Left I on the News

No child left behind

Here's an excerpt from the report itself, describing some of the reasons for this success:

"In [one particular] study, Cuba had the highest level of student achievement and the smallest variation in parents' educational attainment. Detailed analyses of the LLECE data revealed several factors in Cuba's success, including universal day care, more prevalence of home educational activities, smaller class sizes, higher levels of school and classroom material resources, better-trained teachers, greater parental involvement in school, a strong classroom disciplinary climate and relatively few multigrade or ability-grouped classes."

If graffiti falls on a wall and no one sees it, does it make a sound?

"Nearly 15,000 residents have reentered Fallouja during the last week, military figures show. The returnees have been given the option of staying permanently or leaving by the end of the day.

"Military officials said they were not keeping track of how many were opting to stay."

Like the lack of counting of dead Iraqi civilians by the American military, this lack of counting those leaving Fallujah (which is almost certainly a lack of publicly admitting something which they know very well) has to do with hiding bad news. Because the returnees to Fallujah are finding the situation grim, to say the least. The lack of water and electricity is well-known. But it's a lot worse than that. Here's one story about three returning brothers, who were among those (I'm guessing nearly 100%) who didn't stay after returning:

"A gaping hole in the two-story house appeared to have been caused by a tank, whose tracks were visible in the mud, he said. Most of the furniture was smashed. 'Half my house was demolished,' Atiya said. In the kitchen, cabinets had been ripped from the walls, he said. Others were emptied of their contents, which lay in heaps on the floor. 'Every dish was broken, every cup, every plate, as if someone had just stood there breaking one dish after another,' said Atiya's brother Raaid Abbas, 37. 'Why?'

"The brothers don't know who ransacked the house, but they blame American troops, who they say left muddy boot prints. Military officials expressed sympathy with the plight of returning residents but said the blame should rest with militants who took control of the city and continued to hide among the population. 'Our forces never intentionally damage structures or homes,' said Wilson, the deputy operations officer. 'After all, we, in partnership with the [interim Iraqi government], will be at the forefront of assisting in the restoration and cleanup of Fallouja.'"

"Omar Khalil, 38, moved his family of eight about 10 days ago to a nearby Red Crescent compound because he was told Iraqi and US troops wanted to sweep through homes to make sure no insurgents were hiding there. They came back a week ago and found their home -- a living room and one bedroom -- destroyed by fire, along with all their contents. 'We were heartbroken,' said Khalil's wife Thana, 30. 'This is worse than the shelling and bombing.'

"The family survived the worst moments of the fighting and did not join the few hundred thousand people that fled the city before the start of the assault and settled in makeshift camps or with relatives.

"Every single home, shop and shed in Khalil's neighbourhood has a big 'x' mark sprayed in red to indicate that US and Iraqi forces have searched it. Some are burnt or simply levelled to the ground.

"'I saw them burn homes with my own eyes on the 14th (of December), there was no fighting, why?' said an angry Ismail Ibrahim Shaalan, 50.

"A US Marine admitted that in some cases they were forced to use 'alternative means' like torching or bombing homes they believed were being used as sanctuaries for insurgents. 'If we could not get in there we had to use alternative means,' said Sergeant John Cross.

"But an Iraqi soldier nearby admitted that in some cases Iraqi troops burnt homes if they found pro-insurgency literature or material."

"Hawkins told Khalil he can go to the mayor's office to file a claim or to Baghdad and receive $100 from reconstruction funds deposited at designated banks to tie him over until his application is processed."

But amidst all this, the U.S. authorities have their priorities straight - bringing "democracy" to Fallujah and Iraq. And what better way to do that than requiring every resident "to carry a small card outlining special new rules for the city," which ban cars...and graffiti. Well, that should certainly put an end to the insurgency.

Tariq Aziz...and his house

"A suicide bomber activated his car Monday at the entrance to the house of the leader of Iraq's biggest political party, killing at least 13 but leaving the cleric unharmed, his spokesman said.

"Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq was in his residence in Baghdad's Jadiriyah district when the explosion took place.

"The residence, where Hakim has his home and offices, was previously the house of Tariq Aziz, the former foreign minister and close aide to Saddam Hussein."

What a leader would do - and what a misleader does

By contrast, the donation-less Bush is looking for personal glory by announcing that he's leading a "coalition" to help coordinate relief efforts. God forbid he should just work with the U.N., the Red Cross, and others and not play a leading role, or at least pretend that he is.

Another slam dunk...post

I seem to be the only one to have noticed that this phrase, which is simply accepted as history, seems to be Bob Woodward's paraphrase of George Bush's paraphrase of whatever George Tenet allegedly told him. I'll just re-post a bit of what I posted back in October:

"How do we know [that Tenet called the case for WMD a 'slam-dunk']? Because Bob Woodward says so. And how does Bob Woodward know this? Does he have a tape? A transcript? Of course not. It's because George Bush, that paragon of veracity, says so. There is simply no reason to accept this 'history' as good coin. The fact that Tenet hasn't protested against the characterization proves nothing; he's demonstrated adequately that he's a loyal soldier, ready to take the fall, so even if he didn't say it, expecting him to say so publicly is probably more than one should expect.

"And even the phrase 'slam-dunk' is questionable. I haven't read the book, but here's how CNN (previous link) reported the story when the book was published:

"According to Woodward, Tenet reassured the president that 'it's a slam dunk case' that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.

"In his CBS interview, Woodward said he 'asked the president about this, and he said it was very important to have the CIA director, 'slam-dunk' is as I interpreted it, a sure thing, guaranteed.'"

