posted on September 28, 2002 01:43:31 PM new
BTW...The National public-affairs network, C-Span, will broadcast the protest and rally tomorrow. Tomorrow's protest will be focused on the Iraq war.
posted on September 28, 2002 01:47:06 PM new
If there is a war in Iraq, I think the media will present it very differently than Vietnam. In Desert Storm, I noticed the reporters and TV crews were kept well back, despite their protests. I think it will be presented in sound bytes and briefings on television, rather than the actual gruesome footage that could disturb people. No more Capas. You have the right to an informed opinion -Harlan Ellison
posted on September 28, 2002 02:06:14 PM new
Helen - I don't know where the author of that article gets his information from, but one thing I know he said is not true.
Of course, when it gets to the condition of the Kurds in Turkey and the East Timorese under Indonesian assault, we must recognize that we "can't do everything," and that there are cases where "constructive engagement" is more helpful than threats and the use of force.
Our military/government did work at the East Timor hot spot. Our son was deployed to Australia to be sent the very next day to East Timor, if they didn't back down.
So...if he's wrong on that issue, I can't take the rest of what he says as facts either. Just another person's opinion.
posted on September 28, 2002 02:42:18 PM new
Linda,
The article was written Dec 12, 2001.
It may help to read the entire article.
Edward Herman is a Professor Emeritus of Finance at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, an economist and media analyst, with a specialty in corporate and regulatory issues as well as political economy and the media. He is the author of numerous books, including Corporate Control, Corporate Power (1981), Demonstration Elections (1984, with Frank Brodhead), The Real Terror Network (1982), Manufacturing Consent (1988, with Noam Chomsky), Triumph of the Market (1995), and The Global Media (1997, with Robert McChesney). He is just going to press with The Myth of The Liberal Media: an Edward Herman Reader (1999).
posted on September 28, 2002 03:21:18 PM newEven conservative political columnistslike Robert Novak are nowquestioning The Bush Push:
A LITTLE U.S.-IRAQI HISTORY
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Sen. Robert Byrd, a master at hectoring executive branch witnesses, asked Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld a provocative question last week: Did the United States help Saddam Hussein produce weapons of biological warfare? Rumsfeld brushed off the Senate's 84-year-old president pro tem like a Pentagon reporter. But a paper trail indicates Rumsfeld should have answered yes.
An eight-year-old Senate report confirms that disease-producing and poisonous materials were exported, under U.S. government license, to Iraq from 1985 to 1988 during the Iran-Iraq war. Furthermore, the report adds, the American-exported materials were identical to microorganisms destroyed by United Nations inspectors after the Gulf War. The shipments were approved despite allegations that Saddam used biological weapons against Kurdish rebels and (according to the current official U.S. position) initiated war with Iran.
This record is no argument for or against waging war against the Iraqi regime, but current U.S. officials are not eager to reconstruct the mostly secret relationship between the two countries. While biological warfare exports were approved by the U.S. government, the first President George Bush signed a policy directive proposing "normal" relations with Saddam in the interest of Middle East stability. Looking at a little U.S.-Iraqi history might be useful on the eve of a fateful military undertaking.
At a Senate Armed Services hearing last Thursday, Byrd tried to disinter that history. "Did the United States help Iraq to acquire the building blocks of biological weapons during the Iran-Iraq war?" he asked Rumsfeld. "Certainly not to my knowledge," Rumsfeld replied. When Byrd persisted by reading a current Newsweek article reporting these exports, Rumsfeld said, "I have never heard anything like what you've read, I have no knowledge of it whatsoever, and I doubt it."
That suggests Rumsfeld also has not read the sole surviving copy of a May 25, 1994, Senate Banking Committee report. In 1985 (five years after the Iraq-Iran war started) and succeeding years, said the report, "pathogenic (meaning "disease producing", toxigenic (meaning "poisonous" and other biological research materials were exported to Iraq, pursuant to application and licensing by the U.S. Department of Commerce." It added: "These exported biological materials were not attenuated or weakened and were capable of reproduction."
