No Simple Matter

New address

2006-06-21T23:50:00.000-05:00

The address of No Simple Matter has changed, new address is

http://nosimplematter.livejournal.com

or preferably

http://nosimplematter.org

The latter always points to the right site.

Thanks, please continue reading, and spread information !

-Editors

War Porn

2006-06-21T14:21:00.000-05:00

War Porn
by Tom Engelhardt
TomDispatch
June 14, 2006

The history of war-atrocity snapshots did not start with the Abu Ghraib
screen-savers from hell. After all, photography itself came into being
as the industrializing West was imposing its rule on much of the
planet. That imposition meant wars of conquest; and such colonial wars,
in turn, meant slaughter.

From the moment the wooden sailing ship mounted with canons took to the
high seas and Europeans began to seize the coasts of the planet,
technological advantage lay with them. When others resisted, as they
regularly did, the result was almost invariably an unbalanced slaughter
that passed for war. Even in the relatively rare instances when
European powers, as at Adowa in Ethiopia in 1896, lost a battle, the
casualty figures still tended to run staggeringly in the other
direction. In 1898, at the victorious battle of Omdurman, the British,
using Maxim machines guns and artillery, famously slaughtered perhaps
11,000 Dervishes, wounding many more, at a cost of 48 British
casualties. ("It was not a battle," wrote one observer, "but an
execution.")

With the one-sided slaughter their technological advantage in arms (and
in the industrial organization of warfare)offered came the presumption
by the Europeans, the Americans when they joined the imperial game, and
the Japanese when they too leaped in, that there was some deeper kind
of superiority -- racial, religious, or civilizational -- at work
determining events. And so, above the repetitious fact of slaughter was
invariably unfurled a banner with glorious slogans about delivering the
benefits of "civilization" (in the French case, literally, the mission
civilatrice; in the American case, "democracy") to the ignorant or
benighted heathen and barbarians of the backward parts of the planet.

When against such obvious superiority and the benefits that went with
it, native peoples "irrationally" resisted their own subjugation, when,
against great odds and suffering terrible casualties, they refused to
give in and were not wiped away, this naturally confounded
expectations. It engendered an incomprehension, sometimes a fury in the
troops sent to subject them, who had been assured that their task was
an expression of manifest destiny itself. Then, of course, came
frustration, resentment, rage, the urge for revenge, in short, the
atrocity -- and against such inferior, irrational, inhuman types, it
was increasingly something not just to be committed, but to be
recorded.

How convenient that the camera was there and ever easier for any common
marauding soldier to use. There is, unfortunately, no historian of the
trophy war photo (as far as I know), but from the later nineteenth
century on, these certainly begin to appear -- Europeans holding
Chinese heads aloft after the Boxer Rebellion was crushed by a
European-American-Japanese expeditionary force; the photo albums
Japanese soldiers brought back from their imperial (and disastrous)
expeditionary campaigns on the Chinese mainland in the 1930s -- those
"burn all, kill all, loot all" campaigns against resistant peasants --
with snapshots again of Chinese heads being removed, private records of
moments not to be forgotten.

The principle was: Do the barbaric to those already labeled barbarians
or "bandits," or "rebels," a principle extended, not surprisingly, to
America's imperial wars. When Vietnam descended into the famed
"quagmire," for instance, it also descended into an orgy of atrocities.
By the accounts of soldiers, the taking of ears, fingers, even heads
was not out of the ordinary. As one soldier described the matter to
author Wallace Terry in Bloods, An Oral History of the Vietnam War by
Black Veterans, "Well, those white guys would sometimes take the
dog-tag chain and fill that up with ears... They would take the ear off
to make sure the VC was dead... And to put some notches on they guns.
If we were movin' through the jungle, they'd just put the bloody ear on
the chain and stick the ear in their pocket and keep going. Wouldn't
take time to dry it off. Then when we get back, they would nail 'em up
on the walls of our hootch." Another told Terry that the fourteen ears
and fingers "strung on a piece of leather around my neck... symbolized
that I'm a killer. And it was, so to speak, a symbol of combat-type
manhood."

And the camera, which anyone could use by now, was never far behind.
Many of these scenes were snapped and undoubtedly kept, including, as
journalist Michael Herr recounted in his classic account of the war
Dispatches, shots of severed heads. Some of these photos were
disseminated. I remember one of them appearing in the late 1960s in an
alternative (or, as they were called then, "underground") paper, of a
grinning American soldier holding up a severed Vietnamese head in what
could only be called a trophy-hunting pose.

But the digital camera, the cell-phone camera, and the capacities of
the computer as well as the Internet -- that technological superiority
still at work -- has lent the trophy photo new power in our latest war
of frustration, making it so much more available to the non-war-making
public and the world at large. As Susan Sontag commented after some of
the Abu Ghraib photos were finally published, these reflected "a shift
in the use made of [trophy] pictures -- less objects to be saved than
messages to be disseminated, circulated. A digital camera is a common
possession among soldiers. Where once photographing war was the
province of photojournalists, now the soldiers themselves are all
photographers -- recording their war, their fun, their observations of
what they find picturesque, their atrocities -- and swapping images
among themselves and e-mailing them around the globe."

If the enemy are barbarian beheaders (as some of them indeed are), when
you consider the photos that have emerged from our latest imperial
expeditionary campaign in Iraq, you need to ask, what exactly are we?
Just what is it that we are actually spreading to the world on the tips
of our Cruise missiles or via Hellfire-missile armed Predator drones,
as well as up close and personal from Abu Ghraib to Haditha? What kind
of screen-savers are we really creating for posterity?

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-Jim Leftwich & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen

----

2006-06-21T12:37:00.000-05:00

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-Peter K. Niven

Nobel Laureate flays Bush

2006-06-20T14:59:00.000-05:00

Nobel Laureate flays Bush
by Haroon Siddiqui
Asheville Global Report
June 14, 2006

Jun. 1- Gunter Grass, celebrated German novelist, playwright, poet,
essayist, sculptor and commentator, is a living legend. When this Nobel
Laureate speaks, people listen.

His address in Berlin to the annual Congress of International PEN, the
worldwide organization of writers, had been much anticipated,
especially given his long admonition to intellectuals to speak up on
the political and moral issues of the day.

He himself has done so all his life, most famously against the Nazi
past and contemporary neo-Nazism and xenophobia.

Grass, at 78 still spry and energetic, quickly gets into his topic,
"The hubris of the world's only superpower," and proceeds to offer a
sweeping critique.

His words find resonance among the writers gathered, including another
Nobel Laureate, South African novelist Nadine Gordimer.

"Armed force is used by this superpower to defeat the terrorism it is
itself responsible for," Grass says, citing Osama bin Laden, the
by-product of US support for Afghan jihadists in the 1980s. "The war
[on Iraq], deliberately started in blatant disdain of the laws of
civilized societies, produces still more terror."

Yet George W. Bush is searching for new enemies and targets.

"Dictatorships, and there are plenty to choose from, are referred to as
rogue states and threatened vociferously with military strikes,
including the deployment of nuclear weapons. But it only further
stabilizes the fundamentalist power systems in those countries.

"Whether the term 'axis of evil' is used to refer to Iran or North
Korea or Syria, politics could not be more stupid and hence more
dangerous. Yet the entire world is watching and pretending to be
powerless."

Grass quotes liberally from the blistering speech given last year by
British playwright Harold Pinter in accepting the Nobel Prize for
Literature: "The United States supported and, in many cases, engendered
every right-wing military dictatorship in the world after World War II
- Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the
Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador and, of course, Chile...

"Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place in those countries... but
you wouldn't know it. The crimes of the US have been systematic,
constant, vicious, and remorseless but very few people have actually
talked about them.

"You have to hand it to America. It has exercised quite a clinical
manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for
universal good. It's brilliant, even witty, a highly successful act of
hypnosis. How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be
described as a mass murderer and a war criminal?"

Having cited Pinter, Grass adds his own condemnation of "the
hypocritical method of keeping the body count" in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Although we meticulously keep count of the victims of terror attacks -
terrible though their number is - nobody bothers to count the dead
caused by American bombs or rocket attacks."

The death toll from America's "three Gulf Wars," as he called it - "the
first one having been fought by Saddam Hussein against Iran, with
support from the United States" - runs into hundreds of thousands.

