Away

I'm out of town for about a week with irregular to no internet access. Make of that what you may...

A face of war

Boosting Fatah

NY Times:

The United States spent about $1.9 million of its yearly $400 million in aid to the Palestinians on dozens of quick projects before elections this week to bolster the governing Fatah faction's image with voters and strengthen its hand in competing with the militant faction Hamas, American and Palestinian officials said Sunday.

The spending was intended "to work with the Palestinian Authority to enhance democratic institutions and support democratic actors, not just Fatah," said Micaela Schweitzer-Bluhm, a spokeswoman for the American consulate in East Jerusalem. The program, run by the United States Agency for International Development, was described Sunday in The Washington Post.

American and Palestinian officials who spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to speak to reporters said that the program, which started in August, was intended to help defeat Hamas and that the government had done a detailed political analysis to try to focus on constituencies where Hamas was doing well. The international development agency's Office of Transition Initiatives was allowed as much as $30,000 in discretionary spending for each project instead of the $10,000 usually allotted.

Ha'aretz:

The American administration has promised Israel that the United States will not recognize any Palestinian government in which Hamas participates, government sources in Jerusalem have said.

The sources said that American envoys who visited here about 10 days ago told Israeli officials that recognizing such a government would violate American law.

...Polls have shown that Hamas could win a third or more of the vote in the Wednesday elections for the Palestinian parliament, a showing that could prompt an offer from the ruling Fatah party to share power in a coalition government.

Translation: "democracy" is wonderful, as long as the "right people" win the elections.

"Iraq Rebuilding Badly Hobbled"

Today's NY Times:

The first official history of the $25 billion American reconstruction effort in Iraq depicts a program hobbled from the outset by gross understaffing, a lack of technical expertise, bureaucratic infighting, secrecy and constantly increasing security costs, according to a preliminary draft.

...In the document, the paralyzing effect of staffing shortfalls and contracting battles between the State Department and the Pentagon, creating delays of months at a stretch, are described for the first time from inside the program.

The document also recounts concerns about writing contracts for an entity with the "ambiguous legal status" of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the question of whether it was an American entity or a multinational one like NATO.

Seemingly odd decisions on dividing the responsibility for various sectors of the reconstruction crop up repeatedly in the document. At one point, a planning team made the decision to put all reconstruction activities in Iraq under the Army Corps of Engineers, except anything to do with water, which would go to the Navy. At the time, a retired admiral, David Nash, was in charge of the rebuilding.

"It almost looks like a spoils system between various agencies," said Steve Ellis, a vice president and an authority on the Army corps at Taxpayers for Common Sense, an organization in Washington, who read a copy of the document. "You had various fiefdoms established in the contracting process."

Quick! Look over there! Corruption at the UN!

Didn't happen?

Two news items that should pique your curiosity:

1) From CNN:

Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz on Sunday ridiculed as "bizarre" a U.S. report that senior al Qaeda leaders were killed in a CIA attack on a home along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

"There is no evidence, as of half an hour ago, that there were any other people there," Aziz said on CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer."

2) From the Durham Herald-Sun:

A Duke University professor who has edited the statements of Osama bin Laden is sticking by his opinion that the al-Qaida leader is dead or incapacitated.

...Soon after the CIA's identification of the [Bin Laden] tape this week, Lawrence received a few anonymous e-mail messages gloating that his assessment had been incorrect.

At first, he thought so, too. Then, he said, he looked more closely at the tape's message and context -- and began to doubt its authenticity.

...Unlike most of bin Laden's pronouncements in [Bruce] Lawrence's book, "Messages to the World," it doesn't contain allusions to the Quran and Islamic history. It doesn't cast Western policy in the Middle East as a product of a "Zionist-Crusader alliance," as bin Laden has nearly unfailingly done in the past, he said.

Rather than the florid, poetic style of most of bin Laden's statements, this one is bluntly prosaic.

