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  • UK considers consumer carbon trading scheme


  • Putin plan to shut out US oil giants

    A final decision on awarding the contracts – which involves extracting and transporting gas from Shtokman in partnership with Gazprom, the Russian state-controlled company – was also originally expected before the G8 summit but has been postponed until next month at the earliest.

    As well as the US and Norwegian companies, Total of France is also on the shortlist to develop the 3.7 trillion cubic metre gas field, which is located in the Barents Sea, near the Arctic Circle.

    Igor Shuvalov, a Putin aide, warned in April that the US firms’ chances of participating in the undersea drilling project were tied to US support for Russia’s WTO bid, although this has since been denied by the Kremlin.

    Last week, however, Putin singled out the Norwegian bidders for praise when asked by reporters about energy deposits in the Barents Sea.

    ‘You have probably heard that we are holding talks with several countries on the development of different fields, but companies from Norway are among the first on this list,’ he said.

    He added: ‘They don’t go around with their noses in the air. They work objectively, very professionally.’ Viktor Khristenko, the Russian energy minister, also praised the Norwegian firms’ record on protecting the environment last week.

    Analysts have tipped the Kremlin to pick the Norwegian contractors following the recent resolution of a Barents Sea territorial dispute between Oslo and Moscow.

    But the Shtokman project is also important to Russia’s long-term relations with the US, since most gas from the field is to be shipped to north America in the form of liquefied natural gas. Participation by Chevron or ConocoPhillips could help ease access to the US market.

    Russia has been very reluctant to allow foreign oil groups access to its energy reserves other than as junior partners on joint ventures with Gazprom. Russia supplies 25 per cent of the European Union’s gas but has also resisted EU demands that it loosen Gazprom’s control over the country’s pipeline network.

    A dispute over gas prices earlier this year between Russia and Ukraine led to temporary disruptions in the flow of gas to western Europe and prompted Dick Cheney, the US vice president, to accuse Moscow of using energy as a tool of ‘intimidation and blackmail’.

    But these diplomatic ructions have not extinguished the appetite of western investors for Russian energy stocks. Last week the oil group Rosneft successfully floated in London and Moscow with a $10.4bn placing.

    Despite its size, the IPO represents only a small fraction of Rosneft’s total equity, and the company remains majority-controlled by the Russian state.


  • What Does Israel Want?

    The first Intifada was crushed, but the Palestinians continued to seek ways of ending the occupation. They rose again in 2000, inspired this time by a more religious group of national leaders and activists. But it was still a ‘low intensity conflict’; no more than that. But this is not what the army expected, it was yearning for a ‘real’ war. As Raviv Druker and Offer Shelah, two Israeli journalists with close ties to the IDF, show in a recent book, Boomerang (p. 50), major military exercises before the second Intifada were based on a scenario that envisaged a full-scale war. It was predicted that in the case of another Palestinian uprising, there would be three days of ‘riots’ in the occupied territories that would turn into a head-on confrontation with neighboring Arab states, especially Syria. Such a confrontation, it was argued, was needed to maintain Israel’s power of deterrence and reinforce the generals confidence in their army’s ability to conduct a conventional war.

    The frustration was unbearable as the three days in the exercise turned into six years. And yet, the Israeli army’s main vision for the battlefield is today still that of ‘shock and awe’ rather than chasing snipers, suicide bombers and political activists. The ‘low intensity’ war questions the invincibility of the army and erodes its capability to engage in a ‘real’ war. More important than anything else, it does not allow Israel to impose unilaterally its vision over the land of Palestine – a de-Arabized land mostly in Jewish hands. Most of the Arab regimes have been complacent and weak enough to allow the Israelis to pursue their policies, apart from Syria and Hizballah in Lebanon. They have to be neutralized if Israeli unileteralism is to succeed.

    After the outbreak of the second Intifada in October 2000, some of the frustration was allowed to evaporate with the use of 1,000 kilo bombs on a Gaza house or during operation Defense Shield in 2002 when the army bulldozered the refugee camp in Jenin. But this too was a far cry from what the strongest army in the Middle East could do. And despite the demonization of the mode of resistance chosen by the Palestinians in the second Intifada – the suicide bomb – you needed only two or three F-16 and a small number of tanks to punish collectively the Palestinians by totally destroying their human, economic and social infrastructure.

