Left I on the News  

"Cuban-US Sergeant Carlos Lazo, who fought for the United States in Iraq all last year and is now separated from his children in Cuba, attended the conference [Cuba Action Day, in which thousands of Americans travelled to Washington to call for an end to restrictions on travel to Cuba].

"When he tried to use his two-week military vacation to visit his two children in Cuba, the government refused it."

The first angle is the American chauvinist angle. If you read the New York Times coverage of the story (or any other coverage, for that matter), you will read that this bird has been "long given up for extinct" and that "the last documented sighting was in Louisiana in 1944." But this isn't true - a pair of Ivory-billeds was seen in Cuba as recently as 1987, as noted in Birds of Cuba. Of course that has no relevance if you think the world ends at the borders of the United States, as so many Americans do.

The second political angle to this story is to understand why the Ivory-billed Woodpecker has been so decimated, and why it had been thought to be extirpated (extinct within a given range) in North America. As is almost always the case, the immediate cause is loss of habitat. But what caused the loss of habitat? Was it just development, as is sometimes the case? No, the cause can be summed up with an old saying: War is not healthy for human beings and other living things. More specifically, according to the Birds of North America:

"The first great wave of habitat loss occurred during 1880–1910. During World War I, Northern industries were getting the bulk of money spent for the war effort, and Southern politicians demanded their share. A bill was passed to build 1,000 ships of southern pine, sounding the death knell for remaining virgin pine forests. It was considered patriotic to cut the forests, although only 320 ships were ever built and none saw war action

"World War II was the final blow. Again in response to war 'needs' and under the banner of patriotism, many remaining old-growth southern forests were cut. Some of the wood was used for the decks of PT boats, other for pallets for shipping ammunition; much of it fueled the demands of industry."

"The advice which the Attorney General set out to the House of Lords on 17 March, the day before the debate in the Commons, was unequivocal and it set out that resolution 1441 had effectively revived the authority for use of force under Security Council resolution 687 because of Iraq's clear further material breach in its refusal to comply with its disarmament obligations."

Update: Clockwise from upper-left: Elegant Trogon, Curve-billed Thrasher, Female Broad-billed Hummingbird (sitting on a nest hanging from a string of Christmas tree lights in the outdoor part of a shop!), White-faced Ibis. For the camera buffs out there (of which I am definitely not one), these and all previous pictures were taken with a hand-held (i.e., no tripod) Canon PowerShot S1 IS camera with 10x optical zoom and 32x digital zoom; almost all, or perhaps all, of the posted pictures were shot at 10x. The take-home lesson is that it doesn't take particularly fancy equipment to get some pretty decent nature shots (if I do say so myself), but the "standard" digital camera which has 3x optical zoom definitely is not sufficient in my experience.

Further update: Apologies if you are getting "traffic exceeded" images and can't see the pictures; come back tomorrow, earlier in the day. I paid for an upgrade in bandwidth from imagehosting.us but they have yet to acknowledge that and do anything about it.

"Doctors in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, have reported a significant increase in deformities among newborn babies. 'There have been 650 cases in total since August 2003 reported in government hospitals - that is a 20 percent increase from the previous regime. Private hospitals were not included in the study, so the number could be higher,' [Dr.] Ali warned.

"The health expert said polluted water, which could contain radiation from weapons used in previous conflicts, was the main factor behind the increase.

"The type of deformities found in newborn babies are characterised by multiple fingers, unusually large heads, unilateral lips or no arms or legs."

Update: Clockwise from upper-left: Vermilion Flycatcher, Gray Hawk, Black-bellied Whistling-Duck, Common Yellowthroat.

Update: Clockwise from upper left: White-breasted Nuthatch, Hepatic Tanager, Black-throated Gray Warbler, Acorn Woodpecker.

And if the government and media can do that, they can pretty much do anything they want. When and if the U.S. government decides they need to bomb Iran, or invade Syria, or blockade North Korea, or sponsor a coup in Venezuela, they'll turn up the verbal heat and in no time the bogeyman-du-jour will be established. And that's why independent media is so important. Because it's one of the necessary links in the only chain that can put a stop to this madness. Of course people who listen to, and learn from, independent media, and act on what they know, is another necessary link.

"As President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela veers toward greater confrontation with Washington, the Bush administration is weighing a tougher approach, including funneling more money to foundations and business and political groups opposed to his leftist government, American officials say."

Fortunately, even the New York Times is forced to acknowledge a delightful bit of reality:

"But it [the U.S. government] has found no allies so far in its attempts to isolate the Venezuelan leader."

Note: Because I'm on the road with only a dialup connection, this post isn't as "rich" with references as it should be. If you're new to this blog, use the Google search above or at the right to search for many previous posts on Venezuela.

"His subordinates were concerned that that charge might not be such a slam dunk."

"Carter revealed that during extensive briefings prior to his departure, U.S. intelligence officials told him they had no evidence Cuba was producing biological weapons or aiding other countries to do so. 'I asked them specifically, on more than one occasion: 'Is there any evidence that Cuba has been involved in sharing any information to any other country on Earth that could be used for terrorist purposes?’ And the answer from our experts on intelligence was ‘no,’ ' Carter said."

You can send feedback to CNN about Blitzer's implicit slander here.

"Some say the movement is in need of a major overhaul: Environmentalists should become part of a larger left-leaning coalition of labor, civil rights, anti-war activists and others -- while talking more about mainstream American values and less about lawsuits and lobbying. But many leaders of America's largest green groups say what they need instead is to find more common goals with business owners, farmers, ranchers and religious conservatives."

"[Michael Schellenberger, executive director of the Breakthrough Institute, an El Cerrito environmental think tank] and Ted Nordhaus, vice president of Evans/McDonough, an Oakland polling firm, set off shock waves in the conservation world when they released a 12,000-word essay, 'The Death of Environmentalism,' in October. It contends environmentalists are seen as just another special interest because they narrowly define their issues."

"'The National Rifle Association is more powerful than the Sierra Club,' said Schellenberger. 'What animates so much of the NRA's activism is core American values of freedom, individualism and populism. Environmentalists need to be animated by those core values too.'"

Schellenberger and Nordhaus seem to completely miss the entire point of environmentalism. "Freedom" and "individualism" are completely inimical to the health of the environment, because they mean precisely that people are free to do what they want and ignore the consequences for society as a whole or for the planet. This is known as the "Tragedy of the Commons". One person throwing non-biodegradable trash in the wilderness is an annoyance; thousands doing so is a tragedy. One person fishing to their heart's content is joy; thousands of fisherman doing so can mean the permanent depletion of fishing stocks. One person building a cabin in a pristeen wilderness with a road leading to it is their personal delight; a thousand people do so and there's no more wilderness to be enjoyed by any of them. Fill in your own examples; there's an unending list.

No, the environmental movement does not need to embrace "core American values of freedom and individualism", it needs to better explain the incompatibility between those values and the future existence of the planet.

Update: In a related story, George Bush was all set to "celebrate" Earth Day by visiting the nation's most polluted national park (Great Smoky Mountains National Park), but had to cancel due to bad weather. It's not that he couldn't get there, of course, just that it wouldn't have made for an optimal "video bite" for TV, which is the only reason he was going there (according to my cynical interpretation; no, that wasn't in the news story).

Nick Anderson:

• Hunger-related deaths - 9,000,000/year
• Diarrhea - 1,500,000/year
• Traffic accidents - 1,000,000/year
• Terrorism - <5,000/year (much less)

By contrast, and adding to the list above, is another number that's just made the news - the 68,000 women worldwide who die as a result of unsafe abortions. The Guardian says that the WHO has been trying to put two abortion pills on its list of "essential mediciines", and that the U.S. has been blocking that from happening, thus contributing to the continuation of those deaths. No doubt that accusation is one of those things which will never be "conclusively proved", but whether its true or not, the essential point remains the same. The U.S. is spending $200 million a day on just the war in Iraq, and a lot more in its "war on terror" - let's call it $75 billion a year. If those abortion pills cost as much as $100 a dose, 68,000 of them would cost $7 million - less than the amount being spent in the "war on terror" in one hour. And with that money, some fraction of those 68,000 women, almost certainly larger, if not much larger, than the number of people killed each year by terrorism, would be saved.

And, needless to say, those 68,000 women are just a tiny fraction of the people dying each year from hunger, poor hygiene and other public health problems, inadequate health care, and a variety of other preventable problems, all of which could be dealt with with the money being spent on the "war on terror".

And why is that? As I've written before about a previous occurence:

"The reason these Iraqis weren't armed is, more than likely, that the U.S. doesn't really trust them to be armed, lest they turn over the arms to insurgents, or turn out to be insurgents themselves. And so they send them off to the slaughter."

"During this first round of voting, 13,949 municipal delegates were elected, of which 26% are women and 19% are young, results that show a greater female and youthful presence in local government structures.

