Since the September 11 atrocities in New York and Washington, British and U.S. leaders have trumpeted to the world their "shoulder-to-shoulder" stance against terrorism. President George W. Bush describes British Prime Minister Tony Blair as "a friend to America," and told a press gathering at the White House on September 20 that "one of the first phone calls I got after that terrible day was from the prime minister." "He was reassuring to me," Bush said. "He showed himself to be a true friend, and I appreciate that."
Blair, in turn, has offered Britain's "full solidarity" to the United States. "I give you, on behalf of our country, our solidarity, our sympathy, and our support," Blair said in September. He told the American people, "we stand side by side with you now, without hesitation." Blair has fought off domestic and European critics who accuse him of "getting into bed with Bush," and has sent his Royal Marines to "fight side by side" with U.S. forces in the Afghan war. "We are together on this," Blair has said.
Really? Recent events on the ground in Afghanistan tell a different story. For all British and U.S. leaders' grand pronouncements of solidarity in the face of terrorism, the "true friendship" between Bush and Blair seems to be in short supply -- at least between U.S. Marines and Royal Marines in the hills of east Afghanistan. Indeed, while politicians at home talk about standing "shoulder to shoulder," their forces on the ground can barely see eye to eye.
Britain's Royal Marines arrived in east Afghanistan at the end of March, at America's behest. In the wake of Operation Anaconda -- which ended in confusion and uncertainty over how successfully it had "found and destroyed" al-Qaeda and Taliban forces in the Shah-i-Kot mountains, and which cost nine American lives -- U.S. forces wanted British backing to finish off the enemy. But no sooner had Britain's Royal Marines touched down at Bagram airbase in east Afghanistan than the first clash between British and U.S. forces occurred.
General Tommy Franks, commander of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, insisted in mid-March that Operation Anaconda had been "an unqualified and absolute success," and that the British were only needed to ensure that no enemy forces had been left behind. The Royal Marines saw it differently. According to Royal Marine commanders, Anaconda had been a military and political disaster and it was up to them to make amends. As the UK Guardian reported: "Anaconda, where the USA again relied too heavily on air power, was hailed by US commanders as a success. British military officials called it a cock-up."
Saturday, June 29, 2002
The top White House official for coordinating the federal government's counteroffensive against terrorism resigned yesterday in a surprise decision that removed one of the Bush administration's leading advocates of launching aggressive and unconventional attacks on terrorist networks.
The departure of retired Army Gen. Wayne A. Downing, who also has been an outspoken hawk in administration debates about how to deal with Saddam Hussein, raised questions among security experts about both the administration's plans to improve homeland security through a massive government reorganization and the direction of its policy on Iraq.
Downing could not be reached for comment on his decision, which came 10 months after he joined the White House staff as deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism. A White House statement announcing Downing's resignation offered no reason for it.
ZURICH -- According to a secret government report revealed last week by the New York Times, the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan not only "failed to diminish the threat to the United States," but actually complicated the U.S. counter-terrorism campaign by dispersing its radical foes across the Muslim world.
The small, tightly-knit leadership of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida has been succeeded by a group of younger militants who have formed ad hoc alliances with other anti-U.S. groups from Morocco to Indonesia. These groups now pose the most serious danger to the United States and will remain a potent threat for years to come.
This dismaying report confirms what this writer has been saying in columns and on CNN since 9/11. A full-scale military invasion of Afghanistan would prove futile; the correct response was intelligence and police work, not brute force.
Friday, June 28, 2002
The speech itself was not so much White House as Little House on the Prairie. All, said George Bush, that had to happen for there to be a Palestinian state (which, of course, we all want) was for the Palestinians democratically to kick out their horrid old leadership and replace it with a nice, new, peace-minded leadership. This new dispensation – plus major reforms – would clear the way for talks which, in the fullness of time, might or might not settle a few other tricky little matters, such as how big a Palestinian state might be, whether part of Jerusalem would be in it and whether Israeli settlements built in violation of United Nations resolutions would be dismantled. We'd have to see about that.
