Huffington Post | March 13, 2008 06:11 PM

President Bush let his inner adventurer out while discussing the state of the war in Afghanistan with military and civilian personnel. While those in Afghanistan detailed the logistical and diplomatic problems via teleconference, the President took a much more whimsical approach to their mission. Via Reuters:

“I must say, I’m a little envious,” Bush said. “If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed.”
“It must be exciting for you … in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You’re really making history, and thanks,” Bush said.

Meanwhile, over 40 Taliban insurgents were killed in a battle in Southern Afghanistan, and six Afghani civilians were killed in a suicide bombing aimed at an American convoy.

Read Huffpost’s Warwire.

The Nation, March 13, 2008

Michael Zweig

The government treats its soldiers the way most corporations treat their workforce–as an invisible, disrespected, disposable means to an end that is contrary to workers’ interests. Members of the armed forces come mainly and disproportionately from the working class and from small-town and rural America, where opportunities are hard to come by. The “economic draft” operates, in effect, to recruit young people from these communities as they sign up to gain job skills, experience and educational opportunities absent from their civilian lives.

A number of parallel experiences link the lives of soldiers with those of working-class civilians, going well beyond their common discipline of following orders. Consider “stop-loss” as an example. The military reserves the right to extend the deployment time and active-duty status of every soldier beyond the service dates prescribed in their enlistment contracts and mobilization papers. Most soldiers were unaware of this as the Iraq War intensified, but by the start of 2006 the military had enforced its stop-loss provision on 50,000 of them. Outraged soldiers and their families challenged these extensions in court, but they were upheld.

Continued . . .

Amnesty International, 11 March 2008

Bulldozer destroys Palestinians’ property in Hadidiya, West Bank, 11 March 2008

© Amnesty International

Israeli soldiers and Palestinian residents amidst debris in Hadidiya, West Bank, 11 March 2008

© Amnesty International

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The family of Omar ‘Arif Mohammed Bisharat amidst the wreckage of their homes in Hadidiya, West Bank, 11 March 2008

© Amnesty International

 The Israeli army demolished more homes in Palestinian villages in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday morning. The homes and property of Palestinian families in the villages of Hadidiya, Jiftlik and Furush Beit Dajan, in the Jordan Valley area of the occupied West Bank, were demolished.

Amnesty International’s researcher on Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories witnessed the demolitions. Donatella Rovera described the scene:

“In all the places, most of the people are children. These homes mostly have three generations – the grandparents, parents and children. In Hadidiya, there were four families, in Furush Beit Dajan, five families.

Continued . . .

In the past five years more than four million Iraqis – 20 per cent of the entire population – have been driven from their homes as a result of the war and sectarian bloodshed. Two million have become exiles, living desperate lives across the border in Syria and Jordan. This edition of Dispatches investigates the biggest and most catastrophic refugee crisis in the Middle East since the Palestinian diaspora of 1948.

Iraq’s Lost Generation is the first film in the Happy Birthday Iraq season marking the fifth anniversary of the invasion – a series of penetrating programmes examining the devastating fall-out of the war for Iraq and the Middle East, America and Britain.

Award-winning journalist Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy travels to Syria and Jordan to investigate the plight of Iraqi refugees. These are the very people on whom the new, democratic Iraq was to be built – the professional middle classes – nearly half of whom now live as desperate refugees, driven out by the violence and civil breakdown.

Continued . . .

Washington Dispatch: Televangelist Rod Parsley, a key McCain ally in Ohio, has called for eradicating the “false religion.” Will the GOP presidential candidate renounce him?

By David Corn | Mother Jones, March 12, 2008

Senator John McCain hailed as a spiritual adviser an Ohio megachurch pastor who has called upon Christians to wage a “war” against the “false religion” of Islam with the aim of destroying it.

