Left I on the News  

"This is the Pentagon statement on the seizure of Mohsen Abdul-Hamid: 'Following the interview it was determined that he was detained by mistake and should be released. ... Coalition forces regret any inconvenience...' First, don’t blame it on a 'coalition' when it was a purely American operation. Second, an 'interview' starts with being asked to sit and would you like some coffee, not with having a hood thrown over your head and being dragged out of your house. Third, a bigger lexicographical problem continues to be that word 'mistake': it’s a day and a half later, the Pentagon still hasn’t clarified the nature of the mistaken behooding and seizure of the head of the largest Sunni party, and nobody seems to be asking them to do so."

"Iraq's month-old transitional government announced Tuesday that it had asked the United Nations Security Council to extend the mandate of the American-led forces here beyond the end of this year, and said Iraq's need for outside military assistance, not pre-set deadlines, should determine when American troop withdrawals should start.

"'The multinational forces are not occupying forces, they are friendly forces, and they are helping us to establish security, carrying out missions in the interests of the Iraqi people, and under the authority of the government,' [Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari] said. 'The government will request an extension of their mandate until we have defeated terrorism and restored security across the country.'"

"President Bush on Tuesday said there were still diplomatic options available to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions without having to resort to a military strike.

"'It's either diplomacy or military. And I am for the diplomacy approach,' Bush told reporters at a news conference in the White House Rose Garden.

"'And so for those who say that we ought to be using our military to solve the problem, I would say that while all options are on the table, we've got a ways to go to solve this diplomatically,' he said."

About The Wall Street Journal editorial against Cuba
Request of an institution without any moral authority
By: Nicanor Len Cotayo

The newspaper of the great financial world of the United States, The Wall Street Journal, called for the Organization of American States (OAS), last Saturday, to offer more support to those Washington calls Cuban "dissidents". The newspaper claims that the lack of support for democracy in Cuba "is one of the reasons that the government of the United States has decided to push the OAS to do more to promote democracy in the region".

To understand the seriousness of the demand, it is worthwhile to briefly remember the way in which island was separated from that shoot-off of Washington policy in the area. It was on October of 1961 that the White House decided to pass judgement on Cuba in the OAS. It was a curious attitude because seven months before it had launched the invasion at Playa Giron.

To understand fully what occurred behind the scenes, they granted a credit of 99 million dollars to the President of Peru, Manuel Prado Ugarte who was visiting the U.S. capital at the time. Later, the Peruvian ambassador in Washington presented a request to the Secretary General of the OAS to call for a meeting of foreign ministers "as soon as possible". On January 3, 1962, just before the meeting, the White House announced a project to grant 15 million dollars to the governments of Costa Rica, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador for coffee production. A Costa Rican newspaper, ADELANTE, considered it a bribe on the eve of judging Cuba, since they were giving stability to a product with prices precisely damaged by the great importers of the United States. On January 22 of that same year, The New York Times revealed that the U.S. State Secretary, Dean Rusk, had warned his Latin American colleagues that financial aid depended on the support given to the sanctions against Havana. This was front page news in an article entitled "Rusk links aid to Latin countries to actions regarding Cuba" with a byline of Juan de Onis.

During the third day of the sessions in the Uruguayan resort of Punta del Este, seven countries, not counting Cuba, questioned the legality of the objectives Washington was trying to achieve. After a four hour-long meeting, the representatives of Argentina, Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia and Haiti declared that "applying diplomatic sanctions was politically and legally unacceptable and valueless. They suggested that "the Bogota Charter did not contemplate the exclusion of a member State, that it was the responsibility of the OAS Council or a Special Commission to solve the problem, forewarning that a reform of the Bogota Charter requires another Special Inter-American Conference".

On January 30, seven days into the VIII OAS Foreign Minister's Consultative Meeting, a resolution was put to the vote calling for "the exclusion of the present Government of Cuba from participating in the Inter-American system" with 14 in favor, the minimum required. This result was held up at the time by someone who delayed his sellout, the Haitian Chancellor. Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Chile, Bolivia and Ecuador abstained and the one vote against was Cuba. In an analysis of these events, the Canadian newspaper, the Montreal Star, pointed out that among the 14 countries voting against Havana "there are seven that do not have a democratically elected government", a situation, it added "that damaged the prestige of the United States".

Now, 43 years later, The Wall Street Journal dares to request an institution without the least moral authority, such as the OAS, to help bring democracy to the island. Expressing itself in this impudent way, the newspaper of US big business uses the same rotten measures it had used to separate Cuba from that Organization.

"I believe the government has just successfully proved that any seaman recruit has reasonable cause to believe that the wars in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq were illegal."

- the judge in the court-martial of Pablo Paredes, being tried for failure to deploy to Iraq, which he justified because he considered it an illegal order to deploy to an illegal war.

Below, the lyrics from the little-known song "Christmas in February" from Lou Reed's masterpiece, "New York". It isn't the only song about homeless veterans, but it happens to be one I was listening to two days ago, and was moved by (Lou Reed's haunting voice helps; unfortunately that's missing from this page)

Sam was lyin' in the jungle
agent orange spread against the sky like marmalade
Hendrix played on some foreign jukebox
they were praying to be saved
Those gooks were fierce and fearless
that's the price you pay when you invade
Xmas in February

Sam lost his arm in some border town
his fingers are mixed with someone's crop
If he didn't have that opium to smoke
the pain would never ever stop
Half his friends are stuffed into black body bags
with their names printed at the top
Xmas in February

Sammy was a short order cook
in a short order black and blue collar town
Everybody worked the steel mill
but the steel mill got closed down
He thought if he joined the Army
he'd have a future that was sound
Like no Xmas in February

Sam's staring at the Vietnam Wall
it's been a while now that he's home
His wife and kid have left, he's unemployed
he's a reminder of the war that wasn't won
He's the guy on the street with the sign that reads
"Please help send this Vet home"
But he is home
and there's no Xmas in February
no matter how much he saves

"Give thanks, in whatever way you can, for the lives lost be heroes from the Bay Area and across the nation -- from Bunker Hill to the deserts of Iraq -- to ensure the American flag can fly freely."

The truth is, there hasn't been a threat to the "American flag flying freely" since the war of 1812, whatever your position on the various wars that have occured since then.

I have a better idea this Memorial Day. Let's demand that U.S. troops leave Iraq now, so they will stop dying and stop killing Iraqis (who, along with Afghans, Haitians, Serbs, Vietnamese, and countless other victims of American "heroes", should also be remembered on this Memorial Day), and let's demand that the U.S. abandon its plans for future wars against Iran, Syria, Venezuela, North Korea, Cuba, and everyplace else. In addition to looking backwards, and remembering the dead, let's look forward, and dedicate ourselves to working for a world in which millions more don't follow in their path.

"In the early years of Saddam Hussein, the health care system in Iraq was a showcase, with most Iraqis receiving excellent, inexpensive care. Iraqi doctors often studied in England, and Iraq's medical schools, based at hospitals, had high standards. But Mr. Hussein let the economic penalties of the 1990's bite deeply into medical care and used the damage to the increasingly worn system to try to persuade the world to ease economic pressure on Iraq."

This would be a good place to point out that the sanctions, which were supposedly put in place to ensure the disarming of Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, had in fact achieved that goal by 1991, and that it was a deliberate decision by Bill Clinton (not Saddam Hussein) to keep those sanctions in place until Saddam Hussein was no longer in power, regardless of disarmament, which was responsible for the deaths of a million Iraqis. We also take time to recall that Madeleine Albright said those deaths were "worth it", although, since we now know that almost all of those deaths occured after Iraq was disarmed, exactly what "we" got in return for "paying that price" (generous of the U.S. to pay for something with the blood of Iraqis, wasn't it?) isn't clear. Not in any kind of moral or legal sense, anyway; what the U.S. really got out of a decade of sanctions was the ability to subsequently invade Iraq and overthrow its government and install a compliant puppet government. What it got out of that is still a work in progress.

Something else to remember on this Memorial Day.

"One thing I found particularly amusing about the article- and outrageous all at once-was in the following paragraph:

'Religiously, if you want to know how the Sunni Arab world views a Shiite's being elected leader of Iraq, for the first time ever, think about how whites in Alabama would have felt about a black governor's being installed there in 1920. Some Sunnis do not think Shiites are authentic Muslims, and they are indifferent to their brutalization.'

"Now, it is always amusing to see a Jewish American journalist speak in the name of Sunni Arabs. When Sunni Arabs, at this point, hesitate to speak in a representative way about other Sunni Arabs, it is nice to know Thomas L. Friedman feels he can sum up the feelings of the 'Sunni Arab world' in so many words. His arrogance is exceptional.

"It is outrageous because for many people, this isn't about Sunnis and Shia or Arabs and Kurds. It's about an occupation and about people feeling that they do not have real representation. We have a government that needs to hide behind kilometers of barbed wire and meters and meters of concrete- and it's not because they are Shia or Kurdish or Sunni Arab- it's because they blatantly supported, and continue to support, an occupation that has led to death and chaos.

