Beograd sunset, 22 July, 7:45 p.m. CEDT

earlier, i took a walk over to the kalemegdan fortress and the adjoining park to catch the sunset... it's a very large park and it was full of people, couples strolling, old men sitting on park benches, kids hand-in-hand with their parents or kicking soccer balls with their friends... there was even a female jazz singer accompanied by a jazz quartet in the little bandstand doing classics like peggy lee's "fever..." the folks in belgrade, as in many european cities, seem to always be out and about, walking, sitting in outdoor cafes, mingling, buying ice cream... it's all very comfortable and relaxed... the sunset overlooking the confluence of the sava and danube rivers was pretty great too...

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The mustache of serial abuse

wouldn't know diplomacy if it bit him in the ass...

Mr. Bolton that day burst into a packed committee hall, produced a cordless microphone and began to lecture envoys from developing nations about their weakening of a proposal to tighten management of the United Nations, his chief goal.

Gaveled to silence, he threw up his hands and said, “Well, so much for trying something different.”

It was not merely rude, the ambassadors said. One recalled that moments later, his BlackBerry flashed a message from another envoy working on management change. “He just busted us apart,” it read.

yes, john, we know you are good at the angry clown act but how about seriously working on GETTING SOMETHING DONE...??!?

The envoys will not, of course, have any say about whether Mr. Bolton receives the full appointment to the United Nations. But their concerns over his methods extend to issues that the senators will undoubtedly have to weigh: his ability to build coalitions and reach consensus.

senators... listen up...! regarding abilities to build coalitions and reach consensus...? he doesn't have any or, if he does, he has deliberately failed to cultivate them and they've atrophied from severe neglect... DON'T CONFIRM HIM...!

(thanks to raw story...)

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Inside Dick Cheney's head

the only thing i can possibly come up with that might capture what it looks like is this hieronymus bosch painting, entitled "hell..."

Vice President Dick Cheney on Friday pointed to the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah as fresh evidence of the ongoing battle against terrorism that underscores the need to keep President Bush's Republican allies in control of Congress.

[...]

Cheney said that as Republicans make their case to voters in the midterm elections, "it's vital that we keep issues of national security at the top of the agenda." He faulted Democrats in Congress who have pushed for a timetable for withdrawing Americans from Iraq, saying that would send the wrong message to terrorists.

promoting fear gives uncle dick a reason to get up in the morning...

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Mercosur Summit followed by "Peoples' Summit" - minus Argentina

(Note: Venezuela is now a full member of Mercosur.)

i guess argentina and brazil are trying not to piss off the u.s. TOO much...

[Argentine President] Kirchner and [Brazil President] Lula tried to offset the influence of the Venezuela-Bolivia-Cuba axis in the Mercosur trade bloc. President Kirchner left the Córdoba Mercosur summit early last night in what was rumoured as an intentional snub to his presidential colleagues, who included Cuba's Fidel Castro and Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez. The move, however, was seen as a part of an effort by Argentina and Brazil to detach themselves somewhat from other members.

[...]

Mercosur chiefs yesterday wound up a summit in Argentina marking the incorporation of Venezuela, and which saw President Nestor Kirchner leave early in what observers said was part of Argentina's attempt together with Brazil to prevent Chavez from pushing the trade bloc too far to the left.

[...]

Kirchner's leaving immediately after the summit ended was a cautious move to mark a distance from Chávez and Castro, who after the official summit ended took part in a parallel "Peoples' Summit."

i understand the reticence of argentina and brazil to be identified too closely with fidel and hugo... however, i sure would like to see all of them figure out how to work together effectively and to present a united front... if latin america could figure out how to do that, they would be an unstoppable global economic force...

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"Appropriate," "lawful" killing... Result: just another dead Iraqi...

the real horror of a story like this is its utter matter-of-factness... why, goodness gracious, doesn't EVERYBODY accept the fact that there are "appropriate," "lawful" killings...?

Killing by Guardsman in Iraq Called Appropriate

Army Lt. Col. John W. McClory found that Spec. Nathan B. Lynn, 21, of South Williamsport, Pa., did nothing wrong in shooting Gani Ahmad Zaben in the post-curfew darkness outside a group of homes on Feb. 15. McClory ruled that Lynn thought the man was armed with an AK-47 and believed he was a threat.

[...]

...Lynn followed the rules of engagement, or ROE, when he "lawfully" killed Zaben in an area that had been the scene of frequent insurgent attacks.

[...]

"Although evidence in this case indicates that the victim was in fact unarmed, sufficient evidence was presented that SPC Lynn thought the man was armed, perceived hostile intent from the movement of the victim in an active area of combat operations, and acted within the ROE in engaging the target with deadly force," McClory wrote in his report to commanders on Thursday.

needless to say, there is no mention whatsoever in the story about the man, the man's family, the terrible tragedy they have suffered at our hands, how their lives have been changed forever... gani ahmad zaben is just another dead iraqi...

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Recommending that Congress sue Bush to stop him from trashing the Constitution...?

it could happen...

i posted a month and a half ago that the american bar association was launching an investigation into bush's potential abuse of the constitution through his use of signing statements...

The ABA's president, Michael Greco, said in an interview that he proposed the task force because he believes the scope and aggressiveness of Bush's signing statements may raise serious constitutional concerns.

evidently, as a result of the inquiry, the aba is poised to recommend a pretty heavy-duty step...

Now, U.S. News has learned, an American Bar Association task force is set to suggest even stronger action. In a report to be released Monday, the task force will recommend that Congress pass legislation providing for some sort of judicial review of the signing statements. Some task force members want to simply give Congress the right to sue over the signing statements; other task force members will not characterize what sort of judicial review might ultimately emerge.

