IAEA resolution as I see it.

The International Atomic Energy Agency's resolution on Iran among other items says:


Underlines that outstanding questions can best be resolved and confidence built in the
exclusively peaceful nature of Iran's programme by Iran responding positively to the calls for
confidence building measures which the Board has made on Iran, and in this context deems it
necessary for Iran to:
• re-establish full and sustained suspension of all enrichment-related and reprocessing
activities, including research and development, to be verified by the Agency;
• reconsider the construction of a research reactor moderated by heavy water;
• ratify promptly and implement in full the Additional Protocol;
• pending ratification, continue to act in accordance with the provisions of the Additional
Protocol which Iran signed on 18 December 2003;
• implement transparency measures, as requested by the Director General, including in
GOV/2005/67, which extend beyond the formal requirements of the Safeguards Agreement
and Additional Protocol, and include such access to individuals, documentation relating to procurement, dual use equipment, certain military-owned workshops and research and
development as the Agency may request in support of its ongoing investigations;




So IAEA defines the "Additional Protocol", Iran accepts it (meaning it would implement its terms, but wont officially ratify it unless the whole issue is resolved) and implemented its requirements for three years. It says:

Recalling that in reports referred to above, the Director General noted that after nearly
three years of intensive verification activity, the Agency is not yet in a position to clarify some
important issues relating to Iran's nuclear programme or to conclude that there are no
undeclared nuclear materials or activities in Iran,


After three years IAEA says Iran may (or may not) have nuclear weapons program. Now if after three years it can't say definitively one way or another, what is the point of the protocol? It seems to me the issue here is IAEA much more so that Iran, it can't define a process to have a firm conclusion one way or another.

The last items is replay of run up to Iraq war..."implement transparency measures..." . IAEA came up with the additional protocol, which some countries have signed, what does it mean to ask for additional measures that extend beyond the formal requirements of the Safeguards Agreement and Additional Protocol. Wouldn't after this there be yet more additional measures, that would extend the already additional measures that extended beyond the formal requirements of the Additional Protocol? Is this about doubling the requirements each time?

These items are rather interesting too:

(j) Recalling that in November 2005 the Director General reported (GOV/2005/87) that Iran possesses a document related to the procedural requirements for the reduction of UF6 to metalin small quantities, and on the casting and machining of enriched, natural and depleted uranium metal into hemispherical forms,

and,

Expresses serious concern that the Agency is not yet in a position to clarify some important issues relating to Iran's nuclear programme, including the fact that Iran has in its possession a document on the production of uranium metal hemispheres, since, as reported by the Secretariat, this process is related to the fabrication of nuclear weapon components; and, noting that the decision to put this document under Agency seal is a positive step, requests Iran to maintain this document under Agency seal and to provide a full copy to the Agency;


So what? Let say Iran even has all the diagrams to make nuclear weapons. What does that mean? Can you be found guilty of a crime if you have a picture of a gun? Are there factual evidence that Iran is building a nuclear weapons or not? IAEA board also wants a copy of this document; does this mean that from that day on every member of the IAEA that has seen the document now is making nuclear weapons?

Fortunately (or may be unfortunately :) )no one listens to me, but if I had anything to say on this I would have advises the Iranian government to open source ALL documents relating to their program, and let the world see it and judge by themselves.


What I see here is politics and bullying without real substance. This reminds me of the run up to Iraq war. I think the biggest casualties of the Iraq war were the:

1. reputation of US and UK,
2. UN Security Council
3. and the Media.

You can see the result of media's one sided approach to the run up to the war, the journalist are seen as party to the war and occupation and they being targeted. Almost every journalist that comes back for Iraq says that this is the first conflict that insurgency doesn't protect them or care to talk to them.

The deception campaign prior to the Iraq war, without a doubt, has ruined the reputation of US/UK and has shown the in-effectiveness of the UN Security Council to bring security to the world.

IAEA agency, for most part, kept its reputation. But the more I look at this resolution I see that this agency is being used more and more as political tool rather than its true intention, to stop proliferation of the nuclear weapons. Truly scary prospect.

By any deception(s) necessary

Bush, Blair 'in deal on Iraq war'

The unelected corrupt many ....

Unraveling the Ties of Abramoff and DeLay

Settlers?

Jewish settlers and their supporters clash with Israeli troops and police, as authorities evacuated the West Bank settlement outpost of Amona, east of the Palestinian town of Ramallah, Wednesday Feb. 1, 2006. Thousands of troops in riot gear and on horseback clashed with hundreds of stone-throwing Jewish settlers holed up behind barbed wire and on rooftops in this illegal West Bank settlement outpost Wednesday, after the Supreme Court cleared the way for the demolition of nine homes at the site.(AP Photo/Baz Ratner)




Israeli policemen clash with Jewish settlers in the unauthorized outpost of Amona, close to the West Bank Jewish settlement of Ofra, February 1, 2006. (Oleg Popov/Reuters)






Why are these people called "settlers"? Isn't Colonizer, Bandits, Robbers.... a more appropriate name?

What does "unauthorized outpost" mean? Who authorizes the authorized outposts?

threat to end the threats

This is an interesting article

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw's threats ("advice") Iran against threatening! Sort of like mother of all threats (or advices?)

It reminds me of the George Bush (or for that matter any American President) we "don't take the military option off the table". It has to do with some cultural values. In some cultures it is bad manner to put your shoes (or foot for that matter) on the table. In US it seems putting the military option off the table is bad manner.

"dogma has no place in a secular society"?

I like this. Paper reprints Islam row cartoons.

Lets express our views using cartoon. It sure beats Political Violence (war, terrorism). The French Soir says: "Yes, We Have the Right to Caricature God".

But let also be honest, Others can draw cartoons. Would the papers print them? Do they have right to for example question and caricature Holocaust? If we say "religious dogma has no place in a secular society", are we ready to say dogma has no place in secular society?

Trying to make sense of the speech

From
President Geroge W Bush's 2006 State of Union Speech

In one part of the speech the President said:

....The Palestinian people have voted in elections. And now the leaders of Hamas must recognize Israel, disarm, reject terrorism, and work for lasting peace. (Applause.)...

He also said:

Tonight, let me speak directly to the citizens of Iran: America respects you, and we respect your country. We respect your right to choose your own future and win your own freedom. And our nation hopes one day to be the closest of friends with a free and democratic Iran. (Applause.)


The question is this...Does President Bush practice what he preaches? Is he willing to show leadership and lead by example? Meaning:

...And now the leader of Free world must recognize Iranian rights, end all sanctions, reject war (take military option off the table) and work for lasting peace through trade and cooperation? (Applause ?)

At the end of the speech he said:


Fellow citizens, we've been called to leadership in a period of consequence. We've entered a great ideological conflict we did nothing to invite. We see great changes in science and commerce that will influence all our lives. Sometimes it can seem that history is turning in a wide arc, toward an unknown shore. Yet the destination of history is determined by human action, and every great movement of history comes to a point of choosing.




This is very confusing. If "the destination of history is determined by human action, and every great movement of history comes to a point of choosing", then how can you say that "We've entered a great ideological conflict we did nothing to invite." It would seem to me that you would need to conclude that the our choices in previous "great movements of history" caused current "idealogical conflicts."

Did I miss something here?

Art of Elections

Interesting article "U.S. will push efforts to isolate Hamas, Rice says"

.....
Rice said the landslide had taken many, including Hamas, by surprise, but she also said it was prompting an internal review of sorts within the administration.

''I have asked why nobody saw it coming,'' she said. ''And I hope that we will take a hard look, because it does say something about perhaps not having had a good enough pulse on the Palestinian population, as opposed to elites in Ramallah and the like.''

Basically, had we known we would have lose (that is losing our corrupt friends), we would not have pushed for election. At some point someone can summarize all of these into Art of Election. This rule sounds very similar to a point in Art of War, By Sun Tzu


15. Thus it is that in war the victorious strategist
only seeks battle after the victory has been won,
whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights
and afterwards looks for victory.


She goes on to say:

''When that happens, it's the responsibility and the role of - particularly the United States, but the international community more broadly - to stay very firmly planted in principle,'' she said. She also said the United States needed to ''make certain that everything that you are doing relates to that set of principles, so that you don't start flagging one way and another.''

It is more like two set of principals, one for "us" and one for "them".

An intersting prespective....

Israel/US says Hamas must recognize Israel's right to exsit before any negotiation.

Hamas: "If Israel is ready to tell the people what is the official border, after that we are going to answer this question."

Full report: http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/01/29/hamas.interview/index.html

Pop Quiz

this is a pop quiz to see if anyone is paying attention.

Instruction: Read the question, try to formulate your answer, then try to see if this matches the "correct" answer.

Q: After victory of Hamas in Palestinian election, what would be the most effective way for US and Europeans powers to radicalize the middle east?

