Unfit for publication
In his bestselling book about Barack Obama, Jerome Corsi provides few facts to support his outrageous claims
Ian Williams
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday September 10 2008 19:00 BST
Jerome Corsi, PhD is the Lord High Admiral of the Swift-boat Armada now heading against Barack Obama. Still doing the hornpipe over his success sinking John Kerry, since his book Unfit for Command, plus a few million in conservative foundation dollars helped torpedo the Democratic candidate below the water-line even before he noticed, Corsi has now launched Obama Nation into the New York Times bestseller lists.
Generally only dubious scientists, quack doctors and freaky cosmologists dress themselves in a little brief acronymic authority by putting their titles after their name on the cover of books. Corsi repeats his (apparently genuine) PhD on every single verso page heading.
Nor does the bestseller list mean best read, as the far-too-discreet little dagger next to Obama Nation and several other current conservative hatchet jobs indicates. It means that there have been bulk purchases from bookshops. If a foundation wants to give away free books, it can get a bulk wholesale rate directly from the publishers. Paying retail for bulk buys is more expensive, but it's an effective way to puff them onto the bestseller list.
Even so, I do appreciate writers like Kitty Kelly, when they scrutinise the toe-jam on the clay feet of the great, good and royal, so I tried to appreciate Corsi's opus as an example of that genre. Obama is not perfect, after all, and it always helps to temper optimism with realism.
However, I almost gave up reading during the introduction, when Corsi referred to his extensive "footnoting all references so readers can determine for themselves the truth and validity of the factual claims." Truth and validity, a tautology, elides into an oxymoron: fact and claims are different animals outside the faith-based universe. He refers to Obama's "pattern of voting on the far left on a wide range of policy issues," which is only true if you consider Margaret Thatcher to be a charter member of the Weathermen.
Even more risibly, Corsi suggests that Obama would "lead the United States in a costly and self-destructive direction, both at home and abroad. … We would be a militarily weakened and economically diminished nation". Presumably, a less faith-based Corsi might note that his hypothetical state of the nation under Obama is the actual state after two terms of George Bush.
Corsi avers: "Growing numbers of largely Hispanic illegal immigrants, many of them still citizens of their home countries … live in our midst with no firm purpose or requirement to become American citizens." I suspect that most of them are unaware that US passports are on offer. This is the voice of prejudice that in one breath condemns immigrants for both taking our jobs while living on welfare!
Corsi expands his almost limitless ability to have his cake and eat it when he cites Wall Street Journal and Fox consultant John Fund, who complains that Obama beat Alan Keyes, an "unserious" GOP candidate, to get in the Senate. This is true, but Keyes and Corsi himself were recently trying to get the Constitution party nomination for the presidency. Unseriousness is clearly contagious.
On the other hand, Corsi is not always completely wrong. His analysis of Hillary Clinton's mistake in using the race card is quite accurate, even though his claim that her "campaign attacks against Barack Obama legitimised many of the lines of inquiry explored in the first two sections of this book," is a stretch. Her campaign no more justifies his "lines of inquiry" than his book retrospectively koshers her cynical use of the race card.
Occasionally Corsi asks legitimate questions, but he consistently refuses to accept legitimate answers, and it would appear that his sole purpose in examining some of the weirder myths of the blogosphere is to keep them afloat. For example, he says magnanimously: "I accept Obama's statement that he is a Christian, but take exception to the claim that Obama was not introduced to Islam as a child." But who made that claim? Obama's team said that he had never been a Muslim, not that he not been "introduced to Islam" the same way that I was "introduced to Anglicanism" when dragooned to Church for the school Founder's Day service.
With spurious academic authority he declares: "We have already established that Obama wrote the autobiography to hide key points." Oh no, we haven't. Obama's books probably do suffer from overhyping, but he was explicit that these are not autobiographical chronicles.
So when Obama says he used marijuana, it does not earn him brownie points for being unevasively un-Clintonian, or indeed un-Bushian. Rather it is a cynical political prophylactic against the chance of him being revealed.
Corsi joined in hounding Obama to disown the Rev Jeremiah Wright, then attacking his disloyalty to his old mentor when he did. McCarthy meets Kevin Bacon, as acquaintances of acquaintances are marshalled and alleged to be communist or Muslim, in that modern form of conservative colour-blindness where red and green are indistinguishable. People like Saul Alinsky (the guru of community organisers) died never meeting Obama. But some people he knew did, and so … .
Perhaps most bizarre, if you are not attuned to the conservative evangelical fixation on Kenya, is Corsi's depiction of Obama's involvement there. For the rest of the world, an authoritarian tribalist government fixed an election but was forced to compromise with the democratic winner in the face of riots. To the evangelical right, despite "credible signs of electoral fraud" Kenyan President Kibaki is a hero, not to be overthrown by the mere casting of ballots.
In Corsi's narrative, Obama's Luo tribal paternity led him to intervene on behalf of a "communist" (incidentally Anglican) Odinga, who was furthermore a Muslim stooge pledged to introduce Sharia law in an overwhelmingly Christian country. Obama "could claim to be a Kenyan citizen" – the same way, presumably that McCain could claim to a Panamian citizenship or the Clintons and Kennedys Irish, or indeed any Jewish politician could claim Israeli citizenship.
It is typical of Corsi's use of sources that he quotes Mainu Wararu, "respected international correspondent", on the fears that Kikuyu have about Obama in the White House. However he skips Waruru's conclusion: "This attitude is running counter to views of majority of Kenyans who are excited by every victory by the US democrat frontrunner and are praying day and night for more victories for this 'son of Kenya'."
Incidentally, applying his own methodology that every accusation is true unless definitively disproven, I checked with Notre Dame professor Daniel Myers, the custodian of the archives of the Lemberg Centre for the Study of Violence, which Corsi claims to have worked with. There is no record of his presence there. Of course, this does not prove that he wasn't – but he does not give his victim the same indulgence.
Corsi's smearing of fact, supposition and slander into a quantum slime really made me wish I had worn rubber gloves when reading. Nonetheless, Obama and his team should really read this book, even if it seems like turning over a stone to study the things that scurry from underneath. They do not need an enigma machine to plot the enemy fleet's manoeuvres. It's all here.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Catskill Review of Books, God, and Me
September 8th, as part of Making Waves, we launched the CROB on a waiting world, with an hour long discussion between Larry Beinhart, author of Salvation Boulevard, Ron Aronson, author of Living Without God, Mary Hall, and myself Ian Williams, on atheism and believers.
The plan is to follow up every two weeks on Monday evenings at WJFFradio.org with similar discussion on current books. Tune in! 90.5 FM. Podcasts are available at wjffradio.org
The plan is to follow up every two weeks on Monday evenings at WJFFradio.org with similar discussion on current books. Tune in! 90.5 FM. Podcasts are available at wjffradio.org
Saturday, September 06, 2008
Radio Liars
Firedoglake Book Salon Welcomes Rory O’Connor, Shock Jocks: Hate Speech & Talk Radio
By: Ian Williams Saturday September 6, 2008
check out this very lively discussion at the firedoglake book salon, still open for 34 hours and archived afterwards.
Ian
Rory O’Connor is not a conspiracy theorist. He knows the world is complicated, and there can be unintended consequences – but he also knows that there can indeed be plots. Shock Jocks traces the history of contemporary Talk Radio, which is almost invariably conservative.
The opening up of the public airwaves and the FCC’s abandonment of public service requirements, removal of restrictions on concentrated ownership and the disappearance of requirements for balance may have been the result of neoliberal pandering to sheer commercial greed as the motivating force for public good. However, since, for obvious reasons wealthy people want to stay that way and get richer, they are naturally conservative.
It may be objected that financial conservatism is not necessarily the same as social conservatism, which is a common characteristic of the right-talkers – except, as Rory points out, O’Reilly. However, it is difficult to mobilise masses for the right of a few very rich people to get even richer. Thomas Frank addressed how this works in Congress, but recently sentenced lobbyist Jack Abramoff's sidekick Scanlon gave a perfect battleplan for such campaigns.
“We plan to use three forms of communications to mobilize and win these battles. … Our mission is to get specifically selected groups of individuals to the polls to speak out AGAINST something. To that end, your money is best spent finding them and communicating with them on using the modes to which they are most likely to respond. Simply put, we want to bring out the wackos to vote against something and make sure the rest of the public lets the whole thing slip past them. The wackos get their information form [sic] the Christian right, Christian radio, mail, the internet, and telephone trees."
Talk radio is an integral part of this mechanism for rallying the troops, and it ties closely in an incestuous loop with the conservative bloggers in a protected fact-checker free environment.
As “Shock Jocks” was published, Jim Adkisson, a Tennessee aficionado of conservative talk shows, took their hosts' invective all too literally and shot up a "liberal" Unitarian Universalist congregation, killing two and wounding six congregants watching a children's musical. Caught up in a world of conservative talk radio, he reportedly expected to be able to carry on shooting unimpeded by the spineless, gay-loving pacifists, and was surprised when they tackled him and brought him down.
In keeping with a more reality-based liberal stereotype, the Rev. William Sinkford, national president of the Unitarian Universalists Association of Congregations, provocatively turned the other cheek. "This crime was the action of one man who clearly must have lost the battle with his personal demons," he said. "When I was asked if the shooter would go to hell, I replied that he must have been living in his own private hell for years."
Limbaugh has "remade American politics", according to Karl Rove, or is a "big fat liar" as Al Franken has called him, but as Rory points out, he is a consummate performer, convincing and funny.
The distilled essence of redneck prejudice is bound to appeal to an audience. Hell, if Father Coughlin, the anti-Semitic radio priest of the 1930s were around now, he would have an audience. And for many of the same reasons. There are indeed many people out there suffering financially who feel their plight is ignored and want to hit out at clear and identifiable targets.
Adkisson and other angry listeners are more often than not the victims of precisely those unregulated concentrations of capital that put Limbaugh on the air, Chinese goods on the shelves of Wal-Mart and them on welfare. With Democratic leaders too wary to bite the hands that write the contribution cheques, but also too residually honest to invent scapegoats, no wonder an incisive populism can win listeners.
Rory hints at some of the problems. “Liberal” or fact-based radio is always going to suffer from the big disadvantages of empathy and nuance. Remember Bush told his speechwriters he did not want them sneaking nuance into his speeches. It was taken as a sign of his low intellect, but in fact, it was politically very astute. There is a streak of Manichaeanism in American life that wants things in black and white, good and evil, cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers.
One explanation for the relative lack of popularity of “liberal” talk radio is that it is all too often dourly earnest and humourless, inhibited by a fear offending one or other hues of the rainbow coalition. Evil-minded, fact-free and malicious as Limbaugh is, he is a good performer with sense of humour that is wicked in senses ancient and modern.
I have been on O’Reilly’s show, and quite enjoyed it. Like all these hosts, he has a monstrous ego – but so do I and was quite happy to butt heads. I was told that Fox had an inquest after my first performance to find out who had booked a wild leftist on the show – and they decided it made good television – and O’Reilly was guaranteed the last word. As Rory points out, most of the so-called balanced shows like Hannity & Colmes, or indeed cross-fire, are as fixed as the World Wrestling matches.
The solution to audience figures and commercial success is no-holds barred genuine gladiatorial combat, with cut and thrust “liberals” who, after all, actually have the majority in their favor on issue after issue. There is no need to set up conservative straw dogs, the real ones are out there, just waiting to have the stuffing knocked out of them.
Rory’s book is essential reading for those of whose stomachs are not strong enough to listen round the clock to this stuff.
Friday, September 05, 2008
Beyond the Palin
It's revealing that George Bush and Dick Cheney didn't get mentioned by the VP nominee in her big speech last night
Ian Williams
guardian.co.uk, Thursday September 04 2008 19:00 BST
If Obama's convention speech, with the white columns in the huge stadium was grand opera, Sarah Palin's was soap opera. The message was not that we should overlook her inexperience, but rejoice in it. We should vote for her because she was a hockey mom. The content of her speech was dumbed down in a way that was exquisitely handcrafted.
