thoughts on the eve of the apocalypse

No Mas

2008-08-31T21:16:00.000-04:00

After mulling things over, I've come to the conclusion that it makes sense to close up shop here. Things have run their course.

Thanks to everyone for stopping by, at one point or another. There's a good chance I'll pop up elsewhere on the blog front, eventually. Perhaps we'll run across each other there...

Ahoy

2008-07-08T00:09:00.004-04:00

Well, I guess I should say something.

Blogging is not do-able for me at the current moment, at least not in the way I'd like. I'm leaving stuff on ice for the time being until I figure out whether to: a) resume things here; b) close up shop altogether; or c) possibly start a different blog, with a different focus.

I'm not sure how long it's going to take me to figure out what to do next, since I'm juggling a couple of variables. Sorry about that. Stay tuned, I guess.

'Agreed in principle'

2008-05-10T00:20:00.002-04:00

War With Iran Might Be Closer Than You Think.

(via)

Israel Without Zionism?

2008-05-10T00:19:00.000-04:00

Tony Karon: Israel is 60, Zionism is Dead, What Now?

'The Arab Mind'

2008-05-10T00:16:00.003-04:00

I have long found it amusing how the people most likely to denounce Edward Said's thesis in Orientalism routinely confirm that very thesis with their constant opining and alleged understanding of the "Arab" or the "Muslim."

The Patai stuff is just the most obvious marker here; examples abound in the neocon-o-sphere, not atypically in the reverence given to Bernard "22 August" Lewis.

ps - Said torched Lewis' critical style in this old Harper's essay. Well worth the read.

Fall down

2008-05-10T00:15:00.002-04:00

Greg Mitchell wonders why it took so long for the press to break the Abu Ghraib story.

A good question, but still too tame when you consider the larger context of the scandal -- something that also was readily apparent at the time, if you bothered to look.

Deploying the unfit

2008-05-10T00:14:00.001-04:00

Ok, so it's not the Washington Post and it's only been a year, but I wasn't too far off base.

A DIY journalist

2008-05-08T14:10:00.002-04:00

Check an interview with Dahr Jamail in the Guardian.

Israel's bday

2008-05-08T14:08:00.004-04:00

A joyous occasion for some. For others, it's been sixty years of dispossession.

Gated

2008-05-08T14:05:00.000-04:00

Paulville? Seriously?

Defiling another city

2008-05-08T01:24:00.004-04:00

Yet another example of destroying a village to save it, so to speak. This time it's Sadr City.

"Surge" Strains

2008-05-08T01:19:00.005-04:00

Jim Lobe says that Bush soon will be running into problems funding his beloved "surge" in Iraq.

Demolishing Feith and Wolfowitz

2008-05-08T01:18:00.000-04:00

Gosh, maybe if I start lying more and enabling war crimes I, too, can teach at Georgetown. Or -- even better -- run the World Bank for a stretch of time.

Celebrating a terrorist

2008-05-07T12:58:00.006-04:00

I like Miami. I really do. It's such a shame that, using the logic of the GWOT™, we're going to have to bomb the shit out of it, pronto.

Persistent Injustice

2008-05-07T12:55:00.004-04:00

Let's hope Jeremiah Wright doesn't see this. Might make him angrier.

African Americans have suffered much higher rates of arrests and imprisonment than whites in the nearly 30-year-old U.S. "war on drugs", according to two reports released here this week.

While white citizens constitute the large majority of convicted drug offenders, African American communities have been the principal "fronts" in the war, according to "Targeting Blacks: Drug Law Enforcement and Race in the United States", by New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW).

Among other conclusions, the 67-page report found that African Americans constituted 53.5 percent of all individuals who were sentenced to prison for violating drug laws between the war's launch in 1980 and 2003, the most recent year for which statistics are available.

Across 34 states covered by the HRW report, a black man was found to be nearly 12 times more likely than a white man to be sentenced to prison for drug offences. A black woman is nearly five times more likely to go to prison than a white woman.

In a separate study of data from 43 of the largest U.S. cities, the Sentencing Project found that the rate of drug arrests for African Americans increased by 225 percent, compared to 70 percent among whites over the same 23-year period, despite the absence of any statistical evidence that the rate of drug use in each community had changed.

In 11 cities, the 45-page study, "Disparity by Geography: The War on Drugs in America's Cities", found that black arrest rates grew by more than 500 percent over the period.

"Urban black Americans have borne the brunt of the war on drugs," said Michael Tonry, a professor of criminal law at the University of Minnesota associated with the Sentencing Project. "They have been arrested, prosecuted, convicted, and imprisoned at increasing rates since the early 1980s, and grossly out of proportion to their numbers in the general population or among drug users."

Recreate sixty-eight?

2008-05-07T12:54:00.000-04:00

Frida Berrigan takes apart some myths about the peace movement.

