Armstrong as politician

There was a bit of noise following Armstrong's seventh Tour victory that he might seek political office. Dave Zirin does some commentary on this below. I'm actually a bit surprised. I followed and will continue to follow the Tour faithfully: live via the Tour website every morning, reading all the post-race commentary in the US and French papers, and constantly exchanging emails with friend Dan about the daily races, even going so far as to nerd-blog about it. But I saw absolutely nothing about Lance's politics, simply that John Kerry said something along the lines of hoping Armstrong wouldn't be a Republican. This is all interesting only because Armstrong is a notoriously tough, take-no-prisoners, committed, and intelligent guy. Plus, he's adored in Texas. Here's some of what I had missed from any post-Tour coverage.

...considering Armstrong's comments after winning his seventh yellow jersey. They weren't about the Alps, the cobbled Paris streets, or the new bell on his handlebars. They were about Iraq. "The biggest downside to a war in Iraq is what you could do with that money," Armstrong said through gritted teeth. "What does a war in Iraq cost a week? A billion? Maybe a billion a day? The budget for the National Cancer Institute is four billion. That has to change. Polls say people are much more afraid of cancer than of a plane flying into their house or a bomb or any other form of terrorism." His timing was fortuitous. A report came out of the Congressional Budget Office the next day that indicated the war in Iraq will cost more - adjusted for 2005 dollars - than any war since the Second World War, with a price tag that may near 800 billion dollars....

In 2004, Armstrong's anxiety about the war was rising, perhaps affected by the French protests during that year's Tour. But despite his stronger objections, Armstrong still reserved praise for his "friend" in the Oval Office. "I don't like what the war has done to our country, to our economy," he said. "My kids will be paying for this war for some time to come. George Bush is a friend of mine and just as I say it to you, I'd say to him, 'Mr. President, I'm not sure this war was such a good idea', and the good thing about him is he could take that."

Now in 2005, Armstrong has taken a much harder stance. This could be attributed to possible aspirations for political office. Armstrong in a recent interview laid out his views on a number of issues, describing himself as "against mixing up state and Church, not keen on guns, pro women's right to choose. And very anti war in Iraq," - which may lead some of us to wonder exactly what political party in our glorious duopoly would even allow him to stand as a candidate.

And then here's some reaction.

He will assuredly face words such as those from one internet blogger who wrote "Lance Armstrong should be detained the moment he steps back on American soil, and then he should have a bicycle tire pump shoved so far up his ass that he whistles Dixie when he breathes."

Porn better than police

Islamic militants threatened to kill him for it, but Abu Mustafa says it was the only way he knew to make a living in the chaos that is Baghdad today.

The pornographic video salesman is among many traders caught between two faces of the new Iraq, one liberated from the state censorship of Saddam Hussein, the other gripped by religious zeal.

"I am scared but what else can I do? I tried lots of other jobs. I worked in a factory, but you just can't make any money in Iraq. It's the only way to support my son," he said on Wednesday.

"There is no way I am going to join the police or army because the insurgents are killing many of them every day."

A French view

"The Other America"
(Serguei in Le Monde Paris, August 10th, 2005)

Lebanon, Hezbollah, and police in the brig

Cedar Revolution? How quickly we forget. From Zoran Andjelic at Sobaka Newswire:

The incident took place in the town of Aramoun, a Hezbollah stronghold. Hezbollah subsidizes housing for their supporters there. In return, the civilians are exposed to hours of blasting sermons from loudspeakers. This is not a mosque broadcasting prayers, but a regular building in a somewhat dense residential area.

According to media reports, neighboring residents complained about the speakers. It's been stated - but disputed by other sources - that the city of Aramoun ordered the removal of the speakers.

Local police moved in to carry out the order, only to be threatened by Hezbollah officials waving weapons. Words were exchanged, and soon the police and Hezbollah were shooting at each other.

The Lebanese Army - non-sectarian, but mostly under the control of President Lahoud - intervened. But they didn't arrest or even question those who had threatened the local police carrying out what would appear to be a lawful order. Instead, they arrested the six policemen themselves - along with "two other people," who may or may not be members of Hezbollah.

Aussie article on Atta suggests cover-up

From the Sydney Morning Herald below. This has the potential for becoming very interesting politically since Lehman and Weldon, both Republicans, are on the case.

Members of the independent investigation into the September 11 strikes have called on Congress to determine whether the Pentagon withheld intelligence showing a secret US military unit had identified Mohammed Atta and three other hijackers as threats more than a year before the attacks.

The former commission members said the information, if true, could rewrite an important chapter of the history of the intelligence failures before September 11, 2001.

"I think this is a big deal," said John Lehman, a Republican member of the commission who was navy secretary in the Reagan administration. "The issue is whether there was in fact surveillance before 9/11 of Atta and, if so, why weren't we told about it? Who made the decision not to brief the commission's staff or the commissioners?"

Mr Lehman and other commissioners said that as the panel had been formally disbanded for a year, the investigation would need to be taken up by Congress, possibly by the House and Senate intelligence committees.

Detailed accounts about the findings of the secret operation, known as Able Danger, were offered this week by Curt Weldon, the Pennsylvania Republican who is vice-chairman of the House armed services committee, and by a former defence intelligence official. Their comments are the first assertion by officials that Atta, an Egyptian who was the lead hijacker, was identified as a potential terrorist before the attacks.

Intriguing man, that Chavez

KARI'NA LA ISLA, Venezuela - Six of Venezuela's indigenous communities received title to their ancestral lands on Tuesday in a ceremony that Venezuela's president said reversed centuries of injustice.

President Hugo Chavez said he hoped the government would be able to turn over titles to 15 other indigenous communities by the end of the year.

"What we're recognizing is the original ownership of these lands," Chavez said during the ceremony. "Now no one will be able to come and trample over you in the future."

Helpful rundown on Delay/Abramoff

TPM Cafe does a good summary of the key players in the Delay/Abramoff scandals.

The color of immigration

David Neiwert at Orcinus on illegal immigration and the right:

Illegal immigration is a serious problem, not least for its effects in spreading a Wal-Mart economy to the working classes, as well as the way it depresses wages. It requires serious and thoughtful solutions that change the framework of how we deal with both the nuances and the fundamentals of the problem. Blaming desperate Mexicans -- millions of whom have been thrown out of work and off their lands because of NAFTA -- for wanting to come here for jobs is not going to solve anything.

But that's exactly what the Minutemen and their ilk are proposing to do: Harass illegal migrants as they cross the border. This has also created a predictable spate of freelance Minutemen conducting their own version of a border watch. (In two recent cases this escalated to someone shooting a couple of Latinos.)....

It isn't about whether they're legal or not. It is, in the end, all about the color of their skin.

"Freeance, 9-11, terr'rists, never surrender...."

Steve Gilliard reports on Bush's planned 9-11 burlesque revue.

Ironies of conquest

Michael Schwartz in Tom Dispatch:

The Ironies of Conquest: The Bush Administration's Iranian Nightmare

In 1998, neo-conservative theorist Robert Kagan enunciated what would become a foundational belief of Bush Administration policy. He asserted that "a successful intervention in Iraq would revolutionize the strategic situation in the Middle East, in ways both tangible and intangible, and all to the benefit of American interests."

Now, over two years after Baghdad fell and the American occupation of Iraq began, Kagan's prediction appears to have been fulfilled -- in reverse. The chief beneficiary of the occupation and the chaos it produced has not been the Bush administration, but Iran, the most populous and powerful member of the "Axis of Evil," and the chief American competitor for dominance in the oil-rich region. As diplomatic historian Gabriel Kolko commented: "By destroying a united Iraq under [Saddam] Hussein... the U.S. removed the main barrier to Iran's eventual triumph." Keep reading....

Mangosteen

God is famous

Helmut is working at the moment, but he has the tv on in the background. VH1 and some celebrity and religion stuff has just come on ("Richard Gere built a Tibetan hut"). It was announced that in the celebrity world, "when it comes to God, money is no object."

Sigh, a post on intelligent design

That is, if a medieval argument dispelled by Hume and Kant isn't enough. Here is a note from 2002 from the National Center for Science Education.

ID has been called an "argument from ignorance," as it relies upon a lack of knowledge for its conclusion: Lacking a natural explanation, we assume intelligent cause.

UPDATE (Aug. 9, 11:53pm):

This is basically it. But I'm still sighing that we have to do this. From Balkinization:

...Rather than being challenged as inconsistent with biblical teaching, and therefore wrong, the theory of evolution is now being challenged by Intelligent Design advocates--a cleaned up version of creation "science"--as a weak scientific theory (despite piles of empirical support). The attack is on scientific turf, not religious turf, or at least that is the claim by ID folks, although they have little science to offer and candor presumably would compel them to admit that they are motivated by religious reasons.

