Left I on the News

Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson said Sunday it would be "enormously unwise" for the Bush administration to take military action against Iran before it gets out of Iraq.

(3) that it should be the policy of the United States to combat, contain, and roll back the violent activities and destabilizing influence inside Iraq of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, its foreign facilitators such as Lebanese Hezbollah, and its indigenous Iraqi proxies;

(4) to support the prudent and calibrated use of all instruments of United States national power in Iraq, including diplomatic, economic, intelligence, and military instruments, in support of the policy described in paragraph (3) with respect to the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its proxies;

(2) that it is a vital national interest of the United States to prevent the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran from turning Shi'a militia extremists in Iraq into a Hezbollah-like force that could serve its interests inside Iraq, including by overwhelming, subverting, or co-opting institutions of the legitimate Government of Iraq;

So, even as amended, there can be no doubt that this amendment was a strong endorsement by the Senate, including half of the Democrats, for war against Iran. But actually, the reason I'm writing here is to call attention to the one section of the amendment which has been pretty much overlooked - section 1:

(1) that the manner in which the United States transitions and structures its military presence in Iraq will have critical long-term consequences for the future of the Persian Gulf and the Middle East, in particular with regard to the capability of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran to pose a threat to the security of the region, the prospects for democracy for the people of the region, and the health of the global economy;

It all starts to run together sometimes. But the things that will stay with me over my break are Afrah's tears. I sat in her home this past week to talk about her mother Ghania. Afrah was the woman's favorite among her eight children. Often her sisters would complain that she and Ghania were always together.

Afrah talked about her kindness, Ghania would hide away her favorite foods for her or pick up clothes or trinkets from the market that reminded her of her daughter.

Ghania is gone, killed at the back of a bus by what witnesses said were bullets from Blackwater security guards on Sept. 16 in Nisour square. While they protected Americans Iraqis died, witnesses said.

No one has come to this tiny home in Hurriyah to ask this family what happened. No investigators from the Ministry of Interior or the U.S. Embassy or the joint U.S. and Iraqi commission. No one has asked them about compensation or what this has done to their family.

Ghania died while she held her 27-year-old daughter in her arms in the back of a bus, protecting her from the bullets.

Her family lives in a tiny two-bedroom home where instead of doors, sheets of cloth conceal the rooms from each other and the home from the street. Her poor husband can't think about anything but his loving wife. They spent 40 years together and at night when everyone has gone home he sees her in front of him. No one else can put up with his stubborn personality, she love him, she alone.

He tries to stop his mind and goes to the street in the dead of night and chain-smokes. But his love and need for her has grown since her death. Nothing will be enough to compensate this 67-year-old for his loss.

For Afrah, the image of her mother's body in the back of a pick up truck with two other bodies is engrained in her mind. She wakes up and sleeps with it in her mind.

When her mother died she kissed her and turned to God, "We belong to God and we return to God," she prayed. But I see the pain in Afrah's tears.

Iran labels CIA 'terrorist organization'
Iran's parliament on Saturday approved a nonbinding resolution labeling the CIA and the U.S. Army "terrorist organizations," in apparent response to a Senate resolution seeking to give a similar designation to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The hard-line dominated parliament cited U.S. involvement in dropping nuclear bombs in Japan in World War II, using depleted uranium munitions in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq, supporting the killings of Palestinians by Israel, bombing and killing Iraqi civilians, and torturing terror suspects in prisons.

1- To break the global media stranglehold of western outlets.
2- To bridge cultural divisions pragmatically.
3- To highlight the versatility and vitality of political and cultural differences, making up the human condition.

"We will set a long-term goal for reducing global greenhouse gas emissions. By setting this goal, we acknowledge there is a problem. And by setting this goal, we commit ourselves to doing something about it."

- George Bush, yesterday

You solve problems by laying out a course of action, not by "setting a goal."

As I wrote back in 2005: "John McCain - war criminal then, war criminal now, war criminal forever."

But I'm not writing this to insult religious fundamentalism; that's an easy target. No, I'm writing this because the other day I was browsing through a bookstore and picked up a copy of Bill Bryson's latest book, "The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid," which is his portrait of growing up in the '50s in the United States (something I share with Bryson). And what did I read in the very first chapter, which reminds us in the West that if you think people like Ahmadinejad (and the right-wing in America) are living in another century, you're right, but it isn't the 16th century, it's the 20th? This: "Up until Pearl Harbor, half of the 48 states had laws making it illegal to employ a married woman." So the next time you're looking down your nose at another culture or even part of your own, try looking in a mirror. Or a history book.

I first become politically active not the antiwar movement, but in the women's movement in the early 70's. One of the key figures in the struggle at that time was Bill Baird. Baird was imprisoned in 1965 and 1966 (hardly ancient history; I was a senior in high school) for teaching birth control and distributing abortion literature in New York & New Jersey; and was the central figure behind the Supreme Court decision of Eisenstadt v. Baird, which allowed unmarried people the right to use birth control...in 1972 (following the 1965 case of Griswold v. Connecticut which provided the same right for married couples).

No, neither of these examples is in the same league as stoning someone to death for adultery, say. But they do remind us that the "superior" Western culture has its own history (and present!) of reactionary attitudes and laws as well.

"You, quite simply, [are] ridiculous. You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated....I doubt you will have the intellectual courage to answer [our] questions...I do expect you to exhibit the fanatical mind-set that characterizes so much of what you say and do....Your preposterous and belligerent statements...led to your party's defeat in the [last] elections."

This week, a global audience saw Iran's "petty and cruel dictator," as Bollinger called him, courteously parrying questions from hostile students -- something viewers won't see our democratically elected president doing.

