"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." - John Kenneth Galbraith.
Israel has recently put forward some proposals for negotiations with the Palestinians, proposals that I have been happy to applaud as a serious basis for future negotiations.
However, the USraelis are only willing to have these negotiations with Fatah and have made it very clear that they expect Hamas - the party who won the most recent Palestinian elections - to have nothing to do with the process.
Now the International Crisis Group independent think-tank have stepped forward and said that there has to be a new power-sharing arrangement between Fatah and Hamas for there to be any chance of peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
The Arab states and other third parties, it suggested, should mediate between Fatah, which controls the West Bank, and Hamas, which seized the Gaza Strip two months ago. Robert Malley, a former White House adviser who directs the ICG's Middle East programme, said that if a new unity government emerged, "the rest of the world must do what it should have done before: accept it".
I have always argued that what was done regarding the election of Hamas amounted to a disgraceful abdication of the electoral process. The International Crisis Group think tank are stating the obvious here. How can Fatah represent the Palestinian people - in, potentially, the most important negotiations in that people's history - when they are not the elected representatives of the Palestinian people?
The Israelis have put forward a series of proposals which I think are credible and workable. However, no future Palestinians state will be possible without the input of the party which the Palestinians say best represent their interests.
But the ICG proposals were greeted with Palestinian scepticism and Israeli rejection. Ghassan Khatib, a West Bank political scientist and former independent minister, said: "The two sides are not yet ripe for partnership. Hamas seems interested in complete control or domination. Fatah is unable to live with such arrangements... I don't see this being reversed in the foreseeable future."
Mark Regev, Israel's Foreign Ministry spokesman, said: "Everyone understands we're moving finally in the right direction. The resumption of national unity on the Palestinian side would immediately stop the process from moving."
It seems a very odd set of affairs that Israel and Palestine "moving finally in the right direction" can only be achieved by cutting the will of the Palestinian people out of the equation.
This "democracy" which Bush is so keen to export to the Middle East simply looks odder and odder with each passing day.
First, Ibrahim al-Jaafari - the elected Prime Minister of Iraq - is forced to step down, and then Hamas, the elected leaders of Palestine, are starved out of office.
And all in the name of "democracy". Bush's version of democracy would work a lot better if he could simply find a way to cut the people out of the process.
At a time when George Bush is making the case that the surge is working, comes the news that roadside bomb attacks on American troops in Iraq reached an all-time high last month, accounting for more than one third of all combat deaths.
One of the initial aims of the "surge" was to combat Shia militias which, often in collusion with government forces, have been running death squads. However, the alleged use of the roadside devices shows the threat from the Shias, with many of the groups sponsored by Tehran, has not diminished despite numerous American missions.
This is the main problem I have had with claims of success in this war from the very beginning. In a conflict that has now raged longer than the First World War, what measurements are being used to define success?
Although the death rate amongst Iraqi citizens fell briefly during the initial stages of the surge, it only fell in one area of measurement: namely, those dying as a result of militant executions. Deaths of ordinary Iraqis from all other manner of killings - car bombs, suicide bombs etc - remained the same and the death rates of American soldiers within Baghdad doubled.
And yet, that small fall in deaths by executions was hailed as an example of how the surge was working, ignoring almost every other pertinent measurement.
Lieutenant General Raymond Odiarno, the deputy US commander in Iraq, said there had been an "all-time high" in July of attacks using the devices and that Shia militants were responsible for 73 per cent of the attacks that killed or wounded American troops in Baghdad.
US and British intelligence say the report of Iranian involvement is based on a technical analysis of exploded and captured devices, interdiction near the border and interrogation of Shia prisoners.
Critics say there is no proof linking the Iranian government to the devices and the allegations are being made to pile pressure on Tehran and hide the shortcomings of the US and British Iraq policy.
Lt-Gen Odiarno insisted: "I think it is because the Iranians are surging support to the special groups. I think they want to influence the decision potentially coming up in September".
So, Odiarno is already ramping up the blame game, insisting that Tehran are attempting to influence Petraeus's decision in September.
But, whoever they blame, the simple fact is that figures - like these most recent ones - tell a story that is radically different from the one being pushed by the White House.
Even the outgoing defence attaché at the British Embassy in Baghdad has stated that the surge is failing:
Speaking on the record last week to a public audience at Chatham House, the London-based foreign-policy research institute, he said: "The evidence does not suggest that the surge is actually working, if reduction in casualties is a criterion. The figures in April were not encouraging."
In unusually candid comments, Mr Campbell also disclosed that American commanders had decided that the criteria for the "success" of the troop surge would be nothing more than a reduction in violence to the level prior to last year's al-Qaeda bombing of the al-Askari Mosque in Samarra, which destroyed its golden dome.
While the United States military has made little secret of its view that the bloodshed in Iraq can now only be contained, rather than stamped out altogether, the suggestion that 800 murders a month in the country would be a measure of success is an indication of how far the coalition has been forced to reign in its expectations.
Success has been defined as reducing the number of murders to around 800 a month. And even a lowly aim like that has proven impossible to achieve.
And yet still Bush continues to claim that the surge is working and that victory is just over the next hill. The New York Times withdrew support for the war recently and stated:
It is frighteningly clear that Mr. Bush’s plan is to stay the course as long as he is president and dump the mess on his successor. Whatever his cause was, it is lost.
And that is what it appears that the Republicans are attempting to do. If they can just hold on until the Democrats take over in 2008, then they can claim that the defeat was a Democrat one because the Dems lacked the will to stick the course.
That is why they are ignoring every fact on the ground and insisting, against all available evidence, that black is white.
Anti-war sentiment among Republican poll respondents has suddenly increased with 38 percent of Republicans now saying they oppose the war.
Moreover, 63 percent of Americans are ready to withdraw at least some troops from Iraq. Forty-two percent of Republicans agree.
Fifty-four percent of Americans do not believe U.S. action in Iraq is morally justified.
Only in the White House is this campaign seen as making progress. And I'm beginning to wonder if even they really believe what they are telling us, or whether they are simply playing for time until this failure becomes someone else's problem.
