Israel's campaign against Lebanon may constitute war crimes, by Israel, and may violate US law

There is a conflict happening between Israel and Lebanon right now. It's an extension of 50 years, or more, of previous conflict and is in the context of the larger Middle East conflict which has been with us for decades. (Also see this previous blog entry)

I want to outline several articles that have come up in my news scans. These articles provide a non-mainstream view of the conflict, one that Fox News is unlikely to air.

Attacks Qualify as War Crimes, Officials Say: This was published in the NY Times, and republished on CommonDreams.org. The contention is that because Israel is making attacks that are killing civilians, that perhaps they are targeting cibilians, and to do so is illegal conduct under International law concerning the conduct of war. For example one source in the article is quoted saying:

“International humanitarian law is clear on the supreme obligations to protect civilians during hostilities" ... “Indiscriminate shelling of cities constitutes a foreseeable and unacceptable targeting of civilians," ... “Similarly, the bombardment of sites with alleged innocent civilians is unjustifiable.”

Additionally: The Swiss-based International Red Cross, the recognized guardian of the Geneva Conventions on the conduct of war, said Wednesday that Israel had violated the principle of proportionality provided for in the Conventions and their protocols.

Thousands Flock to Hills, Parks and Schools, But No Place Safe from Bombs: Provides some "color" in terms of what life is like in Lebanon under Israel's attacks.

Civilian Toll Raises Questions: Discusses how intertwined is Hezbollahs infrastructure with the civilian society around them. It is claimed it would be very difficult for Israel to effectively attack and destroy Hezbollah without inflicting collateral damage.

"The reality is, we're fighting an organization that stores the missiles it launches against us in people's homes," ... "They do it on purpose."

"This is Going to Be A Big War": A discussion by a longtime Iraq War analyst who claims this war with Lebanon is going to escalate even further. Similarly the other day I saw an article based on a speech by Newt Gingrich where he said we are now in World War III.

A Handful of Neocons Are Instigating a Wider War: Points a finger at the Neo-Conservatives for instigating an escalation of the war. This follows along with their plan from the mid-90's to use the U.S. position as being the "world's sole superpower" to throw our weight around and reshape the world into a kind of Pax Americana where the U.S. calls all the shots, and the world will enter a golden age of peace and harmony led by the U.S. Or some kind of bullcrap like that. I think it's sheer megalomania.

In US, Not All Casualties Are Equal ..and.. Remarks by Ambassador John R. Bolton, U.S. Representative to the United Nations, on the situation in the Middle East, at the Security Council Stakeout, July 17, 2006: There is a curious logic going on which we've seen before. In Israel's attacks on Lebanon, the number of deaths is highly skewed where there are approximately 300 deaths in Lebanon to approximately 30 deaths in Israel. The same kind of ratio holds with the U.S. invasion of Iraq, where tens of thousands of Iraqi's have died compared to nearly 3000 U.S. soldiers.

John Bolton, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., has a curious statement to this effect:

Reporter: Over the weekend, a Canadian family was killed on vacation in southern Lebanon by the Israeli air campaign. I’m wondering how concerned you are about the civilian deaths? Ambassador Bolton: Well, it is a matter of great concern to us, to the President in particular, that these civilian deaths are occurring and it’s a tragedy. There’s simply no other way to describe it. But I think it would be a mistake to ascribe a moral equivalence to civilians who die as the direct result of malicious terrorist acts, the very purpose of which terrorist acts are to kill civilians, and the tragic and unfortunate consequence of civilian deaths as a result of military action taken in self-defense. Our moral and legal systems make all the difference in the world between acts based on what their intention is and it’s simply not the same thing to say that it’s the same act to deliberately target innocent civilians, to desire their death, to fire rockets and use explosive devices and examples like kidnapping versus the sad and highly unfortunate consequences of self-defense. But there’s no doubt that all of these civilian deaths are tragic and that’s why if Hezbollah would release the two soldiers it’s kidnapped, then I think we’d have a quick way to get back to a peaceful situation.

To the people who died, do you think they care whether it was a tragic and unfortunate consequence, or whether it was a terrorist act? They died either way. And, as noted above, there is the question of whether Israel is purposely targeting civilians.

The U.S. and Israeli authorities probably feel they have to deny any purposeful targeting of civilians. Since it is a violation of International war conventions to do so, if they want to avoid being brought to trial for war crimes violations they have to spin their actions their way, and hope nobody catches on.

Here's the breakdown: More than 250 Lebanese, most of them civilians, including women and children ... To date, 25 Israelis have been killed, half of them uniformed soldiers in combat with Hezbollah fighters.

Now, if we look at what Bolton said, he claims it is Hezbollah who is deliberately targeting civilians. But if that's what Hezbollah is doing, then why are the casualties from their actions heavily skewed to the military? Why are the casualties due to Israeli actions heavily skewed to civilians? Just who is targeting civilians?

On the other hand Hezbollah has been hiding their weapons in peoples homes, and all their infrastructure is located among the civilian population. What's Israel to do?

The final question I want to raise is the issue that Israel's attacks in Lebanon violates U.S. law.