In the hall, the audience was festooned with folksy placards handcrafted by the same sophisticated but ultimately stupid whiz-kids who put the Mission Accomplished banner on the USS Lincoln five long years ago. The crowd is different, however. At a Republican convention there is always an undercurrent of bitterness and anger, a readiness to boo at the mention of, for example, community organising, or Senate democratic majority leader Harry Reid, or chant "Drill baby, drill", as the crowd offers to drive their gas-guzzlers over all obstacles.
Of course, the crowd had been primed for bitterness by none other than New York's own Napoleon, the bitter and vicious Rudy Giuliani who always gives the impression of payback time for perennial bullying in his schoolboy days. However, any crowd that cheers Giuliani for celebrating McCain's response to Putin's Cossack raid into Georgia, "We are all Georgians," is not up for cerebration. Whose big talking got the Georgians into that predicament? And is McCain in a refugee camp with Russian tanks stopping him move about his own country?
Technically, Palin's speech was not a patch on Obama's. I ran it past the reading level test on the spell checker. His had come in at a reading level of fourth grade, with no passives. Hers was a reading level of over ninth grade with six per cent of passives. Strangely, although she was clearly intended to evoke the solidarity votes of small town America, her speech writers, Bush's hand-me-downs, were worried about her pronunciation, and spelt out some difficult words for her on the teleprompter: "habber-dasher" for haberdasher, "new-clear" for nuclear to avert the Bushian "noocoolear."
However, even if the style was higher than Obama's, the content was not. It was aimed at people of faith, who could believe in three impossible things before breakfast. Her speechwriter Matthew Scully wrote a book about the ethical treatment of animals, which is perhaps why his residual ethics eschewed any mention of shooting wolves from aircraft that may have sullied the hockey mum image. Nor indeed did he mention that her enthusiasm for hockey led her to increase the local sales tax – including on food – to build an ice-hockey stadium so that her son could indulge his passion closer to home.
The speech was almost certainly inspired by HL Mencken's thought: "On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron". But that is unfair. Both she and her speechwriters are very clever, and unscrupulous, and they want to make her fit that role. They are basing their campaign on the premise that the American electorate wants a president on the edge of Alzheimer's and a vice-president who is auditioning for a part in a schmaltzy soap opera.
She mentioned, to cheers that her husband was a proud member of the United Steelworkers Union, she glided over pathological Republican attempts to crush unions, and inhibit their organising efforts. But then, nor did she mention her run-in with the town librarian (surely along with the little red school house, an American icon) over censorship, her attempts to promote creationism, her belief that God wants federal funding for Alaskan pipelines, her doubts about global warming, or her pursuit of personal family feuds against public employees. This is a serious omission, and almost perplexing since it could prove that she may indeed be a worthy successor to Dick Cheney as a vice-president, and indeed a better shot, hitting wolves rather than colleagues. But then, Cheney wasn't mentioned either.
Her balancing budgets may have been helped by a $1,000 per head per annum pork-barrelling operation from federal funds for her small town, helped by Senator Ted Stevens, one of the "good ol' boys" she was supposed to have cleaned out, but who is currently campaigning for re-election even as he faces Federal corruption charges.
She complained that Obama did not mention victory. But if pressed, she might have to explain why diverting troops from the search for Bin Laden in Afghanistan to Iraq and bogging down in both places occasioned mention for victory. Almost as eloquent in the deafening sound of silence was any reference to President Bush, which is surely churlish. The USA has had eight years of the policies she was prescribing – and is teetering on the edge of an economic catastrophe, but she just ignored it.
Polls suggest that the American public oppose almost every one of Palin's concealed policies. This speech casts the forthcoming telection as an IQ test for the American electorate. If it fails, I foresee long lines outside Canadian and European consulates as the elite (anyone with an IQ over a 100) tries to get out.
It's revealing that George Bush and Dick Cheney didn't get mentioned by the VP nominee in her big speech last night
Ian Williams
guardian.co.uk, Thursday September 04 2008 19:00 BST
If Obama's convention speech, with the white columns in the huge stadium was grand opera, Sarah Palin's was soap opera. The message was not that we should overlook her inexperience, but rejoice in it. We should vote for her because she was a hockey mom. The content of her speech was dumbed down in a way that was exquisitely handcrafted.
In the hall, the audience was festooned with folksy placards handcrafted by the same sophisticated but ultimately stupid whiz-kids who put the Mission Accomplished banner on the USS Lincoln five long years ago. The crowd is different, however. At a Republican convention there is always an undercurrent of bitterness and anger, a readiness to boo at the mention of, for example, community organising, or Senate democratic majority leader Harry Reid, or chant "Drill baby, drill", as the crowd offers to drive their gas-guzzlers over all obstacles.
Of course, the crowd had been primed for bitterness by none other than New York's own Napoleon, the bitter and vicious Rudy Giuliani who always gives the impression of payback time for perennial bullying in his schoolboy days. However, any crowd that cheers Giuliani for celebrating McCain's response to Putin's Cossack raid into Georgia, "We are all Georgians," is not up for cerebration. Whose big talking got the Georgians into that predicament? And is McCain in a refugee camp with Russian tanks stopping him move about his own country?
Technically, Palin's speech was not a patch on Obama's. I ran it past the reading level test on the spell checker. His had come in at a reading level of fourth grade, with no passives. Hers was a reading level of over ninth grade with six per cent of passives. Strangely, although she was clearly intended to evoke the solidarity votes of small town America, her speech writers, Bush's hand-me-downs, were worried about her pronunciation, and spelt out some difficult words for her on the teleprompter: "habber-dasher" for haberdasher, "new-clear" for nuclear to avert the Bushian "noocoolear."
However, even if the style was higher than Obama's, the content was not. It was aimed at people of faith, who could believe in three impossible things before breakfast. Her speechwriter Matthew Scully wrote a book about the ethical treatment of animals, which is perhaps why his residual ethics eschewed any mention of shooting wolves from aircraft that may have sullied the hockey mum image. Nor indeed did he mention that her enthusiasm for hockey led her to increase the local sales tax – including on food – to build an ice-hockey stadium so that her son could indulge his passion closer to home.
The speech was almost certainly inspired by HL Mencken's thought: "On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron". But that is unfair. Both she and her speechwriters are very clever, and unscrupulous, and they want to make her fit that role. They are basing their campaign on the premise that the American electorate wants a president on the edge of Alzheimer's and a vice-president who is auditioning for a part in a schmaltzy soap opera.
She mentioned, to cheers that her husband was a proud member of the United Steelworkers Union, she glided over pathological Republican attempts to crush unions, and inhibit their organising efforts. But then, nor did she mention her run-in with the town librarian (surely along with the little red school house, an American icon) over censorship, her attempts to promote creationism, her belief that God wants federal funding for Alaskan pipelines, her doubts about global warming, or her pursuit of personal family feuds against public employees. This is a serious omission, and almost perplexing since it could prove that she may indeed be a worthy successor to Dick Cheney as a vice-president, and indeed a better shot, hitting wolves rather than colleagues. But then, Cheney wasn't mentioned either.
Her balancing budgets may have been helped by a $1,000 per head per annum pork-barrelling operation from federal funds for her small town, helped by Senator Ted Stevens, one of the "good ol' boys" she was supposed to have cleaned out, but who is currently campaigning for re-election even as he faces Federal corruption charges.
She complained that Obama did not mention victory. But if pressed, she might have to explain why diverting troops from the search for Bin Laden in Afghanistan to Iraq and bogging down in both places occasioned mention for victory. Almost as eloquent in the deafening sound of silence was any reference to President Bush, which is surely churlish. The USA has had eight years of the policies she was prescribing – and is teetering on the edge of an economic catastrophe, but she just ignored it.
Polls suggest that the American public oppose almost every one of Palin's concealed policies. This speech casts the forthcoming telection as an IQ test for the American electorate. If it fails, I foresee long lines outside Canadian and European consulates as the elite (anyone with an IQ over a 100) tries to get out.
Thursday, September 04, 2008
Obama's Oratory
The art of speaking to 80,000 people
As a former speechwriter, I know it's not just what you say but how you say it. Barack Obama's performance walked a fine line
* Ian Williams
*
o guardian.co.uk,
o Friday August 29 2008 17:30 BST
One of the difficulties for an orator in addressing a stadium-size audience is the loss of the rapport that a more intimate crowd can have. A speech is a joint performance with the audience. Otherwise you could just text it.
Talking to 80,000 people affects the ability to adjust pacing for when the listeners are slow to get a point, or indeed respond more enthusiastically than planned to one, and there were occasions last night when Barack Obama seemed to be playing more by the metronome than the pheromones from the crowd.
But that is minor quibble. His audience was in his hands, and it was a crowd of individuals. This was no rally of serried ranks of uniform supporters. As the camera played over the crowd, the diversity of the supporters reinforced the message of the vox pops that had introduced him. They had been working-class or middle-class people hurting, or perhaps equally worried about being hurt by a faltering economy and his populism without tub-thumping was aimed at them. There were suits and ties for the respectable, baseball caps and novelty sunglasses for the free of spirit, young, old, black, white, casual and formal, scattered indiscriminately across the stands. This was no Jesse Jackson rainbow of discreet hues. It was an integrated pointilliste picture of America.
Obama gave the bravura performance on a tightrope, balancing the hopes and fears of his audiences masterfully. There were enough references to establish his blackness, as if giving the speech on the anniversary of Martin Luther King's iconic speech were not enough in itself. But consciously or otherwise, he eschewed the preacher-like cadences that come naturally and distinctively to black American politicians who switch effortlessly between pulpit and platform.
Even so, his speech had the antiphony of genuine oratory. He was not reading out an op-ed. "This country of ours has more wealth than any nation, but that's not what makes us rich. We have the most powerful military on Earth, but that's not what makes us strong. Our universities and our culture are the envy of the world, but that's not what keeps the world coming to our shores."
Without talking down to his audience, or dumbing down his message, he used plain, direct language. I ran it through the spell checker, which, fallible though it may be, gave it a fourth-grade reading level with no passives, backing up my own impression. This was not a wonkish or "elite" speech, but it addressed the issues, concretely, active without being orotund. He also adroitly addressed the criticism, open and implied of voters who are not sure why someone of his complexion has stridden from the back of the bus to the driving seat. He was rightly indignant about the plight of ordinary Americans, without being "angry" in the way that codes for "too black" in the US.
He effected a winning combination of altruism and self-interest, offering not just a dream but a plan, and a plan that addresses the hopes and fears of those white working-class voters. Even his criticisms of McCain were nuanced, substantial without being personal, and sharply witty without being snide: "It's not because John McCain doesn't care. It's because John McCain doesn't get it."
"You know, John McCain likes to say that he'll follow bin Laden to the gates of hell, but he won't even follow him to the cave where he lives," Obama scored, putting a new wound in the Republican's achilles heel, the Iraq war. To a war-weary electorate he offered a renewed version of Teddy Roosevelt's soft talk/big stick formula, promising tough diplomacy and an efficient military.
That will not stop the attacks of course. As Obama said: "If you don't have any fresh ideas, then you use stale tactics to scare the voters. If you don't have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from."
Perhaps most impressive was the way that Obama prophylactically anticipated the coming flood of conservative vituperation, taking the attacks and deflecting them back onto the perpetrators with commonsense and wit. "Don't tell me we can't uphold the second amendment while keeping AK-47s out of the hands of criminals." And the calls about lack of experience he countered neatly, suggesting, without naming McCain, that some people may have too much of it. "I realise that I am not the likeliest candidate for this office. I don't fit the typical pedigree and I haven't spent my career in the halls of Washington."
