How did Hillary and McCain manage to simultaneously come up with "elitism" as a way to slam Barack Obama?

cnn's "best political team" (sez them) looks at the joint clinton-mccain attack on obama after obama committed the cardinal sin of making a truthful observation in public...



here's obama's response to hillary and john...



three observations...

one... why is hillary hell-bent on acting like a republican...? are hillary and mccain coordinating on this shit...? did they agree that "elitism" was going to be the attack point...?

two... obama's response is powerful, not just for its emotional content, but because it's fundamentally, undeniably true... i don't think anyone can listen to the words he says and not find herself shaking her head in agreement...

three... i want so desperately for obama to be the real thing... please, please, please, let him be the real thing...

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The WaPo catapults the Bush administration Iran propaganda on page 1

what kind of hidden perks and bennies do you suppose the wapo reaps for splashing bush administration spin and talking points all over its front page...? there simply HAVE to be some, wouldn't you agree...?

Last week's violence in Basra and Baghdad has convinced the Bush administration that actions by Iran, and not al-Qaeda, are the primary threat inside Iraq, and has sparked a broad reassessment of policy in the region, according to senior U.S. officials.

Evidence of an increase in Iranian weapons, training and direction for the Shiite militias that battled U.S. and Iraqi security forces in those two cities has fixed new U.S. attention on what Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates yesterday called Tehran's "malign" influence, the officials said.

The intensified focus on Iran coincides with diminished emphasis on al-Qaeda in Iraq as the leading justification for an ongoing U.S. military presence in Iraq.

she-e-e-e-eeeit, vern, you don't think they just GOTTA manufacture reasons to stay in iraq and to attack iran, do ya...? huh...? do ya...?

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Bill Moyers: "What is important for the journalist is not how close you are to power, but how close you are to reality"

i have few personal heroes... bill moyers is one of them...

From Bill Moyers' acceptance speech for the The Ridenhour Courage Prize on April 3, 2008.

[W]hat is important for the journalist is not how close you are to power, but how close you are to reality.

[...]

I ... had to learn one of journalism's basic lessons. The job of trying to tell the truth about people whose job it is to hide the truth is almost as complicated and difficult as trying to hide it in the first place. We journalists are of course obliged to cover the news, but our deeper mission is to uncover the news that powerful people would prefer to keep hidden.

Unless you are willing to fight and re-fight the same battles until you go blue in the face, drive the people you work with nuts going over every last detail to make certain you've got it right, and then take all of the slings and arrows directed at you by the powers that be -- corporate and political and sometimes journalistic -- there is no use even trying. You have to love it and I do. I.F. Stone once said, after years of catching the government's lies and contradictions, "I have so much fun, I ought to be arrested." Journalism 101.

in one of the last columns from dear, departed molly ivins, she beseeched bill moyers to run for president... she admitted that he probably wouldn't stand a chance of being elected, but that he was the only person she knew who would dramatically increase the integrity and moral tenor of the race simply by being IN it... i couldn't agree more...

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Spotting the moonwalking bear - your perceptions ARE your reality

yeah, ok, i gave it away in the title of the post...



the point, however, is one that has fascinated me for years... we are schooled from infancy about how to interpret the information we receive from our five senses... we learn to recognize leaves on tree branches, differentiate among various colors, associate certain sounds with earlier experiences, on and on and on... i've always wondered what the world would look like to us if we had been schooled differently... what if, for example, we were schooled to form a mental picture out of the spaces BETWEEN the leaves on tree branches, rather than from the leaves and branches themselves...? we can't answer that, and, in fact, many people have difficulty even comprehending the question...

how we have been schooled to perceive the world constitutes our definition of reality... put more bluntly, our perceptions ARE our reality... it is the failure to grasp this fundamental fact that has led to so many of the conflicts that continue to tear at the fabric of the human community... think of the incalculable amounts of energy expended each and every day by people insisting that THEIR perceptions are the only valid reality, when their "reality" is only what they have been schooled to see and doesn't take into consideration anything that they HAVEN'T been schooled to see... acceptance of that single fact all by itself would contribute dramatically to a lessening of world conflict...

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TDS does a devastating takedown of Fox News

cuz, let's face it, there are few targets more ripe for spoofing than fox...

Part 1




Part 2

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Why hasn't this man resigned?

or, better yet, been prosecuted for war crimes...

2006



2007



2008



here's a closer look...

The latest Gallup poll finds that President Bush’s approval rating has fallen to 28 percent — “a record low” for his administration. Bush’s approval is “lower than that of any president since World War II, with the exceptions of Jimmy Carter (who had a low point of 28% in 1979), and Richard Nixon and Harry Truman, who suffered ratings in the low- to mid-20% range in the last years of their administrations.”

(thanks to think progress...)

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Just another day in Iraq

as i sit here in kabul, feel the brilliant sunshine streaming in my window, (particularly welcome after several days of rain) and view this youtube clip, i am reminded that this kind of horror could literally take place at any time on the very street below my room... i hope and pray every day for an end to this insanity...

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Scenes from an Iraki childhood

warning... it will break your heart...

