Author: jameswagner

These are the words of a madman, and not merely the ravings of an idiot, ignorant of fact, of the world and of history. Actually they are certainly both.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (Reuters) – Vice President Dick Cheney called on Monday for a liberated Iraq, saying now not later is the time for a preemptive strike against President Saddam Hussein.

The news bulletin’s description of Cheney’s rant and the quotes it supplies show it to be based on lies, but even aside from that it cannot even be parsed sufficiently to apply a rational rebuttal.
Can’t we at least understand that Hussein is not dangerous until he does something to defend himself from attack, the attack Cheney seems about to launch in the name of our own rogue state, a superpower running amok under a government arguably as insane as Iraq’s own (maybe more so, if we really think about it)?
Finally, note that even in its nonsense form all that Cheney and everyone else in his [sic] administration says about our next target could actually be a description of the U.S. rather than Iraq, especially under the current junta. Aren’t we lucky that there is no bully to threaten a preemptive attack on ourselves? Or are we, or is the world?

A Kuwaiti political science professor who had come to the U.S. in 1971 for undergraduate and graduate studies, and who was working in Washington last September, is saddened, like many of us, at the prospect of a less open and accepting America.

A day after the attacks I walked to my office and noticed that people were looking at me more than usual. I kept smiling back and telling myself, “Shafeeq, you have become unusually handsome overnight. Be happy with it.”
The America I knew in the 1970’s taught me that whatever your ideology you could still be accepted and have a meaningful connection with others. When I first came to the United States I was a leftist and had in me all the anti-American slogans of the Vietnam war and the Palestine struggle. My American professors surprised me with their tolerance. Even when the professors were hard-core Republicans or fundamentalist Christians — I studied for one year at a very small junior college in the Midwest — the fair-mindedness was consistent. It amazed me.
In graduate school, in the 1980’s, the most Zionist of all my teachers would listen with empathy to my opinion and my difference of perspective, then argue. This opened the way for respect, learning and understanding. Tolerance, even without accepting the other view, does have a moderating power on people and permits for the repetition of the cycle of understanding. Tolerance breeds tolerance. As a professor of political science at Kuwait University, I practice my old professor’s technique on my own fundamentalist students.

–is not limited to the subject of health coverage.
But let’s start dismantling it right there.

Free-Market Myth of Health Coverage

To the Editor:
Re “Unproductive Medicare Bashing” (editorial, Aug. 20):
In urging President Bush to “stop the Medicare bashing and work to improve the system,” you note that the sick and elderly “are not always in the best position to shop around” for medical coverage. You assert that “it might be possible to design” the free-market solution that the White House and its backers seek, but say only that “nobody has done so yet.”
But health care isn’t like other commodities. Ordinary people seldom know much about its fast-changing options. By definition a free market can exist only where buyers are as well informed as sellers.
The free-market myth is trumpeted by health-industry interests to maximize their money-making opportunities. It’s also attractive to libertarians and others who believe that lower-income folks don’t deserve first-class care.
You should be less reluctant to expose this fallacy.
JOHN GLASEL
Hoboken, N.J., Aug. 20, 2002
The writer is secretary of Health Care for All, New Jersey.

[The U.S. won’t remonstrate against the Saudi government.]
Are we “Drowning Freedom In Oil”? The Muslim world does not hate the West. They quite reasonably hate what the West is doing to their world.

[An Indian Muslim community leader insists,] They hate that you are monopolizing all the nonrenewable resources (oil). And because you want to do that, you need to keep in power all your collaborators. As a consequence, you support feudal elements who are trying to stave off the march of democracy.”
The more I’ve traveled in the Muslim world since 9/11, the more it has struck me how true this statement is: Nothing has subverted Middle East democracy more than the Arab world’s and Iran’s dependence on oil, and nothing will restrict America’s ability to tell the truth in the Middle East and promote democracy there more than our continued dependence on oil.
Yet, since Sept. 11, the Bush-Cheney team has not lifted a finger to make us, or the Arab-Islamic world, less dependent on oil. Too bad. Because politics in countries dependent on oil becomes totally focused on who controls the oil revenues — rather than on how to improve the skills and education of both their men and women, how to build a rule of law and a legitimate state in which people feel some ownership, and how to build an honest economy that is open and attractive to investors.

The Saudi ruling family stays in power not through the support of the progressives, the secularized, U.S.-educated, pro-American elite and middle class.

It stays in power through a bargain with the conservative Wahhabi Muslim religious establishment. The Wahhabi clerics bless the regime and give it legitimacy — in the absence of any democratic elections. In return, the regime gives the Wahhabis oil money, which they use to propagate a puritanical version of Islam that is hostile to the West, to women, to modernity and to all non-Muslim faiths.