"The paragraph is contemptible because the idea of a 'Shia leader' is not an utterly foreign one to Iraqis or other Arabs, no matter how novel Friedman tries to make it seem. How dare he compare it to having a black governor in Alabama in the 1920s? In 1958, after the July 14 Revolution which ended the Iraqi monarchy, the head of the Iraqi Sovereignty Council (which was equivalent to the position of president) was Mohammed Najib Al-Rubayi- a Shia from Kut. From 1958 - 1963, Abdul Karim Qassim, a Shia also from Kut in the south, was the Prime Minister of Iraq (i.e. the same position Jaffari is filling now). After Abdul Karim Qassim, in 1963, came yet another Shia by the name of Naji Talib as prime minster. Even during the last regime, there were two Shia prime ministers filling the position for several years- Sadoun Humadi and Mohammed Al-Zubaidi. "

On that gray morning more than 32 years ago, McCain was knocked unconscious briefly when he ejected from his damaged bomber. Both his arms were broken, his right knee was shattered, and when he splashed into the middle of Truc Bach (White Silk) Lake, his 50 pounds of flight gear kept him from reaching the surface.

When [Mai Van] On finally got to him, about 200 yards out, all the older man could see was a bit of white silk, the top of the American's parachute.

With U.S. planes still bombing and strafing their target of the day - a nearby light-bulb factory where On worked as a security guard - On used a stout bamboo pole to hoist McCain off the bottom of the lake.

"If I had hesitated even one more minute, I'm sure he would have died," said On, still vigorous at 83 and still living in the same spot on the southern edge of the lake in the heart of downtown Hanoi.

"John McCain was lucky that morning," On said. "It was about 11 a.m. I had just come home for lunch and put my bicycle into the house. Then the air-raid siren went off, and 60 or 70 of us ran to a tunnel to avoid the bombs. I was at the entrance to the tunnel when I saw the pilot go into the water.

"The tunnel was still shaking from the bombing when I ran to the lake."

The two men differ on some small details of the rescue, but what is not in dispute is that On managed to drag McCain ashore, where a crowd of about 40 people had gathered. Unaware that their injured prisoner was the son of a high-ranking American admiral, they stripped McCain to his underwear, then began kicking him, spitting on him, screaming for him to be killed.

"One of them slammed a rifle butt down on my shoulder and smashed it pretty badly," McCain later wrote. "Another stuck a bayonet in my foot."

Then some young men approached with bricks in their hands.

"They tried to beat him in the head with the bricks, but I covered him," On said. "They surely would have beaten him to death. I said I wanted to rescue this man and return him to his family."

A nurse arrived and put bamboo splints on McCain's broken arms and leg, but when she tried to give him some sort of pill, he spit it out. A military ambulance appeared and carted him off to Hoa Lo prison in downtown Hanoi. Hoa Lo, which means "fiery oven" in Vietnamese, came to be known to many Americans as the "Hanoi Hilton."

"Military advantage may involve a variety of considerations, including the security of the attacking force. ... Economic targets of the enemy that indirectly but effectively support and sustain the enemy’s war-fighting capability may also be attacked.”

"War is a clash of opposing wills.... While physical factors are crucial in war, the national will and the leadership’s will are also critical components of war. The will to prosecute or the will to resist can be decisive elements....Strategic attack objectives often include producing effects to demoralize the enemy’s leadership, military forces, and population, thus affecting the adversary’s capability to continue the conflict.”

But McCain didn't just carry out such illegal orders himself, he willingly voiced support for them, specifically during the 1999 war against Yugoslavia when, as I wrote here, "water systems, power and heating plants, hospitals, universities, schools, apartment complexes, senior citizens' homes, bridges, factories, trains, buses, radio and TV stations, the telephone system, oil refineries, embassies, marketplaces and more were deliberately destroyed by U.S./NATO planes in a ruthless 10-week bombing campaign."

John McCain - war criminal then, war criminal now, war criminal forever.

"Family physician Mary Frank couldn't understand why one elderly patient with high-blood pressure wasn't responding to his medication. She had been steadily increasing his dose, but his blood pressure remained unstable.

"Finally, the man admitted he had been sharing his pills with his wife. He also would stop taking his medication a few days before his appointment hoping his blood pressure would be higher so that he and his wife could then split a higher-dose drug.

"But the practice put the couple at risk of a stroke or heart attack."

"Researchers say those most likely to share prescription drugs are the poor and the elderly, as well as family members who have a common chronic illness, such as diabetes.

"'If you ask people why they are doing this, they say they have no other option,' said Chien-Wen Tseng, an assistant professor at the University of Hawaii who has studied the ways people deal with rising prescription drug prices. 'To many of them, it's better than not taking the medication at all.'"

"The military has established a multitiered system to ensure that innocent people caught up in chaotic events are not held for extensive periods."

Ensure: To make sure or certain; insure

"Records provided by the military, however, show that the evidence against suspects justifies prolonged detention in only about one in four cases. Nonetheless, more than half are held three months or more before being freed."

"The RAF and US aircraft doubled the rate at which they were dropping bombs on Iraq in 2002 in an attempt to provoke Saddam Hussein into giving the allies an excuse for war, new evidence has shown.

"The new information, obtained by the Liberal Democrats, shows that the allies dropped twice as many bombs on Iraq in the second half of 2002 as they did during the whole of 2001, and that the RAF increased their attacks even more quickly than the Americans did."

For example, here are some excerpts from an article in the Sept. 12, 2002 issue of Workers World newspaper, written in the aftermath of a fact-finding trip to Iraq made by Ramsey Clark, the article's author Brian Becker, and others in August of that year:

"This writer went to Iraq on Aug. 25 as part of a fact-finding anti-war delegation led by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark. The delegation flew into Iraq's "no-fly zones" in the north and south of the country for five days. In those five days, the U.S. bombed Iraq on five separate occasions.

"True to form, the U.S. media said almost nothing about these daily bombings. Each day after we returned from the site of the latest bombing we would check the web sites of the Western media. Nary a peep about the lawless aggression waged from the skies by U.S. warplanes. Instead, the U.S. media focused its coverage on 'why Saddam Hussein is such a great threat to world peace.'

"When the U.S. press does mention the regular bombings of Iraq, it usually buries the information in a small article far from the front page. The Pentagon is almost always quoted, explaining that the attacks were in self-defense. They say it was against military targets and against Iraqi radar, which was flipped on to trace U.S. and British warplanes overflying Iraq's airspace in two large areas in both northern and southern Iraq."

"The civilian airport had been without radar since the 1991 Gulf War. It had been largely non-functional until recently, when the government decided to defy the no-fly zone and resume daily flights into the city from Baghdad. The assumption was that U.S. aircraft would not shoot down civilian airliners.

"U.S. warplanes have not yet shot down any passenger planes, but on Aug. 27 two powerful missiles took out the airport's radar that guides the civilian airliners in their takeoff and landing and as they travel through the surrounding air space.

"The delegation went through the wreckage of the totally destroyed radar, which lay in crumpled ruins not far from the runway. The radar was very old, made up of balkanized parts from earlier rudimentary radar systems. Clearly, it was not a sophisticated military-type radar."

One interesting side note. Upon returning from the trip to Iraq described above, Ramsey Clark appeared on CNN, where, on August 29, he was accused by Wolf Blitzer of having been "used by Saddam Hussein" (a similar accusation was thrown at Dan Rather after his pre-invasion interview of Hussein). The world now knows, of course, that the truth is that Wolf Blitzer, and virtually every other member of the U.S. media, was being "used" by George Bush. I wonder if anyone has ever asked Blitzer that question, and what his answer was (or would be) if they did.

On the one hand, the U.S. war of terror against the people of Iraq and Afghanistan continues unabated, with thousands being killed or rounded up for indefinite incarceration (excuse me, "detainment") on a regular basis. A Marine is acquitted of slaughtering two unarmed Iraqis who appear to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, using sixty (6-0) rounds of fire to eviscerate them, and then hang a sign on their bodies as a "warning" to other Iraqis; in other words, a sign meant to terrorize Iraqis into submission. Incredibly, we read: "Autopsies conducted on the Iraqis' exhumed bodies backed 2nd Lt. Ilario Pantano's assertion that he shot them in self-defense after the men disobeyed his instructions and made a menacing move toward him, Marine officials said." Now I understand that an autotopsy might be able to show that the men weren't shot in the back (although with sixty rounds ripping them apart, I wouldn't be so sure about that), but it certainly couldn't possibly prove that they had "made a menacing move" toward the Marine killer. Hardly a surprising turn of events considering that a soldier who killed an unarmed Iraqi who was clearly not making any "menacing moves" toward him, but was in fact lying motionless, with all of this captured on video, was not even charged. A war of terror is certainly an apt phrase.

Back in the Western hemisphere, the U.S. demonstrated that its willingness to shield terrorists from justice knows no geographical limitations:

"The United States rejected on Friday Venezuela's first move to extradite a Cuban exile wanted for an airliner bombing, in a case that could challenge the U.S. commitment to fight all forms of terrorism.

"The Bush administration told Venezuela its request that Luis Posada Carriles be arrested with a view to extradition was 'clearly inadequate,' because it lacked supporting evidence, said a State Department official who asked not to be named."

"The TV ad [pushing California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's political proposals], released in May, features Schwarzenegger talking to people in a lunchroom, and places Pepsi and Arrowhead Water in prominent spots next to the governor for 1/3 of the ad. Donors connected to Pepsi Co. and Arrowhead Water's parent company, Nestle, gave the governor a total of $279,800 in campaign contributions. Also recognizable on-screen are Ruffles, Sun Chips, Cheetos and a SoBe Beverage, all brands owned by Pepsi.

"The practice, known as 'product placement,' is unheard of in political advertising. In fact, political ads typically avoid using logos because companies may not want to be associated with a particular candidate or issue. However, studios receive significant payments for featuring a product in a film or television show."

