Peace and Justice Post

By ZingPao | RINF.COM, Oct 26, 2008

If we truly live in a land of Freedom & Opportunity, then we should be able to vote for any political party that wants to run candidates. So why aren’t we being allowed to vote for someone other than a Democrat or Republican? The Constitution makes no mention of political parties. The simple truth is that the two major parties do not want any competition.

The Republican Party began as a new party in 1856 and only 4 years later, Abraham Lincoln was elected president in a 4 way race. Back in 1860 the two major parties of the day were the Whigs and the Democrats.

Competition yields superior products or in this case candidates. Competition would give us better elected officials and better government. One of the things that makes America great is competition. But there is very little competition on Election Day. Imagine the NFL with only two teams.

In 2004, the number of valid ballot access signatures required for a third party to have its candidates’ names listed in all 50 states has risen to millions of signatures! Approximately 25% of the voters across our country are registered as either independent or as members of a “third party.” Over the last 10 years this has been the largest growing segment of voter registrations, which illustrates that voters are tired of the same 2 choices and are hungry for more competition on Election Day.

Third parties increase voter participation and citizen involvement in government, bringing about a return to “government by the people” in a competitive environment offering multiple ideas and candidates.

Given a level playing field, third parties can play a significant role in restoring our Constitutional Republic and help reduce voter apathy, which is one of the major reasons we no longer have a government that is responsive to the people.

There are plenty of political parties to choose from; Party X, the Democratic Socialist Party, the Libertarian Party, the First American Party. The list goes on.

Please consider third parties and the next time someone needs your signature on a petition to get a third candidate on the ballot, please sign it.

By Ali Gharib | Inter Press  Service

WASHINGTON, Oct 28 (IPS) – A cross-border raid into Syria by U.S. forces in Iraq, and a subsequent stonewalling by U.S. officials unwilling to divulge details, has led to rampant speculation among U.S. analysts about the origins and meaning of the attack.

“So the question is: Why?” wrote geo-strategic analyst and journalist Helena Cobban on her blog, wondering if the raid could have been pulled off without explicit permission from the highest levels of the President George W. Bush administration.

“So why now at the end of the Bush administration, with Washington trying to play nice with Damascus and tensions easing throughout the region, would U.S. forces stage such a gambit?” echoed Borzou Daragahi on the Babylon and Beyond blog at the Los Angeles Times website.

The questions started to swirl late Sunday afternoon when U.S. helicopters allegedly crossed five miles over the desert border between Syria and Iraq. According to reports, eight U.S. soldiers alighted when a helicopter landed, attacking the al-Sukkari farm in the Syrian Abu Kamal border area.

The cross-border raid — the first of its kind involving a helicopter attack and U.S. boots on the ground that far into Syrian territory — left eight dead, according to Syrian press reports.

The attack is especially curious since, according to a report this weekend in the New York Times, Bush appears to have rolled back his initiative to lead troop-driven cross-border attacks — initially approved this summer — by Afghan-based U.S. forces into Pakistani territory.

The raid also comes as Syria is negotiating with Israel, through Turkish mediation, presumably in a calculated effort to alleviate tensions with the West and the U.S. The Bush administration’s take on the Israel-Syria talks has been lukewarm at best.

More immediately for the U.S., the raid could complicate negotiations on a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with Iraqi authorities to allow U.S. forces to keep operating in Iraq after the U.N. mandate expires at the end of this year.

The talks on the SOFA have been bogged down, and a persistent Iraqi demand has been that Iraqi soil not be used as a launch pad for attacks on other countries.

“The Iraqi government rejects U.S. aircraft bombarding posts inside Syria,” a government spokesperson, Ali al-Dabbagh, said Tuesday. “The constitution does not allow Iraq to be used as a staging ground to attack neighbouring countries.”

The U.S. Department of Defence has repeatedly declined to comment on the Syrian incident, including to a direct request by IPS, but several press reports have quoted unnamed U.S. officials confirming the attack, and saying that it was ordered by the CIA.

One U.S. official anonymously told Agence France-Presse that the strike was aimed at Abu Ghadiya, whom the official called “one of the most prominent foreign fighter facilitators in the region.” The official said he believed the target was killed.

The spokesman for the Syrian embassy here, Ahmed Salkini, told IPS that the name did not appear on the official Syrian list of those dead.

In retaliation, Syria shut down a U.S. school and cultural centre in Damascus, and its U.N. envoy has requested that the Security Council intervene to prevent further incursions into Syrian territory.

Neoconservatives and hawks within the administration have long clamoured for expanding Middle Eastern conflicts into Syria, which was named as one of the three countries in Bush’s famous “Axis of Evil”.

Indeed, Bush’s neoconservative deputy national security adviser, Elliott Abrams, told Israeli officials during a high-level meeting that the U.S. would not object if Israel extended its 2006 war with Hezbollah into Syria.