This raises the question: why has a sensible way to reconcile faith and science that has worked for so long become unacceptable to many religious leaders in this country? This is not like the other ongoing battles over religion in the public sphere and the separation between state and church (school prayer, Decalogue displays, funding for parochial schools), all of which raise debatable issues of public and private values.

The validity of evolutionary theory is about scientific knowledge. It's not a debate over values.

They have gone a bridge too far. School boards and state legislatures which legally require that ID be mentioned in biology classes, as a number have done and more are considering doing, are abusing the coercive power of the state. It is no longer about defending religious values in society, which is a noble cause, but about aggressively insisting that others pay heed to their dogma.

Farmer Saddam

You may have seen this elsewhere already. If not, take a look at this Times article. We are a strange species of bizarre historical lineages. The crooked timber of this mortal coil....

A British cow that died in an Oxfordshire field in 1937 has emerged as the source of Saddam Hussain's "weapons of mass destruction" programme that led to the Iraq war.

An ear from the cow was sent to an English laboratory, where scientists discovered anthrax spores that were later used in secret biological warfare tests by Winston Churchill.

The culture was sent to the United States, which exported samples to Iraq during Saddam's war against Iran in the 1980s. Inspectors have found that this batch of anthrax was the dictator's choice in his attempts to create biological weapons.

Sawicky on tax cuts/hikes

There are no tax cuts. Banish that phrase from your mind. You haven't seen any.

Republican control of the White House and Congress has yielded trillions in tax increases since January of 2001. How can this be? Simple. When you spend more, and when you pass laws that commit the government to spending more in the future, you increase taxes, sooner or later. Spending not financed by current taxes will be financed by future taxes. A debt increase is the present value of future increased taxes. If taxpayers merely pay interest on the debt incurred, forever, the present value of the interest payments is the initial increase in debt.

Suppose you raise future spending on X but later you cut spending on Y? You have still raised taxes. If you had cut spending on Y and foregone the spending on X, taxes would be lower. To spend is to tax. There are no tax cuts. There are only tax shifts....

Tracking Khan

Interesting but perhaps obvious little story. Pakistan's nuclear father, Abdul Qadeer Khan, has been tracked by the US for three decades, though the Dutch had wanted to indict him.

At the request of the CIA, the Netherlands let go the father of Pakistan's nuclear program Abdul Qadeer Khan who worked in the country between 1975 and 1986, former Dutch prime minister Ruud Lubbers told Dutch public radio on Tuesday.

Pointless news

Texas man aims to visit every Starbucks

"Every time I reach a Starbucks I feel like I've accomplished something," Winter said, "when actually I have accomplished nothing."

A simple hunger equation

Fill in the answer (20 points):

U.S. Appears Headed for Peanut Surplus

+

In Niger, Plumpy'nut becomes a life-saver

+

Mali's food crisis goes little noticed

+

Mauritania also at risk of hunger

= ???

Let's not forget Nagasaki

Iccho Ito, who was born just two weeks after a US B-52 bomber dropped a 4.5-tonne atomic device on the southern port city, told a ceremony in Nagasaki's Memorial Peace Park: "To the citizens of America: we understand your anger and anxiety over the memories of horror of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

"Yet, is your security actually enhanced by your government's policies of maintaining 10,000 nuclear weapons, of carrying out repeated sub-critical nuclear tests, and of pursuing the development of new 'mini' nuclear weapons?

"We are confident that the vast majority of you desire in your hearts the elimination of nuclear arms. May you join hands with the people of the world who share that same desire, and work together for a peaceful planet free from nuclear weapons."

The Fat Man bomb - named after Winston Churchill - was dropped on Nagasaki at 11.02am on August 9, 1945, killing 74,000 people. It came three days after the first ever nuclear attack, on Hiroshima, which killed 140,000 people....

I've been to both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, having lived in Japan on three different occasions in my life. It's merely anecdotal and impressionistic to say it, but Nagasaki, of the two, has truly turned the bomb into a symbol of peace and dignity. It's a beautiful city of friendly and kind people who are historically welcoming of non-Japanese, and who have turned one of humanity's worst horrors into a global campaign against the bomb and for peace. While the experience of Hiroshima for an American visitor today (or perhaps anyone else) is one of guilt, revulsion at the events of 1945, and a sense of the human capability for plumbing the depths of violence, Nagasaki decided to remember 1945 as a message of hope and peace for the future. The difference in numbers is irrelevant. The experience of visiting the two cities is one of experiencing two interpretations of essentially the same event. Two different monuments. Two sides of the same coin. This is why it's important to remember both Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Aussies less trigger-happy than Yanks

Cole also links to an article in The Australian on the gung-ho Australians keeping the gung-ho Americans from shooting everyone in Iraq.

Juan Cole tells a joke

Joke of the Day

CONSTITUTION

"They keep talking about drafting a Constitution for Iraq. Why don't we just give them ours? It was written by a lot of really smart guys, it's worked for over 200 years and we're not using it anymore."

Iraqi soldiers

Many make light of the capabilities of the Iraqi soldiers, but take a look at this article in USA Today (via The War in Context) for some further background to the realities on the ground.

But since the administrative handoff to the Defense Ministry, the camp has faced a barrage of problems, al-Malki says. A $350,000 monthly stipend from the United States to manage the base has dried up, leaving a dearth of funds for repairs, he says. Windows blasted by mortar rounds are covered in cardboard and yet to be replaced. When no money surfaced to fix an electrical wiring problem in a section of the camp, the soldiers pooled their own money to hire an electrician, al-Malki says.

Requests to fix the camp's sewage system have also been ignored, he says. Large pools of human sewage bubble in the street outside the barracks of the base security platoon, sending strong, rank smells through the building. Inside, soldiers sleep 12 to a room in beds leftover from the Saddam Hussein era. Concrete cinder blocks are propped under some beds to keep the middles from sagging.

"We have so many shortages - in equipment, in ammunition, in everything," says Pfc. Ala Sadiq, 20. "We're going in the right direction. But it's very, very slow."

U.S. officials who have toured the camp include Army Gen. George Casey, top commander for U.S. troops in Iraq, Sgt. Maj. Hassan Kadum says. So far, no one from the Defense Ministry has showed up, he says.

"They don't understand our operation at all," says Kadum, who walks over to the U.S. barracks each night to check his e-mail. "They are kings playing chess with us."

The question of patriotism

George Monbiot, provocateur, writing in the Guardian:

...I don't hate Britain, and I am not ashamed of my nationality, but I have no idea why I should love this country more than any other. There are some things I like about it and some things I don't, and the same goes for everywhere else I've visited. To become a patriot is to lie to yourself, to tell yourself that whatever good you might perceive abroad, your own country is, on balance, better than the others. It is impossible to reconcile this with either the evidence of your own eyes or a belief in the equality of humankind. Patriotism of the kind Orwell demanded in 1940 is necessary only to confront the patriotism of other people: the second world war, which demanded that the British close ranks, could not have happened if Hitler hadn't exploited the national allegiance of the Germans. The world will be a happier and safer place when we stop putting our own countries first.

So Monbiot is a kind of internationalist. But elsewhere in his article he uses a quickie, yet abstract, utilitarian argument to get to this position, one that's very similar to Peter Singer's One World argument minus Singer's ongoing insistence on increasing the circle of moral empathy.

See Peter Levine for an interesting discussion of empathetic versus systematic thinking in a different context.

Blog problems

Update on some of the blog issues. If you're using Firefox as a browser, the site should now look fine. If you're using Internet Explorer, I've solved the problem of the sidebar dropping to the bottom of the page, but not yet the new problem of everything out of alignment on the sidebar. That'll have to wait for tomorrow.

Kalamansi limes

Photo: Jim Richter

Rendition

Marty Lederman at Balkinization on legal aspects of rendition.

Peter Jennings

You know, I'm usually not one for anything but simply noticing that a celebrity of some sort or another has died. No great sense of loss or sadness. After all, everybody dies. And, after all, celebrities usually have received a great deal from their position in society -- and sometimes when they die it's through having mismanaged that great good fortune. There are only a few exceptions for me. This may sound Beatle-wonkish, but I felt genuinely sad when George Harrison died. The quiet Beatle was brilliant, honest, and tried to matter beyond his music. He died too young and it was a real loss. Ibrahim Ferrer, who died a couple of days ago, had found deserved international recognition at long last through his work in Buena Vista Social Club. It's the kind of death where we may regret the loss of a gentle man and beautiful voice, but know he lived a good and long life.

