New York Daily News - Ideas & Opinions - Stanley Crouch: It's up to blacks to end stigmaIt's up to blacks to end stigma
Alex Rodriguez, the Yankee hitter and the highest-paid player in baseball, has admitted that he is getting therapy. This came as a shock to many but was seen as an advance because, as his wife, Cynthia, said, she was proud of him. She knew his background and where he came from and what it took for him to get the help that led Rodriguez to conclude, "I don't know where I would be" without therapy.
In this month's Essence, publicist, writer and philanthropist Terrie Williams reveals that she has had to battle depression, which blew a hole in the myth of the undaunted black superwoman.
What is made evident by Williams' story is that there are still a number of problems that black Americans can have when it comes to facing up to the burdens of modern life. One of them is admitting to the emotional distress brought on by careers, success and the demands that come either with career prominence or just living right there down on the ground like everyone else. Some still feel embarrassed to admit they need help.
Williams says, "The reason I decided to speak out was because I see too many who are needlessly and silently suffering. I believe that we will not be able to approach healing as a nation until we begin to peel away our masks. That goes for everybody. As far as black people in particular are concerned, depression is at the root of so many things in our community, in the way that we overeat, drink, have diabetes and have irresponsible sex. Much of this, including the violence we see in every age group, is because so many of us are in pain and are not handling it well."
Williams is not talking about a culture of pathology; she is zeroing in on modern human problems. She does not feel that black people suffer from these alone. But they have not been publicly addressed, so that people can free themselves of the guilt that comes from feeling that they have let themselves or others down.
When Williams pointed that out, I recalled a black student whom I taught in college 35 years ago. He suffered from depression, but would never admit it to black students or black staff. If overwhelmed with suicidal impulses, he would call a white colleague of mine and confess his troubles. He did not want the black college community to know that he was not being a strong black man.
Williams sees a version of this that applies to black women. "We are all afraid to show that there is a chink in the armor. We feel that it is a sign of weakness to say that we have challenges, as if everyone in the world doesn't have issues and deep hurts of some sort. Black people will tell you they have a relative in prison or on drugs before they will talk about suffering from depression. Suffering in silence gives your problems greater power over you."
Since she has started speaking out about her own troubles, Williams has gotten a tremendous response. She has been startled by how deeply her troubles were shared by successful men and women, many of whom she thought were simply having it all.
Our problems as modern people, whatever our color, sex or religion, keep coming at us. Perhaps, when the blues drop onus too heavily and refuse to lift, wewould do well to follow the examples of Alex Rodriguez and Terrie Williams, who have both learned how to get assistance in putting up a good fight for emotional well-being.
Originally published on May 26, 2005
Monday, May 30, 2005
Saturday, May 21, 2005
How U.S.-China economic relationship really works
How U.S.-China economic relationship really works OPINION
Sunday, May 22, 2005
How U.S.-China economic relationship really works
By PAUL KRUGMAN
SYNDICATED COLUMNIST
Stories about the new U.S. Treasury report condemning China's currency policy probably had most readers going, "Huh?" Frankly, this is an issue that confuses professional economists, too. But let me try to explain what's going on.
Over the past few years China, for its own reasons, has acted as an enabler both of U.S. fiscal irresponsibility and of a return to Nasdaq-style speculative mania, this time in the housing market. Now the U.S. government is finally admitting that there's a problem -- but it's asserting that the problem is China's, not ours.
And there's no sign that anyone in the administration has faced up to an unpleasant reality: The U.S. economy has become dependent on low-interest loans from China and other foreign governments, and it's likely to have major problems when those loans are no longer forthcoming.
Here's how the U.S.-China economic relationship currently works:
Money is pouring into China, both because of its rapidly rising trade surplus and because of investments by Western and Japanese companies. Normally, this inflow of funds would be self-correcting: Both China's trade surplus and the foreign investment pouring in would push up the value of the yuan, China's currency, making China's exports less competitive and shrinking its trade surplus.
But the Chinese government, unwilling to let that happen, has kept the yuan down by shipping the incoming funds right back out again, buying huge quantities of dollar assets -- about $200 billion worth in 2004, and possibly as much as $300 billion worth this year. This is economically perverse: China, a poor country where capital is still scarce by Western standards, is lending vast sums at low interest rates to the United States.
Yet the United States has become dependent on this perverse behavior. Dollar purchases by China and other foreign governments have temporarily insulated the U.S. economy from the effects of huge budget deficits. This money flowing in from abroad has kept U.S. interest rates low despite the enormous government borrowing required to cover the budget deficit.
Low interest rates, in turn, have been crucial to the U.S. housing boom. And soaring house prices don't just create construction jobs; they also support consumer spending, because many homeowners have converted rising house values into cash by refinancing their mortgages.
So why is the U.S. government complaining? The Treasury report says nothing at all about how China's currency policy affects the United States -- all it offers on the domestic side is the usual sycophantic praise for administration policy. Instead, it focuses on the disadvantages of Chinese policy for the Chinese themselves. Since when is that a major U.S. concern?
In reality, of course, the administration doesn't care about the Chinese economy. It's complaining about the yuan because of political pressure from U.S. manufacturers, who are angry about those Chinese trade surpluses. So it's all politics. And that's the problem: When policy decisions are made on purely political grounds, nobody thinks through their real-world consequences.
Here's what I think will happen if and when China changes its currency policy, and those cheap loans are no longer available. U.S. interest rates will rise; the housing bubble will probably burst; construction employment and consumer spending will both fall; falling home prices may lead to a wave of bankruptcies. And we'll suddenly wonder why anyone thought financing the budget deficit was easy.
In other words, we've developed an addiction to Chinese dollar purchases, and will suffer painful withdrawal symptoms when they come to an end.
I'm not saying we should try to maintain the status quo. Addictions must be broken, and the sooner the better. After all, one of these days China will stop buying dollars of its own accord. And the housing bubble will eventually burst whatever we do. Besides, in the long run ending our dependence on foreign dollar purchases will give us a healthier economy. In particular, a rise in the yuan and other Asian currencies will eventually make U.S. manufacturing, which has lost 3 million jobs since 2000, more competitive.
But the negative effects of a change in Chinese currency policy will probably be immediate, while the positive effects may take years to materialize. And as far as I can tell, nobody in a position of power is thinking about how we'll deal with the consequences if China actually gives in to U.S. demands and lets the yuan rise.
Paul Krugman is a columnist for The New York Times. Copyright 2005 New York Times News Service. E-mail: krugman@nytimes.com
Sunday, May 22, 2005
How U.S.-China economic relationship really works
By PAUL KRUGMAN
SYNDICATED COLUMNIST
Stories about the new U.S. Treasury report condemning China's currency policy probably had most readers going, "Huh?" Frankly, this is an issue that confuses professional economists, too. But let me try to explain what's going on.
Over the past few years China, for its own reasons, has acted as an enabler both of U.S. fiscal irresponsibility and of a return to Nasdaq-style speculative mania, this time in the housing market. Now the U.S. government is finally admitting that there's a problem -- but it's asserting that the problem is China's, not ours.
And there's no sign that anyone in the administration has faced up to an unpleasant reality: The U.S. economy has become dependent on low-interest loans from China and other foreign governments, and it's likely to have major problems when those loans are no longer forthcoming.
Here's how the U.S.-China economic relationship currently works:
Money is pouring into China, both because of its rapidly rising trade surplus and because of investments by Western and Japanese companies. Normally, this inflow of funds would be self-correcting: Both China's trade surplus and the foreign investment pouring in would push up the value of the yuan, China's currency, making China's exports less competitive and shrinking its trade surplus.
But the Chinese government, unwilling to let that happen, has kept the yuan down by shipping the incoming funds right back out again, buying huge quantities of dollar assets -- about $200 billion worth in 2004, and possibly as much as $300 billion worth this year. This is economically perverse: China, a poor country where capital is still scarce by Western standards, is lending vast sums at low interest rates to the United States.
Yet the United States has become dependent on this perverse behavior. Dollar purchases by China and other foreign governments have temporarily insulated the U.S. economy from the effects of huge budget deficits. This money flowing in from abroad has kept U.S. interest rates low despite the enormous government borrowing required to cover the budget deficit.
Low interest rates, in turn, have been crucial to the U.S. housing boom. And soaring house prices don't just create construction jobs; they also support consumer spending, because many homeowners have converted rising house values into cash by refinancing their mortgages.
So why is the U.S. government complaining? The Treasury report says nothing at all about how China's currency policy affects the United States -- all it offers on the domestic side is the usual sycophantic praise for administration policy. Instead, it focuses on the disadvantages of Chinese policy for the Chinese themselves. Since when is that a major U.S. concern?
In reality, of course, the administration doesn't care about the Chinese economy. It's complaining about the yuan because of political pressure from U.S. manufacturers, who are angry about those Chinese trade surpluses. So it's all politics. And that's the problem: When policy decisions are made on purely political grounds, nobody thinks through their real-world consequences.
