[Peace] News notes for the AWARE meeting 2008-01-20: faction
fights
Morton K. Brussel
brussel4 at insightbb.com
Mon Jan 21 16:03:23 CST 2008
Shame on you---the Boston game was over---but thanks for a good recap
of the news of the week. --mkb
On Jan 21, 2008, at 2:17 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> [AWAREists-- Sorry I wasn't there to deliver these last night, but
> I was investigating a faction fight amongst uniformed forces (the
> professional football playoffs...) --CGE]
>
>
> SUNDAY 20 JANUARY 2008. ONE YEAR FROM TODAY a new chief magistrate of
> the United States of America is scheduled to be inaugurated. I think
> however it would be a mistake to think either (a) the Bush
> administration is over, or (b) the new administration will follow
> substantially different policies, absent serious public pressure --
> which of course it is the business of the media and the political
> system
> to prevent.
>
> [1] FEAR AND LOATHING OF THE ECONOMY have so possessed the authorities
> in the central bank and the treasury that they've sent out the
> president
> and the chairman of the Federal Reserve to say that nothing's
> wrong, but they're going to fix it: interest rate cuts and a $150B
> “stimulus package” (which I thought was what I keep getting spam
> about).
> The economic news is in fact quite bad, and it's suggested that
> the authorities are aware of worse to come. The Dow-Jones industrial
> average is down 2,000 points from its October high; wholesale
> inflation
> has taken the worst jump in 26 years; and the Financial Times reports
> that a rise in import prices spurs fears of 1970s-style stagflation
> (prices go up, jobs go down).
> There will probably be a decline in buying and selling in 2008 and
> a concomitant rise in unemployment (“recession”). Most Americans
> will find their economic circumstances tightening further, while
> the few who control wealth and power will do very well. E.g., Alan
> Greenspan, the Ayn Rand devotee who as chairman of the Federal
> Reserve shaped the
> policies that gave us the now-burst housing bubble, has gone to
> work for
> a hedge fund manager, John Paulson, who personally made billions [sic]
> this year by shorting the subprime crisis – which Greenspan's policies
> caused. Alan, who really wanted to be a jazz musician when he was
> young, goes to his reward...
>
> [2] THE FOREIGN POLICY OF THE LAST YEAR OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION
> apparently is being shaped by a bitter fight within the only effective
> branch of the USG, the executive, between the war party (centered
> in the
> OVP and the Rumsfeld civilians in the Pentagon) and the foreign policy
> establishment (the “permanent government,” centered in the
> “intelligence
> community,” the Department of State, and the uniformed military –
> itself
> riven by faction). Both are of course devoted to the constant goal of
> US foreign policy – control of ME energy resources as a strangle-
> hold on
> America's economic rivals – but they differ in tactics (notably
> regarding attacking Iran). The latter seems recently to have gone
> into
> the ascendant (perhaps because of a shift by Bush and the White House
> from Cheney to Rice/Gates). The change was announced by the recent
> National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), which – contrary to the war
> party's frenzied claims – said that Iran was not much of a threat.
> On his ME trip, Bush seemed to distance himself from the report –
> by saying that it was crafted by “independent” spy agencies
> (independent from the war party, he means) who “come to conclusions
> separate from what I may or may not want” [sic]. But the White
> House rushed forward Thursday to contradict him, according to
> Agence-France Presse: White House spokesman Tony Fratto told
> reporters, “The president stands by the full scope of the findings
> in that they were put together by incredibly dedicated people that
> did their best work and put their best views out”!
> Meanwhile, the corresponding factions in the military are openly
> debating troop cuts in Iraq: US Iraq commander Petraeus says that he
> will decide (as Bush indicated), and the Joint Chiefs of Staff reply
> that no, he won't: they will. And the chairman of the JCS casually
> outrages the war party by saying that the US concentration camp at
> Guantanamo Bay should be closed!
>
> [3] THE WAR CONTINUES, ALTHOUGH THE COVERAGE DOESN'T. The U.S.