I'm going on a bit longer than I had wanted, but I have the same sort of genuine sadness with the passing of Peter Jennings. I no longer watch network or cable news -- preferring newspapers -- because so much of it is useless or distracting or oversimplifying or prejudice-affirming junk, when not the simpleton's treacle. I'm under no illusions that the route to broadcast or cable news anchor is anything other than one that is heavily managed and blow-dried. But with the death of Peter Jennings and the retirement of Dan Rather, we've witnessed the end of the last tattered threads of old-school television journalism. Jennings straddled the line, but his connection to the old school, the one where criticism was not heresy and challenging questions weren't out of political bounds, came through his subtle sardonic smiles and slightly raised eyebrows. That's what we had left. Now and then, he was capable of probing questions or interjecting a dose of reality into political rhetoric and wrangling or presenting us with the blunt realities of genuine news. And now and then he was capable of taking up the role of responsible journalist rather than the anchor's contemporary role of high-profile mascot for a vast corporation.

So, yes, I'm a bit sad today. I think Jennings was generally a decent and responsible guy. But his death also marks the final passing of reality-based news into vapid, loud, faith-based political advertising and missing white woman reporting.

The US and Chavez go kooky

I love this site. Check it out: Sobaka. As a follow-up to my post below, see also Cali Ruchala who writes in the Sobaka newswire,

US Ambassador William Brownfield had not yet commented on Chavez's announcement, though he's clearly been on message in the past. A week ago he stated that should Venezuela end cooperation with the DEA, "there is only one group that wins, and that group is the drug traffickers."

Or the terrorists. Which in the Bush Administration's public statements, are largely becoming the same thing. During his brief public meeting with Colombian President Uribe, during which less than four questions from the press were asked, Bush and his guest used the words terror, terrorism or terrorist no less than twenty-two times. Colombia's problems are fighting "narco-terrorists," Uribe said; and he's just the type of narco-democrat to eliminate them.

Accusations of drug trafficking have been US administrations' kiss of death in the past. Former Colombian President Samper was publicly accused of accepting campaign contributions from drug cartels and became an international pariah, and we all know what happened to Manuel Noriega in Panama. On the other hand, charges that close relatives of former Mexican President Carlos Salinas were involved in cocaine smuggling into the United States were never echoed by the government, which viewed Salinas as a partner rather than an antagonist. And the DEA had credible evidence that the sitting president of the Dominican Republic was raising money from druglords in the United States during his election campaign, but the investigation (based primarily in Philadelphia) was suppressed.

Chavez just escalated his war of words with the US government, which can now claim that Venezuela is a "black hole" in the South American drug trade (while Colombia is apparently a shining example of transparency), and only the DEA can save it. It's doubtful that he cares.

Salman Rushdie on Islamic fanaticism

From the Washington Post. I don't necessarily agree with the entirety of this article, but it's very good and worth reading. I'll soon have a somewhat related post on why the Iraq War is not about promoting democracy, contrary to Bush-speak, but rather liberalism or perhaps neo-liberalism is the more appropriate term in today's language of politics.

The deeper alienations that lead to terrorism may have their roots in these young men's objections to events in Iraq or elsewhere, but the closed communities of some traditional Western Muslims are places in which young men's alienations can easily deepen. What is needed is a move beyond tradition -- nothing less than a reform movement to bring the core concepts of Islam into the modern age, a Muslim Reformation to combat not only the jihadist ideologues but also the dusty, stifling seminaries of the traditionalists, throwing open the windows to let in much-needed fresh air.

The real AIPAC story - Iran

Doug Ireland has the goods.

GI says he was trained in blows that killed detainees

But only privates are punished, the supposed "bad apples" at the bottom of the military totem pole. As many have pointed out, this speaks volumes about the administration's respect and concern for soldiers, fake Thanksgiving turkeys notwithstanding. History will show the connections between the top and the bottom. But we need to make certain those connections don't have to wait for a future historical account. Mark Danner and others have done some of this work. We need more. My forthcoming book on torture at the end of 2006 will take up some of this work as well.

Your Minutemen, America

Orcinus (via Norwegianity) has a photo of a Minutemen rally -- note the flags. True colors.

More on Vincent

See also my previous post below. This is from Juan Cole:

Was American journalist Steve Vincent killed in Basra as part of an honor killing? He was romantically involved with his Iraqi interpreter, who was shot 4 times. If her clan thought she was shaming them by appearing to be having an affair outside wedlock with an American male, they might well have decided to end it. In Mediterranean culture, a man's honor tends to be wrought up with his ability to protect his womenfolk from seduction by strange men. Where a woman of the family sleeps around, it brings enormous shame on her father, brothers and cousins, and it is not unknown for them to kill her. These sentiments and this sort of behavior tend to be rural and to hold among the uneducated, but are not unknown in urban areas. Vincent did not know anything serious about Middle Eastern culture and was aggressive about criticizing what he could see of it on the surface, and if he was behaving in the way the Telegraph article describes, he was acting in an extremely dangerous manner.

UPDATE (Aug 9, 12:27pm):

Nell Lancaster writes in the Comments that, "It seems very doubtful to me that Nour Weidi or Steven Vincent were killed by members of her family. She was yelling their name as protection when she was being kidnapped off the street.

Cole's initial reaction to Vincent's murder -- surprise that it would happen because Basra is so much safer than Baghdad -- was disappointing. Clearly he hadn't been reading Vincent's dispatches, or taking very seriously the evidence over the last few months of systematic killings of Sunnis identified with the former government."

Beetles

We've got your intelligent design here:

The distinguished Scots evolutionary biologist John Burdon Sanderson Haldane was once asked by a group of theologians what he had concluded about the nature of God from his study of God's creation. Haldane famously replied,"An inordinate fondness for beetles."

Chavez cries foul again

President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela accused the US today -- specifically the Drug Enforcement Agency -- of spying on Venezuela.

Chavez said that although his government would be cutting its links with the DEA, it would still work to combat drug trafficking with France, Spain, China, Russia and other south American states.

Chavez's comments come after Washington in recent weeks has stepped up its criticism of Venezuela, accusing it of actively funding efforts to destabilize its Latin American neighbours and allowing weapons to cross into Colombia.

Chavez is well-known for utilizing inflammatory comments about the US for political gain. But a friend in Colombia tells me that there are attempts by the US to utilize the rightist government of Uribe in next-door Colombia to create problems for leftist Chavez, creating a similar situation to the tensions between Nicaragua and Guatemala through American-funded mercenaries and paramilitaries during the Reagan administration. Apparently, this is easier said than done in the case of Venezuela-Colombia since the FARC and ELN in Colombia make for a less stable launching pad than the US might like.

UPDATE (Aug. 9, 12:29):

Nell Lancaster writes in the Comments that, "Guatemala might have been a 'launching pad' for political and diplomatic attacks against Nicaragua in the Sandinista era, but it was not a physical base, given the geography. Honduras was the vast contra camp.

Your point about the inconvenience of guerrilla activity for such operations is well taken, though. The U.S. funded and organized a leftist-killing drive in Honduras to clean the way, lest anything like the Salvadoran or Guatemalan insurgencies get going, and get in the way."

Helmut: Yes, you're right, thanks for the clarification.

Pineapples and Firefox

I use the Mozilla Firefox browser and have built up the blog template through Firefox. I've noticed most visitors to this site use Firefox, but there are still plenty of you who use Internet Explorer. Your choice, but I just opened this blog using Explorer and, given the new changes to Phronesisaical, it looks pretty crappy. For instance, the links and subtitle are located about halfway down the page.

I'd suggest downloading Firefox anyway for your own browsing safety (most viruses and trojans are created for Internet Explorer) since it's free and more stable. Here: Mozilla. But I'll try to find a way to make the site look better with Explorer.

Thanks for the patience. And here are some pineapples as a welcoming gift.

Photo by Jim Richter

August 6th, 8:16am

From Cali Ruchala at Sobaka Newswire.

Tat flax

Michael Kinsley goes to work on the regurgitated flat tax idea.

IT'S TRUE THAT the Republicans are the party of ideas and the Democrats are the party of reaction. Republicans set the agenda, and Democrats try to talk the country out of it. But the Republican Party is hardly the Institute for Advanced Studies. The GOP uses ideas like seasonal sports equipment — taking them out when needed, then scraping the mud off and stuffing them back into the garage until they are needed again....

The nub of Forbes' proposal is this: Everybody would pay an income tax of 17%, with most deductions eliminated, but enough basic exemptions so a family of four would owe no income tax until it had income of more than $46,000. Of course, it would still pay the FICA Social Security tax. FICA, which starts at dollar-one, is already a bigger burden than the income tax for most people. But it tops out at incomes of $90,000 and doesn't apply to investment income at all. But that is just fairness talking.

