Mark Almond

The Georgia Rose Stinks

[audio:http://wiredispatch.com/scott/07_11_09_almond.mp3]

Mark Almond of the British Helsinki Human Rights Group discusses the story behind the “Rose Revolution,” the current crackdown on dissent in former Soviet Georgia and how Georgia has degenerated since the end of USSR in 1991.

MP3 here. (23:52)

Mark Almond teaches modern history at Oriel College, Oxford. He has visited Georgia 10 times since 1992 on behalf of the British Helsinki Human Rights Group.

Dahr Jamail

Iraq Deliberately Destroyed

[audio:http://wiredispatch.com/scott/07_11_09_jamail.mp3]

Unembedded reporter Dahr Jamail discusses the continuing quagmire in Iraq, how the “surge” was just to appease Americans and buy time, how the decline in murders is due to the ethnic cleansing being complete, U.S. support for Iraqi separatists, U.S. claims of Iranian meddling in Iraq while we have over 300,000 occupiers and possible consequences for U.S. troops in Iraq in the event of war with Iran.

MP3 here. (26:59)

In late 2003, Weary of the overall failure of the US media to accurately report on the realities of the war in Iraq for the Iraqi people and US soldiers, Dahr Jamail went to Iraq to report on the war himself.

His dispatches were quickly recognized as an important media resource. He is now writing for the Inter Press Service, The Asia Times and many other outlets. His reports have also been published with The Nation, The Sunday Herald, Islam Online, the Guardian, Foreign Policy in Focus, and the Independent to name just a few. Dahr’s dispatches and hard news stories have been translated into French, Polish, German, Dutch, Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese, Chinese, Arabic and Turkish. On radio as well as television, Dahr reports for Democracy Now!, the BBC, and numerous other stations around the globe. Dahr is also special correspondent for Flashpoints.

Dahr has spent a total of 8 months in occupied Iraq as one of only a few independent US journalists in the country. In the MidEast, Dahr has also has reported from Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. Dahr uses the DahrJamailIraq.com website and his popular mailing list to disseminate his dispatches.

Greg Mitchell

The War and the Newspapers

[audio:http://wiredispatch.com/charles/aw110907gregmitchell.mp3]

Greg Mitchell, editor of Editor and Publisher, discusses non-combat deaths of American soldiers in Iraq, the lack of media coverage of these deaths, the changing views of the editorial pages and reporters before and since the war started and the real consequences for the casualties and their families.

MP3 here. (15:39)

Greg Mitchell is the author of six nonfiction books. His articles – including many on baseball – have appeared in New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, TV Guide, Mother Jones, Sport magazine, Quest, and other publications. Mitchell was a senior editor at Crawdaddy for many years. He lives in Nyack, New York.

US Navy Gets Chinese Surprise

In a report in today’s Daily Mail, A Chinese submarine surfaced in the middle of a recent Pacific naval exercise and close to the vast U.S.S. Kitty Hawk – a 1,000ft supercarrier with 4,500 personnel on board.

By the time it surfaced the 160ft Song Class diesel-electric attack submarine is understood to have sailed within viable range for launching torpedoes or missiles at the carrier.

According to senior NATO officials the incident caused consternation in the U.S. Navy. One NATO figure said the effect was “as big a shock as the Russians launching Sputnik” – a reference to the Soviet Union’s first orbiting satellite in 1957 which marked the start of the space age.

The lone Chinese vessel slipped past at least a dozen other American warships which were supposed to protect the carrier from hostile aircraft or submarines.

The Chinese fleet includes at least two nuclear-missile launching subs. It is not known if the sub in question was one of these.

Commodore Stephen Saunders, editor of Jane’s Fighting Ships, and a former Royal Navy anti-submarine specialist, said the U.S. had paid relatively little attention to this form of warfare since the end of the Cold War. He said: “It was certainly a wake-up call for the Americans.

“It would tie in with what we see the Chinese trying to do, which appears to be to deter the Americans from interfering or operating in their backyard, particularly in relation to Taiwan.”

Norman Mailer: Against the Empire

The death of author Norman Mailer stills an eloquent voice in defense of the old America — the pre-9/11, pre-neocon -dominated America, which disdained the idea of empire. During the Vietnam war, whilst in attendance at Truman Capote’s famous “Black and White Ball,” he went up to McGeorge Bundy, Lyndon Johnson’s foreign policy advisor, and demanded that he step outside so they could settle accounts like two gentlemen. Here’s an excerpt from his remarkably prescient 2003 op ed:

“There is a subtext to what the Bushites are doing as they prepare for war in Iraq. My hypothesis is that President George W. Bush and many conservatives have come to the conclusion that the only way they can save America and get if off its present downslope is to become a regime with a greater military presence and drive toward empire. My fear is that Americans might lose their democracy in the process.

