Elsewhere Today 437

Aljazeera:
Rebel Congo general warns of 'war'

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 02, 2007
16:56 MECCA TIME, 13:56 GMT

A renegade Congolese general has said his forces are now in a state of war with government troops after sporadic fighting forced tens of thousands to flee the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

Laurent Nkunda told Al Jazeera he blamed the government for the recent outbreak of violence and warned a genocide could take place in eastern Congo.

"We are surrounded by government forces and they launched an attack three days ago. The government has chosen the way to fight and not the way of peace talks," he said on Sunday.

The UN has sent an extra 200 soldiers to the east of the country amid fears of a looming humanitarian crisis.

'Negative forces'

Nkunda says he is protecting his own minority ethnic Tutsi population in North and South Kivu provinces from locally based Rwandan Hutu fighters, whom he has accused the Kinshasa government of backing.

In 2004, he led two army brigades, around 4,000 men, into the bush and briefly captured Bukavu, the capital of neighbouring South Kivu.

The rebel general is wanted by the UN for alleged war crimes and is considered by them one of the most wanted regional commanders still at large in the country.

"We were in a ceasefire in January. But what is happening on the ground is that the government has put an end to that process, " he told Al Jazeera.

"We are afraid that because the government is working with negative forces in Rwanda that were responsible for the genocide there that they want to kill our people in North Kivu.

"I'm fearing that those negative forces want to do a genocide in Congo."

Chikez Diemu, the Congolese defence minister, told Al Jazeera: "Everybody knows Mr Nkunda is a criminal. Everybody knows he has killed people."

Diemu insisted that the army had not been sent to fight but carry out an agreed programme to integrate Nkunda's forces into the army.

Regional threat

After bouts of fierce fighting last year between the regular army and forces loyal to Nkunda, the two sides agreed to integrate the mainly Tutsi forces into special "mixed" brigades in Nord-Kivu.

Five such brigades have been deployed since January but UN monitors say this has only worsened the situation.

Colonel Philemon Kav, an army brigade commander, said Nkunda's forces sustained "heavy losses" when they launched a pre-dawn offensive on Thursday in a bid to overrun at a key post south of Masisi, the main regional town.

Losses denied

Nkunda denied the claim, saying: "We have not taken many casualties and morale is high."

He also warned that the conflict could spiral out of control and threaten regional security.

The UN says more than 170,000 civilians have been displaced in fighting in the region since the beginning of the year.

On Thursday, witnesses said that the populations of entire towns had fled the fighting.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/61ECBB18-A248-4466-A919-E8D0781797AB.htm

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AllAfrica:
Clashes Between Two FNL Factions Claim 21 Lives

Burundi Réalités (Bujumbura) NEWS
5 September 2007

Twenty-one persons died in clashes between two FNL factions in the northern section of Bujumbura city.

The fighting began in the early Monday morning in Buterere and pitted the combatants of FNL that are loyal to Agathon Rwasa against dissidents of this movement who claim to be for peace. The 21 victims are all said to be dissidents. Most of the dissidents fled to the headquarters of Buterere commune where they are under the protection of the national police.

Clashes between these two factions began last Sunday morning in the Buhinyuza quarter of Kinama commune. The previous fighting claimed no victims but forced many people to flee their homes for fear of being caught in the crossfire. The dissidents of FNL who are stationed not far from where civilians live in Buterere were attacked by combatants of the faction loyal to Agathon Rwasa who are stationed in Rukoko forest of Mutimbuzi commune.

Some civilians began to return home Tuesday morning to see what it is left of their homes. Further violence is feared as the bulk of the dissidents remain in Buterere. The army indicates that it cannot intervene in this FNL internal affair because of the ceasefire agreement. It was clear, however, that the FNL dissidents were backed by the national security forces.

Copyright © 2007 Burundi Réalités. All rights reserved.

http://allafrica.com/stories/200709050014.html

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AllAfrica:
Flood - Over 5,000 Rendered Homeless in Sokoto

By Aminu Mohammed, Sokoto
Daily Trust (Abuja) NEWS
5 September 2007

Over 5,000 people have been displaced by flood which has affected 10 local government areas in Sokoto state. The affected local government areas are Goronyo, Shagari, Tureta, Bodinga, Tambuwal, Yabo, Sokoto South, Sokoto North and Kebbe.

Apart from the displaced persons, farmlands and property estimated at millions of naira have also been destroyed in all the affected areas.

In Goronyo local government which is the worst affected, about 500 houses were affected while several hectares of farmlands were also destroyed in Kiyawa village while at Gamgam in Shagari local government, the flood was worse than that of last year when over 100 houses were affected.

Already, the state government has distributed relief materials valued over N100 million to the victims in all the 10 local government areas, while the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Muhammadu Sa;ad Abubakar III, also distributed materials worth over N3 million to the victims.

Again, the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), has donated relief materials worth millions of naira to the Sokoto State Relief Agency for distribution to the affected areas. However, in all the affected areas, no loss of life was reported.

Copyright © 2007 Daily Trust. All rights reserved.

http://allafrica.com/stories/200709050007.html

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AlterNet:
The Great Plastic Plague

By Tara Lohan, AlterNet
Posted on September 5, 2007

They're ubiquitous. They accompany us home each time we shop. They swirl about our oceans, they cling to our trees, they drift down our city sidewalks, they adorn metal fences, they're consumed by animals.

They are an urban tumbleweed, a flag of the consumer era.

Each year across the world some 500 billion plastic bags are used, and only a tiny fraction of them are recycled. Most of them will have a short lifetime with a consumer - they'll be used for the few minutes it takes to get from the store to home and then they're thrown away.

But what does "away" really mean? Plastic shopping bags can last up to a thousand years in a landfill. In the environment, they break down into tiny, toxic particles that become part of the soil and water. Fortunately, some communities in America have started taking serious action.

Stephanie Barger has seen what washes up on the shores of Southern California. The executive director of Earth Resource Foundation, Barger has helped clean up the sands of Orange County and has helped educate people about the effects of a society that embraces disposability.

For every bag, there's a cost. Environment California reports that plastic bags, and other plastic refuse that end up in the ocean, kill up to one million sea creatures every year, such as birds, whales, seals, sea turtles, and others. And the number of marine mammals that die each year because of eating or being entanglement in plastic is estimated at 100,000 in the North Pacific Ocean alone.

The Algalita Marine Research Foundation learned that "broken, degraded plastic pieces outweigh surface zooplankton in the central North Pacific by a factor of 6-1. That means six pounds of plastic for every single pound of zooplankton." Which means, when birds and sea animals or looking for food - more often, they are finding plastic.

Our history with plastic bags is short but significant. The Film and Bag Federation, an industry group, reports that plastic sandwich bags were unveiled in 1957 and quickly became a part of our routine, with department stores adopting plastic shopping bags in the late '70s and supermarkets employing them by the early '80s.

Although bags are given out free these days, they are not without their costs. Retailers in the United States spend $4 billion a year on plastic bags, which gets passed on to customers as higher prices.

A global problem

According to Vincent Coob, founder of reusablebags.com, about 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are used worldwide every year and are causing a global epidemic. The enormous demand for plastic bags ties into the surging global demand for oil - plastic bags are made from ethylene, a petroleum byproduct. In the United States alone, an estimated 12 million barrels of oil is used annually to make plastic bags that Americans consume.

"Eliminating the use of disposable plastic bags is about more than just the environment," said Barger, "it is about health, sustainability, economics and focusing on what kind of quality of life we want."

A growing list of communities and countries are beginning to rethink their dependence on plastic bags. Already a complete or partial ban on the bags has been approved in Australia, South Africa, parts of India, China, Italy, Bangladesh and Taiwan.

Africa has seen an increasing problem with bags as Environmental News Network reports, "South Africa was once producing 7 billion bags a year; Somaliland residents became so used to them they renamed them "flowers of Hargeisa" after their capital; and Kenya not so long ago churned out about 4,000 tons of polythene bags a month."

In Asia, the bags were banned in 2002 in Bangladesh after they were considered to be major factors in blocking sewers and drains and contributing to the severe flooding that devastated the country in 1988 and 1998.

Taking a different route, in 2002, Ireland imposed a 15-cent tax on bags, which led to a rapid 90 percent reduction in use. Ireland uses the tax to help fund other environmental initiatives. Bags are also taxed in Sweden and Germany, and are set to be banned outright in Paris this year.

In the United States, Californians Against Waste estimate that Americans consume 84 billion plastic bags annually. The United States has been slow out of the gate in addressing the growing problem with plastic, but recently momentum has started for positive change.

Currently 30 rural Alaskan villages and towns have banned plastic bags. And in March the city of San Francisco became the first major municipality to ban the use of plastic bags, and nearby Oakland has followed suit, but not without controversy and litigation from industry groups.

Californians themselves discard about 19 billion bags each year. Over the years a growing coalition of environmental and consumer groups have been pushing for the state to take action.

This summer their work resulted in the passage of Assembly Bill 2449, which requires all supermarkets, pharmacies and other large retail stores to provide bins to help consumers recycle.

While this is a step in the right direction, many who have been aggressive on the issue, see the law as a disappointment. "It is basically just fluff - most big stores already have the recycling bins," said Barger.

Bryan Early, who works for the Sacramento-based Californians Against Waste, admitted the legislation was a compromise. With pressure from the grocery and plastics industries, the law includes a provision that takes away the rights of municipalities to put a tax on bags the way Ireland did.

Hence, San Francisco and Oakland's push to ban the bags entirely.

But the devil is in the details. The Oakland legislation (which would go into effect in January) requires large markets to use bags made of recyclable paper or "bioplastics" - bags made from compostable materials like cornstarch.

But a supermarket trade group calling itself the Coalition to Support Plastic Bag Recycling has sued, saying that the ban in Oakland and San Francisco conflict with the state law requiring stores to have bag recycling programs.

The group argues that compostable bags and petroleum-based bags would be confused by consumers and the compostable bags would contaminate the plastics bags during the recycling process.

"We are wasting energy fighting about disposable bags," said Barger, "when we should be putting energy into educating people about reusable bags."

Alternatives vs. the solutions

While lawyers will hash out the details in Oakland, there is a lot we can do as consumer and advocates - some approaches are better than others.

Compostable or bioplastic bags may seem like a good solution to the typical plastic ones, but Barger believes they are more of an alternative - not a solution.

The bioplastics may be made from natural products, but they also may contain a whole bunch of chemicals we don't know about, said Barger. And since most of them will come from corn or soy, they'll also mean more use of farmland laden with petroleum-based pesticides and fertilizers and the same environmental and energy costs to truck the bags to market.

And, while the bags may not last a thousand years, they do break down slower than regular compost and could last up to six or eight months in the environment - threatening wildlife just the same.

"Bioplastics is really just replacing one problem for another and doesn't address what is wrong with our throw-away culture," said Barger.

Neither paper nor plastic

Which brings us to the "paper or plastic" question. The best answer is really neither. Paper bags have their own environmental cost. According to Vincent Coob, 14 million trees were cut down in 1999 to produce 10 billion grocery bags for Americans. The production and shipping of the bags also contributes to global warming and air pollution.

