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Bailout Vote Underscores US Leadership Crisis

October 1, 2008

Truthout, Monday 29 September 2008

by: Steven Thomma, McClatchy Newspapers

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The bailout deadlock demonstrates that no definitive leadership exists in Washington – least of all in the White House. (Photo: Ezra Shaw / Getty Images AsiaPac)

Columbus, Ohio – The failure of a proposed Wall Street bailout Monday underscored that America is suffering not just from a financial crisis, but also from a crisis of political leadership.

“This has been a bad day for Washington and a bad day for American politics,” said Harold Ford, a former Democratic congressman from Tennessee. “What happened today was an embarrassment for the country.”

None of the country’s political leaders, Republican or Democrat, has proved able to navigate the treacherous politics of the moment and secure an agreement to bail out the country’s financial system and restore confidence in the marketplace.

President Bush is a largely discredited lame duck. He’s not trusted by his own party and was unable to bend the Congress to his will even as he warned of a catastrophe if lawmakers rebelled.

Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama and his party’s congressional leaders control the Congress and agreed with Bush’s urgency, but they couldn’t deliver a majority, either.

Still, they came closer than did Republican John McCain and his party’s leaders in the House of Representatives, who delivered only 30 percent of the GOP votes for the compromise, while Democrats delivered some 60 percent of their members.

Leaders of both parties vowed to seek bipartisan cooperation toward drafting a compromise that could pass, but with their own elections five weeks away, they couldn’t stop themselves from partisan attacks, which make the goal of bipartisan agreement even more difficult to reach.

Nowhere is the crisis more evident than it is in the White House.

Bush limps toward the end of his second term with among the lowest job-approval ratings in history – a recent Gallup poll found just 27 percent approving and 69 percent disapproving.

Worse, he’s lost credibility in Congress, notably for leading the country into war in Iraq on false claims that Iraq had ties to al Qaida and weapons of mass destruction. When he dispatched Vice President Dick Cheney to lobby House Republicans to support the Wall Street bailout, the closed-door session grew heated, and some members reportedly reminded Cheney that they’d trusted him on Iraq.

Bush also is paying a price for years of strong-arming Congress, particularly when he counted on then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, to “hammer” proposals such as a costly expansion of Medicare past skeptical conservatives.

“There’s no question the rank-and-file are carrying some grudges from the past,” said Dan Schnur, the director of the Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California.

Democrats, who won control of both the House and Senate in 2006, also couldn’t deliver. Congress’s approval rating is even lower than Bush’s, at around 18 percent.

When Obama, the party’s new leader, learned of the plan’s rejection, he spoke about Washington almost as if he weren’t a member of Congress.

“Democrats and Republicans in Washington have a responsibility to make sure that an emergency rescue package is put forward that can at least stop the immediate problems we have so we can begin to plan for the future,” he said.

He didn’t say how he might lead or what role he’d play. “Step up to the plate,” he told Congress. “Get it done.”

His party’s leaders in Congress also threw up their hands, as House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and others bragged that they’d delivered a majority of the Democratic votes, even though that wasn’t enough.

“The Democratic side more than lived up to its side of the bargain,” Pelosi said, lauding fellow Democratic leaders for “getting 60 percent of the House Democrats to support a bill which isn’t our bill.”

Republican leaders in Congress were powerless as well to deliver the votes they’d promised, saying that they lost about 12 committed votes when some of their members got mad at Pelosi.

“We could have gotten there today had it not been for this partisan speech that the speaker gave on the floor of the House,” said House Republican Leader Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio.

McCain appeared as impotent as everyone else. He’d suspended his campaign briefly last week to rally support for the plan, and spent part of Saturday lobbying House Republicans by phone, but he couldn’t deliver, either.

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McCain/Palin Campaign’s End-Run Around Media

September 30, 2008

The McCain campaign is attempting to do something unheard of in the modern political era. It is not just running against the mainstream media, it is running around it.

[Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin speaks at a rally at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio, on Monday. (MANDEL NGAN / AFP/Getty Images) ]Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin speaks at a rally at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio, on Monday. (MANDEL NGAN / AFP/Getty Images)

This strategy is not so much expressed in McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt’s declaration last week that the New York Times is “150 percent in the tank” for Democratic Sen. Barack Obama or the media-bashing by several speakers at this month’s Republican National Convention. It’s more about the GOP’s continued sheltering of its vice presidential nominee, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.She has yet to hold a major press conference 32 days after McCain announced her as his running mate – and that’s not changing anytime soon. McCain spokesman Michael Goldfarb said Palin will do at least one news conference before election day. That could mean that the person who could potentially lead the free world will have done one national press conference before being sworn into office.

The Democratic vice presidential nominee, Joe Biden, has given more than 89 national and local interviews over roughly the same period of time.

Other than TV interviews with CBS anchor Katie Couric, ABC anchor Charlie Gibson and conservative Fox News commentator Sean Hannity, Palin hasn’t engaged the press. The effort to shield her is so intense that when she met with foreign leaders in New York last week, the campaign initially would only allow photographers near her.

No favors

“I don’t think the campaign is doing her any favors by not letting her answer any questions,” said PBS political editor Judy Woodruff, who has covered politics for 30 years for CNN and PBS. “If she’s elected vice president of the United States and were she to succeed to the presidency, she needs that interchange with journalists. The American people have a right to know what does she know and how does she think.”

“The media needs to continue to say, every day, until she has a news conference, ‘When is she going to have a news conference? Why isn’t she having one?’ I just find it astounding,” Woodruff said. “I think the media has a responsibility to continue to point out that this is unlike any presidential or vice presidential candidate in memory. She has been more bottled up.”

