Left I on the News  

Sunset over Manahawkin Bay

It's interesting to compare how a reflection on perfectly smooth water, as in the picture of Mirror Lake below, can generate one kind of effect, but a reflection on non-smooth (can't really call it rough) water, as here, generates a different, but equally striking, effect.

FEBRUARY...In other hopeful news, President Bush, seeking to patch up the troubled relationship between the United States and its European allies, embarks on a four-nation tour. When critics note that two of the nations are not actually located in Europe, the White House responds that the president was "acting on the best intelligence available at the time."

JUNE...Israeli and Palestinian leaders reach an agreement under which Israel will withdraw its settlers from the Gaza strip, arousing peace hopes in amnesia victims everywhere.

I'll quote just one section but recommend the entire article:

So we are now told that “This technique (hunger striking) is consistent with al-Qaida training and reflects detainee attempts to elicit media attention and bring pressure on the United States Government to release them.” The phrase “consistent with” implies a causal relationship, suggesting that the prisoners are Al Qaeda members, that they have received some sort of training in not eating, and that they are under orders, without actually having to prove any of that.

OK, so I did have something to add. :-) But you should still read what WIIIAI has to say.

Also left unmentioned in the course of this "good news" story is the distinct possibility that Baby Noor's birth defect was caused by American use of depleted uranium in both the Gulf War and the current invasion of Iraq. Not that spina bifida doesn't occur naturally, but both birth defects and cancer have increased dramatically in Iraq:

At the Saddam Teaching Hospital in Basra, Dr. Jawad Al-Ali, a British-trained oncologist, displays, in four gaily colored photo albums, what he says are actual snapshots of the nightmares.

The photos represent the surge in birth defects -- in 1989 there were 11 per 100,000 births; in 2001 there were 116 per 100,000 births.

There were photos of infants born without brains, with their internal organs outside their bodies, without sexual organs, without spines, and the list of deformities went on and on. There also were photos of cancer patients.

Cancer has increased dramatically in southern Iraq. In 1988, 34 people died of cancer; in 1998, 450 died of cancer; in 2001 there were 603 cancer deaths."

The hourly wages of average workers are 11 percent lower than they were back in 1973 (adjusted for inflation), despite rising worker productivity. CEO pay, by contrast, has skyrocketed -- up a median 30 percent in 2004 alone, in the Corporate Library survey of 2000 large companies.

Median household income has fallen an unprecedented five years in a row. It would be even lower if not for increased household work hours. Americans work over 200 hours more a year on average than workers in other rich industrialized countries.

We are breaking records we don't want to break. Record numbers of Americans have no health insurance. The share of national income going to wages and salaries is the lowest since 1929. Middle-class households are a medical crisis, an outsourced job, or a busted pension away from bankruptcy.

After a series of prison abuse scandals that have inflamed sectarian tensions, U.S. officials announced plans Thursday to rein in Iraqi special police forces, increasing the number of American troops assigned to work with them and requiring consultations before the Iraqis mount raids in Baghdad.

The plan, which is expected to be formally approved in Washington in a few weeks, will be implemented in the capital first but may serve as a model for the rest of the country.

This week, the U.S. military announced it would delay the hand-over of American-run prisons to Iraqis.

The U.S. moves will upset some Interior Ministry officials, the senior official acknowledged. It amounts to a reimposition of American authority over security forces that have operated independently for months.

More than 2 1/2 years after the U.S.-led invasion and 1 1/2 years after the formal end of the occupation, it also illustrates that Americans still have the final word on security matters.

Ah, but there's an explanation:

Though Iraq is technically a sovereign nation, a United Nations resolution passed last year gives U.S.-led forces the authority "to take all necessary measures to contribute to the maintenance of security and stability in Iraq."

"All necessary measures"? Why, that might include dissolving the just-elected Iraqi government under the claim that the election results might destabilize the country. It could include arresting Muqtada al-Sadr, who we're informed this morning is a "real spoiler." It could include establishing checkpoints on every street corner, and requiring every person passing by to submit to strip searches to ensure they aren't carrying bombs or other weapons. It could literally include anything, since virtually anything the Americans do could be asserted to be part of maintaining "security and stability." "Sovereignty"? Not even close.

Mirror Lake

U.S. fighter jets dropped two 500-pound (225-kg) bombs on a village in northern Iraq, killing 10 Iraqis they suspected of planting explosive devices on a nearby road, the U.S. military said on Thursday.

They [the fleeing men] drove the cars into the village and tried to hide by parking between two buildings, the statement said.

The pilots then dropped two 500-pound laser-guided bombs.

"They were able to destroy the vehicles while causing only minimal damage to surrounding structures," the military said.

About 22% of U.S. adults believe Mr. Hussein helped plan 9/11, the poll shows, and 26% believe Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the U.S. invaded. Another 24% believe several of the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqis, according to the online poll of 1,961 adults.

Headwaters of the San Lorenzo River
photographed from the Travertine Springs Trail
Left, San Lorenzo River proper; RIght, Craig Springs Creek

Ahmad Chalabi once argued that Saddam Hussein had doomsday weapons and that Iraq needed liberation and democracy.
...
Before Saddam's ouster in 2003, Chalabi, then living in exile, was a favorite of the Defense Department and the U.S. Congress.

But he fell from grace after his claims that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction were discredited. U.S. forces last year raided Chalabi's Baghdad office after he was accused of giving U.S. intelligence to Iran.

The headline on the White House page describing the event is rather curious itself:

Special Guests of Mrs. Bush at the State of the Union

The article cited above is from AP; the identical formulation ("Source in 'information' about WMD, fell out of favor, offices raided] was used on the local TV news I was watching last night. A New York Times editorial described him merely as an "American protege"; I guess maybe they didn't want to say "Bush administration protege" since that would have left out the debt the Times owes to him as one of their "best" sources. Another Times article describes him as a "former Pentagon favorite."

Contrast that with the far more accurate coverage in the Washington Post:

Ahmed Chalabi -- the returned Iraqi exile once backed by the United States to lead Iraq -- facing a shutout from power.

The longtime exile and his associates played an influential role in the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein; U.S. authorities tapped Chalabi to lead a small Iraqi force in the U.S.-led invasion. But his reputation suffered from past financial scandals, and critics have charged he was always more popular with Americans than with Iraqis.

Gambel's Quail, photographed at Sabino Canyon

No, you moron, they were unhappy with what they perceive as election fraud in the election, not with the "results" (although those are, of course, the end product of the fraud). Of course he followed that by citing the U.N. statement that the election was "credible," and that's that.

"These Democratic senators voted for the war and say they were misled. They weren't misled, they were afraid of being called unpatriotic."

- Politically insightful actor George Clooney

And as an added bonus:

Tony, Workers World

Jenness said the number of complaints was less than one for every 7,000 voters. About 70 percent of Iraq's 15 million voters went to the polls.

Scheer correctly notes this:

The fact is, all of the top scientists in Iraq consistently told first U.N. and then U.S. inspectors before and after the invasion that Iraq, hobbled by inspections and sanctions, had no functioning WMD programs or usable WMDs in recent years.

When Saddam was still in power, most of us journalists reporting in Iraq simply assumed it was impossible to get a straight story out of his officials. Now we know Saddam’s aides weren’t the only ones spinning the truth. It’s hard to know what to believe any more.

Liu's claim she doesn't know "what to believe" is also at odds with her discussion of torture. She describes at length the treatment meted out to Dr. Ammash's husband:

Being subjected to hours and hours of earsplitting American rap music laced with profanity and being doused with cold water, then forced to stand for hours in front of a freezing air-conditioner turned up full blast.

Incidentally, Liu interviewed Ammash's husband in 2004, before the Abu Ghraib revelations became public. I can find no evidence that she ever wrote about any of his claims until this article.

Also incidentally, there are now calls by some Iraqi government officials to rearrest Taha and Ammash, which raises the question of whether the original claim that the decision to release them was an "Iraqi-American decision" was accurate (or whether it was as accurate as the fiction that U.S. troops are now in Iraq at the "invitation" of the Iraqi government).

Marin Headlands Wildflowers

The CIA's independent watchdog is investigating fewer than 10 cases where terror suspects may have been mistakenly swept away to foreign countries by the spy agency.

For instance, someone may be grabbed wrongly or, after further investigation, may not be as directly linked to terrorism as initially believed.

It is a fact that rebels had seized control of Najaf and Karbala, so this was definitely a serious revolt. How surprising would it be if 30,000 people were killed in fighting a civil war/revolt? In the U.S. Civil War, in a country with a population of 31 million (i.e., comparable to that of Iraq), 200,000 were killed in battle, with far less lethal technology (although also less effective medical care) than available at the end of the 20th century. Thousands, sometimes more than ten thousand, were killed in single battles.

It is also a fact that there were other mass graves in southern Iraq, which were quite fresh at that time:

On the "Highway of Death," the American "Turkey Shoot" had killed thousands, perhaps "as many as" 30,000 (although most estimates are just "thousands"), retreating Iraqi soldiers, not to mention the literal mass graves created when American bulldozers buried hundreds or thousands of Iraqi troops alive during their initial attack. The "Highway of Death" (the Basra Road) extended for seven miles; just imagine the picture above, repeated nearly ad infinitum and definitely ad nauseum for seven miles worth of death, defenseless, senseless death from the air. However the 30,000 Shia died, and I can find virtually no information on the subject, it seems highly unlikely their deaths were any more brutal or morally repugnant than the ones that came at the hands of Americans.

Mike Peters

Really obnoxious quotes for quoted, inserted material

I've also just modified the link configuration, mainly because looking at underlined words in blogs has been bugging me since I started writing, and I finally decided to do something about it. The way it's now set up, you should only see underlining when the mouse is over the link; otherwise the links are in blue, bold for links which haven't been visited, and plain for links which have. I'm definitely open for feedback, so stick your $0.02 in the Comment field if you have thoughts.

In looking at the story, I talked to Curt Gilroy, who, as director of accession policy for the secretary of defense, has oversight of all active-duty recruiting; Tim Kane, a Heritage researcher; Betty Maxfield, demographer of the Army; Bruce Orvis, director of the Manpower and Training Program at the Rand Corp.'s Arroyo Center, and Robert Brandewei, director of the Defense Manpower Data Center in Monterey, Calif.

I'm not going to do a detailed criticism of the criticism, but I do want to mention just one point, which bears directly on the central point of the article, which was that the military draws heavily on the poor for its recruits:

A statement from Gilroy and Maxfield said that "incomes and socioeconomic status of recruits' families closely mirror the U.S. population."

My analysis of the original article is here. Not one of the criticisms I had of the article is even mentioned in Howell's analysis, among them, the bizarre implication that someone from an urban area is not among those "lower-middle-class to poor households."

My favorite statement in this article? "The Department of Defense does not know whether the data are right or wrong." No, but that won't stop them from criticizing the analysis.

Great Blue Heron, photographed at Ridgefield NWR

Well, as it turns out, they do. Almost all things are possible, once you decide on your priorities:

Some 2,260 Cuban health brigadistas, more than 1,400 of them doctors, are in the area of Kashmir, where they have attended to more than 200,000 patients and saved hundreds of people in imminent danger of dying.

Now imagine the same thing happened after the recent elections in Bolivia or Venezuela. The story would be at the top of the news, in heavy rotation on the cable channels, the subject of all the pundits on the talking heads shows, daily press releases from the U.S. government, and so on, all designed to make sure that the entire American public was aware that the elections were illegitimate (and, implicitly, that if the U.S. decided to invade those countries, it would be entirely justified since they are ruled by people who will stop at nothing to stay in power, even stealing elections, and they clearly need to have democracy "brought" to them at the point of American guns).