    I know these generals as well as one could know them. In the last week, they have had a field day. No more random use of one-kilo bombs, battleships, choppers and heavy artillery. The weak and insignificant new minister of defense, Amir Perez, accepted without hesitation the army demand for crushing the Gaza strip and grinding Lebanon to dust. But it may not be enough. It can still deteriorate into a full scale war with the hapless army of Syria and my ex-students may even push by provocative actions towards such an eventuality. And, if you believe what you read in the local press here, it may even escalate into a long distance war with Iran, backed by a supreme American umbrella.

    Even the most partial reports in the Israeli press of what was proposed by the army to Ehud Olmert’s government as possible operations in the coming days, indicate clearly what enthuses the Israeli generals these days. Nothing less that a total destruction of Lebanon, Syria and Tehran.

    The politicians at the top are more tamed, to a point. They have only partially satisfied the army’s hunger for a ‘high intensity conflict’. But their politics of the day are already donned by military propaganda and rational. This why Zipi Livni, Israeli foreign minister, an otherwise intelligent person, could say genuinely on Israeli TV tonight (13 July 2006) that the best way to retrieve the two captured soldiers ‘is to destroy totally the international airport of Beirut’. Abductors or armies that have two POWs of course immediately go and buy commercial tickets on the next flight from an international airport for the captors and the two soldiers. ‘But they can sneak them with a car’, insisted the interviewers. ‘Oh indeed’ said the Israeli Foreign Minister, ‘This is why we will also destroy all the roads in Lebanon leading outside the country’. This is good news for the army, to destroy airports, set fire to petrol tanks, blow up bridges, damage roads and inflict collateral damage on a civilian population. At least the airforce can show its ‘real’ might and compensate for the frustrating years of the ‘low intensity conflict’ that had sent Israel’s best and fiercest to run after boys and girls in the alleys of Nablus or Hebron. In Gaza the airforce has already dropped five such bombs, where in the last six years it dropped only one.

    This may be not enough, though, for the army generals. They already say clearly on TV that ‘we here in Israel should not forget Damascus and Teheran’. Past experiences tell us what they mean by this appeal against our collective amnesia.

    The captive soldiers in Gaza and Lebanon have already been deleted from the public agenda here. This is about destroying the Hizballah and Hamas once and for all, not about bringing home the soldiers. In a similar way in the summer of 1982, the Israeli public have totally forgotten the victim that provided the government of Menachem Begin with the excuse of invading Lebanon. He was Shlomo Aragov, Israel’s ambassador to London on whose life an attempt was made by a splinter Palestinian group. The attack on him served Ariel Sharon with the pretext of invading Lebanon and staying there for 18 years.

    Alternative routes for the conflict are not even raised in Israel, not even by the Zionist left. No one mentions commonsensical ideas such as an exchange of prisoners or a commencement of a dialogue with the Hamas and other Palestinian groups at least over a long ceasefire to prepare the ground for more meaningful political negotiations in the future. This alternative way forward is already backed by all the Arab countries, but alas only by them. In Washington, Donald Ramsfeld may have lost some of his deputies in the Defense Department, but he is still the Secretary. For him, the total destruction of the Hamas and Hizballah – whatever the price and if it is without loss of American life – will ‘vindicate’ the raison d’être for the Third World Theory he propagated early on in 2001. The current crisis for him is a righteous battle against a small axis of evil – away from the quagmire of Iraq and a precursor for the so far unattained goals in the ‘war against terror’ – Syria and Iran. If indeed to a certain extent the Empire was serving the proxy in Iraq, the full fledged support President Bush gave to the recent Israeli aggression in Gaza and Lebanon, shows that may be pay off time has come: now the proxy should salvage the entangled Empire.

    Hizballah wants back the piece of southern Lebanon Israel still retains. It also wishes to play a major role in Lebanese politics and shows ideological solidarity with both Iran and the Palestinian struggle in general, and the Islamist one, in particular. The three goals do not always complement each other and resulted in a very limited war effort against Israel in the last six years. The total resurrection of tourism on the Israeli side of the border with Lebanon testifies that, unlike the Israeli generals, for its own reasons the Hizballah is very happy with a very low intensity conflict. If and when a comprehensive solution for the Palestine question will be achieved even that impulse would die out. Crossing 100 yards into Israel proper is such an action. Retaliating to such a low key operation with a total war and destruction indicates clearly that what matters is the grand design not the pretext.