When television news outlets threatened not to run any images of her meeting with Afghan president Hamid Karzai on Tuesday unless reporters were allowed in as well, the campaign allowed CNN – which was providing the pool report for the event – inside. Briefly. According to the network, “CNN’s producer and other photographers were allowed in the room for just 29 seconds.”

‘Free Sarah Palin’

Last week, The Chronicle began a “Free Sarah Palin” campaign on its Politics blog, documenting the continuing lack of access to the candidate. The effort was echoed by CNN host Campbell Brown, who called on “the McCain campaign to stop treating Sarah Palin like she is a delicate flower that will wilt at any moment.”

“This woman is from Alaska, for crying out loud. She is strong. She is tough. She is confident. And you claim she is ready to be one heartbeat away from the presidency. If that is the case, then end this chauvinistic treatment of her now. Allow her to show her stuff,” Brown said. “Free Sarah Palin.”

The real loser in this game of hide-the-candidate: voters. Palin was not well-known outside of conservative circles before the campaign chose her. Polls, including one taken by the Pew Research Center, taken over the past few days show that Palin’s approval rating has dropped since she was nominated.

“The lack of access is potentially damaging in the eyes of the voter, because they are trying to get to know the candidate,” said Paul Dimock, associate director of the nonpartisan Pew Research Center for People and the Press. Palin is especially vulnerable because voters know McCain, Obama and Biden better, he said.

“The McCain campaign has discovered it has a major problem,” said Carol Jenkins, president of the Women’s Media Center. “Increasingly, it has become clear that she doesn’t have a grasp of the issues. If I were John McCain, I’d be doing the same thing with her.”

No incentive

But Jenkins said the campaign doesn’t have an incentive to give the media more Palin face time. “If there is anybody more despised than Congress, it’s the media.”

So what can the media do? Jenkins said they shouldn’t have given in to the campaign’s demands last week during Palin’s New York visit. “At some point, the media has to stop cooperating with the campaign.”

Friday, syndicated conservative columnist Kathleen Parker had seen enough of Palin – and called on her to withdraw.

“Palin’s recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League,” Parker wrote at the National Review Online.

“Palin filibusters. She repeats words, filling space with deadwood. Cut the verbiage and there’s not much content there,” Parker wrote. “If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself.”

But other news executives say what the McCain campaign is doing is not that unusual.

“All politicians go through a stage where they want to minimize how much they are exposed to the media,” said Paul Friedman, vice president of news at CBS, the network that scored one of the three major Palin interviews. He shrugged at what could be learned in a news conference that couldn’t in a one-on-one interview. “I just don’t think it is that cosmic of an issue. We’ll see more of the candidates soon. Just wait for the debates.”

© 2008 The San Francisco Chronicle

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We Can’t Afford McCain and Palin’s Anti-Science Beliefs

September 23, 2008

By John Tirman, AlterNet. Posted September 23, 2008.

Their combined anti-science positions may be devastating for the economy, the environment and our health.

One of the peculiar oversights of the Sarah Palin media blitz is her strong anti-science views. In keeping with her Pentecostal faith and alignment with the far right of the Republican Party, Palin is opposed to stem cell research, declaims evolution, and believes global warming to be a hoax. Of her many controversial qualities, this anti-science ideology may be the most troubling — in fact, devastating — for the economy, ecology, and health.

If the McCain-Palin ticket is elected, we would have the prospect of an administration constantly at odds with scientific advance. As vice-president, Palin would not only be the proverbial “heartbeat away” from the presidency, but the leading contender for the top spot eight years hence.

McCain himself shows some worrisome tendencies as well, supporting the teaching of “intelligent design”– the beard for anti-evolution propaganda — in schools, for example. Overall, the prospect of 8-16 years of this kind of bias sends a chill through the science community, even after years of dealing with the Bush anti-science agenda.

The Union of Concerned Scientists, an independent watchdog group, has documented dozens of cases where the U.S. government has interfered with, undermined, or falsified science in public policy over the last seven years. It is a shocking record, revolving mainly around environmental issues but ranging from abstinence-only AIDS prevention (shown repeatedly to be ineffective) to phony information about breast cancer. Bush cut funding for the National Institutes of Health and the Center for Disease Control, among other science agencies, in his final budget. Overall, he has starved non-defense R&D at a time when China, the EU and other rivals are investing vigorously.

More of the same, and possibly worse, is likely to be in store if Republican rule continues. The right-wing hostility to science is a mystery. Some years back much skepticism about scientific progress came from the left, ire focused on the way science was used to further corporate priorities. But an attack on science per se is now the province of the right wing, partially based on religious dogma (itself reserved to a tiny minority of the fundamentalist churches) and partly another way to divide the political culture into an us (small-town just folks) versus them (pointy headed intellectuals). But whatever the reasons, this steady assault on science is alarming. Why?

Science and engineering remain America’s most powerful assets in the world economy. As we have lost steel mills and other hard-hat industries, innovation has become the font of prosperity. Without a robust scientific community, hopes for creating the new technologies and processes that fuel sustainable economic activity will surely decline.

Equally important, science offers solutions to urgent problems. The climate change threat is most obvious in this regard. We need to do more than burn less fossil fuel; we need to find ways to increase efficiency and develop new kinds of fuels to reverse the trends of global warming. Yes, we can do a lot with stronger political will to put in place what we already know about energy efficiency in particular. But given the scale of what we face-including the immense problems stemming from rapidly growing India, China, and other developing countries-new technology has to be a big part of the solution. Science and engineering is what will take us there.

