We'll note two things (and that's probably it for the night).

First Amada e-mails to note that Dahr Jamail has a new post up at Iraq Dispatches entitled "A 'Welcome Parade' of Blood and Seething Anger:"


As if to add insult to injury, with over 400 Iraqis killed in violence during the first two weeks of the newly sworn in Iraqi "government," US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice made a surprise one day visit to the newest US colony.
After visiting northern Iraq which has been spared the brunt of the ongoing violence, Rice traveled to the heavily entrenched "green zone" in central Baghdad where the U.S. "embassy" is located. She addressed a crowd in the former Republican Palace, the perfect setting for her symbolic visit to Iraq where more and more Iraqis are referring to the devastating occupation which has beset their country as their new "bloodocracy."
"We are so grateful that there are Americans willing to sacrifice so the Middle East will be whole, and free and democratic and at peace," she announced before she returned to northern Iraq in her huge contingent of military helicopters to the mountain stronghold of Kurdish Democratic Party leader Massoud Barzani before exiting the war ravaged nation.
Rather than a welcoming parade with ticker-tape and rose petals for the US Secretary of State who was one of the architects of the invasion, 34 corpses of men shot, beheaded or with their throats slit were discovered across Iraq today.

Lynda e-mailed to share with the community.

Lynda: If anyone's not seen Monster-In-Law yet, please go this week. It's so funny. I saw it with my mother-in-law and we were laughing so hard. On the TV a few moments ago, it was reported that it was the number one movie for the weekend and took in over $24 million. They were saying this was the biggest opening for a Jennifer Lopez film. I was thinking, "And the biggest opening for a Jane Fonda film." It's a funny film that everyone will really enjoy. I was thinking all weekend I needed to see it and then I read the thing you [C.I.] and Ava wrote at The Third Estate Sunday Review this morning and knew I had to see it today. I called up my mother-in-law and asked her if she was interested so we both went. You and Ava were angry in your rebuttal but I also thought you two were pretty funny. Please post all of this.

I'll assume the last statement is because Lynda was worried that, due to the self-referential policy here, I would cut out the comments regarding what Ava and I wrote. But that's a Third Estate Sunday Review piece (not a Common Ills one) and Ava's wonderful so no problem in Lynda's comments being posted in full. (And if the rebuttal turned out well, credit Ava.)

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]

I've got mulitple screens open right now so please make a point to scroll down from the top if you've been online for a bit and are looking for entries. (Mark e-mailed wondering where the Iraq entry is. It's posted below the Judy Collins' entry. Blogger puts on a time stamp based upon when you open the "Create" post window. Not when you actually publish the entry. I'll try to adjust the time but in case I forget, please scroll around if you're looking for something.)

In These Times has posted the article that a number of us have been waiting on. So this entry is just a head's up to Erin Mosely's "Light and Solidarity." Here's an excerpt:


Susan Plum is challenging the Mexican government's massive failure to effectively investigate and halt the killing spree in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, which has taken the lives of more than 370 women in the past 12 years. Plum, an artist who lives and works in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, has decided to shed light on the mysterious string of female abductions and murders--one candle at a time.
Last summer she began circulating via e-mail the idea for "Luz y Solidaridad" ("Light and Solidarity"), an art project that calls for people everywhere to help her "bring light to Juárez, especially to the mothers and the families of the young women and girls who have been murdered." The installation exhibit and performance, set to open February 4, 2006, at the Museo de la Ciudad in Querétaro, Mexico, will incorporate photographs of votives that have been lit all over the world for the women of the Mexican border town.
According to Amnesty International, 137 of the 370 murders in Juárez and the surrounding area of Chihuahua, have involved sexual assault. Additionally, somewhere between 70 and 400 women and girls remain missing.
Many of the women killed have been abducted near their workplaces--the maquilas (factories) located on the outskirts of Juárez. Kari Lydersen writes in her new book, Out of the Sea and into the Fire, "They disappear while waiting for or leaving the buses that take them to and from work, or after visiting the bars that are popular with maquila workers on Friday nights." Pervasive machismo and a culture that demeans women are also to blame for the pattern of violence. As National Public Radio's John Burnett reported, "It's a common joke [in Juárez] when two men see a provocatively dressed woman, for one to elbow the other and say, 'She better watch out or she’ll end up in the desert.'"

Again, it's an excerpt, read the full article.

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]

We're going to focus, this entry, on some of the resources and sites that are permalinks (on the left).

From CounterPunch, we'll note Saul Landau's "Wars Kill Empires as Well as People: Lessons from Vietnam:"


In 2005, the United States has become Communist Vietnam's single-largest trading partner. Vietnam's products permeate US stores. But the "Vietnam War trauma" remains central to US politics. Note how the Vietnam service record of presidential candidates became a contentious issue in the 2004 elections. People don't overcome traumas unless they understand them.
Since public education provides citizens with minimal context, we rely on mass media to reach into its collective attic and drag out "Fall of Saigon" stories. However, when the commercial press pushes the anniversary method of history teaching, the public tends to divorce rather than engage with its past connections.
Personal anecdotes overwhelm analysis. Relatives of dead soldiers weep at Washington's Vietnam Wall; others relive battles and deaths of comrades. Few media presentations offer the past as a way to learn for the future.
As the US occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan continue down their bloody paths, we should study the lessons of The Vietnam War. Vietnamese refer to that period between the early 1960s and April 1975 as "The American Phase." They suffered periods of foreign domination by Chinese, Japanese and French occupiers who, unlike the Americans, learned the painful lesson of trying to subdue and occupy that land.
US leaders adamantly refuse to learn that some people, like Koreans, Vietnamese and Iraqis, for examples, do not submit to force and brutality. How to teach that simple lesson? Teachers will have shared the experience of trying to educate students who have not ingested their own history. Instead of inculcating historical context from first grade on, US students learn a kind of patriotic mythology disguised with words like "unbiased" ­ as if along with critiques of US behavior in Vietnam ­ or Iraq -- one had to present the good side of torture, mass murder and the napalming of villages.

