Left I on the News  

The "rules of engagement" of the U.S. military, as illustrated by this episode, last week's massacre in Kandahar, or countless other examples, couldn't be clearer. If the U.S. military even thinks that a suspected enemy fighter is inside a building, they consider that they have the right to simply destroy that building, without even asking the question of who might be inside, much less actually attempting to find out. This is because the slightest risk to the life of one American soldier is evidently considered to outweigh a much more concrete risk to almost any number of innocent civilians (as long as those civilians are those barely-qualifying-as-human "foreigners" without, as far as we know, names, families, or emotions).

First, this one from March, 2005: "US occupation forces' fighter planes have attacked civilian populations in the Iraqi cities of Haditha and Haqlaniyah, in the western province of Al Anbar." This story, as far as I could tell at the time, never appeared in a single corporate news outlet. The old tree falling the forest story. Iraqi civilians are massacred on the ground and from the air by American forces on a routine basis; only the rare stories even make the press for a one-day run, and few indeed get the followup they really deserve.

And, most significantly, this story from August, 2005, which ominously presages the massacre which would occur that November:

Talking to a truckload of troops, sitting in pre-dawn darkness Friday morning, Sgt. Marcio Vargas Estrada made the point to the men of his squad from 3-2's Lima Company.

"If somebody shoots at you, you waste him," said Estrada, 32, of Kearny, N.J. "When you go back to Camp Lejeune, these will be the good old days, when you brought . . . death and destruction to -- what . . . is this place called?"

A Marine answered in the darkness: "Haqlaniyah."

Estrada continued: "Haqlaniyah, yeah, that. And then we will take death and destruction to Hadithah. Hopefully, we'll stay until December so we can bring death and destruction to half of . . . Iraq."

The flatbed truck erupted in a storm of "Hoo-ahs."

As I wrote then: "Support the troops? Count me out."

Killdeer, photographed at Carmel River State Beach

Actually the most interesting thing about this picture is something you really can't see--there are two Killdeer in this picture, the parent (could be male or female, appearance and behavior pretty much indistinguishable) and a tiny chick, which only became apparent when they both stood up and walked around. The chick is visible in a small "hole" in the sticks, in a box below the parent formed by two light-colored thin sticks (top and left) and two darker larger sticks (bottom and right), where you can see a black-white--gray pattern which is the chick's face.

Anyway, one of my favorite birds, partly because they're so easy to identify for a birder of decidedly modest abilities like myself, thanks to their distinctive markings (and sounds). And, I thought, a fairly nicely-composed shot. Enjoy. We'll be back to the death and destruction soon enough. Come to think of it, "Killdeer" isn't exactly a peaceful name, is it?

U.S. forces killed two Iraqi women--one of them about to give birth--when the troops shot at a car that failed to stop at an observation post in a city north of Baghdad, Iraqi officials and relatives said Wednesday.

Back to this story. Let me start by repeating a post from last March:

How common are "checkpoint" shootings like that of Giuliana Sgrena which has made the news? This from AP:

"Yarmouk hospital - just one of several large medical facilities in Baghdad - receives several casualties a day from such shootings, said Dr. Mohamed Salaheddin."

And, to no one's surprise:

"Shooting deaths of Iraqi civilians are so common they're rarely reported in the media."

The blood-splattered little girl whose picture appears at the top of this page? If an embedded reporter hadn't been accompanying the patrol which killed her parents and left her and her five brothers and sisters orphans, the chances that you (or I) would have ever learned of her story are slim and none.

Say it with me now. Out Now! When you are occupying a country and your "soldiers carry signs asking people to stay away," isn't that about as clear a sign as possible that you don't belong there?

The U.S. military said coalition troops fired at a car after it entered a clearly marked prohibited area near an observation post but failed to stop despite repeated visual and auditory warnings.

"Shots were fired to disable the vehicle," the military said in a statement e-mailed to The Associated Press.

Jassim's brother, who was wounded by broken glass, said he did not see any warnings as he sped his sister to the hospital. Her husband was waiting for her there.

"I was driving my car at full speed because I did not see any sign or warning from the Americans. It was not until they shot the two bullets that killed my sister and cousin that I stopped," he said.

If this is the kind of "warning" sign that the U.S. troops are posting and expecting drivers to stop for, it's no wonder Iraqis are being shot every day as a result. I can barely read the top line in the sign in this picture, which appears to have been taken from about 20 feet away from the sign. Imagine trying to read a sign like this from a speeding car, at a distance far enough away to allow stopping the car!

The names are different in today's murders. The conclusion is the same. Out Now!

From 1825 until the end of the Civil War in 1865, Mexican authorities continuously thwarted attempts by slave-holding Texas settlers to conclude fugitive slave extradition treaties between the two parties. During this period of extremely tense relations between the two governments, Mexico consistently repudiated and forbade the institution of slavery in its territory, while U.S. officials and Texas slave owners continuously sought ways to circumvent Mexican law.

By the year 1855, the estimates were that as many as 4,000 to 5,000 formerly enslaved Africans had escaped to Mexico. Slaveholders became so alarmed at this trend, that they requested and received, approximately one-fifth of the standing U.S. army, which was deployed along the Texas-Mexico border in a vain effort to stem the flow of runaways.

The second article, which appeared in the Los Angeles Times, was written by Professor Mae N. Ngai of the University of Chicago. This article is focused on the history of U.S. immigration policy. In it, you'll learn things like:

There were so few restrictions on immigration in the 19th and early 20th centuries that there was no such thing as "illegal immigration." The government excluded a mere 1 percent of the 25 million immigrants who landed at New York's Ellis Island before World War I, mostly for health reasons.

• The Registry Act of 1929 allowed immigrants who arrived before 1921 but had no record of their admission to register retroactively, for a $20 fee.
• From 1935 to the late 1950s, to keep families together, tens of thousands of Europeans unlawfully in the United States were temporarily allowed to go to Canada and legally re-enter the States as permanent residents.
• In 1940, Congress authorized the suspension of orders of deportation in cases of hardship, which it defined as "serious economic detriment" to the immigrant's immediate family. The guidelines have become less generous, but the principle remains in the law.
• In 1965, the United States repealed racial restrictions against Southern and Eastern Europeans and Asians, but the 1965 law also imposed quotas for the first time on Western Hemisphere countries. That created illegal immigration from Mexico and Central America.
• The 1986 immigration reforms addressed the problem by legalizing nearly 3 million undocumented workers. It also called for increased enforcement -- which didn't stop illegal immigration; it just made it more dangerous.

"As soon as Iran fully and verifiably suspends its enrichment and reprocessing activities, the United States will come to the table with our EU-3 colleagues and meet with Iran's representatives."

- top American "diplomat," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice

Of course, being CondoLIEzza, she couldn't help but accompany this absurdity with a series of bold statements in the service of the big lie:

"The Iranian government...is...pursuing nuclear weapons in defiance of the international community."

And there's an interesting twist when it comes to Iran. Because as hard as it is to prove you don't have WMD, proving that you aren't pursuing them is even harder. Let's recall that George Bush has declared it unacceptable for Iran to even know how to make nuclear weapons. Which means that any Iranian reading a physics textbook, or just browsing the Internet, could be deemed to be "pursuing" nuclear weapons.

But even I didn't expect it was this bad:

Defense witnesses in Saddam Hussein's trial over the killings of Iraqi Shiite villagers claimed many of those allegedly executed were still alive and said the prosecution case was built on bribes.

How much more ludicrous, then, is a forecast like this:

The Pentagon report said the strength of insurgents aiming to drive U.S.-led foreign forces out of Iraq "will likely remain steady throughout 2006 but that their appeal and motivation for continued violent action will begin to wane in early 2007."

U.S. military commanders are moving about 1,500 troops from a reserve force in Kuwait into the volatile Anbar province in western Iraq to help local authorities establish order there.

The industrial companies that make up the Standard & Poor's 500 index -- which excludes financial, transportation and utility companies -- have $643 billion in cash and equivalents.

One of the biggest ways that companies have spent this excess money has been through mergers and acquisitions.

Anti-U.S. Rioting Erupts in Kabul; at Least 14 Dead

The article does its best to reinforce the headline. The first paragraph quite literally treats the riot as if it were an earthquake or a brush fire:

A deadly traffic accident caused by a United States military convoy quickly touched off a full-blown antiAmerican riot on Monday that raged across much of the Afghan capital, leaving at least 14 people dead and scores injured.

It became clear the American military and the Afghan police and army had used their weapons to try to disperse the crowds. Scores of people were treated in hospitals for gunshot wounds.

Fourteen people didn't just "die" in Afghanistan. They were killed by U.S. and/or Afghan troops.

Meanwhile, in the actions which are actually acknowledged as "killing," yet another air strike today in southern Afghanistan killed another 50 alleged Taliban, bringing the death toll from such attacks in just the last two weeks to more than 420. How many of those were actually Taliban, and how many innocent civilians, will surely never be known.

The War's Human Toll
2,466
Number of U.S. soldiers killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom as of May 26
More than 18,000
The number of U.S. military members wounded

How much better if the American people used this day to remember all those victims: more than 100,000 fatalities from the invasion of Iraq, including not just those 2,466 American soldiers, but 224 soldiers from allied countries, and the Iraqi civilians, military (former and current), police, and resistance fighters whose numbers can only be estimated. 378 coalition fatalities (including 296 Americans) resulting from the invasion of Afghanistan, at least 3,500 Afghan civilians (as of the end of 2001!) who, it is worth remembering, had a lot less to do with the composition and actions of their own government than did the nearly 3,000 innocent Americans who died on Sept. 11, 2001, and thousands of Taliban fighters who, whatever their reactionary religious ideas, died legitimately defending their country from an illegal foreign invasion.

And there are others we should remember. The estimated one million Iraqis, the majority children, who died from the effect of a blockade which continued long after its alleged purpose, the destruction of Iraqi WMD, had been accomplished. The hundreds if not thousands of Iraqis who were killed by years of bombing on the U.S.-U.K. imposed "no-fly" zones, bombing which is now acknowledged as having been used to "soften up" Iraq for the coming invasion. And let's not forget the North Koreans, Iranians, and others, who have died from lack of health care or proper nutrition because their governments had to divert precious resources to defend against the very real threat of attack by the United States.

No doubt there are others I've forgotten in this brief summary. The cost of imperialism is high indeed.

Update: Already, just minutes after writing the above, this story about the death of a CBS camera crew in Baghdad reminds me of a group I left out--the hundreds of non-Iraqi (or Afghan) civilians who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, including reporters, contractors (real ones, not just mercenaries), and others.

Update 2: Here's another group to remember: the spouses and others who have been murdered by soldiers returning from the war with their minds seriously tormented by their experiences. Not to mention the ones who have "merely" taken their own lives.

