporate media will rediscover its journalistic principles and start challenging the Bush administration more forcefully.

In the meantime, even on vital issues of war and constitutional principles, the national Democrats apparently have concluded that their best hope is to duck confrontations and do whatever’s necessary to accommodate aggressive Republicans and their right-wing media allies.

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COLONIZING NATIVES SINCE 1500

by Malik Isasis

















Here I was, like many of my progressive brethren, screaming from the roof tops in the spirit of the doomed Greek beauty, Cassandra about the wicked ways of the Bush Administration but who the hell am I, to go against centuries of tradition?

My ancestors were taken against their will from the west coast of the African continent and brought to the shores of the so-called "New World" and colonized along with the Native Americans—twin holocausts, if you will spearheaded by the mythical figure Christopher Columbus who the United States government celebrates every October 12th.

Think about it—all that land traded sometimes for alcohol, but mostly just annexed, violently —and what about four hundred years of free labor from the Africans to make America one of the most prosperous countries ever? The cheap Chinese immigrant labor that helped complete the transcontinental railroad system. Who the hell am I, to go against centuries of tradition?

Manifest Destiny

Manifest Destiny was a phrase that expressed the belief that the United States was destined to expand from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific Ocean; it has also been used to advocate for or justify other territorial acquisitions. Maybe this explains the last 57 years of perpetual state of war we are in--starting with Korea 1950-53, Indonesia, 1950-53, Guatemala 1950-53, Congo 1964, Cuba 1959-61 Vietnam 1961-73, Peru 1965, Laos 1964-73, Cambodia 1969-70, Lebanon 1982-83, Grenada 1983, El Salvador 1980, Libya 1986, Nicaragua, Bosnia, Iraq 1990-current. It’s our Manifest Destiny.

Iraq has many rich natural resources mostly oil—we want it, and so it’s our destiny to get it, right? I mean it’s ours; all we have to do is keep breaking the spirit of the natives, divide and conquer—have them kill one another off by supporting one side over the other—like the Dutch did in Rwanda.

Bush is brilliant. I get it now.

He’s going to duplicate this plan in Iran, and maybe Syria, if he has time. While the natives will be busy killing each other off, we can scoop up their natural resources. This has worked for centuries, who the hell am I, to go against centuries of tradition?

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What a War on Iran Might Look Like [photo essay]

by Nina Berman, Alternet
















Photos of the aftermath of Israel's air strikes on Lebanon give an idea of what a war on Iran might look like.



The Lebanon War of 2006 between Israel and Hezbollah lasted 34 days, and according to veteran war correspondent Scott Anderson, author of Double Blind, was noteworthy for its "sheer senselessness." AlterNet and multimedia co-sponsor BAGnewsNotes are pleased to host the above slideshow of images from Double Blind by photographer Paolo Pellegrin and an interview with author Scott Anderson, conducted by AlterNet's Nina Berman.


Nina Berman: In 34 days last summer, the Israeli Defense Forces lay waste to a large swath of Lebanon. Thousands of rocket attacks, more than 3 million cluster bombs, over 1,000 Lebanese civilians killed, and despite all the destruction and a small number of Israeli casualties, the general consensus, George Bush notwithstanding, is that Hezbollah, the intended target, emerged stronger than ever.

You've covered many conflicts around the world. What can you tell us about the Israel-Hezbollah war, and why it was waged??

Scott Anderson: Everyone has different theories. Hezbollah did this cross-border raid, killed three soldiers and captured a few. The Israeli army went in pursuit, walked into an ambush and lost five more. By the end of that day, the Israeli air force was already bombing. Most people think the Israelis were looking for a pretext to do what they did, and they found it in the cross-border raid..

Berman What was the U.S. involvement in the war?

Anderson: As in most everything that has to do with Israel, there was a complete carte blanche. Certainly from my vantage point, the most shameful aspect of American policy was to rush cluster bombs to Israel near the end of the war.

So in the last days of the war, the Israeli air force just littered the countryside with these cluster bombs. (Note: The Israeli Defense Forces dropped an estimated 3 million bombs over an area half the size of Rhode Island. About 1 million did not explode.) Civilians in Lebanon continue to die from these bombs. Obviously the major blame lies with the Bush administration, but the Democrats all just lined up, which supports this view in the Muslim world that they can never get a break with the American government.

Berman: Some people have said that the Lebanon war was a dress rehearsal for Iran. Do you support that view, and why should the American public be interested?

Anderson: I don't know if this was a dress rehearsal for Iran. But if you support the idea that we have to go in and take out Iran's nuclear facility and believe that it's going to be a clean war with pinpoint strikes, then you need to take a look, because really it's going to look an awful lot like Lebanon.

Berman: In the complex algebra of the Middle East, it seems that Israel, and now the United States, in attacking its enemy, ends up emboldening them, or creating conditions of such misery that make the rise of more hardline elements inevitable. What was accomplished by this war?

Anderson: The Israelis had this idea that they were going to move in and really pound the infrastructure throughout Lebanon, but they so overplayed their hand. They just took a hammer to the entire country. It had the political effect of making all of Lebanon feeling that they were under attack and rallying political support behind Hezbollah. On a military level it was a disaster for Israel. Hezbollah gave them a great fight, maybe the best they've ever had.

Berman: For the Lebanese, this was a war that began with little warning, spread rapidly and horrifically, and ended without resolution. Can you explain the book's title, Double Blind?