To mount a legal case, a person or group must have been granted "standing," or the right to file a lawsuit. Current law does not grant members of Congress such a right, and recent Supreme Court decisions have denied it in all but very exceptional cases. But Congress could consider bypassing that hurdle by writing a law to give its members the right to sue, a resolution in the task force's report declares, a source familiar with the task force report told U.S. News.

The resolution cannot become official aba policy without approval from the group's legislative body, scheduled to meet in Hawaii next month.

if the task force thinks that what's happening is so serious that it ends up recommending congress pass legislation giving its members the right to sue, that's some major shit...

every day, the walls close in a little bit more on bushco, but, no matter... they're still there, barricaded in the white house, trashing our country just as fast as they can...

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The western media on Lebanon: ingore the tragedy, ignore the death, it's all about US

the middle east reality show: the race to get out of town...

The western media has been focused like a laser on the dramatic story of the evacuation of refugees from western countries. The Americans I know who are on their way out all have the same question: Why are we the story? With hundreds dead, thousands injured, hundreds of thousands displaced, Lebanon essentially turned into a Gaza with mountains, and the Bush Administration saying that talk of a cease-fire is “premature,” can we ever expect the western media to report what is significant rather than what will entertain its audience?

ordinary folks like you and me are scrambling to leave a country that's being pounded into dust and THEY become the story...? another pathetic display of the distorted lens through which everything we experience through the media is viewed...

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"Serious talk of Baghdad being divided into east and west. We are extremely worried."

that familiar flushing sound you hear is an entire presidential administration suddenly unclogging and rushing down the pipe into the septic tank of history...

"Iraq as a political project is finished," a top government official told Reuters -- anonymously because the coalition of Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki remains committed in public to a U.S.-sponsored constitution preserving Iraq's unity.

"The parties have moved to Plan B," the official said, saying Sunni, ethnic Kurdish and majority Shi'ite blocs were looking at ways to divide power and resources and to solve the conundrum of Baghdad's mixed population of seven million.

"There is serious talk of Baghdad being divided into east and west," said the official, who has long been a proponent of the present government's objectives. "We are extremely worried."

wasn't it colin powell who said, "you break it, you own it...?"

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Probably one of Condi's, Dick's, and Rummy's worst nightmares

...



george, on the other hand, just goes biking and dreams of groping angela...

[Fidel Castro] left Havana at midday for his first visit to Argentina since President Nestor Kirchner's inauguration in May 2003 and arrived in Cordoba at 8.30pm. It is the fourth time Castro [has visited] Argentina.

The surprise visit by the dean of Latin America's left, honouring Venezuela's formal induction into Mercosur, set up a nightmare image for Washington's free-trade faithful: Castro and his radical allies Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Evo Morales of Bolivia publicly embracing Latin America's more mainstream leftists, far beyond the influence of the White House.

Arriving in Buenos Aires yesterday morning, Chavez called their display of leftist unity a "fiesta of integration." He lunched with Kirchner and the two later flew separately to Cordoba to join the others, including Brazil's Luiz Inicio Lula Da Silva.

Morales and Chile?s Michelle Bachelet were attending as observers; also coming are the leaders of Mercosur members Paraguay and Uruguay, Nicanor Duarte Frutos and Tabare Vazquez respectively.

Venezuela's formal induction into Mercosur, a long-unassuming Customs union that will now include all the continent's largest economies, is to be a highlight of today's daylong Mercosur summit of presidents.

interesting that i've seen nothing of this in the u.s. media... totally predictable but interesting, nonetheless...

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Bush had better keep his goddam hands to himself

what IS IT with this guy...? the photo of angela merkel cringing at the g8 summit was painful to see and this ain't much better...



Bush "playfully" slaps
Rep. Al Green at NAACP
convention

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Another court boot in Bushco's ass

keep 'em comin'...

A federal judge on Thursday rejected a motion by the Bush administration to dismiss a lawsuit against AT&T over its cooperation with a government surveillance program, ruling that state secrets would not be at risk if the suit proceeded.

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The world's stupidest analogy

news flash - people are born left-handed (i'm one of 'em) and, no matter how hard we try, right-handedness just ain't in the cards... people are also born black and red and yellow and brown and short and tall and stout and skinny and with green eyes and blue eyes and brown eyes and gray eyes... and, ya know what, you can't do anything about all that either...

"Dogs aren't born mooing, and people aren't born gay," a [Focus on the Family] news release stated.

is it possible that people are born neither straight nor gay...? and, ultimately, what the hell difference does it make...? god, sitting up in his/her/its heaven, gazing down on his/her/its creatures and saying, you're ok, you're not ok, you're ok, you're not ok, is patently absurd... it's ALL good as long as it's done with love and in the light... life's REAL challenges are all about loving and living in the light...

Focus psychologist Bill Maier told reporters that scientists had discredited several studies linking homosexuality to genetic causes.

And Melissa Fryrear, a Focus gender-issues analyst, said she herself had overcome lesbianism.

"I know first-hand that people are not born gay," she said.

good for you, melissa... if "overcoming lesbianism" has helped you to live a more fulfilling, loving life, i commend you for it... for others, embracing their lesbianism may help them to lead more fulfilling, loving lives... get over it... and, please, please, i'm begging you, STOP TELLING ME WHAT GOD WANTS FOR ME... that's between god and me and you aren't qualified to speak on the subject...

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Well, SOMEBODY'S listening to the neocons...!

if nobody's listening, then why do flaming horse's patoots like bill kristol continue to get valuable airtime...?

I don't think the country is listening to the neocons anymore.

Conservative pundit Pat Buchanan, appearing on MSNBC

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Bill Clinton supporting Lieberman doesn't make me re-think Joe, it makes me re-think Bill

he should keep his nose out of this one...