> conducted more than five times as many airstrikes in Iraq in 2007
> as it
> did in 2006. And the “war on terror” moves East to the “good war,”
> avidly promoted by the Democrats. (See John Pilger's piece on the war
> in Afghanistan, “The 'Good War' is a Bad War.”) SOD Gates faults NATO
> forces in southern Afghanistan for not trying hard enough. Lord
> Ashdown
> (“Paddy” from his schoolboy NIreland accent), the UN proconsul in
> Bosnia (and former special forces officer and leader of the Liberal
> Democrat party) will become the United Nations' envoy to
> Afghanistan, “expected to achieve nothing less than to save the
> faltering Western mission in
> Afghanistan,” says the British press.
> Admiral William Fallon, the commander of CENTCOM [the US military
> district of the Middle East] says that Pakistan OKs a bigger US
> role after “negotiations” with Musharraf who had previously vigorously
> rejected such a suggestion. (Fallon, technically Petraeus' superior,
> seems not to have denied the story, put about by Pentagon sources,
> that
> at their first meeting in Baghdad in March, Fallon told Petraeus
> that he
> considered him to be "an ass-kissing little chickenshit" and added, "I
> hate people like that.")
>
> [4] DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE MIKE MCCONNELL is profiled in
> the
> current New Yorker. The article should perhaps be read as an
> update to
> Tim Weiner's 2007 book, *Legacy of Ashes: the History of the CIA*.
> Weiner is a NYT reporter and no lefty, but he is a severe critic of
> the
> US “intelligence community” from WWII on, for what he sees as
> stupidity
> and incompetence. But he describes murder and criminality with a
> curious
> acceptance that makes sense only under the supposition that, as Noam
> Chomsky recently titled an article worth reading, “We [i.e., the
> US] own
> the world.”
> McConnell, a retired admiral who was Colin Powell’s intelligence
> officer before and during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and had
> directed
> the National Security Agency [electronic spying] from 1992 to 1996,
> was
> working for a defense contractor [“and finally making real money”]
> when
> he was approached about the D.N.I. position. He wants "reforms" to
> the
> Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that will make the
> current
> debate “a walk in the park.” It was McConnell’s decision to
> declassify
> the recent National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear program,
> after he had initially said that it would remain classified.
>
> [5] MAKE FRIENDS FOR YOURSELF WITH THE MAMMON OF INIQUITY. Stephen
> Cambone -- Igor to Rumsfeld's Dr. Frankenstein -- the Pentagon
> spychief
> and head of special operations (murder and torture, free even of the
> control supposedly exercised over the CIA) while Rumsfeld was SOD,
> resigned when Rumsfeld did. In 2006 Germany decided, within the legal
> framework of universal jurisdiction, to prosecute Cambone for the Abu
> Ghraib torture. (Nothing came of it.)
> Now Cambone has been hired by a “defense contractor” created by
> the British Ministry of Defense. Two months later the company
> received a multi-million dollar contract for unspecified “security
> services” from a Pentagon office that claims to monitor terrorist
> threats to U.S.
> military bases in North America -- and was once reprimanded by the US
> Congress for spying on antiwar activists -- the “Counter-Intelligence
> Field Activity” office. Cambone created the office while he was in
> the Pentagon...
>
> [6] WILL IT SURPRISE YOU TO HEAR THE THE DEMOCRATS ARE NOT REALLY
> ANTI-WAR? House Democrats rolled over again this week and passed the
> defense bill that include exemption of Iraq from lawsuits dating
> back to
> Saddam Hussein, as the administration demanded.
> A coalition of fake anti-war groups – Democratic party fronts like
> MoveOn, Americans Against Escalation in Iraq et al. -- admitted
> this week that they're not really going to oppose the war in the
> Congress. ("Anti-war groups retreat on funding fight," read the
> headline.) They'll simply try to use the war for the electoral
> advantage of the Democratic party against Republicans by questioning
> the administration's arrangements with the Maliki government.