Here's what I think will happen if and when China changes its currency policy, and those cheap loans are no longer available. U.S. interest rates will rise; the housing bubble will probably burst; construction employment and consumer spending will both fall; falling home prices may lead to a wave of bankruptcies. And we'll suddenly wonder why anyone thought financing the budget deficit was easy.
In other words, we've developed an addiction to Chinese dollar purchases, and will suffer painful withdrawal symptoms when they come to an end.
I'm not saying we should try to maintain the status quo. Addictions must be broken, and the sooner the better. After all, one of these days China will stop buying dollars of its own accord. And the housing bubble will eventually burst whatever we do. Besides, in the long run ending our dependence on foreign dollar purchases will give us a healthier economy. In particular, a rise in the yuan and other Asian currencies will eventually make U.S. manufacturing, which has lost 3 million jobs since 2000, more competitive.
But the negative effects of a change in Chinese currency policy will probably be immediate, while the positive effects may take years to materialize. And as far as I can tell, nobody in a position of power is thinking about how we'll deal with the consequences if China actually gives in to U.S. demands and lets the yuan rise.
Paul Krugman is a columnist for The New York Times. Copyright 2005 New York Times News Service. E-mail: krugman@nytimes.com
The Yuan Diversion - New York Times
The Yuan Diversion - New York TimesThe Yuan Diversion
The get-tough-on-China talk got tougher this week when Treasury Secretary John Snow announced that China risks being branded a currency manipulator - and thus subject to sanctions - unless it acts soon to increase the fixed exchange rate between its currency, the yuan, and the United States dollar. Mr. Snow was echoing American manufacturers and some members of Congress who complain that China is undervaluing the yuan to artificially depress its export prices. But his aim is only partly to prod China. By demanding action, he is also trying to defuse growing anti-Chinese sentiment, as evidenced by the Senate's threat last month to slap punitive tariffs on Chinese goods unless the yuan is revalued.
Given America's difficult trade issues with China - patent and copyright violations, barriers to American goods and services - why are Congress and the administration fixating on the yuan? The Chinese currency is undervalued and that situation must be remedied, both in order for China to gain more control over its own economy and to improve international trade relations. But even a sharp upward revaluation wouldn't do much to reduce the United States' immense trade imbalances because China accounts for just a fraction of America's overall trade, and American consumers are unlikely to shun Chinese products even if their prices rise.
One reason for the fuss is that it's easier to exploit the yuan than to remedy the loss of American manufacturing jobs. For years, the United States has pursued global trade without adopting programs to fix its negative side effects, chief among them the lost jobs in generally low-skilled industries, like textiles. Nor are there policies to prepare displaced workers for better employment, like tax credits for companies to provide more training.
Focusing on the yuan also deflects the blame for America's role in promoting global imbalances. Mr. Snow has acknowledged that the United States' federal budget deficit distorts global trade and investment. But, incredibly, he has also said that the United States is "aggressively tackling" its deficit with "appropriate fiscal policy." That statement might be valid if President Bush and his Congressional allies gave up their drive to extend Mr. Bush's first-term tax cuts permanently or if Mr. Bush abandoned his plan to borrow trillions of dollars to privatize Social Security. But there are no such reversals in sight. Contrary to Mr. Snow's assertion, then, the United States is not "doing its part" to address global imbalances.
Washington relies greatly on China for the funds to finance its deficits. Rather than positioning ourselves as China's adversary, it would be wise to cooperate, starting with honest discussion.
The get-tough-on-China talk got tougher this week when Treasury Secretary John Snow announced that China risks being branded a currency manipulator - and thus subject to sanctions - unless it acts soon to increase the fixed exchange rate between its currency, the yuan, and the United States dollar. Mr. Snow was echoing American manufacturers and some members of Congress who complain that China is undervaluing the yuan to artificially depress its export prices. But his aim is only partly to prod China. By demanding action, he is also trying to defuse growing anti-Chinese sentiment, as evidenced by the Senate's threat last month to slap punitive tariffs on Chinese goods unless the yuan is revalued.
Given America's difficult trade issues with China - patent and copyright violations, barriers to American goods and services - why are Congress and the administration fixating on the yuan? The Chinese currency is undervalued and that situation must be remedied, both in order for China to gain more control over its own economy and to improve international trade relations. But even a sharp upward revaluation wouldn't do much to reduce the United States' immense trade imbalances because China accounts for just a fraction of America's overall trade, and American consumers are unlikely to shun Chinese products even if their prices rise.
One reason for the fuss is that it's easier to exploit the yuan than to remedy the loss of American manufacturing jobs. For years, the United States has pursued global trade without adopting programs to fix its negative side effects, chief among them the lost jobs in generally low-skilled industries, like textiles. Nor are there policies to prepare displaced workers for better employment, like tax credits for companies to provide more training.
Focusing on the yuan also deflects the blame for America's role in promoting global imbalances. Mr. Snow has acknowledged that the United States' federal budget deficit distorts global trade and investment. But, incredibly, he has also said that the United States is "aggressively tackling" its deficit with "appropriate fiscal policy." That statement might be valid if President Bush and his Congressional allies gave up their drive to extend Mr. Bush's first-term tax cuts permanently or if Mr. Bush abandoned his plan to borrow trillions of dollars to privatize Social Security. But there are no such reversals in sight. Contrary to Mr. Snow's assertion, then, the United States is not "doing its part" to address global imbalances.
Washington relies greatly on China for the funds to finance its deficits. Rather than positioning ourselves as China's adversary, it would be wise to cooperate, starting with honest discussion.
Thursday, May 19, 2005
New York Daily News - Ideas & Opinions - Stanley Crouch: Fund fiasco is tarnishing Golden Years
New York Daily News - Ideas & Opinions - Stanley Crouch: Fund fiasco is tarnishing Golden YearsFund fiasco is tarnishing
Golden Years
Lawmakers, unions must work to protect nest eggs
A recent federal court ruling allowing United Airlines to terminate its drastically underfunded pension plan and pile $6.6 billion of liabilities onto a small federal agency means retired pilot Ray Brice's monthly check could be cut nearly 80%, to about $2,000. But Brice's situation is not unusual.
The United pension default - the largest in U.S. history - is just one in a long line of bankruptcies and retirement plan meltdowns that have directly affected the retirement security of millions of Americans. And many more are left wondering if they're next.
The ultimate hope for pensioners rests, for now, in Washington, where the GOP is threatening to destroy the checks and balances system. But the GOP always wants votes, and there are millions of lives in the middle of this pension drama, which is not going to get any lighter without new laws that are less vague. This should be the focus of a new movement for our elected officials.
At this moment, we are finding that retirees are being told that their pension agreements do not hold up when the company for which they worked is sold. The worst-case scenarios have retirees being told that they've been overpaid and now owe back money to the company's new owners.
Along with new laws protecting retirement funds, it is obvious that the value of unions also should be reassessed. Unions must now figure out a better way to represent retired workers. Once companies have people in their employ whose job is to figure out ways of reducing costs, one can easily assume that the retiree, whose voice has no power in the collective bargaining process, will feel his neck stretched across the chopping board.
With all the talk about the rights of the unborn, it's time for laws that support the rights of those who were born a while ago, those who labored for decades and who now feel they deserve to be taken care of, especially since the agreements were already made. Retirees cannot remain silent, content to go out as casually as the aged in primitive societies, accepting the fact that they had outlived their usefulness and should expect to be abandoned and ignored. They deserve better.
Originally published on May 19, 2005
Golden Years
Lawmakers, unions must work to protect nest eggs
A recent federal court ruling allowing United Airlines to terminate its drastically underfunded pension plan and pile $6.6 billion of liabilities onto a small federal agency means retired pilot Ray Brice's monthly check could be cut nearly 80%, to about $2,000. But Brice's situation is not unusual.
The United pension default - the largest in U.S. history - is just one in a long line of bankruptcies and retirement plan meltdowns that have directly affected the retirement security of millions of Americans. And many more are left wondering if they're next.
The ultimate hope for pensioners rests, for now, in Washington, where the GOP is threatening to destroy the checks and balances system. But the GOP always wants votes, and there are millions of lives in the middle of this pension drama, which is not going to get any lighter without new laws that are less vague. This should be the focus of a new movement for our elected officials.
At this moment, we are finding that retirees are being told that their pension agreements do not hold up when the company for which they worked is sold. The worst-case scenarios have retirees being told that they've been overpaid and now owe back money to the company's new owners.
Along with new laws protecting retirement funds, it is obvious that the value of unions also should be reassessed. Unions must now figure out a better way to represent retired workers. Once companies have people in their employ whose job is to figure out ways of reducing costs, one can easily assume that the retiree, whose voice has no power in the collective bargaining process, will feel his neck stretched across the chopping board.
