Building a New Peace Movement, an Interview with Judith Le Blanc

Originally from PoliticalAffairs.net

PA: Currently it seems as though the economic crisis and the health care debate have really pushed peace movement issues off the priority list? What do you think the peace movement can or should be done to re-center that effort?

Judith Le Blanc: The peace movement played a critical role in the results of the 2008 elections, and for anybody who has read Game Change and was active in the anti-Iraq War movement, you can really can see that it made a difference. Behind the scenes in the campaigns, both during the democratic primary and in the general elections, people were concerned about the positions the candidates were taking, because they knew the power of the grassroots sentiment opposing the war in Iraq.

The peace movement is now in a period of transition, transitioning from a kind of historical role of being one of the decisive movements working on one of the most critical issues facing the country. Now organizations that sprang up from the grassroots and formed national coalitions that were able to mobilize hundreds of thousands are in a transition from that historic moment to a moment where we have to build a new kind of peace movement from the grassroots up, a peace movement that links the issues and organizes on the basis of relating to other movements which are adjusting to the economic crisis.

Read the whole interview here...

Real causes of high deficits

by Joel Wendland

The government reported this week that federal deficit set a record at more than $80 billion, just for the month. They expect the total deficit for the year to easily eclipse $1 trillion.

Republicans are ranting and raving, trying to distract voters from their responsibility for the deficit which doubled when they controlled Congress and the Presidency under Bush.

Here are two basic reasons why the deficit is so high:

1. Taxes for the richest Americans have steadily declined, eroding federal revenues by hundreds of billions.



And don't give me the line that if you raise taxes on the rich there will be a recession. If that tired argument were true we wouldn't be calling the economic crisis that started in December 2007 and just now seems to be ending the "Great Recession."

2. The second main reason is Bush's war of choice in Iraq. Totaling over $720 billion today, the Republicans, who started that war and called anyone who refused to go along with it traitors, still have provided no plan to pay for it. If we follow their argument about how our grandchildren will have to pay for deficits, this trillion dollar war of choice, by definition an atrocity, will take generations to pay for.

John McCain Endorses Barack Obama's Plan for Iraq?

Does John McCain actually know what his position is? Maybe he should consult his advisers.

Iraqis to Set Up a Timetable for Withdrawal?

Despite his lame-duck status, Bush has been trying to sidestep Congress and hammer out a long-term occupation agreement with the Maliki government in Iraq to replace the UN mandate for military occupation in that country.

Iraqi lawmakers have opposed the deal. Leading Democratic figures in Congress have opposed it. And now Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki appears prepared to put forward a short-term, non-binding "memorandum" on the U.S. occupation that includes a timetable for withdrawal.

If this happens and the Iraqi parliament agrees to it, one question remains: Will Bush abide by the will of the Iraqi government?

Read more about here...

The Sounds of War in Washington

by Norman Markowitz

Many Americans fear that the Bush administration will launch a new war before the election in order to win the election for McCain with the usual appeals to "national unity" and "national security." While I am not nor have I ever been a "conspiracy theorist," meaning that I don't see history as a big conspiracy, even though as an historian I and every other student of history knows that "secret treaties," behind the scenes political maneuvers which have little to do with what the general public thinks they are about, are significant parts of history. To paraphrase a famous statement made by a nineteenth century Prussian general, war is politics by other means.

Yesterday, mass media was repeating intelligence reports about a Syrian nuclear reactor which the Israelis had previously destroyed. The reactor was seen as a direct step in developing nuclear weapons and the result of Syria using "North Korean" technology(since the Baath government of Syria was an active opponent of the Baath government of Iraq, it was not an original member of the "Axis of Evil," Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, although it may be on its way to replacing Iraq in that lineup). All sorts of questions were being raised about the "evidence" concerning these accusations, given the previous "photographic" evidence used to support the Iraq invasion, but my interest in it is as a trial balloon to prepare Americans to think in terms of new and/or wider wars.

Admiral Michael Mullen, new chairperson of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, launched a bigger and potentially more dangerous trial balloon when he accused the Iranian government and the special forces units of its Revolutionary Guards of using "malign and increasingly lethal influence" internationally, arming and manipulating insurgent groups. For those with short memories, alleged Iranian weapons found in Iraq were trotted out, along with suggestions that these weapons are being used to kill U.S. and Iraqi forces fighting against Shia militias in Basra and other Southern Iraqi regions.