"In Western evaluation, not only are there first-, second- or third
class citizens among the living, but also among the dead."

As for Bush and Tony Blair, he says, "whenever their lies lack
persuasive power, they put God into harness. Hypocrisy is written all
over their faces. They are like the priests and missionaries of old who
used to bless weapons and carry death with their Bibles into distant
countries."

The enormity of US-initiated death, destruction and torture, places a
burden on the citizens of democracy to be more vigilant: "Who wanted
this war? What are the lies that have disguised its true purpose? Who
profits from it? Whose shares go up because of it?"

In a post-speech interview, I ask Grass about governments ignoring the
electorate between elections, as those did in Britain, Italy and Spain,
which joined the war on Iraq despite overwhelming public opposition.

"In the last 10 years, lobbies have become stronger than the
government, in the US and other democracies," Grass responds. "They
cannot change policy, for example, on health without the pharmaceutical
industry, or farming policy without the farm groups. Lobbies are too
powerful," the most powerful being the ones wanting war.

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2006-06-20T12:07:00.001-05:00

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-Jim Leftwich & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen

----

2006-06-20T12:07:00.000-05:00

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-Peter K. Niven

The Tripolar Chessboard

2006-06-19T15:15:00.000-05:00

The Tripolar Chessboard
Putting Iran in Great Power Context
by Michael T. Klare; TomDispatch
June 15, 2006

For months, the American press and policy-making elite have portrayed
the crisis with Iran as a two-sided struggle between Washington and
Tehran, with the European powers as well as Russia and China playing
supporting roles. It is certainly true that George Bush and Iranian
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are the leading protagonists in this
drama, with each making inflammatory statements about the other in
order to whip up public support at home. But an informed reading of
recent international diplomacy surrounding the Iranian crisis suggests
that another equally fierce -- and undoubtedly more important --
struggle is also taking place: a tripolar contest between the United
States, Russia, and China for domination of the greater Persian
Gulf/Caspian Sea region and its mammoth energy reserves.

When it comes to grand strategy, top Bush administration officials have
long attempted to maintain American dominance of the "global
chessboard" (as they see it) by diminishing the influence of the only
other significant players, Russia and China. This classic geopolitical
contest began with a flourish in early 2001, when the White House
signaled the provocative course it planned to follow by unilaterally
repudiating the U.S.-Russian Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and
announcing new high-tech arms sales to Taiwan, which China still
considers a breakaway province. After 9/11, these initial signals of
antagonism were toned down in order to secure Russian and Chinese
assistance in fighting the war on terror, but in recent months the
classic chessboard version of great-power politics has again come to
dominate strategic thinking in Washington.

Advancing the Strategic Pawns

This resurgence was perhaps first signaled on May 4, when Vice
President Dick Cheney went to Lithuana, the former Soviet Socialist
Republic (SSR), to lambaste the Russian government at a pro-democracy
confab. He accused Kremlin officials of "unfairly and improperly"
restricting the rights of Russian citizens and of using the country's
abundant oil and gas supplies as "tools of intimidation [and]
blackmail" against its neighbors. He also condemned Moscow for
attempting to "monopolize the transportation" of oil and gas supplies
in Eurasia -- a direct challenge to U.S. interests in the Caspian
region.

The next day, Cheney flew to the former SSR of Kazakhstan in oil and
natural gas rich Central Asia, where he urged that country's leaders to
ship their plentiful oil through a U.S.-sponsored pipeline to Turkey
and the Mediterranean rather than through Russian-controlled pipelines
to Europe.

Then, on June 3, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld weighed in on
China, telling an audience of Asian security officials that Beijing's
"lack of transparency" with respect to its military spending
"understandably causes concerns for some of its neighbors." These
comments were accompanied by publicly announced plans for increased
U.S. spending on sophisticated weapons systems liked the F-22A
Air-superiority Fighter and Virginia-class nuclear attack submarines
that could only be useful in a big-power war for which there were just
two candidates, Russia and China.

Like Russia, China has also aroused Washington's ire over its
aggressive energy policies -- but in China's case over its increasing
attempts to nail down oil and gas supplies for its burgeoning,
energy-poor economy. In Military Power of the People's Republic of
China, its most recent report on Chinese military capabilities issued
on May 23, the Pentagon decried China's use of arms transfers and other
military aid as inducements to countries like Iran and Sudan to gain
access to energy reserves in the Middle East and Africa, and for
acquiring warships "that could serve as the basis for a force capable
of power projection" into the oil-producing regions of the planet.

There's nothing new about the Bush administration's urge to rollback
Russia and "contain" China. Such thinking was famously articulated in
the "Defense Planning Guidance for 1994-99," written by then
Undersecretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz and leaked to the press in
early 1992. "Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a
new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or
elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by
the Soviet Union," the document famously declared. This remains the
principal aim of U.S. strategy today, but it has now been joined by
another key objective: to ensure that the United States -- and no one
else -- controls the energy supplies of the Persian Gulf and adjacent
areas of Asia.

When first articulated in the "Carter Doctrine" of 1980, this precept
was directed exclusively at the Gulf; now, under President Bush, it has
been extended to the Caspian Sea basin as well -- a consequence of
rising oil prices, fears of diminishing supplies, and the vast oil and
natural gas deposits believed to be housed there. To assert U.S.
influence in this region, once part of the Soviet Union, the White
House has been setting up military bases, supplying arms, and
conducting a sub-rosa war of influence with both Moscow and Beijing.

Knight's moves in the Gulf

It is in this context that the current struggle over Iran must be
viewed. Iran occupies a pivotal position on the tripolar chessboard.
Geographically, it is the only nation that abuts both the Persian Gulf
and the Caspian Sea, positioning Tehran to play a significant role in
the two areas of greatest energy concern to the United States, Russia,
and China. Iran also abuts the strategic Strait of Hormuz -- the narrow
waterway from the Gulf to the Indian Ocean through which about
one-quarter of the world's oil moves every day. As a result, if
Washington ever lifted its trade embargo on Iran, its territory could
be used as the most obvious transit route for the delivery of oil and
natural gas from the Caspian countries to global markets, especially in
Europe and Japan.

As the most populous and industrialized nation in the Persian Gulf
basin, Iran has always played a significant role in that region's
affairs -- a situation that has often troubled neighbors like Saddam
Hussein's Iraq (which invaded Iran in 1980, beginning a bloody
eight-year war that ended in an exhausted stalemate). In recent years,
Iran has also gained regional clout as the center of the Shia branch of
Islam. Long despised and abused by Sunnis, the Shia are now in the
ascendancy in neighboring Iraq and are gaining greater visibility in
Bahrain, Kuwait, Lebanon, and the Shia-populated areas of Saudi Arabia
nearest to Kuwait (where crucial Saudi oil fields lie) in what is
starting to be thought of as the "Shia crescent."

At present, Iran's military capabilities are not impressive -- a
result, in part, of the U.S. embargo on sales of spare parts to the
Iranian air force (largely equipped with American aircraft during the
reign of the former Shah). But Iran has acquired submarines and other
modern weapons from Russia and has developed a ballistic missile
capability -- probably with help from North Korea and China. Were it
ever to succeed in acquiring nuclear weapons, it would indeed become a
formidable regional power, possibly calling into question America's
projected military domination of the Gulf. It is for this reason more
than any other that Washington is so determined to block its
acquisition of nuclear arms.

While both Russia and China claim to be opposed to such a development,
they certainly wouldn't view it with the same degree of dread and fury
as does the Bush administration -- a consideration that has no doubt
given added impetus to its drive to block Iran's nuclear efforts.

Above all, of course, Iran possesses the world's second largest
reserves of petroleum -- an estimated 132 billion barrels (11.1% of the
world's known reservoirs); and also the second largest reserves of
natural gas -- 971 trillion cubic feet (15.3% of known reservoirs). The
Iranians may possess less oil than the Saudis and less gas than the
Russians, but no other country controls so much of both of these vital
resources. Many states including China, India, Japan, and the European
Union countries already depend on Iran for significant shares of their
petroleum supplies; and China and the others have been busy negotiating
deals to develop, and then draw on, its mammoth natural gas reserves.
Iran will not only remain a major energy supplier, but also one of the
few that has the capacity - with the right kind of investment -- to
substantially boost its output in the years ahead when many other
sources of oil and gas will have gone into decline.