Without dignifying the absurd accusations of elitism and arrogance from sitting politicians and wallowing plutocrats, Obama encapsulates the portmanteau populism of his speech. "History teaches us – that at defining moments like this one, the change we need doesn't come from Washington. Change comes to Washington."
After the speech, it may just.
As a former speechwriter, I know it's not just what you say but how you say it. Barack Obama's performance walked a fine line
* Ian Williams
*
o guardian.co.uk,
o Friday August 29 2008 17:30 BST
One of the difficulties for an orator in addressing a stadium-size audience is the loss of the rapport that a more intimate crowd can have. A speech is a joint performance with the audience. Otherwise you could just text it.
Talking to 80,000 people affects the ability to adjust pacing for when the listeners are slow to get a point, or indeed respond more enthusiastically than planned to one, and there were occasions last night when Barack Obama seemed to be playing more by the metronome than the pheromones from the crowd.
But that is minor quibble. His audience was in his hands, and it was a crowd of individuals. This was no rally of serried ranks of uniform supporters. As the camera played over the crowd, the diversity of the supporters reinforced the message of the vox pops that had introduced him. They had been working-class or middle-class people hurting, or perhaps equally worried about being hurt by a faltering economy and his populism without tub-thumping was aimed at them. There were suits and ties for the respectable, baseball caps and novelty sunglasses for the free of spirit, young, old, black, white, casual and formal, scattered indiscriminately across the stands. This was no Jesse Jackson rainbow of discreet hues. It was an integrated pointilliste picture of America.
Obama gave the bravura performance on a tightrope, balancing the hopes and fears of his audiences masterfully. There were enough references to establish his blackness, as if giving the speech on the anniversary of Martin Luther King's iconic speech were not enough in itself. But consciously or otherwise, he eschewed the preacher-like cadences that come naturally and distinctively to black American politicians who switch effortlessly between pulpit and platform.
Even so, his speech had the antiphony of genuine oratory. He was not reading out an op-ed. "This country of ours has more wealth than any nation, but that's not what makes us rich. We have the most powerful military on Earth, but that's not what makes us strong. Our universities and our culture are the envy of the world, but that's not what keeps the world coming to our shores."
Without talking down to his audience, or dumbing down his message, he used plain, direct language. I ran it through the spell checker, which, fallible though it may be, gave it a fourth-grade reading level with no passives, backing up my own impression. This was not a wonkish or "elite" speech, but it addressed the issues, concretely, active without being orotund. He also adroitly addressed the criticism, open and implied of voters who are not sure why someone of his complexion has stridden from the back of the bus to the driving seat. He was rightly indignant about the plight of ordinary Americans, without being "angry" in the way that codes for "too black" in the US.
He effected a winning combination of altruism and self-interest, offering not just a dream but a plan, and a plan that addresses the hopes and fears of those white working-class voters. Even his criticisms of McCain were nuanced, substantial without being personal, and sharply witty without being snide: "It's not because John McCain doesn't care. It's because John McCain doesn't get it."
"You know, John McCain likes to say that he'll follow bin Laden to the gates of hell, but he won't even follow him to the cave where he lives," Obama scored, putting a new wound in the Republican's achilles heel, the Iraq war. To a war-weary electorate he offered a renewed version of Teddy Roosevelt's soft talk/big stick formula, promising tough diplomacy and an efficient military.
That will not stop the attacks of course. As Obama said: "If you don't have any fresh ideas, then you use stale tactics to scare the voters. If you don't have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from."
Perhaps most impressive was the way that Obama prophylactically anticipated the coming flood of conservative vituperation, taking the attacks and deflecting them back onto the perpetrators with commonsense and wit. "Don't tell me we can't uphold the second amendment while keeping AK-47s out of the hands of criminals." And the calls about lack of experience he countered neatly, suggesting, without naming McCain, that some people may have too much of it. "I realise that I am not the likeliest candidate for this office. I don't fit the typical pedigree and I haven't spent my career in the halls of Washington."
Without dignifying the absurd accusations of elitism and arrogance from sitting politicians and wallowing plutocrats, Obama encapsulates the portmanteau populism of his speech. "History teaches us – that at defining moments like this one, the change we need doesn't come from Washington. Change comes to Washington."
After the speech, it may just.
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
Georgia - Taiwan and the unstable world
Ian Williams: Taiwan and the Georgia Precedent
September 3rd, 2008 World Policy Journal
Ian Williams
August was a strange month, and there were times when one felt that it could have been a Sarajevo moment (1914 style), or even a Cuban crisis. There is an almost Newtonian law of diplomacy about the resulting release of belligerent energy when two roughly equal masses of foresightlessness collide.
Neither side emerges with much credit from the Ossetia debacle, whether the issue was controlling unruly surrogates, or delivering an effective solution afterwards. In this case, however, the George W. Bush White House unusually played the role of Khrushchev, and backed down in the face of a clearly irrational opponent. But even that commendable forbearance has unintended consequences across the globe, in particular, with China and Taiwan.
In the short term, Moscow tweaked the Eagle’s feather, and got away with it because, for once, this White House appreciated its own limitations. Moscow certainly weakened U.S. military prestige even as it enhanced its battered reputation for sanity, but it was a hollow triumph, reminiscent of the Russian tank column that raced to Pristina Airport in Kosovo and cocked a snook at General Rupert Smith and NATO—but then, sheepishly, had to get fuel and food from NATO since all Russia’s former allies refused over-flight permission for reinforcement.
Clearly, that memory still rankles in Moscow, and can only hope that the little brief authority that Russia’s raid into Georgia gave its generals will overcome their chronic Kosovo syndrome. However, it was dearly bought therapy, which has compounded Russian isolation. It delivered support in Prague, Warsaw, and Kiev for NATO, missiles, and bases that a month ago looked like unjustifiable provocation but which the Russian action has now made seem eminently sensible. Indeed, apart from the effect on its neighbors, one cannot but help wonder at the long-term effect on the Russian Federation itself—Chechnya and Tartarstan being but some of many potentially fissiparous components. How long before Israel recognizes the independence of the Birobidzhan “Jewish Autonomous Region” in Russia’s far eastern provinces?
Obtusely, after its recognition of the Georgian enclaves, Russia went to the meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Council in Dushanbe expecting full support. After all, one avatar of this shape-shifting organization is as a counterbalance to U.S. influence and interference in the area. However, while the Russians came away claiming support, they did not get it, nor, if they were fully tuned to the world, should they have expected it. Discomfort about aspects of American unilateralism does not automatically translate into support for a cruder Russian version of the same thing.
The parties concerned supported the six points negotiated with President Nicolas Sarkozy—but so did Georgia. There was no support expressed for recognition of the breakaway enclaves and indeed, in a separate statement, China expressed its concern about the move, though it stopped short of condemnation.
That is hardly surprising. Not only has Russia eaten its own words about Kosovo on the subject of sovereignty and humanitarian intervention, it has called into question the whole basis of the post-Soviet settlement, implicitly based on the preservation of former Soviet Republic boundaries. Those boundaries were indeed questionable on all sorts of grounds—ethnic, economic, and even historical—but as with the Organization of African Unity’s explicit declaration of the sanctity of former African colonial boundaries, questioning them poses far greater risks than accepting them.
The Central Asian republics, which have been dancing on a tightrope between Russia, the United States, and China (and each with varying proportions of Russian population suddenly looking like Trojan Horses) were highly unlikely to endorse a principle that gave Moscow an implicit right to interfere whenever it wanted. Not only did they not endorse the recognition, it is likely that the combination of Russian aggressiveness and American ineffectuality will drive them closer to China.
With even Belarus, which normally behaves as independently as the former Byelorussian Soviet delegation at the United Nations, treading water on the matter, Abkhazia and Georgia have a long way to go before they attain the degree of international recognition of Taiwan’s two dozen embassies, let along Kosovo’s four times that.
Russia’s foreign ministry is at least attuned to reality enough to eschew blatant arm-twisting, but more because it recognizes its inability to exert leverage world-wide for an unpopular move than because of any sense of diplomatic delicacy.
However, Taiwan symbolizes the damage the affair has done to American credibility. Clearly, Taiwan, Xinjiang, Tibet, and Inner Mongolia loom large in Chinese sensitivities. The Ossetian affair blew up as the Kuomintang government in Taipei put forward its new, conciliatory application to work in the UN specialized agencies—while leaving aside the question of actual UN membership. Beijing firmly but politely rebuffed the modified bid, weakening newly elected President Ma Ying-jeou’s position at home, where first his 100 days were marked by a massive demonstration of DPP supporters condemning the failure of his “appeasement” of the mainland.
For some time, the United States has been sounding increasingly ambivalent about its legal commitment to defend Taiwan, not least as economic ties between the U.S. and mainland China have grown. Recently, the Bush White House has been even reluctant to provide defensive weaponry for Taiwan’s new government.
Washington’s failure to defend its close friend in the Caucasus may cause dangerous speculation on both sides of the Straits of Taiwan. Just as Margaret Thatcher sent the wrong signals to Argentina before the Falklands invasion, Beijing may be led to draw conclusions about Taiwan that could be disastrously wrong.
Putin and Medvedev’s blunder has made the world less stable and safe, without enhancing Russian prestige or power in any significant way.
It is bad enough for Washington to fail to deliver on an implied commitment to Georgia, but any signs of reneging on an explicit commitment to Taiwan will have repercussions throughout East Asia, from South Korea to Japan. The United States does still play the role of Globocop—and, for most countries, there is a residual feeling that a bent cop is better than none. Many countries who had assumed that there was an implied American guarantee of support will now be considering other options, notably, replacing the U.S. nuclear umbrella with one of their own.
September 3rd, 2008 World Policy Journal
Ian Williams
August was a strange month, and there were times when one felt that it could have been a Sarajevo moment (1914 style), or even a Cuban crisis. There is an almost Newtonian law of diplomacy about the resulting release of belligerent energy when two roughly equal masses of foresightlessness collide.
Neither side emerges with much credit from the Ossetia debacle, whether the issue was controlling unruly surrogates, or delivering an effective solution afterwards. In this case, however, the George W. Bush White House unusually played the role of Khrushchev, and backed down in the face of a clearly irrational opponent. But even that commendable forbearance has unintended consequences across the globe, in particular, with China and Taiwan.
In the short term, Moscow tweaked the Eagle’s feather, and got away with it because, for once, this White House appreciated its own limitations. Moscow certainly weakened U.S. military prestige even as it enhanced its battered reputation for sanity, but it was a hollow triumph, reminiscent of the Russian tank column that raced to Pristina Airport in Kosovo and cocked a snook at General Rupert Smith and NATO—but then, sheepishly, had to get fuel and food from NATO since all Russia’s former allies refused over-flight permission for reinforcement.
Clearly, that memory still rankles in Moscow, and can only hope that the little brief authority that Russia’s raid into Georgia gave its generals will overcome their chronic Kosovo syndrome. However, it was dearly bought therapy, which has compounded Russian isolation. It delivered support in Prague, Warsaw, and Kiev for NATO, missiles, and bases that a month ago looked like unjustifiable provocation but which the Russian action has now made seem eminently sensible. Indeed, apart from the effect on its neighbors, one cannot but help wonder at the long-term effect on the Russian Federation itself—Chechnya and Tartarstan being but some of many potentially fissiparous components. How long before Israel recognizes the independence of the Birobidzhan “Jewish Autonomous Region” in Russia’s far eastern provinces?
Obtusely, after its recognition of the Georgian enclaves, Russia went to the meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Council in Dushanbe expecting full support. After all, one avatar of this shape-shifting organization is as a counterbalance to U.S. influence and interference in the area. However, while the Russians came away claiming support, they did not get it, nor, if they were fully tuned to the world, should they have expected it. Discomfort about aspects of American unilateralism does not automatically translate into support for a cruder Russian version of the same thing.
