Author: R J Adams

One of many unanswered questions concerning the Bush administration and its connections to the now almost infamous, Project for the New American Century, has been why Paul Wolfowitz – one of the PNAC’s greatest advocates – suddenly took himself off to head the World Bank.

At first glance, it seemed something of a backwater for this Straussian student who was once described in the Economist, not just as a hawk, but a velociraptor. Why would Wolfowitz bury himself away in such a job when he had no financial qualifications, but bachelor degrees in mathematics and chemistry, and a doctorate in political sciences?

The reason may now be more apparent.

First and foremost, Wolfowitz is a Jew, and a Zionist like his father. He spent time in Israel as a young man; his sister lives there permanently. It’s not surprising then that his sympathies lie more with Israel, than with Palestine.

What is somewhat surprising – shocking, even – is an article tucked away in the archives of a website called “Project Censored” – subheaded, “The News That Didn’t Make The News”.

Should we take note of this particular news source? Walter Kronkite thinks so. He says:

“Project censored is one of the organizations we should listen to, to be assured that our newspapers and our broadcasting outlets are practicing thorough and ethical journalism.”

The article in question describes how, since Wolfowitz joined the World Bank in June 2005, money earmarked for Palestinian assistance is being used to fund parts of the Israeli “barrier”, in particular the costs of erecting huge security gates in the wall to allow controlled access of Palestinians. This is in breach of an International Court of Justice ruling that the “barrier” is illegal.

A framework is already in place for a Palestinian Middle East Free Trade Area (MEFTA) which, according to a World Bank report:

“In an improved operating environment, Palestinian entrepreneurs and foreign investors will look for well-serviced industrial land and supporting infrastructure. They will also seek a regulatory regime with a minimum of ‘red tape’ and with clear procedures for conducting business. Industrial Estates (IEs), particularly those on the border between Palestinian and Israeli territory, can fulfill this need and thereby play an important role in supporting export based growth.”

Sounds good for the Palestinians, doesn’t it, until one realizes that these “Industrial Estates” are to be controlled by the Israelis:

“Built on Palestinian land around the Wall, these industrial zones are envisaged as forming the basis of export-orientated economic development. Palestinians imprisoned by the Wall and dispossessed of land can be put to work for low wages. The post-Wall MEFTA vision includes complete control over Palestinian movement. The report proposes high-tech military gates and checkpoints along the Wall, through which Palestinians and exports can be conveniently transported and controlled. A supplemental “transfer system” of walled roads and tunnels will allow Palestinian workers to be funneled to their jobs, while being simultaneously denied access to their land. Sweatshops will be one of very few possibilities of earning a living for Palestinians confined to disparate ghettos throughout the West Bank.” [Source: Jamal Juma – “Cementing Israeli Apartheid: The Role of World Bank”]

Former World Bank president James Wolfensohn rejected out of hand any suggestion that the World Bank become involved in the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. It seems one of the first things Paul Wolfowitz did on replacing him, was to reverse that decision.

The idea of a free trade area within the Middle East has been on US agendas for sometime. The whole thrust of the PNAC is about opening up the Middle East – and eventually other parts of the world – to American markets.

An invasion of US business.

First, of course, had to come the military invasion, to persuade those Middle Eastern governments with reservations about a “Middle East Free Trade Area”, that it was a good idea. Unfortunately, the military plans have stalled in Iraq. According to US Central Command documents from August 2002, just procured by the National Security Archive, it was anticipated that only 5,000 US troops would remain in Iraq by 2006 and Iraq would be “stable, pro-US and democratic” by that time. According to NSA officials, the plans were based on “delusional assumptions”.

Nevertheless, increased US administration rhetoric devised to pump-up the American psyche in readiness for an attack on Iran – to “liberate” it’s people from an oppressive regime – shows that the PNAC hope to resurrect their takeover of the Middle East before what may prove to be another disastrous election for the far right in 2008.

