Thursday, January 31, 2008

Eating Dirt for Lunch in Haiti. "Overwhelming Strength" in Florida.

At about 8:25 Wednesday morning, US Eastern time, AOL's internet welcome screen juxtaposed two AP news stories: "He (McCain) Jumps Ahead in Republican Race: What Will Rudy Giuliani Do Now?" and "Desperate Haitians Eat Dirt: 'One Day I'll Have Enough Food.'"

("Hungry people in the slums of Haiti are giving new meaning to the phrase 'dirt poor.' As food prices soar, many desperate people are eating mud cookies to stave off their hunger pangs...;" Jonathan M. Katz, AP, January 29, 2008, quote from AP photo gallery by Ariana Cubillos).

One thing Rudy Giuliani did after losing the Florida primary was give a speech with the line "The best way to achieve peace is through overwhelming strength."

That could have been said by the rulers of colonial France as they tore the gold from Haiti's mountains, or by Thomas Jefferson as he warned against tolerating Haiti's slave uprising. Or by the US rulers of the '50s through '80s as they backed the Duvaliers as Haiti's dictators, or of the '90s as they backed the FRAPH death squad and imposed a World Bank/IMF plan on Haiti that -- a decade before Wednesay's dirt- consumption update -- began making Haitians hungrier.

(Re. FRAPH and the World Bank/ IMF, respectively, see my "Our Man in FRAPH: Behind Haiti's Paramilitaries," October 24, 1994, "He's Our S.O.B.," October 31, 1994, and "Haiti Under the Gun," January 8 / 15, 1996, all in The Nation [US], and "Aristide Banks on Austerity," Multinational Monitor, July/August, 1994).

It might be true, in theory, that overwhelming strength could achieve peace, but only if wielded by a figure like, say, God, and the Bible, Torah, and Koran all agree that even that scenario makes massacres.

The US founders may not have followed their own stated principles -- few do -- but they were cynically insightful about people in general, so as rich men, some of them slave holders (like Jefferson), they sought to contain the popular "mob" but also to structurally, constitutionally constrain future rulers like themselves.

In stated principle, at least, the US founders feared overwhelming strength in the hands of humans.

But today, the stated principle has reversed.

Giuliani's statement was not peculiar. McCain says things like that all the time, and it was the Clinton administration, where Hillary worked, that produced the 20-year Pentagon plan for "Full-spectrum Dominance," i.e. the ability "to defeat any adversary and control any situation," anywhere, anytime (Jim Garamore, American Forces Press Service [US Department of Defense], "Joint Vision 2020 Emphasizes Full-spectrum Dominance," June 2, 2000).

But if you fully dominate the world, who's going to stop you if you murder, or if you cause people to hunger because of the way you move and concentrate scarce wealth?

Those are the murder and preventable death problems that Americans are free to raise in politics -- but usually don't, but there's also another, straight-power problem that may eventually have to get discussed.

The problem is that though militarily, in some senses, the US still overwhelms, economically the US is becoming one power-center among several.

In his State of the Union President Bush said he'd "make sure America remains the most dynamic nation on earth."

That was possible to do after World War II with the rest of the rich world ravaged, but with nodes of capitalism now having dispersed worldwide it is no longer possible.

The fastest growth will inevitably happen elsewhere and, before long, a number of others will equal the US as centers of capital, exchange, and even innovation (and, on the latter, sooner than later if the US sustains its anti-immigrant hysteria).

What then? Elected US rulers always talk in supremacist, nationalist terms (though they personally and professionally invest globally). If they truly want the US to have/keep overwhelming dominance, their comparative advantage will have to be in gunpowder.

The sensible answer by non-rulers should be: who cares about attaining/keeping dominance? As a means of achieving peace it is discredited. As a means of feeding people, it hasn't produced.

It's more reasonable to search for other means, means toward good ends like ceasing death squad sponsorship, and shifting enough wealth so that people can sustain their strength by eating real food instead of dirt.

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Monday, January 28, 2008

State of the Union. Entitlement, Justice, and the War of All Against All.

President Bush just said "We will deliver justice to our enemies" (US State of the Union Address, January 28, 2008).

So does that mean that it's dependent on our enemies to deliver justice to us?

That's the way people like Bin Laden think, and Bush apparently shares his mindset.

A leader chooses his definition of justice and goes out and kills -- or does whatever -- to the culprit.

Thats the way things theoretically work by default in the absence of a strong society, in the condition of something like what Thomas Hobbes called "the war of all against all."

But if we didn't have a strong society, Bush wouldn't have a $2.8 trillion budget (FY 2007). He wouldn't have Secret Service bodyguards, so he'd have to wear a holster to the podium, as Arafat -- who had a smaller budget -- once did.

Without a strong society there wouldn't be any effective inheritance laws, so Bush would be out there scrambling for work and food like everybody else.

In other words, you can't have it both ways.

You can't luxuriate in huge social entitlements while ignoring society's most basic laws and taboos: the ones regarding killing other people, the ones that say that society defines justice on these matters -- not individual leaders, or even establishments -- and it defines it by consensus and law (i.e. murder laws), made laboriously over time.

So if Bush wants to go out and kill somebody with a sword, as he might in a Hobbesian world, that's up to him.

But he shouldn't be surprised -- or complain -- when he's arrested by society's law-enforcers.

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Sunday, January 27, 2008

Suharto Dead. Six Billion Alive. Time for a Little Reform.

To the Clinton White House, General Suharto was "our kind of guy," but to many Indonesian -- and other -- children he was the guy who killed their parents.

Now, General Suharto is dead, and in Heaven a million souls are beseeching God for permission to invade Hell and give him what he's got coming.

But even if they gave him a proper trial, it would be too late for their shot, starved bodies.

There are six billion people still above ground in this world.

Isn't it time for a little reform?

(See posting of January 13, 2008, "General Suharto of Indonesia. One Small Man Leaves a Million Corpses." For "our kind of guy" quote see David E. Sanger, "Real Politics: Why Suharto is In and Castro is Out," New York Times, October 31, 1995).

Link to Democracy Now! discussion re. Suharto and the US.

Link to tape of questioning of Richard Holbrooke and Bill Clinton re. their support for Suharto's killings.


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Saturday, January 26, 2008

The Breaking of the Gaza Wall. Wise, Justified Political Violence.

The breaking of the Gaza-Egypt wall is clearly a good thing, and a rare example of the moral -- and also wise -- use of violence in politics. (For the logic and effects of the Israeli cordon of Gaza see posting of December 7, 2007, "Imposed Hunger in Gaza, The Army in Indonesia. Questions of Logic and Activism").

Most all political violence consists of clear wrongs , like murder or unjustified war, but sometimes, sadly, disgustingly, some violence is justified as a last resort, and sometimes -- as a subcategory of that -- some of that justified violence is also wise, tactically.