>
> [7] THE PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARIES are a contemptuous parody of democracy,
> designed to forestall policies desired by the majority, such as an end
> to the war and universal health care. But they will labor for another
> ten months to give us a run-off between two pro-war, pro-corporate
> candidates (so that it won't matter to our rulers which you pick).
> If it's McCain against Clinton, we'll choose between an authentic
> war criminal and the wife of one, but the campaign and the media
> successfully cover that over: in NH, the 34% of Republican primary
> voters who said they disapproved of the war voted overwhelmingly for
> McCain, a rabid advocate of the war, who's considering warmongering
> Democrat Joe Lieberman as a running mate!
> A new AP-Ipsos national poll reported last week shows that the war
> and the economy tie as the top issues in the public's minds. Robert
> Weissman at counterpunch.org reports polls that show that the "public
> holds Big Business in shockingly low regard." The job of he
> campaign is
> to erase these views.
> Since real issues can't be discussed, this week Clinton used race
> against Obama (it had apparently been effective in NH); Obama
> praised Reagan for dealing with the "excesses of the '60s and
> '70s" (from Obama's book it's clear that he meant the anti-war
> movement); and the surprisingly strong vote for Ron Paul in Nevada
> -- because of his
> uncompromising anti-war position and worries about the economy -- goes
> unmentioned in the media. And while all the other GOP candidates were
> ready to attack Iran after the (faked) Straits of Hormuz incident, Ron
> Paul alone expressed skepticism about it and and warned against a rush
> to war.
>
> [8] IN LATIN AMERICA, Guatemala's first leftist president since the US
> overthrew an elected government 50 years ago (see Weiner's book for an
> account of the stupid and criminal action by the CIA), Alvaro Colom,
> took office Monday with a pledge to help the poor; Brazil’s president
> offered Cuba a $1-billion line of credit; and the US foreign policy
> establishment, including the media, appears to think that Venezuela is
> off-base for supporting a negotiated solution to the conflict in
> Colombia – which is the result of US support for a murderous regime
> there.
>
> [9] THE CHIEF CLIENT AT WORK. Israel Defense Forces troops on Tuesday
> killed at least 19 Palestinians, including three civilians, in ground
> and air attacks on the Gaza Strip. In Israel and the Occupied
> Territories, Israel has ordered the closure of all crossings into the
> Gaza Strip. The border had already been heavily restricted, but now
> all
> goods have been blocked, including humanitarian supplies from the UN.
> This collective punishment was justified by the Israeli government
> spokesman who said, “It’s unacceptable that people in Sderot are
> living
> in fear every day and people in the Gaza Strip are living life as
> usual.”
> Israel needs to promote the war to resist US pressure for a
> settlement. The Israeli paper Ha'aretz reported that – after Bush's
> visit – a “senior American diplomat” (Rice?) made it clear to the
> Israeli government that the USG disapproves of all building in East
> Jerusalem and the West Bank -- including in the large settlement
> blocs.
>
> [10] FINAL HOPEFUL NOTE (FOR LINDA). New NYT columnist, the neocon
> William Kristol (once foreign policy advisor to Dan Quayle) seems
> to get
> it right: "that National Intelligence Estimate ... was, I think, an
> attempt by the intelligence agencies to prevent the Bush
> administration
> from sort of seriously considering taking action" (viz., bombing
> Iran -- but they still might).
> The Regency wit (and a good bit more), Rev. Sydney Smith, when
> walking through an Edinburgh alleyway, saw two women shouting abuse
> at one another across the alley from their tenement windows.
> "They'll never
> agree," he said. "They're arguing from different premises." (And
> Flann
> O’Brien improved on the line in At Swim Two Birds: "The conclusion of
> your syllogism, I said lightly, is fallacious, being based upon
> licensed
> premises.")
>
> --Carl Estabrook <www.newsfromneptune.com>
>
> ###
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