Their attacks are being carried out using weapons provided by the U.S. Under U.S., weapons sold to another country can only be used for defensive purposes. Israel is claiming this is self defense, but at the same time their form of self defense is to invade and occupy Lebanon. Are they waging an act of aggression, or are they committing self defense?

Building pressure for a world war to secure oil supplies?

What are we fighting in Iraq for? What are we fighting in Afghanistan for? Why are we threatening Iran?

Think it's about ephemeral things such as establishing democracy and freedom? Think again. There are dozens of freedom-hating countries around the world that we don't threaten with our military. Some of those freedom hating countries had their leaders installed by the U.S. We aren't threatening those countries, only the ones in the Middle East.

This article outlines the growing danger of a world war fought to secure oil supplies: A battle for oil could set the world aflame International powers will do everything to protect their access to dwindling resources. We are mad not to have an alternative strategy (Will Hutton, Sunday April 30, 2006, The Observer)

The key piece is twofold. First is the incontrovertible fact that the U.S. and China both have very little domestic oil supplies. What has allowed our modern societies to flourish isn't technology, it's that the technology has cheap energy to drive it. We could have the same dazzling array of technology, but if the energy to drive the technology wasn't available the technology would be useless. And, this is a situation we all may be facing in a few years.

The U.S. imports over 60% of its oil needs. In the 1970's there were two oil embargo crisis, at a time when the U.S. imported only 35% of its oil needs, and which drove the U.S. into a recession. What would happen today if the supply of oil to the U.S. were to dry up?

At the same time China is experiencing rapid economic growth, which is in turn causing rapid growth in its energy demands.

The article discusses China's role in both the Sudan/Darfur fiasco, and the showdown against Iran. In both cases China has made oil deals with the countries in question, and at the same time are expected to veto any UN Security Council actions against those countries. Further, Iran and China have an oil deal, part of which is shipping oil from Iran to China via a pipeline through Central Asia. Such a pipeline is a strategic move that would keep the U.S. from enforcing anything against that oil, because our Navy is useless in reaching Central Asia.

The coming world oil disruptions

I was in my young teens in the early 1970's when the oil embargo was used against the U.S. In the second oil embargo I was in college. Those two events really affected me and is what's driving me today to study energy supplies.

Stanford EMF: 80% Probability of Major Oil Disruption in Next Ten Years covers a study done by Hillard Huntington, Executive Director Energy Modeling Forum (EMF), Stanford University, which discusses the probabilities of another oil disruption.

Thinking about it now, this shouldn't be surprising. For example we are threatening Iran right now which could easily turn into a major oil disruption. And generally speaking, OPEC did it before (staging oil disruptions) so why wouldn't they do it again?

The thing that's really alarming is what the effect would be.

In the 1970's the recessions we had then were likely triggered by the oil embargo's. Those oil embargo's caused the price of oil to rise pretty high. Remember Carter's Windfall Profits Tax? President Enron nor Vice President Halliburton nor Secretary of State Chevron are likely to push for such a tax, but we have the same conditions today that occurred in the 1970's that prompted that tax.

In the 1970's the U.S. imported 35% of its' oil needs. Today we import 70% of our oil needs. If there were another oil disruption today, the effect on the U.S. would be far more dramatic than the effect in the 1970's.

Not Optional - a nice rant about the oil situation

Not Optional by Jim Kunstler with Clusterfuck Nation is right on the money, so far as I can see. Enjoy -- warning, it gets a little ranty.

The topic he's writing on is collective blindness on several angles. For example, how can the people really believe we can just pull out of this misbegotten war in Iraq. Regardless of how illegal that war is, we started a total mess there and pulling out now would only make matters worse.

The other blindness is about oil. The war is for oil, despite the protestations of the Administration. The Bush Administration has taken lying to the public to a fine art, and for that I must applaud them.

It's about oil because Iraq has a huge chunk of it, and the U.S. has very little. In order to keep our standard of living, which is one of the meme's the Bush Administration keeps mouthing, we must grab the oil wherever it is.

The problem is this is a fools quest. There's not that much oil left in the world anyway, and there are plenty of alternatives. The better route is to invest in alternative energy research in a big way. Not these piddly little bits here and there the Administration has been throwing out to keep the environmentalists happy. There's a real problem here, and with the direction the Bush Administration is leading the country the only result is a kind of world described in the Mad Max movies.

Theocracy in America, an "Unholy Alliance"?

Kevin Phillips is one of the political operatives who helped bring the Republicans into power in the 1960's and 1970's. He's billed as a Republican Strategist, and eventually worked in the Reagan White House. With that as background we have a very interesting book from him, warning of the danger of the neo-Theocracy we find ourselves with today in the United States.

Here's some resources:

American Theocracy : The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21stCentury

Interview with Democracy Now, March 21, 2006

The Unholy Alliance Kevin Phillips believes the U.S. is threatened by a combination of petroleum, preachers and debt

This gives a sense of where the book is going:

AMY GOODMAN: Kevin Phillips, you talk about radical religion, about debt, and about oil, about this being an oil war. You also talk about peak oil. That's not talked about very much in the mainstream. Explain.