Once you get far outside the murder and the crimes of war and those against humanity, some of the choices regarding whether or not to use some violence can be legitimately tough and debatable.

But the Gaza wall-breaking was an easy call: no people were killed, some may have been saved, and the spectacle of an exodus into Egypt effectively dramatized a gross injustice.

It's ironic that this was apparently done -- its not yet clear from what level -- by or with some Hamas people, since that's a movement that has, in its bombings of Israeli civilians, been immoral, criminal, and tactically stupid, turning the oppressed into oppressors, in many eyes, and turning some victims into actual murderers.

But this use of violence -- against mere bricks in a wall -- was right and a stroke of genius. The legend of all-knowing Israeli intelligence notwithstanding, some of the IDF (Israel Defense Forces)/ Shin Bet/ Mossad/ Cabinet killers must have been stunned, and temporarily shaken.

This was, after all, the first big, smart Palestinian move since the David and Goliath stone intifada, which pitted mere stone-throwing teenagers against Israeli tanks and body-armored soldiers, and exposed the Occupation, twenty years ago, putting Israel's regime on the defensive. (Not that it lasted long enough to produce results. The Peace Laureates Rabin and Arafat killed it; Rabin with knee-breaking -- "force, might, and beatings" was his order, which, for a while, made Israel look still worse, but then Arafat shut the teen Davids down since they were winning without his approval).

The poor Washington Post was clearly stunned and shaken by this wall breach in Gaza.

They were reduced to accusing Hamas of "exploit[ing] [Israel's] temporary shutdown of fuel supplies" -- i.e. by telling people about it (aren't newspapers supposed to encourage that?), and were cornered into the unfortunate position -- if one accepts their logic -- of seeming to support the denial of rights to Darfur refugees. ("As thousands stream across the border to Egypt, Hamas blockades the peace process," The Washington Post, January 24, 2008).

The Post asked rhetorically: "Would Mr. Mubarak allow tens of thousands of Darfur refugees to illegally enter Egypt from Sudan, where a real humanitarian crisis is underway?," the expected answer from the reader being a realistic, shameful (for Mubarak) "No," and then demanded that Mubarak apply exactly that shameful standard by likewise barring uninvited Gazans.

So in order to keep the Palestinians out (or, more precisely, keep them cooped-in), you seem willing to bar the Darfuris too?

When you reach for arguments like that, it's a sign that your side's case is in trouble.

So what would happen if some Palestinians decided to break the West Bank wall, too? Say, tens of thousands of teens one morning, at dawn, turning up with picks and crowbars?

Would the IDF destroy people to save concrete?

Quite possibly.

They feel entitled.

As then - Justice Minister Haim Ramon put it, "we are allowed to destroy everything" (Gideon Levy, Little Ahmadinejads, Haaretz, 10/06/2007), and though he was talking about Lebanon '06 (Final rough tallies: 1,000 Lebanese civilians killed, 40 Israeli civilians, and 4 million mainly-US cluster bomblets scattered by IDF in southern Lebanon) he could have been articulating the broad moral/criminal law philosophy of today's Israeli/US establishments, and -- when it comes to Israel -- much of today's Israeli/US society.

But if they did, if they opened fire, Israel-Palestine history would begin anew, and though many Palestinians would die, as usual, this time they might not die in vain, since many in the world -- including the US -- would see who's oppressing whom.

Incidentally, Israel's leading newspaper, Haaretz, recently carried an airtight critique of the security rationale behind the vast complex of barriers that seal-in West Bank villages -- a complex of which the wall is only the final, tallest, manifestation.

The stated reasons for these barriers, that divert and slow Palestinians, making them fade and die in ambulances, is that they keep suicide/homicide bombers from attacking, in-and-of-itself, a good objective.

But Haaretz reporters found that, incredibly, 475 of 572 roadblocks were unmanned, and then posed the logically clinching questions: What? Suicide bombers can't get through here? They're not willing to step over the unmanned barriers that stop ordinary people (and ambulances)?

The Haaretz analyst reached the reasonable conclusion that the sealing-in has a different function:

"Is it seriously contended by anyone that a mound of earth, a ditch or a series of concrete blocks can stop terrorists from moving around? Do these barriers serve any function other than embittering the lives of the Palestinians? The sick and the elderly, pregnant women and people carrying shopping baskets undoubtedly find it more difficult to get in and out of their barricaded towns and villages. Indeed both B'Tselem and the organization Physicians for Human Rights have documented cases of sick people being unable to receive treatment because they couldn't reach their doctors or clinics - while anybody planning a terrorist attack can easily clamber over the mounds, traverse the ditches or circumvent the blocks..."

"Nobody I've spoken with," continued the writer, Daniel Gavron, " has a convincing military explanation for the unmanned roadblocks. In fact, people familiar with Israeli military thinking have convinced me that the main object of these barriers is to fragment the territory, effectively preempting the 'contiguous Palestinian state' recently touted by U.S. President George Bush. Nothing I have heard has convinced me that the unmanned roadblocks increase the security of Israelis in Israel, or even of the Jewish settlers in the territories." (Daniel Gavron, "Start with the unmanned roadblocks!," Haaretz, December 23, 2007, which also refers to earlier Haaretz reporting ).

And as the veteran Israeli correspondent Amira Hass points out, there seem to be other, non-barrier/wall, factors behind the recent decline in bombings; that is, bombings by walking Palestinians; bombings by flying Israelis have increased (see Amira Hass, "Where are the suicide bombers?," December 2007 | Kibush.co.il , translated from Hebrew by George Malent. Hass notes that some Palestinians, desperate for work, slip the wall into Israel daily. If they can do it, so could suicide bombers, if they personally or politically wanted to).

And, at any rate, the settlers and the Occupation are illegal, as is the wall, according to the World Court -- and not surprisingly, the Palestinians are justly unhappy with them all -- , so the best security solution is to simply remove them.

But the Israeli regime seems to want perpetual war tension. It now sustains their political culture.

That's fine. They can want whatever they want.

But they don't have the right to impose it.

And neither do the Palestinians, of course. They just have the right to their rights.

And since one of them is to have that illegal wall breached, and Mr. Olmert doesn't want to do it, maybe some Palestinian teens can do it for him.

He can meet them at the wall, at dawn.

Tell him to bring a pick.

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Friday, January 25, 2008

Little Hands With Fever. Some Consequences of Poverty Death.

At an orphanage this morning, the ustad (Muslim cleric) in charge said they were taking care of 387 kids, and when I shook hands with twelve of them -- mainly little girls -- four of them clearly had fevers.

When I asked the ustad how the parents had died, he first answered "They were poor people." Asked to elaborate, he listed sickness, hunger, disaster (the tsunami), accident, and work (ie. on-the-job injury/ overwork) as being among the reasons the kids were now there, instead of in a family.

