The Flashlight, August 25-31, 2007

THE FLASHLIGHT, August 25-31, 2007

World
Mother Theresa

CBS 8-26. The diaries of Mother Theresa have disclosed that for fifty years, up to her death, she no longer believed in God and was depressed about it. She wrote that if God did not exist, Jesus was dead, and she had no soul.

A New Rock Star

Guardian 8-28. The world’s biggest diamond has been discovered in a secret location in South Africa. After it is cut it will be worth millions.

Greece

CNN 8-25. Over half of Greece has been swept by wild fires. Attempts to fight them are meager. Arsonists are suspected. 46 people have burned to death.

Afghanistan

CBS 8-26. A bumper crop of opium, 90% of the world’s supply, is being harvested here this year. The struggle against it has failed.

Iraq

Guardian 8-27. Prime Minister Maliki and Vice Presidents Talabani and al-Hashemi have agree to ease restricts on former Baathists entering the government. They also agree to release all persons detained without charge.

Turkey

Guardian 8-28. Abdullah Gul has been elected President of Turkey. He has promised to maintain the current separation between mosque and state.

United States

NYTimes 8-27. Albert Gonzales resigned as US Attorney General, yielding to widespread pressure.

` CNN 8-29. 326,000 citizens of the New Orleans are suing the US Corps of Engineers for faulty construction of the levees.

NY Times 8-29. Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho (R) has been removed from all committee assignments and is under pressure to resign on account of a homosexual incident in a Minneapolis airport bathroom. The other party was an undercover cop. This was not the first incident of its kind for Craig. He proclaims himself a “family values” man in a state with a big Mormon population.

Book Review

John Mearsheimer and Steven Walt, The Israel Lobby. New York, Farrar Straus, 2007. To be published September 4.

The first review of this long expected book appeared in the New Yorker this week. David Remnick was the reviewer. The thesis of the book is that the unconditional support that the US has given Israel in the last sixty years has not been in the national interest. The reviewer tries to be balanced, but feels that the book is a “phenomenon of the moment,” since people in the US are generally frustrated with the situation in the Middle East.
There will little doubt be many more reviews and much discussion of the work.

The Fllashlight, August 18-24, 2007

THE FLASHLIGHT, August 18-24, 2007

Iraq: US Policy

8-22 CNN. Senator John Warner calls for the beginning of US withdrawal from Iraq next month.
NYTimes 8-24. The new US National Intelligence Estimate, drawn up by all sixteen US intelligence agencies, said that despite security gains, the Iraqi government is paralyzed. It has little hope of healing the sectarian rift by next spring.
Last month Admiral Michael G. Mullen, incoming chair of the US Chiefs of Staff, told congress that without political progress in Iraq, “No amount of troops in no amount of time will make a difference.”

Lebanon

Guardian 8-19. With political negotiations stalemated, Lebanon expects a war. The fight of the Lebanese Army with Muslim extremists in the Nahr al-Barid refugee camp has lasted three months and cost 200 lives, and still goes on. There is widespread fear that the Israelis and Hezbollah will go to war again in the near future, with possible involvement by Syria and Iran.

[Review of CNN series, “God’s Warriors,” with Christine Amanpour, Aug. 21, 22, 23. Rebroadcasts are likely. This review includes some expressions of editorial opinion, marked with brackets. ]

1. Jewish Warriors. [This was a ground-breaking effort, asserting facts presented in the mass media rarely, if ever, before.]
a. Jewish settlements on the West Bank violate international law and have been condemned (in toothless statements) by every sitting US President. Yet nothing has been done to prevent US Zionists from sending over $63 million dollars to Israeli to support such settlements, and taking these contribution as charitable deductions from their US income taxes.
b. Israeli receives three billion dollars a year in military and other aid from the US, and the Israel Lobby is so effective that no Congressman dares to vote against it. Senator Charles Percy, who once refused to cooperate, was defeated in a re-election bid by an opponent heavily financed by the Israel Lobby.
c. 59% of US evangelicals think Israel is a fulfillment of Biblical prophecy and support it with money and lobbying.
d. Israel shelters its own terrorists who assassinated Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin after he signed a peace agreement with the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat. Other Israelis planned a revenge attack against Palestinians by plotting to destroy a Palestinian girls school in East Jerusalem with a truck bomb. The Israeli police got suspicious and foiled the attack. In both cases the Israeli terrorists are in prison now. But many others are not: Christine Amanpour interviewed them.
e. Ariel Sharon, the “godfather” of illegal Israeli settlements, provoked the second Palestinian intifada (rebellion) by entering the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, contrary to custom.
f. There is a group in Israel called Peace Now which is trying to dismantle the illegal settlements on the West Bank.
Christine Amanpour said that God’s Warriors refuse to compromise because they see compromise as the equivalent to capitulation.
This television program starts in the year 1967, when the victorious Israeli Army occupied Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank. [By omitting any account of events in 1948, which the Palestinians call The Catastrophe, CNN leaves it unclear why Palestinians are resisting so fiercely. ]