    There is nothing new in this. In 1948, the Palestinians opted for a very low intensity conflict when the UN imposed on them a deal which wrested from their hand half of their homeland and gave it to a community of newcomers and settlers, most of whom arrived after 1945. The Zionist leaders waited for long time for that opportunity and launched an ethnic cleansing operation that expelled half of the land’s native population, destroyed half of its villages and dragged the Arab world into unnecessary conflict with the West, whose powers were already on the way out with the demise of colonialism. The two designs are interconnected: the wider Israel’s military might expands, the easier it is to complete the unfinished business of the 1948: the total de-Arabization of Palestine.

    It is not too late to stop the Israeli designs from creating a new and terrible reality on the ground. But the window of opportunity is very narrow and the world needs to take action before it is too late.

    Related Links
     BY TOPIC: Israel attacks Lebanon (12 July 2006)
    BY TOPIC: Israel attacks Gaza (27 June 2006)

    Ilan Pappe is senior lecturer in the University of Haifa Department of political Science and Chair of the Emil Touma Institute for Palestinian Studies in Haifa. His books include among others The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (London and New York 1992), The Israel/Palestine Question (London and New York 1999), A History of Modern Palestine (Cambridge 2003), The Modern Middle East (London and New York 2005) and forthcoming, Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006)

  • Wild dogs devour victims of Israel’s Bombs

    We know now that Israel’s plan of attack was "finalized more than a year ago" and that Hezbollah’s capturing of the 2 Israeli soldiers was merely a pretext to execute their strategy. Gerald Steinberg, professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University clarified this point saying, "Of all Israel’s wars since 1948, this was the one for which Israel was most prepared. In a sense, the preparation began in 2000, immediately after the Israeli withdrawal."

    According to the San Francisco Chronicle, "More than a year ago, a senior Israeli army officer began giving Power-point presentations, on an off-the-record basis, to US and other diplomats, journalists and think-tanks, setting out the plan for the current operation in revealing detail."

    Although this simply confirms what most serious analysts suspected from the beginning, it is still interesting on many levels. For one thing, we can be sure that top ranking officials in the Bush administration (including George Bush) not only knew of the plan, but tacitly endorsed the invasion of a friendly country who posed no threat to national security. We can also assume that the battle-plans were carefully orchestrated with Washington so that Bush could co-opt the leaders at the G-8 meetings while Israel pummeled its vulnerable neighbor. Again, this shows the appalling degree of cynicism in the Bush foreign policy strategy.

    The SF Chronicle article also demonstrates the extent to which the media is integrated into the machinery of state power. The fact that select "journalists" were provided with information about future aggression against non-threatening states shows that the administration places great value on the preparation of propaganda for major events like the destruction of Lebanon. The media’s carefully crafted message; chock-full of the usual "buzz-words" and "talking points" (nb. "Israel is fighting a war on 2 fronts"; "Israel has the right to defend itself"; "Syria and Iran are the cause of the violence") follows the predictable pattern of emphasizing Israeli "victim-hood" while lashing out against future enemies without any evidence of wrongdoing. Nearly every one of the 4,000 or so articles covering the violence, use the very same talking points in describing events on the ground. It is a shocking reminder of the woeful state of modern corporate media which advances an elite agenda through the intentional dissemination of misinformation. In the present crisis, much of the public support for Israeli aggression can be directly attributed to the manipulation of language and facts appearing in the media. (We should note that, so far, there is no proof that either Iran or Syria is directly involved in the hostilities and that, more importantly, it is American ordinance in the control of Israeli pilots that is pelting-down on the blameless civilians in Lebanon. Neither Iran nor Syria are in any way responsible for the carnage in Lebanon.)

    According to the Chronicle, Israeli officials expect a 3 week campaign. Targeted bombing is to be followed by commando raids and a ground offensive, but the situation is "fluid" and plans will undoubtedly be modified to meet the changes in conditions on the ground. Already, we can see that 500,000 mostly poor Shiites have been uprooted in the south and "ethnically cleansed" from the area. Israel’s 20 mile buffer-zone to the Litani River is tantamount to occupation and will preclude many of these refugees to returning to their homes.