So it's all knitted samplers and best bonnets. As the President argued, the present situation is hopeless. "It is untenable," he said on Monday, "for Israeli citizens to live in terror. It is untenable for Palestinians to live in squalor and occupation". And you can't say fairer than that. It was the same belief that drove his predecessor, Bill Clinton, to his hunt for a peace plan, which just eluded him, first at Camp David and then at Taba on the Israeli-Egyptian border.
It's worth recapping on that process. There was, for a moment at the end of 2000 and the beginning of 2001, a deal possible in which the Palestinians ended up with almost all of the West Bank, with part of Jerusalem and with a territory that was contiguous. But the Israelis had done too little to build Palestinian confidence in the period following Oslo, and Arafat lacked the courage or vision to seize the moment. A new intifada began, that was met by tanks, the number of terrorist attacks increased and Israel reoccupied much of the West Bank. Now, so far have the prospects for peace receded, that even exchanges between participants – conducted in the almost scholarly pages of the New York Review of Books – sound as though they can only be resolved by violence.
Most Americans believe we live in dangerous times, and I must agree. Today I want to talk about how I see those dangers and what Congress ought to do about them.
Of course, the Monday-morning quarterbacks are now explaining, with political overtones, what we should have done to prevent the 9/11 tragedy. Unfortunately, in doing so, foreign policy changes are never considered.
I have, for more than two decades, been severely critical of our post-World War II foreign policy. I have perceived it to be not in our best interest and have believed that it presented a serious danger to our security.
For the record, in January of 2000 I stated the following on this floor:
Our commercial interests and foreign policy are no longer separate...as bad as it is that average Americans are forced to subsidize such a system, we additionally are placed in greater danger because of our arrogant policy of bombing nations that do not submit to our wishes. This generates hatred directed toward America ...and exposes us to a greater threat of terrorism, since this is the only vehicle our victims can use to retaliate against a powerful military state...the cost in terms of lost liberties and unnecessary exposure to terrorism is difficult to assess, but in time, it will become apparent to all of us that foreign interventionism is of no benefit to American citizens, but instead is a threat to our liberties.
Again, let me remind you I made these statements on the House floor in January 2000. Unfortunately, my greatest fears and warnings have been borne out.
In the protest tents and opposite the Palestinian legislative council building in Gaza, the protesters talked and argued with passersby, expressing nostalgia for the past and fears about the future. One person told this story: "The prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him, once saw a poor man sitting at the corner of the street. He asked who the man was and was told `He's a Jew, a non-believer.' The prophet said: `He used to work for you. Take him and attend to his needs.'" Others called out in response: "We built Israel. Who built Sharon's ranch? We built it."
Since 1967, Israel's economic policy regarding the territories, and especially the Gaza Strip, has been based on two principles - bringing cheap Palestinian labor into Israel and preventing the development of an independent economic sector in the territories. (The latter was achieved by restrictive laws and by blocking the development of infrastructure, despite the fact that Palestinians paid taxes to the state). So the families of those working in Israel achieved relative economic prosperity on a personal level, while the community as a whole remained economically backward.
In Israeli in the 1970s it was hoped this economic dependence would prevent separation and that personal economic welfare would deflect any nationalist ideas about political independence. Even in the optimistic days of Oslo, economists explained that this dependence still existed and that even if development plans went ahead with a hitch, it would still require many years to create new jobs. Thus, economic stability in the territories - and especially in the Gaza Strip - depended on jobs in Israel. No one considered the possibility that this source of livelihood would disappear.
LINDA MOTTRAM: Flawed, naïve, unbalanced and a demonstration of an inability to grasp the Middle East, that's been some of the newspaper reaction from the Middle East to US President George W. Bush's much touted blueprint yesterday for solving the Israel/ Palestinian conflict.