With all the talk about the rights of the unborn, it's time for laws that support the rights of those who were born a while ago, those who labored for decades and who now feel they deserve to be taken care of, especially since the agreements were already made. Retirees cannot remain silent, content to go out as casually as the aged in primitive societies, accepting the fact that they had outlived their usefulness and should expect to be abandoned and ignored. They deserve better.
Originally published on May 19, 2005
N. Korea ambitions may spark Asia arms race - International News - MSNBC.com
N. Korea ambitions may spark Asia arms race - International News - MSNBC.comN. Korea ambitions may spark Asia arms race
South Korea, Japan, others could reconsider policies
By Michael Moran
Senior correspondent
MSNBC
Updated: 4:32 p.m. ET May 19, 2005
North Korea’s neighbors, fast losing faith in the Bush administration’s strategy of isolating the communist nation in order to prevent it from becoming a full-blown nuclear power, are beginning to look past the non-proliferation effort to a future where one or more new powers conclude they, too, must field nuclear weapons.
Over the past year, the “six nation talks” conceived by the Bush administration as a way to bring pressure to bear on the unpredictable government in Pyongyang have failed to make progress. In that time, signs have emerged that several nations in the region may be rethinking longstanding commitments on nuclear weapons as they face a world in which the unpredictable Kim Jong Il has proven his ability to stare down the United States.
In a region with Japan and South Korea, both of which have the technology and finances to move into “the nuclear club” if they feel compelled, there is concern that one or more of them may react to a North Korean nuclear test precisely as Pakistan reacted to India’s test in 1998.
Recently, North Korea said it had extracted weapons-grade fuel rods from a nuclear reactor. The White House said that there is some evidence that Pyongyang was preparing for a nuclear test.
“The worry is that if North Korea tests a nuclear weapons, then it is difficult to put the genie back in the bottle and that it triggers a host of other countries to reconsider their own pledges not to pursue nuclear weapons,” says Kurt Campbell, who served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Asia and the Pacific in the Clinton administration and is now a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “It could lead other countries like Japan, South Korea and Taiwan to go nuclear.”
China, too, is concerned about such a scenario, though in the long run the Chinese may see a nuclear North Korea — still highly dependent on Beijing for food, fuel and diplomatic support — as a price worth paying in return for the collapse of such a major U.S. commitment to its allies in Asia.
Last-ditch effort
U.S. officials confirmed on Thursday they took the highly unusual step of talking directly with the North Koreans in secret bilateral talks in New York last week, something the administration vowed not to do when it first came to office. Separate talks between North and South Korean officials ended Thursday on a similar down note.
“People are still trying to get the North Koreans to come back to the table, but there is a feeling that a lot of time has passed and that this process can’t go on indefinitely without some progress being made,” said a State Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity. “I’m sure the consequences of a failure of the talks are being talked about, but we’re not giving up at this point.”
Nonetheless, in Washington, as in Beijing, Tokyo, Seoul and other regional capitals, and in the Vienna offices of the International Atomic Energy Agency, attention is beginning to focus on a point beyond the current talks — beyond even a North Korean nuclear test, an event that many intelligence analysts now fear to be imminent. Satellite photos in recent weeks have shown what American intelligence officials say appears to be preparations for such a test in a remote northeastern corner of North Korea.
Early fallout
Since the talks faltered last summer, public statements and investigations by international nuclear monitors indicate that the long dormant nuclear weapons ambitions of U.S. allies in the region may be awakening.
South Korea was investigated late last year by the IAEA, the U.N.’s international nuclear inspection agency, after revelations that forced the U.S. ally to concede it had been hiding experiments in uranium and plutonium that took place as late as 2000.
Like many nations once ruled by military dictatorships, South Korea was known to have attempted to build a nuclear weapon during the late Cold War period, following President Richard Nixon’s decision to reduce the U.S. troop deployment there by a full division.
Today, South Korea has 19 nuclear power plants, a vibrant high-tech and manufacturing economy and a sophisticated, U.S.-backed military on its northern frontier. According to a recent issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, conditions, and especially the large and well-funded South Korean nuclear industry, “enables the South to keep the door to the proliferation path slightly ajar.”
“Much of our thinking for the past two decades, and in Japan, too, I would say, has been based on the idea that we are under the U.S. nuclear umbrella,” says a South Korean diplomat based at the United Nations. “If the U.S. cannot prevent North Korea from testing a nuclear weapon, how can it deter North Korea from using one? That’s the basic question being asked today,” said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Contributing to the calculus, the Bush administration recently announced plans to reduce U.S. troops stationed in South Korea from 37,000 to 25,000 by next year.
Beyond the taboo
Proliferation experts have long been concerned about Japan's civilian nuclear program, which includes the world's most extensive network of plutonium "breeder reactors," a type of power plant that produces large quantities of weapons-grade byproduct. As a result, Japan is often described as a "paranuclear" state in academic studies of the issue.
It had long been assumed that Japan, the only nation ever to be the victim of nuclear weapons, would never cross the threshold. But the taboo against public discussion of a Japanese nuclear weapon fell by the wayside when North Korea tested a ballistic missile in 1998 on a trajectory that took it over Japanese territory before splashing down in the South China Sea. Since then, Japan's military spending has risen to rank second only to that of the United States, and constitutional restrictions on the deployment of troops abroad and the use of force defensively are being redefined.
In 2003, Shinzo Abe, a senior adviser to the Japanese prime minister, went further, saying Japan’s constitution did not rule out the idea of a nuclear deterrent. Another official, Yasuo Fukada, said more recently that circumstances in the region “could require Japan to possess nuclear weapons.”
Both comments set off a public furor. But unlike previous instances in Japan where senior officials broached the topic, neither Fukada nor Abe was forced to resign or even retract the statements. Indeed, Abe is now the chairman of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and met with Vice President Dick Cheney at the White House on May 6.
On the periphery
Contrary to China's public statements, many believe China has spoken frankly to North Korea about the negative affects that a nuclear test or development of a nuclear arsenal would have on the region. But few expect China to go to the mat on the issue.
"China is saying, 'If you do this there will be horrible consequences'," says Campbell, who handled Asia policy in the mid-1990s at the State Department. "There are a lot more tensions in the China-North Korea relationship than are evident publicly. But China is not going to help the U.S. strangle the North economically, either. They take a longer-term view."
Both in China and South Korea, there is little appetite for tight economic sanctions that would cause a collapse, famine or a desperate political climate in North Korea. The fear of waves of refugees alone is seen as a reason to keep the reclusive North afloat.
Russia, also a member of the "six-nation" talks, believes the current standoff on nuclear testing is the result of the harder line adopted by the Bush administration.
Russia's ambassador to China, Igor Rogachyov, speaking in Beijing with the Interfax news agency, said "pressure is not an appropriate or acceptable method of communication" with North Korea. "There is a need to promote contacts with the North Korean authorities — China understands it very well and will never resort to this method to resolve the nuclear problem of the Korean Peninsula.''
© 2005 MSNBC Interactive
© 2005 MSNBC.com
URL: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7911849/
South Korea, Japan, others could reconsider policies
By Michael Moran
Senior correspondent
MSNBC
Updated: 4:32 p.m. ET May 19, 2005
North Korea’s neighbors, fast losing faith in the Bush administration’s strategy of isolating the communist nation in order to prevent it from becoming a full-blown nuclear power, are beginning to look past the non-proliferation effort to a future where one or more new powers conclude they, too, must field nuclear weapons.
Over the past year, the “six nation talks” conceived by the Bush administration as a way to bring pressure to bear on the unpredictable government in Pyongyang have failed to make progress. In that time, signs have emerged that several nations in the region may be rethinking longstanding commitments on nuclear weapons as they face a world in which the unpredictable Kim Jong Il has proven his ability to stare down the United States.
In a region with Japan and South Korea, both of which have the technology and finances to move into “the nuclear club” if they feel compelled, there is concern that one or more of them may react to a North Korean nuclear test precisely as Pakistan reacted to India’s test in 1998.
Recently, North Korea said it had extracted weapons-grade fuel rods from a nuclear reactor. The White House said that there is some evidence that Pyongyang was preparing for a nuclear test.
“The worry is that if North Korea tests a nuclear weapons, then it is difficult to put the genie back in the bottle and that it triggers a host of other countries to reconsider their own pledges not to pursue nuclear weapons,” says Kurt Campbell, who served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Asia and the Pacific in the Clinton administration and is now a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “It could lead other countries like Japan, South Korea and Taiwan to go nuclear.”
China, too, is concerned about such a scenario, though in the long run the Chinese may see a nuclear North Korea — still highly dependent on Beijing for food, fuel and diplomatic support — as a price worth paying in return for the collapse of such a major U.S. commitment to its allies in Asia.