KEVIN PHILLIPS: The peak oil idea is that just as the United States oil production peaked in 1971, that we have a limited amount of oil globally, and that it’s something that can't be re-created. It’s running out. And the expectation of some is that the oil production of the non-OPEC countries will peak at some point during the 2010s, and that then the production of OPEC itself will peak in the 2020s or 2030s. Now, some people think that Saudi production has already peaked.

Now, if you believe this, and it’s possible, then we face an enormous convergence, again under specific oil-related circumstances, of a global struggle for natural resources as the price of oil climbs, as we turn the armed services into a global oil protection service, which has been happening, and as we see the administration refuse to grapple with the need to really curb oil consumption in the United States, which is mostly through transportation and especially motor vehicles.

And I just have a sense, as many others on the conservative side do, this administration has no strategy to deal with these converging problems, be they foreign policy, military, oil, debt. They are like the three little monkeys on the old jade thing – the one sees no evil, one speaks no evil, and one hears no evil. Do they know anything? You know, that's an open question.

But, it just goes on and on. Such as an assertion that: "that the Bush electorate is probably 50 to 55% people who believe in Armageddon and probably more or less the same numbers who believe that the Antichrist is already on earth. And when you have this backdrop and you have a president who got his start in national politics as his father’s liaison with the religious right back in 1987 and ‘88, you just have an enormous exposure to this whole psychological context and an awareness on the part of people in the White House that this huge constituency interprets the Middle East in this very unusual way."

Inside the US's regime-change school

For a couple years the Bush Administration has been rattling war against Iran (and Syria). (see here, here, here, and background material for the Iraq war for some of my previous coverage).

The justification is said to be Iran's plan to build out nuclear weapons ability. Except Iran says their plans are for peaceful nuclear power production, just for electricity. And, in any case, Iran is a Non Proliferation Treaty signatory and apparently they haven't done anything to violate that treaty. It's more than a little contradictory that on the one hand we are threatening Iran, who has yet to violate the NPT, while we are making a broad deal with India to support their nuclear power program, and India has never signed on to the NPT and is known to have (today) nuclear weapons.

Logic has never been a strong suit of the Bush Administration. And given their clear goal of toppling Iran after toppling Iraq we shouldn't be surprised to have them invent some kind of justification for launching a new war.

Inside the US's regime-change school offers an interesting glimpse into a "regime change school". It's clear to me the article isn't highly verifiable, instead it's an account of one person who "accidentally" attended a secretive U.S. backed program to train activists in methods that can be used to topple a government.

The "school" was a week-long session held at a Holiday Inn in Dubai. Sessions were led by members of the Otpor democratic movement that overthrew the late Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic in 2000. And, given the secretive nature of the "school" the hotel advertised them as "Griffin Hospital".

In class, the Serbian instructors organized role-playing games in which the participants would assume the personas of characters such an Iranian woman or a Shi'ite cleric. Throughout these exercises in empathy and psychology, stress was laid on the importance of ridiculing the political elite as an effective tool of demythologizing them in the eyes of the people.

"They taught us what methods they used in Serbia to bring down Milosevic," Nilofar said. "They taught us some of them so we could choose the best one to bring down the regime, but they didn't mention directly bringing down the regime - they just taught us what they had done in their own country."

Hurm... your tax dollars at work, I suppose.

Later in the article Nilofar described the activists as mahrum, a Farsi word for deprived. Apparently the ones inside Iran most clamoring for change are "lower-class families who have been deprived of everything and now they've decided to overthrow the government".

Our right to privacy, killed by the Bush administration? Or was it inevitable?

It's easy to lay the blame for loss of privacy on the Bush Administration. It is while the Bush Administration was in power when massive privacy invasion by the government was disclosed. While I'm quick to lay blame on the Bush Administration, in this case there's a heavy dose of inevitablity.

Let's consider these articles which make an interesting juxtaposition.

No longer can the right of privacy be expected in any walk of life -- an editorial in a local newspaper in Hagerstown Maryland.

Invasion of privacy must stop -- An editorial in a local newspaper in India

Taking Spying to Higher Level, Agencies Look for More Ways to Mine Data - A New York Times article by John Markoff

The first two take the opinion that we have a "right to privacy". As the Hagerstown editorial mentions, a right to privacy wasn't written into the U.S. Constitution, but that was because the Founders assumed privacy was such an obvious right as "breathing" or "eating" that they didn't bother to discuss it. But little did they have a clue of the sort of technology which would be developed.

The article from India is interesting because of the expression of fear which comes up just with a hint that any of our phone conversations could be tapped.

The NY Times article just demonstrates how the government is continuing to look for more and more surveillance and privacy-destroying tools. It discusses an NSA visit to Silicon Valley looking for data mining tools. Which just makes me think of the Total Information Awareness project.

Data mining is widely used by corporations. For example credit card companies data-mine transactions looking for possibly fraudulent activity. In the article they discuss a prison which used data mining of telephone call records to discover a drug smuggling ring.

