Left I on the News  

"Let me just say that this crisis, of course, just underscores the need to have all parties, all Palestinian parties [Ed. note: !], work for an end to terrorist activities. We also called on the Palestinian Government and other parties to secure the release of the Israeli soldier. And we are asking Israel to exercise restraint in this circumstance because with restraint perhaps we can get back to a place where there can be hopes again for a peace process.

"This began as a terrorist act but we do recognize that it is important to protect civilians so that they do not suffer as a matter of this current crisis, and it is extremely important that every party act responsibly so that the possibilities for peace will be preserved."

And now let's hear from the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs (full statement here, this is just the concluding paragraph):

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Cuba wishes to express its most vigorous condemnation of the barbaric Israeli military aggression against the Gaza Strip and calls on the international community and peace-loving forces to mobilize in demand of the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip; a cession of Israeli state terrorism; and respect for the inalienable human rights of the Palestinian people, including the establishment of an independent, sovereign state with its capital in East Jerusalem, the return of refugees, and the unconditional return of all Arab territories occupied in June 1967, as the only way of reaching a just and lasting peace for all the people of that convulsive region.

Just out of curiosity, not because I expect to find anything, I've been searching to see if a single Democrat has spoken out against the Israeli actions. So far, nothing. Not even a "regret" or an "exercise restraint."

Boycott Israeli goods. Click on either of these two icons to visit two sites with more information, after you commit the barcode to memory:

Donate to the Middle East Children's Alliance's urgent campaign to deliver medicine to the children of Gaza:

Send an email (or letter) to Washington to demand action.

Join one of your local emergency actions to protest the attacks (information about actions in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and New York City is here, San Francisco here).

Update: Savage Justice has an excellent roundup of what's going on right now in Gaza, along with world reaction.

The Israelis cited Hamas's firing of Qassam rockets beginning this month, its public declaration that the cease-fire with Israel was over and its open involvement in the raid into Israeli territory early Sunday that resulted in the deaths of two Israeli soldiers and the capture of a wounded corporal, Gilad Shalit, 19.

The first is this Reuters article, which discusses some proposed new legislation in Cuba:

Mariela Castro is leading a Cuban revolution less well known than her Uncle Fidel's: one in favor of sexual tolerance within the island's macho society.

Castro, 43, is leading the charge from her government-funded National Center for Sex Education, based in an old Havana mansion.

As director of the group, she promoted a soap opera that scandalized many Cubans in March by sympathetically depicting bisexuality. The controversial show depicted, among other story lines, the life of a construction worker who leaves his wife and children for the man next door.

Now President Castro's niece is pushing for passage of a law that would give transsexuals free sex change operations and hormonal therapy in addition to granting them new identification documents with their changed gender.

A draft bill was presented to parliament last year and was well received, she said. It is expected to come up for a vote in December.

If approved, it would make Cuba the most liberal nation in Latin America on gender issues.

Castro says her goal is to bring the revolution her uncle and father, Defense Minister Raul Castro, fought 47 years ago to the terrain of sexuality. Her group has also campaigned for better AIDS prevention as well as acceptance of homosexuality, bisexuality and transvestites.

"I want to bring the revolution's humanity to those aspects of life that it hasn't reached because of old prejudices," she told Reuters.

Much has changed, she says, since the 1960s when homosexuals were sent to work camps, or the 1970s when gay men and women were denied certain jobs as "ideological deviants."

"None of that exists anymore," she said. "But that is not to say the same for homophobic attitudes."

One of the things the Revolution was criticized about in its first years is that it was said to display an aggressive, repressive attitude towards homosexuals, that there were camps where the homosexuals were locked away and repressed. What can you say about that?

In two words, you're talking about a supposed persecution of homosexuals.

I have to tell you about the origins of that and where that criticism came from. I do assure you that homosexuals were neither persecuted nor sent to internment camps.

But there are so many testimonies of that...

Let me tell you about the problems we had. In those first years we were forced to mobilize almost the whole nation because of the risks we were facing, which included that of an attack by the United States: the dirty war, the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Missile Crisis. Many people were sent to prison then. And we established the Mandatory Military Service.

We had three problems at that time: we needed people of a certain school level to serve in the Armed Forces, people capable of handling sophisticated technology, because you could not do it if you had only reached second, third or sixth grade; you needed at least seventh, eighth or ninth grade, and a higher level later on. We had some graduates, but also had to take some men out of the universities before graduation. You can't deal with a surface-to-air rocket battery if you don't have a University degree.

A degree on Sciences, I assume.

You know that very well. There were hundreds of thousands of men who had an impact on many branches, not only on the preparation programs, but economic branches as well. Yet some were unskilled, and the country needed them as a result of the brain-drain we enforced in production centers. That's a problem we had then.

Second, there were some religious groups which, out of principles or doctrines, refused to honor the flag or accept using weapons of any kind, something some people eventually used as an excuse to criticize or be hostile.

Third, there was the issue of the homosexuals. At the time, the mere idea of having women in Military Service was unthinkable. Well, I found out there was a strong rejection of homosexuals, and at the triumph of the Revolution, the stage we are speaking of, the machista element was very much present, together with widespread opposition to having homosexuals in military units.

Because of those three factors, homosexuals were not drafted at first, but then all that became a sort of irritation factor, an argument some people used to lash out at homosexuals even more.

Taking those three categories into account we founded the so-called Military Units to Support Production (UMAP) where we sent people from the said three categories: those whose educational level was insufficient; those who refused to serve out of religious convictions; or homosexual males who were physically fit. Those were the facts; that's what happened.

So they were not internment camps?

Those units were set up all throughout the country for purposes of work, mainly to assist agriculture. That is, the homosexuals were not the only ones affected, though many of them certainly were, not all of them, just those who were called to do mandatory service in the ranks, since it was an obligation and everyone was participating.

That's why we had that situation, and it's true they were not internment units, nor were they punishment units; on the contrary, it was about morale, to give them a chance to work and help the country in those difficult circumstances. Besides, there were many who for religious reasons had the chance to help their homeland in another way by serving not in combat units but in work units.

Of course, as time passed by those units were eliminated. I can't tell you now how many years they lasted, maybe six or seven years, but I can tell you for sure that there was prejudice against homosexuals.

Do you think that prejudice stemmed from machismo?

It was a cultural thing, just as it happened with women. I can tell you that the Revolution never promoted that, quite the opposite; we had to work very hard to do away with racial prejudice here. Concerning women, there was strong prejudice, as strong as in the case of homosexuals. I'm not going to come up with excuses now, for I assume my share of the responsibility. I truly had other concepts regarding that issue. I had my own opinions, and I was rather opposed and would always be opposed to any kind of abuse or discrimination, because there was a great deal of prejudice in that society. Whole families suffered for it. The homosexuals were certainly discriminated against, more so in other countries, but it happened here too, and fortunately our people, who are far more cultured and learned now, have gradually left that prejudice behind.

I must also tell you that there were -and there are- extremely outstanding personalities in the fields of culture and literature, famous names this country takes pride in, who were and still are homosexual, however they have always enjoyed a great deal of consideration and respect in Cuba. So there's no need to look at it as if it were a general feeling. There was less prejudice against homosexuals in the most cultured and educated sectors, but that prejudice was very strong in sectors of low educational level -the illiteracy rate was around 30% those years- and among the nearly-illiterate, and even among many professionals. That was a real fact in our society.

Do you think that prejudice against homosexuals has been effectively fought?

Discrimination against homosexuals has been largely overcome. Today the people have acquired a general, rounded culture. I'm not going to say there is no machismo, but now it's not anywhere near the way it was back then, when that culture was so strong. With the passage of years and the growth of consciousness about all of this, we have gradually overcome problems and such prejudices have declined. But believe me, it was not easy.

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that President Bush overstepped his authority in creating military war crimes trials for Guantanamo Bay detainees, a rebuke to the administration and its aggressive anti-terror policies.

Justice John Paul Stevens wrote the opinion, which said the proposed trials were illegal under U.S. law and the Geneva Convention.

The case, one of the most significant involving presidential war powers cases since World War II, was brought by Guantanamo prisoner Salim Ahmed Hamdan, who was a driver for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.

"We recognize the rights of the oppressed to defend themselves against tyrannical and genocidal regimes."

- Robert G. Joseph, under secretary of state for arms control and international security affairs

(Hat tip to WIIIAI)

Israeli forces arrested the Palestinian deputy prime minister and dozens of other Hamas officials early Thursday and pressed their incursion into Gaza, responding to the abduction of one of its soldiers.

Surely the correct term for this action is "kidnapped." But you won't be seeing that one in the corporate media. Of that I'm certain.

In today's news:

Israel turned up the pressure on Palestinian militants to release a captive soldier Wednesday, sending its warplanes to bomb a Hamas training camp after knocking out electricity and water supplies for most of the 1.3 million residents of the Gaza Strip.

Without exception as far as I've seen, the media reports that the current Israeli attacks are a "rescue attempt." This is nonsense. Their chances of rescuing the captured soldier alive are as close to nil as can be imagined. This assault is, as the actual actions cited above demonstrate, all about collective punishment of the Palestinian people, and has little if anything to do with attempting to save the life of Cpl. Gilad Shalit.

Update: "Collective punishment" may be a bit too abstract. Let's make it concrete. Last month, 3-year-old Mariyah Amin was left paralyzed and on an artificial respirator for life. Without electricity, Mariyah Amin, and many others in similar circumstances, will die. Or, to be more accurate, will have been murdered by the Israelis, as were her brother, mother, and grandmother.

And what were the circumstances of the 80's in which the U.S. was "in" Afghanistan? Let Wikipedia sum it up:

In 1979 the United States government under President Jimmy Carter and National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski began to covertly fund and train anti-government Mujahideen forces through the Pakistani secret service agency known as Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), which were derived from discontented Muslims in the country who opposed the official atheism of the Marxist regime, in 1978. Brzezinski's recruiting efforts included enlisting Usama bin Laden to fight the Soviets.