Anderson: I've covered war for a long time, and I think you operate on a covenant that you can gauge things coming, and the really creepy thing is that you didn't see Hezbollah. So the fighters on the ground were invisible. And the Israelis were doing it all by air. You see the F16s flying away, and they're dropping bigger bombs, but by the time you hear them overhead, the bomb has already dropped.

Paolo (Pellegrin, the photographer) and I had this experience where a drone missile exploded next to our car, about 25 feet away. You hear nothing. It's not like in the movies. It just explodes. It could come at the next second.

Berman: So the anxiety is constant? There are no safe moments or places for the civilian population?

Anderson: That's right

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ASLEEP AT THE SWITCH: THE MATRIX ONE YEAR LATER

by Malik Isasis
















I started The Matrix: For Real because I didn’t feel empowered by what was going on during the six-year absolute reign of terror by Bush and his despotic Republican Party, the capitulating Democratic Party, and the complete collapse of the Fourth Estate. It became clear to me that the media were colluding with Bush and Co. to pull off a high tech heist of the Middle East.

For the most part Bush and Co. has succeeded in the heist. As I listened to the Democratic debate last week Senators Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards discussed leaving thousands of troops behind to protect the embassy so to keep a watchful eye on the natives and the oil, if they were to become president. (see here).

The presidential debates is another illusion brought to us by the corporate media to display the idea that we have choices. We have false choices, the corporate media’s political operatives are moderating the dog and pony shows, and have already decided who’s going to win the nominations before a single vote has been cast.

During the Democratic Debate last week Tim Russert’s questions seemed accusatory as if they’d been vetted by neocon operatives, listen here and here.

One Day at a Time

A year ago when I started I didn’t know whether or not I would keep the blog going and I still don’t. I still take it one entry at a time. Frequently writing about occupation, death and destruction, white supremacy and corporate imperialism on almost a daily basis does have its emotional consequences, mainly secondary trauma.

This entry makes 177. I didn’t think I could write so frequently, but I guess I under estimated the power of feeling disempowered. And it helps to have people like Bill O’Reilly saying, “I think black people are starting to think more and more for themselves.” (see here)

The malfeasance of the corporate media keeps my fire lit. As Bush and Co. extract the United States Treasury of its funds, the Iraqi people of their lives and oil it is the corporate media who are asleep on watch and when something terrible happens to this country they will awake in a stupor and ask why.


Here are some of my oldies but goodies:

IT’S THE OCCUPATION STUPID

COLONY COLLAPSE DISORDER

FLYING MONKEYS

ADVENTURE CAPITALISTS

THE LONG DARK ROAD

THE LUKIDNIKS AND THE PRINCESS WARRIOR

WHO’S WASHING THE MONEY

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FEAST OF LOVE

a film review by Malik Isasis














I would watch Morgan Freeman in just about anything, and I have. As a filmmaker, one of the things I appreciate about Freeman is that it never seems like he is phoning in a performance. He is present no matter how absurd the story. Freeman seem to always rise above the material he’s in.

One of the most disturbing things about Freeman’s long illustrious film career in Hollywood is that he is usually the only African American person in his films. His characters walk about in the world completely disconnected from black heritage. This is a systemic issue in Hollywood. The reasoning: too many black people in a mainstream film would make it a “black film” therefore limiting its international sales. To a lesser extent, Will Smith and Denzel Washington also inhabit characters that are estranged from black America.

When I think of Morgan Freeman, I think of the extremity to which this is true. There are two exceptions that I can think of: Glory (1989) where he played a former slave drafted to fight with the Union against the Confederate Army. Denzel Washington was also a part of the cast. The second was Kiss the Girls (1997) where Freeman’s character’s niece was kidnapped.

This observation is limited only to Freeman’s film life.

Feast of Love

Feast of Love is a story about the intersecting, dysfunctional love lives of several urbanites who are trying to make life work.

Harry Stevenson (Morgan Freeman) a quietly grieving father of a son whose recent death to an overdose has caused him to take a permanent sabbatical from his professorship. He and his wife Esther (Jane Alexander) rarely discuss the grief that has interrupted their emotional and physical intimacy. Harry spends most of the film walking about observing people falling in and out of love and coming home and sharing his observations with his wife.

One of the people Harry observes is his friend Bradley (Greg Kinnear), a meek coffee-shop owner whose wife of six years, Katheryn (Selma Blair) is leaving him for another woman. From the start of the film, Katheryn is used more as a device. When she walks out of the door, she inexplicably never appears again in the film. When characters are thinly drawn this way the audience is stuck with narrow emotional choices.

Bradley quickly falls in love again with Diana (Radha Mitchell) only to have that relationship dissolve.

Then there are the young lovers Chloe (Alexa Davalos) and Oscar (Toby Hemmingway) who find one another in Bradley’s coffee shop under the watchful eyes of—you got it, Harry. Incidentally, Ms Davalos and Mr. Hemmingway have no screen chemistry.

Feast of Love is based on the 2000 novel by the same name. It feels like the script adaptation wanted to hit all the themes in the novel. The film spends very little time with its characters, which works against getting to know them; therefore it is difficult to emotionally invest in them.

I’m a big fan of happenstance, but the happenstances are too many to be credible. There was even dissonance in the love scenes and there were plenty with full on nudity. Even with the issues I had with the film structure and character development, I generally liked the film. There were moments where I thoroughly enjoyed what I was feeling. I have a bias toward films in this genre.

I don’t believe films are about perfection but making sure that there are more memorable moments than none, unfortunately, for Feast of Love the math does not add up in its favor.


Grade: C

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