BUSH WATCH...Doug Ireland

posted November 20, 2005

The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act  has yet to pass the House, which will take it up this fall, although -- since the Republicans have an arm-lock on the lower chamber and the GOP leadership is making this bill's passage a priority to insure the NRA's full-throated support for Republican Congressional candidates in November -- its passage is hardly in doubt,. But it's still worthwhiile to register your opposition to this dreadful bill, H.R. 800, and doing so is as easy as a couple of mouse clicks: the Stop the NRA website has an easy form for you to e-mail your Member of Congress with a message of opposition to the bill, which you can access by clicking here.

August 22, 2005

BUSH CAVES IN TO ISLAMIST CONSTITUTION FOR IRAQ -- AND THE U.S. PRESS BLOWS THE STORY

If the Bush administration brokered a deal in Occupied Iraq to enshrine Islamic law as the guiding principle of the new Iraqi Constitution, you'd think it would be headline news in the U.S. media, wouldn't you? Well, that's what has happened -- yet you can  search the Sunday papers in vain to find this sell-out to the Islamists clearly portrayed -- or, in some cases, even mentioned.

In a dispatch that Reuters moved at 1:33 P.M. on Saturday (August 20), the headline reads, "U.S. concedes ground to Islamists on Iraqi law."  "U.S. diplomats have conceded ground to Islamists on the role of religion in Iraq,  negotiators said on Saturday as they raced to meet a 48-hour deadline to draft a constitution under intense U.S. pressure," Reuters reported. "Shi'ite, Sunni and Kurdish negotiators all said there was accord on a bigger role for Islamic law than Iraq had before.

"But a secular Kurdish politician said Kurds opposed making Islam 'the,' not 'a,'main source of law -- changing current wording -- and subjecting all legislation to a religious test. 'We understand the Americans have sided with the Shi'ites," he said. "It's shocking. It doesn't fit American values. They have spent so much blood and money here, only to back the creation of an Islamist state ... I can't believe that's what the Americans really want or what the American people want.'"

Under the soporific headline,  "Iraqi Talks Move Ahead on Some Issues," The Sunday New York Times did report, under an August 20 Baghdad deadline, that "Under a deal brokered Friday by the American ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad (right), Islam was to be named "a primary source of legislation" in the new Iraqi constitution, with the proviso that no legislation be permitted that conflicted with the 'universal principles' of the religion. The latter phrase raised concerns that Iraqi judges would have wide latitude to strike down laws now on the books, as well as future legislation. At the same time, according to a Kurdish leader involved in the talks, Mr. Khalilzad had backed language that would have given clerics sole authority in settling marriage and family disputes. That gave rise to concerns that women's rights, as they are enunciated in Iraq's existing laws, could be curtailed. Finally, according to the person close to the negotiations, Mr. Khalilzad had been backing an arrangement that could have allowed clerics to have a hand in interpreting the constitution." But because of the way the Times presented the story, it's doubtful that anyone bothered to pay attention to it or wade into the body of the story to find this revealing detail.

The Washington Post also put a snooze of a headline on its Sunday story: "Kurds Fault U.S. on Iraqi Charter," said the Post header -- but it's not until the story's fifth paragraph that one gets to the meat, when the paper reports that, "The working draft of the constitution stipulates that no law can contradict Islamic principles. In talks with Shiite religious parties, Kurdish negotiators said they have pressed unsuccessfully to limit the definition of Islamic law to principles agreed upon by all groups. The Kurds said current language in the draft would subject Iraqis to extreme interpretations of Islamic law. Kurds also contend that provisions in the draft would allow Islamic clerics to serve on the high court, which would interpret the constitution. That would potentially subject marriage, divorce, inheritance and other civil matters to religious law and could harm women's rights, according to the Kurdish negotiators and some women's groups."

Moreover, the Post devalued the impact of this information by relying solely on Kurdish sources. But the Reuters dispatch also cited one of the main Sunni negotiators on the Constitution confirming the U.S. sell-out to the Islamists: "Sunni Arab negotiator Saleh al-Mutlak also said a deal was struck which would mean parliament could pass no legislation that 'contradicted Islamic principles. A constitutional court would rule on any dispute on that, the Shi'ite official said," Reuters reported, further quoting the Sunni's Mutlak as saying "The Americans agreed...."

Given the way the two national U.S. dailies -- which set the TV news agenda -- played this story, it's hardly surprising that shallow little George Stephanopoulos (right), on  this morning's ABC political chat show "This Week," didn't even bother to raise the question of the U.S. cave-in to an Islamic Constitution, neither when quizzing several U.S. Senators (Republicans Allen and Hagel) and Gov. Bill Richardson on Iraq, nor in the round-table discussion with journalists which followed. And on NBC's "Meet the Press" this morning, David Gregory (subbing for Tim Russert) also failed to bring up the U.S. sell-out to an Islamist Constitution in long discussions of Iraq with Sens. Russ Feingold and Trent Lott (Feingold should have mentioned it--but didn't), although Gregory did bring it up in a roundtable at the very end of the show (by which time a lot of people had probably switched to watching "Sports Wives" -- why didn't Gregory talk about this important news at the top of the hour, particularly when questioning Lott, who kept insisting "we're making progress" in Iraq?)

The Reuters dispatch also contained this useful and highly relevant reminder, absent from both the Times and Post reports: that Bush's ambassador to Iraq, Khalilzad,  "helped draft a constitution in his native Afghanistan that declared it an 'Islamic Republic' in which no law could contradict Islam." And the Post story, way down, quoted the Sunni's Mutlak as saying of Khalilzad, "'His main interest is to push the constitution on time, no matter what the constitution has in it,'' said Salih Mutlak, a Sunni delegate who has been outspoken against some compromise proposals. 'No country in the world can draft their constitution in three months. They themselves took 10 years,' Mutlak said, referring to the United States. 'Why do they wish to impose a silly constitution on us?'" Meanwhile, the AP reports this morning that the Sunnis say they've been left out of the negotiations over the Constitution.-- a sure prescription for more violence in Iraq.

