The Osterley Times

Thursday, November 22, 2007

Young Father Tased For Refusing To Sign Speeding Ticket In Utah

This young cop loses it very quickly. I thought tasing was a last resort kind of thing. Not in this case. The release of this on YouTube has triggered an investigation into the policeman's actions.

Hat tip to Crooks and Liars

Afghanistan 'falling into hands of Taliban'

A new report from the Senlis Council states that the Taliban has a permanent presence in 54% of Afghanistan and that the country is in "serious danger" of falling into Taliban hands.

Despite tens of thousands of Nato-led troops and billions of dollars in aid poured into the country, the insurgents, driven out by the American invasion in 2001, now control "vast swaths of unchallenged territory, including rural areas, some district centres, and important road arteries", the Senlis Council says in a report released yesterday.
On the basis of what it calls exclusive research, it warns that the insurgency is also exercising a "significant amount of psychological control, gaining more and more political legitimacy in the minds of the Afghan people who have a long history of shifting alliances and regime change".
It says the territory controlled by the Taliban has increased and the frontline is getting closer to Kabul - a warning echoed by the UN which says more and more of the country is becoming a "no go" area for western aid and development workers.
The council goes as far as to state: "It is a sad indictment of the current state of Afghanistan that the question now appears to be not if the Taliban will return to Kabul, but when ... and in what form. The oft-stated aim of reaching the city in 2008 appears more viable than ever and it is incumbent upon the international community to implement a new strategic paradigm before time runs out."

I have always thought that the current policy - where Karzai controls Kabul and very little else - is a disaster in the making. No intervention in Afghanistan, whether by the Russians, the Brits, or anyone else - has ever been successful.

And there is certainly no way to control that vast terrain with a mere 40,000 Nato troops.

When the Russians invaded Afghanistan, the Mujahideen took to the mountains and attacked them from there. The Taliban are not even having to do that as they now have a presence in 54% of the country.

Senior British and US military commanders privately agree despite their public emphasis on short-term successes against Taliban fighters.
The insurgency is divided into a largely poverty-driven "grassroots" component and a concentrated group of "hard-core militant Islamists", says the Senlis Council, which has an office in Kabul and field researchers based in Helmand and Kandahar provinces in southern Afghanistan.
There is no sign of any move within Nato to send reinforcements to Afghanistan.

Nor has there been any lack of indications that the British Army were not aware of how potentially disastrous the Afghanistan campaign was, as General the Lord Guthrie made clear in October of last year:

'Anyone who thought this was going to be a picnic in Afghanistan - anyone who had read any history, anyone who knew the Afghans, or had seen the terrain, anyone who had thought about the Taliban resurgence, anyone who understood what was going on across the border in Baluchistan and Waziristan [should have known] - to launch the British army in with the numbers there are, while we're still going on in Iraq is cuckoo,' Guthrie said.

Of course, there are no indications that troop levels are going to be increased in Afghanistan whilst the war rages in Iraq which leaves us with the distinct possibility that we might have two failed campaigns on our hands, rather than simply the one disaster in Iraq.

Click title for full article.

Data fiasco forces ministers into ID cards review

The news that some young civil servant had managed to lose the personal details of some 25 million Brits in the post had me thinking that the Labour Party's wish to introduce ID cards into this country must be all but dead in the water.

Today, astonishingly, the government tries to stumble on with it's plans, albeit whilst drastically reducing the amount of information that such cards should hold.

Ministers are to look at scaling back plans for identity cards in response to the catastrophic loss of the personal information of 25 million people, including their bank records and addresses.

The information commissioner, Richard Thomas, urged ministers yesterday to review the amount of data they intend to amass on the national identity register, and Labour backbenchers previously supportive of ID cards backed his view.

At a time when the government continually warn citizens of the dangers of identity theft, it seems to me incredible that the government are attempting to continue with a scheme where they amass lots of information about their citizens in one vast database which will be vulnerable to public disclosure in the exact same way as the details of twenty five million people have now been made public. Human error.

