UNITED STATES NEWS DIGEST
Kissinger Peddles Preemptive War, Clash of Civilizations
No doubt Henry Kissinger's latest diatribe, on how NATO must learn to love preemptive war, will soon make it into the pages of the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, International Herald Tribune, and Die Welt.
Published Dec. 1 in Rupert Murdoch's New York Post, Kissinger's current column assails Europe for making too much of a stink over the Bush Administration's new national security doctrine of preemptive war, arguing that the events of 9-11 and the danger of WMD attacks now make national sovereignty a relic, and warrant preemptive attacks.
"Preemption is inherent in the technology and ideology of the 21st-century international system," Kissinger wrote. Kissinger's advice to the Bush Team, which he has now more or less joined as chairman of the 9-11 investigation commission, is to work with the NATO allies to reach an agreement on how to carry out preemptive war, or else the U.S. will eventually be ganged up on. "History shows," he wrote, "that, sooner or later, every powerful country calls into being countervailing forces. And at that pointand I would insist even nowthe United States will not be able to sort out every international problem alone without exhausting itself physically and psychologically."
Kissinger argued that the glue that should repair the damage in the Western Alliance is the common threat of a Clash of Civilization: "We will need allies, and the countries that most share our values and history are the NATO countries," he explained. "And however much conventional wisdom balks at the concept of a clash of civilizations, that is what Western societies face together from the radical crusading version of Islam."
At that point, Kissinger turned to the same argument touted by the Washington Post's resident British liberal imperialist, Sebastian Mallaby. Kissinger declared, "The ultimate challenge for American foreign policy is to turn dominant power into a sense of shared responsibility; it is to conduct policy, as the Australian scholar Coral Bell has written, as if the international order were composed of many centers of power, even while we are aware of our strategic preeminence."
President Bush Attends Eid Al-Fitr at Washington Islamic Center
President George W. Bush and the First Lady attended the breaking-of-fast ceremony on Dec. 5 to celebrate the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, in President Bush's second visit to Washington, D.C.'s Islamic Center (his first occurred shortly after Sept. 11, 2001). The President's, though brief, were respectful and appreciative. He congratulated Imam Dr. Khouj for the role the Islamic Center has played in Washington for half a century.
Bush said: "This beautiful mosque has served as a place of worship for Muslims and has helped to advance understanding between people of different faiths. Millions of our fellow Americans practice the Muslim faith. They lead lives of honesty and justice and compassion.
"I am pleased to join you today in the celebration of Eid, the culmination of the Holy Month of Ramadan. I appreciate so very much Dr. Khouj, and I want to thank the other distinguished imam from the Washington, D.C. area....
"The spirit behind this holiday is a reminder that Islam brings hope and comfort to more than a billion people worldwide. Islam affirms God's justice and insists on man's moral responsibility. This holiday is also an occasion to remember that Islam gave birth to a rich civilization of learning that has benefitted mankind.
"Here in the United States our Muslim citizens are making many contributions in business, science and law, medicine and education, and in other fields. Muslim members of our Armed Forces and of my administration are serving their fellow Americans with distinction, upholding our nation's ideals of liberty and justice in a world at peace. And in our Nation's Capital, this center contributes greatly to our spiritual and cultural life.
"On behalf of Laura and our family and the American people, I bring our best wishes to all who worship here, and to Muslims throughout the world for a joyous Eid, and for health and happiness and prosperity in the year to come.
"Eid Mubarak. God bless."
Religious-Warfare Gang Goes Crazy Over Bush's Appearance at Islamic Center
The Dec. 6 Washington Times featured Bush's visit on the front-page, prominently quoting Pat Robertson saying that Bush "ignores history" by not acknowledging that Islam is "violent at its core." The article also quotes William S. Lind of Paul Weyrich's Free Congress Foundation mocking what Bush did, comparing it to celebrating Shinto after Pearl Harbor.
Washington Times editor Wesley Pruden dished out more ridicule of Bush for his statements on Islam, saying that Bush "is not very convincing as the theologian in chief." Pruden says that FDR didn't assuage the Japanese by praising Shinto after Pearl Harbor, nor did FDR feel the need to serve up sauerkraut and bratwurst at the White House as Americans battled Germany.