While some environmentalists dispute this, the Environmental Protection Agency reported that paper bags generate 70 percent more air pollutants and 50 times more water pollutants than plastic bags, largely because of the amount of energy needed in the recycling process.

The best alternative Barger and Early agree, are reusable bags and education - lots of it. By purchasing a reusable cloth bag, consumers can save hundreds and perhaps thousands of plastic or paper bags.

If you can't afford one, then reusing a plastic bag for as long as possible and then recycling it (if you are lucky to live in California or the few other places that offer the service) is the best bet.

It is also important, Barger says, to educate grocery store managers and ask them to talk to their employees.

Political pressure helps, too. Ask your elected officials to consider legislation to impose bag taxes or bag bans.

Probably the best thing we can do, though, is change our behavior as consumers and begin valuing durability instead of disposability. "There is a crisis happening right now," said Barger. "We have got to stop the flow of plastic today. People really want some organization to fix this problem. But we are the only people that can fix it."

Tara Lohan is a managing editor at AlterNet.

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at:
http://www.alternet.org/story/61607/

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Arab News: The Shiite Power Struggle:
Hardly Good News for the US in Iraq

Ramzy Baroud, Aljazeera.net English
Wednesday, 5, September, 2007 (23, Sha`ban, 1428)

The decision made by Shiite leader Moqtada Sadr to halt his Mahdi Army’s attacks on occupation forces and Iraqi security is likely to be considered the single most promising breakthrough for the US military in Iraq. Although the move comes ahead of several reports to be presented to the US Congress later this month, the decision was ultimately an outcome of a long-brewing intersectarian conflict between Shiite Iraqis, which will further complicate the devastating American failure in Iraq.

Sadr’s decision followed the widespread clashes at Karbala on Aug. 26, during one of the holiest Shiite festivals. Despite various accusations of outside involvement, the clashes were apparently Shiite through and through, involving militant members of the Badr Brigade of the Islamic Supreme Council (lead by Abdul Aziz Al-Hakim, a duel ally of the US and Iran) and Sadr’s Mahdi Army.

Both of these groups are Shiite, but they differ significantly in terms of their loyalty to Iran: Sadr, although backed by Iran, often invokes an Iraqi national sentiment, while the Badr Brigade of the Supreme Council is unabashedly pro-Iran. While the latter has been heavily involved both in the sectarian killings and the massacres of (mostly Sunni) civilians, it coordinates most of its work with the US military, and is in fact heavily represented in the Iraqi army, police and intelligence. Yet, it is the armed wing of the Islamic Supreme Council that is affiliated with the Shiite high authority Ali Al-Sistani, and both hold unquestionable allegiance to Iran. The US also claims to fight Iran’s agents in Iraq (who are blamed for the development of most destructive types of guerrilla warfare tactics) and yet Iran plays an uncontested role in determining the overall policies of the ruling Shiite parties in Iraq — who are willing collaborators with the US military.

Sadr’s recent decision was, predictably, welcomed by the Americans, who are likely to take any opportunity to prove the successes of their most recent operations. Top official Gen. David Petraeus has already boasted about the troop surge leading to a reduction in sectarian fighting. Statistics, however, directly contradict such claims. Figures from the Associated Press show that the month of August registered the second highest civilian death toll in Iraq — 1,809 civilians — since the US invasion of March 2003. The sharp rise is largely attributed to the quadruple suicide bombings on Aug. 14, near the Syrian border, which killed 520 people.

The significance of that incident — aside from its devastating death toll — is of less consequence than the inner Shiite fighting, considering that the targeted group is a small minority that played next to no part in the raging conflict. However, it will most likely be underlined further by the US to detract from the fact that their once reliable allies in Iraq are now engaged in a perplexing fight over control of the southern part of the country, where most of the oil wealth is concentrated. Southern Iraq is also important to groups vying for power because the city of Basra directly borders Iran, the main ally for Iraqi Shiites and their major source of political validation, and Najaf and Karbala, two of the holiest cities for Shiites around the world are located in the south (the recent clashes in Karbala were about controlling these shrines). With the British vacating their positions in Basra, Shiite groups, who had hitherto displayed a degree of unity in their fight against Sunnis, are now increasingly likely to lock horns; those who control the south seem set to emerge as the future power brokers of the country.

Although capable of inflicting widespread damage, Sadr’s chances of becoming this power broker are slim. For one, his Shiite rivals receive greater backing from Iran, which has displayed a largely Machiavellian attitude towards the situation in Iraq, choosing never to bid on the underdog. The advent of the Americans has also worsened the position of the Sadrists as they became largely excluded from all government institutions. The new Iraqi hierarchy favored the followers of Al-Hakim, who apparently represented a more dominant and perhaps more trustworthy (from an American point of view) branch of Shiites.

However, despite his seemingly erroneous strategies and media depictions as a “radical”, Sadr has actually adopted a very careful balancing act. He has continued to appeal to his Shiite followers in a way that sets him apart from Sistani, while simultaneously maintaining good relations with Sistani and Iran. He has even occasionally appeared sympathetic to the plight of the Sunnis.

Yet his relative political shrewdness could hardly bridge the gap between the various Shiite groups, which remains essentially ideological and an extension of the theological contention between the Hawza followers of Sistani and the followers of Mohammad Sadiq Al-Sadr, Muqtada’s father. The divide between the two religious Shiite schools is as real as ever and the new economic woes and power struggles are likely to bring back to the fore — and further fuel — these differences.

We know very little of why Sadr decided to send the Mahdi Army into hibernation. He claims that his militias are being infiltrated by Iran, but this is unconvincing given that Sadr uses Iran as a personal escape hatch whenever his safety is threatened at home.

A lenient Sadr may well inspire revolt amongst his followers and send the inner Shiite fight on an early and destructive path, or he might find himself compelled to resume the fight on behalf of his own group. Both scenarios would be bad news for the Americans, who would be forced to watch an escalating Shiite power struggle in a country they supposedly control.

Copyright: Arab News © 2003 All rights reserved.

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=100840&d=5&m=9&y=2007

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Asia Times:
Jihadis strike back at Pakistan

By Syed Saleem Shahzad
Sep 6, 2007

KARACHI - The US-inspired move to stabilize Pakistan by bringing together the exiled liberal and secular former premier Benazir Bhutto and President General Pervez Musharraf to form a national-consensus government indicates Washington's overriding desire to maintain Pakistan as an important base in the "war on terror", as well as to secure large infrastructure projects in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The idea has taken firm root, with talks between representatives of Musharraf and Bhutto continuing, and an announcement expected within a couple of days. No opposition alliance, whether it be the six-party religious alliance Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal or the All Parties Democratic Movement, is in a position to threaten the government.

No political opposition, that is.

Al-Qaeda members based in the Pakistani tribal areas of South Waziristan and North Waziristan on the border with Afghanistan see this development as a serious challenge to their survival. In response, they have drawn together the Afghan Taliban, the Pakistani Taliban, jihadist groups and, last but not least, a significant number in the Pakistani security forces to "nip the evil in bud".

This they aim to do by offering fierce resistance to Pakistani forces across the country from bases in North West Frontier Province and elsewhere, as well as to any coalition forces that stage raids from across the border in Afghanistan. (See Taliban a step ahead of US assault, Asia Times Online, August 11.) After this, they will rejoin the Afghan offensive with renewed zeal.

On Tuesday, militants send a bloody message on their intentions. Two suicide bombers attacked two areas in the high-security zone of the garrison city of Rawalpindi (the capital Islamabad's twin city), killing 27 people and injuring more than 80. Most of the victims belonged to the defense services. An Interior Ministry spokesman linked the bombers with militants in Waziristan.

Last week, in a stunning show of strength, militants abducted 410 officers and soldiers of the security forces in the Waziristans. The Pakistani press initially reported numbers of 100, then 200 and later 300. This clearly underlines the vulnerability of the ruling military establishment.

"You don't see any law enforcer in FATA [Federally Administered Tribal Areas], especially after sunset. The militants hold the real authority," Zulfiqar Ali, who reports from the area, was quoted as saying by Inter Press Service. He speculated that the fact that the militants could seize and hold such a large number of soldiers indicated their size and strength and said it was possible that the government had already lost control of the tribal areas.

This vulnerability can be traced to July, when security forces stormed the radical Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) in Islamabad, which had close links with militants in the tribal areas. Many militants holed up in the mosque were killed, but such was the backlash that Pakistan retreated from a planned operation against the Taliban's and al-Qaeda's assets throughout the country, despite a massive deployment of troops in the tribal areas. An uneasy truce in the tribal areas between militants and the authorities was called off by the militants.

New lease on life for militants
Rawalpindi is full of secret detention centers known as "safe houses" in the language of the secret services. All high-profile terror suspects, including those involved in plots to kill Musharraf in 2003 and 2004, coup plotters and those involved in sabotage operations, are held in these centers. The suspects number in the hundreds.

The saga of Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry changed everything. He was suspended in March by Musharraf for alleged abuse of office, but subsequently reinstated by the Supreme Court. This marked a major milestone in the history of the Pakistani judiciary and the birth of unprecedented judicial activism, which included the Supreme Court ordering the authorities to release "missing people" detained in the secret detention centers of intelligence organizations.

Dozens were released, including al-Qaeda's Pakistani chief, Mustafa (one name). [1] Militants had tried for a long time to strike deals to have him freed, but Pakistan, under foreign pressure, would not do so. It took the courts to secure his release.

Soon after the militants were released, the Lal Masjid operation took place, which further emboldened them to reorganize into various groups. On August 25, this message was disseminated through e-mail to all national and international press:

Dusk on July 10 witnessed the fall of a gallant warrior. Perhaps the bravest this land has seen. His revolutionary pride refused to bow down before a system which is based on tyranny and oppression. He might be dead, but he lives through the cause his blood sanctified. To our nation, which has been enslaved for the past 300 years, he gave the will to resist the ruling class and the imperial powers with the slogan Shariat ya shahadat. [We are back with a bang.]

The message was released with photographs of Abdul Rasheed Ghazi, the deputy prayer leader of Lal Masjid, who was killed on July 10. Also in the last week of August, a video compact disc was released of the Lal Masjid operation in which a background voice promised a wave of suicide attacks throughout Pakistan to avenge the incident. Supporters of the Lal Masjid, not only in Islamabad and Rawalpindi but also in other parts of the country, activated their followers.

Then a car was snatched at gunpoint from Inter-Services Intelligence officials in Rawalpindi. This prompted the authorities to issue orders that officials avoid all unnecessary movements in civilian areas and not to travel without guards in uniform. In the same period, militants raided a secret detention center in Rawalpindi, firing some shots before escaping. This week, before the twin suicide blasts, four army personnel were kidnapped in broad daylight from Qasim Market in Rawalpindi.

Concerned officials opened back-channel talks with the militants. Fazl Karim, who slit the throat of US reporter Daniel Pearl in Karachi in 2002, was released without fanfare from detention in Karachi. Though Pakistan claimed an unconditional handover of 18 security personnel in Waziristan last week, sources told Asia Times Online that more than 1,000 militants were swapped.