Or consider stem cell research. The potential for developing medicines and other therapies from this research is virtually unlimited. Diseases and disabilities like diabetes, arthritis, heart ailments and other maladies that affect tens of millions of Americans are likely to be cured or their severity greatly lessened as a result. Yet stem cell research is now blocked and would face the prospect of further interference from an anti-science government. The Republican Party platform passed this month states that “we call for a ban on human cloning and a ban on the creation of or experimentation on human embryos for research purposes.”

The best young researchers facing this harsh prospect would be better off going to Britain or Germany or Singapore or the many other places where their research can thrive, and where governments recognize its value. New talent in the form of graduate students from Europe and Asia particularly (and my campus is loaded with such young brainiacs) would likely choose other universities to earn their PhDs if their biological research would be constrained here.

In computing science, another field potentially buffeted by McCain/Palin’s cluelessness, the “five-year stay rate for Chinese students with temporary visas who received [science and engineering] doctorates in 1998 was 90 percent. It was 86 percent among Indian students,” says Computing Research News. Some of these numbers declined as a result of harsh homeland security barriers, sending a cascade of foreign students to non-U.S. grad schools. The increase in recent graduates seeking employment outside the U.S. jumped by 67 percent in 2004 from 1997 levels. With an anti-science government in Washington, the stay rates and new applications both will surely erode further.

This is not a flashy issue, needless to say, for the pyrotechnic campaign we’re now witnessing. It is, however, the meat and potatoes of governing. There are certain things government can do to gainfully affect our lives, and promoting science, science education, research, and a spirit of discovery are high on that list. The McCain/Palin shakiness on science issues is not just another occasion for SNL skits or jokes about the U.S. being the laughing stick of the world. They’re life-and-death issues for global health and ecology, as well as our own well being.

So we have both an economic liability and a moral deficit resulting from anti-science policies. The economic problem is that the U.S. will lose, possibly forever, its competitive edge in innovation. The moral setback is that we are unable, as a science community or as a nation, to help those most in need of these scientific advances. And of course the immense challenge of global warming-creating sustainable economic growth and equity-needs U.S. technological leadership.

Scientists, who are generally apolitical, are reluctant to call out the Republican establishment on its anti-science bias. But it is time for this to become a campaign issue, because the anti-science jeremiad could actually ruin the country that all the candidates profess to put first.

John Tirman is a Principal Research Scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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Twin Terrors of the Holy Land: The Sexy Fundamentalist and a White-Haired Zionist

September 22, 2008

Robert Weitzel, Sep 21, 2008

Mention 9/11 to most Americans and the two numbers are considered sufficient to give meaning to that day. But mention 9/12, the day after when “terror” became our national mantra and the “smoking gun” brandished by a neocon-infested administration for its devilish designs in the Middle East and the numbers are meaningless beyond the platitudinous, “they hate our freedoms” and “God Bless America.”

Such platitudes, hawked ad nauseam by TV “faith-healers” and political snake oil peddlers, may act as a balm to soothe a body politic traumatized by the attacks on 9/11, but they do not explain—only obfuscate—the real causes that brought terror to our “blessed shores.”

Like many Americans on the seventh anniversary of 9/11, I turned to the Bible for an answer, a problematic move for an atheist such as myself. Predictably, I went straight to verse 9:11 in the Book of Revelation—the Bible’s most terror filled text—and found a short blurb about Abaddon the Destroyer; admittedly, an interesting coincidence, but not a “big picture” explanation.

However, thanks to Providence or serendipity, the very next verse, 9:12, was a godsend: “One terror now ends, but there are two more coming.”

Considering the last seven years, plagued to biblical proportion as they have been by the Bush administration’s criminal domestic and international response to 9/11, no prophet is needed to give meaning to the first half of Rev 9:12, while only a cursory vita review of the Republican and Democratic vice presidential candidates is needed to illuminate the rest of the verse.

John McCain will be the oldest man ever elected as a first-term president. He is also the fellow who made an enemy of the religious right in 2000 when he blasted them for “the evil influence that they exercise over the Republican Party.” McCain needs youth and sex appeal and religious right muscle to prevail. He needs Sarah Palin . . . who happens to be an “end times” fundamentalist.

Barack Obama will be the first “black” man ever elected president. He is young and inexperienced in foreign affairs. He is also not polling well among influential older white voters. Obama needs age and white hair and foreign policy muscle to prevail. He needs Joseph Biden . . . who happens to be a self-professed Zionist.

Behold the twin “terrors” of the Holy Land: a sexy fundamentalist and a white-haired Zionist.

Introducing Governor Palin to Master’s Commission graduates, a youth ministry whose vision is to “see young men and women who are not afraid to lead and are violent in their pursuit of righteous,” Ed Kalnins, pastor of the Wasilla Assembly of God church where Palin was baptized, told the audience that she is the “real deal.”

Pastor Kalnins is the same guy who believes that certain parts of the world are controlled by demons—guess which parts—and preaches an “end times” theology, the radical fundamentalist belief that the corruption of the Holy Land, that would be Muslims, Jews, sundry heretics and unbelievers, must be purified by God’s cleansing fire before the Second Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ can occur.

Knowing Palin is the “real deal” and that several of the churches she’s attended are associated with the likes of Christians United for Israel, a right-wing “end times” organization dedicated to leading the charge to Armageddon (beginning with the nuking of Iran), odds are good Palin embraces this apocalyptic vision.

Frederick Clarkson, author of “Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy” recently told Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!, “[Palin’s] well-documented belief that she’s living in the “end time” . . . and her interpretation of the Book of Revelation may be driving her public policy and particularly her foreign and military policy views.”