'The horrific mess that is America'

2008-05-06T14:34:00.002-04:00

Some interesting thoughts about Bageant's Deer Hunting With Jesus.

(via)

Targeting hospitals

2008-05-06T14:33:00.002-04:00

Last week US and Iraqi forces bombed a hospital in Sadr City, inadvertently or not. This week they're storming hospitals, beating and arresting workers.

They must be getting nostalgic for Fallujah or something.

Off the Table?

2008-05-06T14:32:00.000-04:00

Bill Berkowitz wonders, how will immigration issues play in Election 2008?

The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class

2008-05-06T00:13:00.003-04:00

A talk by Elizabeth Warren. Also see some related pieces/links:

* The Middle Class on the Precipice
* What’s Hurting the Middle Class
* Middle-class income doesn't buy middle-class lifestyle

Some more here, too. If you've read her Two-Income Trap, much of this will look and sound familiar.

(via)

Post-War Suicides May Exceed Combat Deaths

2008-05-06T00:12:00.001-04:00

"It's quite possible that the suicides and psychiatric mortality of this war [GWOT] could trump the combat deaths."

Immigrant deaths in custody

2008-05-06T00:11:00.001-04:00

The WSWS's Naomi Spencer flags a disturbing NYT story about a rash of immigrant deaths in government detention centers.

Cyclone fallout

2008-05-06T00:08:00.004-04:00

Follow the fallout from the deadly cyclone in Burma/Myanmar here, here, here, and here.

Free-Marketeering

2008-05-05T00:36:00.002-04:00

Stephen Holmes reviews The Shock Doctrine in the LRB. He has somewhat mixed feelings for the book, but generally comes across as more negative than positive.

Holmes is especially critical of Klein for mistaking the forest for the trees, so to speak, and placing corporate greed at the heart of too many disparate developments. He also doesn't like the liberal deployment of the "shock" metaphor, a point noted by several previous reviewers.

J Street

2008-05-05T00:34:00.003-04:00

No, we don't need another Israel lobby.

If the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is ever to be "solved" in a judicious manner, it's going to come about from the effort of forces who are not aligned with Israel out of the gate. Because when it gets down to it, Israeli doves and hawks have long been in agreement about the prudence of grafting a "secure Israel" over the lives and livelihood of Palestinians. Their disputes are mostly tactical, and tangential.

I fear that all J Street is going to give us is more clucking from Dennis Ross, et al. and hand-wringing over why Palestinians don't jump at whatever "generous offer" of a ghettoized, cantonized state is in vogue this time around. Surely, that's not going to help the situation.

New photos from Ground Zero

2008-05-05T00:33:00.001-04:00

Barbarity and terrorism on a scale scarcely seen before.

Building walls

2008-05-05T00:32:00.002-04:00

One of the more ironic aspects of the "success" of the "surge" in Iraq is how driving wedges between warring parties actually put the prospects for national reconciliation further off into the distance, perhaps so far off on the horizon as to render it a pipe dream at this point.

This dilemma is highlighted, in varying detail, here, here, and here.

Unsustainable chains

2008-05-05T00:31:00.001-04:00

"Is just-in-time nearly out of time?" Could be.

Iran the root of all evil, apparently

2008-05-02T13:45:00.002-04:00

Very insightful piece by Nir Rosen on "Selling the War with Iran."

Also on the US-Iran front, see Pepe Escobar, Andrew Cockburn, and Chris Floyd.

(via)

25,000 Dockworkers Shut Down West Coast Ports in Historic Antiwar Protest

2008-05-02T13:44:00.001-04:00

Wow. This was unexpected.

Misery Under Siege

2008-05-02T13:42:00.001-04:00

Indeed, "Sadr City and Gaza are starting to look more and more alike."

'Main Core,' etc.

2008-05-01T12:52:00.004-04:00

Good, scary article by Christopher Ketcham on the shadowy plans for "the continuity of our government."

After Basra

2008-05-01T12:50:00.001-04:00

Ashley Smith takes a stab at the long-term implications of Maliki's brutal crackdown against the Sadrists.

Pipes claims another scalp

2008-05-01T12:47:00.005-04:00

The latest "victory" for the crypto-fascists.

'accomplished

2008-05-01T00:09:00.001-04:00

Good ol' memories.

Threats galore

2008-05-01T00:08:00.000-04:00

A good summary of recent "are they gearing up to bomb Iran?" news. There have been a flurry of developments.

Bloodshed in Iraq

2008-05-01T00:06:00.000-04:00

AFP:

More than 900 people have been killed in clashes between militiamen and security forces in Baghdad's Sadr City that broke out last month, a senior Iraqi official told reporters on Wednesday.

"There were 925 martyrs in Sadr City and 2,605 others have been wounded," in the firefights that began on March 25 and are still continuing, said Tehseen Sheikhly, a spokesman for the government's Baghdad security plan.

