Instahoglets 30th Jun 06

More news and opinion - big, small and "less travelled" - with a healthy dose of snark.

When a Gitmo detainee, a former Afghan police commander accused of plotting against the United States, tried to call four witnesses in his defense, U.S. authorities told him they searched for months but failed to find them. The UK's Guardian newspper found them in 3 DAYS - one was working for President Karzai and another was teaching at the National Defence University in Washington DC! The witnesses corroborate his claims of innocence and even General Ali Shah Paktiawal, Interpol director of the Afghan national police, says his arrest was based on false information. He is still at Gitmo, along with the 45 or so (out of 94) Afghan detainees that their own government claims are entirely innocent. Perhaps now that the Supremes have decided to not be ostriches any longer, there will be a fair investigation and trial for each of them.

Regular reader Kat sent me a tale of some 500 "Rainbow Children" detained in the name of Homeland Security (in the middle of a forest???). Closed-door trials based on DHS legislation for civil emergencies then ensue. The defendants are not explained their rights nor afforded the right to an attorney, the right to summon witnesses, the right to a jury trial, etc. Are you worried by this? You should be. Can anyone say "bird flu"?

George Lakoff has a new book out on July 4th. Called Whose Freedom? The Battle Over America's Most Important Idea, it argues that "liberals have foolishly allowed conservatives to claim ownership of "freedom" -- even though the progressive version is the one Americans actually believe in". Lakoff's PR firm are kindly sending me a review copy and I will have my thoughts posted on or about the release date. Meanwhile, they point my readers and myself to a Salon review, an audio clip of Lakoff reading a passage from the book and the website for the book. Enjoy.

Privacy International, a London-based civil rights group, has asked 35 nations to block the release of confidential financial records to U.S. authorities, calling the spying program a "fishing expedition" and pointing out that American subpoenas to SWIFT's American arm for records of other nation's transfers have no force in international law. Belgium, where SWIFT is headquartered, has already opened an investigation into the legality of the data trawl by Belgian law.

Read reports that Iran is behind smuggling weapons and IED's into Iraq with a massive pinch of salt. The smuggling routes in the region are legendary and borders are uncloseable given the terrain. It's as likely that the source of weapons is Pakistan as it is to be Iran - after all, the weapons bazaars there flourish. "There is nothing we cannot copy...You bring us a Stinger missile and we will make you an imitation that would be difficult to tell apart from the original." one told the BBC.

Stranger at Blah3 gets his rant on! Dear Media: You've been played like a '59 GoldTop. Now what? Excellent stuff.

Bush's guide to good leaks and bad leaks. "Leaks about plans for troop redeployment are fine with the president because they could help him and his congressional allies politically. Leaks about the administration spying on citizens, on the other hand, are "disgraceful" because they could cause the president and his Republicans acolytes political harm." Yup.

Someone gets sick of Dem Ostriches in a post which vies with Stranger's for "Excellent Rant of the Week". Dear Dems: You had me at hello -- You lost me at "we will not seek impeachment". Just...WOW. The list of gutless complicity with Bush's monarchy is staggering when you see it all laid out. Here's the money quote: "why, after all of this, could I possibly expect you to represent me if I actually reward your five years of gutless complicity and moral bankruptcy? What kind of fool, would reward this appalling display and expect it not only to end, but not to actually get worse?" That, indeed, is the question.

Unfortunately, America isn't the only nation afflicted with a Dear Leader who thinks he should be king and will happily tromp all over the "freedoms" he pretends to defend. Here, from the Independent, is a long and truly frightening article about the way in which Tony Blur, Bush's poodle, has transformed my homeland and its "mother of parliaments" into an Orwellian nightmare. Read it while you can - it will slip behind their pay-to-read firewall in seven days. SCARY!!! (Hat tip to Kat again.)

Remember the Downing Street Memos? Here's the man who leaked them, Micjael Smith of the London Times, in a prepared statement to the Senate Democratic Policy Committee oversight hearing on Pre-War Intelligence Relating to Iraq - in which Smith clearly explains that Blair and Bush knew they were ginning up an illegal war. Never mind impeachment - its time to reconvene the Nuremberg Court.

While we are on the subject, Colin Powell's former chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, was just as forthright when the only Republican to attend the hearing asked him to explain why a small number of individuals in the administration “had more influence…than the professionals.” Wilkerson's response - "I’d answer you with two words. Let me put the article in there and make it three. The Vice President." Did you know war crimes in the U.S. still carry the death penalty?

I saw Warren Buffet, Bill and Melinda Gates on the Charlie Rose show the other night. They all agreed on two things. Firstly, that they want their children to "have enough money to be able to do anything except nothing" (There goes the Estate Tax repeal). Secondly, that the capitalist free-market system, while wonderful, cannot answer to situations such as fighting a third world disease where there's no profit for the drug companies to make research worthwhile. All say government must be the first to fill the gaps when the free market fails. In this, of course, they agree entirely with Adam Smith.

Anyway, here are Warren Buffet's lessons for the rich. Good stuff for any social democrat fighting the avarice of conservative selfishness.

A bunch of zionist Christians - the one's who think the trigger for the Last Times and the Rapture will be the conversion of Jews to their brand of evangelism - visit an ultra-orthodox part of Jerusalem and get attacked by the locals. God has a wicked sense of humor.

Breaking - U.S. Soldiers Arrested For Rape/Murder

There's breaking news that the US military has opened a probe into the alleged killing of an Iraqi family by US soldiers. The BBC reports that "Five soldiers are being investigated for allegedly raping a woman and killing her and three members of her family." AP has more - including the possibility that the kidnapping, mutilation and execution of two soldiers from the same platoon last month may have been in revenge for the rape and murder!

For the sake of completeness I'm including the whole AP report.

BEIJI, Iraq

Five U.S. Army soldiers are being investigated for allegedly raping a young woman, then killing her and three members of her family in Iraq, a U.S. military official told The Associated Press on Friday.

The soldiers also allegedly burned the body of the woman they are accused of raping in the March incident, the official said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case.

Maj. Gen. James D. Thurman, commander of coalition troops in Baghdad, had ordered a criminal investigation into the alleged killing of a family of four in Mahmoudiya, south of Baghdad, the U.S. command said. It did not elaborate.

"The entire investigation will encompass everything that could have happened that evening. We're not releasing any specifics of an ongoing investigation," said military spokesman Maj. Todd Breasseale.

"There is no indication what led soldiers to this home. The investigation just cracked open. We're just beginning to dig into the details." However, a U.S. official close to the investigation said at least one of the soldiers, all assigned to the 502nd Infantry Regiment, has admitted his role and has been arrested. Two soldiers from the same regiment were slain this month when they were kidnapped at a checkpoint near Youssifiyah.

The official, however, said the soldiers were from the same platoon as the two slain soldiers, whose bodies were mutilated. He said the mutilation of the bodies of the two soldiers stirred feelings of guilt and led at least one of them to reveal the rape-slaying on June 22.

At least four other soldiers have had their weapons taken away and are confined to Forward Operating Base Mahmoudiyah south of Baghdad.The official said the killings appear to be unrelated to the kidnappings. He said those involved were all below the rank of sergeant. He said senior officers were aware of the family's death but believed it was due to sectarian violence, common in the religiously mixed town.

The killings appeared to have been a "crime of opportunity," the official said. The soldiers had not been attacked by insurgents but had noticed the woman on previous patrols.

At what point are we allowed to wonder if the bad apples are already spoiling the whole barrel? I'm just asking.

Geneva Conventions Win, Says Helsinki Law Prof.

Radio Free Europe has, in recent years, become primarily a mouthpiece for Bushspeak justifications of administration policy. It is thus truly remarkable that they carry an interview today with Jarna Petman, professor of international law at the University of Helsinki, on what the Supreme Court's ruling yesterday means for the application of the Geneva Conventions. Petman is unequivocal:

The whole setting up of "light torture" mechanisms [interrogation techniques that interrogators say do not constitute torture, but human rights groups say do] and the intensified interrogation mechanisms, the unusual detention centers set up all over -- these are all violations of the Geneva Conventions.

...The calling of the detainees "enemy combatants" and "illegal combatants" was something that the Geneva Convention does not recognize. This is a category that has never existed before, and it has been created in the war against terror specifically to put these people [out of reach of] the Geneva Conventions. And for the Supreme Court to recognize [implicitly] that this particular category does not exist -- it is indeed the Geneva Conventions that win the day.

...What the Geneva Conventions require is that each time you capture an individual on the battlefield, you must first of all define whether that person is a prisoner of war or a civilian. If that person is a prisoner of war, and you suspect that he or she has committed war crimes, then the Geneva Conventions require that you submit that person to the very same criminal procedures that you would your own soldiers. Those are national courts-martial. If you decide that this particular person is not a prisoner of war but a civilian, then you have two ways to go. Either you find that person innocent, in which case you will have to let that person go. Or, if you suspect that this particular person has committed war crimes, then you must submit that person to the national, domestic criminal-procedure system.

Did we all get that? POW or civilian - there is no third category. And in either case those accused must be tried with the full panoply of justice applicable to their category - like the ability to challenge their accusers and evidence, cross-examine, not be physically abused to extract information, have a lawyer present, etc. etc. A third option transgresses the Geneva Conventions.

