An Encouraging Sign of Global Change

The United Steelworkers Union has officially merged with Unite the Union, the largest labor organization in Ireland and the UK, to continue the growth of globally organized labor.

The establishment of of an organized and globally coordinated labor movement is a necessity in an increasingly global marketplace. The presence of a powerful voice for labor can enhance worker protections, promote fair wages, create incentives for a decent work environment, raise the over-all standard of living in developing countries, discourage exploitation, and remove many of the root causes of terrorism.

Now, if this were not all good enough, I'd also like to mention that this is a very radical and very Irish idea. In 1908, James "Big Jim" Larkin founded the Irish Transport and General Workers Union, which was a forerunner of the Services, Industrial, Professional and Technical Union and the British Transport and General Workers Union, some of the constitutents of "Unite the Union."

Tiocfaidh Ár Lá.

A Clearer View of Iraq

An Update on the "So-called War on Terror"^TM

Our mainstream mass media are serving us poorly, and it doesn't really matter if your politics makes you see them as "corporate media" or as "liberal media" (an idea, I must admit, that I've found laughable and unsupported for a quarter of a century, during which time I spent nearly two decades working at NBC News -- vapid, shallow, obnoxiously self-righteous, yes. Liberal, no). What everyone seems to agree upon, however, is just what a terrible job our mainstream mass media are doing informing us about the world.

That's a start. I hope we can accelerate this process a bit, because people are dying, and we need to know about it so we can do something about it.

To that end I will tell you about a new report, Accepting Realities in Iraq by Gareth Stansfield of Britain's Chatham House (one of the world's leading organizations for the analysis of international issues) and the University of Exeter.

The report argues that US policy in Iraq must change to face a number of realities to which the Bush administration has been blind up until now. Among these realities, the report claims that(emphases mine):

• There is not ‘a’ civil war in Iraq, but many civil wars and insurgencies involving a number of communities and organizations struggling for power. The surge is not curbing the high level of violence, and improvements in security cannot happen in a matter of months.
• The conflicts have become internalized between Iraqis as the polarization of sectarian and ethnic identities reaches ever deeper into Iraqi society and causes the breakdown of social cohesion.
• Critical destabilizing issues will come to the fore in 2007–8. Federalism, the control of oil and control of disputed territories need to be resolved.
• Each of Iraq’s three major neighbouring states, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, has different reasons for seeing the instability there continue, and each uses different methods to influence developments.
• These current harsh realities need to be accepted if new strategies are to have any chance of preventing the failure and collapse of Iraq. A political solution will require engagement with organizations possessing popular legitimacy and needs to be an Iraqi accommodation, rather than a regional or US-imposed approach.

This all jibes pretty closely with a recent Speigel interview with Stephen Biddle, Senior Fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations, former Professor of National Security Studies at the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute, and respected military historian.

Biddle told der Speigel that the war we're fighting in Iraq is not an insurgency at all:

...the classical strategy for waging counter insurgency is oriented around winning hearts and minds. You engage in a process of political reform in which you introduce democracy to make the government's ideas legitimate. You engage in a campaign of economic development assistance. And you try and train an indigenous military to wage the war. All those strategies are what the Bush Administration's approach to Iraq has been. They make some sense, if the problem you are trying to solve is a classical ideological insurgency. Except, Iraq is not.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What is then?

Biddle: It's a communal civil war in which the war is not fought over a set of ideas. Rather, it is about the survival and self interest of communal groups within the nominal state. Sunnis are not fighting for an idea of what's best for all Iraqis; they are not trying to persuade Shiites that a Sunni government would be good for them. They are fighting for the self interest of Sunnis against the self interest of Shiites -- and vice versa. Because it is not a war of ideas you cannot expect to win it by changing people's minds. It's a war of identity. Identities can't change in the way minds can.