Why is the Bush administration strong-arming the Iraqis into rushing through a new Constitution with so little time to craft it? Two reasons: Bush desperately wants to score a p.r. victory in "the war on terror," in which his administration continues to insist that Iraq is the main front (even though it is the U.S. occupation of Iraq that is now  the main motivator for  terrorist-style violence); and because failure to achieve a new Constitution on time would undoubtedly cause new elections in Iraq -- and the Bushies are terribly afraid of the Iraqi voters, fearing that discontent in the country with the U.S. occupation and its failure to bring either security from violence or to deliver basics -- like water and electric power-- would lead to the election of a government less maleable by Washington, thus creating further U.S. domestic backlash against the Anglo-American occupation of Iraq.  That short-sighted desire for achieving something that could be sold by Bush's spinmeisters to the American people as 'progress" in Iraq is what's driven Bush's man to break arms on behalf of an Islamist Constitution for Iraq.

The Reuters report cited above is reinforced by the coverage in the daily Al-Hayat, cited by Middle East expert Prof. Juan Cole this morning on his excellent blog, Informed Content. Cole (left) writes: "In one of the major disputes outstanding between the Kurds and the Shiites, on whether Islamic law will be the fundamental source or only one of the sources of Iraqi law, the Shiite religious parties appear to have won out. AFP reports that the reason for this is that the United States has swung around and begun to support the primacy of Islamic canon law.

"Al-Hayat writes, 'Also, an agreement was reached that Islam is the religion of state, and that no law shall be enacted that contradicts the agreed-upon essential verities of Islam. Likewise, the inviolability of the highest [Shiite] religious authorities in the land is safeguarded, without any allusion to a detailed description. The paragraph governing these matters will specify that Islam is 'the fundamental basis' for legislation, though there will be an allusion to the protection of democratic values, human rights, and social and national values. A Higher Council will be formed to review new legislation to ensure it does not contravene the essential verities of the Islamic religion.' Personal status law, concerning marriage, divorce, alimony, inheritance, and so forth, will be adjudicated by religious courts in accordance with the religion or sect to which the individual belongs." 

And, of course, nobody mentioned it in all these cited reports, but gays and lesbians in particular also have huge reason to be afraid of an Islamic Constitution in Iraq. But Prof. Cole also extensively quotes the text of the Islamic Constitution which U.S. Ambassador Khalilzad godfathered in Afghanistan. It makes for chilling reading, especially as an omen of what Khalilzad is cooking up in Iraq, and you can read it by clicking here.

August 18, 2005

NEW STUDY SHREDS THE MYTH OF THE MARKET ECONOMY BRINGING DEMOCRACY

It's a finger in the eye for the likes of the Times' Tom Friedman and other prophets of the beneficial effects of globalization: a new study  of 150 countries, to appear in the September-October issue of the archi-establishment journal Foreign Affairs (published by the Council on Foreign Relations), demonstrating how the conventional wisdom which says that free market economies inevitably bring democracy in their wake is a myth.

Today's International Herald-Tribune has a preview of the Foreign Affairs inquest in an article, "An Open Economy, a Closed Society," by the authors of the study: Bruce Bueno de Mesquita (chair of the Department of Politics at New York University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution) and George W. Downs (professor of politics and dean of social sciences at New York University).

Bueno de Mesquita and Downs shred the prevailing notion in U.S. political discourse from both wings of the bi-partisan duopoly: namely, "that market liberalization is the most reliable path to democracy. Economic openness, it was reasoned, leads to the emergence of an educated and entrepreneurial middle class that over time, will start to demand more and more control over its own fate. But something went wrong in China, Russia and other states where authoritarian regimes loosened the economic reins. Economic growth arrived but liberal democracy is still nowhere is sight. The reason is simple but disturbing: A new and more sophisticated breed of autocrat has discovered a strategy that permits them to enjoy the benefits of economic growth while postponing - often for decades - the emergence of authentic competitive democracy.

"To understand how this strategy works, it helps first to understand how political competition emerges in the first place. To effectively pursue political power, citizens have to engage in "strategic coordination": activities such as disseminating information, recruiting and organizing party members, selecting leaders, raising funds and holding meetings and demonstrations. Economic growth has traditionally been thought to promote democratization by making strategic coordination easier, as communications technology improves, news media become more diverse and the citizenry more educated.

"But in recent years some savvy regimes have learned how to cut the cord between growth and strategic coordination, allowing the former without having to worry about the latter. Their trick is to ration carefully the subset of public goods that facilitate political coordination, while investing in others that are essential to economic growth. The "coordination goods" that they need to worry about consist of things such as political and civil rights, press freedom and access to higher education. "Standard public goods" include public transportation, primary and secondary education, and public health; all of which contribute to economic growth and pose relatively little threat to the regime.

"Examples abound of how autocrats limit coordination goods. Consider China's long history of restricting access to the Internet and other media. Or Russia, where President Vladimir Putin has placed all national television networks under strict state control and eliminated elections for regional leaders. Or Venezuela, where last year President Hugo Chávez pushed through a law allowing him to ban news reports of violent protests and to suspend the broadcasting licenses of media outlets that violate any of a long list of broadly phrased regulations.

"How well does this coordination suppression strategy work? We recently examined the provision of both coordination goods and standard public goods in about 150 countries from 1970 to 1999. Several findings are particularly noteworthy. First, the suppression of coordination goods keeps autocrats in power. An autocrat who both permits freedom of the press and civil liberties reduces the chances that he will survive for another year by about 15 to 20 percent. Second, today's autocrats tend to suppress coordination goods much more consistently than they do other public goods. Some old-fashioned tyrants, especially in Africa, still suppress all public goods. But a growing proportion of the world's authoritarian regimes have adopted a more sophisticated brand of oppression. Third, the greater the suppression of coordination goods in a given country, the greater the lag between the onset of economic growth and the emergence of liberal democracy...."