Last-ditch effort
U.S. officials confirmed on Thursday they took the highly unusual step of talking directly with the North Koreans in secret bilateral talks in New York last week, something the administration vowed not to do when it first came to office. Separate talks between North and South Korean officials ended Thursday on a similar down note.
“People are still trying to get the North Koreans to come back to the table, but there is a feeling that a lot of time has passed and that this process can’t go on indefinitely without some progress being made,” said a State Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity. “I’m sure the consequences of a failure of the talks are being talked about, but we’re not giving up at this point.”
Nonetheless, in Washington, as in Beijing, Tokyo, Seoul and other regional capitals, and in the Vienna offices of the International Atomic Energy Agency, attention is beginning to focus on a point beyond the current talks — beyond even a North Korean nuclear test, an event that many intelligence analysts now fear to be imminent. Satellite photos in recent weeks have shown what American intelligence officials say appears to be preparations for such a test in a remote northeastern corner of North Korea.
Early fallout
Since the talks faltered last summer, public statements and investigations by international nuclear monitors indicate that the long dormant nuclear weapons ambitions of U.S. allies in the region may be awakening.
South Korea was investigated late last year by the IAEA, the U.N.’s international nuclear inspection agency, after revelations that forced the U.S. ally to concede it had been hiding experiments in uranium and plutonium that took place as late as 2000.
Like many nations once ruled by military dictatorships, South Korea was known to have attempted to build a nuclear weapon during the late Cold War period, following President Richard Nixon’s decision to reduce the U.S. troop deployment there by a full division.
Today, South Korea has 19 nuclear power plants, a vibrant high-tech and manufacturing economy and a sophisticated, U.S.-backed military on its northern frontier. According to a recent issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, conditions, and especially the large and well-funded South Korean nuclear industry, “enables the South to keep the door to the proliferation path slightly ajar.”
“Much of our thinking for the past two decades, and in Japan, too, I would say, has been based on the idea that we are under the U.S. nuclear umbrella,” says a South Korean diplomat based at the United Nations. “If the U.S. cannot prevent North Korea from testing a nuclear weapon, how can it deter North Korea from using one? That’s the basic question being asked today,” said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Contributing to the calculus, the Bush administration recently announced plans to reduce U.S. troops stationed in South Korea from 37,000 to 25,000 by next year.
Beyond the taboo
Proliferation experts have long been concerned about Japan's civilian nuclear program, which includes the world's most extensive network of plutonium "breeder reactors," a type of power plant that produces large quantities of weapons-grade byproduct. As a result, Japan is often described as a "paranuclear" state in academic studies of the issue.
It had long been assumed that Japan, the only nation ever to be the victim of nuclear weapons, would never cross the threshold. But the taboo against public discussion of a Japanese nuclear weapon fell by the wayside when North Korea tested a ballistic missile in 1998 on a trajectory that took it over Japanese territory before splashing down in the South China Sea. Since then, Japan's military spending has risen to rank second only to that of the United States, and constitutional restrictions on the deployment of troops abroad and the use of force defensively are being redefined.
In 2003, Shinzo Abe, a senior adviser to the Japanese prime minister, went further, saying Japan’s constitution did not rule out the idea of a nuclear deterrent. Another official, Yasuo Fukada, said more recently that circumstances in the region “could require Japan to possess nuclear weapons.”
Both comments set off a public furor. But unlike previous instances in Japan where senior officials broached the topic, neither Fukada nor Abe was forced to resign or even retract the statements. Indeed, Abe is now the chairman of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and met with Vice President Dick Cheney at the White House on May 6.
On the periphery
Contrary to China's public statements, many believe China has spoken frankly to North Korea about the negative affects that a nuclear test or development of a nuclear arsenal would have on the region. But few expect China to go to the mat on the issue.
"China is saying, 'If you do this there will be horrible consequences'," says Campbell, who handled Asia policy in the mid-1990s at the State Department. "There are a lot more tensions in the China-North Korea relationship than are evident publicly. But China is not going to help the U.S. strangle the North economically, either. They take a longer-term view."
Both in China and South Korea, there is little appetite for tight economic sanctions that would cause a collapse, famine or a desperate political climate in North Korea. The fear of waves of refugees alone is seen as a reason to keep the reclusive North afloat.
Russia, also a member of the "six-nation" talks, believes the current standoff on nuclear testing is the result of the harder line adopted by the Bush administration.
Russia's ambassador to China, Igor Rogachyov, speaking in Beijing with the Interfax news agency, said "pressure is not an appropriate or acceptable method of communication" with North Korea. "There is a need to promote contacts with the North Korean authorities — China understands it very well and will never resort to this method to resolve the nuclear problem of the Korean Peninsula.''
© 2005 MSNBC Interactive
© 2005 MSNBC.com
URL: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7911849/
Asia Times Online :: China News, China Business News, Taiwan and Hong Kong News and Business.
Asia Times Online :: China News, China Business News, Taiwan and Hong Kong News and Business.Taiwan leaders paint poll with broad strokes
By Mac William Bishop
TAIPEI - If the headlines are to be believed, Taiwan's National Assembly elections on Saturday were supposed to be a referendum on "President Chen Shui-bian's China policies", as well as on the recent visits to Beijing by two Taiwanese opposition leaders. In reality, few people in Taiwan appeared interested in the elections, and others were completely oblivious to the poll.
"There's an election tomorrow?" was the response of a 26-year-old office worker in Hsinchu City, Karyn Liu, when asked how she intended to vote. "What's it for?"
When informed about the purpose of the election - to select representatives to the National Assembly - she admitted she had no idea what that meant and added that she had no intention of taking part.
"I voted in the presidential elections last year. And I voted in the legislative elections in December," said Lee Chien-hsin, a 42-year-old restaurant manager in Taipei. "I usually vote green [for the ruling Democratic Progressive Party of President Chen], but I don't see why I should bother going back to Taiwan for this." (In Taiwan, people must return to the city or town in which they maintain a household registration - generally their family's hometown - in order to vote.)
Apparently, most of the people in Taiwan shared Lee's point of view. The election on Saturday had the lowest turnout of any election in Taiwan's history - a mere 23.35% of the electorate showed up to vote, according to the figures supplied by Taiwan's Central Election Commission (CEC). In comparison, the legislative elections in December last year had a turnout of 59.16%, while the previous National Assembly elections - in 1996 - drew 76.21% of the electorate, according to the CEC.
Many analysts said the low turnout marred an otherwise solid victory for the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which walked away with 42.52% of the vote, to earn 127 seats in the 300-member National Assembly - the largest share of any of Taiwan's four main political parties.
Meanwhile, the pro-unification Chinese Nationalist Party, also known as the Kuomintang (KMT), won 38.92% of the votes to garner 117 seats in the assembly - far less than the 130 that it predicted it could gain.
Of the two main smaller parties, the pro-independence Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) and the pro-unification People First Party (PFP), the TSU made a surprising gain, achieving third place with 7.05% of the vote to earn 21 seats in the National Assembly. The PFP won 18 seats with 6.11% of the vote. Various independent candidates and alliances won the remaining 5.38% of the available ballots.
Pundits and editorialists were quick to cast the election results as a reflection of public opinion regarding the recent overtures to China made by Taiwan's two main opposition leaders, KMT chairman Lien Chan - the former vice president who was twice defeated by President Chen - and PFP chairman James Soong.
However, the National Assembly election cannot be described in simplistic "unification versus independence" terms, and in fact had little to do with cross-strait relations.
The National Assembly's purpose is to approve or deny a package of amendments to Taiwan's constitution that was passed by the Legislative Yuan in August of last year. When the amendments were passed, they had the support of all four of Taiwan's main political parties, but the TSU and the PFP later changed their positions on the amendments. Taiwan's two largest political parties - the DPP and the KMT - continue to support the amendments, although they are usually at odds over most other issues.
A perfunctory glance at the raft of amendments quickly explains the breakdown in support and opposition.
One of the key issues is the reduction of the number of seats in the Legislative Yuan from 225 to 113 - essentially getting rid of half of the country's legislators - beginning with the 2007 legislative elections. The voting system will also be simplified from its current multi-member district, single-vote system into a single-member district, two-vote system.
These two changes will increase the competitiveness of legislative elections, and therefore, it is hoped, also improve the quality of the nation's elected representatives. The changes will also deal a severe blow to Taiwan's smaller political parties, such as the TSU and the PFP, which will find it more difficult to get a meaningful number of legislators elected.
The newly elected National Assembly is also expected to approve an amendment that will abolish all future National Assemblies, which according to the constitution are required to approve constitutional amendments. In place of the National Assembly, the people will be given the right to decide on amendments through referendum, after they have been passed by the Legislative Yuan.
All of these amendments are now expected to be approved, as the DPP and the KMT together won 81.44% of the assembly vote.
Despite the rather prosaic and undramatic issues at stake, Taiwanese political leaders were quick to paint the election results with broad strokes. "The election has been a victory for democracy, for reform and for Taiwan," Chen declared on Sunday.