"Next Sunday (April 24), a second round of voting will take place in 1,163 voting districts (7.7% of the total), where there was a tie or where no candidate attained more than 50% of votes cast. [Ed. note - Instant Runoff Voting evidently hasn't made its way to Cuba]

"Of those delegates elected during the first round, 52.48% of them are currently serving in that office, which indicates the people's support for a large number of companeros who are carrying out that commendable work."

In a nice touch, ballot boxes in Cuba are guarded by schoolchildren.

And, need I add, money played no role in these elections, making them truly free and fair. Every candidate was given exactly the same opportunity to "make their case".

Condoliezza Rice has been frequently singled out for her scowling appearance, but that's not really about how she looks, but how she looks, if you know what I mean, so it's not really out of place, though still not nearly as important as discussing what she does and says. But, back to the cases where people are being attacked for their appearance rather than their politics, all I can say is, if you're guilty, what are you thinking? Grow up.

November, 2003: "Support the troops - Bring them home now!"

January, 2005: "Support the troops - bring them home!"

Those were just the posts I could find with that meme in the title; of course the theme has been a constant one here. But today, in one day, we find these posts, seemingly out of the blue (by which I mean it's not like there was a major "Lebanon-barracks" incident yesterday):

Skippy the Bush Kangaroo: "support the troops-bring them home" [all lower-case, of course, befitting the Skippy stylebook]

Semidi: "Support the Troops: Pull Them Out" [I'm not actually familiar with Semidi; I found the post through the increasingly useful WebNymph, and, incidentally, I'm not really fond of the "pull them out" phrase - a little too suggestive for my taste. "Bring them home" will do fine, thanks.]

Spread the meme! "Support the troops - bring them home!"

"Deputies suspended their session for an hour in protest at the incident involving Fatah al-Sheikh, a partisan of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr and member of the dominant United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) bloc.

"They then voted unanimously on a motion demanding an official apology from the US embassy and Washington, and the punishment of the US soldier involved.

"Deputies took turns to speak for almost two hours about the many indignities that they and the Iraqi population suffer when coming in contact with US troops.

"'According to the Geneva conventions, an occupying force must respect the occupied nation,' said Abdul Khaliq Zanganah, a Kurdish MP. 'This offending soldier must be thrown out of our country.'

"A Sunni MP, Mudhar Shawkat, handed in the green VIP badge issued by the US military authorising him and other deputies to enter the Green Zone and said he would only attend parliament if sessions were moved to another location.

"'They should be put on notice and given two months -- no more -- to leave the Green Zone,' he said before walking out.

"Another unidentified MP shouted: 'Yes, the end of occupation begins here. The Green Zone must be liberated from occupation!'

"Speaker Hajem al-Hassani said he would suspend sessions altogether unless they move within a week to a building on the fringes of the Green Zone that has its own entrance and would be guarded by Iraqi soldiers.

"'Enough is enough!' he said before adjourning parliament until Sunday."

(With more than just a hat tip to Holden at First Draft)

Yesterday at lunchtime I was out and decided to drive through at McDonalds (yes, guilty as charged). There on the cashier's window was this sign:

We now have "oatmeal cookies"

Then last night, during Jay Leno's "Headlines" segment, he showed this ad from a restaurant:

Wed. Kids Night
$2.00 Margarita's

Argggh!

EU not condemning states that torture but those providing medical and literacy services to other countries

"We're so proud of what all of you are doing over there. Congratulations on running your own marathon, and thank you, all of you, for serving our country and making it possible for everybody here to enjoy a Patriot's Day in the freedom and the splendor that we're all experiencing."

Some other clown named Tred Barta (the host of a show on OLN) dressed in camouflage with his face blackened and shooting a bow and arrow in the woods just came on and echoed the same nonsense:

"I'm preparing for a grizzly bear and black bear hunt with a longbow and homemade wooden arrows. If it wasn't for the men and women of our armed forces, I wouldn't have the opportunity. [Then, addressing the soldiers running the marathon] Without your sacrifice, the athletes [in Boston] don't run, period."

I have a feeling this telecast is going to be a lot longer than two and a half hours, figuratively speaking.

Why? Despite their similarities, there are two huge differences between Ruzicka and Corrie. First, Corrie was working and was killed in Rafah refugee camp in Gaza. The number of American reporters based in, or even visiting Gaza regularly? Zero. Ruzicka was working and killed in Baghdad (and, before that, Kabul), where she was well known to American reporters. And second, Ruzicka was killed by "our" enemies, the "bad guys", and the American government and its handmaiden media would love to make sure that point gets emphasized, even while deemphasizing or failing to mention that she was killed in an attack on an American military convoy. Corrie, by contrast, was killed by our "friends", the "good guys" in the Israeli government, a fact neither the U.S. government or media would like to dwell on.

Incidentally, researching this post, I learned that, shades of Baghdad Burning, the Play, a new play has just opened up London called "My Name is Rachel Corrie", based on Corrie's writings from her childhood to her death in Rafah.

Update: Promoted from the comments, a long article on this subject from Richard Estes at American Leftist.

"The fact that even now, a full 6 months after the siege, camera crews and journalists are banned from the city, tells us a great deal about the extent of America's war crimes. Just two weeks ago, a photographer from Al Aribiyya news was arrested while leaving Falluja and his equipment and film were confiscated. To date, he is still being held without explanation and there is no indication when he will be released. This illustrates the fear among the military brass that the truth about Falluja will leech out and destroy whatever modest support still exists for the occupation."

And, as I have written before, one thing that is definitely true - not a single aerial (satellite) view of post-Apocalypse Fallujah has been published (as usual, to my knowledge), although it is virtually certain that such a thing must exist.

"Declaring that blogs equal journalism is like saying that television equals journalism -- people mistake the medium for the message.

"Blogs ...could easily supplement traditional media outlets, giving voice to less-publicized people, causes and points of view. They also could force mainstream media outlets to maintain high standards and take a fresh look at the subjects they cover.

"Not every blog is a news outlet. But shouldn't it be up to readers to decide what's news and what isn't?"

Marla Ruzicka died today in a car bombing in Iraq, a truly tragic death of a women whose mission was attempting to do the job the United States wasn't doing, attempting to count the civilian dead in Iraq, as well as bringing aid and comfort to them.

ABC Nightly News tonight informed its viewers that Ruzicka's favorite quote was, "The true revolutionary is guided by strong feelings of love." They "forgot" to mention the origin of that quote, however. It was, of course, Che Guevara, as many readers probably know.

And a quote from Ruzicka herself, taken from the ABC broadcast:

"The numbers are important, but not as important as recognizing that each number represents a human life."

Further update: TV coverage, on which I based the post above, completely ignored the fact which has now come out in the print coverage, that Ruzicka's longtime Iraqi aide and driver, Faiz Ali Salim, was also killed. It was reported on TV that she was killed on the notorious "airport road" (still unsecured two years after the fall of Baghdad), but what wasn't reported was that Marla and Faiz were on that road because that's where Iraqis have to go to seek compensation or help from the American forces. Ruzicka herself wrote in her journal almost a year ago: "[Military] convoys in that area are the target of rockets and fire from the resistance. It would be nice if there was a more secure location for Iraqis to seek compensation." This information and a lot more worth reading on the subject from Zeynep at Under the Same Sun.

"Twenty-five years ago this week, the U.S. Olympic Committee's House of Delegates, facing withering pressure from the Carter White House, voted by more than 2 to 1 not to participate in the 1980 Summer Olympic Games in Moscow. President Jimmy Carter ordered the boycott after Soviet forces invaded Afghanistan. [Ed. note - again, note the use of the word "invasion"]

"The Games went on without the Americans and athletes from 64 other countries that joined the U.S.-led boycott...The Soviets and East Germans returned the favor in 1984, boycotting L.A. and lessening the competition at the 1984 Games...The matching boycotts robbed an entire generation of athletes on both sides of the Iron Curtain of their greatest competition on the world's grandest stage."

"'A journalist tries to get the facts right' and tries to get close to a 'verifiable truth,' not to take sides but 'to inspire public discussion,' [Tom Rosenstiel, head of the Project for Excellence in Journalism] said.

"This isn't a requirement for bloggers with axes to grind.

"Professional reporters and editors are trained to understand the need for neutrality in straight news stories. They also have been trained in the ethics that distinguish their profession.

"It's in the nature of our work that the public has every opportunity to scrutinize what we do. No one lasts long in the news business if there are deliberate distortions of the news.

"Fortunately, most newspapers in this country are still devoted to delivering impartial news stories. The editors and publishers see it as an indispensable public service."

Perhaps that was a bit abstract, and unquantifiable. Let's look at a completely different story, a trivial one from today's news - the story of George Bush and Dick Cheney paying taxes. Here's Knight-Ridder's story - it dutifully reports how much Bush and Cheney paid in taxes, and how many charitable contributions each made. Now here's the story from the New York Times. Same story, same facts. Except that in the Times story, we also learn that Bush saved $28,846 and Cheney $81,336 from the tax cuts that were enacted by their administration. Now was the Knight-Ridder story untrue? Not at all. Was the Times story somehow not "impartial" because it reported the additional fact of how much each man saved because of their own tax cuts? Some might say so. The Times reporter considered those facts (and they are facts) essential to tell the full story; the Knight-Ridder reporter did not (or perhaps didn't even consider the subject).

