Sunday, September 28, 2008

The Illusion of Sovereignty

By Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich | Information Clearing House, Sep 28, 2008

Perhaps sovereignty is relative; how else can one explain the subjugation of the most powerful industrial nations to the will of another while under the delusion of independence, national interest, democracy, and even capitalism? A single country, Israel and its powerful lobby AIPAC have altered the course of history in America and by extension, the rest of the world.

In order to understand the argument being made and the power of manipulation of this extraordinary group, one must revisit the Arab economic boycott of Israel dating back several decades. To defeat the boycott, the Israeli lobby went into full gear and argued before the House that the Arab boycott constituted “a harassment and blackmailing of America, an interference with normal business activities … that the boycott activities were contrary to the principles of free trade that the United States has espoused for many years … and the Arab interference in the business relations of American firms with other countries is in effect an interference with the sovereignty of the United States.”i Bowing to AIPAC, the US adopted and enforced comprehensive anti-boycott legislation which Jimmy Carter signed into law in 1977. The law called for fines to be levied on American companies which cooperated with the boycott.

However, in spite of pressure from the Lobby, Congress refused to enforce sanctions on the Arab League on the grounds that “extraterritorial measures that impermissibly impinge on the sovereignty of other nations”ii was not acceptable. Yet in an about face, America has yielded its own sovereignty and has demanded other nations subjugate theirs and impose sanctions on Iran. Surely one must wonder what made the United States bow to the Israeli demands and impinge on the sovereignty of Japan as an example when it had to forgo its exclusive rights to develop part of Iran’s Azadegan oil field, the country’s largest in compliance with the Iran-Libya Sanction Act (ILSA).

For not only is it believed that AIPAC wrote the ILSA, but today, using their foot soldier, the neocon influenced US government, it is holding the United Nations hostage as three rounds of illegal sanctions have been passed against Iran with a recent House approved tougher sanctions bill iii as Iran pursues nuclear technologies that are put in the service of humankind on every continent. Surely those whose lust for power blindly led them to office must come to realize that their power is an illusion for the reins are held by another. They are the puppets and the Lobby and the neoconservatives the puppeteers. Should we not question how we got to this point in our history?

Was it the power of the vote or the ally’s treachery? In the 60’s and 70’s while the Lobby was asking for American sacrifice, Israel was busy betraying America. Within the CIA as elsewhere in the intelligence community, there is a “widespread belief” that in the 1960s Israeli intelligence spirited about two hundred pounds of weapons- grade uranium from the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC) in Apollo, Pennsylvania. John Hadden, a former CIA station chief in Tel Aviv, states that NUMEC was an “Israeli operation from the beginning.” The NUMEC case was investigated by the GAO and the House Interior Committee in 1978, but their reports have never been declassified”. Lyndon Johnson who was the first of a string of administrations to bury the NUMEC affairiv, not only covered up the report but it would seem as if the audacity of their act merited further cover up - the killing of American servicemen on board the Liberty by Israelis.v To their credit, the Israelis, confident that they could do as they pleased with American administrations, smuggled 810 krytons to Israelvi (krytons can be used for electronic triggers for nuclear weapons). Not long after this outrageous thievery, Ronald Reagan punished Iran by reinstating trade sanctions (Exec. Ord. No.12613) (first imposed by Carter and lifted in accordance to the Algiers Accords). It would seem that the trend for punishing other nations for Israel’s dangerous betrayal continues.

On every continent nuclear technology is being made available to promote progress. In South America, nuclear technology is being used to map underground aquifers, so that water supplies can be managed sustainably. The Nuclear magnetic resonance imaging (NMRI) which was changed to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) because of the negative connotations associated with the word nuclear in the late 1970’s would be explored to diagnose and treat patients. In Vietnam farmers plant rice with greater nutritional value that was developed with IAEA assistance – rice is also the staple food of Iranians. Within the next few years (estimates are 10-25 years) over 2 billion people will be without drinking water. Research in desalination technology initiated in 1970 using Advance Heavy Water Reactor (AHWR) will make salt water drinkable. These are the components of nuclear technology that are the fundamentals of ‘Atoms for Peace’. These are the inalienable rights of Iran under Article IV for which it is being sanctioned.