Answer

"The working assumption... is prudent to assume at the least.... they can have the choice at some stage"

WOW! This is the reason why they want to take Iran to Security Council:

"The working assumption in the international community from all sides is that it is prudent to assume at the least that Iran is seeking to develop a nuclear weapons capability so that they can have the choice at some stage ... to activate it."

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw

Source

What if the shoe were on the other foot?

The Big Idea
When things go wrong - whether in your personal or professional life - chances are you resort to quick-fix plans, strategies and techniques for altering and improving your environment. Often, the problem is caused by a misalignment of your actions and decisions with the correct principles. To solve it, you need to alter not the external circumstances but your perspective.

....

Principles are like compasses that point us to our true direction. They are objective, unchanging natural laws that are correct and relevant regardless of the external circumstances. They are timeless, universal behavioral standards that have governed the social values of all the great human societies and civilizations. They apply to all people and all roles at whatever time and place and in whatever situation. Examples are fairness, equality, justice, integrity, honesty and trust. . . .

Principle-Centered Leadership
By Stephen R. Covey

Free Press, 1992
ISBN 0671792806
Soruce

I was listening the President Bush's press conference on his reaction to Hammas, and his statement on what they have to do to be "partner in peace" or get back on the "roadmap" to peace.




Q Mr. President, is Mideast peacemaking dead with Hamas' big election victory? And do you rule out dealing with the Palestinians if Hamas is the majority party?
.....
On the other hand, I don't see how you can be a partner in peace if you advocate the destruction of a country as part of your platform. And I know you can't be a partner in peace if you have a -- if your party has got an armed wing. The elections just took place. We will watch very carefully about the formation of the government. But I will continue to remind people about what I just said, that if your platform is the destruction of Israel, it means you're not a partner in peace. And we're interested in peace.
...




This reminded me of a passage I once read on Vietnam War and the US position during the negotiations to end the war. Then the shoe was on the other foot....






The voices from Hanoi, however, continued to insist otherwise. North Vietnamese President Ho Chi Minh, in his own New Year's message, proclaimed that "this year the United States aggressors will find themselves less able than ever to take the initiative, and will be more confused than ever, while our armed forces … will certainly win many more and still greater victories." At the same time, though, Ho's foreign minister, Nguyen Duy Trinh, said over Hanoi radio that his government would enter talks if the United States would "first unconditionally cease bombing and all other acts of war" against North Vietnam.

At home, pressures were increasingly building on Johnson to do just that. Robert Kennedy in a speech in San Francisco three days later argued that "it would make some sense to go to the negotiating table and see if we can resolve the conflict. It is possible we can go to the negotiating table and they will not be genuinely interested in finding a solution … [but] we have to at least take the first step."

The hawks would have none of it. Chairman L. Mendel Rivers of the House Armed Services Committee urged Johnson "to consider no cessation of bombing unless Hanoi agrees immediately to exchange of American prisoners, or at very least inspection of prisoners by the International Red Cross." And William P. Bundy, the assistant secretary of state for Far Eastern affairs, threw cold water on the idea. "I am not sure that they are anywhere near the point of being ready to yield," he said in a television interview. In the Hanoi statement, he said, there was "no mention of whether they themselves would exercise any kind of restraint." The danger, he warned, was that the enemy could "take advantage of things and pour down more divisions, and play the thing as what they call … fighting while negotiating."

And so there was no bombing halt. Instead, LBJ sent his ambassador to India, Chester Bowles, to Phnom Penh to discuss with the Cambodian chief of state, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, the possibility of American "hot pursuit" over the Cambodian border. Vietcong and North Vietnamese forces were suspected of using Cambodia as a sanctuary. Sihanouk in an earlier interview had indicated he would permit such raids under certain circumstances. But in his conversations with Bowles he resisted the idea and instead joined the call for a halt in bombing North Vietnam.

The Year the dream died

Selling fear

Fear Works:
57% Americans support military action in Iran


Fear is good for the bottom line:
Lockheed Profit Up 53%, but Aircraft Business Was Flat

Must watch

Why we fight?

The Neocons....

You simply can't say it any better:

At a time when the rush to war seems now to have been engineered at least in part by unelected operatives working in the shadows of power at Think Tanks and other interest groups, Eisenhower warns of "the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power" arising from the "unwarranted influence" of such forces.

Eugene Jarecki, Director of "Why we fight"
Source

What we should do now.

As Sharon sent an armoured column to reinvade Nablus, still ignoring Bush's demand to withdraw his troops from the West Bank, Colin Powell turned on Arafat, warning him that it was his "last chance" to show his leadership. There was no mention of the illegal Jewish settlements. There was to be no "last chance" threat for Sharon. The Americans even allowed him to refuse a UN fact-finding team in the occupied territories. Sharon was meeting with President George W Bush in Washington when a suicide bomber killed at least 15 Israeli civilians in a Tel Aviv nightclub; he broke off his visit and returned at once to Israel. Prominent American Jewish leaders, including Elie Wiesel and Alan Dershowitz, immediately called upon the White House not to put pressure on Sharon to join new Middle East peace talks. "This is a tough time," Wiesel announced. "This is not a time to pressure Israel. Any prime minister would do what Sharon is doing. He is doing his best. They should trust him." Wiesel need hardly have worried.

....

Extracted from The Great War For Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East, by Robert Fisk. Published by Fourth Estate on 3 October 2005


Fast forward to Jan 2006:

"Hamas won," said Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel. "Hamas is
surely not a democratic movement. Its ideas are surely not humanistic
ideas. "What do we do now?"

Source


What do we do now? Well as a starter, we should not listen to your advice any more!

Lost in Translation!

In Persian you can say I will cut of the hand of person(s) to mean you are going to stop the influence or interference of the person(s) in your affair. At one point a visibly shaken American friend asked me "Why are they cutting the hands of foreigners in Iran?" Upon further inquiry it became obvious that the reporter either maliciously or out of ignorance did a literal translation and along the way the expression lost its meaning.

Today President Bush said: ...I also want the Iranian people to hear loud and clear, and that is, we have no beef with you.

It would be interesting to see how this gets translated to Persian, as there is no equivalent expression in Persian. President Bush wants to put a sanction on import of beef to Iran?

Bad Intelligence?

I wonder if President Bush realizes that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei shares his views on nuclear weapons also.

• Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a fatwa forbidding the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons on August 9, 2005. The full text of the fatwa was released in an official statement at the meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna. [2]
  
  Source
  

January 23, 2006

President Discusses Global War on Terror at Kansas State University
Kansas State University
Manhattan, Kansas

.....

Q What is your position, or would you comment on a long-term strategy with respect to the geopolitical ambitions of China and Iran?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, great question. First, let me start with Iran. I'm deeply concerned about Iran, as should a lot of people be concerned about Iran. I'm concerned, when the country of Iran, their president announces his desire to see that Israel gets destroyed. Israel is our ally. We're committed to the safety of Israel, and it's a commitment we will keep.

Secondly, I'm concerned about a non-transparent society's desire to develop a nuclear weapon. The world cannot be put in a position where we can be blackmailed by a nuclear weapon. I believe it is very important for the Iranian government to hear loud and clear from not only the United States, but also from other nations around the world. I also want the Iranian people to hear loud and clear, and that is, we have no beef with you. We are worried about a government that is not transparent whose aims and objectives are not peaceful. And, therefore, we don't think that you should have the capacity to make a nuclear weapon.

The diplomatic strategy is being led right now by what's called the EU3 -- France, Germany and Great Britain -- and they're doing a good job of keeping together a common message to say to the Iranians that we expect you to adhere to international norm. The next logical step if the Iranians continue not to adhere to international norm or the demands of the free world is to go to the United Nations Security Council.

At the same time, the development of an Iraqi democracy is an important message to people inside of Iran. I told you what I believe. I believe everybody desires to be free. I believe women want to be treated equally. And I think that a message of democracy and freedom in that part of the world will embolden reformers. But this is a serious issue.
China is --....


Source

RNC logic

"Do Nancy Pelosi [(D-Calif.) is the House minority leader] and Howard Dean really think that when the NSA is listening in on terrorists planning attacks on America, they need to hang up when those terrorists dial their sleeper cells in the United States?"

Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman
Source

Follow the money

Good point John Do follow the money... Here is where you end up: The War In Iraq Costs . There is no evidence that Iran is working on any nuclear weapons, but folks like yourself are determined to make a buck selling fear. "Because you are really determined to get the dough".

That's My Word.

Brilliant!

"To forestall the need for nuclear force, we need tough action now, including economic sanctions, cultural sanctions, cutting off their supply of gasoline, (arms) sales, those kind of things, to convince the radical leaders of Iran that nuclear weapons are something they just cannot have," Bayh said on Fox News Channel's "Fox and Friends" morning program.

