Over the weekend

* Anthony Shadid of the Washington Post has a relatively comprehensive report on how the "election" in Iraq turned out. The media coverage today has, overwhelmingly, stressed the positive, and, for the sake of Iraqis, let's hope such optimism is warranted. My better instincts tell me that the rosy image we're now seeing is crass propaganda, but we'll have to wait for events to play themselves out. See also: "The Iraq Election 'Bait and Switch.'"

* Tomorrow's the last day of the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Catch up on what's happened over the past few days via TerraViva. Also note the contrast with events in Davos, Switzerland.

* Buzzflash: "Paul Bremer's Occupation Regime Misplaced $9 Billion. Was Anyone Keeping Track Of What His Heritage Foundation Bumblers Were Doing With Your Money?"

* Via War In Context comes two interesting articles, one from the Chronicle of Higher Education on the lack of attention given to the Lancet survey of Iraq war fatalities and another from the New Statesman on the fate of the "Middle East's Generation X."

* Kurt Nimmo breaks down the new plea for more troops and military toys from the PNAC.

* Eliot Weinberger's heard a bunch of things about Iraq. Check his list over in the LRB.

* Here's an essay by Mahmood Mamdani that nicely summarizes the argument he puts forth in Good Muslim, Bad Muslim.

* In Dissent, Andrei S. Markovits traces the trajectory of the European and American Left since 1945.

* In an analytic piece, Jim Lobe discusses the centrality of the Holocaust to the neoconservative worldview.

More Iraqi civilians killed by U.S. forces than by insurgents, still

The BBC's Panorama has uncovered some Iraqi Health Ministry figures that show that American and Iraqi security forces are still killing more civilians than the insurgents. Between July 2004 and January 2005,

The figures reveal that 3,274 Iraqi civilians were killed and 12,657 wounded in conflict-related violence during the period.

Of those deaths, 60% - 2,041 civilians - were killed by the coalition and Iraqi security forces. A further 8,542 were wounded by them.

Insurgent attacks claimed 1,233 lives, and wounded 4,115 people, during the same period.

You might recall that Knight Ridder published similar findings about the period between between April and September 2004, when US and Iraqi forces killed twice as many civilians as attacks by insurgents.

Update: The BBC has apologized for "misinterpreting" the figures.

A culture of martyrdom

Inverting the traditional paradigm, Baruch Kimmerling investigates Israel's "culture of death" in a review essay for The Nation.

Coming on the heels of the ceremony at Auschwitz, his conclusion is particularly stark:

The obsessive commemoration of the Holocaust and of Jewish victimhood has blinded much of the Jewish community to Israel's real position in the world and to the humanity of the Palestinian people. The result has been to make ever more distant a reasonable political solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is the victory of death over life, of the past over the future. To be sure, there are periods in the history of a nation when ultimate sacrifices are necessary, and a cult of death unavoidable. The question in Israel today is whether this heroic period has come to an end or whether the prevailing ideology of the 1948 war will last another hundred years, until the entire "Land of Israel" is "liberated." To choose the former option is to grant priority to the lives of Israel's citizens, Jewish and Arab. To choose the latter is to remain a community of victims, joined in a mythical communion of Jewish sacrifice in an eternally hostile gentile world. Tragically, most of the organized American Jewish community seems to prefer the mythic option, a course that can only lead to disaster.

(via news from babylon)

Ruminating on the Iraqi "meltdown"

This is an interesting interview with Christian Parenti over at Mother Jones. Parenti's done some excellent reporting from Iraq, much of which can be found in his new book, The Freedom: Shadows and Hallucinations in Occupied Iraq.

Gallagher & Williams

Someone please tell me why right wing hacks are getting subsidized by my tax dollars...

Global warming worse than thought

Geez. More wonderful news regarding the fallout from climate change, courtesy of the Independent:

Global warming might be twice as catastrophic as previously thought, flooding settlements on the British coast and turning the interior into an unrecognizable tropical landscape, the world's biggest study of climate change shows.

Researchers from some of Britain's leading universities used computer modeling to predict that under the "worst-case" scenario, London would be under water and winters banished to history as average temperatures in the UK soar up to 20C higher than at present.