Or take the story of the 20 Iraqis killed by American airstrikes the other day in al-Rummana, to this day still not reported by any corporate American media. Why not? Was this story somehow less newsworthy than others which have run? Clearly it was, in the judgment of the journalists who run those media outlets. But not in the opinion of the journalists at al Jazeerah, who did run it, nor in my opinion either (who also ran it).

The press is "neutral" and that's the defining characteristic of journalism? Don't believe it for a minute, even from the mouth of Helen Thomas.

"U.S. troops stationed in South Korea were forced this year to scrap a contingency plan for the collapse of Kim Jong Il's regime in North Korea because of objections by Seoul, the South Korean government said Friday.

"The strategy, code-named Op-Plan 5029, mapped out military responses in the event that Kim suddenly lost power and the communist country started to come apart.

"South Korean officials apparently feared that the United States would take command in case of a power vacuum and that it would hastily send its troops toward Pyongyang, perhaps under the flag of the same U.N. command that waged the 1950-1953 Korean War.

"South Korea, which considers the entire Korean peninsula its rightful territory, wants to take the lead if the North Korean system collapses."

Imperialist greed, and its desire/need to control the world, knows no bounds.

"Santa Clara County's growth helped boost the total number of Bay Area residents for the first time in three years, according to a census report released this week.

"The census numbers show Santa Clara County grew in part because of migration and in part because of natural growth, with births exceeding deaths. Local experts said that out-migration, which has been slowing, may also signal improving job opportunities.

"'It is a measure of some economic turnaround,' said Hans Johnson, a demographer and research fellow at Public Policy Institute in San Francisco."

"Santa Clara and San Benito counties added 5,200 jobs from February to March, for a total of 857,300 jobs, according to a state report released Friday. But that number is down by 6,000 from a year ago. The unemployment rate for the two counties fell to 5.8 percent in March, down from a revised 6.3 percent in February, but that is partly due to people leaving the workforce."

What are the causes of child abuse?

• general stress
• the stress of having children in the family, when one didn't have children before
• dealing with a handicapped or behaviorally difficult child
• the stress of caring for someone besides oneself
• a personal history of being abused (childhood trauma)
• alcohol or drug use
• marital conflict (which, in turn, has as its number one cause financial problems)
• unemployment

"U.S. soldiers reportedly have been cleared of wrongdoing in the shooting of an Italian journalist and an intelligence agent last month in Baghdad.

"The car was about 130 yards from a checkpoint when the soldiers flashed their lights to get it to stop. They fired warning shots when the car was within 90 yards of the checkpoint, but at 65 yards, they used deadly force. Calipari was killed and Sgrena wounded."

Now, there are variables, but typical perception plus reaction times are of the order of 1.5 seconds, that is, the time it takes to perceive a problem (such as a warning signal) and move your foot to the brake. That means that, according to the military's story, shots were fired at the vehicle less than 0.3 seconds after the vehicle could possibly have begun to slow down, even if they were paying close attention and they had immediately perceived that the alleged flashing light was meant as a signal to stop. However that 0.3 second is actually overstated, because the gunman (or gunmen), attempting to perceive if the car was responding to their warning signal to slow down, have perception and reaction times of their own, so in fact, they were pulling the trigger before they could possibly have perceived if the car were slowing down. And likewise, if the so-called warning shots were supposed to have served any purpose whatsoever, once again the "deadly force" shots were being squeezed off well before the warning shots could possibly have had any effect.

And on that basis, the military has "exonerated itself" from any wrongdoing.

Update: I mentioned above the time required for the gunman to perceive that the car was slowing down; I don't think I realized how long that would be. I was just out driving and did a little experiment. Applying the brake in "normal" fashion (i.e., not jamming on the brakes which isn't advisable on a wet road such as was the case in Baghdad that night), it seemed to take the better part of 2 full seconds to slow down from 45 to 35 (an amount I guesstimate as being enough for a forward observer to perceive the change in speed), making the whole claim of "warning lights" and "warning shots" even more ridiculous. And, if the car in question were a standard transmission rather than an automatic (I have no idea if that's the case), that adds still more time (to the driver's response time) in order to push in the clutch before braking.

Finally, just elevating some comments from the Comments section, I recognize that the entire U.S. military story is quite likely false, as I have discussed here and here (among other places). The purpose of this post is simply to show that, even if the military claims about the flashing lights and the warning shots (and Sgrena being shot from the front, not from the back) are true, they still don't amount to anything except the callous (and possibly deliberate) murder of Nicola Calipari and the possible attempted murder of Giuliana Sgrena.

"One reason why Washington can persuade the outside world that its venture in Iraq is finally coming right is that it is too dangerous for reporters to travel outside Baghdad or stray far from their hotels in the capital."

"When I was travelling in the northern city of Mosul this week, my guards ­ Kurdish members of the Iraqi National Guard ­ said it was too dangerous for them to travel with me in uniform in official vehicles. They donned Arab gowns, hid their weapons and drove through the city in a civilian car."

"Most violent incidents in Iraq go unreported. We saw one suicide bomb explosion, clouds of smoke and dust erupting into the air, and heard another in the space of an hour. Neither was mentioned in official reports. Last year US soldiers told the IoS that they do not tell their superiors about attacks on them unless they suffer casualties. This avoids bureaucratic hassle and 'our generals want to hear about the number of attacks going down not up'."

"US casualties have fallen to about one dead a day in March compared with four a day in January and five a day in November. But this is the result of a switch in American strategy rather than a sign of a collapse in the insurgency. US military spokesmen make plain that America's military priority has changed from offensive operations to training Iraqi troops and police."

During the interview, Avlon claims (and Stewart agrees) that "the parties are being controlled by the extremes." The Republicans, yes. But the Democrats? I wasn't aware that Dennis Kucinich and Cynthia McKinney were in "control" of the Democratic Party. In fact, of course, the Democrats are firmly in the control of precisely the "centrists" that Avlon and Stewart claim to be - Kerry, Clinton, etc.

Avlon's example of the "outer reaches of politics" includes "Al Sharpton on the left." Al Sharpton? First of all, Rev. Al isn't even an elected politician. Second, "outer reaches"? To be honest I don't remember Sharpton's exact positions in the last campaign, but I know he wasn't to the left of Kucinich, and what were Kucinich's two big issues? Single-payer health care (wow! how radical can you get?), and withdrawing American troops from Iraq (but only after, and if - a big if - they were replaced by U.N. troops), a position supported by the majority of Americans (depending on which poll you believe and how the question is asked).

What complete and utter rubbish is the stance put forth by Avlon and Stewart. What are the big issues of the day that exhibit this alleged "polarization" between two extremes? Terry Schiavo - right-wing politicians drove the government to intervene in a single, private family matter, while other people...didn't want them to intervene. Social Security - one group wants to radically change (destroy) Social Security, and another group wants to...leave it alone. The filibuster - one group wants to change rules that have governed the Senate for years so they can pack the judiciary with right-wing appointees and the other group wants to...leave things as they are. Iraq - the "opposition" isn't calling for withdrawal of troops, and although they criticize Bush for having gone to war with phony justification, they don't question the essence of the justification at all - the "doctrine" that America has a "right" to invade any country which might, someday pose a threat to us.

The fact is, national politics are about as "polarized" as the Hannity and Colmes show - a radical right-wing on one side, and a milquetoast on the other. Not what I'd call "polarization". But phony "centrists" like John Avlon and Jon Stewart want you to think that's the essence of politics today. Feh.

And in a strong candidate for the political humor of the day post, "A senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, confirmed that the publication was being eliminated, but said the allegation that it was being done for political reasons was 'categorically untrue.'" And who would doubt that? Interestingly, although I can't imagine that Landay didn't ask the question, the anonymous State Department official evidently didn't say that the reason was exactly. Saving paper? Couldn't squeeze the printing costs into that $100 billion "war on terror" budget?

Fed governor: U.S. economic growth 'solid'
"The U.S. economy is on a 'path of solid growth' that will continue to boost job growth, Federal Reserve Governor Donald Kohn told directors of the San Francisco Fed on Thursday."

Don't worry, though. Economic growth is "on a path of solid growth that will continue to boost job growth." Right.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, things aren't looking too good either: 5,000 MG Rover workers are being made "redundant" (Redundant with what? There's no one else doing their jobs; their plant has been closed.), and an estimated 15,000 jobs among suppliers are forecast to be lost. Revisiting one of my favorite themes, Tony Blair says "What people expect now...is that we do all that we can to find people jobs, to train them properly, to give them as much financial security as we can in the short term." Train them for what? What business is it exactly in Britain that will be looking for 20,000 ex-autoworkers, tire workers, etc.? What businesses in Britain that require "training" will be hiring 20,000 workers of any kind? This business with "training" is just a complete crock. There is only one long term solution to the economic situation of workers in Britain, America, and everywhere else, and it starts with the word "social" and ends in "ism". A system where the government worries about the financial security of everyone for the long term, and not just for the "short term" as Blair claims he's prepared to do. A system in which, if productivity allows enough cars (or other goods) to be produced with 3/4 the effort, then the work week will be shortened to 30 hours, with everyone still receiving the same pay. Under capitalism, the trend is distinctly in the opposite direction - more hours for less pay, rather than fewer hours for more pay.

"Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick paid a surprise visit Wednesday to this former insurgent stronghold.

"Zoellick, who wore body armor under his suit jacket, was told by military commanders that he could not leave his armored Humvee because of security concerns during the lightning tour of the shattered downtown.

"A one-hour session with the city's recently elected leaders was held downtown in a heavily guarded Marine enclave, in a sweltering room with windows covered with sandbags."

U.S. law enforcement records say that Jimenez, 69, helped kidnap Cuba's consul to Mexico in 1977 and killed a consular official, and that Remon, 60, was identified as the triggerman in the slaying of a pro-Castro activist and a Cuban diplomat. Novo, 65, was convicted in the United States in the late 1970s of taking part in the 1976 assassination of Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier. He was acquitted on appeal but served four years in prison for lying to a grand jury.

Despite the presence of vigilantes on the Arizona border, a major international terrorist has apparently recently snuck across the border and entered the U.S. Yet astonishingly, only a single American newspaper, the Miami Herald, has even covered the story. Why? Because, of course, it's the notorious anti-Cuban terrorist, Luis Posada Carriles, and he's busy negotiating for asylum with the "implacably anti-terrorist" American government.

Luis Posada Carriles is personally responsible for the death of 74 people. He was convicted of masterminding the bombing of a Cubana Airlines plane in 1976, which killed 73 people, and he has publicly admitted to organizing bombings of Cuban hotels in 1997 which killed one and injured another 11. In 2000, he and three others were convicted in Panama of a plot to kill Fidel Castro (although absurdly, and no doubt as a result of pressure from the U.S., they were charged with lesser crimes and not attempted murder). A few months later the four were pardoned by the Panamanian President, and three of them immediately flew to the U.S. to a heroes' welcome (all three, by the way, had earlier been convicted in connection with other murders). Posada Carriles laid low, however, until now when he has apparently surfaced in Miami, at least through his lawyer (he himself is in hiding).

It's instructive to see how the Miami Herald describes Posada Carriles:

"Posada has been accused of blowing up a Cuban airliner in 1976 and trying to kill Cuban leader Fidel Castro in 2000. He also has been linked to a string of bombings against several Havana hotels and restaurants in 1997."

The final paragraphs of the article are replete with irony:

"Venezuela has indicated an interest in seeking Posada's extradition. Posada, a naturalized Venezuelan, escaped from prison there in 1985 pending final resolution of the Cuban airliner case.

"But in a recent case, an immigration judge prohibited the U.S. government from deporting two former Venezuelan military officers accused of bombings in their home country because 'more likely than not' they would be tortured there."

Cuba is naturally demanding an explanation from the U.S. as to why they are negotiating with such a well-known terrorist for asylum; none is likely to be forthcoming, given that, with the exception of the Miami Herald, the rest of the press are keeping mum. Wouldn't want to let the furor over alleged al Qaeda terrorists sneaking across the border be overshadowed by the facts of this very real terrorist doing the same.

Update: I'd been sitting on this story, which has been running in Granma and the Miami Herald for several days, waiting for clarifying details (i.e., was Posada really in the U.S. or was this just a rumor?), and finally decided to run it last night. This morning, the Washington Post (and probably others) break the story, on the news that Posada Carriles has now made an official application for asylum. Like the Miami Herald, the Post does its best to cover up Posada's background (although, unlike the Herald, they do mention the deaths of 74 people and the fact that Posada was trained by the CIA). Here's one paragraph:

"Posada's defenders deny that he is a terrorist. They point out that Venezuelan courts twice acquitted Posada before he escaped from prison while awaiting a third trial there in the bombing of the Cuban airliner."

"He was implicated in the Cuban hotel bombings and the plot to kill Castro in Panama."

"The region which is now threatened by Soviet troops in Afghanistan is of great strategic importance: It contains more than two-thirds of the world's exportable oil. The Soviet effort to dominate Afghanistan has brought Soviet military forces to within 300 miles of the Indian Ocean and close to the Straits of Hormuz, a waterway through which most of the world's oil must flow. The Soviet Union is now attempting to consolidate a strategic position, therefore, that poses a grave threat to the free movement of Middle East oil.

"Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force."

Only one small problem for her. The main website spreading this nonsense, the anti-Chavez Vcrisis.com, today carries this followup story, the response from the Spanish Minister of Industry, Commerce and Tourism when asked about the "incident":

"The 30,374 Euros worth of exports to Venezuela in the first semester of 2004 consisted of CS (chlorobenzylidene malonitrile) gas used to produce tear devices (the gas gets compressed into containers in a facility in Venezuela). It is used to control riots."

No, Forbes' pet theory is this: "Social status correlates strongly and positively with IQ and other measures of intelligence, and intelligence correlates strongly with health literacy -- the ability to understand and follow a prescription for disease prevention and treatment." You poor people just aren't smart enough to take your medicine, according to Forbes. Well, perhaps Forbes ought to familiarize themselves with this post that ran here at Left I on the News last September, which discusses how patients are cutting back on their medicines because they simply can't afford them. The bottom line?

"When the co-pay shouldered by younger patients with chronic illnesses doubled, those patients cut back on their medications by as much as 23%. And the health results were striking: As these patients scaled back their medications, their visits to emergency rooms rose 17% and hospital stays went up 10%."

By the way, the recommendations of that study were that doctors should start prescribing less effective drugs to poor patients, on the grounds that less effective drugs, if also less expensive, would be more likely to be taken. I think we can safely say that no doctor has ever prescribed a less expensive but less effective drug to a billionaire.

"Dennis Kyne put up such a fight at a political protest last summer, the arresting officer recalled, it took four police officers to haul him down the steps of the New York Public Library and across Fifth Avenue.

"'We picked him up and we carried him while he squirmed and screamed,' the officer, Matthew Wohl, testified in December. 'I had one of his legs because he was kicking and refusing to walk on his own.'"

"A videotape shot by a documentary filmmaker showed Mr. Kyne agitated but plainly walking under his own power down the library steps, contradicting the vivid account of Officer Wohl, who was nowhere to be seen in the pictures. Nor was the officer seen taking part in the arrests of four other people at the library against whom he signed complaints."

Of course, perjury isn't the only crime police are guilty of:

"Alexander Dunlop...said he was arrested while going to pick up sushi. Last week, he discovered that there were two versions of the same police tape: the one that was to be used as evidence in his trial had been edited at two spots, removing images that showed Mr. Dunlop behaving peacefully. When a volunteer film archivist found a more complete version of the tape and gave it to Mr. Dunlop's lawyer, prosecutors immediately dropped the charges and said that a technician had cut the material by mistake."

"Twenty Iraqis have been killed and 22 injured after US helicopters and heavy artillery bombed houses in al-Rummana village north of al-Qaim city. Seven children, six women and three old men were among the dead, witnesses said, while the injured included 13 children, seven women and two old men."

The New York Times offers this headline:

In Talks With Bush, Sharon Vows to Remove Illegal Settlements

"Sharon vows to remove unauthorized outposts". Yes, he'll at least give lip service to that goal. "Sharon vows to remove illegal settlements"? Not a chance.

Update 1: And here's the progressive Guardian:

Bush insists he will not permit settlement blocking off a Palestinian East Jerusalem

"I told the prime minister of my concern that Israel not undertake any activity that contravenes road map obligations or prejudices final status negotiations. Therefore, Israel should remove unauthorised outposts and meet its road map obligations regarding settlements in the West Bank."

Update 2: Sure enough, after the sound bites were dutifully recorded for the evening news and the cameras were turned off, Sharon was a little more specific:

"Speaking to reporters before flying to Washington, Mr Sharon...indicated that a controversial plan to build thousands of homes linking the biggest settlement of Maale Adumim and Jerusalem will go ahead, despite international opposition."

"Khaled el-Masri says his strange and violent trip into the void began with a bus ride on New Year's Eve 2003.

"When he returned to this city five months later, his friends didn't believe the odyssey he recounted. Masri said he was kidnapped in Macedonia, beaten by masked men, blindfolded, injected with drugs and flown to Afghanistan, where he was imprisoned and interrogated by U.S. intelligence agents. He said he was finally dumped in the mountains of Albania.

"[When he finally arrived home] his apartment was empty except for unpaid bills. His wife and four children were gone; they had moved to Lebanon when he failed to return months earlier."

"Aviation documents viewed by the Los Angeles Times show that a jet registered to a U.S. company landed at the Skopje airport at 8:51 p.m., Jan. 23, 2004. The plane's tail number was N313P and was registered to Premier Executive Transport Services Inc., a Massachusetts firm with reported connections to the CIA. No phone numbers are listed for the company or its directors.

