De Oorlogsstaat 59

Het persbureau Reuters bericht: 'Lieberman faces showdown over Iraq.

After years of ardent support for the Iraq war, Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman could become that conflict's first big political casualty in a Democratic primary race fueled by rising anti-war anger.
Lieberman, the party's vice presidential nominee in 2000, faces a growing challenge from a political neophyte who has rallied Democrats angered by the senator's enthusiastic backing of the war and willingness to support Republican President George W. Bush on other issues.
Challenger Ned Lamont's underdog bid to unseat Lieberman in Democratic-leaning Connecticut could offer an early gauge of the intensity of anti-war sentiment ahead of November's midterm elections, along with a measure of the influence of the Internet activists and bloggers who have flocked to his cause.
"Senator Lieberman has cheered on the president every step of the way when it comes to the invasion of Iraq, and he is too quick to compromise on core Democratic principles," Lamont, a businessman and former Greenwich town selectman, told Reuters.
"He's wrong on the big issues of the day and he is not challenging the Bush administration," added Lamont, who qualified for the August 8 primary ballot by winning 33 percent of the delegates at the state party convention last month.
Lieberman, who has not faced a tough re-election race since entering the U.S. Senate 18 years ago, has been stirred by the challenge, stepping up his state schedule and launching a television ad attacking Lamont for votes he cast in Greenwich.' Lees verder:
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyid=2006-06-05T194636Z_01_N05315322_RTRUKOC_0_US-LIEBERMAN.xml Of: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/060506T.shtml

Klimaatverandering 39

De Guardian bericht: 'Desert Cities Are Living on Borrowed Time, UN Warns.
Climate change threatens conditions for 500 million. But report points to huge solar energy potential.

The 500 million people who live in the world's desert regions can expect to find life increasingly unbearable as already high temperatures soar and the available water is used up or turns salty, according to the United Nations.
Desert cities in the US and Middle East, such as Phoenix and Riyadh, may be living on borrowed time as water tables drop and supplies become undrinkable, says a report coinciding with today's world environment day.
Twentieth-century modernist dreams of greening deserts by diverting rivers and mining underground water are wholly unrealistic, it warns.
But the report also proposes that deserts become the powerhouses of the next century, capturing the world's solar energy and potentially exporting electricity across continents. For instance, a 310-square mile area of the Sahara could, with today's technology, generate enough electricity for the whole world.
The problem now facing many communities on the fringes of deserts, says the UN environment programme report, is not the physical growth of deserts but that rising water tables beneath irrigated soils are leading to more salinisation - a phenomenon already taking place across large tracts of China, India, Pakistan and Australia. The Tarm river basin in China, it says, has lost more than 5,000 square miles of farmland to salinisation in a period of 30 years.
The report suggests that Middle Eastern countries such as Saudi Arabia have used water from the desert very unwisely. Rather than growing staple crops such as wheat or tomatoes, it suggests that precious water should be used only for high value crops such as dates and fish farming.
The mining "fossil" water, laid down many millions of years ago, was once believed to have the potential to green deserts, but is now not thought to be a solution - except in Libya, where opinion is divided as to whether supplies may last 100 or 500 years.
But the greatest threat to people and wildlife living anywhere near deserts is climate change, which is already having a greater impact on desert regions than elsewhere. The Dashti Kbir desert in Iran has seen a 16% drop in rainfall in the past 25 years, the Kalahari a 12% decline and Chile's Atacama desert an 8% drop.' Lees verder:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,1790471,00.html Of:
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/060506EB.shtml

De Macht in de Wereld

De werkelijke macht in de wereld, de financiele macht, doet niet eens meer een poging om de schijn van democratie hoog te houden. De Los Angeles Times bericht: 'Goldman Sachs rules the world
With Paulson's appointment as Treasury secretary, the firm is supreme in matters political and economic.

