Hillary: Pakistan troops might have killed Bhutto

Something very interesting is happening in the Presidential Election Race. Contrary to tradition, Clinton has come out with a policy directly in conflict with the Bush Administration. Never have former presidents been more active in condemning a seated President in history than with Dubya. Now even the Presidential Candidates are critical of current foreign policy positions.
If I were to guess, I think Hillary is trying to influence current events. If Musharraf knows that his support from the US ends with Bush, perhaps he will do the right thing and step down now when it's politically expedient and the pressure is supremely intense to do so. Biden has called for Musharraf to step down, perhaps Hillary is trying to make it happen.
Newsday.com

Hillary Rodham Clinton waded into Pakistan's volatile internal political situation Saturday, raising the possibility the country's military might have assassinated Benazir Bhutto because the killing took place in the garrison city of Rawalpindi.


Clinton's remarks came as Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf's government seemed to reject a call for an independent international investigation of the murder that Clinton and John Edwards proposed on Friday.


During a question-and-answer session at an elementary school here, Clinton offered a detailed prescription for the troubled country, suggesting that the U.S divert aid away from its military to social welfare programs.


And for the second time in as many days, she cast doubt on Musharraf's contention that the suicide bombing that led to the death of the country's most popular opposition leader was masterminded by al-Qaida.


"There are those saying that al-Qaida did it. Others are saying it looked like it was an inside job -- remember Rawalpindi is a garrison city," she said.

Meanwhile the evidence of a cover-up seems omnipresent, so much so one has to wonder if it reflects a power struggle within the military government of Pakistan, one part killing off Bhutto and trying to cover it up, another trying to pin the blame on Musharraf by leaking contradictory evidence about her death.
Why would the military say she wasn't shot, unless they are trying deliberately to make it appear Musharraf is responsible?

Spector: Assad Wants Peace

Arlan Spector, one of the few Republicans who have shown some leadership in the past 8 years says Syria is ready for peace. He says it's largely accepted that the Golan Heights would have to be returned to Syria. Contrary to popular knowledge, to Syria, the Golan Heights is one of a few bountiful sources of water in for this arid nation.
The Daily Star

Two visiting US Congressmen announced after talks with Syrian leaders on Sunday that they had secured a pledge that jailed dissidents would be freed and said they saw scope for progress in the peace process with Israel. Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter, a member of President George W. Bush's Republican Party, and Congressman Patrick Kennedy, a Democratic representative from Rhode Island, met with President Bashar Assad and Foreign Minister Walid Moallem.


[..]Specter also sounded an upbeat note about the prospects for movement on the peace process between Syria and Israel, which has been frozen since 2000, saying it was now generally accepted that Israel would have to return the Golan Heights which it seized in 1967.

Can Obama Change His Stripes?

It seems that Obama is feeling the pressure from Edwards, so he's changing his tune to populist themes about the working class. Tell me, why would he have to change his message if he really was a populist? Just how much can he be supportive of the working class?
Los Angeles Times

Working-class voters have been migrating to the former North Carolina senator in recent weeks, prompting a shift in strategy.


Obama knocks CEOs who "dump" employee pensions while "pocketing bonuses." He laments Maytag workers who "labored all their lives only to see their jobs shipped overseas." He recalls humble beginnings and says his experience is "rooted in the lives of the people."


That kind of hard-driving populism has formed the core of John Edwards' campaign for president. But those words have come this week from Barack Obama -- one of Edwards' chief rivals for the Democratic nomination -- who has recalibrated his campaign to appeal to working-class voters before Thursday's caucuses.

Huckabee the Wacko Right WingNut

Informed Comment

Mike Huckabee is a smooth-talking, fanatical country preacher who has learned to make himself likeable on camera but who spews all kinds of hateful nonsense when among like-minded devotees.


The dark side of Huckabee, the anti-science and anti-gay side of Huckabee, and the anti-Palestinian genocidal side of Huckabee, are all more more dangerous than the incompetent fool side of Huckabee, but the latter is pretty dangerous, too.


The incompetent fool side was on full display in his remarks, apparently provoked by the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, about the alleged threat of illegal Pakistani immigration into the United States. He actually thundered about 660 persons, claiming that the Pakistanis came right after Latinos in the ranks of illegals. He also seemed to think that building a wall around Mexico would keep out Pakistanis (the illegals among whom likely mostly just overstayed their visas and landed at LaGuardia).


[..]Huckabee's first response to Benazir's assassination was to ask whether "martial law" would be "lifted." Martial law had not been declared, rather a constitutionally permissible "state of emergency" had been declared by Musharraf. He lifted it some time before Huckabee's remark.


Huckabee is a narrow-minded, bigotted and ignorant person, and I am quite sure that the American people have had enough of that sort of thing in the White House for a while. On the other hand, I certainly hope that he emerges as the Republican standard-bearer, because I think any Democratic candidate could make mincemeat of him once his bizarre views become public.

Heroin, Afghanistan, and the CIA

Ever since Ronald Reagan funded Osama Bin Ladin in his fight against the Soviets using heroin profits funneled through the CIA, the CIA and the US has been heavily into funding it's covert operations through the drug trade. Confirmation that the problem continues comes from a report last fall of a CIA Gulfstream II crash loaded with cocaine. The CIA stirred up Islamic fundamentalism to undermine the Soviet Union. Now drug money continues to flow into combating those we armed and radicalized who have now turned against us.
Meanwhile, the addicted in America populate homeless shelters and jails.
AlterNet

Perhaps the reason why the CIA’s well-documented role in the global drug trade is never really acknowledged is because it never really ended.


Other Western countries like Great Britain are quite honest about their history of drug trading, but we still engage in self-censorship, even amongst the Left, when it comes to acknowledging that similar activities have been carried out by the CIA in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War and Latin America during the Iran-Contra Affair. Perhaps the reason why the CIA’s well-documented role in the global drug trade is never really acknowledged is because it never really ended.


Remember this story? The video to your right is an update into the specifics:

A Gulfstream II jet that crash landed in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula in late September bearing a load of nearly four tons of cocaine. This particular Gulfstream II (tail number N987SA), was used between 2003 and 2005 by the CIA for at least three trips between the U.S. east coast and Guantanamo Bay — home to the infamous “terrorist” prison camp — according to a number of press reports.

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Gary Webb uncovered that the CIA was responsible for distributing cocaine into poor Los Angeles neighborhoods. Shortly after Webb exposed the CIA, he was killed (the official story is that he committed suicide by shooting himself twice in the head).


War is profitable, and the so-called “War on Drugs” is no different. Government agencies make money in every part of the process: from sale, to seizure, to incarceration. America has 25% of the world’s incarcerated population, and a higher percentage of its black population in prison than South Africa did at the height of apartheid.

Sometimes there is a price to pay for telling the truth.
PrisonPlanet.com

Credible sources who were close to Gary Webb have stated that he was receiving death threats, being regularly followed, and that he was concerned about strange individuals who were seen on multiple occasions breaking into and leaving his house before his apparent 'suicide' on Friday morning.


Webb, a Pullitzer prize winning journalist, exposed CIA drug trafficking operations in a series of books and reports for the San Jose Mercury News. He was found dead on Friday morning in what the police said was an apparent suicide.


[..]Original Associated Press reports stated that Webb had died of gunshot wounds (plural) to the face. This was later changed to 'single gunshot wound' when people began to question how or why a man would shoot himself in the face twice. This represents a concentrated effort to cover up the nature of Webb's death. There have also been reports that the coroner on the scene had originally reported 'multiple gunshot wounds' but later changed his story.


Newspapers also reported the fact that Webb's body was found by removal men without questioning why a man who was about to commit suicide would plan a house move.


The Miami Herald and LA Times continue to attack Webb even after his death in their obituariues published yesterday. Both claimed that his work was discredited despite the fact that Webb was vindicated by congressional investigations.


