Le souci de vérité
Par Tzvetan Todorov à Libération (19.12.2006).
Japanese Chauvinism
Mr. Thanos Kalamidas has some insightful words about our PM Shinzo Abe :
New Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has passed through the upper house a new bill that approves the creation of a new ministry, defense ministry and requires schools to teach patriotism in classrooms. But that doesn’t say how Mr. Abe identifies patriotism. If he himself is an example of practicing patriotism with his visits to the war veteran shrines that include war criminals from the WWII some of them convicted for crimes against humanity in China or Korea then the word patriotism definitely crosses the line.
The bills have passed as laws since they have already voted in the Japanese upper house and according to the Japanese system can be immediately active. The bill demands from the teachers to teach respect of tradition, culture and loving the nation and homeland. Furthermore, they want to teach moral values, ethics and self-discipline. Sad as it is that sounds just like a dictatorship, in a democracy you learn the moral values by learning respect to others’ needs.
You don’t need a lesson to teach you these things, you learn to love your country by learning history and as I said above learn to accept and admit all the sides of your homeland and most of all learn never to repeat the same mistakes. By forcing tradition, culture and loving the nation the only thing you manage is create a blind and Japanese centered new generation.
After all, it is well known that all the crimes during the 1940s to neighboring countries started from enforcing their traditions and culture that included racism and prejudice and that’s something the Koreans paid most among other nations. Is this what Mr. Abe wants reborn?
Agreed. Unfortunately yes, PM Abe wants it all.
Ask Kissinger about Pinochet's regime
By Amy Goodman at Seattle PI (14.12.2006) :
Pinochet's death allows him to escape conviction. Kissinger, whose support for the Pinochet regime is increasingly well documented, is still alive and still of interest to those seeking justice. Kissinger has been sought for questioning by Judge Garzon and by French Judge Roger Le Loire, both investigating the death and disappearance of their citizens in Chile. While Kissinger is frequently questioned by the media in this country, he is almost never asked about his own record. Instead, he is treated like royalty.
Questions remain about the brutal regime of Pinochet. Kissinger likely holds many answers. If we are to have a uniform standard of justice, then answers need to be demanded of the genuine terrorism experts such as Henry Kissinger.
Le Japon se dote d'un ministère de la défense, pour la première fois depuis 1945
Du Monde (15.12.2006) :
Japon, officiellement pacifiste, s'est doté, vendredi 15 décembre, d'un véritable ministère de la défense. Il s'agit d'une première depuis sa défaite à la fin de la seconde guerre mondiale. La mesure entrera en vigueur le 9 janvier 2007. Après la Chambre des députés, le Sénat a adopté cette décision à une confortable majorité, le principal parti d'opposition s'étant rallié au projet de loi présenté par la majorité de droite.
La naissance de ce ministère est largement symbolique, puisque l'actuelle Agence de défense – qui faisait jusqu'à présent office de ministère – disposait déjà de puissants moyens. Créée en 1954 au lendemain de la guerre de Corée, l'Agence de défense était placée sous le contrôle direct du premier ministre. Fumio Kyuma, le secrétaire d'Etat qui la dirigeait, devient ministre à part entière avec la nouvelle loi, qui accroît le contrôle politique – donc civil – sur l'armée.
Voir ce diagramme.
Renverser le Panopticon
Francis Pisani gives a world wide job :
Pour parler de ce nouveau phénomène Jamais (c’est son prénom) Cascio, animateur hors pair de WorldChanging, un site qui s’occupe de technologie et d’environnement, a lancé la formule de “participatory panopticon” ou panopticon participatif en s’inspirant de la formule de Bentham reprise par Foucault. Big brother n’a plus qu’à bien se tenir. On se sent mieux.
Japan's Neocons
By Eric Johnston at Adbusters.com (13.12.2006) :
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on a secret visit to the Yasukuni Shrine in April 2005 during his service as the Liberal Democratic Party’s Deputy Secretary General. Abe presently refuses to discuss the controversial shrine, which has caused strained relations with Korea and China due to the fact that 14 war criminals are included among the shrine’s honored dead. [REUTERS/Issei Kato] When Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi stepped down in September 2006 after five and a half years, nobody was sadder than George W. Bush and his neocon allies. During his years in office, Koizumi tied Japan’s geopolitical fate to the United States, sending Japanese soldiers to Iraq despite huge public doubts, pushing hard to renounce the Constitution to allow closer US-Japan military relations, and adopting a tough line towards both China and North Korea that pleased American hawks.
