Friday, March 18, 2005
We Don't Need Iraqi Oil! Would I Lie to You?
Secret U.S. Plans For Iraq's Oil
by Greg Palast
Published on Thursday, March 17, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
by Greg Palast
Published on Thursday, March 17, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
The Bush administration made plans for war and for Iraq's oil before the 9/11 attacks sparking a policy battle between neo-cons and Big Oil, BBC's Newsnight has revealed.
Two years ago today - when President George Bush announced US, British and Allied forces would begin to bomb Baghdad - protestors claimed the US had a secret plan for Iraq's oil once Saddam had been conquered.
In fact there were two conflicting plans, setting off a hidden policy war between neo-conservatives at the Pentagon, on one side, versus a combination of "Big Oil" executives and US State Department "pragmatists."...
Neocons About to Rule through World Bank?
Green Imperialism: Wolfowitz, Wars and the Wearing Down of Sovereign States
by Abhinav Aima
Published on Thursday, March 17, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
by Abhinav Aima
Published on Thursday, March 17, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
The nomination of Neoconman Paul D. Wolfowitz for the presidency of the World Bank has sent a clear signal to the sovereign nations across the world – forget charity. Now you must squeal support for the United States for every penny you need to feed, house and medicate your poor...
Democracy Serves the US
Playing the Democracy Card
How America Furthers Its National Interests in the Middle East
by Dilip Hiro
Published on Thursday, March 17, 2005 by TomDispatch.com
by Dilip Hiro
Published on Thursday, March 17, 2005 by TomDispatch.com
The United States flaunts the banner of democracy in the Middle East only when that advances its economic, military, or strategic interests. The history of the past six decades shows that whenever there has been conflict between furthering democracy in the region and advancing American national interests, U.S. administrations have invariably opted for the latter course. Furthermore, when free and fair elections in the Middle East have produced results that run contrary to Washington's strategic interests, it has either ignored them or tried to block the recurrence of such events...
© 2005 Dilip Hiro
Getting Out Of Iraq
Why Iraq Withdrawal Makes Sense
by Norman Solomon
Published on Thursday, March 17, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
by Norman Solomon
Published on Thursday, March 17, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
President Bush just told reporters that he has no intention of setting any timetable for withdrawal. "Our troops will come home when Iraq is capable of defending herself," he said. Powerful pundits keep telling us that a swift pullout of US troops would be irresponsible. And plenty of people have bought into that idea - including quite a few progressives. Such acceptance is part of what Martin Luther King Jr. called "the madness of militarism."...
[T]hroughout the 1960s and into the 1970s, a prevailing argument was that removing US troops would be a betrayal of U.S. responsibility to the people of South Vietnam. Today, likewise, opposition to a swift U.S. pullout from Iraq is often based on the idea that the American military must stay because of a responsibility to the people of Iraq.
But most Iraqis want the U.S. military out of their country - pronto. As
Published on Thursday, March 17, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
Why Iraq Withdrawal Makes Sense
by Norman Solomon
President Bush just told reporters that he has no intention of setting any timetable for withdrawal. "Our troops will come home when Iraq is capable of defending herself," he said. Powerful pundits keep telling us that a swift pullout of U.S. troops would be irresponsible. And plenty of people have bought into that idea -- including quite a few progressives. Such acceptance is part of what Martin Luther King Jr. called "the madness of militarism."...
As spring 2005 begins, many who like to praise Martin Luther King are going out of their way to evade the fundamental destructiveness of this war. Of course, throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s, a prevailing argument was that removing U.S. troops would be a betrayal of US responsibility to the people of South Vietnam. Today, likewise, opposition to a swift US pullout from Iraq is often based on the idea that the American military must stay because of a responsibility to the people of Iraq.
But most Iraqis want the US military out of their country - pronto. As Newsweek reported in its Jan. 31 edition: "Now every major poll shows an ever-larger majority of Iraqis want the Americans to leave." Yet we hear that US troops must stay for the good of the Iraqi people -even though most of those people clearly want US troops to leave. (Are we supposed to believe that Americans know better than Iraqis whether American troops should stay in Iraq?) [Of course they do! Americans know everything better than anybody else]
Thursday, March 17, 2005
An Israeli Lawyer/Reservist Speaks Out
Israel: A Call for Divestment
by Shamai Leibowitz
by Shamai Leibowitz
Published on Wednesday, March 16, 2005 by The Nation
The assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri has led to an explosion of "people power" in the streets of Beirut, in which hundreds of thousands of Lebanese citizens have called for an end to Syria's occupation of their land. These calls have been celebrated and echoed in other capitals, and nowhere more so than in Washington. However, there is another area in the Middle East where a struggle to end foreign occupation has brought the natives only death and destruction. For decades, Israel has crushed the 3.5 million Palestinians living under military domination, beating them into submission while taking away their civil rights and their land.