    Israel’s invasion can be expected to reenergize the ethnic and religious rivalries which resulted in Lebanon’s civil war which killed an estimated 70,000 Lebanese nationals. Apparently, no price is too high to pay to ensure that Israel can establish a client regime in Beirut that will function at the behest of Tel Aviv.

    Once again, all of the details were clearly worked out with members of the Bush administration prior to the invasion. Obviously, they were given Washington’s blessing. Since the hostilities broke out, the Bush administration has publicly given the "green light" to Israeli aggression and successfully blocked all diplomatic efforts to achieve a "cease-fire". The international community is now as much a hostage of Bush’s preemptive doctrine as the frightened Lebanese civilians cowering in their underground shelters in Beirut.

    The New York Times reported on Saturday that Bush was "rushing a delivery of precision-guided bombs to Israel" to guarantee that the killing can continue nonstop and that whatever is left of Lebanon’s frayed infrastructure will be swiftly pounded into dust.

    Make no mistake, the vast destruction of the once-bustling metropolis and the ocean of suffering caused by the unprovoked Israeli air-assault, is a joint-operation facilitated by the Washington warlords as much as anyone in Tel Aviv.

    In an op-ed piece today in the New York Times, neoconservative chieftain, Richard Perle provided a lurid summary of the present strategy:

    "Israel must now deal a blow of such magnitude to those who would destroy it as to leave no doubt that its earlier policy of acquiescence is over. This means precise military action against Hezbollah and its infrastructure in Lebanon and Syria, for as long as it takes and without regard to mindless diplomatic blather about proportionality."

    Perle’s statement is, in fact, an apt description the Bush-Olmert battle-plan for Lebanon. It tells us that, despite the failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, the two leaders still believe they can achieve a political solution through the (exclusive) use of overwhelming force. There is no moral or ethical component to the present policy, nor is there any wiggle-room for negotiation or diplomacy. (Condoleezza Rice’s trip is purely for public relations purposes) It is simply violence as a political-panacea removed from any rational alternative. 3 years in Iraq and 39 years of unrelenting bloodshed in Palestine, have taught them nothing. Lebanon is shaping up to be another dismal chapter in the chronicle of colonial atrocities.

    :: Article nr. 24945 sent on 23-jul-2006 04:34 ECT

    :: The address of this page is : www.uruknet.info?p=24945

  • Evangelical Christians plead for Israel

    They see God’s word being played out on their television sets
    Timothy Shah, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life

    But the military conflict "certainly makes our meeting more significant," Pastor Hagee said.

    The thousands of Christians in Washington – who came and are staying at their own expense – will be urging the US government "not to restrain Israel in any way in the pursuit of Hamas and Hezbollah", he said.

    "We want our Congress to make sure that not one dime of American money goes to support Hamas and Hezbollah or the enemies of Israel."

    Gift from God

    John Hagee is the pastor of the 18,000-member Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, and a long-time fervent supporter of Israel.

    In common with many American evangelicals, he believes that God gave the land to the Jewish people and that Christians have a Biblical duty to support it and the Jews.

    His latest book, Jerusalem Countdown: A Warning to the World, interprets the Bible to predict that Russian and Arab armies will invade Israel and be destroyed by God.

    This will set up a confrontation over Israel between China and the West, led by the anti-Christ, who will be the head of the European Union, Pastor Hagee writes.

    That final battle between East and West – at Armageddon, an actual place in Israel – will precipitate the second coming of Christ, he concludes.

    It is not clear how many evangelicals believe literally in those type of prophecies.

    Research by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life last year found that evangelical Christians were more likely to support Israel than any other religious group in America besides Jews.

    And there are far more evangelicals in America than Jews – estimates suggest that they represent about a quarter of the US population. (Jews make up about 2%.)

    Two in three evangelicals believe that the establishment of the state of Israel fulfils Biblical prophecy, the survey found.

    And what they see in the news only reinforces their faith, according to Timothy Shah, a scholar at the Pew Forum.

    "When they see what’s going on in the Middle East, a whole range of enemies arrayed against God’s people, they see God’s word being played out on their television sets," he said.

    "They see Israel triumphing over its enemies as proof that God’s promises remain."

