Another round-up

Blogging will continue to be sporadic for the time being. What's below is a sort of summary of the past week.

* Welcome to Planet Reagan. The breadth and scope of the media coverage of Reagan's death has been simply amazing to witness. Obviously, I am not one of the people who fondly recalls the Gipper, but I don't deny those who do the ability to remember him in their own way. However, the American media has not enabled this proper memorialization, instead providing what Eric Boehlert describes as "Reagan porn," an extraordinarily generous review of the ex-President's legacy devoid of any meaningful context or critical discussion. Ironically, the very same tropes of reverence and deference Mark Hertsgaard unearthed in his important book on Reagan's relationship with the press, On Bended Knee, returned with a vengeance this past week.

* To counterbalance the overwhelming tone of the coverage, here are just some of the dissident opinions about Reagan's tenure and legacy to emerge in the past week: FAIR notes the disparities between Reagan's media myth and reality; Tim Wise probes Reagan's racial divide, while Derrick Z. Jackson brings up his shameful record on apartheid; James Galbraith and David E. Rosenbaum weigh in on Reagan's economic policy and fiscal legacy, respectively; Michael Bronski explains the truth about Reagan and AIDS; James Bovard exhumes the foreign policy debacles of the '80s, while other stories revisit the Reagan legacy in Afghanistan, East Timor, and Central America. Particularly relevant to today's political environment, of course, are the Reagan policies that planted the seeds of Al Qaeda, nurtured Bin Laden, and coddled Saddam. Additionally, World Press Review surveys press reaction around the world, Jonathan Steele provides the view from Iraq, David Corn dusts off a list of 66 unflattering truths, and Left End of the Dial provides even more alternative interpretations.

* Turning to the impact on current politics, the NY Times reports that the Gipper's legacy looms over the current presidential campaign and the Boston Globe notes that Kerry and Bush are seizing on it for their own purposes.

* Jim Lobe summarizes the major issues raised by the "torture memo" uncovered by the Wall St. Journal earlier in the week. Additionally, this development spotlights Bush's role in the torture scandal, to which he responds that his office has always urged underlings to stick to the law. A likely story.

* A new report from the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR) charges the Bush administration with committing up to ten categories of war crimes and rights violations as a matter of routine policy in Iraq. HRW has also issued a new report which argues that the abuse at Abu Ghraib was "the predictable result of the Bush administration's decision to circumvent international law."

* Donald Rumsfeld's office urged military intelligence to "take the gloves off" while handling John Walker Lindh, according to the LA Times, in an act that "foreshadowed the type of abuse documented in photographs of American soldiers tormenting Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib." As you'll recall, Dave Lindorff raised precisely this point last week.

* Truthout collates some of the other torture articles to appear recently.

* Robert Kuttner says it is now "unambiguously clear that the torture of prisoners in Afghanistan, at Guantanamo, and at Abu Ghraib was official policy" and it is an absolute travesty "that a few grunts are taking the fall," rather than the war criminals sitting in the White House and Pentagon.

* In response to some of the recent torture news, Paul Woodward of the War in Context comments, "Bush administration and Congress are embroiled in debate about interpretations of law. Senior officials, aware that a few months from now they may no longer be in office, are at pains to avoid placing themselves in legal jeopardy. What led to this situation was not the legal opinion of any particular lawyer, but a cultural climate in which not only the Bush administration, but also Congress and most of the citizenry participated in post-911 America. As America 'fought back,' the administration tapped into and fueled a visceral response to the attacks that was nothing more than an effort to violently assert America's global dominance. That effort was provided with a narrative -- a 'war on terror' -- and ascribed with moral imperatives, but the underlying force was a crude expression of power. 'For us or against us,' a contempt for international opinion and international bodies, steered by fierce national pride, led America down a path whose brutality would sooner or later become evident not only to the rest of the world but to America itself. The star culprits are now appearing, almost daily, before Congress, but the shock at each new revelation will really only be feigned if America as a whole does not claim its share of the responsibility."

* Let us also not forget a prime legitimizer of torture in post-9/11 America. No, not you, Mr. Alter, or any of the other "pro pain pundits." I'm talking about Alan Dershowitz, who, it seems, is at it again.

* The NY Times reports that the forced nudity of detainees in Iraq was part of a common, institutionalized pattern of treatment and Chris Shumway of The NewStandard reports that the torture of male prisoners is oversadowing the sexual abuse of female detainees in Iraq.

* Thankfully, the legal charges have been dropped against the Abu Ghraib protester at a military recruitment office in Boston.

* Howard LaFranchi of the CS Monitor explains some of the consequences of the recently passed UN Resolution on Iraq.

* "Links to the United States run deep among many in the interim Iraqi government," report Farah Stockman and Thanassis Cambanis of the Boston Globe. "Although about a third of the new government's leaders spent most of their lives under Saddam Hussein's regime, five of the six leading posts in the government are held by people who lived a significant part of their lives abroad, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. At least two Cabinet members are US citizens. In addition to Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, who was involved in a CIA-backed coup attempt against Hussein, at least seven others were members of exile groups funded by the United States." Not surprisingly, many Iraqis think the new government is made up of pawns.

* In a corresponding article, the NY Times reports that the CIA helped Allawi conduct terrorist attacks in Iraq during the early 1990s in a campaign that seems reminiscent of "Operation Mongoose."

* According to the BBC, Moqtada al-Sadr has expressed conditional support for the new interim government in Iraq.

* A LA Times poll has found that most US voters now think the Iraq war was not worth fighting.