"So, as I read that sentence, the very strong phrase 'slam-dunk' is actually Woodward's phrase, not Bush's; Bush may have said (or even implied) something far weaker.

Don't believe everything you read. Except on Left I on the News, of course. ;-)

The economy is...improving?

But wait, there's more, because the article actually includes new data about actual employment: "Employers added 112,000 jobs in November, down from 303,000 in October." Good news? Hardly. Especially once you adjust those numbers for "job-inflation",* in which case you realize this November's number was actually a loss of 38,000 job-inflation-adjusted jobs. "Hopeful Signs"? Sure, if that's the conclusion you wanted to draw before you started writing the article. Otherwise, I think not.

Footnotes:

* On Christmas I finally got around to reading two books that had been sitting around for a while, one of them being "Eats, Shoots & Leaves". In doing so I learned that it's an American custom to put commas and periods inside quotation marks, even when the material inside the quotation marks would not have had its own punctuation, as in the two examples above. The British, on the other hand, do what has always seemed more sensible to me - when you put quotes around a word or phrase like these, you put the punctuation outside the quotation marks. I've decided that I'm returning to my roots (at least the roots of my language, not my personal roots) and becoming British. From now on, punctuation outside! The third American revolution** starts now!

** Using Peter Camejo's (and no doubt others as well) description of the Civil War as the second American revolution.

Is Joe Scarborough an idiot?

Of course you know (and I knew) that it was none of that, they were in fact talking about the New York Times and how it just isn't covering enough of that good old "good news" from Iraq. One story they were talking about was some soldier (or Marine) who had died throwing himself on a grenade to save his men. Certainly a heroic act, although I don't know if it exactly qualifies as "good news."

The capper, however, Scarborough's piece de resistance as it were, was the fact that the Times apparently ran its article about bin Laden's recent statement, the one in which he called Zarqawi his deputy in Iraq, on page nine. This, according to Scarborough, from a paper which never tired of denying a link between Iraq and bin Laden, and here was the definitive proof of such a link and they were burying it.

Which returns us to the title question - is Joe Scarborough a complete idiot? Is he unaware that when people talk about a link between "Iraq" and bin Laden, which was one of the justifications for the invasion, that they weren't really referring to Iraq the country but to the then leadership of Iraq under Saddam Hussein? Is he aware that what people deny (because there is no evidence whatsoever) was a relationship between the Hussein regime and bin Laden before the invasion, not between bin Laden and anyone who might be in Iraq now, nearly two years later? And is he aware (as Colin Powell pretended not to be when he spoke to the U.N. urging support for the invasion) that Zarqawi, although he was in Iraq before the invasion, was in the part of Iraq controlled not by the central government but by America's allies?

As little respect as I have for Joe Scarborough, I really doubt he is unaware of any of these things. Instead, he's hoping that he has enough credibility with his audience that they will ignore all these inconvenient details, and simply absorb the simple message that the New York Times is "antiwar" based on this absurd analysis, and that those "liberal" media are undermining the "war effort" in Iraq.

U.S. aid to tsunami victims begins to flow...in the opposite direction

"At the airport in Bangkok, other governments had set up booths to greet nationals who had been affected and to help repatriate them, she said.

"That was not the case with the U.S. government, Wachs told her mother. It took the couple three hours, she said, to find the officials from the American consulate, who were in the VIP lounge.

"Because they had lost all their possessions, including their documentation, they had to have new passports issued.

"But the U.S. officials demanded payment to take the passport pictures, Helen Wachs said.

"The couple had managed to hold on to their ATM card, so they paid for the photos and helped other Americans who did not have any money get their pictures taken and buy food, Helen Wachs said."

"Finishing the job"; "Cutting and running"

Having just watched Control Room, George Bush's speech of March 17, 2003 was fresh in my mind. Some representative excerpts:

"For more than a decade, the United States and other nations have pursued patient and honorable efforts to disarm the Iraqi regime without war [sic]. That regime pledged to reveal and destroy all its weapons of mass destruction as a condition for ending the Persian Gulf War in 1991...It has uniformly defied Security Council resolutions demanding full disarmament...Peaceful efforts to disarm the Iraqi regime have failed again and again...Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised...Under [U.N.] Resolutions 678 and 687 -- both still in effect -- the United States and our allies are authorized [sic] to use force in ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction...Today, no nation can possibly claim that Iraq has disarmed...The United Nations Security Council has not lived up to its responsibilities, so we will rise to ours."

Meanwhile, Joe Lieberman is back in the news, drumming up support for the war and claiming "There’s not a single credible voice saying that we will cut and run." The fact that he feels the need to assert that so strongly is pretty clear evidence that it isn't true. Apparently Joe chooses to ignore both Pat Buchanan and Ralph Nader, both of whom have received a lot more votes for President than Joe, not to mention USA Today founder Al Neuharth. No, Joe, the voices that aren't credible are the voices like yours which claim that the U.S. should throw good money after bad, and good lives after bad. The voices calling for getting out now are getting louder, and more plentiful. And they have never lacked for credibility.

The tsunami in perspective

But let's keep things in perspective. Between 1991 and 2003, the United States, operating under the cover of the United Nations, intentionally and knowingly caused the deaths (we'll avoid the word "murder," but that's just a quibble) of at least a half million Iraqi children, and probably another half million Iraqis. And far from ever expressing any "loss and grief" over those deaths, the United States, in the person of Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, has announced that that was a price that was "worth it" and that "We shouldn't apologize because great countries don't have to do that." This, by the way, even after it is now known that the sanctions, which were put into place ostensibly to force Iraq to get rid of its weapons of mass destruction, had accomplished that task in 1991.

