Saudi Monstrosity and International Silence

By Huda Jawad

February 04, 2009 "Information Clearinghouse" -- - For the past several weeks, dozens of family members have been reaching out to the Iraqi government in a fragile gesture meant to save the lives of their sons. In January 2009, Saudi courts convicted 25 young Iraqi men of trespassing into Saudi Arabia. Their punishment: beheading. Among the Iraqi prisoners are at least several men suffering from tuberculosis, all of whom are being denied medical attention by the Saudi judiciary.

Relatives of the Iraqi prisoners in Saudi prisons have been holding protests in the southern province of Al-Muthana, withstanding the bitter cold and wind. The response by the Iraqi officials has been ridiculously indifferent, with the buck being passed between the bureaucracies. Human rights officials have announced today that the case should be pursued by National Security Advisor Mowaffak al-Rubaie. However, Rubaie has refused to take any proactive action in this regard. In September 2008, Rubaie had met with the Saudi King and authorized the transfer of 400 Saudi terrorists out of Iraq and back to Saudi Arabia. Any mention of the Iraqi death-row prisoners in Saudi Arabia was not present.

Iraqi politicians are far too engulfed in the elections to even grant a second glance to the young men about to lose their lives for petty crimes. However, these same power holders have no grievance with releasing Saudi terrorists and allowing them to live a normal life, long after they had wrecked that of the Iraqi children. Saudi Arabia has become the shame of the Muslim and Arab world; to think some claim these barbarians represent us is an insult to humanity and Islam.

Saudi Arabia is a state party to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Secrecy and the lack of internationally recognized standards of due process have long been distinctive features of the Saudi justice system. None of the Iraqi men had access to any form of legal representation, nor were they offered such an option. This is a recurring theme within the Saudi legal system, and it strips away the most basic of rights for prisoners, both foreign and domestic.

The treatment of detained foreign nationals both in the case of the Iraqi men and other multinationals gives insight into the closed world and fundamental flaws of the Saudi judicial system, including prolonged incommunicado detention, the absence of protection against torture, and other forms of mistreatment during interrogation. In many cases involving foreigners, foreign governments rarely if ever publicly raise fair-trial concerns or engage in other vigorous public advocacy on behalf of their nationals, prior to or even after their executions.

If this was any other nation, there would outrage, but since it is Saudi Arabia, the world has become complacent. The kingdom spends a fortune on US public relations firms to cover up human rights violations. In the year 2000, Amnesty International reported that Saudi Arabia has spent more than one million dollars on public relations firms to ensure secrecy about abuses of human rights. An oil-dependent international community sits back in silence as the suffering continues inside the kingdom.

The death penalty is used in Saudi Arabia more than in any other country, mainly because many crimes are punishable by execution. Defendants are typically poor foreign migrant workers from developing countries in Africa and Asia, often have no defense lawyer, and are usually unable to follow court proceedings in Arabic. For countless prisoners, they had no knowledge of their sentence until the actual day of their execution.

We must act now to save the Iraqi prisoners in Saudi custody. These Iraqi nationals were beaten until they confessed, and all claim that they are innocent. Prisoners in Saudi Arabia can be put to death without a scheduled date for execution being made known to them or their families. Subsequently, these men could be put to death any time.

Here is whom to contact regarding appeals in the cases of the Iraqi prisoners, while also expressing our outrage at the abuse of all prisoners:

Ambassador Adel A. Al-Jubeir
Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia
601 New Hampshire Ave. NW
Washington DC 20037
Fax: 1 202 944 3113
Email: Email: info@saudiembassy.netThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

His Majesty King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz Al- Saud
The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques
Office of His Majesty the King
Royal Court
Riyadh
KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA
Fax (via Ministry of the Interior): 011 966 1 403 1185 (please keep trying)
Salutation: Your Majesty

Turki bin Khaled Al-Sudairy
President
Human Rights Commission
P.O. Box 58889
King Fahad Road, Building No. 373
Riyadh 11515
KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA
Fax: 011 966 1 4612061

Huda Jawad is a writer for http://islamicinsights.com/, a weekly publication in North America

How the Israeli lobby uses intimidation to prevent academic freedom in the U.S.

At Columbia, the professors in the Middle East department believe there's a civil war under way for the hearts and minds of Americans.

11/11/06 Video - SBS - Dateline - Runtime 20 Minutes

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Here are just some of the victims of Israel's attack on Palestinian civilians. The U.S. has vetoed a UN resolution condemning the the attack.

