Discontented Soul

Is It Time For A Corporate Death Penalty Act?
by Karyn Strickler
Published on Friday, January 28, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
George W. Bush recently announced that he was going to end asbestos damage lawsuits; limit medical malpractice suits; and ban class action lawsuits of all sorts. It’s part of his high priority, tort reform plan.
Instead of Bush’s proposed tort reform -- depriving ordinary folk of reasonable settlements in cases of severe harm and making the rule of law meaningless -- Timothy G. Hermach, President of the Native Forest Council (www.forestcouncil.org), proposes a Corporate Death Penalty Act.
Regardless of your position on the death penalty, when an individual murders someone, they know that they may face the death penalty. While it is badly administered, the death penalty is supposed to be a deterrent...
Corporate leaders kill people regularly, often consciously, with personal impunity. Why not hold the individuals behind corporations that poison, harm and kill people accountable the same way we do for individuals who commit murder, deliberately or otherwise?
The idea seems kind of whacky, until you consider the fact that, in a capitalist society, making money reigns supreme, even if doing so kills someone - or thousands of people...
Corporate biographer Jack Doyle, told the Multinational Monitor, “Corporations…are not controlling the full costs of their operation, and we are picking up the tab for their externalities in form of disease, illness, lower immunity, altered reproduction, birth defects, cancer…That’s a mortal trespass, an unforgivable transgression that must be stopped…They need to be prosecuted.”
The Corporate Death Penalty Act could provide that every member of the Board of Directors and executives of a corporation who knew, or should have known about the likelihood of their product or services to cause death, will be subject to the death penalty if their product or service results in the death of an individual or group of individuals...
Karyn Strickler is a writer and activist. You can reach her at fiftyplusone@earthlink.net.
© 2005 Karyn Strickler

Women are the new victims of Islamic groups intent on restoring a medieval barbarity

by Houzan Mahmoud
Published on Friday, January 28, 2005 by the Guardian/UK

I am an Iraqi woman, and I am boycotting Sunday's elections. Women who do vote will be voting for an enslaved future. Surely, say those who support these elections, after decades of tyranny, here at last is a form of democracy, imperfect, but democracy nevertheless?
In reality, these elections are, for Iraq's women, little more than a cruel joke. Amid the suicide attacks, kidnappings and US-led military assaults of the 20-odd months since Saddam's fall, the little-reported phenomenon is the sharp increase in the persecution of Iraqi women. Women are the new victims of Islamic groups intent on restoring a medieval barbarity and of a political establishment that cares little for women's empowerment...

Should You?
by Dr. Teresa Whitehurst
Published on Friday, January 28, 2005 by CommonDreams.org

The War of Terror has killed or maimed hundreds of thousands of human beings, including trusting young GI's, pretty women, little babies and grannies, but those who shouldn't feel guilty do, while those who should, do not. "No regrets" is the trademark slogan of George W. Bush, Tony Blair, gung-ho torturers, and many others who've exercised their power without worries about accountability…or guilt.
Bush and Blair and all the kings' men are determined to feel no regrets, no matter how severe the carnage they've caused through bombings, ruthless home invasions, torture, and machine-gun attacks. Nor will they feel regret about the suicide explosions, car bombings, roadside bombs, kidnappings, beheadings, and other horrors that never would have happened, had they not started this sinful war.
So don't hold your breath waiting for Bush/Blair guilt, because it isn't going to happen. But what about you? Do you feel guilty for their sins? Should you?...

Iraq’s Non-Election
by Robert Jensen and Pat Youngblood

Published on Friday, January 28, 2005 by CommonDreams.org

... The task of activists who step outside those limits is to point out a painfully obvious fact, and therefore one that is unspeakable in the mainstream: A real election cannot go on under foreign occupation in which the electoral process is managed by the occupiers who have clear preferences in the outcome.
That’s why the U.S.-funded programs that “nurture” the voting process have to be implemented “discreetly,” in the words of a Washington Post story, to avoid giving the Iraqis who are “well versed in the region’s widely held perception of U.S. hegemony” further reason to mistrust the assumed benevolent intentions of the United States.
Post reporters Karl Vick and Robin Wright quote an Iraqi-born instructor from one of these training programs: “If you walk into a coffee shop and say, ‘Hi, I’m from an American organization and I’m here to help you,’ that’s not going to help. If you say you’re here to encourage democracy, they say you’re here to control the Middle East.”...
For the past two years, journalists have reported about U.S. intentions to establish anywhere from four to 14 “enduring” military bases in Iraq. Given that there are about 890 U.S. military installations around the world to provide the capacity to project power in service of the U.S. political and economic agenda, it’s not hard to imagine that planners might be interested in bases in the heart of the world’s most important energy-producing region.
But in mainstream circles, such speculation relegates one to the same category as those confused Middle Easterners with their “widely held perception of U.S. hegemony.”...
But let’s return to reality: Whatever the long-term plans of administration officials, the occupation of Iraq has, to put it mildly, not gone as they had hoped. But rather than abandon their goals, they have adapted tactics and rhetoric. Originally the United States proposed a complex caucus system to try to avoid elections and make it easier to control the selection of a government, but the Iraqis refused to accept that scheme. Eventually U.S. planners had to accept elections and now are attempting to turn the chaotic situation on the ground to their advantage...
No matter how many times Bush speaks of his fondness for freedom and no matter what games the planners play, we should not waver in an honest analysis of the real motivations of policymakers. To pretend that the United States might, underneath it all, truly want a real democracy in Iraq -- one that actually would be free to follow the will of the people -- is to ignore evidence, logic and history...
Right now, one of the things that U.S. policymakers do is to allow Iraqis to cast ballots under extremely constrained conditions. But whatever the results on Jan. 30, it will not be an election, if by “election” we mean a process through which people have a meaningful opportunity to select representatives who can set public policy free of external constraint. The casting of ballots will not create a legitimate Iraqi government. Such a government is possible only when Iraqis have real control over their own future. And that will come only when the United States is gone.