Moreover, he said, it would be uncharacteristic for bin Laden to buttress his arguments by appealing to a book by a U.S. author. The tape commends "Rogue State," William Blum's 2000 indictment of U.S. foreign policy.

Furthermore, the timing of the release -- soon after a U.S. missile strike against al-Qaida leaders in Pakistan -- seems suspicious, Lawrence said.

"Isn't it almost too circumstantial that a bin Laden tape that has been around for at least a month, that it now surfaces in the immediate aftermath of a failed strike on his second-in-command?" he asked, referring to Ayman al-Zawahri.

I'm not suggesting these excerpts are the last word on their respective subjects. What I am suggesting is the need for skepticism and, above all, verifiable evidence. Until that's presented, take all claims with extreme caution.

I'm more skeptical about the attack on Damadola than I am about the Bin Laden tape, to be honest. I will concede, however, that Lawrence raises important points. On close inspection, last week's tape does sound much different than past Bin Laden missives, even to the ears of this non-expert.

What a Way to Make a Living

The American journalist Jill Carroll is still unaccounted for, but hopefully she'll be released soon.

If you're interested, she penned an AJR article last year that provides a nice glimpse into the hardships she's faced while working in Iraq. There are a lot of people like her putting their lives on the line to cover this war, and they deserve our gratitude -- especially the "unembedded" ones.

Down the neoliberal drain

In Counterpunch, Peter Feng lays out an elegant -- and disturbing -- case for viewing the US as a Third World nation.

Iran's real weapon

Martin Walker of UPI has picked up on the story of the proposed Iranian oil bourse that will trade energy in euros, rather than the dollar. Kind of a ho hum story, right? Of course not, says Walker:

This sounds like a minor change, and possibly even a useful one, broadening the choice among traders and consumers in the kind of way that Adam Smith, the 18th century father of modern capitalism, would have recommended.

Not so. This could be a far more profoundly punishing blow to American interests than Iran's ability to manufacture a crude atom bomb that would have little credibility until it became small and stable and reliable enough to be delivered on some putative target.

The relationship between the oil price and dollar is intimate and important, and very useful to the dollar's highly profitable status as the world's reserve currency. The prospect of a rival bourse and futures market opens the intriguing possibility, beyond hedging the future oil price, of profitable arbitrage between the euro and the dollar.

And if oil and gas are to be denominated in more than just one currency, why not open the trade to others? Why not denominate the price of a barrel of oil in Japanese Yen, or in Chinese yuan, the currency of the world's second biggest oil importer?

Why not, in short, end the monopoly rule of the almighty dollar?

Such a move would not be welcomed in Washington, which swiftly moved after the fall of Baghdad in 2003 to reverse Saddam Hussein's impudent decision to start selling Iraqi oil for euros, rather than dollars. After all, the great benefit of running the world's reserve currency means that if all else fails, the United States Treasury can just print more and more of the stuff and pay for its oil imports that way.

UPI is typically derided for being a "Moonie" outlet, but it does contain a pretty solid roster of reporters and covers a good number of important stories, like this one, that tend to be marginalized in the rest of the dominant media. I think -- although I could be wrong -- it's the first major American media outlet to run a story on the bourse.

Ford cuts

Joe Kay of the WSWS contextualizes Ford's announcement of 30K job cuts. Strike another blow against labor and the manufacturing sector in the US.

For Narnia

This story underscores so much of what's wrong with the media: from debilitating synergy schemes, the woes of corporate consolidation, to plain old demographic pandering.

Weekend reading

* Iraqi election results are in. Juan Cole has an early reaction.

* While it doesn't get adequate attention, even here, violence continues to plague Iraq. Here's a look back on the past week from UPI's Martin Sieff.

* In the LRB, Ed Harriman looks at the corruption endemic to the American occupation of Iraq -- wonderfully phrased by some as a "reconstruction gap." The essay is a follow-up to Harriman's July piece in the same pages.

* In a cogent Tom Dispatch essay, John Brown relates the GWOT to America's ongoing efforts to clear and expand the "frontier."