Palin clarified one of her foreign and military policy views for the Master’s Commission graduates by assuring them that the invasion of Iraq was “a task from God.” For a would-be vice president this policy view, one first held by medieval Crusaders as they whacked off Muslim heads, is a real diplomatic nonstarter for the 325 million Arabs living in the Middle East, not to mention the billion-plus Muslims worldwide.

But the mother of all diplomatic nonstarters among Middle East Arabs is a comment Joseph Biden, the current chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Obama’s would-be foreign policy advisor, made during an interview with the Jewish-American cable network, Shalom TV, “I am a Zionist.”

Having a declared Zionist as the vice president of Israel’s most ardent—to the point of irrational—ally waves a shoe in the face of Arabs who are convinced (rightly or wrongly) that Zionism’s ultimate goal is to fulfill the 3000-year-old biblical mandate in Genesis 15:18 to reclaim the land between the Nile and Euphrates rivers as Eretz Yisrael, a territory that includes all or part of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, a slice of Turkey and upwards of 160 million Arabs.

Considering the brutal tactics used by a succession of right-wing Israeli governments—backed by U.S. dollars and military hardware—to secure the Vermont-sized “Eretz Yisrael-lite,” it’s little wonder that Arabs living within the biblical boundaries of Eretz Yisrael feel terrorized by Israel’s chutzpa and its 200 nuclear warheads and have long since elevated their terror alert to blood red.

Keep in mind that when a terrorized people lack a superpower ally and more sophisticated means, their only recourse is to throw stones or strap explosives to their backs or pack suitcases with mini-nukes and deadly microbes or hijack airliners with box cutters and visit their enemy’s “blessed shores” This is not to excuse it. This is not to condone it. This is to explain it.

Come November Americans will choose one of two “terrors” (since our political system allows only two choices): the Middle East in flames to fulfill a biblical “end times” prophecy or the Middle East in flames to secure a biblical Eretz Yisrael. Either way, 325 million Arabs will have an answer that will undoubtedly send a twinge of terror, and most likely rage, down many a “radicalized” spine.

If the Bible or patriotic platitudes or political snake oil continue to be the extent—or sincerity—of our search for understanding the cause of 9/11, we will sooner than later have two more numbers of national significance and another annual occasion for remembering and mourning.


Biography: Robert Weitzel is a contributing editor to Media With a Conscience. His essays regularly appear in The Capital Times in Madison, WI. He can be contacted at: robertweitzel@mac.com

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Will McCain-Palin Lies Hurt Them?

September 15, 2008

By Robert Parry, Consortium News. Posted September 15, 2008.

Despite all the chatter about how “historic” Campaign 2008 has been, it is the McCain-Palin ticket that it is truly testing the limits, not of race or gender politics, but whether the United States is ready to enter into a new dimension of political lying.

Until two weeks ago, it would have been hard to believe that any political figure would have had the audacity to step into the national spotlight by telling the bald-faced lies that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has. Yet, many Americans have embraced her enthusiastically and don’t want to hear anything negative about her.

Palin’s most obvious lie is one that she has repeated over and over: “I told Congress, ‘thanks but no thanks’ about that Bridge to Nowhere.” Now, however, anyone who has bothered to fact-check this claim knows that Palin supported the bridge until Congress removed the earmark and then she kept the money to use on other state projects.

Palin also presents herself as a “reformer” who can’t stand earmarks or the lobbyists who arrange such wasteful pork-barrel spending — except that she hired Alaska’s top Washington lobbyists to secure millions of dollars in earmarks for her town, Wasilla, and for her state, including sending off a wish list of nearly $200 million just this year.

With the help of the lobbying firm and her annual treks to Washington, Palin secured a stunning $27 million in earmarked funds for Wasilla, a town then with about 6,000 residents. Some of Palin’s projects were considered such prime examples of Washington pork that they were cited in anti-earmark reports compiled by none other than Sen. John McCain earlier this decade.

When ABC’s news anchor Charles Gibson asked Palin about her past support of earmarks and her backing for the Bridge to Nowhere, Palin simply refused to acknowledge that she had made misleading or false claims about herself.

“It has always been an embarrassment that abuses of the ear form — earmark process has been accepted in Congress,” Palin said. “And that’s what John McCain has fought. And that’s what I joined him in fighting.”

But Palin is not alone in simply denying reality. Her partner, John McCain, has shown his own ability to not blush while lying.

On the ABC-TV show “The View,” McCain was confronted with Palin’s contradictory record of arranging earmarks while selling herself as a reformer. McCain simply ignored the facts and declared, “not as governor she didn’t.”

McCain’s Lies

But McCain now has his own long trail of stunning lies, both about his opponent Barack Obama and McCain’s dubious reputation for clean politics. After presiding over a convention notable for its partisan rancor — including endless mocking of Obama as a “community organizer” — McCain said his presidency would be about eliminating “partisan rancor.”

Earlier in the campaign, McCain approved ads accusing Obama of everything from causing $4 a gallon gasoline (a silly charge) to stiffing wounded U.S. troops in Germany by canceling a visit because he couldn’t bring along cameras (a false accusation).

More recently, McCain and his team have blamed Obama for passing a law that would require sex education for kindergarteners and for calling Palin a “pig” when the Democratic nominee criticized McCain’s economic package by saying it was like “putting lipstick on a pig.”

Though McCain himself had applied the common expression to Hillary Clinton’s health-care plan, Obama’s use of the image was ripped from its context and twisted into a “sexist” attack on Palin.

As for the kindergarten sex-education ad, the McCain campaign had contorted Obama’s support for a program that would teach young school children how to avoid sexual predators into providing them “comprehensive sex education.”