Update 3: And how could I forget the tens of thousands of Americans who have died due to lack of adequate health care, because war spending means that we "can't afford" such "luxuries."

Update 4: I meant to say somewhere at the start that I was limiting my listing to wars the U.S. is currently involved in. Clearly the list would be a lot longer and the numbers a lot bigger if I were to go back further, headed up by the nearly 1.5 million American and Vietnamese dead from the Vietnam War.

One warning. Here in the U.S. it's Memorial Day weekend, and a certain kind of activity is very common. But folks, when you mail out email invitations to your friends to invite them to your party, be careful of what words you use:

For example, "if a terrorist is planning a bombing, they might say 'Let's have a barbecue,'" said Norris. "The software can detect if the word 'barbecue' is being used more often than usual."

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Sigmund Freud (!) said that. Sometimes "a cigar" is a false positive. I said that (stealing from Bob Dylan's Talkin' World War III Blues).

Using the same specious claim as in the Posada case, that the suspects would "most likely" be subject to torture in Venezuela, the U.S. is refusing to extradite the two to Venezuela for trial. As in the Posada case, however, international law obliges the U.S. to prosecute them for the crimes if they refuse to acknowledge the extradition request. Instead, these two men, almost certainly terrorists (although obviously not yet convicted), are walking free.

War on terror? Don't you believe it.

It seems that Brig. Gen. Brahms, as well as the media, have forgotten all about Manadel al-Jamadi, who was not only tortured to death during interrogation at Abu Ghraib, but even features in a well-known picture of Charles Graner, one of those infamous Abu Ghraib "bad apples":

Nor was al-Jamadi the only Iraqi to die at Abu Ghraib. There are many others, including a number listed as "shot during riot," but many others listed as "natural causes or accident" or "unknown or still under investigation," many of which are quite likely to have actually been murders which were either covered up or simply never investigated.

Not that the killing has been limited to Abu Ghraib, of course. There was Abed Hamed Mowhoush, the Iraq General who was tortured to death by being stuffed in a sleeping bag head first and having someone sit on his chest. He just happens to have been killed at another Iraqi prison facility, Al-Qaim. Why, someone was even convicted in that murder. Although they called it "negligent homicide" and fined him a whopping $6,000.

Then there are those who never made it into a prison at all. There was Nazem Baji, executed by U.S. troops while in custody, shot in the head while his hands were tied with plastic handcuffs. There was Salem Hassan, beaten to death by U.S. soldiers at a checkpoint for refusing to remove a picture of Moqtada al Sadr from his car. And so many, many others.

"Nobody was killed at Abu Ghraib"? Bullshit.

"Massacre" is, of course, a loaded word. In searching for stories with "Kandahar massacre" to see if anyone other than myself had called last week's events in Kandahar a massacre, I came across one of those "news roundup" articles in the Seattle Times. Consider this sequence of two stories:

Dili, East Timor
Soldiers fired on unarmed police in East Timor's capital Thursday, killing nine and wounding 27.
...
Khartoum, Sudan
Sudanese cross-border raiders have massacred more than 100 villagers in Chad, Human Rights Watch alleged Thursday, expressing concern the violence in Darfur was spreading. Survivors told the New York-based group that the massacre was carried out last month by the Janjaweed.

Back in Haditha, we'll no doubt be revisiting the "few bad apples" theory to explain the murders. And certainly it's true that neither George Bush nor Donald Rumsfeld, nor even any medium-level commander in Iraq ordered this particular massacre. But that doesn't excuse this sentence in the Washington Post article: "Two U.S. military boards are investigating the incident as potentially the gravest violation of the law of war by U.S. forces in the three-year-old conflict in Iraq." No. The "gravest violation of the law of war" was the invasion of Iraq, the unproked assault on another country, the ultimate violation. Everything else follows from that.

"To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."

- Robert H. Jackson, chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials.

Following up on the post below, I've been doing a little more digging, and naturally finding more contradictions. Here's some of what I've found:

The only reference to "Dujail" in the New York Times prior to early 2005 is an article from March 29, 1991, written by Elaine Sciolino. I'm accessing it in PDF format via ProQuest, so I can't link to it, but here's what it says:

The Government also found other, more creative ways to punish Shiite dissent. In July 1982, for example, assassins tried to kill Mr. Hussein during a visit to the village of Dujail, a stronghold of Shiite militancy about 40 miles northeast of Baghdad. Mr. Hussein ordered the entire population deported and the village was razed.

Now let's move forward to July 3, 2005, and the last major article in the Times on the subject, written by John F. Burns. Here's a portion of the narrative that Burns spins:

In small groups at first, then in larger roundups, about 1,500 townspeople were arrested, as many as 30 from single families, and started on a journey into Mr. Hussein's gulags.

Burns also writes:

Within weeks, the razing of the palm groves and the orchards began, continuing until more than 250,000 acres had been bulldozed.

There's something else in that article--a map of Iraq showing Dujail. I've extracted it, and made one small addition. That pink square you see centered on the town of Dujail? That's a square 20 miles on a side - 250,000 acres, the area allegedly razed by Saddam. Note that that square extends all the way to the nearest large town, Balad. Seeing it graphically like this makes clear just how implausible this claim is.

Update: John Burns replies:

Baghdad
May 26th 2006

Mr. Stephens:

This is a claim made by the prosecution at the trial -- in hectares, converted by us into acres. I'll ask the Regime Crimes Liaison Office to throw some light on this when I next meet with them.

Best regards

John Burns

John Fisher Burns
Bureau Chief
Baghdad Bureau
The New York Times

It is also well worth noting Burns' response to me in connection with his article of July 3, 2005, which reads like a documentary, laying out detail by detail what happened in Dujail. There is nothing, nothing, to suggest that the information in it includes allegations by the prosection, and everything which suggests that the narrative it weaves is simple, unchallenged historical fact, backed by the full weight of the New York Times.

Tony Blair: "the impression is given that the Iraqi people wish that we were gone from Iraq and weren't there any longer in support of the Iraqi government or the Iraqi forces. Not a single one of the people I talked to, not one of the political leaders, from whatever part of the spectrum in Iraq that I talked to -- and these are all people from all the different communities elected by their people -- not one of them wanted us to pull out precipitately. All of them wanted us to stick with it and see the job done."

Bush makes the complementary error:

No question that the Iraq war has created a sense of consternation here in America. I mean, when you turn on your TV screen and see innocent people die, day in and day out, it affects the mentality of our country.

But here's what they're asking in America. They're asking, can we win? That's what they want to know. Do we have a strategy for victory?

More importantly, Bush, like Blair, is lying about what people think, in this case the American people. Every poll shows that the majority of American people want the troops brought home on some reasonable time scale, "victory" or no victory. When the troops are coming home is what's on their mind, not "what is our strategy?"

While I'm on the press conference, I will note just one more thing. I wrote last December:

Has anyone else noticed that there are now allegedly 200,000 Iraqi troops "standing up," and not a single American soldier (not one!) has been "stood down" as a result? What are these Iraqi troops anyway, neutrinos?

But the fact is, you have been standing up Iraqi forces in great numbers. The administration says you have hundreds of thousand trained and equipped, tens of thousand leading the fight. And yet, during the same period they've been standing up there has not been a substantial decrease in U.S. and coalition forces. So what does that tell us about how meaningful the figures are on Iraqi troops? And what does that tell us about a potential for a draw-down?

This series of photos spans a full two minutes (compressed in the film to one minute) in the life of a Western Gull, and my life as well, filmed at Moss Landing State Beach in Moss Landing, California. It was a fascinating two minutes. The gull had a small fish in its mouth. I don't know if this gull was uncoordinated, or if this fish was just too big for a gull. It didn't look that big. But for at least two minutes (I left; the gull was still going strong!), the gull picks up the fish, drops it, tries to swallow it, drops it, picks it up, drops it, and on and on. Curiously enougly, neither the other gull who appears in some of the pictures, nor the Brant (small geese with a white neck line) ever attempted to steal the fish from the gull. There were some close approaches, but none ever came close to an attempted theft.

Incidentally, there was a soundtrack on the movie I made, but for some reason it doesn't play when I watch the video as I uploaded it to YouTube. Not sure why. No matter, it was just some simple music overlaid on the photos.

Bad birdwatching. A nice relief from the stress of daily life and politics.

The government's political opposition, a group increasingly relegated to the sidelines of Venezuelan public life, sees the university as a thinly disguised propaganda factory that takes advantage of the country's most vulnerable citizens.

Somehow I suspect there are plenty of people growing up in poverty in the United States (not to mention in practically every other country in the world) would just love to be "taken advantage of" like that.

Orchard destruction is a routine practice in Palestine and Iraq, and I haven't heard a word of criticism of those practices in the Western corporate media. Indeed, the whole situation would be laughable were it not so tragic for those involved.

And don't even ask about the destruction of Vietnamese farms and forests by the U.S. application of Agent Orange. I'm sure that dwarfs Hussein's destruction of farmland in Dujail by many orders of magnitude.

For another way to look at this, 390 square miles is just a little smaller than a square 20 miles on each side. That's a large area! If you had a huge bulldozer with a blade 20 feet wide, you would have to drive it 20 miles, then turn around, and drive back 20 miles, and keep repeating that until you had driven 20 miles more than 5000 times! At 5 mph, it would take you 880 days, working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to complete the job. What kind of speed you could maintain while you were knocking down trees along the way I really don't know. But, even with many bulldozers, that's one heck of a job.

Update: Decided to throw another data point on the fire. Central Park in New York, something many people are familiar with, contains 843 acres. That makes the alleged area razed in Dujail just under 300 times more than the size of Central Park! Imagine what it would take just to bulldoze all the trees in Central Park! On second thought, don't imagine it, it's too horrible a thought.

The 70-year-old Aziz, a former foreign minister and deputy prime minister, took the stand wearing checkered pajamas and looking pale. Aziz, who is in U.S. custody, has complained of health problems and his family has been pressing for him to be released temporarily for medical treatment.

"He looked like he had turned 80," his wife, Violette, told The Times [That's The Times of London, by the way; the U.S. media doesn't cover stories like this]. "He was frail and too tired to walk, even inside the small meeting room. He had to lean against his American military escort to move a step down.

"Much of his thick hair and moustache had shed and greyed," she added, tears running down her cheeks.

She said that he had lost more than 30lb (14kg). Doctors had pulled out most of his decaying teeth to make way for dentures. He was taking more than a dozen pills a day to control high blood pressure, diabetes and heart problems.

As for today's testimony in the Dujail case, the broadcast media provided little detail, but buried in some of the print coverage was this information:

He turned the accusations around, saying members of the Shiite Dawa Party--which carried out the shooting attack on Saddam--should be put on trial. He pointed to Dawa leaders who, since Saddam's fall, have become leaders of Iraq's first elected governments: current prime minister Nouri al-Maliki and his predecessor, Ibrahim al-Jaafari.