You know, you have to fight the war you've got, not the war you wish you had. And we should be fighting a real war on terror, not doing our part to further Al Qa'ida's goals. To wit: Michael Jacobson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy points out that while the Bush administration's "Iraq policy" (if it can be called that) in the past has conformed to the classic insurgency approach, resulting in a 25% increase in casualties between 2005 and 2006, a new approach might be presenting itself> Citing the State Department's annual report on global terrorism developments, Country Reports on Terrorism 2006, Jacobson observes that (my emphases):

While the United States still must eliminate the leadership of terrorist organizations, the report notes that "incarcerating or killing terrorists will not achieve an end to terrorism." According to the report, one of the most important and challenging aspects of combating terrorism is "addressing the underlying conditions that terrorists exploit," which include "geo-political issues, lack of economic opportunity and political participation, ethnic conflict, ungoverned space, or political injustice."

Sounds like a good idea to me. It ought to, since those of you who read this blog know I've been saying this for years. Those of you who know me even longer than I've been blogging know that this is something I've been saying since the late 1990s.

As for that "ungoverned space" mention in the State Department's report, has anyone been looking at Pakistan lately? As I've mentioned to Howie, when we are hit again by terrorists, the attack is more likely to come from Pakistan than anywhere else.

IN THE DARK Post #1,001-- Philippine Chief Justice Says War on Terror in Danger of Becoming "Mindless"; Poor Suffer More From Poverty Than From Terror

An Update on the "So-called War on Terror"^TM

Supreme Court Chief Justice Reynato Puno joins a long list of global public figures who stepped out of the dark and acknowledged the reality of terrorism, including Peter Munya, the US Conference of Catholilc Bishops, John Edwards, Hugo Chavez, Fernando Lugo, Desmond Tutu, Charles Dickens, Muhammed Yunus, myself, and even Pakistan dictator Gen. Pervez Musharraf who have been saying that you can't win a war on terror if you don't fight a war on poverty. For the record, the late Holy Father Pope John Paul II believed this too.

Puno criticized the "mindless" war on terrorism at the expense of civil liberties, and -- referring to the Philippines, but relevant to the US under the Bush administration -- said a state with credibility problems could not adequately protect the rights of its citizens. He said the fight against terrorism had been "more discomforting" than the terror itself.

Terrorism is terrible enough, but the mindless, knee-jerk reaction to extirpate the evil is more discomforting. One visible result of the scramble to end terrorism is to take legal shortcuts and legal shortcuts always shrink the scope of human rights. These shortcuts have scarred the landscape of rights in the Philippines.

Puno said that the institutional forces of anti-terrorism engage in much flag-waving, singing of the national anthem and issuing "high-pitched" directives to military forces, the police, and citizens to use their weapons for victory at all costs. But, he said, enough is enough. Security is meaningless at the expense of individual liberty.

To put constitutional cosmetics to the military-police muscular efforts, lawmakers usually enact laws using security of the state to justify the dimunition of human rights by allowing arrests without warrants; surveillance of suspects; interception and recording of communications; seizure or freezing of bank deposits, assets and records of suspects. They also redefine terrorism as a crime against humanity and the redefinition is broadly drawn to constrict and shrink further the zone of individual rights.

Puno urged political leaders -- but the appeal might be read by all of us, if we choose -- to have a broader view of terrorism, saying poverty is also a form of terrorism and the poor suffer more by their poverty than by violence.

In poor countries, it is poverty that truly terrorizes people for they are terrorized by the thought that they will die because of empty stomachs and not that they will lose their lives due to some invisible suicide bombers...The apathy of those who can make a difference is the reason why violations of human rights continue to prosper. The worst enemy of human rights is not its non-believers but the fence sitters who will not lift a finger despite their violations...Sooner or later, they will find that they who default in protecting the rights of the many will end up without rights like the many...With the incursions and threats of incursion to our human rights at this crucial moment in our history, the clarion call to each one of us is to consecrate our lives to the great cause of upholding our human rights.

