ORDINARY EUROPEANS DENIED CHANCE TO HATE TONY BLAIR
30-10-09
MILLIONS of ordinary Europeans look set to lose their chance of getting steadily sick of Tony Blair until they despise him with every fibre of their being.
France and Germany last night refused to back the former prime minster as Europe's first president, insisting the EU was a large and complex political union and not an excuse for some jumped-up actor to have his own plane.
The job now looks likely to go to a lower profile candidate despite Gordon Brown attempting to secure the job for Mr Blair in a twisted, malevolent bid to inflict his former colleague on the EU before he is chased out of Downing Street next spring.
Friends of Mr Blair say he may now be forced to look for a new continent to lie to every time he opens his mouth, with some suggesting Africa may still be susceptible to his clapped-out brand of greasy bullshit.
Tom Logan, professor of international politics at Reading University, said: "Some Africans still seem to think Tony Blair might actually be Jesus rather than a millionaire consultant to various multi-national corporations that want to bribe their army and steal their land."
Jan Vankerken, a sales executive from Antwerp said he was disappointed, adding: "I really wanted to be vaguely optimistic about him to start with before quickly seeing through the shiny veneer and then developing the kind of nausea and self-loathing one might feel after having dirty sex with a merchant banker.
"I then wanted to experience the month upon month of sickening, transparent lies while European newspapers were bullied into submission by some oleaginous mortgage fraudster and a bag-piping psychopath.
"And then I wanted him to try and frighten me into supporting a war that was obviously for the benefit of American corporations while I resigned myself to the fact there was nothing I could do about it because they had all been planning it for years.
"And I also really wanted the chance to hate his ghastly wife from day one."
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has been caught up in a number of sex scandals, but for a long time, Italian women have been largely silent about his behavior. That changed earlier this month when Berlusconi made a remark about an opposition politician's lack of good looks.
Berlusconi's comment unleashed a wave of anger among Italian women. Tens of thousands have signed a petition that says "this man offends us — stop him."
Here is a sampling of Berlusconi quips: Women are "God's most beautiful gift to men." In order to prevent rape, "we would need as many soldiers as there are beautiful Italian women."
Berlusconi, 73, boasts of the good looks of his party's young female members of parliament, dismissing the opposition ranks as menopausal.
In September, the prime minister informed a gathering of journalists that he had never paid for sex.
"For those who love to conquer, the joy and the most beautiful satisfaction is in the conquest. If you have to pay, what joy is there?" he told them.
Berlusconi's sex scandals came to light when his wife announced she was divorcing him. The prime minister, she said, is a man who consorts with minors.
Later, numerous young women, including a call girl, said they had attended parties at Berlusconi's home.
But in a country where women made massive political gains during the 1970s, there was little or no female protest about the prime minister's womanizing.
A former Marine Corps captain with combat experience in Iraq, Hoh had also served in uniform at the Pentagon, and as a civilian in Iraq and at the State Department. By July, he was the senior U.S. civilian in Zabul province, a Taliban hotbed.
But last month, in a move that has sent ripples all the way to the White House, Hoh, 36, became the first U.S. official known to resign in protest over the Afghan war, which he had come to believe simply fueled the insurgency.
"I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States' presence in Afghanistan," he wrote Sept. 10 in a four-page letter to the department's head of personnel. "I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end."
Critics of Human Rights Watch's work on Israel raise three main points. First, they say we disproportionately focus on Israel, and neglect other countries in the Middle East. Second, they claim our research methodology is flawed - relying on witnesses with an agenda. Third, as recently expressed by our founding chairman Robert Bernstein, they argue that we should focus on "closed" countries such as China rather than "open" societies like Israel.
Sadly, this witch-hunt has the blood stained fingerprints of leading American evangelicals. The Fellowship, (aka The Family) one of America’s most powerful and secretive fundamentalist organization’s, converted Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni to its anti-gay brand of Christianity, which is the “intellectual” impetus behind the anti-gay crackdown. The clandestine organization’s leader, Doug Coe, calls Museveni The Fellowship’s “key man” in Africa. Jeff Sharlet, author of “The Family”, writes of the African strongman’s conversion:
“So,” Doug Coe told us, “my friend said to the president, ‘why don’t you come and pray with me in America? I have a good group of friends—senators, congressmen—who I like to pray with, and they’d like to pray with you.’ And that president came to the Cedars (a religious retreat), and he met Jesus. And his name is Yoweri Museveni…And he is a good friend of the Family.”
A Ugandan MP has tabled a new bill that could mean the death penalty for gay and transgender citizens convicted of "aggravated homosexuality". The bill, which calls for citizens to tell the authorities about those they believe to be gay, has been called a prelude to "the final solution" by some Ugandan gay rights activists. Introduced by MP David Bahati, the bill would extend Uganda's already tough anti-gay laws to prescribe the death penalty for those charged with "aggravated homosexuality".
The bill describes this charge as engaging in "gay sex" with a person under the age of eighteen, or a partner with a physical disability (their consent does not factor). The charge also applies if the accused has HIV (regardless of whether a condom was used or not).
It is believed that the law will be used to penalize Ugandan gay rights organizations, and that it could also be exploited to shut down HIV/AIDS programs in Uganda. HIV/AIDS charities have been targeted by religious conservatives in the past because of their advocating safe-sex practices such as condom use.
“It will almost certainly lend itself to misapplication and abuse, and implicitly encourages persecution of LGBT people by private actors,” the gay rights group the International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission (ILGHRC), have said.
Perhaps the full, awful scope of this bill does not become clear until one reads that the proposed law would punish a citizen with life in prison for "touch[ing] another person with the intention of committing the act of homosexuality". How they will measure or define such an intention remains unclear. In fact, lack of clarity seems to be the entire basis of the bill, so as to give the authorities greater powers to victimize and, indeed, terrorize Ugandan LGBTs.