AIPAC had previously contended that the Arab boycott constituted “a harassment and blackmailing of America…..”, yet today, with all nations blackmailed by a country that has an illegal nuclear arsenal capable of unimaginable destruction, a country which has no regard for international law and norms or loyalty, is demanding that sanctions be imposed on Iran for pursuing its inalienable right within the framework of the NPT.
“What makes it so plausible to assume that hypocrisy is the vice of vices is that integrity can indeed exist under the cover of all other vices except this one. Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.” - Hannah Arendt

Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich is an independent researcher with a focus on U.S. foreign policy and the influence of lobby groups. She is a peace activist and political analyst.

1 - H. Alikhani, Sanctioning Iran, Anatomy of a Failed Policy, New York, 2000, p.321

2 - Alikhani (2000), p.312.

3 - http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080927/ap_on_go_co/iran_sanctions

4 - Duncan L.Clarke, “Israel’s Economic Espionage in the United States”, Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 27, No. 4. (Summer, 1998), pp. 20-35.Quoted in Cockburn and Cockburn, Dangerous Liaison, pp. 78-81., also Hersh, The Samson option’, pp. 188-89, 242; Raviv and Melman, Every Spy a Prince, pp. 197-98., and Interview, congressional source, Washington, D.C., August 1994.

5 - http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17901.htm

6 - “Israelis Illegally Got U.S. Devices Used in Making Nuclear Weapons,” NewYork Times, 16 May 1985

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Pilger: Truth and war mean nothing at the party conferences

John Pilger | New Statesman, 25 September 2008

The media turns the other way, or perverts the truth, while an increasingly imperialist United States, with Britain in tow, pursues its expansionist interests

Britain’s political conference season of 2008 will be remembered as The Great Silence. Politicians have come and gone and their mouths have moved in front of large images of themselves, and they often wave at someone. There has been lots of news about each other. Adam Boulton, the political editor of Sky News, and billed as “the husband of Blair aide Anji Hunter”, has published a book of gossip derived from his “unrivalled access to No 10″. His revelation is that Tony Blair’s mouthpiece told lies. The war criminal himself has been absent, but the former mouthpiece has been signing his own book of gossip, and waving. The club is celebrating itself, including all those, Labour and Tory, who gave the war criminal a standing ovation on his last day in parliament and who have yet to vote on, let alone condemn, Britain’s part in the wanton human, social and physical destruction of an entire nation. Instead, there are happy debates such as, “Can hope win?” and, my favourite, “Can foreign policy be a Labour strength?” As Harold Pinter said of unmentionable crimes: “Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening, it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest.”

The Guardian’s economics editor, Larry Elliott, has written that the Prime Minister “resembles a tragic hero in a Hardy novel: an essentially good man brought down by one error of judgement”. What is this one error of judgement? The bank-rolling of two murderous colonial adventures? No. The unprecedented growth of the British arms industry and the sale of weapons to the poorest countries? No. The replacement of manufacturing and public service by an arcane cult serving the ultra-rich? No. The Prime Minister’s “folly” is “postponing the election last year”. This is the March Hare Factor.

Following the US

Reality can be detected, however, by applying the Orwell Rule and inverting public pronouncements and headlines, such as “Aggressor Russia facing pariah status, US warns”, thereby identifying the correct pariah; or by crossing the invisible boundaries that fix the boundaries of political and media discussion. “When truth is replaced by silence,” said the Soviet dissident Yevgeny Yevtushenko, “the silence is a lie.”

Understanding this silence is critical in a society in which news has become noise. Silence covers the truth that Britain’s political parties have converged and now follow the single-ideology model of the United States. This is different from the political consensus of half a century ago that produced what was known as social democracy. Today’s political union has no principled social democratic premises. Debate has become just another weasel word and principle, like the language of Chaucer, is bygone. That the poor and the state fund the rich is a given, along with the theft of public services, known as privatisation. This was spelt out by Margaret Thatcher but, more importantly, by new Labour’s engineers. In The Blair Revolution: Can New Labour Deliver? Peter Mandelson and Roger Liddle declared Britain’s new “economic strengths” to be its transnational corporations, the “aerospace” industry (weapons) and “the pre-eminence of the City of London”. The rest was to be asset-stripped, including the peculiar British pursuit of selfless public service. Overlaying this was a new social authoritarianism guided by a hypocrisy based on “values”. Mandelson and Liddle demanded “a tough discipline” and a “hardworking majority” and the “proper bringing-up [sic] of children”. And in formally launching his Murdochracy, Blair used “moral” and “morality” 18 times in a speech he gave in Australia as a guest of Rupert Murdoch, who had recently found God.

