Mindless in Iraq

By Peter W. Galbraith

I arrived in Baghdad on April 14, 2003, as a news consultant to an ABC investigative team. In the three weeks that followed Baghdad's fall, I was able to go unchallenged into sites of enormous intelligence value, including the Foreign Ministry, Uday Hussein's house, and a wiretap center right across Firdos Square from the Sheraton. All three had many sensitive documents but even weeks after the takeover, the only people to take an interest in these document caches were looters, squatters (who burned wiretap transcripts for lighting), journalists, Baathists, Iraqi factions looking for dirt on political rivals, and (possibly) agents of countries hostile to the United States. Neither the Pentagon nor the CIA had a workable plan to safeguard and exploit the vast quantities of intelligence that were available for the taking in Iraq's capital.

Digby: RMA 1.0

Billmon, in another of his excellent essays on the Israel Lebanon crisis (aptly entitled "the Debacle") points out what I think may just be the most important fact to emerge about our Really Big Adventure in the mid-east these last few years:

It's a dismal situation for the Israelis -- worse, in many, many ways, that what I would have called the worst-case scenario before the war started. This is what happens when your state-of-the-art blitzkrieg machine is exposed as a relic of a past century.

In 1870, when the Emperor Louis Napoleon declared war on Prussia, he was confident his armies could beat those of Kaiser Wilhelm I just as throughly as his famous uncle had whipped the Prussians at the Battle of Jena in 1806. After all, everyone "knew" the French were the masters of modern military science. In Europe's capitals the betting was on how long it would take the French to get to Berlin.

Hannity hi-jinks

Posted by Evan Derkacz at 12:19 PM on July 27, 2006.

Notes from the authoritarian right

John Dean's new book uses research from a preeminent academic researcher who notes that regardless of the facts and their arrangement, a certain portion (23-25% I think) of any given population is going to follow authority come hell or high water.

So when you marvel at the fact that Bush has an approval rating that even goes as high as 37% or that someone like Sean Hannity has listeners, just remember, it's built in.

So he can just lie to the high heavens, demagogue till the cows come home, and his listeners will Sir, Yes Sir right along with him.

Digby: Bending The GWOT

In a preview at Arthur's of an upcoming post about Alan Dershowitz's suggestion that we civilized westerners develop a new way of defining collective punishment so as to be able to kill civilians with impunity, I noted this quote from an Israeli official:

Mr Ramon - a close confidant of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert - said "everyone understands that a victory for Hezbollah is a victory for world terror".

"World terror" huh? How convenient for all of us then that the Israelis are fightin' 'em over there so we don't have to fight 'em over here. No wonder we rushed in those delayed missiles. We can't let "world terror" win fergawdsake!

Digby: Not So Favorite Son

In case you missed this little tid-bit earlier, Tom Tomorrow deftly took down Andrew Sullivan's lame attempt to proclaim that Joe Lieberman is actually quite popular in Connecticut. Among other things, he pointed out this little factoid I hadn't seen before:

One last thing: you hear a lot from lazy media types about how very popular Joe is here in Connecticut. Well, here’s a small reality check: in the 2004 Super Tuesday presidential primary in Connecticut, John Kerry got 58% of the vote. John Edwards came in second with a respectable 24%.

Joe Lieberman, meanwhile, came in third with five percent of the vote, here in the state in which he is so very popular.

Was there anyone who did that badly in his home state?

Digby: Eating Their Lunch

I've long speculated that one of the biggest miscalculations of the war in Iraq was exploding the American mystique of military and intelligence superiority. It's like that old saying "It is better to remain quiet and thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt." It's better to hold your fire and be thought weak than attack for no good reason and remove all doubt.

But at least America had decades of post war success to draw upon and diplomatic and economic clout to employ even as it degraded its reputation in all those areas.

Digby: Swinging Them By The Tail

Bush's press conference with Blair today was even more frightening in its arrogant incoherence than usual:

QUESTION: Mr. President, Mr. Prime Minister, with support apparently growing among the Arab population, both Shiite and Sunni, for Hezbollah, by bounds, is there a risk that every day that goes by without a cease-fire will tip this conflict into a wider war?

And, Mr. President, when Secretary Rice goes back to the region, would she have any new instructions, such as meeting with Syrians?

BUSH: Her instructions are to work with Israel and Lebanon to get a -- to come up with an acceptable U.N. Security Council resolution that we can table next week.

Daily Kos: Science Friday: Clan of the Neocon

by DarkSyde
Fri Jul 28, 2006 at 03:49:31 AM PDT

At the heart of every human lurks a beast. We have crocodile brains, monkey digits, and hominoid eyes. But written into the fabric of man's greatest physical attribute, the swollen cerebral cortex, is the operating system of a savage.

For millennia we existed in small, kin-bonded groups. This ancient relic of our evolutionary legacy still smolders in our being. Despite all the trappings of modern technology, we yearn to escape the confines of our plastic and metal caves, to roam a pristine landscape alone or in small bands. We write great documents on the concept of independence and argue ferociously over what it means. It stirs something deep inside, for we each and every one descended from countless generations of people who enjoyed a liberty we can only dream of. For the vast history of our species, we humans were ruled by neither tyrant-king or elected leader: Mankind is a tribal creature.

The Christian Right and the Rise of American Fascism

by Chris Hedges www.theocracywatch.org, Nov 15, 2004 (This is an article by Chris Hedges that no major publication will print.)


Dr. James Luther Adams, my ethics professor at Harvard Divinity School , told us that when we were his age, he was then close to 80, we would all be fighting the "Christian fascists."

The warning, given to me 25 years ago, came at the moment Pat Robertson and other radio and televangelists began speaking about a new political religion that would direct its efforts at taking control of all institutions, including mainstream denominations and the government. Its stated goal was to use the United States to create a global, Christian empire. It was hard, at the time, to take such fantastic rhetoric seriously, especially given the buffoonish quality of those who expounded it. But Adams warned us against the blindness caused by intellectual snobbery. The Nazis, he said, were not going to return with swastikas and brown shirts. Their ideological inheritors had found a mask for fascism in the pages of the Bible.