In his book, Confessions of an Economic Hitman, John Perkins outlines how the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have become tools which the west uses to rob poorer countries of their resources by giving them loans which we know they will not be able to repay, and then demanding access to their resources when they, inevitably, fail to meet repayments.
Venezuela recently repaid all monies owed to these organisations and now Chavez is setting out to free other South American country's from the grip of the World Bank and the IMF. He has already announced that he will buy up $1billion in Argentinean bonds, even before his tour takes him to Uruguay, Ecuador and Bolivia.
"We need to unite and the north American empire doesn't want us to unite," the president told reporters in Buenos Aires. "It is a battle of interests, but we will win this battle."
Argentina, thanks to Chavez, will now be able to meet it's international commitments this month - which come to around $2.5 billion - at a time when Argentina was having difficulty attracting credit.
"This is a big effort for Venezuela, but we are doing it because we know what is at stake. Argentina is freeing itself from Dracula, it is cutting ties with the IMF," said Mr Chávez.
In January 2006, Argentina repaid its entire remaining $9.6bn debt to the IMF, giving President Néstor Kirchner kudos at home for restoring national pride and sovereignty.
Mr Chávez's latest cash injection was a reminder to Mr Kirchner's politician wife, Cristina, that she too will owe Caracas if she wins the presidency in October's election after her husband steps down.
Some critics say the first couple have merely swapped one master, the IMF, for a more radical and controversial one. Argentina was now "Chávez-dependent", said Joaquín Morales Solá, a columnist with the daily La Nación.
The criticism is to be expected. But Chavez has set out to unite South America in a way that was previously unthinkable. George Bush's apparent lack of interest in what is going on in this region - apart from his brief embrace of the failed attempt to have Chavez replaced - has left the space for South America to unite. Already the South has elected an unprecedented number of socialist leaders. This is the very point when one would normally expect the World Bank and the IMF to intervene. Instead, what we have is Chavez touring the region and offering aid to his neighbours.
This is part of his overall plan to form an alliance against the US, which has even gone as far as to see him entering deals to build tractors with Ahmadinejad.
The socialist radical is using Venezuela's vast oil wealth to strike commercial and political deals with countries that challenge the US such as Iran, Belarus, Russia and China, as well as much of Latin America and the Caribbean, to rebuff what he refers to as the "empire".
"Chávez is a global player because right now he has a lot of money that he is prepared to spend to advance his huge ambitions," said Michael Shifter, an analyst with the Inter-American Dialogue thinktank. "He has worked tirelessly to upset US priorities in Latin America."
Supporters say he has worked tirelessly to support the poor and marginalised, for example through a $250,000 (£121,000) loan to help farmers in Bolivia's lowlands build a coca industrialization plant, part of an effort to turn the leaf into cakes, biscuits and other legal products instead of cocaine.
"For years we have wanted to do this but no one would support us," said Leonardo Choque, leader of the Chimoré federation of coca growers. "Then the Venezuelans come and offer us a loan with very low interest rates. And no conditions." Venezuela is also funding a new university nearby.
There can be no surprise that Chavez is seeking to unite the South where a great number of citizens live in dire poverty. The United States have consistently intervened in this area to prevent what it describes as Socialism on it's doorstep, as if Latin America's citizens have no right to choose the kind of government they would like due to their proximity to America.
Usually this has been done surreptitiously, by claiming to be part of a "war on drugs", but at other times it has simply been overt intervention.
Chavez challenges US domination of this region like no leader before him, simply because he is backed by oil cash. His strong resistance to the Bush administration's Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) has severely set back, if not derailed entirely, the US's long-held hemispheric agenda.
It is understandable that other Latin American country's will question why he is being so generous and what he actually wants in return. I suspect he simply wants South America to be independent enough to be able to resist US intervention. And, with US history regarding Nicaragua, Chile, Cuba and many others, that's no bad thing.
There's a very good editorial in today's Ha'aretz newspaper stressing that "neither Israel nor the Zionist movement has any more important or more urgent interest than ending the occupation of the territories".
It also lays out the framework of the Peres document which, I must admit, is more comprehensive than I have previously believed it to be:
Olmert, basing himself on a proposal by President Shimon Peres, welcomed the key principle of the Arab peace initiative, which guarantees that negotiations over the borders of the Palestinian state will be based on the June 4, 1967, lines.
The Peres document proposes that Israel and the Palestinians draft a document of principles, with an upfront guarantee that Israel will provide the Palestinian state with territory equal to 100 percent of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. A prior agreement on this central issue, along with a binding timetable, would enable negotiations to be held on the details of the agreement. Such a discussion would focus, among other issues, on what compensation the Palestinians would receive for the designated settlement blocs, which must not interfere with the West Bank's territorial contiguity. The Peres outline also proposes practical and balanced solutions for the issues of Jerusalem and the refugees' return to places other than Israel's sovereign territory.
This is the first time in many a year that I have heard the Israelis approach peace talks with anything like the sense of purpose that is needed to make progress possible. The suggestions above are serious proposals to enable a successful solution.
The Ha'aretz editorial also suggests that the reason Israel must grasp the nettle is the radicalisation of the territories since Bush's failed invasion of Iraq and Israel's newly weakened position since the failed invasion of Lebanon last summer:
Moreover, time is not on the side of pragmatic forces in the Middle East. Israel's failed war in Lebanon, and the failure of American policy in Iraq, have raised the status of Shi'ite fanatics like Hassan Nasrallah, who receive support from Iran. The combination of hasty "democratization" and an atmosphere of violence is attracting extremist terrorist elements such as Al-Qaida to the region, and strengthening rejectionist organizations in the territories. Without a substantive change in the situation in the territories, Hamas' takeover of the Gaza Strip is liable to turn out to be the first step in a takeover of the entire territories by Islamic fanatics. These enemies have created a rare common incentive for Israel, the Arab League, and the Quartet - headed by the United States - to strengthen the circle of Middle East moderates, which is aware of the importance of a peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, before Tehran completes its nuclear program. If this opportunity is missed, it is liable to be one miss too many.
I disagree with the editorials view of some Palestinians as "rejectionists", believing that the worst rejectionists over the past forty years have been the US and the Israelis, but now is not the time for such quibbling.