Tsunami - what a leader would do

If George Bush were a real leader, he would give a public speech, announce that he was donating $10,000 of his own considerable personal wealth to the Red Cross, and urge every American to donate a dollar to the same or similar cause. His example and his words could raise a hundred million dollars overnight. Why, he could even appeal to his rich friends to do the standard "matching fund" thing that charities always do, and double that figure.

And pigs might fly. George and his friends have better things to do with their money.

We're #1!

Just imagine what that percentage would be if the study included government/corporate media propaganda in the spam total, as it rightfully should be. Well, maybe not, spam isn't nearly as harmful. Or as deadly.

Health care under Capitalism

"How much does a Tylenol cost? In California, that depends on what hospital you're in.

"At some California hospitals, a tablet of Tylenol, or its generic version, acetaminophen, is billed at $5 or $5.50. Others charge $7, or even $9, for a single pill. One Los Angeles hospital charges just 12 cents a tablet, while at a few facilities it's free. The retail price of brand-name Tylenol is about eight or nine cents each. The generic goes for a nickel or less.

"Who will be asked to pay these list prices? Almost nobody except uninsured patients, says Mr. McGowan. 'These are the people who are handed a bill for these astronomical amounts,' he says."

"Take that ancient treatment the leech. It has made a comeback in medicine, but with a newfangled price. UC Davis and Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla are among those that use the creatures for certain treatments. The leech sucks blood in the course of delicate surgical procedures."

Posthumous Quote of the Day

"Where is the acknowledgment that this was not a 'cowardly' attack on 'civilization' or 'liberty' or 'humanity' or 'the free world' but an attack on the world's self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions?"

- Susan Sontag, writing about the 9/11 attacks

Reality distortion field

Virtually every single attack by Iraqi insurgents these days is heralded in the media as "an attempt to derail the upcoming elections." Not once have I heard an attack described as "an attempt to expel the American occupiers" or, perhaps less provocatively, as "an attempt to weaken the American resolve to continue their occupation of Iraq." Even today, when there were a series of attacks not on elected officials or candidates but Iraqi police and National Guard, a Reuters article links the attacks to bin Laden's message about the elections yesterday, notwithstanding the fact that bin Laden simply called for a boycott of the elections, and did not call for a "holy war" on elections on Reuters claims.

Not surprisingly, one of the few reporters to resist this trend is Knight-Ridder's Hannah Allam, who, even in writing about the attempted assassination of a leading Shiite candidate, writes that it was an "apparent attempt to thwart the Jan. 30 parliamentary elections," which, in the absence of any statement from the attackers describing their motives, is at least a reasonably honest way to report the event (omitting presumed motives entirely would be even better).

Elsewhere in the Middle East, Israel released some Palestinian prisoners. Earlier this month, Egypt freed an Israeli businessman who had been jailed on spying charges, and anyone with two brain cells to rub together knows this was a prisoner swap. But Israel never likes to admit to swapping prisoners, so they always have some other story. That's fair enough, but it doesn't mean that the media have to report it as such. Today's Los Angeles Times describes this prisoner release first as "an apparent effort to bolster the standing of the moderate interim Palestinian government led by Mahmoud Abbas", and second as being "intended to demonstrate goodwill toward Egypt" because of their freeing of the Israeli prisoner. Although reported in a news article, both of these claims are apparently a presumption on the part of the writer, since neither claim is attributed to anyone in the Israeli government. Indeed, Ha'aretz reports just the opposite: "Israel released 159 Palestinian prisoners yesterday in the framework of its deal with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak that saw the release of jailed Israeli citizen Azzam Azzam."

A mathematical puzzle

That's what we're being told in the Ukranian election, where in a two-person runoff election, the announced results have one candidate with 52 percent and the other with...44 percent? Huh? No wonder Yanukovich is crying fraud; I would be too if 4 percent of the electorate vanished into thin air.

Meanwhile, although news reports tell us that there is only a "preliminary full count" and that "official confirmation could take several days," the "democrat" in the election is denouncing his opponent for refusing to concede, claims he has "no right to remain in office," and is calling upon his supporters to physically blockade government buildings to prevent a cabinet meeting from taking place. Imagine what would happen if the big D Democrats in this country called on their supporters to do the same. Well, don't spend too much time thinking about it, it's not going to happen.

But if you come upon those missing 4 percent of Ukranian votes, do let me know, will you?

Quote of the Day (belated)

"We know that Al Jazeerah has a pattern of playing propaganda over and over and over again. What they do is when there's a bomb goes down they grab some children and some women and pretend that the bomb hit the women and the children. And it seems to me that it's up to all of us to try to tell the truth, to say what we know, to say what we don't know, and recognize that we're dealing with people that are perfectly willing to lie to the world to attempt to further their case. And to the extent that people lie, ultimately they are caught lying, and they lose their credibility, and one would think that it wouldn't take very long to happen dealing with people like this."

- Donald Rumsfeld, April 2003

"Welcome to my house, Mr. Bush. Look at this. Do you have any humanity? How can you accept seeing a little girl crying for her mother and father? Where is your humanity? Where is your conscience? Where is your God?"