Another AFP dispatch provides a broader picture:

At least 1,073 Iraqis were killed across the country in April, most of them slaughtered in fierce fighting between security forces and Shiite militants, security officials told AFP Wednesday.

According to data collected by Iraq's interior, health and defence ministries and made available to AFP, 966 civilians were killed in April, followed by 69 policemen and 38 soldiers.

The death toll in April is marginally lower than in March which saw 1,082 Iraqis killed.

...Combined figures obtained by AFP from the three ministries showed that 1,745 civilians were wounded in the violence that ravaged the country, followed by 159 policemen and 104 soldiers.

The April toll maintains the trend of high violence that reversed, mainly since March, a gradually declining trend of violence seen from June last year and follows 721 killed in February, 541 in January, 568 in December, 606 in November, 887 in October, 917 in September and 1,856 in August.

April is also the deadliest month for the US military since September last year.

It lost 49 soldiers in April, according to independent website www.icasualties.org based on the deaths announced by the military so far this month.

These deaths brought the number of US troops killed in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion to 4,061.

With ramped up violence, this link again becomes useful, if depressing.

Bashing Wright, Banishing Truth

2008-05-01T00:05:00.002-04:00

As Chris Floyd and Arthur Silber observe, it's quite telling that when certain individuals dare to venture anywhere near the truth, they're mocked and driven away from the center of national discourse with the rhetorical equivalent of pitchforks and torches.

From the rubble

2008-04-30T18:08:00.004-04:00

From Gaza? Sadr City? So hard to tell the difference these days.

Answer here.

(via)

A costly link

2008-04-30T18:05:00.001-04:00

This is a pretty good WaPo article on the stupidity and sheer callousness of funneling so much agricultural productivity into ethanol.

Exposing the bankruptcy of 'Race Neutrality'

2008-04-30T18:02:00.004-04:00

This is the best, and most honest, thing I've read thus far on the whole Obama-Wright flare-up, which has been nearly 100% contrived by our beloved corporate media.

America's University of Imperialism

2008-04-30T17:59:00.002-04:00

Chalmers Johnson reviews Alex Abella's new history of the RAND Corporation. Good read -- the review, that is.

A New Kind of Poll Tax

2008-04-30T17:58:00.003-04:00

Did the US Supreme Court just elect John McCain?

Postponing the inevitable

2008-04-30T17:57:00.001-04:00

Memo to Bacevich: the "Freedom Agenda" was always bullshit. The Iraqis were intended to have as much "freedom" as they wanted, so long as they used that "freedom" to do what the US wanted them to do.

Selling the con

2008-04-28T20:59:00.007-04:00

See Tom Engelhardt on Saint Petraeus.

"As a general and a personality," Engelhardt observes, "Petraeus fit the particular marketing mentality of this administration perfectly." And he has performed ably in his role as con man par excellence, what with his successful selling of the "surge."

Our confused time

2008-04-28T20:58:00.000-04:00

Thomas Sugrue has a nice review in The Nation of a few recent books to emerge on the omnipresent theme of "race in America." After running through these latest volleys, he offers some particularly cogent concluding remarks:

If there is one lesson to be learned from the past half-century of struggle for racial equality, it is that accusing elite blacks of selling out, calling on poor blacks to shape up or ship out and making a high-minded effort to change the hearts and minds of white Americans have not fundamentally reshuffled the deck of racial inequality in America, especially when black interests threaten white power and privilege. Change did not come only because of high-minded rhetoric or hope. It took the coercive power of the federal government and courts to desegregate schools. The opening of the American workplace did not happen because the shingles fell from the eyes of racist employers. It took grassroots activism and the threat of disruption, along with litigation and the power of regulation, to break down Jim Crow on the factory floor and in the corporate office.

The struggle for racial equality and its partial and incomplete victories are forgotten in our confused time. The politics of race in 2008 is, more than ever, a politics of national redemption through personal transformation. It is all strangely removed from the experience of most black and white Americans. Despite more than a half-century of progress on racial matters, rates of black-white segregation remain incredibly high; neighborhoods and public schools in the North and South remain separate and unequal (and, despite our myths of progress, they are resegregating); and blacks fare worse than whites on nearly every measure of health, well-being and success. Nearly half of African-American children live in poverty, and there are more black men in prison than in college. Black households have on average only 10 percent of the wealth of white households. The current housing crisis affects all Americans, but blacks are disproportionately represented in the ranks of those with subprime loans and foreclosed properties. All of these amount to a crisis--but one that is almost wholly absent from the political agenda. So long as the battle for racial justice continues to be fought on the battleground of hearts and minds, so long as it misinterprets the gauzy politics of symbolism and rhetoric as victory, and so long as it holds out the misguided hope that ferreting out the last hard-core racists or sellouts will transform American life, then the day when "we shall overcome" will remain a distant dream.

Utterly depressing, on several levels.

