28 June 2005

High Court Decisions Could ‘Change the Face of the Internet As We Know It.’
FreePress.net, 28 June 2005
The Supreme Court today ruled on two critical cases, NCTA v. Brand X and MGM v. Grokster, both of which could have a profound impact on future of the Internet. Free Press joined amici curiae briefs in both cases.
Ben Scott, policy director of Free Press, issued the following statement:
The Supreme Court handed down two rulings today that will have a tremendous impact on the future of the Internet. The Brand X decision will badly weaken the foundation of the Internet as an open marketplace for new ideas, competitive services, and the free flow of information. The Grokster case upholds the protection of technologies from secondary liability in copyright infringement, even as it rules against the peer-to-peer company.
The 6-to-3 decision in the Brand X case will likely change the face of the Internet as we know it. The Court ruled that the FCC's interpretation of the Communications Act was lawful, upholding the agency's long-contested decision to exempt cable modem service from the common carrier regulations that apply to its major competitor, the telephone companies.
The response of the telephone giants that control the DSL market will no doubt be to rush to the FCC and the Congress to demand their own exemption from open access regulations. If they are successful, the Brand X case will stand as the trigger that reversed a century of communications policy and undermined the bedrock principle of democratic media — nondiscriminatory access for all.
Every major technology in the history of this nation designed to facilitate the transport of goods, services and information has operated as a common carrier network. The railroads, the highway system, the telegraph, the telephone, and the Internet all have followed this principle. Now we are told that this tremendously successful system will be overturned because the FCC was within its rights in an arcane definitional ruling.
The FCC's decision was awash in lobbying dollars from the affected industries that had little media scrutiny at the time and absolutely zero public involvement. The FCC's distinction between "information service" and "telecommunications service" to describe precisely the same bit-streams of ones and zeros boggles the imagination.
Justice Scalia, who rarely collects accolades from the public interest community, got it right this time in his dissenting opinion. "After all is said and done," he wrote, "after all the regulatory cant has been translated, and the smoke of agency expertise blown away, it remains perfectly clear that someone who sells cable-modem service is 'offering' telecommunications."
The Brand X decision is not only absurd on its face, it is an insult to the American ideals of competitive markets, equal opportunity, and the free flow of information. This short-sighted decision to eliminate common carrier requirements on broadband networks essentially grants the incumbent cable giants the prerogative to stifle all competitive access to their wires. If the telephone companies receive similar exemptions — as is expected — the cozy duopoly of cable and DSL that controls more than 95 percent of the broadband market will be entrenched for a generation. There will be no competitive broadband carriers. There will be no independent ISPs. The thriving new market for Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) may be badly destabilized. The owners of the wires will likely determine what content is and is not appropriate to travel over their networks.
Without guarantees of nondiscriminatory access, Internet services provided by anyone other than the incumbent wireline giants will be under threat. Not just the so-called last-mile connections into consumer households will be affected. The decision also impacts the "middle-mile" networks that connect our major cities. The booming market for wireless broadband depends upon these middle-mile pipes for backhaul connection to the wider Internet.
The hundreds of communities across the country that have built their own Community Internet services must also be interconnected. Common carriage rules guaranteed that competitive broadband providers serving rural areas and low-income urban neighborhoods would not become isolated islands. After Brand X, this guarantee will be replaced by the whims of the cable and telco cartels.
The response from the public and its representatives in Congress must be firm, swift and resolute. The open proceedings at the FCC dealing with nondiscrimination on wireline networks should become a focal point of attention for advocates of telecom policy in the public interest. Congress must seek to reverse the FCC's misguided judgment, re-establishing rules that protect open access to communications networks. Far from granting the phone companies the same exemptions, Congress should write an unambiguous statute guarding communications network from monopoly domination.
Finally, the hundreds of towns and cities across the country that have chosen to build their own Community Internet and municipal broadband projects should rise together in strong denunciation of the demise of common carriage. These new enterprises represent the true spirit of innovation, local ingenuity and competitive enterprise. These local networks offer the promise of bridging the digital divide and pursuing affordable broadband access for all Americans. We must not allow them to be held hostage by wireline monopolies emboldened to crush competition with disastrous public policy.
In the Grokster case, the monumental question of whether peer-to-peer network technologies themselves, rather the ways they are used, could be deemed an illegal inducement to commit copyright violation was punted into the future. The Court issued a narrow ruling against Grokster on the grounds that the company blatantly advertised the opportunity to use a peer-to-peer technology to break the law and profited from that specific venture.
The law has always made a careful distinction between regulating technologies and regulating the users of those technologies. This is no time to turn our backs on history. The critical point in this case is the Justices affirmation that technologies cannot be held liable for how consumers use them. Innovation must be permitted to thrive.
The lesson from both Brand X and Grokster is that Congress has an obligation to the people to protect the viability of an open Internet and to resist the temptations of the powerful to control how we access and use our common communications systems.

Nightmare Vision of Underwater Britain
JAMES REYNOLDS
Scotsman.com, 28 June 2005
The UK's major coastal cities could be submerged as a result of massive sea-level rises over the next two centuries, transforming the British mainland into a string of islands, according to latest research.
In a doomsday scenario, the melting of ice sheets caused by global warming could mean that Scotland's major coastal conurbations, including Edinburgh, Dundee and Inverness, and smaller settlements such as Peterhead and Ullapool, could be wiped off the map completely.
Experts say the flash floods and sweltering heat that have swept across Britain during the past few weeks could be a harbinger of major problems in the future.
The study suggests that the planet's rapidly changing weather patterns will have a devastating effect on the UK. According to the most extreme model, England and Wales would be most affected, with the centre of London and many cities and coastal towns under water.

Iraq, Afghanistan On the Brink of Disaster: Bush Warns Blair He Must Boost UK Forces
BRIAN BRADY
Scotsman.com, 26 June 2005
Britain is coming under sustained pressure from American military chiefs to keep thousands of troops in Iraq - while going ahead with plans to boost the front line against a return to "civil war" in Afghanistan.
Tony Blair was warned that war-torn Iraq remains on the brink of disaster - more than two years after the removal of Saddam Hussein - during his summit with President Bush in Washington earlier this month.

27 June 2005

A Thirty Years War?
by George Hunsinger
Antiwar.com, 25 June 2005
Currently the occupation is going poorly. One reason is the indiscriminate tactics used by U.S. forces. Whole towns – from Fallujah to Ramadi and now to the desert villages around Qaim – have virtually been flattened. Analyst Fred Kaplan comments: "Leveling towns, bombing every suspicious target in sight – this is not how hearts and minds are won or how persistent insurgencies are defeated." Indiscriminate tactics, of course, also violate morality and the laws of war.
It is not surprising that the occupation lacks wide popular support. Civilian casualties – already in the tens, and perhaps hundreds, of thousands – are steadily on the rise. Among children malnutrition has doubled and mortality has tripled. Hospitals still lack basic medicines and equipment, water and electricity are in short supply, half the population is unemployed, and prices for food are inflated. Car bombs, assassinations, kidnappings, deadly roadblocks, stagnant sewage, and strikes from American forces are a daily occurrence. At least one million refugees have fled the country.
Those who insist on "staying the course" overlook the unpleasant fact that the occupation is the main cause of the insurgency, not its cure. Outstripped and illegitimate, it will only bring more death and destruction.
...Although no good options exist, a viable exit plan might include the following:

• The U.S. should cease all offensive military operations, withdraw from population centers, and announce that it plans to depart in six months.
• An international peacekeeping force should be established, consisting of UN blue helmets along with forces from the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference.
• Iraqi security forces should be trained under international auspices, with special attention to respecting human rights.
• Plans for permanent U.S. military bases should be abandoned, and the American embassy (now the world's largest) should be reduced to normal size.
• A generous aid package, with no strings attached, should be offered to rebuild what the war has destroyed.

As unpalatable as such a strategy may be to our national pride, it is as prudent, principled and ambitious as the quagmire permits. It is arguably more "realistic" than continuing to fight indefinitely against a growing insurgency that is increasingly sophisticated in weaponry and tactics. Those who believe otherwise should explain to the increasingly disillusioned American public how we can extricate ourselves from the biggest U.S. foreign-policy disaster since Vietnam.
SEE ALSO:
Informed Comment
Juan Cole, 27 June 2005
I share al-Hakim's fear that civil war in Iraq could ignite the entire eastern portion of the Middle East. He is a man of the region and attention should be paid to him on this. Likewise, I agree with the Egyptians that a precipitate US withdrawal would very likely spark the sectarian war that al-Hakim warned about. I also agree with the al-Akhbar editorial that it is time for the US to bring in the international community. The Egyptians know Iraq and know the region. The Americans, who have shown themselves incredibly ignorant of both, should listen carefully to what they are saying.