"Getting a worldwide agreement to ban the export of gasoline to Iran could have a major impact on their thinking," Bayh said

Source

Anther word, he condones the use of nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear state. Further more by banning sale of gasoline to iron, it justifies the Iranian claim that they can't rely on foreign sources for their energy supply.

What Noncompliance?

Interesting: What Noncompliance?

We deserve better media

When reading news coverage of the Iranian "crisis", it is very difficult to know where media starts and where the government propaganda ends. Everything from the article title, to its pictures, to its content seem to have been designed to condemn Iranian position.

Readers are suppose to read the articles and learn about the events and make up their mind. Just as a judge would have done so. In the media, the coverage is similar to a court room where only the state prosecutor can speak, and the defended is not able to air his defense. Take for example this article: Iran's Rogue Rage.

The article title speaks for itself. It also republishes what must be at least 6 month old picture (if not more) of a few technicians moving a barrel of "Yellow cake" and posing for a picture with it. It is interesting that this article, just like many of the other articles covering the issue, have either anonymous sources, US and IAEA officials. You would be hard press to get the response of the Iranian officials on the matter. There are Iranian negotiators that are involved in these, most likely no one has heard any of their arguments.

The articles generally has a statement like: "....even the atomic weapons the Iranian government officially says it doesn't want...". Followed by a defiant message like: "If they want to destroy the Iranian nation's rights by that course," he said, "they will not succeed.".

It rarely covers the issue from the Iranian perspectives. They negotiated for two years with Europens to come up with a agreement that solves their concerns yet recognizes Iranian right to have nuclear energy as it sees fit. Instead you have "anonymous" comments such as:

Thus far, "the tactic of the Iranians is to give you half of what you need, then when you ask for more, half of the half, then, again, half of that," says a Western diplomat familiar with the inspection process, who asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the matter.

After what we know from the run up to the Iraq war, the Iranian side can say that "the US tactic is to ask for Iranians to provide them documents, then after they hand in the documents, double the requirements."

Where is the real meat of the negotiation? What was offered, what was the counter offer?

The ending is rather interesting:

The mullahs see this fight as one to ensure the survival of their regime—with American assurances. Would Washington cut that deal? A lot of bargaining remains. But Rice was right; the Iranian people deserve better.

The conclusion might be right, this is really about Iranians ("regime" and its people) being worried about possible US intervention in internal Iranian affairs. Regardless, what Iranian people deserve or don't deserve is really up to Iranians to decide. One thing is certain, we deserve better media than what we are getting.

"Joe Isuzu in the News and How to Listen to Him (Her) (it)".

I can't forget the deception campaign of the British government and its foreign Minister, Jack Straw, in the run up to the Iraq war. Reading his world remind me of the Joe Isuzi

"The onus is on Iran to act to give the international community
confidence that its nuclear programme has exclusive peaceful purposes
-- confidence, I'm afraid, that has been sorely undermined by its
history of concealement and deception."

Source

Does he really believe he is trustworthy himself?

I found this while looking for Joe Isuzu on the web Joe Isuzu on the Witness Stand and How to Examine Him (Her) (it) . We need the "Joe Isuzu in the News and How to Listen to Him (Her) (it)".

Diffrent strokes for different people

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: The government of President Ahmadinejad has done nothing but confront the international system ever since he came into power, confront the international system and their behavior on the nuclear issue, confront the international issue with outrageous statements that I don't think have been made in polite company in many, many, many years.

And so this is about the Iranian regime, and it is the Iranian regime that is isolating Iran.

Online NewsHour Focus

Such a contrast to her view of Ronald Reagan's "undiplomatic" message.

Propaganda Supply Chain

An interesting article on shifting US tactics in the Iraq war. US tries to loosen Shiite grip in Iraq

I find the last paragraph particularly interesting:

In the past, the US tended to refer to Iraq's armed groups as holdouts and terrorists. Now, that rhetoric is changing. After meeting with US officials and officers in Baghdad, columnist Roger Cohen concluded in The New York Times that the Iraqi resistance is "composed for the most part of people who want jobs and a stake in the new Iraq."

In the past, it was the oppression and marginalization of Shiites lamented by columnists such as Mr. Cohen. Not so today.

Today's businesses require supply chain to "adjust as conditions and business goals shift". Out goes Zarqawi, and in comes the Iran.

Why Multiculturalism Matters in America

Why Multiculturalism Matters in America
Dr. Ronald Takaki, professor of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley, brings
his distinctive viewpoint to this discussion on multiculturalism.
Takaki's mission is to demonstrate that multiculturalism is not only a
social reality, but also an intellectually stimulating approach to an
array of academic disciplines.

Watch the presnetatio

She said, He said.

Now, I can't judge the motives of the Iranian regime in picking this particular time to pick a fight with the international community. They've been on this path for some time.

I'd go back to March of last year, when our -- yes, of last year, when the United States made the decision to try and give new impetus to the EU-3 negotiations by agreeing, for instance, that the Iranians should be allowed to apply for WTO membership, for removing our objections to that. I talked about potentially spare parts for Iranian aircraft. This was a time when Iran, I think, could see the international community coming together around the strategy that, while recognizing that this was not an issue about their rights to peaceful nuclear energy, would have given them access to peaceful nuclear energy.
We have been on a course, ever since then, where they've not taken repeated opportunities to take the world up on that, so I can't speak to the timing, but I'll say they've been on this course for a good time.

Secretary Condoleezza Rice
Washington, DC
January 12, 2006
Source

And some of the Iranian proposals from the same time perid:

• Although Mr. Rohani gave no specific details of Iran's proposed compromise ideas, but diplomats told Iran Press Service on condition of not being named that Tehran is ready for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to install monitoring devices in its uranium enriching facilities making sure that the material is not enriched more than 3.5 per cent, a degree enough for civilian purposes.



• Another Iranian plan is to transform the underground Natanz uranium enrichment plant into an international joint-venture under multinational ownership; Reuters quoted EU diplomats as having indicated.

Source

Kadama = Forward

How half a century gave different meaning to kadima battle cry

Email, Efficency for the honest.

This is an interesting story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20060110/cm_csm/ychinni10_1

Email increases productivity of the honest and the criminals. The evildoers have learned that the email trace would come back to hunt them. At some point they would completely give this up and go back to the old, inefficient methods. One would hope the increased productivity of the honest people would make the outlaws (the big fish at least) as an endanger species.

A rogue regime opposed to peace (and Election results)

"What the Iranian president has shown us today is that he is clearly outside the international consensus, he is clearly outside international norms and international legitimacy, and in so doing he has shown the Iranian government for what it is -- a rogue regime opposed to peace and stability and a threat to all its neighboring countries,"

Mark Regev, spokesman for Israel's Foreign Ministry

Source

Hamas wins 73% of vote in Nablus local elections Source

"If the Hamas was ever to become a dominant force in Palestinian politics, that would be the end of the peace process,"

Mark Regev, spokesman for Israel's Foreign Ministry

Source

"How undiplomatic."

"And I just want to return to the point that I made earlier. In 1989, in 1990 and 1991 when I was lucky enough to be the Soviet specialist at the end of the Cold War. Doesn't really kind of get better than that. (Laughter.) I really looked back and I thought, what we were really doing was harvesting those good decisions that had been taken back in the '40s. And we were, in effect, harvesting good decisions that frankly Ronald Reagan had made in 1982 and '83 and '84 when he held fast and essentially said that the Soviet Union was an artifact of history that was going to go away. And I remember people saying, "How undiplomatic. My goodness. How could you say that about a great power like the Soviet Union. But you know, it was speaking the truth."....

...."But there are so many events in history that one day seemed impossible and now we look back on them as inevitable. And they weren't inevitable. They came about because the United States of America married power and principle together, because the United States understood that its values and its interests were inextricably linked and because the United States was willing to speak the truth, that men and women wherever they are, whoever they are, are endowed by their creator to have these rights"....

Secretary Condoleezza Rice
The Heritage Foundation
Washington, DC
December 13, 2005

Source

Polls and Elections in Iraq.

What do Iraqis think?

An interesting item in the poll is the "Q17 - Which structure should Iraq have in future?". The Constitution that was passed calls for the Federal Iraq, yet the poll says that 70% would like "One unified Iraq with central government in Baghdad" as oppose to 17.6% that call for "A group of regional states with their own regional governments and a federal government in Baghdad".

National Survey of Iraq, Nov 2005

History is repeating itself?

Hamas started by Israelis to fight Yaser Arafat, Afghanistan mujahendines and Al Queida were trained by the US to fight the Soviets. When they turn their guns against the former masters though they become know as Islamic Radicals. I wonder where this folly ends up!