The point is technology creates new possibilities. The digitization of "everything" makes privacy invasion so much easier to do. Which gets to the inevitability.

Even if it's inevitable, that doesn't mean "we the people" should just allow it to happen without protest.

Asia Times Online :: India to join Turkmenistan gas pipeline

Hopefully you saw Fahrenheit 9/11, the movie by Michael Moore that was prominent in 2004. His main topic throughout the movie was to explore cronyism and how that created the war in Iraq. The main example is the laundry list of business ties between the Administration, the Saudi royalty and even to the bin Laden family. That most of the Administration has ties to the Oil Industry (both GW and GHW Bush owned oil companies, VP Cheney was the CEO of Halliburton, Chevron named an oil tanker for Condoleeza Rice, etc) figured heavily in this movie.

In one segment Moore talked about the oil in Central Asia and the U.S. plan for bringing that oil to market. The Central Asia oil has been a matter of power play for several years, and it's land-locked position that isn't easily accessible makes it difficult to "extract" and sell on the market. Taking it in one direction, you'd be going through Russia. Another direction and you're going across Siberia and then the port is in the arctic and probably locked in by ice. And to the south are steep mountains, some of the highest in the world. Also to the south is Iran, a sworn enemy of the U.S.

The chosen U.S. route was through Afghanistan. The U.S. has pushed for this route since the 1990's. The problem was, neither Afghanistan nor Pakistan were terribly friendly to the U.S. The Taliban was in control, and Pakistan was very friendly with the Taliban. It didn't make any difference that during the 1980's the U.S. worked closely with Pakistan and the people who became the Taliban. In the 1980's the menace was Russia's invasion of Afghanistan, and the U.S. effort to drive Russia out, which meant a secret operation supplying the mujahadeen (as they were known then) with arms and training. By the 1990's that was long in the past, and U.S. policy had shifted away. Even so the Taliban government visited the U.S., as Michael Moore documented, working to negotiate both the opium poppy eradication as well as the pipeline deal.

BTW, since the toppling of the Taliban government, opium poppy production has sprung back to pre-Taliban levels.

In any case there was an existing plan to run an oil pipeline through Afghanistan. And you can imagine the big question in U.S. and oil industry planning -- how the heck do we get access to Afghanistan? Essentially that country had become enemy territory.

Conveniently the September 11, 2001 attack provided the needed excuse. The culprits were in Afghanistan, which gave us all the excuse in the world to invade that country, topple its government, etc.

And, now, conveniently the path was clear. Afghanistan was no longer essentially enemy territory. Further, in the process of making war on Afghanistan the U.S. established bases and cooperation with several Central Asian countries. These countries had been carved out of the former Soviet Union after its collapse in the early 1990's.

A nagging question is whether the September 11, 2001 attack was merely a coincidence, or whether some behind the scenes conspiracy created it? There's enough connections there to make one ponder. The Bush family had ties with the bin Laden family, to the point that one of the bin Laden cousins bailed George W Bush out of at least one of his failed businesses. And there was the pre-existing plan for a pipeline through Afghanistan, and coincidentally the major players in creating that plan are now major players in both the Afghanistan government and the U.S. relationship with Afghanistan.

But there isn't enough proven data to truly connect the attack to any behind the scenes conspiracy. So we'll just leave that question dangling out there.

What's of interest now is this article: India to join Turkmenistan gas pipeline

It discusses two different pipeline projects to bring Natural Gas to "market". One is the US-backed Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan (TAP) while the other is the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI).

This appears to be part of the larger geopolitics power struggle. The different sources of these two pipelines is interesting. Iran being an U.S. enemy at this moment makes this statement interesting:

Moreover, unlike IPI, the project does not run the risk of being blacklisted for participation by US and European financiers and companies. The US has been encouraging Pakistan to abandon the IPI project and consider TAP for meeting its gas needs.

Blacklisted?? This isn't explained, but clearly the official relationship with Iran is problematic for many countries. But Pakistan probably has a lot of cooperation with Iran, given they share a long border and probably have common cultural elements. But to the U.S. and the "west" Iran is a pariah, being controlled by fundamentalists who are opposed to the western powers.

Chavez threatens to cut off oil to U.S. - Feb 18, 2006

This CNN article: Chavez threatens to cut off oil to U.S. discusses a threat by Hugo Chavez to cut off Venezuela's shipments of oil to the U.S. Part of this has been an ongoing story, for example the American-backed coup attempt in Venezuela a couple years ago.

Chavez has been making statements for years about vague threats against him by the U.S. They might sound like the ravings of paranoia, except that there was this weird coup which started to topple him out of power. A coup which was clearly inspired by American interests. And, there is the long history of the U.S. toppling governments in the Western Hemisphere through following the Monroe Doctrine, in which President Monroe declared to the world, "The Western Hemisphere is ours, and you can't have it" and which has justified repeated actions by the U.S. government against western hemisphere governments from at least the Dominican Republic, to Allende's government in Chile, to the invasions of Grenada and Panama.

A part of the game playing between the U.S. and Venezuela is repeated expulsions of diplomats over allegations of spying.