* Lookee here: Iran's getting a bit frisky with its assets. Start the timer: I'm sure some yahoo will be branding this "economic terrorism" soon enough. Also, check some simple, rational thoughts on Iran from Charley Reese.

* After this, I thought Niall Ferguson couldn't shame himself much more. How wrong I was.

* Another high profile mine accident in West Virginia. Go figure.

* Google's been in the news a lot lately, mostly because of the government's efforts to get at internet search databases. The LRB has an essay on the history of Google this week, as well.

* Yet another good interview with Chomsky, here. Coincidentally, Noam made his way over to Ireland and is in the process of delivering a series of lectures. Watch or listen to some of them here. He also gave the prestigious 2006 Amnesty Lecture, which you can download here. In particular, the AI talk was excellent. He gets extra kudos for bringing up this long forgotten story, which typifies the "war on terror" rather well.

* Salon has an interesting review of Eric Foner's latest book, Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction. Aside: Foner is one of the greatest living US historians and, if you're looking for a very elegant survey of American history, his The Story of American Freedom is probably the best one out there.

An Iranian Oil Bourse?

A war for oil in Iran? That's not too far off base, argues Krassimir Petrov.

Pity the region

Augustus Richard Norton reviews Fisk's new book in The Nation. He has a fair rendering, I thought:

The Great War for Civilisation is 1,000-plus pages of history with attitude. It is not an impartial reading of contemporary Middle East history, but it is generally clear-eyed and consistently unflinching. The book seals Robert Fisk's place as a venerable, indispensable contributor to informed debate in and about the Middle East. If there are no realistic remedies on offer, there is generous informed criticism and a storehouse of rare detail and erudite reportage that serve as testimony to an exceptional career, one that is unmatched in its sustained intensity, moral introspection and courage.

I'm not finished with it yet, but I would recommend it to others. Great War is a beast, in terms of size, but it goes by pretty quickly.

Read Blum

Bin Laden says:

We don't mind offering you a long-term truce on fair conditions that we adhere to. We are a nation that God has forbidden to lie and cheat. So both sides can enjoy security and stability under this truce so we can build Iraq and Afghanistan, which have been destroyed in this war. There is no shame in this solution, which prevents the wasting of billions of dollars that have gone to those with influence and merchants of war in America who have supported Bush's election campaign with billions of dollars - which lets us understand the insistence by Bush and his gang to carry on with war.

If you (Americans) are sincere in your desire for peace and security, we have answered you. And if Bush decides to carry on with his lies and oppression, then it would be useful for you to read the book "Rogue State," which states in its introduction: "If I were president, I would stop the attacks on the United States: First I would give an apology to all the widows and orphans and those who were tortured. Then I would announce that American interference in the nations of the world has ended once and for all."

Holy shit. That's Bill Blum's book. Osama's reading Blum.

Poor Bill. He's already in enough trouble with the FBI, no doubt. This can't help.

WSF

Like most, I've dropped the ball on the World Social Forum taking place this week. I completely forgot to even mention it.

See TerraViva for coverage of what's going on.

The global war on terrorism human rights

Jim Lobe notes the release of Human Rights Watch's annual "World Report." As usual, the picture is pretty grim around the globe, and American participation in and cover for abuses continues making the situation worse.

How Big?

It truly boggles the mind to contemplate how much money this country wastes on "Defense."

Collateral damage

I don't know what's more pathetic: the idea that we should take Pakistani and American claims about killing "senior" Al Qaeda members in the missile strike on Damadola last week at face value, or the willingness of some liberals, like Drum, to lap it up.

48K per year

Robert Fisk must feel so lonely:

Between 3,000 and 4,000 Iraqis are killed every month, rendering "ridiculous" US President George W. Bush's estimate of about 30,000 civilian casualties since the start of the war, veteran British journalist Robert Fisk said Wednesday.

The figures were compiled during several recent trips to the country occupied since March 2003 by US-led forces, The Independent newspaper's Beirut-based correspondent told a news conference in Madrid where he was promoting his book "The Great War for Civilisation".

