Democrats Have No Good Options on Iraq

by Walden Bello
published by Foreign Policy in Focus
November 16, 2006

***

Iraq is the test case. As many have pointed out, the Democrats have no unified strategy on Iraq. The situation in Iraq has deteriorated to the point where only bad choices are available.

The current Bush strategy is to shore up the Shi'ite-dominated government militarily, and that isn't working. Bringing in more troops temporarily to stabilize the situation, then leaving - a plan originally endorsed by 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry - won't work, since the civil war has progressed to the point where even a million troops would not make a difference. Partitioning Iraq into three entities - the Sunni center, the Shi'ite south, and the Kurdish north - will simply be a prelude to even greater conflict tying down more US troops. Withdrawing to the bases or to the desert to avoid casualties will simply raise the question: Why keep troops there at all?

Getting Iran, Turkey and Syria to come in to create a diplomatic solution - one that the bipartisan Iraq Study Group headed by James Baker and Lee Hamilton may propose - is not going to work because no foreign-imposed settlement can counteract the deadly domestic dynamics of a sectarian conflict that has passed the point of no return.

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As of now, the Democrats have the moral weight of the country behind them. They have an opportunity not only to eliminate a foreign-policy millstone but to open the road to a new relationship between the United States and the world if they take the least bad route out of Iraq - that espoused by Congressman John Murtha, who, perhaps among the key Democrats, knows the military realities on the ground: immediate withdrawal. With all their inchoate feelings about wasted American lives, "our responsibility to Iraqis", or being seen as "cutting and running", many of those who voted for the Democrats may have some difficulty accepting the reality that immediate withdrawal is the least bad of all the options. But that is the function of leaders: to articulate the bitter truth when the times demand it.

It is not likely that most Democratic politicians will embrace immediate withdrawal of their own accord. Without more sustained pressure, the likely course they will take is to come with a plan that will compromise with Bush, which means another unworkable patchwork of a plan.

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The anti-war movement is to be congratulated for its role in the titanic struggle to turn the tide of US public opinion on Iraq. Cindy Sheehan's camp-out at Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, the many acts of protest and civil disobedience engaged in by so many others, the big protest rallies and demonstrations, all this made a difference - a big difference.

But the movement cannot even think about relaxing for a second. The moment is critical. Now - the immediate post-election period - is the time to raise the ante. Now is the time for the US anti-war movement to escalate its efforts - to mount demonstration after demonstration - to effect immediate withdrawal. Electoral choice has created the momentum that can be translated into street action that can, in turn, translate into strong pressure on the Democrats not to agree to a protracted exit strategy. The movement cannot afford to squander this momentum, for the price of stepping back and letting the Democrats come up with the strategy will be more Iraqis and Americans dead, sacrificed for a meaningless war with no real end in sight.

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Where the Nukes Are

by Robert S. Norris and Hans M. Kristensen
Published by Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists


Katharine Lee Bates, the author of "America the Beautiful," could not have been referring to the expanse of the U.S. nuclear arsenal when she penned the lyric "from sea to shining sea," but it is fitting. Though it is the smallest it has been since 1958, the U.S. nuclear arsenal continues to sprawl across the country, with thousands of weapons deployed from the coast of Washington State to the coast of Georgia and beyond.

In total, we estimate that the United States deploys and stores nearly 10,000 nuclear weapons at 18 facilities in 12 states and six European countries...

***

The ballistic missile submarine base at Bangor, Washington, contains nearly 24 percent of the entire stockpile, or some 2,364 warheads, the largest contingent. The Bangor installation is home to a majority (nine) of the navy's nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines and a large number of surplus W76 warheads that will eventually be retired and disassembled. Its counterpart on the Atlantic coast, Kings Bay Submarine Base in Georgia, is the third-largest contingent, with some 1,364 warheads. Each base stores approximately 150 nuclear sea-launched cruise missiles.

Minot Air Force Base (AFB) in North Dakota, with more than 800 bombs and cruise missiles for its B-52 bombers and more than 400 warheads for its Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile wing, has the largest number of active air force weapons. The other B-52 wing at Barksdale AFB in Louisiana has more than 900 warheads, and Whiteman AFB in Missouri has more than 130 bombs for its B-2 bombers.

