by David Steven | Oct 12, 2007 | Climate and resource scarcity, North America
A UN body and a US Democrat – it’s the reddest of red rags for the American right…
Update: Breaking:
Although former Vice President Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize this week for his work as a global-warming performance artist, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled early today that President George Bush would receive the gold medal, the diploma and the $750,000.
Update II: Jonas Kyratzes:
Seriously, people. There are certainly more disgusting figures than Gore – Bush, Kerry, Blair, etc. But just because he’s occasionally put forth an idea which isn’t catastrophically idiotic (Bush), appallingly opportunistic (Kerry) or just butt-crawlingly evil (Blair), doesn’t mean he should be elevated to being the god of the Vaguely Progressive There’s Something Wrong With The World But We Refuse To Use Our Brains To Analyze It movement.
Pajamas Media has a huge round-up, which is mostly in the same vein.
It’s the Gore-problem in a nutshell. He’s persuaded a lot of Americans to take climate seriously, but left others even more entrenched in their belief that it’s a ‘vast left-wing plot‘.
Update III: Time to consult the Goracle…
Update IV: Rush Limbaugh: Gore should hand the award over to “genuine agents of peace: General Petraeus, the U.S. military, and its commander-in-chief [George Bush].
Iain Murray has an especially helpful suggestion: “Who Else Should Al Gore Share the Prize With? How about that well known peace campaigner Osama Bin Laden, who implicitly endorsed Gore’s stance – and that of the Nobel committee – in his September rant from the cave.”
Melanie Phillips: “Awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Gore— along with the wretched Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change whose own untruths would fill a book — perfectly symbolises a western world that has lost its reason and its capacity to tell truth from lies.”
Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld: He’s killing the planet through hypocrisy and blame. If you disagree with him, you’re a heretic and if you agree with him, you’re doomed.
by Alex Evans | Oct 12, 2007 | Middle East and North Africa, North America
I’m wading through Bob Woodward’s outstanding State of Denial. The first few chapters are almost entirely devoted to a detailed discussion of the early years of the Pentagon under Donald Rumsfeld, who must surely win some kind of prize for the boss from hell. But then (page 75) comes a fascinating vignette about Saudi Arabia’s posture on US-Israeli relations, during an episode in August 2001.
According to Woodward, Crown Prince Abdullah was so appalled by seeing an Israeli soldier first push and then step on an elderly Palestinian woman that he dispatched Bandar bin Sultan – Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the US and all-purpose political fixer – to the White House with an unprecedented message:
“Mr President,” Bandar began, “this is the most difficult message I have had to convey to you that I have every conveyed between the two governments since I started working here in Washington in 1982.”
Bandar’s message continued that while US policy on Israel had in the past been balanced – as when Bush senior had suspended loan guarantees to Israel over illegal settlements – this was no longer the case. “The Crown Prince has tried to find many excuses for this administration and we couldn’t.” Ariel Sharon had been permitted to “determine everything in the Middle East”. The message wenton, “What pained the Crown Prince more is the continuance of American ignorance of Israel upholding policies as if a drop of Jewish blood is equal to thousands of Palestinian lives.”
Then came the action line. “Therefore the Crown Prince will not communicate in any form, type or shape with you, and Saudi Arabia will take all its political, economic and security decisions based on how it sees its own interest in the region without taking into account American interests anymore because it is obvious that the United States has taken a strategic decision adopting Sharon’s policy.”
Naturally, the Administration was stunned. Colin Powell is quoted as demanding of Bandar, “What the fuck are you doing? You’re putting the fear of God in everybody here. You scared the shit out of everybody.” But by August 29, Bush had sent a two page letter to Abdullah that began, “Let me make one thing clear up front: nothing should ever break the relationship between us. ” The letter went on:
“I firmly believe the Palestinian people have a right to self-determination and to live peacefully and securely in their own state, in their own homeland, just as the Israelis have the right to live peacefully and safely in their own state.”
