Left I on the News  

Saddam was telling truth in missing Gulf War pilot
Yes, you're shocked I know. The U.S. was lying and Iraq was telling the truth. When does that ever happen? Oh, yeah, I remember.

Naturally, AP isn't going to let it go that easily. No, they have to claim that "Saddam Hussein was telling the truth, this time," [Emphasis added] and that "the Iraqis lied, but sometimes they told the truth." What exactly did they lie about? AP doesn't say, but we all know one thing it surely wasn't, and that's about their alleged possession of WMD. And now we can add another one, the U.S. claim that Scott Speicher was being secretly held prisoner in Iraq.

Will the AP ever tell us that the U.S. government "lied" about anything, using that precise word? Don't bet on it.

UPDATED AGAIN

When it's an Israeli settlement [colonization] "freeze":

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Wednesday evening that Israel would impose a 10-month freeze on construction in West Bank settlements.

Well, it's only ten months, but still a freeze, right? Wrong:

Netanyahu said the construction freeze would not be implemented in predominantly Arab East Jerusalem...The freeze will also not apply to construction that has already been authorized or to work on public buildings conducive to normal life in the territories.

Expect this announcement to be greeted rapturously in the halls of Washington and by the U.S. corporate media.

Update: In related news, I'm going on a hunger strike. Except for french fries. And everything currently in my refrigerator and cupboard. And breakfast.

Back to serious but cynical speculation. Why ten months? What a curious time frame. 6 or 12 months we might understand, but 10? Here's my speculation. There are currently 3000 housing units under construction in the West Bank (not including East Jerusalem, i.e., the ones included in Netanyahu's "freeze"). I bet they figured out that ten months is precisely the time they need to finish those 3000. If I'm correct, that means there's even less to this "freeze" than it appears, and there wasn't much to begin with!

Update 2: I was right - the ten months corresponds exactly to the time that the ongoing 3000 units are expected to take to build. Meaning that the "freeze" amounts to precisely...nothing. On the other hand I was wrong - the reception in Washington, as reflected by public statements, has been less than rapturous.

Gee, where have we heard that before?

(For you youngsters out there, that's Lyndon B. Johnson at the right, the President who campaigned as the "peace candidate" against "war-hawk" Barry Goldwater, while escalating American troop levels from 16,000 to 550,000.)

In a settlement today, the government (technically the Washington D.C. government) agreed to pay $13 million to protesters arrested at demonstrations against the IMF and World Bank in 2000. This is the latest in a series of victories for the Partnership for Civil Justice, who just last week got the police checkpoint system in Washington, D.C. dismantled. A group well worth donating to to help protect all our civil rights.

In Berkeley, students who occupied a building are being charged with "burglary" because they moved some desks from an office to push them up against the building door.

In Oakland, an apparently unruly passenger pulled off a train by a BART cop is being charged with "assaulting an officer" because, as the officer was throwing him into a glass wall head first, he put up his arm which broke the glass, injuring the cop (evidently if he had allowed his head to break the glass, the "assaulting" charge wouldn't apply).

Gheesh.

If you can make sense of this, or even moreso if you thought of it, chances are you're a capitalist:

As millions of Americans struggle to hold on to their homes, Wall Street has found a way to make money from the mortgage mess.

Investment funds are buying billions of dollars’ worth of home loans, discounted from the loans’ original value. Then, in what might seem an act of charity, the funds are helping homeowners by reducing the size of the loans.

But as part of these deals, the mortgages are being refinanced through lenders that work with government agencies like the Federal Housing Administration. This enables the funds to pocket sizable profits by reselling new, government-insured loans to other federal agencies, which then bundle the mortgages into securities for sale to investors.

While homeowners save money, the arrangement shifts nearly all the risk for the loans to the federal government — and, ultimately, taxpayers — at a time when Americans are falling behind on their mortgage payments in record numbers.

Benefiting from the misfortunes of others - capitalism in a nutshell. Work focused on producing goods or services that people need, like health care? That's socialism.

Could the Associated Press print a more one-sided and misleading article on Honduras?

"voters will choose a new president Nov. 29...No one is pushing the leftist agenda of the ousted leader, who said he was trying to lift a country where seven in 10 people are poor.

"Pushing the leftist agenda"? Who's writing this, Rush Limbaugh? Sean Hannity?

While many Hondurans want reform, they were reluctant to trust Zelaya, a wealthy rancher elected from one of the two major conservative parties.
...
According to the CID-Gallup Poll, Zelaya's job-approval rating dropped steadily from 2007 to just 38 percent in October 2008, though it had rebounded to 53 percent by February and has held steady around 50 percent since.

Since a certain percentage of Hondurans don't "want reform", we can conclude that a majority of those who do still approve of Zelaya. And while it's true that, in a population of millions of people, even 1% is still "many people," to call that description "misleading" would be charitable.

