[for complete article links, please see original:
http://www.tomdispatch.com:80/index.mhtml?pid=157241]
This January, Tomdispatch has been focusing on the Pentagon, the imperial path, and militarization. Last week, Nick Turse explored the way Pentagon strategists, having taken possession of our future, are writing their own dystopian science fiction scenarios about how to fight in Baghdad 2025 and other urban megaslums of the planet (as American troops may soon be doing in Baghdad's huge Shiite slum of Sadr City). Then, Frida Berrigan considered the massively profitable business operation the Pentagon was running off fictional futures and the all-too-real weapons systems that will result from it.
Today, Michael Klare, an expert on resource wars and the author of the indispensable Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependence on Imported Petroleum, offers a startling vision of the grim energy future that the Pentagon is actually helping to create -- as well as the ruthless scrambles for energy resources, the Great Power energy races, and the kind of Big Brotherhood that may lie in our near future. This is the first of a major two-part Tomdispatch series on the possible emergence of a new phenomenon in our world that Klare dubs "Energo-fascism." Tom
Is Energo-fascism in Your Future?
The Global Energy Race and Its Consequences (Part 1)
By Michael T. Klare
It has once again become fashionable for the dwindling supporters of President Bush's futile war in Iraq to stress the danger of "Islamo-fascism" and the supposed drive by followers of Osama bin Laden to establish a monolithic, Taliban-like regime -- a "Caliphate" -- stretching from Gibraltar to Indonesia. The President himself has employed this term on occasion over the years, using it to describe efforts by Muslim extremists to create "a totalitarian empire that denies all political and religious freedom." While there may indeed be hundreds, even thousands, of disturbed and suicidal individuals who share this delusional vision, the world actually faces a far more substantial and universal threat, which might be dubbed: Energo-fascism, or the militarization of the global struggle over ever-diminishing supplies of energy.
Unlike Islamo-fascism, Energo-fascism will, in time, affect nearly every person on the planet. Either we will be compelled to participate in or finance foreign wars to secure vital supplies of energy, such as the current conflict in Iraq; or we will be at the mercy of those who control the energy spigot, like the customers of the Russian energy juggernaut Gazprom in Ukraine, Belarus, and Georgia; or sooner or later we may find ourselves under constant state surveillance, lest we consume more than our allotted share of fuel or engage in illicit energy transactions. This is not simply some future dystopian nightmare, but a potentially all-encompassing reality whose basic features, largely unnoticed, are developing today.
These include:
* The transformation of the U.S. military into a global oil protection service whose primary mission is to defend America's overseas sources of oil and natural gas, while patrolling the world's major pipelines and supply routes.
* The transformation of Russia into an energy superpower with control over Eurasia's largest supplies of oil and natural gas and the resolve to convert these assets into ever increasing political influence over neighboring states.
* A ruthless scramble among the great powers for the remaining oil, natural gas, and uranium reserves of Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia, accompanied by recurring military interventions, the constant installation and replacement of client regimes, systemic corruption and repression, and the continued impoverishment of the great majority of those who have the misfortune to inhabit such energy-rich regions.
* Increased state intrusion into, and surveillance of, public and private life as reliance on nuclear power grows, bringing with it an increased threat of sabotage, accident, and the diversion of fissionable materials into the hands of illicit nuclear proliferators.
Together, these and related phenomena constitute the basic characteristics of an emerging global Energo-fascism. Disparate as they may seem, they all share a common feature: increasing state involvement in the procurement, transportation, and allocation of energy supplies, accompanied by a greater inclination to employ force against those who resist the state's priorities in these areas. As in classical twentieth century fascism, the state will assume ever greater control over all aspects of public and private life in pursuit of what is said to be an essential national interest: the acquisition of sufficient energy to keep the economy functioning and public services (including the military) running.
The Demand/Supply Conundrum
Powerful, potentially planet-altering trends like this do not occur in a vacuum. The rise of Energo-fascism can be traced to two overarching phenomena: an imminent collision between energy demand and energy supplies, and the historic migration of the center of gravity of planetary energy output from the global north to the global south.
For the past 60 years, the international energy industry has largely succeeded in satisfying the world's ever-growing thirst for energy in all its forms. When it comes to oil alone, global demand jumped from 15 to 82 million barrels per day between 1955 and 2005, an increase of 450%. Global output rose by a like amount in those years. Worldwide demand is expected to keep growing at this rate, if not faster, for years to come -- propelled in large part by rising affluence in China, India, and other developing nations. There is, however, no expectation that global output can continue to keep pace.
Quite the opposite: A growing number of energy experts believe that the global output of "conventional" (liquid) crude oil will soon reach a peak -- perhaps as early as 2010 or 2015 -- and then begin an irreversible decline. If this proves to be the case, no amount of inputs from Canadian tar sands, shale oil, or other "unconventional" sources will prevent a catastrophic liquid-fuel shortage in a decade or so, producing widespread economic trauma. The global supply of other primary fuels, including natural gas, coal, and uranium is not expected to contract as rapidly, but all of these materials are finite, and will eventually become scarce.
Coal is the most plentiful of the three; if consumed at current rates, it can be expected to last for perhaps another century and a half. If, however, it is used to replace oil (in various coal-to-liquid schemes), it will disappear much more rapidly. This does not, of course, address coal's disproportionate contribution to global warming; if there is no change in the way it is burned in power plants, the planet will become inhospitable long before the last coal mine is exhausted.
Natural gas and uranium will outlast petroleum by a decade or two, but they too will eventually reach peak output and begin to decline. Natural gas will simply disappear, just like oil; any future scarcity of uranium can to some degree be overcome through the greater utilization of "breeder reactors," which produce plutonium as a byproduct; this substance can, in turn, be used as a reactor fuel in its own right. But any increased use of plutonium will also vastly increase the risk of nuclear-weapons proliferation, producing a far more dangerous world and a corresponding requirement for greater government oversight of all aspects of nuclear power and commerce.
Such future possibilities are generating great anxiety among officials of the major energy-consuming nations, especially the United States, China, Japan, and the European powers. All of these countries have undertaken major reviews of energy policy in recent years, and all have come to the same conclusion: Market forces alone can no longer be relied upon to satisfy essential national energy requirements, and so the state must assume ever-increasing responsibility for performing this role. This was, for example, the fundamental conclusion of the National Energy Policy adopted by the Bush administration on May 17, 2001 and followed slavishly ever since, just as it is the official stance of China's Communist regime. When resistance to such efforts is encountered, moreover, government officials only wield the power of the state more regularly and with a heavier hand to achieve their objectives, whether through trade sanctions, embargoes, arrests and seizures, or the outright use of force. This is part of the explanation for Energo-fascism's emergence.
Its rise is also being driven by the changing geography of energy production. At one time, most of the world's major oil and natural gas wells were located in North America, Europe, and the European sectors of the Russian Empire. This was no accident. The major energy companies much preferred to operate in hospitable countries that were close at hand, relatively stable, and disinclined to nationalize private energy deposits. But these deposits have now largely been depleted and the only areas still capable of satisfying rising world demand are located in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East.
The countries in these regions were nearly all subject to colonial rule and still harbor deep distrust of foreign involvement; many also house ethnic separatist groups, insurgencies, or extremist movements that make them especially inhospitable to foreign oil companies. Oil production in Nigeria, for example, has been sharply curtailed in recent months by an insurgency in the impoverished Niger Delta. Members of poor tribal groups that have suffered terribly from the environmental devastation wrought by oil-company operations in their midst, while receiving few tangible benefits from the resulting oil revenues, have led it; most of the profits that remain in-country are pilfered by ruling elites in Abuja, the capital. Combine this sort of local resentment with lack of security and often shaky ruling groups, and it's hardly surprising that the leaders of the major consuming nations have increasingly been taking matters into their own hands -- arranging preemptive oil deals with compliant local officials and providing military protection, where needed, to ensure the safe delivery of oil and natural gas.
In many cases, this has resulted in the establishment of oil-driven, patron-client relations between major consuming nations and their leading suppliers, similar to the long-established U.S. protectorate over Saudi Arabia and the more recent U.S. embrace of Ilham Aliyev, the president of Azerbaijan. Already we have the beginnings of the energy equivalent of a classic arms race, combined with many of the elements of the "Great Game" as once played by colonial powers in some of the same parts of the world. By militarizing the energy policies of consuming nations and enhancing the repressive capacities of client regimes, the foundations are being laid for an Energo-fascist world.
The Pentagon: A Global Oil-Protection Service
The most significant expression of this trend has been the transformation of the U.S. military into a global oil-protection service whose primary function is the guarding of overseas energy supplies as well as their global delivery systems (pipelines, tanker ships, and supply routes). This overarching mission was first articulated by President Jimmy Carter in January 1980, when he described the oil flow from the Persian Gulf as a "vital interest" of the United States, and affirmed that this country would employ "any means necessary, including military force" to overcome an attempt by a hostile power to block that flow.
When President Carter issued this edict, quickly dubbed the Carter Doctrine, the United States did not actually possess any forces capable of performing this role in the Gulf. To fill this gap, Carter created a new entity, the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force (RDJTF), an ad hoc assortment of U.S-based forces designated for possible employment in the Middle East. In 1983, President Reagan transformed the RDJTF into the Central Command (Centcom), the name it bears today. Centcom exercises command authority over all U.S. combat forces deployed in the greater Persian Gulf area including Afghanistan and the Horn of Africa. At present, Centcom is largely preoccupied with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it has never given up its original role of guarding the oil flow from the Persian Gulf in accordance with the Carter Doctrine.
The greatest danger to the Persian Gulf oil flow is now said to emanate from Iran, which has threatened to choke off all oil shipments through the vital Strait of Hormuz (the narrow passageway at the mouth of the Gulf) in the event of an American air assault on its nuclear facilities. In possible anticipation of such a move, the Pentagon recently ordered additional air and naval forces into the Gulf and replaced General John Abizaid, the Centcom Commander, who favored diplomatic engagement with Iran and Syria, with Admiral William Fallon, the Commander of the Pacific Command (Pacom) and an expert in combined air and naval operations. Fallon arrived at Centcom just as President Bush, in a nationally televised speech on January 10, announced the deployment of an additional carrier battle group to the Gulf and warned of harsh military action against Iran if it failed to halt its support for insurgents in Iraq and its pursuit of uranium-enrichment technology.
When first promulgated in 1980, the Carter Doctrine was aimed principally at the Persian Gulf and surrounding waters. In recent years, however, American policymakers have concluded that the United States must extend this kind of protection to every major oil-producing region in the developing world. The logic for a Carter Doctrine on a global scale was first spelled out in a bipartisan task force report, "The Geopolitics of Energy," published by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in November 2000. Because the United States and its allies are becoming increasingly dependent on energy supplies from unstable overseas suppliers, the report concluded, "[T]he geopolitical risks attendant to energy availability are not likely to abate." Under these circumstances, "the United States, as the world's only superpower, must accept its special responsibilities for preserving access to worldwide energy supply."
This sort of thinking -- embraced by senior Democrats and Republicans alike -- appears to have governed American strategic thinking since the late 1990s. It was President Clinton who first put this policy into effect, by extending the Carter Doctrine to the Caspian Sea basin. It was Clinton who originally declared that the flow of oil and gas from the Caspian Sea to the West was an American security priority, and who, on this basis, established military ties with the governments of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. President Bush has substantially upgraded these ties -- thereby laying the groundwork for a permanent U.S. military presence in the region -- but it is important to view this as a bipartisan effort in accordance with a shared belief that protection of the global oil flow is increasingly not just a vital function, but the vital function of the American military.
More recently, President Bush has extended the reach of the Carter Doctrine to West Africa, now one of America's major sources of oil. Particular emphasis is being placed on Nigeria, where unrest in the Delta (which holds most of the country's onshore petroleum fields) has produced a substantial decline in oil output. "Nigeria is the fifth largest source of U.S. oil imports," the State Department's Fiscal Year 2007 Congressional Budget Justification for Foreign Operations declares, "and disruption of supply from Nigeria would represent a major blow to U.S. oil security strategy." To prevent such a disruption, the Department of Defense is providing Nigerian military and internal security forces with substantial arms and equipment intended to quell unrest in the Delta region; the Pentagon is also collaborating with Nigerian forces in a number of regional patrol and surveillance efforts aimed at improving security in the Gulf of Guinea, where most of West Africa's offshore oil and gas fields are located.
Of course, senior officials and foreign policy elites are generally loathe to acknowledge such crass motivations for the utilization of military force -- they much prefer to talk about spreading democracy and fighting terrorism. Every once in a while, however, a hint of this deep energy-based conviction rises to the surface. Especially revealing is a November 2006 task force report from the Council on Foreign Relations on "National Security Consequences of U.S. Oil Dependency." Co-chaired by former Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger and former CIA Director John Deutsch, and endorsed by a slew of elite policy wonks from both parties, the report trumpeted the usual to-be-ignored calls for energy efficiency and conservation at home, but then struck just the militaristic note first voiced in the 2000 CSIS report (which Schlesinger also co-chaired): "Several standard operations of U.S. regionally deployed forces [presumably Centcom and Pacom] have made important contributions to improving energy security, and the continuation of such efforts will be necessary in the future. U.S. naval protection of the sea-lanes that transport oil is of paramount importance." The report also called for stepped up U.S. naval engagement in the Gulf of Guinea off the coast of Nigeria.
When expressing such views, U.S. policymakers often adopt an altruistic stance, claiming that the United States is performing a "social good" by protecting the global oil flow on behalf of the world community. But this haughty, altruistic posture ignores crucial aspects of the situation:
* First, the United States is the world's leading gas guzzler, accounting for one out of every four barrels of oil consumed daily around the world.
* Second, the pipelines and sea lanes being protected by American soldiers and sailors at risk of life and limb are largely those oriented toward the United States and close allies like Japan and the NATO countries.
* Third, it is often specifically American-based corporations whose overseas operations are being protected by U.S. forces in turbulent areas abroad, again at significant risk to the military personnel involved.
* Fourth, the Pentagon is itself one of the world's great oil guzzlers, consuming 134 million barrels of oil in 2005, as much as the entire nation of Sweden.
So while it is true that other countries may obtain some benefits from the activities of the American military, the primary beneficiaries are the American economy and giant U.S. corporations; the primary losers are the American soldiers who risk their lives every day to protect the pipelines and refineries, the poor of these countries who see little or no benefit from the extraction of their natural resources, and the global environment as a whole.