Daily Kos: Deconstructing the Dominionists

Part I

by Mahanoy
Wed Jun 21, 2006 at 01:02:30 PM PDT

Welcome to this multi-part critical review of the recently published booklet, America, Return to God, edited by "The Chinese Billy Graham," Thomas Wang. This collection of essays by prominent leaders of the far Christian right has one simple thesis: America must return to its Christian roots or die. In the forthcoming installments of this series, we will work our way through the essays in this booklet, critique them, and offer a progressive Christian alternative.

What is at stake here are two very different understandings of the Bible, American history, and Christianity itself, specifically what it means to be a Christian in a cosmopolitan society. The Dominionists claim absolute validity and exclusivity for Christians, relegating adherents of any other religion to second-class status (or worse), they place the blame for America's failings and problems squarely at the feet of the political and social left, whom they regard as dangerous anti-Christian radicals. The Christian left, on the other hand, celebrates the diversity of the world's religions while affirming our own commitment to the Christian tradition, we value and affirm the religious experience of our fellow Americans as well as their right to worship (or not worship) according to their own conscience, and we reaffirm our commitment to the principles of the Enlightenment and of the Founders - reason, tolerance, respect for science, personal liberty, and religious freedom.

Part II

by Mahanoy
Thu Jun 29, 2006 at 03:39:19 PM PDT

Part III

by Mahanoy
Thu Jul 06, 2006 at 03:52:31 PM PDT

Part IV

by Mahanoy
Thu Jul 13, 2006 at 03:40:02 PM PDT

Part V

by Mahanoy
Thu Jul 20, 2006 at 02:27:59 PM PDT

Part VI

by Mahanoy
Thu Jul 27, 2006 at 04:18:32 PM PDT

Daily Kos: Plato's Republic (book IV) as window to the Republican mind

by Randolph06
Fri Jul 28, 2006 at 11:29:25 AM PDT

I taught a Philosophy of Education class and it forced me to read Plato's Republic real close. I chose Book IV to assign because it seemed to work well as a stand-alone chapter. Little did I know that that Book would illuminate most basic underpinnings of Republican belief concerning big ideas like the culture, the economy, justice and courage.

An early dialogue (y'know before they had diaries they had dialogues) focuses on regulating the culture:

Then to sum up: This is the point to which, above all, the attention of our rulers should be directed,--that music and gymnastic be preserved in their original form, and no innovation made. They must do their utmost to maintain them intact. And when any one says that mankind most regard

The newest song which the singers have,

they will be afraid that he may be praising, not new songs, but a new kind of song; and this ought not to be praised, or conceived to be the meaning of the poet; for any musical innovation is full of danger to the whole State, and ought to be prohibited. So Damon tells me, and I can quite believe him;-he says that when modes of music change, of the State always change with them.

Daily Kos: Don't blame immigrants for healthcare crisis

by Duke1676
Fri Jul 28, 2006 at 06:55:58 AM PDT

Contrary to popular opinion, and the propaganda coming from anti-immigration advocates in Washington, a new study released in health care policy journal Health Affairs found that undocumented immigrants are not the cause of a public health crisis defined by over-crowded emergency departments, higher health care costs, and lower-quality primary care.

The study of 46,600 people living in 60 different communities found that the communities with high levels of Hispanics and undocumented immigrants had far lesser rates of emergency department use than communities with low undocumented representation. By far the largest cause of emergency department overcrowding was found to be an increased use of them as primary care facilities by native born Medicare and Medicaid recipients.

Could U.S. Troops End Up in Lebanon?

Posted on Wednesday, July 26, 2006. By Ken Silverstein.

Sources

There's much discussion of putting a multinational, NATO-led force in southern Lebanon as part of a ceasefire agreement in the Israel–Lebanon conflict, but Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, according to a story in the Washington Post, has said that she does “not think that it is anticipated that U.S. ground forces . . . are expected for that force.” However, a well-connected former CIA officer has told me that the Bush Administration is in fact considering exactly such a deployment.

The officer, who had broad experience in the Middle East while at the CIA, noted that NATO and European countries, including England, have made clear that they are either unwilling or extremely reluctant to participate in an international force. Given other nations' lack of commitment, any “robust” force—between 10,000 and 30,000 troops, according to estimates being discussed in the media—would by definition require major U.S. participation. According to the former official, Israel and the United States are currently discussing a large American role in exactly such a “multinational” deployment, and some top administration officials, along with senior civilians at the Pentagon, are receptive to the idea.

Billmon: Axis of Weevil

Glenn Greenwald directs our attention to this astonishing column from ubercon David Frum, in which the master of disaster essentially recants four years worth of views on the wisdom, necessity and feasibility of invading Iraq -- without, of course, ever admitting that he is doing so.

It's like some baby boomer nightmare: after decades of swearing that we would never repeat the mistakes of our parents, we are re-enacting the errors committed in Indochina in the 1960s and 1970s, every single one.

It seems like everybody's hopping on that bandwagon these days. Of course in Frum's view, the Vietnam errors repeated in Iraq weren't the lies and distortions used to sell the war to the public, the absence of a realistic plan, the lack of international support, the bureaucratic inefficiency, the ideological blindness, etc. etc.

Cursor's Media Patrol - 07/28/06

"Lebanon has now become Condi's war," writes Eugene Robinson, arguing that "she took personal ownership of the bloody, escalating war" by failing to act and by trumpeting fantasies "of somehow making the world's tinderbox into something 'new.'"

Asked by some cable networks if they were going overboard in their coverage of Lebanon, Editor & Publisher's Greg Mitchell replied that the amount of coverage is not the problem, it is the failure to explain "our own deep involvement in that war," in particular, the amount of arms we supply to Israel.

The Conservative Voice reports that a private U.S.-Israeli company Security Solutions International is "sponsoring "training missions to Israel for U.S. law enforcement and security officers," and a Montgomery, Alabama SWAT team is learning Israeli tactics.

As Gen. Peter Pace insists that the Taliban "cannot take over" again, an article in American Journalism Review on 'The Forgotten War' argues that sparse coverage has failed to make Americans aware that this has been a bad year in Afghanistan.