One of the Democratic Party's biggest guns, former President Bill Clinton, is coming to Connecticut to campaign for Senator Joe Lieberman.

Clinton's visit, planned for July 24 in Waterbury, comes as a new Quinnpiac Poll shows Lieberman and his Democratic primary challenger, businessman Ned Lamont, in a statistical dead heat.

lieberman's made his bed, he should have to lie in it... if he can persuade the voters of connecticut to support him in the primary, he really should do it on his own merits, not trying to make himself look good by having the former president speak up for him...

there's another side to this coin... clinton, as all former presidents, is ever-mindful of his legacy... stumping for lieberman isn't helping him and, even though we should not confuse the two, it isn't helping his wife either... tossing his support behind joe, rather than making me think again about joe, is making me think again about bill...

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Emily Litella

you have to to take a look at this...

Emily Litella speaks out on the situation in the middle east

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Irak or Iran or am I stoopid...?

hunter questions his own intelligence on daily kos...

I know maybe i am not smart like on tv, but maybe now i am thinking on the tv, is the problem in my dream that they did not know between irak and iran? Did they mess up and stuff, i guess? Because now they are saying if we fix up iran then everything will work great and there will be democracy. And that is what i thought they said about irak in my dream but maybe i am stupid?

[...]

Anyway, Bill Kristol says that we should go invade Iran because they will greet us as liberators. And I bumped my head and now I'm dum and i taste copper and stuff but that still seems to me like the stupidest motherfuking thing I ever heard.

Anyway if you see Bill Kristol tell him please put some flowers on algernons grav in the bakyard because i may be dum but compared to that dum fuker i am godamm richard feynman.

no, hunter, you're not stupid... and let's just hope and pray that our fellow countrymen have recovered from their earlier attack of the stupids...

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Poverty a Bush priority...? Perish the thought...!

this headline and lead-in in today's wapo to what should be a front-page story, says everything you need to know about the hypocrisy and political posturing of our president...

Bush's Poverty Talk Is Now All but Silent

Aiding Poor Was Brief Priority After Katrina

and i would dispute that it was even a brief priority... it was grandstanding, nothing more and nothing less...

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NYT editorial on Alberto Gonzales' testimony: headline of the day

telling it like it is... how refreshing...

Editorial

Tap-Dancing as Fast as He Can

Published: July 20, 2006

This is how President Bush keeps his promise to deal with Congress in good faith on issues of national security and the balance of powers: He sends the attorney general to the Senate Judiciary Committee to stonewall, obfuscate and spin fairy tales.

Testifying on Tuesday after months of refusing to show up, Alberto Gonzales dodged questions about President Bush’s warrantless wiretapping operation. He refused to say whether it was the only time that Mr. Bush had chosen to ignore the 1978 law on electronic eavesdropping. In particular, he would not say whether it was true that the government had accumulated large amounts of data on Americans’ routine telephone calls. “The programs and activities you ask about, to the extent that they exist, would be highly classified,” Mr. Gonzales intoned.

Mr. Gonzales did answer when he was asked who had derailed a Justice Department investigation, requested by Congress, into Mr. Bush’s decision to authorize the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on phone calls and e-mail without a warrant. Mr. Gonzales said that Mr. Bush himself did it, by refusing to grant the needed security clearances to the lawyers involved.

one of these days, hopefully sooner rather than later, we will find out the full extent of the criminality that is being and has been perpetrated from 1600 pennsylvania avenue and we will be astonished at its depth and breadth...

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As the bombs fall, the usual suspects are banging the drums for a wider war

don't these people ever get tired of death and destruction...?

Americans are being whipped into a new war frenzy with simplistic visions of evil villains, much like occurred four years ago before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Just as Saddam Hussein was cast as the monster whose elimination would transform Iraq into a democratic oasis, Hezbollah and its allies in Syria and Iran are presented now as the crux of all evil in the Middle East whose military defeat will bring a new day.

Inside the United States, many of the same politicians and pundits who stampeded the nation into Iraq are back again urging the application of even more violence. While George W. Bush and his neoconservative advisers may be leading the herd, influential Democrats – like Hillary Clinton and Alan Dershowitz – are running with this pack, too.

i'm sure many of these "politicians and pundits" consider the hezbollah-israel war a blessing heaven-sent, but god, i am sure, does not seek death and destruction for his creatures... i only hope god will choose to save our souls if we get duped again...

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Hezbollah, Israel, and Lebanon: bombings, death, and massive displacement

it's getting worse and nobody's making an effort to stop it...

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour criticized the growing death toll, saying the indiscriminate shelling of cities and of nearby military sites was invariably resulting in the deaths of innocent civilians.

[...]

Thousands of foreigners fled Lebanon in one of the largest evacuation operations since World War II, including 1,000 Americans who arrived in Cyprus early Thursday on a rented cruise ship.

[...]

Hezbollah, undeterred, fired rockets into the Israeli Arab town of Nazareth, where Jesus is said to have spent his boyhood, killing two Arab brothers, ages 3 and 9, as they played outdoors.

[...]

Prime Minister Fuad Saniora, whose weak government has been unable to fulfill a U.N. directive to disarm Hezbollah and put its army along the border with Israel, issued an urgent appeal for a cease-fire. He said his country "has been torn to shreds," and pointedly criticized the U.S. position that Israel acts in self-defense.

[...]

The Bush administration is giving Israel a tacit green light to take the time it needs to neutralize the Shiite militant group, but the Europeans fear mounting civilian casualties will play into the hands of militants and weaken Lebanon's democratically elected government.

[...]

In all, more than 10,000 people from at least 13 countries had been extracted from Lebanon by Wednesday night.

Israel refused to rule out a full-scale invasion.

the fact that the loathsome neocons are using this as a rationale to attack syria and iran is horrific and despicable beyond words...