The cost of this immense undertaking, in both blood and treasure, is enormous and it's still on the rise. There is, first of all, the war in Iraq, which may have been sparked by a variety of motives, but cannot in the end be separated from the historic mission first laid out by President Carter of eliminating any potential threat to the free flow of oil from the Persian Gulf. An assault on Iran would also have a number of motives, but it, too, would be tied to this mission in the final analysis -- even if it had the perverse effect of closing off oil supplies, driving up energy prices, and throwing the global economy into a tailspin. And there are sure to be more wars over oil after these, with more American casualties and more victims of American missiles and bullets.
The cost in dollars will also be great. Even if the war in Iraq is excluded from the tally, the United States spends about one-fourth of its defense budget, or some $100 billion per year, on Persian Gulf-related expenses -- the approximate annual price-tag for enforcement of the Carter Doctrine. One can argue about what percentage of the approximately $1 trillion cost of the war in Iraq should be added to this tally, but surely we are minimally talking about many hundreds of billions of dollars with no end in sight. Protection of pipelines and tanker routes in the Indian Ocean, the Pacific, the Gulf of Guinea, Colombia, and the Caspian Sea region adds additional billions to this figure.
These costs will snowball in the future as the United States becomes predictably more dependent on energy from the global south, as resistance to Western exploitation of its oil fields grows, as an energy race with newly ascendant China and India revs up, and as American foreign-policy elites come to rely increasingly on the U.S. military to overcome this resistance. Eventually, the escalation of these costs will require higher domestic taxes or diminished social benefits, or both; at some point, the growing need for manpower to guard all these overseas oil fields, refineries, pipelines, and tanker routes could entail resumption of the military draft. This will generate widespread resistance to these policies at home -- and this, in turn, may trigger the sorts of repressive government crackdowns that would throw an ever darkening shadow of Energo-fascism over our world.
Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and the author of Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependence on Imported Petroleum (Owl Books).
[Note: Look for part two of Michael Klare's "Is Energo-fascism in Your Future?" -- "Petro-power and the Nuclear Renaissance" -- later this week.]
Copyright 2007 Michael T. Klare
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Blundering Into Somalia Yet Again
Blundering Into Somalia Yet Again
by Eric Margolis
Ethiopia’s invasion of Somalia under cover of the Christmas holiday was a blatant aggression that is likely to widen the arc of conflict across the dangerously turbulent Horn of Africa. It also marks the opening of a new front in Washington’s war against Islamic militants and reformers.
Claims by Ethiopia that Somalia, a nation without any real military forces, threatened its border were as fanciful as assertions by Washington and Addis Ababa that the so-called "transitional government" they had installed in the town of Baidoa represented anything more than its own well-paid members.
The US-backed and financed Ethiopian offensive was clearly designed to crush the first stable government strife-torn Somalia has had in 15 years of civil war and anarchy. The new Islamic regime, known as the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), recently managed to bring law and order to much of southern and central Somalia. In the north, a secessionist group has proclaimed something called independent "Puntland."
The Union of Islamic Courts ended Somalia’s long civil war by crushing local warlords who were being armed and financed by the CIA. The US claims the Islamic Courts is a second Taliban-style movement containing "terrorists" involved in the 1998 bombings of US embassies in East Africa who will turn Somalia into a hotbed of anti-American subversion. The UIC denies these allegations.
More important, under the Bush/Cheney Administration, any movement that has the audacity to call itself "Islamic" immediately becomes a target of American hostility. The embarrassing total defeat of US-backed Somali warlords by the Islamic Courts militia led directly to Washington’s decision to press Ethiopia to invade Somalia.
Ethiopia has one of Africa’s more powerful, well-trained armed forces with over 1,300 tanks and a modern air force that are now increasingly equipped and aided by the United States.
The repressive regime of strongman Meles Zenawi seems the antithesis of President George Bush’s calls for democracy, but has become a primary ally of Washington that is seen as a bulwark against Islamic forces in Africa. Washington has quietly supported Ethiopia in its long border war against its bitter foe, Eritrea. In recent months, the Eritrea has become an important supplier of small arms and munitions to Somalia.
Somalia’s ragtag Islamist militias are helpless against Ethiopian tanks, artillery and attack aircraft. Ethiopia’s army could quickly occupy all of Somalia, but it would then be very hard-pressed to protect its long, vulnerable supply lines against attack by Somali guerilla forces.
Ethiopia has enough men to wage a two-front war against Somalia and Eritrea, but a prolonged conflict would seriously undermine its fragile economy. Accordingly, Ethiopia’s likely strategy is to protect the western-imposed rump regime in Baidoa and launch attacks to prevent the UIC from consolidating power. But involvement by traditional enemy Ethiopia will undoubtedly further inflame Somali passions and strengthen the Islamic Courts. The latest war in the Horn of Africa could easily widen into a wider conflict that involves Eritrea, strife-torn regions of southern Sudan and Uganda, and northern Kenya, which has many ethnic Somalis.
Equally important, prolonged war with Somalia could open fissures in unstable, multiethnic, multi-religious Ethiopia. Though usually depicted as a Christian nation, at least 50 percent of Ethiopians are Muslim, and 35–40 percent Christians. Ethnic Amhara and Tigrayans comprise 32 percent of the population, while long-oppressed, rebellious Muslim Oromo in the south account for over 40 percent.
Ethiopia’s Muslims have long sought a voice in their nation’s affairs but were brutally repressed by Ethiopia’s royalist, Marxist, and now, the Tigrayn regimes. Conflict with Somalia could re-ignite the Oromo independence movement and lead to the splintering of Ethiopia, producing a reverse mirror image of ethnic-religious strife between Sudan’s northern Muslims and southern Christians and animists.
Ethiopia’s war against Somalia presents a more dangerous regional threat than an Islamic-run Somalia. The Bush/Cheney Administration is again showing its reckless ignorance and arrogance by charging into a tribal conflict, as it did in Afghanistan and Iraq, about which it knows nothing. Once again, Washington’s "cure" will be shown to be far worse than the disease it claims to address.
What Washington should be doing is talking to leaders of the Islamic Courts to ensure Somalia is not used as a new base for al-Qaeda operations. This is a fair request that can be sweetened by offers of financial support and assurances the Ethiopians will be leashed. But this appears too subtle for the administration’s ham-handed crusaders who have already blundered into two lost wars and are now courting a third.
January 1, 2007
Eric Margolis [send him mail], contributing foreign editor for Sun National Media Canada, is the author of War at the Top of the World. See his website.
Copyright © 2007 Eric Margolis
by Eric Margolis
Ethiopia’s invasion of Somalia under cover of the Christmas holiday was a blatant aggression that is likely to widen the arc of conflict across the dangerously turbulent Horn of Africa. It also marks the opening of a new front in Washington’s war against Islamic militants and reformers.
Claims by Ethiopia that Somalia, a nation without any real military forces, threatened its border were as fanciful as assertions by Washington and Addis Ababa that the so-called "transitional government" they had installed in the town of Baidoa represented anything more than its own well-paid members.
The US-backed and financed Ethiopian offensive was clearly designed to crush the first stable government strife-torn Somalia has had in 15 years of civil war and anarchy. The new Islamic regime, known as the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), recently managed to bring law and order to much of southern and central Somalia. In the north, a secessionist group has proclaimed something called independent "Puntland."
The Union of Islamic Courts ended Somalia’s long civil war by crushing local warlords who were being armed and financed by the CIA. The US claims the Islamic Courts is a second Taliban-style movement containing "terrorists" involved in the 1998 bombings of US embassies in East Africa who will turn Somalia into a hotbed of anti-American subversion. The UIC denies these allegations.
More important, under the Bush/Cheney Administration, any movement that has the audacity to call itself "Islamic" immediately becomes a target of American hostility. The embarrassing total defeat of US-backed Somali warlords by the Islamic Courts militia led directly to Washington’s decision to press Ethiopia to invade Somalia.
Ethiopia has one of Africa’s more powerful, well-trained armed forces with over 1,300 tanks and a modern air force that are now increasingly equipped and aided by the United States.
The repressive regime of strongman Meles Zenawi seems the antithesis of President George Bush’s calls for democracy, but has become a primary ally of Washington that is seen as a bulwark against Islamic forces in Africa. Washington has quietly supported Ethiopia in its long border war against its bitter foe, Eritrea. In recent months, the Eritrea has become an important supplier of small arms and munitions to Somalia.
Somalia’s ragtag Islamist militias are helpless against Ethiopian tanks, artillery and attack aircraft. Ethiopia’s army could quickly occupy all of Somalia, but it would then be very hard-pressed to protect its long, vulnerable supply lines against attack by Somali guerilla forces.
Ethiopia has enough men to wage a two-front war against Somalia and Eritrea, but a prolonged conflict would seriously undermine its fragile economy. Accordingly, Ethiopia’s likely strategy is to protect the western-imposed rump regime in Baidoa and launch attacks to prevent the UIC from consolidating power. But involvement by traditional enemy Ethiopia will undoubtedly further inflame Somali passions and strengthen the Islamic Courts. The latest war in the Horn of Africa could easily widen into a wider conflict that involves Eritrea, strife-torn regions of southern Sudan and Uganda, and northern Kenya, which has many ethnic Somalis.
Equally important, prolonged war with Somalia could open fissures in unstable, multiethnic, multi-religious Ethiopia. Though usually depicted as a Christian nation, at least 50 percent of Ethiopians are Muslim, and 35–40 percent Christians. Ethnic Amhara and Tigrayans comprise 32 percent of the population, while long-oppressed, rebellious Muslim Oromo in the south account for over 40 percent.
Ethiopia’s Muslims have long sought a voice in their nation’s affairs but were brutally repressed by Ethiopia’s royalist, Marxist, and now, the Tigrayn regimes. Conflict with Somalia could re-ignite the Oromo independence movement and lead to the splintering of Ethiopia, producing a reverse mirror image of ethnic-religious strife between Sudan’s northern Muslims and southern Christians and animists.
Ethiopia’s war against Somalia presents a more dangerous regional threat than an Islamic-run Somalia. The Bush/Cheney Administration is again showing its reckless ignorance and arrogance by charging into a tribal conflict, as it did in Afghanistan and Iraq, about which it knows nothing. Once again, Washington’s "cure" will be shown to be far worse than the disease it claims to address.
What Washington should be doing is talking to leaders of the Islamic Courts to ensure Somalia is not used as a new base for al-Qaeda operations. This is a fair request that can be sweetened by offers of financial support and assurances the Ethiopians will be leashed. But this appears too subtle for the administration’s ham-handed crusaders who have already blundered into two lost wars and are now courting a third.
January 1, 2007
Eric Margolis [send him mail], contributing foreign editor for Sun National Media Canada, is the author of War at the Top of the World. See his website.
Copyright © 2007 Eric Margolis
Saturday, January 13, 2007
Understanding American "Policy" in Central Asia
This article appeared in the April 9, 1999 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.A Lexicon of 'Brzezinski-isms' Brzezinski testifies against himself
by Scott Thompson
In last week's Feature, Lyndon LaRouche warned that, if the insane geopolitical doctrines of Carter National Security Adviser Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski are imposed on an increasingly weakened President William Clinton, the consequences will be the greatest global conflagration in modern times. Brzezinski, who counts among his leading political offspring Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, the self-described "Xena Warrior Princess" of the Clinton administration's Principals Committee, has done the world a favor, by putting pen to paper and spelling out his zany geopolitical views in a booklength diatribe, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives (New York: Basic Books, 1997). To save our readers the agony of a full reading of Brzezinski's incompetent ravings, we provide a lexicon of the ideas presented in his chessboard fantasy.
A goofy Anglo-American imperial model
With the collapse of the Soviet Union and emergence of a prostrate Russia, what Brzezinski calls "The Black Hole," he starts his discourse on "Superpower Politics" by stating that the United States, as the sole surviving superpower in the post-Cold War world, has a window of opportunity of some 10-20 years to assert its control over all of Eurasia. "Ever since the continents started interacting politically," writes Brzezinski, "some 500 years ago, Eurasia has been the center of world power. . . .
"The last decade of the twentieth century has witnessed a tectonic shift in world affairs. For the first time ever, a non-Eurasian power has emerged not only as the key arbiter of European power relations, but also as the world's paramount power. The defeat and collapse of the Soviet Union was the final step in the rapid ascendance of a Western Hemispheric power, the United States, as the sole and, indeed, the first truly global power. Eurasia, however, retains its geopolitical importance."
"For America" after the Cold War, Brzezinski adds, "the chief prize is Eurasia."
Looking for a model in the first part of his book for the sort of "hegemony" that the United States currently projects over Eurasia, Brzezinski eschews Pax Romana and Rule Britannia for a goofy model: "To find a somewhat closer analogy to today's definition of a global power, we must turn to the remarkable phenomenon of the Mongol Empire. Its emergence was achieved through an intense struggle with major and well-organized opponents. Among those defeated were the kingdoms of Poland and Hungary, the forces of the Holy Roman Empire, several Russian and Rus' principalities, the Caliphate of Baghdad, and later, even the Sung dynasty of China."
Making love to a corpse
While Brzezinski's book has probably sold more copies in Russia, where the elites are trying to figure out U.S. strategy, it is worth recalling that Brzezinski is in reality a British asset, trained by William Yandell Elliott, a Nashville Agrarian and Cecil Rhodes "Roundtable" tout who also trained Brzezinski's sibling rival, self-confessed British agent Sir Henry Kissinger (KCMG). Unlike Kissinger, who was given a knighthood usually reserved for leading members of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Brzezinski has been more covert in his Anglophilism. In The Grand Chessboard, Brzezinski goes out of his way to camouflage the current British role as the "back-seat driver" behind the worst policies of those such as Vice President Al Gore, Jr. and Secretary of State "Madmeddling" Albright.
In The Grand Chessboard, which always speaks of U.S. "geopolitical" interests, Brzezinski dismisses as irrelevant the ongoing manipulation by an Anglo-American cabal, in which the British "Venetian Party" is the dominant intellectual force shaping the issues that confront traditional American institutions. According to Brzezinski, Britain today occupies a special place as a U.S. ally, but it is a "retired" geostrategic player:
"In contrast, Britain is not a geostrategic player. It has fewer major options. It entertains no ambitious vision of Europe's future, and its relative decline has also reduced its capacity to play the traditional role of European balancer. Its ambivalence regarding European unification and its attachment to a waning special relationship with America, have made Great Britain increasingly irrelevant insofar as the major choices confronting Europe's future are concerned. London has largely dealt itself out of the European game. . . .
