To the Frontline and Back

"Traveling across the mainstream American corporate-state television broadcast spectrum with an eye for the sickening truth of United States policy is like watching the stars for certain astronomical occurrences," Paul Street writes in a searing essay on the recent Frontline documentary, "The Invasion of Iraq."

"Most of your time is spent peering into the vapid abyss of nothingness," he continues. "When you do get a glimmer, you'd better look closely, you'd better look fast, and you need the right equipment to identify, record, and interpret what you're seeing. It's over before you know it, the meaning often unclear, as the corporate-state communications universe returns to its normal state of dull, monotonic, power- and privilege-friendly thought-control."

Osama on the brain

Rumors and media reports have been swirling over the the past month or so that Osama Bin Laden is either on the brink of being captured or already is in the custody of US/Pakistan forces. All of this news has emerged in such a quick, linear, succesional manner that it seems -- dare I say -- scripted.

Here are some of the more significant developments since late January:

Jan. 29 - A "spring offensive" to mop up Taliban and Al Qaeda remnants in Afghanistan is announced by the United States, to be conducted with the aid of Pakistan.

Jan. 29 - A US military spokesman, Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, says he is "sure" OBL will be captured this year.

Feb. 6 - Donald Rumsfeld clarifies Hilferty's statement to mean that the US will capture Bin Laden "one day."

Feb. 20 - The White House issues a denial of reports out of Pakistan suggesting Bin Laden has been captured.

Feb. 21 - A London tabloid reports that Bin Laden is "cornered" in Pakistan, but Pakistani sources deny the story.

Feb. 23 - The Bush administration signs new directives to step up military activities by Task Force 121 in the search for Bin Laden along the Afghan-Pak border, according to the Washington Times.

Feb. 25 - The US military invokes the tired phrase that "time is running out" for Osama.

Feb. 28 - Iranian radio reports that OBL is in custody, which the Pentagon denies.

Feb. 29 - In an article striking for its optimism, the NY Times confirms that Task Force 121 has been dispatched to the mountainous regions between Afghanistan and Pakistan in an "intensified effort" to ferret out Bin Laden.

This flurry of news could belie a psy-ops campaign being conducted to prepare the public for a capture, something to show that the Bush administration is hard at work hunting down "evil-doers," or the confluence of events and a renewed momentum in the media for stories of this ilk.

Caution and prudence suggest the latter is most likely, although I would definitely not rule out the former two explanations.

Desensitization

"Rarely a day passes without American forces being killed in Iraq," writes Ibrahim Kazerooni in the Denver Post. "Yet, as the steady stream of tragic news seeps out of that country, we appear to be growing less concerned - not more - in the face of a rising death toll for Americans, Iraqis and others."

Little time for questions

Reuters reports that President Bush has pledged only one hour for his testimony before the 9/11 commission about the "day that changed America, forever."

With so many unanswered questions, don't you think he could offer up a bit more of his time?

Cheering on the coup

Not surprisingly, the Bush administration seems all too willing to see Aristide overthrown in Haiti. It takes a lot of chutzpah to tout the virtues of democratic systems ad nauseum, while urging thugs, criminals, and warlords to overrun a democratically elected leader.

To make things worse, the media has been paralyzed with the question of whether the US should "get involved more."

As the Black Commentator notes, "The bloody answer screams back from the Haitian mountains and cities: Washington has already intervened militarily in Haiti, through its surrogates’ armed invasion from the Dominican Republic."

Right wing celebrities

Meet Bill O'Reilly, populist multimillionaire, and Lou Dobbs, budding socialist.

Hastert tried to block extension of 9/11 investigation

When I first read this headline, I thought that it was going to refer to the proposed extension of the 9/11 commission's deadline to January 2005, something the 9/11 families desire. After all, the Bush administration allegedly pledged its support to extend the investigation another two months, so I thought that was more or less a done deal. How wrong I was:

In a blow to the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives has told the White House and fellow Republicans that he will not bring up legislation to extend its May 27 deadline, officials said on Wednesday.

President Bush's chief of staff, Andrew Card, personally had appealed to Speaker Dennis Hastert to reconsider, and the Illinois Republican met on Wednesday with Bush at the White House.

But the speaker's spokesman, John Feehery, said Hastert told the White House and members of the House Republican conference that "it's a bad idea to extend the commission and ... that we're not going to bring any legislation up."

The commission wants a 60-day extension through July 26 to complete its final report on the attacks. Despite initial objections, Bush backed the extension and the Senate is moving forward with legislation.

But Hastert cast serious doubt on its prospects for passage in the Republican-controlled House. "He thinks the (commission's) report is overdue and we need to get the recommendations as soon as possible. He is also concerned it will become a political football if this thing is extended and it is released in the middle of the presidential campaign," Feehery said.

While Hastert has relented and agreed not to block the extension, it's highly unlikely that the Bush administration didn't have some input on his earlier declaration.

Tax cuts or social security, you decide

Commenting on the fallout from Alan Greenspan's announcement of the need for cutbacks in Social Security in order to stem a future fiscal crisis in the United States, Patrick Martin of the WSWS writes,

The discussion of the US fiscal crisis, as it is framed by the media and political establishment, is based on distortions of a fundamental kind. The alleged bankruptcy of Social Security and Medicare is not the inevitable result of impersonal demographic forces. It is the product of policy decisions that favor one class of Americans—the top one or two percent who control the bulk of the wealth—at the expense of everyone else.

As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal study group, pointed out nearly a year ago, any deficit in Social Security as a result of increasing life expectancy is dwarfed by the long-term cost of the Bush tax cuts, which essentially phase out all taxation on the wealthy. Simply repealing the Bush tax cuts—in other words, taxing the rich by no more than they were taxed in 2001—would generate three times as much revenue over a 75-year period as the projected Social Security shortfall. It would generate enough revenue to cover the combined deficits of Social Security and Medicare, with several trillion dollars to spare.

Always nice seeing socialists approvingly citing liberal think tanks...

Neocons not the problem

The notion that the United States has been "hijacked by a neo-conservative cabal," avers Stephen Gowans, is "a pleasing fiction moderate Republicans, and equally Democrats and progressives, use to insulate themselves from reality, for it says the invasion of Iraq was an aberration, not a manifestation of a deep-seated tendency in US foreign policy that spans liberal Democrat to neo-conservative Republican administrations."