In 1953, after the CIA helped oust Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh,
who had nationalized the Iranian oil industry, American energy firms
came to play a commanding role in Iran's oil industry with the blessing
of the Shah. This remained true until he fell in the Khomeini
revolution of 1979. They would no doubt love to return to Iran, if
given the opportunity; but Washington's hostility to the Islamic regime
in Tehran now precludes their reentry. Under Executive Order 12959,
signed by President Clinton in 1995 and renewed by President Bush, all
U.S. companies are barred from operating in Iran. But should "regime
change" ever occur there -- the implied objective of U.S. policy --
this Executive Order would be lifted and U.S. firms would be able to do
what Chinese, Japanese, Indian, and other firms are now doing,
exploiting Iranian energy supplies. Just how much energy figures into
the administration's desire for political change in Iran cannot be
fully judged from the outside, but given the close ties Bush, Cheney,
and other key administration officials have with the U.S. energy
industry, it is hard to believe that it doesn't play a highly
significant one.

For China's energy plans, Iran's "pariah" status has certainly been a
boon. Because U.S. firms are barred from investing and European
companies face American economic penalties if they do so (under the
congressionally mandated Iran-Libya Sanctions Act of 1996), Chinese
companies have had a relatively open playing field as they shop for
promising energy deals like the $50 billion one signed in 2004 to
develop the massive Yadavaran gas field and to buy 10 million tons of
Iranian liquefied natural gas (LNG) annually for 25 years.

Russia, unlike energy-desperate China, is practically drowning in oil
and natural gas, but has an abiding interest in not seeing energy-rich
neighboring Iran fall under the sway of the U.S. and, as a major
supplier of nuclear equipment and technology, also has a special
interest in lending a profitable hand to Iran's energy establishment.
The Russians are completing the construction of a civilian nuclear
reactor at Bushehr in southwest Iran, a $1 billion project, and are
eager to sell more reactors and other nuclear energy systems to the
Iranians. This, of course, is a source of considerable frustration to
Washington, which seeks to isolate Tehran and prevent it from receiving
any nuclear technology. (Although an entirely civilian project, Bushehr
would no doubt be on the target list for any American air attack
intended to cripple Iran's nuclear capacity.) Nevertheless, the head of
the Russian nuclear energy agency, Sergei Kiriyenko, announced in
February, "We don't see any political obstacles to completing Bushehr"
and bringing it on line "in the swiftest possible period."

Given what is at stake, it is easy to see why the United States,
Russia, and China all have such an abiding interest in the outcome of
the Iranian crisis. For Washington, the replacement of the clerical
government in Tehran with a U.S.-friendly regime would represent a
colossal, threefold accomplishment: It would eliminate a major threat
to America's continued dominance of the Persian Gulf, open up the
world's number two oil-and-gas supplier to American energy firms, and
greatly diminish Chinese and Russian influence in the greater Gulf
region.

From a geopolitical perspective, there could be no greater win on the
global chessboard today. Even if Washington failed to achieve regime
change but, using its military might, crippled Iran's nuclear
establishment without sustaining major damage itself in Iraq or
elsewhere, this would still be a significant geopolitical win, exposing
the inability of either Russia or China to counter American moves of
this sort. (This would only work, of course, if the Bush administration
was able to contain the inevitable fallout from such action, whether
increased ethnic strife in Iraq or a sharp spike in oil prices.)

Not surprisingly, Moscow and Beijing are doing everything in their
power to prevent any American geopolitical triumph in Iran or Central
Asia from occurring, though without provoking an outright breach in
relations with Washington -- and so endangering complex economic ties
with the United States.

As this grand geopolitical "Great Game" unfolds, with the potential
economic well-being of the planet at stake, all sides are trying to
line up allies wherever possible, using whatever diplomatic levers are
available. Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the U.S. position in
both the Persian Gulf and Central Asia has noticeably deteriorated. At
present, the Bush administration's greatest weakness remains the schism
in U.S.-European relations created by the unilateral U.S. invasion
itself. Because the Europeans felt betrayed by that action, they have
largely refrained from helping out either in the counterinsurgency
effort in Iraq or in funding the reconstruction of the country. This
has imposed a ghastly and mounting cost on the United States. Fearing a
repetition of this fiasco in Iran, the White House has clearly decided
to let the diplomatic process play out on the Iranian crisis in a way
they refused to do when it came to Saddam's Iraq. So, within limits,
they are letting the Europeans set the diplomatic game plan for
"resolving" the nuclear dispute.

This, in turn, has given Moscow and Beijing their one obvious option
for averting what could be a geopolitical disaster for them in Iran:
the potential use of a Security Council veto to block the imposition of
U.S.-threatened sanctions on Iran under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter,
which could legitimize not only such sanctions but also the use of
force against any state deemed to pose a threat to international peace.
The Europeans want to prevent such a vote from occurring -- knowing
that any "failure" at the UN might only strengthen the arguments of the
hawks in Washington who want to move unilaterally and by force against
Iran. As a result, they are listening to the Russians and Chinese who
insist on relying on diplomacy -- and nothing else -- to resolve the
crisis, however long that takes.

"Russia believes that the sole solution for this problem will be based
on the work of the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency],"said the
Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, in March. Very similar
statements have been issued by Chinese officials, who have expressly
ruled out force as an acceptable solution to the crisis. In February,
for instance, the Chinese Ambassador to the IAEA, Wu Hailongon, called
on "all relevant parties to exercise restraint and patience" and
"refrain from any action that might further complicate or deteriorate
the situation."

Checkmate for Whom?

That all key parties see this unfolding crisis as part of a larger
geopolitical struggle is beyond doubt. For example, the Russians and
Chinese have begun to create something of a counter-bloc to the United
States in Central Asia, using the Shanghai Cooperation Organization
(SCO) as a vehicle. Originally established by Moscow and Beijing to
combat ethnic separatism in Central Asia, the SCO -- now including
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan -- has become more
like a regional security organization, a sort of mini-NATO (but also an
anti-NATO). Clearly, the Russians and the Chinese hope that it will
help them turn back U.S. influence in the energy-rich former Islamic
territories of the old Soviet Union, and in this it has shown -- in
Uzbekistan, at least -- some signs of realpolitik success. At a recent
meeting of the organization, the current members went so far as to
invite Iran to join as an observer -- to the obvious displeasure of
Washington. "It strikes me as passing strange," Secretary Rumsfeld
opined recently in Singapore, "that one would want to bring into an
organization that says it's against terrorism... the leading terrorist
nation in the world: Iran."

At the same time, the United States has sought to line up its own
allies -- including south Asian wildcard, India -- for a possible
military confrontation with Iran. Even though Bush insists that he's
prepared to rely on diplomacy to resolve the crisis, Pentagon officials
have sought the assistance of NATO in planning air strikes against
Iranian nuclear facilities. In March, for example, the head of NATO's
Airborne Early Warning and Control Force, General Axel Tuttelmann,
indicated that his force was ready to assist American forces at the
very onset of a U.S. attack on Iran. The German press has also reported
that former CIA director Peter Goss visited Turkey late last year to
request that country's assistance in conducting air strikes against
Iran.

Despite continuing calls for diplomacy to prevail, all sides in this
wider struggle recognize that the current situation cannot last
forever. For one thing, the shaky position of the Bush administration
-- politically at home, in its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, in its
attempts to secure geopolitical advantage in Central Asia, and
economically at a global level -- continues to develop fissures and to
embolden those countries, Iran included, which might frustrate its
desires. To top Bush officials, still dreaming of global energy
hegemony, the situation may seem increasingly perilous, but the window
to act may also appear in danger of closing. Their appetite for
European, Chinese, or Russian stalling tactics, no less Iranian
intransigence, may not be great; and, however much Moscow and Beijing
try to persuade the Iranians to back down on nuclear matters, thereby
averting American military action, their influence in Tehran may not
prove strong enough.

If, in the coming few months, Iran rejects U.S. demands for the
complete and permanent termination of its nuclear enrichment
activities, the United States will certainly insist on the imposition
of sanctions at the UN. If, in turn, the Security Council (with the
acquiescence of Russia and China) adopts purely symbolic gestures to no
visible effect, Washington will then demand tougher sanctions under
Chapter 7; and if either Russia or China vetoes such measures, the Bush
administration will almost certainly choose to use military means
against Iran, playing out Moscow's and Beijing's worst fears.