Speaking to Amnesty International, Daniel Molokele, the Africa program officer at the World AIDS Campaign, said:
"Discrimination and punitive laws like this aimed at marginalized groups and at those often among the most affected by HIV drive people underground and do nothing to help slow down the AIDS epidemic."
The law also requires mandatory HIV/AIDS testing for those convicted on a charge relating to homosexuality, even if it is a lesser charge.
Amnesty International's expert on sexual rights, Kate Shell, has condemned the proposed law as illegal, saying:
"Certain provisions in this bill are illegal; they are also immoral. They criminalize a sector of society for being who they are, when what the government should be doing instead is protecting them from discrimination and abuse."
Last year, Uganda's ethics and integrity minister said that homosexuality was a threat to national security, contending that gay and lesbian people, by their very nature, were "an attempt to end civilization", calling homosexuality a Western phenomenon, but saying that "the disease has penetrated everywhere".
Insidiously, this law may have been influenced, in part, by anti-gay American religious conservatives who have praised Uganda for its tough stance on homosexuality. Truth Wins Out founder and director Wayne Besen writes:
It should be made explicitly clear, however, that a majority of religious institutions from around the world have reacted with strong condemnation for the death-penalty bill.
Will the bill pass? John Otekat Emile, an independent Ugandan MP, gave an interview to the BBC saying that the bill had a "99% chance" of passingif no one intervened.
Below is an excerpt form John Kenneth Galbraith's "The Affluent Society" (2nd ed., revised 1969). I found it to be a very clear description and a statement that is still relevant to this day. Enjoy.
In the world into which economics was born, the four most urgent requirements of man were food, clothing and shelter, and an orderly environment in which the first three might be provided. The first three lent themselves to private production for the market; given good order, this production has ordinarily gone forward with tolerable efficiency. But order which was the gift of government was nearly always supplied with notable unreliability. With rare exceptions, it was also inordinately expensive. And the pretext of providing order not infrequently afforded the occasion for rapacious appropriation of the means of sustenance of the people.
Not surprisingly, modern economic ideas incorporated a strong suspicion of government. The goals of nineteenth-century economic liberalism was a state which did provide order reliably and inexpensively and which did as little as possible else. Even Marx intended that the state should wither away. These attitudes have persisted in the conventional wisdom. And again events have dealt them a series of merciless blows. Once a society has provided itself with food, clothing and shelter, all of which so fortuitously lend themselves to private production, purchase and sale, its members begin to desire other things. And a remarkable number of these things do not lend themselves to such production, purchase and sale. They must be provided for everyone if they are to be provided for anyone, and they must be paid for collectively or they cannot be had at all. Such is the case with streets and police and the general advantages of mass literacy and sanitation, the control of epidemics, and the common defense. There is a bare possibility that the services which must be rendered collectively, although they enter the general scheme of wants after the immediate physical necessities, increase in urgency more than proportionately with increasing wealth. This is more likely if increasing wealth is matched by increasing population and increasing density of population. Nonetheless, these services, although they reflect increasingly urgent desires, remain under the obloquy of the unreliability, incompetence, cost and pretentious interference of princes. Alcohol, comic books and mouthwash all bask under the superior reputation of the market. Schools, judges and municipal swimming pools lie under the evil reputation of bad kings.
Moreover, bad kings in a poorer world showed themselves to be quite capable, in their rapacity, of destroying or damaging the production of private goods by destroying the people and the capital that produced them. Economies are no longer so vulnerable. Governments are not so undiscriminating. In western countries, in modern times, economic growth and expanding public activity have, with rare exceptions, gone together. Each has served the other as indeed they must. Yet the conventional wisdom is far from surrendering on the point. Any growth in public services is a manifestation of an intrinsically evil trend. If the vigor of the race is not in danger, personal liberty is. The structure of the economy may also be at stake. In one branch of the conventional wisdom, the American economy is never far removed from socialism, and the movement toward socialism may be measured by the rise in public spending. Thus, even the most commonplace of public services, for one part of the population, fall under the considerable handicap of being identified with social revolution.
Finally – also a closely related point – the payment for publicly produced services has long been linked to the problem of inequality. By having the rich pay more, the services were provided and at the same time the goal of greater equality was advanced. This community of objectives has never appealed to those being equalized. Not unnaturally, some part of their opposition has been directed to the public services themselves. By attacking these, they could attack the leveling tendencies of taxation. This has helped to keep alive the notion that the public services for which they pay are inherently inferior to privately produced goods.
While public services have been subject to these negative attitudes, private goods have had no such attention. On the contrary, their virtues have been extolled by the massed drums of modern advertising. They have been pictured as the ultimate wealth of the community. Clearly the competition between public and private services, apart from any question of the satisfactions they render, is an unequal one. The social consequences of this discrimination – this tendency to accord a superior prestige to private goods and an inferior role to public production – are considerable and even grave.
"...the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has pursued guerrilla action in a 25-year campaign for a Kurdish independent state. The PKK has now offered to drop its demand in return for a negotiated settlement to end its war with Turkey."
It's taken me a week or two to form these words in my head, I think because of this film's subject - it's about events which, via TV news, were part of my childhood 'programming'.