I was frankly expecting more from the movie based on word-of-mouth when it was in the theatre. It's an interesting picture of Al Jazeerah and its people, but that's about it. The section on the bombing of Al Jazeerah offices in Baghdad and the resulting death of reporter Tarek Ayyoub leaves the American claim that they were "taking fire from the building" entirely unrebutted, despite the contradition between the American claim that they "weren't targetting the building," but were just responding to fire, with the fact that the building was attacked with a missile. The pulling down of the Saddam statue in Firdos Square is immediately spotted by the Al Jazeerah staff as a propaganda move, but the movie doesn't take even a few seconds to contrast that with the blind acceptance of the event in the Western media (or their "discovery" a year later that they were had; that might have happened too late for the movie). Comparing the coverage in the West to Rumsfeld's quote about playing propaganda "over and over and over again" would have been quite a powerful answer to his absurd charge against Al Jazeerah, but the movie doesn't do so.

Actually, I think the most interesting thing about the movie is the chance to revisit events from the initial phase of the war (the famous "major combat operations") in the light of a year and a half's experience. The quote from Rumsfeld above is one example (not that most of the people reading this blog didn't realize how self-referential that quote was even back in 2003). Another quote worth remembering is how George Bush announced the war, two days before it started:

"Saddam and his sons must leave Iraq within 48 hours. Their refusal to do so will result in military conflict commenced at a time of our choosing."

One interesting aspect of the movie is the reaction of the Al Jazeerah staff, all of whom (at least the ones who are part of the movie) are opposed to the invasion, but all of whom realize that the U.S. military will prevail. However not one of them gives any thought to the consequences of the occupation, and what is likely (or even possible) to happen after the "major combat" dies down.

Amazing song

But of all the music I've listened to in the last few days, one, which wasn't even a Christmas song (but it was part of a Christmas special), simply blew me away; so much so that I had to write about it here even though it's completely off-topic to what I normally write about. And that song was a version of Amazing Grace sung by the Blind Boys of Alabama to the tune of The House of the Rising Sun (still one of my favorite songs on the original Animals' LP, which you can listen to here). You can listen to a clip here, or buy the whole thing from the iTunes music store (or elsewhere too, I'm sure). Be sure to listen (or buy) the version that's on the album Spirit of the Century; there's another, completely different, version which did nothing to me.

For a more traditional version of the song, I'll still go with the Judy Collins' version. But the Blind Boys' version is not only a tour de force, it's simply an amazing Amazing Grace.

Political humor of the day

"Meanwhile, in another blow to the U.S.-led coalition effort in Iraq, Spain withdraws its troop, Sgt. Juan Hernandez. As violence in Iraq escalates, critics of the Bush administration charge that there are not enough U.S. soldiers over there. Administration officials heatedly deny this, arguing that the real problem is that there are too many Iraqis over there. In the words of one high-level official (who is not identified in press reports because of the difficulties involved in spelling 'Condoleezza') the administration 'may have to relocate the Iraqis to a safer area, such as Ecuador.' John Kerry calls this 'a ridiculous idea,' adding, 'I wholeheartedly endorse it.'"

Election roundup

In Palestine, local elections are going on, although the Presidential election is actually two weeks later, on January 9. If you limit yourself to the Western corporate media, you'd be unlikely to name a single candidate other than Mahmoud Abbas. Infrequent but invaluable blogger Lawrence of Cyberia has an extremely informative post about the other main candidate, the "other" Barghouti, Mustafa (the one who was beaten by Israeli troops a couple weeks ago). Well worth reading if you want to know who he is before he loses.

As in Palestine, in Ukraine there is only one candidate running as far as the Western corporate media is concerned, Yushchenko. Watching BBC World the other night, it was "Yuschchenko this," and "Yuschchenko supporters that." It's a wonder they're bothering to have an election with only one candidate. Yanukovich? Never heard of him. In the light of this, it's all the more remarkable that the New York Times actually ran a story the other day completely debunking the conventional "knowledge" (I can't call it "wisdom") that Yushchenko was poisoned with dioxin put into his soup at a dinner with the head of the Ukranian Secret Service. How on earth this "discouraging word" about Yushchenko slipped through is beyond me; no doubt the editor who let it happen has been disciplined and it won't happen again.

Again on "Christians"

Writing on CommonDreams yesterday, Vicar Giles Fraser notes about the kind of Christians I'm talking about:

"Nicene Christianity is the religion of Christmas and Easter, the celebration of a Jesus who is either too young or too much in agony to shock us with his revolutionary rhetoric. The adult Christ who calls his followers to renounce wealth, power and violence is passed over in favor of the gurgling baby and the screaming victim. As such, Nicene Christianity is easily conscripted into a religion of convenience, with believers worshipping a gagged and glorified savior who has nothing to say about how we use our money or whether or not we go to war."

Iraqis are better off today than under Saddam

And 250,000 Fallujans who no longer have homes to live in, or, if they do, they don't have electricity or water which would actually allow them to live in their homes.

And let's not forget the women, including blogger Riverbend, who once upon a time (i.e., before the invasion) used to be employed as a computer geek, and since the invasion barely is able to leave her home.

And of course who can forget the residents of Baghdad, who not only have to live with just a few hours of electricity a day, but also have to suffer the indignity of not being able to buy enough gasoline to run their generators for the remaining hours.

Not to mention the tens of thousands (estimates range up to 100,000, and that was before the recent assault on Fallujah) of Iraqis who are no longer living to see this "better day."

And then there are the 27-50 percent of Iraqis who are unemployed.

