Exit stage left: Harold Pinter dies.

He was, rightly, known as one of the greatest playwrights of his generation and, on Xmas Eve, he finally exited the stage after a long battle with cancer.

Pinter had a number of awards bestowed on him during a long and distinguished career, including the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005. In its citation, the Nobel academy said Pinter was "generally seen as the foremost representative of British drama in the second half of the 20th century" and declared him to be an author "who in his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression's closed rooms".

Pinter was best know for his plays, including his 1960 breakthrough production The Caretaker, The Dumb Waiter and The Birthday Party. But he was also a screenwriter, actor and director and in recent years a vociferous campaigner against human rights abuses, including the occupation of Iraq by western armed forces. He joined other artists such as Blur and Ken Loach in sending a letter to Downing Street opposing the 2003 invasion.

In 2004 he received the Wilfred Owen award for poetry for a collection of work criticising the war in Iraq.

I well remember his comments on the day 2 million people marched through London protesting against the Iraq war, when he referred to the neo-cons as "thugs". There was something beautifully apt about this master of language choosing this particular word to describe so bluntly a group of people that political commentators were bending over backwards to understand. Pinter simply called them as he saw them and it was a description which never left me.

The Independent refer to him this morning as the "most anti-Establishment member of the Establishment" and there is great truth in that. He has for many years been in a class of his own, indeed the term "Pinteresque" had long ago entered the lexicon, and yet he never lost his anger at that same establishment and the mindless wars that they engaged in, the most recent being the Iraqi misadventure.

It was typical that he should take a swipe at the Iraq war whilst collecting his Nobel Prize in 2005, but he widened his criticism to American foreign policy in general:

Everyone knows what happened in the Soviet Union and throughout Eastern Europe during the post-war period: the systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities, the ruthless suppression of independent thought. All this has been fully documented and verified.

But my contention here is that the US crimes in the same period have only been superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged, let alone recognised as crimes at all. I believe this must be addressed and that the truth has considerable bearing on where the world stands now. Although constrained, to a certain extent, by the existence of the Soviet Union, the United States' actions throughout the world made it clear that it had concluded it had carte blanche to do what it liked.

Direct invasion of a sovereign state has never in fact been America's favoured method. In the main, it has preferred what it has described as 'low intensity conflict'. Low intensity conflict means that thousands of people die but slower than if you dropped a bomb on them in one fell swoop. It means that you infect the heart of the country, that you establish a malignant growth and watch the gangrene bloom. When the populace has been subdued - or beaten to death - the same thing - and your own friends, the military and the great corporations, sit comfortably in power, you go before the camera and say that democracy has prevailed.

He gave examples, including what took place in Nicaragua, E Salvador and Guatemala of how this promotion of "democracy" works and how it impacts on the world's poorest citizens:

The United States finally brought down the Sandinista government. It took some years and considerable resistance but relentless economic persecution and 30,000 dead finally undermined the spirit of the Nicaraguan people. They were exhausted and poverty stricken once again. The casinos moved back into the country. Free health and free education were over. Big business returned with a vengeance. 'Democracy' had prevailed.

And, of course, he saw this same pattern being repeated in Iraq, where American corporations were moving in on Iraqi oil whilst their government spouted platitudes about democracy.

And Pinter, a master of language, understood perfectly well how American presidents have managed to sell what they are doing to the American people:

Listen to all American presidents on television say the words, 'the American people', as in the sentence, 'I say to the American people it is time to pray and to defend the rights of the American people and I ask the American people to trust their president in the action he is about to take on behalf of the American people.'

It's a scintillating stratagem. Language is actually employed to keep thought at bay. The words 'the American people' provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance. You don't need to think. Just lie back on the cushion. The cushion may be suffocating your intelligence and your critical faculties but it's very comfortable.

He referred to the Iraqi invasion as "a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law" and asked the question, "How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand?"

At a time when one witnesses political commentators falling over themselves to excuse the inexcusable, Pinter's voice had a unique logical consistency which refused to buy into American exceptionalism or the Orwellian language of "freedom" and "liberation" espoused by Bush and his cohorts.

It was an important voice and it will be missed.

Click title for full article.

Tags: Harold Pinter, Iraq war, US foreign policy, Nobel prize

Merry Xmas (War Is Over) - John Lennon

War Criminals: Theirs and Ours.

I had no intention of posting anything this morning but Glenn Greenwald looks at the way the US makes a distinction between American war criminals and the other non-American leaders who commit similarly heinous crimes.

There is an almost comic book simplicity to the cackling non-American evildoers and a rush to understand - and attribute only the most moral motives to - Americans who commit war crimes which would be instantly condemned were they to be committed Ahmadinejad, a man who is routinely compared to Hitler, despite the fact that he has never committed any crime.

As Glenn states:

But people like Goldsmith, Drezner, Douthat, and The Los Angeles Times Editorial Page can only see a world in which they -- Americans -- are situated at the center. They cite the post-9/11 external threats which American leaders faced, the ostensible desire of Bush officials to protect the citizenry, and their desire to maximize national security as though those are unique and special motives, rather than what they are: the standard collection of excuses offered up by almost every single war criminal.