"Special Report"

There are exceptions; but all too often journalism in the west is not much more than propaganda pieces where the goverment thesis is advanced not by facts, rather one sided characterisation and framing of "the other side" as unreasonable, and dishonarable. Case and point is the Gaurdian's Special report on Iran:

As negotiators, Iranians have a reputation for being both skilful and infuriating. They have certainly lived up to that in the three years since their nuclear ambitions became the focus of intense diplomatic attention, drawing in, beside the International Atomic Energy Authority, the EU troika of Britain, France and Germany, with the US warning and fulminating and trying to set terms from a distance.
One tactic that has reduced the best of Europe's diplomats almost to tears is the habit of suddenly discounting concessions which Iran had sought long and hard by announcing, once they have been reluctantly granted, that these concern minor issues of no particular importance to them either way. It is as if you can never build up any bank balance of obligation on the Iranian side. Another has been to violate the conditions under which talks are taking place, and then, when the other side not surprisingly breaks off discussions, to proclaim readiness, even eagerness, to start them again, but without mentioning the original agreed conditions. Yet another has been to obscure the difference between Iran's obligations under the IAEA regime and the agreements underwhich it is conducting talks with the EU. And yet another has been to produce apparent evidence that nuclear "sovereignty" is an issue of such popular importance in Iran as to limit the Iranian government's room for manoeuvre in international negotiations.

It seems this last card was the Iranian choice yesterday, when the parliament in Tehran voted by an overwhelming majority for a bill which would ban intrusive inspections by the IAEA if Iran is referred to the UN security council for its alleged nuclear misbehaviour. The vote was presumably not unrelated to the fact that the board of the IAEA is meeting in Vienna later this week to consider just such a referral, although many already expected it to postpone the decision, perhaps in the context of commendingnew Russian proposals as a basis for discussion. The Majlis tends to do what it is told or expected to do in foreign affairs, especially since the recent consolidation of the right within Iranian political institutions. In truth the vote does not mean much anyway, since Iran has never passed a law agreeing to such inspections, preferring to proceed on a more ambiguous basis, and no doubt there are ways, if it wishes, to preserve that ambiguity whatever the Majlis has supposedly decided.

The coverage of the issue has been so one sided that the Iranian government had to buy a full page advertisement in the New York Times (see full text here) to explain its version of the story. Take for example:

One tactic that has reduced the best of Europe's diplomats almost to tears is the habit of suddenly discounting concessions which Iran had sought long and hard by announcing, once they have been reluctantly granted, that these concern minor issues of no particular importance to them either way.

On what basis does the author make these allegations? What has the Best of Europe's diplomats reluctantly granted the Iranian side? The nature of these propaganda pieces are all too evident when contrasted with the detailed position of the Iranian goverment in An Unnecessary Crisis - Setting the Record Straight About Iran's Nuclear Program piece in the New York time.

The article's characterization of the Iranian Majlis (Parliament):
The Majlis tends to do what it is told or expected to do in foreign affairs, especially since the recent consolidation of the right within Iranian political institutions.

Reading the Guardian article, it appears to me the "do what it is told or expected to do in foreign affairs" is an better characterizations of the Guardian article as oppose to a Iranian parliment. It is truly sad when journalism becomes indistinguishable from government propaganda and and a citizen of western democracy has to get its facts from advertisement piece by a foreign government.

Virtual reality of the occupation.

The New Iraq Strategy or the Old Saddam?

Why US presence in Iraq is doomed.....It simply isn't based on reality, does he think people would forget the use of chemical weapons against their city?

"Once you take a city, you've got to go through it slowly and clear
it," says Capt. William Grube, commander of Fox Company, of the 2nd
Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, whose unit lives in and helps patrol
the city. He says previous operations in Anbar Province, where US and
Iraqi forces attacked and then withdrew, were simply "playing
whack-a-mole."

"At some point, you need to take it, and sit there, and hold it for
real," says Captain Grube, from Emmaus, Pa. In Fallujah, "the longer
we have the place stable, the more chance there is to undermine
support for insurgents."

"When you look at the near term, of course it is going to be
negative," says Grube, about Fallujan views of how badly damaged their
city was by the offensive. So he takes the long view - one that many
Iraqis remain uncertain about.

"I don't think they will wake up one day and say, 'I'm all for
transparency and the rights of man,'" says Grube. "We have to show by
example that you can be powerful, but not a brutal conqueror."

Source

Racing alone

Interesting book:

Racing Alone

US vs Bush Frame!

The headline reads: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4440664.stmUS used white phosphorus in Iraq
. Notice the frame in the title.

When Iraqi Army used Chemical weapons against Kurdish villages it was
attributed to Saddam. We saw headlines such as ....Saddam is using
WMD against its own people. Why isn't the use of Chemical weapons in
Iraq attributed to Bush and Blair as oppose to "US" or "Britain"
troops?

Trying to do something humane....

"dreaming of a peaceful life of freedom,

When all else fails blame Iranians!

Britain accuses Iran of running training camps for bombers

The article says:

The account of the alleged Iranian involvement made by defence and diplomatic sources in Iraq yesterday was extraordinarily detailed.....

This story is rather interesting

There are parallel of this "detailed" allegation to the "45 minutes" claim of the British "defence and diplomatic sources" How is this any different? Where is the proof? If there are such evidence, wouldn't the British government presents the evidence to UN?


There are more... In the British view you see the colonialism mind set at work. It is as if the Iraqis (that have been at war in one form or another since 1980) can't figure out how to make a bomb and need Iranians to tell them about infra-red triggers. The "colonizer are superior to those of the colonized", the irony is that the British army was training Iraqis during the 80s, why is it that they don't expect them to have learned a thing or two from the years of British training?

In the "Radio Free Europe" Article Iran: Experts Say Infrared Bombs Used By Iraqi Insurgents Can't Be Homemade It says:

Jones [ security policy adviser to NATO in London] stressed that another significant feature -- also far beyond the insurgents' production capability -- is the infrared "trip-wire."

"It's very much the same concept that you have of alarms," Jones said. "An infrared beam goes between two points in a museum, and if that is interrupted, then an alarm goes off."


The alleged infra-red triggers are suppose to be the same as the ones that are used in the museums. Could they be the ones that were taken from the Iraq national museum as Donnald Rusmfeld was saying: "Freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things," Rumsfeld said . . . Looting, he added, was not uncommon for countries that experience significant social upheaval. "Stuff happens,"



What is a deception without national security claim?

Godfrey [the U.K. Armed Forces Program at the Royal United Services institute] added that the intelligence services have also gathered a lot of evidence from the attacks on British troops. He said he doubts, however, whether -- because of its nature -- the intelligence services would reveal this kind of evidence to the public.

What are they hiding the evidence from? The insurgents that planted the bomb?

....I mean, they can't win a battle...

THe Defense Department Frame

Q: A question for General Casey. You opened up and said the enemy is attacking the will of the Iraqi people and attacking the will of the American people. They are failing in Iraq. Are you suggesting that the enemy, with these spectacular attacks, is somehow successfully chipping away at the will of the American people?

GEN. CASEY: What do you think?

Q: It's not my question to answer – (laughter)

GEN. CASEY: It is your question. But look, you guys read the polls just like I do. And this is a terror campaign, and they are trying to create the impression that we and the Iraqis cannot succeed in Iraq. And what do you think? Is it having an impression back here at home, the levels of violence? I think it is.

SEC. RUMSFELD: There's no question but what the general says is correct, that they have a media committee, multiple media committees, the terrorists do. They know what they're doing. They're focusing on public opinion in the United States. They're trying to do things that are dramatic and affect that. And they're looking for allies and ways that they can get the echo chamber going. They work closely with Middle East networks and arrange to have cooperative arrangements with them.

No, I mean, they can't win a battle, they can't win a war out in the field. The only place they can win is in a test of wills, if people say the cost is too high and the time is too long.

Source

The Iraqi Frame

Technically, it’s the summers end… But realistically, we have at least another month of stifling heat ahead of us. It’s almost mid-September and the weather is still hot and dry in Baghdad. There are a few precious hours in the very early morning when the sun seems almost kind. If you wake early enough, you can catch a solid hour of light breezes and a certain summer coolness.

The electrical situation deteriorated this summer in Baghdad. We’ve gone from a solid 8 – 10 hours daily to around six. During the winter, we have generators in the area providing electricity when it goes off. In the summer, however, with the heat and the heavy electrical load from air-conditioners AND the fuel shortage, many generators have to be turned off for most of the day.

We’re also having water difficulties, though people have grown accustomed to that. You can tell first thing in the morning that the water is cut off. I woke up this morning and knew it even before I had gotten out of bed. The house just sounds… dry. You strain your ears for the familiar house sounds and they aren’t there- there’s no drip-drip-drip from the faucet in the bathroom down the hall. There’s no sound of dishes being washed in the kitchen downstairs. There’s no sound of a toilet being flushed, and certainly no sound of a shower. The house is dry.

