Archive for March, 2009

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Gaza donor conference: conspiracy wrapped up as compassion

March 6, 2009
By Jean Shaoul | WSWS,  5 March 2009

The donor conference Monday at Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt had nothing to do with alleviating the appalling humanitarian crisis in Gaza and rebuilding the homes, factories, infrastructure and schools destroyed by Israel—its ostensible purpose. This stated goal was a cover for furthering Washington’s geopolitical interests in the oil-rich Middle East, by overthrowing Hamas and restoring the discredited Palestinian Authority of President Mahmoud Abbas to power in Gaza so as to help police the region in American and Israel’s interests.

The meeting followed Israel’s US-backed 22-day war against Gaza at the end of last year, an assault that killed more than 1,300 Palestinians, wounded many thousands more and drove 400,000 people from their homes. Attended by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the donor conference is part of an attempt by the Obama administration to portray itself as more even-handed in its approach to the Middle East in general and the Israel-Palestine conflict in particular. This is vital in order to provide cover for the Arab regimes’ collusion with the US in the occupation of Iraq, the war in Afghanistan and any offensive against Iran.

The essential purpose of the gathering was to demand that the Palestinians “break the cycle of rejection and resistance” and submit to Israeli demands. This means accepting a bifurcated state made up of Gaza and several non-contiguous enclaves in the West Bank, ruled by the Fatah-dominated PA. This entity would be dominated by Israel with the help of Egypt and Jordan, while Israel continues to expand its settlements in the West Bank. Just last week, the Israeli PeaceNow movement announced that Israel had drawn up plans to build 70,000 new homes for Jewish settlers in the West Bank.

The conference was attended by diplomats from 45 countries, but not by Israel. Hamas, despite being the elected government, was not invited, as Israel, the US and European Union regard it as a terrorist organisation. Instead the Palestinians were represented by Washington’s puppet PA regime, headed by Abbas, even though his term of office expired last January.

Egypt’s Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit announced that international donors had pledged $5.2 billion from 68 countries for rebuilding Gaza. He said that the total was “beyond our expectations.” The Palestinian Authority had requested only $2.8 billion for reconstruction, to be channelled through its government in the West Bank. The Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia, pledged $1.65 billion, the US $900 million, and the European powers $554 million.

Clinton made clear that Washington’s $900 million contribution is conditional on the Palestinians accepting its dictates. She said, “[The aid package] will only be spent if we determine that our goals can be furthered rather than undermined or subverted. We want to show we care about their plight [the Palestinians] and that we obviously don’t want civilians to suffer any more than they have. But we want to make clear that any contributions we make will not go to Hamas.”

Clinton added, “Our response to today’s crisis in Gaza cannot be separated from our broader efforts to achieve a comprehensive peace.” The aim of the aid was to “foster conditions in which a Palestinian state can be fully realised.”

Her spokesman, Robert A. Wood, said that $600 million was for the PA, based in the West Bank, with only $300 million for humanitarian aid for Gaza. This is a drop in the ocean compared with both Gaza’s needs and the support Washington has lavished on Israel for more than 40 years. Clinton insisted that iron-clad safeguards would be put in place to ensure none of the $300 million went to Hamas.

The European powers fully support this agenda, although they tried to appear more even handed. British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said that “visible signs of progress” in the West Bank and Gaza were vital. He added, however, that Palestinians needed “a single government across the occupied territories.”

French President Nicolas Sarkozy took a somewhat different approach, urging Hamas “to engage resolutely in searching for a political solution and engage in a dialogue with Israel.”

Little of the monies promised are new. Most was pledged at the Paris conference in December 2007 and never delivered due to Israel’s refusal to lift the then 500-plus roadblocks in the West Bank and allow Gaza to open its borders, making any investment impossible and pointless. There are now more than 600 roadblocks.

Fully $1.5 billion was specifically earmarked for the Palestinian Authority’s budget deficit, economic “reforms” and private sector projects.

Only $1.33 billion was budgeted for reconstruction in Gaza. This is far less than the $2.4 billion the United Nations estimated is necessary to make good the destruction wrought by Israel. And even this pittance would not be disbursed until Hamas is no longer a force in Gaza.

The Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait, said that the $1.6 billion they had pledged would bypass both Hamas and the PA. Not wanting to be seen to be favouring Abbas directly, they said they would set up an office in Gaza to carry out their own reconstruction. But since all reconstruction materials, such as cement, pumps and generators, must pass through Israel, and an Israeli Defence Ministry spokesman has stressed that Israel wanted “each and every pipe accounted for” by a project-by-project approvals process, it will be impossible to get even the most modest reconstruction programme off the ground.

The money for humanitarian purposes would bypass Hamas and be channelled through UN agencies and international aid groups. But since Israel controls Gaza’s borders, coastal waters and airspace, and allows only some food, medical supplies and fuel to enter Gaza, this has little substantive meaning. According to the UN, Gaza needs a minimum of 500 truckloads of humanitarian aid and commercial goods a day. While the Israeli authorities have told humanitarian agencies that they will allow up to 200 truckloads a day, the actual number has never exceeded 120 since the blockade began in June 2007. The average in February was between 88 and 104, including the grain shipped by conveyor belt at the Karni crossing. New security procedures since the January war make it almost impossible for aid agencies to plan deliveries more than 24 hours in advance. Israel’s latest condition for any easing of the restrictions is the release of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier who has been held in Gaza since June 2006.

According to Human Rights Watch, the New York based group, aid workers said that on several occasions the Israeli authorities refused to allow the shipment of pre-scheduled aid just hours before they were supposed to arrive. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that Israel has arbitrarily refused entry of even basic items like chickpeas, macaroni, and wheat-flour, notebooks for students, freezer appliances, generators, water pumps and cooking gas.