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Friday Kabul photoblogging: Oh, LOOK...! It's the SUN...!

friday is the one-day "weekend" here so i've got some time to take a few shots and some sun to help me along... it's been raining the past several days here in kabul so, today, when the sun finally decided to come out, it's a real treat and maybe it will dry up some of the omnipresent mud... the rain did manage to clear out some of the pollution, so you can actually see the mountains clearly... spring is still "springing," and the temps are cool, if not a little chilly... the nights have been down in the mid-40s (7C) and today, if we're lucky, it will get up to 60 (16C), as opposed to the low 50s (11C) of the past few days...

be sure to note the concertina barbed wire in the bottom two photos...


Panorama, Hindu Kush mountains
Kabul, 11 Apr 08, 11:30
(Click here for larger image)


Dead bus across the street
Kabul, 11 Apr 08, 11:30


Building a house
Kabul, 11 Apr 08, 11:30

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Yep, yep, yep... Torture does indeed start at the top...

following on to yesterday's post... read it and weep...


Click here for story and larger image


Click here for story and larger image

(thanks to troutfishing at daily kos...)

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If the Bush criminals have their way, the U.S. WILL attack Iran and NEVER leave Iraq

while most of the attention the past week has been focused on iraq, just LOOK at the intense push that the bush criminal cabal has been quietly putting on justifying its psychotic obsession with attacking iran...

from think progress...

On his radio show this morning, Bill Bennett told the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol — who had a personal meeting with President Bush yesterday — that a “conclusion” he drew was that the hearing was “less an argument for getting out of Iraq than going into Iran.” After suggesting that Iran may “have to pay some price at some point on their own soil,” Kristol said that President Bush authorizing an attack of some kind before he leaves office is not “out of the question”:

BENNETT: Do you think there’s any chance that, and we won’t ask you to reveal anything confidential, do you think there’s any chance that we might take some action against some aspect of the Ira…against Iran, let’s put it that way, before the president leaves office?

KRISTOL: We didn’t really talk about that, in all honesty, directly. I don’t think it’s out of the question. I think people are overdoing how much of a lame duck the president is.

but bill kristol is just a propaganda sock puppet, repeating the talking points of his masters... for that matter, so is petraeus...

The top U.S. commander has shifted the focus from al-Qaida to Iranian-backed "special groups" as the main threat to a democratic Iraq — a significant change that reflects both the complexity of the war and its changing nature.

The shift was articulated this week in Washington by Gen. David Petraeus, who told Congress that "unchecked, the special groups pose the greatest long-term threat to the viability of a democratic Iraq."

and, i suppose one could make the argument, as so many already have, that george is merely a sock puppet of dick cheney...

President George W. Bush issued a stark warning to Iran to stop interfering in Iraq on Thursday and characterized Iran and al Qaeda as "two of the greatest threats to America."

In a speech at the White House, Bush, who has accused Iran of backing militant groups in southern Iraq and providing explosives to extremists in the country, said Tehran had a choice in its relations with Iraq.

"(It) can live in peace with its neighbor, enjoy strong economic and cultural and religious ties, or it can continue to arm and train and fund illegal militant groups which are terrorizing the Iraqi people and turning them against Iran," Bush said.

"If Iran makes the right choice, America will encourage a peaceful relationship between Iran and Iraq. If Iran makes the wrong choice, America will act to protect our interests and our troops and our Iraqi partners."

i would, however, challenge anyone who called the state-owned china daily newspaper a sock puppet of the bush cabal...

As the Bush administration draws closer to the end of its tenure in office, the prospect of a US military strike against Iran is increasing, partly caused by the serious misjudgment of each other's strategies.

The Bush administration, which calibrated its rhetoric about military strikes against Iran in recent months, is getting more agitated about the Iran issue.

The administration considered Iran would be the biggest beneficiary of its toppling of the Saddam government in Iraq and had expected it to behave.

However, contrary to its expectations, Iran, Washington alleges, has tried every means to enhance its influence in Iraq, therefore becoming the biggest obstacle to improving the security situation of that country.

And the US is increasingly concerned about Iran's role in the Israel-Palestine conflict, Lebanon, Afghanistan and even in the Muslim world where Iran is seen as the leader of the Shi'ites.

Such developments, undoubtedly, has set the stage for conflict between the two countries.

btw, i suddenly realized why the bush criminals are so obsessed with iraq and iran and don't place that much emphasis on afghanistan... it's simple... iraq and iran = oil... afghanistan = only a pipeline route...

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U.S. deception and doublespeak results in some very ugly business in Afghanistan with former U.S. detainees

there's something that smells very, very fishy here...

Dozens of Afghan men who were previously held by the United States at Bagram Air Base and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, are now being tried here in secretive Afghan criminal proceedings based mainly on allegations forwarded by the American military.

The prisoners are being convicted and sentenced to as much as 20 years’ confinement in trials that typically run between half an hour and an hour, said human rights investigators who have observed them. One early trial was reported to have lasted barely 10 minutes, an investigator said.

[...]