Stolen elections in the United States? Let's not even go there. The press certainly won't.

Monterey Harbor: Brown Pelicans and White Boats

Bush/Cheney Have Disgraced Their Office; They Should Resign

An illegal, criminal war means that every related U.S. death and injury, every related Iraqi civilian death and injury, every person tortured, every home and building destroyed become war crimes as a result - under established international law.

Israel said Monday it will build more than 200 new homes in Jewish West Bank settlements.

Incidentally, "settlements" are not "Jewish." Settlements are buildings and roads and sewers and electric lines. Settlements don't worship God, or light candles on Chanukah. Imagine if that sentence were written accurately: "Israel said Monday it will build more than 200 new homes in West Bank settlements for Jews only." It's even more striking in that form, isn't it? And no surpise the author doesn't write it that way.

And in the face of these statements, what does The New York Times have to say (and, I might point out before I continue, this is a news article, not an opinion piece)? "Though Mr. Powell stopped short of criticizing Mr. Bush, his suggestion that there was 'another way to handle it' was another example of his parting company on a critical issue with the president he served for four years." Parting company? He sees "absolutely nothing wrong" with what Bush did! Man, if that's "parting company," I'd sure like to have opponents like that! Gheesh!

And what about Iraq, another one of those examples of "parting company"?

On Iraq, Mr. Powell repeated earlier statements that differed somewhat from those of Mr. Bush, saying he did not know whether he would have advocated going to war with Iraq if he had known that the country had no stockpiles of illicit weapons.

Referring to the case for going to war if there were no such weapons, Mr. Powell said he would have told the president, "You have a far more difficult case, and I'm not sure you can make the case in the absence of those stockpiles."

Update: So excited I forgot to include the citation:

Eli Stephens’s Left I on the News delivers far and away the best media analysis anywhere in the blogosphere.

"The public perception that this is a risky time to be a soldier."

Start with that figure of 97. It's a figure provided by a doctor in Husaybah, and only refers to fatalities in the first week in one town of a multi-town, 17-day offensive. But even though the article refers to how "some critics" say that the deaths are "too liittle investigated," there isn't the slightest effort in the article to investigate or even add up the claims of deaths in other towns to come up with an actual total estimate for the entire campaign.

Then of course we have the obligatory military claims. The article quotes that same doctor saying, "I dare any organization, committee or the American Army to deny these numbers," and then proceeds to do just that:

Just how many civilians have been killed is strongly disputed by the Marines...U.S. Marines in Anbar say they take pains to spare innocent lives and almost invariably question civilian accounts from the battleground communities. They say that townspeople who either support the insurgents or are intimidated by them are manipulating the number of noncombatant deaths for propaganda..."I wholeheartedly believe the vast majority of civilians are killed by the insurgency," particularly by improvised bombs, said Col. Michael Denning, the top air officer for the 2nd Marine Division, which is leading the fight against insurgents in Anbar province..."Insurgents will kill civilians and try to blame it on us."...Townspeople, medical workers and officials often exaggerate death tolls, either for effect or under orders from insurgents [That last statement made completely with attribution, merely as simple fact on the authority of the Post]...American commanders insist they do everything possible to avoid civilian casualties, Denning said [Ed. note: not content with making that claim once in the article, this is now the second time for the identical claim]...The precision-guided munitions used in all airstrikes in Anbar 'have miss rates smaller than the size of this table,' Denning said [Ed. note: too bad "precision" is not the same as "accuracy"; "precision-guided" munitions are not the same as "accuracy-guided" munitions because the latter do not exist]"

Perhaps the most outrageous charge in the article is this one, which is the conclusion of one of the phrases cited above (emphasis added): "They say that townspeople who either support the insurgents or are intimidated by them are manipulating the number of noncombatant deaths for propaganda -- a charge that some Iraqis acknowledge is true of some residents and medical workers in Anbar province." Who are those Iraqis? None are identified in the article. The only possible source for this "charge" comes much later in the article, with this statement:

Arkan Isawi, an elder in Husaybah, said he and four other tribal leaders gathered to assess the damage while the operation was still underway and identified at least 80 dead, including women and children. "I personally pulled out a family of three children and parents," he said.

An exact count, however, was impossible, he said. "Anyone who gives you a number is lying, because the city was a mess, and people buried bodies in backyards and parking lots," with other bodies still under rubble, Isawi said.

Perhaps this was not the Iraqi who "acknowledged" that the number of noncombatant deaths was being "manipulated for propaganda" (although even he isn't quoted as making any such charge, only saying that it is impossible to make an exact count, which isn't the same thing at all). If not, then why not at least cover your tracks by attributing the claim to "Iraqis who refused to be identified for fear of their lives" or something like that? No, the Post didn't even think that was necessary, any more than they thought it necessary to attribute the more direct claim "Townspeople, medical workers and officials often exaggerate death tolls, either for effect or under orders from insurgents" to anyone. Just the word of the Post, which is really the word of the U.S. military, ought to be good enough for its readers. At least, that's the implicit attitude in the article.

Not once in the article does anyone challenge the word of the U.S. military or note that their claims "could not be verified," or might be "exaggerated." The one former Pentagon official who appears in the article as some kind of mild critic is mainly noting that better assessments should be made post-facto. Among the claims of this "critic" are: "It's almost impossible to fight a war in which engagements occur in urban areas [and] to avoid civilian casualties...when you're using force in an urban area or using force in an area with limited intelligence [and facing an enemy actively] exploiting distinctions between combatants and noncombatants, air power becomes challenging no matter how discriminate it is." This "critic" is better at making excuses for the military than actually criticizing them.

As Amy Goodman says, "If we had state media in the United States, how would it be any different?"

Today, the Cuban Baseball Federation hit that pitch out of the park:

Money is not the motive adduced by the OFAC for our interest in competing. We are a federation of a modest but dignified country; our only proposal is to cooperate so that baseball can continue to develop and attain its reinsertion in the Olympic Program in the near future. We have never competed for money.

With the objective of offering options, the Cuban Baseball Federation would be disposed to the money corresponding to its participation in the Classic to be destined to the victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

Update: Dave Zirin's informative take on the original denial (i.e., before this current news), delightfully entitled "Bray of Pigs."

Second update: And never to be forgotten is that the Cuban President was thinking about (and offering help to) Katrina victims before the American President.

It's both remarkable and sad how everything remains true, and keeps coming back again and again. The Prologue ("Building Agendas for War"), which tells the stories of the U.S. invasions of the Dominican Republic (1965), Grenada (1983), and Panama (1989), makes clear not only the proganda aspects of laying the groundwork for such wars, as well as the demonization of selected "enemies" which happens both before and after those invasions, but also that wars which are "quick" or "successful" and generate few American casualties generate little opposition at home. Which is exactly what I was discussing here last week. Democrats/liberals (not universally, but overwhelmingly) are not only not opponents of imperialism, they are supporters of it. It isn't U.S. intervention -- economic or military -- that they oppose, just interventions which don't bring "results," or can't be sold properly to the public, or seem to have more negative consequences than positive ones, etc.

The first chapter ("America Is a Fair and Noble Superpower") echoes that same point, that those who view the history of American intervention as somehow noble or benign, and done only for the best of intentions, will continue to support that foreign policy except when things go "wrong" (as in Iraq today) or in the most extreme of circumstances. One of the interesting historical episodes in this chapter is that of the NSA's spying on the U.N. delegates as the final U.N. vote (never taken) on invading Iraq approached. Highly relevant today, because the Bush administration is busy trying to give the impression that all their spying and wiretapping has to do with tracking down those dastardly al Qaeda terrorists and their "allies" (i.e., anyone who ever Googled "al Qaeda"). In fact, though, just two years ago we had the case of the U.S. wiretapping U.N. delegates in order to try to influence the vote for invading Iraq. In keeping with Solomon's focus on the media, he points out that the "paper of record," The New York Times, never printed a single story about that scandal, which was big news all over the world.

Chapter two ("Our Leaders Will Do Everything They Can to Avoid War") talks about people who mouth their love of "peace" while preparing (and then waging) war (which, as an aside, is one reason I insist that I am part of the "antiwar" movement, and not the "peace" movement, and that demonstrations I'm involved with are "antiwar" demonstrations, not "peace" demonstrations). In 1972, for example, the U.S. was publicly talking about negotations and "peace" in Vietnam. At that very time, Richard Nixon was rejecting the idea of bombing the North Vietnamese dikes because it would kill "only" two hundred thousand people; instead, he was suggesting to Henry Kissinger that they "think big" and use a nuclear bomb (Kissinger said that would be "too much." What a guy.). Solomon shows how fake diplomacy is often used while preparing for war, with Colin Powell's performance at the U.N. (and "performance" is definitely the right word) just the latest example.

The key thing about this book, which characterizes all of Solomon's writing, is that it is absolutely full of facts. Not dry facts, but anecdotes, examples, and such to drive home the points he is making. Solomon's knowledge is encyclopedic, and he imparts that knowledge in the service of helping the reader not just know what has happened, but to understand how and why it happened, and continues to happen.

Even though I haven't finished it yet, I say confidently that War Made Easy is the most important book that was written in 2005. It is absolutely essential reading for anyone who wants to understand what is happening in the world today, which is part and parcel of understanding how to change that direction.

[Yes, this is indeed the card I had to make myself after I couldn't find a decent one in the stores, and that is, naturally, one of my own photographs of my (extremely broadly defined) neighborhood.]

Thank you for your email of 24 November in which you request a copy of any memos or notes that record President Bush's discussions with the Prime Minister about the bombing of the al-Jazeera television station in Qatar. Your request has been handled under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

I can confirm that the cabinet Office holds information which is relevant to your request.

By the way, it goes without saying that the charge itself (that Bush did seriously propose this) is entirely believable.

The U.S. Army cleared its soldiers of any wrongdoing and blamed the Italians for driving too fast on a dangerous road to the Baghdad airport and for failing to heed the soldiers' warnings to slow down.

But Italian investigators, relying on testimony from the Italian intelligence agent driving the car and the journalist, Giuliana Sgrena, concluded that the vehicle had not been speeding and that U.S. troops had not issued any warnings.

There have, of course, been probably hundreds of Iraqis killed at checkpoint shootings in a manner similar to this one. Iraqis, however, unlike Italians, have no recourse to the law, since American soldiers are exempt from prosecution under "Iraqi law" (i.e., the "law" of occupation).

Today's AP summary of events in Iraq yesterday starts off like this:

Large demonstrations broke out across the country Friday to denounce parliamentary elections that protesters say were rigged in favor of the main religious Shiite coalition. Also, the U.S. military said two soldiers were killed when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb in Baghdad on Friday.

No other details were released. At least 2,163 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

Meanwhile, gunmen Friday attacked an Iraqi army checkpoint in the city of Adhaim, in religiously and ethnically mixed Diyala province, killing eight soldiers and wounding seventeen, an Iraqi army officer said on condition he not be identified for fear of reprisal.

In Balad Ruz, 45 miles northeast of Baghdad, a suicide bomber detonated his explosives belt outside a Shiite mosque, killing four people and wounding eight, Diyala police said. Among the dead was a policeman guarding the mosque.