From Amnesty International, "Guantánamo Bay - a human rights scandal:"

Hypocrisy, an overarching war mentality and a disregard for basic human rights principles and international legal obligations continue to mark the USA's "war on terror". Serious human rights violations are the inevitable result. The detention camp at the US Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay in Cuba has become a symbol of the US administration’s refusal to put human rights and the rule of law at the heart of its response to the atrocities of 11 September 2001. Hundreds of people of around 35 different nationalities remain held in effect in a legal black hole, many without access to any court, legal counsel or family visits. As evidence of torture and widespread cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment mounts, it is more urgent than ever that the US Government bring the Guantánamo Bay detention camp and any other facilities it is operating outside the USA into full compliance with international law and standards. The only alternative is to close them down.

Clicking on the link above takes you to resources including a full report and video.

Over at Iddybud, the Jude wonders "Does the GOP Value American Freedom and Democracy?"
Excerpt:

When the state becomes the church, we no longer live in a free country. The government becomes similar to the one that spurred the American Revolution. Congress has the lowest public approval rating that it has seen in years.
The far right pundits will lead you to believe it is the fault of "Democratic obstructionists", but the reality is that moderate, liberal, and progressive citizens are disgusted with the radical right holding the reins of leadership in Congress - pandering to the Religious Far Right. John McCain denounced the Religious Far Right's influence today on ABC's This Week, yet he aligned himself closely with George W. Bush at last year's Republican Convention with fear-mongering rhetoric and an obvious ommission of any talk about domestic issues.
I don't see Bush denouncing the GOP leadership that is coddling the religious extremists. So, isn't McCain a hypocrite or a pathetic dodger, at best? In his Convention speech, McCain said "We have to love our freedom not just for the material benefits it provides, not just for the autonomy it guarantees us, but for the goodness it makes possible." What goodness comes of enriching the richest and creating a Godzilla-deficit with which our poor children will be enslaved?

As always, Jude's worth reading. And, as Richie noted when he sent this in, "Someone get her a weekly guest spot on Air America already!"

Over at Interesting Times, Chris weighs the issue of when to fight back and when not to:

Partisanship, the kind that everyone hates, is when politicians attack regardless of the impact those attacks may have on their country. It is the back seat driver who keeps banging the cabby over the head with their purse. That kind of blind assault, while it may feel good to those who have no real power, doesn't do anyone any good.
But isn't there an equal danger to sitting quietly back as you see your driver heading the wrong way down a one way street? Partisanship is not always bad, especially when your driver is drunk.
The solution to the quandry of the patriotic opposition is this: fight back is good when not fighting back creates an even more dangerous situation.
Democrats have tried for years to work with Republicans as they have steered the nation into the future. As much as they might have disagreed with their political philosophy, they were patriots and didn't want their differences of opinion do any further damage to their country.

From The Black Commentator, we'll note Paul Street's "Think Piece" ("'Before We Can Claim Our Future, We Have to Control Our Past': On History and Self-Defense"):


Driving around in my car with Chicago's WBBM News Radio (780 AM) recently, I got to hear two guttural syllables from the mouth of Fidel Castro. The full word and the Spanish language he was speaking were unintelligible. "That was Fidel Castro speaking to a throng in Havana, Cuba yesterday," the robotic corporate newscaster reported. "Castro was speaking to commemorate May 1st, which has traditionally been observed as a worker's day in other nations." This entire news item took about 15 seconds, in curious contrast to Fidel's notorious taste for giving 3-hour speeches.
"In other nations." Do WBBM's writers know or even care that May 1's status as "the workers' day" hit its stride in the United States, in connection with the American labor movement's 8-hour struggle in the 1880s, and especially by the way in...CHICAGO. The Anarchist International Information Service has attempted to rescue that little, forgotten piece of history from what Edward Palmer Thompson used to call "the enormous condescension of posterity." At the site you will also find the following prescient observation: "...it is not surprising that the state, business leaders, mainstream union officials, and the media would want to hide the true history of May Day. In its attempt to erase the history and significance of May Day, the United States government declared May 1st to be 'Law Day', and gave the workers instead Labor Day, the first Monday of September – a holiday devoid of any historical significance."
History, the real and radical record of the past is dangerous to rulers and masters the world over. It reminds us that contemporary social and political hierarchies are not "permanent," like the earth and wind and solar system. It tells us that existing power relations are in fact socially constructed products of human agency that can be subverted and supplanted over time...sometimes quite quickly (Cuba in the late 1950s, for example).
History shows patterns and origins and the nature of certain phenomenon – the nature of fascism or imperialism or what have you – that can't be properly understood except with observation over time.

At Liberal Oasis, Bill Scher addresses what could be learned from the latest developments in the fight over John Bolton's nomination:


Dems have avoided making ideological arguments against Bolton in hopes that his pattern of abusiveness would be more convincing to the other side.
Then GOP Sen. George Voinovich went ahead and opposed Bolton on ideological grounds anyway.
And then he made a mockery of his passionate arguments by refusing to kill the nomination.
(Voinovich weakly argued that it would "arrogant" for him to "impose" his sole "judgment and perspective" on the rest of the Senate, conveniently forgetting the eight other Senators in the room that agreed with him.)
So what should Dems take from this? Two things.
First, that they should feel emboldened to make the deeper, fundamental argument against Bolton.
To get away from inside baseball of whose toes Bolton stepped on, and instead articulate what a Bolton appointment means for our nation’s safety and security.
Voinovich showed how it’s done:
We will face more difficulties in conducting the war on terrorism, promoting peace and stability worldwide and building democracies without the help from our friends to share the responsibilities, leadership and costs.
To achieve these objectives, public diplomacy must once again be of high importance.
If we cannot win over the hearts and minds of the world community and work together as a team, our goals will be more difficult to achieve...
... But what message are we sending ... when in the same breath we have sought to appoint an ambassador ... who himself has been accused of being arrogant, of not listening to his friends, of acting unilaterally, of bullying those who do not have the ability to properly defend themselves?
These are the very characteristics that we're trying to dispel in the world community.
Second, that it's going to be a waste of time to try hustling up GOP votes on this one.
It’s patently obvious that half the GOPers on the Foreign Relations Cmte would vote against Bolton if it was a secret ballot, but they are too weak and wimpy to think for themselves and resist the intense White House pressure.