Speaking in a hoarse voice, he said the Dujail attack was "part of a series of attacks and assassination attempts by this group (Dawa), including against me." He said that in 1980, Dawa activists threw a grenade at him as he visited a Baghdad university, killing civilians around him.

"I'm a victim of a criminal act conducted by this party, which is in power right now. So put it on trial. Its leader was the prime minister and his deputy is the prime minister right now and they killed innocent Iraqis in 1980," he said.

Since we're talking about Prime Minister al-Maliki, I'll close with today's other news: al-Maliki "said Wednesday he believed Iraqi forces were capable of taking over security around the country within 18 months." An interesting assertion considering it took five months to simply form a "government," one which still lacks an actual defense or interior minister, the two most important positions when it comes to "taking over security." And also not to mention (ok, I'm going to mention it) something I've mentioned many times before--the chances that security in Iraq could be established without the use of planes and tanks is nil, and the chances that the U.S. government is going to give Iraq control of planes and tanks is also nil.

While we're visiting Lenin's Tomb, there's also a worthwhile dissection of the recent attempt to smear Iran for having allegedly passed a law requiring Jews and others to wear distinctive insignia.

Pigeon Guillemot, photographed outside the Monterey Aquarium, Monterey, California

This picture doesn't have the "photographic" quality of the White-crowned Sparrow photo below -- composition not as interesting, wings a little blurred because I'm not good enough to turn off "Auto" mode and set the speed and F-stop manually. But it tells a story and leads into the rest of this post. The Pigeon Guillemots, seen in the inset sitting on a rock, aren't the flashiest birds in the world, although with the white patches on their wings and their very red feet contrasting with their coal-black bodies, they are hardly unattractive or even drab. They aren't common, at least in places where most people (including myself) frequent; indeed, these birds may have been "lifers" for me -- my first sighting of the bird (I actually don't think so, but since I don't keep records of these things, I can't be sure). But the reason I like this picture, and the experience of seeing these birds, has nothing to do with their appearance or their scarcity. It has to do with the way they, like many similar heavy-bodied seabirds, "run" across the water in order to take flight, leaving "footsteps" in their wake. It's a small thing, clearly, but one which never ceases to delight me.

Which brings me to the book review. Talk about serendipity. I actually stopped in a bike shop to look for a dog (don't ask!), and while there, wandered into a nearby garden/gift shop. And as such shops often do, scattered amongst the knickknacks were a variety of books on random topics, presumably ones which caught the fancy of the shop owner and which were presumed to catch the fancy of shoppers. And there, in the garden shop by the bike shop, I found How to Be a (Bad) Birdwatcher, by Simon Barnes, of all things the chief sportswriter for The Times on London, but also a writer on birds and other natural history subjects. And this short (only 220 5"x7" pages) book turned out to be a real find, a page-turner and certainly among the most readable and worthwhile books on birds or natural history I've ever read. I couldn't recommend it more highly.

And how does this relate to the picture above? Because the thesis of the book, encapsulated in the phrase "I don't go birdwatching. I am birdwatching," is that you don't have to be able to distinguish a Western Sandpiper from a Least Sandpiper, or a Cordilleran Flycatcher from an Olive-sided Flycatcher, in order to appreciate birds, or nature in general. You don't have to qualify as a "birdwatcher," or a "birder," and certainly not as a "twitcher" (someone who runs, drives, or even flies off at a moment's notice when a rare bird is sighted) to appreciate birds. You simply have to appreciate them -- the color, the sounds, or, as in the picture above, the motion (and the color).

The book does actually qualify as "Birdwatching 101," as, chapter by chapter, Barnes leads you on from that starting point, through the use of field guides, binoculars, and audio tapes. Then he moves on to natural history, and understanding the value of place (where birds congregate and why) and time (breeding, migration). But all of this is done in a conversational style quite unlike any other similar book I've ever seen. It's all intermingled with stories of Barnes' life, his relationship with his father, and so on. And, even while covering a wide range of topics and making the reader appreciate how one's appreciation for birds can be enhanced by greater understanding, he never strays far from his thesis that being simply a "bad" birdwatcher is plenty reward in and of itself.

Throughout the book, and one of the reasons I recommend it so highly, are general observations on natural history. Here's an example which bears directly (in my view) on the subject of "intelligent design," something I've written about before:

"One tentative count [of the number of species in the world], from the great scientist and thinker Edward O. Wilson, comes up with the number 1,032,000. Of these, only 4,000, including ourselves, are mammals, with another 10,000 or so birds and a further 28,000 other backboned animals. There are 12,000 different species of nematode worms. A cake diagram [I assume that's British for pie chart] shows that almost three-quarters of all living animal species are arthropods--that is to say, animals with jointed appendages and usually an external skeleton. Most of these are insects. That includes 98,000 flies, 112,000 butterflies and moths, and a whopping 290,000 beetles. That prodigious number gave rise to one of the most famous throwaway lines in the history of science. J.B.S. Haldane, another great scientist, was asked by his theological colleagues what, after a lifelong study of creatures, he could assume about their creator. He replied: 'An inordinate fondness for beetles.'"

"Watching birds is one way of understanding this revolution in thought [evolution, which started with Charles Darwin's interest in those very same beetles]. Understanding that evolution is not a tree with a bottom, a middle, and a top, but a bush with a million twigs. Every twig is equally valid, equally important. Every different kind of bird we see is one of those twigs; every bird is another solution to the problem of life [surviving and reproducing]."

"Liking birds is not just a nice thing to do. To look at a bird and feel good about it is a violent revolutonary act. To put out peanuts is an act of insurrection. It is an act that demands a revolution in political thought, for it is quite obvious that conservation is far, far too low on the political agenda...The environment ought to be right at the top of the political agenda, because 100 percent of us live in it."

So why, you may ask, am I a political (non-electoral, but definitely political) activist and not an environmental activist? Two reasons. First, politics--the host of issues I cover in this blog, like war, Cuba, Palestine, etc., as well as some that I don't, like abortion just to name one--is what interests me, and you really have to follow your gut on things like this. Activism is voluntary, and it's obvious that you will work the hardest on things that interest you. And second, I am convinced that, whatever the mediocre or even dismal environmental record of the Soviet Union and China, that at bottom it is capitalism and its insatiable desire for expansion and profit which is the ultimate threat to the environment (not to mention the very concrete damage to the environment caused by war which is itself by and large a product of imperialism). And so by working to replace capitalism with a system which is driven by the desire to satisfy human needs rather than by generating profit, I am also working on behalf of the environment.

But, you might say, "human needs" could be opposed to the needs of the environment. Which brings us back again to Barnes' book. Because Barnes does an excellent job of explaining the interconnectedness of humanity with nature, and, in so doing, demonstrating how "environmental needs" are "human needs." There may, naturally, be short-term conflicts where some particular human need does come up against what's good for the environment. But in the long-term, they must be in harmony. Survival of our own species, if not the planet, depends on it.

The relationship of the U.S., Israel, and Palestine was an important story in the news today thanks to the visit of Ehud Olmert. The inability of the American people to understand the full scope of that relationship, and its consequences for Mariyah Amin and so many like her, is based in part on the kind of media coverage discussed above. And the fact that Mariyah's story is so poignant, and yet is unheard, tells you that the nature of American media coverage is no mere accident.

"Indeed, the government, Sunday, decided to spend 50 million shekels buying medical equipment -- 50 million shekels, about $11 million -- for the time being, to buy medical equipment and drugs needed for the hospitals in Gaza. And as I said during the Cabinet meeting, we will spend any amount of money needed in order to save lives of innocent Palestinians suffering from the indifference of their government."

As for the idea that the Palestinians who are already dying due to lack of drugs are doing so due to the "indifference of their government," perhaps Mr. Olmert will explain why this crisis erupted precisely in response to Israel's withholding of Palestinian funds. Perhaps he might also explain why he thinks that those innocent Palestinians that he claims to care so much about are expendable when they happen to be driving in a car near the target of an Israeli missile assassination.

According to Vause, there have been eight fatalities from the Hamas-Fatah infighting. According to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, there have been 25 Palestinian deaths this month, and 98 serious injuries. Those 123 Palestinian casualties of Israeli attacks, like the Amin family, weren't even worth a mention on CNN. We wouldn't want to trouble the minds of Americans with the thought that their (our) tax dollars are being used to massacre people not just in Iraq and Afghanistan, but in Palestine as well.

The Voice of America's bureau in Baghdad has been closed for the past six months, ever since the government-funded agency withdrew its only reporter in Iraq after she was fired upon in an ambush and her security guard was later killed.

Asked why VOA has not sent another reporter to Iraq, [VOA reporter Alisha] Ryu said, "They didn't have any volunteers to replace me."

Despite this, let me just add that VOA is far from the most biased news source out there.

White-crowned Sparrow, coastal path, Carmel, California

The Beastie Boys fought for the right to party. I fight for the right of everyone in the world to enjoy its beauty and wonders.

"Meddling in other elections is -- to achieve a short-term objective is not in the interests of the neighborhood."

- George W. Bush, casting a stone at Hugo Chavez

By the way, you might wonder what Bush means by "short-term objectives." He doesn't say. But I'd speculate that what he means is that, in the long term, in his view, capitalism and "Pax Americana" are fated to rule the entire world, so that any gains for the left in Latin America, and anything Hugo Chavez or anyone else does to encourage those gains, are strictly "short-term" affairs.

I'll return to the "humor" part of this post with the rest of Bush's answer to the question:

"I'm going to remind our allies and friends in the neighborhood that the United States of America stands for justice; that when we see poverty, we care about it and we do something about it; that we care for good -- we stand for good health care."

U.S. planes attack Taliban
Several civilians killed and wounded, Governor says

But why do I call it a "massacre"? Here's something I wrote last year on the subject, on the occasion of the U.S. bombing of an Iraqi wedding party:

Perhaps the most famous "massacre" on American territory, the Boston Massacre, involved the killing of five men by British soldiers. The equally famous St. Valentine's Day Massacre involved the killing of seven men. What makes all three of these events a "massacre" is their one-sided nature; the fact that the people killed were not fighting back, but were simply gunned down in cold blood.

And here in Kandahar we have the same story repeating itself. The U.S. military says, "The purpose of this operation was to detain individuals suspected of terrorist and anti-Afghanistan activities." But it's kind of hard to "detain" people when you are dropping bombs on them from the air. The U.S. military also says, "These individuals were active members of the Taliban network and have conducted attacks against coalition and Afghan forces as well as civilians" (note how the word "suspected" suddenly disappears; between the last sentence and this one the individuals went from being "suspected" of certain activities to having "conducted attacks," no question about it). And to top it off, this was a night-time operation. The assertion that, even with the best night-vision goggles, a pilot could identify "individuals" is implausible to put it mildly.

