President Bush has talked about the danger of World War III if Iran doesn't stop its nuclear program. What do people think is the risk of war where you are?
Posted by David Ignatius on October 25, 2007 11:36 AM
Readers’ Responses to Our Question (183)
Rick :
Hi Victoria,
Thanks for the post. That Simon Wickens Overview of the Eruption of Mount Tambora is the best I’ve seen yet. I like the graphic of the “Ring of Fire” of volcanic activity around the joints of the tectonic plates. And the one showing the relative volume of ejecta for some historic eruptions is fascinating. The Yellowstone eruption of 600,000 B.C. produced 1200 times the ejecta from Mt. St. Helens in 1980, and 16 times the amount from Tambora in 1815 that caused the year with no summer in 1816.
Another super volcano eruption at Lake Toba, Sumatra, Indonesia only 75,000 was twice as great as Yellowstone and caused a volcanic winter that eradicated 60% of human life. Another eruption at La Garita Caldera, Colorado, 28 million years ago was 4 times as great as Yellowstone.
It’s awe inspiring and reminds us of how insignificant and fragile our existence is in view of the cataclysmic events that await us from within the Earth’s core and collisions from asteroids and comets from without. It helps us to put our little political problems into perspective.
But it was the enormous cloud of gas — some 400 million tons of it — released by the eruption that produced the "year without summer."
When the gas reacted with water vapor in the atmosphere, it formed tiny little droplets of sulfuric acid that became suspended in the stratosphere, creating a veil over the Earth, Sigurdsson says.
This veil of gas acted like a mirror, bouncing radiation back into space and decreasing the amount of heat that reached the Earth's surface, causing global cooling, he says.
what made me think of your post was the part of the show that dealt with yellowstone- a supervolcano-
the show stated that it erupts every 600,000 years, and is 40,000 years overdue.
The previous article notes that Jews living in Arab countries were treated badly as well. But what should they expect after their highway robbery of Palestinian land?
Group Spotlights Jews Who Left Arab Lands
By WARREN HOGE
UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 2 — With assertions of the rights of Palestinians to reclaim land in Israel expected to arise at an planned Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, Md., a Jewish advocacy group has scheduled a meeting in New York on Monday to call attention to people it terms “forgotten refugees.”
The organizing group, Justice for Jews from Arab Countries, says it is referring to the more than 850,000 Jews who left their homes in Arab lands after the declaration of the state of Israel in 1948…”
“The next opportunity would be Nov. 29, the 60th anniversary of the partition vote, which is officially recognized by the United Nations as the International Day of Solidarity With the Palestinian People.
The United Nations says that 711,000 Palestinians left Israel-controlled territory in 1948 and 1949 and that today, along with their descendants, the number of Palestinian refugees is at least four million.
“There is mention, as there should be, of Palestinian refugees, but no mention of Jewish refugees,” Mr. Cotler said of the annual commemoration…”
Oil Price Rise Causes Global Shift in Wealth
Iran, Russia and Venezuela Feel the Benefits
By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 10, 2007; A01
“High oil prices are fueling one of the biggest transfers of wealth in history. Oil consumers are paying $4 billion to $5 billion more for crude oil every day than they did just five years ago, pumping more than $2 trillion into the coffers of oil companies and oil-producing nations this year alone…”
“"There's never been anything like this on a sustained basis the way we've seen the last couple of years," said Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard University economics professor and former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. Oil prices "are not spiking; they're just rising," he added.
The benefits, to the tune of $700 billion a year, are flowing to the world's oil-exporting countries.
Two of those nations -- Iran and Venezuela -- may be better able to defy the Bush administration because of swelling oil revenue. Venezuela has used its oil wealth to dispense patronage around South America, vying for influence even with longtime U.S. allies. And Iran could be less vulnerable to sanctions designed to pressure it into giving up its nuclear program or opening it to inspection.”
President Bush has talked about the danger of World War III if Iran doesn't stop its nuclear program. What do people think is the risk of war where you are?”
My answer is:
Yes, primarily because of our dependence on Mid East oil and our war on Islam.
If we had spent the $1 Trillion that we have squandered on the illegal and immoral preemptive invasion and occupation of Iraq on developing alternative energy sources instead, we would be well on out way to energy dependence, and would have dramatically reduced the likely of WWIII.
If we did not unconditionally support the illegal and immoral Israeli usurpation of Palestine from its rightful owners, the Palestinian people, we would not have not have enraged the Islamic world, and would not have served as the catalyst for a probable WWIII.
Tom Wonacott argues that the “State of Israel” is legal because of the Balfour Declaration and its inclusion by the League of Nations in the British Mandate following WWI. However, the Balfour Declaration was the British response to the lobbying influence of the powerful Jews Baron Rothschild and Barron Hirsch.
So as a spoil of war after WWI, and as a result of the lobbying influence of wealthy Jews on the British government, Palestine was taken away from its rightful owners, the Palestinian people who had tended their flocks and orchards and farmed this land for millennia, and given instead to the Jews.
In a like manner it was the lobbying influence of the powerful American Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC) that mislead us into the moronic and disastrous preemptive invasion and occupation of Iraq. The dual motives for this disaster were our greed to control the world’s second largest oil field combined with the Israelis fear and loathing of Saddam Hussein. These same motives are at work in pushing us to bomb Iran’s suspected nuclear facilities.
Until we develop a fair and balanced policy with respect to Palestine, develop energy independence, and free ourselves from the influence of the Jewish lobby, the likelihood starting WWIII will only increase.
By Joel Achenbach
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 9, 2007; Page A03
Something is stirring deep below the legendary hot springs and geysers of Yellowstone, the first and most famous national park in America -- and home to a huge volcanic caldron.
Parts of the park have been rising the past three years at a rate never before observed by scientists. They believe that magma -- molten rock -- is filling pores in the Earth's crust and causing a large swath of Yellowstone to rise like a pie in the oven...
Yellowstone bears close monitoring, scientists say, because it is prone to hydrothermal explosions, volcanic eruptions (the most recent occurred 70,000 years ago) and, once in a very long while, a super-eruption, a continent-scorching explosion that makes your average volcanic event seem like a hiccup. The most recent super-eruption at Yellowstone, 640,000 years ago, launched 240 cubic miles of material into the atmosphere, burying much of the American West in a layer of hot ash. By comparison, Mount St. Helens in 1980 spewed forth less than a quarter of a cubic mile of material.
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, November 9, 2007; A21
Islamist barbarians are at the gates. The president declares de facto martial law. The country's democratic forces of the center and left, led by well-dressed lawyers and a former prime minister, take to the streets.
What is America to do about Pakistan? Opposition leader Benazir Bhutto knows just how to appeal to America. In a New York Times op-ed, she quoted President Bush back to himself: "All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: The United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you."
Bhutto (Harvard '73) is a good student of American politics. She caught Bush's democratic messianism at its apogee, the same inaugural address in which he set "the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world."...
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice attempted to engineer a marriage of these two factions by trying to orchestrate Bhutto's return to Pakistan under a power-sharing agreement that Musharraf has just blown to pieces.
Our influence should not be overestimated. But we need to make clear our choices. The best among the awful ones Musharraf has presented to us is to try to broker a truce between the two forces before the blood starts to flow, keep Musharraf to his promise of holding early parliamentary elections -- which Bhutto will win -- and then guarantee him a dignified and gradual exit that ensures his protection while Bhutto and her allies claim legitimate authority and try to reach an accommodation with Musharraf's successor as military chief.
It's a long downfield pass. But Musharraf never consulted us on the choice of plays.
Yup, it ain't pretty. I agree it's hard to imagine the Israelis giving up and moving out; but equally as hard to imagine the Palestinians forgiving and forgetting. I guess it will just be the survival of the fittest. I just wish my tax dollars weren’t being used to stack the deck in favor of the Israelis.
Yes the Israelis think they are God’s chosen people, and this land was promised to them; all the more reason they should be summarily booted out of the region.
"However, the UN document at the following link makes clear that the British had no right to promise Palestine to the Jews, had promised the same land to both the Jews and to the Palestinians, and that this duplicity is responsible for the current conflict in Palestine that has been raging since prior to the 1947 U.N. Partition and since the Balfour Declaration:"
What is legal and what is fair or right are different concepts. Who could doubt that OJ Simpson is guilty of murder, but legally he was found innocent.
Zionist believe that the land of Israel is historically their land, and they have strong religious and historic ties to the land and to cities such as Jerusalem. Jews (before 1949) were found throughout the Middle East including Palestine. As you have pointed out, Palestinian people have been farming and raising livestock for hundreds of years in the land of Palestine.
Many Israelis would like to incorporate the entire West Bank while many Palestinians (as well as other Arabs and Persians) believe this is ALL Muslim land. Neither the one state solution as is favored by radical Islam or additional building of new settlements by the Israelis will bring peace. It seems tenuous under the best of circumstances that peace will come to this region anyway (and probably not at Annapolis), but what chance there is lies in the two state solution, at least in my opinion.
Who is kidding whom? There will be no peace in the Middle East (or the world) until the Zionist invaders are pulled out of Palestine and transported to their new homeland in Texas.
If This Peace Process Fails
By Jackson Diehl
Thursday, November 8, 2007; A27
JERUSALEM -- In a bold speech broadcast on national television Sunday night, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert explicitly overturned the judgments that have guided Israeli governments for the past seven years. Israel, he said, does have a worthy negotiating partner in the Palestinian Authority. It cannot afford to postpone negotiations or drag its feet in endless talks. "Real accomplishments" are possible before President Bush leaves office. "We will not avoid fulfilling our own obligations" -- such as dismantling West Bank settlements -- "to the letter," Olmert said, " . . . no matter how difficult it is."...
For the next several days, Israel's talk radio and op-ed pages converged on a single subject -- but it was not Olmert's groundbreaking speech. Instead, the buzz was all about something that took place at a soccer game in Haifa while Olmert was speaking. Before the game began, an announcer asked for a moment of silence in honor of former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, who led Israel toward peace in the early 1990s before being assassinated on Nov. 4, 1995. Hundreds in the crowd, most of them supporters of the visiting Jerusalem team, responded with boos; some began lustily singing songs in honor of Yigal Amir, the man who murdered him.
The message drawn from this episode by Israeli security officials, as well as pundits, was grim: The return Olmert signaled to an aggressive pursuit of a final peace with Palestinians also will mean the comeback of the ugly and potentially violent resistance from Israel's far right. The soccer game wasn't the only sign. Posters showing Israeli President Shimon Peres, another peace advocate, wearing an Arab headdress have appeared on walls around Jerusalem this week, an explicit echo of the propaganda that preceded the attack on Rabin 12 years ago...
Is President Bush getting ready to extend his term of office indefinitely? With a 31% approval rating (lower than Nixon) you’d think he’d been anxious to get out of town and back to Crawford.
i should have specified-
this is about directive 51 from may this year which gives bush emergency powers to suspend the constitution among other things-
I understand your position that: “The Balfour Declaration was made a part of the mandate set by the League of Nations, and that’s what makes it legally binding”...
However, the UN document at the following link makes clear that the British had no right to promise Palestine to the Jews, had promised the same land to both the Jews and to the Palestinians, and that this duplicity is responsible for the current conflict in Palestine that has been raging since prior to the 1947 U.N. Partition and since the Balfour Declaration:
“These assurances appear in correspondence 2/ during 1915-1916 between Sir Henry McMahon, British High Commissioner in Egypt, and Sherif Husain, Emir of Mecca, who held the special status of the Keeper of Islam's most holy cities. He thus acted as a representative of the Arab peoples, although not exercising formal political suzerainty over them all...”
