Six days of war, 40 years of failure

Forty years on: By Ian Black.

It was Moshe Dayan, the hero of Israel's 1967 victory, who set the tone for what was to follow: "We are waiting for a telephone call," the one-eyed general said disdainfully as the frontline Arab states - Egypt, Jordan and Syria - reeled from their crushing defeat. Of the Palestinians - the newly conquered population of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip - little was said at the time. But the six-day war put them back at centre stage in their conflict with Israel. They have stayed there ever since.

"Rarely has so short and localised a conflict had such prolonged, global consequences," commented the historian Michael Oren. "Seldom has the world's attention been gripped, and remained seized, by a single event and its ramifications." Israel's triumph, someone else observed wisely, was "a cursed blessing".

Perceptions have changed so much in 40 years that it is hard now to recapture the sympathy that was felt for Israel as Egypt mobilised, and residents of Tel Aviv filled sandbags. If the country's leaders talked emotively about the vulnerable "Auschwitz borders" left after their 1948 war of independence, blood-curdling Arab rhetoric bolstered the image of Israel as the underdog.

But little David, just 19 that May, was rapidly to become a lumbering Goliath. As euphoric Israelis thronged across Jordanian lines to Jerusalem's Old City and marvelled at its Jewish and Muslim holy places, a little-known guerrilla commander named Yasser Arafat fled Ramallah and Palestinians adjusted to a new reality of curfews, informers and military occupation.

And it is that occupation, now as then, that stands at the heart of the conflict between two peoples engaged in a vicious, primordial - and utterly unequal - struggle over one small land. It has taken a terrible toll.

For Palestinians, 1967 was an extension of what began in Ottoman times, before they were a nation in the modern sense, when - half a century before the Nazi Holocaust - Zionists called for "solving" the Jewish problem in "a land without a people for a people without a land". If 1948 was their first nakba (catastrophe), the June war was the next devastating instalment.

It will long be debated whether Israel missed an early opportunity for peace. But the war reignited the dormant debate about the territorial limits of Zionism, fatefully fusing religion, nationalism and security. It produced no strategy for turning military supremacy into a tool to change relations with the Arab world.

"The truth of the matter was that when the Arabs finally called, Israel's line was either busy or there was no one on the Israeli side to pick up the phone," the Israeli scholar Shlomo Ben-Ami wrote later of Dayan's laconic quip.

Israel seemed to care less about peace than territory. It insisted that what it simultaneously called the "administered territories" and "Judea and Samaria" (the Hebrew names for the West Bank) were up for negotiation. (Unlike East Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan Heights, they were never annexed.) But the creation of "facts on the ground" gradually erased the old green line border, and nowhere more completely than around Jerusalem. The result - which some call apartheid - is 450,000 Jews living with full democratic rights in 125 settlements amidst 2.5 million Arabs under illegal occupation.

The wars of 1973 and 1982 and the return of Sinai to Egypt changed nothing on that central Palestinian front. Israel's "liberal occupation" - a flattering self-image that won wide international acceptance - did not outlive the 20th anniversary of the six-day war. The first intifada - the largely peaceful "war of stones" that erupted in 1987 - did more for the Palestinians than two decades of "terrorism" or "armed struggle," reminding the world, and growing numbers of Israelis, that a settlement had to address their demands.

Yitzhak Rabin's recognition of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) at Oslo was a historic turning-point. But Rabin and Arafat could not translate their "peace of the brave" into a workable final deal. The Islamist movement Hamas, which rejected the legitimacy of Israel even in its pre-67 borders, pioneered suicide bombings and got the Likud's Binyamin Netanyahu elected. The militarised second intifada was the disastrous result.

Netanyahu was right about one thing: the Middle East is a "tough neighbourhood," as he famously remarked. It has got a lot tougher. Today there is a generation of Palestinians who have known nothing but occupation and a generation of Israelis who have experienced only dominance and repression of the Palestinians. As the Israeli philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz pointed out, justice and occupation are not compatible. Both societies have been traumatised and brutalised.

Israel has its "separation wall," built to keep bombers away from its restaurants and shopping malls but perceived as another land grab. Palestinian workers have been replaced by Chinese and Filipinos. But its military superiority has not created the security and normality it craves. Gaza - unilaterally abandoned by Ariel Sharon - has become a vast prison, a global byword for misery, desperation and anarchy, a cruel parody of the freedom the Palestinians yearn for.

Pessimists believe too much water and blood have flown down the Jordan in these 40 years, that these changes are irreversible, that this is a land that can now be neither shared peacefully nor divided.

Optimists point out that time has not stood still. Egypt and Jordan have made peace with Israel, with realism if not joy. Syria (and Lebanon) will follow suit if Israel returns the Golan. March's summit in Saudi Arabia confirmed peace as the "strategic choice" of the entire Arab League, a far cry from the three noes - to peace, to recognition and to negotiation - of the Khartoum conference in September 1967. Mayhem in Iraq, jihadist fanaticism and Iranian ambitions are all part of the new geostrategic equation.

Still, the Palestinians remain at centre stage. A solution for the refugees is vital; so are the interlinked questions of Jerusalem, borders and a viable, independent state. Even Hamas claims it will settle for the pre-1967 lines, as it fires rockets - legitimate "resistance," it insists - across them. Much depends on whether it will learn to act pragmatically like the PLO before it: engagement is more likely to encourage that than isolation. Israel's acceptance as part of the Middle East is at stake.

Majorities on both sides say they want peace but few believe it is attainable. It has all been discussed countless times in the last four decades. It all still looks impossibly hard to achieve.

History

In the months before June 1967, relations between Israel and its neighbours Syria and Egypt were strained. There were clashes on the Syrian border, provoked by both sides. In Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser put on a show of force in support of Syria. Egyptian troops were sent into Sinai and on May 22 Nasser closed the Straits of Tiran, cutting off Israel's port of Eilat from the Red Sea. On June 5, Israel's prime minister, Levi Eshkol, launched a first strike. At 7.45am Israeli jets attacked Egypt's air bases in Sinai and Suez: by mid-morning the Egyptian air force was all but wiped out. Israeli armoured divisions pushed south into Sinai and the Egyptian military fled. Jordanian forces attacked in Jerusalem but their air force was quickly destroyed. On June 6, Israeli paratroopers fought their way into the Jordanian-held east of the city and by the next day Israel took the Old City and the Western Wall. Other units pushed into the West Bank. The Syrian air force had been destroyed and Israeli forces took the Golan Heights. On June 10 a ceasefire was signed. Israel had defeated three Arab armies.

Rory McCarthy speaks to soldiers, settlers, activists, Israeli Palestinians and refugees about how the war changed their lives:

05.06.2007: Ahmad Shalabi, 51, Palestinian refugee in Jordan
05.06.2007: Daniella Weiss, 62, mayor of the Jewish settlement of Kedumim, near Nablus, in the West Bank
05.06.2007: Gila Svirsky, 60, prominent Israeli peace activist
05.06.2007: Hala Hamdan, 35, Palestinian living near Nablus
05.06.2007: Saadeddin Malley, A Palestinian-American businessman based in Chicago
05.06.2007: Senan Abdelqader, 44, architect in Beit Safafa, just south of Jerusalem
05.06.2007: Shimon Cahaner, 72, retired Israeli army colonel
More on the six-day war

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Guantánamo trials in chaos after judge throws out two cases

Guantanamo will define Bush's presidency as much as the Iraq war and - judging by yesterday's decision by military judges to throw out all charges against one detainee and dismissing charges against another detainee who chauffeured Osama bin Laden - the verdict against the Bush administration will be a damning one.