    ‘Huge influence’

    Evangelical Christian support for Israel is "not a new phenomenon", Mr Shah said, pointing out that there were Christian Zionists lobbying for a homeland for the Jews in Ottoman Palestine in the 19th Century.

    These groups have much more influence that Aipac or the so-called Israel lobby
    Michelle Goldberg,
    Author of Kingdom Coming

    What has changed is the movement’s level of political involvement, said Nancy Roman, the director of the Council on Foreign Relations’ Washington programme.

    "Part of what is happening is that the evangelical community in the US is becoming more engaged in the political process," she said.

    "Whereas the church used to counsel people not to engage in politics, many churches are now counselling the opposite.

    "It’s important and it will have a huge influence on foreign policy over time," she added.

    Backing irredentists

    Michelle Goldberg is deeply concerned about that influence.

    She is the author of Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, which argues that a significant strain of conservative Christianity is working to undermine fundamental American rights and freedoms.

    She said the movement was just as dangerous in foreign policy.

    "Christian Zionism is responsible for American support for some of the most irredentist Israeli positions," she said, such as support for settlement-building.

    She said evangelical Christians had substantial influence on US Middle East policy – more so than some better-known names such as Aipac, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

    "The influence of Hagee is to make the American public support the government’s completely one-sided, hawkishly pro-Israel stance. These groups have much more influence than Aipac or the so-called Israel lobby."

    Pastor Hagee himself said his group potentially had more clout than Jewish pro-Israel groups.

    "When a congressman sees someone from Aipac coming through the door, he knows he represents six million people. We represent 40 million people."

    One of those people is Rosa Highwater of Biloxi, Mississippi, who heard about the Washington summit through a local pastor.

    She had no money to attend, she said, but added: "You have to believe and trust in the Lord when he tells you he’s going to do something."

    And in the end, friends paid for her journey to Washington and put her up in nearby Virginia.

    She said she was not sure which congressman she would be meeting on Wednesday, but she knew her mission was important.

    "Israel is God’s first love," she said. "The Lord told me to come and be an intercessor. I said, ‘I got to go. I got to do this.’"

    Story from BBC NEWS:
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/5193092.stm

    © BBC MMVI

  • The End is Near – but first a commercial


    Israel’s declarations about the absolute unacceptability of one of their soldiers being held captive by the Palestinians, or two soldiers being held by Hezbollah in Lebanon, cannot be taken too seriously when Israel is holding literally thousands of captured Palestinians, many for years, typically without any due process, many tortured; as well as holding a number of prominent Hezbollah members. A few years ago, if not still now, Israel wrote numbers on some of the Palestinian prisoners’ arms and foreheads, using blue markers, a practice that is of course reminiscent of the Nazis’ treatment of Jews in World War II. [1]

    Israel’s real aim, and that of Washington, is the overthrow of the Hamas government in Palestine, the government that came to power in January through a clearly democratic process, the democracy that the Western "democracies" never tire of celebrating, except when the result doesn’t please them. Is there a stronger word than "hypocrisy"? There is now "no Hamas government," declared a senior US official a week ago, "eight cabinet ministers or 30 percent of the government is in jail [kidnapped by Israel], another 30 percent is in hiding, and the other 30 percent is doing very little."[2] To make the government-disappearance act even more Orwellian, we have Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, speaking in late June about Iraq: "This is the only legitimately elected government in the Middle East with a possible exception of Lebanon."[3] What’s next, gathering in front of the Big Telescreeen for the Two Minutes Hate?

    In addition to doing away with the Hamas government, the current military blitzkrieg by Israel, with full US support, may well be designed to create "incidents" to justify attacks on Iran and Syria, the next steps of Washington’s work in process, a controlling stranglehold on the Middle East and its oil.

    It is a wanton act of collective punishment that is depriving the Palestinians of food, electricity, water, money, access to the outside world … and sleep. Israel has been sending jets flying over Gaza at night triggering sonic booms, traumatizing children. "I want nobody to sleep at night in Gaza," declared Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert[4]; words suitable for Israel’s tombstone.

    These crimes against humanity — and I haven’t mentioned the terrible special weapons reportedly used by Israel — are what the people of Palestine get for voting for the wrong party. It is ironic, given the Israeli attacks against civilians in both Gaza and Lebanon, that Hamas and Hezbollah are routinely dismissed in the West as terrorist organizations. The generally accepted definition of terrorism, used by the FBI and the United Nations amongst others, is: The use of violence against a civilian population in order to intimidate or coerce a government in furtherance of a political objective.