Girl Blogger from Baghdad



Two years after the war and there is not enough water and electricity and US Defense Secretery says " they can't win a battle, they can't win a war out in the field". Does he think he is winning?

It is getting wrost...

So the Basra police sees two men acting suspicious, unlike the rest of Iraq, they do their job and arrest them, later finding that they are connected to the British forces. So what does the Basra police get for doing their job?

Britain will scrap and replace police force in Basra

When you look back at events of last two years it seems that incompetence and corruption has been rewarded and people doing their job have been penalized.

What was the lesson?

Q: Earlier today you said the President was thinking of suggesting trigger power for the military to take over in the most severe catastrophe. My question is, would he bypass our constitutional civilian rule over the military to get that kind of authority?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, there are some laws that are already in place. You have the Insurrection Act, which was originally passed I think back in 1861. The President had authorities before that to quell rebellions or restore law and order if needed. But that was primarily -- the purpose of that act was really aimed at what I just said, quelling rebellions or restoring law and order. What we saw with Hurricane Katrina was a category five hurricane coming up the Gulf Coast. I think it hit as a category four. But this was a major, catastrophic event, and that's what the President is talking about, a situation like Hurricane Katrina. Is there a trigger needed, an automatic trigger for something like a hurricane five --

Q Wouldn't that be dangerous? After all, there is a --

MR. McCLELLAN: -- for something like a --

Q -- precedent, isn't there?

MR. McCLELLAN: Let me -- that's why I'm trying to go through this to talk to you about his views and his thinking on this because it is one of the important lessons learned of Hurricane Katrina. And the President is talking about what do we do in the event of a major, catastrophic event when we need to quickly deploy large amounts of resources and assets to help stabilize the situation. That's what he's talking about.

The military is the one organization that has the capability to quickly deploy large amounts of resources and assets to help stabilize a situation in the event of a major catastrophe.

Q But why bypass civilian control? You have instant communications, you can call the President.

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, we saw some of the problems from Hurricane Katrina. And this is one of the lessons --

Q Why? What --

MR. McCLELLAN: -- this is one of the lessons learned when you have a situation where state and local first responders are doing everything they can to help. But they're also victims. And to a large extent, they are overwhelmed. And so the question becomes, in a situation like that, how do you immediately or quickly establish some stability to help get people the help they need.

Q But can't you assume, then, that the President would know immediately if there was a severe catastrophe in the country?

MR. McCLELLAN: I'm sorry, what?

Q I said, wouldn't we assume that the President would know immediately that there was something terribly catastrophic?

MR. McCLELLAN: And that's why we need to look at this issue, because right now, the way things are set up, you have the Department of Homeland Security, which is from the federal government standpoint where you have a number of agencies under its umbrella that help assist the first responders. But it's primarily a state and local responsibility -- the initial response efforts, with the full support of the federal government.

And we saw with Hurricane Rita that there was very good coordination going on at all levels of government. And the response -- or the reports that the President was receiving that the response efforts were going well to get people the help that they needed and to save lives.

With Hurricane Katrina, you had a unprecedented natural disaster, one of a size and magnitude like we haven't seen before. It covered a very large area. And the President wants to make sure that we learn the lessons from Hurricane Katrina, and that means at all levels of government. And one of the lessons is, in a situation like this, do you need an organization like the military to come in and quickly stabilize the situation. They're the one organization that can do that, and that's what he wants Congress to consider.

Q They couldn't even reach the President during Katrina.

MR. McCLELLAN: That's false. That is absolutely false.

Source


The cost of cleaning up after the damage caused by the broken levees (which was probably avoidable) is going to be much more than if the goverment had spend the money to keep the levees repaired and in working condition. The lesson is not to make sure other cities infrastructures are in good shape, rather the lesson is to change the rules on how quickly the millitary can get involve in the catastrophy. It looks as if the goverment trives on the catastrophies and is not interested in avoidng them in the first place.

George and Tony Show

Blair falls into line with Bush view on global warming

Unbelievable

I can understand the delay and overall burrecratic incompetence of the federal goverment to deliver aid to the victim of the disaster. But this is just beyond belief....

Suburb Ok'd Decision To Block New Orleans Evacuees
The City Council in Gretna Louisiana has passed a resolution supporting a move by the police chief to seal off a bridge that could have been used by thousands of people in New Orleans to evacuate. Gretna is a largely white town while the vast majority of the evacuees in New Orleans were African-American. The town's mayor Ronnie Harris said "This wasn't just one man's decision. The whole community backs it." Hundreds of men, women and children were turned away as they tried to cross the bridge over the Mississippi River. There were reports that officers fired gunshots over the heads of some people trying to cross the bridge. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin criticized the town's move to close off the bridge. He said "We allowed people to cross ... because they were dying in the convention center. We made a decision to protect people.... They made a decision to protect property."

Source
and From LA Times

Unbelievable

I can understand the delay and the bureaucratic incompetence in trying to get aid to people. But this is just beyond belief...

Suburb Ok'd Decision To Block New Orleans Evacuees
The City Council in Gretna Louisiana has passed a resolution supporting a move by the police chief to seal off a bridge that could have been used by thousands of people in New Orleans to evacuate. Gretna is a largely white town while the vast majority of the evacuees in New Orleans were African-American. The town's mayor Ronnie Harris said "This wasn't just one man's decision. The whole community backs it." Hundreds of men, women and children were turned away as they tried to cross the bridge over the Mississippi River. There were reports that officers fired gunshots over the heads of some people trying to cross the bridge. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin criticized the town's move to close off the bridge. He said "We allowed people to cross ... because they were dying in the convention center. We made a decision to protect people.... They made a decision to protect property."

Source
or

From LA Times

Is it a religious war?

Bishops want to apologise for Iraq war
By Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent
BISHOPS of the Church of England want all Britain’s Christian leaders to get together in public to say sorry for the war in Iraq and its aftermath.

The bishops say that the Government is not likely to show remorse so the churches should. They want to organise a major gathering with senior figures from the Muslim community to make a “public act of repentance”.....

Rest of the article


SAUDI ARABIA: JIHAD IN IRAQ WRONG SAYS GRAND MUFTI

Jeddah, 19 Sept. (AKI) - Sheikh Abdul Aziz al-Asheikh, Saudi Arabia's grand mufti, has spoken out against those seeking to sow civil war in neighbouring Iraq. "Adding to the bloodshed and murder of innocents by planes and bombs are attempts by suspicious parties to trigger sectarian tension between the people of Iraq,” said Al-Asheikh who was quoted by the Arab News daily.

These jihadists were trying to stoke intra-religious clashes “to serve the aims of the enemies conspiring against Muslims,” al-Asheikh argued. Al-Qaeda's number one in Iraq, the Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, declared an all-out war against Shiites in an audio recording posted to the Internet last week.



Rest of the article

So much for independent media!

"It is possibly one of the largest thefts in history"

Today's jeopardy... What do Iraqis consider as bigger problem than terrorism? Answer

Bishops want to apologise for Iraq war

From Bill Clinton:

"What Americans need to understand is that ... every single day of the year, our government goes into the market and borrows money from other countries to finance Iraq,
Afghanistan, Katrina, and our tax cuts," he said.

"We have never done this before. Never in the history of our republic have we ever financed a conflict, military conflict, by borrowing money from somewhere else."

Clinton added: "We depend on Japan, China, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, and Korea primarily to basically loan us money every day of the year to cover my tax cut and these conflicts and Katrina. I don't think it makes any sense."

Source


It sounds like the "one of the largest [credit] thefts in history".

separated church and state.... "for a theological reason, not a secular one"

Excerpt from the Rev. Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, Ph.D. testimony in Judge Robert's confirmation hearing:

....It is less well known that the framers of the Constitution also drew on a theological vision and that their prohibition of the establishment of any religion and their insistence on the protection of the free exercise of religion was made for religious reasons.

The popular debate uses the “founding fathers” on both sides of any specific controversy on what are called separation of church and state issues. Those who vigorously oppose any perceived breach in the separation of church and state understand the authors of the Constitution as secularists and revolutionaries who established a nation on the concept of liberty, including not only freedom of religion, but also freedom from religion. These strict separationists see religion as a threat to the secular sphere and the individual freedom from religious control that a secular public life entails. On the other hand, those who want to lower the bar in the separation of church and state debates also cite the founders in support of their position. They argue that the founders were not “secularists” who wished to keep religion locked away from public life. As is so often the case, there is truth on both sides of this argument.