• The American Journal of Public Health reports more than 1,700 African Americans die each week because they don't have the same access to health care as other Americans.  
• The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports (pdf) 110 workers die each week in workplace fatalities, many of which could be prevented by better enforcement of basic workplace laws by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (which is being gutted by budget cuts).  
• The Pentagon reports roughly 15 American soldiers die each week in Iraq.
• The Institute of Medicine reports 346 Americans die each week because they lack health insurance.
• The Environmental Working Group reports that 192 Americans die each week because of exposure to asbestos.

Julio Palacios, president of the Central American Parliament (PARLACEN), highlighted this Monday Cuba’s fulfillment of the UN Millennium Goals on the reduction of poverty, access to education and health and a lower infant mortality rate.

"Cuba is the only country in the Caribbean and even at the level of all Latin America to have exceeded the Millennium Goals in almost all areas," Palacios stated to Prensa Latina at the parliamentary summit that is in session in the Guatemalan capital.

The development goals are an attempt to reduce extreme poverty and hunger, attain universal elementary education, reduce maternal and infant mortality, halt the spread of AIDS and guarantee sustainability and the environment.

Only a few Latin American countries have advanced in that context and others have even regressed from 2000 to date, the PARLACEN president noted.

According to the Central American Parliament, more than 200 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean are living in poverty and 96 million of them in absolute poverty.

Need I remind you that there are lots more if you buy the book?

A former board member of the Cuban American National Foundation says he and other CANF leaders created a paramilitary group to carry out destabilizing acts in Cuba and do away with Cuban ruler Fidel Castro.

Jose Antonio Llama, known as Toñin, told El Nuevo Herald that the arsenal to carry out these plans included a cargo helicopter, 10 ultralight radio-controlled planes, seven vessels and abundant explosive materials.

According to Llama, between 1994 and 1997 he personally spent more than $1.4 million to finance the purchase of radio-controlled planes and other supplies, under the cover of Florida-registered Nautical Sports Inc. and Dominican Republic-based Refri Auto.

Llama showed El Nuevo Herald financial records used to buy the equipment.

Llamas paid Nautical Sports $869,811. The purchase of the seven vessels equipped with satellite radio and phones, including the Midnight Express fast boat, was guaranteed through this front corporation, created in 1993, he said. That 40-foot motorboat was meant to take Mas Canosa to Cuba if Castro died or there was a sudden change of power, he added.

The 10 small remote-control planes were financed by Llama for $210,000 through the International Finance Bank of Miami, which paid Flight Rescue Systems, a company owned by Luis Prieto and Rafael Montalvo. The equipment was stored in a Miami-Dade warehouse to be used against Cuban economic targets or against Castro. Llama said Pepe Hernandez sold them after 1997.

To buy explosives, the group used businessman Raul Lopez, an anti-Castro exile involved in infiltration operations in Cuba in the 1960s, Llama said. Lopez owned a company authorized to purchase explosives to open up sewage canals for South Florida's sugar industry.

Since I have a special interest in Cuba, though, I decided to investigate the laws in that country, just to see what the truth was. The Congressional Record says "As Senator Feingold noted, penalties range from one year of imprisonment in Cuba..." Is that true? Not exactly. This page purports to be the complete and current legal code of Cuba, and I don't see any reason to believe it isn't. Here is one section, in the original Spanish and then in translation:

ARTÍCULO 203. El que ultraje o con otros actos muestre desprecio a la bandera, el himno o al escudo nacionales, incurre en sanción de privación de libertad de tres meses a un año o multa de cien a trescientas cuotas.

ARTICLE 203. Anyone that outrages or with other acts shows scorn to the national flag, the anthem or to the national crest, incurs sanction of deprivation of freedom from three months to one year or fines from hundred to three hundred cuotas.

But there's more, as we find out two articles later:

ARTÍCULO 205. El que arranque, destruya o en cualquier forma ultraje la bandera, insignias u otro símbolo oficial de un Estado extranjero, expuesto públicamente por una representación acreditada de ese Estado, incurre en sanción de privación de libertad de uno a tres meses o multa hasta cien cuotas.

ARTICLE 205. Anyone that tears down, destroys or in any form insults the flag, national insignia or another official symbol of a foreign State, exhibited publicly by an accredited representation of this State, incurs sanction of deprivation of freedom from one to three months or fines up to a hundred cuotas.

Should I renounce the Cuban law? Hardly. I don't know the history of the legislation, nor whether it has ever been applied. But, in the context of a small country 90 miles away from the most powerful country in the world, whose stated policy (and one which very much exists in deed as well as word) is "regime change" in the small country, I would guess that flag desecration is very much in the classic category of shouting "Fire" in a crowded theater, with overtones of treason. The context of such a law (or Constitutional Amendment) in the United States is completely different.

Instead of super-villains, [the original Superman of Action Comics in 1938] fought slumlords, greedy corporate executives, corrupt politicians and common thugs.

"At that point in history," said comic book writer Mark Waid in the recent documentary, "Look, Up in the Sky: The Amazing Story of Superman," "we are a nation on the verge of war, we are a nation new to this whole concept of urbanization and urban crime, and Superman was originally created as a social crusader."

At the end of World War II, something finally stepped on Superman's cape: the changing times. The period after the war and into the 1950s was "a very conservative era, very respectful of authority," Waid said. "And Superman went from being a crusader of social causes to being a symbol of the social order."

Of course, reading the article reveals the backstory: "Isra'a El Batsh, just 3 1/2 years old, lost her right eye in March when an Israeli helicopter fired a missile into her densely populated Gaza neighborhood." Just for emphasis let's repeat that: fired a missile into her densely populated Gaza neighborhood.

Isra's, like Mariyah Amin (who, along with her now-dead family members, was also hit by a missile in a densely populated Gaza neighborhood), is just one of many such victims of Israeli state terrorism:

The health care system in the Palestinian territories is underdeveloped for numerous reasons. Local hospitals are regularly overwhelmed with civilian casualties and lack supplies. There are long waiting lists of children who need surgery. And talented physicians often leave the region due to the stress of living under military occupation and the constant cycle of violence between Israeli forces and Palestinian extremists.

"There's a medical and humanitarian crisis in Palestine right now," said PCRF President Steve Sosebee, who lives in Ohio but came to San Jose to be with Isra'a on Friday. "These are innocent victims of poverty and conflict, and they deserve health care."

Update: I just realized I left out the other part of Isra'a's story:

The missile attack killed two of Isra'a's young cousins and also injured her 10-year-old brother, Mohammed.

"Escalation of force" incidents typically involve a U.S. soldier giving a warning or hand signal to a driver approaching a checkpoint or convoy. The situation escalates if the driver fails to stop, with the soldier firing a warning shot, and then shooting to kill.

[Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, who as head of the Multinational Force-Iraq] would not say how many civilians had been killed overall or what percentage of civilian deaths occurred at checkpoints or near convoys. But a military official who was not authorized to release the numbers and who asked not to be identified said there were 3,000 "escalation of force" incidents from July to Dec. 31, 2005.

Of those, 16 percent led to a civilian being killed or injured, the official said.

During the first five months of this year, 1,700 such incidents were reported. Of those, 12 percent led to a civilian being killed or injured, the official said.

The headline for this post comes from this:

Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, who as head of the Multinational Force-Iraq is the No. 2 U.S. commander in Iraq, said the number of civilian dead and wounded is an important measurement of how effectively U.S. forces are interacting with the Iraqi people.

"We have people who were on the fence or supported us who in the last two years or three years have in fact decided to strike out against us. And you have to ask: Why is that? And I would argue in many instances we are our own worst enemy," Chiarelli said.

Nongovernmental organizations have made estimates by tallying media accounts; The Times attempted to reach a comprehensive figure by obtaining statistics from the Baghdad morgue and the Health Ministry and checking those numbers against a sampling of local health departments for possible undercounts.

War's Iraqi Death Toll Tops 50,000

Higher than the U.S. estimate, the tally likely is undercounted. Proportionately, it is as if 570,000 Americans were slain in three years.
BAGHDAD — At least 50,000 Iraqis have died violently since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion

But the correct qualifying words are "vastly exceeds." Why do I say that? Here's some of the things found just in the L.A. Times article:

L.A. Times: "Many more Iraqis are believed to have been killed but not counted because of serious lapses in recording deaths in the chaotic first year after the invasion, when there was no functioning Iraqi government, and continued spotty reporting nationwide since."

Left I on the News: The "chaotic first year" might well be replaced by "bloody first year"; all by itself that omission could increase the number by 25-33%. And "spotty reporting nationwide" is rather a scary phrase, since we know that the major American assaults have occured outside of Baghdad. How many people were killed in Fallujah alone? The Times doesn't say.

L.A. Times: "The toll, which is mostly of civilians but probably also includes some security forces and insurgents, is daunting."

Left I on the News: Now we move into the realm of the absurd, when it comes to referring to 50,000 "Iraqis" rather than 50,000 Iraqi civilians. Thousands of security forces and tens of thousands of insurgents (resistance fighters) have been killed. Omitting them as if they weren't "Iraqis" makes no sense.

L.A. Times: "Iraqi officials involved in compiling the statistics say violent deaths in some regions have been grossly undercounted, notably in the troubled province of Al Anbar in the west. Health workers there are unable to compile the data because of violence, security crackdowns, electrical shortages and failing telephone networks.

"The Health Ministry acknowledged the undercount. In addition, the ministry said its figures exclude the three northern provinces of the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan because Kurdish officials do not provide death toll figures to the government in Baghdad."

Left I on the News: OK, now they admit the results are not just undercounted, but "grossly" undercounted in one of the key provinces where fighting (and American bombing) is occuring (not to mention ignoring three entire provinces!).

And there's another group completely omitted by the Times, which, despite referring to "Iraqi deaths" in their headline, refers to "deaths by violence" in the body of the article. This completely omits deaths caused by lack of health care, malnutrition, and other such causes which have increased since the war. When it comes to Darfur, both the American media and the U.S. government are quick to talk about "excess deaths" and people killed by "disease and famine" (as well as violence). But when it comes to Iraq, the Johns Hopkins/Lancet study which estimated excess deaths in Iraq at 100,000 more than a year ago is universally (in the corporate media and elsewhere) pooh-poohed.