I was five years old in 1982. My father, an ardent socialist who worked in a desk job in London local government, was a news-junkie, as I appear to have become in recent years. Like father like son. Point is - as much as Godzilla, Coyote & Roadrunner and Dr.Who, I remember certain vivid images from the TV during my childhood - Yasser Arafat and the PLO (who for many years I confused with 'P&O', an English Channel Ferry company); Soviet tanks rolling into Afghanistan; IRA bombs on British mainland and Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams' voice dubbed by an actor on BBC; Arthur Scargill, picket lines and miners' strikes; and of course the Falklands war, and its relevance to England's World Cup game against Argentina at Mexico '86 when Diego Maradona scored 'The Hand of God' goal. The Falklands, not so much... back in those days, I don't think 'embedded' journalists were as common, and we didn't have 24 hour news direct from the warzone to the same extent that we do today. I don't have images in my early memory of that, like I do of British journalist Kate Adie in Beirut, who my father always joked was unpopular in the office so she got sent to the most dangerous locations. Beirut I've been aware of since day one. The actual details of Israel and her neighbours, I only came to understand much more recently... for years, I was perplexed as to the relationship between Judaism the religion and Israelis as a 'race'. I still don't believe the layperson can properly understand this without some reading and actively attempting to find out for his or her-self.
It was in that light that this interested me. My leftiness and tendency to be appalled by bullies, genocide and war-crimes, has often found me allied with the Palestinian and Lebanese cause, careful to recognise that Hamas and Hizbollah are no saints either, yet I remain fundamentally opposed to organised religion, particularly the patriarchal Abrahamic ones. You either believe in that or you don't, and I don't. I think they're far more trouble than they're worth. So... that's me, and I was of course not able to watch, much less review this film without a degree of subjectivity. So I did a little background reading -
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Waltz with Bashir (Hebrew: ואלס עם באשיר - Vals Im Bashir) is a 2008 Israeli animated documentary film written and directed by Ari Folman. It depicts Folman in search of his lost memories from the 1982 Lebanon War.[2][3][4]
This film and $9.99, also released in 2008, are the first Israeli animated feature-length films released in movie theaters since Alina and Yoram Gross's Ba'al Hahalomot (1962). Waltz with Bashir premiered at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival where it entered the competition for the Palme d'Or, and since then has won and been nominated for many additional important awards while receiving wide acclaim from critics. It won a Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film, an NSFC Award for Best Film, a César Award for Best Foreign Film and an IDA Award for Feature Documentary, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, a BAFTA Award for Best Film Not in the English Language and an Annie Award for Best Animated Feature.
Plot Summary
In 1982, Ari Folman was a 19-year-old infantry soldier in the Israel Defense Forces. In 2006, he meets with a friend from his army service period, who tells him of the nightmares connected to his experiences from the Lebanon War. Folman is surprised to find that he does not remember a thing from that period. Later that night he has a vision from the night of the Sabra and Shatila massacre, the reality of which he is unable to tell. In his memory, he and his soldier friends are bathing at night by the seaside in Beirut under the light of flares descending over the city. Folman rushes off to meet another friend from his army service, who advises him to discuss it with other people who were in Beirut at the same time in order to understand what happened there and to relive his own memory. Folman converses with friends, a psychologist and the reporter Ron Ben-Yishai who was in Beirut at the time.
The film ends with animation transitioning to actual footage of the aftermath of the Sabra and Shatila massacre.
The film takes its title from a scene in which Shmuel Frenkel, one of the interviewees and the commander of Folman's infantry unit at the time of the film's events, grabs a light machine gun and "dances an insane waltz" (to the tune of Chopin's Waltz in C Sharp) amid heavy enemy fire on a Beirut street festooned with huge posters of Bashir Gemayel.
Bachir Gemayel (10 November 1947 – 14 September 1982) (first name also spelled Bashir and surname also spelled al-Jumayyil El Gemaiel, Joomayyeel) (بشير الجميّل) was a Lebanese politician, militia commander, and president-elect. He was a senior member of the Phalange party and the commander of the Lebanese Forces militia amid the first several years of the Lebanese Civil War (1975-90). He was elected president on August 23, 1982 while the country was torn by civil war and occupied by both Israel and Syria. He was assassinated on September 14, 1982, along with 26 others, when a bomb exploded in the Beirut headquarters of the Phalange. The bomb was planted by Habib Tanious Shartouni.[1] The FBI blamed the Syrian Social Nationalist Party.[2]
Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982. Defense Minister of Israel, Ariel Sharon, met with Bachir months earlier, telling him that the Israeli Defense Force were planning an invasion to uproot the PLO threat to Israel and to move them out of Lebanon. [5] While Bachir did not control Israel’s actions in Lebanon, the support they gave the Lebanese Forces, militarily and politically, angered many Lebanese Muslims.
The PLO was rooted out of Lebanon in August of 1982. By now, Bachir had announced his candidacy for president. He was backed by the United States, who sent peacekeeping troops to oversee the withdrawal of the PLO from Lebanon. Bachir had requested that they stay longer to keep Lebanon stable until he could reunite it, but his request was denied. On August 23, 1982, being the only one to declare his bid, Bachir was elected president.
On 1 September 1982, two weeks before his assassination and only one week after his election, Bachir met the Israeli Prime minister Menachem Begin in Nahariya. Begin demanded that Bachir sign a peace treaty with Israel as soon as he took office in return of Israel's earlier support of Lebanese Forces. Begin was reportedly angry at Bachir for his public denial of Israel's support. Bachir refused the immediate peace arguing that time is needed to reach consensus with Lebanese Muslim communities and Arab nations. Bachir was quoted telling David Kimche, the director general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, few days earlier, “Please tell your people to be patient. I am committed to make peace with Israel, and I shall do it. But I need time-nine months, maximum one year. I need to mend my fences with the Arab countries, especially with Saudi Arabia, so that Lebanon can once again play its central role in the economy of the Middle East.”[6][7]
"Phalange" and "Phalangist" redirect here. For the Spanish party, see Falange. For the bones of the hand and foot, see Phalanx bones. For the ancient infantry, see Phalangite.