[T]he trials appear to be based almost entirely on terse summaries of allegations that are forwarded to the Afghan authorities by the United States military. Afghan security agents add what evidence they can, but the cases generally center on events that sometimes occurred years ago in war zones that the authorities may now be unable to reach.

“These are no-witness paper trials that deny the defendants a fundamental fair-trial right to challenge the evidence and mount a defense,” said Sahr MuhammedAlly, a lawyer for the advocacy group Human Rights First who has studied the proceedings. “So any convictions you get are fundamentally flawed.”

The head of Afghanistan’s national intelligence agency, Amrullah Saleh, said his investigators did their best to develop their own evidence. But he added that the Afghan judicial system remained crippled by problems more than six years after the fall of the Taliban.

[...]

Since 2002 the Bush administration has pressed foreign governments to prosecute the Guantánamo prisoners from their countries as a condition of the men’s repatriation. But many of those governments — including such close American allies as Britain — have objected, saying the American evidence would not hold up in their courts.

ok, i've got a question... if these men have been released from detention by the u.s., one would have to assume that the u.s. did not have evidence solid enough to hold them, right...? so, if that's the case, what basis does the u.s. have for even SUGGESTING that foreign governments prosecute them as a condition of their repatriation...? that makes no sense...

here's what the u.s. says about that...

United States officials defended their role in providing information for the Afghan trials as a legitimate way to try to contain the threats that some of the more dangerous detainees would pose if they were released outright.

and, in the very next breath, the u.s. says THIS...

“These are not prosecutions that are being done at the request or behest of the United States government,” said Sandra L. Hodgkinson, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detention policy. “These are prosecutions that are being done by Afghans for crimes committed on their territory by their nationals.”

so, the u.s. is trying to contain the threats of dangerous detainees that the u.s. RELEASED by providing information to their home country governments, information that wasn't sufficient to warrant their continued detention and eventual trial in the u.s... have i got that right...? and the u.s. passes this insufficient information to their home country governments with the not-too-subtle hint that those governments should consider prosecution...? but these prosecutions - in the one country that's doing the prosecuting - are NOT being done at u.s. request OR behest...? pardon me, but i suddenly developed a splitting headache... WTF...?!?!? i've read some double-speak - lots of it, in fact - but this takes the cake...

here's a little squib of a perspective i've already gleaned from my two brief weeks in afghanistan... if there was ever a place in the world where money talks, it's here... afghanistan is a total cash economy... no credit cards... no checks... no time payments... it's either cash in full, right here, right now, or nothing... some of the money-changers over in the money-changers market have stacks of dollars, euros, and afghan currency piled as high as a man is tall, and i'm not exaggerating one bit... in the courts, "justice" is for sale... obtaining the ruling or the verdict you want carries a price and, believe me, that price isn't fixed, nor is it based on ability to pay... what you pay to get your favorable court decision fluctuates daily, based entirely on what the market will bear...

so, you can be sure that the former detainees who are being "prosecuted," if any of the poor bastards are fortunate enough to have relatives with money, a highly unlikely possibility, will be able to buy their acquittal... if not, tough shit... any hint of due process is simply the delusion of a fevered u.s. imagination...

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How do you get to 100 years in Iraq? Six months at a time.

from moveon...



sad but true...

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Let the numbers tell the story

(thanks to pew research via matt yglesias at the atlantic via atrios...)

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Juan Cole chronicles events in the five-year period since the fall of Saddam

it's a great, articulate, informed, insightful, sweeping, and utterly damning overview...

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WOO-HOO...! Dump Yoo...!

this is absolutely the right thing to do... perpetrators of crimes should not be tolerated...

Congress should repeal the provision of the Military Commissions Act that would give Yoo immunity from prosecution for torture committed from September 11, 2001 to December 30, 2005. John Yoo should be disbarred and he should not be retained as a professor of law at one of the country’s premier law schools. John Yoo should be dismissed from Boalt Hall [University of California, Berkeley, Law School] and tried as a war criminal.

now, let's apply the same standard to bush, cheney, rumsfeld, condi, colin, ashcroft, alberto, addington, and the rest of the war criminals...

(thanks to think progress...)

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Torture starts at the top (as if we didn't know)

more "news" we've known all along...

U.S. President George W. Bush's most senior advisers approved "enhanced interrogation techniques" of top al Qaeda suspects by the Central Intelligence Agency, ABC News reported on Wednesday, citing sources it did not name.

ABC reported that the so-called "principals" discussed interrogation details in dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the White House.

Then national security adviser Condoleezza Rice chaired the meetings, which took place in the White House Situation Room and were typically attended by a select group of senior officials or their deputies, ABC said.

"Highly placed sources said a handful of top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects -- whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding," ABC reported.

In addition to Rice, the principals at the time included Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft, the report said.

anybody who believed for a single minute that those poor low-level schmucks that took the rap for abu ghraib were acting on their own initiative has been smoking some truly powerful shit...

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John Pilger: "The threat to our societies comes not from Al Qaeda but from the terrorism of powerful states"

needless to say, in my present situation in afghanistan, i hear a lot of people mouthing "democracy," "free market economy," "reform," and "capitalism"... not surprisingly, those from whom i hear those things the most are the few who have managed to profit the most from the mess that the country is in...