From Consortium News, we'll note Robert Parry's "Solving the Media Puzzle:"

For instance, there's no realistic way today to stiffen the spine of PBS, at least as long as. George W. Bush has the power to appoint right-wing apparatchiks to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The CPB was created to serve as a buffer between PBS and the politicians, but now it is acting as the Right's enforcement mechanism, scrutinizing each program for violations of a conservative-defined "balance."
At least for the short term, the most effective progressive strategy toward PBS would be to mount a campaign to convince PBS viewers to divert their donations to independent broadcasting operations, such as LINK TV or Free Speech TV, or to give to Internet outlets that are distributing or producing honest journalism.
That would not only help build independent media, but it would show PBS and CPB that there is a price to pay for the Right's "politicization" of public broadcasting. Then, at some future point, if and when CPB gets back to its original role, PBS would understand that it can't take its loyal viewers for granted.
It also would be a mistake to put much effort in trying to get the Federal Communications Commission to re-regulate the telecommunications industry or to re-apply the Fairness Doctrine. In the current political environment, progressives can expect almost nothing positive from the FCC.
While it makes sense to educate the public about the damage caused by the FCC in recent years, a reversal of its policies won’t occur until there is a clear shift in the political winds -- and that will require a far-stronger independent media.
So the starting point must be to build that independent media.

That is one of many solutions Parry is proposing. For others read the full article.

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]
 

We're still in the midst of "what's being reported outside the U.S." (and an entry on Iraq is being compiled) but on a commercial break during The Laura Flanders Show (which hopefully many of you are also listening to), there was a commercial for Steve Earle's The Revolution Starts Now. The program airs at ten p.m. eastern time (and, as everyone knows, if you don't have an Air America Radio station in your area and don't have satellite radio, you can listen online via Real Player or Windows Media Player).

Earle's guest tonight is Judy Collins and I know many of you will be interested in hearing that. Hopefully, most domestic members (members in this country) were already listening to The Laura Flanders Show but if they weren't or if they tune out commercials (as I usually do), heads up because Judy Collins is Earle's guest tonight. That's a heads up that comes a little over one hour and twenty minutes before the show starts airing.

I'll note Kat's Kat Korner review of Collins' Portrait of an American Girl. Hopefully, some tracks from the new album will be played during Earle's show.

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.  And if you missed Judy Collins on The Revolution Starts Now, you can access the archives at Air America Place to hear it.]

 

Sergeant Kevin Benderman cannot shake the images from his head. There are bombed villages and desperate people. There are dogs eating corpses thrown into a mass grave. And most unremitting of all, there is the image of a young Iraqi girl, no more than eight or nine, one arm severely burnt and blistered, and the sound of her screams.
Last January, these memories became too much for this veteran of the war in Iraq. Informed his unit was about to return, he told his commanders he wanted out and applied to be considered a conscientious objector. The Army refused and charged him with desertion. Last week, his case - which carries a penalty of up to seven years' imprisonment - started before a military judge at Fort Stewart in Georgia.
"If I am sincere in what I say and there's consequences because of my actions, I am prepared to stand up and take it," Sgt Benderman said. "If I have to go to prison because I don't want to kill anybody, so be it."
The case of Sgt Benderman and those of others like him has focused attention on the thousands of US troops who have gone Awol (Absent Without Leave) since the start of President George Bush's so-called war on terror. The most recent Pentagon figures suggest there are 5,133 troops missing from duty. Of these 2,376 are sought by the Army, 1,410 by the Navy, 1,297 by the Marines and 50 by the Air Force. Some have been missing for decades.

The above is from "The deserters: Awol crisis hits the US forces" in the UK's Independent. We're doing the second part of what's being reported outside the United States and we'll be focusing on Iraq for this entry.

From Scotland's The Herald, we'll note Michael Settle's "Galloway heads for lions’ den to give them hell:"

A DEFIANT George Galloway is to defend himself before US senators next week in the oil-for-food row, and last night predicted he would "give them hell" when he enters the lions' den.
Their allegations are that he received vouchers for millions of barrels of oil from Saddam Hussein.
The Scottish MP, who dismissed the claims as absurd, told his aides when he heard of an invitation from Washington: "Book the flights, let's go, let's give them both barrels," adding quickly: "That's guns, not oil."
The offer to appear before the homeland security subcommittee on investigations, which is examining the alleged abuse of the UN's oil-for-food programme, followed an outcry from Mr Galloway that he had been found guilty of the allegations without having been able to defend himself.

Domnick e-mails "Gunmen free Iraqi governor" from I.E. Breaking News:

Al-Mahalawi was seized on Tuesday as he drove from the Syrian border town of Qaim to the provincial capital of Ramadi. The governor’s kidnappers told the family he would be released when US troops withdrew from Qaim.
[. . .]
Ahmed Hadi, an official at Iraq’s Ministry of Provincial Affairs, confirmed al-Mahalawi was released in the early hours of this morning, but declined to provide any details of how this happened. The governor's cousin said he was released without conditions.

Marci notes, from Aljazeera, "Violence continues as Rice visits Iraq:"


The bodies of 34 men who were shot execution-style in Iraq have been found in three locations in less than 24 hours as the US secretary of state made a surprise visit.
Sunday's discoveries came on a day when drive-by shootings and bombings killed at least eight Iraqis, including a senior Industry Ministry official and a top Shia cleric.
The attacks came as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a heavily guarded surprise visit to Iraq to meet leaders of the new national government and urge patience for Iraqis weary of repeated bombings and insecurity.