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Full Map in pdf format

America's Last War of the 20th Century

by Mark Robertson

With the events of the last five years it is easy to forget that America's model for so-called "humanitarian intervention" was brought to full realization in the final decade of the last century. The test case was Clinton's 78-day U.S. led bombing of Serbia carried out under the flag of NATO without UN authorization, and thus as much a violation of the United Nations charter and established international law as the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Operation Allied Force was ostensibly aimed at preventing the ethnic cleansing of the majority ethnic Albanian population by Serbian Army forces in Kosovo. Contrary to the often simplistic portrayal of the conflict by U.S. media, the three years prior to the 1999 air campaign was politically complex and had seen attacks on both minority Serb civilians by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and Albanian civilians by the Serbian military.

The bombing of Serbia was certainly not solely focused on military targets and included the destruction of factories, power stations, telecommunications facilities, major roads and bridges, and the headquarters of the Yugoslavian Leftists, a political party led by then president Milosevic's wife (all of which were claimed to be dual-use civilian and military targets); not to mention the bombing of the Chinese embassy (later revealed to be intentional) and the accidental destruction of an Albanian refugee convoy killing 50. Far from solving the crisis, the bulk of ethnic cleansing was later revealed to have occurred after the start of the NATO air campaign.

Now, seven years after this supposedly successful demonstration of humanitarian warfare, it seems that little has been solved to anyone's satisfaction.



UN Delays Final Report on Kosovo's Future

by Ian Traynor
Published by The Guardian
November 10, 2006

The international community today put off deciding to impose independence on Kosovo in an attempt to forestall extreme nationalists coming to power in Serbia.

Serbia today announced early elections for January 21, with the extreme nationalist Radical party tipped to emerge as the strongest party. Simultaneously in Vienna, the UN envoy for Kosovo, Martti Ahtisaari of Finland, and diplomats from the US, Europe and Russia went back on earlier pledges to resolve Kosovo's status this year. They said they would wait until after the Serbian ballot before making public their recommendations.

The Albanian-majority province is formally part of Serbia, but won an independence war in 1999 when the Serbian authorities were driven out by Nato. Since then the province has been under UN control.

Mr Ahtisaari has been conducting fruitless negotiations between the Serbs and the Albanians since February in a vain attempt to find a settlement. Since there is no prospect of agreement, he is to propose to the UN security council that the international community impose his recommendations. “I have decided to present my proposal for the settlement of Kosovo's status to the parties without delay after parliamentary elections in Serbia,” Mr Ahtisaari said in Vienna.

The Serbian authorities have been trying to delay any decision on Kosovo and are waging a ferocious campaign warning of the dangers to international security and stability of an independent Kosovo.

Last month the prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, rushed through a new Serbian constitution proclaiming Kosovo forever part of Serbia. The Kosovo issue will utterly dominate the election campaign in Serbia.

In a study of the new constitution this week, the International Crisis Group thinktank said that Serbia was turning its back on mainstream liberal democracy in Europe and reverting to a role as a nationalist, authoritarian seat of instability in the Balkans.

Mr Ahtisaari, strongly backed by the US and Britain, is certain to recommend that Serbia lose Kosovo, although the province's independence will be hedged with conditions that fall short of full sovereignty for some time to come.

Tensions are rising as the deadline for a decision nears. Any further postponement of a decision on Kosovo's fate risks a violent explosion of frustration among the province's two million Albanians.

Guest Election Commentary

by Keith Brekhus
November 10, 2006

I guess my glass is half full this year. While disappointed in Green turnout locally--I still can't recall an election night this much fun since at least 1992 or 1986. Tuesday night was a lot more uplifting than either 2000, 2002 or 2004. Sure gay marriage bans still passed unfortunately, but by smaller margins than in 2004 and red state Arizona rejected the ban outright. Blood red South Dakota said no to banning abortion and 5 red states voted overwhelmingly to raise the minimum wage. According to exit polls in Missouri even 58% of Republican voters voted yes to a minimum wage increase.

Furthermore, I watched three truly reprehensible Senators (Santorum, Allen and Burns) get beat. Both Santorum and Allen had their presidential aspirations crushed...thankfully. I also watched Jim Talent spend 20 million dollars on a negative campaign in Missouri and still lose. I also watched with glee as voter suppression Fascists Katherine Harris and Kenneth Blackwell lost by resounding margins and I watched GOP wonder boy Mark Kennedy look like a 3rd party candidate in Minnesota.

In addition, the Northeast come closer to relegating the Republican Party to political extinction in the region as long term "moderates" felt crushed by Bush's albatross on their backs. New Hampshire went deep blue flipping about 100 state house seats and both Congressional seats. Especially heartwarming was activist Carol Shea-Porters underfunded primary victory, and though she was written off as having no chance she shocked Jeb Bradley to win her seat. Likewise, I saw Montana voters reject a milquetoast DLC-centrist in favor of progressive populist Jon Tester and still win in a state Bush carried by almost 20 points in 2004.