"Democracy" is now the free market – a concept itself berefet of freedom. "Reform" is now the denial of reform. "Economics" is the relegation of most human endeavour to material value, a bottom line. Alternative models that relate to the needs of the majority of humanity end up in the memory hole. And "governance" – so fashionable these days - means an economic system approved in Washington, Brussels and Davos. "Foreign policy" is service to the dominant power. Conquest is "humanitarian intervention". Invasion is "nation-building".

Every day, we breathe the hot air of these pseudo ideas with their pseudo truths and pseudo experts. They set the limits of public debate within the most advanced societies. They determine who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. They manipulate our compassion and our anger and make many of us feel there is nothing we can do. Take the "war on terror". This is an entirely bogus idea that actually means a war of terror. Its aim is to convince people in the rich world that we all must live in an enduring state of fear: that Muslim fanatics are threatening our civilisation.

In fact, the opposite is true. The threat to our societies comes not from Al Qaeda but from the terrorism of powerful states. Ask the people of Iraq, who in five years ago have seen the physical and social destruction of their country. President Bush calls this "nation-building". Ask the people of Afghanistan, who have been bombed back into the arms of the Taliban - this is known in the West as a "good war". Or the people of Gaza, who are denied water, food, medicines and hope by the forces of so-called civilisation. The list is long and the arithmetic simple. The greatest number of victims of this war of terror are not Westerners, but Muslims: from Iraq to Palestine, to the refugee camps of Lebanon and Syria and beyond.

We are constantly told that September 11th 2001 was a day that changed the world and - according to John McCain - justifies a 100-year war against America's perceived enemies. And yet, while the world mourned the deaths of 3,000 innocent Americans, the UN routinely reported that the mortality rate of children dead from the effects of extreme poverty had not changed. The figure for September 11th 2001 was more than 36,000 children. That is the figure every day. It has not changed. It is not news.

The difference between the two tragedies is that the people who died in the Twin Towers in New York were worthy victims, and the thousands of children who die every day are unworthy victims. That is how many of us are programmed to perceive the world.

over the past few days, i have had several deep and passionate conversations with locals here who question me intensely on ways to change "the system," the term we have agreed best captures the powerful stranglehold the entrenched interests have on us all... i'm unable to give them the magic solution they're looking for simply because there isn't one... all i can say is that it's up to us, that we are all we have, and that it will be through each of us doing what we can, living our lives the way we know is right, and seizing opportunities to help others see the light that things will eventually change... the little understood fact is that revolution contains within it the seeds of its own gradual demise... for true systemic change to manifest, it will only be by letting our individual lights shine forth...

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Using our "allies" as proxy jailers and proxy torturers

so, sez the bush administration, WE don't torture and WE HAVEN'T SENT people to custody in OTHER COUNTRIES where they torture... everything's just fine and dandy... trust us... would we lie to you...?

A human rights group said Tuesday that the CIA transferred at least 14 terror suspects to Jordan for interrogation after September 11.

Human Rights Watch said in a new report that the U.S. ally in the Mideast served as a proxy jailer for the CIA until at least 2004.

"The Bush administration claims that it has not transferred people to foreign custody for abusive interrogation," said Joanne Mariner, the group's terrorism and counterterrorism director. "But we've documented more than a dozen cases in which prisoners were sent to Jordan for torture."

It said its 36-page report was based mainly on information from former Jordanian prisoners who had been detained with non-Jordanian terrorism suspects.

The group charged that Jordan commonly tortured suspects with extended beatings on the soles of their feet.

look... i totally believe that you lie through your teeth, incessantly and compulsively... MY question is this... can you point to even ONE single instance when you've told the truth...?

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Petraeus, the Iraq circus ringmaster, leads the chorus in indicting Iran

yeah, it's not only about making goddam sure the u.s. stays in iraq for the next 10,000 years, it's also about making goddam sure that every possible piece of groundwork is laid for our NEXT war against iran... bastard sons-of-bitches...

Army Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker were critical of Iran when they testified Tuesday before the Senate , barely giving credit for an Iranian-brokered cease-fire that curbed the killing after a week of Shiite-on-Shiite bloodshed in southern Iraq and Baghdad.

then we have THE SUPREME GRAND EXALTED BASTARD SON-OF-A-BITCH, JOE LIEBERMAN...

"[A]s I hear the questions and the statements today, it seems to me that there's a kind of 'hear no progress in Iraq, see no progress in Iraq' and most of all 'speak of no progress' in Iraq.

[...]

Hey, let's be honest about this. The Iraqi political leadership has achieved a lot more political reconciliation and progress since September than the American political leadership has. So we've got to give some credit for that."

[...]

Naturally, Lieberman was quick to inject Iran into these proceedings, dutifully asking the leading question, "Let me ask you first, are the Iranians still training and equipping Iraqi extremists who are going back into Iraq and killing American soldiers?"

then there's the voice of reason...

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Tuesday called for a "diplomatic surge" including talks with US foe Iran, to help stabilize the situation in Iraq.