But if the cross-border attack was an attempt by hawks to lure Syria into a war, it appears to have failed; Syria has engaged in a measured and strictly diplomatic response.

“[…T]he Syrians have not responded, and are not about to respond, in any way that is violent or otherwise escalates tensions,” said Cobban, a well respected commenter and veteran analyst, on her Just World News blog.

“I’ve been studying the behavior of this Baathist regime in Syria closely for 34 years now. They have steely nerves. They are just about impossible to ‘provoke’, at any point that they judge a harsh response is not in their interest,” she wrote.

While foreign fighters from Syria have long been problematic to the U.S. occupation of Iraq, since 2006, U.S. patrols along the border and some Syrian cooperation have dramatically reduced the number of foreign fighters flowing into Iraq.

Last December, the former U.S. commander in Iraq and now the CENTCOM chief, Gen. David Petraeus, said, “Syria has taken steps to reduce the flow of the foreign fighters through its borders with Iraq.”

Petraeus reiterated the notion this month when he reported that fighters from Syria moving into Iraq have had their monthly total reduced from about 100 to 20.

But last Thursday, the commander of U.S. troops in western Iraq, Marine Major John Kelly, said that while there has been progress, it wasn’t enough.

The suspected involvement of some of the most vociferous anti-Syria hawks at the highest levels of the Bush administration, including Vice President Dick Cheney, have combined with U.S. silence on the matter to fuel a guessing game as to just exactly who ordered or approved Sunday’s cross-border raid.

“This operation is pretty clearly run by U.S. special operations forces pursuing a terrorist target,” Col. Pat Lang, a retired U.S. military intelligence officer, told IPS. “Their sole mission is like a SWAT team to go around and hunt terrorists.”

Lang said that these special operations forces sometimes operate distinctly outside the normal military chain of command by design of hawkish former Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld.

“If left to themselves, they would do this kind of thing [the Syria raid]. That’s what they do,” said Lang. “They don’t follow policy, they carry out their assigned mission.”

Because the U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. Ray Odierno, is dealing with mounting concerns about the SOFA, Lang suspects that he’d be hesitant to directly approve such a bold a provocative attack as Sunday afternoon’s.

“I haven’t established it yet, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the authority to do this came right out of the White House,” Lang told IPS.

Asked if the decision doesn’t undermine pressing U.S. goals for commanders in Iraq, Lang said that while the considerations are there, they don’t always filter up into decision making in the executive branch.

“Usually command arrangements of various kinds are messy,” Lang said, “and this White House has shown a tendency to want to bypass the established chain of command and influence what’s going on [in the field].”

But in addition to being a bold foreign policy move, the raid has also been interpreted by some as a political stunt, albeit one unlikely to succeed.

Some journalists and experts have speculated that the raid was a Bush administration attempt to deliver an “October Surprise” — a late game-changing development favouring one candidate — for Republican candidate Sen. John McCain just over a week before the presidential election in which he badly trails Democratic rival Sen. Barack Obama in most polls.

McCain has been seen as holding an advantage in issues of national security.