The Lebanese Social Democratic Party — better known in English as the Phalange — is a right-wing Lebanese political party. Although it is officially secular, it is mainly supported by Maronite Christians. The party played a major role in the Lebanese War (1975-90). In decline in the late 1980s and 1990s, the party slowly re-emerged since the early 2000s. It is now part of the parliamentary majority, the March 14 Alliance, opposed to the alliance led by Hezbollah and the Free Patriotic Movement.
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I've only given this Golden-Globe winning, Oscar nominated animation three of a possible five stars. Those here who know me and know this film might find that surprising. I simply have to admit it didn't hold my attention. I watched it in two sittings, inspired to finish viewing after a conversation about it with my new housemate, who teaches Media at the local college. His verdict is, I think, the secret of the film's success.
"You see the live footage at the end..." he asked, and I admitted I hadn't managed to watch it throughout, finding it almost repulsively biased in favour of Israel.
"...could you watch an hour and a half of that?"
Irony is, I probably would... but I know what he meant. My in-house video-editing teacher and animation enthusiast had hit the nail right on the head. Director Ari Folman is a former serviceman in the Israeli army, and a veteran of the Lebanese invasion of 1982. He also the central character - it concerns his loss of memory about the events of the war. Now, it strikes me as a convenient vehicle to carry the story along that he had amnesia, and he could just as easily have made it all up for the sake of his art... but it's convincing enough. It's a true story.
I went back to it and watched the rest. True enough, as animation, the images are in some way diluted and the viewer is able to endure the history lesson (which Folman makes no attempt to pretend isn't told from an Israeli perspective (his own), it's not a 'political' film, but a personal one - see video below) without being put off by the shocking images. It's a predictable narrative though, because we know what happened, so we know the end.
I'm not keen on films that try to re-write history and distort events, subtlety or not. And as a cartoon, this will reach a younger audience, as he also says in the video below. This IS a political film, whether Folman likes it or not, and this aspect of it really puts me off. A generation of young people will grow up with this tale as their chief understanding of what happened in Lebanon in 1982. It just doesn't dig deep enough.
The artwork is striking, comic-book-esque. Memorable enough, but not the best I've ever seen. 'A Scanner Darkly' and 'Plague Dogs' were more interesting to the eye. But it received widespread acclaim, so who cares what I think?
If you're inclined to download rather than seek out the hard-copy, you'll miss out on the interview with Folman in the special features. I found that very helpful in understanding it's purpose. Here's a similar interview:
And for those more curious about the animation and artwork itself, which I haven't said so much about because I don't really know enough to evaluate it, there is an image gallery here:
Former Nasa scientist accused of trying to sell secrets to Israel's Mossad intelligence service
By David Usborne, US Editor
Wednesday, 21 October 2009
A leading American scientist who once had access to top-secret materials related to national defence and atomic research appeared in court yesterday after being charged with attempting to pass classified materials to Mossad...
Because it is the Holocaust, however, it is hilarious: No greater monster left alive, John Demjanjuk sits where Hitler once sat — in a cell in Munich's Stadelheim prison — waiting for his lunch, and for justice to be done to him again.
Again. As the dwindling few real-life Nazis march day by day to hell, as their numbers shrink and our remembrance fades, the faceless face on atrocity's Most Wanted poster is again — again — this recycled Ukrainian peasant, now eighty-nine years old.
Lunch eventually will come. As for justice, who knows when or what that will be. Justice took its time last time, seven years in all, dawdling till the gallows were built; Demjanjuk heard the work crew daily, hammering the planks. But there, at least — in, of all places, Israel — his jailers brought fresh vegetables, and tins of mystery meat, and let him thrust his thick arms through the bars of his cell and fix himself supper on a hot plate.
From those Jews — after he was found guilty of being one of two men who ran the gas chambers at Treblinka, where nearly a million Jews were killed — from them, he got a civilized evening meal.
From these Germans — who have now charged him with being a mere accessory to the murder of a mere 27,900 Jews at Sobibor, a different extermination camp — what does he get for dinner?
Here, presumed innocent, he gets bread and cheese at 3:00 P.M., and so to bed.
Historians generally agree that World War II claimed roughly sixty million lives, including roughly forty million civilians, roughly six million of whom were Jews butchered by the Nazis. Roughly.
For Jews, the wound inflicted by the Nazis will never heal. Our number is too small: Six million was two thirds of all the Jews alive in Europe then, half of all the Jews alive in all the world today.
Their loss was — is — irretrievable.
Funny thing, though: This story is not about the Jews. This story is larger than that.
This story is about truth, justice, and John Demjanjuk.
Who was a Ukrainian farm boy and a Red Army conscript.
Who survived famine and war.
Who took a boat from Germany and landed in America in 1952.
Who lived in Cleveland quietly for twenty-five more years.
Who first came to the attention of American Nazi hunters in the mid-1970s.
Who was stripped of citizenship and shipped to Israel to face his accusers — brought to justice onstage in a concert hall converted into a courtroom for a yearlong trial broadcast on Israeli television and radio, meant to remind the younger Jews never to forget the evil done to them — and heard the survivors, in simultaneous translation, identify him across all the years and miles as the Ukrainian savage so bloodthirsty, so unforgettably depraved — with a whip or a sword or a drill, it was his pleasure to maim Jews only a few moments away from being gassed — that inmates called him Ivan Grozny: Ivan the Terrible.
Who has spent thirty-three years now insisting he had nothing — nothing — to do with the Holocaust: that he was never a Nazi death-camp guard; that he was simply and only a Red Army prisoner of war enslaved by the Nazis as a farm laborer; that he is a victim of mistaken identity, of a Communist plot hatched by the KGB; that he would not, could not, hurt a rabbit, much less a fellow human.
Who was put on a plane in May and carried back to Germany to face his accusers, again, placed under arrest in Munich by — funny thing — the righteous progeny of Hitler-loving burghers who did nothing as Jewry burned.