(We had just met. He prudently omitted murder, private and official).

He went on to explain that some of the kids were on loan, since one of their parents or relatives was living, but so poor that they had chosen to bring a kid or two to the orphanage -- securing them better nutrition, etc. -- until they found some money, food, or pick-up work and felt equipped to reclaim their children.

When the kids are sick, the ustad said, the orphanage takes them to the PUSKESMAS, the public health clinics for Indonesia's poor that stand in contradistinction to what poor people call "good doctors" (dokter bagus).

At a PUSKESMAS you're lucky if a. it's open b. they have real doctors, nurses or trained aides c. they dispense more than over-the-counter pain killers/ cough medicines and d. the bribe isn't too heavy.

Even if you borrow/pawn/sell something and go to a dokter bagus if you're poor you may still be in trouble, since favorite tactics include quite expensive, unnecessary X-rays and, for people with diabetes, walking into the doctor's office with a swollen foot and walking out with no foot.

One good doctor who truly studied well and wants to help the poor once told of another class of kids-on-loan: kids rented out by their families as beggars, then run by preman (street thugs with army, police or big-shot backing) and, he said, sometimes sedated to be compliant and look still more pitiable.

(All in all, though, one still encounters fewer street beggars than one does in, say, New York City. For a reason why, having to do with extended families, see posting of January 14, 2008, "Economic Indicator").

Jakarta and other cities have now made it a crime to beg, or to give.

Another shakedown excuse for Indonesia's POLRI police.

The kids in the orphanage are actually lucky.

Lucky not in comparison to a decent world, where people don't die of poverty (or, more precisely, die of a failure to move excess wealth from people who merely want it to people whose bodies need it), but lucky in comparison to life on the streets.

No mom or dad is pretty awful.

But its good to be clean, and also to have roughly 386 friends.


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Thursday, January 24, 2008

Assassination Update

The activist threatened with "a Munir" -- assassination -- by Indonesian intelligence (BIN) has, people say, arrived on foreign soil, after fleeing his native country. (See posting of January 22, 2008, "Breaking News: Indonesian Intelligence (BIN) Threatens to Kill Activist").

But he shouldn't count his chickens prematurely.

The country he's in has been known to do its own assassinations -- some of them on foreign soil -- and, as is often the case among killer rulers, has an "intelligence" relationship with Jakarta.

Its just a question of who feels politically empowered/ compelled to ask whom to do what.

And what is this man supposed to do now? Live hiding in exile away from work and family and away from his efforts to stand up to certain powers and, as he's been heard to say, "help my country, Indonesia"?

It is said that the US Embassy in Jakarta is well aware of BIN threats against activists. Some hope that the Embassy may now make "representations," an old diplomatic practice, which entails using one hand/finger to make "human rights" admonishments to the regime you're sponsoring, while using the other to hand over fresh supplies of guns, bullets, and money to the admonishees.

And even if BIN -- ie. President Susilo, the General who runs Indonesia -- decided to call the whole thing off, what precisely would they do?

Send a note to the activist's family saying 'Come home. It's OK. We've decided not to kill you'?

Such a statement might indeed be enough to lure a brave man home, but the only thing that would be enough to really guarantee his -- and others' -- safety would be to oust murderers from power and have their decisions made for them by jailers.


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Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Breaking News: Indonesian Intelligence (BIN) Threatens to Kill Activist

Last night, local time, during a ceremony celebrating democracy, one of the most noted killers in Indonesia, Col. Chairawan of BIN intelligence (Badan Intelijen Negara, State Intelligence Body), waited quietly in plainclothes.

(Chairawan, a US-trained Kopassus veteran, has been publicly implicated in disappearances, and told me in 1998 that he reported to a US Colonel, who worked for the US Defense Intelligence Agency [DIA]; see my "Our Man In Jakarta," The Nation [US], June 15, 1998).

After the dancers and speeches had finished and the guests were gone from the Aceh governor's palace, Col. Chairawan slipped in and met the governor till midnight.

As this was happening, news from Jakarta was confirming again that BIN had assassinated the famous activist, Munir, and -- unreported -- another far less famous activist was fleeing Indonesia in fear of his life.

This man had been at a pool with his wife and kids one recent Saturday when he got an urgent SMS text message, from family, saying he'd better come to Jakarta.

There he was confronted by a senior BIN man whom he, luckily, knew through family, and who informed him sternly that BIN was -- as they now say in Indonesian security -- considering "doing a Munir on him" ("akan di Munirkan").

Munir was poisoned to death with arsenic as he traveled from Jakarta to Amsterdam, vomiting to death on the plane, reaching The Netherlands as a corpse (see posting of November 13, 2007, "Vomiting to Death on a Plane. Arsenic Democracy").

(The new public news was that a BIN functionary who had paid Munir's poisoner had now fingered one of his own bosses, Gen. Muchdi. This talking BIN man, though, was unavailable for court, overseas on "state duty," and is reportedly "believed to be involved in intelligence operations in Pakistan"; see Mark Forbes, "Jakarta Spy Agency Linked to Murder," The Age [Australia], January 17, 2008.)

The summoned activist, known to be a brave man, appeared to be shaken by the death threat since it followed two things: one, a detailed -- accurate -- recital of what he'd done in previous weeks ("You go to the store, we know it"), and, two, a reminder that BIN's orders come directly from Indonesia's President, Gen. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

This was relevant since the activist -- not from a poor family -- has a few connections himself, but since BIN is the instrument of the country's military president, "You can't do anything," he was told.

His offenses were severalfold. He was trying to oust a BIN agent from political office (his purported right, under democracy), and he had been seen meeting with people from watch-listed regions, including West Papua (likewise, a supposed right).

He already knew that BIN men had been watching his house, coming to his workplace looking for him. He had disconnected his phones, and, at the Jakarta death-threat meeting he learned that BIN was perusing his bank accounts.

So as they danced democracy in Banda Aceh, he got some things together and fled.

Several of the countries he's said to be considering going to now boast enhanced martial ties with Jakarta.

When told about the situation, one senior elected official tried to play down the danger. His theory: if they threaten you, you're OK. "The barking dog doesn't bite," he said.

That didn't work for Munir, the receiver of many threats, but some threatened are, indeed, still living.

When you live shadowed by killers in democratic plainclothes, you just have to count your blessings -- or, secure more of them.


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Monday, January 21, 2008

Action, Motive, Distraction, and Nukes in Politics. An Interview With the Iranian Press.

The following is the text of an e-mail interview with Iranian Press TV (http://www.presstv.ir/).

(UPDATE NOTE, Jan. 29, 2008: Contrary to my insistence that this e-mail interview be published in full, if at all, Iranian Press TV published a version that cut all my criticisms of the Iranian rulers.)

