A link purge

Ok. I'm back. I will be blogging on a consistent basis again. What's below might strike some as too much information, since I try to encapsulate most of what I've missed recently, but I post it more for my future reference than anything else. If you can find stuff that you might have forgotten, or stuff you failed to pick up over the past month or so, then good. Otherwise, it might be a bit too dense.

* So it is official: No WMD in Iraq. Ho hum. This was more or less known as of last May, but no matter. As Robert Scheer says, "Can we now talk impeachment?"

* "We were all wrong," laments David Kay. Umm, not quite. Those who were not hell-bent on going to war, like Scott Ritter, and those who warned that the administration was dismissive of inconvenient intelligence that failed to portray Iraq as a serious threat, turned out to be quite accurate in their assertions.

* Was it simply an "intelligence failure" on Iraq, as much of the press suggests? Please. How about a "scandal greater than Watergate"? For anyone still not convinced that this is much more than an intel snafu, review the plethora of deceptive statements made by the administration and then take a peek at the CAP's chronology of "how the Bush Administration repeatedly and deliberately refused to listen to intelligence agencies that said its case for war was weak."

* Regrettably, as Rahul Mahajan writes, many journalists seem to be "coming together around a systematic rewriting of the selling of the Iraq war. They are being helped along by mainstream Democratic politicians, always happy to shoot themselves in the head whenever they get the chance; presidential frontrunner John Kerry has just called for the resignation of George Tenet, rather than the impeachment of George Bush." In actuality, Mahajan continues, "The real intelligence failure is ours, in allowing all of this to happen. After months of the truth about the administration's lies coming out, an October poll showed that 60% of the nation thought of Bush as 'honest and trustworthy.' That's an intelligence failure among the media, among the political opposition, and among all of us who watch passively as a very dark new world order is ushered in, not with a bang but a whimper." Similarly, Nat Parry laments that very "few members of the U.S. political or media establishments seem willing to draw the obvious conclusion: that the Bush administration either lied repeatedly to justify the invasion of Iraq or that top officials of the U.S. government are living in a fantasy world. Both options pose hard questions for the press, the politicians and the American people -- and it's not clear which option is more frightening."

* Now, of course, media outlets are aflutter with reports critical of the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq war (editorial boards, too). "Watching and reading all this, one is tempted to ask, where were you all before the war?" writes Michael Massing in a devastating indictment of the media's performance in the NYRB. "Why didn't we learn more about these deceptions and concealments in the months when the administration was pressing its case for regime change -- when, in short, it might have made a difference? Some maintain that the many analysts who've spoken out since the end of the war were mute before it. But that's not true. Beginning in the summer of 2002, the 'intelligence community' was rent by bitter disputes over how Bush officials were using the data on Iraq. Many journalists knew about this, yet few chose to write about it."

* "If the Bush administration really wants to find out what went wrong with our pre-war intelligence on Iraq," offers Chalmers Johnson, "it should appoint a commission consisting of first-class investigative reporters, including first and foremost the New Yorker magazine's Seymour Hersh and the Atlantic Monthly's James Fallows. These two journalists have, in fact, already told us in damning detail what really went on inside the Bush administration."

* "Anyone with a passing acquaintance of recent history knows exactly how, and why, the intelligence data concerning Iraq's nonexistent WMD came to be used as a justification for military aggression," writes Chris Floyd. "Indeed, this history is so open, so transparent and so widely available -- in news reports, unclassified government documents, think-tank publications, etc. -- that a cynic might suspect that these government-appointed 'investigations' are actually designed to obscure the already evident truth." The story, Floyd declares, starts ~30 years ago with "Team B," an ideological predecessor to the infamous Office of Special Plans.

* The commission set up by Bush to investigate intelligence failures prior to the Iraq war will have a narrow scope and consist of partisan figures sympathetic to the administration. Skepticism, in other words, should be in order over just how deep the probe will go.

* Dick Cheney's stuck on that infamous Feith memo profiled in a November issue of the Weekly Standard. In appearance after appearance, Cheney recites the same, tired, debunked claims -- thankfully, though, some people are starting to call him on it. And, if investigators want to get to the bottom of the Iraq scandal, they need to thoroughly examine what role the man from Wyoming played in this entire charade.

* "Contrary to what most Americans believe," George Hunsinger writes, "the U.S. is in deep trouble in Iraq, and its policies are adrift."

