2+ weeks in review

* The civil war in the DRC has killed nearly 4 million people since 1998, according to a study conducted by the International Rescue Committee and published in The Lancet. "Congo is the deadliest crisis anywhere in the world over the past 60 years," says Richard Brennan, the study's main author. "Ignorance about its scale and impact is almost universal and international engagement remains completely out of proportion to humanitarian need."

* The NY Times looks back on the "wide range of contrasting and often paradoxical effects being felt" a year after the devastating South Asian tsunami.

* Mark Engler and Nadia Martinez examine "Bolivia's charge to the left," as evidenced by Evo Morales' election to the presidency. For further analysis, check out ZNet's Bolivia Watch. See also: "Key elections ahead around the world."

* Prior to Ariel Sharon's brain hemorrhage, separate reports proclaimed him as "triumphant" in 2005 and predicted his "scrapping" (yet again) of the widely-touted "road map." It's too early to say what will come about with Sharon's passing from Israeli politics, but if Netanyahu gets power, the answer is pretty clear. From the Palestininan point of view, things remain as tumultuous as ever on the internal side of the equation, notwithstanding what happens in Israel now.

* Paul de Rooij follows-up on his glossary of occupation with a new, relevant glossary of dispossession. "During 2005," he writes, "the Israelis and most main media trumpeted the 'disengagement' from Gaza, and claimed that bold steps had been taken to resolve the conflict. Despite these claims, the reality is that more Palestinian land has been stolen, many have been dispossessed, and ethnic cleansing has been exacerbated especially in Jerusalem. Meanwhile Israelis are orchestrating a propaganda campaign to hide this latest sordid chapter of dispossession," in large measure via the deployment of words that obscure what is happening on the ground.

* As James Petras ties together recent reports about preparations for a US/Israeli attack on Iran, German media has been noting meetings between American and Turkish officials, which Der Spiegel interprets as a sign that the US "may be preparing its allies for an imminent military strike."

* Robert Dreyfuss claims the "last hope for peace in Iraq was stomped to death" with the results of the disputed December 15th election. The overwhelming Shi'ite victory, he says, leaves "no silver lining, no chance for peace talks among Iraq's factions, no chance for international mediation. There is no centrist force that can bridge the factional or sectarian divides. Next stop: civil war."

* UPI's Martin Sieff notes that the cold, dark reality is back on the ground in Iraq. "The intense wave of killings and bombings that have swept Iraq this week comes as a shock awakening, or hangover, following the unrealistically high expectations and self-congratulations in the administration that surrounded the Dec. 15 parliamentary elections and their immediate aftermath," he argues. And "it is all too likely that there will be far worse to come."

* Picking up on that prescient Sy Hersh piece in the New Yorker last month, Michael Schwartz details the "New Iraq War Strategy" -- bombings, bombings, and more bombings. "As U.S. military strategy in Iraq has begun to unravel," Schwartz contends, "our military has adopted progressively more vicious methods to attempt to maintain its control of the country. In the current iteration, this involves escalated bombing attacks against densely populated urban areas in an attempt to bomb the Sunnis into submission, and the development of anti-Sunni brigades of Shia and Kurdish troops to inflict punishment on resisting cities. The American role in Iraq continues to get uglier."

* The US seems to be pulling the plug on its reconstruction efforts both in Iraq and Afghanistan.

* "The real cost to the US of the Iraq war is likely to be between $1 trillion and $2 trillion (£1.1 trillion)," the Guardian reports, "up to 10 times more than previously thought, according to a report written by a Nobel prize-winning economist and a Harvard budget expert."

* In the LA Times, Andrew Cockburn reviews what we (don't) know about how many Iraqis have died since the US invasion. The figure is far higher than the 30K Bush cited, but Cockburn's main point is that nobody is much interested in finding out the truth.

* "A secret Pentagon study has found that at least 80 percent of the marines who have been killed in Iraq from wounds to their upper body could have survived if they had extra body armor," reports the NY Times. "That armor has been available since 2003 but until recently the Pentagon has largely declined to supply it to troops despite calls from the field for additional protection, according to military officials."

* Permanent bases in Iraq? You betcha. A nice colonial office embassy, too.