In a Washington Post column Dec. 6, neo-con Charles Krauthammer wrote another of his diatribes against Islam, contending that it is irrelevant if Islam were a religion of tolerance sometime in the past, because today it's violent and bloody, just as Samuel Huntington says.
Bush Imposes, But Waives, Sanctions on PLO and Palestinian Authority
Under agreements reached in 1993 between the U.S. government and the Palestine Liberation Organization/Palestinian Authority at the time of the signing of the Oslo accords between Israel and the Palestinians, certain commitments were made by the PLO/PA, including rejection of use of terrorism. Every six months thereafter, a report is issued evaluating compliance with the terms of agreement. This year, based on a report given him, President Bush determined that sanctions should be imposed, which action "downgrades" the status of the PLO office in the United States. Simultaneously, however, the President said, in a statement issued Dec. 3, that he found "that it is in the national security interest of the United States to waive that sanction," for this next 180-day period, before the next report is issued.
Democratic Leadership Council: Let's Annex Dems to the GOP
On Dec. 2, Al From and Bruce Reed of the Democratic Leadership Council released a memo that, in the words of New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, "pretty much suggested that Democrats become an annex of the Republican Party."
In a Dec. 4 column, Dowd warned that the Democratic Party are becoming a bunch of "eunuchs" cowering from "Sheriff Bush" and his posse, afraid they'll be accused of being soft on terrorism or unpatriotic.
Dowd wrote of the From-Reed memo: "Running away from [new House Minority Leader] Nancy Pelosi and jumping into Lynne Cheney's lap, the memo warned that if Democrats continue to come across as counterculture wimps on terrorism, they are doomed."
The Democratic Leadership Council is the centrist Democratic group that brought us such notable losers as Al Gore, Joe Lieberman, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Dick Gephardt, and such master-"triangulators" as political consultant Dick Morris. DLC founder Lieberman was singled out by Lyndon LaRouche last summer as the chief obstacle to serious efforts by the Democrats to stop the war drive against Iraq, and adopt infrastructure development programs to turn around the economic collapse.
As LaRouche had warned, Democrats following the DLC policies (that is, flabbily trying to imitate the Republicans), were doomed to lose in the Nov. 5 elections. That's exactly what happened. So now what do the DLC gurus propose? More of the same.
The political bankruptcy of the memo reinforces LaRouche's assertion that post-Nov. 5, he stands as the only viable Democratic leader.
That fact becomes even more obvious when looking at the overall Democratic Presidential "field." Lieberman is going nowhere fast. As his home-state newspaper, the Hartford Courant, pointed out right after the November elections, of the 11 Senate candidates he strenuously supported, eight lost, and Mary Landrieu wound up in a tight runoff (which she has since won). Not a very good track record.
And of course, Lieberman's 2000 running mate is hopeless. A Nov. 26 New York Times/CBS News poll found that Al Gore "is viewed unfavorably today by a ratio of almost two to one," despite favorable (even fawning) national publicity he and wife Tipper got from the tour that promoted their two new books (and reintroduced them to the electorate). Nearly two-thirds of the respondents, including just over 50% of Democrats, said that Gore should not run in 2004.
A Washington Post gossip column reports that the Gore books are not selling up to expectations, quoting a "publishing expert who asked for anonymity," that the Gores have "been on television, in Time magazine and everywhere else, and the sales don't seem commensurate with the attention."
According to Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, the New York Times indicated that Gore's favorable ratings are among the worst it's ever recorded, since it started taking such polls in 1987.
As for Dick Gephardt and Tom Daschle, Gephardt stepped down as House Minority Leader partly because he had led his party into a debacle in the elections, and partly because he's still hankering to run for President. Daschle is perhaps not as compromised as Gephardt, but his whiny petulance has had the effect of putting him very low (11%) in the National Quinnipiac University Poll of Presidential preference.
Lowest of all in that poll is rookie Senator and DLC leader John Edwards (North Carolina), at 4%.
Meanwhile, although the DLC's favorite Republican, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz) insists that he won't be on the same ticket as possible Presidential candidate Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn), Lieberman won't rule it out. "You know, it's so far ahead, Lieberman told The New Yorker magazine's Jeffrey Toobin, adding that: "There's nobody I think better of just in terms of integrity, purpose, honor, trustworthiness." And, when Toobin suggested to McCain that the two feel the same about President Bush, McCain responded: "Exactly ... [although] I probably don't feel as strongly negative."