You can read the entire article by clicking here.  The notion that the free market brings democracy with it is dear not only to George Bush and the Republicans, it is a staple of Democratic politicians' rhetoric as well -- it is the U.S. version of the pensée unique, and holds that the only possible economic model compatible with human freedom is the American one. To have this arrogant and falacious proposition left in tatters by such a prestigious publication as Foreign Affairs provides new ammunition for a radical, systemic critique of both U.S. foreign policy and Washington's attempt to dictate global economic hegemony on behalf of the multinationals. The appetizer of this new study in today's Herald-Trib leaves me eager for F.A.'s September issue.

August 12, 2005

ANTI-GAY HATE CAMPAIGN TARGETS STARBUCKS

I've written before about the potent anti-gay boycott and pressure campaigns by the Christian right and the "family values" industry targeting Corporate America (see my L.A. Weekly article, "The New Blacklist: Corporate America Caves In to the Christers.").Well, the Christers now have a new target for their hate-spewing: Starbucks.

• The Concerned Women of America -- an outfit run by Beverly LaHaye (right), the wife of fundamentalist preacher Rev. Tim Lahaye, a Christian broadcaster with her own nationally syndicated radio show, and a skilled Christer propagandist who's written eight books and sits on the board of Jerry Falwell's Liberty University -- has now targeted the latte-purveying company for promoting homosexual values. "Starbucks Funds and Promotes Homosexual Activism,:" shrieks Mrs. LaHaye's website.

Starbucks' crime? The company  is corrupting our youth on its coffee cups. On the back of certain Starbucks cups, as part of their "The Way I See It" series, is a quote from openly gay writer Armistead Maupin --- author of the "Tales of the City" series of six books that also became a TV series on PBS and Showtime, with Olympia Dukakis and Laura Linney among its stars. Armistead's oh-so-dangerous words on the Starbucks cup read:

"My only regret about being gay is that I repressed it so long. I surrendered my youth to the people I feared when I could have been out there loving someone. Don't make that mistake yourself. Life's too damn short."

That unimpeachable statement by our friend Armistead Maupin (right) is, when it appears on Starbucks' coffee cups, apparently a violation of the "Biblical values for women and families" which Mrs. LaHaye proclaims she founded Concerned Women of America to promote (the group had a $12 million budget in 2003, the last year for which figures are publicly available).

Another Starbucks crime, in the eyes of LaHaye and the Christers, is to have provided a bit of funding for San Diego's Gay Pride celebrations.

An interesting note about Christer hypocrisy: BlogActive reports that Lee LeHaye -- son of Beverly and the Rev. Tim -- who is the Concerned Women of America's CFO -- is openly gay.

As my survey of the anti-gay Christer boycotts of Corporate America shows, many of the largest companies have been knuckling other to the censorious demands of the religious primitives. That's why you can, and should, take some concrete action. Contact Starbucks and tell them not to cave in to Beverly LaHayes'  campaign of hate and fear-mongering -- you can express your opinion to Starbucks by clicking here.

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posted July 17, 2005

ROVE'S LATEST SMEAR STRATEGY: GOP TARGETS MOVEON AS WEDGE ISSUE TO BAIT DEMS

In a hydra-headed propaganda attack, reminiscent of Joe McCarthy's wild charges in the 1950s that the Democrats were responsible for "twenty years of treason," Karl Rove and the Republican Party are engaged in a widespread smear campaign against MoveOn as "unpatriotic," hoping to hang the successful e-fundraising operation around the necks of Democratic candidates all across the country like a terror-tinged albatross.

In a recent edition of the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call, an article, "GOP Sees MoveOn as Wedge" (available online by subscription only), lays out the Rove-inspired propaganda blitz:

"From top White House operative Karl Rove (LEFT) to two of the party campaign committees, Republicans have launched a full-scale attack on MoveOn.org, questioning the liberal group's patriotism and worldview. These attacks appear to have two purposes: One is to put the group and its Democratic allies on the defensive over support for the war on terror. And the second is to drive a wedge between Democratic candidates and the millions of dollars that MoveOn's supporters have pumped into their campaigns. With MoveOn fast becoming one of the Democratic Party's most important fundraising sources, the second goal may end up being the more important one."

Take the case of GOP Senator Rick Santorum (LEFT), darling of the Christer right. The almost-certain Democratic nominee against Santorum next year is Bob Casey Jr., (RIGHT) the Pennsylvania State Treasurer, son of a former Democratic governor, and a noted social conservative who opposes abortion. Despite   Casey's conservative views, MoveOn sent out a major e-mailing soliciting funds for Casey's campaign as a way of defeating Santorum -- and with great success, raising over $150,000 for Casey in the first 24 hours after the fundraising appeal.

"But," reports Roll Call,  "the National Republican Senatorial Committee immediately went on the offensive with a release titled, 'Casey Moves In With MoveOn,' alleging that the group's e-mail on behalf of Casey shows how closely he is aligned with the 'ultra-liberal left.' John Brabender, Santorum's media consultant, predicted that if Casey continues to accept MoveOn money, he will have to answer for the group's controversial policies, which include opposing military intervention in Afghanistan. 'You can tell a lot about a person by the company they keep,' Brabender said. A group like MoveOn 'will have a lot of trouble in Pennsylvania, particularly in the middle part of the state. The group will be hung around Bobby Casey's neck.'  The rhetoric from Brabender and the NRSC is aimed at forcing Casey into a no-win choice: He could pass up a generous source of campaign cash, or he could accept MoveOn's ample resources, yet face an assault over the group's issue stances."

