Left I on the News  

This is the country that is going to teach Iraq, or Palestine, or Iran, or anyplace in the world, about democracy?

Update: Sheehan explains "What Really Happened?" Here's the conclusion:

"I have lost my son. I have lost my First Amendment rights. I have lost the country that I love. Where did America go? I started crying in pain.

What did Casey die for? What did the 2244 other brave young Americans die for? What are tens of thousands of them over there in harm's way for still? For this? I can't even wear a shirt that has the number of troops on it that George Bush and his arrogant and ignorant policies are responsible for killing."

And not just "children," but "young children": a nine-year-old girl and a 13-year-old boy.

Kraft Foods Inc., the nation's largest food manufacturer, said Monday it would eliminate 8,000 more jobs...Kraft already had announced closures of 19 production facilities and the elimination of 5,500 jobs.

Kraft announced the moves Monday while reporting fourth-quarter earnings results that beat analysts' expectations.

Earnings for the October-December period totaled $773 million, or 46 cents a share, up from $628 million, or 37 cents a share, a year earlier. Revenue rose to $9.66 billion from $8.78 billion a year ago.

What George Bush said:

"I appreciate my friend's commitment to peace and security. I appreciate his vision. I appreciate his willingness to lead."

"I appreciate my poodle's commitment to war. I appreciate his obedience. I appreciate his willingness to be lead."

Update: By the way, this is just one more example of why I don't call myself a "peace" activist.

Almost incidental to the basic "theme" of the movie, but all the more timely thanks to the American war against Iraq, are the descriptions of events that happened in that other war, the "another" when people want to debate whether Iraq is or is not "another" Vietnam. And, lo and behold, what do we hear about during the course of the film? The taking of women hostages by American forces to "get to" their husbands. The shooting in cold blood of children as young as five years old by American soldiers. The burning to the ground of not one (My Lai), not two, but 106 out of 107 villages, some of them more than once, in the region in which the filmmaker's husband was killed. "Free-fire zones," just like Fallujah, where American soldiers have the "right" to shoot at anything that moves (including that five-year-old child). And all, I'm sure I don't need to remind readers, in the course of a war that had as little justification as the one against Iraq, but that was part and parcel of the same system of imperialism, then as now.

• "Controversial form of pressure" (that was the lead-in to the story)
• "Cultural sensitivies toward the treatment of women"
• "Ungentlemanly conduct" (that was the close of the story)

A reading of Ahmadinejad's statement suggests quite clearly that the "wiped off the map" is to be taken literally (i.e., that the political boundaries of the region should be redrawn), and not figurately as meaning "wiped off the face of the earth." He explicitly denies that he is talking about "A fight between Judaism and other religions," and explicitly describes the endpoint of the struggle in the Middle East by saying: "It will be over the day a Palestinian government, which belongs to the Palestinian people, comes to power; the day that all refugees return to their homes; a democratic government elected by the people comes to power."

By contrast, Baghdad Burning reminds us today of the very literal destruction of her homeland by the American attack (the Gulf War) of 1991. The following were either destroyed or seriously damaged

• Schools and scholastic facilities – 3960
• Universities, labs, dormitories – 40
• Health facilities (including hospitals, clinics, medical warehouses) – 421
• Telephone operators, communication towers, etc. – 475
• Bridges, buildings, housing complexes – 260
• Warehouses, shopping centers, grain silos – 251
• Churches and mosques – 159
• Dams, water pumping stations, agricultural facilities – 200
• Petroleum facilities (including refineries) – 145
• General services (shelters, sewage treatment plants, municipalities) - 830
• Factories, mines, industrial facilities - 120

P.S. - Just so we're all clear on this, before I get the obvious comments, if his remarks were translated correctly, and if there was no elaboration about which I am not aware, I am not associating myself with Ahmadinejad's remarks about the "myth" of the Holocaust. I do, however, have an open mind about exactly what he did say and mean.

Skippy liked this strip, as do I:

Browsing through some of the back strips, I found this one which expresses a sentiment I've written about here many times:

Enjoy!

One of the themes that has bubbled up for me in the course of studying Nader's career (full disclosure: I'm a registered Democrat who voted for Al Gore in 2000) is the tension between "idealism" versus "pragmatism." Nader and his supporters are frequently characterized as naive, whose adolescent pursuit of their ideal agenda only serves to move them farther away from it. On the other hand, the mature pragmatists know the score. They know that you have to retreat from a battle every once in a while in order to win the war. I used to believe that myself. Now, I no longer do.

In fact, I think it's the reverse. The so-called pragmatists don't realize that if you want to know what a politician stands for, find out who is paying him. They believe that the Democratic Party as it is now constituted is truly an opposition party. They refuse to believe that our system is dominated by two factions of one corporate party. This strikes me as naive.

The idealists seem a lot more pragmatic to me. They know that most successful social movements, be it universal suffrage, civil rights, or anti-war protests always start from the bottom up, usually with a handful of people meeting in a room. They know that in order to accomplish anything long lasting you have to do your homework, aggregate the facts, and then start making demands. You don't retreat from a battle. You keep fighting. You demand that your candidates stand for your values before the election. You don't tell them that their only job is to beat the other guy, and then hope they will do the right thing after they've been marinated in a teeming crock of corporate and special interest cash.

The title of our movie comes from a quotation by George Bernard Shaw that my producer, Kevin O'Donnell, brought to my attention two years ago when we started shooting our first interviews:

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

Now just who is Joaquin Chaffardet? In an article appearing in Granma yesterday, Jean-Guy Allard follows up on a subject we discussed here back in October -- Posada's record as a torturer (and murderer) back when he was a key figure in DISIP, the Venzuelan political police. His co-worker at the time? Joaquin Chaffardet! And after Posada left DISIP, he started a private investigation company. His partner in that company? Joaquin Chaffardet! And just what was that company? Why, it was the one described in that New York Times article from October, 1976 that I recently reprinted here, the one in which a phone rang with a cryptic message shortly before an explosion aboard a Cubana airliner killed 74 people, and which was raided the next day by Venezuelan police, a raid which took Posada and five associates (one of them quite possibly Chaffardet, although I can't find any evidence of that) into custody for the bombing. Chaffardet is also, as it turns out, someone who was indicted but not convicted of organizing the prison break which sprung Posada from a Venezuelan jail in the first place!

That's the Chaffardet on whose testimony the U.S. is refusing to extradite Posada to Venezuela.

Yesterday's Granma article, by the way, follows up on that earlier story, and informs us that the Venezuelan victims of Posada's torture and murder have now gathered documentary evidence, and are considering filing suit against him in U.S. courts. Interesting development.

Like most Americans, the AP has a short memory. The two incidents described in the AP article occured in 2004. But this post from last April describes another incident, and this one, from November 2003, discusses an article by AP itself covering the arrest of the wife and daughter of Izzat al-Douri. Yet another post, from June 2004, notes that the detention of al-Douri's wife and daughter continued, and links to a (no-longer online) Newsday article which wrote that "the U.S. military is holding dozens of Iraqis as bargaining chips to put pressure on their wanted relatives to surrender, according to human rights groups. These detainees are not accused of any crimes, and experts say their detention violates the Geneva Conventions and other international laws" (and you hardly need to be an "expert" to know that). And remember, those dozens are just the ones that became publicly known.

And, just to remind you of the details of one of these cases, here's a bit more about the case from last April: One of the hostages, the wanted man's mother, was 65 years old! And here's the note that the American military left in the house: "Be a man Muhammad Mukhlif and give yourself up and then we will release your sisters. Otherwise they will spend a long time in detention."

People like you and I are allowed to be justifiably outraged by the seizure of American reporter Jill Carroll as a hostage. The U.S. government, guilty of the same war crime many times over, is not.

Update: Knight-Ridder's Nancy Youssef adds some interesting details about events more recent than 2004:

The Iraqi woman [who was released Thursday after four months in prison] told Knight Ridder on Friday that she and eight other female detainees in her cell had often talked among themselves. She said she discovered that all of them were being held because U.S. officials had suspected their male relatives of having ties to terrorism.

"I don't see how you can be a partner in peace if you advocate the destruction of a country as part of your platform. And I know you can't be a partner in peace if you have a -- if your party has got an armed wing."

- George Bush, the man whose party's "armed wing" (a.k.a. the U.S. military) has effectively destroyed two different countries (by which we mean destroyed the existing state, in the same sense that Hamas refers to the "destruction" of the state of Israel), Iraq and Afghanistan, and who rules a country which has destroyed many more states with its "armed wing" over the years.

Bush said Iran has acknowledged that it wants a nuclear weapon. That, however, goes beyond what Tehran has actually said; Iran says it wants nuclear power only for civilian use.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan acknowledged that Bush had misstated Iran's position.

And as far as AP, "goes beyond what Tehran has actually said"? No, it completely contradicts what Tehran has actually said. How many euphemisms can you make up in place of the word "lie"?

Most news coverage just skips right over the whole subject. For example, the main Knight-Ridder article treats the subject like this:

On Iran, the president called a proposal by Russia to enrich Iran's uranium and return it to the Islamic nation for use in fueling nuclear reactors for electricity "a good plan." Iran maintains that it wants nuclear-powered electricity, but the United States and the European Union fear that it's pursuing nuclear weapons.

The New York Times article on the news conference doesn't even mention Iran [but see Update below]. The Washington Post did, but did its best to cover for Bush by calling his lie a "mischaracterization" and not mentioning McClellan's retraction:

Bush endorsed a plan to allow Russia to help produce nuclear energy for Iran as a way to keep the anti-American regime from building nuclear weapons. But he mischaracterized Iran's public position by saying, "The Iranians have said, 'We want a weapon.' " Publicly, the Iranian government has insisted the opposite is true, though Tehran is widely believed to be actively seeking nuclear weapons."

Has the media learned anything from Iraq? No. Bush boldly lies to the American people to justify the next war (or the next military strike, or the next strike by its ally Israel), and none of the media (and, here's a wild guess, none of the leading Democrats either) are willing to say, in the words of Ronald Reagan, "There he goes again."

