archived: 6 - 12 Jun, 2004 Back Next
JUNKIE EDITOR MICHAEL CARMICHAEL
“Michael’s Cornucopia”
Saudi Arabia
Dr Mai Yamani is the daughter of Sheikh Yamani, one of the most far-sighted thinkers in the world of Islam. I have enjoyed her lectures to Oxford audiences and her increasingly frequent appearances on British television where she is often asked to comment about developments in the middle east. She reminds me of two other women educated in England: Indira Gandhi and Benazir Bhutto - but, to my knowledge, Dr Yamani has no political ambitions. Her analysis of the deteriorating situation in Saudi Arabia raises the specter of potential terrorist attacks against the massive oil and petroleum sites Ras Tanoura and Abqaiq. Her insights into the religious and political fissures emerging in the peninsula are troubling ones.
Washington will prop up the House of Saud - for now; Saudi Arabia has descended into a cauldron of hatreds and divisions. -- Dr. Mai Yamani
All the signs suggest that in the face of mounting violence and international pressure, the House of Saud has sunk into terminal denial and paralysis. Convinced that their enemies are all around them, they are nevertheless unable to locate them. Even when gunmen are totally surrounded in a building, three of them succeed in escaping. Last year the aged King Fahd threatened militants with his "iron fist", but they have gone on killing regardless. While the princes have insisted reforms are in progress, they continue to fling reformists themselves into jail - and intimidate others into keeping quiet. The government maintains its oil installations are completely safe from attack - and yet high-level oil analysts insist the Saudi security forces which guard them are infiltrated by extremists.
Such contradictions suggest that very little is currently under control in the Saudi kingdom. – Guardian Unlimited
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Bush Under Pressure
This story may be highly significant.
Bush's Erratic Behavior Worries White House Aides, by DOUG THOMPSON
President George W. Bush’s
increasingly erratic behavior and wide mood swings has the halls of the West
Wing buzzing lately as aides privately express growing concern over their
leader’s state of mind. In meetings with top aides and administration
officials, the President goes from quoting the Bible
in one breath to obscene tantrums against the media, Democrats and others that
he classifies as “enemies of the state.” –
Capitol Hill Blue Junkie:
Carefully note Democrats as being “enemies of the state.”
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Bush takes refuge in history
Iraq is looking worse than Vietnam in
the mind of at least one military strategist at the Army War College. Bush's
speech to the USAF cadets in Colorado Springs ignored a significant portion of
American history - the Vietnam Era.
Sidney Blumenthal writes a powerful and disturbing comment on the mushrooming
military opposition to Bush.
Bush takes refuge in history: Images of the second world war pepper the president's rhetoric - but the one word you won't hear him say is Vietnam -- Sidney Blumenthal
Shock and awe was more than the first phase of the invasion of Iraq. It was the premise of Bush's foreign policy. Fear of unrivalled power would prompt the dominoes to fall - the dominoes being the traditional western allies. Unilateralism (depicted as the coalition of the willing) would yield in submission. The spectacle of Iraqi democracy, a beacon to the Arab world, would refute argument and opposition.
On this gamble, the entire edifice of Bush's policy rested. From the "cakewalk" would follow the collapse of Iranian influence, the rescue of Saudi Arabia from radical Islamist threat, Palestinian quiescence and instant solution of the Middle East crisis, the rapid spread of democracy across the former Ottoman empire, the US blessed by the grateful Iraqi street as it withdrew its military forces, leaving the leader of "free Iraq," former exile Ahmad Chalabi, in charge, and the French reduced to anxious waiters only seeking to please Bush with his order.
Now the FBI investigates neoconservatives in the Pentagon to discover who may have given secret US intelligence to Chalabi that he allegedly passed to the Iranians. The Iraqi governing council, a US creation, has transmogrified itself into the interim government, having shed Chalabi, hoping that its new identity will lend it a mask of legitimacy. Al-Qaida has found fresh fields for its deadly work. The Saudis cannot protect western businessmen from terrorism. The Middle East peace process is in ruins. The US casualty rate reached and then exceeded 800 dead soldiers on Memorial Day. The French case that there was not a WMD threat, and invading Iraq would lead to fragmentation of the country and trigger more terrorism, has been vindicated.
JUNKIE EDITOR MICHAEL CARMICHAEL
President Ronald Reagan, 1911-2004
Ronald Reagan has died at the exalted age of 93. He was America’s 40th president, serving from 1981 until 1989.
Reagan is an icon for the Republican right. He will be eulogized by the media, and the details of his inspiring biography will be written and documented for years to come. He rose from humble beginnings in small town Illinois to become a successful broadcaster and actor.
After serving in the training film division of the US military during World War Two, Reagan returned to civilian status, where he found his acting career had lost momentum. Shifting into political activity, he became president of the Screen Actors Guild. During the Congressional investigations of Hollywood, Reagan agreed to identify communists for the McCarthy committee.