* Shiites' unhappiness bodes ill for U.S. effort in Iraq. Indeed. Thousands of angry marchers, "whispers of revolution," and a defiant Al-Sistani do not bode well for the occupying power. As Erich Marquardt puts it, "Washington now finds itself in the middle of an array of diverging interests and is responsible for drafting an extremely difficult power sharing arrangement that will need to be accepted by majorities in each of Iraq's three dominant ethnic groups. Furthermore, with the coming of a new presidential election in the United States, ethnic factions in Iraq know that they have the opportunity to influence the U.S. vote. By threatening raging protests or open confrontation, they can make the U.S.-led occupation very unpopular among the U.S. population, damaging the Bush administration's reelection chances. How this power struggle concludes will depend largely on the United Nations and ultimately on al-Sistani."

* Accordingly, the Knight Ridder team of Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay report that "CIA officers in Iraq are warning that the country may be on a path to civil war." Any internal conflict or partition of Iraq would likely breed regional instability, as many analysts have been warning Bush administration officials for some time. And, if Iraq "breaks apart," Turkey's already declaring that it will intervene. That's sure to make the Kurds feel so much more secure.

* Where to on Iraq now? The Boston Globe's James Carroll says a new president could start with an apology.

* "Saddam Hussein warned his Iraqi supporters to be wary of joining forces with foreign Arab fighters entering Iraq to battle American troops, according to a document found with the former Iraqi leader when he was captured," reports the NY Times. So much for Saddam being in bed with the Islamists.

* Noam Chomsky details what a fair trial for Saddam would look like. You're not bloody likely to see anything like it, of course.

* The Guardian reports on a new study from the US army war college that charges the Bush administration with bungling the "war on terror" and dragging the country into an unnecessary war in Iraq.

* The Iraq Body Count project has tallied more than 10,000 civilian deaths from the Anglo-American invasion.

* "Iraqi civilians are reportedly intending to bring charges in Belgium against U.S. General Tommy Franks for war crimes," reports Deutsche Welle. "The Iraqis, allegedly eyewitnesses and victims of U.S. atrocities, hold coalition forces responsible for numerous crimes, including failing to prevent looting, firing on an ambulance, shooting and injuring Iraqi civilians, causing the deaths of scores of people by bombing a Baghdad marketplace and killing at least ten passengers driving in a civilian bus near the town of Hillah."

* Human Rights Watch shoots down the humanitarian justifications for the Iraq war in its World Report for 2004.

* "Iraqi women, who were among the most liberated in the Arab world under the country's legal system, are seeing their rights stripped away by the U.S.-backed Iraqi Governing Council (IGC), according to 44 U.S. lawmakers who are calling on President Bush to take urgent steps to address what they call a 'brewing women's rights crisis,'" reports Jim Lobe.

* The Denver Post reports that at least 37 female service members have sought counsel for sexual assault upon returning to the US from their tours of duty in Iraq, many complaining that their cases were handled poorly by the military.

* The Observer's Peter Beaumont reports that, for the US military in Iraq, "the suicide rate is high and the army is riddled with acute psychiatric problems."

* Gilles d'Aymery, the editor of the Swans, introduces his online journal's special issue on Iraq. Many of the essays offered are well worth the read.

* Guy Dinmore of the Financial Times reports how the Bush administration seriously underestimated what it would take to rehabilitate of Iraq's oil industry.

* The US is pouring money into several new media projects in Iraq, according to Sergei Danilochkin of Radio Free Europe.

* Two prominent Israelis -- Yossi Sarid, a member of the Israeli Foreign Affairs and defense Committee, and Shlomo Brom, a former Israeli intelligence officer -- have raised concerns about Israel's role in the march to war in Iraq. Both men claim that Israeli intelligence knowingly passed along false and misleading estimates of Iraq's weapons abilities to the United States. The implication, of course, is that this was done because the war was strategically desirable for Israel.

* BBC takes bullet meant for Blair. So reads the title of Linda McQuaig's column following the release of the Hutton report in Britain. John Pilger put it this way, a bit more harshly: "In the wake of the Hutton fiasco, one truth remains unassailed: Tony Blair ordered an unprovoked invasion of another country on a totally false pretext, and that lies and deceptions manufactured in London and Washington caused the deaths of up to 55,000 Iraqis, including 9,600 civilians."