Globally, average temperatures could reach 11C greater than today, double the rise predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the international body set up to investigate global warming. Such high temperatures would melt most of the polar icecaps and mountain glaciers, raising sea levels by more than 20ft. A report this week in The Independent predicted a 2C temperature rise would lead to irreversible changes in the climate.

Bye, Feith

Doug Feith is going to be stepping down from his Pentagon post. Hallelujah.

In a sane world, Feith would be heading straight for jail. Instead, he's sure to assume some prominent and lucrative position in the private sector.

Drip, drip

In a column for NY Press, Alexander Zaitchik foreshadows a "Green-Hawk alliance" and concludes, "One way or the other, the Age of Oil is coming to an end, and soon. The only question is what we're going to do about it."

The complicit

Scott Ritter reminds us that "a crime of gigantic proportions has been perpetrated" in Iraq. "If history has taught us anything," he writes, "it is that it will condemn both the individuals and respective societies who not only perpetrated the crime, but also remained blind and mute while it was being committed."

Goin' down

"Who will be the first politician brave enough to declare publicly that the United States is a declining power and that America's leaders must urgently discuss what to do about it?" asks Slate's Fred Kaplan in an article noting the central conclusions of the NIC's 2020 report, namely that India and China will rise to challenge US global dominance in the next 15 years.

Michael Lind, on the other hand, says the US is already on the way down. He observes in the Financial Times that "evidence of foreign co-operation to reduce American primacy is everywhere," and goes on to conclude:

Ironically, the US, having won the cold war, is adopting the strategy that led the Soviet Union to lose it: hoping that raw military power will be sufficient to intimidate other great powers alienated by its belligerence. To compound the irony, these other great powers are drafting the blueprints for new international institutions and alliances. That is what the US did during and after the second world war.

But that was a different America, led by wise and constructive statesmen like Dean Acheson, the secretary of state who wrote of being "present at the creation." The bullying approach of the Bush administration has ensured that the US will not be invited to take part in designing the international architecture of Europe and Asia in the 21st century. This time, the US is absent at the creation.

In the meantime, somebody should start passing around some Joseph Nye for the plebes in the State Department to start reading.

Update: Lots of stuff along similar lines to the pieces above, here.

A Chilean warning

This is an interesting article on the Chilean ordeal with a privatized pension system from the NY Times.

Things turned out well for a wealthy few, but the overwhelming majority of those in the working class have been screwed by the deal. Don't act surprised if something similar happens once Bush and Wall Street get their hands on Social Security.

A dying dream

Andrew Moravcsik has an article in Newsweek International on the withering of the American Dream, a great companion piece to Tony Judt's recent NYRB article.

Land grab

Writing in the IHT, Henry Siegman explains what is going on in Israel:

I was born in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1930, a few years before Germany's government was taken over - constitutionally - by the Nazi Party. In the mid- and late '30s, this government "legally" deprived Germany's Jews of their professions, livelihoods and property. These injustices provoked not much outrage on the part of the German people.

Like the measures taken by the German government in the '30s, Israel's theft of Palestinian property in East Jerusalem occurred within the law, and provoked no outrage from Israelis - either from the right, or from Sharon's new Labor partners.

Many of these same Palestinians recently had part of their property confiscated by Israel for the construction of the separation fence. When the fence was completed, these Palestinians found themselves cut off from the rest of their property.

Now, as they petition Israel's courts to be given access to their lands across the fence, many of them are being told it actually is no longer their land at all, nor will they receive any compensation for it.

It sounds too unjust, too evil, to be true, particularly for a Jewish state that considers its very existence a living reproach to the German people, and to the world, for the injustices and suffering inflicted on the Jewish people. But the details of Israel's manipulations of the legal system and its theft of Palestinian lands are described in the Israeli media for all to read and see.

Predictably, Israel is invoking security to justify its behavior, as it has invoked that elastic concept to justify other injustices - as if robbing people of property and possessions that have been in their families for generations can be seen as enhancing Israel's security. In fact, it is being done for political reasons, and out of sheer greed.