Israel insists that all trucks enter Gaza via Kerem Shalom near the south of Gaza, where every item on the trucks must be unloaded, inspected, repackaged and reloaded with a “handling fee” of $1,000, even though there are other crossings with more sophisticated security screening equipment. It is clear that Israel’s actions are aimed less at preventing arms from getting through into Gaza than intimidating and punishing the Gazan population, destroying whatever remains of the Gazan economy and forcing Gazans into exile.

Egypt, which controls Gaza’s southern border, says it can only fully open Rafah, its crossing with Gaza, under the previous arrangements requiring that the PA, not Hamas, controls the terminal. Egypt is continuing to broker talks between Hamas and Fatah, aimed at restoring Fatah to power.

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War comes home to Britain

March 6, 2009

By Pilger, John | ZSpace, March 6, 2009

John Pilger’s ZSpace Page

Freedom is being lost in Britain. The land of Magna Carta is now the land of secret gagging orders, secret trials and imprisonment. The government will soon know about every phone call, every email, every text message. Police can willfully shoot to death an innocent man, lie and expect to get away with it. Whole communities now fear the state. The foreign secretary routinely covers up allegations of torture; the justice secretary routinely prevents the release of critical cabinet minutes taken when Iraq was illegally invaded. The litany is cursory; there is much more.

Indeed, there is so much more that the erosion of liberal freedoms is symptomatic of an evolved criminal state.  The haven for Russian oligarchs, together with corruption of the tax and banking systems and of once-admired public services such as the Post Office, is one side of the coin; the other is the invisible carnage of failed colonial wars. Historically, the pattern is familiar. As the colonial crimes in Algeria, Vietnam and Afghanistan blew back to their perpetrators, France, the United States and the Soviet Union, so the cancerous effects of Britain’s cynicism in Iraq and Afghanistan have come home.

The most obvious example is the bombing atrocities in London on 7 July 2005; no one in the British intelligence mandarinate doubts these were a gift of Blair.  “Terrorism” describes only the few acts of individuals and groups, not the constant, industrial violence of great powers. Suppressing this truth is left to the credible media. On 27 February, the Guardian’s Washington correspondent, Ewen MacAskill, in reporting President Obama’s statement that America was finally leaving Iraq, as if it were fact, wrote: “For Iraq, the death toll is unknown, in the tens of thousands, victims of the war, a nationalist uprising, sectarian in-fighting and jihadists attracted by the US presence.”  Thus, the Anglo-American invaders are merely a “presence” and not directly responsible for the “unknown” number of Iraqi deaths. Such contortion of intellect is impressive.

In January last year, a report by the respected Opinion Research Business (ORB) revised an earlier assessment of deaths in Iraq to 1,033,000. This followed an exhaustive, peer-reviewed study in 2006 by the world-renowned John Hopkins School of Public Health in the US, published in The Lancet, which found that 655,000 Iraqis had died as a result of the invasion. US and British officials immediately dismissed the report as “flawed” – a deliberate deception. Foreign Office papers obtained under Freedom of Information disclose a memo written by the government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Roy Anderson, in which he praised The Lancet report, describing it as “robust and employs methods that are regarded as close to ‘best practice’ given [the conditions] in Iraq.” An adviser to the prime minister commented:  “The survey methodology used here cannot be rubbished, it is a tried and tested way of measuring mortality in conflict zones”. Speaking a few days later, a Foreign Office minister, Lord Triesman, said, “The way in which data are extrapolated from samples to a general outcome is a matter of deep concern.”

The episode exemplifies the scale and deception of this state crime. Les Roberts, co-author of the Lancet study, has since argued that Britain and America might have caused in Iraq “an episode more deadly than the Rwandan genocide”. This is not news. Neither is it a critical reference in the freedoms campaign organised by the Observer columnist Henry Porter. At a conference in London on 28 February, Lord Goldsmith, Blair’s attorney-general, who notoriously changed his mind and advised the government the invasion was legal, when it wasn’t, was a speaker for freedom. So was Timothy Garton Ash, a “liberal interventionist”. On 9 April, 2003, shortly after the slaughter had begun in Iraq, a euphoric Garton Ash wrote in the Guardian: “America has never been the Great Satan. It has sometimes been the Great Gatsby: ‘They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things …”. One of Britain’s jobs “is to keep reminding Tom and Daisy that they now have promises to keep”. Less frivolously, he lauded Blair for his “strong Gladstonian instincts for humanitarian intervention” and repeated the government’s propaganda about Saddam Hussein. In 2006, he wrote: “Now we face the next big test of the west after Iraq: Iran.”  (I have italicized we). This also adheres precisely to the propaganda; David Milliband has declared Iran a “threat” in preparation for possibly the next war.

Like so many of New Labour’s Tonier-than-thou squad, Henry Porter celebrated Blair as an almost mystical politician who “presents himself as a harmoniser for all the opposing interests in British life, a conciliator of class differences and tribal antipathies, synthesiser of opposing beliefs”. Porter dismissed as “demonic nonsense” all analysis of the 9/11 attacks that suggested there were specific causes: the consequences of violent actions taken by the powerful in the Middle East. Such thinking, he wrote, “exactly matches the views of Osma bin Laden … with America’s haters, that’s all there is – hatred”. This, of course, was Blair’s view.