The number of Iraqi killed violently by the war is well over 100,000, and the number of Iraqi dead as a result of the war, including "excess deaths," quite possibly approaches 200,000. The Times did some actual reporting, which is good, and their work may result in conventional wisdom [sic] citing the figure 50,000 instead of 30,000, which might be considered "better" in being somewhat closer to the truth, but unfortunately the end result will be that the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqis are as nothing.

The defendants had no guns or other weapons when they were arrested. The informant did provide some boots and a camera for the suspects to photograph a North Miami Beach FBI office and other local targets, the indictment says.

But it's unclear from the indictment if the alleged conspirators actually visited their most ambitious target, the 110-story Sears Tower in Chicago.

Except for one little detail, which the Times does reveal: "Combat brigades, which generally have about 3,500 troops, do not make up the bulk of the 127,000-member American force in Iraq." Indeed, a few paragraphs later the Times does part of the math: "A reduction of eight combat brigades would equal about 28,000 troops." However, they never do the final math: 127,000-28,000=99,000 American troops occupying Iraq. And, while if you went from 127 pounds to 99 pounds, I might concede that you had achieved a "sharp reduction" in your weight, but that's only because if you went much lower, you'd be dead. When it comes to an occupation, I'm afraid it will take a lot bigger reduction than that to qualify as "sharp." Of course, there's another requirement too -- it actually has to happen, unlike every other reduction that's been talked about since "Mission Accomplished Day" more than three years ago.

I got a kick out of this part of General Casey's plan:

In the general's briefing, the future American role in Iraq is divided into three phases. The next 12 months was described as a period of stabilization. The period from the summer of 2007 through the summer of 2008 was described as a time when the emphasis would be on the restoration of the Iraqi government's authority. The period from the summer of 2008 though the summer of 2009 was cast as one in which the Iraqi government would be increasingly self-reliant.

You do have to love how, just days after the Congress (all Republicans and most Democrats) beat back any talk of a "timetable" for withdrawal, along comes the Prime Minister of Iraq talking about a timetable.

The pages and screens of the media are replete with politicians and pundits denouncing the savagery of the recent murders of two American soldiers. Although it is certainly possible, even probable, that the two men were indeed tortured and then beheaded, not the slightest proof has been offered of these allegations, and yet the same people who are denouncing the act, and even using it as the latest justification for why U.S. troops have to stay in Iraq and "finish the job," were the first to talk about how we shouldn't condemn the American soldiers involved in the Haditha massacre because "we don't know exactly what happened" and "an investigation is still on going" etc etc.

On whose word do we know the two men were tortured? The word of the U.S. military, the same U.S. military who claimed that the Iraqis in Haditha were killed by an IED, the same U.S. military who claimed that Jessica Lynch was captured emptying her weapon against attacking Iraqis, the same U.S. military who covered up the death of Pat Tillman, and on and on and on. Would they make up such a grotesque lie as the one about the two soldiers? Probably not, but considering they have gotten away with lies that were just as easily disprovable (Kuwaiti babies thrown out of incubators to die come to mind), it certainly isn't impossible.

Then we have the latest thought crime -- some men in Miami allegedly talking about committing acts of terrorism, although doing, as far as is alleged so far, quite literally nothing about it. News reports of the incident all refer to how "the group had been infiltrated by a government informant." "Informant" is the media's word. I'm giving even odds that the correct term is agent provocateur, and that the first one to mention the words "Sears Tower" or "ammonium nitrate" was he.

And finally in local news we have the indictment of San Jose Mayor Ron Gonzales for "bribery." Now believe me, I have absolutely no love lost for Ron Gonzales, but this indictment borders on the ludicrous. Despite the fact that the word "bribery" has been splashed all over the news, Gonzales isn't accused of taking any money himself. To the contrary, the heart of the case involves his efforts (albeit done in secret) to have more money paid to workers, specifically the workers who pick up the city's garbage (the secret deal was the city's agreement to pay more money for the garbage contract, with the proviso that the contractor would employ higher-paid Teamsters rather than lower-paid Longshoremen). Here's a quote from the Deputy District Attorney which I almost decided to run under the "Political Humor of the Day" headline:

"The message that the indictment makes is that public officials cannot use their public office to secure benefits either for themselves or for third parties or for political supporters."

CNN'S SOLEDAD O’BRIEN: There is a whole school of thought, as you well know, that says that musicians – I mean you see it with the Dixie Chicks - you know, go play your music and stop.

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: Well, if you turn it on, present company included, the idiots rambling on on cable television on any given night of the week, and you’re saying that musicians shouldn’t speak up? It’s insane. It’s funny.

O’BRIEN: As a musician though, I’d be curious to know if there is a concern that you start talking about politics, you came out at one point and said, I think in USA Today listen, the country would be better off if George Bush were replaced as President. Is there a worry where you start getting political and you could alienate your audience?

SPRINGSTEEN: Well that’s called common sense. I don’t even see that as politics at this point. So I mean that’s, you know, you can get me started, I’ll be glad to go. […] You don’t take a country like the United States into a major war on circumstantial evidence. You lose your job for that. That’s my opinion, and I have no problem voicing it. And some people like it and some people boo ya, you know?

Which word can you stretch out the longest, "goooooooaaaaaaaal" or "Bruuuuuuuuuuuuuce"? Actually both are appropriate here.

And now along comes the latest development to reinforce that point. In the last few days (the talking points must have gone out), various pundits on TV are suddenly discussing the fact (which for the purposes of this post I'll accept as true, although I don't actually know that it is) that Iran has a shortage of refining capacity, and that if the U.S. and its allies want to bring Iran to its knees, all they have to do is to put an embargo on selling refined petroleum to Iran. And amazingly enough, not a single one of these learned gentlemen (I use both terms as loosely as possible) who I have heard making this argument have seen any connection between that proposal, and Iran's reluctance to be dependent on foreign sources for nuclear fuel.

For additional reading, here's a previous post describing the reasons why oil-rich Iran might want nuclear power in the first place.

"The unprovoked invasion of Iraq was a major strategic error. We took our eye off the ball."

But even the best of the Democrats will never acknowledge those facts.

Update: And as for the Democrats who are to the right of Harkin (which is almost all of them), many of them continue to try to position themselves as "tougher" on "defense" than the Republicans:

[Bill Clinton's] former defense secretary William J. Perry has called on President Bush to launch a preemptive strike against the long-range ballistic missile that U.S. intelligence analysts say North Korea is preparing to launch.

Other people might experience a third aspect of culture shock visiting New Jersey -- having someone else put gas in your car. Since I grew up in New Jersey, that's something I'm used to. And previous trips to the East Coast have made me aware of how much further behind California they are as far as hybrids. But the lack of Starbucks, that was a shock!

Q To President Bush, you've got Iran's nuclear program, you've got North Korea, yet, most Europeans consider the United States the biggest threat to global stability. Do you have any regrets about that?

PRESIDENT BUSH: That's absurd. The United States is -- we'll defend ourselves, but at the same time, we're actively working with our partners to spread peace and democracy. So whoever says that is -- it's an absurd statement.

Absurd? What's absurd was Bush's reaction. The idea that the U.S. is the biggest threat to global stability is so far outside his world view his head nearly exploded when he heard the question. Of course he feels the same way about global warming, and probably about the earth revolving around the sun. We know he thinks the world revolves around the U.S., and, more specifically, him.

U.S. forces killed three Iraqi farmers and wounded four during an air raid Tuesday over Buchahin, to the northeast of the capital.

The civilians were resting at a poultry farm when they were caught in the bombings, according to Hadi al Azawi, member of a human rights organization in Baquba, PL reports.

The U.S. command claimed that the mission was to eliminate members of the international Al Qaeda network.

AP Television News footage showed bloodstained mattresses and bullets inside a chicken processing plant in the village where residents say U.S. soldiers killed those civilians.

A Palestinian woman was killed today in Gaza after a pair of Israeli missiles veered off target, one of them slamming into a house. It was the latest in a series of botched air strikes that have killed a dozen Palestinian civilians in the last eight days.

The strike, which also injured a reported 13 people in the southern town of Khan Yunis, came a day after another strike killed three Palestinian children, whose bodies were paraded today before burial through Gaza streets seething with angry citizens.

Burns hasn't written back to me, but in the latest article on the trial, we find this: "They are charged with crimes against humanity for offenses that included...the razing of a vast acreage of orchards and date palm groves around Dujail." So 250,000 acres has now become the more nebulous "vast acreage" (but is still apparently a "crime against humanity," at least according to Burns).

Why do I press this seemingly minor point? For one thing, I have a fetish about the truth. For another, there's the old legal maxim, "false in one, false in all." If the prosecutors, or the Times, would lie about this detail, what else are they lying about? Today, for example, for the very first time as far as I know, the prosecutors are claiming that the assassination attempt itself had been faked by Saddam as an excuse to crack down on the people of Dujail. It's possible, of course, but the sudden appearance of this claim, 25 years after the fact, is questionable to put it mildly. The prosecutor claims that the rationale was "to justify cracking down on Shiites at a time when Mr. Hussein had begun a war with Shiite-ruled Iran," but surely if Iraq had just begun a war against Iran, they would hardly want to antagonize a segment of their own population, which could only weaken their efforts in that war.

Be that as it may, it looks like the Times, if not the Iraqi prosecutors, have conceded the point that the razing of 250,000 acres was an exaggeration.

"Today is a particularly symbolic day. Cuba is a founding member of the Human Rights Council and the United States is not. Cuba was elected with the overwhelming support of 135 countries, more than two-thirds of the United Nations General Assembly, while the United States did not even dare to run as a candidate. Cuba relied on the secret vote for the same reasons that the United States was afraid of it.

"Cuba’s election epitomizes the victory of principles and truth; it stands as recognition of the value of our resilience. The absence of the United States is the defeat of lies; it is the moral punishment for the haughtiness of an empire."