Other DPP officials were equally enthusiastic. "I am sure that China has heard the voice of the people of Taiwan," Vice President Annette Lu said.
The KMT, however, backed away from equating the poll to a referendum on its policies. "The support rating for the KMT was not reflected in the election results, especially since many of our supporters avoided the polls due to bad weather," KMT spokeswoman Cheng Li-wen told reporters. There was, in fact, torrential rainfall throughout much of Taiwan on the day of the election.
The PFP took a different approach and said it intends to challenge the legality of the poll through a lawsuit. "We cannot allow the constitutional reforms to be recklessly passed in a situation where 23% of the people are confused," PFP legislative caucus whip Lee Yung-ping told reporters on Sunday.
Whether or not the PFP succeeds in challenging the legitimacy of the election results, there is still at least one hurdle that the KMT and the DPP must overcome on the road to government reform: hashing out a consensus regarding the proposed statute governing the National Assembly's exercise of power.
This bill, currently deadlocked in the Legislative Yuan, is what would determine the mechanics of how the National Assembly will approve or deny constitutional amendments. The sticking point now is whether it will take a simple two-thirds or three-quarters majority in the legislature in the future to approve constitutional amendments, territorial changes or impeachment of the president and vice president.
Considering the Byzantine political minutiae that must be delved into to understand what was at stake in Saturday's election, it seemed clear to most people in Taiwan why the turnout on Saturday was so low: "I wasn't sure what I was voting for, so I just picked my party," said a college student and self-professed KMT supporter, who asked not to be named.
Mac William Bishop is a journalist based in Taipei. Comments or queries may be sent to mwbtaiwan@hotmail.com
By Mac William Bishop
TAIPEI - If the headlines are to be believed, Taiwan's National Assembly elections on Saturday were supposed to be a referendum on "President Chen Shui-bian's China policies", as well as on the recent visits to Beijing by two Taiwanese opposition leaders. In reality, few people in Taiwan appeared interested in the elections, and others were completely oblivious to the poll.
"There's an election tomorrow?" was the response of a 26-year-old office worker in Hsinchu City, Karyn Liu, when asked how she intended to vote. "What's it for?"
When informed about the purpose of the election - to select representatives to the National Assembly - she admitted she had no idea what that meant and added that she had no intention of taking part.
"I voted in the presidential elections last year. And I voted in the legislative elections in December," said Lee Chien-hsin, a 42-year-old restaurant manager in Taipei. "I usually vote green [for the ruling Democratic Progressive Party of President Chen], but I don't see why I should bother going back to Taiwan for this." (In Taiwan, people must return to the city or town in which they maintain a household registration - generally their family's hometown - in order to vote.)
Apparently, most of the people in Taiwan shared Lee's point of view. The election on Saturday had the lowest turnout of any election in Taiwan's history - a mere 23.35% of the electorate showed up to vote, according to the figures supplied by Taiwan's Central Election Commission (CEC). In comparison, the legislative elections in December last year had a turnout of 59.16%, while the previous National Assembly elections - in 1996 - drew 76.21% of the electorate, according to the CEC.
Many analysts said the low turnout marred an otherwise solid victory for the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which walked away with 42.52% of the vote, to earn 127 seats in the 300-member National Assembly - the largest share of any of Taiwan's four main political parties.
Meanwhile, the pro-unification Chinese Nationalist Party, also known as the Kuomintang (KMT), won 38.92% of the votes to garner 117 seats in the assembly - far less than the 130 that it predicted it could gain.
Of the two main smaller parties, the pro-independence Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) and the pro-unification People First Party (PFP), the TSU made a surprising gain, achieving third place with 7.05% of the vote to earn 21 seats in the National Assembly. The PFP won 18 seats with 6.11% of the vote. Various independent candidates and alliances won the remaining 5.38% of the available ballots.
Pundits and editorialists were quick to cast the election results as a reflection of public opinion regarding the recent overtures to China made by Taiwan's two main opposition leaders, KMT chairman Lien Chan - the former vice president who was twice defeated by President Chen - and PFP chairman James Soong.
However, the National Assembly election cannot be described in simplistic "unification versus independence" terms, and in fact had little to do with cross-strait relations.
The National Assembly's purpose is to approve or deny a package of amendments to Taiwan's constitution that was passed by the Legislative Yuan in August of last year. When the amendments were passed, they had the support of all four of Taiwan's main political parties, but the TSU and the PFP later changed their positions on the amendments. Taiwan's two largest political parties - the DPP and the KMT - continue to support the amendments, although they are usually at odds over most other issues.
A perfunctory glance at the raft of amendments quickly explains the breakdown in support and opposition.
One of the key issues is the reduction of the number of seats in the Legislative Yuan from 225 to 113 - essentially getting rid of half of the country's legislators - beginning with the 2007 legislative elections. The voting system will also be simplified from its current multi-member district, single-vote system into a single-member district, two-vote system.
These two changes will increase the competitiveness of legislative elections, and therefore, it is hoped, also improve the quality of the nation's elected representatives. The changes will also deal a severe blow to Taiwan's smaller political parties, such as the TSU and the PFP, which will find it more difficult to get a meaningful number of legislators elected.
The newly elected National Assembly is also expected to approve an amendment that will abolish all future National Assemblies, which according to the constitution are required to approve constitutional amendments. In place of the National Assembly, the people will be given the right to decide on amendments through referendum, after they have been passed by the Legislative Yuan.
All of these amendments are now expected to be approved, as the DPP and the KMT together won 81.44% of the assembly vote.
Despite the rather prosaic and undramatic issues at stake, Taiwanese political leaders were quick to paint the election results with broad strokes. "The election has been a victory for democracy, for reform and for Taiwan," Chen declared on Sunday.
Other DPP officials were equally enthusiastic. "I am sure that China has heard the voice of the people of Taiwan," Vice President Annette Lu said.
The KMT, however, backed away from equating the poll to a referendum on its policies. "The support rating for the KMT was not reflected in the election results, especially since many of our supporters avoided the polls due to bad weather," KMT spokeswoman Cheng Li-wen told reporters. There was, in fact, torrential rainfall throughout much of Taiwan on the day of the election.
The PFP took a different approach and said it intends to challenge the legality of the poll through a lawsuit. "We cannot allow the constitutional reforms to be recklessly passed in a situation where 23% of the people are confused," PFP legislative caucus whip Lee Yung-ping told reporters on Sunday.
Whether or not the PFP succeeds in challenging the legitimacy of the election results, there is still at least one hurdle that the KMT and the DPP must overcome on the road to government reform: hashing out a consensus regarding the proposed statute governing the National Assembly's exercise of power.
This bill, currently deadlocked in the Legislative Yuan, is what would determine the mechanics of how the National Assembly will approve or deny constitutional amendments. The sticking point now is whether it will take a simple two-thirds or three-quarters majority in the legislature in the future to approve constitutional amendments, territorial changes or impeachment of the president and vice president.
Considering the Byzantine political minutiae that must be delved into to understand what was at stake in Saturday's election, it seemed clear to most people in Taiwan why the turnout on Saturday was so low: "I wasn't sure what I was voting for, so I just picked my party," said a college student and self-professed KMT supporter, who asked not to be named.
Mac William Bishop is a journalist based in Taipei. Comments or queries may be sent to mwbtaiwan@hotmail.com
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
World news from The Times and the Sunday Times - Times Online
World news from The Times and the Sunday Times - Times Online
May 18, 2005
Galloway v the US Senate: transcript of statement
By Times Online
George Galloway, Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, delivered this statement to US Senators today who have accused him of corruption
George Galloway after arriving in the Senate committee room to give evidence (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
"Senator, I am not now, nor have I ever been, an oil trader. and neither has anyone on my behalf. I have never seen a barrel of oil, owned one, bought one, sold one - and neither has anyone on my behalf.
"Now I know that standards have slipped in the last few years in Washington, but for a lawyer you are remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice. I am here today but last week you already found me guilty. You traduced my name around the world without ever having asked me a single question, without ever having contacted me, without ever written to me or telephoned me, without any attempt to contact me whatsoever. And you call that justice.
"Now I want to deal with the pages that relate to me in this dossier and I want to point out areas where there are - let's be charitable and say errors. Then I want to put this in the context where I believe it ought to be. On the very first page of your document about me you assert that I have had 'many meetings' with Saddam Hussein. This is false.
"I have had two meetings with Saddam Hussein, once in 1994 and once in August of 2002. By no stretch of the English language can that be described as "many meetings" with Saddam Hussein.
"As a matter of fact, I have met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to target those guns. I met him to try and bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war, and on the second of the two occasions, I met him to try and persuade him to let Dr Hans Blix and the United Nations weapons inspectors back into the country - a rather better use of two meetings with Saddam Hussein than your own Secretary of State for Defence made of his.
