Afghan Villagers Protest US Air Strike, as Ballot Fraud Evidence Surfaces

Posted on September 27, 2010 by Juan

According to the Afghanistan government, about 186 civilians have died in each of the last 6 months in the war. (Other studies suggest the bulk of them are killed in Taliban attacks).

While it is true that some 300 civilians were killed in Iraq in August, or nearly twice the Afghan toll, earlier in 2010 the toll there was on the order of 200 a month. That is, Afghanistan violence is creeping up toward Iraq levels.

Past 6 months in Afghanistan according to Ministry of Interior spokesman, Zemarai Bahsari (Tolo News):

Insurgent attacks: 4012
Civilians killed: 1119
Civilians wounded: 2473
Police killed: 959
Police wounded: 1345
Insurgents killed: 3098
Insurgents arrested: 2800
Insurgents wounded: 632

Lara Logan’s report on CBS’ “60 Minutes” on Sunday struck me as highly pessimistic and as supporting with its footage the reality of these grim statistics.

One of her stories was about going out to a village with an American officer and his men. They found that the village had turned against them and would not talk to them. Then on the way back they were attacked and seemed barely to get out of it alive. It sounded to me like the surrounding countryside was full of such dangerous villages, and that the previously safe village had turned deadly strikes me as a bad sign. The officeer admits that he controls perhaps 18 sq. kilometers of the 300 sq. km. for which he is responsible; the rest is in Taliban hands and there are many villages to which he cannot go. Logan points out that the datum is astonishing. I would have said depressing.

Andrew Bacevich slams Bob Woodward for indulging in Washington salon gossip in his new book on the Afghanistan war, instead of asking the hard questions of an investigative reporter about what in the world we are doing there.

Der Spiegel is reporting that recently Afghan army and police have been boycotting joint patrols with American and German troops in Qunduz Province. The German article is here.

Meanwhile, Aljazeera English is reporting that video evidence is now emerging of ballot fraud in the recent parliamentary elections. This issue has the potential to render the Afghanistan government invalid altogether, which would be a real blow to it in the midst of a hard fought battle against the Taliban.

A recount has been ordered of ballots at voting stations across 7 provinces.

Afghans were not surprised. Before the election, only 36% though that the election would be free, fair and transparent. Some 65 percent of Afghans think Karzai is doing a bad job, and 95 percent of people in Kabul (where he actually rules) think that. Only half say that NATO & US troops make them safer.

According to this Dari Persian newspaper, hundreds of people demonstrated on Saturday in Mehtarlam, Laghman province, over a US-led raid on Masmood village in Alishang district, Laghman Province, that allegedly killed innocent, civilian villagers. The demonstrators chanted anti-American slogans.

NATO initially announced that it had killed 30 insurgents and that no civilians had been in the area.

The governor of Laghman Province, Muhammad Iqbal Azizi, initially denied the villagers’ claims. But on Sunday he met with the villagers and became convinced that 13-14 civilians had in fact been killed in the operation, which had involved 250 NATO, US and Afghanistan army and police personnel.

A provincial council member blamed an overzealous American pilot for the error.

Afghans all across the country are suspicious of the US military presence and have been demonstrating against it in recent weeks. The threat of some Christian crazies in the US to burn the Quran explains some of the failure to win hearts and minds.

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Posted in Afghanistan | 2 Comments

New Polls: Dems Very Likely to Keep Senate

Posted on September 27, 2010 by Juan

Jason Easley’s essay looking at recent opinion polls in Kentucky, Nevada, and California argues that Democrats are substantially improving their position in senate races in each.

I’ve been noticing the same thing. Even if the new LA Times poll showing the Democratic candidates, Boxer for Senate and Brown for governor, pulling way out ahead is as inaccurate as the rightwing blogosphere maintains, there is other evidence of them now enjoying a lead beyond the margin of error. Easely pays a lot of attention to who has high negatives, and it is clear that the public just does not like some of the Republican candidates very much.