For five years the Bush administration have sought to keep the captives in Guantanamo away from American courts and insisting - after losing a case at the Supreme Court - that the prisoners at Guantanamo would be dealt with by a series of military tribunals.

However, yesterday that system was thrown into chaos.

In back-to-back arraignments for the Canadian Omar Khadr and Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni national, the US military's cases against the alleged al-Qaida figures were dismissed because, the judges said, the government had failed to establish jurisdiction.

Yesterday's decision by Colonel Peter Brownback to dismiss all charges against Mr Khadr on technical grounds has broad implications for the Bush administration's system of military tribunals because the technicality appears to apply to all 385 prisoners held at Guantánamo.

The dismissal of the case also undermines the administration's efforts to show that the military tribunals are based on sound legal practice and can provide detainees with a fair hearing, detainee lawyers said.

In his decision yesterday, Col Brownback said the Pentagon had merely designated Mr Khadr, a Canadian citizen facing charges of murder and terrorism, as an "enemy combatant", not an "unlawful enemy combatant", the term used by Congress last year in authorising the tribunals.

The Pentagon's lapse meant the tribunal did not have proper jurisdiction to try Mr Khadr. "A person has a right to be tried only by a court that has jurisdiction over him," Col Brownback told the court.

Mr Hamdan is accused of being Bin Laden's chauffeur and bodyguard. In his case, US Navy captain Keith Allred yesterday said Mr Hamdan is "not subject to this commission" under legislation passed by Congress and signed by President George Bush last year.

The term "unlawful enemy combatant" does not appear anywhere in the Geneva Conventions and has led many of us to believe that the Bush administration have been making up their response to these men as they have been going along.

Now, with this latest ruling, it appears as if - under the system they have cobbled together to avoid bringing these men before American courts - they have buggered this to such an extent that they may have no case against these men at all.

Yesterday's rulings also suggest that none of the 385 other detainees at Guantánamo, held for more than five years without charge, can be brought to trial before the tribunals because they too have been designated merely as "enemy combatants", lawyers said yesterday.

"The system right now should just stop," Marine Corps Colonel Dwight Sullivan, the lead military defence lawyer, said. "The commission is an experiment that failed and we don't need any more evidence that it is a failure."

It's simply astonishing to see the whole system that Rumsfeld and Bush cobbled together fall apart so spectacularly, leaving the US with virtually no case against these men who we were told were "the worst of the worst".

Of course, as Col Brownback threw out the charges "without prejudice" then the government are free to issue new charges against the men, however any new charges will only increase the impression that the Bush administration are making this whole thing up as they go along.

They will now no doubt seek to have another set of "combat status review tribunals" in which they will attempt to redefine the men held as "illegal" enemy combatants but the damage is done.

They look like they are busking because they are busking. They are literally making this up as they go along. Nothing makes this clearer than the fact that the prosecutors have said that they will appeal to the court of military commissions review, a body which doesn't even (at this moment) exist.

Mr Khadr's defence team was equally scathing. "This is a shambles," said Kristine Huskey, who had been on Mr Khadr's defence team until last week when he sacked all of his American lawyers. "It's another example of how everything has been so ad hoc."

Ad hoc. A very polite way to say "making it up as they go along." It's a shambles, and it's a shambles that should define the shambles that was the Bush presidency.

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Sicko? The truth about the US healthcare system

By Andrew Gumbel

Cynthia Kline knew exactly what was happening to her when she suffered a heart attack at her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She took the time to call an ambulance, popped some nitroglycerin tablets she had been prescribed in anticipation of just such an emergency, and waited for help to arrive.

On paper, everything should have gone fine. Unlike tens of millions of Americans, she had health insurance coverage. The ambulance team arrived promptly. The hospital where she had been receiving treatment for her cardiac problems, a private teaching facility affiliated with the Harvard Medical School, was just a few minutes away.

The problem was, the casualty department at the hospital, Mount Auburn, was full to overflowing. And it turned her away. The ambulance took her to another nearby hospital but the treatment she needed, an emergency catheterisation, was not available there. A flurry of phone calls to other medical facilities in the Boston area came up empty. With a few hours, Cynthia Kline was dead.

She died in an American city with one of the highest concentration of top-flight medical specialists in the world. And it happened largely because of America's broken health care system - one where 50 million people are entirely without insurance coverage and tens of millions more struggle to have the treatment they need approved. As a result, medical problems go unattended until they reach crisis point. Patients then rush to hospital casualty departments, where by law they cannot be turned away, overwhelming the system entirely. Everyone - doctors and patients, politicians on both the left and the right - agrees this is an insane way to run a health system.

When Elizabeth Hilsabeck gave birth to premature twins in Austin, Texas, she encountered another kind of insanity. Again, she was insured -- through her husband, who had a good job in banking. But the twins were born when she was barely six months pregnant, and the boy, Parker, developed cerebral palsy. The doctors recommended physical therapy to build up muscle strength and give the boy a fighting chance of learning to walk, but her managed health provider refused to cover it.

The crazy bureaucratic logic was that the policy covered only "rehabilitative" therapy - in other words, teaching a patient a physical skill that has been lost. Since Parker had never walked, the therapy was in essence teaching him a new skill and therefore did not qualify. The Hilsabecks railed, protested, won some small reprieves, but ended up selling their home and moving into a trailer to cover their costs. Elizabeth's husband, Steven, considered taking a new, better-paying job, but chose not to after making careful inquiries about the health insurance coverage. "When is he getting over the cerebral palsy?" a prospective new insurance company representative breezily asked the Hilsabecks. When Elizabeth explained he would never get over it, she was told she was on her own.

Everyone in America has a health-care horror story or knows someone who does. Mostly they are stories of grinding bureaucratic frustration, of phone calls and officials letters and problems with their credit rating, or of people ignoring a slowly deteriorating medical condition because they are afraid that an expensive battery of tests will lead to a course of treatment that could quickly become unaffordable.

Even when things don't go horribly wrong, it is a matter of surviving by the skin of one's teeth.

In Montana, Melissa Anderson can't find affordable insurance because she is self-employed - an increasingly common affliction. When her son Kasey came down with epilepsy two years ago, she was saved only by a recently introduced child health insurance programme specifically tailored to people who aren't poor but can't afford to pay monster medical bills. She herself remains uninsured for anything short of major care needs.

Over the past 15 years, the stories have become less about poor people without the economic means to access the system - although that remains a vast, unsolved problem - and more about the kind of people who have every expectation they will be taken care of. Middle-class people, people with jobs that carry health benefits or - as the problem worsens - people with the sorts of jobs that used to carry robust health benefits which are now more rudimentary and risk their being cut off for a variety of reasons.

This is the morass that Michael Moore has chosen to explore in his latest documentary, Sicko, which goes on release later this month. Moore spends much of the film demonstrating that there is nothing inevitable or necessary about a system that enriches insurance companies and drug manufacturers but shortchanges absolutely everyone else. His searching documentary looks at health care in France, Britain, Canada, and even Cuba - still regarded as a model system for the Third World.

Moore has his share of ghoulishly awful stories. The film kicks off with an uninsured carpenter who has to decide whether to spend $12,000 (£6,000) reattaching his severed ring finger or $60,000 to reattach his severed middle finger. Later on, Moore focuses on a hospital worker whose husband needed a bone marrow transplant to save him from a rare disease. The couple's insurance company refused to cover the transplant because it regarded the treatment as "experimental". The husband died.