Which just reminds me of: The confessions of an economic hit-man an interview I heard on Democracy Now a few days ago. The interviewee, John Perkins, had written a book exposing, as a former insider to the game, how the U.S. government has quietly created a worldwide economic empire. A part of that game is to make deals with world leaders where people like him would meet newly elected world leaders and offer them a deal. In one hand the economic hit man will offer riches, kickbacks for example from the sale of whatever resources that country has. In the other hand the economic hit man will hold a threat of violence against that leader or his/her family. These leaders know the history and know that legions of previous world leaders have been assassinated or overthrown by these people.

The confessions of an economic hit-man

Democracy Now for February 15, 2006 has an interesting interview with John Perkins, author of "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man". Ostensibly he worked as an economist for a big consulting company, but he describes his real job as

JOHN PERKINS: We economic hit men, during the last 30 or 40 years, have really created the world's first truly global empire, and we've done this primarily through economics, and the military only coming in as a last resort. Therefore, it's been done pretty much secretly. Most of the people in the United States have no idea that we've created this empire and, in fact, throughout the world it's been done very quietly, unlike old empires, where the army marched in; it was obvious. So I think the significance of the things you discussed, the fact that over 80% of the population of South America recently voted in an anti-U.S. president and what's going on at the World Trade Organization, and also, in fact, with the transit strike here in New York, is that people are beginning to understand that the middle class and the lower classes around the world are being terribly, terribly exploited by what I call the corporatocracy, which really runs this empire.

His story is as an insider to the creation of the current empire, what techniques are used by these self-described economic hit-men. The empire was constructed quietly through economic leverage rather than in obvious ways like marching armies into a country and toppling governments. The fact that we're in Iraq and Afghanistan today is more an example of the extremes to which the economic hit-men will go, that they begin with threats and bribes, but if the individual government leaders do not cooperate under threats or bribes then they can create wars as needed.

He ends with this thought: "...I look at myself as an extremely loyal American citizen. I believe in the principles of this country, which I think that in the past few decades, increasingly, we've put them way in the back burner. But as good Americans, we need to insist that our government and our corporations honor democracy."

But I think that, while he said that very nicely, it's very short sighted. This empire is economic, and is based on the corporations being used as leverage against other countries and to control other countries. In my view this story isn't about the United States controlling other countries ... but instead some other entity, which is not beholden to any one government but instead beholden only to itself. It's using the United States government today simply because of the power the U.S. holds.

I think the same leverage is being used against the United States as well. For example consider the debt being run up under the Bush Administration. John Perkins describes how debt is being used as a lever against these other countries, so of course it's also being used against the U.S. as well. A huge amount of our national strength is going towards paying off that debt.

And, always, when you owe money to others, those others has some measure of control over you.

At a personal level what happens when you "own" a house? The vast majority of people don't own their houses, they have a mortgage and it's the mortgage company that owns the house. If they don't keep up a sufficient income level to pay the mortgage payments, the mortgage company will forclose and take away their house. Therefore the debt they have against "their" house forces them towards some kind of work life, towards having a job so they can have the money to pay their debt. They wouldn't have the freedom to quit their stinking job and go off to the country and paint art. They have to stay in their job to pay their debts.

So it goes also for governments.

Is this the world we want to live in? Where a kind of secretive entity of some kind is controlling the world, toppling governments, etc, all to maintain some kind of power stranglehold?

Iraq, Vietnam all over again?

In Permanent bases in Iraq? Tom Engelhardt suggests we interpret Iraq as Vietnam.  Iraq is a worsening situation, where it's hard to see any face-saving exit from the country and where the population is increasingly rising up against the American presence.  Plus, at home there's a growing anger over this war.  I don't know what's taken the American people so long, the war is clearly illegal and immoral.

Engelhardt's main point of discussion is to contrast the plan for troop reductions with a fact "on the ground".  Namely the presence of the permanent bases that have been constructed, which cost several billion dollars.  An army engineer tasked with facilities development described them in an engineering magazine article with "staggering" cost.  If the plan is to withdraw, then why spend billions of dollars on bases?

One of the bases has finally been discussed in the mainstream press as having a "small town feel".  It has all the comforts of home, extensive telecom and other infrastructure, etc.  And in the London Telegraph is another covering the still-under-construction al-Asad airbase.  Apparently each of these bases cover 15-20 square miles of land.  There are at least four of these bases in Iraq and the fact we're stating this as "at least" is a symptom of the secrecy.

"I don't see how you can be a partner in peace if you advocate the destruction of a country"

"I don't see how you can be a partner in peace if you advocate the destruction of a country.." - G.W. Bush in the wake of an unexpected landslide victory by Hamas in the latest Palestinian elections. Hamas has been a bloody terrorist organization, but has recently turned to political action and has now won the elections in the Palestinian territories.

It seems the U.S. is two-faced about wanting democracy. We say we want democracy, but then when democracy turns up an unwanted result then there's only complaints. In this case the election chose Hamas, but no sooner than the results were in than the complaints began. President Bush, I label you HYPOCRIT.