Spying at the UN

Two stories have broken recently regarding the spy scandal at the UN:

1. The criminal charges against Katharine Gun, the UK intelligence worker who blew the whistle on the operation, have been dropped.

2. Clare Short, the former International Development Secretary under Tony Blair, is charging that the spy operation was not only directed at rival delegates, but also against UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

This is all being reported in the British press, of course. But, as Norman Solomn says, the US media has pretty much ignored and marginalized this story in the 11 months since the Observer broke it.

Ralph

The furor created over the announcement that Ralph Nader has decided to enter the Presidential fray has been pretty pathetic to witness, from my vantage point. This man has every right to run, and those who denounce him with the fervor of rabid dogs should be ashamed of themselves.

That being said, Nader has yet to adequately address many questions, including what he will do if it looks like his candidacy will increase the possibility of a Bush victory come next November and what his campaign is supposed to accomplish, since he is not running under the Green Party banner.

Even more relevant, however, is whether Nader's entry can bring issues to the fore that would be downplayed, if not outright ignored, by the Republican-Democratic "duopoly" that exists in the United States.

More to the point: it's quite clear that Nader is willing to raise issues in a tenor that Democrats, like Kerry and Edwards, will not and, well, cannot. The sort of faux-populism exhibited by both of these upper-class Democrats has become fashionable in the last 5 months, but I am hardly struck by their ability to speak the obvious about "free trade," the burdens of empire and go-it-alone wars, and other vagaries of class war from above.

While no radical, Nader at least has the background and pedigree to substantially challenge the "agreeable center" on issues like corporate malfeasance, media consolidation, environmental degradation, and out-of-control militarism.

In short, give him a chance. He's open for criticism, like everyone else, but those concerned with the trajectory of American politics should be wary of denigrating Ralph to the extent that the issues he raises are implicitly marginalized.

Oh, and lastly: hey, Ralph, have you heard about this fellow named "Kucinich"?

Al-Sistani warns of intifada

This is potentially a major story, but it hasn't been getting much press:

Iraqi Shiite Leader Seyyid Ali Al-Sistani yesterday warned that he would call for an intifada (uprising) if American soldiers stayed in Iraq after the handover of power on June 30, 2004.

From what I can gather, this threat was issued in an interview Al-Sistani conducted with the German magazine Der Spiegel.

Update: According to the NY Times, Al-Sistani is now urging that "nationwide elections be held by the end of the year," backing away from his earlier demands that full sovereignty be transferred to Iraqis by June 30. This seems to preempt any discussion of an intifada, but we'll have to see what happens when the Summer comes.

Bankrupting the Gov't

Anyone shocked by Alan Greenspan's comments that Social Security should be cut back should read this column by Paul Krugman. It's from last May and, well, it "states the obvious."

The CAP has more on Greenspan, "The Class Warrior."

Sexual assaults in the military

Expanding on a series of articles from the Denver Post, the NY Times reports that over the past 18 months there have been 112 reports of sexual misconduct, including rape, from US servicewomen in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kuwait (Central Command).

Haiti Q&As

For anyone confused about just what's going on in Haiti, the human rights group MADRE and the Resource Center of the Americas provide succinct backgrounders on the crisis there.

War kick started in Feb. 02

February 16, 2002. This is the day Bush decided to go to war in Iraq, according to a new book, Rumsfeld's War, by Rowan Scarborough of the Washington Times.

Of course, this is more than one year before the invasion started. "No decision yet"? Please.

Surrounded?

Is Osama bin Laden surrounded? Tom Regan takes a closer look.

DoD budget, times two

Pointing to Robert Higgs' research, David R. Francis of the CSM reports that, "To measure actual spending by the United States on defense, take the federal budget number for the Pentagon and double it."

Afghan attacks on increase

"Attacks by a resurgent Taliban and fighters loyal to one of Afghanistan's most powerful warlords have reached 'their highest levels since the collapse of the Taliban government,'" Cam Simpson of Knight-Ridder reports.

A Legacy of Lies

In a Mother Jones article that revisits the tale of Hussein Kamel, along with a host of other details, Seth Ackerman roots the war in Iraq to the Clintonite policies of the 1990s.

"Faced with the need to justify an economically devastating and internationally unpopular embargo of Iraq, the Clinton administration engaged in a pattern of stretching and distorting weapons data to bolster their claim that Saddam Hussein was still hiding an illicit arsenal," Ackerman explains. "The Clinton White House never used that 'intelligence' to push for an invasion of Iraq, as Bush so effectively did. But in its desperate quest to salvage a crumbling Iraq policy, the Clinton White House laid the groundwork for the deceptions of their successors."

Slash & burn politics

In a post summarizing the machinations behind Bush's decision to back a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, Josh Marshall observes that the political dynamics behind this move seem to resonate with past history.

"The White House has decided that the long-predicted rising economy won't float them through this election," Marshall conjectures. "The situation in Iraq looks wobbly and likely to get worse before it gets better. So deprived of the ability to run on his record he's decided to save his political hide by trying to tear the country apart over a charged and divisive social issue which is being hashed out through the political process in the states.

"It's his dad and the flag burning amendment all over again. Is there really anything that tells you more about a man's character than this?"

Misreading or misleading on the economy?

Putting it as diplomatically as possible, the Washington Post's Dana Milbank reports that the White House's economic predictions tend to "miss the mark."

"Over three years," Milbank writes, stating the obvious, "the administration has repeatedly and significantly overstated the government's fiscal health and the number of jobs the economy would create."

Why is this so?

There are three possible explanations. One is that, gosh darn it, mistakes have been made and it's tricky to forecast economics anyway. The second is that "structural changes" in the American economy, like the outsourcing of service sector jobs, have changed the dynamics of tax revenue and economic growth to the extent that historical patterns regarding recessional rebounds aren't bankable anymore. The third reason, of course, is that the administration has been cavalier with facts, hoping to tout any improvement in the economy, no matter how fleeting or inconsequential, as a result of its tax cuts.