Video Runtime 5 Minutes

 

By Gerard Aziakou

11/11/06 UNITED NATIONS (AFP) - The United States vetoed an Arab-sponsored draft resolution in the UN Security Council that would have condemned Israel's deadly attack in the Gaza Strip, calling the text "unbalanced" and "biased."

"The draft doesn't display an even-handed characterization of the recent events in Gaza," US Ambassador John Bolton said, referring to what Israel said was an accidental shelling that killed 19 Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children, in the the Gaza town of Beit Hanun.

"We are disturbed at the language of the resolution that is in many places biased against Israel and politically motivated," he added. "Such language does not further the cause of peace and its unacceptability to the United States in previous resolutions is well known."

As one of the council's five permanent members along with Britain, China, France and Russia, the United States has veto power which it has now used 82 times, often to shield Israel from censure.

Its previous use of the veto was in July to block a Qatari-sponsored draft resolution that would have condemned Israel's military onslaught in Gaza as "disproportionate force" and would have demanded a halt to Israeli operations in the territory.

Ten of the council's 15 members voted in favor the amended text, introduced by Qatar on behalf of Arab member states, and four -- Britain, Denmark, Japan and Slovakia -- abstained.

Israel immediately hailed the US veto as "very satisfactory" while the Palestinians said it would encourage further Israeli attacks on civilians.

"The American veto is very satisfactory. The draft resolution did not stipulate that what happened at Beit Hanun was a tragic error," Israeli government spokesman Avi Pazner said.

But Nabil Abu Rudeina, a spokesman for Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas swiftly condemned the veto, saying: "We feel it will encourage Israel to continue its escalation against the Palestinian people."

Explaining her decision to abstain, Britain's deputy UN Ambassador Karen Pierce said: "We were not able to conclude that the draft resolution was sufficiently balanced nor reflected the complexity of the current situation."

But France's UN Ambassador Jean-Marc de La Sabliere disagreed.

"I think the text was a balanced one and (its) adoption would have sent the right signal to both parties that the Security Council is really concerned about what is happening in Gaza, really concerned about the deaths of civilians and the protection of civilians," the French envoy said.

Palestinian UN observer Ryad Mansour also voiced disappointment and accused the council of "shirking its responsibility."

"Palestine is disappointed again," he said and warned that the US veto would push extremists on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide "to take matters into their own hands."

The council vote had been delayed by 24 hours as the sponsors continued efforts to try to make the text more palatable to Western countries.

Diplomats said Arab countries would now most likely take their case to the 192-member General Assembly, where their draft would get a more sympathetic hearing.

Mansour said Arab foreign ministers, due to hold a special meeting in Cairo Sunday on the Gaza violence, would decide whether to turn to the General Assembly for support.

The Qatari draft would have condemned Israel's military operations in Gaza, particularly the Beit Hanun incident, along with "the firing of rockets from Gaza into Israel."

It would have called on Israel "to immediately cease its military operations that endanger the Palestinian civilian population in the Occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, and to immediately withdraw its forces from within the Gaza Strip to positions prior to June 28, 2006."

It would have urged the international community, including the diplomatic Quartet -- the United States, Russia, the United Nations and the European Union -- "to stabilize the situation and restart the peace process, including through the possible establishment of an international mechanism for protection of the civilian populations."

It also would have directed the UN secretary general to set up a fact-finding mission on the Beit Hanun attack within 30 days.

Bolton bemoaned the fact that the Qatari draft made "not a single reference to terrorism" and did not condemn Hamas's "statement that Palestinians should resume terror attacks on Israel on a broad scale, or calls by the military wing of Hamas to Muslims worldwide to strike American targets and interests."

Wednesday's Israeli strike in Gaza has received worldwide condemnation and led to calls for an immediate halt by the Jewish state of its Gaza offensive, which has left more than 300 Palestinians dead since late June when an Israeli soldier was seized by Palestinian militants.

Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse.

By Howard Zinn

11/12/06 "Information Clearing House" --- Let's go back to the beginning of Veterans Day. It used to be Armistice Day, because at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, World War I came to an end.

We must not forget that conflict. It revealed the essence of war, of all wars, because however "just" or "humanitarian" may be the claims, at the irreducible core of all war is the slaughter of the innocent, organized by national leaders, accompanied by lies. World War I was its epitome, as generals and politicians sent young men forward from their trenches, bayonets fixed, to gain a few miles, even a few yards, at frightful cost.