And here's the second point, which I don't think I have ever noted before. Where do the deaths of Iraqi army members show up? If you look at the database at Iraq Body Count, you will see that IBC includes Iraqi police in their "civilian" body count, but not members of the Iraqi defense forces. It turns out, if you dig into the fine print at the Iraq Coalition Casualties site, they have a count of 3802 Iraqi police and military killed. Unfortunately they don't divide the totals (unfortunate since the police deaths are already included in Iraq Body Count), but suffice to say there are thousands more Iraqis who I had previously forgotten about when summing up the total number of Iraqis dead as a result of the invasion.

U.S. authorities call the military exercises standard and largely humanitarian in nature, involving no more than two dozen or so U.S. troops at a time in this California-sized nation. Paraguayan officials approved 13 joint exercises last spring, lasting through the end of next year, but it wasn't until Rumsfeld's visit in August that the maneuvers ignited a firestorm, especially in neighboring Brazil.

Later in the article, a former Paraguayan interior minister is quoted as saying, "That's one reason it's infantile to think that these U.S. training missions are meant just to provide dental care and take care of people's cavities." And a curbside merchant says ""If they want to help people, that's fine. I'm all for that. We can use the help. But if it's to fight a war? That's a different story." So again -- if the U.S. is sending people to Paraguay to provide dental care and otherwise "help people," why do those people have to wear uniforms and carry guns?

And one more question. Why does the U.S. government pay soldiers to go do these tasks, but at the same time people who work for its Peace Corps are volunteers? Don't they need those soldiers in Iraq? And aren't Peace Corps people doing work at least as worthy of a paycheck as soldiers?

One stark example was the White House's blockade of a Ridge-supported plan to secure large chemical plants. After Sept. 11, Whitman had worked with Ridge on a modest effort to require high-risk plants -- especially the 123 factories where a toxic release could endanger at least 1 million people -- to enhance security. But industry groups warned Bush political adviser Karl Rove that giving new regulatory power to the Environmental Protection Agency would be a disaster.

"We have a similar set of concerns," Rove wrote to the president of BP Amoco Chemical Co.

In an interagency meeting shortly before DHS's birth, White House budget official Philip J. Perry, who also happens to be Cheney's son-in-law, declared the Ridge-Whitman plan dead.

The Department of Homeland Security was only a month old, and already it had an image problem.

It was April 2003, and Susan Neely, a close aide to DHS Secretary Tom Ridge, decided the gargantuan new conglomeration of 22 federal agencies had to stand for something more than multicolored threat levels. It needed an identity -- not the "flavor of the day in terms of brand chic," as Neely put it, but something meant to last.

So she called in the branders.

Neely hired Landor Associates, the same company that invented the FedEx name and the BP sunflower, and together they began to rebrand a behemoth Landor described in a confidential briefing as a "disparate organization with a lack of focus." They developed a new DHS typeface (Joanna, with modifications) and color scheme (cool gray, red and hints of "punched-up" blue). They debated new uniforms for its armies of agents and focus-group-tested a new seal designed to convey "strength" and "gravitas." The department even got its own lapel pin, which was given to all 180,000 of its employees -- with Ridge's signature -- to celebrate its "brand launch" that June.

"It's got to have its own story," Neely explained.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan called Saddam's allegations "preposterous." The former president, he said, "is being treated the exact opposite of the way his regime treated those he imprisoned and tortured simply for expressing their opinions."

It's especially interesting that McClellan chose to talk about "expressing their opinions." There is little doubt that Saddam Hussein did treat political opponents harshly, including torture and murder. But the current trial, as I have discussed before, is about an actual assassination attempt against Hussein. Not even a plot, an attempt. By contrast, where do we stand with the invasion of Iraq which has killed more than 100,000 people? George Bush says it was justified because Saddam Hussein, even though he had no WMD, had a desire to "reconstitute" (just add water, I guess) his weapons in the future, and might have decided to give some of them to terrorists to use against the United States. So not only does Bush think that war and the death of 100,000+ people are justified on the basis of someone "expressing their opinion," apparently they're justified based on what George Bush thinks someone else may have been thinking! And Saddam Hussein is in the dock, and George Bush is swaggering around. Now that is preposterous. But true.

Update: Experimenting with the new "included quotes" style which seems to be sweeping blogtopia. Comments? Yes? No? Indifferent?

And perhaps we give a little to the poor
If the generosity should seize us
But if any one of us should interfere
In the business of why they are poor
They get the same as the rebel Jesus

"There are two kinds of giving, but I like to think of it as downstream giving and upstream giving. It's not enough to pull the drowning victims out of the river, you need to walk back upstream and find out who's throwing them in. So there's both downstream-giving that actually takes care of victims of oppression. And then there's upstream-giving -- walking back upstream to do justice and to promote systemic change to find the underlying causes that are causing all this."

"Some striking workers hinted they were having second thoughts. They said they live paycheck to paycheck, burdened with mortgages, many with children and ailing relatives to care for. Some said they had begun to wonder if they would be the ones to lose the most."

Today's news takes the story one step further, both qualitatively and quantitatively:

"Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter charged Monday that the reason Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony Principi stepped down earlier this month was the growing scandal surrounding the use of uranium munitions in the Iraq War.

"Writing in Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter No. 169, Arthur N. Bernklau, executive director of Veterans for Constitutional Law in New York, stated, 'The real reason for Mr. Principi's departure was really never given, however a special report published by eminent scientist Leuren Moret naming depleted uranium as the definitive cause of the 'Gulf War Syndrome' has fed a growing scandal about the continued use of uranium munitions by the US Military.'

"Bernklau continued, 'This malady (from uranium munitions), that thousands of our military have suffered and died from, has finally been identified as the cause of this sickness, eliminating the guessing. The terrible truth is now being revealed.'

"He added, 'Out of the 580,400 soldiers who served in GW1 (the first Gulf War), of them, 11,000 are now dead! By the year 2000, there were 325,000 on Permanent Medical Disability. This astounding number of 'Disabled Vets' means that a decade later, 56% of those soldiers who served have some form of permanent medical problems!' The disability rate for the wars of the last century was 5 percent; it was higher, 10 percent, in Viet Nam.

'The VA Secretary (Principi) was aware of this fact as far back as 2000,' wrote Bernklau. 'He, and the Bush administration have been hiding these facts, but now, thanks to Moret's report, (it) ... is far too big to hide or to cover up!'"

"While the exact cost of compensating those injured in fighting in Iraq is uncertain, the Department of Veterans Affairs already expects to pay $600 billion over the next three decades in disability payments to veterans of earlier wars."

"Undercover New York City police officers have conducted covert surveillance in the last 16 months of people protesting the Iraq war, bicycle riders taking part in mass rallies and even mourners at a street vigil for a cyclist killed in an accident, a series of videotapes show.

"In glimpses and in glaring detail, the videotape images reveal the robust presence of disguised officers or others working with them at seven public gatherings since August 2004.

"The officers hoist protest signs. They hold flowers with mourners. They ride in bicycle events. At the vigil for the cyclist, an officer in biking gear wore a button that said, 'I am a shameless agitator.' She also carried a camera and videotaped the roughly 15 people present.

"Beyond collecting information, some of the undercover officers or their associates are seen on the tape having influence on events. At a demonstration last year during the Republican National Convention, the sham arrest of a man secretly working with the police led to a bruising confrontation between officers in riot gear and bystanders."

One of the tactics police used in the sixties, which was effective in damaging the Black liberation movement, is to send a letter to someone in the movement alleging that someone else is a police informant. If you ever see such a letter (or, these days, an email) about someone in an organization you work with, do not believe it unless it comes from a known source (if it's anonymous, just hit the "Delete" button and move on; it's less than worthless) that you trust completely, and has some sort of proof. Even if it's from a known source, make sure it really came from that source. Assume nothing (other than that the police will always try to create trouble to weaken progressive movements). Leave the anonymous sources, which will usually be people you don't want to have anything to do with anyway, to Judith Miller and her colleagues in the corporate media.

I've added the Jan. 31 call to the "Upcoming Events" schedule (where I list "national" events) at right.

Update: The story is now online at the Washington Post (hat tip to reader catherine). The ruling, written by a conservative judge, is described by the Post as "blasting the government in unusually blunt terms for its behavior in the Padilla case."

And the same is true for Scott Ritter, who puts on a marvelous performance (RealPlayer video link) on C-SPAN's Washington Journal today. While Ritter and I don't share the same politics, my admiration for his integrity, his knowledge, and his speaking ability is enormous. If you have the time, watch the show (Ritter's segment starts just at 2:18 into the 3-hour show; he's preceded by other segments on Intelligent Design which I didn't watch). Ritter is truly impressive.

"The country has had no elected national assembly since 1973, after which coups and a Soviet invasion plunged it into decades of chaos that killed more than 1 million people. That period was followed by the rule of the Taliban."

Which brings us to the second story in the news -- George Bush's assertion that being "at war" allows him to ignore even clearly written laws, under the guise of "national defense." Nevermind that the United States Congress has not declared war. Nevermind that the endpoint of this war is as ill-defined as the end of the "war on drugs" or the "war on poverty." Nevermind that the "enemies" in this "war" range from Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al Zarqawi to PETA, Greenpeace, student LGBT groups, and the ACLU, not to mention Quakers.

The facts are quite plain. The McCain bill is a complete and utter irrelevancy. If George Bush can order warrantless wiretaps in the name of "national security," despite a clearly written law preventing him from doing so, then he can order torture, the invasion of Syria, the bombing of nuclear reactors in Iran, or anything else he chooses. It's in the Constitution. That's what Bush says, anyway. And that's why 1+1=1. Indeed, 1+anything=1. Because that first "1" trumps everything, according to George.

"Radical Israeli settlers have uprooted more than 200 olive trees belonging to Palestinian farmers in a village in the northern West Bank, officials and a rights group said on Monday.

"'The settlers uprooted 128 olive trees on Friday and we were shocked this morning to discover the loss of an additional 40 trees,' Raed Nahas, head of Burin regional council, told AFP. Nahas said that many of the trees had been farmed for generations and that the farmers were devastated by their loss. 'We feel great sadnees. This is a real disaster as these trees were inherited from our grandfathers.'"

"The trees had been destroyed by youths living in an unauthorised settlement outpost close to the major city of Nablus over the last few days but there had been no arrests, the head of the local regional council said."

Even the Israeli groups that sound like they ought to be doing something, or at least saying something, have rather curious things to say:

"The Israeli group Rabbis for Human Rights, which monitors abuses committed by settlers against Palestinians, said that the destruction was the work of settlers living in outposts which have not been authorised by the government.

"'The farmland is placed very near to the illegal outpost of Har-Bracha Bet and the Bracha settlement,' the organisation said in a statement.

"'We know that the settlers of the area were angry at the fact that the farmers worked their land, and it should be pointed out about the proximity between the ploughing action and the cutting down of the trees.'"

Back here in the land where even that group of Rabbis would be considered terrorist sympathizers, here's what CNN's Daryn Kagan had to say this morning when reporting on upcoming elections in Israel:

"Likud hardliners opposed Sharon's land concessions to Palestinians."

"Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, speaking in an interview on CNN, said that if it's confirmed that Morales won the election, 'we will do what we do with every elected government, which is to say that we'll look to the behaviors of the Bolivian government to determine the course of U.S.-Bolivian relations.'"

But that wasn't all Secretary Rice had to say today, oh no:

"The reconvened [Commission for Assistance to a Free [sic] Cuba] will present President Bush with a new report by May, 'with both updated recommendations to hasten democracy and an inter-agency strategic plan to assist a Cuban-led transition,' Rice said.