That money also finds its way into the hands of the terrorists with whom we insist we are at war.

And it is our oil addiction that keeps us from ever confronting the Saudis on this. Addicts never tell the truth to their pushers.

[Donald just sent this message describing Steve’s report of his experiences yesterday and today in Palestine.]

I am writing this around 10:30 AM on Sunday, August 25, New York Time
This report covers Saturday, August 24 and some of Sunday, August 25.
As reported previously, a demonstration protesting the occupation was
being planned for Saturday in a town called Hawara (sp?).
Internationals from ISM were joining Palestinians, along with an
Israeli group from Jerusalem, Ha Taayush.
Approaching Hawara, the ISM contingent was met by soldiers. These
soldiers did not advise the group of anything, they simply started
detonating sound bombs and launching tear gas. Steve says he got
mildly tear gassed.
The groups were split up as they dispersed, and Steve ran into an
olive grove. It was while he was doing this that I happened to make
my usual morning call. He told me he would call me back. A few
minutes later, I heard from him. He was in the olive grove, and told
me everything I have just written. He said he had been invited to
someone’s home and was going there. While he was in the olive grove,
Palestinians came out with onions, which can provide some relief from
tear gas when you sniff them.
While he was in Hawara at this person’s home, tanks went through the
streets with bullhorns and shouts of “Curfew”, while launching
teargas. Steve and his hosts locked their doors and shuttered their
windows and decamped to their hallway. Some little boys were brought
in off the street. Steve helped the little boys and they helped
back, offering their onions, as well as rags soaked in vinegar (which
helps alleviate the stinging of tear gas).
Later, when Steve was in the town, he spoke with a woman, saying what
a shame it was that little boys were getting tear gassed. She
said “Tear gas is nothing. You can get over tear gas. Bullets are
the problem”. Steve realized that it was possible that the soldiers
might have used live ammunition if it weren’t for the presence of
internationals.
Steve and the ISM people never met up with Ha Taayush. Ha Taayush
was physically stopped by the soldiers from entering the town. They
weren’t tear gassed but as Steve put it, they were manhandled. They
weren’t allowed to march to the checkpoint, but were allowed to hold
a rally. Then they went back to Jerusalem.
So how to get back home to Nablus and Askar refugee camp? Steve and
about 30 other internationals (plus two Palestinians) got in cabs as
started a journey along a settler road. Eventually they were stopped
by the Army because the cabs had West Bank plates and weren’t allowed
on the road. The soldiers made everyone get out of the cabs. It was
unclear what would happen next. Obviously, they would have to walk
to the village of Iraqborin. But before they could do that, the
soldiers wanted to check everyone’s ID. This would have guaranteed
arrest of the two Palestinians. So Steve and others fluent in Hebrew
argued and obfuscated and generally prevented IDs from being checked.
They were all welcomed very graciously by the people of Iraqborin and
spent Saturday night there.
One of the Palestinians in the group had not been allowed out of
Nablus for more than a year. She was very happy just to have been
out for a little while.
On Sunday they went back into Nablus. This wasn’t supposed to
happen. Steve says the soldiers are preventing internationals from
getting into Nablus and trying to remove all the internationals who
are inside. Apparently, soldiers are stopping everyone, even
searching ambulances, and not allowing them through if they contain
internationals. Steve believes that the military is planning a big
action in Nablus and does not wish to be fettered by humanitarian
concerns which internationals might call attention to. Nevertheless,
with the help of some seasoned drivers who knew all the right dirt
paths to circumvent checkpoints, Steve was delivered to the door of
the Nablus office of the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief
Committees.
Steve is going to rest today. He was exhausted by Saturday’s
activities. Tonight he will stay in Askar refugee camp, and tomorrow
he will go back to Bethlehem to visit people and bring things to them.
Steve says “It’s amazing how hard life is here under curfew. You
risk imprisonment just for going out to get food.”
That’s the report.
dsg

Can I just go home now?

Some people are suspicious that President Bush will go for a “wag the dog” strategy — boosting Republican prospects with a military assault on Iraq shortly before Election Day. But a modified approach now seems to be underway. Let’s call it “wag the puppy.”

What if they can keep us distracted from our problems and their foibles just enough to squeak through the November elections and what could then be an all-clear signal for further domestic and foreign shenanigans.

