It is, of course, purely coincidental that news of the alleged death of Osama bin Laden--or, at least, his imminent demise--has been “leaked“ by the Saudis via a French intelligence document just as the American election season hits its stride. This time, he’s supposedly dead or dying of typhoid, although the source of his reported health problems varies with the teller. And, some speculate, this could be just an effort to smoke him out--to motivate him to issue a new video, the first in two years, and therefore provide his hunters with possible clues to his whereabouts and condition.
Nothing about this rumor is at all clear. What is breathtakingly obvious, however, is that bin Laden is a living reminder of this administration’s complete failure when it comes to the GOP’s signature issue: national security and the “war on terrorism.“ For years, the more addlepated wing of the War Party has been stoutly maintaining that OBL is dead, in spite of audio messages in which he has spoken. Now they have another excuse to trot out this tired line, as if the death of a single man could possibly improve their rapidly sinking position.
Since the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq, the level of terror in that country has risen; bin Laden’s death, if it has occurred, is likely to register a similar uptick worldwide. We are, it seems, caught in a conundrum.
The great problem of the War Party is that they chose to fight the wrong war. We were struck by bin Laden, and we went for Saddam’s throat--while letting the real author of 9/11 get clean away. Instead of strengthening our ties with local Arab governments and using our influence and regional allies to hunt down and kill the real terrorists, we marshaled inordinate resources to accomplish regime change in Iraq and succeeded only in strengthening al-Qaeda. Or, rather, we succeeded in confirming the idea and action program represented by bin Laden and his followers, who enjoy growing support far beyond the periphery of their actual organization.
In an important sense, bin Laden, the individual, matters not. His significance transcends his own person. Whether he is alive or dead will not impact the larger struggle one way or the other. In the short term, however, rumors of his death, albeit vague to the point of insubstantiality, do serve a purpose, and that is to shore up the rapidly collapsing American strategy in the Middle East. If he is truly dead, or dying, Washington can claim, albeit implausibly, to have driven him into the ground, to have so exhausted and debilitated him that his health simply gave out: it’s a “victory“ of sorts, if a rather threadbare one. On the other hand, I tend to agree with Michael Scheuer, until 1999 the head of the CIA’s bin Laden unit, who avers:
“You should never say ’never,’ but the source of the intelligence is not a very good one--Saudi intelligence can sometimes be an oxymoron. It almost sounds like between the French and the Saudis are trying to goad bin Laden into saying something to prove he is still alive.“
Scheuer has been uncannily correct in his prognostications. In his 2004 book Imperial Hubris and elsewhere, Scheuer predicted with pinpoint accuracy that the Americans’ alleged “victory“ in Afghanistan would soon unravel, leaving “President“ Hamid Karzai as ruler of little more than the capital city of Kabul. This piece, detailing the rise of pro-Taliban warlords such as former Afghan prime minister and U.S.-funded “freedom fighter“ Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, shows Scheuer on the mark yet again:
“Karzai, holed up in Kabul, is increasingly marginalized, as the insecurity has shaken faith in the elected government. Hekmatyar has even taken to taunting Karzai. Earlier this month he called the president and told him he should be able to tell from the telephone number where Hekmatyar was speaking from. He challenged Karzai to arrest him.“
As our politicians prate about “who lost Afghanistan,“ the irony is that it was “lost“ in the very effort to take it. Instead of going in for the sole purpose of tracking down and shutting down Bin Laden & Co., the Afghan campaign prefigured the nation-building neoconservative program of regime change, the ostensible purpose of which is to “drain the swamp“ that supposedly nurtures the terrorist pestilence.
This ideological fantasy soon dissolved in the clear morning light, although U.S. policymakers are still suffering from a huge hangover. The Afghan elections did not deter or even delay the natural native resistance to this imposition of “democracy“ from on high: it was, in any event, a performance put on mainly for the benefit of a Western, and specifically American, audience. The idea was to wring money out of Congress (and the NATO countries), as well as to secure a commitment to keep troops there long enough to mount what was termed a “final“ offensive against the supposedly defeated Taliban. All that was needed, we were assured, was a “mopping up“ operation, and our job would be done. Today, it is closer to the truth to say that we are being mopped up.
Justin Raimondo
ANTIWAR.COM

