O'Reilly lies to smear US troops

I am not making this up, as Dave Barry would say. It's too outrageous to make up. No one would believe that Bill O'Reilly of Fox News would lie to smear American troops and whitewash Nazis, but he did. He lied and smeared the US military while exonerating the Nazi SS of atrocities. It's so outrageous even I wouldn't believe it without solid evidence.

Here's the video in Quicktime.

Here it is in Windows Media.

Here's the audio.

Here's the transcript.

O'Reilly: "in Malmedy, as you know, US forces captured SS forces who had their hands in the air, and they were unarmed, and they shot them down."

Untrue. That was Nazi SS troops who killed unarmed US prisoners. Confederate troops did the same thing to US troops at the infamous Fort Pillow Massacre, but US troops who do things like that are supposed to be punished for it.

Here are the facts, from Wikipedia, from History.Net, and one with photographs.

This massacre, this Nazi atrocity, is too well known for anyone to doubt it, much less to attribute it to Americans.

Problem is, O'Reilly is a Nazi who thinks he's an American. He's just very confused. Just like anyone who thinks they are getting real information from Faux News, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, or any of the other right wing liers.

Unfortunately, you can't legally libel the dead. They can't sue. But everyone should make this as public as possible. O'Reilly has no shame, but maybe pressure can be put on Fox News to replace him. This is outrageous, even by the standards of Fox.

Clinton last freely, democratically elected US president?

From Rolling Stone

something deeply troubling had taken place in 2004. Nearly half of the 6 million American voters living abroad never received their ballots -- or received them too late to vote -- after the Pentagon unaccountably shut down a state-of-the-art Web site used to file overseas registrations. A consulting firm called Sproul & Associates, which was hired by the Republican National Committee to register voters in six battleground states, was discovered shredding Democratic registrations. In New Mexico, which was decided by 5,988 votes, malfunctioning machines mysteriously failed to properly register a presidential vote on more than 20,000 ballots. Nationwide, according to the federal commission charged with implementing election reforms, as many as 1 million ballots were spoiled by faulty voting equipment -- roughly one for every 100 cast.

The reports were especially disturbing in Ohio, the critical battleground state that clinched Bush's victory in the electoral college. Officials there purged tens of thousands of eligible voters from the rolls, neglected to process registration cards generated by Democratic voter drives, shortchanged Democratic precincts when they allocated voting machines and illegally derailed a recount that could have given Kerry the presidency. A precinct in an evangelical church in Miami County recorded an impossibly high turnout of ninety-eight percent, while a polling place in inner-city Cleveland recorded an equally impossible turnout of only seven percent. In Warren County, GOP election officials even invented a nonexistent terrorist threat to bar the media from monitoring the official vote count.

What goes around comes around, I guess. They have pulled this stuff in too many Latin American countries, especially in Central America, and justified it to themselves so often that they have really come to believe that they were doing what was right. Old time political machines did this locally, and just did it for the money. Of course the Republicans, at least the rich ones at the top, are ripping off the US treasury like crazy, but the guys on the bottom really are blinded by Faux News and Ann Coulter screaming that liberals are traitors. What makes it really sad is not just the way the Republicans have been mortgaging the country to the Red Chinese to get money to buy votes with (they call it "tax cuts", but it's not a tax cut when the government is this far in the red). What's really sad is the way they let bin Ladin get away by shifting most of the troops to Iraq. Was it incompetence or deliberate? I don't know. Was the response to Katrina incompetence or deliberate ethnic cleansing? You tell me.

There better be an investigation of this administration. I know we won't have one until after this fall's Congressional elections, if then. If the Democrats don't win it will be a good sign that those elections were fixed to. What to do then?

Searching Congress vs. Searching Citizens.

From the U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 6:

The Senators and Representatives shall receive a Compensation for their Services, to be ascertained by Law, and paid out of the Treasury of the United States. They shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.

I don't see anything there that says the offices of Congressional representatives can't be searched. I don't see anything that says they can't be arrested for bribery. I don't see anything that says William Jefferson can't be searched, arrested or indicted or anything else that can happen to an ordinary citizen who breaks the law. It does say he can't be forced to hold a press conference, much less be questioned by the F. B. I., but he's not above the law.

Why are Republicans insisting that Congressional offices can't be searched for evidence of wrong-doing? What have they got to hide? Why doesn't violation of the 4th Amendment to the Constitution bother them?

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Wole Soyinka and Darfur

Wole Soyinka (on Democracy Now) expects the Arab League to clean up Dar Fur:

"The Arab League has a clear responsibility, and I think that if a family member of the Arab world, you know, if a family member errs, then the entire family has a responsibility to say, “You cannot do this in our name. And if you do this, we expel you, we cut you off, we denounce you, and we proscribe you from our community.” I expect that kind of action of deep and profound moral integrity from the Arab world."

Personally I think that expecting the Arab League to stop the genocide in Darfur is like expecting the Ku Klux Klan to take responsibility to stop lynching of African Americans.

The Arab League is an ethnically based organization designed to promote the interests of Arabs as an ethno-linguistic group. Not a race, Arabs are not a race, but they are the largest ethnic group in Africa. The Arab League should be abolished and the African Union should become a federal government designed to defend the rights of all people regardless of their ethnicity or their language.

The problem with Soyinka and his politics is that he can't see things in any political paradigm other than ethnic. That's why he expects the Arab League to take action in Darfur to stop genocide. That's why he doesn't support the African Union. That's why his book about Nigeria blames everything on northerners and why he supports Yoruba, as long as those Yoruba will criticize other ethnic groups in Nigeria and end what he insists is northern domination of Nigeria. He doesn't mention that northerners are the majority of Nigerians, and calling for ending northern domination of Nigeria is about as democratic as calling for ending black domination of South Africa. I won't even go into the fact that northerners are deeply split politically, as are Yoruba, as any ethnic group should be. I don't like ethnic separatism.

Sure, celebrities have as much right to talk about politics as anyone else. However, I have to wonder if it is always a good idea. Soyinka's plays are great, but they don't show much political sophistication.

Read it and weep!

from Wikipedia:

"Voting locations that used electronic or other types of voting machines that did not issue a paper receipt or offer auditability correlate geographically with areas that had discrepancies in Bush's favor between exit poll numbers and actual results."

Why is a paper trail for elections even an issue? OK, so the handicapped people need the electronic voting so they can vote by themselves, but there could still be paper trails. Justice must not only be done, it must be SEEN to be done, and without a paper trail how could anyone be expected to trust the result? This shouldn't be a partisan issue.

Iran to require oil payments in euros

"TEHRAN, May 15 (UPI) -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced Friday that in July Iran will abandon dollar payments for its oil and natural gas exports in favor of euros.

. . .

"Some observers speculate that the Iranian switch to euros could negatively affect the dollar, as many central banks from oil importing nations could choose to stock up their currency reserves with euros rather than dollars."

Yes, folks, the same thing happened in Iraq just before the US invasion. Well, this time Bush doesn't have the wherewithal to invade. It looks like the dollar really is going to tank this time, and there's nothing we can do about it.

MORE TAX CUTS?!?!?

Let me get this straight:

If the economy is booming, we need tax cuts. Presumably this is to cool off the economy, so it doesn't overheat or something.

BUT, if the economy is tanking, we also need tax cuts. (Look for the section entitled "A Slowing Economy" in the plan.)

So which is it? Have these people ever heard of the business cycle? Or do they really think the proper response to both boom and bust phases of the cycle is cutting taxes? Do they ever stop? Do they think there are any functions of government that ought to be paid for? Whom do they think should pay for them?

Whatever happend to countercyclical spending?

Whatever happened to fiscal conservatism?

Legalize "drugs"?!?!?!

The whole debate about legalizing "drugs", most recently in Mexico, is completely ridiculous. We already have legal drugs, and no, I'm not talking about pharmaceuticals, either "over the counter" or prescription. I'm talking about recreational drugs.

I regularly recreate myself with alcohol. I mostly stay away from the hard (i.d. distilled) stuff, but most nights find me imbibing some beer or wine. Don't laugh, this used to be a crime in the United States, in fact it was against the Constitution.

I don't smoke tobacco anymore, and that's still legal, even in California, for the time being. I try not to be one of those ex-smokers who can't be around the stuff. I understand, because I remember, how nicotine after a meal can be very satisfying. Just don't smoke it while I'm still eating. It interferes with the flavors of my food. You shouldn't smoke while you're eating either. Wait until you've finished eating, then savor a fine cigar (or at least a nicotine fix) and a snifter of brandy. That's it!