What's surprising is that the criticism comes not from the Arab press but from Israel's most senior correspondents who say that while the Sharon government may have scored a political coup, Israelis and Palestinians have nothing to look forward to.
Middle East correspondent Tim Palmer reports from Jerusalem.
TIM PALMER: Business as usual for Yasser Arafat, still meeting world leaders in Ramallah, in this case the French Foreign Minister, despite the use by label George W. Bush attached to him yesterday.
"Definitely not," Yasser Arafat said when asked if President Bush had been talking about him when he called for a change in the Palestinian government.
Certainly there's been no clamour from Palestinians to take to the streets and seize on Mr Bush's somewhat vague promise of a provisional Palestinian state years from now if they do install new leaders. Perhaps because, in the West Bank at least, more than half a million of them live behind closed doors under curfew.
Hebron, the latest city reinvaded by Israeli troops and tanks sent by a government which knows there's no sniff of a demand from the White House now that they leave the territories.
Palestinian political scientist, Hisham Ahmed, said the Palestinian people have no incentive to pursue the distant Bush vision.
HISHAM AHMED: I find it to be most disappointing for all other American Presidential speeches since the beginning of the question of Palestine and I tend to believe that it was preferred in the corridors of the Israeli government rather than in the corridors of the White House.
Thursday, June 27, 2002
Palestinian Authority President Yasir Arafat stunned the world yesterday by demanding that the United States hold democratic elections for a new Chief Executive before it attempts to continue in its role as broker between Israel and Palestine.
"Mr. Bush is tainted by his association with Jim-Crow-style selective disenfranchisement and executive strong-arm tactics in a southeastern province controlled by his brother," said Mr. Arafat, who was elected with 87% of the vote in 1996 elections in the West Bank and Gaza, declared to be free and fair by international observers, including former U.S. president Jimmy Carter. "Our count shows that he would have lost the election if his associates hadn't deprived so many thousands of African-Americans, an oppressed minority, of the right to vote. He is not the man to bring peace to the Middle East."
Hugo Chavez, elected president of Venezuela with 62% of the popular vote, concurred with Mr. Arafat. Chavez has long been a victim of Bush's anti-democratic attitude, as the Bush administration funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars through the "National Endowment for Democracy" to anti-Chavez forces and reportedly gave the go-ahead for an attempted military coup by those forces. "After it was over and I was back in power," said Chavez, "his administration actually told me 'legitimacy is not conferred by a majority vote.' Unless, of course, it's a majority of the Supreme Court. I respect the local traditions, however quaint, of the United States, but he hardly sets the best example for the Middle East, does he? Why don't we get back to that idea of an international conference to settle the question of Palestine?"
Bush was not without his supporters, however. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, elected head of a country that legally discriminates among its citizens on the basis of religious belief, forbids political candidates from advocating an end to that discrimination, and disenfranchises an entire people through military occupation, dismissed the call as "absurd."
Hamid Karzai, recently "elected" head of Afghanistan by a grand council, or "loya jirga," in which a foreign body, controlled by the United States, selected delegates; unelected warlords who had ravaged the country were permitted to control the meeting and to threaten delegates who refused to vote their way; and the U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, refused to allow at least two other candidates to stand for election, added his support for Mr. Bush in his hour of need. Said Karzai, "In Afghanistan, we have the loya jirga. In the United States, you have your own process -- as we understand, it's traditional over there for corporations to play a large part in electing officials and writing legislation. We're very interested in looking into that kind of system ourselves."
How does the Bush administration stack up after 18 months? Poorly if you ask me, and it's high time that we conquer our natural reluctance to criticize the president and speak up, like true patriots, when we see our country being led astray.
On Sept. 10, 2001, the Bush administration was in serious difficulty on almost every front:
— The economy was in the doldrums; the Bush remedy — tax cuts for the rich and rebates for the rest of us — failed to excite the populace, or stimulate the economy.