As reported by the Israeli media, certain Israeli real-estate interests long ago started work on plans for large new housing projects in East Jerusalem that will replace these stolen Palestinian homes, farms and orchards.

In addition to enriching themselves as they impoverish the Palestinian owners, they will also sever East Jerusalem from its Palestinian hinterland, thus precluding the possibility of a capital of a future Palestinian state in any part of East Jerusalem. This would make any peace process with a new Palestinian leadership - even one that is democratic, reformed, and committed to nonviolence - a complete non-starter. One does not have to be a cynic to suspect that is precisely what the Sharon government intended.

A growing deficit

It sure is going to be interesting to see how they turn this puppy around in such short time.

Bewildering polls

Oh yeah, the elections in Iraq look like they're going to go real smoothly:

Iraqis who brave the threat of attacks and crippling power shortages to cast their votes will face a bewildering array of choices when they are handed ballot papers.

The poll for a transitional national assembly is not being contested by traditional political parties and many candidate names will not feature on voting forms, such are the fears for their safety.

Instead, voters will decide between 111 coalitions, mainly loose alliances of established political factions clustered along traditional religious and ethnic divisions.

Around 8,000 candidates – double the number of a British general election – are vying for the 275 seats on the country’s transitional national assembly, charged with drawing up a new constitution.

The confusing nature of the poll has hampered campaigning efforts and research conducted last month revealed that more than 40% of Iraqis believe they are simply voting for a new president, not a national body.

Gitmo suicide attempts

The AP reports that 23 Gitmo detainees tried to commit suicide during August 2003 as part of a mass protest at the detention center.

What's not mentioned in this report is the number of suicide attempts that happened earlier in 2002-2003.

Accountability

Countdown to Iraqi vote

Attacks by the insurgency in Iraq have dipped recently. A Reuters piece relays the widespread speculation that this is merely the calm before the storm, a prelude to a "spectacular" attack surrounding the elections later this week.

On the other hand, those looking for a rosier assessment of things might wish to conclude that the capture of Abu Omar al-Kurdi, who is allegedly responsible for "75 percent of the car bombs used in attacks in Baghdad," might have something to do with the lull in the violence.

Torture all around

Torture remains rampant in Iraq, according to a new report by HRW. And we're talking about torture at the hands of fellow Iraqis here, not the Americans.

Not to feel left out, of course, Americans should take solace in the fact that continuing FOIA requests by the ACLU are unearthing more details about the torture by the Americans.

Nearing the point of no return on climate change

From yesterday's Independent:

The global warming danger threshold for the world is clearly marked for the first time in an international report to be published tomorrow - and the bad news is, the world has nearly reached it already.

The countdown to climate-change catastrophe is spelt out by a task force of senior politicians, business leaders and academics from around the world - and it is remarkably brief. In as little as 10 years, or even less, their report indicates, the point of no return with global warming may have been reached.

The report, Meeting The Climate Challenge, is aimed at policymakers in every country, from national leaders down. It has been timed to coincide with Tony Blair's promised efforts to advance climate change policy in 2005 as chairman of both the G8 group of rich countries and the European Union.

And it breaks new ground by putting a figure - for the first time in such a high-level document - on the danger point of global warming, that is, the temperature rise beyond which the world would be irretrievably committed to disastrous changes. These could include widespread agricultural failure, water shortages and major droughts, increased disease, sea-level rise and the death of forests - with the added possibility of abrupt catastrophic events such as "runaway" global warming, the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, or the switching-off of the Gulf Stream.

In related news, varying developments in Antartica are bolstering the conclusions of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment. Mind you, that's not a good thing.

Connecting the dots -- or not

In a survey of recent news linked, in some way, to the fate and health of the American empire, Tom Engelhardt laments that "our demobilized media treats the world, if at all, as a set of hopeless fragments and just doesn't consider puzzling them together part of the job description."

Echoing what countless bloggers and media consumers have discovered, Engelhardt concludes, "If you want to grasp our world as it is, you might actually have to click off that TV, use your local paper to wrap the fish, and head for the Internet."