The thought of John Locke, on whose work “founding fathers” such as Thomas Jefferson drew, is instructive. Locke, like others in the 17th century, had seen the terrible results of religious wars as Catholics and Protestants struggled for power in England. At first Locke was dubious about the capacity of human reason to provide the bulwark against the terrible abuses that result when “Priest and Prince” are combined. But his own faith led him finally to believe that it is only in the absolute protection of human civil society from any control by religious authorities that people are enabled to come to have faith in God. He paid a high personal cost for challenging the abusive power of the religious state, as he had to flee to Holland to escape execution for treason.

It was, therefore, for a theological reason, not a secular one that Locke and the American founders who drew on his work separated church and state and prohibited establishing one religion over any others. In that way, they protected religious freedom. Locke believed that people could only come to know God under the conditions of absolute freedom from any state control of their consciences. All state control gives you, argued Locke, is the “sin of hypocrisy, and contempt of his divine majesty.”

Locke made this simple point: ‘God doesn’t need the help of the state for there to be faith.’ Also, Locke and the framers of the U.S. Constitution were deeply and profoundly suspicious of the motives of those who wanted to bring religious and state control together. Locke notes “how easily the pretence of religion, and of the care of souls, serves for a cloak to covetousness, rapine, and ambition.”

The Framers’ Construct—The Prohibition of Establishment of Religion and the Free Exercise of Religion—Have Stood the Test of Time

From our vantage point in the twenty-first century we can see that the framers were right. They did not just protect political freedom. They protected religious freedom. It is no accident that the United States through all of its history so far has been free from the terrible effects of religious war. The framers of the Constitution knew what they were doing. Don’t merge religion and the state.

This has recently been said with great acumen by retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. As she wrote in a concurring opinion last term, “At a time when we see around the world the violent consequences of the assumption of religious authority by government, Americans may count themselves fortunate: Our regard for constitutional boundaries has protected us from similar travails, while allowing private religious exercise to flourish. Americans attend their places of worship more often than do citizens of other developed nations, and describe religion as playing an especially important role in their lives. Those who would renegotiate the boundaries between church and state must therefore answer a difficult question: Why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly?” McCreary County v ACLU, 125 S. CT. 2722, 2746 (2005).

The Prophetic and Progressive Faith Traditions

It is helpful for the health of our political life to realize that some people can vigorously object to any attempt to merge religion and the state from deeply held religious conviction. Those who point out the remarkable danger to American society from tendencies to merge religion and the state are not by definition “faithless secularists” or “liberal ideologues”.

The faith communities who vigorously defend separation of church and state, who oppose any establishment of religion and who vigorously protect the free exercise of religion are a diverse group. Some may best be described as “progressives,” while others could be called “the prophetic.”

The Progressive Faith community is, in large part, the most direct heir to the religious perspectives that informed thinkers such as Locke. Progressive people of faith have roots in the European Enlightenment and in the Protestant movement in Christianity. The root word of “Protestant” is “protest” and the protest was, in part, against the temporal power wielded by the Catholic Church of the 16th century.

These movements were responsible for inventing a concept called the “secular,” a place in social life where organized religion does not hold absolute authority. It is the invention of this sphere of “worldliness” (the root of the word “secular” being the Latin for world) that gave rise to the political philosophy that informs the framers of the American Constitution. Subsequently, other religions have brought their faith traditions into the modern era and similarly defined a “world” where government holds sway. Reformed Judaism and Vatican II Catholicism are examples of this.

Progressive people of faith come from many religious traditions today. They share a commitment to the use of reason in human affairs, the duty of religious people to help create a just society and they believe that religious freedom and pluralism are religious and social goods.

The Prophetic faith traditions are also opposed to any infringement on the free exercise of religion and to any breach in the separation of church and state. Prophetic faith traditions often draw significantly on the spirit and want the church and the state to be separate because the latter is not spiritual.

Among the Prophetic faith traditions, African American Christianity, in particular, is very clear about both religious freedom and separation of church and state. African American Christianity was born under horrific state abuses of the individual rights of kidnapped and enslaved African people that were not only legal under American law, but also most often sanctified by the dominant churches. Enslaved African people were prevented, sometimes violently, from practicing their African religious faith and from forming independent Christian churches. This historical experience has given African American Christianity a very healthy skepticism about the dangers of merging religion and political authority and a deep conviction that both need to be constantly held accountable to the demands of true justice.

Jewish Americans contribute to this same perspective out of their experience of the Holocaust and underline that the systematic kidnapping, torture, and extermination of millions and millions of people was legal under the laws of Germany. Nuremberg has established that too narrow a reading of what is “legal” can profoundly betray the duty of the nation state to the claims of transcendent justice. Moreover, the American Jewish experience has been one of the flourishing of Jewish life due to the protections of religious liberty in the United States (though this has not always been perfectly observed by all citizens).

The women’s movement in the United States blends elements of both the Progressive and the Prophetic traditions. Nineteenth and twentieth century American women had to counter strong, even virulent, opposition from churches to have their right to vote recognized. To this day, American women do not have an Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution due, in part, to vocal opposition from the religious quarter in the latter part of the twentieth century.

Together the Progressive and the Prophetic faith communities are united in the view that any move to privilege one religion over another and to blur the lines that separate the power of religion and the power of the state is to run a grave risk of damaging both religion and the state. It is an oft-repeated phrase, but one that is particularly apt in relationship to the effect of merging religion and politics, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Adherence to Religious Freedom Principles in the First Amendment is Critical in a Pluralistic Society

It might seem contradictory that while as a nation we are more religiously pluralistic than ever before, we see contemporary efforts by some to establish the doctrines of only one religion, Christianity, and indeed only of part of Christianity, as social policy. The strenuous objections to embryonic stem cell research, for example, are directly based on a particular religious conviction that the human soul is made present by God at the time of conception and that the newly fertilized embryo is ensouled .

When we look more closely, however, this is not as contradictory as it seems. While the Constitution protected religious freedom, our culture has been functionally Protestant since its beginning. In the 19th century, public school children were taught from readers that were patently a tutorial in the Protestant faith. Catholic immigrants in the 19th century formed their own parochial schools because they correctly perceived that this so-called public education was in truth nothing short of indoctrination in Protestantism.

What has become evident in the last half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first is that our society is becoming more genuinely religiously pluralistic. The Harvard “Pluralism Project” has documented this astonishing growth of religious pluralism. As Dr. Diana Eck writes in her widely praised book A New Religious America: How a “Christian Country” Has Become the World’s Most Religiously Diverse Nation (HarperSanFrancisco, 2005), “there are now more Muslims than Episcopalians, Jews or Presbyterians” in the United States.

Such increasing religious pluralism calls for even greater vigilance both in protecting religious minorities and clearly avoiding even the appearance of the establishment of any particular religion.


The Rev. Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, Ph.D.
United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary
The Nomination of John G. Roberts as Chief Justice of the United States

Source

An interesting article

The Incoherence of the Incoherent

All stories are on the table.

Today's fairy tale.....

Yes, ma'am.

QUESTION: Mr. Ambassador, you mentioned Syria. What are the consequences if Syria doesn't -- I mean, you said time is running out. Well, what does that mean? What are the consequences for Damascus? What would you like to see the United States or other countries do if Syria does not act the way you would like it to?

AMBASSADOR KHALILZAD: Well, I would not like to elaborate any more than that. I think they'll -- they should understand what I mean. It simply is not tolerable that they, with impunity, can allow terrorists to come from other countries in the region, get training or just either pass through -- or Baathists want to have the old order returned, get trained in places like Latakia or Aleppo or near Damascus and then come across the border, kill Iraqis and pursue policies or actions that are unhelpful to the success of Iraq.

As I said, our patience is running out; the patience of Iraqis are running out. The time for decision is arriving -- has arrived for Damascus. It simply must close the training camps. It should not allow youngsters, misguided by al-Qaida, from Saudi Arabia, from Yemen, from North Africa, to fly into Damascus International Airport. It shouldn't be that hard, if you see young men between the ages of 18 and 28, who are coming without a return ticket, landing in Damascus Airport, to control that. If they cannot control that, if they need help to control inflow and processing of people, well, they should ask for help. I'm sure help can be provided. But it's gone on for too long and it simply needs to be dealt with.


U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad on Reconstruction Efforts


What if the "young men" have return tickets also?

2+2 = ?

President's Radio Address
Crawford, Texas
August 13, 2005

...

This war on terror arrived on our shores on September the 11th, 2001. Since that day, the terrorists have continued to kill -- in Madrid, Istanbul, Jakarta, Casablanca, Riyadh, Bali, Baghdad, London, and elsewhere. The enemy remains determined to do more harm.

.....

When terrorists spend their days and nights struggling to avoid death or capture, they're less capable of arming and training and plotting new attacks on America.

.....