Whoever takes control of the White House in two years will have no effect on the plight of the Palestinians. Whether Democrat or Republican, the Jewish contingency in Congress will ensure the best interests of Israel will top the administration’s agenda.

It is difficult to see any hope for the future that is not tainted by continued war and aggression, as US political and corporate interests dig footholds into other nations, using bombs and tanks to blast their way. Is Israel’s contribution to this master plan to be a nuclear attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities? There can be little doubt the US and Israel are closely allied in this “Project for the New American Century”. Its success would be enormously advantageous to both.

But, oh…..at what a price!

Read the full analysis, “The World Bank Funds Israel-Palestine Wall” Here.

Filed under: Great unpunished crimes

What were your thoughts back in 2003 when Natalie Maines stood on the stage of the Shepherds Bush Empire in London and told the audience, “Just so you know, we’re ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas.”?

Last week the Dixie Chicks carried off five Grammy awards, a sure indication that America – whatever its feelings following that night back in 2003 – has forgiven this all-girl country and western band for its anti-war, unpatriotic comments to a foreign audience.

That’s hardly the end of the matter, though – is it?

Let’s be bluntly honest. While 75% of Americans now consider George W Bush wrong to invade Iraq, that figure was much, much lower in 2003. I wonder just how many of you reading this can truthfully – with hand on heart – state you were completely and utterly against such action at the time Natalie Maines broadcast her feelings to the world?

Remember the first night of the conflict? The “shock and awe” pictures on CNN? Wasn’t it truly a moment to flutter the heartstrings as your country swung its military might into action against a defiant dictator?

Perhaps that was truly not the case for you – but it was for the vast majority of American citizens glued to their TV’s throughout those weeks when US troops advanced on Baghdad, and a victorious president landed on the flightdeck of the “Abraham Lincoln” and announced, “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED”.

Had that indeed been the end of conflict in Iraq George W Bush may well have been vaunted as the greatest American president ever. America, beguiled by its love affair with violence; it’s desire for military victories, coupled with the satisfaction of proving itself the greatest nation on earth, builds heroes as easily as it manufactures enemies. The American people will follow a victor as surely as the Roman patriarchs lauded Julius Caesar. Defeat, or even the stalemate of Iraq, will just as easily condemn that leader forever.

It’s no way to live though, is it?

Those assuaging your lust for blood and victory are human beings just the same as you. Husbands, wives, children, all slaughtered needlessly to maintain the viewing figures on CNN. And you supported it. At least, most of you did. Was it any different, knowing real people were dying as you watched? Or, does Hollywood actually produce more realism – a bit more blood and gore, perhaps?

Of course, CNN still has much to learn from Hollywood. Next time it will do better. Maybe, if we had a war a week, they could put Hollywood out of business altogether.

Or is that expecting too much, even of the American people?

It didn’t have to happen. You could have said “No”. If enough of you had stood up and said “No”, George W Bush could not have invaded Iraq. But you didn’t. Instead, you sat in your comfortable air-conditioned homes with your Budweisers and your big flat-screen TV’s – and you watched CNN.

You watched people die.

In May 2006, Natalie Maines of the all-girl country and western band, Dixie Chicks, told an interviewer:

“”The entire country may disagree with me, but I don’t understand the necessity for patriotism. About what? This land is our land? Why? You can like where you live and like your life, but as for loving the whole country… I don’t see why people care about patriotism.”

The whole country certainly does not agree with her. But I do.

The American people sat back in their comfortable air-conditioned homes with their Budweisers and their big flat-screen TV’s, and did nothing to stop their democratically elected leaders slaughtering innocents for their pleasure.

And you know what?

If it happened all over again, they’d do exactly the same thing. That’s the price of being the greatest nation on earth with its comfortable air-conditioned houses, Budweisers, and big flat screen TV’s.

It’s called apathy.