If ostensible self-protective motives are now considered mitigating factors in the commission of war crimes -- or, worse, if they justify immunity from prosecution -- then there is virtually no such thing any longer as a "war crime" that merits punishment. Every tyrant and every war criminal can avail themselves of this self-defense. But advocates of this view -- "Oh, American officials only did it to protect us from The Terrorists" -- can't or won't follow their premise to this logical conclusion because their oh-so-sophisticated and empathetic understanding that political leaders act with complex motives only extends to their own leaders, to Americans.

But the rest of the world's war criminals -- the non-Americans -- have no such complexities.

And that is precisely why Dick Cheney can sit on American national television and almost casually admit to a war crime. Because torture is different when Americans do it as they do so with a heavy heart and for only the noblest of reasons. The others obviously do so without motive and merely to satisfy their sadistic tendencies which is why the latter are war criminals and the former are not.

It's a logic that simply takes your breath away. And yet it is being repeated endlessly in the American media.

Click title for Greenwald's entire post.

Tags: Bush, Cheney, war criminals, war crimes

Have a Nice Day!

Dick Cheney Says The Powers Of The President Are Unlimited.

When it was pointed out to him that the American people did not back the Iraq war, Dick Cheney famously replied, "So?"

He appeared to be arguing that the opinion of the people in a democracy was worthless outside of the electoral cycle and that democracy is really only the means to elect a dictator every four years.

In his recent interview with Fox News he expanded on his Nixonian view of presidential powers and appeared to argue, as Nixon did, that the president is actually above the law.

But, as Cenk points out, Cheney actually believes that the president's powers are limitless and that Congress is powerless to curb his powers.

Cheney doesn't actually believe in democracy at all. And he is rubbing his illegality in people's faces because he doesn't feel that anyone will ever punish him for what he has done. And the chances are that he won't be prosecuted. But, he is establishing a precedent. And, unless he is prosecuted, that precedent will stand. Cheney is saying that what he has done is legal unless someone can take him to court and prove that what he has done was not legal.

That's why it is so important that the Obama administration prosecutes these people.

Tags: the young turks, cenk uygur, dick cheney, republican, iraq war, torture, water boarding, george bush, fox news, checks and balances, congress, precedent, executive power, guilty, criminal, dictator

Palin: I should have talked to the press more.

As she accepted her award as Conservative of the Year, no seriously that's what they have just awarded her, Sarah Palin mused on what was the biggest mistake of the 2008 election.

GIZZI: What was the biggest mistake made in the ’08 campaign?

PALIN: The biggest mistake made was that I could have called more shots on this: the opportunities that were not seized to speak to more Americans via media. I was not allowed to do very many interviews, and the interviews that I did were not necessarily those I would have chosen.

But I was so thankful to have the opportunity to run with John McCain that I was not going to argue with the strategy decisions that some of his people were making regarding the media contacts.

But if I would have been in charge, I would have wanted to speak to more reporters because that’s how you get your message out to the electorate.

So, the woman who participated in some of the worst car crash TV interviews of the entire electoral cycle thinks things would have worked out better if she had done more interviews?

The ignorance she displayed during the interviews she did was breathtaking, indeed, it was enough to turn her into a national joke. And she thinks she should have done more of them?

I really hope conservatives keep her front and centre of any future Republican campaigns. Nothing will do more to ensure Obama's re-election than that.

Click title to read the Conservative of the Year's interview.

Tags: Conservative of the Year, Palin, Republicans, 2008 election

Tutu accuses South Africa over Mugabe.

I don't think there's anything Archbishop Tutu is saying that I have not been saying for a long time. But, for someone who took part in the epic struggle against Apartheid, it must be especially galling to watch the way South Africa is impeding any attempt to help the people of Zimbabwe.

Tutu has now told Radio 4 that he feels South Africa has lost the moral high ground by failing to stand up to Mugabe.

He said: "How much more suffering is going to make us say 'No we have given Mr Mugabe enough time?'"

He added: "I want to say first of all that I have been very deeply disappointed, saddened by the position that South Africa has taken at the United Nations Security Council in being an obstacle to the security council dealing with that matter.

"And I have to say that I am deeply, deeply distressed that we should be found not on the side of the ones who are suffering.

"I certainly am ashamed of what they've done in the United Nations.

"For the world to say no, we are waiting for South Africa's membership of the Security Council to lapse and then we can take action."

That, the Archbishop, said, was an "awful indictment" to a country that had a "proud record of a struggle against a vicious system".

He said: "We should have been the ones who for a very long time occupied the moral high ground.

"I'm afraid we have betrayed our legacy."

I understand that different country's have a different take on history, and that Britain's colonial past is a prism through which both Zimbabwe and South Africa view recent events and, to this end, I have understood Brown's reluctance to get too involved as our intervention only ever seems to play into Mugabe's hands and allows him to say that all of Zimbabwe's problems are caused by outside meddling.

But the blatant stealing of the last election and the violence which accompanied it - coupled with the fact that the country is now overrun with a cholera epidemic - must surely represent some kind of line in the sand where even South Africa say, "Enough is enough".

