Two sides of the coin

GYWO 42

Thinking about Darfur

What should be done about the Darfur crisis? Mahmood Mamdani provides some wise counsel.

On Saddam's heels

Juan Cole ominously notes that if the Lancet survey of Iraq war fatalities is accurate, "the US has already killed a third as many Iraqi civilians in 18 months as Saddam killed in 24 years."

Uncle Sam Is Watching You

David Cole dusts off TIA, MATRIX, and other assorted data mining initiatives in a review for the NYRB.

The Road to Abu Ghraib

Echoing recent charges by Amnesty International, Phillip Carter argues in the Washington Monthly that the torture at Abu Ghraib was "a direct -- and predictable -- consequence of a policy, hatched at the highest levels of the [Bush] administration, by senior White House officials and lawyers, in the weeks and months after 9/11. Yet the administration has largely managed to escape responsibility for those decisions."

On the brink of the election, Carter observes, "almost no one in the press or the political class is talking about what is, without question, the worst scandal to emerge from President Bush's nearly four years in office."

November 2 and beyond

Anyone on the left thinking about voting for Ralph Nader should consider two possible outcomes, says Steve Shalom:

Four more years of Bush with Nader having gotten 1 percent of the vote or a Kerry presidency with Nader having gotten 0.5 percent of the vote. It's hard to see how the former would be better for anyone. For the Left, the former means having to operate in a far more repressive environment; having to organize against Bush policies that this time would have the endorsement of the U.S. population; having to fight to prevent the enactment of rightwing policies instead of working for progressive change. For African Americans, a Bush victory means continued assault on affirmative action. For women, it means reproductive rights will be in great peril. For workers, it means more attacks on unions, on the minimum wage, on overtime. For the elderly, it means privatizing social security. For gays and lesbians, it means the anti-same-sex marriage amendment. And for people around the world, it means fewer checks on U.S. military interventionism. These are some of the losses we would suffer were Bush to be re-elected; they might happen under Kerry too (who will, after all, probably have a Republican Congress), but it is less likely. Avoiding these setbacks does not come close to creating the world we want or need, but they are not nothing. And avoiding them will put us in a better position to fight for what we want and need after November 2.

The rest of Shalom's analysis is good, so read the whole thing.

I haven't weighed in on Ralph since this post from February. And, frankly, I don't have anything to really add to it.

I don't think there are compelling reasons for voting for Nader this time around, even though I am quite sympathetic to his political views. I do not consider myself an "Anyone But Bush" kinda guy, but realize that with the possible outcomes a week from now, a Nader vote is not going to bring about the best ones. Not even close.

I've pretty much resigned myself to voting for Kerry. That doesn't mean that I'm really happy with him, but rather that I think the war criminals currently filling the highest posts in Washington should be thrown to the curb as soon as possible.

Make no mistake, should Kerry win, there will be battles to be fought, not only against a vengeful right, but also against a good portion of those on the liberal left who will be more than willing to carry a Democratic president's water no matter the merits of his policy stances.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves, though. I'd much rather be fighting against Brookings policy wonks, DLCers, and humanitarian hawks than the current holders of power. In order to ensure that, Bush needs to be sent back to Crawford. We'll then go from there.

Study Finds 100,000 Excess Iraqi Deaths Since War

From Reuters:

Deaths of Iraqis have soared to 100,000 above normal since the Iraq war mainly due violence and many of the victims have been women and children, public health experts from the United States said Thursday.

"Making conservative assumptions, we think that about 100,000 excess deaths, or more have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq," researchers from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland said in a report published online by The Lancet medical journal.

"Violence accounted for most of the excess death and air strikes from (U.S.-led) coalition forces accounted for the most violent deaths," the report added.

The new figures, based on surveys done by the researchers in Iraq, are much higher than earlier estimates based on think tank and media sources which put the Iraqi civilian death toll at up to 16,053 and military fatalities as high as 6,370.