Many more stories are collected in a newly published book called Sick: The Untold Story of America's Health Care Crisis, by Jonathan Cohn. A woman in California called Nelene Fox died of breast cancer after she, too, was turned down for a bone marrow transplant by her insurance company. In Georgia, a family whose infant son went into cardiac arrest were forced to take him to a hospital 45 miles away on their insurance carrier's orders. He survived, but suffered permanent disabilities that more prompt treatment might have averted. In New York, an infant called Bryan Jones - whose case was trumpeted all over the local media at the time - died of a heart defect that went undetected because his insurance company kicked him and his mother out of hospital 24 hours after his birth, too soon to carry out the tests that might have spotted the problem.

America's health system offers a tremendous paradox. In medical technology and in the scientific understanding of disease, it is second-to-none. Since doctors are better paid than anywhere else in the world, the country attracts the best of the best. And yet many, if not most, Americans are unable to reap the advantages of this. In fact, as The New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has argued, the very proliferation of research and high-tech equipment is part of the reason for the imbalance in coverage between the privileged few and the increasingly underserved masses. "[The system] compensates for higher spending on insiders, in party, by consigning more people to outsider status --robbing Peter of basic care in order to pay for Paul's state-of-the-art treatment," Krugman wrote recently. "Thus we have the cruel paradox that medical progress is bad for many Americans' health."

Having the system run by for-profit insurance companies turns out to be inefficient and expensive as well as dehumanising. America spends more than twice as much per capita on health care as France, and almost two and a half times as much as Britain. And yet it falls down in almost every key indicator of public health, starting, perhaps, most shockingly, with infant mortality, which is 36 per cent higher than in Britain.

A recent survey by the management consulting company McKinsey estimated the excess bureaucratic costs of managing private insurance policies - scouting for business, processing claims, and hiring "denial management specialists" to tell people why their ailment is not covered by their policy - at about $98bn a year. That, on its own, is significantly more than the $77bn McKinsey calculates it would cost to cover every uninsured American. If the government negotiated bulk purchasing rates for drugs, rather than allowing the pharmaceutical companies to set their own extortionate rates, that would save another $66bn.

Astonishingly, there hasn't been a serious debate about health care in the United States since Bill Clinton, with considerable input from his wife Hillary, tried and failed to overhaul the system in 1994. That, though, may be about to change as the 2008 presidential race heats up. Everyone acknowledges the system is broken. Everyone recognises that 50 million uninsured - including almost 10 million children - is unacceptable in a civilised society.

Even the old, classically American free-market argument - that "socialised" medicine is somehow the first step on a slippery slope towards godless communism - doesn't hold water, because in the absence of a functioning private insurance regime the government ends up picking up about 50 per cent of the overall costs for treatment anyway. The indigent rely on a government programme called Medicaid. The elderly have a government programme called Medicare. And perhaps the most efficient part of the whole system is the Veterans' Administration, a sort of NHS for former servicemen.

Rather like London and Paris in the 19th century, where the authorities belatedly paid attention to outbreaks of cholera once the disease started affecting the rich and middle classes, so the American health crisis may be coming to a head because of the kinds of people who are suffering from its injustices.

Corporate chief executives, for a start, are gagging under the ever-increasing costs of providing coverage to their employees. Starbucks now spends more on health care than it does on coffee beans. Company health costs, as a whole, are at about the same level as corporate profits. In a globalised world where US businesses are competing with low-wage countries such as India and China, that is rapidly becoming unacceptable.

That explains, perhaps, why the chief executive of Wal-Mart, Lee Scott, has made common cause with America's leading service sector union - more commonly a bitter critic of Wal-Mart's labour practices - in calling for a government-run universal health care system by 2012. It's going to be a tough battle. The insurance and pharmaceutical industries bankroll the campaigns of dozens of congressmen and have so far been brutally efficient in protecting their own interests. The Clintons were defeated in 1994 in part because of the power of the industry lobbies. Doing better this time will take singular political courage.

In the meantime, we will hear ever more crazy stories like the one told by Marijon Binder, a former nun in Chicago who ended up being sued by a Catholic hospital for $11,000 because her two-night stay for a heart scare was not considered a worthy charity case. Binder, who works as a live-in companion to a disabled old woman, wrote on all her admission forms that she had no insurance and, in her telling at least, was reassured the hospital would take care of her anyway.

After a year and a monstrous bureaucratic fight that went nowhere, a civil judge promptly absolved her of responsibility for her bill - a lucky outcome, for sure. Binder said: "The whole experience was very demeaning. It made me feel very guilty; it made me feel like a criminal." She is, though, alive and solvent. Not everyone in this system catches the same break.

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The new cold war: Russia's missiles to target Europe

Vladimir Putin has launched a blistering attack on Bush's plans to position elements of a missile shield in eastern Europe saying that this will set off a new cold war and that Russia will retaliate against US missile defence plans in Europe by pointing its missiles at European cities.

Russia has not specifically aimed its missiles at Europe since the end of the cold war but, asked if it might do so again if the US missile shield went ahead, Mr Putin said: "Of course we are returning to those times. It is clear that if a part of the US nuclear capability turns up in Europe, and, in the opinion of our military specialists will threaten us, then we are forced to take corresponding steps in response."

"What will those steps be? Naturally, we will have to have new targets in Europe."

He said: "We want to be heard, we want our position to be understood. But if that does not happen, we lift from ourselves any responsibility for the steps we take in response, because we are not the ones who are initiating the arms race in Europe."

Once again, the US - obsessed with a missile defence system that no-one can even guarantee will work - endanger the world's equilibrium by insisting on carrying on with this.

It's a right wing obsession which Reagan started and which spoiled negotiations between Reagan and Gorbachov, and it is apparently one which Bush is keen to continue.

It should not be forgotten that Bush's policy since he came to office has been to rip up all that came before. He has already withdrawn from the 1972 ABM treaty with the former Soviet Union which produced fresh tensions with Russia at a time when most were celebrating the fact that the Cold War was over.

Bush has always attempted to make it clear that the missile defence system is not aimed at Russia, although he has been at something of a loss to state who the Hell it is aimed at.

The president said Thursday that part of the reason for his trip was "to allay people's fears" about the system. "He thinks it's aimed at him. It's not," Bush said of Putin.

Instead, he said, the system is meant to protect NATO allies against hostile regimes. "Russia is not hostile. Russia is a friend."

If you aim a missile, you are aiming it somewhere. Bush is being spectacularly vague about where he is aiming these so-called "defensive" missiles. And the very fact that he is doing this when the US-Russian relationship is so good is simply baffling. He claims to be doing so to protect the US against any action by "rogue states", when there are no rogue states that anyone can name which possess weaponry requiring this sort of response.

"We are being told the anti-missile defence system is targeted against something that does not exist. Doesn't it seem funny to you?" Mr Putin said.

So now, thanks to an American right wing obsession with a missile defence system that they can't even guarantee will work, European cities now have Russian nuclear weapons trained upon them. This is only happening because of the right's obsession with Ronald Reagan and a failure on the part of that right wing to see the Reagan years objectively.

However, it is also happening because of the Bush regime's failure to accept any reality other than their own, a concept that Putin touched upon:

"Certain participants in the international arena assume that their opinion is the ultimate truth. That, naturally, does not help create an atmosphere of trust."

That certainly has been the defining feature of the Bush administration, that almost total belief that whatever they state instantly becomes reality.

We have witnessed it in Iraq and we have witnessed it in their approach to climate change. They seem to believe that simply by saying something, by announcing it as America's intention, then the sheer weight of their Empire will instantly make what they state a reality.