Closing in on Vietnam

by Derrick Z. Jackson
Published on Friday, January 28, 2005 by the Boston Globe

It is $80 billion and halfway home to Vietnam.
The fresh $80 billion just requested by President Bush pushes the war costs of Iraq and the amazing shrinking asterisk of Afghanistan (Osama been where?) past the $300 billion mark.
The estimated cost of Vietnam in current dollars was $584 billion, according to the Congressional Research Office. Iraq has already cost more in current dollars than either the Civil War or World War I. It is about to pass the Korean War. We are on pace to pass Vietnam in two or three years.
As Bush appears dead set on certifying Iraq's elections, even if it has the credibility of the Florida recount, his $80 billion brings us closer to certifying Iraq as, in financial terms, the most terrifying war on terror in American history.
Americans were made to believe we could defuse the most dangerous nation on earth in a bargain-basement rout. When former White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsay dared to suggest that an invasion would cost between $100 billion and $200 billion, White House budget director Mitch Daniels popped up to say the estimate was ''very, very high."...
There was General Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff who dared to say in a Senate hearing that ''something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers" would be required after the invasion to maintain ''control over a piece of geography that's fairly significant with the kinds of ethnic tensions that could lead to other problems." Shinseki said, ''It takes significant ground force presence to maintain a safe and secure environment to ensure that the people are fed, that water is distributed, all the normal responsibilities that go along with administering a situation like this."
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz rebuked that sober assessment. He said Shinseki was ''wildly off the mark."
With each supplemental request, Iraq becomes the most wildly off the mark mission since Vietnam, making the neo-cons the biggest con artists of our generation.
Once they were looking for Osama. They forgot him trying to find Saddam Hussein. They claimed Saddam had weapons of mass destruction pointed at American air ducts and waterways. Instead we became as big a weapon of mass destruction as Saddam ever was -- assuming you believe the thousands of Iraqi civilians needlessly killed in our invasion were in fact human beings...

But even the very capture of Saddam did not stop the tailspin of chaos. Nearly two years after the invasion, Iraq more resembles civil war than civil society. There were just as many attacks against US soldiers, Iraqi police, and civilians in the last month, 2,736, as there were in September.
Politically, Bush has nowhere to go but Vietnam...
With the predictions of a protracted occupation becoming more solid by the day, comparisons of Iraq with the costliest war in American history are no longer out of the question.
In today's dollars, World War II cost $2.9 trillion. Yale economist William Nordhaus predicted a long conflict in Iraq might cost up to $1.9 trillion. Economist Warwick McKibbin, a board member of the Australian central bank, said a conflict lasting to 2010 could cost more than $3.5 trillion.
It is certain that we are there in a massive way until close to 2010. Bush said in April 2004 that American forces would stay ''not one day more" than necessary.
But his military's own assessment is that it will take three to five years to train a competent Iraqi security force...

Tell Them, 'Because our Fathers Lied'

by Gilbert Jordan
Published on Thursday, January 27, 2005 by CommonDreams.org

The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles...

Eugene Debs
Almost two years after our invasion of Iraq ... it is well past the point when we should recognize that the Iraq War has become the Vietnam of the 21st Century. As in Vietnam ... the pretext for going to war was manufactured by misrepresenting facts and whipping up public fury, usually a simple task when that well known toxin - patriotism - is in the air.
Many years ago Rudyard Kipling wrote in his Epitaphs of the War:
If any question why we died,

Tell them, because our fathers lied.
At the same time, one of England's most promising poets of WWI, Wilfred Owen, wrote a famous anti-war poem. After presenting a series of ghastly images relating to the death of a soldier by mustard gas, Owen tells us that if we could witness such scenes, then
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest to children ardent for some desperate glory. The old lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro Patria Mori.

For those of us without an Oxford education, the translation of the Latin is, "It is sweet and fitting that you should die for your country."
President Bush and his minions are not unique in riding to war on the back of lies ... In each case, these presidents embarked on wars that were based not on self-defense but naked aggression and a desire to expropriate what belonged rightfully to others. To mask such pillaging, it is always accompanied by an appeal to nationalism and soaring flights of rhetoric. With Iraq, President Bush kept inventing new rationales for the invasion, all of them evoking some noble purpose. And in his second inaugural speech just delivered, more of the same was dished up supposedly in the service of liberty and justice for all of the world's citizens...

While the President can endlessly resort to Pollyanna summaries of the "catastrophic success" of our engagement in Iraq, the truth puts the lie to all of these fictions...
In Dwight Eisenhower's final speech to the nation in 1953, he warned us of the power of the military-industrial complex:
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children....This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from an iron cross.
We, with our deluded belief that God is on our side and that our new manifest destiny is to control the world and all its assets, must reassess our priorities. Is this ill-fated adventure in Iraq (with hints of Iran to follow) worth the agony it is causing? Do we really want to bankrupt the nation and sacrifice our youth by pouring our resources into wars of folly? Do we really want to leave the rest of the world shaking their heads as they see this country diminishing itself by paying lip service to its Constitution and Bill of Rights but, at the same time, violating the very essence of those documents? It is time for us to awake from a long sleep, take a serious look at the world and this country's place in it, and recognize that we have been manipulated by an unscrupulous band of miscreants who have been following their own agenda. And that agenda has nothing to do with democracy and liberty, at least for all of us living below the tiny sliver of privileged and tax-free aristocrats occupying the top of society's pyramid.
A good place to start our examination is to recognize that Kipling and Owen pulled back the curtain from myths and lies that promote wars. In a real democracy, we should demand transparent government and accountability. Until we do, we are in danger of sacrificing our 225 year old experiment in self-rule. There is a very thin line between democracy and despotism and at the moment we are standing on the razor's edge.
Gilbert Jordan is a retired English Professor from Monroe Community college, Rochester, NY and has been active in the anti-war movement. He resides in in Wyoming, NY

MIDDLE EAST PERCEPTIONS
Remarks by Career Ambassador Edward "Skip" Gnehm
DACOR Bacon House
Diplomatic and Consulor Officers, Retired
January 25, 2005

