IS ZARGAWI REAL?
TV TAKES OVER HOLLYWOOD
THE OUTING PT 2

UNDERSTATEMENT OF THE DAY: Headline in yesterday’s Washington Post:

“BUSINESS SEES GAIN IN GOP TAKEOVER
Political Allies Push Corporate Agenda”

BAD NEWS RISING

Easter came and Easter went, and all those good vibes of joy turned back into discontent. But before they did our Commander in Chief used his office to pay tribute to his lord and savior with nary a mention of Purim or much else:

Steve Weissman asks on Truthout:

“Why do so many zealots live in the land of darkness?

“Whatever they believe, those consumed by truth rarely understand how anyone of good faith can possibly fail to see their particular light. Those who refuse “the truth” must be wicked, willful, or somehow uninstructed, and become the target of fervid evangelism, whether with soothing words or avenging fire.

“Our President uses both, as he showed in his Easter message.
For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16.

“I send greetings to all those celebrating Easter, the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Through His sacrifice and triumph over death, Christ lifted the sights of humanity forever. In His teachings, the poor have heard hope, the proud have been challenged, and the weak and dying have found assurance. Today, the words of Jesus continue to comfort and strengthen Christians around the world.”

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/032705A.shtml

Onward C soldiers.

Back in the material world…

CNN and the BBC both led with the Pope’s greetings to the faithful noting he was unable to speak. The Pontiff said he has abandoned himself to God’s will. Terri Schiavo’s parents seem to be leaning in that direction too urging protesters to go home after all legal appeals were exhausted. They are now wrangling with Terri’s former husband about how to treat her remains. He wants cremation; they want a Catholic burial.

The big question — will the “base” fold its tent or blame the Bush brothers for not doing enough? Have the polls showing an overwhelming majority against the political manipulation this tragedy led wiser heads in the GOP to cut and run and let this issue and Terri Shiavo go.?

And just to punctuate a week of protests in which the NY Times Bob Herbert opines that the US press went “berserk, ” the LA Times finds a blast from the past:

“THE TERRI SCHIAVO CASE

DeLay’s Own Tragic Crossroads
Family of the lawmaker involved in the Schiavo case decided in ‘88 to let his comatose father die.”
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-delay27mar27,1,1747897.story?coll=la-headlines-nation

THE REST OF THE NEWS

In the rest of the news, CNN of course had the obligatory Michael Jackson story. He now calls himself a “warrior” and also reports on royalty: Prince Ranier is conscious and Charles has been urged to apologize to Camilla’s ex-husband. Meanwhile BBC chronicles a world in uproar–with riot police out in Egypt. bombs going off in Beirut, protests escalating in Zimbabwe, rival parliaments meeting in Kyrgyzstan, trains ambushed in Thailand, and Iraqi prisoners trying to escape.

Two countries. Two broadcasters. Two worlds. Note that the larger world is frequently missing in ours.

IRAQ: OIL PLAN REVEALED

On Sunday, President Bush flew to Fort Hood for the third time… He “prayed for peace…” His prayers were apparently not answered…. There were more bomb attacks in Iraq this morning with Shia pilgrims and Baghdad police targeted…

Harpers Magazine is out with the details of a new investigation by Greg Palast:

“Some conspiracy nuts believe the Bush Administration had a secret plan to
control Iraq’s oil. In fact, there were TWO plans. In a joint investigation with BBC Television Newsnight, Harper’s Magazine has uncovered a hidden battle over Iraq’s oil. It began right after Mr. Bush took office - with a previously unreported plot to invade Iraq.

“Within weeks of the first inaugural, prominent Iraqi expatriates — many with ties to U.S. industry — were invited to secret discussions directed by Pamela Quanrud, National Security Council, now at the State Department. “It quickly became an oil group,” said one participant, Falah Aljibury. Aljibury is an advisor to Amerada Hess’ oil trading arm and Goldman Sachs.

“The petroleum industry, the chemical industry, the banking industry — they’d hoped that Iraq would go for a revolution like in the past and government was shut down for two or three days,” Aljibury told me. On this plan, Hussein would simply have been replaced by some former Baathist general.

“However, by February 2003, a hundred-page blue-print for the occupied nation, favored by neo-cons, had been enshrined as official policy. “Moving the Iraqi Economy from Recovery to Sustainable Growth” generally embodied the principles for postwar Iraq favored by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and the Iran-Contra figure, now Deputy National Security Advisor, Elliott Abrams. The blue-print mapped out a radical makeover of Iraq as a free-market Xanadu including, on page 73, the sell-off of the nation’s crown jewels: “privatization [of] the oil and supporting industries.”

http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=418&row=0

THE ZARGAWI MYSTERY

We take you back to the war on terror. The question: who is Al Zargawi — does he even exist? Chris Shumway of the New Standard tries to decipher the mystery:

However impossible it is to discern truths from fictions about the Jordanian boogeyman blamed for most of Iraq‚s current chaos, Washington piles on the accusations, painting the perfect picture of a legendary master terrorist.