* The Observer reports that Britain helped the US spy on fellow UN Security Council members last year in the run up to the Iraq war. For background, recall the story from last March's Observer which broke the news about US efforts to monitor fellow delegations. Also read up on the predicament of Katharine Gun, the British intelligence worker who faces prosecution for leaking the news about the spy operation.

* Sheldon Richman revisits a burning question about US policy towards Iraq during the 1990s: were the sanctions "worth it"?

* According to a report published in the London Times, "Medical problems linked to the [first] war in Iraq, dubbed Gulf War syndrome, were probably caused by vaccines administered to soldiers before their departure to the region." This news is consistent with previous reports, but it does not provide a comprehensive explanation as to why there are so many US veterans on disability.

* Predictably, the White House struck back at Paul O'Neill for his allegations that Iraq was targeted almost immediately once Bush took office, although it took some time for everyone in the administration to get on the same page. Rumsfeld, for example, first said this just wasn't so, but then Bush admitted that "regime change" was always the policy, stressing, however, that it was merely a continuation of Clinton's policy. O'Neill waffled, too, but his claims were eventually corroborated by another administration official.

* There was some controversy over the Treasury Department documents cited by O'Neill, which he had handed over to Ron Suskind for his book, The Price of Loyalty. Now, Suskind is presenting these files to the public via the book's website.

* "Despite George W. Bush's new good ol' boy image -- cowboy boots and born-again ties to the religious right -- his basic tendencies go in the same directions -- oil, crony capitalism, top 1% economics and military-industrial-establishment loyalties -- that the previous Bush and Walker generations have traveled," writes Kevin Phillips in an article adapted from his book American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush. In a more controversial piece drawn from the same tome, Phillips suggests that "the Bush dynasty's many decades of entanglement and money-hunting in the Middle East have created a major conflict of interest that deserves to be part of the 2004 political debate." At base, this brings into question Dubya's ability to handle the demands of a "war on terror" aimed predominantly at regions girding the globe's major energy reserves. For more on this topic, watch Greg Palast's BBC investigation, "The Bush Family Fortunes."

* Coincidentally, Paul Krugman reviews the Suskind and Phillips books in the NYRB.

* The investigation into the Plame leak continues behind closed doors. A grand jury has been gathered, and White House officials are being called to testify. Richard Sale reports that Cheney's staff is the focus of the probe, confirming one of the earliest suspicions about the leak investigation.

* In related "Plamegate" news, Joseph Wilson is still at the throat of the Bush administration. Oh, and Josh Marshall teases us with a suggestion that the parallel probe into who forged the Niger docs promises even more political fireworks.

* No doubt part of the fallout from the Plame scandal and the Iraq war, Salon's Mark Follman reports on the CIA's revolt against the White House.

* "AWOL Bush" is a hot topic again. This story is actually old news. The issue of gaps in Dubya's National Guard service record from 1972-1973 was first raised in 2000 by Walter Robinson of the Boston Globe, with many of the details clarified via subsequent research by Martin Heldt. Fast forwarding to today, Salon's Eric Boehlert provides a pretty succinct account of the scandal as it sits right now; Time Magazine tells us what we do -- and don't know; and CalPundit is doing a great job filling in the rest of the blanks. The White House is apoplectic about this and trying its hardest to make the story go away. Thus, new military records have been released to quell the firestorm, but they don't seem to answer any of the glaring questions.

* Earl Ofari Hutchinson and Reynard N. Blake, Jr. address why white males love Dubya.

* In an article excerpted from the Center for Public Integrity's new book, The Buying of the President 2004, Charles Lewis explores the Bush administration's preoccupation with secrecy.

* Concerning Dubya's recent appearance on Meet the Press, here are 8 questions David Corn wanted Russert to ask, along with 10 questions he didn't ask.

* Will Dubya dump Dick? Is Rudy the replacement-in-waiting?

* Dick Cheney and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia went duck hunting together "just three weeks after the court agreed to take up the vice president's appeal in lawsuits over his handling of the administration's energy task force," the LA Times reports. "While Scalia and Cheney are avid hunters and longtime friends, several experts in legal ethics questioned the timing of their trip and said it raised doubts about Scalia's ability to judge the case impartially."