International (and therefore U.S.) law is equally unequivocal about what we call a transgression of the laws of war, including the Geneva Conventions, by a signatory nation during a conflict - war crime. By international and U.S. law, the Nuremberg Principles then apply - a commander is just as guilty as the person who actually comitted the crime, those who had the power of command to stop a crime but didn't are equally culpable and "I was just following orders" is not a defense.

Issuing legislation from Congress to artificially create a pseudo-legality for the category of "enemy combatant" and for military tribunals which lack the full panoply of American justice would itself, then, be a conspiracy to contravene the Geneva Conventions and would, by the Nuremberg Principles (Principle VII), make every congresscritter who backed such a move likewise a war criminal.

And it doesn't matter what the best political move is or what the public opinion polls say, this is about the law - of the world and the land - not domestic politics. That's why John Yoo is out of gas when he says the Supreme Court has no authority to make the ruling they did yesterday and why Democrat spinners like Reed Hundt are just plain wrong when they advocate moving to the right of the Right and clamoring for legislation to allow military tribunals.

Supremes Allow Segue On Detainees

This post should have had a subtitle: - From "Stop, in the Name of Love" to "You Keep Me Hanging On" Without Skipping A Beat - but it wouldn't have all fitted the blogger formatting box.

News that the Supreme Court has ruled that President Bush overstepped his authority in ordering military war crimes trials for Guantanamo Bay detainees. SCOTUSblog has the really crucial bit:

Even more importantly for present purposes, the Court held that Common Article 3 of Geneva ap[p]lies as a matter of treaty obligation to the conflict against Al Qaeda. That is the HUGE part of today's ruling. The commissions are the least of it. This basically resolves the debate about interrogation techniques, because Common Article 3 provides that detained persons "shall in all circumstances be treated humanely," and that "[t]o this end," certain specified acts "are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever"—including "cruel treatment and torture," and "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment." This standard, not limited to the restrictions of the due process clause, is much more restrictive than even the McCain Amendment. See my further discussion here.

This almost certainly means that the CIA's interrogation regime is unlawful, and indeed, that many techniques the Administation has been using, such as waterboarding and hypothermia (and others) violate the War Crimes Act (because violations of Common Article 3 are deemed war crimes).

If I'm right about this, it's enormously significant.

Well, DUH! For a start, it means that the Nuremberg Principles clearly apply all the way up the chain of command! (Hey, guess what, Scott Ritter was right again.)

This has led many, among them Kevin Drum, to wonder if this means the closure of Gitmo. Sadly, No.

The administration has been left two options. The first is to halt military tribunals and simply keep detainees incarcerated for the "duration of the conflict" - something perfectly legal under the Geneva Convention. The commander at Gitmo has already signalled that he is happy to do exactly that.

Adm. Harry Harris, the prison commander, said in an interview this week...he would build a second courtroom if the tribunals are allowed to proceed but little else would change because the court was not asked to rule on Guantanamo itself, a prison camp that human rights groups, the United Nations and foreign governments have sharply criticized.
..."If they rule against the government I don't see how that's going to affect us. From my perspective I think the impact will be negligible," Harris told Reuters.

Of course, given what Bush and his cronies have said about the "War on Terror" that effectively means forever but hey, America only has real terrorists detained at Gitmo, according to the Right. If we can't try 'em, fry 'em. After all, America would never detain innocent people, only the guilty - just ask Rush Limbaugh and Tom DeLay! The idiocy of the bloodthirsty Right should be readily apparent here.

The second option is to do an end-run around the Court, either by plain Executive fiat or by getting the Republicans and Dem Hawks in Congress - all scared stiff of looking like "cut and run" types - to "propose a bill to override the decision and keep the terrorists in jail until they are securely transferred to host countries for permanent punishment"...and more torture.

The Counterterrorism Blog predicts a rightwing victory over the Court:

They will challenge the "judicial interference with national security" and challenge dissenting Congressmen and civil libertarians to either stand with the terrorists or the American people. The Pentagon will continue to release a small number of detainees as circumstances allow. The bill will pass easily and quickly. And if the Supremes invalidate that law, we'll see another legislative response, and another, until they get it right. Just watch.

Hill Republicans (Sens. Graham and Kyl with Frist's support) are already promising a bill to enable Bush to keep his military tribunals. The way was expertly paved by Alito in his dissenting statement when he wrote that "Such an order brings the Judicial Branch into direct conflict with the Executive in an area where the Executive’s competence is maximal and ours is virtually nonexistent." Of course, any such bill would be illegal under international and U.S. law - as the majority of the Supremes clearly see - since it would unilaterally abrogate part of the Geneva Convention, which the U.S. has sworn to uphold by signing the treaty. Voting for such a bill would be, legally speaking and by the terms of the Nuremberg principles, a war crime in itself.

Not that it will matter to Imperial America - after all, who has the power to arrest the criminals here? They will do it, and America will become even more of a pariah on the world stage, making it even harder to actually win the War on Terror.

Update Wow, that was fast! Bush has already said he will seek the complicity of Congress in breaking U.S. and international law by seeking their "approval to proceed with trying terrorism suspects before military tribunals."

Update 2 I'm not alone in noticing the "war crimes" implications. Here's Steve Vladeck, Professor at the University of Miami School of Law, who "played a small but recurring role on the legal team for the Petitioner in Hamdan":

Once Common Article 3 applies to the conflict with al Qaeda, the legal framework within which we analyze the various interrogation and torture allegations changes dramatically, as does the broader issue of the applicability and enforceability of the Geneva Conventions in U.S. courts, and the potential liability of various U.S. officials under the War Crimes Act of 1996, 18 U.S.C. § 2441, for grave violations thereof. [Emphasis Mine]

Two Elephants in the Iraqi Room

I've been waiting a few days to see what the immediate reactions from all sides would be to Prime Minister Maliki's Ambassador Khalilzad's 28-point 24 point "reconcilliation plan" for Iraq. I also wanted to mull over the plan and make sure of my own opinion. After all, I was very, very sceptical that the original elections to install an interim Iraqi government, the subsequent elections or the adoption of a constitution - all of which were hailed by many as a "last corner" - would work and I was proven right. I was, as soon as I read it, sceptical about the new plan too but I wanted to make sure it wasn't just a kneejerk reaction.

So I've thought about it...it isn't going to work.

There are two huge reasons it won't work - budget and sovereignty .

Maliki's plan doesn't have any indication of a budget attached - yet aspirations like compensating Iraqis for losses incurred by violence and by the Saddam Regime, "a large-scale development campaign for the whole country, which will also tackle the problem of unemployment", strengthening Iraqs military and the myriad talking-shops (conferences, councils and committees) will not come cheap. No-one's talking about what it will cost, which is a bad sign. Considering the huge amount of money that America poured into Iraq earmarked for reconstruction that ended up being spent on security - over half - the final bill will be huge. America has now cut them off and other nations aren't contributing enough for such a massive program. Iraqi ministers say they have returned oil production to pre-war levels and they cream of about a third of the $70 dollars or so from each of the 3.5million barrels a day...but that is still only $26 billion a year and Iraq really has no other source of income. They hope to increase production to levels comparable with that of Sausi Arabia by 2015 but that's a long time. The entire Iraqi defense procurement budget last year was only $1.8 million - no where near enough for a real country - and all of that got stolen! A new sustained insurgency campaign against the oil production infrastructure could easily prove fatal to their plans. Iraq needs results fast and in the short term they don't have the funds whereas they will have the funds but they don't have the time to spare if they are to prevent a descent into open fullblown civil war.

As to the second, bigger, reason why Maliki's plan won't work...I've written before, on many occasions, about the myth of sovereignty in Iraq. The fabled "handover of sovereignty" has been betrayed as a sham in so many ways, most recently by Bush's unannounced visit to Iraq. But we also have such incidents as British troops attacking and demolishing an Iraqi prison where fellow British soldiers were held and such long-term telltales as the complete absence of a plan to equip the Iraqi military for defense against external national threats. That means the U.S. will have to leave at least 50,000 troops in Iraq with heavy and advanced equipment to do the job they won't allow the Iraqi military to do. Democrat "withdrawal" plans are as guilty of this credibility gap as Republican ones. Some family planning expert needs to explain to them at it's not withdrawal if you leave some in.

The very fact that two major provisions of the reconcilliation plan - for a "withdrawal" timetable and for the insurgency amnesty to include those who had attacked Coalition troops - were dropped within a weekend after negative press and political comment in the U.S. put a final knife in the fiction of Iraqi sovereignty

Without true sovereignty, the major Sunni insurgent groups are going to realise that negotiating with Maliki's government is negotiating with a puppet power - and one that contains a large element who would like nothing better than to take their whole ethnic grouping and drop it down a well. They probably figured that much out after the Shiites reneged on their promises about renegotiating parts of the constitution after the elections, but they've been slapped in the face with the reality of it in the last week or so by Bush's drive-by and by the way in which American opinion determined the final nature of Maliki's proposal. Given that realization, they are going to bide their time and keep on with what they are doing. There is no percentage in doing anything else since they now know they will get no favors but more to the point keeping fighting while Iraq has no true sovereignty is exactly what they are all about. It's their raison-de-etre and so separating the Sunni insurgency from the Islamist terrorist movement, who will fight no matter what, is going to be impossible under these circumstances. Only a general amnesty that still excludes Al Qaida and its ilk will succeed in driving a real wedge between the two factions.