Not only did Bush lose, but in some respects the DLC-consultants and Rahm
Emmanuel took a back seat to activists and bloggers who rejected conventional wisdom and put up strong candidates in districts that weren't supposed to be competitive. Columbia activist Michael Ugarte's brother in law (Jerry McNerney) was one. Another was Tim Walz who beat a 6 term incumbent in my original hometown of Rochester, MN.

More importantly, the What's the Matter with Kansas crowd elected a new
Democratic Congresswoman and a Democratic Attorney General. They also re-elected a Democratic Governor and now have Democrats in 2/3rds of their US House seats. Indeed, the deep red interior West became an unexpected battleground. While it is unfortunate that challenges in Wyoming, Idaho and Nebraska came up short--the fact that the GOP had to dump millions of dollars into Districts that went 60-77% for Bush is a testimony to how far the GOP has slipped.

You're doing a hecuva job Rummy

Workers in Control: Venezuela’s Occupied Factories

by Marie Trigona
Published by Venezuelanalysis.com
November 9, 2006


Latin America’s occupied factories and enterprises represent the development of one of the most advanced strategies in defense of the working class and resistance against capitalism and neoliberalism. This new phenomenon catching hold throughout Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Venezuela continues to grow despite market challenges. More than 30,000 Latin American workers are employed at cooperative-run businesses, which were closed down by bosses and reopened by employees.

In Venezuela alone, it is estimated that 1,200 business and factories have been occupied by their workers after bosses and owners abandoned them. In response to the Bolivarian revolution, many oligarchic and foreign investors have fled Venezuela leaving workers out to dry. Venezuela’s working class has stood up to the destiny of unemployment and helped to build a road to socialism: taking over ransacked companies, calling for the nationalization and implementing worker self-management. Since 2005, the Venezuelan government passed a number of legal decrees expropriating abandoned factories for workers to start up production. Today in Venezuela some 20 companies have been nationalized and function under worker co-management or control.


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The Myth Of Alternative Energy

by Peter Goodchild
September 24, 2006

Alternative sources of energy will never be very useful, for several reasons, but mainly because of a problem of "net energy": the amount of energy output is not sufficiently greater than the amount of energy input. Alternative sources simply don't have enough "bang" to replace 30 billion annual barrels of oil.

A further problem with alternative sources of energy is that conventional oil is required to extract, process, and transport almost any other form of energy; a coal mine is not operated by coal-powered equipment. It takes "oil energy" to make "alternative energy."

***

More-exotic forms of alternative energy are plagued with even greater problems. Fuel cells cannot be made practical, because such devices require hydrogen derived from fossil fuels (coal or natural gas), if we exclude designs that will never escape the realm of science fiction; if fuel cells ever became popular, the fossil fuels they require would then be consumed even faster than they are now. Biomass energy (perhaps from wood, animal dung, peat, corn, or switchgrass) would require impossibly large amounts of land and would still result in insufficient quantities of net energy, perhaps even negative quantities. Hydroelectric dams are reaching their practical limits. Solar, wind, and geothermal power are only effective in certain areas and for certain purposes; such types of power, in any case, are only of significant value when converted into electrical energy, requiring the use of disposable batteries - a practice as ecologically unsound as the use of fossil fuels. Nuclear power will soon be suffering from a lack of fuel and is already creating serious environmental dangers.

Petroleum, unfortunately, is the perfect fuel, and nothing else even comes close. There will never be a solar-powered airplane. The problem with flying pigs (as in "when pigs can fly") is not that we have to wait for scientists to perfect the technology; the problem is that the pig idea is not a good one in the first place. To maintain an industrial civilization, it's either oil or nothing.

***

The quest for alternative sources of energy is not merely illusory; it is actually harmful. By daydreaming of a noiseless and odorless utopia of windmills and solar panels, we are reducing the effectiveness of whatever serious information is now being published. When news articles claim that there are simple painless solutions to the oil crisis, the reader's response is not awareness but drowsiness. We are rapidly heading toward what has been described as the greatest disaster in history, but we are indulging in escapist fantasies. All talk of alternative energy is just a way of evading the real issue: that the Industrial Age is over.

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Analysis: Chechnya Food Crisis Looms

By Edith Honan
UPI
November 6, 2006

With another bitterly cold winter on the way and tuberculosis rates on the rise, nearly 250,000 people in Chechnya face a cutoff of U.N. food aid.