La stratégie médiatique états-unienne 1945-2005
Par René Naba à Réseau Voltaire (14.12.2006) :
Depuis la fin de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, les États-Unis ont déployé un système sans précédent de propagande. À travers des structures comme le Congrès pour la liberté de la culture, ils ont corrompu les élites intellectuelles occidentales. Puis, instrumentalisant la liberté de l’information, ils ont noyé le monde sous leur point de vue unique, grâce à de puissantes agences de presse et à un gigantesque maillage de radios profanes et religieuses, ainsi que le révèle René Naba dans son dernier livre, Aux origines de la tragédie arabe, dont nous reproduisons un extrait.
The Case for Japanese Constitutional Revision Assessed
By Koseki Sho'ichi at Japan Focus (12.12.2006) :
There’s been much discussion of constitutional revision in Japan. In November 2005, celebrating the 50th anniversary of its formation, the Liberal-Democratic Party published its “Draft of a New Constitution.” In this rapidly changing world, it’s quite risky for a developed country to make a constitution with an eye to the 21st century. Why? Because this is an age in which the nation-states that shape the modern era are changing dramatically, and because we still can’t see what lies ahead.
The debate over constitutional revision originates in the incompatibility between the Japanese constitution’s renunciation of armaments and the right to make war, on the one hand, and the primacy of the US-Japan security system on the other. No matter how you look at it, it’s risky to dream up a constitution for the 21st century without addressing—above and beyond US security demands—the changing character of the modern nation-state. In order to see the future, we must first examine the past. The current constitution of Japan has a history of nearly 60 years, and one might think it would be necessary to begin by assessing that history. But the constitutional research committees of the two houses of the Diet that might be expected to take that as their highest duty have failed to do so.
Mr. Kosek's new book, The Scars of War: The Japanese Home Front in World War II, will be published in 2007.
Japan 'staged' ministerial forums
By Chris Hogg at BBC News (13.12.2006) :
Japan's PM Shinzo Abe says he will work unpaid for the next 90 days, after it emerged that officials had paid people to ask questions at public meetings.
The government inquiry also found that at some of the meetings - held over the past five years - officials had pretended to be ordinary people.
Mr Abe, a cabinet minister at the time, was responsible for such meetings.
John Brinsley's report on the Moonie administration at Bloomberg (12.12.2006) :
Welcoming back the ex-LDP lawmakers "was a remarkably cynical thing to do," said Steven Reed, a professor of Japanese politics at Chou [sic] University in Tokyo. "It really pissed people off. What Abe's done is trade popular support for old-fashioned politics. It may not work."
Abe's popularity fell to 47 percent from 53 percent last month, the Asahi newspaper said. The Yomiuri newspaper said his approval rating dropped to 55.9 percent from 65.1 percent, while the Mainichi newspaper showed Abe's support at 46 percent, down from 53 percent last month and 67 percent in September. NHK said support fell to 48 percent, from 59 percent. No margins of error were provided.
Whatever Moonie Abe and his wife say and do seems "staged". The sex-up and cover-up cabinet.
Beyond Liberal Globalization: A Better or Worse World?
By Samir Amin at Monthly Review (December 2006) :
The present is characterized by the deployment of a U.S. hegemonic plan on a global scale. This is currently the only plan to occupy the entire world scene. There is no longer any counter plan that aims to limit the area subjected to U.S. control, as was the case at the time of bipolarity (1945–90); beyond the ambiguity of its origin, the European project has entered a phase of self-effacement; the countries of the South (the non-aligned countries in the Group of 77) whose ambition during the Bandung period (1955–75) was to put up a common front to Western imperialism have given up; and China itself, which is going its own way, has barely the ambition to protect its national plan (which is itself ambiguous) and does not present itself as an active partner in the global system.
Top Democrat: Halliburton Violated Multibillion Dollar Iraq Contract
By Jason Leopold at TruthOut (09.12.2006) :
Halliburton Corp., the oil field services company once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, breached the terms of its multibillion dollar contract to provide US soldiers logistical support in Iraq when one of its subcontractors outsourced security work to Blackwater USA, according to new documents released Friday by Congressman Henry Waxman.
In a December 7 letter to outgoing defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Waxman alleged that taxpayers have been paying sky-high prices for Blackwater's services, which were not authorized under the terms of Halliburton's contract with the US Army. Waxman said he could not ascertain the exact cost of Blackwater's work, because the Army has refused to respond to questions about the deal for the past two years.
Waxman contends Halliburton was fully aware that its subcontractor ESS Support Services, food supplier to the military, hired armed guards employed by Blackwater to provide security for its convoys.
Under the terms of its $16.5 Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP) contract, Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root, its employees and its subcontractors are prohibited from carrying weapons without prior approval from the military.