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Crunch time for Kosovo

Serbia Flag



Kosovo's location
within Serbia

Simmering tensions in the region are threatening to reach a boiling point as UN-appointed envoy Martti Ahtisaari hosts a seventh round of negotations in Vienna this week, aimed at settling the province's final status: Albanian Kosovars favor independence, while Serbia is pushing for the province to remain under its control.

Kosovo's minority Serbs, concentrated in the north, have ended cooperation with the Pristina government. Just over half of ethnic Albanians, meanwhile, support to some extent Kurti's Self-Determination movement. The latest UNMIK head resigned last month. And a rift between governments of the West, which advocate a solution by the end of the year, and the government of Russia, which fears that an independent Kosovo would set a precedent for its own breakaway provinces, could further stall the process.

between mid-2003 to as recently as this past may, i spent a fair amount of time in macedonia, the country bordering kosovo on the south, where i was a mere 40km from kosovo's capital, pristina... the city where i was located was the weekend watering hole for many of the kfor troops (the un peace-keeping force in kosovo)... i'm currently in serbia, several hundred kilometers distant, but ironically at the nexus of serbian resistance to kosovo independence... the serbian president was in washington not long ago making serbian opposition to kosovo independence clear to the bush administration... having just lost montenegro, serbia isn't keen to lose yet more of what it considers its own... tensions in the region have been held in check ever since the nato bombing seven years ago, but they have never gone away... now that crunch time is here, i hope cooler heads will prevail...

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Ask Congress to oppose H.Res. 921 on Israel, Lebanon and the Palestinians

(courtesy of juan cole...)

take action if you can...

The Council for the National Interest has learned that the House of Representatives will vote sometime today on an unbalanced resolution on the current crisis between Israel, Lebanon and the Palestinians. The bill, H.Res. 921, includes no criticism of the month of Israeli attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure in Gaza and Lebanon, which have been carried out with American-made weapons paid for with U.S. taxpayer money. A Senate version of the bill passed by a voice vote (meaning there was no recorded vote) yesterday.

The Council for the National Interest encourages its members to call their member of Congress immediately to express their opposition to this bill for its lack of balance. You can reach your Representative's office by calling the main House switchboard at (202) 225-3121.

here's why...

Israel's attacks on innocent civilians and civilian infrastructure in Gaza and Lebanon are a violation of U.S. law, specifically the U.S. Arms Export Control Act and the U.S. Foreign Assistance Act. The U.S. Arms Export Control Act restricts the use of U.S. weapons to legitimate self-defense and internal policing; U.S. weapons cannot be used to attack civilians in offensive operations. The U.S. Foreign Assistance Act prohibits U.S. aid of any kind to a country with a pattern of gross human rights violations.

Israel's attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure in Gaza and Lebanon are examples of collective punishment, which are prohibited under the Geneva Conventions.

Continued Israeli actions against the civilian population of Gaza and Lebanon are not only against U.S. laws and the Geneva Conventions, which Israel has reportedly been given a "green light" to continue for another week by the Administration, but they are destroying the American ability to fight the war on terror. They are also destroying Israel's ability to make peace with her neighbors through negotiations, the only real road to security for the state of Israel.

i hold no brief for hezbollah, but we can't simply sit by while israel pounds innocent civilians of a neighboring country into dust...

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OMG...! Repub candor on Iraq - from a war SUPPORTER...!

somebody got his eyes opened up wide...

Congressman Gil Gutknecht (R-MN)... a strong supporter of the war since it began in March of 2003, told reporters in a telephone conference call Tuesday that American forces appear to have no operational control of much of Baghdad.

• “The condition there is worse than I expected...”

• “... I have to be perfectly candid: Baghdad is a serious problem.”

• “Baghdad is worse today than it was three years ago...”

• Sending additional troops to Iraq would be “a terrible mistake...”

• “We learned it’s not safe to go anywhere outside of the Green Zone any part of the day,”

• “They realize people like us are juicy targets.”

• “While a little bit of progress has been made, there’s an awful lot that needs to be done...”

• “... All of the information we receive sometimes from the Pentagon and the State Department isn’t always true.”

• “What I think we need to do more is withdraw more Americans...”

• “... I don’t want to predict what will happen if things don’t get better.”

• “Americans are going to start losing faith in this thing,”

don't beat around the bush, gil... tell us how you REALLY feel...!

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Shylock lives and is preying on the poor

you can see these places everywhere, usually cloaked in their less in-your-face guise as check-cashing parlors... they generally locate in and near immigrant and poor neighborhoods, most often in strip malls and, except for the bright neon sign in the window flashing "checks cashed" or "payday advances," look just like any other strip mall store...

Payday lending is another scheme that hits the working poor who rely on costly forms of credit. The industry has exploded in the past decade, "reporting $10 billion in sales in 2000 to $40 billion, including $6 billion in interest rates and fees, in 2003." Payday lenders offer "small-sum (between $200 and $500), high-fee ($15 to $35), short-term loans (generally two weeks) that result in annual percentage rates (APRs) that often equal or exceed 400%." Because of the high-risk terms, borrowers are often forced to pay "another high fee to roll over the loan for an additional two weeks or take out another loan to pay off the first loan, thereby getting trapped in a costly and often devastating cycle of 'back-to-back' loans." The Center for Responsible Lending reports that the average person pays $1,105 to borrow just $325 from a payday lender. The payday scheme is even a national security issue because these lenders target military service members, who are often young and financially strapped for cash. A Dec. 2004 New York Times study revealed that 25 percent of military households have used payday lenders and the Defense Department has listed predatory lending "as one of the top 10 threats to members of the military." According to the Marine Corps News, "the Navy and Marine Corps denied security clearance to about 2,000 service members nationwide in 2005 because of concern that their indebtedness could compromise key operations."

there's another, equally predatory, type of business that offers furniture and home electronics on a "rent-to-own" basis... it caters to people with no or poor credit and little available cash who would like to have a decent tv to watch (or a refrigerator or a computer or a stove or a microwave or a sofa), and can't come up with the money but can manage a monthly "rent," supposedly applied to a purchase price... by the time they've paid a few months of the exorbitant "rent" on these items, they could have bought three or four of them outright... it's scandalous...