” … Iraq is the excuse for moving in an imperial direction. War with Iraq, as they originally conceived it, would be a quick, dramatic step that would enable them to control the Near East as a powerful base – not least because of the oil there, as well as the water supplies from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers – to build a world empire.”

He elaborated on his view of the US as a developing world empire in a fascinating interview with the editors of The American Conservative, in which he explains why he called himself a “left-conservative. Here’s a fascinating snippet: 

There is just this kind of mad-eyed mystique in Americans: the idea that we Americans can do anything. So, say flag conservatives, we will be able to handle what comes. Our know-how, our can-do, will dominate all obstacles. They truly believe America is not only fit to run the world but that it must run the world. Otherwise, we will lose ourselves. If there is not a new seriousness in American affairs, the country is going to go down the drain. That, I am fully ready to speculate, is the subtext beneath the Iraqi subtext, and they may not even be wholly aware of it themselves, not all of them.” 

And here’s one for the road: “The White Man Unburdened,” his 2003 antiwar essay in the New York Review of Books.

Smearing Scheuer

If you want to see the true heart and soul of the neoconservative style, go on over to Commentary — where else? — and direct your attention to one Gabriel Schoenfeld, senior editor, who is calling for former CIA honcho Michael Scheuer to be … jailed!

Why? Well, you see, they jailed Larry Franklin, didn’t they? And Larry was just engaging in a little harmless espionage on Israel’s behalf — nothing serious, according to Senor Schoenfeld. Why, every body in Washington does it! Scheuer, on the other hand, did an interview with Politiken, a Danish newspaper, wherein he discussed the “renditioning” of a suspected terrorist, who had been granted asylum in Denmark and kidnapped by Rummy’s Rangers whilst in Croatia. According to Schoenfeld, this amounts to divulging secret information — just like Franklin, and his two of his cohorts: Steve Rosen, AIPAC’s top Washington lobbyist for many years, and Keith Weissman, AIPAC’s Iran expert, scheduled to go on trial in January.

The only problem for Schoenfeld, as Scheuer has pointed out, is that the Danish rendition case was public knowledge and well known: a little research, and perhaps some familiarity with a web site known as Google.com, would have been helpful.

At first Schoenfeld admitted his error, seemed to apologize — and then changed his mind, after “someone in Washington” sent him a missive saying maybe there’s hope for jailing Scheuer after all. He doesn’t even bother to hide his viciousness: it’s bared fangs all the way.

The Forward was moved to remark on”Schoenfeld’s penchant for demonizing those with whom he is in disagreement,” and it’s true, but then this has always been the Commentary style under the reign of Podhoretz I, and Podhoretz II promises to be even worse. The AIPAC spy scandal is a disaster for the neocons, who are being outed as Israeli assets as well as prodigious liars.

As the Rosen-Weissman trial date approaches, and the defense threatens to blow the whistle on AIPAC’s behind-the-scenes machinations in Washington — including espionage, coupled with an unusually aggressive effort to influence on US foreign policy — the Lobby’s partisans are going a little crazy, as evidenced by the level of vituperation in Schoenfeld’s many posts on this subject. The latest is directed at me, and, in reiterating his litany of smears, once again sets himself up to look foolish.

Schoenfeld pretends that he saw Scheuer’s work on some obscure web site of dubious provenance — “The Jingoist,” of all things — when he knows perfectly well it appeared on Antiwar.com, a website with 100,000-plus readers daily, and then does his demonization act:

“Readers can judge for themselves. For if The Jingoist is in Holocaust-denial territory, anti-war.com is not far behind. A good place to begin is the long series that anti-war.com has devoted to the many Israeli “art students” who in the run-up to September 11 came to our country ostensibly to sketch, draw, and paint, but were actually working deep under cover, spying on Americans.”

He links to and quotes from this piece, and then avers:

“What happened to these art students? And how did they make their escape? Why did all the Jewish employees stay at home on the day that the Twin Towers were destroyed? Is anti-war.com fringe or mainstream? Connecting the Dots is eager to know.”

Legitimacy is something that the neocons have always prized, and their main conceit is that they are the final arbiters of who is “mainstream” and who is to be relegated to the “fringe.” Well, then, since he raises the issue of news sources and their legitimacy, then what about Fox News? Some would say that this is not really a news channel at all, but a propaganda outlet for the neocons, or, at least, for the Bush administration. Yet that is the source of the contention that the Israelis did indeed know something about the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and was the theme of a special four-part series by Carl Cameron. (By the way, in bringing up the canard that no Jews showed up for work at the World Trade Building on the morning of 9/11, he is attributing to me remarks I never made, nor gave any credence to: this is typical, however, of the neocon method — muddy the issue with a stream of unsourced invective, in the hope that the sheer volume of lies will obscure the reality.)

Schoenfeld’s Commentary blog is called “Connect the Dots,” and all I have to say to him is connect these dots, buster.