According to recent work with by Israeli historians using Hebrew official documents, Israeli armed men, the Stern Gang and the Irgun Zvi Leumi, forcibly expelled c. 725,000 Palestinians from their homes and lands during Mar-Sep. 1948. Then they bulldozed the abandoned villages and planted parks over them. No compensation has been paid. Today the descendents of these refugees amount to four million people. The story can be found in Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006), and Cypel, Walled: Israel Society at an Impasse (2007).

2. Muslim Warriors

This program contains mostly familiar material to those who habitually watch CNN and PBS.
The most famous Muslim extremists, an Egyptian, Sayed Qutb and Osama bin Laden, visited the US, and were appalled by excesses of sexuality, materialism, and alcoholism.
In Iran, militant Muslim revolutionaries were appalled by the corruption in the government of the secular Shah, who profited hugely from Iran’s oil . He was put into power by the CIA, who also trained SAVAK, his secret police. The US generously funded the Iraqi attack, led by Saddam Hussein on Iran. This war last eight years and cost over a million Iraqi lives. The pious Muslims of Iran expect a savior Imam to return and solve all problems.

In Egypt the US generously funds the de facto dictatorship of Husni Mubarak. His only strong political opposition is the Muslim Brotherhood, with a history of terrorism which it not renounces.
On the West Bank, Christine Amanpour shows a Palestinian family from which a son has died as a suicide bomber. They refuse to condemn him. His behavior is explained only as the result of horror at the death of a Palestinian girl during a violent incident involving the Israeli authorities.
[The CNN program spends considerable time on head scarves and “modest” dress for Muslim women, but this has little to do with extremism and violence. ] Devout Muslims are not supposed to date, drink alcohol, or have premarital sex. [Such were American Christian middle class mores before the 1920’s. ]

3. Christian Warriors

In this program we see a large audience of evangelical Christians chanting very fast “Christ is King” clap-clap-CLAP! Their leader says they are trying to hold back “barbarous secularists” who hold to “illegal alien” values. Christian fundamentalists showed their power first in 1994, when Ralph Reid and his Christian Coalition elected a Republic Congress and helped to kept it in power until 2006.

The viewer also sees Rev. Greg Boyd of Minnesota, who opposes the glorification of war and wants to keep religion and politics separate. Also shown is the Rev. Richard Sizak, who became alarmed about global warming in 2002 and says that saving the Earth is God’s agenda.
But other Christian fundamentalists fight the teaching of evolution in the public schools, abortion, and gay marriage. They want the Ten Commandents displayed in public places and the requirement of prayer in the schools. [Their opposition to stem cell research and the morning after pill is not discussed.]

Also shown is the rally of 22,000 teenagers organized by Ron Luce in his Battle Cry movement against premarital sex, drugs and the corruptions available on the Internet and TV. His rules are similar to those of the Taliban except that his dress code falls short of the burqa for women. This movement is based in Texas.

[CNN shows Christian “warriors” as generally non-violent, since the US laws allows them to operate freely in politics and conduct their war against sex and drugs.]

Christine Amanpour concludes with an appeal for the understanding of God’s Warriors. She said she had worked for eight months preparing the program.

The Flashlight, August 11-17, 2007

THE FLASHLIGHT, August 11-17, 2007

Iraq

NY Times 8-12. The leading Democratic candidates for President (Clinton, Obama, and Edwards) are now saying that leaving Iraq may take years. They express fears of wider war, genocide, and an Al-Qaida takeover in case of complete withdrawal. But Bill Richardson is saying, “Just get out.” [and so is Dennis Kucinich].
NYTimes Editorial 8-13. Any plan to stay in Iraq in reduced numbers outside of the cities in order to train Iraqi security forces just won’t work. No Iraqi government will be able to control the cities any time soon. As the US draws down its forces, attacks on them will increase, judging from the current British experience.

CNN 8-13. Michael Ware: the US is cutting deals with Sunni Baathists to fight Al-Qaida in northern Iraq, and Al-Qaida attacks have been cut 50%. But that is a move toward a wider war, in which the US sides with Sunnis instead of Shias. [The Shias have been getting military help from Iran.] Baghdad is now ethnically segregated, or “cleansed,” but there are still about twenty torture deaths discovered every morning.