"'The work we do now will ensure that our government is fully prepared, if asked, to assist a genuine Cuban transition government committed to democracy and which will lead to Cuba's reintegration into the inter-American system,' she added in a statement."

Today, for the first time as far as I know, influential blogger Atrios (Eschaton), reacting to "Snoopgate", adds his voice, which reaches just a few more people than mine (150 times as many, more or less). In typical Atrios fashion, he really doesn't actually say very much himself, merely adding "Time for the president to resign" to a long quote from a Newsweek online piece by Jonathan Alter. Well, it's a start.

Incidentally, I have to comment on the "New York Times held the story for a year" aspect of the story, which I commented on briefly before. Here's the thing no one else has mentioned. The New York Times may have had the story for a year, but they didn't "get" it by themselves. Someone who was either involved with the illegal activities, or who knew about them, told them. Perhaps it was even Sen. Jay Rockefeller, who wrote himself a letter two years ago (how very bold!). Whoever it was surely realized that the New York Times wasn't publishing the story. I mean, a week, two weeks, a month, maybe that was understandable, but surely at some point they realized that their whistle had been blown in the wrong ear. And? What's the matter, didn't they have Sy Hersh's phone number? Or Robert Parry? Or Norman Solomon? Or Amy Goodman? Or many other brave and progressive journalists, who would have been absolutely delighted to break the story? Did they want the story out there, or not? Evidently not so much. So maybe it was Jay Rockefeller.

"As John Pilger said, 'The British media was as much a part of the invasion force of Iraq as was the Marines, and the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force. Where are they now, all these columnists, all these experts, all these interviewers who used to interview us as if we were mad, or bad, or both?"

- George Galloway, speaking at the International Peace Conference in London, Dec. 10

Lots more coverage of that conference here and here.

Galloway's speech (listen here) is dynamite, as usual.

Here's the most outrageous fact:

"'The release was an American-Iraqi decision and in line with an Iraqi government ruling made in December 2004, but hasn't been enforced until after the elections in an attempt to ease the political pressure in Iraq,' said lawyer Badee Izzat Aref."

Update: I had refrained from commenting on this in the original post, but the repeated occurence of broadcasts on TV referencing "Dr. Germ" and "Mrs. Anthrax," coupled with the echoing of that language at Huffington Post, forces me to add something. We (the American media-consuming public) are told in every story that Dr. Taha was "known" as "Dr. Germ." No. George Bush is "known as" "W". Dr. Taha was not "known as" "Dr. Germ" any more than George Bush is "known as" "aWol". She was called that by the American government in an attempt to demonize her and by extension the Iraqi people, and to help pave the way for the invasion. Repeating this pejorative term serves only to continue that demonization, and to continue the desperate attempt to justify an unjustifiable war.

Garry Trudeau

"For every life lost, there are countless more lives reclaimed."

- George Bush, discussing "progress" in Iraq

Of course, thinking that Bush is concerned with actual lives lost is fantasy, as he himself demonstrates in his speech with this line:

"Some look at the challenges in Iraq and conclude that the war is lost, and not worth another dime or another day."

Vice president's secret visit meant to show U.S. in control

Yes, and what better way to show that it is the U.S. in control than to arrive in a country with the prime minister of the country not being told you are coming (but American reporters having known for several hours).

Of course, the U.S. may be the ones in "control" (as compared to the actual Iraqi government), but that control doesn't amount to much:

"The scripted visit unfolded behind concrete barriers, barbed wire, armed guards and other measures to ensure Cheney's safety, and came as insurgents broke the relative calm since the national election Thursday, with a series of attacks over the weekend that killed nearly two dozen people."

"U.S. forces guarded Cheney with weapons at the ready while Iraqi soldiers, who had no weapons, held their arms out as if they were carrying imaginary guns."

"Yesterday the existence of this secret program was revealed in media reports, after being improperly provided to news organizations. As a result, our enemies have learned information they should not have, and the unauthorized disclosure of this effort damages our national security and puts our citizens at risk. Revealing classified information is illegal, alerts our enemies, and endangers our country."

Of course that wasn't Bush's only lie. There was this:

"The review [of the authorized actions] includes approval by our nation's top legal officials, including the Attorney General and the Counsel to the President."

Never to be forgotten is that, not just once but on three different occasions, Bush has said how much "easier" things would be if he were a dictator. Evidently things have gone beyond the wishing stage.

Hurricane Katrina - The Bush League Response
Shattering his old record for totally ignoring a national disaster (8 minutes of slacking following the 9/11 attacks), President Bush set a new standard this year for utter cluelessness. As Katrina grew to a Category 5 hurricane and smashed the Gulf Coast, leaving New Orleans underwater and thousands stranded and suffering, Dubya spent his time clearing brush, presenting a birthday cake to John McCain, strumming a guitar at a GOP fundraiser, and sleeping. By the time he apologized to the nation two weeks later, it was painfully clear that the President had a lot in common with the citizens of New Orelans: he, too, was in way over his head.

The Most Shameless Show on Earth
Witness the Presidential Human Cannonball...as he flies through the air from his Texas ranch all the way to Washington just to sign a law that applies to only one person!!!!
Thrill at political trapeze artist Governor Jeb Bush...as he tries again and again to soar above the law!!!
Behold Reverend Jesse Jackson...as he parades around from ring to ring on his high horse!!!
Marvel at Bill Frist...the mind-reading "doctor" who can diagnose a patient he's never met from thousands of miles away!!!
Wonder at circus geek Sean Hannity...as he bites the head off of anyone who dares to disagree with him!!!
Roar with laughter at the antics of the TV reporter clowns...as they trip and fall all over themselves sensationizing a family tragedy!!!
See the bizarre contortionist Tom DeLay...as he performs the breath-taking feat of putting his foot in his mouth and head up his ass at the same time!!!

On Wednesday, George Bush gave a speech. The media described the speech as one in which Bush "took responsibility for the faulty intelligence. He did no such thing; he did claim responsibility for the decision to invade Iraq. And of course the idea that it was "faulty" intelligence is misleading to say the least. It wasn't "faulty" intelligence which led the Administration to conceal the fact that one of their key witnesses about WMD had failed a lie-detector test, it was concealed intelligence - concealed from the American public and from (at least most of) the Congress as well. It wasn't "faulty" intelligence that led the Administration to conceal from the public and Congress the fact that "Saddam's bomb maker," Khidir Hamza, who testified about Iraqi WMD, had also told the CIA (and the administration) in private that all those WMD had been destroyed in the early 90's, it was concealed intelligence.

But I'm getting off point here. Because the point is that, having admitted (or rather, claimed) that the intelligence was wrong, but that the decision to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein was still correct despite that, Bush was pointedly asserting the new U.S. doctrine - any country which is not just a current threat to the U.S., but even a potential future threat, regardless of whether they are massing troops on our borders (or the conceptual equivalent) or not, is subject to attack. Not under some unspecified circumstances of proof of WMD, or ties to al Qaeda, but now. Today. Regardless of any evidence. In other words, North Korea, which has nuclear weapons (or, at least, claims to; I'm skeptical on that point), and which conventional wisdom has it is ruled by an unstable "madman" (no, that would be the U.S.), is not only some kind of potential enemy, but George Bush could literally declare war on it any day and order a bombing or invasion. Iran? They don't have nuclear weapons yet, and say they don't intend to, but George Bush says they do, so that's good enough to make them a potential threat to us too, and hence a target for attack tomorrow, no questions asked. No proof of WMD or ties to al Qaeda required, after all, if Bush made the "right decision" in the case of Iraq, then surely it would be the "right decision" in the case of Iran too.

Cuba, of course, has been accused by the U.S. of developing biological weapons and even of giving them to other countries. And not only that, but, as the object of decades of economic warfare conducted by the U.S., Cuba even has a casus belli which would make their declaring war on the U.S. completely justified. Given that, surely they too are either a threat or a potential threat, and George Bush could order an invasion of Cuba tomorrow too, and again declare it the "right decision," WMD or no, al Qaeda ties or no. Venezuela? Syria? There's hardly a country which doesn't qualify as a potential threat, and one which therefore could be attacked tomorrow.

These are serious, serious issues. Violations of international law, violations of the Constitution, not to mention immoral. And, in the face of this bold declaration by George Bush, that it is the "right decision" to invade any country which might be a threat to the United States, and cause the death of tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands. or possibly even millions of people? Deafening silence from those same people who are so upset that the government might be listening to our phone calls and reading our emails. People who claim to be "antiwar."

This is precisely why the fight against the war against Iraq is not just about lies about WMD, because, after all, what if Iraq had had WMD? That wouldn't make this invasion any more legal or acceptable, no more than an invasion or bombing of North Korea or Iran or Cuba or anyplace else will be legal or acceptable. At the heart of the fight against the war in Iraq is the fight against imperialism, and its unsatiable appetite. It isn't about any particular excuses offered by imperialism as to why it is fighting one or another particular "enemy." It's about understanding the real cause.

The first document, the opening shot in the latest "battle" in an unfortunately ongoing war, was fired by United for Peace and Justice (UfPJ) here, in which they announce that they would no longer work with ANSWER. Yesterday, ANSWER released its response to this attack, which is published here.

I personally find it reprehensible that UfPJ continues to reject the idea of a unified antiwar movement (not in the sense of one organization, of course, but of unified actions), at a time when Iraqis and Americans (and others) continue to suffer the consequences of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq (with Americans suffering both in Iraq and at home). But I don't want to get into a long discussion over the central issues of the split, questions such as what emphasis to place on the oppression of the Palestinian people. I suspect most readers have their own opinions on these questions, and if you don't, the documents linked above have plenty to say without me adding my $0.02.

I do want to add just two factual issues based on my own personal knowledge. The first is to note this curious paragraph in the UfPJ statement:

"As September 24 came closer and some circumstances changed, we changed our perspective. Regarding the weekend in general, the spotlight Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath put on racism and class inequities led us to highlight the demand for Funding Full and Just Recovery in the Gulf Coast."

And the second issue, which is discussed in the ANSWER response but to which I'd like to add my own words, are the claims by UfPJ, which one can gather they are claiming is the evidence of why they "just can't work with ANSWER," of various problems on Sept. 24 itself - sections of the demonstration going long, march not starting on time, and not enough ANSWER volunteers. The first two charges are simply ludicrous to anyone who has ever attended a demonstration. Demonstrations are not Swiss trains! Things like that happen at every demonstration. Get over it! They hardly indicate any nefarious plot.

The third charge is equally absurd to anyone who has ever attended an ANSWER demonstration. My own personal experiences on Sept. 24 (and 23rd) are written up here. The number of ANSWER volunteers, and the level of dedication (not to mention the number of hours) they bring to the task is extraordinary. I admit I don't have any recent experience with demonstrations in Washington, D.C., having left the East Coast and Washington demos years ago. But I find it hard to believe (and the ANSWER document backs this up) that there is that much difference between what happens there and what happens here in Northern California. Indeed, one of the notable things about demonstrations here is that, while other organizations are able to make an impression at demonstrations by marching in a large contingent, ANSWER itself is never able to do that, since its volunteers are busy doing all the work - setting up and taking down the platforms and banners, providing security, collecting money, staffing tables, etc., etc. All that is over and above the work done in the days, weeks, and months before the demonstration.