I’ve also noticed that television news has made a big deal about generic Republican versus Democratic polls. I cannot say such polls are completely useless, but they should be approached with great caution. Americans have the same low opinion of Congress as an institution that Mark Twain had.

But it turns out that voters usually like their representatives just fine, thank you, and believe that they are exceptions to the rule.

The president’s party usually loses some seats in the midterm, but the Democrats increasingly look set to keep a majority in the Senate. The Republicans would have to take 10 seats, and that outcome looks increasingly implausible, especially with Christine “Blood on the Altar” O’Donnell having won the primary in Delaware.

It is, of course, strange that Americans should be contemplating returning to power in the House the party that ran the country off a cliff during the first 8 years of the new millennium. But it isn’t all “Americans” who are voting. In most midterms, the voter turnout is relatively low, about 37%. The poor don’t typically vote, and neither do people under 30 (they came out for Obama in ’08, but that was likely a fluke). Also, ethnic minorities don’t vote in as high numbers as middle class and upper class whites. The voters will be well-heeled people who already had health coverage and who mind that it was extended to workers, students and the poor in a way that might cause them to have to bear some of the burden. They will include the ones who would be affected if the Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire.

So a midterm election is an election in which rich cranky old white people predominate as voters. Thus, it really is remarkable, and sad for the Republicans, that even with such a favorable electorate (i.e. a shrunken and weird one), they likely can’t take the Senate back. And without the Senate, they won’t be able to get up to much mischief. Every theatrical bill they pass in the House will be quietly buried in committee, and in the unlikely event it came to a vote and passed, it would simply be vetoed; and the veto would stick.

Since there are only two parties in the US, and one has gone bonkers, every election is now a game of Russian roulette for the American republic. But this time, at least, the chamber that has come up looks to be empty.

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Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments

Worst Reporting on Green Energy of the Week

Posted on September 26, 2010 by Juan

This week’s award for bad environmental reporting goes to John Spear of the Toronto Star for his article on the cost of wind power in Ontario “when we don’t need it.”

Spear manages to write the entire article as though the only comparison between wind power and other energy should be about the conventional pricing, and he continually assumes that green energy is an unneeded add-on. He complains about government essentially subsidizing the start-up costs of wind turbines by paying a relatively high price per kilowatt hour, and brings up the question of over-production of power and the inability of wind to meet high demand on particularly hot, still days as this past August.

Spear either has no sense of irony or has never read a book on pollution or climate change, or just doesn’t get it. I couldn’t tell you.

But he manages not to make the connection between the use of coal, natural gas, and petroleum to produce power in Ontario and the highly dangerous levels of air pollution reached in Toronto in late August, not to mention the the extreme heat alert around the same time. That is, he was complaining about the inability of the wind turbines to deal with the air conditioning demand (in Canada!) on hot windless days instead of realizing that the hydrocarbons caused the heat wave in the first place. It is astonishing.

He doesn’t want to factor into the cost of the hydrocarbons the lost lives caused by pollution (and consequent losses to the economy), the effects on health and consequent costs of medical care, and the potentially catastrophic effects of climate change on Canada as more and more carbon is dumped into the atmosphere– even just things like insufficient lumber availability from transformed forests affected by more frequent forest fires and fewer hardwood trees.

Is the 12 cents a kilowatt hour for wind that Spear complains about really such a bad bargain when it produces none of those bad effects? Is it really the case that hydrocarbons are such a steal when they do?

Nor does he seem to be aware of the potential positive effects on job-generation of wind energy, as the Nordseewerke shipyard in Emden, Germany, has discovered.

I constantly come across this bad arithmetic (it is not even calculus, just adding and subtracting) in business reporting on alternative energy, and am frankly getting more and more crotchety about it.

So Spear’s article should have been about why Ontario is still depending so heavily on the hydrocarbon power generation that “we don’t need” and which is actively harming us, not why the pollution-free wind turbines are a government boondoggle. (Maybe he has a point about how the provincial or municipal energy contracts are being let, I don’t know; but if that is the main problem then it isn’t about wind, is it?)