The casualty rate meant up to 48,000 Iraqis a year were dying in the conflict, "the figure of 30,000 plus is ridiculous", Fisk said, adding that the West did not care about Iraqi deaths.

Go ahead. Besides the usual suspects -- Pilger, the Cockburn brothers -- find me another Western journalist of similar stature who is willing to speak about this. I'm having trouble thinking of one.

Al-Jazeera Seeking Bush-Blair Transcript

Don't worry. The Bush/Blair bombing of Al Jazeera story hasn't disappeared completely yet.

And in case you missed it, the Guardian published a bit more of the backstory two weeks ago.

Scandalology 101

Patricia Goldsmith: "To paraphrase Marshall McLuhan, the media is the scandal."

NSA Spying Evolved Pre-9/11

Jason Leopold continues fleshing out the story about the NSA's domestic spying before 9/11. It's a convoluted tale, but one that definitely deserves more attention than it's currently receiving. Cheney sure looks like he was up to something nefarious.

'Past the Point of No Return'

Truthout has collated three recent pieces from the Independent, all of which are based in some way around the claims of noted Gaia theorist James Lovelock. Although they're definitely not going to lift your spirits, they are worth reading in full.

(via P!)

Gore Is Right

I didn't mention it at the time, but Paul Craig Roberts (the most visceral anti-Bush writer out there, for my money) thinks Al Gore gave the "the most important political speech" of his lifetime on Monday.

I wouldn't go that far, but it was put together well and worth checking out if you haven't already. What Roberts has to say is also worth noting. It's no wonder why he, the ex-Reaganite, isn't featured on Townhall anymore.

The Shame of the Nation

The Guardian points out what very few others have dared since Monday: MLK's "dream" of equality is failing, spectacularly, in America's public school system.

More from Jonathan Kozol on this same topic, here.

"Re-Talibanization"?

Tom Regan of the CSM rounds up some of the news about the increase in violence in Afghanistan.

Mississippi forgotten

Sad, but undoubtedly true. Things aren't peachy in New Orleans, either.

Downward trends

If you take even the most cursory peak behind the curtain of the alleged strength of the economy in the US at the current moment, you find some very disturbing trends.

Spy story revelations

Chris Floyd observes:

Good story in the NYT today about the pathetic ineffectiveness of Bush's illegal wiretap program in fighting terrorism – the ostensible reason offered for the scheme. But the story completely ignores what has rapidly become the most important aspect of this scandal (aside from its inherent – and impeachable – illegality): the fact that Bush ordered the illegal, warrantless, widespread wiretapping of American citizens MONTHS BEFORE the September 11 attacks, as the ever-intrepid Jason Leopold revealed last week: Bush Authorized Domestic Spying Before 9/11.

Leopold's bombshell has yet to penetrate the cotton-packed ears of the mainstream media – even though it gives the lie to Bush's only "defense": the threadbare falsehood that Congress' Sept. 14th authorization for him to deal with the Sept. 11 attackers was a blank check "Enabling Act" allowing him to circumvent any law that might conflict with this mandate. As any sentient being knows, this argument is a great big crock of Crawford cowflop – so naturally, we will soon have long, detailed and utterly pointless Senate hearings into the matter, which will doubtless end with a Congressional surrender to the dictator's whim, albeit with a bit of harrumphing and tut-tutting to save face.

Yeah, I can't wait for them. More grandstanding from Biden, et al. while the Republic continues going down in flames.

Boosting Islamist prospects

If they have any manners, Islamist politicians will one day thank George Bush for his help.

Medicare transition flops

Well, this is certainly no surprise:

With tens of thousands of people unable to get medicines promised by Medicare, the Bush administration has told insurers that they must provide a 30-day supply of any drug that a beneficiary was previously taking, and it said that poor people must not be charged more than $5 for a covered drug.

The actions came after several states declared public health emergencies, and many states announced that they would step in to pay for prescriptions that should have been covered by the federal Medicare program.