- speech by Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque to the opening session of the new U.N. Human Rights Council

"Cuba can be counted upon to fight for truth and transparency, to defend the right to independence, to self-determination, to social justice, to equality. And also to defend the right to food, to education, to health, to dignity, the right to a dignified life.

"Cuba can be counted upon to defend real democracy, true participation and the real enjoyment of all human rights.

"Cuba’s cooperation cannot be counted upon to relinquish a single principle. Cuba will always be counted upon to uphold the noble ideal of building a better world for all."

The prospect of a deal hinges on Iran's willingness to drop what it says is its sovereign right to develop nuclear power sources.

Well, it turned out to be a lot more than that. With a long flight I naturally started to read it, and found I couldn't put it down. Because this book is much more than the dry history of a medium-sized Jersey shore town, it's the history of America writ small. Fundamentalist religion, capitalism as reflected both in the drive toward development, and also in the political power exercised by the capitalist class, segregation and racism (including lynching and the Ku Klux Klan), anti-immigrant prejudice and efforts to limit immigration to people from "desirable" countries, demonization of people based on their religion, the role of the media (including the surprising role of Stephen "Red Badge of Courage" Crane), corruption, mob power, and last but not least music (and not just Bruce Springsteen, but John Philip Sousa, Count Basie, Frankie Lymon, and more), all played key roles in the history of Asbury Park. And with the exception of lynching, virtually everything in the book could be drawn from the pages of today's papers.

I guess you figured out that I finished the book before giving it to my mother, and that I'm strongly recommending it, not just to those who spent their summers on the Jersey shore, but to anyone interested in reading about the development of the United States over the last 130 years, as viewed through the events in one town. And, as I suggested above, it's a real page-turner, not dry at all but quite well-written. It's only out in hardcover right now, but the publisher's website (linked above) has it coming out in paperback next month.

One final point -- this is just one more reason why I try never to buy books from Amazon.com. Could I have saved money on the book? Yes. And one day, the day the last bookstore closes because everyone is busy saving money, I'll have saved myself right out of ever being able to walk into a bookstore and have an experience like this, wandering randomly and finding a splended book on a subject I didn't even know I was interested in, and certainly wasn't looking to find anything about, and ending up better-educated and entertained as well.

During the questioning, the subject of those erectile Iraqis (you know, the ones who are "standing up") came up. And Levin was asked about the readiness of the Iraqis, and he mentioned the zero or one Iraqi battalion which is able to operate independently (allegedly, and whatever that means anyway), and the 65 who are able to "take the lead" with American support. And when he was asked what was keeping those 65 battalions from becoming independent, the main thing he mentioned was equipment.

And that is precisely the point I have hammmered on multiple occasions under the title "The 'Exit Strategy' is a sham." I have pointed out that the main "successes" of the American military effort have been almost uniformly dependent on air power (the killing of Zarqawi being just the latest example), and that there was no chance, zero, that the U.S. would ever allow Iraqis to fly those planes, much less leave planes there, because they know very well that anything they allow Iraqis to get their hands on will eventually, if not quickly, be used against either the Americans or their Iraqi surrogates, or both.

It's important to add that this doesn't just go for airplanes, though. Are the Americans going to give tanks to the Iraqis? Howitzers? Not on your life. Sophisticated AWACS or other kinds of high-technology devices upon which the American forces depend, and which undoubtedly comprises at least some of that "support" which those 65 "able to lead" battalions are receiving? Not a chance. Even night-vision goggles or other equipment which allows the American forces to fight at night and gain an advantage over their opponents are hardly likely to be given to Iraqi forces.

The number of Iraqi battalions "able to operate independently without American support" hasn't increased beyond zero or one, whatever the number is, for a very good reason, and that reason isn't going to change, which means that Iraqi forces aren't going to be able to operate without American support a year from now, or two, any more than they are now.

The political question to ask, then, is why are the insurgents able to operate without such outside military expertise and technology and weaponry, and yet still be able to be so effective? In part it's because their objectives are different, of course -- killing off American and Iraqi soldiers and policemen, but not in general attempting to hold territory or fight in open formation. But in part, and an important part, it's also because of their implantation in the population, the fact that they are, to an extent, the population, if not the actual fighters than certainly those either actively or passively providing support or protection. And that force can only be "defeated" in one way -- by ending the occupation that they are fighting. In other words, by acknowledging, if not "defeat," that "victory" is not going to happen.

We know George Bush is never going to acknowledge that. And, as of now, the number of Democrats willing to do so are few and far between, and certainly not including any of the Senators introducing their various resolutions and "plans" today.

A secretive military Special Operations group in Iraq used several unauthorized interrogation tactics on detainees in early 2004 after it erroneously received an outdated policy from commanders in Baghdad, according to a high-level military investigative report released yesterday at the Pentagon.

You won't be surprised when I tell you that the word "torture," not even with qualifying words surrounding it, doesn't appear in the Washington Post article linked above, will you? I didn't think so.

Added later: Just so we're clear on this, American military personnel don't torture because of memos they get or didn't get. They torture because they were trained to do so. If you were asked to interrogate someone, you might come up, having watched TV, with the "good cop-bad cop" technique. But you would be unlikely to come up with the kinds of things that were done at Abu Ghraib, or Guantanamo, or elsewhere. These techniques are taught.

Troops in WWI were defended by foxholes...
...troops in Iraq are defended by Fox News.

The Korean War was caused by post-WWII instability...
...the war in Iraq was caused by post-9/11 gullibility.

During the Revolutionary War, a young woman named Molly becuse famous for her pitcher...
...during the Iraq War, a dumb woman named Lynndie because famous for her pictures.

During Vietnam, draft-dodgers abruptly fled the country...
...during Iraq, draft-dodgers corruptly led the country.

In WWII, the liberation of Paris caused songs and revelry...
...in Iraq, the liberation of Baghdad caused bombs and rivalry.

During WWII, the Reich blamed their problems on the Jews...
...during Iraq, the right blames their problems on the news.

A great image of the Revolutionary War is of Washington on a boat, courageously crossing the Delaware...
...a grating image of the Iraq War is of Bush on a boat, outrageously lost and unaware.

During the Gulf War, the Patriot missile was used to repel our enemies...
...during the Iraq War, the Patriot Act is used to repeal our liberties.

A new article in the Guardian delves at length into the translation questions that have arisen surrounding this quote, concluding, more or less as Juan Cole did back in October, that "eliminated from the page of history" is a better translation.

To me, however, the key is still precisely what I (with zero knowledge of Farsi) wrote last October:

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.

Anyway, during the minute or two I was watching, some Republican Congressperson was solemnly talking about how "we" (that wouldn't include you or I, of course) had promised Karzai and Maliki that "we" (and now that probably would include you and I, if you're American, and are either a member or potential member of the Armed Forces or just a taxpayer paying for the whole thing, or even a non-taxpayer suffering from the cutbacks in social services the war has caused) would be "with them until the bitter end."

Somehow I don't think people refer to September 2, 1945 as the "bitter end" of World War II (perhaps the Japanese do, but definitely not Americans). It wouldn't surprise me, though, if people refer to the evacuation from the rooftop of the American Embassy in Saigon as the "bitter end" of the Vietnam War.

Yup, if the Administration and Congress have their way we'll be with Karzai and Maliki until the "bitter end," all right. The only question is, whose bitter end?

Nissenbaum is head and shoulders above most other American reporters covering the subject, but that doesn't mean his coverage is without problems. For example, he makes this claim:

To be sure, there's a significant distinction between the two sides: Palestinian suicide bombers and rocket teams target Israeli civilians, whereas Israel is aiming at Palestinian militants.

Over the same period, a conservative review of statistics shows, at least 47 innocent Palestinians have been killed by Israeli artillery shells, missiles and bullets. B'Tselem, which compiled the data, gives a higher number, 156, but that figure includes demonstrators throwing stones, militants trying to evade capture and Palestinians whom Israel targeted for assassination.

But I don't want to be too harsh on Nissenbaum. For example, in conjunction with this week's murders on the beach in Gaza, he chooses his language carefully: "the military has cleared itself of responsibility," and balances that by noting "that conclusion is being challenged by human rights groups." He also provides his readers with the total figures which again, most of them are unlikely to be familiar with since they rarely, if ever, appear in the American press: "Over the past six years, according to B'Tselem, Israelis have killed more than 3,500 Palestinians, while Palestinians have killed about 1,000 Israelis."

Readers with very good memories may remember that last August, Nissenbaum actually reminded his readers in an article that Israeli settlements were in defiance of international law (an astonishing event in current-day American corporate journalism), and that he was briefly kidnapped last October when doing something else few corporate American journalists do -- reporting from Gaza, instead of from the comfort and convenience of Jerusalem.

Fraudulent Katrina and Rita Claims Top $1 Billion

Now statistics do have a certain validity, and extrapolations have a mathematical basis to them. But even had the headline been written in a truthful manner, the ability to extrapolate based on such a small number is limited, to put it mildly. This projection is based on 1,500 actual cases of fraud (or, to be more precise, suspected fraud; I don't know that any of it is actually proven yet). The obvious question to ask is, how many cases were examined to find those 1,500? Obvious perhaps, but the reporter covering the story (and the hordes of TV reporters like Anderson Cooper who have been hyping the story) neglected to ask it.

But let's assume that a statistically valid sample was taken (and, I repeat, based on this article and all the TV coverage I've seen of the story so far, there's no evidence that's true). What do the statisticians at GAO project as the final total? "Between $600 million and $1.4 billion." And that's assertedly with a "95% confidence level," meaning it could actually be lower (or higher, of course). Hardly justifying a statement that the "fraudulent claims top $1 billion."

Think about this a little more. "Between $600 million and $1.4 billion" means that some statistician gave the result as $1 billion +/- $400 million. That's one heck of an error bar! Typical polls (e.g., for elections) quote error bars of 3 points, e.g., 48 percent +/- 3 for one candidate, and 52 +/- 3 for the other. Imagine if you saw a poll reading 48 percent +/- 20 percent for one candidate, and 52 +/- 20 percent for the other. You wouldn't be too impressed with that poll, which would have obviously been based on far too small a sample to be significant. Yet that's the kind of precision we're being asked to accept here.

