JANUARY2007

BOOK REVIEWS

Pulse by Robert Frenay is a book whose subtitle implies that it is about technology that mimics nature. It is, initially, but then it becomes much more about how its author would run the world if in charge. He thinks that we are coming to the end of a “machine age” in which we based our agriculture, our town planning and our economic systems on machine analogies, whereas we must now begin to base them on analogies from ecosystems instead. A biocentric age is due to dawn, he thinks, and just in time to save us from environmental disaster. We must learn to copy rainforests, which recycle their matter and reorganise their information (DNA) as energy flows through them.

This is at least a different take on green politics, more optimistic and less allergic to technology than the stuff that emanates from many British tree-huggers (Frenay is American). And although like most greens he includes the obligatory digs at economists, unusually he tries to understand economics before patronising it. Indeed, he has a rather intriguing passage on how to use currencies that automatically depreciate to kill off what he sees as the evil of interest.

But scratch beneath the surface of what he is saying — very fluently — and there is not much more than the usual green manifesto: make all farming organic (which would starve the world in short order), stop international capital flows (which would prevent the dissipation of risk and the punishment of economic incompetence), make urban planning more imaginative (but in this country, planning is not even “planning” at all; it is bureaucratic licence-giving), and above all curb the power of corporations, which are unnatural and against the decentralised philosophy of Adam Smith.

Frenay collects blood-curdling stories about how big companies lobby, advertise and corrupt their way into government favour, and he is right that they get away with too much in politics. But to argue that they are thereby capturing the world is bizarre when you reflect how vulnerable large companies are to a supremely biological phenomenon: extinction. It’s not just that Carnegie Steel has gone the way of Diplodocus (reconstructed with Andrew Carnegie’s money); even General Motors and IBM have now had their day; while Microsoft and Google are sure to follow. If only government bureaucracies could suffer the same fate.

I think Frenay is essentially right that the world is becoming less machine-age and more eco-system-like, and that it is a good thing. That is largely because it is embracing the market rather than the state, something that is anathema to most greens, though not entirely to Frenay. What could be more like a rainforest than a vigorous market economy, with its multifarious interconnections, its rampant competition, its rapid turnover of firms, its exhaustive discovery of underused resources and unexploited niches, its incredible diversity, its ubiquitous parasitism and its bottom-up, unplanned innovation? Nature’s greatest lesson, as Frenay half perceives, is that things work best when nobody’s in charge. The genome, the rainforest and the bond market are all unplanned and decentralised. Political and economic systems that allow and trust people to evolve their own solutions are always going to work better than systems where somebody tries, however brilliantly, to plan how to meet people’s needs. Inside Frenay’s book is this simple and beautiful idea trying to get out.

Getting the bug

The American and British military are particularly keen to learn from nature. As well as copying the sensing mechanism of the cockroach for fighter aircraft, scientists have also investigated how transpiration methods in leaves can help military clothing change its “breathability”, allowing it to adapt to different weather conditions. Shape-shifting jets that twist and flex like birds are also being looked at by Nasa.

Wahhabi Islam

From Revival and Reform to Global Jihad Natana J. Delong-Bas ; hardback, 384 pages Jul 2004,  due Feb 14 2007

Price:

$35.00

Description

Until September 11, 2001 few Westerners had ever heard of "Wahhabism." Now most of us recognize the word as describing an austere and puritanical type of Islam, mentioned frequently in connection with Osama bin Laden and Saudi Arabia and often named as the inspiration behind the 9/11 terror attacks. The word "Wahhabi" stems from the name of the founder of this system of thought, Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1702-1791), companion and religious adviser to Muhammad Ibn Saud, founder of the House of Saud. In this book Natana DeLong-Bas offers an in-depth study of the written works of al-Wahhab and demonstrates how it has been distorted into the extremist ideology now propagated by Osama bin Laden and his followers. Through a close reading of al-Wahhab's texts she demonstrates that many aspects of 20th- and 21st- century Wahhabi extremism do not have their origins in his writings but were added to Wahhabi teachings in the 19th century. She debunks the common journalistic portrayal of Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab as an illiterate, rural bumpkin with no scholarly formation. Her revisionist reading of al-Wahhab's thought will be controversial but impossible to ignore.