When confronted on “The View” about these two dishonest ads, McCain insisted that “actually they are not lies.” He then went on to argue that his own use of the “lipstick on a pig” remark was different because he was talking about Clinton’s health-care plan.

Barbara Walters, one of the program’s co-hosts, challenged this excuse, noting that Obama was speaking about change, not Palin.

McCain’s response was that Obama “chooses his words very carefully,” suggesting apparently that when McCain has used the phrase he doesn’t. McCain added as his defense that harsh things have been said about him, too, and that “this is a tough campaign.”

At the end of McCain campaign ads — including others that have compared Obama to Paris Hilton and distorted his positions on taxes, health care and energy — the voters hear McCain intoning, “I approved this message.”

Continued . . .

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Quagmire, Phase 2: The Invasion of Pakistan

September 15, 2008
Truthdig.com, Posted on Sep 11, 2008

By William Pfaff

The United States has just invaded Cambodia. The name of Cambodia this time is Pakistan, but otherwise it’s the same story as in Indochina in 1970.

An American army, deeply frustrated by its inability to defeat an anti-American insurgent movement despite years of struggle, decides that the key to victory lies in a neighboring country. In 1970, the problem was the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Cambodia. Today it is Taliban and al-Qaida bases inside Pakistan, which the United States has been attacking from the air for some time, with controversial “collateral damage.”

George W. Bush has now authorized independent ground assaults on Taliban and al-Qaida targets in Pakistan’s Tribal Territories, without consultation with Pakistan authorities. These already have begun.

This follows a period of tension, with some armed clashes, between American and Pakistani military units, the latter defending “Pakistan’s national sovereignty.” Pakistan public opinion seems largely against “America’s war” being fought inside Pakistan.

Washington’s decision was made known just in time for the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks that opened the first phase of the “war on terror,” after which “nothing could ever be the same.” We no doubt have now begun phase two.

The eventual outcome of the American intervention in Cambodia in 1970 was Communist overthrow of the American-sponsored military government in that country, followed by genocide. The future consequences in (nuclear-armed) Pakistan await.

There is every reason to think they may include civil protest and disorder in the country, political crisis, a major rise in the strength of Pakistan’s own Islamic fundamentalist movement and, conceivably, a small war between the United States and the Pakistan army, which is the central institution in the country, has a mind of its own and is not a negligible military force.

In Afghanistan, American and NATO forces have been complaining for many months that victory over the Taliban was impossible so long as there were secure Taliban bases in Pakistan’s largely inaccessible Tribal Territories.

Pakistan’s former president, Pervez Musharraf, was told by his American allies to clean the Taliban out of the Territories or the U.S. Army and NATO would do it for him. U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama made the same threat. John McCain concurred. Musharraf had been looking for a negotiated arrangement with the tribesmen.

Pakistan’s military intelligence services created the Taliban while they were collaborating with the CIA to form the mujahadeen that drove the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan. Many in the service still support the Taliban as a useful instrument against India, and to keep Afghanistan out of the hands of more dangerous enemies.

Musharraf was forced out of office. The U.S. brought in exiled former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, expected to be cooperative. She was assassinated, presumably by Islamic extremists. Her widower has been elected to take her place and declares himself an enemy of terrorism. However, the United States has already taken the matter into its own hands.

In the Vietnamese case, the American military command held that it could win the war by invading Cambodia to cut the so-called Ho Chi Minh Trail, along which supplies and arms for the Viet Cong Communist insurrection were being transported. The argument made was that cutting this route would starve the Viet Cong of supplies.

Initially, the unhappy Prince Sihanouk of Cambodia, desperately trying to keep his country out of the Vietnam War, was persuaded to turn a blind eye to U.S. bombing of the trail. A military coup followed in 1970, installing an American puppet general. B-52 saturation bombing ensued, without the desired military effect, but killing many Cambodians.

The joint U.S. and South Vietnamese “incursion” to cut the trail came in April 1970; it simply pushed the supply operations deeper into Cambodia. Richard Nixon said he acted to prove that the United States was not “a second-rate power.” “If, when the chips are down, the world’s most powerful nation acts like a pitiful helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world.”

The native Cambodian Khmer Rouge subsequently defeated the American-backed military regime in Phnom Penh. Genocide followed, the “killing fields,” on which the United States turned its back, condemning the triumphant Vietnamese Communist government when it later invaded Cambodia to stop the killing.

Visit William Pfaff’s Web site at www.williampfaff.com.

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Christian Fundamentalism Permeats the Republican Party: Sarah Palin’s links to the Christian Right

September 13, 2008
by F. William Engdahl
Global Research, September 13, 2008

Some days ago, most Americans had never heard of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Now, following her Vice Presidential acceptance speech, viewed live by more than 40 million people, Palin is viewed favorably by 58% of American voters according to the latest Rasmussen Reports survey. The self-described ‘hockey mom’’s poll ratings, if they are to be believed, are that of a rock superstar who is rated now higher than either McCain or Democrat Obama. The same Bush-Cheney propaganda apparatus that made the nation believe that Saddam Hussein was the new Hitler and that Georgia was a helpless victim of ruthless Russian aggression after 8.8.08 in Georgia is clearly behind one of the most impressive media propaganda efforts in recent history—the effort to package Republican Vice Presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska for less than 19 months, to be the American dream candidate. Her religious roots are something she has been deliberately vague about. It’s worth a closer look.