On a more serious note of media obfuscation, the AP story linked above describes the operation this way:

"The government said Thursday a security cordon of 40,000 Iraqi soldiers and police will ring Baghdad starting next week in what it dubbed Operation Lightning"

"In an operation that will include 40,000 police and army personnel, and thousands of U.S. soldiers, Iraqi troops and American soldiers will blockade the roads leading in and out of Baghdad next week in the largest effort ever undertaken by the nation's new security forces."

"Did you know that the No Child Left Behind law requires your high school to divulge your child's personal information to military recruiters at the risk of losing scarce federal education money?

"I didn't. At least not until my constituents brought it to my attention with complaints that, in some instances, their children were persistently contacted at home by military recruiters."

Can we get a refund on his salary? And maybe use it as downpayment on a real opposition party in Congress?

"On Friday, May 20 at the White House Oval Office, US President George Bush received a small Cuban-American delegation headed by terrorist Luis Zuniga Rey, founder of the Cuban-American National Foundation’s paramilitary committee in Miami, which for years assured the financing and logistics of Luis Posada Carriles’ terrorist activities.

That individual previously had been captured on August 1, 1974, near Boca Ciega, in Havana, when he was caught red-handed with a load of explosives and weapons, together with two other members of a terrorist commando who had infiltrated with the objective of carrying out attacks.

"The group received by the US president also included Eleno Oviedo Alvarez, arrested in Cuba on February 21, 1963, together with other members of a terrorist commando as they were unloading weapons and munitions on the Cuban coast."

Q So when you talk about a partnership, is it fair to say that the United States is the senior partner, and Afghanistan is the junior partner?

MR. McCLELLAN: No, it's a partnership. A partnership, by nature, is equal.

McClellan (and George Bush)'s real concept of "partnership"

McClellan followed up that howler with something almost as funny:

"Well, it is a sovereign country, and they are a duly-elected government that represents the people of Afghanistan. We are there at their invitation."

"President Bush said the other day that the world should see his administration's handling of the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison as a model of transparency and accountability. He said those responsible were being systematically punished, regardless of rank. It made for a nice Oval Office photo-op on a Friday morning. Unfortunately, none of it is true.

"A two-part series in The Times by Tim Golden provides a horrifying new confirmation that what happened at Abu Ghraib was no aberration, but part of a widespread pattern. It showed the tragic impact of the initial decision by Mr. Bush and his top advisers that they were not going to follow the Geneva Conventions, or indeed American law, for prisoners taken in antiterrorist operations."

The question will be how far does this go? People talk, accurately in my opinion, about the "right-wing echo chamber", and the fact is that there is no counterpart. Will other papers, and various talk-show hosts (Alan Colmes?!) take up the banner and keep it waving? One of the key components lacking for the "'left-wing' echo chamber" is the presence of a real political opposition. The media in this country focus on the actions and speeches of politicians, and not "fringe" politicians like Dennis Kucinich (don't even get them started on a Cynthia McKinney or a Ralph Nader), but "mainstream" ones. If Harry Reid or Barbara Boxer or Ted Kennedy were to take up this cause, perhaps even start talking about impeachment proceedings, the media would have to "keep the story going"; in the absence of that, it will soon, perhaps very soon, die away (with Hamid Karzai doing his part, repeatedly emphasizing in his joint press conference today that it was just a couple individuals who were responsible for the mistreatment of Afghan prisoners, not the American people or the American government).

"Hours before flying to Washington, D.C., for talks with President Bush, Afghan leader Hamid Karzai demanded greater control Saturday over U.S. military operations in his country and called for vigorous punishment of any U.S. troops who mistreat prisoners.

"He also said he wants the United States to hand over all Afghan prisoners still in U.S. custody.

"Speaking to reporters before his first visit to the United States since he was installed in December as Afghanistan's first democratically elected president, Karzai demanded more say over operations by the 16,700 U.S. soldiers still in the country, including an end to raids on the homes of Afghans unless his government was notified beforehand.

"'No operations inside Afghanistan should take place without the consultation of the Afghan government,' he told reporters.

"There were fears that a report in Friday's New York Times, based on the Army's criminal investigation into the December 2002 deaths of two Afghans at Bagram, could re-ignite anti-American demonstrations. Karzai said he was 'shocked' by allegations of prisoner abuse by poorly trained U.S. soldiers at Bagram."

If Hamid Karzai really wants to be shocked, how about discussing the massacre of 4000 Afghan prisoners by the Northern Alliance under the supervision of U.S. Special Forces, documented in the film Massacre at Mazar which has been shown in Britain but still, to my knowledge, not in the U.S. (certainly not on PBS). At the time this film was shown on British TV, both the European Union and the United Nations called for a war crimes investigation, about which nothing has been heard since as far as I know.

"More than 1,000 Sunni Arab clerics, political leaders and tribal heads ended their two-year boycott of politics in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq on Saturday, uniting in a Sunni bloc that they said would help draft the country's new constitution and compete in elections."

"In a statement adopted at the meeting, the Sunni leaders called for 'liberating' Iraq from U.S.-led forces 'by all legal means.' The statement condemned 'all terrorist acts that target civilians, no matter the reason,' but said, 'resisting the occupier is a legitimate right.'"

"In the two years since Mike Cannon became president and CEO of Solectron, the company has lost $3.4 billion. It's posted a loss in all but two of the eight quarters he's been running it.

"Along the way, Cannon has announced plans to fire at least 17,000 employees. The stock has fallen 11 percent.

"While Solectron has struggled to make money, Cannon hasn't.

"Over the past two years, Cannon has received $11.2 million in direct compensation, including salary, bonus and restricted stock. That figure doesn't include 5.1 million options he's been granted worth an estimated $6.5 million at the end of 2004."

The news article from Prensa Latina.

The full text of Fidel's speech here.

As I've written before, I think the thing that would really depress recruitment even more would be the post-combat film of the permanently injured soldiers, driving home a reality that is ten times more frequent, and, for many people, ten times worse than a quick death. But with that footage, we're back to the "once in a blue moon" standard.

"White House spokesman Trent Duffy said US President George W Bush was 'alarmed by the reports of prisoner abuse.'" (Source)

Unfortunately for David (pictured), Goliath is politically, financially, and militarily backed by the most powerful nation on Earth, and hasn't the slightest compunction about crushing his enemy. And, if David ever did score a lucky shot to the forehead and take Goliath out, Goliath would probably fall on his nuclear button and destroy them both.

The filibuster, the efforts of a minority to frustrate the will of a majority, is a fundamentally undemocratic procedure. Saying so doesn't mean that super-majority votes don't have their place in a democratic system, because they do when the changes in question are permanent ones - Constitutional amendments and the lifetime appointment of judges. Where they don't have a place is in legislative matters - raising taxes, passing civil rights legislation, etc., where, not coincidentally, they have been uniformly used by the right-wing to frustrate the will of the majority for progressive change. Nor do they have a place in election of a Prime Minister, where that requirement in the recent Iraqi election replaced the sentiment of the voters (constrained as they were) with deals done in back rooms.

So what's the answer? Abolish the filibuster, but institute super-majority (two-thirds) votes for the confirmation of judges. A position espoused by neither the Republicans nor the Democrats.

"Even as the young Afghan man was dying before them, his American jailers continued to torment him.

"The prisoner, a slight, 22-year-old taxi driver known only as Dilawar, was hauled from his cell at the detention center in Bagram, Afghanistan, at around 2 a.m. to answer questions about a rocket attack on an American base. When he arrived in the interrogation room, an interpreter who was present said, his legs were bouncing uncontrollably in the plastic chair and his hands were numb. He had been chained by the wrists to the top of his cell for much of the previous four days.

"Mr. Dilawar asked for a drink of water, and one of the two interrogators, Specialist Joshua R. Claus, 21, picked up a large plastic bottle. But first he punched a hole in the bottom, the interpreter said, so as the prisoner fumbled weakly with the cap, the water poured out over his orange prison scrubs. The soldier then grabbed the bottle back and began squirting the water forcefully into Mr. Dilawar's face.

"'Come on, drink!' the interpreter said Specialist Claus had shouted, as the prisoner gagged on the spray. 'Drink!'

"At the interrogators' behest, a guard tried to force the young man to his knees. But his legs, which had been pummeled by guards for several days, could no longer bend. An interrogator told Mr. Dilawar that he could see a doctor after they finished with him. When he was finally sent back to his cell, though, the guards were instructed only to chain the prisoner back to the ceiling.

"'Leave him up,' one of the guards quoted Specialist Claus as saying.

"Several hours passed before an emergency room doctor finally saw Mr. Dilawar. By then he was dead, his body beginning to stiffen. It would be many months before Army investigators learned a final horrific detail: Most of the interrogators had believed Mr. Dilawar was an innocent man who simply drove his taxi past the American base at the wrong time."

Of course, this being the New York Times, an organ of the ruling class, the punch is pulled. In an article exceeding 6000 words in length, the word "torture" appears only once, and then referring to how the soldiers referred to one of their number as the "King of Torture". The actions described above (and the others described in the article)? "Abuse". "Torment". "Harsh treatment". "Mistreatment". Anything but "torture".

Update: Jeanne at Body and Soul has a very moving writeup of this story, complete with links to the facts that have been known for more than two years.

"Love that word 'detainees.' Sounds so pastoral. 'Uncle Achmed, you've missed 7 years of my birthday parties.' 'I was detained.'"

- Will Durst

And the "war against terror" continues.

"In her address [to the Columbia Business school MBA class of 2005] last Sunday, the [Indian] born [Pepsico president Indra] Nooyi compared the five major continents of the world to the five fingers of the human hand.