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"When Iraqis are texting from Baghdad to see if you're OK, you know it's not good."

no shit...

The first warplanes sheared through the sky at about 3:30 am Friday, just as the call to prayer wavered out from the mosque, the faint, pre-recorded voice of the muezzin drowned in the rising growl of their engines. The bombings began soon after, and the anti-aircraft guns kicked in at about 4 am; we didn't get to sleep until dawn.

I woke up at 9, when a text message bleeped into my cellphone. It was from a friend in Baghdad, who wrote, "I hope U R OK and fine. We all here in Iraq feel worried about U." I was glad to hear from him, but his message didn't make me feel any better: When Iraqis are texting from Baghdad to see if you're OK, you know it's not good.

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Simple Middle East solution from a simple mind

a mind much better suited to brush-clearing in crawford than being the spokesman for the world's sole remaining superpower... sadly, the guy just doesn't get it...

US President George W Bush has said he suspects that Syria is trying to use the crisis in the Middle East to reassert its influence in Lebanon.

He suggested that Hezbollah activities were being orchestrated by Damascus.

Israel attacked Lebanon after the militant group captured two soldiers in a cross-border raid last week.

Mr Bush said it was very important that the Lebanese government, formed after Syria ended its occupation a year ago, should survive and succeed.

first of all, the survival and success of the lebanese government is not being imperiled by syria at the moment... secondly, you'd think that, after the reaction to having such mindlessness revealed at the g-8 conference in front of an unexpectedly open microphone, george might have gotten a clue... silly me... just in case we need reminding, let's revisit juan cole's comment from my post the other day...

It is an astonishingly simple-minded view of the situation, painted in black and white and making assumptions about who is who's puppet and what the Israeli motivations are. Israel doesn't appear as a protagonist. It is purely reactive. Stop provoking it, and it suddenly stops its war.

Since Israel is just being provoked and has no ambitions of its own, in this reading, it is useless to begin with a ceasefire. That treats the two sides as both provoking one another. Here, only Hizbullah matters, so you lean on Syria to lean on it, and, presto, peace breaks out.

It is a little window into the superficial, one-sided mind of the man, who has for six years been way out of his depth.

I come away from it shaken and trembling.

all bush is doing is feeding the neocon wet dream of expanding the already-expanding conflict to syria and iran... and, i suppose, that is precisely his intent...

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Can we still be inspired to reach for our greatness...?

a few choice paragraphs from a wonderful piece by brent budowsky, writing in consortium news, reminding us of the higher good we all too easily forget in these troubled times...

I've been in this capital city of America for a long time and dealt with giants and midgets of all persuasions and cannot remember any other time, when neither political party dared to offer a grand vision that at least tries to appeal to the souls and spirits of young Israelis, Arabs and Americans.

Can we agree that military policy without diplomacy is a one-way road to failure, that diplomacy without military strength is a one-way road to weakness, and that disastrous military policy with zero diplomacy is a one-way road to hell?

Today there is a war of the worlds, on virtually every field of endeavor, and contrary to the partisans, ideologues and profiteers, I would define it this way: it is a war between the dream builders, the dream crushers, the dream exploiters, and standing on the side, as always, the vanity players who's call to action is "what's in it for me."

[...]

Can we agree on this? Those who have committed crimes of war should be prosecuted and punished under law? Those who have been sent to war without armor and helmets and bandages were called heroes but treated with contempt and neglect by the same people, in both parties, who give magnificent speeches on the Fourth of July, but did nothing for four years to prevent this outrage that persists, too often, today?

Can we agree that the homeless heroes who fought our wars and suffer the hardships today should be treated with the honor and passion of a decent society, not the neglect and harvest of shame from those who let this happen without waging the fight for them that deserves to be waged?

[...]

This is not about Democrat, Republican, Left, Right. Let a thousand flowers bloom, let a hundred million voices sing, and let the battle be waged in the voting booth, on television and radio, on movie screens and Internet screens, with publishing houses and editorial boards and advertising eyeballs.

The common denominator is this: we are people who believe in the building of dreams, as Jefferson built dreams, as Adams built dreams, as these two giants, who stood together in creating our Nation, who stood apart on many of the great issues of their day, who died the same day, on different sides of our continent, whispering their last words about each other. speak to us today.

In these difficult days, no one ever promised it would be easy, but as others have said, the battle continues, the struggle remains, the cause endures, and the dream shall never die.

it's not often i can say that i've been inspired, far too rarely, in fact... but this did it... thanks, brent...

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My man, Russ, is on the case

as many of us have long suspected, bushco's justification for its criminal seizure of power is just exactly what it appeared to be at the very first - a load of bollocks...

Hamdan completely undercuts the Administration's already weak legal argument in defense of its warrantless wiretapping program.

[...]

In Hamdan, the Court made it clear that the Administration can't hide behind the AUMF anymore. The Administration tried to use the AUMF argument in the Hamdan case too - claiming that it authorized military commissions for detainees. But the Court flatly rejected that idea, just as it rejected the idea that the President's inherent authority as Commander-in-Chief trumps the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The bottom line is that the Court was not buying the extreme theories of executive power put forward by the Administration in the military commissions case, and there is no reason to think it that it would buy those same theories when they are used to justify the illegal wiretapping program.