"Great Britain, to be sure, still remains important to America. It continues to wield some degree of global influence through the Commonwealth, but it is neither a restless major power, nor is it motivated by an ambitious vision. It is America's key supporter, a very loyal ally, a vital military base, and a close partner in critically important intelligence activities. Its friendship needs to be nourished, but its policies do not call for sustained attention. It is a retired geostrategic player, resting on its splendid laurels, largely disengaged from the great European adventure in which France and Germany are the principal actors."
According to Brzezinski, Britain is above reproach in terms of the dangerously "geopolitical" doctrines that "Americans" like himself have been peddling increasingly of late, being content to maintain what it can of the "special relationship" with the United States and play with its Commonwealth--the euphemism for the British Empire today.
In the footsteps of Adolf Hitler
When discussing the history of geopolitics, Brzezinski lets his guard down. What he calls geopolitics is a variant upon the Mackinder/Hitlerian quackery that, in the hands of the Prince of Wales--later King Edward VII--underlay World War I. Ultimately, this doctrine was conduited, through Anglophile circles such as the "Wagner Kreis" (i.e., Houston Stewart Chamberlain and the Wagner Circle) and the mystic Thule Society, of which German geopolitician Karl Haushofer had been a member, into the pages of Hitler's Mein Kampf, as a prelude to World War II.
At the start of the section "Geopolitics and Geostrategy," Brzezinski observes: "Napoleon once said that to know a nation's geography was to know its foreign policy."
Elsewhere in this section, he remarks: "Until recently, the leading analysts of geopolitics have debated whether land power was more significant than sea power and what specific region of Eurasia is vital to gain control over the entire continent. One of the most prominent, Harold Mackinder, pioneered the discussion early this century with his successive concepts of the Eurasian `pivot area' (which was said to include all of Siberia and much of Central Asia) and, later, of the Central-East European `heartland' as the vital springboards for the attainment of continental domination. He popularized his heartland concept by the famous dictum:
"Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland;
"Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island;
"Who rules the World-Island commands the world.
"Geopolitics was also invoked by some leading German political geographers to justify their country's `Drang nach Osten' ["Drive to the East"], notably by Karl Haushofer adapting Mackinder's concept to Germany's strategic needs. Its much-vulgarized echo could also be heard in Adolf Hitler's emphasis on the German people's need for `Lebensraum' " ["living space"].
One suspects that Brzezinski is even more aware than he lets on of how Mackinder's geopolitics permeated various British channels, to Karl Haushofer, and thence to the marcher-lord Hitler.
It is therefore little short of astounding that Brzezinski offers to present a post-modern version of the Mackinder/Haushofer geopolitical doctrine, since it places him historically in the footsteps of Hitler's geostrategic doctrine.
Clearly, Brzezinski's hatred of Russia is much more motivated by his being a British asset, than by his background as heir to the lesser Polish nobility, that suffered so deeply from these "geopolitical theories."
The `Survivors' Club'
Brzezinski glosses through Russian foreign policy thinking, from the "Westernizers' " design for a strategic partnership with the United States, to building alliances with the "Near Abroad," to a semi-mystical doctrine known as "Eurasianism," laughing up his sleeve at the failure of these doctrines.
However, Brzezinski is crystal clear throughout his book that China and Russia, especially, must not be allowed to combine forces, thereby becoming a global power sufficiently strong to expel the United States from its post-Cold War "prize" of Eurasia. The alliance of China, Russia, and India that is coming into being based on Lyndon LaRouche's "Grand Design" for Eurasian integration through massive infrastructure projects such as the Eurasian Land-Bridge, what the Chinese refer to as the "New Silk Road," is, for Brzezinski, the number-one danger. This demonstrates that he does not represent traditional "American System," republican economic thought, because an equivalent of the Land-Bridge conception had originally been proposed by Henry Carey in his role as chief economist to President Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was assassinated by a British conspiracy, once Britain's efforts to divide and conquer the United States with the fratricidal Civil War had failed.
Writes Brzezinski: "In early 1996, President [Boris] Yeltsin replaced his Western-oriented foreign minister [Andrei] Kozyrev, with the more experienced but also orthodox former Communist international specialist Yevgeni Primakov, whose long-standing interest has been Iran and China. Some Russian commentators speculated that Primakov's orientation might precipitate an effort to forge a new `anti-hegemonic' coalition, formed around the three powers with the greatest geopolitical stake in reducing America's primacy in Eurasia. Some of Primakov's initial travel and comments reinforced that impression. Moreover, the existing Sino-Iranian connection in weapons trade, as well as the Russian inclination to cooperate in Iran's efforts to increase its access to nuclear energy seemed to provide a perfect fit for closer political dialogue and eventual alliance. The result could, at least theoretically, bring together the world's most militant Islamic power, and the world's most populated and powerful Asian power, thereby creating a potential coalition. . . .
"Moreover, China would be the senior partner in any serious Russian effort to jell such an `anti-hegemonic' coalition. Being more populous, more industrious, more innovative, more dynamic, and harboring some potential territorial designs on Russia, China would inevitably consign Russia to the status of a junior partner, while at the same time lacking the means (and probably any real desire) to help Russia overcome its backwardness. Russia would thus become a buffer between an expanding Europe and an expansionist China."
Elsewhere in his book, Brzezinski repeats this warning that China must not be allowed to become a global power in league with Russia: "A geostrategic issue of crucial importance is posed by China's emergence as a major power. The most appealing outcome would be to co-opt a democratizing and free-marketing China into a larger Asian regional framework of cooperation. But suppose China does not democratize but continues to grow in economic and military power? A `Greater China' may be emerging whatever the desires and calculations of its neighbors, and any effort to prevent that from happening could entail an intensifying conflict with China. Such a conflict could strain American-Japanese relations--for it is far from certain that Japan would want to follow America's lead in containing China--and could therefore have potentially revolutionary consequences for Tokyo's definition of Japan's regional role, perhaps even resulting in the termination of the American presence in the Far East. . . .
"Potentially, the most dangerous scenario would be a grand coalition of China, Russia, and perhaps Iran, an `anti-hegemonic' coalition united not by ideology but by complementary grievances. It would be reminiscent in scale and scope of the challenge posed by the Sino-Soviet bloc, though this time China would likely be the leader and Russia the follower. Averting this contingency, however remote it may be, will require a display of U.S. geostrategic skill on the western, eastern, and southern perimeters of Eurasia simultaneously."
Thus, Brzezinski defines the emerging "Survivors' Club" as the single most dangerous "geopolitical" force which those who desire to dominate Eurasia might encounter. Once again, Brzezinski allies himself with the British "Club of the Isles," that emerged out of two world wars, that were instigated by a treasonous Anglo-American Tory plot--e.g., financing Hitler's imposition upon a prostrate Germany by E.H. Harriman, Sir George Bush's father, Prescott Bush, and Montagu Norman, Governor of the Bank of England--in order to halt precisely such integration of Eurasia around true global economic development as the Land-Bridge conception.
NATO expansion, and China
Despite Russia's justifiable objections, Brzezinski repeatedly stresses that the expansion of NATO as a defensive alliance after the Cold War, to include the former glacis of the Soviet Union, is of the utmost importance. Eventually, he argues, starting from "the Democratic Bridgehead" of Europe, NATO ought to expand, via Poland, and thence Ukraine, to the very border of a much reduced Russia. Here is one example of this proposal:
"Ultimately at stake in this effort is America's long-range role in Europe. A new Europe is still taking shape, and if that new Europe is to remain geopolitically a part of the `Euro-Atlantic' space, the expansion of NATO is essential. Indeed, a comprehensive U.S. policy for Eurasia as a whole will not be possible if the effort to widen NATO, having been launched by the United States, stalls and falters. That failure would discredit American leadership; it would shatter the concept of an expanding Europe; it would demoralize the Central Europeans; and it could reignite currently dormant or dying Russian geopolitical aspirations for Central Europe. For the West, this would be a self-inflicted wound that would mortally damage the prospects for a truly European pillar in any eventual Eurasian security architecture; and for America, it would thus be not only a regional defeat but a global defeat as well."
Thus, to gain a "bridgehead" up to the border of Russia, Brzezinski is prepared to pursue NATO expansion and out-of-area deployments, whatever the potential danger, especially in light of his other containment policies toward Russia, of pushing the globe in the direction of World War III.
In a section on "The Far Eastern Anchor," Brzezinski insists that China, with which President Clinton has proclaimed a "constructive strategic partnership," must not be allowed to emerge as a "global power," but must be contained as a "regional power." Because, he lies, ultimately the Chinese wish to seek revenge against the United States: "China's principal objection to America relates less to what America actually does than to what America currently is and where it is. America is seen by China as the world's hegemon, whose very presence in the region, based on its dominant position in Japan, works to contain China's influence."
Brzezinski suggests that access to energy and food is China's Achilles' heel, that can be used as a weapon to prevent China from becoming a truly "global power."
Cecil Rhodes-style grab of Central Asian oil
Brzezinski devotes an entire chapter to a modern-day version of a Cecil Rhodes-style raw materials grab of the large oil and gas reserves in Central Asia. According to Brzezinski, these petroleum-based resources must be under sufficient Anglo-American control, so that they can be denied to Russia and China in particular:
"In Europe, the word `Balkans' conjures up images of ethnic conflicts and great-power regional rivalries. Eurasia, too, has its `Balkans,' but the Eurasian Balkans are much larger, more populated, even more religiously and ethnically heterogeneous. They are located within the central zone of global instability . . . and that embraces portions of southeastern Europe, Central Asia and parts of South Asia, the Persian Gulf area, and the Middle East.
"The Eurasian Balkans form the inner core of that large oblong . . . and they differ from its outer zone in one particularly significant way: they are a power vacuum. . . .
"The Eurasian Balkans . . . are of importance from the standpoint of security and historical ambitions of at least three of their most immediate and more powerful neighbors, namely, Russia, Turkey, and Iran with China also signaling an increasing interest in the region. But the Eurasian Balkans are infinitely more important as a potential economic prize: an enormous concentration of natural gas and oil reserves located in the region, in addition to important minerals, including gold. . . .
"The momentum of Asia's economic development is already generating massive pressures of the exploration and exploitation of new sources of energy, and the Central Asian region and the Caspian Sea basin, are known to contain reserves of natural gas and oil that dwarf those of Kuwait, the Gulf of Mexico, or the North Sea."
Noting that Central Asia not only represents at present a "power vacuum," but also that each of those countries "suffers from serious internal difficulties," Brzezinski, who must know that the British are the principal "stakeholders" on these riches through their dominance within the oil multinationals, maps out how to deny any access to this raw materials fortune by Russia, especially.
Enlarging the `Arc of Crisis'
In the second chapter, entitled "The Eurasian Chessboard," Brzezinski puts forward a vision of a "global-zone of percolating violence," that can be skillfully manipulated to stop Eurasian integration. This plan is larger in scope than his earlier "Arc of Crisis" doctrine, that had been based on a plan of British agent Bernard Lewis, according to which he gave U.S. support to the Afghansi to create a "Vietnam War" crisis for the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
According to a map of this region in The Grand Chessboard, this zone of "percolating violence" includes all of Central Asia, extending westward to include Turkey, northward to include southern Russia, and eastward to touch upon the western borders of China. It includes the entire Middle East, where Brzezinski claims it is imperative for the United States to retain control, especially in the critical Persian Gulf. And, the zone extends eastward to include Afghanistan and Pakistan, up to the latter's border with India.
Consonant with the British imperial "Great Game," Brzezinski argues that skillful manipulation of this "global-zone of percolating violence" can be used to halt Russia from becoming an imperial power once again: "To what extent should Russia be helped economically--which inevitably strengthens Russia politically and militarily. . . ?" writes Brzezinski. "Can Russia be both powerful and a democracy at the same time? . . . If it becomes powerful again, . . . will it not seek to regain its lost imperial domain, and can it then be both an empire and a democracy? . . .
"Internal Russian recovery is essential to Russia's democratization and eventual Europeanization. But any recovery of its imperial potential would be inimical to both these objectives."
Hence, by manipulating this "global-zone of percolating violence," which happens to be a raw-materials-wealthy region, Brzezinski proposes to further contain and weaken Russia.
It is clear, based on reading The Grand Chessboard "geopolitical" lunacy from the perspective of Lyndon LaRouche's Eurasian Land-Bridge for the integration of the United States in strategic partnership with Franklin Roosevelt's World War II allies--i.e., China and Russia--that anyone in policymaking circles insane enough to lend credence to Brzezinski's nonsense has endorsed a fast track toward World War III. As LaRouche made clear in his Feature on "Mad Brzezinski's Chessboard," every time the Anglo-American Tory traitors have faced a depression collapse, they have sought to protect their global dominance by starting a war. The Grand Chessboard by Zbigniew Brzezinski is a blueprint for how to start such a war, which would plunge the majority of mankind (perhaps leaving only the Chinese component of the Survivors' Club relatively unscathed) into a New Dark Age for generations to come.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
CIA gets the go-ahead to take on Hizbollah
By Toby Harnden, US Editor |
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
A Solution More for Israel
Federalism: A Solution More for Israel than for Iraq
Nicola Nasser
Tuesday, 09 January 2007
Revealing both the double standards of U.S. policies and the propaganda-oriented Israeli advocacy of “minority rights” in the Arab world, the U.S.-allied Iraqi Kurdish and sectarian leaders reacted angrily to James Baker-Lee Hamilton report because it recommended what they perceived as a possible American retract from federalism in Iraq and the Israeli Jews condemned as a catastrophic declaration of war an Israeli Arabs’ “future visions” because those visions could lead to a “federal” Israel.
Israel is still not “Jewish” neither in the demographic nor in the religious sense and the “Jewishness” of the state is still a strategic Zionist goal; hence the Israeli mainstream calls for the “transfer” of “non-Jews” and the Israeli official policies that boil down to nothing less than being ethnic cleansing practices. Jimmy Carter’s Palestine Peace Not Apartheid was only the latest reminder of this existential problem that threatens both the very existence of the indigenous Arabs in Israel as well as the Zionist dream of Jews to lead an independent Jewish life.
Israeli Jews have to choose between Apartheid and a democratic state. A federal Israel could solve both an Israeli internal ethnic problem and as well be the right just, lasting and comprehensive approach to solving the Arab and Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which would spare the region more wars and violence; the ingredients of success are much more authentic than the U.S., Israeli and Iranian-backed separatist and sectarian calls for federalism in Iraq. This approach would allow for the return of Palestinian refugees without “throwing the Jews to the sea” and would allow the Jews to lead an independent life without condemning Palestinians to an eternal exile in Diaspora.