Donor countries say the U.N. World Food Program has been too slow to update its approach. The agency says a highly vulnerable population now risks going hungry. There is evidence Russia shares the blame.

WFP officials told United Press International the agency can finance its efforts through the end of November. But with the European Commission Humanitarian Organization, the program's principal donor, threatening to scale back aid, U.N. officials are warning they may be forced to shut down the program for the second winter in a row.

Last year, at the height of the coldest winter recorded in Russia in 25 years, no food aid was distributed from November to March.

Doctors working in the region have said malnutrition, persistent stress, unemployment and growing poverty combined to cause a tuberculosis outbreak in Chechnya. WFP is already assisting some 650 victims of the illness, though Mia Turner, a WFP spokeswoman based in Cairo, told UPI the stigma attached to tuberculosis could mean many cases have gone unreported.

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Israel Kills 50 Palestinians in 6 Days

Islam Online
November 5, 2006

A 17-year-old Palestinian student has been killed in an Israeli air strike in Beit Lahiya , part of a massive Israeli military campaign has left 50 Palestinians and one soldier dead in six days in the northern Gaza Strip, medical officials said.

Mahmud Ashrafi was killed and nine other Palestinians, two of them five-year-olds, were hurt in the Israeli strike near a school in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza.

The Israel forces claim that “militants” were the target of the attack. The Israeli military said its attack was targeting Palestinian fighters who came to collect a rocket launcher used to fire two rockets on an Israeli town on Sunday.

But witnesses reported that the Israeli aircraft missed its target, striking near a school instead.

Beit Hanoun remains under siege by Israeli tanks and troops who raided the town a few days ago, and ordered residents to stay indoors.

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C.I.A. Wants Prison Tactics Secret

By Scott Shane
New York Times
November 4, 2006

The Central Intelligence Agency has told a federal court that Qaeda suspects should not be permitted to describe publicly the “alternative interrogation methods” used in secret C.I.A. prisons overseas.

In papers filed in the case of Majid Khan, a Pakistani who is among 14 so-called “high-value detainees” recently transferred to the Guantánamo Bay detention camp in Cuba, Justice Department and C.I.A. officials argued that allowing Mr. Khan to disclose details of his treatment could cause “extremely grave damage to the national security.”

“Many terrorist operatives are specifically trained in counter-interrogation techniques,” says a declaration by Marilyn A. Dorn, an official at the National Clandestine Service, a part of the C.IA. “If specific alternative techniques were disclosed, it would permit terrorist organizations to adapt their training to counter the tactics that C.I.A. can employ in interrogations.”

The court filings, first reported by The Washington Post on its Web site Friday night, also argued that revealing the countries where the prisoners were held could undermine intelligence relationships with those governments. Such disclosures “would put our allies at risk of terrorist retaliation and betray relationships that are built on trust and are vital to our efforts against terrorism,” Ms. Dorn wrote.

Lawyers for Mr. Khan, who lived in Maryland for several years and is accused of researching how to blow up gasoline stations and poison reservoirs, have alleged that he was tortured while in American custody and falsely confessed to crimes.

Intelligence officials have acknowledged that some terrorism suspects were subjected to harsh interrogation techniques, including sleep deprivation, exposure to heat and cold and a simulated drowning technique. Human rights advocates believe the methods amount to torture, which is banned by international law, but United States officials deny the charge.

Mr. Khan is represented by Gitanjali S. Gutierrez, a lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, which has been in touch with his wife, Rabia Khan, according to court documents.

The Other Campaign Takes Over Juárez-El Paso International Bridge in Solidarity with Oaxaca
US Police Attempt to Intimidate Protesters
By Karla GarzaIndymedia Chiapas
November 4, 2006

To the cry of “Oaxaca is not a military barracks, get the army out,” hundreds of people, led by Subcomandante Marcos, took over the Lerdo de Tejada international bridge, which connects Ciudad Juárez to El Paso, Texas.

Around 10 o’clock in the morning, members of the Other Campaign, surrounded by a large police contingent, arrived at the site to speak out against the government of Ulises Ruiz and the repression being carried out against the people of Oaxaca.

They advanced to the highest part of the bridge while members of “the Other Campaign on the Other Side” did the same on the other side, chanting in chorus, “we are a people without borders.”

Today we have come here to unite the struggles of the south with the struggles of the north,” said a representative from the Union of People on the Border, “here on the border, there are people resisting the exploitation, and the wall of death, because we are not criminals or terrorists, we are working people. We want them to leave the border knowing that we will not give up, that we will continue fighting for land, liberty and justice.”

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