The parties concerned supported the six points negotiated with President Nicolas Sarkozy—but so did Georgia. There was no support expressed for recognition of the breakaway enclaves and indeed, in a separate statement, China expressed its concern about the move, though it stopped short of condemnation.
That is hardly surprising. Not only has Russia eaten its own words about Kosovo on the subject of sovereignty and humanitarian intervention, it has called into question the whole basis of the post-Soviet settlement, implicitly based on the preservation of former Soviet Republic boundaries. Those boundaries were indeed questionable on all sorts of grounds—ethnic, economic, and even historical—but as with the Organization of African Unity’s explicit declaration of the sanctity of former African colonial boundaries, questioning them poses far greater risks than accepting them.
The Central Asian republics, which have been dancing on a tightrope between Russia, the United States, and China (and each with varying proportions of Russian population suddenly looking like Trojan Horses) were highly unlikely to endorse a principle that gave Moscow an implicit right to interfere whenever it wanted. Not only did they not endorse the recognition, it is likely that the combination of Russian aggressiveness and American ineffectuality will drive them closer to China.
With even Belarus, which normally behaves as independently as the former Byelorussian Soviet delegation at the United Nations, treading water on the matter, Abkhazia and Georgia have a long way to go before they attain the degree of international recognition of Taiwan’s two dozen embassies, let along Kosovo’s four times that.
Russia’s foreign ministry is at least attuned to reality enough to eschew blatant arm-twisting, but more because it recognizes its inability to exert leverage world-wide for an unpopular move than because of any sense of diplomatic delicacy.
However, Taiwan symbolizes the damage the affair has done to American credibility. Clearly, Taiwan, Xinjiang, Tibet, and Inner Mongolia loom large in Chinese sensitivities. The Ossetian affair blew up as the Kuomintang government in Taipei put forward its new, conciliatory application to work in the UN specialized agencies—while leaving aside the question of actual UN membership. Beijing firmly but politely rebuffed the modified bid, weakening newly elected President Ma Ying-jeou’s position at home, where first his 100 days were marked by a massive demonstration of DPP supporters condemning the failure of his “appeasement” of the mainland.
For some time, the United States has been sounding increasingly ambivalent about its legal commitment to defend Taiwan, not least as economic ties between the U.S. and mainland China have grown. Recently, the Bush White House has been even reluctant to provide defensive weaponry for Taiwan’s new government.
Washington’s failure to defend its close friend in the Caucasus may cause dangerous speculation on both sides of the Straits of Taiwan. Just as Margaret Thatcher sent the wrong signals to Argentina before the Falklands invasion, Beijing may be led to draw conclusions about Taiwan that could be disastrously wrong.
Putin and Medvedev’s blunder has made the world less stable and safe, without enhancing Russian prestige or power in any significant way.
It is bad enough for Washington to fail to deliver on an implied commitment to Georgia, but any signs of reneging on an explicit commitment to Taiwan will have repercussions throughout East Asia, from South Korea to Japan. The United States does still play the role of Globocop—and, for most countries, there is a residual feeling that a bent cop is better than none. Many countries who had assumed that there was an implied American guarantee of support will now be considering other options, notably, replacing the U.S. nuclear umbrella with one of their own.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Biden My Time
Stick to the script, Joe
As a former speechwriter for Neil Kinnock, reminders that Joe Biden plagiarised his words give me a warm glow
Ian Williams
guardian.co.uk, Saturday August 23 2008 17:16 BST
I have always felt a quasi-spiritual connection with Joe Biden, Barack Obama's choice as running mate. Google "plagiarism" and the poor Senator from Delaware always comes near the top of the search. As a former speechwriter for Neil Kinnock it gives me a warm glow that Neil's political career gets a much deserved resurrection and run around the houses every time Biden's past is raked up. I did not produce the immortal words that Biden borrowed, but, fittingly for my views on how Democratic primaries are a long drawn-out form of seppuku, it was an aide to his Democratic rival Michael Dukakis who incited the media feeding-frenzy by revealing Biden's highly inappropriate lifting, not only of Neil's words, but his biography as well.
And you have to admire someone like Biden who presented Kinnock with a book of his Senate speeches when he visited the House of Commons the following year. A sense of humour is rare in American politics, and Biden has one. How else could he have survived all those long decades on Capitol Hill?
He shares another oratorical characteristic with the former Labour leader, which is an inability to put a firm and terminal full-stop (or a period, in the US) at the end of his discourses.
Biden's long foreign policy experience and interest certainly meets Obama's alleged deficiencies in that field. In reality of course Obama is not so deficient compared with John McCain, so it is a bad sign that he may be appointing a real VP to beat a spurious shortcoming.
However, Biden and Obama seem to be on similar lines with the need to engage in diplomacy before sending in the gunboats. And read the conservative blogosphere on Biden as a creature of the UN – he even got married in the Methodist chapel at the UN - and you begin to think that he may have something going for him on the multilateral front.
Biden was pandering to Aipac long before Obama stepped to the podium to promise the world to the lobby, but is still on the more pragmatic side compared with McCain's "coalition of the yelling" on the issue.
And one presumes it was Biden's tendency to lean towards the Israel lobby which inclined him to support the Iraq war, which he did with some enthusiasm, even though he now regrets it. Certainly, having a son about to be deployed to Iraq puts him in a distinct minority among American politicians.
Biden also supports the embargo on Cuba, which has been Fidel's best excuse for mismanaging the island for all these decades. That sits uneasily with his call to engage constructively with China, the number one proponent of the death penalty, which Biden, to his credit, opposes. In fact, his position is remarkably close to Clinton's on this.
Similarly while one can admire the humanitarian fervor with which he insists that something must be done about Darfur, his favoured solution was to send US troops there. That would be as disastrous as it is impracticable. Quite apart from the question of where the troops would come from, it betrays a lack of appreciation of just how deep in the toilet the US's reputation is globally, let alone in the Arab world.
Clearly Biden may need some help. Nine years or so ago I was taken to lunch by a veteran Republican who asked how I would like to write speeches for George Bush. I replied that if Bush wanted speeches written advocating universal healthcare and a greater role for the UN, he could have them. I did not get the call. Neil Kinnock is now busy heading the British Council, but I am prepared to substitute. Joe, just drop me a line. But please, follow the script.
As a former speechwriter for Neil Kinnock, reminders that Joe Biden plagiarised his words give me a warm glow
Ian Williams
guardian.co.uk, Saturday August 23 2008 17:16 BST
I have always felt a quasi-spiritual connection with Joe Biden, Barack Obama's choice as running mate. Google "plagiarism" and the poor Senator from Delaware always comes near the top of the search. As a former speechwriter for Neil Kinnock it gives me a warm glow that Neil's political career gets a much deserved resurrection and run around the houses every time Biden's past is raked up. I did not produce the immortal words that Biden borrowed, but, fittingly for my views on how Democratic primaries are a long drawn-out form of seppuku, it was an aide to his Democratic rival Michael Dukakis who incited the media feeding-frenzy by revealing Biden's highly inappropriate lifting, not only of Neil's words, but his biography as well.
And you have to admire someone like Biden who presented Kinnock with a book of his Senate speeches when he visited the House of Commons the following year. A sense of humour is rare in American politics, and Biden has one. How else could he have survived all those long decades on Capitol Hill?
He shares another oratorical characteristic with the former Labour leader, which is an inability to put a firm and terminal full-stop (or a period, in the US) at the end of his discourses.
Biden's long foreign policy experience and interest certainly meets Obama's alleged deficiencies in that field. In reality of course Obama is not so deficient compared with John McCain, so it is a bad sign that he may be appointing a real VP to beat a spurious shortcoming.
However, Biden and Obama seem to be on similar lines with the need to engage in diplomacy before sending in the gunboats. And read the conservative blogosphere on Biden as a creature of the UN – he even got married in the Methodist chapel at the UN - and you begin to think that he may have something going for him on the multilateral front.
Biden was pandering to Aipac long before Obama stepped to the podium to promise the world to the lobby, but is still on the more pragmatic side compared with McCain's "coalition of the yelling" on the issue.
And one presumes it was Biden's tendency to lean towards the Israel lobby which inclined him to support the Iraq war, which he did with some enthusiasm, even though he now regrets it. Certainly, having a son about to be deployed to Iraq puts him in a distinct minority among American politicians.
Biden also supports the embargo on Cuba, which has been Fidel's best excuse for mismanaging the island for all these decades. That sits uneasily with his call to engage constructively with China, the number one proponent of the death penalty, which Biden, to his credit, opposes. In fact, his position is remarkably close to Clinton's on this.
Similarly while one can admire the humanitarian fervor with which he insists that something must be done about Darfur, his favoured solution was to send US troops there. That would be as disastrous as it is impracticable. Quite apart from the question of where the troops would come from, it betrays a lack of appreciation of just how deep in the toilet the US's reputation is globally, let alone in the Arab world.
Clearly Biden may need some help. Nine years or so ago I was taken to lunch by a veteran Republican who asked how I would like to write speeches for George Bush. I replied that if Bush wanted speeches written advocating universal healthcare and a greater role for the UN, he could have them. I did not get the call. Neil Kinnock is now busy heading the British Council, but I am prepared to substitute. Joe, just drop me a line. But please, follow the script.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Georgia & Uncle Joe's Jigsaw
What To Do Now in Georgia
Ian Williams | August 19, 2008
Editor: John Feffer
Foreign Policy In Focus
www.fpif.org
There are no saints and even fewer geniuses in the conflict between Russia and Georgia over Ossetia. However, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, clearly the real power in Moscow, has certain proven himself even less saintly than other parties – and in the long term, less clever. Albeit with serious input from American miscalculations and atavistic politics and with the help of the hapless Georgian leader Mikheil Saakashvili, Putin has made both Russia, and the world, a more dangerous place.
That is not because of any great conspiracy, but rather a concatenation of expedient stupidities on all sides, exacerbated by the tendency of all American administrations since Reagan to treat Russia as a defeated power rather than a partner. Russian leaders began the elder George Bush’s New World Order with unprecedented gestures of cooperation, around the first Gulf War, for example. Washington’s triumphalist approach since would have provoked any regime in Moscow, let alone one led by a KGB/Mafia consortium, to nationalist reaction.
Some conspiracy theorists see a pipeline beneath every recent front line. In Georgia, a real one runs from Baku to Ceyhan in Turkey, whose sole and explicitly announced purpose was to get oil from the Caspian that did not have to go through Russian territory. Of course, it also made Turkey and its Israeli friends very happy. But alienating even a faded nuclear superpower to make two dependent states happy is not a statesmanlike thing to do.
The United Nations has largely been absent from the conflict between Russia and Georgia. There were Russian and not UN peacekeepers deployed in South Ossetia, and there was little discussion in the Security Council about either Georgia’s attack on the enclave or Russia’s response. Any durable peace in the region, however, will require some role for the UN. There is some real potential. The United States under Bush, while paying lip disservice to the organization, has been using it tacitly and widely. Russia, as one would expect from a weaker power, often invokes the organization, even if its adherence to UN principles has been as much, if not even more, expedient than Washington’s.
Unfinished Business
As an organization of sovereign states, albeit committed to over-arching humanitarian principles, the UN is confronted with “Uncle Joe’s Jigsaw.” The ex-Soviet republics were born with often calculatedly capricious boundaries that Stalin had established. As Boris Yeltsin took over after the Soviet Union’s official dissolution, he doubtless expected to reconstitute the union under some form or other. Polls across the former Soviet Union showed quite strong support for maintaining the union in some form. It would have helped defuse the economic and political shock of the Soviet Union’s collapse if Russia had promoted dual or multiple nationalities, freedom of movement and employment, a common currency, a free trade area, and the maintenance of joint enterprises across state boundaries. None of that happened. Instead, most of the new states had independence – and authoritarian regimes – thrust upon them. What had been administrative boundaries became concrete and barbed wire, regardless of economic and ethnic realities.
