<a href="http://www.commondreams.org/">Common Dreams</a> has a very ironic article by Rahul Mahajan called <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0626-06.htm" title="Arafat Calls for Democratic Elections in the United States; World Reaction is Mixed">Arafat Calls for Democratic Elections in the United States</a>. In it, he notes that <iq>Arafat, who was elected with 87% of the vote in 1996 elections...[which were] declared to be free and fair by international observers</iq> actually has far more of a mandate than a President elected by a <iq>majority of the Supreme Court</iq>. This is in response to U.S. President Bush's speech on Monday in which he called for the Palestinian people to have new elections. No mention was made that the current Palestinian leadership is already democratically elected. This is the kind of fact that can be easily ignored in order to let the majority of people listening assume the opposite is true: that Arafat is an unelected dictator. Furthermore, he expressed his dissatisfaction with Arafat in order to dissuade the Palestinians from electing him again in the coming round of U.S.-enforced elections (<iq>Arafat would not be acceptable to the administration even if he were chosen as head of the Palestinian Authority in a democratic election.</iq>). No similar call is made for the Israelis to elect a new leader that has any interest in peace whatsoever, and who perhaps might have hands <iq>not tainted with the massacre of hundreds of innocents in Sabra and Shatila</iq>. All of which must be so easy for the Palestinian people to swallow, coming from the leader of the nation that contributes $3 Billion in military aid to Israel every year. The <a href="http://www.newsday.com/">New York Newsday</a> reported in <a href="http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/ny-wobush252762757jun25.story?coll=ny%2Dworldnews%2Dprint" title="Bush: Arafat Must Go: Says U.S. will back Palestinian state if conditions are met">Bush: Arafat Must Go...</a> that if the Palestinians followed the rules he laid out, the end result would be that <iq>Israel must withdraw from the territories it has occupied since the Six-Day War in 1967</iq>. However, <iq>Bush was careful not to specify what Israel's final borders after such a withdrawal would look like.</iq> The content of the speech was summarized by Bush as <iq>a test to show who is serious about peace and who is not</iq>. Which is so unbelievably ridiculous coming from a man who just presided over the bombing into dust of the poorest nation on Earth; a man who still sends billions of dollars of aid to a country (Israel) that engages in the worst state terror of the 21st Century; a man who authorized a shipment of helicopters to Israel just days before sending his Secretary of State to Israel on a 'peace' mission. This is also the same man whose administration told Hugo Chavez, the <i>elected</i> president of Venezuela, a country the U.S. was heavily involved in trying to overthrow in a coup that <iq>funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars through the "National Endowment for Democracy" to anti-Chavez forces</iq>, that <iq>legitimacy is not conferred by a majority vote</iq>. This is the same man who continues to support Sharon and a <iq>country that legally discriminates among its citizens on the basis of religious belief, forbids political candidates from advocating an end to that discrimination</iq>. This is the way the U.S. expresses its support for democracy in the rest of the world. <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0626-07.htm">Bush's Speech A Setback for Peace</a> by Stephen Zunes, also on <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/">Common Dreams</a> mentions that <iq>the president mentioned terrorism eighteen times but did not mention human rights or international law even once</iq>. This should serve as a decent indicator that the expressed intent of creating a Palestinian nation is not really a priority and that the call for new Palestinian leadership is simply subterfuge meant to distract anyone from noticing that nothing has really changed. Be very careful when reading mainstream media's estimation of Bush's speech as a 'refreshing change' or 'long overdue policy change'. It is quite obvious that nothing at all has changed, no matter how many times Bush insists that it has: <bq>It is remarkable how President Bush insists on democratic governance and an end to violence and corruption as a prerequisite for Palestinian independence when his administration, as well as administrations before him, have strongly supported a series of violent, corrupt and autocratic regimes throughout the Middle East and beyond.</bq> <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0625-06.htm">Bush's Speech - An Interim Insult</a> notes that Bush wields the word terrorism like a bludgeon: <iq>"Terrorism" is to President Bush as "Communism" was to Senator McCarthy</iq>. Only the Palestinians are terrorists. Though the Israelis are the ones occupying the territory, by colonialist rules they have every right to 'defend their interests' in their occupied territories. The U.S. is so far from a democratic advocate abroad that Israeli actions are <i>never</i> thought of as terrorism. Perhaps because that would invite description of U.S. actions is so many lands as terrorist, as well. Sadly, this is a pattern that is played out again and again. Even a cursory examination of the facts will point up the administration's demands and statements as ridiculous and hypocritical, but that examination is not likely to happen anywhere in the mainstream media or public thought. Instead, a moronic outburst like Bush's speech will be heralded as a 'new beginning to peace' or some such rot. <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0625-05.htm">Bush's Speech - A Vision of Permanent War</a> notes that Bush demands that <iq>it is up to the Palestinians to "reform" themselves before any demands, no matter how mild, are made of Israel</iq>. With regard to continued violence, he <iq>made it very clear that only the Palestinians must renounce it. Israel was given a free hand to "continue to defend herself."</iq> The fact that Israel is actively engaged in an illegal occupation fueled by U.S. military and financial aid doesn't even enter into the President's discussion of democracy.