On February 26, McCain appeared at a campaign rally in Cincinnati with the Reverend Rod Parsley of the World Harvest Church of Columbus, a supersize Pentecostal institution that features a 5,200-seat sanctuary, a television studio (where Parsley tapes a weekly show), and a 122,000-square-foot Ministry Activity Center. That day, a week before the Ohio primary, Parsley praised the Republican presidential front-runner as a “strong, true, consistent conservative.” The endorsement was important for McCain, who at the time was trying to put an end to the lingering challenge from former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, a favorite among Christian evangelicals. A politically influential figure in Ohio, Parsley could also play a key role in McCain’s effort to win this bellwether state in the general election. McCain, with Parsley by his side at the Cincinnati rally, called the evangelical minister a “spiritual guide.”

Continued . . .

In Torture We Trust

By ROBERT FANTINA | Counterpunch, March 14, 2008

The U.S. Congress sent President Bush a bill that would have banned the CIA from using ‘harsh interrogation methods,’ which most of the world sees as torture and which even the military is forbidden to use. Said Mr. Bush: “The bill Congress sent me would take away one of the most valuable tools in the war on terror.”

It is not surprising that the irony of that statement is lost on Mr. Bush. Terrorist tools that he allows the Central Intelligence Agency to use are a ‘valuable tool’ in the war against terror.

The spineless Democratic Congressional leadership duly weighed in with meaningless rhetoric, proving once again that talk is cheap, and it can’t get much cheaper than the pronouncements of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. In vowing to override the presidential veto, a near impossibility considering the numbers and therefore an easy target for taking the moral high ground, Ms. Pelosi said: “In the final analysis, our ability to lead the world will depend not only on our military might, but on our moral authority.”

Continued . . .

Source: Gush Shalom – Israeli Peace Bloc,
Press release, March 13, 2008

The government does not want a ceasefire, but a new flareup. Those who sent the assassins to carry out “liquidations” today, in Tulkarm and Bethlehem, knew what they were doing – a grave act of provocation which might blow up the serious chance which had opened up, to reach ceasefire and calm. This is a wanton, completely irresponsible act, which might return the inhabitants of Sderot, Ashkelon and Gaza back into the hell from which they momentarily escaped.

The lethal propaganda perpetrated today is the latest in a whole week of provocations:

• the Prime Minister approving settlement construction, spitting in the face of the entire world;
• the incitement in the Knesset, even by the Speaker, to the vengeful destruction of a family house for a crime of which none of the people living there is guilty;
• the rabbis who openly and insolently encourage their disciples to commit indiscriminate killings;
• and also the small-minded boycott declared against the Al-Jazeera TV, whose only sin was to expose to the world’s gaze horrors which the Government of Israel wanted to hide.

Contact: Adam Keller, adam@gush-shalom.org

Chanting “war criminal,” anti-war protesters waved blood-colored hands at U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Wednesday, but police held them back as she left a Capitol Hill hearing room.

Earlier, Republicans had complained about the distraction from the group as they held up signs saying “Condi Kills Kids” during the hearing on the State Department budget.

But the chairman of the House of Representatives committee, a New York Democrat, declined to eject the protesters.

“We’re here in the United States of America. And as long as they don’t disrupt this proceeding and as long as they’re silent, they will be welcome,” said Rep. Nita Lowey, who runs the subcommittee overseeing State Department appropriations.

“But they may not stand and they may not disrupt the proceedings.”

The demonstrators, between 15 and 20 members of the Code Pink organization often seen at congressional hearings on Iraq, included one woman who was arrested last autumn for waving blood-colored hands in Rice’s face.

The protesters wore pink T-shirts splattered with red, as well as pink scarves and pink artificial flowers braided into their hair. There were occasional outbursts from the group.

“Thank God,” one protester said when Rice, an architect of President George W. Bush’s Iraq policy, said it was her last appearance to testify on the budget.

Rice ignored the protesters. Several plainclothes police officers and uniformed Capitol Hill police watched them warily.

“I am embarrassed for the entire committee,” said Rep. Jerry Lewis, a California Republican.

“I hope we never do this to the likes of you again,” he told Rice.