MoveOn underscored its financial power when, in just 48 hours, it raised some $800,000 for West Virgina Sen. Robert Byrd, (LEFT) a leading Democratic critic of the Iraq war. This prompted a raising of the rhetorical level by Rove & Company. As Roll Call notes, "The campaign against MoveOn moved to a new level with Rove's June 22 speech in midtown Manhattan, not far from the site of the World Trade Center attacks. Rove accused MoveOn and other liberals of wanting to 'offer therapy and understanding for our attackers.' Democrats pounced on the remarks and demanded an apology from Rove, noting that Durbin just the previous day had apologized for likening treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay to those in Nazi Germany or in Soviet gulags. But rather than issuing an emotional apology - as Durbin did - the White House and Republicans went into full attack mode on MoveOn and other liberals,  including Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean. The Republican National Committee issued reams and reams of documentation on the positions of MoveOn and Dean regarding the war in Afghanistan. The White House refused to offer even a hint of an apology. And the NRSC sent out a fundraising e-mail lambasting MoveOn, beginning with: 'Karl Rove was right.' And a few days later, when MoveOn's pitch went out on Casey's behalf, the NRSC again pounced on the group and attacked the centrist-leaning candidate for allying himself with a liberal group - a line of attack that the committee has used mercilessly against Byrd ever since the late March fundraising pitch on his behalf."

Just as the American people are turning against Bush's war on Iraq, with a majority favoring withdrawal, the Rove Republicans are going to use scare tactics and the Big Lie technique so often brandished in past GOP campaigns to use guilt-by-association with MoveOn to try to brand Democrats as "soft on terror" -- even when, as in the cases of conservative Democrat Casey Jr. and the octogenarian Senator Byrd, the charges are ludicrous. Make no mistake -- the Big Lie can work. Just ask Max Cleland (RIGHT), the quadriplegic Vietnam War veteran, who lost his Senate seat in 2002 after a similar smear campaign. His GOP opponent ran an ad which It opened with pictures of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, then attacked Cleland for voting against President Bush's Homeland Security bill. It didn't mention that Cleland supported a Democratic bill that wasn't radically different. Cleland lost -- even though he had voted in favor of Bush's invasion of Iraq.

The gullibility of the American electorate is notorious when it comes to phony appeals to patriotism -- and the London bombings will only heighten the national mood of security hysteria. In fact, the horrific London attacks (LEFT) on the underground and the double-decker bus, resulting in 50 dead, were a gift from the terrorists to Bush and Blair, both discredited for their lies that took us into a war that did not need to be waged -- the Anglo-American duo will be strengthened now by those bombings, which is what the terrorists want. It's much easier for them to recruit when the world's only hyperpower and its Britannic helpmate are led by two mendacious figures with blood on their hands like Tony and Dubya.

So, with the attacks on Move-On and its use against Democrats like Casey and Byrd, the shape of next year's Congressional by-election is now clear. And remember, as the poet said, when the flag is unfurled, all reason is in the trumpet.

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July 15, 2005

THE "PALESTINIAN GANDHIS" OF BILIN

The small Palestinian village of Bilin is just one of many communities being rent asunder by Israel's Wall of Shame, the 650 kilometer apartheid barrier meant to separate Palestinians from Israel, and which slices through many communities and completely encircles others. But Bilin is remarkable for the creative non-violence with which its residents have carried out demonstrations against the destruction of their community and the confiscation of their lands to build it. They have conducted demonstrations while placing themselves in handcuffs, as the Lebanon Star reported -- so it could not be said they were throwing stones at the Israeli occupying army. They have sent their minor children to demonstrate in front of the Israeli Supreme Court in Jerusalem -- since their mothers and fathers were not allowed to enter Israel. They have chained themselves to trees about to be uprooted to make way for the Wall. Demonstrators have sealed themselves in large metal water barrels placed in the way of the construction crews erecting the Wall of Shame. They have held mock funerals of white-draped coffins, each inscribed with the name of human values that should be respected -- Justice, Fairness, Humanity, Courtesy, and the like. They have created a mock security fence (LEFT), placed themselves under it, and handed out leaflets in Hebrew to the Israeli soldiers begging them not to destroy their village and answer non-violence with violence. Israeli peace activists from groups like Gush Shalom (the Israeli Peace Bloc) have flocked to Bilin to join in these peaceful, nonviolent protests. The response to this nonviolence by the Israeli army has been disproportionately violent -- tear gas, rubber bullets, live bullets, night-time raids of homes in Bilin. When attacked in this way, the Bilin protesters have responded with balloons filled with chicken dung -- an insulting, but hardly lethal response. Children have been killed -- just last week, a 16-year-old from Bilin, Muheeb Assi, was shot to death by the Israeli army occupiers.

Today, in an op-ed for the International Herald-Tribune, "Help Us Stop Israel's Wall Peacefully,"  Mohammed Khatib -- secretary of the Bilin Village Council and a leading member of the Bilin Popular Committee Against the Wall -- tells the story of the "Palestinian Gandhis" of Bilin:

"...Bilin is being strangled by Israel's wall. Though our village sits two and a half miles east of the Green Line, Israel is taking roughly 60 percent of our 1,000 acres of land in order to annex the six settlements and build the wall around them. This land is also money to us - we work it. Bilin's 1,600 residents depend on farming and harvesting our olives for our livelihood. The wall will turn Bilin into an open-air prison, like Gaza.  After Israeli courts refused our appeals to prevent wall construction, we, along with Israelis and people from  around the world, began peacefully protesting the confiscation of our land. We chose to resist non-violently because we are peace-loving people who are victims of occupation. We have opened our homes to the Israelis who have joined us. They have become our partners in struggle. Together we send a strong message - that we can coexist in peace and security. We welcome anyone who comes to us as a guest and who works for peace and justice for both peoples, but we will resist anyone who comes as an occupier.

"We have held more than 50 peaceful demonstrations since February. We learned from the experience and advice of villages like Budrus and Biddu, which resisted the wall nonviolently. Palestinians from other areas now call people from Bilin "Palestinian Gandhis."  Our demonstrations aim to stop the bulldozers destroying our land, and to send a message about the wall's impact. We've chained ourselves to olive trees that were being bulldozed for the wall to show that taking trees' lives takes the village's life. We've distributed letters asking the soldiers to think before they shoot at us, explaining that we are not against the Israeli people, but against the building of the wall on our l and. We refuse to be strangled by the wall in silence..."