As I discuss in some detail in my soon-to-be-released book, Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order, one of the most significant transformations of American domestic politics over the past three decades since the early 1970’s, when George H.W. Bush was head of the CIA, has been the deliberate manipulation of significant segments of the population, most of them undoubtedly sincere believing people, around the ideology of ‘born-again’ evangelical Christian Fundamentalism to create something known as the Christian Right. Within the broad spectrum of fundamentalist denominations there are some currents which are particularly alarming. Sarah Palin comes out of such a milieu.

The phenomenon of the rapid spread within the United States since the 1980’s of evangelical Pentecostalism is a political phenomenon which has become so influential that the two elections of George W. Bush as well as countless races for Senate or Congress often depend on the backing or lack of it from the organized Religious Right.

The spawning of some Christian Right sects also creates an ideology to drive the shock troops willing to literally ‘die for Christ’ in places such as Iraq or Afghanistan, Iran or elsewhere that the Pentagon needs their services. That ideology has been used to build a fanatical activist base within the Republican Party which backs a right-wing domestic agenda and a military foreign policy that sees Islam or other suitable opponents of the US power elite as Satanism incarnate. How does Sarah Palin fit into this?

The CNP: manipulating religion to political ends

Many of the religious evangelical groups in America are coordinated top-down by a secretive organization called the Committee on National Policy. Former close Bush adviser, Rev. Ted Haggard, was a member of the Committee on National Policy until a sex and drugs scandal forced him out in late 2006.

Haggard was Pastor of the New Life Church in Colorado Springs described as the ‘evangelical Vatican,’ and was head of the National Association of Evangelicals. Ted Haggard was also a member of a highly significant and little-understood sect known as Joel’s Army or the Manifest Sons of God, the same circles which spawned Sarah Palin.

Another noteworthy member of the CNP as was Grover Nyquist, the man once described as the ‘Field Marshall of the Bush Plan.’

The CNP, created in the early 1980’s during the Reagan era, is the nexus for several odd and quite powerful organizations. It was described by ABC’s Marc J. Ambinder as ‘the conservative version of the Council on Foreign Relations.’ CNP Members include names such as General John Singlaub, shipping magnate J. Peter Grace, Texas billionaire Nelson Bunker Hunt, Edwin J. Feulner Jr of the right-wing Heritage Foundation, Rev. Pat Robertson of the Christian Broadcasting Network, Jerry Falwell, Tim LaHaye and most of the prominent names in the Christian Right around Bush. It has included prominent politicians including Senator Trent Lott, Senator Don Nickles, former Attorney General Ed Meese, Col. Oliver North of Iran-Contra fame, and Right-wing philanthropist Else Prince, mother of Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater the controversial private security firm.1

CNP members have also included not only the Rev. Sun Myung Moon Unification Church, definitely a bizarre formation whose founder openly states that he is superior to Christ. The CNP as well reportedly includes the Church of Scientology.2

CNP member and GOP strategist, Gary Bauer, links both. Bauer’s Family Research Council was a signatory of the Scientology Pledge to remove psychology from California schools and replace it with L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics. Bauer was also a speaker at Sun Myung Moon’s Family Federation for World Peace and Unification Conference in 1996.

Religious researchers Paul and Phillip Collins describe the CNP as follows: ‘The CNP appears to be a creation of factions of the power elite designed to mobilize well-meaning Christians to unwittingly support elite initiatives. The CNP could also be considered a project in religious engineering that empties Christianity of its metaphysical substance and re-conceptualizes many of its principles and concepts according to the socially and politically expedient designs of the elite. These contentions are supported by the fact that many CNP members are also members of other organizations and/or criminal enterprises that are tied directly to the power elite.’3

In order to shape public debate over the course of national military and foreign as well as domestic policy, the US establishment had to create mass-based organizations to manipulate public opinion in ways contrary to the self-interest of the majority of the American people. The Committee on National Policy was formed to be a central part of this mass manipulation.

The Committee on National Policy is a vital link between multi-billion dollar defense contractors, Washington lobbyists like the convicted felon and Republican fundraiser, Jack Abramoff, and the Christian Right. It’s at the heart of a new axis between right-wing military politics, support for the Pentagon war agenda globally and the neo-conservative political control of much of US foreign and defense policy.

The CNP has been at the center of Karl Rove’s carefully-constructed Bush political machine. Tom Delay and dozens of top Bush Administration Republicans are or had been members of the CNP. Few details about the organization are leaked to the public. As secretive as the Bilderberg Group if not more so, the CNP releases no press statements, meets in secret and never reveals names of its members willingly.

The elite circles behind the Bush Presidency have crafted an extremely powerful political machine using the forces and energies of the Christian Right and millions of American Christians unaware of the darker manipulations. Is Sarah Palin a part of such darker manipulations?

Continued . . .

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A Palin Theocracy? God, Oil and Guns

September 12, 2008

By MARJORIE COHN | Counterpunch, Sep 11, 2008

John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate has invigorated a lackluster campaign. The media can’t stop talking about her. Given McCain’s age and state of health (his medical file was nearly 1,200 pages long), Palin would indeed be a heartbeat away from becoming President. But what would a Palin administration really look like?

Palin is a radical right-wing fundamentalist Christian who would love to create a theocracy. She believes we are living in the “end times” which will result in a bloody inferno from which only true Christians will be saved. Palin recently attended a service in her Wasilla Bible Church run by David Brickner, who runs Jews for Jesus, a group the Anti-Defamation League criticizes for its “aggressive and deceptive” proselytizing of Jews. Those who don’t accept Jesus as their savior will burn in Hell, according to Palin’s brand of theology.

As Governor of Alaska, Palin asked her congregation to pray for the natural gas pipeline, which she characterized as “God’s will.” She thinks the war in Iraq is a “task that is from God.” Palin has pushed for creationism to be taught in schools, and she opposes stem cell research.