By bringing up the threat of al Qaeda entering the territories and acknowledging the link between this organisation and the conflict in the Middle East, I think this is the nearest any Israeli newspaper has come to admitting that the Israeli-Palestine issue is central to what occurred on 9-11.
The Bush regime have done everything in their power to blur the link, with Bush talking about people "hating our freedoms" and launching misguided wars in Iraq and Lebanon - and threatening to launch yet another in Iran.
"Although half of al-Qaeda's 30 senior leaders and perhaps 2,000 rank-and-file members have been killed or captured, a rump leadership is still intact and more than 18,000 potential terrorists are still at large, with recruitment accelerating on account of Iraq."
Indeed, as early as May 2004, Time magazine were hinting at the real cause of Muslim anger towards the US:
The consensus among security analysts is that the key to eliminating al-Qaeda as a threat is to transform the permissive political environment in which it operates in the Muslim world. Instead, the opposite has occurred — Muslim anger at the U.S. has reached an all-time high and continues to grow, driven by outrage at U.S. actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and by Israel's actions against the Palestinians.
Even Tony Blair has admitted that settling this dispute would do more to rob al Qaeda of it's recruiting power than any other action which the west could take. This dispute is pivotal to Bush's war on terror, although it's centrality has been obscured by Likud supporting Bushites keen to avoid Israel having to give up any land.
With this editorial, Ha'aretz allow the cat out of the bag, acknowledging that time is running out to find a sensible solution to this madness.
Israel MUST deal with this historic wrong. Nothing else will rob bin Laden of his ability to radicalise Muslims everywhere. Afghanistan and Iraq are sideshows next to the anger generated in the Muslim world by the treatment of the Palestinians at the hands of the Israelis.
I am pleased that the proposals put forward by Peres are so sensible. If implemented, they do represent a genuine window of opportunity for serious negotiations. Good on Peres for proposing this, and good on Ha'aretz for being brave enough to write an editorial that makes - however tenuously - the link that Bush and others deny.
Nothing matters more than sorting this dispute NOW.
As Ha'aretz also point out: "If this opportunity is missed, it is liable to be one miss too many."
For years Tony Blair skirted around the issue and refused to get involved, lest he annoyed George Bush. After all, the men locked up at Guantanamo Bay might have been British residents, but they were not British citizens, a distinction that Blair used to avoid having to call for their release which, effectively, resulted in him signalling that they could go hang.
Thankfully, Gordon Brown is a more humane man and he has stepped up to the plate and requested that America let the five remaining British men locked up in Guantanamo Bay go and has vowed that he will allow them to return to the UK.
Whitehall officials said ministers and their advisers had come to realise that the government's position - that the men were either still regarded as security risks or that their residency status had lapsed - was untenable. "The UK was calling for an end to Guantánamo Bay yet was not doing all it could do [to end it]," said one official. What made the British position appear worse was the change in the US approach, with Washington suggesting that the men were no longer regarded as threats to American national security.
"No longer regarded as threats to American national security." That's the nearest Washington ever comes to admitting that they have, for four years, detained and possibly tortured totally innocent men.
Washington ought to compensate these people for the trauma that they have put them through. In any other circumstances, a person who was wrongly convicted of a crime would have the right to compensation. And that's a right that belongs to people who have only been put in jail; they have not been shackled and flown half way around the world to a camp where many suspect torture takes place.
Families and supporters of the men expressed both delight and caution last night. Mr Deghayes's brother, Abubaker, said: "When I heard I was so happy, I was in tears. It's been a long, long terrible episode. Previous experience shows when the British government officially makes a request to the Americans they do manage to bring them back."
But his sister, Amina, was more cautious, saying she would not be able to celebrate properly until her brother was back in the UK. "I am getting mixed messages," she said. "Some people are telling me he is definitely coming back. Other people are saying they are going to request he come back and they may not be successful for a while."
In May the Guardian revealed that the US military had decided Mr Banna was no longer a security threat and was prepared to release him. But British authorities would not guarantee that he would be allowed back in the country, which meant he could be returned to his native Jordan. Yet Britain accepts he was tortured in Jordan, which is why he was granted refugee status. The high court was due to rule tomorrow on whether the government would have to accept Mr Banna back.
Mr Banna's MP, Sarah Teather, said: "The government were frightened of losing the court case. They have been stalling and stalling until they thought they couldn't get away with it.
"The US are trying to clear out Guantánamo and, as their closest ally, we have a duty to help them. Abandoning British residents to indefinite imprisonment in obscene conditions was a gross dereliction of duty by the government."
Even Lord Goldsmith, the former Attorney General, has had warm words, praising Brown for taking actions that Blair only contemplated but never actually got around to. And, now out of office, Goldsmith was much more forthright about what he thought about Guantanamo Bay than he ever was whilst Attorney General.
Last night Lord Goldsmith, who was attorney general in the Blair government, admitted that " getting consensus within government was not easy" but claimed that the UK had been "moving towards it".
"But I am very pleased that Gordon Brown's government has reached a decision. It is the right one," he added, claiming to have always opposed the camp as "wrong in principle and practice". " Guantanamo had become a symbol of injustice; it had become a rallying call for terrorism... I think it has dragged the good name of the United States, the good reputation for liberty and justice, through the dirt instead of upholding those traditions," he said.
So Brown has stepped up to the plate and asked the US to send the men back to the UK. Good for him.
From the US they will receive no apology for what they have been put through. There will be no admission that they have been wrongfully imprisoned. If they have been tortured, the Bush administration will ask them to accept that as the way things now have to be since the US was attacked. They should probably regard it as unfortunate but necessary.
This is now how the USA operates, Bush-Cheney style. It's astonishing to witness how far that noble nation has fallen in such a short period of time.
Historians will look back at this Presidency and wonder what Congress were doing whilst Bush destroyed America's standing in the world.
Ah, so now the Republicans hate Bush. This is simply an attempt to distance themselves from the nightmare and abject failure that has been the Bush presidency.
One must never forget that for the past six years these people have backed every illegal stance this incompetent man has made. The Republican's mustn't be allowed to now state, "Oh, he was never one of us."