However, even that turns out not to be the case.

I have no idea what Mugabe would have to do for South Africa to finally wash their hands of him. And I do understand how, for people like Tutu and Mandela, the stance currently taken by their country must be simply shameful to them.

Click title for full article.

Tags: Tutu, South Africa, Zimbabwe

Already the Whining has Begun... "No to War Crimes investigations."

It was boringly predictable that this lament would start to be heard all over the right wing world:

For the sake of national security and national unity, President-elect Barack Obama should put a stop to efforts to investigate or prosecute Bush administration officials for anti-terror "war crimes."

The motive behind such efforts is not -- as claimed -- "truth" or "justice," but political vengeance.

Firstly, I fail to see how American national security would be harmed by people who committed what the entire world recognises as war crimes being brought to justice. In an age when soft power matters as much as military power wouldn't that strengthen the US's national security? I mean wasn't that the reason Bush and others sought to prosecute Lynndie England and others who perpetrated abuse? To prove to the world that the US did not approve of such things?

Bush stated at the time:

Bush promised a "full accounting" for "cruel and disgraceful abuse of Iraqi detainees." He said the treatment is an "insult to the Iraqi people" and an "affront to the most basic standards of morality and decency." He said those involved will "answer for their conduct in an orderly and transparent process."

Bush wanted justice to be "orderly" and "transparent" because he wanted to show the world the American way of dealing with what he called the "cruel and disgraceful abuse of Iraqi detainees."

If it now transpires that this "cruel and disgraceful abuse of Iraqi detainees" was actually official policy then why should the people who ordered the abuse not have to go through a similar "orderly and transparent" process?

Why should the people who carried out the policy be considered more reprehensible than the people who ordered it?

Nor, after Cheney's recent jaw dropping interview in which he breezily admitted authorising waterboarding, can there be any doubt that war crimes have been committed. The only remaining question is whether or not those who ordered torture and abuse to take place will be prosecuted in the same "orderly and transparent" manner which Bush insisted upon for Lynndie England and others.

Because what Mort Kondracke and others are actually asking for is that the political class should be exempt from facing the very same law which they used to punish others, even when those other people were actually merely following orders issued by that same political class.

He bemoans the recent New York Times editorial calling for prosecutions and is amazed that the NYT haven't called for Bush and Cheney to be charged. On this point we are in agreement, as I personally think Cheney especially has opened himself up to prosecution.

But there's no need to investigate whether Bush -- or Cheney -- authorized the use of "enhanced" interrogation techniques or warrantless terrorist wiretapping or renditions ("snatching") of terrorist suspects.

They've admitted it and defended it as being necessary to defend the nation in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks -- and justified it by pointing out that the homeland has not been attacked since.

What Kondracke misses here is that all war criminals can cite good reasons, at least according to their own logic, as to why they had to do what they did. This does not stop what they did being a war crime.

As I have pointed out before these are not known as peace crimes, they are not actions which become understandable at a time of war to keep "the homeland" safe. They are known as war crimes because it is precisely at a time of war that leaders might be tempted to employ these hideous tactics.

The fact that Bush and Cheney have admitted what they did should actually make prosecution inevitable. However, we all know that in the real world the same president who called for an "orderly and transparent" process when dealing with "the few bad apples" who were caught carrying out his policies will have many right wing defenders who will insist that the nation will fall into the sea if he is ever subject to the same kind of trial that he insisted was inflicted on others.

And I note that Kondracke has even tried to find a way to blame Obama should Bush decide to issue blanket pardons for all the war criminals in his administration.

On the other hand, Obama said on the campaign trail in April that "I would not want my first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of Republicans as a partisan witch hunt, because I think we've got too many problems to solve."

Obama should find an opportunity soon to reiterate that position. If he did so, he could eliminate the unseemly possibility that Bush, on his way out of office, would issue a blanket pardon to everyone in his administration who participated in the war on terror.

You see, if Bush had to do this it would be because Obama had been too slow to make his intentions known, leaving Bush with no choice other than to take this "unseemly" path.

I don't know which part of this argument sickens me more, the plea to ignore war crimes or the pathetic attempt to make Bush pardoning them somehow someone else's fault.

America's moral authority has been badly damaged and, much as we all applaud and support the presidency of Barack Obama, that authority will not be restored unless his presidency delivers the change that he promised.

The typical attack from conservative corners during the primaries was that Barack Obama was "just words". That behind those words there was no substance. Now, they are demanding that he become the very thing which they attacked him for, that he distance himself from the pledges he made during his campaign:

Obama insisted during the campaign that if he found "that there were high officials who knowingly, consciously broke existing laws (and) engaged in cover-ups of those crimes ... then I think a basic principle of our Constitution is nobody above the law."

Kondracke's argument is the complete opposite of Obama's. He is insisting that the political class should be above the law. I have no faith that an Obama administration will prosecute these criminals, but the US - and Obama - will suffer as a result.

The entire world knows that war crimes have been committed, Dick Cheney is on record admitting so, but the world will now watch to see if that famed American sense of justice and fair play which Bush insisted was needed after Abu Ghraib, will extend itself to America's political class.