Glenn Greenwald flags an essay by neoconservative David Frum, who now concedes that the invasion he so desperately wanted "has delivered control of Iraq into the hands of our arch Iranian enemies," and Media Matters reviews the record of the "Pollyanna pundits."

Democrats are seeking legislative changes allowing Medicare to negotiate the price of drugs in an effort to plug what's been called "the doughnut hole" in the program's coverage, but lack of information is seen as an obstacle in making this an issue in the fall elections.

A dismal GDP report leads one analyst to predict a recession by the end of the year, and a former chief economist at the IMF says "the odds of a U.S. recession next year have doubled to 25% or 30%, mainly due to rising energy prices."

Detainee Abuse Charges Feared

Shield Sought From '96 War Crimes Act

By R. Jeffrey Smith

Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 28, 2006; Page A01

An obscure law approved by a Republican-controlled Congress a decade ago has made the Bush administration nervous that officials and troops involved in handling detainee matters might be accused of committing war crimes, and prosecuted at some point in U.S. courts.

Senior officials have responded by drafting legislation that would grant U.S. personnel involved in the terrorism fight new protections against prosecution for past violations of the War Crimes Act of 1996. That law criminalizes violations of the Geneva Conventions governing conduct in war and threatens the death penalty if U.S.-held detainees die in custody from abusive treatment.

Frist's Obsession

Adam Hughes

July 28, 2006

Adam Hughes is the director of of OMB Watch's Federal Fiscal Policy program.

Congressional Republicans have seemingly been obsessed with only one thing over the last year, pulling out all the stops by doing anything at all in their power to give their friends, their campaign contributors, family farms and small businesses a tax cut worth upwards of $1 trillion.

Almost all respectable media outlets, congressional offices, outside analysts and even most Americans now understand that the fight to repeal the estate tax is not about fighting for the little guy or the needs of average Americans, but is really about a windfall welfare program for the heirs of the outrageously mega-rich—with the 18 families at the top of the list.

Police spies chosen to lead war protest

- Demian Bulwa, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, July 28, 2006

Two Oakland police officers working undercover at an anti-war protest in May 2003 got themselves elected to leadership positions in an effort to influence the demonstration, documents released Thursday show.

The department assigned the officers to join activists protesting the U.S. war in Iraq and the tactics that police had used at a demonstration a month earlier, a police official said last year in a sworn deposition.

NSA whistleblower subpoenaed by federal grand jury

RAW STORY
Published: Friday July 28, 2006

A former National Security Agency signals intelligence expert has been called before a grand jury, RAW STORY has learned.

Russell Tice, an important source for the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times report by James Risen and Eric Lichtblau on the NSA's warrentless eavesdropping activities, was served papers by two FBI agents outside his home on Wednesday, July 26th. Tice must appear in court on August 2nd "to testify and answer questions concerning possible violations of federal criminal law."

Study: Water contaminant can cause cancer

By JOHN HEILPRIN, Associated Press Writer
Thu Jul 27, 8:42 PM ET

Growing scientific evidence suggests the most widespread industrial contaminant in drinking water — a solvent used in adhesives, paint and spot removers — can cause cancer in people.

The National Academy of Sciences reported Thursday that a lot more is known about the cancer risks and other health hazards from exposure to trichloroethylene than there was five years ago when the Environmental Protection Agency took steps to regulate it more strictly.

"Armed with the results from the NAS review, EPA will aggressively move forward" on a new risk assessment of TCE, spokeswoman Jennifer Wood said Thursday. "EPA will determine whether or not to address the drinking water standard once the risk assessment is complete."

Blackwater: Inside America's Private Army

The Virginian-Pilot
© July 23, 2006

Enter a world where the military has become a business – where citizen soldiers work for a private company whose currency comes from conflict. It’s a place some salute and others fear. And it’s right in our backyard.

What we can learn from 1920s Germany

Brian E. Fogarty

Imagine this situation: Your country has had a military setback in a war that was supposed to be over after a few months of "shock and awe." Because of that war, it has lost the goodwill and prestige of much of the international community.

The national debt has grown to staggering size. Citizens complain bitterly about the government, especially the legislative branch, for being a bunch of do-nothings working solely for themselves or for special interest groups. In fact, the political scene has pretty much lost its center -- moderates are attacked by all sides as the political discourse becomes a clamor of increasingly extreme positions.

Paul Krugman: Reign of Error

--The New York Times, July 28, 2006

Amid everything else that’s going wrong in the world, here’s one more piece of depressing news: a few days ago the Harris Poll reported that 50 percent of Americans now believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when we invaded, up from 36 percent in February 2005. Meanwhile, 64 percent still believe that Saddam had strong links with Al Qaeda.

At one level, this shouldn’t be all that surprising. The people now running America never accept inconvenient truths. Long after facts they don’t like have been established, whether it’s the absence of any wrongdoing by the Clintons in the Whitewater affair or the absence of W.M.D. in Iraq, the propaganda machine that supports the current administration is still at work, seeking to flush those facts down the memory hole.

Corporate Media Censors MoveOn

By Joel Bleifuss, In These Times. Posted July 27, 2006.

In a new series of TV ads, MoveOn exposes GOP lawmakers' fealty to the corporations that fund their campaigns. Now if only the stations would run them.

Perhaps you have thought, "If the voters knew how venal a GOP member of Congress was, they could never get re-elected."

MoveOn is testing that proposition with a public service ad campaign that targets four Republican candidates whose votes in Congress have put special interest profits before the public good.

"Caught red-handed" is the moniker for a series of MoveOn TV ads that expose the lawmakers' fealty to the corporations that fund their campaigns. MoveOn PAC Director Eli Pariser puts it this way: "The most visible and insidious form of corruption is the form that is also legal, and that is the money politicians take from big companies and the votes that they give in return to help those companies out."

End the Violence

By Norm Stamper, AlterNet. Posted July 28, 2006.

If Steven Soderbergh's gritty 2000 film "Traffic" caused you to squirm in your seat, the real-life story of Mexican drug dealing is even more disquieting.