Iraq Study Group: a bipartisan coverup of Washington’s war crimes
By Bill Van Auken at WSWS (09.12.2006) :
A striking feature of the Iraq Study Group report is that its belated admission of the military-political debacle and catastrophic conditions created by the US intervention in Iraq excludes any assessment of how the “grave and deteriorating” situation in that country came to pass, and who bears political responsibility for it.
Instead, the document includes multiple denunciations of the Iraqi government for failing to provide essential services, create a functioning judiciary or foster economic progress. That the country was laid to waste by a US war and remains under military occupation—making Washington fully responsible for all of these failures—is simply passed over in silence.
As one member of the group, Democratic power broker Vernon Jordan, put it, the bipartisan panel made no effort to determine “how the house got on fire.”
Theodor Herzl sur le divan de Gilles Deleuze
Par Gyslain di Caro à Sens Public (05.12.2006) :
Résumé : Il peut paraître singulier de vouloir mettre Theodor Herzl, inventeur du sionisme politique, sur le divan de Gilles Deleuze. Pourtant, le lent cheminement qui va pousser Herzl à accomplir l’œuvre de sa vie procède d’une quête remarquablement mise en évidence par Deleuze. La recherche de la vérité chez Deleuze n’est pas mue par un amour de la sagesse - philo-sophie - mais est au contraire le fruit d’une anti-sophie, d’un tourment qui fait tendre vers la vérité, au gré des signes de la vie qui nous force à penser. Theodor Herzl n’est en rien un philosémite ; c’est dans les tourments antisémites de son siècle que lui est apparu l’évidence d’Israël. - Abstract : It might seem awkward to try and lay Theodor Herzl, inventor of political Zionism, on Gilles Deleuze’s couch. However, the slow pace of Herzl’s endeavour towards his life’s achievement outlines a search intrinsically related to Deleuze. Indeed, the search for truth in Deleuze is not driven by love of wisdom - philo-sophy - but on the contrary results from an anti-sophy, a torment which makes us tend towards truth according to the signs of our lives and the drive that forces us into thinking. Theodor Herzl is nothing of a philo-semite, for it is in the anti-semitic torments of his century that he envisioned the obviousness of Israel.
Rosa Luxembourg et Karl Liebknecht, un mythe paradoxal en RDA
Par Paul Maurice à Sens Public (05.12.2006) :
La RDA était un État nouveau en 1949, il lui a fallu se créer un passé et une histoire. Pour cela, les dirigeants et les historiens ont utilisé le mythe des acteurs de la Révolution de janvier 1919, Rosa Luxembourg et Karl Liebknecht. Leur mort dans l’acte révolutionnaire leur a conféré un statut de héros dans la mythologie de la RDA. Par l’utilisation de la rhétorique marxiste, cette glorification est semblable à celle d’une hagiographie laïque. Cependant, même s’ils sont associés et glorifiés comme un couple, Karl Liebknecht et Rosa Luxembourg sont traités différemment dans l’historiographie est-allemande. Rosa Luxembourg n’avait pas le même statut, pour des raisons idéologiques - son opposition à Lénine - et dues à sa condition féminine. À la différence, Karl Liebknecht était considéré comme le meneur actif de la « Révolution de Novembre. » Celle-ci ayant été considérée comme l’acte de naissance symbolique de la RDA, il fut par extension considéré comme le père symbolique de l’État est-allemand. Mots-clés : Rosa Luxembourg, Karl Liebknecht, Historiographie est-allemande, « Révolution de Novembre », Groupe Spartacus, République Démocratique Allemande, République de Weimar, Communisme.
L’audiovisuel extérieur français : cahoteux, chaotique et ethniciste
Par René Naba à Réseau Voltaire (06.12.2006) :
Après deux décennies d’hésitations, la France lance aujourd’hui une chaîne internationale d’information, France 24. Malheureusement, ce projet remarquable risque de reproduire rapidement les erreurs commises dans le passé, en matière d’audiovisuel extérieur. Des errements dont René Naba dresse ici le réquisitoire implacable.
China: What's the Big Mystery?
By John Feffer at Foreign Policy in Focus (04.12.2006) :
The latest recruitment brochure from the Central Intelligence Agency, which beckons the uninitiated to “be a part of a mission that's larger than all of us,” opens to reveal an image of the red-roofed entrance to Beijing's Forbidden City. From an oversized portrait on the ancient wall, Chairman Mao and his Mona Lisa smile behold the vast granite expanse of Tiananmen Square. The Cold War is over, and the Soviet Union is gone. The cloak-and-dagger games of Berlin and Prague have been replaced by business and tourism. But China—land of ancient secrets, autocratic leaders, and memories of suppressed uprisings—still holds out the promise of world-historical struggle that can help the CIA meet its recruitment goals.