"First was Africa - the pinky finger - small and somewhat insignificant but when hurt, the entire hand hurt with it. Next was Asia -the thumb - strong and powerful, yearning to become a bigger player on the world stage.

"Third was Europe - the index finger - pointing the way. Fourth was South America -the ring finger -the finger which symbolises love and sensualness.

"According to some students who were present at the graduation ceremony and who fired up the issue in the blogosphere, Nooyi then reserved the remaining finger for the United States (and not North America, they say), launching into 'a diatribe about how the US is seen as the middle finger to the rest of the world.'"

"Hewlett-Packard may cut as many as 15,000 jobs under new Chief Executive Mark Hurd, said a few Wall Street analysts Wednesday. In his conference call with investors after HP reported a slightly-better-than-expected second quarter Tuesday, Hurd made it clear that he believes the Palo Alto company's current operating costs are too high.

"'Management made it clear the current cost structure is not best in class and that significant cost-reduction activities were on the horizon,' wrote Merrill Lynch analyst Steve Milunovich in a note to clients. He estimates HP could cut 5 to 10 percent of its workforce of 150,000 before the quarter, which ends in July, is reported in August."

Core prices hold steady

But even more bizarre is that this same story, by the same AP reporter, also ran yesterday, under a different headline:

Energy, food costs boost consumer prices

"American military commanders in Baghdad and Washington gave a sobering new assessment on Wednesday of the war in Iraq, adding to the mood of anxiety that prompted Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to come to Baghdad last weekend to consult with the new government.

"In interviews and briefings this week, some of the generals pulled back from recent suggestions, some by the same officers, that positive trends in Iraq could allow a major drawdown in the 138,000 American troops late this year or early in 2006. One officer suggested Wednesday that American military involvement could last 'many years.'

"Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top American officer in the Middle East, said in a briefing in Washington that one problem was the disappointing progress in developing Iraqi police units cohesive enough to mount an effective challenge to insurgents and allow American forces to begin stepping back from the fighting."

I can only hope that this new assessment, and this article from the New York Times, may be the lever which moves more people from the "we have to leave, but only after we 'finish the job'" position to the "Out Now!" position.

"The surge of violence following last week's Newsweek story on the desecration of the Quran at Guantanamo Bay is tragic. That the story was not accurate as printed is clear from the decision to retract it, and Newsweek has a responsibility to review the procedures that failed to prevent the story from running in the first place."

Also to be noted is her generic claim of a "surge of violence". What there was was a surge of anti-American demonstrations around the world, not "violence"; smearing all demonstrators as "violent", and failing to note that the violence came from the repression of the demonstrations, is outrageous. The major violence occured in one country, Afghanistan, where 17 people were killed by the U.S.-armed, U.S.-backed, U.S.-created government, and where Gen. Richard Myers has specifically said that the demonstrations were linked to the "political process there", and was "not necessarily" the result of the Newsweek article; Pelosi's failure to mention either of these facts represents still further acquiescence to the right-wing attacks on Newsweek.

"The fact remains that the story was clearly plausible to Muslims around the world. That plausibility has its roots in the interrogation techniques employed at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. For months, photographs of tortured prisoners and inappropriate interrogation techniques have made headlines throughout the world. There is evidence that indicates that some of these practices were sanctioned at much higher levels in the Bush Administration than the punishments thus far imposed would suggest."

It remains true that Left I on the News, with my meager resources (my memory and Google), was able to produce a review back on Saturday whereas it took papers like the Washington Post and the AP until today to do so, but at least they did; some of them even brought in the "fake menstrual blood" story, which I had predicted would not be mentioned.

What do I learn from my missed prediction? This time, the right-wing might have moved too fast and too far to the right even for the sycophantic press to follow without their lips becoming momentarily disconnected from the Administration's rear end. Not to worry, though, the aberration will no doubt soon be rectified.

"Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will travel to five states, including the Republican strongholds of Florida and Texas, to raise millions of dollars for a special election in November, and he may take the lead in campaigning for a controversial ballot measure aimed at weakening the political clout of public employee unions."

"Iraq's Industry Ministry plans to partially privatize most of its 46 state-owned companies as part of the government's plan to establish a liberal, free-market economy."

"Under the former regime of Saddam Hussein, only Arab countries were allowed to invest in Iraq. But the new commercial laws established by the Coalition Provisional Authority allow foreigners to own 100 percent of Iraqi businesses - the exceptions being those dealing with natural resources such as oil."

Back here in the U.S., the capitalists remain just as greedy - never satisfied until they have it all, as this headline suggests:

PC sales boost HP profit; job cuts hinted

"The Air Force believes 'we must establish and maintain space superiority,' Gen. Lance Lord, who leads the Air Force Space Command, told Congress recently. 'Simply put, it's the American way of fighting.'"

For further information on the subject, the new movie "Arsenal of Hypocrisy: The Space Program and the Military Industrial Complex" comes highly recommended, although I haven't seen it.

And, while we're on the subject, how come Advise and Consent is never shown on TV, anyway? Aren't closeted gay politicians a relevant subject anymore?

I'm watching Pentagon spokesliar Lawrence Di Rita doing his best to pooh-pooh the allegations of Koran abuse in a long press conference. Di Rita claims the Pentagon acts on credible evidence, which doesn't, in his words, include some lawyer talking on Al Jazeerah. As with Newsweek editor Whitaker, Di Rita wants us to believe that the only credible evidence is "hard" evidence. Di Rita tried to blame the reports of Koran abuse on Al Qaeda "black ops", i.e., Al Qaeda detainees who were spreading false rumors in order to incite people against the U.S. There's just one little problem with that theory - the allegations come from former detainees, who were released because the U.S. determined that they were not members of Al Qaeda (and, of course, other allegations, albeit not "Koran in the toilet" allegations but definitely "exploitation of religion" allegations, come from a former U.S. translator). Unfortunately I wasn't able to hear the entire conference so I don't know if any reporter brought out these inconvenient facts. I'm guessing no.

Update: Here's a link to the transcript. And here's the quote referred to above:

"With respect to lawyers making allegations of detainees who have been released, we anticipate, and have seen, in fact, all manner of statements made by detainees -- as you recall, many of whom as members of al Qaeda were trained to allege abuse and torture and all manner of other things.

"When we have received specific, credible allegations -- and typically that's not what we see when we see a lawyer speaking on Al- Jazeera -- but when a specific, credible allegation of this nature were to be received, we would take it quite seriously. But we've not seen specific, credible allegations."

Di Rita elaborates:

"In their own training manuals they say: Here's what we'll do if we ever get into a court; we allege torture, we allege abuse, we allege all kinds of things to influence public opinion."

I wonder if Tony Blair is contemplating using this legislation against those who agitated for (to the extent of lying), and now fully support, the act of terrorism known as the invasion of Iraq? No, I suppose not. The real target will be people like George Galloway, who dare to suggest that the resistance in Iraq, or the Palestinian people, are not committing acts of "terrorism", but instead legitimate acts of resistance against an occupying power.

The slippery slope is getting a lot steeper and more slippery. Who knows what lies at the bottom?

CNN just broadcast a major piece on Posada Carriles, in which they stated that Fidel Castro is demanding that Posada be sent to Cuba for trial. This, of course, is absolutely false; the Cubans are demanding that he be extradicted to Venezuela, from where he escaped from jail and where there is an outstanding warrant for his arrest. I'll be waiting for CNN to "retract" the story based on this egregious error.

Update: This interesting tidbit just in via AP:

"Posada told the Miami Herald in an interview published Tuesday that he was not trying too hard to conceal himself in Miami because he was sure U.S. authorities were not looking for him."

Further update: PBS itself follows in line, as a brief "introduction to the upcoming news" describes Posada Carriles as a "Cuban militant". A few minutes later, BBC World describes him as a "Cuban exile". Actually this kind of thing is endemic; scanning headlines we find Posada described as a "Castro opponent", a "former CIA operative", an "alleged anti-Castro terrorist", a "Castro foe", and an "accused Cuban bomber"; the simple description "terrorist" or even "convicted terrorist" appear nowhere. Paraphrasing what a reader wrote in the comments to my original post on Posada Carriles, imagine someone describing Osama bin Laden as an "Islamic militant" or a "Saudi exile" (or a "former CIA operative" for that matter) rather than a "terrorist". And, in case you're confused about Posada's recent self-serving denials of involvement in the bombing of the Cubana airliner and even now, in the latest change of story, the bombings of Havana hotels, let's remember that this man was convicted just last year of entering Panama in 2000 with 20 (or 33) pounds of powerful plastic explosive, with the clear intent of assassinating Fidel Castro. His status as a terrorist simply isn't in question.

Naturally, the U.S. is still playing games, refusing to say what they plan to do with Posada, and saying that "generally, the U.S. government does not return people to Cuba or to countries acting on Cuba's behalf," as if Venezuela were not a sovereign nation.

"The reconstituted Iraqi army took another step Sunday toward leading stabilization efforts in its own country, opening its first national headquarters since the U.S.-led invasion.

"The Iraqi Ground Forces Headquarters was inaugurated by a 'small group of Iraqi and Coalition dignitaries' at an undisclosed location in Baghdad, according to Multi-National Force-Iraq officials Monday."

And wouldn't you love to know the truth behind this report:

"The Pentagon said 90 Iraqi battalions have been created so far. But, the report concedes, 'All but one of these 90 battalions … are lightly equipped and armed and have very limited mobility and sustainment capabilities.'"

"I have met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to target those guns. I met him to try and bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war."

"You have nothing on me, Senator, except my name on lists of names from Iraq, many of which have been drawn up after the installation of your puppet government in Baghdad."