Guardian 8-14. A terrible attack on three villages 75 miles west of Mosul with fuel trucks called at least 250 and wounded over 300 persons. The victims were ethnic Kurds but members of a religious minority, the Yezidis. Moslems and Yezidis are endogamous: they are forbidden to marry only outside their own religious group. The Yezidi religion is pre-Islamic in origin, and contains elements of Zoroastrianism and Mithraism. One of their religious symbols is the peacock. They have tended to support the American occupation of Iraq.
According to the Iraqi police, the massacre was incited by a love affair between a seventeen year old Yezidi girl and a Muslim man; the girl converted to Islam. In revenge, the Yezidis stoned her to death. [The Muslims would have done the same if the roles had been reversed: this is an expression of the honor/shame concept that is cross-cultural around the Mediterranean Basin.]

US News
NY Times. Spending lavishly, Mitt Romney won the Iowa Republican straw poll with 32% of the votes. Huckabee, who spent
little, won 18%. The latter is an effective public speaker.

Guardian 8-13. The US rate for life expectancy has fallen from eleventh place in the world 20 years ago, to forty second place today.
Some attribute this to the lack of health insurance of 45 million Americans and that one-third of American adults are obese.

NY Times 8-13. Karl Rove resigned as deputy chief of staff and senior Advisor to President Bush as of August 31. He “needed to spend more time with his family.”

The Flashlight, August 4-10, 2007

THE FLASHLIGHT, August 4-10, 2007

Israel/Palestine

NYTimes and Guardian, 8-8. Israeli riot police, by court, forcibly removed 17 Jewish settlers from the houses they had been occupying illegally in the center of Hebron, on the West Bank. The settlers threw rocks and chunks of metal at them. Twelve Israeli soldiers who refused to participate in settler removal were immediately court-martialed and imprisoned. The NY Times said, “All Israel settlements beyond the 1967 boundaries are considered illegal by much of the world.” [and under international law]. “Israel disputes that. But there are more than 20 settlement outposts created since March 2001, illegal under Israeli law, that the government has promised Washington to dismantle but has not.”
More than 400,000 Jewish settlers live in the West Bank plus East Jerusalem.

According to Haaretz, a liberal Israeli newspaper, Shimon Peres, President of Israel, has proposed a new peace plan giving the Palestinians 100% of occupied territory. Israel would keep settlements on 5% of the West Bank in exchange for an equal amount of land. Haaretz said, in an editorial, that the most important interest of the Zionist movement was to end the occupation of the territories. The editorial said that a stable majority of Israeli prefer a two-state solution to a binational state or an apartheid regime.
The Guardian said that Israelis fear that Islamic fanatics [Hamas et al] will take over the West Bank. They also fear Iran’s program to make nuclear weapons.
Ehud Barak, the Israeli Defense Minister, said that before Israeli withdraws from the West Bank, the technology for a missile defense system must be developed. He estimated this would take 3 to 5 years.

Iraq

Washington Post, 8-6. The General Accounting Office reported that 30% of the arms giving to the Iraqi Army are not accounted for. 190,000 assault rifles and pistols were given during 2004-2005. At that time General Petraeus was in charge of the training of Iraqi security forces. The GAO said an incorrect procedure was used.

Az-Zaman 8-7. The Ministry of Electricity of Iraqi said it is unable to provide energy for half the Iraqis in the country. The temperature is now ranging between 45-50 degrees Celsius [113-122 Fahrenheit]. Unnamed sources warned of the spread of epidemics as a result of the lack of means of water desalination and the rise in temperatures.

United States

CNN 8-9. Stocks declined 387 points, the worst decline since February. There is a “liquidity famine.” 8-10. NY Times. Paul Krugman said that this was ominous and that there is little that the government can do, especially in the light of its lack of credibility.

Book Review

Tim Weiner. Legacy of Ashes. The History of the CIA. NY 2007.
This is a definitive history of the CIA based on documents, oral histories, and interviews. The author is a NY Times reporter. He concludes that three generations of CIA officers have failed in their most important mission: to enable the President and the public to understand the world.
He says, “Stalin never had a master plan for world domination, nor the means to pursue it.” According to Khrushchev, Stalin was afraid of war.
The CIA was adept at using money to buy foreign politicians. Its money talked so loudly, that it saw no need to learn foreign languages or study the culture and history of other countries.
The focus of the organization was on clandestine paramilitary activities, which were expensive and unmonitored. The focus was not on intelligence gathering. Consequently, it was unable to warn the US of major crises. The 9-11 attack was the Pearl Harbor that the CIA was created to prevent.