Voter ID law upheld

2008-04-28T20:57:00.002-04:00

Indeed: "pretty obvious...And pretty shameful."

(From earlier: The Voter ID Fraud.)

The Big Squeeze

2008-04-28T20:54:00.004-04:00

It's worth checking out Stephen Greenhouse's new book. Here are some teasers, via Jonathan Schwarz.

Wright on Moyers

2008-04-26T18:31:00.003-04:00

Check out Bill Moyers' interview with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

A renaissance?

2008-04-26T18:29:00.000-04:00

In The Nation, Christian Parenti examines nuclear power's comeback.

Tip of the 'berg

2008-04-26T00:01:00.000-04:00

Israel Might Have Many More Spies Here, Officials Say. Gosh, ya think?

The apartheid mentality

2008-04-25T23:57:00.001-04:00

Helena Cobban: "What would it mean, today, if Americans started to think and act as though all of humanity constituted a single community, with us as just one part of it? Are we ready to seek out and give fair weight to the views of the citizens of other countries on matters that affect everyone?"

Drugging Detainees

2008-04-25T23:51:00.000-04:00

The Return of MKULTRA?

The big question

2008-04-25T23:49:00.002-04:00

Jim Lobe: "Are the latest accusations and tough language leveled against Iran, Syria, and North Korea evidence of a resurgence by the remaining hawks in the administration of President George W. Bush hoping for a final confrontation against one or more members of the revised 'axis of evil' before his term ends next January?"

Nuclear?

2008-04-25T23:48:00.002-04:00

The revival of the Israel-bombed-a-Syrian-nuclear-site story smells awfully fishy.

Millions Behind Bars

2008-04-23T22:14:00.002-04:00

Petraeus Promoted

2008-04-23T22:13:00.001-04:00

Not good. Not good at all.

Thus it is again

2008-04-23T22:11:00.001-04:00

The Gilded Age is back. Totally awesome.

Walling off

2008-04-22T16:15:00.002-04:00

Steve Niva: "Iraq, it seems, is surging towards Gaza."

Historic Reversal

2008-04-22T16:13:00.001-04:00

Washington Post:

For the first time since the Spanish influenza of 1918, life expectancy is falling for a significant number of American women.

In nearly 1,000 counties that together are home to about 12 percent of the nation's women, life expectancy is now shorter than it was in the early 1980s, according to a study published today.

The downward trend is evident in places in the Deep South, Appalachia, the lower Midwest and in one county in Maine. It is not limited to one race or ethnicity but it is more common in rural and low-income areas. The most dramatic change occurred in two areas in southwestern Virginia (Radford City and Pulaski County), where women's life expectancy has decreased by more than five years since 1983.

The trend appears to be driven by increases in death from diabetes, lung cancer, emphysema and kidney failure. It reflects the long-term consequences of smoking, a habit that women took up in large numbers decades after men did, and the slowing of the historic decline in heart disease deaths.

It may also represent the leading edge of the obesity epidemic. If so, women's life expectancy could decline broadly across the United States in coming years, ending a nearly unbroken rise that dates to the mid-1800s.

Although it's not mentioned in the article, I suspect that our dysfunctional healthcare system has a lot to do with this, too.

Global food shortages

2008-04-22T00:23:00.001-04:00

The Economist's take.

How to get away with murder, etc.

2008-04-21T20:55:00.000-04:00

Ed Herman and David Peterson explain the Principles of the Imperial New World Order.

'Disputed waters'

2008-04-21T20:54:00.001-04:00

In case you missed this news the first time around, we have further confirmation that the British "hostage" crisis following a dispute with the Iranian Navy in March 2007 was completely contrived.

You should be detecting a pattern, by now.

Unraveling Iraq

2008-04-21T20:52:00.002-04:00

Tom Engelhardt offers up "twelve answers to questions which should be asked far more often in this country."

On Iraq, obviously.

The Latest Disgrace

2008-04-21T20:51:00.001-04:00

Here's Bob Parry's reaction to the recent NY Times exposé about "sock-puppet" military analysts:

...the real question is not how widespread the ethical lapses of the U.S. news media were – both in palming off self-interested ex-generals as objective observers and for failing to demonstrate even a modicum of skepticism in publishing false articles that paved the way to war.

Rather, the urgent question is what must be done if the United States is to reclaim its status as a functioning constitutional Republic in which a reasonably honest news media keeps the public adequately informed.

Having spent most of my career on the inside at places such as the Associated Press and Newsweek, it’s been my view for many years that the mainstream U.S. news media can’t be reformed, that it is beyond hope.

Though there are still good journalists working at major news companies – and the better news outlets do produce some useful information, like Sunday’s story in the Times – the central reality is that corporate journalism is rotten at the core and won't stop spreading the rot throughout the U.S. political process.

That’s why for the past dozen-plus years at Consortiumnews.com, we have called for a major public investment in honest journalism, so information can be produced that it is both professional and independent of the kinds of external pressures that have deformed today’s mainstream press.