Former DEA agent Cele Castillo concurs that Webb was murdered and that in such a 'revenge hit' situation it was common in his experience that the murderers would have likely talked to Webb at length about how and why they were about to kill him.

If the Taliban really controlled drug profits, wouldn't they be flying modern aircraft against us?
JWHarrison

Afghanistan’s heroin share dwindled to 6 percent for much of the 1990’s. After the fundamentalist Taliban government was overthrown in 2001, opium production escalated. The production of Afghan opium used to produce heroin reached its highest level ever this year, accounting for 90% of the world’s supply of illicit opium.


With Afghanistan accounting for nearly the entire product in a multibillion dollar trade, it’s obvious that the benefactors are not the Afghans growing the poppies. Afghanistan still remains one of the poorest countries in the world. Though official US sources will claim that Afghan warlords and the Taliban are collecting this revenue, the surge in opium cultivation actually coincides with the US-led military operation which toppled that regime. In 2001, Taliban prohibition had caused the beginning of a worldwide heroin shortage for powerful interests. This fact is compounded when consider that the CIA was previously engaged in drug trafficking out of Afghanistan in the 1980’s as it supported the Mujahideen against the Soviets.


The connection between the CIA and the drug trade is well documented. The agency was accused by various US soldiers in Vietnam of smuggling opium into the United States to fund covert operations defending American corporate interests. It was also reported by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Gary Webb that the CIA was responsible for distributing cocaine into poor Los Angeles neighborhoods. Shortly after Webb exposed the CIA, he committed “suicide” by shooting himself in the head… twice.


During the Iran-Contra Affair, it was also concluded that members of the US State Department were involved in cocaine trafficking from Latin America. In fact, the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence in the CIA during the Iran-Contra Affair was Robert Gates. Yes, the same Gates who is now Secretary of Defense and heads military matters worldwide, including Afghanistan of course. With drug trafficking constituting the third biggest global commodity after oil and arms trades, do we truly believe that the Taliban is the benefactor, or the powerful business and financial interests sustained by US foreign policy?

The Edwards Surge: Right Message at the Right Time

Here is why I think Edwards is the greatest hope for America.
The Nation

Indeed, undecided voters assembled in focus groups that watched the debate for the major television networks rated Edwards off the charts. That's going to help the 2004 Democratic nominee for vice president as the Iowa caucuses approach. Despite the intense focus on the campaigns of New York Sen. Hillary Clinton and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, most polls suggest that Edwards is very much in the running in Iowa. And rightly so.


To a far greater extent than Obama or Clinton, Edwards has struck at the heart of issues that should matter most in the race to replace not just George W. Bush, but the Bush agenda of corporate giveaways, job-crushing free trade deals, war profiteering in Iraq, and subprime mortgage profiteering in Indiana, Idaho, Illinois and, yes, Iowa.


Edwards summed up his increasingly aggressive and powerful anti-corporate themes with a declaration: "What makes America America is at stake: jobs, the middle class, health care, preserving the environment in the world for future generations.


"But all those things are at risk. And why are they at risk? Because of corporate power and corporate greed in Washington, D.C. And we have to take them on. You can't make a deal with them. You can't hope that they're going to go away. You have to actually be willing to fight. And I want every caucus-goer to know I've been fighting these people and winning my entire life. And if we do this together, rise up together, we can actually make absolutely certain, starting here in Iowa, that we make this country better than we left it."

ZNet

My most interesting exchange with the Clintonites in Columbus Junction wasn’t about foreign policy. It was about so-called “economic war.” After discussing Hillary's Iraq policy with Kulongoski, I said the following to Oregon's chief executive: "just for your information, Governor, we voters see a lot of ads and get a lot of mail from Edwards. He speaks all over this state, and with him it's always about working people and how they get mistreated and so forth. He gets a lot of union worker support because of that. I wondered if you knew that when you dropped that ‘I’ve been waiting for a candidate who cares about workers’ line. You really ought to know."


Kulongoski didn’t miss a beat. He just smiled and said, "Edwards? Oh, but we're not talking about war."


"War"" I said.


"Economic war," he said.


"You mean 'class war," I said.


"Yeah. Look I’ve been at this too long. It’s about getting things done.”


I was getting ready to ask him what he thought of the notion that the American “get-things-done” business “community” had been waging savage “class warfare” of the unmentionable kind – from the top down – on American working people for all of my adult life. “Class war” has been going on for the last thirty-five years at least in the U.S. It appears to work quite well, for the privileged few.


But Kulogonski had to go. The former labor lawyer (was he pro- or anti-union?) and Vilsack had other locations to hit with their conservative, corporate (neo-)liberal message wrapped in the pseudo-progressive flag of identity politics. Yes, by all means, let’s run around telling people that electing Hillary will mean that the only remaining barriers to racial, economic, and gender equality are internal to the people on the bottom ends of the nation's steep social hierarchies.


The most interesting comment I’d gotten hadn’t been from Bill Clinton and about the imperialist war on Iraq. It came from the governor of Oregon and had to with class inequality inside the imperial “homeland.”


The Clintonites’ point and Bill’s too, was clear as day. It was this: “Let’s all be adult and realistic here. The way you get things done is by working with and through corporations and professional elites. You don’t get it by fighting concentrated power."

Obama Running to the Right of Other Dems

Krugman continues his verbal jabs with Obama's campaign on his health care plan.
Paul Krugman's Blog

Have you seen or heard about the radio ad that Obama is running in Iowa about health care? It has a man and a woman talking, with the man leading off saying that health care mandates “force those who cannot afford health care insurance to buy it, punishing those who don’t fall in line.”


This is what I’ve been complaining about. I was willing to cut Obama slack on the lack of mandates in his plan, even though the economics says they’re necessary; I figured that in practice, if elected, he’d end up doing the right thing.*


I started ramping up the criticism when he started attacking his opponents from the right, making the lack of mandates a principle rather than a compromise — because that was poisoning the well, making it much harder for any future Democratic president to implement a plan that will work.


And whaddya know, now he’s running an ad that bears a striking resemblance to the infamous “Harry and Louise” ads, run by the insurance industry, that helped block health care reform in 1993.


Call it the audacity of cynicism.


Let me repeat the argument: “The point of a mandate isn’t to dictate how people should live their lives — it’s to prevent some people from gaming the system. Under the Obama plan, healthy people could choose not to buy insurance, then sign up for it if they developed health problems later. This would lead to higher premiums for everyone else. It would reward the irresponsible, while punishing those who did the right thing and bought insurance while they were healthy.”

Oy, Kos - Paul Krugman's Blog

The Edwards and Clinton proposals actually include a public option — that is, people can buy into a Medicare-type plan administered by the government. They are not forced to go to private insurance companies. In fact, the public option was what originally made people like myself and Ezra Klein enthusiastic about the Edwards plan.


The Obama plan includes a public option for everyone as well — but thereby hangs a tale. You see, when it was first announced, it didn’t: the public option was there only for selected groups — others would have to go with private insurance companies. It was only after several days of hectoring from progressive health care wonks that the Obama people said, in effect, “OK, we’ll make it available to everyone.” I was told that they really hadn’t thought about that — which is amazing, considering how important the public option is. (the Edwards campaign has been clear in stating that it might eventually lead to a single-payer system.)


This was one of the episodes that led health wonks I talk to to conclude that Obama may just not be that committed to universal care.


This gets once again at what I keep trying to tell people: on health care, Obama is consistently running to the right of his rivals.


And it’s deeply disappointing to have influential bloggers buying into the bizarre notion that trying to make a health care plan truly universal is somehow a gift to the insurance companies.

