Left I on the News  

David Kay

"O'BRIEN: All right. Meanwhile, in Iraq, you have people like Scott Ritter coming forward and saying, There's nothing really to worry about with Saddam Hussein, there's no proof of any of the allegations that the administration has brought forward. How much credence should we give the likes of Scott Ritter?

"KAY: Well, I -- dealing not with Scott as an individual but with anyone who would take that position, there are, I think, two answers. There's a lot of proof, that is, the proof of failure to allow inspectors in, and failure to allow inspectors, once in, to conduct inspections in an unfettered manner.

"Of the second issue that is there is, look, the lack of hard evidence, particularly over the last four years, is because inspectors haven't been in and Saddam has engaged in deception and concealment efforts of an unparalleled status."

What I want to know is this - why is David Kay now someone who has become a reliable source? This is a man who admits that "we [he and his colleagues] were all wrong," yet all sorts of people now want to quote him. For example, from the most recent Democratic debate, this is Tom Brokaw questioning Howard Dean:

"You said that the books were cooked. Cooking the books means that there was a fraud of some kind, in an attempt to achieve something that wasn't in fact true. David Kay has said that that wasn't the case. He thinks the president was just simply abused by the intelligence agencies."

The last thing the media, who were a willing participant in the fraud which drove the U.S. to war, want to admit is that there were people like Scott Ritter, and many more (although few on their "approved" list of "mainstream" guests that are heralded as "experts" on their talk shows), who were telling the truth before the invasion.

The "honest broker"

"The United States has filed a formal brief with the International Court of Justice in The Hague, urging the court to refuse a U.N. General Assembly request for a ruling on barrier in the West Bank. The U.N. body voted overwhelmingly last month to ask the court for an opinion on the legality of the Israeli project."

Andrew Gilligan turns tail for truth-telling

"I am today resigning from the BBC. I and everyone else involved here have for five months admitted the mistakes we made. We deserved criticism. Some of my story was wrong, as I admitted at the inquiry, and I again apologise for it. My departure is at my own initiative. But the BBC collectively has been the victim of a grave injustice.

"If Lord Hutton had fairly considered the evidence he heard, he would have concluded that most of my story was right. The Government did sex up the dossier, transforming possibilities and probabilities into certainties, removing vital caveats; the 45-minute claim was the 'classic example' of this; and many in the intelligence services, including the leading expert in WMD, were unhappy about it.

"This report casts a chill over all journalism, not just the BBC's. It seeks to hold reporters, with all the difficulties they face, to a standard that it does not appear to demand of, for instance, Government dossiers. I am comforted by the fact that public opinion appears to disagree with Lord Hutton and I hope this will strengthen the resolve of the BBC.

"The report has imposed on the BBC a punishment far out of proportion to its or my mistakes, which were honest ones. It is hard to believe now that this all stems from two flawed sentences in one unscripted early-morning interview, never repeated, when I said that the Government "probably knew" that the 45-minute figure was wrong.

"I attributed this to David Kelly; it was in fact an inference of mine. It has been claimed that this was the charge which went round the world, but a cuttings check shows that it did not even get as far as a single Fleet Street newspaper. Nor did the Government mention it in its first three letters of complaint.

"In my view, this helps explain why neither I nor the BBC focused on this phrase as we should have. I explicitly made clear, in my broadcasts, that the 45-minute point was based on real intelligence. I repeatedly said also that I did not accuse the Government of fabrication, but of exaggeration. I stand by that charge, and it will not go away.

"I love the BBC and I am resigning because I want to protect it. I accept my part in the crisis which has befallen the organisation. But a greater part has been played by the unbalanced judgments of Lord Hutton."

A review of the executive summary of the "dodgy dossier" is helpful to remind us of the claims of the British government:

"As a result of the intelligence we judge that Iraq has:"

• continued to produce chemical and biological agents
• military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, including against its own Shia population. Some of these weapons are deployable within 45 minutes of an order to use them.
• developed mobile laboratories for military use, corroborating earlier reports about the mobile production of biological warfare agents
• sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa, despite having no active civil nuclear power programme that could require it

Outrageous statement of the day

"Reverend Sharpton, there is a great war going on in the world between the West and the Nation of Islam."

Don't read this while eating or drinking...

"The U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad wants to hire an advertising agency to sell the Iraqi public on its plans for a new democratic government, even as U.S. officials and Iraqi leaders struggle to decide whether that government should be formed through elections, caucuses or some combination.

"The occupation authority invited advertising agencies with Middle East experience to 'prepare a proposal for planning, developing and executing a full communications plan in support of the Iraq electoral process.' Bidders were given six days to formulate their programs, and their proposals were due today.

"The bid solicitation said the winning agency should be prepared to educate the Iraqi people on the 'caucus/electoral process leading to a democratically elected government in Iraq' and should devise a campaign to 'inform and educate the Iraqi people about the transition to sovereignty.'

"The request for proposals said the winning agency is to develop a 'branding' symbol and slogan for the transition along with 'informational campaign products,' including tapes for use in radio and television advertisements.

The plan is to 'educate the Iraqi population in a non-propaganda style about the electoral process,' said the occupation authority's request. Once the transition takes place, the campaign 'is to quickly motivate the Iraqi people to express a positive attitude and participate in the process in order to make it a successful initiative.'

I don't know who's getting this contract, but it's pretty clear the fix was in. Six days to respond to the proposal? Educating people about the "electoral process" (in a "non-propaganda style," mind you!) is, of course, pretty funny when the U.S. wants to talk about an appointed government, or at best an election where the voters were all selected by a foreign power. But my favorite part is "motivating the Iraqi people to express a positive attitude." Do you suppose that will include training in the proper pronunciation of "Yes, massah"?

Save Kevin Cooper

And while you're at it, listen or re-listen to Bob Dylan's powerful song "Hurricane" (Lyrics and downloadable music here), a song written while Rubin "Hurricane" Carter was himself still awaiting the death sentence, and which was a small part of the effort which saved Carter's life. Or go rent or re-rent the great movie Hurricane featuring Denzel Washington as Carter. No songs or movies (yet) about Kevin Cooper, but the travesty of justice would appear to be as great or greater than occured to Carter.

Followup: Schwarzenegger denies clemency, saying that he saw no reason to overturn state and federal courts, and that "evidence establishing his guilt is overwhelming." It's hard to believe he read the material referenced above, which would cause any honest person to have serious doubts, not just about Cooper's guilt, but about the fairness of the police and prosecution which put him where he is.

Fun from Tom Tomorrow, today

Unfortunately, to use another phrase well known to an earlier generation, T'aint funny, McGee. Bush lied, people died (and continue to die).

Colin Powell, now and then

"Powell acknowledged that the United States thought deposed leader Saddam Hussein had banned weapons, but added, 'We had questions that needed to be answered.'"

"While we were here in this Council chamber debating Resolution 1441 last fall, we know, we know from sources that a missile brigade outside Baghdad was dispersing rocket launchers and warheads containing biological warfare agent to various locations, distributing them to various locations in western Iraq.

"Most of the launchers and warheads had been hidden in large groves of palm trees and were to be moved every one to four weeks to escape detection.

"We know that Iraq has at least seven of these mobile, biological agent factories.

"There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more. And he has the ability to dispense these lethal poisons and diseases in ways that can cause massive death and destruction.

"Saddam Hussein has chemical weapons." [Emphasis added]

"Most U.S. experts think they are intended to serve as rotors in centrifuges used to enrich uranium." [Emphasis added]

More phantom weapons of mass destructon

BROKAW: Senator Lieberman, do you think that Libya would have given up its weapons of mass destruction if the United States had not invaded Iraq?

LIEBERMAN: It's a very important question. I seriously doubt whether Libya would have given up its weapons of mass destruction if we had not overthrown Saddam Hussein.

I seriously doubt if the Iranians would have allowed international inspectors come in and looked at their nuclear weapons sites if we had not done that.

Followup: USA Today, in an editorial today, makes the same erroneous claim that Libya had weapons of mass destruction.

More from Condo-lie-zza

"I think that what we have is evidence that there are differences between what we knew going in and what we found on the ground."

Real humanitarians

We are told that "the US Defence Department said the boys no longer posed a threat to the United States, and they had no further value as suspects for interrogation." Right. So they posed a threat a year ago? Or they actually ever had "value as suspects"? Not bloody likely, as someone from Britain would say. Of course, an admission from the U.S. government that they made a mistake, or did something outrageous, or violated international law, would be way too much to expect.

Kevin Moore looks at the primaries

Copyright 2004 Kevin Moore

Spinning the economic news

"The department said its closely watched four-week moving average, considered a more reliable gauge of labor market health because it smooths out volatility, rose 750 to 346,000."

Evolving...backwards

"Georgia students could graduate from high school without learning much about evolution, and may never even hear the word uttered in class.

"New middle and high school science standards proposed by state Schools Superintendent Kathy Cox strike references to 'evolution' and replace them with the term 'biological changes over time,' a revision critics say will further weaken learning in a critical subject.

Just say no to Nader?

Condo-lie-zza speaks

"She [Rice] put the blame for any [intelligence] gaps on looters and former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, whom she said was so secretive that 'he allowed the world to continue to wonder' what weapons he still had."

"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."

"Critics say the administration did little to secure sensitive sites immediately after the invasion, undercutting efforts to find the alleged weapons at the center of Bush's case for going to war."

Looters may have destroyed records, but they neither took nor destroyed any WMD, because there were no WMD. None.

Followup: NY Times vs. NY Times. The Reuters story above, published in the Times, is headlined "Bush Aide Acknowledges Some Flaws in Iraq Intelligence." The Times own story, now out, has quite a different headline: "Bush Aide Leads White House Offensive on Iraqi Weapons." Different headline, but the same old lies. Among the lies in this one:

"The president's judgment to go to war was based on the fact that Saddam Hussein had for 12 years defied the international community, refused to account for large stockpiles of weapons."

"Nobody could count on the good will of Saddam Hussein to tell us that he did not have anthrax or botulinum toxin. He didn't even try."

Not only doesn't the Times attempt to set the record straight, but they compound the problem by making this into a political question:

"Some Democrats [say] that Mr. Bush took the United States to war based on intelligence that was inadequate. Some Democrats have gone further, accusing the White House of manipulating intelligence."

Misleaders

The Bush (and Blair) administrations didn't deliberately mislead the world? Please. Don't insult our intelligence.

The only thing more offensive than Sneider's claim is the headline under which it appears: "Whatever the WMD oops factor, Bush rushed into war with Iraq." How clever. How about "Whatever the lies about WMD, tens of thousands are dead and wounded as a result"?

A funny evening

Flipping channels, I discovered Bill Maher guesting on Larry King. Maher definitely can be funny, at least some of the time, and also isn't afraid to express controversial opinions (e.g., "Religion is the worst thing that's ever happened to mankind" - paraphrasing). Discussing Iraqi WMD, Maher talked about how it was completely obvious that Bush had lied, but "we should move on." After all, he said, no one remembers how you got into a war, it's only the results that are important, and if years from now Iraq is a democracy and democracy is spreading throughout the Middle East, Bush will be remembered as having done a great thing. Well, that's an opinion I couldn't disagree with more completely, but he has a right to his opinion. What he doesn't have a right to is to spread lies in support of it. Talking about the Democrats vs. Bush, he said "Well, lefty Kucinich wants to get the U.S. out of Iraq immediately. Bush wants to get us out in four months. So that's the difference between the Democrats and Bush - just four months." Surely an intelligent guy like Maher should know that's nonsense, even if it hadn't just appeared in the press that the U.S. military is planning for troops in Iraq until at least 2006. Anyone expecting U.S. troops to be out of Iraq in four months is naive at best, and just plain stupid at worst. I don't think Maher is either.

I closed out the evening with Jon Stewart on the Daily Show. Stewart really is funny, and his show is funny, but for the second straight evening I had to watch a mostly fawning interview with some right-winger. Two nights ago it was the despicable Richard Perle, calmly talking about the need to invade more countries, last night it was Christie Whitman, calmly talking about how Bush really has the best interests of the environment at heart. Yes, Stewart will occasionally ask the most mildly challenging question to such a person, but they're always tossed up as softballs, easily batted back. I haven't kept track, but I definitely think that over the course of time he has had far more right-wing figures on his show (Kissinger, Albright, etc.) than progressive ones. But at least he's funny!

Giving new meaning to the word "irony"

We don't really know if the BBC report was true or false (that is to say, regardless of what Lord Hutton thinks, we don't really know if Tony Blair knew the dossier was false), although to me, unlike Lord Hutton, it seems almost certain it was true (because, like claims by George Bush, the British government claims were presented as absolute certainties, rather than estimates or "considered opinions" or "likely possibilities," and it is virtually certain that they knew that they did not really know this information with such certainty). We do know for sure that the British government report was false, that is, we know for certain that Iraq did not have any such weapons ready to launch at 45-minutes notice (or any notice, for that matter). These obvious facts don't seem to have perturbed Lord Hutton.

Official reports are great for producing testimony which can be examined by independent people for the truth. But expecting official commissions to actually produce anti-establishment results, like concluding that a right-wing conspiracy including CIA agents killed John F. Kennedy, is too much to expect. The ruling class has far too much experience in circling the wagons.

The 23-minute mystery

For those who are conspiracy theorists, or just appreciate good music, Left I on the News recommends a visit to David Rovics' website; scroll down and read the lyrics and/or listen to the song "Reichstag Fire" (listening is better, it's a great song!).

Here's the chorus:

I am left to wonder
As the flames are reaching higher
Was this our latest Lusitania
Or another Reichstag Fire?

Bush lies, people die

"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." [Emphasis added]"

Open season on Palestinians

"Israeli soldiers shot dead at least nine Palestinians, five of them Islamic Jihad gunmen, during fierce gunbattles that erupted when tanks raided the edge of Gaza City early on Wednesday, a Palestinian hospital official said.

"The Islamic Jihad militant group said at least five of its fighters were killed in the deadliest Israeli raid in Gaza for at least one month. The others killed in the incident were an 11-year-old boy and three workers at the scene."

There's nothing in the article about "searching for tunnels" or anything like that, because this invasion occured in the middle of Gaza, not at the southern end. It was simply "an operation," also known as an invasion - Gaza is not part of Israel. These "militants," these "fighters," were simply defending their homeland against a foreign invasion. Will we hear a single U.S. politician speak out against this massacre? Will a single U.S. newspaper editorialize against it, and against the U.S. financial support which makes it all possible? I'll make this quiz simple - the answer is "no."