Incidentally, one of the villagers says that "when the bombing started, the Taliban were desperately trying to take shelter and were not trying to fight." Which seems plausible considering the no doubt inferior, if not total lack of night-fighting capability on the part of these alleged Taliban, not to mention their probable lack of anti-aircraft weapons. So "massacre" -- the murder of a group of people who were not in the process of fighting back -- is definitely the right word.

Despite the impression one could get from reading the American press, the words "al Qaeda" and "Taliban" are not interchangeable. The Taliban were a fundamentalist religious group which ruled Afghanistan. To what extent they were "aiding" al Qaeda or "shielding" al Qaeda is not really known. What is known is that the United States, instead of indicting Osama bin Laden and demanding his extradition according to international law, simply issued an ultimatum to the Taliban to "turn over" bin Laden, with the assumption that they could even if they would (notice that it hasn't proved possible for the U.S. despite vastly superior firepower, manpower, and mobility to the Taliban government). When the Taliban refused the arrogant, illegal request of the United States, the U.S. invaded and overthrew their government.

To shed light on the nature of the U.S. action (which is more or less identical in concept to the Israeli missile assassination described two posts below this one), let me repeat an analogy I've used before, though possibly not in a post on this blog (I can't find it if I did). Suppose a convicted mass murderer, someone who had killed dozens of people and actually been convicted of the crime and sentenced to death, escaped from prison. He runs into a house. Do the police have the right to bomb the house, and then, like the U.S. military did in this case (and countless other similar cases), claim that the death of the innocent victims in that house was the fault of the criminal who ran into their house? What if he ran into a shopping center? Do they have the right to bomb the shopping center? I'm sure we're all glad we don't live in a country where such things would be acceptable. I'm equally sure the Afghan people feel the same way. The deliberate murder of innocent people, even in the course of targeting people who are known to be guilty, is murder.

Palestinian schoolchildren from the West Bank village of Umm Tubba were assaulted Sunday morning by settlers who approached them from a community called Ma'on ranch, Palestinians said.

Three soldiers and an army jeep escorted the children, but the Palestinians say that the soldiers did nothing to stop the settlers from assaulting the children.

And, while I'm on the subject, in case you missed them while I was away, two very worthwhile articles from last week to read, both on CounterPunch: Flashpoints' Nora Barrows-Friedman on the Nakba and the necessity for Americans, and American Jews in particular, to protest the continuing oppression of the Palestinians, and Jonathan Cook on the marriage ban just approved by the Israeli Supreme Court and what it says about the racist nature of the Israeli state.

The small figure of Mariyah Amin lies in intensive care in a Gaza City hospital. A fragment of shrapnel from an Israeli rocket has severed her spinal cord, and she will never move her arms or legs again.

In fact Mariyah will never even breathe again - at least not on her own. Tubes link her to an artificial respirator, and every few seconds it fills her lungs. This is how it will have to be for the rest of her life - and she is only three years old.

Just a day earlier, Mariyah had been on her way across Gaza City to visit her auntie. Her whole family was in the car with her. They were caught in the blast when the Israeli air force struck at a nearby vehicle carrying an Islamic Jihad militant.

Mariyah was not the only casualty. Her five-year-old brother, Mohannad, her mother, Naimeh, and her grandmother, Hannan, are all dead.

The Israeli airstrike later on Saturday killed Muhammad Dahdouh, 32, a commander of Islamic Jihad who the Israeli Army said was responsible for launching rockets into Israel. The Israelis fired at least two missiles, which also killed two women and a child who were traveling in a car close to Mr. Dahdouh's pickup truck. The child was identified by Palestinians as Fadi Amman, 4, and his mother as Hanan Amman, 29. Five people were wounded.

And how was it that Mohannad (Fadi?), Naimeh, and Hannan were killed, and Mariyah's life destroyed? It's practically inexplicable, if you believe the Israeli military:

Air force chief Eliezer Shkedi said that "superhuman efforts" were made to avoid civilian casualties.

"We acted only after waiting a long time for the right occasion," he told a press conference.

"People died because mistakes were made, and because safety was exchanged for efficiency and reduced cost."

- Raymond Seed, a professor of engineering at UC-Berkeley and the chief author of a report on the failure of the levees during Hurricane Katrina

"People before profits" is not just a slogan. It's an imperative.

"The United States is committed to advancing the values that sustain liberty and helping establish a just and peaceful government in Cuba."

- George W. Bush, in a statement on the 104th anniversary of Cuban independence

As for the "sustaining liberty" part, I'm sure the hundreds of legally innocent people being imprisoned and tortured by the United States within the boundaries of Cuba would take issue with that alleged "committment" on the part of the United States.

The second is even more interesting. It's a MediaLens article whose principle thrust is to dissect, with dozens of examples, the way the media describes, e.g., George Bush as "U.S. President George Bush" while describing, e.g., Hugo Chavez as "controversial left-wing president Hugo Chavez." The article really does a good job demonstrating how the public's perceptions of people such as Chavez or Evo Morales are shaped by such subtle media clues.

Almost as an aside from the main point of the article, in drawing an analogy to an article which talks about the "eclectic group of supporters" who greeted Chavez in England (the usual "reminiscent of the 60's line"), the authors recall similar descriptions of a 2002 antiwar demonstration. And then they write this, which is something we all must never forget, as we come to accept as "normal" such trivialization and minimization of the demonstrations in which so many of us take part (or help organize):

Hidden far out of sight are the life and death issues motivating such protests - in 2002 the marchers were, after all, attempting to prevent a war that has since killed and mutilated hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians. It is not inconceivable that if British and American journalists like Ferguson had emphasised the desperate importance and urgency of the anti-war protests, rather than sneering at them, those civilians might still be alive today.

• In 2003, Forbes estimated Castro's "wealth" at $110 million
• In 2005, $550 million
• And in 2006, $900 million!!!

For the record, Fidel claims, and there isn't the slightest evidence to the contrary, that his net worth is nil. Here are the kind of "facts" Forbes includes in its "analysis": "Travels exclusively in a convoy of black Mercedes-Benzes. Sold state-owned Havana Club rum to French liquor giant Pernod Ricard for $50 million in 1993." Yes, I'm sure he does travel in nice cars. Which are owned by the state, just like the ones George Bush travels in (different state). Pernod did pay for Havana Club, although without further investigation, I'm pretty sure that was for the rights to produce and sell the product overseas, not for Havana Club itself. But in any case, whatever they paid went, naturally, straight to the Cuban treasury, not to some secret Swiss bank account.

I'd say "you'd think they could do better," but the fact is, they can't. That's as "good" as the slander they can come up with. But no matter, because now the corporate media are dutifully repeating, without elaboration (which would be embarassing), that Fidel Castro is "worth" $900 million. After all, Forbes says so.

Starting briefly with Fidel's early childhood (including an interview with one of his teachers), it moves on to the student protests in Havana, the Batista coup, the attack on the Moncada, the landing of the Granma, the proclamation of socialism in Cuba, the Bay of Pigs, and on and on, all the way through the saga of Elian Gonzalez and the visit of the Pope to Cuba (the film was made in 2001). Interspersed throughout are interviews with various people, including Alice Walker, Harry Belafonte, and Wayne Smith.

One of the most smile-inducing sections is footage showing Fidel visiting a series of countries in Latin America and Africa. Fidel is, by virtue of what he and Cuba have accomplished, admired all over the world, and the brief shots of huge, adoring crowds in country after country in close proximity to Fidel form quite a contrast with politicians from imperialist countries like George Bush who need security even to speak before hand-picked friendly crowds in their own countries.

I'll be watching it again, anytime I'm in need of a dose of inspiration. Join me (in a virtual way). It'll be well worth the 90 minutes of your time. And don't forget to watch for the dove (I'll say no more).

Update: A lengthier review of the film here for those who want to learn more.

Prior to the Algerian war, terror--that is, the deliberate slaughter of civilians--had been mostly a tactic employed by what are sometimes called "advanced nations." In World War II, the Germans did it--followed in short order by the British and the Americans. After the French massacred Algerians by shooting them through the bars of the jails, insurgents placed bombs in cafés, clubs and ocean resorts.
 
It wasn't long before Frenchmen, fighting in a war they had no use for, were exacting atrocities on the other side. Mr. Morgan tells of an incident that, one suspects, has probably been played out in Iraq more than once these past three years:
 
"The fellagha (insurgent) had been strung up with his wrists tied over a horizontal beam, so that his feet didn't touch the ground. He wore a khaki uniform without rank or insignia. His coarse black hair was cut short, and he had a bushy beard and a mustache. His gaze was more defiant than fearful.
 
"I asked him his name, but he did not reply. 'Ask him the location of his base camp,' Lastours (Mr. Morgan's commanding office) said. I asked him, and he did not reply.
 
"'Ask him a bit more forcefully,' Lastours said.
 
"I punched him hard in the stomach.

"'Hakarabi. Makache,' the man said. 'I swear I don't know.' I hit him again. 'Hakarabi. Makache.' Then something happened to me. I started to lose it. I was in an altered state, where my mental processes broke down. It was as if the scene had been rehearsed and choreographed. My role was to punch him, and his role was to repeat his line. This went on for about two minutes, and then he stopped repeating.
 
"Lastours felt his pulse and said, 'He's dead. And he didn't talk.'
 
"I was horrified by what I had done. I had killed a defenseless man. I had not intended to kill him, but that didn't make him any less dead.
 
"'Place me under arrest,' I said.
 
"'Don't be ridiculous,' Lastours said. 'When you go to the hamam [steam bath], you sweat, and in war there are losses. It's the logic of things. I'll find a couple of men to bury him.'"

Apart from the ubiquitous teachers' and public employees' unions, the official sponsors of this year's convention of the Party of the Little Guy included: Verizon, AT&T, Health Net, Mercury Insurance and a handful of Indian gambling tribes. Among them are the two most virulently anti-labor tribes in the state: the Morongos and the Agua Caliente. The latter, known among its critics as the Wal-Mart tribe, has been spending bundles to defeat an organizing drive by the hotel workers union while simultaneously forcing much of its low-wage work force to seek public assistance for health care. The tribe, however, "sponsors" a whole team of Democratic pols with it bottomless millions in political contributions.

The Speaker of the California Assembly, Fabian Nuñez, who had been prominently scheduled on the podium roster (his name was also printed boldly on the plastic pouch that held the delegates' credentials around their necks), turned out to be a no-show. He was tied up a few hours southwest of the convention site at the ultra-posh Pebble Beach golf resort, where he was being feted by all the little guys from AT&T.