Freedoms are being lost in Britain because of the rapid growth of the “national security state”. This form of militarism was imported from the United States by New Labour. Totalitarian in essence, it relies upon fear mongering to entrench the executive with venal legal mechanisms that progressively diminish democracy and justice. “Security” is all, as is propaganda promoting rapacious colonial wars, even as honest mistakes. Take away this propaganda, and the wars are exposed for what they are, and fear evaporates.  Take away the obeisance of many in Britain’s liberal elite to American power and you demote a profound colonial and crusader mentality that covers for epic criminals like Blair. Prosecute these criminals and change the system that breeds them and you have freedom.

www.johnpilger.com

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U.S. Military Aid to Israel

March 6, 2009

By Kathleen and Bill Christison | Counterpunch, March 5, 2009

In these days of economic crisis, budget overruns, earmarks, and multi-billion dollar bailouts, when Americans are being forced to tighten their own belts, one of the most automatic earmarks—a bailout by any measure—goes to a foreign government but is little understood by most Americans.  U.S. military aid to Israel is doled out in annual increments of billions of dollars but remains virtually unchallenged while other fiscal outlays are drastically cut.

The United States and Israel signed a Memorandum of Understanding in August 2007 committing the U.S. to give Israel $30 billion in military aid over the next decade.  This is grant aid, given in cash at the start of each fiscal year.  The only stipulation imposed on Israel’s use of this cash gift is that it spend 74 per cent to purchase U.S. military goods and services.

The first grant under this agreement was made in October 2008, for FY2009, in the amount of $2.55 billion.  To bring the total 10-year amount to $30 billion, amounts in future years will gradually increase until an annual level of $3.1 billion is reached in FY2013.  This will continue through FY2018.

Israel is by far the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid.  Since 1949, the United States has provided Israel with $101 billion in total aid, of which $53 billion has been military aid.  For the last 20-plus years, Israel has received an average of $3 billion annually in grant aid;, until now the grant has been a mix of economic and military aid.

Israel receives its aid under vastly more favorable terms than any other recipient.  Egypt, for instance, receives $2 billion a year in economic aid, but this is a loan and must be repaid.  Saudi Arabia also has U.S. military equipment in its arsenal, but it buys and pays for this equipment and is not given it, as Israel is.

Aid to Israel can be said to benefit the United States because it is spent to purchase equipment manufactured here.  But this recycling of federal monies into the arms industry is not the wisest way to spur general economic recovery.  In fact, in the midst of a financial crisis, incurring a long-term obligation of this magnitude is highly irresponsible.

When Israel attacks Palestinians, as during the recent assault on Gaza, its instruments of destruction are U.S. fighter jets and attack helicopters, U.S. missiles, U.S.-made white phosphorus, U.S.-made Caterpillar bulldozers.  All of this American-made destruction is clearly identifiable to television audiences throughout the Arab and Muslim world, where viewers receive a steady diet of news showing Palestinian civilians being killed by weapons made in the USA.  It is from this vast population, which feels kinship with Palestinians and feels itself to be under assault from the United States, that terrorists such as Osama bin Laden are able to find recruits.

The U.S. Foreign Assistance Act stipulates that no aid may be provided to a country that engages in a consistent pattern of violations of international human rights laws.  Israel has been charged by human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch with precisely such violations during the Gaza assault and in past attacks.  Israel also violates the Arms Export Control Act, which stipulates that U.S. weapons must be used only for “internal security.”

This arms package, furthermore, seriously undermines the mission of U.S. peace mediators such as former Senator George Mitchell, recently appointed by President Obama as envoy to the Middle East.  As long as Israel can rest assured that it is guaranteed an annual arms package in the billions, it will have no incentive whatsoever to heed Mitchell’s mediation efforts, to make the territorial concessions necessary to reach a peace agreement, to stop building settlements and other infrastructure in the occupied Palestinian territories, or to stop its attacks on Palestinians.

By committing itself to this arms package, the United States is undermining with one hand the very peace agreement it is trying to promote with the other hand.

These distortions of U.S. national interests must stop.

Kathleen and Bill Christison have been writing on Palestine and Israel for several years. Kathleen is the author of two books on the Palestinian situation and U.S. policy on the issue, while Bill has written numerous articles on U.S. foreign policies, mostly for CounterPunch. They have co-authored a book, forthcoming in June from Pluto Press, on the Israeli occupation and its impact on Palestinians, with over 50 of their photographs. Thirty years ago, they were analysts for the CIA. They are members of the Stop $30 Billion Coalition in Albuquerque, NM.  They can be reached at kb.christison@earthlink.net.

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George Bush could be next on the war crimes list

March 6, 2009

RINF.com,Thursday, March 5, 2009

THE HAGUE – George W. Bush could one day be the International Criminal Court’s next target.

David Crane, an international law professor at Syracuse University, said the principle of law used to issue an arrest warrant for Omar al-Bashir could extend to former US President Bush over claims officials from his Administration may have engaged in torture by using coercive interrogation techniques on terror suspects.

Crane is a former prosecutor of the Sierra Leone tribunal that indicted Liberian President Charles Taylor and put him on trial in The Hague.

Richard Dicker, director of the International Justice Programme at Human Rights Watch, said the al-Bashir ruling was likely to fuel discussion about investigations of possible crimes by Bush Administration officials.

Congressional Democrats and other critics have charged that some of the harsh interrogation techniques amounted to torture, a contention that Bush and other officials rejected.

The prospect of the court ever trying Bush is considered extremely remote, however.

The US Government does not recognise the court and the only other way Bush could be investigated is if the Security Council were to order it, something unlikely to happen with Washington a veto-wielding permanent member.

– AP

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Columbia demands justice for Palestine

March 6, 2009

By David Judd | Socialist  Worker, March 3, 2009

NEW YORK–Students at Columbia University are taking up the fight for Palestinian rights and have begun organizing around a set of demands for the university’s divestment from Israel.