George Bush, WMD, and the obsequious press

Q: "Mr. President, a year ago you said the dictator of Iraq has got weapons of mass destruction. Are you still confident that weapons of mass destruction will be found in Iraq, given what Dr. Kay has said?"

PRESIDENT BUSH: "Let me first compliment Dr. Kay for his work. I appreciate his willingness to go to Iraq and I appreciate his willingness to gather facts. And the Iraq Survey Group will continue to gather facts.

"There is no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein was a gathering threat to America and others. That's what we know. We know from years of intelligence -- not only our own intelligence services, but other intelligence gathering organizations -- that he had weapons -- after all, he used them. He had deep hatred in his heart for people who love freedom. We know he was a dangerous man in a dangerous part of the world. We know that he defied the United Nations year after year after year. And given the events of September the 11th, we know we could not trust the good intentions of Saddam Hussein, because he didn't have any.

"There is no doubt in my mind the world is a better place without Saddam Hussein. America is more secure, the world is safer, and the people of Iraq are free.

Note also, by the way, the obsequious way in which the question itself was phrased by the (unknown) reporter, who could have easily asked Bush to comment on a statement he made on the eve of the invasion on March 17, 2003, the statement which the Daily Show showed its viewers in its "Moment of Zen":

"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." [Emphasis added]

"And then we went to the United Nations, of course, and got an overwhelming resolution -- 1441 -- unanimous resolution, that said to Saddam, you must disclose and destroy your weapons programs, which obviously meant the world felt he had such programs. He chose defiance. It was his choice to make, and he did not let us in." [Emphasis added]

Followup: As an example of the way the issue is treated in the press, the New York Times has a long article covering the news conference. Their language about Bush's response to the WMD question? "Mr. Bush did not answer directly." How quaint of them. The fact is that he did not answer at all. And, as mentioned above, they didn't even take note of the absurd "he did not let [the inspectors] in" remark. Evidently that was too much even to cover up with a fawning statement, so they took the alternative route and simply ignored it.

Knight-Ridder uses a different, but still inaccurate, formulation - "Bush declined to answer directly." He did decline to answer, but the suggestion that he somehow did answer, just "indirectly," is simply false, compounded by the totally unjustified headline over the story - "Bush backs down on weapons." He did no such thing. And again, no mention of the "did not let us in" remark.

MyDoom Virus

Continuing to use Windows after it screws you, time and time again, year after year, is like continuing to vote for Democrats and Republicans. Every year they tell you - "listen, we know the last version sucked, but the next version will be better!" And year after year, people continue to hope it will be, because they refuse to consider the alternatives.

Jewish Nazis

And to add to the picture of "things that you don't see in the paper," another reminder from Left I on the News that back on December 29 Israel announced they were going to remove four "unauthorized" outposts from the West Bank. As far as I can tell, that story, like so many others, has vanished into thin air, with no actual actions having resulted. Of course, since it hasn't happened, it hasn't been in the press, so we're left with the impression formed by the last time it was in the press, which is the impression that it was going to happen. Again, as far as I can tell, it didn't.

Et tu, Cheney?

"Dick Cheney, US vice-president, on Tuesday defended the US decision to invade Iraq but, in a notable shift of emphasis, he left open the question of whether Saddam Hussein had possessed weapons of mass destruction - a claim he made repeatedly before the war.

"In his first public response to David Kay, who resigned last Friday as the chief US arms inspector saying pre-war intelligence was wrong, Mr Cheney said: 'There's still work to be done to ascertain exactly what's there, and I am not prepared to make a final judgment until they have completed their work.'"

Was self-flagellation required?

"More than 2,000 former members of the Baath Party turned out at the Mosul Public Safety Academy to renounce their membership in the party, to denounce violence and to pledge support to a new, free and democratic Iraq."

CNN

Later on the same show, we were treated to a graphic showing where "the Democratic candidates" were headed after New Hampshire. Five faces lined up on the screen, three on the left, two on the right - Dean, Kerry, Edwards, Clark, and Lieberman. Even though there was plenty of space left in the graphic, not a word of where candidates Kucinich and Sharpton were headed. Sorry, boys, CNN has not only decided not to have a reporter "in bed" with you, they've decided you simply don't exist. And by the way, I don't know about Sharpton, but I happen to be on the Kucinich mailing list, and I know for a fact that they issue press releases with great regularity, and I can pretty much guarantee that CNN knows exactly where he's going tomorrow.

And the "fair and balanced" coverage marches on...

Coming soon to a theater near you (?)

"Using a mixture of humour, hard-hitting interviews and reportage, Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott...dissect with laser beam precision the basis for corporate power.

"The documentary aims not at a single company... Noting that corporations are defined by law as legal persons, it shows how this person perfectly matches the criteria of a pyschopath. Ruthless self-interest: tick. Indifference to harm caused to people, animals or biosphere: tick again.

"Leftist commentators like Michael Moore, Naomi Klein and Noam Chomsky are interwoven with candid interviews with CEOs and corporate insiders. A marketing executive explains the importance of getting children to nag their parents until they are "guilted" into buying a product. Two investigative journalists recount how Fox News pressured them into killing a cancer story about BST, a Monsanto drug which increases cows' milk production."

By the way, I'm no legal expert, but the fact that "corporations are defined by law as legal persons" certainly is not true everywhere in the world, and for all I know only in the U.S. Even in the U.S., the legal basis on which that rests is actually quite shaky, based on a "preamble" to a court ruling, not an actual court ruling (can't find a reference for this at the moment). But by now, unfortunately, this is the way it is.

American soldiers in the dock

"Three Marine reservists appeared in military court Monday to face charges stemming from the death of an Iraqi prisoner who prosecutors said was punched, karate-kicked and dragged by the throat while in their custody.

"The military prosecutor, Capt. Leon Francis, said Nagen Sadoon Hatab, a high-ranking member of the Baath Party, was among three prisoners 'of notoriety' brought to a detention facility in southern Iraq last June. Hatab, 52, had been left lying naked, covered in his own feces, for hours when he was found dead.

"Francis said Hatab was singled out for punishment because he was captured with an M16 rifle belonging to the 507th Maintenance Company of Fort Bliss, Texas, which had been ambushed in Nasiriyah in March.

"Eleven soldiers were killed in the ambush, with nine wounded and six captured, including Pfc. Jessica Lynch."

The "liberal" media

"Out of the 96 questions that Sawyer asked, 90 were about personality and temperament and only six were even vaguely about issues; virtually all 96 were hostile and negative. Thirty-six were about Dean's supposedly out-of-control Iowa concession speech, his alleged bad temper and the loss of momentum of his campaign. ('So did you lose your temper at [your son's] hockey game?') The 10-second yell in his Iowa concession speech was replayed three times during the interview, along with riffs by David Letterman and Jay Leno. ('How does it feel, to be the object of all these jokes?')

"Twenty questions were about Judy Dean's absence from the campaign, which appeared to fault her for failing to stand by her man while at the same time criticizing the couple's decision to be interviewed together. ('Is it because it's a troubled time and — and the juggernaut has hit some pothole?') Twenty-one questions were about their family life, which all had a decidedly negative cast. ('Religion, first of all, ever a problem? Jewish? Christian?') All the questions to Judy Dean had a shockingly sexist subtext, about her clothes and hair and whether or not she was ready for the prime-time spotlight. She was made to seem like an un-American weirdo for failing to watch her husband on TV, for failing to have cable and for receiving rhododendron plants for her birthday. ('Not exactly romantic … ')

"Throughout, the questions assumed that negative stereotypes about Dean were simple truths rather than debatable opinions. 'How often does he lose his temper around you?' Sawyer asked Judy Dean at one point."

Truly unbelievable news

"NASA scientists say hundreds of computer files that have accumulated on the Mars rover Spirit may be the cause of problems that have crippled it.

"The space required in the rover's RAM memory to manage the data files stored in its flash memory was more than anticipated due to the build-up of files, [the surface development manager] told a news conference."

Wesley Clark - war criminal, spammer

Quote of the Day

"Weapons of mass destruction including evil chemistry and evil biology are all matters of great concern." - John Ashcroft, speaking today

John Ashcroft's intelligence is a matter of great concern to me. What a frickin' idiot.

Letter to Dr. Laura

Dear Dr. Laura,

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination. End of debate.

I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some of the other specific laws and how to follow them.

1. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing smell for the Lord - Leviticus 1:9. The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?


2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?


3. I know that I am not allowed to have contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual cleanliness - Leviticus 15:19-24. The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.


4. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?


5. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states she should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill her myself?


6. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination - Leviticus 11:10, it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this?


7. Leviticus 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here?


8. Most of my male friends get their hair cut, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by the bible, in Leviticus 19:27. How should they die?


9. I know from Leviticus 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?


10. My uncle has a farm. He violates Leviticus 19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton and polyester blend). He also tends to curse a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? - Leviticus 24:10-16. Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? Leviticus 20:14


11. I have a rebellious son who is a glutton and a drunkard. Is it legal in Tennessee for "all the men" in my town to "stone him with stones, that he die"? Deuteronomy 21:21

I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident you can help. Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging.

Another gem from Wiley Miller

Interestingly enough, the brief "good news from Iraq" fetish has pretty much disappeared from the media. Evidently there wasn't very much to go around. As opposed to the bad news, of which there's pretty much a steady diet.

Credit where credit is due

Clark is, in my view, a good example of how "the system" is stronger than any individual. Like bosses who are forced to fire workers because "the market demands it," having a "decent person" as a General in charge of war simply isn't enough to make a difference. It's "the system" that needs to be changed, not any particular individual.

Polls

The real "defense of marriage"

"We don't need government marriage counseling; we need good jobs with good benefits. We need flexible workplaces, universal health insurance, affordable child care, safe after-school programs and much more. We need a government that helps ease the pressures on hard-working parents who never seem to have enough time or money to meet their obligations to their families without compromising their jobs.

"But instead of help with the Balancing Act, what American families get from this administration is an assault on overtime pay, a tax policy that stiffs the middle-class, a crippling deficit, fewer jobs and lower wages, dwindling 401(k)s, a health care crisis, cuts in education, and higher college tuition costs. Initiatives like this marriage proposal are nothing more than an attempt to layer a transparent veneer of compassion on a truly destructive domestic agenda.

"Finally, we have to ask: Wouldn't the institution of marriage be strongest if it embraced all committed relationships? Apparently not, according to President Bush. For heterosexuals, he believes marriage is so indispensable that we must spend $1.5 billion to promote it. But for gays and lesbians, he finds marriage so abhorrent that we ought to consider writing discrimination into our Constitution to prevent it."

People like this were part of why the U.S. invaded Iraq

"The Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said Sunday that his panel is investigating the prewar data. But Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas told CNN's 'Late Edition' that if Hussein didn't have weapons of mass destruction, 'why on Earth didn't he let the U.N. inspectors in and avoid the war?'"

"Hussein did allow U.N. inspectors into Iraq in November 2002 as momentum for war built, and they conducted nearly 600 inspections of about 350 sites. The inspectors made no significant discoveries of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons programs, although there were unresolved questions."

"Although there were no large stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction available for 'imminent action,' Kay said, 'that's not the same thing as saying it was not a serious, imminent threat…. That is a political judgment, not a technical judgment.'"

Truly shocking news

"A 19-year-old high school student who intended to take a rooftop shortcut to a birthday party was shot and killed by a police officer early yesterday at the top of a dark stairwell leading to the roof of a Brooklyn housing project. Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said the shooting appeared to be unjustified."

Thanks to Politics in the Zeros for spotting this one.

Bush's Shift to the Center?

Just one problem - the evidence is pretty thin gruel indeed. As astute political commentator Dave Barry says, I am not making this up. Here's what author Jim Puzzanghera (Washington bureau chief) has to say to back up his thesis: Bush proposed a new temporary-worker program for illegal immigrants. He called for sending astronauts to the moon and Mars. And - wait for this - he actually laid a wreath at the grave of Martin Luther King. But my favorite piece of evidence that Bush is "moving to the center" - when he made a recess appointment of reactionary judge Charles Pickering to the federal appeals court, he did so only with a written announcement on a slow news day, and avoided having a photo op. Wow! I'm convinced!

Left I's pet peeve - innumeracy

If this isn't clear, imagine a jar filled with an equal number of white and red balls. Now imagine pulling out 53 white and 47 red balls in a "poll," and concluding that "white is beating red," i.e., that there are more white balls than red balls in the jar. This conclusion is simply unsupported by the data, and is, in fact, false in this particular case (although it could be true as well; we just don't have enough information to say).

All of this, of course, assumes that the only question in the poll is precision, not accuracy. But political polling is not a question of pulling white or red balls from a large jar. If you make all your calls between 9 and 5, for example, your poll will reflect the elderly, the retired, and the unemployed (or non-employed), and will underrepresent people who work 9-5 jobs. For sure it will underrepresent people who don't have phones, not to mention people with an aversion to talking to pollsters! And even of the people who are polled, these polls typically apply some sort of historical, but definitely imprecise formula to select "likely voters" out of all the respondents. Given all these factors, the +/- 3% figure given is, to use a precise scientific term, a joke. But that doesn't prevent the media from reporting that "Kerry is beating Bush" or "Bush is beating Dean" or whatever. And it certainly doesn't prevent them from devoting precious time and their readers' or viewers' attention to this nonsense, rather than to the very serious issues confronting the country.

Quote of the Day

"There comes a time when deceit and defiance must be seen for what they are. At that point, a gathering danger must be directly confronted." - U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland

The real threat to Americans from real weapons of mass destruction

"Amarillo, Texas, area workers dismantling an aging nuclear weapon improperly secured broken pieces of a highly explosive component by taping them together, federal investigators found. An explosion could have occurred, they said.

"Such [an event] could have 'potentially unacceptable consequences,' board chairman John T. Conway said in the letter, which raised disquieting questions about safety at the Pantex plant.

"About 250,000 people live within 50 miles of the Pantex plant, where the motto on its Web site is 'Maintaining the safety, security and reliability of America's nuclear weapons stockpile.'"

Thousands of people are dead, wounded, homeless, jobless...