France Told CIA in January 2000 About Al Qa'ida Plans to Hijack Airliners

An Update on the "So-called War on Terror"^TM

French newspaper Le Monde adds more fuel to the fire by publishing a story saying that they warned the CIA about al Qa'ida intentions to hijack airplanes nine months before the attacks of September 11, 2001.

The newspaper says it has obtained 328 pages of classified documents that show foreign agents infiltrated al-Qaeda's network.

It produced nine reports between September 2000 and August 2001, including the January 2001 document called 'Plan to hijack an aircraft by Islamic radicals'.

That's reminiscent of the August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US." Good Lord, how many dots do you have to draw in a straight line before it occurs to George W. Bush's administration to connect them???

Le Monde said the January 2001 report was handed over to a CIA operative in Paris, but that no mention of it was made in the official US September 11 Commission which produced its findings in July 2004.

Why was that? Don't we deserve an explanation?

Le Monde said the documents also show the French believed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was still receiving help from family members and senior officials in Saudi Arabia in advance of the 11 September attacks.

Yes. Like Pakistan's dictator Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the Saudis are our allies.

God help us.

Musharraf, Back Against the Wall, Calls on Developed World to Fight Poverty

An Update on the "So-called War on Terror"^TM

Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the dictator "President" of Pakistan (who created the position of President -- not in the Pakistan Constitution -- after taking power in a military coup in 1999), is beginning to make some democratic and egalitarian noises -- for reasons, I am sure, of base self-interest. Simply stated, he is in trouble. He is losing control of his increasingly independent-minded judiciary, he is losing whatever support he has ever had of the citizens of Pakistan, and he is losing the confidence of the West. At least he's got the military. But it may not be enough. He is being forced into a set of elections at the end of the year, and looking to two political rivals to shore up his power: Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto.

Whatever his motivation (and I don't really care why someone finally does the right thing), Musharraf is making guardedly centrist statements lately, and yesterday in Islamabad finally stated the obvious and made the connection between terrorism and poverty. Speaking to an international land forces symposium on Common Security and the "Global War on Terrorism,"

President Musharraf urged the developed and industrialized States to help the Islamic countries in their socio-economic development as the extremism stems from poverty.

The President re-emphasized Pakistan's firm resolve to combat terrorism frontally and militarily but said that joint efforts were needed by the global community in achieving the objective of defeating the menace. He pointed out that extremism is a state of mind and could not be countered with force and needs a long-term strategy and total understanding of underlined causes which spawn the scourge.

Let me repeat and emphasize that last part: Terrorism is a state of mind that cannot be countered with force and needs a long-term strategy and total understanding of its underlying causes.

So, we're stepping back from global, unregulated, laissez faire, "free-market" capitalism, and --FINALLY -- acknowledging that government has a larger role than merely smoothing the road for the creation of wealth. It also has the responsibility to see that the wealth is distributed equitably and justly. Well, at least Musharraf -- back against the wall -- is giving the idea lip service, even if he'd rather not. Why would he prefer not to say -- and do -- the right thing?

The President said that the poverty, illiteracy and misinterpretation of Islamic knowledge are the other inherent causes contributing to the rise of extremism.

Yes. Pakistan has only a 48% literacy rate -- 35% female literacy. Perhaps Musharraf will funnel some money into educating Pakistan's citizens? A quarter of Pakistan lives below the poverty level -- the Pakistani poverty level. Child labor is common there. Pakistan has a per capita gross domestic product of $2,600. To put that into perspective, Iraq -- in the midst of a bloody civil war, mounting insurgency, and daily chaos, has a per capita GDP of $2,900.

For the life of me, I don't know why -- if we had to invade someone and do some "regime change -- we invaded Iraq and not Pakistan.

(Musharraf) said two-pronged strategy on the one hand calls upon the Muslim States to shun extremism and go on the path of socio-economic development and on the other called upon the West, especially the United States , to help resolve outstanding disputes and assist in economic development of Islamic countries. (my emphasis)

Like it or not, folks, we are our brothers' keeper. From those to whom much is given, much is expected.