Who sits in jail gnawing German bread and cheese, awaiting truth and justice.
Zimbabwe's Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai says his Movement for Democratic Change is disengaging from the ZANU-PF party led by President Robert Mugabe but is not officially withdrawing from the power-sharing government. The move follows the indictment and re-arrest on terrorism charges of the MDC's Deputy Agriculture Minister-designate Roy Bennett.
Confrontations within Zimbabwe's fragile power-sharing government deepened Friday as Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai announced his party would boycott the executive branch whose ministries it shares with President Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF party.
"It is our right to disengage from a dishonest and unreliable partner," said Morgan Tsvangirai. "In this regard, whilst being in government we shall forthwith disengage from ZANU-PF, in particular from cabinet and Council of Ministers until such time as confidence and respect are restored in this relationship."
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1929103,00.html A few weeks ago, a well-known U.S. military expert gave a wise speech about the near impossibility of making a counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy work in Afghanistan. He gave two examples. The first was digging a well: "How could you do anything wrong by digging a well to give people clean water?" Well, you could create new enemies by where you dug the well and who controlled it. You could lose a village by trying to help it. And then there was the matter of what he called COIN mathematics. If there are 10 Taliban and you kill two, how many do you have left? Eight, perhaps. Or there might be two, because six of the remaining eight decide it's just not worth fighting anymore. Or you might have 20 because the brothers and cousins of the two dead fighters decide to take vengeance. "When I am asked what approach we should take in Afghanistan," General Stanley McChrystal concluded, "I say humility." (See pictures of a photographer's personal journey through the war in Afghanistan.)
Yes, this was the infamous McChrystal London speech that allegedly put the military at odds, publicly, with President Obama. Actually, the controversy was all about a comment McChrystal made during the question-and-answer session, when he said a switch from counterinsurgency to a counterterrorism strategy, in which American troops are withdrawn and the war against al-Qaeda is fought mostly with drones and special forces, would be "shortsighted." A week later, the President said essentially the same thing at a meeting of congressional leaders. And while it could be argued that McChrystal overstepped by dissing one possible course of action in the midst of a presidential strategy review, it could also be argued that the option dissed was not under consideration.
In fact, most of the hoo-hah about Obama's Afghanistan strategy review has been a matter of smoke and mirrors. In a recent issue of this magazine, for example, Leslie H. Gelb — a prominent "opponent" of the current strategy — came out against the military's all-in option in Afghanistan, favoring instead a plan that would add three brigades, about 15,000 additional troops, this year. But the military's all-in option, a request for 40,000 more troops, is just that: an option. It is the upper end of three options that McChrystal has offered the President, I'm told; the low option was 10,000 troops, and the middle one was 25,000. When Presidents are offered a menu like that, we know what they usually pick. I'd be willing to bet that the plan Gelb laid out is close to what the Administration will decide to do in the next few weeks — two brigades, or 10,000 troops, will probably be sent to secure Kandahar city and environs, and two other brigades will be sent to train and advise the Afghan security forces. (See pictures from the Afghanistan election.)
Why, then, all the excitement and controversy? Politics, pure and simple. There is an effort afoot by neoconservatives, led by Senator John McCain, to paint the President as flaccid on national security. McCain has been going around for the past few weeks telling all comers — heatedly, at times — that Obama's strategy review is essentially a waste of time, that the President has to, has to, go with the 40,000-troop option in Afghanistan. The Obama Administration, unnecessarily defensive, added fuel to the fire by having National Security Adviser Jim Jones and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates obliquely chastise McChrystal for public lobbying.
Obama has made some mistakes on Afghanistan, and so has the military, but having a six-month strategic review is not one of them. No doubt, the President should have spoken with McChrystal more than once over the summer. The military's mistake was going ahead with a flawed battle plan that did not secure Kandahar, the second largest Afghan city and the fulcrum of the insurgency. That mistake made the six-month strategy review necessary, as did two other factors: the disastrously corrupt Afghan presidential election and a vastly improved capability to gather intelligence on al-Qaeda, which has resulted in the killing of more than half of the 20 targeted al-Qaeda leaders. Several of the principals involved in Obama's strategy review have told me that their ultimate position on troop levels will depend on whether a plausible government, newly committed to reform, emerges when the Afghanistan election process is finally completed. Either way, the increased success against al-Qaeda could mitigate the need for a full counterinsurgency strategy. "That's the central question of the internal debate," a senior Defense official told me.
In the end, it is a shame that smoke and puffery have obscured McChrystal's excellent speech. Those who speak of winning or losing in Afghanistan are using a primordial vocabulary. But the essential humanity at the heart of the counterinsurgency strategy — the idea that we succeed if we work at helping people — makes it worth trying. As the man said, this is about humility. In the 21st century, real power may be all about figuring out the right place to dig a well.
At 84, the writer and activist may be confined to a wheelchair, but his rage – at his country, its leaders and citizens – burns as fiercely as ever. Johann Hari watches the sparks fly
Wednesday, 7 October 2009
In Russian, the phrase "gore vidal" means "he has seen grief". As Gore Vidal is wheeled towards me across an empty London hotel lobby, it seems for the first time like an apt translation. In the eight years since I saw him last, he has lost his partner of 50 years, most of his friends, most of his enemies, and the use of his legs. The man I met then – bristling with his own brilliance, scattering witticisms around like confetti – has withered. His skin is like parchment, but the famous cheekbones are still sharp beneath the crags. "It is so cold in here," he says, by way of introduction. "So fucking cold."