OK, what about those illegal drugs? I'm in favor of legalizing marijuana. Period. End of story. I've known too many people who take too many drugs. Heroin is vicious. People lose all control, then they lose their friends when the friends wake up to how they've been used. Cocaine? Yeah, in the '70s people said it was harmless. Friends of mine really got messed up. One lost his job because he was always away from work trying to score. He's still in the service as an enlisted man because he couldn't get away from coke any other way. Legalize it and he wouldn't have spent so much time scoring? Get real. Even tobacco doesn't get people craving the way cocaine does. This guy used marijuana and other drugs but none messed him up like cocaine. He could always wait until after work before he went around scoring pot.

Speed? I knew meth monsters back in the 60s. They called it "the drug even hippies were afraid of" and Allen Ginsberg singled it out as an inherently bad drug, something he did for no other psychoactive substance. I remember him saying that most of the souvenirs he brought back from India were ripped off by meth monsters. I really have no problem with government's cracking down on amphetamines.

Marijuana has been used for thousands of years. It's less addictive than the recreational drugs that are already legal. You can't overdose on it. Gateway drug? Don't make me laugh. That's a common post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, but even if it weren't, the percentage of hard drug users who first used alcohol or tobacco is even higher than the percentage who used marijuana. Shouldn't we go back to prohibiting alcohol? Really? Why not? Oh, right. It turned out that the negative consequences of alcohol prohibition were worse than the negative consequences of alcohol itself. And alcohol is the United States's number one drug problem.

No, I don't use marijuana myself. I used to be addicted to nicotine, I still use alcohol, and I'm still addicted to caffeine. But it doesn't bother me if people use other drugs. I'm not out to impose my values on other people. Stoners get high, giggle a lot, eat snacks and go to sleep. If you think they should be thrown in jail for that I really have to wonder about you, not them.

And if you're worried about underage smoking, the best thing to do about it is to legalize marijuana. No one ever got thrown out of a pot party for being underage. Legalizing it and regulating it would go a long way to minimizing the harm that is done by it. You would take organized crime out of the equation, make a serious dent in underage smoking, and be able to start teaching peole responsible use. Not to mention end one cause of disrespect for the law. After all, if the law comes down so hard on marijuana, then the law is an ass. Read the facts.

Need proof that Americans are becoming xenophobic?

Men detained 3 hours for school materials

"NEWARK, New Jersey (AP) -- Five airline passengers speaking in foreign languages and carrying "aircraft flight materials" were briefly detained Saturday until authorities determined they were simply returning to their home countries after attending a U.S. helicopter training school.

"Fellow passengers on American Airlines Flight 1874, which had departed from Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, became suspicious of the men, said Steven Siegel, a spokesman for the FBI's Newark office.

"A federal marshal on the plane notified authorities at Newark Liberty International Airport about the men's behavior. (Watch as a passenger describes what happened during the flight -- 1:44)

"The men -- identified only as four Angolan military personnel and an Israeli -- had attended helicopter training school in Texas, Siegel said."

9.11 video

Just found an interesting video on the Internet about the 9/11 attacks. Their website is here.

They make a lot of questionable assumptions, especially at the beginning, and raise a lot of things that are not necessarily problems for people who know anything about statistics, probability, unexpected consequences of experiments and problems with the perceptions of eyewitnesses. It reminded me a lot of the "Bill Clinton killed Vince Foster" school of investigation that we saw so much of during the Clinton impeachment. But the Vince Foster murder freaks were able to raise a number of troubling questions about the investigation of that murder, though they came nowhere near making a case that Clinton was bumping off his supporters right and left (as the list of Clinton related "disappearances" claimed) much less giving Clinton a motive for all these supposedly suspicious deaths, even much, much less that he was bumping off nobodies while leaving his worst enemies untouched.

I'm not endorsing this video for many reasons, including the classic argument agaisnt conspiracy theories (i.e. the bigger they get the harder they are to keep secret), but I think it raises a number of questions that should be considered. I would also appreciate comments from anyone who has seen the video and can comment intelligently on it.

Congressional Black Caucus Calls for Fair Agreement to End Genocide in Darfur

"After more than three years of suffering at the hands of the Government of Sudan and the Janjaweed, the people of Darfur are faced with a proposed peace agreement which falls short of the aim to end the violence and create a just and lasting peace in the region.

"The seventh round of the African-Union brokered peace talks in Abuja, Nigeria are coming to a close and the April 30 deadline for a signed peace agreement was extended to midnight tonight. The draft peace agreement is skewed to benefit the Government of Sudan and penalize the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) -- the only voices for the people of Darfur."

Read more at the Congressional Black Caucus Press Release

More China in Africa (spotlight on Nigeria)

Nigeria: China Rationalises $15bn Investment

Nigeria: China to Acquire Mines

Issues in Nigeria-China Relations

Direct air flights between Nigeria, China proposed

China, Nigeria sign big deals as Beijing pledges higher profile in Africa

China, Nigeria sign joint communique

China gains oil drilling rights in Nigeria

China, Nigeria to ink oil deal

(comments later?)

As usual, things get complicated

Darfur rebels frustrate mediator

"The two rebel groups are still seeking a number of changes, particularly over the post-conflict security arrangements such as the number of their forces to be integrated into the Sudanese army."

China's Africa policy backfiring?

I'm not sure why Niger Delta secessionists should target China over any other country exporting oil, and of course they have targetted other countries' oil workers, but China better learn to deal with this before it blows up in their face. They can't just pretend they are not involved, because they are going to be involved on one side or the other of every dispute in Africa, whether they like it or not.

Need more proof that the Iraq war is counterproductive?

The CIA says so, officially. This is what you can read when the administration doesn't order them to cook the books on intelligence.

"US admits Iraq is terror 'cause'"
By Tom Baldwin
"Report says that 11,000 attacks worldwide shows the war has become driving factor for extremists"

"THREE years after its invasion of Iraq the US Administration acknowledged yesterday that the war has become “a cause” for Islamic extremists worldwide and there is a risk of the country becoming a safe haven for terrorists hoping to launch fresh attacks on America.

"According to CIA data released yesterday, there were 11,111 terrorist incidents last year, killing more than 14,600 non-combatants, including 8,300 in Iraq. Of the 56 American civilians killed by terrorists in 2005, some 47 of them were in Iraq."

Read the rest of the story.

Yes, it's true

They're trying to take the Internet away, and give it to the highest bidder. Say goodbye to the open-access Information superhighway, say goodbye to the democratizing of news and bebate, say goodbye to the new world of information equality. It was nice while it lasted.

Not a Republican war?

Tyrrell: Not just a Republican war

This is wrong and outrageous on so many levels. Let me count some of them:

1) American soil was attacked in the US embassy bombings in east Africa. Most Republicans insisted the real threat to the United States was Monica Lewinsky, and that Clinton and the Democrats were involved in a "wag the dog" strategy to distract America with a phony Islamic threat.

2) It is not "a" war. Iraq has absolutely NOTHING to do with September 11. For the first time in American history we are at two wars at once. The first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, famously said "one war at a time" when one of his cabinet officers suggested starting a second war to convince the seceding southern states to come back in the Civil War. We have to explain to people that Iraq was the "wag the dog" distraction from our real national security business.

3) Who made it a Republican war? Who politicized it by refusing to cooperate with Democrats? Who used national security for partisan political gain at the expense of the national interest? Who outed a CIA agent to take petty revenge on her husband? Who ignored the professional advice of non-political generals? Who invaded Iraq for no real reason and then tried to use the Iraq invasion for partisan political ends?

If the Iraq war, or even the war against Al-Qa'ida, is a Republican war (and don't forget that the latter started under Clinton and most Republicans refused to get on board) Republicans have no one to blame but themselves for their mismanagement. Democrats were not the ones who let bin Ladin get away, not the ones who lied America into an unrelated war that prevents us from dealing with our real enemies, not the ones alienating moderate Muslims, and not the ones who have been mismanaging the wars America finds itself fighting, one thrust upon us and one Bush chose.

We have to get the word out. Real information about these two wars has to reach the American people, so that articles like this one will no longer be taken seriously, and Tyrrell will be scoffed off of CNN. I have only dealt with the obvious errors here, but Americans in general need a crash course on the Islamic world and how the Bush regime is playing into the hands of our enemies. We don't need more lies about how Democrats are umpatriotic. Republicans have been losing the war. If Lincoln's administration had done this badly we would be reading about President McClellan in our American history books.