Leftward Christian Soldiers
A new, well-organized religious group has emerged. And guess what: It actually supports Christian values.
By Rob Garver
The American Prospect, 24 June 2005
Deep in the heart of the reddest county in a red state, a new grass-roots movement is taking shape that means to break the religious right’s hold on the rhetoric of Christianity by developing a network of activists on the “Christian left” that can be mobilized to support progressive causes. Founded by Jacksonville, Florida, businessman Patrick Mrotek, the Christian Alliance for Progress (CAP) says its purpose is the “reclaim” the Christian faith from the extreme religious right.

25-26 June 2005

Proof Of Deception, Not Intention
David Corn
TomPaine.com, 22 June 2005
The DSM and the other British memos, though, are significant and serious for another reason: They prove that Bush's primary case for war—the argument that Saddam Hussein, with his supposed connection to Al Qaeda, posed a direct WMD threat to the United States—was false (if not an outright lie). Moreover, they show that the issue is not bad intelligence—as Bush and his crew have suggested after no WMDs were found in Iraq—but the administration's purposeful misrepresentation of intelligence. This is the main point for DSM fans to make.
The Downing Street memo, for instance, notes that British Foreign Minister Jack Straw believed the WMD case for war was "thin." Presumably, he had access to the leading prewar intelligence, and none of it convinced him. As these documents demonstrate, British officials were indeed worried about Hussein and WMDs, but Straw, according to the minutes of that July 23, 2002, gathering, told Blair that "Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran." Other British memos go into more detail. A March 22, 2002, memo written for Straw by Peter Ricketts, the political director of the British foreign service, notes, "Even the best survey of Iraq's WMD programmes will not show much advance in recent years on the nuclear, missile or [chemical weapons/biological weapons] fronts; the programmes are extremely worrying but have not, as far as we know, been stepped up." Another memo written by Blair national security aides reported that intelligence on Iraq's WMD was "poor," that Iraq's nuclear weapons program was "effectively frozen," and that its chemical and biological weapons programs have been "hindered."
Compare this to what Dick Cheney said in August 2002: "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction….What he wants is time, and more time to husband his resources to invest in his ongoing chemical and biological weapons program, and to gain possession of nuclear weapons." Cheney was conveying the impression that Iraq possessed active WMD programs. There was, he said, "no doubt" about this. The British memos show that Bush's number-one ally had a rather different—perhaps more reality-based—view. And, in retrospect, we know which one was closer to the truth.
Nowadays, Bush-backers like to claim that Bush, Cheney and Co. were led astray by the CIA and its faulty intelligence. But the British memos demonstrate that Bush and Cheney were not duped; they were doing the duping. The Brits looked at the existing intelligence and concluded the material was inconclusive and that Iraq's WMD programs were not strong. Yet the Bush-Cheney administration told the American public the intelligence was rock-solid and that Iraq was crazy with active WMD programs, including a project to develop quickly nuclear weapons. The DSM and the other documents are the evidence that blows apart the bad-intelligence defense embraced by the Bush administration.
Moreover, these records also show Bush was fiddling with the truth when he claimed before the war that Hussein was in league with Al Qaeda. That was a crucial component of Bush's case for the invasion. The argument he made at the time was not that Hussein would be so stupid as to use a biological or chemical weapon against a U.S. target (and risk retaliation that would certainly annihilate his regime) but that Hussein would slip such a weapon to his pals in Al Qaeda. According to these memos, Bush was essentially making this up. Ricketts wrote, "US scrambling to establish a link between Iraq and Al Aaida [sic] is so far frankly unconvincing." Other Blair aides noted there was "no recent evidence" of a link between Baghdad and Osama bin Laden. And Jack Straw wrote to Blair, "there has been no credible evidence to link Iraq with [bin Laden] and Al Qaida. Objectively, the threat from Iraq has not worsened as a result of 11 September."
So the documents indicate that the intelligence on the two main arguments for war—Hussein's WMD activity and his purported ties to bin Laden—was unconvincing, according to Bush's number-one ally.
...(One of the document also reports that the Bush administration was giving "little thought" to the invasion's "aftermath and how to shape it.") Nothing new here? Think of it this way: had the contents of these memos been known before the war, how might they have affected the debate?
Or consider this exchange. When I was discussing the memos the other day with a skeptical mainstream media reporter who brushed them aside as insignificant, I said, "Imagine if you came across official U.S. documents that noted that before the war, Condoleezza Rice had said in private meetings that the WMD intelligence was uncertain, that Hussein's WMD programs were not robust, and that the WMD case for war was 'thin.' Wouldn't that be hot-damn front-page news?" "You have a point," this MSMer said. Well, that's what happened in London. Put aside the questions of fixing intelligence and lying about intentions, these memos demolish Bush's case for war and his CIA-made-me-screw-up defense. That's why they are—or ought to be—big news.
SEE ALSO:
Fixed Is Fixed
Ray McGovern
TomPaine.com, June 22, 2005

Hit by Friendly Fire
With his polls down, Bush takes flak on Iraq from a host of critics--including some in his own party
By Kevin Whitelaw
USNews.com, 27 June 2005 issue
Nebraska Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel is angry. He's upset about the more than 1,700 U.S. soldiers killed and nearly 13,000 wounded in Iraq. He's also aggravated by the continued string of sunny assessments from the Bush administration, such as Vice President Dick Cheney's recent remark that the insurgency is in its "last throes." "Things aren't getting better; they're getting worse. The White House is completely disconnected from reality," Hagel tells U.S. News. "It's like they're just making it up as they go along. The reality is that we're losing in Iraq."

Iraq May Be Prime Place for Training of Militants, C.I.A. Report Concludes
By DOUGLAS JEHL
NYT, 22 June 2005
A new classified assessment by the Central Intelligence Agency says Iraq may prove to be an even more effective training ground for Islamic extremists than Afghanistan was in Al Qaeda's early days, because it is serving as a real-world laboratory for urban combat.
The assessment, completed last month and circulated among government agencies, was described in recent days by several Congressional and intelligence officials. The officials said it made clear that the war was likely to produce a dangerous legacy by dispersing to other countries Iraqi and foreign combatants more adept and better organized than they were before the conflict.
Congressional and intelligence officials who described the assessment called it a thorough examination that included extensive discussion of the areas that might be particularly prone to infiltration by combatants from Iraq, either Iraqis or foreigners.
They said the assessment had argued that Iraq, since the American invasion of 2003, had in many ways assumed the role played by Afghanistan during the rise of Al Qaeda during the 1980's and 1990's, as a magnet and a proving ground for Islamic extremists from Saudi Arabia and other Islamic countries.
The officials said the report spelled out how the urban nature of the war in Iraq was helping combatants learn how to carry out assassinations, kidnappings, car bombings and other kinds of attacks that were never a staple of the fighting in Afghanistan during the anti-Soviet campaigns of the 1980's. It was during that conflict, primarily rural and conventional, that the United States provided arms to Osama bin Laden and other militants, who later formed Al Qaeda.
The assessment said the central role played by Iraq meant that, for now, most potential terrorists were likely to focus their energies on attacking American forces there, rather than carrying out attacks elsewhere, the officials said. But the officials said Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other countries would soon have to contend with militants who leave Iraq equipped with considerable experience and training.