Newspaper headlines bannered the deaths of two policemen during a shoot out with alleged “criminals.” The pictures were gory, the public outcry emotional. Demands that the government take immediate and decisive action dominated private conversations as well as public statements.
Five days later flash news bulletins described yet another shoot out. This time reports said that security forces had killed two terrorists and were pursuing two others who had fled. While the government took action against this group, public calls for decisive action against these armed groups intensified. Even Islamic political figures joined the call for more decisive action.
The location of these incidents was neither Iraq nor Gaza. In fact the country was Kuwait and these events took place within the past two weeks. I was there for the second. I was struck by the intense anger of Kuwaitis toward the “terrorists,” as they were now being called. I was also struck by the intensity of support for their own government to move against these groups forcefully. Another significant point is that neither incident involved the USA or Americans. These were incidents that involved Arabs on both sides — terrorists and police.
These incidents underscored for me a fact little appreciated in the US. The Arab world, its people, and its leaders are as much targets of terrorism today (and I mean fundamentalist Islamic terrorism) as are we. They are as angry as Americans. They do not want to see their way of life or the security of their homes destroyed by terrorists any more than Americans do.
I asked myself, “Don’t we have a common cause with these Arabs?” I assert that we do. And yet one of the sad consequences of our own reaction to terrorism since 9/11 is to cluster all Arabs in the same profile. This is but one example of the many misunderstandings that seem to be driving Americans and the people of the Middle East apart — exactly as Osama bin Laden desires.
As you might imagine, I found the Kuwaitis deeply concerned about events in their region — be it to the north in Iraq, eastward in Iran or further to the west in Palestine. I stopped to think at one point (something I have been able to do in my new academic guise) that Kuwait will be celebrating its 44th Anniversary of Independence next month and for more than half of that time (24 years to be exact) there has been a major conflagration going on around it. We simply do not focus on the point that no Kuwaiti under the age of 30 remembers a time when there was no war nearby! This is sadly true for most peoples of the Gulf.
My Arab friends are worried about Iraq — but far more concerned about Iran — not about what Iran will do but what the US will do to Iran. Their presumption is that Iran will not be deterred from its nuclear program and the US ultimately will take some sort of action that will embroil them in US-Iranian hostilities. This, however, is not their nightmare scenario. Be it in Jordan or Kuwait, that scenario is an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities similar to the Israeli attack on the Iraqi reactor in 1982. The Vice President’s remarks to Don Imus during an interview broadcast on Inauguration Day are being interpreted in the region (and I believe erroneously) as giving Israel a signal to take such action. All my interlocutors are deeply concerned about Arab public reaction to an Israeli military attack given public perception in the ME that the US is always behind such Israeli actions.
From my perspective, I share the concerns of many observers that the US in fact does not have an Iranian policy — at least not a long range policy. Ellen Laipson (President and CEO of the Stimson Center) recently wrote an insightful article for the American Academy of Diplomacy on exactly this matter. I commend this article to you. In it she wrote that:
“(The United States has) lost an ability to think about Iran as a three-dimensional country of great size and natural richness and potential power, and to develop an appropriate complex and multifaceted policy towards the country…. The United States lacks an appropriate declaratory policy that addresses the full range of national interests that are at stake in Iran, a policy that would communicate to Americans and to Iran what the US seeks to achieve and how to move forward in this long-stalled relationship.”
I could not say it better and I join her in her appeal that we “revisit, with a fresh look, all aspects of Iranian behavior to determine where the threats and opportunities lie, and consider a range of policy approaches.”
Iraq:
We are five days in front of elections in Iraq. Any predictions are precarious just as the situation on the ground is precarious. I will hazard this observation however. I believe the elections will take place and there will be fairly good participation in Shia and Kurdish areas and some, though less significant, participation in other areas — specifically the Sunni provinces. Sunni involvement will be limited; but I do not see this as a major concern at this point in the political process.
Recall that voting Sunday is for a 275 person constituency assembly which will oversee the drafting and adoption of a permanent constitution for Iraq leading to Parliamentary elections in December. The text of the constitution and the willingness of Sunnis to participate in these parliamentary elections are far more the test of success than this round of voting. What I point to is the rather unexpected successes in the past that demonstrated that Iraqis (now in leadership positions) were desirous and are capable of reaching the political compromises necessary to keep a political process in motion. I think that even in the absence of a significant Sunni representation in the new assembly, these leaders will want a constitution that appeals to the Sunni minority so that they are willing to participate later in parliamentary elections. I would not be surprised — in fact I expect — to see elected “drafters” working closely with Sunni “outsiders” to craft a document that will be more broadly acceptable than many might predict. Specifically, I think the new constitution will contain guarantees that protect minority rights. And finally, it is worth noting that, so far, we see no major faction arguing for a division of Iraq into sub-states and I don’t think we will.
Having said that, the situation on the ground continues to deteriorate — no matter what the spin. All of my friends come out of Iraq with dire observations about the course of events. Christopher Dickey (Newsweek), whom I have found to be an honest and reasonable reporter, filed a story on January 21 (“Sandbagged in Baghdad”) in which he said,
“I pressed every official I saw to tell me anything that might be better now than it was just last summer, which was already pretty awful. It’s clear the Sunni insurgency is worse. Out and out terrorism is worse. The danger to foreigners is worse. Crime is worse. Public services are worse.”
In fact the only aspect Dickey found improved was the reduction in Shiite insurgency. He credited this development to Ayatollah Sistani's success in forging a united political party which he (Sistani) assumes will dominate the new assembly. Dickey, by the way, does not share my optimism about the Shias willingness to share power in Iraq or my view that Shia Iraqis are going to be Iraqi before they are going to be Iranian (meaning “under the influence of”). He sees the Iranian influence as sinister and controlling.
Frankly, because I have so much respect for Dickey’s judgment, I reassessed my own views after reading his article. In the end I continue to believe that there are sufficient reasons to conclude that Iraqi Shia will be their own masters in the end. They will not take orders from Iran any more than any other Iraqi. Iraq’s own national interest will ultimately prevail. In addition, the Shia religious establishment in Iraq does not endorse the involvement of the ulema in government, as Ayatollah Khomeini did in Iran. I interpret recent statements by Sistani that Shia are for a secular state in Iraq as evidence of where the Shia houses in Iraq stand on this issue.
On balance we have no choice at this point but to continue our support for the political process that we have championed and to hope that those Iraqis elected in that process can make the political deals with insurgent groups that will bring them ultimately into the system. And then we need to get our forces out of Iraq.
The Middle East Peace Process:
Here I am cautiously optimistic while, admittedly, fighting an urge to despair. I am among those who see the present moment as a real opportunity to advance the cause of Arab-Israeli peace. I was pleased to see the President and Secretary-designate Rice use the same word “opportunity.” In my opinion Arab-Israeli peace is the most crucial of all the issues we must deal with in the region.
The election of Mahmoud Abbas as the President of the Palestinian authority is a significant development. It was impressive (as the President said) to see Palestinians going to the polls even under the circumstances they now face. We tend to forget that the Palestinians have a history of selecting mayors and other local officials. The Administration should support the elections for the Palestinian parliament scheduled for June as well as continued Palestinian political reform.
Mr. Abbas’ steadfast opposition to violence and terror is unquestioned. We have seen recently his willingness to use his new position to argue with those who continue to espouse violence to give him the chance to work with the Israelis. The Israelis seem desirous of doing so in spite of their initial reaction to the recent killing of several Israelis. And important to my sense of events, is a belief that the Israeli people would like to see meaningful progress toward peace as do many Palestinians.
We are fortunate as well to have an Arab initiative adopted at the Beirut Arab Summit which supports a peaceful resolution of the Palestinian question along with Arab acceptance of full and complete relations with Israel in the context of a comprehensive settlement. While there are always a list of difficulties and hurdles, we have some significant building blocks now at our disposal.
For me the big question is here in Washington. The United States needs to reengage actively and effectively in assisting the two parties to achieve progress. I am encouraged by the remarks of the President following Abu Mazen’s election in which he not only indicated his hope to see Abbas in Washington but he reiterated his vision of a Palestinian state living side by side with Israel in peace and security. Secretary-designate Rice’s remarks during her confirmation hearings this past week are another encouraging indication that this Administration may well engage as is necessary.
And what about that “urge to despair”? I remember a moment years ago when Secretary Shultz called me in Amman to ask what I thought the odds of success were in an initiative that we had underway. Was it 50, 60 or 70%? I said it was more in the 15-20% range but in the Middle East if it was that high you went for it! The difference now is that I was certain then that Secretary Shultz was committed to our initiative. I am still not certain about this Administration’s commitment to engagement; but I sincerely hope and pray that they will indeed seize the opportunity that is before us.