Russia and China can thus be expected to stretch out the diplomatic
process for as long as possible, hoping thereby to make military action
by the United States appear illegitimate to the Europeans and others.
By the same token, the hawks in Washington will undoubtedly become
increasingly impatient with the delays -- viewing them as rear-guard
strategic moves by Russia and China -- and so will push for military
action by the end of this year if nothing has been accomplished by then
on the diplomatic front.

As the crisis over Iran unfolds, most of the news commentary will
continue to focus on the war of words between Washington and Tehran.
Political insiders understand, however, that the most significant
struggle is the one that remains just out of sight, pitting Washington
against Moscow and Beijing in the battle for global influence and
energy domination. From this perspective, Iran is just one battlefield
-- however significant -- in a far larger, more long-lasting, and
momentous contest.

Michael T. Klare is the Professor of Peace and World Security Studies
at Hampshire College and the author, most recently, of Blood and Oil:
The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependence on
Imported Petroleum (Owl Books) as well as Resource Wars, The New
Landscape of Global Conflict.

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2006-06-19T12:03:00.000-05:00

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-Jim Leftwich & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen

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-Jim Leftwich & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen

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2006-06-19T11:51:00.000-05:00

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-Jim Leftwich & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen

----

2006-06-19T11:14:00.000-05:00

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----

2006-06-19T11:12:00.000-05:00

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-Peter K. Niven

Laos: Secret War Still Killing Thousands Of People

2006-06-18T14:58:00.000-05:00

Laos: Secret War Still Killing Thousands Of People
June 16, 2006
By Andre Vltchek

Plain of Jars, Laos. "It is terrible when the bomb kills the cow," says
my guide and translator, Mr. Van Lorn, as we are leaving Phonsavan in
Plain of Jars, driving east, towards Vietnam. "Cows like to chew on
stones. Very often they dig out some old bombie and then it goes off in
their mouth, tearing off the entire head of the animal."

Mr. Van Lorn belongs to the Hmong minority, and he is too young to
remember the war. He seems to be indifferent to the fact that his tribe
used to support the US Secret War in this country. His allegiances lie
entirely with Laos and he is talking with great compassion about those
who lost their lives in the most savage bombing campaigns in the
history of mankind.

Our van is slowly driving along the dirt road, bypassing Ban Khai
village, finally stopping in the middle of waste meadow. Enormous
craters dot the entire countryside, plains and hills. "We can't drive
any further," says Mr. Van Lorn. "There are bombs buried in the ground
and our van could explode on one of them. We have to walk."

He leads me to one of the craters and then back to the van, helping me
to climb to the roof for a better view. When I finish taking
photographs, he points to the village: "Pick out any house in this
town. I will translate for you. There is not one family in this area
which did not suffer during the war. Each family lost relatives and had
to leave this part of the country."

I ask the driver to stop at a humble looking compound. We enter the
courtyard and are greeted by an old man. His name is Mr. Nai Phommar
and he is 81 years old. He invites us to his clean and simple house;
his children bring "Lao whiskey" and fruits.

"People are dying in this area," explains Mr. Phommar. "We lost 2
people six years ago, but this is just a small village and we are lucky
we have had no more casualties since then."

I first feel hesitant to ask him about the war, but the old man is
happy to share his memories. "We used to hide by the side of the road,
in the ditch. Bombs kept falling and once our entire family was buried
and we had to dig ourselves out. People were dying all around us. They
used to bomb us with enormous airplanes which flew so high that we
couldn't see or hear them approaching. And they used to send small
planes which were looking for people on the ground: those flew so low
that we were able to see faces in the cockpits."

"But the carpet bombing was the scariest. There was no warning. Bombs
began to explode all around this area and we had no idea where they
were coming from. On average, they bombed us 5 times a day. They bombed
us almost every day, for more than ten years. Laos had only 2 million
people then. And we were later told that the US and its allies dropped
3 million tons of bombs on us."

"Eventually, nobody could survive here, anymore. Our houses were
destroyed and our fields were full of unexploded substances. People
were dying and so were the animals. We had to leave and so we decided
to go to Vietnam, to search for refuge. But the journey was
tremendously arduous. We were moving at night, carrying few
possessions. During the day we were hiding from the enemy planes."

"During the war I was very angry at Americans. I couldn't understand
how can somebody be so brutal - how can somebody kill fellow human
beings in such cold blood. But now my government tells me that
everything is ok, that it is past and we should forget. But how can we
forget? I don't feel angry anymore, but I would like the world to know
what happened to us."

John Bacher, a Ph.D. in history and a Metro Toronto archivist once
wrote about The Secret War in Laos: "More bombs were dropped on Laos
between 1965 and 1973 than the US dropped on Japan and Germany during
WWII. More than 350 thousand people were killed. The war in Laos was a
secret only from the American people and Congress. It anticipated the
sordid ties between drug trafficking and repressive regimes that have
been seen later in the Noriega affair."

In reality, it is hard to call this twisted campaign of terror "a war".
There were hardly any serious strategic merits of indiscriminately
bombing one of the poorest countrysides in the world, scarcely
inhabited by subsistence farmers and their domestic animals.

In this biggest covert operation in US history, the main goal was to
"prevent" pro-Vietnamese forces from gaining control over the area. But
the entire operation seemed more like a game, overgrown boys allowed to
play, unopposed, their war games, bombing an entire nation into the
stone age for more than a decade. The result of that "game" was one of
the most brutal genocides in the history of the 20th century.

Some of the most brutal bombing raids were done out of spite, with no
planning. When US bombers couldn't find their targets in Vietnam due to
bad weather, they just dumped their load on the Laos countryside, as
the airplanes couldn't land with the bombs on board. After the end of
the bombing campaign against North Vietnam, the US military decided to
simply use its old bomb arsenal (by dropping it on Laos) accumulated in
Southeast Asia, instead of carrying it back home. The value of human
lives, of the Lao people, was never taken into consideration.

I ask Mr. Van Lorn to take me to an isolated Hmong village, and after a
half hour journey we park in front of the school in ancient and
extremely poor Ban Tajock. We walk through traditional houses, followed
by the silent stares of local inhabitants. Some of them walk around
barefoot. Most of the houses have no electricity. Fences are mainly
made out of rusty bombs.

I ask where they got the bombs. After all, the Hmong tribe was
supporting the US during the war. Mr. Van Lorn replied laconically: "Do
you think they really cared? They were just bombing everything that
moved. Bombing was their main obsession."

I ask whether anyone lost his or her life in this village due to
unexploded ordnance. "3 children," we were told by the school teacher.
"On February 26. They were playing behind their house and found an
unexploded bombie. They took it behind their hut and it exploded. All
three died on the spot."

We walk towards the area where the tragedy took place. Three girls
follow us. They are unwashed, some of them barefoot. Mr Van Lorn asks
them whether they knew the boys.

"They were our friends," says Kalia, a 10 year old girl. "We used to
play together. They were good friends. Now I am so afraid. We all have
to work here, even at our age. Our families don't have money. The boys
found the bomb and they probably tried to take it apart - to open it so
it could be sold for scrap. Then it exploded and all three of them
died. I cried for two weeks."

I ask her whether she knows how this bomb got here. I asked her whether
she ever heard about the war, about the foreign pilots dropping
millions of tons of explosives on her country. She listens to my
questions translated by Mr. Van Lorn, while drawing long line in the
dirt with her little toe. Then she looks at me, confused: "I don't
know," she said. "I never heard about it. The bombs are here. They were
always here. I am sorry, I don't know
"

Further east, there is Tham Piu Cave, the biggest of the caves
penetrated by American missiles. 473 people died there. Most of them
are still buried under stones and debris. There is no light inside the
cave, except that which comes from the entrance. Mr. Van Lorn insists
that we go inside. The cave is one huge mass grave and one of the
symbols of the "Secret War".

The Lao government claims that the cave was full of civilians hiding
here from the carpet bombing of the area. Others say that there were
some pro-Vietnamese fighters inside when the missile struck. I find
this dispute absolutely irrelevant and to a large extent insulting.