— His proposed new energy policy, based on advice from the petroleum industry and Enron officials, focused on expanding resource development, including drilling on national park lands and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, was foundering on resistance from environmental interests and the public at large.
— European allies were offended by patent disinterest in international cooperation; dues to the United Nations remained unpaid; determination to relaunch star wars and abrogate the test-ban and antiballistic missile treaties, to abandon the Kyoto protocol on global warming and sabotage the proposed international criminal court, alienated friends around the world.
Then came the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Overnight, the United States received overwhelming sympathy and support from the international community; Americans of every political persuasion rallied around the president, applauding his declaration of war on terrorists. Congressional support of presidential initiatives was bipartisan and nearly unanimous. The terrorist attack of Sept. 11 was a terrible tragedy for the nation and the world; but for George Bush, it was a gift from Allah.
Wrapping his programs in the red, white and blue of patriotism, Bush stifled critics by suggestions of disloyalty or worse. The leader of our Department of Justice, Attorney General John Ashcroft, averred that dissent was akin to treason.
BERLIN - U.S. tennis great Martina Navratilova criticized her adopted homeland in a German newspaper on Wednesday, saying money is the only thing that matters there.
Navratilova, a Czech-born American who won 18 grand slam singles titles when she dominated women's tennis in the late 1970s and 1980s, also wrote in an article for Die Zeit weekly that she believed free speech was being suppressed in the United States.
"The most absurd part of my escape from the unjust system is that I have exchanged one system that suppresses free opinion for another," said Navratilova, 45, who fled Czechoslovakia at the age of 18 to go to the United States.
The nine-time women's Wimbledon champion, who still plays in some doubles tournaments and last week played in a singles tournament at the Eastbourne International Championships in England, singled out President Bush's Republican Party for unusually harsh criticism.
"The Republicans in the United States manipulate public opinion and sweep any controversial issues under the table," Navratilova said.
"It's depressing. Decisions in America are based solely on the question of 'how much money will come out of it' and not on the questions of how much health, morals or the environment suffer as a result."
Navratilova, who is openly homosexual, said she fights actively for gay rights
Does the big Bush plan for the Palestinians sound complex? It is. The plan has to be that way to hide the fact that it lacks a simple deadline for a clear goal: creation of a Palestinian state.
President Bush caved in to Israel's right wing – during this critical election year for control of the US Congress – and rejected the idea of a firm American promise to create such a state by a set time. Without that, Palestinians aren't left with much hope of a future homeland.
Instead, Mr. Bush offers just big money and lots of other development aid if the Palestinians jump through these tiny hoops:
1) Somehow oust their fairly elected leader, Yasser Arafat, and his close associates;
2) Demand incorruptible leaders (who, it is hoped, won't take big campaign donations for big favors, as in the US);
3) And (here's the complex part) somehow hold an election with Israeli tanks in the streets and choose leaders who somehow won't seem like US lackeys and who somehow will run the first real Arab democracy while suppressing a sizable portion of the population that actively supports suicide bombings against occupying Israeli soldiers and Israeli civilians.
And so politics trumps policy, with more US demands for reform and only a vague US notion of a state to come. Meanwhile, Jewish settlements spread on the West Bank, with Bush unlikely to stop them.
Let's hope Bush is just waiting until after the fall congressional elections to set that deadline. Without giving Palestinians that hope, he only risks escalating anti-US feeling among Muslims that will fuel Al Qaeda.
Fighting terrorism takes bolder steps than this plan, ones that require taking bigger political risks.
A BIG red "Free Palestine" sticker has a prominent place on the Elhanan family's front door.
But this is not a Palestinian house in the occupied territories.
Remarkably, this home is in an affluent Jewish area in Jerusalem and belongs to a couple whose daughter Smadar, 14, was killed by a Palestinian suicide bomber.
Rather than being motivated by revenge and hatred, Nurit Elhanan and her husband Rami, both 52, are fighting for peace.