Rumsfeld's Last Stand
By Tom Engelhardt at TomDispatch (05.12.2006). "How Iraq was won" produced by Don Rummy.
Carter Criticizes US Approach to Israel
By Bob Kempter at CommonDreams (04.12.2006) :
Former President Jimmy Carter on Sunday said the only hope for peace in the Middle East is for America to take a more "balanced view" of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, something he believes may be politically impossible.
Carter, promoting his new book, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," in a marathon, nationally broadcast interview on C-Span, said that, given widespread support for Israel in the United States, it would be "unimaginable" that a politician would assign any blame to Israel for the ongoing violence in the Middle East and still win office.
The result, Carter said, is an unbalanced U.S. foreign policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that prevents America from acting as an honest broker between the two sides, as Carter did in reaching the Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt in 1978.
People Party vs. Money Party: Who's Who Among the Democrats
By David Sirota at AlterNet (04.12.2006).
Is it important to classify lawmakers according to the people/money distinction even in Japan? Anybody already tried it?
Gangster Capitalism And The Third Maroon War
By John Maxwell at Black Agenda Report/Counter Currents (04.12.2006).
The World's Mastermind: The Hidden Face of Globalization
By Adrian Salbuchi at Global Research (02.12.2006). A summary.
Has Milton's legacy really freed man?
By Luis Cabral at Mercator.net (30.11.2006) :
The first point of my analogy is that, in addition to the absence of external coercion, true freedom requires some level of self-determination, self-mastery (which I, alas, lack when it comes to piano playing). Without that basic self-mastery, I can randomly hit white and black keys, but I will not be playing the piano. I can say that I’m acting freely, but this would be freedom of a rather poor grade.
The second point of my analogy is that freedom cannot be separated from a good that it is aimed at. Ultimately, true freedom must be directed to what is good and what is true. In fact, the relation between freedom and truth is at the centre of one of the great intellectual debates of our day. Is moral relativism a necessary implication of freedom? Many libertarians would agree. On the opposite side are those who fear the effects of a “dictatorship of relativism” -- by insisting on the principle that “if you don’t harm others than anything goes” we risk losing our moral purpose altogether.
Milton Friedman has left us, but the debate carries on.
Zionism and other Marginal Thoughts
By Gilad Atzmon at Alarab Online (28.11.2006).
Seems like a post-Zionist perspective. Does Gilad Atzmon have something to do with Amos Gitai? Somebody fill me in.
PM Abe Drops Below 60% Mark in Japan
From AngusReid.com (28.11.2006) :
Polling Data
a) Do you approve of (sic) disapprove of Shinzo Abe’s cabinet?
Nov. 2006
Sept. 2006
Approve
59.3%
65.0%
Disapprove
28.5%
16.2%
Source: Kyodo News
Methodology: Telephone interviews with 1,027 Japanese adults, conducted on Nov. 25 and Nov. 26, 2006. No margin of error was provided.
b) Do you approve of (sic) disapprove of Shinzo Abe’s cabinet?
Nov. 2006
Sept. 2006
Approve
53%
67%
Disapprove
22%
16%
Source: Mainichi
Methodology: Interviews to 1,065 Japanese adults, conducted on Nov. 25 and Nov. 26, 2006. No margin of error was provided.
The Moonie administration may fall out faster than expected. Actually approuve is less than 20%, I guess.
Howard Zinn on The Uses of History and the War on Terrorism
Democracy Now! (24.11.2006) | RM file (96 mb) | MP4 (torrent).
I too feel like living in an occupied country when I wake up in the morning. Abe, Aso, Nakagawa (alcoholic), Nakagawa (horny), and Koizumi are aliens to me.
Les néo-conservateurs prêts à sacrifier les Républicains
Par Jürgen Cain Külbel at Réseau Voltaire (24.11.2006) :
Ayant anticipé la défaite républicaine, les néoconservateurs et leurs sponsors avaient effectué un retournement d’alliance tactique, dénonçant la politique de l’amdinistration Bush dont ils étaient pourtant les inspirateurs et soutenant plus ou moins tacitement le camp démocrate. Leurs objectifs stratégiques restent toutefois les mêmes. Jürgen Cain Külbel analyse cet ajustement politique opportuniste mais rappelle que quels que soient leurs alliés, les néoconservateurs sont lancés dans une fuite en avant.
Denationalized states and global assemblages
Magnus Wennerhag interviews Saskia Sassen at Eurozine (20.11.2006) :
Magnus Wennerhag: Today, there is an obvious difference between the rhetoric of liberalism – that is, liberalism as political ideology – and the actual workings of the state in liberal-democratic polities. From an historical perspective, how should we understand this difference?