2,500 tons of Afghan drugs enter Iran yearly

Maybe this has always been part of the US policy for Iran. Perhaps this is one of the many ways the US has decided to attack Iran.
The Daily Star

Some 2,500 tons of narcotics enter Iran from neighboring Afghanistan annually, more than a quarter of which are consumed in the Islamic Republic, an anti-drugs official said on Sunday. "Afghanistan produces 8,200 tons of narcotics, 2,500 of which enter Iran," the Fars news agency quoted Mohammad Reza Jahani, deputy head of Iran's anti-narcotics organization, as saying. "Of this amount, 700 tons are consumed in the country, 500 tons are seized by the police and the rest, which is about 1,300 tons, is transited through the country," he said. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime has said that Afghanistan's opium production increased from 6,100 tons in 2006 to 8,200 tons in 2007, accounting for 93 percent of global production. Iran lies on a major narcotics route from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Turkey and Europe, and Tehran says it needs more funds to combat trafficking across its porous eastern borders. It has hanged smugglers, dug trenches and built walls across the border and lost hundreds of police and military forces in its battle against traffickers. With cheap heroin available at $3.5 dollars per gram, according to the United Nations, the country also faces a serious drug abuse problem with an official two million drug addicts - 250,000 of whom are intravenous heroin users. Nearly half of the prisoners in the country's jails have been incarcerated for drug-related crimes.

CIA withheld Al Qaeda tapes from 9/11 panel-paper

Can you imagine why the CIA would withhold tapes from the 9/11 Commission? Probably because they are incriminating. And I'd bet they were withholding the tapes under orders or at least knowledge of the White House.
Reuters

The Sept. 11 commission's chairmen, Lee Hamilton and Thomas Kean, said their reading of the review, a copy of which the newspaper obtained, convinced them the CIA made a conscious decision to impede the panel's inquiry, the Times said.


A memo prepared by Philip Zelikow, the panel's former executive director, concluded that "further investigation is needed" to determine whether the CIA's withholding of the interrogation tapes from the commission violated U.S. law, the paper reported.


CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield on Saturday said the CIA gave the commission "a wealth of information" and did not destroy the tapes while the commission was active.


"The 9/11 commission certainly had access to, and drew from, detailed information that had been provided by terrorist detainees," Mansfield said in an e-mail. "That's how they reconstructed the plot in their comprehensive report."


"Because it was thought the commission could ask about tapes at some point, they were not destroyed while the commission was active. As Director Hayden pointed out in his December 6th statement, the tapes were destroyed only when it was determined they were no longer of intelligence value and not relevant to any internal, legislative or judicial inquiries," Mansfield said.


The CIA said it destroyed the tapes lawfully to protect the agents involved in the interrogations, but the news prompted an outcry from rights activists and Democrats in Congress, as well as investigations by the Bush administration and Congress.

Tourist Chained and Held Incommunicado, No Food, or Sleep for 24 Hours

Here is an incredible story about a tourist who came to New York to spent money. Welcome to America!
Signs of the Times News

During the last twenty-four hours I have probably experienced the greatest humiliation to which I have ever been subjected. During these last twenty-four hours I have been handcuffed and chained, denied the chance to sleep, been without food and drink and been confined to a place without anyone knowing my whereabouts, imprisoned. Now I am beginning to try to understand all this, rest and review the events which began as innocently as possible.


Last Sunday I and a few other girls began our trip to New York. We were going to shop and enjoy the Christmas spirit. We made ourselves comfortable on first class, drank white wine and looked forward to go shopping, eat good food and enjoy life. When we landed at JFK airport the traditional clearance process began.


We were screened and went on to passport control. As I waited for them to finish examining my passport I heard an official say that there was something which needed to be looked at more closely and I was directed to the work station of Homeland Security. There I was told that according to their records I had overstayed my visa by 3 weeks in 1995. For this reason I would not be admitted to the country and would be sent home on the next flight. I looked at the official in disbelief and told him that I had in fact visited New York after the trip in 1995 without encountering any difficulties.

Where did America learn this from? Guess:
Signs of the Times News

The security personnel of El Al Airlines descended upon me at Newark International Airport like a flock of vultures. There were five of them, in uniform, blockading the check-in counter. They looked old enough to have finished their obligatory service in the Israeli Defense Forces but not old enough to have finished college, which put them beneath me in age. I was prepared for their initial question, "What are you?", which I've been asked my entire life. Really, there is no satisfactory word for what I am.


"Mulatto" is now considered taboo since at its root is the four-legged beast that results from the union of a horse and a donkey (though I am told mules are smarter than both of those breeds). "Mixed" is a more proper adjective for a cocktail. "Interracial" is too vague, and "bi-racial" is similarly unspecific. Though it chafed me, I knew the canned answer that would satisfy: "I look the way I do because my mother is white and my father is black." This time the usual reply wasn't good enough. This time the interrogation was tribal.


"What do you mean black? Where are you from?"
"New Jersey."
"Why are you going to Israel?"
"To visit a friend."
"What is your friend?"
"She's a Cancer."
"She has cancer?"
"No, no. I'm kidding. She's healthy."
"She's Jewish?"
"Yes."
"How do you know her?"
"We grew up together."
"Do you speak Hebrew?"


[..]"Ms. Raboteau. Do you want to get on that plane?"
I was beginning to wonder.
"Do you?"
"Yes."
"Answer the question then! What are your origins?"
What else was I supposed to say?
"A sperm and an egg," I snapped.


That's when they grabbed my luggage, whisked me to the basement, stripped off my clothes and probed every orifice of my body for explosives. When they didn't find any, they focused on my tattoo, a Japanese character which means different, precious, unique. I was completely naked, and the room was cold. I tried to cover myself with my hands. I remember feeling incredibly thirsty. One of them flicked my left shoulder with a latex glove. "What does it mean?" he asked. This was the first time I'd ever been racially profiled, not that the experience would have been any less humiliating had it been my five hundredth. "It means Fuck you," I wanted to say, not because they'd stripped me of my dignity but because they'd shoved my face into my own rootlessness.


I have never felt more black in my life than I did when I was mistaken for an Arab.

Iraq Surge Displaced a Million to Syria

The news from Iraq is so controlled, we may never know the consequences of the American invasion. But even the surge seems to have hurt more civilians than anyone.
Informed Comment

The US troop escalation that began last February seems to be implicated in the displacement of over one million Iraqis to Syria between March and October of this year, adding to the nearly 450,000 that fled there in 2006. This is according to projections from a United Nations weighted survey of nearly 800 refugees. Some 78% of those interviewed in Syria said that they came from Baghdad.


Many of the refugees are from the white collar middle class, and are the people Iraq can least afford to lose. Most of them are only 3 months or less from exhausting all their saving and being thrown into complete destitution. Children are not being educated, and literacy is falling dramatically in the next generation. Many girls are forced into 'survival sex,' i.e. prostitution.


How the US 'surge' drove one million Iraqis to Syria last spring and summer is a great mystery, and casts severe doubt on its political success. A significant proportion of these one million Surge Victims appear to have been Baghdad Sunnis, since from January of 2007 through July 2007 the US military admits that Baghdad went from being 65% Shiite to being 75% Shiite. Since another 500,000 left between July and October, depending on what proportion of those were Sunnis, Baghdad could now be even more than 3/4s Shiite. The Sunnis are not going to take this lying down, and the 'surge' seems to me to have set the stage for 1) a violent return of hundreds of thousands of Sunni Arabs to their usurped homes in Baghdad and 2) therefore a second Battle for Baghdad as soon as the US forces in Iraq are too weak to prevent it.

Was Rice's trip to Iraqi Kurdistan Deliberately Sabotaged?