Looked at another way, imagine trying to project the results of an election after 1.7% of the votes had been counted (and in the absence of any exit polls). Obviously such a result would be useless at projecting a winner. And that would be even truer if you knew that that 1.7% wasn't a random selection, but came, say, exclusively from gated communities with homes valued at more than $2 million. And what do we know about how these 1,500 cases of suspected fraud were found? Precisely nothing. Perhaps someone did a preliminary scan of all the claims, and deliberately started by analyzing the ones which sounded the most suspicious. That's certainly the way I would start if I were tasked to find fraud in such a situation. As to what the GAO actually did, however, we have no idea. Did they just take the cases in alphabetical order and start going through them? I doubt it.

But for the Washington Post, CNN, and everyone else hyping the story, none of these issues matter. Only the hype. And, in my opinion, the ability to strike a blow at the very idea of government, which never does anything right, so we might as well do away with it and let people solve their own problems with their own resources, rather than run the risk that some small number of people will take advantage of the system.

Update: Here's the Los Angeles Times: "Non-Victims Bilk $1.4 Billion From FEMA Katrina Funds." Not "may have bilked." Not even "more than $600 million." Just "$1.4 billion," flat out. Flat out alright. A flat out lie.

And then we just had Bush's trip to Baghdad, in which he arrived in a plane which may well have had a U.S. flag painted on it, but since the plane arrived at night with its lights off, no one would have been able to see it.

These colors don't run? Maybe, maybe not, but they sure know how to hide.

Last night I saw Al Gore's new movie, "An Inconvenient Truth." I liked the exposure he did, the presentation of unarguable facts proving global warming is happening, and the photographs documenting its effects. He didn't stray from a liberal ruling class point of view though, and even made the point that a sufficiently energy-efficient economy can still be a growth economy (which I don't agree with). And he doesn't really look at the underlying economic forces that created this problem, or focus much blame on corporations. But I think it will serve as a horrifying wake-up call to many people, which is certainly necessary and positive.

But, you won't be surprised to hear, that isn't the whole truth. Or even any of the truth, as you can find out today from Granma, who, in typical Cuban fashion, has published a long, fact-filled editorial documenting the actual truth. The electricity, as a reporter could easily have verified, was part of a wider outage, connected with recent tropical storms hitting Cuba (storms bad enough to have warranted the evacuation of 25,000 people):

In fact there were a large number of power failures in the city of Havana and throughout the country; one of them occurred along the underground 13,000-volt circuit Vedado2, which directly feeds the Interests Section offices, and one of the two channels that supplies electric power to the Anti-Imperialist Tribune, due to the adverse weather conditions experienced by the country over the last two weeks up until yesterday afternoon, Monday (June 12): repair work on this interruption is underway just like on all the others.

"Under pressure from the Cuban-American mafia, and as one of its next steps, the government of the United States is intent on openly violating the U.S.–Cuba Migratory Agreement (...) It is looking for any pretext to prevent, at all costs, the sale of agricultural products to Cuba, which has been increasing, while our country has paid every cent on time during five years – something it did not expect from a blockaded nation facing constant aggression (...) And, unhappy with the decision taken by President Carter on May 30, 1977, it proposes to force a rupture in its current minimal diplomatic ties with Cuba. The gross provocations that have been carried out from its Interests Section offices in Havana do not and cannot have any other purpose."

"Thanks for having me."

- George Bush's first words to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, on arriving in Baghdad the Green Zone

As Becker says, imagine the Iraqi Prime Minister landing unannounced on the lawn of the White House in a military helicopter. Of course that couldn't happen for two reasons. One, because he would have been shot down first, and second, because Iraq doesn't have any military helicopters or any other military aircraft as far as we know, a point I've made before while pointing out the fallacy of the U.S. "exit strategy."

John Cusack's motivation for his latest film grew out of something he did not see - flag-draped caskets returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Pentagon policy bans media coverage of America's war dead as their remains are returned. The Bush administration has strongly enforced the ban, something Cusack describes as "one of the most shameful, disgraceful, cowardly political acts that I've seen in my lifetime."

So the actor started looking for a project that would illustrate "what happens when the coffins come home."

The result is "Grace Is Gone," a small, independent film in which Cusack plays a man whose wife, Grace, is killed in service in Iraq. Filming wrapped last month; the movie's producers - who include Cusack - will be looking for a distributor or film festival opportunities.

Only 75 percent of Americans had heard reports of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and at the American naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, while 90 percent of Western Europeans and Japanese had heard about them.

That's indirect evidence that the Israeli story is hogwash. But there's lots of direct evidence. I'm not going to summarize it here; instead, I'm just going to refer readers to primary sources:

• Guardian article by Chris McGreal (who visited the beach).
• Independent article by Donald Macintyre, also on the scene.
• Democracy Now! interview with McGreal and Dr. Mona El-Farra, VP of the Gaza Red Crescent Society who treated some of the victims (audio and transcript)
• Flashpoints interview with Dr.El-Farra on two consecutive days (Monday and Tuesday) (audio only, no transcript)
• Added: The Human Rights Watch report

I just want to add one bit of my own analysis to what you can read in the sources above. First, read this from the Israeli explanation:

The army has accounted for five of six of the shells that it fired in the area Friday evening before the blast, the officials said. The one shell that is not accounted for was fired before the five others -- more than ten minutes before the blast that killed the Palestinians -- and apparently landed further away than the shells that were fired later, the officials said.

It's also worth noting some interesting language shifts. Here's the headline in the Washington Post: "Israel: Gaza Blast Not From Israeli Shell." Really? Here's the very first sentence from the article: "An Israeli investigation into what caused an explosion on a Gaza beach that killed eight Palestinians will conclude that the blast was most likely caused by a mine planted by Palestinian militants and not an Israeli shell, military officials said Tuesday." Need I say that "most likely" does not mean it was "not" caused by Israeli shell, it means that even the Israelis only claim it was "most likely" that it wasn't. To repeat, read the evidence in the sources above and decide for yourself.

Update: Knight-Ridder's Dion Nissenbaum, about whom I have previously had good things to say, actually mentions, albeit in greatly abbreviated form and not until the final three paragraphs of his article, some of the evidence that Israeli shells were the cause of the deaths.

Thirty-one percent of U.S. companies intend to increase staffing levels in the third quarter this year, on par with last quarter, according to a survey of 16,000 employers prepared for release today.

The report marks the 10th straight quarter that more than 20 percent of the companies surveyed said they plan to add staff. The expected staffing level increase was 30 percent for the second quarter of this year.

On top of missing information, we have some rather poor math. We're told that "Six percent of companies surveyed expect to reduce employment in the third quarter," and that "the trend shows the economy continues to be healthy." Really? If the 31 percent of companies planning to increase staffing levels each plan to add one worker, while the six percent planning reductions will be laying off a thousand each, that wouldn't exactly indicate a "healthy" economy. So are there any numbers for the total numbers being planned to be added or laid off? Not in the article, anyway.

My headline of the day is this one from the San Jose Mercury News: "Bush invites critics to discuss war." Cindy Sheehan? Ah, no. Nor were any of the four actual opponents of the invasion itself, just a few in a long line of people whose criticism is confined to the "incompetence" with which the war has been waged.

Not that Bush was actually listening. He was too busy thinking about his impending trip to Iraq the Green Zone, a trip which AP preposterously describes as "Bush's second trip to Baghdad in less than three years." Wow, that many? And gosh, this trip even left Bush on the ground for a whole five hours, two more than the previous trip.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, American forces in Iraq killed a 6-month-old baby and a 4-year-old child in the process of killing seven suspected insurgents. AP naturally calls them simply "insurgents," no suspected about it, although they haven't the slightest information which would allow them to confirm the claims of the U.S. military. The AP does mention the death of "two children" in the opening sentence of the article, but their ages aren't mentioned until paragraph ten. Wouldn't want to shock the reader with the reality of the American war too quickly. Maybe they won't read that far. Certainly the headline "U.S. troops kill 7 insurgents in raid" gives no clue as to what follows.

It's worth noting two things about the AP coverage I linked to above. The first is that, in the "old days," an occurance like this would at least be accompanied by some ritual, meaningless but still spoken, words of "regret" by the "U.S. administration." Those days are gone. If the U.S. does issue "regrets" (never "condemnations," of course) of Israeli actions like these, they don't do so forcefully enough for AP to even notice.

The second, and much more important, is what is missing from the AP coverage. Why were three medical workers killed? Why were so many civilians injured? It turns out to be much more than the usual Israeli practice of firing missiles into crowded streets. The reason why is revealed in the Ha'aretz coverage:

Palestinian witnesses said the second missile came two minutes after the first, after a crowd had begun to gather around the scene of the attack.

Let me also note a difference between standard American practices in Iraq, and standard Israeli policies in the West Bank and Gaza. The Americans, as I have noted many times, routinely massacre civilians by bombing buildings in which they "suspect" (or even know) there are resistance fighters (oh, excuse me, "terrorists"), but without knowing or asking or caring who else might be inside. But, with some exceptions like the massacre of Fallujah in November, 2004, it isn't standard U.S. practice to drop bombs when they can actually see the civilians in their sights at the same time as their target. It is the Israeli practice. I say this not to exonerate in any way the standard American method, which I have previously labelled as a war crime, but to note how the even more heinous Israeli practice still continues to escape any serious condemnation by the so-called civilized world (including, it almost goes without saying, not only the U.S. administration but also most if not all prominent members of the so-called "opposition" party).

"Out Now!" doesn't just refer to the U.S. out of Iraq and Afghanistan. It's also an appropriate slogan for Israel. Israel should, must, withdraw from the West Bank, all of the West Bank, now, and they must not use that withdrawal, as they have in Gaza, as an opportunity to rain even more death and destruction on the Palestinian people.

Update: I'm not sure if I missed this earlier in the Ha'aretz article, or the article has been updated, but, just for the record:

The IDF's Operations Directorate head, Brigadier General Gadi Eisencott, confirmed Palestinian reports that the second missile struck a group of civilians that had gathered around the casualties of the first missile.