Saskia Sassen: I would distinguish two issues. One is that historically, liberalism is deeply grounded in a particular combination of circumstances. Most important is the struggle by merchants and manufacturers to gain liberties vis-à-vis the Crown and the aristocracy, and the use of the market as the institutional setting that both gave force and legitimacy to that claim. Seen this way, why should liberalism not have decayed? What rescued liberalism was Keynesianism, the extension of a socially empowering project to the whole of society. This is the crisis today: Keynesianism has been attacked by new types of actors, including segments of the political elite. What is happening today is on the one hand a decay (objectively speaking) of liberalism even as an ideology – being replaced with neoliberalism, attacks on the welfare state, etc – and, on the other hand, a decay of the structural conditions within which Keynesian liberalism could function. So the struggle today has been renamed: one key term is democratic participation and representation, and those who use this language will rarely invoke liberalism. When we praise liberalism, it is often a situated defense: as against neoliberalism, as against fundamentalisms and despotisms – this is not necessarily invoking historical liberalism, which at its origins was defending the rights of an emerging class of property owners, but the best aspects of a doctrine that had to do with the fight against the despotism of Crown and nobility.
Burden Sharing, Security and Equity in the Straits of Malacca
By Nazery Khalid at Japan Focus (17.11.2006).
It’s Not the Democrats Who Are Divided
By Frank Rich at The NY Times/Welcome to Pottersville (19.11.2006).
National, local governments scrabble to shore up broken town meeting system
From Mainichi Daily News (18.11.2006) :
One local government came up with an innovative solution for dealing with apathy towards local issues and declining attendance at town meetings: Fill seats with their own employees.
A Mainichi investigation into problems with government-sponsored town meetings has found that the Aomori Prefectural Government dispatched a large number of its own workers to a meeting in Aomori in June 2004, basically making it one between government officials.
The finding comes on the heels of the discovery that staged questions were being asked at meetings, and suggests the town meetings initiative -- which is supposed to provide a chance for the government to converse directly with the local community -- is breaking down.
This is the Japanese way. The American should accuse the Japan Gov't of having insulted the town meeting system.
The Rise and Decline of the Neoconservatives
By Jim Lobe & Michael Flynn at Right Web (17.11.2006) :
Summary: Shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, an influential, neoconservative-led pressure group called the Project for the New American Century issued a letter to the president calling for a dramatic reshaping of the Middle East as part of the war on terror. Although many of the items on the neoconservatives' agenda, including ousting Saddam Hussein, were eventually adopted by the George W. Bush administration, the group's remarkable string of successes has gradually given way to a steady decline, culminating most recently in the president's decision after the November midterm elections to replace Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, an important erstwhile ally of the neoconservatives, with Robert Gates. This essay examines the rise and decline of the neoconservatives and their post-Cold War agenda. We conclude that although the neoconservatives and their allied aggressive nationalists, such as Vice President Dick Cheney, retain sufficient weight to hamper efforts to push through major reversals in U.S. foreign policy, the increasing isolation of this political faction coupled with recent political events in the United States point to the potential emergence of a more cautious, realist-inspired agenda during the final two years of the Bush presidency.
All the father's men
By Sidney Blumenthal at The Salon (16.11.2006).
Bush family guardians James Baker and others are trying to rescue "Sonny" from his failed Middle East policies. Will he listen this time?
The Okinawan Election and Resistance to Japan's Military First Politics
By Gavan McCormack at Japan Focus (n.d., 15 or 16).
The National Politics of the Yasukuni Shrine
By Takahashi Tetsuya at Japan Focus (n.d.) | Download (PDF).
Yasser Arafat a-t-il été assassiné ?
Par Amnon Kapeliouk au Monde Diplomatique (Novembre 2006) :
Un an après le décès de Yasser Arafat, que le général Sharon présentait comme l’obstacle principal à la paix, l’impasse est totale : non seulement Israël poursuit la colonisation, mais la vie quotidienne des Palestiniens reste très difficile – même dans la prison qu’est devenu Gaza « libéré ». Pis : la guerre civile que le raïs voulait éviter menace. C’est dans ce contexte que les médias évoquent l’hypothèse d’un empoisonnement...
Israel : Olmert brings Lieberman’s far-right party into government
From WSWS (13.11.2006) :
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has brought Avigdor Lieberman, the leader of the far-right Israel Beitenu (Israel is Our Home) party, into his cabinet as deputy prime minister. Lieberman has been given the specially created post of minister of strategic affairs, dealing with threats against Israel, with a focus on Iran.
As a member of the foreign and defence committees and other “security cabinets,” and reporting directly to the prime minister, Lieberman will be one of the inner circle making Israel’s key decisions. He will be more powerful than either the defence or foreign ministers, Amir Peretz and Zippi Livni, both of whom are from the Labour Party.