I somehow doubt that the same "orderly and transparent" process which Lynndie England faced will be considered appropriate for the people who issued the orders on which she was acting.

Click title for Kondracke's piece.

Tags: Kondracke, war crimes, torture, Bush, Cheney, Obama

Bush Attacks New York Times for Cherry Picking.

You couldn't make this up. The White House, furious at a New York Times Story - which outlines Bush's culpability in the recent mortgage disaster - has responded with a furious statement saying:

The Times' 'reporting' in this story amounted to finding selected quotes to support a story the reporters fully intended to write from the onset, while disregarding anything that didn't fit their point of view.

Isn't that a despicable thing to do, especially in something as important as an article in the New York Times.

At least when the Bush administration cherry picked information and ignored "anything that didn't fit their point of view" the end result was a disastrous war which killed tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis and destroyed America's reputation worldwide.

But to do so for a newspaper article is seriously f#cked up.

I'm glad the Bushies have retained their sense of perspective.

Click title to read the New York Times article.

Tags: Bush, New York Times, mortgage crisis, economy, crisis

The 10 Worst Predictions for 2008.

Foreign Policy is listing it's ten worst predictions of the last year and it's no surprise to find Bill Kristol right at the top of the list with this gem:

“If [Hillary Clinton] gets a race against John Edwards and Barack Obama, she’s going to be the nominee. Gore is the only threat to her, then. … Barack Obama is not going to beat Hillary Clinton in a single Democratic primary. I’ll predict that right now.” —William Kristol, Fox News Sunday, Dec. 17, 2006

Jim Cramer runs a very close second with this:

“Peter writes: ‘Should I be worried about Bear Stearns in terms of liquidity and get my money out of there?’ No! No! No! Bear Stearns is fine! Do not take your money out. … Bear Stearns is not in trouble. I mean, if anything they’re more likely to be taken over. Don’t move your money from Bear! That’s just being silly! Don’t be silly!” —Jim Cramer, responding to a viewer’s e-mail on CNBC’s Mad Money, March 11, 2008

And still on the subject of the economy we have this classic:

“[A]nyone who says we’re in a recession, or heading into one—especially the worst one since the Great Depression—is making up his own private definition of ‘recession.’” —Donald Luskin, The Washington Post, Sept. 14, 2008

The day after Luskin’s op-ed, “Quit Doling Out That Bad-Economy Line,” appeared in the Post, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, and the rest is history. Liberal bloggers had long ago dubbed the Trend Macrolytics chief investment officer and informal McCain advisor “the Stupidest Man Alive.” This time, they had some particularly damning evidence.

But worry not, no-one featured on the list has to worry that employment will dry up any time soon. And Kristol is especially guaranteed to be allowed to continue to spout his partisan rubbish to Fox News who are more interested in him saying what they want to hear than they are in hearing from anyone who actually knows what they are talking about.

After all he survived spouting this piece of right wing crap:

We are tempted to comment, in these last days before the war, on the U.N., and the French, and the Democrats. But the war itself will clarify who was right and who was wrong about weapons of mass destruction. It will reveal the aspirations of the people of Iraq, and expose the truth about Saddam's regime. It will produce whatever effects it will produce on neighboring countries and on the broader war on terror. We would note now that even the threat of war against Saddam seems to be encouraging stirrings toward political reform in Iran and Saudi Arabia, and a measure of cooperation in the war against al Qaeda from other governments in the region. It turns out it really is better to be respected and feared than to be thought to share, with exquisite sensitivity, other people's pain. History and reality are about to weigh in, and we are inclined simply to let them render their verdicts.

It's that wonderfully condescending tone he hits whilst being utterly wrong that most amuses me. Of course, both history and reality rendered a completely different verdict than the one Kristol so patronizingly predicted, but that won't stop him pontificating throughout 2009.

It's what he does. The real wonder is that he gets away with being so wrong, so often, and is still treated as a serious commentator.

Click title for the list.

Tags: Bill Kristol, predictions, 10 worst

Nixon and Cheney. Great Minds Thinking Alike.

The same mindset which was behind Nixon's thinking is evident behind the Bush administrations thinking.

Nixon told Frost:

Frost: Would you say that there are certain situations - and the Huston Plan was one of them - where the president can decide that it's in the best interests of the nation, and do something illegal?

Richard Nixon: Well, when the president does it, that means it is not illegal.

And now Cheney tells Wallace:

WALLACE: This is at the core of the controversies that I want to get to with you in a moment. If the president during war decides to do something to protect the country, is it legal?

CHENEY: General proposition, I'd say yes.

Both administrations believe that if the president does something, then it becomes inherently legal simply because he is the person who has done it. In other words the president is not only above the law, he is the law.

Tags: Cheney, Nixon, presidential power, US constitution

Kristol Defends Cheney's Admission That He Told Leahy To F*** Himself.

Dick Cheney is going out in an orgy of truth, now admitting that he told Senator Leahy to, "go f#ck himself". What's extraordinary is that Cheney is so obviously pleased with himself. And one can always rely on Bill Kristol to rush to the defence of any neo-con. That's simply what Bill Kristol does.