Republicans have joined Democrats in asserting that the federal government botched the beginning of the prescription drug program, which started on Jan. 1. People who had signed up for coverage found that they were not on the government's list of subscribers. Insurers said they had no way to identify poor people entitled to extra help with their drug costs. Pharmacists spent hours on the telephone trying to reach insurance companies that administer the drug benefit under contract to Medicare.

Many of the problems involve low-income people entitled to both Medicare and Medicaid.

So in other words, the caricature of Republicans looking to put granny out on her ass and take her medication away is not, after all, far from the truth. Good to know.

"Impeding the westward march"

"Injun Country." Really? People actually write this stuff? And they're taken seriously?

What scares me even more is that you can easily graft Kaplan's cute phrase onto the "gap" part of Tom Barnett's work, which makes perfect sense when you realize how influential Barnett is in the "Defense" establishment.

I/P elections soon

Remi Kanazi breaks down some of the issues behind the elections in Israel and Palestine.

While there's some time to breathe until Israelis go to the polls, Palestinian elections are less than a week away.

MLK

Robert Jensen on MLK Day:

I don’t pretend to know what King would say if he were alive today. I don’t know what analysis he would offer or what strategy he would propose. But he would certainly challenge all of us to act -- every one of us here today, everyone in this country, which has the opportunity to turn its power away from wealth and war, toward justice and peace. Whatever else King would say, he would say this:

Act. Now. Before the only path before us is that long, dark, shameful corridor, which ends at a door we should all pray is never opened.

Good advice.

Pulling the plug on Iraq $

The LA Times says goodbye to those grand plans of building up Iraq into a model democracy via a modified "Marshall Plan."

Personally, I have no problem cutting off reconstruction aid to Iraq. What that country needs, instead, are reparations. Massive ones that Iraqis will have control over, not Western bureaucrats who will do their damnedest to funnel whatever monies are allocated into the coffers of transnational corporations.

Many people shake their heads at the corruption at the heart of the American occupation. What they fail to understand is that the missing billions weren't the consequence of some grievous mistake, but rather a nice benefit of the invasion for those contractors that were lucky enough to suckle at the American teet.

In the DROC

Rahul Mahajan offers some cogent thoughts on "Congo's Tragedy and Western Complicity," following the publication of the Lancet survey that pinned excess deaths from the ongoing civil war at nearly 38K a month.

Iran

Iran's alleged nuclear desire has quickly shot to the top of international attention over the course of the past week, again raising the spectre of a US/Israeli military attack.

Lamenting that we now sit on the brink of a messy confrontation, Robert Dreyfuss argues that the Bush administration has bungled this situation terribly. Dreyfuss suggests we could be at a very different juncture than the one the world currently faces if the Bushies were less ideologically driven in their foreign policy dealings.

Most of what Dreyfuss says is true. I'm not, however, terribly sympathetic to his characterisation of Iran as a "rogue regime." Looking at things that way does nothing for us. Frankly, the "rogue" label is just a smear if you're not going to similarly lament America and Israel's "rogue" characteristics.

Nor am I a fan of nuclear proliferation, and if that is indeed Iran's goal, it wouldn't make me very happy. Still, it's worth pointing out that as yet there's no evidence against Iran, a detail that seems to be getting lost in the groupthink.

Unfortunately, to suggest that Iran has no need for nuclear weapons is absurd when you consider the sort of rhetoric emanating out of Tel Aviv and Washington for at least the last 4 years. It's perfectly reasonable for Iran to want to have nuclear weapons when they have shown to be the only real deterrent against aggression from the west (see Korea, North).

Much like the pre-war Iraq scenario, the hand wringing led by Israel and the US over nuclear proliferation is being used as a cover to build up Iran as a grave threat to humanity, which can then be manufactured into political momentum or public support for missile strikes. Again, the desirability of creating conditions where the US and/or Israel can act militarily with minimum international uproar is the goal here. The question of Iran's nuclear program, while not insignificant for the rest of the world, is not what is driving this scenario.