Forbes figures that almost everybody would pay less under his proposal than under the current system. And just to make sure, he would let you opt to calculate your taxes under current rules, if you prefer. So everybody would pay less. That is swell. But it has nothing to do with the flatness or otherwise of the tax system. You could just as well combine a tax cut with a proposal to release all the animals from the National Zoo. People might like that too. A simpler tax system would be very nice. But find me some folks who would choose a flat tax over the current system even if it meant that they would pay more, not less. Then I'd be impressed.

And if everyone gets a tax cut, where does the money come from? Do you really have to ask? It seems that no amount of recent experience can put a dent in the wonderfully convenient belief that you can raise tax revenues by cutting taxes, because lower taxes inspire people to work longer and think harder, yadda yadda yadda.

Debate on this quickly becomes theological, so let's note only that tax rates were higher than they are now when Forbes had the inspiration to be born into a wealthy family, and higher still when his father, Malcolm, first built the family fortune.

Next idea, please. Or, heck, why don't we take the balanced budget amendment out for another spin? It's been a while.

Ibrahim Ferrer has died

The great Cuban singer whose international career was spawned through Buena Vista Social Club. Though it's a shame he can no longer reap any of the royalties he so belatedly deserved, pick up a copy of his Buena Vista work and listen to the joy and heartbreak.

The bomb

Spiegel has a good collection of articles on the 60th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It's important to remember not simply to provoke anti-Americanism, but to recall constantly what humans are capable of doing to each other. Keeping that present in the public eye and at the center of our accepted notions of morality, with their emotional and psychological investment, is as important as any strict ethical arguments regarding the justification or lack thereof of the bombs. This is because our moral sense tends to fade the greater the distance in space and time. If one hopes for a less violent world with greater respect for human rights and dignity, those hopes have to be reinforced by the moral lessons learned from history, good and bad. Some in our midst actively count on us to forget.

The bomb that was meant for Hitler

Does this include whippings?

Why do Australians want to hurt Mel Gibson?

Sydney, Australia - Hollywood actor-director Mel Gibson has been asked to recreate the crucifixion of Jesus Christ in the streets of Sydney if the city is selected to host a major Catholic gathering in 2008, a newspaper reported Saturday....

Gibson's involvement with World Youth Day was on the city's "wish list," Pell said.

Messing around with the look

I'm testing out some different templates for Phronesisaical. As you can tell, the site looks different than it did five minutes ago. I'm going to stick with this design for now and maybe change it later. I don't like any of the templates I've found. The inexistence of ninja-themed templates is a real black-eye on the face of the internet. But I don't know enough yet to do the work myself to create my own template.

Hope this one works for you. I think it organizes things better -- block quotes, the ads, etc. -- and is easier to read. The previous polka dots were just stupid. Let me know what you think about this one.

Hiroshima / Nagasaki

Out of the major American newspapers listed in the links to the right, only the Star Tribune has anything on their front page about Hiroshima, and it is a discussion with an American who has few regrets. Curiously, the Japan Times, which is largely written for Americans, also doesn't have anything on the front page. Go to any other newspaper outside of the US and Hiroshima makes the headlines. What the hell is wrong with us?

Hiroshima marks 60 years since bombing

The burning and the haunting

Un legado para la humanidad

Hiroshima memories: the struggle against forgetting

The left "hates America"?

Members of the Rev. Fred Phelps' Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., are picketing military funerals, KMBC's Micheal Mahoney reported Friday.

The group has made national headlines for traveling throughout the country to picket gay churches, gay weddings, and the funeral of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student who was murdered in Wyoming in 1998.

Friday, about 15 members of the group -- some of them children -- picketed the funeral of a St. Joseph soldier who was killed in Iraq. Mahoney reported that the group stood across the road from the Grace Evangelical Church during the funeral of 21-year-old Spc. Edward Myers.

"The first sin was being a part of this military. If this young man had a clue and any fear of God, he would have run, and not walked, from this military," said protester Shirley Phelps-Roper. "Who would serve a nation that is godless and has flipped off, defiantly defied, defiantly flipped off, the Lord their God?"

One protester had an American flag tied to his belt that draped to the ground. He was holding a sign that read, "Thank God For IEDs," which are explosive devices used by insurgents to blow up military convoys.

Protesters said America has ignored the word of God, and those who defend the nation must pay a price.

"That's the first piece of solid evidence that you have that the young man is currently in hell," Phelps-Roper said.

bananas and baseball

I'm off to a Nationals vs. Padres game. Have a banana.

Zawahiri captured in 2002?

What was this 2002 story in the Guardian about? Just asking.... Zawahiri is the one speaking in the recent al Qaeda video warning of new terrorist attacks.

Bin Laden's No. 2 'Captured in Iran'

Osama bin Laden's most senior lieutenant, the Egyptian militant Ayman al-Zawahiri, has been captured and jailed in Tehran, a leading Iranian newspaper reported yesterday.

Zawahiri, the founder of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, was arrested several days ago and has been imprisoned in the city's Evin jail, where political prisoners are usually held, the Hayat-e-Nou newspaper said....

The responsibility administration

Nothing is ever the president's fault

So far, nothing in Bush's 4 1/2 years in office has been his fault. He's either been ignorant of problems that developed within his administration or he was forced by outside groups to take drastic action.

It wasn't his fault that an impostor kept the Denver 3 from attending a March town hall meeting at the Wings Over the Rockies museum or that the Secret Service has refused to identify the man. It wasn't Bush's fault that his adviser, Karl Rove, was involved in the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame.

The intelligence failures prior to Sept. 11 weren't Bush's fault. Neither was the bad intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. It wasn't his fault that he insulted and alienated U.S. allies who demanded proof of Iraq's guilt prior to the war.

The abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison weren't his fault, nor was the establishment of an extralegal camp at Guantanamo Bay where Bush abandoned the Geneva Convention. A few rogue soldiers committed all the abuses, and the terrorists created the need for Guantanamo Bay.

It's not Bush's fault that there was no post-war plan in Iraq. Nor can he be blamed for our skyrocketing national debt, budget deficits and war costs. He can't be blamed for the more than 1,800 U.S. soldiers who have been killed in Iraq; the insurgents bear responsibility for that.

War in Iraq spurs new nuclear arms race

Ann Penketh of The Independent (link via Juan Cole) argues that the Iraq War has broken down normative barriers to nuclear proliferation. Again, an issue of legitimacy in the international sphere. I'll have a post up on the legitimacy question soon.

In a world no longer guided by a universally accepted regime, countries are weighing the nuclear option. Arab states consider nuclear-armed Israel, and are drawing their own conclusions. Iran is hemmed in by hostile neighbours such as Israel and Pakistan. A nuclear test by North Korea could prompt Taiwan and Japan to follow down that road....

Today, the "official" nuclear powers could annihilate the world many times over. And 40 other countries have the know-how to join their club. Sixty years after Hiroshima, who can say with confidence: "Never again"?

Krugman speaketh

Paul Krugman in tomorrow's NYT on "intelligent design." Terrific. And it runs right back to the point about the self-interested relativism of the right.

Iraq in "state of war"

It appears Jaafari's been spending too much time at Starbucks in the Green Zone.

IRAQ is in "a state of war" as it struggles to overcome the insurgency that has claimed hundreds of lives since the swearing in of a new government earlier this year, the country's prime minister admitted yesterday.

Norwegian-Czech Freundschaft

With sadness, Helmut reflects upon his ancestry.

(I'm a Source and a Target).

Colorado terror fighters

Via Norwegianity.

An M-113 armored personnel carrier is wanted by Denver-area officials as a tool for evacuating victims and catching terrorists in a major attack, even though security analysts say that s an unlikely scenario for Colorado. (KRT / Eddie Ledesma)

Vincent

Steven Vincent was the journalist killed a few days ago in Iraq. Here's an excerpt from Vincent's blog, excerpted in the Guardian. From the accounts I've seen, the guy was well-enough respected by other journalists, mainly not for his views and support of the war, but for his intrepidness.

"But should we really get involved in choosing one political group over another?" the captain countered. "I've always believed we should not project US values on to other cultures - we should let them be. Who is to say we are right and they are wrong?" And there it was, the cultural-values-are-relative argument. That, I realised, was part of US naivety: the belief, filtering down from Ivy League academia to Main Street, USA, that our values are no better (and usually worse) than those of foreign nations; that we have no right to judge "the Other" and that imposing our way of life on the world is the sure path to the bleak morality of empire.