Putin’s rhetorical and military over-reaction to events in Georgia has scuppered any likelihood of reconstruction of the defunct Commonwealth of Independent States on the lines of the European Union. Russia’s attack has made NATO expansion all the more likely, and leaders of the ex-Soviet states immediately showed their colors by making solidarity visits to Tbilisi.
The Kremlin’s strategy in Georgia is likely to come back to haunt it. If there is one country that has much to fear from unbridled secessionism it is the Russian Federation, the Russian majority is rapidly shrinking. Legitimizing the secession of Abkhazia and Ossetia strengthens the case of the Chechens and numerous other claimants to independence or simply greater autonomy. And challenging the former Soviet boundaries opens the way to future conflicts, not just between Russia and its neighbors, but among the neighbors themselves.
Quite apart from any suspicions of Moscow’s ulterior motives, the undisciplined behavior of Russian troops in Georgia, as documented by human rights workers and the journalists who witnessed the Russian assault, did not win hearts and minds in their field of operations. It certainly belies Moscow’s weasel words about humanitarian interests.
Humanitarian Intervention
The Canadian-convened Commission on the Responsibility to Protect, the doctrine of humanitarian intervention adopted at the 60th anniversary summit of the United Nations, was quite clear about how dangerous a concept it could be when used expediently. When the doctrine was first raised in modern times in response to Saddam Hussein’s brutal assault on the Kurds, international lawyers at the UN quietly mentioned that one of the precedents was Adolf Hitler’s invocation of humanitarian intervention to “save” the Sudeten Germans and justify the invasion of Czechoslovakia.
Sadly, there were shades of that expediency in Moscow’s declaration that it was intervening on humanitarian grounds. Handing out Russian passports to the Ossetian citizens of Georgia could be taken as a humanitarian gesture – unless one takes into account the difficulties encountered by ethnic Russians and other Soviet citizens marooned in other ex-Soviet Republics in getting the same documents. As for coming to the rescue of their Ossetian brethren, Human Rights Watch and journalists on the ground have cast considerable doubt on whether nearly so many people as Russia claimed were killed in Georgia’s initial, unjustifiable attack.
Russia has followed the Kosovo script, almost recycling the same rhetoric the United States used to justify the 1999 intervention. However while Putin did not succeed in getting UN authorization for military intervention,– there are no records of any CIS meeting to consider the reaction of the Russian peacekeepers it nominally controls, unlike the long discussions Blair and Clinton had that won round NATO members. By going beyond Ossetian boundaries and papering over the brutalities of Ossetian militia, Moscow has seriously compromised its case, quite apart from the implicit doublethink of advocating in Ossetia the principles it repudiates in Kosovo.
Russia has claimed that its forces in Abkhazia, Ossetia, and Transdneister are the equivalent of UN peacekeepers. The first has a UN blue fig leaf, the other two have none. Of course the Russians are not alone in their expediency. The UN resolutions that mandated Russian presence in Georgia were the price Bill Clinton paid to acquire UN support for U.S. intervention in Haiti.
It would be simplistic to see Ossetia as payback for Kosovo, but it was certainly one element. Russia was clearly humiliated that it could not deliver for Serbia, one of the few countries left with any respect for the Kremlin. Even though Moscow has often been in the wrong, Washington has not seriously tried to engage the Kremlin, and its snubs have provoked understandable, if not always justifiable reactions. And the United States has often been in the wrong as well.
The Russian veto at the UN, less frequent but often as unprincipled as America’s, has been a demand for respect as well as a serious political gambit. Neither the French nor the British feel the need to use theirs, since they are treated as partners by Washington (albeit very junior ones). Russia has not even been given this junior status.
Although Russians have sent an effective message to their neighbors that neither NATO nor the USA can guarantee their safety, the strategy is all stick and no carrot. The response of the leaders of other ex-Soviet states and the immediate Polish-American agreement on missile bases demonstrates how counter-productive the Russian action has been. Add to that events in Ukraine, where the former Russian anti-missile system is on offer to NATO and the Sevastapol Russian Navy base has been called in question, and Moscow has actually consolidated an anti-Russian alliance.
Was this the covert plan of the United States: to provoke Georgia to attack South Ossetia, knowing that Russia would respond, and thereby create anti-Russian solidarity among its neighbors? When April Glaspie passed on Washington’s advice to Saddam Hussein that the United States did not take sides in the dispute, she did not expect him to invade Kuwait. It seems equally unlikely that the White House support for their latest man in Tbilisi was intended to encourage him to respond so vigorously. Some people in the Bush administration may have encouraged Saakashvili in his impetuousness. There are neocons around who are detached enough from reality to think that the United States could face Russia down and welcome the chance to humiliate the old enemy – but they are clearly not in the State Department at the moment.
Conversely, the readiness of Russian troops and the reported provocation by Ossetian militias could have been a trap sprung on the hapless Saakashvili. On the other hand Moscow’s calling of an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council and its seemingly exaggerated casualty figures could have been the result of credulity on its part in the face of manipulation by the KGB/Mafia figures who control South Ossetia.
It would be marginally more reassuring if the conflict had been caused by the irrationalities of local leaders on both sides, rather than by cold war calculations in either Moscow or Washington. That would at least imply that there was a basis for getting the parties to the negotiating table before matters escalate.
The Future
With even Germany now supporting extension of NATO to include countries with unresolved issues such as the enclaves in Georgia and even the Crimea, an action replay of 1939 threatens. Just as a bedrock principle of the African Union was acceptance of existing colonial boundaries, there were good reasons not to open the Pandora’s box of redrawing Stalin’s cartographic caprice.
Even so, however, there is room for legitimate mutually agreed boundary revisions, for example between Azerbaijan and Armenia. The Russians do have a point that self-determination is an important principle, even if they tend to ignore the detail that Abkhaz self-determination was a case of a minority expelling the majority.
Any U.S. administration that can restrain its scruples enough to deal with the House of Saud, or Pervez Musharraf can do business with Putin, or maybe even with Medvedev when we have sorted out if he is more than a ventriloquist’s dummy. Europe, despite its frequent diplomatic paraplegia can play a constructive role, and in fact already has done so by inhibiting NATO’s pull to the west.
Washington should begin by taking its declared European allies such as Germany and France seriously to work out a shared approach, and then jointly talking with Russia to build a framework to handle problems in the region. But any accommodation to the Russians (or indeed the Georgians) has to preclude the use of military force. In the Georgian enclaves, the Russian military are clearly part of the problem, not the solution. They need to be replaced with real peacekeepers who can guarantee the return of refugees and replace the KGB/Mafia rule in the enclaves. Certainly Russian monitors should be part of the force, but the substantial elements should come from elsewhere and be under actual UN auspices.
Ban Ki Moon is not the type to use a bully pulpit, which is a shame since all sides deserve a hard talking to. However, Moon’s customary low profile does allow some possibilities for his “good offices.”Some form of UN mission could allow both sides to descend with dignity from the poles they have climbed. A good example would be the brokering role the UN played in ending the Iran-Iraq war. Such quiet diplomacy, in concert with UN monitors and peacekeepers, could produce a durable settlement without asking any of the parties to eat humble pie.
Ian Williams is a senior analyst for Foreign Policy In Focus (www.fpif.org). More of his work is available on www.deadlinepundit.blogspot.com.
Ian Williams | August 19, 2008
Editor: John Feffer
Foreign Policy In Focus
www.fpif.org
There are no saints and even fewer geniuses in the conflict between Russia and Georgia over Ossetia. However, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, clearly the real power in Moscow, has certain proven himself even less saintly than other parties – and in the long term, less clever. Albeit with serious input from American miscalculations and atavistic politics and with the help of the hapless Georgian leader Mikheil Saakashvili, Putin has made both Russia, and the world, a more dangerous place.
That is not because of any great conspiracy, but rather a concatenation of expedient stupidities on all sides, exacerbated by the tendency of all American administrations since Reagan to treat Russia as a defeated power rather than a partner. Russian leaders began the elder George Bush’s New World Order with unprecedented gestures of cooperation, around the first Gulf War, for example. Washington’s triumphalist approach since would have provoked any regime in Moscow, let alone one led by a KGB/Mafia consortium, to nationalist reaction.
Some conspiracy theorists see a pipeline beneath every recent front line. In Georgia, a real one runs from Baku to Ceyhan in Turkey, whose sole and explicitly announced purpose was to get oil from the Caspian that did not have to go through Russian territory. Of course, it also made Turkey and its Israeli friends very happy. But alienating even a faded nuclear superpower to make two dependent states happy is not a statesmanlike thing to do.
The United Nations has largely been absent from the conflict between Russia and Georgia. There were Russian and not UN peacekeepers deployed in South Ossetia, and there was little discussion in the Security Council about either Georgia’s attack on the enclave or Russia’s response. Any durable peace in the region, however, will require some role for the UN. There is some real potential. The United States under Bush, while paying lip disservice to the organization, has been using it tacitly and widely. Russia, as one would expect from a weaker power, often invokes the organization, even if its adherence to UN principles has been as much, if not even more, expedient than Washington’s.
Unfinished Business
As an organization of sovereign states, albeit committed to over-arching humanitarian principles, the UN is confronted with “Uncle Joe’s Jigsaw.” The ex-Soviet republics were born with often calculatedly capricious boundaries that Stalin had established. As Boris Yeltsin took over after the Soviet Union’s official dissolution, he doubtless expected to reconstitute the union under some form or other. Polls across the former Soviet Union showed quite strong support for maintaining the union in some form. It would have helped defuse the economic and political shock of the Soviet Union’s collapse if Russia had promoted dual or multiple nationalities, freedom of movement and employment, a common currency, a free trade area, and the maintenance of joint enterprises across state boundaries. None of that happened. Instead, most of the new states had independence – and authoritarian regimes – thrust upon them. What had been administrative boundaries became concrete and barbed wire, regardless of economic and ethnic realities.
Putin’s rhetorical and military over-reaction to events in Georgia has scuppered any likelihood of reconstruction of the defunct Commonwealth of Independent States on the lines of the European Union. Russia’s attack has made NATO expansion all the more likely, and leaders of the ex-Soviet states immediately showed their colors by making solidarity visits to Tbilisi.
The Kremlin’s strategy in Georgia is likely to come back to haunt it. If there is one country that has much to fear from unbridled secessionism it is the Russian Federation, the Russian majority is rapidly shrinking. Legitimizing the secession of Abkhazia and Ossetia strengthens the case of the Chechens and numerous other claimants to independence or simply greater autonomy. And challenging the former Soviet boundaries opens the way to future conflicts, not just between Russia and its neighbors, but among the neighbors themselves.
Quite apart from any suspicions of Moscow’s ulterior motives, the undisciplined behavior of Russian troops in Georgia, as documented by human rights workers and the journalists who witnessed the Russian assault, did not win hearts and minds in their field of operations. It certainly belies Moscow’s weasel words about humanitarian interests.
Humanitarian Intervention
The Canadian-convened Commission on the Responsibility to Protect, the doctrine of humanitarian intervention adopted at the 60th anniversary summit of the United Nations, was quite clear about how dangerous a concept it could be when used expediently. When the doctrine was first raised in modern times in response to Saddam Hussein’s brutal assault on the Kurds, international lawyers at the UN quietly mentioned that one of the precedents was Adolf Hitler’s invocation of humanitarian intervention to “save” the Sudeten Germans and justify the invasion of Czechoslovakia.
Sadly, there were shades of that expediency in Moscow’s declaration that it was intervening on humanitarian grounds. Handing out Russian passports to the Ossetian citizens of Georgia could be taken as a humanitarian gesture – unless one takes into account the difficulties encountered by ethnic Russians and other Soviet citizens marooned in other ex-Soviet Republics in getting the same documents. As for coming to the rescue of their Ossetian brethren, Human Rights Watch and journalists on the ground have cast considerable doubt on whether nearly so many people as Russia claimed were killed in Georgia’s initial, unjustifiable attack.