Update: The New York Times did cover the subject, not in their "main" article on the news conference, but in a separate article on the subject of Iran. Here's their take:

Mr. Bush made his statement embracing the Russian idea at a news conference on Thursday. He said, "The Iranians have said, 'We want a weapon.' "

In fact, Iran has denied that it is pursuing a weapon, and in the afternoon, the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, acknowledged that Mr. Bush had misspoken.

Saddam Hussein's chief lawyer said Thursday that the deposed Iraqi president wants President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair tried on allegations of committing war crimes.

Khalil al-Dulaimi said Saddam wants to sue both leaders, along with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, for allegedly authorizing the use of weapons such as depleted uranium artillery shells, white phosphorous, napalm and cluster bombs against Iraqis.

No complaint has been filed to the International Criminal Court in The Netherlands, but al-Dulaimi said Saddam's foreign defense team will present it "very soon."

"President Saddam intends to bring those criminals to justice for their mass killings of Iraqis in Baghdad, Ramadi, Fallujah and Qaim and abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib," the lawyer added.

Saddam also wants all Iraqis who have had relatives killed or had property damaged should receive at least $500,000 each."

Here's what the "spying" consisted of, and remember, this is the detail they're including in the paper, which means it is the most "damning": "Carlos M. and Elsa Alvarez spied on Florida International University President Modesto 'Mitch' Maidique, giving details in at least one report to their Cuban intelligence handlers about a White House invitation Maidique received." Man. What the Cuban government could do with that information.

I'm treating this lightly here, but this is no joke. For crimes no more serious than this, five Cuban men have been in jail in the United States for more than seven years, facing in some cases life in prison unless justice finally prevails.

• Amnesty International writes the U.S. State Department, pleading the case of the wives of two of the "Cuban Five" who have denied the right to visit their husbands for more than five years
• Dave Lindorff points out the hypocrisy of Bush taking Hamas to task for not "renouncing violence"
• Michael Neumann, the author of a new book entitled The Case Against Israel, discusses the origins of Zionism and what it means to have a "Jewish state"

At the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld rejected both reports, saying that "it's clear that those comments do not reflect the current situation. They are either out of date or just misdirected."

Rumsfeld said he hadn't read either report.

Cycling, Lance Armstrong notwithstanding, is a different story entirely. And, lo and behold, we learn that just this week two Cuban cyclists were excluded from participation in a World Cup event in Los Angeles. Will the IOC and the UCI (International Cycling Union) act to exclude American cyclists from the Olympics as a result? They should, but it's quite unlikely.

This story, unlike the baseball story, appears to have been covered in exactly one paper, curiously enough my hometown San Jose Mercury News.

Why this fetish? Because virtually everyone responsible for killing people, from George Bush to Donald Rumsfeld to the Generals in the Army, claims they're killing in order to "bring peace" or "ensure peace." And today brings an excellent example of that -- an op-ed, originally from the Los Angeles Times but appearing in the San Jose Mercury News, singing the praises of targeted assassinations. It's author? Daniel Byman, the director of the Center for Peace [sic or should that be "sick"?] and Security Studies at Georgetown University.

Oh, Mr. Bynam has his regrets, though, that's why he's such a "peace"-loving guy. He allows as how "arrests are always preferable to killing," and even concedes that "mistakes are inevitable." Mr. Bynam's idea of a "mistake"?

On July 22, 2002, when an Israeli F-16 dropped a 2,000-pound bomb on his apartment building, the operation went awry. The strike killed [Salah Shehada, a senior Hamas operative], but it also killed 14 civilians, including his daughter and eight other children. International reaction to the attack was overwhelmingly negative.

The idea that dropping a 2,000-pound bomb on an apartment building in the middle of the night was likely to kill only a single "targeted" person and no one else, and hence not go "awry" by Mr. Bynam's standards, is absurd. Preposterous. In actual fact, five houses were also destroyed, and more than 100 people injured, in addition to the 15 dead. This was an "atrocity" by any reasonable definition, a war crime. But Mr. Bynam, who heads a "Center for Peace," says it was a "mistake."

Fetish? No, it's no fetish.

"In order to ensure the existence of a Jewish national homeland, we will not be able to continue ruling over the territories in which the majority of the Palestinian population lives."

Flashpoints! on Monday (at 39:00) and Tuesday (at 22:00) has segments very much on this point, the first featuring Richard Becker from ANSWER giving an overview of the situation, and the second featuring producer Nora Barrows-Friedman with girls from Ibdaa Cultural Center in Dheisheh Refugee Camp, discussing their experiences visiting (but definitely not being allowed to remain) in their original villages. Here's a post from Politics in the Zeros with more background information, and an ANSWER-LA forum (downloadable mp3 available) on the same subject.

The new components would propel the nation's health care system in a direction that many Republicans and business groups embrace: lightening the burden of insurance cost on employers to some degree, while creating financial incentives for individual patients to restrict how much care and medicine they use.

"Bill Gates shows up at a Hollywood party of actors and actresses and he's just a geek. Steve Jobs shows up at a Hollywood party of actors and actresses and he's a star.''

- Paul Saffo, director of the Institute for the Future

Here's something I haven't seen anyone (and certainly not the Democratic "opposition") say about Bush's claims. Bush claims that he's the Commander-in-Chief (my, how he loves those words), that he's just "protecting us," that he can "use any and all available tools -- including electronic surveillance -- to guard against terrorist attacks," and that the Congressional vote to authorize him to "use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons" involved with 9/11 gives him the authority to do what he's been doing. If that's true, then why does he (and those who speak for him) continually emphasize that this program only applied to calls made by "known terrorists" outside the United States to people inside the United States? Surely there must be terrorists inside the United States (Tim McVeigh comes to mind, just to name one) making calls to other terrorists inside the United States? If Bush has all this power, why on earth would it be restricted to the limited circumstances he claims it was restricted to (not that we believe him, of course)? Furthermore, one significant aspect of terrorism is that it so often comes from people who aren't known (check the recent bombings in London for an example). So if the President can "use any and all available tools" to guard against "terrorist attacks," he should be wiretapping and otherwise spying on every single person in the world, since any one of them could be planning a terrorist attack at this very moment.

And, if the technology allowed it, he probably would be.

"There certainly is a battle of ideas taking place right now which will very soon become a battle of results of showing how democratic governments can deliver the goods. Cuba and Venezuela obviously are on one side of the divide. It's not clear where Bolivia will go."

I also like the way there's a battle of ideas (that's Fidel's phrase, of course, although neither Shannon nor the Journal credits it) taking place "right now" and that will "very soon" become a battle of results. It's kind of like Washington is all of a sudden waking up to the fact that mining is an unsafe industry and that, by gosh, there's actually technology available that could make it less so. No, Mr. Shannon, this "battle" has been going on for a long, long time, and you and the people you represent are losing.

Welshofer's defense was that he was only following orders to "take the gloves off," and that he wasn't given "clear rules." I'm willing to bet that not only wasn't he given a rule against stuffing someone's head in a sleeping bag, he wasn't given a specific rule against pulling out his fingernails either. Maybe even smashing his fingers with a hammer, one by one. No doubt the people who received that kind of treatment will surface in the future, if they haven't already. And we'll be told the perpetrator was only following orders.

And how much is this outrage going to penetrate the American consciousness? Precious little. In the paper I read, the San Jose Mercury News, it received a 3 column-inch squib in the "News in Brief" section; in the same section of the paper, a train crash in Montenegro got 16 column-inches, a large headline, and a picture. TV news hasn't even mentioned it.

Ralph Nader once said his mother "took us out in the yard one day and asked us if we knew the price of eggs, of apples, of bananas. Then she asked us to put a price on clean air, the sunshine, the song of birds -- and we were stunned."

Yes, I can definitely see how a bunch of Bolivian peasants who can read and who have more fuel for generating electricity or running equipment could be a major cause of anxiety. Not for me or any other "regular" American, of course. But for the U.S. government and the business interests they represent, definitely. What will "these people" want next?

Venezuela's vice president on Monday told top U.S. Republican Sen. John McCain he could "go to hell" for suggesting that "wackos" were governing the oil-producing South American country. (Source)

"I'm mindful of your civil liberties, and so I had all kinds of lawyers review the process."

It reminds me of another quote of Bush's from last year, also illustrating his rather curious concept of the word "all":

"These are people from all walks of life, all income groups."

In both cases, making war and mining coal, important people in a hurry for results economize on their human capital. In both cases, it means empty places at the table and holes in small communities where each absence hurts badly and healing is slow.

In each case, they say the disasters will lead to improvements, that investigations will reveal the need for more protection, more attention to safety, stricter enforcement of regulations. They always say that. Sometimes it happens and sometimes not. And still, generation after generation, West Virginians go down in the mines and march off to war.

Maybe one reason why things change so slowly -- if at all -- is that those people need the rest of us to keep their bosses honest, and the rest of us have short attention spans. When they die needlessly, our sorrow is real -- but after a few weeks or a few months, with other demands on our concern, we turn back to our daily lives.

We forget to hold accountable the politicians who deplete the regulatory agencies that are supposed to enforce the rules. As the tragedies fade into the past, our compassion falters. It gets easier to mark the ones who keep making noise as bleeding-heart loonies.

Republicans and Democrats alike think that what's good for the company is good for the worker. Along with what has been happening recently in the mines, today brings us another illustration of the fallacy of that idea:

Ford announces it's cutting 30,000 jobs and closing 14 plants, and "Wall Street" rejoices.

The San Jose Mercury News, however, has just finished a 3-year, incredibly detailed investigation into the criminal "justice" system in Santa Clara County, California, which you can find online here (the series started Sunday and continues through Thursday). Their investigators studied in excrutiating detail no less than 727 criminal cases in which appeals were involved, and found a whopping 261 where questionable conduct prevailed - withheld evidence, midleading or even lying to juries, using improper arguments, inadequate defense counsel, hiding witnesses, mistakes tolerated by appellate courts, and on and on. To no one's surprise, I'm sure, many of the victims of this system profiled in the articles are black and brown and, more generally poor and unable to afford high-priced lawyers. The prevalence of black faces in the article is particularly striking, since San Jose, while it has a very high Latino and Asian population, has a rather small black population (just 3.5%).