Now, why would Rice go to Iraqi Kurdistan at the precise moment of a Turkish incursion? There is no way Rice would do that on purpose.
Yet, there is a leak saying the US provided real time intelligence to Turkey on the location of PKK terrorists, just as Rice was leaving Washington.
Sure looks like a set up. And guess who has been setting up the Secretary of State for the past 7 years? This has Cheney's smell all over it.
Informed Comment

it is absolutely impossible that Condi plans out a trip to Kirkuk and a meeting with Barzani with full knowledge that while she is there, Turkey will send 500 Turkish soldiers into northern Iraq to occupy the villages of Kaya Retch Binwak, Janarok and Gelly Resh. Or even that when she set out on her trip, she knew that Turkey was planning to bomb Iraqi Kurdistan on Sunday, killing 3, wounding 8, and displacing 300 Kurdish villagers.


[..]So in my view Turkey is trying to drive a wedge between the US and Barzani, and Turkish chief of staff Yasar Buyukanit deliberately embarrassed Secretary Rice and ruined her trip to celebrate Kurdish-Arab reconciliation (a reconciliation that is not actually good news for Ankara, which does not want to see the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government annex Kirkuk).


If the bombing raid was also not a SNAFU but was a deliberate attempt to thwart Rice's good feeling tour in Iraqi Kurdistan, then that would point to the Turkish military having received advance warning from someone in the US government about Rice's secret trip. That is, it would point to spying. That in turn would raise the question of whether there are relatively high USG officials who had knowledge of her secret itinerary, and who have an interest in bolstering the ties of the US with the Turkish military at the expense of Washington's de facto alliance with Barzani in Iraq.

The Story Behind Zawahiri's Video

It would appear that Al Qaeda's Zawahiri is concerned about become irrelevant. He defends the Islamic State of Iraq, the Sunni insurgents largely quieted by other Sunni militias, and attacks Iran and other prominent Shiites. Here is Juan Cole's assessment of the video.
Informed Comment

The USG Open Source Center summarizes the main points in the new video released by al-Qaeda's number 2 man, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Zawahiri identifies Iraq as the primary field for jihad or holy war and defends the Islamic State of Iraq (radical Sunni Muslims in Iraq) from charges of having been especially vindictive and destructive. Zawahiri also again slams the the Shiites. He sees Iran as hypocritical and actually tacitly cooperating with the US. He dismisses Muqtada al-Sadr as an Iranian cat's paw. He attacks Hasan Nasrallah of Lebanon's Hizbullah. This sectarian approach is typical of the Salafi Jihadis' failures in Iraq, where only a pan-Islamic movement against US occupation could have had a chance of succeeding. Nasrallah is still very popular in the Arab world because his Hizbullah stood up to Israel's attack on Lebanon in summer of 2006, and al-Zawahiri clearly sees Nasrallah as a rival to himself. But Nasrallah has an extensive social welfare program and deputies in the Lebanese parliament, and leads a real if small political movement in a compact territory. Zawahiri is a fugitive whose organization is shadowy and tenuous and on the run. These are the rantings of a loser. The one worrisome thing in the video Zawhiri's conviction that the US presence in Iraq is keeping al-Qaeda alive as a cause, which may well be correct. A whole new generation of jihadis with key terrorism skills is being created by their struggle against what they see as US occupation. That US interests are held harmless from this development in the long run seems unlikely. Zawahiri also calls on the Pakistani military to make a coup against Pervez Musharraf, apparently in hopes that officers of a radical Muslim bent will come to power. (This development is highly unlikely, since Musharraf has by now purged a lot of those elements from the officer corps.)

The Secret Behind the Tar Sands of Alberta

What if Alberta Canada becomes one big open pit mine? Thats the plan for a section of Alberta the size of the UK. BP will strip the vegetation from the surface, divert huge water resources and burn natural gas to bring each barrel of oil out of the ground.
AlterNet calls this "The Biggest Global Warming Crime in History".

Greenpeace pledged a direct action campaign against BP following its decision to reverse a long-standing policy and invest heavily in extracting so-called "oil sands" that lie beneath the Canadian province of Alberta and form the world's second-largest proven oil reserves after Saudi Arabia.


Producing crude oil from the tar sands -- a heavy mixture of bitumen, water, sand and clay -- found beneath more than 54,000 square miles of prime forest in northern Alberta -- an area the size of England and Wales combined -- generates up to four times more carbon dioxide, the principal global warming gas, than conventional drilling.


[..]The oil rush is also scarring a wilderness landscape: millions of tonnes of plant life and top soil is scooped away in vast open-pit mines and millions of litres of water are diverted from rivers -- up to five barrels of water are needed to produce a single barrel of crude and the process requires huge amounts of natural gas.


[..]"It takes about 29kg of CO2 to produce a barrel of oil conventionally. That figure can be as much 125kg for tar sands oil. It also has the potential to kill off or damage the vast forest wilderness, greater than the size of England and Wales, which forms part of the world's biggest carbon sinks.


[..]BP said it will be using a technology that pumps steam heated by natural gas into vertical wells to liquefy the solidified oil sands and pump it to the surface in a way that is less damaging than open cast mining. But campaigners said this method requires 1,000 cubic feet of gas to produce one barrel of unrefined bitumen -- the same required to heat an average British home for 5.5 days.


[..]Licenses have been issued by the Albertan government to extract 350 million cubic metres of water from the Athabasca River every year. But the water used in the extraction process, say campaigners, is so contaminated that it cannot be returned to the eco-system and must instead be stored in vast "tailings ponds" that cover up to 20 square miles and there is evidence of increased rates of cancer and multiple sclerosis in down-river communities.


Experts say a pledge to restore all open cast tar sand mines to their previous pristine condition has proved sadly lacking. David Schindler, professor of ecology at the University of Alberta, said: "Right now the big pressure is to get that money out of the ground, not to reclaim the landscape. I wouldn't be surprised if you could see these pits from a satellite 1,000 years from now."

The Rich Keep Getting Richer

Why has so many in the middle class voted Republican over the years? They haven't been paying attention.
Paul Krugman

Here’s what the numbers say about percentage gains in after-tax income from 2003 to 2005:


Bottom quintile: 2%
Next quintile: 2.4%
Middle quintile: 3.9%
Fourth quintile: 3.7%
Top quintile: 16%


Top 10%: 20.9%
Top 5%: 27.7%
Top 1%: 43.5%


It was a boom, all right — but only for a few people.


One other thing that’s striking from the report, by the way, is that over the 26 years the estimates span, the only significant gains for the bottom two quintiles, and most of the gains for the middle quintile, took place during the Clinton years.

Edwards Is More Electable. Period.

Somebody finally said it. And it was Ian Welch at The Agonist

CNN's poll ... shows Edwards crushing Republicans.


Versus McCain: Clinton loses by 2%, Obama is in a dead heat, and Edwards wins by 8%.


Versus Giuliani: Clinton wins by 6%, Obama by 7%, Edwards wins by 9%.


Versus Romney: Clinton wins by 11%, Obama by 13%, and Edwards wins by 22%.


Versus Huckabee: Clinton wins by 10%, Obama wins by 15%, and Edwards annihilates Huckabee by 25%.


Basically, current polling shows the popularity of the candidates in direct inverse relationship to how well they poll against Republicans in a general. Edwards polls better than Obama who polls better than Clinton.


[..]Voting your beliefs (the poor and middle class are getting screwed) and choosing the most electable candidate aren't in opposition to each other this time.


So what I'm asking Democratic primary voters is to take a good hard look at Edwards again. Stop accepting the media's narrative of Edwards as "the number 3 guy". Look at the numbers, look at his positions and realize that this time you can have it all -- you can have a progressive candidate and you can have a nominee who will absolutely wipe the floor with the Republicans.


Vote your heart, but by all means also vote electability. And don't let political correctness blind you to political realities. Because the country simply cannot afford another 4 years with a Republican president.