We must find new ways to tell the news.

Hard to disagree. Longing for reform in corporate media or pining for journalists who work for corporate outlets to "do their job!" tends to be, at the least, misplaced.

This is one of the reasons why I find the Chomsky/Herman propaganda model so useful and why it's exceptionally annoying to watch media analysts or critics pull their hair out when the jaundiced sourcing or -- to use the Chomsky/Herman word -- "filtering" becomes glaringly apparent. These sorts of anecdotes about a corrupt media environment are not aberrant. They illustrate precisely how the corporate media functions.

Ultimately, the point is not to think that you can remove filters, or even get them to change how they function within a heavily concentrated corporate media system. The point is to develop new media -- or, at least, new ways of seeing and producing media that have different sorts of filters, which reflect a different value system. In essence, that's the point Parry is making.

Suicide terror

2008-04-20T17:37:00.001-04:00

Well, at least we don't have any explanation lying around to explain why people increasingly like blowing themselves up and killing others. Tis such a mystery.

The yellow fruit

2008-04-20T17:35:00.001-04:00

Amongst other things, bananas kill! Sort of.

Failing to learn

2008-04-20T17:34:00.001-04:00

In an insightful NYRB essay, Tony Judt argues that Americans failed to learn the most important lesson of the 20th century -- namely, "how war brutalizes and degrades winners and losers alike and what happens to us when, having heedlessly waged war for no good reason, we are encouraged to inflate and demonize our enemies in order to justify that war's indefinite continuance."

This failure goes quite far in explaining our current predicament; perhaps more ominously, it suggests that until we come to grips with the lessons gone by we face an even more perilous future.

Reigning terror

2008-04-20T17:33:00.001-04:00

I know it's a bit impolite to say this, but it is deeply ironic, perturbing, and, yes, sad when an avowed "Jewish state" submits people to such daily, grinding brutalities and degradations. You'd think there would be a greater sensitivity to this sort of thing considering how Jews have such a visceral collective memory of what it is like being under the boot themselves.

Sectarian Fiefdoms

2008-04-20T17:31:00.002-04:00

Why has Iraq fragmented to such a degree? Common explanations are the intractability of the Shia/Sunni split or the inherently "tribal" makeup of the society.

On their face, though, these are rather shallow explanations. IPS relays a much more convincing one:

There are an estimated 2.7 million Iraqis who have been displaced within their own country. No house; no food; no security. Who do they turn to for help? The international community's humanitarian organisations? The occupying United States government? The central Iraqi government based in Baghdad?

According to a report released Tuesday by Refugees International (RI), none of these has been able to provide sufficient assistance to the most vulnerable Iraqis. As a result, they are turning increasingly to local religious-political armed groups for their humanitarian needs -- often Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, or the Sunni militias known as Sahwa or Awakening groups, made up of former insurgents armed and funded by the U.S. military, though other militias and strongmen exist as well.

The ongoing fragmentation of Iraqi society well beyond pre-U.S. invasion levels -- caused by the flawed U.S. occupation and even encouraged by some of it and the nascent Iraqi government's policies -- has left militias and other neighbourhood strongmen the only ones able to effectively provide food, shelter, oil for heating and cooking, and the semblance of a judiciary system, according to the report entitled "Uprooted and Unstable: Meeting Urgent Humanitarian Needs in Iraq".

"The trend more and more has been [that] Iraq, leaving aside Kurdistan, resembles Somalia, where you have warlords and militias independent fiefdoms," said journalist Nir Rosen, who has spent significant time in Iraq, in a conference call to launch the report, which he co-authored. "These militias, be they Mahdi Army, be they Sunni Awakening groups or otherwise, provide security, provide housing, and other forms of assistance."

The expansion of militias into a service-delivery and aid role stands to reinforce the fragmentation. And if the trend is to be reversed, the international community and the Iraqi government must act now -- during the window of a relative lull in violence brought on by the U.S. counterinsurgency strategy -- said the RI report.

But so far, the chaotic picture is roundly characterised by policies that continue to deepen rifts. The Shia-dominated Iraqi government tends to only offer aid to its Shia base, Sunnis told RI, and the Sunni militias -- armed and even usually created by the U.S. -- give help only to Sunnis in their local purview.

"Effectively there really isn't even a state in Iraq. People often talk about the Iraqi government as if it actually functions -- and it doesn't provide very many services," said Rosen. "To the extent that it does, it provides them on sectarian grounds. So we saw services being provided to a much larger extent in Shia areas."

So when the state loses all authority, legitimacy, and functionality, people increasingly rely on whatever local networks are available to them. And, to the extent that these local networks are able to provide sustenance and security, it shouldn't come as a surprise that people increasingly align themselves or identify with said local alliance. This is practically a sociological rule.