"I was an opponent of Saddam Hussein when British and Americans governments and businessmen were selling him guns and gas. I used to demonstrate outside the Iraqi embassy when British and American officials were going in and doing commerce.
"You will see from the official parliamentary record, Hansard, from the 15th March 1990 onwards, voluminous evidence that I have a rather better record of opposition to Saddam Hussein than you do and than any other member of the British or American governments do.
"Now you say in this document, you quote a source, you have the gall to quote a source, without ever having asked me whether the allegation from the source is true, that I am 'the owner of a company which has made substantial profits from trading in Iraqi oil'.
"Senator, I do not own any companies, beyond a small company whose entire purpose, whose sole purpose, is to receive the income from my journalistic earnings from my employer, Associated Newspapers, in London. I do not own a company that's been trading in Iraqi oil. And you have no business to carry a quotation, utterly unsubstantiated and false, implying otherwise.
"Now you have nothing on me, Senator, except my name on lists of names from Iraq, many of which have been drawn up after the installation of your puppet government in Baghdad. If you had any of the letters against me that you had against Zhirinovsky, and even Pasqua, they would have been up there in your slideshow for the members of your committee today.
"You have my name on lists provided to you by the Duelfer inquiry, provided to him by the convicted bank robber, and fraudster and conman Ahmed Chalabi who many people to their credit in your country now realise played a decisive role in leading your country into the disaster in Iraq.
"There were 270 names on that list originally. That's somehow been filleted down to the names you chose to deal with in this committee. Some of the names on that committee included the former secretary to his Holiness Pope John Paul II, the former head of the African National Congress Presidential office and many others who had one defining characteristic in common: they all stood against the policy of sanctions and war which you vociferously prosecuted and which has led us to this disaster.
"You quote Mr Dahar Yassein Ramadan. Well, you have something on me, I've never met Mr Dahar Yassein Ramadan. Your sub-committee apparently has. But I do know that he's your prisoner, I believe he's in Abu Ghraib prison. I believe he is facing war crimes charges, punishable by death. In these circumstances, knowing what the world knows about how you treat prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison, in Bagram Airbase, in Guantanamo Bay, including I may say, British citizens being held in those places.
"I'm not sure how much credibility anyone would put on anything you manage to get from a prisoner in those circumstances. But you quote 13 words from Dahar Yassein Ramadan whom I have never met. If he said what he said, then he is wrong.
"And if you had any evidence that I had ever engaged in any actual oil transaction, if you had any evidence that anybody ever gave me any money, it would be before the public and before this committee today because I agreed with your Mr Greenblatt [Mark Greenblatt, legal counsel on the committee].
"Your Mr Greenblatt was absolutely correct. What counts is not the names on the paper, what counts is where's the money. Senator? Who paid me hundreds of thousands of dollars of money? The answer to that is nobody. And if you had anybody who ever paid me a penny, you would have produced them today.
"Now you refer at length to a company names in these documents as Aredio Petroleum. I say to you under oath here today: I have never heard of this company, I have never met anyone from this company. This company has never paid a penny to me and I'll tell you something else: I can assure you that Aredio Petroleum has never paid a single penny to the Mariam Appeal Campaign. Not a thin dime. I don't know who Aredio Petroleum are, but I daresay if you were to ask them they would confirm that they have never met me or ever paid me a penny.
"Whilst I'm on that subject, who is this senior former regime official that you spoke to yesterday? Don't you think I have a right to know? Don't you think the Committee and the public have a right to know who this senior former regime official you were quoting against me interviewed yesterday actually is?
"Now, one of the most serious of the mistakes you have made in this set of documents is, to be frank, such a schoolboy howler as to make a fool of the efforts that you have made. You assert on page 19, not once but twice, that the documents that you are referring to cover a different period in time from the documents covered by The Daily Telegraph which were a subject of a libel action won by me in the High Court in England late last year.
"You state that The Daily Telegraph article cited documents from 1992 and 1993 whilst you are dealing with documents dating from 2001. Senator, The Daily Telegraph's documents date identically to the documents that you were dealing with in your report here. None of The Daily Telegraph's documents dealt with a period of 1992, 1993. I had never set foot in Iraq until late in 1993 - never in my life. There could possibly be no documents relating to Oil-for-Food matters in 1992, 1993, for the Oil-for-Food scheme did not exist at that time.
"And yet you've allocated a full section of this document to claiming that your documents are from a different era to the Daily Telegraph documents when the opposite is true. Your documents and the Daily Telegraph documents deal with exactly the same period.
"But perhaps you were confusing the Daily Telegraph action with the Christian Science Monitor. The Christian Science Monitor did indeed publish on its front pages a set of allegations against me very similar to the ones that your committee have made. They did indeed rely on documents which started in 1992, 1993. These documents were unmasked by the Christian Science Monitor themselves as forgeries.
"Now, the neo-con websites and newspapers in which you're such a hero, senator, were all absolutely cock-a-hoop at the publication of the Christian Science Monitor documents, they were all absolutely convinced of their authenticity. They were all absolutely convinced that these documents showed me receiving $10 million from the Saddam regime. And they were all lies.
"In the same week as the Daily Telegraph published their documents against me, the Christian Science Monitor published theirs which turned out to be forgeries and the British newspaper, Mail on Sunday, purchased a third set of documents which also upon forensic examination turned out to be forgeries. So there's nothing fanciful about this. Nothing at all fanciful about it.
"The existence of forged documents implicating me in commercial activities with the Iraqi regime is a proven fact. It's a proven fact that these forged documents existed and were being circulated amongst right-wing newspapers in Baghdad and around the world in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Iraqi regime.
"Now, Senator, I gave my heart and soul to oppose the policy that you promoted. I gave my political life's blood to try to stop the mass killing of Iraqis by the sanctions on Iraq which killed one million Iraqis, most of them children, most of them died before they even knew that they were Iraqis, but they died for no other reason other than that they were Iraqis with the misfortune to born at that time. I gave my heart and soul to stop you committing the disaster that you did commit in invading Iraq. And I told the world that your case for the war was a pack of lies.
“I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims did not have weapons of mass destruction. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al-Qaeda. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11 2001. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that the Iraqi people would resist a British and American invasion of their country and that the fall of Baghdad would not be the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning.
"Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 people paid with their lives; 1600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies.
If the world had listened to Kofi Annan, whose dismissal you demanded, if the world had listened to President Chirac who you want to paint as some kind of corrupt traitor, if the world had listened to me and the anti-war movement in Britain, we would not be in the disaster that we are in today. Senator, this is the mother of all smokescreens. You are trying to divert attention from the crimes that you supported, from the theft of billions of dollars of Iraq's wealth.
"Have a look at the real Oil-for-Food scandal. Have a look at the 14 months you were in charge of Baghdad, the first 14 months when $8.8 billion of Iraq's wealth went missing on your watch. Have a look at Haliburton and other American corporations that stole not only Iraq's money, but the money of the American taxpayer.
"Have a look at the oil that you didn't even meter, that you were shipping out of the country and selling, the proceeds of which went who knows where? Have a look at the $800 million you gave to American military commanders to hand out around the country without even counting it or weighing it.
"Have a look at the real scandal breaking in the newspapers today, revealed in the earlier testimony in this committee. That the biggest sanctions busters were not me or Russian politicians or French politicians. The real sanctions busters were your own companies with the connivance of your own Government."
May 18, 2005
Galloway v the US Senate: transcript of statement
By Times Online
George Galloway, Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, delivered this statement to US Senators today who have accused him of corruption
George Galloway after arriving in the Senate committee room to give evidence (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
"Senator, I am not now, nor have I ever been, an oil trader. and neither has anyone on my behalf. I have never seen a barrel of oil, owned one, bought one, sold one - and neither has anyone on my behalf.
"Now I know that standards have slipped in the last few years in Washington, but for a lawyer you are remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice. I am here today but last week you already found me guilty. You traduced my name around the world without ever having asked me a single question, without ever having contacted me, without ever written to me or telephoned me, without any attempt to contact me whatsoever. And you call that justice.
"Now I want to deal with the pages that relate to me in this dossier and I want to point out areas where there are - let's be charitable and say errors. Then I want to put this in the context where I believe it ought to be. On the very first page of your document about me you assert that I have had 'many meetings' with Saddam Hussein. This is false.
"I have had two meetings with Saddam Hussein, once in 1994 and once in August of 2002. By no stretch of the English language can that be described as "many meetings" with Saddam Hussein.
"As a matter of fact, I have met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to target those guns. I met him to try and bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war, and on the second of the two occasions, I met him to try and persuade him to let Dr Hans Blix and the United Nations weapons inspectors back into the country - a rather better use of two meetings with Saddam Hussein than your own Secretary of State for Defence made of his.
"I was an opponent of Saddam Hussein when British and Americans governments and businessmen were selling him guns and gas. I used to demonstrate outside the Iraqi embassy when British and American officials were going in and doing commerce.