The jet left Skopje more than three hours later, and its destination -- first disclosed by the German television program "Frontal 21" -- was Kabul, the Afghan capital, with a stopover in Baghdad."

[U.N. Ambassador-nominee John] Bolton pledged "to fulfill the president's vision of working in close partnership with the United Nations." (Source)

Jeremy Scahill's article [Shooting the Messenger, March 7, 2005] was an excellent overview of the fate that journalists have suffered in Iraq at the hands of the U.S. military, but it didn't answer one question - does the U.S. deliberately target journalists? The answer is clearly "yes", and I'm surprised Scahill didn't mention it, since he was instrumental in exposing that fact. On Jan. 26, 2004, Democracy Now! featured aninterview Scahill conducted with Gen. Wesley Clark, who was in charge of NATO forces who bombed Radio Television Serbia, killing 16 journalists. Clark vigorously defends that bombing in the interview, although he tries to escape responsibility for the deaths by asserting that "Milosevic was warned." The deliberate targeting of Radio Television Serbia remains an undisputed fact. Although Clark talks about how it was a "command and control" center, at the time, various pronouncements by the U.S. government made it quite clear that it was the alleged "propaganda" being dispensed, that is, its journalistic output, that qualified RTS as a "command and control" center, and nothing else.

It's also worth remembering that, although no one was killed in the attack, the U.S. quite deliberately bombed and destroyed the Al Jazeera offices in Kabul during the assault on Afghanistan. A spokesman for the U.S. Central Command said the bombing was based on "compelling" evidence that the facility was being used by al Qaeda, but, needless to say, no compelling evidence, or any evidence at all, was ever released to back up his claim.

Does the U.S. military deliberately target journalists? Unquestionably yes.

There's an interesting backstory to the news that former CNN executive Eason Jordan, chased from his job by right-wing bloggers for saying he believed journalists killed by coalition forces in Iraq had been targeted. During its 1999 war in Yugoslavia, NATO disliked the way the central Serb TV station in Belgrade was covering the fighting. Jordan, then head of CNN International, was informed that NATO planned to attack the station. He protested and the jets veered away during their first sortie. Jordan had time to clear out CNN's crew and equipment from the building. Two days later, on April 23, NATO struck, killing sixteen journalists and technicians. After the war ended, in October 1999, Jordan revealed the story of the premeditated attack at the "News World" media conference in Barcelona.

"The incident took place last April while the three Border Policemen patrolled the area of the village of Abu Ghosh near Jerusalem. When they noticed the two 17-year-old Palestinians from a nearby Palestinian village, they arrested them on the grounds of not possessing permits to enter Israel. They instructed them to get into the police vehicle and started toward the community of Nataf. They then ordered the minors to get off the jeep and for about 30 minutes they beat them using batons. They forced gravel down their throats, poured dairy products and food leftovers on them and eventually released them.

"The three policemen admitted to beating the Palestinians with their fists and batons, to pouring dairy products and food leftovers on them and forcing the youths to kiss their boots.

"The investigation of the incident revealed that the policemen didn't actually check whether the Palestinians had entry permits to Israel."

"[Judge] Segal said that the accused were partly right when saying that the state wasn't doing enough to train Border Police to face the day-to-day pressure their task involves."

Meanwhile, in a followup to the recent murders in Rafah, the New York Times, alone among all the news sources I consulted including several Israeli newspapers, claims that "An Israeli Army spokesman said the army had an hour of video of the young men and that they were nowhere near any residential area, were monitoring Israeli patrols and were not playing soccer." We shall see if that claim proves to be true, or if it proves just as false as the claim that the soldiers were aiming for the "lower part" of the boys' bodies. Note that even this denial, however, does not in any way claim that the soldiers thought the boys were armed, or that they were a threat in any way warranting the application of deadly force. Although again, it must be repeated - whatever the details of the event prove to be, it is the occupation, and the occupiers, which is (and who are) to blame, nothing else.

Bush went out of his way to be vague about settlements. His handlers had given him a really short mantra from which he did not stray: "the road map says no expansion of settlements." Also, "road map road map road map." At no point did he say that Sharon's plans for major expansions of the settlements contravened the road map, although he said it in such a way that you might think he had, which was the point. But when Sharon stood up and insisted that Israel will "meet all its obligations under the road map" but that he intends to build new housing to make the settlements contiguous with Jerusalem, Bush didn't object. Clearly, Sharon will be allowed to interpret the road map to mean the exact opposite of what it says. In fact Bush said that "the United States will not prejudice the outcome of final status negotiations" and went on to do just that: "changes on the ground, including existing major Israeli population centers, must be taken into account in any final status negotiations."

* A fine song, no matter what anybody says, and I'm not going to let the fact that George Bush likes it ruin it for me, any more than I'm going to let him ruin my enjoyment of Van Morrison's "Brown-Eyed Girl" just because he likes that too.

Being on MSNBC, rather than CNN, this show probably has one-tenth the viewership of Judy Woodruff's Inside Politics. More's the pity. Not that either of them will ever stray too far from the standard paradigm when choosing issues to cover on their show. Tom DeLay controversy? Sure. Three Palestinians slaughtered in Rafah? Don't look for that on either show. They're too busy covering the pious nonsense being spouted by Bush and Sharon about the "peace process" to look at reality.

"Very often, the points he makes have some truth to them, but he simply goes beyond where the facts tell intelligent people they should go." - Carl W. Ford Jr., recently retired head of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, speaking about Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton and his claims about the "threats" to the U.S. posed by Syria, Libya, North Korea, and Cuba, as quoted in the Los Angeles Times [link no longer valid]

"Three current and former State Department officials say Bolton tried to bully the intelligence bureau into endorsing his view that Cuba has a bioweapons program. 'Bolton wanted to go far beyond what the intelligence community would support,' said Greg Thielmann, who retired in September as head of the Strategic, Proliferation and Military Affairs Office in the State Department's intelligence bureau. His assertions about Cuba's bioweapons were 'pure surmise as far as I know,' Thielmann said."

"After the 2000 presidential election, Bolton helped wage the legal battle over the recount for George W. Bush and succeeded in stopping the recount of Miami-Dade County ballots."

A star is born.

By the way, Kos denies that he's a "journalist". As I just wrote, I think he's dead wrong about that. Like so many people, he confuses being a "journalist" with being a "reporter". They are not the same.

"A U.S. college-educated detainee asks plaintively in one: 'Is it possible to see the evidence in order to refute it?'

"In another transcript, the unidentified president of a U.S. military tribunal bursts out: 'I don't care about international law. I don't want to hear the words 'international law' again. We are not concerned with international law.'

"Feroz Ali Abbasi was ejected from his September hearing because he repeatedly challenged the legality of his detention. 'I have the right to speak,' Abbasi said. 'No, you don't,' the tribunal president replied. The tribunal found Abbasi to have been 'deeply involved' in the al-Qaida terror network. Yet four months later, the government released him, saying his home country of Britain would keep an eye on him.

"'You believe anyone that gives you any information,' said detainee Mohammed Mohammed Hassen, who was arrested in Pakistan. 'What if that person made a mistake? Maybe that person looked at me and confused me with someone else.' The unclassified evidence against Hassen, 24, was that a senior al-Qaida lieutenant had identified his picture as that of someone he might have seen in Afghanistan."

Scene 2: A front page article in the San Jose Mercury News reminds us that the business that companies are in is not making computers, or making software, or anything else except making money: "In 2004, Silicon Valley's 150 largest companies made more money than ever -- profits were up 169 percent from the year before. So why didn't it feel like a boom year? Because for the most part, companies aren't hiring locally. They're simply banking the cash. The 10 Silicon Valley companies with the most cash on hand increased their stashes from a total of $21 billion in 1997 to $73 billion in 2005. When they open their checkbooks, it's often to buy back stock or acquire other companies." The result? "It's a different story for workers. Santa Clara County posted its third straight year of job losses in 2004."

Scene 3: A television ad for Saturn cars (paraphrasing): "John gets X miles per gallon on his fuel-efficient car. But what good is that when cars are passing him by on the freeway? You need horsepower - and Saturn's got it." Yeah, what good is good gas mileage? Other than saving the driver lots of money, lessening the depletion of limited natural resources, diminishing the need to spend billions of dollars on "war for oil", and reducing pollution and saving the planet? I mean, how can all those things possibly compare with the profit needs of Saturn?

Three Palestinian boys were killed in Rafah refugee camp yesterday. Naturally there are conflicting stories. Palestinian witnesses say that the boys were playing soccer, and were running after a ball that had left the field. The Israeli army says that two other boys confessed that they and the three dead boys were trying to "slip into Egypt" to smuggle "weapons and other goods." I wasn't aware those were death-penalty crimes, but apparently the Israelis feel that explanation is sufficient; it certainly will be enough to prevent any condemnation from Western governments and politicians (not that that would be forthcoming even if the Israelis admitted they simply shot the Palestinians in cold blood). After all, who are you going to believe?