In case it's not obvious -- what's really galling about the above quote is that GW Bush himself laid out a call for the destruction of another government. Which? Iraq's government under Saddam Hussein. That's what the phrase regime change means, the destruction of another government. Further the NEOCON strategy for the middle east is to destroy not just the Iraqi government, but also that of Syria and Iran.

Oh, and apparently the U.S. government was meddling in the Palestinian election by giving huge funding to Hamas opponents:

Palestinian Groups Accuse U.S. of Meddling in Elections: And in the Occupied Territories, the Bush administration is being accused of meddling in this week's Palestinian parliamentary elections. On Sunday the Washington Post reported the U.S. has clandestinely funneled $2 million into public service projects ahead of the elections in an effort to increase the popularity of the Palestinian Authority and its governing Fatah party. Officials from Hamas have questioned whether the aid violates rules barring Palestinian political parties from receiving funds from foreign sources. Independent candidate Mustafa Barghouti warned the Bush administration's efforts could backfire and end up helping Hamas in the elections. Barghouti said, "Every time the United States says it doesn't want Hamas, they boost Hamas. Let us do our elections entirely on our own. These interventions run counter to our efforts, and they hurt the Palestinian people. This effort was completely counterproductive." -- Democracy Now, Jan 24, 2006

But the Bush administration has demonstrated anti-democracy tendencies in the past. For example all the actions taken to undermine Hugo Chavez's rule in Venezeula, including a U.S.-backed coup attempt against the Venezuela government. For example the U.S. backed coup that tossed Jean-Bertrand Aristide out of Haiti. In both cases it's a democratically elected government that wasn't to U.S. liking. But this isn't new to the Bush administration, as the U.S. government has been toppling democratically elected governments for decades.

Bush sees vote proving 'power of democracy' But he urges Abbas to stay in chief post (Boston Globe, By Farah Stockman, Globe Staff, January 27, 2006)

Hamas invited to form government (BBC, Jan 27, 2006)

Hamas’ victory upends Israeli politics Opposition politicians blast government for failing to stop group's ascent (By Scott Wilson, The Washington Post Updated: 5:29 a.m. ET Jan. 27, 2006)

Hamas victory explodes Middle East peace plans (theage.com.au)

Voters did not elect Hamas because its charter commits it to the destruction of Israel; indeed, that goal was dropped from its election platform, an implicit acknowledgement of public opinion by an increasingly pragmatic political force. Hamas has observed a ceasefire for the past year, after carrying out about 60 suicide bombings since the second intifada began in 2000. Only a minority of Palestinians subscribe to its hardline Islamic ideology; instead, they rejected Fatah because of its divided and ineffective administration and its entrenched corruption. Hamas has quietly attended to the practical side of community politics, providing services to the poor and building a reputation for discipline, efficiency and integrity. Its officials in Gaza, where Hamas first won municipal elections, have even co-operated with Israel on administrative matters, out of necessity. Hamas has sent out mixed signals on broader co-operation, and even the taboo matter of peace talks, which it may decide to let President Abbas pursue, as this was the platform on which he was elected.

All politics is local, eh?

Re: The price of gasoline could get ugly in 2006

The "Hybrid Cars Blog" suggests that in 2006, the price of gasoline could get ugly. That is, the high gas prices seen in the U.S. last year could be as bad, or worse. See: The price of gasoline could get ugly in 2006

The story seems to be that the cause for last years oil price surge can be found in the gap between China having increasing oil use and weather related outages in oil delivery. This year China's surging oil demand is still there, plus we have several possible outages in oil delivery such as "rebels" in Nigeria attacking oil platforms, and the situation in Iran from which there could be several ways oil delivery could be blocked.

While that story is very true, it is also an example of short term thinking.

In the long term picture the price for oil can only go up. In the short term there will be fluctuations, but long term is a different story. Why? It's because the demand continues to go up in an unabated curve, and the Peak Oil scenario is looming out there.

The Peak Oil scenario is a model developed by oil company scientists that describes production capacity over time. The model shows that the world oil production capability will peak. Already discoveries of new oil fields has dried up with discoveries not at all meeting the growth in demand for oil.

UPDATE in December 2006 ... the price for oil and gasoline did get very high up until September. Then it curiously dropped just before the election, and then has curiously risen a little since the election. Makes one wonder if some kind of price manipulation was being tried by the oil industry to prop up the Republicans? If so, it didn't work.

Re: Do Internet companies need to be regulated to ensure they respect free expression ?

Reporters sans Frontiers has made a call for action/change about Internet companies that do business with repressive countries. Do Internet companies need to be regulated to ensure they respect free expression ? They cite several cases of Internet and Technology companies cooperating with repressive countries, for example Google and Yahoo filter search results based on blacklists provided by the countries in question.

In case you don't grasp the significance of this ... In the 1930's and 1940's IBM gave a lot of help to Hitlers government in Nazi Germany. They used the just-developed punched card machines (not quite computers, but close) to record and track information about Jews, so that they could more efficiently perform the Holocaust.