"No, believe me," Layla exclaimed. "These religious parties are wrong. Look at them, their corruption, their incompetence, their stupidity. Look at the way they treat women. How can you say you cannot judge them? Why shouldn't your apply your own cultural values?"

It was a moment I wish every college kid and western-civilisation-hating leftist could witness: an air force captain quoting chapter and verse from the new American gospel of multiculturalism, only to have a flesh and blood representative of "the Other" declare he was incorrect, that discriminations and judgment between cultures are possible - necessary - especially when it comes to the unacceptable way Middle Eastern Arabs treat women. I couldn't resist. "You know, Captain," I said, "sometimes American values are just ... better."

It's not fair to be critical of someone who can no longer answer back, but this cultural relativism critique is wearisome. Vincent is just one other mouthpiece for this cliche. He also carries the kind of arrogant know-it-all-ness that many travelers, journalists, war reporters, and those who go through devastating events can have. I know the sentiment and have been guilty of it in the past. The problem with it is its blindness. And, yes, blind arrogance can come (and often does) from the Ivies -- where pretty much all the planners of this war went to school, by the way -- or anywhere else.

Vincent was wrong on the war. It's wrong for the Iraqis because a lot of them are dead and/or tortured and their country is a long-term mess. It's wrong for Americans because a lot of them are dead (though a lot fewer than the Iraqis), the American population was tricked into supporting the war, and they're paying a large price in monetary terms too. I don't say this because I'm a "cultural relativist" nor because I think America is inherently "bad." These kinds of trite claims about the critics of American policy are based in intellectual laziness and political muddle-headedness. They regurgitate the story about some mediocre and uninfluential academic with poorly conceptualized relativistic political views as representative of all of academia. Vincent was wrong on the war because the convoluted or ill-formed or bogus values that went into justifying this war are and were wrong. The battle is over which values are better, not between having them and not having them. Since that battle is won philosophically and morally and those who were and are against the war are correct, many of those who have supported the war have had to resort to all sorts of moral and rhetorical contortions to hold onto their position.

We'll give them this: they're tenacious. Hopefully this tenacity will see them through to cleaning up the awful mess they've created in some satisfactory way. But we won't grant them their rhetorical claim to values. These people are the relativists, changing their reasons and justifications for the war on a daily basis to suit the occasion, adjusting how they represent realities or facts for political reasons and hardly ever good policy or ethical reasons, and plain old-fashioned lying to the American public, the Iraqi public, their supposed allies, and sometimes to themselves. Steven Vincent bought it all. Yes, of course American values are sometimes better, even often better. But not these people's American values, wherever the shifting political and rhetorical winds ultimately take them.

Now and then a little goodness

The Washington Post has the article on the indictments. Daily Kos, below, has some commentary.

An espionage case with wide-ranging implications inside the neocon wing of the administration, including possible connections to the Niger uranium documents that started the Plame saga, is inching forward. WaPo:

Two former employees of an influential pro-Israel lobbying group were charged today with illegally receiving classified information from a Defense Department analyst, according to court documents unsealed in Alexandria.

In a superseding indictment, a federal grand jury also restructured the charges against the analyst, Lawrence A. Franklin, who is alleged to have disclosed classified defense information to the two employees of the group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, known as AIPAC. [...]

Today's indictment outlines a much broader case against [former AIPAC policy director Steven] Rosen and [former senior Middle East analyst Keith] Weissman than has previously been indicated, alleging that the two disclosed sensitive information as far back as 1999 and that the topics ranged from Saudi Arabia to al Qaeda to Iran. Recipients of the information included foreign governments and reporters, the 26-page indictment says.

Franklin worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency under Douglas Feith, and is closely associated with the neocon wing of the Bush administration. See here and here, among other places, for more background.

See especially this intriguing Juan Cole post linking Franklin, Iranian arms dealer Ghorbanifar, SISMI, and the forged Niger uranium documents. Note also that the FBI investigation of Franklin was leaked to the media while still underway, which Larry Johnson and others have previously speculated was an attempt to shut down the investigation into higher up figures in the DOD and NSC. Connections galore...

Robert Novak, psychowanker

Check out the video of his blowout on CNN.

And Bob's going to take some time off.

The Poorman gets it right:

So, to recap: burn a CIA agent - no punishment at all; say "bullshit" on cable - indefinite suspension.

dragon fruit again

Photo: Jim Richter

So what's the mission to accomplish now?

Bush on Wednesday insisted he would not lay down a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops.

"I hear all the time, 'Well, when are bringing the troops home?' And my answer to you: 'As soon as possible but not before the mission is complete,'" Bush said....

"We are never going to win this thing militarily, that is the bottom line," said Lieutenant General John Sattler of the First Marine Expeditionary Force, in a candid conversation in Washington last week.

See this interview with Arun Gupta also. Gupta suggests that one way, perhaps the only way, out of Iraq is to leave Iraq to civil war, thus making the ongoing disaster a putative domestic conflict (and the US wouldn't get involved in domestic disputes, would it?).

Bush's Exit Plan: Fomenting Civil War in Iraq?

Bush in prison

Greg Moses (yes, Wes, Dan, Sean, Michael,... our Greg Moses), writes in Counterpunch that,

...Honestly, my first reaction upon viewing a video of Fallujans filling body bags was to wish a Walls Unit future for our War Criminal in Chief. That's the name of the prison in Huntsville where they strap killers down and inject them.
In a perfect world there won't be a Walls Unit, of course, so in the scenario of intelligent design that we're pursuing here, there won't be a Walls Unit for Bush either.

But it is so humanly tempting to settle for something a little less than perfect now and then, just to see the same man, who as Governor of Texas authorized so many Walls Unit killings, be placed on trial under Texas capital punishment statutes for conspiring to kill and loot. Although as I say it is tempting to embrace the not quite perfect impulse for capital punishment, I did manage to keep these thoughts well-hidden on my hard drive until Bush shared with Texas journalists his notion that teaching intelligent design would be good for kids. That put me in a more perfect mood.

So to complete our picture of the perfect world, if the infamous Downing Street memo turns out to be connected to court-worthy evidence of a cooked-up war. And if there is some human authority with enough jurisdiction and guts to prosecute. And if intelligent design includes a robust consciousness of justice. Then all the lines of perfection for these past 9 billion years have been converging inescapably on Bush teaching intelligent design from prison. Why not report that news in advance?

Venezuela too

The U.S. government prepares the American public for its next invasion/intervention:

"Venezuela is destabilizing the border area with Colombia by supplying weapons to the country's main leftist insurgency, a top State Department official said Wednesday."

And what exactly is the evidence for this?

"In an interview with The Associated Press, Nicholas Burns, the State Department's third-ranking official, said the United States is disturbed by what he described as Venezuela's 'massive' arms imports."

The "massive" arms being imported by Venezuela amount to $120 million.

Media flagstones towards war with Iran

So, the nuclear moralists in Washington have no problem with Israeli, Pakistani, and Indian nuclear weapons, developed and stockpiled with contemptuous disregard for the Nonproliferation Treaty. But the White House and talking heads of U.S. television are insisting that Iran has no right to do what the treaty allows it and other signers to do - develop nuclear power, ostensibly to generate electricity.

The latest U.S. media uproar about Iran's nuclear program is part of a dream starting to come true for neocons in Washington who fantasize about "regime change" in Tehran. More realistically, for the nearer term, the Bush administration is setting the agenda for a U.S. air attack on Iran.

Roots of terrorism

Harout Semerdjian, writing in Asia Times.

The eminent French writer Victor Hugo once appropriately remarked that "If a man has his throat cut in Paris, it's a murder. If 50,000 people are murdered in the East, it is a question."

dragon fruit

Photo: Jim Richter

Conservatives okaying torture

Watch them squirm and screech. Again, don't any of these folks have any principles?