I can't even begin to go into more detail. The material that is posted online can keep you busy for a week if you read it all. But the take-home lesson comes very quickly. "Criminal justice" is very much a misnomer.

What an outrage! Why can't these people be honest for a change? Why not a choice between "Support the war" and "Stop the war now"? Or "Support the President" and "Stop the war now"? How on earth does demanding that soldiers stay in a war zone to be killed and permanently maimed have anything whatsoever to do with "supporting" them?

I suppose I shouldn't expect any more from KSFO; visiting their home page I find a picture of Melanie Morgan, the right-wing "leader" of the anti-Sheehan "movement," Move America Forward [sic] (they mean "backward," of course). I also find notices about "California GOP speaks" and "Support Travis AFB soldiers" and a Photoshopped (I presume!) picture of George Galloway dressed as the devil. So it's obviously a right-wing station. I can handle that. But can't they be an honest right-wing station? Can't they defend their support for the war without hiding behind the fiction that this is about "supporting the troops"? Evidently not.

The Bush administration is spending foreign aid money to increase the popularity of the Palestinian Authority on the eve of crucial elections in which the governing party faces a serious challenge from the radical Islamic group Hamas.

The approximately $2 million program is being led by a division of the U.S. Agency for International Development. But no U.S. government logos appear with the projects or events being undertaken as part of the campaign, which bears no evidence of U.S. involvement and does not fall within the definitions of traditional development work.

The plan's $2 million budget, although a tiny fraction of USAID's work here, is likely more than what any Palestinian party will have spent by election day. A media consultant for Hamas said the organization would likely spend less than $1 million on its campaign.

Elements of the U.S.-funded program include a street-cleaning campaign, distributing free food and water to Palestinians at border crossings, donating computers to community centers and sponsoring a national youth soccer tournament. U.S. officials are coordinating the program through Rafiq Husseini, chief of staff to Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority and leader of Fatah.

In recent days, Arabic-language papers have been filled with U.S.-funded advertisements announcing the events in the name of the Palestinian Authority, which the public closely identifies with Fatah. Some of the events, such as a U.S.-financed tree-planting ceremony here in Ramallah that Abbas attended last week, have resembled Fatah rallies, with participants wearing the trademark black-and-white kaffiyehs emblazoned with the party logo, walls plastered with Fatah candidates' posters, and banks of TV cameras invited to record the event.

There are about 115,000 East Jerusalem residents who are eligible to vote.

Under a deal [Ed. note: "deal" my eye. "Israeli diktat" would be more accurate, I'm sure] between the two sides, just 5.5% will be allowed to cast their ballot in East Jerusalem.

Just 6,300 residents will be allowed to vote in the city - the remainder, an estimated 109,000 - will have to travel outside the city boundaries to vote.

Voters who are chosen will then go to one of six post offices in the city. There a post office official [Ed. note: an Israeli] will hand them a ballot paper. There is no polling booth. The completed ballot paper is placed in a box, and later sent to Palestinian election officials for the votes to be counted.

Of course, even if they got to freely cast their ballots, which they don't, they haven't had the freedom to actually hear from the candidates. The fact that Hamas candidates aren't allowed to campaign (and have been arrested for trying to do so) in East Jerusalem is well-publicized. But actually, they are only one of at least four parties whose candidates have either been banned, or just arrested.

Spreading "democracy," one "free and fair" election at a time.

Update: And I completely forgot about this aspect of those "free" elections, since it's such a completely normal aspect of elections in countries under the gun (literal or figurative) of the United States: The United States and the European Union have threatened to cut off aid to the Palestinian Authority if Hamas is granted a presence in the Palestinian Cabinet.

Wiley Miller

He's not talking about me! Honest! Although I do use one of those computers with the Apple on it :-)

Here's an article from Oct. 26, 1976, that's quite relevant to everything going on today:

Venezuela Depicts Intrigue Among Exiles in Crash of Cuban Plane

by Juan de Onis

CARACAS, Venezuela, Oct. 23 -- Shortly before a bomb exploded aboard a Cuban airliner on Oct. 6, forcing it to crash off Barbados with the loss of all 73 aboard, the telephone rang here in the office of a private investigating company.

"The bus is full of dogs," the caller, who was in Barbados, reported.

The next day, the Venezuelan police raided the office as part of an investigation of the bombing. The head of the investigating company, Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban-born naturalized Venezuelan, and five others have been taken into custody, and the Barbados caller and an associate, Venezuelans who are suspected of having planted the bomb on the airliner, were being brought here today from Trinidad, where they were arrested the day after the crash.

The plane sabotage, which the Cuban Government of Prime Minister Fidel Castro has attributed to anti-Castro Cubans [Ed. note: I think it's safe to say those aren't Fidel's words!], also accusing the United States Central Intelligence Agency of complicity, has created a major problem [Ed. note: problem for who?] here and in the English-speaking Caribbean countries that have normalized relations with Havana.

President Preses Inquiry

The case is also a domestic political embarrassment in Venezuela, where there is a Cuban exile population of about 50,000 people, among them powerful anti-Castro business figures and some influential advisers to President Carlos Andrés Pérez.

The investigation is being pressed by the President, who has campaigned for an international antiterroirst treaty since terrorists led by the Venezuelan revolutionary Illich Ramirez Sánchez, also known as Carlos, kidnapped oil ministers of 11 governments attending a meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries in Vienna last year. President Pérez is scheduled to speak before the United Nations General Assembly on Nov. 15 on behalf of such an agreement.

On Oct. 7, the day after the Cuban plane crashed, the Venezuelan police found in the office of the Posada concern what they described as a "detailed intelligence report" on the location of and security conditions at Cuban embassies and airline offices in Panama, Colombia, Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados. One paragraph spoke of the weekly stopover of a Cubana de Avaición plane at Barbados on a flight from Trinidad to Jamaica and Havana.

Served Jail Time in U.S.

Hernán Ricado Lozano, the man who telephoned from Barbados, and an associate, Freddy Lugo, flew aboard that plane on Oct. 6 from Trinidad to Barbados, where they left it. Nine minutes after the airliner took off for Jamaica, a bomb exploded and the plane crashed.

That evening, the two Venezuelans few back to Trinidad, where they were arrested the next day at the request of the Barbados police.

As a result of the crash, the police here arrested Orlando Bosch [Ed. note: eventually pardoned by Pres. George H.W. Bush and currently living in Miami], one of the most prominent anti-Castro activists, who had entered Venezuela with a false Costa Rican passport late in September.

Mr. Bosch, who has declared in press interviews that he is waging a war against Cuban embassies, airlines, and commercial offices until political prisoners are released in Cuba, served four years of a 10-year sentence in the United States for firing a bazooka at a Polish ship in Miami harbor [Ed. note: read that again. Miami harbor, not Havana, this man served four years for committing an act of terrorism in the United States] in 1968. He was released in 1974 on probation, but violated his probation by leaving the United States.

In November 1974, Mr. Bosch was arrested here on charges of having been involved in a bomb explosion at the Cuban Embassy. He was subsequently expelled to Caraçao, and then went to Chile and Costa Rica, where he was expelled in March 1976. He was charged in Costa Rica with plotting the assassination of Andrés Pascal Allende [Ed. note: try to remember this is a man now living in the U.S. courtesy of George H.W. Bush], a nephew of the late President Salvador Allende Gossens of Chile, who is an exiled leader of the extremist [Ed. note: so says Juan de Onis] Revolutionary Left Movement in Chile.

Mr. Bosch is a friend of Mr. Posada, the operator of the private investigating agency, who came here from Miami in the early 1960's and joined the Venezuelan National Police. In 1970, under the administration headed by President Rafael Caldera, a Christian [Ed. note: sic] Democrat, Mr. Posada became chief of operations of the secret police [Ed. note: where he added "torturer" to his list of accomplishments]. He resigned and set up his private agency after President Pérez was elected in 1974.

During his arraignment in a criminal court here yesterday along with Mr. Bosch -- both are being held in conjunction with the continuing investigation -- Mr. Posada said that Mr. Lozano was an employee of his agency, working as a photographer.

Tax refunds sought by 1.6 million poor Americans over the last five years were frozen and their returns labeled fraudulent, although the vast majority appear to have done nothing wrong, the Internal Revenue Service's taxpayer advocate told Congress yesterday.

The advocate, Nina Olson, said the IRS devotes vastly more resources to pursuing questionable refunds sought by the poor -- which under the highest estimate is $9 billion -- than to the $100 billion in taxes not paid each year by people who work for cash and fail to file tax returns or understate their income.

"Just from the outside, you look at that and you say: You know, they're acting as though it's a controlled press. So let me put into the pot just the hypothesis that to a greater extent than we are really aware, it is a controlled press. And it's not 100 percent and some of the exposes occasionally - not that many - even go beyond what is necessary to establish an appearance of independence and constitutes a real degree of independence. But I think it's just possible that when you look a flagship like the New York Times from which other papers take their cues as to what is news and what isn't, there may be a critical element of top-level people being actually on the team. It's clear that Judith Miller was on the team. I'm suggesting that that goes beyond a mere groupie-type enthusiasm for the policy. She was on the team, period. She was one of us. She's an insider, not an outsider, let's say."

This person is asking our opinion concerning the United States sheltering a terrorist known as the Osama Bin Laden of Latin America, Luis Posada Carriles. This terrorist is responsible for the murder of 73 innocent passengers on a civilian plane over the waters of Barbados in October of 1976. Posada is a fugitive from justice in Venezuela, because he escaped from a prison in Caracas while his trial for murder was pending. In June of last year, Venezuela asked the United States government for his extradition. Our request is based on three different extradition treaties that require the U.S. government to either extradite him to Venezuela or try him in this country for 73 counts of first degree murder. Rather than responding to our request and moving forward with his extradition or trial for murder, the U.S. government has thus far treated his case as a minor immigration matter and charged him only with illegal entry into the country. The international war on terrorism does not mean an a la carte war. The U.S. cannot pick and choose which terrorist to prosecute. A terrorist is a terrorist period. We call on the American people to demand that the US government abide by its international obligations and do what the law requires it to do: extradite or prosecute Posada for murder. Instead, he now stands on the verge of being released from custody on January 24.