Questions by Press TV. Answers by Allan Nairn.


1- Press TV (Iran) : The US troops say they have resorted to ‘precision bombing’ in Iraq. What exactly is precision bombing? Could you please elaborate?


Allan Nairn: Precision bombing is more accurate bombing that purports to kill fewer civilians. The Washington Post (January 17, 2008) paraphrases US Air Force General Gary L. North as saying that US forces in Iraq are doing precision bombing, "using 250-pound GBU-39 small-diameter bombs to make blasts safer for civilians." But in fact, precision bombing probably ultimately increases the civilian death toll because by making each bomb-drop more legitimate back home (eg. some US human rights people defend it) it increases the likelihood that there will be more bomb-drops, and even the most ardent precision bombers admit that their 250-pound weapons do kill civilians.


2- Press TV (Iran): The so-called US war on terror has turned Iraq into a graveyard. Why is it that the international community has done nothing to stop quixotic Mr Bush?


Allan Nairn: The US government bears prime responsibility for the illegal invasion of Iraq and the mass killing that that invasion helped touch off, but the government of Iran has blood on its hands as well. By backing militias that kill civilians in Iraq, the Tehran regime is also committing murder.

I wouldn't call Bush quixotic. Don Quixote was an idealist who wanted to help people, but had delusions. Bush is a cynical ruler -- like so many -- who acts above the murder laws.

Today's world is still so lawless and uncivilized that the international community tends to only stop or punish minor and/or defeated murdering powers. The US, as the biggest power, is the least constrained, but many others also get away with murder. The International Criminal Court, for example, has had to start by going after isolated killer forces like the Lord's Resistance Army of Uganda. When they recently tried to do prosecutions re. Darfur -- and Sudan is hardly a major power -- they were stopped from doing so by Russia and China, which invest in Sudan.

There are many practical reasons for the world's failure to enforce the murder laws on high officials. One is that many regular people have yet to assimilate the idea that their rulers have no more right to commit murder than they do. Another, on a political-mechanical level is the UN Security Council. The original holders of the atom bomb have veto power, so, naturally, they block UN action against themselves and their clients. A more democratic UN structure -- based on criteria other than bomb-holding -- would be a step in the right direction


3- Press TV (Iran): What do you think is the main motivation of US troops to stay on in Iraq? Is it only because they intend to expropriate the Iraqi national wealth or is there some other grand plan?


Allan Nairn: In politics, motive is almost always a secondary or tertiary question. What matters most is what you do, not why you do it. Figuring out motivation can, in theory, be useful for planning effective political action, but it is often very difficult and speculative, and the US in Iraq is an example.

The different players in the US decision to invade and stay probably had a mix of motivations. I think that primary among them was that, after Afghanistan, Bush wanted to keep the war excitement going. His father, remember, lost his reelection bid after his politically popular victory in the so-called First Gulf War, but by the time the US election came around people had already essentially forgotten about it. (It is an ancient tactic for rulers to distract their people with war or war-talk; I think Ahmadinejad blusters and provokes so much in part to distract Iran's poor from economic suffering).

So I think Bush and Cheney wanted to invade somewhere new -- they just had to decide which country -- and since the broad rationale with the US public was still 9-11 revenge it essentially had to be a Muslim country. (See the posting on my blog , News and Comment, http://www.newsc.blogspot.com/, for Thomas L. Friedman's revealing comments on this; Wednesday, November 28, 2007, "Thomas L. Friedman and the Bali Bombers. Cold-Blooded Celebrity.").

Even before the Afghan invasion the US actually considered, at the highest level, small-scale, simultaneous invasions of Yemen, Somalia, Malaysia, the Philippines (presumably the southern, Muslim, part), and Indonesia ( See Bob Woodward's Bush At War, 2002, Simon & Schuster, p. 90). It was a bizarre proposal, advanced by White House Chief of Staff Andy Card, since Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia -- particularly the latter two -- were US intelligence/ military associates, and it would have been impossible to choose even remotely plausible targets for attack in either Malaysia or Indonesia. But it just goes to show that some key US officialdom was, at that moment, itching to invade some Muslims. (Over time, US attack policy is cold-blooded and ecumenical, but in that historical moment bin Laden, who was in part apparently seeking to provoke a religious war, in part, temporarily, did have some success).

Why the US chose Iraq as the target is a complex, somewhat mysterious, question, and it was obviously a very bad choice, from the US establishment point of view, and the US establishment, led by figures like Gen. Brent Scowcroft -- Bush I's old right-hand-man, has been giving Bush II grief about it ever since. In choosing to invade Iraq they discarded the formula that the establishment had successfully developed post-Vietnam: if you're going to invade, choose only weak, defenseless targets (eg. Grenada, Panama), use a minimum of US ground troops, and be sure to get them out within weeks, before domestic and international opposition builds.

One factor seems to have been that Bush and Cheney were almost willfully misinformed and deluded about Iraq. They may have thought it would be quick and easy (easy in the ruler's terms, that is -- perhaps thousands dead, but power is seized quickly and the ruler wins), though many in Washington were thinking otherwise.

I don't think oil or expropriating the Iraqui national wealth was a primary factor in the decision to invade or to stay. There were people like Wolfowitz who were saying Iraqui oil will pay for the invasion , which he claimed would be quick and easy. And there were some old-fashioned strategists who thought: lets get the Iraqui oil in order to control it.

But the US oil companies were against the invasion -- they don't like instability in the oil region, and if the Wolfowitz claim of greatly increased Iraqui oil production had come true, that would have dropped the world oil price, which they wouldn't want.

And the seize-the-oil strategists were working on assumptions from an older world. In today's world of global markets your worst enemy will sell you all the oil you want (remember, the whole point of the Bush I - Clinton sanctions against Iraq was that Saddam wanted to sell his oil on the world market, but the US wouldn't let him), at prices set by the world market. Actions like the old OPEC oil embargo would be nearly impossible today given the newer sources of production (eg., the North Sea, Russia -- which wasn't on the world market then, etc.). And the idea that the US could use seized Iraqui oil as leverage against Europe and Japan is also implausible. They could go elsewhere for supply, and the politico/economic disruption caused by such a move would likely outweigh imagined benefits. I think there are many US strategists who recognize these newer realities, so the advice coming up to Bush would have been mixed.

As it turns out, ironically, the invasion has been a boon for the oil companies, sending oil prices skyward. But thats not what they expected.

And, for the US government the invasion has been extremely costly. Whatever wealth they extract from Iraq is outweighed by the vast daily expenditure on the occupation.

I think that, as often, political, even whimsical emotional factors were paramount, not material ones. In fact, if you look back at the list of recent-era US-invaded countries they include some of the world's poorest places: Afghanistan, Haiti, Nicaragua, etc. And Vietnam was no treasure-trove.