So fine, let's congratulate ourselves for showing Iran just how many freedoms we have in America. But when we get done congratulating ourselves on our fancy freedoms, let's figure out why we can't be bothered to put them to use.

Who'll be the last to die for a mistake
The last to die for a mistake
Whose blood will spill, whose heart will break
Who'll be the last to die for a mistake
...
We don't measure the blood we've drawn anymore
We just stack the bodies outside the door
...
The wise men were all fools
What to do

- Bruce Springsteen, "Last to Die"

This is a song called Livin' In the Future. But it's really about what's happening now. Right now. It's kind of about how the things we love about America, cheeseburgers, French fries, the Yankees battlin' Boston... the Bill of Rights [holds up microphone, urging crowd to cheer] ... v-twin motorcycles... Tim Russert's haircut, trans-fats and the Jersey Shore... we love those things the way womenfolk love Matt Lauer.

But over the past six years we've had to add to the American picture: rendition, illegal wiretapping, voter suppression, no habeus corpus, the neglect of that great city New Orleans and its people, an attack on the Constitution. And the loss of our best men and women in a tragic war.

This is a song about things that shouldn't happen here happening here.

So right now we plan to do something about it, we plan to sing about it. I know it's early [in the day, as he was performing], but it's late. So come and join us.

And, aside from the political comments that start the show, few songs have political content and send chills up my spine like "My Hometown."

The closer ties are viewed with alarm by the opposition in Venezuela and Bolivia, and by Washington. U.S. Rep. Connie Mack, a Florida Republican, said they remind him "of the relationship that Fidel Castro had with Russia." He urged Washington to reach out more to a region analysts say it has largely ignored since 9-11.

Toward that aim, a bipartisan bill is being introduced in the U.S. Congress on Friday that would establish a 10-year, $2.5 billion program aimed at reducing poverty and expanding the middle class in Latin America.

The program would bring more stability in the long run and help the United States "re-establish leadership in the hemisphere" by increasing development assistance by more than a third, said bill co-sponsor Sen. Bob Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat.

Now for the crap. I'll leave out the standard Russert "gotcha" questions, and the less said about the inane "what's your favorite Bible verse" the better. No, what really pissed me off was the old torture question - "We get the #3 guy in al Qaeda, we know there's a big bomb going off in America in three days, and we know this guy knows where it is. Don't we have the right and the responsibility to beat it out of him?" All the candidates assured us they wouldn't sanction torture (although one wonders how many would change their position if the conventional wisdom was that torture does work). But not one of them challenged the ludicrous premise of the question. How do you "know" there's a big bomb going off in America in three days? Did al Qaeda publish an ad in the New York Times informing us of that? And how do you "know" that this guy knows where it is? How do you even know he's "the #3 guy in al Qaeda" for that matter?

The point is, this is precisely the kind of "knowing" things that helped justify the war against Iraq in the first place ("We 'know' they have weapons of mass destruction"). It's precisely the kind of "knowing" that is pointing the way to an attack on Iran ("We 'know' they are developing nuclear weapons).

Want to save lives the sure way, no torture required? Get the hell out of Iraq!

Blackwater USA triggered a major battle in the Iraq war in 2004 by sending an unprepared team of guards into an insurgent stronghold, a move that led to their horrific deaths and a violent response by U.S. forces, says a congressional investigation released Thursday.

It's worth reprinting an article I posted from Ha'aretz shortly after the massacre of Fallujah three years ago to remind ourselves of what happened in Fallujah:

During the first two weeks of this month, the American army committed war crimes in Falluja on a scale unprecedented for this war. According to the relatively few media reports of what took place there, some 600 Iraqis were killed during these two weeks, among them some 450 elderly people, women and children.

The sight of decapitated children, the rows of dead women and the shocking pictures of the soccer stadium that was turned into a temporary grave for hundreds of the slain - all were broadcast to the world only by the Al Jazeera network.

"You can have a President who has opposed the Iraq war from the beginning, opposed every bill funding it, opposed the Patriot Act, supported non-profit single-payer health care, or you can have a President...who's tall."

- Dennis Kucinich, in tonight's Democratic debate

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (Ohio) also participated in the debate, which was aired on MSNBC.

But a second, which is also one of many reasons that the U.S. invaded Iraq in order to overthrow its government, is that the U.S. fears the existence of countries with independent foreign policies, countries which, because they aren't subordinate to the United States, can actually stand up in an international forum and deliver a speech like the one below (PDF) delivered yesterday at the United Nations by Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque (for an earlier powerful speech by Pérez Roque, see this).

In the main, prepared part of his speech, Pérez Roque has a lot of important things to say, like this:

If a small country defends and upholds its right to independence, it is accused of being a rogue State; if a power launches an attack against a country, it is said that it "liberates" them. A fighter against foreign aggression is a terrorist; an attacking soldier is a "freedom fighter." That is the media war, the swindle of truths, the tyranny of a one-track mind in a globalized world.

Read it below, or watch it here:

This was supposed to be the end of my statement as Chair of the Non-Aligned Movement. However, the shameless and gross behavior of the US President in this hall, yesterday morning, now forces me to utter a few remarks on Cuba's behalf.

With a foul language and an arrogant tone, President Bush insulted and threatened some ten countries; he gave orders, in a firm and authoritarian fashion, to the General Assembly; and with such bossiness never ever seen in this hall, he dished out terms and judgments on a score of countries.

It was an embarrassing show. The delirium tremens of the world's policeman. The intoxication of imperial power, sprinkled with the mediocrity and the cynicism of those who threaten to launch wars in which they know their life is not at stake.