On Monday, McCloskey will announce he is challenging Pombo in the Republican primary.

McCloskey did endorse John Kerry for President, but I'll forgive him that lapse of judgment. I'll still be absolutely delighted if he, in his own words, takes Pombo out (even if I do detest that Mafia-ization of American political language, but at least in this case I know he's referring to taking him out of Congress, and not killing him, which is what that euphemism usually means).

By last night, "Rogue State" shot up from 205,763 to 26 on Amazon.com's index of the most-ordered books.

The Washington Post article linked above is filled with interesting and telling details, like this one:

Until now, the mainstream media have paid virtually no attention to Blum. His books rarely are reviewed.

Back to Blum, the Post gives its readers this, which by itself is enough of a positive consequence of bin Laden's plug, since it's the kind of analysis Post readers rarely if ever are subjected to:

In a chapter called "Why Do Terrorists Keep Picking on the United States?" Blum lists as possible reasons everything from support of Middle East dictators, including the Shah of Iran and Saudi rulers, to occupying military bases in the region, to favoring the Israelis over the Palestinians.

"I think bin Laden shares that view, and that is why I'm not repulsed by his embrace of my book, because that is one of my major themes," Blum said.

When it is pointed out that terrorists target innocent civilians, which is not U.S. policy, he replies that U.S. tactics in Iraq have led to the deaths of thousands of civilians. "We bomb homes and these people have families, and the U.S. refuses to apologize for these civilian deaths," Blum said. "The absence of concern makes their actions almost equal to a deliberate targeting of civilians."

When the World Baseball Classic first sought a license for Cuba, the Treasury Department denied it because the Cubans would have made American dollars. That would have violated the United States' trade embargo against Cuba.

The tournament organizers submitted a second license request on Dec. 22 and eliminated any possibility that the Cubans would earn money.

And the Washington Post article isn't much better. It's author writes: "After Cuba agreed to donate tournament proceeds to Hurricane Katrina victims..." Cuba did not "agree" to donate the proceeds to Katrina victims. It volunteered to do so!

"Liberal" media my eye (substitute other body parts at will)!

And wouldn't it be nice if the U.S. press gave 1/100th the coverage to the visa denial of a 7-year old girl who hasn't seen her father since she was two than they give to the permit denials for a baseball team?

Yesterday, the Supreme Court made a key decision which even federal officals admit will have major implications for free speech across the country.

With all eyes on the Alito confirmation non-aftermath, the Court hastily refused to hear the appeal of South Carolina activist Brett Bursey, the first and only person to be prosecuted under the statute governing "Threats to the President."

Bursey's crime? Four years ago, when President Bush came to Columbia, SC to whip up support for the Iraq war, Bursey -- a leader of the South Carolina Progressive Network -- inserted himself into the pro-Bush crowd with a sign saying "No more war for oil, don't invade Iraq."

For these unthinkable sentiments, Bursey was commanded to retreat to an Orwellian-named "free speech zone" or be charged with trespassing. As Bursey relates, "I told the police that I was in a free speech zone called the United States of America."

The trespassing charges were dismissed four months after the arrest, but the feds wouldn't have it. The Secret Service quickly moved to press the unprecedented "Threats to President" charges, and, after being refused a jury trial, Bursey was convicted and given a $500 fine."

Of course the irony is that Bursey is indeed a "threat" to the President, just like Cuba is a "threat" to the United States. Speaking truth to power, and setting examples of a different way, always threatens those in power.

Google sparks privacy fight

This is, of course, a very serious matter. This particular case involves the government's attempt to defend a law on internet pornography. But if they can compel Google to turn over its search database, supposedly stripped of "personal" information, in this case, how much stronger a position they are in to demand that Google (and Amazon etc.) turn over its entire database, complete with personal information, in the name of "national security." I've joked before that when the government talks about investigating only people who are "linked" to al Qaeda, that Googling "Osama bin Laden" undoubtedly qualifies you. As this suit shows, it's no joke.

Needless to say, bravo to Google for resisting (so far), and a large "thank you, I'll take my business elsewhere" to Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL, who complied with the government's request.

"I think the worst thing that can happen for decision-makers is to get a filtered point of view."

- George Bush

"I've got a group of people around me that are empowered to walk in. Condi Rice, when she walks in, she comes in as a close friend, but as someone who knows that our friendship will be sustained, whether she agrees with me or not. Rumsfeld comes in -- and he's a crusty old guy who -- (laughter) -- and he's got an opinion, and he tells it."

Tom Toles

From his speech today:

"If you (Americans) are sincere in your desire for peace and security, we have answered you. And if Bush decides to carry on with his lies and oppression, then it would be useful for you to read the book 'Rogue State,' which states in its introduction: 'If I were president, I would stop the attacks on the United States: First I would give an apology to all the widows and orphans and those who were tortured. Then I would announce that American interference in the nations of the world has ended once and for all.'"

"Finally, I say that war will go either in our favor or yours. If it is the former, it means your loss and your shame forever, and it is headed in this course. If it is the latter, read history! We are people who do not stand for injustice and we will seek revenge all our lives. The nights and days will not pass without us taking vengeance like on Sept. 11, God permitting. Your minds will be troubled and your lives embittered. As for us, we have nothing to lose. A swimmer in the ocean does not fear the rain. You have occupied our lands, offended our honor and dignity and let out our blood and stolen our money and destroyed our houses and played with our security and we will give you the same treatment.

"You have tried to prevent us from leading a dignified life, but you will not be able to prevent us from a dignified death. Failing to carry out jihad, which is called for in our religion, is a sin. The best death to us is under the shadows of swords. Don't let your strength and modern arms fool you. They win a few battles but lose the war. Patience and steadfastness are much better. We were patient in fighting the Soviet Union with simple weapons for 10 years and we bled their economy and now they are nothing.

"In that there is a lesson for you."

"The terrorists started this war, and the President made it clear that we will end it at a time and place of our choosing. We continue to pursue all those who are seeking to do harm to the American people, and to bring them to justice."

- Scott McClellan, White House "spokesperson"

But "place"? Where is that going to be, the Plains of Armageddon? American bombs might have killed Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora, would that have been the "place" where the "war" ended? Clearly not. If this week's missile strike had killed Ayman al-Zawahiri, would Damadola have been the place? Hardly.

If Bush & Co. and their supporters want to make invalid arguments, or arguments I disagree with, or even lie to justify their war of terror on the world, that's one thing. But do they have to be inane in the process?

The Cochabamba water revolt – which began exactly six years ago this month – will end this morning when Bechtel, one of the world’s most powerful corporations, formally abandons its legal effort to take $50 million from the Bolivian people. Bechtel made that demand before a secretive trade court operated by the World Bank, the same institution that coerced Bolivia to privatize the water to begin with. Faced with protests, barrages of e-mails, visits to their homes, and years of damaging press, Bechtel executives finally decided to surrender, walking away with a token payment equal to thirty cents. That retreat sets a huge global precedent.

"The people, united, will never be defeated" is often just wishful thinking. But "the people, united" can be a powerful force for change. And the Cochabamba water revolt is a premier example.

Q There are allegations that we send people to Syria to be tortured.

MR. McCLELLAN: To Syria?

Q Yes. You've never heard of any allegation like that?

MR. McCLELLAN: No, I've never heard that one. That's a new one.

Q To Syria? You haven't heard that?

MR. McCLELLAN: That's a new one.

Q Well, I can assure you it's been well-publicized.

MR. McCLELLAN: By bloggers?

In the end, however, we really do have to come back to McClellan either being extremely ill-informed or just a plain liar (I'd say "forgetful," but he doesn't even resort to the "I don't remember hearing about that" excuse). Because, as discussed here, Arar has actually brought suit against the U.S. government, a suit which the U.S. government is attempting to dismiss (has dismissed? current status unsure, the last update on the case appears to be in August, 2005, with the government still attempting to dismiss the case, and apparently there has been no ruling on that motion yet, six months later) by invoking the rarely used "state secrets privilege" and claiming that any release of information on Arar could jeopardize "intelligence, foreign policy and national security interests of the United States." So this isn't just some obscure case, but one which the U.S. government is well aware of.

A letter writer to the San Jose Mercury News today announces he won't go see Steven Spielberg's Munich because it shows Palestinians as human beings. But there's another lesser-known film which I wrote about back in November which does that, and, unlike Munich, Paradise Now won the Golden Globe award last night for best Foreign Language picture.

The director claimed in his acceptance speech that the award was a recognition of the legitimate struggle of the Palestinian people. It may well have been. The Golden Globes are given out by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, a group with a more international sensibility (and hence a greater awareness of the Palestinian struggle) than Americans. It will be interesting to see if the award is duplicated at the Oscars, or if Paradise Now will even be nominated by the more pro-Israeli American voters (that's Oscar voters, of course).

P.S. - I haven't seen any of these movies, since I'm still waiting for them all to come out on DVD, so any reader who wants to comment on any of them is encouraged to do so.

And what does Staff Sgt. Paul Hernandez, one of the returnees, have to say?

"The people love us there; they really do."

Apparently you can get too much love, however; Sgt. Hernandez will not be reenlisting.

The silence notwithstanding, the case is moving forward toward a review of his status on January 24. The ANSWER coalition is asking everyone to send an automated letter/email to Bush and Congress to demand that Posada be extradited to Venezuela and not to be released into the United States, and I urge readers to add their voices to that campaign. Raising the visibility of this appalling situation is the essential first step is attempting to ensure justice.

And, as a reminder of what this justice is all about, if you haven't already done so, watch the new 6-minute video summary.

"Feinstein Warns Against Alito Filibuster" - AP headline appearing in the San Francisco Chronicle, Forbes, and countless other places including the local (KTVU) TV news I watched this morning.

"California Sen. Dianne Feinstein announced Sunday that she would vote against Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, but she warned her fellow Democrats not to try to block his confirmation with a filibuster." - San Jose Mercury News coverage of the story.