24 June 2005

The War President
By PAUL KRUGMAN IN VIENNA
NYT, 24 June 2005
In this former imperial capital, every square seems to contain a giant statue of a Habsburg on horseback, posing as a conquering hero.
America's founders knew all too well how war appeals to the vanity of rulers and their thirst for glory. That's why they took care to deny presidents the kingly privilege of making war at their own discretion.
But after 9/11 President Bush, with obvious relish, declared himself a "war president." And he kept the nation focused on martial matters by morphing the pursuit of Al Qaeda into a war against Saddam Hussein.
In November 2002, Helen Thomas, the veteran White House correspondent, told an audience, "I have never covered a president who actually wanted to go to war" - but she made it clear that Mr. Bush was the exception. And she was right.
Leading the nation wrongfully into war strikes at the heart of democracy. It would have been an unprecedented abuse of power even if the war hadn't turned into a military and moral quagmire. And we won't be able to get out of that quagmire until we face up to the reality of how we got in.
Let me talk briefly about what we now know about the decision to invade Iraq, then focus on why it matters.
The administration has prevented any official inquiry into whether it hyped the case for war. But there's plenty of circumstantial evidence that it did.
And then there's the Downing Street Memo - actually the minutes of a prime minister's meeting in July 2002 - in which the chief of British overseas intelligence briefed his colleagues about his recent trip to Washington.
"Bush wanted to remove Saddam," says the memo, "through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and W.M.D. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." It doesn't get much clearer than that.
The U.S. news media largely ignored the memo for five weeks after it was released in The Times of London. Then some asserted that it was "old news" that Mr. Bush wanted war in the summer of 2002, and that W.M.D. were just an excuse. No, it isn't. Media insiders may have suspected as much, but they didn't inform their readers, viewers and listeners. And they have never held Mr. Bush accountable for his repeated declarations that he viewed war as a last resort.
Still, some of my colleagues insist that we should let bygones be bygones. The question, they say, is what we do now. But they're wrong: it's crucial that those responsible for the war be held to account.
Let me explain. The United States will soon have to start reducing force levels in Iraq, or risk seeing the volunteer Army collapse. Yet the administration and its supporters have effectively prevented any adult discussion of the need to get out.
On one side, the people who sold this war, unable to face up to the fact that their fantasies of a splendid little war have led to disaster, are still peddling illusions: the insurgency is in its "last throes," says Dick Cheney. On the other, they still have moderates and even liberals intimidated: anyone who suggests that the United States will have to settle for something that falls far short of victory is accused of being unpatriotic.
We need to deprive these people of their ability to mislead and intimidate. And the best way to do that is to make it clear that the people who led us to war on false pretenses have no credibility, and no right to lecture the rest of us about patriotism.
The good news is that the public seems ready to hear that message - readier than the media are to deliver it. Major media organizations still act as if only a small, left-wing fringe believes that we were misled into war, but that "fringe" now comprises much if not most of the population.
In a Gallup poll taken in early April - that is, before the release of the Downing Street Memo - 50 percent of those polled agreed with the proposition that the administration "deliberately misled the American public" about Iraq's W.M.D. In a new Rasmussen poll, 49 percent said that Mr. Bush was more responsible for the war than Saddam Hussein, versus 44 percent who blamed Saddam.
Once the media catch up with the public, we'll be able to start talking seriously about how to get out of Iraq.

22 June 2005

GOP: Support Our Troops and the Abuse of Prisoners
Successful silencing of critical comments, Durbin yields to onslaught, apologizes in full
By Jill Zuckman and Gary Washburn, Tribune staff reporters. Jill Zuckman reported from Washington and Gary Washburn from Chicago
Chicago Tribune, 22 June 2005
His voice choking, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois took to the Senate floor Tuesday and explicitly offered "heartfelt apologies" for comparing America's treatment of prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention center to the atrocities of the Nazis, Soviets and other murderous regimes.
The apology came after a week of drumbeat criticism against Durbin, the assistant Democratic leader, from the White House, from Republican senators, from conservative activists and, finally, from Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, a fellow Democrat.
And Durbin's own halting efforts at contrition had seemed to only stoke more criticism until his mea culpa Tuesday.
"I'm sorry if anything that I said caused any offense or pain to those who have such bitter memories of the Holocaust, the greatest moral tragedy of our time," Durbin said as his voice trembled. "Nothing, nothing should ever be said to demean or diminish that moral tragedy. I'm also sorry if anything I said in any way cast a negative light on our fine men and women in the military."

Abu Ghraib, Rewarded
NYT, 22 June 2005
It is nice that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his team feel as if they have achieved closure on their prisoner abuse issues and are ready to move on. The problem is, they are still in deep denial. The Bush administration has not only refused to face the problem squarely, but it is also enabling a pervasive lack of accountability.
The most recent evidence of this sad state of affairs came this week in an article in The Times by Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker, who reported that the Pentagon believes the Abu Ghraib scandal has receded enough in the public's mind that Mr. Rumsfeld is considering a promotion for Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who was commander of American forces in Iraq at the time of the disaster.
We can see why General Sanchez would expect a promotion; Mr. Bush has rewarded the people who drafted the policies that led to the illegal detention, abuse, humiliation and, ultimately, torture and even killing of prisoners at the hands of American military forces. A couple were nominated to the federal appeals court. One became attorney general. Mr. Rumsfeld still has his job.
And we feel General Sanchez's pain. As the Army's own investigation showed, he lacked the experience to command the forces in Iraq. Once given that job, he labored under Mr. Rumsfeld's obsession for waging war with too few troops inadequately equipped. For months, Mr. Bush and Mr. Rumsfeld were pretending the war was over, while General Sanchez faced a mushrooming insurgency. He ordered his soldiers to start getting tough with prisoners to get intelligence.
General Sanchez relied on established practice in Mr. Bush's military. He set aside American notions of decency and the Geneva Conventions, authorizing harsh interrogations - including forcing prisoners into painful positions for long periods, isolating them, depriving them of sleep and using guard dogs to, as he put it, "exploit Arab fears." These practices would have been controversial for captives with information that would save Americans' lives. But the vast majority of Abu Ghraib inmates knew nothing.
General Sanchez was exonerated by the last in a series of investigations meant to keep the heat off top generals and civilian policy makers. But his own words at the Texas A&M University commencement were damning. When conditions are at their worst, General Sanchez said, "That is when a leader must step forward and lead - our ethics mandate it and our subordinates expect it."
General Sanchez failed to do that. He should not be the only senior person to pay the price for failure, but neither should he be the latest to be rewarded for it.

Iraq -- The New Afghanistan
By Ivo Daalder
TPM Cafe, 22 June 2005
The indefatigable Doug Jehl has this to report

"A new classified assessment by the Central Intelligence Agency says Iraq may prove to be an even more effective training ground for Islamic extremists than Afghanistan was in Al Qaeda's early days, because it is serving as a real-world laboratory for militants to improve their skills in urban combat."

So let me get this straight.  We went to war against Iraq, Bush told us over the weekend, because of 9/11. And since we've been there, Iraq has become the "central front" in the war on terror. ("All of us can agree that the world's terrorists have now made Iraq a central front in the war on terror," Bush said Saturday.) Thus, even Bush admits that we made it so. And now the terrorists aren't only killing American soldiers and Iraqis in Iraq -- they're getting what Richard Clarke calls "life-fire training," which they will use to strike again at a time and a place of their choosing.
No wonder that a majority of the American people have concluded that the Iraq War has made us less -- not more -- secure.
SEE ALSO:
Iraqi Rebels Refine Bomb Skills, Pushing Toll of G.I.'s Higher
By DAVID S. CLOUD
NYT, 22 June 2005

How To Change Ugly Regimes
Washington has a simple solution to most governments it doesn't like: isolate them, slap sanctions on them and wait for their downfall.By
Fareed Zakaria
Newsweek, 27 June issue
For almost five decades the United States has put in place a series of costly policies designed to force Cuba to dismantle its communist system. These policies have failed totally. Contrast this with Vietnam, also communist, where Washington has adopted a different approach, normalizing relations with its former enemy. While Vietnam remains a Leninist regime in many ways, it has opened up its society, and the government has loosened its grip on power, certainly far more than that of Fidel Castro. For the average person in Libya or Vietnam, American policy has improved his or her life and life chances. For the average person in Iran or Cuba, U.S. policy has produced decades of isolation and economic hardship.
...Washington has a simple solution to most governments it doesn't like: isolate them, slap sanctions on them and wait for their downfall. As Richard Haass argues intelligently in his new book, "The Opportunity," regime change has become a substitute for an actual policy toward countries like North Korea and Iran, with which we have serious security problems. Rather than tackling the issue of North Korean nukes, we're waiting for the country to collapse. We might be waiting awhile.
...In a careful study, the Institute for International Economics has estimated that U.S. sanctions on 26 countries, accounting for more than half the world's population, cost America between $15 billion and $19 billion in lost exports annually and have worked less than 13 percent of the time. But what if it's even worse? What if our policies have exactly the opposite effect than is intended? Look around the world today, and you will see regime change in places where Washington has no such policy and regime resilience in places where it does.

21 June 2005

Robert McChesney: Media and Politics in the United States Today
UCTV, 21 June 2005
Robert McChesney explores the changing relationship between media and politics and the effects of the growing globalization of mass media.