Israeli annexation

Here's a quick, 3-step tutorial on Land Theft 101, courtesy of a post over at AmSam.

Ironic, perhaps, that this news comes out during the same week as the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the WWII concentration camps. The world should never forget the genocidal acts towards Jews, but it should likewise not turn a blind eye towards Israel's policy towards the Palestinians, which can only be characterized as a rather blatant campaign of ethnic cleansing towards non-Jews.

Another recap

For the time being, I'm back on a normal blog schedule.

* E&P reports, "In a startling new analysis, Knight Ridder reporters Tom Lasseter and Jonathan S. Landay, who have done some of the best reporting on Iraq during the past two years, declare that unless something 'dramatic' changes, 'the United States is heading toward losing the war in Iraq.'"

* An Iraqi man and his wife were killed in front of their five children by US soldiers who fired on the car in which the family was travelling. Here are pictures from the scene.

* According to the Sydney Morning Herald, "A former Jordanian government minister has told The New Yorker that an American official confirmed to him that the Iraqi interim Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi, executed six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police station last year." The admission is mentioned in profile of Allawi written by Jon Lee Anderson. Recall the July SMH report that broke this story.

* Frank Rich observes in the NY Times that "Since the early bombshells from Abu Ghraib last year, the torture story has all but vanished from television, even as there have been continued revelations in the major newspapers and magazines like The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books and Vanity Fair." Accordingly, he notes, "If a story isn't on TV in America, it doesn't exist in our culture." Plus: Tara McKelvey asks "What happened to the women held at Abu Ghraib?" and HRW's Reed Brody laments that "the United States is doing what every dictatorship and banana republic does when its abuses are discovered: covering up and shifting blame downwards. Indeed, if there is no real accountability for these crimes, for years to come the perpetrators of atrocities around the world will point to the United States's treatment of prisoners to deflect criticism of their own conduct."

* Still waiting: Will the U.S. Senate Endorse Torture?

* The Brits now have their own torture scandal, as damning photos have emerged of detainee abuse under their purview in Iraq.

* Recently, Ali Fadhil, an Iraqi journalist working for the Guardian, described Fallujah as a "city of ghosts" in a UK television documentary and Michael Schwartz called it a "city without a future" in an article written for Tom Dispatch. Dahr Jamail, as usual, fills in the rest of the gory details.

* Expanding on an earlier essay of his, Robert Parry weighs in on the news that the Bushies are debating the "Salvador option" for Iraq.

* Those American postwar failures in Iraq? Dick Cheney says blame 'em on Saddam.

* Riverbend, the famed Iraqi blogger who now has a book deal, offers her thoughts on news that the hunt for WMD in Iraq is finally, officially over.

* "It's a sorry state of affairs in America when you can trust the words of Saddam Hussein more than those of your own President," writes Harry Browne.

* What should the attitude of the anti-war movement be toward the Iraqi election scheduled for the end of January? ZNet has collated some different responses to this question.

* Sharon Smith explains why you should support the Iraqi resistance.

* According to the Guardian, a "damning report" from the British Museum contends that "Troops from the US-led force in Iraq have caused widespread damage and severe contamination to the remains of the ancient city of Babylon."

* Thalif Deen of IPS reports that a preliminary study of the UN's oil-for-food program, including a "series of 58 internal audits," has found "overbilling and management lapses by its U.N. supervisors, but no large-scale fraud." In related news, a joint investigation by the Financial Times and Il Sole 24 Ore, the Italian business daily, has discovered that "the single largest and boldest smuggling operation in the oil-for-food programme was conducted with the knowledge of the US government."

* American Leftist introduces the story of Jumana Hanna's "American Dream," which Esquire has exposed as a fraud.

* The NY Times examines the controversy over the pro-American Iraqi bloggers of Iraq the Model, while Tex from Unfair Witness digs a little deeper into the story.

* Here's the latest Seymour Hersh piece in the New Yorker that caused such a stir last week. Hersh contends that the Pentagon has hijacked "covert ops" from the CIA and is conducting them in Iran, possibly in preparation for a military strike. Plus: More Hersh from Democracy Now! and the Washington Post corroborates parts of the New Yorker piece by noting that the Pentagon is "expanding into the CIA's historic bailiwick," giving Rummy "broad authority over clandestine operations abroad."