-Senator Russ Feingold

what i find especially nauseating is that congress and the american people have essentially stood silently by for going on six years while this gang of thugs dismembered the u.s. constitution and compromised or outright did away with half or more of the things that have made america a beacon of light to the world...

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It isn't about Mexico's left and right

depending on who's counting, the mexican police or amlo's party, there were either 1.1M or 1.5M people gathered in the zocalo in mexico city yesterday...

[Andres Manuel] Lopez Obrador is asking the tribunal for two rulings that would stretch legal precedent. Publicly, he is calling for a recount of all 41 million votes in the hope of erasing his 244,000-vote deficit.

The motion also seeks a ruling that the President, Vicente Fox, tilted the playing field to favour Mr [Felipe] Calderon, the candidate of Mr Fox's conservative National Action Party. A favourable ruling on that motion would open the election to annulment and force a new one.

Mr Calderon's legal team is contesting both motions. By law, the tribunal, which is scheduled to begin hearing the case this week, must resolve the motions by August 31 and declare a winner by September 6.

The decision, and whether it is accepted by both parties, will be a critical test of whether Mexico can resolve disputes in a peaceful, legal manner rather than through the street demonstrations and backroom deals that settled close elections in the early 1990s. Ultimately, the choice could affect the stability of the country.

this may well be the deepest democratic and constitutional crisis ever faced by mexico... there will definitely be a next march and there will definitely be more people marching than came out for this one... anyone who characterizes what's happening as a contest between left and right is simply missing the point... it's all about the yawning gap between mexico's relatively few very rich and the masses of the very poor...

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Bushco theocracy trumps truth

of all the times when you absolutely need accurate, unbiased information, you get extremist religious crap instead - and federally-funded extremist religious crap, to boot...

Federally funded "pregnancy resource centers" are incorrectly telling women that abortion results in an increased risk of breast cancer, infertility and deep psychological trauma, a minority congressional report charged yesterday.

The report said that 20 of 23 federally funded centers contacted by staff investigators requesting information about an unintended pregnancy were told false or misleading information about the potential risks of an abortion.

The pregnancy resource centers, which are often affiliated with antiabortion religious groups, have received about $30 million in federal money since 2001...

never let facts interfere with religious dogma, i say...

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A Repub voice of reason on detainee rights

this is the kind of principled resistance to the barbaric, dictatorial practices, best-suited to a repressive police state, that have been advocated by the bushco gang of criminals...

[Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina] has insisted that only a system grounded in the fundamental rights of the military code and the Geneva conventions will affirm the reputation of the United States abroad and protect American troops when they are captured by enemies.

“What I’m trying to do with my time in the Senate during this whole debate we’re having is to remind the Senate that the rules we set up speak more about us than it does the enemy,” Mr. Graham said in an interview. “The enemy has no rules. They don’t give people trials, they summarily execute them and they’re brutal, inhuman creatures. But when we capture one of them, what we do is about us, not about them.

“Do they deserve, the bad ones, all the rights that are afforded? No. But are we required to do it because of what we believe? Yes.”

yes, indeed, senator graham, it IS about us and, yes, we ARE required to do it because of what we believe... if we stop living by those principles, we might as well officially and publicly nullify the constitution...

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Dusting off the nukes

and, if you're paying any attention at all, you know that the proponents of unending war, violence, and death, have been calling for escalation in the form of the u.s. attacking iran and syria...

(from robert parry at consortium news...)

The Israel-Lebanon conflict has opened up a possible route for George W. Bush and his neoconservative strategists to achieve a prized goal that otherwise appeared to be blocked for them – military assaults on Syria and Iran aimed at crippling those governments.

[...]

Hezbollah’s firing of rockets as far as the port city of Haifa, deep inside Israel, has touched off new fears among Israelis and their allies about the danger of more powerful missiles carrying unconventional warheads, possibly hitting heavily populated areas, such as Tel Aviv.

That fear of missile attacks by Islamic extremists dedicated to Israel’s destruction has caused Israel to start “dusting off it [sic] nukes,” one source told me.

the middle east is a powder keg, no doubt about it, but the very last thing we need to do is turn these neocon wet dreams into reality...

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Fear has been very good to Karl (and Dick and George and Don and...)

so we can expect a continual parade of boogeymen from now until the november elections...

Vice President Dick Cheney told Republicans on Monday to keep security issues prominent ahead of November's elections and condemned Democratic calls for a timetable on troop withdrawal from Iraq as "a bad idea."

[...]

Cheney's comments on security issues echoed White House political adviser Karl Rove, who has called Democrats weak on national security and urged Republicans to stress President George W. Bush's leadership in the war on terrorism ahead of November's congressional elections.

"Either we're serious about fighting this war or we are not. With George Bush leading this nation we are serious and we will not let down our guard," Cheney said, adding America's enemies were "still lethal and still desperately trying to hit us again."

every time they open their fear-mongering mouths about how scared we ought to be and how king george and dr. evil are going to protect us, we're supposed to pee our collective pants right on cue... karl obviously thinks there's still a lot of mileage on the manipulate-'em-with fear ploy... but maybe, just maybe, the good folks who've been dozing in front of their tv sets are starting to wake up... maybe...

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Maybe Bush should consider talking like a world leader in private too...!

[UPDATE AND BUMP]

juan cole has some thoughts about this pathetic interchange...

It is an astonishingly simple-minded view of the situation, painted in black and white and making assumptions about who is who's puppet and what the Israeli motivations are. Israel doesn't appear as a protagonist. It is purely reactive. Stop provoking it, and it suddenly stops its war.

Since Israel is just being provoked and has no ambitions of its own, in this reading, it is useless to begin with a ceasefire. That treats the two sides as both provoking one another. Here, only Hizbullah matters, so you lean on Syria to lean on it, and, presto, peace breaks out.

It is a little window into the superficial, one-sided mind of the man, who has for six years been way out of his depth.

I come away from it shaken and trembling.

simple solutions from a simple mind...

President Bush, not realizing his remarks were being picked up by a microphone, bluntly expressed his frustration with the actions of Hezbollah...

"See the irony is that what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this (expletive) and it's over," Bush told Blair in a discussion before the Group of Eight leaders began their lunch.

Bush also suggested that Annan call Syrian President Bashar Assad to "make something happen."

how about YOU doing some calling, you moron...!

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Condi is grotesque

juan cole, along with many others, has no patience for this shit...

Condi Rice said on Sunday that it was "grotesque" to suggest that "policies that confront extremism" actually "cause extremism." She was referring to George Stephanopolous's point that the Bush administration kept promising that invading and occupying Iraq would make the Middle East more peaceful (!).

The logical fallacy here is to describe a unilateral war of aggression and then a botched occupation with the euphemism of "confronting extremism." Of course the former can cause extremism. And did. That's not grotesque, that's just the fact of the matter.

the stuff that comes out of the mouths of the folks in this administration is sometimes simply beyond belief, particularly from a dominatrix witch wearing ferragamo shoes...

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Teodoro Obiang pales in comparison to Nursultan Nazarbayev

the rest of the world looks at this kind of massive hypocrisy and just shakes their collective heads...

In early 2004, President Bush issued a presidential proclamation barring corrupt foreign officials from entering the United States. Then, a few months ago, in spite of that proclamation, Washington was treated to the disgusting spectacle of an official visit by Teodoro Obiang, the corrupt dictator who rules over oil-rich Equatorial Guinea. But now the Bush Administration is preparing to roll out the red carpet for a man who, by sheer numbers, appears to have stolen far more than Obiang: President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan.

how much more is "far more...?"

This fall, James Giffen, an American business consultant, is set to be tried in the Southern District Court of New York on charges that he funneled more than $78 million in bribes to Kazakh officials. And guess who is alleged to have received most of that money? President Nazarbayev himself, along with his former prime minister, Nurlan Balgimbayev.

The government's indictment says the bribe money came from fees Giffen received from American oil companies that won stakes in Kazakhstan's oil fields. It charges that in addition to showering Nazarbayev with cash, Giffen bought his-and-her snowmobiles for the president and his wife, bought fur coats for Mrs. Nazarbayev and one of the president's daughters, and also paid the tuition at George Washington University for the daughter.

and that's just for starters...

Kazahstan also counts on support from the Houston-based Baker Botts law firm, which has advised energy companies seeking to invest in Kazakhstan and other Caspian countries. The firm's partners include James A. Baker III, who served as secretary of state under George Bush Sr. In late 1991, during the final days of the Soviet Union, Baker and Nazarbayev brokered the emerging U.S.–Kazakh relationship while enjoying a sauna at a villa in the mountains above Almaty.

can our behavior be any more hypocritical...? unfortunately the answer is, yeah, probably...

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No to Haynes

agreed...

William Haynes II, the Pentagon’s general counsel, has been closely involved in shaping some of the Bush administration’s most legally and morally objectionable policies, notably on the use of torture. The last thing he is suited to be is a federal judge, but that is just what President Bush wants to make him. The Senate has been far too willing to rubber-stamp the president’s extreme judicial nominees. But there is reason to hope that strong opposition to Mr. Haynes, including from the military, may block this thoroughly inappropriate choice.

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Iraq oil flow pinched as money disappears, but Chalabi couldn't have a hand in it - or could he...?

there is simply no good news to be had out of iraq or, for that matter, the middle east...

[U.S. Comptroller General David Walker] said one of the failures of the U.S. program was related to the prewar assumption that Iraq would be able to pay for its reconstruction "in large part through oil revenues."

He said about 10 percent of Iraq’s refined fuels and 30 percent of its imported fuels are being stolen, in part because the subsidized Iraqi price of gasoline, about 44 cents a gallon, is less than half the regional price of 90 cents a gallon.

"That provides a tremendous incentive to be able to steal these fuels and be able to sell them for whatever purposes, corruption or otherwise," Walker said.

Walker noted that oil production, which was to provide prime support to the new government, is below prewar production and distribution levels, complicated by the insurgency and difficulties in maintaining the aging oil infrastructure.

and let's not forget, shall we, who almost stepped in to the post of iraqi oil minister just six months ago, a fact that the wapo article conveniently fails to mention...

As a fuel crisis deepened in Iraq, the government replaced its oil minister with controversial Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Chalabi, whose poor performance in the Dec. 15 elections was a setback in his recent attempt at political rehabilitation.

but i'm sure none of that missing money would be finding its way into chalabi's pocket, right...? right...!

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If he's calling for WWIII, the Gingrich makeover isn't working

it wouldn't matter if he donned enough makeup to suit tammy faye baker, he still comes across like a nutcase... i just hope to hell nobody is really listening because the words coming out of his mouth are seriously deranged...

Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich says America is in World War III and President Bush should say so. In an interview in Bellevue [WA] this morning Gingrich said Bush should call a joint session of Congress the first week of September and talk about global military conflicts in much starker terms than have been heard from the president.

"We need to have the militancy that says 'We're not going to lose a city,' " Gingrich said. He talks about the need to recognize World War III as important for military strategy and political strategy.

Gingrich said he is "very worried" about Republican's facing fall elections and says the party must have the "nerve" to nationalize the elections and make the 2006 campaigns about a liberal Democratic agenda rather than about President Bush's record.

'scuse me, but precisely what does he mean by "nationalizing" the elections...? i think it would be ever so much more efficient if bush simply declared WWIII and martial law at the same time... then we wouldn't have to go through all the unnecessary hassle of having an election at all...