Hope and Imagination

by Susan Griffin
Published on Thursday, January 27, 2005 by CommonDreams.org

...Among those who would seek or want social change, despair is endemic now. A lack of hope that is tied to many kinds of powerlessness. Repeating patterns of suffering. Burgeoning philosophies of fear and hatred. Not to speak of the failure of dreams. Where once there were societies that served as models for a better future, grand plans, utopias, now there is distrust and dissatisfaction with any form of politics, a sense of powerlessness edging into nihilism...

Perhaps it's precisely now, as old systems of meaning perish, that new meanings can be revealed. In these years after the end of the Cold War, a time of the failure of old paradigms and systems of thought, perhaps hope lies less in the direction of grand theories than in the capacity to see, to look past old theories that may obscure understanding and even promise. To assume what the Buddhists call beginner's mind. And to see what exists freshly and without prejudice clears the path for seeing what might exist in the future, or what is possible...
In considering what is possible for the future one must be careful not to slide into denial. Imagination can so easily be trapped by the wish to escape painful facts and unbearable conclusions. The New Age idea that one can wish oneself out of any circumstance, disease, or bad fortune is not only sadly disrespectful toward suffering, it is also, in the end, dangerous if escape replaces awareness.
But there are other dangers. What is called "realism" can lead to a kind of paralysis of action and a state of mind that has relinquished desire altogether. Especially now, when the political terrain seems so unnavigable, the impulse is toward cynicism...
What is required now is balance. In the paucity of clear promise, one must somehow walk a tightrope, stepping lightly on a thin line drawn between cynicism and escape, planting the feet with awareness but preserving all the while enough playfulness to meet fear...
One might say that human societies have two boundaries. One boundary is drawn by the requirements of the natural world and the other by the collective imagination. The dominant philosophies of Western societies have pitted imagination against nature. The effects of this dualism upon nature are devastatingly clear. But the effects on the human imagination are also terrible. Dividing the mind from the body, sensuality, experience creates small and tortured thought from which frenetic, soulless, and destructive societies have been born...
It is ironic that a society that has dreamt of mastering nature would create a feeling of such terrible powerlessness for the great majority. Though for at least the last two hundred years, technology itself has been the source of a hope for freedom and equality -- new machines that would free us all from labor, chemicals that will conquer disease, methods of agriculture that would feed everyone -- and now the latest hope, that computer networking will somehow magically create a more democratic public arena. But what I see now, standing in this brave new world, is that this technological mandate has become more deterministic in our minds than any law of nature. In this light, progress assumes a demonic aspect, like an engine that cannot be stopped but must bear down on whoever or whatever is in its path. Such a moment does not require less but rather more imagination. For to imagine is not simply to see what does not yet exist or what one wants to exist. It is also a profound act of creativity to see what is. To see, for instance, that the freedom of public discourse is being circumscribed by corporate power requires an imaginative leap.
At the same time, the act of seeing changes those who see. This is perhaps most clear with self- perception. By my perceptions of who I am or what I feel, not only do I re-create my idea of who I am but I also change myself. Perception is not simply a reflection of reality but a powerful element of reality. Anyone who meditates has had this experience: Observing the activities of the mind changes the mind until, bit by bit, observation creates great changes in the soul. And the effect is the same when the act of perception is collective. A change in public perception will change the public. This is why acts of imagination are so important.
Like artistic and literary movements, social movements are driven by imagination. I am not speaking here only of the songs and poems and paintings that have always been part of movements for political and social change, but of the movements themselves, their political ideas and forms of protest. Every important social movement reconfigures the world in the imagination. What was obscure comes forward, lies are revealed, memory shaken, new delineations drawn over the old maps: it is from this new way of seeing the present that hope for the future emerges...
No one can stop us from imagining another kind of future, one which departs from the terrible cataclysm of violent conflict, of hateful divisions, poverty and suffering. Let us begin to imagine the worlds we would like to inhabit, the long lives we will share, and the many futures in our hands

by Kyle Brown
Published on Thursday, January 27, 2005 by CommonDreams.org

If I feel queasy at the spectacle of another public memorial, it is not because I fail to appreciate its importance. Auschwitz should be engraved in our memory as a testament to the evils we are capable of visiting on one another.
What jars is the disjuncture between our solemn vow of “Never Again”, to nods of collective commitment, and the xenophobia, anti-Semitism and racist attacks which continue to be a part of life, here and now.
Memorials give us the feeling that we have done something about these ghastly things for which others were responsible. We have closed a chapter on a dark book which we need only open to recall how far we have come.
We have not come as far as we would like to think...

Iraq: This Election is a Sham

by Salim Lone
Published on Thursday, January 27, 2005 by the International Herald Tribune

Very early in the occupation of Iraq, the Bush administration recognized that a democratic Iraq, even a stridently anti-Saddam one, would not countenance the strategic U.S. goals the war was fought for: controlling the second-largest oil reserves in an energy-thirsty world, and establishing military bases required for undertaking the political transformation of the Middle East to serve American interests. A long-term occupation to secure these ambitious goals was no less tenable.
So even as the Americans proclaimed their mission as one designed to introduce democracy and human rights in Iraq, they fought against demands for early elections even from putative allies like the Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. They also maneuvered to put into place a self-governance and electoral plan that, through carefully circumscribed United Nations involvement, they thought would ensure that the hand-picked Iraqi leadership would enjoy some legitimacy, with the elections scheduled for Sunday providing an added boost of Shiite support...