A “think tank” called Demos exemplified this new order. A founder of Demos, Geoff Mulgan, himself rewarded with a job in one of Blair’s “policy units”, wrote a book called Connexity. “In much of the world today,” he offered, “the most pressing problems on the public agenda are not poverty or material shortage . . . but rather the disorders of freedom: the troubles that result from having too many freedoms that are abused rather than constructively used.” As if celebrating life in another solar system, he wrote: “For the first time ever, most of the world’s most powerful nations do not want to conquer territory.”

That reads, now as it ought to have read then, as dark parody in a world where more than 24,000 children die every day from the effects of poverty and at least a million people lie dead in just one territory conquered by the most powerful nations. However, it serves to remind us of the political “culture” that has so successfully fused traditional liberalism with the lunar branch of western political life and allowed our “too many freedoms” to be taken away as ruthlessly and anonymously as wedding parties in Afghanistan have been obliterated by our bombs.

The product of these organised delusions is rarely acknowledged. The current economic crisis, with its threat to jobs and savings and public services, is the direct consequence of a rampant militarism comparable, in large part, with that of the first half of the last century, when Europe’s most advanced and cultured nation committed genocide. Since the 1990s, America’s military budget has doubled. Like the national debt, it is currently the largest ever. The true figure is not known, because up to 40 per cent is classified “black” - it is hidden. Britain, with a weapons industry second only to the US, has also been militarised. The Iraq invasion has cost $5trn, at least. The 4,500 British troops in Basra almost never leave their base. They are there because the Americans demand it. On 19 September, Robert Gates, the American defence secretary, was in London demanding $20bn from allies like Britain so that the US invasion force in Afghanistan could be increased to 44,000. He said the British force would be increased. It was an order.

In the meantime, an American invasion of Pakistan is under way, secretly authorised by President Bush. The “change” candidate for president, Barack Obama, had already called for an invasion and more aircraft and bombs. The ironies are searing. A Pakistani religious school attacked by American drone missiles, killing 23 people, was set up in the 1980s with CIA backing. It was part of Operation Cyclone, in which the US armed and funded mujahedin groups that became al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The aim was to bring down the Soviet Union. This was achieved; it also brought down the Twin Towers.

War of the world

On 20 September the inevitable response to the latest invasion came with the bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad. For me, it is reminiscent of President Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia in 1970, which was planned as a diversion from the coming defeat in Vietnam. The result was the rise to power of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge. Today, with Taliban guerrillas closing on Kabul and Nato refusing to conduct serious negotiations, defeat in Afghanistan is also coming.

It is a war of the world. In Latin America, the Bush administration is fomenting incipient military coups in Venezuela, Bolivia, and possibly Paraguay, democracies whose governments have opposed Washington’s historic rapacious intervention in its “backyard”. Washington’s “Plan Colombia” is the model for a mostly unreported assault on Mexico. This is the Merida Initiative, which will allow the United States to fund “the war on drugs and organised crime” in Mexico - a cover, as in Colombia, for militarising its closest neighbour and ensuring its “business stability”.

Britain is tied to all these adventures - a British “School of the Americas” is to be built in Wales, where British soldiers will train killers from all corners of the American empire in the name of “global security”.

In Latin America, the Bush government is fomenting incipient military coups in Venezuela, Bolivia and possibly Paraguay

None of this is as potentially dangerous, or more distorted in permitted public discussion, than the war on Russia. Two years ago, Stephen Cohen, professor of Russian Studies at New York University, wrote a landmark essay in the Nation which has now been reprinted in Britain.* He warns of “the gravest threats [posed] by the undeclared Cold War Washington has waged, under both parties, against post-communist Russia during the past 15 years”. He describes a catastrophic “relentless winner-take-all of Russia’s post-1991 weakness”, with two-thirds of the population forced into poverty and life expectancy barely at 59. With most of us in the West unaware, Russia is being encircled by US and Nato bases and missiles in violation of a pledge by the United States not to expand Nato “one inch to the east”. The result, writes Cohen, “is a US-built reverse iron curtain [and] a US denial that Russia has any legitimate national interests outside its own territory, even in ethnically akin former republics such as Ukraine, Belarus and Georgia. [There is even] a presumption that Russia does not have fully sovereignty within its own borders, as expressed by constant US interventions in Moscow’s internal affairs since 1992 . . . the United States is attempting to acquire the nuclear responsibility it could not achieve during the Soviet era.”