The notion of an ID card has always appalled me, as the amount of information being collected was always deeply intrusive. The fact that the amount of information being collected is to be reduced is a good thing, but it doesn't address the central point of why the government wish us to carry ID cards in the first place.

There is no indication that these cards will help in the war on terror and the government have long ago abandoned their pretence that such cards would aid in this process. So what ARE they for?

There are hints these cards will aid in the fight against illegal immigration, but very few of us buy that nonsense as anything other than the wink towards racists that it is. ID cards will be able to be forged just as anything else can be forged, so how will that stop illegal immigration?

Cameron said people were "desperately worried" and they would "find it frankly weird" that Brown still wanted to go ahead with plans for a national ID card scheme and register.
Some Labour MPs urged Brown to put plans for an ID card scheme on hold while the government absorbed the lessons from the loss of the child benefit data.
Karen Buck, a member of the Commons home affairs committee, said: "The worst thing in the world would be to plough on and say, 'We're going ahead with this', until we have had a chance for proper reflection and measure where public opinion stands when this has calmed down."
Andy Love, a member of the treasury committee, said: "It is sensible in the circumstances to stand back for a while."

I fins myself agreeing with Cameron. I "find it frankly weird" that Brown's government are considering pushing on with the ID card scheme - at a time when they have just lost the data of over 25 million Brits - without ever winning the argument over why such cards are needed in the first place.

At the moment they appear on the threshold of conceding that less information should be held on such cards, but they have still to prove to most of us why such cards will be needed and what the gains to all of us of such cards would be.

Until they do that, the ID card should be opposed.

Click title for full article.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

John Dean on McLellan's Allegations

Hat tip to Crooks and Liars.

Olbermann On McClellan Revelations: Bush Was A Passively Involved “Liar In Chief”

Tonight on Countdown, Keith Olbermann talked to MSNBC’s David Shuster about revelations from former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan’s new book, that President Bush, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove were directly involved in deceiving the American people about their roles in outing covert CIA operative, Valerie Plame.

Hat tip to Crooks and Liars.

McClellan points finger at Bush, Rove

In the days when it was Scotty's job to defend the administration from the podium, he would have dismissed the very charges he is now making as the rantings of someone wanting to "sell a book".

However, we always treated such claims with a pinch of salt when Scott made them regarding others, so we can only hope that there is some serious investigation into the claims that McLellan is making regarding why he misled the press over the involvement of "Scooter" Libby and Karl Rove in the outing of Valerie Plame.

In a new book that Scott McLellan is publishing concerning his time as White House press secretary, he names names regarding who he thinks was behind the cover up.

“I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the most senior aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby,” McClellan wrote.

“There was one problem. It was not true.”

McClellan then absolves himself and makes an inflammatory — and potentially lucrative for his publisher — charge.

“I had unknowingly passed along false information,” McClellan wrote.

“And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice president, the president's chief of staff and the president himself."

McClellan says he was in that position because he trusted the president: "The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.”

Politico has caught up with Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper to ask what they think of McLellan's revelations.

“You’re only as good as your sources,” Miller, who was a reporter at the New York Times when the imbroglio broke, said with a mischievous laugh.

Miller, now an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute, spent 85 days in jail by not revealing her source. “Nothing surprises me about Washington during this administration anymore,” she said.

Cooper, who was a White House correspondent for TIME magazine and is now the Washington bureau chief of Portfolio magazine, said he “was always frustrated that Rove and Libby misled McClellan.”

“I’m glad McClellan is, too,” Cooper said.

Now, there's something funny about Miller defending herself by claiming that you are only as good as your sources, as if the concept of journalists checking the credibility of information spoon fed to them by an administration seeking war is one that had never occurred to her, but McLellan's position was different. He was the administration's paid spokesperson and it was his job to stand there and deliver whatever the administration told him was the truth.