The students’ demands, released on March 2, include full disclosure of Columbia’s budget and endowment, a public forum on divestment, partnership with a Palestinian university, scholarships for Palestinian students and statements of support for Palestinian academic freedom and self-determination.

Students plan to host a forum on March 4, on “Columbia University’s Relationship to Palestinian rights.” A rally in front of the administration building is planned for the next day.

This comes just two weeks after more than a hundred Columbia University faculty members signed a letter demanding that the university’s president take a stand for academic freedom in Palestine.

The faculty letter, now signed by 132 professors, points out that Columbia’s president, Lee Bollinger, has frequently “expressed [his] views in public on questions of academic freedom in the Middle East. Yet [he has] remained silent on the actions by Israel that deny that freedom to Palestinians.” In 2005, Bollinger helped organize a group of university presidents across the U.S. to denounce a British professors’ union that had voted to consider a boycott of Israel.

Bollinger came to Columbia with a reputation as a liberal, after his defense of affirmative action as the president of the University of Michigan. But he has alienated progressives on campus over a number of issues. He angered many faculty members by launching an investigation of Middle Eastern Studies professors who were attacked in a film by an off-campus group, the David Project, for their pro-Palestinian views.

A final straw for some came when Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited campus in 2007, and Bollinger–who has treated visiting U.S.-friendly dictators like Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf with kid gloves–denounced the Iranian leader with an introduction that repeated discredited neoconservative talking points blaming Iran for the U.S. failure in Iraq.

Soon afterward, more than a hundred professors signed a letter criticizing Bollinger for refusing to defend the independence of Columbia’s tenure process, failing to consult with faculty and having effectively “allied the university with the Bush administration’s war in Iraq.” Many of the same professors have signed on to the more recent letter around Gaza.

In the past, Columbia has hosted pro-Palestine scholars like Edward Said, Joseph Massad and Rashid Khalidi as well as pro-Israel forces. In recent years, pro-Palestine activists on campus have often been on the defensive–in the face of the David Project’s campaign and a more recent attempt to deny tenure to Nadia Abu El Haj–but that period may be ending.

According to Rahel Aima, a member of Students for a Democratic Society, “Recent events in Gaza have changed the campus climate…despite Israel’s attempt to keep its actions out of the sight of the media, the Internet has brought war crimes in Gaza into homes in the U.S., as television did for Vietnam.”

If students, faculty and workers who want justice in the Middle East can take advantage of this new atmosphere, substantive change may be coming.

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Attacks on evolution and the right wing’s social agenda

March 5, 2009

By: Ben Becker| PSL, Feb 13, 2009

Science vs. ‘intelligent design’

Monday, Feb. 12, was celebrated as “Darwin Day” by schools and other institutions in the United States. Scientist Charles Darwin was born on that day 198 years ago. This article about Darwin and right-wing attacks on his theories was first published in the December 2005 issue of Socialism and Liberation magazine.

A recent court case in Pennsylvania brought the right wing’s attacks on science into the public spotlight. The case is the tip of the iceberg in a well-funded effort to promote religious ideology at the expense of scientific and rational thinking.

The Harrisburg, Pa. case involved the legality of referencing “intelligent design” in public school biology classrooms.

charlesdarwin

Charles Darwin (1809-1882), originator of the theory of evolution.

“Intelligent design” is a code phrase for the anti-scientific idea of a god creating life. The movement asserts that only an unknown designer—not evolutionary processes—can explain the development of life on earth and the biological complexity of the natural world.

The case comes from a 2004 decision by a Dover, Pa., school board requiring biology teachers to read a four-paragraph statement telling students that “gaps” existed in current evolutionary theory and that “intelligent design” was a reasonable alternative worth exploring. Eleven parents sued the school board, calling the statement a violation of the separation between church and state and a thinly veiled attempt to reintroduce a faith-based concept of “God” into the natural sciences.

Attorneys presented final arguments for the case on Nov. 5.

A brief exposition of the political forces and “scientific” premises behind the intelligent design movement shows that the parents’ accusations are correct. The Harrisburg trial has not received national attention because of Dover’s renegade school board, all of whose members were voted out on Nov. 8. At the root of the trial and the entire intelligent design “controversy” is a far-reaching, right-wing attack on the fundamental methods and premises of modern science.

It is an attempt to roll back more than a century of scientific thinking and progress with implications that go far beyond biological theories.

Science and evolution

The main issue in the Harrisburg case was whether intelligent design represents religion or science. In common definitions, a theory is accepted as scientific when it is consistent, testable, correctable, progressive (meaning it builds off of previous discoveries) and based on controlled, repeated experiments.

Every high school science class learns about the scientific method, which is the cornerstone of every scientific theory. This method begins with observations of natural phenomena. Then reasoning is used to generalize from the observations to make theoretical models capable of making predictions about future observations. These predictions are then tested in experiments and results are collected. Once the results can be reproduced consistently, the hypothesis becomes a theory.

Science attempts to arrange observations of the natural world into rational laws that allow us to understand that world more completely without resorting to forces outside of nature itself.

This is an important feature of evolutionary theory. In 1859, Charles Darwin published “The Origin of Species,” which elaborated the theory of evolution by natural selection. That theory says that over time, biological populations change according to the capacity of certain individual organisms to adapt to their environment. Darwin explained this adaptation as a result of the chance variations of the organism’s individual traits.

The organisms that survive are able to reproduce. As the changes accumulate over generations, new species arise—those that are best able to adapt to their natural environment. The conditions of the natural world—not humans or any god—determine which species survive.

One aspect of Darwin’s theory is “common descent,” which means that all living things come from a common gene pool or ancestor. Over billions of years, this common pool has split into various families and species.