As Woodward observes, “it was a much bigger step than President Clinton had ever taken. Even as Clinton had tried to fashion a Middle East peace agreement as his legacy, he had never directly supported a separate Palestinian state.” Crown Prince Abdullah, Woodward continues, was relieved. But he had one further ask: “…it is very essential that you declare your position publicly which was stated in your letter. Such a declaration at this level will eliminate the common impression prevailing in the region of the US bias to Israel.” And then:
Bush agreed to come out publicly for a Palestinian state. A big rollout was planned for the week of September 10, 2001.
In the event, Bush would not make his speech calling for a Palestinian state until June the following year, and it would be April 2003 before details of the ‘Road Map’ were released following the appointment of Mahmoud Abbas as Palestinian Prime Minister – by which time the intifada had been fermenting for another eighteen months.
by David Steven | Sep 20, 2007 | Middle East and North Africa, North America
Writing in Salon, Steve Clemons recalls a round table he organised 18 months ago on the prospects for war with Iran. Then an unnamed former official in the Bush administration had this to say:
The President is going to receive a memo — some time in the next 6 to 12 months — that presents a “bleak binary choice”. Either he takes action to preempt Iran from reaching a nuclear threshold and calls for a military strike or he stands down and accepts a future with Iran with nuclear weapons.
Condi’s job is to develop a “third option”. She will dance round and round, waltzing with that third option. She will dance faster and faster with it, spinning and spinning, all around she’ll go — but when she’s done she’ll see that she’s dancing with a corpse.
This President is the kind of president who believes it is his moral responsibility to address serious problems now and not to leave these tough actions to a successor.
Those are the cold, harsh realities that we face — and to me, as I look ahead, I don’t see how we come out of this without military action. Unless Iran abandons its nuclear weapons intentions, which I don’t see happening, there will be a war.
So war with Iran is inevitable, right? Clemons says no – arguing that Cheney’s influence is on the wane, the military is strongly opposed to action, and that the President’s body language suggests air strikes are unlikely:
To date… nothing suggests Bush is really going to do it. If he were, he wouldn’t be playing good cop/bad cop with Iran and proposing engagement. If the bombs were at the ready, Bush would be doing a lot more to prepare the nation and the military for a war far more consequential than the invasion of Iraq. There is also circumstantial evidence that he has decided bombing may be too costly a choice.
All very reassuring. Until you reach the last few paras, that is, when Clemons starts back pedalling:
What we should worry about, however, is the continued effort by the neocons to shore up their sagging influence. They now fear that events and arguments could intervene to keep what once seemed like a “nearly inevitable” attack from happening. They know that they must keep up the pressure on Bush and maintain a drumbeat calling for war.
They are doing exactly this during September and October in a series of meetings organized by the American Enterprise Institute on Iran and Iraq designed to reemphasize the case for hawkish, interventionist deployments in Iraq and a military, regime-change-oriented strike against Iran. And through Op-Eds and the serious political media, the “bomb Iran now” crowd believes they must undermine those in and out of government proposing alternatives to bombing and keep the president and his people saturated with pro-war mantras.
We should also worry about the kind of scenario David Wurmser floated, meaning an engineered provocation. An “accidental war” would escalate quickly and “end run,” as Wurmser put it, the president’s diplomatic, intelligence and military decision-making apparatus. It would most likely be triggered by one or both of the two people who would see their political fortunes rise through a new conflict — Cheney and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
That kind of war is much more probable and very much worth worrying about.
by David Steven | Sep 20, 2007 | North America
The leader of the Western world, yesterday:
Asked what traits people should look for in choosing a President, George Bush responded immediately: “Be comfortable with your family. Work hard to make sure there is love in the White House.”
He went on to talk about how a president needs to have “rock solid” principles and warned that D.C. is a town where they will be constantly challenged. “If your principles ever get eroded, I don’t know how you will look in the mirror.”
He also said it was important to “soak in the beauty and greatness of America.” And whoever gets to the White House, he says: “Enjoy it as best you possibly can.” Reflectively he said of running for president, “I’m glad I did it.”
by Alex Evans | Sep 9, 2007 | Climate and resource scarcity, Conflict and security, Influence and networks
Osama’s new video is worth watching / reading in full. He’s been reading Chomsky, and it shows. Multinational corporations figure heavily, and there’s even strong criticism of the US withdrawal from Kyoto.
Here’s the transcript:
(more…)