So why do they stay in Iraq? My guess is because they're stuck there. It would be embarrassing to pull out, especially if the US-backed Iraqui regime then fell, and cynical rulers are frequently willing to keep on causing death -- even of their own people -- in order to avoid embarrassment.


4- Press TV (Iran): The US government has proved to be a threat to world peace by attacking Iraq and Afghanistan and exacting an inconceivable number of human casualties. Yet, they accuse Iran of jeopardising the security in the region. What is your opinion in this regard?


Allan Nairn: Both the US and Iran are ruled by murderers, its just that those of the US are more powerful and reach around the globe. So the US government is correct when it says Iran is a threat to security and the Iranian government is correct when it says the same re. the US (though both often lie and exaggerate about the details). Just because a person is a murderer, that doesn't mean everything they say is incorrect. Both the US and Iran should get out of Iraq militarily and stop backing foreign killer forces.


5- Press TV (Iran): Do you think there is any possibility of any US attack on Iran?


Allan Nairn: Who knows? I doubt that Bush himself has decided. But you probably can't completely rule out the possibility.

There are some in Washington openly agitating for an attack (and I suspect that Ahmadinejad and Khameni want it too), but the bulk of the US establishment is against it. They reasonably argue that it could trigger problems comparable to or worse than Iraq, but Bush isn't required to listen to them.

If it looks like Bush's party -- the US Republicans -- are heading for a bad defeat in November, 2008 -- ie. the election of a Democratic party president and Democratic House and Senate chambers with sufficient majorities to pass Democratic legislation and subpoena, investigate, and maybe even charge with corruption (charging them with murder is politically inconceivable) people from the Bush administration -- then I think Bush and Cheney could be cynical enough to consider invading some country at the last minute to salvage the election (since invasions are usually popular in their early stages).

But Iran would be a foolish target to choose. A tiny, weak, country would make more sense, by their standards. But they already made a foolish choice re. Iraq, so you never know.

I think Iran's leadership is being deeply cynical and irresponsible on the whole nuclear issue. If they are developing or keeping open the option of developing nuclear weapons they should stop. And even if they are merely developing nuclear energy, they should stop that too.

Each new nuclear weapon makes the world a more dangerous place. Nuclear deterrence theory -- developed by the US Dr. Strangeloves at MIT, the Rand Corporation, the Hudson Institute, and elsewhere -- says that having the bomb discourages other countries from attacking you, and though that is probably true in the short-term, micro sense, over time as the weapons build up and proliferate it becomes all but inevitable that control, discipline, and/or rational calculation will at some point fail (it almost happened in the Cuban Missile Crisis, back when only a few countries had the bomb) and nuclear bombs will start going off, including in countries that ostensibly were merely seeking protection.

Nuclear energy is also a bad idea. Iran's leadership is foolish -- or worse -- to follow in the footsteps of countries like the US -- and , especially, France -- which have developed complexes of nuclear plants that generate endless, eternal, toxic byproducts, expose citizens to the risk of catastrophic accident (see Chernobyl, Three Mile Island), to the risk of catastrophic military or terrorist attack (you're voluntarily, stupidly, creating devastating targets for your enemies to hit), which require totalitarian levels of security and secrecy that have a bad effect on politics, and that make energy production still more dependent on vast infusions of concentrated capital, often foreign.

If the reports that say Iran is doing nuclear energy for prestige are true, that is a pathetic reason. It would seem far better for the people and perhaps, in the long run, maybe even more prestigious, to invest the country's brainpower in developing safer, more rational alternative energy sources, especially since given oil prices and geological oil supply questions there's a fast-rising world market demand for such alternative technologies. How would Iran look -- and profit -- if it made breakthroughs in solar energy?

Even on a more mundane, immediate level, if Iran wants to address energy problems, it would seem to economically make more sense to address its gasoline refining bottlenecks rather than wastefully and dangerously diving into the nuclear morass.

But, of course, if Iran did that it would make it harder for Bush and Ahmadinejad to trade bluster, and that would be less fun for both rulers, though better for both peoples.

(Parenthetically, its worth noting that though the US still has a lot of nuclear energy, US nuclear plant expansion was essentially stopped in the 1970s [and has only recently started to revive] in part by a US popular movement that included mass demonstrations against government and corporate policy. Such freedom of speech and assembly [though some are now trying to cut it back] is a very good aspect of the current US system -- hard-won by centuries of popular struggle. I think Iranians will be better off when they succeed in winning similar rights, and Americans will be better off when they start using theirs more again.)
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Thursday, January 17, 2008

US Precision Bombing in Iraq and Afghanistan. Killing Civilians, Carefully.

CNN's Ed Henry, their White House correspondent, recently spotted the President of the United States "walking in the footsteps of Jesus along the Sea of Galilee" (CNN International, January 17, 2008 [WIB]).

The Washington Post reports that as the President was walking, troops under his command were bombing Iraq and Afghanistan with increasing intensity. (Josh White, "U.S. Boosts Its Use of Airstrikes In Iraq," Washington Post, Thursday, January 17, 2008).

It's part of the return to the post-Vietnam tactics that worked so well for Washington, substituting US bombs for US troop deaths: lessening the political damage in the US by increasing the physical damage in the place you're bombing.

(The Post quotes Georgetown security studies professor Colin Kahl, who recently visited the US bombers, as noting that "as U.S. forces begin to draw down you may see even more airstrikes.")

The Post, paraphrasing Air Force Lt. Gen. Gary L. North, says that US forces are doing precision bombing, "using 250-pound GBU-39 small-diameter bombs to make blasts safer for civilians."

Regarding precision bombing they quote Marc Garlasco, a Human Rights Watch military analyst: "My major concern with what's going on in Iraq is massive population density... you have the potential for very high civilian casualties, so you need really granular intelligence on what you're going to hit. But I don't think they're being careless."

If you buy this logic, as long as, say, Iraqui insurgent forces weren't being careless, it would be OK on human rights grounds for them to bomb the US White House so long as they had sufficiently "granular intelligence" on where President Bush was sitting, and used one of those 250-pound bombs that "make blasts safer for civilians."

Just hope that at that moment a servant wasn't bringing Bush a cup of coffee, or that he wasn't being visited by nieces, or a Cub Scout troop, or even, say, one of those human rights officials who now consult with General Petraeus or legitimize the idea of bombing countries that have been invaded illegally (according to, say, the British Foreign Office's former deputy legal adviser, who resigned because "an unlawful use of force on such a scale amounts to a crime of aggression") so long as painted on one side of the bombs is the word "precision" (re. the British lawyer, see Steven Marks, "The legality of war," Letters, The Economist, January 5th, 2008).