On the other side of the ethnic divide, the Shia militias are thei puppet government's guarantee of their power against the sudden and unforseen abdication of their American rulers. They will not allow those militias to be defanged in anything but baseless propoganda statements while there is a state of civil war...and the civil war cannot be solved without solving the sovereignty problem.

On a sidenote, when there were rumors of negotiations with the insurgency last year here in America hardline rightwingers were generally against it. Now their positions have substantially reversed, not because they truly think it is a good idea but because they are cheerleading for Bush. Progressives like Juan Cole were for an amnesty and negotiation last year, as was I. Past events in other places such as Northern Ireland and Israel (where a wanted terrorist, Menachem Begin, went on to be leader of his nation and even win the Nobel Peace Prize) have proven the theory. The current rush by Democrat partisans to get to the right of the right on the issue is simply dumb. Could we have a better example of how domestic politics, not the needs of Iraq, are running the debate? Luckily, some progressives, like Robert Dreyfuss still have the right idea.

One day, in who knows how many years or decades, there will be a true sovereign government in Iraq and a negotiated ceasefire between the various indigenous groups. At that time, everyone is going to realise that a general amnesty (almost certainly still excluding Al Qaeda) is in everyone's best interests. Exactly as in Northern Ireland and in Israel after the British occupation, there will be a general acceptance that not all the "bad guys" will ever be caught and brought to trial and that the nation must draw a line under its past and move on. However, as long as the Coalition, and in particular the U.S., refuses to cut the Iraqi government they have set up free in fact as well as in name that cannot happen. In this, the Coalition is the main obstacle to national reconciliation.

Yet the only reason Iraq is not operationally free is an insistence by America and the UK that any Iraqi government must be in their own national interests. It is an insistence that is bipartisan and also implicitly expected by both nation's populaces. Yet more proof that America and Britain don't "do" foreign policy - they do domestic policy that is then inflicted on foreigners. In this, America is the true inheritor of the British hegemony. The hypocricy of rhetoric about freedom over a nation that is now kept chained by its liberators is not lost on the rest of the world - if the U.S. and U.K. were serious, then they would allow Iraq to determine its own national interest free of considerations of theirs. Even more ridiculous then, when Iraq is constrained in what it can and cannot do by how its actions might effect American domestic politics.

It is long past time to talk about the elephants in the Iraqi room.

Feingold Answers The Damn Question

At last, a Democrat who is happy to state clearly that he favors democracy. After legal eagles told the Senate Judiciary Committee today that Bush's signing statements - and by extension those of Reagan, Bush I and Clinton - are clearly unconstitutional, Feingold issued a statement that gave me some new hope.

Now, as the witness testimony has pointed out, this Administration certainly isn’t the first to issue signing statements, nor is it the first to express concern about the constitutionality of particular provisions of laws in signing statements.

But this Administration has taken this approach far more often than prior Administrations, and it has done so to advance a view of executive power that, as far as I can tell, knows no bounds. What’s more, this Administration has shown no sense of obligation to resolve thorny constitutional questions by trying to facilitate judicial review of questionable provisions. And it has denied Congress the opportunity to overcome a presidential veto. It has instead assigned itself the sole responsibility for deciding which laws it will comply with, and in the process has taken upon itself the powers of all three branches of government.

As one law professor recently put it in a piece on signing statements, “Because President Bush has found constitutional problems with statutes so readily and because he takes such a radically expansive view of his own power, President Bush’s position amounts to a claim that he is impervious to the laws that Congress enacts.”

Mr. Chairman, I believe that is dangerous to our system of government. So I’m glad we are here talking about it today.

That's about as clear an answer to "the damn question":

Will you, if elected, pledge to roll back the Bush vision of total Presidential executive power?

As you can get. "The damn question" was never actually asked in so many words but he has clearly asked it of himself in some form. Thus, we now know exactly what Feingold's answer would be. YES

Senator Russ Fiengold - NOT Ostrich.

Here's hoping it emboldens the press and the netroots to begin asking the damn question of other candidates - and insisting on clear answers.

GOP Shills Offer Newspapers Free Reports From Iraq

A great bit of connect-the-dots reporting by News National's Jerry Zremski looks at the deep GOP ties that lie behind a pro-war group that are offering their services to newspapers as imbedded reporters in Iraq and freelance op-ed writers.

The group, Vets for Freedom, has already had a memorial day op-ed in the New York Times that was widely quoted by rightwing pundits.

But...

Their spokesman, the one who approached newspapers on their behalf, is former White House spokeman Taylor Gross, who worked under Press Secretary Scott McClellan until last year.

Gross now works for consulting and PR firm the Herald Group, which he formed with other Republican operatives, Matt Well and Doug McGinn. They "tout their GOP background" on their website. Herald Group has been hired by Vets For Freedom to do its PR work after "volunteering" for the job.

One of the two reporters Vets For Freedom has imbedded in Iraq is former Marine Lt. Wade Zirkle. He was also a a regional field director for Republican Jerry Kilgore's 2005 campaign for governor of Virginia.

The other is David Bellavia, he "attended President Bush's 2006 State of the Union address as a guest of Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds, (R-Clarence)".

Another of the consulting firms the group has hired is Campaign Solutions, "a well-known consulting group that lists several Republican clients on its Web site. Zirkle said he hired Campaign Solutions because he was familiar with its work from the Kilgore campaign".

Vets For Freedom's website is hosted by the same company that "previously worked for the 2004 Bush-Cheney re-election campaign and the Republican National Committee".

Experts on ethical journalism were horrified:

If a news organization had spent any time vetting this, I doubt that anyone would have taken them up on it," said Kelly McBride, ethics group leader at the Poynter Institute, a highly regarded journalism training center in St. Petersburg, Fla. McBride said the embedding effort appears to have "a very strong relationship" with Republican activists.

...Told of Gross' effort to place stories in the mainstream media, the executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy, John Stauber, said: "You can't find a link much closer to the administration than this one."

Yet Vets for Freedom insist they are not a GOP front in any way.

"I worked for President Bush, and I'm proud to have done so," Gross said. "But Vets for Freedom is a nonpartisan group. If one wants to classify it as pro-mission, that would be accurate."

Coincidence? Well all four newspapers they approached to carry their imbed reports - the New York Daily News, the New York Post, the Buffalo News and the Richmond Times-Dispatch - reportedly turned them down so I suppose a lot will be said by where their reports do eventually turn up.

Expect to see their glowing tales of how clean the streets of Baghdad are in places like FrontPage, National Review Online and American Daily any day now.

Comments on the Kos/TNR Feud

I said I would try to say something about this topic that didn't involve me just writing "DUMBASSES" a dozen times.

Thankfully, stranger at Blah3 did a great job of explaining the fallacies surrounding the feud that are being jumped on by nervous mainstream media types and dumbass rightwing bloggers. (I had to get one "dumbass" in.)

As to the actual feud itself, I am going to let my comment at Blah3 stand for now:

Briefly, I don't see the upside for the Dems in the feud.

If everything written about Markos is to be believed then Kos is running a "pay to play" cartel just like all the elite big-boys do by taking corporate money (even if the GOP are better at it) and the big guns are pissed at that? Pot meet kettle. Do I want to vote for a party with that level of hypocricy? Nope.

If all the things written about TNR are true then they are part of an elitist Democrat heirarchy of repuglican-lites who control the party and are squishing the netroot upstarts because they only want netroots money and PR but not to fork over the clout that should go with it. Yet Kos and the A-list Liberals still want us to contribute our cash, time, blogging and votes to said party. Are they fucking insane? Is it going to happen? Nope.

(Update 27th June It looks like Billmon is having similiar thoughts to the paragraph above, although as usual his thoughts are wonderfully written whereas mine were a quick scribble. Definitely worth a read.)

Moreover, do I want to read punditry written by people who have such out-of-whack logic? Maybe, but I will never quite trust them to try to be fair.

As I said...where's the upside for either the Dem establishment or the A-listers? No wonder the GOP and their own brand of shills are laughing so hard.

The Most Influential Australian...Is American

According to The Bulletin magazine, the most influential Australian of all time is....drum roll...Rupert Murdoch, despite his being an American citizen.

Murdoch picked up his award today and was heckled by members of the audience for his citizenry, reports the Guardian.

Bulletin magazine is owned by the billionaire Packer family, who not too long ago were involved, along with the Murdochs, in a massive scandal when the two families joined forces to purchase half of a telecoms company that subsequently crashed. Many suspected that the two families had known about and covered up the firm's insolvency.

Oh, and Bulletin magazine also has a deal with the Washington Post company to publish Newsweek magazine as a supplement inside the Bulletin in Australia.

Oh, that doggone liberal media...

1,000 Posts

Wow, all unknowing I passed the 1,000 posts mark earlier in the week.