Hamid Karzai has thrown the cat amongst the pigeons during his latest visit to the US by announcing that Afghanistan regards Iran as "a helper" in his country.
Bush, whilst reluctantly admitting that, “The president knows best about what’s taking place in his country, and of course, I’m willing to listen,” nevertheless went on to state, “But from my perspective, the burden of proof is on the Iranian government to show us that they’re a positive force.”
So let's get this straight. The US has invaded two country's - Afghanistan and Iraq - and both of those supposedly "liberated" country's are accepting help from Iran, a country that Bush has labelled as part of the Axis of Evil, despite Iran helping in the "liberation" of Afghanistan.
Getting those pesky client regimes to obey the orders of Washington used to be a lot simpler than it seems to be under the Bush administration. One could almost be forgiven for thinking that they had lost control of the situation...
Certainly neither of the "liberated" country's is singing from a US script.
The madness continues in Zimbabwe with Mugabe arresting over 7,000 people for failing to sell their goods at a loss since Mugabe has announced that all goods are to be sold at half price in an attempt to control Zimbabwe's hyperinflation. Zimbabwe's inflation rate is currently running at 4,500% according to official figures - making it the highest in the world - although most people assume it is actually around 9,000%.
The International Monetary Fund have speculated that the figure could be as high as 100,000% by the end of the year.
Mugabe's plan is an insane one. No shopkeepers are going to sell their goods at a loss and Mugabe seems to be unsure of how to deal with those that refuse. He has so far come up with two ploys:
A police spokesman said 7,495 people had been arrested, the state-owned Herald newspaper reported yesterday. Most were jailed briefly and fined, and some were sentenced to do community service cleaning government buildings after magistrate Olivia Mariga declared that fines alone were not proving a sufficient deterrent to profiteers.
I feel sure that the shopkeepers would rather do community service than sell off their assets at a loss, and Mugabe's second solution is no better than the first:
Mr Mugabe has threatened to seize businesses that either shut down or scale back their production.
So now he's talking about snapping up unprofitable business's and seizing them for the state. The old bugger really has well and truly lost the bloody plot. His problem will hardly be improved by the state seizing business's that can't operate under hyperinflation.
He seems not to have a clue how to tackle the inflation and, instead, thinks that he can bring it down by sheer will power alone.
Mr Mugabe said he would not back down in the campaign against what he called "price madness", which has seen prices increasing by the hour. He said the government would take action against businesses resisting the cuts. "Some are ... saying they will not supply goods and services but we say you will," he said.
This is actual madness. He is attempting to make the inflation for which his government is to blame the responsiblity of everyone else and he's throwing people into jail because they will not bankrupt themselves to bail him out.
The industry minister, Obert Mpofu, said on Sunday that new regulations were being prepared to "fine-tune" the price order and control foodstuffs brought in from neighbouring countries.
The police said executives of two of the nation's biggest dealers in building materials and hardware, Astra Building Supplies and PG Paint and Glass, were charged on Friday with defying the price freeze on taps, pickaxe handles and putty.
Two Harare store managers were arrested over the weekend for allegedly hoarding goods including matches, soap, washing powder, toothpaste and body lotions. "The arrest of the two seems to suggest that some managers are removing commodities from the shelves and hiding them to beat the system," he told the Herald.
He's got the whole thing back to front. It matters not at which price the shopkeepers buy their goods from neighbouring countries, what matters is the value of the Zimbabwean dollar at the time that the shopkeeper is attempting to sell those goods. If the Zimbabwean dollar is worth half as much then the seller is going to want twice what he paid.
Mugabe is attempting to tackle the price of goods without considering the value of the Zimbabwean dollar, making the whole exercise futile.
Zimbabwe has now officially stopped releasing inflation figures, which sort of ties in with Mugabe's entire way of addressing this problem. Ignore it or blame someone else.
Much is being made of the fact that Olmert has travelled to the Palestinian territories for a meeting with Abbas. Before the meeting Olmert stated that, "he intended to discuss "fundamental issues" with the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, at the meeting in the InterContinental Hotel in Jericho."
However, as soon as the meeting was over:
But an Israeli official later said the talks had stopped short of negotiations over the core issues of a future peace deal: the future borders of a Palestinian state, the removal of settlements, the fate of refugees and the future of Jerusalem.
The Israelis appear determined that these meetings should discuss an "agreement of principles" ahead of any future meetings which will presumably tackle the core issues which Israel is, at the moment, so assiduously avoiding.
Already one feels a sense of frustration from the Palestinian camp:
Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said the meeting was "serious, deep and positive". He said: "We are seeking negotiations to go back to the pre-1967 borders and to a final status for a Palestinian state based on international resolutions." But he said the Palestinian side was frustrated with the lack of concrete results. "I think now it is about taking decisions at the leadership level."
Israel argues that it has made several gestures to the Palestinians in recent weeks, including releasing some of the Palestinian tax revenues that it froze early last year, freeing about 250 Palestinian prisoners, and announcing an amnesty for some Fatah militants in the West Bank.
It is for this very reason that Saudi Arabia is refusing to commit to attending any future US sponsored peace talks.
There is no point in having these meetings unless Israel is serious about negotiating the core issues. At the moment Israel appears to want to spend a lot of time talking about "an agreement of principles", a vague term that probably means Israel is seeking to limit the terms of future discussions.
Israel may well argue that she has made "several gestures" over the past few weeks, but one can't help feeling that they are simply that - gestures. And Israeli gestures in the past have been done only to convince the Americans that the Israelis are making concessions, they have never been gestures concerning the core issue of returning to the pre-1967 positions.
"Abbas did not come to the meeting with a magic wand, and neither did Mr. Olmert," Erekat said at a news conference. "There is an agreement on a series of meetings to discuss the issues, including the establishment of a Palestinian state."
There is a rumour in today's Ha'aretz newspaper that Shimon Peres has come up with the idea that Israel and Palestine could swap land to replace that Palestinian land currently occupied by Israeli settlements.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is examining a new framework for peace in which Israel will propose transferring to the Palestinian state areas equivalent to 100 percent of the territories conquered in 1967.