It is - as both Iraq and the world's reaction to Bush's climate change proposals show - a bampot theory that has no factual basis.

And yet Bush insists on continuing with it, even if the end result is Europe being targeted by Russian nuclear weapons.

I suppose that's what I find most depressing about the Bush years: the almost total lack of imagination. The complete inablity to see things out of the box. If Reagan did it, it must be good seems to be the mantra, no matter what is actually happening in the world.

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Brazil rejects Bush move on climate change talks

And now even Brazil say no.

As I reported yesterday, European leaders have been quick to distance themselves from Bush's new plans to create a new framework to tackle climate change outside of the United Nations, with Britain and Germany quickly making their objections known. Now, Brazil, a fast developing country whose support is critical to a global deal on emission cuts, has rejected the American proposition.

"The Brazilian position is clear cut," Mr Lula said. "I cannot accept the idea that we have to build another group to discuss the same issues that were discussed in Kyoto and not fulfilled.

"If you have a multilateral forum [the UN] that makes a democratic decision ... then we should work to abide by those rules [rather than] simply to say that I do not agree with Kyoto and that I will develop another institution," said Mr Lula, who was in London to watch Friday's England-Brazil international football friendly.

The Bush administration has sought to cultivate President Lula as an ally, seeing the former trade unionist as a centre-left alternative in Latin America to the more radical anti-American socialism espoused by Cuba's Fidel Castro and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. Presidents Bush and Lula also share an enthusiasm for the potential for "bio-fuels" made from plants as a substitute for fossil fuels.

However, on overall climate change policy, President Lula was dismissive of the Bush approach, calling it "voluntarism", meaning a reliance on "coalitions of the willing" rather than establish global institutions and the pursuit of voluntary goals rather than binding commitments. "We cannot let voluntarism override multilateralism," he said.

And on this Lula is, of course, bang on the money. Bush is very keen to make any changes we make regarding climate change totally voluntary, which means that bugger all will ever be done. Bush is very keen to have us all sign up to a set of "guidelines" rather than rules, which is a very good indication of how flippant he is being when it comes to this subject.

He doesn't want to be tied down to actually having to do anything.

But Mr Lula, Brazil's president since 2003, rebuked Mr Bush for seemingly sidestepping the UN and not taking its global responsibilities seriously. "I am open-minded about talking to President Bush ... I will never refuse to discuss any idea, but we should respect the decisions made in the multilateral forums. It is the only thing we have all agreed on in a democratic way," he said. "If the US is the country that most contributes with greenhouse gases, in the world, it should assume more responsibility to reduce emissions."

So there we have it. Bush is coming to the G8 with almost everyone opposed to his great new plan. Even Brazil, with a leader that Chavez has attacked for his tendency to produce bio-fuels, has refused to join the Bush camp.

President Lula said the decisive moment in the current "Doha round" of talks would come in the next few weeks, with the G8 summit at a trade ministers' meeting due in mid-June.

"I think that this month something has to happen. If nothing happens, we will go into history as a generation of politicians that failed humanity, especially the poor," the president said. "If there is no agreement on Doha round, it's useless to talk about fighting terrorism, its useless to fight organised crime because poverty is the principal seed for the growth of terrorism."

The only more important issue in the world than trade, President Lula said, is climate change, and both are nearing a potential turning point.

"In the Doha round, I want to solve the issues of today and tomorrow," the Brazilian leader said. "On the climate issue I have to solve the problem of planet earth, the only one we know of on which we can survive ... So for God's sake, let's take care of planet earth."

Ever since Bush came into office his rejection of Kyoto has marked him as an ostrich, as someone with his head buried deep in the sand, refusing to believe in climate change until the evidence became overwhelming.

Now, whilst apparently accepting the evidence, he is seeking to avoid having to make any difficult decisions until the day he leaves office.

Thankfully, the rest of the world is much more serious about the problem than Bush is, and it looks like he is going to find very few takers for his new game of "lets circumvent the UN."

The real test of a leader is whether anyone follows, and for a long time now Bush has been marching into the desert with no-one behind him. Angela Merkel summed up the European position best when she called it "non-negotiable".

Let's see how "The Decider" approaches the G8 with almost everyone opposed to his plan. No doubt Blair will continue to see "progress" in the fact that Bush has even admitted that there is a problem, but there is no reason to believe the rest of the world will find this even remotely adequate.

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US told to toe line on climate

It's interesting to note just how far Bush is outside of the international consensus when it comes to global warming. Yesterday he attempted to side-step the United Nations policy of achieving a successor to the Kyoto Protocol by stating that he would prefer to rely on free-market mechanisms and technology to solve the problem.

What's fascinating is how few other world leaders are embracing Bush's ideology, even amongst supposed allies.

Britain and Germany yesterday joined forces to warn President George Bush that talks on climate change must take place within a United Nations framework and not in an ad hoc process floated last week by Bush.

'For me, that is non-negotiable,' the German Chancellor Angela Merkel said of the need to ensure that climate change negotiations take place within the existing UN framework.

Her remarks were echoed by Hilary Benn, Britain's international development secretary. 'I think it is very important that we stick with the framework we've got,' Benn told The Observer.

So Bush's attempt to form an alternative framework for tackling global warming appears to have been resoundingly rejected by the international community.

Merkel underlined deep European unease with the President when she told Der Spiegel: 'In a process led by the United Nations, we must create a successor to the Kyoto agreement which ends in 2012. But it is important that they flow from the United Nations.'

Benn offered limited support for Bush's declaration as 'some progress'. But he highlighted deep misgivings in Europe at the President's call for a parallel process to the UN that would see the world's biggest carbon emitters 'establish a new framework on greenhouse gases' by the end of next year in time for the expiry of the Kyoto protocol.

'In the end, we have to have one framework for reaching agreement,' Benn said. 'I think that is very clear.'

It's astonishing to find that Bush is not only behind the rest of the world on this issue but he now appears to be behind many American states, eight of whom - along with New York - are currently suing five US power companies for their contribution to global warming.

"If we do not act soon, the steps we will need to take to prevent global warming will be much greater and much harder," says New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.

He says the companies - American Electric Power Company, the Southern Company, Tennessee Valley Authority, Xcel Energy Inc, and Cinergy Corporation - were chosen because they are the five largest carbon dioxide emitters in the US, operating 174 power plants in 20 states.

"These companies together emit 650 million tons of carbon dioxide each year - 10 percent of the country's carbon dioxide and more than all of the UK," he adds.

The plaintiffs - which also include California, Connecticut, Iowa, New Jersey, New York state, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin - say the federal government has failed to take action on the problem.

I've said it before, but Bush's failure to tackle global warming is on the same scale as Reagan's failure to tackle the Aids epidemic whilst he was in office. Both are scars on their presidencies which, in time, will come to be seen as monumental failures of vision on the part of both men.

However, as the G8 summit approaches it's obvious that Bush can no longer rely on support from even the UK and Germany regarding his policy, which shows just how far outside the loop this short-sighted little man really is.

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With Korea as Model, U.S. Ponders Long Role in Iraq

For the first time since the invasion of Iraq the Bush White House have now started hinting that they see an American presence in Iraq for decades to come, which explains why the embassy they are building in Baghdad is the size of Vatican city.

President Bush has long talked about the need to maintain an American military presence in the region, without saying exactly where. Several visitors to the White House say that in private, he has sounded intrigued by what he calls the “Korea model,” a reference to the large American presence in South Korea for the 54 years since the armistice that ended open hostilities between North and South.