Later this morning (U.S. time), the Czechs routed the Americans, 3-0.

"Capitalism has no interest in abolishing ignorance."

Fidel Castro, speaking at the closing session of the International Literacy and Post-Literacy Seminar

I'm sure most readers of this blog have noted that in countries undergoing socialist, or quasi-socialist, revolutions or evolutions, countries like Cuba, Venezuela, and Bolivia, one of the very first things they prioritize is eliminating illiteracy. Capitalist societies flourish by having enough educated people to fill the technical positions, but beyond that they have no particular desire to raise up the educational level of the rest of the population. It would only encourage them to aspire to things that society can't make available to them, rather than being content with their lot in life at the bottom of the pile. Socialist societies flourish by maximizing the potential of all of their people.

Is shutting down Guantanamo a magic answer? Of course not, especially if the prisoners are simply transferred to Bagram or Abu Ghraib or secret CIA prisons around the world. But Guantanamo does occupy a special place, both legally and symbolically. Legally, it's a place that is fully under (illegal, but de facto) U.S. control, but still outside the borders of the country, allowing the government to make arguments about the lack of jurisdiction of U.S. courts (or any other courts). And symbolically, it is the place above all others where the U.S. has declared its right to lock people up without a trial and throw away the key. Shutting it down would be a blow, albeit far from a mortal one, to the U.S. empire. Sign the petition!

And, while you're customizing the text being sent to your representatives, why not add a line about getting the U.S. out of Guantanamo altogether! Stop the illegal occupation of Cuban territory!

U.S. troops entered Korea in 1950; the Korean War nominally ended (without a peace treaty, but with a truce) in 1953. There are still 37,000 American troops in Korea.

And is Korea a fully sovereign nation even now? Consider this:

"Despite a desire by officials here to assume greater responsibility for the defense of their country, the United States and South Korea agreed [Ed. note: yeah, sure] Friday to leave a U.S. commander in charge of their combined armies in the event of a war on the Korean peninsula.

"With steady improvements made by South Korea's military and the nation's emergence as an economic power, South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun said recently that his country was ready to take on more control of its armed forces, and suggested altering the current arrangement that put South Korean forces under U.S. command during wartime." [Ed. note: his suggestion was duly noted, and round-filed.]

Mr. Bush on Friday made clear that the American commitment to the country will be long-term. Officials say the administration has begun to look at the costs of maintaining a force of roughly 50,000 troops there for years to come, roughly the size of the American presence maintained in the Philippines and Korea for decades after those conflicts.

If an Administration spokesperson or media pundit describes this as an "attempt to get attention" I'm going to spit:

Three detainees at Guantanamo Bay committed suicide in what apparently was a joint pact to protest the U.S. military prison that holds suspected terrorists.

Update: Not to my surprise, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy (!) Colleen Graffy has described the suicides as "a good PR move to draw attention." Here's my attempt to draw attention: fuck you, Ms. Graffy.

(Hat tip to Politics in the Zeros)

Second update: An even more bizarre assertion via CNN:

"I believe this was not an act of desperation, rather an act of asymmetric warfare waged against us."

- Rear Adm. Harry Harris, commander of Joint Task Force-Guantanamo

Update 3: We're told via a spokesperson that "[George Bush] stressed the importance of treating the bodies in a humane and culturally sensitive manner." Wouldn't it have been nicer to treat them in a humane and culturally sensitive manner while they were alive? There's still a chance to do so for the hundreds of remaining prisoners before they too give in to despair.

Aren't there laws against this sort of thing?

President George W. Bush said on Friday that Iran has "weeks not months" to respond to a U.S.-backed offer aimed at containing Iran's nuclear ambitions and said Tehran needs to suspend uranium enrichment.

At a joint news conference with Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Bush said that if Iran does not suspend enrichment, "there must be a consequence."

"We've given the Iranians a limited period of time -- you know, weeks not months -- to digest a proposal to move forward. And if they choose not to verifiably suspend their program, then there will be action taken in the U.N. Security Council," Bush said.

Real threat or braggadocio? You make the call.

The Pentagon, as it turns out, isn't releasing the categorized data. If (and we know it isn't true) all $20 million were paying off $2,500 chunks for Iraqi deaths caused by coalition fire, that amounts to 8,000 Iraqis killled directly by the coalition. The actual number could be more (if the average payment is less than $2,500) or less (if a lot of the money is for injuries and not deaths), but the 8,000 figure is surely a "ballpark" figure which gives us some indication of the magnitude of death and destruction being visited upon the Iraqi people by the occupying forces.

"Two, three, many Hadithas" isn't just a slogan. It's an understatement.

It's classically typical of the George W. Bush administration: more lost than a homeless dog. One has only to look at what happened to the under secretary of state in the Dominican Republic this past week.

Robert Zoellick, leading his country's delegation, arrived ill-prepared at the 36th General Assembly of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Santo Domingo. One would assume that a delegation leader would come to such events after thoroughly consulting with State Department experts. Not so.

Perhaps the issue is the OAS. Gringo proconsuls have traditionally attended the forum as if they were wearing the headdress of an arrogant Catholic archbishop. They would arrive and preach, and the servile flock would genuflect and vote in line with orders from the Vatican in Washington. Once the farce was concluded, masters and slaves would retire to sip cocktails in the gringo's suite.

Things have changed. These days, Zoellick would barely say mass. Nobody is following his orders. Deaf ears to silly words.

Perhaps it is because, in holding on to the last vestiges of their ignorant arrogance, Bush and company have not yet grasped our irreversible political changes. Our America is no longer the backyard of the White House. Period.

Perhaps it is because the State Department did not have the decency to warn the under secretary that Washington's negligence has cost it the miniscule support that it used to have in the hemisphere. Now Bush is as popular as a homeless dog.

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. One could speculate ad nauseum. The reality is that Zoellick underestimated the intelligence and determination of delegates not to let themselves be trampled over by imperialist political maneuvers.

During his speech, Zoellick made a fool of himself, thus confirming Washington's abysmal ignorance regarding hemispheric issues and international diplomacy. The gringo agenda began to collapse with a loud crash when Zoellick wrongly assumed that Brazil and Argentina would block Venezuela's entry onto the UN Security Council. That backfired. Both nations announced their unconditional support for Venezuela's candidacy.

Zoellick also underestimated the hemisphere's diplomats when he urged a condemnation of Venezuela. He accused President Hugo Chávez of interfering in the Peruvian elections. The forum categorically rejected Zoellick's nonsense. When they got no support, Zoellick and Peru withdrew their accusations. Ironically, the OAS refusal represents a resounding and unequivocal slap in the face to Washington's crude interventionism in the hemisphere.

The Pentagon is refusing to release data on how many soldiers have suffered brain injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan. It says disclosing the results would put the lives of those fighting at risk.

The Pentagon spokesperson is probably right that disclosing the results would put lives at risk. The lives, however, are the political lives of those who brought us this war -- the ones who really "put the lives of those fighting at risk."

In addition to suspending its enrichment of uranium indefinitely, Iran would have to receive a seal of approval from the International Atomic Energy Agency confirming that it had no undeclared nuclear facilities or secret nuclear programs, and that it had answered a long list of outstanding questions, European diplomats and senior Bush administration officials said. Such criteria alone in recent years took Japan five years to accomplish.

In addition, the package calls for Iran to prove economic justification for its nuclear program, a complicated process that would probably take more than 10 years. [Ed. note - huh?]

That formula was designed to give the six powers -- the United States, Britain, Russia, France and China, the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, plus Germany -- complete control over any decision to allow Iran to proceed with some enrichment. "The package does not say that if the I.A.E.A. gives Iran a clean bill of health that it will be the end of the moratorium," said one senior European official. "It simply means we will re-examine it."

Asked whether the United States had softened its position, the official said, "This is a small conceptual step because they accept the notion that someday in some circumstances -- maybe in 30 years when the mullahs disappear -- there could be the end of a moratorium."

"We're trying to give these people freedom, which I think is an incredibly noble thing. But it's complicated.''

- Capt. Jason Earley, interviewed by Knight-Ridder's Tom Lasseter

In the operation being described by Earley, two Iraqi men and one woman were killed, all almost certainly innocent civilians, in a raid on an alleged "insurgent leader's" compound. The rocket-propelled grenade launcher someone thought they saw on the woman's shoulder, which led to her death, never materialized. Of course the fact that this raid was conducted at 1 a.m. to maximize the U.S.' technological advantage no doubt contributed to that error. Ah, but don't worry. Someone is going to "return to the compound to give the family compensation payments for the woman and probably for the two men as well, depending on whether intelligence officers determined they were insurgents." That's ok then (and wouldn't you love to know how the intelligence [sic] officers are going to make that determination?).

And in yet another operation yesterday, this one so minor it was only mentioned 12 paragraphs down in a story about the release of 600 Iraqi prisoners:

U.S. mortar shells hit a house in a village 15 miles north of Baquba, and soldiers raided the home as military aircraft circled overhead, according to witnesses. The shelling destroyed the house and two cars and killed a father and his son, witnesses said. Four other people were injured in the strike, including two women and an 8-month-old baby.

Just to clarify, as far as one can tell from these two articles, no actual resistance fighters were killed in either of these operations. Only innocent civilians. Or, in the words of Capt. Jason Earley, "complications."

Nor do I mean that lightly. We read today that there were 750 airstrikes in Afghanistan in May alone, and a "smaller number" in Iraq. How many of those were even reported in the press (through no fault of theirs in most cases, I'll add), nevertheless followed up on to determine the outcome? How many Iraqis and Afghans have died that we'll never even hear about?

This is what happens when you conduct war from the air based on a combination of "tips" and complete disregard for the civilian population. Occasionally, those tips will prove valid (as evidently in this case). More often than not, they won't. But don't worry. No one in the corporate media, and even few in the alternative media, will call it a "massacre" when innocent, defenseless people die without even seeing the faces of their attackers. After all, they weren't being targeted. It was just a "mistake."