Israel will suggest to the Palestinians to conduct negotiations for adequate territorial compensation from Israel's sovereign territory, in exchange for settlement blocs amounting to about 5 percent of the West Bank's area.
This is a very good idea. However, when one notices that these ideas are being floated around in newspapers rather than being put directly to Abbas - who is being asked to seriously discuss "an agreement of principles" - then I begin to worry whether or not I am witnessing a PR exercise.
If Olmert is serious about an offer regarding transferring territory equivalent to that seized in 1967 - then he should make it. At the moment he is talking about bugger all whilst these rumours float around the Israeli press.
And you can call me a cynic, but I think that there is a reason why these rumours float around whilst Olmert discusses bugger all. It is to create the impression in the public's mind that Olmert actually offered this, when the truth is actually the opposite. Olmert is talking about nothing, whilst the press are floating about these eminently practicable suggestions.
There is a reason why the Saudis are so sceptical about attending any future meeting with the Israelis, despite having come up with the Saudi Peace plan. We've all been here before. Where Israel does her little dance to convince the Americans that she tried to be reasonable but that no "partner in peace" exists.
Israel is at the moment "talking about talks" whilst she floats great ideas in the press. When she starts floating great ideas during actual meetings with the Palestinians, then it's time to take her seriously.
PSoTD posted this today and asked that all Liberal bloggers get on the case:
The timing is about right for Democrats to start stating the obvious suspicion: Joe Lieberman will endorse a Republican Candidate for President in 2008. There’s no reason to cede news value to the Republicans for such an “announcement” next year, when some regular drumbeating of this political opportunity for Lieberman can easily reduce it. Democrats shouldn’t be concerned that by doing so now they will appear to be “moderating” the Republican candidates, but should be concerned that a Lieberman announcement of support of the Republican nominee next year will be reacted to by the shallow national media in such a way.
In short - the likelihood is too great that Lieberman will support ANY REPUBLICAN NOMINEE FOR PRESIDENT in 2008 over ANY DEMOCRATIC NOMINEE FOR PRESIDENT in 2008 to ignore until it happens. It won’t be about people, but about power, and about Lieberman’s future political opportunities. Rather than act dismayed when it does happen, Democrats should be honest in the news media - and repetitively vocal - about why Joe Lieberman may just do that next year.
I just don't trust the Democratic Party Establishment to call Lieberman on this now. I am afraid they will dilly and dally and fret and hope that Joe doesn't go all turncoat in the Presidential Election and when the day comes that he does (and you just know it's going to happen), the Democratic Party will get bathed in a propaganda push about how the moderate Democrats are splitting from the "liberal left", bleh bleh bleh, and the response will be incredibly, but foreseeably, weak. Beyond weak, to the point of pathetic.
And it doesn't have to happen. News shock value does not have to be ceded to the Republican candidate. There's no reason there can't be a discussion about this now - including the positive and negative reasons why Lieberman might support a Republican - in the media.
So I'm asking the bloggers below - those on the PSoTD blogroll - to post about this question this week: Will Joe Lieberman support the Republican candidate for President in 2008, reasons why or why not, and what's the political value to him?
Let's get the Expose Joe's Date in 2008 party going!
Happy to oblige! Let's deny Liberman the faux shock value that he's actually supporting a Republican... After all, he's already threatened to cross over to the other side... Indeed, to all practical purposes, he's there already.
The UK and Israel are about to come to loggerheads over the shooting of James Miller, an award-winning British film-maker who was shot by Israel soldiers while working on a documentary in the Gaza Strip more than four years ago.
Like in the case of the shooting of Tom Hurndall, killed by an Israeli sniper in 2003, the Israeli government's first instinct is to batten down the hatches and claim that the fault for the death of the victim belongs with the victim themselves.
The army's first instinct, as shown in both cases, is to protect its soldiers. A military spokesman said that "a cameraman who knowingly enters a combat zone, especially at night, endangers himself."
In the case of Tom Hurdnall, the army eventually relented and court martialled the soldier concerned. He was sentenced to eight years.
However, in the case of James Miller, the Attorney General of the UK gave the Israelis six weeks to launch a criminal investigation into the officer who fired the fatal shot. That deadline runs out tomorrow.
Moshe Cohen, a spokesman for Israel's Justice Ministry, said in a written statement yesterday that an earlier British request had been thoroughly checked and a decision to close the Miller case had been reported to London. "Now that the British authorities have decided once more to approach us, the matter will be attended to.... A response will be provided in an acceptable fashion, as soon as possible, in accordance with the timetables of the Israeli authorities."
The Israelis have always had an incredibly cavalier attitude towards the killing of Palestinians, an attitude that they seem to want to extend towards anyone - of any nationality - killed within the occupied territories. This is where they run into bother. The world largely turns it's back on Israel's killing rate when it comes to the occupants of the West Bank or Gaza. However, no government can ignore the killing of one of it's own citizens, and it seems to take the Israelis a great deal of time to understand that they are not dealing with an occupied people over whom they have total control when they are, in fact, dealing with another sovereign government responsible to it's people.
And whilst this casual attempt to blame the victim might wash with an American administration who support Israel's overall aims in the Occupied Territories, it is hardly likely to prove a sufficient answer to a British government or, indeed, to a British court.
In April, 2006, a London jury at St Pancras coroner's court returned a verdict of unlawful killing and said that Mr Miller, 34, had been "murdered". The Israeli army had dropped the case for want, it said, of enough evidence to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt.
The coroner, Dr Scott Reid, wrote to Lord Goldsmith inviting him to "consider starting criminal proceedings in the UK against members of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) for an offence of willful killing".
The only soldier who has been named, though only by rank and surname, is Lieutenant Heib, who commanded the armoured vehicle from which the fatal shots were fired.
To try him in Britain, Lord Goldsmith's successor, Baroness Scotland, would have to seek his extradition, which Israel would be expected to resist.
Mr Miller's family accused Israel of "an abject failure to uphold the fundamental and unequivocal standards of international humanitarian and human rights law". They are suing the Israeli government in the Tel-Aviv magistrates' court for compensation.
So a British jury found that Miller had been "deliberately shot with the intention of killing him". The Israeli response was almost a classic lesson in the way an occupying army refuses to accept any responsibility for it's actions, always finding cause for doubt.