Musharraf joins a long list of global public figures who stepped out of the dark and acknowledged the reality of terrorism, including Peter Munya, the US Conference of Catholilc Bishops, John Edwards, Hugo Chavez, Fernando Lugo, Desmond Tutu, Charles Dickens, Muhammed Yunus, and myself qho have been saying that you can't win a war on terror if you don't fight a war on poverty. For the record, the late Holy Father Pope John Paul II believed this too.

Kiwi Green Party : War on Poverty as Urgent as War on Terror

An Update on the so-called "War on Terror"^TM

As Peter Munya, the US Conference of Catholilc Bishops, John Edwards, Hugo Chavez, Fernando Lugo, Desmond Tutu, Charles Dickens, Muhammed Yunus, and I have been saying for years now, you can't win a war on terror if you don't fight a war on poverty. For the record, the late Holy Father Pope John Paul II believed this too.

Now the New Zealand Green Party Foreign Affairs Spokesperson Keith Locke has said the same thing. And he's right. And he's taking his government to task.

Whenever the Government supports laws to combat global terrorism, it routinely invokes UN guidelines on the subject as a rationale, even when that sometimes means restricting the civil liberties of New Zealanders. Yet when it comes to UN initiatives aimed at combating global poverty, the Government has been willing to drag its feet.

In years past, the Prime Minister Helen Clark has acknowledged the links that exist between terrorism and its breeding grounds in poverty, inequality, disease and lack of opportunity. The Government should be treating global poverty with the same urgency it currently affords to global terrorism.

This era of global apathy and global greed has to end. This era of global, un-regulated, laissez faire, "free-market" capitalism has to end. Rational regulation was just as much a part of Adam Smith's vision as irrational speculation.

Democracy, NOT plutocracy.

What a Wonderful World?

Trees of green? Red roses too? For some perhaps, but not me and you. Like everything else in George W. Bush's "wonderful world," the trees of green, the red roses, the skies of blue, the stars of white, bright blessed days and the dark sacred nights are distributed unequally and unfairly.

More than 3,000 Americans are dead, and over 100,000 innocent Iraqi civilians in a war that was absolutely unnecessary. We have accomplished nothing in Iraq other than to create a breeding ground for new terrorists. Meanwhile, we have allowed al Qa'ida to regain strength under the protection of our "ally" in the so-called war on terror, Pervez Musharraf.

Nuclear weapons have proliferated across the globe under Bush's watch. So, naturally, we are going tomanufacture more, newer nukes. You'd almost think that the Bush administration might have turned a blind eye to the spread of nukes, just so we could build new ones. After all, it was our "ally" Pervez Musharraf's man, AQ Khan, who shared nuclear secrets with both North Korea and Iran.

Sweat shop globalization has proceeded unabated under Bush. We have far more evidence of the spread of sweatshops in the last six years than the spread of Democracy. The gap between rich and poor nations, as well as the gap between the richest and poorest within individual nations -- including the United States -- has grown under Bush. For the first time in my lifetime, poverty is on the rise in the United States, both in proportion and number of Americans living below the poverty line.

Our reputation has sunk to unprecedented lows across the world. Our Constitution is in tatters. Our American values have been trampled at home. Politics trumps law. Democratic principles are becoming, like the Geneva Conventions, "quaint" and "obsolete."

Want a wonderful world?

IMPEACH BUSH!!!

Al Qa'ida Thrives in Musharraf's Pakistan

For as long as I've been posting on this blog, I've been saying that the war in Iraq is taking away from the actual war on terror. Lately, the mainstream media have been forced to ackowledge the obvious. At the same time, this unnecessary invasion and occupation -- so pitifully led by the Bush administration -- has given al Qa'ida its first foothold in Iraq. The CIA said this as early as January 2005 (see also here, here, here, and here). Now, the MSM again are scratching their heads as the resurgence of al Qa'ida continues in Pakistan, five years after we "beat" the Taliban and declared "victory" in Afghanistan.