Moving into television was a last resort for Ronald Reagan, but he finally saw his screen career flourish as the presenter of Death Valley Days, which rose to number three in the Nielsen ratings in the mid-fifties. His television contract was actually with General Electric the sponsor of the show, and the vast majority of Reagan’s duties were comprised of making stirring public speeches as a representative of the conservative corporation.
In 1964, he rose to national political prominence as the leading supporter of the ultra-right wing campaign of Barry Goldwater. In 1966, Reagan stood for Governor of California, which he won by capitalizing on his telegenic personality. Reagan’s political career would be entirely predicated on his polished ability to project his ideas to his audiences.
Re-elected Governor of California in 1970, Reagan moved steadily to the right championing the values of religious conservatives. In 1976, he launched a very serious challenge to Gerald Ford and narrowly missed gaining the Republican nomination. In 1980, Reagan swept away all rivals and forged an alliance with the most skilful and manipulative of those he had defeated, George Herbert Walker Bush, that would bring him victory against the embattled incumbent, Jimmy Carter.
From the outset of Reagan’s presidency, he was given the role of actor-president. His schedule made him a part-time occupant of the Oval Office. An official press release in early March, 1981 announced that he would relinquish all National Security duties to his Vice President, Bush, because of the latter’s experience as Director of Central Intelligence.
Three weeks later, Reagan survived the assassination attempt of John Hinckley. Reagan was caught napping during more than one cabinet meeting, and he frequently forgot the names of its members. Reagan once quipped about himself, “I have orders to be awakened at any time in the case of a national emergency, even if I'm in a cabinet meeting.”
Gifted with a natural ability to communicate, Reagan governed through his public appearances, his weekly radio broadcasts and the standard practice of pre-war Hollywood, the photo opportunity. He became the archetypal American demagogue.
Under Reagan, the American economy boomed largely due to the massive expansion of the prison industrial complex that was fuelled through explosive levels of government spending to build new federal and state prisons. His second wife, the former starlet, Nancy Davis, helped him in this regard by fanning the flames of increasingly draconian drug enforcement policies which has led to over one million Americans now serving lengthy sentences for minor drug offences.
Under Reagan, the deficits mushroomed to Gargantuan, record levels, a problem that severely undermined his conservative credentials. Reagan’s negotiations with the Soviet leadership became the hallmark of his foreign policy. When Mikhail Gorbachev came to power, he informed Reagan that the Soviet bloc would restructure its priorities and launch a new era of openness that encompassed an important shift in official policy from that of a military and strategic confrontation with US-led NATO. The two men were eventually able to sign the first treat that reduced the level of nuclear armaments.
Reagan is recalled as one of the most divisive of America’s Presidents. Progressives believe that Reagan’s love of the corporate state caused global hardship by enslaving masses of third world children in sweat shops while doing nothing of substance for America’s poor. Reagan is now widely seen as a responsive puppet for his military-industrial-corporate masters.
Reagan’s administration sank into one of the worst scandals in American history with the discovery of the Iran-Contra Affair. This criminal conspiracy involved direct violations of federal laws by members of the National Security Council. Reagan had personally approved the policy of negotiating with terrorists who were holding American hostages in Lebanon. The military attaché for the NSC, Col. Oliver North, cooked up a half-baked scheme to sell arms to Iran during its war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and to use the profits to support the work of right-wing death squads operating in Central America. Declassified documents prove that North even sought to orchestrate narco-terrorism to help finance the conspiracy. Senator John Kerry has drawn attention to this aspect of the scandal. The Iran-Contra scandal rocked America and shocked the world as it reverberated for the next five years through investigations and a long list of grand jury indictments against leading figures in the Reagan NSC, notably John Poindexter, Oliver North and Robert Gates, the disgraced ex-director of the CIA.
After leaving the White House under a cloud of public dismay with his role as President, Reagan became the recipient of some of the largest fees ever paid to an ex-president when he was given millions of dollars for a three day visit to Japan where he made only one public speech. The Japanese corporations regaled in their friend, Ronald Reagan, who had presided over a period of extremely lucrative trading policies with their nation.
During the presidency of his VP, Reagan slipped into a political eclipse. In 1994, his office issued a brief announcement that he suffered with Alzheimer’s disease. From that point, he has not been seen in public.
His personal life had been colourful. His father was a notorious failure in small businesses who was chronically depressed and alcoholic. His bouts of drunkenness produced deep scars on the psyche of his son. Reagan’s mother was a devout fundamentalist. In Hollywood, Reagan married Jane Wyman. The marriage was eventually dissolved at the request of Wyman. In the 1950s, Reagan married Nancy Davis, who was a minor starlet in the aging studio system.
He is succeeded by Michael Reagan, adopted child of his first marriage, and two children, Patty and Ronald, of his second marriage. One child, Maureen Reagan, the daughter of his marriage to Wyman, predeceased him.
Reagan will always be remembered as the star who became the vehicle for the resurgence of the Republican right, and he will always be excoriated for excessive demagoguery by the mainstream of serious American political commentators
Last Update: 03/23/2006