But it was not until Wednesday that Mr. Bush’s spokesman, Tony Snow, publicly reached for the Korea example in talking about Iraq — setting off an analogy war between the White House and critics who charged that the administration was again disconnected from the realities of Iraq. He said Korea was one way to think about how America’s mission could evolve into an “over-the-horizon support role,” whenever American troops are no longer patrolling the streets of Baghdad.

The next day, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates also mentioned Korea, saying that establishing a long-term American garrison there was a lot smarter than the handling of Vietnam, “where we just left lock, stock and barrel.” He added that “the idea is more a model of a mutually agreed arrangement whereby we have a long and enduring presence but under the consent of both parties and under certain conditions.”

The Korean analogy is as useless as the analogy with Japan and Germany they were fond of quoting when they first invaded Iraq:

Historical analogy has been a problem for this administration since the start of the Iraq war in 2003. In the months before the invasion, there was talk of modeling a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq after the successful occupations of Japan and Germany. But even then, historians and analysts were warning against such comparisons, arguing that those were two cohesive societies that were exhausted by years of war and bore little resemblance to the fractured Iraqi society and its potential for internal violence.

The core problem with the Korea comparison, many experts on Asia note, is that when the war ended in 1953, there were bright lines drawn across the 38th Parallel, separating the warring parties. That hardened into the formal Demilitarized Zone, exactly the kind of division that the Bush administration has said it wants to avoid in Iraq.

I reported before that the US was seeking to establish a series of "enduring bases" in Iraq, which made many of us at the time question whether the US ever had any real intention of leaving the country. Now, Snow and others are stating what we always suspected: the US intends to keep it's footprint in Iraq for the foreseeable future.

This appears to fly in the face of Bush's claims that the US remained in Iraq only at the request of the Iraqi regime and that they would leave if the Iraqis asked them to go.

Apparently, from the reports, there are very few administration officials prepared to talk on the record about American plans, although off the record the plans they are talking about are rather detailed.

It calls for maintaining three or four major bases in the country, all well outside of the crowded urban areas where casualties have soared. They would include the base at Al Asad in Anbar Province, Balad Air Base about 50 miles north of Baghdad, and Tallil Air Base in the south.

“They are all places we could fly in and out of without putting Americans on every street corner,” said one senior official deeply involved in the development of Iraq strategy. “And our mission would be very different — making sure that Al Qaeda doesn’t turn Iraq into a base the way it turned Afghanistan into one.”

Of course, talk of preventing al-Qaeda from turning Iraq into a base is simply a way to sell America's continued presence in a country with substantial oil reserves and is also a way to continue to put pressure on neighbouring Iran who would surely object to a continuing American presence on her border.

Unspoken in all of this is the fact that the American bases would continue to be targets for insurgents and probably would engender the same level of anger amongst Muslims as the American presence in Saudi Arabia generated. A presence that bin Laden cited as one of the reasons for the 9-11 attacks.

Of course, there are some who think that Bush is flattering to deceive when he compares Iraq to Korea:

“If we can make this like Korea, then we have been successful,” said the Donald L. Kerrick, a retired general who spent 30 years in the military and has now emerged as one of a cadre of generals criticizing Mr. Bush’s strategy. He said that he did not believe the analogy fit.

Mr. Bush himself has made clear, while in Hanoi late last year for a summit meeting, that he believes America’s mistake in Vietnam was that it gave up too early. “We’ll succeed unless we quit” he told a small group of reporters who asked him what lessons he drew for Iraq. He declined to engage in deeper comparisons, including the fact that President Lyndon Johnson’s dire warnings about what would happen if the United States pulled out of Vietnam — that Communism would spread across Asia — never came to pass.

Analogies with Korea are meaningless here, what Bush is actually talking about is maintaining a US presence in a country in the middle of a civil war, a civil war that came about because of the American invasion of that country.

Those of us who have long felt that the US were in Iraq to maintain control over the country's oil reserves will feel that Bush is doing little do dissuade us that this was his intention all along. The continuing American presence in Iraq and the newly passed Iraq oil laws all show that the administration, despite all it's rhetoric, has always had it's eye on the ultimate prize.

However, what is really galling is to look again at Bush's statement that, "U.S. troops would not remain in the region "for one day longer than is necessary.""

I suppose the question we should have asked was, "Necessary to whom?"

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Moqtada al-Sadr declines to be an American target for the second time.

The Americans have made it clear that they wish to have direct, peaceful talks with Moqtada al-Sadr. As I pointed out recently, the last time al-Sadr attended peace talks the Americans tried to kill him. I always thought that this would make getting al-Sadr to attend future peace talks almost impossible to achieve, and so it turns out. Al-Sadr has utterly rejected the American advances.

"There is nothing to talk about," he said angrily. "The Americans are occupiers and thieves, and they must set a timetable to leave this country. We must know that they are leaving, and we must know when." He has reason to be wary of US offers to negotiate. As revealed by The Independent last month, respected Iraqi political figures believe the US army tried to kill or capture Mr Sadr after luring him to peace talks in Najaf in 2004.

"We are fighting the enemy that is greater in strength, but we are in the right," he said. "Even if that means our deaths, we will not stand idly by and suffer from this occupation. Islam exhorts us to die with dignity rather than live in shame."

This is a further example of the lack of coherence in the American plans. They have suddenly realised that al-Sadr might be important in any peace talks with the insurgency, but their previous attempts to murder him as he attended peace talks have made his attendance at any future peace talks almost impossible to organise.

As I said at the time: "It is hard to believe that an order to engage in this kind of treachery and double dealing could have come from anywhere but the very heights of the Bush administration. To allow an enemy to attend peace talks at which you attempt to kill them has got to be the lowest of the low. How could anyone ever again agree to attend any conference or negotiations that these people attempt to set up?"

And as predicted, al-Sadr has given this as the reason why he will not attend any future peace talks:

The Shia cleric told The Independent on Sunday in an exclusive interview: "The Americans have tried to kill me in the past, but have failed... It is certain that the Americans still want me dead and are still trying to assassinate me.

"I am an Iraqi, I am a Muslim, I am free and I reject all forms of occupation. I want to help the Iraqi people. This is everything the Americans hate."

So, due to past American tactics, another avenue to ending the occupation with Iraqi co-operation is closed.

My objection to their attempting to kill al-Sadr as he attended peace talks wasn't simply that it was objectionable from a moral standpoint, though it was certainly that, it was also that such a tactic could only be attempted once and closed the door to all further communication with the al-Sadr and the Mahdi Army.

The order to kill al-Sadr as he attended peace talks must have come from quite high up the food chain, and ranks beside the decision to attempt to kidnap Mohammed Jafari and General Minojahar Frouzanda in a botched raid in Arbil whilst they were on an official visit to meet with Iraqi President, as a further example of the Bush regime feeling that they can operate outside the standard rules of warfare and that they can do so with impunity.

Al-Sadr's refusal to meet with them again proves that this is not the case. There are consequences to such actions.

As Bush might say, "Fool me once...."

Brown sets out plan for tough new terror laws

Gordon Brown is certain to infuriate the left wing of the Labour Party as he sets out his new plans to tackle terrorism. The plans he intends to announce seek to outdo Tony Blair in their fervour to please the Daily Mail reader.

The plans include:

· An extension of the 28-day limit on detention without charge. Blair had wanted to extend this to 90 days, but had to limit it to 28 after a Commons revolt.