Back in the early 1960s, I often sneaked into Mexico at the San Diego-Tijuana border. Too young to cross legally, I'd coil up in the trunk of Charlie Romero's '54 Merc. My buddies and I would head straight for the notorious Blue Fox to guzzle Carta Blancas, shoot Cuervo Gold and take in the "adult entertainment" acts. It wasn't something I'd necessarily want my kid doing, but there was a certain innocence to it: tasting freedom, partaking of forbidden adult pleasures. The frontera of Mexico was a fun, safe place to visit.

All that has changed.

From Tijuana to Matamoros, drug gang violence along the U.S.-Mexico border has taken the lives of thousands -- cops, soldiers, drug dealers, often their families, other innocent citizens from both sides of the border. Even a cardinal of the Catholic Church. Many others have gone missing and are presumed dead.

The Myth of the Security Mom and Other Insights from "Gapology"

Political Scientists Examine the Largest Voting Gaps in America Washington, DC--Recent studies of the 2004 election data by political scientists assess the role and impact of major sets of differences in the voting behavior of Americans--known in popular parlance as "voting gaps." Based on differences in support for George W. Bush and ranked in descending order, the studies confirm the largest voting gaps in the electorate were race and ethnicity, religion, class, region, gender, age, and education.

The research is presented in a symposium entitled "Gapology and the Presidential Vote," edited by Laura R. Olson (Clemson University) and John C. Green (University of Akron). In four articles, scholars explore a different voter gap in detail. The entire symposium appears in the July issue of PS: Political Science & Politics, a journal of the American Political Science Association (APSA), and is available online at /section_694.cfm. "We aim to show that 21^st-century Americans are divided on a wide range of political fronts that go far beyond the ... 'red state, blue state' rubric that has become so popular," state the editors; "reality ... is far more complex."

Digby: Cakewalk

Via Laura Rozen I found this startling foreign policy index from the Democratic Policy Committee. Rozen and Democracy Arsenal highlighted a few of the items pertaining to Iraq:

Number of Iraqis who had access to potable water before invasion: 13 million

Number of Iraqis who have access to potable water, according to the April 2006 SIGIR report: 8 million

Digby: Destroy The Village In Order To Save It: Part Deux

"Our mission and our goal is to have a lasting peace -- not a temporary peace, but something that lasts," said Bush. "We want a sustainable ceasefire. We don't want something that's, you know, short term in duration."

This is the middle east he's talking about. Apparently somebody has told him that getting a lasting peace there is just a matter of resolve. If only people hadn't accepted all these temporary ceasefires in the past, everything would have been straightened out by now. (He's not saying they wouldn't have gotten their hair mussed...)

Digby: Chi Sandwich

Ezra expertly slices and dices TimesSelect:

Wandering through the nation's op-ed pages is like ambling through a dojo. Each writer has his own particular style, technique, finishing move. There's Tom Friedman, who rushes in with the Implausible Conversational Anecdote, links it to an Off-Topic Invocation Of World Travels, and finishes you with a Confusing Metaphor From Above. Or there's Maureen Dowd, who deploys Unfounded Personal Speculation mixed with Confusing Allegories till she's set up her killing blow: Insinuation of Character Defect. It's impressive stuff.

Marine 'dead zone' off Oregon is spreading

A hypoxic "dead zone" has formed off the Oregon Coast for the fifth time in five years, according to researchers at Oregon State University. A fundamental new trend in atmospheric and ocean circulation patterns in the Pacific Northwest appears to have begun, scientists say, and this year for the first time, the effect of the low-oxygen zone is also being seen in coastal waters off Washington.

Shoot up and cool down

New study examines a way to fight global warming by injecting sulfur into the atmosphere

Injecting sulfur into the atmosphere to slow down global warming is worthy of serious consideration, according to Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Germany and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California at San Diego. His thought-provoking paper1 is published in the August issue of the Springer journal Climatic Change, devoted this month to the controversial field of geoengineering.

Fossil fuel burning releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which contributes significantly to global warming. Burning of fossil fuel also releases sulfur into the earth’s atmosphere, in the form of sulfate particles. Ironically, these sulfate particles help to cool down the planet by reflecting solar radiation back into space. Crutzen’s proposed planet-saving scheme, which artificially injects sulfur into the earth’s stratosphere (the second atmospheric layer closest to earth) to offset greenhouse gas warming, is based on this phenomenon.

Digby: Value Menu

In this rundown of the latest "daddy has a right to know if his daughter/victim is aborting his child" law in the Washington Post, I see that the Republicans "values agenda" has a new item:

Yesterday's vote marked the most significant congressional action on abortion in some time. Republicans, concerned about sagging poll numbers as they approach the November elections, have emphasized a "values agenda" that includes bids to ban flag desecration, same-sex marriage and estate taxes.

Digby: Exploding The Mystique

Marc Lynch writes:

I don't know anyone who will be surprised that the Rome conference failed - it seems to have been designed to fail, to give the US the chance to appear to be "doing something" while giving Israel the time it wants to continue its offensive. But this policy is so transparent, such an obvious stalling mechanism, that it is probably making things even worse for the United States and for Israel: when you are faking it, you're supposed to at least try to maintain the pretence so that others can at least pretend to believe you. The call for an immediate ceasefire has become more or less universal now, other than from the United States and Israel: even the pro-American Arab states like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan, which initially blamed Hezbollah for the crisis, are now loudly demanding an immediate ceasefire.

Ashcroft Nostalgia

By Ruth Marcus

Wednesday, July 26, 2006; Page A17

Alberto Gonzales is achieving something remarkable, even miraculous, as attorney general: He is making John Ashcroft look good.

I was no fan of President Bush's first attorney general, who may be best remembered for holding prayer breakfasts with department brass, hiding the bare-breasted statue in the Great Hall of Justice behind an $8,000 set of drapes, and warning darkly that those who differed with administration policy were giving aid to terrorists.

CAUGHT ON TAPE: Tom Friedman's Shocking Admission

New York Times columnist Tom Friedman is considered by the Washington, D.C. media and political establishment to be the leading authority on trade policy. Friedman has aggressively pushed corporate-written "free" trade deals, devoting column after column after column shilling for these deals - and spending almost no time actually exploring how these deals undermine wages, job security, environmental standards and workplace rights both in America and abroad. Now, in a little-noticed interview caught on film, Friedman actually went on record admitting he advocates for specific trade deals without knowing anything about what's in the trade deals he is writing about.