Oh, but don't worry, because things are due to get even "better," as you can see from this story:

"The United States is helping the interim Iraqi government continue to make major economic changes, including cuts to social subsidies, full access for U.S. companies to the nation's oil reserves and reconsideration of oil deals that the previous regime signed with France and Russia."

Quote of the Day

"I have to say I am not ecstatic about everything that happens in the United States either."

- Russian President Vladimir Putin, responding to criticism of events in Russia

Oh, and by the way - Vlad, you and me both.

The Washington Post wakes up

"Since the publication of photographs of abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison in the spring the administration's whitewashers -- led by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld -- have contended that the crimes were carried out by a few low-ranking reservists, that they were limited to the night shift during a few chaotic months at Abu Ghraib in 2003, that they were unrelated to the interrogation of prisoners and that no torture occurred at the Guantanamo Bay prison where hundreds of terrorism suspects are held. The new documents establish beyond any doubt that every part of this cover story is false.

"Though they represent only part of the record that lies in government files, the documents show that the abuse of prisoners was already occurring at Guantanamo in 2002 and continued in Iraq even after the outcry over the Abu Ghraib photographs.

"Army investigations of these crimes were shockingly shoddy: Officials lost records, failed to conduct autopsies after suspicious deaths and allowed evidence to be contaminated.

"The Bush administration refused to release these records to the human rights groups under the Freedom of Information Act until it was ordered to do so by a judge. Now it has responded to their publication with bland promises by spokesmen that any wrongdoing will be investigated. The record of the past few months suggests that the administration will neither hold any senior official accountable nor change the policies that have produced this shameful record. Congress, too, has abdicated its responsibility under its Republican leadership: It has been nearly four months since the last hearing on prisoner abuse. Perhaps intervention by the courts will eventually stem the violations of human rights that appear to be ongoing in Guantanamo, Iraq and Afghanistan. For now the appalling truth is that there has been no remedy for the documented torture and killing of foreign prisoners by this American government."

Missing the point

Attack in Iraq shows troops' vulnerability
"CAMP FALLUJAH, Iraq -- American troops in Iraq must work around a wide range of vulnerabilities: soft-skinned tents instead of concrete buildings, a shortage of body armor and open or unprotected vehicles."

What do "Americans" want?

I just called this a "linguistic sin" and "dishonest," but in reality, it's much more than that - a deliberate attempt to marginalize minority opinion, and, perhaps even more subtly, to label anyone who doesn't share the majority opinion on these questions as "not an American" or even "anti-American." If Americans think that fighting on is the only option, and you don't think so, then you must not be an American.

Indicative of this "silence the minority" concept is this section from the Times article:

"Some people said that polls themselves were part of the problem.

"Charlie Eubanks, a cotton farmer and lawyer from the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas, said he supported President Bush but had been lukewarm about going to war. Now, he said there was no choice but to fight on, and that reports on opinion polls were only 'aiding and abetting' the enemy by making opponents think the American will is weak."

No Bill, no Charlie, no New York Times, no CNN, we are not going to shut up and go away. So stop pretending that "Americans" agree with you. Some do. And some don't.

Followup: Cursor notes that the Times article cites a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll which asked about approval or disapproval of how things are going in Iraq, and asked for an opinion about sending more troops, but didn't even bother to ask about withdrawing troops.

Torture - the U.S. double standard

On December 2, in a report that has gone completely unmentioned in the press as far as I can tell, Amnesty International issued a stinging rebuke of American human rights practices, leading with this:

"If and when President Bush comes to sign his Human Rights Day proclamation this year, Amnesty International believes that an honest appraisal would require him to acknowledge that the USA has violated and undermined basic human rights principles and the rule of law during his first term in office and continues to be far from the global human rights champion it proclaims itself to be."

• China: "prolonged periods of solitary confinement, incommunicado detention, beatings, shackles, and other forms of abuse."
• Egypt: "Principal methods of torture reportedly employed by the police and the SSIS included victims being: stripped and blindfolded..."
• Indonesia: "psychological torture cases reportedly included food and sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation".
• Iran: "Some prisoners were held in solitary confinement or denied adequate food or medical care to force confessions."
• Jordan: "The most frequently reported methods of torture included beatings; sleep deprivation, extended solitary confinement, and physical suspension."
• Burma (Myanmar): "They routinely subjected detainees to harsh interrogation techniques designed to intimidate and disorient. There were reports in past years that prisoners were forced to squat or assume stressful, uncomfortable, or painful positions for lengthy periods."
• Pakistan: "sexual assault; prolonged isolation...denial of food or sleep..."

The real story of Christmas

"If the story were told today with Roman imperialism at its center, questions might arise about America's new self-understanding as an imperial power. A story of Jesus born into a land oppressed by a hated military occupation might prompt an examination of the American occupation of Iraq. A story of Jesus come decidedly to the poor might cast a pall over the festival of consumption."

Now you see them, now you don't

It goes without saying they scarcely remember the Iraqi dead, except when it serves George Bush's purpose. Hell, they won't even count those folks; that might imply they actually counted.

The media and their priorities

"The Economy is Improving. Then it's not. Then it is. Then it's not. Then it is. Then it's not. But Alan Greenspan says... and blah, blah, blah. Ah, stagnation. Only the U.S. media could make unemployment, high credit card debt, a sky-high federal deficit, kamikaze tax-cuts, a record trade imbalance, and sagging corporate profits appear rosy. Let's cut the crap: Capitalism is in a crisis that the Bush administration can't figure out how to fix. End of story."

Burying the lede, circling the wagons

"A document released for the first time today by the American Civil Liberties Union suggests that President Bush issued an Executive Order authorizing the use of inhumane interrogation methods against detainees in Iraq."

