Lazy holiday recovery
* Check a great, global-minded round up of stories about where things stand at the dawn of 2008.
* McClatchy and Dahr Jamail survey Iraq at the end of 2007, specifically. Meantime, Fred Kaplan offers up some post-surge scenarios and RawStory relays a new UNICEF assessment on the state of Iraq's children.
* Also via McClatchy, the latest metrics from the Pentagon on Iraq, along with further parsing from Lenin's Tomb.
* As the US continues giving Iraqi refugees the finger, those who have fled increasingly resort to desperate measures.
* Stephen Soldz hearkens back to the first battle of Fallujah, using some newly leaked analysis from the Pentagon.
* Juan Cole: Top Ten Myths about Iraq 2007.
* Conn Hallinan: "In short, the 'surge' has very little to do with the reduction of violence in Baghdad, and virtually nothing to do with the relative peace in Western Iraq. Both are the quiet that follows in the wake of ethnic cleansing."
* More documentation about the increased deployment of airpower in Iraq and Afghanistan, particularly concerning the usage of unmanned drones.
* WaPo: "While most of the public focus has been on the political fight over troop levels, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) reported this month that the Bush administration's request for the 2008 fiscal year of $189.3 billion for Defense Department operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and worldwide counterterrorism activities was 20 percent higher than for fiscal 2007 and 60 percent higher than for fiscal 2006." In other words, $15bn a month.
* Indeed, "when it comes to corporate media and the U.S. government's wars of aggression, some things never change."
* Jim Lobe: "2007 will likely go down in U.S. history as the year in which the balance of power in the long-running struggle between hawks and realists in the administration of President George W. Bush shifted decisively in favour of the latter."
* There's little to say about the Bhutto assassination outside of pablum and cliché, although War In Context has been offering up some good coverage and commentary. Running news, here.
* The latest from Kenya, here.
* See "The Top Ten Most Underreported Humanitarian Stories of 2007," along with further coverage from DN!.
* Charlie Wilson's War? Or Zbignew Brzezinski's?
* Jonathan Cook revisits Israel's "generous offer" at Camp David, offering commentary on some newly released documents.
* Check a very good, comprehensive review of the Walt/Mearsheimer thesis by Stephen Zunes.
* Thankfully, Hoover didn't have detention camps at the ready. Or, say, a massive computer database.
* Tom Engelhardt narrates how America became known, globally, as Torture, Inc.
* Somebody still thinks the 9/11 Commission report was worth the paper it was printed on. Foolish chap.
* Not Getting It About New Orleans. Also see this, this, and this.
* JoAnn Wypijewski: Is there a Left left?
* I hate Iowa, too.
* Do check out the Nader doc, "An Unreasonable Man." It's quite good. If you cannot catch it on PBS, look for it on DVD. As an added bonus, Alterman & Gitlin come across as absolute pricks towards the end.
* In the age of MP3s, sound quality is worse than ever.
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