The names he gives go directly to the heart of the Bush administration and, although not remotely surprising, are simply further confirmation of how startlingly little the truth means to the current White House inhabitants.

Click title for full article.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Noam Chomsky on U.S. policy towards Iran

Reagan administration official supports impeachment

Reagan administration official Bruce Fein, on why some Republicans support Cheney impeachment.

The Middle East has had a secretive nuclear power in its midst for years

George Monbiot is convinced that Iran are trying to acquire nuclear weapons, a point which I remain unconvinced of, but he makes a larger point. If Iran are doing so, they are not starting a Middle East nuclear arms race, they are joining it.

George Bush and Gordon Brown are right: there should be no nuclear weapons in the Middle East. The risk of a nuclear conflagration could be greater there than anywhere else. Any nation developing them should expect a firm diplomatic response. So when will they impose sanctions on Israel?
Like them, I believe that Iran is trying to acquire the bomb. I also believe it should be discouraged, by a combination of economic pressure and bribery, from doing so (a military response would, of course, be disastrous). I believe that Bush and Brown - who maintain their nuclear arsenals in defiance of the non-proliferation treaty - are in no position to lecture anyone else. But if, as Bush claims, the proliferation of such weapons "would be a dangerous threat to world peace", why does neither man mention the fact that Israel, according to a secret briefing by the US Defence Intelligence Agency, possesses between 60 and 80 of them?
Officially, the Israeli government maintains a position of "nuclear ambiguity": neither confirming nor denying its possession of nuclear weapons. But everyone who has studied the issue knows that this is a formula with a simple purpose: to give the United States an excuse to keep breaking its own laws, which forbid it to grant aid to a country with unauthorised weapons of mass destruction.

When it comes to the NNPT the west displays more hypocrisy than it does on any other subject. We continue to hold on to our own nuclear arsenals, indeed, the UK recommissions Trident whilst the US develops a new range of "bunker busting" nuclear weapons - both clear violations of our commitment under the treaty to disarm ourselves of our nuclear arsenals - whilst we threaten God knows what damage to any other nation which dares to attempt to acquire them.

And all of this is being done whilst we all pretend that we don't know that Israel is a nuclear power, because if we admit that we know this, then the US - under it's own laws - would have to suspend the billions of dollars it sends to Israel every year.

Monbiot lays out the difference in attitude the US displayed when it discovered that Israel was developing a nuclear bomb.

At first, US diplomats urged Washington to make its sale of 50 F4 Phantom jets conditional on Israel's abandonment of its nuclear programme. As a note sent from the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs to the secretary of state in October 1968 reveals, the order would make the US "the principal supplier of Israel's military needs" for the first time. In return, it should require "commitments that would make it more difficult for Israel to take the critical decision to go nuclear". Such pressure, the memo suggested, was urgently required: France had just delivered the first of a consignment of medium range missiles, and Israel intended to equip them with nuclear warheads.
Twenty days later, on November 4 1968, when the assistant defence secretary met Yitzhak Rabin (then the Israeli ambassador to Washington), Rabin "did not dispute in any way our information on Israel's nuclear or missile capability". He simply refused to discuss it. Four days after that, Rabin announced that the proposal was "completely unacceptable to us". On November 27, Lyndon Johnson's administration accepted Israel's assurance that "it will not be the first power in the Middle East to introduce nuclear weapons".
As the memos show, US officials knew that this assurance had been broken even before it was made.

And the farce is continues almost every six months:

Every six months, the intelligence agencies provide Congress with a report on technology acquired by foreign states that's "useful for the development or production of weapons of mass destruction". These reports discuss the programmes in India, Pakistan, North Korea, Iran and other nations, but not in Israel. Whenever other states have tried to press Israel to join the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, the US and European governments have blocked them. Israel has also exempted itself from the biological and chemical weapons conventions.
By refusing to sign these treaties, Israel ensures it need never be inspected. While the International Atomic Energy Agency's inspectors crawl round Iran's factories, put seals on its uranium tanks and blow the whistle when it fails to cooperate, they have no legal authority to inspect facilities in Israel. So when the Israeli government complains, as it did last week, that the head of the IAEA is "sticking his head in the sand over Iran's nuclear programme", you can only gape at its chutzpah.