* Separate reports from the Washington Post and the Independent depict widespread restentment towards the US presence in Baghdad.

* Joanne Landy outlines the case for an immediate withdrawal of US forces from Iraq.

* Bob Woodward says the media should have been more critical of Bush's case for the war in Iraq. Ah, more Monday morning quarterbacking from a media luminary. How quaint.

* The conquest of Iraq was expected to boost oil prospects and help lower the global price of oil. Of course, things haven't quite gone as hoped. Nonetheless, Jim Krane of the AP reports that while US gas prices have ballooned in recent months, "Iraqis pay only about 5 cents a gallon for gasoline -- a benefit of hundreds of millions of dollars [of] subsidies bankrolled by American taxpayers."

* The NY Times probes the paradox of a decline in oil production alongside a growth in reserves for many oil companies.

* Is the world's oil running out fast? The BBC's Adam Porter reports from the Association for the Study of Peak Oil conference in Berlin.

* The AP reports that a SIPRI study has found that global military spending reached $956 billion last year, topping off an astonishing 29% increase since 2001. Moreover, the United States accounts for nearly half of the global expenditures.

* "The State Department is scrambling to revise its annual report on global terrorism to acknowledge that it understated the number of deadly attacks in 2003, amid charges that the document is inaccurate and was politically manipulated by the Bush administration," according to the LA Times. The report, "Patterns of Global Terrorism," was released to much fanfare in late April and used to bolster claims that the Bush administration was winning the "war on terror." So much for that. The revised version will indicate that global terrorism has increased rather than declined.

* The St. Petersburg Times has found proof of the long denied flight of Saudis out of Tampa International Airport on September 13, 2001.

* A German television documentary has again raised the claim that the Taliban offered to turn Bin Laden over to the US one year before 9/11.

* In the New Yorker, Ian Buruma profiles one of the most influential players behind the "war on terror" -- Princeton historian Bernard Lewis.

* Tony Blair and the Labour Party got their asses kicked in local elections in Britain this past week, in large part due to backlash against the Iraq war.

* Hamid Karzai is making an appeal to several warlords across Afghanistan to help him with the forthcoming elections, according to the NY Times.

* The recall vote of Hugo Chavez is set for August 15, although his opponents are already raising concerns about the security of the ballots due to the recent implementation of touch-screen voting in Venezuela.

* Marc Lacey of the NY Times reports that the Bush administration is reconsidering its Sudan policy, hoping to take a more aggressive stance on the human rights violations there and avoid repeating the same "mistakes" the Clinton administration made on Rwanda. Still, this new found urgency over the conflict puzzles some Sudanese officials since the situation in Darfur is relatively calm now.

* Elaine Sciolino of the NY Times reports from France on the 60th anniversary of D-Day. Amidst the ceremonies, Mike Davis writes that it's important not to forget about the sacrifices of Soviet soldiers on the eastern front.

* Ha'aretz analyzes the revisions to the recently passed Gaza withdrawal plan and its ramifications for Israeli politics. Regardless, Uri Avnery says the plan is a sham, "a recipe for the continuation of the war in another form."

* Also in Ha'aretz, Danny Rubinstein reports on the changing emphasis Palestinians are placing on the historical events of 1967 and 1948 and Gideon Levy revisits Jenin two years after the IDF's Operation Desert Shield.

* In an article that focuses on the paucity of CNN's coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Electronic Intifada's Nigel Parry contends that "citizens of the US — the country that intervenes more than any other to perpetuate the status quo on the ground — are offered a grossly distorted account of events on the ground that gives them no real sense of the imbalance of power between the two sides in the conflict, no idea of the extent of the US role in the conflict, and little impetus to call for a more even-handed US foreign policy in the Middle East." As a consequence of this, Parry claims Americans are presented "the realities of an ethnic conflict in favour of the aggressor," which only serve to prolong the "ongoing genocide" within the West Bank and Gaza.

* Jonathan Weisman of the Washington Post reports that gains in the US economy don't seem to be helping Bush in the polls because they are being overshadowed by concerns about Iraq.

* The Guardian reports that a GAO investigation suggests that all of the "50,000 troops who served in the first Gulf war might have been exposed to low levels of chemical warfare agents during the fighting and its aftermath."

* Christopher Getzan of The NewStandard reports that the "Miami Model" of protest regulation was exported to the G8 meeting in Georgia last week and is likely to show up at future protests around the country, too. The Telegraph has more on what went on inside the walls of the summit.

* More Enron tapes showing a deliberate attempt to manufacture the energy crisis of 2000 in California have been uncovered by CBS News. In a related development, Jason Leopold reports on the release of additional documents on the scandal.

* ABC News reports that the Pentagon threw away about $100 million on unused airline tickets over the past few years. Add this waste to the already huge pile.

* Does the Bush administration lie? William M. Arkin says it's no mistake that it's sometimes hard to say.

* Chris Floyd weighs in on recent revelations about Henry Kissinger and the hagiography of Reagan in the Moscow Times.

* It's tough times for the neocons, says Paul Richter in the LA Times. Nevertheless, Stephen Hayes, the neocons' waterboy over at the Weekly Standard, is still hard at work pushing the Iraq-Al Qaeda link and the infamous Feith memo from last November.

* Karen Kwiatkowski critiques Thomas Barnett's much discussed theory about "The Pentagon's New Map."

* Here's the transcript to a recent speech by Noam Chomsky at Oxford University on the topic of Iraq and beyond.

* With Euro 2004 kicking off this weekend, Martin Jacques chronicles the increasing influence of globalization on European soccer in the Observer.