• National Review editor Rich Lowry insisted in his June 14 syndicated column that the "U.S. has nothing to be ashamed of" at Guantanamo. Lowry listed the interrogation methods reportedly used on al-Qahtani, according to Time: He was "deprived of sleep," "forced to watch a puppet show satirizing his involvement with al Qaeda," "made to stand for the national anthem," "made briefly to stand naked and occasionally told to bark like a dog." Lowry concluded, "This was as bad as it got at Gitmo."
• Radio talk show host Michael Smerconish stated: "I've read the Time magazine piece. Where is the abuse? We shaved the guy's beard. We played Christina Aguilera music and we pinned 9-11 victim photos to his lapel. That's abuse?" [MSNBC's Hardball With Chris Matthews, 6/15/05]
• A Washington Times editorial also relied purely on the Time account to describe the treatment of Guantanamo detainees as merely "unpleasant": "Time reports that interrogators did a number of unpleasant things to al Qahtani to get him to talk. These included shaving his beard, stripping him naked, ordering him to bark like a dog, depriving him of sleep -- to the music of Christina Aguilera, no less -- and violating his 'personal space' with a vulgar female interrogator." [6/14/05]

Others offered more sweeping, non-specific judgments:

• Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer dismissed allegations of abuse at Guantanamo as "rumor." [The Washington Post, 6/3/05]
• Weekly Standard executive editor and Fox News contributor Fred Barnes said that "there have been FBI reports of rough treatment [at Guantanamo]. But nothing I would consider torture." [Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume, 6/15/05]
• Fox News host Sean Hannity claimed that "we didn't hurt anybody" at Guantanamo. [Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, 5/31/05]
• Fox News host Bill O'Reilly claimed that Guantanamo abuse amounted to "unbuttoning blouses, women interrogators, things like that, but no touching or anything like that." He concluded: "So what are we talking about here? Some minor cases of abuse, that's what." [Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, 6/7/05]
• Downplaying criticism of Guantanamo by the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC), a June 15 Wall Street Journal editorial [subscription required] stated: "Leaked ICRC reports have described conditions at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as 'tantamount to torture' because indefinite detention is stressful." In fact, in the leaked report, ICRC documented other, more disturbing aspects of detainee treatment at Guantanamo as well, as detailed below.

Funny

At Big Picnic, via The Poorman. New White House Press Rules.

Ouch -- Dave Zirin on Palmeiro, Bush and steroids

If we are now to accept Canseco's book as holy writ, we should also remember that his Texas Rangers team had an owner named George W. Bush who Canseco describes as "most certainly knowing" that the players were on the juice. This went wildly underreported when the book was released, largely because Canseco's credibility was in constant question. Now that Canseco has morphed into Honest Abe, we should start asking whether Bush should receive the next congressional subpoena about steroids in sports. We should ask what Bush actually knows and when did he know it. We should press Palmeiro on what his friend in the owner's box, the former cheerleader from Yale, did and did not allow. We should take these Politics of Distraction, which Bush hoisted into our lives and drop the whole stinking, steaming, anabolic load on his front door.

More corruption news

Or really just an overview of corruption cases, all Republican, that the public already ought to know but doesn't.

Spendarama

I'm not a conservative. But then, neither are the Congressional Republicans or Dear Leader. Do these folks have any principles at all?

"If you look at fiscal conservativism these days, it's in a sorry state," said Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), one of only eight House members to vote against the $286.5 billion transportation bill that was passed the day before the recess. "Republicans don't even pretend anymore."

Bolton Watch: Bolton's first day on the job

Bolton is already telling others to take a hike. But at least he has made friends with the Chinese.

The United States and China have agreed to work together to block a plan tabled by Japan, Germany, India and Brazil, to expand the powerful United Nations Security Council, China's U.N. ambassador said Wednesday.

The Associated Press quoted Chinese Ambassador Wang Guangya as saying he reached the agreement with John Bolton during a meeting Tuesday, which was the new U.S. ambassador's first full day in his new post, because both believe the proposal by Brazil, Germany, India and Japan would divide the U.N.'s 191 member states.

Moral neanderthal

If I were as much of a demagogue and moral neanderthal as Pat Robertson, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Bill Frist, Dick Cheney, George Bush, Jerry Falwell, Gregg Shields, Laura Schlessinger, Rick Santorum, Jesse Helms, Ann Coulter, Phyllis Schlafly, Mitch McConnell, George Allen, Zell Miller, Bill Thomson, James Dobson, Donald Wildmon, Paul Cameron, Ken Connor, Louis Sheldon, Mike Farris, Fred Phelps, Trent Lott, Alan Keyes, etc. I might say something nauseating such as the Boy Scouts are being punished by God for excluding gays. Lightning strikes are, after all, the weapon of choice of God and heat exhaustion comes in a close second. But I'm not like that. Though I was a Boy Scout as a youth, I don't really like the Boy Scout organization, especially today's. But these are mostly kids, and they're going through a hell of a time.

Boy Scouts All Started Screaming

Lightning Strike Turns Scout Hike Tragic

Lightning Kills Boy Scout at Utah Camp

Heat Exhaustion Leads to Scout Jamboree Woes

On Third Try, Bush Visits Jamboree

See also this -- Scouts Allowed Continual Use of Military Bases -- then this.

Do you still recognize your country?

Iraq's Child Prisoners

It was early last October that Kasim Mehaddi Hilas says he witnessed the rape of a boy prisoner aged about 15 in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. "The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets," he said in a statement given to investigators probing prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib. "Then, when I heard the screaming I climbed the door … and I saw [the soldier's name is deleted] who was wearing a military uniform." Hilas, who was himself threatened with being sexually assaulted in Abu Graib, then describes in horrific detail how the soldier raped "the little kid".

In another witness statement, passed to the Sunday Herald, former prisoner Thaar Salman Dawod said: "[I saw] two boys naked and they were cuffed together face to face and [a US soldier] was beating them and a group of guards were watching and taking pictures and there was three female soldiers laughing at the prisoners. The prisoners, two of them, were young...."

Proof of the widespread arrest and detention of children in Iraq by US and UK forces is contained in an internal Unicef report written in June. The report has – surprisingly - not been made public....

It's not certain exactly how many children are being held by coalition forces in Iraq, but a Sunday Herald investigation suggests there are up to 107. Their names are not known, nor is where they are being kept, how long they will be held or what has happened to them during their detention....

"He was terribly afraid," Provance said. "He had the skinniest arms I’ve ever seen. He was trembling all over. His wrists were so thin we couldn't even put handcuffs on him. Right when I saw him for the first time, and took him for interrogation, I felt sorry for him.

"The interrogation specialists poured water over him and put him into a car. Then they drove with him through the night, and at that time it was very, very cold. Then they smeared him with mud and showed him to his father, who was also in custody. They had tried out other interrogation methods on him, but he wasn’t to be brought to talk. The interrogation specialists told me, after the father had seen his son in this state, his heart broke. He wept and promised to tell them everything they wanted to know."

An Iraqi TV reporter Suhaib Badr-Addin al-Baz saw the Abu Ghraib children's wing when he was arrested by Americans while making a documentary. He spent 74 days in Abu Ghraib.

"I saw a camp for children there," he said. "Boys, under the age of puberty. There were certainly hundreds of children in this camp." Al-Baz said he heard a 12-year-old girl crying. Her brother was also held in the jail. One night guards came into her cell. "She was beaten," said al-Baz. "I heard her call out, 'They have undressed me. They have poured water over me.'"

He says he heard her cries and whimpering daily - this, in turn, caused other prisoners to cry as they listened to her. Al-Baz also told of an ill 15-year-old boy who was soaked repeatedly with hoses until he collapsed. Guards then brought in the child’s father with a hood over his head. The boy collapsed again.

Although most of the children are held in US custody, the Sunday Herald has established that some are held by the British Army. British soldiers tend to arrest children in towns like Basra, which are under UK control, then hand the youngsters over to the Americans who interrogate them and detain them....

Jack Straw, Also Against Us

From Juan Cole:

First the Polish Prime Minister didn't have the talking points from Karl Rove. Now the UK Foreign Minister, Jack Straw, has had an attack of frankness:

First there is Iraq. "Things are not good there at the moment," he says, acknowledging the strength of the terrorist insurgency. But he believes a new Iraqi constitution can be agreed by the deadline of the middle of next month. "The more certainty you have on that, the more you can have a programme for the draw-down of troops which is important for the Iraqis," he says. "Because - unlike in Afghanistan - although we are part of the security solution there, we are also part of the problem."

He said what? It looks to me as though Blair really is determined to get most British troops out of Iraq during the coming year, if his defense minister is making such a huge admission.

Guantanamorwellian Logic

From Salon (subscription). As Salon asks, do you still recognize your country?

...Although Qassim and al-Hakim were cleared in March, the United States didn't bother to share that fact with anyone outside Guantanamo. And having been denied contact with their lawyers or their family members, the men had no way to spread the word themselves. So for four more months, they sat in Guantanamo, cleared but not freed.

The men were finally allowed to meet with the lawyers in late July, and they were able then to reveal the news that they had been cleared. The government confirmed that fact for the lawyers last week. So are the men free now? No. Their lawyers asked a federal judge in Washington to order their release yesterday, but the government is resisting. The U.S. says it can't send the men back to China because it fears they'll be persecuted there, and it hasn't found any other country that is willing to take them. Why not release them into the civilian population at Guantanamo until something better can be arranged? Can't do that, either, the government says. "They have been detained in here with some very bad people, under some very bad influences," Guantanamo spokesman and Army Maj. Jeff Weir tells the Globe. "We can't just release them into a hotel amongst the civilians on the base ... We understand the point of what the lawyers are saying, but it's an impossibility."....