Of course the expected Israeli-U.S. rejection of this approach rules it out as unrealistic politics, but the rejection would in no way make the arguments for it less authentic. The promotion of federalism in Iraq is increasingly developing into a double-edged weapon against its U.S. and Israeli advocates and could also turn against its Iranian supporters, whose multi-ethnic country of Persians, Arabs, Kurds, Balushis, etc. will certainly not abandon its Islamic unity for a western-style pluralistic federal alternative.
According to the last updated CIA World Factbook online, Iraqi Kurds represent between 15%-20% of the population and the “non-Jews (mostly Arabs)” represent 23.6% of all Israelis. While the Kurds share with the Arab majority of Iraq the same religion, culture, historical heritage, wide-spread inter-ethnic marriages and have never had an independent state of their own, the Israeli Arabs are all either Muslims or Christians, with a distinctive oriental Arab and Muslim culture and no common historical heritage whatsoever with their Jewish compatriots, who by the sword, dispossessed and displaced the Arab majority to create their “Jewish” state and who are to this day ruling out the emergence of a Palestinian – Arab state on only a portion of their ancestral land.
Nonetheless, the U.S. and Israel have incessantly incited and supported a separate Kurdish entity in northern Iraq and since the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq in 2003 imposed as a fait accompli a “constitutional” federal system that would honour that support and as well address a similar Iranian-supported sectarian “separation” in the south, but could not yet be translated into a reality on the ground.
However neither Washington nor Tel Aviv would even ponder the possibility of a potential similar solution for the second class citizenship of the larger Arab minority of more than 1.2 million in Israel, which has a much better case for a federal arrangement with the Israeli central government. Instead the colonialist settlement of Arab land, the “transfer” and the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Arabs were the components of the official Israeli Jewish solution, which had and have its strategist representatives in Israel’s successive governments, with Washington either turning closed eyes or only verbally and shyly protesting.
The contradictory U.S. policies between Iraq and Israel would potentially lead to the failure of its plan for an un-viable federal Iraq and to the failure of the viable “vision” of a federal Israel and would certainly lead to a repetition of American and Iranian betrayals of Iraqi Kurds, whose national aspirations were always opportunistically used by Washington and Tehran against the central government in Baghdad whenever this government is out of step with their regional strategies.
Iraqi Kurdistan enjoys now a de facto independence, protected by the U.S. occupation, but regional factors prevent declaring it officially and Kurdish U.S.-allied leaders are smoke-screening their separatism by claiming a federal link to Baghdad, only to buy time until the regional rejection could be overcome or outmanoeuvred.
In September last year prominent pro-Iran Shiite leader of the “Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq,” a U.S.-financed and Iranian-trained militia, who was hosted later in the year by President George W. Bush in Washington, Abdel Aziz Al Hakim, used the celebration of the birth of the Al-Mahdi, a 9th century Shiite imam, to renew his call for an autonomous Shiite region in central and southern Iraq. “Federalism will lead to stability and security in Iraq,” Hakim told worshippers during Friday prayers in Karbala, adding: “Look at the example of federalism in Kurdistan, it is evidence of the success of this system.”
“If federalism cannot be assured, Iraq will not remain one state,” warned Iraqi U.S.-allied Kurdish leader Massud Barzani, adding: “We will not make any compromises.” Would Israel and Iran tolerate a similar de facto independence for Israeli Arabs or Iranian Kurds? How would Israel and Iran react were their respective Arab and Kurdish minorities to mobilize a 75,000-man Peshmerga-style militia of their own? Would they continue to support “the bad example” of the Iraqi Kurds?
More importantly, what would the U.S., the strategic ally of both Israel and the Iraqi “federalists,” say and how would it react? Of course Washington would react on a case by case basis, which would produce contradictory policies that would reject federalism in Israel but support it in Iran. And if President George W. Bush is to adopt the recommendations of the Baker-Hamilton report Washington would also retract from supporting the Iraqi “federalists.” This is another stark example of Washington’s double standards policy in the Middle East as well as of the absurdity of both U.S. and Israeli verbal propaganda advocacy of minority rights.
U.S. betrayal of Iraqi “federalists” is now highly probable, but the U.S. betrayal of Israeli Arabs is a 60-year old official policy. Kurdish as well as Arab-Palestinian betting on U.S. and Israeli tactical promises could in no time prove tragically counterproductive because occupying powers could not be but in solidarity and foreign occupation could not last forever. Kurds in particular, whether in Iraq or elsewhere and in spite of a lot of their legitimate grievances, could not be winners by exchanging a proven historical alliance with the regional Arab majority for temporary and unproven possible alignment with other minorities whose disloyalty to their historical coexistence with Arabs is still in doubt, despite the Israeli and U.S. incitement.
Last December Israeli Jews and Iraqi “federalists” were united in angry reaction, but ironically in contradictory stances vis-Ã -vis federalism: Barzani and Hakim were joined by the head of the system that is developing under the U.S. occupation, Jalal Talbani, in pledging they were “in no way abiding” by the Baker-Hamilton “unrealistic and inappropriate” recommendations “imposed on us,” which are “contrary to the principles of federalism and the constitution that forms the basis upon which the new Iraq is built,” “contradict U.S. assurances,” represent “interference in the country's internal affairs” and strengthen “the central government.” They warned the recommendations threaten Iraq’s territorial integrity, in a thinly veiled threat to secede.
The Israeli Jews’ furiously blasted a 27-page “Future Vision” of their Arab-Palestinian compatriots, which clearly envisage a federal Israel, thus undermining in an outburst of fury the “Israeli example” on which all their propaganda was based to incite the ethnic, religious and sectarian minorities coexisting peacefully for thousands of years among their Arab neighbours.
“This week, the leaders of the Arab minority in Israel declared war in their own way on the Jewish national state in the Land of Israel,” wrote Avraham Tal in Haaretz on Dec. 11. Why? Because “even if Israel one day arrives at an understanding with the leaders of the Palestinian Authority and all of the Arab states about taking the demand for the right of return off the agenda, the demands of Israeli Arab citizens for a right of return for descendants of the uprooted to their forefathers' villages and their other nationalistic demands will ensure that the flames of the conflict are not extinguished,” Tal wrote.
Tal was right: Here lies the hard core of the conflict and the key to peace as well, namely the fact that a just and lasting peace is based on the Palestinian Right of Return, a fact that has almost drowned in the “brainwashing” rhetoric of the futile “peace processes;” a Palestinian state on a 20 percent portion of the Palestinian ancestral homeland is part, and not all, of the solution.
Tal did not represent only the mainstream Israeli Jewish reaction, but more importantly the leftists and liberals who have traditionally but unsuccessfully struggled for 60 years for “equality for Arabs,” whose “visions” now reflect their despair as well as their conviction that a “state-for-all-citizens solution” has proved a dead end. Israel’s official policy has created a “national minority” out of them after they hoped in vain for too long for an equal status with their Jewish compatriots.
In a “Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel,” published by the Higher Follow Up Committee of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel last month, they only “envisaged” some of the demands of the Iraqi Kurds, which Israel supports and which the Iraqi Kurds already enjoy: They demanded collective rights for the Arab national minority to secure individual equality, a veto power on decisions of national import (on “transfer” for example), equality in immigration rights by annulment of the Jewish Law of Return or the legislation of a Law of Return for Arabs, separate representation at international institutions, representing Arabs in the Israeli flag and national anthem, and envisaged the creation of a national network of institutions to develop their national identity as a central strategy in their struggle for collective rights.
The Israeli Jews have to reconsider; so the Iraqi Kurds, whose current leaders have explicitly or implicitly identified with the Israeli propaganda about the Arab majority’s “oppression” of the minority Jews and Kurds in the region, a view that is still promoted by a “selected” article by Ariel Natan Pasko, dated March 17, 2004, which is still posted on the official Web site of Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government:
“As the discussion of "democratization" of the Middle East continues, an important point that must be made time and time again, is the importance in building structures that liberate the minorities of the region from oppression … Contrary to the propaganda that the region is Arab/Muslim, these minorities are remnants of the indigenous peoples, before the great Arab imperialist wars of the 7th century, and "Islamicization process" that followed” and “have all resisted "Arabization" for over 1,000 years,” Pasko wrote, adding: “Only Israel, the Jewish State, has fully liberated itself - in the political sense - from this Arab/Muslim oppression.”
This twisted rewriting of history to serve the purposes of foreign invaders of the Arab land has caused wars and tragedies and still could cause more of the same. Reconsideration by Kurds and Israelis in particular of this tragic path could prove a turning point in the regional history. However, given the status quo, more bloodletting is in the offing before the two peoples come to their senses to make their leaders change course.
*Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Ramallah, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.
Nicola Nasser
Tuesday, 09 January 2007
Revealing both the double standards of U.S. policies and the propaganda-oriented Israeli advocacy of “minority rights” in the Arab world, the U.S.-allied Iraqi Kurdish and sectarian leaders reacted angrily to James Baker-Lee Hamilton report because it recommended what they perceived as a possible American retract from federalism in Iraq and the Israeli Jews condemned as a catastrophic declaration of war an Israeli Arabs’ “future visions” because those visions could lead to a “federal” Israel.
Israel is still not “Jewish” neither in the demographic nor in the religious sense and the “Jewishness” of the state is still a strategic Zionist goal; hence the Israeli mainstream calls for the “transfer” of “non-Jews” and the Israeli official policies that boil down to nothing less than being ethnic cleansing practices. Jimmy Carter’s Palestine Peace Not Apartheid was only the latest reminder of this existential problem that threatens both the very existence of the indigenous Arabs in Israel as well as the Zionist dream of Jews to lead an independent Jewish life.
Israeli Jews have to choose between Apartheid and a democratic state. A federal Israel could solve both an Israeli internal ethnic problem and as well be the right just, lasting and comprehensive approach to solving the Arab and Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which would spare the region more wars and violence; the ingredients of success are much more authentic than the U.S., Israeli and Iranian-backed separatist and sectarian calls for federalism in Iraq. This approach would allow for the return of Palestinian refugees without “throwing the Jews to the sea” and would allow the Jews to lead an independent life without condemning Palestinians to an eternal exile in Diaspora.
Of course the expected Israeli-U.S. rejection of this approach rules it out as unrealistic politics, but the rejection would in no way make the arguments for it less authentic. The promotion of federalism in Iraq is increasingly developing into a double-edged weapon against its U.S. and Israeli advocates and could also turn against its Iranian supporters, whose multi-ethnic country of Persians, Arabs, Kurds, Balushis, etc. will certainly not abandon its Islamic unity for a western-style pluralistic federal alternative.
According to the last updated CIA World Factbook online, Iraqi Kurds represent between 15%-20% of the population and the “non-Jews (mostly Arabs)” represent 23.6% of all Israelis. While the Kurds share with the Arab majority of Iraq the same religion, culture, historical heritage, wide-spread inter-ethnic marriages and have never had an independent state of their own, the Israeli Arabs are all either Muslims or Christians, with a distinctive oriental Arab and Muslim culture and no common historical heritage whatsoever with their Jewish compatriots, who by the sword, dispossessed and displaced the Arab majority to create their “Jewish” state and who are to this day ruling out the emergence of a Palestinian – Arab state on only a portion of their ancestral land.
Nonetheless, the U.S. and Israel have incessantly incited and supported a separate Kurdish entity in northern Iraq and since the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq in 2003 imposed as a fait accompli a “constitutional” federal system that would honour that support and as well address a similar Iranian-supported sectarian “separation” in the south, but could not yet be translated into a reality on the ground.
However neither Washington nor Tel Aviv would even ponder the possibility of a potential similar solution for the second class citizenship of the larger Arab minority of more than 1.2 million in Israel, which has a much better case for a federal arrangement with the Israeli central government. Instead the colonialist settlement of Arab land, the “transfer” and the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Arabs were the components of the official Israeli Jewish solution, which had and have its strategist representatives in Israel’s successive governments, with Washington either turning closed eyes or only verbally and shyly protesting.
The contradictory U.S. policies between Iraq and Israel would potentially lead to the failure of its plan for an un-viable federal Iraq and to the failure of the viable “vision” of a federal Israel and would certainly lead to a repetition of American and Iranian betrayals of Iraqi Kurds, whose national aspirations were always opportunistically used by Washington and Tehran against the central government in Baghdad whenever this government is out of step with their regional strategies.
Iraqi Kurdistan enjoys now a de facto independence, protected by the U.S. occupation, but regional factors prevent declaring it officially and Kurdish U.S.-allied leaders are smoke-screening their separatism by claiming a federal link to Baghdad, only to buy time until the regional rejection could be overcome or outmanoeuvred.
In September last year prominent pro-Iran Shiite leader of the “Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq,” a U.S.-financed and Iranian-trained militia, who was hosted later in the year by President George W. Bush in Washington, Abdel Aziz Al Hakim, used the celebration of the birth of the Al-Mahdi, a 9th century Shiite imam, to renew his call for an autonomous Shiite region in central and southern Iraq. “Federalism will lead to stability and security in Iraq,” Hakim told worshippers during Friday prayers in Karbala, adding: “Look at the example of federalism in Kurdistan, it is evidence of the success of this system.”
“If federalism cannot be assured, Iraq will not remain one state,” warned Iraqi U.S.-allied Kurdish leader Massud Barzani, adding: “We will not make any compromises.” Would Israel and Iran tolerate a similar de facto independence for Israeli Arabs or Iranian Kurds? How would Israel and Iran react were their respective Arab and Kurdish minorities to mobilize a 75,000-man Peshmerga-style militia of their own? Would they continue to support “the bad example” of the Iraqi Kurds?
More importantly, what would the U.S., the strategic ally of both Israel and the Iraqi “federalists,” say and how would it react? Of course Washington would react on a case by case basis, which would produce contradictory policies that would reject federalism in Israel but support it in Iran. And if President George W. Bush is to adopt the recommendations of the Baker-Hamilton report Washington would also retract from supporting the Iraqi “federalists.” This is another stark example of Washington’s double standards policy in the Middle East as well as of the absurdity of both U.S. and Israeli verbal propaganda advocacy of minority rights.
U.S. betrayal of Iraqi “federalists” is now highly probable, but the U.S. betrayal of Israeli Arabs is a 60-year old official policy. Kurdish as well as Arab-Palestinian betting on U.S. and Israeli tactical promises could in no time prove tragically counterproductive because occupying powers could not be but in solidarity and foreign occupation could not last forever. Kurds in particular, whether in Iraq or elsewhere and in spite of a lot of their legitimate grievances, could not be winners by exchanging a proven historical alliance with the regional Arab majority for temporary and unproven possible alignment with other minorities whose disloyalty to their historical coexistence with Arabs is still in doubt, despite the Israeli and U.S. incitement.