This danger has grown rapidly as the American media again presents US-Russian relations as “a duel to the death - perhaps literally”. The liberal Washington Post, says Cohen, “reads like a bygone Pravda on the Potomac”. The same is true in Britain, with the regurgitation of propaganda that Russia was wholly responsible for the war in the Caucasus and must therefore be a “pariah”. Sarah Palin, who may end up US president, says she is ready to attack Russia. The steady beat of this drum has seen Moscow return to its old nuclear alerts. Remember the 1980s, writes Cohen, “when the world faced exceedingly grave Cold War perils, and Mikhail Gorbachev unexpectedly emerged to offer a heretical way out. Is there an American leader today ready to retrieve that missed opportunity?” It is an urgent question that must be asked all over the world by those of us still unafraid to break the lethal silence.

*Stephen Cohen’s article, “The New American Cold War”, is reprinted in full in the current issue of the Spokesman, published by the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation: http://www.spokesmanbooks.com

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Saturday, September 27, 2008

Pro-freedom Kashmiri leader: Make October 6 march a success

Make Lal Chowk march a success: Geelani

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Not Allowed To Offer Friday Prayers Again

FAHEEM ASLAM | Greater Kashmir

Srinagar, Sep 26: Veteran pro-freedom leader and the chairman of Hurriyat Conference (G), Syed Ali Geelani, on Friday urged people to participate in the march to Lal Chowk on October 6 to show the world that Kashmiris were united in their struggle for right to self-determination.

Talking to Greater Kashmir this afternoon, Geelani said, “People from every nook and corner of the Valley should ensure their presence at Lal Chowk on October 6. They should follow the coordination committee’s call as they have been doing so far.”

Geelani stressed that people should be peaceful during the march and only raise the relevant slogans. “The more peaceful people would be, the more world attraction it will evoke,” he said. “It is therefore necessary that people should march peacefully and abandon from provocative sloganeering.”
Geelani was scheduled to offer prayers at Hazratbal, but was not allowed by the police as the leader continues to be under house arrest for the past 19 days.

He said every participant in the march should carry black flags with ‘we want right to self-determination’ written on it. “There should be no banners of any party or any organisation. People must follow the directions in letter and spirit.”

He said the slogans to be raised should be: “Hum Kya Chahtay Azadi, Islam Zindabad, Shohada Kay Waaris Zinday Hai and Awwaz Do Hum Ek Hain.”
Geelani urged people to go for a social boycott of the pro-India leaders who are desperate to see elections taking place in Jammu and Kashmir. “Kashmir is not the issue of elections or governance. It is an internationally recognized dispute which must be resolved as per the wishes and aspirations of the people of Jammu and Kashmir,” he said.

Geelani said it was unfortunate to see some pro-India leaders advocating elections at a time when the whole Valley is up in arms against India. “Kashmir issue is the issue of India’s illegal occupation of Kashmir and not about elections. Kashmir is not a border dispute between India and Pakistan.”

Geelani reiterated that right to self-determination was the only solution to Kashmir dispute. “It is our obligation to free ourselves from the Indian occupation. The recent protests have given a new dimension to the freedom struggle and it is great to observe our youth realizing their insecurity under the Indian occupation,” Geelani said.

Geelani said it was shocking that he was not allowed to offer any Friday prayers during the holy month of Ramadhan. “It is my 20th day under house arrest and it is painful to observe that I am being barred from offering prayers,” Geelani said.

Meanwhile, Hurriyat (G) acting general secretary, Pir Saifullah addressed a mammoth gathering at Hazratbal shrine here, urging people to stand united in the struggle for freedom. “Anything short of self-determination is not acceptable to us as solution to Kashmir dispute. This basic right must be given to the people of Kashmir,” Saifullah said.