Speaker Nuñez has been steadfastly defending the legislative interests of the telecommunications giant, which stands to make billions in a regulatory fight with the cable industry.

At the podium, decked out in one of his signature Brioni suits, the charismatic [Willie] Brown [former mayor of San Francisco and Assembly Speaker] lapped up the adulatory applause and humbly described himself as serving nowadays as nothing more than a simple "talk-show host." He forgot to mention that his day job is that of corporate lobbyist.

During last fall's special-election cycle in California, Brown pocketed several hundred thousand dollars as a strategist for Big Pharma--hired to head off a ballot prop that would have provided cheaper prescription drugs.

Valley Oak, photographed in the hills above Stanford University

Four Marines drowned when their tank rolled off a bridge and plunged into a canal, the military said Friday, adding that while the accident occurred in a Sunni insurgent stronghold, it was not the result of an enemy action.

The accident was under investigation, and the military said no other information was immediately available, including what kind of operation the Marines were taking part in and whether fighting with insurgents was under way in the area at that time.

"There's been a three-year period since our entry into Iraq."

Fry also used another delightful phrase, which we first heard in what I thought was a Freudian slip from Scott McClellan last October, referring to "standing up" the Iraqi government. Not to the Iraqi government "standing up," mind you, but the other way around. As then, this scene of the fictional town of Rock Ridge comes to mind:

And, as another not so amusing side note, in that post from last October, I asked this question: "Has anyone else noticed that there are now allegedly 200,000 Iraqi troops 'standing up,' and not a single American soldier (not one!) has been 'stood down' as a result?" I didn't have the VCR going, but if memory serves, the figure quoted by Lt. Gen. Fry today was 130,000 Iraqi troops. At that rate, troops will indeed be out of Iraq by 2007...the Iraqi troops.

Senate passes tax-relief bill to ease burden
on investors and above-average earners

Congressional Republicans and Democrats alike demanded answers from the Bush administration on Thursday about a report that the National Security Agency had collected records of millions of domestic phone calls.

Rep. John Murtha, a Vietnam veteran first elected in the anti-war fever of 1974, says American troops will be brought home from Iraq by 2007.

Second, what does "by 2007" mean? To me it means by the end of December, 2006--7 1/2 months from now. Murtha says "Either President Bush will bow to public opinion or Democrats will have won control of the House of Representatives and increased pressure on the White House." But the election isn't until November, so Murtha's theory would mean that within a month of the Democrats winning control of the House, they would have forced Bush to pull out troops; considering that they have already voted the money to keep the troops there past that time, that would be rather difficult to do.

Third, because the implication that Democrats as a whole are somehow pushing for, or even support, withdrawal from Iraq, is simply untrue.

And finally, there's the subtle distinction between "American troops will be brought home" and "all American troops will be brought home," which even Murtha doesn't advocate. Do 3,000 count? 30,000? For sure neither of those numbers will make much difference to the Iraqi people, nor to the families of the American troops who continue to be killed and wounded.

Other than that, you can believe every word. Murtha is a Vietnam vet, and was first elected to Congress in 1974. :-)

But a possible sentence of three years in jail wasn't enough for the U.S. injustice system. Oh no.

Judge Timothy McGinty forcibly incarcerated Carol Fisher in the psych unit of the Cuyahoga County Jail in downtown Cleveland, where she now sits for an indefinite period of time.

In a hastily called hearing yesterday, Judge McGinty made a highly unusual and outrageous decision to force Carol to undergo a state psychological exam as part of her pre-sentencing investigation. From the very start of Carol's case, the judge has openly said that she must have mental problems for resisting an unlawful and brutal encounter with Cleveland Heights police. He went even further in yesterday's hearing, saying that her opposition to the Bush regime makes her "delusional."

The small courtroom on the 21st floor of the Justice Center was ringed with 5 armed court bailiffs. McGinty started off the hearing by making Carol stand up and had one of her attorneys read her t-shirt, which said: "Wanted for Illegally Crossing Borders: The Bush Regime"

"If you are going to insist that crossing borders illegally is a crime which cannot be tolerated, how about George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice (and yes, Colin Powell) and the rest of that gang, with their highly illegal, and violent, 'crossing of the border'-into Iraq, among other places?!"

McGinty then said this was proof of her delusion! He also kept saying Carol "wants" to go to jail, and that she has a "martyr complex." When Carol tried to explain why she wouldn't take this test, the judge's only response was, "I do not negotiate with felons."

On the phone this morning, Carol Fisher stated that, in addition to sending her to the psych unit, McGinty has also put her on "suicide watch"! They have taken away her eyeglasses. And if she refuses the psych exam, she will be forcibly sent to North Coast Mental Institute for a 20 day evaluation.

Two major rabbinic figures will be travelling to the U.S. on Sunday aboard El Al Airlines, who have made special arrangements to cater to the rabbis' needs.

In accordance with arrangements made for the two men, the plane will have no female flight attendants. The rabbis bought out all the first class tickets in order to avoid seeing businesswomen on the flight. Only men will care for the passengers.

• Bush Doesn't Confirm NSA Data Collection
• Bush denies report of spying on Americans
• Bush denies spying infringes on privacy

I haven't seen anyone comment on the overall concept, if we can call it that. The USA Today article claimed that "the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity." What on earth could that mean? Are they looking for a sudden influx of calls to Hackensack, NJ to alert them to the fact that there is a terrorist cell in Hackensack? Is the volume of phone calls made by a handful of terrorists in a country of 300 million people really going to cause the slightest statistical perturbation in phone records, compared not just to the latest American Idol vote but to practically anything else? And even if that were true, could they really be analyzing such data in real-time rather than days, weeks, or months later, when any use of it in "detecting terrorist activity" would be useless?

The whole story is dubious in the extreme.

The application in Cuba of minimum-access surgery for cochlear implants has enabled 53 children –- 18 deaf-mutes and 35 deaf –- to have partial hearing, providing them with a means of communication that empowers their development and improves their quality of life.

Experts noted that this is the largest group of deaf-mute children with implants in the world.

1. A ban on arms-related exports and sales.
2. Controls over exports of dual-use items, requiring 30-day Congressional notification for goods or services that could significantly enhance the terrorist-list country's military capability or ability to support terrorism.
3. Prohibitions on economic assistance.
4. Imposition of miscellaneous financial and other restrictions, including:
• Requiring the United States to oppose loans by the World Bank and other international financial institutions;
• Lifting diplomatic immunity to allow families of terrorist victims to file civil lawsuits in U.S. courts;
• Denying companies and individuals tax credits for income earned in terrorist-listed countries;
• Denial of duty-free treatment of goods exported to the United States;
• Authority to prohibit any U.S. citizen from engaging in a financial transaction with a terrorist-list government without a Treasury Department license; and
• Prohibition of Defense Department contracts above $100,000 with companies controlled by terrorist-list states.

In a response to the U.S. State Department's most recent such designation, former U.S. "pseudo-ambassador" to Cuba Wayne Smith demolishes the absurd U.S. claims. I'll just reproduce his conclusion, which leads the article; you can read the article for yourself for the detailed analysis:

The State Department's annual report on "State Sponsors of Terrorism," issued on April 28 of 2006, is a complete dud. It presents not a shred of evidence to confirm that Cuba is in fact a terrorist state: nothing!

Here's one point that Smith missed: far from "repeatedly providing support for acts of international terrorism," as required by the law, Cuba has vigorously opposed acts of international terrorism, and the State Department report admits as much!

"Cuba...has publicly condemned various U.S. policies and actions."

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.

"It's the largest database ever assembled in the world," said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA's activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency's goal is "to create a database of every call ever made" within the nation's borders, this person added.

For the customers of these companies, it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made -- across town or across the country -- to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others.

"In media charters, correct dissemination of information and honest reporting of a story are established tenets. I express my deep regret about the disregard shown by certain Western media for these principles."

Gloom At A Time Of Growth
Many Workers Feel Left Out Of Recent Spurt In Economy
The U.S. economy is strong these days when measured by macro-statistics, but sluggish wage growth, along with rising gasoline prices and interest rates are overshadowing the good economic news in the minds of most Americans.

"The gap between the economy from 40,000 feet and on the ground level just seems to get wider with every new report,'' said Jared Bernstein, chief economist for the liberal Economy Policy Institute in Washington.

The same week that the robust GDP numbers came out, the government also reported that worker compensation -- pay and benefits -- rose in the year's first quarter at an annual rate of only 2.4 percent, the slowest rate in seven years. That figure, Bernstein said, suggests that workers' wages aren't keeping pace with wage gains during past economic expansions, or even with inflation, which rose by 3.4 percent over the year ending in March as measured by the consumer price index.

Deadly Tracks, Few Fixes Ahead
Caltrain Lacks Money To Cut High Death Toll

Just two days ago, a major story emerged: because of the lack of a few hundred million dollars, the U.N. is cutting in half the food rations of the people in Darfur.

The death of four residents in the Gaza Strip signals that the Palestine health system is about to collapse, said the Israeli organization Doctors for Human Rights.

The DHR blames the US, the EU and Israel for the freezing of Palestinian National Authority funds since March, adding that the health network collapse means a short-term death for thousands.

Cancer patients cut off from chemotherapy since April will suffer the most although vaccine, lab reagents and medical acquisitions are limited along with emergency services, added the DHR.

"In media charters, correct dissemination of information and honest reporting of a story are established tenets. I express my deep regret about the disregard shown by certain Western media for these principles."

"If billions of dollars spent on security, military campaigns and troop movement were instead spent on investment and assistance for poor countries, promotion of health, combating different diseases, education and improvement of mental and physical fitness, assistance to the victims of natural disasters, creation of employment opportunities and production, development projects and poverty alleviation, establishment of peace, mediation between disputing states and distinguishing the flames of racial, ethnic and other conflicts were would the world be today? Would not your government, and people be justifiably proud? Would not your administration's political and economic standing have been stronger? And I am most sorry to say, would there have been an ever increasing global hatred of the American governments?"

"But my main contention--which I am hoping you will agree to some of it--is: Those in power have specific time in office, and do not rule indefinitely, but their names will be recorded in history and will be constantly judged in the immediate and distant futures. The people will scrutinize our presidencies.