"The findings of the military police show that an Israel Defense Forces lieutenant, the commanding officer of the IDF force at the site, allegedly fired his weapon in breach of IDF Rules of Engagement," a statement said. "However, it is not legally possible to link this shooting to the gunshot sustained by Mr. Miller."
So, they have a soldier at the exact location where Miller was killed. They know the soldier fired his weapon against the IDF rules of engagement. They also have a man lying dead with a bullet through his neck, but they find it impossible to make any connection between the two things.
This is not dissimilar to the missing Israeli shell and the dead bodies on a Gaza beach. The IDF admitted that it could not account for one of the shells it was firing during a routine practice in the area but found it could make no correlation between it's missing shell and the huge explosion which ripped through the nearby beach killing seven Palestinians.
This inability to join the dots leaves the IDF's credibility in tatters to all but Israel's most fervent supporters.
In an investigative report in October 2003, the journalist John Sweeney wrote: "They had walked about 20 metres from the veranda when the first shot rang out. The team froze. For 13 seconds, there is silence broken only by Saira's cry: 'We are British journalists.' Then comes the second shot, which killed James. He was shot in the front of his neck. The bullet was Israeli issue, fired, according to a forensic expert, from less than 200 metres away. Immediately after the shooting, the IDF said that James had been shot in the back during crossfire. It later retracted the assertion about where in his body he was shot, but until today it has maintained that he was shot during crossfire. There was no crossfire on the APTN tape."
The moment when James is killed is caught on this piece of film from Death in Gaza. It is quite clear that there is no crossfire as the Israelis later claim.
Astonishingly, Israel's response to James' death was to insist that any foreign national wishing to enter Gaza will need to sign waivers absolving the IDF of any wrongdoing if they are killed or injured by Israeli forces.
Those are hardly the actions of an army that seeks to control it's soldiers and protect civilian lives.
British MP, Gerald Kauffman, who lost many members of his family in the Holocaust, has described the IDF as, "trigger happy and well nigh out of control". If you're asking visitors to sign waivers excusing IDF soldiers if they shoot you, then Kauffman's description actually borders on being too kind.
With the recent collapse of a bridge in Minnesota, and with another 77,000 bridges on the "structurally deficient" list, one can reasonably ask - what does the richest country on Earth spend it's money on?
Budget analysts in Congress last week reckoned the $500bn (£250bn) of taxpayers money allocated so far on wrecking and then rebuilding Iraq will double before it's all over to $1 trillion. The war now accounts for 10 per cent of everything the government spends.
Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize winner in Economics, caused a fuss amongst the neo-Con hordes when he stated that the Iraq war would cost in excess of a trillion dollars. This estimate, which was once considered provocatively high, now appears overly optimistic. But how do the Bush gang plan to pay for this?
The president’s latest budget proposal, while calling for deep cuts to Medicare and other domestic programs, dramatically ramps up funding for fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
So, whilst maintaining tax cuts for the richest members of the population, Team Bush suggest cuts to Medicare. Let the poorest members of society pay the price for the Iraq war. The richest sections of society can continue to cheerlead a war that it is costing them nothing to support.
No bombs are falling on the US, there is no food rationing; so, to all intents and purposes, it's like they are not at war at all. Who would find it hard to support that?
But the cost of the war is enormous. So, whilst Americans die on bridges due to a lack of investment in the country's infrastructure, it is worth asking just what that enormous sum spent on Iraq could have paid for elsewhere.
Joseph Stiglitz:
MJ: You predicted that the total cost of the Iraq war would top a trillion dollars. Can you put a number like that into perspective?
JS: That was last year. I think it is clear from what has happened since then that a trillion dollars was a vast underestimate. We are talking at least between one and two trillion dollars now. To put that into perspective, President Bush went to the American people at the beginning of his second term, saying that we have a major crisis with our Social Security system. For somewhere between a half and quarter of the cost of the war in Iraq you could have fixed all the problems associated with Social Security for the next 75 years and still have had a lot left over. Put in another way: We are now spending something like $10 billion a month—$120 billion dollars a year—on Iraq. The amount the entire world gives in foreign aid, on an annual basis, is about half that.
Those figures are simply extraordinary, especially when one considers what this amount of money could have achieved had it been spent usefully on social programmes. But, to the neo-Cons, social programmes smell of socialism, so they would rather spend the money losing a war in Iraq than in providing free health care for all regardless of ability to pay.
From a Western European perspective that lack of foresight is simply staggering. The people of Europe see free health care as their right, and woe betide any government that attempted to take it away from them.
Indeed, during his first campaign to get re-elected, Tony Blair was memorably confronted by the relative of a cancer sufferer who was unhappy regarding the quality of the free health care her partner was receiving. The event shook Blair and defined his re-election campaign.
The notion of the British electorate allowing their government to spend 10% of all their wealth in Iraq whilst failing to provide a free health system is unthinkable.
And yet, in the US, this is actually what is happening. The collapse of that bridge is Minnesota is symbolic of the priorities of the Bush administration. There's always enough money for war and missiles and tax cuts for the wealthy, there's never enough for infrastructure and Medicare.
Jane Mayer has an article published in The New Yorker which I would urge everyone to read. After reading this article it becomes almost impossible not to come to the conclusion that the US are actively engaging in torture - sanctioned at the highest levels of the Bush administration - with explicit pushing for it's implementation by the Vice President Dick Cheney.
It starts with Gonzales phoning the wife of Daniel Pearl to tell her that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the Al Qaeda leader who was the primary architect of the September 11th attacks, had confessed to killing her husband.
The only problem was that she had been given this information in 2003 by Condaleezza Rice - information that she was told was secret.
Gonzales’s announcement seemed like a publicity stunt. Pearl asked him if he had proof that Mohammed’s confession was truthful; Gonzales claimed to have corroborating evidence but wouldn’t share it. “It’s not enough for officials to call me and say they believe it,” Pearl said. “You need evidence.” (Gonzales did not respond to requests for comment.)