One can see evidence of common descent in the traits shared by all living organisms. In Darwin’s time, he was only able to make this argument with visible observations, comparing the anatomy of various species. For instance, even birds that do not fly have wings—suggesting that birds come from a common ancestor.

Darwin’s theory was incomplete, lacking an explanation of how certain traits were inherited or the source of variations among individual organisms. In the 1930s, however, scientists used their knowledge of genetics to update and improve evolutionary theory. The discovery of DNA was a stunning confirmation of evolution and common descent. Every living thing has nucleic acid as its genetic material with the same 20 amino acids as the building blocks for proteins.

The explanation for variations was given when scientists discovered that a whole variety of genetic mutations regularly occur in cell division and other biological processes.

Far from being an unchanging belief system, evolutionary theory has been tested against biological and archeological facts, revised and improved time and again.

The ‘god of gaps’

Does intelligent design hold up to these same scientific standards? The National Academy of Sciences regards evolutionary theory as the bedrock of modern biology. It recommended that intelligent design “and other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life” not be treated as science. (“Science and Creationism,” 2nd ed., 1999)

Although intelligent design advocates have different names for their arguments—”irreducible complexity,” “specified complexity,” and the “fine-tuned universe”—they all can be reduced to the same premise: since organisms are so complex, and so “perfectly put together” in ways that evolution cannot fully explain, someone or some thing must have designed them.

Evolution is a general theory that provides a framework for explaining the development of different species. How each individual species and mutation arises and fits into the evolutionary framework is an active area of scientific work.

Intelligent design advocates seize on phenomena that have not yet been explained by evolutionary theory as evidence for the work of a godlike being. According to them, every unexplained detail—for instance, a genetic variation that happened millions of years ago—can only be explained by some divine or supernatural intervention.

For this reason, critics have called intelligent design the “god of gaps,” whereby its advocates use “God putty” to fill in every perceived crevice in accepted theories. This is not science. Instead of making conclusions based on what is observed, it makes conclusions based on what cannot be observed. It cannot be tested or corrected.

It is also bad logic. Why begin with the assumption that complexity requires conscious design and cannot develop according to its own internal laws? Why can there not be just some things we have not figured out yet? And if every complex thing must have a designer, who designed this intelligent designer?

In short, intelligent design requires faith. It breaks down once it is subjected to any serious scientific interrogation. It should be no surprise, then, that intelligent design advocates do not put their articles up for peer review. They keep their advocacy campaigns on the editorial and opinion pages.

The forces at play

Although the spokespeople for the intelligent design movement include a few scientists, it is above all a political and

womenevolution

Women in Boston face off against religious anti-woman bigots. Anti-evolution forces promote reactionary social ideology.
Photo: Marilyn Humphries

religious movement. Scientists have called it “creationism in a lab-coat.”

Since 1990, the Discovery Institute, a right-wing think tank, has championed intelligent design. It gives lucrative scholarships to individual scientists willing to give a cover of legitimacy to their anti-science schemes. Far from any aspirations to improve science, their own documents reveal an intention to use intelligent design to “reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview … and replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions.” (Knight Ridder News Service, Oct. 16, 2005)

Their widely publicized strategy is called the “wedge strategy,” which aims not to take evolutionary theory head-on in the field of science (where they admit they will lose), but to simply “teach the controversy.” In other words, by appealing to “critical thought” and “free discussion,” they hope to win policy-makers and the general public over to the idea of presenting evolution as one of a variety of explanations for the development of life.

The creators of the deceitful “wedge strategy” consciously avoid Biblical references and have tried to avoid any lawsuits that would put the legal system officially on record against intelligent design. In the 1980s, a school of “creation science” emerged, which attempted to have the flood of Noah’s Ark taught as a viable explanation for the world’s present geological makeup. When geologists universally rejected the view, the courts barred the teaching of the creation pseudo-science, and set the right-wing movement back.

Learning from the experiences of their predecessors, the stated goal of the Discovery Institute’s sub-division, the Center for Science and Culture, is to have “design theory permeate our religious, cultural, moral and political life” by 2018. According to a document released by a member of Kansas Citizens for Science at a June 2001 conference, the Center’s five-year objectives include: “One hundred scientific, academic and technical articles by [Discovery Institute] fellows,” “significant coverage [of intelligent design] in national media,” and “ten states … [rectify] ideological imbalance in their science curricula.”

The right wing on the move

So far, thanks to heavy funding and right-wing political support, the Discovery Institute has been effective. By simply putting intelligent design on the map and stirring up a controversy—which does not exist in the science community—the movement has gained wide exposure.

Appealing to the continued lack of scientific background among the U.S. public, the movement has won new supporters. Meanwhile, many Republican leaders, including President Bush, have endorsed intelligent design. (Associated Press, Aug. 2, 2005)

The rightists are not devoting so much time and energy to the intelligent design campaign for academic reasons, much less the interest of truth or science. They are aiming to strengthen the ideological position of Christian fundamentalism, an essential tool in providing the billionaires and generals with a semblance of a mass base.

It is part of the effort to roll back women’s reproductive rights. It is part of the effort to prevent the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities from winning any basic democratic rights. It is part of the effort to demonize the Arab and Muslim people to gain support for U.S. imperialism’s military adventures in the Middle East.

Karl Marx dedicated his economic masterpiece, “Capital,” to Charles Darwin. That was not because Darwin was a communist or a political activist. Instead, Darwin’s theory provided a materialist analysis of the development of the natural world, devoid of superstition or religious prejudice. Just as Darwin discovered that species developed according to their struggles and interactions with the world around them, Marx applied a similar scientific method to the development of human societies. What Darwin did for natural sciences, Marx did for social sciences.

Socialists protect the tradition of materialist thought, which uses scientific examination and not some supernatural force to explain how the world works.