“In 1939, shortly after the Husain-McMahon papers were made public, a committee consisting of both British and Arab representatives was set up to consider this specific issue...”
“These acknowledgements that the British Government had not possessed the right "to dispose of Palestine" appeared decades after the commitments to the Arabs not only had been infringed by the Sykes-Picot agreement but, in disregard of the inherent rights and the wishes of the Palestinian people, the British Government had given Zionist leaders separate assurances regarding the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people in Palestine", an undertaking that sowed the seeds of prolonged conflict in Palestine.”
going off topic as ususal rick- but are you familiar with the journalist gideon levy?
i discovered him on a documentary on machsomwath (checkpoint watch) a watchdog group of israeli women who camp out at palestinian checkpoints and monitor abuses
I recall the words of President Bush in his second inaugural address when he said: “All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not IGNORE your oppression, or EXCUSEyour oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, WE WILL STAND WITH YOU.”
Here’s a David Ignatius editorial comparing Pakistan today to Iran 30 years ago in today’s WP:
In Pakistan, Echoes of Iran
By David Ignatius
Wednesday, November 7, 2007; A21
JERUSALEM -- As we struggle to make sense of the current political crisis in Pakistan, it's useful to think back nearly 30 years to the wave of protests that toppled the shah of Iran and culminated in the Islamic Republic -- a revolutionary earthquake whose tremors are still shaking the Middle East.
The shah was America's friend, just like Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. He was our staunch ally against the bogeyman of that time, the Soviet Union, just as Musharraf has been America's partner in fighting al-Qaeda. The shah ignored America's admonitions to clean up his undemocratic regime, just as Musharraf has. And as the shah's troubles deepened, the United States hoped that moderate opposition leaders would keep the country safe from Muslim zealots, just as we are now hoping in Pakistan.
And yet the Iranian explosion came -- a firestorm of rage that immolated any attempt at moderation or compromise. A similar process of upheaval has begun in Pakistan -- with one terrifying difference: Pakistan has nuclear weapons.
The Iran analogy was made forcefully two weeks ago by Gary Sick, a Columbia professor who helped oversee Iran policy for the Carter administration during the time of the revolution. "There was no Plan B," Sick wrote in an online posting. He sees the same dynamic at work in Pakistan. "We have bet the farm on one man -- in this case Pervez Musharraf -- and we have no fall-back position, no alternative strategy in the event that does not work."
So ask yourself: What Iran policy would have made sense, in hindsight, given the ruinous consequences of the Iranian revolution? Should the United States have encouraged the shah to crack down harder against protesters and ride out the storm, as some hard-liners urged at the time? Or should it have moved more quickly to encourage a change of regime, after it became obvious the shah couldn't or wouldn't reform?
Even now, almost 30 years later, it's hard to know what we should have done. And perhaps that's the point...
NOV. 3, 2007, will be remembered as the blackest day in the history of Pakistan. Let us be perfectly clear: Pakistan is a military dictatorship. Last Saturday, Gen. Pervez Musharraf removed all pretense of a transition to democracy by conducting what was in effect yet another extraconstitutional coup.
In doing so he endangered the viability of Pakistan as an independent state. He presented the country’s democratic forces with a tough decision — acquiesce to the brutality of the dictatorship or take over the streets and show the world where the people of Pakistan really stand.
General Musharraf also presented the democratic world — and especially the countries of the West — with a question. Will they back up their democratic rhetoric with concrete action, or will they once again back down in the face of his bluff?...
Op-Ed Columnist
Mushy: Handsome in Uniform
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON
President Bush came to the steps of the Capitol yesterday for a Second Inaugural do-over. Here is the text of his revised speech:
ON this day, when we celebrate the durable wisdom of our Constitution, we must remember: Constitutions don’t work for everyone. It’s not a one-size-fits-all type deal.
We are led, by recent events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the repression of liberty in other lands.
Once I thought my daddy was a wimp for cuddlin’ up real close with dictators, tradin’ stability for freedom. But now I gotta admit, that’s a darn fair trade. As I told Mushy last night on that cool, high-tech videophone I got in the Sit Room, the best hope for expanding peace is expanding dictators.
In America’s ideal of freedom, we are ennobled by a heart for the weak. But we must also have a heart for the strongmen.
Sometimes when the soul of a nation speaks, we must listen. But if that soul is housed in a bunch of trial lawyers wearing identical dark suits and calling my man Mushy a “dog,” I say, bring on the batons. Police tear-gassing lawyers is really just a foreign version of tort reform, which I support.
Those lawyers should be in jail. Mushy told me they were reckonin’ to represent Osama when General-General catches him. Which will be any day now. He’s a man of his word.
I don’t blame Mushy for dissolving that disloyal Supreme Court. When I needed to subvert the democratic process during the 2000 recount, my Supreme Court was totally supportive...
The $64,000 question is: “Why are we digging ourselves such a deep hole in the Middle East? With the $1 Trillion that we have blown in Iraq; we could have achieved energy independence by now.
Remember that show, The $64,000 Question? Nah, ya’ll are way too young for that.
This is for you. And don’t worry about water either. With all the cheap, reliable, electric power that will be available in the future; we can make plenty of fresh water with sea water desalinization plants.
By 2030, wind power could supply 20% of the power needs of the U.S. Denmark is the world’s leader in wind power; more than 5500 wind turbines off shore and on land provide 20% of Denmark’s power needs, with plans to expand to 50%. Denmark’s wind power industry is the world’s largest employing 20,000 people; 90% of the wind turbines produced are exported.
The tiny island of Samso with 4300 citizens became the focus of a government experiment in 1997. Could the island convert all energy to renewable sources in 10 years? The answer is yes. Using wind, solar and bio fuels, it’s not only carbon neutral, it is carbon negative.
On a West Texas ranch, you can see more Wind Turbines than in all Denmark, generating enough power to supply 1 million homes. The first turbines went up in 2001. Texas leads the western hemisphere in this technology.
Wave power has the advantage of being more predictable than wind power. By 2025, wave power could provide 10 GW of power, enough to power the entire state of Massachusetts.
the motion to kill the resolution has been voted down it seems- so i guess the resolution will proceed into vote (after alot of arguments of course) motion to reconsider is final
this is off topic a little, but i find it extraordinary that the bushies seem to be ignoring the jaield lawyers in pakistan, the mild rebuke for musharaff's most undemocratic actions in dismantling the constitution when it serves him.
his clear plans (continue) to be a dictator in pakistan-
to me, its like sadaam hussein all over again- supporting a dictator while claiming to be the beacon of freedom in the world
so is it a lead up to letting things get so bad in pakistan that the US (future neocon servants)
can at some point declare musharaff and paksitan itself a rogue danger to be bombed?
it seems like only a matter of time-
certainly pakistan is in a prime strategic location for future us troops to settle in-
i have to agree with you about egypt and saudi-
egypt has been humiliated enough, that would be the final straw in their camels back- and the saudis are trying for some credibility in the western world- but ot enough i think to alienate the entire muslim community.
but that doesnt mean there arent closed door agreements that we'll never know about.
look at the public face of bush compared with his actions.
Thanks for the great article Victoria. I like the saying at the beginning:
“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one striking at the root (Henry David Thoreau)”.
The root of evil is of course the Balfour Declaration that enabled the questionably legal, but definitely despicable and immoral, Israeli invasion and occupation of Palestine.
This horrendous mistake will be very difficult to reverse, but it is inevitable if there ever is to be peace in the region.
sharm al sheikh-
Incidentally, the demonization of Arafat has by no means stopped after his death. On the contrary, it goes on with great fervor. The Left and the Right in Israel , in heart-warming unity, declare in almost every article and TV talk-show that Arafat was the great obstacle to peace. Not the occupation. Not the settlements. Not the policy of Netanyahu-Barak-Sharon. Only Arafat. Fact: Arafat died and hopla – there is a conference.
The game played by Condoleezza Rice was especially amusing. She visited the Mukata’ah, where every stone shouts the name of Arafat. She did not lay a wreath on his grave – a minimal gesture of courtesy that would have won the hearts of the Palestinians. However, as a diplomatic compromise, she agreed to have her handshake with Abu Mazen photographed under the picture of Arafat.
So what does this all mean? I think that the David Brooks editorial serves us well in answering that question. The upcoming “Annapolis Peace Conference” is not about resolving the Israeli/Palestinian dispute. It is about bringing together the so called “moderates” (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and other Gulf States) to help the U.S. contain Iran.
In my humble opinion, it will fail. Iran, Syria and Shiite Iraq are on the side of justice and fighting the good fight against the imperialist U.S. and Israeli invaders/occupiers. The cause of the true and the just will win out.
Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other Gulf States will never side with US/Israel. If they did, the Arab Street would explode (which it will eventually anyway), and the corrupt rulers of these countries will be toast.
as long as the hamas is depicted as an 'islamist militant group", instead of the elected party and choice of the people of palestine in a transparent and freely run election-
[David Brooks is my favorite “conservative” columnist. He says that when he’s invited to the White House for a briefing with the other Real Conservative columnists, he is considered to be the flaming liberal of the group.]
Present at the Creation
DAVID BROOKS
Amman, Jordan
“What is Condi doing?
This is the question that’s been floating around foreign policy circles over the past few months. It is then followed by more specific questions: Why is Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spending her remaining time in office banging her head against the Israeli-Palestinian problem? Why has she bothered to make eight trips to the region this year? What can possibly be accomplished when the Israeli government is weak and the Palestinian society is divided?
It took a trip to the region for me to finally understand that this peace process is unlike any other. It’s not really about Israel and the Palestinians; it’s about Iran. Rice is constructing a coalition of the losing. There is a feeling among Arab and Israeli leaders that an Iran-Syria-Hezbollah-Hamas alliance is on the march. The nations that resist that alliance are in retreat. The peace process is an occasion to gather the “moderate” states and to construct what Martin Indyk of the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center calls an anti-Iran counter-alliance...”
“Iran has done what decades of peace proposals have not done — brought Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the Palestinians and the U.S. together. You can go to Jerusalem or to some Arab capitals and the diagnosis of the situation is the same:
Iran is gaining hegemonic strength over the region and is spreading tentacles of instability all around.
The Syrians, who have broken with the Sunni nations and attached themselves to Iran, are feeling stronger by the day. At least one-third of Iraq is under Iranian influence.
Hezbollah is better armed and more confident now than it was before its war against Israel. Hamas is being drawn closer inside the Iranian orbit and is more likely to take over the West Bank than lose its own base in Gaza.
In short, Iran is taking advantage of the region’s three civil wars and could have its proxy armies on Israel’s northern, western and southern borders.
Arab opinion, even in Sunni nations, is sympathetic to Iran. Egypt, which should serve as a counterbalance to Iran, is sclerotic and largely absent from the scene...”
“There are a few problems to overcome. The Saudis, as is their nature, are trying to play both sides, making supportive noises about the anti-Iran project without doing much to actually help.
Some “moderate” Arab autocrats have become soul brothers with Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharaff, and are lobbying America to betray its principles and not condemn him.