* In a speech to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, Dick Cheney laid out a path of endless war. It looks like he's figured out that the "war on terror," conveniently, turns out to be a perfect substitute for the Cold War.

* Read critiques of Bush's State of the Union address from David Corn, Rahul Mahajan, Stephen Zunes, William Rivers Pitt, James Fallows, and George Lakoff.

* Bush has released his proposed budget for this fiscal year, which estimates a deficit of $521 billion. However, the administration promises, rather ambitiously, to cut this deficit in half by 2009 by whittling down domestic spending.

* In the budget estimate, defense spending rises by 7.1% to a total of just over $401 billion, including big increases for missile defense, but no money for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Still, Robert Higgs says the real DoD budget is even bigger than what's publicized: "If the additional elements of defense spending continue to maintain approximately the same ratio to the DoD amount -- and we have every reason to suppose that they will -- then in fiscal year 2004, through which we are passing currently, the grand total spent for defense will be approximately $695 billion."

* "Do you support our troops?" asks Kenneth Norris. After taking a look at the proposed budget allocations, Norris says that it appears "our commander in chief does not."

* The Bush administration is still ducking the 9/11 commission; this time it's over the continued requests for the President's Daily Briefs (PDBs). If the Bushies continue to stonewall, subpoenas may be issued.

* In related and somewhat surprising news, Bush has agreed to let the 9/11 Commission release its final report two months later than scheduled. It will now be published in late July of this year.

* "The hijackers of Sept. 11, 2001 blasted Mace or pepper spray at flight crew members and passengers to keep them away from the cockpits and wielded knives in their orchestrated takeovers of the aircraft, according to a report issued yesterday by the commission investigating the attacks," the Washington Post reports. It appears that only one flight was seized with the use of box cutters, the commonly offered explanation prior to these findings.

* Will the 2004 election be hacked?

* There have been a slew of e-voting developments, both at the state and national level. As always, mosey on over to Black Box Notes for the relevant details.

* The Nation has re-published an informative 2001 article by David Corn on John Kerry's political career. Also: Scott Ritter reminds us that Kerry is culpable for the Iraq mess, too, "and if he wants to be the next president of the United States, he must first convince the American people that his actions somehow differ from those of the man he seeks to replace."

* While he ignores Dennis Kucinich's stance on national security, which I consider to be quite different from the other remaining Democratic candidates, I still agree with much of what William Arkin says in this LA Times column: "From none of the [Democratic] candidates have we heard anything approaching a strikingly new vision of how the United States should think about national security in a post-Cold War era marked by terrorism. And that's not because no such vision is conceivable. Rather, it's because the major Democrats -- like a herd of dairy cows trundling across a pasture -- have unthinkingly fallen in behind the tinkling bell of establishment assumptions about the world and how the United States should deal with it."

* Salon's Eric Boehlert and the Black Commentator explain how the media screwed over Howard Dean. To corroborate these claims even further, a study by the Center for Media and Public Affairs has found that Dean received much harsher treatment than his Democratic rivals on network news coverage.

* Democracy Now!'s Jeremy Scahill has the cojones to ask Wesley Clark about his complicity in war crimes in Yugoslavia. 'Bout time someone did...

* Mark Hand of Press Action critiques the "anyone but Bush" movement.

* The Village Voice asks, why is Al Sharpton in bed with Roger Stone, an infamous GOP operative?

* The AP reports that "Pentagon auditors spent 1,139 hours altering their own files in order to pass an internal review, say investigators who found that the accounting sleuths engaged in just the kind of wasteful activity they are supposed to expose." Gosh, I wonder what they could be hiding.

* "Republican staff members of the US Senate Judiciary Commitee infiltrated opposition computer files for a year, monitoring secret strategy memos and periodically passing on copies to the media," the Boston Globe reports. Apparently, a staff member for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has resigned over this controversy.

* Richard W. Behan explains how the ideology of "free markets" destroyed the GOP -- and, maybe soon, the nation.

* As more states sign up for MATRIX -- the public-private initiative that will do much of what the Pentagon's TIA program was supposed to do -- critics are wary about the program's infringement on personal privacy. Moreover, at least one Utah resident claims that information gathered via one of the MATRIX databases has been released, illegally, to the private sector.

* There are five million potential terrorists or criminals worldwide on the US security watch list. The obvious question: Is creating a list this massive an effective way of addressing threats?

