Eye On U.S.A

[Rasputin]

[Rasputin]

به دنبال مخالفت دموكرات*هاى آمريكا با استراتژى و طرح*هاى جديد جورج بوش در عراق يك مقام مسوول و نظامى ارشد آمريكايى اعلام كرد : بوش حكم اعزام 20 هزار سرباز آمريكايى براى مبارزه با خشونت و توقف درگيري*ها در عراق را امضا كرد.

به گزارش پايگاه اينترنتى الجزيره، اين مقام مسوول و نظامى ارشد آمريكايى تاكيد داشت: بوش در ديدار با برخى از مشاورين امنيتى خود آخرين تصميمات لازم درباره*ى استراتژى جديدش در عراق را اتخاذ كرد كه قرار است محتواى كامل اين استراتژى روز چهارشنبه از سوى بوش اعلام شود.

وى هم*چنين افزود: يكى از اين استراتژي*هاى مورد نظر كه حكم آن از سوى بوش تاييد شده، اعزام 20 هزار سرباز آمريكايى به عراق با هدف متوقف ساختن جريان درگيري*هاى مسلحانه در اين كشور است.

اين در حالى است كه به دنبال گسترش دايره*ى مخالفت احزاب آمريكايى با استراتژى جديد آمريكا در عراق برخى از نمايندگان حزب جمهوري*خواه در مجلس نمايندگان آمريكا و كنگره به حزب دموكرات اين كشور در اعتراض به اين استراتژى جديد بوش پيوستند.

سوزان كالينز، سناتور جمهوري*خواه آمريكايى اظهار داشت: نه تنها دموكرات*ها بلكه بسيارى از جمهوري*خواهان آمريكايى نيز با اين استراتژى جديد بوش در عراق به خصوص در زمينه*ى اعزام نيروهاى جديد به اين كشور سرسختانه مخالفند.

وى افزود: اعزام نيروهاى آمريكايى بيشتر به عراق يك اشتباه فاحش است و به اعتقاد جمهوري*خواهان نيز اين امر تنها منجر به افزايش خشونت در عراق خواهد شد، زيرا عراق براى حل بحران*هاى خود نياز به راهكارهاى سياسى دارد نه نظامى.

يكى ديگر از نمايندگان جمهوري*خواه آمريكا اظهار داشت: به عنوان يك جمهوري*خواه اعزام نيروهاى جديد آمريكايى به عراق را تاييد نمي*كنم، زيرا به اعتقاد ما آمريكا نمي*تواند بيشتر از اين براى عراق كارى انجام دهد، كارى كه خود عراقي*ها نيز براى خود نمي*توانند انجام دهد.

جان مك*كين، سناتور جمهوري*خواه آمريكايى نيز در اعتراض به استراتژى جديد بوش در عراق اظهار داشت*: ما به شدت با اين طرح جديد بوش به خصوص در زمينه*ى اعزام نيروهاى بيشتر به عراق مخالفيم.

اين در حالى است كه يك مقام ديگر جمهوري*خواه آمريكايى تصريح كرد : بسيارى از جمهوري*خواهان و دموكرات*هاى آمريكايى در انتظار اعلام كامل استراتژى جديد بوش درباره*ى عراق هستند و موضع*گيرى نهايى خود را پس از آن به صورت جدى در كنگره مطرح خواهند كرد.

[Rasputin]

NEW YORK (CNN) -- New York officials evacuated a number of buildings and shut down some trains after a mysterious gaslike odor was reported Monday.

A New York Police Department spokesman said an air quality test determined that the air is not hazardous, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said there is no indication terrorism was involved.

The city's Office of Emergency Management reported no injuries, and spokesman Jared Bernstein said early Monday afternoon that the number of calls into the office had dwindled since the smell was first reported Monday morning.

Two people were hospitalized for shortness of breath related to the odor, said Bill Douster from the Jersey City Medical Center.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg called the smell "unpleasant" but said it posed no harm.

"One thing we are very confident of, it's not dangerous," Bloomberg said. "How long and what the sources are, we just don't know."

The pervasive odor was reported throughout Manhattan and as far away as Newark, New Jersey, 10 miles west of the Big Apple. In New York, the smell was reported from Midtown to Battery Park City.

Authorities are investigating the source of the smell. Several buildings were evacuated, and the PATH commuter trains along the Sixth Avenue line were temporarily suspended. The odor had no effect on subway service in the city.

New York police initially said no gas leak was reported, but a spokesman for Mayor Jerramiah Healy in Jersey City, New Jersey, just across the Hudson River, said the odor was emanating from a leak near Manhattan's Greenwich Village.

Bloomberg later confirmed a "small gas leak" near Sixth Avenue and Bleecker Street but said the smell appears to be a natural gas additive. Natural gas has no smell, so an additive, mercaptan, is included to give it a detectable smell in the event of a leak.

However, Bloomberg said that he didn't believe the Manhattan gas leak could account for the smell being reported in New Jersey.

"We're all working together to pinpoint the nature of the leak," he said. "So far, the city's air sensors do not report any elevated level of gas."

The mayor said that "these things are normal, happen all the time."

The police said utility provider Consolidated Edison told officials there's been no drop in gas pressure in the city.

[Rasputin]

How can the United States of America who upholds fundamental values such as pursuit of happiness and individualism be entangled with killing of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis inside their country? Wasn't The United States built entirely on the solid plateau of equality of man and free market?

The confederate United States was born in recent history through the mighty power of the American people. It all began after October 12, 1492 when Christopher Columbus accidentally landed on the Caribbean island of San Salvador. His plan was to reach the Indies and to bring into Europe the spices of the Indies and also help his sponsors’ wish of converting these new people into Christianity.