· Making terrorism an aggravating factor in sentencing, giving judges greater powers to punish terrorism within the framework of the existing criminal law.

· Ending the ban on questioning by police after a terrorist suspect has been charged. This would be subject to judicial oversight to ensure that it is correctly and sparingly used.

· Moving towards allowing evidence from telephone-tapping to be admissible as evidence in court by holding a Privy Council review into whether the law should be changed.

· Increasing the security budget, which has already doubled to more than £2bn a year after 11 September 2001, in the forthcoming spending review when a single security budget will be unveiled.

Most of us have long argued that evidence from telephone tapping should be allowed to be put forward as part of the prosecution's case against terrorist suspects, but it is the extension of the 28 day detention without charge that will cause Brown the most problems. Perhaps he feels that he will enjoy some kind of honeymoon period - in which he can get the party to vote for things that they have expressly voted against in the past - however, it is the very fact that the party have expressly voted against this before that makes raising the subject again such a high risk strategy.

There is no hope that Brown - as Blair relied on so much in the past - can rely on Tory votes to pass this legislation. The Tories were as opposed to extending the 28 day detention without charge as the Labour left were.

However, Brown appears to think that he has this argument won:

The Chancellor believes it is possible to win support for increasing the 28-day limit if there is stronger judicial oversight of any decisions to extend an individual's detention on a week-by-week basis and an annual report to parliament on the use of the powers. But Brown believes there is a need to extend detention because of the volume of international evidence which accrues in such investigations, most of which can be difficult to obtain from computers.

Brown said: 'Because we believe in the civil liberties of the individual, we must also strengthen accountability to parliament and independent bodies overseeing the police, not subjecting people to arbitrary treatment. The world has changed, so we need tougher security. We must recognise there is a group of people we must isolate who are determined to attack. Our security must be strengthened, but we must also strengthen the accountability of our institutions.'

He's going to have a fight on his hands when it comes to this. The police have let it be known that they would prefer a ninety day period when they can hold someone without charge, although I notice that Brown simply calls for an extension on the present 28 day period without specifying how long that extension should be.

Most people objected to 90 days on the grounds that this is the equivalent of giving individuals a six month prison sentence (allowing for three months off for good behaviour) without proving them guilty of any crime.

Perhaps Brown is seeking to take on the party just as Blair took on the party on the subject of Clause IV. The main difference there is that Blair took on a demoralised party, eager after eighteen years of Tory rule to do whatever it took to regain power, and that Brown is taking on a party that is demoralised by the lurch to the right that Blair subjected them to.

That's what makes Brown's gamble so dangerous. He's taking on a battle that no-one is quite sure that he can win.

Indeed, he's beginning his Premiership by taking on a battle that many on the left hope that he will lose.

That's hardly a good start.

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Jon Soltz on Lieberman's Iraq visit.

Jon Soltz talks with Allison Stewart about Joe Lieberman ignoring the troops and the contention of the White House that the US will be in Iraq indefinitely, similar to Korea.

As Soltz says, this is simply a recruiting tool for al-Qaeda.

Tags: Countdown, Jon Soltz, Alison Stewart, Joe Liberman, Iraq war, Korean war, Bush

Blair backs 'softly, softly' approach to Zimbabwe

Whilst Blair is in the middle of conducting the slowest exit from the stage ever witnessed in British politics, I had rather hoped he might redeem himself in South Africa when - with the weight of office soon to be removed from his shoulders - he might have the opportunity to speak candidly to Mbeki about South Africa's shocking abdication of her responsibility towards the people of Zimbabwe, and her continuing support for the government of Mugabe whilst Zimbabwe teeters towards complete financial collapse.

However, Blair, for reasons best known to himself, has decided to do the complete opposite and support Mbeki's scandalous stance on this issue.

Asked if they had reconciled Britain's "loud diplomacy" on Zimbabwe and South Africa's "quiet diplomacy", Blair said his views and Britain's were well-known but were not the important thing. "In the end, what is important is to improve the lives of the people of Zimbabwe. The obligation of Britain is to do everything it can to help. But in the end the solution is an African solution for Zimbabwe and that's why I welcome the work that President Mbeki has undertaken on behalf of the southern African regional grouping.

What's to welcome in Mbeki's stance? Mbeki's government are backing a man who is beating up opposition leaders whilst his country - once known as the bread basket of Africa - is unable to feed itself and inflation heads for 2000%. Zimbabwe is heading for total collapse and the refugees fleeing the nightmare that Mugabe has created must be causing problems for all surrounding countries.

Mbeki is in a unique position to speak out and his silence has been little short of scandalous. Why is Blair now backing this man's inaction? Indeed, why is he now attempting to portray this inaction as if it is the opposite?

"The change has to come from within Zimbabwe ... and we will try to support those like President Mbeki who are trying to bring about that change."

The Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa has said that, "Quiet diplomacy has failed to help solve the political chaos and economic meltdown in Zimbabwe," he said.

I have to say that I am in agreement with Mwanawasa, quiet diplomacy has indeed failed; which is why it is so shocking to find Blair, as he finally bows from office, appearing to back Mbeki's utterly failed policy.

It was Mbeki's quiet diplomacy that led to Zimbabwe being placed in charge of a key United Nations committee on the environment, despite the country's political repression and economic chaos.

Indeed, even Mbeki's own brother has condemned his "softly, softly" approach and said that "South Africa's political elite" is the main "obstacle" to any efforts to save Zimbabwe from collapse.

Mugabe continues to murder Zimbabwean journalists, to beat up members of his opposition and even, bizarrely, to threaten a British Embassy political officer through the pages of an official Zimbabwean newspaper.

Gillian Dare, a British diplomat, was threatened in the pages of the Herald newspaper which suggested that she could be welcomed home "in a body bag" if she continued to "play night nurse to arrested MDC hooligans."

"It will be a pity for her family to welcome her home at Heathrow Airport in a body bag just like some of her colleagues from Iraq and Afghanistan said an article on the newspaper's front page.

Dare, "labelled in some sections of the media as a British spy, could one day be caught in the crossfire as she plays night nurse to arrested MDC hooligans," the newspaper said.

This is the reality of Mbeki's "softly, softly" approach to Mugabe's Zimbabwe. It is a criminal regime which shames the rest of Africa. It's people deserve the support of her neighbours in overthrowing this vile dictator and, instead, they have been forced to listen as Mbeki and other African leaders continue to give legitimacy to a man who makes a mockery of the democratic process.

Even Catholic Bishops have given up their usual stance of practised indifference to label the Mugabe regime as "racist, corrupt and lawless" and compared the struggle to remove him from power with the struggle to free the country from white rule.

Even American diplomats have taken to marching out of meetings where they have basically been told to "shape up or ship out" of Zimbabwe for daring to criticise the regime.

And yet, against that backdrop, Tony Blair has decided that - on the verge of leaving office, when he has literally nothing to lose - that he will lend his support to Mbeki's utterly failed policy.

Mugabe had the final word. The Zimbabwe government described Mr Blair's imminent departure from office as "good riddance".

I feel, after Blair's shocking embrace of Mbeki's utterly failed stance, that the people of Zimbabwe might actually share Mugabe's sentiment.

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Tags: Blair, Mbeki, Mugabe, South Africa, Zimbabwe

Bush calls for release of Americans held in Iran

The United States, as run by George Bush, is a kind of parallel universe where any action taken by the US is naturally good and for the benefit of all mankind, and anyone who opposes any American action must be against the spread of democracy.