In a CNBC interview with Tim Russert this weekend, Friedman said:

"We got this free market, and I admit, I was speaking out in Minnesota--my hometown, in fact, and guy stood up in the audience, said, `Mr. Friedman, is there any free trade agreement you'd oppose?' I said, `No, absolutely not.' I said, `You know what, sir? I wrote a column supporting the CAFTA, the Caribbean Free Trade initiative. I didn't even know what was in it. I just knew two words: free trade."

Cursor's Media Patrol - 07/26/06

Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinksi is quoted as saying that "what the Israelis are doing today ... in Lebanon is in effect ... the killing of hostages." Plus: Human shields in Gaza.

War in Context's Paul Woodward, analyzing the rhetorical Trojan horse used to justify Israel's war on Lebanon, finds that it conceals "the lie ... that by killing hundreds of Lebanese civilians and destroying the country's infrastructure, Israel is engaged in nothing more than an act of self-defense."

After an "apparently deliberate" Israeli hit killed four U.N. observers, Secretary-General Kofi Annan was quoted as saying that the Israelis had directed 14 incidents of gunfire at the U.N. post, and that "the firing continued even during the rescue operation."

According to Maureen Dowd, 'The Immutable President' -- who yesterday announced the formation of "a joint committee to achieve Iraqi self-reliance" -- sees Lebanon as "a test of macho mettle," and Paul Waldman has learned to dread each new 'Bush Gut Check.'

By Carpetbagger's count, an article detailing a neocon revolt against Secretary of State Rice is "the ninth Insight article since November that casts the Bush gang in an unflattering light."

'9/11 cash for what?' New York City is said to be spending "a big slice of the $1 billion it got from the feds post-9/11 to fight first responders who claim they got sick on the site," while the U.S. Conference of Mayors reports that "8 in 10 cities say their emergency responders still can't communicate with each other."

A GOP candidate emerges from 'Republicans Anonymous' to accept his "scarlet letter," but Molly Ivins implores Bill Moyers to show Democrats what courage looks like.

Unions Petition OSHA To Deal With Slow-Motion Chemical Disaster

We've become accustomed in this country to framing disasters as single events involving the deaths of numerous workers such as Sago or the BP Texas City explosion. But the deadly damage caused to the lungs of hundreds of workers in this country by a butter-flavoring chemical can only be called a slow-motion disaster. And while OSHA fiddles, the damage to workers lungs continues.

Two labor unions, the United Food and Commercial Workers and the Teamsters, along with forty of the nation's leading experts in environmental and occupational health, are petitioning the Occupational Safety and Health Administration today for an Emergency Temporary Standard to prevent workers from being exposed to diacetyl, a butter flavoring chemical that has caused a deadly lung disease known as "popcorn lung" among workers in microwave popcorn facilities and other factories where flavorings are used.

Iran: The Next War

Even before the bombs fell on Baghdad, a group of senior Pentagon officials were plotting to invade another country. Their covert campaign once again relied on false intelligence and shady allies. But this time, the target was Iran. BY JAMES BAMFORD

How did the Bush administration sell the Iraq war? Check out our award-winning story on the PR machine for regime change in Iraq -- and join a reader debate: Is war with Iran unavoidable?

I. The Israeli Connection

A few blocks off Pennsylvania Avenue, the FBI's eight-story Washington field office exudes all the charm of a maximum-security prison. Its curved roof is made of thick stainless steel, the bottom three floors are wrapped in granite and limestone, hydraulic bollards protect the ramp to the four-floor garage, and bulletproof security booths guard the entrance to the narrow lobby. On the fourth floor, like a tomb within a tomb, lies the most secret room in the $100 million concrete fortress—out-of-bounds even for special agents without an escort. Here, in the Language Services Section, hundreds of linguists in padded earphones sit elbow-to-elbow in long rows, tapping computer keyboards as they eavesdrop on the phone lines of foreign embassies and other high-priority targets in the nation's capital.

NOAA Scientists: 'Dead Zone' Off Gulf Coast 'Half The Size Of Maryland'

July 24, 2006 — A team of scientists from the NOAA National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium and Louisiana State University is forecasting that the "Dead Zone" off the coast of Louisiana and Texas this summer will be larger than the average size since 1990. (Click NOAA image for larger view of Bottom Dissolved Oxygen Contours in the Gulf of Mexico taken July 14-16, 2006. Click here for high resolution version. Please credit “NOAA.”)

This NOAA supported modeling effort, led by Eugene Turner, Ph.D., of LSU, predicts this summer's "Dead Zone" will be 6,700 square miles, an area the half the size of the state of Maryland. Since 1990 the average annual hypoxia-affected area has been approximately 4,800 square miles. The forecast is based on nitrate loads from the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers in May and incorporates the previous year's load to the system. The nitrogen data are provided by the U.S. Geological Survey. NOAA funds research cruises to track development of hypoxia.

US faces science brain drain after Europe backs stem cell funding

· Disillusioned researchers could move to UK
· Debate divides members but ends in compromise

Nicholas Watt in Brussels
Tuesday July 25, 2006
The Guardian

The United States is risking a "brain drain", in which its scientists will flock across the Atlantic, after the EU reached a "historic" deal yesterday on human embryonic stem cells.

A week after George Bush limited federal funds for the highly sensitive area, the EU warned Washington that "disillusioned" US scientists will want to make the most of Europe's more liberal rules.

After five years, world trade talks near collapse

· US intransigence blamed for break-up of summit
· WTO chief offers no hope of immediate resumption

Larry Elliott, economics editor
Tuesday July 25, 2006
The Guardian

Five years of talks aimed at making global trade freer were on the brink of collapse last night after a make-or-break meeting between six of the leading players ended in acrimonious failure.

With the hardline stance adopted by the United States being blamed for the breakdown, the head of the World Trade Organisation said he had no choice but to suspend the talks, with no immediate prospect of them being resumed.