The persecuted Protestants of Europe, calling themselves the Pilgrims, poured into this new land to establish their own New England. On the voyage the Pilgrims’ ship the Mayflower was blown off course. Gradually, about 20,000 Puritan emigrants settled in New England.

Adam Smith’s Capitalism ensured private ownership and the free market. The declaration of independence was adopted by the congress on July 4, 1776. Under the constitution a federal government would take care of major national issues such as wars, taxation and coining money. However individual states remained in control of their own economic affairs. The Bill of Rights was written as amendment to the original constitution to secure basic individual rights.

All of this went into making this nation but, The U.S. had this change coming - Now a country with many enemies outside its borders and many unsatisfied citizens inside.

After all, many great nations have turned into monarchy of favoritism and strict religious doctrines such as Persia (today’s Iran) - although it was originally established as the first empire in the world under the humanistic insight of Cyrus The Great (500 BC).

Another example is China, which was unified for the first time in 221 B.C. The first Chinese emperor was Qin (Shi Huangdi – meaning First Emperor) whose followers brutally silenced criticism of imperial rule. The kings who followed banished or put to death many dissenting Confucian scholars and confiscated and burned their books and personal properties.

History really repeats itself. But, what went wrong with the United States?

All those pilgrims, with their preliminary measurements in bringing law and order to the new land, must have failed to see a day that this fragile government may rise to power and start pulling some threads in other nations’ internal affairs.

Sadly, over 30 Million people in The States are living without medical insurance. The government claims that the cost of creating an insurance program for all is beyond its current capabilities. Yet the war in Iraq costs this nation billions of dollars everyday.

Something seems missing both in internal and foreign policy of this government. Is it Morality that has long been forgotten in the world of politics? Or is it anything else? Lack of interest and trust of our younger generation to vote is obvious; and yet our leaders fail to see the big picture.

This article is not a political one. This article is an ethical examination of our political machine. After all we are what our government looks like.

[Rasputin]

[Rasputin]

ARBIL, Iraq (AFP) - A diplomatic row erupted after US forces arrested six people described by Iraqi and Iranian officials as the staff at an Iranian consulate in the northern Iraqi city of Arbil.

Tehran and the regional government of Iraqi Kurdistan accused US troops of raiding a diplomatic building -- which should have been protected under international law -- and demanded that the detainees be released.

In Washington, a US defense official who requested anonymity said six Iranians were arrested in a search and cordon operation in Arbil.

But a Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman, denied that US forces raided an Iranian consulate. Although he did not know the nationality of the six detainees, he said they were "suspected of being closely tied to activities targeting Iraq and coalition forces."

The building in Arbil was sealed off by Kurdish security forces, and local officials confirmed that there had been arrests by US forces.

"We don't know the reason for this," an Iranian diplomat in Baghdad told AFP on condition of anonymity. "The Americans arrested five employees and took all the computers and documentation."

The raid came just hours after US President George W. Bush announced he had ordered 21,500 more troops to Iraq and promised to take aggressive steps to curtail what he described as Iranian and Syrian help for insurgents.

The White House declined to comment specifically on the operation, but unapologetically defended it.

"If we get information that is actionable that the Iranians are interfering with Iraq, with Iraqis, or in any way going to harm Americans that we're going to take action," said national security spokesman Gordon Johndroe.

"The president made it clear last night that we will not tolerate outside interference in Iraq. And that's what the Iranians are up to."

Iran expressed its "strong condemnation of the US forces' action which was against all international regulations."

"We expect the Iraqi government to act quickly for the release of these people and to condemn the US forces and not let them disturb the two countries' relations with their illegal and spontaneous action," a senior foreign ministry official reportedly told Iraqi ambassador Mohammed Majid al-Sheikh.

The Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq -- normally a staunch supporter of US policy in the region -- also condemned the raid and demanded the immediate release of all prisoners taken.

"The presidency and the government of the Kurdish region of Iraq express their disapproval of the operation against the Iranian consulate," said a statement from regional president Massud Barzani's office.

The statement recalled that diplomatic premises were protected from attack under international protocols and accused US forces of "damaging efforts to restore stability and security in Iraq."

Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh told reporters that Baghdad had asked the Americans to clarify who was arrested and why, confirming that the foreign ministry in Baghdad was investigating the matter.

"We need to identify who those people are and why they were arrested. We have an office in Arbil and the foreign ministry in Baghdad is working on this to find out exactly what happened," he said.

Washington has not confirmed that diplomats were targeted, but has long accused Tehran's agents of fomenting unrest in Iraq and smuggling weapons to militias involved in sectarian violence and attacks on US forces.

"Coalition forces conducted routine security operations in northern Iraq and took six individuals into custody suspected of being closely tied to activities targeting Iraqi and coalition forces," the US military in Iraq said.

Last month, US forces detained two Iranians among eight people rounded up on suspicion of weapons smuggling in Baghdad. They were later released.

Tension between Iran and the United States has soared after the UN Security Council voted to impose sanctions over Iran's nuclear programme and Tehran vowed to start immediately expanding its capacity to enrich uranium.

Washington accuses Iran of seeking to develop a nuclear weapon, a charge vehemently denied by the oil-rich Islamic republic, which says it only wants to provide atomic energy to a growing population.

[Rasputin]

[Rasputin]

You could not have chosen a better time to gather. Voters have provided a respite from a right-wing radicalism predicated on the philosophy that extremism in the pursuit of virtue is no vice. It seems only yesterday that the Trojan horse of conservatism was hauled into Washington to disgorge Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, Ralph Reed, Grover Norquist and their hearty band of ravenous predators masquerading as a political party of small government, fiscal restraint and moral piety and promising "to restore accountability to Congress...[and] make us all proud again of the way free people govern themselves."