Saifuallah urged people to make the march to Lal Chowk on October 6 successful to show the world that Kashmiris were united. Saifullah strongly condemned the house arrest of Syed Ali Geelani, who was scheduled to address people at Hazratbal today.

Flanked by some other Hurriyat (G) leaders, Saifullah asserted that if Geelani was not released from house arrest before Eid-ul-Fitr, lakhs of people would offer themselves for arrest as a mark of protest.

Saifullah condemned what he called the daily police excesses on Kashmiris. “I wonder where these policemen will live when we will achieve freedom. The police excesses on Kashmiris must stop forthwith,” he said.

He said more than 80 Kashmiris have been killed in police action in the past two months. “In Jammu, police uses rubber bullets to break the violent protests, but when it comes to Kashmir, people are ruthlessly killed for holding peaceful protests,” Saifullah said.

He said unity among pro-freedom leaders was the need of the hour.
Later, Saifullah led a peaceful pro-freedom demonstration at Hazratbal. The demonstration was attended by thousands of people who raised pro-freedom and anti-India slogans.

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Violations of Pakistani Sovereignty

U.S. Raids on Pakistan

By BRIAN CLOUGHLEY | Counterpunch, Sep 26, 2008

Henry Kissinger was no amateur when it came to illegally bombing and invading countries that he and the evil President Nixon considered did not meet American requirements of unconditional servility, but even he must be intrigued about the latest antics of Washington’s finest. The vice president of the United States, a charmless and despotic bully, and his president, he of the close-set eyeballs and pretensions to dignity, recently excelled themselves in self-delusion concerning their unlawful invasion of Iraq and their fury with nations whose governments fail to toe the Washington line.

In their latest spasm of bizarre fantasy both Bush and Cheney condemned Russia for its military reply to Georgia’s merciless rocketing of South Ossetia and the killing of scores of its citizens. There is no doubt that Russia had been waiting for an opportunity to teach Georgia a lesson for its treatment of Russian-origin inhabitants of the enclave, and when the US-educated, US-supported Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, was so stupid as to send in troops following his slaughter of civilians, the Russians gave them a hiding. In spite of all the training they received over the past five years from US instructors, and the generous amounts of equipment they acquired, they fled the Russian advance. But Washington intends to have Georgia continue as a US-supporting military base area along Russia’s border, and in order to emphasize its anti-Russian stance Washington arranged for NATO to hold a high level meeting in Georgia last week (which, it was claimed, was planned “a long time ago.”).

As usual, rather than trying to engage Russia through diplomacy, Washington chose confrontation. And this is where the funny bit is, because Cheney declared that “We believe in the right of men and women to live without the threat of tyranny, economic blackmail or military invasion or intimidation.”

It is difficult to believe that the man was being serious, but there was no shade of irony in his delivery. He believed what he was saying, while ignoring the fact that the US has manipulated the UN to impose savage sanctions (economic blackmail) on countries that don’t toe the US line. Of even more importance he ignored the fact that only a few days before his pronouncement there had been gross violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty by the US when its troop s crossed Pakistan’s border and killed civilians. The people of North West Frontier Province – the people of Pakistan – suffered “military invasion and intimidation.”

Last month Bush declared that “We insist that Georgia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity be respected” which might have been a fairly good point to make were it not for the fact that he has no respect for the sovereignty or territorial integrity of any country when criminal violation suits his purpose. The illegal cowboy foray into Pakistan was not denied by Washington; it was merely ignored with that degree of would-be-majestic superiority that is the hallmark of colossal colonial arrogance. Associated Press reported that “a spokesman for the US-led coalition in Afghanistan said it had “no information to give” about the alleged operation, while a spokesman for NATO troops denied any involvement. The US embassy in Islamabad declined to comment.” No surprises there.

It doesn’t seem to matter to Americans that the blitz conducted by their troops resulted in the deaths of six women and two children, citizens of Pakistan. There has been no indication of regret or sympathy ; not a shred of remorse for killing children. For how long can the non-American world tolerate this sort of barbaric malevolence? In America it doesn’t matter, because ‘Support Our Troops!’ is the American mantra, especially in election year, and if a US citizen doesn’t wave the flag and say that American troops are wonderful, even when killing kids in Pakistan, then they are regarded as unpatriotic, which is a dreadful crime.