Gore Vidal is not only grieving for his own dead circle and his fading life, but for his country. At 83, he has lived through one third of the lifespan of the United States. If anyone incarnates the American century that has ended, it is him. He was America's greatest essayist, one of its best-selling novelists and the wit at every party. He holidayed with the Kennedys, cruised for men with Tennessee Williams, was urged to run for Congress by Eleanor Roosevelt, co-wrote some of the most iconic Hollywood films, damned US foreign policy from within, sued Truman Capote, got fellated by Jack Kerouac, watched his cousin Al Gore get elected President and still lose the White House, and – finally, bizarrely – befriended and championed the Oklahoma bomber, Timothy McVeigh.
Yet now, he says, it is clear the American experiment has been "a failure". It was all for nothing. Soon the country will be ranked "somewhere between Brazil and Argentina, where it belongs." The Empire will collapse militarily in Afghanistan; the nation will collapse internally when Obama is broken "by the madhouse" and the Chinese call in the country's debts. A ruined United States will then be "the Yellow Man's Burden", and "they'll have us running the coolie cars, or whatever it is they have in the way of transport".
A Scotch is fetched for him as he is wheeled into the corner of the bar. "I was like everyone else when Obama was elected – optimistic. Everything we had been saying about racial integration was vindicated," he says, "but he's incompetent. He will be defeated for re-election. It's a pity because he's the first intellectual president we've had in many years, but he can't hack it. He's not up to it. He's overwhelmed. And who wouldn't be? The United States is a madhouse. The country should be put away – and we're being told to go away. Nothing makes any sense." The President "wants to be liked by everybody, and he thought all he had to do was talk reason. But remember – the Republican Party is not a political party. It's a mindset, like Hitler Youth. It's full of hatred. You're not going to get them aboard. Don't even try. The only way to handle them is to terrify them. He's too delicate for that."
When he compares Obama to his old friend Jack Kennedy, he shakes his head. "He's twice the intellectual that Jack was, but Jack knew the great world. Remember he spent a long time in the navy, losing ships. This kid [Obama] has never heard a gun fired in anger. He's absolutely bowled over by generals, who tell him lies and he believes them. He hasn't done anything. If you were faced with great problems in chemistry – to find the perfect gas, to gas a population – you won't know for a long time whether it works. You have to go by what people tell you. He's like that. He's not ready for prime time and he's getting a lot of prime time on his plate at once."
Is there any hope? "Every sign I see is doom. But then people say" – he adopts a whiny, nasal voice – "'Oh Mr Vidal, you're so negative, can't you say something nice about America? It's a wonderful country, everybody wants to live here.' Oh yes? When was the last time you saw a Norwegian with a green card who wanted to come here because of the health service? I'll pay you if you can find one."
But there is, he says with sudden perkiness, some "good news. Afghanistan will be terminal for the American empire, yes. Which is a happy way of looking at it. We'll be out of the empire game, rapidly. But it's too late for the country and the constitution." He raises his drink, and smiles ironically. "To a better republic," he says, and drinks in one long gulp.
Amidst recession and fears over jobs and economy, Ireland have voted YES this time around. I understand Poland have yet to also ratify the treaty.
I'm not fool enough to try and write this group's definitive article on a subject I simply don't know enough about - personally, I need to be doing more reading than writing on this. I guess my biggest question is 'where does this all leave Britain'? (not an EU member state).
The Treaty's own website can be found here, and therein is the full text.
This website outlines the main points as follows:
1. A more democratic and transparent Europe, with a strengthened role for the European Parliament and national parliaments, more opportunities for citizens to have their voices heard and a clearer sense of who does what at European and national level.
* A strengthened role for the European Parliament: the European Parliament, directly elected by EU citizens, will see important new powers emerge over the EU legislation, the EU budget and international agreements. In particular, the increase of co-decision procedure in policy-making will ensure the European Parliament is placed on an equal footing with the Council, representing Member States, for the vast bulk of EU legislation.
* A greater involvement of national parliaments: national parliaments will have greater opportunities to be involved in the work of the EU, in particular thanks to a new mechanism to monitor that the Union only acts where results can be better attained at EU level (subsidiarity). Together with the strengthened role for the European Parliament, it will enhance democracy and increase legitimacy in the functioning of the Union.
* A stronger voice for citizens: thanks to the Citizens' Initiative, one million citizens from a number of Member States will have the possibility to call on the Commission to bring forward new policy proposals.
* Who does what: the relationship between the Member States and the European Union will become clearer with the categorisation of competences.
* Withdrawal from the Union: the Treaty of Lisbon explicitly recognises for the first time the possibility for a Member State to withdraw from the Union.
2. A more efficient Europe, with simplified working methods and voting rules, streamlined and modern institutions for a EU of 27 members and an improved ability to act in areas of major priority for today's Union.
* Effective and efficient decision-making: qualified majority voting in the Council will be extended to new policy areas to make decision-making faster and more efficient. From 2014 on, the calculation of qualified majority will be based on the double majority of Member States and people, thus representing the dual legitimacy of the Union.A double majority will be achieved when a decision is taken by 55% of the Member States representing at least 65% of the Union’s population.
* A more stable and streamlined institutional framework: the Treaty of Lisbon creates the function of President of the European Council elected for two and a half years, introduces a direct link between the election of the Commission President and the results of the European elections, provides for new arrangements for the future composition of the European Parliament and for a smaller Commission, and includes clearer rules on enhanced cooperation and financial provisions.
* Improving the life of Europeans: the Treaty of Lisbon improves the EU's ability to act in several policy areas of major priority for today's Union and its citizens. This is the case in particular for the policy areas of freedom, security and justice, such as combating terrorism or tackling crime. It also concerns to some extent other areas including energy policy, public health, civil protection, climate change, services of general interest, research, space, territorial cohesion, commercial policy, humanitarian aid, sport, tourism and administrative cooperation.
3. A Europe of rights and values, freedom, solidarity and security, promoting the Union's values, introducing the Charter of Fundamental Rights into European primary law, providing for new solidarity mechanisms and ensuring better protection of European citizens.