Actually, one of the strongest bonds between Lieberman and McCain has to do with the role organized-crime money has played in both their political careers. And then there's the fact that the two have deployed themselves together to bash President Bush almost constantly to force him into war on Iraq.
Who Sucked the Life Out of Nancy Pelosi?
That's what syndicated columnist and political enfant terrible Arianna Huffington asked in a Nov. 21 column. "Was it 'Meet the Press' or the Sci-Fi Channel?... Nancy Pelosi... [the new] House Minority Leader... sounded like a character from Invasion of the Body Snatchers." Huffington compared what she described as the formerly "bold, combative, impassioned, progressive politician" with the present "soulless pod personan empty shell mouthing the kind of pallid, inoffensive, focus group-tested and cringe-inducing platitudes that have driven two-thirds of the American electorate away from politicsand a little more than half of the remaining one-third away from the Democratic Party."
Huffington cited Pelosi's switch to acquiescence in an Iraq war, after having voted against the use-of-force resolution.
"To hear Pod Pelosi tell it, her leadership role is all about finding the political middle. 'We must seek our common ground with the administration,'" Pelosi told "Meet the Press." Pelosi's communications director, Brendan Daly, explained, "She has got her beliefs. But we are here to win [sic], and she understands that to do that you need to be in the middle."
Meantime, the liberal magazine The Nation is questioning why Pelosi is so soft on President Bush, and suggesting that it may have to do with the friendship that grew up between Bush and her daughter, Alexandra Pelosi, when the latter, as an NBC-TV producer, was travelling on Bush's 2000 campaign plane, and making the recently premiered documentary Journeys with George.
It's Official: 'Recession' in Texas
Despite the sighs of relief that the collapse of Enron did not bring down Houston, Texas, the state is officially in "recession," reports the New York Times, whose profile of the Lone Star State badly underplays the problem. The leading problem is jobs: Texas lost 91,000 jobs in 2001 (the year Enron closed down) and another 22,000 jobs in 2002. There has been about a 9% drop in personal income from mid-2000 to the second quarter of 2002.
The hardest hit is Dallas, where layoffs have former hi-tech workers now jamming homeless shelters. Austin/Dallas was the telecomm/hi-tech corridor, but has suffered layoffs through the last year, and more are expected, since the area is also home to the troubled American Airlines. Two years ago, Dallas had the lowest unemployment of the 15 largest American cities; now it is "hardest hit," said one economist, with a net loss of 15,000 jobs in the past year, despite an increase of government contracts to defense industries like Raytheon, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin.
Statewide there is the budget shortfall of up to $12 billion, and Medicaid will likely be hit; the Republicans rule out tax increases, and there's a continuing drop in revenues.
LaRouche Representative Testifies at Nevada Economic Forum
The Nevada Economic Forum on Dec. 2 took 10-15 minutes of testimony from Ann Reynolds, co-leader of the LaRouche movement in Nevada, on LaRouche's emergency economic program. The Nevada Economic Forum is a panel of five financial experts from outside state government; by law, the Governor must use the revenue projections it made Dec. 2 as the basis for submitting a balanced budget for next fiscal year.
Reynolds asserted that "Lyndon LaRouche has a plan that will work.... It has worked three times before, after the American Revolution, after the Civil War, and with FDR."
She criticized the fantasies of economic recovery upon which the Forum projected that state revenues would increase by 3.5% in this fiscal year, 4.6% in '03-'04, and 5.1% in '04-'05, ridiculing their self-proclaimed assumption of "a jobless recovery based on continuing consumer debt."
Instead, she said, the demise of the de-regulated airlines will hit Las Vegas hard. On a larger scale, the collapse of JP Morgan and Citibank could bring financial havoc. Most states are already ripping up their budgets and raising taxes. "By cutting government services and raising public taxes, Argentina has achieved a 57% poverty rate," she observed.
Reynolds outlined LaRouche's program for debt reorganization and publicly funded low-interest credits for infrastructure buildingwhat LaRouche has called a "super TVA" approachas the only way to get a functioning economy which provides for the general welfare. The LaRouche movement is lobbying state legislatures across the country, to inform them of the need to force Washington to change the axioms of economic policy.
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