Saudi oil fields 'tired'

Courtesy of the NY Times, here's more fodder for those who think recent foreign policy overtures in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Central Asia have been driven by energy concerns:

[Saudi Arabia's] oil fields now are in decline, prompting industry and government officials to raise serious questions about whether the kingdom will be able to satisfy the world's thirst for oil in coming years.

Energy forecasts call for Saudi Arabia to almost double its output in the next decade and after. Oil executives and government officials in the United States and Saudi Arabia, however, say capacity will probably stall near current levels, potentially creating a significant gap in the global energy supply.

Outsiders have not had access to detailed production data from Saudi Aramco, the state-owned oil company, for more than 20 years. But interviews in recent months with experts on Saudi oil fields provided a rare look inside the business and suggested looming problems.

An internal Saudi Aramco plan, the experts said, estimates total production capacity in 2011 at 10.15 million barrels a day, about the current capacity. But to meet expected world demand, the United States Department of Energy's research arm says Saudi Arabia will need to produce 13.6 million barrels a day by 2010 and 19.5 million barrels a day by 2020.

"In the past, the world has counted on Saudi Arabia," one senior Saudi oil executive said. "Now I don't see how long it can be maintained."

Saudi Arabia, the leading exporter for three decades, is not running out of oil. Industry officials are finding, however, that it is becoming more difficult or expensive to extract it. Today, the country produces about eight million barrels a day, roughly one-tenth of the world's needs. It is the top foreign supplier to the United States, the world's leading energy consumer.

Fears of a future energy gap could, of course, turn out to be unfounded. Predictions of oil market behavior have often proved wrong.

But if Saudi production falls short, industry experts say the consequences could be significant. Other large producers, like Russia and Iraq, do not have Saudi Aramco's huge reserves or excess oil capacity to export, and promising new fields elsewhere are not expected to deliver enough oil to make up the difference.

This strikes a chord with what Jeffrey Sachs wrote in the Financial Times last year, that we need to understand that the target of the "war on terror" has been Saudi Arabia all along.

Investigate the suicides

Wayne Smith, a Vietnam vet and former post traumatic stress disorder counselor, urges reporters to probe deeper into the story about soldier suicides in Iraq and expose "what may be the Pentagon's internal mantra on an issue so explosive it could seriously downgrade the American public's support for this war."

What the press sees now, Smith contends, are likely "tip-of-the-iceberg indicators that portend a post-Iraq psychiatric disaster for some returning soldiers, one that the country is ill-prepared to deal with and one that the Pentagon appears to be spinning like a top."

Clear Dubya's name and win $10k!

Part of Bush AIDS initiative announced

The Washington Post reports that the Bush administration is starting to put some money where its mouth is on its AIDS initiative by announcing details, albeit vague ones, of a five-year plan to combat the disease, including the approval of $350 million in grants to religious groups and humanitarian organizations.

While this plan is the "largest commitment undertaken by a nation on a health issue," according to Post reporter Robin Wright, AIDS groups are criticizing it because, while focusing on Southern Africa and a few nations in the Caribbean, no money is allocated towards China and Russia, two nations where the number of AIDS cases promises to rise dramatically in coming years.

Yet, the issue that seems most controversial is that the US is trying to funnel money directly to programs that encourage "abstinence, fidelity and condom use," thus bypassing the Global AIDS Fund. Says the Post:

[A]IDS advocacy groups criticized the Bush administration for cutting back the U.S. contribution to the Global AIDS Fund by about 64 percent in the new budget, despite its pledge to collaborate with the international community on a joint strategy. Congress allocated $547 million for the fund in 2004; the administration's 2005 budget calls for $200 million.

"The big issue in this report is the ideological battle underway: Whether the United States should program money through a go-it-alone approach or work through the Global AIDS Fund," said Paul Zeitz, executive director of the Global AIDS Alliance. "While recognizing the problem in 14 countries, they're actually making the problem worse by setting up a parallel program rather than working through existing partnerships that are already up and running."

So with one hand the administration is promising $350 million of new funding; with the other, it has cut $347 million from arguably the most effective AIDS program in existence. The reality of the situation is that hardly any new money is being allocated.

The reasons for this are clear. Rather than addressing the AIDS catastrophe via the existing channels, the Bush administration seems to be letting its ideology, which emphasizes conservative sexual mores and faith-based services, color how it's going about this fight against AIDS.

I can only say that, with so much at stake over the coming decades, this is hardly an issue to be playing political games with.

Land grab

Noam Chomsky and Neve Gordon have both written great, illustrative pieces on the case being brought before the International Court of Justice in The Hague over the "separation barrier" Israel has been constructing through the West Bank.

In a rare op-ed for the NY Times, Chomsky asserts that the barrier is not being built for protection, but rather for annexation.

"What this wall is really doing is taking Palestinian lands," he writes. "It is also — as the Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling has described Israel's war of 'politicide' against the Palestinians — helping turn Palestinian communities into dungeons, next to which the bantustans of South Africa look like symbols of freedom, sovereignty and self-determination."

Furthermore, if Israel wants to build a wall to protect its citizens, it has every right to; except, it should be built within its recognized borders, inside the Green Line.

Neve Gordon hits a similar note in his piece for the Counterpunch website. Starting off with a telling analogy, Gordon also rebuffs the claim that the wall is built for security purposes.

"The major reason the Israeli government is failing to protect its citizenry is not because it isn't building the wall fast enough," he declares. "The major reason Israeli citizens are not safe is because the government has decided to continue the 37 year-old occupation and oppression of another people. The only way Israelis and Palestinians will ever be safe is if Israel ends the very occupation that this separation wall intends to perpetuate by confiscating more and more land."

DU study suppressed

The Sunday Herald reports that a WHO report on the effects of depleted uranium in Iraq before last year's war was suppressed. Had it been published, it might have had an effect on the way Washington handled the invasion of last March:

The study by three leading radiation scientists cautioned that children and adults could contract cancer after breathing in dust containing DU, which is radioactive and chemically toxic. But it was blocked from publication by the World Health Organisation (WHO), which employed the main author, Dr Keith Baverstock, as a senior radiation advisor. He alleges that it was deliberately suppressed, though this is denied by WHO.

Baverstock also believes that if the study had been published when it was completed in 2001, there would have been more pressure on the US and UK to limit their use of DU weapons in last year’s war, and to clean up afterwards.