They are campaigning for an end to the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, calling it a cancer that is feeding terror.
Nurit, a doctor of language at Israel's Hebrew University, said: "No real mother would ever think of consoling herself with the killing of another mother's child.
"Israel is becoming a graveyard of children. The Holy Land is being turned into a wasteland."
Graphic designer Rami agrees: "If an Israeli child is killed and the next day a Palestinian child is killed, it's no solution.
"Our daughter was killed because of the terror of Israeli occupation. Every innocent victim from both sides is a victim of the occupation. The occupation is the cancer feeding Palestinian terror."
Wednesday, June 26, 2002
Except for the first four years, I've lived my entire life in a war state with a huge standing army, centralized power, a vast security apparatus and a growing contempt for the Constitution and the American tradition.
You ought to ask yourself why the United States has a standing army exceeded in size only by China's. You ought to ask yourself why American armed forces are stationed in more than 100 countries, even though we are not at war, nor are there any countries conceivably inclined to declare war on us.
You ought to ask yourself why, after communism collapsed, the United States insisted on keeping the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and even on expanding it. NATO had been set up for one reason and one reason only — to defend Western Europe against a Soviet invasion. Now there is no Soviet Union. The Red Army was withdrawn completely from Europe. The Warsaw Pact, the communist answer to NATO, was long ago dissolved.
Yet NATO is being expanded. Why is that? Whom do they expect will attack Europe? And why did the American people remain dumbly passive when the Clinton administration persuaded NATO, a purely defensive organization, to launch an offensive war against the little nation of Yugoslavia? And why is the Bush administration also pushing NATO to adopt a new offensive strategy?
Eleanor Roosevelt once said “Justice cannot be for one side alone. It must be for both sides.” Surrounded by the roses of his garden, President Bush’s speech made it quite evident and predictably clear that in the context of the Holy Land, justice would not grace its elusive countenance on the beleaguered women and children of Palestine today. On a day where many Israeli groups went into raptures over the President’s “superb” and “visionary” address, the Palestinians and those who support their plight, felt further marginalized by an administration that seems to assign more value to an Israeli life than that of a Palestinian.
“Terrorism” is to President Bush as “Communism” was to Senator McCarthy. Since that fateful day in September, the word “terrorism” has become this bloody maxim which strikes a painful reminder of the North and South Towers crumbling into oblivion in New York. What fails to reconcile itself to me is why the word “terrorism” is only used for the Palestinians, but not for the Israelis. Prior to President Bush’s address, former Prime Minister Ehud Barak continuously used the word “terror” to refer to the Palestinians. The President followed suit a few minutes later by using the word “terror” ten times in his address. Of those ten instances, how many times was he referring to the Israelis? Not once.
According to Amnesty International, in the first 408 days of the current Intifada, 570 Palestinians were killed compared to 150 Israelis who died. Out of those figures, 150 Palestinian children were killed to Israel’s 30. Amnesty continues to report that “Israeli forces have killed Palestinians unlawfully by shooting them during demonstrations and at checkpoints although lives were not in danger. They have shelled residential areas and committed extrajudicial executions… All Palestinians in the Occupied Territories — more than three million people — have been collectively punished. Almost every Palestinian town and village has been cut off by Israeli army checkpoints or physical barriers. Curfews on Palestinian areas have trapped residents in their homes for days, weeks or even months. In the name of security, hundreds of Palestinian homes have been demolished.” Just going by Amnesty’s casualty count, if President Bush used the word “terror” for Palestinians ten times in his address, the number of associations between Israelis and “terror” should have numbered around fifty.
Tuesday, June 25, 2002
Perhaps you have heard mention of an organisation which calls itself Accuracy in Media, whose name can often be found in the context of lavish praise for being "the country's first and foremost media watchdog organization." This group, headquartered in Washington D.C., leaves no stone unturned in touting its stated goal of "fairness, balance, and accuracy in news reporting."