Prof. Marcy Newman, an American who teaches English at Boise State University and is one of the International Solidarity Movement activists who've joined the nonviolent Bilin demonstrations, wrote a moving diary of the July 9 demonstration in which a teenager was killed by the Israeli forces: "I saw Muheeb Ahmad Assi, and in fact filmed him as he was wounded and taken away in the ambulance. His funeral is in a half hour. For the first time I witnessed with my own eyes the aggressiveness of the Israeli military Occupying a land that they have no legal right to be on."

Last Wednesday, Ariel Sharon's government adopted a policy to speed up construction of the Wall of Shame -- one year almost to the day after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague declared the Wall to be illegal and ordered it torn down in terms that brook no finagling:

"Israel is under an obligation to terminate its breaches of international law," said the ICJ. "it is under an obligation to cease forthwith the works of construction of the Wall being built in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including in and around East Jerusalem, to dismantle forthwith the structure therein situated, and to repeal or render ineffective forthwith all legislative and regulatory acts relating thereto.” In Jerusalem alone, the Wall of Shame will cut off 55,000 Palestinians from the rest of the city, the New York Times reports.

And yet, even as it steps up building the Wall of Shame (now scheduled to be completed by the first week in September), the hypocritical Sharon government has the chutzpah to ask this week for an additional $2.2 Billion in aid from the U.S. for "disengagement" -- money that will simply go to reinforce the Israeli military,already armed to the teeth by Washington's subsidies and arms sales.

There is no "disengagement" for those in Bilin whose lands and livelihood are being expropriated by force. Where is the vast outcry of support for the nonviolent Palestinian Gandhis of Bilin from the U.S. anti-war movement?

RELATED READING: Check out the article in the new online English edition of Le Monde Diplomatique on "Palestine: The Economy of Despair"

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ED KLEIN'S NEW HILLARY BOOK

I wrote the following for the June 23 issue of the L.A. Weekly:

Edward Klein’s new book on Hillary Clinton, published recently, bears the portentous title The Truth About Hillary: What She Knew, When She Knew It, and How Far She’ll Go To Become President. It has been the object of carefully nurtured buzz: Matt Drudge touted it as a book that could “destroy” Hillary’s presidential ambitions, and mega-right Web sites like NewsMax have gushed similar hype. Vanity Fair, for which Klein scribbles with some regularity, ran an excerpt with extravagant fanfare. And the book is already #2 on Amazon's best-seller list, thanks largely to conservative promotions. Alas, this rather slim, air-filled volume — many chapters are only three pages long — is a very wet firecracker indeed.

Up until now, the single best book on the Clintons and their gaping ethical lapses remains Partners in Power: The Clintons and Their America by former National Security Council staffer Roger Morris, which unfortunately ends after only a year and a half of the Clintons’ co-presidency (and from which Klein borrows copiously, as his footnotes indicate). A serious, full-scale political biography of Hillary that would include the rest of the Clinton White House years and her Senate service is certainly overdue. But Klein’s book — a snarling, rabidly sensationalist pamphlet with precious little of substance that is new — is not it.

The book’s subtitle refers to Bill Clinton’s sexual adventures (already finely dissected in Christopher Hitchens’ infinitely better No One Left To Lie To — a book curiously omitted from Klein’s “selected bibliography”). Klein, a former editor in chief of The New York Times Magazine, devotes a huge chunk of his book to disproving Hillary’s assertions of what she knew about Bill’s affairs over the years and when she knew about Monica Lewinsky, his “little humidor,” as Jay Leno once dubbed the onetime White House intern. Here’s how Klein puts it:

. . . Hillary decided to spin an implausible tale . . . In her memoir Living History . . . she wrote that on the morning of August 15 [1998], her husband woke her up and “told me for the first time that there had been an inappropriate intimacy” with Monica Lewinsky. “I could hardly breathe,” she wrote. “Gulping for air, I started crying and yelling at him.” But her version of events was not credible. Months before, Hillary had taken charge of the White House’s damage-control operations. She ran the meetings that prepped Bill Clinton for his grand jury testimony. She asked Robert Shrum, the highly regarded Democratic wordsmith, to write a mea culpa speech for the President to deliver on national television. She then vetoed Shrum’s speech, because she found it too conciliatory, and instead urged her husband to “come out and hammer Ken Starr.” She saw the headline in The New York Times of August 13 — two days before her husband’s alleged bedside confession to her about Monica — that said: PRESIDENT WEIGHS ADMITTING HE HAD SEXUAL CONTACTS. The fact of the matter was, Hillary knew everything — and she knew of it before anybody else.

Well, of course. But this is hardly a shocking revelation. That Hillary had long been in charge of tracking Bill’s extramarital sexual affairs has been known ever since Roger Morris detailed how she put Bill’s former gubernatorial chief of staff, Betsy Wright, in charge of what was called the “Bimbo Patrol” to compile dossiers on Bill’s girlfriends and pressure them into keeping quiet. The role of Hillary confidante Evelyn Lieberman — nicknamed “Mother Superior” when she was installed by Hillary as Bill’s deputy chief of staff to monitor his contacts with women, and who was the person responsible for reassigning Monica from the White House to the Pentagon to get her away from Bill’s cigar wielding — was endlessly chronicled during the Lewinsky scandal and the impeachment proceedings. Klein is correct to say that “Hillary knew everything” — but again, it’s nothing new. Instead of frothing like a 19th-century Comstockian prude at anyone in the book with an active sex life, Klein would have performed a valuable service had he dynamited the myth, perpetuated by the Clintons’ defenders, that the president’s private conduct had nothing to do with his governance. Quite the reverse was true.

As Clinton prepared to run for his second term several years in advance, it was Hillary who brought back to Bill’s inner circle Dick Morris, an ambulant cancer on the body politic and the turncoat Democratic strategist who had crossed the street to ply his trade for Trent Lott and the right-wing Republicans. Together, the prostitute-frequenting political consultant who had fathered a child out of wedlock and the serial-philandering president and his cynical wife made the full-blown “family values” presidency the overarching theme for securing a second Clinton term.