[...]

"We should be talking to them as well," Obama told the top US General in Iraq David Petraeus and US ambassador to Baghdad Ryan Crocker.

"I do not believe we are going to be able to stabilize the situation without that" said Obama, adding that a plan for US troop withdrawals was needed to force Iraqi factions to work together.

talk...? why, THAT'S only for WUSSIES... REAL AMERICANS go to war...

Obama has taken fire from his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton and Republican presumptive nominee John McCain for his offer to talk, if elected president, with the leaders of several US foes including Iran.

talking is free, easy to do, and might actually accomplish something, but since it doesn't feed the giant, gaping maw of the government-military-industrial corporatocracy, why the hell would we want to TALK, fercryinoutloud...?

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8500 National Security Letters in 2000, 47000 in 2005, as the FBI tracks our every move

more so-called "news" in the category of, "yeah, so tell me something i DIDN'T know"...

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been routinely monitoring the e-mails, instant messages and cell phone calls of suspects across the United States -- and has done so, in many cases, without the approval of a court.

Documents released under the Freedom of Information Act and given to the Washington Post -- which stuck the story on page three -- show that the FBI's massive dragnet, connected to the backends of telecommunications carriers, "allows authorized FBI agents and analysts, with point-and-click ease, to receive e-mails, instant messages, cellphone calls and other communications that tell them not only what a suspect is saying, but where he is and where he has been, depending on the wording of a court order or a government directive," the Post says.

But agents don't need a court order to track to track the senders and recipients names, or how long calls or email exchanges lasted. These can be obtained simply by showing it's "relevant" to a probe.

[...]

Some transactional data is obtained using National Security Letters. The Justice Department says use of these letters has risen from 8,500 in 2000 to 47,000 in 2005, according to the Post.

[...]

The new revelations show definitively that telecommunications companies can transfer "with the click of a mouse, instantly transfer key data along a computer circuit to an FBI technology office in Quantico" upon request.

the incredibly naive notion that the fbi is illegally monitoring ONLY the electronic transactions of "suspects" is truly astounding... they are and have been monitoring every goddam electronic transaction for YEARS, and, bit by painful bit, we are finally having this godawful reality confirmed...

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More so-called "news" on Iraq that we've known for a very long time

but only now is our so-called "government" getting around to formalizing it in their usual fashion, secretly...

A draft agreement between the United States and Iraq shows that the two countries are including a provision for an open-ended American military commitment to the war-torn country, The Guardian reported Tuesday.

Citing a copy of the draft strategic framework agreement dated March 7 that it obtained, the newspaper said that the document is designed to replace the current United Nations mandate, which expires at the end of the year.

According to The Guardian, the agreement allows the United States to "conduct military operations in Iraq and to detain individuals when necessary for imperative reasons of security" without including a time limit.

It also does not put any limits on the number of American forces allowed in Iraq, the weapons they can use, the legal status of US troops in Iraq or the powers they hold over Iraqi citizens.

The document states it is "in the mutual interest of the United States and Iraq that Iraq maintain its sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence and that external threats to Iraq be deterred."

"Accordingly, the US and Iraq are to consult immediately whenever the territorial integrity or political independence of Iraq is threatened."

sometimes it's really hard for me to fully comprehend that i am governed by compulsive liars, cheats, criminals, and murderers...

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Meanwhile, back at the WaPo shill factory - er, editorial staff - they're DEFENDING Mark Penn

even the title is un-friggingly-believable...

The Sin of Speaking Truth

and it just gets worse from there...

item...

Yet another Democratic adviser is in trouble for having more common sense that his candidate -- or at least, more than his candidate has the courage to admit having.

item...

Austan Goolsbee, Sen. Barack Obama's economic adviser ... suggested to Canadian officials that a President Obama probably wouldn't be foolish enough to repudiate [NAFTA, but since] Mr. Obama had been running hard against NAFTA, blaming it for a million lost jobs and ignoring the good it has done for the poorer people of Mexico, Mr. Goolsbee's comments had to be repudiated.

item...

Mark J. Penn, was helping Colombia's government win congressional approval of a U.S.-Colombia free-trade agreement that Ms. Clinton opposes.

[...]

This is a particular danger in the case of Colombia, since the arguments against the pact are so flimsy.

[...]

Both Democratic candidates rest their opposition on supposed concern about assassination of trade unionists in Colombia, although such violence has fallen so much that the crime rate for them now is lower -- as we've pointed out in past editorials -- than for the population at large. Mr. Obama committed a particularly egregious libel last week when he said, referring to Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, who has taken on the violent left and the violent right at considerable risk to himself, "You've got a government that is under a cloud of potentially having supported violence against unions, against labor, against opposition."

and, finally, the jaw-dropping conclusion...