Reviews

"...a well-regarded, logically constructed, and considered --if perphaps somewhat sympathetic-analysis of Abd al-Wahhab's beliefs, and therefore of the foundation of Wahhabism. The book is well researched, well written, totally accessible to the layperson --even enjoyable." --The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs

"...a lucid and carefully documented assessment of Wahhabism that, given what has previously been asserted by commentators and scholars alike is clearly revisionist...it should be required reading for all those really interested in understanding the Wahhabi revival."--Middle East Journal

"A ground-breaking study; it is both controversial and informative and should be of particular interest to Middle East specialists, historians, and upper-level college students."-History

"Natana DeLong-Bas has written a comprehensive and original analysis of the writings of the influential Arabian religious reformer Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. She provides a convincing reinterpretation of this controversial thinkers beliefs, especially in regard to the status of women. DeLong-Bas sets out the religious foundations of the early Saudi kingdom while arguing that Osama bin Laden and other violent current-day Islamic extremists differ sharply from Ibn Abd al-Wahhab in their views of many aspects of the Muslim faith." --William Ochsenwald, co-author of The Middle East: A History

"Natana DeLong-Bas's extensive study of Wahhabism's founding father rejects the conventional idea that the movement is a radical departure from the mainstream of Islam. Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab emerges as an original thinker whose views on jihad and women in particular are not extreme or fanatical but scholarly and moderate. By amassing so much evidence for her original interpretation of a rich intellectual vision at the core of Wahhabism, DeLong-Bas opens the way for historians to reconsider and revise the standard, perhaps mistaken, notions about it." --David Commins, author of Islamic Reform: Politics and Social Change in Late Ottoman Syria

"After the events of September 11, 2001 Wahhabi Islam became the focus of world attention. Disturbing questions were raised about its role within long-time U.S. ally Saudi Arabia, about its influence on Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda, and about its spread throughout the Muslim world and export to Europe and America. Natana DeLong-Bas has written a groundbreaking book that sets the standard for understanding the thought of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab and its connection to the global jihad signaled by the 9/11 attacks. Her findings with respect to his teachings on issues of violence, holy war, women, religious tolerance, and reform fly in the face of past scholarship and of the militants who preach and practice a theology of hate in the name of Wahhabism. Wahhabi Islam is must reading for policymakers, scholars, the media, and the general public." --John L. Esposito, author of Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam and What Everyone Needs to Know About Islam

About the Author(s)

Natana J. DeLong-Bas is senior research assistant at the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University. She is the author of Notable Muslims: A Biographical Dictionary (2004) and co-author of Women in Muslim Family Law revised edition, with John L. Esposito (2001). She has served as editor for and contributor to The Oxford Dictionary of Islam (OUP, 2003), and contributor to The Encyclopaedia of the Qur'an (2004), and The Encyclopedia of the Islamic World (OUP, 2004). She is a frequent public speaker on Islam, Wahhabism, and Saudi Arabia.

***An Honest Man Refutes Propaganda

Carter's Inconvenient Truths

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts01112007.html

Jimmy Carter, probably the most decent man to occupy the White House, received a lot of grief during his term in office, most of it undeserved. His latest book, Palestine Peace Not Apartheid has brought him even more grief, none of it deserved.

My own appreciation of Jimmy Carter is new found. It began with his previous book, Our Endangered Values, in which Carter criticized the direction in which George W. Bush was taking America with his assaults on the Constitution and international law. His latest book, currently a best seller, shows that Carter has the courage to match his decency and commitment to peace in the Middle East.

A case can be made that while other US presidents focused on the Soviet or communist threat, Carter perceived that the greater threat to world peace and US interests was in the Middle East. With America's backing Israel was a rising military power whose policies and existence were viewed as a threat by Arab countries. After Israel's military successes and Carter's success in arranging peace between Egypt and Israel, new Arab-Israeli tensions arose from Israel's refusal to leave occupied Palestine and return to its own borders.

Over time the occupied lands have been appropriated by Israeli settlements and now by a massive wall and special roads on which no Palestinian can travel. Palestinian villages have been cut off from water, from their fields and groves, from schools and hospitals, and from one another. Essentially, what was once Palestine has become isolated ghettos in which the Palestinian inhabitants cannot enter or depart without Israeli permission.

Israel's policy is to turn Palestinians into refugees and to incorporate the West Bank into Israel. Slowly over time the policy has been implemented in the name of fighting terrorism and protecting Israel. Had Israel tried to achieve this all at once, opposition would have been great and the crime too large for the world to accept. Today Israel's gradual destruction of Palestine has become part of the fabric of everyday affairs.