Update: The AP report on the Lancet survey does a better job providing context and background.

Of Arafat and withdrawal

The convergence of Yasser Arafat's tenuous health situation and the approval of the Gaza withdrawal plan means the political situation in Israel/Palestine is quite unstable now.

Aluf Benn provides some analysis of these two events in Ha'aretz.

The sleeping giant

John Pilger asks, "Will there be a war against the world after Nov. 2?"

Fallujah's toll

As the US military gears up for its (final?) assault on Fallujah, the Iraq Body Count project has published an exhaustive study of the casualties inflicted from the devastating military incursion there back in April.

The IBC's survey concludes "that betweeen 572 and 616 of the approximately 800 reported deaths were of civilians, with over 300 of these being women and children."

Evil empire

Kevin Drum: "You know, this is the kind of stuff we used to scare our kids with back when the Soviet Union was an evil empire. How sad is it that we're now doing the same thing?"

Cannon fodder

Is the draft coming back? Thomas E. Ricks of the Washington Post and Matthew Yglesias of the American Prospect investigate.

Florida, part deux

The GOP is out to suppress the African American vote in Florida, contends Greg Palast in a Newsnight investigation for the BBC.

Gaza withdrawal almost set

The Knesset has begun debating Sharon's proposed Gaza withdrawal, with voting scheduled for later today. At this point, it looks like the initiative will pass. Some analysts, like Uri Avnery, have warned that this promises to ignite a civil war within Israel.

Once the resolution passes, I guess the next step is to start taking bets on whether Sharon will be assassinated. Who wants to set the odds?

Oh, and btw, 17 Palestinians were killed and more than 78 wounded in Gaza on Sunday and Monday. But that's not news. Hardly ever is.

More money to burn

The Bush administration is seeking an additional $70 billion "in emergency funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan early next year, pushing total war costs close to $225 billion since the invasion of Iraq early last year," according to the Washington Post.

"One of America's ugliest foreign policy secrets"

Writing in Salon, Robert Parry revisits John Kerry's role in exposing the Contra-cocaine story, a tale that has gotten hardly any attention in this campaign season.

Like it was some twenty years ago, Parry seems to be the only one in the press who's willing to tackle this issue head on. Of course, no offense to you, Gary Webb.

Fallujah, explained

The LA Times ran a really good, detailed article on how and why the US military has waged a losing battle on Fallujah this past Sunday.

Post election chaos awaits

With the election fast approaching, Andrew Gumbel of the Independent says the US is teetering on the brink of a nervous breakdown.

Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished From Site in Iraq

The NY Times has lead the way, for the most part, in reporting on the tons of missing explosives from the Al Qaqaa military depot in Iraq. Here's the article that broke the story and here's another one on the political fallout from this news.

Josh Marshall has been posting a lot on this, while Mousemusings is offering up some additional context and a useful timeline on this story, linking it with past reports of the looting of nuclear sites and the general postwar chaos.

Lastly, see Juan Cole on the question of whether Bush is making us safer.

Osama allegedly located

According to John Lehman, a member of the 9/11 Commission, the US knows where Osama Bin Laden is, but it cannot go after him at this moment.

As Jim Mohr of the San Bernardino Sun reports,

Bin Laden is living in South Waziristan in the Baluchistan Mountains of the Baluchistan region [of Pakistan], Lehman told the San Bernardino Sun after delivering a keynote speech on terrorism at Pitzer College in Claremont.

In the interview, Lehman noted, "There is an American presence in the area, but we can't just send in troops. If we did, we could have another Vietnam, and the United States cannot afford that right now."

When pressed on why the United States couldn't send troops into the region to capture the world's No. 1 terrorist, Lehman said the Baluchistan region of the country is filled with militant fundamentalists who do not recognize the legitimacy of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, a close ally of the United States.