* In related stories, Chris Toensing reminds us that "Real men want to go to Tehran," Joost R. Hiltermann probes Iran's nuclear posture, and Kaveh L. Afrasiabi explains "How Iran will fight back."

* Chris Floyd dusts off his story about P2OG and ties it directly to Hersh's revelations.

* "Is it conceivable that al Qaeda, as defined by President Bush as the center of a vast and well-organized international terrorist conspiracy, does not exist?" asks Robert Scheer after viewing the recent BBC documentary, "The Power of Nightmares."

* As the Gitmo detention center "is taking on a look of permanence," Jonathan Steele observes that the Bush administration sees itself "not just as a self-appointed global policeman, but also as the world's prison warder. It is thinking of building jails in foreign countries, mainly ones with grim human rights records, to which it can secretly transfer detainees (unconvicted by any court) for the rest of their lives - a kind of global gulag beyond the scrutiny of the International Committee of the Red Cross, or any other independent observers or lawyers."

* The CIA's updated projections in its 2020 report indicate that the war in Iraq bodes ill for the future, as it is likely to spawn a new generation of terrorists. The report also suggests that India and China will rise to challenge the United States' dominant position in the world.

* According to the Washington Post, a "scathing new report" by Jeffrey Record of the Army War College "broadly criticizes the Bush administration's handling of the war on terrorism, accusing it of taking a detour into an 'unnecessary' war in Iraq and pursuing an 'unrealistic' quest against terrorism that may lead to U.S. wars with states that pose no serious threat." Record also "warns that as a result of those mistakes, the Army is 'near the breaking point.'"

* Abderrahman Ulfat critiques the 2003 Arab Human Development Report. Meanwhile, Nader Fergany, the chief coordinator of the 2004 edition of the report, is accusing the US and Egypt of delaying its publication because it "criticizes the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the state of democracy in Egypt."

* The Associated Press and the Economist summarize the UN's Millenium Development goals to alleviate world poverty, which were overseen by Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University.

* Writing for Dissent, Eric Reeves looks at the ongoing genocide in Darfur.

* Tom Barry says the US isn't "stingy" with foreign aid, just strategic.

* Ali Abunimah says another "historic day" for the Palestinian people passed with Abu Mazen's election. In another essay, he and his father write that the election "has been hailed as a great democratic achievement and breakthrough for the region. It is actually no more than a thin layer of light shaving foam which will soon be blown away by the strong winds of reality."

* Why was the US so concerned about the state of democracy in Ukraine? Because of the geopolitics of oil, says William Engdahl.

* Tony Judt looks at the ideological and cultural differences of Europe vs. America in a NYRB review essay.

* Neocons -- divided or back out of hiding?

* In his NY Times column, Paul Krugman links Bush's "crisis-mongering" over Iraq with efforts to convince voters to "reform" social security. Krugman also urges his readers to check out Roger Lowenstein's article in the NY Times Magazine, which examines the conservative assault on the New Deal, including Bush's efforts to privatize social security.

* Jim Lobe breaks down Bush's "ambitious" -- or "hollow" -- inaugural address.

* The NewStandard's Brendan Coyne and Ariella Cohen report from the streets of DC on last week's Counter-Inaugural protests. On a related front, Karen Loew wonders, "What’s the Point of Protests?"

* "You can say what you like in the US media, as long as it helps a Republican president," announces George Monbiot. "But slip up once while questioning him, and you will be torn to shreds." Similarly, Robert Parry notes that the mantra of "Don’t take on the Bushes" is "an unwritten rule in American journalism."

* Writing for Salon, Peter Dizikes lays out 34 scandals from Bush's first term, "every one of them worse than Whitewater."

* In Salon, Leonard Steinhorn punctures, yet again, the myth of "moral values" being an adequate barometer of recent electoral politics.

* Tom Mertes reviews Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas? in the New Left Review.