"You will see from the official parliamentary record, Hansard, from the 15th March 1990 onwards, voluminous evidence that I have a rather better record of opposition to Saddam Hussein than you do and than any other member of the British or American governments do.
"Now you say in this document, you quote a source, you have the gall to quote a source, without ever having asked me whether the allegation from the source is true, that I am 'the owner of a company which has made substantial profits from trading in Iraqi oil'.
"Senator, I do not own any companies, beyond a small company whose entire purpose, whose sole purpose, is to receive the income from my journalistic earnings from my employer, Associated Newspapers, in London. I do not own a company that's been trading in Iraqi oil. And you have no business to carry a quotation, utterly unsubstantiated and false, implying otherwise.
"Now you have nothing on me, Senator, except my name on lists of names from Iraq, many of which have been drawn up after the installation of your puppet government in Baghdad. If you had any of the letters against me that you had against Zhirinovsky, and even Pasqua, they would have been up there in your slideshow for the members of your committee today.
"You have my name on lists provided to you by the Duelfer inquiry, provided to him by the convicted bank robber, and fraudster and conman Ahmed Chalabi who many people to their credit in your country now realise played a decisive role in leading your country into the disaster in Iraq.
"There were 270 names on that list originally. That's somehow been filleted down to the names you chose to deal with in this committee. Some of the names on that committee included the former secretary to his Holiness Pope John Paul II, the former head of the African National Congress Presidential office and many others who had one defining characteristic in common: they all stood against the policy of sanctions and war which you vociferously prosecuted and which has led us to this disaster.
"You quote Mr Dahar Yassein Ramadan. Well, you have something on me, I've never met Mr Dahar Yassein Ramadan. Your sub-committee apparently has. But I do know that he's your prisoner, I believe he's in Abu Ghraib prison. I believe he is facing war crimes charges, punishable by death. In these circumstances, knowing what the world knows about how you treat prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison, in Bagram Airbase, in Guantanamo Bay, including I may say, British citizens being held in those places.
"I'm not sure how much credibility anyone would put on anything you manage to get from a prisoner in those circumstances. But you quote 13 words from Dahar Yassein Ramadan whom I have never met. If he said what he said, then he is wrong.
"And if you had any evidence that I had ever engaged in any actual oil transaction, if you had any evidence that anybody ever gave me any money, it would be before the public and before this committee today because I agreed with your Mr Greenblatt [Mark Greenblatt, legal counsel on the committee].
"Your Mr Greenblatt was absolutely correct. What counts is not the names on the paper, what counts is where's the money. Senator? Who paid me hundreds of thousands of dollars of money? The answer to that is nobody. And if you had anybody who ever paid me a penny, you would have produced them today.
"Now you refer at length to a company names in these documents as Aredio Petroleum. I say to you under oath here today: I have never heard of this company, I have never met anyone from this company. This company has never paid a penny to me and I'll tell you something else: I can assure you that Aredio Petroleum has never paid a single penny to the Mariam Appeal Campaign. Not a thin dime. I don't know who Aredio Petroleum are, but I daresay if you were to ask them they would confirm that they have never met me or ever paid me a penny.
"Whilst I'm on that subject, who is this senior former regime official that you spoke to yesterday? Don't you think I have a right to know? Don't you think the Committee and the public have a right to know who this senior former regime official you were quoting against me interviewed yesterday actually is?
"Now, one of the most serious of the mistakes you have made in this set of documents is, to be frank, such a schoolboy howler as to make a fool of the efforts that you have made. You assert on page 19, not once but twice, that the documents that you are referring to cover a different period in time from the documents covered by The Daily Telegraph which were a subject of a libel action won by me in the High Court in England late last year.
"You state that The Daily Telegraph article cited documents from 1992 and 1993 whilst you are dealing with documents dating from 2001. Senator, The Daily Telegraph's documents date identically to the documents that you were dealing with in your report here. None of The Daily Telegraph's documents dealt with a period of 1992, 1993. I had never set foot in Iraq until late in 1993 - never in my life. There could possibly be no documents relating to Oil-for-Food matters in 1992, 1993, for the Oil-for-Food scheme did not exist at that time.
"And yet you've allocated a full section of this document to claiming that your documents are from a different era to the Daily Telegraph documents when the opposite is true. Your documents and the Daily Telegraph documents deal with exactly the same period.
"But perhaps you were confusing the Daily Telegraph action with the Christian Science Monitor. The Christian Science Monitor did indeed publish on its front pages a set of allegations against me very similar to the ones that your committee have made. They did indeed rely on documents which started in 1992, 1993. These documents were unmasked by the Christian Science Monitor themselves as forgeries.
"Now, the neo-con websites and newspapers in which you're such a hero, senator, were all absolutely cock-a-hoop at the publication of the Christian Science Monitor documents, they were all absolutely convinced of their authenticity. They were all absolutely convinced that these documents showed me receiving $10 million from the Saddam regime. And they were all lies.
"In the same week as the Daily Telegraph published their documents against me, the Christian Science Monitor published theirs which turned out to be forgeries and the British newspaper, Mail on Sunday, purchased a third set of documents which also upon forensic examination turned out to be forgeries. So there's nothing fanciful about this. Nothing at all fanciful about it.
"The existence of forged documents implicating me in commercial activities with the Iraqi regime is a proven fact. It's a proven fact that these forged documents existed and were being circulated amongst right-wing newspapers in Baghdad and around the world in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Iraqi regime.
"Now, Senator, I gave my heart and soul to oppose the policy that you promoted. I gave my political life's blood to try to stop the mass killing of Iraqis by the sanctions on Iraq which killed one million Iraqis, most of them children, most of them died before they even knew that they were Iraqis, but they died for no other reason other than that they were Iraqis with the misfortune to born at that time. I gave my heart and soul to stop you committing the disaster that you did commit in invading Iraq. And I told the world that your case for the war was a pack of lies.
“I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims did not have weapons of mass destruction. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al-Qaeda. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11 2001. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that the Iraqi people would resist a British and American invasion of their country and that the fall of Baghdad would not be the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning.
"Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 people paid with their lives; 1600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies.
If the world had listened to Kofi Annan, whose dismissal you demanded, if the world had listened to President Chirac who you want to paint as some kind of corrupt traitor, if the world had listened to me and the anti-war movement in Britain, we would not be in the disaster that we are in today. Senator, this is the mother of all smokescreens. You are trying to divert attention from the crimes that you supported, from the theft of billions of dollars of Iraq's wealth.
"Have a look at the real Oil-for-Food scandal. Have a look at the 14 months you were in charge of Baghdad, the first 14 months when $8.8 billion of Iraq's wealth went missing on your watch. Have a look at Haliburton and other American corporations that stole not only Iraq's money, but the money of the American taxpayer.
"Have a look at the oil that you didn't even meter, that you were shipping out of the country and selling, the proceeds of which went who knows where? Have a look at the $800 million you gave to American military commanders to hand out around the country without even counting it or weighing it.
"Have a look at the real scandal breaking in the newspapers today, revealed in the earlier testimony in this committee. That the biggest sanctions busters were not me or Russian politicians or French politicians. The real sanctions busters were your own companies with the connivance of your own Government."
New York Daily News - Ideas & Opinions - Stanley Crouch: A worthy view of racism's intricacy & weight
New York Daily News - Ideas & Opinions - Stanley Crouch: A worthy view of racism's intricacy & weightA worthy view of racism's intricacy & weight
It is good to see a Hollywood movie remind those who need to know that the world is not all special effects, cartoons and fairy tales. In sometimes contrived ways, the makers of the new film "Crash" mean for us to think about the intricacies of contemporary American life.
They create situations in which we see racial politics of a police department and a district attorney. We see how dangerously a frustrated Iranian man acts when disrespectfully lumped with all Middle Easterners. The shadow world of Asian communities is put on display in surprising and shocking ways. Impositions placed by Negro criminals achieve freshness as we see the plight of a black middle class man.
The point of "Crash" is not about how different we are but that we are, finally, responsible to and for each other. It's a point that shows the sort of nerve we need in our moment.
Sometimes black people are trapped and the only way they can be saved is if white people decide to take risks and save them. Black criminals are a burden to everyone, and the black middle class need no longer allow itself to be pushed around by those knuckleheads who claim it is not "authentically black." The black middle class has to fight back but it also has to take the responsibility of protecting those below it when injustice shows its teeth.
Middle Eastern people embittered by the stereotypes that have come since 9/11 cannot sink down into the violence almost reserved for minorities. Everyone, even knuckleheads, should refuse to support the kind of slavery that goes on in the shadow worlds of some of our Asian communities.
Reviewers are either ecstatic or disturbed by the film's attempts to address cross-racial problems. It does not play to the expected clichés. We should not be surprised to be told that people are people, no group is perfect, apparent monsters can have hearts, the rhetoric of oppression can be used to justify criminality, and that members of a troubled minority will victimize their own kind or, literally, sell them into slavery. None of this should be startling, but it is.