Warm Cornish waters attract new marine life

Mark Oliver and agencies
Tuesday July 25, 2006
Guardian Unlimited

The UK's heatwave has been attracting some rather unusual fans - giant ocean sunfish, so called because of their habit of 'sunbathing' on the surface of the ocean.

It emerged today that marine researchers spotted 19 of the species - the world's largest bony fish - during a two hour survey off the south-west tip of Cornwall last week.

The theocrats thrive

Cynthia Tucker
Universal Press Syndicate
07.24.06

Don't let Reed's loss fool you; 'agents of intolerance' still own GOP

Religious extremists have powerful political allies Last week, Ralph Reed, once the golden boy of hard-core religious conservatives, was defeated in Georgia's Republican primary for lieutenant governor, his first attempt at elective office. Because he rose to prominence as the cherubic face of the Christian Coalition, his political remains have been autopsied by pundits nationwide, some of whom are speculating that the cause of death was the more general demise of America's theocrats.

But they're wrong. Reed lost because his hypocrisy on the issue of gambling became too glaring for his ultraconservative constituents to ignore. While he was recruited by disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff to work against gambling initiatives in Alabama, the project was largely funded by the Mississippi Band of Choctaws, which wanted to protect its casinos from competition.

U.S. Says It Knew of Pakistani Reactor Plan

Congress Learned of Nation's Nuclear Expansion From Independent Analysts

By Joby Warrick

Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 25, 2006; Page A11

The Bush administration acknowledged yesterday that it had long known about Pakistan's plans to build a large plutonium-production reactor, but it said the White House was working to dissuade Pakistan from using the plant to expand its nuclear arsenal.

"We discourage military use of the facility," White House spokesman Tony Snow said of a powerful heavy-water reactor under construction at Pakistan's Khushab nuclear site in Punjab state.

Stand up to US, voters tell Blair

Just what we need...more enemies and fewer friends. Thanks, Bush!--Dictynna

63% say PM has tied Britain too close to White House

Leader: Standing back from America

Julian Glover and Ewen MacAskill
Tuesday July 25, 2006
The Guardian

Britain should take a much more robust and independent approach to the United States, according to a Guardian/ICM poll published today, which finds strong public opposition to Tony Blair's close working relationship with President Bush.

The wide-ranging survey of British attitudes to international affairs - the first since the conflict between Lebanon and Israel started- shows that a large majority of voters think Mr Blair has made the special relationship too special.

That Raise Might Take 4 Years to Earn

Those with bachelor's degrees are finding their incomes stagnate despite a growing economy.

By Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Times Staff Writer
July 24, 2006

WASHINGTON — The economy has been steadily growing, with unemployment low and corporate profits at historic highs.

So why can't David Lewis get a decent raise?

Lewis worked his way up through a string of technology companies around San Jose, finally landing a $77,000-a-year Web design position. But in five years in that job, he received only a single 5% pay increase.

Paul Krugman: Black and Blue

The New York Times
Published: July 24, 2006

According to the White House transcript, here's how it went last week, when President Bush addressed the N.A.A.C.P. for the first time:

THE PRESIDENT: "I understand that many African-Americans distrust my political party."

AUDIENCE: "Yes! (Applause.)"

But Mr. Bush didn't talk about why African-Americans don't trust his party, and black districts are always blue on election maps. So let me fill in the blanks.

First, G.O.P. policies consistently help those who are already doing extremely well, not those lagging behind — a group that includes the vast majority of African-Americans. And both the relative and absolute economic status of blacks, after improving substantially during the Clinton years, have worsened since 2000.

State Department has yet to issue required Iran, Syria WMD report

RAW STORY
Published: Monday July 24, 2006

The US State Department has yet to issue a semiannual report outlining all foreign persons known to be engaging in WMD-proliferation related activities in Iran and Syria, according to a letter reviewed by RAW STORY.

Three Democrats in Congress wrote Monday to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice requesting the Department issue its semi-annual report, as required by the Iran-Syria Nonproliferation Act.

Cursor's Media Patrol - 07/24/06

With many Lebanese refugees trying to flee across its border, and "anger spilling over against the U.S. government -- and its citizens," Syria warns Israel that a major ground incursion would draw it into the conflict, and a U.S. plan to peel Syria away from Iran, is seen as facing a non-negotiable obstacle.

Commenting on a San Francisco Chronicle report that 'Israel set war plan more than a year ago,' Juan Cole finds it scary that "Cheney and Rumsfeld don't appear to have let W. in on the whole thing."

According to Jane's, "Hezbollah is proving a tough opponent for Israel because of their Viet Cong-style network of tunnels," the AP quotes an Israeli soldier as saying, "It's hard to beat them ...They're not afraid of anything," Earlier: 'Hezbollah rides wave of popularity across Mideast.'

Kurt Nimmo predicts that the "temporary detention center" Israel is building for "prisoners that will be captured during army operations in Southern Lebanon" will in fact be a torture center for abducted Lebanese, based on reports about the Khiam prison from the last Lebanese war.

Patrick Cockburn writes that "While the eyes of the world are elsewhere, Baghdad is still dying and the daily toll is hitting record levels," adding that "Iraqis are terrified in a way that I have never seen before, since I first visited Baghdad in 1978."

The federal government moves "to eliminate nearly half the lawyers at the IRS who audit tax returns of some of the wealthiest Americans," while President Bush is reportedly advised "to beef up his counsel's office for the tangle of investigations that a Democrat-controlled House might pursue."

Blackwater's top brass

The Virginian-Pilot
© July 24, 2006

ERIK PRINCE, 37, Blackwater’s founder and chairman, has deep roots in conservative Republican politics in Michigan.

His father, Edgar Prince, turned a small die-cast shop in Holland, Mich., into a major auto parts supplier with a specialty product: a windshield visor with a lighted mirror. After his death in 1995, the company was sold for $1.4 billion. Edgar Prince was a confidant and financial backer of Gary Bauer, a conservative activist and onetime presidential candidate.

Erik Prince’s sister Betsy, a former chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party, is married to Dick DeVos, billionaire son of the founder of marketing giant Amway and this year’s likely Republican candidate for governor of Michigan.