Fittingly, the landmark post was about some "news less travelled" - the brewing foreign policy disaster that is the Indian Sub-continent. Some observers have described it as "the most dangerous place in the world".

It isn't the kind of post that gets wild linkage because most folks simply don't care about the region, but it is the kind of post I think I do best. I'm happy. Now on to the next 1,000.

Play Ostrich

I've invented myself a little game to while away a few idle moments. Its called "Ostrich". Here's how you play.

You are browsing the internets happily when you come across a major-name liberal blogger. That blogger has written a post about the Bush administration's trampling of democracy - be it from secret warrantless spying programs or signing statements or feeding a lazy press propoganda or whatever. However, the blogger has implicitly made the assumption that the kind of Republican-Lite types who make up the elite of the Democrats and who are most likely to ever occupy the Oval Office wouldn't do exactly the same. (Nor would the elitists who make up the top levels of the Republican party, mind you. Where's my third party option?)

You then challenge said blogger to come up with evidence for their assumption or to 'fess up that what they are really doing is "using the force" (trans - shutting your eyes tight and hoping like hell). You point out that the issue is too important, after two Bush terms, to leave to guesswork and wishful thinking. "We the people" need to know.

You say that there is actually a way for those concerned about the future of American democracy to pressure those candidates to pledge a rollback of the King as President meme rather than using it as a useful precedent. It is, quite simply, to ask the damn question they seem so afraid to ask:

Will you, if elected, pledge to roll back the Bush vision of total Presidential executive power?

As I wrote before, it is an unfair question - that's what is so good about it from the point of view of those worried about more of the same monarchy-style rule:

Its unfair because, if the answer is no, then the candidate - and I mean for President, Senator, Congresscritter, Governor, whatever - has to launch into an explanation of why he or she thinks Bush's vision of utter power vested in the Oval Office is a good idea. I can't see any Democrat (or Republicans for that matter) being able to carry that one off in a way that will do them any good at all. The soundbite quotes it would hand their political opposition would be devastating. If the answer is "yes" less explanation is required and the soundbites will all be about balance of power and the vision of the Founders - good PR stuff - and then the pressure is there to act as if they mean it.

Then you sit back and see whether the liberal blogger in question has the guts to face this elephant in his room or whether he prefers to be an ostrich.

So far, I've found that Steve Soto at The Left Coaster is an ostrich (read the comments, it's like the topic doesn't exist for him). It's a pity, because I really like his work, including this post if it didn't have that assumption of Democrat beatitude...in fact I plan to link to one of his posts later today.

Neil at Ezra Klein's blog, on the other hand, at least had a bash at digging up a quote from his favourite candidate, John Edwards, that would show how Edwards would fall on the issue. NOT ostrich.

Easy, Eh?

You can play too if you'd like. Imagine how much fun 30 or so Newshog regular readers all playing "Ostrich" could have. Let me know how you get on in comments.

If the elite don't like the people, why dont they dissolve them and elect some new ones? - Old anarchist grafitti.

Instahoglets 24th Jun 04

Wherein Newshog continues to be a drop in the ocean of opinion on various stories, both big and small. Lying Bastard Fatigue sets in so easily, and now that they have a whiff of power the Dems cause almost as much of it as the Repugs do.

Heard about the clampdown in Baghdad? The new PM there has announced a state of emergency in the city after violent clashes. What you may not have heard if you only follow the tame American media is that the clashes concerned were a three-way free for all. Sunni insurgents vs US/Iraqi army units then the Shia al-Mahdi militia arrived and started shooting at all and sundry. This just outside the Green Zone. There goes the pretense that this much-vaunted security operation was going to be a last corner to turn.

Meanwhile, even the Iraqi national security advisor is perpetuating the myth, so beloved of both Demlicans and Republicrats, that the US can withdraw from Iraq if it can just make the streets safe again. Welcome to the Satrapy of Iraq, folks - the coalition cannot withdraw until the Iraqi military can not only hold its own against an insurgency or militias but also present at least some deterrent to a full-blown invasion by a neighbouring nation like Syria or Iran. That's an essential part of true sovereignty and anything else is smoke and mirrors. There are NO plans right now to give Iraq that military or anything close to it and the present plans won't be looked at until at least 2010. Them's the facts, get used to them.

In Afghanistan too, despite the largest anti-Taliban offensive there since the invasion, things head from bad to worse. Afghan President Karzai is getting increasingly anxious for his position because US-led forces are more interested in airstrikes and soot-em-upos than in actually convincing common Afghans that the new order is a better option than the resurgent Taliban who have the tacit support of Pakistani intelligence. You see, it remains true that there are 20,000 Taliban and Al Qaida trained militia in just the Pakistani city of Karachi, so killing 600 or so Taliban cannon-fodder along with a whole slew of civilians just isn't going to cut it. Doing something about the way Afghanistan has been sidelined for money and support by the Iraqi debacle just might.

Blah3 - an excellent group blog I heartily recommend - has the big question on the "Miami terror plot". They ask "is there any there, there"...and I have to say I don't think there was. The whole thing was an FBI construction, with even an FBI official admitting that the plotters were "more aspirational than operational." The guy they thought was an Al Qaida operative giving them all their big ideas and promising money was an FBI operative. Oh, and it looks like they were some mixed-up bunch of homegrown cultists rather than Islamist extremists.

To call the administration's press spin on these arrests careless and cynically xenophobic fearmongering is, I fear, to use inadequate language in describing their motives... but I try really hard not to use a lot of profanity in blogging.

Paul Harris at the Guardian nails it : "A culture of fear has entered into American public and private life, especially because there is a lot of money to be made out of it." A must-read analysis of some uncomfortable truths about 'fraidy-cat America and the people making moolah from terrah.

Utterly unmentioned by the tame US press as they support Bush's rhetoric of confrontation with Iran is the story of moderate Hashemi Rafsanjani's efforts to do an end run around Ahminutjob and the hardliners by positioning himself to become the next supreme leader when the post is vacated by the current incumbent, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Maybe, just maybe, America would do well to wait and see if what appears to be an indigenous moderate groundswell in Iran bears fruit - rather than working to forcibly hand power to a bunch of Chalibi-like expatriates who often seem to have money as a major motivating factor or to an avowedly Maxist/Islamist terror group with a leader who thinks he is the new Moslem Messiah. Just an idea.

Ah well, at least there's good news - Richard Perle is pissed. Given his record, anything Perle thinks is a bad idea is probably worth trying.

Smintheus builds on his excellent work concerning GOP "Cleaner" David Laufman's nomination as Pentagon IG in a close look at the way Pat Roberts is blocking completion of the Senate's report on the use of intelligence in the run up to the Iraqi war. One of Laufman's tasks is surely to make certain anything embarrassing is buried forever. (Of course, Roberts is refusing to even begin any investigation of the reliability of intelligence about Iran's supposed nuclear weapons program until the Iraq report is done. So expect a "cleaned" report three years after the bombs drop yet again.)

Here's a fun one, yet another episode of Muppets in Powerrrrrr. Abramoff in the news again as AP tells a sordid tale of "pay per view" politics. Grover Norquist and Karl Rove also get namechecks as the tale unfolds. Seems Jack told all and sundry - in emails that the AP now has - that contributing to Grover would get them access to Karl and thus to other administration figures. Both Grover and Karl deny it, of course.

Over in the UK, we have the unusual and embarrassing spectacle of a wannabe leader moving further to the Right because of his own boss rather than because of the opposition party. Check out this excellent analysis from "urban drift" blog. Some of it sounds ominously familiar for American readers.

Triangulation means the betrayal of the core party supporters on the left. They are vulnerable because they have no choice but to vote for the party, while of course the party has much to gain by way of votes from the middle in moving rightwards...Would non-voting be a rational response? The theory says no. It predicts that the firm left voter is trapped into continuing to vote for the party as it would be irrational to vote for other party and hence usher in an abhorrent government...It would be rational not to vote...only if the difference in utility arising from the two parties' agendas in government is smaller than the loss of utility from said party’s failure to implement promises.

How much confidence do you have that the Dems will implement their promises (implied and overt) on foreign aggression, on social compacts and poverty alleviation, on rolling back the President as King meme? How much do you think they will end up just like the Republicans? C'mon, be honest.

There's a lot of noise about the Bush administration's secret program to tap into international bank transfer data. I don't know enough to say for sure that the program is illegal under US law, although Arlen Specter seems to think it probably is. However, SWIFT transfers are run from Belgium, and I suspect it is an unwarranted (literally) invasion of privacy under European human rights laws.

However, the Counterterrorism blog points out that it isn't exactly new news and has been on the UN website since 2002 - and that Al Qaida changed their tactics at least that long ago so that they wouldn't get caight by the program.

Which begs a couple of questions...like "why did Bushco want it kept quiet if it was already a matter of public record?" and "if they aren't using it to spy on Al Qaida who are they using it to spy on" and "do the Malkinite hordes mindlessly cheerleading Dick Cheney about the NYTimes breaking national security by re-reporting four year old news feel stupid yet?".

P.S. I haven't said a word about the various goings on centered around the Kos/TNR feud yet. That's because I can't quite figure out how to say what I want to without just writing "DUMBASSES" over and over again. I just don't see an upside for the Dems on this one, no matter who is in the right or by how much. Maybe later.