March 16 - The Bush administration’s nearly constant focus on suspected Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi as the source of its problems in Iraq has helped turn the Islamic fundamentalist into a figure of mythic proportions, but despite the hype and hyperbole surrounding the mysterious Al-Zarqawi, little is actually known about the man or his alleged misdeeds.

In fact, so many of the US’s claims about Al-Zarqawi’s whereabouts and affiliations have proved suspect or false that many critics view new warnings of his alleged plans to stage attacks within the US as a case of the White House crying wolf.

Al-Zarqawi is, according to Washington, the key link between Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, guilty of leading tens of thousands of Iraqi insurgents and orchestrating dozens of attacks — ranging from car bombings and assassinations to kidnappings and beheadings — against foreign military personnel and contractors, as well as Iraqi government and civilian targets in Iraq over the past two years.

Now, according to an article posted March 13 on Time magazine’s website, unnamed US intelligence officials say they have evidence that Al-Zarqawi is planning attacks — at the urging of Osama bin Laden — on stateside “soft targets,” such as “movie theatres, restaurants and schools.” Time’s sources attributed this information to a man recently interrogated in Iraq, who they claim was one of Al-Zarqawi’s top aides.

But one day later, MSNBC reported that another unnamed government official — this one from the Department of Homeland Security — said such warnings were alarmist and that the informant in Iraq was not a credible source.

As with these new reports, much of the previously released information about Al-Zarqawi has been contradictory. Mostly leaked by unnamed government intelligence and military sources and contained in statements from civilian analysts, “news” of Al-Zarqawi’s whereabouts, alliances, operations and intentions is largely unreliable. In fact, it is nearly impossible to report about Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi as man rather than legend.

http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/1546

REUTERS TO THE RESCUE?

NEW YORK Reuters Foundation and the United Nations Development Programme have launched a Web site that will enable Iraqi media outlets to pool their news coverage.

Newspapers, magazines, and radio and TV stations can submit news items to the site, at www.aswataliraq.info and publish or broadcast news items submitted by other contributors. The “Voices of Iraq” site also carries reports from a network of individual Iraq journalists and from the Reuters Arabic Service. News is provided in Arabic with Kurdish and English-language options to be added in coming months.

“The need to improve the range and quality of domestic news available to Iraqi media is urgent,” said Jo Weir of the Reuters Foundation. “Since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, new, uncensored media have emerged, but they have struggled to report events in a country of 26 million people where insecurity makes it risky to move around and inadequate telephones hamper communication. This project creates a network for them to exchange and share information, creating a more complete picture of what is happening across the country.”

DOES PALESTINE HAVE A HOPE?

Jeff Halper, an activist American rabbi who has fought bravely and non-violently to stop illegal demolitions of Palestinian homes by the Israel; Army. Halter fears that the a Palestinian state is impossible in the current environment..

The fatal flaw in most analyses of the Israel-Palestine conflict is the assumption that if the Palestinians can just get a state of their own, then all will be fine. A state on all the Occupied Territories (UN Resolution 242), on most of the Occupied Territories (Oslo and the Road Map to the Geneva Initiative), on even on half the Occupied Territories (Sharon’s notion) - it doesn’t matter. Once there’s a Palestinian state the conflict is over and we can all move on to the next item on the agenda.

“Wrong. A Palestinian state can just as easily be a prison as a legitimate state that addresses the national aspirations of its people. The crucial issue is viability. Israel is a small country, but it is three times larger than the Palestinian areas. The entire Occupied Areas - the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza - make up only 22% of Israel/Palestine. That means that even if all of the territories Israel conquered in 1967 were relinquished, it would still comprise a full 78% of the country. Would the Palestinian areas constitute a viable state? Barely. Just the size of the American state of Delaware (but with three times the population before refugees return), it would at least have a coherent territory, borders with Israel, Jordan, Syria and Egypt, a capital in Jerusalem, a port on the Mediterranean, an airport in Gaza, a viable economy (based on Holy Land tourism, agriculture and hi-tech) and access to the water of the Jordan River. An accepted member of the international community enjoying trade with its neighbors - and enjoying as well the support of a far-flung, highly educated and affluent diaspora - a small Palestinian state would have a shot at viability. This is what Israel seeks to prevent….”

http://www.amin.org/eng/jeff_halper/2005/mar27.html