Were it a Democrat who was admitting to such a thing we would no doubt be hearing about how he had brought his office into disrepute.

Tags: Cheney, Kristol

Livni and Netanyahu vow to oust Hamas after Gaza rocket strikes.

With the end of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and rockets beginning to hit Israel once more, Tzipi Livni and Benjamin Netanyahu have got themselves tied up in a war of words over who will do the most to tackle Hamas.

The Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, who hastily led Israel into war with Hizbollah in Lebanon in 2006, suggested a wait and see approach to Gaza, saying that "a responsible government doesn't rush into battle, neither does it shy away". He called on his fellow ministers to avoid "bold statements" about the crisis. But the Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, who is vying with the hard-line Likud party leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, in the February election, vowed that her government's "strategic objective" would be to "topple the Hamas regime" using military, economic and diplomatic means.

Mr Netanyahu visited the Sderot house and called for tough military steps against Hamas, whose defeat he said was "inevitable". He added: "In the long-term, we will have to topple the Hamas regime. In the short-term ... there are a wide range of possibilities, from doing nothing to doing everything, meaning to conquer Gaza."

So now both Livni and Netanyahu are threatening to retake Gaza should they be elected, which will do nothing to stop the rocket attacks but will put a major spanner in the works regarding any plans Barack Obama has to restart the peace process, which in the case of Netanyahu is probably the whole point of the exercise.

The cabinet meeting heard from Yuval Diskin, the head of the Shin Bet domestic intelligence agency, that Hamas has rockets that could strike the city of Beersheva, a major population centre about 40km from the Gaza Strip. But the Defence Minister, Ehud Barak, the Labour leader, warned that even an incursion involving two to three divisions, or more than 20,000 troops, may not be enough to stop rocket fire. Government ministers promising to topple Hamas "do not know what they are talking about," Mr Barak said.

Lieutenant General Moshe Yaalon, a former chief of staff who is now Likud's security expert, recommended the assassinations of Hamas leaders and "in and out" military incursions to stop the rockets. However, a leading analyst, Yossi Alpher, said it is time for Israel to admit that it does not have a "workable strategy" for dealing with Hamas.

Mr Alpher suggests considering informal, non-governmental contacts with the group to examine possible political options. "We want Hamas to disappear, but we can't make them disappear. We've tried economic warfare, ceasefire, and limited military responses with a price tag. A fully-fledged invasion hasn't been tried because the costs are too high, there is no exit strategy, there could be heavy casualties, there could be [negative] international focus, and there is no guarantee it will stamp out Hamas. I would counsel trying to encourage them [Hamas] politically in a limited way, perhaps through Israelis having informal contacts with them."

Of course, politicians fighting for election cannot bog themselves down with such realities, so they make promises which even they must know that they cannot keep.

But Alpher and Barak are correct. There is no military solution which has not already been tried. The only solution is negotiation, which someone like Netanyahu will be vehemently opposed to.

If only the US and Israel had recognised the wishes of the Palestinian people to have Hamas as their democratically elected representatives then we wouldn't be in this position in the first place.

I said at the time that Israel had the chance to negotiate with the organ grinder rather than the monkey, but that opportunity was squandered.

And now we are back to talking about invading Gaza and defeating Hamas, both of which sound "strong" but, in reality, are word games to please the Israeli electorate. If that was the solution then this problem would have disappeared a long time ago. It's not, and both Livni and Netanyahu surely know this as they spout this nonsense.

Click title for full article.

Tags: Livni, Netanyahu, Israel, Palestine, Gaza, Hamas

Mugabe unleashes wave of terror with mass abductions.

Mugabe has responded to worldwide calls that he stands down the only way he appears to know: He has started abducting those who oppose him.

Fears are mounting in Zimbabwe for the lives of more than 40 opposition officials and human rights activists who have been abducted as part of a renewed crackdown by the regime in Harare. At least two more members of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change have disappeared in the past week, along with a freelance investigative reporter.

"The abductions are increasing and it now seems to be happening nationwide," Nelson Chamisa, an MDC spokesman,said yesterday.

The operation, codenamed Chimumumu according to sources in the army, aims to eliminate political opponents and remove human rights monitors. The kidnappings follow a pattern familiar from the past two years of political intimidation, where key middle- and lower-ranking officials are "disappeared" in an attempt to terrorise or destabilise opponents of the ruling party. Among those taken in the past month are Chris Dlamini, the head of security for the MDC, and Jestina Mukoko, the director of Zimbabwe Peace Project. The ruling party and security services have denied any part in the abductions.

The police and authorities are claiming that they have had nothing to do with these abductions, even though all of the people being abducted are opponents of Mugabe.

Mugabe is now claiming that Botswana are training guerrillas to topple his government and that the UK are planning an invasion, which is a fanciful theory.

Even Mugabe must realise that there has been a distinct change in the attitude of the international community towards him since the recent outbreak of cholera in his country. However, it was seriously wishful thinking if anyone thought condemnation alone would be enough to shame this old bugger into heading for the sunset. He intends to go out the only way he knows, fighting for his last breath.

Mr Tsvangirai, who is in Botswana, has given a deadline of the end of the year for the release of the abductees, otherwise his party will "suspend" power-sharing talks with the government.