Huckabee: A Wife Should Graciously Submit

Daily Kos

Huckabee's opinion on gay marriage is out there, but we should also be publicizing Huckabee's opinions on heterosexual marriage. Specifically, what he believes about a women's role in a marriage.


In August of 1998, Huckabee was one of 131 signatories to a full page USA Today Ad which declared: "I affirm the statement on the family issued by the 1998 Southern Baptist Convention." What was in the family statement from the SBC? "A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ."


The ad wasn't just a blanket, "we support the SBC statement," but rather highlighted details. The ad Huckabee signed specifically said of the SBC family statement: "You are right because you called wives to graciously submit to their husband's sacrificial leadership."


Add "graciously submit" to his "Take back the nation for Christ" statement, and if the media does its job, he's well on his way to being toast.

Dubya's Somalia Devolves

Dubya's foreign policy has been a disaster. Somali is a good example. A Muslim fundamentalist regime was the only likely successful government to stabilize Somalia. Because there were a few Al Qaeda sympathizers in their ranks, then they had to be all bad. The truth is there are no good guys left in Somalia. The only group with any hope of leading must engender the kind of loyalty that comes automatically for many Islamists.
Constructive engagement has been a tried and true diplomatic way to influence a government toward mutually favorable policies. It's time to make constructive engagement as the center piece of American foreign policy. Dubya, we can't just kill everyone we disagree with, duh!
The Daily Star

Repeated regional and internecine violence, which has now spanned 16 years and been worsened by nearly a year of bloody insurgency, has left Mogadishu in ruins, with most basic services completely wiped out.


The remaining residents in Mogadishu, many were driven out by the heavy fighting last month, eek out a living, making do with nearly nothing. Despite efforts by the government to make the city more livable, by painting buildings - those that have survived years of shelling - and clearing and cleaning certain areas, garbage heaps make up much of city's features, and water and electricity remain a luxury.


[..]The fighting has killed hundreds of people this year and sparked a dire humanitarian crisis described by the United Nations as Africa's worst. Nearly 200,000 people fled the war-wracked capital during the latest clashed in November, and at least 600,000 others have been displaced from Mogadishu since February. The latest clashes on Sunday claimed the life of a civilian and wounded three others.

The outcome was predictable from the begining. Ethiopia's invasion was doom from the start. Dubya's financing of it just filtered into the wrong pockets as usual.
PINR

In PINR's judgment, the power struggle within the T.F.G. has ended with its devolution into factionalism and a government divided between Yusuf -- an irreparably failed boss -- and Hussein -- an appeaser without a power base; both are weak and appear to have no possibility of providing national leadership. Yusuf is no longer the protagonist and Hussein is incapable of replacing him; the last piece of Somalia's devolution is in place.


As the T.F.G. collapsed, the patterns of devolution described by PINR in its reports throughout 2007 persisted and deepened. The insurgency against the Ethiopian occupiers and allied T.F.G. forces continues despite an Ethiopian attempt to mount a brutal crackdown and has spread beyond Mogadishu to other regions. The political opposition to the T.F.G. remains intransigent in its demand that Ethiopian forces withdraw from Somalia before it will negotiate on power-sharing. Tensions remain high between Somaliland and Puntland over their conflicting territorial claims. Some regions in Somalia have competing governments, extortionate roadblocks have proliferated, inter-clan conflicts over water and pasture persist, piracy and crime have risen, and there is a humanitarian crisis brought about by the Ethiopian crackdown, which created hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons. Independent media are being suppressed. The donor powers continue to call for broad-based power-sharing in the T.F.G. and for more contributions to the weak African Union peacekeeping force in Mogadishu, to no avail and with no relevance to the actual situation. PINR sees no need to document the above conditions in detail, since they simply prolong a familiar pattern.


With Somalia devolved, the ball is in the court of the external actors, who no longer form a single team. Desperate to pull out, Addis Ababa lost an ally when it forced Gedi out and received in return a "neutral" anxious to please the donor powers. Look for Addis Ababa to be forced to lower its profile as a result of its weakened position. The donor powers are caught between persisting in supporting the T.F.G., which has lost every shred of its unity; devising a new strategy; or pulling back.


A new strategy, the outlines of which have been floated by some strategists in the U.S. military, would be to cantonize Somalia in order to isolate and encircle its most unstable regions; that would involve as its central feature diplomatic recognition of Somaliland and an abandonment of the T.F.G. and of any possibility of a Somali state. Were a cantonization strategy to be pursued, its success would depend on substantial reconstruction aid for the most stable areas, which, in PINR's judgment, would be unlikely to be forthcoming.


Cantonization is simply a return to pre-Courts Somalia, as are continued support for a collapsed T.F.G. and pulling back. There is no present actionable strategy that does not lead back to devolution.

Obama's Progressive Stripes Are Skin Deep

It would appear that Obama isn't the man he's appeared to be. He's now using Republican talking points to attack his rivals.
Paul Krugman makes his point that Obama's health plan has a big problem. Now Obama has hit back in a Swift Boat type attack. DailyKos has the scoop on the Obama attack dog back lash. It would appear Obama's progressive stripes are skin deep.
New York Times

From the beginning, advocates of universal health care were troubled by the incompleteness of Barack Obama’s plan, which unlike those of his Democratic rivals wouldn’t cover everyone. But they were willing to cut Mr. Obama slack on the issue, assuming that in the end he would do the right thing.


Now, however, Mr. Obama is claiming that his plan’s weakness is actually a strength. What’s more, he’s doing the same thing in the health care debate he did when claiming that Social Security faces a “crisis” — attacking his rivals by echoing right-wing talking points.


The central question is whether there should be a health insurance “mandate” — a requirement that everyone sign up for health insurance, even if they don’t think they need it. The Edwards and Clinton plans have mandates; the Obama plan has one for children, but not for adults.


Why have a mandate? The whole point of a universal health insurance system is that everyone pays in, even if they’re currently healthy, and in return everyone has insurance coverage if and when they need it.


And it’s not just a matter of principle. As a practical matter, letting people opt out if they don’t feel like buying insurance would make insurance substantially more expensive for everyone else.


Here’s why: under the Obama plan, as it now stands, healthy people could choose not to buy insurance — then sign up for it if they developed health problems later. Insurance companies couldn’t turn them away, because Mr. Obama’s plan, like those of his rivals, requires that insurers offer the same policy to everyone.


As a result, people who did the right thing and bought insurance when they were healthy would end up subsidizing those who didn’t sign up for insurance until or unless they needed medical care.


[..]But now Mr. Obama, who just two weeks ago was telling audiences that his plan was essentially identical to the Edwards and Clinton plans, is attacking his rivals and claiming that his plan is superior. It isn’t — and his attacks amount to cheap shots.


First, Mr. Obama claims that his plan does much more to control costs than his rivals’ plans. In fact, all three plans include impressive cost control measures.


Second, Mr. Obama claims that mandates won’t work, pointing out that many people don’t have car insurance despite state requirements that all drivers be insured. Um, is he saying that states shouldn’t require that drivers have insurance? If not, what’s his point? Look, law enforcement is sometimes imperfect. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have laws.


Third, and most troubling, Mr. Obama accuses his rivals of not explaining how they would enforce mandates, and suggests that the mandate would require some kind of nasty, punitive enforcement: “Their essential argument,” he says, “is the only way to get everybody covered is if the government forces you to buy health insurance. If you don’t buy it, then you’ll be penalized in some way.”


Well, John Edwards has just called Mr. Obama’s bluff, by proposing that individuals be required to show proof of insurance when filing income taxes or receiving health care. If they don’t have insurance, they won’t be penalized — they’ll be automatically enrolled in an insurance plan.


[..]I recently castigated Mr. Obama for adopting right-wing talking points about a Social Security “crisis.” Now he’s echoing right-wing talking points on health care.