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The Israel donors conference

March 5, 2009

Amira Haas | Haaretz, Israel, March 4, 2009

The extent of the funding pledged to the Palestinian Authority by donor countries reflects the extent of their support for Israel and its policies. The American taxpayers’ contribution to the Ramallah government’s bank account is dwarfed by the large sums the U.S. government donates to Israel every year. It’s impossible to get excited over the American pledge of $900 million (two-thirds of it for strengthening Salam Fayyad’s government and the rest for Gaza’s recovery) and forget the $30 billion the United States has promised Israel in defense aid by the end of 2017, as last week’s Amnesty International report noted.

The $900 million pledged to the Palestinians in Sharm el-Sheikh should be seen as part of the regular American aid to Israel. As an occupying power, Israel is obligated to assure the well-being of the population under its control. But Israel is harming it instead, after which the United States (like other countries) rushes to compensate for the damage.

The Clinton and Bush administrations – and Barack Obama appears to be following in their footsteps – erased the phrase “Israeli occupation” from their dictionaries and collaborated with Israel in ignoring its commitments as enshrined in international law. The billions of dollars that Israel receives from the United States for weapons and defense development – which played a significant role in the destruction in the Gaza Strip – are part of Israel’s successful propaganda, which presents the Rafah tunnels and Grad rockets as a strategic threat and part of the Islamic terror offensive against enlightened countries.

The West has blown the Hamas movement out of proportion, exaggerating its military might to the point of mendacity; this allowed for an extended siege and three weeks of Israeli military intractability. In the Palestinian and larger Arab world, this embellishment helps Hamas depict itself as the real patriotic force.

The hundreds of millions of euros that have been donated or pledged to help Gaza, as though it were beset by natural disasters, are overshadowing the trade ties between Europe and Israel. The Western countries concerned about humanitarian aid for the Palestinians also buy from Israel arms and defense knowledge developed under the laboratory conditions of the occupation, that serial creator of humanitarian crises.

And the 1 billion petrodollars? First of all, they were generated from a natural resource that logic dictates should benefit the Arab peoples. Second, they were pledged at a conference that boycotted Gaza (neither Hamas nor business people or social activists from the Strip participated in the donors conference). This is how Saudi Arabia lends its hand to the American and Israeli veto of inter-Palestinian reconciliation.

Every cent paid to the Palestinians – whether for the Ramallah government’s budget or medical treatment of children wounded by Israeli pilots or soldiers – lets Israel know that it can continue its efforts to force a capitulation deal on the Palestinian elite. Only by recognizing that surrender is the goal can one understand that 16 years after Oslo, no Palestinian state was established. When did Shimon Peres, Ariel Sharon and Tzipi Livni begin talking about two states? Only after their bulldozers and military bureaucrats crushed the realistic physical basis of a Palestinian state. And this basis is: June 4, 1967 land (including East Jerusalem), Gaza – an inseparable part of the state – and zero settlements (and that applies to Gilo and Ma’aleh Adumim).

During the 1990s it was still possible to describe donations to the Palestinians as an expression of confidence and hope in Israel’s readiness to free itself of the occupation regime it had created. But not in 2009. Support for Israeli policy – this is the only way to understand the fact that other countries keep pouring in hundreds of millions of dollars meant to put out the fires set by this policy, without extinguishing the source of the blaze.

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Endless War

March 5, 2009

by Margaret Kimberley | Black Agenda Report, March 4, 2009

Why are more Republicans happy with Obama’s policies on government secrecy, wiretapping, non-withdrawal from Iraq, unqualified support for Israel and a host of other policies than most of the Democratic party’s own base?

What do they know that many of us don’t, or perhaps do not wish to know?
“There will still be American troops in Iraq, up to 50,000 of them.”

If John McCain and other Republicans are happy about an Obama administration initiative and Democrats are not, it is safe to say that something very bad is taking place. That something is Obama’s announcement that he will continue the occupation of Iraq indefinitely.

Of course, the president didn’t actually use any of those words. In a speech delivered at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, President Obama announced, “…by August 31, 2010 our combat mission in Iraq will end.”

As always, the president chose his words very carefully. The parsing was so clever that it fooled many people into celebrating when there is no reason for joy. There will still be American troops in Iraq, up to 50,000 of them. “As I have long said, we will retain a transitional force to carry out three distinct functions: training, equipping, and advising Iraqi Security Forces as long as they remain non-sectarian; conducting targeted counter-terrorism missions; and protecting our ongoing civilian and military efforts within Iraq. Initially, this force will likely be made up of 35-50,000 U.S. troops.”

It isn’t clear how “conducting targeted counter-terrorism missions” will not be considered combat. Congressman Dennis Kucinich pointed out the obvious problem with the president’s words. “You cannot leave combat troops in a foreign country to conduct combat operations and call it the end of the war. You can’t be in and out at the same time.”

“Obama never expressed any intention of fully withdrawing from Iraq.”

Obama’s one time political rival, Republican senator John McCain, was extremely pleased with the president’s timetable and with the level of troop commitment. “I believe that the administration should aim to keep the full complement – 50,000, as briefed by Secretary Gates and Admiral Mullen – and not succumb to pressures, political or otherwise, to make deeper or faster cuts in our force levels.” While McCain and other Republicans waxed enthusiastically, Congressional Democrats such as Nancy Pelosi and Charles Schumer, who are not known for progressive politics, expressed concern about the number of troops scheduled to remain in Iraq.