"That is a region filled with Taliban and al-Qaida members," he said, acknowledging that Pakistan's security services also are filled with many who agree with bin Laden's beliefs and would aid him if U.S. Special Forces entered the region.

"Look," he said, "Musharraf already has had three assassination attempts on his life. He is trying to comply, but he is surrounded by people who do not agree with him. This is not like Afghanistan, where there was no compliance, and we had to go in.

"We'll get (bin Laden) eventually, just not now."

100 Facts and 1 Opinion

Judd Legum presents "The Non-Arguable Case Against the Bush Administration" in The Nation.

This might be something worth passing around to any remaining fence sitters.

Osama's gift

In an article adapted from his forthcoming book New World Empire: Islamism, Terrorism and the Making of Neoglobalism, William H. Thornton recaps the journey down the road to a New, Anti-American Century.

Election fraud

The Village Voice is collating news about voting fraud and other irregularities.

It might be hard to believe, but this coming election promises to be fraught with even more improprieties than 2000. You might want to refresh your memory about what happened back then.

(via professor kim)

Fallujah in their sights

In the Guardian, Patrick Graham revisits past and predicts future war crimes in Fallujah.

The "nightmare" of a binational state?

Meron Benvenisti observes in Ha'aretz that Israel's actions are, perhaps inadvertently, "laying the foundations" for a binational state in historic Palestine and "destroying the option of two states for two peoples."

Bush backers swallow the kool-aid

So here's yet more evidence that Bush supporters suffer from a case of mass delusion:

Three out of four self-described supporters of President George W. Bush still believe pre-war Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or active programs to produce them, and that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein gave "substantial support" to al-Qaeda terrorists, according to a [PIPA] survey released Thursday.

Moreover, as many or more Bush supporters hold those beliefs today than they did several months ago, before the publication of a series of well-publicized official government reports that debunked both notions.

Robert Parry remarked a few weeks ago that "This election has become a test of whether reality still means anything to the American people."

Ron Suskind has already informed us that reality means little to the Bushies. Now we have it confirmed that it doesn't mean anything to Dubya's diehards, either. The question that remains is, what about the rest of us?

The War and Globalization

Stephen Zunes and Mark Engler tackle the question of the relationship between the Iraq war and globalization.

Required reading on this topic is, of course, Naomi Klein's recent Harper's article. Check it out if you haven't yet done so.

The Human Costs of War

I found this essay by Teri Wills Allison, the mother of a soldier in Iraq, to be simultaneously touching and enraging: touching for her introspection and enraging because it belies the sheer madness of the occupation.

I know a few soldiers who were involved in the war, but all have since rotated out. Besides them, the only personal contact I have with the war right now are three Iraqi friends, who I only hear from periodically. Having said that, I cannot fathom the idea of having someone from your closest circle of family over there right now. It must be the most nerve-wracking experience.

I also wonder about a point Allison raises in her piece, whether the experience for individuals in close proximity to the effects of the war is different for those who support the war, in comparison with those who do not.

Soldier Sentenced to 8 Years for Iraq Abuse

A US soldier has been sentenced to eight years in prison for his involvement in the torture at Abu Ghraib, according to Reuters. He is the third soldier to be convicted for his role in the prison scandal, while five others still await their trials.

Of course, I eagerly await the day when the architects of the abuse and torture at Abu Ghraib face their reckoning. Hell, if a staff sergeant is sentenced for eight years, then surely those higher ups in the Justice Department and the Pentagon who sanctioned and issued decrees for this activity deserve much worse. Right?

Follow the bouncing meme

CIA stalling to benefit Bush?

Is the CIA sitting on a report because it'll cause even more grief for the Bush administration? Robert Scheer says definitely:

It is shocking: The Bush administration is suppressing a CIA report on 9/11 until after the election, and this one names names. Although the report by the inspector general's office of the CIA was completed in June, it has not been made available to the congressional intelligence committees that mandated the study almost two years ago.