Russia has followed the Kosovo script, almost recycling the same rhetoric the United States used to justify the 1999 intervention. However while Putin did not succeed in getting UN authorization for military intervention,– there are no records of any CIS meeting to consider the reaction of the Russian peacekeepers it nominally controls, unlike the long discussions Blair and Clinton had that won round NATO members. By going beyond Ossetian boundaries and papering over the brutalities of Ossetian militia, Moscow has seriously compromised its case, quite apart from the implicit doublethink of advocating in Ossetia the principles it repudiates in Kosovo.
Russia has claimed that its forces in Abkhazia, Ossetia, and Transdneister are the equivalent of UN peacekeepers. The first has a UN blue fig leaf, the other two have none. Of course the Russians are not alone in their expediency. The UN resolutions that mandated Russian presence in Georgia were the price Bill Clinton paid to acquire UN support for U.S. intervention in Haiti.
It would be simplistic to see Ossetia as payback for Kosovo, but it was certainly one element. Russia was clearly humiliated that it could not deliver for Serbia, one of the few countries left with any respect for the Kremlin. Even though Moscow has often been in the wrong, Washington has not seriously tried to engage the Kremlin, and its snubs have provoked understandable, if not always justifiable reactions. And the United States has often been in the wrong as well.
The Russian veto at the UN, less frequent but often as unprincipled as America’s, has been a demand for respect as well as a serious political gambit. Neither the French nor the British feel the need to use theirs, since they are treated as partners by Washington (albeit very junior ones). Russia has not even been given this junior status.
Although Russians have sent an effective message to their neighbors that neither NATO nor the USA can guarantee their safety, the strategy is all stick and no carrot. The response of the leaders of other ex-Soviet states and the immediate Polish-American agreement on missile bases demonstrates how counter-productive the Russian action has been. Add to that events in Ukraine, where the former Russian anti-missile system is on offer to NATO and the Sevastapol Russian Navy base has been called in question, and Moscow has actually consolidated an anti-Russian alliance.
Was this the covert plan of the United States: to provoke Georgia to attack South Ossetia, knowing that Russia would respond, and thereby create anti-Russian solidarity among its neighbors? When April Glaspie passed on Washington’s advice to Saddam Hussein that the United States did not take sides in the dispute, she did not expect him to invade Kuwait. It seems equally unlikely that the White House support for their latest man in Tbilisi was intended to encourage him to respond so vigorously. Some people in the Bush administration may have encouraged Saakashvili in his impetuousness. There are neocons around who are detached enough from reality to think that the United States could face Russia down and welcome the chance to humiliate the old enemy – but they are clearly not in the State Department at the moment.
Conversely, the readiness of Russian troops and the reported provocation by Ossetian militias could have been a trap sprung on the hapless Saakashvili. On the other hand Moscow’s calling of an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council and its seemingly exaggerated casualty figures could have been the result of credulity on its part in the face of manipulation by the KGB/Mafia figures who control South Ossetia.
It would be marginally more reassuring if the conflict had been caused by the irrationalities of local leaders on both sides, rather than by cold war calculations in either Moscow or Washington. That would at least imply that there was a basis for getting the parties to the negotiating table before matters escalate.
The Future
With even Germany now supporting extension of NATO to include countries with unresolved issues such as the enclaves in Georgia and even the Crimea, an action replay of 1939 threatens. Just as a bedrock principle of the African Union was acceptance of existing colonial boundaries, there were good reasons not to open the Pandora’s box of redrawing Stalin’s cartographic caprice.
Even so, however, there is room for legitimate mutually agreed boundary revisions, for example between Azerbaijan and Armenia. The Russians do have a point that self-determination is an important principle, even if they tend to ignore the detail that Abkhaz self-determination was a case of a minority expelling the majority.
Any U.S. administration that can restrain its scruples enough to deal with the House of Saud, or Pervez Musharraf can do business with Putin, or maybe even with Medvedev when we have sorted out if he is more than a ventriloquist’s dummy. Europe, despite its frequent diplomatic paraplegia can play a constructive role, and in fact already has done so by inhibiting NATO’s pull to the west.
Washington should begin by taking its declared European allies such as Germany and France seriously to work out a shared approach, and then jointly talking with Russia to build a framework to handle problems in the region. But any accommodation to the Russians (or indeed the Georgians) has to preclude the use of military force. In the Georgian enclaves, the Russian military are clearly part of the problem, not the solution. They need to be replaced with real peacekeepers who can guarantee the return of refugees and replace the KGB/Mafia rule in the enclaves. Certainly Russian monitors should be part of the force, but the substantial elements should come from elsewhere and be under actual UN auspices.
Ban Ki Moon is not the type to use a bully pulpit, which is a shame since all sides deserve a hard talking to. However, Moon’s customary low profile does allow some possibilities for his “good offices.”Some form of UN mission could allow both sides to descend with dignity from the poles they have climbed. A good example would be the brokering role the UN played in ending the Iran-Iraq war. Such quiet diplomacy, in concert with UN monitors and peacekeepers, could produce a durable settlement without asking any of the parties to eat humble pie.
Ian Williams is a senior analyst for Foreign Policy In Focus (www.fpif.org). More of his work is available on www.deadlinepundit.blogspot.com.
Monday, August 18, 2008
Western Sahara; A Maghrebi Commonwealth?
Ha - the perils of deadline punditting - in the Guardian I reversed my Hassans and my Mohammeds... rectified in true Orwellian fashion in this version!
A very British compromise
Rather than shrugging its shoulders about Western Sahara, the UN should use the Commonwealth as a role model
Ian Williams
guardian.co.uk, Friday August 15 2008 18:30 BST
It was a bit like telling a rape victim to stop struggling. Peter van Walsum, the Dutch diplomat who is the UN representative to Western Sahara, told the Spanish newspaper El Pais that Western Sahara will never achieve independence, even though he admitted that international law and successive UN resolutions have called for self determination in the vast desert country mostly occupied by the Moroccans.
He castigated Spanish civil society - which is very active on the issue since Western Sahara is a former Spanish colony that Franco threw to the Moroccans to protect his own "Gibraltars" in Morocco, the Spanish enclaves of Melilla and Ceuta - for encouraging the Sahrawis in their resistance.
Van Walsum almost has a point when he says the UN security council "is not ready to exercise its authority under article VII of the UN charter, and impose it." But why is he attacking the victims and their friends? One would have thought a Dutch diplomat, with the record of acquiescence to "facts on the ground" in Srebrenica, would be more circumspect. Why has he not pilloried Morocco and its friends in the Security Council - the US, France and Britain?
The silence of the UN Secretariat over the years has been stunning, since Morocco reneged on its 1991 agreement to allow a referendum in the territory. Indeed, there has often been complicity and connivance, as when then UN secretary-general Perez de Cuellar, in his last week in office tried to get the security council to adopt a pro-Moroccan resolution over the Christmas and New Year's holidays.
I was at the press briefing back in 1991 when Johannes Mantz, the Swiss diplomat charged with heading MINURSO announced that it would only take a year to identify the voters and hold the referendum. I asked him at the time if he had consulted the King of Morocco, who had made it plain that the only referendum he would allow was one that he was guaranteed to win. Since then, Hassan and his heir Mohammed each refused to allow the referendum while the UN has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the sand dunes in preparation for it.
There is a deafening sound of silence about Morocco's refusal to accept international law and security council resolutions, let alone honour its own promises. Initially backed strongly by France, Morocco now has American support, which nowadays always carries automatic British acquiescence as an added bonus.
At least partly, Washington's support is because Morocco is Israel's closest partner in the Arab world, even though the King hedges his bets by being chair of the Arab League committee on Jerusalem. The latter position ensures that Arab states perennially concerned about Palestinian refugees and the separation wall are calmly insouciant about the Saharan refugees and the huge sand berm that Morocco has built across the territories it has occupied.
However, there is a solution from the example of the British Commonwealth, which has been endlessly inventive in finding ways to maintain symbolic ties without real authority or responsibility. When the Moroccans referred the issue to the World Court, the ICJ, the judgement found no evidence "of any legal tie of territorial sovereignty" between Western Sahara and Morocco and said that the territory needed an act of self-determination. Neverthless, it did detect "indication of a legal tie of allegiance between the [Moroccan] Sultan and some of the tribes of the territory."
So, enter King Mohammed of Western Sahara, with all the powers and honours of Queen Elizabeth in her realms of Canada, Australia, Barbados and so on. The security council can then tell the King that he gets his due, while the Western Saharans clearly get what they want: effective independence. Polisario would surely be happy to offer a 21-gun salute and a few garden parties every time the King visited – maybe even build him a royal sand-castle somewhere.
But first, the western members of the security council have to put some truth to the rumours they keep spreading about their attachment to international law, democracy and the rights of small countries not to be bullied and occupied by their neighbours.
A very British compromise
Rather than shrugging its shoulders about Western Sahara, the UN should use the Commonwealth as a role model
Ian Williams
guardian.co.uk, Friday August 15 2008 18:30 BST
It was a bit like telling a rape victim to stop struggling. Peter van Walsum, the Dutch diplomat who is the UN representative to Western Sahara, told the Spanish newspaper El Pais that Western Sahara will never achieve independence, even though he admitted that international law and successive UN resolutions have called for self determination in the vast desert country mostly occupied by the Moroccans.
He castigated Spanish civil society - which is very active on the issue since Western Sahara is a former Spanish colony that Franco threw to the Moroccans to protect his own "Gibraltars" in Morocco, the Spanish enclaves of Melilla and Ceuta - for encouraging the Sahrawis in their resistance.
Van Walsum almost has a point when he says the UN security council "is not ready to exercise its authority under article VII of the UN charter, and impose it." But why is he attacking the victims and their friends? One would have thought a Dutch diplomat, with the record of acquiescence to "facts on the ground" in Srebrenica, would be more circumspect. Why has he not pilloried Morocco and its friends in the Security Council - the US, France and Britain?
The silence of the UN Secretariat over the years has been stunning, since Morocco reneged on its 1991 agreement to allow a referendum in the territory. Indeed, there has often been complicity and connivance, as when then UN secretary-general Perez de Cuellar, in his last week in office tried to get the security council to adopt a pro-Moroccan resolution over the Christmas and New Year's holidays.
I was at the press briefing back in 1991 when Johannes Mantz, the Swiss diplomat charged with heading MINURSO announced that it would only take a year to identify the voters and hold the referendum. I asked him at the time if he had consulted the King of Morocco, who had made it plain that the only referendum he would allow was one that he was guaranteed to win. Since then, Hassan and his heir Mohammed each refused to allow the referendum while the UN has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the sand dunes in preparation for it.
There is a deafening sound of silence about Morocco's refusal to accept international law and security council resolutions, let alone honour its own promises. Initially backed strongly by France, Morocco now has American support, which nowadays always carries automatic British acquiescence as an added bonus.
At least partly, Washington's support is because Morocco is Israel's closest partner in the Arab world, even though the King hedges his bets by being chair of the Arab League committee on Jerusalem. The latter position ensures that Arab states perennially concerned about Palestinian refugees and the separation wall are calmly insouciant about the Saharan refugees and the huge sand berm that Morocco has built across the territories it has occupied.
However, there is a solution from the example of the British Commonwealth, which has been endlessly inventive in finding ways to maintain symbolic ties without real authority or responsibility. When the Moroccans referred the issue to the World Court, the ICJ, the judgement found no evidence "of any legal tie of territorial sovereignty" between Western Sahara and Morocco and said that the territory needed an act of self-determination. Neverthless, it did detect "indication of a legal tie of allegiance between the [Moroccan] Sultan and some of the tribes of the territory."