To justify the slaughter the usual highly-placed anonymous US official told the New York Times that “The situation in the tribal areas is not tolerable. We have to be more assertive. Orders have been issued.”

You can hear the Hitlerian resonance in this, straight from Cheney and Bush. It has hideous echoes of “My patience is exhausted,” before Fascist Germany invaded its neighbors – and of the justification that “Befehl ist Befehl” : “an order is an order,” as the Gestapo herded terrified women and children into concentration camps and then to gas chambers. (In fact some of the victims in the Guantanamo Bay concentration camp would welcome death by gassing, it being preferable to the vicious torture they are undergoing.) The American attitude, under Bush, is one of intolerance and macho contempt for any who dare to display independence. “We have to be more assertive” is a chilling declaration of what motivates the Washington administration. It is unlikely to change, irrespective of who is the next president.

President Zardari of Pakistan showed considerable courage last week when he said that “We will not tolerate the violation of our sovereignty and territorial integrity by any power in the name of combating terrorism,” if only because we have learned what happens to presidents and countries who offend the mighty empire. Pakistan has been dumped before by America. It appears that it is important for the moment, but neither sovereignty not diplomacy are of concern to Washington. Pakistan’s government had better be very careful.

Brian Cloughley lives in France. His website is www.briancloughley.com

A version of the above appeared in The Daily Times (Pakistan).

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ECONOMY-US: Bailout for Who?

By Adrianne Appel | Inter-Press Service


BOSTON, Sep 26 - U.S. lawmakers and the George W. Bush administration are continuing their closed-door meetings through the weekend to try and fashion a softer 700-billion-dollar deal for Wall Street that will appeal to citizens angry at the prospect of the mega-corporate bailout.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson brought the plan to Congress on Sep. 19 in a three-page outline, and said it was necessary to prevent the collapse of the finance market due to complex trades involving subprime mortgages.

The plan would have allowed Paulson, a former CEO of Goldman Sachs, complete control of the massive payout with no oversight, no auditing and no plan of a payback to the taxpayer.

ACORN president Maude Hurd captured the nation’s sentiment when she hinted at the potential electoral fallout in a speech this week: “There is a palpable populist revolt rolling through towns and cities across the country, and if Main Street doesn’t get any real help with the mortgage out of this deal, the American people only have to wait a few weeks for a constructive outlet for their anger.”

ACORN is the nation’s largest grassroots community organisation of low- and moderate-income people, with over 400,000 member families in 110 cities across the country.

At the Capitol, members of Congress attempted to convince taxpayers — and voters — that they had their best interests in mind, and that meant a big bailout for Wall Street.

“Hundreds of billions of dollars that Americans invested in retirement accounts and mutual funds have evaporated,” and more surely would, warned Democrat Chris Dodd, Senate Banking Committee chairman, while giving the impression that the income security of average people is at stake.

This couldn’t be further from the truth, say those who study stock ownership. The average U.S. citizen owns very little or no stock, and wouldn’t be helped directly by an up-market.

“I think the middle class are not going to be very affected at all by a bailout. It’s something that is going to affect the very wealthy. Changes in the stock market won’t make much difference to the middle class,” Edward Wolff, a New York University economist, told IPS.

“It’s just a political gambit to help the rich recover from the stock market collapse. If you claim that everyone is suffering, it’s easier to get a bailout from Washington,” Wolff said.

In 2001, the richest 10 percent of families owned 85 percent of all outstanding stocks, about 85 percent of all financial securities and 90 percent of all business assets, according to Wolff.

As for the rest of the country, only 32 percent of households owned more than 10,000 dollars of stock, and only 25 percent of households owned more than 25,000 dollars worth of stock, Wolff said.

A 2007 report by the Government Accountability Office found that in 2004, just 36 percent of workers had any savings at all in a retirement account. Most U.S. citizens will depend on Social Security in retirement, the government programme that provides 30-40 percent of what was earned in their lifetimes.

The bad practices of the mortgage lending industry targeted people of colour and the elderly, in particular, according to a report by United for a Fair Economy.