    Since 9-11 it has been a calculated US-Israeli tactic to label the fight against Israel’s foes as an integral part of the war on terror. On July 19, a rally was held in Washington, featuring the governor of Maryland, several members of Israeli-occupied Congress, the Israeli ambassador, and evangelical leading-light John Hagee. The Washington Post reported that "Speaker after prominent speaker characteriz[ed] current Israeli fighting as a small branch of the larger U.S.-led global war against Islamic terrorism" and "Israel’s attacks against the Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah were blows against those who have killed civilians from Bali to Bombay to Moscow." Said the Israeli ambassador: "This is not just about [Israel]. It’s about where our world is going to be and the fate and security of our world. Israel is on the forefront. We will amputate these little arms of Iran," referring to Hezbollah.[5]

    And if the war on terror isn’t enough to put Israel on the side of the angels, John Hagee has argued that "the United States must join Israel in a pre-emptive military strike against Iran to fulfill God’s plan for both Israel and the West". He speaks of "a biblically prophesied end-time confrontation with Iran, which will lead to the Rapture, Tribulation, and Second Coming of Christ."[6] The beatification of Israel approaches being a movement. Here is David Horowitz, the eminent semi-hysterical ex-Marxist: "Israel is part of a global war, the war of radical Islam against civilization. Right now Israel is doing the work of the rest of the civilized world by taking on the terrorists. It is not only for Israel’s sake that we must get the facts out — it is for ourselves, America, for every free country in the world, and for civilization itself."[7]

    As for the two Israeli soldiers captured and held in Lebanon for prisoner exchange, we must keep a little history in mind. In the late 1990s, before Israel was evicted from southern Lebanon by Hezbollah, it was a common practice for Israel to abduct entirely innocent Lebanese. As a 1998 Amnesty International paper declared: "By Israel’s own admission, Lebanese detainees are being held as ‘bargaining chips’; they are not detained for their own actions but in exchange for Israeli soldiers missing in action or killed in Lebanon. Most have now spent 10 years in secret and isolated detention."[8]

    Israel has created its worst enemies — they helped create Hamas as a counterweight to Fatah in Palestine, and their occupation of Lebanon created Hezbollah. The current terrible bombings can be expected to keep the process going. Since its very beginning, Israel has been almost continually occupied in fighting wars and taking other people’s lands. Did not any better way ever occur to the idealistic Zionist pioneers? But while you and I get depressed by the horror and suffering, the neo-conservatives revel in it. They devour the flesh and drink the blood of the people of Afghanistan, of Iraq, of Palestine, of Lebanon, yet remain ravenous, and now call for Iran and Syria to be placed upon the feasting table. More than one of them has used the expression oderint dum metuant, a favorite phrase of Roman emperor Caligula, also used by Cicero — "let them hate so long as they fear". Here is William Kristol, editor of the bible of neo-cons, "Weekly Standard", on Fox News Sunday, July 16: "Look, our coddling of Iran … over the last six to nine months has emboldened them. I mean, is Iran behaving like a timid regime that’s very worried about the U.S.? Or is Iran behaving recklessly and in a foolhardy way? … Israel is fighting four of our five enemies in the Middle East, in a sense. Iran, Syria, sponsors of terror; Hezbollah and Hamas. … This is an opportunity to begin to reverse the unfortunate direction of the last six to nine months and get the terrorists and the jihadists back on the defensive."

    Host Juan Williams replied: "Well, it just seems to me that you want … you just want war, war, war, and you want us in more war. You wanted us in Iraq. Now you want us in Iran. Now you want us to get into the Middle East … you’re saying, why doesn’t the United States take this hard, unforgiving line? Well, the hard and unforgiving line has been [tried], we don’t talk to anybody. We don’t talk to Hamas. We don’t talk to Hezbollah. We’re not going to talk to Iran. Where has it gotten us, Bill?"

    Kristol, looking somewhat taken aback, simply threw up his hands.

    The Fox News audience does (very) occasionally get a hint of another way of looking at the world.