"It is infuriating that a report which shows that high-level people were not doing their jobs in a satisfactory manner before 9/11 is being suppressed," an intelligence official who has read the report told me, adding that "the report is potentially very embarrassing for the administration, because it makes it look like they weren't interested in terrorism before 9/11, or in holding people in the government responsible afterward."

...According to the intelligence official, who spoke to me on condition of anonymity, release of the report, which represents an exhaustive 17-month investigation by an 11-member team within the agency, has been "stalled." First by acting CIA Director John McLaughlin and now by Porter J. Goss, the former Republican House member (and chairman of the Intelligence Committee) who recently was appointed CIA chief by President Bush.

The official stressed that the report was more blunt and more specific than the earlier bipartisan reports produced by the Bush-appointed Sept. 11 commission and Congress.

Liberal hawks

Writing in The Nation, Anatol Lieven takes on the "liberal hawks" in a review of George Packer's newish book, The Fight Is for Democracy, and in the process revisits what will be at the core of Kerry's foreign policy, should he be elected -- the PPI's guidance paper, "Progressive Internationalism: A Democratic National Security Strategy."

"It is true that the vision of the Democratic 'progressive internationalists' differs from that of the American nationalist right on a range of other vital international issues, including the environment, foreign aid and various international treaties," Lieven observes. "And if actually implemented--a quite dubious possibility, given the past record of the Democratic Party in Congress with regard to these issues--such policies would not only be very good in themselves but would go far toward improving the entire atmosphere of relations between the United States and Western Europe in particular. However, when it comes to the specific issues of the conduct of the war on terrorism, and the use of force to improve the world, the 'progressive internationalists' present no real alternative to Bush Administration policies. Rather, like the neoconservatives, they represent a form of liberal imperialism, of a kind that characterized much of the liberal scene in America and Europe a century ago."

True enough. Also check out Ed Herman's review of the Packer book, which treads much the same water as Lieven's. Herman, though, is much harsher on the liberals.

ABB?

Alex Cockburn smacks the "Anyone but Bush" contingent upside the head in the New Left Review.

Wealth gap for Hispanics, blacks grows

Inequality continues to get worse in the US, particularly among people of color. As the AP reports:

The wealth gap between white families and blacks and Hispanics grew larger after the most recent recession, a private analysis of government data finds.

White households had a median net worth of greater than $88,000 in 2002, 11 times more than Hispanics and more than 14 times that of blacks, the Pew Hispanic Center said in a study being released today.

...According to the group's analysis of Census Bureau data, nearly one-third of black families and 26 percent of Hispanic families were in debt or had no net assets, compared with 11 percent of white families.

"Wealth is a measure of cumulative advantage or disadvantage," said Roderick Harrison, a researcher at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a Washington think tank that focuses on black issues. "The fact that black and Hispanic wealth is a fraction of white wealth also reflects a history of discrimination."

After accounting for inflation, net worth for white households increased 17 percent from 1996 to 2002 and rose for Hispanic homes by 14 percent to about $7,900. It decreased for blacks by 16 percent, to roughly $6,000.

Regardless of race and ethnicity, the median net worth for all U.S. households was $59,706 in 2002, a 12 percent gain from 1996.

From 2001 to 2002, only white homes recouped all their losses. Both Hispanics and blacks lost nearly 27 percent of net worth from 1999 to 2001; the next year Latinos had gained almost all back (26 percent), but blacks were up only about 5 percent.

Inter throws support behind Zapatistas

Way to go, Inter! Maybe I can now forgive Javier Zanetti for that performance against Arsenal last year. Maybe.

Stewards of Democracy

(thanks for the prodding, Kevin)

Resumption

I've been mulling over what to do with the blog since I am finding it a bit more difficult to keep up with news and post in a timely, consistent manner. I was hoping to use this recent hiatus to think about changes and implement them. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. I'm still stuck in the same situation and I'm not sure what I'm going to (eventually) do about it.