* In an essay for Dissident Voice, Paul Street invokes Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assessment of the "the triple evils that are interrelated" -- war, racism, and poverty.

* As hip hop celebrates its 30th birthday, the Black Commentator points to the vibrancy of that cultural form as an indication that MLK's dream is not dead.

* Sharon Lerner ruminates on the 30th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, while Benjamin Wittes says it's about time to let go of Roe.

* There's little doubt as to why Marxists are concerned about the state of health care. Kenneth Rogoff says the next great battle between socialism and capitalism will be waged over this issue.

* "Uncle Sam has reneged and defaulted on up to 40% of its trillion-dollar foreign debt, and nobody has said a word except for a line in The Economist," observes Andre Gunder Frank in a two-part feature for the Asia Times Online. "In plain English that means Uncle Sam runs a worldwide confidence racket with his self-made dollar based on the confidence that he has elicited and received from others around the world, and he is a also a deadbeat in that he does not honor and return the money he has received."

* In These Times weighs in on current debates within the AFL-CIO and the general state of the labor movement.

* In an article for Dollars & Sense adapted from his new book, Gar Alperovitz searches for an America beyond capitalism.

* National Geographic offers some fast facts on global warming and Brandi Neal asks: "Has Environmental Abuse Finally Gone too Far?"

* The CBC reports that new scientific research suggests that global warming, not an asteroid collision, may have caused the "biggest mass extinction in the planet's history, known as the 'Great Dying,' [which] eliminated 90 per cent of marine life and nearly three-quarters of all plants and animals on land."

* Varying reviews in The Nation explore affirmative action, the rebuilding of the WTC, and American torture. All are worth reading.

* The Seattle Times has launched a special series on the failed case against Guantanamo Army Chaplin Captain James Yee.

* Foreign Policy outlines the Top Ten Stories You Missed in 2004.

* Ignacio Ramonet explores some of the factors that are destroying critical, incisive journalism in Le Monde diplomatique.

* Mark Morford asks, "Do You Suffer News Fatigue?"

* "First they came for Tinkie Winkie and I did not speak out because I was not a Teletubby," writes Jill Rachel Jacobs. "Then they came for Barney and I did not speak out because I was not a happy go lucky, carefree overweight purple reptilian children’s show star. Then they came for Spongebob Squarepants..."

* Steve Twomey of CJR profiles Bob Somerby of The Daily Howler.

Some of what I've missed

...out of town for about two weeks, so back on hiatus I go.

* Is the US too "stingy" with aid? Tom Regan looks at competing views following the South Asian tsunami. See also: Gideon Levy on "two types of disasters."

* "The hypocrisy, narcissism and dissembling propaganda of the rulers of the world and their sidekicks are in full cry" with the western media coverage of the tsunami disaster, declares John Pilger. "Superlatives abound as to their humanitarian intent while the division of humanity into worthy and unworthy victims dominates the news. The victims of a great natural disaster are worthy (though for how long is uncertain) while the victims of man-made imperial disasters are unworthy and very often unmentionable. Somehow, reporters cannot bring themselves to report what has been going on in Aceh, supported by 'our' government. This one-way moral mirror allows us to ignore a trail of destruction and carnage that is another tsunami."

* Mike Whitney and Peter Phillips also note the hypocrisy of the the American media's wall-to-wall coverage of the tsunami, contrasting news of human death and devastation there with the lack of any comparable reports coming out of Iraq.

* Newsweek has "learned" that the Pentagon is "intensively debating" the use of "death squads" in Iraq to hunt down insurgents, a la El Salvador/Nicaragua in the '80s.

* According to AFP, the head of Iraqi national intelligence, General Mohammed Abdullah Shahwani, says the insurgency in his country "includes more than 200,000 active fighters and sympathizers," a force larger than the number of American troops. Also see an updated report by Anthony Cordesman of CSIS on the state of the insurgency.

* Baghdad is currently the "least attractive city" in the world, according to a recent survey by Mercer Human Resource Consulting.

* Displaced and terrorized Fallujans recently began returning to their city, only to find destruction and unlivable conditions.