When Bush appointed Porter Goss as Director of the CIA, the latter tried to purge the organization of officers he considered disloyal to the President. The most competent officers left or were fired.

The Flashlight, July 28 - August 3, 2007

THE FLASHLIGHT, July 28 – August 3, 2007

Iraq

NYTimes 7-29. editorial. Saudi Arabia is pouring money into Sunni opposition groups in Iraq. It is allowing 30-40 people a month to cross its border into Iraq to join the Sunni insurgents. The Saudis are afraid of growing Iranian influence, especially in southern Iraq.

Frank Rich: Since March the number of Iraqi Army battalions fit to fight independently has dropped from 10 to 6.
In The Occupation of Iraq by Ali Allawi published last April at Yale Press, unknown embezzlers stole $1.2 billion of the Iraq Army’s procurement budget “under the nose of General Petraeus.”

NPR (National Public Radio) 7-30. In an official US government report on Iraqi reconstruction, the Bechtel Corporation, which received $1.5 billion for various projects, has only succeeded to making half of them operational. The rest are dysfunctional, and the Iraqi Government refuses to take them over. The report said that corruption is a “second insurgency” in Iraq. Unemployment in Iraq is now 50%.

CNN 8-1. $602 billion has already been spent in Iraq and Afghanistan according to the official estimate. The expected total is one trillion dollars.

Guardian 8-3. The Iraqi Parliament went into recess after failing to pass the oil bill much desired by the Bush Administration. It would have allowed foreign companies to operate in Iraq under “exploration risk contracts” that could last 30 years with no chance for revision. The location of most of Iraq’s oil reserves is well known; there is no risk involved in drilling there. As a country under occupation, Iraq is in a poor bargaining position in dealing with foreign companies.
The Guardian reports that Iraqi civil society, trade unions, and professional oil experts are opposed to this bill. The Sunnis, Sadrists, and Virtue Parties in Parliament oppose the bill. Cheney and the oil lobby in Washington are reportedly enraged at the Iraqi Parliament for refusing to pass it. They have stopped talking about benchmarks and the September deadline, and now are advocating “patience.”
[On account of the waning supply of American men and equipment available to fight in Iraq, and the growing public opposition to the war, a major political struggle is probable this fall.]

Israel/Palestine

NYTimes 7-29. A new coalition of 34 American evangelical Christian leaders called for a greater US effort to find a just solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. They called for the creation of a Palestinian state which would include the “vast majority” of the West Bank. [Currently there are 250,000 Israeli settlers there.] This new Christian coalition is opposed to another evangelical group, Christians United for Israel.

US News

7-31 CNN. Senator Ted Stevens (R), age 83, of Alaska is under FBI / IRS investigation for corruption. Investigators entered his house and took pictures. It was reported that he “allowed” Veco, an oil services corporation with tens of millions in federal government contracts in Alaska, to pay for the renovation and expansion of his home. Rep., Don Young, the only representative from Alaska in Congress, is also under investigation.

CNN 7-30. John Roberts, Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, suffered a seizure and was rushed to a hospital. He was allowed to go home two days later. It was reported that he had a seizure in 1993, although this was not mentioned in his Senate confirmation hearings. There was no tumor or blood clot in his brain. According to a medical commentator, Roberts is now considered an epileptic. There is a 50% chance that he will have another seizure.

CNN 8-1. A major bridge over the Mississippi in downtown Minneapolis collapsed at the height of evening rush-hour traffic. 50 automobiles landed in the river. 7 people are known dead so far, and 20-30 are missing.
This was an interstate bridge, thus a federal government responsibility. It was built in 1967; since then traffic over it has greatly increased. There is no indication of terrorism as a cause of the collapse. Both federal and state agencies are investigating it.
CNN (8-2) and the New York Times (8-3) issued commentaries on the deterioration of the American infrastructure, including bridges, roads, tunnels, waterways, dams, railroads, water systems, and waste-water systems. A bill sponsored by Senators Chuck Hagel (R) and Chris Dodd (D) for infrastructure maintenance work is currently pending in the Senate.

NYT 8-3. The Senate passed an expanded Children’s Health Insurance Bill by a veto-proof margin of 68 to 31. A similar bill passed the House by a smaller margin. The cost of the bill would be paid for by increased taxes on tobacco and reduced subsidies to private insurance companies.