Memo to Americans and, indeed, the rest of the world: don't get caught up in the groupthink, again.

Bush Authorized Domestic Spying Before 9/11

Jason Leopold:

The National Security Agency advised President Bush in early 2001 that it had been eavesdropping on Americans during the course of its work monitoring suspected terrorists and foreigners believed to have ties to terrorist groups, according to a declassified document.

The NSA's vast data-mining activities began shortly after Bush was sworn in as president and the document contradicts his assertion that the 9/11 attacks prompted him to take the unprecedented step of signing a secret executive order authorizing the NSA to monitor a select number of American citizens thought to have ties to terrorist groups.

So what's the justification going to be now?

The peak ahead

Alternet has three interesting pieces on "peak oil" by James Howard Kunstler, Christopher Flavin, and Robert K. Kaufman. Check em out.

Send him packing

Yes, please, impeach the bastard.

Post Sharon

Uri Avnery looks at some of the possibilities in Israel after Sharon.

Perspective on the NYC strike

David Sirota on the absurdity that was last month's NYC transit strike, including the media's hostile reaction to it:

...the workers in New York were asking for $20 million more over three years than New York city/state government wanted to give them. And you might also recall that the media never bothered to once ask why the city/state politicians were refusing to provide this money just a month after handing over $1.5 billion in taxpayer-issued bonds for Goldman Sachs' new headquarters.

Now, today, Reuters reports "Wall Street bonuses are expected to have hit a record $21.5 billion in 2005 from $18.6 billion in 2004 as investment banks reaped record earnings...Goldman Sachs Chairman and Chief Executive Henry Paulson received a compensation package worth about $38 million." In other words, Goldman Sachs' CEO alone made more last year than the combined total that thousands of transit workers were requesting over three years in order to avoid cuts to their pension. He made this at the very same time politicians held photo-ops to laugh it up with him at a groundbreaking ceremony to hand over the taxpayer-funded bonds to him. And yet, many of those same politicians who hammed it up with Paulson while giving him taxpayer money were attacking transit workers as "thugs", and the media never reported the context of the situation.

This is what substitutes for political debate in our country. It's perfectly fine for a CEO who makes $38 million a year to ask politicians to give him and his company $1.5 billion worth of taxpayer-issued bonds to build his palatial new office. And yet, if thousands of blue collar workers ask for a paltry sum over three years to prevent cuts to retirement pensions, that's unacceptable and they are labeled thugs. Incredible.

This is what you get in these neoliberal times, particularly when media is primarily seen as a revenue generator, rather than a public good. Capital reigns supreme; labor is treated like shit.

Genocide and the West

True, this:

If one thing compels itself with brutal clarity, it is that we are not entitled to consider genocide as something pathologically external or alien: it is absolutely part of the rule of capitalism and its system of competing nation-states. The word should haunt the discourse of liberal imperialists, who happily use it to describe the actions of official enemies, yet miss it when it is right in front of them.

Read the whole post. Then go hide in shame.

Blame Israel?

Was the Iraq war fought for Israel's benefit? Not quite, says Stephen Zunes.

Pounding Iraq

Here's further thoughts from Tom Engelhardt and Michael Schwartz on the American military's love affair with an air war in Iraq.

As Schwartz succinctly puts it, this "strategy, billed as a way to de-escalate the war, is actually a formula for the slaughter of Iraqi civilians." And as long as none of the beloved US troops get hurt, nobody in this country gives a damn.

Worse care for more

In case you haven't been paying attention, healthcare is "still a problem" in the US.

This is one of those issues that continues to blow my mind. Namely, why the US won't/can't implement universal care. It makes sense on so many levels that even the most ardent fiscal conservative should be yelling for it. See Malcolm Gladwell's New Yorker essay from last August for further thoughts.

Who cares about miners?

Following the Sago accident, recent reports from USA Today and Knight Ridder have fleshed out the degree to which the Bush administration has systematically gutted relevant safety regulations in the mining industry.