"Powell acknowledged that the United States thought deposed leader Saddam Hussein had banned weapons, but added, 'We had questions that needed to be answered.'

"'What was it?' he asked. 'One hundred tons, 500 tons or zero tons? Was it so many liters of anthrax, 10 times that amount or nothing?'"

As with the rest of the Bush and Blair administrations, Powell of course continues to insist that "we just don't know" the answers:

"'The answer to that question is, we don't know yet.'"

If this man had an ounce of pride, or honesty, he'd still be fifteen ounces short of a pound.

NPR-Watch Action Alert

Lies and the lying liars...

David Kay, struggling with the truth

"David Kay stepped down as leader of the U.S. hunt for banned weapons in Iraq on Friday and said he did not believe the country had any large stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons."

In a similar vein, this direct quote:

"'I don't think they existed,' Kay said. 'What everyone was talking about is stockpiles produced after the end of the last (1991) Gulf War, and I don't think there was a large-scale production program in the nineties,' he said."

And finally, this gem:

"'I think we have found probably 85 percent of what we're going to find,' he said."

Followup: The liberal Guardian has this to say: "[David Kay's] suggestion that Saddam had no illegal weapons means Saddam was involved in a gigantic bluff to shore up his international prestige." But Iraq repeatedly said in public that it did not have any weapons of mass destruction. Pretty strange "bluff" if you ask me.

In reality it was George Bush and Tony Blair who were "involved in a gigantic bluff," claiming that they had overwhelming evidence of massive amounts of Iraqi WMD threatening the world in order to drag their countries into war.

CG News

Clear Channel takes a hit

I love the "J. Gerbils, 'Clean' Channel Standards Minister" :-)

The Fog of War Criminals

Most people know about McNamara's role in the Vietnam war. But most (certainly including me) probably don't know about his role in the fire-bombing of Tokyo, one of the original demonstrations that "weapons of mass destruction" come in many forms:

"After graduating from the University of California-Berkeley and Harvard business school, McNamara set about assembling what he calls (with evident lack of irony) 'the best and the brightest' to do statistical analysis for the Army air corps during World War II. 'I analyzed bombing missions and how to make them more efficient,' he says.

"His efficiency report persuaded Gen. Curtis LeMay to bring his B-29s down to bombing runs so low they couldn't miss. This allowed American planes to fire bomb 50 square miles of Tokyo in a single night, burning to death 100,000 men, women and children.

"'LeMay said if we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals,' McNamara recalls. 'And I think he's right. He, and I'd say I, were behaving as war criminals.'

"After this, McNamara just stares into the camera for a long time, his face a blank, but still struggling to hold something back. 'What makes it immoral if you lose,' he asks finally, 'and not if you win?'"

Stalemate in the Middle East?

And how much does the U.S. care about this "stalemate" which sees Palestinians killed almost every single day? The words "Israel" or "Palestine" do not appear in George Bush's State of the Union address even once.

On March 20, join one of the many worldwide demonstrations against occupation, not just the U.S. occupation of Iraq but also the U.S.-supported Israeli occupation of Palestine. George Bush isn't going to raise his voice, or his finger, but the people of the world can.

Just say no...to the PATRIOT Act

Thanks to TalkLeft for spotting this for us; it was not visible on the main page of the LA Times online.

Political humor of the day, Part III

"Vice President Dick Cheney revived two controversial assertions about the war in Iraq Thursday, declaring there is "overwhelming evidence" that Saddam Hussein had a relationship with al-Qaida and that two trailers discovered after the war are proof of Iraq's biological weapons programs." (Source)

And by contrast, during tonight's Democratic Presidential debate I had to listen to Peter Jennings declare in his most authoritative tone, while demanding to know what on earth Wesley Clark was thinking when he allowed Michael Moore to refer to George Bush as a "deserter," that "that's a reckless charge not supported by the facts." I wonder if he's ever said the same thing to Dick Cheney? (Over and above the fact that the claim is hardly "reckless" and is in fact supported by facts, even if not necessarily undisputed facts).

Followup: Visit Michael Moore's website for the lowdown on the deserter charges.

The vanishing case for WMD

"Whether weapons (or weapons programs) existed, or were hidden, or were destroyed, or (in this case) whether orders were received to use them, there were people involved - lots of people. And not just the "key scientists" and generals, but ordinary soldiers, technicians, truck drivers, etc. -- people who would have received the orders to deploy chemical weapons, been guarding the warehouse where they were stored, driven trucks out to the desert to hide or destroy them, received training in how to use them, etc. Now, given the financial (and asylum) incentives being offered for actual evidence of any of this, it is at all plausible that not a single person would have come forward with this evidence?...There can only be one explanation why none have come forward, and that is that no such people (and hence no such weapons) exist."

"In a Jan. 9 interview on 'Newshour' on PBS, Mr. Duelfer said, 'The prospect of finding chemical weapons, biological weapons is close to nil at this point.' He said the inspectors had been 'talking to a lot of Iraqi scientists, anyone who has known where they are, they've spoken to. They've had every incentive to show them where they are, and they have come up with nothing.'"

Not a pretty picture

"Facing a sharp drop in demand for conventional photographic film, the Eastman Kodak Company said today that it was speeding its transition to digital imaging while cutting costs in its film business by eliminating up to 15,000 jobs worldwide, more than a fifth of its work force.

"Past job cuts have not damaged the economy in western New York State, but the new cuts may have a greater impact. Most older workers eligible for early retirement or large settlements are gone and the company has begun laying off people in their thirties whose only job has been with Kodak. The cuts will eliminate, over three years, close to 1 percent of the 528,000 jobs in the Rochester market."

Will this "transition to digital imaging" create more jobs in the future? Don't count on it.

"Mr. Carp also said the company would concentrate on acquisitions that fit neatly into its business plan, rather than on exotic ideas that may show potential for future profits."

Worldwide agreement - U.S. out of Iraq!

U.S. military vs. journalists

"Robert Menard, president for life of the pseudo-NGO Reporters sans frontieres might deceive a lot of people, but cannot deceive everyone.

"Responding to the January 15 publication of a Reporters sans frontieres (RSF) 'report' exonerating the soldiers who confessed to the murder in Iraq of Spanish cameraman Jose Couso, his family issued a press release on January 16 in Madrid, rejecting the supposed 'investigation' and asking RSF to immediately withdraw from the dispute.

"The family has filed a suit in the Supreme Court accusing the three U.S. soldiers implicated in the firing of a missile at the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad that killed Couso. In their letter to RSF, his family members explain that their decision was made 'after analyzing the RSF report,' which refutes the guilt of the identified soldiers and transfers 'responsibility to non-identified persons.'

"For the family, the RSF conclusions 'are appropriate for the defense of the accused, but not for the ongoing indictment.' Couso's family also states that 'the irregularities and lack of rigor in drawing up a report that fails to include the testimony of any of the journalists present at the hotel (only with three journalists 'embedded' within the U.S. forces) and which contains erroneous information and contradictions.' They likewise note the RSF's lack of sensitivity in writing a report that thanks two of the soldiers accused of the war crime in their lawsuit.

"The RSF report is signed by a journalist, Jean-Paul Mari, known to associate with Colonel Philip de Camp, a military officer who admitted his involvement in the attack on the Palestine Hotel and the death of the journalists. The report is based on the testimony of three journalists - all of them American - linked to the U.S. armed forces. One of them - Chris Tomlinson - was in the U.S. Army Intelligence Services for more than seven years. None of the Spanish journalists who were at the hotel were consulted in the drafting of the report, the Couso family press release emphasizes."

Political humor of the day, II

"West Point is replacing National Guardsmen on security duty with private security. That's how thinly we are stretched. Our military academy has had to hire a private company to protect it."

Free the Five!

Incidentally, for those who don't know, Gloria La Riva probably has the honor of being the leftist (or the American for that matter) who has addressed the largest public audience, having spoken in Cuba at their giant May Day rally several years ago about U.S. efforts on behalf of Elian Gonzalez. Maybe one day we'll see her picture on a stamp, just like Paul Robeson and Malcolm X. One can only hope!

Political humor of the day

"To achieve these great national objectives -- to win the war, protect the homeland, and revitalize our economy -- our budget will run a deficit that will be small and short-term." - George Bush, State of the Union, 2002

Headlines

"The White House insisted on Wednesday that President Bush's State of the Union speech was not the opening shot of his re-election campaign. But that did not stop the president from taking a relatively small job-training initiative that he included in the speech to two of the most hotly contested states in the coming election, Ohio and Arizona [where he spoke at two community colleges]"

Paul Robeson

A new stamp has just been issued by the U.S. Postal Service honoring this great man - Left I just picked up ten sheets today to help enlighten the world about Robeson by honoring him on letters for the next few months. Here's just one little taste of what Robeson had to say:

"I do not believe that a few people should control the wealth of any land - that it should be a collective ownership in the interest of everyone.

"If we were free in the South tomorrow to carry our weight, to vote, and to do everything, would we now look around and try to find the ten billionaires among our people?  Would we attempt to build them up, or would we try to answer the needs of the great millions of our people?  And so I see other ways of life - socialism - as trying to solve the problems of millions and tens of millions of people at once.

"Giving up freedom is not any part of socialist philosophy - or communist philosophy, as far as I know.  We struck it during the war, under Roosevelt, for example.  We had to give up many privileges.  They're practically telling us that we have to do that again.  [Socialist society]  may not exactly belong to the man in the street, but he feels it is much more his than, say, I do in Charleston, South Carolina.  When a Southern American Negro explained to me that I was in the state of our great plantations, I said: 'Are you sure about that?  Our great plantations?  I don't feel that they are my plantations'.  But in one sense, some of the people of socialist lands feel that the country does belong to them, in a real sense.

"There is no way, as I have said before, for an American Negro, however wealthy, however famous, to be anything at this period of our history, other than an American Negro.  If he doesn't know it, he'll find out."

(As when the Postal Service issued a stamp honoring Malcolm X, I have to ask - do they really know who they are honoring? Well, whether they do or they don't, I'm glad they did!)

Invasions of privacy - for what?

According to reports, this was "an experiment to determine if the government could 'mine' the data to spot terrorists." Further:

"Researchers at NASA's Ames Laboratory had hoped to use data to find unusual travel patterns as clues to terrorists' identities.

"A spokesman for the laboratory, David R. Morse, said 'They were looking to see if they could develop algorithms that were useful for security.'"

Headline of the Day

Puma-people encounters rise

Liberals

"As a nation, we must show our greatness, not just our strength. America must be a light to the world, not just a missile."

"Diplomacy"

Bush: "Nine months of intense negotiations involving the United States and Great Britain succeeded with Libya, while 12 years of diplomacy with Iraq did not."

"This must be Orwellian doublespeak that refers to the 12 years of strangling economic sanctions [strangling and deadly, with over a million Iraqis dead as a result of the sanctions, according to U.N. estimates], combined with occasional cruise missile strikes, and the almost daily bombings from U.S. warplanes patrolling the illegal 'no-fly' zones.  With diplomacy like this, who needs wars?

Another day, more dead, wounded, and homeless Palestinians

"Israeli forces demolished [25] houses [and a mosque] in Gaza's Rafah refugee camp early Wednesday for the second straight day in an anti-militant clampdown that has left 400 people homeless.

"A Palestinian woman standing near her home was fatally shot in the head during the operation, hospital officials said. An 11-year-old boy was critically wounded in the head when Israeli troops fired machine guns as cover for bulldozers demolishing houses, witnesses and doctors said."

"With the demolitions under way in the Rafah camp, frantic residents threw mattresses and blankets from second-floor windows as ceilings and walls come crashing down around them. One woman, standing just feet from a bulldozer, waved a white flag in a failed attempt to slow the demolition and buy time to salvage belongings. A crying girl helped her mother carry a mattress."

The facts and figures the "State of the Union" speech omitted

Leave no child behind...just out in the cold

State of the Union - a Running Commentary

Americans are proving once again to be the hardest working people in the world.

Inside the United States, where the war began...

The first to see our determination were the Taliban, who made Afghanistan the primary training base of al-Qaida killers.

Since we last met in this chamber, combat forces of the United States, Great Britain, Australia, Poland, and other countries enforced the demands of the United Nations, ended the rule of Saddam Hussein

I know that some people question if America is really in a war at all. They view terrorism more as a crime - a problem to be solved mainly with law enforcement and indictments. After the World Trade Center was first attacked in 1993, some of the guilty were indicted, tried, convicted, and sent to prison. But the matter was not settled.

Already the Kay Report identified dozens of weapons of mass destruction-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations.

Productivity is high. And jobs are on the rise.

Much of our job growth will be found in high-skilled fields like health care and biotechnology. So we must respond by helping more Americans gain the skills to find good jobs in our new economy.

We are making progress toward excellence for every child.

Many of the fastest-growing occupations require strong math and science preparation, and training beyond the high school level.

A government-run health care system is the wrong prescription. By keeping costs under control, expanding access, and helping more Americans afford coverage, we will preserve the system of private medicine that makes America's health care the best in the world.

A strong America must also value the institution of marriage. I believe we should respect individuals as we take a principled stand for one of the most fundamental, enduring institutions of our civilization. Congress has already taken a stand on this issue by passing the Defense of Marriage Act, signed in 1996 by President Clinton.

Our Nation must defend the sanctity of marriage.

Followup: Even Cheney was depressed having to listen to this bullshit:

More followup: The Center for American Progress has a good comparison of "Claims vs. Facts" from the speech.

Oxymoronic times

States of the Union

The real commentary on the imaginary State of the Union:

Credit to Tom Tomorrow for this timeless commentary.

The real State of the Union

Followup: I was doing the sensible thing, doing a workout, so I didn't see the SOTU speech (I will be reading it, at least as long as my stomach holds out), but thanks to Talk Left I learn I missed one lovely moment of irony:

"There was applause when Bush said that key provisions of the Patriot Act will expire next year--then embarassed laughter-- it may have been a mistake as there was also applause when he said we need to renew it."

State of the Union

"Tonight I'm proposing $1.2 billion in research funding so that America can lead the world in developing clean, hydrogen-powered automobiles. (Applause.)

"A single chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen generates energy, which can be used to power a car -- producing only water, not exhaust fumes. With a new national commitment, our scientists and engineers will overcome obstacles to taking these cars from laboratory to showroom, so that the first car driven by a child born today could be powered by hydrogen, and pollution-free. (Applause.)