Many people, including intelligent Israelis, believe that peace in the Middle East cannot be achieved through military coercion and that peace requires Israel to abandon its policy of stealing Palestine from Palestinians. Jimmy Carter, whose long involvement with the issue makes him very knowledgeable and credible, is one of these people.

The reason that Israel has been able to appropriate Palestine unto itself with American aid and support is that Israel controls the explanation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. At least 90% of Americans, if they know anything at all of the issue, know only the Israeli propaganda line. Israel has been able to control the explanation, because the powerful Israel Lobby brands every critic of Israeli policy as an anti-semite who favors a second holocaust of the Jews.

In Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, Jimmy Carter takes the risk of speaking truth to propaganda. Predictably, the Israel Lobby and its shills ranging from the "conservative" National Review to "liberal" media and commentators have attempted to banish Carter by labeling him an "anti-semite."

We must not let the Israel Lobby get away with demonizing an American president who dares to stand up to their lies.

Carter's book is a readable and factual history of the Israeli-Palestinian issue and its various turnings. The most powerful chapter is the penultimate, "The Wall as a Prison."

Carter makes clear that the wall has little to do with Israeli security and a lot to do with dispossession of the Palestinians. Carter writes:

"It is obvious that the Palestinians will be left with no territory in which to establish a viable state, but completely enclosed within the barrier and the occupied Jordan River valley. The Palestinians will have a future impossible for them or any responsible portion of the international community to accept, and Israel's permanent status will be increasingly troubled and uncertain as deprived people fight oppression and the relative number of Jewish citizens decreases demographically (compared to Arabs) both within Israel and in Palestine. This prospect is clear to most Israelis, who also view it as a distortion of their values. Recent events involving Gaza and Lebanon demonstrate the inevitable escalation in tension and violence within Palestine and stronger resentment and animosity from the world community against both Israel and America."

Most Zionists and American neoconservatives could care less about what the world community thinks. They are concerned only with Israeli hegemony in the Middle East. They realize that this goal can only be obtained with military coercion and have discarded any reliance on negotiation and compromise. Bush, for example, has refused the unanimous recommendation of the Iraq Study Group to talk with Iran and Syria. The US and Israeli electorates have proven to be powerless, while a handful of neoconservatives and Zionist settlers drive Middle East policy.

Carter is well aware that the "Roadmap for Peace" has been turned into a propaganda device. Carter writes that Israel uses the roadmap "as a delaying tactic with an endless series of preconditions that can never be met while proceeding with plans to implement its unilateral goals," and that the US uses it "to give the impression of positive engagement in a 'peace process,' which President Bush has announced will not be fulfilled during his time in office."

The Israel Lobby and its bought-and-paid-for minions tried to demonize Carter for using the word "apartheid" to describe the Palestinian ghettos that Israel has created. The word calls to mind the former South African government's policy of racial separation, which was mild compared to the restrictions and dispossessions Israel has imposed on Palestinians. A number of commentators have come to Carter's defense, including Jewish scholar Norman Finkelstein (CounterPunch, Dec. 28, 2006) and former Israeli Minister of Education Shulamit Aloni (Yediot Acharonot, Israel's largest circulating newspaper). They point out that within Israel itself Israel's policy is commonly called apartheid.

If Americans could read the frank discussion in the Israeli press about Israel's inhuman treatment of Palestinians they would wonder how they, as Americans with a "free press," became so totally brainwashed.

In an act of honest statesmanship that is rarely witnessed, Carter concludes his book:

"The bottom line is this: Peace will come to Israel and the Middle East only when the Israeli government is willing to comply with international law, with the Roadmap for Peace, with official American policy, with the wishes of a majority of its own citizens--and honor its own previous commitments--by accepting its legal borders. All Arab neighbors must pledge to honor Israel's right to live in peace under these conditions. The United States is squandering international prestige and goodwill and intensifying global anti-American terrorism by unofficially condoning or abetting the Israeli confiscation and colonization of Palestinian territories. It will be a tragedy--for the Israelis, the Palestinians, and the world--if peace is rejected and a system of oppression, apartheid and sustained violence is permitted to prevail."