Hundreds of thousands of DU shells were fired by coalition tanks and planes during the conflict, and there has been no comprehensive decontamination. Experts from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) have so far not been allowed into Iraq to assess the pollution.

“Our study suggests that the widespread use of depleted uranium weapons in Iraq could pose a unique health hazard to the civilian population,” Baverstock told the Sunday Herald.

Yeah, DU just might have adverse effects on the Iraqi people. After all, the CSM's Scott Petersen found radioactivity levels nearly 1,000 times higher than normal when he visited Iraq just after the last war, in May 2003.

The Hunt for OBL

Steve Coll, the managing editor of the Washington Post, is coming out with a new book called Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001.

The Post has published two articles (one; two) adapted from his tome that broadly sketch how the hunt for Bin Laden evolved since 1993. Neither article goes into the sordid history of what happened in the 1980s, although I assume that will be covered in other parts of the book.

Blame Israel?

Jane's Intelligence Digest is reporting that Israel's Knesset is setting up its own internal investigation on whether that country's intelligence services "deliberately overstated Saddam Hussein's military capabilities."

Although many of those calling for an investigation are doing so to identify weak points in Israel's typically strong intelligence apparatus, there are some critics who are interested in just what type of relationship Israel had with the Feith-led Office of Special Plans.

As I've mentioned previously, two prominent Israelis -- Yossi Sarid, a member of the Israeli Foreign Affairs and defense Committee, and Brig. Gen. Shlomo Brom, a former Israeli intelligence officer -- have already raised troubling questions about how Israeli intelligence funneled hawks in the Bush administration the information needed to scare the American people into signing off on the attack.

Update: Ed Blanche, writing in the Daily Star of Beirut, talks about the implications of this investigation into Israeli intelligence.

Looking for answers on soldiers' mental health

As UPI reports that mental problems account for a whopping 10% of the US military personnel evacuated out of Iraq, Newsweek asks a related question: "Where is the Army’s so-called suicide report?"

TIA lives, in other forms

TIA's not dead, apparently.

According to the AP, a variety of the information-gathering programs thought up by the Poindexter-led DARPA team have been outsourced to different agencies in the government:

Disturbed by the privacy implications, Congress last fall closed Poindexter's office, part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and barred the agency from continuing most of his research. Poindexter quit the government and complained that his work had been misunderstood.

The work, however, did not die.

In killing Poindexter's office, Congress quietly agreed to continue paying to develop highly specialized software to gather foreign intelligence on terrorists.

In a classified section summarized publicly, Congress added money for this software research to the "National Foreign Intelligence Program," without identifying openly which intelligence agency would do the work.

It said, for the time being, products of this research could only be used overseas or against non-U.S. citizens in this country, not against Americans on U.S. soil.

Congressional officials would not say which Poindexter programs were killed and which were transferred. People with direct knowledge of the contracts told the AP that the surviving programs included some of 18 data-mining projects known in Poindexter's research as Evidence Extraction and Link Discovery.

Let's not forget about MATRIX, either. That's a classic case of how the government can outsource dirty work to the private sector.

There, much of this data mining can be accomplished with minimal amounts of oversight, since a lot of the technology can be lumped under harmless consumer research and initiatives that serve to facilitate information sharing between state and local law enforcement agencies.

Pentagon warns of climate change, part deux

The Observer has picked up on the climate change report from the Pentagon I mentioned earlier in the week.

Here's its take:

A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.

The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.

'Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,' concludes the Pentagon analysis. 'Once again, warfare would define human life.'

The findings will prove humiliating to the Bush administration, which has repeatedly denied that climate change even exists. Experts said that they will also make unsettling reading for a President who has insisted national defence is a priority.

Bush doesn't even read newspapers, so I doubt he'll be perusing a Pentagon study in the near future.

This report, should it become an issue in the mainstream US press, will be spun by Rove and Cheney. In other words, the political and petroleum wings of the executive branch.

Pentagon gears up for war in space

"For years," Noah Shachtman reports for Wired News, "the American military has spoken in hints and whispers, if at all, about its plans to develop weapons in space. But the U.S. Air Force Transformation Flight Plan (PDF) changes all that. Released in November, the report makes U.S. dominance of the heavens a top Pentagon priority in the new century. And it runs through dozens of research programs designed to ensure that America can never be challenged in orbit -- from anti-satellite lasers to weapons that 'would provide the capability to strike ground targets anywhere in the world from space.'"

Of bases and coaling stations

As Kurt Nimmo says, this article by Jim Lobe should be on the front page of the NY Times today. But of course it isn't.

Lobe writes,

For those still puzzling over the whys and wherefores of Washington's invasion of Iraq 11 months ago, major new, but curiously unnoticed, clues were offered this week by two central players in the events leading up to the war.

Both clues tend to confirm growing suspicions that the Bush administration's drive to war in Iraq had very little, if anything, to do with the dangers posed by Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or his alleged ties to terrorist groups like al-Qaeda – the two main reasons the U.S. Congress and public were given for the invasion.

Separate statements by Ahmed Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), and US retired Gen. Jay Garner, who was in charge of planning and administering postwar reconstruction from January through May 2002, suggest that other, less public motives were behind the war, none of which concerned self-defense, preemptive or otherwise.

Go ahead, read the whole thing.

Big & Bad

Malcolm Gladwell's essay from last month's New Yorker examined some of the troubling aspects of S.U.V. culture. It's worth a read.

Thinking about OBL

Looking to the future, Ahmed Bouzid urges Democrats to start thinking about the implications of the potential capture of Osama Bin Laden before the 2004 election.

"Democrats," Bouzid writes, "should start anticipating bin Laden's capture as if it were around the corner rather than lambaste and ridicule the President for his failure to capture the fugitive terrorist. By framing the bin Laden question in terms of 'why so long?' rather than 'why not?' and by constantly asking that question loudly and unapologetically, Democrats can not only blunt what could otherwise be a fatally sharp political sword, but will be able to control the parameters of the important debate about the future of U.S. foreign policy while at the same time highlighting the cynical and manipulative nature of the administration they are working so hard to dislodge."

Update: The Sunday Express, a British tabloid, is reporting that Bin Laden is "cornered" by the US military in the Pakistani region north of Quetta. Talk about a coincidence.