Well, the long night of the junta is over, and Democrats are ebullient as they prepare to take charge of the multitrillion-dollar influence racket that we used to call the US Congress. Let them rejoice while they can, as long as they remember that while they ran some good campaigns, they have arrived at this moment mainly because George W. Bush lost a war most people have come to believe should never have been fought in the first place. Let them remember, too, in this interim of sweet anticipation, that although they are reveling in the ruins of a Republican reign brought down by stupendous scandals, their own closet is stocked with skeletons from an era when they were routed from office following Abscam bribes and savings and loan swindles that plucked the pockets and purses of hard-working, tax-paying Americans.

As they rejoice, Democrats would be wise to be mindful of Shakespeare's counsel, "'Tis more by fortune...than by merit." For they were delivered from the wilderness not by their own goodness and purity but by the grace of K Street corruption, DeLay Inc.'s duplicity, the pitiless exploitation of Terri Schiavo, the disgrace of Mark Foley and a shameful partisan cover-up, the shamelessness of Jack Abramoff and a partisan conspiracy, and neocon arrogance and amorality (yes, amoral: Apparently there is no end to the number of bodies Bill Kristol and Richard Perle are prepared to watch pile up on behalf of illusions that can't stand the test of reality even one Beltway block from the think tanks where they are hatched). The Democrats couldn't have been more favored by the gods if they had actually believed in one!

But whatever one might say about the election, the real story is one that our political and media elites are loath to acknowledge or address. I am not speaking of the lengthy list of priorities that progressives and liberals of every stripe are eager to put on the table now that Democrats hold the cards in Congress. Just the other day a message popped up on my computer from a progressive advocate whose work I greatly admire. Committed to movement-building from the ground up, he has results to show for his labors. His request was simple: "With changes in Congress and at our state capitol, we want your input on what top issues our lawmakers should tackle. Click here to submit your top priority."

I clicked. Sure enough, up came a list of thirty-four issues--an impressive list that began with "African-American" and ran alphabetically through "energy" and "higher education" to "guns," "transportation," "women's issues" and "workers' rights." It wasn't a list to be dismissed, by any means, for it came from an unrequited thirst for action after a long season of malignant opposition to every item on the agenda. I understand the mindset. Here's a fellow who values allies and appreciates what it takes to build coalitions; who knows that although our interests as citizens vary, each one is an artery to the heart that pumps life through the body politic, and each is important to the health of democracy. This is an activist who knows political success is the sum of many parts.

But America needs something more right now than a "must-do" list from liberals and progressives. America needs a different story. The very morning I read the message from the progressive activist, the New York Times reported on Carol Ann Reyes. Carol Ann Reyes is 63. She lives in Los Angeles, suffers from dementia and is homeless. Somehow she made her way to a hospital with serious, untreated needs. No details were provided as to what happened to her there, except that the hospital--which is part of Kaiser Permanente, the largest HMO in the country--called a cab and sent her back to skid row. True, they phoned ahead to workers at a rescue shelter to let them know she was coming. But some hours later a surveillance camera picked her up "wandering around the streets in a hospital gown and slippers." Dumped in America.

Here is the real political story, the one most politicians won't even acknowledge: the reality of the anonymous, disquieting daily struggle of ordinary people, including the most marginalized and vulnerable Americans but also young workers and elders and parents, families and communities, searching for dignity and fairness against long odds in a cruel market world.

Everywhere you turn you'll find people who believe they have been written out of the story. Everywhere you turn there's a sense of insecurity grounded in a gnawing fear that freedom in America has come to mean the freedom of the rich to get richer even as millions of Americans are dumped from the Dream. So let me say what I think up front: The leaders and thinkers and activists who honestly tell that story and speak passionately of the moral and religious values it puts in play will be the first political generation since the New Deal to win power back for the people.

There's no mistaking that America is ready for change. One of our leading analysts of public opinion, Daniel Yankelovich, reports that a majority want social cohesion and common ground based on pragmatism and compromise, patriotism and diversity. But because of the great disparities in wealth, the "shining city on the hill" has become a gated community whose privileged occupants, surrounded by a moat of money and protected by a political system seduced with cash into subservience, are removed from the common life of the country. The wreckage of this abdication by elites is all around us.

[Rasputin]

Corporations are shredding the social compact, pensions are disappearing, median incomes are flattening and healthcare costs are soaring. In many ways, the average household is generally worse off today than it was thirty years ago, and the public sector that was a support system and safety net for millions of Americans across three generations is in tatters. For a time, stagnating wages were somewhat offset by more work and more personal debt. Both political parties craftily refashioned those major renovations of the average household as the new standard, shielding employers from responsibility for anything Wall Street didn't care about. Now, however, the more acute major risks workers have been forced to bear as employers reduce their health and retirement costs--on orders from Wall Street--have made it clear that our fortunes are being reversed. Polls show that a majority of US workers now believe their children will be worse off than they are. In one recent survey, only 14 percent of workers said that they have obtained the American Dream.

It is hard to believe that less than four decades ago a key architect of the antipoverty program, Robert Lampman, could argue that the "recent history of Western nations reveals an increasingly widespread adoption of the idea that substantial equality of social and economic conditions among individuals is a good thing." Economists call that postwar era "the Great Compression." Poverty and inequality had declined dramatically for the first time in our history. Here, as Paul Krugman recently recounted, is how Time's report on the national outlook in 1953 summed it up: "Even in the smallest towns and most isolated areas, the U.S. is wearing a very prosperous, middle-class suit of clothes, and an attitude of relaxation and confidence. People are not growing wealthy, but more of them than ever before are getting along." African-Americans were still written out of the story, but that was changing, too, as heroic resistance emerged across the South to awaken our national conscience. Within a decade, thanks to the civil rights movement and President Johnson, the racial cast of federal policy--including some New Deal programs--was aggressively repudiated, and shared prosperity began to breach the color line.