Lieberman is an ultra-nationalist and notorious racist, who in 2001 advocated using nuclear weapons against Tehran as well as bombing Palestinian civilians and targeting Egypt’s Aswan High Dam. He is in favour of the ethnic cleansing of Israeli Arabs.
The War Crimes Case Against Rumsfeld
"Don't Leave Town, Don" by Marjorie Cohn at CounterPunch (10.11.2006).
Prodi : «Je suis obligé de mécontenter les gens»
Entretien avec Romano Prodi, propos recueillis par Jean-Michel Demetz & Vanja Luksic, à L'Express (08.11.2006).
Oubliez ce qu'écrivent les quotidiens italiens, qui évoquent déjà son successeur. Oubliez les joutes oratoires au Parlement. Cet homme n'est pas aux abois. Certes, six mois après la victoire, sur le fil, de sa coalition, qui va des sociaux-libéraux aux nostalgiques du marxisme, l'état de grâce est passé. La cote de popularité de son gouvernement a chuté de 20 points, les tensions sont manifestes au sein de sa majorité, les marchés financiers doutent de sa capacité de soigner un pays malade... Mais Romano Prodi semble n'en avoir cure. A 67 ans, il trace son sillon, prudent comme ses ancêtres paysans d'Emilie-Romagne, pédagogue comme l'ancien professeur d'économie qu'il fut. Il lui reste pourtant à prouver que le «prodisme» ne se limite pas à une stratégie de conquête du pouvoir doublée d'un parler vrai, mais qu'il peut déboucher sur la réforme. Et être un éventuel modèle.
Charges Sought Against Rumsfeld Over Prison Abuse
Just days after his resignation, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is about to face more repercussions for his involvement in the troubled wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. New legal documents, to be filed next week with Germany's top prosecutor, will seek a criminal investigation and prosecution of Rumsfeld, along with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former CIA director George Tenet and other senior U.S. civilian and military officers, for their alleged roles in abuses committed at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
La défense de l'environnement exige de nous une rupture fondamentale
Par Nicholas Sarkozy au Figaro (08.11.2006).
Old Man Out
"Outrage at 'old Europe' remarks" at BBC News (23.01.2003) :
"Germany has been a problem and France has been a problem," Mr Rumsfeld told Washington's foreign press corps on Wednesday.
"But you look at vast numbers of other countries in Europe, they're not with France and Germany... they're with the US.
"You're thinking of Europe as Germany and France. I don't," he said. "I think that's old Europe."
"Secretary Rumsfeld stepping down" at MSNBC (08.11.2006) :
WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld stepped down as defense secretary on Wednesday, one day after midterm elections in which opposition to the war in Iraq contributed to heavy Republican losses.
President Bush nominated Robert Gates, a former CIA director, to replace Rumsfeld at the Pentagon.
Asked whether his announcement signaled a new direction in the war that has claimed the lives of more than 2,800 U.S. troops, Bush said, “Well, there’s certainly going to be new leadership at the Pentagon.”
Bush lavished praise on Rumsfeld, who has spent six stormy years at his post. The president disclosed he met with Gates last Sunday, two days before the elections in which Democrats swept control of the House and possibly the Senate.
Military officials and politicians dissatisfied with the course of the war had called for Rumsfeld’s resignation in the months leading up to the election. Last week, as Bush campaigned to save the Republican majority, he declared that Rumsfeld would remain at the Pentagon through the end of his term.
It took two elections and the lives of 2800 men for this war criminal to resign. Walter Reed and Arlington are filled because of his ego, maybe 700,000 Iraqis lie dead because of his hubris. He should be dragged from the Pentagon and tossed on a plane to the Hague for war crimes trials like the Balkan war criminals.
America has suffered many incompetents, but even for a record of incomptence, Rumsfeld is in a special place. Blind, deaf, dumb, to reality, contemptous of the men he led, demanding lickspittle advisors, all of these are enough for any man to be fired.
Now, as I watch Bush fumble his way to not understanding that his war is over, I can only hope, no pray, that someone forgives us for letting these fools kill so many innocent people.
Joshua Holland, "Bush Replaces Rumsfeld with... Another Rumsfeld", at Alter Net (08.11.2006).
Jason Leopold, "Gates Has History of Manipulating Intelligence", at TruthOut (08.11.2006).
Michel Chossudovsky, "NeoCon Continuity at the Pentagon: Robert Gates Involved in Iran-Contra Scandal", at Global Research (09.11.2006).
Ray McGovern, "The Cheney-Gates Cabal", at TomPaine.com (09.11.2006).
Robert Parry, "The Secret World of Robert Gates ", at Consortiumnews.com (09.11.2006).