Clark, Firing Rumsfeld and politics

It was great to start downloading and listening to Wes Clark's "clarkcast" podcasts. I was especially pleased to hear the first one say that they would take a non-partisan tone, but that the policies of the Republican administration and Congress had to be gotten rid of. Listening to Clarkcasts is going to be a priority for me from now on.

I was also glad to hear that Clark had joined the increasing calls of other retired generals for replacement of Donald Rumsfeld. I'd like to add an additional reason for getting rid of Rumsfeld that I haven't seen offered by others yet. Rumsfeld is a Republican.

No, I'm not suggesting that Bush's cabinet should be replaced with Democrats. I'm still in favor of replacing Bush with a Democrat. When that Democrat (and I hope it's Wes Clark) takes office, I hope he replaces the Secretary of Defense with a Republican. We're at war.

It makes good political sense for the President and the Secretary of Defense to be from opposite parties, but no one figured that out before Honest Abe Lincoln appointed Democratic politician Edwin M. Stanton his Secretary of War. Secretary Stanton not only helped rally Democrats to the war effort but he eventually became a Republican himself.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt imitated Lincoln by appointing William Howard Taft's old Secretary of War, Henry L. Stimson, as his own Secretary of War as the United States prepared for World War II. Again this paid off by helping assure Republican support for the war.

Jack Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson appointed a non-political technocrat, Robert McNamara, as Secretary of Defense. He may not have been the best Secretary, but he did help to keep the Republicans on board during the Vietnam War. Nixon had Republican Secretaries of Defense, Melvin Laird, Elliot Richardson, James Schlesinger, and (gasp) Donald Rumsfeld, but that only left Democrats more free to oppose the War.

Woodrow Wilson also had a Secretary of War from his own party, Newton D. Baker, during World War I. Of course the Republicans weren't about to oppose World War I. They'd been screaming for it when Wilson was campaigning as the guy who kept us out of it. But they sure weren't going to cut him any slack about his "League of Nations" idea when he came home from France with the Treaty of Versailles. He may have sold it to the Europeans but he couldn't sell it to the Republicans, not after he left them out of both the war cabinet and the peace negotiations. Reductionists might blame World War II on Wilson's decision (and it should bear part of the blame - it did doom US participation in the League of Nations, which might have helped stop the war before it got out of hand) but that would be going too far. Hoover's Secretary of State Henry Stimson (yes, the same Stimson) offered to help the League stop Japanese aggression in Manchuria if they would grow a backbone, but they turned him down. Still, it's easy to find fault with Wilson's "my way or the highway" attitude and most historians today would.

The lesson of history in this case? Yes, we need a Democrat president to replace Bush, but we also need a non-partisan administration that can unite the country afterwards. That means whichever of the Democrats who wins in 2008 should appoint a sane, honest, qualified Republican (assuming one can be found at this late date) as Secretary of Defense for the duration of the War against Al-Qa'ida and possibly beyond.

Need more proof that "Ann" Coulter is a man?

Try her "blame the victim" attitude to rape:

"Also, you can severely reduce your chances of being raped if you do not go to strange men's houses and take your clothes off for money."

Personally I don't mind seeing beautiful women take off their clothes. I've seen it before and I hope to see it again. I do mind that some people think that's an excuse to rape the women who do it. That would severely discourage women, especially beautiful women, from taking off their clothes.

More double standard?

"WASHINGTON, April 21 (UPI) -- The CIA has fired an employee for leaking classified information to the news media, the agency announced in Washington Friday."

So . . . when does the leaker in chief get fired? Don't tell me it's legal when he does it. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. That shouldn't be the issue. The issue should be that he is not interested in the national interest, or even national security. He is interested in his own short-term political future, in taking revenge on people who cross him, and his own crackhead delusions.

Darfur and the Chad insurgency

Chad has been providing refuge to refugees and rebels from Darfur in Sudan, probably less from sympathy than from inability to do anything about it. Wadai in Chad is right over the border from Darfur. Wadai and Darfur used to be neighboring kingdoms. The capital of Chad is all the way across the country, near Cameroon. Chad itself has never had a democratic government and is one of the most artificial, unviable and ungovernable states in Africa.

The government in Chad has accused the government in Sudan of supporting the rebels in Chad, as Sudan has accused Chad of supporting the rebels in Sudan. Maybe they have, maybe they don't have enough control of, or enough concern with, the area to do anything about it. Modern states in Africa are often more a way to get money from the International Community (OECD? G8+? what does that term mean?) in foreign aid, especially in French Africa where La France pays for the government expenses in order to maintain French as the official language.

The Chad rebels are promising a national conference, which has worked in many other Francophone countries, but as long as French is the official language, and as long as literacy rates (measured in French of course) are miniscule, there is not much hope for democracy.

Is the tide turning?

I decided to take a listen to wingnut talk radio yesterday, just to see what the other side was saying. I went to Shoutcast, got the list of talk streams, and clicked the most popular one that looked most clearly right wing. Sure enough there were ads for right wing bumper stickers, and ads telling me how to put my money into gold because the Federal Reserve Board was a bunch of conspirators trying to make away with my hard earned money. But what were they talking about?

IMPEACHMENT!

Yes, I couldn't believe it. They had a some guy from Vermont on the air talking about how to impeach Bush, and people were calling in wanting to know more. The news that President Bush himself had been behind the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame all along had finally gotten people to realize that this administration was not about national security at all.

Out of control hypocrisy

First the Bush administration reclassifies old documents needlessly.

Then they casually leak pertinent, sensitive, current national security secrets for political gain.

Finally they pretend they are protecting American citizens from foreign terrorists.

How can approximately one third of the country not yet see through these people?

Bush and the question from a North Carolina man

I originally heard this exchange on NPR, but I can't find it on their site. I have to give Bush praise for telling the audience to let the man speak, even if he was only being political about it. There is a real question historically about the limits of dissent in wartime, just as there is a real question, Constitutionally, whether we are at war or not right now. However, since the Vietnam War (or "conflict" if you prefer) there has been an emerging consensus that patriotic dissent is possible in wartime, and that it is different from treason, i.e. "levying War against them [i.e. the United States], or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort." Hopefully we won't see any Alien and Sedition Acts anytime soon.

Nevertheless, I wondered why the guy didn't ask the obvious question that's been bugging me for months, namely, why can't Bush get a warrant for his wiretapping, if he really has nothing to hide? I think maybe too many of us are too emotional, or maybe we find these questions to be too self-evident, that we don't always pose them correctly.

Bush is obviously trying to position himself as the defender of America, so he can rise in the polls and avoid a Congress that will investigate his illegal activities, and, if necessary, move to impeach him and remove him from office.

Bush and signing statements

from the Boston Globe

WASHINGTON -- When President Bush signed the reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act this month, he included an addendum saying that he did not feel obliged to obey requirements that he inform Congress about how the FBI was using the act's expanded police powers.

This presidency is the first time I've ever heard the idea that signing statements have the force of law, in fact that they have more force than the law being signed. I always thought they were just kind of a political speech in writing, a press release saying how nice it was that the law had been passed and how we should all thank the president for his support of it.

Of course this is red meat to those who hate America, not to mention the fact that it creates more and more such people. I don't hate America, and in fact what disturbs me about Bush is how his actions create more and more hatred of America. Pro-Union slave owners in the American Civil War denounced secessionists as "practical abolitionists" because they actually promoted abolitionism (against their intentions, of course) by seceding from the Union. Bush seems to be the most practical anti-American alive.

What I would like to know is whether his oath of office,

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

is modified by some kind of signing statement that gives him the right to ignore all or part of the Constitution of the United States.

A radical proposal for immigration

Radical doesn't really, originally mean extreme. It comes from the Latin word "radix" which means "root". Radical means getting to the root of a problem. In this case, let's look at what the root cause of out of control immigration from Mexico and Central America and see what can be done to control it. No one in the current debate is talking about it.

Why are so many people from Mexico and Central America streaming into the United States? Because they are desperately poor and they see prosperity and opportunity in the United States. There is almost no place else on earth where the developed and underdeveloped worlds meet so closely as the US Mexico border. On one side there are lawn sprinklers, soccer moms and SUVs. On the other side there are dusty desert towns with barefoot children begging for coins. The only other border that stark is the one between North and South Korea. Some Americans would like to see our border as fortified as the inter-Korean one, but for the time being, you can walk or drive across the US Mexico border. It's not so easy to cross the Korean border.