WHAT IS it about Goldman Sachs? President Bush's nomination last week of Henry M. Paulson Jr., Goldman Sachs' chairman and chief executive, to replace John W. Snow at the Treasury Department has refocused attention on what has become, quite simply, the most influential company on the planet.
Goldman Sachs alums now run the White House bureaucracy (in new Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten), , the state of New Jersey (Gov. Jon Corzine) and the New York Stock Exchange (Chief Executive John Thain). Not since John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil — and maybe not even then — has one firm exerted such muscle over national economic and fiscal policy. Goldman Sachs' reach has expanded in part because the people who run the firm have done it enormously well. The company's 40% profit margins make it a superpower, and its soaring share price and generous bonus policies have helped turn hundreds of its 24,000 employees into millionaires. But that in itself doesn't explain Goldman Sachs' allure. Most Wall Street firms are making buckets of money, and lots of executives hitting middle age feel compelled to punch the public-service clock. Nor is the company without faults. Goldman Sachs has become so dominant — particularly in investment banking and trading — that it increasingly finds it hard not to step on its own toes. Critics howled, for instance, when Goldman Sachs represented both sides in the New York Stock Exchange's purchase of electronic rival Archipelago, which Goldman Sachs also owned a stake in. These same skeptics are looking warily at Goldman Sachs extending its influence into Europe now that Thain, a former president of the firm, plans to expand the exchange's reach into Europe in a $10-billion deal.' Lees verder:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-op-pope4jun04,0,1401923.story?coll=la-home-commentary

Martelen 44

De Los Angeles Times bericht: 'Army Manual to Skip Geneva Detainee Rule. The Pentagon's move to omit a ban on prisoner humiliation from the basic guide to soldier conduct faces strong State Deptartment opposition.

Washington - The Pentagon has decided to omit from new detainee policies a key tenet of the Geneva Convention that explicitly bans "humiliating and degrading treatment," according to knowledgeable military officials, a step that would mark a further, potentially permanent, shift away from strict adherence to international human rights standards.
The decision culminates a lengthy debate within the Defense Department but will not become final until the Pentagon makes new guidelines public, a step that has been delayed. However, the State Department fiercely opposes the military's decision to exclude Geneva Convention protections and has been pushing for the Pentagon and White House to reconsider, the Defense Department officials acknowledged.
For more than a year, the Pentagon has been redrawing its policies on detainees, and intends to issue a new Army Field Manual on interrogation, which, along with accompanying directives, represents core instructions to U.S. soldiers worldwide.
The process has been beset by debate and controversy, and the decision to omit Geneva protections from a principal directive comes at a time of growing worldwide criticism of U.S. detention practices and the conduct of American forces in Iraq.
The directive on interrogation, a senior defense official said, is being rewritten to create safeguards so that all detainees are treated humanely but can still be questioned effectively.
President Bush's critics and supporters have debated whether it is possible to prove a direct link between administration declarations that it will not be bound by Geneva and events such as the abuses at Abu Ghraib or the killings of Iraqi civilians last year in Haditha, allegedly by Marines.
But the exclusion of the Geneva provisions may make it more difficult for the administration to portray such incidents as aberrations. And it undercuts contentions that U.S. forces follow the strictest, most broadly accepted standards when fighting wars.' Lees verder:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-torture5jun05,0,877738,full.story?coll=la-home-headlines Of:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/060506Z.shtml

De Israelische Terreur 23

De kritische Israelische journalist Gideon Levy schrijft in Haaaretz: 'With a little help from the outside.

The laugh of fate: The state waging a broad international campaign for a boycott is simultaneously waging a parallel campaign, no less determined, against a boycott. A boycott that seriously harms the lives of millions of people is legitimate in its eyes because it is directed against those defined as its enemies, while a boycott that is liable to hurt its academic ivory tower is illegitimate in its eyes only because it is aimed against itself. This is a moral double standard. Why is the boycott campaign against the Palestinian Authority, including blocking essential economic aid and boycotting leaders elected in democratic and legsal elections, a permissible measure in Israel's eyes and the boycott of its universities is forbidden?

Israel cannot claim the boycott weapon is illegitimate. It makes extensive use of this weapon itself, and its victims are suffering under severe conditions of deprivation, from Rafah to Jenin. In the past, Israel called upon the world to boycott Yasser Arafat, and now it is calling for a boycott of the Hamas government ? and via this government, all of the Palestinians in the territories. And Israel does not regard this as an ethical problem. Tens of thousands have not received their salaries for four months due to the boycott, but when there is a call to boycott Israeli universities, the boycott suddenly becomes an illegitimate weapon.

Those calling for a boycott of Israel are also tainted
with a moral double standard. The National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education ?(NATFHE?) in Britain and the Canadian Union of Public Employees in Ontario, which have both decided to boycott Israel, did not act similarly to protest their own countries' war crimes and occupations ? the British army in Iraq and the Canadian army in Afghanistan. Nonetheless, the handful of human rights advocates and opponents of the occupation in Israel should thank these two organizations for the step they have taken, despite their flawed double standards. Lees verder: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/722364.html

De Israelische Terreur 22

De voormalige plaatsvervangend burgemeester van Jeruzalem Meron Benvenisti schrijft in Haaretz: 'Those who plot to expel Mohammed Abu Tir from his home justifiably earned the condemnation and disgust.