I admit that, as I write this, the truth is impossible to discern with absolute certainty. But two observations suggest the answer. First is the lesson of history: the Israeli military, in cases like this, has a credibility more or less equal to that of the American military. That is, none. And second, in this case, we have more specific information. From the Ha'aretz story linked above, we have this statement: "A senior officer said the soldiers had opened fire only after firing warning shots, and aimed at the lower part of the boys' bodies." And then, from the New York Times story, also linked above, we learn this: "According to Dr. Ali Mosa of Al Najar Hospital in Rafah, the dead are Ashraf Mosa, 14, with a bullet in the chest; Khaled Al Ghanaam, 14, a bullet in the neck; Hassan Abu Zaid, 17, a bullet in the head." Chest, neck and head. Yeah, they were "aiming for the lower part of the boys' bodies," alright.

As an aside, note that both facts do not appear in the same story; only a careful comparison of stories from various sources helps us to draw this conclusion, reflecting things I wrote just below about the unique value of blogging.

And what is the Israeli reaction to this? Ha'aretz is a relatively liberal paper. Here's what appears on the front page of their online edition today, linking to the story:

"Militant shelling in Gaza kills horse, damages settlers' homes
Dozens of missiles fired after IDF shot dead 3 youths in Rafah on Saturday; militants: Not end to truce

Update: I forgot to add the most important point. Which is that, in the end, exactly what the facts are in this case, or in any other case, is really irrelevant. Because the cause of these deaths is the occupation, pure and simple. The logic of occupation, whether it be demonstrated in this case or the case of the parents of the young girl whose picture is at the top of this page, is straightforward - the lives of the occupiers are worth everything, and the lives of the occupied, nothing. If there is a 1% chance, or even a 0.1% chance, that the occupier's life is in danger, then the occupier will shoot to kill and ask questions later (or, more likely, not even bother). The solution to prevent these tragedies is similarly straightforward: end the occupation. U.S. out of Iraq and Afghanistan, Israel out of Palestine, and tragic deaths like these will end.

Given that actual past, here's how CNN just described the event:

"Jubilant newly-liberated Iraqis tore down the statue of Saddam with the help of American forces."

DeLay allies launch plan to defend his ethics

• U.S. military spending will be $527 billion this year, as much as all other nations combined (I've discussed previously how even that figure is an underestimate). Note that the author uses the accurate phrase "military spending", rather than the more commonly used, and highly misleading, "defense spending".
• Military adventures continue their toll on the U.S. pocketbook years into the future. This year $2.5 million will be spent to remove unexploded bombs dropped over Laos during the Vietnam War, and $27 billion on medical services for veterans, not to mention $7.3 billion to cleanup radioactive waste from nuclear weapons production and $6.6 billion just for maintenance of nuclear warheads.
• Interest payments on the national debt will be $1085 per person (more per household, obviously) this year.
• Funding for the Securities and Exchange Commission and Small Business Administration total $1.4 billion; spending on consumer protection (OSHA and the Consumer Product Safety Commission) totals only $550 million.
• $168 million is being spent on sexual-abstinence education, but only $13 million on adoption awareness.
• The $19 billion allocated (definitely not spent) for the reconstruction of Iraq (which is definitely warranted, mind you, but only because the U.S. has spent hundreds of billions destroying the country in the first place) is more than the combined annual budgets for the National Cancer Institute, Amtrak, the National Park Service, the Superfund Hazardous Waste Cleanup, and Home-Delivered Meals to the Elderly.
• Research on Nuclear Power gets $503 million, vs. $126 million for solar and wind combined.
• $1.2 billion is spent by the Secret Service to protect the President and assorted others.

And here are a few of the people the Iraqis would like to see get the hell out of their country, as they "watch" the demonstration. The picture illustrates just how "welcome" they feel:

But the reason this discussion draws my blogging attention at all is because it, like every single other discussion of the subject that I've seen, completely missed one of the key points, and it wasn't an accident that it did so. And that is that blogging is not just about spreading unconfirmed rumors, although there is some of that, and is isn't just about actual reporting, although there is some of that, and it isn't just about commenting on the news, although there is plenty of that too. But what never gets mentioned is the role of blogger as editor, selecting the stories to cover at all and the stories to give emphasis too. And, to me, that is precisely the role in which bloggers, and related "news/commentary" sites like Cursor, CommonDreams, Antiwar.com, etc. (all links at right) serve. Just to pick a recent story, where are you going to read or hear about Italian police terrorists going on trial for acts of terrorism committed during the Genoa Social Forum? Not in The New York Times. Not in the Washington Post. Not on CNN or Fox or MSNBC or ABC or NBC or CBS. Why? Because all those outlets, whether they lean slightly to the left or slightly (or heavily!) to the right, all share in the dominant paradigm - capitalism, Democrats vs. Republicans, the "West" is a force for "good" in the world, etc. It's not that they won't report stories like this, or Abu Ghraib, or the story about the Iraqi women hostages, but when they do appear, they'll be deemphasized, and disappear as quickly as they can. Only with blogs, and a handful of progressive outlets like Democracy Now! or the Guardian, do you get breaks in that paradigm which allow other news to shine through or be emphasized. The "mainstream", corporate media have been spending days on end, countless of hours of coverage, on the death of the Pope. Have any of them covered the relationship of the Pope with the ultra-right-wing Opus Dei organization, like CounterPunch (not a blog, but these days primarily an online publication in terms of circulation) did today? Not that I've seen. Was this primarily a function of clever investigative reporting on the part of CounterPunch? No, these were not obscure facts. It's primarily a function of emphasis, of bringing attention to facts which are already known.

The other failing of this, and other panels on blogging, is that they all seem to neglect what is unique about blogging, or rather about the web, which is the ability to provide links to supporting material, which enables the blogger to provide context and supporting material in a way that is impossible for all but the best journalists, and hardly possible at all in most broadcast media (at least "short-form" broadcast media, i.e., the normal news). Justin Raimondo at Antiwar.com is perhaps the foremost practioner of this art, with a link every two or three words in his essays, but all good political/news bloggers do that to greater or lesser extents. Being able to contrast something said or written by someone today with something they said a year ago is done every night by Jon Stewart on the Daily Show, every day by countless bloggers, but only rarely by "real" journalists.

Blogs do have some very unique roles to fill in the news/analysis world. But you would never know it from panels like the one that occured today, and not just because they wasted time and energy on the likes of Jeff Gannon.

* They're Longfellows

"Through the night's darkness, on an outer wall of the Cesar Chavez Library, a projection showed the mounting revenues from Salinas taxpayers that have helped to pay for the war in Iraq -- already more than $80 million. The odometer image kept spinning while authors read into the night as part of the protest against the planned closure of the public libraries in a city that John Steinbeck once called home."

The Courier urges a "yes" vote for Measures A and B, which will cost less than $50 per household. This is indeed a trivial expense, and the cuts in library services which have already occurred in this, one of the richest counties in the richest country in the world, are without question outrageous, as is the recent closing of the only hospital in downtown San Jose, impending closings of fire stations all over the Bay Area, and countless other cuts in social services.

Why is it that we can't pay for these vital services? Because, as shown on the website www.costofwar.com, the citizens of Santa Clara County have already paid just under $1.6 billion dollars for the illegal and completely unjustified invasion and occupation of Iraq; counting money already allocated by the Congress but not yet spent, the figure is closer to $3 billion dollars, and counting other future costs (like the cost of paying for health care for wounded veterans for the rest of their lives) the cost is higher still.

The people of Santa Clara County are spending nearly $3 million a day to continue the occupation of Iraq - that's $2 a day, or $730 a year, per person (more per household). If we want money to spend at home on libraries, teachers, hospitals, fire and police protection, roads, mass transportation, and everything else we need, there is one place to find that money, but unfortunately it won't be found on the ballot. American forces should leave Iraq today, and not only will we be saving American and Iraqi lives in doing so, we'll have all the money to do what we need to do in Cupertino and Santa Clara County. The Cupertino Courier, the Cupertino City Council, and the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors should all declare their opposition to this war, and join in the demand to end the war immediately. We've spent enough money, and enough people have died as a result of our actions, already.

In related news, U.S. citizen Jose Padilla, accused by the U.S. government of discussing committing crimes (but never having actually done anything, mind you) is now into his third year of jail, mostly (if not exclusively) solitary confinement, with no actual charges and no actual evidence as far as we know. The U.S. government, ever mindful of the concepts of justice and "innocent until proven guilty", brands him an "enemy combatant" on the Voice of America web site.

Will any court ever have the courage to rule that the "war on terror" is a public relations label, and not a legal term which has the slightest relevance to actual "war"? Stay tuned.

"[A] former Japanese prison guard was tried by the Allies after World War II for war crimes. In 1947, a U.S. military commission, citing the Geneva Conventions and customary international law, convicted him of compelling prisoners of war to practice saluting and other military exercises for as long as 30 minutes when they were tired. His sentence: 12 years of hard labor...Many defendants...received long sentences for lesser infractions, in keeping with the U.S.'s aggressive approach to prosecutions.