To this day I remember John F. Kennedy's landmark speech at the Yale commencement in 1962. Echoing Daniel Bell's cold war classic The End of Ideology, JFK proclaimed the triumph of "practical management of a modern economy" over the "grand warfare of rival ideologies." The problem with this--and still a major problem today--is that the purported ideological cease-fire ended only a few years later. But the Democrats never re-armed, and they kept pinning all their hopes on economic growth, which by its very nature is valueless and cannot alone provide answers to social and moral questions that arise in the face of resurgent crisis. While "practical management of a modern economy" had a kind of surrogate legitimacy as long as it worked, when it no longer worked, the nation faced a paralyzing moral void in deciding how the burdens should be borne. Well-organized conservative forces, firing on all ideological pistons, rushed to fill this void with a story corporate America wanted us to hear. Inspired by bumper-sticker abstractions of Milton Friedman's ideas, propelled by cascades of cash from corporate chieftans like Coors and Koch and "Neutron" Jack Welch, fortified by the pious prescriptions of fundamentalist political preachers like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, the conservative armies marched on Washington. And they succeeded brilliantly.

When Ronald Reagan addressed the Republican National Convention in 1980, he a told a simple story, one that had great impact. "The major issue of this campaign is the direct political, personal and moral responsibility of Democratic Party leadership--in the White House and in Congress--for this unprecedented calamity which has befallen us." He declared, "I will not stand by and watch this great country destroy itself." It was a speech of bold contrasts, of good private interest versus bad government, of course. More important, it personified these two forces in a larger narrative of freedom, reaching back across the Great Depression, the Civil War and the American Revolution, all the way back to the Mayflower Compact. It so dazzled and demoralized Democrats they could not muster a response to the moral abandonment and social costs that came with the Reagan revolution.

We too have a story of freedom to tell, and it too reaches back across the Great Depression, the Civil War and the American Revolution, all the way back to the Mayflower Compact. It's a story with clear and certain foundations, like Reagan's, but also a tumultuous and sometimes violent history of betrayal that he and other conservatives consistently and conveniently ignore.

Reagan's story of freedom superficially alludes to the Founding Fathers, but its substance comes from the Gilded Age, devised by apologists for the robber barons. It is posed abstractly as the freedom of the individual from government control--a Jeffersonian ideal at the root of our Bill of Rights, to be sure. But what it meant in politics a century later, and still means today, is the freedom to accumulate wealth without social or democratic responsibilities and the license to buy the political system right out from under everyone else, so that democracy no longer has the ability to hold capitalism accountable for the good of the whole.

And that is not how freedom was understood when our country was founded. At the heart of our experience as a nation is the proposition that each one of us has a right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." As flawed in its reach as it was brilliant in its inspiration for times to come, that proposition carries an inherent imperative: "inasmuch as the members of a liberal society have a right to basic requirements of human development such as education and a minimum standard of security, they have obligations to each other, mutually and through their government, to ensure that conditions exist enabling every person to have the opportunity for success in life."

The quote comes directly from Paul Starr, one of our most formidable public thinkers, whose forthcoming book, Freedom's Power: The True Force of Liberalism, is a profound and stirring call for liberals to reclaim the idea of America's greatness as their own. Starr's book is one of three new books that in a just world would be on every desk in the House and Senate when Congress convenes again.

John Schwarz, in Freedom Reclaimed: Rediscovering the American Vision, rescues the idea of freedom from market cultists whose "particular idea of freedom...has taken us down a terribly mistaken road" toward a political order where "government ends up servicing the powerful and taking from everyone else." The free-market view "cannot provide us with a philosophy we find compelling or meaningful," Schwarz writes. Nor does it assure the availability of economic opportunity "that is truly adequate to each individual and the status of full legal as well as political equality." Yet since the late nineteenth century it has been used to shield private power from democratic accountability, in no small part because conservative rhetoric has succeeded in denigrating government even as conservative politicians plunder it.

[Rasputin]

But government, Schwarz reminds us, "is not simply the way we express ourselves collectively but also often the only way we preserve our freedom from private power and its incursions." That is one reason the notion that every person has a right to meaningful opportunity "has assumed the position of a moral bottom line in the nation's popular culture ever since the beginning." Freedom, he says, is "considerably more than a private value." It is essentially a social idea, which explains why the worship of the free market "fails as a compelling idea in terms of the moral reasoning of freedom itself." Let's get back to basics, is Schwarz's message. Let's recapture our story.

Norton Garfinkle picks up on both Schwarz and Starr in The American Dream vs. the Gospel of Wealth, as he describes how America became the first nation on earth to offer an economic vision of opportunity for even the humblest beginner to advance, and then moved, in fits and starts--but always irrepressibly--to the invocation of positive government as the means to further that vision through politics. No one understood this more clearly, Garfinkle writes, than Abraham Lincoln, who called on the federal government to save the Union. He turned to large government expenditures for internal improvements--canals, bridges and railroads. He supported a strong national bank to stabilize the currency. He provided the first major federal funding for education, with the creation of land grant colleges. And he kept close to his heart an abiding concern for the fate of ordinary people, especially the ordinary worker but also the widow and orphan. Our greatest President kept his eye on the sparrow. He believed government should be not just "of the people" and "by the people" but "for the people." Including, we can imagine, Carol Ann Reyes.