The teaming up of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation with the Rockefeller Foundation to bring a “new“ Green Revolution to Africa sadly ignores the lessons of the failures of the first Green Revolution.
In the first Green Revolution, the Rockefeller and Ford foundations exported industrial-style agriculture--based on chemicals and “high-response“ seeds--to the Third World, with the paradoxical outcome of greater production of a few food crops, accompanied by even worse hunger, and by environmental degradation. Pesticides and chemical fertilizers eventually degraded the soil, leading to declining productivity, and the high cost of those inputs deepened the divide between rich and poor farmers, swelling the ranks of the hungry.
The Gateses’ apparent naivetŽ about the causes of hunger have led them to make private investments in genetically engineered seeds and to launch this $150 million altruistic offensive to promote technology packages that use irrigation, fertilizer and, not surprising, new seeds. Unfortunately, the likely results are higher profits for the seed and fertilizer industries, negligible impacts on total food production and worsening exclusion and marginalization in the countryside.
Today’s rural Africa has been devastated by 25 years of free trade and anti-peasant policies imposed on the continent’s governments by the World Bank, the Intertional Monetary Foundation, the WTO, the United States and the European Union. The forced privatization of food crop marketing boards--which, though flawed, once guaranteed African farmers minimum prices and held food reserves for emergencies--and rural development banks, which gave farmers credit to produce food, have left farmers without either financing to grow food or buyers for their produce.
Free trade agreements have made it easier for private traders--the only buyers and sellers of food left now that the marketing boards are largely gone--to import subsidized food from the U.S. and the European Union than to negotiate with thousands of local farmers, driving local farm prices below the costs of production. Faced with this negative panorama, peasant families across the continent have abandoned agriculture in search of low-wage jobs in urban slums and in the international migrant stream.
Understanding this reality is critical to addressing hunger in Africa.
Under such circumstances, what difference could a new “technology package“ make? Farmers still could not afford the inputs, or sell what they grow, or make a living as farmers--not to mention the severe environmental and human health risks of genetic engineering technology.
In contrast, the global alliance of family farm and peasant organizations, Via Campesina (www.viacampesina.org), will hold a world conference in Mali in February 2007 on “Food Sovereignty,“ an approach far more likely to reduce hunger in Africa. Delegates from across Africa and around the world will debate the changes that are needed to truly reverse the policy-driven collapse of food production in Africa and other continents. Those policies, including a step back from free trade extremism and market fundamentalism, plus increased supports for family farmers, improved access to farmland for the poor, and ecological farming methods, are together called Food Sovereignty.
Without such changes, no farming technology can truly address hunger. In contrast to the Gates/Rockefeller guaranteed-to-fail approach, creating such a favorable policy environment for family agriculture would make it possible for the hungry to feed themselves using sustainable, ecologically sound farming methods.
SEATTLEPI.
NEWSOURCE.COM

Appointment of Paul Wolfowitz as president of the World Bank was greeted with dismay because of Wolfowitz’s cheerleading for the invasion of Iraq while a member of the Bush administration. If fears that Wolfowitz would turn the bank into an arm of the White House have proven unfounded, he has nevertheless set the bank on a course that has run into opposition. Most recently, the UK has withheld £50m from the bank to push it to focus on accountability and human rights, rather than reforms linked to privatisation and liberalisation, a process known as conditionality. Hilary Benn, the international development secretary, is right to try to hurry the bank along.
The main controversy stirred up has been Wolfowitz’s decision to concentrate on tackling corruption, through halting loans and aid to countries that the bank deems to have unacceptable records. Some of the world’s poorest countries, including Chad, Bangladesh and Congo, have since suffered the effects. Wolfowitz argues that in most cases the funds have been paid after safeguards were put in place, and that fighting corruption and fraud is an important part of development in that it rewards countries with good governance.
In this Wolfowitz is in agreement with an established strand of development policy. It is how he has gone about it that is worrying. It has produced dramatic double standards: punishing India yet appearing to indulge Pakistan, the suspicion being that Pakistan’s alliance with the US gains it an easy ride. But the most serious concern is that the bank’s model is too simplistic.
More fundamentally, there is the pressing question of how to aid those who have the misfortune of living in the most corrupt countries. Rather than punish them twice--once for being poor and again for having corrupt government--donors can instead search out institutions that do work.
Britain’s Department for International Development operates in Ethiopia by using local government, with the aim of keeping aid cash out of the hands of those who would misuse it.
There is a wider debate about the effectiveness of aid currently going on within academia and development agencies. Donors have little to show for sums they spend on aid, and some research suggests that corruption increases in proportion to aid flows. No one doubts that fighting corruption is important. It is right that the bank should continue that fight, one which began under its last president, James Wolfensohn. But it must beware of elevating it too highly: moral purity staffs no hospitals.
GUARDIAN.CO.UK

An African Union soldier patrols the village of Kerkera, located between El-Fasher, the capital of northern Darfur and Kuma, further north, May 18. (AFP File Photo)