While Democrats openly questioned the president’s policy, Republicans were enthusiastic supporters. During the presidential campaign John McCain was excoriated by Democrats when he said the United States should continue its presence in Iraq for 100 years. It was easy to sneer at the hapless McCain, but the Obama plan could lead to an American presence that may not last 100 years, but for a very long time nonetheless. The snickering directed at McCain should also have been directed at Obama, who never expressed any intention of fully withdrawing from Iraq.

His statement at Camp Lejeune was a repetition of his words on the stump as a presidential candidate. He reminded his foolishly smitten yet now disappointed supporters that he was an anti-war candidate only in their dreams. “Well, what I would say that is that they maybe weren’t paying attention to what I said during the campaign.”

The damage done by the complete capitulation of many progressives to Obama is now bearing fruit. He is able to dismiss them and his own party without suffering any political damage. He said as much in a PBS interview with Jim Lehrer.

JIM LEHRER: You’re not the least bit uneasy over the fact as John McCain and John Boehner, the Republican leader of the House, have praised your plan while the Democrats are criticizing it?

BARACK OBAMA: You know, I don’t – I don’t make these decisions based on polls or popularity. I make the decisions based on what I think is best.

In other words, the Democrats can go to hell. He doesn’t care what they think. He doesn’t have to care what they think because they gave him carte blanche to say and do anything he wanted during the campaign. McCain and Boehner are now his cheerleaders and Democrats have to be happy with whatever their leader deems to be acceptable.
“Many more will die in the name of fighting terror.”

Dennis Kucinich, among those who can be ignored, made another important point about the Obama plan. “We must bring a conclusion to this sorry chapter in American history where war was waged under false pretense against an innocent people. Taking troops out of Iraq should not mean more troops available for deployment in other operations.”

The other operation is of course in Afghanistan, where an additional 17,000 troops are headed. Afghanistan is also under occupation, its civilian population is the target of U.S. military action that has killed thousands of human beings. Many more will die in the name of fighting terror, and to benefit the same corporations that will turn their country into another cash cow for war profiteers.

Barack Obama proves that there is only one political party in this country when foreign policy decisions are being made. George W. Bush may no longer be in the White House, but because of capitulation to the Obama administration, his grand plan for endless war will be a reality for a very long time to come.

© 2009 Black Agenda Report

Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgandaReport.Com.

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Obama’s Coalition of the Unwilling

March 5, 2009

by Amy Goodman | TruthDig.com, March 3, 2009

President Barack Obama met recently with the prime ministers of Canada and Britain. This week’s meeting with Britain’s Gordon Brown, who was pitching a “global New Deal,” created a minor flap when the White House downsized a full news conference to an Oval Office question-and-answer session, viewed by some in Britain as a snub. The change was attributed to the weather, with the Rose Garden covered with snow.It might have actually related not to snow cover, but to a snow job, covering up the growing divide between Afghanistan policies.

U.S. policy in Afghanistan includes a troop surge, already under way, and continued bombing in Pakistan using unmanned drones. Escalating civilian deaths are a certainty. The United Nations estimates that more than 2,100 civilians died in 2008, a 40 percent jump over 2007.

The occupation of Afghanistan is in its eighth year, and public support in many NATO countries is eroding. Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, told me: “The move into Afghanistan is going to be very expensive. … Our European NATO partners are getting disillusioned with the war. I talked to a lot of the people in Europe, and they really feel this is a quagmire.”

Forty-one nations contribute to NATO’s 56,000-troop presence in Afghanistan. More than half of the troops are from the U.S. The United Kingdom has 8,300 troops, Canada just under 3,000. Maintaining troops is costly, but the human toll is greater. Canada, with 108 deaths, has suffered the highest per capita death rate for foreign armies in Afghanistan, since its forces are based in the south around Kandahar, where the Taliban is strong.

Last Sunday on CNN, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said, “We’re not going to win this war just by staying … we are not going to ever defeat the insurgency.” U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine: “The United States cannot kill or capture its way to victory.” Yet it’s Canada that has set a deadline for troop withdrawal at the end of 2011. The U.S. is talking escalation.

Anand Gopal, Afghanistan correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor, described the situation on the ground: “A lot of Afghans that I speak to in these southern areas where the fighting has been happening say that to bring more troops, that’s going to mean more civilian casualties. It’ll mean more of these night raids, which have been deeply unpopular amongst Afghans. … Whenever American soldiers go into a village and then leave, the Taliban comes and attacks the village.” Afghan Parliamentarian Shukria Barakzai, a woman, told Gopal: “Send us 30,000 scholars instead. Or 30,000 engineers. But don’t send more troops-it will just bring more violence.”

Women in Afghanistan play a key role in winning the peace. A photographer wrote me: “There will be various celebrations across Afghanistan to honor International Women’s Day on Sunday, March 8. In Kandahar there will be an event with hundreds of women gathering to pray for peace, which is especially poignant in a part of Afghanistan that is so volatile.” After returning from an international women’s gathering in Moscow, feminist writer Gloria Steinem noted that the discussion centered around getting the media to hire peace correspondents to balance the war correspondents. Voices of civil society would be amplified, giving emphasis to those who wage peace. In the U.S. media, there is an equating of fighting the war with fighting terrorism. Yet on the ground, civilian casualties lead to tremendous hostility. Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland, recently told me: “I’ve been saddened and shocked by virulent anti-American responses to those wars [in Iraq and Afghanistan]. They’re seen as occupations. … I think it’s very important we learn from mistakes of sounding war drums.” She added, “There’s such a connection from the Middle East to Afghanistan to Pakistan which builds on strengths of working with neighbors.”

Barack Obama was swept through the primaries and into the presidency on the basis of his anti-war message. Prime ministers like Brown and Harper are bending to growing public demand for an end to war. Yet in the U.S., there is scant debate about sending more troops to Afghanistan, and about the spillover of the war into Pakistan.