Apologia and a New Leaf Turned

You might have noticed I've been light on posts with meat on them this last couple of weeks. My apologies. Let me explain.

This little project is now a year and a half old. Its a lot of fun to write but it isn't well read. The average is 160 page views a day of which about 30 are regular repeat visitors. (I want to thank all the regular readers - not everyone comments but I feel I know every Ohioan, Californian, Texan etc. from my stat sites. I recognise you all and I'm always greatful you keep coming back.)

I feel I've produced some decent stuff - including one post that Crooks and Liars described as possibly the best of 2005. I've caught a neocon warmonger in an outright lie about a source, written a series about Iraq that pretty much came true (except for the optimistic parts) and another on healthcare that predicted the findings of a Congressional report a year in advance. I was even on the "fixing of intelligence around the policy" over Iran before most and have done more than many since on the subject.

But I've also written about why the Democrats just don't cut it for me and why they never will, about the huge gap in everyone's Iraqi withdrawal "blueprints" and about the scary possibility that a Dem President will use the King George years as a handy precedent (something the A-list liberals want to do an ostrich on).

In short, even if I write some linkable stuff I don't fit in with the "in crowd" and I never will.

That means, quite simply, that Newshog will never get the regular linkage from the big kidz that means the regular readership will push towards that magic figure that lets me even dream about doing this for a living. It means that I will always be talking to a small crowd rather than playing the superstadia.

I'm pretty OK with that but it also means the arguments I make and the gaps in the rhetoric I point out will usually also have a small audience. I'm not sure if I am as OK with that. Call it pride, because that is exactly what it is - if I've done a good job I would like more folks to notice and maybe even come back to see if the dog can do the trick again. If that wasn't a motivation, I would be doing a "lifejournal" blog instead of trying to come up with decent and lengthy political analysis. I want this blog to make a difference. I don't feel it is. I'm down about it. So sue me.

Ah well...its always been a dream of mine to write for a living, I think I would be good at it. Maybe I am wrong in that.

So here's the plan(s) to shake me from my doldrums.

I've no intention of quitting but I am going to drop my dream of doing this for a living, at least in this format. Newshog is my fun ranting place and if I don't post for a couple of days it just means I can't be bothered. We're all going to have to live with that. It also means I resolve to stop worrying about site traffic hoping for that breakthrough. Read or not, I will post when I want to about what I want to. No more chasing the stories "everyone is talking about" unless I want to either.

Anyone out there want to be a Newshog writer? More writers means more posts and more opinions - which means Newshog will still have new stuff to read when Cernig is having an off day. It doesn't matter whether you want to take on, say, just doing an "Instahoglets" every Sunday or whether you want to contribute far more. If you want to see your byline on Newshog, just for the fun of it, drop me a mail. If I like you, you're on the team.

Anyone want Newshog content on their site? I can drop you the formatted text as a mail for you to post or if you want me to contribute to your blog with Newshog crossposts that's good too. Or just copy n paste the stuff, dude. Anyone want to talk blog mergers? I'm willing to listen. All of this massages the pride part...

A Newshog statement of independence - I don't much like the way the Dems are going now they smell blood and victory any more than I like the Republicans. Both parties are too far right for me anyhow. Newshog will not shill for either of them. If they f*ck up, Newshog will say so. It is a Lefty blog and an independent voice. It won't play in your games. (This has always been the case but here's the open "f*ck you" to those who expect every lefty and liberal to be a Dem supporter or suffer in silence).

My promise to be as impartial a critic as I can be - but always a critic - still stands. The job of the blogosphere should be exactly that - to be critics of power - not partisan shills for the moneychangers and powerbrokers.

So there you go. The newly normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

Thanks for reading, everyone.

Ghana 2 - 1 USA

Sorry guys. Better luck in four years, eh?

I didn't see the match, but reading between the lines of the report from AP, which describes the Ghanans as "stronger and faster", you got a lesson in the African style from some experts. At its best, African football has the beauty of Brazilian play and the guts of European play with a little Carribean pazzazz thrown in for good measure - it often comes as a shock to large nations with a superiority complex about playing the Third World. Still, it also sounds like the USA fought bravely. Good on ya.

Also reading between the lines, I have to say Oguchi Onyewu is a liability to your squad. He thinks he's playing highschool basketball. In the Italy game he did a lot to rack up the level of nastiness with constant fouls for pulling and holding - here he gave away a penalty that cost you the match. Football isn't a game where you can beat the best by being physical and sailing close to the rules. They will samba or waltz around you and when that fails will bend freekicks into your net instead.

Somewhere, there's a potential Newshog post in which American antipathy for football as being not confrontational and aggressive, of being for wimps, is a reflection of an American preference for military options and the grinding idiocy of frontal assault. Maybe - maybe not. For those Americans who think football is for wimps...try rugby. 80 minutes of crunching tackles and flat-out running with no stops for breathers and no body armor. THAT's a man's game! There's actually a pretty good team down here in San Antonio.

Anyhow...

Maybe Scotland will pull their abysmal act together by 2010 and actually qualify and maybe our two nations will get to play a match which can be an example of fine sportmanship and skill. That'd be nice. Most Americans will now lose what little interest they had in the beautiful game and the World Cup for another four years so I will cease to bug y'all by writing about it.

What Do You Do With A Wanker Like Derbyshire?

Check out this stunningly crass post by John Derbyshire over at National Review Online.

He manages to insinuate, in two short paragraphs, that the only reason Stephen Hawking is worried about global warming is because he has nothing better to do - like mow the lawn and chase the kids - because he is...HAW, HAW, SNORT...SO funny!... major-time DISABLED!

But it's not offensive, because he's, like, this huge fan of Hawkings...

No mention of the possibility that Hawkings is worried because...umm...like...he's the world's smartest brain?

Wanker. This is the best the conservative blogosphere has? Sheesh.

Instahoglets 20th Jun 06

First, some fiction. ...as Lube Skystalker's X-wing rounded a corner in a trench cut deep into the surface of the Death Star - one that Rebel Alliance tacticians had highlighted as a fatal flaw in the design - he slammed into a breeze-block wall hundreds of feet high which totally blocked the way. He died instantly. Darth Cheney stepped away from the viewscreen where he had watched the catastrophe unfold and wheezed "So long, sucker". (With Thanks to Mad Comics.)

Now on with some "less travelled" news and analysis, in the time-honored InstaAtrioPundit format of snarky punchposts.

Everybody is talking about it - except the mainstream media - that shocking memo from the US embassy in Baghdad which tells of "increasing danger and hardship faced by its Iraqi employees". Yet another rollover for the lapdogs of democracy. The poor poodles have largely lost their ability to do their jobs without their "un-named official sources" feeding them propaganda to regurgitate wholesale.

Here's some spot-on analysis: "by refusing to consider a "grand bargain" with Iran — that is, resolution of Washington's concerns about Tehran's weapons of mass destruction and support for terrorism in return for American security guarantees, an end to sanctions and normalization of diplomatic relations — the Bush administration is courting failure in its nuclear diplomacy and paving the way for Russia and China to win the larger strategic contest."

Earlier this week CNN reported, to not much reaction, that a laptop containing the personal data of 13,000 D.C. employees and retirees had been stolen. Let us hope that it gives the beaurocrats incentive to help the hundreds of thousands of veterans and servicemen who had their own data stolen recently - and maybe take steps to make sure it cannot happen again. On second thoughts, strike that. Let us hope instead that a laptop with the data of all Bush administration officials, senators and congressmen is stolen - because that would seem to be the only way to make most of them care!

Here's another story you haven't seen in the U.S. yet but which is potentially explosive for the Bush administration's relations with the rest of the world and for its' credibility with Americans. The tiny European nation of Bosnia has confirmed that it allowed the extraordinary rendition in 2002 by the U.S. of SIX of its' citizens - after a local court had found insufficient evidence to try them for any crime! That's a clear and extrajudicial breach of the European Convention on Human Rights and will doubtless lead to further questions and investigations in the other 20 nations accused of aiding such illegal acts by the U.S. in Europe. The Bosnians recently did an about-face and requested their citizens be released from Gitmo, where they are now held, but the U.S. has refused. This one will build and spread slowly but will have a major impact on transatlantic affairs, I guarantee it.

And another. A former conservative British defence secretary claimed that Britain paid bribes to encourage Saudi Arabia to buy his country's arms in the 1970s. Lord Ian Gilmour told BBC television "In those days you either went along with how the Saudis behaved or what they wanted or you let the United States and France have all the business." Do you really think it has changed any? "The ex-minister's comments come as Britain reportedly nears finalising the sale of 40 billion pounds (74 billion dollars, 58.5 billion euros) worth of arms to Saudi Arabia, almost doubling the 50 billion pounds worth of trade already completed in recent years" continues the AFP report. I keep saying this - you cannot understand foreign policy unless you keep track of the arms trade and its' vested interests.

First Lt. Ehren Watada is the first soldier to resist the war in Iraq based on the Nuremburg Principles pioneered by U.S. prosecutors during Nazi war crimes trials after World War II and adopted by the United Nations General Assembly (and the United States) in 1950. In my humble opinion he is absolutely correct. 'Nuff said.