The President of the United States has no right at all to pass judgment on any other sovereign nation on this planet. Having powerful nuclear weapons offers no right whatsoever to tread upon the rights of the peoples of the other 191 countries that are represented here.

And the determination and courage of the peoples should not be underestimated when it comes to defending their rights! After all, what prevails is not the power of cannons but the fairness of the ideas that you fight for. The bullish and menacing President should have already learned it by now.

Sovereign equality of States and not "regime change." Respect for sovereignty and not unilateral certifications of good behavior. Respect for International Law and not illegal blockades and wars.

President Bush talked about democracy, but we all know that he is lying. He came into office through fraud and deceit. We would have been spared his presence yesterday and would have listened to President Al Gore talking about climate change and the risks to our species. We also recall how he brazenly supported the coup d'etat against the President and the Constitution of Venezuela.

He talked about peace, but we know that he is lying. We remember very well when he threatened 60 or more countries, which he called "dark corners of the world," saying that he would wipe them off the face of the earth with pre-emptive and surprise attacks. Bush is a strange warrior who, from the rearguard, sends the young people of his country to kill and to die thousands of kilometers away.

He talked about human rights, but we know that he is lying. He is responsible for the death of 600,000 civilians in Iraq; he authorized tortures at the Guantánamo Naval Base and at Abu Ghraib, and he is an accessory to the kidnapping and disappearance of people, as well as to the secret flights and the clandestine prisons.

He talked about the fight against terrorism, but we know that he is lying. He has ensured complete impunity for the most hateful terrorist groups which, from Miami, have perpetrated heinous crimes against the Cuban people.

President Bush attacked the new Human Rights Council. He is bleeding through the wound; he is grunting his helplessness. He is haunted by the shamefulness that, during his term in office, the United States cannot even look forward to being a member because elections are through secret ballot. Cuba, in turn, was elected as a founding member of the Council with more than two-thirds of the votes.

He talked about cooperation, development and prosperity for the rest of the world, but we all know that he is lying. He has been the most selfish and reckless politician we have ever seen. In a world that this year will bear witness to the death of 10 million children under the age of 5 through preventable diseases, his self-seeking and empty proposals of yesterday are but a sick joke.

President Bush has no moral authority or credibility to judge anyone. He should be held accountable to the world for his crimes.

There are boundaries to both arrogance and hypocrisy. There are boundaries to lies and blackmail. Cuba rejects and condemns each of the devious words uttered yesterday by the President of the United States.

Mr. President:

Cuba appreciates the solidarity received from this General Assembly in its struggle against the blockade and the aggressions that it has been forced to endure for nearly five decades.

Cuba thanks all those who have supported its tenacious fight against terrorism and have raised their voice in favor of the release of five Cuban anti-terrorism fighters unjustly imprisoned in the United States.

Cuba will fight, along with all the members of the Non-Aligned Movement, in order to achieve a more just and democratic international order, in which our peoples can exercise their right to peace and development.

We may be accused of being dreamers, but we are fighting with the conviction that today's dreams will be tomorrow's realities.

We are fighting with the conviction that even when there are men without decorum, there are always others who have in themselves the decorum of many men and carry in them a whole nation, as well as human dignity.

Thank you very much.

Fadel's blog contains all sorts of interesting stories. The Sept. 18 post, for example, discusses the question of how many people have died in Iraq. Unfortunately, as discussed below under the title "Holocaust deniers by the dozens," her thoughts on the subject didn't reach the readers of McClatchy newspapers. In that same post, she reports (again, just to her blog readers) about a U.S. General who tried to get her to stop reporting that Sunnis and Shiites were killing each other, the facts be damned. Another post, also unpublished (so far, anyway), has her interviewing juvenile prisoners in Iraq, noting how they all showed signs of abuse (torture if you prefer), and that none knew why they were in prison.

Check it out.

I don't believe there's a transcript, so I transcribed parts of it which I present here. First, a lesson in class politics:

Jon Stewart: How does a poor farmer without high school education become the first indigenous President of Boliia?

Evo Morales: I understand that we all have rights. It's not just professionals and intellectuals who can become President, people who have other experiences, who have a working life as well, can also become President. Therefore indigenous persons can also become President.

Stewart: In Bolivia...[PAUSE FOR LAUGHTER]...In America, it's a little rigged.

Morales: So if it's rigged, something needs to be done to change that. [APPLAUSE]

And second, a more or less nonsensical non-question from Stewart, revealing his conventional American "wisdom"-reflecting antipathy to Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, followed by a very interesting answer from Morales:

Stewart: We have a tendancy to group the South American leaders. If you visit Castro, if you visit Chavez, then we all of a sudden get...scared. And so that understanding and dialog is important for us to open up as well.

Morales: I know that we're different not only within nations but among nations as well. Those difference among the various nations must be respected. But what better among political leaders, Presidents, or with social movement leaders, then coming together to think about how we can support life and humankind. And it's my sense that in this new millenium it should be the millenium of life. And from here, or from Cuba, Venezuela, Europe, Africa, we need to create and come together to save lives and to save humankind.

In recent days at the United Nations I have heard a lot of talk about global warming, climate change, but they don't say why, where all that is coming from. There appear to be few political leaders or movements that say where is all this coming from. Perhaps from a Western culture. Perhaps excesses in relation to industry. Or perhaps because of excessive luxury. Excessive consumption. And if we all think about humankind, we need to figure about how we can change that situation.

And I personally know that there are Presidents and countries that send troops abroad to save lives, but there are also countries and Presidents that send troops abroad to take away lives. If we compare these two things and weigh these two things, certainly we're going to come to the conclusion that in this millenium, the key guideline must be to save lives.