All of the above sources quote her only as saying the following: "I do not see a likelihood of a filibuster. This might be a man I disagree with, but it doesn't mean he shouldn't be on the court." There is nothing in that statement that could be remotely interpreted as "warning her fellow Democrats." Later in both articles, we have Republican Lindsay Graham saying, "If there's a filibuster of this man based on his qualifications, there would be a huge backlash in this country," which definitely qualifies as a "warning."

Here's (pdf) the exact transcript of what Feinstein said:

"I do not see the likelihood of a filibuster to be very candid with you. I don't see those kinds of egregious things emerging that would justify a filibuster. I think when it comes to filibustering a Supreme Court appointment, you really have to have something out there whether it's gross moral turpitude or something that comes to the surface. Now I mean, this is a man I might disagree with. That doesn't mean he shouldn't be on the court."

What she did say is equally telling (and amusing as well). First, she plainly contradicts herself. She says she's voting against confirmation, but also says that although she disagrees with Alito "it doesn't mean he shouldn't be on the court." Well, if it doesn't mean he shouldn't be on the court, then she should vote for him, not against him.

Here's the wonderfully amusing part: Feinstein says she was "very impressed with his ability...not to specifically answer any questions.'' Wow! What a qualification! Perhaps she would prefer Sgt. Schultz on the Court; I hear he's really good at not answering questions.

The real Feinstein news from this interview was her joining with John McCain in endorsing the "all options are on the table" stance vs. Iran, refusing to object to military action against this threat. McCain, lying as usual, claimed:

"Now the difference between Iraq and Iran is that Saddam Hussein had us all fooled, including his own generals, about having weapons of mass destruction. I think it's pretty clear in the mind of any expert that Iranians are about to acquire them."

"I think Iran has much more opportunity to create devastation in the Middle East than Iraq at this time. I think it's a very serious threat. I think this new president of Iran is very difficult to predict. He clearly holds very radical, almost fanatic views certainly with respect to Israel. I don't think it's a stretch to say that if the Iranians had a nuclear missile that this president might well use it against Israel."

"I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent."

- Martin Luther King, April 4, 1967

What does she think the troops are doing with that equipment? Doing their laundry? They are killing people with that money, Pelosi's money, our money.

Pelosi also repeated (not in the linked article above, but she has made this point before) the statement that her (the Democrats') answer to "stopping the war" is the Murtha proposal. And, as I have explained before, the Murtha proposal is hardly one of stopping the war, whatever it masquerades as (and Pelosi wouldn't even endorse that for two full weeks).

And when it comes to impeachment, what is Pelosi's response to the protesters? "I think we should solve this issue electorally," she said, urging audience members to channel their energy into the 2006 elections. Which is not only not an answer to impeachment, it's also the classic trap for the antiwar movement. Because putting our energy into electing Democrats in 2006 will end up with people like Pelosi who think that "the troops' having the equipment they need" is consistent with claiming an "antiwar" position. Or people like those being touted on various Democratic-oriented sites like Daily Kos, the "fighting Democrats" whose major qualification for being supported (so we are told) isn't that they are actually against the war, but that they fought in it. Whoopee.

Incidentally, I can't find evidence that a single other blogger, even the myriad "diarists" on Daily Kos, has commented on this latest demonstration of Pelosi's phony "antiwar" position.

From the moment the story broke, news reports (following the lead of the police, this was not primarily a media problem but a police problem) described an item which had been found in a Starbucks bathroom as "a homemade bomb." Not a "suspected" bomb, but a "bomb." The original police spokesperson claimed, without any apparent qualification, that this "bomb" "would have caused damage if it exploded.''

Within a day, that claim had escalated to a bomb which was "powerful enough to dismember or kill someone had it gone off." Again, based on what, it isn't clear; it's not as if they had detonated it in a special chamber and had seen what would happen.

Many of you probably already know the denouement. Three days after the "bomb" was found, and one day after it was revealed that "no explosive material" was present, the final conclusion was announced -- the "bomb" was a flashlight with corroded batteries. Interestingly, the initial stories in the press (which were not reflected in the broadcast stories that I heard on multiple channels) described the device as "a portion of a flashlight and a fuse"; the "fuse", we can speculate without actually having seen it, was just one of those little lanyard attachments at the end to make it easier to carry and/or hang from a hook.

The damage, however, has surely been done, as millions of people around the country received one more dose of fear and terror calculated to increase their acceptance of the loss of their rights. I have yet to even hear the updated true story on any of the national news channels who broadcast the original story, but, if and when I do, it's a safe bet I won't be hearing about it on "high rotation" for several days as I did the "bomb" story.

In case you're wondering, the headline reads "bomb 'scare'" and not "'bomb scare'" for a reason. It's my way of indicating this was not a "bomb scare" where someone calls the police or a newspaper and announces there's a bomb someware that is going to go off, something that would traditionally be called a "bomb scare." This was something quite different - an attempt by government, in this case the police force of San Francisco, to scare the people of their city (and the entire country) with a story that was patently untrue from the start. It's not that it couldn't have been a bomb, but the idea that they knew it was a bomb, and a powerful one at that, was simply a lie.

Doing control experiments in a science lab is usually straightforward. Doing them in the real world is virually impossible. But surely the experiences of China described in this article come as close as possible, comparing China "before" to China now. I don't usually quote so extensively from articles, but this one warrants it:

When Jin Guilian's family took him to a county hospital in this gritty industrial city after a jarring two-day bus ride during which he drifted in and out of consciousness, the doctors took one look at him and said: "How dare you do this to him? This man could die at any moment."

The doctors' next question, though, was about money. How much would the patient's family of peasants and migrant workers be able to pay - up front - to care for Mr. Jin's failing heart and a festering arm that had turned black?

China's economic reforms have turned an almost uniformly poor nation into an increasingly prosperous one in the space of a mere generation. But the collapse of socialized medicine and staggering cost increases have opened a yawning gap between health care in the cities and the rural areas, where the former system of free clinics has disintegrated.

According to the government's own estimates, in less than a generation a rural population that once enjoyed universal, if rudimentary, coverage is now 79 percent uninsured.

The near total absence of adequate health care in much of the countryside has sown deep resentment among the peasantry while helping to spread infectious diseases like hepatitis and tuberculosis and making the country - and the world - more vulnerable to epidemics like severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, and possibly bird flu.

Every year hundreds of millions of rural Chinese, like the Jin family, face the clash between health and poverty, knowing that if they treat their illnesses they will lack the money needed for marriage, education and, sometimes, food.

Even the official Chinese news media are regularly filled with accounts of the desperate choices people are forced to make over health care, of brothers who must draw lots to see whose serious disease will be treated because their family cannot afford to treat both, or of a father who sells a kidney to treat an ill son.

That China finds itself in this situation today is as remarkable as the country's economic takeoff and, paradoxically, is inseparably related to it. Until the beginning of the reform period in the early 1980's, China's socialized medical system, with "barefoot doctors" at its core, worked public health wonders.

From 1952 to 1982 infant mortality fell from 200 per 1,000 live births to 34, and life expectancy increased from about 35 years to 68, according to a recent study published by The New England Journal of Medicine.

Since then, in one of the great policy reversals of modern times, China has dissolved its rural communes, privatized vast swaths of the economy and shifted public health resources away from rural areas and toward the cities. Public hospitals were urged to charge commercial rates for new drugs and most procedures, and today the salaries of health care workers are typically linked to the amount of income they generate for their hospitals.

The recent emphasis on profit, meanwhile, has led doctors and other well-trained health care workers to abandon the countryside, with a result that peasants are left at the mercy of unqualified caregivers and outright charlatans who peddle expensive, improperly prescribed drugs and counterfeit medicines.

Let's say he was among the dead and the U.S. knew with absolute certainty that he was there at the precise moment the missiles were going to land (of course that's impossible, but let's assume it). How many innocent civilians is (are?) too many? Is knowingly (or deliberately "unknowingly") killing one innocent person acceptable if you can also kill a guilty person? How about five? Ten? 25? Hell, how about 100,000? And who gets the right to decide, and who gets the right to be that executioner? Is it just the U.S. government? Does the Cuban government have the right to launch a missile at the jail where Luis Posada Carriles, murderer of at least 74 people, is housed? [Incidentally, there's an excellent new video online, just six minutes long, well worth watching, on the Posada case and the possibility that the U.S. will soon release him on probation.]

Did I hear someone say he's just an accused murderer, and retracted a confession he once gave to a New York Times reporter? That he's still awaiting trial in Venezuela, a trial which isn't going to happen if the U.S. has anything to do with it (and they do)? Funny, I don't recall Ayman al-Zawahiri ever being convicted in a U.S. court for anything either. But that didn't stop them from launching missiles and killing 25 people in an attempt to kill him.

How many is too many? Isn't "any" the answer to anyone except a terrorist?

48 per cent of respondents think the U.S. should keep military troops in Iraq until the situation has stabilized, while 48 per cent believe all troops should be brought home as soon as possible.

Do I believe that 2%? Not really. Other polls have shown much higher numbers for that, and it isn't even clear in this poll, since that wasn't an answer to the question, if that was an option that was offered to the respondents or just a "volunteered" response. A better question would be, "Should the U.S. set a timetable for withdrawal, should it stay indefinitely until "success" is achieved, or should it withdraw immediately (or "as soon as possible," which was actually the first question that was asked).

The two key take-home lessons of polls are these: first, you have to be careful designing them and interpreting them. And second, no poll which measures some kind of breadth of sentiment will ever be as important as things like demonstrations, letter-writing campaigns, "Camp Caseys," and things which demonstrate the depth of people's sentiments on this issue.

The show I'm watching is hardly exceptional. Last night (or was it the night before?) I was watching BBC World and they (the anchor and an interviewee) were calmly discussing the "military option" for dealing with the "problem" of Iran as if it were perfectly legal, perfectly moral, and just the most natural thing in the world. The idea of questioning whether it was even acceptable to discuss the "military option" simply never occured to them.

Hands off Iran!

Alan G. Hevesi, the New York State comptroller, announced yesterday that Wall Street bonuses were estimated to hit a record $21.5 billion for 2005, surpassing the previous record of $19.5 billion, set in 2000.