This is very similar to what is happening with Africans trying to get into Europe via the Canary Islands, or even Turkey trying to join the EU. But the borders between the developed and underdeveloped world are not so stark between Europe and Africa and Asia around the Mediterranean. The relative prosperity fades out even within countries (as in Italy or the former Yugoslavia - although we should keep in mind that factor is divisive in those countries) as much as it does between countries, and there are no economic borders as stark as that between Texas or California and Mexico.

The Hispanic population in the United States, which is mostly Mexican, is disproportionately young. The half the population was less than 26.0 years old, compared with 35.4 for the population at large (and it was even higher for the non-Hispanic population). In part this was because the Hispanic population was largely immigrant (which also explains the fact that there are more Hispanic men than women, the opposite of the case with the population at large), but this is more a result of fact that the Hispanic population, even the Cubans in Florida, is from underdeveloped countries, with high birth and death rates, especially infant mortality. This leaves a demographic pyramid that is wide at the base, narrow at the top, rather than the rough cylinder that is the population of the developed countries.

In underdeveloped countries children are not just the expensive hobby they are in the US, Europe and Japan. They are their parents Social Security and old age pension. It is not just sentiment that makes people have children there. It is naked, cold self interest. The only way to stop Mexican population from hemorrhaging into the US is to develop Mexico, and give the Mexican people the individual, personal self-interest in controlling their population that people in developed countries have now.

Can one country develop another by either foreign investment or foreign aid? I suppose if it could be done it would have been done somewhere, but it hasn't been. However, the United States has a very serious national security interest in seeing that Mexico becomes developed, and Mexicans become prosperous. This would mean not only investment, but the ability of Mexicans to collectively bargain, in their own country, for better remuneration from their employers, to raise Mexican living standards to the level of those in the United States.

Will the Dems adopt my slogan?

GET BIN LADIN! was my first post here. I was still trying to recover from the Bush baby's re-election.

Today Dick Cheney said the Democrat plan was to "get bin Laden". Al Sharpton, not my favorite Democrat, points out that Bush said he was going to get bin Laden. Just a few weeks ago Bush himself said he was going to "get bin Laden." Even in South Carolina people are finally beginning to see that Bush can't come through on that promise. People everywhere are finally beginning to see that the invasion of Iraq was at best a diversion from the war, at worst a boon to bin Ladin.

So what are the Democrats offering as an alternative?

The Democrat plan offers to "Eliminate Osama Bin Laden, destroy terrorist networks like al Qaeda, finish the job in Afghanistan, and end the threat posed by the Taliban.

"Double the size of our Special Forces, increase our human intelligence capabilities, and ensure our intelligence is free from political pressure."

YES! We need more money for human intelligence, not just buying information from others overseas, but training more Americans who can understand what's happening around the world in other societies. And the Special Forces? They seem to be the only people who can get things right. They were Kennedy's idea, just like the Peace Corps.

Boy, do I miss Jack Kennedy! There was a president.

Everyone's entitled to a day in court.

Or so we were taught in America when I was young. The Constitution doesn't limit this right to citizens, as some would have us believe. It doesn't even limit the right to a jury trial. Here's what it says, even before the Bill of Rights was added (Article III, section 2):

"The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment; shall be by Jury;"

Everyone's entitled to a day in court, with a jury. Not a jury of their peers (that's the Magna Carta you're thinking of, which applied only to nobles, or "peers") but a jury nonetheless.

Americans as diverse as Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and General Billy Mitchell have deliberately violated the law in order to get a day in court and use it as a forum for changing policies and laws.

Is this era coming to an end? The administration seems to think so. They might even reject the Supreme Court's jurisdiction, arguably placing the President above the law. If the US is fighting a war, then the Guantanamo detainees are POWs and entitled to Geneva Convention rights. If the US is suppressing criminal activities, then the Guantanamo detainees are criminal suspects and entitled to criminal law protections. Either way they are human beings, and entitled to the rights that human beings are naturally entitled to, according to American belief.

But not according to Justice Scalia.

Why don't the media call Bush on these lies?

I listened to Bush's press conference on NPR. Now I'm listening to it again on C-Span.org. I can believe the guy lies constantly. I'm used to that by now. But why does no one call him on the lies? Helen Thomas tried to but she could barely get any words in. Then the discussion on NPR never mentioned that he kept lying and lying and lying. Is the man a pathological liar? Does he think Americans are stupid?

Let me count the lies (or at least some of the biggest):

I didn't plan the Iraq war until 9/11 . . .
Iraq had something to do with al-Qa'ida . . .
The UN Security Council resolutions authorized the invasion . . .
Saddam Hussein wouldn't obey the Security Council resolutions . . .
Saddam wouldn't allow the inspectors to finish their work . . .

and that's just to one question by Helen Thomas. He wouldn't even answer her question about what was the real reason we went to war.

What else:

The enemy wants us out of Iraq. (Ultimately yes, but for the time being they want us in, alone, because not only is it easier to kill us there, but it inflames the Muslim world and gives them more and more recruits and imitators. Their plan is to bankrupt us through this war, which will make us withdraw not just from Iraq but from the entire Islamic World, by making us collapse (as they think they made the Soviet Union collapse), which is also the Grover Norquist plan to destroy the Federal government. Isn't that usually considered treason?)

Let's not even talk about what he says about Social Security, "democracies don't war" (Is he admitting that, thanks to Diebold, the US is no longer a democracy? Is that the real reason we went to war?), the decision about troop strength will be made by commanders on the ground or all the other lies.

And then there's the stuff he won't even talk about anymore, like yellowcake uranium from Niger and outing a CIA agent.

The biggest question to me is why the press is not performing its watchdog role by calling this man on his lies. They know the facts. Anyone who has been paying attention knows the facts. What is going on that our "free, independent" fourth estate cannot call the president on his lying?

My two cents about censure

Senator Russ Feingold has introduced a bill to censure President Bush. Democrats are rushing to support that bill. I am opposed. Let me explain why.

Censure is not in the Constitution. It does nothing in a practical sense. It's just a means of getting steam off your chest about something. Henry Clay created it for political reasons. He didn't like what Andy Jackson was doing as president (specifically about the Bank of the United States) but he knew, even if he had the support of the Congress, that he couldn't legally impeach Jackson without the Constitutionally required "high crimes and misdemeanors" to charge him with.

Now, I think censure would have been perfect in Clinton's case, although impeachment would have been inappropriate. What Clinton did was clearly wrong. But it wasn't illegal. It certainly wasn't worth removing him from office. The whole thing was a political move. If they had the votes to impeach Clinton for zippergate, they would have had the votes to remove Gore for the Buddhist Temple thing. Then guess who gets to be President. That's right, Newt Gingrich, the Speaker of the House, would have become our next Commander in Chief. Of course he'd have had to call out troops to quell the public outcry, but dictatorship would be a small price to pay for (what? what possible advantage could Gingrich have offered over Clinton?)

The point is that impeachment was in no way justified by Clinton's actions, it is every way justified by Bush's actions, which are not just wrong, not just incompetent, but criminal. Censure may make people feel better about what's happening, but it won't fix the problems.

Anonymity: let me count the wherefores

1. Who am I? Why should it matter? Shouldn't the ideas, the facts, and the interpretation of them be important? What does it matter to you whether I am male or female, black, white or other, tall or short, skinny or fat, smoker or drinker or sex addict? Aren't these all just ad hominem arguments? Who cares? As the Diamond Sutra teaches us, material characteristics are not, in fact, characteristics. Don't ask me what that means. I don't claim to have had a satori, in Paris or elsewhere. I would just rather my ideas were judged on their own merits than on the basis of who they were espoused by. I've had good and bad experiences with academic "blind peer review" of my writings, and some bad ones. The bad ones were always caused by people trying (and sometimes failing) to figure out who I was, what my ethnic and/or national identity was, and judging the value of my ideas by who they thought I was (sometimes mistakenly), instead of judging the ideas on their own.

2. Maybe I'm just paranoid. I probably say much more dangerous things under my own name than I do here. Maybe the idea that I might lose out on some future job, or be dismissed from one of the ones I hold now, for what I say here is just crazy. But I think it was Nixon's Attorney General John Mitchell who said that even paranoids have real enemies. He saw the enemies list, and he should know. I'm not under any illusion that I'm important enough to have a spot on Bush II's enemies list. However, I do feel a little more secure not putting my name out there for what's on this blog, and the crossposts at DailyKos and Wesley Clark's blog. I started my blog after Bush was re-inaugurated. John Dean (who should know) said that the Bush II administration was "worse than Watergate" and I remember Watergate. In fact I remember handing out flyers for McGovern in '72, when someone took me aside and said that I shouldn't be doing this because Nixon was going to be much harder on the opposition after he was re-elected with a landslide. I said I was too deep in it anyway. I probably am again. I can only hope Bush is impeached. After that, when I feel safer, maybe I'll tell everyone who I am. If anyone's actually reading this stuff enough to be interested.