How else do we explain the Bush White House's demand for the release of four Americans currently being held by Iran? Especially as it comes at a time when America are holding five Iranian detainees snatched whilst the US was trying to arrest Mohammed Jafari, the powerful deputy head of the Iranian National Security Council, and General Minojahar Frouzanda, the chief of intelligence of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

In a statement on the detainees, some of whom face espionage charges, Mr Bush said: "I strongly condemn their detention at the hands of Iranian authorities. They should be freed immediately and unconditionally."

Now, we know from articles by Seymour Hersh that the Bush administration have people operating inside Iran aiming to topple Ahmadinejad's regime, could these be some of the people arrested?

The Guardian article goes on to state:

The arrests of academics Haleh Esfandiari and Kian Tajbakhsh, journalist Parnaz Azima and businessman Ali Shakeri, have proved awkward for Washington because they highlight a new $75m (£38m) programme for democracy activists in Iran. Tehran accuses the four of trying to carry out a soft revolution against the government. Three have been accused of espionage, a charge that carries the death penalty. Mr Shakeri has not yet been charged.

So the answer is yes. These men are in Tehran as part of Bush's "soft revolution" against Iran and have been caught trying to undermine the Iranian government. What's annoying the Americans is that Tehran have now charged the individuals concerned and according to Bush "that represented an escalation on the part of the Iranians".

Stephen Hadley gave a hilarious account of why the Iranians were wrong to charge these men:

"It is not helpful to resolving these outstanding issues we have with Iran - whether it is Iran activity in Iraq that destabilises that nation, or progress on the nuclear issue - for Iran to be capturing innocent Americans who are in Iran on peaceful business, visiting relatives or other acceptable activity," Mr Hadley said. "It's an unfortunate development, and these people need to be let go promptly."

I think the question of whether or not they were indulging in "acceptable activity" is much more central to the argument than Mr Hadley would wish. If they were indulging in attempts to weaken Ahmadinejad's government then there is certainly a case for the Ahmadinejad government finding this activity decidedly unacceptable.

Mr Bush said the four detainees had been working to improve relations between Iranians and Americans and posed no threat to Tehran. "Their presence in Iran - to visit or to conduct humanitarian work - poses no threat," he said.

Only on planet Bush could such a statement be made with a straight face. If relations between Iranians and Americans could be improved by the collapse of Ahmadinejad's government, then there's a chance that Bush is being truthful, otherwise he's simply talking bunkum.

Of course, after the recent breakthrough talks between Iran and the US it's odd that Washington should be seeking to highlight tensions like this, unless - like myself - you suspect that the talks were merely a chance for Washington to give Tehran a warning so that she can tell her domestic audience that she "tried everything" to resolve issues with Tehran peacefully and that now conflict is the only reasonable course.

That certainly appears to be the opinion of Mohamed ElBaradei.

White House officials scrambled yesterday to demonstrate unified support behind a diplomatic policy towards Iran. Their task was made more challenging as the International Atomic Energy Agency chief, Mohamed ElBaradei, issued warnings about the "new crazies" in the administration who were pressing for military action. "I have no brief other than to make sure we don't go into another war or that we go crazy into killing each other," he told the BBC. "You do not want to give additional argument to new crazies who say 'let's go and bomb Iran'."

The "crazies" who want to attack Iran are said to be making noises from the office of the Vice President. The Vice President, the only man with access to American intelligence who still believes a link existed between al-Qaeda and Iraq prior to the US invasion of that country - despite being told by US intelligence agencies that such a link is erroneous - now believes that the US should launch an aerial assault on Iran.

To this end he is now seeking - with the aid of Bush and Stephen Hadley - to present American spies seeking to undermine the Iranian government as people indulging in "peaceful business, visiting relatives or other acceptable activity".

It's simply fantastical. But that's the planet that the Bushites inhabit. If the US are doing it, then it must be good. And anyone who objects must be an enemy of democracy.

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Presidential Hopeful Fred Thompson Hides Behind His Desk

Mark Halperin last week described Republican possible Presidential candidate Fred Thompson's "magnetism" and praised him as "poised and compelling" and exuding "bold self-confidence." Michael Moore challenged Thompson to a debate on health care.

This 38 second - one way debate - on YouTube, where Thompson urges Moore to enter a mental hospital, is Thompson's response. It is hardly the behaviour of a man exuding "bold self-confidence."

Indeed, it reeks of cowardice.



How typical of Republican "hard men". The kind of Republican "hard men" who show their bravery by insisting that other people's children fight wars that they support from behind their desks.

Tags: Fred Thompson, Michael Moore, debate, healthcare

Bill O'Reilly wants to protect the white, Christian, male power structure.

O'Reilly and McCain discuss immigration and O'Reilly tells us what is at stake and what it is that he is fighting for. And McCain appears to agree with him:

Bill O'Reilly: But do you understand what the New York Times wants, and the far-left want? They want to break down the white, Christian, male power structure, which you're a part, and so am I, and they want to bring in millions of foreign nationals to basically break down the structure that we have. In that regard, Pat Buchanan is right. So I say you've got to cap with a number.

John McCain: In America today we've got a very strong economy and low unemployment, so we need addition farm workers, including by the way agriculture, but there may come a time where we have an economic downturn, and we don't need so many.

O'Reilly: But in this bill, you guys have got to cap it. Because estimation is 12 million, there may be 20 [million]. You don't know, I don't know. We've got to cap it.

McCain: We do, we do. I agree with you.

Tags: Bill O'Reilly, Senator McCain, immigration

Iraq’s PM Al-Maliki doesn’t trust his own military: Threat of a Coup

Hat tip to Crooks and Liars.

Tags: Maliki, Iraq, Iraq war, Bush, surge and accelerate

Bush sidesteps G8's climate change agenda

President Bush has come forward with his great new plan for tackling climate change. He has rejected global carbon-trading programmes, he has rejected the "two-degree" strategy, whereby the rise in world temperatures would be slowed to 2C this century by cutting emissions, and a leaked memo from the US says that the US has a "fundamental opposition" to the European target of global halving of 1990 emission levels by 2050.

Bush, instead, prefers to rely on free-market mechanisms and technology to solve the problem.

"The world is on the verge of great breakthroughs that will help us become better stewards of the environment," Mr Bush declared. Under his scheme, individual countries would establish "midterm management targets and programmes that reflect their own mix of energy sources and future energy needs".

The problem with Bush's logic is that, in his world, we are always "on the verge" of great breakthroughs. However, here on planet Earth, we realise that this problem is not going to go away by waiting for "great breakthroughs" that mean we can basically carry on as before, but that we are all actually going to have to do something.

Bush's speech is really no more than an attempt to hide the fact that he is dragging his feet and doing nothing, but - of course - Tony Blair stepped forward to applaud Bush's inaction.

Tony Blair hailed Mr Bush's remarks as a step forward. "Without America and China, the rest of the world frankly can agree whatever it wants but it's not going to have the effect of improving the environment," the Prime Minister said during his visit to South Africa. "The important thing is, for the first time America is saying it wants to be part of a global deal."

This should be taken as seriously as Blair applauding Bush's plan to allow Ariel Sharon to hold on to settlements in the West Bank. Then, as now, one couldn't help but notice that what Bush was saying was actually the opposite of everything that Blair had ever stood for, but Blair seems to feel that America should be applauded for taking any kind of stance at all, as if the US is on a different planet from the rest of us and that this problem really doesn't effect them at all.

However, the reaction from people not beholden to Bush for possible US lecture tours was much more negative.

But for critics, Mr Bush's proposals were simply more of the same - a transparent attempt to create the impression that the US was not dragging its heels.