"Join me in this important innovation to make our air significantly cleaner, and our country much less dependent on foreign sources of energy. (Applause.)

Powell speaks too soon

"U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell on Tuesday condemned Hezbollah for its deadly missile attack on an Israel Defense Forces bulldozer the day before, saying that it had caused a need for Israel to respond with its air strikes on southern Lebanon on Tuesday evening.

"'The deliberate action that they took, which resulted in the loss of life, once again demonstrates the nature of that organization,' Powell said. 'We believe that all parties interested in peace should condemn that kind of action by Hezbollah.'"

"The Israeli army changed its account of Monday's border incident and said the soldier killed by a Hizbollah anti-tank missile was several yards inside Lebanon."

A new death-penalty crime

"They were running away from a known bad-guy site,'' [Lt. Col. Bryan] Hilferty told the AP."

By the way, it's bad enough that I have to hear this kind of juvenile talk about "bad guys" from the President of my country. Do I have to start hearing it from the military as well?

Religious fanatics

"Visitors to the Grand Canyon won't be able to find a U.S. park ranger who will tell them the chasm was created as a result of the very same flood that threatened to drown Noah and sink his ark, but they can walk away from the park souvenir shop with a book that tells that version of how the canyon came to be.

"The book, 'Grand Canyon: A Different View,' compiled by Colorado River guide Tom Vail, hit park bookshelves in August and includes breathtaking views of the canyon along with a collection of essays by two dozen other creationists who maintain the canyon is just over a few thousand years old.

"According to geologists, the rocks in the deepest part of the canyon are as much as 2 billion years old and the canyon itself was created about 6 million years ago when the Colorado River slowly carved through the layers over thousands of years.

"Vail and his fellow creationists argue that all science is theory and say their theory is just as valid as current geological theories."

Creationists play on the layman's understanding of the word "theory," whose meanings include "speculation" and "conjecture." But scientific theories are not "speculation" or "conjecture," they are, as the first definition of the word "theory" has it, "A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena." And it is on the basis of such sound knowledge that scientists can make reliable statements about the origin of the Grand Canyon, or indeed of the origin of life. Does that mean that they know "for sure" exactly how the Grand Canyon was formed? No. In geology, as in biology, there are competing scientific explanations, or "theories," generally centering around gradual change (erosion, slow evolution) vs. periods of stasis followed by more rapid change ("punctuated equilibrium," a theory popularized by Stephen Jay Gould) (By the way, I'm speaking in general terms here; I have no idea specifically about the Grand Canyon but I rather suspect there is a strong scientific consensus that in that particular case, the gradual change theory is pretty much universally accepted). But does this mean there is any scientific explanation which is compatible with an age of "a few thousand years"? Not even close.

I have a "theory" about these creationists. My "theory" is that they're completely full of shit, and I claim my theory is "just as valid" as anything they have to say.

Cheney again

"Vice President Cheney says he believes 'the jury's still out' on whether Iraq had the chemical and biological weapons that were the Bush administration's justification for war."

"The most damaging revelation [to the Administration's justification for war] came from an an internal Iraqi document -- this time, happily, not a forged one -- confirming that a high-level order to destroy all chemical and biological weapons was carried out in the summer of 1991 (there were no nuclear weapons). U.S. officials learned of this in mid-1995 from what intelligence officers would call 'a reliable source with excellent access.' Everything else he told us has checked out.

"That source was none other than the person in charge of Iraq's nuclear, chemical, biological and missile programs: Saddam Hussein's son-in-law Hussein Kamel -- the one who gave the order to destroy those weapons. Kamel defected in August 1995.

"Documentary corroboration that Kamel's order was carried out surfaced this month in a handwritten letter obtained by Barton Gelman of The Washington Post. The letter was written by Hossam Amin, director of the Iraqi office overseeing U.N. inspectors, five days after Kamel's defection. It confirms that Iraq had in fact destroyed its entire inventory of biological weapons during the summer of 1991, before U.N. inspectors even knew of their existence.

"Does this mean that Kamel's testimony had been known in Washington and London more than seven years before Bush's address last January, and that during that entire period no evidence had come to light poking holes in the information he provided? Yes.

"Well, maybe they didn't tell the president. If that is true, 'they' should be fired.

"There is, I suppose, a chance that Bush's advisors missed the information from Kamel's debriefing -- or forgot it. But Newsweek on Feb. 24, 2003, reported Kamel's assertion that the weapons of mass destruction had been destroyed. That was more than three weeks before our troops were sent into Iraq, ostensibly to 'disarm' Iraq of those same weapons.

"Both Bush and Vice President Cheney have accorded Kamel fulsome praise as defector par excellence, emphasizing his revelations about the Iraqi biological and chemical weapons but not mentioning that Kamel also said that those same weapons were destroyed at his order in 1991. This brings the practice of ''cherry-picking'' intelligence information to new heights -- or lows.

Iowa Caucuses

Countless hours and millions of dollars have been invested by the candidates and the media in the Iowa caususes. Too bad they couldn't invest one-one-thousandth the time and money investigating the death of Nazem Baji, or the deaths of 15 innocent children in Afghanistan in December, or countless other things which have been swept under the rug while the world focuses on this election.

Followup: One of the major Green party issues is something called Instant Runoff Voting, by which someone votes not just for their first preference in an election, but also for a second, third, etc. preference, and then, if their first preference isn't elected, their vote is "re-allocated" to their second preference. Although this process is very similar to the way the causus process works in Iowa, I have yet to hear or read the words "Instant Runoff Voting" in conjunction with this election. God forbid.

More followup: I apologize for sullying the good name of "Instant Runoff Voting." Watching the "process" in Dubuque I see it consists of the crassest form of horse-trading. They should only be so democratic (small "d") as to use Instant Runoff Voting.

Chauvinism

Afghan children (and adults) in the crosshairs

"Eleven villagers, including four children, were killed in a US bombing raid near their homes in southern Afghanistan, a district governor said.

"Governor Abdul Rahman said the incident occurred on Sunday night in Char Chino district, 330 kilometres (206 miles) south of the capital Kabul, after US soldiers had come to the village of Saranaw in search of suspected militants.

"'A number of villagers were scared that probably they would be arrested by the Americans so they left the village with their families,' Rahman said. 'As soon as they arrived near a river, planes bombed them and killed 11 innocent civilians.' The dead were four children, three women and four men, he said. 'Today in the morning we went to the site and buried the bodies.'"

"A US military spokesman said however that only five 'armed anti-coalition militia members' had been killed on the weekend in Uruzgan province when coalition forces 'engaged from the air.' The spokesman had no further details on the incident."

Just a reminder to our readers who are Democrats. Every single Democratic Presidential candidate supported the illegal invasion of Afghanistan, and not one has spoken out against the continuing U.S. war against the Afghan people, as far as I know.

"Too soon to tell" - Cheney

"Vice President Cheney says he believes 'the jury's still out' on whether Iraq had the chemical and biological weapons that were the Bush administration's justification for war.

"'I am a long way at this stage from concluding that somehow there was some fundamental flaw in our intelligence,' Cheney said in an interview with USA Today and the Los Angeles Times."

In fact, there was no "fundamental flaw in our intelligence," primarily because for all intents and purposes there was no intelligence. Pictures of buildings taken from satellites are not "intelligence," they're "data." Claims about what the pictures showed were politically-inspired lies, and nothing more.

As I've written before, if we're a "long way" from convincing Cheney on this issue, one has to wonder what it would take exactly to convince him, considering that the search for WMD in Iraq is, for all intents and purposes, as non-existent as the WMD themselves?

Here's a new one from Cheney:

"Cheney suggested that biological weapons are hard to find because they could be produced on short notice. 'The stuff is perishable and doesn't last very long anyway,' he said."

Even Cheney's claim, however, is bogus. Specifically, as Left I on the News has written since the very first days of this blog last August, the problem is people - biological (or any other) weapons don't produce themselves, and it takes a lot more than one person to produce them if they are actually going to become weapons. Here's an excerpt from last August to elaborate a bit further (the excerpt refers to "chemical weapons," but it applies equally to biological weapons:

And not just the "key scientists" and generals, but ordinary soldiers, technicians, truck drivers, etc. -- people who would have received the orders to deploy chemical weapons, been guarding the warehouse where they were stored, driven trucks out to the desert to hide or destroy them, received training in how to use them, etc. Now, given the financial (and asylum) incentives being offered for actual evidence of any of this, it is at all plausible that not a single person would have come forward with this evidence? Indeed, it is reported that some of the key people who have come forward, like Obeidi (he of the buried centrifuge parts) and Gen. Amer al-Saadi (senior Iraqi science advisor) have been squirreled away, kept from the prying eyes of the press precisely because they have said that there were no weapons; we wouldn't want them repeating that on CNN. No doubt pressure is being put on them and others like them to change their story (i.e., lie) in return for rewards or the promise of more lenient punishments. And, it is certainly arguable that people like that could be lying to avoid being prosecuted for war crimes. But the ordinary Iraqi soldiers who were in charge of guarding a warehouse where chemical weapons were stored would have no fear of punishment. So there can only be one explanation why none have come forward, and that is that no such people (and hence no such weapons) exist.

What are the benefits of space exploration?

"It's easy to become jaded by all the promises of technology, but the early success of the rover Spirit has renewed a sense of wonder for some business-technology professionals. [Said one] 'There isn't anything we can't do with computers."

One of the ways they try to justify the enormous expenses of things like the current Mars landing, or Bush's proposed moon base and manned mission to Mars, is by telling us how we're all going to benefit from some unknown "development." You know, like "Tang." The Information Week article carries on the same tradition. Even while admitting that "much of the technology that runs the orbiters and rovers has been available for years," they make the unsupported claim that "functions that [the] Jet Propulsion Laboratory introduced for this latest Mars mission will have an impact on business technology in the future. The lab's AutoNav system in particular lets Spirit find its way along the Martian surface without assistance. Says [one]: 'This could lead to a car that drives itself.'" Well, we already have a car that parks itself, and it didn't take a mission to Mars to develop it. And let's not forget that the Macintosh I'm using, technology which really did change the world, stems from the efforts of Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs working in a garage, not from a multi-hundred-billion-dollar program.

Instead of investing hundreds of billions that might, peripherally, help develop a technology for a car that drives itself, how about we spend that money on mass transit right here on Earth?

I am a supporter of basic scientific research, I think it is essential to always carry on that tradition to the extent we can afford it, but the idea of justifying it based on bogus claims of "benefit for humanity" is generally way overdone. If the political will existed to scrap the entire military budget, once we used that money to deal with homelessness, health care, housing, and other basic human needs, I'd be more than happy to see whatever remains being spent on space exploration. But until that day, I'll continue to view it as one more effort to funnel billions into the profits of big corporations (and from there into the pockets of the billionaires who control those corporations).

By the way, while trumpeting the successes of technology, the article didn't bother to remind its readers that the British effort at a Mars landing, the Beagle, was a complete failure, yet another "Blue Screen of Death" reminding us of the limits of technology.

Washington Post covers for Bush

"Few of the many claims made by the administration have been confirmed after months of searching by weapons inspectors."

Dean's anti-war "posture"

Cheney's been making up "threats" for years

"July 1989: Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney objects to a government decision to relax export controls on personal computers, including the Macintosh Plus, saying such computers would give the Soviet Union 'significant capabilities that they do not now possess.'"

More Price of Loyalty

"Through the fall and winter of 2000-2001, the Clinton administration had made a final desperate push for a settlement...But along the way, the Clinton team had isolated [Yasser] Arafat, figuring they could induce cooperation by separating him from more radical factions in the Palestinian camp...In retrospect, it was clear to many of those involved that he had been left with insufficient authority to sign any pact.

"President Bush echoed this view: 'We're going to correct the imbalances of the previous administration on the Mideast conflict. We're going to tilt it back toward Israel,' Bush said. 'If the two sides don't want peace, there's no way we can force them.'

"Then the president halted. 'Anybody here ever met (Ariel) Sharon?'

"After a moment, Powell sort of raised his hand. Yes, he had.

"'I'm not going to go by past reputations when it comes to Sharon,' Bush said.

"He'd met Sharon briefly, Bush said, when they had flown over Israel in a helicopter on a visit in December 1998. 'We flew over the Palestinian camps,' Bush said sourly. 'Looked real bad down there. I don't see much we can do over there at this point. I think it's time to pull out of that situation.' [Emphasis added]

...Powell said such a move might be hasty...He stressed that a pullback by the United States would unleash Sharon and the Israeli army. 'The consequences of that could be dire,' he said, 'especially for the Palestinians.' [Ed. note - especially for the Palestinians?]

Bush shrugged. 'Maybe that's the best way to get things back in balance.'

Powell seemed startled.

'Sometimes a show of strength by one side can really clarify things,' Bush said.

"Tenet pulled out a long scroll, the size of an architectural blueprint, and flattened it on the table.

"It was a grainy photograph of a factory. Tenet said that surveillance planes had just taken this photo. The CIA believed the building might be 'a plant that produces either chemical or biological materials for weapons manufacture.'

"Soon, everyone was leaning over the photo. Tenet had a pointer. 'Here are the railroad tracks coming in...here are the trucks lined up over here...They're bringing it in here and bringing it out there...'

"[Vice President Dick] Cheney motioned to the deputies, the backbenchers, lining the wall. 'Come on up,' he said with uncharacteristic excitement, waving his arm. 'You have to take a look at this.'

"...After a moment, O'Neill interjected, 'I've seen a lot of factories around the world that look a lot like this one. What makes us suspect that this one is producing chemical or biological agents for weapons?'

"Tenet mentioned a few items of circumstantial evidence -- such as the round-the-clock rhythm of shipments in and out of the plant -- but said there was 'no confirming intelligence' as to the materials being produced."