* This is pretty funny -- and pathetic. Iraqi forces allegedly arrested famed terrorist bogeyman Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, but he was subsequently released because nobody recognized him.

* Also, the notorious "Dr. Germ" and "Mrs. Anthrax" were recently released, along with other prisoners, by the Iraqi government. Robert Scheer seems to have been the only one to take notice and alarm about this.

* Maher Arar, you have company. Meet Khaled El-Masri, a new ambassador for American "rendition" policies.

* With all of the news afoot about government snooping and NSA spying of late, Norman Solomon reflects back to the NSA's spying on the UN in the run up to the Iraq war. The American press had no trouble ignoring this story back then, so I suppose it's no surprise that it continues being ignored now.

* The ACLU, stating things as bluntly as possible: "What if it emerged that the President of the United States was flagrantly violating the Constitution and a law passed by the Congress to protect Americans against abuses by a super-secret spy agency? What if, instead of apologizing, he said, in essence, 'I have the power to do that, because I say I can.' That frightening scenario is exactly what we are now witnessing in the case of the warrantless NSA spying ordered by President Bush that was reported December 16, 2005 by the New York Times."

* According to the NY Times, the FBI is monitoring activist groups involved "in causes as diverse as the environment, animal cruelty and poverty relief, newly disclosed agency records show." The US government is also monitoring -- sans warrants -- the radiation levels at hundreds of "Muslim sites" in at least 6 cities, according to US News & World Report.

* As is typical with other Bushist shenanigans, much of the White House's sanctioning of snooping rests on John Yoo's dubious logic and a jaundiced interpretation of presidential power.

* Here's a nice summary of the important, somewhat damning details from James Risen's new book, State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration, the publication of which allegedly triggered the long-delayed NY Times article on NSA spying.

* While Michelle Goldberg documents "Bush's Impeachable Offense," E&P notes that the "I-word" is starting to pop up in newspapers again. But, as Greg Mitchell points out, few papers seem as quick on the trigger as they were when Bubba was around.

* The Constitution in Crisis? No kidding. Plus: Henry Giroux on "The New Authoritarianism in the United States."

* Tom Engelhardt looks back on the forgotten anthrax attacks of 2001. Talk about falling down the memory hole...

* Holly Sklar: "The American Dream is becoming the American Pipe Dream." Faster than you think, really.

* E&P reviews the amazing bungled story of the Sago mine disaster. While most media outlets got their hand caught in the exploitation-of-human-drama jar -- and have spent most of the time afterward lamenting the fact -- important stories about overlooked mine safety hazards and the "fox guarding the henhouse" syndrome have, predictably, been ignored.

* School vouchers have been struck down in Florida. Before the current era of permanent war and a resurgent imperial presidency, this would have been big news.

* The Abramoff scandal has consumed much of Washington and the blogosphere, although its full ramifications probably won't be known for a few months. See Google News for the latest coverage.

* "Four months after Hurricane Katrina, analyses of data suggest that some widely reported assumptions about the storm's victims were incorrect," reports Knight Ridder. "For example, a comparison of locations where 874 bodies were recovered with U.S. Census tract data indicates that the victims weren't disproportionately poor. Another database, compiled by Knight Ridder of 486 Katrina victims from Orleans and St. Bernard parishes, suggests they also weren't disproportionately African-American."

* Socialist Worker reviews "The strike that shut down New York." This report reflects the sort of coverage you'd expect from a socialist paper, but it's safe to say that you can't find anything of use in the dominant media about the strike. The bias against it, from virtually every corporate outlet, was truly remarkable.

* Harry Magdoff, one of the prime movers at Monthly Review, recently passed away. Read obits from Robert Pollin and John Bellamy Foster, then check out some of Magdoff's articles online.

* New oceanographic research, published in Nature, links a major climate change event 55 million years ago with global warming. Then, a quick rise in temperatures triggered a shift in ocean currents that had severe consequences for the general stability of the earth's climate. "The study," AFP adds, "comes on the heels of research published in November which suggests that global warming is slowing the Atlantic current that gives western Europe its mild climate." See also: Climate change, a year in review.

* Soccer's World Cup is coming up this summer in Germany. One of the issues lurking behind FIFA's happy facade is prostitution.

* Here's a good interview with Noam Chomsky.