Watch the entire program now using RealPlayer.

18 June 2005

'Sounds Good'
Juan Cole
Informed Comment, 18 June 2005
Bill Montgomery's "Form over Substance" goes beyond expressing skepticism about the shadowy stories coming out of Iraq about top aides of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi being arrested. He suggests that the stories are a combination black psy-ops operation to influence public opinion, and scripted Hollywood entertainment value. I would only add that it is now often forgotten that the major politicians running Iraq are the same people who lied to the US public about Saddam's WMD and about Baath links to terrorism, etc. Vice-Premier Ahmad Chalabi, Member of Parliament Iyad Allawi, and others told bald-faced lies or provided to Western intelligence defectors who told bald-faced lies. They told Tony Blair that Saddam could launch a chemical weapons attack on Western interests "within 45 minutes." Chalabi's lies and those of his cronies would fill a multi-volume print encyclopedia. How likely is it that now that they are running the Iraqi government, we can suddenly trust everything their spokesmen tell us? Yet the Western press dutifully reports these allegations about the attrition against the Zarqawi network as though it is gospel. I almost never refer to such reports, because they seem to me obviously questionable and impossible to verify, except that obviously someone continues to go on blowing things up in Iraq despite Iraqi government claims about all these arrests.

Onward, Moderate Christian Soldiers
By JOHN C. DANFORTH
St. Louis
NYT, 17 June 2005
It would be an oversimplification to say that America's culture wars are now between people of faith and nonbelievers. People of faith are not of one mind, whether on specific issues like stem cell research and government intervention in the case of Terri Schiavo, or the more general issue of how religion relates to politics. In recent years, conservative Christians have presented themselves as representing the one authentic Christian perspective on politics. With due respect for our conservative friends, equally devout Christians come to very different conclusions.
It is important for those of us who are sometimes called moderates to make the case that we, too, have strongly held Christian convictions, that we speak from the depths of our beliefs, and that our approach to politics is at least as faithful as that of those who are more conservative. Our difference concerns the extent to which government should, or even can, translate religious beliefs into the laws of the state.
People of faith have the right, and perhaps the obligation, to bring their values to bear in politics. Many conservative Christians approach politics with a certainty that they know God's truth, and that they can advance the kingdom of God through governmental action. So they have developed a political agenda that they believe advances God's kingdom, one that includes efforts to "put God back" into the public square and to pass a constitutional amendment intended to protect marriage from the perceived threat of homosexuality.
Moderate Christians are less certain about when and how our beliefs can be translated into statutory form, not because of a lack of faith in God but because of a healthy acknowledgement of the limitations of human beings. Like conservative Christians, we attend church, read the Bible and say our prayers.
But for us, the only absolute standard of behavior is the commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves. Repeatedly in the Gospels, we find that the Love Commandment takes precedence when it conflicts with laws. We struggle to follow that commandment as we face the realities of everyday living, and we do not agree that our responsibility to live as Christians can be codified by legislators.
When, on television, we see a person in a persistent vegetative state, one who will never recover, we believe that allowing the natural and merciful end to her ordeal is more loving than imposing government power to keep her hooked up to a feeding tube.
When we see an opportunity to save our neighbors' lives through stem cell research, we believe that it is our duty to pursue that research, and to oppose legislation that would impede us from doing so.
We think that efforts to haul references of God into the public square, into schools and courthouses, are far more apt to divide Americans than to advance faith.
Following a Lord who reached out in compassion to all human beings, we oppose amending the Constitution in a way that would humiliate homosexuals.
For us, living the Love Commandment may be at odds with efforts to encapsulate Christianity in a political agenda. We strongly support the separation of church and state, both because that principle is essential to holding together a diverse country, and because the policies of the state always fall short of the demands of faith. Aware that even our most passionate ventures into politics are efforts to carry the treasure of religion in the earthen vessel of government, we proceed in a spirit of humility lacking in our conservative colleagues.
In the decade since I left the Senate, American politics has been characterized by two phenomena: the increased activism of the Christian right, especially in the Republican Party, and the collapse of bipartisan collegiality. I do not think it is a stretch to suggest a relationship between the two. To assert that I am on God's side and you are not, that I know God's will and you do not, and that I will use the power of government to advance my understanding of God's kingdom is certain to produce hostility.
By contrast, moderate Christians see ourselves, literally, as moderators. Far from claiming to possess God's truth, we claim only to be imperfect seekers of the truth. We reject the notion that religion should present a series of wedge issues useful at election time for energizing a political base. We believe it is God's work to practice humility, to wear tolerance on our sleeves, to reach out to those with whom we disagree, and to overcome the meanness we see in today's politics.
For us, religion should be inclusive, and it should seek to bridge the differences that separate people. We do not exclude from worship those whose opinions differ from ours. Following a Lord who sat at the table with tax collectors and sinners, we welcome to the Lord's table all who would come. Following a Lord who cited love of God and love of neighbor as encompassing all the commandments, we reject a political agenda that displaces that love. Christians who hold these convictions ought to add their clear voice of moderation to the debate on religion in politics.

John C. Danforth is an Episcopal minister and former Republican senator from Missouri.

15 June 2005

'Tom the Incredulous' Calls for Doubling the Number of Troops in Iraq
Let's Talk About Iraq
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
NYT, 15 June 2005
Ever since Iraq's remarkable election, the country has been descending deeper and deeper into violence. But no one in Washington wants to talk about it. Conservatives don't want to talk about it because, with a few exceptions, they think their job is just to applaud whatever the Bush team does. Liberals don't want to talk about Iraq because, with a few exceptions, they thought the war was wrong and deep down don't want the Bush team to succeed. As a result, Iraq is drifting sideways and the whole burden is being carried by our military. The rest of the country has gone shopping, which seems to suit Karl Rove just fine.
Well, we need to talk about Iraq. This is no time to give up - this is still winnable - but it is time to ask: What is our strategy? This question is urgent because Iraq is inching toward a dangerous tipping point - the point where the key communities begin to invest more energy in preparing their own militias for a scramble for power - when everything falls apart, rather than investing their energies in making the hard compromises within and between their communities to build a unified, democratizing Iraq.
Our core problem in Iraq remains Donald Rumsfeld's disastrous decision - endorsed by President Bush - to invade Iraq on the cheap. From the day the looting started, it has been obvious that we did not have enough troops there. We have never fully controlled the terrain. Almost every problem we face in Iraq today - the rise of ethnic militias, the weakness of the economy, the shortages of gas and electricity, the kidnappings, the flight of middle-class professionals - flows from not having gone into Iraq with the Powell Doctrine of overwhelming force.
Yes, yes, I know we are training Iraqi soldiers by the battalions, but I don't think this is the key. Who is training the insurgent-fascists? Nobody. And yet they are doing daily damage to U.S. and Iraqi forces. Training is overrated, in my book. Where you have motivated officers and soldiers, you have an army punching above its weight. Where you don't have motivated officers and soldiers, you have an army punching a clock.
Where do you get motivated officers and soldiers? That can come only from an Iraqi leader and government that are seen as representing all the country's main factions. So far the Iraqi political class has been a disappointment. The Kurds have been great. But the Sunni leaders have been shortsighted at best and malicious at worst, fantasizing that they are going to make a comeback to power through terror. As for the Shiites, their spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has been a positive force on the religious side, but he has no political analog. No Shiite Hamid Karzai has emerged.
"We have no galvanizing figure right now," observed Kanan Makiya, the Iraqi historian who heads the Iraq Memory Foundation. "Sistani's counterpart on the democratic front has not emerged. Certainly, the Americans made many mistakes, but at this stage less and less can be blamed on them. The burden is on Iraqis. And we still have not risen to the magnitude of the opportunity before us."
I still don't know if a self-sustaining, united and democratizing Iraq is possible. I still believe it is a vital U.S. interest to find out. But the only way to find out is to create a secure environment. It is very hard for moderate, unifying, national leaders to emerge in a cauldron of violence.