Does Ms. Clinton really believe a newly elected president should adhere to a year-old timetable for troop withdrawal, regardless of circumstances? Are they each unaware of the real statistics on NAFTA's effects? Voters are left to wonder, and to ponder which would be worse: that the candidates are sincere and misguided or are insincere and lacking the courage to speak honestly.

i wouldn't even know where to begin... is claiming that nafta has been good for the "poorer people of mexico" more patently ridiculous than portraying colombia's chief drug-runner and total washington toady, Álvaro Uribe, as a risk-taker for democracy...? the wapo apparently believes that "the courage to speak honestly" equates with espousing bush administration-approved and wapo-adopted talking points... this is what passes for journalism in our nation's capital...

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Petraeus comes to town... Where are the clowns...? Send in the clowns...*

* Stephen Sondheim from "A little night music"

But where are the clowns?
Quick, send in the clowns.
Don't bother, they're here.

the petraeus circus is coming to town and, golly gee, everybody is SO excited...!

karen deyoung at the wapo may not be a total clown, but she's pretty damn close...

In a reprise of their testimony last September, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker plan to tell Congress today and tomorrow that security has improved in Iraq and that the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has taken steps toward political reconciliation and economic stability.

[...]

Despite considerable U.S. expenditures on oil and electricity infrastructure, oil exports and the supply of electricity and other services have not risen significantly since 2004. In early April, according to State Department statistics, the electricity supply met 58 percent of demand, compared with 66 percent a year earlier. The International Committee of the Red Cross reported last month that "millions of Iraqis have insufficient access to clean water, sanitation and health care."

[...]

Although the administration has put a positive face on the offensive -- describing it as evidence that Maliki's government and the Iraqi military are capable of independent, decisive action -- U.S. military and administration officials privately draw a more mixed picture. They judge Iraqi forces, despite five years of U.S. training, as ill prepared for the mission, which lacked cohesive planning and ultimately ended in a draw, at best, with the Sadrists. U.S. air power was called in to back flailing government forces three days into the operation.

A senior U.S. officer in Iraq described Maliki's action as "both bold and impulsive/hasty." While some Iraqi troops "fought well," he wrote in an e-mail, others were "largely ineffective." Up to 1,000 army and police personnel reportedly either deserted or refused to fight. In the National Police, which is known to be sympathetic to Sadr, "hundreds" of officers were fired, one administration official said.

reuters isn't totally in clown territory either, but they're pretty damn close too...

The top U.S. commander in Iraq presents a long-awaited progress report to Congress on Tuesday but will offer little hope for improved security before a new American president takes over in January.

All three contenders for the U.S. presidency will be among the senators questioning Gen. David Petraeus, who is expected to say he will interrupt a series of troop withdrawals in July to evaluate security conditions.

That decision, made as rising violence threatens to unwind gains made last year, could leave more than 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq though to the end of President George W. Bush's term.

In testimony over two days, Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker will assess the uneven progress made in a year-long "surge" of force meant to create the calm for Iraqi politicians to advance legislation and factions to reconcile.

The upturn in violence has thrust Iraq back to the forefront of campaigns for the November presidential election.

i watched cnn's michael ware interviewing ryan crocker this morning (tuesday morning in afghanistan, monday evening in the u.s.) and, even though i happen to have a lot of respect for michael ware, i was terribly disappointed in the softball questions he lobbed to the ambassador... (you can watch here...)

tom engelhardt at the nation is certainly not a clown...

[A]fter years of intensive training by American advisors and an investment of $22 billion dollars, US military spokesmen are once again left trying to put the best face on a strategic disaster (from which they were rescued thanks to negotiations between Muqtada al-Sadr and advisors to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, brokered in Iran by General Qassem Suleimani, a man on the U.S. Treasury Department's terrorist watch list). Think irony. "From what we understand," goes the lame American explanation, "the bulk of these [deserters] were from fairly fresh troops who had only just gotten out of basic training and were probably pushed into the fight too soon."

This week, with surge commander General David Petraeus back from Baghdad's ever redder, ever more dangerous "Green Zone," here are a few realities to keep in mind as he testifies before Congress:

1. The situation in Iraq is getting worse
2. The Bush administration has no learning curve.
3. The "success" of the surge was always an expensive illusion, essentially a Ponzi scheme, for which payment will someday come due.
4. A second hidden surge, not likely to be discussed in the hearings this week, is now under way.
5. A reasonably undertaken but speedy total withdrawal from Iraq is the only way out of this morass.

juan cole is DEFINITELY not a clown...

I am always astounded at the combination of unrealistic optimism and foolish gullibility that marks political discourse on the Right in Washington. We were being told by Glen Lowry at the National Review that Sadr was on the ropes and on the verge of disbanding the Mahdi Army because the other political factions had turned on him, and that the others had had their militias join the regular security forces.

So let us get this straight. Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army fought off thousands of regular Iraqi army troops in Basra and Baghdad, and perhaps thousands of those troops deserted rather than fight. So the Mahdi Army won big and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki lost. Also the US military trainers of the Iraqi troops lost face.

So the next thing we hear is that al-Maliki is talking big and demanding that the Mahdi Army be dissolved. Usually you get to talk big if you win the military battle, not if you lose.

[...]

The Baghdad fighting is the worst in about a year.

imho, judy collins has the best rendition of "send in the clowns" ever recorded by anyone...