Finally, there is the peace process itself. There is remarkably little substance to it so far. Even people inside the Israeli and Palestinian governments are not sure what’s actually going to be negotiated and what can realistically be achieved. Moreover, it’s not clear that either of those governments can actually deliver anything. The Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, can sign deals, but it’s not clear that he controls events a block from his headquarters. Israeli Prime Minister Olmert can do the same, but his cabinet is hostile and his people are cynically disengaged.
The whole thing could backfire and leave the anti-Iranian cause in worse shape than ever. If that happens, then life will get really ugly for Rice. America’s friends in the region will try to flip Syria out of the Iranian orbit by offering it the re-conquest of Lebanon. Rice would then face a Faustian bargain — continue the struggle against Iran, but at the cost of her own principles.
Still, despite these perils, Rice is surely right to be trying something. She’s an admirer of former Secretary of State Dean Acheson and is now present at the creation of a containment policy across the Middle East. The Bush administration is not about to bomb Iran (trust me). It’s using diplomacy to build a coalition to balance it, and reverse an ugly tide.”
By ALI DARAGHMEH
The Associated Press
Tuesday, November 6, 2007; 2:42 AM
BALATA REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank -- Palestinian police who battled militants in the West Bank's biggest refugee camp for more than 12 hours withdrew early Tuesday with two suspects in custody and a vow that security forces would no longer shy away from entering militant strongholds.
The operation, in which a policeman and eight passers-by were wounded by gunfire, was the first major offensive in President Mahmoud Abbas' campaign to assert control over gunmen and persuade Israel he can implement a future peace deal.
For several years police had not dared patrol the four refugee camps in and around the city of Nablus or the old downtown market district, where armed militants held sway, but Nablus governor Jamal Mohsein said Tuesday that those days were now over.
"We shall post police in all the camps and in the Old City," he said. "In the future, nobody will be able to say that the police cannot go here or there."
The operation was launched around midday Monday as Abbas assured visiting Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that he had begun meeting his short-term peace obligations, including disarming militants and rounding up illegal weapons...”
“Some Al Aqsa gunmen have balked at handing over their weapons as part of the deal with Israel. During the second Palestinian uprising, which erupted in 2000, Nablus and Balata became increasingly lawless, and some gunmen involved in fighting Israeli soldiers also blackmailed and robbed local residents.
Last week, Abbas sent 300 extra policemen to Nablus, turning the city into a testing ground for his new security campaign. Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said that if the security forces can impose control in chaotic Nablus, they would gradually try to do the same in other West Bank cities.
Israel has raised doubts about Abbas' ability to control the West Bank and implement any peace deal, after his security forces were defeated in a few days of fighting with the Islamic militant group Hamas in Gaza in June...”
Olmert hopes Syria will attend Annapolis conference
By Jeffrey Heller
Reuters
Tuesday, November 6, 2007; 7:17 AM
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Tuesday he expected the United States would invite Syria to a U.S.-led conference on Palestinian statehood, calling the participation of Israel's long-time nemesis appropriate.
Olmert made no mention of any preconditions for Syrian attendance but appeared to issue a cautionary note to Damascus not to try to push the future of the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in a 1967 war, onto the meeting's agenda.
"I hope Syria and other Arab countries will participate," Olmert told reporters.
"Naturally, the issue at the centre of the agenda for this meeting is our relations with the Palestinians, which are part of the general relations in the Middle East," he said.
Syria, which hosts leaders of Hamas, a Palestinian Islamist movement that violently took control of the Gaza Strip in June and opposes President Mahmoud Abbas's peace efforts with Israel, has not decided whether to attend the conference...
Abbas Sees Palestinian State Soon Achievable
Leader Says Success Possible in Bush Term
By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 6, 2007; A14
RAMALLAH, West Bank, Nov. 5 -- Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said Monday that he believes the path to peace with Israel is now clear and that a Palestinian state can be achieved before the end of the Bush administration in January 2009.
Echoing a statement made Sunday night by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Abbas said that an upcoming peace conference in Annapolis would mark the start of serious negotiations over core issues that have posed insurmountable obstacles for decades -- the status of Jerusalem, the borders of Israel and Palestine, the removal of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the rights claimed by Palestinian refugees who left or were forced from their homes when the state of Israel was established.
Abbas praised Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's efforts and her "insistence on . . . concluding peace within the presidential term of Mr. Bush." Her persistence, he said, had turned the Annapolis conference into "a serious occasion to launch a genuine peace process."
The statements by the Israeli and Palestinian leaders exceeded Rice's most optimistic expectations for a diplomatic effort that appeared to be faltering as recently as last week. The leaders' agreement to attend the conference and their professed optimism are likely to open the door for Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, to take part.
"It is a historic time, a time of real opportunity," said Rice, standing alongside Abbas at a news conference here. The negotiations, she said, "could achieve their goal within the time remaining within the Bush administration."
Others, while claiming genuine progress, were less certain of where it would lead. One senior State Department official, recalling decades of dashed hopes, cautioned that "you never say never in the Middle East. You've always got to be ready for bad news."
The rapidly growing metropolis' 'cavalier' attitude toward conservation is the real problem, critics say.
By Jenny Jarvie
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
November 4, 2007
ATLANTA — …now that Lake Lanier, the reservoir that supplies drinking water to most of metropolitan Atlanta's 5 million residents, is draining to historic lows. With government officials issuing stark projections that Atlanta could run out of water within three months, Georgia politicians have pleaded with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to decrease the amount of water being released…
A break came Thursday in Georgia's 17-year water war with Florida and Alabama: The GOP governors of the three states agreed to reduce by 16% the amount of water released downriver from Lake Lanier, which would slow the drain on Atlanta's main water source…
Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, in opposing a request by Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue to President Bush to permit a reduced downstream flow, wrote in his own letter to Bush that Florida's $134-million commercial seafood industry depended on the water. Crist added that his state had acted responsibly in enacting water legislation. Alabama Gov. Bob Riley argues that downstream communities and a nuclear power plant in his state require water too…
Atlanta is not the only city grappling with water shortages. In 2003, a Government Accountability Office report on the nation's freshwater supply found that 36 states anticipated water shortages in the next decade…
interestingly rick, i just saw a report on droughy conditions in the southeast which has the city of atlanta(one of several) rationing water to 3 hours a day, with figures projecting that in 120 days there will be a major water shortage of crisis proportions.
the measures taken today will not impact this shortage, as its too little too late-
10:15 27 May 2004
Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition
Fred Pearce, Jerusalem
Israel has drawn up a secret plan for a giant desalination plant to supply drinking water to the Palestinian territory on the West Bank. It hopes the project will diminish pressure for it to grant any future Palestinian state greater access to the region's scarce supplies of fresh water.
Under an agreement signed a decade ago as part of the Oslo accord, four-fifths of the West Bank's water is allocated to Israel, though the aquifers that supply it are largely replenished by water falling onto Palestinian territory...
For Israelis, agreement on the future joint management of this aquifer is a prerequisite for granting Palestine statehood...
Water supply is one of the few areas where cooperation between Israel and Palestine has survived the current intifada. Every day on the West Bank, Palestinian engineers help repair and maintain Israeli water pipes, and vice versa.
But Palestinian water negotiators are deeply uneasy about the plans being drawn up on their behalf, especially if they involve abandoning claims to the water beneath their feet. "We cannot do that. We don't have the money or the expertise for desalination," Ihab Barghothi, head of water projects for the Palestinian Water Authority, told New Scientist.
Palestinians badly need more water. Under the Oslo agreement they have access to 57 cubic metres of water per person per year from all sources. Israel gets 246 cubic metres per head per year. And in the nearly 40 years that Israel has controlled the West Bank, Palestinians have been largely forbidden from drilling new wells or rehabilitating old ones...
“Water and Palestinian-Israeli Peace Negotiations,”
by Jad Isaac
Overview:
19 August 1999—The maldistribution of water in Israel and the Palestinian territories reflects an unequal balance of power rather than internationally formulated agreements or international law. Although water has been a major issue in the Oslo peace negotiations—starting with the Declaration of Principles signed by Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in September 1993—little progress has been made on the bilateral or multilateral negotiating tracks. While Israel recognized Palestinian water rights in the September 1995 Taba Agreement (Oslo II), that agreement reserves water as one of the issues to be addressed in the so-called “final status” negotiations. Thus far, however, those negotiations, which were to begin in May 1996 and conclude by 4 May 1999, have yet to start. Meanwhile, in this year of record drought, Israelis consume more than four times as much water as Palestinians do, including 80 percent of Palestinian ground water...
...Resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli water dispute should be governed by international law, which recognizes the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip as occupied territories. Israel is violating the Hague Regulations (1907) and the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949) by controlling and exploiting Palestinian natural resources.
Soon after the occupation began in June 1967, Israel imposed a number of military orders to control Palestinian water resources. Among them was Order No. 92, issued on 15 August 1967 by the Israeli military commander, stating that water was to be considered a strategic resource. Numerous other orders followed, extending complete Israeli control over Palestinian water resources. According to international law, Palestinian water rights include:
1. Absolute sovereignty over all the Eastern Aquifer resources, as this aquifer is completely located beneath the West Bank and is not a shared resource;...
Cristina is also really concerned about water issues. I wonder if they are having a shortage in her region of South America. Where is Cristina? Maybe we should send out a search party.
"Israelis are quick to draw a parallel to President Clinton’s peace push during the closing months of his administration in 2000, which collapsed and, many Israelis believe, led to the Palestinian intifada..."
id say its fair to compare the belated push by bush to clinton-
however- for ms. cooper to suggest that it was clinton's meeting with barak and arafat that led to the palestinian intifada is wildly revisionist-
sharon marching into the al quds mosque with 1000 armed guards while the people were at prayer on friday jumma was what led to the intifada-
also, i notice in these discussions about peace talks with paestinians/israelis, somehow people always neglect to mention one of the most contentious issues about which talks always break down at-
By Robert D. Novak
Monday, November 5, 2007; 8:16 AM
The timing of the release of the new documentary "Jimmy Carter: Man From Plains" was not intentional. The movie is arriving at theaters just before the Bush administration's proposed Middle East conference in Annapolis, scheduled for the end of this month. But the former president's clarity on the Palestinian question contrasts sharply with George W. Bush's refusal to face reality, casting a pall over hopes to conclude his presidency with a diplomatic triumph.
In the film, Carter repeatedly and unequivocally states what Palestinian and Israeli peace advocates view as undeniable: to achieve Israeli-Palestinian peace, with all its benefits for the world, Israel must end its illegal and oppressive occupation of the West Bank. That is a prerequisite that neither President Bush nor congressional leaders of both parties can approach for fear of being labeled anti-Israeli or even anti-Semitic (as Carter has been).
With the end to the occupation not on any participant's agenda, hopes for substantive accomplishment at Annapolis are dim. Testifying before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Oct. 24, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned of "further radicalization of Palestinian politics, of politics in the region" if "we lose the window for a two-state solution." But she did not mention the forbidden words of Israeli removal from the West Bank.
These words are not forbidden in "Man From Plains." I was surprised when a publicist for the movie invited me to a private screening in advance of its Washington debut Saturday. For the past 32 years, I had been a critic of Carter -- but not of his most recent and most attacked book, "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid."
The unusual documentary is mainly an account of Carter's travels promoting his 21st book. Normally, nothing would seem more boring than presentation of a book tour. But Jonathan Demme, the Academy Award-winning director of "The Silence of the Lambs," has produced a beautiful, fascinating film, whose two hours sped by.