Bush Aide Softened Greenhouse Gas Links to Global Warming
NYT, 8 June 2005
Mr. Cooney is chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the office that helps devise and promote administration policies on environmental issues.
Before going to the White House in 2001, he was the "climate team leader" and a lobbyist at the American Petroleum Institute, the largest trade group representing the interests of the oil industry. A lawyer with a bachelor's degree in economics, he has no scientific training.
The documents were obtained by The New York Times from the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit legal-assistance group for government whistle-blowers.
The project is representing Rick S. Piltz, who resigned in March as a senior associate in the office that coordinates government climate research. That office, now called the Climate Change Science Program, issued the documents that Mr. Cooney edited.
A White House spokeswoman, Michele St. Martin, said yesterday that Mr. Cooney would not be available to comment. "We don't put Phil Cooney on the record," Ms. St. Martin said. "He's not a cleared spokesman."
In one instance in an October 2002 draft of a regularly published summary of government climate research, "Our Changing Planet," Mr. Cooney amplified the sense of uncertainty by adding the word "extremely" to this sentence: "The attribution of the causes of biological and ecological changes to climate change or variability is extremely difficult."
In a section on the need for research into how warming might change water availability and flooding, he crossed out a paragraph describing the projected reduction of mountain glaciers and snowpack. His note in the margins explained that this was "straying from research strategy into speculative findings/musings."
Other White House officials said the changes made by Mr. Cooney were part of the normal interagency review that takes place on all documents related to global environmental change. Robert Hopkins, a spokesman for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, noted that one of the reports Mr. Cooney worked on, the administration's 10-year plan for climate research, was endorsed by the National Academy of Sciences. And Myron Ebell, who has long campaigned against limits on greenhouse gases as director of climate policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian group, said such editing was necessary for "consistency" in meshing programs with policy.
SEE ALSO:
Ex-White House Official to Join Exxon
YahooNews, 14 June 2005
A former White House official and one-time oil industry lobbyist whose editing of government reports on climate change prompted criticism from environmentalists will join Exxon Mobil Corp., the oil company said Tuesday. The White House announced over the weekend that Philip Cooney, chief of staff of its Council on Environmental Quality, had resigned, calling it a long-planned departure. He had been head of the climate program at the American Petroleum Institute, the trade group for large oil companies. Cooney will join Exxon Mobile in the fall, company spokesman Russ Roberts told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from its Dallas headquarters. He declined to described Cooney's job.
Cooney could not be reached through the White House for comment.
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Cooney's departure was "completely unrelated" to the disclosure two days earlier that he had made changes in several government climate change reports that were issued in 2002 and 2003.
"Mr. Cooney has long been considering his options following four years of service to the administration," Perino said. "He'd accumulated many weeks of leave and decided to resign and take the summer off to spend time with his family."
The White House made no mention of Cooney's plans to join Exxon Mobil, the world's largest oil company. Its executives have been among the most skeptical in the oil industry about the prospects of climate change because of a growing concentration of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere. The leading greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels.
Like the Bush administration, Exxon Mobil Chairman Lee Raymond has argued strongly against the Kyoto climate accord and has raised questions about the certainty of climate science as it relates to possible global warming. Greenpeace and other environmental groups have singled out Raymond and Exxon Mobil for protests because of its position on climate change.
...Last week, the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit group that helps whistleblowers, made available documents showing that Cooney was closely involved in final editing of two administration climate reports. He made changes that critics said consistently played down the certainty of the science surrounding climate change. After Cooney's involvement in editing the climate reports was first reported by The New York Times, the White House defended the changes, saying they were part of the normal, wide-ranging review process and did not violate an administration pledge to rely on sound science. A whistleblower, Rick Piltz, who resigned in March from the government office that coordinates federal climate change programs, made the documents — showing handwritten edits by Cooney — available to the Project on Government Accountability and, in turn, to news media.

Losing Our Country
Paul Krugman
NYT, 10 June 2005
Baby boomers like me grew up in a relatively equal society. In the 1960's America was a place in which very few people were extremely wealthy, many blue-collar workers earned wages that placed them comfortably in the middle class, and working families could expect steadily rising living standards and a reasonable degree of economic security.
But as The Times's series on class in America reminds us, that was another country. The middle-class society I grew up in no longer exists.
Working families have seen little if any progress over the past 30 years. Adjusted for inflation, the income of the median family doubled between 1947 and 1973. But it rose only 22 percent from 1973 to 2003, and much of that gain was the result of wives' entering the paid labor force or working longer hours, not rising wages.
Meanwhile, economic security is a thing of the past: year-to-year fluctuations in the incomes of working families are far larger than they were a generation ago. All it takes is a bit of bad luck in employment or health to plunge a family that seems solidly middle-class into poverty.
But the wealthy have done very well indeed. Since 1973 the average income of the top 1 percent of Americans has doubled, and the income of the top 0.1 percent has tripled.
Why is this happening? I'll have more to say on that another day, but for now let me just point out that middle-class America didn't emerge by accident. It was created by what has been called the Great Compression of incomes that took place during World War II, and sustained for a generation by social norms that favored equality, strong labor unions and progressive taxation. Since the 1970's, all of those sustaining forces have lost their power.
Since 1980 in particular, U.S. government policies have consistently favored the wealthy at the expense of working families - and under the current administration, that favoritism has become extreme and relentless. From tax cuts that favor the rich to bankruptcy "reform" that punishes the unlucky, almost every domestic policy seems intended to accelerate our march back to the robber baron era.
It's not a pretty picture - which is why right-wing partisans try so hard to discredit anyone who tries to explain to the public what's going on.
These partisans rely in part on obfuscation: shaping, slicing and selectively presenting data in an attempt to mislead. For example, it's a plain fact that the Bush tax cuts heavily favor the rich, especially those who derive most of their income from inherited wealth. Yet this year's Economic Report of the President, in a bravura demonstration of how to lie with statistics, claimed that the cuts "increased the overall progressivity of the federal tax system."
The partisans also rely in part on scare tactics, insisting that any attempt to limit inequality would undermine economic incentives and reduce all of us to shared misery. That claim ignores the fact of U.S. economic success after World War II. It also ignores the lesson we should have learned from recent corporate scandals: sometimes the prospect of great wealth for those who succeed provides an incentive not for high performance, but for fraud.
Above all, the partisans engage in name-calling. To suggest that sustaining programs like Social Security, which protects working Americans from economic risk, should have priority over tax cuts for the rich is to practice "class warfare." To show concern over the growing inequality is to engage in the "politics of envy."
But the real reasons to worry about the explosion of inequality since the 1970's have nothing to do with envy. The fact is that working families aren't sharing in the economy's growth, and face growing economic insecurity. And there's good reason to believe that a society in which most people can reasonably be considered middle class is a better society - and more likely to be a functioning democracy - than one in which there are great extremes of wealth and poverty.
Reversing the rise in inequality and economic insecurity won't be easy: the middle-class society we have lost emerged only after the country was shaken by depression and war. But we can make a start by calling attention to the politicians who systematically make things worse in catering to their contributors. Never mind that straw man, the politics of envy. Let's try to do something about the politics of greed.

Vomit Factor
Next Generation of Conservatives (By the Dormful)
By JASON DePARLE
NYT, 14 June 2005
They are young and bright and ardently right. They tack Ronald Reagan calendars on their cubicle walls and devote brown bag lunches to the free market theories of Friedrich von Hayek. They come from 51 colleges and 28 states, calling for low taxes, strong defense and dorm rooms with a view.
And let's get one thing straight: they're not here to run the copying machine.
The summer interns of the Heritage Foundation have arrived, forming an elite corps inside the capital's premier conservative research group. The 64 interns are each paid a 10-week stipend of $2,500, and about half are housed in a subsidized dorm at the group's headquarters, complete with a fitness room.

Take My Privacy, Please!
By TED KOPPEL
NYT, 13 June 2005
THE Patriot Act - brilliant! Its critics would have preferred a less stirring title, perhaps something along the lines of the Enhanced Snooping, Library and Hospital Database Seizure Act. But then who, even right after 9/11, would have voted for that?  Precisely. He who names it and frames it, claims it. The Patriot Act, however, may turn out to be among the lesser threats to our individual and collective privacy.
...To wit: OnStar, ...E-ZPass and most other toll-collecting systems, ...The State Department plans to use radio frequency identification technology in all new American passports by the end of 2005, ...TiVo, ...and databases of consumer information.