Pre-programmed "experts"

2008-04-20T17:29:00.001-04:00

Newsflash: the military likes propagandizing us, and the corporate media is perfectly willing to provide the forum. It's almost like the media functions in accordance with some sort of propaganda model or something. Shocking.

Taxi to the Dark Side

2008-04-18T15:39:00.000-04:00

Or, alternatively, wait until it shows up on HBO.

Backtracking

2008-04-18T15:25:00.002-04:00

Ahoy. Links below saved/condensed for posterity. Will try to resume posting semi-regularly.

* Just how many Iraqis have died in the war? PR Watch's Diane Farsetta and The Guardian's Jonathan Steele and Suzanne Goldenberg do an admirable job wading through the assorted figures and studies, when most would prefer we ignore or whitewash the question entirely.

* Jim Lobe, rewinding 5 years: Why Did the U.S. Invade Iraq? Similarly, Patrick Cockburn looks back and sees "a war of lies from the start." Also see Cockburn on DN!

* Frontline did a pretty lengthy retrospective on "Bush's War" recently. Yet, as Ray McGovern notes, it was much too timid. You got plenty of "how," but hardly any "why." Plus, nary a dissident source was referenced.

* A $3 trillion war? Is that estimate too low? How about $5 trillion?

* The Winter Soldier hearings were a "victory" for independent media? Perhaps. But the more obvious lesson drawn was that the lack of coverage further exposed the bankruptcy of corporate media, especially at the NYT.

* Michael Schwartz narrates the disintegration of Baghdad over the course of the war.

* Nir Rosen: "The Myth of the Surge." Also see Rosen on DN!

* McClatchy rightly foreshadowed the unravelling of the "success" of the "surge" at the beginning of the crackdown in Basra and related environs, ultimately aimed at the Sadrists.

* Along these lines, Juan Cole speculates as to why Maliki attacked Basra, Lenin's Tomb dissects Sadr's victory, and IPS' Ali al-Fadhily and Dahr Jamail proclaim March 25 a "day of truth."

* See more on Sadr from Patrick Cockburn in an excerpt drawn from his latest book and a related essay by Richard Seymour.

* Alternet: Five Things You Need to Know to Understand the Latest Violence in Iraq.

* The number of IDPs in Iraq continues to trend upward. And those Iraqis fleeing the country often wound up in Sweden, where one city of some 80,000 people hosts more refugees than the entire United States.

* Obviously, the US isn't planning on giving up its ~~permanent~~ enduring foothold in Iraq. That should be crystal clear by now.

* Salon: Just how bad was the looting of Iraq's museum and archaeological sites?

* See Ira Chernus on why Petraeus' testimony should have been ignored. Alas, it wasn't. Instead, Petraeus & Crocker put Iran back on the front burner, euphemized as a concern about "special groups."

* Accordingly: 6 Signs the U.S. May Be Headed for War in Iran? Note especially the fallout from Fallon's resignation.

* Jim Lobe flags some newly released documents that highlight "The Bush Doctrine in Embryo."

* More Yoo-authored "torture memos" have been made public. Also see: The Green Light.

* Re: the "torturing Principals." Can we now throw out the "bad apples" excuse? Pretty please?

* To those attuned to history, the sickening "debate" over torture and waterboarding in the US might sound familiar.

* At Gitmo, "We can't have acquittals. We've got to have convictions." Surely nothing problematic in that...

* Rule #1 for international "diplomacy": always refrain from shedding light on Israel's behavior. Doing so is rarely useful, and scarcely noted. Just ask John Dugard, who I doubt gets invited to many cocktail parties.

* The Guardian's Seumas Milne and the IPS team of Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani highlight some of the issues raised by Vanity Fair's "Gaza Bombshell" article.

* Ilan Pappe is rethinking his depiction of Israel as pursuing a "genocidal" policy against Palestinians in Gaza. He now sees the policy as part of a distinct strategy, an outgrowth of Israel's unilateralism. In a related piece, Jonathan Cook more or less agrees.

* Remembering the Nakbah; Remembering Deir Yassin.

* One State or Two ?

* Israel loves stealin' that Palestinian land, reminds Henry Siegman in the LRB.

* Waaaay down the memory hole: When Conservatives Loved the Palestinians.

* Interesting New Yorker piece on Nadia Abu El Haj's tenure fight. Those Israel Firsters get awfully cranky when you challenge Zionist myths.

* Funny how we've had, until relatively recently, a "booming" economy when so very few felt a "boom." And, yes, this trend goes much farther back.

* Still, as we all know, socialism absolutely sucks. Except, that is, socialism for rich people, which is necessary to "preserve the system" and something we don't even dare call socialism.

* The assorted bailouts have Dean Baker wondering, "Can’t the media find any economists who don’t think that handing hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to the big banks and the incredibly rich people who own and manage them is a good idea?"

* From Global Financial Crisis to Global Recession -- Part I & Part II.