Political Affairs Magazine, March 6, 2007

Norman Markowitz

A recent article by Thomas Riggins dealt cogently and insightfully with the recent controversy over an anti-Muslim book, While Europe Slept, which received a finalist nomination for a National Book award. Riggins presented an accurate distinction between “radical Islam” and Islam as a religion, and highlighted the open racist politics of group which have campaigned on chauvinist political platforms (“Keep Sweden Swedish”) while claiming to defend the civil rights and liberties of women, other religious groups, and minorities threatened both by Muslim “terrorists” and by Muslim populations hostile to these values.

As the non-Marxist philosopher-athelete, Lawrence Peter “Yogi” Berra, said, “this is dejavu all over again.” Although the global political situation may be different, present-day anti-Muslim racism (broadly defined) not only bears a good deal of resemblance to the anti-Jewish racism or anti-Semitism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but some of the social economic factors are similar, as are the political forces exploiting and developing this racism.

In this essay, I will not dwell on the Marxist concept of religion as a manifestation of idealist philosophy, and its social role, which Tom dealt intelligently with. Rather I will look at how the relationship of longstanding hostilities rooted in religion to modern racist mass politics has functioned.

In that regard the comparison of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe to Western Europe, Great Britain and the U.S. a century ago can I think is fruitfully compared to the present-day immigration of Muslims, mostly from non European countries, to West Europe, Great Britain, and the United States.

East European Jewish immigrants were a visible part of a huge migration of Eastern and Southern European populations to the U.S. Britain, and other advanced capitalist countries, a migration created by the economic and political fallout from the rise of industrial capitalism and the huge inequalities which developed from its subjugation of non-industrial regions.

Continued . . .

Islamic Jihad leader Mohammad Shahada killed

Ma’an News, March 12, 2008

Muhammad Shahada, who was killedbby Israeli special forces on Wednesday [Ma’anImages] Bethlehem – Ma’an – Israeli special forces gunned down four Palestinians in the West Bank city of Bethlehem on Wednesday evening, including a leader in Islamic Jihad, witnesses said. Islamic Jihad leader Mohammad Shahada, Issa Marzouq, Imad Al-Kamal, and Ahmad Bilboul were killed in the attack. Marzouq and Al-Kamal were also an Islamic Jihad activists. Bilboul was an activist with the armed wing of Fatah, the Al-Aqsa Brigades. The Israeli forces entered the area between the Cinema neighborhood and Duheisha refugee camp and opened fire on car from another civilian car. Passersby pulled the bodies of the four men from the small red car, which had been parked in front of a bakery when the Israelis opened fire. According to one witnesses, the car appeared to have been “showered with bullets.” The Palestinian security services said that they transferred the four dead bodies to Al-Hussein hospital in neighboring Beit Jala. Hundreds of Palestinians congregated at the hospital, expressing their deep anger A life of resistance Veteran activists in the armed Palestinian resistance movement, Shahada and his comrades had evaded the forces of the Israeli occupation for years. On Wednesday the four activists were in Bethlehem meeting with other Fatah activists in preparation for Fatah’s sixth movement conference. The activists visited the offices of Ma’an News Agency earlier on Wednesday, saying: “The Israeli occupation doesn’t want to arrest us. Really, they want to assassinate us.” As if foreseeing his own death, Shahada repeated this sentence to Ma’an’s chief editor, Nasser Lahham. Israeli bulldozers destroyed Shahada’s house last Thursday night, immediately following the deadly shooting attack at Jewish religious school in Jerusalem. Ma’an’s chief editor, Nasser Lahham, spoke with Shahada at Bethlehem’s Christmas Eve celebrations on Manger Square last December. Shahada was smiling on Christmas Eve, radiating confidence: “The Palestinian people are capable of raising the flag of liberty and completing their mission. Israel has to realize that military occupation of Palestine does not solve its problems, either now or in the future.” Asked about the US-backed peace initiative, Shahada said, “The Annapolis conference did not reach a brave level of addressing the Palestinian rights. It instead took us back to the Road Map plan trying to vision that the Palestinian problem was only one of security chaos, which every body knows is incorrect.” Finally, asked why he rejected amnesty in favor of continuing with armed struggle, he said “it is the revolutionaries who have the right to give amnesty to the occupation, and not the opposite.”