Only 11 percent of subprime loans went to first-time buyers last year. The vast majorities were refinancing that caused borrowers to owe more on their homes under the guise that they were saving money. Many borrowers were talked into refinancing their homes to gain additional cash for things like medical bills, the report says.

African American borrowers will lose between 71 billion and 92 billion dollars, and Latino borrowers will lose between 75 billion and 98 billion dollars as a result of bad subprime loans, according to the report.

“A couple decades of deregulation have allowed people at the top of the financial food chain to benefit from millions of people, through unscrupulous mortgage lending practices,” Michael Lapham of United for a Fair Economy told IPS.

“Who are we most concerned about helping? Homeowners facing foreclosure or people who’ve made millions and billions on subprime lending?” Lapham asked.

The U.S. public seems especially peeved at the idea of helping companies that pay exorbitant salaries to their bosses, at a time when many people have seen a decline in their standard of living.

According to the Institute for Policy Studies, CEOs of large U.S. companies last year made an average of 10.5 million dollars, while the top 50 private equity and hedge fund managers pocketed an average of 588 million dollars each.

The institute notes that draft proposals floated by the chairs of both the House and Senate banking committees would allow Paulson to determine what qualifies as “inappropriate or excessive” executive compensation under the bailout plan.

“Secretary Paulson amassed a personal stock stash worth over three-quarters of a billion dollars as the CEO at Goldman Sachs,” said analyst Sarah Anderson. “He hardly strikes us as the appropriate arbiter of what’s excessive and what’s not.”

In a statement, Anderson said the nation needs clear and strict limits on CEO pay “so that taxpayers won’t have to worry about their money flooding into the pockets of top executives and encouraging another round of reckless behaviour.”

On Thursday, unions, and anti-poverty and peace groups took to the streets, staging large demonstrations on Wall Street and in many cities chanting, “No bailouts for billionaires.”

At the end of the day Thursday, it was hard-line Republicans, including Sen. Richard Shelby and Rep. Spencer Bachus, who stood firm against the bailout. Bachus told reporters that the Republicans do not want the U.S. to buy the bad debts of the companies, but instead to loan the companies money.

Their argument that the market could do more to fix itself was bolstered later Thursday evening, when troubled Washington Mutual bank, riddled with bad mortgages, was bought by J.P. Morgan Chase.

The Democrats want the bailout, one that would meter out the billions in installments and somewhat restrict the pay of CEOs, Dodd said.

“I don’t understand why the Democrats in particular didn’t feel they have the leverage to get more out of this deal. Congress has squandered an opportunity to actually help homeowners facing foreclosure,” Brenda Muniz, legislative director for ACORN, told IPS.

According to an analysis of U.S. Census data by the Centre for Budget and Policy Priorities, 18 percent of U.S. children lived in poverty in 2007.

The willingness of Congress to consider a 700-billion-dollar payout makes clear that Congress could budget other large sums to help end homelessness and hunger, and improve public education.

“When people go to Congress to ask for more affordable housing funds and are told there isn’t money, then along comes Wall Street and they say, ‘Oh sure we have 700 billion dollars for your bailout.’ It definitely makes you question our nation’s priorities,” Lapham said.

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UN debates West Bank settlements


Al Jazeera, Sep 27, 2008

The construction of settlements is viewed as a major obstacle to peace [AFP]

The Palestinian president and Arab countries have criticised Israel over its settlement expansion policy in the West Bank during debates at the United Nations.

In a speech to the General Assembly on Friday, Mahmoud Abbas deplored as “racial terrorism” what he said were daily attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinian civilians, and urged the international community to take action.

“[The settlements] will not allow for the emergence of a viable Palestinian state because they divide the West Bank into at least four cantons,” he said.

Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, whose country formally called for the debate, said Israel must halt settlement activity and obey international law.

“Settlement makes the creation of a viable Palestinian state impossible,” he said.

“The only path to Israel’s security is peace and it is time for Israel to understand that it cannot continue to exempt itself from behaving in accordance to international law,” Prince Saud said.

The Palestinian Authority, Saudi Arabia and the Arab League urged the UN Security Council to encourage the faltering peace process by demanding an end to Jewish settlements on Palestinian land.

In August, Israel approved the construction of 400 new homes in a Jewish neighbourhood in east Jerusalem and invited bids for the construction of another 416 settler homes in the occupied West Bank.