But beyond the first week of his ouster, he had a hard time amassing large numbers of supporters demanding his return.

There have in fact been demonstrations continuously the entire time. It's true that numbers haven't been massive, but repression (including murder of demonstrators) and the lack of serious support from the international community, most especially the U.S., surely are a significant factor.

Nowhere in the entire article does AP bother to mention that the OAS (not to mention commonsense) has declared that an election being held under a military dictatorship is null and void, and will not be recognized, nor that the left is boycotting the election. Meanwhile, Americans are further misled by the claim that "everyone from Barack Obama to Fidel Castro lined up behind ousted President Manuel Zelaya" [after the coup]. With people like Barack Obama (and Hillary Clinton and the U.S. government) "lined up behind" you, a government which I'm pretty sure never made an official declaration that a coup had actually occurred, you're in deep trouble.

And, topping it all off, AP repeats the standard canard:

His opponents said he wanted to follow in Chavez's footsteps and revise the constitution to extend his time in office. Zelaya denies any such intention.

Of course whether Zelaya denied any such intention or not is a moot point; the timeline of the votes which would have occurred had the initial non-binding referendum passed absolutely precluded any possibility such a reelection could have happened. But don't let that bother you, AP. Better to repeat the charges and just rebut them from a "denial" from the accused. It sounds more believable that way, even if it's absurd.

UPDATED (see below)

It's a long-standing convention of the U.S. media that any Israeli action is always describe as a "response" to something or other from the Palestinian side. So let's consider what happened today.

The Palestinian action:

Hamas says it has agreed with other Palestinian militant groups in Gaza to stop firing rockets into Israel.

And lest you think that's really a totally new development, really it's been pretty much the status quo for quite some time:

Hamas has observed a ceasefire for months, but other groups have carried out sporadic cross-border attacks.

So what was the Israeli response to this good faith action on the part of Hamas? This:

Israeli jets have carried out air strikes against targets in the Gaza Strip, injuring seven Palestinians...In addition, the Press TV correspondent in Gaza reported that Israeli gunboats were approaching the coast of Gaza.

Do you suppose we'll be hearing from the U.S. State Department, lamenting the fact that Palestinians have no "partner for peace"? And, since the total blockade of Gaza imposed not only by Israel but also by Egypt, the U.S., and U.K., and others, is "justified" by rocket attacks from Gaza against Israel, will we be seeing a response from those parties in the form of a lifting of the blockade? Stay tuned. But please, please don't hold your breath.

Update: Unbelievable. Just unbelievable. You remember (a few paragraphs ago!) when I wrote about the "response" phenomenon? Well today, the Times (U.K.) gives us this unbelievable spin on the story above:

Hamas announced today that it would freeze its rocket attacks on southern Israel, after Israeli war planes bombed the Gaza Strip.

Of course, this is wrong on two important counts. First of all, as noted in the clip above, Hamas has actually observed a ceasefire for months, rather than "announcing today" that it would freeze its attacks. And second, and on the point of this story, that announcement preceded the Israeli bombing of Gaza, it did not follow it.

Unbelievable.

No, I'm not talking about Sgt. Pepper. No, I'm talking about the murder of six Jesuit priests by right-wing death squads in El Salvador, which happened 20 years ago last week. Newly declassified documents suggest that both the U.S. State Department and the CIA knew in advance of this plot. And guess who quite likely was involved? Yes, our old "friend" Luis Posada Carriles, currently under the protection of the U.S. government from standing trial for the airplane bombing murder of 73 people.

You're shocked, I know.

"Don't ask, don't tell?" Don't talk about it, at least, not if you're the U.S. Congress.

And as for the "Defense [sic(k)] of Marriage Act"? The Obama Administration isn't just not acting to do anything about it, it's actively enforcing it in spite of court rulings.

• California faces a $21 billion budget shortfall; Gov. Schwarzenegger promises massive across-the-board budget cuts (a.k.a. service cuts).
• In San Francisco, Mayor Newsom asks department heads to plan for 30% budget cuts, following on 25% cuts last year.
• In Los Angeles, University of California Regents approved a 32% fee increase for students.

Just one week ago, two of the nation's richest men, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, told students that "capitalism is great" and that "the fundamentals of the system, a marketplace-driven system where we invest in education and a great infrastructure for the long-term, that's continued." Remarkably, they were cheered, rather than laughed out of the building.

I recently finished reading Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, in which Dawkins presents his arguments not only against the existence of God but affirmatively for an affirmation in atheism, tackling such subjects as "is religion the source of morality?" and "is religion actually a bad thing?" Being both a scientist and a Marxist, I didn't need Dawkins to convince me of the non-existence of supernatural forces, and since convincing religious people that there is no God is neither high nor frankly anywhere on my agenda, the discussion along those lines were interesting but little more.