There were no named witnesses to his initial confession, and no solid information about what form of interrogation might have prodded him to talk, although reports had been published, in the Times and elsewhere, suggesting that C.I.A. officers had tortured him.
A surprising number of people close to the case are dubious of Mohammed’s confession. A longtime friend of Pearl’s, the former Journal reporter Asra Nomani, said, “The release of the confession came right in the midst of the U.S. Attorney scandal. There was a drumbeat for Gonzales’s resignation. It seemed like a calculated strategy to change the subject. Why now? They’d had the confession for years.” Mariane and Daniel Pearl were staying in Nomani’s Karachi house at the time of his murder, and Nomani has followed the case meticulously; this fall, she plans to teach a course on the topic at Georgetown University. She said, “I don’t think this confession resolves the case. You can’t have justice from one person’s confession, especially under such unusual circumstances. To me, it’s not convincing.” She added, “I called all the investigators. They weren’t just skeptical—they didn’t believe it.”
The fact that KSM admitted to 31 criminal plots - an astonishing number even for such a high ranking figure - has led to an examination of the techniques that the CIA have been using.
What Mayer has found simply confirms what many of us had suspected, there has been a deliberate policy of torture carried out by the CIA, although they have stopped short of calling it torture.
The best proof of this is allegedly from a report made by The Red Cross. The Red Cross, in order to ensure access to prisoners, never make their reports public; they report only to the country whose methods they are investigating.
The public-affairs office at the C.I.A. and officials at the congressional intelligence-oversight committees would not even acknowledge the existence of the report. Among the few people who are believed to have seen it are Condoleezza Rice, now the Secretary of State; Stephen Hadley, the national-security adviser; John Bellinger III, the Secretary of State’s legal adviser; Hayden; and John Rizzo, the agency’s acting general counsel. Some members of the Senate and House intelligence-oversight committees are also believed to have had limited access to the report.
Confidentiality may be particularly stringent in this case. Congressional and other Washington sources familiar with the report said that it harshly criticized the C.I.A.’s practices. One of the sources said that the Red Cross described the agency’s detention and interrogation methods as tantamount to torture, and declared that American officials responsible for the abusive treatment could have committed serious crimes. The source said the report warned that these officials may have committed “grave breaches” of the Geneva Conventions, and may have violated the U.S. Torture Act, which Congress passed in 1994. The conclusions of the Red Cross, which is known for its credibility and caution, could have potentially devastating legal ramifications.
Nor do the CIA officials involved have any faith, should this ever become public, that the Bush administration would not simply throw them to the dogs and claim that they had no knowledge about what was actually going on.
A former C.I.A. officer, who supports the agency’s detention and interrogation policies, said he worried that, if the full story of the C.I.A. program ever surfaced, agency personnel could face criminal prosecution. Within the agency, he said, there is a “high level of anxiety about political retribution” for the interrogation program. If congressional hearings begin, he said, “several guys expect to be thrown under the bus.” He noted that a number of C.I.A. officers have taken out professional liability insurance, to help with potential legal fees.
Even George Tenet is trying to distance himself from approval of the programme although the Bush administration are insisting that he signed off on it. (First indication that they will throw people under buses if caught.)
Accurately or not, Bush Administration officials have described the prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo as the unauthorized actions of ill-trained personnel, eleven of whom have been convicted of crimes. By contrast, the treatment of high-value detainees has been directly, and repeatedly, approved by President Bush. The program is monitored closely by C.I.A. lawyers, and supervised by the agency’s director and his subordinates at the Counterterrorism Center. While Mohammed was being held by the agency, detailed dossiers on the treatment of detainees were regularly available to the former C.I.A. director George Tenet, according to informed sources inside and outside the agency. Through a spokesperson, Tenet denied making day-to-day decisions about the treatment of individual detainees. But, according to a former agency official, “Every single plan is drawn up by interrogators, and then submitted for approval to the highest possible level—meaning the director of the C.I.A. Any change in the plan—even if an extra day of a certain treatment was added—was signed off by the C.I.A. director.”
So they are preparing Tenet to carry the can if they are ever caught. And who was behind all this really? Well, wouldn't you know it, the Vice President for Torture himself:
“It began right away, in Afghanistan, on the fly,” he recalled. “They invented the program of interrogation with people who had no understanding of Al Qaeda or the Arab world.” The former officer said that the pressure from the White House, in particular from Vice-President Dick Cheney, was intense: “They were pushing us: ‘Get information! Do not let us get hit again!’ ” In the scramble, he said, he searched the C.I.A.’s archives, to see what interrogation techniques had worked in the past. He was particularly impressed with the Phoenix Program, from the Vietnam War. Critics, including military historians, have described it as a program of state-sanctioned torture and murder. A Pentagon-contract study found that, between 1970 and 1971, ninety-seven per cent of the Vietcong targeted by the Phoenix Program were of negligible importance. But, after September 11th, some C.I.A. officials viewed the program as a useful model.
And how did they got round the tiresome detail that they were actually employing techniques used by countries who the USA had traditionally condemned for such practices? Easy... They employed psychologists:
The use of psychologists was also considered a way for C.I.A. officials to skirt measures such as the Convention Against Torture. The former adviser to the intelligence community said, “Clearly, some senior people felt they needed a theory to justify what they were doing. You can’t just say, ‘We want to do what Egypt’s doing.’ When the lawyers asked what their basis was, they could say, ‘We have Ph.D.s who have these theories.’ ” He said that, inside the C.I.A., where a number of scientists work, there was strong internal opposition to the new techniques. “Behavioral scientists said, ‘Don’t even think about this!’ They thought officers could be prosecuted.”
Nevertheless, the SERE experts’ theories were apparently put into practice with Zubaydah’s interrogation. Zubaydah told the Red Cross that he was not only waterboarded, as has been previously reported; he was also kept for a prolonged period in a cage, known as a “dog box,” which was so small that he could not stand. According to an eyewitness, one psychologist advising on the treatment of Zubaydah, James Mitchell, argued that he needed to be reduced to a state of “learned helplessness.”
There are people who come here and argue that there is insufficient proof that the US is engaging in torture and that I must be some sort of anti-American to argue that this is actually taking place.