The charade was on: Clinton decided not to implement the lifesaving recommendations even of George H.W. Bush’s AIDS Commission, let alone his own. He made permanent the ban on immigration by HIV-ers; capitulated to the religious right on explicit sex education and condoms in the schools, while his administration — and Hillary in particular — preached the failed fantasy of “abstinence”; threatened prosecution of doctors who prescribed medical marijuana for people with AIDS and other patients to restore their appetites; sided with the know-nothing obscurantists on the issue of clean needles against the unanimous advice of the medical and AIDS-prevention experts; signed the Defense of Marriage Act into law — and then campaigned on it in 1996 with stealth radio ads targeting the Bible Belt so they’d be under the radar for gay voters on the two coasts. And this is only a partial list of the concrete consequences of Bill and Hillary’s hypocrisy. In an apposite irony, Bill’s televised lies about his sex life with Monica, scripted with Hillary’s help, were beamed to the grand jury from the White House Map Room, site of those infamous fat-cat coffees where Clinton sold his soul to corporate America to get the money for the Clinton-Morris “family values” ad campaign. Thus did the twin hypocrisies meet: Clinton-policy Tartufferies were just as much a sham as “Putting People First,” which translated into putting the bond market first. Yet Klein is either too ignorant about policy, or too eager to pander to the conservative audience that is already making this book a best-seller, to delve into these substantive matters and connect them to Hillary’s active collaboration in the charade.

The author’s conservative bias shows throughout the book. For example, in a vain attempt to demonstrate that Hillary was, in her youth, “The Radical” (as one of his chapter headings has it), he makes much of Hillary’s readership of the now-defunct Methodist magazine motive. In Klein’s telling, he labels two who wrote for motive — the anti-war Catholic priest and advocate of nonviolence Daniel Berrigan and the noted civil-libertarian writer Nat Hentoff — both “Marxists,” which will be news to them. Klein hollers about Hillary’s supposed “fiery radicalism” while she was at Yale Law School — although he is able to produce no evidence of it, other than a couple of articles defending the Black Panthers, written by others, which were published in a law journal Hillary co-edited. Klein also devotes pages to implying (without ever coming right out and saying so) that Hillary is, or was, a lesbian. Thus, he writes of Hillary’s years as first lady of Arkansas: “To Arkansans, she walked like a lesbian, talked like a lesbian, and looked like a lesbian.” In fact, Klein sees lesbians everywhere; Hillary’s White House chief of staff Melanie Verveer is “mannish-looking”; another associate is “a Marlboro-Man-in-drag.”

Personally, I have little use for Hillary Clinton, and I’m appalled that the Democratic base has been taken in by her and thinks she’s a “liberal.” When the imprint she’s left on public life is carefully examined, it is that of an unprincipled opportunist who will say or do anything to achieve and hang on to power. Klein makes the latter judgment, but at the same time he pretends to find in Hillary a closet left-liberal who will swing the White House wildly to the left if she’s elected president. And he does so by ignoring much already on the public record, and with such exaggerated rhetoric, as to make this book quite useless to anyone who is not a right-wing Hillary hater.

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TONY BLAIR'S SON TO INTERN WITH CLOSET-CASE DAVID DREIER

The Daily Telegraph reports today that Tony Blair's 21-year-old son, Euan (below, with his mother), has snared a prestigious internship in Washington working under Republican Congressman David Dreier, the powerful conservative chairman of the House Rules Committee (and a hypocritical gay closet case who supports the Republicans' homophobic political agenda). And Democrats aren't happy about the internship, engineered by Daddy Blair, calling Dreier an "extremely surprising choice" to train Euan in the intricacies of American politics.

The Telegraph, which says that Euan will be "mentored" by Dreier (at right), notes: "Committee officials say the decision to offer the sought-after position to the Prime Minister's son was taken at a senior level - not by staff ordinarily responsible for sifting internship applications. The offer followed a telephone interview with the committee's staff director. British diplomats in Washington also played a part in the process. A Downing Street spokesman said: 'Given the obvious sensitivities, the Prime Minister asked the British embassy to get involved in the process.'

"...Despite his father's close relationship with President George W Bush, the news that Euan is to work for the Republican-led committee has stunned Democrats in Washington. Eric Burns, the communications director for Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, the leading Democrat on the committee, said: 'Working on the Rules Committee will be quite a learning process as it has always been one of the most partisan in the House. It is extremely surprising that the son of a Labour prime minister would intern with the Republican majority staff on the committee.'"

Well, what's so surprising? Tony Blair began his reign by imitating the sell-out triangulations of Bill Clinton and has moved steadily to the right of traditional Labour policies ever since--not just on foreign policuy but on economic issues and civil liberties. By getting the British Embassy to snaggle a job with Dreier for his son, it looks like the prime minister wants to make sure young Euan doesn't stray to far from the family right-wing line. In an editorial just before the Brits' recent elections, The Independent growled that Tony Blair "is essentially a con man." So is the two-faced Dreier, who keeps his male lover on the Congressional payroll at a salary higher than Karl Rove's, but continues to step on the rights of gays to full equality before the law.

There's a solid, detailed analysis of Blair's New Labour and its turn to the right in the current issue of the New Left Review. Susan Watkins' carefully footnoted article, "A WEIGHTLESS HEGEMONY--New Labour’s Role in the Neoliberal Order," among other things points out how Blair's policies have widened the yawning gap betwen the haves and the have-nots in Britain: "Gross transfers to the rich from the poor have continued under New Labour. Indirect taxes, though they have fallen slightly following the mass protests against fuel prices in 2000, are still higher than in Thatcher’s day. Brown ’s tax credits for low-paid parents and pensioners—garnering much praise from left-liberal commentators for giving the poorest decile an extra £15 a week—have been offset by larger changes in underlying income distribution...Wage differentials and the gender pay gap have widened during Labour’s second term."