Followup: I finally found a copy of the book today at the Stanford bookstore. Turning to the Index to find the quotes above and looking up "Palestine", I find: "See Arab-Israeli conflict." Well, not to make to much of this, but doesn't that say it all. This phrase, commonly used in the media, suggests that there is some intrinsic enmity between Arabs and Israelis or, in reality, Arabs and Jews. But the historic source of anti-Semitism wasn't Arabs, and it certainly wasn't an Arab who killed six million Jews during World War II. Conversely, the state of Israel wasn't established by evicting "Arabs" from their homes. Egyptians, or Jordanians, or Lebanese, or Saudis weren't forced out of their land when Israel was established by the U.N. It was Palestinians, the people who lived in the "land without people," whose land was taken, and this conflict is at its center a Palestinian-Israeli conflict, not an "Arab-Israeli conflict." Incidentally, back to The Price of Loyalty, if you turn to the pages noted in the Index as relating to the "Arab-Israeli conflict," the only subject you'll find discussed is Palestine. You won't see the words Syria, or Lebanon, etc. on those pages. Only Palestine.

Los Angeles Times covers for Bush

"Bush served as a pilot in the Texas National Guard during the Vietnam War, a relatively safe posting.

"In 1972, Bush was allowed to transfer to the Alabama National Guard for three months so he could work on the campaign of a Senate candidate there."

"The Boston Globe reported in 2000 that 'there is strong evidence that Bush performed no military service as required when he moved from Houston to Alabama to work on a U.S. Senate campaign from May to November 1972.'

"The Dallas Morning News reported that 'after a thorough search of military records, George W. Bush's campaign has failed to find any document proving he reported for duty during an eight-month stint in Alabama with the Texas Air National Guard.' Bush was quoted as saying he remembers being at drills in Alabama."

Chauvinist headlines persist

The "Iraq Toll" is in the thousands, probably well over ten thousands (the count of Iraqi deaths is, unfortunately, quite imprecise). And, as Left I has written so many times before, even the "coalition" toll includes 96 other soldiers in uniform (British, Italian, Spanish, and others), and to that must be added a further uncounted number of "contractors" who are, in their majority, basically soldiers in civilian uniforms (i.e., part of the "privatized" military doing jobs that uniformed soldiers would traditionally be doing in a war).

The "Iraq Toll" is most definitely not 500, even just counting fatalities. And my guess is that people (both coalition soldiers and Iraqis) who have been maimed for life might take offense at not being included in the "Iraq Toll" as well.

Wal-Mart endangers workers

Workers Assail Night Lock-Ins by Wal-Mart
"Looking back to that night, Michael Rodriguez still has trouble believing the situation he faced when he was stocking shelves on the overnight shift at the Sam's Club in Corpus Christi, Tex.

"It was 3 a.m., Mr. Rodriguez recalled, some heavy machinery had just crushed his ankle, and he had no idea how he would get to the hospital.

"The Sam's Club, a Wal-Mart subsidiary, had locked its overnight workers in, as it always did, to keep robbers out and, as some managers say, to prevent employee theft. As usual, there was no manager with a key to let Mr. Rodriguez out. The fire exit, he said, was hardly an option — management had drummed into the overnight workers that if they ever used that exit for anything but a fire, they would lose their jobs.

"The reason for Mr. Rodriguez's delayed trip to the hospital was a little-known Wal-Mart policy: the lock-in. For more than 15 years, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, has locked in overnight employees at some of its Wal-Mart and Sam's Club stores. It is a policy that many employees say has created disconcerting situations, such as when a worker in Indiana suffered a heart attack, when hurricanes hit in Florida and when workers' wives have gone into labor."

Rewriting history - in a single article

Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin brushed off warnings by a top Israeli official that he is 'marked for death'.

In more than three years of fighting, Israel has killed more than 140 suspected militants in targeted attacks but refrained from going after top Palestinian leaders.

Israeli security officials said targeted killings of senior Hamas members would probably resume after Wednesday's bombing.

In the summer, Israel unleashed several airstrikes against leading Hamas figures, killing one but missing three others -- including Yassin. [Emphasis added]

Incidentally, if you doubt the existence of U.S. complicity in the building of the apartheid wall, consider this interesting tidbit from the same article:

Also Friday, Israeli TV reported that Sharon is considering changing the route of a separation barrier Israel is building in the West Bank to cut costs and reduce Palestinian suffering. Sharon aides are to present proposed changes to U.S. officials next week, the reports said.

Hope springs eternal

"California employers shed a net 8,400 jobs in December, capping three consecutive years of falling payroll employment — the worst performance since the early 1990s recession.

"The report released Friday by the state Employment Development Department was discouraging to economists, who have long been expecting an upturn in hiring. And it was unsettling to budget watchers who know that California can't hope to emerge from its deep fiscal hole without a boost in jobs and income — and the tax revenue they generate."

"The employment numbers stand in sharp contrast to a raft of upbeat data showing that the economy is poised for solid expansion. Consumer confidence is on the rise in California. Ditto for factory orders and production. Corporate profits are up. The state's housing market is on a tear. And income tax payments to Sacramento are running ahead of projections.

"What's missing from the party are tens of thousands of newly California employees who, by anyone's reckoning, should have been on the job by now. Some analysts worry that unless companies start boosting their payrolls soon, the recovery could fizzle before it really heats up."

Followup: The world writ large here in Santa Clara County. The unemployment rate between November and December dropped from 7.3% to 6.4%! Wow! An incredible economic recovery is underway! Not quite. The number of unemployed dropped from 66,200 to 58,200 - 8,000 fewer unemployed. Unfortunately, the labor force dropped from 912,500 to 904,900 - a drop of 7,600. In other words, all but 400 of the no-longer "unemployed" have either left the county or left the workforce entirely (at least according to the government). The headline for the article carrying this news? "Valley job market shows hints of upturn."

Quote of the Day

"Selected? Elected? What's the difference?" - Selected President and language guru George Bush, commenting on future Iraqi "elections"

Followup: Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, leading Shi'ite cleric in Iraq, "is insisting Iraqis should be permitted to vote on whether American peacekeeping troops remain in the country after transition." I wonder if al-Sistani knows about the Platt Amendement?

Free speech in America

What I want to know is, who's paying for those buses? The Atlanta city government, who no doubt like every other government is busy cutting government services, including quite likely mass transit? The Federal government, using my money (and that of every other American reader of this blog)? Or George Bush and his contributors? Why is it I'm certain that "C" isn't the answer? And why is it that the King Foundation would let a man whose every action tramples on the grave of Martin Luther King lay a wreath on that very grave?

Body and Soul, from whom I'm stealing the picture, has more.

Followup: This is what it looks like when a leader who is actually popular with the people of his country speaks in public:

"The most advanced country on women's rights in the Arab world"

As it was in Afghanistan as discussed here recently, any idea that the U.S. intervenes around the world in order to advance women's rights, or human rights, or democracy, is strictly a cover story for the gullible, and not supported by the evidence.

Uncounted deaths in Iraq

Election plan?

"So tens of thousands of Shi'ites protested yesterday calling for elections. That is the accurate description in the headline in the Guardian. In the Washington Post, the headline was: 'Shiites Protest U.S.-Backed Election Plan.' What propaganda. What election plan? It is a No-election plan."

This line from the Post article is pretty funny (and true!):

"The United States...says security is too poor and voter records too incomplete for fair elections."

Quote of the Day

"I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government." - Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., speaking on April 4, 1967, one year before his assassination.

Powell at the U.N.

Now, Derrick Jackson writing in the Boston Globe, has written a scathing criticism of Powell's speech, based on the new report from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace which has debunked essentially everything Powell had to say in that speech. Jackson's column is certainly a good thing, and it's well worth reading as a summary of Powell's (and the Bush administration's) lies and deceipt. But Jackson omits one little detail. That is, that there were countless sources on the left who saw through the speech on the day it was given, among them Rahul Mahajan, Phyllis Bennis, Robert Fisk (available to subscribers only), Ali Abunimah, and Stephen Zunes.

And finally, to that list of articles I'll add the following unpublished letter to the editor written by Left I on the day of the speech, prior to the advent of this blog:

While Iraq's compliance with U.N. Resolution 1441 is still being investigated by U.N. inspectors, thanks to Colin Powell it is now an incontrovertible fact that the United States is in violation of that resolution, which requires "all Member States" to provide to UNMOVIC "any information related to prohibited programmes." But U.S. photos purporting to show removal of banned materials from suspect sites were taken last year and have not been previously shared with inspectors. Clearly, the lame excuse that we are protecting "sources" doesn't wash, since everyone knows that the U.S. has spy satellites monitoring Iraq (and the rest of the world).

The reason why the U.S. has not shared this "evidence" are readily apparent. George Bush and Tony Blair have stood before the cameras before and trotted out photos purporting to show, among other things, Iraq rebuilding nuclear facilities. But inspectors on the ground quickly verified that this was complete nonsense - the facilities in question were rusted, cobwebbed, and hadn't been used in years. Likewise we have heard much about aluminum tubes, which Bush and Powell continue to point to as evidence despite the fact that the IAEA has concluded they were intended for conventional weapons, not centrifuges. The Iraqi government may have minimal credibility, but the sad fact is that the credibility of the U.S. and British governments is nil.

Most of us aren't in a position to judge the accuracy or relevance of the "evidence" presented today by Colin Powell, but a little common sense goes a long way. Powell showed pictures of trucks allegedly evacuating suspect items from a weapons facility two days before inspectors were to arrive. But then he said that the truck caravan was "something we almost never see at this facility." "Almost never?" How often is that? Once a week? Once a month? If the Iraqis were really evacuating the site, wouldn't they do it all at once, and not just at some lengthy, irregular interval?

Powell continued to claim that "we saw this kind of 'house cleaning' at close to 30 sites." The obvious question is this - if we have seen caravans of trucks pulling up to 30 different sites and loading banned material, why is that we haven't ONCE been able to see the same caravan pulling up to another building and unloading, or disappearing underground, and been able to tell the inspectors where the weapons had been moved to?

There is a reason why the U.S. government doesn't want the inspections to continue - the longer they do, the more U.S. lies are exposed. Bravo to the Santa Clara Board of Supervisors for speaking out against this travesty, and demanding that the billions of dollars already being spent on the ongoing U.S. war against the Iraqi people be spent instead meeting the needs of our state, county, and cities.

Dennis Miller & the Big Lie

"People say I've slid to the right," Mr. Miller said in his office at the NBC Studios in Burbank, speaking in his rat-a-tat-tat style. "Well, can you blame me? One of the biggest malfeasances of the left right now is the mislabeling of Hitler. Quit saying this guy is Hitler," he said, referring to Mr. Bush. "Hitler is Hitler. That's the quintessential evil in the history of the universe, and we're throwing it around on MoveOn.org to win a contest. That's grotesque to me."

*Joseph Goebbels

Followup: Atrios digs this up from Miller's past:

"Miller was especially merciless in bashing Gingrich. Many of his anti-Newt quips compared the House Speaker to Adolf Hitler."

Bush shrugs, Palestinians die

"[The book] confirms how Mr. Bush consciously disengaged from the Middle East, putting the conflict between Israel and Palestine on the back burner at that NSC meeting, so as to concentrate on Iraq.

"The Clinton administration had 'overreached' on the Middle East 'and it all fell apart,' Mr. Bush is quoted as telling the assembled NSC, adding: 'We're going to tilt back towards Israel.' The President then brushed aside concerns by Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, about possible 'dire consequences' for the Palestinians if the US pulled back.

"'Maybe that's the best way to get things back in balance,' Mr. Bush is said to have shrugged in reply. 'Sometimes a show of strength by one side can really clarify things.'"

Suicides in Iraq

But is this true? Here are the data from the article:

"That's a suicide rate for soldiers in Iraq of about 13.5 per 100,000, Winkenwerder said. In 2002, the Army reported an overall suicide rate of 10.9 per 100,000.

"The overall suicide rate nationwide during 2001 was 10.7 per 100,000, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"The Army recorded 102 suicides during 1991 for a rate of 14.4 per 100,000. The Army's highest suicide rate in recent years came in 1993, when the rate was 15.7 per 100,000.

"The Marine Corps has the military's highest suicide rate. Last year the Marines' rate was 12.6 per 100,000. During 1993, the Marines' rate was 20.9 per 100,000."

U.S. troops should leave Iraq immediately, for any number of reasons. But one of those reasons isn't because they're killing themselves too frequently.

Followup: I can't believe I didn't notice this in the article: "...about 2,500 soldiers who have returned from the war on terrorism..." This "big lie," the idea that the invasion of Iraq was part of some "war on terrorism," has just become so common it went right past me, but thankfully it didn't escape the attention of Cursor.

Comment on comments

Today's good news

"Yet another sordid chapter in the murky annals of Halliburton might well lead to the indictment of Dick Cheney by a French court on charges of bribery, money-laundering and misuse of corporate assets." (Source)

"Dealing a potentially severe blow to Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's highest court on Tuesday overturned a recently enacted law that had shielded him from criminal prosecution while in office.

"The Constitutional Court's decision allows the resumption of a bribery trial against Mr. Berlusconi that was halted when the law took effect last June." (Source)

Spending Priorities

Bush Plans $1.5 Billion Drive for Promotion of Marriage
"Administration officials say they are planning an extensive election-year initiative to promote marriage, especially among low-income couples, and they are weighing whether President Bush should promote the plan next week in his State of the Union address.

"For months, administration officials have worked with conservative groups on the proposal, which would provide at least $1.5 billion for training to help couples develop interpersonal skills that sustain 'healthy marriages.'"

Bush to seek billions for moon, Mars treks
"President Bush on Wednesday will call on Congress to increase funding for NASA by nearly a billion dollars annually over the next five years, while radically transforming the space agency's manned space flight goals -- from low Earth orbit -- to audacious missions to the moon and ultimately, Mars."

Just yesterday we wrote about the end of an important project to restore California's ocean fish population for lack of $2 million dollars; needless to say there are thousands of other crying needs in the areas of health, housing, jobs, education, and all the other basic needs where spending is being cut, cut, and cut again. But when it comes to "promoting marriage," or trying to send someone to Mars (the motivation for which is really the militarization of space under the guise of some "noble" goal, in my opinion), Bush is ready to spend, spend, and spend again.

Followup: The following modest proposal occurs to me. The U.S. government already pays farmers not to grow crops. Why don't they pay the TV networks not to air shows like "The Bachelor", "The Bachelorette", "Joe Millionaire", and "Average Joe"? Wouldn't that do a lot more to promote the "sanctity of marriage" for a lot less money? Surely the networks made a lot less than $1.5 billion profit on them.

R.I.P. Tom Hurndall

"A British peace activist who was shot by an Israeli soldier as he tried to protect Palestinian children from gunfire in a Gaza refugee camp died last night in a London hospital.