Last December Israeli Jews and Iraqi “federalists” were united in angry reaction, but ironically in contradictory stances vis-Ã -vis federalism: Barzani and Hakim were joined by the head of the system that is developing under the U.S. occupation, Jalal Talbani, in pledging they were “in no way abiding” by the Baker-Hamilton “unrealistic and inappropriate” recommendations “imposed on us,” which are “contrary to the principles of federalism and the constitution that forms the basis upon which the new Iraq is built,” “contradict U.S. assurances,” represent “interference in the country's internal affairs” and strengthen “the central government.” They warned the recommendations threaten Iraq’s territorial integrity, in a thinly veiled threat to secede.
The Israeli Jews’ furiously blasted a 27-page “Future Vision” of their Arab-Palestinian compatriots, which clearly envisage a federal Israel, thus undermining in an outburst of fury the “Israeli example” on which all their propaganda was based to incite the ethnic, religious and sectarian minorities coexisting peacefully for thousands of years among their Arab neighbours.
“This week, the leaders of the Arab minority in Israel declared war in their own way on the Jewish national state in the Land of Israel,” wrote Avraham Tal in Haaretz on Dec. 11. Why? Because “even if Israel one day arrives at an understanding with the leaders of the Palestinian Authority and all of the Arab states about taking the demand for the right of return off the agenda, the demands of Israeli Arab citizens for a right of return for descendants of the uprooted to their forefathers' villages and their other nationalistic demands will ensure that the flames of the conflict are not extinguished,” Tal wrote.
Tal was right: Here lies the hard core of the conflict and the key to peace as well, namely the fact that a just and lasting peace is based on the Palestinian Right of Return, a fact that has almost drowned in the “brainwashing” rhetoric of the futile “peace processes;” a Palestinian state on a 20 percent portion of the Palestinian ancestral homeland is part, and not all, of the solution.
Tal did not represent only the mainstream Israeli Jewish reaction, but more importantly the leftists and liberals who have traditionally but unsuccessfully struggled for 60 years for “equality for Arabs,” whose “visions” now reflect their despair as well as their conviction that a “state-for-all-citizens solution” has proved a dead end. Israel’s official policy has created a “national minority” out of them after they hoped in vain for too long for an equal status with their Jewish compatriots.
In a “Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel,” published by the Higher Follow Up Committee of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel last month, they only “envisaged” some of the demands of the Iraqi Kurds, which Israel supports and which the Iraqi Kurds already enjoy: They demanded collective rights for the Arab national minority to secure individual equality, a veto power on decisions of national import (on “transfer” for example), equality in immigration rights by annulment of the Jewish Law of Return or the legislation of a Law of Return for Arabs, separate representation at international institutions, representing Arabs in the Israeli flag and national anthem, and envisaged the creation of a national network of institutions to develop their national identity as a central strategy in their struggle for collective rights.
The Israeli Jews have to reconsider; so the Iraqi Kurds, whose current leaders have explicitly or implicitly identified with the Israeli propaganda about the Arab majority’s “oppression” of the minority Jews and Kurds in the region, a view that is still promoted by a “selected” article by Ariel Natan Pasko, dated March 17, 2004, which is still posted on the official Web site of Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government:
“As the discussion of "democratization" of the Middle East continues, an important point that must be made time and time again, is the importance in building structures that liberate the minorities of the region from oppression … Contrary to the propaganda that the region is Arab/Muslim, these minorities are remnants of the indigenous peoples, before the great Arab imperialist wars of the 7th century, and "Islamicization process" that followed” and “have all resisted "Arabization" for over 1,000 years,” Pasko wrote, adding: “Only Israel, the Jewish State, has fully liberated itself - in the political sense - from this Arab/Muslim oppression.”
This twisted rewriting of history to serve the purposes of foreign invaders of the Arab land has caused wars and tragedies and still could cause more of the same. Reconsideration by Kurds and Israelis in particular of this tragic path could prove a turning point in the regional history. However, given the status quo, more bloodletting is in the offing before the two peoples come to their senses to make their leaders change course.
*Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Ramallah, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.
Sunday, January 07, 2007
A bigot called Bibi
Rattling the Cage: A bigot called Bibi
Larry Derfner
THE JERUSALEM POST Jan. 3, 2007
By rights, Binyamin Netanyahu, who every poll says is by far the most popular politician in Israel, should be ranked with Jean Le Pen, Jorge Haider and the rest of the Western world's racist demagogues.
But he won't be, because anti-Arab racism in Israel is either supported or strategically ignored by the mainstream of the Jewish world, and pretty much taken for granted by the gentile world.
What Netanyahu said Tuesday night was not new for him; he was reported to have made the same appeal to the same sort of audience - haredi political leaders - a couple of years ago as finance minister.
Then, as now, he was apologizing for the way his child welfare cuts had hurt large haredi families, while at the same time asking the haredim to look at the bright sides of that policy.
"Two positive things happened," he told a conference of haredi government officials in Nir Etzion this week. "Members of the haredi public seriously joined the workforce. And on the national level, the unexpected result was the demographic effect on the non-Jewish public, where there was a dramatic drop in the birth rate." (Quoted in Ynet, Yediot Aharonot's Web site. The speech was also reported in Haaretz.)
The once-and-possibly-future prime minister of Israel says publicly that he's sorry his welfare cuts made life harder for Jewish families who are "blessed," as he put it, with many children, but isn't it "positive" that these cuts resulted in fewer Arab children being born? Then Netanyahu went on to suggest a national remedy for the victims of his economic policies - but for Jewish victims only, not Arab victims.
"I don't think that the Jewish Agency should refrain from helping part of the Jewish public in the state," he said, "and it is possible that additional non-governmental bodies could have done so."
IMAGINE IF any gentile government official in the world cited the lowering of the Jewish birthrate in his country as an accomplishment, then recommended that his country's founding institution raise money to help poor gentile families, but not poor Jewish families. How would the Jewish world, starting with Israel, characterize such an individual? What sort of pressure would the Jewish world apply to get him or her fired, blackballed and, if possible, indicted?
Yet everyone knows the speech in Nir Etzion will not hurt Netanyahu at all - even though, again, this is not the first time he's said this, and even though the statements are perfectly in line with his standing as Israel's number one fear-monger on the Israeli Arab "demographic threat." (On second thought, Netanyahu is probably only number two - Avigdor Lieberman, his former right-hand man and alter ego, is number one. When it comes to the subject of Israeli Arabs, it's hard to tell where Netanyahu ends and Lieberman begins.)
The worst that will happen to Netanyahu from this is that maybe another liberal commentator or two will denounce him, and there will be a press release from some civil rights organization. Maybe not even that. If, on the other hand, we're really, really lucky, the attorney-general might have a word to say. (FYI, even if there was a chance of it happening, I wouldn't want to see Netanyahu indicted. If every Israeli who made racist remarks in public had to stand trial, the courts would collapse under the load.)
The only political parties that might censure Netanyahu are the left-wing parties, and nobody cares about them; in fact, a bad word from Meretz can only help the Likud leader in the polls.
The Anti-Defamation League won't say anything, and neither will the other Diaspora Jewish organizations. Bibi is just too big, too popular, too important, too much a symbol of Israel for the Diaspora Jewish establishment to say a word against him, let alone accuse him of being a shameless bigot.
Two positive things happened: Members of the haredi public seriously joined the workforce. And on the national level, the unexpected result was the demographic effect on the non-Jewish public, where there was a dramatic drop in the birth rate.
That's the Israeli people's overwhelming choice for prime minister talking. I hope The New York Times, CNN and every other major news medium in the world picks up this story and doesn't let it go until Israel and Diaspora Jewry are shamed into dumping this guy once and for all.
On second thought, exposure as an anti-Arab racist by the international media could cause Netanyahu some problems overseas, but at home, it would only increase his appeal.
source:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1167467
656176&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Crossing Class Lines in Paris
Middle-Class French Join Sleep-In Over Homelessness
by Craig S. Smith
the New York Times
Tuesday, January 2, 2007 by
PARIS - Hundreds of people emerged from tents beside this city’s Canal St.-Martin to greet the chilly New Year with a hot lunch from a nearby soup kitchen. But not all of them were homeless.
Dozens of otherwise well-housed, middle-class French have been spending nights in tents along the canal, in the 10th Arrondissement, in solidarity with the country’s growing number of “sans domicile fixe,” or “without fixed address,” the French euphemism for people living on the street. The bleak yet determinedly cheerful sleep-in is meant to embarrass the French government into doing something about the problem.
To highlight the plight of the homeless, some have traded the comfort of their apartments for cold tents along the Canal St.-Martin in Paris. (Photo: François Mori/Associated Press)
“Each person should have the minimum dignity in a country as rich as this,” said Bleunwenn Manrot, a 28-year-old with a newsboy cap on her head and a toothbrush in her hand. Ms. Manrot drove more than six hours with friends from her home in Carhaix, Brittany, to spend New Year’s Eve along the canal.
The demonstration has drawn enough media attention over the holidays for President Jacques Chirac to acknowledge it during his traditional New Year address to the nation on Sunday. He asked the government to work in the coming weeks to “put in place a truly enforceable right to housing” that would give the homeless the legal means to demand a place to live.
Given France’s well-financed social services, the country’s homeless problem is relatively mild — the national statistics bureau estimated the number of people living without a fixed address on any one night at 86,000 for all of France in 2004, about equal to the number of homeless in Los Angeles alone.
But even that number is disturbing for the socially active segment of France’s population. In December 2005, the French affiliate of the international charity Doctors of the World began distributing nylon pup tents to people who sleep on Paris’s sidewalks and beneath its bridges. The movement took hold, and since then the tents have become a fixture in odd corners of the city.
In an effort to increase pressure on politicians, another group, Don Quixote’s Children, marshaled some of the tent dwellers last year to set up their tents along the Canal St.-Martin, in the heart of “bobo” (short for bourgeois bohemian) Paris. The canal was dug by Napoleon to supply Paris with clean drinking water. Since mid-December, the encampment has become a happening in one of Paris’s most happening neighborhoods.
“There are 250 tents now,” said Jean-Baptiste Legrand, the organization’s president. “The people keep coming, and the tents are full.”
The protest has started to spread to other cities, including Orléans, Toulouse and Lyon, and has been picked up by politicians as the presidential campaign gets under way.
François Hollande, the leader of the Socialist Party, and Bertrand Delanoë, the mayor of Paris, have signed the group’s petition calling for a solution to the housing problem. Both of the leading presidential candidates — Nicolas Sarkozy, of the governing Union for a Popular Movement, and Ségolène Royal of the Socialists — support the cause.
Catherine Vautrin, the minister for social cohesion, met with Mr. Legrand and other members of his group and last week announced a tenfold increase in spending to help the homeless, to $92 million from $9 million. She said the money would allow homeless shelters to stay open around the clock on weekends and extend their weekday opening by three hours a day.
But a legally enforceable right to housing is the biggest prize sought by housing activists, including Don Quixote’s Children, and they remain skeptical of Mr. Chirac’s New Year promise. France already has a hard time housing new immigrants and asylum seekers. Fires in overcrowded, substandard lodgings have caused scandals in recent years. Finding a place for the hardcore homeless is certain to complicate those problems.
“Chirac’s speech means nothing,” said Ms. Manrot, the Brittany protester.
Such comments suggest that the long camp-out will continue. Organizers have arranged portable toilets and a soup kitchen to keep the ad hoc village operating. Vans of blankets and other supplies arrive regularly, much of the material donated by Parisians. Volunteers sweep the canal-side cobblestones to keep the area clean.
“I like the protest because it’s nonviolent,” said another protester, Renaud Huvé, 39, a photographer. “It’s a citizens’ call.”
So far, the authorities have been tolerant, though they have quietly evicted tent dwellers before, when the news media were not watching. The police broke up one encampment under a bridge farther north along the canal in October.
Magali Marx, 23, a sales assistant in a clothes shop, expressed the laissez-faire attitude of the neighborhood’s residents as she passed by. “It’s a bit of a pain for the people who want to walk along the side of the canal,” she said. “But then, these people don’t have a roof.”
Not all of the homeless are down-and-out French. A group of immigrants continues to live farther up the canal beneath what people in the area have dubbed “the bridge of the Afghans.” The government says that a third of the country’s homeless hold jobs.
The homeless who make up the bulk of the canal-side campers are thankful for the attention. “Let’s hope it makes a difference,” said Jean, a middle-aged man who said he had been living on the streets of Paris for eight years.
But staying on the street is anything but restful for those who have a warm bed waiting at home. Rain and high winds dampened the canal-side New Year’s Eve celebration. Ms. Manrot and her boyfriend, Franck Renardineau, ended up sleeping in their car.
“I sleep in one of the tents,” Mr. Legrand said, rubbing his pale, exhausted face. “But I’ve stayed at home a couple of times. We’ve got a lot going on.”
Jethro Mullen contributed reporting.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
source:
http://www.commondreams.org:80/headlines06/0102-56.htm
GE Cows to the Rescue
Young bulls were genetically engineered to be prion-free.
By Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY
Scientists at a South Dakota biotech company have genetically engineered cattle that appear to be resistant to mad cow disease, a paper published in the Monday issue of the journal Nature Biotechnology reports.
Although similar genetic engineering had been done in mice, this is the first time it has been accomplished in cattle.
The team of scientists first genetically engineered a cell line in which the gene that produces the infectious protein that cause mad cow disease — prions — was disabled. They then used those cells to clone 12 bulls on the theory that the genetic engineering will prevent them from making the protein that, when "misfolded," causes prion diseases such as mad cow.
Those 12 bulls are now two years old and so far appear to be perfectly normal, says James Robl,. president of Hematech Inc.. in Sioux Falls, S.D., a biotech firm owned by the pharmaceutical division of Japanese brewing giant Kirin..
Although misfolded prions are not alive in the conventional sense, they can cause other proteins they come in contact with to misfold as well, creating the holes in the brain that characterize bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, or spongy brain disease) in cattle and variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob. disease in humans and other mammals.
When scientists took brain cells from the resistant cattle and mixed them with prions in a test tube, the cattle brain cells did not misfold. Brain cells from normal cattle did. "That's a pretty good indication that they will not be able to contract the disease, nor would they be able to pass the disease on," Robl says.