Alas, reporting like this is rare. How come? Check in with the WSWS for some of the major reasons.

(via cursor)

Into open arms

(Repost from March. Obviously, though, still relevant.)

Revising the Iraq Body Count

Today Counterpunch published an expanded version of Andrew Cockburn's essay on Iraq war deaths that ran in the LA Times a few weeks ago. The new article contains a good deal of added detail, much of it important and sobering.

Most notably, Cockburn relays a revised estimate of the total war deaths as tabulated by Pierre Sprey, a statistician colleague. Sprey took a closer look at the famed Lancet survey and extrapolated its findings up to today. This is what he concluded, according to Cockburn:

Assuming the rate of death has proceeded at the same pace since the study was carried out, Sprey calculates that deaths inflicted to date as a direct result of the Anglo-American invasion and occupation of Iraq could be, at best estimate, 183,000, with an upper 95 per cent confidence boundary of 511,000.

Given the generally smug and heartless reaction accorded the initial Lancet study, no such updated figure is likely to resonate in public discourse, especially when it registers a dramatic increase. Though the figures quoted by Bush were without a shadow of a doubt a gross underestimate (he couldn't even be bothered to get the number of dead American troops right) 30,000 dead among the people we were allegedly coming to save is still an appalling notion. The possibility that we have actually helped kill as many as half a million people suggests a war crime of truly twentieth century proportions.

In some countries, denying the fact of mass murder is considered a felony offence, incurring harsh penalties. But then, it all depends on who is being murdered, and by whom.

Indeed. Thank heavens we have these things called "editors" and forces like "concision" that help keep this sort of unpleasantness out of our mainstream dailies.

Czar Dubya

What the hell is up with this?

President Bush agreed with great fanfare last month to accept a ban on torture, but he later quietly reserved the right to ignore it, even as he signed it into law.

Acting from the seclusion of his Texas ranch at the start of New Year's weekend, Bush said he would interpret the new law in keeping with his expansive view of presidential power. He did it by issuing a bill-signing statement - a little-noticed device that has become a favorite tool of presidential power in the Bush White House.

In fact, Bush has used signing statements to reject, revise or put his spin on more than 500 legislative provisions. Experts say he has been far more aggressive than any previous president in using the statements to claim sweeping executive power - and not just on national security issues.

"It's nothing short of breath-taking," said Phillip Cooper, a professor of public administration at Portland State University. "In every case, the White House has interpreted presidential authority as broadly as possible, interpreted legislative authority as narrowly as possible, and pre-empted the judiciary."

Seriously, is anyone going to put this bastard in his place soon?

Reeling in Israel?

In a 27 December 2005 letter, HRW called on President Bush to cut diplomatic aid to Israel in proportion to the amount Israel is spending on its illegal settlement policy:

To avoid U.S. financial complicity in policies that the U.S. Government opposes and that international law prohibits, we therefore call on you and other key government officials, first, to state in unequivocal terms that the United States will not tolerate any further settlement expansion and, second, to announce that the administration will deduct from U.S. financial aid to Israel -- about $2.58 billion in fiscal year 2005 -- an amount equal to Israel's expenditures on the settlements and on the construction and maintenance of such portion of the wall that is inside the West Bank.

This is definitely an issue worth getting behind.

I'm under no delusions about how delusional the US discourse on Israel is -- see, for example, the Orwellian laments about Sharon's passing from Israeli politics as perhaps a fatal blow to the "peace process" -- or whether a call for "aid" reduction has a snowball's chance in hell of being heeded.

Still, no matter how unlikely it is to come to pass, HRW needs to be vociferously supported on this by people who actually give a damn about nostalgic stuff like, you know, "human rights" and "justice."

Heard about Iraq, cont'd

I forgot to post this yesterday: Eliot Weinberger's updated his notable "what I heard about Iraq" essay from last year's LRB.

You can check out the 2005 version here.

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.