One Nation, Uninsured
By PAUL KRUGMAN
NYT, 13 June 2005
Harry Truman tried to create a national health insurance system. Public opinion was initially on his side: Jill Quadagno's book "One Nation, Uninsured" tells us that in 1945, 75 percent of Americans favored national health insurance. If Truman had succeeded, universal coverage for everyone, not just the elderly, would today be an accepted part of the social contract.
But Truman failed. Special interests, especially the American Medical Association and Southern politicians who feared that national insurance would lead to racially integrated hospitals, triumphed.
Sixty years later, the patchwork system that evolved in the absence of national health insurance is unraveling. The cost of health care is exploding, the number of uninsured is growing, and corporations that still provide employee coverage are groaning under the strain.
So the time will soon be ripe for another try at universal coverage. Public opinion is already favorable: a 2003 Pew poll found that 72 percent of Americans favored government-guaranteed health insurance for all.
But special interests will, once again, stand in the way. And the big debate among would-be reformers is how to deal with those interests, especially the insurance companies. These companies played a secondary role in Truman's failure but have since become a seemingly invincible lobby.
Let's ignore those who believe that private medical accounts - basically tax shelters for the healthy and wealthy - can solve our health care problems through the magic of the marketplace. The intellectually serious debate is between those who believe that the government should simply provide basic health insurance for everyone and those proposing a more complex, indirect approach that preserves a central role for private health insurance companies.
A system in which the government provides universal health insurance is often referred to as "single payer," but I like Ted Kennedy's slogan "Medicare for all." It reminds voters that America already has a highly successful, popular single-payer program, albeit only for the elderly. It shows that we're talking about government insurance, not government-provided health care. And it makes it clear that like Medicare (but unlike Canada's system), a U.S. national health insurance system would allow individuals with the means and inclination to buy their own medical care.
The great advantage of universal, government-provided health insurance is lower costs. Canada's government-run insurance system has much less bureaucracy and much lower administrative costs than our largely private system. Medicare has much lower administrative costs than private insurance. The reason is that single-payer systems don't devote large resources to screening out high-risk clients or charging them higher fees. The savings from a single-payer system would probably exceed $200 billion a year, far more than the cost of covering all of those now uninsured.
Nonetheless, most reform proposals out there - even proposals from liberal groups like the Century Foundation and the Center for American Progress - reject a simple single-payer approach. Instead, they call for some combination of mandates and subsidies to help everyone buy insurance from private insurers.
Some people, not all of them right-wingers, fear that a single-payer system would hurt innovation. But the main reason these proposals give private insurers a big role is the belief that the insurers must be appeased.
That belief is rooted in recent history. Bill Clinton's health care plan failed in large part because of a dishonest but devastating lobbying and advertising campaign financed by the health insurance industry - remember Harry and Louise? And the lesson many people took from that defeat is that any future health care proposal must buy off the insurance lobby.
But I think that's the wrong lesson. The Clinton plan actually preserved a big role for private insurers; the industry attacked it all the same. And the plan's complexity, which was largely a result of attempts to placate interest groups, made it hard to sell to the public. So I would argue that good economics is also good politics: reformers will do best with a straightforward single-payer plan, which offers maximum savings and, unlike the Clinton plan, can easily be explained.
We need to do this one right. If reform fails again, we'll be on the way to a radically unequal society, in which all but the most affluent Americans face the constant risk of financial ruin and even premature death because they can't pay their medical bills.

9 June 2005

Revealed: How Oil Giant Influenced Bush
White House sought advice from Exxon on Kyoto stance
John Vidal
The Guardian, 8 June 2005
President's George Bush's decision not to sign the United States up to the Kyoto global warming treaty was partly a result of pressure from ExxonMobil, the world's most powerful oil company, and other industries, according to US State Department papers seen by the Guardian.
The documents, which emerged as Tony Blair visited the White House for discussions on climate change before next month's G8 meeting, reinforce widely-held suspicions of how close the company is to the administration and its role in helping to formulate US policy.
In briefing papers given before meetings to the US under-secretary of state, Paula Dobriansky, between 2001 and 2004, the administration is found thanking Exxon executives for the company's "active involvement" in helping to determine climate change policy, and also seeking its advice on what climate change policies the company might find acceptable.
Other papers suggest that Ms Dobriansky should sound out Exxon executives and other anti-Kyoto business groups on potential alternatives to Kyoto.
Until now Exxon has publicly maintained that it had no involvement in the US government's rejection of Kyoto. But the documents, obtained by Greenpeace under US freedom of information legislation, suggest this is not the case.
"Potus [president of the United States] rejected Kyoto in part based on input from you [the Global Climate Coalition]," says one briefing note before Ms Dobriansky's meeting with the GCC, the main anti-Kyoto US industry group, which was dominated by Exxon.
The papers further state that the White House considered Exxon "among the companies most actively and prominently opposed to binding approaches [like Kyoto] to cut greenhouse gas emissions".

7-8 June 2005

Stripping Rumsfeld and Bush of Impunity
by Matthew Rothschild
The Progressive, June 2005 issue

A Galbraith Revival
James K. Galbraith
TomPaine.com, 7 June 2005
[Themes of a revival of John Kenneth Galbraith's vision of a democratic capitalist society...]
Democracy.  The civil rights struggle of our time must be to regain, for all Americans, the right to vote, the practical capacity to exercise that right, and the right to a full, accurate and verified count. I was in Columbus, Ohio, on election day.  I saw the voting machine shortages and the two and three hour lines they produced.  I spoke with voters who came to vote and could not stay.  That's the simple reality, in part, of how the court-picked government of 2000 was returned to power in 2004.  I ask you not to let it happen again—not in Florida, not in Ohio, and not anywhere else.
Peace.  The world is dangerous but war is no solution. Sixty years ago my father showed what bombing cannot do.  Iraq now shows what an occupation army cannot achieve.  Undaunted, some seek a wider war and a deeper disaster.  We say, No.  Let's work instead to end the war we are in. And if we need new strategists, unafraid to weigh the costs of war, let's get them.  My father contributed one line to John F. Kennedy's inaugural address: "Let us never negotiate from fear, but let us never fear to negotiate." 
It's not the most soaring line in that speech, but it's perhaps the one we need most today. Above all, let us rise to the warning just issued by Robert McNamara, that our nuclear policy is "illegal, immoral, militarily unnecessary and dreadfully dangerous."  Life itself is at stake on this point, and about no other does my father care more deeply. It is truly time to stop the bomb.
Truth. Yesterday, we were reminded dramatically that three decades ago Watergate taught us the potential for malice in high office and cleansing power of revelation.  When did Bush decide to invade Iraq and why? Who ordered and who approved the disgrace of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib?  Why and how did the trail of Osama bin Laden grow cold? We are passing through a sorry moment of history. These and many other questions demand answers, and they will continue to do so, long after this administration leaves town.
Finally, inevitably, a word on economics.  Full employment prosperity is not a birthright, it must be earned.  It doesn't come by magic, by cutting deficits or through prayer to the Great God Greenspan. Full employment prosperity must be created in the solution of our own national problems.  Let's therefore rebuild our cities, conserve our energy resources, save education, extend health care, restore the environment and preserve Social Security.  When we have taken back America, we will surely have to rebuild it, finally ending the long age of "public squalor" of which my father wrote in The Affluent Society 50 years ago.
I'll close on a personal note. My father has been in the hospital for several weeks, trying to regain some strength after a touch of pneumonia. I have word today that he is walking, and the doctors have given him a date of June 10 to return home.  On his behalf, I thank you very deeply for the honor of this lifetime achievement award, and I will write him tonight of your affection.
But, get to work. Working together, we might take back America in his lifetime after all.  And I have to say, much as he dislikes being proven wrong, I don't think he'd mind at all.
SEE ALSO:
Governing the Economy
Interview with Richard Parker
NewsHour on PBS, 5 June 2005

6 June 2005

Bush's Optimism On Iraq Debated
Rosy View in Time Of Rising Violence Revives Criticism
By Jim VandeHei and Peter Baker
Washington Post, 5 June 2005
President Bush's portrayal of a wilting insurgency in Iraq at a time of escalating violence and insecurity throughout the country is reviving the debate over the administration's Iraq strategy and the accuracy of its upbeat claims. While Bush and Vice President Cheney offer optimistic assessments of the situation, a fresh wave of car bombings and other attacks killed 80 U.S. soldiers and more than 700 Iraqis last month alone and prompted Iraqi leaders to appeal to the administration for greater help. Privately, some administration officials have concluded the violence will not subside through this year. The disconnect between Rose Garden optimism and Baghdad pessimism, according to government officials and independent analysts, stems not only from Bush's focus on tentative signs of long-term progress but also from the shrinking range of policy options available to him if he is wrong. Having set out on a course of trying to stand up a new constitutional, elected government with the security firepower to defend itself, Bush finds himself locked into a strategy that, even if it proves successful, foreshadows many more deadly months to come first, analysts said…