Something is Wrong with Our Justice System

There is something wrong with our justice system. Michael Vick gets 23 months in prison Monday for his role in a dogfighting conspiracy, and Barry Bonds faces a 30 year in prison term if convicted for lying to a grand jury about steroid use.
The US has the highest rate of imprisonment of any country in the world, 40 percent greater than those of our nearest competitors (the Bahamas, Belarus, and Russia). One in 32 Americans are in jail or prison. Too many are young African Americans and way too many are imprisoned for petty drug offenses. Not only are we creating more victims, we're ensuring their future success as criminals in the best training grounds (prisons). We can no longer afford this sick system, by taxes, or moral responsibility.

A Shifting Balence of Power in the Asian Pacific

Image via Wikipedia

The Chinese decision to deny US ships access to Hong Kong harbor marks a significant shift in the balence of power in the South China Sea. At the same time, Chinese ships have ported in Tokyo harbor for the first time. While largely symbolic, the meaning of these events should not be underestimated.
PINR

[..]On November 20, two navy minesweepers, the USS Patriot and USS Guardian, were performing routine patrol missions in the South China Sea when a weather storm descended upon them. Both ships were also running low on fuel. They sent an emergency request to Chinese authorities to dock at Hong Kong in order to weather the storm and refuel. The request was denied. The two ships were forced to stay out at sea.


Another incident centers around a U.S. aircraft carrier, the USS Kitty Hawk. The Kitty Hawk and the five support vessels that travel with her were scheduled to dock in Hong Kong on November 21, one day before Thanksgiving. The arrangements for this port call had been worked out well in advance, and the Chinese authorities had granted approval. As the USS Kitty Hawk approached port, Chinese authorities radioed to indicate that the approval had been revoked. In order to salvage some part of the holiday, the USS Kitty Hawk turned and sailed for Japan, where approval would be certain. Some time later, Chinese authorities radioed again to say that approval had been re-granted. Yet, by this time, the Kitty Hawk was well on her way to Japan and could not afford to turn back.


On the same day, two other events transpired. Chinese authorities sent a communiqué to the U.S. Department of the Navy to inform them that the pending request for the USS Reuben James to dock in Hong Kong on New Year's Day had been denied.


[..]Regarding the balance of power, the events of the last week are a clear indication that a change is occurring in East Asia. Expressed in the simplest terms, the U.S. Navy is losing the ability to dock in Chinese controlled territories while the Chinese navy is gaining the ability to dock in Japanese territories. The frontier of the American sphere of influence is regressing, while the frontier of the Chinese sphere of influence is growing outward.


At a deeper level of analysis the change in the balance of power is even more evident. The USS Kitty Hawk is considered a significant vessel by the Chinese. The ship provided indispensible support to the campaign in Afghanistan, to which China, along with other member states in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, has taken a clear stance of active disapproval. To the Chinese government, the USS Kitty Hawk is symbolic of Washington's role in Afghanistan and presence in Central Asia.


The USS Kitty Hawk is also symbolic of another long standing disagreement. In 1994, the Kitty Hawk was instrumental in putting down tensions between Taiwan and the mainland. Ever since 1998, the Kitty Hawk has been the flagship in U.S. efforts to maintain peace across the straits. As a result, to the Chinese government the USS Kitty Hawk is also symbolic of Washington's extended deterrence for Taiwan.


Given that the Kitty Hawk symbolizes Washington's presence and dominance in China's backyard, the rejection of the Kitty Hawk and concurrent expedition to Japan must be viewed as changes in the balance of power in East Asia. The extent and consequences of these changes are unclear at the present time. However, if these questions are to be understood in the future, the answers will most likely be gleamed from analysis of events in Taiwan, Japan and the Spratley Islands. If the spheres of influence are indeed shifting, any repercussions will be evident in these domains, which are situated at the threshold of the two spheres.

Senator Whitehouse Takes On Dubya's Double Doings

Thanks to Cosmic Tap for the tip on Senator Sheldon Whitehouse's speech today. A few Dems and even Republicans are willing to talk turkey about Doublethink Dubya.

In a nutshell, these three Bush administration legal propositions boil down to this:


1. “I don’t have to follow my own rules, and I don’t have to tell you when I’m breaking them.”


2. “I get to determine what my own powers are.”


3. “The Department of Justice doesn’t tell me what the law is, I tell the Department of Justice what the law is.”


When the Congress of the United States is willing to roll over for an unprincipled President, this is where you end up. We should not even be having this discussion. But here we are. I implore my colleagues: reject these feverish legal theories. I understand political loyalty, trust me, I do. But let us also be loyal to this great institution we serve in the legislative branch of our government. Let us also be loyal to the Constitution we took an oath to defend, from enemies foreign and domestic. And let us be loyal to the American people who live each day under our Constitution’s principles and protections.

There is more here.

Huckabee Is a Liar, A Christian Right Wingnut

Clearly, Huckabee intervened to get a convicted rapist released. After all the victim was a relation to Clinton and the Parole Board were Democrat appointees. Except DuMond was guilty and after Huckabee got him released, he went on to rape and murder another woman.
Meanwhile, Huckabee insists he had nothing to do with getting him released. The parole board members disagree.
Also in this article is a story that Huckabee advocated interning AIDs victims and called homosexuals dangerous.
New York Times

As new polls highlight Mike Huckabee’s ascent in the Republican presidential field, he is drawing new scrutiny of his record in Arkansas, particularly his actions in the release of a convicted rapist who went on to murder a woman and his response to a questionnaire in which he said people with AIDS should be quarantined.


Two former parole board members in Arkansas said yesterday that as governor, Mr. Huckabee met with the board in 1996 to lobby them to release the convicted rapist, Wayne DuMond, whose case was championed by evangelical Christians. “He expressed his concerns about DuMond’s guilt,” said Deborah Suttlar, a former parole board member. “He felt he deserved to be released.”


Mr. DuMond later went on to murder a Missouri woman after his parole. He died in prison of natural causes in 2005.


Mr. Huckabee, a former Southern Baptist pastor, has denied that he had any involvement in Mr. DuMond’s release, pointing out that he had refused to commute the sentence and that the parole board freed him. But The Los Angeles Times reported yesterday that three of the seven members of the parole board said Mr. Huckabee had pressured them, echoing earlier reporting by The Arkansas Times and other local news media.


[..]Highlighting the new scrutiny of Mr. Huckabee’s record, The Associated Press revealed yesterday that as a candidate for the United States Senate in 1992, Mr. Huckabee said in a response in a 229-question survey that he believed that AIDS patients should be isolated from the public and that homosexuality was an “aberrant, unnatural and sinful lifestyle” that posed a “dangerous public risk.”


[..]Mr. DuMond was convicted in the 1984 rape of a teenager who was a distant cousin of Bill Clinton, then the governor of Arkansas. While he was out on bail awaiting trial, Mr. DuMond said men forced his way into his home and castrated him, but the authorities said they thought he might have castrated himself in a play for sympathy. He was sentenced to life in prison.


Mr. Clinton’s successor, Jim Guy Tucker, found the sentence excessive and cut it to 39 ½ years, making Mr. DuMond eligible for parole.


While Mr. DuMond was in prison, the Rev. Jay D. Cole, a Baptist pastor and friend of Mr. Huckabee’s, ministered to him, and the inmate later said he had found God. Mr. Cole said yesterday that he asked Mr. Huckabee to look into the case. “I think Mike was very torn about the whole thing,” Mr. Cole said. “I feel he felt an innocent man was in prison, or if not, he had been in prison too long. But he didn’t come out and say that.”


Nevertheless, soon after taking office, Mr. Huckabee met in October 1996 with members of the parole board, all of whom had been appointed by his Democratic predecessors. Mr. DuMond’s case, with its twists and turns — including a $110,000 judgment against a sheriff who kept Mr. DuMond’s testicles in a jar on his desk — had become something of a celebrated cause among conservative activists, who charged that Mr. Clinton’s relation to the victim had led to Mr. DuMond’s being railroaded.