And please don't consider me to be part of the axis of evil. [LAUGHTER]

I won't bother to argue to "dictator" description. If you know enough about Cuba, you know that there is a large leadership team, and a democratic system by which decisions are taken. Fidel Castro does not "dictate" what happens. However, it is obvious that he is at once a very strong personality and at the same time a brilliant political and social thinker. Clearly he has, and has had, a major influence on the course of events in Cuba, and that's probably putting it mildly. So if someone wants to call him a "dictator," ok, it's not worth arguing about, although you'd have to say it's a funny criticism coming from a man who on more than one occasion has expressed a desire to be a dictator.

No, it's the "cruel" part I have to take exception to. Before getting to Fidel, we pause to remember that the accuser (Bush) was the one who was described by conservative Tucker Carlson (i.e., not one of Bush's enemies) as having "mocked" Carla Faye Tucker as he was about to put her to death. So accusations of "cruel" coming from him, a man who signed the death warrants of 155 people, are a cruel joke.

But Fidel? A man who has devoted his life (and I mean every day of his adult life, not the days in between clearing brush on his ranch and going fishing) to bettering the lives of the people of his country? A man whose leadership has given Cubans the lowest infant mortality in Latin America, the best education in Latin America, a leadership in scientific fields (2% of the population of Latin America but 11% of the scientists) such as biotechnology, "cruel"? A man whose leadership has led his country to send doctors all over the world offering both regular and emergency medical care to poor people in need, to send doctors to help after Hurricane Katrina hit the country whose leadership wishes him dead, and even to train (for free!) medical students of that country so they can return to treat poor people who otherwise might not have adequate health care? This man is "cruel"?

Again, a cruel joke. And worse, of course. Because behind it lies the deadly policy of blockade, attempted assassination and other acts of terrorism, imprisonment of those who dared to try to prevent that terrorism, and more. You want cruel? The U.S. just denied once again (for the eighth time) visas to Olga Salanueva and Adriana Pérez, wives of two of the Cuban Five (an interview with Olga broadcast yesterday on WBAI here). One man serving life in prison in the United States, another 15 years, both completely unjustly, and the U.S. government led by George Bush has denied them the right to see their wives for more than nine years, in contravention of all international law and human decency.

"Cruel"? That's cruel.

The New York Times did run an article in October, 2006 when the Lancet article appeared with its estimate of 600,000, but that was it - a one-day story. The rest of the U.S. media was pretty much the same.

In George Bush's defense, even if I call what is happening in Iraq a "holocaust," I couldn't really call him a "holocaust denier." Why? Because no one in the corporate media ever even bothers to ask him about it. No question, no denial. Although I would say he, like most war supporters, are in denial about the havoc they have caused.

Update: When I started this post, I had intended to include one other "holocaust" in it, but forget. But just now I'm listening to the "Holocaust denier" himself, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, addressing the U.N., and he reminded me (because he's talking about it) of what I left out. As he said, quoting U.N. statistics, every day 50,000 people die worldwide because of poverty - 18 million a year. A real holocaust. A preventable holocaust. A holocaust happening every year. And a holocaust which the likes of George Bush and the corporate media and all those casting stones at Mahmoud Ahmadinejad don't give a moment's thought to. Although once again, they don't really have to "deny" it, since the subject never comes up. George Bush, for example, in his address to the U.N. today, mentioned the word "poverty" three times. The only mention of people dying, however, came in a reference to "genocide" in Darfur.

What a splendid example of the depths of ignorance about Iran. Ahmadinejad is not only the duly elected President of a country (unlike, arguably, George Bush), but if there's one thing he's not, it's a "dictator" (or a "tyrant," which is a description I heard listening to one of the cable news channels). Indeed, one of his very first acts in office, allowing women to attend football (soccer) matches, was met with strong opposition from the Ayatollahs and was quickly overturned. A dictator? Hardly.

The funny thing about this is that before the media was filled with the story lines of Iran arming Iraqi resistance forces and Iran developing nuclear weapons, the story line was all about how Ahmadinejad was politically very weak within Iran. Not exactly consistent with being a dictator. Then again, when your main aim (Bollinger) is name-calling rather than the rational discussion your university is supposed to be about, the truth (or logic) isn't really the point.

Although the starting incident occurred about a year ago, the case has been slow to join the national conversation. After Mr. Bell’s conviction, though, the details spread quickly on the Internet, text messaging and black talk radio.

The Times also reports that there were "more than 10,000" demonstrators. Yes, there were. A lot more:

Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, another contender for the Democratic nomination, did not vote, although he voted minutes earlier for an alternative resolution by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. That resolution condemned the MoveOn ad as an "unwarranted personal attack," but also condemned political attack ads that questioned the patriotism of Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., and former Sen. Max Cleland, D-Ga., both Vietnam veterans.

Update: Just as a point of interest, looking at the list it appears that Sen. Russ Feingold was the single member of the Senate who took the principled stand of voting against both of these amendments. And, just after I wrote the post above, I sat down for lunch and turned on CNN, only to see a MoveOn.org ad about how George Bush has "betrayed us" because there will be the same number of troops in Iraq in 2008 as in 2006, after Americans "voted to end the war." Of course the ad placed all the blame on Bush and none on the Democrats, in typical MoveOn fashion, but their quick "counter-attack" and reuse of the "betray us" meme is to be commended.

Cuban anti-terrorist Fernando Gonzalez was taken from Waseca Prison in Minnesota to Terre Haute, Indiana, denounced Free the Five International Committee on Wednesday.