In the meantime, I'm going to continue blogging as usual. Or at least try. I also considered taking time away until after the elections, but decided it'd be better to come back before and go from here.

What's below is some reading from recent weeks. Most of it will look familiar if you've been paying attention to media and blogs. If not, all the better.

* Knight Ridder reports that, according to Iraqi Health Ministry figures, "U.S. and multinational forces and Iraqi police are killing twice as many Iraqis - most of them civilians - as attacks by insurgents." This report is based on numbers calculated between April and September, but the trend does not look like it will reverse itself anytime soon. In fact, judging from the increase in military attacks on Fallujah and other anti-occupation hotspots, the ratio may tilt even more towards US-inflicted casualties now.

* Another Knight Ridder report confirms that the Bush administration went to war in Iraq with no plan on how to deal with a post-Saddam scenario or rehabilitate the country. The general outline of this story has long been known, as a July 2003 report about the aimlessness of the occupation attests.

* The AP boils down a dozen reports by governmental and non-governmental organizations on the situation in Iraq, finding that all of them have a negative tone that roots the problems on the ground with the inability of the US government to provide a stable environment and reconstructed economy following the toppling of Saddam Hussein. This story provides the sort of context needed for understanding an earlier Washington Post report about the growing pessimism on Iraq.

* The Washington Post summarizes the final report of the Iraq Survey Group (aka the Duelfer report) as concluding that the "1991 Persian Gulf War and subsequent U.N. inspections destroyed Iraq's illicit weapons capability and, for the most part, Saddam Hussein did not try to rebuild it." Of course, there were no WMD and the only thing the Bush administration can claim at this point in its revisionist frenzy is that Hussein had a "desire" to restart his weapons program, should the opportunity have presented itself. See also: Scott Ritter on the "source Duelfer didn't quote."

* The NY Times ran a very long article on "How the White House Embraced Disputed Arms Intelligence" in its October 3rd edition. Worth reading.

* "Soaring rates of disease and a crippled health system are posing a new crisis for the people of Iraq, threatening to kill more than have died in the aftermath of the war," reports Jeremy Laurance of the Independent. "Deadly infections including typhoid and tuberculosis are rampaging through the country, according to the first official report into the state of health in the country." It goes without saying that this is precisely what aid agencies warned would happen prior to the war.

* Greg Mitchell breaks down the tale of Wall Street Journal correspondent Farnaz Fassihi's revealing email from Iraq.

* "About half of the roughly $5 billion in Iraq reconstruction funds disbursed by the US government in the first half of this year cannot be accounted for, according to an audit commissioned by the United Nations, which could not find records for numerous rebuilding projects and other payments," reports the Boston Globe.

* In the Atlantic Monthly, William Langewiesche reports on life inside the Green Zone, where attacks by insurgents are beginning to appear.

* Mother Jones profiles some Iraqi veterans who are breaking ranks and speaking out against the war.

* What would America look like if it were in Iraq's current situation? wonders Juan Cole.

* Mary Jacoby provides the "inside story of the Army platoon that refused to carry out a 'death sentence' mission" for Salon.

* Reuters reports on how excavations around Iraq are being used to gather evidence about Saddam Hussein's crimes against humanity.

* David R. Francis of the CS Monitor examines the question of those "enduring" US military bases in Iraq.

* Who's the flip-flopper? On Iraq, it's Bush, not Kerry.

* War crimes caught on tape? Sure looks like it.

* Seymour Hersh implicated the United States in a plethora of war crimes during a recent appearance at UC Berkeley.

* Neil Lewis details the torture techniques being used at Gitmo in the NY Times.