From The Independent, Cedric e-mails to note Patrick Cockburn's "Iraq is a bloody no man's land. America has failed to win the war. But has it lost it?" From that article:

There is no doubt that the US has failed to win the war. Much of Iraq is a bloody no man's land. The army has not been able to secure the short highway to the airport, though it is the most important road in the country, linking the US civil headquarters in the Green Zone with its military HQ at Camp Victory.
Ironically, the extent of US failure to control Iraq is masked by the fact that it is too dangerous for the foreign media to venture out of central Baghdad. Some have retreated to the supposed safety of the Green Zone. Mr Bush can claim that no news is good news, though in fact the precise opposite is true.
Embedded journalism fosters false optimism. It means reporters are only present where American troops are active, though US forces seldom venture into much of Iraq. Embedded correspondents bravely covered the storming of Fallujah by US marines last November and rightly portrayed it as a US military success. But the outside world remained largely unaware, because no reporters were present with US forces, that at the same moment an insurgent offensive had captured most of Mosul, a city five times larger than Fallujah.
Why has the vastly expensive and heavily equipped US army failed militarily in Iraq? After the crescendo of violence over the past month there should be no doubts that the US has not quashed the insurgents whom for two years American military spokesmen have portrayed as a hunted remnant of Saddam Hussein's regime assisted by foreign fighters.
The failure was in part political. Immediately after the fall of Saddam Hussein polls showed that Iraqis were evenly divided on whether they had been liberated or occupied. Eighteen months later the great majority both of Sunni and Shia said they had been occupied, and they did not like it. Every time I visited a spot where an American soldier had been killed or a US vehicle destroyed there were crowds of young men and children screaming their delight. "I am a poor man but I am going home to cook a chicken to celebrate," said one man as he stood by the spot marked with the blood of an American soldier who had just been shot to death.

From London's Sunday Times, Pru e-mails to highlight Richard Beeston's "Insurgents greet Rice with car bombings, murders and chaos:"

THE surprise visit of Condoleezza Rice to Iraq was upstaged yesterday as insurgents mounted a wave of attacks against those loyal to the shaky United States-backed Government.
In the first visit by a member of the Bush Administration since Iraq formed its Government a fortnight ago, the US Secretary of State sought to give impetus to the country’s political transformation.
Yet even as she was shuttled across the country, insurgents stepped up their campaign of terror on a day in which at least a dozen people were killed and the bodies of 46 others were found. It began with a double suicide-bomb attack against Raad Rashid, the Governor of Diyala province. He escaped unhurt, but four policemen and two civilians were killed. The attack followed assassinations of two government officials, one who worked at the Industry Ministry, the other at the Foreign Ministry. A Shia cleric was also murdered by gunmen.
Then police found the handcuffed bodies of 13 men near the sprawling Sadr City slum in Baghdad. They had been shot dead and abandoned in a rubbish dump.
West of Baghdad, in the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi, the remains of ten Iraqi soldiers were found with their throats cut. South of the capital, in Iskandariya, the corpses of eleven more Iraqis, thought to be lorry drivers, were found in a field, four of them beheaded.
The killings pushed the death toll in Iraq to nearly 500 since the new Government was formed. Laith Kubba, the Government's spokesman, blamed foreign volunteers for the campaign, which included 70 car bombs, and accused "these criminals of trying to prove that the Government is incapable of protecting the people".

From the Sunday Herald (Scotland), Lori e-mails two stories. First, James Cusik's "Blair will stand down by mid 2007:"

Tony Blair has privately assured the Chancellor Gordon Brown that he will not serve a full third term in Downing Street as Prime Minister and will stand down within two years.
Details of the deal, contradicting the Prime Minister’s comments that he will serve out a full term, have been passed on by key allies of Brown to senior members of the government and leading figures in the trade union movement.
Brown is understood to have insisted that any incoming leader would need a minimum of 18 months to two years to establish strong leadership in the party and put in place the political authority needed for a new prime minister to win Labour a fourth consecutive term.
In return for a period of post-election calm and the withdrawal of any coup threat, Blair is understood to have accepted that he will go by mid-2007 at the latest.
The call for peace by the Chancellor follows growing unrest in the rebel ranks of the Parliamentary Labour Party and among some trade union leaders that Blair has not kept his immediate post-election promise that he will "listen and learn".
Last week, the leader of the Amicus union, Derek Simpson, urged Blair not to cling to power.
Fearing a public coup would damage any future leader who followed Blair, Brown and key advisers have, in the words of one source, "called off the dogs".

Lori: The memo our (U.S.) press has ignored has obviously made waves in England.

Lori also notes Trevor Royle's "400 and counting: IRAQ’s Grim death toll for may:"