The point is simple. Whenever you read something that was originally written or spoken in a different language, you should be very careful before jumping to any conclusions based on the translation.

In today's news, this completely unremarkable and perfectly justifiable remark from the deputy commander of Iran's air force:

"We have drawn up a plan to strike back at Israel with our bombers if this regime (Israel) makes a silly mistake."

White House press secretary Dana Perino called Alavi's comment "unhelpful."

"It is not constructive and it almost seems provocative."

The Israeli reaction was even more topsy-turvy:

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said, "Unfortunately we are all too accustomed to this kind of bellicose, extremist and hateful language coming from Iran."

"We take the threat very seriously and so does the international community," he added.

Brian Becker, A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition National Coordinator:

Tina Richards, Grassroots America:

Mara Verheyden-Hilliard (Partnership for Civil Justice, member of the ANSWER Steering Committee) & Cindy Sheehan:

Ramsey Clark:

Ralph Nader: (click here if this one doesn't appear; it seems to be having trouble because it was a few seconds longer than 10 minutes)

Essam Omesh, President of the Muslim American Society:

Michael McPhearson, Executive Director, Veterans for Peace:

Liam Madden and Garett Reppenhegen, Iraq Veterans Against the War:

Adam Kokesh, Iraq Veterans Against the War:

"For sure we'd want to ascertain his approach on such important and sensitive issues as wiretapping and the appointment of U.S. attorneys, but he's a lot better than some of the other names mentioned and he has the potential to become a consensus nominee."

So how good is "a lot better"? Here's some substance:

Although Mr. Mukasey backed the White House by ruling that Mr. Padilla could be held as an enemy combatant — a decision overturned on appeal — he also defied the administration by saying Mr. Padilla was entitled to legal counsel.

Update: Bush, announcing the nomination:

"He knows what it takes to fight this war effectively."

Vic Lee

Let's start with some pictures:

On top are two pictures (taken in different directions) taken from an online AP photo collection of yesterday's events in Washington, D.C. I have two friends in DC, both of whom described (as did the organizers) the crowd as a "solid 100,000," and the pictures on the top seem to reflect that kind of "sea of humanity." On the bottom is a screen capture of the C-SPAN coverage of the "Gathering of Eagles" counter-demonstration. Being charitable, and assuming that there was an equal crowd on the other side of the C-SPAN camera, there were a couple hundred people there.

And the media? My local paper, the San Jose Mercury News, picked up the Washington Post article. Before you even got to the article, though, you were greeted with two large pictures. The one on top showed a handful of counter-demonstrators with their "give victory a chance" signs, and the second one showed more counter-demonstrators being confronted by a single antiwar demonstrator with his "end the war" sign.

The article was more of the same. The first (and only!) antiwar demonstrator quoted in the article is quoted as saying "it's time for the peace movement to take the next step past protest and to resistance," which is fine, but doesn't say anything about the issue. In contrast, the description of the Gathering of Morons Eagles demonstration includes this text (not a quote, this is the reporter): "Their message: The Iraq war can and is being won, and the troops need unqualified support." That's followed by a quote from one of the counter-demonstrators - "We just want a chance to show America we don't agree with the vocal minority," with no indication in the article about the glaring inaccuracy of that word "minority."

You might think this was an aberration, but The New York Times is almost a duplicate. The very first quote we read is not from the speakers or one of the 100,000 marchers, but from one of the handful of counterdemonstrators - "What troubles me, the thing that is so dismaying, is they don’t realize the big picture." Only in the final paragraphs of the article do we hear from Brian Becker, one of the organizers of the demonstration, and two of the demonstrators.

As far as numbers, it really was the same old story. The Washington Post was "live-blogging" the demo with several reporters. The lead reporter (Marc Fisher) claims to have counted the demonstration and arrived at the seemingly preposterous (and much too precise) 6,850, but did peg the counterprotest accurately as "several hundred." Other estimates of the counterprotest I saw and heard went from "just under a thousand" to "two thousand," which, based on what I could see on C-SPAN (pictured above), was a vast overestimate.

The AP started their report by talking about "thousands of demonstrators," but later resorted to this: "Organizers estimated that nearly 100,000 people attended the rally and march. That number could not be confirmed; police did not give their own estimate. A permit for the march obtained in advance by the ANSWER Coalition had projected 10,000." This isn't the first time I've seen this kind of news reporting based on permits. What an absurd idea! If they're willing to accept ANSWER's word for things, surely their word for how many actually showed up should be a lot more accurate than their advance prediction of how many they expected to show up, especially given the multi-organizational, multi-city nature of the event. The only possible reason to mention the permit is to provide some kind of justification to report a smaller number. The Washington Post had this: "Organizers of the antiwar event said tens of thousands turned out. A law enforcement official, who declined to be identified because authorities no longer provide crowd counts, estimated the gathering at closer to 10,000; the march permit obtained in advance by ANSWER had projected that number." Of course the organizers did not say that "tens of thousands" turned out, they said "100,000" turned out. And, like the AP, the Post uses ANSWER's advance projection to justify their anonymous and scurrilous "police but not really" estimate.

I'm not mentioning the TV coverage. That's because, as far as I saw, there barely was any. Nothing new there. C-SPAN did carry it, but I only caught the last part, because the C-SPAN schedule the day before said they would be broadcasting the Gathering of Morons Eagles event (which they did), but not the antiwar demonstration (which, as it turned out, they did).

The caption reads:

An Iraqi boy flashes an anti-US slogan as US soldiers watch a protest in Baghdad on 12 September 2007. Some one hundred people held a protest against the concrete wall (background) separating Ghazaliya and Shula districts, built by US forces.(AFP/Ali Yussef)

Hundreds of Iraqis have staged a protest against the building of a dividing wall between a Shia district of Baghdad and a Sunni area.