More in wind news:

World’s largest wind farm opens off UK coast, which is really an article about how minimal and backward Britain’s green energy efforts have been (the new facility would only provide enough power for 200,000 homes), given its enormous wind potential.

For the much better job Portugal is doing, see this posting.

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Posted in Energy, Environment | 12 Comments

Will Resumption of Israeli Colonization of West Bank End the Two State Solution?

Posted on September 26, 2010 by Juan

The Palestinian negotiating team is categorically rejecting any compromise with Israel over the latter’s plan to re-start settlement building on Palestinian land Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is also reviving his threat to resign.

The Palestinians demanded the freeze on new settlement-building in summer of 2009 as a prerequisite to face to face talks. When Israel finally made that concession, it exempted edifices on which work had already begun, ensuring that the ‘moratorium’ was a small gesture indeed.

Having now gotten the Palestinians to a negotiation table, such that it would be difficult politically for them just to storm out of such talks, Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu wishes to start back up the active colonization of Palestinian territory (a matter the negotiations are supposed to resolve.) From a Palestinian point of view, Abbas would be giving a fig leaf to people who are stealing from him, by legitimizing the Netanyahu government through talks. Meanwhile, Palestine would be disappearing.

Abbas is pushing back, saying Israel must choose between taking Palestinian lands and peace. Reuters has video:

The Guardian reports that some of the “freeze” in new settlement building has been a “fiction,” since structures begun the summer of 2009 before the freeze went into effect were exempted from it. Since Israelis had fair warning of a freeze, they simply bought up land and began construction on it before the deadline. And, some are entirely willing to build illegally.

A new poll shows that a majority of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank think peace talks are the best means to attain their goals. Another 16 percent advocated non-violent noncooperation. Only about a quarter of Palestinians advocate violent resistance.

The USG Open Source Center translates an article from al-Quds al-’Arabi on President Mahmoud Abbas

‘Palestinian Source on President Abbas’s Threat to Resign If Negotiations Failed
Report bu Ashraf al-Hur, from Gaza: “Palestinian Source: President Abbas Hinted Anew that He Would Submit His Resignation If the Negotiations Failed and the Official Institutions Had Not Discussed the Alternative”
Al-Quds al-Arabi Online
Friday, September 24, 2010
Document Type: OSC Translated Text …

A senior Palestinian Authority (PA) official has told Al-Quds al-Arabi that President Mahmud Abbas has hinted anew to the possibility of submitting his resignation if the negotiations were to fail. However, the source says that despite this, the PLO and Fatah institutions have not begun to search for an alternative. The source reveals that the plan for conducting the negotiations in the upcoming stage does not depend on the existence of a negotiations delegation, but it depends on holding bilateral meetings between Abu-Mazin and Binyamin Netanyahu.

The senior source, who asked not to be named, points out that President Abbas said at the last meetings of the (Fatah) Central Committee, which discussed the negotiations dossier and their failure if they were launched, “I have a decision which I will announce at the right time.”

The official stresses that it was understood by all members that the president had reiterated the intention to resign his post.

President Abbas had said that he would resign his post, and he would not be a candidate for the presidency again in any future elections; this was because of his dissatisfaction with the peace process.

With regard to the alternatives to be adopted by the PLO and the PA in case President Abbas carries out his threat and submits his resignation as president of the PA, the Palestinian official says that the Central Committee will then convene and select a new president from its members, after that the (PLO) Executive Committee will convene to ratify the selection, and then this will be followed by a meeting of the Central Council to ratify the appointment in its final form.’

If the peace talks collapse and Abbas resigns, there is no vice president to take his place and he is already serving beyond the perimeters of the Palestinian Authority Constitution. Such a set of failures would tarnish the Obama administration and could provoke months of demonstrations by disappointed and suffering Palestinians.

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Posted in Israel/ Palestine | 14 Comments

Colbert on Immigrant Labor

Posted on September 25, 2010 by Juan

Stephen Colbert of Comedy Central’s Colbert Report testifies before Congress on problems facing immigrant labor.