The report then details 70 shipments (including anthrax bacillus) from the United States to Iraqi government agencies over three years, concluding, "It was later learned that these microorganisms exported by the United States were identical to those the United Nations inspectors found and recovered from the Iraqi biological warfare program."
With Baghdad having survived combat against Iran's revolutionary regime with U.S. help, President George H.W. Bush signed National Security Directive 26 on Oct. 2, 1989. Classified "Secret" but recently declassified, it said: "Normal relations between the United States and Iraq would serve our longer-term interests and promote stability in both the Gulf and the Middle East. The United States government should propose economic and political incentives for Iraq to moderate its behavior and to increase our influence with Iraq."
Bush the elder, who said recently that he "hates" Saddam, saw no reason then to oust the Iraqi dictator. On the contrary, the government's approval of exporting microorganisms to Iraq coincided with the Bush administration's decision to save Saddam from defeat by the Iranian mullahs.
The Newsweek article (by Christopher Dickey and Evan Thomas) that so interested Byrd reported on Rumsfeld's visit to Baghdad Dec. 20, 1983, that launched U.S. support for Saddam against Iran. Answering Byrd's questions, Rumsfeld said he did meet with Saddam and then-Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz, but was dismissive about assisting "as a private citizen ... only for a period of months." Rumsfeld contended he was then interested in curbing terrorism in Lebanon.
Quite a different account was given in a sworn court statement by Howard Teicher on Jan. 31, 1995. Teicher, a National Security Council aide who accompanied Rumsfeld to Baghdad, said Rumsfeld relayed then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir's offer to help Iraq in its war. "Aziz refused even to accept the Israeli's letter to (Saddam) Hussein offering assistance," said Teicher, "because Aziz told us that he would be executed on the spot."
Such recollections of the recent past make for uncomfortable officials in Washington and Jerusalem today.
posted on September 28, 2002 04:39:37 PM new
The designation of terrorist or rogue state would seem to not be determined by what a group or government actually does, but rather to be determined by whether or not they are doing what our government wants them to do at any particular time. And doesn't it make you feel secure in knowing that the designation of terrorist can be applied now to citizens following that same criterion!
And think of the great irony that an administration which has made every effort to keep the business of government, whether or not it relates to national security, secret from the people and wielded all influence available to attempt to stiffle dissent and debate intends to bring freedom and democracy to the rest of the world. Would the slogan be, "Vote for the dictator of your choice!"?
As the web turns, it becomes increasingly tangled:
posted on September 28, 2002 05:03:17 PM new
Gad, it just gets worse and worse, doesn't it? Your comments about our designation of terrorists and/or enemies is right on the money, Antiquary. The U.S. has a long history of actually toppling democratically elected foreign leaders and then installing military juntas and/or dictators in their places in order to protect our business interests (or what we perceive at the time as our national interests) abroad. The problem with this "foreign policy" of ours is that time and time again we discover that after a while we can't control these regimes, but since we've heavily armed them, they aren't as easily ousted as their predecessors. That's when the trigger to go to war is cocked, and that's precisely the situation we're in now with Saddam Hussein.
Many of the very people now heading Bush's administration were complicit in empowering Hussein 15 years ago, and were instrumental in our NOT ousting him during The Gulf War. It almost begins to look like Hussein is our personal perennial bad guy -- someone we support and then playfully go to war with every decade or so, just as the important domestic questions begin to be asked.
As far as our ultimate "enemy" - Terrorism - goes, the fact remains that 15 of the 19 hijackers who attacked us on 9/11 came from Saudi Arabia. Not one came from Iraq. Why aren't we targeting the Saudi regime for harboring Al-Qaeda operatives? Isn't that why we went into Afghanistan - because the Taliban harbored Al-Qaeda operatives? (And you'll recall that they swore up and down -- just as the Saudis have done -- that they didn't "support" Al-Qaeda either. ) Bush's anti-terrorist stance becomes laughable when one considers even those two facts. He may as well be throwing darts at a map of the middle east in determining who our "enemies" over there truly are.