Misusing science

Keeping in line with previous reports, more than 60 infuential scientists affiliated with the Union of Concerned Scientists have issued a report charging the Bush administration with "systematically distorting" scientific research in order to further policy goals.

"Don't blame me"

Richard Perle says "heads should roll" over Iraq. Not his, of course.

Chutzpah, indeed.

What Bush's Guard File Reveals

David Corn delivers a "here's where we are now" synopsis of Bush's National Guard record.

Even after the flurry of media attention and the full release of the President's service record, Corn observes, "the story of Bush's missing year is unresolved. It may never be settled. Unless more records somehow materialize, or convincing witnesses come forward. And if the Bush White House has played this episode to a who-will-ever-know tie, perhaps that is, in the end, a win for the former Air National Guard first lieutenant with a file full of riddles."

Will the President fill in the blanks?

Newsweek reports that, due to the stonewalling of the Bush administration, the 9/11 commission has turned to notes taken by Bob Woodward for his book, Bush At War, which chronicled the administration in the period immediately after the attacks, in order to glean more information about what the administration knew surrounding that fateful day.

Meanwhile, Bush has promised to testify privately to the 9/11 commission, although family members of the 9/11 victims think he should do so publicly.

In advance of his appearance, David Corn offers a list of "questions that could cause Bush to squirm." The 9/11 Family Steering Committee has their own questions for Bush, too.

Katharine Gun case to be dropped

The case being brought against Katharine Gun, the British intelligence worker who started the brouhaha over the spy scandal at the UN last year, is going to be dropped, the Guardian reports.

The war against elites

Writing in Le Monde diplomatique, Tom Frank explores the "mystery of the United States," how right-wing populism has reshaped the political landscape to the extent that middle America won't bat an eye over George W. Bush's wealthy pedigree, yet consistently rail against the tyranny of liberals, be they in media, politics, or entertainment.

As Frank observes, "wealth is today concentrated in fewer hands than it has been since the 1920s; workers have less power over the conditions under which they toil than ever before in our lifetimes; and the corporation has become the most powerful actor in our world."

Yet many Americans embrace a worldview that pays little attention to these developments. With "backlash populism," animosity is directed not towards the centers of economic and political power, but is channeled into disagreements about taste and consumption.

Frank puts it this way:

Instead of rebuking the powerful directly, it vituperates against the snobbish and delicate things that the powerful are believed to enjoy: special kinds of coffee, high-end restaurants, Ivy League educations, vacations in Europe, and always, always, imported cars.

Against these maddeningly sissified tastes, backlash populism posits a true-blue heartland where real Americans eat red meat in big slabs, know all about farming, drink Budweiser, work hard with their hands and drive domestic cars. (In November 2000 the Democrats lost in the heartland but won in cosmopolitan California, New York and Massachusetts.) Why the focus on consumer goods? It switches the political polarity of class resentment: the items identified with the elite are also identified with people who have advanced degrees, a reliably liberal constituency. Liberals become the snobs, and Republicans become the plain people in their majestic millions. That rightwing oil millionaires in Houston or Wichita might also vacation in Europe, drink fancy coffee and drive Jaguars is simply not considered, as if contrary to nature.

This phenomenon explains, in part, why lower income and blue collar types can be supportive of political figures and policies that run contrary to their own interests. It is also a major reason why the American left has become so demoralized over the past 30 years.

War opposition as self-help

Even with all of the recent controversy, Naomi Klein contends in the Toronto Globe & Mail, the opponents of Bush's war, including the Democratic hopefuls, "continue to cast themselves as the primary victims" of the invasion, while the real victims, the Iraqis, "remain invisible."

As the 2004 election comes into better focus, Klein laments that the debate over the war is now centered on "uncovering Mr. Bush's lies, a process geared toward absolving those who believed them, not on compensating those who died because of them."

In other words, America needs to get over its preoccupation with the grievous harm done to its own society because of the Iraq fiasco. For justice to be served, the immense carnage created abroad needs to be recognized, not shuffled off to the side so that blame can be placed and domestic politics can return to normal.

"Casualty agnosticism"

Bryan Bender of the Boston Globe reports on a new study by the Project on Defense Alternatives (PDA), which argues that the Pentagon's obfuscation of civilian casualties inflicted by its military campaigns has damaged US credibility, made it more difficult to predict the outcome of armed conflicts, and distorted the ability of the American populace to make informed decisions about whether it is prudent to resort to force in the face of a true threat.

The Globe elaborates:

"Distortion of the civilian casualty issue can only serve to impede the sober assessment of US policy, policy options, and their consequences," states a draft copy of the report, provided to the Globe. "It is antithetical both to well-informed public debate and to sensible policy making."

Based on a review of thousands of news articles and other publicly available materials, the report estimates that 18,000 combatants and civilians were killed during the course of the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, about one-third -- 6,000 -- were civilians. A Pentagon official, who said he had not yet read the full report, maintained that the Pentagon is unable to tally civilian casualties and has no need to.

"Our efforts focus on defeating enemy forces, so we never target civilians and have no reason to count such unintended deaths," said the official, who asked not to be identified. "It is at best extremely difficult to estimate casualty figures, and we cannot say with any certainty how many civilians have been killed . . .

"Even one innocent death is a sad fact, and something we sincerely regret."

As for Iraq, he added, "The responsibility for every death in Iraq, be it soldier or civilian, Iraqi, American, British, or others, lies with Saddam Hussein, who chose war over complying with UN resolutions."

I find it almost cute that the Pentagoners still have the audacity to break out the "it's Saddam's fault" excuse after all these many months of lying about Iraq's capabilities. They must think the public is stupid or ignorant; perhaps, both.

Reframing

Those who support same-sex marriages, argues George Lakoff, "need to reclaim the moral high ground - of the grand American tradition of freedom, fairness, human dignity, and full equality under the law. If they are pragmatic liberals, they can talk this way about the civil unions and material benefits. If they are idealistic progressives, they can use the same language to talk about the social and cultural, as well as the material benefits of marriage. Either way, our job as ordinary citizens is to reframe the debate, in everything we say and write, in terms of our moral principles."

On cue, here's one way to reframe the debate. And another.

Unanswered

The Rittenhouse Review dusts off William Bunch's 20 questions about 9/11 from last year. Amazingly, none of them have been answered with any degree of seriousness as of yet.