One from my homeland. Tony Blair has made the Labour Party so unpopular that it admits it is in danger of losing its first election in 50 years North of the border. Next year, the elections to the regional Scottish Parliament take place and the Scottish National Party are well placed for victory. Should that occur, a referendum on whether to take Scotland out of the Union it was conned into a couple of hundred years ago may not be too far behind. As far as international affairs would be concerned, the major impacts would be a new broadly socialist North Sea oil-producing nation to deal with and a perpetually rightwing England. Those are pretty major impacts, mind you...

Great satire from Unconfirmed Sources - Senate Surprised To Find They've Voted Texas Out Of The Union, "Former United States President, Senor Jorge W. Bush, was apparently shocked when five minutes after he signed the bill into law he found that due to his signature he and his family were no longer United States citizens and immediately applied for refugee status in the United States, citing the fact that most of his new countrymen would like to kill his ass if they ever got a hold of him. While one might expect this request to be easily and immediately granted, Department of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff has put a hold on Senor Bush's visa, citing national security concerns." Oh, if only...

Missile Hype and Invertebrate Pressmen

Here's another in the long list of administration story plants that prove the mainstream media needs a backbone transplant and a lesson in actually writing news instead of regurgitating briefings wholesale.

An announcement is made by an anonymous defense official that the "missile defense shield" is being activated because of fears over the imminent launching of a new North Korean missile. Of course, the press and rightwing bloggers swallow it wholesale (they only distrust the Pentagon when it disagrees with Bush).

It is then left to arms-wonk bloggers like the amazing Noah Shachtman (DefenseTech) and crew to point out that the ability of the "missile defense shield" to hit a barn door at 20 paces is questionable at best and the intention/ability of NK to launch a new ballistic missile is of the same order of credibility. None of this stuff is secret - it is all easily available with a little research. Noah's been blogging about it for ages, as have others like The Arms Control Wonk.

None of which will make it back into the MSM because they are all too scared of being cut out of the loop of background briefings by those famous un-named sources.

Noah isn't scared, yet he keeps getting invites to all those Pentagon bashes nonetheless. A lesson that the propagandists in the Bush administration need the press more than the press needs those anonymous sources, maybe?

[Links to both DefenseTech and The Arms Control Wonk are on my sidebar. I heartily recommend them. You cannot understand American foreign policy without understanding defense policy, the arms trade and - just as importantly - the hype anonymous officials invariably put on threats from foreign nations to justify all those arms purchases and sales.]

The Most Dangerous Place In The World?

A couple of days ago, Swaraaj Chauhan guest-posted a reply to my piece on the Indian sub-continent arms race and the disaster it will be for American foreign policy over at The Moderate Voice. It's incredibly flattering to have someone like him compliment and cite your work - he's one of the best journalists in the subcontinent, teaches at one of India's most prestigious journalism schools and is mentor for the BBC World Service Trust Indian training program. Luckily, he and Joe Gandelman are old friends and so I got to read an assessment of my thinking by a luminary in the field.

The short of it is that Swaraaj and I agree that, as he puts it:

that the rapproachment between Pakistan and India is important and that's what the US Government is encouraging. However, the spanner in the works is provided by the competitive nature of arms selling to the two countries by the Western nations.

Yet another strike for America, then - another good idea done badly. However, Swaraaj is more hopeful than I am about the future for Indo-Pakistan relations as he believes that the vast majorities of both populations want peace and coexistance and will eventually force the entrenched groups that oppose this (the militaries, rightwing Hindu hawks, extremist Muslims) into aquiescence. Other Indian commenters on his post disagree strongly, saying that the peoples of both nations will always see the other as essentially enemies.

The pessimist's (realists?) case is strengthened considerably by a recent International Crisis Group report which "expressed the fear that the process of normalisation of Pakistan-India relations is reversible and resumption of conflict is still possible unless the two nuclear powers work harder for advancing the peace process." In particular, the ceasefire in Kashmir was characterised as holding but "far from stable".

At the same time, the US/India nuclear deal, which would still allow India to construct up to 50 nuclear bombs a year, continues to be a huge destabilizing factor as Indian superhawks push for American concessions which would give India a significant upper hand in the so far delicately balanced MAD with Pakistan. They seek to gain for India the right to stockpile nuclear fuel to levels enjoyed by the likes of America, Russia and China as well as pressing Indian negotiators to hold out against a test ban - which would allow India to test a fusion bomb in the near future. In America, the deal is getting a fair bit of flack from Congresscritters and a LOT of flack from the Federation of American Scientists who have the support of no less than 37 Nobel winners for a letter that says the agreement:

"weakens the existing nonproliferation regime without providing an acceptable substitute. Since nothing is more important to US security than blocking further proliferation and possible use of nuclear weapons, the lawmakers should withhold their seal of approval"

And goes on to say that the US cannot continue to treat nuclear weapons as "militarily useful and politically salient while expecting to stop global nuclear proliferation.The Indian nuclear deal is just one symptom of a bigger problem.'

Finally, I would like to draw your attention to an eye-opening piece by Mike Marqusee of ZNet which points out that Israel has been a convenient surrogate arms dealer to India on America's behalf through the years of sanctions brought about by India's testing nuclear weapons and refusing to join the NPT. Almost half of all Israel's weapons sales are to India. The common connection between the U.S., Israel and India from 2001 to 2004 was that all had governments which emphasised fear and hatred of Moslems as part of a "clash of cultures" philosophy. Now that a coalition government has replaced the rightwing BJP administration in India, the revolving door of rightwingers between the military, industry and its lobbyists and government (so familiar to Americans) ensures that the road from New Delhi to Washington still passes through Tel Aviv.

Two nuclear armed states with a common border but less common ground, a building arms race which is spilling over into other nations in the region, existing flashpoints for armed conflict (which have already caused major wars) and self-centered meddling from the major powers. Both Bill Clinton and Salman Rushdie have previously described the region as "the most dangerous place in the world". It still might be.

Review - Watchdogs of Democracy?

Helen Thomas' new book Watchdogs of Democracy is on general release from the 20th. of the month. I was sent an advance copy by the publishers and thought myself very privileged - until I realized that just about everyone with a left-leaning blog had been offered a copy. It's a good strategy in general, I'm sure, but in the case of Thomas' book I am not so certain that it is a good tactic because it seems Ms Thomas isn't a big fan of bloggers - which is hardly likely to endear the book to blogger reviewers.

The book is subtitled "The waning Washington press corps and how it has failed the public" and from that you might expect a detailed account of how and where the press corps fumbled the ball over the White House's account of Iraqi WMDs and the rush to war, of Plamegate, the Downing Street Memos, the various corruption and procurement scandals and maybe even a short retelling of how the press are falling for the same old stories again in as the neocons press for a violent change of regime in Iran. (All are areas, incidentally, where the MSM has had to play catch-up on the blogging community's lead on key aspects of the story.) If so, you will be disappointed. At a scant 204 pages, Thomas' book simply doesn't have the space for such detailed accounts - and some of these fumbled balls aren't even mentioned. In this much, then, it fails in its stated purpose.

On the other hand, Thomas does give an excellent history of the Washington press corps enlivened by anecdotes and personal observations of people she knew firsthand and events she witnessed at close range. In the process she also gives a good account of how White House manipulation of the press has snowballed over the years and how the concentration of control of the media into fewer corporate hands has damaged the free press' ability to be "free" and reduced manpower until most outlets are simply repeaters of other newsgathering companies coverage of events. So too, her sections on journalist ethics, including the handling of leaks, whistleblowers and anonymous sources, are invaluable background knowledge. In this, the book is an invaluable addition to the existing corpus of work. One wishes that she had doubled the length and stuck solely to this firsthand insight on history.

Still, what shines brightest throughout the book are Thomas' own prejudices. Those prejudices, very much "old school media", stand out most on the very few occasions that she talks about the blogging revolution:

Bloggers online have added to the mix with personal viewpoints providing an interesting public forum for millions of people, although they certainly don't pass as journalists, in my opinion. They are advocates and do not meet the standard of being "fair" in their output.

I suspect, then, that Thomas would also discount as "journalists" the entire cadre of groups such as Benador Associates, including alumni like Mike Ledeen, Charles Krauthammer and Amir Taheri, although somehow she manages to miss mentioning Benador and other neocon journalistic pressure groups at all. But wait, she has more in her epilogue:

[F]rom what I've read, trained journalists who blog love the freedom of unedited opinions. Opinion it is - unfettered stream of consciousness, a marketplace of rumors, instantaneous feedback and discussion, a bully pulpit for all. Journalism it's not.