As an Israeli Jew committed to peace for Israel and our neighbors, I was shocked and disgusted by the recent terror attack in Tel Aviv, which took the lives of innocent Jews. Such acts of terror have made headlines and been rightfully condemned by the international community. However, deadly Israeli attacks against Palestinian civilians have not received significant press attention in the West or led to appropriate, decisive international action. For decades the Israeli army, equipped with US arms and technology, has killed, maimed, beaten and tortured tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians. Evidently, in the eyes of the West the people power of Palestinians does not count...
The assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri has led to an explosion of "people power" in the streets of Beirut, in which hundreds of thousands of Lebanese citizens have called for an end to Syria's occupation of their land. These calls have been celebrated and echoed in other capitals, and nowhere more so than in Washington. However, there is another area in the Middle East where a struggle to end foreign occupation has brought the natives only death and destruction. For decades, Israel has crushed the 3.5 million Palestinians living under military domination, beating them into submission while taking away their civil rights and their land.
As an Israeli Jew committed to peace for Israel and our neighbors, I was shocked and disgusted by the recent terror attack in Tel Aviv, which took the lives of innocent Jews. Such acts of terror have made headlines and been rightfully condemned by the international community. However, deadly Israeli attacks against Palestinian civilians have not received significant press attention in the West or led to appropriate, decisive international action. For decades the Israeli army, equipped with US arms and technology, has killed, maimed, beaten and tortured tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians. Evidently, in the eyes of the West the people power of Palestinians does not count...
© 2005 The Nation
Wednesday, March 16, 2005
International Law? Who Cares? Not Dubya or Jeezus!
A Scofflaw in the White House: Undermining Respect for Law
by Tom Turnipseed
by Tom Turnipseed
Published on Tuesday, March 15, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
...On March 9, the Bush administration announced its decision to withdraw the United States from an International Court of Justice protocol on Consular Relations that the U.S. proposed in 1963 and ratified in 1969. We were the first country to invoke the measure to protect our citizens abroad after the taking of 52 U.S. hostages in Tehran, Iran in 1979. The Bush scofflaw gang in the White House made the decision to ditch the international agreement because opponents of the death penalty have been using it to fight death sentences of foreigners on death row in the U.S.
Examples of exceptionalism to rules of international law currently being flouted and abrogated by the Bush administration abound. "The International Covenant on Economic, Social. and Cultural Rights" asserts the right of all human beings to freely pursue their social and cultural development and promotes the right to work, the right to unionize and the right to receive "social security, including social insurance", the right to have adequate living conditions, the right to be free from hunger and the right to education. We signed this covenant in 1977 and never ratified it, though 151 other nations have. "The Convention on Discrimination Against Women" that asserts equality of men and women and rejects discrimination against women, including women’s reproductive rights, was signed by the U. S. in 1980, and 179 nations have ratified it. We are the only industrialized country to fail to ratify it. The "Convention on the Rights of the Child" asserts broad and inalienable rights for children under 18 to be free from want, abuse and exploitation as well as to express their beliefs and ideas. The U.S. signed it in 1995 and 191 nations who signed have ratified. Only the U.S. and Somalia have not. The "UN Framework Convention on Climate Control (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol" are interesting testaments to the arrogance of the Bush scofflaw mentality when faced with the scientific reality of human over-use of fossil fuels causing global warming and climate change. We ratified the UNFCCC in 1992 and signed the Kyoto Protocol in 1998 but never ratified it. The Bush administration has now pulled out of negotiations. 189 other nations have ratified including Russia.. The "Rome Statue of the International Criminal Court(ICC) that has international jurisdiction to prosecute individuals (not states) for crimes such as genocide, as well as other crimes against humanity, has been signed by 120 nations, but Bush’s scofflaw gang does not want the U.S. to participate.
Makes you wonder why we would condone genocide.
The Bush administration has also ditched the "Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty" that has been ratified by 120 nations; the "Land Mine Ban Treaty", ratified by 144 nations; and the "Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention", ratified in its original form by 144 nations.
We should not be known as a "rogue nation" with a scofflaw in the White House who chases "security" at the point of a gun. Only by seeking and respecting global law and justice can we have an opportunity for justice and security at home and abroad...
...On March 9, the Bush administration announced its decision to withdraw the United States from an International Court of Justice protocol on Consular Relations that the U.S. proposed in 1963 and ratified in 1969. We were the first country to invoke the measure to protect our citizens abroad after the taking of 52 U.S. hostages in Tehran, Iran in 1979. The Bush scofflaw gang in the White House made the decision to ditch the international agreement because opponents of the death penalty have been using it to fight death sentences of foreigners on death row in the U.S.