Did we manage to bring peace, security and prosperity for the people or insecurity and unemployment? Did we intend to establish justice, or just supported especial interest groups, and by forcing many people to live in poverty and hardship, made a few people rich and powerful--thus trading the approval of the people and the Almighty with theirs'? Did we defend the rights of the underprivileged or ignore them? Did we defend the rights of all people around the world or imposed wars on them, interfered illegally in their affairs, established hellish prisons and incarcerated some of them? Did we bring the world peace and security or raised the specter of intimidation and threats? Did we tell the truth to our nation and others around the world or presented an inverted version of it? Were we on the side of people or the occupiers and oppressors? Did our administration set out to promote rational behaviour, logic, ethics, peace, fulfilling obligations, justice, service to the people, prosperity, progress and respect for human dignity or the force of guns. Intimidation, insecurity, disregard for the people, delaying the progress and excellence of other nations, and trample on people's rights? And finally, they will judge us on whether we remained true to our oath of office--to serve the people, which is our main task, and the traditions of the prophets--or not?"

By the way, you might be wondering what the letter has to say about Iran's nuclear power program. This is it:

"Aside from the Middle Ages, in what other point in history has scientific and technical progress been a crime? Can the possibility of scientific achievements being utilised for military purposes be reason enough to oppose science and technology altogether? If such a supposition is true, then all scientific disciplines, including physics, chemistry, mathematics, medicine, engineering, etc. must be opposed."

[First posted 5/9, 8:41 a.m.; updated and bumped]

It's just one word in a article: "killed":

About 200,000 people have been killed in Darfur -- either by violence or by disease and famine -- since ethnic African rebels rose up in early 2003.

The other interesting comparison is that number, 200,000. I have no idea where it comes from, nor am I questioning it. But I'll just note that Iraq is a largely urban country with large cities, hospitals, morgues, etc., while Darfur is an almost entirely rural region of Sudan. It's curious that the media can quote authoritative figures for the numbers of people killed in Darfur, but don't have a clue how many people have been killed (or have died) in Iraq, isn't it?

The second half of the title of this post is a teaser. The article quoted above is a New York Times article, written by Lydia Polgreen, but appearing in the San Jose Mercury News. The article also appears in the New York Times itself. And the first 16 paragraphs are identical, the next three nearly so. Then the articles diverge, until we get to the way the Times phrases the sentence cited above:

Mr. Egeland visited Kalma in part because the situation here is emblematic of the conflict, which has raged for three years, killed 200,000 people and driven more than two million from their homes.

Update: I decided to do just a little research. Here's an interesting "fact sheet" you can find on the U.S. State Department's website. It appears to be the most recent thing they have; unfortunately, it's dated March 25, 2005. Interestingly, it uses the same "excess deaths" concept as the widely disparaged Johns Hopkins study in Iraq, and produces a result with wide variance: "63-146,000 'excess' deaths can be attributed to violence, disease, and malnutrition because of the conflict." It also claims that "wildly divergent death toll statistics, ranging from 70,000 to 400,000, result from applying partial data to larger, nonrepresentative populations over incompatible time periods." I can't find anything more recent that appears to qualify as actual data, rather than just claims. Nevertheless, even this one study from a year ago indicates that the "certainty" suggested by the New York Times' use of the figure "200,000" is surely not warranted.

No, of course not, he was "briefed" on it (a "briefing" that was so brief and unimportant that the New York Times doesn't even bother to mention it). Bush was on an important trip to Florida to make yet another political speech about the "fantastic opportunity" for seniors contained in the new prescription drug "benefit" for Medicare. You don't really think he had time during a 2 1/2 hour flight to read 18 whole pages, do you?

"There even are places where English completely disappears. Well in America, they haven't used it for years!" (from "Why Can't the English" from My Fair Lady). And when Americans use the word "diplomacy," they aren't actually speaking English, in which "diplomacy" has the same root as "diplomatic." No, in America, it comes out sounding more like "dictate" (or is that "diktat"?), as exemplified by this quote from Condoleezza Rice:

"Absence of communication isn't really the problem here. We and the international community have been very clear with the Iranians what they need to do."

Update: The text of the letter (no, I haven't read it yet. It wasn't addressed to me. :-) )

The thing about this issue, as illustrated in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer article on the subjects of Iraqi WMD and on Iraqi ties to al Qaeda, is that it demonstrates the one clear, incontrovertible lie that was told by practically everyone in the Administration, from Bush on down. And that was the lie of certainty. If George Bush, or Donald Rumsfeld, or Colin Powell, or Dick Cheney, or any of them had said, "We think that Iraq has stockpiles of WMD," it would be hard to prove that was a lie. Personally, I believe even that was a lie, as I have argued previously on multiple occasions (see below). But it would be hard to prove. But when they said that they knew Iraq had stockpiles of WMD, that went into the realm of absolute, provable lie. And that difference was no minor issue, no simple "slip" on the part of the warmongers. No, it was very much a deliberate choice.

Here's Rumsfeld, back in Sept. 2003, already trying to backtrack on that certainty:

"I said, 'We know they're in that area,' " referring to the weapons. "I should have said, 'I believe we're in that area. Our intelligence tells us they're in that area,' and that was our best judgment."

Here's something I wrote (in response to another Rumsfeld quote, naturally) back in February, 2004:

What has been proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is that the claims of certainty and "no doubt" by the Bush and Blair administrations were a complete and utter fabrication. And of course it is those claims on which the justification for "immediate threat requiring preemptive action" (in the realm of international law), or "just war" (in the realm of morality) rest.

While I'm at it, on the point that the administration didn't even really believe that Iraq had WMD, I'll reprint something I wrote in September, 2003:

If you did go to war because you thought there were WMD which might find their way into the hands of terrorists (the ostensible purpose for the war, since it was 100% clear that Iraq itself had no way of attacking the U.S. with any weapons at all), then you would have spent months preparing for an immediate, massive effort to seize them and prevent them from getting into the hands of terrorists. Instead, we saw a decidedly lackadaisical search, with known nuclear facilities left unguarded, teams not even ready to go for months after the fall of Baghdad, etc.

According to a new study from the National Education Association, a teachers union, half of new U.S. teachers are likely to quit within the first five years because of poor working conditions and low salaries.

Career appointees at the Department of Agriculture were stunned last week to receive e-mailed instructions that include Bush administration "talking points" -- saying things such as "President Bush has a clear strategy for victory in Iraq" -- in every speech they give for the department.

There's a sample introduction: "Several topics I'd like to talk about today -- Farm Bill, trade with Japan, WTO, avian flu . . . but before I do, let me touch on a subject people always ask about . . . progress in Iraq." See? Smooth as silk.

As Cuba Plans Offshore Wells, Some Want U.S. to Follow Suit

Yes, if I'm going to keep this up I really could use a longer lens (this is with a 10x lens). Not to mention a camera with a faster response, so I could actually get a picture of one "kiting" (that's where they hover in a stationary position in the air, wings flapping rapidly, while they scan the ground below looking for prey, as distinct from other similar birds like hawks and owls which glide around while hunting).

Alternative headline you haven't seen: "Stock market's average rate of return during last 5 years: zero. No longer lags behind mattress."

And why would the opposition pull out of the elections? Because all polls suggest they are going to be trounced in that election, and by pulling out, they will delegitimize the election. Not in the eyes of Venezuelans, of course, but in the eyes of the U.S. (more specifically, the U.S. ruling class), thus providing "justification" for further interference on the part of the U.S. (coups, blockades, invasions). In other words, such an act on the part of the opposition would be borderline treason.

And what did Chavez actually propose, or suggest he might propose, should such a thing happen? You can't find it anywhere in English as far as I can tell, but here it is in Spanish. The relevant paragraph is this one (my translation, with the assistance of PROMT):

The current Bolivarian Constitution of Venezuela, approved in 1999, allows reelection only one time. An eventual referendum might modify this condition.

P.S.: Not that Chavez is proposing a 25-year term, but what exactly is undemocratic about a 25-year term? Is there something magical about a 4-year term (American Presidents) or 6-year term (U.S. Senators, many Presidents including the Venezuelan President) that makes that "democratic"? How about eight years? Ten? Fifteen? When does a "democratic" term become an "undemocratic" one? Not that I support 25-year terms for anyone, mind you. Just askin'. I do think, by the way, that term limits of any kind are fundamentally undemocratic. People should have the right to choose whomever they want for an office. If that person has been in office for 25 years, but a majority still thinks he or she is the best person for the job, they should have the right to vote for that person.

P.P.S.: What is democratic is to make it far easier to recall an elected representative. If a person proves incompetent, or a crook, or flagrantly goes back on campaign promises, you shouldn't have to wait six years, or four years, or even two years to get that person out of office.

Here's one interesting article from the corporate media. In it, Knight-Ridder's Hannah Allam interviews Tehran's "fashionistas," models and clothes designers who actually concern themselves with Paris Hilton, Brad Pitt, and Christian Dior.

And here's yet another view from the socialist press. This one is a speech given by an Iranian who returned recently, after 25 years in the U.S., for a 25-day visit to Iran. Here's a taste of what he saw during his visit:

After more than 50 years of the Pahlavi Dynasty--father and son--that was ended by the 1979 Revolution, more than 50 percent of the Iranian families did not enjoy the taste of running water in their homes. This lack gave rise to a multitude of diseases, including diarrhea and trachoma. In our recent journey, I found out that throughout the entire country, including the most remote villages, families had running water at home and most homes are connected to the city sewer system.

The same with electricity: the streets of all cities and the main roads are brightly lit. The light poles of the electric lines run everywhere. Traveling along the highway between Esfahan and Shiraz, we were surprised to see workers with water trucks busily cleaning the dust and soot off the road signs and light reflectors to ensure safety of the travelers. What a change from 25 years ago!

Healthcare is provided to all children, pre-natal care to pregnant women and care to senior citizens, all at no cost. Teams of nurses and doctors and primary healthcare personnel regularly visit the rural clinics, ensuring that the local municipalities properly provide services.

Last, but not the least important, the government gives subsidies towards some of the essential food items, such as milk, rice and flour.

The most recent statistics show that in 2004-2005, some 15 million students are enrolled in the Iranian schools. Out of this total, 7.4 million were female, and 7.9 million were male.

According to statistics available for the year 2004, the level of enrollment in universities reached 2.1 million students, of whom 54 percent were women.

"I'm conservative right down to the bone, but I think that sometimes we have to do the right thing."

- Paul Palmer, Arizona border-town rancher, quoted in an article discussing the attitude of border ranchers towards illegal immigration.

Yesterday, the first of those rallies was held. An estimated 100 people showed up. So how did the Mercury News cover that minor event? By giving it front-page coverage, including a picture on the front page and two large ones on the inside continuation, where the article occupied more than half an additional page. Man, don't I wish every demonstration I had ever gone to of 100, or even of 1000, could get any coverage at all, nevertheless front-page coverage with three photos.

The U.S. delegation told the committee, the U.N.'s watchdog for a 22-year-old treaty forbidding prisoner abuse, that mistakes had occurred in the U.S. treatment of detainees in the war against terrorism and 29 detainees in U.S. facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan had died of what appeared to be abuse or other violations of U.S. law.