Watkins, after dissecting Blair's neo-Thatcherian policies on economics, foreign policy, civil liberties, and the rest concludes her lengthy analysis with a judgement from which there is no appeal: "There is no reason for any greater sentimentality towards Labourism than Blair himself has shown. The Economist’s judgement that he is the best right-wing prime minister Britain could have is perfectly accurate. For the left, the logic should be clear: any other would be preferable. It is an anachronism to think that the performance of rival parties competing within the field of neoliberal politics can be distinguished, once in office, by their ideological pedigrees or electoral bases. The policies they adopt correspond to the balance of forces within that society—typically, the legacy of antecedent regimes—and of the world outside it. Just as Clinton was far to the right domestically of Nixon, so Blair has been of Heath; let alone Eden or Macmillan. Today, the uk’s main opposition parties, Liberal Democrats and Conservatives, are attacking the government from the left on student fees and pensions, attracting the disapproval of the financial press. Judged against its immediate predecessors, an objective audit can only conclude that New Labour has scattered a few crumbs to the poor, while otherwise consolidating and extending Thatcher’s programme; externally, it has a far more bloodstained record...." Read this definitive NLR article in its entirety by clicking here. --posted 06.28.05

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JUDICIARY FACES NEW G.O.P REIGN OF TERROR

The Republican Congress is launching a new campaign to intimidate and castrate the federal judiciary that amounts to nothing less than a reign of terror and a Constitution-shredding destruction of the seperation of powers. That's the meaning of a frightening report in today's Washington Post on a proposal by House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R.-Wisc.) to create an Inspector General for the judiciary.

Not content with stacking the federal courts with racist, reactionary, homophobic corporate lackeys by eliminating the Senate minority's right to filibuster judicial nominations, the Republicans -- under the command of Tom Delay, the most corrupt politician in Washington -- are planning to set up this Inspector General's office to be under the thumb of Congress, to which it will have to render report cards on judicial behavior, with budgetary and disciplinary threats in its arsenal to force judge to toe the Republican line on everything from the right to die with dignity to affirmative action to abortion to gay civil rights. This is tantamount to putting the Christian right in charge of policing our courts.

Not only that, there's also a Republican plan to split up the federal 9th Circuit -- based in San Francisco, it's the most liberal federal bench in the country -- by slicing it into three parts, taking Oregon, Washington, four mountain states and Alaska out of the liberal judges' jurisdiction.

The chances of defeating these measures are slim indeed. When the Republican "nuclear option" of eliminating the filibuster goes through, Senate Democrats will be unable to block this legislation, which will without doubt pass the House (watch for anywhere from 40-80 House Democrats to go over the side and join the ironclad Republican majority to pass these measures. And the Republicans are determined to pass all this stuff this year.

Next year's mid-term Congressional elections offer little hope of any change in control of Capitol Hill, which means that what will be done this year cannot be undone in a new Congress. Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid has already said in public that it would take a "miracle" for the Democrats to win back the Senate next year. And, given that almost every incumbent in the House was re-elected last year with around 60% of the vote -- thanks to gerrymandering by both parties -- the GOP control of that chamber next year is also not in doubt.

The founding fathers are turning over in their grave. But the progressive forces are outgunned and outnumbered by the well-financed shock troops of the Christian right, and not only the remaining handful of so-called "moderate" Senate Republicans but many Senate Democrats are increasingly pandering to the Christers. There won't be enough of either to stop this punitive Congressional control of the judiciary from becoming law. The last shreds of meaningful democracy in this country are being dismantled before our eyes, one by one. --posted 05.16.05

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A McGREEVEY COMEBACK?

This morning's Newark Star-Ledger reports on a new Zogby poll the paper headlines as a "shock": it shows that nearly half the residents of the Garden State would consider voting again for former N.J. Gov. Jim McGreevey for some other office, like Congress or the legislature (and 30% of those saying so were Republicans).

Just 6% said they would never vote for McGreevey because he is gay, while 43% said they would never vote for McGreevey, but for reasons other than his sexuality. The poll was conducted for New Jersey's gay rights lobby, Garden State Equality, which wanted to get a read on support for legalizing same-sex marriage (55% of Jerseyans are in favor). But the McGreevey question was tacked on (I'm told by a reliable source) not only to measure acceptance of an openly gay candidate -- the ostensible reason -- but also as a favor to McGreevey, who is considering another run for office.

It's encouraging that there is such apparent openness toward an openly gay candidate for public office in New Jersey. But I devoutly hope the gay community does not embrace the disgraced ex-governor as its poster boy. I spelled out the reasons why at the time of McGreevey's resignation last year in "McGreevey's Closet," a piece for the L.A. Weekly in which I explained how the governor's tortured double life led to him to the multiple misjudgments that made him the emblem of corruption and boodling in the Soprano State. It's worth remembering that McGreevey didn’t come out of his own volition — he was dragged out of the closet by a jilted extortionist who embodied the corruption scandals and ethical abuses that swirled around McGreevey’s tenure as governor.

When McGreevey gave his then-boyfriend, Golan Cipel, multiple jobs on the state payroll (and got him several other no-show jobs sweetly provided by McGreevey campaign contributors seeking favors), this was scandalously immoral — not because of the “consensual sexual relationship,” but because the governor stuck his hand in New Jersey taxpayers’ pockets to put his boyfriend on the public tit, betraying the fiduciary responsibilities that came with his oath of office. (You can read the background on McGreevey's multiple corruptions -- and the role his closet syndrome played in them -- by clicking here.)

After McGreevey's resignation, too many institutional gay leaders (like NGLTF's Matt Foreman) rushed to praise McGreevey for his "courage" and hail him as a gay hero. That's patent nonsense. A poll at the time showed the only 8% of New Jerseyans thought the guv's gay affair was the real reason for his resignation -- and they were right. If gay leaders give their imprimatur to a McGreevey political comeback, they'll be putting their stamp of approval on the ethical sewer that was the governor's political life. This will smack of elitism, and the right wing -- not just in Jersey but nationally --will have a field day painting gay Americans as willing to excuse corruption if it's done by "one of their own."

I wish McGreevey well in his personal life, but I hope he stays a thousand miles away from politics -- and that the gay movement keeps double that distance from a lousy governor whose conduct in office was a shameful example of deliberate ethical blindness on many fronts. --posted 05.06.05

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April 20, 2005

THE NEW EUROPEAN CONSTITUTION--SHOULD AMERICANS CARE?