So, enter King Mohammed of Western Sahara, with all the powers and honours of Queen Elizabeth in her realms of Canada, Australia, Barbados and so on. The security council can then tell the King that he gets his due, while the Western Saharans clearly get what they want: effective independence. Polisario would surely be happy to offer a 21-gun salute and a few garden parties every time the King visited – maybe even build him a royal sand-castle somewhere.
But first, the western members of the security council have to put some truth to the rumours they keep spreading about their attachment to international law, democracy and the rights of small countries not to be bullied and occupied by their neighbours.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
UN Goes Dutch with Polisario
If you go to the site you can can click on and get the radio interview
Western Sahara
UN rep claims Western Sahara has the law on their side, but not the UN Security Council
Article published on the 2008-08-13 Latest update 2008-08-13 17:29 TU
Soldiers from the United Nations mission for the organization of a referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) at Oum Dreyga(File Photo: AFP)
Soldiers from the United Nations mission for the organization of a referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) at Oum Dreyga
(File Photo: AFP)
The UN mediator on the Western Sahara Peter van Walsum told the Spanish paper El Pais that the Frente Polisario, the group representing the Sahrawi people will never achieve independence, even though international law in on their side. Part of the problem, according to the Dutch diplomat, is that the UN Security Council "is not ready to exercise its authority under Article VII of the UN Charter, and impose it."
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Ian Williams, a senior analyst for Washington DC-based think tank Foreign Policy in Focus, spoke to RFI about the El Pais interview, noting that the more interesting statement was what van Walsum did not say.
"What he actually did was told off Spanish NGOs for what he said was supporting Polisario's 'unreasonable' aims... he wasn't castigating the US, or France or Britain or the UN for not fulfilling international law," said Williams.
"His advice to the Polisario is basically fairly scandalous. It's like telling a rape victim that she should lie back and enjoy it because there is nothing she can do about it," he added.
Ian Williams, a senior analyst for Washington DC-based think tank Foreign Policy in Focus
listen 2 minutes 42 seconds
13/08/2008 by Laura Angela Bagnetto
Van Walsum's declaration comes before the renewal of his mandate on as UN special representative on the Western Sahara later this month.
The Frente Polisario have indicated that van Walsum "is biased in favour of Morocco after a declaration that the independence of Western Sahara is an unrealistic option," according to a report published by Algeria's APS news agency.
Talks between the Frente Polisario and the Kingdom of Morocco have been going on since June 2007 under the auspices of the UN in New York. The fifth round of talks, scheduled for later this month, have been postponed, according to the office of spokesperson for the UN Secretary General.
The former Spanish colony was illegally annexed by neighboring Morocco in 1975. Fighting between the Frente Polisario and Morocco ensued until both sides agreed to a UN-brokered truce in 1991.
Western Sahara
UN rep claims Western Sahara has the law on their side, but not the UN Security Council
Article published on the 2008-08-13 Latest update 2008-08-13 17:29 TU
Soldiers from the United Nations mission for the organization of a referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) at Oum Dreyga(File Photo: AFP)
Soldiers from the United Nations mission for the organization of a referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) at Oum Dreyga
(File Photo: AFP)
The UN mediator on the Western Sahara Peter van Walsum told the Spanish paper El Pais that the Frente Polisario, the group representing the Sahrawi people will never achieve independence, even though international law in on their side. Part of the problem, according to the Dutch diplomat, is that the UN Security Council "is not ready to exercise its authority under Article VII of the UN Charter, and impose it."
Print the article
Send the article
Comments on article
Ian Williams, a senior analyst for Washington DC-based think tank Foreign Policy in Focus, spoke to RFI about the El Pais interview, noting that the more interesting statement was what van Walsum did not say.
"What he actually did was told off Spanish NGOs for what he said was supporting Polisario's 'unreasonable' aims... he wasn't castigating the US, or France or Britain or the UN for not fulfilling international law," said Williams.
"His advice to the Polisario is basically fairly scandalous. It's like telling a rape victim that she should lie back and enjoy it because there is nothing she can do about it," he added.
Ian Williams, a senior analyst for Washington DC-based think tank Foreign Policy in Focus
listen 2 minutes 42 seconds
13/08/2008 by Laura Angela Bagnetto
Van Walsum's declaration comes before the renewal of his mandate on as UN special representative on the Western Sahara later this month.
The Frente Polisario have indicated that van Walsum "is biased in favour of Morocco after a declaration that the independence of Western Sahara is an unrealistic option," according to a report published by Algeria's APS news agency.
Talks between the Frente Polisario and the Kingdom of Morocco have been going on since June 2007 under the auspices of the UN in New York. The fifth round of talks, scheduled for later this month, have been postponed, according to the office of spokesperson for the UN Secretary General.
The former Spanish colony was illegally annexed by neighboring Morocco in 1975. Fighting between the Frente Polisario and Morocco ensued until both sides agreed to a UN-brokered truce in 1991.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Edwards, Pants on Fire
The dissimulation of John Edwards
The former Democratic senator joins Gary Hart and Bill Clinton in the despised National Enquirer's hall of shame
All comments (54)
Ian Williams
guardian.co.uk, Saturday August 09 2008 01:23 BST
When I came to the US, I thought I was in journalist's heaven. Any serious revelations in the British press would be followed by lawyers' letters threatening writs and sometimes, for well-heeled litigants, actual libel writs to match. As several jurisdiction-miners have discovered, even telling the truth can on occasion be no defence in British courts. Hell, as recently as 1977 they even reinvented a centuries-old offence of "blasphemous libel," to convict a poet for writing about sex with a long-deceased Jesus Christ. But in the US, it was virtually impossible to libel even a live public figure!
But then I discovered that this was much less significant than I thought, since the US media is normally so deferential of politicians that one almost admires the National Enquirer – not least because it knows the difference between "inquire" and "enquire".
One can see why so many of the supermarket tabloid reporters were refugees from British media law, where a judge can rule a story about the former British fascist leader's son having S&M with prostitutes as an invasion of privacy. He did not deny the story as such – but simply said it was none of the press's business. Nor was it.
When British Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown and former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook were outed for having affairs with their secretaries, they fessed up and their popularity rose. But note the difference.
Unlike their British counterparts, the National Enquirer did not make stories up. When Gary Hart told them to bring it on: they did. When Bill Clinton denied Gennifer Flowers, they got him. And now John Edwards is admitting they got him as well. And they all dissimulated. Extra-marital sex may be one of the fringe benefits of political life, but getting caught in the lie outright could be fatal.
Even so, the hypocrisy of Democratic party leaders now working out how to keep Edwards off the podium at their convention does show double standards. They would certainly welcome former President Bill Clinton up there, whom the Enquirer also got bang to rights, as it were. Even more tellingly, when did Newt Gingrich ever lack for a platform in the party of family values and the religious right despite his trying to bully his wife into more favourable divorce terms in her cancer recovery ward?
John McCain himself divorced the wife who had stayed married to him during the years he spent in a Vietnamese prison, and married into the money that now helps bankroll his political ambitions. Rudy Giuliani, while mayor of New York, announced his divorce at a press conference without telling his wife beforehand. Neither of these men seems to have suffered politically within the party of the teenage abstinence, familial integrity and marital fidelity.
A senior UN official once asked another official why I had not carried a story about his affair with his secretary, since I knew about it. The accurate reply was I saw no public - that is, civic - interest. He was not committing any crime and had not made a public career of parading family values and feigned Pauline Christian morality. It was irresistible to gossip about in the bar of the Delegates' Lounge, but entirely resistible to write about it. "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone", is the relevant text.
American law does not protect privacy, unlike European law, but it certainly has a point in excluding public figures from libel protection. On a pragmatic point, people who run for public office should be savvy enough to do the Caesar's wife thing. How can you expect someone who is indiscreet enough to get caught to run a superpower, with its necessary lies and secrets?
In addition, hypocrisy should always be the subject of journalists' attention. Lying and then getting caught out will always prolong the media attention. Take a tip from Rudy and Newt, be brazen in your hypocrisy, and even the religious right will forget about it in a very short time.
The former Democratic senator joins Gary Hart and Bill Clinton in the despised National Enquirer's hall of shame
All comments (54)
Ian Williams
guardian.co.uk, Saturday August 09 2008 01:23 BST
When I came to the US, I thought I was in journalist's heaven. Any serious revelations in the British press would be followed by lawyers' letters threatening writs and sometimes, for well-heeled litigants, actual libel writs to match. As several jurisdiction-miners have discovered, even telling the truth can on occasion be no defence in British courts. Hell, as recently as 1977 they even reinvented a centuries-old offence of "blasphemous libel," to convict a poet for writing about sex with a long-deceased Jesus Christ. But in the US, it was virtually impossible to libel even a live public figure!
But then I discovered that this was much less significant than I thought, since the US media is normally so deferential of politicians that one almost admires the National Enquirer – not least because it knows the difference between "inquire" and "enquire".
One can see why so many of the supermarket tabloid reporters were refugees from British media law, where a judge can rule a story about the former British fascist leader's son having S&M with prostitutes as an invasion of privacy. He did not deny the story as such – but simply said it was none of the press's business. Nor was it.
When British Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown and former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook were outed for having affairs with their secretaries, they fessed up and their popularity rose. But note the difference.
Unlike their British counterparts, the National Enquirer did not make stories up. When Gary Hart told them to bring it on: they did. When Bill Clinton denied Gennifer Flowers, they got him. And now John Edwards is admitting they got him as well. And they all dissimulated. Extra-marital sex may be one of the fringe benefits of political life, but getting caught in the lie outright could be fatal.
Even so, the hypocrisy of Democratic party leaders now working out how to keep Edwards off the podium at their convention does show double standards. They would certainly welcome former President Bill Clinton up there, whom the Enquirer also got bang to rights, as it were. Even more tellingly, when did Newt Gingrich ever lack for a platform in the party of family values and the religious right despite his trying to bully his wife into more favourable divorce terms in her cancer recovery ward?
John McCain himself divorced the wife who had stayed married to him during the years he spent in a Vietnamese prison, and married into the money that now helps bankroll his political ambitions. Rudy Giuliani, while mayor of New York, announced his divorce at a press conference without telling his wife beforehand. Neither of these men seems to have suffered politically within the party of the teenage abstinence, familial integrity and marital fidelity.
A senior UN official once asked another official why I had not carried a story about his affair with his secretary, since I knew about it. The accurate reply was I saw no public - that is, civic - interest. He was not committing any crime and had not made a public career of parading family values and feigned Pauline Christian morality. It was irresistible to gossip about in the bar of the Delegates' Lounge, but entirely resistible to write about it. "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone", is the relevant text.
American law does not protect privacy, unlike European law, but it certainly has a point in excluding public figures from libel protection. On a pragmatic point, people who run for public office should be savvy enough to do the Caesar's wife thing. How can you expect someone who is indiscreet enough to get caught to run a superpower, with its necessary lies and secrets?
In addition, hypocrisy should always be the subject of journalists' attention. Lying and then getting caught out will always prolong the media attention. Take a tip from Rudy and Newt, be brazen in your hypocrisy, and even the religious right will forget about it in a very short time.
Monday, August 11, 2008
Chalabi vs Suskind,
The White House's implausible deniability
Why should anyone believe the Bush administration's weak denials that it forged a link between Saddam and al-Qaida?
Ian Williams
guardian.co.uk, Thursday August 07 2008 15:30 BST
Article history
The White House has categorically denied that it ordered the CIA to forge evidence that Saddam Hussein was conspiring with al-Qaida, a charge made by journalist Ron Suskind in his new book The Way of the World. The credibility of the Bush press office is such that one is tempted to take it as confirmation.
There is an old joke about the guy who claimed he could tell when Henry Kissinger was lying, and when tested had a 100% success rate. When asked his secret, he says: "His lips were moving."