* Capitalism is in an "Apocalyptic Mood," observes Walden Bello. In another piece, Bello is doubtful that capitalism can survive the climate change crisis.

* "Never mind the economic crisis," implores George Monbiot. "Focus for a moment on a more urgent threat: the great food recession which is sweeping the world faster than the credit crunch."

* Food stamp usage in the US is projected to surpass record levels. Incidentally, food stamps are one of the few success stories of the frayed safety net in the US.

* "Welfare reform" reconsidered. Twas a bad, callous idea. No kidding.

* The Nation published a recent edition reflecting back on the New Deal. Several of the articles are worth a gander.

* Newsflash: having a black presidential candidate doesn't mean much when the larger picture of racial inequality is factored in. Also see: UN Panel Finds Two-Tier Society.

* 1 in 100 U.S. Adults Behind Bars, New Study Says. Sweet land of liberty.

* Damn illegal immigrants. Always sucking the good ol' US of A dry.

* Sick Around the World. A pretty good introduction to how a few other industrialized countries handle healthcare. Related, from earlier: The Health of Nations.

* Vicente Navarro outlines "The Next Failure of Health Care Reform." After providing background, he points out why both the Clinton and Obama proposals are seriously deficient.

* Psst. The real work starts after the election.

* The New Gilded Age and Neoliberalism's Theater of Cruelty. An excerpt from Henry Giroux's new book. Also check a review.

* Stephen Lendman: Destroying Public Education in America.

* Paul Street illustrates the so very many reasons why our democracy rocks. Also see Street on the "good war" in Afghanistan.

* Flat Earth News sounds an awful like a sequel to Manufacturing Consent, which makes it all the more curious that the former scarcely acknowledges the latter.

* Scott Horton's Harper's article, "Vote Machine: How Republicans hacked the Justice Department," is available here. Well worth the read.

* Peak Oil -- true or false?

* Michael Klare: "The End of the World as You Know It...and the Rise of the New Energy World Order."

* Nick Turse: The Military-Petroleum Complex.

* My Lai, 40 years on. Also see an inconvenient reminder from Gareth Porter. And do recall Turse's discovery from a few years ago.

* Euphemism and American Violence.

* Bloomberg: "Current and former military personnel accounted for about 20 percent of U.S. suicides in 2005, according to a government study."

* China hits back at the US for "human rights violations." Ya know, the whole glass houses thing.

* Bernard Chazelle floats ideas for saving the American Left.

* Disappearing polar caps; fragmenting ice shelves in Antarctica. Nothing to see here, as usual. Move along.

* Does Harvard care about academic integrity? Going on its handling of the Dershowitz case, I'd say obviously not.

Break

2008-02-25T21:07:00.004-05:00

On hiatus -- back ~~by April 1~~ ~~soon~~ once I can clear some space on my schedule. Sorry.

Quickies

2008-02-18T18:54:00.002-05:00

* Some relevant questions: Is violence on the rise again in Iraq? and Is the US really bringing stability to Baghdad?

* Visions Of The Surge.

* Iran, ever the threat in the Middle East.

* UN shocked by 'grim' life in Gaza. Also see a great corresponding column by John Pilger.

* Newsflash: Israel loves to steal Palestinian land.

* Jim Lobe dusts off his copy of Paul Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers.

* As usual, Chomsky drops some well-placed dissonance.

* Pinch me. The Sibel Edmonds story makes its way into an American newspaper.

* Socialists tend to like Upton Sinclair. See how they react to the rough adaptation of his classic Oil! into There Will Be Blood -- here and here.

The Case Against Dershowitz

2008-02-12T15:43:00.000-05:00

Frank J. Menetrez highlights Dershowitz's boundless mendacity.

In the Orwellian world we inhabit, I suppose it's fitting that Finkelstein is the one who was driven from academia, while Dershowitz still sits proudly at Harvard, spewing venom at anyone who fails to be sufficiently enthusiastic about the Zionist project.

Telecom immunity

2008-02-12T15:41:00.001-05:00

Way to go, Senate. You usually can be counted on to step up when some sort of criminality needs to be enabled and/or whitewashed.

6 on trial

2008-02-12T15:39:00.001-05:00

Three cheers for show trials and Kangaroo Courts. The Founders™ would be so very proud.

Pentagon Papers II?

2008-02-12T15:38:00.000-05:00

Timothy Noah is nostalgic for the Pentagon Papers. But I doubt anything in the RAND study in question this time around would be a major revelation. The sordid details are already well known, at least to those of us who are not braindead or hypnotized by propaganda.

$720M a day

2008-02-12T00:42:00.000-05:00

The Iraq war costs $720 million per day. How would you spend it?

(via)

Chicken Doves

2008-02-12T00:41:00.000-05:00

Matt Taibbi's latest Rolling Stone essay essentially reduces to this:

Which, ya know, was entirely forseeable.