There is bitterness among minorities toward whites whom they assume have power due to the rules of bigotry; and there is bitterness among whites who believe that whatever power or privilege minorities have is the result of bending the rules in their favor, not because of their abilities. We know that there are very few situations in which being white isn't an advantage. Such topics have long been looked into in our more serious television dramas, usually cop shows like "Hill Street Blues," "Homicide" and "NYPD Blue." "Crash" is in that line because pivot points are supplied by the complex nature of crime, violence, and accident.
"Crash" says some things about American life that we need to think about seriously in our ever more muddy vision of what must or must not be done. The problems of race and class are never less than real and they can only be handled if we face the truth that everyone is a participant in this aspect of our national drama.
Originally published on May 16, 2005
It is good to see a Hollywood movie remind those who need to know that the world is not all special effects, cartoons and fairy tales. In sometimes contrived ways, the makers of the new film "Crash" mean for us to think about the intricacies of contemporary American life.
They create situations in which we see racial politics of a police department and a district attorney. We see how dangerously a frustrated Iranian man acts when disrespectfully lumped with all Middle Easterners. The shadow world of Asian communities is put on display in surprising and shocking ways. Impositions placed by Negro criminals achieve freshness as we see the plight of a black middle class man.
The point of "Crash" is not about how different we are but that we are, finally, responsible to and for each other. It's a point that shows the sort of nerve we need in our moment.
Sometimes black people are trapped and the only way they can be saved is if white people decide to take risks and save them. Black criminals are a burden to everyone, and the black middle class need no longer allow itself to be pushed around by those knuckleheads who claim it is not "authentically black." The black middle class has to fight back but it also has to take the responsibility of protecting those below it when injustice shows its teeth.
Middle Eastern people embittered by the stereotypes that have come since 9/11 cannot sink down into the violence almost reserved for minorities. Everyone, even knuckleheads, should refuse to support the kind of slavery that goes on in the shadow worlds of some of our Asian communities.
Reviewers are either ecstatic or disturbed by the film's attempts to address cross-racial problems. It does not play to the expected clichés. We should not be surprised to be told that people are people, no group is perfect, apparent monsters can have hearts, the rhetoric of oppression can be used to justify criminality, and that members of a troubled minority will victimize their own kind or, literally, sell them into slavery. None of this should be startling, but it is.
There is bitterness among minorities toward whites whom they assume have power due to the rules of bigotry; and there is bitterness among whites who believe that whatever power or privilege minorities have is the result of bending the rules in their favor, not because of their abilities. We know that there are very few situations in which being white isn't an advantage. Such topics have long been looked into in our more serious television dramas, usually cop shows like "Hill Street Blues," "Homicide" and "NYPD Blue." "Crash" is in that line because pivot points are supplied by the complex nature of crime, violence, and accident.
"Crash" says some things about American life that we need to think about seriously in our ever more muddy vision of what must or must not be done. The problems of race and class are never less than real and they can only be handled if we face the truth that everyone is a participant in this aspect of our national drama.
Originally published on May 16, 2005
Senator Frist Approaches the Brink - New York Times
Senator Frist Approaches the Brink - New York TimesMay 18, 2005
Senator Frist Approaches the Brink
Of all the hollow arguments Senate Republicans have made in their attempt to scrap the opposition's right to have a say on President Bush's judicial nominees, the one that's most hypocritical insists that history is on their side in demanding a "simple up-or-down vote" on the Senate floor. Republicans and Democrats have used a variety of tactics, from filibuster threats to stealthy committee inaction on individual nominations, in blocking hundreds of presidential appointments across history, including about one in five Supreme Court nominees. This is all part of the Senate's time-honored deliberative role and of its protection of minority rights, which Republican leaders would now desecrate in overreaching from their majority perch.
Republican majorities blocked more than 60 judicial candidates during the Clinton administration by denying them committee hearings through the use of anonymous "blue slip" holds by individual lawmakers and a variety of other tactics just as effective, if less visible, than the filibuster. The majority leader, Bill Frist, who is zealously planning to smash the Senate rules, took part himself in a filibuster of a Clinton appeals court nominee.
But the majority leader is ignoring that history. With his eye clearly on a presidential run, he is playing to his party's extremist gallery by orchestrating a hazardous rules change that would block Democrats from following his example on a few of President Bush's most ideologically extreme and least qualified judicial nominees.
Democrats have hardly been obstructionists in their constitutional role of giving advice and consent; they have confirmed more than 200 Bush nominees, while balking at a mere seven who should be blocked on the merits, not for partisan reasons. This is a worthy fight, and the filibuster is a necessary weapon, considering that these are lifetime appointments to the powerful appellate judiciary, just below the Supreme Court. In more than two centuries, only 11 federal judges have been impeached for abusive court behavior. Clearly, uninhibited Senate debate in the deliberative stage, with the minority's voice preserved, is a crucial requirement.
The two nominees Senator Frist is putting forth first are singularly unqualified: The first, Priscilla Owen, has openly favored big business and flouted abortion rights on the Texas Supreme Court. The second, Janice Rogers Brown, has used her California Supreme Court post to belittle minority rights and rail against New Deal programs as a "socialist revolution." Taxpayers can at least be glad that the nominees' records are being publicly aired. Republicans relied on secrecy in bottling up Clinton nominations before they ever saw the light of debate.
Senator Frist, with the help of Vice President Dick Cheney, would sidestep a Senate precedent requiring two-thirds' approval for a rules change and instead have a simple majority strike down the filibuster on judicial nominees. He promises that there would be no effect on other legislation, but the damage would be incalculable. Democrats are already vowing procedural paybacks and gridlock.
A few moderate senators from both parties - realizing that the Senate's prestige is at stake, as much as its history - are seeking a compromise. We hope President Bush will step in to help find a solution. Otherwise, warns his fellow Republican Arlen Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the result will be the harmful crimping of minority rights in a proud deliberative body and "a dark, protracted era of divisive partisanship."
Senator Frist Approaches the Brink
Of all the hollow arguments Senate Republicans have made in their attempt to scrap the opposition's right to have a say on President Bush's judicial nominees, the one that's most hypocritical insists that history is on their side in demanding a "simple up-or-down vote" on the Senate floor. Republicans and Democrats have used a variety of tactics, from filibuster threats to stealthy committee inaction on individual nominations, in blocking hundreds of presidential appointments across history, including about one in five Supreme Court nominees. This is all part of the Senate's time-honored deliberative role and of its protection of minority rights, which Republican leaders would now desecrate in overreaching from their majority perch.
Republican majorities blocked more than 60 judicial candidates during the Clinton administration by denying them committee hearings through the use of anonymous "blue slip" holds by individual lawmakers and a variety of other tactics just as effective, if less visible, than the filibuster. The majority leader, Bill Frist, who is zealously planning to smash the Senate rules, took part himself in a filibuster of a Clinton appeals court nominee.
But the majority leader is ignoring that history. With his eye clearly on a presidential run, he is playing to his party's extremist gallery by orchestrating a hazardous rules change that would block Democrats from following his example on a few of President Bush's most ideologically extreme and least qualified judicial nominees.
Democrats have hardly been obstructionists in their constitutional role of giving advice and consent; they have confirmed more than 200 Bush nominees, while balking at a mere seven who should be blocked on the merits, not for partisan reasons. This is a worthy fight, and the filibuster is a necessary weapon, considering that these are lifetime appointments to the powerful appellate judiciary, just below the Supreme Court. In more than two centuries, only 11 federal judges have been impeached for abusive court behavior. Clearly, uninhibited Senate debate in the deliberative stage, with the minority's voice preserved, is a crucial requirement.
The two nominees Senator Frist is putting forth first are singularly unqualified: The first, Priscilla Owen, has openly favored big business and flouted abortion rights on the Texas Supreme Court. The second, Janice Rogers Brown, has used her California Supreme Court post to belittle minority rights and rail against New Deal programs as a "socialist revolution." Taxpayers can at least be glad that the nominees' records are being publicly aired. Republicans relied on secrecy in bottling up Clinton nominations before they ever saw the light of debate.
Senator Frist, with the help of Vice President Dick Cheney, would sidestep a Senate precedent requiring two-thirds' approval for a rules change and instead have a simple majority strike down the filibuster on judicial nominees. He promises that there would be no effect on other legislation, but the damage would be incalculable. Democrats are already vowing procedural paybacks and gridlock.
A few moderate senators from both parties - realizing that the Senate's prestige is at stake, as much as its history - are seeking a compromise. We hope President Bush will step in to help find a solution. Otherwise, warns his fellow Republican Arlen Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the result will be the harmful crimping of minority rights in a proud deliberative body and "a dark, protracted era of divisive partisanship."
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