When the west pressures Iran to meet it's commitments under the NNPT - ignoring the fact that the Iranians are allowed to enrich uranium under the NNPT for civilian purposes - we are also ignoring the elephant in the room, which is Israel's nuclear arsenal.

Until we become serious about our commitments under the NNPT, then we are simply spouting hypocrisy when we demand that others adhere to a treaty which we ourselves are blatantly ignoring.

And by allowing Israel to continue to refuse to sign up to the NNPT, we are making a joke out of our supposed desire for a world free of nuclear weapons.

Click title for Monbiot's excellent article.

Court dismisses challenges to Musharraf

Musharraf continues to make a mockery out of any sense of democratic norm or of judicial impartiality with his new hand picked Supreme Court swiftly dismissing five challenges to his controversial re-election this year which saw him elected by 98% of the votes cast.

As I said at the time:

Perhaps, if one had recently landed from Mars, one could honestly claim that one had just witnessed a free and fair election, but all of the rest of us know a sham when we see one.

So we watch Musharraf romp home with a landslide of 98%, the kind of election result that we used to routinely condemn as evidence of illegality when it was won by the likes of Saddam Hussein.

But this is "our" man. So let's celebrate the beauty that is democracy!

Now Musharraf's hand picked Supreme Court is being used to see off any challenges to his faux election whilst the country's chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, who was due to rule on whether or not the election was legal shortly before Musharraf declared a state of emergency, remains under house arrest until Musharraf gets his election declared legal.

Yesterday Chaudhry and seven other independent-minded judges remained under house arrest, and the replacement bench clearly signalled its loyalties. In little more than an hour five anti-Musharraf petitions were quashed and lawyers for his opponents given hostile treatment.
The 10-judge bench headed by the new chief justice, Abdul Hameed Dogar, threatened to jail one lawyer and remove his law licence if he persisted with a challenge to the president.
Several senior lawyers involved in the case, such as bar council president Aitzaz Ahsan, were not present because they had already been jailed.
If, as seems likely, Thursday's court decision goes in his favour, Musharraf will hand control of the nuclear-armed military to his deputy, former spy chief Lt Gen Ashfaq Kiyani.

Bush continues to have faith in Musharraf, although it is unclear how much faith either man can be said to have in the democratic process after watching this debacle being played out in front of us.

Musharraf, however, continues to portray what he has done as almost heroic and, certainly, with the best interests of Pakistan always at the forefront of his mind.

Faced with intense international criticism, an often strained looking Musharraf has become defensive. "I took this decision in the best interest of Pakistan," he said at a bridge-opening ceremony in Karachi on Sunday.
"I could have said thank you and walked away. But this was not the right approach because I cannot watch this country go down in front of me."

So you see, this is not a monomaniacal military dictator, this is a man of sacrifice, doing what he is doing for the greater good of Pakistan.

Benazir Bhutto is making a similar point to the one I made the other day:

"If the United States gives him $10bn (£5bn) and does not get him to do what it wants, how is it going to expect us to make him do what he does not want to do," said Benazir Bhutto yesterday.

Negroponte's request that Musharraf suspend his state of emergency has been totally ignored, but the US will not cut off funding to the military dictator as long as he continues to do their bidding in the war on terror.

Nor does Musharraf even believe that the US is really that serious when they complain about what he has done. He says Washington is privately "200 per cent" more supportive of him than in its public statements.

"They show concern on the democratic front, they show concern over my uniform, but they are totally onboard on what we are doing on the terrorist front. They think what we are doing is the right directions." "They are liking me because we are fighting terrorism together."

And therein lies the rub. No matter what light condemnation Bush issues regarding this blatant usurping of the democratic process, the truth is that Musharraf is Bush's man and Bush will do nothing that may see his man removed from power.