In July 1916 the British General Douglas Haig ordered 11 divisions of English soldiers to climb out of their trenches and move toward the German lines. The six German divisions opened up with their machine guns. Of the 110,000 who attacked, more than half were killed or wounded--all those bodies strewn on no man's land, the ghostly territory between the contending trenches. That scenario went on for years. In the first battle of the Marne there were a million casualties, 500,000 on each side.

The soldiers began to rebel, which is always the most heroic thing soldiers can do, for which they should be given medals. In the French Army, out of 112 divisions, 68 would have mutinies. Fifty men would be shot by firing squads.

Three of those executions became the basis for the late filmmaker Stanley Kubrick's antiwar masterpiece, Paths of Glory. In that film a pompous general castigates his soldiers for retreating and talks of "patriotism." Kirk Douglas, the lieutenant colonel who defends his men, enrages the general by quoting the famous lines of Samuel Johnson: "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel."

The supposed moral justification of that war (the evil Kaiser, the Belgian babies) disintegrated quickly after it ended with sudden recognition of the 10 million dead in the mud of France and the gassed, shellshocked, and limbless veterans confronting the world.

The ugliness of that war was uncomplicated by the moral righteousness that made later wars, from World War II on, unsullied in our memory, or at least acceptable. Vietnam was the stark exception. But even there our national leaders have worked hard to smother what they call "the Vietnam syndrome." They want us to forget what we learned at the Vietnam War's end: that our leaders cannot be trusted, that modern war is inevitably a war against civilians and particularly children, that only a determined citizenry can stop the government when it embarks on mass murder.

Our decent impulse, to recognize the ordeal of our veterans, has been used to obscure the fact that they died, they were crippled, for no good cause other than the power and profit of a few. Veterans Day, instead of an occasion for denouncing war, has become an occasion for bringing out the flags, the uniforms, the martial music, the patriotic speeches reeking with hypocrisy. Those who name holidays, playing on our genuine feeling for veterans, have turned a day that celebrated the end of a horror into a day to honor militarism.

As a combat veteran myself, of a "good war," against fascism, I do not want the recognition of my service to be used as a glorification of war. At the end of that war, in which 50 million died, the people of the world should have shouted "Enough!" We should have decided that from that moment on, we would renounce war--and there would be no Korean War, Vietnam War, Panama War, Grenada War, Gulf War, Balkan War.

The reason for such a decision is that war in our time--whatever "humanitarian" motives are claimed by our political leaders--is always a war against children: the child amputees created by our bombing of Yugoslavia, the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children dead as a result of our postwar sanctions. Veterans Day should be an occasion for a national vow: No more war victims on the other side; no more war veterans on our side.

By Uri Avnery

11/11/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- "Thank God for the American elections," our ministers and generals sighed with relief.

They were not rejoicing at the kick that the American people delivered to George W. Bush's ass this week. They love Bush, after all.

But more important than the humbling of Bush is the fact that the news from America pushed aside the terrible reports from Beit Hanoun. Instead of making the headlines, they were relegated to the bottom of the page.

The first revolutionary act is to call things by their true names, Rosa Luxemburg said. So how to call what happened in Beit Hanoun?

"Accident" said a pretty anchorwoman on one of the TV news programs. "Tragedy", said her lovely colleague on another channel. A third one, no less attractive, wavered between "event", "mistake" and "incident".

It was indeed an accident, a tragedy, an event and an incident. But most of all it was a massacre. M-a-s-s-a-c-r-e.

The word "accident" suggests something for which no one is to blame - like being struck by lightning. A tragedy is a sad event or situation, like that of the New Orleans inhabitants after the disaster. The event in Beit Hanoun was sad indeed, but not an act of God - it was an act decided upon and carried out by human beings.


Immediately after the facts became known, the entire choir of professional apologists, explainers-away, sorrow-expressers and pretext-inventors, a choir that is in perpetual readiness for such cases, sprang into feverish action.

"An unfortunate mistake… It can happen in the best families… The mechanism of a cannon can misfunction, people can make mistakes… Errare humanum est… We have launched tens of thousands of artillery shells, and there have only been three such accidents. (No. 1 in the Olmert-Peretz-Halutz era was in Qana, in the Second Lebanon War. No. 2 was on the Gaza sea shore, where a whole family was wiped out.) But we apologized, didn't we? What more can they demand from us?"