Update: George Bush has this to say: "Coalition and Iraqi forces persevered through years of near misses and false leads, and they never gave up." "Near misses" of Zarqawi that is. The innocent civilians who were foolish enough to put their bodies in the way of the American bombs aimed at Zarqawi weren't so lucky.

"Recent data indicate we may finally be experiencing some impact [of rising oil prices]."

Of course I'm being disingenuous. The "we" in that quote doesn't actually include you and I. It only includes people like Greenspan and other millionaires and billionaires who don't actually fill their own cars with gas.

"Iran continues to rattle its nuclear saber."

Is this a minor matter? Absolutely not. Because the more Americans are conditioned to think that Iran is "threatening," the more willing they are to endorse whatever hostile measures the U.S. government tries to implement, which in turn makes the implementation of those measures -- sanctions, bombing, or whatever -- just that much more likely.

Does Jon Stewart see himself as a warmonger? Probably not. But with remarks like this, he most certainly is.

Update: Danny Schechter makes nearly the same mistake, with this today on his "News Dissector" blog: "Iran’s 'hard line' may have been a negotiating strategy -- not really a threat." A "threat"? What part of "we have no intention of developing nuclear weapons" constitutes a threat, exactly?

Havana, Jun 6 (Prensa Latina) US Colonel James Steele, accomplice of international terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, is advising death squad operations in Iraq, Granma newspaper reported Tuesday.

Steele was the one to whom Posada Carriles reported the shooting down of a DC-3 airplane in Nicaragua and Eugene Hassenfus' apprehension, an incident that provoked the Iran-Contras scandal, the daily stated.

Steele´s presence was denounced in a letter by US congressman Dennis J. Kucinich addressed to the State Department.

Kucinich said he has a copy of all Pentagon documents on the use of US Special Forces members to constitute murder and kidnapping equipment in Iraq.

Kucinich recalled how Steele, who is also advising the US ambassador in Iraq for the Iraqi Security Forces, developed plans in El Salvador to attack revolutionary leaders and their followers.

Posada Carriles, mastermind of the mid-air explosion of a Cuban airplane that killed 73 people, boasts in his book "Los Caminos del Guerrero" of his close links with Steele, Granma daily reports.

That concession, along with a promise of U.S. assistance for an Iranian civilian nuclear energy program, is conditioned on Tehran suspending its current nuclear work until the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency determines with confidence that the program is peaceful. U.S. officials said Iran would also need to satisfy the U.N. Security Council that it is not seeking a nuclear weapon, a benchmark that White House officials believe could take years, if not decades, to achieve.

Almost 54 years ago, when the democratically elected prime minister of Iran, Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh, with the approval of Iran’s consultative assembly and the support of the overwhelming majority of the Iranian people, nationalized the Iranian oil industry, the British Labor government in alliance with the Eisenhower administration declared that nationalization threatened the security of the international community. Using their power of influence in the UN, they were able to impose an embargo on the export of Iranian oil.

The embargo weakened the economy and made Dr. Mossadegh’s government vulnerable to political volatilities that paved the way for the U.S.-British coup of 1953, which made Iranian oil resources uncontrollably available to the U.S., British, French, and Dutch oil companies that also manipulated Iran’s economic and political system through their agent on the Peacock Throne, the Shah.

On Monday, U.S.-led forces fired artillery at the train station in Anbar's provincial capital of Ramadi, "targeting four military-aged males unloading a weapons cache."

A hospital official, Dr. Omar al-Duleimi, said American forces killed five civilians and wounded 15. The U.S. military said the mission had "positive effects on the target," but it denied that civilians were killed or injured in the city west of the capital.

And let me say that the despicable, cynical nature of that phrase "positive effects on the target" merits only contempt.

Fool me once, etc. (see George Bush for the rest of the quote).

Cuba restores sight to nearly a quarter million Latin Americans:

The number of Latin Americans who have had their vision restored since the start of the Cuban Operation Miracle program nearly two years ago is approaching a quarter million. Through this joint program with Venezuela, low-income people of the region are undergoing surgery free of charge along with all required medicines before, during, and after the procedure.

Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque was at the Solo city airport on the Indonesian island of Java to receive a contingent from Cuba’s Henry Reeve Medical Brigade, which arrived to lend its services to thousands of victims after a devastating earthquake a week earlier killed more than 6,000 people and left tens of thousands injured.

The contingent’s 135 health professionals, including specialized doctors and hospital staff, arrived on June 3 at 1:55 pm local time after flying the 22,000 kilometers that separate Havana and Java.

Ninety-six members of the contingent had just returned home after completing a successful mission in the Republic of Pakistan after the latter was shaken by an earthquake on October 8 last year.

But here's the thing I didn't know -- according to Cole, the U.S. government has something called the Open Source Center whose task it is to translate such primary texts. Cole writes "They are, however, not made freely available, though you can get them via university and maybe other good libraries." Which evidently includes Cole, since he provides us with the text of this very interesting speech (you can often get similar material from primary sources, such as the Islamic Republic News Agency, although I couldn't find this particular speech there).

There's too much to excerpt in the speech, but I will pull out just one sentence which goes straight to the heart of the "nuclear issue":

"To say that no country has the right to have access to nuclear technology means that in 20 years' time, all of the countries of the world will have to beg certain Western or European countries to meet their energy demands. They will have to beg for energy in order to run their lives. Which country, nation, or honest official is ready to take that?"

"Ages of experience have taught us that the commitment of a husband and a wife to love and to serve one another promotes the welfare of children and the stability of society."

And while I'm asking questions: Can anyone remember the last time an American flag was burned (in the United States)? I sure can't.

Meanwhile, the slaughter initiated by the current President Bush continues, as those 28 bodies were easily surpassed, as 20 Iraqis were slaughtered as they rode on a bus and another 11 were killed in fighting in Basra. And that's just the Iraqis who were killed in large enough groups to make the news. Were these particular Iraqis killed by American soldiers? No. Are they dead because the U.S. government chose to invade Iraq and overthrow its government? Without question.

Some of the mass graves in Iraq are the result of direct American action, of course. Shortly before those 28 people were killed in the Iraqi desert, 400 Iraqi women and children were incinerated when American bombs deliberately destroyed the Amiriyah air raid shelter. Even closer in time to the death of those 28 people was the slaughter of "thousands" of defenseless Iraqi soldiers on the "Highway of Death" as the war ended. More recently, there are the mass graves in the soccer fields of Fallujah, containing hundreds of bodies. All of them the ultimate responsibility of a President who, unlike the Iraqi President, seems unlikely ever to stand trial for his crimes.

Update: Actual death count for yesterday is being reported as 48, although again that's only the ones being reported, typically because they occured in large groups.

The American media, virtually without exception, headlined one obscure sentence in the speech in which Chavez discussed "Carlos the Jackal" and referred to him as "my friend," and provided the reader with virtually no other details about the speech. Only in the Gulf Times, out of Qatar, could I find any meaningful press coverage of the speech. Some excerpts:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez yesterday declared OPEC an "anti-imperialist" organisation that can help liberate people in the developing world and told its members the US "empire" would collapse.

Addressing the opening of a ministerial meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, the leftist leader said the 11 oil-producing countries were a force to fight poverty.

"OPEC is an anti-colonial, anti-imperialist organisation, a liberating organisation for the development of our peoples of Latin America, Africa and Asia," he told the energy ministers.

With an OPEC expansion, under consideration, that would include countries from those regions, "the tomb of US imperialism is opened," he said. "The empire is going to collapse in this century."

The fiery US critic repeated his demand of a US troop withdrawal from Iraq and defended Iran, which the United States and others accuse of covertly seeking nuclear weapons, as a "brother people".

"Stop the oppression of the Iraqi people, stop the threat against the Iranian people," he said.


In the past century "we have offered our oil to quench the thirst of the developed countries, while our peoples in Asia, Africa and Latin America stagnate in under-development, misery and backwardness," he added.

"That is colonialism, that is called imperialism," he said.

The first time Staff Sgt. Matthew Kruger came home from Iraq, he and his wife, Maggie, went straight into marriage counseling. The second time, she threatened to divorce him if he didn't get out of the Army. The separations were tearing them apart. So in July, to save his seven-year marriage, Kruger quit the service.

Then he looked around the job market, and it didn't take long to figure out that leaving the Army held its own perils. Nothing offered him the financial security of his military job — especially the generous health coverage for his wife and three small children.

And so, 29 years old and with no other place to turn, Kruger spent his first full day of freedom at a military processing center, signing up for four more years.

"We had nothing. We were scared," Maggie said recently, struggling to keep their rambunctious children entertained in a pizza parlor outside the Ft. Lewis military base. "We suddenly realized there was no way to take the kids to the doctor or dentist for any little reason, as we had been used to."

For Kruger, who returned to a war zone for his third tour in December, the danger of losing his family's health insurance was more real and immediate than the danger of dying in combat.

At military installations around the country, other families cling to the modest but steady wages, the guaranteed housing allowance, the solid retirement plan and the health benefits of the armed forces.

For many service members, it's a matter of balancing risk: Within the military, multiple deployments are commonplace, and more than 2,400 U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq and 18,000 have been wounded. Outside the military, 46 million people in the U.S. have no health insurance, and those who do pay increasingly higher prices for it.

Sixty percent of large companies offered health coverage last year, down from 69% in 2000, and the coverage that is available costs more. Traditional pensions are becoming less common.

Although the Army missed its recruitment goals last year, in part because of the Iraq war, retention continues at record levels. Reenlistments this year are running 20% above the Army's goal, despite the long overseas deployments. Two out of three soldiers eligible to reenlist do so.

The military has moved in the opposite direction [from the companies which are cutting health care benefits and pensions]. The $12 medical co-payment was cut to zero in 2001. Dental care is cheap. Plus, active-duty pensions are guaranteed after 20 years.

