[Peace] News notes for the AWARE meeting 2007-11-11

[C. G. Estabrook]

SUNDAY 11 NOVEMBER 2007
[ON THIS DAY IN 1918 an armistice concluded the "Great War," with 10 
million dead (6 million of them civilians), 21 million wounded and 7 1/2 
million taken prisoner or missing in action. Germany, Russia, 
Austria-Hungary, France and Great Britain each lost a million or more 
lives; U.S. forces counted 115,000 dead. A worldwide influenza epidemic 
-- brought to the war by the Untied States -- killed 22 million more by 
1920.  On the eve of the war, in August 1914, pacifist Bertrand Russell 
had written, "Behind the diplomats, dimly heard in the official 
documents, stand vast forces of national greed and hatred ... 
concentrated and directed by governments and the press, fostered by the 
upper class as a distraction from social discontent, artificially 
nourished by the sinister influence of the makers of armaments, 
encouraged by a whole foul literature of 'glory', and by every text-book 
of history with which the minds of children are polluted."  As it began, 
anarchist Errico Malatesta wrote prophetically, "There will be no 
definite victory on either side. After a long war an enormous loss of 
life and wealth, both sides being exhausted, some kind of peace will be 
patched up leaving all questions open, thus preparing for a new war more 
murderous than the present."]

[1] SENATE. Anyone who thought that the Democrats were screwing up the 
opposition to the administration's war policy by accident or ineptitude 
and not by design, now have incontrovertible proof that they're wrong. 
The Democrats are doing it on purpose:  this week they had the votes to 
reject the nomination of torture-friendly Judge Mukasey as Attorney 
General, and they chose to allow his approval, by a 53-40 vote in the 
Senate.  The Democratic senators running for president --  Clinton, 
Obama, Biden and Dodd -- didn't even bother to vote, much less 
participate in what would have been a successful filibuster against it.

[2] TORTURE. Our local daily ran a remarkable column from McClatchy 
newspapers today entitled "One Day, Bush Will Pay," by a reporter who 
witnessed waterboarding in Vietnam and writes that of course it's 
torture.  "The president, Vice President Dick Cheney, and their cronies 
and legal mouthpieces such as David Addington, John Yoo and Alberto 
Gonzales are doing all they can to avoid one day facing the bar of 
justice, at home or in The Hague, and being called to account for crimes 
against humanity ... No matter how desperately his entire administration 
tries to redefine the word 'torture' to cover the fact that not only 
have they acquiesced in its use, but they also have ordered its use."

[3] HOUSE. But in the meantime the administration can count on the 
Democrats.  Rep. Kucinich's impeachment resolution was scuttled by the 
Democratic leadership of the House, altho' some think Rep. Conyers, 
chair of the Judiciary Committee, will save it.  Perhaps, but I doubt it.

[4] HOUSE.  Meanwhile, the Democratic House leadership announced 
Thursday that they will give the administration another $50 billion to 
kill people in the Middle East.  But they'll include some really strong 
whining.  The point is of course that they approve of the general policy 
of which the war is a part: they just want to pin its failures on the 
Republicans.  I hope Pelosi et al. will pay, too; but I doubt that, too.

[5] IRAQ.  Amidst talk on all sides in the press and the parties about 
how things are "improving" in Iraq comes the news that 2007 is *already* 
the deadliest year for American troops since the invasion began.  A CNN 
poll registers opposition to the Iraq war at an "all-time high," and a 
Pew survey finds that 47 percent of respondents say "Democratic leaders 
in Congress are not going far enough in challenging President Bush's 
Iraq policies," a percentage that "has been increasing fairly steadily 
since March, when 40% expressed this view."  People are not fools, 
however misled.

[6] ISRAEL.  There are reports that the US has okayed an Israeli 
military attack within Gaza, the world's largest concentration camp. The 
NYT reports only that hundreds of Palestinian students in Gaza who have 
been admitted to foreign universities are not being allowed to leave. 
Meanwhile Rep. James Moran (D-VA) again rapped Jewish groups for 
misrepresenting the views of US Jews, this time on Iran.

[7] CENTRAL AMERICA.  In Guatemala, center-leftist Álvaro Colom won a 
startling victory in the presidential election last Sunday over rightist 
army Gen. Otto Pérez Molina.

[8] MIDDLE EAST.  In Pakistan, Gen Musharraf's auto-coup necessitated a 
rhetorical change in Washington.  The end of Bush's "Freedom Agenda" 
meant, as even the WP said, "a pragmatic new foreign policy: The Stand 
by Your Man Agenda."

[9] MARKETS. Stock markets on both sides of the Atlantic concluded their 
worst week in months as deepening economic gloom prompted investors to 
ratchet up bets that the US Federal Reserve would be forced to cut rates 
again in the face of mounting credit losses.  Gold was higher by an 
astonishing 32.5% and oil by 61.6% in the past year.  But the reason is 
the dollar slump -- commodities have not risen so much relative to one 
another.  China let it be known this week that it was looking to 
diversify some of its vast dollar holdings.

[10] ASIA.  Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and his Russian counterpart 
Viktor Zubkov in Moscow on Tuesday signed a joint communique pledging to 
broaden cooperation in energy and economics (the great fear of the USG). 
  Xinhua reports that Russia is the final leg of Wen's four-nation 
visit. Wen has already visited Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Belarus and 
attended the sixth Meeting of Prime Ministers of the Member States of 
the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

[11] WE DID IT FOR THE CHILDREN.  Two wars and a decade of sanctions 
have led to a huge rise in the mortality rate among young children in 
Iraq, leaving statistics that were once the envy of the Arab world now 
comparable with those of sub-Saharan Africa. (Of course, the United 
States itself ranks near the bottom for infant survival rates among 
industrialized nations.)

[12] FINAL HOPEFUL NOTE (FOR LINDA).  A Gallup poll shows that by 
64%-31%, Americans disapprove of the job Bush is doing; 50% "strongly 
disapprove."  On the eve of his resignation, similar polls showed only 
48% strongly disapproved of Richard Nixon.

--Carl Estabrook <www.newsfromneptune.com>

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