Yet more
* The Independent's Kim Sengupta offers a rough outline of the rise of militias in Iraq, tracing them directly to the unleashing of the "Salvador Option."
* So the US cannot account for a good portion of the arms it has shipped to Iraq. An unfortunate accounting error? Or a calculated one? See also: "We Arm the World."
* Slave Labor at US Embassy in Baghdad? This is an important two-part investigation from IPS.
* Mmm. War profiteer. Thy name is KBR.
* Anthony Shadid returns to Baghdad after a year, finding only a "city of ghosts."
* Kudos to the Toronto Star's Linda McQuaig for saying what so few in the US will. The primary issue is not, nor has it ever been, whether the Iraq war was "winnable" or whether it was "lost" because of incompetence. Rather, of paramount concern is that "it is illegal — not to mention immoral — for a country to invade another country, in other words, to wage a war of aggression."
* Phil Rockstroh observes that "human beings have always possessed an immense capacity for self-deception -- but, at present, we Americans can no longer afford stupid, naked monkey business as usual: The stakes are too damn high. When we, as a people, cannot or will not connect the needless deaths of well over half-a-million Iraqis with the oversized motor vehicles in our driveways, the situation has grown dire indeed."
* Aww, Ken Pollack is losing sleep over Iraq. Poor ol' chap.
* Christopher de Bellaigue has written a number of insightful pieces on the Iranian nuclear issue in the NYRB, including a review of Pollack's Persian Puzzle. Here's another good recent essay from de Bellaigue, "Defiant Iran."
* I eagerly await the day Iran is allowed to conduct naval operations off the US coast. I mean, that only seems fair, considering that the US is doing that off the Iranian coast. In possibly related maneuvers, US warships in the region are reportedly on "alert" because of threats to Saudi oil facilities.
* "Did Israel use a secret new uranium-based weapon in southern Lebanon this summer in the 34-day assault that cost more than 1,300 Lebanese lives, most of them civilians?" asks Robert Fisk. The UN has opened an investigation into this question, according to the Independent.
* Eh, some more "unpeople" -- a reported 80 -- killed in an alleged "targeted attack" on Zawahiri. Every time something like this happens, of course, Musharraf's collar gets a little tighter.
* Maher Arar narrates his happy little trip to Syria in 2002.
* This is a very good article on some of the misguided debates over the veiling of Muslim women in Europe.
* A NYC Indymedia correspondent was recently killed covering the uprising in Oaxaca, Mexico, which Vicente Fox is now trying to crush. Some further background via the links here.
* A major new report delivered to the British government by Sir Nicholas Stern, a (the?) leading UK economist, contends that the longer we wait to act on global warming, the worse the problem will get, both ecologically and economically.
* The US economy's doing fine. Just Don't Look Behind the Curtain. See also: "The ship of state is on a disastrous course, and will founder on the reefs of economic disaster if nothing is done to correct it."
* Only in a very sick nation would the problem of homelessness be increasingly criminalized.
* Generalissimo Bush? We might need to get used to that.
* Time looks at those unreliable, easily manipulable voting machines that are going to process American "democracy" about a week from today. I hope I'm not the only one who finds it hilarious that the press is churning out stories on the potential for vote fraud when there's practically no time to do anything about it before the coming election.
* Bob Parry looks back to the "Original October Surprise" of 1980 in a 3-part series over at Consortium News.
* Responding to Bruce Ackerman and Todd Gitlin's recent "manifesto" published in the American Prospect, Gabriel Ash asks, "What’s a Liberal?"
* Paul Street takes a principled stand "Against Obamania." See also the recent Harper's piece on Obama's backers.
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