* "On September 11th, nineteen hijackers commandeered four airliners and guided three of them into important symbols of American power with lethal precision," recaps M. Junaid Alam. "An unsuspecting citizenry, quite unaware of events outside the national purview, suddenly found 3,000 of its countrymen killed at the hands of a few fanatics from a far off part of the world. One would expect that, in a democratic country which prides itself on freedom of speech and press, wide-ranging diversity of opinions, and quality of intellectual debate and scholarship, one of the responses to the horrific attacks would be a rigorous and reflective discussion of why they happened. Three years on, what we have instead is the ceaseless, unchallenged mass production - and consumption - of a core set of noxious lies about September 11th that form the foundation of a perpetual, bloody, boundless, and winless war."

* Peter Bergen chronicles the long hunt for Osama in the Atlantic Monthly.

* Wars for oil? Damn right, says Michael Klare. And it's only going to get worse.

* Sam Gardiner, author of the "Truth From These Podia" report, which found that the Bush administration made up or distorted more than 50 news stories related to the war in Iraq, explains in Salon how the Bush administration treats the American public as an enemy with its use of media control and propaganda.

* Interesting profiles of John Kerry and George Bush have run in the NY Times Magazine the past two weeks. PBS' Frontline also ran a two-hour documentary on the political careers of Bush and Kerry that you can watch online.

* The LA Times reported last week that the "conservative-leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group, whose television outlets reach nearly a quarter of the nation's homes with TV, is ordering its stations to preempt regular programming just days before the Nov. 2 election to air a film that attacks Sen. John F. Kerry's activism against the Vietnam War." As one would expect, this news has touched off a firestorm of controversy and activism.

* Joshua Green reviews Karl Rove's shady history in the Atlantic Monthly.

* After the "Rathergate" hubbub, CBS News has apparently decided to throw in the towel and stop its reporting of relevant news related to the Presidential election. FAIR has more on this outrage.

* The Guardian has revived the story of Prescott Bush's links with the Nazis.

* A new report from researchers at the Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley contends that "modern-day slavery is alive and well in the United States," where more than 10,000 people work under coercive or forced conditions.

* Writing in the Daily Star of Lebanon, Rami G. Khouri looks back on four years of intifada.

* In an interview with Ha'aretz, Ariel Sharon's senior adviser Dov Weisglass revealed that Israel's proposed Gaza withdrawal is a ploy to "freeze the peace process" and "prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state."

* Hasan Abu Nimah explores those double standards at the heart of reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the wake of car bombings in Taba and the IDF's destructive operations in Gaza.

* John Dugard, the UN's special rappateur for human rights in Palestine, has issued another report charging that the construction of Israel's separation barrier is motivated by a desire to steal Palestinian land, not prevent suicide bombings.

* Bill and Kathleen Christison observe that "the U.S. relationship with Israel continues to be treated, at all levels of political discourse in the United States, as a sideshow to larger strategic questions." This, they warn, "is extremely dangerous. There will be no resolution to the war on terror, and no easing of the hatred of the United States by our own allies and by the Arab and Muslim world, until there is a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that gives as much justice to Palestinians as to Israelis. We ignore the direct danger Israel poses to us at our own peril. Our drive for empire already came back to bite us three years ago on September 11, and it will come back again as long as we fail to distinguish our own interests from Israel's."

* Is Iran Next? Tom Barry addresses the question that won't go away for In These Times.

* Bill Quigley summarizes the findings of a new report by Pax Christi USA on the situation in Haiti, where human rights conditions "are worse...than they have been in years."

* The Independent reports that an international study has found that "almost a third of amphibians face extinction - and pollution is cited as the biggest cause. The three-year survey, involving 500 scientists from more than 60 countries, has found that a third of the 5,743 known species are threatened with being wiped out and at least 427 are so critically endangered that they could disappear tomorrow."

* According to a study by analysts at Cornell University and the University of Massachusetts for the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, the "United States will lose more than 400,000 jobs this year to Mexico, China, India and other Asian nations as multinational corporations restructure operations and shift production overseas," reports Agence France Presse.