For the next couple of months, the president has domestic political incentives to keep “wagging the puppy” while floating a variety of unsubstantiated claims — like references to wispy dots that implausibly connect the Iraqi dictatorship and al Qaeda.
Meanwhile, sending more ships and aircraft to the Persian Gulf region can be calculated to evoke plenty of televised support-our-troops spectacles. With Old Glory in the background as tearful good-byes are exchanged at U.S. military ports and bases, how many politicians or journalists will challenge the manipulative tactics of the commander-in-chief?
Even if the White House doesn’t sic the Pentagon on Iraqi people before the November elections, its efforts to boost pre-war fever between now and then could have enormous media impacts with big dividends at the polls. This fall, our country may see something short of a “wag the dog” extravaganza provided by leading officials of the Bush administration. But unless we can stop them, the full-grown dogs of war are not far behind.

The only actual rationale for an Iraqi war was recently provided by Richard Perle, a leader of the Administration’s neoconservative hawks. “The failure to take on Saddam after what the president said would produce such a collapse of confidence in the president that it would set back the war on terrorism,” Perle told the New York Times.
Each of the governments which entered into a World War in 1914 felt compelled to do so largely for the same reason argued by Perle. Each felt that if it did not take action, its legitimacy, its power, would be undermined or dissolved. But that is precisely what their acts of war accomplished anyway, as apparently no one in Washington knows or cares, but only after the end of a world, and the death of about eight million combatants (not counting civilians–and there would be civilians this time). The twenty-year intermission, the second act (World War II) and, finally, the epilogue of the Cold War totally buried the horrible record of even the 1914-1918 production.

Dulce et Decorum Est
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.-
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,-
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.
Wilfred Owen

[The Latin reads, “It is sweet and proper to die for one’s country”–Horace]

Maybe something’s finally clicking out there in the head- and heartlands. Today even the NYTimes has to admit it’s worth a few lines, but without a doubt this story has real legs–and great pictures!

The violent demonstrations against President Bush caught White House planners by surprise, a presidential spokesman said Friday.
It’s not unusual for presidents to be confronted by small protests when visiting outside Washington, D.C. But demonstrations that result in the kind of skirmishes with police that erupted here Thursday night have been rare.
“We did not have any inkling” that such protest would occur, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer told reporters.

What does this say about Washington intelligence, including the kind that is supposed to stop real evil-doers?

Officials with the National Lawyer’s Guild asked Mayor Vera Katz to fire Police Chief Mark Kroeker, claiming Thursday’s actions by police were “atrocities against humanity.”
Katz’ spokeswoman, Sarah Bott, said the mayor and her staff were reviewing film and videotape of the incidents. She said the primary objective was to protect the president and that was accomplished.

The Shrub has a bulletproof limousine, a locked-down hotel, and the entire American military establishment to protect him, but the people who are sovereign, whom he is supposed to represent, who under normal circumstances elevate a president to the temporary position where he is expected to serve their welfare, mean nothing, and their safety is not even the concern of their own city police force.
Get rid of those thugs before they really get into trouble! You don’t want Brown Shirts on the public payroll.
But thank you, Portland! We really really love you.

There was not a word of this in the New York Times today, and only four inches of a narrow column hidden just past the comics section of the Daily News. But doesn’t it seem worth some real notice when the pretend-president of a nation at war is successfully confronted by an eclectic group of hundreds of (by one Oregon paper’s account, a thousand) citizen-demonstrators who are then pepper-sprayed and hit with riot police nightsticks?

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP)- Riot police used pepper spray and struck some demonstrators with batons after ordering hundreds of people to leave a protest near a hotel where President Bush attended a fund-raiser.
Protesters hammered on the hoods of police cars as pepper spray wafted through the air. Protesting Bush’s foreign policy, they chanted “Drop Bush, Not Bombs.”
Bush supporters in formal attire were jostled and taunted by protesters as they arrived for a fund-raiser for the re-election campaign of U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith. After elbowing through the demonstrators, they were checked by Secret Service agents before they were allowed inside the hotel.

Not the way to treat the people. [By the way, the entire trip to Oregon was to support a local Republican candidate. The Shrub made no public appearances; you had to pay up front–a lot–to see him.] The photos say a lot.

Police seemed unprepared by the size of the crowd, not providing traffic control for motorists whose evening commute suddenly ground to a halt.
The bulk of the crowd moved from barricade to barricade, chanting slogans, beating drums and yelling at police until abruptly pulling back and moving to another barricade.
But the confrontations turned violent at a barricade at the intersection of Southwest Sixth Avenue and Taylor Street when police decided to push the crowd back, first with nightsticks and then with pepper spray.

The Oregonian reported that the demonstration lasted seven hours.

The protesters represented peace groups, labor unions, environmental organizations, churches, low-income advocates and, overwhelmingly, just themselves.
They were irate over Bush’s plan to relax environmental standards for logging, a possible war with Iraq, the U.S. stand on the Palestinian question and what they called rampant government corruption, among other issues.

Mustn’t report this stuff outside Portland. It might be catching.