"Now, Senator, I gave my heart and soul to oppose the policy that you promoted. I gave my political life's blood to try to stop the mass killing of Iraqis by the sanctions on Iraq which killed one million Iraqis, most of them children, most of them died before they even knew that they were Iraqis, but they died for no other reason other than that they were Iraqis with the misfortune to born at that time. I gave my heart and soul to stop you committing the disaster that you did commit in invading Iraq. And I told the world that your case for the war was a pack of lies.

"I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims did not have weapons of mass destruction. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al-Qaeda. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11 2001. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that the Iraqi people would resist a British and American invasion of their country and that the fall of Baghdad would not be the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning.

"Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 people paid with their lives; 1600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies.

"If the world had listened to Kofi Annan, whose dismissal you demanded, if the world had listened to President Chirac who you want to paint as some kind of corrupt traitor, if the world had listened to me and the anti-war movement in Britain, we would not be in the disaster that we are in today. Senator, this is the mother of all smokescreens. You are trying to divert attention from the crimes that you supported, from the theft of billions of dollars of Iraq's wealth.

"Have a look at the real Oil-for-Food scandal. Have a look at the 14 months you were in charge of Baghdad, the first 14 months when $8.8 billion of Iraq's wealth went missing on your watch. Have a look at Haliburton and other American corporations that stole not only Iraq's money, but the money of the American taxpayer.

"Have a look at the oil that you didn't even meter, that you were shipping out of the country and selling, the proceeds of which went who knows where? Have a look at the $800 million you gave to American military commanders to hand out around the country without even counting it or weighing it.

"Have a look at the real scandal breaking in the newspapers today, revealed in the earlier testimony in this committee. That the biggest sanctions busters were not me or Russian politicians or French politicians. The real sanctions busters were your own companies with the connivance of your own Government."

That's George Galloway's description of the "Oil-for-Food" program. Galloway's testimony to the U.S. Senate, particularly his opening statement, has been absolute dynamite, with Galloway refusing to play the "false politeness game" so common in U.S. politics, and refusing to be distracted from the real issues - the deaths of a million Iraqis, mostly children, as a result of the U.S.-led embargo, and the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqis from the illegal invasion which followed (and which continues). The transcript will be priceless once it's available.

Here's what Galloway had to say going into the hearing:

"I am determined, now that I am here, to be not the accused but the accuser. The people who have been guilty of massive profiteering in Iraq is the US themselves and I intend to put them on trial."

Update: A link to a video containing some of Galloway's most important testimony (RealPlayer format only, short ad at the front). A must-see.

Slimy Senator Norm Coleman, who didn't lay a glove on Galloway during the hearing, scuttles off into the corridor after the hearing to impugn Galloway's credibility.

Update: Transcript here

"If you're the one that soaked the field in gasoline, is it a good idea to draw a lot of attention to the guy who walked by smoking a cigarette?"

- Wonkette, referring of course to the Newsweek controversy

"The magazine relied on an unnamed source -- an increasingly controversial if age-old Washington practice -- who turned out not to know what he was talking about."

I wouldn't bother mentioning him, though, except I'm compelled to note his analysis of the reaction of bloggers to this story. By my count, Kurtz cites eleven blogs criticizing Newsweek, and only a single one which "urges a bit of tolerance". Way to present a fair and balanced coverage, Howie.

Tribal leaders say U.S. offensive near Syria killed friends and foes
"The U.S. military hails last week's 'Operation Matador' as a success that killed more than 125 insurgents. But local tribesmen said it was a disaster for their communities that's made them leery of ever again assisting American or Iraqi forces.

"In interviews, influential tribal leaders and many residents of the remote border towns said the 1,000 U.S. soldiers who swept into their territories in the weeklong campaign that ended over the weekend didn't distinguish between the Iraqis who supported the United States and the fighters battling it.

"'The Americans were bombing whole villages and saying they were only after the foreigners,' said Fasal al-Goud, a former governor of Anbar province who said he asked U.S. forces for help on behalf of the tribes. 'An AK-47 can't distinguish between a terrorist and a tribesman, so how could a missile or tank?'

"When the offensive ended...angry residents returned to find blocks of destruction. Men who'd stayed behind to help were found dead in shot-up houses."

"[Newsweek Editor Mark ] Whitaker said in the interview that Newsweek is 'still trying to ascertain' whether there is any evidence that such a Koran incident took place, as some detainees have alleged."

As I wrote the other day:

Let's get real; were it not for photographs, do you really think that Charles Graner, or Lynndie England, or the rest of the fall guys and gals would have ever been "proven" guilty?

This statement in the Post article is also a gem:

"Pentagon officials said they investigate all specific and credible allegations, but not always on the media's timetable."

Newsweek Retracts Report on Koran Insult After U.S. Pressure

"The White House and State Department said today that Newsweek should do more than apologize for publishing a small item on May 9 saying the Koran had been desecrated by American guards at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, an item linked to riots in Pakistan and Afghanistan that led to the deaths of at least 17 people.

"Newsweek apologized on Sunday for the article, but while acknowledging possible errors, the magazine stopped short of retracting it."

"Newsweek magazine, under fire for publishing a story that led to deadly protests in Afghanistan, said Monday it was retracting its report that a military probe had found evidence of desecration of the Quran by U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo Bay."

Incredibly, it gets worse, because after this juxtaposition, news anchor Kyra Phillips returned to the Koran story, to inform viewers of the virtually unbelievable story that someone (presumably the U.S. government, I didn't quite catch it) is now claiming that it may have been an inmate who was responsible for the Koran abuse! As if A) that were even remotely likely; and B) there is only a single incident of such abuse which has been reported, which, as discussed here already, is far from the truth. By the way, I don't mean to imply that's it's "virtually unbelievable" that someone in the U.S. government would make such a charge as a way of diverting attention from their own culpability; that's all too believable.

A minute later viewers were treated to Donald Rumsfeld shedding crocodile tears at the deaths of 14 Afghans and laying the blame at the feet of Newsweek. You would never guess, either to listen to him or to the U.S. media coverage in general, that 14 Afghans didn't just "die", but were killed by the U.S.-backed, U.S.-armed Afghan government.

"Citgo is a U.S. refining and marketing firm that is a wholly owned subsidiary of Venezuela's state-owned oil company...By buying your gasoline at Citgo, you are contributing to the billions of dollars that Venezuela's democratic government is using to provide health care, literacy and education, and subsidized food for the majority of Venezuelans.

"So get your gas at Citgo. And help fuel a democratic revolution in Venezuela."

Howard Kurtz, the Post's media critic, demonstrates his own inabilty to be clear on a concept when he starts the article with this phrase: "Newsweek apologized yesterday for an inaccurate report on the treatment of detainees..." Newsweek did apologize, but even if they called the report "inaccurate" (they didn't, as far as I can tell), that doesn't mean the report was inaccurate, and it certainly doesn't allow Howard Kurtz to state as fact that the report was inaccurate. It may be inaccurate, or it may simply be "unproven" (or "unprovable"). But neither of those merits the simple phrase "inaccurate". Indeed, as noted in the first paragraph, proving this story false is virtually an impossibility.

Update: Voice of America demonstrates its own "unclarity on the concept" when it uses the headline "Newsweek Magazine Apologizes for Errors in Koran Report" over an article whose very first sentence (emphasis added) starts "Newsweek magazine has apologized for possible errors in a report ..."

"Remember, this war came to us, and not the other way around."

- U.S. Secretary of State CondoLIEzza Rice, speaking today to U.S. soldiers in Iraq (I heard this on TV; here's a link to the transcript. The quote was repeated this morning by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!, other than that few U.S. media sources are repeating this jaw-dropper.)

"It just could not continue to be a Middle East in which dictators like Saddam Hussein paraded around, lived in great palaces, and yet tortured, and oppressed, and just made mincemeat of this wonderful infrastructure here in Iraq."

[First posted 5/15, 6:05 p.m.; updated]

Jeff: James, this being America, after that episode aired, you must have taken a lot of heat from your coworkers the next day.

James: Jeff, this being America, I'm unemployed.

"Fighter jets flattened what the U.S. military said was an insurgent hideout on Thursday...F-18 jets used rockets and bombs to destroy a building in Karabilah that a terrorist captured during the operation had identified as an insurgent safe house."

"An Iraqi platoon that has been training at the Al Asad Marine base was on vacation during the week of the Marine assault and did not participate."

Meanwhile, we're forced to read Granma to read stories like these, which for some strange reason don't make it into the U.S. corporate media:

"A bomb attack carried out by a US helicopter today caused the deaths of five people and wounded another six in Al Charqa in northern Iraq, reported local television.

"The Al Iraqiya station reported that the bombing took place in the early hours of the morning, when the helicopter opened fire on a residential building."

We also read that "The [Pentagon] spokesman also said the Pentagon had investigated other desecration charges by detainees and found them 'not credible.'" Even assuming that anything coming from a Pentagon spokesman has the slightest credibility, this statement is rather pointed in not saying that these charges are "not credible", only that other charges have been found "not credible". Human Rights Watch and the Independent found otherwise (see previous post); my money's on them and not on the Pentagon. As for Newsweek's apology - feh. Way to stand up for the free press with the courage of your convictions, guys. Oh yeah, I forget. You don't have any.