* Democratic values: the Treaty of Lisbon details and reinforces the values and objectives on which the Union is built. These values aim to serve as a reference point for European citizens and to demonstrate what Europe has to offer its partners worldwide.
* Citizens' rights and Charter of Fundamental Rights: the Treaty of Lisbon preserves existing rights while introducing new ones. In particular, it guarantees the freedoms and principles set out in the Charter of Fundamental Rights and gives its provisions a binding legal force. It concerns civil, political, economic and social rights.
* Freedom of European citizens: the Treaty of Lisbon preserves and reinforces the "four freedoms" and the political, economic and social freedom of European citizens.
* Solidarity between Member States: the Treaty of Lisbon provides that the Union and its Member States act jointly in a spirit of solidarity if a Member State is the subject of a terrorist attack or the victim of a natural or man-made disaster. Solidarity in the area of energy is also emphasised.
* Increased security for all: the Union will get an extended capacity to act on freedom, security and justice, which will bring direct benefits in terms of the Union's ability to fight crime and terrorism. New provisions on civil protection, humanitarian aid and public health also aim at boosting the Union's ability to respond to threats to the security of European citizens.
4. Europe as an actor on the global stage will be achieved by bringing together Europe's external policy tools, both when developing and deciding new policies. The Treaty of Lisbon will give Europe a clear voice in relations with its partners worldwide. It will harness Europe's economic, humanitarian, political and diplomatic strengths to promote European interests and values worldwide, while respecting the particular interests of the Member States in Foreign Affairs.
* A new High Representative for the Union in Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, also Vice-President of the Commission, will increase the impact, the coherence and the visibility of the EU's external action.
* A new European External Action Service will provide back up and support to the High Representative.
* A single legal personality for the Union will strengthen the Union's negotiating power, making it more effective on the world stage and a more visible partner for third countries and international organisations.
* Progress in European Security and Defence Policy will preserve special decision-making arrangements but also pave the way towards reinforced cooperation amongst a smaller group of Member States.
So... what does it mean to YOU? What are the pros and cons, as regards taxes, politics, sovereignty, free trade, economics, travel, military alliances? I figured the best way to dig up more answers on this would be to brainstorm here in this group, and ask those effected for their opinions... open floor discussion. All welcome. Those outside Europe, what do you make of it?
I'm not. Not convinced it's anything more to worry about than ordinary flu. I don't read those fearmongering bullshit 'newspapers'. A very informative article in New Scientist a few months ago told me all I feel I need to know about the difference between H1N1 'Swine' Flu, HN51 'Bird' Flu and all the rest of it.
Conspiracy theories abound about how it's a biological weapon sure to spell the end of the human race... we'll see, this winter. There will be flu-related fatalities somewhere around the world, but no more than usual.
And no, I don't subscribe to the RFID verichip paranoia. I DO believe the Murdoch media are especially pushing paedophilia as a moral panic in order to usher in the idea of microchipping our kids, an agenda of which the high-profile Madeleine McCann disappearance in Portugal is a part... but rfid through this vaccine? No. That's silly.
I think the concept of inserting verichips into people *for control* is an idea that comes from The Christian Bible, and the 'mark of the beast' story. A chip designed to monitor financial transactions in a cashless society... I can see it as a Sci-Fi movie, but not as a reality. I don't think much at all about organised religion or supernatural beliefs, I think they're mostly quite silly as well.
I don't usually turn to Big Pharma for my remedies anyway. I'm not known to take aspirin for a headache or things like that. It's not natural. I'd rather drink water and eat a fry-up for a hangover on a Sunday morning. Guinea-pig for some new vaccine that's shrouded in controversy anyway, even if only from the lunatic fringe? No thanks.
There's been talk of making it compulsory. I don't see how you can enforce that... jabbing me against my will is assault. I'll resist any attempt to do so with violence, I'd imagine.
Steve Levine, Foreign Affairs writer for Business Week, says on his website:
"Edward Lucas, a colleague from the Economist, lets loose today with an excerpt in London's Daily Mail from his new book, The New Cold War. Lucas, a take-no-prisoners critic of the Putin Kremlin, is one of the most articulate voices writing in English on Russia. I expect his book to do well."
In August, President Obama laid out the rationale for stepping up the fight in Afghanistan: If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al-Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans. So this is not only a war worth fighting. This is fundamental to the defense of our people. Obamas Af-Pak plan is, in essence, a countersanctuary strategy that denies safe havens to the Taliban and al-Qaeda, with the overriding goal of making America and its allies safer. Under Obama, the Pentagon has already sent a surge of 21,000 troops to Afghanistan, and the Administration is even weighing the possibility of deploying as many as 40,000 more. (See pictures of a photographer's personal journey through war.)
This is a sound policy. If U.S. forces were not in Afghanistan, the Taliban, with its al-Qaeda allies in tow, would seize control of the country's south and east and might even take it over entirely. A senior Afghan politician told me that the Taliban would be in Kabul within 24 hours without the presence of international forces. This is not because the Taliban is so strong; generous estimates suggest it numbers no more than 20,000 fighters. It is because the Afghan government and the 90,000-man Afghan army are still so weak.
The objections to an increased U.S. military commitment in South Asia rest on a number of flawed assumptions. The first is that Afghans always treat foreign forces as antibodies. In fact, poll after poll since the fall of the Taliban has found that a majority of Afghans have a favorable view of the international forces in their country. A BBC/ABC News poll conducted this year, for instance, showed that 63% of Afghans have a favorable view of the U.S. military. To those who say you cant trust polls taken in Afghanistan, its worth noting that the same type of poll consistently finds neighboring Pakistan to be one of the most anti-American countries in the world.