The whole theory of precision bombing is to narrow down the killing radius so that your piece of metal dropped from the sky (or thrown from a distant tube or ship) behaves like an assassin's bullet.

In theory it, may, in a micro sense, occasionally spare some civilians (that is, in comparison to a hit by a bigger bomb, not in comparison to no bombing), but in both theory and practice, in a macro sense, it's likely to increase the civilian death toll since by making each bomb-drop more legitimate back home it increases the likelihood that there will be more of them, and even the most ardent precision bombers admit that their 250-pounders do get civilians.

Indeed, the Post cites the U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq as estimating "that more than 200 civilian deaths resulted from U.S. airstrikes in Iraq from the beginning of April to the end of last year, when U.S. forces began to significantly increase the strikes to coordinate with the expansion of ground troops." And re. Afghanistan: "Human rights groups estimate that Afghan civilian casualties caused by airstrikes tripled to more than 300 in 2007, fueling fears that such aggressive bombardment could be catastrophic for the innocent."

Those fears were fueled, not least, in the mind of US/UN-selected Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who has complained frequently, but -- in a ritual common to sponsor-client state relationships -- not so vehemently that his US sponsors took his statements seriously enough to cut his budget, or simply replace him.

Regarding Iraq, the Post says the U.S. strategy "calls for coalition troops to clear hostile areas before holding and then rebuilding them" -- which is impossible, since not even Bush of Galilee can rebuild 200-plus dead people.

Link to view this posting in Danish translation.

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Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Correction

In the posting of January 14, 2008, "Economic Indicator," there was a bad typographical error.

The original, incorrect, text said that the UN's FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) had established a fund to counterbalance market-induced hunger from food price hikes that "will cost 17 billion US dollars .... mere pocket change for each Forbes 400 member, and for thousands of others."

The correct figure for the size of the FAO fund is 17 million -- not billion -- dollars.

Which indeed means that there are thousands of rich people who could cover this world fund personally, and therefore theoretically have the power to, by their whim, condemn or spare those the fund will feed.

But if the figure really had been 17 billion, that would have been pocket change for only a few, including

Bill Gates, US citizen (net worth $56 billion),
Warren Buffett, US ($52 b),
Carlos Slim Helu, Mexico ($49 b),
Ingvar Kamprad & family, Sweden ($33 b),
Lakshmi Mittal, India ($32 b),
Sheldon Adelson, US ($26.5 b),
Bernard Arnault, France ($24 b),
Li Ka-shing, Hong Kong ($22 b),
David Thomson & family, Canada ($22 b),
Lawrence Ellison, US ($21.5 b),
Liliane Bettencourt, France ($20.7 b),
Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Alsaud, Saudi Arabia ($20.3 b),
Mukesh Ambani, India ($20.1 b),
and Karl Albrecht, Germany ($20 b).

In all, Forbes magazine, the source of these estimates, lists 21 people (or person/family units) as having net worths in excess of 17 billion US dollars.

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Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Tremble (II)

After seeing millions murdered, scholars have asked
"Why did the heavens not tremble?"

But they do,
each time another person dies

Its just that our gaze is horizontal.

On January 15, 2007, at 1700 hours, Western Indonesia Time,
There was a sky quake so enormous
that people in several kampungs looked up

And before the soul completed the laborious process
of exiting its electro-shocked-from-within
body

the lamentations began

and they have yet to begin stopping.

Can a person cry forever?

There may have been 32 marks
on the body

but it was too embarrassing to count precisely

they were small matters, rarely thought of,

The daily brain attacks were paramount

A hungry person doesn't dwell on past inconveniences.
They see goats walking and, in that, they see food.

When the trembling began,
there was, at last
the prospect of restful sleep

without the fear of waking up
having, frankly,
forgotten
who one is
or what the world is.

When, by 2200 hours -- muscles straining from above --
the soul was finally extracted

they had to open the heavens archipelago-wide
to accommodate its enormous bulk

Some say that this world is too crowded simply because when people sleep on mats

they are side-by-side,
like canned silverfish in a room
a family tree, horizontal, snoring

or because at breakfast time when passing out food
some fool somewhere made a mistake
and stacked too much in one house
leaving another with stomachs pulsing

But I tell you, if the world was too crowded before
-- and it wasn't
it sure isn't now.

There's vast open human terrain
because it is missing
a soul the size of Indonesia.

Who Was That? (II)

Sg., last night I heard a story
about the stone six orphanage

where on your birthday
and on deathdays
and on red days

you'd bring unhulled rice
and pyramids

of banana leaves
with cooked rice,
sambal
sliced cucumber
and a little meat

transported laboriously
over stony roads
on Uncle's wood-platform
foot-pedaled
transporter

J. said the kids were thrilled.
Who wouldn't be?
125 pyramids!

Cooked the night before
by you, and her,
and T. -- praying at her wall shrine

But when the kids asked you
What should we pray for, Older Sister?
For your luck, for your prosperity?

You answered -- shocking my ears, from your grave

Pray for my disease to lift.
It afflicts me.

I never heard you talk like that
to anyone

to any stranger

anywhere

And when they asked your name
you refused to answer

Leaving the poor clerics
up to their knees
in rice sacks

and confused

On the peddle platform,
bumping home,
you told J.

They'll know my face.

The kids must have thought

who was this mysterious lady
who brings still-warm food
and full canvas sacks?

But does not bring her name,

and talks so clearly about her agony

Monday, January 14, 2008

Economic Indicator

Returning to a familiar neighborhood after an absence of nearly two months it seemed that many kids were skinnier, though there were various possible explanations.

The rains were slowing, so it was hotter, there had been a run of diarrhea and bleeding fever, and the holidays were recently over so -- like everywhere -- people had blown (some of) their money, but, in this case, not on flat-screen TVs the size of ping-pong tables, but rather on consecutive days of rice with meat, and on bus and ferry-fare to reunite family.

I was staring at two white, embroidered hanging cloths that do service as a corridor door when, to my disappointment, the dead person I was thinking of did not miraculously bustle through, but instead there emerged an aunt, with harassed eyes, and the news that we needed lots more food.

The al-Kuran reciters would be coming from the mosque -- who knew how many, on a given day? -- as well as the orphans (two motorcycle taxis-full -- which is a lot; they're fairly tiny). There would also be their two guardian clerics, assorted relatives, alley neighbors, and the budget was busted: the purchased ingredients would not suffice to feed the guests for the death anniversary.

Why not? "Rice is up! Cooking oil is up! Peppers, chicken, everything!" (The chicken price-hike might have been minor good news two years ago, given the stinking coops behind the hanging cloths, but the bird flu had put an end to that protein-source, and sometime "micro-enterprise").

It was true, and almost everywhere. Food prices are on the rise. Which means for those on the edge of the nutritional cliff, some bodies are on the fall.