Palin’s choice to have a Down syndrome child and her teenage daughter’s choice to continue her pregnancy have made evangelical Christians ecstatic. But while she chose pregnancy, Palin would deny a woman victimized by rape or incest the right to choose abortion, and then criminally punish both the woman for having one and her doctor for performing it.

McCain would also love to inject a heavy dose of Christianity into his administration. A year ago, he declared, “The Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation.” Just about the only issue on which McCain has not flip-flopped is his opposition to abortion rights. The next president will almost certainly make at least one appointment to the Supreme Court. McCain has pledged to appoint judges in the mold of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito; these would also be Palin’s preferred judges. Another conservative on the Court would mean that Roe v. Wade will be overruled. That will return us to back alley abortions with coat hangers.

Rick Davis, McCain’s campaign manager, said that “this election is not about issues . . . This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates.” The Republicans know they will lose if they really focus on issues such as the economy, the war, healthcare, education, and the environment. They are hoping that pro-choice women who supported Hillary Clinton will gravitate to Palin because she’s a feisty – albeit anti-choice – woman. They are also banking on support from people who cannot bring themselves to vote for a black man.

But those non-evangelicals who back the McCain-Palin ticket do so at their peril. Not only will they continue to suffer four more years of the disastrous Bush policies; they will also find themselves living in a Christian theocracy.

Marjorie Cohn is president of the National Lawyers Guild and a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law. She is author of Cowboy Republic. Her articles are archived at www.marjoriecohn.com.(The views expressed in this article are solely those of the writer; she is not acting on behalf of the National Lawyers Guild or Thomas Jefferson School of Law)

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Israeli Attack on Iran Timed Between November and January?

September 10, 2008

By OLIVIER GUITTA | Middle East Times, Sep 8, 2008

Almost a year ago to the day, in a totally surprising move, the Israeli Air Force bombed a suspected nuclear facility in Syria. Interestingly, over the previous summer, Israel had reportedly warned the George W. Bush administration. Despite opposition from U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Israel moved to eliminate what it believed was an imminent threat.

Since Iran is a much bigger threat than Syria was and since the diplomatic efforts and sanctions have led almost nowhere, the question is not if Israel will strike but rather when. One of the people convinced of this outcome is French President Nicolas Sarkozy who on Sept. 4 from Damascus, of all places, warned Iran: “Iran is taking a major risk by continuing the process of seeking nuclear technology for military ends, because one day, no matter which Israeli government is in power, one morning we will awake to find Israel has attacked.”

While some pundits and analysts classify this kind of statement in the psychological warfare/bluff game, the truth is quite different. Interestingly Iran dismissed Sarkozy’s statement and a deputy commander of the Revolutionary Guards, Nour Ali Shoushtari boasted that “the enemy does not dare attack Iran, as it knows that it will receive fatal blows from Iran if it ventures into such a stupid act.”

But in reality, Iran should not take these warnings lightly because time and again Israel has proven in its short history that it will not tolerate a deadly threat.

In a recent appearance at the Washington Institute for Near East policy, deputy Israeli Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz‘s speech and body language could not be clearer especially when he repeated several times, talking about Iran’s threat: “Israel will not allow a second Holocaust.”

At this point in time it seems like Israel is left with the least desired option: the military one.

The main reason for this is the total failure of the international community to pressure Iran to give up its quest for a nuclear weapon. In fact after five years of official non-stop negotiations and three U.N. sanctions, Iran has advanced unopposed its military nuclear program.

While some view that Iran has fooled the international community, it is rather the West that has accepted to be fooled. Indeed by not succeeding in applying real tough sanctions on Iran, the world has come to the point where Iran is ever so close to have access to a nuclear bomb.

It is no secret as to what could force Iran to give in: crippling its oil-based economy. In fact, 85 percent of Iran’s revenue comes from exporting oil and at the same time Iran imports 40 percent of its gasoline. Sanctions that would include banning import of Iranian oil and exporting of gasoline to Iran will never pass because of a Russian and/or Chinese veto. Also the passing of a fourth round of U.N. sanctions against Iran is very unlikely especially since the recent Georgian crisis, Russia will block anything the West will suggest and even more so when it is a condemnation of its Iranian ally.

The solution around this would be for Western navies to block the Strait of Hormuz and not allow any oil to flow in and out of Iran. While this would have very negative impact on the oil market in the short run if the blockade just lasts a few days and Iran caves in, then the world could have averted a new war.

A small price to pay, isn’t it? But since this suggestion seems unlikely to be followed anytime soon, Israel is going to be left with the only choice, that of a military strike against Iran.

Now as to the timing? First, the timing of a new incoming Israeli prime minister is going to have a clear impact on when the strike will occur. But what is sure is that like in all military operations, the element of surprise is crucial so the longer Israel waits, the more prepared Iran will be. Interestingly, experts are placing the risks of an Israeli attack on Iran by January 2009 at anywhere between 0 and 30 percent.

That clearly leaves Israel with a potential opportunity to surprise everyone including most importantly the mullahs’ regime in Tehran. Taking a contrarian view, the ideal time for a strike would be in the transition period in the United States between Nov. 4 (the election of a new president) and Jan. 20 (his entering office).

But depending on who is elected, the odds are not the same. In fact, if Dem. Sen. Barack Obama wins, the likelihood of an Israeli strike during the transition is significantly higher, maybe up to 70 percent, than if Rep. Sen. John Mc Cain becomes president because of Obama’s and Joe Biden‘s appeasing views on Iran and less favorable to Israel.