The Neo-Cons: From Holocaust to Hyperpower

by Jim Lobe
Published on Thursday, January 27, 2005 by Inter Press Service

The importance of this week's recognition by the United Nations of the Nazi Holocaust lies as much in its relevance to today's international realities as it does to the historical significance of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp by Soviet forces 60 years ago Thursday.
As noted by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and other speakers at the memorial's inaugural session Monday, genocide -- as in Rwanda in 1994 and possibly in Darfur, Sudan, today -- has not been confined to the systematic annihilation of some six million Jews and hundreds of thousands of Gypsies in Europe...

Op-Eds / Terrorism

Posted by CarltonCobb on Jan 24, 2005 - 10:39 AM

As America presses for democratic change in the Middle-East, the world can only hope that such changes result in rule by the majority—or as stated by the noted observer of American life, Alexis de Tocqueville, “the interests of the many over the interests of the few.”
The difficulties our own representative democracy has in reflecting majority opinion or in supporting our longstanding policy on the Middle-East conflict is, again, showcased by the interplay of recent events: statements by al Qaeda leaders; the release of a poll of American opinion on the Israeli-Palestinian question; and Israel's announcement of additional housing units to be constructed in the West Bank.
In Osama bin Laden's pre-election statement he repeats his reasons for attacking America: that our government has been deceiving us, continues to hide the truth from us, and therefore the reasons are still there to repeat what happened on 9/11. A principal reason cited is “the injustice of the US-Israeli alliance against our people in Palestine and Lebanon.” If nothing else, his statement answers a common debate these days– why do they hate us?
In July 1996, he stated that the bombing in Dhahran was the result of American behavior against Muslims, its support of Jews in Palestine, and the massacre of Muslims in Palestine and Lebanon. In 1997, he told CNN, he declared jihad against the US government, because “it has committed acts that are extremely unjust, hideous and criminal whether directly or through its support of the Israeli occupation of Palestine.” In bin Laden's statement of February 1998, he lists his top reasons for jihad against Jews and crusaders, which included, using the American military to divert attention from Israel's occupation and killing of Muslims in Jerusalem.
Bin Laden also rails against the Saudi royal family and our support for them, but he repeatedly points to our unquestioning support for Israel and the plight of the Palestinians. On October 7, 2001, bin Laden responded to the invasion of Afghanistan by announcing that the world cannot accept the tragedy of Palestine; that his terrorism is “for the purpose of defeating oppression so America would stop supporting Israel who is killing our children”; and threatening, at the end, that America will never taste security and safety until Muslims feel safe in Palestine and in Arabia. In bin Laden’s “Letter to America” of November 2002, he lists his reasons why he fights and opposes us. Included is the military occupation of Palestine, and seeking revenge for America’s support for it. He also comments on what he sees as Jews controlling our policies, media, and economy. Many of these quotes can be found on the Anti-Defamation League web site.
Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's partner-in-crime, used the Palestinian issue as a rallying cry just four months ago, when he implored his followers, “You should never give up Palestine even if the whole world let it down. In Palestine we don't face the Jews only, but the anti-Muslim world coalition led by America the Crusader and the Zionist.”
Presumably, our elected leaders are provided transcripts of each statement and are, therefore, aware that bin Laden cites America's one-sided support for Israel as a principal reason for attacking us. And it is not just bin Laden’s followers who feel this way either. In a series of polls conducted by the University of Maryland and Brookings Institution, between 79% and 95% of the citizenry of US allies Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia hold unfavorable opinions of the US. 70% of those citizens state their negative feelings are rooted in the belief that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict persists because the US supports Israel without reservation.
The significance of the US-Israeli connection is not lost on the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. As Howard Kohr, AIPAC Executive Director said at the group’s annual meeting seven months post-9/11, “America is Israel's only ally.” And so we are. And, “Israel's fight is America's fight.” And so it has become.
This connection is also well-known to the American public. It started decades ago with oil embargoes and hijackings, kidnappings and hostages, truck-bombs and disco-bombs. It was in Cairo and Jerusalem and Tehran and Beirut and, now, Riyadh and Baghdad and Falluja and Islamabad. It started with Yasser Arafat, Abu Abbas and Abu Nidal, then Colonel Gaddafi, Ayatollah Khomeini and Saddam Hussein, now Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Musab al-Zarqawi. For decades we have watched anger and outrage exhibited on street corners throughout the Middle-East. We have watched Islamic militants burning US and Israeli flags (or, Israeli and US flags, as it were.) We are now inseparable. We are hated equally.
Americans understand the connection between our support of Israel and terrorism. A Pew Survey conducted three months after 9/11 revealed that 67% of Americans (and 74% of the rest of the world) felt if America pressured Israel to create a Palestinian state, it would lead to less terrorism. Fully 70% of Americans felt that our support of Israel was a major reason for people disliking us. 25% thought it a minor reason.
An October 2004 poll published by PIPA of the University of Maryland and the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations reflects the same. American public and foreign policy leaders were asked: “In the Middle East conflict, do you think the United States should take Israel's side, take the Palestinian's side, or not take either side?” 74% of the public answered that the US should not take either side, and 77% of our foreign policy leaders favored the US not taking either side. However, Congress’ one-sided resolutions providing financial and military support to Israel (or just plain “solidarity with Israel” resolutions) express the exact opposite of what Americans desire.
For instance, after George W. Bush presented the Road Map for Peace (a plan developed by the US, Russia, the European Union and the UN), the US House of Representatives passed a resolution expressing solidarity with Israel by a lop-sided vote of 399-5. The bill even viewed Israel's fight against terrorism as part of the global war against terrorism (disregarding, or maybe recognizing, that one reason bin Laden targets America is our unquestioning support of Israel). AIPAC even reports on its website, "through more than 2,000 meetings with members of Congress, AIPAC activists help pass more than 1,000 pro-Israel legislative initiatives a year." 1,000 pro-Israel initiatives a year! No such congressional solidarity is expressed toward the Palestinians, American public opinion notwithstanding.
PIPA examined this disconnect and formed the following conclusion -- that Americans tend to assume, often incorrectly, that Congress is voting in ways that are consistent with how they would like Congress to vote. (Is that a sophisticated way of saying that we are being deceived?) Indeed, 49% of the public thinks that the majority of Congress would favor taking neither side in the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Yet Congressional votes on the Middle-East conflict are consistently and overwhelmingly pro-Israel.
Tellingly, PIPA also found that only 39% of Congressional staffers correctly perceived that the American public favors taking neither side in the Israel-Palestinian conflict. (One wonders if these staffers were hired based on requests for resumes from AIPAC -- a regular practice following an election, as noted by AIPAC).
So, we know the following. 1) that al Qaeda consistently refers to our support of Israel as a principal reason for hating us and vows that America will not be safe until Arabs in Palestine (and Arabia) are safe. 2) that the American public consistently expresses a desire for neutrality in the conflict, and believes that if we pressured Israel to create a Palestinian state it would lead to less terrorism. 3) yet our elected representatives consistently and overwhelmingly vote in favor of pro-Israel initiatives -- and Americans don’t perceive that Congress is voting this way.
Is this what we mean by democracy? Is this what we are exporting to the Middle-East? Do we want rich and organized minorities in Iraq or Palestine to circumvent and obstruct the desires of the majority of Arabs?
What, after-all, is democracy? “Democracy” derives from the Greek, “Rule by the People.” Webster's has defined it as government exercised either directly by the people or through elected representatives; rule by the majority, as it were. America has a representative democracy. Of democracy Thomas Jefferson wrote, “I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves.” Alexis deTocqueville, wrote in Democracy in America, 1835, “The very essence of democratic government consists in the absolute sovereignty of the majority.” He said the moral authority of the majority is partly based upon the notion that there is more intelligence and wisdom in a number of men united than in a single individual, and that the interests of the many are to be preferred to those of the few.