I think you can see my conclusion. I view the actual charges made by UfPJ as specious in the extreme, and conclude they are merely a cover to disguise the fact that they are really doing what they are doing (dividing the movement) for political reasons, reasons which they refuse to discuss and debate publicly. Worth remembering is that UfPJ took precisely this stand (opposed to unity in action) prior to Sept. 24, until the movement pressured them into changing. And one of the most curious claims in the UfPJ statement is this: "Co-sponsorship with ANSWER on September 24 was welcomed by some in the antiwar movement but limited or prevented completely the participation of others." Curiously, no evidence is provided to back up that last claim; not one group is cited who refused to participate in the events of Sept. 24 because of ANSWER's co-sponsorship. Undoubtedly, though, such people or groups do exist. And, as a commentary on such people and groups, I refer you back to a post (and a Nation article) entitled "The Fear of the Liberals," in which the author notes that the same sort of people who worry about being associated with ANSWER are often the same people who have no fear of associating with the U.S. government by supporting its war against Afghanistan (or Yugoslavia, or the first war against Iraq, or the decade of murderous sanctions against Iraq, for that matter). Curious, that.

Best Post:

A tale of two generals
The "opposition" party: transcript (and analysis) accomplished!
The "exit strategy" in Iraq is a sham
Resign. Now.
Intelligent design: an assault on religion
What is a life worth? And to whom?
Posada Carriles - why he matters
Birds and politics - the Tale of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker
John McCain - war criminal
The war didn't end yesterday
Did the administration believe in Iraqi WMD?
Terrorist sneaks across U.S. border
"Expert" analysis
Assessing the antiwar movement
Terrorism...and other problems
The function of blogs
WMD - The lies continue
Am I the only one who thinks members of the Iraqi military and resistance fighters are human beings?

The "exit strategy" that isn't
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Resign. Now.
1 2 3 4 5 6

The "Disappeared"
1 2 3 4

Intelligent Design

"Intelligent design"...isn't (and what it is is blasphemy)
Intelligent design: an assault on religion
Pat Buchanan: Unintelligent, and disingenuous

California nurses confront
sniveling Governor Schwarzenegger

Signe Wilkinson

I'm sure I don't need to point out to readers that there were Iraqis who weren't "civilians" who also didn't get to vote on Thursday.

"I’m not anti-Bush; I’m anti-Bush behavior. In other words, I’m against cheating, greed, cruelty, racism, imperialism, religious fundamentalism, treason, and the seemingly limitless capacity for hypocrisy shown by Bush and his administration."

- Actor Viggo Mortensen

Here's what the New York Times said at the time:

"The American military command has repeatedly asserted that it goes to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties by weighing intelligence and following strict protocols, and says its bombs are capable of near-pinpoint precision."

"The real fly in the ointment the U.S. military is trying to spread is that bit about 'weighing intelligence' and 'following strict protocols.' Sorry, but when you're conducting a war from the air on an urban setting in a guerilla war, there is no way you are ever going to know, with any reliability, who is inside a house you are bombing. And it is guaranteed that you will be killing civilians, not once in a blue moon, as with this particular admission, but every day you drop those bombs.

"The implication of this story is that the U.S. military has killed a grand total of five civilians in a single incident during the entire multi-day assault on Husayba. And, having just seen the footage of last year's very similar assault on Fallujah, I can assert with a high degree of confidence that that is far, far from the truth."

And here's what that piece shows. It starts with an interview with a resident of Husayba who welcomes the American assault and expresses gratitude that they are there to rid the town of insurgents. "Later that same day," three men are seen shooting from the top of a building, and a U.S. airstrike takes out the building next door. The results? Seventeen Iraqis killed, all but one women and children, including the 7-year-old nephew of the man who welcomed the Americans.

And what does the U.S. commander on the spot, Col. Stephen. Davis, have to say? Read on, and compare it to the claim above about "going to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties" and "weighing intelligence" and "following strict protocols":

"Whether a family is in that building or not, we do not know. What we do know is when we meet significant resistance coming out of those buildings we will not put our people's lives unneccesarily at risk, and we will reduce it in the most efficient manner we can." (transcript by me from the broadcast)

A week later, 500 villiagers gather to demand food, water, electricity, and permission to bury the dead. The report concludes: "The man who spoke out, said he wanted the Americans to save his town from terrorists, now asking the Americans to help fix the horror the war on terror has brought." Did he recognize that it was the Americans who had brought that horror? Damon doesn't say, but I'll bet he did.

And just what is "cruel, inhuman, and degrading" anyway? I suspect international and military lawyers have their own definition. Was it cruel and inhuman to imprison Jose Padilla in solitary confinement for 3 1/2 years without charges? How about Iraqi General Amer al-Saadi, who surrendered voluntarily to the Americans, only to spend the next 2 1/2 years (and counting) in solitary confinement, again without charges, a man not even suspected or accused of any violent acts (not that Padilla was ever formally accused either, press conferences not qualifying as legal proceedings)? Was his treatment "cruel and inhuman"? I know if someone did that to me, I'd certainly think so. How about the hundreds of prisoners in Guantanamo, illegally imprisoned in dog cages, without legal rights and often without their families knowing where they are? Cruel and inhuman? How could it not be?

A "ban" on "cruel, inhuman, and degrading" treatment? Don't you believe it.

"I can't imagine Osama bin Laden appreciating the joy of Chanukah."

- George Bush, at the annual White House Chanukah party, held just 18 days before Chanukah (as seen during the "Moment of Zen" on last night's Daily Show).

First, this:

"Some officials familiar with the continuing operation have questioned whether the surveillance has stretched, if not crossed, constitutional limits on legal searches."

And then this:

"The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article, arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny. After meeting with senior administration officials to hear their concerns, the newspaper delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting."

Nominations are open in the Koufax awards for best blogs on the left, in categories such as Best Blog, Best Post, Best Writing, Most Deserving of Wider Recognition, and others. Feel free to go here (explanations of categories here) and nominate Left I on the News in any and all categories if you are so inclined.

And "he" is not a jolly old fat man with a long white beard and a red suit who brings you gifts, either.

Most people probably saw this story which came out yesterday (and was a major discussion on Democracy Now! this morning), and there's really not much to add. I just want to highlight this one paragraph:

"One DOD briefing document stamped 'secret' concludes: '[W]e have noted increased communication and encouragement between protest groups using the [I]nternet,' but no 'significant connection' between incidents, such as 'reoccurring instigators at protests' or 'vehicle descriptions.'"

Update: One other sentence in the article mentions the monitoring of "a large anti-war protest at Hollywood and Vine in Los Angeles last March that included effigies of President Bush and anti-war protest banners." [Ed. note: "anti-war protest banners at an anti-war protest! Imagine that! What will they think of next?] Those of us with good memories remember reading about that very demonstration at Politics in the Zeros, whose proprietor actually admits (gasp!) to having driven the lead truck. Arrest that man! He's a threat to the government! No, really, he really is. If only there were a million more like him.

Updated again and bumped to top: A Freedom of Information Act request has now been filed on behalf of ANSWER and the Naitonal Lawyers Guild. If you're involved with another antiwar or anti-recruitment organization, you might consider filing a similar request. The more the merrier!

I guess I also imagined this guy (Manadel al-Jamadi), who "we" not only tortured and murdered, but "we" even managed a nice smile for the camera to celebrate the fact.

One quote in an article on the subject in the San Jose Mercury News made the point:

"Salam Hassan, 30, a computer-technology student from Berkeley, was one of the early voters. He arrived seven months ago from Baghdad.

"'I think the whole voting process is good,' he said, 'but I'm conflicted about allowing Iraqis who are here in America, who are Americans, to decide what's going to happen in Iraq.'

"Iraqi-Americans will not return to the devastation of Baghdad, he said, 'but I have to.'"

"Jose Basulto, head of the organization Brothers to the Rescue, openly bragged on a recent Miami Channel 41 program 'A Mano Limpia' (Straight Talk) hosted by Oscar Haza, of having fired a 22mm cannon from a speedboat on a hotel in Havana, and that 'so far' the FBI has not even questioned him about it.

"In an act of blatant threat to the U.S. authorities, he also freely said that the CIA not only trained him but also directed terrorist activities by Cuban-American groups against Cuba.

"'It was the United States itself that started all this, with support, training and even direction,' [Basulto] said.

"The program on which Basulto made this admission was dedicated to the trial of his buddies Santiago Alvarez Magrina and Osvaldo Mitat, two Miami extremists recently arrested for possession of illegal weapons. Santiago Alvarez is the 'protector' of Luis Posada Carriles and it was he who facilitated the latter’s illegal entry into the United States from Mexico."

Alvarez and Mitat were found with "machine guns, grenades, grenade launcher, detonation devices and thousands of rounds of ammunition." Their lawyer says they're not criminals because, after all, "the weapons were never intended for use in the United States."

"We want to make sure people in the [Bush] administration know that our news coverage by White House reporters is separate from what appears in Froomkin's column because it contains opinion."

Finally, there is the notion that Froomkin is any less of a "White House reporter" than the others working for the Post with that job description. Here's Froomkin's most recent column, which contains at least two extremely interesting, and highly revealing, news scoops. The first concerns the classic thing I bring up from time to time - it's harder to recognize what isn't being said or written than to analyze what is being said. Two days ago, George Bush participated in a "Medicare roundtable" with seniors. That meeting was extensively covered in the media. Few of them described that "roundtable" in the terms that Froomkin does, though: "a hand-picked group of seniors at a swanky retirement home." But that isn't even the interesting part. The interesting part is that, at that very moment, there was a White House Conference on Aging, which occurs once every ten years, taking place in Washington, and Bush became the first President to not attend his "own" conference. That Conference was virtually ignored by the major media, since all their White House reporters were off covering Bush's photo-op at the "swanky retirement home" (the one where Bush amusingly urged senior to spend a good portion of their remaining years figuring out how to deal with the new prescription drug plan: "You can call 1-800-Medicare. You can get on the Internet with Medicare.gov. Ask your son or daughter, ask people in your church, ask people in AARP, ask people in your community center to help you look at what's available for you."). Froomkin was one of the few able to take his eyes off the White House misdirection and focus on the real news event.

Froomkin's second interesting scoop yesterday pertains to the Brian Williiam's interview with Bush that I mentioned yesterday, and this scoop is really telling:

"Williams asked Bush several questions about the protective bubble in which he operates. So why did the NBC anchor then build one for the president himself?

"Williams said that while tagging along with the president he could hear protesters outside the Philadelphia hotel where Bush was speaking yelling 'Shame! Shame!'

"The third part of the interview took place in that very hotel. And Williams revealed to Matthews: 'Something I haven't said before is, to dampen the noise outside the hotel because of the floor we were on, we had mattresses that our production crew had put up against the windows and curtains on the other side, because we had to conduct this interview.'"

Update: By the way, I don't want to leave the impression that "buy low, sell high" doesn't have anything to do with capitalism. It does, just not as illustrated by this story. The real "buy low, sell high" is "buy the labor power of your workers low, sell the goods they make for the highest possible price." And that leads directly to the fundamental contradiction of capitalism: it leaves the workers unable to afford the products they are making, as the American auto industry, among others, is finding out in spades.