Nasrallah's Game

by ADAM SHATZ

[posted online on July 20, 2006]

In January 2004 Sheik Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the Secretary-General of Hezbollah, presided over a major prisoner exchange with Israel, in which the Lebanese guerrilla movement and political party secured the release of more than 400 Arab prisoners in return for the bodies of three Israeli soldiers and an Israeli businessman and alleged spy, Elhanan Tannenbaum, whom Hezbollah had kidnapped. Moments before the exchange was sealed, Ariel Sharon withheld three Lebanese detainees, one of whom, Samir Kuntar, had killed a family of three in the Israeli town of Nahariya in 1979. Nasrallah, having failed to release Kuntar and the two other men, declared that Hezbollah would "reserve the right" to capture Israeli soldiers until the men were freed.

On July 12 Nasrallah launched the most daring assault of his tenure as Hezbollah's leader: the capture of two Israeli soldiers in a raid that left eight other Israeli soldiers dead. He called the attack "Operation Truthful Promise."

Iraqi Parliament Speaker Says Invasion and Aftermath Are the ‘Work of Butchers’

By KIRK SEMPLE

Published: July 23, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 22 — The speaker of the Iraqi Parliament criticized the American government’s involvement in Iraq on Saturday, likening the invasion and its consequences to “the work of butchers” and demanding that the American authorities disentangle themselves from Iraq’s political affairs.

The speaker, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, a Sunni Islamist who quickly developed a reputation for provocative public comments after his election in late April, also said the American government wanted Iraq “to stay under the American boot.”

Interior Report: Indian trust officials violated ethics rules in contract awards

By Edward T. Pound

Posted 7/23/06

In a blistering report, the Interior Department's top investigator says that senior officials who manage $3.2 billion in Indian trust funds pressured subordinates to award lucrative contracts to executives with whom the officials enjoyed close social ties.

According to the report, officials in the Office of the Special Trustee for American Indians (OST), based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, often partied with executives of an Albuquerque accounting firm, Chavarria, Dunne & Lamey LLC. The officials and executives played golf together and exchanged gifts of meals and drinks over an eight-year period. During this time, the report says, the Chavarria firm won $6.6 million in sole source contracts.

Interior Report: Indian trust officials violated ethics rules in contract awards

By Edward T. Pound

Posted 7/23/06

In a blistering report, the Interior Department's top investigator says that senior officials who manage $3.2 billion in Indian trust funds pressured subordinates to award lucrative contracts to executives with whom the officials enjoyed close social ties.

According to the report, officials in the Office of the Special Trustee for American Indians (OST), based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, often partied with executives of an Albuquerque accounting firm, Chavarria, Dunne & Lamey LLC. The officials and executives played golf together and exchanged gifts of meals and drinks over an eight-year period. During this time, the report says, the Chavarria firm won $6.6 million in sole source contracts.

The empire leaves Beirut to burn

Sunday, July 23, 2006

ROBERT FISK
SYNDICATED COLUMNIST

. . . .

It is the slums of Haret Hreik and Ghobeiri and Shiyah that have been leveled and "rubble-ized" and pounded to dust, sending a quarter of a million Shiite Muslims to seek sanctuary in schools and abandoned parks across the city. Here, indeed, was the headquarters of Hezbollah, another of those "centers of world terror" that the West keeps discovering in Muslim lands. Here lived Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the Party of God's leader, a ruthless, caustic, calculating man; and Sayad Mohamed Fadlallah, among the wisest and most eloquent of clerics; and many of Hezbollah's top military planners -- including, no doubt, the men who planned over many months the capture of the two Israeli soldiers 10 days ago.

But did the tens of thousands of poor who live here deserve this act of mass punishment? For a country that boasts of its pinpoint accuracy -- a doubtful notion in any case, but that's not the issue -- what does this act of destruction tell us about Israel? Or about ourselves?

. . . .

Robert Fisk, who writes for The Independent of Britain, has lived in Beirut 30 years.

The Case for Breaking Up Wal-Mart

By Barry C. Lynn, Harper's. Posted July 24, 2006.

Wal-Mart's massive growth has begun to disrupt America's entire retail economy, forcing companies large and small to adapt to its ruthless practices if they want to do business. Is it time to bring in the government to break up the mega chain?

There is an undeniable beauty to laissez-faire theory, with its promise that by struggling against one another, by grasping and elbowing and shouting and shoving, we create efficiency and satisfaction and progress for all. This concept has shaped, at the most fundamental levels, how we understand and engineer our basic freedoms -- economic, political, and moral. Until recently, however, most politicians and economists accepted that freedom within the marketplace had to be limited, at least to some degree, by rules designed to ensure general economic and social outcomes.

Study: Ex-Rep. made use of 'black' budgets

By KATHERINE SHRADER, Associated Press Writer
Sun Jul 23, 12:30 PM ET

An independent investigation has found that imprisoned former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham took advantage of secrecy and badgered congressional aides to help slip items into classified bills that would benefit him and his associates.

The finding comes from Michael Stern, an outside investigator hired by the House Intelligence Committee to look into how Cunningham was able to carry out the scheme. Stern is working with the committee to fix vulnerabilities in the way top-secret legislation is written, said congressional officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because the committee still is being briefed on Stern's findings.

Digby: Sustainable

The Bush administration are monsters. That is not hyperbole. There can be no other explanation as to why the secretary of state, the person in charge of American diplomacy, would be so crude and stupid.

From Maureen Dowd:

Condi doesn’t want to talk to Hezbollah or its sponsors, Syria and Iran — “Syria knows what it needs to do,’’ she says with asperity — and she doesn’t want a cease-fire. She wants “a sustainable cease-fire,’’ which means she wants to give the Israelis more time to decimate Hezbollah bunkers with the precision-guided bombs that the Bush administration is racing to deliver.

The Authoritarian Streak in the Conservative Movement

By John Dean, AlterNet. Posted July 22, 2006.

The despotic personality types we see in the Bush White House have their origins in the amoral politics practiced by the low-lifes of the Nixon administration.