* Color coded terror threats are coming to airline travel. The new data collection project "will affect anyone flying to, from or within the United States and will tag passengers' computer profile with a 'threat' assessment," reports the Telegraph.

* Are you on Uncle Sam's no fly list?

* "In what may be the first subpoena of its kind in decades," the AP reports, "a federal judge has ordered a university to turn over records about a gathering of anti-war activists." See also: "Protester=Criminal?"

* Stan Karp explains why Bush's No Child Left Behind plan is a hoax.

* Any serious discussion of why the Bush administration is now promoting space exploration has to consider the military implications of the planned "reinvestment" in NASA. "Full Spectrum Dominance," anyone?

* A recent report from the National Academy of Sciences urges the US government to implement universal health insurance for all Americans by 2010.

* On the heels of MLK, Jr.'s birthday comes a new report from United for a Fair Economy indicating that, as Madeleine Baran of the NewStandard reports, "America has failed to make significant progress toward closing the economic gap between blacks and whites. In fact, in certain areas -- like infant mortality rates and unemployment -- the gap is increasing."

* Traci Hukill looks at what's behind Bush's $1.5 billion marriage initiative. She finds the appeal to be -- surprise! -- a politically driven bow to the GOP's religious base.

* From the MoveOn fiasco to "boobgate," the Super Bowl was a pretty absurd display of what's wrong with the media and certain aspects of American culture.

* Osama who? Perhaps that will change now that the US military has announced a new "spring offensive" against the Taliban which may see US troops entering Pakistan. Indeed, as Ivan Eland remarks, it is rather curious "that the administration is only now getting ambitious about rounding up terrorists, when it has seemed lukewarm to the idea ever since the September 11 attacks. During the war in Afghanistan, the United States concentrated less on neutralizing al Qaeda fighters than on removing the unfriendly Taliban regime from a country perceived to be strategic and installing a more compliant, hand-picked government." Maybe Madeleine Albright was on to something?

* The London-based Al-Hayat newspaper has published a report that Al Qaeda has had tactical nuclear weapons since 1998. The weapons were allegedly acquired in the Ukraine, but the newspaper cautions that Al Qaeda is not looking to use them unless it "is dealt a serious blow that won't leave it any room to maneuver." It seems, ironically, that Osama has his very own "Samson option."

* According to new documents obtained by the National Security Archive at GWU, "the U.S. government pressed the Taliban to expel Usama bin Laden over 30 times between 1996, when the Taliban took Kabul, and the summer of 2001, but the talks were always fruitless and only three of the approaches took place in the first year of the Bush administration."

* Bush's foreign policy is structured around the prospect of securing oil for the United States, says Michael Klare. Go figure.

* "OPEC is considering a move away from using the U.S. dollar -- and to the euro -- to set its price targets for crude oil," reports the Toronto Globe and Mail.

* In an article based on his recently-released book, Leve Kleveman examines the new Great Game in Central Asia.

* Alfred Cavallo writes that the world is running low on oil in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. In part, this is why the US was so intent on invading Iraq. "Ever-increasing supplies of low-cost petroleum are thought to be vital to the U.S. and world economies," he explains, "which is why the invasion of Iraq and the belief that controlling its 112-billion-barrel reserve would give the United States a limitless pipeline to cheap oil were so dangerous. The war in Iraq will definitely have an effect on the U.S. and world economies, but not a positive one. The invasion, occupation, and rebuilding of Iraq will cost the people of the United States both blood and treasure. But more to the point, Iraq could be a fatal distraction from many fundamental and extremely unpleasant facts that actually threaten the United States--one of which is the finite nature of petroleum resources."

* The NY Times reports that, according to a recently declassified British government document, the Nixon-led US government "seriously contemplated using military force to seize oil fields in the Middle East during the Arab oil embargo 30 years ago." Now, the US is trying to scratch that 30-year itch.

* The original blueprint for an increased American presence in the Middle East comes not from Paul Wolfowitz, Bill Kristol, or Dick Cheney, but from Princeton historian and famed Orientalist Bernard Lewis: "Call it the Lewis Doctrine," writes the WSJ's Peter Waldman. "Though never debated in Congress or sanctified by presidential decree, Mr. Lewis's diagnosis of the Muslim world's malaise, and his call for a U.S. military invasion to seed democracy in the Mideast, have helped define the boldest shift in U.S. foreign policy in 50 years. The occupation of Iraq is putting the doctrine to the test."