Colbert’s television show spoofs rightwing Fox Cable News anchors.

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Posted in US Politics, Uncategorized | 4 Comments

Attack on US Base Repulsed in Afghanistan

Posted on September 25, 2010 by Juan

Afghan guerrillas attacked a US forward operating base in Gardez, Paktia Province, on Friday. NATO issued a press release, saying “The attack began when a vehicle, followed closely by four suicide vest-wearing insurgents, attempted to breach a fortified area of the base.” The attackers were forced to flee or were killed, and there were no US casualties. (The Taliban spokesman made typically exaggerated claims in this regard).

Attacks on US bases, once rare, are becoming increasingly common and sophisticated.

In the Pushtun east, a bomb killed two Western troops, while a firefight in Laghman Province left 34 insurgents dead.

Meanwhile, almost 4000 complaints about the recent parliamentary election have flooded into the complaints commission, and international observers are increasingly willing to consider the possibility that the vote was so marred by fraud and irregularities as to be invalid.

The question raised by the CSM’s Dan Murphy a couple of days ago, as to whether the elections have finished off the democratic ideal in Afghanistan and given a large opening to the Taliban, becomes more salient with every passing day.

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O’Donnell wonders why Monkeys aren’t still evolving into Humans

Posted on September 25, 2010 by Juan

Bill Maher on his HBO television show Friday night played another clip of Christine O’Donnell, the Republican candidate for senator from Delaware, from the 1990s. In it, she denied the evolution of human beings from other forms of life. When Bill asked her to just look at a monkey, she refuted him by asking why monkeys are not still evolving into human beings. Another guest suggests to her that ‘it takes time.’

The practical implications of O’Donnell’s nonsense should not be lost sight of. Her anti-scientific way of thinking harms education in the biological sciences, and in turn harms the prospects of American leadership in biotechnology.

Biotechnology and pharmaceuticals not only have the potential of saving millions of lives and improving tens of millions of lives, but they are becoming a significant contributor to US economic growth. The sector has grown at a time when the rest of the economy is in crisis, and it will be key to global prominence in the rest of this century. If South Korea or France outstrip the US in this area, their citizens will grow wealthy and even more of ours will fall into poverty than already have.

I checked the Delaware Development Office web site, and was unsurprised to find that it touts biotech as a significant engine of the state’s economy, and is expected to grow as such.

O’Donnell and her like would, if sent to Washington, destroy that potential faster than you could sequence a gene. A dedication to ignorance and a demonization of science are a one-way ticket to being a poor, backward country of illiterate yahoos. In other words, candidates like O’Donnell are not just quirky potential senators. They are shapers of our future in their own image.

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Posted in US Politics | 16 Comments

Rumsfeld, Bush and the Supreme War Crime

Posted on September 24, 2010 by Juan

Joyce Battle at the National Security Archive has used the Freedom of Information Act to spring classified documents from 2001 about the Bush administration’s sneaky plans for getting up an aggressive war on Iraq.

Document 8 [pdf] contains notes of then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld prepared for a meeting with CENTCOM commander Gen. Tommy Franks in Tampa, Fl., on November 27, 2001. It shows a plan to pull a lot of troops out of Afghanistan and put them into Iraq and to ‘decapitate’ the Iraqi leadership. (In other words, Rumsfeld planned to abandon some poor GIs fighting al-Qaeda and the Taliban to their fates while putting the money and equipment elsewhere– which got GIs killed).

After all that, the memo sets out points under the heading ‘how start?’, which clearly detail various schemes to start a war under false pretenses, including baiting Saddam into an attack on the Kurds in the north, or breathlessly announcing from the White House that a firm connection had been found between Saddam and Usama Bin Laden. That several such possibilities were listed showed that Rumsfeld did not really care how the war was started, he just wanted that war. And it shows he was entirely willing to manufacture the pretense once it was decided on.