The 410 security forces, however, remain in the captivity of militants in Waziristan. In addition, dozens of security personnel are either killed or kidnapped just about every day in the tribal areas of Mohmand, Bajaur and the Waziristans.

Security officials point out that Tuesday's twin bombings once again show the level of the militants' penetration of the security forces. The bombers were easily able to transport themselves and explosives into a high-security area; clearly they had active help from insiders.

"This is natural retaliation for the oppression of Lal Masjid students and teachers. The government massacred hundreds of people and used white phosphorus to annihilate them, and now they expect peace?" Abu Hafs, a spokesman for the Lal Masjid movement, told Asia Times Online in a telephone conversation.

Musharraf and his allies have been the target of militants for many years, and survived. This time, however, it could be different.

Asia Times Online contacts in the tribal areas say that al-Qaeda, the Pakistani Taliban, Uzbek militants and the Afghan Taliban have shelved their differences and agreed on a single agenda. This is to remove all Western allies from Pakistan and to continue attacks on the establishment until the military leadership alienates itself from the "war on terror". They also want the release of all suspected militant prisoners in Pakistani jails and secret facilities.

This approach is the same as the one adopted in April 2006, when militants made sure that Pakistan would not carry out operations on their bases, and only then they entered Afghanistan for their successful spring offensive.

After a deal is finalized with Bhutto, it will be a litmus test for the Pakistan Army as an institution whether it backs the deal in favor of Washington or expands it and makes a bargain with the militants so that it can survive for another day - and make life more miserable for the Western coalition in Afghanistan.

Note
1. See Al-Qaeda's man who knows too much, Asia Times Online, January 5.

Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com.

Copyright 2007 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/II06Df02.html

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Guardian:
Gang value

Crystal Mahey
September 5, 2007 12:00 PM

With the murder of so many children by children and the rise of gang violence, it is little surprise that recently politicians have been jumping on and off various bandwagons all carrying the supposed solutions. But this week the award for empty rhetoric definitely goes to Gordon Brown. On Monday he declared that this is the time for "a new type of politics" - a vision that has about as much substance as "New" Labour. When are politicians going to start facing up to the real causes of our youth gang problem?

For once, David Cameron said something that rings true when admitting last week that "summit after summit has got us no closer to addressing the causes of social breakdown which are fuelling violent crime". But is finding the cause really as difficult as the politicians are making out?

The rise in youth gangs coincides with research published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation that shows the gap between the rich and poor is at its widest in 40 years. Those living on the poverty line, which if we're being honest is the majority of black and ethnic minority children, are the ones most prone to joining gangs. But this isn't a race issue; it's a class one.

It is very easy to ask the question, where are the parents of these young people on the streets? And it should not always be a rhetorical one. Although not all, many of them are out at work, forced to be there for long hours because they were subjected to poor education and did not leave school with any qualifications.

Of course broken family units are one of the biggest contributors to youth gangs. But I'm tired of politicians such as David Cameron giving us patronising explanations about how important the family unit is, as though those most affected by family breakdown are unaware of its importance. Family breakdown is not a culturally specific problem, as commonly suggested, especially when referring to the black community. It is largely related to financial and social strains endured by those who are living on the margins.

For these children, there is little guidance at home, and even when it is there its not enough to curb their feelings of frustration about being at the bottom of society. The education system is failing them as much as it did their parents, with 147,000 children leaving school each year without even a single grade C GCSE. With so few qualifications in such a competitive jobs market, they have no hope of getting a decent job or working normal social hours. As flattering as it might be to us mere mortals "citizen juries" are hardly likely to solve such a deeply embedded problem.

In an even more competitive housing market affording a mortgage is always going to be a dream rather than a reality. So is it any wonder these kids feel they have no choice but to turn to criminal activity to make the money and live the life they see everyone else around them enjoying?

With increasing gentrification and the influx of the middle classes into previously run-down areas such as Hackney and Lambeth, the trickle-down effect is clearly the government's favoured approach. But let's not beat about the bush. It does not work. It is this kind of thinking that has got us into this crisis, where the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. This means poor housing, poor education and poor future prospects.

But for all the summits and speeches, we hear of no concrete plans to address these specific issues. Take away the rhetoric and token gestures and what are the government's proposed policies? Tougher law enforcement, alcohol crackdowns and acceptable behaviour contracts. And amazingly the opposition make this look halfway credible by concentrating on gangsta lyrics, abolishing the Human Rights Act and taking tougher action on antisocial behaviour by hitting youth where it hurts. But of course it's not about who looks more credible now that Brown has declared that everyone is one big happy family.

When will politicians' stop feeding us hard-hitting tough talk, veiled by Brown's "one-love" vision and realise that these kids have it tough enough already. Youth gangs are not going to go away with politicians' hugs, punishments or jury-citizens! These young people need to be given value and more than that they need to experience economic equality. When our young people genuinely stop being excluded by society they will stop joining anti-social gangs.

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/crystal_mahey/2007/09/valuing_gangs.html

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Jeune Afrique: Ban Ki-moon au Darfour
pour hâter le processus de négociation politique

SOUDAN - 5 septembre 2007 - par AFP

Le secrétaire général de l'ONU, Ban Ki-moon, est arrivé mercredi à Al-Facher au Darfour pour tenter de hâter la fin du conflit qui ensanglante cette province de l'ouest du Soudan depuis plus de quatre ans.

"Pendant trop longtemps, la communauté internationale a assisté sans rien faire (à ce drame), comme un témoin impuissant. Ceci est en train de changer", a-t-il lancé dans un discours mardi à l'université de Juba, dans le sud du Soudan.

A Al-Facher, capitale du Darfour-nord, M. Ban devait rencontrer le gouverneur de la région, des représentants des personnes déplacées de tous les camps, des représentants de la société civile et des chefs traditionnels. Il devait aussi se rendre sur le site où sera installé le futur quartier général de la Minuad, une force hybride ONU-Union africaine devant pacifier cette région grande comme la France et déchirée par la guerre civile depuis février 2003.

Le conflit au Darfour a fait 200.000 morts et plus de deux millions de déplacés, selon l'ONU. Khartoum conteste ces chiffres, n'admettant que seulement 9.000 morts.

"En ce qui concerne le processus de négociation politique, nous nous approchons d'un accord sur un lieu et une date", a dit le chef de l'ONU dans l'avion le transportant de Juba à Al-Facher. "J'espère pouvoir finaliser (cet accord) très bientôt. Je vais vraiment intensifier le processus de négociations", a ajouté M. Ban, accompagné de son envoyé spécial chargé du volet politique du dossier du Darfour, Jan Eliasson. Ce dernier s'efforce de ramener à la table des négociations les nombreux groupuscules rebelles qui n'ont pas signé l'accord de paix d'Abuja en mai 2006 et qui porte sur un partage du pouvoir et des richesses et fixe les étapes d'un retour à la normale avec des dispositions très précises sur le désarmement.

En août, huit groupes rebelles du Darfour réunis à Arusha en Tanzanie se sont entendus sur une plate-forme de revendications communes, en vue de négociations avec Khartoum, mais un influent dirigeant rebelle, Abdulwahid Nour, a boycotté la réunion. M. Ban l'a appelé à sortir de son isolement. D'après une source onusienne, les pourparlers entre rebelles et gouvernement pourraient avoir lieu en Tanzanie en octobre.

La mise en place de la Minuad, qui avec 26.000 hommes sera la plus importante mission de maintien de la paix au monde, a été décidée le 31 juillet par le Conseil de sécurité dans sa résolution 1769. Son déploiement total n'est toutefois pas attendu avant la mi-2008.

La décision est venue après des mois d'efforts diplomatiques intenses internationaux, surtout de M. Ban lui-même, pour faire accepter cette force par le président soudanais Omar el-Béchir. M. Ban a indiqué que lors d'un entretien en tête-à-tête avec M. Béchir lundi à Khartoum, ce dernier lui avait promis de "faciliter" le déploiement de la force sur les plans "administratif et logistique".

Soulignant qu'"il n'y a pas de temps à perdre" et que "la coopération du gouvernement est essentielle", il a dit qu'il "appréciait l'engagement de M. Béchir à coopérer pleinement". Depuis son arrivée au Soudan, M. Ban répète qu'il ne peut y avoir de "solution militaire" au Darfour et que "la violence doit (y) cesser".

Outre le maintien de la paix avec la Minuad et les négociations politiques, M. Ban veut agir sur le plan du développement. Il souhaite que la communauté internationale apporte une aide financière substantielle au Darfour dans des domaines essentiels comme les voies de communication, la santé et surtout l'eau, denrée rare dans cette région désertique et l'une des causes profondes du conflit.

M. Ban devait repartir en soirée pour Khartoum où il aura jeudi des entretiens politiques, avant de poursuivre sa tournée au Tchad et en Libye.

http://www.jeuneafrique.com/jeune_afrique/article_
depeche.asp?art_cle=AFP34457bankieuqiti0#

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Mail & Guardian:
UN: More than 220 000 have fled DRC fighting

Kampala, Uganda
04 September 2007

The United Nations refugee agency said on Tuesday that tens of thousands of Congolese refugees crossed into Uganda on Monday following renewed fighting between the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) army and renegade troops in the north-east of the vast country.

A spokesperson for the UN Mission in the DRC (Monuc) in the provincial capital, Goma, said that exact figures of recent refugees were unavailable, but said that more than 220 000 people have left their villages since January since the beginning of fighting in the Kivu region, which borders Rwanda.

Those families had found refuge with host families in other locations, the spokesperson said, but the current wave of refugees may not have access to host families that already housing other refugees.

The Kampala office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a statement that 10 000 Congolese refugees from the Kivu region had fled to Uganda.

The refugees - mostly women and children - crossed at Bunagana border post, about 500km west of Kampala and were receiving relief assistance from the UN and other charities, UNHCR said.

"The displaced Congolese said they were fleeing fighting between the government army and the militia led by General Laurent Nkunda," UNHCR said.

Nkunda's forces, which comprise mostly ethnic Tutsis, refused to integrate with the government forces and have been controlling much of the area.

The dissident general is said to have the backing of Rwanda's Tutsi-dominated government. On Sunday he described the situation between his forces and those of the Congolese army in the east of the country as a "state of war".

Fighting has periodically broken out between his forces and government troops, forcing the civilians to flee across the borders.

District authorities and the UNHCR were monitoring the movement of the Congolese refugees, while making contingency plans for a mass influx of people, the refugee agency said.

In August, a similar number of Congolese refugees crossed into Uganda but returned home a few days later.

Sapa-dpa

http://www.mg.co.za/articlepage.aspx?area=/breaking_
news/breaking_news__africa/&articleid=318353#

---

Mother Jones:
Seven Years in Hell

On body counts, dead zones, and an empire of stupidity.