"Tom Hurndall succumbed to pneumonia. He had been left in a persistent vegetative state after being hit by a bullet at the Rafah camp in April.

"The 22-year-old died hours after the soldier who shot him was charged with aggravated assault in a rare prosecution of a member of the Israeli military for harming a civilian.

"But the military judge handling the case told the family's lawyer in Tel Aviv that the charge was likely to be revised to murder or manslaughter after Mr Hurndall's death.

"The soldier, who has not been named, has also been charged with obstruction of justice for first shooting the activist through the forehead and only afterwards seeking permission from his commander to kill Mr Hurndall on the fabricated grounds that he was carrying a gun.

"A second soldier is under arrest for allegedly corroborating that account."

Action needed to defend the memory of Rachel Corrie!

A Well-Deserved Award
Little Green Footballs [a right-wing blog] has given out its second annual Robert Fisk Award for Idiotarian of the Year. This year's winner: Rachel Corrie, the terror advocate who died in a bulldozer accident last March.

Right-wing attacks on Rachel Corrie (in various blogs, etc.) are all too common, but unavoidable. Repeating such despicable and slanderous attacks in a so-called "respectable" organ like the Wall Street Journal is simply unacceptable. Letters to opinionjournal@wsj.com, wsj.ltrs@wsj.com, and/or edit.features@wsj.com are suggested to condemn this piece of vile trash.

Wholesale slaughter of Iraqis continues

"A U.S. Army foot patrol came under rocket attack in the town of Falluja, west of Baghdad, after a noisy anti-American protest and the soldiers killed at least four civilians when they returned fire, including an elderly woman, witnesses said.

"The woman who was killed was on a balcony of a nearby house and a passing car was caught in a hail of bullets which killed all three men inside, other witnesses said."

"A U.S. military spokeswoman in Baghdad said she had no immediate information on the incident."

For want of a nail...

Meanwhile, in Iraq, the U.S. government spent $700 million in a search for non-existent "weapons of mass destruction" and accomplished only one thing - proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that George Bush and Tony Blair and their friends lied to the world.

But $2 million to protect the environment and help ensure a food supply for the future? Sorry, "we can't afford it."

The Iraqi "Governing" Council

"In creating the governing council, the Americans foisted a group of politicians on a population that, at the very least, dislikes them. Many of the council members were exiles during Saddam Hussein's reign, and many Iraqis think they left when times were hard and have returned to grab a piece of the nation's wealth.

"In a country where many lack electricity or running water, council members are carted around in Lexus sport-utility vehicles and Mercedes coupes with dark windows. They rarely make public appearances and are surrounded by armed guards, even behind the walls of the compounds where many of them live.

"Their offices are inside a coalition compound that's surrounded by concrete barriers, concertina wire, security checkpoints and U.S. soldiers. Iraqis who don't have appointments, which are hard to obtain, aren't allowed past the outer perimeter."

A history lesson for Iraqis

Back in 1901, Cuba faced a similar problem of ending a U.S. occupation and writing a new Constitution. They ended up with the Platt Amendment (written by U.S. Secretary of War Elihu Root and U.S. Senator Orville Platt), without which the U.S. refused to approve the Consitution and end its occupation of Cuba (sounding familiar?). The Platt Amendment reads in part:

Article III. The Government of Cuba consents that the United States may exercise the right to intervene for the preservation of Cuban independence, the maintenance of a government adequate for the protection of life, property, and individual liberty...

Article VII. To enable the United States to maintain the independence of Cuba, and to protect the people thereof, as well as for its own defense, the Government of Cuba will sell or lease to the United States lands necessary for coaling or naval stations, at certain specified points, to be agreed upon with the President of the United States.

Coming soon to an Iraqi Constitution near you - the "Rumsfeld Amendment." Only active resistance from the Iraqi and the people of the world (especially the American people) can prevent it from happening. March 20, the Global Day of Action on the First Anniversary of the Bombing and Invasion of Iraq, will be a good opportunity for people around the world to speak out on behalf of the Iraqi people, and against the American/British occupation of Iraq.

Israeli outposts still out there

Quote of the Day

""While we, the presidents, go from summit to summit, our people go from abyss to abyss." - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, speaking in Mexico on the occasion of the latest "Summit of the Americas."

U.S. continues its war on reporters

The international news agency Reuters has made a formal complaint to the Pentagon following the "wrongful" arrest and apparent "brutalisation" of three of its staff this month by US troops in Iraq.

The complaint followed an incident in the town of Falluja when American soldiers fired at two Iraqi cameramen and a driver from the agency while they were filming the scene of a helicopter crash.

The US military initially claimed that the Reuters journalists were "enemy personnel" who had opened fire on US troops and refused to release them for 72 hours.

Although Reuters has not commented publicly, it is understood that the journalists were "brutalised and intimidated" by US soldiers, who put bags over their heads, told them they would be sent to Guantanamo Bay, and whispered: "Let's have sex."

At one point during the interrogation, according to the family of one of the staff members, a US soldier shoved a shoe into the mouth one of the Iraqis.

The US troops, from the 82nd Airborne Division, based in Falluja, also made the blindfolded journalists stand for hours with their arms raised and their palms pressed against the cell wall.

"They were brutalised, terrified and humiliated for three days," one source said. "It was pretty grim stuff. There was mental and physical abuse."

He added: "It makes you wonder what happens to ordinary Iraqis."

The US military has so far refused to apologise and has bluntly told Reuters to "drop" its complaint. Major General Charles Swannack, the commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, claimed that two US soldiers had provided sworn evidence that they had come under fire. He admitted, however, that soldiers sometimes had to make "snap judgments".

"More often than not they are right," he said. [Emphasis added]

Quote of the Day

"God curse the Americans! God curse those who brought them to us!" - a relative of the latest innocent victims of the American military in Iraq

"A soldier at the scene of the Palestine Street violence in Baghdad said that the bomb had killed two Iraqi civilians and wounded two others and that all had been in the blue station wagon. Capt. Jason P. Beck, a spokesman for the First Armored Division, which controls most of Baghdad, said three hours after the incident that he had not received a report."

In the same story, we read about "soldiers [who] killed 7 of about 40 members of a gang of smugglers that was siphoning oil from a pipeline." Evidently smuggling is now a crime for which the death penalty can be administered on the spot. At least if you're an American soldier, and the alleged criminal is an Iraqi.

Why are journalists so ignorant?

Reporters do a lot of "spinning," propagating the government line (like using the word "liberation" for the invasion of Iraq). But this conversation was not spin - Koppel was clearly surprised that an Iraqi would think like this. Has he failed to notice that American troops are in Korea, 50 years after the end of that war? When will American troops be leaving Germany? Saudi Arabia? How about Cuba? No, Ted, it will be a surprise, a big one, if and when American troops do leave Iraq.

Dictators

"President Bush is scheduled to announce this week new destinations for U.S. astronauts. In a speech Wednesday, he is expected to order the space agency NASA to send people back to the moon and eventually to Mars and beyond."

Mass Weapons of Destruction

"The U.S. military's only plant making small-arms ammunition is running at near capacity, 4 million rounds a day, and the United States still is forced to look overseas and to the recreational industry for ammunition for troops in Afghanistan and Iraq and those training to deploy there soon."

Tom Hurndall's mother speaks out

"Earlier this month, I read with mixed feelings the news that local Palestinian militia had dynamited an Israeli defence force watchtower in the town of Rafah, in the Gaza Strip. It was from this watchtower, which has been responsible for untold misery to many innocent families in Rafah, that Tom was shot in the head last April. At the time he was trying to help Palestinian children to safety. He now lies in a vegetative state in a hospital in London with no hope of recovery.

"This week we learned that the Israeli soldier who has been arrested for the shooting is alleged to have smoked cannabis with his battalion. As last year was drawing to a close, a phone call from the British Foreign Office informed me that, under interrogation, this soldier has confessed to shooting my son, knowing he was an unarmed civilian. He claimed that the shot was meant as a 'deterrent'. From what? From rescuing children? Had he been so conditioned that an act of humanity could only inspire in him such a violent reaction?

"It hurts me to hear the deafening silence of our own government. How can there have been no statement of condemnation or condolence for the innocent victims of Israel's mindless violence from our own prime minister, Tony Blair? The silence was only broken when on Christmas day the United States president 'strongly condemned' the actions of the suicide bombers responsible for killing four Israeli soldiers at a bus stop just outside Tel Aviv. Does this double standard not underline the lack of regard in which both the British and US governments hold Palestinian life?

"So I have questions to ask of Tony Blair. Does he regard the children of Palestine as children of a lesser god? Does he accept that such inaction is tantamount to complicity in the process of destroying any peace initiative in the Middle East? Mr. Blair, you know now that an Israeli soldier has confessed to shooting in cold blood an unarmed British citizen who was trying to shepherd children away to safety. When will you be ready to openly condemn these actions?"

Quote of the Day

"The conduct of certain U.S. government officials induces pity. A plague of liars who rarely say anything serious or close to the truth can be appreciated in the highest echelons of power." - Cuban newspaper Granma, responding to charges by U.S. assistant secretary of State Roger Noriega that Cuba is "destablizing" certain Latin American countries.

"What does destabilizing mean? Sending thousands of doctors to cooperate with governments in the care of the poorest and most needy people? Have we destabilized Guatemala, Honduras, Haiti, Belize, Paraguay and various other countries in the Caribbean and Central or South America? Does it mean sending 15,000 Cuban doctors to 64 countries throughout the world where millions of people are being cared for and tens of thousands of lives saved? Since when did the promotion of literacy campaigns using new, modern and increasingly efficient methods signify destabilizing democratic regimes in any part of the world? How can granting scholarships to more than 12,000 young people from the Third World to study in our universities be described as a subversive action? Is it not rather stupid to describe the actions of thousands of sports instructors who are promoting the most wholesome activities, contributing to reducing crime and drug taking, and bringing health to millions of young people as "subversive"? Since when did promoting education and culture destabilize governments? When Hurricane Mitch hit Central America, didn't we offer 3,000 doctors to save as many lives each year as the numbers lost as a result of the hurricane and, at the same time, all the scholarships necessary to train young people so that they can undertake the duties of those doctors in the future? Could anyone in their right mind swear that that constituted an effort to destabilize Central American democracy, when we did not even have diplomatic relations with certain countries at that time? Why ignore the fact that Cuba gave emergency aid, without exception, every time a disaster occurred, both in Latin America and in the rest of the world? Why not recall the huge Peruvian earthquake of 1970 that cost more than 50,000 lives, when the Cuban people sent 100,000 donations of blood, built hospitals and provided doctors? Why not also recall when the Uruguayan people were victim to a severe epidemic of meningococcus meningitis, Cuba - the only country with the adequate vaccine available - sent millions of doses to protect the lives of Uruguayan children, even when their government - fully aware of their existence - did not want to acquire it precisely because it was Cuban?"

Needless to say, while the charges against Cuba have appeared in the U.S. press, any response from the Cuban government has not.

Blair: "WMD? I don't know."

"I do not know is the answer. I believe that we will but I agree there were many people who thought we were going to find this in the course of the actual operation ... We just have to wait and see".

As the Guardian reminds us:

"In September 2002, [Blair] told the Commons that 'Saddam's weapons of mass destruction programme is active, detailed and growing', a stance with which he persisted as he took the nation to war in March last year.

"As recently as last June, he told MPs he had 'no doubt' they would 'find the clearest possible evidence of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.'"

"The admission of doubt is particularly significant for Mr Blair because, unlike President George Bush, he put WMD, rather than regime change, at the centre of his justification for war."

Bush on Palestine

Anyway, I'll keep trying to find the exact story and the exact quotes (the ones here are paraphrases only), but in the meantime I wanted to start the process of making this aspect of the story more widely known. What was presented were exact quotes from the book, so on Tuesday, when it's released, this will presumably be clarified; in the meantime I don't know where KGO got the story since it's nowhere online, including the publisher's website.

Profiles in Courage

Q: What kind of pin does Jay Leno wear on his left label?

A: "An American flag," Leno tells us. "I started wearing it after 9/11. When you're telling jokes for a living, you want to tell folks you're on the right side."

By the way, I'm still not happy with the new opening for the Daily Show with its American flag motif. That is a show that isn't scared to attack sacred cows, making their new opening all the more shameful.

Jobs revisited

"The report also shrank the government's estimate of the number of new jobs created in October and November. In October, according to the revision, the country gained 100,000 jobs, not 143,000. In November, 43,000 new jobs were created, not 57,000."

Quote of the Day

President Bush was so disengaged in cabinet meetings that he "was like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people." -former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill (Source)

Cuba, Bush, and sex

Today, the New York Times editorializes on the subject, naming "Belize, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Suriname" as the five worst offenders in the Western Hemisphere.

Now the truly bizarre thing is that, in all these attacks on Cuba, there is not a single fact to back up these accusations. The Times editorial, for example, notes:

"Women from Colombia were smuggled as far away as Japan, and Dominican women ended up against their will in Switzerland. Young Mexicans were enslaved in several states, including Texas, Florida and New Jersey. Costa Rica and Belize became destinations for impoverished women from Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. Without passports or money, they were forced to supply sex to tourists, usually from the United States and Europe. At least 70 Internet sites promote sex tourism in Costa Rica."

The true facts about Cuba (and the United States) are spelled out in an article by University of New Mexico Professor of Sociology Nelson Valdes that is available online here. Prostitution is, in fact, decriminalized in Cuba (that is, the prostitutes themselves are not criminals), although ancillary aspects of prostitution (pimping, running a house of prostitution, etc.) are illegal. And there isn't the slightest evidence that the Cuban government in any way encourages prostitution, not to mention trafficking in women and children for sex (the "sex trade"), which, as far as any available evidence is concerned, is completely unheard of in Cuba.

The facts, however, don't get in the way of the U.S. State Department, nor of the "liberal" New York Times.

Some quotes

There is "no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." - George Bush, 2002

"There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction." - Dick Cheney, 2002

"Our conservative estimate is that Iraq, today, has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent." - Colin Powell, 2002

"We know where they are." - Donald Rumsfeld, 2003

"If you look at the [Iowa] caucuses system, they are dominated by special interests on both sides and both parties." - Howard Dean, 2000

Jobs

The "unemployment rate" actually went down. Why? Because 300,000 people gave up looking for work just last month.