There were also arguments like "They can only blame themselves." As usual, it was the fault of the victims. The most creative solution came from the Deputy Minister of Defense, Ephraim Sneh: "The practical responsibility is ours, but the moral responsibility is theirs." If they launch Qassam rockets at us, what else can we do but answer with shells?

Ephraim Sneh was raised to the position of Deputy Minister just now. The appointment was a payment for agreeing to the inclusion of Avigdor Liberman in the government (in biblical Hebrew, the payment would have been called "the hire of a whore", Deut. 23,19). Now, after only a few days in office, Sneh was given the opportunity to express his thanks.

(In the Sneh family, there is a tradition of justifying despicable acts. Ephraim's brilliant father, Moshe Sneh, was the leader of the Israeli Communist Party, and defended all the massacres committed by Stalin, not only the gulag system, but also the murder of the Jewish Communists in the Soviet Union and its satellites and the Jewish "doctors plot").

Any suggestion of equivalence between Qassams and artillery shells, an idea which has been adopted even by some of the Peaceniks, is completely false. And not only because there is no symmetry between occupier and occupied. Hundreds of Qassams launched during more than a year have killed one single Israeli. The shells, missiles and bombs have already killed many hundreds of Palestinians.


Did the shells hit the homes of people intentionally? There are only two possible answers to that.

The extreme version says: Yes. The sequence of events points in that direction. The Israeli army, one of the most modern in the world, has no answer to the Qassam, one of the most primitive of weapons. This short-range unguided rocket (named after Izz-ad-Din al-Qassam, the first Palestinian fighter, who was killed in 1935 in a battle against the British authorities of Palestine) is little more than a pipe filled with home-made explosives.

In a futile attempt to prevent the launching of Qassams, the Israeli forces invade the towns and villages of the Gaza Strip at regular intervals and institute a reign of terror. A week ago, they invaded Beit-Hanoun and killed more than 50 people, many of them women and children. The moment they left, the Palestinians started to launch as many Qassams as possible against Ashkelon, in order to prove that these incursions do not deter them.

That increased the frustration of the generals even more. Ashkelon is not a remote poverty-stricken little town like Sderot, most of whose inhabitants are of Moroccan origin. In Ashkelon there lives also an elitist population of European descent. The army chiefs, having lost their honor in Lebanon, were eager - according to this version - to teach the Palestinians a lesson, once and for all. According to the Israeli saying: If force doesn't work, use more force.

The other version holds that it was a real mistake, an unfortunate technical hitch. But the commander of an army knows very well that a certain incidence of "hitches" is unavoidable. So-and-so many percent are killed in training, so-and-so many percent die from "friendly fire", so-and-so many percent of shells fall some distance from the target. The ammunition used by the gunners against Beit-Hanoun - the very same 155mm ammunition that was used in Kana - is known for its inaccuracy. Several factors can cause the shells to stray from their course by hundreds of meters.

He who decided to use this ammunition against a target right next to civilians knowingly exposed them to mortal danger. Therefore, there is no essential difference between the two versions.

Who is to blame? First of all, the spirit that has gained ground in the army. Recently, Gideon Levy disclosed that a battalion commander praised his soldiers for killing 12 Palestinians with the words: "We have won by 12:0!"

Guilty are, of course, the gunners and their commanders, including the battery chief. And the General in charge of the Southern Command, Yoav Gallant (sic), who radiates indifference spiked with sanctimonious platitudes. And the Deputy Chief-of-Staff. And the Chief-of-Staff, Dan Halutz, the Air-Force general who said after another such incident that he sleeps well at night after dropping a one-ton super-bomb on a residential area. And, of course, the Minister of Defense, Amir Peretz, who approved the use of artillery after forbidding it in the past - which means that he was aware of the foreseeable consequences.

The guiltiest one is the Great Apologizer: Ehud Olmert, the Prime Minister.

Olmert boasted recently that because of the clever behavior of his government "we were able to kill hundreds of terrorists, and the world has not reacted." According to Olmert, a "terrorist" is any armed Palestinian, including the tens of thousands of Palestinian policemen who carry arms by agreement with Israel. They may now be shot freely. "Terrorists" are also the women and children, who are killed in the street and in their homes. (Some say so openly: the children grow up to be terrorists, the women give birth to children who grow up to be terrorists.)

Olmert can go on with this, as he says, because the world keeps silent. Today the US even vetoed a very mild Security Council resolution against the event. Does this mean that the governments throughout the world - America, Europe, the Arab world - are accessories to the crime at Beit Hanoun? That can best be answered by the citizens of those countries.