Another common criticism is that Afghanistan is a cobbled-together agglomeration of warring tribes and ethnic factions that is not amenable to anything approaching nation-building. In fact, the first Afghan state emerged with the Durrani Empire in 1747, making it a nation older than the U.S. Afghans lack no sense of nationhood; rather, they have always been ruled by a weak central state.
A third critique is that Afghanistan is simply too violent for anything constituting success to happen there. This is highly misleading. While violence is on the rise, it is nothing on the scale of what occurred during the Iraq war — or even what happened in U.S. cities as recently as 1991, when an American was statistically more likely to be killed than an Afghan civilian was last year. Finally, critics of greater U.S. involvement suggest that there is no realistic model for a successful end state in Afghanistan. In fact, there is a good one relatively close at hand: Afghanistan as it was in the 1970s, a country at peace internally and with its neighbors, whose towering mountains and exotic peoples drew tourists from around the world.
These flawed assumptions underlie the misguided argument that the war in Afghanistan is unwinnable. Some voices have begun to advocate a much smaller mission in Afghanistan, fewer troops and a decapitation strategy aimed at militant leaders carried out by special forces and drone attacks. Superficially, this sounds reasonable. But it has a back-to-the-future flavor because it is more or less the exact same policy that the Bush Administration followed in the first years of the occupation: a light footprint of several thousand U.S. soldiers who were confined to counterterrorism missions. That approach helped foster the resurgence of the Taliban, which continues to receive material support from elements in Pakistan. If a pared-down counterterrorism strategy works no better the second time around, will we have to invade Afghanistan all over again in the event of a spectacular Taliban comeback?
Having overthrown the ruling government in 2001, the U.S. has an obligation to leave to Afghans a country that is somewhat stable. And a stabilized Afghanistan is a necessary precondition for a peaceful South Asia, which is today the epicenter of global terrorism and the most likely setting of a nuclear war. Obamas Af-Pak plan has a real chance to achieve a stable Afghanistan if it is given some time to work.
Bergen, a frequent visitor to Afghanistan since 1993, is the author of Holy War, Inc. and The Osama bin Laden I Know.
Hawks on Afghan policy — those who favor defeating al-Qaeda through a full-blown counterinsurgency strategy involving up to 40,000 more U.S. troops — have divined a politically clever line of argument: Win or get out.
Its a phony choice. The hawks know there's no chance of our simply pulling out of Afghanistan. That option isn't even on the White House table, despite growing public desire to end the war. The true aim of the hawks, or all-outers, in this maneuver is to discredit the real policy alternative — the middle ground. Their ploy is to portray the middle way as simply a cover for getting out. (See pictures of Gitmo detainees.)
But there is a real and strong middle option: to put ourselves and friendly Afghans in a position to manage future terrorist threats in that country without a major U.S. combat role. We can accomplish this by doing what we actually know how to do: arm, train, divide the enemy, contain and deter.
There are four main prescriptions for a more realistic strategy in Afghanistan. First, stop trying to do the impossible, i.e., build an effective government in Kabul and enlarge Afghan security forces. Corruption, inefficiency and addiction are endemic to Afghan society. We should instead focus on forging a smaller army, say 75,000 or 100,000, that can and will actually fight, and concentrate on arming and training local warlords and tribal leaders who can defend themselves. This, backed by good U.S. logistics and intelligence, could block a Taliban reconquest of Afghanistan.
Second, divide and rent the Taliban. Like the British, we can propose deals that split the moderates (those content with exerting power in Afghanistan alone) from the fanatics (those obsessed with global jihad). We can also attract Taliban fighters by paying them more than the Taliban leadership can afford.
Third, surge about 10,000 new combat forces on top of the 68,000 already authorized and create an additional 5,000 dedicated trainers. Such a surge should be sufficient to handle immediate troubles.
Fourth, start doing what the U.S. does well — deterrence and containment. To deter, we must maintain a small, residual capability in Afghanistan for a few years, as well as offshore air and missile capabilities to inflict harsh punishment when necessary. To contain threats, Washington needs to form alliances with neighboring states like Pakistan, India, China, Russia and even Iran, which supported us in the early days of the war. All share an interest in combatting Sunni-based religious extremism as well as the drug trade.
These actions can be in place within one to two years and allow the U.S. to be mostly withdrawn from combat within three. This strategy rests on a time guideline, not a fixed timetable. It is in keeping with our overriding interests: first, to check terrorist threats worldwide and not place disproportionate bets in Afghanistan; and second, to extricate ourselves from unending major wars so that our leaders can focus sharply on reconstituting what makes the U.S. the leading world power — our economy.
But by far the strongest argument for this middle course is that the all-out alternative simply defies realities. The all-out strategy calls for an additional 40,000 or so troops, most of whom wont be deployed in the field in less than a year; they would thus do little to protect against the near-term dangers that General Stanley McChrystal has warned of. Perhaps most fundamental, the middle way avoids the quicksand on which the counterinsurgency strategy is built: the absolute need for nation-building. Counterinsurgency strategy requires clearing and holding territory, which cannot be done without transforming a corruption-riddled, anarchic and poverty-stricken state into a functioning market democracy. That goal is totally beyond American interests and capabilities and promises only endless war. Nor does the all-out approach help us in Pakistan, whose leaders continue to nurture long-standing alliances with the Taliban as a counterweight to India, Islamabad's real worry. Finally, the all-outers slight the U.S. voters who have run out of patience with the loss of American lives and treasure for a war whose aims they can no longer fathom.
The U.S. has never won a classic civil war or a fight against an insurgency in which it bore the brunt of battle and became the local villain. Vietnam is the obvious example. For the sake of friendly Afghans and for our own security, our goal now should be to make this their war, not our war.
Gelb is the author of Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy and president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations.
MILLIONS of ordinary Europeans look set to lose their chance of getting steadily sick of Tony Blair until they despise him with every fibre of their being.
