by Anthony Ioven
Here's something to warm the cockles of your heart over this l-o-n-g July 4th weekend:
[T]he real blockbuster in the Hamdan decision is the court's holding that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention applies to the conflict with Al Qaeda — a holding that makes high-ranking Bush administration officials potentially subject to prosecution under the federal War Crimes Act...
[A]s Yale law professor Jack Balkin concludes, it's starting to look as if the Geneva Convention "is not so quaint after all."
This might be worth bringing up to your dittohead brother-in-law at the barbeque this weekend when he starts mouthing off about prosecuting the editors of the New York Times for treason.
by Anthony Ioven
Or not:
Desert ants use an internal "pedometer" to measure exact marching distances, according to a study...
[If] it takes them a thousand strides from the nest to the feeder, they would of course assume that they needed to take another 1,000 strides to return to the nest.
Sometimes I think human beings are just smart enough to fuel our delusion that we are the be all and end all on this earth.
by Anthony Ioven
 Those damn radicals are at it again.
Pastors for Peace is leading another U.S.-Cuba Friendshipment Caravan to Cuba, carrying humanitarian aid in defiance of the decades-old American embargo:
[O]n June 17-18 at four sites along the U.S.-Canada border, Canadian activists transferred aid material to Friendshipment vehicles about to set off for the South. In all, 13 separate caravans left from various points in the northern U.S. to converge in McAllen, Texas. Along the way, drivers and helpers met with supporters in 120 cities to share information and accept humanitarian donations.
On July 7th, the caravan will cross into Mexico. The medical and educational donations will then be shipped to Cuba, accompanied by 100 volunteers.
The volunteers are aware of the risk. Two hundred previous caravan participants have received letters from the government warning of steep fines for violating the embargo.
During last year's caravan, the US government confiscated 45 boxes of computers and other electronic equipment at the Mexican border. The equipment was only released last month, after a year of demonstrations and the threat of an embarrassing court case.
While most of us will celebrate this July 4th with barbeques and fireworks — although the celebration will be dampened some by having witnessed the erosion of our civil liberties — these Pastors for Peace volunteers are celebrating freedom: the freedom to question and even disobey government dictates that they believe are morally wrong.
That is the true spirit of 1776 — real American patriots standing up for higher principles than mere allegiance to a king. Or a president.
by Anthony Ioven
 From the BBC story Israel seizes Hamas legislators:
Sixty-four [Palestinian] MPs and officials were seized, amid Israeli efforts to secure freedom for a captured soldier in Gaza...
The Israeli army dropped leaflets in northern Gaza urging residents to avoid moving in the area because of impending military activity...
The body has been found of an Israeli settler who Palestinian militants abducted and killed at the weekend...
Palestinian PM Ismail Haniya said the US had "given the green light to aggression" and called on the United Nations to step in to prevent an escalation in violence...
Meanwhile, Kofi Annan said he "hoped for a swift diplomatic solution to the crisis in Gaza."
Hope?
by Deep Post
I've been told by the most reliable White House leakers that the following conversation took place this morning in the Oval Office between President Bush and the Official White House Nanny:
POTUS: [Entering the Oval Office from an interior room.] Hi, Nanny. What're you doin' here?
NANNY: Georgie, what did I tell you about zipping up before you come out of the bathroom?
POTUS: [Turning away and zipping up.] Oh. Sorry, Nanny. Keep forgettin'. So much on my mind. Heh... Hey, Condi told me Israeli tanks rolled into Gaza last night. Good for them. Damn terrorists can't get away with kidnappin' our guys. In fact — call Miller. Wanna make a statement to the press about terrorists kidnappin' people.
NANNY: Georgie, Judith Miller no longer works for the New York Times. And I'd be careful what I said to the press about kidnapping if I were you. Don't forget all the people you sent to other countries through rendition.
POTUS: Rendition. Love that word. Like singin' a song. But that's different. We capture militants in the War on Terror. The Palestinians kidnapped some kid.
NANNY: They say they captured a soldier and took him prisoner, just like the Israelis capture Palestinian prisoners. What's the difference?
POTUS: It's different 'cause it ain't the same. One is kidnappin' and one is capturin'.
NANNY: Don't smirk at me, Georgie. It isn't polite.
POTUS: Yes, Nanny.
NANNY: Georgie, why don't you call that nice Mr. Olmert and ask him to call off the invasion —
POTUS: Incursion.
NANNY: You know, Hamas has just agreed to accept a two-state solution. That's a very promising step towards peace. But this military action is going to ruin it. This is the time to talk, not fight.
POTUS: Can't talk to terrorists. They hate our freedoms.
NANNY: That is just silly, Georgie, and you know it. And stop smirking at me...
POTUS: Sorry, Nanny.
NANNY: Georgie, sometimes you really disappoint me. I know how much you don't like Hamas, but withholding aid from them is hurting the Palestinian people. That's not right, Georgie.
POTUS: You don't know nothin' about it, Nanny. Cheney tells me everything I need to know.
NANNY: Oh, speaking of the Vice President, that's why I'm here. He asked me to give you a message. That nice Mr. Olmert called him and asked if he could get next month's check a little early.
by Anthony Ioven
In the brave new world we call America, speaking the truth is apparently treason.
The Raw Story has a roundup of some right-wing reaction to the New York Times report about government snooping into bank transactions. Here's a brief medley, sung by our freedom-loving friends on the right, about the newspaper they so cleverly call the New York Slimes:
They need to hang for this, but it's not PC for me to type this in RESPONSE to their treason...
String em up, right next to Murtha's sad carcass...
Any retired snipers out there?...
The NYT report about the snooping itself was hardly news. After 9/11, it was no secret that the US intended to trace bank transactions of suspected terrorists. But the breadth of the snooping is news, and that's the news the administration wanted to suppress. Again, from the NYT report (emphasis added):
[C]ounterterrorism officials have gained access to financial records from a vast international database and examined banking transactions involving thousands of Americans...
The program, however, is a significant departure from typical practice in how the government acquires Americans' financial records. Treasury officials did not seek individual court-approved warrants or subpoenas to examine specific transactions, instead relying on broad administrative subpoenas for millions of records from the cooperative, known as Swift.
The accusation that the NYT undermined national security is nonsense. But the NYT report did embarrass the administration, and that's the reason it immediately went on the attack — for example, here, here, and here.
And of course, as The Raw Story points out, the rabid sheep on the right are only too glad to help.
by Anthony Ioven
If you were scanning the editorial pages of yesterday's Boston Globe, and your eyes happened to fall upon the following passage near the end of Jeff Jacoby's column, which describes a novel about a theocratic takeover of the US, you would have to wonder whether the conservative Jacoby was actually championing such an America:
"Don't tell me about the old days, girl, I lived through them," says one character, a top government official. "Drugs sold on street corners. Guns everywhere. God driven out of the schools and courthouses. Births without marriage, rich and poor, so many bastards you wouldn't believe me. A country without shame. Alcohol sold in supermarkets. Babies killed in the womb, tens of millions of them. . . . We are not perfect, not by any measure, but I would not go back to those days for anything."
Reading the entire column, you realize Jacoby is talking about an Islamist theocracy in America, not a Christian one.
Jacoby's column attempts to give a chilling glimpse into what might happen if America loses the war on terror. But would the government official's words be any different if he represented a Christian theocracy? And is the irony lost on Jacoby?
by Faith Hope
So I'm having my Sunday morning coffee and flipping channels on the TV trying to get a little more dope on Nicole Kidman's marriage to Keith Urban last night and maybe get a glimpse of some of the glitterazzi who were there because you know you just can't get enough of the lives of superstar celebrities when I happened to hear a news announcer talk about the Iraqi Prime Minister's peace plan for Iraq and for some reason the part about amnesty just caught my attention. He said something like this:
Amnesty to all detainees who have committed no crimes, acts of terror, war crimes or crimes against humanity.
So as I continued flipping through the channels I kept wondering about those words. If these detainees committed no crimes or acts of terror, why are they detainees?
Letting them go doesn't sound like amnesty to me. It sounds like simple justice.
Oh well gotta run...
by Anthony Ioven
It looks like the front in the War on Terror is metastasizing.
US Atty. General Alberto Gonzales issued a warning yesterday that "homegrown" terrorists pose as much of a threat to America as al Qaeda:
The terrorists and suspected terrorists in Madrid and London and Toronto were not sleeper operatives sent on suicide missions. They were students and business people and members of the community. They were persons who, for whatever reason, came to view their home country as the enemy. And it's a problem that we face here in the United States as well.
So what does this mean? Now we have to fight them in Miami or New York or Boston so we won't have to fight them in Washington DC?
And suppose we discover that a homegrown Abu Musab al- Zarqawi is holed up in an apartment on Boston's Commonwealth Ave. Are we going to drop a couple of 500 pounders on it, like we would in Iraq?
If not, why not?
by Anthony Ioven
When Spc. Patrick R. McCaffrey and 2nd Lt. Andre D. Tyson were killed in Iraq, the Army reported that they had been killed in an ambush by insurgents.
It wasn't true. An Army investigation concluded in September, 2005 that McCaffrey and Tyson were killed by two members of the Iraqi Army they were patrolling with. Not in a friendly fire incident. These were insurgents who had infiltrated the Iraqi units and who murdered McCaffrey and Tyson during the ambush.
In fact, the military was aware there were infiltrators in the Iraqi units:
An Army officer who served in the same unit as Tyson and McCaffrey in Iraq said Thursday that military commanders knew militiamen had infiltrated the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps unit they were training long before the Iraqis killed the two Americans.
"We were told that before we went over there," the officer told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity because a criminal investigation remains open in the case. "They told us half these guys were insurgents. We knew it."
The Pentagon revealed the truth to McCaffrey's parents only this week, nine months after their investigation ended, and only after pressure from Sen. Barbara Boxer.
The Pentagon is hardly above lying in the interests of propaganda or to cover up embarrassing facts. Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman come immediately to mind. But covering up the truth behind the deaths of McCaffrey and Tyson is not just shameful, it is yet another attempt to keep Americans unaware of how badly things are going in Iraq.
Update: From Common Dreams:
A month before he died, Patrick [McCaffrey] told his father that Iraqi forces they were training had attacked his unit. When he filed a complaint with his chain of command, Patrick "was told to keep his mouth shut," his mother said.
This is becoming a particularly ugly story in this indefensible occupation.
by Anthony Ioven
 Rachel Corrie was a 23-year-old American who sympathized with the ongoing plight of the Palestinian people. As she herself put it, two days before her death: "I feel like I'm witnessing the systematic destruction of a people's ability to survive. It's horrifying."
Corrie did more than talk the talk. In 2003, she went to Gaza as a member of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a group that practices non-violent resistance to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. On March 16, she and other ISM members acted as human shields against Israeli bulldozers that were leveling Palestinian homes near the Egyptian border. Corrie placed herself in the path of a bulldozer that was heading towards the home of a Palestinian family, and was crushed to death.
An Israeli government investigation found that the driver of the bulldozer "at no point saw or heard Corrie," and ruled the death accidental.
But one of Corrie's ISM colleagues who witnessed the incident said this (emphasis added):
[A bulldozer] began to work near the house of a physician who is a friend of ours ... Rachel sat down in the pathway of the bulldozer ... [It] continued driving forward headed straight for Rachel. When it got so close that it was moving the earth beneath her, she climbed onto the pile of rubble being pushed by the bulldozer. She got so high onto it that she was at eye-level with the cab of the bulldozer ... Despite this, he continued forward, which pulled her legs into the pile of rubble, and pulled her down out of view of the driver ... We ran towards him, and waved our arms and shouted, one activist with the megaphone. But [he] continued forward, until Rachel was underneath the central section of the bulldozer ... Despite the obviousness of her position, the bulldozer began to reverse, without lifting its blade, and drug [sic] the blade over her body again. He continued to reverse until he was on the boarder [sic] strip, about 100 meters away, and left her crushed body in the sand."
You can view photos taken at the scene here. The first photo, taken an hour or more before Corrie's death, shows that the two bulldozer operators in the cab were certainly aware of the ISM activists, including Corrie. The second photo, taken immediately after Corrie's death, suggests that the bulldozer did, in fact, run over Corrie. However, the Israeli investigation concluded that the bulldozer did not run over Corrie, but that her death was caused when the bulldozer accidentally pushed debris on her.
The circumstances of Corrie's death remain controversial, and the controversy doesn't end there.
Last March a one-woman play, My Name Is Rachel Corrie, whose monologue consists entirely of excerpts from Corrie's diaries and emails, was scheduled to open off-Broadway in New York, after a successful run in London. But when the progressive theater company that was to stage the play "decided to postpone its American premiere indefinitely out of concern for the sensitivities of (unnamed) Jewish groups unsettled by Hamas's victory in the Palestinian elections," the show's British producers canceled it, citing "censorship."
This fall, Corrie's words will finally be heard in New York on the stage of a different off-Broadway house, the Minetta Lane Theatre.
At least, that's the plan.
by Anthony Ioven
Yesterday, Sen. Rick Santorum asked himself one question: Are Americans really as stupid as I think they are?
 After answering Yessireebob, Santorum presented himself at the nearest microphone and announced:
We have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, chemical weapons.
Gulp...
Santorum cited a just-released Department of Defense intelligence report (PDF) which said, "Since 2003 Coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent."
This is news?
Soon after Santorum's press conference, Think Progress posted this:
The Bush administration commissioned the Iraq Survey Group to determine whether in fact any WMD existed in Iraq. After a year and half of meticulously combing through the country, here’s what the administration’s own inspectors reported:
While a small number of old, abandoned chemical munitions have been discovered, ISG judges that Iraq unilaterally destroyed its undeclared chemical weapons stockpile in 1991. There are no credible Indications that Baghdad resumed production of chemical munitions thereafter...
So we're talking about a few hundred shells containing degraded chemical agents stockpiled sometime in the 1980s and long forgotten. In fact, a DoD official downplayed the recent intelligence report:
[The found shells] are not the WMDs this country and the rest of the world believed Iraq had, and not the WMDs for which this country went to war.
But Santorum's glee was not to be contained:
This is an incredibly — in my mind — significant finding. The idea that, as my colleagues have repeatedly said in this debate on the other side of the aisle, that there are no weapons of mass destruction, is in fact false.
Will the Republican fact-twisters, their talking-head accomplices and their dutiful blog/stenographers use the DoD report to muddy the waters about WMDs, from now until the November elections? Yessireebob. The only question, really, is whether the American people are as stupid as Santorum thinks we are.
by Anthony Ioven
This administration's real motives for invading Iraq remain a mystery. There were no WMDs, and no ties between Iraq, 9/11, and al Qaeda. It's been evident for quite some time that these justifications were merely pretexts.
And did we really invade Iraq out of some altruistic motive to bring democracy to the Iraqis? Please.
So why?
Today, a top Iranian official, Ali Larijani, offered this reason:
They want to set fire to the region.
As radical as this sounds, I believe it's the only context in which the administration's actions make any sense.
This administration has two main goals in the Middle East: To wrest control of the vast reserves of oil from unfriendly hands, and to suppress what it views as Islamist extremism. If unfriendly Middle Eastern countries bow to our will quickly and peacefully, then great. If not, the administration is fully prepared to spend the blood and treasures of our nation and theirs to get its way.
Sometimes you have to break something before you can fix it. Or, to put it in Colin Powell's terms, if you break it, you own it. Powell was trying to warn the administration against breaking Iraq and possibly the entire Middle East. But in my opinion, that isn't the administration's fear. That's its strategy.
by Anthony Ioven
Tonight, Frontline airs a documentary that looks into allegations that the administration "ignored, suppressed and manipulated intelligence after the 9/11 attacks to lead us into war with a country that had nothing to do with our attackers."
One especially poignant comment by the reviewer:
The apparent circularity of the pro-war machinations is especially disturbing. Then-New York Times reporter Judith Miller would get off-the-record info from the White House about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, print the claims in Sunday's paper, and then Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and others would cite the articles as evidence on the Sunday talk shows to justify the invasion.
To me, "fixing the facts" to justify a war of aggression is a war crime. What do you think?
by Anthony Ioven
Call it WorldNutDaily if you must, but WorldNetDaily manages to enrich its credulous faithful readers with incredible, not-to-be-missed Special Offers on a daily basis, promising everything from riches to a longer life.
Here's a sample from today's edition:
SPECIAL OFFER
What to do if nuclear disaster is imminent
Free report on practical steps for survival of terror attack
SPECIAL OFFER
Indy 500 crew chief exclaims, 'This gas saver works!'
Easy, one-time 5-min install helps thousands of drivers save $$$ at pump
SPECIAL OFFER
PROFIT OR PERISH
From the coming real-estate bloodbath
SPECIAL OFFER
RETIRE THIS YEAR ...
And still make more money than most doctors – learn how
SPECIAL OFFER
The 7 most dangerous lies your doctor's telling you
(Even if he doesn’t know it) Get the real story here, right now ...
SPECIAL OFFER
The official longevity HGH formula from Germany
Is finally available in America without prescription!
Can the special offers for Natural Male Enhancement be far behind?
A clue for WND fans: If you're spending all your free time looking for the secret to longevity and such on WorldNetDaily, you aren't going to actually prolong your life. But it sure will seem longer.
by Anthony Ioven
The right wing is at it again. Since they typically aren't able to present their side of an argument rationally, simply because their arguments so often can't be supported by rational thought, they resort to attacking and belittling the other side.
The latest victim is Rep. Murtha. Yesterday, Michele Malkin posted a gleeful roundup of right-wing diatribe against Murtha for answering a question posed by Karl Rove earlier in the week. From Malkin's post:
Congressman Murtha said, “Let’s redeploy them immediately to another country in the Middle East. Let’s get out of Iraq and go to another country.” My question is, what country would take us?
Yesterday, on Meet the Press, Tim Russert played that question for Murtha and asked for his response:
Kuwait’s one that will take us. Qatar, we already have bases in Qatar. So Bahrain. All those countries are willing to take the United States.
Asked and answered, and answered well. But then Murtha became more expansive:
"We don't have to be right there [in Iraq]," Murtha said. "We can go to Okinawa... our fighters can fly from Okinawa very quickly." He said the targeted killing of terror leader Musab al Zarqawi could have been done "from the outside."
Apparently the word "Okinawa" must sound very funny to righties, judging from the responses Malkin posted:
Bloggers are snorting:
Bryan Preston: "The man is a lunatic."
Tom Maguire: "Let's set Rep. Murtha's new redeployment strategy for Iraq to music."
Ann Althouse: "Embarrasing." (sic) Jeff G.: "Rather bizarre."
Froggy at Blackfive: The Okinawa Option should be plastered all over the DNC in the 2006 elections...
Tee Hee Hee...
Granted, Murtha spoke a little haltingly on Russert. Hardly a smooth, articulate presentation. But then again, today's entry on my Presidential MisSpeak Calendar features this Bush gem:
"I repeat, peoples are gonna say, well, they're gonna let them put it in a risky adventures."
And this man is the decider.
by Anthony Ioven
The Sideshow makes a great point about calling our involvement in Iraq what it is — an occupation and not a war:
And stop calling it a "war". It's not a war! It was an invasion and now it's an occupation. If you keep saying "war", you make people worry about "winning" or "losing" it. We should be talking about whether or not to cease or continue the occupation, dammit.
"Occupation," the accurate term, makes people a little more uncomfortable with what we're doing over there. At least, it should. And that's why the media and the Republicans avoid it.
by Anthony Ioven
This week, after debates that attacked "cut-and-run" Democrats in Congress, both the Senate and the House voted to "stay the course" in Iraq.
The House resolution went even further, reaffirming the administration's justification of the war:
Whereas by early 2003 Saddam Hussein and his criminal, Ba'athist regime in Iraq, which had supported terrorists, constituted a threat against global peace and security and was in violation of mandatory United Nations Security Council Resolutions; ...
Whereas the terrorists have declared Iraq to be the central front in their war against all who oppose their ideology;
Like the Senate resolution, the House also refused "to set an arbitrary date for the withdrawal or redeployment of United States Armed Forces from Iraq."
Arbitrary date?
If your boss assigns you a project and wants to know when you'll have it done, you can't look down your nose at him and say you refuse to set an arbitrary date for its completion, can you? Well, I guess you can. Once.
I agree we shouldn't be setting arbitrary dates for withdrawal. But we've been in Iraq three years. We should be able to set a goal for withdrawal — that we will have Iraqi troops and police sufficiently trained by such-and-such a date.
That's not cutting and running. That's completing the mission. But this would only work if the administration has told us truthfully what the mission actually is.
In any event, the election-year resolution passed in the House 256 to 153. How did your rep vote?
by Faith Hope
So today I'm in the lounge taking a break on one of my part-time jobs when my friend who's reading the newspaper starts jumping around in her chair and gasping for breath and slapping the top of her head with her hand and she sputters Ohmygod – Onmygod — Faith, guess what — Onmygod — al Qaeda is — this is so fantastic..." and I say What about al Qaeda? and she says It says al Qaeda is and I quote "coming to an end in Iraq" and so I shout We caught Osama? and she says No but when we killed Zarqawi we found all kinds of information about al Qaeda fighters and hideouts and stuff and so now we're conducting all these raids and — so I jump in and say So we're about to capture Osama, right? and she just looks at me like I'm as dumb as a log and says It ain't about Osama so forget Osama will you please?
Oh.
So then she starts reading:
According to a US military spokesman, US forces have carried out 452 raids since the killing of Zarqawi, leading to the death of 104 insurgents and the capture of 759 "anti-Iraqi elements".
And so stupid me I start thinking out loud, You know, how come we can count the exact number of insurgents we kill and capture but we have no effing idea how many civilians we kill? but she just waves me off and goes back to reading the paper and says It says here that the Iraqi national security advisor came right out and said "Now we have the upper hand" — The upper hand — believe that?
That's great I say, but what I'm really thinking is What in hell is an 'anti-Iraqi element'? and more imporantly Where the hell is Osama? but I keep my mouth shut because no way I want another dumb-as-a-log look from her.
Oh well gotta run...
by Anthony Ioven
It's a heartwarming story that is played out thousands of times, with slight variations, all over the world: A woman in labor is being driven to the hospital by her brother. With her in the back seat is her cousin, echoing the woman's nervous laughter, comforting her apprehension, and hoping above all that the woman can hold off just a few more miles. A thrilling ride they will talk about fondly years after.
But this particular story has an unusual twist. The women are shot in the back of the head, splattering the brother with blood and gore. The brother stops the car and is confronted by US soldiers. The women and the baby are now just three more death statistics in occupied Iraq.
The US military reported that the killings were justified by the rules of engagement:
The U.S. army claimed that its troops opened fire at the vehicle after it entered a "clearly marked prohibited area" at an observation post.
"As the vehicle neared the troop location and failed to stop despite repeated visual and auditory signals, disabling shots were fired into the vehicle," the military said in a statement.
But the brother says he saw no signs ordering him to stop, and heard nothing "until they shot the two bullets that killed my sister and cousin."
Yesterday, two weeks after the shooting, Dahr Jamail told Democracy Now about his conversation with an Iraqi investigator who investigated "firsthand" what had happened:
And it was very, very clear that the car was shot from actually behind by a U.S. sniper. There was no warning in the area. There was no sign put up by the U.S. military; nothing marking the area that showed that it was prohibited or that these people should not have been there. Instead, after the shooting occurred, the U.S. military, who did not come out and try to provide any aid to these people whatsoever, actually then drug a sign out to the area, a small sign...
The military claims that it was a clearly-marked area. That there were then shots fired in warning, audible and visual alerts given to these people to warn them that they were in a clearly-marked area, which was prohibited and near a so-called observation post. But again, these were claims that were disputed both Redam, who was driving the car, as well as two other people who were interviewed by the human rights investigator nearby the scene, who saw the event occur. And all of them saying that this was basically false — the U.S. military's statement was false — that there were no signs, there was no way that anyone in Samarra could have told that this was a prohibited area.
How can this be happening...
by Anthony Ioven
Hasn't Home Depot ever heard of Green Stamps?
Contractors shopping for bathroom vanities at Massachusetts Home Depot stores found quite a surprise hidden in their purchases. Drugs. Lots of them.
In Tewksbury, a contractor found marijuana worth about $145,000 in his vanity. In Western Mass., a plumber opened up his vanity and found a Crackerjacks surprise of marijuana and cocaine worth around $240,000.
Police searches of other Home Depot stores around the state found other bathroom vanities that contained drugs.
Rumors of an unprecedented spike in orders for bathroom vanities from Massachusetts Home Depot stores could not be confirmed.
by Anthony Ioven
Things just keep getting better in Afghanistan:
The Afghanistan province being patrolled by British troops will produce at least one third of the world's heroin this year, according to drug experts who are forecasting a harvest that is both a record for the country and embarrassing for the western funded war on narcotics...
"It's going to be massive," said one British drugs official. "My guess is it's going to be the biggest ever." UN, American and Afghan officials agreed.
Looks like the mayor ought to get out of Kabul more often.
by Anthony Ioven
It used to be enough to sit on a flagpole or wear funny costumes. No more. The latest PR craze, according to senior US state department official Colleen Graffy, is committing suicide.
Graffy had this to say about the suicides at Guantanamo:
Taking their own lives was not necessary, but it certainly is a good PR move.
Hmmm...I wonder if that shameless self-promoter and PR maven extraordinaire, Ann Coulter, knows about this.
by Anthony Ioven
Until Israeli and Palestinian adults stop acting like stubborn, resentful children, the children of Israel and Palestine will keep paying a terrible price.
It's time for the killing to stop. If the parties themselves won't stop it, the UN must step in.
If the Israelis and Palestinians can't agree on boundaries, the UN must draw them, just as it did in 1947. And this time, UN troops need to enforce it.
Enough is enough.
by Anthony Ioven
Well, this can't be good:
Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Sunday his government will give weapons to local tribesmen so they can help fight the biggest surge in Taliban violence in years.
Isn't that what the Afghan National Army for, not to mention coalition troops? And aren't squabbles between local militias who aren't answerable to the Kabul government part of the problem in Afghanistan? They don't call Karzai the Mayor of Kabul for nothing.
Needless to say, not everyone is comfortable with the plan:
Western diplomats briefed on the plan said they worried it could fuel factional fighting by giving weapons to forces loyal to warlords with long histories of factional disputes.
Gee, ya think?
by Anthony Ioven
Yesterday, Iraqi insurgents beheaded three members of the Iraqi army whom they suspected of being members of a death squad that murdered Iraqi Sunnis.
On the same day, three Guantanamo detainees committed suicide to escape the hopelessness of being imprisoned indefinitely without being charged of any crime.
No blood on our hands. Just another example of our moral superiority over these amateurs.
by Anthony Ioven
 Scaredy-cat Dems could learn something from Jack:
A black bear got more than it bargained for after straying into a family garden in the US state of New Jersey.
The unwelcome intruder was forced up a tree - twice - by the family pet, a tabby cat called Jack.
The terrified bear was only able to make its escape when owner Donna Dickey called the hissing cat into the house.
Jack is on duty in a backyard in New Jersey. But too often in the last six years, Democrats in Washington are nowhere to be found when they're needed most.
by Anthony Ioven
There is no issue in American politics as telling as the health care question. And what it tells us is pretty discouraging.
Most other wealthy, industrialized nations have some form of universal health care, but not the US. Not only that, but research shows that health care in countries such as Canada and England is actually better and less expensive than in America.
 Shouldn't that tell us something, or at least make us wonder about the wisdom of clinging to an overly expensive and less effective system that excludes about 46 million Americans, including over 8 million children?
Apparently not. After all, since we're so much better than everyone else, we must be right and the rest of the world must be wrong.
But then there are disturbing indications that Americans are not all that happy with their health care system. A recent Pew Research Center poll found that 70% of Americans think the government spends too little on health care.
Another survey of 23,000 Americans in 50 different communities shows that Americans believe health care should be "a shared social responsibility," so that all Americans are insured.
In case you're the suspicious type who prefers to believe that the outcome of this survey was manipulated by cleverly-worded questions, consider this:
Respondents to the survey actually had to insist they wanted universal health care even though it wasn't one of the multiple choices offered in the structured survey.
These are not the only polls that show Americans want universal coverage. They are only the most recent. Why are the wishes of a majority of voters not being respected? How can this happen in a democracy?
It can happen if the democracy has been hijacked by cold, hard cash, as ours has been. And it can happen when the ideals of freedom and self-reliance have been perverted to a selfish me-firstism.
by Anthony Ioven
US Army 1st Lt. Ehren Watada is refusing to go to Iraq, a war that he believes is "a lie":
My decision to reject unlawful and immoral orders in spite of the danger, has taught me the true meaning of sacrifice. I hope that my example shows other soldiers that they too have the freedom and the duty to choose right over wrong."
Watada is well aware that his stand may cost him a court-martial and prison time. He has already received death threats.
Nobody doubts the courage of the men and women who are fighting in Iraq. And nobody should doubt the courage of Watada and others like him who refuse to do so.
by Anthony Ioven
Thirty-nine years ago today, during the Arab-Israeli Six Day War, Israeli warplanes and torpedo boats attacked a US spy ship, the USS Liberty, in international waters, 15.5 nautical miles north of the Sinai coast. Of the 294 on board the Liberty, 34 were killed and 172 were wounded.
The Israelis later apologized for what the called a case of mistaken identity. But others, including many of the Liberty survivors, believe the attack was deliberate.
Who's right? You decide.
by Anthony Ioven
The other day, Alternet posted this headline and subhead:
The Tall Blonde Woman in the Short Skirt With the Big Mouth
You know who I'm talking about. I urge you, I challenge you, I beg you: Ignore this woman!
 And then it went on to squander 2,286 words on Ann Coulter's favorite subject — Ann Coulter.
Let's face it, Coulter is a genius at self-promotion. On June 6th, the same day the Alternet post appeared, Coulter published her new book. And with a well-timed slur or two against women who lost their husbands on 9/11, Coulter has everyone — god-damned everyone — talking about her.
There is no such thing as bad publicity, and Coulter knows that very well.
Coulter will say anything to call attention to herself, to better suck the currency out of her johns' readers' pockets. But if we ignore her, she will go away.
But genius that she is, she makes it impossible to do so.
by Anthony Ioven
Hasn't been much good news to report in the War Without End, but today is different:
Yes, the crowing from the right is going to be insufferable, but you have to take the good with the bad.
by Anthony Ioven
Collateral damage is expensive.
In 2005, the US paid a total of $20 million in "condolence payments" to victims or victims' families for each Iraqi civilian maimed or killed during US military operations. Payments range from a few hundred dollars for destroyed limbs to $2,500 for a death.
The $20 million in condolence payments for 2005 are up from $5 million in 2004.
Seems a strange way to pump cash back into the struggling Iraqi economy.
by Anthony Ioven
Click here for a bumper crop of bumper stickers that we need to see more of. Samples:
If You're Not Outraged,
You're Not Paying Attention
Annoy a Conservative -
Think for Yourself
Keep Your Theocracy Off My Democracy
by Anthony Ioven
Advertisers love a captive audience. Take the Wizmark (please) — "the interactive urinal communicator." For the membered members of the advertising audience, the Wizmark is "advertising you can't help but look at."
As crass as the Wizmark may be, it doesn't offend me nearly as much as a plan by a Massachusetts company to broadcast commercial radio programs into school buses.
If there's one thing advertisers love more than a captive audience, it's a highly impressionable captive audience. And what better way to sell crap than to target children, shut up in a bus, going to and from school?
by Anthony Ioven
 The Iraqi government is releasing 2,500 prisoners in an attempt to undo some of the anger and hatred that has been building since the occupation.
But if you think this is part of some general amnesty for wrongdoers, think again:
Nouri Maliki said those freed would be people with no clear evidence against them or who were arrested by mistake.
What in hell were these people doing in jail in the first place?
One released prisoner claimed:
I spent 16 months in jail without any specific reason. They only questioned me once, accusing me of funding terrorism.
Just another sad chapter in the story of this occupation. At least this one has a happy ending for those being released. But you have to wonder how many others are being held in Iraq, Guantanamo, and elsewhere around the world without charges or evidence against them.
by Anthony Ioven
 Today's date represents the number 666, the biblical mark of the beast. The once-in-a-century day devil worshippers celebrate pure evil.
Those who believe in this kind of thing take this date very seriously:
Reports are coming in from around the world of expectant mothers going to great lengths not to have their babies on 6 June. "I refuse to give birth on that date," Texan Bethany Morian told the Seattle Times. "I'll cross my legs and watch the clock."
Ouch. But there's more:
According to advocates of the worst-case scenario, mothers going into labour today could find themselves giving birth to the Antichrist himself: a particularly unappealing prospect, as anyone who's seen Rosemary's Baby will tell you. Perhaps not surprisingly, most of the wacky action is taking place in the US.
Not surprising at all.
Is there anything to this 666, day-of-the-devil thing? I would have said no, until I found out that Ann Coulter is releasing her latest book today. Now I'm not so sure.
by Anthony Ioven
"Evil" is not a word I use much because of its overtones of the supernatural. But sometimes atrocities take place of such magnitude, and representing such incomprehensible hate, that there is no other word to describe them — the holocaust, Rwanda, and Darfur immediately come to mind.
Sometimes "evil" is used to describe the Bush administration. They're not there quite yet, in my opinion. But this administration and its far-out-right supporters are possessed by a philosophy that is something more than simply a flavor of Republicanism. Manipulating the country into a war for reasons which have yet to be made clear, refusing to properly equip the troops in the war zone, surreptitiously and illegally spying on millions of American citizens, intimidating and jailing journalists, abandoning Geneva Convention protections, detaining prisoners for years without charges, kidnapping suspects and rendering them to countries where they are tortured, depleting the Treasury to pay for the war while giving tax breaks to the wealthy...
We're not in the realm of "evil" here. But sometimes it seems we're not in America, either — at least, not the America I was taught to admire.
So, while it's unreasonable to call this administration and its supporters evil, is it unreasonable to call them enemies of America and what it stands for?
by Anthony Ioven
Journalist Barbara Ehrenreich likes to talk about what so many people in America pretend is a non-issue — class, and its effect on the vast majority of Americans.
Ehrenreich researched her books Nickel and Dimed and Bait and Switch by talking the talk and walking the walk. For Nickel and Dimed, Ehrenreich worked and survived, barely, as a low-wage worker, taking jobs such as waitress, cleaning woman, and Wal Mart sales clerk. For Bait and Switch, she went undercover among white collar workers who are in fear for their jobs from downsizing and outsourcing.
Recently, Ehrenreich talked to Tom Engelhardt about some of her views on class, including the struggles of low-wage blue-collar workers and the anxiety of white-collar workers. Here are some of her thoughts:
There still is a real big earnings gap between college and non-college graduates, but it's begun to shrink...[T]he reason it was growing so fast in the nineties was not that college graduates were doing so well, but that low-wage people, blue-collar people, were doing so poorly. Their wages were being held down - and that remains true...
[I]n Bait and Switch, what I'm emphasizing is the lack of difference [between blue-collar and white-collar workers], that the security the professional-managerial class thought it had is gone...
[T]he pioneers [of the bait-and-switch corporate mentality] were people like [Sunbeam's] Al ("Chainsaw") Dunlap and Jack Welsh at GE, who took pride in eliminating as many people as possible, white as well as blue collar, and were richly rewarded by seeing their stock prices rise and their CEO pay go up...
When it comes to the media, anything about economic pain is what gets left out...
Then, commentators keep saying that Americans won't take the jobs immigrants take. It's not that native-born Americans won't do heavy work and hard work and sweaty work. The problem is that these jobs pay so little...After all, what does immigration do, in corporate terms? It provides a group of people you can really, really exploit. As long as they're illegal, you can do anything you want to them. Like not pay them. Not at all...
I couldn't get over it, how beaten down [white collar workers] were, how they had internalized obedience. The fear of standing out in any way that might be noticed seemed to grip them...
[The British] didn't understand the concept of employment at will. So I had to explain that, in America, you have no rights: no right to your job, no right to a hearing. You could be fired for a funny expression on your face...
If you're in the upper middle class you never have to interact with other classes, except with your servants or a cab driver or a manicurist...
Now, so many jobs insist on a college education. I have no idea why. I think they're just training people to sit quietly for long periods of time. Obedience training I guess is the phrase...
[On CEO compensation:] It's just plunder. You have your pay determined by a board of your buddies, often just other CEOs. They can take what they want...
There's a lot in our society that makes people with college degrees and white-collar jobs think they're special and superior. But next time you're seeing that person pushing the broom, remember, you may be one year, maybe even six months away from that yourself. You're not special, not in the eyes of the owners and the CEOs. So we've got to get together; we've got to bridge that divide, get over that snobbishness...
I already use [the term "class war"] when I'm talking to groups. I say, yes, there's a class war. It's totally one-sided and it's time for the rest of us to mobilize against the aggressors.
The class war is one of America's dirty little secrets. You're not supposed to know it exists because you just might fight back. And if that happens, we might just be able to take America back from those who have hijacked it.
by Anthony Ioven
No matter how you look at it, the invasion and occupation of Iraq make no sense. There was no connection to al Qaeda or 9/11. There were no WMDs. And all but the most gullible know full well we didn't spend thousands of lives and billions of dollars — and counting — for the noble goal of bringing democracy to a country half a world away.
 All the dire predictions made before the invasion have come true: the endless insurgency, the bloodletting between sects, the killings of uncounted thousands of civilians in urban warfare, the spawning of new terrorists, the real risk of destabilizing the entire Middle East.
In short, chaos.
The Iraqi newspaper Azzaman accuses the US of bringing constructive chaos to Iraq. And to me, chaos is the only context in which our actions in Iraq make any sense — to make the place an unstable killing field so that our military presence is required for years to come.
And if the violence spills over into other unfriendly Middle East countries, so much the better. The stronger and wider our influence in the Middle East, the more the Middle East will come to resemble the West. At least, that is the hope.
Azzaman explains the concept of constructive chaos like this:
It is said that a farmer complained to a friend about the abundance of large rats in his field, so his friend suggested a cure. He was told to gather some rats and put them in a barrel without food for several weeks. The farmer followed his friend's suggestion, and a week later opened the barrel to find nothing but a single rat, "with blood from the other rats it had eaten dripping from its mouth." He then set the rat loose in his field to eat the rest of the rats!!
American strategic planners have benefited from this idea, for they have made a barrel out of Iraq: the Americans have put terrorist and criminal gangs from around the world inside it, and thrown its borders open to create a fertile breeding ground for terrorism and crime. After letting nature take its course, what's inside the Iraqi barrel can then be distributed elsewhere in the region to implement America's plan for democracy. [emphasis theirs]
Not a bad idea, if the people in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East were rodents. And apparently, to many in Christian America, they are.
by Anthony Ioven
The military simply can't be trusted to investigate allegations of atrocities committed by its own personnel.
There is ample proof of this fact, from the military's investigation of a 55-year-old massacre at No Gun Ri, Korea, that the Pentagon tried to cover up, to the recent coverup of the killings in Ishaqi, Iraq.
In March, according to the military, US troops returned gunfire coming from a house in the village of Ishaqi. After the exchange, the troops called in airstrikes to destroy the home.
At the time, US officials said that the justified use of force in Ishaqi resulted in the deaths of one insurgent, two women, and a child.
 That was the official position of the US military until yesterday, when the BBC broadcast a video showing a row of children that were killed in Ishaqi:
The full 10-minute video shows graphic images of five dead children and three dead adults, cattle that appear to have been shot and a home with a collapsed roof, crumbled walls, and piles of bricks, mortar, and other debris.
Not surprisingly, the military immediately backtracked:
In a statement yesterday, the military said the body of one insurgent and three "non-combatants" were found after the raid, and that the investigating officer "concluded that possibly up to nine collateral deaths resulted from this engagement but could not determine the precise number due to collapsed walls and heavy debris".
The BBC claims that its video is "evidence that US forces may have been responsible for the deliberate killing of 11 innocent Iraqi civilians." Some reports claim
that the victims were placed in a single room with their hands bound before the house was destroyed by airstrikes.
The US military denies there was any wrongdoing at Ishaqi, including that the airstrikes were ordered to cover up the killings. Iraqi officials disagree, and intend to launch their own investigation.
But according to the US military, the Ishaqi operation was conducted "appropriately" and completely by the book.
If that's true, the book needs to be changed.
by Anthony Ioven
Up until now, I've pretty much dismissed all the allegations of ballot fraud in the 2004 presidential election. I just chalked up the reports to mistakes, oversights, the occasional dirty tricks, and the sour grapes that are part of any election. But it looks like I was wrong.
In a report published today in Rolling Stone magazine, Robert Kennedy Jr. makes quite a convincing case for fraud, especially in the close Ohio race that put Bush over the top:
Any election, of course, will have anomalies...
But what is most anomalous about the irregularities in 2004 was their decidedly partisan bent: Almost without exception they hurt John Kerry and benefited George Bush. After carefully examining the evidence, I've become convinced that the president's party mounted a massive, coordinated campaign to subvert the will of the people in 2004. Across the country, Republican election officials and party stalwarts employed a wide range of illegal and unethical tactics to fix the election. A review of the available data reveals that in Ohio alone, at least 357,000 voters, the overwhelming majority of them Democratic, were prevented from casting ballots or did not have their votes counted in 2004) — more than enough to shift the results of an election decided by 118,601 votes.... In what may be the single most astounding fact from the election, one in every four Ohio citizens who registered to vote in 2004 showed up at the polls only to discover that they were not listed on the rolls, thanks to GOP efforts to stem the unprecedented flood of Democrats eager to cast ballots. And that doesn't even take into account the troubling evidence of outright fraud, which indicates that upwards of 80,000 votes for Kerry were counted instead for Bush. That alone is a swing of more than 160,000 votes — enough to have put John Kerry in the White House.
These are serious allegations that are sure to cause a firestorm. The Right will no doubt attack the attacker, charging that Kennedy's grandfather, Joseph Kennedy, bought the presidency for his son, John F. Kennedy, through dirty dealings in Chicago. And besides, what do you expect from a Kennedy?
Don't let the Right change the subject.
If Kennedy's allegations are true and the election was literally stolen, American democracy is in more trouble than even the most pessimistic of us have suspected.
But the question is, do we dare do anything about it?
by Anthony Ioven
Beginning immediately, all US troops in Iraq are to undergo "ethics training." Apparently, too many of our men and women in uniform aren't aware that it is unethical to murder women, babies, and unarmed men.
It doesn't get any dumber than this. The only ethics training that needs to be done here is to jail each and every person responsible for atrocities like Haditha, including those who cover them up. The rest of the troops will get the idea.
|
UpdateAmerica.com
604.UpdateAmerica.com
June's Posts
War Crimes? How Quaint
It's Just a Dumb Bug
Cuban Caravan
Goodbye, Peace
Same Song, Different Singer
Truth is Treason
Theocracy Rising?
All That Glitters...
Homegrown Terror
Another Coverup
'My Name Is Rachel Corrie'
Repubs Find Their Holy Grail
You Break It, You Own It
Must See TV
From Soup to...Nuts
Okinawa - BWAAAA-HA-HA
Not Just 'Tomato' or 'Tomahto'
They Did It Again
Great News From Iraq
What Child Is This?
You Want Coke With Those Vanities?
Another Afghan Success Story
The Ultimate PR
Enough
You Want To Do What, Mr. Mayor?
Even Steven
All Hiss, No Claws
Whose Country Is It, Anyway?
Hell No, I Won't Go
Attack On Our Liberty
The Unholy Hooker
Good News
My Bad...
Liberal Sound Bites
Wiz Kids
Justice Delayed
6.6.06
Speaking of Evil...
'It's Just Plunder'
Constructive Chaos
Completely By the Book
They Hate Our Freedoms
Troops – Babies Are Not The Enemy
|