Since then, John Friedman writing in The Nation, Matthew Rothschild writing in the Progressive, and Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! (and probably others I'm missing) have all repeated the 30,000 number. Rothschild and Goodman actually repeated the question, clearly specifying all Iraqis, but showed no evidence of having listened to it. Goodman, to her credit, was the only one to raise the issue of the Lancet study, and actually interviewed one of its authors who defended it vigorously, but she, like the others, simply didn't question the omission of an estimated 80,000 Iraqis who were just as innocent, and are just as dead, as a result of the invasion and occupation of Iraq -- members of the Iraqi military, and resistance fighters who died fighting against an illegal foreign invasion and occupation of their country.

Am I the only one who considers these people human beings, and no more deserving to die than the "innocent civilians" who everyone seems to be willing to recognize (albeit reluctantly in Bush's case)? For that matter, even if you consider them "guilty" (of what, I don't know), they are still Iraqis (95% of them, anyway), and still dead, and still part of the human cost of this war, and still deserve to be counted just as much as the 2150 American troops who have died fighting in the same war, especially when someone specifically asks about them.

And, just to add another category of forgotten people, am I the only one who remembers that 201 non-American members of the coalition force have also died? Most days it seems so.

But of all the nonsense in the speech, which isn't worth discussing, this is the thing I found the most interesting:

"I'm proud to be traveling today with members of my Cabinet: Secretary of State Condi Rice; Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld; and Secretary of Homeland Security Mike Chertoff. Thank you all for coming. (Applause.) I appreciate the members of the Congress who are here. Thanks for taking time to come. I want to thank the members of the Diplomatic Corps that have joined us today. And thank you all for being here, as well."

Well, I will say one thing for Bush -- he recognizes the truth about himself, at least occasionally:

"I'm delighted to be here with the men and women of the Wilson Center. According to your mission statement, the Center was created to bring together two groups -- political leaders and scholars. I see some of the political leaders who are here, and I presume you've invited me to uphold the scholars' end. (Laughter.)"

"U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Tuesday accused the international community of shirking its obligation to help prosecute ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein by effectively boycotting his trial.

"Without naming specific countries, Rice said she was saddened many nations had done little to help prosecute Saddam."

Hmm, I wonder if she's referring to countries who might be concealing incriminating photos like this one:

Or perhaps she's referring to that country who confiscated thousands of pages of the disarmament report that Iraq submitted to the United Nations, pages which might well contain incriminating evidence?

If not that, then what the heck was she talking about?

Yes, but "yes to the ACLU"? Well, in a way, yes. One of the rights the ACLU has been engaged in over the years is the removal of religious symbols like creches from the public square (figuratively and literally). And here's the Pope's recommendation to his flock:

"'In today's consumer society, this time [of the year] is unfortunately subjected to a sort of commercial 'pollution' that is in danger of altering its true spirit, which is characterized by meditation, sobriety and by a joy that is not exterior but intimate,' the pope said in his traditional Sunday blessing.

"'Assembling the Nativity scene in the home can turn out to be a simple but effective way of presenting the faith to pass it on to one's children,' Benedict added.

"'The Nativity scene helps us contemplate the mystery of the love of God, which is revealed to us in the poverty and simplicity of the grotto in Bethlehem."

Will we see the "holy warriors", the "defenders of Christmas" like Bill O'Reilly, John Gibson, and Bruce "Mallard Fillmore" Tinsley trumpeting these words from their spiritual father? We shall see. My money's against it.

The first is from the Administration's recent "point man" on North Korea: "I don't know of any other case like this except the Nazis, and they were doing it in a state of war." Should the U.S. government's "point man" on North Korea be aware that the United States and North Korea are in a state of war? The Korean War ended with a truce, not a peace treaty, and this is no mere historical curiosity; in recent negotiations, the United States pointedly refused to sign a non-aggression treaty with North Korea.

The second interesting line from the article is this:

"The officials say criminal syndicates in South America, Eastern Europe and elsewhere have also churned out large sums of fake U.S. cash. But North Korea's is the only government believed to do so, despite international pressure and laws that characterize such activity as an economic casus belli, or act of war, they say."

"Just a few days before Bush allegedly proposed bombing the network, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Falluja, Ahmed Mansour, reported live on the air, 'Last night we were targeted by some tanks, twice...but we escaped. The US wants us out of Falluja, but we will stay.' On April 9 Washington demanded that Al Jazeera leave the city as a condition for a cease-fire. The network refused. Mansour wrote that the next day 'American fighter jets fired around our new location, and they bombed the house where we had spent the night before, causing the death of the house owner Mr. Hussein Samir. Due to the serious threats we had to stop broadcasting for few days because every time we tried to broadcast the fighter jets spotted us we became under their fire.'"

And, in fact, not only doesn't the U.S. deny it, they justify it:

"On April 11 senior military spokesperson Mark Kimmitt declared, 'The stations that are showing Americans intentionally killing women and children are not legitimate news sources. That is propaganda, and that is lies.'"

"I have no fear in saying -- and saying loudly -- that we're not just anti-neo-liberal, we're anti-imperialist in our blood."

- Evo Morales, head of the Movement Toward Socialism party, and leading candidate in the upcoming Bolivian Presidential election

"Without an apology and atonement for these senseless and brutal killings there can be no redemption."

Previous (pre-execution) comments here.

"And so we gave Saddam Hussein the chance to disclose or disarm, and he refused. And I made a tough decision. And knowing what I know today, I'd make the decision again."

So when Bush says "knowing what I know today," we can only conclude that he still doesn't know anything. Or, more likely, that he knows very well why the U.S. invaded Iraq, and that it had nothing to do with "disclosing" or "disarming."

One reason the news media may hesitate to question Bush's figure of 30,000 is that, prior to this, mentions of the number of Iraqi dead in the media have been few and far between. Which is directly related to this fact, noted in the NY Times:

"White House officials said that Mr. Bush based the number on public estimates of the death toll, not on an internal government accounting. The Pentagon does not keep statistics on the numbers of Iraqis killed."

For real "state media," read NBC news anchor Brian William's day-long interview with Bush. Or save time, and just look up "sycophant" in the dictionary.

"Q Since the inception of the Iraqi war, I'd like to know the approximate total of Iraqis who have been killed. And by Iraqis I include civilians, military, police, insurgents, translators.

"THE PRESIDENT: How many Iraqi citizens have died in this war? I would say 30,000, more or less, have died as a result of the initial incursion and the ongoing violence against Iraqis. We've lost about 2,140 of our own troops in Iraq."

Of course, Bush doesn't even really care about the 2,140 American dead (and certainly not the tens of thousands of Iraqi dead) either. Here's the very next thing that appears in the transcript:

"Q Mr. President, thank you --

"THE PRESIDENT: I'll repeat the question. If I don't like it, I'll make it up. (Laughter and applause.)"

Needless to say, the 30,000 number is completely bogus. Even if one doesn't accept the now quite dated 100,000 number from the Lancet study (if the Lancet study's methodology was valid, the number is now much higher than 100,000), Bush was asked about all Iraqis, including military, insurgents, etc. The 30,000 figure, which comes from Iraq Body Count, is the reported (and hence also undoubtedly low) number of civilians killed by the invasion and occupation. As I mentioned the other day, the estimate for Iraqi military killed during the initial invasion is another 30,000, and with a 10:1 ratio as a rough number, we can guess that 20,000 or so insurgents, 90+% of them Iraqi, have also been killed. That makes 80,000, not 30,000, Iraqis who are dead. Not that Bush cares.

Incidentally, earlier in the day I started a post about this same quote, based on Bush's reference to the "incursion" of Iraq. Dictionary.com defines "incursion" as "an aggressive entrance into foreign territory; a raid or invasion," but to me, and I'll bet to Bush, "invasion" is a harsh, pejorative word, while "incursion" is more of a neutral, mechanical term, and would be far more likely to apply to "raids" than to "invasions." I was going to write that I doubt anyone ever refers to the German "incursion" of Poland or the Iraqi "incursion" of Kuwait. However, some Google searching proved that theory wrong; you can indeed find people talking about "incursions" when I would have expected them to be talking about "invasions." Despite all that, I'll stand by my gut feeling, and say that Bush's avoidance of the word "invasion" was quite deliberate, not merely a random choice of words.

Update: According to Wikipedia, a recent Washington Post op-ed estimated the number of insurgents killed as 45-50,000. Putting the total number of Iraqis killed over 100,000.

"After studying the evidence, searching the history, listening to the arguments and wrestling with the profound consequences, I could find no justification for granting clemency. The facts do not justify overturning the jury's verdict or the decisions of the courts in this case."

Arnold is used to the movies, where people who are "killed" come back alive after the scene is over. When an innocent, or possibly innocent (or guilty, for that matter), person is executed by the State, it's forever.

1) I listened to a commercial on TV, sung to the tune of "We wish you a Merry Christmas," whose lyrics go, "We wish you a happy Honda days."

2) I opened my paper to see this cartoon by the thoroughly despicable Bruce Tinsley:

I'm sure the point is obvious to most readers but I'll make it anyway. Not that long ago, when people spoke about a "war on Christmas" (without using that language), they were referring to one thing and one thing only -- the over-commercialization (or perhaps just the commercialization) of Christmas, the fact that the religious significance of the holiday had been completely lost to the commercial aspects. And where are we now? Those who proclaim the existence of a "war on Christmas" use as precisely their argument that very commercialization! Do they object to ads like the Honda ad? Not that I've heard. No, instead they loudly assert their right to take their shopping to merchants who are willing to join them in their crusade to proclaim the superiority of their religion, as if where they shop has anything to do with the significance of Christmas.

Does it really take a heathen and pagan to point this out to them?

Oh, and by the way Bruce, if you don't want to shop at Wal*Mart, please don't! You won't get any argument from me!

Meg Perry

Via reader catherine, Maine activist Meg Perry was killed today in New Orleans, in an accident in which well-known activist (and candidate for mayor of New Orleans) Malik Rahim was reportedly among the injured:

"There was a large memorial for Meg this afternoon with about 50 people associated with Common Ground, her parents and sister & brother in law. She was well liked by all who were fortunate to have met her - loved by those close to her. Meg was a very Up/positive person, sharp as a whip and a hard worker. Her parents were moved and appreciative that she was with people doing the work she wanted. The memorial took place in the community garden she had been working on previously.

"She was suddenly killed yesterday afternoon when the Freda Bus flipped on the highway exit - en rout to the People's Hurricane Relief demo for the Right To Return and social justice of the the New Orleans' dispaced. The others on the bus were slightly injured, but of course traumatized. We are all very sad."

Update: Press coverage here and here.

"We are about to lose New Orleans. Whether it is a conscious plan to let the city rot until no one is willing to move back or honest paralysis over difficult questions, the moment is upon us when a major American city will die, leaving nothing but a few shells for tourists to visit like a museum."

"If the rest of the nation has decided it is too expensive to give the people of New Orleans a chance at renewal, we have to tell them so. We must tell them we spent our rainy-day fund on a costly stalemate in Iraq, that we gave it away in tax cuts for wealthy families and shareholders. We must tell them America is too broke and too weak to rebuild one of its great cities."

One more quote from the editorial:

"Total allocations for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the war on terror have topped $300 billion. All that money has been appropriated as the cost of protecting the nation from terrorist attacks. But what was the worst possible case we fought to prevent?

"Losing a major American city."

"U.S. officials here said...Multinational Forces West officials said on background...Officials characterize...an official said...a U.S. embassy official said...Officials expect...officials said...Multinational Forces West officials believe...officials said...officials said...One senior Multinational Force Iraq spokesman likened...Officials said...Embassy officials said...officials said...Officials said...a Multinational Forces West official said."