The horse is out of the barn. Blogs are the new opinion poll. Blogs, therefore, affect how the news is covered. Blogs and bloggers can lead credentialed journalists to news stories. Bloggers are not journalists and should not undermine the mainstream press. Bloggers are not deserving of reporter's priveliges - to think so is ludicrous. {Jaw-dropped emphasis is mine - C]

It is so nice to be reminded of one's place. All this, mind you, after she has already discussed journalists like Jayson Blair and Jack Kelly and how they made up sources and even whole stories. If she had waited a few months she could have added Amir Taheri, Ken Timmerman and Jason Leopold. Despite the much-vaunted ethics of the MSM, all continue to find gainful employemnt as journalists. The MSM pot has no business calling the blogging kettle black - indeed it is often the "trained journalists" who "love the freedom of unedited opinions" who are the worst blogging offenders when it comes to lax journalistic ethics. Elsewhere, investigative bloggers doing hard journalistic coverage to the highest standards abound. One immediately thinks of TPM Muckraker or of the recent excellent work by rightwing blogger Mark In Mexico, as well as countless examples from Katrina, last year's tsunami or the London bombings of 7/7.

In this prejudice about bloggers we see the kernel of Thomas' thesis - that press coverage in this country is a mess and it is everyone's fault except hers and her clique of friends. She writes scathingly of everyone excpet those in her own personal circle, on whom she lavishes glowing praise. Yet many of her friends have used the revolving door between press and White House staff over the years and others have been confidantes of Presidents and the powerful. I think I know human nature, and I refuse to believe that Helen Thomas managed to meet the only Americans in the last 100 years who were so ethical and so devoted to the concept of a free press that they alone remained uncorrupted by their closeness to power. It just won't wash. (Although, to give due credit, the exchanges she recounts between herself and Ari Fleischer show she has a backbone that should be cloned and transplanted into every reporter in DC.)

Without a doubt, Helen Thomas has been "the dean of the White House press corps" as the jacket blurb describes her. However, in her sunset days she has donned rose-colored glasses for the past, or at least that part of it inhabited by her friends and those she admired as journalistic role models. Consequently, she has become myopic about other developments which could hold solutions to the problems she so ably points out.

It's not the greatest book on journalism and politics ever written, but it is nevertheless worth a read.

Comment on Italy v USA

I watched the game on ABC and, at the risk of alienating some of my American friends, have to wholeheartedly agree with this assessment by Rob Hughes in the London Sunday Times:

There were 34 fouls, some of them disgraceful. There were three red cards, all of them justified, and three more yellow cards that might have turned the deeper colour. There were two goals, two memorable saves from either goalkeeper, and a match of shame petered out.

ABC's commentators were trying to say that the first US red card was just a make-up, a compensation for the Italian sending-off, by the ref. What partisan rubbish. If a Brit commentator tried that he would be laughed at in the street. The rules are easy to understand on this point - when a player tackles another with no intention of playing the ball (because the ball has already been passed!) but simply the intention to injure, it is a red card. That covers both the American sendings-off.

I don't understand why DaMarcus Beasley wasn't played from the kick-off. He was the classiest thing about the US effort, followed closely by the goalie Kasey Keller who really is world class from what little we saw of him in action.

Oh, and I don't think Italy's second goal was technically offside. The "offside" player was no-where near the play (by a good 10 or 15 yards), wasn't interfering with play, was running in the opposite direction and was unmarked thus proving he wasn't interfering with the opposition's ability to play the ball. Technically, that is a "no offside" call even if he was in front of the ball and any defenders at the time of play, but I totally understand that most refs err on the side of caution and call it anyway.

As for the Italians - this has to be their worst squad in decades and the fans must be absolutely disgusted. The guy who scored their own-goal won't be able to go out in public without his Menachim Begin Disguise Kit for at least a year and the manager is history after this competition.

Opinions?

Found - 2000 Bush Campaign Vid Waving Mexican Flag!

Yesterday I noted that the National Review's Kathryn Jean Lopez had a post entitled "Bet the White House Hopes This Video Never Surfaces" in which she describes the content of a $5 million campaign video Bush hoped would woo Latino voters back in 2000.

The video includes images that would probably rile those who today are calling for the most restrictive immigration laws. At one point, Bush is shown waving a Mexican flag. The footage was shot, Sosa said, during a Mexican Independence Day parade in San Antonio in 1998, when Bush was running for reelection as governor.

The five-minute video, narrated by Bush, opens with an image of him fishing on his property near Crawford, Texas, as he essentially described millions of Americans who populate his home state as the true foreigners in someone else's native land.

"About 15 years before the Civil War, much of the American West was northern Mexico," Bush says in the video. "The people who lived there weren't called Latinos or Hispanics. They were Mexican citizens, until all that land became part of the United States.

"After that, many of them were treated as foreigners in their own land," Bush adds.

He says the "Latino spirit" was fueled by "strong conservative values" of family, a strong work ethic, faith in God, patriotism and personal responsibility. "These values are my values," Bush says. "I live by them, and I lead by them."

As Bush speaks in the video, the background music — a Latin beat — grows louder. The president is pictured waving the Mexican flag, hugging a Latino woman, and then holding a Latino baby.

Well, regular reader Rudi, after much hard searching, has found that video hosted by the extreme rightwing Liberty Post website. I wish I had the means to host it here or to abstract the flag-waving as a pic but, alas, I don't.

Thanks Rudi! Now stand well back, as Malkin will probably stroke out from angry apoplexy!

Personally, even though I think it was a cynical attempt by Bush to con Latinos into thinking the GOP or any part of it has ever had their interests truly at heart, I still have to admit grudging admiration for his gumption in even considering issuing such a video.

Sheesh, this and the Hawaiian marine park all in one week - a record for stuff Dubya has done I actually approve of.

Instahoglets 16th Jun 06

A third of these things in one week? Either the world or I have gotten very busy. I think it's the world.

The UK's Guardian newspaper, in a great bit of investigative journalism, casts serious doubts over the Israeli Army's version of events on the Gaza beach recently - in particular, every independent indication is that the IDF have stretched the time frame to get themselves out of the...well..frame.

I asked the other day why no-one in the press was asking what effect on the rest of the country moving 75,000 security troops to Baghdad would have. Since no-one in the press seemed interested I asked blogger Fester. As usual Fes stepped up with an excellent analysis. Simply, he says that it is more theatre than real crackdown as 75,000 troops still aren't enough to make a dent on a city of over 6 million (they would need 450,000 troops to duplicate the Tal Afar success) and in any case, Sunni Army and Shia Interior Ministry goons are sticking to their own sectarian areas - each operating a Sergeant Schultz policy - while the US keeps Army and Interior squads seperate so that they don't shoot at each other. Oh, and he also predicts that, just like the last crackdown that failed to break the back of the insurgency, things will quieten a little before flaring up again.

Joe Gandelman, the Moderate Voice, on the current theatre, supposedly a debate about Iraq policy, being enacted in Congress:

Republicans who are cheering on Republican leaders in this battle in Congress know that it's to box the Democrats in a corner. Democrats know it, too, so they're trying to go on the offensive/defensive.

So everyone knows it's a political skirmish. What's lost in the process? Not only a "full and honest" debate on the wear but a "full and honest" assessment about where the U.S. is, how it can be in a better position, what specific steps can be taken to help American troops be more effective and safer, and what the U.S. long-term strategy will be. And many others — if the idea is problem SOLVING.

I would add that when the Pentagon joins in political theatre like this by giving Republicans and Dem hawks a list of talking points on Iraq it makes a mockery of the hawk's attacks on dissident Generals who spoke out - but it also means any chance of obtaining that full and honest assessment has disappeared.

Greg Palast has a post up about a BBC investigation he participated in. Basically, the GOP used a scam to deprive black servicemen who were stationed in Iraq at the time of their votes in the 2004 elections. Read it and weep for your nation.

Yet more corruption involving a Republican and a defense contractor. This time it is Tom Cole (R-Ok), his staffer and General Atomics, maker of the Predator unmanned aircraft. Anything They Say has the sordid details.

Hey, guess what other dent was put in your freedoms this week? Now the CIA gets to decide what is and isn't a news outlet, at least as far as fee wavers for FOIA requests are concerned. It's not as big a deal as some others this week such as the No Knock ruling, but you know what mission creep can be like when it is a deliberate policy.

According to national Review, somewhere out there is a video which will simply drive the bigoted Malkinite right utterly bugshit with fury. It shows Dubya, who they already believe is a traitor to America over his immigration plans, waving a Mexican flag and:

The five-minute video, narrated by Bush, opens with an image of him fishing on his property near Crawford, Texas, as he essentially described millions of Americans who populate his home state as the true foreigners in someone else's native land.

"About 15 years before the Civil War, much of the American West was northern Mexico," Bush says in the video. "The people who lived there weren't called Latinos or Hispanics. They were Mexican citizens, until all that land became part of the United States.

"After that, many of them were treated as foreigners in their own land," Bush adds.

The video, which cost $5 million, was intended to woo latino voters and was made during the 2000 campaign.

Interesting gifts Dubya and his crew get. The Guardian recounts gifts sent to Bush (a braided leather whip, a $10,000 sniper rifle, six jars of fertiliser and a copy of the "Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook"), Rummie (aromatherapy scents and a gold bracelet) and Cheney (a "Happy Day" clock, gold silk pillows, scented candles and a pottery incense burner) by various foreign governments. Anyone think the whip was really a present for Mistress Condi?