Demme told me he intended the documentary to be a "portrait in motion" of the 83-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate, whom he greatly admires, "to find out what makes Jimmy Carter tick." But it became a condemnation of what Demme now calls "land-grabbing" from the "oppressed" Palestinian people.
The film is more assertive than the book, which tends to be prolix in recounting Carter's experiences with Israel. It was the word "apartheid" in the title that spawned instant accusations of anti-Semitism against the former president and led 14 members of the Carter Center's board of counselors to resign. Not until Page 215, near the end of the slim book, did Carter make it clear that the "policy now being followed" on the West Bank is "a system of apartheid with two peoples occupying the same land but completely separated from each other, with Israelis totally dominant and suppressing violence by depriving Palestinians of their basic rights."
In the movie, Carter repeatedly declares that Israel must end its occupation of Palestine
for peace to have a chance. The hecklers at his appearances and confused interviewers only provoke a stubborn Carter, who says chopping up the West Bank is actually worse than apartheid, just as Palestinian peace-seekers told me this year in Jerusalem.
A broader, more detailed analysis can be found in the newly updated American version of "Lords of the Land" by Professor Idith Zertal and leading Israeli columnist Akiva Eldar. This scathing account of the occupation, first published in Israel in 2005, declares that former prime minister Ariel Sharon's plan for a security wall was intended to "take hold of as much West Bank territory as possible and block the establishment of a viable Palestinian state."
As Israelis, Eldar and Zertal employ language that not even Carter dares use: "Israel's lofty demands that Palestinians strengthen their democracy and impose control on extremist organizations is ... nothing but deceptive talk covering its own deeds, which are aimed at achieving exactly the opposite -- of eroding Palestinian society."
In "Man From Plains," Carter goes further in this direction than any other prominent American has to date, and people who wander into a movie theater to see the film may be shocked. It raises questions that must at least be asked for the contemplated conference at Annapolis to have any chance.
Musharraf Declaration Seen as Latest Misstep
Risky Choice Fits Pattern in Efforts To Retain Power
By Griff Witte
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, November 5, 2007; A15
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 4 -- Gen. Pervez Musharraf prides himself, above all, on being a survivor.
But after a series of critical missteps this year that turned the courts and nearly the entire country against him, he decided last week that he had only one means of keeping his presidency alive: the extreme step of imposing de facto martial law, a risky choice that even his close advisers say could ultimately prove ruinous.
Musharraf only reluctantly took that step, loyalists say, after other options had been exhausted. But the move also fits a pattern of behavior for Musharraf, one in which the former commando has chosen to shoot his way out of tight situations, using force rather than finesse...
Of course it would be a hard sell to convince the Palestinians who actually owned (or lived on if Government owned) that 5% of Palestine. They would rightly say: "Why us?". Give them a piece of Great Britain!
I think that the Woodhead Commission that followed the Peel Commission had the responsible, honest approach, which was to allocate 5% of Palestine for the Jewish State.
“The British response was to set up the Woodhead Commission to "examine the Peel Commission plan in detail and to recommend an actual partition plan" [2] This Commission declared the Peel Commission partition unworkable (though suggesting a different scheme under which 5% of the land area of Palestine become Israel). The British Government accompanied the publication of the Woodhead Report by a statement of policy rejecting partition as impracticable [4]”
Ah yes, it's another fine morning and great to be alive! Good morning folks!
From today’s NY Times:
November 6, 2007
Deadline Set for Mideast Peace Process
By HELENE COOPER
RAMALLAH, West Bank, Nov. 5 — Israeli and Palestinian officials have given themselves to the end of President Bush’s administration to reach a comprehensive peace agreement, Israeli, Palestinian and American officials said today.
The deadline of just over a year from now — first laid out by the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, on Sunday night and then confirmed today by the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, gives a huge boost to the efforts of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to push the two sides toward a peace plan during her tenure. Mr. Abbas and Mr. Olmert indicated that the coming Middle East peace conference in Annapolis would begin substantive talks on the four contentious final status issues which have bedeviled peace negotiators since 1979...
... To be sure, Israeli and Arab officials say that Ms. Rice still has an uphill battle ahead of her; Israeli and Palestinian negotiators haven’t decided just how they will tackle the four final status issues: the status of Jerusalem, the contours of a Palestinian state, the removal of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and the fate of refugees who left, or were forced to leave, their homes as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.
Israeli officials said that there remains deep concern in Israel that Ms. Rice is pushing Israelis too hard and too fast, risking a collapse of the talks before they are under way. Israelis are quick to draw a parallel to President Clinton’s peace push during the closing months of his administration in 2000, which collapsed and, many Israelis believe, led to the Palestinian intifada...
I'm going to have to back off on the "acceptance" of the Peel Partition Plan by the Jewish population. Dershowitz ("Making A Case For Israel“, FrontPageMagazine.com) says:
“…Sure, I favored a two state solution. I've always favored a two state solution. Israel has always favored a two state solution, since 1937, when they accepted the Peel Commission report which would have given the Palestinians a long, contiguous state and the Jews a totally non-contiguous state. The Jews said yes and the Palestinians and Arabs said no…”
However, I cannot find any references to support his claim (which he makes elsewhere as well). I found a map from a pictorial guide to the Israeli-Palestinian history that said the Israelis reluctantly accepted the plan (again without references) but everything else seems to suggest (like Wikepedia) that the plan was rejected. I know that the partition of Palestine into two states was accepted in principle by the leaders of the Zionist movement.
“Ben-Gurion and Weizmann found themselves united in tentatively accepting the partition (Peel Commission) in principle but demanding larger, if unspecified, borders.”
I’ll post if I find out why Dershowitz believes the Palestinian Jewish population accepted the plan.
Yup, I guess it’s legal alright, but it’s certainly not just. I say that the Palestinians are fully within their rights to never give the occupiers a minute of peace.
Of course they are overpowered at present by the US/Israel alliance. But the Israelis and the U.S. will never know peace. We have over reached in Iraq as well as Palestine and are vulnerable to our dependence on Middle East oil. The hatred that we have engendered by our war on Islam is bound to come back to bite us.
We have driven Iraq into an alliance with Iran and strengthened the hand of Hamas and Hezbollah. The corrupt leaders of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other oil producers of the Gulf States who collaborate with the U.S. against the will of their people are in for a fall.
Musharraf has declared emergency rule, and his days are numbered. Pakistan with its nuclear weapons is about to explode.
We can’t afford the foreign wars that we are embroiled in so we borrow the money from China. China could easily defeat us by simply flooding the market with our worthless IOUs.
The topic of this thread “Are we heading for WW III?” seems to be very apropos.
Cheers! I apologize for my gloomy outlook tonight. I’m sure it will be all better in the morning.
I appreciate your complement but most of what I know is through discussions with people such as yourself or just reading. I have learned quite a bit from your post already and appreciate your position.
The British must have really regretted their decision to open up a major can of worms in settling the issues of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. In my opinion, when they left Palestine in 1948, that opened the door for the war that followed in which the Palestinians lost a lot of land.
The Balfour Declaration was made a part of the mandate set by the League of Nations, and that’s what makes it legally binding.
The Palestine Mandate
(July 24, 1922)
The Council of the League of Nations:
Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have agreed, for the purpose of giving effect to the provisions of Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, to entrust to a Mandatory selected by the said Powers the administration of the territory of Palestine, which formerly belonged to the Turkish Empire, within such boundaries as may be fixed by them; and
Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2nd, 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing nonJewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country; and
Whereas recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country; and…
…ARTICLE 2. The Mandatory shall be responsible for placing the country under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home, as laid down in the preamble, and the development of selfgoverning institutions, and also for safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine, irrespective of race and religion…
Readers’ Responses to Our Question (183)
Hi Victoria,
Thanks for the post. That Simon Wickens Overview of the Eruption of Mount Tambora is the best I’ve seen yet. I like the graphic of the “Ring of Fire” of volcanic activity around the joints of the tectonic plates. And the one showing the relative volume of ejecta for some historic eruptions is fascinating. The Yellowstone eruption of 600,000 B.C. produced 1200 times the ejecta from Mt. St. Helens in 1980, and 16 times the amount from Tambora in 1815 that caused the year with no summer in 1816.
Another super volcano eruption at Lake Toba, Sumatra, Indonesia only 75,000 was twice as great as Yellowstone and caused a volcanic winter that eradicated 60% of human life. Another eruption at La Garita Caldera, Colorado, 28 million years ago was 4 times as great as Yellowstone.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supervolcano
Here is a link to a 2005 BBC/Discovery Channel docudrama of a Yellowstone eruption.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supervolcano_%28docudrama%29
It’s awe inspiring and reminds us of how insignificant and fragile our existence is in view of the cataclysmic events that await us from within the Earth’s core and collisions from asteroids and comets from without. It helps us to put our little political problems into perspective.
If WWIII doesn't get us, something else will.
November 15, 2007 9:48 AM | Report Offensive Comments
hi rick- the other night i was watching the history channel and a show called 'a global warNing?'
it talked about an eruption in 1816 in tambora indonesia whose effects caused a winterlke atmosphere =here just read-
the year without summer-
http://geology.wcedu.pima.edu/~swickens/Tambora.html
But it was the enormous cloud of gas — some 400 million tons of it — released by the eruption that produced the "year without summer."
When the gas reacted with water vapor in the atmosphere, it formed tiny little droplets of sulfuric acid that became suspended in the stratosphere, creating a veil over the Earth, Sigurdsson says.
This veil of gas acted like a mirror, bouncing radiation back into space and decreasing the amount of heat that reached the Earth's surface, causing global cooling, he says.
what made me think of your post was the part of the show that dealt with yellowstone- a supervolcano-
the show stated that it erupts every 600,000 years, and is 40,000 years overdue.
it also said that a supereruption would cover an area of 3,000 square miles- this article says 7,772- http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/supervolcano/email/email_02.html
interesting sideline
November 15, 2007 1:59 AM | Report Offensive Comments
The previous article notes that Jews living in Arab countries were treated badly as well. But what should they expect after their highway robbery of Palestinian land?
November 10, 2007 11:34 AM | Report Offensive Comments
From today’s NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/05/world/middleeast/05nations.html?pagewanted=print
“November 5, 2007
Group Spotlights Jews Who Left Arab Lands
By WARREN HOGE
UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 2 — With assertions of the rights of Palestinians to reclaim land in Israel expected to arise at an planned Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, Md., a Jewish advocacy group has scheduled a meeting in New York on Monday to call attention to people it terms “forgotten refugees.”
The organizing group, Justice for Jews from Arab Countries, says it is referring to the more than 850,000 Jews who left their homes in Arab lands after the declaration of the state of Israel in 1948…”
“The next opportunity would be Nov. 29, the 60th anniversary of the partition vote, which is officially recognized by the United Nations as the International Day of Solidarity With the Palestinian People.
The United Nations says that 711,000 Palestinians left Israel-controlled territory in 1948 and 1949 and that today, along with their descendants, the number of Palestinian refugees is at least four million.
“There is mention, as there should be, of Palestinian refugees, but no mention of Jewish refugees,” Mr. Cotler said of the annual commemoration…”
November 10, 2007 11:10 AM | Report Offensive Comments
From today’s WP:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/09/AR2007110902573_pf.html
Oil Price Rise Causes Global Shift in Wealth
Iran, Russia and Venezuela Feel the Benefits
By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 10, 2007; A01
“High oil prices are fueling one of the biggest transfers of wealth in history. Oil consumers are paying $4 billion to $5 billion more for crude oil every day than they did just five years ago, pumping more than $2 trillion into the coffers of oil companies and oil-producing nations this year alone…”
“"There's never been anything like this on a sustained basis the way we've seen the last couple of years," said Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard University economics professor and former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. Oil prices "are not spiking; they're just rising," he added.