"It was a veritable Who's Who of Who's Bombed What"

- Jon Stewart, referring to the Bush meeting photo-op with 13 former Secretaries of State and "Defense"

Ninety nine red balloons
Floating in the summer sky
Panic bells, it's red alert
There's something here from somewhere else
The war machine springs to life
Opens up one eager eye
And focusing it on the sky
The ninety nine red balloons go by

Ninety nine decisions treat
Ninety nine ministers meet
To worry, worry, super scurry
Call the troops out in a hurry
This is what we've waited for
This is it boys, this is war
The President is on the line
As Ninety nine red balloons go by

Documents turned over by the NSA indicate that the group [the Baltimore Pledge of Resistance] was closely monitored. In one instance, the agency filed reports approximately every 15 minutes from 9:30 AM to 3:18 PM on the day of a demonstration at the National Vigilance Airplane Memorial on the NSA Campus in Maryland.

According to an NSA email dated July 4, 2004, the agency collected license numbers and descriptions and the number of people in each car and filed a report about them gathering in a church parking lot for the demonstration. NSA agents also logged their travel to the demonstration, including stopping as a gas station along the way. A canine dog unit was used to search a minivan when it was stopped on the way to the demonstration - nothing was found.

NSA officials even reported on the balloons being inflated for the demonstration and the content of their signs.

An entry made at 1300 hours on July 4. reads, "The Soc. was advised the protestors were proceeding to the airplane memorial with three helium balloons attached to a banner that stated, 'Those Who Exchange Freedom for Security Deserve Neither, Will Ultimately Lose Both.'"

For my money, the single most interesting fact in the released NSA documents is the name of the NSA outfit doing the spying on the demonstrators: "The NSA Weapons of Mass Destruction Rapid Response Team."

Think you (or I) are immune from being linked to Saddam Hussein, al Qaeda, or even "Weapons of Mass Destruction", and hence of having our phones tapped or our mail opened? Think again.

Incidentally, balloons released into the sky are a weapon of mass (or at least small-scale) destruction -- of the birds and fish who find them and eat them and die as a result. Don't do it. But somehow, I don't think that's what the NSA was worried about.

When the U.S. government imprisoned the Five, they vindictively spread them into prisons all across the country, making it difficult for their lawyers and friends to visit them. Despite being convicted of non-violent crimes and being model prisoners, the Five have spent much of their time in prison in solitary confinement. And the U.S. government has repeatedly denied their wives visas to visit them. And the reprehensible behavior continues. In this case, the arrested couple were denied bail, because the judge and prosecutor agreed that they "would leave their five children and return to Cuba if released."

Of course I have no idea if this particular couple are actually "guilty" of what they are charged with, but what we do know is that every Cuban "spy" who has either been arrested in this country, or has returned to Cuba and then "outed themselves" by giving information, has been in the United States for one reason and one reason only -- to try to put an end to the decades of terrorist acts being carried out against their country with the tacit approval and probable knowledge and in some cases the active assistance of the U.S. government.

But the bogus nature of this difference, which has been the case all along, is well illustrated by the latest deaths in the Black Hawk helicopter crash. As of this writing, no cause for the crash has been announced, or admitted, and perhaps we'll never know the truth. But does it matter if the helicopter was shot down or not? Consider the circumstances. This helicopter was flying between two bases in northern Iraq at midnight in bad weather. Do you suppose the U.S. military ferries people between two bases in Germany at midnight in bad weather in helicopters? I seriously doubt it. American forces (and associated civilians, in this case) travel by helicopter in the first place not for speed, or at least not just for speed, but for safety - it simply isn't safe down there on the ground. And it isn't even safe in the air in the middle of the day.

Were these people killed by "hostile action"? Maybe not in the immediate sense. But definitely if you look at the reality.

The real number of Americans killed in Iraq? Closing in on, if not already past, 2500 rather than 2200. The number of Iraqis killed? Unknown, but well over 100,000, no matter how you count (but definitely depending, as with the Americans, on who you count).

British, Italians, Poles, Ukranians, and miscellaneous "others"? Nobody remembers them except Iraq Coalition Casualty Count. Even the website of the Multi-National Force-Iraq only provides links to the webpages of the US DoD and the British Ministry of Defence. The others are quite literally not even worth mentioning. I hope the governments of those countries got a nice payoff for providing cannon fodder to the "coalition." The people of those countries, who I believe without exception opposed the invasion, didn't even get the "benefit" of having their dead honored by being remembered.

American troops in Baghdad yesterday blasted their way into the home of an Iraqi journalist working for the Guardian and Channel 4, firing bullets into the bedroom where he was sleeping with his wife and children.

Ali Fadhil, who two months ago won the Foreign Press Association young journalist of the year award, was hooded and taken for questioning. He was released hours later.

Dr Fadhil was asleep with his wife, their three-year-old daughter, Sarah, and seven-month-old son, Adam, when the troops forced their way in.

"They fired into the bedroom where we were sleeping, then three soldiers came in. They rolled me on to the floor and tied my hands. When I tried to ask them what they were looking for they just told me to shut up," he said.

The troops told Dr Fadhil that they were looking for an Iraqi insurgent and seized video tapes he had shot for the programme. These have not yet been returned.

As I write this, this story appears in the Guardian, al Jazeera, and the India Monitor (UK). Not a single American source. Probably because the U.S. military hasn't seen fit to discuss the incident in a news briefing, and hence the American reporters have nothing to say.

That's the "peace of the grave," of course. I was listening to a podcast of a talk by Richard Becker of ANSWER about his recent trip to Syria, including a discussion of developments in Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Palestine. With current events being what they are, though, the thing that caught my attention most was his discussion of the history of Ariel Sharon (43 minutes into the talk), material which it turns out is also found in the Wikipedia entry for Sharon.

Most people on the left have heard of the massacre of Sabra and Shatila, in which somewhere between 460 and 3,500 Palestinian civilians in the refugee camps were killed by Lebanese Christian forces, while Israeli troops under the command of Ariel Sharon were surrounding those camps. Even an Israeli commisson found that Sharon "bears personal responsibility" and recommended his removal as Defense Minister. But that was in 1982. What I had never heard about, and I wager most people haven't either, is the first event in the history of this "man of peace," another massacre, this one in the Lebanese (now West Bank) town of Qibya in 1953.

There, under orders from the government to inflict "maximum killing" on the Palestinians supposedly in retaliation for the death of an Israeli woman and her two children, a "special forces" unit (Unit 101) of the IDF under the command of Ariel Sharon destroyed the village of Qibya, blowing up 45 houses as well as the mosque, the school, and the water reservoir, and killing more than 60 people, two thirds of them women and children. After the massacre, the UN Security Council condemned Israel, the United States temporarily suspended economic aid to Israel, and the U.S. State Department denounced the raid, demanding that those responsible be "brought to account."

And now, the man who should have been "brought to account" for the murder of 60 civilians more than 50 years ago, and the murder of hundreds more Palestinian civilians in 1982, is hailed as a "man of peace."

Update: A survivor of the Sabra and Shatila massacre calls Sharon "the King Kong of massacres."

Second update: Reader Al alerts us to this article by the extremely well-informed Robert Fisk. There's all sorts of information there, but here's an interesting note I don't think many of us know about:

It was years later [after the massacre at Sabra and Shatila] that the Israeli-trained Phalangist commander, Elie Hobeika, now working for the Syrians, agreed to turn state's evidence against Sharon - now the Israeli Prime Minister - at a Brussels court. The day after the Israeli attorney general declared Sharon's defence a "state" matter, Hobeika was killed by a massive car bomb in east Beirut. Israel denied responsibility. US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld traveled to Brussels and quietly threatened to withdraw Nato headquarters from Belgium if the country maintained its laws to punish war criminals from foreign nations.

Yet another update: More on Qibya at CounterPunch.

Their lawyer's "defense" was quite instructive:

"In the war against communism, they did what the United States government wanted them to do and paid them to do."

Haiti has been without an elected leader since President Jean-Bertrand Aristide departed during an armed rebellion in February 2004.

But sometimes, "corporate media" means even more, and reader Helga has emailed a stunning example, taken from the Australian paper The Age. The article is about Australia's secret (?) Jindalee Operational Radar Network, which is part of the global (by which we mean America and its allies) missile defense system. As you read the article, you're hard-pressed to distinguish it from a press release written by Lockheed Martin, who developed the system. We read about about how the system has "impressed" the scientists who have examined it, how it will be "highly effective," about how "enthusiastic" Lockheed executives are about the system, and so on. Then we get to the very end of the article and read the tagline:

Brendan Nicholson [the reporter] travelled to the US as a guest of Lockheed Martin

We get at least some indication of Lockheed's ROI on their small investment in having the article published with this sentence: "Australia will spend tens of billions of dollars over the next decade keeping up with a world of sophisticated military technology." We aren't told how much of those "tens of billions" will be going to Lockheed, but it's a fair bet it's a substantial amount. Incidentally, I am unaware that foreign troops have ever attacked Australia during its entire history. Just to put those "tens of billions" in perspective.

Dirty bomb suspect Padilla's plea hearing postponed

And, just as a silly aside, when did Jose "Padeeya" (rhymes with "tortilla") turn into Jose "Padilla" (rhymes with "Cilla")? Was I out of the room when they changed his name? Just askin'.

"I believe everybody desires to be free. But I also know people need to be convincing -- convinced -- I told you I needed to go to language school."

"We're also going to advance America's interests around the world and defeat this notion about our -- you know, our bullying concept of freedom by letting people see what we're about. Let them see firsthand the decency of this country."

And, as a reminder, Posada's victims had families and loved ones, just like the victims of 9/11. Here are some of them:

Real people, still suffering real hurt. And the U.S. is considering releasing the killer of their son to roam free.

Update: (after initial posting 1/5/06, 7:59 pm) A long statement on the case by Jose Pertierra, the lawyer for the government of Venezuela in their attempt to get Posada extradited, is now available at CounterPunch. He cuts through to the bottom line:

There are enough laws in the United States to keep this terrorist in jail. What is lacking is the political will to do so.