In this eventuality, it would make more sense for Israel to strike while the more favorable President George W. Bush is still in office.

—

Olivier Guitta, an adjunct fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and a foreign affairs and counterterrorism consultant, is the founder of the newsletter The Croissant (www.thecroissant.com).

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The racist creep show

September 10, 2008

By handing the Republican Party back to the Christian Right fanatics, John McCain has made a decision to unleash the ugliest forces in American politics.

Socialist Worker, September 10, 2008 | Issue 680

Running mate Sarah Palin joins John McCain onstage at the Republican convention (Brian Kersey | UPI)

Running mate Sarah Palin joins John McCain onstage at the Republican convention (Brian Kersey | UPI)

JOHN MCCAIN and friends let the dogs loose at the Republican Party convention last week–and it wasn’t just for show.

To the chanting of “USA! USA!” and “Drill, baby, drill!” the Christian Right and social conservatives, thought to be consigned to the margins for this election, made their triumphant return to the spotlight–in the form of John McCain’s running mate, Bible-thumping “hockey mom,” Sarah Palin.

Suddenly, the Republican base–which has always regarded McCain with suspicion for his unforgivably “moderate” views, and which was working itself into a frenzy over a rumor that he might pick a pro-choice running mate–was over the moon.

“A lady who’s a leader,” gushed the Weekly Standard‘s William Kristol. “I would pull that lever,” declared James Dobson of Focus on the Family.

Palin’s convention speech was expected to be a mild-mannered introduction from an almost entirely unknown figure. Instead, she sneered at Barack Obama and snarled about the “liberal” media like an old hand. That set the stage for an address by McCain that ended with bluster about his war wounds and patriotic duty.

If anyone thought the Republicans would be too humiliated by their disastrous eight years in power under George Bush to make much of an effort this time around, think again. McCain was able to erase the Obama’s post-convention “bounce” in opinion polls, and then some, even taking a lead beyond the margin of error in a few.

To be sure, McCain’s own post-convention bounce will fade, and once it does, the Democrats’ significant advantages in this election–above all, the crisis of the Bush administration and the collapse of the right-wing agenda–should become more obvious. But the presidential election is certainly looking like it will be closer than expected.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

IF PALIN survived the convention week with a high level of popularity, it’s because the mainstream media let her get away with being all things to all people–a firm family-values conservative and a down-to-earth working mother; a straight-talking, get-things-done operator and a crusader against corruption and cronyism.

Palin is just what the doctor ordered for the Christian Right, whose top ranks, always overstocked with old white men, are bulging with the discredited, the scandal-plagued and a growing number of outright laughingstocks.

But beneath her just-folks image, Palin is a real fanatic.

The energy industry is in love with this “renegade” governor who can’t wait to open up her home state of Alaska to oil drilling–which is why she sued the Bush administration over plans to add the polar bear to the list of endangered species.

As far as Palin is concerned, she has God’s approval for her policies. Referring to a $30 billion Alaskan oil pipeline, she told the graduating class of commission students at her former church, the evangelical Wasilla Assembly of God, three months ago, “I think God’s will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that.”

The same goes for the war on Iraq. “[O]ur leaders, our national leaders, are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God,” she said in the same church speech. “That’s what we have to make sure that we’re praying for, that there is a plan, and that that plan is God’s plan.”

Palin has appeared as a speaker for the Alaskan Independence Party, which supports secession of Alaska from the U.S. She supports creationism being taught in school. She opposes women’s right to abortion, even in the case of rape or incest. Palin was asked in a 2006 debate what she would do if her daughter–who was 14 years old at the time–was raped and became pregnant. “I would chose life,” Palin answered.

Then there’s Palin’s response–as reported by a server at the restaurant where she was eating with friends–to the news some months back that Obama had clinched the Democratic presidential nomination over Hillary Clinton: “So Sambo beat the bitch.”

Of course, Palin was only one cog in the Republican attack machine. Lacking any program of its own worth cheering for, speakers repeatedly went after Obama and the Democrats–to wild cheers from an arena packed with the Republican faithful. The same message was repeated again and again: The “urban” and “elitist” Democrats are “out of touch” with “small-town America.”

Thus, St. Paul witnessed the spectacle of Mitt Romney–former governor of Massachusetts and CEO of an investment firm–denouncing the “Eastern elite.” Multimillionaire Rudolph Giuliani–the ex-mayor, mind you, of one of the most diverse and multiracial cities in the world–sneered that Obama supposedly thinks Palin’s “hometown isn’t cosmopolitan enough…I’m sorry, Barack, that it’s not flashy enough.” And Palin herself joined in mocking Obama’s history as a “community organizer.”

These insults weren’t chosen at random. As even mainstream commentators recognized, “community organizer” and “urban elite” have become new racist code words–just as surely as the Republicans’ talk about “law and order” and “welfare cheats” served to stir up bigotry in the past.

The Republican creep show in St. Paul served notice that McCain and his party have no qualms whatsoever about playing the race card–as long as it’s done in such a way that any allegations about what’s really being said can be denied with self-righteous anger.

Plus, all that snide abuse served to deflect attention from an obvious question: Since when do the Republicans–the party of big business interests and war profiteers–represent ordinary, working-class Americans against the “elite”?

As New York Times columnist Paul Krugman asked, “Can the vice-presidential candidate of a party that has controlled the White House, Congress or both for 26 of the past 28 years, a party that, Borg-like, assimilated much of the D.C. lobbying industry into itself–until Congress changed hands, high-paying lobbying jobs were reserved for loyal Republicans–really portray herself as running against the ‘Washington elite’? Yes, they can.”

Continued . . .

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