"WE don’t do body counts," was the infamous retort by US general Tommy Franks when he was asked about Iraqi civilian deaths. To date nobody knows the exact figure, but one thing is clear: it is being added to with a relentlessness which is enraging Iraqis and worrying coalition commanders.
Yesterday eight Iraqis -- including five civilians -- were shot dead by US forces in Mosul, four were killed by a suicide car bomb attack in central Baghdad, and in the west of the city a hand grenade attack left one policeman dead. In the middle of the day gunmen assassinated senior foreign ministry official Jassim al-Muhammadawy in Baghdad.
The US military also revealed yesterday that 100 insurgents and nine American troops have been killed in the past week in an operation near the Syrian border, bringing the total number of US troops killed since the conflict began to 1614. The brunt of the killings, however, has been felt by Iraqi civilians as the country is put on the rack by a sharp increase in the levels of attacks by insurgents.
In May alone, more than 400 Iraqis have been killed, and the recent bloodshed shows no sign of receding. One scene encapsulated the sense of frustration and anger felt by the people of Iraq as they helplessly watch the spate of violence. Following a car bomb explosion in Baghdad on Thursday, which left nine people dead, an Iraqi policeman vented his frustration on uncomprehending US soldiers who were doing their best to help the victims. He screamed at them: "This is all your doing. Why don't you leave us and go home?"
In an attempt to put the violence into context, US commanders claim that the number of attacks has dropped while their intensity has increased, but that prognosis is not borne out by the facts.
In February, the month after the elections were held, there was a downturn in the violence, with the average number of attacks running at 30 to 40 a day, but in the last fortnight the figure has doubled. In Tikrit, Saddam's hometown, a suicide bomber crashed his car into a small market, detonating his bomb and leaving 33 dead with at least three times that number badly wounded. In Hawija, north of Baghdad, another bomber targeted a queue of men outside a police and army recruitment centre, killing 30 people . And it is not just people who are facing the wrath of the insurgents. In British-controlled Basra, bombs almost destroyed the country’s largest fertiliser factory and ruptured a gas pipeline .
For the coalition forces, the intensity of the recent attacks has brought into sharp focus the scale of the problem they are facing. Asked on Friday if he thought the insurgency could be contained, General Richard B Myers, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs Of Staff, offered a brutally forthright assessment. "This requires patience," he said. "I wouldn't look for results tomorrow. One thing we know about insurgencies is that they last from three or four years to nine years."

Via Watching America (a great resource), KeShawn notes "The Still Unsolved Stoffel Affair: How Is Known – but Not Who or Why" from DEBEKA-Net-Weekly:

Iraqi guerrillas calling themselves Rafidan -- the Political Committee of the Mujahideen Central Command -- have recently woken up and begun releasing a series of communiqués claiming to shed new light on the still unsolved deaths on December 8, 2004, of two Americans, Dale C. Stoffel, 43, whom they describe as "a CIA shadow manager in Iraq, close friend of George Bush," and his associate Joseph J. Wemple, also 43.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's counter-terrorism sources have been tracking these communiqués. Number 3 "reveals" the reason Stoffel was liquidated was because before and during the US-led invasion of Iraq, he was responsible on behalf of the United States and England of the looting of all of Iraq's weapons and arms. This military equipment is valued at 40 million dollars.
Rafidan promise further disclosures -- all allegedly taken from Stoffel's own computer, which was seized at the time of the murders. Our sources have pieced the episode together along with some of its ominous ramifications.
Stoffel and Wemple died when their BMW sport-utility vehicle was rammed head-on as they drove from a meeting with US military officials in Taji. Both men were shot several times and photos of their possessions were posted after a week on a radical Islamist Web site -- not Rafidan. According to Stoffel's obituary, two men wearing black hoods killed the two Americans in a hail of gunfire. All accounts show they were ambushed by killers who knew they were coming.
Stoffel's partner at CLI Robert Irey was quoted last December by the Monessen Valley Independent as reporting the that Stoffel and Wemple were driving from Taji to the Green Zone for a meeting and were ambushed ten minutes from their destination. Irey described Stoffel as "bigger than life" and an "experienced military Special Forces guy" who was always heavily armed and "knew what he was doing." Something must have lulled them into a false sense of security, he said and pointed at the Iraqi interpreter who fled the scene and is still missing.
On January 21, Washington Post cited a Pentagon spokesman as saying that the defense department is investigating the killing, with no further comment. But then the WP ran an intriguing box, which said: A Jan. 21 article incorrectly said that the defense department is investigating the killings of two US contractors in Iraq. The department is looking into a congressman's request to assist the victims' company in receiving payment for a contract with the Iraqi Ministry of Defense.
The facts known about late Dale Stoffel do not always add up.


Lastly, Robbie e-mails to note an article from The Guardian about Star Wars' latest installment. We do have a number of members who have seen it and love it (and are excited about the upcoming chapter). But Robbie's highlight is being included here because it does have to do with Iraq (and the U.S. attitude to all countries, but most obvious with regards to Iraq -- my opinion). From Charlotte Higgins' "Final Star Wars bears message for America Lucas wins festival trophy - and hopes his epic will awaken US to democracy in peril:"

The republic is crumbling under attack from alien forces. Democracy is threatened as the leader plays on the people's paranoia. Amid the confusion it is suddenly unclear whether the state is in more danger from insurgents, or from the leader himself.
It sounds more like a Michael Moore polemic than a Star Wars movie. But George Lucas, speaking as his latest epic was given its world premiere at Cannes yesterday, confirmed that Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, could be read as a parable about American politics.
When he conceived his series of films in the 1970s, he says, he was thinking about Vietnam and Nixon, investigating "democracy, and how a senate could give itself over, could surrender itself to a dictator".
He found historical echoes down the ages. "I looked at ancient Rome, and how, having got rid of kings, the Senate ended up with Caesar's nephew as emperor ... how democracy turns itself into a dictatorship. I also looked at revolutionary France ... and Hitler.
"It tends to follow similar patterns. Threats from outside leading to the need for more control; democracy not being able to function properly because of internal squabbling."

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]

THE nuclear complex at Dounreay has suffered more than 250 safety “failures” in the past six years, according to documents released by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa).
Many of the leaks, spills and equipment breakdowns have never been reported before, and raise concerns that Dounreay’s operator, the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA), has failed to overcome the poor safety practices of the past.
In response to a request under the Freedom of Information Act, Sepa has provided the Sunday Herald with a 26-page list summarising every incident at Dounreay. It reveals that, since 1999, there have been an average of 40 problems a year, with the highest number, 53, in 2004.
They include the radioactive contamination of whelks, winkles, rabbits, concrete, soil, water, air and beaches. Samplers monitoring for tritium and other radioactive emissions have frequently been reported as being faulty.
There are repeated violations of safety conditions, leaking waste tanks, lost radioactive waste and power cuts. Some records of discharges have been wrong for months.
As many as 18 incidents are listed in the first three months of 2005. They include an “abnormal” radioactive discharge from a stack, the contamination of grass with caesium-137, and a spill of radioactive caustic soda.