The benefits, to the tune of $700 billion a year, are flowing to the world's oil-exporting countries.
Two of those nations -- Iran and Venezuela -- may be better able to defy the Bush administration because of swelling oil revenue. Venezuela has used its oil wealth to dispense patronage around South America, vying for influence even with longtime U.S. allies. And Iran could be less vulnerable to sanctions designed to pressure it into giving up its nuclear program or opening it to inspection.”
November 10, 2007 10:33 AM | Report Offensive Comments
The topic is:
“Are We Heading for WWIII?
President Bush has talked about the danger of World War III if Iran doesn't stop its nuclear program. What do people think is the risk of war where you are?”
My answer is:
Yes, primarily because of our dependence on Mid East oil and our war on Islam.
If we had spent the $1 Trillion that we have squandered on the illegal and immoral preemptive invasion and occupation of Iraq on developing alternative energy sources instead, we would be well on out way to energy dependence, and would have dramatically reduced the likely of WWIII.
If we did not unconditionally support the illegal and immoral Israeli usurpation of Palestine from its rightful owners, the Palestinian people, we would not have not have enraged the Islamic world, and would not have served as the catalyst for a probable WWIII.
Tom Wonacott argues that the “State of Israel” is legal because of the Balfour Declaration and its inclusion by the League of Nations in the British Mandate following WWI. However, the Balfour Declaration was the British response to the lobbying influence of the powerful Jews Baron Rothschild and Barron Hirsch.
So as a spoil of war after WWI, and as a result of the lobbying influence of wealthy Jews on the British government, Palestine was taken away from its rightful owners, the Palestinian people who had tended their flocks and orchards and farmed this land for millennia, and given instead to the Jews.
In a like manner it was the lobbying influence of the powerful American Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC) that mislead us into the moronic and disastrous preemptive invasion and occupation of Iraq. The dual motives for this disaster were our greed to control the world’s second largest oil field combined with the Israelis fear and loathing of Saddam Hussein. These same motives are at work in pushing us to bomb Iran’s suspected nuclear facilities.
Until we develop a fair and balanced policy with respect to Palestine, develop energy independence, and free ourselves from the influence of the Jewish lobby, the likelihood starting WWIII will only increase.
November 10, 2007 10:02 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Off topic but interesting...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/08/AR2007110801336.html
As Yellowstone Bubbles, Experts Are Calm
By Joel Achenbach
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 9, 2007; Page A03
Something is stirring deep below the legendary hot springs and geysers of Yellowstone, the first and most famous national park in America -- and home to a huge volcanic caldron.
Parts of the park have been rising the past three years at a rate never before observed by scientists. They believe that magma -- molten rock -- is filling pores in the Earth's crust and causing a large swath of Yellowstone to rise like a pie in the oven...
Yellowstone bears close monitoring, scientists say, because it is prone to hydrothermal explosions, volcanic eruptions (the most recent occurred 70,000 years ago) and, once in a very long while, a super-eruption, a continent-scorching explosion that makes your average volcanic event seem like a hiccup. The most recent super-eruption at Yellowstone, 640,000 years ago, launched 240 cubic miles of material into the atmosphere, burying much of the American West in a layer of hot ash. By comparison, Mount St. Helens in 1980 spewed forth less than a quarter of a cubic mile of material.
A caldera is essentially a collapsed volcano...
November 9, 2007 10:07 AM | Report Offensive Comments
In today’s WP - I normally don’t agree with Krauthammer, but this time he makes sense:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/08/AR2007110801812_pf.html
Marcos . . . Pinochet . . . Musharraf?
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, November 9, 2007; A21
Islamist barbarians are at the gates. The president declares de facto martial law. The country's democratic forces of the center and left, led by well-dressed lawyers and a former prime minister, take to the streets.
What is America to do about Pakistan? Opposition leader Benazir Bhutto knows just how to appeal to America. In a New York Times op-ed, she quoted President Bush back to himself: "All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: The United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you."
Bhutto (Harvard '73) is a good student of American politics. She caught Bush's democratic messianism at its apogee, the same inaugural address in which he set "the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world."...
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice attempted to engineer a marriage of these two factions by trying to orchestrate Bhutto's return to Pakistan under a power-sharing agreement that Musharraf has just blown to pieces.
Our influence should not be overestimated. But we need to make clear our choices. The best among the awful ones Musharraf has presented to us is to try to broker a truce between the two forces before the blood starts to flow, keep Musharraf to his promise of holding early parliamentary elections -- which Bhutto will win -- and then guarantee him a dignified and gradual exit that ensures his protection while Bhutto and her allies claim legitimate authority and try to reach an accommodation with Musharraf's successor as military chief.
It's a long downfield pass. But Musharraf never consulted us on the choice of plays.
November 9, 2007 9:46 AM | Report Offensive Comments
i have to mention that zionists claims of having religious ties to israel are no true.
the founding zionists were all atheists to a man.
November 8, 2007 11:20 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Hello Tom,
Yup, it ain't pretty. I agree it's hard to imagine the Israelis giving up and moving out; but equally as hard to imagine the Palestinians forgiving and forgetting. I guess it will just be the survival of the fittest. I just wish my tax dollars weren’t being used to stack the deck in favor of the Israelis.
Yes the Israelis think they are God’s chosen people, and this land was promised to them; all the more reason they should be summarily booted out of the region.
November 8, 2007 7:18 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Rick
"However, the UN document at the following link makes clear that the British had no right to promise Palestine to the Jews, had promised the same land to both the Jews and to the Palestinians, and that this duplicity is responsible for the current conflict in Palestine that has been raging since prior to the 1947 U.N. Partition and since the Balfour Declaration:"
What is legal and what is fair or right are different concepts. Who could doubt that OJ Simpson is guilty of murder, but legally he was found innocent.
Zionist believe that the land of Israel is historically their land, and they have strong religious and historic ties to the land and to cities such as Jerusalem. Jews (before 1949) were found throughout the Middle East including Palestine. As you have pointed out, Palestinian people have been farming and raising livestock for hundreds of years in the land of Palestine.
Many Israelis would like to incorporate the entire West Bank while many Palestinians (as well as other Arabs and Persians) believe this is ALL Muslim land. Neither the one state solution as is favored by radical Islam or additional building of new settlements by the Israelis will bring peace. It seems tenuous under the best of circumstances that peace will come to this region anyway (and probably not at Annapolis), but what chance there is lies in the two state solution, at least in my opinion.
November 8, 2007 6:23 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Who is kidding whom? There will be no peace in the Middle East (or the world) until the Zionist invaders are pulled out of Palestine and transported to their new homeland in Texas.
From today’s WP:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/07/AR2007110702073.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
If This Peace Process Fails
By Jackson Diehl
Thursday, November 8, 2007; A27
JERUSALEM -- In a bold speech broadcast on national television Sunday night, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert explicitly overturned the judgments that have guided Israeli governments for the past seven years. Israel, he said, does have a worthy negotiating partner in the Palestinian Authority. It cannot afford to postpone negotiations or drag its feet in endless talks. "Real accomplishments" are possible before President Bush leaves office. "We will not avoid fulfilling our own obligations" -- such as dismantling West Bank settlements -- "to the letter," Olmert said, " . . . no matter how difficult it is."...
For the next several days, Israel's talk radio and op-ed pages converged on a single subject -- but it was not Olmert's groundbreaking speech. Instead, the buzz was all about something that took place at a soccer game in Haifa while Olmert was speaking. Before the game began, an announcer asked for a moment of silence in honor of former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, who led Israel toward peace in the early 1990s before being assassinated on Nov. 4, 1995. Hundreds in the crowd, most of them supporters of the visiting Jerusalem team, responded with boos; some began lustily singing songs in honor of Yigal Amir, the man who murdered him.
The message drawn from this episode by Israeli security officials, as well as pundits, was grim: The return Olmert signaled to an aggressive pursuit of a final peace with Palestinians also will mean the comeback of the ugly and potentially violent resistance from Israel's far right. The soccer game wasn't the only sign. Posters showing Israeli President Shimon Peres, another peace advocate, wearing an Arab headdress have appeared on walls around Jerusalem this week, an explicit echo of the propaganda that preceded the attack on Rabin 12 years ago...
November 8, 2007 6:08 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Hi Victoria,
Is President Bush getting ready to extend his term of office indefinitely? With a 31% approval rating (lower than Nixon) you’d think he’d been anxious to get out of town and back to Crawford.
November 8, 2007 5:38 PM | Report Offensive Comments
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55824
i should have specified-
this is about directive 51 from may this year which gives bush emergency powers to suspend the constitution among other things-
November 8, 2007 4:14 PM | Report Offensive Comments
again off topic-
ill give the link to the post on the pakistan question- i dont want to interrupt the flow here too much-
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/postglobal/2007/11/worlds_most_dangerous_country/comments.html#comments
November 7, 2007 1:42 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Tom Wonacott,
I understand your position that: “The Balfour Declaration was made a part of the mandate set by the League of Nations, and that’s what makes it legally binding”...
However, the UN document at the following link makes clear that the British had no right to promise Palestine to the Jews, had promised the same land to both the Jews and to the Palestinians, and that this duplicity is responsible for the current conflict in Palestine that has been raging since prior to the 1947 U.N. Partition and since the Balfour Declaration:
http://domino.un.org/unispal.nsf/cf02d057b04d356385256ddb006dc02f/aeac80e740c782e4852561150071fdb0!OpenDocument
“These assurances appear in correspondence 2/ during 1915-1916 between Sir Henry McMahon, British High Commissioner in Egypt, and Sherif Husain, Emir of Mecca, who held the special status of the Keeper of Islam's most holy cities. He thus acted as a representative of the Arab peoples, although not exercising formal political suzerainty over them all...”
“In 1939, shortly after the Husain-McMahon papers were made public, a committee consisting of both British and Arab representatives was set up to consider this specific issue...”
“These acknowledgements that the British Government had not possessed the right "to dispose of Palestine" appeared decades after the commitments to the Arabs not only had been infringed by the Sykes-Picot agreement but, in disregard of the inherent rights and the wishes of the Palestinian people, the British Government had given Zionist leaders separate assurances regarding the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people in Palestine", an undertaking that sowed the seeds of prolonged conflict in Palestine.”
November 7, 2007 1:12 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Thanks for the links Victoria. No, I was not aware of Mr. Levy. He seems to be reasonable. I will follow his reports in the future.
November 7, 2007 12:57 PM | Report Offensive Comments
going off topic as ususal rick- but are you familiar with the journalist gideon levy?
i discovered him on a documentary on machsomwath (checkpoint watch) a watchdog group of israeli women who camp out at palestinian checkpoints and monitor abuses
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/917818.html
http://www.machsomwatch.org/eng/homePageEng.asp?link=homePage&lang=eng
November 7, 2007 10:38 AM | Report Offensive Comments
also in that op-ed by bhutto she said-
I recall the words of President Bush in his second inaugural address when he said: “All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not IGNORE your oppression, or EXCUSEyour oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, WE WILL STAND WITH YOU.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/07/opinion/07bhutto.html
the day before yesterday i saw bush proclaim to musharraf to take his uniform off-
later musharaff gave a short press conference wearing a nehru style jacket-
if mushy takes bushys fashion advice, why doesnt bushy push it and give some advice on democracy?