Update: The media (Fox News leading the charge but many more in the hunt) are now all over the "Newsweek repudiates story" story. I repeat what I said in the post below - whatever the truth of this particular charge, there is far too much evidence of similar behavior to avoid the conclusion that exploiting prisoners' religion is not only happening, and moreover that it is not just the deviant behavior of a few sadistic guards, but a systematic effort instituted from above. Listen carefully in all the current "it's Rathergate all over again" talk to see if you hear one word about the "fake menstrual blood" story, for example. I'm predicting you will not.

More update: Terry Moran on ABC News tells us that Newsweek's sin was relying on only a single source rather than the "usual two". Funny, I don't recall any corporate media anchor telling us that when it came to "Curveball", and his rather more serious allegations. He also says that the Pentagon's take on the previous similar allegations (cited in the post below, linked above) is that they were "not proven". Gee, what were those Guantanamo prisoners thinking, forgetting to bring their digital cameras to Guantanamo so they could document the atrocities they were being subjected to? Let's get real; were it not for photographs, do you really think that Charles Graner, or Lynndie England, or the rest of the fall guys and gals would have ever been "proven" guilty?

An investigation into the death of Nazem Baji, murdered by U.S. troops on October 20, 2003 with a shot through the head while his hands were tied with plastic handcuffs?

And, for that matter, the trial of some of Saddam Hussein's aides, which we were told back in early February was due to start "within weeks"?

So, feel free to scoff at the "Koran flushed down the toilet" story. I do. But the underlying truth has been there for all to see for a long time.

"In the Iraqi election the consensus of all leading parties was that there is a need for a timetable for American withdrawal. Only a timetable accompanied by, and spurring, negotiations among all parties will give hope for an end to the instability and violence. One lesson from Vietnam, Palestine and Northern Ireland is that many insurgent nationalists can be drawn in, isolating those addicted to nihilistic sectarian violence."

That was just the minor issue. Here's the major one:

"An end to occupation also requires accountability, on all sides, for war crimes and corruption. There is undeniable historic justice in bringing Saddam and his associates to trial. But those trials will further disillusion Iraqis if they're held without an effort to assign high-level US responsibility for torture in Abu Ghraib, rendition of prisoners, civilian deaths, theft of funds and other grievances."

"'The people of Uzbekistan want to see a more representative and democratic government. But that should come through peaceful means, not through violence,' White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Friday."

I do have to say it's becoming less clear every day that the American Revolution was a good thing. ;-)

"If the Bush administration wants to close military bases, how about starting with the ones in Iraq?"

- Jay Leno

"The Cuban medical brigade of 103 doctors in Belize has cared for more than 1,257,000 patients in the last five years, the Cuban ambassador in that Caribbean nation told Granma International.

"The Cuban health team has been in that Central American nation since 1998 and its replacement is to be guaranteed as part of the final document of the 8th Cuba-Belize Joint Commission, signed yesterday by Assad Choman, Belizean minister of development and Marta Lomas, Cuban minister of foreign investment and economic cooperation.

"In the last year alone, the Cuban doctors who are in every district of that small western Caribbean nation, cared for 392,288 patients, and they are practicing medicine in distant rural areas where health services have never been provided."

"President Bush has a reform agenda in mind at the UN. This reform agenda is generally supported by the UN Secretary General, who has put forward a reform plan of his own. The President wants John Bolton, an avowed and knowledgeable reformer, to carry out that reform agenda."

But Lugar's (and others') mention of the Oil-for-Food situation is just a cover; people like him (and Bush) have been after the U.N. long before that situation surfaced. Here's the "money quote" (in bold) from Lugar's speech (with a few extra "reforms" thrown in for good measure):

"Secretary Bolton has become closely associated with the United States' efforts to reform the UN. If he goes to the UN and helps achieve reform, the UN will gain in credibility, especially with the American people. If reform moves forward, Secretary Bolton will be in an excellent position to help convince skeptics that reform has occurred and that the United Nations can be an effective partner in achieving global security."

Scott McClellan, during a press conference:

Q Who was in charge, who would have made the call if this was at threat level red, too serious a threat to allow to continue?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, the President was at an off-site location, and he was informed, and he was informed of the situation that occurred. And obviously, there are protocols in place for that, as well. But the President was being kept well-informed of the situation that was going on.

Q By whom?

MR. McCLELLAN: By his security detail that was traveling with him.

"The President's detail was informed when the decision was made to raise the threat level at the White House to yellow. A determination was made that the threat posed no danger to the President since he was at an off-site location, and protocols were in place to protect people in the area of the threat. Those protocols did not require any presidential authority. Given such circumstances and the fact that the plane turned away from the White House, the decision was made to inform the President upon conclusion of his bike ride."

Will the press report on this lie, especially considering they themselves were the ones victimized, the ones being told the lie? As usual, don't count on it.

But one look at the recent American offensive in northern Iraq, and before that offensives in Fallujah and elsewhere, makes it clear that this strategy is a fantasy. Because the only way in which the Americans, the best-equipped ground force in the world, have managed to score major victories against the resistance is through the massive use of aerial power, in the form of attack planes and helicopter gunships. Is there any chance at all that the U.S. is not only training Iraqi pilots, but also preparing to leave attack planes, helicopters, and cruise missiles behind for the Iraqi government to use on that mythical day when American forces leave? Are you kidding? And let them fall into the "wrong hands" when that government falls the week after the Americans leave? Not on your life. Which tells you that the entire plan for the U.S. to train Iraqi forces and then leave is a complete sham. It's not going to happen. If the U.S. forces leave Iraq, it will be because they are forced out by the combination of the Iraqi resistance and the worldwide antiwar movement, just as was the case in Vietnam.

[Once again, I'm reposting as a separate post something that was tacked on as an afterthought to a post just below; I'll try not to make a habit of it, but in this case I'm doing so because the emphasis is warranted.]

"The supplemental military spending bill which just passed the Senate includes all sorts of goodies, such as giving the feds back the old McCarren-Walter ability to exclude foreigners from the US merely because of their speech or writings, and, on the other side, a ban on the government spending money to torture people, including non-Americans, who Alberto Gonzales claimed had no constitutional right not to be tortured."

"The nature of the bill, mainly providing support for American troops overseas that President Bush had requested, made it all but politically impossible to oppose in its final form."

"Another important part of this bill will be the periodic report it requires on the progress our forces are making in Iraq."

And, since I mentioned it, I'll digress into that latter subject. specifically the big offensive being conducted by American forces in northern Iraq. One of the only reasons the Americans are having any success there at all, as was the case in Fallujah previously, is because their ground forces were able to call in attack planes and helicopter gunships. Is there any chance at all that the U.S. is both training Iraqi pilots for that task, and preparing to leave such planes and helicopters behind for the Iraqi government to use on that mythical day when American forces leave? Are you kidding? And let them fall into the "wrong hands" when that government falls the week after the Americans leave? Not on your life. Which tells you that the entire plan for the U.S. to train Iraqi forces and then leave is a complete sham.

"Among the four Marines killed and 10 wounded when an explosive device erupted under their Amtrac on Wednesday were the last battle-ready members of a squad that four days earlier had battled foreign fighters holed up in a house in the town of Ubaydi. In that fight, two squad members were killed and five were wounded.

"In 96 hours of fighting and ambushes in far western Iraq, the squad had ceased to be.

"Every member of the squad -- one of three that make up the 1st Platoon of Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 25th Regiment -- had been killed or wounded, Marines here said. All told, the 1st Platoon -- which Hurley commands -- had sustained 60 percent casualties, demolishing it as a fighting force."

"Posada allegedly entered Florida illegally. If that's the case, deport him. Or ship him to a neutral country or hand him over to the International Criminal Court to be tried on the charges."

In another example, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel boldly says "The Bush administration must address the Posada conundrum. A probe of his activities is the first step." Wow. Let's not be hasty. Yes, a "probe" by all means.

It should be clear that none of these editorials were written because the papers are opponents of Bush (or, at least, the Bush agenda), or even particularly opposed to the actions of Luis Posada Carriles. If they were, it wouldn't have taken them a month to run their first significant news articles on this story, or an editorial opposing asylum, and they might have editorialized last year against the absurdly lenient charges brought against Posada Carriles and his associates in Panama, and their subsequent pardon and welcome into the United States, none of which to my knowledge were opposed by any corporate paper in the United States. Rather, these editorials were written in support of the Bush agenda, "constructive criticism" as it were, to let the Bush administration know that sacrificing this one person may be essential for them to maintain the fictions that they are maintaining, in this case first and foremost the fiction that the United States is actually waging a "war on terror" rather than a "war to dominate the Middle East and Central Asia". An agenda which the entire corporate media is fully in support of, even if they may not agree on all the tactics employed to further that agenda.

Meanwhile, in an amusing side note illustrating the need for good translators everywhere, Prensa Latina reports on a huge rally planned for Havana to demand extradition for Posada Carriles:

"Cuba will reiterate its position against terrorism and demand justice in a popular rally that will also vogue for punishment to Luis Posada Carriles, who is hiding in the United States after he requested asylum."

Jews were definitely the largest group, but Gypsies, Poles and other Slavs, along with people with physical or mental disabilities, were also targeted (and killed) because of genetics. Others, including Jehovah's Witnesses, gays, dissenting clergy, Communists, and Socialists were killed because of what they thought or did, rather than who they were.

Meanwhile, the BBC (link above) writes about criticism of the memorial:

"Others pointed out that many thousands of non-Jews perished in the Holocaust, but are excluded from mention in the memorial."

Update: Knight-Ridder gets the math right:

"The most persistent criticism has been that the memorial honors only the 6 million Jews who were killed, not the millions of Gypsies, gays, mentally and physically disabled people, communists and others who fell prey to the Nazis.