"Iraq's main Shiite religious party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution (SCIRI)...condemned policies it said were imposed by the U.S.-led coalition that were hampering Iraqi security forces' counterterrorism work." (Source)

Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State of a country which is responsible for more than a million Iraqi deaths (not to mention thousands of Serbs, Panamanians, Nicaraguans, Salvadorans, etc., and let's not forget Americans), has threatened nuclear attacks on more than one country, and spends more on weapons than the entire rest of the world combined, calls North Korea, a country whose troops haven't left its borders in more than 50 years, a "dangerous regime."

How intense is the bombing that the U.S. is conducting in Iraq, 99% of which we never hear about? Try this ominous statement from the same article:

The Baiji strike was one of 58 air missions the U.S. military carried out Monday over Iraq.

Update: To see some of the consequences of the rule of this man who Hillary Clinton called "courageous," read ex-CIA analysts Bill and Kathleen's Christison's description of the wall (Clinton called it a "fence") and the very real effects it has on very real people (but not the kind of people that Hillary Clinton, or any other American politician, see fit to talk to on their "fact-finding" missions).

On 7 December, Maya Evans, a vegan chef aged 25, was convicted of breaching the new Serious Organised Crime and Police Act by reading aloud at the Cenotaph the names of 97 British soldiers killed in Iraq. So serious was her crime that it required 14 policemen in two vans to arrest her. She was fined and given a criminal record for the rest of her life.

Eighty-year-old John Catt served with the RAF in the Second World War. Last September, he was stopped by police in Brighton for wearing an "offensive" T-shirt, which suggested that Bush and Blair be tried for war crimes. He was arrested under the Terrorism Act and handcuffed, with his arms held behind his back. The official record of the arrest says the "purpose" of searching him was "terrorism" and the "grounds for intervention" were "carrying placard and T-shirt with anti-Blair info" (sic).

He is awaiting trial.

Last October, an American surgeon, loved by his patients, was punished with 22 years in prison for founding a charity, Help the Needy, which helped children in Iraq stricken by an economic and humanitarian blockade imposed by America and Britain. In raising money for infants dying from diarrhoea, Dr Rafil Dhafir broke a siege which, according to Unicef, had caused the deaths of half a million under the age of five. The then Attorney-General of the United States, John Ashcroft, called Dr Dhafir, a Muslim, a "terrorist", a description mocked by even the judge in his politically-motivated, travesty of a trial."

"If we'd been able to do this [warrantless snooping on American citizens] before 9/11, we might have been able to pick up on two of the hijackers who flew a jet into the Pentagon."

What we got for this PR show was a dozen former Secretaries of State and War "Defense". Why, for real diversity, the news is proudly reporting there were even some Democrats. You know, people like Robert McNamara, the guy who helped plan the firebombing deaths of hundreds of thousands of Japanese, and whose "success" in guiding the American war effort in Vietnam has only recently been surpassed by the current occupant of the office, "Donsense" Rumsfeld. And let's not forget Madeleine Albright, the woman who thinks the death of a million Iraqis as a result of the sanctions she helped impose was "worth it."

Of course we an imagine the "suggestions" of the crowd that Bush assembled probably went along lines such as, "I think you've got too many ground forces in Ramadi and aren't doing enough bombing from the air." Indeed, the principle aspect of the "advice" spotlighted by the press was the advice that Bush should "speak more" (or "level more") with the American people in order to get their support. Yeah, it's all about us.

How important were these prestigious people gathered around Bush as props? So important that when they met the public, none of them was given a chance to speak, only Bush (we use the word "speak" loosely here; "blather" might be a more appropriate term).

Update: I missed this in the Times article: "Mr. Bush allowed 5 to 10 minutes this morning for interchange with the group." Let's call it 8 minutes. 13 former Secretaries. A grand total of 37 seconds for each one to offer Bush their advice. The average citizen gets two minutes at their local city council meeting to speak their mind, once every week or two if they're so inclined.

There is talk of major mismanagement and theft in the Oil Ministry. Chalabi took over several days ago and a friend who works in the ministry says the takeover is a joke. “You know how they used to check our handbags when we first walked into the ministry?” She asked the day after Chalabi crowned himself Oil Emperor, “Now WE check our handbags after we leave the ministry -- you know -- to see if Chalabi stole anything.”

Nominations are only accepted until Tuesday, Jan. 10, and the number of nominations count (the most-nominated blogs get into the finals for voting).

Why should you care? Because if there are blogs (like this one, and certainly others) which reflect your views, then you should want them to get wider exposure. And this is one way you can do that.

Amidst all the coverage that the scandal has received in both blogtopia and the corporate media, one aspect of it has been curiously underplayed. I was completely unaware of it until hearing about it on Flashpoints! tonight (mp3 download here, relevant section starts at 7:00 into the show) when host Dennis Bernstein interviewed Ali Abunimah from the Electronic Intifada.

And what is this hidden information? It's that more than $140,000 of the money Abramoff "took" (stole) from Indian tribes in the United States was given to radical right-wing Israeli settlers in the West Bank to fund their private war against the Palestinians. The story appears to have been broken by Michael Isikoff in Newsweek last May, and got a one-sentence mention in the Washington Post in June; outside of that, this aspect of the scandal has gone essentially unmentioned in the media.

And what was Abramoff funding? Isikoff says that the money went "to fight the Palestinian intifada," but that's just pro-Israeli out-and-out nonsense. The Israeli government, with its billions of dollars of financial and military support from the U.S. government, has no trouble fighting the intifada. Here's what the money really went for:

Among the expenditures: purchases of camouflage suits, sniper scopes, night-vision binoculars, a thermal imager and other material described in foundation records as "security" equipment.

Abramoff's paramilitary gear ended up in the town of Beitar Illit, a sprawling ultra-Orthodox outpost whose residents have occasionally tangled [How's that for a euphemism?] Palestinian neighbors. Yitzhak Pindrus, the settlement's mayor, says that several years ago the town was confronting mounting security problems. "They [the Palestinians] were throwing stones, they were throwing Molotov cocktails," Pindrus says.

"He used to bring in this equipment—night-vision goggles, telescopes," says Pindrus. At least some of the equipment appears to have come from Abramoff's law firm. An August 2002 invoice obtained by NEWSWEEK shows that $773 worth of paramilitary gear—including sniper shooting mats and "hydration tactical tubes"—was shipped to one of Abramoff's aides at the law firm where the lobbyist then worked.

Abunimah also notes, which I haven't seen in the press but quite likely is there, that as the heat started coming down, two of Abramoff's associates skipped the country and found refuge in Israel, counting on tough extradition standards to keep them from being sent back to the U.S. to face the music along with their boss.

Also paraphrasing Abunimah, just imagine how much trouble Abramoff would be in if he sent $140,000 to Arab terrorists? Why, he'd probably be in the cell right next to Sami Al-Arian.

Update: Juan Cole has similar thoughts on the same subject (thanks to a tip in comments).

I don't have a video archive, but I'm willing to bet that when Yasser Arafat went into the hospital, the choice of commentators was quite different. Or actually, it may have been exactly the same - all Israelis and Americans talking about what Arafat's death might mean.

Palestine? That's not part of the "world," is it?

"There will still be some who believe that they can affect the political outcome of Iraq through violent means."

- George Bush, the "Commander-in-Chief" of the armed forces which invaded Iraq and overthrew its leadership through somewhat less than peaceful means, and whose 150,000 troops and airplanes continue to accomplish their political (and economic) aims through violent means.

Really? Let's examine the situation. According to the New York Times article (linked above), an unmanned drone spotted people allegedly planting a roadside bomb, who were then followed (from the air) into a building, which was then completely destroyed by a bomb and cannon fire. So exactly what "effort" was made to "minimize the risk" of killing civilians? Precisely none. Other than thinking (which, it appears, was untrue) that there were three resistance fighters in the building, the U.S. pilots had exactly no idea what else might be in that building. It could have been an orphanage for all they knew. Or for all they cared.

Update: The Washington Post version of the story counts 12 dead, not nine, but, preposterously given the circumstances, includes this statement in the third paragraph of the article: "A U.S. military spokesman said that American forces take every precaution to prevent civilian casualties." A little later they quote the same spokesman saying, "We are determining the facts in this particular case so we will know exactly how civilians may have been drawn into the air strike that was deemed necessary by our forces fighting insurgents on the ground." "Drawn into the air strike"? According to the Post's own reporter, "The dead included women and children whose bodies were recovered in the nightclothes and blankets in which they had apparently been sleeping." Talking about sleeping people being "drawn into the air strike" as if they had some involvement in it is an outrage. That doesn't stop the Post from allowing the military to have its say, without the slightest rebuttal from anyone with a different opinion.

Oh, and about those "precision guided munitions"? The Post's reporter did add this to the story: "Officials said six surrounding houses were damaged."

Further update: USA Today has an even more interesting take on the event. The USAToday.com front page, as I write this, asserts "U.S. bombs Iraq hideout Attack kills 7 insurgents, police say."

So this was a "hideout," and the police claimed 7 insurgents were killed, eh? The article, which is an AP article, leads with this: "U.S. aircraft bombed a building where suspected insurgents were hiding north of Baghdad, killing seven people and wounding four, Iraqi police said Tuesday." They missed one "suspected"; not only were the targets "suspected" insurgents, but it was also only "suspected" that they were hiding in the building (and subsequent evidence suggests they were not). Even if they were hiding, they wouldn't make the building a "hideout," which implies some kind of permanent or routine hideout, for which there's no evidence. And finally, note that Iraqi police, contrary to the headline on the front page, said nothing about "7 insurgents" being killed, they said seven people were killed in this bombing of a building containing suspected insurgents. Quite a different thing.

Still another update: I just noticed this in the subhead of the Washington Post article referred to above: "Americans Believed Targeted Farm Was Shelter for Insurgents." And what's wrong with that? Try to square the claim that this was a "farm" (and not just a "house") with the fact that "six surrounding houses were damaged" and the assertion that "precision guided munitions" were used. Did your head explode yet?