The great leaders of our tradition--Jefferson, Lincoln and the two Roosevelts--understood the power of our story. In my time it was FDR, who exposed the false freedom of the aristocratic narrative. He made the simple but obvious point that where once political royalists stalked the land, now economic royalists owned everything standing. Mindful of Plutarch's warning that "an imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics," Roosevelt famously told America, in 1936, that "the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man." He gathered together the remnants of the great reform movements of the Progressive Age--including those of his late-blooming cousin, Teddy--into a singular political cause that would be ratified again and again by people who categorically rejected the laissez-faire anarchy that had produced destructive, unfettered and ungovernable power. Now came collective bargaining and workplace rules, cash assistance for poor children, Social Security, the GI Bill, home mortgage subsidies, progressive taxation--democratic instruments that checked economic tyranny and helped secure America's great middle class. And these were only the beginning. The Marshall Plan, the civil rights revolution, reaching the moon, a huge leap in life expectancy--every one of these great outward achievements of the last century grew from shared goals and collaboration in the public interest.

So it is that contrary to what we have heard rhetorically for a generation now, the individualist, greed-driven, free-market ideology is at odds with our history and with what most Americans really care about. More and more people agree that growing inequality is bad for the country, that corporations have too much power, that money in politics is corrupting democracy and that working families and poor communities need and deserve help when the market system fails to generate shared prosperity. Indeed, the American public is committed to a set of values that almost perfectly contradicts the conservative agenda that has dominated politics for a generation now.

The question, then, is not about changing people; it's about reaching people. I'm not speaking simply of better information, a sharper and clearer factual presentation to disperse the thick fogs generated by today's spin machines. Of course, we always need stronger empirical arguments to back up our case. It would certainly help if at least as many people who believe, say, in a "literal devil" or that God sent George W. Bush to the White House also knew that the top 1 percent of households now have more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined. Yes, people need more information than they get from the media conglomerates with their obsession for nonsense, violence and pap. And we need, as we keep hearing, "new ideas." But we are at an extraordinary moment. The conservative movement stands intellectually and morally bankrupt while Democrats talk about a "new direction" without convincing us they know the difference between a weather vane and a compass. The right story will set our course for a generation to come.

Some stories doom us. In Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Jared Diamond tells of the Viking colony that disappeared in the fifteenth century. The settlers had scratched a living on the sparse coast of Greenland for years, until they encountered a series of harsh winters. Their livestock, the staple of their diet, began to die off. Although the nearby waters teemed with haddock and cod, the colony's mythology prohibited the eating of fish. When their supply of hay ran out during a last terrible winter, the colony was finished. They had been doomed by their story.

Here in the first decade of the twenty-first century the story that becomes America's dominant narrative will shape our collective imagination and hence our politics. In the searching of our souls demanded by this challenge, those of us in this room and kindred spirits across the nation must confront the most fundamental progressive failure of the current era: the failure to embrace a moral vision of America based on the transcendent faith that human beings are more than the sum of their material appetites, our country is more than an economic machine, and freedom is not license but responsibility--the gift we have received and the legacy we must bequeath.

In our brief sojourn here we are on a great journey. For those who came before us and for those who follow, our moral, political and religious duty is to make sure that this nation, which was conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that we are all created equal, is in good hands on our watch.

One story would return America to the days of radical laissez-faire, when there was no social contract and the strong took what they could and the weak were left to forage. The other story joins the memory of struggles that have been waged with the possibility of victories yet to be won, including healthcare for every American and a living wage for every worker. Like the mustard seed to which Jesus compared the Kingdom of God, nurtured from small beginnings in a soil thirsty for new roots, our story has been a long time unfolding. It reminds us that the freedoms and rights we treasure were not sent from heaven and did not grow on trees. They were, as John Powers has written, "born of centuries of struggle by untold millions who fought and bled and died to assure that the government can't just walk into our bedrooms and read our mail, to protect ordinary people from being overrun by massive corporations, to win a safety net against the often-cruel workings of the market, to guarantee that businessmen couldn't compel workers to work more than forty hours a week without extra compensation, to make us free to criticize our government without having our patriotism impugned, and to make sure that our leaders are answerable to the people when they choose to send our soldiers into war." The eight-hour day, the minimum wage, the conservation of natural resources, free trade unions, old-age pensions, clean air and water, safe food--all these began with citizens and won the endorsement of the political class only after long struggles and bitter attacks. Democracy works when people claim it as their own.

It is only rarely remembered that the definition of democracy immortalized by Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address had been inspired by Theodore Parker, the abolitionist prophet. Driven from his pulpit, Parker said, "I will go about and preach and lecture in the city and glen, by the roadside and field-side, and wherever men and women may be found." He became the Hound of Freedom and helped to change America through the power of the word. We have a story of equal power. It is that the promise of America leaves no one out. Go now, and tell it on the mountains. From the rooftops, tell it. From your laptops, tell it. From the street corners and from Starbucks, from delis and from diners, tell it. From the workplace and the bookstore, tell it. On campus and at the mall, tell it. Tell it at the synagogue, sanctuary and mosque. Tell it where you can, when you can and while you can--to every candidate for office, to every talk-show host and pundit, to corporate executives and schoolchildren. Tell it--for America's sake.

[Rasputin]

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - The deployment of the USS John C. Stennis to the Middle East will put two U.S. aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf region for the first time since the 2003 Iraq invasion, in a clear response to Iran's aggressive posture in the region.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Monday that Iran and other U.S. adversaries believe the U.S. is vulnerable in Iraq, where the Pentagon is preparing to send more than 20,000 additional troops as part of a new security plan that envisions a crackdown on Iranian-backed militias.

Some analysts believe that a U.S. offensive against those militias could trigger retaliatory attacks elsewhere in the region, although the Navy described the deployment in broader strategic terms.