Tom Engelhardt
September 04 , 2007

On August 22nd, breaking into his Crawford vacation, the President addressed the national convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, giving what is already known as his "Vietnam speech." That day, George W. Bush, who, as early as 2003, had sworn that his war on Iraq would "decidedly not be Vietnam," took the full-frontal plunge into the still-flowing current of the Big Muddy, fervently embracing Vietnam analogy-land. You could almost feel his relief (and that of his neocon speechwriters).

In that mud-wrestle of a speech, he invoked "one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam.... that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like ‘boat people,' ‘re-education camps,' and ‘killing fields.'" The man who had so carefully sat out the Vietnam War now proclaimed that Americans never should have left that land. As he's done with so much else, he also linked the Vietnam War by an act of verbal ju-jitsu to al-Qaeda and the attacks of September 11th. 9/11, too, turned out to be part of the "price" we'd paid for succumbing to "the allure of retreat" and withdrawing way back when. ("In an interview with a Pakistani newspaper after the 9/11 attacks," intoned the President, "Osama bin Laden declared that 'the American people had risen against their government's war in Vietnam. And they must do the same today.'")

Whatever brief respite his August embrace of Vietnam may have given him in the polls, it involved a larger concession on the administration's part. Like its predecessors, the Bush administration and its neocon supporters simply couldn't kick the "Vietnam Syndrome"—much as they struggled to do so—any more than a moth could avoid the flame. Now, they found themselves locked in a desperate, hopeless attempt to use Vietnam to recapture the hearts and minds of the American people.

Entering the Dead Zone

It's possible to track this losing struggle with the Vietnam analogy over these last years. Take one issue—the body count—on which we know something about administration Vietnam thinking. For Americans of the Vietnam era, a centuries-old "victory culture"—in which triumph on some distant frontier against evil enemies was considered an American birthright—still held sway. In Vietnam, when it nonetheless became clear that the promised frontier victory was, for the second time in little more than a decade, nowhere in sight, American military and civilian officials tried to compensate.

One problem they faced was that the very definition of victory in war—the taking of terrain, the advance into hostile territory that signaled the crushing of enemy resistance—had ceased to mean anything in Vietnam. In a guerrilla war in which, as American grunts regularly complained, you couldn't tell friends from enemies, no less hold a hostile countryside, something else had to substitute for the landing at D-Day, the advance on Berlin, the island-hopping campaign in the Pacific. And so the "whiz kids" of Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's Pentagon and the military high command developed a substitute numerology of victory.

Everything was to be counted and the copious statistics of success were to flow endlessly up the chain of command and back to Washington, proof positive that "progress" was being made. The numbers looked convincing indeed. In fact, to believe loss possible in Vietnam, when by any measure of success—from dead enemy and captured weapons to cleared roads and pacified villages—Americans had such a decisive advantage, seemed nothing short of madness. Yet, to accept the figures pouring in daily from soldiers, advisors, and bureaucrats was to defy the logic of one's senses. To make the endlessly unraveling situation in Vietnam madder still, the impending defeat did not seem to be a military one. Those who directed the war (as well as the right-wing in the post-war years) regularly claimed, for instance, that not a single significant battle had been lost to the Vietnamese enemy.

Sometimes it seemed that Americans in Vietnam did nothing but invent new ways of measuring success. There were, for instance, the eighteen indices of the Hamlet Evaluation System, each meant to calibrate the "progress" of "pacification" in South Vietnam's 2,300 villages and almost 13,000 hamlets, focusing largely on "rural security" and "development." Then there were the many indices of the Measurement of Progress system, its monthly reports, produced in slide form, including "strength trends of the opposing forces, efforts of friendly forces in sorties… enemy base areas neutralized," and so on. And don't forget that there were figures by the bushel-load on every form of destruction rained down on the Vietnamese enemy—sorties flown, tonnage dropped, "truck kills," you name it. The efforts that went into creating numerical equivalents for death were endless.

For visiting congressional delegations, the commander of U.S. forces, Gen. William Westmoreland, had his "attrition charts," multicolored bar graphs illustrating various "trends" in death and destruction. Commanders in the field had their own sophisticated ways to codify "kill ratios"; while, on the ground, where, in dangerous circumstances, the actual counting had to be done, all of this translated, far more crudely, into the MGR, or, as the grunts sometimes said, the "Mere Gook Rule"—"If it's dead and it's Vietnamese, it's VC [Vietcong]." In other words, when pressure came down for the "body count," any body would do.

Back in the U.S., much of the frustration that had gathered in the face of mounting years of claimed progress and evident failure would focus on the "body count" of enemy dead, announced in late afternoon U.S. military press briefings in the South Vietnamese capital, Saigon. For the element of the fantastic in those briefings (and the figures proffered), they came to be known among reporters as "the Five o'clock Follies."

In a war in which D-Day-like landings were uncontested publicity events and "conquered" territory might be abandoned within days, the killing of the enemy initially seemed nothing to be ashamed of and an obvious indicator of "progress"—a classic word then and now. (Witness the upcoming Petraeus "progress report" to Congress.) As time went on, however, as success refused to make an appearance despite the claims that it was just around some corner, and as "defeat," a word no one cared to use, crept into consciousness (while American officials like National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger privately fulminated about the impossibility of losing a war to "a little fourth-rate power"), those dead bodies decoupled from the idea of victory. They began to seem like a grim count of something else entirely—of, depending on your position at that moment, frustration, futility, brutality, tragedy, defeat.

The body count took on a grim life of its own. Detached from reality, yet producing the most horrific of realities—and, among increasing numbers of Americans, a sense of shame—it morphed into something like a never-ending Catch-22 of carnage. In this way, as the bodies piling up looked ever more like so many slaughtered peasants in a "fourth-rate" land, successive American administrations entered the dead zone.

Of course, if the statistics of slaughter had been accepted by all sides (then or now) as the ruling logic of the struggle, the United States would have won the war any day from the mid-1960s on (or, in the present case, from March 2003 on). Instead, by the sacrifice of untold numbers of lives, the enemy somehow succeeded in capturing the only set of numbers worth having—the numbers of weeks, months, years that the fighting went on.

Return of the Body Count

Little wonder then that, in the beginning, the Bush administration was eager to avoid the body count, along with body bags and those disintegrative images of the Vietnam war dead coming home in full daylight in sight of television cameras; that it was eager, in fact, to avoid every aspect of a thoroughly discredited war. But here's the irony: From the moment the Afghan War began in 2001, no one had the Vietnam analogy more programmatically on the brain than the Bush team.

In this, they were no exception to the rule. Ever since the 1970s, the Pentagon and various administrations had been playing a conscious opposites game with what they imagined as Vietnam's failed practices in each of the many smaller interventions, invasions, and wars launched from the invasion of Grenada through the first Gulf War, Somalia, and the Kosovo air war.

The Bush administration began similarly, if more confidently, in opposites mode; for they expected that, as the sole superpower on a modest-sized planet with the mightiest military in sight, victory would be theirs in a "cakewalk", to use a winning word of that moment. It would also happen in the most obvious of ways - the taking of the enemy capital, the destruction (or as they liked to say, "decapitation") of the enemy regime, and the long-term garrisoning of American forces on gigantic bases in the Iraqi countryside (not to speak of the bouquets that were to be thrown by thrilled Shiites at the feet of the invading "liberators"). Vietnam? They'd skip it entirely - and all its notorious ways. As Gen. Tommy Franks, who ran the Afghan war, so famously said: "We don't do body counts."

Jump almost five years to October 2006 and a President thoroughly frustrated by an inability to show "progress" in his war of choice, despite proclaiming that "major combat operations in Iraq" had "ended" in May 2003 and presenting a National Strategy for Victory in Iraq in November 2005. In an outburst to a group of sympathetic conservative journalists, he revealed just how much he yearned for the return of the body count: "We don't get to say that—a thousand of the enemy killed, or whatever the number was. It's happening. You just don't know it," he exclaimed in frustration.

And why exactly couldn't the President reveal that figure—of which he was inordinately proud—to the American people? "We have made a conscious effort not to be a body-count team," was what Bush told the assembled journalists and pundits, indicating in the process how much conscious planning for Iraq as the not-Vietnam had actually taken place in the White House as well as the Pentagon. (Of course, as the Washington Post's Bob Woodward pointed out, the President privately kept a body count, "'his own personal scorecard for the war' in the form of photographs with brief biographies and personality sketches of those judged to be the world's most dangerous terrorists—each ready to be crossed out by the President as his forces took them down.")

Not so long after Bush made his body-count comments, the body count itself returned as military spokespeople in Iraq and Afghanistan began releasing numbers of enemy killed in "coalition" military operations. Six months or so later, the body count has already become a commonplace as typical recent headlines indicate: "U.S., Iraqis kill 33 insurgents"; "Over 100 Taliban Killed in Afghan Battle."

In his VFW speech, the President finally got to salve his own frustration. "In Iraq," he told his audience, "our troops are taking the fight to the extremists and radicals and murderers all throughout the country. Our troops have killed or captured an average of more than 1,500 al Qaeda terrorists and other extremists every month since January of this year."

Forgetting the absurdity of the figure (which, if accurate, would essentially mean al-Qaeda-in-Mesopotamia has been wiped out), let's just note that, as with the Vietnam analogy itself, the body count in administration hands arrives not as a substitute for victory, but as a way of staving off thoughts of defeat. The President, that is, picked up not where the body count started in Vietnam, but where those Five o'clock Follies left off.

In its own strange way, Bush's speech was an admission of defeat. Somehow, Vietnam, the American nightmare, had finally bested the man who spent his youth avoiding it and his presidency evading it. The President had finally mounted the tiger you are always advised not to ride and had officially entered the dead zone, where the bodies pile high and victory never appears, taking the rest of the country with him. It's clear that, barring some stunning development in Iraq (or perhaps an assault on Iran), whatever the "progress reports," whatever the debates, that's where we'll be until January 2009 when it will automatically become Hillary's or Barack's or Mitt's or Giuliani's war. (From the Vietnam years, we also know what happens when a president, who inherits a war, fears being labeled the person who "lost" it; we know just how hard it is to get out then.)

"The Greatest Force for Liberation the World Has Ever Seen"

Arriving 40 years after the Vietnam War ended, the war in Iraq has turned out to be its spiritual twin in the American pantheon of disaster and defeat. But what a 40 years they were! In fact, if in all sorts of ways Iraq wasn't actually Vietnam, then the United States of 2003 wasn't the U.S. of the Vietnam era either. Not by a long shot.

The President's Vietnam speech was a clever historical montage, if you assume that no one remembers anything about the past. As it happens, almost every line of the speech has since been analyzed, attacked, and dismembered by critics, pundits, and historians who do remember. But in all the commentary, one line - perhaps the most striking - slipped by uncommented upon. And yet it was the line that offered an entry ramp onto the royal road to understanding what exactly has changed in our country over the post-Vietnam decades, not to speak of the seven-plus years from hell of the Bush administration.

Here's what the President said to applause from the assembled vets:

"I'm confident that we will prevail. I'm confident we'll prevail because we have the greatest force for human liberation the world has ever known - the men and women of the United States Armed Forces."