What does it matter? A foreign country comes to Laos, bombs it to the
ground; bombs everybody to the ground, from those it considers its
enemies to those it designates as its friends. It penetrates other
caves full of civilians. Those boys on a rampage probably saw it as
their highest achievement, real bravado to identify the cave and send
their missile to finish the hundreds of those they didn't even consider
to be human beings. Would they bomb Tham Piu Cave if it were full of
pro-Vietnamese fighters? Definitely! Would they bomb it if they knew
there were only women and children hiding inside? No doubt they would,
as they bombed other caves and villages full of civilians.

On the way back to Phonsavan we are passing a truck full of rusty
bombs. "They will take it to the outskirts and try to open them," says
Mr. Van Lorn. "If they are made of aluminum, chances are they will make
some decent money. That is, if they survive. Many people die trying to
open old bombs. But they are very poor; they have to eat. They will try
again and again, risking their lives."

The next day in Phonsavan I meet David Davenport, Technical Field
Manager of Mines Advisory Group (MAG). David is a former member of the
Australian military, married to a Vietnamese woman, helping to de-mine
some of the worst contaminated areas of the world: Iraq, Afghanistan,
Congo. I ask him how many people have died since the end of the war in
Laos.

"It's very hard to give exact figures," explains David. "Estimates are
based only on the number of people who reached hospitals, so the
numbers which we have say that since the end of the war some 20
thousand people were killed or maimed. Now, as I said to you, in many
villages that we go to, if someone dies he is simply buried and it may
never get recorded."

"About statistics on ordinance: we say that it's about 10 tons per
sq/kilometer but that's dealing with the whole country - the whole
country was not bombed. This is one of the most contaminated provinces
in Laos and Laos is the most heavily bombed country on the face of the
planet. During the conflict, Americans could do anything they wanted,
because they never declared war on Laos. There were never any defined
rules of engagement. That's why temples were hit, hospitals were hit
And no Geneva Convention would apply, because officially nothing
happened here; there was no war in Laos
"

I know what David is referring to. 20 miles away, the ancient capital
of the province - Xiengkhouang or Ban Phiawat - had been leveled with
the ground. Now only a statue of Buddha is sitting erect in defiance,
his body partially burned, surrounded by the ruins of a once
magnificent temple. The nearby French Hospital is nothing more than a
mountain of rubble. No wonder, the local Xieng Khouang airport used to
be, during the conflict, the second busiest in the world, with 13
thousand sorties recorded every month. All these bombs had to fall on
something and so they did: on farmers, children, hospitals, rice
fields, water buffaloes.

Between what is left of the ancient capital and Phonsavan (the new
dusty capital city built by the refugees) is the world famous Plain of
Jars, a UNESCO tentative world heritage site. It contains hundreds of
mysterious and beautiful ancient jars scattered around green and gently
rolling hills. But the entire site is also surrounded by craters and
some of the jars are broken, the result of aerial bombardment. Bombs
and bombies are scattered all around the site. A large MAG sign
welcomes sporadic visitors: "Colored concrete markers at ground level
indicate the area that has been cleared."

Those who pay can enter and feel relatively safe. While those outside
can still have a taste of what the US stands for, all over the world,
so passionately, determinedly and consistently: freedom, democracy,
respect for others and justice for all.

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-Jim Leftwich & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen

----

2006-06-18T13:08:00.000-05:00

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-Peter K. Niven

Access of Evil

2006-06-17T02:06:00.002-05:00

Access of Evil

by AMY GOODMAN

July 3, 2006

If President Bush had stood on the steps of the White House with a
megaphone when he set out to sell the Iraq War, he might have convinced
a few people about the imminent threat posed by Saddam Hussein. But he
had something far more powerful that convinced far more people: He had
a compliant press corps ready to amplify his lies. This was the same
press corps that investigated and reported for years on President
Clinton's lying about an extramarital affair. The difference here was
that President Bush's lies take lives.

In order to be able to get that all-important leak from a named or,
better yet, unnamed "senior official," reporters trade truth for
access. This is the "access of evil," when reporters forgo the tough
questions out of fear of being passed over.

And then there is the embedding process. Journalists embedded with US
troops in Iraq bring us only one perspective. How about balancing the
troops' perspective with reporters embedded in Iraqi hospitals, or in
the peace movement around the world? Former Pentagon spokesperson
Victoria Clarke proclaimed the embedding process a spectacular success.
For the Pentagon, it was. More powerful than any bomb or missile, the
Pentagon deployed the media.

During the Persian Gulf War, General Electric owned NBC (it still
does). A major nuclear weapons manufacturer--which made parts for many
of the weapons in the Gulf War--owned a major television network. Is it
any surprise that what we saw on television looked like a military
hardware show? According to the New York Times, CBS executives "offered
advertisers assurances that the war specials could be tailored to
provide better lead-ins to commercials. One way would be to insert the
commercials after segments that were specially produced with upbeat
images or messages about the war."

After the Gulf War, Pentagon spokesperson Pete Williams jumped ship,
but he was hardly crossing enemy lines. He became a correspondent for
NBC. Just over a decade later, another Pentagon spokesperson, Victoria
Clarke, gave up her position to work as a CNN commentator.

During the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, MSNBC, NBC and CNN--not only
Fox--called their coverage Operation Iraqi Freedom. We expect the
Pentagon to research the most effective propagandistic name to call its
operation. But the media's adoption of Pentagon nomenclature raises the
question: If this were state media, how would it be any different?

While the big players in the National Entertainment State deserve much
of the blame, other major news outlets have truly outdone themselves in
their total affront to the role that an independent media should play
in a democracy. The New York Times and its former national security
reporter Judith Miller were critical to the successful promulgation of
the WMD lie, with repeated front-page, above-the-fold articles pumping
the false stories about aluminum tubes and buried weapons caches, to
name a few, all reliant on unnamed sources.

Sinclair Broadcast Group, which controls close to sixty TV stations,
acts like a junior version of Fox News, with right-wing biases in its
lackluster coverage. Sinclair refused to broadcast an ABC Nightline
segment on which the names of killed US servicemen and -women were
read, continuing the Bush Administration campaign to deny to the
American public bad news about the War on Terror. Sinclair also
broadcast with much fanfare a Swift Boat Veterans-inspired smear piece
against John Kerry at a critical moment in the 2004 presidential race.

And then there's the Clear Channeling of America. Enabled by the
Clinton/Gore-backed 1996 Telecommunications Act, the Bush-connected
Clear Channel Communications, which began with a dozen radio stations,
ballooned into a 1,200-plus-station radio network. According to South
Carolina's 2002 Radio Personality of the Year, who believes she was
fired for her antiwar beliefs, Clear Channel led prowar rallies,
forbade certain songs from being played and silenced critics.

In 1997 the late George Gerbner, former dean of the University of
Pennsylvania Annenberg School of Communication, described the media as
being "driven not by the creative people who have something to tell,
but by global conglomerates that have something to sell." And almost
ten years later, it still rings true. We need an independent media.
Democracy Now!

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2006-06-17T02:06:00.001-05:00

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-Jim Leftwich & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen

----

2006-06-17T02:06:00.000-05:00

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-Peter K. Niven

----

2006-06-17T01:54:00.000-05:00

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-Peter K. Niven

Why Leftists Mistrust Liberals

2006-06-16T16:09:00.000-05:00

Why Leftists Mistrust Liberals
by Robert Jensen
April 29, 2006

Some of my best friends are liberals. Really. But I have found it is
best not to rely on them politically.

Bashing the left to burnish credibility in mainstream circles is a
time-honored liberal move, a way of saying Im critical of the
excesses of the powerful, but not like those crazy lefties. For
example, during a discussion of post-9/11 politics, I once heard
then-New York University professor (he has since moved to Columbia
University) Todd Gitlin position himself between the hard right (such
as people associated with the Bush administration) and the hard left
(such as Noam Chomsky and other radical critics), implying an
equivalence in the coherence or value of analysis of each side. The
only conclusion I could reach was that Gitlin -- who is both a prolific
scholar and a former president of Students for a Democratic Society --
either believed such a claim about equivalence or said it for
self-interested political purposes. Neither interpretation is terribly
flattering for Gitlin.

Perhaps more important than such cases are the ways in which liberals
can undermine the left even when claiming to be supportive in a common
cause.