Todays computer equipment and technology are far more efficient and capable than the crude toys IBM used to help Nazi Germany commit the Holocaust. And, of course, that means any country that deploys their technology for repressive purposes, will be able to do so much more effectively than did Nazi Germany.

In a sense this is very simple. If these companies want to do business in those countries -- e.g. China is among these repressive countries, and China is a huge and burgeoning market which any technology company would be foolish to ignore -- then they have to do so within the laws of the country in question. In particular, under what justification would some company have the right to ignore the laws of some country in which they do business? None. Countries are supposed to trump companies.

But RSF makes a very interesting point. They cite several instances where technology companies cooperated with repressive countries, and claim those are violations of article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was proclaimed by the United Nations when it was founded and which is supposed to apply to everyone, including business corporations.

They offer several proposals that would limit "U.S. Companies" in what they can do inside a repressive country. For example

No US company would be allowed to host e-mail servers within a repressive country*. So, if the authorities of a repressive country want personal information about the user of a US company’s e-mail service, they would have to request it under a procedure supervised by US.

The activities seem geared to keeping equipment and services outside the repressive countries, so that repressive countries have to abide by U.S. law in order to take certain repressive actions. And, they say the list of repressive countries will be defined by the U.S. State Department.

I think they're pissing into the wind, but you have to admire the integrity with which they are approaching this.

However, as a practical matter, how can we trust the U.S. State Department to be a fair arbiter of repressive governments? We, the U.S., are actively engaged with China as a business partner, for example. And there is the matter of Indonesia where the U.S. actively helped them in repressing the East Timor peoples.

Also discussed by:

Dan Gillmor: A Dangerous Question and Smart Mobs: Regulate internet companies to make them respect freedom of speech: Reporters Without Borders

Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran

Over the last couple years there's been a ratcheting up of rhetoric by the U.S. Administration against both Iran and Syria. This ratcheting up is exactly what happened before we launched the illegal war against Iraq. During the run-up to the war in Iraq a lot of things were said by the Administration that have later been shown to be false, and it's likely the Administration knew they were speaking falsehoods (a.k.a. lying).

The ratcheting up of rhetoric against both Iran and Syria fits the Neocon agenda. My background material posting goes into just how far back their agenda goes. What's important about the Neocon agenda is just who the neocons are. They include people like Dick Cheney (today the Vice President), Donald Rumsfield (today Secretary of Defense), Zalmay Khalilzad (today the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq), I. Lewis Libby (today under indictment for major malfeasances), and Paul Wolfowitz (today chief honcho of the World Bank).

I'm going into that to suggest that the ratcheting up of rhetoric against Syria and Iran is purely to justify launching a war against either of those countries. That is, after all, what the Neocon agenda was stated to be in the mid 1990's.

Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran: is an independent campaign organisation with the purpose of opposing sanctions, foreign state interference and military intervention in Iran.

Event in San Francisco: Stop the war against Iran before it starts!

ALTERNATIVES TO WAR FORUM: JANUARY 4, 2006
7 P.M., 65 NINTH STREET
SAN FRANCISCO

Talk and discussion with a UK anti-war activist, Abbas Edalat, co-founder of the Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII)

Guardian Unlimited | Shock, awe and Hobbes have backfired on America's neocons

What is the reason for the Iraq war? Was it an altruistic exercise in helping a poor oppressed people join the community of enlightened Democacry countries? Naw, because if it were then why doesn't the U.S. launch similar wars on other oppressive countries? There's a bigger picture going on and it's more than a coincidence that the plan by the Project for a New American Century to reshape the world begins in the heart of the Middle East, where the oil is. And, at the same time, there is a game afoot to bring oil from Central Asia to market, with the chosen U.S. path being a pipeline built through Afghanistan. And why did we go to war in Afghanistan? If it was about Osama, then why have we let Osama and the other leaders get away?

That's what is implied from this article: Shock, awe and Hobbes have backfired on America's neocons Iraq has shown the hubris of a geostrategy that welds the philosophy of the Leviathan to military and technological power (Richard Drayton, Wednesday December 28, 2005, The Guardian)

He starts out with an observation about technology.

Ex-hippies talked of a wired age of Aquarius. The fall of the Berlin wall and the rise of the internet, we were told, had ushered in Adam Smith's dream of overflowing abundance, expanding liberty and perpetual peace. Fukuyama speculated that history was over, leaving us just to hoard and spend. Technology meant a new paradigm of constant growth without inflation or recession.

I remember that was the dream floating about during the .COM bubble in the late 90's. But, this kind of thinking is in denial of a real problem. The driving force of the expansion of technology is not technology, it is oil and natural gas. The energy used to drive the technological marvels are these fossil fuels whose use is destroying our environment and which are becoming scarcer by the day.

The public has been misled to believe the technology will keep flowing forever. But that promise is based (today) on fossil fuels.

The problem with that picture is it appears the oil is running out. There is a model put together decades ago which describes the availability of oil. The model shows an unnavoidable fact, that at some point in the future the production capacity of oil will "peak" and after that oil will inexorably decline. There are many indications we are at or near the peak, today.