The world did not pay much attention to the massacre, because it happened on US election day. The results of the election may sadden our leaders more than the blood and tears of mothers and children in the Gaza strip, but they were glad that the election diverted attention.

A cynic might say: Democracy is wonderful, it enables the voter to kick out the moron they elected last time and replace them with a new moron.

But let's not be too cynical. The fact is that the American people has accepted, after a delay of three years and tens of thousands of dead, what the advocates of peace around the word - including us here in Israel - were saying already on the first day: that the war will cause a disaster. That it will not solve any problem, but have the opposite effect.

The change will not be quick and dramatic. The US is a huge ship. When it turns around, it makes a very big circle and needs a lot of time - unlike Israel, a small speed-boat that can turn almost on the spot. But the direction is clear.

Of course, in both new houses of Congress, the pro-Israeli lobby (meaning: the supporters of the Israeli Right) has a huge influence, perhaps even more than in the last ones. But the American army will have to start leaving Iraq. The danger of another military adventure in Iran and/or Syria is much diminished. The crazy neo-conservatives, most of them Jews who support the extreme Right in Israel, are gradually losing power, together with their allies, the crazy Christian fundamentalists.

As former Prime Minister Levy Eshkol once said: when America sneezes, Israel catches cold. When America starts to recover, perhaps there is hope for us, too

Uri Avnery is an Israeli author and activist. He is the head of the Israeli peace movement, "Gush Shalom".

By William Cohn

11/12/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- The 2006 US midterm election results are in, but the meaning of these results is still being spun. The question raised here is whether the return of Congress to the Democratic Party should be seen as the holding to account of the radical neoconservatives who had taken hold of the federal government since 2000. Does this election vindicate the US political system as protecting our basic democratic interests?

To an extent it clearly does. The electoral process has thwarted what critics of the Bush Administration characterize as the most naked power grab in memory whereby a cabal has used a national tragedy to trample the US Constitution in order to give the executive branch of government supreme and unchecked power (Nixon's aim to secure reelection through late night break-ins and dirty tricks was modest in comparison). Thus, the political process has held to account those who abused the trust of the people.

However, the bitter legacy of the 2000, 2002 and 2004 elections continues to undermine public faith in, and pose challenges to, the US political process. The 2000 elections exposed that the state-centric winner-take-all electoral college system of electing a president could negate the national popular will (Gore won the national vote), that the chief state electoral officials could be political players with a clear conflict in discharging their duties (think Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush), that those duties are vital given the obstacles to an accurate vote count (think dimpled and hanging chads), and that the Supreme Court's power of judicial review could stop efforts to accurately count all votes while leaving no recourse for further review or appeal (recall Bush v. Gore).

The 2002 elections saw a shell-shocked electorate duped by a blitz of false patriotism ("you are either with us or you are with the terrorists," a feckless Congress pressed into voting for a war authorization just before Election Day 2002). The 2004 elections brought to the fore the problems of paperless computerized voting technologies developed in response to Florida 2000 (Ohio newspapers on Election Day 2006 were still dominated by stories on how votes are counted, 2004 discrepancies between exit polls and ballot results fueled accurate vote count concerns), and that lies repeated often enough become populist truth (Swiftboat Veterans for 'Truth,' WMD, Iraq linkage to al-Qaeda). The 2004 election was met with disbelief in most of the world, and the damage done to the US global reputation will not be quickly undone (see Pew Global Attitudes Poll).

November 7, 2006 saw US voters cast ballots on what was billed as a referendum on President Bush and the Iraq war. That the electorate voted for change may be readily viewed as holding the Bush radical right to account. However, the institutional problems (e.g., money and politics, gerrymandering congressional districts to secure safe seats for incumbents, and a pliant press) as well as constitutional problems of federalism and separation of powers confronting US democracy remain. Moreover, faith in the franchise is at a low-point (see, e.g., Black voters in Ohio, Florida and Tennessee).

The Supreme Court's first ruling of the current Term bodes poorly for the prospects that the Roberts Court will restore faith in the franchise. In Purcell v. Gonzalez the Court unanimously reversed the Ninth Circuit's ruling against Arizona's new mandatory voter identification requirements. In favoring wholly speculative concerns of voter fraud over the near certain disenfranchisement of many eligible voters, the Court further turned its back on its role since the 1960's as the guarantor of inclusive democracy.