Let's stop on that breathtaking, near messianic claim for a moment. Try, as a start, putting it in the mouths of Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, or even Richard Nixon, no less Gerald Ford. Or try imagining Abraham Lincoln, in the midst of a great civil war that would indeed lead to the emancipation of the slaves, saying something of the sort; or Dwight D. Eisenhower, a former general who had led a great "crusade" - it was his word of choice for the title of his memoir - to free Europe in World War II but would be the first to warn of a "military-industrial complex" as his presidency ended.

Past American presidents might perhaps have spoken of the "greatest force for human liberation" as being "the American way of life" or "the American dream," or American democracy, or the thinking of the Founding Fathers. But it took a genuine transformation in, and the full-scale militarization of, that way of life, for such a formulation to become presidentially conceivable, no less to pass unnoticed, even by fierce critics, in a speech practically every word of which was combed for meaning.

Now, read the speech again and you'll see that the line in question wasn't simply passing blather for an audience of vets, but a thematic summary of the thrust of the whole address, of, in fact, the very vision the Bush administration and supporting neoconservatives carried into office. Much has been said about the Christian fundamentalist nature of the administration, but if that had truly been the essence of these last years, the President would have identified Jesus Christ as that "greatest force."

Not that a distinction need be made, but this administration's primary fundamentalism has been that of born-again militarists, of believers in the efficacy of force as embodied in the most awe-inspiring, high-tech military on the planet. This was the idol at which its top officials worshipped when it came to foreign policy. They were in awe of the idea that they had at their command the best equipped, most powerful military the world had ever seen, armed to the teeth with techno-toys; already garrisoning much of the globe (and about to garrison more of it); already on the receiving end of vast inflows of taxpayer dollars (and about to receive staggeringly more of the same); already embedded in a sprawling network of corporate interests (and about to be significantly privatized into the hands of even more such corporations); already having divided most of the globe into military "commands" that were essentially viceroy-ships (and about to finish the job by creating a command for the "homeland," NORTHCOM, and for the previously forgotten, suddenly energy-hot continent of Africa, AFRICOM.

In the wake of September 11, 2001, these fundamentalist believers in the power of One to twist all other arms on the planet managed to add a second Defense Department - the Department of Homeland Security (with its own "-industrial complex") - to the American agenda; they passed ever more draconian laws curtailing American rights in the name of "homeland security"; they went remarkably far in turning what was already an imperial presidency into something like a Caesarian commander-in-chief presidency; they presided over a far more politicized Defense Department (whose commanders today speak out, while in uniform, on what once would have been civilian political matters); they initiated far more sweeping means of government surveillance at home; they opened offshore prisons, giving their covert intelligence operatives the possibility of disappearing just about any human being they cared to target and their interrogators permission to use the most sophisticated kinds of torture. In short, they presided over a striking increase in the state's coercive powers, as embodied in a single, theoretically unrestrained commander-in-chief presidency and the first imperial vice-presidency in American history. (Of course, from the Reagan "revolution" on, the American conservative movement that first took power over a quarter of a century ago never meant to throttle the state, only the capacity of the state to deliver any services except "security" to its citizenry.)

How distant now is the American moment when a peacetime U.S. Army could still exist as a minimalist force (as between the two world wars or even, to some extent and briefly, after the demobilization of World War II). Similarly, it is no longer possible for American politicians of either party to imagine any region of the globe as not part of our national security sphere or not an object of our attentions, not to say our duty, if push comes to shove (or far earlier), to intervene or make war. As a name, Bush's Global War on Terror was no more meant as blather than that "greatest force for liberation the world has ever seen."

By the time the top officials of this administration and their various neocon backers arrived in power in 2000, they had already fallen deeply in love with the all-volunteer U.S. Armed Forces and the semi-militarized land they were about to inherit. They fervently believed their own propaganda about what such a military could accomplish in the world, despite the cautionary lessons of history stretching from Vietnam back to what the Catholic peasants of Spain, the Sunni fundamentalists of their moment, did to Napoleon's vaunted armies of occupation. (They would, of course, hardly be the first ruling group to mistake their own propaganda for reality.)

Like all fundamentalist believers, like their eternally "resolute" President, in the face of the flood of disasters the Big Muddy of reality has delivered to their doorstep, they remain undeterred -– at least, those who are left. Changing their minds was never an option, though they might indeed still opt to double-down their bets and launch an attack on Iran before January 2009.

They truly believed that when you wrapped the flag of American exceptionalism, of American goodness, around the U.S. military, you would have the greatest force for liberation on the planet. Of course, they defined "liberation" in a way that coincided exactly with their desires for remaking the world. Hence, whenever democratic elections didn't produce the results they wanted, they simply rejected the results. In the bargain, they were convinced that, wielding that "greatest force," they could reshape the Middle East to their specifications, establish an unassailably dominant position at the heart of the oil heartlands of the planet, roll back the Russians even further, cow the Chinese, and create a Pax Americana planet. From their fervent unipolarity, they would, in fact, help to give premature birth to a newly multipolar world.

Because their faith was of the blind sort, they thoroughly misread the nature of power - of what was powerful - in our world. Among other disastrous miscalculations, they confused the power that lay in the threat of loosing the American military, for the actual act of loosing it (as they would soon find out to their chagrin in both Afghanistan and Iraq). Like the monotheists they were, they believed that a single God, personified by the military at their command, would sweep all before Him; that, with a "coalition of the willing" (that is, the submissive) but without the need for actual allies or peers, and so for restraints of any kind, they could take their God of force to the heathen at the point of a shock-and-awe cruise missile and that victory - in fact, an endless string of victories - would be theirs. How predictably wrong they were.

They did move far toward completing the strange process by which American society has, since World War II, been militarized without taking on the normal signs of militarization. We are now a nation armed for global war - from under and on the sea, on the land, in the air, and from the heavens, in jungles and urban jungles, in oil lands, wetlands, and arid lands. We are prepared to make war on the planet itself with an arsenal that is indeed a techno-wonder. As the President suggested in his speech, not thoughts of Thomas Jefferson, but of the latest wondrous armed robot or Hellfire-missile-armed Predator drone are the true hallmarks of early twenty-first century American civilization.

The result of all this has been seven years of hell (so far) delivered by an administration of boys with lethal toys at their command (and the women who enabled them). The dwindling band now left presides over a militarized land that lacks a citizenry of warriors. Think Teutonic without the Teutons. The President caught the essence of America's odd form of militarization when, while launching his wars, he urged American citizens to show their mettle by visiting Disney World and spending up a storm.

A chasm, unimaginable when the U.S. still had a citizen's army, has emerged between American society and a military increasingly from the forgotten towns of the rural hinterland (as the lists of the dead regularly remind us) and new immigrant communities, an all-volunteer military that has become ever less like the public it defends, ever more mercenary (as huge "quick-ship" bonuses are used to attract the reluctant "volunteer") and ever more privatized. These days, the U.S. military and the vast mercenary legions of private contractors who accompany them to war are beginning to take on something of the look of the Roman imperial legions in that empire's last years when they were increasingly filled with Goths and other despised "barbarian" peoples from the empire's frontier regions.

As David Walker, U.S. Comptroller and head of the nonpartisan Government Accounting Office, pointed out recently, the American government has also, in a remarkably short period of time, taken on the look of a faltering imperial Rome with "an over-confident and over-extended military in foreign lands and fiscal irresponsibility by the central government." And imagine - it was only a few years ago that neocon pundits were hailing the U.S. as a power "more dominant than any since Rome." Think instead: The Roman Empire on crack cocaine.

Looking back, it will undoubtedly be clear, if it isn't already, that, with the adherents of the cult of force at the helm of the ship of state, the world of fantasy took over and, even in imperial terms, what resulted was an empire of stupidity, hustling headlong down the slope of decline. That's often the way with blind faith, with anything, in fact, that prevents you from actually taking in the world as it is.

Defeat

Recently, I watched a June Bug caught in a spider's web. It had evidently hit the web almost dead center; and, big as it was, had torn a hole in the fine filaments. Now, it dangled below the web, barely held (so it seemed) by a few strands of the spider's silk. A small brownish thing, glowing in the night light, the spider was working its way methodically around the madly struggling bug in what, for all the world, looked like the most unbelievable of contests. And yet, over time, the bug's flailing grew weaker, the filaments ever more numerous. By morning, with that bug fully wrapped, all its efforts long defeated, the visibly fantastic had turned into the most mundane of realities.

Now, what's left of an American fundamentalist cult of force, based on a prophesy of victory, led by naturals in the arts of destruction and deconstruction, but incapable of overseeing any task of construction or reconstruction anywhere on the planet or altering their path through the world, are faced with a word Americans have long proven themselves ill-equipped to handle - defeat. Today, as in the past, it's a word you only use as a curse to be laid biblically on your opponents. (Oppositional Democrats are reputedly now referred to privately in the White House as "defeatocrats.")

The Bush administration is not alone in being unable to face the idea of defeat. Sometimes even crushed imperial states, blind with defeat, can't admit what's happening to them. Think of Japan in August 1945, facing a defeat so total that just about every one of its cities had been burnt to a cinder. Japan's leaders still couldn't say the word. When the emperor gave his surrender speech (and his previously god-like voice was heard for the first time by ordinary Japanese), he claimed that, well, things hadn't turned out quite as expected. You can search that speech in vain for an actual acknowledgement of defeat.

So imagine a country whose fundamentalist leader sits in an untouched office, where the crisis of the day seems to be a faltering of the home sales market or a foot under a stall in a public bathroom, where the young he's sent to their deaths have largely come from out of the way places, where the stock market remains reasonably buoyant, and the worst casualties are taken on holiday highways.

The Vietnam experience is instructive as to why Americans, however dismayed by another "unwinnable" war, might be pardoned for having trouble coming to grips with the nature of that loss. After all, when the last Americans were lifted off that Saigon embassy roof as North Vietnamese forces entered the southern capital, the "victorious" country lay in ruins. Perhaps three million of its people (not counting neighboring Laotians and Cambodians) had - put in Iraq-era terms - become "excess deaths" during the previous years of fighting; perhaps 9,000 of the South's 15,000 hamlets and villages were in ruins; something like 19 million tons of herbicide had been sprayed on the land by the U.S. Air Force, and unexploded ordnance was everywhere. There were an estimated 1 million war widows, 879,000 orphans, 181,000 disabled people, and 200,000 prostitutes. At least 1.5 million farm animals had been lost and Vietnam's modest industrial base lay in ruins.

The defeated superpower had lost 58,000 dead and 300,000 wounded, but what's now called "the homeland" (a militarized term of our era unknown in the 1970s), except for some wrecked urban ghetto neighborhoods, a few dead or wounded students on university campuses, modest numbers of injured protesters and policemen, and a dead post-doctoral physics student in Wisconsin, lay remarkably untouched. The United States still remained the preeminent superpower on a two-superpower planet.