Residents of the Shula and Ghazaliya districts waved Iraqi flags and chanted slogans rejecting both the proposed separation and the US occupation.

Carrying banners reading "No to the dividing wall" and "The wall is US terrorism", the protesters issued a statement demanding that Iraqi authorities intervene.

Hassan al-Tai, a leader of the Sunni Tai tribe, demanded the Iraqi government act against those "planting division and sectarianism amongst Iraqis".

Washington Post - same exact news item, different headline: "White House Cites 'Satisfactory Progress' on Iraq Goals" - "The White House said today that Iraq has made "satisfactory progress" toward meeting nine of 18 political, economic and security benchmarks..."

It would be the classic glass half full, half empty situation. Except for one thing. Both stories are wrong, because the glass is actually not only completely empty, but broken.

Al Qaeda, whatever delusions they or the Bush Administration may have, is not "at war" with America, nor did they "attack America" on 9/11 nor is the U.S. fighting in Iraq to prevent them from "attacking America." They committed a terrorist attack in America; that attack was no more a threat to the United States than Hurricane Katrina (actually, it was a lot less of a threat). Even Japan, which was (and is) an actual country with an actual army and navy and air force arguably did not "attack America" in the sense of planning to occupy or seize control of Hawaii (which was a territory at the time), much less the mainland, although they obviously did attack the American military. Al Qaeda and its sympathizers are certainly hoping to commit further terrorist attacks in America or against Americans elsewhere. They are not planning to "attack America."

The other day seven American soldiers were killed in what the U.S. military and the U.S. press insist on describing as a "traffic accident." This is almost certainly not an "accident":

The U.S. command said the accident occurred in the Baghdad suburb of Shula when soldiers from the 1st Infantry Division's 2nd Brigade were in an armored transport truck on their way back from a raid in which they had captured three insurgents suspected of attacks on U.S. and Iraqi soldiers.

"The unit was returning to base after the raid when their vehicle apparently lost control and fell approximately 50 feet from a highway overpass," the military said in a statement.

Update: Forgot one - "new." In response to various reporters and anchors I've heard discussing Bush's latest speech, Bush did not present a "new plan" or a "new strategy" or "new tactics" last night - there was nothing "new" about it other than a new catch phrase ("return on success"). The so-called "surge" was arguably a new tactic, and forging alliances with former enemies in al Anbar province was arguably a new strategy. But those "new" things occurred many months ago. Last night was a continued implementation of a strategy already in progress, not anything "new."

Who do you suppose he meant? (cough-Israel-cough)

There is, however, a more interesting section, in which Fidel describes how Cuban security agents helped foil an assassination plot on Ronald Reagan's life:

A highly confidential report submitted in the summer of 1984 to an agent responsible for the security of Cuban representatives in the UN warned of a possible assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan by a far-right group in North Carolina. Upon receiving it, we immediately informed US authorities. Our official suggested that we deliver the information via Robert C. Muller, head of security of the US mission to the United Nations, with whom we maintained contact to ensure the protection of Cuban delegations visiting the international organization.

The assassination was planned for an imminent date, for Reagan's visit to North Carolina, as part of his re-election campaign.

We had all of the information at our disposal. We had the names of those implicated in the plot; the day, time and place where the assassination was to take place; the types of weapons the terrorists had and where they were being kept. In addition to all this, we knew where the elements who were plotting this were meeting and had a brief account of what had been said at a meeting.

Coincidentally, the day that Fidel Castro has informed the world of how Cuba helped foil a terrorist plot against a hostile President of the United States is also the ninth anniversary of the arrest and incarceration of the Cuban Five, five Cuban men who likewise were in the United States gathering information about terrorist plots, in order to prevent such plots from being carried out. Unfortunately for them, the President whose life they were protecting (among other targets) was Fidel Castro, and instead of honoring them for risking their lives to prevent terrorism, the United States put them in jail where they have remained ever since.

Jon Stewart, who just a few nights before put on one of his typical "fawn-fests" with a military guy who co-wrote the "Counter Insurgency Manual" with Petraeus, actually nailed it last night. He first showed a clip of Petraeus saying the following (in response to being asked when troops could be reduced below 130,000): "Our experience in Iraq has repeatedly shown that projecting too far into the future is not just difficult, it can be misleading and even hazardous." He then followed that with a very long clip of Petraeus doing precisely that, asserting exactly what would happen following a "rapid withdrawal" - "disintegration of Iraqi security forces, rapid deterioration of local security initiatives, al Qaeda, etc., etc."

While it is true that "Democrats" may say that, it also happens to be the truth (and a rather obvious one as well). Does it really have to be attributed to "Democrats"?

"I haven't left my home in two months," says Kulsoom, a medical student who lives in east Baghdad with her family.

Only a few family members ever go out, for daily essentials. Otherwise they stay at home, day after day.

But they would agree with Gen Petraeus that there has been a drop in violence since the American troop surge.

"There are fewer attacks," says Kulsoom. "Now it is only four or five killed a day in our area. It used to be 20 or 30."

"But we are still afraid. Nothing has really changed."

More from the article:

"We only get two hours of electricity a day," says Kulsoom. "One in the morning, one in the evening."

The Americans send out constant press releases to journalists talking of new projects to improve the power system. But the situation is as bad as ever.

Even this lower level of violence is still shockingly high. Iraqis still get kidnapped every day.

Gen Petraeus told Congress that the number of car bombs was down by half from the start of the year. But they are still running at a rate of three a day.