Sidelining the CIA
A new White House memo excludes CIA director Porter Goss from National Security Council meetings
By TIMOTHY J. BURGER
TimeOnLine, 5 June 2005
Sidelining the CIA A new White House memo excludes CIA director Porter Goss from National Security Council meetings The biggest changes in Washington often come about with just a few strokes of the pen. And so a dry, one-page internal memo quietly issued by the White House is being viewed as a kind of eulogy for the once mighty Central Intelligence Agency. After nearly 60 years at the pinnacle of American intelligence—and at the elbow of Presidents—the CIA director is no longer automatically welcome at the President's National Security Council (NSC) meetings. John Negroponte, the new director of National Intelligence, has taken his chair.
It's the latest evidence that Negroponte is consolidating his power as the nation's intelligence czar. The May 2 memo, obtained by TIME and also reported late last week by GovWatch.com, states that "effective immediately," Negroponte will participate in meetings of the NSC and its domestic counterpart, the Homeland Security Council (HSC). Meanwhile, CIA Director Porter Goss "will attend NSC and HSC meetings at the direction of the President."
That's the polite Beltway equivalent of saying, "Don't call us. We'll call you."

Bolton Said to Orchestrate Unlawful Firing
Charles J. Hanley
AP via YahooNews, 5 June 2005
John R. Bolton flew to Europe in 2002 to confront the head of a global arms-control agency and demand he resign, then orchestrated the firing of the unwilling diplomat in a move a U.N. tribunal has since judged unlawful, according to officials involved. A former Bolton deputy says the U.S. undersecretary of state felt Jose Bustani "had to go," particularly because the Brazilian was trying to send chemical weapons inspectors to Baghdad. That might have helped defuse the crisis over alleged Iraqi weapons and undermined a U.S. rationale for war. Bustani, who says he got a "menacing" phone call from Bolton at one point, was removed by a vote of just one-third of member nations at an unusual special session of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), at which the United States cited alleged mismanagement in calling for his ouster.

The Mobility Myth
By BOB HERBERT
The war that nobody talks about - the overwhelmingly one-sided class war - is being waged all across America. Guess who's winning.
NYT, 6 June 2005
A recent front-page article in The Los Angeles Times showed that teenagers are faring poorly in a tight job market because of the fierce competition they're getting from older workers and immigrants for entry-level positions.
On the same day, in the business section, the paper reported that the chief executives at California's largest 100 companies took home a collective $1.1 billion in 2004, an increase of nearly 20 percent over the previous year. The paper contrasted that with the 2.9 percent raise that the average California worker saw last year.
The gap between the rich and everybody else in this country is fast becoming an unbridgeable chasm. David Cay Johnston, in the latest installment of the New York Times series "Class Matters," wrote, "It's no secret that the gap between the rich and the poor has been growing, but the extent to which the richest are leaving everybody else behind is not widely known."
Consider, for example, two separate eras in the lifetime of the baby-boom generation. For every additional dollar earned by the bottom 90 percent of the population between 1950 and 1970, those in the top 0.01 percent earned an additional $162. That gap has since skyrocketed. For every additional dollar earned by the bottom 90 percent between 1990 and 2002, Mr. Johnston wrote, each taxpayer in that top bracket brought in an extra $18,000.
It's like chasing a speedboat with a rowboat.
SEE ALSO:
Financial Aid Rules for College Change, and Families Pay More
By GREG WINTER
NYT, 6 June 2005
...thousands of American families might find it harder to qualify for financial aid this year and might be asked to contribute more money toward the cost of college because of changes to a complicated federal formula they barely know about, much less understand. Taken together, these changes, some based on overly optimistic predictions of inflation, have required families to count a greater share of their incomes and assets toward college expenses before becoming eligible for financial aid. As a consequence, tens of thousands of low-income students will no longer be eligible for federal grants; middle-class families are digging deeper into their savings; and some colleges are putting up their own money to make up the difference. ...What the changes will probably do, many university officials and parents contend, is have a disproportionate impact on middle-class families, especially when it comes to tapping their assets. "For the middle class, it means greater pressure put upon them to cobble together college funding at schools that are becoming increasingly expensive," said James Boyle, president of College Parents of America, an advocacy group. "It's another middle-class squeeze."

4-5 June 2005

Richest Are Leaving Even the Rich Far Behind
David Cay Johnston
NYT. 5 June 2005
...The people at the top of America's money pyramid have so prospered in recent years that they have pulled far ahead of the rest of the population, an analysis of tax records and other government data by The New York Times shows. They have even left behind people making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
Call them the hyper-rich.
They are not just a few Croesus-like rarities. Draw a line under the top 0.1 percent of income earners - the top one-thousandth. Above that line are about 145,000 taxpayers, each with at least $1.6 million in income and often much more.
The average income for the top 0.1 percent was $3 million in 2002, the latest year for which averages are available. That number is two and a half times the $1.2 million, adjusted for inflation, that group reported in 1980. No other income group rose nearly as fast.
The share of the nation's income earned by those in this uppermost category has more than doubled since 1980, to 7.4 percent in 2002. The share of income earned by the rest of the top 10 percent rose far less, and the share earned by the bottom 90 percent fell.
...The Bush administration tax cuts stand to widen the gap between the hyper-rich and the rest of America. The merely rich, making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, will shoulder a disproportionate share of the tax burden.
President Bush said during the third election debate last October that most of the tax cuts went to low- and middle-income Americans. In fact, most - 53 percent - will go to people with incomes in the top 10 percent over the first 15 years of the cuts, which began in 2001 and would have to be reauthorized in 2010. And more than 15 percent will go just to the top 0.1 percent, those 145,000 taxpayers.
SEE ALSO:
NYT
A team of reporters spent more than a year exploring ways that class - defined as a combination of income, education, wealth and occupation - influences destiny in a society that likes to think of itself as a land of unbounded opportunity.
• Day 1: Overview
• Day 2: Health
• Day 3: Marriage
• Day 4: Religion
• Day 5: Education
• Day 6: Immigration
• Day 7: New Status Markers
• Day 8: The 'Relo' Class
• Day 9: The Hyper-Rich
• Wednesday: Class and Culture

Truth and Deceit
Bob Herbert
NYT, 2 June 2005
At a press conference on Tuesday, President Bush, speaking about detainees who had complained of being abused, said they were "people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble - that means not tell the truth." Mr. Bush meant, of course, to say dissemble, which really means to deliberately mislead or conceal. Nevertheless, he knew what he was talking about. The president may have stumbled over the pronunciation, but he's proved time and again that he's a skillful practitioner of the art. The lessons of Watergate and Vietnam are that the checks and balances embedded in the national government by the founding fathers (and which the Bush administration is trying mightily to destroy) are absolutely crucial if American-style democracy is to survive, and that a truly free and unfettered press (which the Bush administration is trying mightily to intimidate) is as important now as it's ever been. ...Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, drunk with power and insufficiently restrained, took the nation on hair-raising journeys that were as unnecessary as they were destructive. Now, in the first years of the 21st century, George W. Bush is doing the same.