A Latin Backlash
Hugo Chavez has managed to replace George W. Bush as the imperialist specter

The worst, and most ominous, part of this "joke" on the part of the Post is its opening sentence: "For years Chavez's steady dismantlement of Venezuela's democracy and his embrace of dictators and terrorists around the world -- from Fidel Castro to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- prompted next to no reaction from Latin America's democratic governments." When it comes to "dismantling" democracy, they seem to have confused Hugo Chavez with George Bush, and made the same exact mistake when it comes to the assertion that Fidel Castro and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are "dictators" and "terrorists." I know there are some who are going to argue that Fidel is a dictator, which is simply factually wrong, but let's not get distracted by that, shall we? Fidel Castro is unquestionably not a "terrorist," and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is equally unquestionably neither a dictator nor a terrorist, and the fact that the Washington Post, the leading newspaper of the American ruling class, can write such nonsense, does not portend well for as far as future actions of terrorism emanating from just down the street from the Post.

Did I say something about "liberal media" earlier today? My bad.

Canadian police foiled a homegrown terrorist attack by arresting 17 suspects, apparently inspired by al-Qaida, who obtained three times the amount of explosives used in the Oklahoma City bombing, officials said Saturday.

Are these real terrorists with a real plot? Quite possibly. But the rush to judgement and to convincing the public that a "terrorist attack" has been "foiled" is, from my reading of the evidence available to AP, quite unjustified (but hardly unexpected).

Update: This is a very strange story. On CNN tonight, the story has been playing like this: the voice-over reporter says the suspects "tried to get" 3 tons of ammonium nitrate. But then they cut to a video of a Canadian policeman, saying that 3 tons "were delivered" to the suspects. Given that, why does that reporter just say they "tried to get" it? Strange.

Update: Ah, but then they "redeem" themselves with yet another front-page article entitled "White House Opens Door To Dissenters." And who are those "dissenters"? Cindy Sheehan, perhaps? Ray McGovern? Scott Ritter? Medea Benjamin? Hahahahahahaha. You kidder, you. No, it's a retired General (Barry McCaffrey) who, according to Wikipedia, "in June of 2005, ... surveyed Iraq on behalf of U.S. Central Command and wrote an optimistic report afterwards. In it, he says the U.S. senior military leadership team is superb and predicts the insurgency will reach its peak from January-to-September 2006, allowing for U.S. force withdrawals in the late summer of 2006." And it's a Wall Street CEO (Henry M. Paulson Jr.) who actually has the audacity to think global warming is a reality, and a right-wing commentator (Tony Snow) who criticizes Bush from the right.

"Dissent" in America.

The investigation of the March 15 attack in Ishaqi concluded that the U.S. troops followed normal procedures in raising the level of force as they came under attack upon approaching a building where they believed an al-Qaida terrorist was hiding, said Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, a U.S military spokesman.

Caldwell also acknowledged there were "possibly up to nine collateral deaths" in addition to the four Iraqi deaths that the military announced at the time of the raid.

Then we come to the question of the numbers. The U.S. military today is claiming there were "possibly" 13 deaths and not just the four -- "a man, two women and a child" -- that were acknowledged on the day of the attack. But that very day, "Associated Press photographs showed the bodies of two men, five children and four other covered figures arriving at the hospital accompanied by grief-stricken relatives." Despite that documentary evidence, on that very day, headlines read "Iraqis Say 11 People Killed in U.S. Raid," as if the photographic evidence was worth less than the worthless claims of the U.S. military. And now, 2 1/2 months later, the military still is only willing to admit that it is "possible" that there were more than four deaths.

The big controversy seems to be over the question of when these people died -- were they shot first, and then the building demolished to cover up that crime, or were they killed when the building was demolished by an airstrike? As far as I'm concerned, it's a distinction without a difference, which brings me back to the title of this post. Because, illustrating the point I've made so many times, here we have a suspected resistance fighter in a building, and the U.S. military stating proudly that calling in an airstrike to demolish that building, without asking or caring who else might be inside, was an example of the "normal procedures in raising the level of force." This building could have been an elementary school containing 50 small children for all they knew, or cared. As it was it "only" contained 11 Iraqis, most if not all of them unarmed and all of them, as far as we know, completely uninvolved in the fighting (the suspect actually escaped and was captured).

Rotten apples? Rotten barrel!

On the eve of the assault on Fallujah, the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition sent out an email to anti-war activists (November 7, 2004) under the headline: “Top U.S. Marine in Iraq Calls for Massacre in Fallujah.” It reported that Sgt. Major Carlton W. Kent gave an emotional pep-talk to 2,500 Marines who were poised to attack the city. The marines had just notified the people of Fallujah that any male between the age of 15-55 who dared go outside would be automatically killed. “You’re all in the process of making history,” the Sgt. Major exhorted his soldiers. “This is another Hue City in the making. I, have no doubt, if we do get the word, that each and every one of you is going to do what you have always done kick some butt.” (AP, November 7, 2004)

Evoking the events in Hue by U.S. officers, as a motivation for today’s troops, shows the macabre criminality inherent in imperialism’s war for conquest.

Hue was a city in South Vietnam that was a scene of horrific war crimes by military personnel when it was captured by U.S.-led forces in March 1968. U.S. Under-Secretary of the Air Force, Townsend Hoopes, admitted that Hue was left a “devastated and prostrate city. Eighty percent of the buildings had been reduced to rubble, and in the smashed ruins lay 2,000 dead civilians …” (Noam Chomsky’s forward to the papers of the 1967 International War Crimes in Vietnam Tribunal.)

The Geneva Conventions expressly prohibit the targeting of civilians under any circumstances. But the Pentagon had a bigger political concern than adhering to international law. The fundamental fear of the Pentagon and the White House in Korea, as it was in Vietnam and during the first and current war against Iraq, was that public opinion at home would turn against the imperialist adventure and tie the hands of the warmakers. The logic of their political calculus was that U.S. public opinion would turn against the war directly as a result of a large number of U.S. casualties. This thought took them to the next murderous conclusion: if civilians pose even a remote risk to U.S. soldiers it is better to shoot the civilians first and ask questions later. Dead Korean or Vietnamese or Iraqi civilians will not be as politically damaging back home as dead American soldiers.

"And then, of course, there is the issue, if they do get sanctions leveled against Iraq -- leveled against Iran, are they going to work? Don't forget, Iraq endured 11 years of sanctions, and, you know, we stil had to go to war to get rid of what it was that they had."

Hat tip to Daily Kos diarist katchen.

The largest labor union in the Canadian province of Ontario has voted unanimously to boycott Israel "until it recognizes the Palestinians' right of self-determination" and accepts all United Nations resolutions relating to Palestinians, including the right of return.

The decision was made by the Ontario division of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), which has 450,000 members.

The union's decision says that it is joining an international campaign to boycott Israel and to impose sanctions on it, until it fulfills all UN resolutions including Resolution 194, which recognizes the right of return of Palestinian refugees from 1948. In addition, the union intends to support pro-Palestinian organizations in an educational campaign, which will depict Israel as an apartheid state.

An apologist for the military being interviewed by Anderson Cooper on his show tonight kept emphasizing how this was "aberrant," and how 99% of the troops don't do such things. Perhaps. I'm not convinced. Remember, some substantial percentage of the troops in Iraq aren't even on the front lines. Of the troops who are actually conducting raids, or knocking down doors, I'd bet it's much higher. But let's say it's only 1%. With 135,000 troops in Iraq, that's more than 1,000 "bad apples" running around gunning down Iraqis. With that many, is it any surprise there are two, three, many Hadithas?

Let's remember something else--the only cases that are going to surface like this are the clearly deliberate murders. When an incident happens in a city, and let's say a shot is fired at the soldiers, how often have they responded by randomly firing in what might or might not be an appropriate direction, killing bystanders? Killings like that aren't even questioned, much less prosecuted. Nor are checkpoint killings, no matter how trigger-happy the soldiers staffing the checkpoint might have been. It just isn't going to happen.

Back to that 1%. I'm not going to quibble with regard to ground troops, even though we have clear evidence (like the story filed by Knight-Ridder's Tom Lasseter which so ominously presaged the Haditha massacre) that the attitude which leads to such massacres is not only not suppressed but actively encouraged. But I'm willing to bet that close to 100% of the pilots flying combat missions have committed similar acts, dropping bombs or firing missiles at buildings which were "suspected" al Qaeda hideouts or where "suspected" insurgents were located, without seriously attempting to even verify that information, much less to find out who else might have been in that building. This is simply the nature of the U.S. air war. The day the first pilot gets charged for such crimes, well, I was trying to think of something to promise to do, but it isn't worth it, because it simply isn't going to happen. They'll just chalk it up to "bad intelligence." That one's been working for George Bush so far.

Hey military and media--while you're busy investigating, how about looking into the murders of Nazem Baji and Salem Hassan?

And for our quote of the day:

Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki lashed out at the American military on Thursday, denouncing what he characterized as habitual attacks by troops against Iraqi civilians.

Mr. Maliki said violence against civilians had become a "daily phenomenon" by many troops in the American-led coalition who "do not respect the Iraqi people."

"They crush them with their vehicles and kill them just on suspicion," he said. "This is completely unacceptable."

The characters, we're told, are "Bob the Tomato" and "Larry the Cucumber." Now that's a religion I could really sink my teeth into.

In today's Ha'aretz (hat tip to Cursor), however, Gideon Levy explores in detail the fate of the Amin family. Among the powerful descriptions of the family, which deserve to be read in full and not excerpted, there were a few other tidbits that I'll repeat here. First, this:

This is what happens when one assassinates from the air, not even a "ticking bomb" - no one talks about "ticking bombs" any more - only a wanted Jihad man who was on his way to the hospital to visit his wife, who had just given birth.

And, remarkably, given the detail that Levy provides about the victims, this:

Ten days after the attack, the IDF spokesperson is still wondering if any civilian was killed in the operation: "On Saturday, May 20, the IDF attacked, from the air, a car in which Mohammed Dahdouh, a senior activist in Islamic Jihad, who was involved in elevated-trajectory firing and additional terror operations against Israel, was traveling. The IDF continues to investigate in order to check the report that three Palestinians were killed as a result of the attack on Dahdouh's car."