The interests of the many are preferred to those of the few. Wow! That's democracy. That's what we strive for, what we demand of the Iraqi's and Palestinians. Isn’t it? But have we demanded it of ourselves? Let’s look at the facts.
The land that Israel conquered by force in 1967 is Arab land -- America has always recognized this. Our government analyzed the conflict and determined that land for peace is the only just and proper answer. We have voted in favor of numerous UN resolutions calling for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from territories it occupies. But, Israel has not withdrawn. To the contrary, their occupation is ever-expanding.
Notwithstanding such recalcitrance, our democratically elected representatives began a decades-long stretch of funding Israeli settlements on land we have said belongs to the Palestinians. Today, Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid, receiving roughly 1/3 of total U.S. foreign aid, $10 million a day, $3 billion a year. Israel’s influence in Congress is so great that they receive their annual foreign aid appropriation within thirty days after passage of the bill, instead of in quarterly installments as with other recipients (meaning Israel is making interest on our money). AIPAC even cites this as a “recent achievement” on its website.
Several months ago, Israel announced that it intends to construct an additional 1,000 housing units in the West Bank. Recent reports from the Council for the National Interest now puts the number at 1,800. Despite such settlements openly disregarding UN resolutions, international conventions and treaties, not to mention America’s longstanding position on the conflict, our democratically-elected representatives approved an additional $2.58 billion in assistance to Israel for fiscal 2005-it passed unanimously in the Senate and passed in the House, 365 to 41.
Also, in the run-up to the 2004 election, President Bush endorsed Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to disengage from Gaza and only part of the West Bank, and denying the Palestinian's right of return. Congress then dutifully lined-up behind a pro-Israel resolution supporting the President’s endorsement of Sharon’s plan, effectively rejecting UN resolutions 242 and 338. It passed 407 to 9 in the House (the House version being co-sponsored by the House Majority leader and Minority Whip) and 95-3 in the Senate (the Senate version being co-sponsored by Senator's Bill Frist and Tom Daschle). Even the bitterest of political enemies join forces for pro-Israel legislation.
In response to Bush’s election-year policy departure, fifty retired US diplomats from administrations spanning the past thirty years responded in May 2004 that “the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is at the core of the problems in the Middle East”, and expressed profound concern for our support of a plan that defies UN Security Council resolutions calling for Israel's return of occupied territories, undermines the Road Map for peace drafted by the Quartet (including the US), and reverses longstanding American policy in the Middle East.
Let’s go back to deTocqueville. Is going against our longstanding position on this significant world conflict something the majority of American’s would agree to? Is disregarding UN resolutions stating that Israeli settlements in the Palestinian and other Arab territories have no legal validity and constitute a serious obstruction to achieving a just and lasting peace, the type of neutrality Americans demand? Is this democracy in action? Is this what we’re marketing to other countries?
Notwithstanding our votes on UN resolutions, statements by former Presidents and Secretary’s of State regarding the legality of the settlements and the focal point they provide for Islamic extremists, and public opinion, our representatives nonetheless push forward with their unquestioning support of Israel. And bin Laden telling us that this is a principal reason they hate us does not stop the rush to Israel’s corner. It is so out of control the UN General Assembly called upon all countries (i.e. the US) to withhold aid and join in the efforts of the Security Council to oppose expansion of Israeli settlements in Gaza and the West Bank, and in the Jerusalem area. But Congress has not. Now there are roughly 230,000 illegal settlers in West Bank, 20,000 illegal settlers in Golan Heights, 9,000 illegal settlers in Gaza Strip, 200,000 illegal settlers in East Jerusalem.
Not surprisingly, bin Laden has less confidence in the UN than we do. And why shouldn’t he? America has vetoed thirty-five UN Resolutions related to the Middle East, oftentimes the only veto against unanimous countervailing votes. Over the past thirty years we have used our veto power to protect Israel from censure more than all other members of the Security Council have used their veto power on all other issues combined! It is no small wonder that bin Laden stated in November 2001 that America and its allies are “the last ones to respect the resolutions and policies of international law.”
At the same time, bin Laden also said—“American tax dollars are given to Israel for it to continue to attack us and penetrate our lands. The American people,” he said, “are the ones who fund the attacks against us, and they are the ones who oversee the expenditure of these monies in the way they wish, through their elected candidates. Thus the American people have chosen, consented to, and affirmed their support for the Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, the occupation and usurpation of their land, and its continuous killing, torture, punishment and expulsion of the Palestinians.”
But have we, the American people, really consented to and affirmed support for Israeli oppression, killing, torture and expulsion of Palestinians? As published by AIPAC there are at least 1,000 pro-Israel pieces of legislation passed every year; but have the American people ever consented to this one-sided support? Have we debated what we’ve done in the past, and where it’s gotten us? Or, have our representatives voted for such support, despite it being contrary to our longstanding national policy, our national interest, and popular opinion?
But it’s all about democracy, right? Testifying before Congress in 2003 AIPAC Executive Director, Howard Kohr stated, “In these increasingly dangerous times, the United States and Israel have forged a unique and remarkable partnership, made even more evident after 9/11. This relationship is based on a common set of values, a shared commitment to democracy and freedom, and comparable visions of providing safe haven to oppressed peoples.” But what of the neutrality Americans call for? He didn’t mention that. Instead, AIPAC reports that they worked with Congress to reaffirm the core value that forever binds the United States and Israel -- democracy -- by passing a resolution in the House by a vote of 410 to 1 applauding Israel's recent elections and restating our commitment to Israel's security.
Yet in the same year, the Israel Democracy Institute reported that Israel's political system has not yet acquired the characteristic of a substantive democracy. In fact, over the last few years there has been a significant decline in the Jewish population's support for democratic norms on all levels. Notably, 53% of Jews in Israel state that they are opposed to equal rights for Arab-Israeli's. In contrast to America, where all citizens have equal rights regardless of religion or ethnic origin, in Israel citizenship is not available to Muslim and Christian Palestinians driven from their homes in 1947-49. Amazingly, 90% of the land in Israel is held in restrictive covenants barring non-Jews, even those with Israeli citizenship from owning or leasing the land. Even our State Department recently reported that the Israeli government did little to reduce institutional, legal, and societal discrimination against the country's Arab citizens who did not share fully the rights and benefits provided to its Jewish citizens.
And given present birthrates their will soon be more Arabs than Jews in Israel and the occupied territories combined. As noted by Uri Dromi of the Israel Democracy Institute, “Either we give the Palestinians equal rights, in which case Israel ceases to be Jewish, or we don't, in which case Israel ceases to be democratic. The only way for Israel to remain both Jewish and democratic is for it to pull out of the territories.” Similarly, Avraham Burg, Speaker of the Israeli Knesset from 1999-2003, recently challenged Israel to choose between racist oppression of the Palestinian's or full democracy.
Yet America’s elected representatives line-up and applaud the US-Israel “shared commitment to democracy?” Really?
Our representative’s inability to resist voting in favor of all things Israeli, despite our longstanding policy, not to mention the will of the majority of Americans, is not lost on the world. A poll conducted in late 2004 by major newspapers in nine western countries and Russia concluded that 42% of those in the ten countries felt that American democracy remained a model for other nations. 52% felt it did not. Wow!
Has our representative democracy failed us with regards to our Middle-East policy? Is it time to replace deTocqueville’s words with Thomas Jefferson’s, “Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct?”
Only our democratically elected representatives can determine that.