November 7, 2007 10:12 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Here’s a David Ignatius editorial comparing Pakistan today to Iran 30 years ago in today’s WP:
In Pakistan, Echoes of Iran
By David Ignatius
Wednesday, November 7, 2007; A21
JERUSALEM -- As we struggle to make sense of the current political crisis in Pakistan, it's useful to think back nearly 30 years to the wave of protests that toppled the shah of Iran and culminated in the Islamic Republic -- a revolutionary earthquake whose tremors are still shaking the Middle East.
The shah was America's friend, just like Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. He was our staunch ally against the bogeyman of that time, the Soviet Union, just as Musharraf has been America's partner in fighting al-Qaeda. The shah ignored America's admonitions to clean up his undemocratic regime, just as Musharraf has. And as the shah's troubles deepened, the United States hoped that moderate opposition leaders would keep the country safe from Muslim zealots, just as we are now hoping in Pakistan.
And yet the Iranian explosion came -- a firestorm of rage that immolated any attempt at moderation or compromise. A similar process of upheaval has begun in Pakistan -- with one terrifying difference: Pakistan has nuclear weapons.
The Iran analogy was made forcefully two weeks ago by Gary Sick, a Columbia professor who helped oversee Iran policy for the Carter administration during the time of the revolution. "There was no Plan B," Sick wrote in an online posting. He sees the same dynamic at work in Pakistan. "We have bet the farm on one man -- in this case Pervez Musharraf -- and we have no fall-back position, no alternative strategy in the event that does not work."
So ask yourself: What Iran policy would have made sense, in hindsight, given the ruinous consequences of the Iranian revolution? Should the United States have encouraged the shah to crack down harder against protesters and ride out the storm, as some hard-liners urged at the time? Or should it have moved more quickly to encourage a change of regime, after it became obvious the shah couldn't or wouldn't reform?
Even now, almost 30 years later, it's hard to know what we should have done. And perhaps that's the point...
November 7, 2007 8:52 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Here’s a NY Times editorial by Benazir Bhutto.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/07/opinion/07bhutto.html?hp=&pagewanted=print
November 7, 2007
Op-Ed Contributor
Musharraf’s Martial Plan
By BENAZIR BHUTTO
Islamabad, Pakistan
NOV. 3, 2007, will be remembered as the blackest day in the history of Pakistan. Let us be perfectly clear: Pakistan is a military dictatorship. Last Saturday, Gen. Pervez Musharraf removed all pretense of a transition to democracy by conducting what was in effect yet another extraconstitutional coup.
In doing so he endangered the viability of Pakistan as an independent state. He presented the country’s democratic forces with a tough decision — acquiesce to the brutality of the dictatorship or take over the streets and show the world where the people of Pakistan really stand.
General Musharraf also presented the democratic world — and especially the countries of the West — with a question. Will they back up their democratic rhetoric with concrete action, or will they once again back down in the face of his bluff?...
November 7, 2007 8:40 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Hi Victoria,
Here’s a column from your NY Times this morning:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/07/opinion/07dowd.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
November 7, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
Mushy: Handsome in Uniform
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON
President Bush came to the steps of the Capitol yesterday for a Second Inaugural do-over. Here is the text of his revised speech:
ON this day, when we celebrate the durable wisdom of our Constitution, we must remember: Constitutions don’t work for everyone. It’s not a one-size-fits-all type deal.
We are led, by recent events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the repression of liberty in other lands.
Once I thought my daddy was a wimp for cuddlin’ up real close with dictators, tradin’ stability for freedom. But now I gotta admit, that’s a darn fair trade. As I told Mushy last night on that cool, high-tech videophone I got in the Sit Room, the best hope for expanding peace is expanding dictators.
In America’s ideal of freedom, we are ennobled by a heart for the weak. But we must also have a heart for the strongmen.
Sometimes when the soul of a nation speaks, we must listen. But if that soul is housed in a bunch of trial lawyers wearing identical dark suits and calling my man Mushy a “dog,” I say, bring on the batons. Police tear-gassing lawyers is really just a foreign version of tort reform, which I support.
Those lawyers should be in jail. Mushy told me they were reckonin’ to represent Osama when General-General catches him. Which will be any day now. He’s a man of his word.
I don’t blame Mushy for dissolving that disloyal Supreme Court. When I needed to subvert the democratic process during the 2000 recount, my Supreme Court was totally supportive...
November 7, 2007 8:21 AM | Report Offensive Comments
The $64,000 question is: “Why are we digging ourselves such a deep hole in the Middle East? With the $1 Trillion that we have blown in Iraq; we could have achieved energy independence by now.
Remember that show, The $64,000 Question? Nah, ya’ll are way too young for that.
November 6, 2007 9:02 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Cristina,
This is for you. And don’t worry about water either. With all the cheap, reliable, electric power that will be available in the future; we can make plenty of fresh water with sea water desalinization plants.
Here’s the link to the NBC wind power video:
http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-US&brand=msnbc&vid=6266fa18-666b-4d02-9a38-952858230437
By 2030, wind power could supply 20% of the power needs of the U.S. Denmark is the world’s leader in wind power; more than 5500 wind turbines off shore and on land provide 20% of Denmark’s power needs, with plans to expand to 50%. Denmark’s wind power industry is the world’s largest employing 20,000 people; 90% of the wind turbines produced are exported.
The tiny island of Samso with 4300 citizens became the focus of a government experiment in 1997. Could the island convert all energy to renewable sources in 10 years? The answer is yes. Using wind, solar and bio fuels, it’s not only carbon neutral, it is carbon negative.
On a West Texas ranch, you can see more Wind Turbines than in all Denmark, generating enough power to supply 1 million homes. The first turbines went up in 2001. Texas leads the western hemisphere in this technology.
Here's the link to the NBC wave power video:
http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-US&brand=msnbc&vid=1c9f32ef-9a20-43a5-a23f-b4c798189bdf
Wave power has the advantage of being more predictable than wind power. By 2025, wave power could provide 10 GW of power, enough to power the entire state of Massachusetts.
November 6, 2007 8:48 PM | Report Offensive Comments
the motion to kill the resolution has been voted down it seems- so i guess the resolution will proceed into vote (after alot of arguments of course) motion to reconsider is final
November 6, 2007 4:03 PM | Report Offensive Comments
the motion to kill the resolution has been voted down it seems- so i guess the resolution will proceed into vote (after alot of arguments of course)
November 6, 2007 4:01 PM | Report Offensive Comments
http://kucinich.house.gov/Issues/Issue/?IssueID=3750
also misleading congress into going into another war with iran
November 6, 2007 3:30 PM | Report Offensive Comments
c-span dennis kucinich has just proposed a resolution to impeach dick cheney for high crimes and misdemeanors
fabricating a threat of wmds to go to war with iraq
actively sought to deceive citizens of us
2-22-2002 press conference
2-19-2002
2-24-2002 cnn late edition interview
5-19-2002 meet the press
(?)26-2003 vfw 103rd conventional
9-8-2002 meet the press
nbc meet the press
3-16-2003 meet the press
trips to CIA with libby questioning results
sought out unverfied evidence to influence intellegence
corrupted national intelligence estimate
10-1-2002
to authorize use of force congressional vote
dissenting view by NIE
they are currently voting to table (kill) the resolution which was immediately raised
claims of uranium in africa- highly dubious
wow-
November 6, 2007 3:12 PM | Report Offensive Comments
ill keep an eye out for mr brooks-
this is off topic a little, but i find it extraordinary that the bushies seem to be ignoring the jaield lawyers in pakistan, the mild rebuke for musharaff's most undemocratic actions in dismantling the constitution when it serves him.
his clear plans (continue) to be a dictator in pakistan-
to me, its like sadaam hussein all over again- supporting a dictator while claiming to be the beacon of freedom in the world
so is it a lead up to letting things get so bad in pakistan that the US (future neocon servants)
can at some point declare musharaff and paksitan itself a rogue danger to be bombed?
it seems like only a matter of time-
certainly pakistan is in a prime strategic location for future us troops to settle in-
i have to agree with you about egypt and saudi-
egypt has been humiliated enough, that would be the final straw in their camels back- and the saudis are trying for some credibility in the western world- but ot enough i think to alienate the entire muslim community.
but that doesnt mean there arent closed door agreements that we'll never know about.
look at the public face of bush compared with his actions.
im reading all your links BTW
peace
November 6, 2007 11:49 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Thanks for the great article Victoria. I like the saying at the beginning:
“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one striking at the root (Henry David Thoreau)”.
The root of evil is of course the Balfour Declaration that enabled the questionably legal, but definitely despicable and immoral, Israeli invasion and occupation of Palestine.
This horrendous mistake will be very difficult to reverse, but it is inevitable if there ever is to be peace in the region.
November 6, 2007 10:47 AM | Report Offensive Comments
past failed "talks"
sharm al sheikh-
Incidentally, the demonization of Arafat has by no means stopped after his death. On the contrary, it goes on with great fervor. The Left and the Right in Israel , in heart-warming unity, declare in almost every article and TV talk-show that Arafat was the great obstacle to peace. Not the occupation. Not the settlements. Not the policy of Netanyahu-Barak-Sharon. Only Arafat. Fact: Arafat died and hopla – there is a conference.
The game played by Condoleezza Rice was especially amusing. She visited the Mukata’ah, where every stone shouts the name of Arafat. She did not lay a wreath on his grave – a minimal gesture of courtesy that would have won the hearts of the Palestinians. However, as a diplomatic compromise, she agreed to have her handshake with Abu Mazen photographed under the picture of Arafat.
http://www.strike-the-root.com/51/avnery/avnery5.html
November 6, 2007 10:17 AM | Report Offensive Comments
You are right on, Victoria.
So what does this all mean? I think that the David Brooks editorial serves us well in answering that question. The upcoming “Annapolis Peace Conference” is not about resolving the Israeli/Palestinian dispute. It is about bringing together the so called “moderates” (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and other Gulf States) to help the U.S. contain Iran.
In my humble opinion, it will fail. Iran, Syria and Shiite Iraq are on the side of justice and fighting the good fight against the imperialist U.S. and Israeli invaders/occupiers. The cause of the true and the just will win out.
Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other Gulf States will never side with US/Israel. If they did, the Arab Street would explode (which it will eventually anyway), and the corrupt rulers of these countries will be toast.
November 6, 2007 10:10 AM | Report Offensive Comments
i think, rick, you will appreciate this journalist, he is an israeli peace activist named uri avnery
http://www.strike-the-root.com/archive/avnery.html
November 6, 2007 10:09 AM | Report Offensive Comments
as long as the hamas is depicted as an 'islamist militant group", instead of the elected party and choice of the people of palestine in a transparent and freely run election-
does anyone hold any real hope here?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4651056.stm
November 6, 2007 9:57 AM | Report Offensive Comments
From today’s NY Times:
[David Brooks is my favorite “conservative” columnist. He says that when he’s invited to the White House for a briefing with the other Real Conservative columnists, he is considered to be the flaming liberal of the group.]
Present at the Creation
DAVID BROOKS
Amman, Jordan
“What is Condi doing?