The new leaders rose from within the organization after the death or capture of the operatives that built Al Qaeda before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. This has led to surprise and dismay within U.S. intelligence agencies about the group's ability to rebound from an American-led offensive.

Perhaps if we had maintained that offensive pressure -- and exerted some pressure on the likes of Pakistan's dictator Gen. Pervez Musharraf -- instead of bailing out to fight an unnecessary war in Iraq, we wouldn't be feeling all this "surprise" and "dismay."

The evidence officials said was accumulating about (ascending terrorist leader Abu Ubaidah al-)Masri and a handful of other Al Qaeda figures has led to a reassessment within the U.S. intelligence community about the strength of the group's core in Pakistan's tribal areas, and its role in some of the most significant terrorism plots of the last two years, including the airline plot and the suicide attacks in London in July 2005 that killed 56 people.

So al Qa'ida has survived the "American-led offensive" (which included the "fumbled" opportunity at Tora Bora) in Afghanistan, they have a safe haven in Pakistan, and --SURPRISE!!! -- they have gained a foothold in Iraq.

Experts say they still see Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia as largely independent of Al Qaeda's hub in Pakistan but that they believe the fighting in Iraq will produce future al Qaeda leaders. "The jihadis returning from Iraq are far more capable than the mujahedeen who fought the Soviets ever were," said Robert Richer, who was associate director of operations in 2004 and 2005 for the CIA. "They have been fighting the best military in the world, with the best technology and tactics."

"To say that Al Qaeda was out of business simply because they have not attacked in the U.S. is whistling past the graveyard," said Michael Scheuer, a former head of the bin Laden tracking unit at the CIA. "Al Qaeda is still humming along, and with a new
generation of leaders."

Yes. Thanks to George W. Bush and his friends, like Pakistan dictator Pervez Musharraf.

Kenyan Security Minister : Poverty Fueling Terror in Africa

Howie and his ilk on the right don't want to hear this. But more and more people are coming to the realization that poverty and terrorism are intimately connected.

Are we fighting a war on terror or not? If so, we've got to fight the root causes of terrorism, including poverty, malnutrition, inequality, and exploitation. If we have the nerve to call ourselves a "Chritian nation," we damned well ought to behave like one.

Jesus Was NOT a Socialist...BUT...

The Catholic principle of apostolic succession means, among other things, that there is an unbroken line of apostles from the original twelve until today. It also means that Bishops (and this of course includes the Pope in his role as Bishop of Rome) have a particular authority to teach. This authority is exercised in pastoral letters (on the episcopal level) and encyclicals (a Pope's teaching to the entire church). In fairness to the subject, it is also used as an excuse to keep women from being ordained.

But those who call themselves "Catholic" ignore Church teaching at their own peril. So here's what the US Conference of Catholic Bishops had to say to Congress (all emphases mine).

Do not forget or neglect the needs of the poor and vulnerable in the United States and throughout the world in setting budget priorities, U.S. bishops urged Congress, noting that they have responsibility to meet the common good.

Common good? You still talking about that? Didn't we get rid of that useless concept in the 1980s? No, say the Bishops. Decisions about spending have to be made on the basis of more than "economic policy."

“Meeting essential human needs is a compelling ethical and fiscal priority,” he said. “A moral measure of the budget will be how it treats poor and vulnerable people.”

The Bishops questioned the morality of tax cuts that benefit the rich while putting an undue burden on the middle class and jeopardizing the well-being of the poor.

“When the basic requirements of human life and dignity for many in our country and throughout the world go unmet, it is essential that adequate federal revenues be available to help meet these basic human needs,” he said.

Deficit spending on things like, well, war also limit the amount of money that can be spent on providing for the common good.

The budget should, he said, provide “adequate funding” for programs that help families “escape hunger and homelessness, find decent housing and employment and have access to quality education and medical care.”

This is important not just at home; the common good extends beyond our shores.