Quartet meeting

The Middle East diplomatic Quartet on Friday pressed Israel and the Palestinians to seal a peace deal this year, but also expressed “deep concern” over continuing settlement expansion in the West Bank.

A ministerial session of Quartet members, the US, Russia, the European Union and the UN, ended with a call on the parties “to make every effort to conclude an agreement before the end of 2008″.

Quartet members “expressed deep concern about increasing [Israeli] settlement activity, which has a damaging impact on the negotiating environment and is an impediment to economic recovery and called on Israel to freeze all settlement activity.”

They also reiterated that the parties “must avoid actions that undermine confidence and could prejudice the outcome of the negotiations”.

In Annapolis, Maryland last November, Israel and the Palestinians revived negotiations toward resolving core problems such as the status of Jerusalem, the borders of a future Palestinian state and refugees, by the end of 2008.

Settlement expansion

Settlement expansion has nearly doubled since 2007, despite Israel’s pledge to freeze such activities, Peace Now, the Israeli watchdog, said last month.

“The situation necessitates a serious stand by the international community and a clear call upon Israel to begin withdrawing its settlers and dismantling its settlements,” Abbas said.

Settlement expansion has nearly doubled since 2007, according to Peace Now [File: EPA]

“It was recognised [in Annapolis] that this was a prerequisite for allowing negotiations towards ending the conflict to progress,” he said.But Gabriela Shalev, Israel’s UN Ambassador, told council members that while the settlements are a “delicate issue,” they “are not an obstacle to peace”.

“They have been used here as another instrument to bash Israel instead of addressing the realities on the ground,” she said.

“There is much that those in the region can do to support that peace process, but it is not about more UN meetings.

“It is, first and foremost, about commitment to prepare the people of the region for the price of peace, to accept the true meaning of peace,” Shalev said.

The West Bank has been under military occupation by Israel since 1967 and at least 400,000 Israelis have been settled in the territory, including East Jerusalem.

The settlements are illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.

Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister, whose country currently chairs the European Union, restated the EU view that Israeli settlements, “wherever in the occupied Palestinian territories, are illegal under international law.”

He added that settlement “harms the credibility of the process started in Annapolis and affects the viability of the future Palestinian state.”

Reaching out

Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, shifted the focus of the debate away from settlements, instead urging Arab countries to “consider ways they might reach out to Israel”.

She said the Arab world needed to fully understand that: “Israel belongs to the Middle East and will remain” in the Middle East.

Meanwhile, a group of 21 leading aid agencies said on Thursday that the Middle East Quartet was “losing its grip” on the peace process and must radically revise its approach.

The aid agencies said the Quartet has failed to hold Israel to account for expanding settlements in the West Bank.

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Israeli academic injured in bomb blast

By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem

The Independent, Thursday, 25 September 2008

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One of Israel’s leading centre-left academics was injured early today when a pipe bomb blew up outside his home in an attack which police suspect was the work of Jewish extreme right-wing extremists.

The victim of the attack was Professor Zeev Sternhell, a Holocaust survivor and recent winner of the prestigious Israel prize, who has long opposed Jewish settlements in the Occupied Territories.

Police said they had found fliers in the area of the attack offering 1.1m shekels (£173,000) to anyone who kills a member of the long established organisation Peace Now, of which Mr Sternhell is a veteran member.

The professor was in hospital tonight with minor shrapnel wounds in one of his legs. Police said that the explosive had been planted on the doorstep of his Jerusalem home and was detonated when he opened the door.

Tzipi Livni, foreign minister and the prospective Prime Minister, said that the attack was “intolerable” and could not be glossed over. Ehud Barak, the Labour leader and Defence Minister also strongly condemned the attack “from a dark corner” of Israeli society against a “very gifted person who never shies away from expressing his opinion.”

In a statement which coupled condemnation of the attack on Professor Sternhell with a reference to the apparently growing instances of settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, Peace Now said: “Those who don’t enforce the law on violent settlers… will find himself with a Jewish terror organization in the heart of Israel.”

In contrast with the West Bank, political violence by right wing extremists inside Israel has been relatively rare-with the notable exception of the assassination of the then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in Tel Aviv in 1995. Another extremist killed a member of Peace Now with a grenade at a 1983 peace protest.

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