3. OK, I admit, it just feels kind of neat to let off some steam anonymously. Think of it like cybergraffiti, only I'm not defacing anything except my own site. There's an old Latin satire that claims "The names of fools are inscribed on the walls of public buildings." (Yes, Rome had a graffiti problem, too.) I can write something wittier than my own name in Roman letters. In fact I could write my name in a few other scripts, too. I guess I don't have an ego that insists I must get credit (if not get paid) for everything I do. It's the deed that matters more than the doer. And the deed here is just a long, anguished scream.

4. I figure if I keep this up long enough I'll probably get outed sooner or later. I'd just as soon let it be later rather than sooner. I've been slowly dropping a lot of hints about who I might be. A good detective could probably figure it out now. How many people know Francis Fukuyama's SAT scores, what "fitnah" means in Arabic, and regularly submit articles for blind peer review? Maybe Alberto Gonzales, or his underlings, already know who I am and are preparing to render me to Gitmo. Maybe they could care less. Myself, I've become curious to see who figures out my identity first. Should I give them something my state is famous for producing?

5. When people ask me questions privately I can answer them here. For example, someone from the Clark blog asked me about my Arabic. I studied classical Arabic, a dead language, for a few years. I even studied Islamic studies, and Middle Eastern Studies (they're not the same), at one of the best universities in the US. I try to contribute whatever I can to the desperate need of the American public, if not the current American administration, for more and better information, as I'm trying to continue educating myself. After 9/11 half the US wanted to learn more about what was happening in the Islamic world, the other half were going "NUKE THE CAMEL JOCKEYS!" I'd rather address the first group. I don't think they need to know who I am, especially if what I say can be independently confirmed.

6. That really brings up another point. I don't really have anything to say that depends on my identity. Unlike RiverBend, whose veracity depends on her identity as an Iraqi woman living in Baghdad (but who nevertheless, or perhaps therefore, remains anonymous), nothing I say here depends on who I am. It's all verifiable independently of me. You have no need to know who I am. All I know is what I read on the Internet (to update Will Rogers). Or at least all I post here is what I read on the Internet.

7. I suppose Google could find out who I am if they wanted to. I have to take the risk that they would turn me in to the Chinese government, or the US government as soon as the Bush administration gets around to bumping off its domestic opponents, but I just think that risk is small enough that I'll take a chance on it for the opportunity to mouth off like this. I guess Kos could find out who I am, too, but I'll take my chances on him. If he's going to turn me in I might as well give up.

8. General Clark can find out who I am anytime he wants just for asking, although he could probably ask the guys who run the blog for him, if he cares. I still have a lot of faith in General Clark, but not idealistic faith. (I still remember the guy working on the Carter campaign who said he would resign if we saw a Cy Vance as Secretary of State or Zbigniew Brzezinski as National Security Advisor. He didn't when we did.) I expect General Clark to administer from the center if he ever becomes president, like the Democratic Eisenhower many see him as. I'd even support him if he appointed a Republican (John McCain?) as Secretary of Defense. Lincoln, FDR and JFK had Secretaries of War or Defense from the other party and got a lot of support for their policies for it. Wilson and Nixon didn't. Wilson couldn't get the Republicans to support his League of Nations idea, with disastrous consequences for the US, not to mention the world. We all know what happened to Nixon. Not that I'm blaming the Democrats for going after him. In retrospect we can all be happy he didn't have a Democrat Secretary of Defense.

9. Well, that's about it. It's about all the reasons I can think of offhand. Maybe I'm crazy, maybe I'm a fox, maybe it doesn't matter at all. You can ask me questions privately if you want. I'll just answer them here. Or you can ask them as comments on my blog, and I can answer them as other comments there. When I get around to it. I really don't have time to get online everyday.

Ali's America

Anyone know what happened to a podcast called "Ali's America"? This was done by a rather conservative American from the heartland who happened to be Muslim, happened to be a Bush supporter in fact, and had an interesting, quirky sense of humor.

I've long been interested in the interaction of Islam and the United States, the way each poses challenges to the ohter, and just the general way they interact. America is a challenge to the Islamic tradition of religious states. Muslims who want to be Muslim in America will have to be Muslim on their own. The state neither enforces Islam nor persecutes it. They also have no normative Islam to reference. All the various immigrant and convert groups have different conceptions of Islam and none of them dominates. Pan-Islam can't be romantic anymore.

Islam challenges the US not only by having a stronger tradition of ties to the state than any other major religion, but in other ways as well. I'm not just talking about the al-Qa'ida challenge here, but the communitarian nature of Islam, it's close family values, and the potential it has (as Malcolm X pointed out) for being anti-racist.

Not that Muslims are necessarily more racist than other immigrants. The largest group of converts is African Americans, yet most immigrants are whites, not always anxious to associate with blacks. That's another challenge the US poses for Muslims. Can they really live up to their ideals on their own? America might be better if they did.

Michael Jackson, Daniel Pipes and Islam

Daniel Pipes had the following to say about Michael Jackson's possible conversion to Islam:

"Given Mr. Jackson's famous eccentricities, it is unclear what his Bahraini venture amounts to, but if he does convert to Islam, he will be following a path in place since the late 1940s, of African-Americans under stress turning to some form of Islam. . . .

"These and other examples establish Islam – in both its normative and Nation variants – as a leading solace for African-Americans in need. That helps explain why the United States has by far the largest Muslim convert population in the Western world (about 750,000 adherents). Each black public figure who converts to Islam or accepts Nation of Islam support creates an added impetus for other blacks to change religions, a pattern that has also emerged in other Western countries."

It is unfortunate that Professor Pipes only sees Michael as black. Americans (myself included) are so racist. What's the saying? "Americans can't see class because they're blinded by race. Brazilians can't see race because they're blinded by class." Can't Michael Jackson, like every other black, just be an individual human being without everyone making him represent the black community? Isn't it unfair?

But this isn't about race or even about class (how many Americans can afford to fly to Bahrain on a whim?) Not even class in the American sense in which Michael doesn't have any. (Not that he has much race, either.)

This conversion, if it happens at all, may have less to do with Jackson's (confused) racial identity than with his sexual proclivities. Like the use of slave soldiers, which Daniel Pipes is an acknowledged expert on, homosexual child-molesting is found in Islamic civilization but is against Islamic law, in fact it's even more obviously and clearly against Islamic law than are slave soldiers and officials although it may also be less coincident with Islamic civilization. I don't know off hand anyone who's written about it. I do know that Islamic states have more and more outlawed polygyny because it makes many men, especially those who can't afford to buy a bride, put off marriage, exacerbating their sexual frustration. They haven't been able to stamp it out. Maybe it has more to do with purdah than with polygyny as such, though.

Like the use of slave soldiers, it's an example of how Islam as a religion and Islam as a civilization can be in conflict. But most people don't want to talk about it. It would be completely unfair to characterize Islam as a faith as promoting homosexual child-molesting, of course, because it is a heinous crime meriting the death penalty. It is an example of contradictions within Islamic civilization, as well as an example of ancient Greek influence on Islam that neither Greeks nor Muslims wants to draw attention to.

Clark, Hackett, netroots and DLC

[Crossposted at Clark Community Network, with links]

General Clark's 2004 race for president was a unique opportunity not only to bring the U. S. together, but to bring the Democratic Party together. Of course he would have had to unite the Democrats behind him before bringing the country together, but if he had been able to unite Democrats, I believe that as a non-political general with ties to both parties, he could have united the country.

Uniting the Democratic Party is another question and probably more difficult, as the Paul Hackett affray testifies. The gap between the activist base (often referred to as the netroots) and the organization (often confused with the DLC, though there is much overlap) is once again threatening to tear the party apart.


The 2004 Clark campaign was a unique combination of netroots and DLC, that General Clark carefully balanced. Clark not only raised much money on the Internet, as did Dean, but he was propelled into the race by net activity as no other campaign was, arguably making his campaign the most Internet based campaign of all. His ties to Bill Clinton gave him access to so many DLC activists and contributors that Repbublican conspiracy theorists actually charged him with being a stalking horse for Hillary! Ultimately the Clark campaign failed to gain the nomination, but I sense there is still a chance for moderation to combine with passion, not only in 2006 when we have to take back Congress, but in 2008, when I hope General Clark will run again. And I'm also getting ahead of myself. Let me go back to the point.