The most recent example in my life came when a faculty colleague at the
University of Texas wrote about the controversy sparked by the
publication of David Horowitzs tract about the alleged threat radicals
pose to universities, The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics
in America. The thesis of UT classics professor Tom Palaimas op/ed
piece in the Austin daily paper was that people typically dont give
students enough credit for their ability to evaluate critically the
statements of faculty members. Palaima discussed me by name in his
piece, believing he was coming to the defense of faculty with dissident
views who are being attacked by Horowitz.

I saw it differently. My concern about this isnt personal; Palaimas
piece and Horowitzs book have had no effect on my professional life.
But these attacks and our responses to them have serious political and
intellectual consequences more generally.

First, some definitional work: In the contemporary United States, I use
the term left or radical to identify a political position that is
anti-capitalist and anti-empire. Leftists fight attempts to naturalize
capitalism, rejecting the assertion that such a brutal way to organize
an economy is inevitable. Leftists also reject the idea that the United
States has the right to dominate the world, refuting the assertion that
we are uniquely benevolent in our imperial project. Liberals typically
decry the worst excesses of capitalism and empire, but dont critique
the system at a more basic level.

Palaimas op/ed piece started by stating, Jensens classes have a
political content and that this led to a conservative student group
putting me on a watch list of professors who inappropriately
politicize the classroom. I teach about journalism and politics; of
course my courses have political content, as does every course that
deals with human affairs. The political views of professors -- left,
right or center -- shape their courses in some ways. But by marking me
as political, Palaimas essay implies others are not, or at least not
political as my class (and, by extension, the classes of other leftist
professors).

Palaima goes on to refer to my radical opinions, suggesting students
are free to accept or reject them, and are capable of doing so. I agree
that students have, and exercise, that capacity. But by labeling my
teaching as the expression of opinions, he adds to the perception that
I, or any leftist, turn the classroom into a political pulpit. While my
opinions shape my teaching -- just as Palaimas and all professors
opinions do, of course -- I dont simply teach my opinions. I teach a
mix of facts, analysis, and interpretation. When I offer students my
own analysis and interpretation, I support it with evidence and logic.

Remember that Horowitzs claim is not just that some of us have
left-wing political views but that we inappropriately politicize the
classroom. Though Palaima doesnt explicitly endorse that charge, his
defense of me seems to concede that point, as he goes on to defend my
teaching on the basis that there is a diversity of views on campus. Yet
no one -- the conservative student group that targeted leftist
professors, Horowitz, or Palaima -- has ever offered evidence for the
claim that I am inappropriate in the classroom. I have always invited
anyone who wants to make such a claim to come watch me teach; I am
confident I can defend my teaching methods.

Finally, near the end of his column, Palaima refers to political
extremists, on the left and the right in a way that could easily lead
readers to assume that he believes that extremist is an appropriate
description of me. Given that is a term typically used in public
discourse for violent factions (such as terrorists) or groups with
ideas outside acceptable discourse (such as neo-Nazis), such casual use
of it is irresponsible, further marking me as someone who need not be
taken seriously.

When I raised these issues with Palaima, I made it clear I didnt feel
personally aggrieved but thought our disagreements mattered if faculty
members are to make a principled defense of the university as a place
where independent critical inquiry is valued. He contested my reading
and said he hadnt intended people to read the column the way I
suggested they might.

Readers can judge for themselves (the op/ed is online at
http://www.statesman.com/opinion/content/editorial/stories/04/
6palaima_edit.html ), but I think the most likely reading of the piece
-- given that many peoples existing ideas about leftists and
universities are negative -- is something like this: Jensen is a
radical who injects his politics into the classroom, but we shouldnt
worry too much about it because students can manage to see through it,
and besides other professors are teaching from a different perspective.
And oh, by the way, there are lots of sensible professors with less
extreme ideas, such as

My response here could be seen as taking on the wrong target. Should I
not be critiquing Horowitz before Palaima? Well, I have written such a
critique and debated Horowitz on radio and TV (
http://www.alternet.org/rights/31986/ and
http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0324-05.htm). But just as
important: In a political moment in which virtually every major
institution in the country is dominated not just by conservatives but
by reactionary right-wing ideologues, its easy to assume that liberals
and leftists should find common cause. Those of us committed to left
politics need to evaluate such cooperation on a case-by-case basis
rather than assume it is always the best path, for several reasons.

First, in the short-term in this country it is difficult to see
possibilities for serious progressive political change. Thats not
defeatist but merely realistic. In such a period, when no mass movement
is likely to emerge, one important political task is to consolidate a
base of activists with common values and deeper commitments. In such a
process, making the distinctions between liberal and left is crucial to
the project of building a core radical contingent that can be
politically effective in the future.

Second, when leftists and liberals form least-common-denominator
coalitions, liberal positions dominate. Theres no history of liberals
moving to include left political ideas when right-wing forces are
chased from power. Think Bill Clinton, here.

That said, we in left/radical movements have made more than our share
of mistakes. Its time for a period of serious critical self-reflection
about our analysis and organizing strategies. That process is not going
to be advanced by ignoring the differences we have with liberals. We
need to be clearer than ever about those differences in thinking about
the long term.

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-Jim Leftwich & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen

----

2006-06-16T13:06:00.000-05:00

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-Peter K. Niven

Technobarons of the 21st Century

2006-06-15T15:14:00.001-05:00

Technobarons of the 21st Century
From The Independent Weekly, May 17, 2006
By Fiona Morgan

John D. Rockefeller realized that the way to control the oil market was
to control the transport of oil. So in 1871, he colluded with the
railroad industry to form a cartel called the South Improvement
Company. The rate to ship oil doubled, but Rockefellers Standard Oil
Company would get rebates for every gallon of oil shipped, even those
shipped by his competitors. South would also collect information on the
destinations, costs and dates of competitors oil shipments.

Once word leaked, independent oil producers revolted and managed to
stop South before it shipped a single gallon. But to a great extent,
the damage had been done. Rockefeller offered to buy out his
competitors, showing them his books so theyd know what they were up
against. They had a choice: Sell out now, or be run into the ground.
Standard Oil went on to control the production of oil throughout the
United States until the Supreme Court broke it up in 1911.

What does a 19th-century oil monopolist have to do with the modern-day
world of ones and zeroes? Well, we all know how nicely things work out
when oil men are in charge. But the real key is the railroadthe
transport route, the superhighway. Its more than a stale metaphor for
talking about the abstract technicalities of the Internet. The way
valuable goods are deliveredbe they gallons of oil or binary
packetshasnt changed much. When the invention of radio and telephones
spurred Congress to regulate communications, legislators used
transportation law as a model. Now, as Congress is working on its first
major telecommunications bill since 1996, telecom and cable companies
are floating the idea of a preferred status for content providers who
are willing to pay for fast downloads, with slower service for everyone
elsean Information Super-Tollway.

By now, youve probably gotten an e-mail or read a blog post about the
issue of network neutrality. The term doesnt tell you much. (As
Arianna Huffington recently observed on her blog, HuffingtonPost.com,
Why are the bad guys so much better at naming things? Especially
legislation.) Its a term created by geeks, and it refers to the
concept of keeping content separate from the operation of networks.
Internet equality might be more evocative in the political arena. In
any case, the concept has been essential to the Internet since it was
created.

The Telecom Act of 1996 deregulated the communications industry,
bringing about widespread media consolidation. It opened the door for
Clear Channels acquisition of hundreds of radio stations. It allowed
phone and cable companies to consume one another ravenously, undoing
many decades worth of anti-trust measures. From a public interest
point of view, the law has been a disaster. Its also out of date: The
Internet is mentioned fewer than a dozen times.

Now the U.S. House of Representatives is preparing to vote on the
Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act of 2006. The
COPE Act covers a lot of ground. It overturns state laws that prevent
cities from setting up their own community Internet services, which is
good. It also establishes a national video franchise system to allow
telephone and cable companies to offer broadband TV service without
having to make the local agreements the cable companies currently have;
thanks to public outcry, the bill also ensures funding for public
access programming.

Most significantly, the COPE Act and its Senate equivalent would
deregulate the Internet in exactly the way telephone and cable
companies want it to. COPE would allow the telcos to control the
ongoing shift to broadband Internet television by allowing th¸
telephone companies to enter the TV business, and would allow both
telephone and cable companies to offer service only where they want
toi.e., where they can make the most moneywith no obligation to build
out into lower-income neighborhoods, which wont do anything to help
the digital divide.