The following is excerpted from John Dean's new book, Conservatives without Conscience (Viking, 2006):

Frankly, when I started writing this book I had a difficult time accounting for what had become of conservatism or, for that matter, the Republican Party. I went down a number of dead-end streets looking for answers, before finally discovering a true explanation. My finding, simply stated, is the growing presence of conservative authoritarianism. Conservatism has noticeably evolved from its so-called modern phase (1950-94) into what might be called a postmodern period (1994 to the present), and in doing so it has regressed to its earliest authoritarian roots. Authoritarianism is not well understood and seldom discussed in the context of American government and politics, yet it now constitutes the prevailing thinking and behavior among conservatives.

FRANK RICH: The Passion of the Embryos

How time flies when democracy is on the march in the Middle East! Five whole years have passed since ominous Qaeda chatter reached its pre-9/11 fever pitch, culminating in the President’s Daily Brief of Aug. 6, 2001: “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.”

History has since condemned President Bush for ignoring that intelligence. But to say that he did nothing that summer is a bum rap. Just three days later, on Aug. 9, he took a break from clearing brush in Crawford to reveal the real priority of his presidency, which had nothing to do with a nuisance like terrorism. His first prime-time address after more than six months in office was devoted to embryonic stem-cell research instead. Placing his profound religious convictions above the pagan narcissism of Americans hoping for cures to diseases like Parkinson’s and diabetes, he decreed restrictions to shackle the advance of medical science.

Billmon: Losing an Army

Earlier this week I linked to a commentary from William S. Lind in which he warned that war with Iran could result in the loss of the 140,000 man army America currently has bogged down in Iraq. This may have seemed far-fetched, given the enormous military disparity between the two sides. But Col. Pat Lang, a former intelligence officer, explains how and why it could happen:

American troops all over central and northern Iraq are supplied with fuel, food, and ammunition by truck convoy from a supply base hundreds of miles away in Kuwait. All but a small amount of our soldiers' supplies come into the country over roads that pass through the Shiite-dominated south of Iraq . . .

Southern Iraq is thoroughly infiltrated by Iranian special operations forces working with Shiite militias, such as Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigades. Hostilities between Iran and the United States or a change in attitude toward US forces on the part of the Baghdad government could quickly turn the supply roads into a "shooting gallery" 400 to 800 miles long.

(Christian Science Monitor, via No Quarter)

There's a saying: Amateurs talk strategy; professionals talk logistics. And in the case of the U.S. Army, they talk it about a lot. This has been true almost as long as there's been a U.S. Army. During the 1944-45 campaign in Europe, for example, each U.S. division consumed 650 tons of food, gas, ammo and other supplies per day -- roughly three times what the German Army managed to get by on. Logistical requirements have only exploded since then. Those lobster tails they're eating at Camp Victory don't grow on the trees.

Civil rights hiring shifted in Bush era

Conservative leanings stressed

By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff | July 23, 2006

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration is quietly remaking the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, filling the permanent ranks with lawyers who have strong conservative credentials but little experience in civil rights, according to job application materials obtained by the Globe.

The documents show that only 42 percent of the lawyers hired since 2003, after the administration changed the rules to give political appointees more influence in the hiring process, have civil rights experience. In the two years before the change, 77 percent of those who were hired had civil rights backgrounds.

Amazon rainforest 'could become a desert'

And that could speed up global warming with 'incalculable consequences', says alarming new research

By Geoffrey Lean in Manaus and Fred Pearce
Published: 23 July 2006

The vast Amazon rainforest is on the brink of being turned into desert, with catastrophic consequences for the world's climate, alarming research suggests. And the process, which would be irreversible, could begin as early as next year.

Studies by the blue-chip Woods Hole Research Centre, carried out in Amazonia, have concluded that the forest cannot withstand more than two consecutive years of drought without breaking down.

Barbara Ehrenreich: Could You Afford to be Poor?

There are people, concentrated in the Hamptons and Beverly Hills, who still confuse poverty with the simple life. No cable TV, no altercations with the maid, no summer home maintenance issues - just the basics, like family, sunsets, and walks in the park. What they don't know is that it's expensive to be poor.

In fact, you, the reader of middling income, could probably not afford it.

A new study from the Brookings Institute documents the "ghetto tax," or higher cost of living in low-income urban neighborhoods. It comes at you from every direction, from food prices to auto insurance.

MP casts doubt on David Kelly suicide

2 hours, 32 minutes ago

An opposition member of parliament has alleged that a government scientist who cast doubt on intelligence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction may not have taken his own life.

A judicial inquiry into the death of David Kelly in July 2003 concluded that the one-time UN weapons inspector and expert on Saddam Hussein's weapons programmes committed suicide.

He did so after he was named as the source of a BBC news report suggesting that Tony Blair's government had "sexed up" intelligence in the run-up to the US and British invasion of Iraq four months earlier.

"Today, I challenge that conclusion," wrote Norman Baker, from the Liberal Democrats, in the Mail on Sunday newspaper.

Civil rights activist on lonely quest for justice

Six decades after lynching, witnesses still silenced by fear

Saturday, July 22, 2006; Posted: 4:33 p.m. EDT (20:33 GMT)

MONROE, Georgia (AP) -- The dirt road that led to Moore's Ford bridge is paved now, and the creaky wooden bridge has been replaced with a sleek concrete span. But the black letters "KKK" sprayed on the new bridge's face offer an eerie reminder of the terrible events that happened here 60 years ago.

Bobby Howard brushes back a leafy tree branch, revealing a half-dozen more racist scribblings. He sniffs his disgust, but he is not surprised. He has long forsaken his personal safety to fight the culture of fear that has suppressed the truth of what took place on the bridge. He still hopes that truth may come out -- in a courtroom.

Group: U.S. military urged abuse in Iraq

By DAVID B. CARUSO, Associated Press Writer
2 hours, 31 minutes ago

The group Human Rights Watch said in a report released Sunday that U.S. military commanders encouraged abusive interrogations of detainees in Iraq, even after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal called attention to the issue in 2004.

Between 2003 and 2005, prisoners were routinely physically mistreated, deprived of sleep and exposed to extreme temperatures as part of the interrogation process, the report said.

"Soldiers were told that the Geneva Conventions did not apply, and that interrogators could use abusive techniques to get detainees to talk," wrote John Sifton, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch.