Poverty, Numbers of Uninsured Up
Over the past year, poverty in the US rose along with the number of people lacking health insurance.
An additional 1.7 million fell below the poverty line, bringing the total in this country to 34.6 million. The number of people without health insurance rose by 2.4 million, bringing that total to 43.6 million.
The Plame/Wilson Scandal
Plamegate is, as expected, all over the news now and the damage control is in full effect. The administration is trying to deflect criticism away from Karl Rove, while Robert Novak is trying to throw some water on the charges with a clever denial that he was contacted by the administration. This does not jibe with what he's said previously, though.
I may periodically post on this, but will not follow the story like a hawk. A great number of other blogs are, especially Eschaton and TPM. I recommend checking them out if you want to keep a close eye on how the story evolves in the coming days and weeks.
Again, this Google News link is particularly useful for checking on the most recent reports and articles as they appear in the media.
Update: Mother Jones has a great rundown of some of the questions this story prompts, not about the administration's actions (as contemptible as they are), but of the media's handling of the story.
Breaking the Silence now available
John Pilger's film Breaking the Silence aired on Britain's ITV last week and got very good reviews. The documentary is now available for viewing or downloading here.
The Intifada
The third anniversary of the al-Aqsa Intifada has passed. Justin Huggler of the Independent chronicles some of the terrible costs since Sharon's infamous visit to the Temple Mount:
At least 2,197 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli security forces. Figures on how many were civilians are hard to find, but a large proportion were civilians: at least 123 were militants assassinated by the Israelis, but 84 innocent Palestinian bystanders were killed in those assassinations. And 399 of the Palestinian dead were children, 200 of them younger than 15.Huggler does not mention the number of Israelis killed, which is around 860. The Israeli economy has also collapsed, but not nearly to the degree experienced in the West Bank and Gaza. Whether there is a way out of this nightmare remains to be seen.
Despite three years of carnage, there is no indication either side has an exit strategy. The Israeli invasion and reoccupation of West Bank cities did not work. Nor did imprisoning thousands of Palestinians. Nor has a relentless campaign of 123 assassinations stopped the suicide bombers coming. Israelis continue to die when they get on the bus to go work or school, when they go out to a restaurant or a nightclub.
And life has become miserable for the vast majority of Palestinians. They too die on their way to work or school, hit by an Israeli helicopter rocket as the "collateral damage" of an assassination, hit by shrapnel in their homes during gun battles in the streets outside between the Israeli army and militants, or hit by the live ammunition Israeli soldiers fire at Palestinian children throwing stones at their tanks.
Millions of Palestinians are trapped inside cities surrounded by the Israeli army, unable to move freely because of roadblocks. The Palestinian economy has collapsed and there is now serious child malnutrition in the occupied territories. Yet the Palestinians marching yesterday vowed to continue their armed resistance. The militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad have rejected any new ceasefire - so, for that matter, has Israel.
TIA's dead; Matrix lives
Congress has pulled the plug on funding for TIA.
The next question: to what extent will the same information collection and surveillance be accomplished via state-run programs like Matrix (Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange)? Is Matrix simply TIA by another name?
Plamegate Lives!
Perhaps Joseph Wilson will get a chance to see Karl Rove "frog marched out of the White House."
NBC News reports that the CIA has asked the Justice Department to investigate the allegation that someone affiliated with the White House leaked the identity of Wilson's wife, an undercover intelligence agent named Valerie Plame, in order to strike back at him for penning an op-ed piece in the NY Times which accused the administration of manipulating intelligence to justify war with Iraq.
Update: The Washington Post follows up with a more detailed story which contends, according to a "senior administration official," that "two top White House officials" shopped Plame's identity around to at least six Washington journalists back in July.
Track this story as it evolves via Google News.
Costs of Settlement
The Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz has conducted a detailed study into how much money Israel has spent on settlements.
Adjusted for US dollars, the total amounts to $10.1 billion since 1967. Check out Ha'aretz's extensive supplement on the study, which features detailed maps, statistics, and analysis.
Cheney still linked w/ Halliburton
Dick Cheney lied about non-Iraq related issues in his now infamous interview on MSNBC last week, too. Despite a firm denial, he still has financial ties to Halliburton.
Edward Said, 1935-2003
What is the Matrix?
It's an interstate version of the Pentagon's infamous Total Terrorism Information Awareness (TIA) program being run by Seisint Inc., a Florida company founded by an accused drug smuggler, and funded by the federal government to the tune of $12 million.
The AP explains:
The database project, created so states and local authorities can track would-be terrorists as well as criminal fugitives, is being built and housed in the offices of a private company but will be open to some federal law enforcers and perhaps even U.S. intelligence agencies.On this last point, just for clarification, there was a lot more than just spying going on. Too bad the Orwellian surveillance systems now being developed weren't around back then. Hoover would've had a field day.
Dubbed Matrix, the database has been in use for a year and a half in Florida, where police praise the crime-fighting tool as nimble and exhaustive. It cross-references the state's driving records and restricted police files with billions of pieces of public and private data, including credit and property records.
...As a dozen more states pool their criminal and government files with Florida's, Matrix databases are expanding in size and power. Organizers hope to coax more states to join, touting its usefulness in everyday policing.
It gives investigators access to personal data, like boat registrations and property deeds, without the government possibly violating the 1974 Privacy Act by owning the files.
...Aspects of the project appear designed to steer around federal laws that bar the U.S. government from collecting routine data on Americans.
For instance, the project is billed as a tool for state and local police, but organizers are considering giving access to the Central Intelligence Agency, said Phil Ramer, special agent in charge of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement's intelligence office.
In the 1970s, Congress barred the CIA from scanning files on average Americans, after the agency was cited for spying on civil rights leaders.
Your Vote is Not Safe
Bev Harris, who coincidentally is being sued by Diebold, continues to be vindicated for her investigative work into the flaws of that company's voting technology and software.
A new report conducted by the state of Maryland suggests that the nationally-used Diebold technology could be easily compromised by hackers, even though there are safeguards which could minimize any risk of vote tampering.
Additional background on this very important issue is available via unknown news.
Correction: Harris has not been sued by Diebold, as I suggest above. Rather, Diebold contacted the ISP for blackboxvoting.org and had them shut down the site because of alleged copyright violations. My apologies for the mistake.
The hunt for WMD yields nothing
As expected, David Kay and the ISG haven't found any weapons in Iraq. A draft of their findings has started making its way around Washington and, according to the Guardian, "has caused such disappointment that there is now a debate over whether it should be released to Congress over the next fortnight, as had been widely expected."
More Presidential bluster and lies about Iraq
Bush again "assaulted the truth" in his speech before the UN on Tuesday. Like he has with past Bush performances, Stephen Zunes offers an annotated refutation of what came out of Dubya's mouth.
In related news, Sam Smith, the editor of the excellent Progressive Review, provides a history of the Iraq war, told entirely in lies.
Dershowitz channels Joan Peters
Alan Dershowitz debated Norman Finkelstein on Democracy Now! yesterday over the merits of Dershowitz's new book, The Case For Israel. Finkelstein accused Dershowitz of heavily plagiarizing Joan Peters' notorious book From Time Immemorial, misrepresenting a key finding by Israeli historian Benny Morris, and making several false assertions about Israel's record on torture and its treatment of Palestinians.
To add further drama, Dershowitz had issued an open challenge to any critic of his book during a previous appearence on MSNBC's Scarborough Country. "I will give $10,000 to the PLO," Dershowitz announced during the taping on September 8th, "...if you can find a historical fact in my book that you can prove to be false.”
Finkelstein rose to the challenge and, well, you'll have to judge for yourself whether Alan should be dropping a check in the mail anytime soon.
The transcript is available here, although it's not complete. I recommend taking an hour out to watch or listen to the debate, both for amusement and just to witness Dershowitz squirm.
Update: Alex Cockburn picks up on Dershowitz's plagiarism. The Harvard Crimson has run an article on the controversy, which Dershowitz has responded to.
Breaking the Silence
The Australian journalist John Pilger aired a documentary on British television over the weekend which, not surprisingly, laid bare the bankruptcy of the Iraq war. In addition to several stirring interviews with Bush administration officials, Pilger unearthed some past quotes from Condi Rice and Colin Powell which further discredit the notion that Iraq was perceived as a threat in policy circles. Pilger explained what he found in a corresponding column for the Daily Mirror:
An investigation of files and archive film for my TV documentary Breaking The Silence, together with interviews with former intelligence officers and senior Bush officials have revealed that Bush and Blair knew all along that Saddam Hussein was effectively disarmed.The Guardian's TV critic called the film "an astonishing piece of television that should be required viewing in every home, school and office." I eagerly await the announcement that this film will make its way across the Atlantic. I won't hold my breath, though.
Both Colin Powell, US Secretary of State, and Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's closest adviser, made clear before September 11 2001 that Saddam Hussein was no threat - to America, Europe or the Middle East.
In Cairo, on February 24 2001, Powell said: "He (Saddam Hussein) has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbours."
This is the very opposite of what Bush and Blair said in public.
Powell even boasted that it was the US policy of "containment" that had effectively disarmed the Iraqi dictator - again the very opposite of what Blair said time and again. On May 15 2001, Powell went further and said that Saddam Hussein had not been able to "build his military back up or to develop weapons of mass destruction" for "the last 10 years". America, he said, had been successful in keeping him "in a box".
Two months later, Condoleezza Rice also described a weak, divided and militarily defenceless Iraq. "Saddam does not control the northern part of the country," she said. "We are able to keep his arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt."
So here were two of Bush's most important officials putting the lie to their own propaganda, and the Blair government's propaganda that subsequently provided the justification for an unprovoked, illegal attack on Iraq. The result was the deaths of what reliable studies now put at 50,000 people, civilians and mostly conscript Iraqi soldiers, as well as British and American troops. There is no estimate of the countless thousands of wounded.
US revives Taliban tryst in Afghanistan
"Faced with escalating unrest and an increasingly stronger and more organized guerrilla resistance in Afghanistan," Syed Saleem Shahzad of the Asia Times reports, "the United States has stepped up efforts to address the country's troubles, including its moves to draw elements of the ousted Taliban back into the political process."
Miller Strikes Again
Referring to this story by Judy Miller in last week's NY Times, William E. Jackson Jr. of Editor and Publisher asks, "Did Miller break credible hard news -- or only flack for hawks in the government, an all-too-familiar role for her over the last two years as she wrote a batch of stories supporting allegations that Iraq was developing and producing chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons?"
The answer, of course, is pretty obvious.
Back to the UN...
"Bush's decision to return to the UN for military and financial assistance does not reflect any U.S. concern regarding the illegality of the occupation, the lack of legitimacy of the U.S. presence in Iraq, or the impact on Iraqis of Washington's abject failure to provide for even the minimal humanitarian needs of the population," declares Phyllis Bennis. "Instead, it reflects a growing concern about how to deal with what the New York Times called the 'high cost of occupation' for the U.S. in Iraq -- costs both in U.S. soldiers' lives and in dollars."
Priorities
"I'm enraged by the behaviour of the rich powers...how much more grievous - by their neglect - they have made the situation in Africa...we can find over $200bn to fight a war on terrorism, but we can't find the money...to provide the anti-retroviral treatment for all those who need such treatment in Africa!"
-- Stephen Lewis, UN secretary-general's special envoy on HIV/Aids
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is talking
It looks like the "coercion" or "torture" (call it what you will) of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is paying off. He's offered new details about the planning of the 9/11 attacks during interrogations with American intelligence agents. It turns out that the initial plan for the attack, if this report from the AP is to be believed, was much more ambitious than what actually transpired on that day. The details outlined by Mohammed also suggest that the 9/11 plot evolved directly from the never-realized Project Bojinka.
Nonetheless, what I find most interesting is this excerpt from the story:
A key event in the plot, Mohammed told his interrogators, was a meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in January 2000, that included al-Mihdhar, al-Hazmi and other al-Qaeda operatives. The CIA learned of the meeting beforehand and had it monitored by Malaysian security, but it did not realize the significance of the two eventual hijackers until just before the attacks.Three questions:
Art students pop up again
Those Israeli "art students" are back in the news again. This story popped up in the Ottawa Sun, here, but was pulled off the paper's website without explanation.
That there may be Mossad agents running around North America does not come as a shock, but the question which won't go away is whether they were involved with what happened on 9/11. Some say suggesting this makes you a conspiracy theorist, but this story is entirely suspicious. It could be "the biggest espionage scandal of the century," as Nathan Guttmann wrote in Ha'aretz, "or the greatest journalistic non-starter in many a decade." Nobody's been able to step forward with a comprehensive explanation about what's going on here.
For background, check out antiwar.com's archive. If you're a particular fan of mainstream news sources, ABC's 20/20 and Fox News each ran lengthy features on the story in the wake of 9/11 which have since disappeared down the memory hole.
Justin Raimondo has been pushing this story from the get-go and, as expected, he takes on this most recent development in his column for today.
Some links
* To distance himself from Cheney's absurd claims, George Bush has admitted -- again -- that there's no Iraq-9/11 connection. Nevertheless, the Weekly Standard continues to ride the Iraq-Al Qaeda connection.
* Why can't Americans see "the terrible truth" -- that they've been conned on Iraq? "The problem is not really that the public was misinformed by the press before the war, or somehow denied the truth afterward," Newsweek's Christopher Dickey asserts. "The problem is that Americans just can’t believe their eyes. They cannot fathom the combination of cynicism, naiveté, arrogance and ignorance that dragged us into this quagmire, and they’re in a deep state of denial about it."
* If Bush is expecting help from the UN in Iraq, then perhaps he should come clean with this speech on Tuesday.
* Hans Blix says the Iraq war wasn't justified, while Ted Kennedy thinks the case for going to war was a "fraud." Gee, thanks for speaking up when it mattered, guys. Such commentary is uncontroversial and obvious now; it wasn't 6+ months ago, when you could've been a bit more vocal in your criticism.
* "Faced with the rising costs and complications of occupying Iraq," Jim Lobe of the Asia Times writes, "the hardline coalition around US President George W Bush that led the drive to war with Iraq appears to be suffering serious internal strains." Bush may even be questioning the advice of some of his top aides now.
* If you're looking for upbeat news from Iraq, avoid the reporting of Christian Parenti (here and here) and Robert Fisk (here, here, here, and here).
* The US military is looking towards Israel for tips on how to hold down an occupied population. Hardly a surprise, since the US military turned to the Israelis for help even prior to the war on how to best handle urban combat.
* Speaking of Israel, Eyal Weizman follows up his analysis of the "politics of verticality" with an elaboration on the "geometry of occupation."
* Iran may be violating IAEA statutes and might be considering a withdrawl from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. This mess prompts an uncomfy question: if Israel can ignore the IAEA, why can't Iran (or anyone else, for that matter)?
* Mother Jones usually delivers good journalism, not shoddy pieces like this article on Rachel Corrie.
* The lies of the American-led "war on terrorism" are being exposed with each passing day. Including, says Howard Zinn, "the largest lie: that everything the United States does is to be pardoned because we are engaged in a 'war on terrorism.' This ignores the fact that war is itself terrorism, that the barging into people's homes and taking away family members and subjecting them to torture, that is terrorism, that invading and bombing other countries does not give us more security but less security."
* Members of the Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations have even more questions for Dick Cheney. Recall the first batch. Ray McGovern, a former CIA agent and co-founder of VIPS, is cited in the most recent set of questions. Read interviews with McGovern from Democracy Now! and lifeinfo.de.
* The US is leaning on Pakistan to help snag Osama, but that's probably not going to bear much fruit. Is the hunt narrowing or is the US nowhere near capturing Bin Laden?
* You know all about Project Bojinka, the 1995 Al Qaeda plot which foreshadowed 9/11 and provided the US government with a wake up call that something like that was a very real possibility, right? Well, if not, that's too bad. The files are not fit for public consumption.
* According to a leaked memo from John Ashcroft's office, the US government has not invoked its newfound powers under the PATRIOT Act to peer into library records. I have my doubts about this.
* Check out three good interviews with Paul Krugman from Buzzflash, Calpundit and the Guardian. Also read Krugman's long NY Times Magazine article, "The Tax-Cut Con," from last Sunday.
* Did conservative elements in the White House provoke an Exxon front group to sue the EPA in order to suppress a report on climate change?
* Some forgotten history: "Hitler victimized an entire continent and exterminated millions in his quest for a so-called 'Master Race,'" Edwin Black reminds us. "The world thought Hitler was mad and barely understood his rationales. But the concept of a white, blond-haired, blue-eyed master Nordic race was not Adolf Hitler’s. The idea was created in the United States at least two decades before Hitler came to power."
Cheney's Gross Distortions
If there is any doubt why nearly 70% of Americans believe Saddam Hussein was involved with 9/11, one only needs to look at the recent television appearance by Vice President Dick Cheney on Sunday.
He popped up on NBC's Meet the Press to assert that new evidence has emerged to prove links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, Mohammad Atta really met with Iraq representatives in Prague, Iraq really had the raw materials for a nuclear weapons program and hid a chemical weapons cache, and those weather balloon trailers really were mobile weapons labs.
It's hard to imagine more outright disceptions, baseless assertions, and wanton speculation in such a short interview. The Washington Post published an illuminating article on the appearance, but it's worth reading the transcript just to witness this man's sheer brazenness.
Lining Up For War
Dan Rather, CBS News anchor, May 2002:
It is an obscene comparison - you know I am not sure I like it - but you know there was a time in South Africa that people would put flaming tyres around people's necks if they dissented. And in some ways the fear is that you will be necklaced here [in the United States], you will have a flaming tyre of lack of patriotism put around your neck. Now it is that fear that keeps journalists from asking the toughest of the tough questions, and to continue to bore in on the tough questions so often. And again, I am humbled to say, I do not except myself from this criticism.Rena Golden, executive vice-president and general manager of CNN International, August 2002:
...What we are talking about here - whether one wants to recognise it or not, or call it by its proper name or not - is a form of self-censorship. It starts with a feeling of patriotism within oneself. It carries through with a certain knowledge that the country as a whole - and for all the right reasons - felt and continues to feel this surge of patriotism within themselves. And one finds oneself saying: 'I know the right question, but you know what? This is not exactly the right time to ask it'.
I worry that patriotism run amok will trample the very values that the country seeks to defend... In a constitutional republic, based on the principles of democracy such as ours, you simply cannot sustain warfare without the people at large understanding why we fight, how we fight, and have a sense of accountability to the very top.
Anyone who claims the US media didn’t censor itself [during the Afghan campaign] is kidding you. It wasn’t a matter of government pressure but a reluctance to criticise anything in a war that was obviously supported by the vast majority of the people...And this isn’t just a CNN issue - every journalist who was in any way involved in 9/11 is partly responsible.Ashleigh Banfield, MSNBC war correspondent, April 2003:
...what didn't you see [in the media coverage of the Iraq war]? You didn't see where those bullets landed. You didn't see what happened when the mortar landed. A puff of smoke is not what a mortar looks like when it explodes, believe me. There are horrors that were completely left out of this war. So was this journalism or was this coverage? There is a grand difference between journalism and coverage, and getting access does not mean you're getting the story, it just means you're getting one more arm or leg of the story. And that's what we got, and it was a glorious, wonderful picture that had a lot of people watching and a lot of advertisers excited about cable news. But it wasn't journalism, because I'm not so sure that we in America are hesitant to do this again, to fight another war, because it looked like a glorious and courageous and so successful terrific endeavor, and we got rid of a horrible leader: We got rid of a dictator, we got rid of a monster, but we didn't see what it took to do that.Christiane Amanpour, CNN war correspondent, September 2003:
...Free speech is a wonderful thing, it's what we fight for, but the minute it's unpalatable we fight against it for some reason.
I think the press was muzzled [in the runup to war in Iraq], and I think the press self-muzzled. I'm sorry to say, but certainly television and, perhaps, to a certain extent, my station was intimidated by the administration and its foot soldiers at Fox News. And it did, in fact, put a climate of fear and self-censorship, in my view, in terms of the kind of broadcast work we did.So, do we detect a pattern yet? It doesn't take a genius to realize that the American broadcast media lined up behind the administration and promoted the post 9/11 military adventures as noble excursions to hunt down evil and liberate the downtrodden.
WTO in Cancun
I'm a bit ashamed that I haven't said anything about the WTO meeting down in Cancun, Mexico.
Luckily, others have been keeping track of things: Body and Soul has some interesting background reading. Infoshop has some pictures from the protests. Global Exchange has a list of top reasons to oppose the WTO, amongst other resources. Marc Cooper has penned an excellent piece on the ironies of meeting in Cancun, "one of the world's most dramatic showcases of the gross inequities of the global economic system."
Following the suicide of Lee Kyang Hae, a South Korean farmer who killed himself in symbolic protest of the WTO's policies, the big news is that delegates from the poorer nations have walked out of the talks over disagreements about agricultural development, protectionism, and a variety of trade-related issues.
Of course, the Global Indymedia and Cancun Indymedia sites have been keeping on top of things as they transpire.
US delays arms report
David Kay and the Iraq Survey Group haven't found any evidence of WMD in Iraq, so their report has been indefinitely shelved. It was scheduled to be released this month, but probably would be an additional embarrassment for the British and American governments if it did see the light of day.
Update: CBS News suggests that the ISG report isn't being delayed, but confirms that no weapons have been found.
Radioactive Battlefields in Iraq
Katherine Stapp of IPS speculates that the recent revelation that ~4,500 soldiers were evacuated out of Iraq for medical reasons other than combat and non-combat injuries may be related to high radiation levels from depleted uranium leftover from the invasion.
As evidence that something is awry, Strapp points to a May report by Scott Peterson of the Christian Science Monitor which found radiation levels 1,000 - 1,900 times higher than normal in areas around Iraq.
War for more terror
The American, British, and Australian governments were all warned that a war on Iraq would increase the threat of terrorism.
Somebody again want to run down the reasons why they claimed this invasion was a good idea?
'Cause my memory is failing me...
Gene Warfare from the PNAC
"Imagine a bomb that only kills Caucasians with red hair. Or short people. Or Arabs. Or Chinese," writes Thom Hartmann.
"Three years ago, Wolfowitz, Kristol, and their colleagues suggested this is something the Pentagon should be thinking about. Not just germ warfare, but gene warfare."
Bush's masterful -- yes, masterful -- rhetoric and its consequences
George Bush has rarely been allowed by his handlers to speak extemporaneously because, when he does, the results are usually disastrous. It is thus no accident that when Bush engages the public, it is almost always with highly choreographed speeches.
This reliance on controlled forums to communicate ideas took on added significance in the wake of 9/11. It allowed the Bush administration to script specific messages and carefully chose words that would have a lasting effect and play on the public's desire to feel secure again. With speeches filled with Manichaean references and brimming with apocalyptic overtones, listeners were encouraged to seek refuge by adopting the administration's worldview. "You're either with us, or against us" was the mantra. What this really meant was: "join us, and we shall protect you; repudiate us (our policies) and you shall be thrown to the wolves."
By utilizing these rhetorical techniques, Bush was able to turn the fears and anxieties of the post 9/11 era into political capital. It turned out to be a "winning formula that allowed him to mesmerize the nation after Sept. 11, making himself politically invulnerable, while turning his political enemies into enemies of the state," according to Olivia Ward of the Toronto Star.
Renana Brooks, author of the forthcoming The Virtue Myth: American Culture's Obsession with Abuse and Intimidation, elaborates: "Bush describes the nation as being in a perpetual state of crisis and then attempts to convince the electorate that it is powerless and that he is the only one with the strength to deal with it. He attempts to persuade people they must transfer power to him, thus crushing the power of the citizen, the Congress, the Democratic Party, even constitutional liberties, to concentrate all power in the imperial presidency and the Republican Party."
Hail to the Chief, indeed.
Iraq's weapons going down the memory hole
Democrats and war hawks like Paul Wolfowitz agree: the issue of WMD is oh so last week.
Off the Radar
Project Censored has released their Top 25 Censored Media Stories of 2002-2003. Check 'em out.
Ground zero air quality was 'brutal' for months
Thomas Cahill, a UC Davis scientist, has confirmed via his own research that the air surrounding the WTC site in the days and months following the attacks on 9/11 was full of pollutants including "very fine metals, which interfere with lung chemistry; sulfuric acid, which attacks lung cells; carcinogenic organic matter; and very fine insoluble particles such as glass, which travel through the lungs and into the bloodstream and heart," according to the SF Chronicle.
Cathill's study mirrors some of the findings of the EPA's own internal investigation, which found that the EPA issued misleading assurances to the public about the safety of the air while under pressure from the White House.
Bosnian Blowback
Brendan O'Neill revisits America's role in midwifing Al Qaeda not only through the "Soviet Jihad" in Afghanistan, but also through its "humanitarian intervention" in Bosnia:
Many writers and reporters have traced al-Qa’eda and other terror groups’ origins back to the Afghan war of 1979–1992, that last gasp of the Cold War when US-backed mujahedin forces fought against the invading Soviet army. It is well documented that America played a major role in creating and sustaining the mujahedin, which included Osama bin Laden’s Office of Services set up to recruit volunteers from overseas. Between 1985 and 1992, US officials estimate that 12,500 foreign fighters were trained in bomb-making, sabotage and guerrilla warfare tactics in Afghan camps that the CIA helped to set up.
Yet America’s role in backing the mujahedin a second time in the early and mid-1990s is seldom mentioned — largely because very few people know about it, and those who do find it prudent to pretend that it never happened. Following the Russian withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989 and the collapse of their puppet regime in 1992, the Afghan mujahedin became less important to the United States; many Arabs, in the words of the journalist James Buchan, were left stranded in Afghanistan ‘with a taste for fighting but no cause’. It was not long before some were provided with a new cause. From 1992 to 1995, the Pentagon assisted with the movement of thousands of mujahedin and other Islamic elements from Central Asia into Europe, to fight alongside Bosnian Muslims against the Serbs.
The Bosnia venture appears to have been very important to the rise of mujahedin forces, to the emergence of today’s cross-border Islamic terrorists who think nothing of moving from state to state in the search of outlets for their jihadist mission. In moving to Bosnia, Islamic fighters were transported from the ghettos of Afghanistan and the Middle East into Europe; from an outdated battleground of the Cold War to the major world conflict of the day; from being yesterday’s men to fighting alongside the West’s favoured side in the clash of the Balkans. If Western intervention in Afghanistan created the mujahedin, Western intervention in Bosnia appears to have globalised it.
...It would appear that when it comes to Bosnia, many in the West have a moral blind spot. For some commentators, particularly liberal ones, Western intervention in Bosnia was a Good Thing — except that, apparently, there was too little of it, offered too late in the conflict. Many journalists and writers demanded intervention in Bosnia and Western support for the Muslims. In many ways, this was their war, where they played an active role in encouraging further intervention to enforce ‘peace’ among the former Yugoslavia’s warring factions. Consequently, they often overlook the downside to this intervention and its divisive impact on the Balkans. Western intervention in Bosnia, it would appear, has become an unquestionably positive thing, something that is beyond interrogation and debate.
Yet a cool analysis of today’s disparate Islamic terror groups, created in Afghanistan and emboldened by the Bosnian experience, would do much to shed some light on precisely the dangers of such intervention.
Media: Ownership and Journalism
The US Senate is debating whether it should repeal the FCC's ruling to loosen media ownership restrictions. The resolution, which would overturn the controversial June decision allowing a single media corporation to own newspapers and broadcast outlets in the same city and television stations reaching 45% of the public nationwide, could be finalized by next week.
In response, the White House is threatening to veto any resolution passed by the Senate.
In related news on the other side of the media equation, journalism schools are facing "their worst public financing crisis ever," accordiing to Editor & Publisher.
Blix: Saddam did not lie about WMD
"The UN's senior weapons inspectors now say they believe Saddam Hussein was telling the truth when he claimed he had no weapons of mass destruction," the Canadian National Post reports.
"I'm inclined to think that the Iraqi statement that they destroyed all the biological and chemical weapons, which they had in the summer of 1991, may well be the truth," former chief inspector Hans Blix declared in an interview on CNN.
Arafat's Predicament
As expected, Israel has set in motion a plan to expel Yasser Arafat. There's every indication, considering the catastrophic backlash an expulsion would precipitate, that they will hold off doing this and instead use it as a threat to force additional security measures and concessions from the Palestinian Authority.
And, to throw even more fuel on the fire, the right wing Jerusalem Post has explicitly called for Israel to "kill Yasser Arafat, because the world leaves us no alternative." This is journalistic bankruptcy on a scale rarely seen.
Doesn't fit the script
Check out some unknown news about September 11. Plenty of stuff there to make you go "hmm."
Update: William Bunch of the Philadelphia Daily News offers a list of 20 unanswered questions from 9/11, too.
Fooling You on the Economy
The received wisdom is that, while jobs have not been created, the American economy is expanding at a healthy rate. It turns out that may not be the case, after all.
Universal Health Care in Iraq
I missed this story from a few months ago, and it's got my head spinning now: apparently, the US government awarded a contract to Abt Associates in April to provide universal health service in Iraq.
A press release from US Representatives Diana DeGette (D-CO), John D. Dingell (D-MI), and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) objecting to the allocation of services half way around the world while the US health care system lies in disrepair notes that the contract apportioned by USAID "seeks to 'help facilitate rapid, universal health service delivery to the Iraqi population' including 'basic health care available to 12.5 million persons' after six months and '25 million persons' after one year of program implementation. The Administration also requires all 25 million Iraqis to have maternal, child health care, and health information and education after six months of program implementation."
Granted, Iraq's health system needs massive rehabilitation, especially after more than a decade of sanctions. But if such socialized investment is good for Iraqis, why isn't it good for Americans?
Revisiting 9/11
Eric Margolis examines some of the lessons from September 11, while the AJC's Jay Bookman says that, two years after the attacks, Osama's wish has been granted.
Troops evacuated from Iraq for unexplained reasons
What's up with this?
Citing the US military Central Command as its source, the Washington Post reported on September 2 that “more than 6,000 service members” had been medically evacuated from Iraq since the launch of the war. At the time, the number of combat wounded stood at 1,124. A further 301 personnel had been injured in non-combat incidents such as vehicle accidents. The figure of “more than 6,000” supplied to the Post therefore implies that over 4,500 US troops have required evacuation from Iraq for medical reasons other than combat or non-combat injuries.Update: The Observer follows up with a story on "America's hidden battlefield toll."
The Washington Post article did not include any further information on what is a staggering admission by the military. At no point in the last six months have the American people been told that for every soldier who has been killed in Iraq, at least another 15 have fallen so ill that they had to be flown back to the United States. The Post described the unexplained evacuations simply as the “thousands who became physically or mentally ill.”
The obvious questions that must be answered are: what were they diagnosed with; what units are they from; what duties were they were performing; what long-term effects have they suffered; and what treatment are they receiving?
The Battle at the UN Recommences
"France and Germany will back the new UN resolution on Iraq sought by President George Bush only if the proposal gives the UN full political rule over the country," the Guardian reports.
Anniversaries
As the anniversary of 9/11 is just a day away, perhaps it's time to again bring up some of those nagging questions and reflect on the path not taken. If you're feeling particularly inquisitive, then tackle the excellent 9/11 timeline over at cooperativeresearch.org.
You could also revisit what happened on the other 9/11 -- the date of the 1973 military coup in Chile.
Looting, Revisited
"Heavy suspicion remains that failure of the US to protect heritage sites, more than negligence, was a deliberate oversight designed as a kind of cultural 'shock and awe' that would devastate a sense of shared culture among Iraqis, leaving a blank page for the imprint of the US occupying force and the reconstruction to follow," contends an article by Stephen Smith which reconsiders the looting of cultural sites in Iraq. "If proven, this would be cultural genocide not witnessed during this civilization and indeed rarely experienced over the 7,000-year time span of these lost collections."
Smith's piece draws heavily from Jean Baudrillard's essay, "The Despair of Having Everything," which, while being a bit theoretical, is also worth a read.
Escalating Costs of Empire
That $87 billion Bush has requested for Iraq in his speech on Sunday night is a low-balled figure. Administration officials now say, according to the LA Times, that this request still leaves "a reconstruction funding gap of as much as $55 billion."
Such escalating costs threaten to blow a hole in the Bush administration's much-touted plan to reduce taxes. So much for a relatively painless 90-day occupation or an "empire on the cheap."
Operation Army Advertising
The US Army needs fodder for its "wars on terrorism." Luckily, Leo Burnett USA has had success with its rebranding efforts.
Losing the War on Terror
Paul Rogers, the excellent columnist for openDemocracy and professor of peace studies at the University of Bradford in England, has published a new study which argues that the US-led war on terror has thus far been a failure, and that Al Qaeda is even stronger than it was prior to 9/11.
In related news, a new poll from ABC News suggests a growing number of Americans feel the war on Iraq has increased the risk of terrorism.
WMD Redux
Greg Mitchell reviews how the press played up Iraq's WMD program before the war. He thinks it is "a depressing case study of journalistic shirking of responsibility. The press essentially acted like a jury that is ready, willing and (in this case) able to deliver a verdict -- after the prosecution has spoken and before anyone else is heard or the evidence studied. A hanging jury, at that. "
Mitchell points to Colin Powell's now discredited performance before the UN as a sort of turning point in war coverage. The media now has a chance to make partial amends by probing the Iraq Survey Group's forthcoming report, but he is worried that past patterns of coverage will again portray empty assertions as "compelling proof."
Post-war Iraq through rose-colored glasses
"...we will be greeted as liberators."
-- Dick Cheney, Meet the Press, March 16, 2003
So the rosy assessments about post-war Iraq parroted by hawks in the administration haven't quite come true. This is because people like Cheney chose to believe their own propaganda, even when dissenting analyses were readily at hand.
It thus comes as little surprise to see this story in today's Washington Post:
U.S. intelligence agencies warned Bush administration policymakers before the war in Iraq that there would be significant armed opposition to a U.S.-led occupation, according to administration and congressional sources familiar with the reports.Nothing in this piece should shock you, if you've been paying attention over the past few months. Nonetheless, isn't it about time someone is held accountable for this stuff? Resignations, at the least?
...Among the threats outlined in the intelligence agencies' reporting was that "Iraqis probably would resort to obstruction, resistance and armed opposition if they perceived attempts to keep them dependent on the U.S. and the West," one senior congressional aide said. The general tenor of the reports, according to a senior administration official familiar with the intelligence, was that the postwar period would be more "problematic" than the war to overthrow Hussein.
"Intelligence reports told them at some length about possibilities for unpleasantness," said a senior administration official, who like others spoke on condition of anonymity. "The reports were written, but we don't know if they were read."
In the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion, senior Pentagon officials were privately optimistic about postwar Iraq, and their assessment shaped calculations about the size of the occupation force that would be required and how long it would have to be there, as well as the overall cost of the U.S. management of Iraq after the fall of the Hussein government.
The more pessimistic view generally remained submerged, but the controversy did occasionally break into the open, most notably when then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric K. Shinseki told Congress in February that several hundred thousand occupation troops would be needed. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz rejected his estimate at the time as "wildly off the mark."
The WMD Boomerang
Apparently, Iraq might be linked to the Fall 2001 anthrax attacks in the US! But in a highly ironic way, and not in any sense that the Bush administration would like.
Those alleged WMD trailers found shortly after the invasion of Iraq, which Bush touted as evidence of a WMD find but which turned out to be for weather balloon production, are at the heart of this mystery.
Scott Ritter explains:
While Iraq has not been shown to possess the alleged mobile biological labs (or any other weapon of mass destruction, for that matter), fear within the U. S. national security community over the potential existence of such labs in Iraq led the United States to order mobile biological laboratories to be constructed in America, ostensibly for training elite U.S. special operations forces on how to disable the Iraqi labs once discovered.
It now appears that the only place in the world where labs similar to those described by Powell actually exist is here, in the United States. Worse, according to the New York Times, the scientist responsible for the design and construction of the U.S. mobile biological lab is under suspicion by the FBI of using this technology to produce the dry powder anthrax used in the October 2001 letter attack that killed seven Americans. This same scientist was allegedly behind similar "defensive" research that identified anthrax- impregnated letters as an ideal platform for delivering the deadly biological agent.
So, when it comes to the only major biological attack conducted against the United States, the available information points to the likelihood that the attack originated in the United States, using technology and techniques developed as part of a defensive biological weapons program that was a product of bad intelligence about Iraq's biological weapons program.
The War in Iraq is Not Over and Neither Are the Lies to Justify It
Stephen Zunes does a good job critiquing Bush's speech from last night, line-by-line.
With Bush now framing Iraq as "the central battle in the war on terror," Iraq has officially become a self-fulfilling prophecy. While the US "struggled before the war to convince the world there was a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda network," Steve Kirby of AFP writes, "five months of US-led occupation of Iraq may have created precisely such an unholy alliance."
About those WMD...
While we of course regret to report this, it turns out that mistakes have been made:
No weapons of mass destruction have turned up in Iraq, nor has any solid new evidence for them turned up in Washington or London. But what about Baghdad's patchy bookkeeping the gaps that led U.N. inspectors to list Iraqi nerve agents and bioweapons material as unaccounted for?Like Bush, the media should be forced to eat a whole bunch of crow over this.
Ex-inspectors now say, five months after the U.S. invasion, that the "unaccountables" may have been no more than paperwork glitches left behind when Iraq destroyed banned chemical and biological weapons years ago.
...It was always a "fragile assumption" to expect Iraq to provide a highly detailed, fully consistent and well documented account of all its weapons work, said U.S. defense analyst Carl Conetta. No military can do that, he wrote in a report recapping the Iraq inspections.
A U.S. audit last year, for example, found the Pentagon had lost track of more than 1 million chemical-biological protective suits, said Conetta, of the Project on Defense Alternatives, a private think tank.
In perhaps the most striking example, U.S. government auditors found in 1994 that almost three tons of plutonium, enough for hundreds of nuclear bombs, had "vanished" from U.S. stocks, because of discrepancies between "book inventory" and "physical inventory."
Rummy's Arrogance and Racism
From Juan Cole:
US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld blamed the Iraqis for their own lack of security, since they are not doing enough to tell the US forces in the country who the bombers are. Does anybody but me find this sort of rhetoric disgraceful? First of all, it lumps all Iraqis together. Do people in Najaf even know anybody in Tikrit, where the recent bombing was probably planned? How could they have tipped the US off about something a small group of Sunni Arabs in another town were planning? Since the US dissolved the Iraqi army, moreover, how exactly could Iraqis track such terrorists? With the PTA? It is the US that has 140,000 troops in the country and is supposed to be in control of places like Tikrit, and which has special forces and CIA field officers on the ground. Why isn't it the responsibility of the US to stop bombings and provide security? Finally, there is an ugly undertone of racism in Rumsfeld's pronouncements on Iraq. Earlier in the summer he compared the violence in Iraq to the murder rate in Washington, DC, a majority African-American city into three quarters of which wealthy people like Rumsfeld do not venture. He also compared it implicitly to Benton Harbor, a badly bifurcated city in Michigan that saw race riots this summer over the continued lack of opportunites for African-Americans. Does Rumsfeld think that Iraqis are analogous to African-Americans, only under better control? That is how he talks. And if you applied this recent comment to any minority group in the US ("they wouldn't have such a big crime problem if they would out their own criminal elements to the police") it would be patently offensive. It is with regard to Iraq, too.
Israel/Palestine
Now that Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas has resigned, expect the pressure to be ratched up against Yassir Arafat. Israeli politicians are already calling for his expulsion, once again, with some even hinting at more severe measures, like assassination. In response, the US has warned Israeli leaders that it wants "no surprises" in regards to Arafat's treatment.
Israel has been on a rampage recently with targeted assassinations, and the immediate political situation only looks to descend into further chaos and violence, which will no doubt be exploited by Sharon and his cabinet to shift the onus for further "reforms" onto the Palestinian leadership, making the possibilities for peace or any serious negotiations even more unlikely.
Unremarkable Killings
If you're looking for an anecdote indicative of the brutality of the American occupation of Iraq, then perhaps the story of how Farah Fadhil was killed is worth reflecting upon.
A clearly outraged Peter Beaumont of the Guardian sees her death as "part of a pattern that points not to a deliberate policy but perhaps to something equally worrying, an institutional lack of care among many in the US military for whether civilians are killed in their operations. It is not enough to say, as some defenders of the US military in Iraq do, that its soldiers are tired, frightened and under pressure from the simmering guerrilla attacks directed against them. For it is the impression that the US military gives of not caring about those innocent Iraqis that they kill that is stoking resentment."
The Importance of Losing
Jonathan Schell thinks the US better learn to lose the war in Iraq, or else continue to reap disastrous consequences.
The President’s Re-Election Campaign Kicks Off With a Shameless 9-11 Docudrama
Would you like some freedom fries with your crow, Mr. President?
"Let me make sure I've got this right," Salon's Gary Kamiya thinks aloud.
After being insulted, belittled and called irrelevant by the swaggering machos in the Bush administration, the United Nations is now supposed to step forward to supply cannon fodder for America's disastrous Iraq occupation -- while the U.S. continues to run the show?The Guardian's Steve Bell puts what Kamiya has to say into picture form.
In other words, the rest of the world is to send its troops to get killed so that a U.S. president it fears and despises can take the credit for an invasion it bitterly opposed.
The rest of the world may be crazy, but it ain't stupid.
Fascism?
"Is fascism an obsolete term? Even if it resurrects itself as a significant political threat, can we use the term with any effectiveness?" These are the questions David Neiwert addresses in his lengthy series, "Rush, Newspeak and Fascism," which is now available in HTML, via Cursor.
Where to begin?
I should be back on a regular blog schedule now. Hopefully.
* Iraq defectors may have provided US intelligence with bogus information and calculated disinformation in the run-up to war. "Oops," as Robert Scheer says.
* Lacking "hard evidence of weapons of mass destruction," David Kay's forthcoming report on Iraqi weapons capabilities will claim that "Hussein's regime spread nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons plans and parts throughout the country to deceive the United Nations," the Boston Globe reports. "Once freed of inspections and international sanctions, the weapons programs were intended to be pulled together quickly to manufacture substantial quantities of deadly gases and germs," Kay will argue.
* Rowan Scarborough of the Washington Times confirms that the Bush administration failed to do any serious planning for a post-Saddam Iraq. Yes, this is old news.
* Casualties in Iraq? Oh, they're no big deal, according to the wizzes at Fox News.
* Halliburton's Iraq deals are greater than previously thought. The company is being paid more than $1.5 billion to rebuild Iraq, and has won quite a few no-bid contracts. It's nice to have connections.
* "For the first time since the all-volunteer Army began in 1973, significant numbers of U.S. combat soldiers may have to start serving back-to-back overseas tours of up to a year each in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan and South Korea," reports USA Today.
* "While the dead are honored, the men and women injured in Iraq and Afghanistan have become the new disappeared," declares Bill Berkowitz. In Iraq, nearly 10 American troops are wounded each day.
* But the casualties are worth it, right? We're bringing democracy to Iraq. Yep. Gunpoint Democracy.
* US taxpayers are, of course, going to be footing the bulk of the Iraq bill unless the UN hops on board to help defray costs. Not taking into account externalities like the increase in gas prices, this year's bill "works out to $281 per man, woman, and child" in the US, according to the CSM.
* In related news: next year's federal deficit is likely to surpass $500bn.
* The Pentagon's spending on "Black Ops" is at its highest level since the end of the Reagan era.
* The controversial Office of Special Plans (OSP) has been renamed as the Northern Gulf Affairs Office. Convenient way to deflect all that criticism, eh?
* The Taliban is still causing problems in Afghanistan, and receiving a good amount of support from Pakistan.
* "Top White House officials personally approved the evacuation of dozens of influential Saudis, including relatives of Osama bin Laden, from the United States in the days after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks when most flights were still grounded," reports the NY Times. This story was first reported by the New Yorker nearly two years ago.
* "Like the Israelis," observes Amira Hass, "the Palestinians too are all exposed to the terror of missiles and bombs exploding in the heart of the civilian population centers." 80% of the Palestinians killed since the beginning of the intifada have had no connection to "armed actions" against Israelis or the IDF. Perhaps someone should send Tom Delay a memo about this.
* Dick Cheney probably lied to Congress in an attempt to obscure his work on the Energy Task Force. Still waiting for him to explain what those 2001 Iraqi maps are all about...
* Here's the report which unveiled the EPA's lying in the aftermath of 9/11 about the NYC health situation.
* Crime in the US is at its lowest level in 30 years.
* An additional 1.4 million people in the US fell into poverty last year, half of which were children. In all, nearly 35 million people live under the poverty line, approximately 12.4% of the population.
* US workers are the most productive in the world. They're not compensated accordingly, though: since 1973, productivity has grown by 66% while median wages have risen a mere 7%. And, unfortunately, things are likely to get worse before they get better. Here's more on the state of Labor.
* There are jobs down in Cuba though -- helping to build a more permanent military detention and interrogation camp at Gitmo.
* 40 years after the March on Washington, and Ward Connerly is evoking Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy to push through Proposition 54 in California. According to the Black Commentator, this "colorblind" initiative is set "to impose yet another layer of unreality on the American body politic in order to obscure the true state of the nation." I wonder what Martin would think about efforts like 54...
* Recent conservative meme #1: Bush bashing is worse than Clinton bashing. Take Back the Media, one of the alleged culprits of this phenomenon, responds. Recent conservative meme #2: Cruz Bustamante is a racist because of his connections to MEChA. Rodolfo F. Acuna responds.
* A federal appeals court has blocked the FCC from imposing its new media ownership limits. Nevertheless, American TV networks are getting ready to hit back at FCC critics with a PR campaign to persuade the public that the loosening of media ownership restrictions is a good thing.
