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Sidney Blumenthal
On virtually every single important claim made by the Bush Administration in its case for war, there was serious dissension. Discordant views - not from individual analysts but from several intelligence agencies as a whole - were kept from the public as momentum was built for a congressional vote on the war resolution. Precisely because of the qualms the Administration encountered, it created a rogue intelligence operation located within the Pentagon and under the control of neo-conservatives. At the same time, constant pressure was applied to the intelligence agencies to force their compliance.
Frida Berrigan
At a 1996 energy conference in New Orleans, Dick Cheney, then CEO of Halliburton said “the problem is that the good Lord didn?t see fit to put oil and gas reserves where there are democratic governments.” Laying the blame on the divine is a stretch, but it seems that the vice president is right: democracy and oil do not mix. Just look at the United States? top 10 oil suppliers. Algeria, Angola, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia are repressive regimes with deplorable human rights records. Mexico and Venezuela, while democracies, are marked by instability, inequality and civil strife. Iraq remains at war and under occupation. Only Norway, Canada and the United Kingdom are fully functioning democracies.
Neve Gordon
Anyone who follows the news has no doubt come across the claim that “Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East.” Usually, this claim is followed by its logical inference: “As an island of freedom located in a region controlled by military dictators, feudal kings and religious leaders, Israel should receive unreserved support from western liberal states interested in strengthening democratic values around the globe.” Over the years, some of the fallacies informing this line of argument have been exposed. Whereas many commentators have emphasized that foreign policy is determined by selfish interests rather than by moral dictates, few analysts have challenged the prevailing view that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East.
Mark Zeitoun
Last summer was long and hot in the West Bank. It was also very dry. Palestinian summers typically are dry, and water for crops and drinking has always been scarce. But for Palestinians suffering under a double yoke of drought-level rainfall and the Israeli occupation, these years are drier and thirstier than ever. The only permanent surface watercourses in the area are the Jordan River and the Lake of Tiberias. The waters are allocated, under the terms of a 1996 agreement, between Jordan and Israel. The Palestinians living along the Jordan River’s west bank are entitled to not a drop of it.
Rahul Mahajan
In the late 19th-century folk classic, the wily Brer Rabbit is caught by Brer Fox. He?s stuck to a “Tar Baby” and Brer Fox is going to eat him up. So Brer Rabbit repeatedly says, “Do anything. Roast me. Skin me. Eat me. Just don?t throw me in that briar patch.” After much importuning, the sadistic Brer Fox throws him in the briar patch and, of course, Brer Rabbit gets away. We are now witnessing a replay, with the Bush administration as Brer Rabbit, the stunning lack of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction as the Tar Baby, and the expected “bipartisan commission” into the WMD intelligence fiasco as the briar patch.
Salim Lone
Even as one recoils at the carnage caused by the suicide bombings at the offices of Kurdish political parties, it becomes ever more impossible to understand how the US can justify occupation policies that have singularly failed to quell the insurgency and the spectre of civil war - and have not won over even a tiny minority of Iraqis to support continued US control. The latest strikes will also complicate Kofi Annan’s decision on whether to field the UN’s world-class electoral team in Iraq, even though there is widespread agreement on the need for UN involvement in the process leading to the end of the occupation. In the darkness, however, there is a glimmer of hope.
Geoffrey Lean
If people in the UK think that the recent snowy weather was inconvenient, they should spare a thought for their children. According to new research, Britain is likely to be plunged into an ice age within our lifetime. The study, which is being taken seriously by top government scientists, has uncovered a change “of remarkable amplitude” in the circulation of the waters of the North Atlantic, that could turn off the Gulf Stream. If it happens, Britain and northern Europe are expected to switch abruptly to the climate of Labrador - which is on the same latitude - bringing a nightmare scenario where farmland turns to tundra and winter temperatures drop below -20C. The much-maligned cold snap would seem balmy by comparison.
Mustafa Barghouthi
Israel has committed litany of atrocities during its occupation of Palestine, but the crimes visited daily upon the innocent civilians of Rafah are among the most heinous. Even in the wider context of the occupation as a whole, Rafah?s situation is particularly tragic, and the conditions imposed on its citizens increasingly desperate. There can be no doubt that Israeli policy in Rafah amounts to a process of ethnic cleansing, and, as has been so often the case throughout history, a humanitarian catastrophe is being allowed to continue unimpeded as the world sits idly by.
Mike Whitney
Should we thank President Bush for rekindling the Cold War now, or wait until the bombs start falling? The Associated Press is reporting that “Russia?s nuclear forces are preparing their largest maneuvers in two decades, an exercise involving the test firing of missals and flights by dozens of bombers in a massive simulation of an all-out nuclear war”; a scenario much like the type of Biblical Armageddon that we expected when George the Apostle first took office. The maneuvers will also involve the test firing of cruise missals over the northern Atlantic and near the Caspian Basin, as well as launching several intercontinental ballistic missals from both land and sea. Analysts describe the exercise as an imitation of a nuclear attack on the United States.
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