James Mann, "Close-Up : Young Rumsfeld", at The Atlantic Online (November 2003). [ Download (PDF) ]
Les nouveaux Goebbels des campus états-uniens
Par Harley Schlanger à Réseau Voltaire (07.11.2006) :
Les néo- conservateurs ont entrepris de transformer les États-Unis depuis le 11 septembre 2001. Pour y parvenir, ils ont pu bénéficier de la complaisance des médias dominants afin d’obtenir le consentement de la population. Mais pour inscrire leur action à plus long terme, ce mouvement cherche à influencer les universités qui forment les élites états-uniennes de demain. Harley Schlanger, responsable californien du mouvement de Lyndon LaRouche, décrypte l’action dans ce domaine de l’Ayn Rand Institute, organisation liée à Lynne Cheney, épouse du vice-président US.
"24 heures contre la censure" : 17 000 personnes ont voté contre les ennemis d’Internet
De Reporters sans frontières (08.11.2006) :
Les internautes se sont mobilisés massivement sur le site de Reporters sans frontières pour protester contre la censure d’Internet. L’association avait par ailleurs organisé hier des manifestations symboliques dans les rues de Paris et de New York. La page de mobilisation - http://www.rsf.org/24h, qui a reçu plus de 100 000 visites en 24h - restera accessible encore quelques jours pour que les internautes continuent d’y poster des messages.
"Nous souhaitions démontrer que les blogueurs et les internautes du monde entier se sentent concernés par le problème de la censure sur Internet. L’ampleur de la mobilisation démontre que le sort des cyberdissidents chinois, égyptiens ou cubains ne laisse pas indifférent. Nous avons par ailleurs constaté une nouvelle fois que les compromissions éthiques de Yahoo ! provoquent un véritable élan de réprobation. Il est temps que cette entreprise prenne des mesures concrètes pour respecter la liberté d’expression", a déclaré l’organisation.
The Scandal Sheet
By Mark Follman and Tracy Clark-Flory at The Salon (06.11.2006) :
Here we've gathered many, though certainly not all, of the presidential and Republican evils that have sprung up or come further to light during the last two years. Once again, these items are not arranged chronologically, or in terms of moral or historical weight. We'll get to torture and the war and illegal spying -- but upfront we want to alert you to some of the lesser-known or overlooked or now forgotten scandals. Lost track of all the Bush administration's trumped-up terror busts? Forgotten how the White House coerced government scientists to fudge the facts? Aware of the federal judges Bush nominated who violated ethics law?
And His Life Should Become Extinct
By Arundhati Roy at Outlook India/Countercurrents.org (31.10.2006). On Mohammed Afzal.
Rogue President
By Michael Carmichael at Global Research (25.10.2006) :
The president seems confused. After making a curious remark observing that the war in Iraq was placing a strain on the psyche of America, President Bush has become the primary focus of concerns about a strained psyche.
Last week, the president uttered more than one oracular pronouncement. First he acquiesced to the analogy that has been on everyone’s lips since well before the launch of the Iraq War – Does Iraq resemble Vietnam? In an interview with George Stephanopoulos, President Bush agreed that the Ramadan offensive in Iraq smacks of the Tet offensive of 1968.
Examining the Moonie Administration
The Japan Times features "On The 'Right' Track", "examining expected changes in three areas -- education, gender-equality and media -- under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who took office a month ago." 1) Akemi Nakamura, "Abe to play hardball with soft education system" (27.10.2006). 2) Jun Hongo, "Reactionary views, appointments obscured by his 'gentle' exterior?" (28.10.2006). 3) Hiroko Nakata, "Image-conscious Abe media manipulator?" (31.10.2006). Mr. Seko looks like Karl Rove... "Right" is ambiguous.
The Ryukyus and Taiwan in the East Asian Seas: A Longue Durée Perspective
By Man-Houng Lin at Japan Focus (27.10.2006) :
Traveling through East Asia, one can view historic imperial palaces in Beijing and Tokyo, and royal palaces reconstructed from the ruins left by fire and war in Seoul and Naha. Okinawa is the largest island in the Ryukyu archipelago. The Shuri palace in its capital, Naha, was constructed more than six hundred years ago by the rulers of the Ryukyu kingdom, which played a crucial role in maritime East Asia from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries. Today, it takes barely an hour to fly from Taipei to Naha, and the Shuri castle, reconstructed three times in the last century, has been designated a World Heritage Site in an attempt to evoke its former grandeur.
Interview with Camille Paglia
Published by Salon.com (27.10.2006) :
What are you working on these days?