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WaPo's Broder and Balz are full of crap

given what we know now vs. what we knew even as recently as the 2004 election, i am dumbfounded to read this nonsense...

Whether the return to national rancor and partisan conflict was avoidable or inevitable remains a topic of debate, although the evidence tilts in the direction of inevitability. The deep divisions that produced the disputed election of 2000 never disappeared and quickly reasserted themselves shortly after Sept. 11. In a 50-50 America, the lust for political advantage overwhelmed calls for consensus and cooperation.

there was nothing friggin' INEVITABLE about it, messrs. broder and balz... it was absolutely goddam DELIBERATE, CALCULATED, AND TOTALLY MANIPULATIVE, planned and orchestrated by karl rove, to create an environment that would allow cheney, rumsfeld, et al, to push for and accrue total power within the executive branch of the government...

the bush administration had a chance to bring the people of the united states together, but that would not have served their purposes... they had a chance to capture the arch-enemy, osama bin laden, but that wouldn't have served their purposes either... instead, they've worked diligently to polarize the american people, to sustain an environment of fear, to establish a one-party state, and to place the citizenry firmly under the thumb of a regime virtually dictatorial in its aim and intent...

the news media in the united states would be well served by david broder's retirement, the sooner the better...

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Staggering internet stats

(thanks to the sunday uk times online via raw story...)

and it's changing the world faster than we can comprehend...

• 50 billion the number of e-mails dispatched every day wordwide; in 2001 the traffic was less than 12 billion

• 88 per cent of e-mails are junk including about 1 per cent which are virus-infected

• 32 The average number of e-mail messages received per person per day. This is rising by 84 per cent each year

• 440 million the number of electronic mailboxes in use, including 170 million corporate ones, growing by 32 per cent per year

• 1,035 million the total number of mobile phone text messages sent each month in Britain

• 37 The average number of texts a user sends per month compared with 21 in 2001 1 million the number of children aged under 10 in Britain — one in three — who own a phone

• 8 The average age at which a child gets a mobile phone in Britain

the current internet protocol, ipv4, has approximately 4B available internet addresses, of which 75% are already in use... the new protocol, ipv6, already being rolled out in some countries, will have (count 'em)

340,282,366,920,938,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

available addresses... stated differently, that's 340 undecillion, 282 decillion, 366 nonillion, 920 octillion, 938 septillion...

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The Iraq war was - and still is - a religious crusade

(from Kevin Phillips, author of American Theocracy: The Perils and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century, via Steve Clemons at The Washington Note...)

not that we don't intuitively know this, but it's always good to have it backed up by someone who knows what he's talking about...

Richard Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals noted in 2003 that since the break-up of the USSR, "evangelicals have substituted Islam for the Soviet Union. The Muslims have become the modern-day equivalent of the Evil Empire."

you don't have to read very many wing-nut blogs to run across the term "islamofascism..." maneuvering to get the political support of this constituency was a natural ploy for satan's very own right-hand man, karl rove...

Because such beliefs concentrate among very pro-Bush evangelicals, fundamentalists, and Pentecostals, my [Kevin Phillips] estimate is that some 55 percent of the people who voted for Bush in 2000 would have told pollsters about believing in the end times and Armageddon.

and, as we know all too well, manipulating the "end-times evangelicals," for rove, was like shooting fish in a barrel...

[This] huge chunk of Bush voters would want to view the U.S. attempt to topple Saddam Hussein in terms of the war of good versus evil. Weapons of mass destruction were a prop but collateral to the larger biblical context. Invading Iraq would evoke that context because Saddam was one of the evil ones -- maybe the Evil One, given his Babylon tie-in. Toppling him could aspire to biblical interpretation. Aiding Israel was also biblically vital. Bush had already carved out a related, overarching "good versus evil" posture with his heavily religious post-9/11 rhetoric.

all of which would explain why, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary and the absence, in most cases, of any rational thought, these folks are still rabidly and slavishly supporting dear leader...

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Wrong again: "No one questions the determination of the White House to fight terrorism"

the nyt has a bgo (blinding glimpse of the obvious)...

It is only now, nearly five years after Sept. 11, that the full picture of the Bush administration’s response to the terror attacks is becoming clear. Much of it, we can see now, had far less to do with fighting Osama bin Laden than with expanding presidential power.

Over and over again, the same pattern emerges: Given a choice between following the rules or carving out some unprecedented executive power, the White House always shrugged off the legal constraints. Even when the only challenge was to get required approval from an ever-cooperative Congress, the president and his staff preferred to go it alone.

but, once again, either deliberately, disingenuously, or under full sail of ignorance, it fails to make the next logical leap...

While no one questions the determination of the White House to fight terrorism, the methods this administration has used to do it have been shaped by another, perverse determination: never to consult, never to ask and always to fight against any constraint on the executive branch.

bushco does not and never has had any desire whatsoever to fight terrorism... terrorism is bushco's very, very best friend... it is entirely in the interests of the criminal gang that controls the white house and most of the rest of the united states government to continue to stoke the fears of the american people, and that means keeping terrorism alive and well... while it will be a dark day indeed when this truth finally dawns on americans, at least we will finally be able to see the full horror of those who have achieved a strangehold on everything that the u.s. stands for...

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No, Senator McCain, that's not it at all

(nyt's quotation of the day...)

"I hesitate to say anything nice about him, for fear that it would be used against him. And that’s a terrible commentary on the state of politics and the political climate today."

- SENATOR JOHN McCAIN, Republican of Arizona, on Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut.

john, john, john... let's not forget for one single moment, shall we, that YOU and your criminal political party, orchestrated by satan's right-hand man, karl rove, and embodied in men like george bush, dick cheney, donald rumsfeld, and yourself, are responsible for the state of politics and the political climate today... look in the mirror, john...

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