Iraq hospitals in ruins

Have living conditions improved in Iraq since the overthrow of Hussein? The United States government no doubt says "yes," but this report from the NY Times suggests that the healthcare situation in major cities, like Baghdad, is even worse:

To be sure, Iraq's hospitals were in bleak shape before the American-led invasion last year. International isolation and the sanctions imposed after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 had already shattered a public health care system that was once the jewel of the Middle East. Crucial machines stopped working. Drugs were in short supply.

Conditions eased a bit once the United Nations oil-for-food program started in 1996, but the country still suffered, especially the children.

But Iraqi doctors say the war has pushed them closer to disaster. Fighting and sabotage have destroyed crucial infrastructure and the fall of Saddam Hussein precipitated a breakdown in social order.

"It's definitely worse now than before the war," said Eman Asim, the Ministry of Health official who oversees the country's 185 public hospitals. "Even at the height of sanctions, when things were miserable, it wasn't as bad as this. At least then someone was in control."

Of course, US authorities insist otherwise:

"I've been all around the country and we're better than prewar levels across the board," said Bob Goodwin, an American health adviser for the Coalition Provisional Authority who has been working with the Health Ministry since last summer.

But, he added, "there are so many problems, sometimes it is hard to stay on top of everything."

"When we took over in April, it was a total system collapse," he said. "The Health Ministry was literally on fire."

"The fire may be out," as the Times says, but things are definitely not looking too bright:

The violence on the streets has seeped into the wards, with attacks on staff members and feuds being finished in the corridors.

And the list goes on. While Health Ministry officials say no comprehensive health survey has been conducted since the war, several doctors here said that infant mortality is up. Of 48 babies recently brought to the neonatal clinic at Yarmuk Hospital, 19 died, said Tala al-Awqati, a pediatrician. "That is twice as many as last year," she said.

She also said that more women were choosing to give birth at home, increasing the chances of complications, because they were frightened of venturing into the streets to deliver at a hospital.

The Red Cross and the United Nations used to run health programs in Iraq. But after the headquarters of both organizations were bombed last year, foreign experts pulled out.

Doctors also said that the postwar sabotage of the country's primary pharmaceutical factory in Samarra and the looting of the central supply depot in Baghdad had depleted the country of needed supplies.

"Last week a man bled to death right in front of me because we didn't have any IV's," said Ali Qasim, an emergency room doctor at Baghdad Central Hospital.

Then there is the experiment with democracy. After Mr. Hussein's government fell, doctors decided to pick their own leaders. "They told us this is the democratic way," said Dr. Asim, the Health Ministry official. "Now we have dentists in charge of surgery centers."

Despite signs of a public health crisis, medical experts here say it is hard to get foreign donors to pay attention. "Bombs and elections -- that's all people on the outside seem interested in," said Khalil Sayyad, head of the Baghdad office of Medicos del Mundo, a Spanish organization working on health projects.

I hope I'm not the only one who finds it amazing (criminal, too) that this administration would go through on an invasion of a sovereign country without a plan on how to run it once the ruling power was displaced.

Because of the arrogance and ignorance of bureaucrats on the other side of the globe, Iraqis are left with stuff like this: a dilapidated health care system low on the list of priorities of the occupational authorities that periodically gets money thrown at it, without much care given as to how the fundamental problems on the ground might be best addressed.

Pentagon Forecasts Climate Wars

Stephen Leahy of IPS reports on the Pentagon's planning for the security challenges that might come with an abrubt change in the Earth's climate, which promises to wreak ecological and economic devastation in regions to the south of the United States.

The plan was drawn up by the Global Business Network, a California think tank, and first reported on by Fortune Magazine last month.

The article by Fortune ventures to say that the fallout from this report could radically alter the public debate over global warming, with the Pentagon potentially taking the lead.

Update: There's a follow-up to this story over at Benedict@Large.

Update II: The Pentagon study is now available, here.

Channeling INC Propaganda

"U.S. intelligence officials have concluded that almost all of the Iraqi defectors whose information helped make the Bush administration's case against Saddam Hussein exaggerated what they knew, fabricated tales or were 'coached' by others on what to say," report Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay of Knight-Ridder.

Of course, Wolfowitz and Cheney are likely to have been the ringleaders of the coaching initiative.

It's also worth pointing out that there was plenty of intelligence on Iraq, predominantly gathered by the CIA and not the Pentagon, that did not support the conclusion that Iraq was a substantial threat to the United States. This info, since it did not fit the script, was conveniently brushed to the side and scrubbed from prominent speeches by administration officials.

World Press Photo of the Year 2003

Costs of Empire

Echoing Chalmers Johnson's recent sentiments, David Isenberg tackles the costs of American empire in a two-part feature for the Asia Times (part I and part II).

"The process of creating and maintaining an empire, like making sausage or passing congressional legislation, is not a pretty process," he warns. "In fact, it is costly, very costly, in terms of lives, money and liberty. It requires a large military establishment, which can consume a substantial, if not disproportionate amount of the national treasury. And it requires stationing and deploying forces around the world."

National Guard questions still brewing

Steve Perry writes that the scandal over Bush's National Guard record is "hardly over, though Democrats would do well to turn the focus from the matter of Bush’s service--about which two-thirds of the public does not care, according to a Washington Post poll--to the abiding cover-up, which speaks volumes about the way the Bushmen do business."

Despite the release of Bush's entire record, which was a long time coming, the new documents don't resolve the gaps in Dubya's service record.

Furthermore, the administration may have opened up a Pandora's Box with their release. Journalists are now pressing Scott McClellan hard about whether Bush was performing community service during the time he was supposed to be serving in Alabama.

"Surrender, we have your wife"

Al Jazeera is reporting that the US is taking hostages in Iraq in an effort to encourage members of the resistance to give up.

Surely this is a piece of propaganda being parroted by an anti-American news source!

Too bad the same thing has been reported on two separate occasions by the Washington Post, in July and November of last year.

Preempting peace

The Observer continues its reporting on the US-led spy scandal at the UN last winter with two articles from yesterday's edition (here and here).

Not surprisingly, the paper concludes that the effort was intended to undermine any moves for peace with Iraq, and preempt any offers that might have headed off the invasion.