As we recently witnessed in Gaza and the West Bank, Bush only favours democracy when it delivers results that he agrees with. As long as Musharraf continues to pursue a western policy - which is hated by many of his electorate and accounts for much of his unpopularity - Bush doesn't care how he is elected.

For Bush to still be supporting Musharraf as he goes through this electoral charade, reveals Bush's professed wish to export democracy as some kind of sick joke.

Note the difference between Dana Perino's claims of impotency when it comes to Pakistan, as opposed to the calls for sanctions against Iran when it fails to do what the US demands:

Though U.S. President Bush is urging his Pakistani counterpart to lift emergency rule, there's not much else that can be done, the White House admitted Monday.

The idea of withdrawing funding from a military dictator who has just pulled off his second military coup is simply unthinkable. "There's not much else that can be done", pines Perino. Does anyone seriously buy that piece of bunkum?

Click title for full article.

Monday, November 19, 2007

Dispatches: In The Killing Zone

A British TV programme reports on Israeli violence in Gaza against, not only Palestinian civilians, but also against International Aid Volunteers and Foreign journalists as well.

Some of the footage here is genuinely shocking. Especially the moment when the Israelis advance on a memorial service for Rachel Corrie - a young American killed by the Israelis - and fire tear gas and bullets at the mourners.

What possible justification could there be for this behaviour?

In the case of Tom Hurdnall: a British jury found the IDF guilty of intentionally killing him.

The jury found that Tom Hurdnall, 22, who had been shot in broad daylight, whilst wearing bright orange clothing, had been deliberately shot by an Israeli soldier, "with the intention of killing him".

A British court found that James Miller had also been "murdered" by the IDF.

On 6 April 2006, the inquest jury at St Pancras Coroner's Court in London returned a verdict of unlawful killing, finding that Miller had been "murdered." After meetings with the Miller family, the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, sent a formal request to his Israeli counterpart in June 2007 for prosecution proceedings to be enacted within six weeks against the soldier responsible for firing the shot. As of August 2007, prosecution proceedings have yet to be enacted.

The intentional killing of civilians are war crimes.

Trailer: Sicko

Musharraf rejects US call to lift state of emergency

It would appear that Musharraf has started to believe his own publicity which states that he is the only man who can run Pakistan:

President Pervez Musharraf has rejected calls from the US to lift the state of emergency and restore Pakistan's constitution, despite a two-hour meeting with John Negroponte, a senior envoy dispatched by the Bush administration.

Mr Negroponte, the deputy US Secretary of State, left Pakistan yesterday, following meetings with General Musharraf and the deputy head of the armed forces General Ashfaq Kayani, as well as a telephone conversation with the opposition leader and former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto.

Mr Negroponte told reporters that while the US still regarded General Musharraf as a valuable ally, the measures he had taken since imposing a state of emergency on 3 November "run directly counter to the reforms that have been undertaken in recent years". He added: "Emergency rule is not compatible with free, fair and credible elections, which require the active participation of political parties, civil society and the media."

But Mr Negroponte admitted that his presentation to General Musharraf had so far brought no new concessions: "In diplomacy, as you know, we don't get instant replies."

The Bush administration's plans for dealing with Pakistan have always centred on Musharraf, who Bush is said to have a strong personal fondness for. This is based, yet again, on Bush's gut instinct, the same gut instinct which allowed Bush to look into the eyes of Putin and see his soul.

And now, in a very similar fashion to the way he clung on to Rumsfeld and Gonzales - long after the rest of the planet could see that they were damaged goods - Bush now clings to Musharraf.

What we are actually witnessing is a military dictator, having just pulled off his second military coup, telling the US to bugger off whilst retaining the support of the American administration.

If you think of it in those terms it's simply astonishing. And yet that is exactly what we are witnessing.