"[T]he archives also make clear that some of the practices employed by the U.S. today resemble those that U.S. military commissions condemned when Americans were on the receiving end. The U.S. considered as war crimes such tactics as solitary confinement, sleep and sensory deprivation, manipulation of meal schedules, forcing men to answer questions while naked or restrained in painful 'stress positions,' and failing to register prisoners with the International Red Cross. Today, all have been approved or practiced at Guantanamo and other U.S. facilities. [Ed. note: the Journal's uses the word "resemble" is probably their attempt to cover the U.S.'s behind; "identical to" would be more accurate.]

"U.S. tribunals dismissed defense arguments that Japanese practices were necessary for disciplinary or interrogation reasons, that American prisoners were treated no worse than Japanese soldiers, that Japan hadn't ratified the Geneva Conventions and wasn't therefore bound by them and that, in any event, many American prisoners had forfeited POW status by bombing cities or committing acts of sabotage.

"The U.S. also held senior officials accountable for actions of their underlings; the Tokyo tribunal, for instance, sentenced former Japanese foreign minister Mamoru Shigemitsu to seven years even though he was an acknowledged leader of the Japanese peace faction and had sought to investigate Allied complaints of prisoner mistreatment during the war. The tribunal found punishment warranted because 'he should have pressed the matter, if necessary to the point of resigning.'"

And no, 9/11 did not "change everything".

The Spanish edition of the book is available now through Amazon; the English version is supposedly available "soon".

Two of the measures making their way toward the California ballot are intended to require explicit employee permission before a portion of union dues can be funneled into politics (candidates or ballot measures); the pharmaceutical industry (who of course has nothing but the best interest of their employees at heart) alone has donated $1.5 million to fund these measures. Amazingly enough, there is actually a countermeasure which would require publicly held companies to get explicit shareholder permission to make political contributions, but, according to the Contra Costa Times, "most analysts view this measure as a feint and doubt its viability." Why corporations, which are not citizens (well, not according to me, anyway), should be allowed to donate money to candidates or ballot measures under any circumstances, with or without shareholder approval, doesn't seem to be on the ballot.

"Twenty-eight Italian police officers went on trial in Genoa yesterday accused of beating anti-globalisation demonstrators at the G8 summit four years ago. Almost 100 people were hurt during the raid on the Diaz school, the then headquarters of the Genoa Social Forum.

"Among the accused are Italy's current anti-terrorism chief, Francesco Gratteri, and Giovanni Luperi, the head of an EU taskforce on Islamist terrorism. The charges include grievous bodily harm, slander and false arrest."

"The 93 people arrested during the raid on the school building said they had offered no resistance, as the police maintained, but were subjected to deliberate and gratuitous beatings. At least 62 of them suffered injuries: 31 were taken to hospital, three of them in a critical state. Some are still receiving medical treatment. They were not only accused of resisting the police but of theft, carrying offensive weapons and belonging to a criminal association intent on looting and destroying property. By February 2004, following criminal investigation, all proceedings against them had been dropped for lack of evidence. Only 28 police officers are standing trial: scores of officers involved in the raid, and believed to have participated in physical assaults, could not be identified because their face were frequently hidden by masks, scarves or riot helmets and they wore no numbers or name tags."

"Mark Covell, a journalist and one of the alleged victims, was at the opening of the trial. He told the BBC the beating had left him with a broken hand and eight broken ribs. 'One lung was shredded - not punctured, but shredded,' he said, adding that he also lost his 10 front teeth.

"Genoa public prosecutors set out graphically the evidence of verbal and physical abuse suffered by the detainees. They described, among other things, detainees being slapped, kicked, punched and spat on; subjected to threats, including of rape, and to verbal abuse, including of an obscene sexual nature; made to line up and stand for hours, spread-eagled against a wall; deprived of food, water and sleep for lengthy periods; subjected to body searches carried out in a deliberately degrading manner, with detainees made to adopt humiliating postures and women made to strip naked in the presence of male officers. They cited individual instances of abuse, including a female detainee having her head forced into a toilet, a male detainee being forced to go down on all fours and bark like a dog and the beating of male detainee unable to remain standing for hours because he had an artificial leg."

Update: The BBC actually had some fairly extensive coverage complete with pictures, along with an interview with Covell, but back during the first week of February, when they reported that the trial was "about" to start. That was two months ago.

While I'm mentioning FAIR, I'll put in one of my periodic plugs for subscribing to their magazine, Extra! What I (and other bloggers) do anecdotally and in our spare time (i.e., analyze the biases of the media), FAIR does systematically and professionally, and for that they deserve continued support. The latest issue features major articles on how the coverage of "Rathergate" vastly exceeded the coverage of the "No WMD in Iraq report", America's broken electoral system and how the media ignored that problem, academic racists achieving respectability in the press, Gary Webb and the disgraceful treatment of him and the CIA/contra/cocaine story by the press, and the shaping of the news by the power of advertisers and other powerful people. But just as much as their major articles, I always enjoy the "SoundBites" (as they call them) as well, like this one:

"PBS president Pat Mitchell announced an internal inquiry into why the childrens show Postcards from Buster featured a segment including lesbian mothers -- because, she said PBS 'wants to avoid confusion and controversy.' Apparently she's forgotten that, as described by the Carnegie Commission that provided public broadcasting's mandate, PBS was intended to 'provide a voice for groups in the community that may otherwise be unheard' and to 'be a forum for debate and controversy.'"

"An Iraqi apparently suspected by U.S. troops of taking part in attacks in Baghdad accused U.S. forces on Tuesday of taking his mother and sister hostage to pressure him and his brothers into surrendering for questioning.

"A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad said he doubted the accusation and was not aware of such an incident. But neighbors interviewed around Arkan Mukhlif al-Batawi's villa in the capital's Sunni Arab suburb of Taji corroborated his account."

Reuters does its best to cover the U.S. military with this curious sentence:

"If true, the troops would have offended local sensibilities about the treatment of women; Amnesty International said they could also have broken international law by taking hostages."

At Amnesty International, the London-based human rights lobby group, Middle East spokeswoman Nicole Choueiry said of Batawi's case: 'I do not think it is the first time.' [Ed. note: Ms. Choueiry should know better; it is most definitely not the first time]

"'We are against it. It is against international law to take civilians and use them as bargaining chips.'"

"The prison guards stand over their captives with electric cattle prods, stun guns, and dogs. Many of the prisoners have been ordered to strip naked. The guards are yelling abuse at them, ordering them to lie on the ground and crawl. 'Crawl, motherf*****s, crawl.'

"If a prisoner doesn't drop to the ground fast enough, a guard kicks him or stamps on his back. There's a high-pitched scream from one man as a dog clamps its teeth onto his lower leg.

"Another prisoner has a broken ankle. He can't crawl fast enough so a guard jabs a stun gun onto his buttocks. The jolt of electricity zaps through his naked flesh and genitals. For hours afterwards his whole body shakes.

"Lines of men are now slithering across the floor of the cellblock while the guards stand over them shouting, prodding and kicking.

"Second by second, their humiliation is captured on a video camera by one of the guards.

"The images of abuse and brutality he records are horrifyingly familiar. These were exactly the kind of pictures from inside Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad that shocked the world this time last year.

"And they are similar, too, to the images of brutality against Iraqi prisoners that this week led to the conviction of three British soldiers.

"But there is a difference. These prisoners are not caught up in a war zone. They are Americans, and the video comes from inside a prison in Texas."

"Comcast Corp. is working with TiVo Inc. on an advertising system that will insert new, updated commercials into already-recorded programs, the company said.

"The system could also take into account viewer patterns to make ads more targeted and relevant, Roberts explained."

I'm still looking for a DVR (standalone, or using my computer's hard disk) that is affordable and does not require subscribing to a service like TiVo which is continually connected (such things do exist, but so far seem to be way too expensive). I'm more than happy to set my own recording times; I really don't need a "service" so that I can say "record all episodes of the Daily Show" and have it do so by itself. Not at the expense of losing my privacy, thank you very much.

Greenspan also asserted that "energy demand was already starting to soften," which I'm sure has a small grain of truth (people are definitely trimming out a few optional trips with gas prices skyrocketing), but I very much doubt it will "help bring prices down" as Greenspan claims (without proof or even backing data, as far as I can tell). But no matter, stocks rose and oil future prices fell on Greenspan's pronouncements. In the usual irrational way of capitalism, it doesn't even matter if anyone believes what Greenspan had to say, it only matters if they believe that other people believe it. And on this kind of firm foundation, the ship of capitalism lumbers slowly forward toward the rocks.

"The American public remains disconnected from the war, even while supporting the troops with words and bumper stickers. That's because the White House has stubbornly refused to call on the American people to sacrifice. The public hasn't been asked to pay for the war by giving up tax cuts. The public hasn't been asked to reduce its reliance on imported oil.