Mullen didn't suggest any new war against Iran, but he did stress that Iran was seeking to establish a "weak Iraq" to advance its interests in the region (of course, one might ask what kind of Iraq is the U.S. seeking to establish as it works with and against Turkish outside forces, the Kurdish minority, Shia and Sunni populations). But Mullen went on to make a blanket condemnation of the Iranian government's support for all sorts of insurgent groups in the region, its training "Iraqis in Iran to come back and fight Americans and the coalition." He also, in a real blast from the recent discredited past, contended that "in fact we are seeing some evidence that they are supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan."

A little elemental history should be cited here. The clerical forces that came to power in Iran and established an "Islamic Republic" are of the Shia denomination. The Al Qaeda group and the Taliban in Afghanistan both represent ultra-right sectarian groupings within the Sunni denomination (which globally represents in its many groupings, which range from liberal to moderate to conservative, over 80 percent of the world's Muslims). Unlike the great majority of the world's Muslims, they are not only extremely intolerant of other religions and secular regimes in Muslim countries and non Muslim regimes everywhere, but they are specially intolerant of other Muslims. They have vilified and fought against Shia Muslims particularly and are sworn enemies of Iran, as they were sworn enemies of the Baath regime in Iraq.

The Bush administration, by its complete refusal to do anything but condemn and seek to economically harm a more liberal clerical regime in Iran in its early years, set the stage for the present rightist clerical regime, which is actively opposed by large numbers of Iranians
and whose adventurist demagogic President (a symbol but not the real power in the government) is in his crackpot embrace of pro Nazi Holocaust deniers and other stands in world politics is a perfect foil for the Bush administration, as was Saddam Hussein (whom the Reagan administration supported in its war against Iran in the 1980s, just as six U.S. presidents earlier supported the brutal reactionary regime of the Shah, which the CIA installed through a coup in 1953, in order to denationalize Iranian oil (which before nationalization had been controlled by British Oil interests) and split up the oil with the British.

Iran in 2008 is not Iraq in 2003. Its military power is significantly greater and a U.S. invasion (it is virtually impossible to think of any ally including Britain joining the U.S.) would have disastrous consequences for everyone, not the least of which would be large numbers
of Iranian and U.S. casualties far beyond anything that the U.S. has experienced to date in Iraq. U.S. bombing of Iran, which some interventionists have suggested short of invasion, would also be very different than the bombing interventions which the U.S. has since the Reagan administration carried out in many places, because the ability of the Iranians to retaliate and thus create a wider war is much greater.

Instead of preparing for a potential war against Iran or at the very least using Iran as an excuse to extend the U.S. occupation and operations in Iraq, we should be working to end that occupation and pursue a regional peace process that will not strengthen reactionary forces in power in Iran or be a pretext for reactionary forces in power in the United States to maintain their power.

Interview with Dennis Kucinich

"I am a candidate of the mainstream"

If you were elected president, what do you think would be the first thing you would do in office?

Cancel NAFTA, get out of the WTO. Bring our troops home. Reintroduce legislation for a not-for-profit health care system and for fully paid two- and four-year college for every American young person. Put in motion legislation to create a full employment economy. I want to create jobs, that's what I want to do. I want to get people back to work and get them in health care, make sure their children have education. This is fundamental.

READ THE FULL INTERVIEW

Lobbying for Democracy?

There are many stories in news today which one might comment on. The Pope has issued a statement calling upon Catholic pharmacists not to fill "immoral prescriptions" for drugs used for abortion and euthanasia to the 25th annual international convention of Catholic Pharmacists (there have been conflicts over this issue in regard to contraception in the U.S.). But that is conflict between spiritual and medical advisors, of soul and body or vice versa.

A Russian serial killer has received a life sentence for his crimes (this is interesting because the pro capitalist regime in Russia, under pressure from the European Union established a moratorium on the death penalty a decade ago, an example of an advance for "democracy" that the U.S. government, which actively supported the dismemberment of the Soviet Union, and Boris Yeltsin's terroristic suppression of his enemies in the Russian State Duma, has not exactly highlighted, emulated, or taken credit for). But no one has yet suggested that Americans on death row go to Russia.