This is the question that’s been floating around foreign policy circles over the past few months. It is then followed by more specific questions: Why is Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spending her remaining time in office banging her head against the Israeli-Palestinian problem? Why has she bothered to make eight trips to the region this year? What can possibly be accomplished when the Israeli government is weak and the Palestinian society is divided?
It took a trip to the region for me to finally understand that this peace process is unlike any other. It’s not really about Israel and the Palestinians; it’s about Iran. Rice is constructing a coalition of the losing. There is a feeling among Arab and Israeli leaders that an Iran-Syria-Hezbollah-Hamas alliance is on the march. The nations that resist that alliance are in retreat. The peace process is an occasion to gather the “moderate” states and to construct what Martin Indyk of the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center calls an anti-Iran counter-alliance...”
“Iran has done what decades of peace proposals have not done — brought Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the Palestinians and the U.S. together. You can go to Jerusalem or to some Arab capitals and the diagnosis of the situation is the same:
Iran is gaining hegemonic strength over the region and is spreading tentacles of instability all around.
The Syrians, who have broken with the Sunni nations and attached themselves to Iran, are feeling stronger by the day. At least one-third of Iraq is under Iranian influence.
Hezbollah is better armed and more confident now than it was before its war against Israel. Hamas is being drawn closer inside the Iranian orbit and is more likely to take over the West Bank than lose its own base in Gaza.
In short, Iran is taking advantage of the region’s three civil wars and could have its proxy armies on Israel’s northern, western and southern borders.
Arab opinion, even in Sunni nations, is sympathetic to Iran. Egypt, which should serve as a counterbalance to Iran, is sclerotic and largely absent from the scene...”
“There are a few problems to overcome. The Saudis, as is their nature, are trying to play both sides, making supportive noises about the anti-Iran project without doing much to actually help.
Some “moderate” Arab autocrats have become soul brothers with Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharaff, and are lobbying America to betray its principles and not condemn him.
Finally, there is the peace process itself. There is remarkably little substance to it so far. Even people inside the Israeli and Palestinian governments are not sure what’s actually going to be negotiated and what can realistically be achieved. Moreover, it’s not clear that either of those governments can actually deliver anything. The Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, can sign deals, but it’s not clear that he controls events a block from his headquarters. Israeli Prime Minister Olmert can do the same, but his cabinet is hostile and his people are cynically disengaged.
The whole thing could backfire and leave the anti-Iranian cause in worse shape than ever. If that happens, then life will get really ugly for Rice. America’s friends in the region will try to flip Syria out of the Iranian orbit by offering it the re-conquest of Lebanon. Rice would then face a Faustian bargain — continue the struggle against Iran, but at the cost of her own principles.
Still, despite these perils, Rice is surely right to be trying something. She’s an admirer of former Secretary of State Dean Acheson and is now present at the creation of a containment policy across the Middle East. The Bush administration is not about to bomb Iran (trust me). It’s using diplomacy to build a coalition to balance it, and reverse an ugly tide.”
November 6, 2007 9:43 AM | Report Offensive Comments
In today’s WP:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/05/AR2007110500908_pf.html
“Palestinian Police Seal Refugee Camp
By ALI DARAGHMEH
The Associated Press
Tuesday, November 6, 2007; 2:42 AM
BALATA REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank -- Palestinian police who battled militants in the West Bank's biggest refugee camp for more than 12 hours withdrew early Tuesday with two suspects in custody and a vow that security forces would no longer shy away from entering militant strongholds.
The operation, in which a policeman and eight passers-by were wounded by gunfire, was the first major offensive in President Mahmoud Abbas' campaign to assert control over gunmen and persuade Israel he can implement a future peace deal.
For several years police had not dared patrol the four refugee camps in and around the city of Nablus or the old downtown market district, where armed militants held sway, but Nablus governor Jamal Mohsein said Tuesday that those days were now over.
"We shall post police in all the camps and in the Old City," he said. "In the future, nobody will be able to say that the police cannot go here or there."
The operation was launched around midday Monday as Abbas assured visiting Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that he had begun meeting his short-term peace obligations, including disarming militants and rounding up illegal weapons...”
“Some Al Aqsa gunmen have balked at handing over their weapons as part of the deal with Israel. During the second Palestinian uprising, which erupted in 2000, Nablus and Balata became increasingly lawless, and some gunmen involved in fighting Israeli soldiers also blackmailed and robbed local residents.
Last week, Abbas sent 300 extra policemen to Nablus, turning the city into a testing ground for his new security campaign. Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said that if the security forces can impose control in chaotic Nablus, they would gradually try to do the same in other West Bank cities.
Israel has raised doubts about Abbas' ability to control the West Bank and implement any peace deal, after his security forces were defeated in a few days of fighting with the Islamic militant group Hamas in Gaza in June...”
November 6, 2007 8:56 AM | Report Offensive Comments
In today’s WP:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/06/AR2007110600464.html
Olmert hopes Syria will attend Annapolis conference
By Jeffrey Heller
Reuters
Tuesday, November 6, 2007; 7:17 AM
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Tuesday he expected the United States would invite Syria to a U.S.-led conference on Palestinian statehood, calling the participation of Israel's long-time nemesis appropriate.
Olmert made no mention of any preconditions for Syrian attendance but appeared to issue a cautionary note to Damascus not to try to push the future of the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in a 1967 war, onto the meeting's agenda.
"I hope Syria and other Arab countries will participate," Olmert told reporters.
"Naturally, the issue at the centre of the agenda for this meeting is our relations with the Palestinians, which are part of the general relations in the Middle East," he said.
Syria, which hosts leaders of Hamas, a Palestinian Islamist movement that violently took control of the Gaza Strip in June and opposes President Mahmoud Abbas's peace efforts with Israel, has not decided whether to attend the conference...
November 6, 2007 8:21 AM | Report Offensive Comments
In today’s WP:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/05/AR2007110500200.html
Abbas Sees Palestinian State Soon Achievable
Leader Says Success Possible in Bush Term
By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 6, 2007; A14
RAMALLAH, West Bank, Nov. 5 -- Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said Monday that he believes the path to peace with Israel is now clear and that a Palestinian state can be achieved before the end of the Bush administration in January 2009.
Echoing a statement made Sunday night by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Abbas said that an upcoming peace conference in Annapolis would mark the start of serious negotiations over core issues that have posed insurmountable obstacles for decades -- the status of Jerusalem, the borders of Israel and Palestine, the removal of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the rights claimed by Palestinian refugees who left or were forced from their homes when the state of Israel was established.
Abbas praised Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's efforts and her "insistence on . . . concluding peace within the presidential term of Mr. Bush." Her persistence, he said, had turned the Annapolis conference into "a serious occasion to launch a genuine peace process."
The statements by the Israeli and Palestinian leaders exceeded Rice's most optimistic expectations for a diplomatic effort that appeared to be faltering as recently as last week. The leaders' agreement to attend the conference and their professed optimism are likely to open the door for Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, to take part.
"It is a historic time, a time of real opportunity," said Rice, standing alongside Abbas at a news conference here. The negotiations, she said, "could achieve their goal within the time remaining within the Bush administration."
Others, while claiming genuine progress, were less certain of where it would lead. One senior State Department official, recalling decades of dashed hopes, cautioned that "you never say never in the Middle East. You've always got to be ready for bad news."
November 6, 2007 8:05 AM | Report Offensive Comments
thanks for the articles rick-
ive been on the turkish blog with amar bakshi
tomorrow he goes to lebanon, so some of these issues are sure to arise
November 6, 2007 12:26 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Yup, here’s the report in the LA Times:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-drought4nov04,0,5428439.story?coll=la-headlines-nation
From the Los Angeles Times
Atlanta water use is called shortsighted
The rapidly growing metropolis' 'cavalier' attitude toward conservation is the real problem, critics say.
By Jenny Jarvie
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
November 4, 2007
ATLANTA — …now that Lake Lanier, the reservoir that supplies drinking water to most of metropolitan Atlanta's 5 million residents, is draining to historic lows. With government officials issuing stark projections that Atlanta could run out of water within three months, Georgia politicians have pleaded with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to decrease the amount of water being released…
A break came Thursday in Georgia's 17-year water war with Florida and Alabama: The GOP governors of the three states agreed to reduce by 16% the amount of water released downriver from Lake Lanier, which would slow the drain on Atlanta's main water source…
Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, in opposing a request by Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue to President Bush to permit a reduced downstream flow, wrote in his own letter to Bush that Florida's $134-million commercial seafood industry depended on the water. Crist added that his state had acted responsibly in enacting water legislation. Alabama Gov. Bob Riley argues that downstream communities and a nuclear power plant in his state require water too…
Atlanta is not the only city grappling with water shortages. In 2003, a Government Accountability Office report on the nation's freshwater supply found that 36 states anticipated water shortages in the next decade…
November 5, 2007 6:39 PM | Report Offensive Comments
interestingly rick, i just saw a report on droughy conditions in the southeast which has the city of atlanta(one of several) rationing water to 3 hours a day, with figures projecting that in 120 days there will be a major water shortage of crisis proportions.
the measures taken today will not impact this shortage, as its too little too late-
November 5, 2007 4:06 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Here is another more recent article:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn5037.html
Israel lays claim to Palestine's water
10:15 27 May 2004
Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition
Fred Pearce, Jerusalem
Israel has drawn up a secret plan for a giant desalination plant to supply drinking water to the Palestinian territory on the West Bank. It hopes the project will diminish pressure for it to grant any future Palestinian state greater access to the region's scarce supplies of fresh water.
Under an agreement signed a decade ago as part of the Oslo accord, four-fifths of the West Bank's water is allocated to Israel, though the aquifers that supply it are largely replenished by water falling onto Palestinian territory...
For Israelis, agreement on the future joint management of this aquifer is a prerequisite for granting Palestine statehood...
Water supply is one of the few areas where cooperation between Israel and Palestine has survived the current intifada. Every day on the West Bank, Palestinian engineers help repair and maintain Israeli water pipes, and vice versa.
But Palestinian water negotiators are deeply uneasy about the plans being drawn up on their behalf, especially if they involve abandoning claims to the water beneath their feet. "We cannot do that. We don't have the money or the expertise for desalination," Ihab Barghothi, head of water projects for the Palestinian Water Authority, told New Scientist.
Palestinians badly need more water. Under the Oslo agreement they have access to 57 cubic metres of water per person per year from all sources. Israel gets 246 cubic metres per head per year. And in the nearly 40 years that Israel has controlled the West Bank, Palestinians have been largely forbidden from drilling new wells or rehabilitating old ones...
November 5, 2007 4:03 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Hi Victoria,
Here’s a link to an old 1999 article on the water issue:
http://www.palestinecenter.org/cpap/pubs/19990819pb.html
“Water and Palestinian-Israeli Peace Negotiations,”
by Jad Isaac
Overview:
19 August 1999—The maldistribution of water in Israel and the Palestinian territories reflects an unequal balance of power rather than internationally formulated agreements or international law. Although water has been a major issue in the Oslo peace negotiations—starting with the Declaration of Principles signed by Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in September 1993—little progress has been made on the bilateral or multilateral negotiating tracks. While Israel recognized Palestinian water rights in the September 1995 Taba Agreement (Oslo II), that agreement reserves water as one of the issues to be addressed in the so-called “final status” negotiations. Thus far, however, those negotiations, which were to begin in May 1996 and conclude by 4 May 1999, have yet to start. Meanwhile, in this year of record drought, Israelis consume more than four times as much water as Palestinians do, including 80 percent of Palestinian ground water...
...Resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli water dispute should be governed by international law, which recognizes the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip as occupied territories. Israel is violating the Hague Regulations (1907) and the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949) by controlling and exploiting Palestinian natural resources.
Soon after the occupation began in June 1967, Israel imposed a number of military orders to control Palestinian water resources. Among them was Order No. 92, issued on 15 August 1967 by the Israeli military commander, stating that water was to be considered a strategic resource. Numerous other orders followed, extending complete Israeli control over Palestinian water resources. According to international law, Palestinian water rights include:
1. Absolute sovereignty over all the Eastern Aquifer resources, as this aquifer is completely located beneath the West Bank and is not a shared resource;...
Cristina is also really concerned about water issues. I wonder if they are having a shortage in her region of South America. Where is Cristina? Maybe we should send out a search party.
November 5, 2007 3:41 PM | Report Offensive Comments
hi rick- from your ny times article
"Israelis are quick to draw a parallel to President Clinton’s peace push during the closing months of his administration in 2000, which collapsed and, many Israelis believe, led to the Palestinian intifada..."
id say its fair to compare the belated push by bush to clinton-
however- for ms. cooper to suggest that it was clinton's meeting with barak and arafat that led to the palestinian intifada is wildly revisionist-
sharon marching into the al quds mosque with 1000 armed guards while the people were at prayer on friday jumma was what led to the intifada-
also, i notice in these discussions about peace talks with paestinians/israelis, somehow people always neglect to mention one of the most contentious issues about which talks always break down at-
access to water.
November 5, 2007 1:39 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Finally something that I can partially agree with Novak on:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/05/AR2007110500204_pf.html
Carter's Clarity, Bush's Befuddlement
By Robert D. Novak
Monday, November 5, 2007; 8:16 AM
The timing of the release of the new documentary "Jimmy Carter: Man From Plains" was not intentional. The movie is arriving at theaters just before the Bush administration's proposed Middle East conference in Annapolis, scheduled for the end of this month. But the former president's clarity on the Palestinian question contrasts sharply with George W. Bush's refusal to face reality, casting a pall over hopes to conclude his presidency with a diplomatic triumph.
In the film, Carter repeatedly and unequivocally states what Palestinian and Israeli peace advocates view as undeniable: to achieve Israeli-Palestinian peace, with all its benefits for the world, Israel must end its illegal and oppressive occupation of the West Bank. That is a prerequisite that neither President Bush nor congressional leaders of both parties can approach for fear of being labeled anti-Israeli or even anti-Semitic (as Carter has been).
With the end to the occupation not on any participant's agenda, hopes for substantive accomplishment at Annapolis are dim. Testifying before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Oct. 24, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned of "further radicalization of Palestinian politics, of politics in the region" if "we lose the window for a two-state solution." But she did not mention the forbidden words of Israeli removal from the West Bank.
These words are not forbidden in "Man From Plains." I was surprised when a publicist for the movie invited me to a private screening in advance of its Washington debut Saturday. For the past 32 years, I had been a critic of Carter -- but not of his most recent and most attacked book, "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid."
The unusual documentary is mainly an account of Carter's travels promoting his 21st book. Normally, nothing would seem more boring than presentation of a book tour. But Jonathan Demme, the Academy Award-winning director of "The Silence of the Lambs," has produced a beautiful, fascinating film, whose two hours sped by.
Demme told me he intended the documentary to be a "portrait in motion" of the 83-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate, whom he greatly admires, "to find out what makes Jimmy Carter tick." But it became a condemnation of what Demme now calls "land-grabbing" from the "oppressed" Palestinian people.
The film is more assertive than the book, which tends to be prolix in recounting Carter's experiences with Israel. It was the word "apartheid" in the title that spawned instant accusations of anti-Semitism against the former president and led 14 members of the Carter Center's board of counselors to resign. Not until Page 215, near the end of the slim book, did Carter make it clear that the "policy now being followed" on the West Bank is "a system of apartheid with two peoples occupying the same land but completely separated from each other, with Israelis totally dominant and suppressing violence by depriving Palestinians of their basic rights."
In the movie, Carter repeatedly declares that Israel must end its occupation of Palestine
for peace to have a chance. The hecklers at his appearances and confused interviewers only provoke a stubborn Carter, who says chopping up the West Bank is actually worse than apartheid, just as Palestinian peace-seekers told me this year in Jerusalem.
A broader, more detailed analysis can be found in the newly updated American version of "Lords of the Land" by Professor Idith Zertal and leading Israeli columnist Akiva Eldar. This scathing account of the occupation, first published in Israel in 2005, declares that former prime minister Ariel Sharon's plan for a security wall was intended to "take hold of as much West Bank territory as possible and block the establishment of a viable Palestinian state."
As Israelis, Eldar and Zertal employ language that not even Carter dares use: "Israel's lofty demands that Palestinians strengthen their democracy and impose control on extremist organizations is ... nothing but deceptive talk covering its own deeds, which are aimed at achieving exactly the opposite -- of eroding Palestinian society."
In "Man From Plains," Carter goes further in this direction than any other prominent American has to date, and people who wander into a movie theater to see the film may be shocked. It raises questions that must at least be asked for the contemplated conference at Annapolis to have any chance.
November 5, 2007 10:14 AM | Report Offensive Comments
From today’s WP:
Musharraf Declaration Seen as Latest Misstep
Risky Choice Fits Pattern in Efforts To Retain Power
By Griff Witte
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, November 5, 2007; A15
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 4 -- Gen. Pervez Musharraf prides himself, above all, on being a survivor.
But after a series of critical missteps this year that turned the courts and nearly the entire country against him, he decided last week that he had only one means of keeping his presidency alive: the extreme step of imposing de facto martial law, a risky choice that even his close advisers say could ultimately prove ruinous.
Musharraf only reluctantly took that step, loyalists say, after other options had been exhausted. But the move also fits a pattern of behavior for Musharraf, one in which the former commando has chosen to shoot his way out of tight situations, using force rather than finesse...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/04/AR2007110401575_pf.html
November 5, 2007 9:32 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Of course it would be a hard sell to convince the Palestinians who actually owned (or lived on if Government owned) that 5% of Palestine. They would rightly say: "Why us?". Give them a piece of Great Britain!
November 5, 2007 9:24 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Tom,
I think that the Woodhead Commission that followed the Peel Commission had the responsible, honest approach, which was to allocate 5% of Palestine for the Jewish State.
“The British response was to set up the Woodhead Commission to "examine the Peel Commission plan in detail and to recommend an actual partition plan" [2] This Commission declared the Peel Commission partition unworkable (though suggesting a different scheme under which 5% of the land area of Palestine become Israel). The British Government accompanied the publication of the Woodhead Report by a statement of policy rejecting partition as impracticable [4]”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peel_Commission
November 5, 2007 8:57 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Ah yes, it's another fine morning and great to be alive! Good morning folks!
From today’s NY Times:
November 6, 2007
Deadline Set for Mideast Peace Process
By HELENE COOPER
RAMALLAH, West Bank, Nov. 5 — Israeli and Palestinian officials have given themselves to the end of President Bush’s administration to reach a comprehensive peace agreement, Israeli, Palestinian and American officials said today.
The deadline of just over a year from now — first laid out by the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, on Sunday night and then confirmed today by the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, gives a huge boost to the efforts of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to push the two sides toward a peace plan during her tenure. Mr. Abbas and Mr. Olmert indicated that the coming Middle East peace conference in Annapolis would begin substantive talks on the four contentious final status issues which have bedeviled peace negotiators since 1979...
... To be sure, Israeli and Arab officials say that Ms. Rice still has an uphill battle ahead of her; Israeli and Palestinian negotiators haven’t decided just how they will tackle the four final status issues: the status of Jerusalem, the contours of a Palestinian state, the removal of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and the fate of refugees who left, or were forced to leave, their homes as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.
Israeli officials said that there remains deep concern in Israel that Ms. Rice is pushing Israelis too hard and too fast, risking a collapse of the talks before they are under way. Israelis are quick to draw a parallel to President Clinton’s peace push during the closing months of his administration in 2000, which collapsed and, many Israelis believe, led to the Palestinian intifada...
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/06/world/middleeast/06diplo.html?hp=&pagewanted=print
Good luck folks!
November 5, 2007 8:47 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Rick
I'm going to have to back off on the "acceptance" of the Peel Partition Plan by the Jewish population. Dershowitz ("Making A Case For Israel“, FrontPageMagazine.com) says:
“…Sure, I favored a two state solution. I've always favored a two state solution. Israel has always favored a two state solution, since 1937, when they accepted the Peel Commission report which would have given the Palestinians a long, contiguous state and the Jews a totally non-contiguous state. The Jews said yes and the Palestinians and Arabs said no…”
However, I cannot find any references to support his claim (which he makes elsewhere as well). I found a map from a pictorial guide to the Israeli-Palestinian history that said the Israelis reluctantly accepted the plan (again without references) but everything else seems to suggest (like Wikepedia) that the plan was rejected. I know that the partition of Palestine into two states was accepted in principle by the leaders of the Zionist movement.
“Ben-Gurion and Weizmann found themselves united in tentatively accepting the partition (Peel Commission) in principle but demanding larger, if unspecified, borders.”
I’ll post if I find out why Dershowitz believes the Palestinian Jewish population accepted the plan.
November 5, 2007 8:06 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Tom Wonacott
Yup, I guess it’s legal alright, but it’s certainly not just. I say that the Palestinians are fully within their rights to never give the occupiers a minute of peace.
Of course they are overpowered at present by the US/Israel alliance. But the Israelis and the U.S. will never know peace. We have over reached in Iraq as well as Palestine and are vulnerable to our dependence on Middle East oil. The hatred that we have engendered by our war on Islam is bound to come back to bite us.
We have driven Iraq into an alliance with Iran and strengthened the hand of Hamas and Hezbollah. The corrupt leaders of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other oil producers of the Gulf States who collaborate with the U.S. against the will of their people are in for a fall.
Musharraf has declared emergency rule, and his days are numbered. Pakistan with its nuclear weapons is about to explode.
We can’t afford the foreign wars that we are embroiled in so we borrow the money from China. China could easily defeat us by simply flooding the market with our worthless IOUs.
The topic of this thread “Are we heading for WW III?” seems to be very apropos.
Cheers! I apologize for my gloomy outlook tonight. I’m sure it will be all better in the morning.
November 4, 2007 7:57 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Rick
I appreciate your complement but most of what I know is through discussions with people such as yourself or just reading. I have learned quite a bit from your post already and appreciate your position.
The British must have really regretted their decision to open up a major can of worms in settling the issues of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. In my opinion, when they left Palestine in 1948, that opened the door for the war that followed in which the Palestinians lost a lot of land.
The Balfour Declaration was made a part of the mandate set by the League of Nations, and that’s what makes it legally binding.
The Palestine Mandate
(July 24, 1922)
The Council of the League of Nations:
Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have agreed, for the purpose of giving effect to the provisions of Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, to entrust to a Mandatory selected by the said Powers the administration of the territory of Palestine, which formerly belonged to the Turkish Empire, within such boundaries as may be fixed by them; and
Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2nd, 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing nonJewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country; and
Whereas recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country; and…
…ARTICLE 2. The Mandatory shall be responsible for placing the country under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home, as laid down in the preamble, and the development of selfgoverning institutions, and also for safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine, irrespective of race and religion…
November 4, 2007 6:41 PM | Rep