One can add to Carter's bottom line that the Bush administration, American neoconservatives, and the Olmert Israeli government believe that the solution lies in the use of military force to smash Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah and to inflict cultural genocide on Muslims by deracinating Islam. This is the path on which Bush with deceit and treachery is leading America.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts01112007.html

Who would believe it? After Carter, it's Ritter, and they say what we have said a few years ago... Book: Israel, Lobby Pushing Iran War http://www.forward.com/articles/book-israel-lobby-pushing-iran-war/
Nathan Guttman
Forward
December 29, 2006

A former United Nations weapons inspector and leading Iraq War opponent has written a new book alleging that Jerusalem is pushing the Bush administration into war with Iran, and accusing the pro-Israel lobby of dual loyalty and “outright espionage.”

In the new book, called “Target Iran,” Scott Ritter, who served as a senior U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998 and later became one of the war’s staunchest critics, argues that the United States is readying for military action against Iran, using its nuclear program as a pretext for pursuing regime change in Tehran.

“The Bush administration, with the able help of the Israeli government and the pro-Israel Lobby, has succeeded,” Ritter writes, “in exploiting the ignorance of the American people about nuclear technology and nuclear weapons so as to engender enough fear that the American public has more or less been pre-programmed to accept the notion of the need to militarily confront a nuclear armed Iran.”

Later in the book, Ritter adds: “Let there be no doubt: If there is an American war with Iran, it is a war that was made in Israel and nowhere else.”

Ritter’s book echoes recent high-profile attacks on the pro-Israel lobby by former President Jimmy Carter and by scholars Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer. Ritter, who recently returned from a weeklong speaking engagement on The Nation cruise, speaks of a “network of individuals” that pursues Israel’s interests in the United States. The former weapons inspector alleges that some of the pro-Israel lobby’s activities “can only be described as outright espionage and interference in domestic policies.” Ritter also accused the American Israel Public Affairs Committee of having an inherent dual loyalty. He called for the organization to be registered as a foreign agent.

Representatives for both Aipac and the Israeli Embassy in Washington declined to comment on Ritter’s accusations.

In his book, Ritter also accuses the pro-Israel lobby of invoking the memory of the Holocaust and of crying antisemitism whenever Israel is accused of betraying America. “This is a sickening and deeply disturbing trend that must end,” Ritter writes.

According to Ritter, Iran is far from developing a nuclear weapons program and will not do so in the future if the world makes sure that stringent inspections are in place to verify that the Iranians live up to the requirements of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

“If Iran does make a political decision to develop nuclear weapons, it will take them a decade and it won’t go undetected,” Ritter said. “But it will take the U.S. only five weeks to build up a force capable of destroying Iran by air strikes. It’s a timeline of five weeks compared to a decade, so I’m not worried about taking a risk.”

As for Israeli and American fears regarding Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president who vowed to “wipe Israel off the map,” Ritter dubbed the leader a “sick joke” and asserted that he does not make the decisions in Tehran.

Ritter argues that the Bush administration knows that inspections can solve the Iranian nuclear problem but, at the urging of Jerusalem and its American allies, is in reality pursuing a different goal: regime change in Tehran.

“Israel has, through a combination of ignorance, fear and paranoia, elevated Iran to a status that it finds unacceptable,” Ritter writes in his book. “Israel has engaged in policies that have further inflamed this situation. Israel displays arrogance and rigidity when it comes to developing any diplomatic solution to the Iranian issue.”

Ritter is no stranger to controversy.

As a U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq, he headed several surprise inspection missions that were denied access to suspicious sites, and led to the Saddam Hussein regime accusing Ritter of being an American spy. The frequent refusal of the Iraqis to provide Ritter and his team access to sites of interest led eventually to the abandonment of the inspection regime in Iraq. Ritter resigned his post in 1998, accusing the United States and the U.N. of caving in to the Iraqis.

But Ritter later became a leading voice warning against taking military action against Iraq, arguing that a resumption of inspections would be sufficient to contain Hussein. He accused the United States of trying to use the U.N. inspection force for spying purposes and claimed that Iraq was deliberately held to higher standards than other countries in order to justify a military invasion.

In early 2004, Ritter charged in an interview on the Web site Ynet, operated by the daily Yediot Aharonot, that Israeli intelligence had deliberately overstated what it knew to be a minimal threat from Iraq in an effort to push America and Britain to launch a war. Ritter’s accusations were roundly rejected across the Israeli political spectrum. Security officials interviewed by the Forward insisted that no branch of the military could or would deliberately skew the findings in that way, but they also said that Israeli intelligence tended to exaggerate threats because it was operating under flawed assumptions.