Kulsoom says 60 or 70 of her classmates have left [the country] in the past 18 months, many of her professors too.

"A lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus."

- Comedian Kathy Griffin, accepting an Emmy award

Ultra-right wing Senator James Inhofe wanted to make the point that Iraq was connected to "terrorism," if not to the 9-11 hijackers per se, by talking about numerous "terrorist training facilities" that existed in Iraq, including Salman Pak "where they trained terrorists to hijack airplanes." Unfortunately for Sen. Inhofe's point, that allegation has been completely discredited by the CIA, the DIA, and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

And Gen. Petraeus' response? Not a word. He was happy to let Inhofe's lie sit on the table, unchallenged.

What caught my eye were two aspect of the story. One is the description of the group as "racist and anti-Semitic." Got to get that "anti-Semitic" in there. But who were the targets of the group? "Religious Jews [Ed. note: by which they mean the ultra-conservative, orthodox Jews who don't even serve in the Israeli military, not Jews who attend synagogue on Friday night], foreign workers from Asia, drug addicts, the homeless and gays." The standard targets of right-wing thugs everywhere - immigrants, the poor, the weak. The fact is, these thugs are only one step removed from their more respectable counterparts, the kind who populate the podium at a Republican Presidential primary debate, or who spread their message of hate via countless media outlets.

The other interesting aspect was this:

All eight had loose connections to Jewish heritage. They did not identify themselves as Jews and their families had come to Israel to escape hardships in the former Soviet Union, police said.

Under the Israeli "law of return," a person can claim automatic citizenship if a parent or grandparent has Jewish roots. Authorities say that formula allowed many Soviets with questionable ties to Judaism to immigrate here after the Soviet Union disintegrated.

But let non-Jewish skinheads from Russia come live in Israel? No problem, as long as they'll take the jobs that Palestinians used to do. Indeed, continuing the ethnic cleansing of Israel by eliminating all contact with Palestinians was precisely why Russian immigrants were encouraged to immigrate to Israel.

"This is a man on a run, from a cave, who's virtually impotent other than these tapes."

- George Bush's "homeland security" adviser Fran Townsend, referring to Osama bin Laden

"If al Qaeda bothers to mention Iraq it's because they want to achieve their objectives in Iraq, which is to drive us out and to develop a safe haven. And the reason they want a safe haven is to launch attacks against America, or any other ally."

Get your story straight, guys.

"It is a moral disgrace. He is not a person of intellectual merit; he is not an academic. As a policy-maker, his only claim to fame was, at best, flawed and morally corrupt. On the grounds of intellectual judgment and moral character, he would seem to be a markedly inappropriate choice. This should be treated as a collective embarrassment."

- Stanford Professor of American history Bart Bernstein, reacting to the news that Donald Rumsfeld has been appointed a visiting fellow at Stanford's ultra-right-wing Hoover Institute, where he will participate in a task force of scholars and experts studying "post-Sept. 11 ideology and terror."

Does a U.S. Marine serving in Iraq have the right to shoot first and ask questions later if hostile forces could be nearby?

The question is at the heart of the case against Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, 27, the U.S. Marine accused of leading a November 19, 2005, massacre of 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha.

Witnesses who were on patrol with Wuterich in Iraq have testified that he told them to "shoot first and ask questions later" as they followed up the killing of a popular Marine in their unit.

"This is not what we do," Wuterich's former commanding officer, Capt. Alfonso Capers, testified on Wednesday when asked about the "shoot first" remark attributed to Wuterich that day. "It says everybody is expendable."

U.S. airstrikes on a Shi'ite neighborhood in Baghdad overnight killed at least 14 people including one woman and destroyed 11 houses, Iraqi police and residents said on Thursday.

The U.S. military said U.S. special forces called in the strikes after coming under fire from gunmen on rooftops during an operation against Shi'ite militants suspected of killing local police and Sunni Arabs.

Two police sources said 14 people were killed and nine wounded in the air attack on Washash, a poor Shi'ite neighborhood in western Baghdad's Mansour district. They said the operation took place in the early hours.

Reuters television footage showed at least 11 buildings caved in or leveled in three adjoining streets in the densely packed neighborhood.

As for the presence of "gunmen on rooftops" firing on the U.S. special forces, they may or may not have even been "Shi'ite militants" who may or may not have killed local police and Sunni Arabs. As the article notes, "Many residents were sleeping on the roofs of their houses at the time, trying to keep cool in the oppressive summer heat." If armed people suddenly showed up on the street in the middle of the night, it would be perfectly understandable for residents to start firing warning shots (or real shots) in defense against a preseumed attack from unknown assailants (unknown because the residents aren't equipped with night-vision goggles).

I've said it before and I'll say it again - when the U.S. is still dropping bombs on the capital city of a country, then A) the U.S. is not in control; B) any talk of "Iraqi sovereignty" is a joke; and C) the Iraqi military, without attack helicopters and warplanes, is never going to "take over" the role of the U.S. military (which is a good thing).

There is no meaningful response to climate change without massive social change. A cap on this and a quota on the other won't do it. Tinker at the edges as we may, we cannot sustain earth's life-support systems within the present economic system.

Capitalism is not sustainable by its very nature.

In reality, power concentrates around wealth. Private ownership of trade and industry means that the decisive political force in the world is private power. The corporation will outflank every puny law and regulation that seeks to constrain its profitability. It therefore stands in the way of the functioning democracy needed to tackle climate change. Only by breaking up corporate power and bringing it under social control will we be able to overcome the global environmental crisis.