Some economists are stunned by the rapidity of the rise -- and flexible markets can indeed stun you -- and commodities futures prices suggest that the peak may not be seen until North American springtime, if then.

Reasons for such market moves are always complex, but studies cite bio-fuels as a big one, and then there's oil-price hikes -- a gift for Exxon and co., who actually didn't want the Iraq invasion -- a serious matter in a world food economy now dependent on fertilizers that use oil.

But though the reasons are complex, some consequences can be simple: hungry people can get hungrier, since they lack the wealth cushion one needs to ride-out market fluctuations.

"Win some, lose some," Americans like to say.

When their holdings drop, American Wall Street guys say they're getting "killed."

But they're not. After saying that, they can go out to lunch.

What they lose today they may make up tomorrow.

And, the key point: they will still be alive -- and undamaged -- to celebrate it.

For poor people, the world's majority, market life has some different principles.

Fluctuations that rich people later forget can be life-altering catastrophes for poor people.

For rich people, what counts is whether, in the end, your market wins outweigh your losses.

But for people on the edge of survival, one bad loss and the counting game is over.

If a market-induced loss pushes you off the cliff, with a consequence that is irreversible -- like death, subsequent market moves that would have been in your favor become irrelevant to you.

And there are a number of ireversibles, or consequences nearly so.

There's baby brain stunting from a few bad hunger days or weeks, body-growth stunting from bad months, pulling a kid from school so he never comes back and lives forever unable to read, or unable to read any of the billions of pages written beyond his given literacy level.

In South Korea and India there has developed a recent sad tradition of indebted farmers killing themselves, after a bad turn -- for them, (they need higher prices) -- in the global markets.

Its Indonesian counterpart is Baygon or the chair-and-noose. The Baygon insecticide cocktail tends to be for the girls, the chair-and-noose for the boys -- a not uncommon reaction among poor pre-teens who, pulled from school, hurting, choose suicide.

Or what about choices born of desperation brought on by bad fluctuation? A mother becomes a one-night prostitute. A father goes overseas to work. We all know what can happen to family life then. Mental blows can heal more slowly than body ones.

(One US near-equivalent to all this is being evicted and becoming homeless, a threat that is, quite significantly, proportionally smaller in the kampungs [proportionally, adjusting for differing poverty levels] than it is in the United States, since with extended families still intact, even the poorest person in, say, Indonesia, often has somewhere to go. Capitalist development knows some bitter jokes. You, an American, may be richer than your poor-world counterpart, but if both your putative extended family and your cash/credit are gone, you may end up worse-off than him -- on the street, stinking and shivering, and, to boot, in a country with an ideology that says that this is a good thing for you: an incentive to go find work.)

In capitalist theory, markets are directionally neutral. Up or down is neither good nor bad. Which is true for people who live on cushions. But false for those on cliffs.

Just as there's no such thing as a free lunch, there's also no such thing as a free market.

There are always rules -- lots of them -- otherwise markets couldn't function.

The question is merely: what rules? For what ends? Lives turn on the answers.

Recently the Indonesian communications workers hung plaintive but profound banners outside workplaces: "Don't Write the Regulations For the Capitalists Only."

They were referring to a privatization fight but they could have been discussing the core issue that confronts any economy -- including this global capitalist one: will a society commit or not to writing the regulations such that everyone gets fed, and goes to market (or wherever) tall and with a clear head?

If they won't, then decent people have to force changes, call them what you will, that solve this solvable problem using whatever appropriate tools.

Coincidentally, after that incident with the harassed aunt and the hanging white cloths, I made the short physical but long social journey to a place in town with an internet connection, and read the news that, first, "Thousands of tofu and tempeh producers and vendors in Greater Jakarta began a three-day strike Monday to protest the rocketing price of soybeans," and, second, that the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is setting up a fund to try to counterbalance this market-induced hunger.

(Parenthetically, the fund will cost 17 million US dollars, and the total of FAO aid for "imported foodstuffs for Low Income Food Deficit Countries," is $107 million, in both cases mere pocket change for each Forbes 400 member, and for thousands of others).(See: The Jakarta Post, Tuesday, January 15, 2008, "Tofu, tempeh disappear from dishes;" "Fund launched for poor countries struggling with high food prices," OUAGADOUGOU, 14 January 2008 (IRIN)).

The fund will undoubtedly spare -- for the moment -- many painful deaths. But as free-market economists love to tell you in other contexts, such schemes are wildly inefficient. They cannot possibly know, find, and deliver to each newly enhungered stomach in the world.

OK, so, then, what will? The current global "free market" system obviously does not. It is so perversely unbalanced that nearly a billion starve a year.

If it could have solved this problem, it would have.

So we can conclude that it can't.

Even on the flip-side of a food-price hike, which in theory should benefit farmers, the current system actually often hurts the poor ones, while bloating Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland.

So take down those books -- that fill several shelves -- that constitute the global trade, property and rulemaking rules, and start rewriting -- fast -- before the next stack of savable baby dies.

Don't want to do that? OK, we'll have to find people who do.

On the decision and commitment level, this is simple stuff. The implementation gets complicated, but not so complicated as to be undoable, if enough people want it and decide that they will also become strivers for it.

The first step toward political choice is recognizing that a choice is needed.

On hunger, the choices for poor people are rough.

For rich people, they should be easy.

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Sunday, January 13, 2008

General Suharto of Indonesia. One Small Man Leaves a Million Corpses.

General Suharto of Indonesia is fading fast, the news bulletins say.

So when I came into the country, I started asking how people felt about their dying killer. (Body count, circa one million plus, overwhelmingly civilian).

The first man I ran into -- near a coffee/ rice stall -- though the radio blared the death watch, said nothing about it, until I raised it. "So much the better," he smiled.

Even people I know well did not bother to mention it, though they know I follow politics.

One market lady had just described her own recent ailments -- decades of squatting and pounding grain take a toll -- when I asked about Suharto.

"Suharto?", she said. "He ate too much money. He's full. He ate so much that others can't eat."

She chuckled at her own joke. Everybody laughed. The mourning period should be over by lunchtime.

The New York Times, in 1993, after the East Timor massacres, said Suharto "r[a]n the country with a grandfatherly smile and an iron fist" and lamented that his "accomplishments are not widely known abroad." (Philip Shenon, "Hidden Giant -- A special report.; Indonesia Improves Life for Many But the Political Shadows Remain," The New York Times, August 27, 1993.)

On earth, in Indonesia -- below the towers of life-giving-or-taking wealth and distant killing decision -- Suharto seemed to have been seen, on the one hand, as a small man, but on the other, as a menace.

You could talk corruption, but you could not mention the murders. You had to work hard to forget them. The government helped with "Clean Environment" laws that banned the surviving relatives from social contacts, on the theory that if they got around, their memories might pollute society.