In the recent history of the reconstruction of war-torn lands, as with occupied Germany and Japan after World War II (as well as prostrate Europe via the Marshall Plan), Americans were supposed to generously offer help in rebuilding. But the land that now so desperately needed reconstruction was "the winner"; and Americans were still at heart a victory culture facing a losing war. Our war mythology had been built upon rare mobilizing defeats (think: the Alamo, Custer's Last Stand, or Pearl Harbor) that were destined to lead to ultimate victory. But what to do in the face of ultimate defeat? In one of the many strange reversals of the post-Vietnam years, Americans decisively turned their backs on the victorious land in ruins and began trying to reconstruct their own country, focusing not on some devastated environment but on the American psyche which, it was said, was suffering from something called the "Vietnam syndrome."

In relation to Iraq, we see a similar back-turning process underway. American politicians (mainly Democrats at this point) are already dumping the blame for Bush's War on Iraqis living in a devastated land that is now really little more than a series of bloodied, embattled religious and ethnic fiefdoms. Already Iraq by-the-numbers has a Vietnam-like look of horror to it, complete with more than two million of its own wartime bus (instead of boat) people and its own monstrous "killing fields." When, in some relatively distant future, Americans finally do face reality and "retreat" from Iraq in whatever fashion, count on a desire to forget it all. But this time, it may not be so simple.

For a whole group of analysts and pundits, the words "Iraq" and "fiasco" have become synonymous, fiasco standing in (as in the bestselling book by the Washington Post's Tom Ricks) for how the post-invasion period was bungled by the Bush administration and Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon. But the essential fiasco lay not in acts, however blundering and empty-headed, in Iraq, but in the fundamentalism of a militarized (corporatized and privatized) cult of armed imperial isolationists, who blindly drove the country to the edge of an imperial cliff (or beyond) and were incapable of changing course even when reality essentially spit in their faces.

Forty years after Vietnam ended, the Bush administration made sure that Americans would have déjà vu all over again at least one last time. In the bargain, the President, Vice President, and their top officials ensured that "the greatest force… the world has ever seen" would be a hurricane not of liberation but of destruction, the geopolitical equivalent of Katrina.

As it happened, 40 years later, the planet had changed. American military power not only would fail (as in Vietnam) to conquer all before it, but the United States would no longer prove to be the preeminent force on the planet, just the last, lingering superpower in a contest that had ended in 1991.

When, finally - 2010, 2012? - we do pack up, head home from the Iraqi dead zone, and try to forget, it surely won't be as easy as it was 40-plus years ago (and, as the inability of our rulers to eradicate the "Vietnam syndrome" from their own brains indicates, it wasn't so easy even then). Whether or not, as the President claims, the crop of "terrorists" he's helped to grow will "follow us home," something will certainly follow us home. After all, when the troops return, if they do, they will return to a "superpower" that, in population life expectancy, has plunged from 11th to 42nd place in only two decades, and, in infant mortality terms, now ranks well below many far poorer countries.

Of course, by then, the President, Vice President, and those true believers still left in his administration will undoubtedly have entered the true American Green Zone, the one where a lecture to an audience of admirers can net you 75,000-100,000 greenbacks; where your story, no matter who writes it for you, will be worth millions; where your "library" can be a gathering place for "scholars"; and the "institute" you sponsor, a legacy recreating locus. It's a zone in which the accountant, not accountability, rules.

In the meantime, we live with all the pointless verbiage, the "debate" in Washington, the "progress reports," and the numerology of death, while the Bush administration hangs in there, determined to hand its war off to a new president, while the leading Democratic candidates essentially duck the withdrawal issue and the bodies pile ever higher.

It's important to remember, however, that there was once quite another tradition in America. Whatever our country was in my 1950s childhood, Americans were still generally raised to believe that empire was a dreadful, un-American thing. We were, of course, already garrisoning the globe, but there was that other hideous empire, the Soviet one, to point to. Perhaps the urge for a republic, not an empire still lies hidden somewhere in the American psyche.

Let's hope so, because one great task ahead for the American people will be to deconstruct whatever is left of our empire of stupidity and of this strange, militarized version of America we live in. We can dream, at least, that someday we'll live in a world where one Defense Department is plenty, where militarized corporations don't have endless battlefields on which to test their next techo-toys, where armies are for the defense of country, not to traipse the world in a state of eternal war, and victory is not vested in imperial conflict on the imagined frontiers of the planet, but in "progress reports" concerned with making life everywhere better, saner, and more peaceable.

Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com, is the co-founder of the American Empire Project. His book, The End of Victory Culture (University of Massachusetts Press), has just been thoroughly updated in a newly issued edition that deals with victory culture's crash-and-burn sequel in Iraq.

This article has been made possible by the Foundation for National Progress, the Investigative Fund of Mother Jones, and gifts from generous readers like you.

© 2007 The Foundation for National Progress

http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/tomdispatch/2007/09/seven-years-in-hell.html

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Página/12:
Hacer ahh

Por Rodrigo Fresán
desde Barcelona
Miércoles, 05 de Septiembre de 2007

UNO Hoy se cumplen cincuenta años y millones de kilómetros recorridos por una novela que –desde su aparición, el 5 de septiembre de 1957– se niega a frenar y, cuando de tanto en tanto se detiene, lo hace apenas para llenar el tanque y seguir corriendo. Y nosotros seguimos corriendo detrás de ella para alcanzarla y subirnos y continuar dentro suyo y junto a ella. Ahora viene otra vez, oigan el rugido de su motor, contémplenla levantar el polvo de la carretera, aquí está, aquí pasa, ya pasó, seguirá pasando: On the Road, de Jack Kerouac.

DOS On the Road (“En el camino”) de Jack Kerouac es uno de esos libros que uno siempre se recuerda y se recordará leyendo y descubriendo. Ese estallido iniciático. Dónde estaba uno, qué pensaba, qué hacía y –lo más importante– qué quería hacer y ser cuando lo miró o nos miró por primera vez. On the Road es uno de esos libros/llave, que entra y gira y enciende algo que uno ya nunca va a querer apagar. Y Kerouac –quien se definía como “un extraño solitario loco místico católico”– es el cerrajero. El hombre que –en un país que creía sin dudar en el opulento Sueño Americano de la posguerra pero que a la noche gemía y se enredaba en las sábanas de la Pesadilla Atómica– le abrió la puerta a toda una generación para ir a jugar. El Trompetista de Hamelín Be-Bop. El evangelista que predicaba otro Nuevo Testamento y creía en –y aquí viene ese incandescente párrafo que todos subrayamos cuando lo leímos la primera de las muchas veces que lo leeríamos– “los locos, los locos por vivir, los locos por hablar, los locos de ser salvados y deseosos de todo al mismo tiempo, los que nunca bostezan o dicen un lugar común y que arden, arden, arden como fabulosos fuegos artificiales amarillos estallando como arañas atravesando las estrellas, y en el medio, ves como la luz azul en su centro aparece de pronto y todos hacen ahh”.

TRES Medio siglo después (aunque On the Road fuera escrita antes, en 1951, revisada muchas veces y rechazada por numerosos editores) es la hora de los festejos, de las reediciones de-luxe y canónicas y de revisitar la leyenda de un manuscrito original con forma de rollo de papel que fue subastado por 2.400.000 dólares y que suele exhibirse en bibliotecas del mundo como si se tratase de un Santo Sudario de cuya existencia nadie duda. Tampoco se cuestiona el sacrificio de su creador. Así, Kerouac no como alguien que murió por nuestros pecados pero sí como víctima propiciatoria en el altar de un mundo que suele comerse crudo y después escupir a un costado a los productos de moda. La historia puede leerse en cualquiera de sus muchas biografías: se publica On the Road, Kerouac es aclamado como algo novedoso (el perfecto Homo Beat con look de actor de cine, aunque él no fuera el primero en utilizar la etiqueta o en poner por escrito las intimidades de la secta), best-seller modesto, curiosidad para los estudios de televisión (donde los colegas lo desprecian) y una amenaza para el establishment literario, que procede a atropellarlo sin detenerse a ver exactamente qué fue eso que pisó con sus ruedas y engranajes. Está claro que buena parte de los mandamientos e instrucciones de Kerouac (cosas del tipo “Al no revisar lo que has escrito lo que le estás ofreciendo al lector no es otra cosa que la obra de tu mente durante el mismo acto de la escritura”) pueden causar más daño que otra cosa y que no son demasiado útiles a la hora de fundamentar y apuntalar un oficio literario que resista truenos y rayos. Pero también está claro que On the Road es una de esas tantas Grandes Novelas Americanas que andan sueltas por ahí.

CUATRO Son pocos los que recuerdan o saben que Jack Kerouac era un pésimo conductor al que no le gustaban los autos. Son muchos los que prefieren considerarlo –como si así lo explicaran todo– una especie de buen salvaje de las letras e ignorar que se trataba de un lector abundante y sensible y un corrector cuidadoso y prolijo (leer sus diarios y su correspondencia con Malcolm Cowley, editor de On the Road) con una idea muy clara de lo que quería y necesitaba hacer antes de ser devorado por esa criatura que él había creado y en la que se había convertido. Son todavía menos los que prefieren enterarse de que murió detestando a toda esa fauna de fieles que lo perseguía y que necesitaba adorarlo como si se tratara de una pieza de museo. Estas amnesias más o menos voluntarias por parte de segundos y terceros tienen que ver con la necesidad de imponer el personaje a la persona. Algo que suele ocurrir con los autores de libros talismánicos y “generacionales”: degeneración y combustión espontánea y por ahí anduvieron también Fitzgerald y Hemingway y Capote. Autores todos que acabaron extraviados en las fronteras que separan al creador de la creación. Henry Miller y Charles Bukowski terminaron como patéticos adictos a sí mismos. J. D. Salinger –tal vez el más cobarde o el más valiente– decidió desaparecer antes de ser procesado y consumido por sus acólitos. Dentro de la Santísima Trinidad Beatnik, Kerouac es el que sale peor parado. William Burroughs siempre fue un virus extraterrestre, Allen Ginsberg fue feliz invitándose a todas las fiestas y saliendo en todas las fotos (Beatles, Dylan, etc.), mientras que Kerouac –confundido por la fina línea que separa a la visión de la alucinación– nunca superó la muerte de su hermano de sangre y héroe Neal Ca-ssady (el Dean Moriarty de On the Road). Y así se retiró, con 91 dólares en el banco (su fantasma hoy tiene 19.999.909 más), a emborracharse en la cocina de su madre. O frente a un televisor basura mientras escribía blues quebrados como esa memoir y adiós que es Satori en París, cuya última línea es “Cuando Dios diga: ‘Has vivido bastante’ olvidaremos todo lo que significaba esa despedida”. Entonces, cuando le preguntaban qué estaba haciendo, Kerouac respondía: “Estoy esperando que Dios muestra su cara”.

Jack Kerouac –quien vivió bastante pero no lo suficiente y buena parte de su existencia la pasó saliendo a buscarlo todo, motor de movimiento perpetuo, a toda velocidad– murió esperando. Una muerte triste. Una muerte quieta pero no tranquila. Una muerte muerta.