Edited to add one last bit of irony:
Britain and the United States are working together on a draft resolution on Iraq which they plan to propose to the United Nations. It would call on Saddam to reveal all materials relating to weapons of mass destruction and to give U.N. weapons inspectors unfettered access to presidential sites.
Heh, the U.S. itself could probably provide an exact list to the U.N., since we sent him all the stuff to begin with!
posted on September 28, 2002 06:06:31 PM new
Lol! Yes, that's probably true.
But I don't think the administration would officially accept that he has disarmed, even if they believed otherwise. Iraq covers a big area, and every inch of it can't be examined, so there's always room to assert that something potentially dangerous is secreted away somewhere. If, however, the citizens become adamantly opposed to pursuing Iraqi, that would likely alter events.
posted on September 28, 2002 07:18:29 PM new
Yes, and I shudder to think what that means, for I suspect that if Bush doesn't get his way on invading Iraq, we'll have another horrific terrorism event here at home. That scenario, of course, has its own merits for the administration; once again the need to spy on our neighbors and acquiesce to de facto martial law will be touted as the only means of protecting us and our freedom. And the next time around we just might go for it.
posted on September 29, 2002 12:10:17 AM new
It seems that the FBI has deemed it appropriate to include names of known or suspected antiwar protesters in the "no fly" lists of suspected terrorists which they submit to airlines. What a neat way to restrict citizen access to the capitol.
posted on September 29, 2002 12:34:37 AM new
Byrd's words:
“We have in our hands the equivalent of a Betty Crocker cookbook of ingredients that the U.S. allowed Iraq to obtain and that may well have been used to concoct biological weapons.”
Those shipments included:
Between 1985 and 1988, the nonprofit American Type Culture
Collection made 11 shipments to Iraq that included a “witches’
brew of pathogens,” including anthrax, botulinum toxin and
gangrene. All shipments were government-approved.
Between January 1980 and October 1993, the federal Centers for
Disease Control shipped a variety of toxic specimens to Iraq,
including West Nile virus and Dengue fever.
The U.S. Commerce Department and CDC provided lists of these
shipments.
“The Defense Department ought to have the same lists,so that the decision-makers will know exactly what types of biological agents American soldiers may face in the field,” Byrd said.
“At last week’s Armed Services Committee hearing, Secretary
[Donald] Rumsfeld said he had no knowledge of any such shipments and doubted that they ever occurred. He seemed to be affronted at the very idea that the United States would ever countenance entering into such a deal with the devil.
Imagine that.
“Secretary Rumsfeld should not shy away from this information. On the contrary, he should seek it out,” Byrd said.
In its Sept. 23 edition, Newsweek magazine published an article
discussing the viruses, poisons and gases that the U.S. sent to
Saddam Hussein in the mid-1980s. At that time, the U.S. regarded
Iraq as a potential ally against Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeni.
Byrd criticized Rumsfeld for failing to answer questions he asked
last week about these shipments to Iraq during an Armed Services
Committee hearing.
“I repeat today what I said to him then,” Byrd said. “In the event of a war with Iraq, might the United States be facing the possibility of reaping what it has sown?”
Calls to the White House press office on Thursday afternoon were
referred to the Department of Defense, where no one returned a
call. One woman at the White House asked, “How do you spell
Byrd?”
(lol)
Federal documents and a United Nations Security Council report
document a direct connection between periods when Iraq received
toxins and viruses from the U.S. and the periods when Iraq
developed biological weapons.
Byrd closed his speech by asking what the future holds.
“The role that the U.S. may have played in helping Iraq to pursue biological warfare in the 1980s should serve as a strong warning to the president that policy decisions regarding Iraq today could have far reaching ramifications on the Middle East and on the United States in the future.In the 1980s, the Ayatollah Khomeni was America’s sworn enemy, and the U.S. government courted Saddam Hussein in an effort to undermine the Ayatollah and Iran. Today, Saddam Hussein is America’s biggest enemy, and the U.S. is said to be making overtures to Iran.”
posted on September 29, 2002 02:27:34 AM new
Let's recap, shall we?