The whole notion of "power sharing" which South Africa, led by Mbeki, championed, has turned into a sick joke. This tyrant has no intention of sharing anything and his recent behaviour shows that this dog is still up to his old tricks.

And the US has now signaled that it no longer has any faith in Mugabe sharing power with anyone else.

Jendayi Frazer, the US assistant secretary of state for African affairs, told reporters in Pretoria that Washington had become convinced that the embattled president, Robert Mugabe was not interested in sharing power.

To allow him to continue as president in a unity government would leave "a man who’s lost it, who’s losing his mind, who’s out of touch with reality" in power, she said after talks with regional leaders. Washington – and Britain – had signalled a readiness to step in with a major aid package once a unity government is operational. "We’re not prepared to do any of that now," Ms Frazer said, citing the abductions in Zimbabwe, the deteriorating humanitarian and economic situation and the cholera epidemic.

The US are right in that we are now dealing with someone who appears to have lost his mind.

The question now is what are we all prepared to do about this? Mugabe, despite brutalising his people, is betting that we will do nothing. In the past he has always been proven correct and this time I don't imagine things will change in any significant manner.

Unless we are prepared to go in and topple him on humanitarian grounds then sanctions will achieve nothing. The country is already broken so there is nothing else that sanctions can do. And I somehow doubt that we are prepared to do anything more.

Click title for full article.

Tags: Mugabe, Zimbabwe

Duncan Hunter Calls New York Times Editorial on Detainee Abuse "Left Wing Rubbish".

Duncan Hunter went on Hardball and criticized the New York Times editorial on detainee abuse as "left wing rubbish".

The New York Times stated:

A report released Thursday by leaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee said top Bush administration officials, including Donald H. Rumsfeld, the former defense secretary, bore major responsibility for the abuses committed by American troops in interrogations at Abu Ghraib in Iraq; Guantánamo Bay, Cuba; and other military detention centers.

The report also rejected previous claims by Mr. Rumsfeld and others that Defense Department policies played no role in the harsh treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 and in other episodes of abuse.

The abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, the report says, “was not simply the result of a few soldiers acting on their own” but grew out of interrogation policies approved by Mr. Rumsfeld and other top officials, who “conveyed the message that physical pressures and degradation were appropriate treatment for detainees.”

Leaving aside that this was actually a bipartisan report, what's most interesting is that Hunter does not deny the reports findings but rather appears to defend the use of waterboarding based on the evidence it produced.

Torture, it appears, ceases to be torture if it produces good results. And it's "left wing rubbish" to suggest otherwise.

Hat tip to Crooks and Liars.

Tags: Abu Ghraib, Donald Rumsfeld, Duncan Hunter, Gitmo, Hardball/Chris Matthews, Janice Karpinski, Torture

Israeli blockade 'forces Palestinians to search rubbish dumps for food'.

It is a figure which defies belief. 51.8% of the residents of Gaza are now living below the poverty line thanks to Israel's brutal siege. And yet, the vast majority of the planet sits idly by and does nothing whilst this outrage occurs in front of our eyes.

Impoverished Palestinians on the Gaza Strip are being forced to scavenge for food on rubbish dumps to survive as Israel's economic blockade risks causing irreversible damage, according to international observers.

Figures released last week by the UN Relief and Works Agency reveal that the economic blockade imposed by Israel on Gaza in July last year has had a devastating impact on the local population. Large numbers of Palestinians are unable to afford the high prices of food being smuggled through the Hamas-controlled tunnels to the Strip from Egypt and last week were confronted with the suspension of UN food and cash distribution as a result of the siege.

"Things have been getting worse and worse," said Chris Gunness of the agency yesterday. "It is the first time we have been seeing people picking through the rubbish like this looking for things to eat. Things are particularly bad in Gaza City where the population is most dense.

"Because Gaza is now operating as a 'tunnel economy' and there is so little coming through via Israeli crossings, it is hitting the most disadvantaged worst."

This all began because the Palestinians had the temerity, in a democratic election, to choose Hamas as their representatives, a decision which so outraged the US and Israel that they decided the people of Palestine had to be made to see the error of their ways.

To this end they armed the Fatah party and made the civil war between Hamas and Fatah inevitable, which resulted in Hamas seizing the Gaza Strip.

Chris Gunness of the UN Relief and Works Agency perfectly summed up what is happening when he stated:

"This is not a humanitarian crisis," he said. "This is a political crisis of choice with dire humanitarian consequences."

And we must never forget that what we are witnessing is a matter of Israeli policy. Israel has chosen to do this to the Palestinians.

Israel's policy was summed up by Dov Weisglass, an adviser to Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, earlier this year. 'The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger,' he said. The hunger pangs are supposed to encourage the Palestinians to force Hamas to change its attitude towards Israel or force Hamas out of government.

This callous attitude has now resulted in people picking through rubbish tips in search of food, it has resulted in 51.8% of the Palestinian population living below the poverty line.

I can think of no other circumstances in which the world would sit idly by whilst one country did this to another.