CINCO El otro día entré en un site donde colgaron todas las portadas de todas las ediciones de On the Road aparecidas a lo largo de cincuenta años en muchos países. Estaba la de Losada (la primera que tuve y leí) y las cuatro ediciones en inglés que tengo ahora (y, aviso, me voy a comprar la nueva versión con los párrafos eliminados en su momento por la autocensura editorial y la primera transcripción a libro del ya citado rollo). Tengo varios On the Road porque me lo he comprado varias veces, en varios lugares, por el sólo placer de volver a poseerlo y a hojearlo. Tengo el que tiene en la tapa un cuadro expresionista y abstracto, el que tiene una foto de camaradas de Kerouac y Cassady, una edición anotada y con ensayos con cubierta amarilla y tipográfica, y el que ilustra esta contratapa y que, digamos, es la irresistible encarnación Billiken para fans-fetichistas. Este último es el que he vuelto a arrancar para buscar ese fragmento y escribir estas líneas y –debí suponerlo, cabía esperarlo– ya lo estoy leyendo otra vez.

Rápido.

Más rápido todavía.

Ahh.

© 2000-2007 www.pagina12.com.ar|Todos los Derechos Reservados

http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/contratapa/13-90808-2007-09-05.html

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The Independent:
Basra: The soldiers' tales

A sense of relief tinged with loss as troops reflect on a brutal campaign

By Kim Sengupta
Published: 05 September 2007

The convoys from Basra Palace were lined up outside the airport yesterday, their dusty armour punched and dented by rocket-propelled grenades and bullets in the months of ferocious firefights in the "ambush alleys" of the city.

The 550 soldiers who had withdrawn from the one remaining British base in Basra to the airbridge, the last post for UK troops before the final departure from Iraq, were tired and reflective. There had already been mortar rounds fired at their new home, but it was nothing compared with what they had been facing, and most had not even noticed the attack.

The soldiers of the 4 Rifles Battle Group spoke for the first time yesterday about their night-time evacuation from the palace and also how, for five months, they had been living under a state of siege with attacks around the clock and patrols being hit by roadside bombs.

After their experience, the vast aridness of the airport, with its comparative security, air conditioning and showers was a welcome respite. Cpl Frank Taylor, a 29-year-old from Fiji, said: "This actually feels like a holiday. I am actually quite relaxed. We have been through some pretty difficult times, and, yes, I have been scared.

"I remember once a group of Bulldogs [armoured vehicles] came under fire. I dived under one of them and there were rockets and mortars landing all around us. I saw something roll by, I thought it was a tyre, but then I saw it was the tailfin of a mortar. That was pretty close."

There was a degree of bitterness among some soldiers that many in Britain appeared to have forgotten about the men and women they had sent off to this highly unpopular war.

Cpl Leigh Pool, 28, from Bedfordshire, said: "We are soldiers and we do what we are ordered to do. But it does seem sad that there is so little news about people getting killed here."

Lt-Col Patrick Sanders, the commanding officer of the 4 Rifle Battle Group, had the task of planning the withdrawal. Despite a declaration by British officials of faith in Iraqi security forces, it was decided that the Iraqi police, deeply infiltrated by Shia militias, should not be allowed access to the palace. Instead, a Palace Protection Group, drawn from outside Basra, has been trained by the UK forces.

The withdrawal from the palace has become a highly contentious event, and is seen as a symbolic parting of the ways between the UK and the US over the war. Gordon Brown has promised to meet Britain's responsibilities in Iraq, but told President George Bush at his Camp David retreat in July that the US would not have a veto over when Britain withdraws from southern Iraq. Mr Brown wants to shift British forces from Iraq to what is seen as a more winnable – and less unpopular – struggle in Afghanistan, which he has described as the "front line against terrorism".

Lt-Col Sanders had spent four years in Baghdad when his father was a British military attaché there in the 1970s. He had returned after the war and served with the Americans in the Iraqi capital. "There are issues here which are extremely difficult," he said. "But the fact remains that we are told by the Iraqi commanders that our presence in the city was inciting attacks, so, under the circumstances, it is right that we withdrew. The planning had to be carefully organised. I was reassured by the commander of the protection force.

"It has always been our intention to hand over security to the Iraqis. It is not our job to stay here as foreign troops against their wishes, so I believe we have taken the best decision possible. I would also like to think that what was achieved at Basra Palace had restored some of the reputation of the British forces which had been damaged by mistakes by a very few people."

The difference in emphasis between the UK and the US has never been so marked. While the US has poured troops into the "surge" in Baghdad and central areas of the country, British officials are adamant that the presence of foreign troops is simply encouraging more violence.

The Iranian influence, say officials, is "not all malign" and the end of the occupations would help turn Iraqis against Iranians seeking hegemony.

The British forces say they have not been defeated, but they have learnt, the hard way, not to outstay their welcome.

Lt-Col Patrick Sanders

Commanding officer, 4 rifles battle group, in charge of basra palace

We had known for a while that we had to leave Basra Palace, but it was a hugely difficult matter with a lot of political complexities. We decided on a night move and it was broadly successful. We had one IED [improvised explosive device] and three soldiers received minor injuries.

We have faced a lot of action while we were at Basra Palace and our guys have acted with immense courage. I could have stayed on there for another six months, we would have been able to defend ourselves, and killed a lot of people in the process, but what would that have achieved?

Some of the militias fighting us are nationalists and they do not like foreign troops in their country, and that is probably a healthy thing. Ninety per cent of the violence in Basra City was directed at foreign forces and by us leaving that violence should go down, so it was probably time for us to leave.

But there are also a lot of thugs among the militias and I am glad that British forces played a part in showing the local population that one can stand up to them. Was the war in Iraq justified? It is too early to tell. If Iraq manages to be at peace with itself and its neighbours then it would have been worthwhile. If that doesn't happen, questions will be asked.

Lance Corporal Leigh Pool

Age 28, Bedfordshire

We were getting attacked every day and most nights at the palace for week after week. They were getting quite good at hitting targets, but after a while you have just got to live with it and get on with what you have to do. Some of us were called out on operations as well, and then we faced a lot of small-arms fire as well. We simply did not hang around anywhere on foot.

On the night of the pullout, I was one of those sent out early to secure the route. We were out for the whole night – it was pretty tiring.

What makes me a bit angry is that there have been soldiers dying out here and people, and there is so little notice taken back at home. It seems people have forgotten about the Iraq war. The thing is that it may be old news back home, but this is still going on and we are doing what we were sent out to do. It is a shame that some of these losses are not being recognised.

Rifleman Dwayne McIntyre

Age 25, North London

When we were under regular attack, you cannot really relax at all. At least at the palace, we had proper buildings where we could take shelter. When we got ambushed at the PJCC (a central police base), we were out in the open and you feel the danger.

Corporal Lucas Farrell

Age 23, Liverpool

[One night] we had left Basra Palace on a supply convoy to the PJCC in Bulldogs, Warriors and military trucks. As we were unloading the supplies in the base, we came under attack from mortars and rockets. It was pretty fierce. An officer who had been briefing us one minute was then killed. We were stunned, like, shocked.

But then there was no more time to think about that. We were told that they [the militias] would know when we went out and that they would be waiting for us. And that's what happened. As we left, there was firing from all sides. We were getting repeatedly ambushed, they were hitting the vehicles [with] small arms, RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades]. What they were trying to do was hit the ones in the rear and separate the convoy and trap some of us. There was a lot, a lot of shooting. I don't know how much was fired in total, I was using a GPMG (General Purpose Machine Gun) and I myself fired around 600 rounds.

We drove straight back to Basra Palace with the officer's body – then you thought about what had happened, and it was very sad.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2927085.ece

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The Nation:
Bush's Deceitful Smiles

truthdig by Robert Scheer
[posted online on September 5, 2007]

OK, throw another $50 billion down the rat hole that is the Iraq occupation. It's only money, if you ignore the lives being destroyed. That's what the White House is asking for, in addition to the $147 billion in supplementary funds already requested, and Congress will grant it after Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker follow President Bush's photo op in Iraq's Anbar province with a dog-and-pony show of their own. Meanwhile, the Democrats are totally cynical about this continuing waste of taxpayer dollars and of American and Iraqi lives, and, wanting Bush to hang himself with his own rope, they will deny him nothing.

In the effort to retaliate against terrorists who hijacked planes six years ago with an arsenal of $3 knives, this year's overall defense budget has been pushed to $657 billion. We are now spending $3 billion a week in Iraq alone, occupying a country that had nothing to do with the tragedy that sparked this orgy of militarism. The waste is so enormous and irrelevant to our national security that a rational person might embrace the libertarian creed if only for the sake of sanity. Clearly, the federal government no longer cares much about providing for health, education, hurricane reconstruction or even bridge safety, as the military budget now dwarfs all other discretionary spending, despite the lack of a sophisticated enemy in sight.

Numbers are boring, and the media act as if there is no difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars thrown at the military-let alone the trillion-dollar projected cost of the Iraq war. That last figure is well documented in a solid study out of Harvard co-authored by Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz but ignored by the mass media So too a recent authoritative report from the non-partisan Government Accountability Office that, despite the $44.5 billion in US taxpayer dollars already poured into reconstruction, little detectable progress has been made in Iraq's crucial oil and electricity systems.

Remember when Paul Wolfowitz, then the Pentagon's resident neocon genius, assured Congress that Iraqi oil money would easily bear the entire cost of America's Iraqi adventure? Now the GAO tells us that, even after spending an additional $57 billion on the Iraqi oil and electricity infrastructure, and assuming peace is restored, Iraq would still not produce enough oil and electricity to meet local demand until the year 2015.

Aside from corruption and the lack of security, the biggest problem in supplying Iraq with electricity is that the national electrical grid has broken down, and different factions, divided largely along ethnic and religious lines, are grabbing what they can. This kind of anarchy is emblematic of the new, emerging Iraq, in which the central government has declining sway over the nation's decisions.

That latter point was underscored this week by Bush's happy-faced visit to a highly fortified and isolated American outpost in Anbar province. After posing gamely with the troops at the Al-Asad base, Bush celebrated the return of Sunni areas to the control of US-armed militias-composed largely of former insurgents who have at least temporarily decided that their Shiite rivals, currently in control of the central government, are a more pressing enemy than the American occupiers. Speaking of one such group of Sunnis trained by the Americans and dubbed the "Volunteers" by their instructors, a US soldier told the Washington Post, "I think there is some risk of them being Volunteers by day and terrorists by night."

That is exactly what has occurred on the Shiite side, where anti-US religious groups have completely infiltrated the American-trained Iraqi military and police forces. In Iraq's Shiite-controlled south, the domination of the military and police by the fiercely anti-American Madhi Army and other militias was ensured by the final withdrawal of British troops from Basra, Iraq's second-largest city and a vital center of oil production, on the same day that Bush visited Iraq. Instead of the liberated, united and democratic Iraq promised by this invasion, we are left with a nation ruled by religious fiefdoms sustained far into the future by US taxpayers.

The French and the Germans, hoary veterans of various failed European adventures in imperialism, warned us about precisely this outcome. While US troops spill blood to guard broken oil pipelines, the Chinese and others go merrily about the world buying up black gold on the open market. But hey, don't worry about your tax dollars and the waste of lives-eat some freedom fries and learn, like our president, to keep smiling.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070910/scheer2

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ZNet | Israel/Palestine
Hamas – A History From Within

by Jim Miles; Palestine Chronicle; September 05, 2007

Hamas – A History From Within. Azzam Tamimi. Olive Branch Press, Northampton, Massachusetts. 2007.