Judy Woodruff on CNN's Inside Politics today interviewed Gregory Mankiw, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. Mankiw continued with rosy predictions for the future. Did Woodruff ask him to explain his previous predictions, predictions made well after 9/11 and the bursting of the tech bubble on which he blamed the continuing economic problems? You're kidding, right?

The next time I hear some commentator on TV talking about how Bush is sitting pretty because of the "good" economic news, I think I'm going to scream.

Followup: George Bush, sitting in front of a backdrop reading "Jobs Jobs Jobs", said today it was "good news" that the unemployment rate went down. I'm sure the 300,000 people who gave up looking for work last month, who were the sole cause of that drop, will agree. Not.

U.S. torture stories just keep piling up

Sadiq Zoman Abrahim suffered massive head trauma and electrocution while in U.S. custody and will probably be in a coma for life.

Abed Hamoud al-Tikriti, former secretary of Saddam Hussein, died in U.S. custody amidst allegations of torture.

Zaydun

Zaydun Ma'mun Fadhil Hassun Al-Samarrai was thrown into a river by possibly drunken American soldiers and drowned.

All of these stories surfaced on a single day.

And, of course, Left I in the News still remembers Nazem Baji, apparently executed while handcuffed and in U.S. custody, shot in the head.

Outrage in the U.S. press or from American politicians? Actual investigations into these alleged crimes by U.S. authorities? Missing in action. Or should that be "inaction"?

Oh what a tangled web we weave...

Powell: "So, we didn't find any WMD. BFD. Like I care."

Poor Colin Powell just can't stop lying:

"Secretary of State Colin Powell acknowledged Thursday that he saw no 'smoking gun, concrete evidence' of ties between Saddam Hussein and the al-Qaeda terror network, but insisted that Iraq had dangerous weapons and needed to be disarmed by force."

Followup: Headline from another version of the same story: "Powell Refutes Think-Tank Report on Iraq." Disputes? Yes. Refutes? Not even close.

Stating the obvious

Quote of the Day

"There is no job that is America's God-given right anymore." -- Carly Fiorina, chairman of Hewlett Packard, conveniently forgetting her own job, which is in no danger of being shipped to India

"The only alternative to losing jobs overseas [is] to make a national decision to stay ahead of foreign competitors by improving grade-school education, doubling federal spending on basic research and forming a national broadband policy."

"Nearly half [the world's] population...can do just about any job in the world. The U.S. has a very simple choice to make. We have to decide if we're going to be competitive with these markets."

Followup: A good column by San Jose Mercury News columnist Mike Cassidy on the subject.

With friends like these...

Innumeracy? Or deception?

Curiously enough, MSNBC's online story, which is essentially the story that appeared elsewhere in print, cites the million figure. But that is not what was read on the air.

Why wait for November? Vote now!

Bechtel's "satisfactory performance"

"Bechtel Corp., the San Francisco engineering giant leading Iraq's reconstruction, won a new $1.8 billion government contract Tuesday to fix more of the country's power plants and water works."

"Bechtel has now landed nearly $3 billion in reconstruction contracts from the U.S. government in the nine turbulent months since Saddam Hussein's fall. The new contract will keep Bechtel in Iraq for another two years -- well past the anticipated transfer of power to a new Iraqi government.

"U.S. officials expressed satisfaction Tuesday with the company's performance and cited it as one reason for handing Bechtel more work."

"Nine months after the American-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein, frequent breakdowns in supplies of fuel and electricity, especially in Baghdad, are defying attempts by both Iraqis and foreign occupiers to stitch together something resembling normalcy here.

"Through the summer and fall, Mr. Hassan and others at the Electricity Ministry said, the power plants gave Bechtel a list of needed spare parts. So far, 'we've gotten absolutely nothing,' he added, and engineers are jury-rigging equipment just as they did under Mr. Hussein."

What lead to the (proposed) prisoner release in Iraq?

"U.S. authorities, seeking to attract support and information from Iraqis who once backed Saddam Hussein, have decided to release about 500 prisoners who have not committed acts of violence."

"The move follows pressure behind the scenes from British officials in Baghdad who have been alarmed at the large numbers of Iraqis scooped up by the American military during routine operations.

"In a move apparently designed to deflect growing criticism of America's human rights record in Iraq, Mr Bremer said today's release of prisoners was in the interests of 'reconciliation'."

"'All they do is put a bag on their heads, bind their hands behind them with plastic handcuffs and take them away. Families don't know where they go,' Malek Dohan al-Hassan, the head of the Baghdad lawyers' syndicate complained last month. 'They violate human rights up to their ears.'

"The 506 detainees to be freed represent about 4% of the 12,800 prisoners in US custody in Iraq, a figure that includes 4,000 members of an anti-Iranian militia. None of the detainees has been charged. Some have been in jail for nine months. The US military has refused to allow them to see a lawyer. There have also been consistent complaints from former detainees that US soldiers have beaten them up or forced them to stand for hours with their hands in the air."

Political joke of the day, II

"The immigration reform proposals would make the U.S. a 'more compassionate, humane and stronger country.'" -- George Bush

Headlines

Political joke of the day

"At a checkpoint on the barren plain east of Baqouba, word of a new U.S. Army plan to pay soldiers up to $10,000 to re-enlist evoked laughter from a few bored-looking troopers.

"'Man, they can't pay me enough to stay here,' said a 23-year-old specialist from the Army's 4th Infantry Division." (Source)

Gander better than goose

"The U.S. State Department has changed its stance on a new Brazilian security process for U.S. citizens entering the South American nation. Washington is now urging Brazil to alter its new process of fingerprinting and photographing U.S. visitors.

"'We have told the Brazilians that we think that these are measures that provide tremendous inconvenience to travelers and that they need to be changed,' State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Tuesday."

"In Brazil, meanwhile, the Foreign Ministry started fingerprinting and photographing arriving Americans last week in retaliation. U.S. citizens waited for hours Monday to be photographed and fingerprinted at Rio's international airport."

Not the news

Then we have the story reported by blogger xymphora, who steers us to the news that $2.5 million in U.S. banknotes was recently seized by Venezuelan customs as it arrived in Venezuela aboard a U.S. air carrier. Strong speculation is that this money, and lots more, was to be/is being used to finance the opposition the Hugo Chavez government, this at a time when the U.S. is accusing Cuba of "provocative" interference in Latin America:

"Cuba's efforts to destabilize elected governments in Latin America are being viewed as increasingly 'provocative,' the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs said Tuesday.

"'Those who are destabilizing democratically elected governments, interfering in the internal affairs of other governments, are playing with fire,' Roger Noriega said." (Wall Street Journal, not available online)

CNN

Then the next item discussed the impending release of a few hundred of the more than 12,000 "detainees" being held prisoner without charges by the U.S. government in Iraq. The CNN reporter solemnly intoned that detainees could always be visited by their families in prison, "a right they are guaranteed by the Geneva Convention." He neglected to inform us that the detainees in Iraq are not classified by the U.S. as POW's, and in fact have no rights whatsoever. And, in fact, many if not most of the prisoners are being held in secret, without even their families knowing where they are held or even, in fact, if they are being held prisoner or are, in fact, lying dead somewhere. "Geneva convention" indeed. Perhaps CNN might want to report on this first-hand testimony about how prisoners are really being treated in Iraq.

Doodles of mass destruction

This is the best evidence found in Iraq of weapons of mass destruction after the search that couldn't wait for Hans Blix & co. to finish. The "mass destruction" that these "weapons" produced, however, was the very real mass destruction of more than a million Iraqi lives by the decade-long U.S./U.N. embargo and the subsequent U.S./U.K. invasion.

$500 for "free" speech

"He is no hero for First Amendment free speech rights. As shown by the judge’s verdict today, he's a criminal."

"Bursey, who faced up to six months and a $5,000 fine, told the judge he would not stand for his rights to be 'neutralized or sanitized' by the U.S. Secret Service, which sets presidential protection zones.

"'I may lose this battle today,' Bursey said in a courtroom packed with supporters. 'But we're winning the war over free speech rights in this country.'"

Find the WMD

They must be there somewhere...'cause they aren't anywhere in Iraq, that's for sure.

$73,000 a shot

Things I don't understand

"The findings are based on school questionnaires given to youngsters in the 15 countries in 1997 and 1998."

Worker-friendly government...not

U.S. helps firms avoid overtime
"The Labor Department is giving employers tips on how to avoid paying overtime to some of the 1.3 million low-income workers who would become eligible under new rules expected to be finalized early this year.

"The department's advice comes even as it touts the $895 million in increased wages it says those workers would be guaranteed from the reforms."

An (ex-) Israeli colonel speak out

A country in which the army disperses demonstrations of its citizens with live gunfire is not a democratic country," Lt-Col Ronel wrote [in his letter of resignation]. "An army that educates its soldiers that such a crime is conceivable has lost all its borders.

"I saw this deterioration, stage after stage: the blind eye that was turned to the abuse of detainees in violation of the army's orders; the blind eye that was turned to soldiers' gunfire on unarmed Palestinian civilians; the blind eye that was turned to the settlers' unlawful behaviour towards Palestinian civilians; the oppression of the population; the roadblocks; the curfew; the closure; the blind eye the army turned towards humiliation and abuse; the searches and arrests; the use of live fire against children and unarmed people."

Lt.-Col. Ronel continued: "Stage by stage, the value of human life has diminished. Step after step, the values on which we were raised-the purity of arms, the value of human life, the dignity of human beings as being created in the image of God-have become a scornful travesty. And now we have reached the next stage: soldiers shoot at Israeli civilians in a demonstration, in keeping with the regulations for opening fire...This is an educational, ethical and moral failure.

Fidel speaks

"A summary of all that I have said shows my profound conviction that our species, and with it each one of our peoples, are at a turning point in their history: the course of events must change or else our species will not survive. There is no other planet we can move to. There is no atmosphere, no air and no water on Mars, neither is there any transportation for us to emigrate there en masse. Either we save this what we have, or many millions of years will have to go by before another intelligent species arises that can start all over again the adventure we have gone through."

The greatest healthcare system

"In 2003 Cuba attained a 6.3 infant mortality rate on the international indicator that measures the state of health of the population and in particular, the development of maternal-infant care. That makes [Cuba] the Latin American country with the lowest rate.

"According to The State of the World's Children 2004, published by UNICEF, the United States registers 7.0."

Quote of the Day

"The search for Iraqi WMD has become a public joke. But I, for one, am not laughing." -- Scott Ritter, former UN weapons inspector, in what was technically not a quote but the headline for an article

Self-defense?

"Three soldiers have been discharged from the US army for mistreating Iraqi prisoners of war.

"An internal inquiry found soldiers had thrown prisoners down and kicked them in the head, groin and abdomen in an incident at Camp Bucca last May.

"The three soldiers, a woman and two men who said they acted in self-defence, have all returned to the United States.

"The senior officer, Master Sergeant Lisa Marie Girman, 35, knocked a prisoner to the ground, 'repeatedly kicking him in the groin, abdomen, and head, and encouraging her subordinate soldiers to do the same', according to military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Vic Harris.

"Staff Sergeant Scott McKenzie, 38, and Specialist Timothy Canjar, 21, were both found guilty of holding prisoners' legs apart while encouraging others to kick them in the groin."

"To give you some sense of how seriously these charges are being taken, if convicted on all counts, Sergeant Lisa Girman could face up to 25 years in prison, Sergeant MacKenzie 23 years prison, and the specialist Canjar up to 25 1/2 years in prison, in addition to other more minor disiplinary actions -- reduction of rank and loss of benefits and that sort of thing."

The "liberation" of Afghan women

From the start it was clear that this was completely bogus as a justification for the invasion, even though many people, even opponents of the invasion, still expected women to be "liberated" as a result of the overthrow of the Taliban government. Unfortunately, it hasn't worked out that way, as detailed by filmmaker Meena Nanji in an article written for the Los Angeles Times. Nanji writes:

"The litany of laws passed this year to govern women's conduct reads like a page out of the Taliban handbook. They include the banning of coeducational classes; restrictions on a woman's ability to travel by limiting the time she can be without a 'mahram,' a male relative or husband; and forbidding women to sing in public. The biggest blow to women's rights was dealt in November when a 1970s law prohibiting married women from attending high school classes was upheld.

"What is particularly ominous about Afghanistan's situation is that the oppression of women is once again being given legal and religious justification by the state. It is vital that Americans speak up now against this. In his 2002 State of the Union address, President Bush said that in Afghanistan today, 'women are free' -- but he was wrong."

Howard Dean is poison?

What we need an antidote for are the lies that spew from our TV sets. That is poison.

Innumeracy

If this seems like nitpicking, change the numbers and imagine if the percentages had changed from 15% last year to 0% this year, that is, downloading had completely come to an end. Do you think a headline reading "Downloads drop by 15%" would be even remotely accurate?

Me bad, AP lots worse

Dean now, of course, supports the war, also known as the occupation. But the fact that I don't agree with his position on the war doesn't make this misquote by AP any less outrageous. And, worth noting, the AP article from which this comes was written by Nedra Pickler, who, thanks to KOS, is now achieving notoriety as a "spinner" and a liar approaching that of world-record-setting Judith Miller.

Defending Paris Hilton

The "free market"

Remember this the next time someones starts preaching the "free market" to you (and they do "preach", because it really is a "faith" wholly unsubstantiated by actual facts).

Capitalism vs. health

Part II: The soft-drink industry - Consumption of soda in schools is a significant contributing factor to the epidemic of obestity which affects American youth. Schools are being urged by the American Academy of Pediatrics to eliminate soda sales, which have blossomed in recent years (from a base of zero back when Left I was in school). But, of course, that's a problem, because under-funded schools are more and more dependent on money generated by soda sales to fund student activities including athletics.

Parenthetically, need I say for the umpteenth time that the cost of just a day or two of the war against Iraq could probably have funded student activities in every school across the country for a year, without sacrificing the present and future health of children on the alter of soda industry profits.

Fred Burks - Presidential translator, Buena Vista Social Club fan, criminal?