The above is from Scotland's Sunday Herald, Rob Edwards' "Revealed: the safety ‘failures’ at Dounreay." Read it and note it. And then take a moment to imagine how embarrassing it must be to be the New York Times today. Is that egg on their face? Or just shame? Having pimped for the "cause" of bringing nukes to America this morning ( Felicity Barringer's front page "Old Foes Soften to New Reactors"-- see this morning's entry) Edwards' exclusive report couldn't have come at a worse time. Of course, like the Downing Street memo, the New York Times will no doubt never tell their readers about this story.

The New York Times wants you to believe that there's mega shift taking place where "several" "environmentalists" are backing nuclear power and they offer up three. "Breaking with the ranks," these three. Three out of how many millions worldwide? A statistically insignificant Gang of Three and it's front paged without hearing from any of the "ranks" just the tiny threesome that's "broken" from them. Safe and clean, "several" want to tell you and the Times wants to trumpet. Once again, timing proves to go against the New York Times.

Provided you go beyond that paper for all your information. Which we're doing and, yes, we're in the midst of our "what's being reported outside the U.S." roundup.

From Australia's ABC, Tori e-mails to highlight "Burma blames 'superpower' for bombings:"

Burma's military junta has raised the death toll from last week's bombings to 19, and says the attackers had received training and financing from a "superpower nation".
In their first public comments on the probe into the May 7 bombings, officials said the bombers used sophisticated explosives unavailable in Burma and had been trained by "foreign experts" in rebel-controlled areas near the Thai border.
"It is crystal clear that the terrorists ... and the time bombs originated from training conducted with foreign experts at a place in a neighbouring country by a world famous organisation of a certain superpower nation," Information Minister Brigadier General Kyaw Hsan told reporters.
He did not elaborate, but the junta has previously accused the United States of meddling in its affairs.

Also from Australia's ABC, we'll note "Coup 'plotters' back in S Africa:"

Zimbabwean authorities have released a group of South Africans jailed a year ago on suspicion of planning a coup in the West African nation of Equatorial Guinea.
The group, known as the Zim 62, has arrived back in South Africa after a year in a Zimbabwean prison.
[. . .]
Sir Mark Thatcher, son of former British Prime Minister, Margaret has admitted funding the group, but there has been no admission that a coup was planned.

From Ireland's I.E., Dominick e-mails "500 bodies laid out after Uzbek unrest:"

About 500 bodies have been laid out in rows at a school in the eastern Uzbek city where troops fired on protesters to put down an uprising, a doctor in the town said today, corroborating witness accounts of hundreds killed in the fighting.
Relatives were arriving at School No. 15 to identify the dead, said the doctor. Another 2,000 people were wounded in the clashes on Friday, said the doctor.
[. . .]
The violence was Uzbekistan's worst since gaining independence following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]
 

The United States has warned four nations campaigning jointly for permanent seats on the United Nations Security Council that it will not support their cause unless they agree not to ask for the veto power that the five current permanent Council members hold, senior diplomats and administration officials said.
The four nations - Brazil, India, Germany and Japan - are unhappy about that position. "The Security Council is not like an aircraft, with first class, business and economy seats," said Ryozo Kato, Japan's ambassador to the United States.

The above is from Joel Brinkley's "As Nations Lobby to Join Security Council, the U.S. Resists Giving Them Veto Power" in this morning's New York Times. Brian e-mails asking if the U.N. is "as obsolete as this administration says, why are we so worried about the veto?"


Keesha e-mails to note Steven Lee Myers' "As Hundreds Flee, Violence Flares Anew at Uzbek Border:"

Mr. Karimov, who has ruled the Central Asian republic with an iron grip since it gained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, made no mentioned of the civilian casualties.
Others, including opposition leaders, said that scores had been killed when troops opened fire on thousands of protesters who assembled in Andijon's central square after the storming of the prison. The various reports said the dead - which were put at 200 to 300 or more - included many civilians. But the reports were varied and numerous, and few details were verifiable. Foreign journalists in the city were ordered to leave it.
New clashes erupted Saturday in the town of Karasu on the Kyrgyz border, where hundreds of Uzbeks gathered, apparently hoping to leave the country. Protesters clashed with the police and border guards, occupying several government buildings, The Associated Press reported.

Keesha: Karimov, like Donald Rumsfeld, apparently doesn't do body counts.


Braedon of Bristol e-mails to note the Associated Press' "Jailed Leader of Police Unit Lays Blame on Pinochet:"

The commander of the secret police under Gen. Augusto Pinochet said in a court document that General Pinochet was responsible for abuses committed by the police, his lawyer said Friday.
The retired commander, Gen. Manuel Contreras, also submitted a document to the Supreme Court discussing the fate of more than 500 dissidents who disappeared after being arrested by his force, said Juan Carlos Manns, General Contreras's lawyer. The report confirmed that many of the victims were thrown into the sea after being killed - a disclosure made last year by a presidential investigative commission.
Mr. Manns said his imprisoned client put the responsibility for the abuses on General Pinochet and the other military commanders. In the document, General Contreras said he was writing to counter "the permanent, ominous silence maintained by my superior," referring to General Pinochet.


Rob and Kara both e-mailed to note James Bennet's "The Day After Peace: Designing Palestine:"

Rand had judged that for all the attention lavished on the possible borders between Israel and a notional Palestine, no one had expended much imagination on the structure of the latter. Palestine had persisted as a dream or nightmare, as an abstraction to occupy diplomats and politicians, not as a concrete challenge for urban planners. Yet both the American president and the Israeli prime minister had now called for the eventual creation of a Palestinian state. If the world was serious about a two-state solution, Rand reasoned, someone had to start planning Palestine, particularly since its population was about to surge. The alternative - a failed, impoverished and angry ward on Israel's doorstep, if not in its living room - posed a problem, a danger, for the world.
Rand, an independent nonprofit think tank with a reputation for dispassion and a record of advancing the space program and the military, has concluded that the challenge can be met. It has delivered up a gimlet-eyed survey of life in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that shows how far Palestinians are from viable statehood: the crippled, dependent economy, the "corrupt, nonrepresentative and authoritarian rule," the inadequate water supply, the pressure of Israeli occupation. It has suggested a long list of improvements, which it says would cost $33 billion over 10 years. And it has twinned its appraisal with a second study, a vision of what might be, the vision that Mr. Suisman eventually dreamed up that Saturday in his studio.