Iraq's Tidal Wave of Misery

2008-02-12T00:40:00.000-05:00

The horror of the Iraqi refugee crisis has been outlined in detail previously, but Michael Schwartz adds a useful angle by tying it to the overall neoliberal project in Iraq, along with the desire to maintain a long-term foreign presence in the country.

In his words, the refugee crisis "had a silver lining":

The Iraqi government's incapacity to perform at almost any level became but further justification for the claims first made by L. Paul Bremer at the very beginning of the occupation: that the country's reconstruction would be best handled by private enterprise. Moreover, the mass flight of Iraqi professionals, managers, and technicians has meant that expertise for reconstruction has simply been unavailable inside the country. This has, in turn, validated a second set of claims made by Bremer: that reconstruction could only be managed by large outside contractors.

So: 1) Create conditions that force people to flee. 2) Point to the fleeing as a reason why you have to import so many foreign contractors. 3) Then point to the existing chaos and lack of indigenous "human capital" as a reason why you need to stick around.

Imperial logic works a treat.

Mythbusting Canadian Healthcare

2008-02-12T00:38:00.000-05:00

Some useful correctives to the most common disinformation spread about Canadian healthcare.

'Level the area'

2008-02-12T00:37:00.000-05:00

Israeli officials talk about eradicating towns in Gaza. I think three people notice and take alarm.

Fearmongering

2008-02-12T00:36:00.001-05:00

Thankfully, Mitt Romney has walked off stage, at least for the time being.

But it comes as no comfort that the sort of despicable memes he fired off upon exit are likely to be shoved down our throats repeatedly throughout the coming election season, pushed by such amply funded outlets as Freedom's Watch (sic).

Climate Code Red

2008-02-12T00:35:00.000-05:00

Warning: reading may induce the desire to drink.

A corporate TIPS program

2008-02-10T00:59:00.000-05:00

Global push

2008-02-10T00:56:00.000-05:00

Universities in the US increasingly push study abroad. Well, kinda.

Worse Than Fossil Fuels

2008-02-10T00:55:00.000-05:00

Biofuels will save us? Actually, they'll probably kill us off faster than fossil fuels.

The standard line

2008-02-10T00:54:00.000-05:00

It's funny how violence starts in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict only once Israelis die. Any previous deaths are practically invisible.

Along related lines, Henry Siegman has some useful thoughts on Gaza's future.

CP Day

2008-02-08T00:37:00.000-05:00

Ah, memories.

Fleeing; caging

2008-02-08T00:35:00.000-05:00

AFP:

Iraqis are once again leaving Iraq for Syria in greater numbers than are returning, despite the lower level of bloodshed in their homeland, the UN refugee agency said on Wednesday.

A report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, citing Syrian immigration officials, said that in late January an average of 1,200 Iraqis entered Syria every day compared with around 700 who returned.

Most of those Iraqis who return say they are doing so because their Syrian visas have expired or because they have run out of money, rather than because conditions in their homeland have improved, the report said.

Iraq’s Tragic Future

2008-02-08T00:34:00.000-05:00

Ritter: "The war in Iraq has bankrupted Americans morally and fiscally, and yet the American public continues to shake the hands of aspiring politicians who ignore Iraq, pretending that the blood which soaks the hands of these political aspirants hasn’t stained their own."

Internet outage

2008-02-08T00:33:00.000-05:00

Justin Raimondo wonders what's up with the odd cable-cutting story over in the Mid East.

The need to migrate

2008-02-08T00:32:00.001-05:00

Why the uproar over immigration? Jim Hightower takes a look and finds a major culprit in NAFTA.

Get out already

2008-02-05T15:27:00.000-05:00

Steve Shalom asks: So when and how should US troops leave Iraq?

He concludes: "the best hope for the Iraqi people is the course suggested here -- complete withdrawal of US troops and contractors, announced and initiated immediately and carried out on a prompt time table, and supported by international and regional diplomacy, backed by a different kind of US foreign policy, a democratic and non-militaristic foreign policy -- with substantial US reparations, and if desired by the Iraqis, international peacekeepers but not the US military."

Lovin' militarism

2008-02-05T15:26:00.000-05:00

What Progressives and Other Critics Don't Get about the U.S. Military.

Evil fruit

2008-02-05T15:25:00.000-05:00

As you know, the 'war on terra' calculus frequently reduces to: Afghan war good, Iraq war bad.

Chris Floyd explains one of the many reasons why this sort of thinking is bankrupt.

More 'competence,' please

2008-02-05T15:24:00.000-05:00

The Winograd whitewash.

More or less, the full report has the same thrust as the interim report, which was released last April.

Strike in the dark

2008-02-05T15:23:00.000-05:00

What did Israel bomb in Syria? Sy Hersh revisits Israel's strike against Syria last September, when subsequently many people were willing to swallow the propaganda line that the IAF hit a nuclear site.