The DLC attempt to be "Republican Lite" is a formula for disaster in many instances. There is, of course, no arguing with success, and Bill Clinton, who created the DLC and their formula of triangulation in an attempt to destroy or marginalize DSA, SDUSA and other Socialist groups active in the Democrats, was at least a partial success. Whatever one may think of their specific policy proposals, the word "Socialist" is such poison in the US that any attempt to turn the Democrats into a Socialist Party is doomed to failure. Perhaps the Democrats should join the Liberal International, as the Republicans have joined the Democrat International, but the United States is so nationalistic that perhaps they would be better off staying aloof and attacking the Republicans for international ties. Perhaps the party of Jackson should remember its Jacksonian roots.

MY POINT:

The United States, with its executive presidential constitution and tradition of single-seat constituencies, has two large parties that would be coalitions of parties in a differently structured democracy. Building a majority party involves creating coalitions within the party, not circular firing squads. That means we all have to compete cleanly within the party primary, then swallow our pride and support the nominee who was chosen by the majority of our fellow Democrats, who are not really our political opponents, much less enemies. Behind the scenes phone calls by Senators to donors, getting them to pull their money, and even worse, calls to candidates to get them to pull out of races (yes, I'm writing about the Schumer and Hackett affair here) are totally out of line. I e-mailed the DNC asking why I should continue to contribute money but I'm still waiting for an answer. Maybe I'll get it here.

The best way to prevent the kind of "brusing primary battles" that Schumer and others urging Hackett to drop out feared is to adopt something like the Republicans old "11th Commandment" - "Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican." Or in our case, fellow Democrat. We need to keep ALL negative campaigning and name calling out of primary races and other internal party squabbles. We need to be able to united against Republicans in the general election, and most of all we need to avoid alienating swing voters in the general election by attacking fellow Democrats, who may not be perfect (no one is) but are infinitely preferable to Republicans. DLC is not going to win general elections by alienating the activists, and activists are not going to win general elections by alienating moderates, either.

Honor the fallen

even if some others don't!

Islamists vs. warlords in Somalia

Fighting has broken out in the world's only real existing anarchism, Somalia, between Islamic militants tied to Sharia courts and what the UN calls "a newly created group - the Alliance for Peace and Fight Against International Terrorism - which comprises several Mogadishu-based faction leaders" (sounds like the warlords to me. Hard to tell who to root for at this time. I wonder who the "international community" (i.e. the rich, white, industrial countries) will root for.)

more from the UN: (Reuters has the same story)

"Abdullahi Shirwa, a member of Civil Society in Action, an umbrella organisation made up of over 12 groups in Mogadishu, however, said the fighting was an attempt by the alliance "to arrest the influence of the Islamic courts", which, he said, has brought a semblance of order in areas they control."

Somalinet: has basically the same information rewritten.

BBC reports "Somali warlords battle Islamists" and further adds "Supporters of some of the city's militia leaders have clashed with an armed Islamist group which is trying to establish law and order.

"Their opponents say the Islamic courts are terrorising local people. A top cleric says fighting will continue until the other side surrenders.

"Many of the at least 15 deaths have been civilians hit by stray bullets."

. . .

"Their critics accuse the courts of being behind the killing of moderate Muslim scholars."

I suspect that the best information is, as usual, from the Beeb. Their information is probably as spot on as it always is.

There's a poll on the D-Kos site about it.

U.S. Reclassifies Many Documents in Secret Review

from the NYT, but there are other sources out there, too:

"WASHINGTON, Feb. 20 — In a seven-year-old secret program at the National Archives, intelligence agencies have been removing from public access thousands of historical documents that were available for years, including some already published by the State Department and others photocopied years ago by private historians."

. . .

"Another historian, William Burr, found a dozen documents he had copied years ago whose reclassification he considers "silly," including a 1962 telegram from George F. Kennan, then ambassador to Yugoslavia, containing an English translation of a Belgrade newspaper article on China's nuclear weapons program."

After neoconservatism

February 19, 2006After Neoconservatism
By FRANCIS FUKUYAMA

"As we approach the third anniversary of the onset of the Iraq war, it seems very unlikely that history will judge either the intervention itself or the ideas animating it kindly. By invading Iraq, the Bush administration created a self-fulfilling prophecy: Iraq has now replaced Afghanistan as a magnet, a training ground and an operational base for jihadist terrorists, with plenty of American targets to shoot at. The United States still has a chance of creating a Shiite-dominated democratic Iraq, but the new government will be very weak for years to come; the resulting power vacuum will invite outside influence from all of Iraq's neighbors, including Iran. There are clear benefits to the Iraqi people from the removal of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship, and perhaps some positive spillover effects in Lebanon and Syria. But it is very hard to see how these developments in themselves justify the blood and treasure that the United States has spent on the project to this point."

This is already well diaried at DailyKos, in fact diaried twice. I left comments there, so I won't repeat them here. Surf for yourself.

Bin Laden compares U.S. "barbaric" crimes to Saddam’s

Not that I think much of bin Ladin's opinion, but the following is from al-Jazeerah:

"In the tape posted Monday, bin Laden also promised never to be captured alive. "I have sworn to only live free. Even if I find bitter the taste of death, I don't want to die humiliated or deceived," he said."

It wouldn't surprise me if he did it. That's the competence of the Bush administration!

Paul Hackett

You don't need me (I hope!) to give you the news about Paul Hackett.

You don't even need me to bring up the DNC's position.

What I would like to point out is that the decision to cut off Hackett's funding (and then unironically criticize his fundraising ability) was taken by two Senators. Is there any way to take action on this? At the very least Reid should drop his position of party leadership. He and Schumer should have let the Democrats of Ohio decide this.

Vaughn Meader

I don't know why I'm thinking of Vaughn Meader today. I've almost forgotten about him since the Kennedy assassination, as have most people. He could have been Mayor Quimby on the Simpsons if he (or they) had thought of it. Too bad no one can make fun of Bush as well as Meader made fun of Kennedy. Maybe Bush isn't as funny, or maybe Bush is just no laughing matter. Maybe Bush is too good a self-satire, a sort of unconscious low-camp president, or presidential impersonator himself.

Bush reminds me of Ford in that he handles the ceremonial work that usually goes to the Vice-President, like going to Corretta King's funeral. When they don't even inform the (titular) Commander in Chief that they think the country is under attack you have to wonder how seriously the guy is president, or how seriously he takes himself.

So what's with the US labor movement?

I haven't heard much about the split in the AFL-CIO. This is potentially one of the biggest stories of the century in labor. The one thing I did hear (and that was some time ago) that intelligently and in detail dealt with the split told me that those who left were interested in organizing, hostile to politics and wanted a more industrial than craft structure. Sounds like the CIO, except for the hostility to political action, which sounds more like the IWW, at least after the first few years. I know this is significant, but Can't really say how.

I'm not interested in prognostication, although don't let that stop you. I am interested in finding out more about what is going on and what its significance is. It's hard to get that out of the mainstream media, so I thought I'd ask around here.

SOTU

"President Warns About Dangers for Nation in Isolationism"

How about warning us against the Hawley-Smoot tariff, Mr. President? Or the gold standard? Or some other discredited political ideology?

People who want a sensible foreign policy are NOT, repeat, NOT ISOLATIONISTS!

Please stop smearing your opponents and going after straw men. We have enough real enemies abroad whom you need to confront.

Warrantless wiretapping

There's so much information out there about this I don't think I need to link to anything.

Other than the paperless, hacked voting, this is probably the greatest threat to the Republic that's out there. I mean seriously, why can't they ask for warrants? The whole process is secret, and they can ask for warrants up to 72 hours after they wiretap. If, as the president says, they are only interested in taping people who are getting calls from al-Qa'ida overseas that is certainly probable cause, and they have no problems.

The only reason they could logically have is if they don't have probable cause for some of the wiretaps. Now why would they be taping someone without probable cause? Who are they really taping and why? This is potentially much more serious than Nixon's taping.

Mixed feelings about Google

On the one hand Google defies US over search data.

On the other hand "Google is reportedly amending its index to exclude information to which the Chinese government objects."

Personally I wish they'd stand up to both governments, but then I don't own stock in Google.