Americans Smarter Than Government; Yet, Elected Government

New poll conducted by Public Agenda.

"Contrary to conventional wisdom that the American public doesn't know and doesn't care how it is seen abroad, strong majorities" believe the U.S. image overseas is suffering and "large majorities are worried about it," the survey concluded.

Some 63 percent of Americans say the charge that the United States has been too quick to go to war is justified and three-quarters worry about losing trust abroad and about the growing hatred of the United States in Muslim countries, it said.

Uzbekistan

Craig Murray gives a nice summary in the Guardian of recent US relations with Uzbekistan, who has just given notice to the US that it must pack up its base there. Karimov is torturous and murderous scum, but this didn't bother the Bush administration until the past few days. Now Karimov's getting some Rovificationism while he poops on the American military parade and turns to Russia in the meantime. It couldn't happen to more deserving guys, all around.

President Karimov of Uzbekistan has served notice to quit on the US base in his country. This completes a process of diplomatic revolution as Karimov turns away from the west and back into the embrace of Russia, with coy sideways glances at China. The US is trying to cover its retreat behind a smokescreen of belated concern for human-rights abuse in Uzbekistan. Suddenly one of their most intensively courted allies has been discovered - shock horror - to be an evil dictator. (Remember Saddam?) But the reality is much more complex.

The first and most obvious point is that the US didn't jump, it was pushed. The Andijan massacre of May 13, in which at least 600 demonstrators were killed, was carried out by Uzbek forces that in 2002 alone received $120m in US aid for the army and $82m for the security services. Prior to Karimov kicking it out, there was no indication at all that the US was going to review its military links with Uzbekistan - in fact General Richard Myers had specifically stated that they would continue.

Text of Embargoed EPA Report

Here's the text of the EPA report showing loopholes in emissions and fuel-efficiency regulations for carmakers (thanks to Dan for sending the link). The report was intentionally delayed before the vote on the new energy bill, which dumps billions of taxpayer dollars into energy industry companies.

Let's speak the truth: this is a corrupt government.

Juan Cole: Fisking the "War on Terror"

Juan Cole gives a brief history of our time in the Middle East. Read.

Some Who Get It

As U.S. President George W. Bush announced the unprecedented ”recess appointment” of ultra-nationalist John Bolton as his next ambassador to the United Nations, a group of diplomatic heavyweights was preparing to launch a bipartisan coalition to promote a return to a more moderate and multilateral foreign policy.

Bush and Cheney Indicted

Yes! Ok, hold on.... Here's one of the reasons why the blogosphere can run along the borderline between truth and falsity, when not crossing it, and drudge up plain-old trickery. Not that our regular media do any better, but there's no reason at this point to give this post any credence at all. It could be a plant or troll from the right, some outrageous optimist from the left, or a few chuckles from someone in the Balkans with broadband. It's nonetheless fun to see, thus my posting (via another nice discovery, the blog Norwegianity - recall my brotherhood post about famous Norwegians.). I prefer the guy-in-the-Balkans explanation, for laughs.

A snippet of the indictment post:

U.S. federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's Chicago grand jury has issued perjury and obstruction of justice indictments to the following members of the Bush Administration: President George W. Bush, Vice-President Richard Cheney, Bush Chief of Staff Andrew Card, Cheney Chief of Staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, former Attorney General John Ashcroft, imprisoned New York Times reporter Judith Miller and former Senior Cheney advisor Mary Matalin.

Great

The Iraqi Infection:

Military doctors are fighting to contain an outbreak of a potentially deadly drug-resistant bacteria that apparently originated in the Iraqi soil. So far at least 280 people, mostly soldiers returning from the battlefield, have been infected, a number of whom contracted the illness while in U.S. military hospitals.

Poland Against Us

Oh, Poland, do you really think you ever mattered?

Poland's prime minister said Monday that postwar nation-building efforts in Iraq have "failed totally...."

Nuevo Laredo and Narcs

Sean writes, in comments to the Friedman, Marxist article below,

While you're on the subject of the violently disruptive impact of markets, don't forget Nuevo Laredo, where, just a couple of days ago, the United States temporarily closed its consulate in response to ongoing drug-cartel violence there. A Google news search on Nuevo Laredo will get you any number of gory accounts of the on-going crisis (and it really is bad). But few--very few--writers are acknowledging that the problem has anything to do with the impact of neoliberalism on the U.S. Mexican border, with multinational (not just Mexican, not just Spanish-speaking) drug cartels, or with our government's ironic committment to the idea that it can win a "war" against a set of commodities by successfully restricting their supply.

But in La Jornada on Saturday, in reference to comments by the U.S. Embassador to Mexico (Tony Garza) concerning the consular closure, Victor Quintana writes,

La Red de Organizaciones Sociales de la Frontera Norte se acaba de reunir en Chihuahua el fin de semana pasado. El tema de esta reunion es precisamente Seguridad y violencia en la frontera norte, pero sus analisis, sus premisas y sus conclusiones son muy distintas a las del embajador Garza: si la frontera norte es un espacio dominado por la violencia y por la inseguridad no es el fruto de una manera de ser especial de los mexicanos fronterizos. Es resultado de varios procesos nacionales, binacionales y, sobre todo, multinacionales que se han dado en esta zona desde hace por lo menos 23 anos.

Un primer factor de inseguridad son los programas de ajuste estructural que impactaron seriamente las economias y las sociedades no solo de Mexico y toda America Latina, generando verdaderos pogroms de millones de desplazados por la economia neoliberal, sobre todo campesinos y campesinas. Estos programas de ajuste, impuestos por el gobierno que representa Garza, el Banco Mundial y el FMI han destruido comunidades, separado familias y llevado a millones de mexicanos, centroamericanos y sudamericanos a la frontera para buscar una mejor vida en el pais que les destruyo la propia.

Un segundo factor de inseguridad es la restructuracion laboral internacional. De pronto a la frontera norte de Mexico se le asigna un nuevo lugar en la division internacional del trabajo: ser proveedora de mano de obra barata para las industrias maquiladoras. Aqui no solo se violentan los espacios urbanos con la irrupcion de miles de personas buscando empleo. Sufren tambien violencia los esquemas tradicionales de roles familiares con la integracion masiva de la mujer a la nueva industria. Pierden toda seguridad los hijos de las mujeres que tienen que ir a las maquiladoras, sin que esas empresas brinden alternativas de cuidado para los menores.

Tambien es factor de inseguridad y violencia la politica intervencionista disfrazada de "guerra sin fin contra el terrorismo", puesta en marcha desde principios de los anos 80 por Washington. Desde entonces el complejo colectivo de culpa hace que las autoridades gringas se obsesionen por que no se les vayan a colar por la frontera quienes resisten a su injerencia en varias partes del planeta. A partir de ella se ha criminalizado a los migrantes. Y desde el 11 de septiembre de 2001 se ve en cada uno de ellos a un terrorista potencial. Por eso se militariza la frontera a ambos lados, se dota de mas recursos y efectivos a la Border Patrol; se adopta la politica del laissez faire ante las persecuciones de los minuteman a los migrantes. La frontera es, efectivamente, muy insegura... para los indocumentados.

El crimen organizado es, ciertamente, un factor decisivo en la inseguridad y en la violencia fronterizas. Pero no se trata solamente de narcos mexicanos. Estamos hablando de una multinacionalizacion de los carteles que incluye efectivos colombianos, centroamericanos, mexicanos y estadunidenses. Hablamos de un negocio de 65 mil millones de dolares en Estados Unidos. Habria que agregar la cifra del trafico de armas de alla para aca. Y el gobierno de Tony Garza no ha emprendido acciones decisivas para recabar informacion, elaborar una estrategia de inteligencia y de combate que termine con estos pingues negocios.

Nuestra frontera es una realidad multinacional, globalizada. Es la interfase en la que chocan los procesos globales del crimen organizado, de la politica intervencionista estadunidense y de la resistencia a la misma, de la restructuracion de los procesos de trabajo y de apertura de las economias. Pero esta realidad multinacionalizada no es igualmente violenta e insegura para todos. Las principales victimas son los ciudadanos afectados por la toma de ciudades como Nuevo Laredo, por el Ejercito y los narcos. Las casi 400 familias de mujeres asesinadas en Chihuahua y las mas de 150 en Nuevo Leon. Las decenas de indocumentados que perecen en el desierto, en las aguas del Bravo. Las victimas de la inseguridad en la frontera no son ni con mucho los y las ciudadanas del pais que ha generado mas inseguridad y violencia en otros paises en los pasados 60 anos. Tony Garza puede guardarse sus recomendaciones y dormir tranquilo.