However, something very eerie and sinister lurks behind this innocuous name and seemingly benign goal. In fact, Accuracy in Media is an Orwellian misnomer that ranks with the best of them.
Monday, June 24, 2002
RAMALLAH, West Bank Like hundreds of thousands of Palestinians across the West Bank, Awad Massar and his wife, Randa, woke up Monday morning hemmed-in by Israeli forces and under a curfew that prohibited them from going outside.
But when Awad was discharged from the hospital in Ramallah early Monday after a series of heart tests on Sunday, all roads were blocked by the curfew.
So, under a scorching sun, they hiked through the rugged fields and mountains surrounding this scruffy town, skirting Israeli patrols and heading for any road not under curfew. They wanted to hitch a ride home to their refugee camp near Hebron, about 48 kilometers (30 miles) south.
"I'm tired,' said Awad, 48, looking fatigued after five hours of shuffling across rocky hills, his hospital bandages still covering fresh incisions in his arms and chest, a diagram of his failing heart under his arm.
Every time they came to an Israeli checkpoint, he would show them his hospital records and plead to pass, but they would wave him away, forcing him back into the countryside, he said.
With most of the West Bank reoccupied by Israeli forces and every major city but Hebron and Jericho under curfew, an estimated 600,000 Palestinians technically were confined to their homes Monday, as some have been since last Wednesday, when the Israeli government announced a new policy to capture and hold Palestinian territory in retaliation for terrorist attacks on Israelis.
In the southern Gaza Strip, Israeli Apache helicopter gunships fired missiles at two taxis Monday morning in a "targeted assassination" that killed six people, including two high-ranking officials in the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas. The main target of the attack was Yasser Razek, the head of the Hamas military wing in Rafah, a town on the border of Egypt.
He was described by Israeli security officials as a "ticking bomb" who was involved in several recent attempts to send suicide bombers into Israel.
Razek was responsible for an attack in January that killed four soldiers, security sources said. Another Hamas activist, identified as Amr Koufa, and two of Razek's brothers were also killed in the attack, the army said. In a reference to the helicopter attack, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Monday that Israel was "preparing to launch a massive operation in the Gaza Strip against the Hamas organization, the beginning of which we witnessed today." Speaking at a meeting of his party's Knesset members, Sharon said that in response to increased terrorist attacks on Israelis he would carry out "a number of measures against the territories, beginning with a massive incursion into the cities and remaining there indefinitely."
ISRAEL’S preparations yesterday for a massive military offensive against militants in the Gaza Strip threatened to escalate seriously the bloody two-year conflict with the Palestinians.
As Israeli military reservists were called up and Gazans prepared for the assault, there were fears that any incursion on the ground could turn months of sporadic fighting into a set-piece battle.
Unlike the West Bank, where the Israeli Defence Forces have concentrated their operations against suspected militants for six months, the Gaza Strip has been left largely intact.
The reason is obvious to both sides. Gaza is one of the most densely populated places on earth and most of the population of more than one million is made up of Palestinian refugees living in crowded shanty towns.
The leadership of Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement responsible for most of the recent suicide bomb attacks in Israel, is concentrated in Gaza City and the Jabalia refugee camp, where they are protected by thousands of fighters.
Unlike the West Bank, where Israeli forces earlier this year quickly overcame Palestinian resistance in “Operation Defensive Shield”, Gaza would be almost impossible to take and hold without using thousands of troops and risking many lives.
George Bush Junior gave up last week. After all the blustering and grovelling and the disobeyed instructions to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and all the hectoring of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and all the "visions" of a Palestinian state, the President threw in his hand. There will be no Middle East peace conference in the near future, no serious attempt to halt the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, not a whimper of resolution on the region's tragedy from the man who started the "war for civilisation'', the "war on terror'', the "endless war'' and, most recently, the "titanic war on terror''. Mr Bush, his ever more incomprehensible spokesman Ari Fleischer vouchsafed to us last week, "has come to some conclusions". And – this really took the biscuit – "when the President determines the time is right, he will share it".