The only "mistake" the U.S. made was in letting the evidence get out publicly and getting caught. Everything else that happened was quite deliberate. It was no "mistake."

And while we're on the subject of Zarqawi, let's return to the Rumsfeld/McGovern contretemps. Rumsfeld claims (not for the first time, obviously) that the presence of Zarqawi in Baghdad during the prewar period was "bulletproof evidence of ties between al Qaeda and Iraq." But Zarqawi is in Iraq now. Does that provide "bulletproof evidence of ties between al Qaeda and the U.S. and its Iraqi puppets"? Rumsfeld also asserts, after McGovern points out that Zarqawi was actually in Kurdistan out of Hussein's control, that he was in Baghdad when he visited a hospital. I wonder if there is actual evidence for that. Remember, this is the same U.S. government which, back when it was talking about Zarqawi in a Baghdad hospital, was also claiming that Zarqawi only had one leg. Is that really grounds for confidence in their assertions?

And finally, just to add something else to the mix, which McGovern didn't have time to say, let's remember that it was only recently that Zarqawi claimed to "affiliate" with al Qaeda and call his group "al Qaeda in Iraq." He may well have qualified as a "terrorist" in March, 2003, but calling him "al Qaeda" is a definite stretch.

"The key to this lies in Iran's hands. If they give up the pursuit of nuclear weapons a lot of things are possible."

As per the usual way things go these days, the reporters questioning him during his press conference didn't bother with any followup questions to challenge this false claim. Nor did BBC World News, where I saw the film, follow it with even a ritual "Iran says it has no desire for nuclear weapons" disclaimer. Good job, media. [Note to readers: that's irony (or sarcasm, if you prefer) :-) ]

"It appears that there were not weapons of mass destruction there."

The hunt for Zarqawi sparked panic in Ramadi, the capital of the western province of Anbar, where residents believed that he filmed the video to bolster support for Iraq's insurgent movement and threaten its foes.

The rumor, based on background details in two scenes of the video, caused hundreds of people to flee east toward Baghdad, fearing that U.S. and Iraqi troops would level the city in order to kill or capture Zarqawi.

"About 170 families left Ramadi in the first four hours of the work day" after the video appeared, said Muhammed Rifat, the manager of the main bus station in the city. "It is like a tornado or a storm warning, and people are trying to avoid it and leave before it happens."

He said that he would leave, too, because he feared residents of Ramadi would face the same fate as those of Fallujah, a former headquarters for Zarqawi that was cordoned off and targeted during a massive U.S. offensive in 2004.

$71 billion more for war? No problem. $1 billion to save the planet? Geez, whaddya' think we are, made of money?

Reading that article reminded me of the conclusion I had seen in the press but forgotten -- that although $1 trillion is the estimated amount of "money that will need to be spent" (obviously dependent on assumptions about what will happen in the future!), it is not the total economic cost of the war (the human cost is another issue). The economic costs include the increase in the price of oil, the growth in the economy that would have occured had the $1 trillion been spent on other things rather than war ("It's hard to imagine any way of spending that money that would have a less positive impact on the U.S. economy [than spending it on war]," says Bilmes), and the economic value (not the emotional value) of the lost lives, for which the authors use a "standard figure" of $6 million per death.

Which brings us to the final point, which you won't find in the Harvard Magazine article, nor in any of the more limited press coverage I saw, but you will find in the article itself -- the cost estimate in this article is the cost to the United States only.

Nor have we included in this paper any of the costs borne directly by other countries, either directly (as a result of military expenditures) or indirectly (as a result of the increase in the price of oil.) Most importantly, we have not included the costs of the war to Iraq, either in terms of destruction of property (infrastructure, housing) or the loss of lives. Clearly, including these would increase the cost of the war substantially -- perhaps by an order of magnitude.

I can't claim to have read the paper seriously yet, it's 37 pages long, but it looks to be a valuable resource.

Speaking of valuable resources, on a completely different subject but in the same issue, a very interesting article entitled "Fueling our Future" about oil, coal, nuclear power, global warming, etc. Including some interesting pictures of what Miami and Manhattan will look like (or, more accurately, won't look like) under certain plausible scenarios of global warming.

Update: In re-reading this post, I realize I really need to add something I've written before. The author is quoted in the article as saying, "How can you weigh the benefits against costs if you don’t know what the costs are?" That may be true in general, but the war isn't wrong because it will cost $2 trillion, and it wouldn't be "right" if it only cost $2 billion or even $2 million. The war is wrong because it's wrong. The cost is relevant, of course, in helping to make people appreciate the full impact of the decision. But it isn't a factor in deciding right or wrong.

"Where are the activist priests and ministers who took strong stands during the Vietnam War and hit the streets with their protests?

Three years into the war against Iraq, the silence of the clergy is deafening, despite U.S. abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and a reported American policy of shipping detainees to secret prisons abroad where, presumably, they can be tortured. (Source)

Update: Quickly jumping to the defense of one of the world's top war criminals, here's how AP headlines its story on the event: "Rumsfeld Heckled by Former CIA Analyst." Heckled? He was questioned, rather politely I might note. Medea Benjamin heckles (that's not a criticism!). Ray McGovern did not heckle.

Here's a transcript (my transcription) from last night's show, which occured while Colbert was showing footage of the April 29 antiwar rally in New York City:

"Somehow these hippies managed to break free of their drum circles long enough to march in a straight line. Usual cut-and-runners were there. No surprises by the faces in this crowd [Cindy Sheehan, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson]. These are people giving aid and comfort to our enemies."

Many progressive bloggers, and again I think some commenters on this blog, have raved about how Colbert destroyed Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol on his April 28 show. This claim seems to have been largely based on this exchange:

COLBERT: You were a member, or are a member of the Project for a New American Century, correct?

KRISTOL: I am.

COLBERT: How’s that Project coming?

KRISTOL: Well it’s…

COLBERT: How’s the New American Century? Looks good to me, right?

KRISTOL: I think it, I…I’m speechless.

What follows that? An exchange in which Colbert prods Kristol about Iran, ending with the Kristol arguing for military action and Colbert agreeing but pressing for the "nuclear option." Now that would be satire if the "nuclear option" were such an absurd idea that it would be recognized as such. But the fact of the matter is that the U.S. government has plans for that option, that there are undoubtedly people within the government pressing for it right now, and there are certainly real right-wing talk-show people saying the same thing. Once again removing this exchange from the realm of satire into the real (or surreal) world of an actual right-wing talk show.

And how does this interview end? (This is from my transcription of the video; it's not in the Think Progress "full transcript")

KRISTOL: Iran is a real threat, Bush has basically tried to do the right thing, we didn't execute Iraq as well as we should have, but it was the right thing to do, and we're going to prevail. Iraq will be better off, and the Middle East will be better off.

COLBERT: Sir, you're preaching to the choir.

And if you do "get the joke," the principle target of that joke isn't the subject matter (e.g., an attack on Iran), but the right-wing talk show host himself. Who cares about that? People like Bill O'Reilly are already self-parodies. The purpose of political humor is to speak (with a humorous slant) truth to power, not to speak truth to Bill O'Reilly.

What Stephen Colbert did the other night in Washington just demonstrated all the more how much he is wasting his talents on the Colbert Report.

Poor nutrition contributes to the deaths of some 5.6 million children every year, and the world has fallen far short in efforts to reduce hunger by half before 2015, the U.N. Children's Fund said Tuesday.

Total amount spent so far on the so-called "war on terror"? More than $300 billion. Depending on what you include, over $400 billion already. And including the money that will need to be spent in the future, even if the war stops today, closer to $1 trillion. Even the lowest of all those figures could have provided $53,500 to purchase food for each of those children who died last year. Given the cost of living in most of the countries involved, that $53,500 could have bought food for a lifetime for each of them. Instead, they're dead. And so are more than 100,000 Iraqis, Afghans, Americans, and others because of what that money was spent on.

But here's the problem with this argument. There was a reason why the U.S. went to war with the minimum number of troops it could, and it had nothing to do with expecting to be greeted with candy and flowers. It had to do with the U.S. public, and its reaction (or perceived reaction) to the idea of sending massive amounts of troops. An essential component of generating American support for the invasion was the idea that it could be done "on the cheap," with relatively limited numbers of soldiers (not to mention limited amounts of money, the "Iraqi oil will pay for the reconstruction" argument). American opinion would, in my opinion, have been much more strongly opposed to the invasion had the Administration said it needed several hundred thousand troops and, reflecting that opinion, the backbones of a few more politicians and editorial boards might have stiffened just enough to put them into opposition. That was a chance the Bush Administration wasn't willing to take.

And of all the people, such as Powell, making the "we should have sent more troops" argument, not one has made this argument. They all want to leave the impression it was just a "poor decision" by George Bush. It was not. It was actually a "good" decision from his point of view. And most definitely a deliberate, well-thought-out one.

On 9/11, two of the largest cities in the country, New York and Washington, were attacked. Nearly 3000 people were killed. George Bush...continued reading My Pet Goat to schoolchildren, then ran the other way. Last year another major city, New Orleans, along with the rest of the Gulf Coast, was attacked by Hurricane Katrina. More than 1600 people were killed. George Bush...spent the next two days giving political speeches and indulging in frivolities.

Ms. Townsend's statement is certainly correct; the President is, or should be, in charge in a national crisis. Clearly, based on past performance, George Bush is completely incapable of fulfilling that role. There's only one logical conclusion...he should resign. Now.

In another article, the same site claims (unfortunately for myself and most of my readers, totally in Spanish) that six or seven million people stayed off work on Monday and that not one (the figure I have quoted here) but three million people marched nationwide. Unfortunately there is no table or listing of the raw data, but in a private email to me, here's the editor's description of the methodology they used: "Twenty five people, taking two states each and going through every single piece of local info like local newspapers, radios with URLs, etc." No doubt they took the highest possible estimates in each case, but since we know the corporate media also print the lowest possible estimates, I'm certainly not going to argue. As far as I know, no U.S. source (e.g., AP) made this kind of effort, so until proven otherwise I'll take three million as the best estimate.

Elaborating just a bit with additional numbers:

Mas de 3 millones de inmigrantes, trabajadores y jóvenes, mayoritariamente Latinos, marcharon en cerca de 100 ciudades en los 50 estados del país. Alrededor de 100,000 empresas y negocios paralizaron sus tareas en solidaridad con la causa de los inmigrantes o sencillamente porque sus trabajadores no se presentaron a trabajar.

Mas de 400.000 estudiantes de secundarias y universidades de todo el país suspendieron sus estudios por el día y se unieron a las manifestaciones de masas.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry responded to the U.N. statement by saying that "Iran is loyal to its commitments based on the U.N. charter and it has never used or threatened to use force against any country," and indeed, 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." There is no talk of "driving the Jews into the sea" or "waging war against Israel" or anything remotely along those lines, merely the expression of support for the goal of a democratic Palestinian state. And for that, he is condemned by the U.N., while real aggressor states like the U.S. and U.K. (not to mention Israel) are among those who do the condemning.