Who could disagree with these words?:
“The continued spectacle of men, women and children driven from their homes by murder, rape and the burning of villages makes a mockery of our claim, as an international community, to shield people from the worst abuses.“
So said Kofi Annan, the secretary-general of the United Nations, to the 192-nation UN General Assembly on Sept. 19. His words followed protests in 50 cities to mark a “Day for Darfur“, and to make sure those world leaders attending the annual UN session in New York would take action.
One cannot approach the subject of this desperately poor area of Sudan without thinking of the genocide in Rwanda. There, according to an official government report in 2002, 1,074,017 people, more than 93 percent of them Tutsis, were killed between 1990 and 1994.
I find real anger among all political parties at Westminster that although there has been considerable international diplomatic activity over Darfur, including the passing of several UN Security Council Resolutions, on the ground the situation is getting worse and the violence is on the increase.
The figures are so large that it becomes difficult to comprehend the scale of the individual suffering and the human misery involved. It is thought between 200,000 and 400,000 have died, two million people have fled their homes, and three million are dependent on international support.
It might be hoped that those people who finally made it to the refugee camps would have found security and be satisfactorily looked after. In reality, serious and frequent assaults on the camps have led to the highly motivated aid workers being unable to cope, and some have been withdrawn for their own safety.
The World Food Program does not consider sufficient aid is getting into the camps. It is not possible to escort the women who leave the camps to gather firewood and rapes and murders are on the increase.
It was against this background that a few days ago Tony Blair sent a letter to JosŽ Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, suggesting now was the moment for the European Union to play a key role on Darfur.
The African Union monitors in Darfur are to be allowed to stay until the end of the year, but they lack funding and are gravely short of the basic equipment for such a task. The Khartoum government has threatened to expel them if they attempt to hand over to a UN peacekeeping mission which has been authorized by Security Council Resolution 1706. Khartoum has said the deployment of the proposed 22,600-strong UN force would be “illegal“. It has been most unwise and has horrified Sudan’s friends. There is at present a 10,000-strong UN force in southern Sudan and Washington plans to table a resolution in the Security Council extending its mandate to Darfur.
Tony Blair is right to draw attention to the consequences for the region if the problems of Darfur are not speedily resolved. Chad is in danger of being destabilized by the fighting on and over its border with Sudan.
In 2004 the UN declared that in Darfur was to be found “the world’s greatest humanitarian crisis“. In 2006 it would be intolerable if the Security Council decided to avert its eyes from Darfur where the violence and misery is an affront to us all.
Cyril Townsend
ARABNEWS.COM

Some thirty-two years ago, President Gerald Ford created a political firestorm by pardoning former President Richard Nixon of all crimes he may have committed in Watergate--and lost his election as a result. Now, President Bush, to avoid a similar public outcry, is quietly trying to pardon himself of any crimes connected with the torture and mistreatment of U.S. detainees.
The ’’pardon’’ is buried in Bush’s proposed legislation to create a new kind of military tribunal for cases involving top al-Qaida operatives. The ’’pardon’’ provision has nothing to do with the tribunals. Instead, it guts the War Crimes Act of 1996, a federal law that makes it a crime, in some cases punishable by death, to mistreat detainees in violation of the Geneva Conventions and makes the new, weaker terms of the War Crimes Act retroactive to 9/11.
Avoiding prosecution under the War Crimes Act has been an obsession of this administration since shortly after 9/11. In a January 2002 memorandum to the president, then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales pointed out the problem of prosecution for detainee mistreatment under the War Crimes Act. He notes that given the vague language of the statute, no one could predict what future ’’prosecutors and independent counsels’’ might do if they decided to bring charges under the act.
As an author of the 1978 special prosecutor statute, I know that independent counsels aren’t for low-level government officials such as CIA interrogators, but for the president and his Cabinet. It is clear that Gonzales was concerned about top administration officials.
To ’’reduce the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act,’’ Gonzales recommended that Bush not apply the Geneva Conventions to al-Qaida and the Taliban. Since the War Crimes Act carried out the Geneva Conventions, Gonzales reasoned that if the Conventions didn’t apply, neither did the War Crimes Act. Bush implemented the recommendation on Feb. 7, 2002.
When the Supreme Court recently decided that the Conventions did apply to al-Qaida and Taliban detainees, the possibility of criminal liability for high-level administration officials reared its ugly head again.
What to do? The administration has apparently decided to secure immunity from prosecution through legislation. Under cover of the controversy involving the military tribunals and whether they could use hearsay or coerced evidence, the administration is trying to pardon itself, hoping that no one will notice. The urgent timetable has to do more than anything with the possibility that the next Congress may be controlled by Democrats, who will not permit such a provision to be adopted.
Creating immunity retroactively for violating the law sets a terrible precedent. The president takes an oath of office to uphold the Constitution; that document requires him to obey the laws, not violate them. A president who knowingly and deliberately violates U.S. criminal laws should not be able to use stealth tactics to immunize himself from liability, and Congress should not go along.
Elizabeth Holtzman,
a former New York
congresswoman
SUNTIMES.COM