*** Federal prosecutors assembling evidence for the Moussaoui trial accidentally give him dozens of sensitive documents he's not meant to see. (Heh, as paleryder points out, we'll have to kill him now.)
*** John Ashcroft secures U.S. support for a terrorist group and even attends its rallies.
*** Our government is actively breaking international law with its foray into non-lethal chemical weapons development and admits in its own documentation on the project that they're being considered for use on American civilians.
*** There's a mysterious list floating about our airports targeting people who attend peace rallies.
If it all wasn't so frightening, it'd coalesce into one heck of a Woody Allen film.
Aposter, thank you again for providing the link to The Sunshine Project -- I spent a couple of hours there.
ubb
[ edited by plsmith on Sep 29, 2002 02:30 AM ]
posted on September 29, 2002 07:13:07 AM new
Thirty seven protesters are still in a DC jail because they refuse to submit their names. All arrested protester's names will be included by the FBI in the "no fly list" among those of terrorists...even though their only "crime" was standing in the street to protest a war and monetary policies that impoverish people all over the world.
"As of 3:00 pm Saturday, 134 demonstrators had been processed and jailed, according to a "lock-up list" posted in the U.S. Superior Court in Washington. Of those, 97 submitted names of Jane or John Doe when they were processed. When arraigned in front of a judge, however, many gave the court their names and plead not guilty. Those who still did not give their names were placed in jail for seven days without bond."
posted on September 29, 2002 11:18:04 PM new
As I was scanning the Yahoo news coverage, I saw this link to an article printed in The Guardian by an Indian (Asia) writer who I thought brought a number of perspectives together rather well. It reflects well the current view of our government by most of the rest of the world, based upon what I have read, and I think that his style is unusually good.
The short introduction prefacing the article itself is The Guardian's.
Not again
Tomorrow thousands of people will take to the streets of London to protest against an attack on Iraq. Here, the distinguished Indian writer Arundhati Roy argues that it is the demands of global capitalism that are driving us to war
Friday September 27, 2002
The Guardian
Recently, those who have criticised the actions of the US government (myself included) have been called "anti-American". Anti-Americanism is in the process of being consecrated into an ideology. The term is usually used by the American establishment to discredit and, not falsely - but shall we say inaccurately - define its critics. Once someone is branded anti-American, the chances are that he or she will be judged before they're heard and the argument will be lost in the welter of bruised national pride.
What does the term mean? That you're anti-jazz? Or that you're opposed to free speech? That you don't delight in Toni Morrison or John Updike? That you have a quarrel with giant sequoias? Does it mean you don't admire the hundreds of thousands of American citizens who marched against nuclear weapons, or the thousands of war resisters who forced their government to withdraw from Vietnam? Does it mean that you hate all Americans?
This sly conflation of America's music, literature, the breathtaking physical beauty of the land, the ordinary pleasures of ordinary people with criticism of the US government's foreign policy is a deliberate and extremely effective strategy. It's like a retreating army taking cover in a heavily populated city, hoping that the prospect of hitting civilian targets will deter enemy fire.
There are many Americans who would be mortified to be associated with their government's policies. The most scholarly, scathing, incisive, hilarious critiques of the hypocrisy and the contradictions in US government policy come from American citizens. (Similarly, in India, not hundreds, but millions of us would be ashamed and offended, if we were in any way implicated with the present Indian government's fascist policies.)
To call someone anti-American, indeed, to be anti-American, is not just racist, it's a failure of the imagination. An inability to see the world in terms other than those that the establishment has set out for you: If you don't love us, you hate us. If you're not good, you're evil. If you're not with us, you're with the terrorists.