Now there are legitimate questions about whether the Executive Order referred to actually exists; the White House denies it. Nevertheless, the fact that there exist FBI documents which allege such an order is blockbuster news, right? Well, not according to the Washington Post, who buries that fact in the fifth paragraph of their story, and uses the phrase "presidential order" (lower case) and fails to include the name "Bush" in their story. Not according to the Los Angeles Times, who buries that fact in the tenth paragraph of their story. And definitely not according to the New York Times, which does not mention the Executive Order at all!

Yes, that's the same New York Times which in the same edition gives us this headline: "Bush Says Iraqis Aren't Yet Able to Quell Rebels" as if something which is obvious to the entire world becomes news because the President says so. How about "Bush Acknowledges Iraqis Aren't Yet Able to Quell Rebels"? Too confrontational and anti-establishment? Evidently so. Has anyone seen that famous liberal media? I'm afraid it disappeared long before today's lede did.

Update: Knight-Ridder follows the lead of the New York Times in completely omitting any mention of the Executive Order.

Update 2: I can't watch all the channels at once, but jumping between CNN, CNN Headline News, CNBC, Fox News, and MSNBC this morning, I haven't seen any mention of either aspect of the story, neither the new evidence of torture nor the allegation of the existence of an Executive Order authorizing torture.

"Free nations are peaceful nations"

Bush II: Afghanistan, Iraq
Clinton: Somalia, Iraq, Yugoslavia
Bush I: Iraq, Panama
Reagan: Grenada, Libya
Carter: Nicaragua (by proxy)
Ford: East Timor (U.S. weapons, with permission)
Nixon: Vietnam, Chile
Johnson: Vietnam
Kennedy: Cuba, Vietnam

Two out of five Americans agree - U.S. out of Iraq!

Presidential security

That's what it looks like in Iraq (at least, if you allow me the liberty of calling Allawi the "president"). Will it come to that in the U.S.? No, but only because in the U.S. they use a much wider security perimeter so the weapons-toting guards aren't in frame:

"President Bush will be sworn in next month for a second term amid the tightest security in inaugural history, with police planning to search every one of the tens of thousands of people expected to line the parade route...And there will be more Washington streets closed and more security fencing than ever to create a large buffer zone...extra security measures include bomb-sniffing dogs, sophisticated sensors to detect chemical, radiological or biological material, and expanded use of police helicopters and military aircraft. Thousands of police officers from the Washington suburbs and other cities will help with traffic, crowd control and other duties...More will be ready to respond behind the scenes. The FBI, for example, will have investigators, evidence technicians, hostage-rescue teams, heavily armed SWAT personnel, hazardous-materials experts and bomb technicians in place."

Bush would like to keep demonstrators from spoiling his day, as they did in 2000, but ANSWER is doing their best to make sure that Bush doesn't get his way. Despite having thus far been refused permits for demonstration areas along Pennsylvania Avenue (applied for 11 months ago!), and despite indications that there will be illegal attempts to prevent people from carrying signs, and despite the fact that the private "Presidential Inauguration Committee," in cooperation with the National Park Service, is doing its best to privatize Pennsylvania Avenue and restrict it to paying customers (and "customers" is the right word, since many of them expect something in return), ANSWER is expecting to mobilize thousands of people to defend the right to free speech and tell George Bush (and tell the world) what the American people, and the world, think of George Bush and his policies.

Incidentally, AP should read their own articles. The one linked above on the security measures ends by saying "So far no mass demonstration is planned for next month," while another AP article on the same day describes ANSWER's plans for a demonstration.

It is indicative of the weasel-like nature of the Administration that they hide behind the fact that they haven't yet denied any permits that were applied for:

"'The inauguration is on Jan. 20 and it's not even Dec. 20 yet,' [Bill Wine, a spokesman for the National Park Service] said. 'It is expected that a lot of permits will be finalized in the next two or three weeks.'"

Some people are urging a silent demonstration at the inauguration, the "Turn Your Back on Bush" movement. ANSWER are urging the opposite. Don't give up the right to use your voice, even if turning your back is a form of free speech. Don't give up the right to hold up a sign expressing your viewpoint. Do not be silent while the people of Iraq, and Afghanistan, and Haiti are led to the slaughter. Do not be silent while the people of Iran and North Korea and Cuba are put into the crosshairs. Do not be silent while the people of the United States see their schools and hospitals and libraries closed, their jobs lost, their benefits reduced, their civil liberties taken away. Do not be silent.

Getting your news in a timely manner

In that same article, Hackworth reported with somewhat less evidence that the same was true of condolence letters being sent out by George Bush. Don't look for that story to appear in the media, though. No part of the Washington establishment has the knives out for Bush, so it's unlikely they'll be investigating that aspect of the story (not that they investigated the Rumsfeld story either; it was Hackworth and Stars & Stripes who get credit for that). Sounds like a perfect question for Helen Thomas to be asking at the next press conference, though.

Remember Fallujah?

"The US-backed government put rebel losses at more than 2,000, although unit commanders later revealed their troops had orders to shoot all males of fighting age seen on the streets, armed or unarmed, and ruined homes across the city attest to a strategy of overwhelming force."

Free and fair elections

"A judge Friday granted a state Republican Party request to block the counting of hundreds of recently discovered King County [Washington] ballots in the governor's race, which the GOP's candidate is winning by 43 votes.