Most of the world knows the superficial history of Hamas as presented by western media, the stories of the suicide bombers, the election results that were argued to be a vote against the PLO/Fatah but not for Hamas, the resulting denial of that democratic vote by all western governments, and most recently, the Hamas takeover of the dysfunctional governance of the Gaza Strip. Azzam Tamimi’s book, Hamas – A History From Within, presents a much broader and much more accurate perspective on a group that has had much more significance for the Palestinian people than simply being a militant suicidal terrorist group.

Consistent with the title, Tamimi presents a history that shows Hamas’ development from its roots within the Muslim Brotherhood, from its aspects of international cooperation and denial, and from ‘within’ – the development of the ideas, policies, and implementation of ideas that is rarely seen in western media sources. It is not a fawning sycophantic review, as it also reveals the internal struggles within Hamas between the various people and political institutions involved in its history and development, and further reveals the precarious hold it had on survival, a survival that became ensured only with the advent of more serious Israeli atrocities during the first Intifada.

Arguments have been made that Hamas was assisted in its set-up by Israel in order to counter the power of the PLO/Fatah organization. Tamimi is much more nuanced in his discussion of this, arguing more that Israeli ignorance of what Hamas embodied and what it meant to the mostly poorer and refugee Palestinians allowed it to survive without direct complicity. Beginning with Sheikh Yassin in Gaza, and as a reaction to the defeat of pan-Arabic Nasirism after the 1967 war, the Islamic Brotherhood centred their concerns not on militancy, but “primarily on instilling Islamic values and ethics in the hearts and minds of the young.” At that time, Israel did not support the Islamic Brotherhood (Ikhwan) but the “occupation authorities did not object to this seemingly benign religious activity.”

Tamimi argues, “At this time, the Palestinian Ikhwan…were concerned principally with the education and training of their members and supporters so as to shield them from what they deemed to be alien and hostile ideologies and sociopolitical trends …[rescuing] the individual, the family, and the community as a whole from the onslaught of Western ideas, whether liberal or Marxist.” An Islamic education and revival of Islamic society, and not militant terrorism, were the initial forces behind Ikhwan activities.

Following from that, and with full evidence over the years, the Ikhwan, focussed mainly on students and young people, focussed on providing social, recreational, and educational services. Again, “The Israelis did not see this association [the Islamic Society] as any kind of threat, and granted the Ikhwan a license for its establishment.” The activities of the society “included sports, recreational trips, scouting activities, and public lectures on religious and social issues.”

There is certainly room to spin these developments into that of Israeli subterfuge against the PLO, and more than likely within the broad spectrum of opinion that is usual in all possible political motivations that view could arise within some individuals, but Tamimi’s overall historical development indicates, as above, that Israel simply saw it as no threat to themselves at that time. Likewise, within the Ikhwan, would be individuals that were more militantly oriented than others, but the fundamental appears solid and well argued, that education and social services were the primary goal of the original Ikhwan set-up.

This led to the development of mosques, schools, kindergartens, universities, day-care, medical clinics, hospitals, and other social organizations. These organizations obviously greatly benefited the poor and the refugees within the West Bank and Gaza; in contrast, the PLO/Fatah, as evidenced in this work and other recent histories, became more concerned about supporting their own internal structures and maintaining their power and predominance politically and economically over the Palestinian territories.

As history from ‘within’ Tamimi concentrates most of his presentation on the personalities and politicians that influenced the development of the Ikhwan into what became known as Hamas. Sheikh Ahmad Yassin was the foremost among them, a spiritual and moral leader who oversaw the major developments of the group, and who served as spiritual leader in absentia during his many years in Israeli prisons. Other less familiar names play major roles in the many developments both for and against Hamas, Khalid Mishal, Abu Marzuq, Samih al-Battikhi, Ibrahim Ghosheh, Isma’il Haniyah, Jordan’s King Abdullah, and many others illustrate the political turmoil that Hamas experienced over the years.

The international role played ‘within’ Hamas is also reviewed, with its on and off relationship with what I could only label as the conspiratorial monarchy of Jordan significantly displayed. Hamas’ relationships with other Arab states, many of which appeared self-serving for the Arab states, is well outlined, with the ultimate support coming with the release of Sheikh Yassin in 1997 after the disastrous (for the Jordanians) botched Mishal assassination attempt. Yassin’s Arabic tour the next year demonstrated high level political support from his Arab neighbours (except those overly influenced by his political rival Arafat) as well as the continuing strong support from the Arab populations. This support came from “the movement’s steadfastness in recent years in the face of an American-led global campaign against it. In the face of would-be crushing blows, Hamas had refused to modify its stance in the slightest towards compliance.”

In Palestine, Hamas leaders were noted for “ascetism, altruism, dedication, and honesty,” for living with and among the people as they always had, as “no one joins Hamas to make money or has become rich by virtue of their position within it….Finally, donors were aware that only a small fraction of the money raised by Hamas would be used for military purposes.”

This stands in contrast to the PLO/Fatah activities. The internal relationship of Hamas with the PLO/Fatah becomes more intense as events progress, the comparison between the two also drawing significant support towards Hamas. Tamimi, as with other recent Palestinian histories [1] is quite direct in his criticism of the PLO/Fatah who dominated the Palestinian Authority whose “officials were seen to be paid unreasonably high sums” as well as being employed “in the expanding security services, whose task was to control the occupied Palestinians on behalf of Israel.” This “vast bureaucracy…secured the loyalty of its employees….and served to increase the disparity of economic means between Palestinians.” Fatah suffered from “a plague of rampant corruption” and was “wracked by corrosive rivalries that sickened many Palestinians.”

The transition from being a section of the Islamic Brotherhood, the Ikhwan, into Hamas began before the start of the first Intifada. Internal discussion had taken place about armed resistance, with the Ikhwan maintaining that building the Islamic individual and community were paramount. From these discussions developed the movement towards protest actions, and a more militant viewpoint that found expression with the Intifada, dated as of December 8, 1987. The Intifada “was a gift from heaven” for Hamas, with the PLO and Israel being caught off guard. The Israelis misjudged it in two aspects: that it was “Merely an expression of anger that would abate in a day or two;” and they “were not sure who was orchestrating the unrest.”

The results of the Intifada were counterproductive for Israel as they “were oblivious to the fact the whenever they hit Hamas, and no matter how hard they hit it, they only earned it further popular sympathy and support.” With the PLO leaders at this time still encamped in Tunis, it was these actions that Tamimi credits “to the emergence of Hamas as a credible alternative to the PLO.” Through all this the Hamas military wing developed, the al-Qassam Brigades, “a product of the intifada itself.” With their organization involving an ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ leadership, and the recognition that Israel would try to decapitate that leadership, “Hamas…seemed to make gains out of its losses.”

From that time, Hamas history became public, with the western media emphasizing the Islamic militancy of the al-Qassam Brigade above the overall Hamas political set-up. From that, as is well known, Hamas has been declared a terrorist organization by many countries even though it is much more similar to all other insurgencies worldwide against foreign occupation. [2] Eventually, through all the intervening activities, Tamimi summarizes, “From Israel’s unconditional and unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon to its unconditional and unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, it was Hamas that reaped the benefits and emerged victorious despite the losses. The failure of peace negotiations, whether the Oslo Accords, the road map, or Sharon’s disengagement policy, seemed in the eyes of many Palestinians to vindicate Hamas’s approach.”

History then takes the story in a new direction as Hamas buys into the political process. This part of the story is much better known to the west, albeit similarly biased in its presentation of Hamas as a terrorist group. Although winning a clear majority of the Palestinian legislative seats, an accomplishment that Tamimi sees not as a vote against the PLO as “in reality, only a fraction of the votes cast was made up of protest votes,” the election was universally disallowed and has resulted in ongoing internal division within the Palestinian territories, with now PLO leader Abbas being the current Israeli/American “man of peace” while being derided alternately as another PLO pawn in their hands. The PLO, Israel, America and the west in general have done as much as possible to discredit and destroy the Hamas political success.

While discussing these recent events, Tamimi also discusses more of the philosophical underpinnings of the Hamas movement and the discussion that takes place within Hamas itself concerning its goals and means. The Hamas charter “reads more like an internal circular” and there is ongoing discussion about writing a new charter. In Appendix II, Tamimi presents a memo prepared by the Hamas Political Bureau in 2000 that is a much more nuanced document, and it still calls for – naturally - the liberation of Palestine, and supports its right to military resistance (as a right determined under international law as well).

In the chapter “The Liberation Ideology of Hamas” Tamimi develops these internal discussion as well as adding more definition to other ideas presented in passing in western media. The idea of ‘hudna’ or truce receives strong coverage (including previous statements that only Hamas had ever initiated and maintained a unilateral truce during the various conflicts), as well as ‘tahdi’ah’ or calming, a temporary ‘hudna’. The result of these truces however was that “Israel’s refusal to reciprocate led many Palestinians to lose confidence in the usefulness of declaring a unilateral truce.” The concept of suicide and suicide bombing within the Islamic context as well as within western perception is discussed, along with the related Islamic discussions of jihad and its subordinate positions of ‘qital’ and martyrdom.

For those in the west who truly want to understand Hamas, Hamas – A History From Within should be required reading (along with those mentioned in the footnotes). It is clearly written, presents well structured arguments and while it is a history, it is much more than dates, names, and events, but a running discussion of the changes in ideas and organizational structures within Hamas. Although the Israelis and Americans use their own “terrorist theology” to denounce Hamas the reality as seen by the Palestinians is one of colonial occupation and subjugation with the intent, ultimately, of Israeli hegemony over the Palestinian territories as well as the greater Middle East, supported in full by American commercial/military interests. Azzam Tamimi has presented a highly informative work, one that provides a significant new perspective for the west on what is occurring in Palestine and the Middle East.


[1] see in particular Between the Lines, by Honig-Parnass and Haddad, Haymarket Books, 2007, and The Palestinian Hamas by Mishal and Sela, Columbia University Press, 2006. While they all direct criticism at the PLO/Fatah, they also recognize the contributions made towards recognition of the Palestinian situation internationally and the powerful unifying symbolism of Arafat, particularly when he defied Israel at the end of his time in Ramallah.

[2] Nor did Hamas originate suicide bombings of civilians. Yes, that is terror, but it is also an ‘asymmetrical’ response to massive oppression endured under occupation and the terror that devolves from Israeli and American military actions against Palestinian civilians. For a reasoned discussion on suicide bombing, see Dying To Win, by Robert Pape, Random House, 2005.


Jim Miles is a Canadian educator and a regular contributor/columnist of opinion pieces and book reviews to Palestine Chronicles. His interest in this topic stems originally from an environmental perspective, which encompasses the militarization and economic subjugation of the global community and its commodification by corporate governance and by the American government.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=107&ItemID=13699