Last year, like many others, I too made the mistake of scoffing at this post-September 11 rhetoric, dismissing it as foolish and arrogant. I've realised that it's not. It's actually a canny recruitment drive for a misconceived, dangerous war. Every day I'm taken aback at how many people believe that opposing the war in Afghanistan amounts to supporting terrorism. Now that the initial aim of the war - capturing Osama bin Laden - seems to have run into bad weather, the goalposts have been moved. It's being made out that the whole point of the war was to topple the Taliban regime and liberate Afghan women from their burqas. We're being asked to believe that the US marines are actually on a feminist mission. (If so, will their next stop be America's military ally, Saudi Arabia?) Think of it this way: in India there are some pretty reprehensible social practices, against "untouchables", against Christians and Muslims, against women. Pakistan and Bangladesh have even worse ways of dealing with minority communities and women. Should they be bombed?
Uppermost on everybody's mind, of course, particularly here in America, is the horror of what has come to be known as 9/11. Nearly 3,000 civilians lost their lives in that lethal terrorist strike. The grief is still deep. The rage still sharp. The tears have not dried. And a strange, deadly war is raging around the world. Yet, each person who has lost a loved one surely knows that no war, no act of revenge, will blunt the edges of their pain or bring their own loved ones back. War cannot avenge those who have died. War is only a brutal desecration of their memory.
To fuel yet another war - this time against Iraq - by manipulating people's grief, by packaging it for TV specials sponsored by corporations selling detergent or running shoes, is to cheapen and devalue grief, to drain it of meaning. We are seeing a pillaging of even the most private human feelings for political purpose. It is a terrible, violent thing for a state to do to its people.
The US government says that Saddam Hussein is a war criminal, a cruel military despot who has committed genocide against his own people. That's a fairly accurate description of the man. In 1988, he razed hundreds of villages in northern Iraq and killed thousands of Kurds. Today, we know that that same year the US government provided him with $500m in subsidies to buy American farm products. The next year, after he had successfully completed his genocidal campaign, the US government doubled its subsidy to $1bn. It also provided him with high-quality germ seed for anthrax, as well as helicopters and dual-use material that could be used to manufacture chemical and biological weapons.
It turns out that while Saddam was carrying out his worst atrocities, the US and UK governments were his close allies. So what changed?
In August 1990, Saddam invaded Kuwait. His sin was not so much that he had committed an act of war, but that he acted independently, without orders from his masters. This display of independence was enough to upset the power equation in the Gulf. So it was decided that Saddam be exterminated, like a pet that has outlived its owner's affection.
A decade of bombing has not managed to dislodge him. Now, almost 12 years on, Bush Jr is ratcheting up the rhetoric once again. He's proposing an all-out war whose goal is nothing short of a regime change. Andrew H Card Jr, the White House chief-of-staff, described how the administration was stepping up its war plans for autumn: "From a marketing point of view," he said, "you don't introduce new products in August." This time the catchphrase for Washington's "new product" is not the plight of people in Kuwait but the assertion that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. Forget "the feckless moralising of the 'peace' lobbies," wrote Richard Perle, chairman of the Defence Policy Board. The US will " act alone if necessary" and use a "pre-emptive strike" if it determines it is in US interests.
Weapons inspectors have conflicting reports about the status of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, and many have said clearly that its arsenal has been dismantled and that it does not have the capacity to build one. What if Iraq does have a nuclear weapon? Does that justify a pre-emptive US strike? The US has the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons in the world. It's the only country in the world to have actually used them on civilian populations. If the US is justified in launching a pre-emptive attack on Iraq, why, any nuclear power is justified in carrying out a pre-emptive attack on any other. India could attack Pakistan, or the other way around.
Recently, the US played an important part in forcing India and Pakistan back from the brink of war. Is it so hard for it to take its own advice? Who is guilty of feckless moralising? Of preaching peace while it wages war? The US, which Bush has called "the most peaceful nation on earth", has been at war with one country or another every year for the last 50 years.
Wars are never fought for altruistic reasons. They're usually fought for hegemony, for business. And then, of course, there's the business of war. In his book on globalisation, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Tom Friedman says: "The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies to flourish is called the US Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps." Perhaps this was written in a moment of vulnerability, but it's certainly the most succinct, accurate description of the project of corporate globalisation that I have read.