"Early this week, county workers found 573 ballots that elections officials say were mistakenly rejected because there was a problem with how the voters' signatures had been scanned into the county's computer system. County workers should have checked for a paper signature to verify the ballot during the original count, but instead they were put in the reject pile."

Of course, I could say this is some kind of cosmic justice, or "what goes around comes around." The Democrats did their own best to make sure the most recent election wasn't a proper representation of the voters' wishes by expending millions of dollars and hundreds of hours of effort to keep Ralph Nader off the ballot.

Not, of course, that any election where money plays such a dominating role could possibly be truly "free and fair."

Capitalism kills

"Thousands of Americans are getting sick and many are dying each year from prescription drugs that were pushed onto the U.S. market ahead of the rest of the world.

"A Knight Ridder analysis shows that as the number of new drugs given first to Americans has increased, the reports of drug-induced ailments have soared. Yet, even as the deaths and damage have increased, the Food and Drug Administration has never instituted an aggressive system to track the safety of drugs once they are on the market."

PTSD

Here's just one story from the article, which I recommend in its entirety:

"The first time Kristin Peterson's husband hit her, she was asleep in their bed. She awoke that night a split second after Joshua's fist smashed into her face and ran, terrified and crying, to the bathroom to wipe the blood spurting from her nose.

"When she stuck her head back into the bedroom, there he was--punching at the air, muttering how she was coming after him and how he was going to kill her. Kristin started yelling but Joshua's eyes were closed. He was still asleep.

"The next morning Joshua saw the dried blood on his wife. 'Oh God,' she recalls him saying. 'I did that.'

"Peterson doesn't remember the night or the nightmares. He also can't remember punching his wife again in his sleep a few weeks later, this time driving her front tooth through her lip, all the while murmuring how he'd never go back.

"For six months last year, Peterson helped build an oil pipeline across Iraq as a specialist in the Army's 110th Quartermaster Company. On the same highway where Private Jessica Lynch was ambushed, he saw Iraqi soldiers, dead and rotting, dangling out of their tanks. Peterson's truck once broke down as it was surrounded by a group of Iraqi children, some throwing rocks, others toting AK-47s. 'I kept thinking, 'God, I can't handle this,'' the 24-year-old says with a hollow laugh.

"Since Peterson returned to Richmond Hill, Ga., in August 2003, these memories have turned him into a man Kristin often doesn't recognize--a man who lashes out in anger at her and their 21-month-old son, whose awful dreams tell him to beat his wife because, in his sleep, she's an Iraqi.

"There are thousands of Operation Iraqi Freedom soldiers across the country like Joshua Peterson. They are coming home with minds twisted by what they've seen and done in Iraq.

"A December 2003 Army study -- published in The New England Journal of Medicine -- found that approximately 16 percent of soldiers returning from Iraq were suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a psychologically debilitating condition causing intense nightmares, paranoia and anxiety. But that study is, already, out of date.

"After a particularly bloody summer and fall, many military and mental health experts predict the rate of PTSD will actually run nearly twice what the Army study found, approximately the same level suffered by Vietnam veterans. Others think it could spike even higher and note that rarely before has such a dramatic rate of PTSD manifested itself so early."

Elections in Iraq

"With most groups acknowledging that the insurgency will make it largely impossible to hold Western-style rallies, campaigning is expected to consist mainly of television pitches. That arena may favor Dr. Allawi, with easier access to the country's two main broadcast television channels, one of them government-operated and the other American-financed.

"Dr. Allawi's campaign started on an unpropitious note, when American and Iraqi forces closed off sections of central Baghdad so he could leave the Green Zone and cross the Tigris River to declare his candidacy at a sports club. But Western reporters judged the three-mile journey to be too hazardous in the bus provided by Allawi aides, and remained behind.

"Five hours later, he stood before fewer than 60 people, about half of whom were his own aides. With American bodyguards in flak jackets and cradling automatic weapons patrolling the club's auditorium, Dr. Allawi read a brief statement and returned hastily to the Green Zone."

Read the fine print

The other strange statement in this article, which I haven't read anywhere else (partially because the details of this "plan" have been less than forthcoming, since there really isn't an actual plan), is this: "The president wants to let younger workers invest part of their Social Security taxes, probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 2 percent, in the stock market and other investment vehicles." That's it? Two percent? And with that minuscule change, I'm supposed to believe that on the one hand there is going to be a huge crisis requiring borrowing two trillion dollars, and on the other hand that the entire Social Security "problem: will disappear by "wisely" investing just two percent of the taxes. Something doesn't add up.

Quote of the Day & Repulsive Headline of the Day

"The real threat to the life of the nation, in the sense of a people living in accordance with its traditional laws and political values, comes not from terrorism but from laws such as these."

- Leonard Hoffman, one of eight British justices who ruled 8-1 against a British law allowing for the indefinite detention without trial of "suspected foreign terrorists"

How about a headline like "Human rights upheld in Britain" or "British justices strike a blow against the unrestricted power of the state"? Or even a neutral headline like "Indefinite detention outlawed in Britain"(The Washington Post, whose story this is, used the relatively neutral headline "British Court Deals Blow to Terror Law"). Instead, we have a headline which immediately turns the reader against the decision, making sure that the reader knows that the paper thinks this was a bad decision (and subconsciously encouraging the reader to feel the same way).

Quote of the Day

"We will continue to make it clear to both Syria and Iran that ... meddling in the internal affairs of Iraq is not in their interests."