The parole board meetings are public, but after Mr. Huckabee arrived, the board chairman closed the meeting to everyone except board members. What happened next is in dispute.


A request for a pardon was being considered at that point by Mr. Huckabee, who came out in favor of it. That caused an outcry among some, including the rape victim, who went to his office to ask him to change his mind. Mr. Huckabee later denied Mr. DuMond clemency, but wrote a letter to him. “Dear Wayne,” he wrote. “My desire is that you be released from prison. I feel that parole is the best way for your reintroduction to society to take place.”


When Mr. Huckabee met with the parole board, according to Ms. Suttlar and Charles Chastain, another board member, he said he wanted to talk to them about a specific case and raised the issue of Mr. DuMond unprompted. “I’ve looked into this a good bit,” Mr. Chastain recalled Mr. Huckabee saying to them. “I feel he may just be a fellow from the wrong side of the tracks and gotten a raw deal.” Ms. Suttlar yesterday accused Mr. Huckabee of compromising “the integrity of the parole board.” She was somewhat more lenient in an interview with The Associated Press in 2001, when she said the pressure from Mr. Huckabee “was not coercion, it was an implied thing.”

White House Reveals Bush Lied: "No One Told Me Not To"

Here is an incredible story from
AlterNet. Dubya lied about knowing about the intelligence on Iraq and said that "no one told him to stop" talking about Iran. Clearly, this man is a figurehead without someone to lead him around and even White House officials aren't covering for him anymore. How dysfunctional can this Administration get?

On Tuesday, President Bush said he was never forewarned by the intelligence community that Iran had suspended its nuclear weapons program in 2003:

In August, I think it was John -- Mike McConnell came in and said, We have some new information. He didn't tell me what the information was.

Now the White House is revealing that wasn't true. In fact, Bush did know what the information was. CNN reports:

President Bush was told in August that Iran's nuclear weapons program 'may be suspended,' the White House said Wednesday, which seemingly contradicts the account of the meeting given by Bush Tuesday."

The White House statement released by Dana Perino tonight also states McConnell told Bush "the new information might cause the intelligence community to change its assessment of Iran's covert nuclear program."


On Tuesday, Bush said "nobody ever told me" to back down from his hawkish rhetoric on Iran. No, maybe not. But Bush knew Iran "may have suspended" its nuclear weapons program and that the intelligence community was in the process of "changing its assessment." And yet, he continued to warn of "World War III" and a "nuclear holocaust" because nobody told specifically him to stop.

The Get-Tough-On-Crime Bug is Making Us Sick

AlterNet

Doctors recommend people get the flu shot this time of year. And I recommend folks get inoculated for the get-tough-on-crime bug before the campaign season gets in full swing. The highly contagious mental malady prevents people from thinking clearly about crime and punishment. It's how we get legislation like the "Aid Elimination Penalty" provision in the Higher Education Act (HEA) that bars students with drug convictions from receiving federal financial aid for college; apparently, to teach them a lesson.


By "them," in this case, we're talking about disproportionately disadvantaged students. Rich, stoner kids don't need financial aid.


The push to repeal the provision from the HEA was dropped in Congress two weeks ago, despite the efforts of the Coalition for Higher Education Act Reform, though they did get one small victory in getting the law amended so that the AEP applies only to offenses committed while a student is getting financial aid.


Still, an estimated 200,000 students have been denied financial aid because of AEP, as Congress moves toward reauthorizing the bill, AEP and all. It's just one of the many strains of the get-tough-on-crime virus that attacks the popular political mind, re-defining "justice" as an institutionalized form of making sure "those" people get what they "deserve."


In his 1966 study of the American penal system, Dr. Karl Menninger discerned a diagnosis, offering two simple observations that exposes the get-tough-on-crime approach for what it is: an irrelevant distraction in dealing with the "crime problem."


First, Menninger observed, most criminals are never caught, meaning: convicted criminals -- the people in prison -- are only the minority of law-breakers foolish enough, brazen enough, poor enough or unlucky enough to get caught.


And, of the minority of offenders who are behind bars, not even all of them are guilty, as we are reminded with alarming frequency by periodic news reports of yet another wrongly convicted inmate later exonerated by DNA evidence. It was true in 1966 when Menninger wrote The Crime of Punishment and it's true today. According to the most recent figures I could find -- the FBI's 2002 Crime Index Offenses Cleared data -- law enforcement agencies, nationwide, had a 20 percent clearance rate for all crimes.


[..]Secondly, and more importantly, Menninger reminds us, most convicted criminals will eventually be released. If we remove law-breakers from society to merely punish and humiliate them for their crimes because they "deserve it," and then release them as economic and political pariahs, by doing stuff like denying drug offenders financial aid for college, the only thing we've done is warehouse workers in labor camps that double as crime universities where penitentiary professors teach their pupils the tricks-of-the-trade.


Arguing about whether the criminal justice system should be about retribution or rehabilitation is besides the point. Because it won't change the reality that if you put people with problems in a place that makes them worse-off and then turn them loose on society without any resources, the only thing you've done is exponentially increase the chances of that person becoming a repeat offender, guaranteeing many more future victims.


Menninger's medicine goes right to the heart of the get-tough-on-crime rationalization: "'Doesn't anybody care about the victims?' cry some demagogues, with melodramatic flourishes. 'Why should all this attention be given to the criminals and none to those they have beaten or robbed?'"


"This childish outcry has an appeal for the unthinking. Of course no victim should be neglected. But the individual victim has no more right to be protected than those of us who may become victims. We all want to be better protected. And we are not being protected by a system that attacks 'criminals' as if they were the embodiment of evil."


Until the "crime problem" is diagnosed and treated as a "social safety problem," like Menninger suggested, we'll keep having these get-tough-on-crime policies creating more future victims. Inoculate yourself.

More Gazans turn away from Hamas

csmonitor.com

Support for Hamas, the Islamist militant group that has controlled Gaza since June, has frayed as Israel keeps intense pressure on the thin, coastal strip and its chief Palestinian rival is embracing a language of peace.


A vast majority of Gazans now favor Fatah's path to formal talks with Israel, according to the Ramallah-based Near East Consulting, an independent market research firm. Sixty-one percent of those Palestinians who responded to a November poll also said they see Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah Party, which controls the Palestinian Authority (PA), as the legitimate government for the Palestinian people.


While the numbers represent a dramatic drop in its popularity since its overwhelming win in Palestinian polls last year, Hamas remains steadfast in its opposition to new talks, as prescribed in the Annapolis, Md., summit of Arab and Israeli leaders last week.


And yet, say analysts, this potent and still widely influential force must be reckoned with before any lasting agreement can be inked. The catch is, according to the logic of Annapolis, Hamas should be treated as "extremist" until it endorses negotiations with Israel and forswears violence, despite the fact that the group controls a part of the Palestinian territories where 1.4 million Palestinians live.


But critics warn that as long as the US, Israel, and Mr. Abbas's PA shut out Hamas, the peace process will be flawed at best, or, at worst, could trigger intensified fighting.


"There is no concept of how to deal with Hamas. That is part of the big problem with what is going on right now," says Gidi Grinstein, who was part of the Israeli peace team for the 2000 Camp David summit, and is the president of the Tel Aviv-based Reut Institute.


Through aid, rebuilding PA institutions, and removing Israeli limits to Palestinian movement in the West Bank, peace-process advocates hope to improve the quality of life in such a way that Gazans will be compelled to turn out Hamas.