I regard such people as enablers, as no better than the turds who hand alcoholics drinks. They are, by constantly insisting that the voluminous body of evidence emerging is insufficient proof, allowing the good name of the US to be dragged through the mud by an administration that most of the US have not only rejected, but which they regard as one of the most profound failures in the history of that great nation.
I really do urge everyone to read this article. This paragraph alone must make any sentient person sit up and take notice:
The C.I.A.’s interrogation program is remarkable for its mechanistic aura. “It’s one of the most sophisticated, refined programs of torture ever,” an outside expert familiar with the protocol said. “At every stage, there was a rigid attention to detail. Procedure was adhered to almost to the letter. There was top-down quality control, and such a set routine that you get to the point where you know what each detainee is going to say, because you’ve heard it before. It was almost automated. People were utterly dehumanized. People fell apart. It was the intentional and systematic infliction of great suffering masquerading as a legal process. It is just chilling.”
Any person who continues to deny that the US is torturing people must accept that their very denial potentially allows any such practice to continue - and makes them complicit in that practice.
When your country is accused of such crimes, there are only two stances that one can take. One can either demand an investigation and, if the practice is found to exist, insist that it be stopped. Or one can continue to think it inconceivable, and by doing so, implicitly allow it - if it is, indeed, happening -to continue.
Having never been a fan of Daily Kos I must admit to having been bowled over by the spirit of the debate. This really is netroots politics at it's finest. I take my hat off to these guys for arranging this. Fantastic. Simply fantastic.
There's an excellent article an AntiWar.com by Jonathan Cook which questions the logic of the current Israeli obsession with Ahmadinejad as the "new Hitler", an obsession that has been picked up by both Bush and Cheney as a possible reason to justify attacking that country.
This obsession has been fuelled by the infamous Bibi, the man who marched in front of a coffin bearing the inscription, "Rabin is murdering Zionism" at the time of the Oslo Peace Accords, shortly before Yitzhak Rabin was murdered by an Israeli student for the "crime" of proposing giving away "parts of Israel". So we are not dealing with reasonable people here, which makes Bush and Cheney's willingness to accept a Netanyahu script all the more suspicious.
Netanyahu has been drumming up support for attacking Iran through a series of astonishing exaggerations:
"It's 1938 and Iran is Germany. And Iran is racing to arm itself with atomic bombs." Of Ahmadinejad, he said: "He is preparing another Holocaust for the Jewish state."A few weeks ago, as Israel's military intelligence claimed – as it has been doing regularly since the early 1990s – that Iran is only a year or so away from the "point of no return" on developing a nuclear warhead, Netanyahu was at it again.
"Iran could be the first undeterrable nuclear power," he warned, adding: "This is a Jewish problem like Hitler was a Jewish problem … The future of the Jewish people depends on the future of Israel."
Nor is Bibi alone in making these astonishing claims:
Israel's new president, Shimon Peres, has compared an Iranian nuclear bomb to a "flying concentration camp." And the prime minister, Ehud Olmert, told a German newspaper last year: "[Ahmadinejad] speaks as Hitler did in his time of the extermination of the entire Jewish nation."
All of these claims are based on a speech Ahmadinjad made when he supposedly stated that he wished to "wipe Israel off the map", a comment that has been repeated so often that it has been taken to be true. Of course, the truth is that Ahmadinejad made no such comment. Ahmadinejad was actually quoting the late Ayatollah Khomeini who said that Zionism would "vanish from the page of time" in much the same way as the Shah of Iran, Apartheid South Africa, the Soviet Union and other illegitimate systems of rule whose time had passed, had eventually fallen. But it suits the purposes of some people to cling to this false translation and claim that Ahmadinejad is the new Hitler seeking to "wipe Israel off the map". Despite the fact that Ahmadinejad never even used the word "Israel" or the word "map" or even the western phrase "wipe out".
However, the Cook article raises a very interesting point which undermines this entire theory regarding Ahmadinejad's supposedly entrenched anti-Semitism:
If Ahmadinejad really is Hitler, ready to commit genocide against Israel's Jews as soon as he can get his hands on a nuclear weapon, why are some 25,000 Jews living peacefully in Iran and more than reluctant to leave despite repeated enticements from Israel and American Jews?
The Iranian Jewish leaders have been adamant that they are not under threat and have, so far, fought against all Israeli enticements to emigrate to Israel.
As Ciamak Moresadegh, an Iranian Jewish leader, observed: "If you think Judaism and Zionism are one, it is like thinking Islam and the Taliban are the same, and they are not."
Iran's leaders denounce Zionism, which they blame for fueling discrimination against the Palestinians, but they have also repeatedly avowed that they have no problem with Jews, Judaism or even the state of Israel.
The state of Israel have offered all kinds of financial incentives in an attempt to dislodge Iran's Jewish population, but they have discovered "a lack of desire on the part of thousands of Iranian Jews to leave."
To step up these efforts – and presumably to avoid the embarrassing incongruence of claiming an imminent second Holocaust while thousands of Jews live happily in Tehran – Israel is now backing a move by Jewish donors to guarantee every Iranian Jewish family $60,000 to settle in Israel, in addition to a host of existing financial incentives that are offered to Jewish immigrants, including loans and cheap mortgages.
The announcement was met with scorn by the Society of Iranian Jews, which issued a statement that their national identity was not for sale. "The identity of Iranian Jews is not tradeable for any amount of money. Iranian Jews are among the most ancient Iranians. Iran's Jews love their Iranian identity and their culture, so threats and this immature political enticement will not achieve their aim of wiping out the identity of Iranian Jews."
It really does provide the Holocaust predictors with a little bit of a problem that Iran's Jewish population are not only happy to remain in Iran but that they are refusing rather large cash incentives in order to do so.
However, as the article also touches upon, sometimes this kind of Israeli pressure can become a self fulfilling prophecy. By implying that Iran's Jewish population have some kind of dual loyalty or that they are really Israelis rather than Iranians, the Israeli propagandists run the real risk that other Iranians might take them at their word. Which would have a devastating effect on Iran's Jews.
It's an excellent article. Click the title to read the whole thing.
That is why the greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another.
The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.
What, oh what, will the USraelis make of this?