The memo clearly was developed in close consultation with deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz and his subordinate Douglas Feith, both of them part of the Israel Lobby in the Bush administration, whose obsession with Iraq derived from their right-Zionist commitments.

Rumsfeld’s memo certainly violates the charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal on war crimes:

(a) Crimes against peace:

(i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;

(ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).

The Nuremberg Tribunal declared that “To initiate a war of aggression . . . is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

That the United States has failed to come to terms with its war crimes in Iraq only sets us up for a repeat performance. For a nation that lives by laws and the esteem of allies to act like an outlaw will ultimately undermine its own foundation. It is like playing golf in a bathroom– you’re going to end up with a lot of self-inflicted bruises.

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Posted in Iraq | 27 Comments

Ahmadinejad Mugs for Cameras, Blames USG for 9/11 Attacks

Posted on September 24, 2010 by Juan

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s outrageous speech at the United Nations, in which he blamed the US government for staging the September 11 attacks against itself, was not aimed at an American audience. Ahmadinejad is a populist, and wants to whip up loyalty to himself among a dwindling stratum of true believers in Iran. The speech was shown on Iranian television, and he was almost certainly actually playing to the audience back home. He wanted to be on television on the world stage, poking America in the eye.

Ahmadinejad deliberately missed a chance to improve relations with the US. One of the suspects in Wednesday’s bombing in the largely Kurdish city of Mahabad is Ansar al-Islam, or radical Sunnis of the al-Qaeda type. (Kurdish separatist movements don’t typically target Kurdish civilians, as this bombing did). Iran’s president could have taken advantage of that tragedy to declare solidarity with the US in fighting radical Sunnism. He was more wedded to getting some guffaws in the workplaces of Iran.

He has good reason to want to take the focus off himself. He is involved in a conflict with the parliament (Majles) over who has more power, and some in parliament are firing back (see below).

The USG Open Source Center translated an article on MP Ali Motahhari’s attack on Ahmadinejad as wanting to weaken the separation of powers and move to a presidential dictatorship. The translation has been slightly revised, below, with the Persian word for parliament, Majles, removed in favor of the English term, and the spelling of Ahmadinejad’s name standardized.

“Tehran MP Rejects President’s Remarks on Parliament, Warns Against ‘Dictatorship’
Unattributed report from the “Politics” column: ” Ali Motahhari: If Parliament Is Not at Helm of Affairs, Dictatorship Will Be Established”
Qods Online
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Document Type: OSC Translated Text

As a reaction to recent remarks by the president, who has said that the Parliament is not at the helm of affairs, a Tehran M P[member of Parliament] regards the guardianship of the supreme jurisconsult and the Parliament as two factors for preventing autocracy. He said: “The late Imam Khomeyni considered that a tendency toward individualism creates autocracy and dictatorship and a branch called the Parliament should exist so that the tendency toward autocracy does not increase in the government.”

In his interview with a Mehr (News Agency) journalist, Tehran MP Ali Mottahari explained the president’s recent remarks, indicating that the period of the orders by the revolution leader (Ayatollah Khomeyni), who stated that the Parliament is at the helm of all affairs, has passed. This MP added: “Ahmadinejad’s argument indicating that the Parliament is not at the helm of all affairs is not right. The late imam’s (Khomeyni’s) order that the Parliament is at the helm of all affairs was not based on the reasoning that the prime minister was elected by the Parliament, and now that the president is elected through the people’s direct votes the Parliament has no power any longer.

Parliament Still Has Power To Dismiss President

Mottahari added: “The Parliament is at the helm of all affairs now as well, and has power because the authority to dismiss the president is with the Parliament. It can dismiss the president from power by questioning him, through impeachment, or by making a decision on his political non-qualification. Therefore, the Parliament is more powerful and is at the helm of all affairs.” …

Continue reading →

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Posted in Iran | 13 Comments

Tomdispatch: Decline of US Empire Not So Bad

Posted on September 23, 2010 by Juan

Tom Engelhardt is fine reading for a Thursday.

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