© 2009 TruthDig.com


Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 700 stations in North America. She was awarded the 2008 Right Livelihood Award, dubbed the “Alternative Nobel” prize, and received the award in the Swedish Parliament in December.

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SUDAN: Rights Groups Applaud Bashir War Crimes Warrant

March 5, 2009

By Nigar Hacizade | Inter Press Service


UNITED NATIONS, Mar 4 (IPS) – Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir, the first head of state to be indicted by the Hague-based International Criminal Court, now faces an arrest warrant issued Wednesday by the ICC’s Pre-Trial Chamber on charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes in Darfur.

The decision was hailed by human rights organisations that had long anticipated the court’s move. Richard Dicker, director of the International Justice Programme at Human Rights Watch, called the decision “a momentous occasion first and foremost for the people of Darfur, but also for ICC and the cause of justice and ending impunity for the most serious crimes in law.”

Right after the decision was announced, thousands of pro-government protestors took to the streets of Khartoum, to hear President Bashir reaffirm his defiance in the face of the charges. Bashir has repeatedly said that his country does not recognise the ICC and the decision is “not worth the ink it is printed on.”

Sudan’s ambassador to the U.N., Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamad, said in a press briefing following the decision, “Today is a day of national outrage, of national anger. We strongly condemn this verdict; the ICC does not exist for us. We are not bounded by its decision and we are not going to cooperate with it.”

He reiterated Khartoum’s position that the court is a tool of Western aspirations of hegemony and imperialism.

The decision came amid substantial opposition not only from the Sudanese government, but also the African Union and the League of Arab States, as well as China, a close ally of Sudan and a permanent member of the Security Council. Critics have argued that the decision might damage the fragile peace process in the region and lead to an escalation of violence.

But human rights organisations respond that giving up justice for peace is not a credible or sustainable move.

“There is no real peace process to speak of,” Dicker told IPS on Monday. “Neither side is showing will to end the conflict.”

Regarding the escalation of violence, Dicker said “given the track record of the Sudanese government in crimes on its people in the last six years, I wouldn’t rule anything out in terms of retaliation.”

Analysts have suggested that inflicting more violence will isolate Bashir and his government further, eventually leading to his fall from power and arrest, much like Slobodan Milosevic.

Concerns exist regarding the U.N. personnel on the ground in Darfur. Alan Le Roy, the under-secretary-general of U.N. Peacekeeping Forces, said in a press briefing on Tuesday that while there is a contingency plan for the hybrid U.N.-African Union force known as UNAMID, there are no plans to either move or scale down the mission and UNAMID will continue its normal operations as scheduled.

Le Roy noted that “we are deeply concerned with the tensions on the Sudan-Chad border,” but “we have to fulfill our mandate, which is to protect 14,000 IDPs (internally displaced persons) near our camp.”

The spokesperson for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon confirmed Wednesday that the mission has been rigorously patrolling the area as normal and is so far unaffected by the ICC’s announcement.

The U.N. Security Council, through Resolution 1953, referred the case of Darfur to the ICC in March 2005. While Sudan is not a party to the Rome Statute, the legal mandate of the ICC, Article 13 of the Statute allows the Security Council to refer cases to the court.

Luis Moreno Ocampo, the ICC’s prosecutor, opened the case in June 2005, and requested an arrest warrant for President Bashir in July 2008. Arrest warrants have also been issued for Ahmad Mohammad Harun, minister of state for humanitarian affairs of Sudan, and Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman, alleged leader of the Janjaweed militia accused of carrying out atrocities in Darfur.

Last November, Ocampo requested arrest warrants for attackers on the UNAMID forces.

A press release issued by the court following the decision said that “according to the Judges, the crimes were allegedly committed during a five year counter-insurgency campaign by the Government of Sudan against the Sudanese Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A), the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and other armed groups opposing the Government of Sudan in Darfur.”

The conflict has resulted in 300,000 dead and 2.7 million displaced, according to U.N. estimates. The Sudanese government maintains that the conflict has been exaggerated and the numbers inflated.

The ICC is a permanent independent judicial body created by the international community in 1998 with the aim of persecuting the gravest crimes such as genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

While the indictment and warrant was widely anticipated by various human rights groups, Bashir was not charged with genocide due to lack of “reasonable grounds.”

There are allegations that the court has been pursing “white justice” and is only interested in persecuting Africans. Asked about the perceived double standards of justice, Niemat Ahmadi, a longtime women’s rights activist and the Darfuri liaison officer with the Save Darfur Coalition, noted that “African leaders have failed in their own responsibility to African people” and that there would be no need for an international court if Sudan had the adequate legal mechanisms.

The other three cases currently before the court are of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic and Uganda. All cases have been referred to the court by the respective countries, and those indicted so far have been fallen warlords or government opponents.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the situation in Palestine aggravated by Israel’s assault on Gaza in late December and January, have led many, including the Sudanese government, journalists and ordinary Sudanese people to question whether the court is capable of indicting Western leaders.

In response to these allegations, Dicker explained that the court is very new and operates on an uneven playing field. While he acknowledged that “American or European leaders are less likely to be charged in this court,” but added that “it is counterproductive to say there can be no justice because we cannot have justice for all.”

The United States, despite its unwillingness to join the ICC and previous efforts to undermine the court, has been instrumental in referring the case of Darfur to the court through the Security Council.

During the George W. Bush administration, an independent investigation concluded that genocide was taking place in Darfur. Britain and France have also supported the indictment.

The Libyan ambassador to the U.N., who is chairing the Security Council for March, said on Tuesday that he is carrying out bilateral consultations with the other Security Council countries to defer the case based on Article 16 of the Rome Statute.

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