Judy Collins sings "Send in the Clowns"

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World food shortages may provoke riots

hungry people are desperate people... we're sitting on a powder keg with this one...

A global rice shortage that has seen prices of one of the world's most important staple foods increase by 50 per cent in the past two weeks alone is triggering an international crisis, with countries banning export and threatening serious punishment for hoarders.

With rice stocks at their lowest for 30 years, prices of the grain rose more than 10 per cent on Friday to record highs and are expected to soar further in the coming months. Already China, India, Egypt, Vietnam and Cambodia have imposed tariffs or export bans, as it has become clear that world production of rice this year will decline in real terms by 3.5 per cent. The impact will be felt most keenly by the world's poorest populations, who have become increasingly dependent on the crop as the prices of other grains have become too costly.

it isn't just rice, either... it's wheat, corn, and soy as well... look at what took place in argentina the past few weeks over soy...

but, it isn't until the last third and second to the last paragraphs of the article - paragraphs 14 and 15, to be precise - that you get a picture of what's REALLY going on...

Analysts have cited many factors for the rises, including rising fuel and fertiliser expenses, as well as climate change. But while drought is one factor, another is the switch from food to biofuel production in large areas of the world, in particular to fulfil the US energy demands. A continuing change in the global diet is also putting a further squeeze on rice. In China, for example, 100 million rural migrants to the country's big cities have switched from a staple of wheat to rice as they have become wealthier.

Rapid recent price increases are also likely to have a dangerous secondary effect of stoking further inflation in emerging countries, which are already suffering from record oil prices and surging agricultural commodity prices.

"fulfill u.s. energy demands"... haven't i heard that somewhere before...?

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It looks like Argentina is going to re-pay its Paris Club debt, finally closing the door on 2001

i've posted extensively (see here) on the gripping telenovela that world observers were treated to as argentina struggled to deal with the imf and argentine bond-holders following argentina's 2001 economic collapse, where argentina basically told the world financial community to take their loan conditions and stick 'em where the sun don't shine, that argentina's first obligation was to the welfare of its citizens... needless to say, that didn't play well among the super-rich elites who consider their debtors' promises to repay as a sacred obligation... and, sadly, it didn't play well either with elderly pensioners in places like italy and japan who were forced to accept a 75% haircut on their investments...

there's a $6+ billion debt still to be re-paid to the paris club of nations and the imf has been pressuring argentina to cough up for some time... it looks like argentina, with $50B in reserves, is ready to do that but only if the imf keeps their collective noses out of it... believe me, no love is lost between argentina and the imf...

A meeting of Argentina's president with her French counterpart may provide new stimulus to talks with the Paris Club over Argentina's $6.3 billion debt, Argentina's finance minister said on Sunday.

Argentina defaulted in late 2001 and made an early repayment of about $10 billion owed to the International Monetary Fund in 2005. It is still in talks over the remaining debt with the Paris Club of 19 creditor countries, including France, Germany and the United States.

[...]

Since the default, Argentina's economy has boomed and the country has been facing increasing pressures to pay its debt as it has accumulated more than $50 billion in reserves.

The [Argentina's finance minister, Martin Lousteau] said that any deal with the Paris Club would have to respect Argentina's sovereignty and give the country time to pay the debt.

Lousteau ruled out any involvement of the IMF as part the negotiations. "That's non-negotiable", he said.

you tell 'em, martin...

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The drums pushing war with Iran continue to thunder

the madmen who dare to call themselves our "leaders" will stop at nothing to achieve their dark aims... reality and truth play no part... meanwhile, we are purposefully distracted by the staged dramas of the presidential campaign and transsexuals having babies... what a world...!

The Bush regime will tell any lie and orchestrate any event in order to “finish the job” in the Middle East.

“Finishing the job” means to destroy the ability of Iraq, Iran, and Syria to provide support for the Palestinians and for Hezbollah in southern Lebanon against Israeli aggression. With Iraq and Iran in turmoil, Syria might simply give up and become another American client state. With Iraq and Iran in turmoil, Israel can steal the rest of the West Bank along with the water resources in southern Lebanon. That is what “the war on terror” is really about.

The entire world knows this. Consequently, the US and Israel are essentially isolated. The US can only count on the support that it can bribe and pay for.

At the NATO-Russian summit in Bucharest, Romania, on April 4, Russian President Putin said: “No one can seriously think that Iran would dare attack the U.S. Instead of pushing Iran into a corner, it would be far more sensible to think together how to help Iran become more predictable and transparent.”

Of course it would, but that is not what the warmonger Bush regime wants.

these people are certifiably insane...

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HRC's campaign takes a big hit as Mark Penn quits

mark penn is not a nice man... however, even with his resignation, the fact that he will "continue to provide polling and advice to the campaign" tells me that the resignation is purely cosmetic...

A top campaign aide to Sen. Hillary Clinton, under fire for meeting with a Colombian diplomat to discuss a free trade deal that the presidential candidate opposes, quit his post on Sunday, the campaign said.

"After the events of the last few days, Mark Penn has asked to give up his role as chief strategist of the Clinton campaign," Clinton's campaign manager Maggie Williams said in a statement.