And even Tony Blair, who is as pro-Israeli as any politician could possibly be, has stated that this policy is counter productive if it's aim is to lessen Hamas' grip on Gaza:

The deteriorating conditions inside Gaza emerged as Tony Blair, Middle East envoy for the Quartet - US, Russia, the UN and the EU - warned explicitly yesterday that Israel's policy of economic blockade, which had been imposed a year and a half ago when Hamas took power on the Gaza Strip, was reinforcing rather than undermining the party's hold on power. In an interview in the Israeli newspaper Haartez, Blair warned that the collapse of Gaza's legitimate economy under the impact of the blockade, while harming Gaza's businessmen and ordinary people, had allowed the emergence of an alternative system based on smuggling through the Hamas-controlled tunnels. Hamas "taxed" the goods smuggled through the tunnels.

It was because of this that Blair wrote to Israel's prime minister, Ehud Olmert, earlier this month demanding that Israel permit the transfer of cash into Gaza from the West Bank to prop up the legitimate economy.

"The present situation is not harming Hamas in Gaza but it is harming the people," Blair said yesterday. Calling for a change in policy over Gaza, he added: "I don't think that the current situation is sustainable; I think most people who would analyse it think the same."

I would argue that the policy must be immediately stopped because it is so manifestly inhumane, Blair argues that it must be stopped because it ultimately does not work.

I don't care which reason spurs the Israelis to stop what they are doing, I care only that they stop.

And the international community should be pressuring them to do so. They are deliberately starving an occupied people. It is reprehensible.

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Tags: Israel, Palestine, Gaza, Hamas, starvation, poverty, siege, blockade

Obama's revolution on climate change.

Barack Obama appears to be perfectly serious about tackling climate change and has appointed one of the world's leading climate change experts as his administration's chief scientist.

The president-elect's decision to make Harvard physicist John Holdren director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy reveals a new determination to draw a line under eight years of US policy that have seen George Bush steadfastly reject overwhelming evidence of climate change.

News of the appointment was hailed by scientists around the world, including former UK chief government scientific adviser Sir David King. "This is a superb appointment," he told the Observer. "Holdren is a top-rate scientist and his position on climate change is as clear as you could get. This is a signal from Barack Obama that he means business when it comes to dealing with global warming."

Obama also used his weekend radio address to announce that respected climatologist Jane Lubchenco is to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The appointments follow Obama's selection of Steven Chu, a Nobel prizewinner, to the Department of Energy, where he has been directed to lead the development of alternative energy sources.

"Today, more than ever before, science holds the key to our survival as a planet and our security and prosperity as a nation," Obama announced. "It's time we once again put science at the top of our agenda and ... worked to restore America's place as the world leader in science and technology."

Obama is breaking away from the last eight years of "do nothing" politics, breaking away from Bush's habit of appointing people to top positions who come from the very industry's whose actions have been harming the environment and is appointing the kind of people who most understand what needs to be done, even if we don't like what it is that they tell us.

In one telling remark, he added that respect for the scientific process was not "just about providing investment and resources. It's about ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted nor obscured by politics nor ideology."

For far too long both politics and ideology have been used by the Bush administration to obscure scientific facts.

We have witnessed eight long years of the Bush administration who have resisted international emission-reduction accords and the introduction of US laws to protect threatened species. Indeed, many of the laws Bush is rushing through before he leaves office are all an orgy of violence on the environment.

It is as if he has to show us how much contempt he has for those of us who value the planet's survival before profit.

The attitude at the top simply couldn't be more different than it is now with the appointment of Holdren.

Holdren, whose expertise runs from nuclear-weapons proliferation to global warming, recently warned in a speech at Harvard that he considered "global warming" to be a misnomer. "It implies something gradual, something uniform, something quite possibly benign, and what we're experiencing is none of those. There is already widespread harm ... occurring from climate change. This is not just a problem for our children and our grandchildren."

This change in attitude at the highest level of the US government when it comes to the issue of climate change is long overdue.

With these appointments Obama has hit the ball clean out of the park.

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Tags: Obama, climate change, Holdren, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy

Bush Decries "Name Calling".

Bush is disappointed at "name calling" during his time in office, which he seems to think is something which was done to him and his friends.

"I have been disappointed at times about the politics of personal destruction. It's not the first time it's ever happened in our history, but I was just - I came with the idea of changing the tone in Washington, and frankly didn't do a very good job of it," he said.

The claim that he came to office hoping to change the tone of Washington is simply ludicrous. He beat John McCain to the nomination after allowing his campaign to insinuate that McCain had an illegitimate black love child, and won re-election by allowing Republicans to insinuate that John Kerry was not a war hero and did not earn his purple heart awards.

And, of course, talking of personal destruction, Valerie Plame famously had her career destroyed as an covert CIA operative when her husband revealed what he did not find in Niger. Bush was so upset by this act of personal destruction that he commuted the sentence of the person found to have obstructed the investigation into who outed Plame.

And he and his supporters have spent the last eight years questioning the patriotism of anyone who disagreed with them and labeling a "traitor" anyone who ever exposed the illegal actions in which they were engaging. And, as a parting gift, he even went as far as to say that a win for the Democrats would be a win for the terrorists, which is hardly a good example of changing the tone in Washington, which he now claims was his most fervent wish.