"At the ceremony, Paul Spiegel, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, echoed that criticism, saying there should be no hierarchy of suffering among Nazi victims and that all groups should have memorials."

But the main flaw in the editorial are these absurd statements:

"Mr. Bush has made a point of his unwavering moral clarity on the issue of harboring terrorists...Since 9/11, the United States has become so zealous in its efforts to exclude potential terrorists from American soil that it has made it much harder for genuine refugees fleeing deadly persecution in their home countries to find sanctuary here. Washington would offend American principles and set an extremely damaging precedent by making a special exception for an admitted terrorist."

"Unwavering moral clarity on the issue of harboring terrorists"? I think not. And that's not even counting the terrorists the U.S. is harboring inside the Pentagon and White House.

And in a different kind of humor (irony), Minister "Peace", who is part of a government which has been claiming the big problem with the Palestinians is their lack of democracy, now says that if Hamas wins July's Palestinian Authority parliamentary elections, Israel should reconsider pulling out of Gaza. And, exhibiting the total lack of self-awareness of which there seems to be an epidemic in the world today, says:

"There is no room in a democratic society for a party carrying arms and dealing with terror against neighboring citizens."

Incidentally, the Chicago Tribune is already reporting, based on the word of the local commander on the scene and not officials in Baghdad, that the actual number of alleged insurgents killed was just a few dozen.

(First posted last night as part of an update to the item below; separated for visibility)

U.S. forces launched their latest assault in northern Iraq today, "reportedly killing as many as 100 militants." Right. Or as few as three. Wouldn't you love to see the U.S. media report on antiwar demonstrations that way? "As many as a million people marched today against the war." No, I haven't seen that either. And it looks like the AP didn't take my advice to follow their sentence about the military's assertions with the sentence: "The military offered no proof of their claims." Of course, they didn't bother to let their readers know that these alleged 100 dead people were not "militants", but "people alleged by the U.S. military to be militants." Because, if the two-year history of the Iraq war has taught us anything (assuming we or the AP hadn't learned the lesson many times before), surely it is that there is a difference between the two.

Update: On the same day that the New York Times produces an internal report aiming to "increase their readers' confidence" by, among other things, "reducing errors", the Times headlines the above story: "100 Rebels Killed in U.S. Offensive in Western Iraq". No ifs, ands, or buts about the exact number killed or their characterization as "rebels". The article itself does include the cover phrase "American military officials said Monday", but again, inexplicably fails to include the phrase "the military offered no proof of their claims." And thus the number one error of the New York Times and every other member of the corporate media -- unquestioning reporting of the claims of the U.S. government -- continues unabated, as does the lack of "confidence" that any intelligent reader should place in what they find in its pages.

Further update: From the Chicago Tribune:

"Though military commanders in Baghdad announced that 100 insurgent fighters were killed in the early fighting, along with three Marines, Davis' [the local commander in charge of the assault] figures were lower. He said 'a couple of dozen' insurgents had been killed in Ubaydi, about 10 at another river crossing near Al Qaim, and several who were killed by air strikes north of the river."

You won't be surprised to learn two facts. 1) The driver was unarmed. 2) The driver was black. You may be surprised to learn that, amazingly, the driver survived. At least so far.

Indeed, per capita, the free medical education which Cuba makes available to students from other countries (including the U.S.), which now totals more than 10,600, exceeds the number of students receiving an extremely costly medical education in the United States by a factor of four.

And those students are being put to good use! More than 13,000 Cuban doctors have worked in Venezuela over the last two years, providing medical care to the poorest of the poor, as they have in country after country for decades; indeed, it's a fairly well-known fact that Cuba has more doctors serving abroad than the World Health Organization.

And, of course, the "inefficient" socialist system of Cuba provides these medical benefits to its own people and people around the world for far less cost per capita than the marvelously "efficient" capitalist system at work elsewhere. Of course when you don't have HMOs, insurance companies, private hospitals, doctors, and drug companies taking billions of dollars of profits out of the system (and hence out of the pie available for actual health care), it's easy.

People before profits - it's more than just a slogan. It's a reality.

Sharon Ends Prisoner Release, Tells Abbas to Curb Militants

"Israeli officials said Sharon's commitments at the Egyptian summit were tied to progress by the Palestinians in clamping down on armed groups. Under pressure from Abbas, the main Palestinian militant groups agreed in March to hold their fire against Israel. Since then, there have been scattered incidents of violence, including the sporadic firing of Kassam rockets from the Gaza Strip into Jewish settlements within Gaza and Israeli communities just outside its borders."

Update: If Americans Knew (via Cursor) is out with a new report quantifying the media's handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A sample statistic: during 2004, ABC and NBC reported every death (100%) of Israeli children killed by Palestinians; CBS reported 50% of them. In that same period, the three networks reported only 8% of all the deaths of Palestinian children killed by Israelis. Looked at another way, the death of an Israeli child was ten times more likely to make the American network news as was the death of a Palestinian children.

"The CIA has so far refused to hand over control of Iraq's intelligence service to the newly elected Iraqi government in a turf war that exposes serious doubts the Bush administration has over the ability of Iraqi leaders to fight the insurgency and worries about the new government's close ties to Iran.

"The director of Iraq's secret police, a general who took part in a failed coup attempt against Saddam Hussein, was handpicked and funded by the U.S. government, and he still reports directly to the CIA, Iraqi politicians and intelligence officials in Baghdad said last week. Immediately after the elections in January, several Iraqi officials said, U.S. forces stashed the sensitive national intelligence archives of the past year inside U.S. headquarters in Baghdad in order to keep them off-limits to the new government.

"Unlike the defense and interior ministries, there is no provision in the Iraqi government's budget for the secret police. The Mukhabarat's money comes straight from the CIA."

"I prefer to call it the American Intelligence of Iraq, not the Iraqi Intelligence Service."

Cuban Exile Could Test the U.S. Definition of Terrorist

Let me take note of two things in the article. The first is this quote from one of Posada's allies:

"Alfredo Duran, who was captured at the Bay of Pigs and later led a militant anti-Castro group, said that 'after 9/11, it has become inexcusable to defend attacks that could kill innocent civilians.'"

And then these "coverup" pararaphs, from the Times itself:

"The moment Mr. Castro arrived in Panama for an international conference, he accused Mr. Posada of plotting against his life. Mr. Posada was seized, along with his three colleagues and 33 pounds of the plastic explosive C-4. Despite Mr. Posada's protest that the case was a sting set up by the Cuban spy service, he received an eight-year sentence in April 2004 for endangering public safety."

And then this, in the same vein:

"Mr. Castro said in a recent speech that Mr. Posada then went to the Mexican resort Isla Mujeres and arrived in Florida on a boat owned by a Cuban-American developer in Miami. The Cuban leader offered no proof."

And why wouldn't Castro reveal the source of his information, which might well be a Cuban secret agent working within the anti-Castro movement in Miami? Because the last time that Cuba provided information to the United States about American-based anti-Cuban terrorists who were planning attacks on Cuba, the United States arrested (and tried and convicted) the Cuban informants rather than the terrorists. And that's a mistake we won't see Cuba making again.

Wouldn't you like to see the New York Times apply this same standard to statements from members of the United States government and military? "George Bush said X today, but offered no proof." "The U.S. military said they had almost captured Y today, but offered no proof." Yeah, that'll happen.

Update: Ricardo Alarcon (one of the interviews on today's Democracy Now!) makes a very good point (among many others): Posada Carriles isn't arriving in Miami to retire. Posada Carriles isn't just a man who was involved with blowing up airlines more than thirty years ago. Posada Carriles is an active terrorist, actively and personally involved in terrorist activity as recently as five years ago. There isn't any reason to believe he isn't now, and won't be in the future, actively involved in planning and executing more terrorist activities. So this isn't just some academic exercise in setting history right. It isn't just a case that the U.S. is currently harboring a fugitive from justice. It's the case that the U.S. is harboring an active terrorist.

On the front page, above the fold, the sage of the "chili finger lady". Also above the fold, a perfectly interesting story about blind parents raising a child, which is worth the ink, but hardly on the front page. Not until we get to page four do we find a story that actually affects millions of people - hidden in just two paragraphs, the news that if you're elderly and receiving food stamps, if you sign up for the new Medicare prescription drug benefit [sic], your food stamps will be reduced by the amount you save on the drugs. Otherwise known as robbing Peter to pay...Peter in this case.

A little later (page 12 to be exact), we learn what should be a "good news" story - a half million dollars worth of medical supplies have arrived in Najaf. But curiously, although the article describes how these supplies came from humanitarian agencies, the article fails to point out that none of the billions of dollars supposedly allocated for Iraqi reconstruction by the U.S. government have made their way to Najaf. Instead, it provides this explanation, as if we were talking about "acts of God" instead of deliberate decisions on the part of the U.S. government and their Iraqi figureheads:

"Ten months later, there has been little reconstruction of the hospitals, and doctors said patients still bleed to death for lack of simple equipment."

"Two violent uprisings last year by the rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr left the Shiite Muslim nerve center in ruins. The main hospital was severely damaged in clashes between Sadr's militia and U.S. and Iraqi forces."

A little later on in another article, we find this interesting headline:

Al-Jazeera an unlikely ally

And how's this for an interesting sentence, buried in that article:

"[Al-Jazeera's] correspondents are banned in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Algeria and Tunisia, all with autocratic governments, as well as in Iraq."