America's Next Big Foreign Policy Disaster

I wasn't at YearlyKos and even if I had I definitely wouldn't have been invited to address their foreign policy panel. But if I had, I would have warned them that the next truly enormous American foreign policy nightmare is brewing right now. It will happen in the Indian sub-continent and it will affect the whole world. It will be a direct consequence of Bush's policies there but will probably not hit the fan until the next president is in office - and that president, no matter from which party, will do nothing to halt this coming nightmare and will essentially do nothing dissimiliar to what Bush would do in his place.

Why? Because few will notice the impending trainwreck. The way in which this nightmare is being allowed to progress raises a fundemental question about the ability of America to "do" foreign policy successfully. It suggests that all American foreign policy is really about domestic policy and doesn't actually take account of the foreigners much, if at all.

Imagine, if you will, that a regular army unit of a nuclear-armed nation on border patrol shoots at a drugs smuggler. That paramilitary guards on the other side of the border think those soldiers are shooting at them. That the ensuing firefight between army and paramilitaries lasts all night and most of the next morning, with "a heavy exchange" of mortar and machinegun fire and over 10,000 rounds of small arms ammunition expended. That protocols put in place and designed to stop such fighting broke down even before they could be tried.

Imagine that scenario being played out on the Gaza Strip or Iraq's border with Iran or Syria. Every single U.S. media outlet would be all over it. There would be Senatorial and Presidential statements. It would, in short, be huge news. Yet exactly this scenario happened, just as I described it, just last weekend...on the India/Bangladesh border. No-one in America noticed. Just as no-one in America notices the raging, two year old, civil war involving thousands of troops, helicopters, airstrikes and artillery barrages in Pakistan's SouthEastern province of Balochistan.

India and Bangladesh are normally on friendly terms, yet a firefight like the one described can occur even so. How much more likely to spark a major conflict, then, is India's relationship with nuclear-armed neighbour Pakistan? I would wager that few Americans think there is any real problem between those two nations anymore given the fact that both seem to be U.S. allies. (It is, in fact, highly significant that it is almost an axiom of American thinking - on the street or on The Hill - that two American allies will not war with each other. More on this later.) But try this from an op-ed in India's The Asian Age:

There is a reality about India-Pakistan relations that sudden bonhomie cannot wish away. The reality is decades of distrust and suspicion, nurtured and cultivated by vested interests that include governments in Pakistan and political parties in India. The Hindu-Muslim angle remains the cornerstone of this distrust, as does the deeply embedded view that Islamabad and New Delhi can never really wish well for the other. Both governments are willing to lie down and be tickled endlessly by Washington, but when it comes to each other, every word is dissected and every action viewed under the prism of dislike and intolerance.

The author goes on to accuse the current Indian government of being thralls to Washington and promises that the Indian people will not long accept that arrangement. They prefer their independence - after being the engine-room of the British Empire for so long they have no great wish to be the outsourced powerhouse of another Empire now - and look at China as a natural equal, while blaming their government's kowtowing to the U.S. for their failure to attain that equality.

India's current sparse goodwill towards the U.S. is not set in stone and may not last longer than the current Indian government does. Even some U.S. conservatives are worried for the future. Nor are most Indians likely to view their neighbour Pakistan as anything except a problem, now and in the future. The situation is hardly better in Pakistan, where only 27% approve of the U.S. and 10% of Bush - yet half think Iran becoming a nuclear power would be a good thing. The "balancer" in favor of an alliance with America in Pakistan is the historic authority of the military, something General Musharaff is certainly unwilling to change but that democratic reform movements certainly plan to.

Ironically, for all its talk of spreading democracy, the Bush administration's plan for safeguarding American interests in the sub-continent relies on the continued authority of a dictator at the helm of a de facto rogue state who cannot be relied upon to remain an ally in the future. Bush;s reaching out to India virtually guarantees a breakdown somewhere. Musharaff is utterly dependent on his military and security establishment for power, yet those same establishments now feel threatened by Bush's deals with India. Thus, they are reaching out to other nations, notably China, to provide the deals they cannot get from the U.S. - such as nuclear reactors. In time, Musharaff will either buckle to their demands not to befriend any friend of India or be removed by a new military coup. It is as simple as that. The same is true of India, where a friend of Pakistan is automatically distrusted and where democracy has always been a fragile thing that has survived more by luck than intent.

Here is a small illustration of how the Pakistan-India feud is actually being fuelled by Bush policy, even if the feud is not as open as it was a decade ago. It has gotten to the point already where Pakistan has told the U.S. it must limit the number of Indian troops, part of the UN force fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, after Bush asked for a promise of more Indian troops in the theatre. India has said it is fine with that because Pakistani intelligence agents would simply use their Taliban puppets to make the Indians targets if they sent more! Recent Bush plans to sell Pakistan maritime Harpoon missiles that could only be used to sink Indian naval vessels likewise created a wave of distrust all round, as did plans to sell both sides advanced fighters, anti-missile defenses and AWACS technology. The flashpoint remains the Kashmir region amidst accusations from both Pakistan and India of the other's training and equipping terorists, the expected battlefield remains the border between the two nations, but the fuze is the burgeoning arms race catalyzed by Bush's nuclear deal with India and predicted by many at the time.

The arms race is no longer local, either. Japanese analysts have watched and worried as the rush to arm has spread to other countries in the region and are considering whether Japan should abandon it's policy of pure defense and instead become more interested in power projection and its own arms build-up and even possibly selling its own arms abroad for the first time. Likewise, Japanese opinion is split over the U.S./India nuclear deal - some feeling it is a reason to distrust the integrity of American policymakers while others see it as a reason to abandon Japan's policy of not selling its own nuclear technology abroad. American foreign policy - which has been to start an arms race and then sell gleefully to everyone involved - is having a direct destabilizing effect on the entire region and no-one in the U.S. seems to know or care.

Eventually that destabilization will turn into a shooting war somewhere in the region - and the biggest danger of all is a nuclear conflict between the main players, India and Pakistan, that then embroils China and the U.S. - and everyone in America will be surprised that it could happen without a decade's worth of warning!

That's because American foreign policy is always driven by short term domestic policy. The opportunity to make a few billion and so bolster the domestic economy is almost always a primary factor in U.S. thinking when danger seems far off and not "right now". That's why 60% by value of all arms exports come from America and it is true no matter who sits in the White House. Its why even though the Pentagon touts China as a real and present danger and uses that fear to sell its newest fighter planes to Europe...well....Boeing and dozens of others have security-sensitive plant and technology in China right now and China is the only source of rare earths for missile guidance chips available to the U.S. military.

Americans don't actually "do" foreign policy - what they do is policy for foreigners that effects the domestic bottom line. It is always about the short term gain for America right up until the fecal matter hits the fan - and then America reaches for the bombs. And the fecal matter hits the fan more often than not. I mentioned before the American faith that two of its allies will never ever have a war between themselves. Only Americans could ever believe this bit of naivete (the rest of the world has gotten cynical after so much history America missed) but it has become an integral part of the rhetoric about exporting "democracy and the American dream".

Many Americans are OK with this - why shouldn't American policy safeguard American interests (and pocketbooks) first? But the rest of the world has a real problem with it. Whether we non-Americans like it or not, America has become the single "big kid" on the block and established an effective global hegemon whereby no other nation can measure up to Americas might - economic or military. In that, the PNACers were always glaringly right. However, if America is not to be simply the big bully on the block, but instead the Mentor to the smaller kids, then it must put aside its self interest and actually act in a way that will sometimes have to be self-sacrificing for the greater good of the greater number. That part, the PNACers got all twisted up...which wasn't all that amazing considering that America is one of the more militaristic of the democracies. Only Israel perhaps exceeds the American propensity to reach for a military option early and often, to idolize the military and its way of life in public rhetoric and holidays, to afford the military such thorough access to every part of non-military life. American culture actively works against America having a foreign policy that isn't essentially self-centered and reliant on force to solve problems.

Kevin Drum recently tried to tackle the more superficial differences between liberal and conservative foreign policy and one of his commenters made the following observation:

Liberals are in a real Catch-22, because the American mindset is generally pro-war (or at lest depressingly easily duped into supporting war). Yet our beliefs require us to use all options short of military action to solve conflicts.

Until we can convince the American public that war is as destructive to the fabric of life here as it is abroad, and that it simply costs too much in blood and treasure for us as a country to be reflexively in favor of the military option, it will be easy for us to be demagogued on this issue.

Right now, the only solution I can see is to take our lumps, continue stating our case, and fight back against charges of weakness and disloyalty. Maybe the public will come around. The other direction leads to some version of imperialism or outright fascism.

If anyone has a better solution to an admittedly thorny problem, I'm all ears. It's very frustrating to know you are right, yet the public discourse rejects the best arguments (i.e., a de-emphasis of the military role in foreign policy) seemingly out of hand.

The trouble is, the Democrats too have a short-term domestic and militaristic bias inbuilt to their foreign policy planning. To do otherwise is domestic political suicide.

So the potential for this and other new nightmares will continue to grow right up until Americans realise that a long-term and ethical foreign policy, based on the good of the whole globe, is the only sensible policy for a de facto World Empire to follow. How's that for a mission statement for a new Progressive Project For A New American Century given that the old PNAC is now history?