"It's possible that the recruiting problems are temporary and can be turned around by policy tweaks and PR campaigns aimed at parents. But it's just as possible that recruitment problems have a deeper source during a war in which the sacrifices fall disproportionately on heroic volunteers."

The reason that the armed forces are having trouble recruiting comes down to the success of the Iraqi resistance, combined with the total lack of justification for this war. People don't want to sign up to be cannon fodder to fight and kill people and be killed or wounded, or to lose years of their lives, for what they perceive as no valid reason whatsoever.

Today's tragedy (nine 16 people, most presumably American soldiers, killed in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan) is a case in point. What are American soldiers doing in Afghanistan? Hunting for Osama bin Laden, or other al Qaeda members who allegedly pose such a dire threat to the American way of life? Hardly. Almost exclusively their role is to prop up the puppet government of Afghanistan by fighting to kill the opposition to that government, the government of a country that 98% of Americans couldn't locate on a map. That opposition, be it warlords or Taliban, poses no threat whatsoever to the people of the United States, only to Hamid Karzai.

"JACKI SCHECHNER, CNN BLOG REPORTER: Another site being heavily linked to today are, uh, -- yeah, Representative John Conyers -- I knew I was going to mess that one up. Conyersblog.us, and he's taking his fellow Republicans to task. Down at the bottom of his long post, he says, 'to my Republican colleagues, you are playing with fire, you are playing with lives and you must stop.'"

"Guerrillas and criminal gangs have killed 6,000 Iraqi civilians over the past two years and wounded 16,000, according to the first comprehensive government estimate of the toll from the insurgency.

"'There are around 6,000 Iraqis who have been killed by these people and 16,000 who have been wounded,' he said, citing figures compiled from records kept by the health, human rights, interior and other ministries."

"A decision to pair Army recruiters with Iraq and Afghanistan veterans on visits to the homes of potential recruits. The idea: Tell parents 'the Army story'."

No, I shouldn't think so. Nor anyone of the thousands of vets with PTSD either. As I've written before, I don't think the threat of death scares people (especially kids who think they're "tough") half as much as the threat of being crippled, or worse, for life.

"Not long ago, an elderly man distressed over high medical premiums phoned the call center at Wisconsin Physician Services Insurance Corp. The caller was so frustrated he hung up before an agent could address his problem. But the call center's IT system was aware of the customer's exasperation and automatically E-mailed a supervisor, who immediately listened to a digital recording of the conversation.

"Moments later, the supervisor called the customer and suggested ways to lower the premium. The customer agreed to the policy changes. 'All in all, we ended up with a happy customer,' says Sharon Whitwam, the insurer's VP of member services.

"The Madison, Wis., health insurer did that with new emotion-detection software called Perform.

"Using algorithms, the system determines a baseline of emotion during the first five to 10 seconds of a call, when most people usually aren't excited or frustrated. Any deviation from that baseline can trigger an alert.

"The software examines 200 elements to give a holistic picture of the customer experience. It lets users set parameters to determine which supervisor should be contacted and how, and create lexicons of words and phrases a caller may say that could raise red flags: cancellation, frustration, a competitor's name.

"What's next for emotion-detection software? Artificial intelligence. For example, instead of users defining keywords and emotions, the software will figure things out by analyzing the caller's voice. By analyzing pitch, tone, tempo, and inflection, the software in the not-too-distant future could be used to detect fraud. It already can differentiate between real anger and someone mimicking anger."

"'We have no intention of being a Democratic channel, a liberal channel or the TV version of Air America,' Gore said, referring to the fledgling liberal radio network. 'It is not in any way an ideological, much less partisan, point of view in any respect. It will have the point of view of the young generation.'"

"Planned segments include 'Current Soul,' an exploration of spirituality, and 'Current Parent,' advice for first-time moms and dads."

"The thing that strikes me most is the fact that the news is so...clean. It's like hospital food. It's all organized and disinfected. Everything is partitioned and you can feel how it has been doled out carefully with extreme attention to the portions - 2 minutes on women's rights in Afghanistan, 1 minute on training troops in Iraq and 20 minutes on Terri Schiavo! All the reportages are upbeat and somewhat cheerful, and the anchor person manages to look properly concerned and completely uncaring all at once.

"We sat there watching like we were a part of another world, in another galaxy. I've always sensed from the various websites that American mainstream news is far-removed from reality - I just didn't know how far. Everything is so tame and simplified. Everyone is so sincere."

- Baghdad Burning blogger Riverbend, reporting on her first impressions of American television, which is now saturating the Iraqi airwaves - the next phase of "shock and awe"

And while you're visiting Raed, check out his pictures of the third anniversary of the massacre of Jenin, just to remind yourself of the "just war" being carried out by the Israelis against the Palestinians.

Update: By the way, have any of the people who talked about how Terry Schiavo was being "murdered" had a single word to say about this "mercy killing", and the fact that the murderer is now about to rejoin their community? I seriously doubt it. Their "concern" is limited to Americans, and, for the most part (I'm sure Jesse Jackson is an exception), white Americans.

The San Jose Mercury News article linked clearly attempts to mislead its readers by writing: "The system provides some of the most generous benefits in the nation, and costs to state and local governments have skyrocketed. The state's pension costs have grown from $160 million in 2000 to $2.6 billion this year." Has California in the last five years started giving retired people 16 times as much money, or have 16 times more people retired in the last five years than in all the preceeding years? Hardly. The "growth in costs" has nothing whatsoever to do with "generous benefits". As explained here (in an article which supports the Governor's proposals), the "growth" is explained by the fact that California's pension system, like Social Security, pays a fixed amount to retirees, while it's income is based on the performance of its investments; in years when investments do poorly (as recently), the payout has to be made up from the general fund, which is what the figures above refer to. Unless the investments which support the pension system continue to tank, the implication that the "skyrocketing" costs will continue to show such growth is a completely false one; in "good" investment years, the system takes in more than it pays out.

"A U.S. army tank company commander convicted of shooting dead a wounded Iraqi walked free from court on Friday, although he was dismissed from the army for what he called a 'mercy killing.'"

Q Back to the report on the botched WMD intelligence, have the massive intelligence failures documented in the report caused the President to rethink his policy of preventive war?

MR. McCLELLAN: You know, September 11th taught us a very important lesson, and that lesson was that we must confront threats before it is too late. If we had known of those attacks ahead of time, we would have moved heaven and earth to prevent them from happening.

This President will not hesitate when it comes to protecting the American people. And in the post-September 11th world that we live in, the consequences of underestimating the threat we face is too high. It's tens of -- possibly tens of thousands of lives.

Q What about the cost of overestimating?

MR. McCLELLAN: Are you talking about the Iraq situation?

Q Going into Iraq, yes, with bad intelligence.

MR. McCLELLAN: I think we've talked about this before. The world is safer with Saddam Hussein's regime removed from power. The Iraqi people are serving as an example to the rest of the Middle East through their courage and determination to build a free future.

Q The ones that are alive, you mean?

"The Army apologised yesterday for raiding the home of a prominent MP from Basra and arresting his family. Officers blamed an intelligence blunder.

"Army officers did not explain how they mistook Mansour Abdulrazzaq Mansour, one of the British Army's closest allies in Iraq's second city, for an insurgent.

"The MP, a member of the Shia coalition, said British tanks and helicopters surrounded his house before soldiers blew open the front door with explosives.

"'They smashed the windows of the cars parked in the garage, smashed the computer to the ground and took $260,000 from the house,' said Mr Mansour, who comes from one of southern Iraq's wealthiest families.

"'The reason for the violation of my immunity has not been explained and my money has not been returned. I demand compensation.' He said his children were also detained and had been left scarred by the experience.

"'Basically we are very sorry,' a spokesman said from the Army headquarters in Basra. 'We made a mistake, we apologise for it and we will do our best to make sure something like this does not happen again.' All 11 members of Mr Mansour's family had been released."

(Hat tip to First Draft)

And why is a special election needed, rather than simply waiting for the next regularly scheduled election? Thurston Howell IV Reed Dickens, spokeperson for the Governor's referenda campaign, suggested in the broadcast that if you had a broken arm, you would rush to the hospital immediately to have it fixed. True enough. And such things as privatizing California's pension system, whose full effect almost certainly won't be felt for years to come should it pass, is certainly just like a broken arm, a crisis that can't wait one more day to fix. The fact that CalPERS has been in place since 1932? Please, don't bother them with the facts. They've got a "crisis" to whip up.

And why are they artificially whipping up a crisis? Because, just like George Bush & Co. at the federal level with their phony Social Security crisis (and many other things), Schwarzenegger and the rich people he represents know that sooner or later, the people are going to wake up and rise up against the anti-worker, anti-human policies they represent and throw them out on their ear. And they're bound and determined to push through as much of their agenda as fast as they can before that happens. The "crisis" isn't with Social Security, or California's pension system, it's with the fact that the right-wing forces know they can't stay in power forever, implementing policies that favor a tiny minority of the population, people who could care less if a public health clinic is forced to close to pay for the special election, because they won't be using it anyway.