Researchers have now injected mad cow-infected brain cells into the brains of some of the resistant cattle to see whether they develop mad cow disease.
"In one and a half years we'll have an answer," because prion diseases are so slow to develop, says Jürgen Richt,. a co-author on the paper and veterinary microbiologist at the National Animal Disease Center in Ames, Iowa.
The bulls appear to be developmentally and reproductively normal and should be able to breed true, creating a line of mad cow-resistant cattle, says Robl. Because they are still adolescents, they have not yet been bred, but their semen appears to be normal.
Because the animals are only two years old it's not certain if they might begin to show signs of difference as they live out their natural lifespan, which in cattle is about 15 years, says Richt.
In general the animals are no different from regular cattle, he says.
"They're more friendly than the other because they have been bottle fed and they had a lot of human interaction when they were calves. But they do seem more nervous." However that could simply be that the original bull they were cloned had a nervous disposition, he says.
Some scientists have argued that because the gene for creating prion proteins is so common in mammals and hasn't mutated, it must have some critical function that researchers don't yet know about.
Whether it's that the gene actually isn't important, or if there are redundant systems within the genome that take over when it's gone isn't known, Richt says.
At least for now the cattle are not meant for human consumption, says Robl. Instead, if they prove incapable of getting mad cow disease, they could be used to produce products important to industry, such as blood serum used in making pharmaceuticals and collagen for cosmetics. Because of concerns about mad cow disease, many companies have been scrambling to find cost-effective replacements for these, often with little success.
George Seidel, a expert on cattle reproduction technologies at Colorado State University in Ft. Collins, CO, calls the research "elegant" but with mad cow disease so rare in North America, he says it's more a niche market.
"There are much easier ways to deal with mad cow than to make transgenic cattle," he says.
source:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2007-01-01-
genetic-cattle_x.htm?POE=TECISVA
Monday, January 01, 2007
A Forgetting of Convenience
Conveniently forgotten
Saddam committed most of his crimes when he was an ally of those who now occupy his country
By Tariq Ali
01/01/07 "The Guardian" --- It was symbolic that 2006 ended with a colonial hanging - most of it shown on state television in occupied Iraq. It has been that sort of year in the Arab world. The trial was so blatantly rigged that even Human Rights Watch had to condemn it as a travesty. Judges were changed on Washington's orders, defence lawyers were killed and the whole procedure resembled a well orchestrated lynch mob. Where Nuremberg was a relatively dignified application of victor's justice, Saddam Hussein's trial was the crudest and most grotesque to date.
The great thinker-president's reference to it "as a milestone on the road to Iraqi democracy" is as clear an indication as any that Washington pressed the trigger. The leaders of the European Union, supposedly hostile to capital punishment, were passive, as usual.
Although some Shia factions celebrated in Baghdad, the figures published by a fairly independent establishment outfit, the Iraq Centre for Research and Strategic Studies, reveal that more than 80% of Iraqis feel the situation in the country was better before it was occupied. (The ICRSS research is based on detailed house-to-house interviewing carried out during the third week of November.) Only 5% of those questioned said Iraq is better today than in 2003; 12% felt things had improved and 9% said there was no change. Unsurprisingly, 95% felt the security situation was worse than before.
Add to this the figures supplied by the United Nations high commissioner for refugees: 1.6 million Iraqis (7% of the population) have fled the country since March 2003, and 100,000 leave every month - Christians, doctors, engineers, women. There are 1 million Iraqis in Syria, 750,000 in Jordan, 150,000 in Cairo. These are refugees who do not excite the sympathy of western public opinion, since the US - EU-backed - occupation is the cause. Perhaps it was these statistics, and estimates of a million Iraqi dead, that necessitated the execution of Saddam.
That Saddam was a tyrant is beyond dispute, but what is conveniently forgotten is that most of his crimes were committed when he was a staunch ally of those who are now occupying the country. It was, as he admitted in one of his trial outbursts, the approval of Washington and the poison gas supplied by what was then West Germany that gave him the confidence to douse Halabja with chemicals in the middle of the Iran-Iraq war. Saddam deserved a proper trial and punishment in an independent Iraq. Not this.
The double standards applied by the west never cease to astonish. Indonesia's Suharto, who presided over a mountain of corpses, was protected by Washington. He never annoyed them as much as Saddam.
And what of those who have created the mess in Iraq today? The torturers of Abu Ghraib; the pitiless butchers of Falluja; the ethnic cleansers of Baghdad; the Kurdish prison boss who boasts that his model is Guantánamo. Will Bush and Blair ever be tried for war crimes? Doubtful. And former Spanish prime minister José MarÃa Aznar? He is currently employed as a lecturer at Georgetown University, in Washington, where the language of instruction is of course English - of which he hardly speaks a word.
Saddam's lynching might send a shiver down the spines of the Arab ruling elites. If Saddam can be hanged, so can the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, the Hashemite joker in Amman and the Saudi royals - as long as those who topple them are happy to play ball with the United States.
Tariq Ali is the author of Bush in Babylon: the recolonisation of Iraq - tariq.ali3@btinternet.com
Saddam committed most of his crimes when he was an ally of those who now occupy his country
By Tariq Ali
01/01/07 "The Guardian" --- It was symbolic that 2006 ended with a colonial hanging - most of it shown on state television in occupied Iraq. It has been that sort of year in the Arab world. The trial was so blatantly rigged that even Human Rights Watch had to condemn it as a travesty. Judges were changed on Washington's orders, defence lawyers were killed and the whole procedure resembled a well orchestrated lynch mob. Where Nuremberg was a relatively dignified application of victor's justice, Saddam Hussein's trial was the crudest and most grotesque to date.
The great thinker-president's reference to it "as a milestone on the road to Iraqi democracy" is as clear an indication as any that Washington pressed the trigger. The leaders of the European Union, supposedly hostile to capital punishment, were passive, as usual.
Although some Shia factions celebrated in Baghdad, the figures published by a fairly independent establishment outfit, the Iraq Centre for Research and Strategic Studies, reveal that more than 80% of Iraqis feel the situation in the country was better before it was occupied. (The ICRSS research is based on detailed house-to-house interviewing carried out during the third week of November.) Only 5% of those questioned said Iraq is better today than in 2003; 12% felt things had improved and 9% said there was no change. Unsurprisingly, 95% felt the security situation was worse than before.
Add to this the figures supplied by the United Nations high commissioner for refugees: 1.6 million Iraqis (7% of the population) have fled the country since March 2003, and 100,000 leave every month - Christians, doctors, engineers, women. There are 1 million Iraqis in Syria, 750,000 in Jordan, 150,000 in Cairo. These are refugees who do not excite the sympathy of western public opinion, since the US - EU-backed - occupation is the cause. Perhaps it was these statistics, and estimates of a million Iraqi dead, that necessitated the execution of Saddam.
That Saddam was a tyrant is beyond dispute, but what is conveniently forgotten is that most of his crimes were committed when he was a staunch ally of those who are now occupying the country. It was, as he admitted in one of his trial outbursts, the approval of Washington and the poison gas supplied by what was then West Germany that gave him the confidence to douse Halabja with chemicals in the middle of the Iran-Iraq war. Saddam deserved a proper trial and punishment in an independent Iraq. Not this.
The double standards applied by the west never cease to astonish. Indonesia's Suharto, who presided over a mountain of corpses, was protected by Washington. He never annoyed them as much as Saddam.
And what of those who have created the mess in Iraq today? The torturers of Abu Ghraib; the pitiless butchers of Falluja; the ethnic cleansers of Baghdad; the Kurdish prison boss who boasts that his model is Guantánamo. Will Bush and Blair ever be tried for war crimes? Doubtful. And former Spanish prime minister José MarÃa Aznar? He is currently employed as a lecturer at Georgetown University, in Washington, where the language of instruction is of course English - of which he hardly speaks a word.
Saddam's lynching might send a shiver down the spines of the Arab ruling elites. If Saddam can be hanged, so can the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, the Hashemite joker in Amman and the Saudi royals - as long as those who topple them are happy to play ball with the United States.
Tariq Ali is the author of Bush in Babylon: the recolonisation of Iraq - tariq.ali3@btinternet.com
Sunday, December 31, 2006
RCMP Raids on B.C. Legislature Offices (Dec. 28, 2003)
Fifth Part
RCMP Raids on B.C. Legislature Offices (Dec. 28, 2003).
Hearings. Delays. Obstruction in the Basi, Basi, Virk case.
Journalistic cover-up. The collapse of responsible journalism in Canada.
By
Robin Mathews
Dec. 29, 2006
Gary Mason, special B.C. columnist for the Globe and Mail, has written one of the silliest and - at the same time - one of the most disturbing columns a Canadian might imagine. It was published to mark the third anniversary of the December 28, 2003 "raids" by RCMP on B.C. Legislature offices. It is based upon a face to face interview with the three men, David Basi, Aneal Basi, and Bob Virk, charged, variously, with a total of 14 criminal offenses, largely related to the dirty sale of B.C. Rail by the Gordon Campbell government.
The three men and the charges against them are, you might say, the tip of the huge iceberg of suggestions, allegations, and factual revelations of corruption in the Gordon Campbell government.
The silly report by Gary Mason might be acceptable if the Globe and Mail was doing anything like reasonable coverage of the thickening corruption in B.C. government. It is not. Mason is what I call "Gordon Campbell's personal representative at the Globe and Mail". He manages to make the Campbell government look good in everything he writes. Or he manages to leave it out of stories in which it should figure importantly - like this one. Recently he wrote a front page story on the complexity of Gordon Campbell's policies, never once referring to (a) the unflagging policy of destroying medicare in B.C., (b) the policy of removal of safety legislation all over the province (c) the policy of privatisation and sell-out of B.C.-owned wealth-assuring operations to large private (often foreign) corporations (d) the policy to downgrade and destroy protection of all kinds for all vulnerable people in the province (e) the policy to destroy the ownership of B.C. rivers by British Columbians and to hand ownership (in fact) to large corporate foreign control and ownership. What then did Gary Mason write? Fluff.
He is not alone. In a front page story (Globe and Mail, Dec. 11 06 S1) Mark Hume wrote a laudatory piece about the miraculous transformation of Gordon Campbell under (violins are heard playing softly here) the soothing guidance of a woman. All is beautiful, Hume tells us, about Native/B.C. government relations - never uttering a word of the information to appear a little later in this column. Vaughn Palmer I call "Gordon Campbell's personal representative at the Vancouver Sun." Why? Let me use one "for instance".
For instance, Vaughn Palmer has written column after column on the Native land claims in B.C.and about Gordon Campbell's sudden and stunning enlightenment and humanity on the whole question of Native rights. It took B.C. Mary, a serious non-journalist Canadian who is disturbed about the corruption in B.C., to point out that the recent Tsawwassen proposed treaty uses Agricultural Land Reserve territory to pay off the Natives AFTER they have given up some key treaty rights so they may be pushed into development games with private entrepreneurs probably to lose everything they have.
"The Tsawwassens have agreed to give up their Reserve status". The land they will receive has been removed "from the Agricultural Land Reserve making it OK to pave the richest, blackest soil in B.C." "So what seemed like a long-awaited treaty settlement is really just another part of Gordon Campbell's plan to sell off B.C. Rail and everything connected to it. Why else are there 185 spin doctors in the employ of the government, at the Ministry of Finance (See Order in Council #656 dated 12 Sept. '06)? " I quote BC Mary there to show what Palmer, Hume, Mason and the rest of the servants of the Private Corporate Press and Media fail, almost doggedly, almost devotedly to report.
B.C. Mary (not Vaughn Palmer! Not Mark Hume! Not Gary Mason!) revealed Campbell can attack the ALR preserves (and is doing so), destroy them, take in the Native peoples, rub out their historic defenses, and turn over land he has intended for Private Corporations to those Corporations under the guise of following a just and progressive policy.
Column after column from the major news journalists on Native Land Claims, and not a word of what B.C. Mary revealed. Two very simple questions offer themselves. If Gordon Campbell is doing his utmost to sell out every asset belonging to the British Columbia people and is doing so with secrecy, deceit, false advertising, and barbarous legislation, why would he work sincerely and humanely for the Native people? If he is permitting (and in fact earlier constructing) a ministry of Children and Families involved in the needless deaths of Native children, why would he be working for the future good of the Native people in B.C.? Are the journalists of the private corporate press really so stupid they don't look into real Native policy? Into the real designs of Gordon Campbell? Surely not. Then we must conclude their nonsense writing about Native policy and Gordon Campbell's enlightened humanity arises from other motivations. What are they?
On the legislature raids, from the allegations (true or false) against the three men named and the dirty sale of B.C. Rail, the focus shines hard down on B.C. affairs so that - played out in any reasonable way - the trial should threaten the very existence of the Gordon Campbell government. Is it fair to say the private corporate press and media are "employed" in covering up any information that may point to that central fact?
On the eve (?) of the trial of the three men Gary Mason secured an intimate interview with them. The three men came together in one room with Mason. Two of them even posed for a photograph "at play" at Bob Virk's home. That's called, in the trade, a "human interest" shot.
How did Gary Mason get the interview? Why did the men agree to do it? What negotiations did the Globe and Mail have with the Defence lawyers? They must have been involved. What Globe and Mail executives were involved in any negotiations? What guarantees were given that Mason would not ask certain questions? Did the Globe and Mail consult Martyn Brown, Gordon Campbell's chief of staff - the man who fired Dave Basi the day of the raid on the legislature offices? Was the Special Prosecutor, appointed by cabinet in fact, consulted? Who vetted the "story" before it was published - who read it pre-publication?
Clearly, the interview and story resulting from Gary Mason's meeting are considered important - or those events would never have happened. Who considers them important? The Defence team? The Special Prosecutor? Martyn Brown and Gordon Campbell? The purchasers of B.C. Rail? Who? Who else?
Not a word on any of that from Gary Mason.
Early in Gary Mason's story, we are told that Dave Basi "was an aide to the then-finance-minister Gary Collins [in 2003]. He [Basi] was considered the most powerful ministerial assistant in the B.C. government. Mr. Basi was also a political operative of some renown in both federal and provincial wings of the Liberal Party, highly prized for his ability to sign up large numbers of Indo-Canadian members." Bob Virk was assistant to Judith Reid, transportation minister.