"My contention here is that the US crimes in the same period [since World War II] have only been superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged, let alone recognized as crimes at all. I believe this must be addressed and that the truth has considerable bearing on where the world stands now. Although constrained, to a certain extent, by the existence of the Soviet Union, the United States' actions throughout the world made it clear that it had concluded it had carte blanche to do what it liked.

[He goes on to discuss U.S. support for the Contras in Nicaragua, the murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero in El Salvador, the coup against Allende in Chile, and more, and then returns to the present day...]

"The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law. The invasion was an arbitrary military action inspired by a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the media and therefore of the public; an act intended to consolidate American military and economic control of the Middle East masquerading - as a last resort - all other justifications having failed to justify themselves - as liberation. A formidable assertion of military force responsible for the death and mutilation of thousands and thousands of innocent people."

Yesterday brought the Nobel Prize lecture of a different recipient, Mohamed ElBaradei of the IAEA. I haven't been able to find the text online, so we'll have to look at some quotes and paraphrases from the press. Here's the most thorough coverage, from The New York Times:

"The world should stop treating the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea as isolated cases and instead deal with them in a common effort to eliminate poverty, organized crime and armed conflict, the director general of the United Nations' nuclear monitoring agency said Saturday in accepting the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize.

"The director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, said a 'good start' would be for the United States and other nuclear powers to cut nuclear weapon stockpiles sharply and redirect spending toward international development."

"The world should work to make nuclear weapons as universally condemned as slavery or genocide, U.N. nuclear watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei said Saturday after receiving the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize.

"ElBaradei said in his acceptance speech that the world had 27,000 nuclear warheads and 'to me, that is 27,000 warheads too many.'"

Meanwhile, I suspect most papers in the country are more akin to my local San Jose Mercury News, which can only manage to squeeze a couple paragraphs of this story into its "World News in Brief" section, exclusively focused on the "terrorist angle," and not mentioning reductions of nuclear weapons at all.

Finally, though, let's return to the NY Times article to look at one very curious assertion, unfortunately also included as a paraphrase:

"Feelings of insecurity and humiliation, exaggerated by today's nuclear imbalance, are behind the spread of bomb-development programs at the national level, said Dr. ElBaradei."

After you get done reading this letter, I urge you to go to the website of the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five, and add your voice to their campaign to involve the UN Human Rights Commission in rectifying this outrage. The U.S. government is never going to change its ways without strong international pressure.

From the Guardian this week, an article by Olga Salanueva, wife of jailed Cuban anti-terrorist fighter Rene Gonzalez:

Olga and her daughter Ivette

Jailed for fighting terror

The hypocrisy of the US war on terrorism is revealed by its treatment of my husband

Olga Salanueva
Wednesday December 7, 2005

The United States always says that it is fighting a war against terror. But when it comes to terrorism that is grown in its own backyard, it somehow chooses to forget about it. Worse than that, as in the case of the persecution of the Miami Five, Washington appears to be condoning and protecting terrorists who have been responsible for the deaths of scores of innocent victims.

I am talking about the four-decade-long war of terror that the US government and Cuban emigre groups based in Miami have waged against Cuba - and about my husband Rene Gonzalez, one of five Cubans imprisoned in Miami seven years ago for doing nothing more than trying to prevent terrorist attacks being planned against Cuba in the very territory of the United States.

It was in September 1998 that five armed US federal agents burst into our Miami apartment and took Rene away. It was a traumatic event for our two daughters. This was not the kind of arrest you see in films. There was nothing ethical about it. No one spoke to him of his rights. They had no documents to support their actions and it was not until a day later that I learned that Rene and the four others had been charged with conspiracy to commit espionage.

My husband is now in his eighth year of imprisonment for a crime he did not commit. He was found guilty in a trial so obviously biased that his lawyers were incredulous that this could happen in the modern-day United States. Without a shred of evidence being presented by the prosecution they were given sentences ranging from 15 years, in the case of my husband, to life in the cases of Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labanino and Antonio Guerrero. Recently, the Atlanta court of appeals revoked their convictions. The prosecution has appealed against this decision and the process may yet take months or even years to resolve. Meanwhile, my husband and his comrades remain in jail.

The Miami Five were treated to bouts of solitary confinement far beyond the limits that other prisoners have to bear and they have been denied visiting rights. A committee of the United Nations has found their treatment to be in contravention of international human rights standards. It is time the United States was held to account for the injustice that has been done.

Not only has my husband been unjustly imprisoned, his family has also been treated appallingly. For neither my daughters nor myself have seen him in five years because the US refuses me a visa to visit him in prison. Our younger daughter, Ivette, is a US citizen by birth, as is Rene. Yet they are denied a fundamental right that is supposedly guaranteed US citizens by law.

Time and again the United States has arbitrarily denied me the possibility of visiting Rene. There is no reason to justify this denial. Like Adriana Perez, the wife of fellow-prisoner Gerardo Hernandez, I am suffering as an additional punishment to the unjust sentence imposed on my husband.

Ivette is now seven, and only knows Rene through the photos produced by the worldwide campaign to free him; she goes through life asking about him and wondering what life would have been like if she had had her father at home. She asks me constantly when all this will end, if her father will ever come home. Ivette is an innocent child who is being vindictively punished.

We demand the cessation of these cruel, dishonest practices - and denounce and refute all the false arguments and lies that the authorities have tried to use to continue punishing these political prisoners, who are in fact fighters against terrorism.

As a minor graphic matter, if this really were to end up being a T-shirt, the number of colors almost certainly needs to be reduced, probably by coloring all the continents white or something like that.

Anyway, please, please, tell me what you think! The comments are open...

There are two ironic side notes to this post. First of all, and I remember writing about this perhaps last year, although I don't believe in God, I'll spend a good part of the next few weeks listening to Christmas albums. I like music, and there's lots of good Christmas music, and I'm not only happy to listen to it, I actually go out of my way to do so. Just a few days ago I picked up two new albums, a Chris Isaak Christmas album (excellent) and a Bing Crosby album (only fair). My two favorite Christmas albums remain The Bells of Dublin by the Chieftans (from which Jackson Browne's "The Rebel Jesus" comes) and James Galway's Christmas Carol, which are both on high rotation.

And the second ironic note is that I'm also a big believer in the holiday card (not the "Christmas card") idea. I'm not the world's greatest correspondent, either by mail, phone, or email, and the tradition of corresponding with one's friends and relatives at least once a year is one I really approve of. And, by the way, one which recent events have taught us is only 160 years old, and hardly something at the heart of the Christian faith. So in the last few days, I've been out looking for cards, and what I've found in going through quite a few stores, including ones which are allegedly part of the "war on Christmas" like Target, etc., is that it is very hard to find "Season's Greetings" or "Happy Holidays" cards; "Merry Christmas" cards vastly predominate. Finding nothing I could tolerate, I've decided to make my own cards (thank God science for computers and printers) to convey my own message. :-)

And, as one final appropriate note on this 25th anniversary of John Lennon's murder, the "proof" that this "war on Christmas" is a plot on the part of us radical leftists who can't bring ourselves to say the word "Christmas":

A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear
And so this is Christmas (War is over)
For weak and for strong (If you want it)
For rich and the poor ones (War is over)
The world is so wrong (Now)
And so happy Christmas (War is over)
For black and for white (If you want it)
For yellow and red ones (War is over)
Let's stop all the fight (Now)

Imagine there's no Heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

Update: CounterPunch treats us to this long 1971 interview with John Lennon, in which Lennon talks about Revolution (the song) and revolution.

"Herty Lewites has been a gunrunner. He served in a Soviet-backed government that was virtually at war with the United States. He even spent time in a U.S. federal prison."

The picture shows Linder, demonstrating against the war (not this war, that war) at the University of Washington. The caption reads:

"I can't bury what is so very important. I used to be able to, but that was when struggle and revolution and dignity of people only existed in theory."

What they're really scared of is backlash from the pundits, because that's the group where a large majority is still in full support of the war. That kind of withering criticism is just too much for the Democrats to withstand.

Update: Just to emphasize my parenthetical point, the latest poll says 40 percent of Americans "believe U.S. troops should be withdrawn from Iraq immediately." 19 percent selected various deadlines (6 months, one year, etc.), while only 34 percent supported an indefinite committment.

If you read the print media now, whether it be the long Post story, or even the AP story online, Masri's allegation of torture is invariably mentioned, albeit not prominently. But if you just watch TV, what you get (and what I got listening to both MSNBC and CNN today, which is what triggered this post) is reflected in the online headline at MSNBC: "Rice, Merkel discuss claim of wrongful jailing." That is, not the slightest mention of the torture part of Masri's allegation, only the "wrongful jailing" part. And this is the story that goes out to the world, or at least to the TV-watching public (i.e., most of the American public, at least the minority that even watches the news).

"Two of the three co-defendants in a terrorism conspiracy case were acquitted of all charges against them.

"The two co-defendants acquitted are Sameeh Hammoudeh and Ghassan Zayed Ballut. The third, Hatem Naji Fariz, was found innocent of 24 counts and jurors deadlocked on the remaining eight.

"Sami Al-Arian, a former South Florida professor, was acquitted on a key charge that he helped lead a Palestinian terrorist group that has carried out suicide bombings against Israel.

"In one of the biggest courtroom tests yet of the Patriot Act's expanded search and surveillance powers, the jury acquitted Al-Arian of eight of the 17 counts against him, including a charge of conspiring to maim and murder people overseas.

"The jury deadlocked on the others including charges he aided terrorists.

"Al-Arian will go back to jail until prosecutors decide whether to retry him on the deadlocked counts."

Update: The Free Sami Al-Arian website for those who want lots more information.

Further update: A long discussion of the case on this morning's Democracy Now! Isn't it amazing that a long, detailed exploration of a case like this never takes place on the corporate media? I just can't imagine why.

Hat tip to the invaluable Cursor for this and many other stories.

Two months later, the U.S. Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy, Karen Hughes, is showing up leading a delegation of business executives including the chief executives of major U.S companies such as PepsiCo and JPMorgan Private Bank. I'm sure the Guatemalans will be thrilled.

"One thing that struck me about what the witnesses were saying - after the assassination attempt in Dujail, so much of what later unfolded is exactly what is happening now in parts of Iraq. They talked about how a complete orchard was demolished because the Mukhabarat thought people were hiding there and because they thought someone had tried to shoot Saddam from that area. That was like last year when the Americans razed orchards in Diyala because they believed insurgents were hiding there. Then they talked about the mass detentions - men, women and children - and its almost as if they are describing present-day Ramadi or Falloojah. The descriptions of cramped detention spaces, and torture are almost exactly the testimonies of prisoners in Abu Ghraib, etc.

"It makes one wonder when Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney and the rest will have their day, as the accused, in court."

"While the economy grew by a healthy 4.2 percent in 2004, most families lost income; real median household income fell for the fifth year in a row, census data show."

Story, Day 2) Al Qaeda #3 blown up by a U.S. cruise missile launched from an unmanned drone aircraft. Pakistani President Musharraf is "500%" sure it's Abu Hamza Rabia.

Story, Day 3) Two children blown up by a U.S. cruise missile launched from an unmanned drone aircraft.

"Sat amid the ruins of his mud and concrete-walled home in the restive North Waziristan tribal agency, Haji Mohammad Siddiq told Reuters his 17-year old son and an eight-year-old nephew were killed in a missile attack, but denied there were any militants present. 'I don't know anything about them -- there were no foreigners in my house,' Siddiq said. 'I have nothing to do with foreigners or al Qaeda. We were sleeping when I heard two explosions in my guest room. When I went there I saw my son, Abdul Wasit, and my eight-year-old nephew, Noor Aziz, were dead.'"