As he leaves office we are being subjected to an awful lot of this revisionist shit but seriously.... Bush wanted a new tone in Washington? Give me a bloody break.

Tags: Bush, Washington, tone, name calling, Plame, Kerry, McCain

Israel angered by UK settlements move.

The British government are being accused of Antisemitism by a hard line Israeli MP for daring to warn British people on the Foreign Office website that purchases of property in the West Bank and Gaza could be affected by any possible peace deal struck between the parties.

Yuval Steinitz, a hopeful for the post of foreign minister if Benjamin Netanyahu leads the right-wing Likud party to victory in February, advised Britain to abandon the campaign. Foreign Office officials said that it would include possible steps against newspapers advertising property in the occupied territories.

"This is none of Britain's business," said Mr Steinitz, former chairman of the Knesset's foreign affairs and defence committee. "When Israel is boycotted one should wonder if there is no implicit anti-Semitism. Let us see the British government boycott products from China because there is no democracy there before they turn to Israel."

The first thing to note is how quickly the charge of Antisemitism is invoked as a way of threatening anyone who disagrees with the hardline Likud position, but the second thing to note is that the British Foreign Office even feels the need to offer this advice at all.

Are they, as I am, hopeful that Barack Obama is serious about bringing about a deal between the two sides?

And Steinitz's claim that Israel is being boycotted is simply ludicrous. The Foreign Office often advise which country's are safe to travel to etc, and there is nothing unusual about them issuing a warning that certain places where British subjects might wish to purchase property are currently under dispute. The British government are not preventing anyone from purchasing in these areas, but they are covering their own back from criticism from anyone who does make a purchase and then finds themselves out of pocket. And they are considering asking newspapers not to advertise such purchases as if they are just another property abroad as these purchases would carry particular risk.

And this advice wouldn't need to be given at all had Israel complied with her commitments under the Annapolis agreement.

Settlements are considered illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits an occupying power from moving its nationals into the occupied territory. Last month, an EU campaign was launched for clear labelling to distinguish between goods produced inside Israel, which are exempt from EU tariffs, and those made on Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, which are not.

Britain says it acting in response to Israel's failure to uphold a commitment under the Annapolis peace process to freeze settlement building. "We hear a lot said about settlements being a major obstacle to peace. We haven't seen action. Now we are seeing how we can take action on the basis of that political position," said a Foreign Office spokesman.

Israel has long flouted international law when it comes to building settlements on occupied land and they have done so recently with George Bush's scandalous claim that there were "facts on the ground" ringing in their ears.

This might all be about to change under an Obama presidency and it is only right that the British government warn any citizens thinking of making a purchase in the occupied territories about that possible risk.

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Tags: Israel, Palestine, United Kingdom, illegal settlements

Bush pledges $17.4bn to prevent collapse of US car industry.

In the midst of the current financial crisis it is only the true partisans like Michelle Malkin and the Toyoto Republicans who can afford to hold on to their conservative principles, as they don't care how many people become unemployed as long as they can continue to insist that the market is always right.

Bush would, perhaps, love to agree with them, but his record is so appalling that he can hardly wish to add the destruction of America's manufacturing base to his already abysmal record in office, so he has capitulated and paid out $17.4bn of emergency funding to prevent the collapse of the big three car companies, although he has attached an insistence that workers wages must be lowered in line with Japanese companies wages by the end of next year, a blatant hat tip to the Toyota Republicans.

In a speech from the White House's Roosevelt room, Bush said: "In the midst of a financial crisis and a recession, allowing the US auto industry to collapse is not a responsible course of action."

From an initial fund of $13.4bn, GM will get $9.4bn and Chrysler will receive $4bn. The treasury will make a further $4bn available to GM in February. Detroit's third major firm, Ford, told the administration that it could get by without a handout.

Bush said without the money, manufacturers faced the prospect of disorderly bankruptcy and liquidation. Experts believe the loss of one of Detroit's "big three" would cause more than a million job losses among suppliers and contractors.

"Such a collapse would deal an unacceptably painful blow to hardworking Americans far beyond the auto industry," said Bush.

"It would worsen a weak job market and exacerbate the financial crisis. It could send our suffering economy into a deeper and longer recession."

The decision ends a month of bitter political wrangling in which motor industry bosses shuttled between Detroit and Washington to plead for aid.

Congress failed to agree on a legislative rescue plan a week ago, leaving an executive order from the White House as the last hope.

The decision regarding wage cuts will be reviewed once Barack Obama comes to office according to union officials, but Bush has at least taken steps to ensure that the Big Three remain operational.

However, Bush couldn't resist implying that he was bailing them out as a favour to the new Obama administration:

Bush: “I thought about what it would be like for me to become president during this period,” he said. “I believe that good policy is not to dump him a major catastrophe.”

That's too funny. He's leaving an economy in collapse and the nation entrenched in two unwinnable wars but he doesn't want to leave Obama a major catastrophe?

He blatantly leaves office as incurious as he entered it.

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Tags: Bush, Big Three, auto industry, bailout