"This demonstrates our resolve to do what we can to bring security and stability to the region," Cmdr. Kevin Aandahl of the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet in Bahrain said Tuesday.

Aandahl said the Stennis carrier strike group of eight ships and nine air squadrons would arrive in Mideast waters in a matter of weeks, after crossing the Pacific and Indian oceans.

U.S. diplomats, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, have been touring the region to shore up American credibility. The United States' Arab allies are dismayed over the chaos in Iraq, while a resurgent Iran — the Arab world's centuries-old rival — is supporting militants across the region.

"Rice is promising the U.S. will stand firm against Iran. But without a show of force, without backing these words with muscle, no one will take the U.S. seriously, whether in Tehran or any Arab capital," said Mustafa Alani, a military analyst with the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center. "Now is the time. They have to stand or shut up."

The Stennis strike group, which was previously in line to deploy to the Pacific, will augment another Navy task force in Mideast waters led by the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, Aandahl said.

A second U.S. carrier will significantly boost U.S. air power in the region and serve to remind Iran of American firepower. Its arrival will give the Pentagon two carriers in the region for the first time since 2003, Aandahl said.

After departing Tuesday from its homeport of Bremerton, Wash., the Stennis will stop in San Diego to pick up an air wing of more than 80 planes, including F/A-18 Hornet and Superhornet fighter-bombers, the Navy said.

The Stennis could also shore up air cover for U.S. and NATO ground troops in Afghanistan, now relying on about 20 ground-based warplanes after the Eisenhower was sent to the Somali coast.

Britain sent two Royal Navy mine sweepers to the Gulf last month. The Pentagon said it is also sending an additional Patriot anti-missile battalion to a U.S. allied Gulf Arab country, as well as 21,500 more U.S. troops to Iraq.

In Brussels on Monday, Gates indicated that Iran's perception of U.S. vulnerability in the region was part of the reason the Pentagon needs to dispatch the Stennis and the Patriot missiles.

"The Iranians clearly believe that we are tied down in Iraq, that they have the initiative, that they are able to press us in many ways," Gates said.

Patriots defend against short-range missiles of the type that Iran could use to hit U.S. bases in the Gulf. The Pentagon has not said exactly where the Patriots will be based.

The escalating American combat power doesn't mean Washington is bent on a showdown with Tehran, Alani said. But the Pentagon may be preparing for tough U.S. action against Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, and the retaliation by Iran that could follow.

"They're not trying to pick a fight" with Iran, Alani said. "But if Iran makes any mistakes, the U.S. will deal with them."

Iran has denounced the Patriot deployment as part of U.S. plan to turn Arab countries into the front line of defense for Israel.

In December, Tehran's top national security official, Ali Larijani, asked Arab leaders to shut down U.S. military bases in the Gulf and instead join a security alliance with Iran. Gulf leaders have shown no inclination to give up their U.S. security umbrella.

The Stennis and its 3,200 sailors lead a strike group consisting of the guided-missile cruiser USS Antietam, three Navy destroyers — the USS O'Kane, Preble and Paul Hamilton — the submarine USS Key West, the guided-missile frigate USS Rentz, as well as the supply ship USNS Bridge, the Navy said.

Washington will keep two carriers in the Middle East "as long as the situation demands it," Aandahl said. A typical carrier deployment lasts six months.

The United States maintains nearly 40,000 troops in Gulf countries other than Iraq, including about 25,000 in Kuwait, 6,500 in Qatar, 3,000 in Bahrain, 1,300 in the United Arab Emirates and a few hundred in Oman and Saudi Arabia, according to figures from the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center.

[Rasputin]

مدير آژانس امنيت*ملى آمريكا اعلام*كرد كه از تمام امكانات براى جلوگيرى از تهديد*هاى جارى عليه منافع ايالات *متحده**آمريكا استفاده خواهد كرد.
پايگاه عربى "راديو سوا" گزارش داد كه "جان نگروپونته" مدير آژانس امنيت *ملى آمريكا گفت: "ايالات* متحده*آمريكا اكنون بر روى فعاليت*هاى تروريستى سازمان*ها و گروه*هايى كه عليه منافع آمريكا در عراق و افغانستان وارد عمل شده*اند، متمركز شده است."
وى افزود: "دايره امنيتى آمريكا تلاش مي*كند تا از نفوذ ايران در خاورميانه، آفريقا و آمريكاي*لاتين و تهديدهاى اقتصادى و نظامى چين جلوگيرى كند."
نگروپونته تصريح*كرد: "با وجود دستگيرى و كشته*شدن برخى مقام*هاى بلندپايه القاعده، اين گروه همچنان تهديدى براى ايالات*متحده*آمريكا محسوب مي*شود. القاعده همچنان تلاش مي*كند تا با استفاده از موادمنفجره دست *ساز، عليه منافع آمريكا اقدام كند. اين گروه حتى براى رسيدن به اين هدف، تلاش مي*كند تا به سلاح*هاى شيميايي، بيولوژيكى و هسته*اى دست يابد و از آنها عليه منافع آمريكا استفاده كند."
وى درباره وضعيت كنونى عراق نيز گفت:"وضعيت امنيت در عراق اكنون بحرانى است اما دولت عراق در مقابل تمام اين تهديدها ايستاده و براى بازگرداندن امنيت به كشور تمام تلاش خود را به كار گرفته است. ما مطمئنيم عراق در آينده نزديك شاهد تحولات مثبتى خواهد بود."
نگروپونته افزود: "دولت عراق وظيفه دارد تا با تمام گرو*ه*ها براى رسيدن به يك مصالحه همه*جانبه همكارى كند و اصلاحاتى در قانون مبارزه با اعضاى حزب بعث، توزيع عايدات نفتى و قانون انتخابات شوراها اعمال كند."
وى درباره تهديد*هاى القاعده نيز گفت: "تا كنون موفق شده*ايم با همكارى گسترده با كشورهاى خارجى از نفوذ القاعده در خاك آمريكا جلوگيرى كنيم و تلاش مي*كنيم تا از اين نوع همكاري*ها براى بازگرداندن امنيت به عراق نيز استفاده كنيم و نگذاريم فعاليت*هاى تروريستى القاعده بيش از اين گسترده شود."
نگروپونته همچنين نسبت به تهديد*هاى حزب*الله عليه منافع ايالات* متحده*آمريكا نيز هشدار داد. وى درباره نفوذ ايران در خاورميانه گفت: "سقوط جنبش طالبان در افغانستان، سقوط نظام صدام در عراق، پيروزى حماس در انتخابات فلسطين و پيروزى حزب*الله بر اسرائيل همگى نشان از نفوذ ايران در خاورميانه دارد. اين نفوذ باعث كلافگى متحدان آمريكا در خاورميانه شده است و آنها به شدت از افزايش اختلاف*هاى شيعيان با سني*ها معترضند و با انتقادات داخلى بر سر مشاركت خود با آمريكا مواجه شده*اند."