Filed under: Not my fault

“The true measure of a nation’s standing is how well it attends to its children – their health and safety, their material security, their education and socialization, and their sense of being loved, valued, and included in the families and societies into which they are born.” ~ UNICEF, Child poverty in perspective – Report card 7, 2007.

There are presently thirty members of the OECD – the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development that originated in 1960. Twenty-one of those nations come under scrutiny by UNICEF in its recent report on child welfare and well-being.

Let’s not be fooled. The countries studied are some of the richest on earth and include most of Europe and the North American continent. This is not a report on the predicament of children in developing nations, it is a systematic analysis of the plight, or otherwise, of children in the developed world.

The most outstanding fact to emerge from this report is that the United States and the United Kingdom are rock bottom in the league table of countries best caring for their kids. George W Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” policy, and Tony’s Blair’s much publicized “Action for Education” and “Campaign Against Child Poverty” are proven – beyond any shadow of doubt – to be complete and utter failures.

Top of the league, sits the Netherlands, followed by Sweden and Denmark. The USA and Britain rank twentieth, and twenty-first, respectively.

Why is the Netherlands such a good place to grow up in? The report goes into lots of detail, much of it vague and requiring more time for study than the average person can spare, but the gist of the report covers subjects mentioned in the first paragraph of this article:

Health and Safety

Material Security

Education and Socialization

and last, but certainly not least, “their sense of being loved, valued, and included in the families and societies into which they are born”

Neither America’s pious society, nor the UK’s secular structure, are conducive to fulfilling the yardsticks necessary to producing a community capable of providing these attributes to its children. It’s no coincidence both nations are heavily involved in aggressively maintaining positions of dominance in the world. By contrast, Dutch society has never sought that kind of power, being content to develop its own social structures and leave others to their own devices. Such is also the case with the runners-up in this league table, Sweden and Denmark.

And yet, rings out the cry, Holland is such a permissive country, condoning – even promoting – prostitution and drugs. How can it be a safe place for children?

It’s a safe and secure place for children to grow up exactly for those reasons. Here’s the response [from a BBC Newsnight report] from a 16 year old Dutch girl, to exactly that criticism:

“”In this country, it’s very free, you can do anything you want. You can smoke at 16, you can buy pot in the store next to the school. You can do what you like and because it’s not illegal, it’s not that interesting for us to provoke our parents with it.”

“……..it’s not that interesting for us to provoke our parents with it.”

When kids grow up in a society where sex and drugs are either taboo subjects, or considered vaguely “evil”, and certainly illegal – in the case of sex, until society deems one old enough to do it in a mature and wedded way – the compulsion to rebel is irresistible. In societies where laws are strict and often illogical, young people will quite rightly rebel against authority; crime rises and prisons overflow. America is a prime example of a such a society – a society that doesn’t work because so many influential factions vie to impose their own moral codes, none of which are acceptable to the nation’s youth.

The UK’s attitude, though different in many ways from the American model, produces similar results.

Having sampled Dutch society, one factor obvious to the observer is that the Dutch don’t spend time advertising their “free society”. They get on with enjoying it. The US yells its freedom from the rooftops, yet in place of the substance is a huge black hole.

If we want our children to be happy, healthy and loved the manner of achieving it is simple. As a society we have to care for them, love them, and stop making them miserable. The way not to achieve that is by imposing on them outdated, narrow-minded, ideological concepts that leave them no room for self expression.

In his book, “The Prophet”, Kahlil Gibran speaks of children thus:

“Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, and though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward, nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.”

Perhaps American society should treat its children more in the manner of Gibran, and less that of Dobson.

If indeed “the true measure of a nation’s standing is how well it attends to its children” then both America and the United Kingdom have every reason to be grossly ashamed.

For those with a bent for statistics the full UNICEF report can be accessed as a pdf. file HERE.

A breakdown of the report can be found at BBC webpages linked from HERE.

Filed under: Failing our children