A grandmother, when pressed, once told me about bodies bobbing in Sumatra rivers.

But, as a rule, people don't like to talk about Suharto's founding massacre, the one that was, in the words of James Reston of The Times, the "gleam of light in Asia" (June 19, 1966), and in the words of the CIA, which assisted, "one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century" (for background see posting of November 8, 2007. "Duduk - Duduk, Ngobrol - Ngobrol. Sitting Around Talking, in Indonesia.").

Interestingly enough, on the official, bureaucratic level, though, it is corruption talk that is taboo.

In 1998, I was being interrogated after giving a press conference on Suharto's secret aid from Clinton (including snipers and "PSYOP"(s); see posting of December 12, 2007), and Suharto's man began to read aloud from my file -- parts disturbingly accurate, parts ridiculous.

He asked about my political views. I went into a speech about the massacres and how Suharto and Clinton should share a jail cell. The man was thoroughly bored. But, then, somehow, I mentioned corruption.

He was offended, angry. He sat upright: "What do you mean, corruption?!"

It made sense, on the popular level that was Topic A. So, therefore, it was a dangerous topic. Bureaucrats are not encouraged to speak the word. Cash envelopes enter pockets quietly.

But the massacres? They were unlikely to spark a flame, the Suhartoites had calculated.

Survivors really can be selfish sometimes -- forget the dead and kiss the killers -- especially if clever ongoing terror is applied. Forced thought control is sometimes possible.

When Suharto goes, there won't be weeping in the kampungs I know, but there may be on some US campuses.

There, there developed a school of thought (and of subsidy) that held that Suharto was OK since, though he had "human rights" problems, the official statistics showed rapid GDP growth.

The proponents were strict anti-communists, but had absorbed some Pravda thinking, since that argument was -- as it happened -- the same one once used to justify Stalin.

But as short, thin people gathered this morning at, say, the Belawan ferry to Malaysia could tell you, Pak Harto's massacre development, unlike Uncle Joe's, did not vault Indonesia onto a new plane.

Neighboring countries, starting tied with Indonesia in real-eating development, have post-rise-of-Suharto-and-his-army far surpassed it, so Indonesians leave home, seeking work, often trading dignity for their babies' brain growth. (See "Duduk-Duduk" on the choices sending poor Indonesians overseas, and the posting of November 24, 2007, "Rising in Malaysia. The Dangers of Feeding Poor People, " on Malaysia's different, far-faster development).

The interesting question is not why are foreign sponsors so suave about explaining murder (key answer: because they can get away with it), but rather why do local people, in so many places, let one small man rise above them?

That's a complex question, for another day. But right now, some people here are busy with the death anniversary of another, far bigger, person, a lady buried in a goat field, who was -- by consensus of several kampungs -- a shining, good person, a great one.

If they had met, Suharto would have told her to wash his floor (I can assure that you she wouldn't have).

But even she, with her strong shoulders, could not possibly have washed all that blood.

That's a task for a whole society, after Suharto is condemned and gone.

Then they'll have to get together and resolve to henceforth keep the floor clean.

Link to view this posting in Arabic translation.


Link to Democracy Now! discussion re. Suharto and the US.


Link to tape of questioning of Richard Holbrooke and Bill Clinton re. their support for Suharto's killings.

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Wednesday, January 2, 2008

The US Election is Already Over. Murder and Preventable Death Have Won.

The US press is reporting that on Thursday the American political system will begin the process of selecting the next President of the United States.

But that is not true.

The process is already largely completed, in that we already know that the next president will highly likely be one of eleven rich people each of whom have positions that -- if implemented -- will kill perhaps eleven million poor people.

The plausible candidates -- Bloomberg, Clinton, Edwards, Giuliani, Gore, Huckabee, McCain, Obama, Rice, Romney, and Thompson -- differ in many ways, including differing marginally in their likely body counts, and differing in whether they have already in their lives facilitated gun murders (Bloomberg, Huckabee, and Romney may not have, since they haven't yet held national office).
'
But they all oppose even-handed enforcement of the murder laws, and they all oppose shifting enough wealth now to prevent all preventable deaths.

These should not be controversial goals. Most decent people would support them. And even the US rulers themselves often support them -- though only on paper, in principle.

Regarding murder, President Bush told the United Nations on November 10, 2001: "We must unite in opposing all terrorists, not just some of them ... No national aspiration, no remembered wrong, can every justify murder of the innocent...The allies of terror are equally guilty of murder and equally accountable to justice."

But as Bush spoke, sitting in the audience, as part of his delegation, was Elliott Abrams who was, and is, one of Bush's top policy makers on Israel/Palestine, and who ran the '80s US support for terror killings of civilians in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua (where, as US General John Galvin put it, they went after "soft targets," like farmers' coops).

Yet the President did not cap his speech by asking UN security to slap shackles on Mr. Abrams.

And the President did not go to the New York Police Department's Midtown South to turn himself in for -- at that very moment -- bombing Afghan villages, or for arming, training, or financing regimes that in several dozen US-allied countries around the world make a practice of murdering innocents.

And none of the possible new US presidents would have done it differently.

They all supported the Afghan invasion (though they vary on Iraq), and none have rejected the routine US practice of yearly support for killer regimes (Congress just passed two big defense and foreign operations appropriations bills that will lethally aid, among many others, Colombia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel, Iraq, Congo, Pakistan, and Indonesia), and -- crucially -- none have called for putting US officials on trial for any of these or similar acts.

Its a similar story with preventable death. The US speaks against it and has food aid and world health programs, and Bill Clinton has a foundation that spares some lives privately (as well as providing a conduit for big-money donations to the Clintons).

But taking the theoretically easy step of shifting enough wealth to stop all the hunger? To stop children from defecating to death, anywhere? None of the possible presidents has ever pushed for that.

If the US had wanted to do it it would have been done. Millions now dead would be alive. But they didn't, either during the Republican administrations or the presidency of Clinton/Gore.

Indeed, if Michael Bloomberg, personally, had wanted to do it -- if he had chosen otherwise -- the roughly 5 million kids who died malnourished last year could have been fed, and kept alive, with his own personal money, since, according to Forbes magazine, he's worth 11.5 billion dollars.

Such is democracy in America.

You get a vote, but not a choice, at least if you want to vote against murder and for keeping hungry kids alive and thinking.

No choice, that is, unless you force it. Americans have yet to get that.


Link to a Charlie Rose show debate with Elliott Abrams re. subjecting him to a Nuremberg trial.

Link to a transcript of the Charlie Rose show debate with Elliott Abrams.

Link to a January 3 Democracy Now! discussion re. tactics for change in the US system and atrocities by advisers to the top presidential candidates.

Link to view this posting in Arabic translation
.

Link to view this posting in Danish translation

Link to view this posting in French translation.



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