The rest of the article goes into describing megalomaniacs who have the capabilities to act out their megalomania. The writings of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) show them to be megalomaniacs. The PNAC is a think-tank whose founding members are today holding positions of high power in Washington DC (that is, Cheney, Rumsfield, Wolfowitz, Bremer, Jeb Bush, etc). In the mid-90's the PNAC published a series of position papers describing the need of America to assert global dominance, ensuring a Pax Americana. The justification was that "we" are the worlds sole remaining superpower, and that we had to use our strength to take the moral high ground and that it was our duty to reshape the world in our image.

According to this article these people learned certain strategies from the classics of literature:

or the American imperial strategists invested deeply in the belief that through spreading terror they could take power. Neoconservatives such as Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and the recently indicted Lewis "Scooter" Libby, learned from Leo Strauss that a strong and wise minority of humans had to rule over the weak majority through deception and fear, rather than persuasion or compromise. They read Le Bon and Freud on the relationship of crowds to authority. But most of all they loved Hobbes's Leviathan. While Hobbes saw authority as free men's chosen solution to the imperfections of anarchy, his 21st century heirs seek to create the fear that led to submission. And technology would make it possible and beautiful.

The technology that is supposed to free us all, is also these peoples weapon used to dominate us all.

The vision they've had, and which Rumsfield has been busily implementing in the Defense Department, is that high technology weaponry can be used to create battlefields with few soldiers. Hence we have unmanned aircraft doing both surveillance and firing weapons, we have a rise in robotic tanks, we have a global satellite system delivering GPS positioning coordinates and others spying on everybody's activities. The next time you're in the back yard making love with your sweetie, think about the Pentagon watching you.

But their vision missed something which Iraq and Afghanistan have demonstrated. Satellites in the sky can't stop the acts of individuals. In Afghanistan the leaders made their escape so they could make new plots in the future. In Iraq the U.S. forces have been hobbled by the improvised explosive device (IED) in ways that satellites cannot see or prevent.

Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report - New York Times

Here's some more on wiretapping issue. This NY Times article gives an overview of the depth of the program. The program is about what they call "data mining". In case you don't know, "data mining" is a common technique in IT organizations. Essentially data mining about processing one set of data to create a second set of data.

Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report (By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JAMES RISEN, NYTimes.com, Published: December 24, 2005)

This might help understand what this is

Officials in the government and the telecommunications industry who have knowledge of parts of the program say the N.S.A. has sought to analyze communications patterns to glean clues from details like who is calling whom, how long a phone call lasts and what time of day it is made, and the origins and destinations of phone calls and e-mail messages. Calls to and from Afghanistan, for instance, are known to have been of particular interest to the N.S.A. since the Sept. 11 attacks, the officials said.

This is what they call the "envelope" information. This would be like the post office writing down the addresses on the outside of envelopes they handle. By tracking just the sources and destinations of physical mail you learn a lot. And it's the telecommunications equivalent to this, such as the source and destination phone numbers of all phone calls, that the article talks about.

It's not just this envelope information, but they're looking for "patterns" of contacts. This kind of analysis is not about listening to the actual phone calls, but who is calling whom, and how often.

The article discusses how the government has made special arrangements with the telecommunication companies. The NSA has a secret "backdoor" letting them directly tap into the core of the telecommunication infrastructure.

This says that what's happened has had widespread agreement from a broad spectrum of government and business entities. This took a long time and had to involve a lot of people to implement.

The volume of information harvested from telecommunication data and voice networks, without court-approved warrants, is much larger than the White House has acknowledged, the officials said. It was collected by tapping directly into some of the American telecommunication system's main arteries, they said.

As part of the program approved by President Bush for domestic surveillance without warrants, the N.S.A. has gained the cooperation of American telecommunications companies to obtain backdoor access to streams of domestic and international communications, the officials said.

One final interesting piece is whether U.S. laws govern privacy of telephone calls that just pass through equipment which happens to be located in the U.S. It may seem counter-intuitive, but the way telecommunications is installed in the world it is sometimes cheaper or easier for transmissions from one country to another country to pass through equipment in the U.S.

The government's collection and analysis of phone and Internet traffic have raised questions among some law enforcement and judicial officials familiar with the program. One issue of concern to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has reviewed some separate warrant applications growing out of the N.S.A.'s surveillance program, is whether the court has legal authority over calls outside the United States that happen to pass through American-based telephonic "switches," according to officials familiar with the matter.

"There was a lot of discussion about the switches" in conversations with the court, a Justice Department official said, referring to the gateways through which much of the communications traffic flows. "You're talking about access to such a vast amount of communications, and the question was, How do you minimize something that's on a switch that's carrying such large volumes of traffic? The court was very, very concerned about that."

... The switches are some of the main arteries for moving voice and some Internet traffic into and out of the United States, and, with the globalization of the telecommunications industry in recent years, many international-to-international calls are also routed through such American switches.

One outside expert on communications privacy who previously worked at the N.S.A. said that to exploit its technological capabilities, the American government had in the last few years been quietly encouraging the telecommunications industry to increase the amount of international traffic that is routed through American-based switches.