Curtis A. Loub

by Ray McGovern
Published on Wednesday, January 26, 2005 by CommonDreams.org

Quick! Anyone! Who can put the brakes on Vice President Dick Cheney before we have another war on our hands? Current and former intelligence analysts are reacting with wonderment and apprehension to his remarks last week on the nuclear program of Iran and his resuscitated spinning on why attacking Iraq was the prudent thing to do...

The Power of Nightmares

by Katrina vanden Heuvel
Published on Wednesday, January 26, 2005 by The Nation

Last week, the BBC re-broadcast a provocative documentary series which challenges the idea that al-Qaeda is the center of a uniquely powerful, unified and well-organized international terrorist conspiracy.
The attacks on September 11th, according to the film's director Adam Curtis--one of Britain's leading documentary filmmakers--were not the expression of a confident and growing movement. They were acts of desperation by a small group frustrated by their failure which they blamed on the power of America. It is also important, Curtis adds, to realize that many within the Islamist movement were against this strategy. (This view accords with those held by terrorism experts--like Peter Bergen--who argue that al-Qaeda is largely a spent force that has changed from a tight-knit organization capable of carrying out 9/11 to more of an ideological threat with loose networks in many nations.)
The film also challenges other accepted articles of faith in the so-called war on terror, and documents that much of what we have been told about a centralized, international terrorist threat is a fantasy that has been exaggerated and distorted by politicans. It is a dark illusion that has spread unquestioned through governments around the world, the security services and the international media.
The series does not claim that terrorism poses no threat, nor does it challenge the idea that radical Islamism has led to gruesome violence throughout the world. The bombs in Madrid and Bali showed clearly the seriousness of the threat--but they are not evidence of a new and overwhelming threat unlike any we have experienced before. And above all they do not--in the words of the British government--'threaten the life of the nation'...
I asked Curtis what he thought Americans could learn from the film. His reply:
The United States is the most powerful, confident and in many ways, the freest civilization ever in the history of the world. It is extraordinary that it has become so paralyzed by the fear of radical Islamist terrorism--it really is a lion quaking in the face of a mouse. Radical Islamists do represent a serious threat and will use terror against civilians, but when you look at them historically, as the series does, you come to see that they are not some new force with a unique power to bring the strongest nation in the world to its knees.
Yet America has become trapped by that fear--riven by nightmare visions of 'sleeper cells' in its midst for which there is little or no evidence. The series attempts to explain why this strange state of affairs has come about and it argues that politicians have found in fear a way of restoring their power. In a populist consumerist age where their authority and legitimacy has declined dramatically politicians have simply discovered in the War on Terror a way of making themselves indispensable to their populations again by promising to protect us from something that only they can see...
© 2005 The Nation

by Huck Gutman

What does it mean that Alberto Gonzales is about to be approved as Attorney General of the USA? That this particular appointee of President George W Bush will become the chief law enforcement officer of the American nation?
The President's advisors and spin doctors proclaim his elevation from the President's counsel to his current position, as a moment of historic magnitude. For the first time in American history, a Hispanic will occupy one of the four highest administrative offices in the nation. They cite his story, the rise from rags to riches, as proof that democracy and egalitarian opportunity are alive and well in the world's sole superpower...

Bush is no doubt mindful of the Latino success story that Gonzales embodies...

But something other than identity politics and cultural pride are at stake in the Gonzales appointment...

The Quagmire Parable
by Robert Rowley
Published on Tuesday, January 25, 2005 by CommonDreams.org