Now Ritter is arguing that a similar effort is under way to produce an attack against Iran.

Speaking to the Forward this week, Ritter stressed that he is not accusing all American Jews of having dual loyalty, saying that “at the end of the day, I would like to believe that most of American Jews will side with America.”

Ritter is already working on his next book, due for publication in March 2007. In this tome, he sets out to teach the anti-war movements that he supports how to wage an effective campaign to win over American public opinion.

NEWS RELEASE: SEVEN STORIES PRESS

A 20+ year prosecutor with the US Attorney’s Office does what she knows best in the face of gross criminal activity--she convenes a grand jury

United States

v.

George W. Bush et al

in which Elizabeth de la Vega lays out a brilliant case against George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld,

Condoleeza Rice, and Colin Powell, for tricking the nation into war, or, in legal terms,

conspiracy to defraud the United States.

“On the basis of the evidence presented by former prosecutor Elizabeth de la

Vega, I'm convinced that George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and their

fellow "indictees" are fully entitled to a fair and honest trial—indeed,

several fair and honest trials—by juries of their peers.”

—Daniel Ellsberg

Former State and Defense Department official who revealed

the Pentagon Papers

“In her truly engrossing study, former Federal prosecutor Elizabeth de la Vega conducts a hypothetical but technically impeccable grand jury indictment. She marshals the evidence to show that Bush et al deliberately misinformed the people about the reasons for our war against Iraq. It is much more powerful than the 9/11 report. A tour de force.”

--Chalmers Johnson

Author of Blowback and The Sorrows of Empire

“[A] front-row seat for the evidence of violent crimes by high officials of the Bush administration.”

--Ray McGovern

Retired CIA Analyst

"Any American patriot who would like to see a Grand Jury challenge this Administration's blitzkrieg against our constitution will relish Elizabeth de la Vega's book THE UNITED STATES V. GEORGE W. BUSH ET AL.  Machiavelli believed fraud was laudable and glorious in matters of war.  In her book; Ms. de la Vega invites us into the courtroom to consider the indictment of our modern day Machiavellis and the fraud they've perpetrated."

--Edward Asner

“It shines a brilliant beam of light into the fog of mainstream news and politics. If you're tired of partisan rhetoric and media evasions, read "United States v. George W. Bush et al." Elizabeth de la Vega puts you in the jury room—and gives you the evidence you need to decide whether Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and Powell worked as a team to defraud the USA while dragging the country into the invasion of Iraq. Apologists for the war have tried to evade and deny the facts that can be found in "United States v. George W. Bush et al." This meticulous book will make the evasions and denials more difficult.”

--Norman Solomon

Author of War Made Easy:

How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death

“De la Vega has accomplished an amazing feat with this singularly triumphant presentation of the intersection between political fantasy and legal reality. Reading the delightfully logical and clearheaded United States v. George W. Bush, et al is both incredibly sobering, and yet strangely hopeful.  Real American patriots can only wish the United States godspeed in this case, and this brief is destined to be well studied by principals in all three branches of American government, as well as by those who serve as the Fourth Estate.”

—Karen Kwiatkowski

“What a great book. In the form of a fictional grand jury looking into criminal charges of conspiracy and fraud committed by the Bush administration concerning the war on Iraq, this book contains the documented details of public comments and secret actions of President Bush and his senior advisors in the year prior to the war.  The Department of Justice led by Bush-intimate Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez will never bring such a case to the federal courts, but the United States Congress could lift sections of this well-researched case and use them as elements of articles of impeachment of George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Condeleezza Rice. All impeachment would take is courage of members of Congress and a true love for our country, instead of loyalty to administration benefactors.”

—Ann Wright

Retired US Army Reserve Colonel (29 years) and US diplomat who resigned in

March, 2003 in opposition to the war on Iraq.

UNITED STATES v. GEORGE W. BUSH et al. | Elizabeth de la Vega | now available at Amazon.com and www.seventories.com; in stores December 1, 2006

1-58322-756-3 | $14.95 | 192pp

www.sevenstories.com

To arrange an interview or request Ms. de la Vega’s services as a speaker, contact elizabethdelavega@verizon.net.