    Iraq will follow Bush the rest of his life Here comes now our Glorious Leader, speaking last week at a news conference at the G8 summit in St. Petersburg, referring to Russian president Vladimir Putin. "I talked about my desire to promote institutional change in parts of the world like Iraq where there’s a free press and free religion, and I told him that a lot of people in our country would hope that Russia would do the same thing."[9]

    It’s so very rare that Georgie W. makes one of his less-than-brilliant statements and has the nonsense immediately pointed out to him to his face — "Putin, in a barbed reply, said: ‘We certainly would not want to have the same kind of democracy as they have in Iraq, I will tell you quite honestly.’ Bush’s face reddened as he tried to laugh off the remark. ‘Just wait’," he said.[10]

    It’s too bad that Putin didn’t also point out that religion was a lot more free under Saddam Hussein than under the American occupation. Amongst many charming recent incidents, in May the coach of the national tennis team and two of his players were shot dead in Baghdad by men who reportedly were religious extremists angry that the coach and his players were wearing shorts.[11]

    As to a "free press", dare I mention Iraqi newspapers closed down by the American occupation, reporters shot by American troops, and phony stories planted in the Iraqi press by Pentagon employees?

    The preceding is in the same vein as last month’s edition of this report in which I listed the many ways in which the people of Iraq have a much worse life now than they did under Saddam Hussein. I concluded with recounting the discussions I’ve had with Americans who, in the face of this, say to me: "Just tell me one thing, are you glad that Saddam Hussein is out of power?"

    Now we have a British poll that reports that "More than two thirds who offered an opinion said America is essentially an imperial power seeking world domination. And 81 per cent of those who took a view said President George W. Bush hypocritically championed democracy as a cover for the pursuit of American self-interests." The American embassy in London was quick to reply. Said a spokesperson: "We question the judgment of anyone who asserts the world would be a better place with Saddam still terrorizing his own nation and threatening people well beyond Iraq’s borders."[12]

    They simply can’t stop lying, can they? There was no evidence at all that Saddam was threatening any people outside of Iraq, whatever that’s supposed to mean. It may mean arms sales. Following the Gulf War, the US sold around $100 billion of military hardware to Iraq’s "threatened" neighbors: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the Gulf States, and Turkey.

    As to the world being a better or worse place … only Iraq itself was and is the issue here, not the world; although if the world is a better place, why am I depressed?

    The peculiar idea of tying people’s health to private corporate profits Steven Pearlstein is a financial writer with the Washington Post, with whom I’ve exchanged several emails in recent years. He does not ignore or gloss over the serious defects of the American economic system, but nonetheless remains a true believer in the market economy. In a recent review of a book by journalist Maggie Mahar, "Money-Driven Medicine", Pearlstein writes that the author tries to explain "why health care costs so much in the United States, with such poor results." She has focused on the right issues, he says, "the misguided financial incentives at every level, the unnecessary care that is not only wasteful but harmful, the bloated administrative costs." However, "in making the case that the health-care system suffers from too much free-market competition and too little cooperation, Mahar means to drum up support for a publicly funded national system. But in the end, she mostly makes a convincing case that no health-care system will work unless we figure out what really works and is cost effective and then get doctors, hospitals and patients to embrace it."[13]

    "Unless we figure out what really works and is cost effective" … hmmm … like there haven’t been repeated studies showing that national health plans in Western Europe, Australia, Canada, and elsewhere cover virtually everyone and every ailment and cost society and individuals much less than in the United States. Isn’t that "working"? I spent five years in the UK with my wife and small child and all three of us can swear by the National Health Service; at those times when neither my wife nor I was employed we didn’t have to pay anything into the system; doctors even made house calls; and this was under Margaret Thatcher, who was doing her best to cripple the system, a goal she and her fellow Tories, later joined by "New Labour", have continued to pursue.

    And then there’s Cuba — poor, little, third-world Cuba. Countless non-rich ill Americans would think they were in heaven to have the Cuban health system reproduced here, with higher salaries for doctors et al., which we could easily afford.

    It should be noted that an extensive review of previous studies recently concluded that the care provided at for-profit nursing homes and hospitals, on average, is inferior to that at nonprofits. The analysis indicates that a facility’s ownership status makes a difference in cost, quality, and accessibility of care.[14]

    William Blum is the author of: Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2 – Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower – West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire.
    www.killinghope.org