[Rasputin]

Ney Sentenced to 30 Months In Prison for Abramoff Deals

Former Ohio Republican congressman Robert W. Ney was sentenced to 30 months in prison yesterday, becoming the first elected official headed for jail because of corrupt dealings with now-convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

U.S. District Judge Ellen S. Huvelle handed down a tougher sentence than the 27 months recommended by prosecutors, telling Ney that, "as a member of Congress, you had the responsibility above all else to set an example and to uphold the law."

Ney became a symbol of the corruption that aroused voters and helped sweep into Congress a new Democratic majority promising ethics reform.

The former chairman of the House Administration Committee admitted that he performed official acts for Abramoff's lobbying clients between 2001 and 2004, receiving in exchange luxury vacation trips, skybox seats at sporting events, campaign contributions and expensive meals. Ney also admitted receiving tens of thousands of dollars in gambling chips from a businessman who sought his help with the State Department.

In the continuing investigation, Ney and seven others have pleaded guilty or have been convicted, and several are cooperating as witnesses. In addition to the government's chief witness, Abramoff, they include Ney's former chief of staff, Neil G. Volz, and two other Capitol Hill staffers who once worked for former congressman Tom DeLay (R-Tex.). All three were part of Abramoff's lobbying team.

More charges are expected. Prosecutors recently notified a former deputy secretary of the interior, J. Steven Griles, that he is a target, sources familiar with the probe said.

Ney said yesterday that he regretted his actions and was sorry for disappointing his family and voters.

"I will continue to take full responsibility for my actions and battle the demons of addiction," he said, referring to the alcohol problem for which he has sought treatment.

In a letter to the judge, Matthew D. Parker, a friend and former aide, said that Ney began to drink more heavily in 2004 when he first came under federal scrutiny. "Bob was a functioning alcoholic who could rarely make it through the day without drinking and would often begin drinking beers as early as 7:30 a.m.," Parker said. But the judge rejected his plea for leniency.

"Whether or not you've served your constituents well, on some level you have seriously betrayed the public's trust and abused your power as a congressman," Huvelle told Ney. "You have a long way to go to make amends for what's happened."

Ney pleaded guilty to one count each of conspiracy and making false statements. Huvelle agreed to a request that he serve his term in a federal prison in Morgantown, W.Va., where he can receive alcohol treatment. She ordered him to pay a $6,000 fine, remain on probation for two years after his release, and participate in community service.

"Today's sentence makes it clear that our government is not for sale," Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher said in a statement. "Former Congressman Ney now faces 30 months in prison for abusing his position of trust as a representative of the American people. The Justice Department will continue to pursue and prosecute public officials who compromise the integrity of elected office for private benefit."

The gifts Ney accepted from Abramoff included a golfing trip to Scotland and other travel that prosecutors valued at more than $170,000. In return, Ney sought to insert four amendments to benefit Abramoff's clients into a 2002 election reform bill. Ney also admitted helping another Abramoff client win a multimillion-dollar contract to provide wireless communication services to the U.S. Capitol.

The congressman twice inserted comments in the Congressional Record aimed at bolstering a bid by Abramoff to take ownership of a Florida casino company.

Along with acknowledging his dealings with Abramoff, Ney admitted accepting free air travel, luxury accommodations and thousands of dollars worth of gambling chips in 2003 from a foreign businessman who has been identified by Ney attorney Mark H. Tuohey as Fouad al-Zayat, a high-rolling London gambler. Zayat has been described in the media as an arms middleman. He sought Ney's help in getting a visa and an exemption to a U.S. law that bars the sale of airplane parts to other countries.

Ney and his staff also offered to aid Abramoff's clients in the summer of 2003 as Ney prepared for a trip to Russia. Abramoff's team got the congressman to intervene with the U.S. Consulate in Moscow to help resolve a passport issue for the daughter of an Abramoff client. Volz, then working for Abramoff, later paid for Ney's stay at a luxury hotel in Lake George, N.Y.

Huvelle is the second judge to show little sympathy for federal officials convicted in the scandal.

Earlier this month, Magistrate Judge Alan Kay issued a stiffer sentence than the one worked out by prosecutors and defense attorneys in the case of Roger G. Stillwell. An Interior Department employee, Stillwell gave Abramoff copies of internal agency documents and accepted football tickets from him. Prosecutors had sought six months of probation, but Kay extended it to two years, saying there is "no such thing as a free lunch, particularly as provided by lobbyists."