Following the divisive 2000 election, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA), establishing a timetable for the 50 states to modernize their voting methods. HAVA, however, has been anything but helpful to voter confidence in free and fair elections. 16 states used paperless computerized voting methods in this election, leading to widespread concern about a lack of accountability via an accurate recount. On November 7th one-third of US voters used touchscreen voting, which is completely non-transparent. The growing use of absentee ballots (e.g., in Florida 40% of voters cast their ballot prior to Election Day) is one result of public mistrust of paperless voting.

2006 has led to more disputes. Two days following the close of the polls two candidates declared losers of Senate races (in Montana and Virginia) had yet to concede defeat. In Virginia, where the FBI is investigating allegations of voter intimidation, the election laws allow the loser to seek a recount, but most of the ballots were cast using paperless computerized voting. The law is seemingly confronted with a black hole in verifying the outcome of this Senate race, and consequently determining which party controls the US Senate. This raises the prospect of prolonged litigation, a battle of expert witnesses, and another unsatisfying intervention by the High Court. How do you fulfill a legal right to a recount if there's nothing to count? Would the Diebold Corporation simply certify the accuracy of its chips and optical scanners?

Controlling the House of Representatives gives the Democrats power to control spending and launch investigations. Will they deny funding for operations in Iraq? Impeach Bush? Investigate the apparent embezzlement of some $10 billion in unaccounted for Iraqi reconstruction funds? Nancy Pelosi, the first woman Speaker of the House, may lead investigations into administration abuses. This could reaffirm democratic values of accountability. However, skeptics contend that Bush, Cheney and gang have looted the US treasury
(weren't conservatives for small government?) and that the President will grant pardons for all illegal activities of his cronies.

As Cheney is not running for President in 2008 Bush is more concerned with his own legacy than the Republican Party. He seemingly must now work with a Democratic Congress, yet skeptics note that his unprecedented use of executive signing statements evinces the radical contention that the President has the authority to enforce the law selectively. No matter how Bush operates during his last two years in office, it seems clear that he will leave the next President with an overstretched military and record budget and trade deficits.

The 2006 campaign was marked by negative campaigning, record spending on mudslinging attack-ads, and a general lack of dialogue and ideas for making things better. US politics are now polarized and mean-spirited, leaving citizens looking for substantive policy discussion disillusioned. That the end days of the campaign focused on the lewd emails of Rep. Foley, a botched joke by Senator Kerry and a well-timed death sentence for Saddam Hussein shows how far the campaign strayed from the substantive concerns of voters.

If a core value of democracy is choice, many voters concluded that the Democratic Party as the only viable choice left them with little choice. The election result is more a failure of Republicans than a victory by Democrats.
2006 can be seen as buyers' remorse by a public that bought a bill of lies in 2004. Some, noting that Reagan lost both houses in 1986, will discount the significance of the 2006 election, insisting it is customary for two term presidents to lose Congress in their 2nd term. But the unseating of so many incumbents, despite gerrymandered districts widely thought to ensure their reelection, shows the extent of the voter backlash against the spineless and useless 109th Congress.

The head of the US Federal Elections Commission acknowledges that other countries are "light-years ahead" of the US in terms of elections technology and integrity. The needed steps are obvious (strong campaign finance reform legislation, non-partisan control of congressional redistricting, demanding responsible media, requiring transparency in government including open bidding for government contracts, and paper ballots, and perhaps unifying federal election standards and amending the electoral college process). The European tradition of giving free air time to candidates may be a good starting point in reducing the role of money and influence-peddling in US politics.

In the final analysis the 2006 election shows that US voters finally said "Enough! (of the lies, fake reporters, fiscal and diplomatic irresponsibility, corruption, incompetence, human rights abuses, lack of accountability, faith-based certitude precluding discussion, demonizing people with divergent views, and denying that the US is a nation ruled by law, not by men) Throw the bums out!" That's a time-honored democratic value. But it is indeed both ironic and remarkable that the purported leader of the free world has been unable to have an election in this century which has the full confidence of its own people.

William Cohn is a lawyer, writer and university lecturer

The author, a member of the California and International Bar Associations, is lecturer at the University of New York in Prague where he teaches and writes on law, ethics and logic. He holds degrees from Stanford University in international relations and University of California in law. His writings on law and public policy have been published in TransAfrica Forum, Eurozine, Information Clearinghouse, Hemispheres, The New Presence and The Prague Post