But my "favorite" article in today's paper is written by Teresa Wiltz, who we're told writes for the Washington Post "Style" section, which is where all the serious analysis is found. This piece, entitled "Heroes and Villians", purports to discuss Americans' attitudes toward torture after September 11. I'm not going to discuss the article, but here's the caption that appears underneath the picture of Lynndie England [emphasis added]:

"While the image of Pfc. Lynndie England, center, leading an Iraqi prisoner around on a leash is hard to forget, no one seems close to resolving the question about whether she and other soldiers at Abu Ghurayb prison were good guys or bad guys.

Is this "democracy"? Well, in some ways, of course yes. But in a more fundamental way of providing a system in which Parliament reflects the will and the opinions of the electorate? It's dubious at best.

The British are talking ever so tenuously about proportional representation. Given the advantage that Labour (and, to a lesser extent, the Conservatives) derive from the present system, it will be astonishing indeed if anything actually happens along those lines.

George Galloway, kicked out of the Labour Party and running on a strong anti-war platform against a pro-war Labour candidate (and others, of course), has beaten the Labour candidate (who won the last election by 10,000 votes!) and won election to Parliament. People rarely have such a direct chance to "vote on the war"; here they did, and their voice was clear.

Galloway's post-victory speech was priceless:

"All the people you [Tony Blair] have killed, all the lies you have told have come back to haunt you, and the best thing the Labour Party can do is sack you tomorrow morning."

In other election news, Reg Keys, the father of a British soldier killed in Iraq, failed to unseat Tony Blair in his constituency, but did garner 4,252 votes, an impressive total for someone with no party or other organizational support whatsoever, and running against the powerful Blair.

Update: Tariq Ali on Democracy Now! points to this result as well, in which anti-war Liberal Democrat Lynne Featherstone pulled off a 13,000-vote (!) swing (from a 10,614 vote deficit in 2001 to a 2,395-vote plurality in 2005) to defeat pro-war Labour candidate Barbara Roche.

Got along without you before I met you
[We'd like to] get along without you now

"It was all foreign companies modernizing the country. Iraqis with engineering Ph.D.s who built their electricity system and who built their telephone system had no place in the reconstruction process."

And finally, just for completeness, a link to Rudyard Kipling's 1899 poem from which the title of this post is taken.

Naomi Klein writes about "The Rise of Disaster Capitalism," in which she discusses the role that not only the money derived from rebuilding countries, but also the potential future profits from completely restructuring (i.e., privatizing) their economies) plays in driving U.S. foreign policy. As she puts it:

"The stories of corruption and incompetence serve to mask this deeper scandal: the rise of a predatory form of disaster capitalism that uses the desperation and fear created by catastrophe to engage in radical social and economic engineering."

"The Transitional Government [in Haiti] provide[s] a window of opportunity for implementing economic governance reforms...that may be hard for a future government to undo."

And in the second recommended article, Alexander Cockburn provides a lot more detail on the comparison of the deaths of Marla Ruzicka and Rachel Corrie which I discussed last month.

"My friend Daniel Ellsberg once said that what's good about the American people is that you have to lie to them. What's bad about Americans is that it's so easy to do."

- Investigative journalist Greg Palast, discussing the slam-dunk case for the impeachment that will never happen.

Israel suspends hand-over of towns to Palestinians

"Israel declared Wednesday it would not hand over any more West Bank towns to Palestinian security forces until their government moves to disarm militant groups."

"A pair of Palestinian teens were shot to death by Israeli troops in the West Bank during a stone-throwing clash."

And how does the neutral U.S. press cover this story? Here's the lead-in phrase to that just quoted sentence:

"Exacerbating growing tensions between the two sides..."

"More than 18,000 adults in the USA die each year because they are uninsured and can't get proper health care, researchers report in a landmark study released Tuesday.

"It is the second in a planned series of six reports by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) examining the impact of the nation's fragmented health system. The IOM is a non-profit organization of experts that advises Congress on health issues.

• Uninsured people with colon or breast cancer face a 50% higher risk of death.
• Uninsured trauma victims are less likely to be admitted to the hospital, receive the full range of needed services, and are 37% more likely to die of their injuries.
• About 25% of adult diabetics without insurance for a year or more went without a checkup for two years. That boosts their risk of death, blindness and amputations resulting from poor circulation.

"At least one Cuban journalist claims that the head of the organization is a CIA agent, and while Left I can't offer any further insight into that charge, one does have to wonder why this organization was founded given the well-established reputation of CPJ."

Reporters without Borders? Reporters without Ethics is more like it. If indeed they are reporters at all.

"The intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy."

Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern has an extended discussion of the whole subject of the use of intelligence [sic] on CommonDreams.

I was reminded of that episode this week when I read this (emphasis added - note that I posted part of this same article two posts below this one, but in order to make a completely different point):

"The concentration of American troops and weapons in Iraq and Afghanistan limits the Pentagon's ability to deal with other potential armed conflicts, the military's highest ranking officer reported to Congress on Monday.

"The officer, Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, informed Congress in a classified report that major combat operations elsewhere in the world, should they be necessary, would probably be more protracted and produce higher American and foreign civilian casualties because of the commitment of Pentagon resources in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"The general's report appears to provide a slightly different assessment than President Bush offered at a news conference last week when he said the number of American troops in Iraq would not limit Washington military options elsewhere.

"Mr. Bush said he had asked General Myers, 'Do you feel that we've limited our capacity to deal with other problems because of our troop levels in Iraq?'

"'And the answer is no, he didn't feel a bit limited,' Mr. Bush said."

Incidentally, while looking for that previous "appears to contradict" reference, in the same post I found this notable quote from Colin Powell: "We are more convinced by the Kay report that we did the right thing." I wonder if Colin is still quite so convinced now that the final report has been released, or indeed if he was even convinced at the time he said that.

You can find a whole series of photos of the May 4, 1970 Kent State incident here, in which four students were killed and nine wounded, one paralyzed for life.

But, as was discussed in a comments thread a while back about John Bolton's nomination, there certainly are cases where things that liberals might view as "the worse" I view exactly the opposite. This is one of them:

"The concentration of American troops and weapons in Iraq and Afghanistan limits the Pentagon's ability to deal with other potential armed conflicts, the military's highest ranking officer reported to Congress on Monday."

The worse the better? Very much so, in this case.

"U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in a tough statement aimed at North Korea, says the United States has significant deterrent capability to thwart Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions."

Every country in the world has forsworn the first use of nuclear weapons. Except one. I'm pretty sure you know which one that is.

"We want to keep hammering away, smothering a story. That's how we put our resources to use instead of spreading ourselves thinly over a variety of stories, many of which are inconsequential.''

(All links except the first courtesy of the invaluable Cursor)

Then we have an interesting sentence like this:

"Posada, now 77, and three associates were imprisoned in Panama in an alleged plot in 2000 to kill Castro at a conference in Panama."

"Sources close to the Iraqi insurgency have said Hassan was held in Al-Fallujah and executed about a week after the start of the U.S.-led assault to retake the rebel-held town last November. She was killed, they added, because she had become an obstacle to her kidnappers' escape from Al-Fallujah."

And why do I mention something which is seemingly so obvious? Because here in "rugged individualist" American, this fact of human existence is routinely forgotten. The media are filled with stories which glorify individual achievement as if it materialized from nowhere. To pick one example, Larry Page and Sergey Brin created Google. They certainly deserve recognition and honor for that achievement, and a reasonable financial reward as well. But do they deserve billions for their work? They would be nowhere without the computer (developed with government money) or the Internet (ditto). I don't know for sure, but it's a good guess that their professor at Stanford was working on a government grant, and possibly they were as well. Stanford University itself wouldn't exist without the government acting to create the Transcontinental Railroad which made Leland Stanford a wealthy man, and all the private endowments given to Stanford University since then which keep the University running were all tax-deductible, and hence in essence subsidized by the public. Not to mention those who preceded Page and Grin in developing search technology. Did any of the people in this long line of essential precursors and components of Google (including U.S. taxpayers) share in Google's billions? Not likely. And will you read about any of them when you read articles about the brilliant Page and Grin? Not likely either. Not in America, where individual achievement is emphasized, and the social and joint aspects of human activity are routinely deemphasized or ignored.

Clockwise from upper-left: Cactus Wren, Brown-crested Flycatcher, Cooper's Hawk, Summer Tanager.

And now, to answer the question all of you (o.k., one or two of you) have been asking, all of these birds, and the twelve previously shown, only exist together (and some of them only exist at all within the United States) in one place, which is the greater Tucson (Arizona) area. The first batch (White-breasted Nuthatch, Hepatic Tanager, Black-throated Gray Warbler, Acorn Woodpecker) were all photographed in Madera Canyon (south of Tucson). The second batch (Vermilion Flycatcher, Gray Hawk, Black-bellied Whistling-Duck, Common Yellowthroat) were all photographed at Arivaca Cienaga, part of the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge south (and slightly west) of Tucson. Of the third batch, the Elegant Trogon was photographed at Fort Huachuca (yes, that Fort Huachuca; I was tempted to wear my "U.S. Out of Iraq" t-shirt but I was pretty sure I would be refused admittance if I did), the Curve-billed Thrasher was in Patagonia-Sonoita Creek Preserve, the Female Broad-billed Hummingbird was outside a store in Tubac, and the White-faced Ibis was sitting on Patagonia Lake. Of this final batch, the Cooper's Hawk and the Brown-crested Flycatcher were photographed in Sabino Canyon (northeast Tucson). The Summer Tanager was back at Sonoita Lake, and the Cactus Wren was in a housing complex in Green Valley.

Thus endeth the saga, but, believe it or not, I'll have some political insights into birdwatching and society in the next post.