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/08/20050813.html

Quote of the day

If you develop an ear for sounds that are musical it is like developing an ego. You begin to refuse sounds that are not musical and that way cut yourself off from a good deal of experience.

- John Cage

Intellectual Property Right.

If intellect is a property, then how come no one is collecting property taxes on intellect?

jazz in seattle 

Why Should I believe you?

Question: Why should I belive Noam Chomsky's view of reality over anyone else? He has an appealing and belivable presentation style, but then so do those representing oppossing views.

Noam Chomsky: I say he is exactly right, he shouldn't belive it. That is why you have a brain for; you should check it out, look at the data, look at the facts, look at the evidence then decide what you think.

Listen to the full Interview

Blair the sleek liar.

Tony Blairs interview with Independent of London:

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=631630

"The only thing I would ask people to do is understand that it was a very difficult decision. What I object to is people trying to frame the decision in terms of my integrity rather than in terms of the fact that I was faced with the situation where there were 250,000 troops down there. Saddam wasn't fully co-operating with the UN inspectors, he remained in breach of the UN resolutions and yet I couldn't get a second UN resolution with an ultimatum. I had to decide whether we backed off altogether, with all that would mean, or go ahead still and remove Saddam.

"It was a very difficult decision in very difficult circumstances and I have always made clear I respect those who disagreed with the decision I took".

He says there are some issues that are "a nightmare whichever decision you take"….


This was an issue that he was instrumental in. Isn’t is a sign of incompetence for a politician to put his country in a position were it is "a nightmare whichever decision you take".


….He points out that there was a sequence of events, each of which are sometimes taken out of context.
"We must remember the UN inspectors were only there because the troops were also there.
"It was the threat of force that got the inspectors back in. Now imagine what would have happened if I had backed away and that the Americans also backed away and the conflict had not happened. Saddam would still be in charge and immeasurably strengthened and there would be no further possibility about enforcing the community's will in regard to UN resolutions.
"Some will say that would have been better than having the conflict. That's a perfectly understandable view. I only ask people to understand there wasn't a middle way. So it was a nightmare in the sense that, whatever you did, you were going to get problems either in sorting out Iraq after a conflict or you would get big problems leaving Saddam in charge."


Wait a second now, what happened to the rest of the context?

a) UN Inspector had to go to Iraq because previous British (along with US, Europeans and Russians) government had authorized the sale of WMD to Iraq?
b) Saddam was in charge primarily because in 1991, after the first Gulf war, the Bush Sr administration had decided to authorized Saddam to put down Shiite uprising. Had they been left to their devices, Saddam would not have been in power.


On positive side he is more honest than President Bush:

"There are going to be many people who vote Labour in this election who strongly disagree with Iraq. There are people in my own party, there are candidates for my own party, who disagreed with Iraq. There will be some people who will vote for other parties who agreed with me about Iraq. Of course, I can't say that if we win this election that means everyone who supports us approved of Iraq. That would be absurd."

diversity to conceal uniformity

“What you want in a media system is to present an ostensible diversity that conceals an actual uniformity.”

Joseph Goebbels
Nazi Propaganda Minister

a wizard who grew serpents on each of his shoulders

From Juan Cole's weblog:

.....Now-Ruz, the New Year celebrated by the Kurds (rooted in ancient Iranian Zoroastrianism, this holiday commemorates the spring solstice --usually March 21-- as the beginning of a new year). The Kurds tie their celebration to the legends of the Shahnameh, which tells the story of how in ancient times an evil ruler emerged, Dahhak or Zohak, who overthrew the glorious king Jamshid. Dahhak was a wizard who grew serpents on each of his shoulders, which needed to eat human brain every day. So Dahhak had young men rounded up from the subject populations, and two were sacrificed each day. Dahhak was finally overthrown by a young knight, Faridun, aided by the blacksmith Kaveh, who freed the captured young men on Now-Ruz. The Kurds have a legend that they are descended from those freed prisoners, and they celebrate their manumission on March 21. The story of Jamshid, Dahhak and Faridun is a variation on a widespread Indo-European myth cycle. In the ancient Indian sources the three are the king of the underworld, Yama; the world-serpent, Vrta, and Indra, who slays Vrta. The story is also echoed in the Nordic myth of Thor and the Midgaard serpent (Thor is a composite of Faridun the prince and Kaveh the blacksmith). At some point in Iran, the snake figure was historicized as an evil foreign king who brought drought and had serpents growing from his body, and he was also racialized. Dahhak or Zohak is a clearly Semitic word, whereas Jamshid and Faridun are Indo-Europeans. This development reflects the fights that took place when the Iranian peoples from Anatolia immigrated into Elamite and Assyrian territory in the 800s BC. Assyrians and Babylonians spoke Semitic languages related to Arabic and Hebrew. (Some US newspapers last year reported the struggle of Kaveh with Zohak as a historical event of the 7th century BC!)

The casting of the serpent monster as a Semitic ruler made it easy for Kurds to identify Dahhak with Saddam, and perhaps with the virulent strain of Arab nationalism he represented.



http://www.juancole.com/2005/03/government-to-be-formed-by-sunday.html

Interesting Q/A

Presenter: Secretary of the Army Francis J. Harvey
Wednesday, March 23, 2005 10:03 a.m. EST

Defense Department Special Briefing on Iraq and Afghanistan

STAFF: Well, good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

Q Good morning.

STAFF: Today we have an opportunity to let you interact with the
secretary of your Army, Dr. Francis Harvey, who has recently returned
from a trip into theater, in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As this is his first time with you, I would ask that when we get to
questions and answers, that you identify yourself and your news
organization so he can get to know you better.

Mr. Secretary, please.

........

Q Good morning, sir. My name is Tom Squitieri with USA Today.
Following up on the issue of recruiting, two surveys conducted for DOD
and the Army recently as well as independent polling by our paper and
other media organizations show that one of the biggest challenges for
recruiters are parents of the younger people who are being convinced
by their parents not to sign up, for the reason they don't want to see
their child possibly killed or hurt in the conflict. With all the
ideas that you're brainstorming, about bonuses and all these other
things and the things you don't want to tell us this morning, how do
you deal with the fact that your biggest obstacle are parents?

SEC. HARVEY: Good question. And as you say, we do take
surveys along those lines.

One thing we're going to be doing, without getting into
the details, is we're going to be being very proactive to pointing out
to recruits and their parents the value of serving the country. This
is a theme the chief and I started in our testimony to Congress, that
it is a noble calling to serve the country. I personally feel that
way. I'm standing here before you because I wanted to serve the
country. And that's what I wanted to do. This is actually my third
career. And my motivation is, during a time of war I want to serve the
country that has been so good to me. I want to return to the
government, return specifically to DOD, that was very influential in
my business success, and what I learned here at the department. So
we're going to appeal to patriotism. We're going to appeal to the
value of service. And we're going to do that in a very proactive way.

So I think those particular results are subject to change
and they can be turned around.

....

http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2005/tr20050323-2325.html

A Nation Rocked to sleep

*CARLY'S POEM*
A Nation Rocked to sleep

by Carly Sheehan
Brother Casey KIA 04/04/04
Sadr City Baghdad

Have you ever heard the sound of a mother screaming for her son?
The torrential rains of a mother's weeping will never be done
They call him a hero, you should be glad that he's one, but
Have you ever heard the sound of a mother screaming for her son?

Have you ever heard the sound of a father holding back his cries?
He must be brave because his boy died for another man's lies
The only grief he allows himself are long, deep sighs
Have you ever heard the sound of a father holding back his cries?

Have you ever heard the sound of taps played at your brother's grave?
They say that he died so that the flag will continue to wave
But I believe he died because they had oil to save
Have you ever heard the sound of taps played at your brother's grave?

Have you ever heard the sound of a nation being rocked to sleep?
The leaders want to keep you numb so the pain won't be so deep
But if we the people let them continue another mother will weep
Have you ever heard the sound of a nation being rocked to sleep?

http://www.gsfp.org/

History according to NPR.

U.S. Changes Tack on Iraq Military Training

All Things Considered, January 24, 2005 · After this weekend's
elections in Iraq, the U.S. plans to revise its strategy on training
Iraq's fledgling security forces, based on lessons learned in
Afghanistan. American advisers "embed" with units for up to two years,
creating closer partnerships with the forces being trained.

Eric Westervelt: …. Additionally the advisor model raises concern
among human rights groups. They recall the specter of the Central
American forces that used their new US trained combat skills to commit
egregious human right abuses, particularly in El Salvador and
Guatemala. General Grange says it is a REAL concern, especially given
the vicious nature of the insurgency and history of brutality under
Saddam Hussein.

Retired US Brigadier General David Grange: "It is hard to teach a
military that came from a country with three decades of lack of
respect for human rights to others, to change over night. And there
will be incidents, no doubt in my mind this would happen, and the US
advisors would have to report that. Which presents another, you know,
issue camaraderie between the advisor and advise."