Neither the House nor the Senate bill includes net neutrality
protections, which is why so many public interest groups oppose the
bills. In the midst of all of this deregulation, Congress needs to make
a clear stand against letting Internet service providers filter
content. Net neutrality would ensure that every Web-based businesses
and every site, be it personal, political or commercial, would be
treated the same by the systems that power the Internet itself. Rep. Ed
Markey (D-Mass.) introduced those protections into the COPE Act, but
two separate committees voted them down. Last week he introduced the
protections as a freestanding bill, the Net Neutrality Act of 2006.

Verizon, BellSouth, Time Warner, SBC, Comcast and AT&Tthe main
supporters of the COPE Act and virtually the only opponents of net
neutralityare using Congress to help them gain a competitive
advantage. Collectively they claim 98 percent of the nations Internet
customers, but they fear that theyre losing ground in their other
businesses. Internet phone services like Vonage and Skype offer
free-to-incredibly-cheap local and long distance calling online, and
once Internet TV gains a mass audience, cable TV will be outmoded.
Suddenly theres real competition in voice and video services, and
thats bad news for companies like Verizon and Time Warner.

So in order to get their cut from all this newfangled content, the
telcos and cable companies have come up with a tiered system for the
Internet similar to that of cable TV (the one that makes you pay
through the nose to watch The Sopranos). They would charge not only
their subscribers but also the content providers themselvesGoogle,
Yahoo!, iTunes, and every other site that could afford itfor
super-fast service. A news content site like The New York Times would
sign a high-dollar agreement with an ISP for that fast service, making
its competitors less appealing to the 80 percent of Americans who get
their news online. How slow will rank-and-file Web sites be in that
system? How easy will it be to read the liberal blogs or download the
indie podcasts? That would be up to the ISPs.

The industry says it needs a tiered system because all those little
video clips people send to each to other are hogging bandwidth. The
next time you see an ad for Time Warners Road Runner broadband
service, notice that streaming video is part of the lure of paying
$44.95 a month. An Associated Press story earlier this week quoted
Verizon and BellSouth spokesmen warning that as the video trend
continues, the Net could chokelike an overbooked flight, an ISP would
be overcapacity if all of its subscribers downloaded high-quality video
at the same time. But as the story points out, Internet traffic doesnt
work that way. It grows along with the capacity, not ahead of it. We
wouldnt be watching YouTube videos over a 64K modem, because it
wouldnt be worth the aggravation. The industry says all that
innovation will cost money, and that they will have no choice but to
pass that cost on to consumers. Oh, we consumers would suffer, they
warn us, even those of us who just want to check e-mail. The fact is,
ISPs have been whining about multimedia content since RealAudio first
launched its streaming sounds in 1995. Not only has the Net survived,
but ISPs have raked in billions in profits as a result. The COPE Acts
video franchising piece, remember, would let phone companies set their
own terms for launching nationwide video services.

Public interest groups are afraid that telcos would use their
gatekeeping power to block access to the sites of their competitors and
critics. Poppycock, the telcos say. We would never do anything like
that. The FCC wouldnt let us get away with it! And anyway, we wouldnt
want to. We believe in all this net neutrality stuff. Cross our hearts.
Pinky swear. No need to make it part of the law, now is there?

And we should believe them why? Remember, AT&T, BellSouth and Verizon
willingly sold the private phone records of American citizens to the
Bush administrations illegal domestic spying operation.

At the very least, its no stretch to think they would give
preferential access to their own content. When AOL bought Time Warner
in 2001, it was a delivery system merging with a content company. Time
Warner owns CNN, HBO and a huge movie library. The ongoing convergence
of content and telecom companies would reach its logical conclusion in
offering faster Road Runner downloads for those sites and channels. Why
wouldnt the industry go there? Theyll do anything the law allows to
make money. Thats why we need a law.

Not surprisingly, Amazon, Google and every other major content site
dont want to pay a toll. Theyve joined a coalition of groups urging
Congress to enshrine net neutrality into law. Like the successful
alliance that pushed back on media ownership deregulation two years
ago, the net neutrality coalition spans the political spectrum. It
includes not only lefty groups such as MoveOn and Common Cause, and
mainstream groups such as the American Library Association and
Consumers Union, but also Gun Owners of America, the Parents Television
Council (crusaders for decency laws) and Prof. Glenn Reynolds, better
known as the right-wing blogger Instapundit.

Its not hard to understand why this issue reaches across the political
spectrum. The Internet has made possible a democratic discourse that is
truly stunning, transforming political organizing and communication
while the mainstream tries harder and harder to suffocate ideas that
dont follow the standard party lines. Consider Stephen Colberts
blistering address at the White House Correspondents Dinner. Broadcast
on CSPAN on a Saturday night, completely left out of official newspaper
accounts of the event the next morning, it was watched by millions of
people online, thanks to the kind of video streaming that the telcos
say is cramping their style.

Money, of course, trumps ideology, and the growing concern of the
banking industry could ultimately be decisive. The financial services
companies, as theyre called, are beginning to wake up to the fact that
they, too, would be expected to pay tolls for the secure high-speed
transactions that have made them loads of money. In a memo leaked to
the press last week, Verizon urged its consultants to talk the banking
industry out of supporting net neutrality. They are being fed a lot of
cock-and-bull, Chicken Little stories about how the future of their
industry is at stake because another network industry might have the
freedom to price broadband services according to market demand,
Verizons chief congressional lobbyist, Peter Davidson, said in the
memo.

In case the dismissive approach didnt work, Davidson also included the
hard sell. He warned that the financial services industry better not
start moaning in the future about a lack of sophisticated data links
they need if net neutrality becomes law.

U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick, a Republican from Charlotte, has been a target of
the net neutrality movement since she voted down a net neutrality
provision in the House Energy and Commerce Committee on April 26 and
signed on to cosponsor the COPE Act. Myricks phone number is listed on
SavetheInternet.com, which urges people to call and express their
displeasure.

Andy Polk, Myricks legislative aide, says her office has been flooded
with calls from people who think Congress is passing laws that will
keep them from being able to look at the Web sites they want to see. He
says these people have been misinformed.

Exactly what people are concerned about, the FCC has already drafted
principles to deal with, he says, which ensure that people have
access to any Internet site that they would like, that they cant be
blocked by their Internet provider. We fully support the principles
that the FCC has laid out.

The FCCs connectivity principles are: 1) Consumers are entitled to
access the lawful Internet content of their choice; 2) consumers are
entitled to run applications and services of their choice, subject to
the needs of law enforcement; 3) consumers are entitled to connect
their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network; and 4)
consumers are entitled to competition among network providers,
application and service providers, and content providers. Like the
airwaves, the broadband lines are regulated by the FCC because they run
along the public rights of waythose wires and cables are run along
public streets and buried under peoples backyards. ISPs charge us for
the privilege of connecting, but nobody owns the Internet.

But Polk calls net neutrality a dicey concept. The problem with the
current debate is, no one knows what net neutrality actually means.
In committee hearings, he says, its proponents all defined it
differently. But in arguing against it, he gives a pretty good working
definition. It would require Internet providers to treat all content
exactly the same regardless of how much bandwidth its taking up. If we
define net neutrality in this bill, it would be seen by the industry as
saying you have to allow people to see everything they want and take up
as much bandwidth as they want. When industry people see that, they
would raise the cost of providing the Internet service because they
would have to allow everybody to have equal access to the bandwidth.

Read the information telcos publish for their investors and youll
learn of unlimited bandwidth, a future without limits created by their
technological prowess. But when theyre discussing net neutrality,
suddenly their broadband systems are packed tighter than sardine cans.

At this point in time were not sure we need to further regulate the
Internet, Polk says. We want to make sure its as free as possible
and allow as much creativity and ingenuity as possible.

Incidentally, Myrick received $27,500 in campaign contributions from
telecom PACs in 2004, including $10,000 from SBC, $8,500 from BellSouth
and $7,000 from Verizon.

Polks point about the FCC has some basis. There has been only one case
in the United States in which an Internet service provider blocked
access to a specific Web site or service. It happened to be the Mebane,
N.C.-based Madison River, which was fined $15,000 last year by the FCC
for blocking traffic to Vonage, the online phone service. Madison River
had approximately 121,000 residential phone subscribers and nearly
40,000 broadband Internet subscribers at the time. Vonage had more than
a million. About a month after Vonage complained to the FCC that
Madison River was port blocking, or preventing certain types of
Internet traffic from traveling through its networks, the agency took
action.