And of course, there is the daily carnage from Iraq along with the daily statements from the government and the U.S. military that things are getting better, law and order is being established in the North, relations are improving between the Sunni provinces and the Shia led central government along with the following policies which will follow the successful completion of the Bush administration's mission: no Iraqi child will be left behind, Iraqi homeowners will receive property tax rebates, the Iraqi national anthem will be sung in Arabic only, the border patrol will be beefed up to prevent undocumented workers from crossing Iraqi borders, faith based Iraqi organizations will be given responsibilities for social welfare, the right of Iraqis to bear arms will be maintained at any cost, and of course there will be no public funding for pregnancy terminations for low income Iraqis. In the future democratic Iraq, students will be freed from the dogma of biological Darwinism thanks to the introduction of Intelligent Design into the school curriculum and freed also to understand the great truth of Social Darwinism, social survival of the fittest in a free market where the wealth and power of those who have wealth and power is both proof of their superiority and for the good of society. Actually, looking at the contradiction in the Bush administration, which actively opposes all scientific work which advances biological Darwinism while its political and economic policies promote Social Darwinism is always a good story to comment on and will continue, unfortunately, to be one until the Right Republicans are decisively defeated in the U.S.

But the story that most intrigued me concerned Robert D. Blackwell. Blackwell is a former ambassador to India who in 2004, as the Iraq area director of the National Security Council, helped make former Baath politician Ayad Allawi, a Shiite who had broken with Saddam Hussein and whom the CIA came to see as its first choice to be strongman of the new "democratic" Iraq, interim Prime Minister. Allawi turned out to be a political disaster and he and his supporters got nowhere in the subsequent Iraqi elections. Today Blackwell is a professional lobbyist who is still representing Allawi in the U.S for a $300,000 fee (at least that was what he received for six months of work recently).

Blackwell, the news reports, also represents for a fee many other governments including a few, Serbia and the Kurdistan regional government in Iraq, for whom I and others on the left would have some sympathy, along with the government of Taiwan (for whom few on the left would have any sympathy) a billionaire former president of Thailand, and a Moscow bank. In 2005 alone, the press reports that he brought in eleven million dollars of business alone to the lobbying firm, Barbour, Griffith and Rogers, with whom he is now associated.

Blackwell goes back to the 1970s when he began work with associates of Henry Kissinger and has had a long career in government and teaching at the John F. Kennedy School, along with a reputation for pushing people around. Now he, with thirty years of information, a good deal of it, I would assume, possibly classified, is taking in millions to represent foreign governments and businesses on a variety of issues, the way former generals and politicians work for military contractors and foreign governments. Influence peddling is nothing new but it has, as students of the U.S. government contend, expanded tremendously since Ronald Reagan became president with his scripted attacks on "big government."

A system of institutionalized and legal bribery, what an old Tammany politician once called "honest graft," operating openly and directly at the legislative and executive levels of the national government, makes that government today what the great Wisconsin progressive Governor and Senator Robert La Follette called it a century ago, a "trading post" for the Trusts (today one would have to add foreign governments and Trusts). If the U.S. is to become(and I emphasize become) a modern democracy, it must be eliminated by serious regulation of lobbying firms, a regulation that would reduce such firms to a small fraction of what they presently are. This is something that progressives must fight for now, if we are not to see progressive governments of the future fall victim to that institutionalized bribery.

Norman Markowitz

Blackwater USA Should be Declared a Terrorist Organization

After numerous incidents involving the slaying of Iraqi civilians by mercenary contractors at Blackwater USA, and because Iraqis appear to have no real recourse for getting justice for these ruthless murders, and because the Bush administration seems bent on essentially looking the other way, it is time to consider Blackwater USA a terrorist organization that is being harbored by the Bush administration.

The latest news, reports the Washington Post, is that the Bush administration, rather than imposing penalties on the Erik Prince and his hired killers, is using taxpayer dollars to make "condolence payments" (White House term) to Blackwater's victims.

Make no mistake: the payments are not an admission of guilt, the US embassy says. Just a guilt payment. Smooth things over. How much will it cost to get you to shut up and go away? And forget your loved ones?

Family members of Blackwater's victims, however, are disgusted by the offer.

And despite Bush's claims, Iraq's sovereignty is a joke given that it has so far demanded the expulsion of Prince's Blackwater mercenaries to no avail. Echo chamber. Prime Minister Al-Maliki doesn't have authority over which armed gangs of killers he can force out of his country.

Prince's inside connections and huge donations to the Republican Party are a likely source of the protection offered by the adminsitration.

Is this the democracy Bush pretends exists in Iraq? Mass killings by mercenaries, no justice for the vicitms, and a government that can't expel the perpetrators?

Int'l Solidarity Pressuring Iraqi Gov't to Back Off Anti-union Stance?