Rob: Advancing war is more like it when discussing the Rand Corporation. I'm bothered by the fact that they're attempting to determine what Palestine would look like.

Kara: Did anyone seek out Rand's help? I'm not seeing it in the article. Apparently, even if a two-state proposal is carried out, the Palestinians still won't have a right to self-rule.

Lynda e-mails to note David D. Irkpatrick and Carl Hulse's "At Center of Senate Showdown, a Boxer Takes On a Surgeon:"

In the end, the brutal public battle over judicial confirmations in the Senate comes down to two starkly different men. One is a wealthy surgeon still considered new to the Senate but with an eye on the White House, the other a former lightweight boxer and police officer whose flashes of candor sometimes get him into trouble - like calling President Bush "a loser" in a speech to students.
The two lawmakers, Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, and Senator Harry Reid, his Democratic counterpart, are locked in a dispute over the Senate rules that could shape the future makeup of the Supreme Court, permanently alter the power of a Senate minority party, thrust the chamber into parliamentary chaos and determine the two men's political prospects. Dr. Frist has said he plans to bring their confrontation to a head as early as Wednesday, leaving the two men just days to work out a possible compromise.

Lynda: Unless I'm mistaken, it was Senator Barbara Boxer that placed the hold on Bolton, not Harry Spineless Reid.


Francisco e-mails to highlight Alan Cowell's "300 Missing Boys in Britain Fuel Child-Trafficking Fear:"

In September 2001, in the River Thames near the soaring columns of Tower Bridge, the police discovered the torso - headless and limbless - of a black-skinned child they called, for want of any definitive identity, Adam. The suggestion from subsequent investigations was that he had died in some kind of ritualistic murder linked to West African witchcraft.
Now, more than three years later, the discovery has brought another chilling fact to light: in the three months before the body was found, 300 other black boys 4 to 7 years of age were missing or were unaccounted for. The disclosure may have cast a rare spotlight into a secretive world of child trafficking that the authorities seem unable to control or prevent, according to experts on the issue.
"We were really looking at black children, black male children, aged between 4 and 7, and we found 300 of those that couldn't be accounted for," Detective Chief Inspector Will O'Reilly told British radio on Friday. "It was one of the lines of inquiry we had to follow up. In the main these were African children. I think there were one or two from the Caribbean."

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com. And yes, to Liang's question, as soon as the last entry on the Times this morning goes up (which would be this one), Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts will be going up.

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]

Let's start out by noting Felicity Barringer who's done an amazing thing in the paper this morning -- and on the front page, no less. "Old Foes Soften to New Reactors" is worthy of attention because how often does the New York Times run, on the front page, an editorial? Or is it and adver-torial? Is it some combination between advertisement and editorial?

Whatever it is, it doesn't appear to pass the news test. Has Barringer been getting tips from Rudith Miller? Or maybe her article's been badly edited with whole parts, needed parts, being tossed aside? Maybe, it's been rewritten, by someone other than her, to allow it to speak in one rah-rah, Love a NUKE!, voice?

Several of the nation's most prominent environmentalists have gone public with the message that nuclear power, long taboo among environmental advocates, should be reconsidered as a remedy for global warning.
Their numbers are still small, but they represent growing cracks in what had been a virtual solid wall of opposition to nuclear power among most mainstream environmental groups. In the past few months, articles in publications like Technology Review, published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Wired magazine have openly espoused nuclear power, angering other environmental advocates.

Where to begin? "Several." How about there? How about with "several." You know that group whose "numbers are still small?" Whose numbers are apparently, in fact, three.

"Several?" Three. It's like a line out of Shampoo. You can almost hear Julie Christie shooting back, "Three's not even several."

And did I miss the group memo? Apparently I did. Apparently Technology Review became the Green bible while I was out of the room. Someone should have brought me up to speed!

Oh, that's right, Technology Review is not an enivornmental publication. Nor is Wired. They are techonology publications. Who edited this article? Who decided to spin these magazines as though they were Mother Earth News?

Probably the same thinker or thinkers that felt Fred Krupp of Environmental Defense qualifies as an upstanding "environmentalist."

Let's go to In These Times, to Jeffrey St. Clair's September 4, 2000 article entitled "Cash and Carry: George W. Bush's environmental menace:"

Bush also has huddled with Fred Krupp, director of the conservative Environmental Defense Fund, which has been pushing market-oriented ideas, such as pollution credits, for years. EDF helped fashion the Clean Air Act revisions of 1990, which President Bush cited as one of the cornerstones of his presidency. This spring, Krupp advised the younger Bush on sweeping changes to Texas clean air standards, which for the first time attempted to regulate emissions from old, "grandfathered" power plants. In describing the bill, Bush said: "I believe government and industry, jobs and the environment can coexist. The old command and control school is not what I am for. I'm for setting standards and letting industry comply." But Bush left out a key word: "voluntarily." Those old power plants are on the honor system when it comes to meeting the new air standards, and there are no penalties for violating the rules.

Is the Times that stupid or just that willfully stupid?

I believe "several" just lost one valid voice. We could address the other two (the split in how Lash is seen, for example, with some seeing him as a visionary and others see him as a corporate lobbyist willing to sell out).

But where's the reaction from the environmental community? Where in the article do we hear any of those voices?