In a sane world, the woman who exposed this political scandal, Katharine Gun, would be a hero, not a villain at risk of being sent to jail.

Backing off on Afghan elections

Due to massive logistical problems, the US may have to back off on elections in Afghanistan for this coming summer, according to the NY Times.

This story fleshes out many of the details outlined by Ahmed Rashid in his essay from last week's NYRB.

Whitewash

Tony Karon and John Dean have both come to the appropriate conclusion about the Bush appointed commission to investigate the Iraq intel scandal: it's besides the point.

Karon charges that the decision to invade Iraq was made within the White House, not within the confines of Langley, so any investigation that focuses on the latter will be searching for red herrings. Likewise, Dean notes that the principal focus of any relevant investigation should be on the Office of Special Plans, and yet it is not within the sights of this commission.

Kerry rumor dead?

The accused mistress of John Kerry and her family have issued statements denying the Drudge rumor.

Me thinks it's no coincidence that this rumor popped up at an opportune time, to deflect attention away from the firestorm over the WMD issue and Bush's service record.

Whither the propaganda?

Following up on Michael Massing's piece in the NYRB, Jack Shafer revisits the Judith Miller fiasco on Slate.

Just as the Bush administration needs to be thoroughly vetted for its handling of the Iraq WMD evidence, Shafer contends, the Times has a duty to explain how its prime WMD reporter got things so very wrong, and why she funneled INC propaganda through the "newspaper of record."

Rockefeller wins out on OSP investigation

The Washington Post reports that the Senate Intelligence Committee that is investigating prewar intelligence on Iraq has decided to expand its scope.

The Office of Special Plans, amongst other Bushite intelligence ventures, will now be within the committee's purview.

Time to wake up

AWOL Bush? How about an AWOL media?

9/11 families are pissed

This is an interesting report from the Newark (NJ) Star-Ledger:

The head of the national 9/11 commission yesterday came under tough, often emotional questioning from families of the terror victims concerned the panel has too little time to finish its investigation and is prejudging its conclusions.

...Members of the Family Steering Committee monitoring the commission's work said they were upset that the panel did not get full access to important documents, and angry over a published comment by Kean that the White House intelligence material contained "no smoking guns."

Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, acknowledged his choice of words was inappropriate.

"'No smoking gun' -- that was a bad phrase," Kean said after the meeting at Drew University, where he is president. He said he "may have been misquoted" in a New York Times story saying he had found nothing in the White House documents to indicate that President Bush or top aides had forewarning of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"We did find lots of new information in the briefings, information that raises many new questions." said Kean.

"What I meant to say is that, given what we've seen and heard from other sources, there were no major surprises in the intelligence briefings," Kean said. "Nothing that would have made me stand back and say, 'Wow! I didn't know that.'"

Kean, however, said the documents will require the panel "to go back and talk again to witnesses we've already interviewed."

Emerging from their closed-door meeting with Kean, which was punctuated by shouts and table-pounding, family members expressed unhappiness that Kean appeared to have been pre-empting the investigation.

"I don't know how he can say that before more public hearings are held and top administration officials are questioned under oath," said Mindy Kleinberg of East Brunswick, a 9/11 widow. She called Kean's published remark "very offensive" and added he had "prejudged the work of the commission."

The story goes on to indicate that family members want the commission to be granted an extension until January 2005 to release its final report, so that more investigation can be done.

But, the Bush administration has already extended the commission's deadline by two months, from May to July of this year, and there is little Congressional support for a further delay.

Crushing dissent

Salon's Michelle Goldberg outlines how the war on terror has become a war on freedom in Bush's America.

"Cogs in a system"

Writing in Toronto's Globe & Mail, Paul Knox invites you to take a look at a recent Oxfam report.

Titled Trading Away Our Rights, it depicts the savagely competitive world of global manufacturing and food production, and traces its effect on workers and farmers. It shows that the blessings of unprecedented choice many Canadians currently enjoy in fresh produce and stylish fashions come at a price.

In China, Honduras, Bangladesh, Chile, Kenya, Cambodia or Colombia, the pattern is the same: long hours, pay below minimum wage, increased health risks, intimidation and harassment for the legions who produce these goods. Often they are migrant workers. Increasingly they are women. All of them -- not only workers, but plant owners and middlemen -- are cogs in a system that is largely beyond regulation or control.

Dominated by a few giants -- Wal-Mart is a name that comes up repeatedly -- the global manufacturing industry aims to turn on a dime to find the cheapest possible way of filling orders. Elementary rights such as the freedom to associate, reasonable hours and safe working conditions often go by the board. Even companies that have ethical production standards violate them, sometimes unwittingly, as suppliers cut under-the-table deals with subcontractors to lower costs or satisfy just-in-time demand.

Nothing extraordinary here. Just a par-for-the-course report on the logic of the neoliberal order.

The current orientation of global trade does a great job creating economies of scale; it just does a lousy job creating a just, liveable world for billions around the world.

Waxman calls for probe of "flights of the Bin Ladens"

A few eyes were raised when the NY Times reported that the White House approved the departure of Bin Laden family members from the US shortly after 9/11 on private jets.

Now, Congressman Henry Waxman is calling for this event to be examined more closely.

'Out of Gas'

In yet another book on the impending oil crisis facing the world, David Goldstein warns that "Civilization as we know it will come to an end sometime in this century unless we can find a way to live without fossil fuels."

Diversions

Keep your eye on the ball, implores Justin Raimondo.

All of the hoo-ha about Bush's military records and Kerry's alleged shenanigans is distracting from the important issues of the day: the Iraq war deceptions and the Plame scandal.

9/11 revelations

If you haven't already, check out Gail Sheehy's piece on what the 9/11 commission has so far unearthed in the NY Observer.

Beyond Baghdad

The CS Monitor previews an upcoming Frontline program, "Beyond Baghdad," which is scheduled to air on most PBS stations later on today (check local listings).

The same crew that produced the programs "Truth, War and Consequences" and "In Search of Al Qaeda" is behind this one, so it looks like it'll be worth the watch.

Bloodshed in Iraq

Iraq has been rocked by violence recently. Just within the past 24 hours, more than 100 civilians have been killed in two major bombings.