She said Penn would continue to provide polling and advice to the campaign.

News of Penn's March 31 meeting with Colombian Ambassador Carolina Barco Isakson, in which they discussed a free trade deal, first surfaced on Friday.

Penn apologized for the meeting, which he held in his separate role as chief executive officer of Burson-Marsteller Worldwide, a lobbying firm hired by the South American country to help win the approval by the U.S. Congress of a free trade agreement with the United States.

[...]

The controversy prompted an angry reaction from Colombia, which took offense at Penn's statement in which he called the meeting "an error in judgment."

The Colombian Embassy in Washington announced it was ending its contract with Burson-Marsteller, which had been hired a year ago.

however, whether penn is still helping hrc or not, hrc's credibility, already circling the drain, is going to take another hard blow with this, and rightfully so...

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"Glib, contemptuous, ignorant, incurious, a dupe of anyone who humors his deluded belief in his heroic self"

i wonder who in the world the above description could possibly be referring to...?

No individual president can compare to the second Bush. Glib, contemptuous, ignorant, incurious, a dupe of anyone who humors his deluded belief in his heroic self, he has bankrupted the country with his disastrous war and his tax breaks for the rich, trampled on the Bill of Rights, appointed foxes in every henhouse, compounded the terrorist threat, turned a blind eye to torture and corruption and a looming ecological disaster, and squandered the rest of the world’s goodwill. In short, no other president’s faults have had so deleterious an effect on not only the country but the world at large.

sometimes the irony i experience on a daily basis is almost overwhelming... i just concluded a three-hour seminar on leadership that i offered for fourteen afghan staff members who work for the same project i'm working for here in kabul... imagine...! me...! an american...! an american with george bush as my country's leader, offering perspectives on effective leadership to afghanis...! talk about IRONY...!

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The Grid - super fast "cloud" computing

from the london sunday times...

At speeds about 10,000 times faster than a typical broadband connection, “the grid” will be able to send the entire Rolling Stones back catalogue from Britain to Japan in less than two seconds.

The latest spin-off from Cern [CERN - European Organization for Nuclear Research*], the particle physics centre that created the web, the grid could also provide the kind of power needed to transmit holographic images; allow instant online gaming with hundreds of thousands of players; and offer high-definition video telephony for the price of a local call.

[...]

[T]he grid has been built with dedicated fibre optic cables and modern routing centres, meaning there are no outdated components to slow the deluge of data.

[...]

That network, in effect a parallel internet, is now built, using fibre optic cables that run from Cern to 11 centres in the United States, Canada, the Far East, Europe and around the world.

[...]

Ian Bird, project leader for Cern’s high-speed computing project, said grid technology could make the internet so fast that people would stop using desktop computers to store information and entrust it all to the internet.

“It will lead to what’s known as cloud computing, where people keep all their information online and access it from anywhere,” he said.

Computers on the grid can also transmit data at lightning speed. This will allow researchers facing heavy processing tasks to call on the assistance of thousands of other computers around the world. The aim is to eliminate the dreaded “frozen screen” experienced by internet users who ask their machine to handle too much information.

bring it on...

the internet and its associated technologies and applications has already radically changed the way i communicate and conduct personal and professional business, and has become, in so many ways that it's frightening to think about, totally integral to the way i live my life...

it's no exaggeration to say that my computer and the internet is now my desk, my shopping mall, my newspaper, my television, my telephone, my desk, my filing cabinet, my bank, my post office, my library, my bookstore, my radio, my music library, my means of self-expression, my tool for political activism, my conference room, my office, my business address, my travel agent, my entertainment guide and venue, my movie theater, my concert hall, my sports stadium (if i paid any attention at all to sports, that is), my weather forecast, the map i use to find out where i am and where i'm going, my travel guide, my yellow pages, my phone directory, my dictionary, my thesaurus, my source for language translation, my notepad, my publisher, my public relations and marketing agent, my career guide, my employment resource, my investment advisor, my health care guide, my social network, my professional association, and so much more... and that's the scarey part... without my computer and the internet, all of the above go away...

from wikipedia...

* Most of the activities at CERN are currently directed towards building a new collider, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and the experiments for it. The LHC represents a large-scale, worldwide scientific cooperation project. Physics experiments are expected to start May 2008, delayed due to an inner triplet magnet assembly failing a pressure test in March 2007.

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Oh, so now we're in a SEVERE economic crisis...?

emphasis added...

McCain vows to deal with
SEVERE economic crisis

By Tim Gaynor Sat Apr 5, 6:08 PM ET

PRESCOTT, Arizona (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate John McCain said on Saturday he would not underestimate the severity of the ongoing U.S. economic crisis and keep open a variety of options to deal with it.

"When Alan Greenspan says this is the worst crisis since World War II, we have a major challenge and we should never underestimate it, nor exhaust all the measures that we need to put into effect," McCain said, referring to the former Federal Reserve chairman.

The economy has become increasingly important

well, goodness me... all of a sudden we've got a SEVERE problem... that's a big admission from someone who has about as little grasp of reality as his clone in the white house...

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