* While some see HR 3077 as an effort to marginalize the work of Edward Said in favor of Lewis' teachings, Zachary Lockman roots the initiative to regulate Middle East studies in the work of Martin Kramer.

* The outrageous profiteering from war and weapons proliferation needs to be put in check, writes William Hartung in The Nation. "Getting rid of George W. Bush and his gang of neocon profiteers is an excellent place to start," he declares. "But it's only a start."

* Maher Arar, the 33 year-old computer engineer from Toronto who was sent off to be tortured in Syria by the US government, is initiating a suit against John Ashcroft's Justice Department. Remember, Arar's deportation was reportedly approved by a "senior Justice Department official."

* The World Social Forum was held from January 16 - 21 in Mumbai, India. Check out the short or long version of Arundhati Roy's opening remarks to the gathering of activists from around the globe. Michael Albert and Tom Hayden weigh in with their own impressions on what transpired in India.

* On the other side of Eurasia, the World Economic Forum took place in snowy Davos, Switzerland. Jay Rosen and Simon Zadek report from the ground there.

* The Jerusalem Post reports that "US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is considering provoking a military confrontation with Syria by attacking Hizbullah bases near the Syrian border in Lebanon, according to the authoritative London-based Jane's Intelligence Digest." This is "no idle threat," reiterates Alex Standish, the editor of Jane's.

* The spate of recent assassination attempts against Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf have been linked to Al Qaeda, reports Juliette Terzieff of the SF Chronicle. Perhaps more significantly, there is intelligence suggesting that the assassins received helped from within Pakistan's intelligence services, which has historically close links with the Taliban and, it has also been reported, Al Qaeda.

* If Jim Baker can get the Iraqi debt cancelled, why can't the same be done for African nations?

* The NY Times reports that Margaret Tutwiler, the new head honcho at the US State Department for public diplomacy, recently "acknowledged that America's standing abroad had deteriorated to such an extent that 'it will take us many years of hard, focused work' to restore it" in testimony before the House Appropriations subcommittee.

* Susan Taylor Martin, a columnist for the St. Petersburg Times, breaks down the State Department's report, "Changing Minds, Winning Peace," which tries to outline a way for the United States to regain support in the rest of the world, especially in regions with large Muslim populations.

* "When does the banishment of an entire people become morally justified?" asks Ali Abunimah. "That such a question can even be posed in today's Israel is dismal testament to the transformation of Zionism into what it claims to abhor. In two recent, extraordinary documents -- a commentary in London's The Guardian and an interview with Ha'aretz -- Israeli historian Benny Morris prepared the ground for Israel to justify any atrocity, no matter how much it transgresses human rights, law and decency." Read more criticism of Morris from Ghada Karmi and Gabriel Ash.

* While there is widespread concern about the "new Anti-Semitism," Jonathan Cook writes that the Palestinian plight continues to be ignored, especially in Europe.

* Seumas Milne addresses whether the two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict is dead for the Guardian: part I and part II. If the two-state solution is indeed not viable anymore, then it's time to get working on the one-state solution, as Tony Judt urged a few months ago.

* Some of the leading scientists who investigate workplace safety are accusing the government of distorting their research to support the interests of big business. In a related story, the US government is also working hard to reconfigure the peer-review process for scientific research with implications for federal regulatory statutes.

* In a well couched New Yorker piece that reviews a good portion of the recent literature on "American Empire," Josh Marshall concludes that a heavy-handed foreign policy a la the Bush administration actually weakens the United States' dominant position in the world.

* Have we witnessed the end of the American Dream? That's what the research of Elizabeth Warren, author of The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle Class Mothers And Fathers Are Going Broke, implies.

* The most globalized institution on the planet? Not the IMF or McDonald's. Try soccer.

* Liza Featherstone, Doug Henwood, and Christian Parenti opine about the rise of "Activismists" on the political left, proponents of a "new ideology [which] combines the political illiteracy of hyper-mediated American culture with all the moral zeal of a nineteenth century temperance crusade."

* Say goodbye to PoMo? The CS Monitor provides a eulogy of sorts, while Kevin Moore contributes some additional thoughts on the subject.