In response, Paul Woodward of the War in Context comments:

The much publicized terrorist "planning" document alleged to be authored by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian suspected of links to Al Qaeda, along with what are clearly attempts to sabotage the political process of Iraquification, are being portrayed by Donald Rumsfeld and other members of the Bush administration as evidence of desperation inside an enemy faced with an increasingly successful reconstruction process. These acts of violence are being treated as a form of fanatical Islamic nihilism. Though this might accurately describe the motives of the suicide bombers themselves, it's reasonable to assume that those planning the attacks have practical motives and expectations. The most predictable outcome of suicide attacks against Iraqis is not that they will foment a civil war, but that they will prolong the American occupation. The longer the occupation continues, the more despised America will be across the Middle East. The longer the Iraqi reconstruction process flounders, the more likely it becomes that this or a future president will conclude that it's time to cut and run. If that happens, there can be little doubt that a chant will rise up across the Islamic world that the infidels have been driven out. It's a prospect that America dreads, but as Rumsfeld acknowledges, the advantage is on the side of lone attackers. As he says, "it's impossible to defend in every location against every conceivable kind of attack at every time of the day or night. It is not possible."

Terrorist logic 101, it seems.

Update: Turns out the al-Zarqawi document cited above may not be genuine. Billmon has the goods on this.

The Guardian

Over the past 4+ years, the British Guardian has risen from relative obscurity to become one of the best online sources for news. In an interview with OJR, the paper's Editor in Chief, Emily Bell, talks about the reasons for the Guardian's success, as well as some of the challenges that lie ahead.

Tricky Dick

Jane Meyer investigates Dick Cheney's relationship with Halliburton in the New Yorker.

You didn't need that job anyway, did you?

The Bush administration has taken the formal stance that the outsourcing of US jobs will provide a long term benefit to the US economy.

The President's extraordinary weakness on the job front makes this a rather remarkable, and potentially costly, maneuver.

Feds pullback on Drake U subpoenas

Huge amounts of publicity forced federal authorities to withdraw subpoenas for four activists at Drake University in Iowa, reports the Des Moines Register.

Wars do cost $$$, ya know

The US military is set to run out of funds for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan by September unless President Bush asks Congress for more money. Furthermore, as Knight-Ridder's Drew Brown reports, "Because the Bush administration's $401.7 billion fiscal 2005 defense budget contains no money for Iraq and Afghanistan, the armed services will be forced to pay for operations in the two countries with money that's supposed to be used for modernization and other items."

Considering that the Pentagon is such a financial cess-pool, with funds sloshing around everywhere, it won't be too difficult to shift the money around. But this is only a short term solution; the administration is going to have to make another public appeal for funds sooner than later, which will not likely win Bush any political points with the American people. It'll be interesting to see if they can hold off on this until after the election, although that seems doubtful to me.

More obfuscation

The Bush administration is still tap dancing around Dubya's National Guard service record.

The records now available, including those recently released by the White House, "support conflicting accounts," David Corn writes. "Bush's unwillingness (or inability) to provide any specific recollections is certainly suspicious, as is his refusal to answer questions about his failure to take a flight physical. By releasing the pay sheet summaries and retirement records, Bush has not made good on his pledge to [Meet the Press's Tim] Russert. There likely are other records in his military files that could be of use in settling this dispute--medical records, perhaps. Are there disciplinary records? When Bob Fertik of Democrats.com filed a Freedom of Information Act request in 2000 requesting portions of Bush's military records, he asked for pay stubs. He was turned down by the military, which cited Bush's privacy rights. If Bush and McClellan really want to address this issue 'fully,' Bush should waive his privacy rights and release all the papers that remain. He did promise to disclose 'everything.'"

Update: Even since this post, a plethora of new details, reports, and allegations have emerged. The story is spinning quickly, as the Bush administration seems to be selectively throwing documents at the press, hoping to quench their blood thirst.

Keep up with the new reports via CalPundit and Josh Marshall. Also, here's a Google link for the latest developments.

Censure Bush

Afghan Mess

Ahmed Rashid, the esteemed journalist on Central Asia, addresses "The Mess in Afghanistan" in the NYRB. He surveys many recent documents that shed light on the situation in country there, including several reports by Human Rights Watch.

In a telling passage, he writes:

The US is now determined that elections go ahead by June, as stipulated in the Bonn agreement of December 2001. But almost all other key forces—the UN, most European and NATO countries, Western and Afghan NGOs, as well as many Afghans—have pleaded with the US to postpone them for at least a year. That much time is needed, they say, to increase security, build more infrastructure, strengthen the central government, and complete important building projects. However the final decision rests with Karzai. UN officials recently told me that too many parts of Afghanistan are still a war zone, and at least half of Karzai's cabinet would prefer to delay the elections. "The security situation has to improve and real reconstruction must start before elections can be held," Vice President Amin Arsala told me in December. Karzai himself acknowledges that the country has reached no more than "only 40 to 50 percent of the administrative ability that a government in a country like ours should have." Still, Karzai and some who are close to him strongly supported early elections, cooperating with the Americans in upholding the image they are trying to project of a stable, post-conflict state where free and fair elections can be held.

Is it fair to conclude that the elections-by-the-summer-no matter-what stance is in part driven by domestic political considerations in the US, so Bush has something positive to tout prior to the election? Probably.

Rashid's conclusion is part somber analysis, part clarion call:

That the Taliban are returning in force two years after their defeat is testimony enough that the West's support and strategy for rebuilding Afghanistan have so far been a failure. The war against terrorism is still to be won in the Afghan mountains and deserts and among the Afghan people as well. Their nation, the largest and most tragic victim of terrorism, is not being rebuilt. Until that happens there is little incentive for al-Qaeda or extremists elsewhere to lose heart.

The urgency of the Afghan situation was emphasized by Kofi Annan in a UN report issued on December 3. "Unchecked criminality, outbreaks of factional fighting and activities surrounding the illegal narcotics trade," he said, "have all had a negative impact." He warned that "the international community must decide whether to increase its level of involvement in Afghanistan or risk failure."

While lip service abounds about the West's "commitment" to reconstruction, little is being done to address the crippling problems that plague Karzai's regime. The US promises a stepped up military campaign for this coming spring, but whether that is the right prescription remains to be seen.

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.