Reflections of Fidel | Granma Internacional, Oct 27, 2008

IN Zulia, Chavez made reference to “comrade Sarkozy,” and did so with a certain irony but he meant no offense. On the contrary, he was rather recognizing the sincerity of the president when he spoke in Beijing in his capacity as chairman of the European Community.
Nobody was saying what every European leader knows but is not confessing: that the current financial system is no good and must be changed. The Venezuelan president candidly proclaimed:
“It is not possible to re-found the capitalist system; it would be like trying to re-float the Titanic when it’s lying on the ocean floor.”
According to press dispatches, at the meeting of the European and Asian Nations Association attended by 43 countries, Sarkozy made some remarkable confessions:
“Things are going badly for the world, which is facing an unprecedented financial crisis marked by its magnitude, swiftness and violence, a crisis whose consequences on the environment call into question the survival of humankind, as 900 million people lack the means to feed themselves.”
“The countries taking part in this meeting account for two thirds of the global population and half its wealth. The financial crisis started in the United States, but it is now a global crisis demanding a global response:
“An 11-year-old child’s place is not in a factory but in school.”
“No region in the world has any lesson to teach others.” This is a clear reference to the United States.
Finally, he recalled before the Asian nations the colonizing past of Europe on that continent.
If Granma had written those words, they would have been considered a cliché of the official communist press.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in Beijing that it was not possible “to foresee the magnitude and duration of the current international financial crisis. We are actually dealing with the creation of a new constituent Charter of finances.” That same day the news revealed the general uncertainty unleashed.
In the Beijing meeting, the 43 countries from Europe and Asia agreed that the IMF should play a major role in assisting the countries most seriously affected by the crisis. They also supported an interregional summit to promote stability in the long term and the development of the world economy.
The President of the Spanish government, Rodriguez Zapatero, stated that “there is a crisis of responsibility in which a few have grown richer but the majority is growing poorer.” He also said that “the markets have lost confidence in the market,” and urged countries to flee protectionism, as he is convinced that competition will make the financial markets to play their role. He has not been officially invited to the Washington summit since Bush resents his withdrawing the Spanish troops from Iraq.
The European Community president, José Manuel Durão Barroso, supported his warning on protectionism.
For his part, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon met with eminent economists to try and avert the developing countries becoming the principal victims of the crisis.
Miguel D’Escoto, former foreign minister of the Sandinista Revolution and current president of the UN General Assembly, demanded that the issue of the financial crisis should be discussed in the United Nations, not by the wealthiest nations and the group of emerging countries that make up the G-20.
There are disputes over the venue of the meeting at which a new financial system should be adopted on order to bring about an end to the chaos and the absolute lack of security for the peoples. There is a major fear that the wealthiest countries in the world, meeting with a small group of emerging nations hit by the financial crisis, might approve a new Bretton Woods, ignoring the rest of the world. President Bush said yesterday that the countries that will discuss the global crisis here next month should also renew their commitment to the basics of economic growth on a long-term basis: free markets, free enterprise and free trade.
The banks were lending tens of dollars for every dollar deposited by savers. They were multiplying money. They breathed and sweated through every pore… Any contraction would lead to ruin or to absorption by other banks. They had to be saved; always at the expense of the taxpayers. They were amassing great fortunes. Their privileged majority shareholders could afford to pay any money for anything.
Shi Jianxun, a professor at the Tongui University in Shanghai, stated in an article published in the foreign edition of The People’s Daily that “the crude reality has made people realize, amidst the panic, that the United States has utilized the hegemony of the dollar to plunder the riches of the world. He confirms the pressing need to change the international monetary system based on the dominant position of the dollar.”
With just a few words he explained the essential role of currencies in international economic relations. This was happening for centuries between Asia and Europe: it should be recalled that opium was imposed on China as a currency. I talked about that when I wrote The Chinese Victory.
The authorities of that country did not even wish to receive the metal silver initially paid by the Spaniards from their colony in the Filipinas for products acquired in China, because it was progressively devaluated due to its abundance in the so-called New World recently been conquered by Europe. Even today, European leaders feel ashamed at the things that they imposed on China for centuries.
According to the Chinese economist, current difficulties in the terms of trade between those two continents should be solved with euros, GB sterling, yens and yuans. Undoubtedly, reasonable regulation between those four currencies would aid the development of relations of fair trade between Europe, Britain, Japan and China.
Two countries that produce sophisticated equipment with state-of- the-art technology, both for production and services, such as Japan and Germany, would be included in that sphere, as well as China, the potentially largest locomotive of the world economy, with a population of close to 1.4 billion and over $1.5 trillion in its hard currency reserves, mostly in US dollars and Treasury bonds. Japan comes second with an almost identical total of hard currency reserves.
At the present juncture, as the Shanghai professor has rightly indicated and rejected, the value of the dollar is increasing due to this currency’s dominant position imposed on the world economy.
A large number of Third World countries, exporters of goods and raw materials with little added value, are importers of Chinese consumer goods which generally have reasonable prices, and technical products from Japan and Germany, which are constantly increasing in price. Even though China has tried to halt the overvaluation of the yuan, as the Yankees are constantly demanding in order to protect their industries from Chinese competition, the value of the yuan is increasing and the purchasing power of our exports is decreasing.
The price of nickel, our main export item, whose value recently reached $50,000-plus per ton, is currently barely fetching $8,500 per ton; that is, less than 20% of its maximum price attained. The price of copper has dropped at least 50%, and the same is happening with iron, aluminum, tin, zinc, and all the minerals indispensable for sustained development.  And defying any rational or human sense, the price of consumer goods like coffee, cocoa, sugar and others have barely grown over more than 40 years. That is why, not long ago, I also warned that as a result of the impending crisis, markets would be lost and the purchasing power of our products would be considerably reduced. In that circumstance, the developed capitalist nations are well aware that their factories and services will be paralyzed, and only the consumption capacity of a large part of humankind already living on the poverty line or below it, will keep them operating.
That is the great dilemma posed by the financial crisis and the danger that social and national self-interest will prevail over and above the desire of many politicians and statespersons agonizing over the phenomenon. They do not have the least confidence in the very same system from which they emerged as public figures.
When the peoples leave behind illiteracy, know how to read and write and possess the minimum knowledge indispensable for living and producing in an honorable way, they will still need to overcome the worst form of ignorance in our times: economic illiteracy. Only in that way can we understand what is occurring in the world.

Fidel Castro Ruz
October 26, 2008
5:15 p.m.