The speech was proof that the administration had a "do-nothing" approach to global warming, said Daniel Weiss, the climate strategy director at the Centre for American Progress think-tank. The European and Japanese pleas for action "add to the voices of corporations such as Dow, Shell, General Electric and General Motors". But they were falling on deaf ears, he added.

Bush has literally done nothing about this problem since he came into office. It reminds me of Reagan's reaction to the Aids epidemic in the eighties when, scandalously, he stood still - refusing to invest any money into research - because he believed it was an illness that only affected homosexuals and, therefore, because of the religious beliefs of his base could be safely ignored. Reagan's presidency should be viewed through that callous prism just as Bush's should be viewed through how he handled the most important issue that faced him whilst he was in office: global warming. In both cases, both Presidents deserve to be remembered as abject failures. Neither recognised the global implications of a problem that was right in front of their noses.

Harold Macmillan’s celebrated answer to a journalist’s question about what can most easily steer a government off course was, "Events, dear boy, events." In the case of both Bush and Reagan, they refused to even acknowledge the importance of the event that was, in actuality, defining their Presidency.

Just as Reagan paid scant lip service to Aids, so Bush does the same on the subject of global warming.

Here's what Bush said yesterday and what it actually meant:

'In recent years, science has deepened our understanding of climate change and opened new possibilities for confronting it.'

Translation: In recent years, my refusal to acknowledge the reality and seriousness of global warming has turned me into a laughing-stock and contributed to my record low poll ratings. So now I have to look interested.

'The United States takes this issue seriously.'

Translation: Al Gore takes this issue seriously, his movie was a hit, and it's causing me no end of grief.

'By the end of next year, America and other nations will set a long-term goal for reducing greenhouse gases.'

Translation: By the end of next year, I'll be weeks away from the end of my presidency and this can be someone else's problem.

'To develop this goal, the United States will convene a series of meetings of nations that produce the most greenhouse gasses, including nations with rapidly growing economies such as India and China.'

Translation: We will look as busy as we can without doing anything.

'The new initiative I am outlining today will contribute to the important dialogue that will take place in Germany.'

Translation: The new initiative will put the brakes on the much more robust proposal the Germans are putting forward. As long as dialogue continues, we won't have to abide by any decisions.

'Each country would establish midterm management targets and programmes that reflect their own mix of energy sources and needs.'

Translation: Nobody will be obliged to take any painful decisions.

'Over the past six years, my administration has spent, along with the Congress, more than $12bn in research on clean energy technology.'

Translation: But we've spent a lot more mollycoddling the oil and gas industries. We're the world's leader in figuring out ways to power our economy while looking after the environment.

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The man who wants to lead a sensible debate on abortion

They are the sort of tactics that work best in the US, where a large proportion of the populace appear to "do God", but it is going to be interesting to see how the tactics of the 17,000-strong Life League plays out in the British mainland.

Anti-abortion campaigners are ready to launch a US-style cultural war against the 40-year-old law that allows women in the UK to choose to terminate unwanted pregnancies - with politicians who are also practising Roman Catholics as their first targets.

MPs and other elected representatives who attend Mass but have not taken a hard line against abortion will be targeted by activists who say they should be disowned by the Church.

The head of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, is proposing to write to every Catholic MP demanding that they give a clear statement that they support the Church's stance on "life" issues. Those who fail to do so will be spied upon to see if they attend mass.

This entire campaign has been inspired by a fiery sermon from O'Brien who has described abortion as "an evil crime" and controversially compared it with the massacre of schoolchildren in Dunblane 12 years ago.

"I urge politicians to have no truck with the evil trade of abortion," he told a congregation at St Mary's Cathedral in Edinburgh, later adding: " We are killing ­ in our country ­ the equivalent of a classroom of kids every single day. Two Dunblane massacres a day in our country going on and on. And when's it going to stop?"

This is an issue that has great significance in the US where a candidates stance on abortion can make or break a political campaign, but I am unconvinced that the issue has the same weight in the UK.

Whilst all of us remain of the opinion that abortion is something that should be avoided if at all possible, many of us accept that there are circumstances in which a termination is unavoidable. However, Cardinal O'Brien appears to be attempting to overturn David Steel's 40 year old abortion law.

The activists' next move will be to use Cardinal O'Brien's comments to force Catholic politicians, such as the Home Secretary John Reid and the Communities Secretary Ruth Kelly, to choose between religion and politics.

"If we see MPs taking communion knowing that they have a pro-abortion voting record, including those who have abstained, we're going to make it public," Mr Dyson said.

His remarks will add to the political storm that broke after Cardinal O'Brien questioned whether Catholic politicians who backed abortion could remain full members of the Church.

"They must consider their own consciences and whether or not they can approach the altar to receive Holy Communion. It's not up to me to judge them, I'll leave that to God to judge them." He added: "It's far beyond time that the present Abortion Act of 40 years ago was re-examined."

There has been a proposal by MP's from all three main parties - put forward by the Tory Ann Winterton - which would compel women seeking an abortion to see a professional counsellor.

Mrs Winterton insisted yesterday that the Bill she will introduce to the Commons on Tuesday is not about personal morality, but about protecting women's health ­ although she is a lifelong campaigner against abortion.

The Bill would compel women who seek a termination to have counselling first so they can be warned about the risk to their mental health and be made aware of the help available should they decide to have their babies. It is backed by the Labour MPs Jim Dobbin and David Drew, the Liberal Democrat Paul Rowen, and 10 Tories, but has little chance of becoming law without the Government's backing.

But the Liberal Democrat MP Sandra Gidley, a member of the Commons Health Committee, said: "This is one of the most dreadful ideas I have ever heard. Once a woman has made this decision, which women find very distressing, she doesn't want to be told she has got to go on a waiting list to see a counsellor."

I suspect that the reason this is dominating some of our papers is because the tactics these people are employing are so quasi-American as to be newsworthy, not because the country is ready to have another abortion debate.

And I am also suspicious of anyone who wants to "counsel" women before they have abortions as I suspect all they want to do is provide them with pictures of foetuses in the womb and generally attempt to talk them out of it.

I do not believe that anyone comes to a decision to terminate lightly and think that forcing people who want to terminate to subject themselves to "counselling" from a group of people who are strongly opposed to abortion as a form of harassment.

It seems bizarre to me that such a campaign should be being waged in Britain in 2007, as this is the kind of issue that dominates the US political scene which is much less secular than the UK.

I am sure that the entire issue will, in time, fade; but it is interesting that O,Brien has managed - by threatening to "out" Catholics who fall short of his Church's stance on this issue - to force it into the headlines.

I presume that he is supposing that many people take the decision to abort lightly, and it is on this supposition that I think he is wrong, which is why I think his campaign will ultimately fail.

No-one likes abortion. All of us would like to see it avoided, but it does not follow that we should all accept the Catholic Church's teachings on this. After all, if we did, the next thing we would have to condemn is contraception, which would only increase the amount of cases of unwanted pregnancies. Unless, of course, we were all to engage in abstinence; which is what the Church ultimately wants us to do.

O'Brien can get many people debating the rights and wrongs of abortion in the 21st century, but what he can't claim is that his Church have come up with a solution that suits most people in the new millennium.

We can all agree that abortion is best avoided if at all possible, but for O'Brien to be honest about what he really believes would mean that he should set out the Catholic alternative for all to see.

A banning of contraceptives and an embracing of abstinence outside of marriage. Who, in 21st Century Britain, would sign up for that package?

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