Everybody on our block agreed that the people living next door to me were a threat to the neighborhood. It was common knowledge that Mr. X was a tyrant in his own house; consequently, his two teenaged boys were menaces. They sped recklessly around our streets in their EuroRacers, blasting loud music from their boomboxes at all hours. When they were younger I once saw one of them carrying a switchblade, and a few years ago they shot a hole in my mailbox with a pellet gun. I called the cops on them for that, but the cops did nothing.
Strange cars pulled in and out of their driveway in the middle of the night, and the homeowner on the other side told the neighborhood association that Mr. X was dealing drugs. Furthermore, that neighbor's uncle, Sam, claimed to have direct knowledge of a cache of weapons that Mr. X and his family owned. The authorities had been notified, and the rumor was that inspectors had infiltrated the residence in various guises--a cable TV guy, a septic tank truck driver, a telephone repair woman--but no weapons were ever found. We knew they had them, though, just because of the type of people they were.
Something had to be done. Actually, I'd been thinking about it for a few years before I brought it up at the neighborhood meeting. Not surprisingly, most of the neighbors were against the plan, wanting the authorities to deal with the problem. A few of the neighbors were very vocal in their opposition--the snooty Mr. French and the rigid Herman Aleman--but we were able to get a small coalition willing to go along.
The X family never knew what hit them. We tossed concussion grenades into their front yard, and while they were all looking out there, we stormed through the back door with guns blazing. It really shocked and awed them. Unfortunately, an infant girl and an elderly woman (Grandmother X?) were killed instantly, but that's the kind of thing that happens when you're liberating people. We didn't realize how large the family was, but we had enough plastic wrist ties to cuff them all. Mr. X, who was particularly belligerent, had to be chained in the basement. After we had the house secured we looked everywhere for drugs and weapons, but all we found was a small bag of marijuana in the younger boy's dresser drawer.
Although we found no weapons after digging up the entire backyard, we still felt pretty certain they were on the property. So we asked Mr. X to tell us where. He was uncooperative. We needed information. We used some interrogation techniques we had heard about--nothing rising above the level of fraternity hazing--to get answers. We stuck a lighted cigarette in his ear, pulled out a couple of his fingernails with needle-nosed pliers, sodomized him with an old metal flashlight we found on a shelf. The guy was stubborn, though, and he passed out after defecating on himself. We made one of the boys clean up after him, and we got the family to clean the whole house, too, which had been a pigsty. Then we tried to instill some semblance of social order. One of the neighbors, a guy who'd lost his wife and kids in a divorce, took a fancy to Mrs. X, so we made him the new father of the family. The family didn't like it, but it was for the best.
Shortly after we'd gotten things organized, the drive-by shootings began. At first they were sporadic, and we figured disgruntled drug buyers were behind it. Soon, the numbers increased: two, five, ten every night. One of the teenage boys said the shooters were family members. We telephoned some of the neighbors who were not part of the coalition--asking that they try to get license plate numbers to report to the police--but they didn't want to get involved. The police were no better. We called them several times, and each time they said they'd check out our claims; but they never did.
One night a bullet came straight through a window and killed Mr. Roma, one of the good neighbors. Afterwards, some of the members of the coalition wanted to pull out. I tried talking to them. "Did you think it was going to be easy?" I said. "Anything worth doing is hard work." But a few left anyway.
Because the utility bills had gone unpaid, services to the house were cut off. The Good Neighbors were able take turns going to their own houses for food and water, and to take care of personal needs, but the X family had to make do with whatever provisions we could supply. We did the best we could, but sometimes the family had to do without. Because the toilets were unflushable, family members had to take turns relieving themselves in the basement. It wasn't the best of situations, but at least they had a place to go.
We're kind of stuck here now, and nobody wants to help. That's a shame, too, because we've done a lot of good. Try telling that to the elite liberal media, though. Yes, word got out about how we've been handling the situation, and TV and newspaper reporters showed up for interviews. But all of their reports simply focus on the negatives, never pointing out all the positive things we've done. After all, we did this for the X family, to give them the freedom they've always wanted. And we got rid of a brutal tyrant.
Speaking of tyrants, some funny things are going on at Mr. Y's house now. We haven't pinned anything down yet, but it's just a matter of time. Soon, we may have to show the Y family what shock and awe is all about.
Robert Rowley is a freelance writer living in Las Cruces, New Mexico. His work has appeared in The American Scholar, High Country News, New Mexico Magazine, and Texas Parks & Wildlife.

In 1787, British abolitionists saw a link among all humankind.

The Idea That Brought Slavery to Its Knees
by Adam Hochschild
Published on Tuesday, January 25, 2005 by the Los Angeles Times

Every Briton knows that the Magna Carta, which placed some of the first limits on the absolute power of kings, was signed in 1215 by a reluctant King John and his barons in a meadow at Runnymede, beside the Thames. Every American knows that the Declaration of Independence was adopted in Philadelphia in 1776, in the building later known as Independence Hall. But another such milestone, equally worth celebrating, too few people remember.
The document involved is merely the minutes of a meeting. And if you go today to the spot where the meeting took place, 2 George Yard, a small courtyard in London's financial district, you will find no monument, no plaque, no troops of schoolchildren--only the service entrance to an office building...

"Standing for the Founding Principles of the Republic"
by US Senator Robert C. Byrd

Remarks delivered Tuesday as the Senate debated the nomination of Dr. Condoleezza Rice to be Secretary of State. The Senate is scheduled to vote on the nomination on Wednesday.

...And so we are here today to fulfill our constitutional duty to consider the nomination of Dr. Rice to be Secretary of State. Mr. President, I have carefully considered Dr. Rice’s record as National Security Advisor in the two months that have passed since the President announced her nomination to be Secretary of State. That record, I am afraid, is one of intimate involvement in a number of Administration foreign policies which I strongly oppose. These policies have fostered enormous opposition -- both at home and abroad -- to the White House’s view of America’s place in the world...

A Fantasy of Freedom

If Bush Wanted to Tackle Tyranny, He Could Start with Regimes Under US Control. But liberty clearly has limits
by Gary Younge
Published on Monday, January 24, 2005 by the Guardian/UK

There is one tiny corner of Cuba that will forever America be. It is a place where innocent people are held without charge for years, beyond international law, human decency and the mythical glow of Lady Liberty's torch. It is a place where torture is common, beating is ritual and humiliation is routine. They call it Guantánamo Bay.
Last week the new United States secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, listed Cuba, among others, as "an outpost of tyranny". A few days later President Bush started his second term with a pledge to unleash "the force of freedom" on the entire world. "The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world," he said
You would think that if the Americans are truly interested in expanding freedom and ending tyranny in Cuba, let alone the rest of the world, Guantánamo Bay would be as good a place to start as any. But the captives in Guantánamo should not ask for the keys to their leg irons any time soon. Ms Rice was not referring to the outpost of tyranny that her boss created in Cuba, but the rest of the Caribbean island, which lives in a stable mixture of the imperfect and the impressive.
In short, while the US could liberate a place where there are flagrant human rights abuses and over which they have total control, it would rather topple a sovereign state, which poses no threat, through diplomatic and economic - and possibly military - warfare that is already causing chaos and hardship...

For Millions of American Women, Roe Is Already History
by Laura Kaminker

Published on Monday, January 24, 2005 by CommonDreams.org

Thirty-two years ago yesterday, American women gained greater control over their bodies - and therefore, over their lives - when Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, became the law of the land.
The choice community celebrates the Roe anniversary as a kind of emancipation day, but it is unlikely we will see too many more of those celebrations. Roe will almost certainly be reversed soon. Abortion will be legal in some states and not others. State laws will vary widely in the circumstances under which a pregnancy may be terminated - as is now the case, only more so.
However, those of us involved in abortion access know that for millions of American women, Roe is already irrelevant...