International Politics: August 2006 Archives

Editor's note: While some countries make war, Norway is setting an international moral example of how both to utilize natural resources to benefit all its citizens and to assist other countries in doing the same.

"Norway, which began producing oil in 1971, has been remarkably successful at harnessing profits to help build one of the world's wealthiest and most equitable societies."

"We want to support these democratic revolutions [in Latin America] because we believe they will enhance development and bring marginalised power structures into government."

"The first objective is, indeed, to fight poverty, this monstrous inequality in a country where next to Carlos Slim - a phone company tycoon and third on the Forbes list of the richest people in the world - millions of people survive in abject poverty."

"Nobody is Paying Us. We Came to Defend Democracy"

The Gaza Strip is in the grip of anarchy and
Palestinians must stop blaming Israel for all their problems, a senior Hamas figure has said.

Ghazi Hamad, chief spokesman for the Hamas government, said the hope that followed Israel's pull-out last year had been replaced with "a nightmare".

Gaza is at the mercy of thugs, he said, and pleaded for an end to deadly clan rivalries. "Let Gaza breathe," he said.

Editor's note: Noam Chomsky is a prominent American leftist who teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States and has published numerous books and articles on linguistics, politics, and other subjects.

The U.S. and Israel have become rogue nations, defiant of the rights of others and world opinion. If constructed slowly and properly, a world government may be the necessary outcome some day to prevent this kind of aggression, arrogance, and violation of human values.

On July 7, 2006, Spanish National Court Judge Santiago Pedraz issued an international arrest order for two former Guatemalan military dictators, Efrain Rios Montt and Oscar Humberto Mejia Victores, along with five others accused of genocide and other crimes against humanity during Guatemala's civil war.

"It took decades for the party to rise to dominate the political scene, but when Per Albin Hansson won a landslide victory in the 1932 elections, he started the process of re-forming Sweden in the party's image. This he did through the creation of the Swedish welfare state, the 'folkhemmet' (home for the people), attempting to achieve full employment and redistributing wealth."

Editor's note: When Prout propounder Shri P.R. Sarkar visited Stockholm a little over 25 years ago, he remarked that Sweden was closest to Prout. Things have changed significantly since that time as the country falls prey to capitalist globalization and pro-immigration neo-marxist social ideology. It is worth reading a very brief summary of Swedish social programs, however, for those who are unaware of them, especially in light of current American superpower projection of the ideology of freedom with little corresponding sense of socioeconomic justice for local populations.

As a Jew who escaped the Holocaust by moving with my family to America in 1938, I turn on the BBC at night. And what I see are clouds of black smoke, explosions; the dead and the dying - children crying bitterly, cities in ruins. Only yesterday, these piles of rubble in Lebanon were home to thousands. Now, the cars roll out onto the highways, white flags attached to the windshields and doors. More than half a million are homeless.

The Israelis told them to leave, but then strafed one convoy from a helicopter. The military people exert their force without pity. They win their wars proudly. They are the masters of force.

Using the most modern weapons the United States can supply to search out the Hezbollah guerrillas, the Israeli soldiers destroy Lebanon. They wreck all of Gaza, seeking to murder the leaders of Hamas.

Many American Jews gather proudly to cheer them on. The face of the American president remains blank. A patter of platitudes issues from his lips. He is not interested in peace. He is happy to see Israel do the dirty war for him. Diplomacy is a word not in his dictionary.

But lo and behold - even as the destruction builds and the war continues through its third week - it seems suddenly no longer such a lark. Success is hard to come by; Israel is no longer the perennial victor. But will it know what to do when faced with the need to talk with the enemy? It has always felt so invincible that discussion seemed the weapon of fools and weaklings, much like the way the earnest work of its principled and dedicated peace camp - Jewish to the core, in an "old-fashioned" way - seemed pathetic and misguided.

"Fiery television evangelist Pastor John Hagee has emerged as the rallying voice for thousands of American Christians who believe Israel is doing God's work in a "war of good versus evil"."

Anyone who wants to understand why Israel has such unwavering support from the United States should speak to one man.

Fiery television evangelist Pastor John Hagee has emerged as the rallying voice for thousands of American Christians who believe Israel is doing God's work in a "war of good versus evil".

When he strode on to a stage in Washington last month, he was cheered to the rafters by 3,500 prominent evangelicals - as well as by Israel's ambassador to America, a former Israeli chief of staff and a host of US congressmen of both parties.

"After 25 years of hammering away at the truth on national television, millions of people have come to see the truth of the word of God," Mr Hagee told The Daily Telegraph. "There is literally a groundswell of support for Israel in the USA among evangelicals."

August 6, 2006 -- U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said today that a draft UN resolution on the Israel-Lebanon conflict should quickly end large-scale violence.

She urged the Security Council to vote by August 7 or 8 on the draft, which calls for a full cessation of hostilities.

But she warned this is only a "first step" towards lasting peace. Rice said she could not rule out that there could be skirmishes continuing between Israeli forces and Hizballah guerrillas "for some time."

The draft resolution was hammered out by the United States and France, and the text was publicized on August 5. However, senior Lebanese officials have already rejected it as inadequate, saying it would leave Israeli forces on Lebanese territory.

PRAGUE, August 4, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- An Israeli air strike killed at least 28 civilians in northeastern Lebanon today and Hizballah fired tens of rockets into Israel, killing three Israelis.

The violence comes as the UN Security Council is set to discuss a resolution urging an immediate cease-fire after more than three weeks of Israeli-Hizballah hostilities.

The deaths occurred when Israeli warplanes raided a depot near the village of Qaa in the Bekaa Valley of northeastern Lebanon.

Security sources say most of the victims, at least 28, were Syrian Kurdish farm workers who had been loading fruit on to trucks.

Reports say 12 others were wounded and ferried to hospitals in nearby Syria.