Spinning up Iranian Nukes

Much is currently being made about the National Intelligence Estimate released this week about the risk of a nuclear Iran. The most important story, however, has to be dug out of several sources.
Despite all the rhetoric from Dubya about Iran building nukes, the Bush Administration has been sitting on this report for nearly a year, apparently attempting to spin up a more negative result.
IPSNews.net Cheney Tried to Stifle Dissent in Iran NIE

A National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran has been held up for more than a year in an effort to force the intelligence community to remove dissenting judgments on the Iranian nuclear programme, and thus make the document more supportive of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney's militarily aggressive policy toward Iran, according to accounts of the process provided by participants to two former Central Intelligence Agency officers.


But this pressure on intelligence analysts, obviously instigated by Cheney himself, has not produced a draft estimate without those dissenting views, these sources say. The White House has now apparently decided to release the unsatisfactory draft NIE, but without making its key findings public.

Hadley calls the report good news. WSJ works really hard at muddying the definitive nature of the result.
Well if Bush knew for a year that if anything the risk of Iranian nuclear weapons program was on hold, why all the rhetoric?
Juan Cole thinks Cheney has been working on regime change.
Then there is the very interesting article about the history of British meddling in Eurasia seeking to prolong it's empire by divide and conquer tactics to break up the possibility ominous new alliances in Asia.
Given Dubya's clumsy moves in Central Asia and signs of alliances brewing between Iran, Russia and China, Bush has been doing a lousy job of continuing British tactics. He may have in fact created the worst case scenario by forcing the Asian triumvirate to circle their wagons.

Chavez Tastes Defeat Over Reforms

There is good new for democracy from TIME. The Venezuelan president Dubya insisted was a budding dictator lost a referendum and is respecting the outcome.
In the third world, money dominates politics even more so than in the West. Hungry bellies make for loyal political allies. But the students recognized excess and put down Chavez's power grab. We'll see in coming days if he intends to do as he says.

Venezuela's polls had closed in a national referendum on a raft of constitutional reforms that would have profoundly tightened his hold on political power in Venezuela — including an amendment to eliminate presidential term limits (which currently last six years). Instead, Chavez's Vice President, Jorge Rodriguez, appeared as the night wore on and told reporters, "We will respect the result, whatever it is."


And, to the astonishment of his opponents, Chavez did. At around 2 am this morning, Caracas time, Chavez conceded his first electoral defeat since winning Venezuela's presidency in 1998. After facing an unusually strong protest movement on the streets of Venezuela's major cities — led not by traditional opposition figures but by university students who'd grown fearful that Chavez was moving the country toward a Cuba-style dictatorship — his reforms were narrowly beaten back by a 51% to 49% margin. The result, and Chavez's graceful acceptance of it, may well have set not only Venezuela, a key U.S. oil supplier, but all of Latin America on a far surer path to democracy in the 21st century. "This was a photo finish," Chavez told his stunned backers after his defeat was announced. "Don't feel sad, don't feel burdened."


[..]The movement led by Gonzalez and tens of thousands of fellow students proved decisive: they articulated an opposition message and galvanized its sympathizers far more effectively than Venezuela's older political elite ever could. It was a force Chavez had not planned on reckoning with, particularly since students have long been a bloc that Latin America's political left could depend on. Chavez also couldn't withstand the defections within his own bloc, including socialist state Governors and, perhaps most important, his erstwhile pal and former Defense Minister, Raul Baduel, who earlier this month called Chavez's amendments a "constitutional coup d'etat." The attempt by Chavez and his backers to demonize figures like Baduel — labeling them "traitors" — backfired, especially since Baduel had helped put Chavez back in power after a botched opposition coup attempt against him in 2002.


But just as important was Chavez's concession. The opposition "won this victory for themselves," he admitted in a voice whose subdued calm was in contrast to his frequently aggressive political speeches. "My sincere recommendation is that they learn how to handle it."


In the end it was a cachet that, fortunately, he knew he couldn't forfeit. As a result, the referendum result will resonate far beyond Venezuela. Latin Americans in general have grown disillusioned by democratic institutions — particularly their failure to solve the region's gaping inequality and frightening insecurity — and many observers fear that Latin Americans, as they so often have in their history, are again willing to give leaders like Chavez inordinate, and inordinately protracted, powers. Chavez, critics complained, was in fact leading a trend of what some called "democratators" — democratically elected dictators. His allies in Bolivia and Ecuador, for example, are hammering out new Constitutions that may give them unlimited presidential re-election. The fact that Venezuelans this morning resisted that urge — and that Chavez so maturely backed off himself when he saw it — may give other countries pause for thought as well. It could even revive the oft-ridiculed notion that this might after all be the century of the Americas.

Will Bush Go To Jail Over Abramoff?

It's beginning to look pretty obvious that something improper went on between Abramoff and Bush. Clearly, Bush has been lying about his contact with Abramoff. Now, as is typical, Bush is attempting to cover his tracks by claiming his security will be compromised if the details come out.
He may not be impeached, but maybe he'll go to jail in 2009.
The Associated Press

The Bush administration is laying out a new secrecy defense in an effort to end a court battle about the White House visits of now-imprisoned lobbyist Jack Abramoff. The administration agreed last year to produce all responsive records about the visits "without redactions or claims of exemption," according to a court order.


But in a court filing Friday night, administration lawyers said that the Secret Service has identified a category of highly sensitive documents that might contain information sought in a lawsuit about Abramoff's trips to the White House.


The Justice Department, citing a Cold War-era court ruling, declared that the contents of the "Sensitive Security Records" cannot be publicly revealed even though they could show whether Abramoff made more visits to the White House than those already acknowledged.


"The simple act of doing so ... would reveal sensitive information about the methods used by the Secret Service to carry out its protective function," the Justice Department argued.


"This is an extraordinary development and it raises the specter that there were additional contacts with President Bush or other high White House officials that have yet to be disclosed," said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group that filed the suit. "We've alleged that the government has committed misconduct in this litigation and frankly this is more fuel for that fire."


[..]To date, the government has turned over Secret Service records referring to seven White House visits by Abramoff — six of them in the early months of the Bush administration in 2001 and the seventh in early 2004 just before Abramoff came under criminal investigation. The White House has released little information about the visits, but none of them appears to involve a small group meeting with President Bush.


Nearly two years ago, just after Abramoff had pleaded guilty in the influence peddling scandal, Bush told reporters, "I can't say I didn't ever meet" Abramoff, "but I meet a lot of people. [..] I don't know him," Bush said at the presidential news conference in January 2006. "I've never sat down with him and had a discussion with the guy."


After Bush's comments, Abramoff wrote an e-mail to the national editor of Washingtonian magazine saying that Bush had seen him "in almost a dozen settings, and joked with me about a bunch of things, including details of my kids. Perhaps he has forgotten everything, who knows."


Time magazine reported that its reporters had been shown five photographs of Bush and Abramoff. Most of them, the magazine said, had "the formal look of photos taken at presidential receptions."

Preserve Internet Liberty, Prevent Corporate Monopoly

A great article from Juan Cole at Informed Comment.

We all know the drawbacks of corporate news outlets, and the great blessing that the internet represents for grassroots organizing and information sharing. But of course, the big corporations are very unhappy about losing some control of these matters, and have been pushing for legislation to end internet liberty and make it into the Corporate Monopoly Internet (CMI), cutting out individuals and small groups.


Some may think the word "monopoly" an exaggeration. But all private television news broadcasts are owned by only five corporations in the United States. Five is too little for healthy competition, and all five disallow centrist and progressive points of view as most Americans would define them (i.e. the range of acceptable opinion on the US airwaves is from center-right to far right). Opinion polling decisively shows that the American public is very substantially to the left of virtually all television broadcasts with a social or political content. Yet of the three cable news networks, 2 are center-right and 1 is far right!


[..]Save the Internet is a key site for organizing to stop the imposition of a Corporate Monopoly on the Internet.