But the discussion got funny at the end, when Phillips decided to claim that her own biography on Wikipedia was in error. Here it is, in its entirety:

"Kyra Phillips is an anchor for CNN, where she has been reporting since October 1999. She anchors 'Live From...', a live news show that airs weekdays from 1:00-4:00 p.m. EST. [1]

"She has been accused by liberals of showing a right-wing bias. In one instance, Nancy Pelosi accused her of asserting the position of the Bush White House during an interview with Pelosi following Hurricane Katrina."

"Declaring oneself a Christian is easy. Putting Christian values to work in a dangerous and violent world is not.

"Perhaps the best response to the tragedy of 9/11 was a preemptive war against a country that had nothing to do with the attacks. Tens of thousands of deaths later, perhaps it is still the right decision.

"But it is not Christian.

"Perhaps it is good economics to give me, an actor on a television show, over a quarter of a million dollars in tax relief over the last five years as the poverty rate climbs, as we burden our children with structural budget deficits and cut services for our most vulnerable citizens.

"But it is not Christian.

"Perhaps the death penalty is an acceptable way to punish criminals.

"But it is not Christian.

"Jesus Christ was the Prince of Peace, not the Prince of Preemptive War. He was an advocate for the poor, not of supply-side economics. And let’s not forget that Jesus himself died in a bogus death-penalty rap."

At the moment, the BBC is the only news organization carrying the story:

"Parties allied to President Hugo Chavez say they have won all 167 seats in the country's parliament, after elections boycotted by the opposition.

"None of the five main opposition parties took part, accusing the electoral body of bias. Only about 25% of registered voters cast a ballot.

"The Fifth Republic Movement, Mr Chavez's party, won 114 seats in the 167 single-chamber National Assembly, according to senior party member, Willian Lara. He said the remainder of seats had been won by allies of the president."

Update: A telling quote from the New York Times coverage of the elections, which is now online: "Chavez would have annihilated them anyway." This was from someone described as a critic of the government. Really, there simply is no doubt about it.

On the turnout question, Venezuelanalysis has some analysis. On the two previous occasions when parliamentary elections were held separately from Presidential elections, turnout was 11% and 17%, so 25% is actually a high turnout for the circumstances. In addition, it is said that there were "severe" weather conditions in several states including Caracas. So it seems the 25% is a roughly accurate number.

On the "answer" side of the equation, we have the "antiwar" Howard Dean, pushing "Democrats to coalesce around a proposal that would keep some U.S. forces in Iraq for two more years." I wonder if he's pushing Democrats to volunteer to be the warm bodies who lose their arms, legs, or lives in those two years? Starting with his own children, Anne and Paul?

Meanwhile, liberals are thrilled with John Murtha's proposal, and Nancy Pelosi's semi-endorsement of that proposal. Don't get me wrong, I think that, given who he is, John Murtha was (and is) very courageous to say what he did, and I think his proposal is a very significant development in the fight to end the war against Iraq. But a little perspective is in order. This is the same Nancy Pelosi who, although her own district is more than 3:1 against the war, just six months ago opposed a rather mild amendment by Rep. Lynn Woolsey to ask Bush to "develop a plan as soon as practicable ...to provide for the withdrawal of United States Armed Forces from Iraq." A nearly meaningless (except in a symbolic sense), unenforceable amendment, supported by a majority of Democrats, but opposed by Pelosi.

And just what is it she is now supporting? In her words, "We should follow the lead of Congressman John Murtha, who has put forth a plan to make America safer, to make our military stronger, and to make Iraq more stable." And what is Murtha's plan exactly? Rep. Murtha has spoken rather strongly about Iraq, saying "Our military has done everything that has been asked of them, the U.S. can not accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. IT IS TIME TO BRING THEM HOME." But his plan doesn't exactly bring them "home." Its four points are:

To immediately redeploy U.S. troops consistent with the safety of U.S. forces.
To create a quick reaction force in the region.
To create an over- the- horizon presence of Marines.
To diplomatically pursue security and stability in Iraq.

Why are Murtha and Pelosi speaking out, even with the limitations I've outlined? Not out of principle. If the war were going "well," and few Americans were dying, they would be backing Bush and the war to the hilt. Murtha hit the nail precisely on the head with one of his statements, to wit: "The American people are way ahead of us." And that's where we have to stay. Not following the "leaders" in Congress. Leading the followers in Congress.

"We counter the lies, intimidation, and pure evil of terror with factual stories that highlight the heroism and sacrifice of the Iraqi people and their struggle for freedom and security," according to Laurie Adler, a spokeswoman for the Lincoln Group.

But really, doesn't the U.S. already have a format for "countering the lies" without paying for stories, called military spokespeople? I can't speak for the Iraqi press, but I know that in the American press, every time there is an attack and there are claims of Iraqi civilians dead, the story always goes like this: "A local doctor claimed X civilians, including Y women and children, had been killed. These claims could not be independently verified." But when the source is the American military, it's simply, "The American military said it killed X insurgents in the town of Y today." Questions of "independent verification" of such claims are rarely, if ever, raised.

An interesting example of American propaganda can be found in today's VOA News, which actually is normally a less biased source than, say, FOX News. The article is entitled "Experts Examine Details of Bush Plan for Iraq," and before we get to those experts, take a look at the first sentence of the article:

"U.S. involvement in Iraq began with strong Congressional and public support."

Now about those experts? Here they are: a spokesman for the Iraqi government, someone from the Cato Institute (a libertarian outfit), someone from the right-wing American Enterprise Institute, and a retired General. Nice balance there. Propaganda? Who, us?

But what caught my eye this time was this amusing sentence in that press release: "On Sunday, September 25th the bus tour will arrive in Washington, D.C., culminating in a giant pro-troop rally held in conjunction with a coalition of groups including Free Republic, Right March and Protest Warrior." That "giant" pro-troop rally, as I wrote here, consisted of around a hundred people (that's 25 people per "group" that was supporting the rally) which was very generously inflated by the media (including Jon Stewart) to 400. That compares to the antiwar rally, variously estimated as 150-300,000. So let's see, if 100 (or 400) was "giant," what would 150,000 (or 300,000) be?

The key thing to remember about right-wing groups like Move America Forward is that their significance is almost entirely made up of the fact that the corporate media and politicians are able to use their "press availabilities" and minuscule rallies to reinforce what they already want to say and do. The real power lies, as it always does, with the elite. And it is they who have to be opposed, not irrelevant fake "groups" like Move America Forward.

But all that is just prelude to what I really want to write about, which was this statement: "This site [CounterPunch] obviously is now one of those that want to see the terrorists in Iraq murder our brothers and sisters." Skipping over the conflation of me with CounterPunch, this really made me mad. Because, while it is arguable linguistically that I am for the "defeat" of the U.S. in Iraq, I most certainly do not want to see American soldiers killed in Iraq (nor do I want to see American soldiers killing Iraqis). It is this site, unlike all but three members of Congress, which advocates an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. It is this site which proclaims daily, "Not one cent more for occupation and war." It is this site which embraced the AFSC "Not One More Death. Not One More Dollar." campaign. It is this site which reviewed and promoted Cindy Sheehan's new book, Not One More Mother's Child. Do I want to see "the terrorists in Iraq murder our brothers and sisters"? I most certainly do not, because I want our brothers and sisters out of Iraq, now, before one more of them has "died (or killed) for a mistake."

Contrast my behavior with that of George Bush, the man who is ultimately responsible (he had a lot of help, of course) for sending those 2100+ Americans to their deaths. On Thursday, 10 Marines were killed in Iraq in the worst single incident since August for American forces. On Friday, George Bush appeared in the Rose Garden to speak publicly. Regardless of the fact that the subject of his speech was the economy, he spoke not one word about those 10 Marines. No word of regret, no word of "staying the course" to "validate their deaths" and "complete the mission," nothing.

It's clear who doesn't give a toss about the lives of American troops in Iraq, and it isn't I.

"Believing there's no God means I can't really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories. That's good; it makes me want to be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around.

"Believing there's no God stops me from being solipsistic. I can read ideas from all different people from all different cultures. Without God, we can agree on reality, and I can keep learning where I'm wrong. We can all keep adjusting, so we can really communicate. I don't travel in circles where people say, 'I have faith, I believe this in my heart and nothing you can say or do can shake my faith.' That's just a long-winded religious way to say, 'shut up,' or another two words that the FCC likes less.

"Believing there is no God means the suffering I've seen in my family, and indeed all the suffering in the world, isn't caused by an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent force that isn't bothered to help or is just testing us, but rather something we all may be able to help others with in the future. No God means the possibility of less suffering in the future.

"Believing there is no God gives me more room for belief in family, people, love, truth, beauty, sex, Jell-O and all the other things I can prove and that make this life the best life I will ever have."

"Repackaging a Twinkie doesn't improve its nutritional value. And the same goes for the Bush Iraq policy." - Rep. Lynne Woolsey

"If Hillary Clinton wants this war to go on, then she should send her daughter to fight in Iraq." - Jimmy Breslin

Q Two more Middle East-related questions. I know you've been asked before about the so-called al Jazzier memo, but Europeans are making quite a big deal about it. Can you assure them that even if the President did say when he was elected said he was doing that in jest?

MR. McCLELLAN: Can I assure them what?

Q That if the President really did make those comments, he was doing so in jest?

MR. McCLELLAN: Make what comments?

Q About allegedly bombing al Jazeera --

MR. McCLELLAN: Any such notion that we would engage in that kind of activity is just absurd.

Q Well, do you know if the comments were made?

MR. McCLELLAN: I don't know what comments you're referring to. I haven't seen any comments quoted.

Q Somebody said that they had a memo, or that they took notes during --

MR. McCLELLAN: Let me just repeat for you, Connie. Any such notion that America would do something like that is absurd.

Q They bomb them in Afghanistan then -- their office.

MR. McCLELLAN: I'm sorry? Whose offices? The terrorist offices.

Q We bombed their office in Afghanistan, and killed their -- some of their people in --

MR. McCLELLAN: And the military talked about that. What are you suggesting? I hope you're not suggesting that they're targeting civilians, because that's just flat-out wrong.

And now, McClellan repeats that lie (and slander), equating the al Jazeera office in Kabul with "terrorist offices." Really, however, he needn't bother, since the U.S. has no problem openly attacking actual press offices. As even CNN reminds us (as Left I on the News has many times):

"During the 1999 air campaign over Kosovo, U.S. warplanes targeted Yugoslavia's state television network. NATO officials argued it was a legitimate target as the propaganda arm of the Yugoslav government."

We guard our world with locks and guns
And we guard our fine possessions
And once a year when Christmas comes
We give to our relations
And perhaps we give a little to the poor
If the generosity should seize us
But if any one of us should interfere
In the business of why they are poor
They get the same as the rebel Jesus

Complete lyrics here.

How close are the Democrats and Republicans? This close:

"California's Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger named a Democrat in a same-sex marriage as his chief of staff on Wednesday...Susan Kennedy, 45, was the confidant and number two to ousted Democratic Gov. Gray Davis [and] once served as the California Democratic Party executive director."

Update: Further confirmation:

"'I see a man whose philosophy is not that different from mine in any respect,' said Kennedy, who noted that she voted for the measures Schwarzenegger placed on the special-election ballot."