He also pointed to strengthening the U.S. government commitment to foreign aid, including relief, developmental and health-care assistance throughout the developing world “where people live with crushing poverty and diseases” and forced to flee “violence and persecution.” “Your budget choices have clear moral and human dimensions,” he said. “They reflect our values as a people.”

Amen.

“The weak and vulnerable,” he said, “do not have powerful lobbyists.”

Alleluia.

Why Do They Hate Us?

Even though conflict is big on television, not all wars infiltrate our consciousness. Where the United States or its (economic?) allies or (economic?) interests are not involved, war does not seem to exist for us. The Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University in Sweden report that on average 9 minor armed conflicts (where the number of deaths does not exceed 1000 during the course of the conflict), 12 intermediate armed conflicts (where the number of deaths exceeds 1000, but is fewer than 1000 in any given year), and 13 wars (with more than 1000 deaths a year) go on at all times somewhere in the world.

In the year 2000, war took the lives of 168,000 Africans, 65,000 Asians, 39,000 “middle-easterners,” 37,000 Europeans, and 2,000 Central and South Americans. At the same time, American arms manufacturers were making it possible for war to be the “booming business” that it is. Forty of the top one hundred arms-producing companies in the world are American companies with profits totaling $664 billion dollars in 1999. Over $93 billion of that profit comes from the manufacture and sale of weapons, more than the profit of the other 60 companies combined (US$64 billion). Is this not something Americans should know about?

Meanwhile, those in the less technologically developed world who are not dying in warfare are likely to be dying of disease or starvation. While the life expectancy of the average American was about 75 years in 2001, it was 65 for the Indonesian, 64 for the Russian, 45 for the Afghan, 39 for the Zambian, and 38 for the Rwandan and the Mozambiquan. While an American baby has 99.4% of survival after birth, the infant mortality rate is 2% for the Russian, 10% for the Ethiopian, almost 15% for the Afghan, and nearly 20% for the Angolan.

And while much of the “third world” believes that we care little for their welfare, many more question our motivations even less kindly. They believe we are more interested in exploiting their natural resources for our benefit, and exploiting their people for their cheap labor.

If terrorism is evil — and it is — this is terror’s recruiting station.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu : "God is Weeping"

An Update on the so-called "War on Terror"^TM

Desmond Tutu Tells World Forum: Terrorism Cannot be Defeated in Current Climate

Unless, like Howie, you believe that Islam is a monolithic religion of hatred whose sole goal is the suppression of human freedom under an absolute world domination (sort of like, for those of you old enough to remember, Communism), you probably wonder what motivates a human being to kill an innocent person, or hundreds of innocent people, or to be killed. South African Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, speaking at the start of the 2007 World Social Forum in Nairobi, Kenya has some ideas:

The war on terror will "never" be won "as long as there are conditions in the world that make people desperate," like dehumanising poverty, disease and ignorance...

Despite Bush administration and neo-conservative assertions to the contrary, both terrorism and the (so-called) "war on terror" are necessary by-products of the "culture of death," a culture where self-interest predominates at the expense of the common good.

Tutu emphasised that the "fundamental law of our being" is that "we are bound to one another". Because of that, "the only way we can make it is together, all of us". Only together can we be free, safe and secure.

It is a founding principle of the Project for a New American Century -- one taken up by the Bush administration (if that is not redendant) -- that American military power and our status as the sole global superpower give us the ability and obligation to spread American values around the world. And that's fine, as long as we know clearly what our values are. Bush and the "religious" right in the US claim to stand for a "culture of life." They "talk the talk," but their walk is kind of crooked.

"God is weeping," Tutu told the ecumenical gathering at Nairobi's Holy Family Roman Catholic Basilica, at the sight of the awful things happening in the world today.

"God weeps and says: 'Who will help me so we can have a different kind of world, one in which the rich know they have been given much so they can share and help others?'" A creation that was very good has "turned into a nightmare".

Amen.