First of all, the headline implies at attack was practically in progress. The facts (as I'll come to in a minute) are hardly that. And the alleged targets were Frankfurt airport, hardly a place where an attack would be focussed on "U.S. citizens," and the US military base in Ramstein, which seems highly unlikely to be penetrated by people using a suicide car bomb.

But about those targets? German Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung asserted that the threat had been "imminent". But the same article informs us that Deputy Interior Minister August Hanning told journalists that "there were no concrete targets," without which it seems rather unlikely that any attack was "imminent." And that business about Frankfurt airport? That's pure speculation by the German police, according to Hanning.

Unlike other recent terrorist scares, this group actually had amassed explosives, and was clearly hoping to do something, somewhere. But a "massive," "imminent" attack on "US citizens"? Hardly.

Update: An AP article sheds further light on that "imminent" attack:

As a token of the intense surveillance by German police, prosecutors said that during the investigation they were able to replace the dangerous peroxide in the containers with a harmless solution without the knowledge of the suspects.

Today, in an editorial: "Mr. Bush pumped up his headlines by suggesting continued gains in security could allow for a reduction in troops."

Yesterday's news article headline: "Bush, in Iraq, Says Troop Reduction Is Possible"

Today's editorial: "But this is a cruel tease and a pathetic attempt to repackage old promises. Mr. Bush has been dangling that same as-soon-as-possible drawdown for years. The Pentagon had a plan to do just that in 2004."

Yesterday's news article: not a word noting the same thing, which is fact, not opinion.

Today's editorial: "Bush’s eight-hour stopover in Iraq on Sunday won him major play in the news media, including photos of smiling American military forces with their commander in chief."

Photo accompanying yesterday's news article (at least online):

Today's editorial: "We suppose Mr. Bush could claim one success for his visit: he did manage to get Iraq’s Shiite prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, to visit the Sunni-dominated province."

Left I on the News: No, Times editorial writers, Bush's "success" was in getting ruling class mouthpieces like your paper to print and broadcast exactly what he wanted them to, up to and including the picture of him with smiling American military forces, today's editorial notwithstanding.

The U.S. military commander in Iraq has suggested he will recommend a cut in U.S. troop numbers around March when he delivers long-awaited testimony to Congress next week.

General David Petraeus' comments are the latest sign that U.S. commanders believe President George W. Bush's decision to send an extra 30,000 soldiers to Iraq earlier this year has improved security enough to warrant a reduction in force levels.

But just three paragraphs later, we read an actual quote from Petraeus:

"The surge will run its course. There are limits to what our military can provide, so, my recommendations have to be informed by -- not driven by -- but they have to be informed by the strain we have put on our military services," Petraeus said.

"That has to be a key factor in what I will recommend," he told ABC News in Baghdad in an interview broadcast late on Tuesday.

And, while Reuters doesn't have a long enough memory to remember it, this post from Daily Kos reminds us Defense [sic] Secretary Gates said last April that the "surge" could only last until next spring because of limitations on troop availability. So the anticipated coming (six months from now!) "reduction" (back to the "pre-surge" levels) was anticipated from the start.

Police launched a court battle Tuesday against a planned protest by up to 20,000 people, organized by the Stop Bush Coalition, saying it posed a serious threat in a city under an unprecedented security crackdown.

"I jeopardized my life every day to get low-fat yoghurt for Americans."

- Ihab Rifaat, a supply manager for USAID in Baghdad who has had to flee Iraq after repeated death threats from militants

"I can never go back to Iraq. It's like I have a tattoo on me that says, 'Worked for U.S.'"

New documents released Tuesday regarding crimes committed by U.S. soldiers against civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan detail a troubling pattern of troops failing to understand and follow the rules that govern interrogations and deadly actions.

They show repeated examples of soldiers believing they were within the law when they killed local citizens.

And last but not least, the the Marine awaiting court-martial for killing a fellow sentry, an Iraqi soldier. The Marine, who murdered the Iraqi with his bayonet (10 wounds), claims "self-defense" because "he thought the Iraqi, who was wearing a ski mask, smoking and talking on a cellphone, may have been signaling to an insurgent sniper." Wouldn't the best self-defense be to duck? Or use your rifle butt to knock the cell phone and cigarette out of the Iraqi soldier's hands? The truth, almost certainly, is that this soldier, who had seen three of his fellow Marines killed a few days earlier, was just seething with anger against Iraqis, and took his anger out on the nearest target.

An interesting aspect of this case is this: "Holmes told the Iraqi to put down his cigarette and cellphone and that when he refused, a fight broke out." But Holmes didn't speak Arabic and the Iraqi didn't speak English, another fact which speaks volumes about the relationship of Americans and Iraqis in Iraq.

I'm sure I don't need to mention that all indications are that this court-martial will go nowhere, and lead at best (and probably not even that) to the dismissal of the Marine from the corps. It's probably just as likely he'll get a medal.

President Bush raised the possibility Monday of U.S. troop cuts in Iraq if security continues to improve.

Not to mention not understanding the concept of the hypothetical. Bush saying he'll withdraw troops "if security continues [sic] to improve" hardly justifies a headline reading, "Bush sees possible troop cuts in Iraq"; a headline reading "Bush sees possible indefinite occupation at current or higher troop levels" would be just as accurate.

CNN's reporter just informed viewers that Bush landed in Iraq in broad daylight and touted that as a sign of progress. But just moments before, she had noted that the airbase Bush landed in has a 10-mile perimeter secured by 10,000 troops, so Bush would hardly have been in danger even if advance notice of his visit had been published in the Baghdad Times. But CNN needed to do its part to help out; I wouldn't be surprised if the bit about the broad daylight landing was a "talking point" distributed by the White House press office.