- George Bush (Source)

Surprise! Tom Hurndall was murdered in cold blood

"The Israeli soldier on trial for killing the British peace activist Tom Hurndall in the Gaza Strip has admitted he was lying when he said his victim was carrying a gun, but said he was under orders to open fire even on unarmed people.

"Sergeant Idier Wahid Taysir is charged with manslaughter for shooting Mr Hurndall, 22, as he tried to shelter children on the edge of Rafah from Israeli army gunfire in April last year. He died of his injuries in January.

"Sgt Taysir told the army investigators he had opened fire at Mr Hurndall because the Briton was on the edge of the security zone, carrying a weapon and wearing camouflage clothing.

"In fact, he had not entered the closed zone, had no gun and was wearing a bright orange jacket."

"The military investigation initially cleared Sgt Taysir but was reopened under pressure from Mr Hurndall's family and the Foreign Office after the army's account of the shooting was shown to be false."

Kookie Sean & Ollie - the view from Cupertino

(Source)

The dioxin drama

But all that was just my speculation, and natural cynicism about anything I read in the corporate media. Today, Justin Raimondo at Antiwar.com makes the case that the whole business is a fraud, based not on speculation but on actual evidence. Evidence like the fact that the "doctor" who has been making these pronouncements is actually the head of the clinic, and that the doctor who actually was in charge of the case, who evidently didn't agree with the announced conclusion, resigned five days ago. There's more (like the fact that no one in recorded history has died of dioxin poisoning), and you can read the column to get the details. Suffice it to say, if you fell for this tale...withhold judgment until further notice.

Followup: Tom Tomorrow reports that Dick Morris was on Sean Hannity's radio show yesterday, claiming responsibility for having orchestrated the revelation that Yushchenko was poisoned. The credibility of the allegation moves yet another notch downward.

Laci Peterson was just one of many

But the only reason I'm posting on this subject at all, which as I said didn't particularly interest me, is something I heard on CNN's NewsNight tonight. According to them, and I have no reason to doubt this, murder is now the leading cause of death of pregnant women in the United States! And that, my friends, is a rather shocking demonstration of something. I'm not quite sure what - the real level of "values" that permeates our culture, the attitude of far too many men towards women, the number of men returning from service in the military with a cavalier attitude towards murder and totally messed up minds - you can fill in the blank yourself. But for sure it's nothing to be proud of.

NewsNight, incidentally, didn't mention the military connection, even though men who were involved in combat are three times more likely to commit spousal abuse, including murder, than men who were not.

The "Disappeared" in Iraq

Supporting the troops

Watching CNN do a story on homeless Iraq veterans (not to be confused with homeless Iraqi veterans), I read the following subhead on the screen: "300,000 veterans are homeless on any given night." Is there any other country in the world about which such a statement could be made? I seriously doubt it. When the President and the right-wing urge me to "support the troops," they have about as much credibility as they did when they claimed there were WMD in Iraq. Or when they claim to support the "right to life," but don't bother to support that right for anyone who's already born.

Support Left I on the News

And don't forget to visit some of our favorites, listed over to the right. Some of them definitely deserve to be nominated in some of the categories too.

Political humor of the day

"The Pentagon is engaged in bitter, high-level debate over how far it can and should go in managing or manipulating information to influence opinion abroad, senior Defense Department civilians and military officers say.

"Critics of the proposals say such deceptive missions could shatter the Pentagon's credibility, leaving the American public and a world audience skeptical of anything the Defense Department and military say - a repeat of the credibility gap that roiled America during the Vietnam War.

R.I.P. Gary Webb

Gary Webb took his own life yesterday at age 49. Webb is the reporter who broke the story of the "Dark Alliance" between the CIA and the Contras in Nicaragua, which led directly to a crack cocaine epidemic in the United States. Based primarily on the CIA "investigating itself" and pronouncing itself innocent, Webb was thrown overboard by his paper, the San Jose Mercury News, and his career as a journalist destroyed. There is no immediately known "reason" for his suicide, but surely had he become a celebrated investigative reporter, as he deserved to be, his life would have taken a different path.

Update: Tom Tomorrow on Gary Webb, from 1996:

Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! interviews Webb in 1998 (replayed today)

Counterpunch discusses Webb and posts an article he wrote for them in 2001, including the following quote:

"To this day, no one has ever been able to show me a single error of fact in anything I've written about this drug ring, which includes a 600-page book about the whole tragic mess."

Some countries take pride in vaccinating their citizens

"The achievements of the vaccination program for the Cuban population following the triumph of the Revolution in 1959 have been described as 'impressive' by U.S. Dr. Jon Kim Andrus, head of the Vaccinations Unit at the WHO/PAHO in Washington who, together with a team of experts has recently carried out an international evaluation of the National Immunization Program in our country.

"After paying tribute to Cuban scientist Tomas Romay - who introduced the first vaccine ever to be discovered in the world, namely the anti-smallpox vaccine - Andrus, a family doctor and epidemiologist in public health, outlined the impact of the results achieved by our country with the immunization programs.

"From 1962 to date, we have eliminated polio, diphtheria, measles, whooping cough, rubella and mumps. Also eradicated in severe clinical form are childhood tetanus, tubercular meningitis in children under one year, and serious complications in congenital rubella and meningoencephalitis posparotiditis.

"He also mentioned other conditions which are no longer a serious problem in Cuba - with infection rates of 0.1 per 100,000 inhabitants - including tetanus and hemophilus influenzae (a bacterial agent that causes meningitis and pneumonias during the first years of life) or other diseases that have been significantly reduced such as typhoid, meningococcus diseases and hepatitis B."