The actual quote, which comes from an old speech of Khomeini, does not imply military action, or killing anyone at all. The second reason is that it is just an inexact translation. The phrase is almost metaphysical. He quoted Khomeini that "the occupation regime over Jerusalem should vanish from the page of time." It is in fact probably a reference to some phrase in a medieval Persian poem. It is not about tanks.

The phrase he then used as I read it is "The Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem (een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods) must [vanish from] from the page of time (bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad)."

Ahmadinejad was not making a threat, he was quoting a saying of Khomeini and urging that pro-Palestinian activists in Iran not give up hope -- that the occupation of Jerusalem was no more a continued inevitability than had been the hegemony of the Shah's government.

Whatever this quotation from a decades-old speech of Khomeini may have meant, Ahmadinejad did not say that "Israel must be wiped off the map" with the implication that phrase has of Nazi-style extermination of a people. He said that the occupation regime over Jerusalem must be erased from the page of time.

The second followup point, which is also about the press coverage in a way, is to note that there is no way at this time to know the complete extent of what happened yesterday. San Jose appears to have been the third largest demonstration in the country (I was mistaken yesterday saying San Francisco was larger), yet outside of the San Jose Mercury News and the San Francisco Chronicle, I haven't seen footage of nor read about that demonstration anywhere. But demonstrations didn't just occur in large cities. Here's an article about a demonstration of 5,000 in the upstate New York town of Newburgh, population just 29,000 (36% Hispanic)! How many more demonstrations like that occured which flew under the national radar?

The third point is relevant to these first two, and it's also completely self-evident yet perhaps the most important point of all - yesterday was a work day!!! Most of those million-plus people demonstrated on a day that wasn't a holiday or a weekend, during work hours!!! There have been days on which more people demonstrated in this country (e.g., against the Vietnam war), but I doubt there has ever been anything close to this number of people taking off work to demonstrate on any issue. Not one news source that I have read or seen explicitly mentioned this point.

Booman Tribune reports that, back in 2004, a country was found to have secretly enriched uranium to bomb-grade levels...South Korea!

"America must...choose a third way...

The idea...is to maintain a united Iraq by decentralizing it, giving each ethno-religious group — Kurd, Sunni Arab and Shiite Arab — room to run its own affairs, while leaving the central government in charge of common interests. We could drive this in place with irresistible sweeteners for the Sunnis to join in, a plan designed by the military for withdrawing and redeploying American forces, and a regional nonaggression pact."

- Democratic Senator and Presidential contender Joe Biden

A few days ago, we were watching one of several ceremonies they held after naming the new prime minister. Talbani stood in front of various politicians in a large room in the Green Zone and said, rather brazenly, that Iraq would not stand any ‘tadakhul’ or meddling by neighboring countries because Iraq was a ‘sovereign country free of foreign influence’. The cousin almost fainted from laughter and E. was wiping his eyes and gasping for air… as Talbani pompously made his statement- all big belly and grins- smiling back at him was a group of American army commanders or generals and to his left was Khalilzad, patting him fondly on the arm and gazing at him like a father looking at his first-born!

- Riverbend, author of the Baghdad Burning blog

The big question is -- what will the US do about Iran? There are the hints of the possibility of bombings, etc. While I hate the Iranian government, the people don’t deserve the chaos and damage of air strikes and war. I don’t really worry about that though, because if you live in Iraq -- you know America’s hands are tied. Just as soon as Washington makes a move against Tehran, American troops inside Iraq will come under attack. It’s that simple -- Washington has big guns and planes… But Iran has 150,000 American hostages.

The other case Fidel talked about (in the one-hour portion that was broadcast on C-SPAN) was the case of Robert Ferro, the subject of this article in the Los Angeles Times three days ago, which I had missed. Here are the basic facts:

Felon Robert Ferro had 1,571 firearms and some hand grenades stashed inside secret compartments and hidden rooms he built inside the sprawling foothill estate. He was arrested last week after a search of his home in connection with another case uncovered the weapons. [Ed. note: the U.S. was not looking for him; his arrest was an accident]

In an interview Thursday, Ferro, 61, contended that some of the high-powered weapons -- including assault rifles, silencer-equipped handguns and Uzis -- were supplied to him by the U.S. government. He said the weapons were supposed to be used in an attempt to oust Castro that would have coincided with U.S. Navy operations being conducted in the Caribbean Sea.

Ferro, who says he's a member of a Miami-based group, Alpha 66, that advocates the overthrow of Castro's regime, said Thursday that about 50 other U.S. citizens were scheduled to accompany him to Cuba, with further assistance coming from people inside Cuba.

Pentagon spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Jeffrey D. Gordon said, "Clearly, these allegations [by Ferro] have no merit and have no basis in fact."

In the 1990s, Ferro was sentenced to two years in prison for possessing 5 pounds of the putty-like explosive C-4. In a 1991 raid, police said Ferro, then a licensed gun dealer, was arrested at the Upland home, where deputies seized an illegal assault rifle and semiautomatic shotgun. About 300 legal firearms were not confiscated.

Prosecutors in the 1990s case said Ferro was an Alpha 66 member training Mexicans at a Pomona chicken ranch he owned for a Castro overthrow attempt.

Who ya' gonna' believe?

The U.S. has had a lot of trouble recently obtaining convictions on people they claim are terrorists, and has had no problem locking up indefinitely people like Jose Padilla who deny they are (and against whom there is no known concrete evidence). Do you suppose that Ferro can expect the same fate as Padilla, and that the U.S. will seize on the fact that here is a man who admits he is a terrorist (perhaps not using that exact word!) to throw him in jail without a trial? No, I didn't think so. It's more likely they'll release Luis Posada Carriles into his custody!

Labels: Robert Ferro

Military investigators are reviewing photographs indicating that Iraqi civilians, including women and children, may have been shot deliberately by U.S. Marines in Haditha last November, according to a military source familiar with the ongoing investigation.

The official said, "It's beginning to look like the Marines were overzealous."

As I wrote a long time ago: "Support the troops? Count me out."

I wasn't really expecting people to use the "comments" section to add their opinions about Left I on the News, and modesty prevents me from repeating those comments here, but I was overwhelmed by the number of unsolicited, glowing comments that were made. Insert Sally Field moment here. Thanks for reading. Tell your friends.

Note the time C-SPAN is alloting for Rumsfeld and Rice to discuss "The Future of Iraq" -- zero minutes. C-SPAN is anticipating that they quite literally will have nothing to say.

The actual broadcast time may well be longer than zero minutes. I feel confident in predicting that the truthful content of that segment will, however, remain at zero.

I don't know how long the actual speech was, but the broadcast is only an hour. :-) Plus you can watch it in the comfort of your house, not standing in the blazing Cuban sun. Although, just like being at the demonstration yesterday, watching things on TV is not the same as being there. But in this case, you don't have a choice (unless you happen to be a Cuban reading this).

Update: Watching the start of the rebroadcast, I learn that this is just the first hour of a four-hour speech. The man can talk!

Second update: Here's the Los Angeles Times story of April 28 that Fidel refers to in his speech.

Now here's the two things you need to know about that picture. First, my camera doesn't have a wide enough angle lens to capture the entire crowd, this is just a small part. And second, if you read the English-language paper (the San Jose Mercury News), or listened to English-language TV, you were told that "the march starts at 4:00 p.m." That's because they were doing their best to build up the "split in the movement, you shouldn't walk out of school or your job" theme. But it's clear that a lot of people got a different message, because even when I got there at 11, there was a decent size crowd, and by 1 or 2, the place (a huge shopping center parking lot) was packed, as in this picture.

Just as the march started, the counterprotesters appeared! Sort of...

The sign reads "Wake up America, close the borders" and lists a web site. It's hard to read because they were far away. They wouldn't have dared to show their faces on the ground. And, as another aspect of this, I feel safe in saying that the majority of people who attended this demonstration did not do so because they read about it on a web site!

Here's what the "pueblo unido" looked like on the march:

When the march reached an overpass over a highway, you could look forward and backward. The crowd was packed as densely as shown in the picture above, for as far as the eye could see in both directions. How many people were there? I heard estimates of 100,000, and I have to believe that's a conservative number. It could easily be much higher. The march started at 3:15. Because I was working giving out signs, I left at the very end; it was then 4:35. People were leaving continually, densely packed, for an hour and 20 minutes. More people arrived at this march after 4:00 (when the TV and papers said it started) than have attended any other march San Jose has ever seen. I walked on the edge for a while until I was closer to, perhaps, 1/4 way from the back end, once I got to that point, I spent more than a mile literally shuffling along, that's how many people there were. When I got about four blocks from the end of the march, to where the closing rally was being held, there were literally as many people leaving the rally (having already been there for well over an hour) as there were arriving.

And here's the thing. Of the marches (not many, but some) that I've been to that were larger than this, every one of them was filled with people who had arrived from various cities on chartered buses. In this march, there was not a single chartered bus; I think it's fair to say that virtually everyone there was from San Jose or an adjacent town (because, after all, there was a bigger (!) march in San Francisco an hour to the north on the same day, and another one in Oakland across the Bay). And there are only 945,000 people in San Jose; more than one person in ten in the entire city was on this march.

I was helping staff the table of our local antiwar group. We got tremendous support, passed out dozens of signs like these (the Spanish-language version is on the other side), and encountered zero hostility:

There were lots of American flags (and many Mexican ones as well, though not as many) at this march, but don't be confused. The people at this rally want the right to be Americans (the majority already are, of course). But that does not mean they were expressing support for American foreign policy. We had people walk up to our table wearing "God Bless America" bumper stickers on their T-Shirt, who would then take one of our "Support the Troops, Bring Them Home Now" bumper stickers and paste it right below the other one.

I've seen lots of television coverage of some of the other large immigrant rights rallies, some of them (like Los Angeles) much larger than this one. But reading about rallies, or watching them on TV, doesn't remotely compare to participating in one, immersing yourself in a literal sea of humanity, in this particular case 95% (or more) Latino, undoubtedly 95% (or more) working-class. Some of the limited TV coverage I've seen since getting home talks about a party atmosphere, a family atmosphere, and even referred to this event as a parade. My description is different: quiet determination. Not that the crowd was physically quiet, far from it. But above all, they were determined to show, just by their presence, that they are real, they are human, they "matter," they aren't going away, and they expect to be accepted.

And San Jose was just one of many cities across the country in which events like this took place.

Vic Lee

See you on the streets! Arise, ye workers (and immigrants) from your slumbers!