* Mike Whitney argues that the American media's treatment of the destruction of Fallujah "illustrates what happens when the nation's information delivery system is controlled by a handful of corporate plutocrats. Media becomes the bullhorn for butchery and adventurism. All hope of rekindling democracy in America depends on eradicating the current media paradigm."

* An IRIN report notes that medical personnel working in Fallujah have "recovered more than 700 bodies from rubble where houses and shops once stood," of which "more than 550 were women and children."

* This is a telling report from an Economist reporter embedded with US troops in Iraq.

* "We have made a disaster in Iraq," Jack Beatty writes in the Atlantic Monthly. "We cannot escape from all of its consequences. But the human consequences of staying — the Iraqi civilians we will kill, the young American men and women alive this minute who will die or be maimed in body or mind — are worse than the political consequences of withdrawing." See also Naomi Klein's related piece, "You Break It, You Pay For It."

* James Dobbins writes in Foreign Affairs that "the ongoing war in Iraq is not one that the United States can win. As a result of its initial miscalculations, misdirected planning, and inadequate preparation, Washington has lost the Iraqi people's confidence and consent, and it is unlikely to win them back. Every day that Americans shell Iraqi cities they lose further ground on the central front of Iraqi opinion." Nevertheless, he continues, "The war can still be won -- but only by moderate Iraqis and only if they concentrate their efforts on gaining the cooperation of neighboring states, securing the support of the broader international community, and quickly reducing their dependence on the United States."

* In Harper's, Joy Gordon says the blame for the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal should be laid at the feet of the UN Security Council, and by extension the US, not the UN's general body. See also: "The UN's Real Disgrace was the Sanctions Regime."

* Jim Lobe reports that the "Bush administration's foreign policy may be costing U.S. corporations business overseas, according to a new survey of 8,000 international consumers released this week by the Seattle-based Global Market Insite (GMI) Inc." Plus: "Is the World Falling Out of Love with US Brands?"

* According to Bryan Bender of the Boston Globe, a recent report by the Defense Science Board makes implicit criticisms of the Pentagon's handling of the Iraq war and "is recommending a significant expansion of the State Department to cope with the diplomatic challenges of nation-building efforts that cannot be met by the Pentagon."

* Samantha Shapiro looks inside the Arab media war for the NY Times Magazine.

* In Foreign Affairs, Mahmood Mamdani reviews Olivier Roy's new book, Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah, alongside Gilles Kepel's The War for Muslim Minds.

* Daniel Pipes, an appointed member of the US Institute for, yes, Peace, seems to support concentration camps for Muslims.

* Adam Morrow of IPS observes that the Bush administration is backing away from its ambitious goal of promoting "democracy" in the Arab world, replacing it with a more focused and conservative goal of promoting economic reform. This story was foreshadowed by an earlier NY Times piece.

* Brian Foley writes that "Focusing on torture as the main objection to Alberto Gonzales' taking over as Attorney General distracts us from his greater sin: his attempt to give the president the power to imprison Americans incommunicado and indefinitely, without recourse to courts or lawyers. Such contempt for our civil rights shows that Gonzales cannot be trusted to protect them." See also: "We Are All Torturers Now."

* "The evidence is credible, compelling and abundant," announces Chris Floyd. "The lines of authority are clear. The blood of the tortured is on Bush's hands."

* The CIA's "torture jet" is no longer being coordinated from Boston, it seems. The paper trail now extends to Oregon.

* The Washington Post reports, "Administration officials are preparing long-range plans for indefinitely imprisoning suspected terrorists whom they do not want to set free or turn over to courts in the United States or other countries, according to intelligence, defense and diplomatic officials."

* Jonathan Raban searches for the truth about terrorism in a NYRB review essay.

* In Harper's, Benjamin DeMott declares that the "plain, sad reality" of the 9/11 Commission's final report is that, "despite the vast quantity of labor behind it," it's a "cheat and a fraud."