But the FCCs principles dont address the kind of tiered system the
telcos want to create. Nor do they establish clear methods of
enforcement. Vonage was already hugely successful when it took on
Madison River. What happens to the startups?

To Paul Jones, the Vonage v. Madison River case is evidence of what
telcos can and will do if given the chance. That really tells the tale
of what net neutrality is about, Jones says. Its about stopping
providers from using their near monopoly of network connections to
invisibly prevent you from connecting to a site, or to strong-arm
content providers into paying fees.
In 1992, Jones launched one of the first Web sites in North America. He
and a team of techies at UNC-Chapel Hill launched SunSITE, a public
archive and information sharing project funded by grants from Sun
Microsystems. As it collaborated on more academic, corporate and
high-tech startup projects, it changed its name. In 2000, it became
ibiblio, a digital archive and online public library. Ibiblio also
nurtures open-source software projects, many of which are created by
UNC students.

Like other online pioneers, Jones feels strongly that making neutrality
law is necessary to preserve everything we love about the Internet.
The great beauty of the Internet is that its dynamic, its constantly
in beta, people are constantly taking risks, he says, and the market
behaves like a true market, in which you have many, many choices. There
are only a few players in the home connectivity market and the variety
is out there beyond them.

Its absurd for the telcos to complain that content providers are
making their money off the backs of Internet service providers, Jones
says. Its kind of like the paving company getting mad when a truck
drives on their work. Theyd like to have a limited monopoly with not
much competition and no responsibility. I want that job, too, he
jokes.

What were talking about is preserving the ability of the Internet to
continue to be an engine for economic growth by keeping a diversity of
access, Jones says. North Carolina is the home of lots of small
businesses and those small businesses need net neutrality so they can
compete fairly.

In 1880, a company named for Alexander Graham Bell undertook the first
nationwide long-distance telephone network. American Bells project
spun off into the American Telephone and Telegraph Company in 1885. It
was a regulated monopoly for almost a centuryeverybody needed a
telephone, and AT&T had the ear of nearly every customer in the nation.
The government set the rates, and AT&T enjoyed guaranteed profits. But
new technologies changed the arrangement. In 1982, the Department of
Justice ordered AT&T broken up into regional baby Bells in exchange
for allowing the company to enterwhat else?the computer business.
Then came massive deregulation with the Telecom Act of 96, and the
monopoly reemerged. One of those baby Bells, Southwestern Bell Corp.,
acquired three others in the 1990s, and in 2005 SBC moved to buy AT&T
(getting full control of Cingular Wireless in the process). That merged
company, called AT&T, will be the largest provider of both local and
long distance telephone services, wireless service and DSL Internet
access in the United States.
Today, were facing another massive deregulation of the telecom
industry, the first one to give century-old monopolists unfair
advantage on the Internet. Industry spin at the moment is that Congress
needs a cooling-off period to study the issue of net neutrality.
Industry money is funding a heavy-duty advertising and PR blitz, some
of which is conducted by Astroturfphony grassrootsorganizations such
as Hands Off the Internet (Say no to government regulation of the
Internet) and Freedom Works (Lower Taxes, Less Government, More
Freedom), which are funded by the telecom companies. They say net
neutrality legislation will infringe on the free market. The situation
is deeply ironic, because techies are notoriously libertarian,
especially the core group of Net founders now urging Congress to pass
net neutrality legislation.

The fact is, the Internet supports the freest market in existence, and
the tiered system would destroy it. Above all, it is this contradiction
the net neutrality movement must get across to Congressand the public.
Otherwise, well be signing over American democracys greatest asset to
modern-day John D. Rockefellers.

Meet the Shock Troops of the Christian Youth

2006-06-15T15:14:00.000-05:00

Meet the Shock Troops of the Christian Youth
Battle Cry for Theocracy!
by Sunsara Taylor ; May 16, 2006

If you've been waiting until the Christian fascist movement started
filling stadiums with young people and hyping them up to do battle in
"God's army" to get alarmed, wait no longer.

In recent weeks, Battle Cry, a Christian fundamentalist youth movement,
has attracted more than 25,000 to mega-rally rock concerts in San
Francisco and Detroit and this weekend they plan to fill Wachovia
Stadium in Philadelphia.

They claim their religion and values are under attack but, amidst
spectacular lightshows, hummers, Navy Seals, and military imagery on
stage, it is Battle Cry that has declared war on everyone else! Their
leader, Ron Luce, insists: "This is war. And Jesus invites us to get
into the action, telling us that the violent--the 'forceful' ones--will
lay hold of the kingdom."

A glimpse at Battle Cry's Honor Academy, which trains 500 youth each
year and preaches that homosexuality and masturbation are sins, reveals
a lot about what kind of society they are fighting for. Interns are
forbidden to listen to secular music, watch R-rated movies or date. Men
can't use the internet unsupervised and the length of women's skirts is
regulated. The logic behind this, that men must be protected from the
sin of sexual temptation, is what drives Islamic fundamentalists to
shroud women in burkhas!

Behind their multi-million dollar operation that sends more than 5,000
missionaries to more than thirty-four countries each year, are some of
the most powerful and extreme religious lunatics in the country. Their
partners include Pat Robertson (who got a call from Karl Rove to
discuss Alito before the nomination was made public), Ted Haggard (who
brags that his concerns will be responded to by the White House within
24 hours), Jerry Falwell (who blamed September 11th on homosexuals,
feminists, pagans, and abortionists), and others. Their events have
been addressed by Barbara Bush (via video) as well as former President
Gerry Ford. This weekend's event will include Franklyn Graham who has
ministered to George Bush and publicly proclaimed that Islam is an
"evil religion."

What most of these figures have in common is their insistence that the
Bible be read literally and obeyed as the inerrant word of God. And, as
Ron Luce leads youth to pray, "I will keep my eyes on the battle,
submitting to Your code even when I don't understand.outside my comfort
zone in the battle zone," it would be foolish to expect that there is
any part of the Bible's literal horrors this movement would be
unwilling to enforce. That includes stoning disobedient children and
non-virgin brides (Deuteronomy 21:18-21 and 22:13-21), executing gays
(Leviticus 20:13), and keeping slaves (Peter 2:18).

Already they staged a protest on the steps of San Francisco's City Hall
precisely because they were "the very city hall steps where several
months ago 'gay marriages' were celebrated." Their answer to the
scourge of rape and violence against women is to end divorce, spread
ignorance, insist on virginity--the very things that will more entrap
women in these nightmares. And this Friday, they are planning rallies
at fifty City Halls nation-wide.

Of course, like the President who gave Ron Luce an appointment to the
White House Advisory Commission on Drug-Free Communities, Battle Cry
tells its share of bald-faced lies. For one, they claim that "a society
fortified by biblical principals and a strong moral code...is the
heritage our forefathers fought and died to secure for us." But the
word "God" never appears in the Constitution. After three-and-a-half
months of debate about what should go into the document that would
govern the land, the framers drafted a constitution that is secular.
Battle Cry also claims America has been "set aside for God's
purposes--a country established for good and fruitfully blessed so that
we might take God's message to the ends of the earth." It is revealing
that for all their talk about the value of life and the evils of
violent imagery, Battle Cry never speaks against the real violence and
loss of life being inflicted by U.S. troops in Iraq.

Still, there is one thing that Battle Cry gets right: this country is
in the midst of a deep moral crisis. We are indeed living through times
when business-as-usual is unconscionable.

As the Bush regime wages unjust wars and conducts torture in our names,
as they leave New Orleans to rot, and drag us closer each day to a
theocracy where abortion and birth control are banned, science is
pulled under, and gays are persecuted, it is no wonder that young
people are searching for meaning and morality.

The truth is, however, youth will not find the morality they need in a
stadium listening to Ron Luce preach about religious war and
intolerance. And they won't find it while buying Battle Cry's keepsake
dog-tags.

These young people need to be challenged to look around them and think
for themselves. I am confident that if they do, many of them may find
that the truly moral way to live is to throw their tremendous energies
and dreams of a better world into stopping this madness and driving out
the Bush regime.

This generation--and their counterparts all around the world--will have
to live with the consequences of this culture war, one way or another.