We know, too, that Martyn Brown sent an early message, after the first Campbell victory, telling cabinet ministers, in fact, they were front-men only. Real power would be in the Campbell-appointed deputy ministers. I quote Charlie Smith in the Georgia Straight, 2003-12-31: "On June 25, 2001, Campbell wrote a letter to all cabinet minsters telling them that [Martyn] Brown would arrange the 'structuring and staffing' of their offices. Campbell also instructed ministers not to act like the chief executive officer of their ministries, adding that this role should be performed by their deputies who would be selected by the premier's office." That was the building of a despotism under the pretence of conformity to parliamentary democracy, a despotism in which all decisions of significance were to be made by one person: Gordon Campbell.
In despotisms the despot is the person responsible for government crimes and wrong-doing, for he is, in fact, the sole power-holder. Gordon Campbell, therefore, is implicated in every crime and wrong-doing of the present B.C. government. He has to be because of the structure of power he, himself, has instituted.
We know, too, because Dave Basi tells us in the interview, that Martyn Brown phoned him on December 28, 2003, and fired him. Note carefully that his apparent employer, Gary Collins, didn't fire him, the minister for whom he apparently worked. Martyn Brown fired him. And he did so by saying, "We're going to have to rescind your OIC [Order in Council] immediately".
Was he not saying, in effect, that Gordon Campbell and I hired you, and we're firing you, now? He seems to be saying, in effect, "You don't work for the minister, Gary Collins. You work for Gordon Campbell and me, and we're firing you". Was he saying more things?
We all know the questions that should come out of Gary Mason's description of Dave Basi as "the most powerful ministerial assistant in the B.C. government" and the rest quoted about him above.
What were Basi's duties? Just what did he actually do? From whom did he take instructions? To whom did he report? To Collins? To Martyn Brown? To Gordon Campbell? What relation did he have - as the most powerful ministerial assistant - to other ministers, other aides and assistants? What "political work" did he do from the ministerial offices? And who directed him in it? What role did he play in the dirty sale of B.C. Rail? How did he "sign up large numbers of Indo-Canadian members" to the Liberal Party? Who paid for the memberships? Where did the money come from? What, in short, did he do as apparent aide to "then-finance-minister Gary Collins"?
From Gary Mason, not a word, not a question. If Mason had asked the questions, we would have the answers. If he didn't ask the questions, the "interview" was a game, nonsense theatre, smoke and mirrors. And if he asked them and answers were refused, he should have told us that.
At the general time covered by the Gary Mason "story", Herb Dhaliwal is reported as saying David Basi was instrumental in his [Dhaliwal's] loss of his federal Liberal candidacy. Bill Tieleman (The Tyee Nov. 30 2006) quotes Dhaliwal directly: "I was concerned that people in Victoria were involved in meddling in my riding….I was the senior minister for B.C. who was working closely with the premier, and they had their own political staff trying to undermine me. I find that incredible."
Notice: "they had their own political staff involved in meddling in my riding." That would be Dave Basi among others, would it not? Who were the others? Is it not obvious that Gordon Campbell would have to have been closely linked to such activity (as the employer of Dave Basi)? To what other dubious activities was and is Campbell directly or closely linked?
There was, indeed, so much open talk and reporting of fraudulent bulk Party membership gathering that some of us acted. Nineteen others and I wrote a joint letter to the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada, Jean-Pierre Kingsley, and his office asking for an investigation of improper Party membership gathering practices in B.C. (Remember - see Fourth Part - Judy Tyabi Wilson reports that Gordon Campbell himself (earlier) allegedly floated to the leadership of the Provincial Liberal Party on what were alleged to be untraceable bulk Party membership votes.)
The Chief Electoral Officer - I believe - stalled and obstructed our request. He or his office wrote to say investigation is not in his hands. (Is he, or is he not, Chief Electoral Officer?) He referred us to another office and suggested we make our request there. Since the office was in the same building and part of the same operation, I wrote and said, in effect, "carry our material across the hall to them". Since the Chief Electoral Officer could hardly refuse to do so without looking like someone clearly attempting to obstruct, that was done.
The officer in charge of investigations refused to investigate and wrote - as I remember it - that if WE would get evidence of wrong-doing, he might act.
You could believe from that information that the Chief Electoral Officer and his offices cover for the dubious behaviour of the Liberal Party. But pause. They are not so exclusive. Remember when Peter MacKay broke his written promise to David Orchard not to integrate the Progressive Conservative Party into Stephen Harper's reactionary formation. Remember that MacKay then integrated with Harper, and the new force decided to call itself the Conservative Party. There were good grounds to fight both the integration and the choice of name - before the Chief Electoral Officer and before the courts - if the opponents moved fast.
But Harper, MacKay, and the Chief Electoral Officer moved faster. The Chief Electoral Officer extraordinarily opened his office on a Sunday and granted the Harper forces the status they wanted when the courts, of course, were not open to challenge the procedure, and most of the opponents probably didn't even know the Sunday meeting was being held.
Now, Jean-Pierre Kingsley has announced his resignation as Chief Electoral Officer after "a dustup with the federal Conservative party over political financing rules …whether the party broke the law by failing to disclose more than $500,000.00 worth of political donations." (Vanc. Sun, Dec 29, 06 A4) Jean-Pierre Kingsley seems to have won that round. Is he being forced out by Stephen Harper because he did so and wouldn't okay wrong-doing? We can only hope so. If that is so, we might be convinced that even Jean-Pierre Kingsley has limits beyond which he won't go.
Strangely, none of that kind of information is even hinted at in the Gary Mason "story" called "There is nothing to these charges". And, indeed, no investigation has been conducted (as far as we can know), and certainly no charges have arisen from fraudulent bulk Party membership gathering which appears to have been an intense, illicit operation conducted in the surround of the Gordon Campbell cabinet and related circles at the time.
There is not much reason to write about the seemingly staged chatter presented by Gary Mason in the "interview". But a few things may be said. David Basi protests about the charge against him (later dropped) and the media fuss made over the tenant in his rented house being charged with running a marijuana grow-op there. Basi says: "How many landlords ever got charged for grow-ops in rental homes?" Very few, we can easily reply. But reasonable Canadians may ask how many landlords of grow-op rental homes can claim to be "the most powerful ministerial assistant in the B.C. government", hired by the premier himself, and active in political candidacies both legitimately and, allegedly, otherwise?
Reasonable Canadians might say: "If you have such a publicly important and responsible job, you don't let marijuana growers rent your revenue house, do you? And if you do, should you be surprised that the situation causes a storm?" Dave Basi seems to think so, perhaps showing a dangerous kind of naivete about his actions and actions occurring around him.
Clearly Gary Mason was on an inside track when he conducted the "interview" and wrote the "story". He knows just what to include and what to leave out. Mostly. I call him in these columns "Gordon Campbell's personal representative at the Globe and Mail". He continues to suit the description. He slips a little, however, in his text. In his third anniversary story, before the January 15, 2007 hearing before Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett, Mason tells us that the trial of the three men "is expected to begin next Spring". Obviously, Mason has consulted - with whom?
With Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett? She is the only person who can rule on the trial date. Or perhaps there were negotiations among the Globe and Mail, the accused, the Defence lawyers, the Special Prosecutor, Martyn Brown, Gordon Campbell - and who knows what others? Could it have been the Defence Counsel, or the Special Prosecutor, or even Gordon Campbell who said there will be no trial until next Spring?
We have to face painful facts about the trial. To begin, the disclosure of evidence, it is argued, was obstructed by the RCMP and by the Department of Justice. The Special Prosecutor, appointed by the Attorney General with whom he had once been in partnership, appears to have done very little to produce evidence for the Defence in a clear, timely, and efficacious fashion. The Associate Chief Justice of the B.C. Supreme Court, Patrick Dohm - who interested himself in the proceedings, and the trial judge, Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett, did not act quickly, surely, and insistently to make sure (over two years following the laying of charges) that all processes moved swiftly and with efficiency. The Associate Chief Justice, in addition, has put in place a set of protocols governing the release of public information concerning criminal trials which is an insult to democratic society.
Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett acts - in relation to this trial - as far as this observer is concerned, not as if she is presiding at events that bring into question the legitimacy of the whole Gordon Campbell government, but rather as if she is dealing with a rather annoying case involving break and entry to a street-corner pizza parlour.
Let it not be forgotten that the former Appeals Court judge who dropped into Gordon Campbell's cabinet in a move that violates the prudent and necessary separation of the courts and political power has taken on the mantle of Attorney General of the province. As such, Wally Oppal recently made irresponsible remarks which, plainly, served (whatever his intentions) to call into question the legitimacy of the Basi, Basi, Virk trial.
Altogether too much about this case reveals activity and behaviour that many reasonable and prudent Canadians would not in any way condone.
One item of Gary Mason's information - as I have pointed out - is the casual announcement that the trial date of the three men is now "expected" to be Spring of 2007. Each delay, of course, brings closer the date upon which the Defence can claim that the accused have suffered so much by delay the judge must declare a mistrial and release them from all charges. For that reason Madam Justice Bennett must declare that the trial will go ahead very soon because it relates to the very fundamental basis of governmental behaviour in a free society and because it is a trial of deep concern to every British Columbian. Other commitments, other plans must be put aside by all parties concerned, and the trial must be undertaken before the end of January. If Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett does not insist on such a procedure, Canadians may assume that law, justice, and the proper conduct of public officers are, for her, a silly, old-fashioned joke.
The last small insight in Gary Mason's "interview" comes from Dave Basi's conversation about Eric Bornmann, "the Crown's star witness, against the word of the two Basis and Mr. Virk. Mr. Bornmann has told police he paid Mr. Basi money for confidential information related to the sale of B.C. Rail. One of Mr.Bornmann's clients, OmniTRAX, was a bidder for the rail line."
No one at OmniTRAX, not Mr. Bornmann, nor lobbyist Brian Kieran - the last involved with giving Basi and Virk "benefits" - is charged with anything. That point has been made before and may, usefully, be pointed out again.
But what is also interesting is Dave Basi's and Bob Virk's familiarity with the characters involved. Basi refers to Bornmann as "Erik", and to Kieran as "Brian". Indeed, Erik Bornmann sent an effusive card and "the largest bouquet of flowers Amy Virk had ever seen" when her daughter Aleena was born. That, according to Virk, happened well after Bornmann had alleged to police the information which makes him "the Crown's star witness" against Basi and Virk.
Gary Mason probed none of that. Nor did he ask what other people might be implicated in the kinds of criminal actions about which the three men claim absolute innocence.
The foolish, silly, smoke-and-mirrors "interview" by Gary Mason is another indication of the collapse of responsible journalism in Canada. It, however, opens two questions. First: how much is the so-called trial of the three men charged (altogether) with something like 14 criminal offenses a sham, a farce, a smoke and mirrors performance, a piece of ugly and ridiculous theatre never intended to have an end but to be, somehow, aborted? Secondly, Mason's interview opens another question - opens it widely without, apparently, Mason even intending it to do so. Who, from Gordon Campbell himself down through government and associated ranks outside, should be facing criminal charges arising out of the particular corruption related to the dirty sale of B.C. Rail, to dirty party membership gathering, and to general and widespread B.C. government corruption elsewhere?
Those are not questions Gary Mason poses, or even intends, it seems. But they are the questions that just won't go away no matter how much he and his private corporate journalist associates try to paint Campbell and the Campbell government in rosy colours - to, it seems, cover for their every dirty deed. The questions that Gary Mason and his private corporate press and media associates absolutely refuse to ask are the ones that, fairly answered, would very likely bring the Campbell government crashing down.
------
Robin Mathews can be contacted at:
rmathews@sfu.ca
RCMP Raids on B.C. Legislature Offices (Dec. 28, 2003).
Hearings. Delays. Obstruction in the Basi, Basi, Virk case.
Journalistic cover-up. The collapse of responsible journalism in Canada.
By
Robin Mathews
Dec. 29, 2006
Gary Mason, special B.C. columnist for the Globe and Mail, has written one of the silliest and - at the same time - one of the most disturbing columns a Canadian might imagine. It was published to mark the third anniversary of the December 28, 2003 "raids" by RCMP on B.C. Legislature offices. It is based upon a face to face interview with the three men, David Basi, Aneal Basi, and Bob Virk, charged, variously, with a total of 14 criminal offenses, largely related to the dirty sale of B.C. Rail by the Gordon Campbell government.
The three men and the charges against them are, you might say, the tip of the huge iceberg of suggestions, allegations, and factual revelations of corruption in the Gordon Campbell government.
The silly report by Gary Mason might be acceptable if the Globe and Mail was doing anything like reasonable coverage of the thickening corruption in B.C. government. It is not. Mason is what I call "Gordon Campbell's personal representative at the Globe and Mail". He manages to make the Campbell government look good in everything he writes. Or he manages to leave it out of stories in which it should figure importantly - like this one. Recently he wrote a front page story on the complexity of Gordon Campbell's policies, never once referring to (a) the unflagging policy of destroying medicare in B.C., (b) the policy of removal of safety legislation all over the province (c) the policy of privatisation and sell-out of B.C.-owned wealth-assuring operations to large private (often foreign) corporations (d) the policy to downgrade and destroy protection of all kinds for all vulnerable people in the province (e) the policy to destroy the ownership of B.C. rivers by British Columbians and to hand ownership (in fact) to large corporate foreign control and ownership. What then did Gary Mason write? Fluff.
He is not alone. In a front page story (Globe and Mail, Dec. 11 06 S1) Mark Hume wrote a laudatory piece about the miraculous transformation of Gordon Campbell under (violins are heard playing softly here) the soothing guidance of a woman. All is beautiful, Hume tells us, about Native/B.C. government relations - never uttering a word of the information to appear a little later in this column. Vaughn Palmer I call "Gordon Campbell's personal representative at the Vancouver Sun." Why? Let me use one "for instance".
For instance, Vaughn Palmer has written column after column on the Native land claims in B.C.and about Gordon Campbell's sudden and stunning enlightenment and humanity on the whole question of Native rights. It took B.C. Mary, a serious non-journalist Canadian who is disturbed about the corruption in B.C., to point out that the recent Tsawwassen proposed treaty uses Agricultural Land Reserve territory to pay off the Natives AFTER they have given up some key treaty rights so they may be pushed into development games with private entrepreneurs probably to lose everything they have.
"The Tsawwassens have agreed to give up their Reserve status". The land they will receive has been removed "from the Agricultural Land Reserve making it OK to pave the richest, blackest soil in B.C." "So what seemed like a long-awaited treaty settlement is really just another part of Gordon Campbell's plan to sell off B.C. Rail and everything connected to it. Why else are there 185 spin doctors in the employ of the government, at the Ministry of Finance (See Order in Council #656 dated 12 Sept. '06)? " I quote BC Mary there to show what Palmer, Hume, Mason and the rest of the servants of the Private Corporate Press and Media fail, almost doggedly, almost devotedly to report.