According to the Public Service International federation of public workers' unions:

Pressure from PSI has forced a rethink on trade union rights in Iraq. Abdullah Muhsin of the General Federation of Iraqi Workers told PSI that the deputy prime minister has met the union to discuss the possibility of repealing laws that currently ban public service unions.

“This was due to international pressure from unions, including PSI,” he said. Apparently, the emergency motion adopted by congress has had some impact. The Government has also indicated that it may release union funds, which it has seized.

Hangaw Abdullah Khan of the Kurdish Federation of Workers stated, “We need international support for a new labour law in all Iraq.”

The Federation of Workers’ Councils of Iraq also supports the emergency resolution which calls for the union ban to be lifted. The Federation has called for a co-ordination committee to oppose privatisation and support women’s rights.

PSI says the blanket ban on unions for public sector workers flouts UN conventions and undermines efforts to build democracy. A separate PSI resolution, from the American Federation of Teachers, opposes the war in Iraq and calls on the US government and coalition partners to withdraw from the country.

Iraqi Civilian Death Toll May Top 1 Million

Two recent estimates put the total number of Iraqi deaths due to the war at over 1 million.

JustForeignPolicy.org uses the estimate made by the British journal The Lancet in 2006 of over 600,000 as a starting point and then uses estimates from the media to project forward. It estimates total deaths at 1.044 million.

A new survey of Iraqi households, as reported in the Los Angeles Times, by ORB, a British polling agency, uses a statistical projection as well to estimate that as many as 1.2 million Iraqi civilians have been killed in the war.

Because no accurate record of civilian deaths has been kept by the Iraqi government or the US military occupation forces, these estimates are the best statistics so far. That the data has been collected independently and has arrived at similar figures suggests that the estimates have merit as fairly accurate.

The outrageous number of over 1 million deaths combined with the ongoing humanitarian crisis Iraqis face as a result of the occupation indicate that far from saving Iraq form an evil tyrant, the US has imposed a far worse life on the Iraqi people. Is this what democracy looks like?

Iraqis Increasingly Reject Sectarian Identities

A recent survey of more than 7,000 Iraqis in different parts of the country, conducted by the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research and the private Iraqi research group, the Independent Institute for Administration and Civil Society Studies, shows that Iraqis increasingly identify themselves as "Iraqis above all else."

Between April 2006 and May 2007, this perception, according to the survey's conductors, grew by more than half, with almost three-quarters of Baghdad residents viewing themselves in terms of their national identity.

Mansoor Moaddel, an University of Michigan professor and one of the collaborators in the survey, stated that this growth in national identity in Baghdad compares favorably with other Middle Eastern capitals where religious affiliations and other local relationships appear to have stronger appeal.

The survey also showed that fewer than 1 in 5 Iraqis felt that having an Islamic government is the most important goal.

The results of this survey are important, because a strong Iraqi national identity is a likely one key element to overcoming sectarian conflict and other legacies of the Saddam dictatorship, as well as ending the US military occupation and its effects.

Senate Republicans Filibuster "Troop Readiness" Amendment

Senate Republicans just filibustered an amendment to provide for troop readiness by allowing troops deployed in combat zone an equal amount of "dwell" time back home with their families.

The amendment, offered by Sen. Jim Webb, simply states that that active duty troops should have as much time home as they had on deployment, and that National Guard and Reserve troops should have three years at home after their one-year deployment.

Currently, the Pentagon has deployed and redeployed troops to Iraq for 15 month cycles, sometimes over and over again.

Critics of the Bush administration's policies point out that stop-loss deployments have irreparably harmed troops even when they haven't been physically wounded. Extended deployments have been blamed for high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental illness afflicting returning veterans.

The Webb amendment is one of four amendments to the Defense Authorization Act being debated in the Senate related to the Iraq war. All four amendments are designed to force a change in the Bush administration's war policy.

In his remarks, presidential hopeful Republican Sen. John McCain, blamed Democrats for the filibuster, ironically. McCain, who has relied on his staunch support for the war as his main campaign talking point, but has seen his campaign falter in funding and several campaign managers flee, argued that Senators should put off Iraq debate until September and that a bill to fund the Department of Defense was no place to debate the war.

Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama accused the supporters of the Webb Amendment, which is a concept fueled both by public outrage over the treatment of US troops and a demand that Iraq war policy change, of "flip-flopping." Sessions essentially implied that public opposition to the war policy and and anger over treatment of the troops is "flip-flopping" and an effort to weaken the nation.

When are the Republicans going to stop with the divisive and disgusting rhetoric that people who disagree with them are somehow un-patriotic?