I love the idea of this increasingly incompetent strategist on Middle East affairs quietly weighing, like Frederick the Great, the odds on the rights of three million Palestinian refugees to return, the future of Jerusalem, and the continued growth of settlements for Jews on occupied land – only to decide that these weighty matters of state must be withheld from his loyal people. After lecturing the pompous and pathetic Arafat on his duties to protect Israel it only took an Israeli shell fired into a crowded Palestinian market – another of those famous Israeli "errors" – to shut Bush up again. Just a week ago, as we all know, Mr Bush had another of his famous "visions". They started in the autumn of last year when he had a vision of a Palestinian state living side by side with Israel. This particular vision coincided quite by chance, of course, with his efforts to keep the Arab states quiescent while America bombed the poorest and most ruined Muslim country in the world. Then this dream was forgotten for a few months until, earlier this year, Vice President Dick Cheney toured the Middle East to drum up Arab support for another war on Iraq. The Arabs tried to tell Cheney that there was already a rather dramatic little war going on in the region. And what happened? George Bush suddenly had his vision thing again.
Now, however, after six visits to the United States by Ariel Sharon – and after Bush was totally ignored by the Israelis when he demanded an immediate end to the West Bank invasion and an end to the siege of Palestinian towns – the President has had yet another vision, a rather scaled-down version of the earlier one. Now he dreams of an interim Palestinian state. It is a sign of how obedient American journalists have become that not one US newspaper has seen this for the preposterous notion it really is. The great American newspapers – I'm talking about their physical bulk not their contents – tiresomely pontificate on the divisions within the American administration on the Middle East. Or they ask whether there's a Middle East policy at all: there is not, of course. But the ideas of this US administration, however vacuous or simply laughable, continue to be treated with an almost sacred quality in the American press and on television.
What on earth, for example, does interim mean? I noticed that in the past four days, interim has turned into provisional, an even more miserable version of the original vision. It reminds me of Madeleine Albright's truly wonderful proposal that the Palestinians should be happy because they might get "a sort of sovereignty" over some areas of Arab east Jerusalem.
WASHINGTON -- The lurid 2002 portrait of the U.S. economy as a bunch of Enrons and Tycos, overpaid CEOs running corporations like casinos, electronic speculators, predatory hedge funds, fraudulent stock values, deceptive investment firms and collusive accountants didn't develop overnight. Unfortunately, while some of the excesses may shrink, they are not likely to fade away.
That's because much of the "financialization" that occurred in the 1980s and 1990s has been built into the system, save for the possible purgative of a market crash. The most visible evidence of this--the mushrooming of CEO compensation and the private sector's "imperial corporate presidency"--ironically parallels the dangerous growth and hubris of the governmental "imperial presidency" in the 1960s and early 1970s. Unhappily, reform of business and finance may be harder to achieve this decade than were the public-sector reforms following Watergate. Washington's business and financial lobbies are mobilizing. Over the past 20 years, the U.S. economy has been reoriented from making, growing, building and transporting things to moving, massaging and manipulating money and securities. So great has this transformation been that by the mid-1990s, the finance, insurance and real estate (FIRE) sector had raced ahead of manufacturing in gross-domestic-product and national-income numbers. By 2001, the FIRE sector had pulled ahead of manufacturing in profits; in the 1960s, manufacturing led by 4 to 1.
This staggering displacement isn't a blip, even though some yardsticks, like CEO compensation and financial profits, may have peaked for now. Examples of previous world economic powers suggest that once a nation's financialization escalates to this extent, it becomes systemic and isn't easily reversed.