In response to what Democrats have dubbed the "culture of corruption," the House and the Senate this month passed ethics packages that would prohibit lawmakers from accepting gifts, meals and travel from lobbyists, and force them to put their names on the "earmarks" that they tuck into bills, often benefiting lobbyists' clients. Also pending is a measure that would take away congressional pensions from members convicted of corruption, but it would not be retroactive. Ney could collect up to $33,000 a year by age 62.

[Rasputin]

World Socialist- ترجمه افسانه نگاهی

خاورمیانه ای نوین

با دو جبهه در برابرهم



سایت خبری- تحلیلیWorld Socialist در گزارشی پیرامون سفر وزیر خارجه امریکا به خاورمیانه و آلمان، آن را یک تور جنگی که از مرز یک هفته گذشته تحلیل کرده و ضمن تاکید بر طولانی بودن سفر وی نوشت:

اکنون عربستان سعودی، مصر، کویت، بحرین، قطر، عمان و امارات عربی همه با دولت بوش برای حمله به ایران متحد شده اند. حتی فراتر از این، وزیر امور خارجه مصر گفت است که برنامه بوش در حمله به ایران، تنها یک برنامه نظامی نیست، بلکه حمله ایست در آغاز یک دید جدید و متفاوت سیاسی ، نظامی و اقتصادی به منطقه خاورمیانه.( ظاهرا اشاره او به تفاهمی است که بین اسرائیل از یکسو و سوریه و فلسطینی ها از سوی دیگر درجریان است و برای نخستین بار اسرائیل با برخی عقب نشینی ها از سرزمین های اشغالی زمینه حضور در اتحاد بالا علیه ایران را فراهم می سازد. پیک نت)



سایت World Socialist ادامه میدهد:

درحال حاضر امریکا علاوه بر نیروئی که درعراق و افغانستان مستقر کرده، 40 هزار نیروی نظامی نیز در کشورهای حوزه خلیج فارس دارد. از جمله در کویت حدود 25 هزار، در قطر حدود 6500 و دربحرین حدود 3 هزار و در امارت عربی 1300 نیروی نظامی دارد. همچین واحدهای ویژه ای نیز در کشور عمان و عربستان سعودی سعودی مستقرند.

وزیر خارجه امریکا، پیش از آغاز سفر اخیر به خاورمیانه و خلیج فارس در کنگره امریکا، با اشاره به همسوئی کشورهای عرب با امریکا و زمینه کاهش تنش بین اسرائیل و همسایگانش برای مقابله با ایران گفت که این خاورمیانه، اکنون دیگر خاورمیانه متفاوتی است. یک طرف کشورهای خلیج فارس و عربستان سعودی و مصر و اردن و دموکراسی جوان لبنان و بخشی از فلسطینیان که از محمود عباس حمایت می کنند قرار دارند و در طرف دیگر ایران، سوریه، حزب الله لبنان و حماس در فلسطین. زمان آن رسیده است که ما این تقسیم بنیادین را درک کنیم.

[Rasputin]

The view of the US's role in the world has deteriorated both internationally and domestically, a BBC poll suggests.
The World Service survey, conducted in 25 nations including the US, found that three in four respondents disapproved of how Washington had dealt with Iraq.

The majority of the 26,381 respondents also disapproved of the way five other foreign policy areas had been handled.

The poll, released ahead of President Bush's State of the Union speech, was conducted between November and January.


Poll findings in more detail


At-a-glance


The number of those who said the US was a positive influence in the world fell in 18 nations polled in previous years.

In those countries, 29% of people said the US had a positive influence, down from 36% last year and 40% two years ago.

Across the 25 countries polled, 49% of respondents said the US played a mainly negative role in the world.

In Kenya, Nigeria, the Philippines and the US most of those polled said they thought America had a positive role.

But among Americans, the number of those who viewed their country's role positively fell to 57% - six percentage points down from last year and 14 percentage points down from two years ago.

Mid-East role

Respondents were also asked about the Bush administration's handling of six areas of foreign policy:


The war in Iraq: an average of 73% of respondents disapproved (57% in the US). Disapproval was strongest in Argentina and France, while people in Nigeria, Kenya and the Philippines were more likely to approve.

Detainees in Guantanamo: 67% disapproved (50% in the US). Backing for America on this issue was highest in Nigeria, where 49% approved.

Israeli-Hezbollah war: Washington's role met with approval from respondents in Nigeria and Philippines, but on average 65% disapproved across the 25 countries (50% in the US).

Iran's nuclear programme: again, support for US actions appeared strongest in Kenya (62%), Nigeria (53%) and the Philippines (52%). But, overall 60% of respondents disapproved (50% in the US).

Global warming: more than 80% of respondents in Argentina, France and Germany disapproved compared to 56% overall (54% in the US). But the White House had 50% or more support among those polled in Nigeria, Kenya, the Philippines and South Korea.

North Korea's nuclear programme: opposition to US policy was strongest among respondents in Argentina and Brazil. On average across the 25 countries 54% disapproved (43% in the US).
When asked about US military presence in the Middle East, an average of 68% of respondents across the 25 countries answered that it "provokes more conflict than it prevents".

SEE THE FULL SURVEY


BBC World Service poll [1.79MB]
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Analysis of results
Your views on US role

In Nigeria, 49% of respondents said it was a "stabilising force", as did 41% in the Philippines, 40% in Kenya and 33% in the US.

The poll was conducted for the BBC World Service by GlobeScan and the Program on International Policy Attitudes (Pipa) at the University of Maryland. It has a margin of error ranging from +/-2.5% to +/-4%.

The questions were put to people in: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Chile, China, Egypt, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Italy, Kenya, Lebanon, Mexico, Nigeria, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Russia, South Korea, Turkey, United Arab Emirates and the United States.