Dawkins also, in my opinion (isn't everything here my opinion?), places too much emphasis on religion in its role in places like Iraq, Palestine, Northern Ireland, and so on. He repeatedly returns to the subject of suicide bombers, but in a completely decontextualized way. You could easily conclude that all suicide bombers are Muslims and that their sole motivation is getting to heaven. Which would hardly explain why Muslims all over the world aren't committing such actions, or why Palestinians weren't acting as suicide bombers before 1948, or why Al Qaeda isn't carrying out actions against Switzerland, or Venezuela, or China, but only the world's imperialist powers who are occupying their countries (indeed, I'm pretty sure the word "occupation" does not occur anywhere in the book). The idea that suicide bombs are a weapon of the hopeless and powerless, and that Palestinians would happily fight against Israeli occupation with tanks and jet fighters if only the world would sell such things to them, seems not to have occurred to Dawkins.

There was one major subject in the book which I found absolutely fascinating. Like, I'm guessing, most people, I read "Bible stories" as a child but never actually read the Bible. Having now read Dawkins (and taking his citations "on faith"; I don't plan to look them up), I think I know why I wasn't encouraged to do so. In his discussion on "is religion necessary for morality," Dawkins takes up at length the "morality" one can find in the Bible.

Take the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, for example. Everyone knows that, as Lot and his wife were leaving those doomed cities, Lot's wife looked back and was turned to salt (by itself a curiously harsh punishment for merely stealing a glance at the ongoing destruction, even if it was in contradiction of God's order). But what preceded that event? Two angels came to Lot, and the people of Sodom demanded that Lot hand them over to them. Lot's "moral" defense of the angels? He hands over his two virgin daughters to the mob for their pleasure to save the angels. Elsewhere in the Bible, a Jewish priest offers his own concubine and the daughter of his host to an angry mob to be gang-raped, in order to save his host.

Then there's Jericho. Everyone knows "Joshua blew his trumpet" and "the walls came tumbling down." But did you know that genocide followed? "They utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword." Joshua, I remind you, is seen as hero to the Jewish people, not a mass murderer.

There are many, many more examples of the "morality" one finds in the Bible. But Dawkins expands on the Jericho story, which bears directly on our world today, because Joshua's destruction of Jericho was part of the conquest of the "Promised Land." When a thousand Israeli schoolchildren were asked if Joshua acted rightly, 66 percent gave total approval and 26 percent total disapproval, with the approvers often citing as their reason the "fact" that "God promised them this land." And some of the disapprovers only disapproved because Joshua destroyed not just the people, but the animals as well! But here's the denouement of the story. When another group of Israel children were given the same story to read, but with the names and locations changed to ancient China, only 7 percent approved and 75 percent disapproved. And lest you think this is just schoolchildren, Dawkins notes that Maimonides, widely considered the greatest Jewish scholar of all time (he lived in the 12th century), agreed with the children (in the Jericho case): "If one does not put to death any of them that falls into one's power, one transgresses a negative commandment, as it is said, Thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth."

Lest you think I'm contradicting myself about the importance of religion, my opinion is that this is not about religion at all, but tribalism. In either case, however, it certainly sheds a bit of light on the attitudes of people like the Israeli settlers today. God not only promised them this land, but told them it was their duty to kill anyone who got in the way. Lovely stuff.

Dawkins doesn't spare the New Testament, lest you think that what most of us would consider immorality (to put it mildly) is only found in the Old Testament. I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.

The headline is quite straightforward: "Obama Demands Results From Afghan Reforms." Demands! And not only that, but "Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned Mr. Karzai privately that future civilian aid would depend in part on how his government performed" (and don't be fooled by that "privately," by the way; if it really was "private," how would we know about it unless the U.S. government wanted us to know about it, which is to say it isn't "private" at all). Adding to that, "Mr. Obama has increasingly warned that his is not an 'open-ended commitment.'"

And why is the U.S. "demanding" things, threatening to withdraw aid, and saying their support may end? Because of "cronyism" and the failure the develop an "effective army."

Well, Israel can never be accused of not having an "effective army," but their sins (wholesale slaughter of Lebanese and Palestinians, routine denial of human rights to Palestinians within Israel's international borders and much, much worse treatment of Palestinians outside of those borders, like denying them access to food, medicine, shelter, and education) are more than just quantitatively worse than those of the Afghan government. The latter's actions amount to incompetence and routine crimes; the former's, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Now think. Have you ever seen the word "demanded" in conjunction with U.S. requests to Israel to change its policy? If you have, it's an anomaly. "Urges," yes. "Demands"? Hardly ever, if ever.

In the latest development, with Israel approving the construction of 900 housing units in occupied East Jerusalem, the U.S. expressed its "dismay," but naturally not wishing to go too far it urged "both parties" not to act unilaterally, just so Americans wouldn't notice that only one party was acting unilaterally. And as far as threatening to withdraw aid or saying U.S. support was not "open-ended" and might end unless Israel changes its behavior? Pull the other leg.