Examples of exceptionalism to rules of international law currently being flouted and abrogated by the Bush administration abound. "The International Covenant on Economic, Social. and Cultural Rights" asserts the right of all human beings to freely pursue their social and cultural development and promotes the right to work, the right to unionize and the right to receive "social security, including social insurance", the right to have adequate living conditions, the right to be free from hunger and the right to education. We signed this covenant in 1977 and never ratified it, though 151 other nations have. "The Convention on Discrimination Against Women" that asserts equality of men and women and rejects discrimination against women, including women’s reproductive rights, was signed by the U. S. in 1980, and 179 nations have ratified it. We are the only industrialized country to fail to ratify it. The "Convention on the Rights of the Child" asserts broad and inalienable rights for children under 18 to be free from want, abuse and exploitation as well as to express their beliefs and ideas. The U.S. signed it in 1995 and 191 nations who signed have ratified. Only the U.S. and Somalia have not. The "UN Framework Convention on Climate Control (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol" are interesting testaments to the arrogance of the Bush scofflaw mentality when faced with the scientific reality of human over-use of fossil fuels causing global warming and climate change. We ratified the UNFCCC in 1992 and signed the Kyoto Protocol in 1998 but never ratified it. The Bush administration has now pulled out of negotiations. 189 other nations have ratified including Russia.. The "Rome Statue of the International Criminal Court(ICC) that has international jurisdiction to prosecute individuals (not states) for crimes such as genocide, as well as other crimes against humanity, has been signed by 120 nations, but Bush’s scofflaw gang does not want the U.S. to participate.
Makes you wonder why we would condone genocide.
The Bush administration has also ditched the "Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty" that has been ratified by 120 nations; the "Land Mine Ban Treaty", ratified by 144 nations; and the "Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention", ratified in its original form by 144 nations.
We should not be known as a "rogue nation" with a scofflaw in the White House who chases "security" at the point of a gun. Only by seeking and respecting global law and justice can we have an opportunity for justice and security at home and abroad...
Watch China
No Longer the "Lone" Superpower
Coming to Terms with China
by Chalmers Johnson
by Chalmers Johnson
Published on Tuesday, March 15, 2005 by TomDispatch.com
I recall forty years ago, when I was a new professor working in the field of Chinese and Japanese international relations, that Edwin O. Reischauer once commented, "The great payoff from our victory of 1945 was a permanently disarmed Japan." Born in Japan and a Japanese historian at Harvard, Reischauer served as American ambassador to Tokyo in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Strange to say, since the end of the Cold War in 1991 and particularly under the administration of George W. Bush, the United States has been doing everything in its power to encourage and even accelerate Japanese rearmament.
Such a development promotes hostility between China and Japan, the two superpowers of East Asia, sabotages possible peaceful solutions in those two problem areas, Taiwan and North Korea, left over from the Chinese and Korean civil wars, and lays the foundation for a possible future Sino-American conflict that the United States would almost surely lose. It is unclear whether the ideologues and war lovers of Washington understand what they are unleashing -- a possible confrontation between the world's fastest growing industrial economy, China, and the world's second most productive, albeit declining, economy, Japan; a confrontation which the United States would have both caused and in which it might well be consumed...
I recall forty years ago, when I was a new professor working in the field of Chinese and Japanese international relations, that Edwin O. Reischauer once commented, "The great payoff from our victory of 1945 was a permanently disarmed Japan." Born in Japan and a Japanese historian at Harvard, Reischauer served as American ambassador to Tokyo in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Strange to say, since the end of the Cold War in 1991 and particularly under the administration of George W. Bush, the United States has been doing everything in its power to encourage and even accelerate Japanese rearmament.
Such a development promotes hostility between China and Japan, the two superpowers of East Asia, sabotages possible peaceful solutions in those two problem areas, Taiwan and North Korea, left over from the Chinese and Korean civil wars, and lays the foundation for a possible future Sino-American conflict that the United States would almost surely lose. It is unclear whether the ideologues and war lovers of Washington understand what they are unleashing -- a possible confrontation between the world's fastest growing industrial economy, China, and the world's second most productive, albeit declining, economy, Japan; a confrontation which the United States would have both caused and in which it might well be consumed...
Monday, March 14, 2005
Kill The WTO - Permanently!
The Walking Zombie of the WTO
by Deborah James
Published on Saturday, March 12, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
by Deborah James
Published on Saturday, March 12, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
More than 240 activists from 23 countries gathered in Hong Kong last weekend to plan a strategy for mobilization against the 6th Ministerial Meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) this coming December. But didn't we already kill the WTO in Cancún in 2003? And come to think of it, wasn’t it already dead in Seattle in 1999?
Yes, it was dead, and we had killed it. The story of how the US and European Union raised it from the dead – like a zombie, beholden to its master - reveals much about the inner workings of the WTO, and why it is more important than ever to stop it before the next Ministerial in Hong Kong