My new book, which is under contract to Pantheon, is about visual images. It's a companion book to "Break, Blow, Burn" and is addressed to the general audience. As a longtime fan of talk radio, I'm very worried about the low opinion that conservative hosts and callers have of the American artist. Art is portrayed as a scam, a rip-off and snow job pushed by snobbish elites.
I was warning about this for years in my Salon column. I was virtually alone on the pro-art side in criticizing the Brooklyn Museum's 1999 "Sensation" exhibit for its needless provocations, which I foresaw would damage support for arts funding at the local level nationwide. Now the cold reality seems to be sinking in.
Interview with Ron Suskind
"The President Knows more than He Lets on" at Spiegel International (27.10.2006) :
SPIEGEL ONLINE: With all your access to high-level sources, have you come across anyone who still thinks it is a good idea for the US to torture people?
Suskind: No. Most of the folks involved say that we made mistakes at the start. The president wants to keep all options open because he never wants his hands tied in any fashion, as he says, because he doesn't know what's ahead. But those involved in the interrogation protocol, I think are more or less in concert in saying that, in our panic in the early days, we made some mistakes.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Because they could have gotten information through normal interrogations ...
Suskind: ... yes, and without paying this terrific price, namely: America's moral standing. We poured plenteous gasoline on the fires of jihadist recruitment.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: So the average interrogator at a Black Site understands more about the mistakes made than the president?
Suskind: The president understands more about the mistakes than he lets on. He knows what the most-skilled interrogators know too. He gets briefed, and he was deeply involved in this process from the beginning. The president loves to talk to operators.
The Armageddon Lobby
"Dispensationalist Christian Zionism and the Shaping of US Policy Towards Israel-Palestine" by Rammy M. Haija at ICH (n.d.) :
Abstract
This article investigates the history of contemporary Christian Zionism in the United States and the impact of this movement on US policy issues related to Israel-Palestine. Dispensationalist Christian Zionists, often described the 'Armageddon lobby', make up the largest voting bloc in the Republican Party and have become a mainstay in US politics. More recently, the Christian Zionist lobby has had a profoundly damaging impact on the Israeli-Palestinian 'peace process' as well as creating a conspiracy of silence regarding Israeli offensives in the occupied Palestinian territories. Though the 'Armageddon lobby' has been successful in its efforts as a pro-Israel lobby, its influence is in fact counterproductive to Israel because the lobby hinders the prospect of Israel living in peace because of their policy of deterring the progression of negotiations.
The phantom occupation of Iraq
By Brendan O'Neill at Spiked Online (26.10.2006). — Will America and Britain ‘cut and run’ from Iraq? That is the question everyone seems to be asking, following recent handwringing debates in Washington and London.
The C.I.A.'s Travel Agent
By Jane Mayer at The New Yorker (30.10.2006 Issue) :
On the official Web site of Boeing, the world’s largest aerospace company, there is a section devoted to a subsidiary called Jeppesen International Trip Planning, based in San Jose, California. The write-up mentions that the division “offers everything needed for efficient, hassle-free, international flight operations,” spanning the globe “from Aachen to Zhengzhou.” The paragraph concludes, “Jeppesen has done it all.”
Boeing does not mention, either on its Web site or in its annual report, that Jeppesen’s clients include the C.I.A., and that among the international trips that the company plans for the agency are secret “extraordinary rendition” flights for terrorism suspects. Most of the planes used in rendition flights are owned and operated by tiny charter airlines that function as C.I.A. front companies, but it is not widely known that the agency has turned to a division of Boeing, the publicly traded blue-chip behemoth, to handle many of the logistical and navigational details for these trips, including flight plans, clearance to fly over other countries, hotel reservations, and ground-crew arrangements.
Lieberman Is Not An Israeli ‘Internal Affair’
By Nicola Nasser at Countercurrents.org (27.10.2006) :
The absence of a proportionate Palestinian reaction to the ascendancy of Israel’s far right leader, Avigdor Lieberman, into the mainstream strategic decision-making in Tel Aviv has indicated of how dangerously the inter-Palestinian divide is overshadowing the Israeli threats and encouraged the visiting European Union's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, to legitimize with a public meeting the only man who could abort not only the mission of his visit but all prospects of regional peace.
In a move that threatens to destabilize the already explosive regional situation, heralds an Israeli escalation towards a war with Iran in tandem with the U.S.-led anti-Iran campaign and pre-empts any credible prospects for initiating a new peace process if not reviving the old “Road Map”-based process, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert signed a deal last week to bring Lieberman and his party Israel Beitenu (Israel Our Home) into his ruling coalition, in a bid for political survival following the fiasco in Lebanon, thus consolidating his power but confusing whatever Israel has of a peace vision.
Out Of The shadows: Israel's Minister Of Strategic Threats
By Jonathan Cook at Countercurrents.org (26.10.2006).