Anyway, during the process, I came across a great antiwar song I had completely forgotten about - "Stop the War Now" by Edwin Starr, a song which didn't even make our list of the "Greatest Antiwar and Political Songs." Everyone knows Starr's "War" ("War. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing!"), but "Stop the War Now" was the lesser-known, but equally good (if not better) followup song, which includes powerful lyrics like these:

Stop the war -- now
Don't put it off another day

Make your voices roar
Stop the war -- now

This is about all the soldiers
That are dead and gone today
If you asked them to fight again
Huh, what do you think they’d say

War casualties pile up each day
Cemetaries are overflowing
The leaders of the world claim victory’s near
But the death list keeps right on growing

And what does a mother get in return
For the life of the son she’s lost
A few measly pennies a month
A medal, a grave and a doggone cross

Enough blood’s been shed
By the wounded and the dead

Let's look instead at Franken's response. Again, I'm forced to paraphrase from memory, but the basic answer went along these lines: "First, Bush and the Republicans got us into this war, so it isn't fair to ask Democrats [like Franken] to be the ones to come up with a plan to get out. Second, he just doesn't know what to do, but definitely will not endorse any kind of immediate [and for him, six months is "immediate"] withdrawal, which he even referred to with the pro-war phrase "cutting and running." And then finally, he said that he recognized that he didn't have any "skin in the game," noting that his son wasn't in the military [curiously omitting his daughter , who like his son is of military age, thereby proving himself not only pro-occupation but also sexist], but that that didn't change his answer.

All of which brings me back to something I wrote back in June, but which can never be repeated often enough (ok, repeating it every day would probably be too much):

If that [Franken's position that we should not pull out of Iraq "now," meaning that troops will be there for at least a year, and most likely a lot longer] is your position...you need to ask just one question: whatever purpose you think the U.S. troops are now serving in Iraq, whether it's "building democracy" or "protecting Iraq from descending into civil war" or whatever, is that purpose worth your life? Would you be willing to go to Iraq, right now, and fight and die for that "cause" that you think the U.S. troops are fighting for (or, if not you, then your son or daughter, your best friend, your best friend's son or daughter, or whomever you like)? Because if that "cause" isn't worth your death, then it is the rankest hypocrisy for you (or whomever takes this position) to suggest that it is worth someone else's death, specifically the soldiers who will be serving and dying in Iraq for the next three months, or six months, or two years, or whatever it takes.

Which brings us back to the words of Edwin Starr. Stop the war. Now! Don't put it off another day. Make your voices roar. Stop the war. Now!

In this context, this article by Glora La Riva in the latest issue of Socialism and Liberation magazine is well worth reading. It talks about several recent developments in Cuba in what they call the "Battle of Ideas." It talks about problems that Cuba faces, like 37,000 old people living alone and in need of personal attention (yes, that's considered a problem in Cuba, not a natural state of affairs). It talks about the rampant corruption that had taken hold at gasoline stations, with pilfering and bribery siphoning off half of the potential income.

That was the bad news. The article also talks about what Cuba is doing to solve these problems, starting by training 28,000 students as social workers, to deal not just with the first problem I mentioned but, believe it or not, with the second one as well.

The article is worth reading not just for the picture of what is happening in Cuba today that you are unlikely to read anywhere else, but also to read what Fidel Castro is thinking (and speaking) about it:

"Is it that revolutions are doomed to fall apart, or that human beings cause revolutions to fall apart? Can either humanity or society prevent revolutions from collapsing? I could immediately add to this another question: Do you believe that this revolutionary socialist process can fall apart, or not? Have you ever given that some thought? Have you ever deeply reflected about it?"

The Catholic Church has set 30 of its top theologians the task of deciding if there is such a place as "limbo," where babies who die without being baptized spend eternity. Cardinal (now Pope) Ratzinger had this to say back in 1984:

"Personally, I would let it [belief in the "existence" of limbo] drop, since it has always been only a theological hypothesis."

Although it's not a direct quote from anyone, the article on this subject frequently refers to the "theory of limbo." The Vatican did recently issue a strong defense of Charles Darwin and evolution, so evidently they do have some understanding of the meaning of the words "hypothesis" and "theory," but the use of the words "theory" and "hypothesis" in this article are one of the reasons why so many people think that the "theory of evolution" rests on the same intellectual foundation as the "theory of limbo." Needless to say, it doesn't.

"I believe it [a shot of 1250 meters which killed an Iraqi resistance fighter] is the longest confirmed kill in Iraq with a 7.62mm rifle," said Staff Sgt Gilliland, 28, who hunted squirrels in Double Springs, Alabama from the age of five before progressing to deer - and then people.

Ace sniper Gilliland has killed between 55 and 65 Iraqis in less than five months, but we're assured that "Every shot has to be measured against the Rules of Engagement [ROE], positive identification and proportionality." Right. Just like the invasion of Iraq. The fact that the observation post from which Sgt Gilliland does his shooting has graffiti reading "Kill Them All" kind of gives the game away.

The quote of the article belongs to Gilliland's commander:

With masterful understatement, Lt Col Robert Roggeman, the Task Force 2/69 commander, conceded: "The romantic in me is disappointed with the reception we've received in Ramadi."

If there is any reason why Cuba should be a "headache" to the U.S., perhaps Morales' visit provides a clue. Most news coverage of the event, like this one from the Los Angeles Times, just mention the visit (and the "headache"). The longer AP article mentions that "Cuba will now offer up to 5,000 scholarships annually to Bolivian college students," which is 5,000 more than the U.S. will be offering (or has offered cumulatively in the entire history of the country). But only a single U.S. source that I can find, CNN International, offers these more extensive details:

During the visit, the two men announced a 30-month plan to erase illiteracy in the South American nation as Cuba moves to increase hemispheric cooperation without U.S. influence.

Cuba also agreed to offer free eye operations to up to 50,000 needy Bolivians with vision problems, as well as 5,000 full scholarships for young Bolivians to study medicine on the island.

Today, the Washington Post reports on the other side of the coin of American values:

The Bush administration does not intend to seek any new funds for Iraq reconstruction in the budget request going before Congress in February, officials say. The decision signals the winding down of an $18.4 billion U.S. rebuilding effort in which roughly half of the money was eaten away by the insurgency, a buildup of Iraq's criminal justice system and the investigation and trial of Saddam Hussein.

And what has been accomplished? Here's what the Post, without attribution but presumably serving in its role as stenographer for the U.S. government, claims:

The hundreds of Americans and Iraqis who have devoted themselves to the reconstruction effort point to 3,600 projects that the United States has completed or intends to finish before the $18.4 billion runs out around the end of 2006. These include work on 900 schools, construction of hospitals and nearly 160 health care centers and clinics, and repairs on or construction of nearly 800 miles of highways, city streets and village roads.

What has the U.S. actually accomplished with its "rebuilding" billions?

U.S. officials have shifted at least $2.5 billion from the rebuilding of Iraq's decrepit electrical, education, water, sewage, sanitation and oil networks to build new security forces for Iraq and to construct a nationwide system of medium- and maximum-security prisons and detention centers.

"As you can possibly see, I have an injury myself -- not here at the hospital, but in combat with a Cedar. I eventually won. The Cedar gave me a little scratch. As a matter of fact, the Colonel asked if I needed first aid when she first saw me. I was able to avoid any major surgical operations here, but thanks for your compassion, Colonel."

- "Commander-in-Chief", George Bush

Update: I forgot to add, this speech occured preceding a "press availability." Not one of the reporters who got to ask a question thought to (or dared to) ask Bush how he dared to compare his scratch to the serious injuries of soldiers he had sent off to battle, even in jest.

To open up the new year, "public editor" (how much concern do they really have for the public when the "public editor's" column appears twice a month? Surely there's enough material for a daily, even an hourly column.) Byron Calame tries to examine the story behind the warrantless-wiretapping story, and the decision to hold publication for a year. In doing so, he runs into a stonewall as both Executive Editor Bill Keller and Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. refuse to answer his questions on the subject. What a way to earn their readers' trust.

Two statements by Keller have already been published. As summarized by Calame:

The longer of Mr. Keller's two prepared statements said the paper initially held the story based on national security considerations and assurances that everyone in government believed the expanded eavesdropping was legal. But when further reporting showed that legal questions loomed larger than The Times first thought and that a story could be written without certain genuinely sensitive technical details, he said, the paper decided to publish.

Calame doesn't question this explanation, but the business about the "legal questions looming larger" is almost preposterous on its face. First of all, it doesn't take a lawyer to understand the probable illegality of the action. That doesn't mean that someday the Supreme Court might not rule the actions legal, but surely the story doesn't only become a story on that day, since the court would never have a chance to even make such a ruling if the entire story were still secret. Furthermore, the story was based on discussions with not one but a dozen (!) whistleblowers in the government. Did the Times think that a dozen people would risk their careers, and even jail, to expose something that was perfectly legal? Surely that in and of itself said the story was worth reporting. Of course, the fact that the Times claims it didn't publish the story based on "assurances that everyone in government believed the expanded eavesdropping was legal" is also preposterous on its face. First of all, no one could possibly speak for "everyone in government," and second of all, such assurances, which obviously came from someone in government, and presumably near or even at the top of government, would have been (or should have been) completely worthless in any case.

Calame also presents at face value the second dubious claim that the impending publication of a book by the article's author James Risen had nothing to do with the publication of the article. If not, then what other event precipitated the publication of the article? Well, actually, there is such an event - the weakened position of George Bush and cohorts. A year ago, they were riding a lot higher, and Bush's bullying would have meant a lot more to them. Now that there is actually talk of withdrawal from Iraq, and real anger towards the government based on its (lack of) response to Hurricane Katrina, among other things, Bush and friends are a lot weaker, and the Times is then willing to kick them while they're, if not down, then at least squatting a bit. But neither Calame nor Keller would ever admit to such a thing. Of course these two effects (book publication, weakened Bush administration) are not mutually exclusive; no doubt they both were part of the decision to publish the article.

Vermilion Flycatcher, photographed at Arivaca Cienega (Buenos Aires) NWR

I was really torn about the cropping of this picture. I really like the full frame (above), especially when viewed on a large screen, but the cropped version also looks great, but with a bit of a different feel. I'll let you be the judge:

Welcome to 2006! Happy New Year!