The stalemate highlights Washington's lack of leverage. It has provided more than $11bn (£5.4bn) to Pakistan since the terror attacks of 11 September 2001, but has clearly shown it does not intend to stop such aid – in fact it has been reported that the US spent an additional $100m over the past six years to help General Musharraf secure his country's nuclear weapons.

And American money continues to flow towards Pakistan and the Pakistani military dictator continues to ignore all America's demands.

Only on Planet Bush would this be possible...

Ten Years of Blair

They are showing "The Blair Years" on British television. I can't find the thing on YouTube or Google, so this will have to do as a taster in the meantime until I can track down the real thing.

Part One:

Part Two:

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Cafferty: Leaked Inside Look At Guantanamo 'A Little Scary'

Cafferty: "We've got an inside look at the early days of Guantanamo Bay prison camp. It's emerging and it's a little scary. A confidential 2003 manual that was leaked onto the internet shows that military officials had a policy of denying some detainees access to Red Cross monitors. ... Some experts are saying that this policy may, in fact, have violated international law. ..."

Tony Benn on the “revolutionary notion” of Democracy

This is one of my favourite politicians. I am linking to him here because I note that Crooks and Liars have discovered him, probably because Michael Moore interviewed him for movie, "Sicko".

Benn recently stood down from Parliament saying that he was doing so because he wanted "to spend more time on politics".

Here he takes apart John Bolton:

Here he is on our history with Iran:

Unexpected Bush-bash from FOX and Friends' guest

I love the stunned reactions from the two Fox News anchors when an aviation expert explains to them why Bush's recent announcement, concerning opening up air space around New York, won't have any effect. They make attempts at damage control, but the guy mows them down.

You can see how Fox expected this story to run from the "Thankful Travelers" logo running at the bottom of the screen.

Showdown with Iran

Frontline have produced another excellent documentary, this time on the Bush administration's ignorant relationship with Iran. You can view the whole thing by clicking here.

'Washington is 200 per cent behind me,' Musharraf claims during crucial talks

My complaint about Bush's policy regarding Pakistan has always been that it's not a Pakistan based policy, it's a Musharraf based policy, built totally on the fact that he will do Washington's bidding when it comes to the war on terror, whether this is popular with Pakistanis or not.

I took some faith from the fact that Negroponte had been dispatched to the region and from what he had to say when he met Musharraf:

"Emergency rule is not compatible with free, fair and credible elections," said John Negroponte, a day after meeting the Pakistani leader.

Mr Negroponte, the US deputy secretary of state, said he had urged Gen Musharraf to stick to his pledge to step down as head of the army, and encouraged him to release political prisoners.

"Recent political actions against protesters, suppression of the media and the arrests of political and human rights leaders, runs directly counter to reforms that have been undertaken in recent years," he said.

Although he stuck in the obligatory "but" which hinted that all which came before it may have been bullshit:

However, the US envoy praised Gen Musharraf as a valued ally in the war on terror.

Now, Musharraf has given us his reading of what was actually said at the meeting with Negroponte:

As President Pervez Musharraf held crisis talks yesterday with a senior US envoy, the Pakistani leader robustly defended his decision to impose a state of emergency – saying Washington was privately "200 per cent" more supportive of him than in its public statements.
"They are liking me because we are fighting terrorism together," Gen Musharraf, who yesterday met John Negroponte, the US Deputy Secretary of State, told an interviewer. "They show concern on the democratic front, they show concern over my uniform, but they are totally onboard on what we are doing on the terrorist front. They think what we are doing is the right directions."

So there we have it. They "show concern" about things like military coups, but privately they are "200% more supportive" than their public statements imply as long as he keeps doing what they want regarding the war on terror.

That's not a policy, that's a suicide pact.

Click title for full article.

Erekat: Palestinians will not accept Israel as 'Jewish state'

There's an extraordinary development occurring ahead of the Annapolis summit between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Olmert has demanded that the Palestinians not only recognise Israel's existence, or even Israel's "right to exist", but he now demands that the Palestinians recognise Israel's "right to exist as a Jewish state".