It's been less than two weeks since the High Court of Justice issued its ruling maintaining the deprivation of the rights of Palestinians to reunify their families, and we already have the decision that Palestinian MPs from Hamas, living in Jerusalem, will be expelled if they don't resign within 30 days. The suspicious will find a connection between the two decisions and wonder if the government is deliberately attempting to try the public and legal system's patience for evil acts bordering on racism, as preparation for even more brutal steps. According to the reactions so far, there have been no firm demands for an end to this cruelty and the government can continue on its merry way; the security excuse serves as an effective fig leaf from any domestic criticism and foreign criticism can always be rejected as forms of anti-Semitism. Seemingly, there is no connection between the prevention of family unification and the threat of expulsion; but the two matters touch on basic perception of the status of Palestinians in their homeland: It's no accident that both issues fall within the realm of "entry to Israel," whether preventing it or stripping it. The Israelis, children of immigrants, who in the best case are only separated by a generation from the status of refugees - uprooted and expelled - impose on native Palestinians the status of foreigners, of living in a country to which they do not belong, forcing them to fight for the right to live in their home, and exposing them to an expulsion decree or banning their "entrance" on the grounds that they "do not belong." Not many years have lapsed since the Jewish yishuv fought for its legitimacy and was forced to defend itself from the argument that it was a collection of immigrants taking over a country they did not own, until the situation was reversed; now it is the Palestinian nation that has to fight for the collective legitimacy that this is their homeland and that they are not some collection of foreigners breaking into a country that is not theirs, and nothing but a gang of terrorists. The Palestinians seeking family reunification and the right to live in Israel are rejected because they are aliens and their presence here "could change the face of Israeli society." The Jerusalemite MPs, like all the Palestinian residents of Jerusalem, never asked for their status as permanent residents; it was imposed on them. In 1967, Israel conquered East Jerusalem and sought to annex the territory without annexing the inhabitants. The legal trick invented for the purpose imposed on the 70,000 Arabs of East Jerusalem the status of "permanent resident" as if they were new immigrants who had not yet been naturalized as citizens. But in this case, it wasn't the Arabs who emigrated to Israel, but Israel that emigrated to them. Under the conditions that prevailed at the time, it was a liberal approach, even if it was a contravention of international law, since on the one hand, their status as Jordanian citizens was not stripped from them - and it was important to them since the Jordanian kingdom was their economic, administrative, family and educational centers - and on the other hand, the "permanent residency" gave them the right to enjoy the benefits of Israel's welfare system, freedom of movement and relatively broader freedom of speech than existed in the occupied territories. It wasn't a favor being done by the Israeli occupiers, because the alternative - granting them Israeli citizenship as happened to the Arabs of the Triangle annexed in 1949 - was worse; and leaving them without any status in Israel would contradict the pretensions of "unifying the city" and would have perpetuated the occupation in it.' Lees verder: http://www.palestinechronicle.com/story-060106234712.htm

Israelisch Expansionisme 19

Het Israelisch expansionisme gaat ongestoord door. Nu kijken welke Nederlandse media hierover berichten. 'West Bank - Israel has begun laying the foundations for a new Jewish settlement deep in the West Bank — breaking a promise to Washington while strengthening its hold on a stretch of desert it wants to keep as it draws its final borders.
The construction of Maskiot comes at a time when Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert seeks U.S. backing for eventually annexing parts of the West Bank as part of a plan to set Israel's eastern border with or without Palestinian consent.
The Palestinians and Israel's settlement watchdog group Peace Now say the Maskiot construction amounts to a new attempt to push Israel's future border deeper into the West Bank. "It's about grabbing land," said Yariv Oppenheimer of Peace Now.
Otniel Schneller, an Olmert adviser, confirmed Israel is building in additional West Bank areas to ensure they are not included in the lands given to the Palestinians. He said Israel needs to keep the Jordan Valley, where Maskiot is located, as a security buffer against Islamic militants based in Iraq, Iran and elsewhere.
Olmert has said that if efforts to resume peace talks fail, as expected, he would annex large Jewish settlement blocs in the West Bank and draw Israel's final borders by 2008. A separation barrier Israel is building in the West Bank is to serve as the basis for the future border.' Lees verder: http://www.miftah.org/Display.cfm?DocId=10448&CategoryId=5