Is the issue so unimportant that there's no need for reaction among the community? It's "important" enough to front page, right? It goes on and on about "several" and John McCain and Joe Lieberman.

Why does it all come off so one-sided? Why does the article read like the decision's been made for you, so shut up and go along? (To quote Eddie from his e-mail this morning.)

Let's suspend any questions about the two remaining voices (Lash, Speth) and just think about the fact that they are proposing something that "breaks with the pack." Why is the "pack" not heard from?

The editors who ran with this article might want to study the recommendations made by the Times panel last week. They might also want to go over this article and ask themselves what and who got left out and why it reads as though an agenda is being pushed?

Finally, with the reports (including in the Times) that followed (but often didn't attribute) Anne-Marie Cusac "Fire Hazzard" (The Progressive, August 2004) why didn't the Times find the space to address that serious topic?

From the opening of Cusac's article:

On June 16, the commission charged with investigating the events of September 11 announced that Al Qaeda's early attack plans had included "unidentified nuclear power plants." You might think the Bush Administration would respond by doing all it could to prevent a terrorist-triggered disaster at these plants.
Think again.
The Bush Administration is actually relaxing the fire safeguards there.
Instead of insisting that the plants have heat-protected mechanical systems in place that will shut down reactors automatically in case of fire, which is the current standard, the Bush Administration would actually let the power companies rely on workers to run through the plants and try to turn off the reactors by hand while parts of the facilities are engulfed in flames.
"The result could be catastrophic," says a March 3 letter from Representative Ed Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Representative John Dingell, Democrat of Michigan, to Nils J. Diaz, chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). "This would assign reactor personnel the duty of rushing directly to the shutdown equipment located throughout the reactor complex to shut down the reactors manually, and would potentially take place in station areas affected by smoke, fire, and radiation and possibly under attack by terrorists."

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]
 

There was a Saturday Daily Howler (thanks to Joy for e-mailing a heads up). From Bob Somerby's Howler today:

QUINDLEN GETS IT RIGHT: Joining Peter Beinart's effort (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 5/9/05), Anna Quindlen gets it right in her current column in Newsweek. She discusses the way Hillary Clinton has been trashed-and-spun for the past dozen years. And for once, a major mainstream pundit discusses this process in the way it deserves. And so: Three cheers for Quindlen, for speaking directly about what has occurred!
Yes, let's offer three big cheers for Quindlen's direct, cutting language! "After years of free-floating propaganda," she writes, "[p]eople are finally seeing past the...fabrications" about Senator Clinton. The fabrications have come from something Quindlen correctly describes as a "smear machine"--a smear machined that "suckered" voters as it "demonized" the former first lady. Fabrications? Smears? And propaganda? Over the past decade, mainstream journalists have been reluctant to speak so frankly about this smear machine--perhaps because so much of its effort has come from within their own ranks.
So let's hope that this scribe will continue to fight, even against her own cohort. In her column, Quindlen singles out a conservative, Gary Bauer, for making phony attacks against Clinton. But over the course of the past dozen years, mainstream and "liberal" scribes have played a huge role in this free-floating propaganda campaign against Clinton. Which brings us to the latest disgraceful outing by Chris Matthews and his "liberal" colleague, Margaret Carlson.

There's much more including Carlson and Matthews. I'm pulling from the top of the entry because it's hard to pick one part to highlight (translation, it all deserves reading).

Dahr Jamail has a new post at Iraq Dispatches. Here's an excerpt:

Abu Talat phoned his family today in Baghdad. They've had no electricity for four days. They told him (unconfirmed) that all of Iraq has had no electricity for several days. As Abu Talat says, "Baghdad is running on the generator."
Of course the gas crisis persists augmented by the lack of electricity, along with constantly increasing attacks.
We were in a taxi earlier, driving across the orderly streets of Amman and talking about the situation in Iraq. "Now I feel ashamed to tell people I am Iraq," says Abu Talat after he told the taxi driver he is from Baghdad, "Because my country has been totally destroyed."
I look out the window, not knowing what to say. I think to say, "But it isn't your fault, habibi," but instead sit quietly, feeling that any words would be inadequate.
The situation around Al-Qaim where "Operation Matador" is ongoing, appears to be a micro-version of Fallujah. The military and corporate media continue to portray the situation as if "foreign fighters" have taken control of Qaim and surrounding villages (as was said about Fallujah) when reports from the ground state that interviews with the fighters have them all saying they are Iraqi.
Of course it behooves the military to claim they are battling "foreign fighters," because as in Fallujah and elsewhere, it doesn't look good in the press to admit that they are fighting Iraqis who are fighting for their independence from the occupiers of their country. Even the marines in Fallujah admitted they had killed a grand total of 35 foreign fighters there. That kind of debunks the myth of a foreign terrorist group taking over the city and terrorizing the citizens.

Who is Jim West? For starters, he's BuzzFlash's pick for GOP Hypocrite of the Week:

Welcome back to the BuzzFlash.com GOP Hypocrite of the Week.
This was a tough week for BuzzFlash, what with all the GOP Hypocrites in the news. There's the GOP Congressman from Pennsylvania accused of choking his mistress, the GOP anti-gay mayor accused of molesting boys when he was a scout master, and the prominent GOP appointee who is accused of forcibly sodomizing his ex-wife?
It can give you an ulcer keeping up with the moral depravity of the "holier-than-thou" Republicans.
But, like choosing from a row of port-o-lets, we had to pick one. This week's GOP Hypocrite is non-other than the anti-gay Mayor of Spokane, Republican Jim West.

But who is Jim West besides "the anti-gay Mayor of Spokane?" So much more. To steal from Jacqueline Susan*, you've got to slither to the bottom of the gutter to become the BuzzFlash GOP Hypocrite of the Week. Click the link to read or listen how West achieved the dishonor.

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

*Jaqueline Susan's opening lines (in verse) of Valley of the Dolls are:
You've got to climb to the top of Mount Everest
to reach the Valley of the Dolls.

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]