July 1 issue — It was two days after Christmas, and Martha Stewart—magazine editor, TV host, syndicated columnist and high priestess of domesticity—wanted to get away from it all. She was flying with two friends from Connecticut to Mexico’s ultratony Las Ventanas resort (a junior suite starts at $585) when her private jet stopped in San Antonio, Texas, to refuel. Just like the rest of us hardworking folks, she called her office to check her messages. The most important one was from her broker, Peter Bacanovic, and Stewart had her assistant patch him into her cell.
Sunday, June 23, 2002
Stanley Hilton now figures his case is stronger because of a coalition of attorneys, victims' families and bipartisan legislators who gathered in Washington on Monday to condemn the government's lack of action in preventing the Sept. 11 attacks.
Hilton is the San Francisco attorney who filed a $7 billion lawsuit in U.S. District Court on June 3 against President Bush and other government officials for "allowing" the terrorist attacks to occur.
Among Hilton's allegations: Bush conspired to create the Sept. 11 attacks for his own political gain and has been using Osama bin Laden as a scapegoat.
Hilton said he has information that bin Laden died several years ago of kidney failure.
"I hope it will expose the fact that there are numbers of people in the government, including Bush and his top assistants, who wanted this to happen," Hilton said.
His class-action suit named 10 defendants, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta. Hilton said he represents the families of 14 victims and that 400 plaintiffs are involved nationwide.
Dear friends,
Tomorrow (Sunday, June 23) “Stupid White Men” begins its 16th week on the New York Times Best Seller list – and, remarkably, it does so by returning, once again, to #1. I just want to thank all of you for this incredible response, but more importantly, I want each of you to know that there are millions just like us who don’t like what is happening to this country under George W. Bush, and the overwhelming reaction to this book is living proof. YOU ARE NOT ALONE! I know it feels that way, but don’t fall for it. Now is the time to get active and encourage others to do likewise.
PLAYBOY: Are you in danger here?
AGEE: Probably not. If they tried any rough stuff, it would have
to look like an accident, and if anybody slipped up, there would
be a very big flap.
PLAYBOY: Is the room bugged?
AGEE: I doubt it. Too much trouble for a short visit. But the
phone may be tapped. The hell with them. Let's talk.
PLAYBOY: How do you like having the Central Intelligence Agency
breathing down your neck?
AGEE: Not much. That's a dangerous bunch of people to tangle with.
I don't want to sound as if I think I'm a hero. I'm not. I just
think something's got to be done about the CIA. Remember, I'm not
the first ex-CIA man to come out against the agency. Victor
Marchetti was the first. But while he was fighting to get his book
published, I was working fast and furiously on mine in secret.
PLAYBOY: Why did you decide to blow the whistle on the CIA?
AGEE: I finally understood, after 12 years with the agency, how
much suffering it was causing, that millions of people all over
the world had been killed or at least had had their lives
destroyed by the CIA and the institutions it supports. I just
couldn't sit by and do nothing.
PLAYBOY: Millions of people? Aren't you overstating the case?
AGEE: I wish I were. Even after the revelations we've had so far,
people still don't understand what a huge, powerful and sinister
organization the CIA is.
PLAYBOY: How big is it?
AGEE: In my opinion, it's the biggest and most powerful secret
service that has ever existed. I don't know how big the K.G.B. is
inside the Soviet Union, but its international operation is small
compared with the CIA's. It's known now that the CIA has 16,500
employees and an annual budget of $750,000,000. But that's not
counting its mercenary armies, its commercial subsidiaries. Add
them all together, the agency employs or subsidizes hundreds of
thousands of people and spends more like billions every year. Even
its official budget is secret; it's concealed in those of other
Federal agencies. Nobody tells the Congress what the CIA spends.
By law, the CIA isn't accountable to Congress. Not for anything.
PLAYBOY: To whom is it accountable?
AGEE: To the National Security Council, which is composed of the
President and officials chosen by him. So it's really an
instrument of the President to use in any way he pleases. If there
are legal restraints on this, I don't know of them. It's
frightening, but it's a fact: The CIA is the President's secret
army.