Full Report

"War has always diminished our freedom. When our freedom has expanded, it
has not come as a result of war or of anything the government has done but
as a result of what citizens have done." -- "Civil disobedience is not our
problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that numbers of
people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their
government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of
this obedience. . . Our problem is that people are obedient all over the
world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and
cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of
petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running and robbing
the country. That's our problem."

-- (Historian Howard Zinn, author of 'A People's History of the
United States')

The OTHER product of rational, intelligent minds - modern, Western minds.

The turn-off is just past a BP petrol station, close to a Leclerc
supermarket. You leave a roundabout and cross a concrete flyover. You
could be on the edge of any town in early 21st-century Europe.

Ahead, through the swirling snow, looms a single railway line,
disappearing through a tower in a long, red-brick building - the
terminus of a short branch line to Auschwitz-Birkenau built in the
spring of 1944. Beyond are three long railway sidings, tall
barbed-wire enclosures, wooden watch-towers, and dark huts in neat
lines. Some huts are ruined. Others stand pristine in freshly fallen
snow, as if enchanted by a curse and frozen for all time.

All is symmetrical and orderly, the product of rational, intelligent
minds - modern, Western minds.

......

Source

What if?

"If we had been wrong the other way and if the threat had really been imminent and we had been hit with an anthrax attack here that was tied to Iraq and the president had done nothing about it, what would people then say?" he retorted when asked to comment about unfound weapons of mass destruction.


"I mean, it would make the criticism of failure to prevent 9/11 just look like child's play."

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said in an interview with PBS television's "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer"

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/050120/1/3pz6t.html

Who else can use this defense? General Pinochet? Stalin? Hitler?

The Sound Bite .....

NPR's All Things Considered had program on Civil Right
movement with guest Andrew Hacker, author of the 1992 book Two
Nations; Claybourne Carson, director of the Martin Luther King Papers
Project at Stanford University; and NPR's Jennifer Ludden. This is
what they said:

Jennifer Ludden: ... Would you concede.... that the general situation
for black Americans has improved?

Andrew Hacker: We have One Million young Black men in prison! That
is a whole chunk of black men, we have more black men in prison that
we have in college... Many more! And nobody is saying there is a
whole generation... that is almost close to genocide in the sense
that they are gonna be felons for the rest of their lives.

Jennifer Ludden: I am wondering Claybourne Carson, how important is
leadership, and is part of the issue there is no modern day Martin
Luther King?

Claybourne Carson: There is no... obviously no Martin Luther King, he
would be 76 years old now, and I think he would be still talking
about the issues that Mr Hacker just described. But my own feeling is
that Dr King would not be welcomed at most Martin King celebrations.
He would be too unsettling in terms of his own message that we still
have a lot of work to do. So I think to some degree what has happened
with Martin Luther King he has been turned into a sound bite, you
know that wonderful speech, I was at the march on Washington, and I
admired the speech, but the way in which it has been turned into a
sound bite to comfort America rather than unsettle America. To make it
seem as if these issues are all in the past. At least once struggled
with that, but now we have overcome it. And that is the way we want
to remember Martin Luther King.

Jennifer Ludden: Andrew Hacker

Andrew Hacker: We live in a very self centered time...

You can listen to the full program at:
All Things Considered

A MUST Watch Documentary

In the past our politicians offered us dreams of a better world. Now
they promise to protect us from nightmares.

The most frightening of these is the threat of an international terror
network. But just as the dreams were not true, neither are these
nightmares.

This is a must watch documentary - Broadcast BBC 2 10/20/04 - Written
and Produced by Adam Curtis

Watch Video:

Part One: The Power of Nightmares
Part Two: Baby It's Cold Outside
Part Three: The Shadows In The Cave Better Alternative

The neocons... What they say and what they belive in.

What they say....

LEDEEN : We were aiming for an expansion of the zone of freedom in the world. And in part that had to do with fighting Communism, and in part that had to do with fighting other kinds of tyrannies. But that’s what we were about, and that’s what we’re still about.

INTERVIEWER (off-camera): When you say you were democratic revolutionaries, what do you mean?

LEDEEN : It meant that we wanted to support the people who wanted to carry out revolutions against tyrannical régimes in the name of democracy, in order to install a democratic system.

INTERVIEWER : As simple as that.

LEDEEN : Yeah. It’s not nuclear physics, you know. I mean, freedom is a fairly simple thing to get.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/video1037.htm



What they belive in...


WILLIAM KRISTOL , Chief of Staff to the Vice President, 1988-92: For Strauss, liberalism produced a decent way of life, and one that he thought was worth defending, but a dead end where nothing could be said to be true; one had no guidance on how to live, everything was relative. Strauss suggests that maybe we didn’t just have to sit there and accept that that was our fate. Politics could help shape the way people live, that politics could help shape the way that people live, teach them some good lessons about living decent and noble human lives. And can we think about what cultures, and what politics, what social orders produce more admirable human beings? I mean, that whole question was put back on the table by Strauss, I think.


http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/video1038.htm

"as they should"

''This is the only practical way to 'win' in Iraq, cut the size of US commitments, and establish a government the Iraqis see as legitimate,"

''What is not clear is whether all the necessary resources are really being provided, and whether a comprehensive and realistic plan exists to ensure that Iraqi military, security, and police forces develop as they should."

Anthony Cordesman, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2005/01/08/report_paints_bleak_picture_of_iraqi_forces?pg=2

You got to love these "fellows"... They get so full of themselves that they think their "as they should" can be forced upon others -- Good luck!

The 4 "areas"

''There's areas where the Iraqi security forces have performed well," Metz said. ''There's areas where they've performed sub-optimally. There's areas where they've been overwhelmed by their opposition and have had to step back and live to fight another day. And there's areas where they've just plain not participated in the fight."

Lieutenant General Thomas Metz, the senior ground commander in Iraq

http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2005/01/08/report_paints_bleak_picture_of_iraqi_forces/


The good news is that 2 years in to the occupation the "areas" have been identified.

Bin Ladin Option

"The Sunni population is paying no price for the support it is giving to the terrorists," ...."From their point of view, it is cost-free. We have to change that equation."

A Military source in the Pentagon
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6802629/site/newsweek/

ronically, Bin Ladin's motivation to attack New York was to make sure American policies in the middle east is not "cost-free" for its civilian population. The chance for this new Pentagon tactic to work on Iraqis is exactly the same as the chance of finding New Yorkers after 9/11 abandoning their goverment in favor of the Taliban.

SPECTER: Starting with the Patriot Act, I already commented that we had this wall which precluded law enforcement from using evidence of crime which had been obtained through search and seizure warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. And now that evidence may be used in a criminal prosecution.

To what extent has that provision and the other provisions of the Patriot Act been of real importance in our fight against terrorism?

GONZALES: Well, of course, Mr. Chairman, I have not been at the department, so I may not know all of the details of specific successes that the United States and the Department of Justice have enjoyed as a result of the tools given to us by the Patriot Act.

But I am told that they have been very significant, and that for our career prosecutors, for the U.S. attorneys out in the field, they have been very, very beneficial in allowing our law enforcement personnel to defend this country.

I believe that in part because of the Patriot Act there has not been a domestic attack on United States soil since9 /11.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53883-2005Jan6.html

If the Patriot Act intends to make it easy to prosecute the terrorist, one has to wonder then why there hasn't been even a single criminal conviction of on terrorism charge since 9/11.

"Now, I hate to ruin a good story by the president's political opponents, who are attacking him through this nominee, but let me just say there's one important point that needs to be made: Judge Gonzales is absolutely right.

You don't have to take my word for it.

First of all, Al Qaida never signed the Geneva Conventions, but moreover the Red Cross' own guidelines state that, "To be entitled to Geneva protection as a prisoner of war, combatants must satisfy four conditions: being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates; secondly, having a fixed, distinctive sign recognizable at a distance; number three, carrying arms openly; and, number four, conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war."

Does anyone on this committee, or anywhere else for that matter, seriously argue that Al Qaida terrorists comply with the law of war? "

U.S. SENATOR JOHN CORNYN (R-TX)
U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the nomination of Alberto Gonzalez to be U.S. Attorney General.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53883-2005Jan6.html



*) Al Queda and Taliban seem to satisfy all four of the condition set out by the Senator. They have a leader (Bin Ladin), the wear distinct clothes, they openly carry their Klashnikov, and they use their weapon as has been the "custom of war".

*) The torture cases that have been publicized so far are about Abu Gharib and Iraqis. So far the practices in the Afghanistan and Gunatanamo has been for the most part secret.


*) Wonder what the Senator thinks are the protection afforded to the US para-military/mercenaries forces that operate in Iraq and Afghanistan.