The only other thoughtful discussions I've seen about Nuevo Laredo are on Narcosphere, a site connected to The Narco News Bulletin, which provides reports on The War on Drugs from a Latin American perspective. Particularly interesting there is Bill Conroy's piece, Nuevo Laredo: a case study in macro narco-economics.

Treaty Wreckers

George Monbiot in The Guardian: The Treaty Wreckers.

You could sketch it out as a Venn diagram. If you have oil and aren't developing a bomb (Iraq) you get invaded. If you have oil and are developing a bomb (Iran) you get threatened with invasion, but it probably won't happen. If you don't have oil, but have the bomb, the US representative will fly to your country and open negotiations.

Iran and the Bomb

One of these sides is a liar:

A major U.S. intelligence review has projected that Iran is about a decade away from manufacturing the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon, roughly doubling the previous estimate of five years, according to government sources with firsthand knowledge of the new analysis.

The carefully hedged assessments, which represent consensus among U.S. intelligence agencies, contrast with forceful public statements by the White House. Administration officials have asserted, but have not offered proof, that Tehran is moving determinedly toward a nuclear arsenal. The new estimate could provide more time for diplomacy with Iran over its nuclear ambitions. President Bush has said that he wants the crisis resolved diplomatically but that "all options are on the table."

The climate is changing

NASA's Earth Observatory reports that there was a record low Arctic sea ice concentration in June 2005. There was a record-number of typhoons over Japan in 2004. In June, there were reports of a number of record-breaking events in the US. And on July 28, the British News paper The Independent reported on record-breaking rainfall (~1 m) in India, claiming hundreds of lives. These are just a few examples of recent observations. So, what is happening?

Warning, some statistics ahead....

salak

Photo: Jim Richter

Thomas Friedman, Marxist

John Gray reviews Friedman and globalization in the New York Review of Books. I say just read or re-read Marx and avoid sifting through Friedman's awful butchering of metaphor, simile, and the basic principles of good reasoning. But Professor Gray does the work of reading Friedman for us. Take a peek:

It is an irony of history that a view of the world falsified by the Communist collapse should have been adopted, in some of its most misleading aspects, by the victors in the cold war. Neoliberals, such as Friedman, have reproduced the weakest features of Marx's thought - its consistent underestimation of nationalist and religious movements and its unidirectional view of history. They have failed to absorb Marx's insights into the anarchic and self-destructive qualities of capitalism. Marx viewed the unfettered market as a revolutionary force, and understood that its expansion throughout the world was bound to be disruptive and violent. As capitalism spreads, it turns society upside down, destroying entire industries, ways of life, and regimes. This can hardly be expected to be a peaceful process, and in fact it has been accompanied by major conflicts and social upheavals. The expansion of European capitalism in the nineteenth century involved the Opium Wars, genocide in the Belgian Congo, the Great Game in Central Asia, and many other forms of imperial conquest and rivalry. The seeming triumph of global capitalism at the end of the twentieth century followed two world wars, the cold war, and savage neocolonial conflicts.

Over the past two hundred years, the spread of capitalism and industrialization has gone hand in hand with war and revolution. It is a fact that would not have surprised Marx. Why do Friedman and other neoliberals believe things will be any different in the twenty-first century? Part of the answer lies in an ambiguity in the idea of globalization. In current discussion two different notions are commonly conflated: the belief that we are living in a period of rapid and continuous technological innovation, which has the effect of linking up events and activities throughout the world more widely and quickly than before; and the belief that this process is leading to a single worldwide economic system. The first is an empirical proposition and plainly true, the second a groundless ideological assertion. Like Marx, Friedman elides the two.

While I'm at it, let me cite one of the most famous passages from the Manifesto, one that Gray cites at the beginning of his article. It is indeed a prescient passage (from 1848).

All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with his sober senses his real conditions of life and his relations with his kind. The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere. The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country.... It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.

More Wankery

Via Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly. But the same was said after 9-11 as well....

Judy [Shalom, wife of the Israeli foreign minister], speaking on a television show about the recent bombings in London: "As long as I hold no official position, I can say it's not all bad for the English to find out what it's like."

Terrorists as Pirates

Douglas Burgess, writing in Legal Affairs Magazine, has a good point, and the definition of "terrorist" has traditionally been a sticking point to a broader international effort against the causes and consequences of terrorism. But... I can't help saying, "aarrrrh."

If the war on terror becomes akin to war against the pirates, however, the situation would change. First, the crime of terrorism would be defined and proscribed internationally, and terrorists would be properly understood as enemies of all states. This legal status carries significant advantages, chief among them the possibility of universal jurisdiction. Terrorists, as hostis humani generis, could be captured wherever they were found, by anyone who found them. Pirates are currently the only form of criminals subject to this special jurisdiction.

Second, this definition would deter states from harboring terrorists on the grounds that they are "freedom fighters" by providing an objective distinction in law between legitimate insurgency and outright terrorism. This same objective definition could, conversely, also deter states from cracking down on political dissidents as "terrorists," as both Russia and China have done against their dissidents.

Recall the U.N. definition of piracy as acts of "depredation [committed] for private ends." Just as international piracy is viewed as transcending domestic criminal law, so too must the crime of international terrorism be defined as distinct from domestic homicide or, alternately, revolutionary activities. If a group directs its attacks on military or civilian targets within its own state, it may still fall within domestic criminal law. Yet once it directs those attacks on property or civilians belonging to another state, it exceeds both domestic law and the traditional right of self-determination, and becomes akin to a pirate band.

Third, and perhaps most important, nations that now balk at assisting the United States in the war on terror might have fewer reservations if terrorism were defined as an international crime that could be prosecuted before the International Criminal Court.

Iraq and Harm

See also James Rule in Dissent on Iraq and the principle of harm.

So, more than two years after the invasion, no one knows what even the immediate future will bring in terms of political evolution and human suffering. That is exactly my point. A situation marked by such deep uncertainties of good outcomes should never be the laboratory for fantastical military and political experiments of the sort America has launched. The audacity of this experiment, so much admired by Thomas L. Friedman, is a synonym for irresponsible game-playing with human lives. I hope that I and my children and theirs are never the subject of such audacious exercises from afar. And I hope that our country learns its lesson about such unilateral experimentation from this terrible adventure in Iraq.

Neocon Philosophy and Politics

Benjamin Ross, in Dissent Magazine, discusses the historical intellectual roots of neoconservativism. Though originally a collection of views set in the teachings of Leo Strauss and Max Shachtman (deriving also from Plato, Hobbes, Machiavelli, and Trotsky), Ross concludes that neocon-ism is more politics than philosophy, a conclusion I discussed in an earlier post.

Many things unite today's neoconservatives. They share a facility with argument, a taste for debate, an appetite for influence, a talent for networking, a desire for gainful employment, and perhaps some hard-to-pin-down psychological predispositions as well. What they lack in common is an animating ideal. The arrival of two philosophical brotherhoods, the Straussians and Shachtmanites, at the same end point owes much to their resemblance as brotherhoods and very little to their widely disparate philosophies.

Although neoconservatism has had an immense influence on the tone of contemporary conservatism, its substantive effect on the actions of government has been much smaller. The claim that the behavior of the Bush administration derives from neocon principles does not stand up, because principles are not what gathered the neocons themselves together. Their purposes are not to be found in philosophies, but in politics.

The ideas of George W. Bush's Republicanism accommodate prevailing interests and justify the accumulation of power; they do not inspire policy. The interests at stake at home - the enrichment of the wealthy and the protection of the privileged - are easy to identify. The wellsprings of what is done abroad are harder to sort out, a topic for another day and another author. But philosophy is not the place to look. Who searches for the intellectual roots of George W. Bush searches in vain.

See also a review by Tony Judt in the NY Review of Books on "The New World Order."

Occupation on Steroids

Italian police have arrested two Slovenians who allegedly mailed steroids to US soldiers in Iraq, a police official says.

Paying for Patriotism

Moral hazard also can explain why the general public is so noticeably indifferent to the plight of our troops and their families. To be sure, we paste cheap magnetic ribbons on our cars to proclaim our support for the troops. But at the same time, we allow families of reservists and National Guard members to slide into deep financial distress as their loved ones stand tall for us on lethal battlefields and the family is deprived of these troops' typically higher civilian salaries.