* "The United States has gone down a road in which the use of force has become a chronic feature of U.S. foreign policy, and the country's security has been weakened rather than bolstered as a consequence," conclude Robert W. Tucker and David C. Hendrickson in an article for Foreign Affairs. "It is true, of course, that the American public does not like the idea of deferring to others, but it may come to see the advantages of doing so once it appreciates that enterprises undertaken on a unilateral basis must be paid for on a unilateral basis."

* "Just as the long Cold War gave rise to the military-industrial complex that President Dwight Eisenhower warned against," Robert Parry warns, "the Long War against Islamic extremism will put the United States on a course toward a more militarized society, a form of government more like an Empire than a Republic."

* In Monthly Review, Richard Peet reviews Thomas P. M. Barnett's newish book, The Pentagon’s New Map.

* Stan Goff outlines a plan for attacking "the basis of imperial political power from within."

* Pentagon Budget cuts? Not bloody likely.

* "What do the CIA, the Pentagon and the UN have in common?" asks Katrina vanden Heuvel. "They share a prescient view of the world's greatest dangers and their unheralded agreement on key issues facing the planet has received far too little attention in the media."

* How fitting that Maher Arar was named Newsmaker of the Year in Time's Canadian edition, while Dubya was adorned with Person of the Year in the US.

* Thank you, John Conyers. At least someone in Congress cares about the state of electoral democracy in the US.

* The gang at The Free Press explain in a two-part feature (one; two) why Bush's victory doesn't add up.

* Those who think Bush won the November election because of the appeal of "moral values" are missing the point entirely, says Rev. William E. Alberts. Instead, he contends, Dubya's victory reveals "the rise of authoritarian tendencies in Americans. It is this apparent phenomenon, and the moral and spiritual crisis it represents, that need to be examined and addressed."

* Stealing a page from Tom Frank's playbook, Michael Lind argues in the Prospect that "Red-state America - inland, suburban and working-class - represents the future of the US, not the expensive, class-stratified coastal cities like New York, Boston and San Francisco. Conservatives, a minority among American voters, have managed to put together a majority coalition because they have learned to speak the populist language of the vast region between the Appalachians and the Rockies. Liberals can do so as well - but only if they stop sneering at the people they aspire to lead."

* Amy Sullivan asks, "Why doesn't W go to church?"

* Mmm. More Bush propaganda -- bought and paid for by the American taxpayer.

* Bob McChesney says the time has come for media reform. My own opinion, again, is that the media's failures on Iraq could be used to open the door to reform.

* Let's have a round of applause for the inaugural winners of the "Falsies Awards."

* How did Wal-Mart become a "corporate gorilla"? Simon Head investigates in the NYRB.

* Ritt Goldstein of IPS contends that recent withdrawals of prescription drugs are just one indication that the FDA is in the pocket of the pharmaceutical industry.

* Barry Mason reports on the findings of a new UNICEF report, which concludes that a "billion children are suffering from one or more forms of deprivation."

* "At the heart of President Bush's plan to sell Social Security private accounts is a simple notion: You're always better off investing your retirement money than letting the government do it," declares David R. Francis of the CS Monitor. Historically speaking, however, that's not necessarily the case.

* Somebody wake Michael Harrington from his eternal slumber. Harold Meyerson says "The 'Other America' May Be Coming Back."

* American Leftist introduces Michael Donnelly's Counterpunch essay on "How Nonprofit Careerism Derailed the 'Revolution'."

* Also check out American Leftist's Top 10 Unanswered Questions of 2004.

* Michael Byers reviews the recently-released Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) in the London Review of Books.

* Dialogic bids adieu to Susan Sontag.

* "Do SUVs Make You Stupid?" Mark Morford wonders.

* Kirsten Anderberg is frequently told she's "too angry." Perhaps you are, too.

* Linda Rothstein, Catherine Auer, and Jonas Siegel rethink doomsday in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.

* John Summers observes that Noam Chomsky is nowhere to be found in the historical canon of American academia.

FYI

I'm sitting on a large number of links and need some time to go through them. Also, I'm really busy with other stuff, so I'm not sure how much time I'll be able to devote to the blog. This will likely be the case until the early part of February.

Nevertheless, I'm going to try to post something soon. I might be going on an extended hiatus afterwards, though.