After September 11 and the war against terror, the hidden hand and fist have had their cover blown - and we have a clear view now of America's other weapon - the free market - bearing down on the developing world, with a clenched, unsmiling smile. The Task That Never Ends is America's perfect war, the perfect vehicle for the endless expansion of American imperialism. In Urdu, the word for profit is fayda. Al-qaida means the word, the word of God, the law. So, in India, some of us call the War Against Terror, Al-qaida vs Al-fayda - The Word vs The Profit (no pun intended). For the moment it looks as though Al-fayda will carry the day. But then you never know...
In the past 10 years, the world's total income has increased by an average of 2.5% a year. And yet the numbers of the poor in the world has increased by 100 million. Of the top 100 biggest economies, 51 are corporations, not countries. The top 1% of the world has the same combined income as the bottom 57%, and the disparity is growing. Now, under the spreading canopy of the war against terror, this process is being hustled along. The men in suits are in an unseemly hurry. While bombs rain down, contracts are being signed, patents registered, oil pipelines laid, natural resources plundered, water privatised and democracies undermined.
But as the disparity between the rich and poor grows, the hidden fist of the free market has its work cut out. Multinational corporations on the prowl for "sweetheart deals" that yield enormous profits cannot push them through in developing countries without the active connivance of state machinery - the police, the courts, sometimes even the army. Today, corporate globalisation needs an international confederation of loyal, corrupt, preferably authoritarian governments in poorer countries, to push through unpopular reforms and quell the mutinies. It needs a press that pretends to be free. It needs courts that pretend to dispense justice. It needs nuclear bombs, standing armies, sterner immigration laws, and watchful coastal patrols to make sure that its only money, goods, patents and services that are globalised - not the free movement of people, not a respect for human rights, not international treaties on racial discrimination or chemical and nuclear weapons, or greenhouse gas emissions, climate change, or, God forbid, justice. It's as though even a gesture towards international accountability would wreck the whole enterprise.
Close to one year after the war against terror was officially flagged off in the ruins of Afghanistan, in country after country freedoms are being curtailed in the name of protecting freedom, civil liberties are being suspended in the name of protecting democracy. All kinds of dissent is being defined as "terrorism". Donald Rumsfeld said that his mission in the war against terror was to persuade the world that Americans must be allowed to continue their way of life. When the maddened king stamps his foot, slaves tremble in their quarters. So, it's hard for me to say this, but the American way of life is simply not sustainable. Because it doesn't acknowledge that there is a world beyond America.
Fortunately, power has a shelf life. When the time comes, maybe this mighty empire will, like others before it, overreach itself and implode from within. It looks as though structural cracks have already appeared. As the war against terror casts its net wider and wider, America's corporate heart is haemorrhaging. A world run by a handful of greedy bankers and CEOs whom nobody elected can't possibly last.
Soviet-style communism failed, not because it was intrinsically evil but because it was flawed. It allowed too few people to usurp too much power: 21st-century market-capitalism, American-style, will fail for the same reasons.
posted on September 30, 2002 07:12:11 AM newThanks, Antiquary for posting that!
Helen
A few other articles by Arundhati Roy Progressive interview The algebra of infinite justice Under the nuclear shadow The End of Imagination
..........]"My husband's writing a book about trees. He has a section on how figs are pollinated, each fig by its own specialised fig wasp. There are nearly 1,000 different species of fig wasps. All the fig wasps will be nuked, and my husband and his book" ...Arundhati
By now, Roy is used to criticism. "Each time I step out, I hear the snicker-snack of knives being sharpened," she told one Indian magazine. "But that's good. It keeps me sharp."
posted on September 30, 2002 09:32:51 AM new
So we basically are going to war with Iraq because we do not want to issue Iraq a refund for items purchased from us?
If Microsoft revoked my license to Windows and wanted me to erase it from my hard drive, I would demand a refund first. But would Microsoft send hitmen to kill me and blow up my house?
.
A Man will spend $2.00 for a $1.00 item he needs.
A Woman will spend $1.00 for a $2.00 item she doesn't need.
, toxigenic (meaning "poisonous"