What do you think they should do? What would you do? Do you own stock in Google?

Sudan raids human rights group on eve of AU meeting

African Union or dictators' trade union? The African Union has really reached a crossroads. Will it be an institution capable of solving Africa's problems, or will it degenerate into just a dictators' trade union the way the Organization of African Unity did?

The current summit meeting in Khartoum may prove decisive. Let's see what kind of news we can get out of Sudan today.

BBC notes that the Sudan was the only country to put its name up to chair the AU next. However, having Sudan chair the AU may result in some bad publicity for the Organization: "A meeting of human rights delegates in Khartoum was broken up on Sunday by Sudanese police, who detained them and took their photographs, reports said." Not to mention ongoing genocide: "More than 200,000 people have been killed in Darfur in the past three years and two million people have been forced from their homes." (sounds like Bosnia all over again, n'est pas?) "Africa is split down the middle over Sudan's candidacy, says the BBC's Adam Mynott in Khartoum."

The Beeb says that Nigeria's president Obasanjo is leading the opposition to Sudan's taking the chair. According to the Nigerian "This Day" the process for electing judges to the African Court on Human and People's Rights is also fatally flawed: "South African lawyer, Nobuntu Mbelle, Regional Coordinator of the Coalition for an African Court on Human and Peoples'­ Rights and a principal author of the report said: 16 countries have nominated 21 candidates, of whom only five are women, and barely one-third have experience in human rights. We can do better."

Human Rights Watch has a press release about it.

And the latest from the Sudan Tribune:

Sudanese police raid human rights groups' meeting
Darfur crisis, a destructive force against the Sudan peace deal
West falls for Sudan's tricks
Sudan: Hosting the African Union Summit

President Gore on the Constitution

"It is imperative that respect for the rule of law be restored."

China buying Nigerian oil company

It might have been nice if Bush had invaded Iraq for oil, and it would have been REALLY nice if the invasion had worked out, but I have to live in the real world on Planet Earth, not on whatever planet our crackhead president lives.

Americans get more oil from Nigeria than from the Persian Gulf, and Nigeria continued to supply the US with oil during the Arab oil embargo in the 1970s. Yes, your gasoline depends on a steady supply from Nigeria, but that supply is now being encroached on by the steady expansion of Chinese economic interests. So not only does the upheaval in Iraq mean less petroleum on the market, what's up for grabs is slipping away.

from AllAfrica.com:

China National Offshore Oil Company Limited (CNOOC), yesterday said it will pay $2.3 billion (N299 billion) in cash to acquire 45 per cent shares of South Atlantic Petroleum, owned by former Defence Minister, Gen. Theophilus Danjuma (rtd), in Akpo oil field located in OPL 246.


The company is financing this with internal resources and expects to make a tidy profit. There is an insurgency, and India decided it was too risky, but the Nigerian insurgency is nothing compared to the insurgency in Iraq.

CNOOC is China's biggest offshore oil producer, and its acquisition of interest in the Nigerian oil field would be China's third big overseas takeover since August 2004 to meet increasing energy demand.

That's right, folks, while your government is busy in Iraq trying to (what? why are we there? what's the excuse this week?) secure the oil fields, the Chinese are doing it the old fashioned way, buying it.

China, which was expected to consume 6.63 million barrels a day of oil last year, imported an average of 2.38 million barrels a day in the first three quarters of 2005, or 36 percent of the total, according to December 2005 Oil Market Report by the International Energy Agency in Paris.

And their apetite is only going to get bigger.

Don't you wish your government had seriously invested in alternative energy sources? Maybe the Japanese will. They seem to like us better than the Chinese do, if anyone does.

MSM blackout of impeachment?

I search news.google.com (US version) for "impeachment" and find:

2 stories about Nigeria

1 story about Malawi

2 stories about the UK (General Rose wants Blair impeached)

1 story about Thailand

and 4 stories about the US.

So most of the stories on the US media are about impeachment in OTHER COUNTRIES!!!!!

One of the stories in the US is actually entitled "How the US Press Squelches Bush Impeachment Drive" but it won't come up in my browser. In fact my browser tells me the URL doesn't exist. Think the FBI shut it down? Or the CIA? or the NSA? Stranger things have happened. I remember Watergate. Special greetings to all the spooks reading this. Wouldn't your time be better spent going after Usama bin Ladin? But Boss Bush doesn't care about him, does he? Nope, he never did. You suckers go after loyal Americans like me instead. ;-(

So subtract 1 from 10 and get 3 out of 9 stories about impeachment related to the US. Two thirds of the stories in the US are about foreign impeachments. And we all know how fascinated Americans are to keep up with events in foreign countries. Especially their political and legislative activities. Americans never follow disasters or celebrities or anything like that. No way!

All three branches of government and the fourth estate are in the hands of corrupt enemies of democracy. I never thought I'd live to see the downfall of the Republic, but it looks that way.

Yes, it's depressing, but my real regrets are for the generations to come. Sorry, guys.

Happy 8th of January!

The Eighth of January was the date of the Battle of New Orleans. The battle was an unexpected victory for an American army composed of motley militia, including free blacks and Amerindians, against what was probably the finest army ever assembled up to that time, British veterans of the Napoleonic Wars, fresh from fighting in Europe. Of course there had been a treaty signed ending the war shortly before the battle was fought, but neither army knew that at the time, and I don't doubt but that the treaty would have been torn up had the British actually been able to take New Orleans.

The battle propelled the victorious General Jackson into politics and eventually the White House, only the second Major General to become a US president. Today's Democratic Party really began as a sort of Jackson fan club, organized by his friends and supporters to push his candidacy and his principles. The anniversary of the battle became an occasion for parades and political oratory and was heavily associated with the Democratic Party.

After the Civil War the holiday went into decline, but I'd like to celebrate it today. It's time that another former general's Democratic Party candidacy was remembered and supported. He won't be running again for a few more years, but of course I'm referring to Wesley Clark.

Happy Eighth of January, fellow Democrats, and especially Democratic veterans, and Fighting Dems candidates. It's time the Democratic Party took back the national security issue and made it ours again.

More spin?

President Bush brought foreign policy heavyweights from yesteryear to the White House on Thursday, including Democrats who have opposed his Iraq strategy. He got support for the mission - along with a few concerns - and a right to claim he was reaching out.

Original article

I guess we'll just have to wait and see if he's really listening, but past experience doesn't hold out much hope. :-(

Let me get this straight

The Justice Department said Friday that it had opened a criminal investigation into the disclosure of classified information about a secret National Security Agency program under which President George W. Bush authorized eavesdropping on people in the United States without a court warrant.

In other words, instead of investigating the actual lawbreaking, these "law enforcement" agents are investigating the stool pigeons who informed the public about it.

Could we have better proof that gangsters are running the government?

Daily Show, now for Windoze only

We're sorry, but MotherLoad will only play on PCs with Windows XP or 2000/SP4+. Click below to make sure you launch our standard media player for video (except MotherLoad exclusives).

http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/?ml_collection=23917

Yeah, I use Windows, too, but sometimes I like to use other OS's, and even RealPlayer.

Anybody got any ideas WHY they did this at Comedy Central?

Go figure

Is there nothing that will wake Americans up?!?

Early Iraq election results show Shi'ite strength
Monday 19 December 2005, 7:59am EST

"BAGHDAD, Dec 19 (Reuters) - Early results from the count of votes in more than half Iraq's regions, including Baghdad, confirmed a strong showing for the ruling Shi'ite Islamist Alliance, figures from the Electoral Commission showed on Monday."


Meanwhile back at Crawford Ranch:

Bush ratings rise on Iraq election, economy - poll
Tue Dec 20, 2005 1:38 AM GMT

"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A successful Iraq election and an improved domestic economic outlook have lifted U.S. President George W. Bush's job-approval rating to its highest level since March, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll released on Monday.

"Forty-seven percent of Americans now approve of Bush's job performance, up from Bush's all-time low approval rating of 39 percent in November and the president's best showing since March when it was 50 percent, ABC said."

Bush is handing Iraq over to pro-Iranian Shi'ite extremists who hate America, but know how to exploit the idiotic people who are running this administration

Bush on Constitution and warrants

Speaker: President George W. Bush
Title: President Bush: Information Sharing, Patriot Act Vital to Homeland Security
Location: Buffalo, NY
Date: 04/20/2004
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
April 20, 2004

President Bush: Information Sharing, Patriot Act Vital to Homeland Security
Remarks by the President in a Conversation on the USA Patriot Act
Kleinshans Music Hall
Buffalo, New York

9:49 A.M. EDT

. . .

"Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires-a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution."

Wingnut for sale!

Doug Bandow, a Cato Institute senior fellow and columnist for Copley News Service took money from Jack Abramoff to write columns, Business Week reported.

In fact Bandow has rather obviously been without principles. His first reaction to the Miers nomination was that appointing someone unqualified wasn't enough, they should be even more unqualified than Miers. His second take, less than a fortnight later, was the opposite.

Now we know who's been pulling his strings.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Israel

Personally I'd love it if all the Israelis came to the United States. The US has done very well by its Jews (and of course vice versa) so I think if we got more that would be even better. The Middle East's loss would be our gain.

But Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is wrong when he says that if others harmed the Jewish community and created problems for the Jewish community, they have to pay the price themselves because the US has discriminated far less against Jews than Iran and other Middle Eastern countries have. Sure, medieval Islam was very tolerant of Jews, arguably more tolerant than medieval Christian societies were. However, Jews need to ask Muslims today "What have you done for us lately?" There are a lot of Israelis, a lot, who are refugees from Muslim persecution, and Muslims cannot continue to say Christians are the only cause of the problem. There are statistically no Jews, NONE, who want to emigrate to Muslim countries. The United States continues to attract Jews, just as it attracts persecuted minorities from around the world. Far more Israelis become Americans than vice versa. How many countries can say that?

Come to think of it, if we can't have all the Jews, could we at least take the Palestinians? They are some of the best educated and most entrepreneurial of all Arabs, with the possible exception of the Lebanese. The United States has done well by its Lebanese and other Arab Americans. I think we could use some more. Send me your huddled masses in the refugee camps, please. I should like to lift my lamp beside the golden door again.

General Clark's latest prescription

His NYT op-ed

My response:

The perfect can be the enemy of the good, and especially in the Middle East you often have to look for a lesser evil. Lesser evilism is actually a major principle in Islamic law.

Here's the problem I see with this column's conclusion:

First, the Iraqis must change the Constitution as quickly as possible after next week's parliamentary elections. Most important, oil revenues should be declared the property of the central government, not the provinces. And the federal concept must be modified to preclude the creation of a Shiite autonomous region in the south.

Asking Iraqis to change their constitution is probably unrealistic., and I'm not sure how much attention they are going to pay to the Constitution anyway. Federalism is not well understood in the Arab world, their only word for it is a loan, and this so-called "federalism" may be only a prelude to partition. And what if you got a unitary state? It and its oil revenues would be dominated by the 60% Shi'ites anyway.

I see no good option here, nor much chance of getting influence. Our least bad option now may be handing over to a Shi'ite theocracy. This was our nightmare from Reagan through Clinton, but Bush II has balled things up, perhaps beyond retrieval.

Also, a broad initiative to reduce sectarian influence within government institutions is long overdue.

That's been tried. It's called Ba'athism. It is totally discredited and didn't work very well at defusing sectarian tendencies. I think it's too late for us to try doing it now.

Maybe we should have tried to educate our Cold War clients, especially in the Islamic world, about American principles such as democracy, freedom of religion, and federalism. Maybe we should do that now. But we haven't. Secularism was associated with Saddam, just as multi-ethnicity in Yugoslavia was associated with Communism. Speaking of which, I'd be interested to hear your comparisons between Iraq and your experiences in the former Yugoslavia, general.

What's the least bad proposal for an American policy that I have seen yet? This column, even though I respectfully disagree with part of it. Thank you, sir, and I wish you were running American foreign policy, but right now I think our best option was our worst nightmare not long ago. The alternatives in Iraq seem to be civil war, or even a new Al-Qa'ida base. You're right that we can't just pull out, but we have to hand over to someone else, some kind of international force, that we can trust. And no one is going to help Bush out now.

Even worse, I don't see much chance of getting a change in US course before 2008.

When that time comes I'm ready to back you again.


His further discussion:

We have three interests in Iraq: preventing a "terrorist " claim of victory there, leaving behind a stable, integral and peaceful Iraq which doesn't threaten its neighbors, and dealing with other regional problems like Iran and Syria. A hasty pullout certainly will be cited by the terorists as a sign of their success. It will demoralize our friends and supercharge their recruiting. My OP-ED yesterday addresses the second interest. On the third, we need strength to deal with Syria and Iran. A pullout driven by cries of woe and partisanship at home just makes us weaker.

What I tried to say yesterday was that against the Sunnis we should be content to aim for reassimilation into society, rather than just killing them. If we continue to try to kill them we just make more enemies....


my comment:

Bush's classic tar baby policy #48157
Posted by Dan Juma on December 7, 2005 - 8:19pm.

We can't leave without making the situation worse, especially when there is no Iraqi security force to take over. What little there is seems to be Shi'ite militia in disguise.

Yet it is our presence which is inflaming the situation. We have to bring someone else into it, maybe Arab League, or UN, or international Muslim force. Yet the Republican administration will not even invite Democrats into a war cabinet the way FDR had Republicans in his WWII cabinet. Forget about anyone else.

The situation will continue to deteriorate until Bush is replaced. This policy proposal is the least bad option I have seen, and the best positioning for the 2006 and 2008 elections I have seen from a Democrat. Keep trying to explain the situation to people and especially keep trying to influence policy. Iraq is not Vietnam. Vietnam only involved Vietnamese nationalism, Iraq involves Arab and Islamic nationalisms.

Sure, we should try to bring the Sunnis into the society, but ultimately it is up to the Shi'ites to accept them. Can we make these people love each other? I don't think so.

What a crazy world this is

Some people throw away delicacies because they have too much food while others are starving. The Niger famine is particularly reprehensible because the world could see it coming. It is particularly strange because it seems to contradict Amartya Sen's claim that democracies don't have famines.

Most of all, What is to be done?

Find out what you can do.

Too much going on!

I'm working a job and a half, commuting two hours each way twice a week for one. Then my family lives three hours in the other direction, so I don't get to see them as much as I should. Now I understand now why people think bloggers don't have real jobs. A lot of them don't, I guess. Well, at least they're doing something useful, or at least some of them are.

Here's a roundup of stories I didn't have time to blog, but thought were important.

Here's testimony to the Bush administration's record of competence, brought home to the USA by FEMA this past hurricane season:

BBC: "Key Asia militant 'escaped jail'"

But did that guy really escape, or did they kill him and destroy the evidence? Americans don't do things like that? I remember when Americans didn't torture people to death. And I even remember when you could trust the president's word about something. Not every president, I do remember Nixon, but some of them.

Remember when we lived under a constitutional government?

Washington Post: "Rebellion against abuse"

LAST MONTH a prisoner at the Guantanamo Bay military base excused himself from a conversation with his lawyer and stepped into a cell, where he slashed his arm and hung himself. This desperate attempted suicide by a detainee held for four years without charge, trial or any clear prospect of release was not isolated. At least 131 Guantanamo inmates began a hunger strike on Aug. 8 to protest their indefinite confinement, and more than two dozen are being kept alive only by force-feeding. No wonder Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has denied permission to U.N. human rights investigators to meet with detainees at Guantanamo: Their accounts would surely add to the discredit the United States has earned for its lawless treatment of foreign prisoners.

Guantanamo, however, is not the worst problem. As The Post's Dana Priest reported yesterday, the CIA maintains its own network of secret prisons, into which 100 or more terrorist suspects have "disappeared" as if they were victims of a Third World dictatorship. Some of the 30 most important prisoners are being held in secret facilities in Eastern European countries -- which should shame democratic governments that only recently dismantled Soviet-era secret police apparatuses. Held in dark underground cells, the prisoners have no legal rights, no visitors from outside the CIA and no checks on their treatment, even by the International Red Cross. President Bush has authorized interrogators to subject these men to "cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment that is illegal in the United States and that is banned by a treaty ratified by the Senate. The governments that allow the CIA prisons on their territory violate this international law, if not their own laws.

More on CIA secret jails and the White House (non)response.

Meanwhile the Republican reaction:

GOP Congressional Leaders Seek Leak Probe

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 8, 2005; 7:50 PM

Congress's top Republican leaders today demanded an immediate joint House and Senate investigation into the disclosure of classified information to The Washington Post that detailed a web of secret prisons being used to house and interrogate terrorism suspects.

So where were these guys when the White House was outing CIA agent Valerie Plame?

At least the Democrats in the Senate are trying to get an investigation into real problems:

Christian Science Monitor: Senate to probe how case for war was made