In the great tradition of White House weaselling, in part revealed by Scott McClellan's book, one notes that there is no denial that the so-called evidence was a forgery, and a very tightly specific repudiation of the White House's role that actually leaves ten thousand several other ways for forgeries to make their entrances. Indeed, in the light of Suskind's descriptions of Dick Cheney's hard work on providing deniability, the vice-president's office is one such.
One question asked in the language of another expansive militarist empire is "Cui bono?" Who would benefit from such a forgery? It is clear that the allegations of an al-Qaida connection, like the equally spurious Niger yellowcake document, were intended to justify the war. Suskind's book should not be shocking to anyone.
Like Hitler's Gleiwitz attack, and the Tonkin Gulf incident, the carefully fed suggestions of Iraqi involvement in the 9/11 attacks were crucial to getting public and political support for war. That was what made the spurious WMDs so threatening. Washington Post polls showed that 70% of the American public bought the al-Qaida connection, and indeed many of the troops apparently still do.
But there were no proven, or even likely ties between al-Qaida and Saddam. Let us do the "just the facts" thing before the inevitable ad-hominem attacks on Suskind drive out his message. The Ba'athists were secular nationalists until Saddam became expediently pious after the first Gulf war. In addition, at no point did Saddam's regime allow any Islamist organisations to threaten his monopoly of political power. It was with mixed shock and amusement that I read Iraq's answer to the UN anti-terrorism committee's questionnaire, where the regime proved its impeccable credentials by citing its use of the death penalty for any remotely terrorist-linked offence.
The only connection is that the invasion let al-Qaida and sundry other fundamentalists into Iraq, and Saddam's viciously efficient secret police were no longer in a position to deal with them.
As for the weapons, by the time President Bush ordered the attack, Hans Blix's UN inspectors were in Iraq coming up blank in their search for weapons, confirming what Saddam's own son-in-law Hussein Kamal had said during his defection, that Saddam had indeed disarmed years before. It would certainly be likely that any defector like Tahir Jalil Habbush would say the same.
But former CIA director George Tenet's statement in large measure vindicates Suskind's points. Intelligence agencies are there to provide evidence that suits their masters, not the truth. Tenet says that Habbush "failed to persuade his British interlocutors that he had anything new to offer by way of intelligence, concessions or negotiations with regard to the Iraq crisis," and that "There were many Iraqi officials who said both publicly and privately that Iraq had no WMD – but our foreign intelligence colleagues and we assessed that these individuals were parroting the Ba'ath party line and trying to delay any coalition attack. The particular source that Suskind cites offered no evidence to back up his assertion and acted in an evasive and unconvincing manner."
That meant that, unlike Ahmed Chalabi's inventive sources, they were not providing the necessary excuses for war that their interrogators wanted to hear.
In summary, who are you going to believe: a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist or a White House that has provably lied about WMDs, about al-Qaida, about torture and indeed about almost any other subject?
In face of the fear of lese-majesté that afflicts most of Washington's media and political operatives, Ron Suskind deserves support. Although one has to wonder. He is being published by Rupert Murdoch, whose hands-on approach to publishing leads one to wonder whether Fox, the Wall Street Journal and the rest are about to eat eight years' worth of mendacious words.
Why should anyone believe the Bush administration's weak denials that it forged a link between Saddam and al-Qaida?
Ian Williams
guardian.co.uk, Thursday August 07 2008 15:30 BST
Article history
The White House has categorically denied that it ordered the CIA to forge evidence that Saddam Hussein was conspiring with al-Qaida, a charge made by journalist Ron Suskind in his new book The Way of the World. The credibility of the Bush press office is such that one is tempted to take it as confirmation.
There is an old joke about the guy who claimed he could tell when Henry Kissinger was lying, and when tested had a 100% success rate. When asked his secret, he says: "His lips were moving."
In the great tradition of White House weaselling, in part revealed by Scott McClellan's book, one notes that there is no denial that the so-called evidence was a forgery, and a very tightly specific repudiation of the White House's role that actually leaves ten thousand several other ways for forgeries to make their entrances. Indeed, in the light of Suskind's descriptions of Dick Cheney's hard work on providing deniability, the vice-president's office is one such.
One question asked in the language of another expansive militarist empire is "Cui bono?" Who would benefit from such a forgery? It is clear that the allegations of an al-Qaida connection, like the equally spurious Niger yellowcake document, were intended to justify the war. Suskind's book should not be shocking to anyone.
Like Hitler's Gleiwitz attack, and the Tonkin Gulf incident, the carefully fed suggestions of Iraqi involvement in the 9/11 attacks were crucial to getting public and political support for war. That was what made the spurious WMDs so threatening. Washington Post polls showed that 70% of the American public bought the al-Qaida connection, and indeed many of the troops apparently still do.
But there were no proven, or even likely ties between al-Qaida and Saddam. Let us do the "just the facts" thing before the inevitable ad-hominem attacks on Suskind drive out his message. The Ba'athists were secular nationalists until Saddam became expediently pious after the first Gulf war. In addition, at no point did Saddam's regime allow any Islamist organisations to threaten his monopoly of political power. It was with mixed shock and amusement that I read Iraq's answer to the UN anti-terrorism committee's questionnaire, where the regime proved its impeccable credentials by citing its use of the death penalty for any remotely terrorist-linked offence.
The only connection is that the invasion let al-Qaida and sundry other fundamentalists into Iraq, and Saddam's viciously efficient secret police were no longer in a position to deal with them.
As for the weapons, by the time President Bush ordered the attack, Hans Blix's UN inspectors were in Iraq coming up blank in their search for weapons, confirming what Saddam's own son-in-law Hussein Kamal had said during his defection, that Saddam had indeed disarmed years before. It would certainly be likely that any defector like Tahir Jalil Habbush would say the same.
But former CIA director George Tenet's statement in large measure vindicates Suskind's points. Intelligence agencies are there to provide evidence that suits their masters, not the truth. Tenet says that Habbush "failed to persuade his British interlocutors that he had anything new to offer by way of intelligence, concessions or negotiations with regard to the Iraq crisis," and that "There were many Iraqi officials who said both publicly and privately that Iraq had no WMD – but our foreign intelligence colleagues and we assessed that these individuals were parroting the Ba'ath party line and trying to delay any coalition attack. The particular source that Suskind cites offered no evidence to back up his assertion and acted in an evasive and unconvincing manner."
That meant that, unlike Ahmed Chalabi's inventive sources, they were not providing the necessary excuses for war that their interrogators wanted to hear.
In summary, who are you going to believe: a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist or a White House that has provably lied about WMDs, about al-Qaida, about torture and indeed about almost any other subject?
In face of the fear of lese-majesté that afflicts most of Washington's media and political operatives, Ron Suskind deserves support. Although one has to wonder. He is being published by Rupert Murdoch, whose hands-on approach to publishing leads one to wonder whether Fox, the Wall Street Journal and the rest are about to eat eight years' worth of mendacious words.
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
A Penny For Your Air Travel Thoughts
Blue sky thinking
July, 2008
IR Magazine Speculator Column
Ian Williams takes a flying leap
Modern flying is such a disagreeable experience and airlines are such unprofitable businesses, I wonder why anyone bothers to be either a provider or a consumer of air transport. The International Air Transport Association estimated at the beginning of the year that the whole global industry would make just $5 bn in profit in 2008, and that was before oil prices vindicated the gloomy prophesies of cynical Jeremiahs like me.
It has been suggested that if you want a close simulation of being booked and held by the NYPD, the best way – short of poking a cop in the nose – is to fly out of a New York airport, or indeed almost any major airport.
Peremptory officials demanding ID; the paranoid humiliation of multiple lines; removing jackets, shoes and belts; giving up phones, keys and computers. Above all, there’s the knowledge that once you enter that airport perimeter, you have, in effect, forfeited all your normal citizen’s rights. Like a prisoner, you have every right to complain or to argue back. But if you do, like prison warders ‘dressed in a little brief authority’, airline and airport personnel can remove you from your flight or even lock you up. And the more you argue with the short-tempered, harassed airline staff, the worse it gets for you.
Because of the inane restrictions at security, passengers can’t even bring their own drinks on planes but have to pay inflated prices inside the zone. There is nothing more annoying, however, than seeing a company neglect revenue. On my last grueling trip hopping from hub to hub, I saw some potential profit centers being ignored by the airlines.
What sense is there in burning up investors’ cash ferrying people between facilities to be incarcerated for hours at a time, unless the airlines can derive revenue from the ‘airport experience’? There are lots of terminally bored, restless people lingering on uncomfortable seats, deafened by announcements from people who have clearly served their apprenticeships in incomprehensibility on the New York subway system. So why can’t the airlines run the franchises there themselves and overcharge their own captive customers for nasty burgers and frankfurters?
Indeed – even better – why not open mini-casinos in the hubs? As certain long-established Italian family firms will testify, that is a much surer way of making money than flying airplanes.
Maybe massage parlors would relieve the tedium and tension of the air travel experience. They would also generate revenue while gainfully employing the cabin crews no longer needed to serve meals and drinks on board.
Finally, while marooned for three hours in Fort Lauderdale, I saw a rare sight: long lines for the men’s room. So if airlines charge for food and water, why not charge for using the restrooms? And not just in the airports. Why not put meters on the doors of the aircraft lavatories? It would shorten the waiting times and be entirely in keeping with the essential process of petty humiliation needed to condition the modern airline passenger – and it would make s***loads of money.
July, 2008
IR Magazine Speculator Column
Ian Williams takes a flying leap
Modern flying is such a disagreeable experience and airlines are such unprofitable businesses, I wonder why anyone bothers to be either a provider or a consumer of air transport. The International Air Transport Association estimated at the beginning of the year that the whole global industry would make just $5 bn in profit in 2008, and that was before oil prices vindicated the gloomy prophesies of cynical Jeremiahs like me.
It has been suggested that if you want a close simulation of being booked and held by the NYPD, the best way – short of poking a cop in the nose – is to fly out of a New York airport, or indeed almost any major airport.
Peremptory officials demanding ID; the paranoid humiliation of multiple lines; removing jackets, shoes and belts; giving up phones, keys and computers. Above all, there’s the knowledge that once you enter that airport perimeter, you have, in effect, forfeited all your normal citizen’s rights. Like a prisoner, you have every right to complain or to argue back. But if you do, like prison warders ‘dressed in a little brief authority’, airline and airport personnel can remove you from your flight or even lock you up. And the more you argue with the short-tempered, harassed airline staff, the worse it gets for you.
Because of the inane restrictions at security, passengers can’t even bring their own drinks on planes but have to pay inflated prices inside the zone. There is nothing more annoying, however, than seeing a company neglect revenue. On my last grueling trip hopping from hub to hub, I saw some potential profit centers being ignored by the airlines.
What sense is there in burning up investors’ cash ferrying people between facilities to be incarcerated for hours at a time, unless the airlines can derive revenue from the ‘airport experience’? There are lots of terminally bored, restless people lingering on uncomfortable seats, deafened by announcements from people who have clearly served their apprenticeships in incomprehensibility on the New York subway system. So why can’t the airlines run the franchises there themselves and overcharge their own captive customers for nasty burgers and frankfurters?
Indeed – even better – why not open mini-casinos in the hubs? As certain long-established Italian family firms will testify, that is a much surer way of making money than flying airplanes.
Maybe massage parlors would relieve the tedium and tension of the air travel experience. They would also generate revenue while gainfully employing the cabin crews no longer needed to serve meals and drinks on board.
Finally, while marooned for three hours in Fort Lauderdale, I saw a rare sight: long lines for the men’s room. So if airlines charge for food and water, why not charge for using the restrooms? And not just in the airports. Why not put meters on the doors of the aircraft lavatories? It would shorten the waiting times and be entirely in keeping with the essential process of petty humiliation needed to condition the modern airline passenger – and it would make s***loads of money.
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