Life was much easier for Israelis seeking to avoid negotiation with the PLO when the PLO simply refused to recognise Israel at all, but then the PLO spoiled the party by recognising Israel and, ever since, Israelis who wish to avoid negotiation have had to set the bar forever higher.

But Olmert has set the bar so high that even Ha'aretz newspaper and the Israeli Arab Higher Monitoring Committee are refusing to play ball, although Olmert is insisting that his position is non-negotiable.

"I do not intend to compromise in any way over the issue of the Jewish state," Olmert said, thereby accepting the position of Livni and Barak. "This will be a condition for our recognition of a Palestinian state."

Olmert said he raised the importance of this issue during his talks with European and American officials, and their response had been positive.

When states recognise each other they acknowledge each others borders, they do not recognise the religion of the country in question. Olmert is seeking to make this part of the negotiations because, if one recognises Israel "as a Jewish state", then it is the state of Jews everywhere, and the whole subject of the Palestinians right to return can be simply swept off the table. After all, how can you have a "right to return" to a Jewish state if you are not Jewish?

Ha'aretz newspaper argue that Israel's own actions are what are endangering it rather than any recognition from the Palestinians:

It is easy to speak about a Jewish state, but difficult to find the political courage required to do what it takes: Settlements scattered in the heart of the Palestinian population make it impossible to separate between Israel and Palestine along a plausible and viable border. With each passing day and each passing year, every settlement expansion, every outpost and every road built to reach it disrupt the chance to separate the two nations.

Therefore suspending construction in the settlements is not a prize for the Palestinians ahead of one agreement or another, but a life-saving medicine for Israel. It is already difficult to delineate a border between the Etzion, Ariel and Ma'aleh Adumim settlement blocs as the building boundaries within them keep expanding, with a wink at Washington.

Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are demanding that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state, but they should direct this demand at the Israelis.

There has always been something faintly ludicrous about Israel demanding that the Palestinians recognise Israel whilst Israel refuses to define her own borders, but the demand of recognition "as a Jewish state" totally ignores the fact that not all Israeli's are Jewish.

It is for this reason that the Israeli Arab Higher Monitoring Committee are drafting a document expressing its refusal to recognise Israel as a Jewish state.

The Hadash party that raised the issue are focusing on expressing its disapproval of the state's definition as Jewish in the context of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Other parties, such as Balad, believe the committee must express a principled disapproval of such a definition.

Saeb Erekat, chief negotiator for the Palestinians, has made it very clear that he totally rejects Olmert's premise:

Erekat said that "no state in the world connects its national identity to a religious identity."

Some of Israel's most prominent Palestinian residents have published an appeal to Abbas, asking him not to concede to Olmert:

The full-page newspaper ad, signed by 108 prominent Jerusalemites, including top Christian and Muslim leaders, did not make specific demands. However, the signatories asked Abbas not to negotiate a deal that would "violate our national rights."

Olmert is pulling a fast one here, making a demand that he must know is impossible for the Palestinians to agree to.

As Lawrence of Cyberia rightly puts it:

The PLO says that Palestinians, like everyone else, give diplomatic recognition to countries, not to demographic balances, religious leanings or political affiliations.

In recognizing Iran, for example, they give formal acceptance to Iran's sovereignty, its people and its borders, but not to its religious orientation. If Iran wants to call itself "The Islamic Republic of...", that is purely an internal Iranian affair. It's "Iran" that international diplomacy recognizes, not the Islamic-ness or Republic-ness of its political system. Similarly, if Israel wishes to call itself "The Jewish State of...", that is an internal Israeli affair, which does not need and cannot demand recognition from the PLO or anyone else in the world community.

Olmert is asking for something that can never be given, and it's hard to believe that he doesn't know that this can never be given. How can the Palestinians be expected to make a declaration that Palestinian-Israelis are somehow second class citizens?

And how can the European and American officials, that Olmert is said to have raised this with, have given such a demand a "positive" reaction?

Click title for full article.