B.C. Mary (not Vaughn Palmer! Not Mark Hume! Not Gary Mason!) revealed Campbell can attack the ALR preserves (and is doing so), destroy them, take in the Native peoples, rub out their historic defenses, and turn over land he has intended for Private Corporations to those Corporations under the guise of following a just and progressive policy.
Column after column from the major news journalists on Native Land Claims, and not a word of what B.C. Mary revealed. Two very simple questions offer themselves. If Gordon Campbell is doing his utmost to sell out every asset belonging to the British Columbia people and is doing so with secrecy, deceit, false advertising, and barbarous legislation, why would he work sincerely and humanely for the Native people? If he is permitting (and in fact earlier constructing) a ministry of Children and Families involved in the needless deaths of Native children, why would he be working for the future good of the Native people in B.C.? Are the journalists of the private corporate press really so stupid they don't look into real Native policy? Into the real designs of Gordon Campbell? Surely not. Then we must conclude their nonsense writing about Native policy and Gordon Campbell's enlightened humanity arises from other motivations. What are they?
On the legislature raids, from the allegations (true or false) against the three men named and the dirty sale of B.C. Rail, the focus shines hard down on B.C. affairs so that - played out in any reasonable way - the trial should threaten the very existence of the Gordon Campbell government. Is it fair to say the private corporate press and media are "employed" in covering up any information that may point to that central fact?
On the eve (?) of the trial of the three men Gary Mason secured an intimate interview with them. The three men came together in one room with Mason. Two of them even posed for a photograph "at play" at Bob Virk's home. That's called, in the trade, a "human interest" shot.
How did Gary Mason get the interview? Why did the men agree to do it? What negotiations did the Globe and Mail have with the Defence lawyers? They must have been involved. What Globe and Mail executives were involved in any negotiations? What guarantees were given that Mason would not ask certain questions? Did the Globe and Mail consult Martyn Brown, Gordon Campbell's chief of staff - the man who fired Dave Basi the day of the raid on the legislature offices? Was the Special Prosecutor, appointed by cabinet in fact, consulted? Who vetted the "story" before it was published - who read it pre-publication?
Clearly, the interview and story resulting from Gary Mason's meeting are considered important - or those events would never have happened. Who considers them important? The Defence team? The Special Prosecutor? Martyn Brown and Gordon Campbell? The purchasers of B.C. Rail? Who? Who else?
Not a word on any of that from Gary Mason.
Early in Gary Mason's story, we are told that Dave Basi "was an aide to the then-finance-minister Gary Collins [in 2003]. He [Basi] was considered the most powerful ministerial assistant in the B.C. government. Mr. Basi was also a political operative of some renown in both federal and provincial wings of the Liberal Party, highly prized for his ability to sign up large numbers of Indo-Canadian members." Bob Virk was assistant to Judith Reid, transportation minister.
We know, too, that Martyn Brown sent an early message, after the first Campbell victory, telling cabinet ministers, in fact, they were front-men only. Real power would be in the Campbell-appointed deputy ministers. I quote Charlie Smith in the Georgia Straight, 2003-12-31: "On June 25, 2001, Campbell wrote a letter to all cabinet minsters telling them that [Martyn] Brown would arrange the 'structuring and staffing' of their offices. Campbell also instructed ministers not to act like the chief executive officer of their ministries, adding that this role should be performed by their deputies who would be selected by the premier's office." That was the building of a despotism under the pretence of conformity to parliamentary democracy, a despotism in which all decisions of significance were to be made by one person: Gordon Campbell.
In despotisms the despot is the person responsible for government crimes and wrong-doing, for he is, in fact, the sole power-holder. Gordon Campbell, therefore, is implicated in every crime and wrong-doing of the present B.C. government. He has to be because of the structure of power he, himself, has instituted.
We know, too, because Dave Basi tells us in the interview, that Martyn Brown phoned him on December 28, 2003, and fired him. Note carefully that his apparent employer, Gary Collins, didn't fire him, the minister for whom he apparently worked. Martyn Brown fired him. And he did so by saying, "We're going to have to rescind your OIC [Order in Council] immediately".
Was he not saying, in effect, that Gordon Campbell and I hired you, and we're firing you, now? He seems to be saying, in effect, "You don't work for the minister, Gary Collins. You work for Gordon Campbell and me, and we're firing you". Was he saying more things?
We all know the questions that should come out of Gary Mason's description of Dave Basi as "the most powerful ministerial assistant in the B.C. government" and the rest quoted about him above.
What were Basi's duties? Just what did he actually do? From whom did he take instructions? To whom did he report? To Collins? To Martyn Brown? To Gordon Campbell? What relation did he have - as the most powerful ministerial assistant - to other ministers, other aides and assistants? What "political work" did he do from the ministerial offices? And who directed him in it? What role did he play in the dirty sale of B.C. Rail? How did he "sign up large numbers of Indo-Canadian members" to the Liberal Party? Who paid for the memberships? Where did the money come from? What, in short, did he do as apparent aide to "then-finance-minister Gary Collins"?
From Gary Mason, not a word, not a question. If Mason had asked the questions, we would have the answers. If he didn't ask the questions, the "interview" was a game, nonsense theatre, smoke and mirrors. And if he asked them and answers were refused, he should have told us that.
At the general time covered by the Gary Mason "story", Herb Dhaliwal is reported as saying David Basi was instrumental in his [Dhaliwal's] loss of his federal Liberal candidacy. Bill Tieleman (The Tyee Nov. 30 2006) quotes Dhaliwal directly: "I was concerned that people in Victoria were involved in meddling in my riding….I was the senior minister for B.C. who was working closely with the premier, and they had their own political staff trying to undermine me. I find that incredible."
Notice: "they had their own political staff involved in meddling in my riding." That would be Dave Basi among others, would it not? Who were the others? Is it not obvious that Gordon Campbell would have to have been closely linked to such activity (as the employer of Dave Basi)? To what other dubious activities was and is Campbell directly or closely linked?
There was, indeed, so much open talk and reporting of fraudulent bulk Party membership gathering that some of us acted. Nineteen others and I wrote a joint letter to the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada, Jean-Pierre Kingsley, and his office asking for an investigation of improper Party membership gathering practices in B.C. (Remember - see Fourth Part - Judy Tyabi Wilson reports that Gordon Campbell himself (earlier) allegedly floated to the leadership of the Provincial Liberal Party on what were alleged to be untraceable bulk Party membership votes.)
The Chief Electoral Officer - I believe - stalled and obstructed our request. He or his office wrote to say investigation is not in his hands. (Is he, or is he not, Chief Electoral Officer?) He referred us to another office and suggested we make our request there. Since the office was in the same building and part of the same operation, I wrote and said, in effect, "carry our material across the hall to them". Since the Chief Electoral Officer could hardly refuse to do so without looking like someone clearly attempting to obstruct, that was done.
The officer in charge of investigations refused to investigate and wrote - as I remember it - that if WE would get evidence of wrong-doing, he might act.
You could believe from that information that the Chief Electoral Officer and his offices cover for the dubious behaviour of the Liberal Party. But pause. They are not so exclusive. Remember when Peter MacKay broke his written promise to David Orchard not to integrate the Progressive Conservative Party into Stephen Harper's reactionary formation. Remember that MacKay then integrated with Harper, and the new force decided to call itself the Conservative Party. There were good grounds to fight both the integration and the choice of name - before the Chief Electoral Officer and before the courts - if the opponents moved fast.
But Harper, MacKay, and the Chief Electoral Officer moved faster. The Chief Electoral Officer extraordinarily opened his office on a Sunday and granted the Harper forces the status they wanted when the courts, of course, were not open to challenge the procedure, and most of the opponents probably didn't even know the Sunday meeting was being held.
Now, Jean-Pierre Kingsley has announced his resignation as Chief Electoral Officer after "a dustup with the federal Conservative party over political financing rules …whether the party broke the law by failing to disclose more than $500,000.00 worth of political donations." (Vanc. Sun, Dec 29, 06 A4) Jean-Pierre Kingsley seems to have won that round. Is he being forced out by Stephen Harper because he did so and wouldn't okay wrong-doing? We can only hope so. If that is so, we might be convinced that even Jean-Pierre Kingsley has limits beyond which he won't go.
Strangely, none of that kind of information is even hinted at in the Gary Mason "story" called "There is nothing to these charges". And, indeed, no investigation has been conducted (as far as we can know), and certainly no charges have arisen from fraudulent bulk Party membership gathering which appears to have been an intense, illicit operation conducted in the surround of the Gordon Campbell cabinet and related circles at the time.
There is not much reason to write about the seemingly staged chatter presented by Gary Mason in the "interview". But a few things may be said. David Basi protests about the charge against him (later dropped) and the media fuss made over the tenant in his rented house being charged with running a marijuana grow-op there. Basi says: "How many landlords ever got charged for grow-ops in rental homes?" Very few, we can easily reply. But reasonable Canadians may ask how many landlords of grow-op rental homes can claim to be "the most powerful ministerial assistant in the B.C. government", hired by the premier himself, and active in political candidacies both legitimately and, allegedly, otherwise?
Reasonable Canadians might say: "If you have such a publicly important and responsible job, you don't let marijuana growers rent your revenue house, do you? And if you do, should you be surprised that the situation causes a storm?" Dave Basi seems to think so, perhaps showing a dangerous kind of naivete about his actions and actions occurring around him.
Clearly Gary Mason was on an inside track when he conducted the "interview" and wrote the "story". He knows just what to include and what to leave out. Mostly. I call him in these columns "Gordon Campbell's personal representative at the Globe and Mail". He continues to suit the description. He slips a little, however, in his text. In his third anniversary story, before the January 15, 2007 hearing before Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett, Mason tells us that the trial of the three men "is expected to begin next Spring". Obviously, Mason has consulted - with whom?
With Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett? She is the only person who can rule on the trial date. Or perhaps there were negotiations among the Globe and Mail, the accused, the Defence lawyers, the Special Prosecutor, Martyn Brown, Gordon Campbell - and who knows what others? Could it have been the Defence Counsel, or the Special Prosecutor, or even Gordon Campbell who said there will be no trial until next Spring?
We have to face painful facts about the trial. To begin, the disclosure of evidence, it is argued, was obstructed by the RCMP and by the Department of Justice. The Special Prosecutor, appointed by the Attorney General with whom he had once been in partnership, appears to have done very little to produce evidence for the Defence in a clear, timely, and efficacious fashion. The Associate Chief Justice of the B.C. Supreme Court, Patrick Dohm - who interested himself in the proceedings, and the trial judge, Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett, did not act quickly, surely, and insistently to make sure (over two years following the laying of charges) that all processes moved swiftly and with efficiency. The Associate Chief Justice, in addition, has put in place a set of protocols governing the release of public information concerning criminal trials which is an insult to democratic society.
Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett acts - in relation to this trial - as far as this observer is concerned, not as if she is presiding at events that bring into question the legitimacy of the whole Gordon Campbell government, but rather as if she is dealing with a rather annoying case involving break and entry to a street-corner pizza parlour.
Let it not be forgotten that the former Appeals Court judge who dropped into Gordon Campbell's cabinet in a move that violates the prudent and necessary separation of the courts and political power has taken on the mantle of Attorney General of the province. As such, Wally Oppal recently made irresponsible remarks which, plainly, served (whatever his intentions) to call into question the legitimacy of the Basi, Basi, Virk trial.
Altogether too much about this case reveals activity and behaviour that many reasonable and prudent Canadians would not in any way condone.
One item of Gary Mason's information - as I have pointed out - is the casual announcement that the trial date of the three men is now "expected" to be Spring of 2007. Each delay, of course, brings closer the date upon which the Defence can claim that the accused have suffered so much by delay the judge must declare a mistrial and release them from all charges. For that reason Madam Justice Bennett must declare that the trial will go ahead very soon because it relates to the very fundamental basis of governmental behaviour in a free society and because it is a trial of deep concern to every British Columbian. Other commitments, other plans must be put aside by all parties concerned, and the trial must be undertaken before the end of January. If Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett does not insist on such a procedure, Canadians may assume that law, justice, and the proper conduct of public officers are, for her, a silly, old-fashioned joke.
The last small insight in Gary Mason's "interview" comes from Dave Basi's conversation about Eric Bornmann, "the Crown's star witness, against the word of the two Basis and Mr. Virk. Mr. Bornmann has told police he paid Mr. Basi money for confidential information related to the sale of B.C. Rail. One of Mr.Bornmann's clients, OmniTRAX, was a bidder for the rail line."
No one at OmniTRAX, not Mr. Bornmann, nor lobbyist Brian Kieran - the last involved with giving Basi and Virk "benefits" - is charged with anything. That point has been made before and may, usefully, be pointed out again.
But what is also interesting is Dave Basi's and Bob Virk's familiarity with the characters involved. Basi refers to Bornmann as "Erik", and to Kieran as "Brian". Indeed, Erik Bornmann sent an effusive card and "the largest bouquet of flowers Amy Virk had ever seen" when her daughter Aleena was born. That, according to Virk, happened well after Bornmann had alleged to police the information which makes him "the Crown's star witness" against Basi and Virk.
Gary Mason probed none of that. Nor did he ask what other people might be implicated in the kinds of criminal actions about which the three men claim absolute innocence.
The foolish, silly, smoke-and-mirrors "interview" by Gary Mason is another indication of the collapse of responsible journalism in Canada. It, however, opens two questions. First: how much is the so-called trial of the three men charged (altogether) with something like 14 criminal offenses a sham, a farce, a smoke and mirrors performance, a piece of ugly and ridiculous theatre never intended to have an end but to be, somehow, aborted? Secondly, Mason's interview opens another question - opens it widely without, apparently, Mason even intending it to do so. Who, from Gordon Campbell himself down through government and associated ranks outside, should be facing criminal charges arising out of the particular corruption related to the dirty sale of B.C. Rail, to dirty party membership gathering, and to general and widespread B.C. government corruption elsewhere?
Those are not questions Gary Mason poses, or even intends, it seems. But they are the questions that just won't go away no matter how much he and his private corporate journalist associates try to paint Campbell and the Campbell government in rosy colours - to, it seems, cover for their every dirty deed. The questions that Gary Mason and his private corporate press and media associates absolutely refuse to ask are the ones that, fairly answered, would very likely bring the Campbell government crashing down.
------
Robin Mathews can be contacted at:
rmathews@sfu.ca
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