The number one topic of political conversation in Europe for weeks has been the possibility that the French electorate may reject the new European Constitution, in a referendum on it to be held at the end of May. The reason: a month ago, the first poll showing the "No" winning in France appeared. This was a shock in every European capital, since France has been considered the most pro-European country on the Continent, its succesive governments having long played a seminal role in building common European political and economic institutions, since the 1950s.

A French "No" vote would effectively kill the new Constitution. And, since the first French public opinion poll showing a win for the "No," 14 consecutive polls have showed the French rejecting the new Constitution for Europe -- the latest, published Thursday by one of the better-known French polling institutes, CSA, gave the "No" a solid 55%, against just 45% for the "Yes." And the "No" vote appears to have doubled its margin of victory in just two short weeks -- despite an extraordinary mobilization of the French and European political and media establishments in support of a "Yes" vote.

Why, you may ask, should Americans care?

I have long been in favor of a strong, federal Europe -- and not simply because I developed great affinities for Europe during the decade I spent living in France. As the political center of gravity in the U.S. has ever more markedly shifted to the right over the last two and a half decades since the election of Ronald Reagan, it has simultaneously become increasingly clear that the arguments in favor of an ever-stronger Europe advanced by the Nobel Prize-winning American economist Joseph Stiglitz have been prophetic. The former chief economist of the World Bank, Stiglitz became one of the most forceful critics of the Bank and of the International Monetary Fund, the twin global enforcers for multinational capitalism. Long before George Bush's war in Iraq, Stiglitz argued -- in a series of books and articles -- that only a European Union that was both economically and politically puissant and coherent could provide a counter-weight to the U.S.-led drive toward the economic globalization that gives the behemoth multinational corporations free and untrammeled reign over our destinies, and offer some hope of resistance to the U.S. military adventures from which those multinationals profit so handsomely.

The war in Iraq, of course -- opposition to which was led by France, Germany, and other nations of "Old Europe" (to borrow Rumsfeld's famous epithet), and which was intensely unpopular even in countries (like Italy and Spain) whose governments, at the time of the invasion, supported the war -- underscored the added importance of a strong Europe as a brake on U.S. imperial adventures. And Bush's aggressive proclamation of an American first-strike doctrine -- which insists on Washington's right to make war or take military action against whomever it likes whenever it likes -- ought to have convinced the sceptical that a strong Europe was necessary to have any hope of preserving the world's fragile peace, since the Bush first-strike doctrine appalled most Europeans, whether of the left or of the right.

Moreover, the parliamentary elections in Spain in the Spring of 2004 -- as I wrote at the time -- "dramatically shifted the balance of power within the European Union against the Atlanticist alliance that sundered the authority of the United Nations by invading Iraq." Last year's eviction of Spain's pro-war Aznar government, and the concommitant election of the anti-war, moderate Socialist government of José Luis Rodriguez  Zapatero, has presaged the probable outcome of next year's parliamentary elections in Italy. The regional elections in Italy two weeks ago were a crushing defeat for Bush's last important Continental ally on Iraq: Premier Silvio Berlusconi and his hard-right governing coalition (and which includes the cosmetically air-brushed neo-fascists led by Vice-Premier Gianfranco Fini) were dramatically slapped down by an electorate with whom the Iraq war and occupation are enormously unpopular -- upwards of 70% of Italians in the public opinion polls oppose Italy's support for the U.S. Iraq policy. As even the conservative editorial writers of The Economist acknowledged in their election analysis, the defeat of Bush's ally in those regional elections means that there is, at the very minimum, "a strong chance that Mr. Berlusconi's lot will lose" next year. And I'd say that's a considerable understatement.

With Aznar gone and Silvio tottering, even Bush's partner-in-lies Tony Blair is in serious trouble heading into the U.K.'s May 5 parliamentary elections -- his arrogant mendacity on Iraq about WMD and the "imminent" threat posed by the odious Saddam Hussein seriously undermined his credibility (and his center-right domestic policies have further alienated his base). Blair's New Labor is now down to just 33%--that's only a slim, six-point lead over the Tories in the latest poll released yesterday, with the anti-war Liberal Democrats siphoning off many Labor voters for a healthy 21%. Blair's support for the Iraq war has already atrophied his influence over the Continental European powers. And even Poland -- part of Bush's Eastern European "coalition of the bought" -- announced two days ago that it is going to withdraw its troops from Iraq. Significantly moreso than at the time of the Iraq invasion, a strong Europe would be antagonistic to the American imperium.

But, contrary to the claims of its supporters, the new European Constitution is not a step toward a stronger Europe, but will actually lessen European influence on the world stage. And that's but one of the reasons why American progressives should be hoping French voters reject it next month. Let me explain why:

[to be continued...]

HOW BOLTON GAY-BAITED A WHISTLEBLOWER

One aspect of wacko John Bolton -- Bush's nominee for UN ambassador -- that hasn't received enough attention is how he gay-baited a Texas businesswoman, Melody Townsel, in Moscow when Townsel got on Bolton's shit list. Her crime was blowing the whistle on the failures and substandard performance of a U.S. A.I.D. subcontractor whom Bolton, then in private practice, represented.

From Howie Kurtz's WashPost column of April 22, on "Bolton Bashing Bonanza": "USA Today meanwhile, caught up with businesswoman Melody Townsel, who says Bolton once threw a file folder and a tape dispenser at an American businesswoman in Moscow, disparaged her weight and alleged she was gay in an attempt to get her to withdraw criticism of a foreign-aid project." "When Townsel got into a dispute with a company represented by Bolton in 1994 and would not withdraw her complaint, she says, Bolton spread rumors that she had stolen money and also referred disparagingly to her weight and hinted that she was a lesbian. . . . Kirby Jones, a Washington consultant, said Townsel told him of Bolton's behavior at the time. "

You can read the entire USA Today story on Townsel by clicking here. And Daily Kos has the complete text of a letter Townsel wrote to Senators recounting Bolton's deranged persecutions of her. Townsel wrote:

"As a mali