Tara Bradshaw, a Treasury Department spokeswoman, is quoted in the article as saying "Much of the hard currency spent in Cuba ends up with Castro and his cronies. So when U.S. tourists go, they're not helping the Cuban people, they're lining the pockets of the Castro regime." This, my friends, is complete and utter crap. The U.S. wishes that the "Castro regime" was just another bunch of corrupt Latin American rulers, then the U.S. would have no problem at all dealing with them. It's only because the Cuban leadership is not lining their own pockets, but instead leading a principled revolution, that the U.S. continues to wage economic (and, occasionally, actual) war against Cuba, and only because they don't want the American people to see for themselves that Cuba isn't a vast prison camp that they want to prevent Americans from visiting.

Followup: A private email asks: "As for Cuba being a 'principled revolution,' anti-capitalist revolution certainly, but whose principles?  Is the 'left i' really a closet Stalinist, or an unregenerated (or undegenerated) New Leftist?" Well, I try to avoid name-calling, and what anyone would mean by "Stalinist" or "unregenerated New Leftist" I really wouldn't know. But as far as the principles of the Cuban revolution, I would say they are quite simple - the principle that fulfilling people's needs, not generating profits, is the purpose of society, and that the people should be maximally involved in the decisions which affect them.

The same writer also takes me to task for the simplistic idea that preventing Americans from learning the truth about Cuba is the only reason for the travel ban. Of course he's correct about that, there are many reasons. The overriding reason is clearly the U.S. desire to see the Cuban revolution fail, so as not to provide a model and an inspiration for millions of people around the world. Economic warfare is one way to do that, and denying the Cuban people (not "Castro") income from tourism certainly is one part of the much larger economic war being waged by the U.S. But "demonization" is also involved too. The U.S. government must demonize its "enemies" in order to get the American people to support wars, blockades, etc. Preventing Americans from knowing Cubans personally, or seeing Cuba first-hand, is definitely part of that demonization.

Free speech under attack across the country

A lot of people on the left debate "facism," and whether the U.S. is "fascist," "neo-fascist," "headed towards facism," or other variants. One thing for sure. If the right to free speech is lost, and protestors have to go underground, then it will be fascism, at least in some sense of the word. This right must be defended at all costs.

Iraq, jingoism, and the numbers game

"In the 14 days before Saddam's capture, 11 American soldiers were killed. In the 14 days that followed, that figure was 14, not including four Bulgarian and two Thai soldiers who also died."

Part of it, of course, is simply to keep the numbers down so the American people don't understand the true cost of the war, even just to "their side"; talking about 485 fatalities instead of 578 fatalities simply makes the war seem 20% less deadly. But a bigger part of it is simply jingoism - too many Americans simply don't give a rat's ass about the lives of people from other countries.

This attitude stems in part from America's geographical location, but is also encouraged every day by the American media. One of our local PBS stations carries BBC World News every day. If you compare the number of different countries mentioned during the course of that half-hour show, vs. the number mentioned during the course of a typical network news show, the difference is striking, and if you count news about US troops fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan or someplace else as really "US" news and not foreign news, it's even more striking. And sad. Overcoming this attitude is a key task to be accomplished if American foreign policy is ever to be changed for the better.

Scratch one more "accomplishment" of the invasion of Iraq

"U.S. occupation authorities in Iraq have imposed strict restrictions on the right of the Iraqi people to demonstrate, particularly in the capital Baghdad, in what Iraqi political analysts described as the real face of sugar-coated democracy cliches.

"A statement issued by the U.S.-led authority and broadcast by the Iraqi media network Wednesday, December 31, said no individual or group is allowed to organize marches or demonstrations or even gather in streets, public places or buildings at any time without a prior [approval] from the occupation command."

Watch out for the tiny saw

"Airman al-Halabi [an Air Force translator at the Guantanamo prison camp] was later arrested on several charges, including suspicion of trying to pass secrets to Syria or some other foreign government, a charge that has since been dropped.

"The military also dropped a charge that Airman al-Halabi had, without authorization, given pieces of baklava to some detainees." (Source)

Urgent appeal from the West Bank

Please Act Immediately to Lift the Siege off Nablus, Balata and Beit Foreek! This is a Humanitarian Crisis!
Greetings from Nablus Under Siege.

Nablus has been under siege for the last 10 days while Balata refugee camp has been under siege for the last 18 consecutive days. We have just heard that every single entrance/exit to Balata has been sealed off completely. No food or medicine is allowed in. Medical relief teams are being obstructed and at times completely prevented from passing through. Activists from ISM (the International Solidarity Movement) were attacked while carrying out their missions to observe and bear witness on what the Israeli occupation authorities are brutalizing the Palestinian population. Beit Foreek has been completely sealed off; its mayor reports that there are signs of starvation.

Two men and a boy were killed by Israeli military fire since this morning. The first, Amjad Bilal Masri is a 15 year old boy who was shot while standing in front of his house. The sniper bullet hit Amjad in the back. He died on his way to the hospital. The second is Amer Kathym Arafat who was also shot in the back by a sniper bullet. The third is Rouhi Hazem Shouman, 25, who was also shot in the back by a sniper. Ms. Majida Masri, spokeswomen for the Coordinating Committee of Palestinian Political Faction, called a couple of minutes ago on all Nabulis who are able to get to Rafidiya Hospital to defy the curfew and join the families of the martyrs in a collective funeral for the three. "They were all shot in the back by cowardly snipers. Their only crime was to refuse to succumb to Israeli occupation designs to empty Palestine from its people."

Reports from Balata indicate that a deliberate starvation campaign is being carried by the Israeli military which has sealed off the Camp and refuses to allow food and medicine to get through every single allyway, formal or informal entrances. A few days ago, the Israeli military shot and injured 4 people who were walking a funeral for an old woman who passed away. No demonstrations or political events were taking place in or around the funeral.

The siege of the old city of Nablus and its neighborhoods (Yasmeeneh, Qaryoun, Habaleh) has been intensified since December 30, 2003. The Israeli military claims that they were looking for the leader of the Aksa Martyrs Brigade, Abu Sharkh. They took his brother and wife as hostages, paraded the wife in a jeep in the old city and forced to call out to her husband over loud speakers to surrender in return for her freedom. She has been released only yesterday. No one can get into the old city, but Dr. Ghassan Hamdan of the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committee, who is in the old city has called on the whole world to immediately intervene to support the people of Nablus. He condemned media outlets for neglecting to cover what's going on, including the largest Palestinian daily, Al-Quds, which has not reported on what's going in Nablus in its front page. Dr. Hamdan criticized the Palestinian Authority who have not done anything to aid Nablus and demanded that "Abu Alaa, the Palestinian Prime Minister, hold a ministrial meeting in Nablus to highlight the horrible conditions the city is experiencing under this brutal Israeli campaign."
...
The People of Nablus appeal to you to declare today (Saturday, Jan. 3rd), tomorrow (Sunday, Jan. 4th), and Monday, Jan. 5th international days in solidarity with the people in Nablus and Palestine.

For additional information on events in Nablus, Electronic Intifada has more.

The mainstream media is covering events in Nablus, albeit with a "cause of violence is disputed" slant to the news. As far as I can see, events in Balata and Beit Foreek are not being covered at all.

New poll

• Should not run: 37*
• Should run, but I'll probably vote Democrat: 9
• Should run, and I'll probably vote for him: 7
• Should run, but I'll probably vote socialist: 5
• Don't care one way or the other: 6

I should note one of the poll comments here which most people probably didn't notice: "Abu-Jamal/Peltier in 2004!!!" There are rumors that is a possibility - certainly interesting to think about!

Anyway, a new poll is up, in which Left I readers can test their ability to predict world events, at the same time that many of you are out there trying to influence those events, such as organizing mass protests against the war in Iraq on March 20.

The hidden face of imperialism

"In preparation for ending its occupation of Iraq, the United States is making plans to create the largest U.S. diplomatic mission in the world in Baghdad, with a staff of more than 3,000, according to the Washington Post.

"The U.S. Embassy in Egypt has a larger presence, more than 7,000 personnel. But this number includes many non-diplomats from other U.S. agencies, including, for example, two members of the U.S. Library of Congress who collect foreign books."

And is it really plausible there will be fewer American State Department personnel in Iraq than in Egypt? Something doesn't seem right here.

"Principled" capitalists

"The union representing striking grocery clerks says Ralphs Grocery has allowed -- and in some cases forced -- some clerks to continue working under false names and Social Security numbers.

"The United Food and Commercial Workers Union filed a lawsuit Friday in Superior Court against Ralphs, charging that from the start of the strike and lockout Oct. 11, the chain let some striking workers return by using the names and Social Security numbers of minor children or relatives."

It is worth recalling the fake indignation of employers when firing employees, typically workers involved in union organizing drives or other "uppity" workers, when the company discovers they have falsified the slightest thing on their job application.

Creeping "PATRIOT" II

The first fruits of that effort are already being harvested, according to TalkLeft:

"Las Vegas hotel operators and airlines serving McCarran International Airport are being required by the FBI to turn over all guest and passenger names and personal information, at least during the holiday period, several sources said Tuesday.

"FBI spokesman Todd Palmer confirmed the federal action and said the requirement that the companies surrender customer information is a 'normal investigative procedure.'

"Hotel operators who asked not to be identified said the information being provided to federal officials includes guest and passenger names, addresses and personal identification information, but not casino records or guest gambling information. ....the FBI in Las Vegas is receiving 100 percent cooperation from the gaming companies and airline operators." (Source)

Let's hope there aren't any terrorists named "John Smith"

"US investigators wrongly identified six Air France passengers as potential terrorists, leading to the grounding of six flights between Paris and Los Angeles last week, US and French officials said.

"A ministry spokesman said the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had based its information on passenger lists containing names that were similar to those of suspected Al-Qaeda operatives who appear on US terror watch lists.

"'The FBI worked with family names and some family names sound alike,' the spokesman said, noting that some of the names had been transliterated from Arabic, which uses a different alphabet from French and English.

"'The difficulty is compounded when you have no first name or date of birth,' he said." (Source)

Followup: Three questions for readers to ponder that I have yet to see asked by the mainstream media or their "terror experts":

1. Why do we read things like "On advice from the British government, British Airways cancelled such-and-such a flight"? If there is a terrorist threat, shouldn't the U.S. simply forbid that flight from landing in the U.S. (and hence from taking off)? Or shouldn't the British government have a decisive say? Why is the final decision, however much a foregone conclusion, left to British Airways?


2. If, upon getting the vaguest kind of "intelligence" suggesting a particular flight might be a target, the flight has to be cancelled, what does that say about the confidence that the government has in existing measures - hardened cockpits, armed air marshalls, x-ray (and other) screenings of passengers and luggage, etc.?


3. If they really had the names of five "suspected terrorists" who were flying on a particular flight (they didn't, but let's assume they did), couldn't they just search those five people and their luggage extra carefully to make doubly sure they weren't bringing anything on board? And couldn't they do that quietly, without having to raise the fear level of Americans and dealing a serious blow to the tourism industry?

Justice delayed

It's too bad we can't expect the U.S. government to bring any pressure on Israel to arrest the known criminal who murdered Rachel Corrie.

Quote of the day

"When it comes to US citizens, human rights are holy. But with other human beings they don't count." -- Abdul Hadi Jabber, the father-in-law of Kamal Mustafa, number 10 on the "deck of cards" list, as quoted in the Guardian.

In all the months of the Democratic Presidential primary campaigning, I haven't heard one candidate speak about this human rights outrage, not even Dennis Kucinich. Nor have I heard the fate of these people addressed by any commentator in the media, nor mentioned in the "mainstream" press. For the U.S. public, as well as for their families, these people quite literally are "los desaparecidos iraquies" - the Iraqi disappeared.

Left I on the News is also "keeping watch" for Nazem Baji, apparently executed by U.S. troops on October 20, shot in the head with his hands tied with plastic bands while in captivity. Despite the outrageous nature of this alleged war crime, Baji has also simply disappeared from history, not mentioned anywhere in the media since that day. Any investigation into his death has also apparently disappeared. His blood, like that of so many Iraqis, remains on the hands of George Bush and the U.S. military.

"What Ever Happened To Peace On Earth?" - Willie Nelson

There's so many things going on in the world
Babies dying
Mothers crying
How much oil is one human life worth
And what ever happened to peace on earth

We believe everything that they tell us
They're gonna' kill us
So we gotta' kill them first
But I remember a commandment
Thou shall not kill
How much is that soldier's life worth
And whatever happened to peace on earth

(Bridge)
And the bewildered herd is still believing
Everything we've been told from our birth
Hell they won't lie to me
Not on my own damn TV
But how much is a liar's word worth
And whatever happened to peace on earth

So I guess it's just
Do unto others before they do it to you
Let's just kill em' all and let God sort em' out
Is this what God wants us to do

(Repeat Bridge)
And the bewildered herd is still believing
Everything we've been told from our birth
Hell they won't lie to me
Not on my own damn TV
But how much is a liar's word worth
And whatever happened to peace on earth

Now you probably won't hear this on your radio
Probably not on your local TV
But if there's a time, and if you're ever so inclined
You can always hear it from me
How much is one picker's word worth
And whatever happened to peace on earth

But don't confuse caring for weakness
You can't put that label on me
The truth is my weapon of mass protection
And I believe truth sets you free

(Bridge)
And the bewildered herd is still believing
Everything we've been told from our birth
Hell they won't lie to me
Not on my own damn TV
But how much is a liar's word worth
And whatever happened to peace on earth

"Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq in March, saying that Saddam Hussein threatened U.S. security by possessing weapons of mass destruction, but no such weapons have been found."

No war for oil?

"The United States gave serious consideration to sending airborne troops to seize oil fields in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi during the 1973 Arab oil embargo, according to a top-secret British intelligence memorandum released Wednesday night.

"The document, titled 'Middle East -- Possible Use of Force by the United States,' says that if there were deteriorating conditions such as a breakdown of the cease-fire between Arab and Israeli forces following the October 1973 Middle East war or an intensification of the embargo, 'we believe the American preference would be for a rapid operation conducted by themselves' to seize the oil fields.

"It cites a warning from Defense Secretary James R. Schlesinger to the British ambassador in Washington, Lord Cromer, that the United States would not tolerate threats from 'under-developed, under-populated' countries and that 'it was no longer obvious to him that the United States could not use force.'

"Seizure of the oil fields, the memo says, was 'the possibility uppermost in American thinking [and] has been reflected, we believe, in their contingency planning.'"