Too Few, Yet Too Many
Paul Krugman
NYT, 30 May 2005
Two things make the burden of repeated deployments even harder to bear. One is the intensity of the conflict. In Slate, Phillip Carter and Owen West, who adjusted casualty figures to take account of force size and improvements in battlefield medicine (which allow more of the severely wounded to survive), concluded that "infantry duty in Iraq circa 2004 comes out just as intense as infantry duty in Vietnam circa 1966."
The other is the way in which the administration cuts corners when it comes to supporting the troops. From their foot-dragging on armoring Humvees to their apparent policy of denying long-term disability payments to as many of the wounded as possible, officials seem almost pathologically determined to nickel-and-dime those who put their lives on the line for their country.
Now, predictably, the supply of volunteers is drying up.
Most reporting has focused on the problems of recruiting, which has fallen far short of goals over the past few months. Serious as it is, however, the recruiting shortfall could be only a temporary problem. If and when we get out of Iraq - I know, a big if and a big when - it shouldn't be too hard to find enough volunteers to maintain the Army's manpower.
Much more serious, because it would be irreversible, would be a mass exodus of mid-career military professionals. "That's essentially how we broke the professional Army we took into Vietnam," one officer told the National Journal. "At some point, people decided they could no longer weather the back-to-back deployments."
And we're already seeing stories about how young officers, facing the prospect of repeated harrowing tours of duty in a war whose end is hard to imagine, are reconsidering whether they really want to stay in the military. For a generation Americans have depended on a superb volunteer Army to keep us safe - both from our enemies, and from the prospect of a draft. What will we do once that Army is broken?
SEE ALSO:
Growing Problem for Military Recruiters: Parents
By DAMIEN CAVE
NYT, 3 June 2005

3 June 2005

Linking Iraq to War On Terrorism Essential to Public Support
War-Weary Americans Ready to Stay the Course Despite Casualties
By Edward Alden
Financial Times, 1 June 2005
Strong US public support for the war in Iraq - in spite of mounting costs and casualties - has been one of the main factors encouraging the administration of President George W. Bush to stay the course. For more than a decade before battle began in March 2003, about 65 per cent of Americans consistently favoured military means to oust Saddam Hussein from Iraq. Even the revelation that the former dictator did not possess mass destruction weapons did not alter the majority of Americans' belief that the war had been the right choice at the right time.
But with the resurgence of violence in Iraq since the January elections, a variety of opinion polls is showing a slow but steady decline in those who think the war has been worth the effort. Depending on the wording of the question, the percentage saying the benefits of the war have outweighed the costs has fallen from near 70 per cent in the middle of 2003 to between 40 and 45 per cent today.
More immediately worrying for Mr Bush is research showing that the rise in US war deaths, which are nearing 1,700, is a large factor pulling down his job approval ratings to near 40 per cent, the lowest of his presidency. Political scientists Richard Eichenberg and Richard Stoll estimate that Mr Bush's approval rating has dropped nearly 1½ percentage points for each 100 US battle deaths in Iraq, although their research predicts the numbers are unlikely to get much worse unless the casualty rate increases dramatically. ...A RAND Corporation study released at the weekend says Americans have shown themselves willing to tolerate far more casualties in Iraq than in conflicts in Kosovo, Somalia and Haiti in the 1990s, because the stakes are considered far higher.
The study concludes that as long as the Iraq conflict remains linked in the US public's mind to the global war on terrorism, military and political leaders "can expect a relatively permissive public opinion environment".
SEE ALSO:
War Made Easy
Norman Solomon
"Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices,"
     --Voltaire
Failure to "win the peace" is failure to really triumph. For the White House and its domestic allies in the realms of government, media, think tanks and the like, the political problem of war undergoes a shift after the Pentagon goes into action in earnest. Beforehand, it's about making the war seem necessary and practical; if the war does not come to a quick satisfactory resolution, the challenge becomes more managerial so that continuation of the war will seem easier or at least wiser than cutting the blood-soaked Gordian knot.
Advocates for humanitarian causes might see the United States as a place where "madmen lead the blind." But that's a harsh way to describe the situation. Our lack of vision is in the context of a media system that mostly keeps us in the dark.

Discredited "experts" dominate broadcast media
No Perles of Wisdom
David Corn, DavidCorn.com, 1 June 2005
Should we be amazed that so-called experts who are proven wrong-wrong-wrong are called upon repeatedly by the media to spout their beliefs and misinform the public? Case in point: Richard Perle, a prominent neocon who was an assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration. He recently appeared on CNN and was questioned by Wolf Blitzer.

Dying For An Education
Earl Hadley
TomPaine.com, 1 June 2005
Earl Hadley is education coordinator for the Campaign for America's Future.
The Bush administration recently pressed Newsweek to help promote the image of the American military internationally after the magazine retracted a story suggesting that U.S. interrogators were desecrating the Holy Quran. But it’s not only abroad that America’s military needs an effective public relations makeover; domestically the military is facing declining enrollment numbers. As recruiting numbers drop, it is evident that more and more young Americans are hesitant to sign up for a stint in the armed forces. But for those who believe in a well-stocked military, have no worries—the administration that paid for pundits to advocate Bush policies and produced fake new stories touting the government line is well prepared for military recruiting problems.
Buried away in the No Child Left Behind Act, which became the nation’s main education law in 2002, is a clause requiring high schools to provide military recruiters with the name and contact information of students and allow them access to students in schools. To be fair to the Bush administration, schools can always choose to reject the federal dollars aimed at helping struggling students to avoid passing on private information to the military. Similarly, school districts have to inform parents that they can opt their students out of the “recruiting database.” So kids in private and high-achieving schools not accepting federal dollars don’t have to deal with the issue. Similarly, students with active and involved parents can also avoid unwanted visits from soldiers. In the end, it will be low-income students and those with parents working multiple jobs who will receive the most calls to “be all you can be.” The military has always drawn heavily from the poor, who, in many cases, have few other options for career development than to pick up a gun and hope for the best. We’ve all seen the ads: “Do more before nine a.m. than most people do all day, see the world, become a doctor, learn to be a pilot”…the promises of the military go on and on. And the commercials are effective—a recent survey found that “money for college” was the main explanation given for enlisting in the military. Given the role of the GI Bill in building the middle class after World War II, these ads have history, in addition to sleek production, behind them. The tragedy—or crime, depending on how you look at the situation—is that the military can no longer deliver on its promises. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that the GI Bill currently only covers 60 percent of the costs at a public four-year school, while the GI Bill originally covered all education costs. Similarly, the GI Bill hasn’t provided subsidies for veterans with spouses and children since 1977.

Promoting Democracy Or Fueling Repression?
Frida Berrigan and William D. Hartung
TomPaine.com, 2 June 2005
At a Rose Garden press conference earlier this week, President Bush struck one of his favorite themes, asserting that "the U.S. is a country that promotes freedom around the world." But the reality of U.S. arms sales policy contradicts Bush's rhetoric. The United States' longstanding policy of arming, training and aiding some of the world's most repressive regimes has accelerated during the Bush years. Increased weapons shipments have gone to allies like the authoritarian Uzbekistan and the thinly veiled military dictatorship in Pakistan; and to the Philippines and Colombia, where U.S. weapons and training have been turned against civilians.
These are not exceptional cases.
The United States transferred weaponry to 18 to 25 countries involved in active conflicts in 2003, the last year for which full Pentagon data is available. From Chad to Ethiopia, from Nigeria to India, transfers to conflict nations totaled over $1 billion in 2003.
Thirteen of the top 25 recipients of U.S. arms transfers in the developing world are undemocratic according to the State Department's Human Rights Report. Citizens in these countries either "do not have the right to change their own government." or those rights are severely abridged. These undemocratic regimes received over $2.7 billion in U.S. arms transfers in 2003.
Under the rubric of the war on terrorism, military aid has increased precipitously, while scrutiny of the human rights and democracy records of recipients has decreased. Foreign Military Financing, Washington's largest military aid program, increased almost 70 percent between 2001 and 2003-- from $3.5 billion to $6 billion. The largest increases went to U.S. allies in the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, including Jordan, which saw its military aid increase by $525 million, and Pakistan, which received an additional $224 million. Military aid totals have leveled off at about $4.6 billion since 2003, but the number of countries receiving military aid increased by 50% between 2001 and 2006, from 48 to 71.
A deeper look at a few U.S. arms clients illuminates the contradictions between President Bush's rhetoric and the realities of current policies. [Uzbekistan and Colombia] ...As the cases of Uzbekistan and Colombia make clear, the time to impose greater scrutiny on U.S. arms transfers and military aid is long overdue. The first step towards a sounder and saner arms sales policy is to implement the underlying assumptions of U.S. arms export law, which call for arming nations only for purposes of self-defense and avoiding arms sales to nations that engage in patterns of systematic human rights abuses. Stopping arms to dictators is one of the best ways to promote the freedom and democracy that President Bush claims to seek.

Warrants and Searches Without Judges
Post-Mortem on the 4th Amendment
By MIKE WHITNEY
CounterPunch, 2 June 2005
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
          - The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America
The Senate Intelligence Committee is working behind closed doors to expand the powers of the Patriot Act and deliver another withering blow to the 4th amendment. This time the constitutional broadside comes in the form of "administrative subpoenas"; an Orwellian expression which indicates that law enforcement agencies, like the FBI, will be able to circumvent the courts to subpoena records. To understand the breadth of this new classification, we need to grasp the basic inconsistency in the terminology itself.

2 June 2005

Iraq Security Forces Suffer Fatal Month
By Adrian Blomfield in Baghdad
Telegraph, 2 June 2005
Iraq's security services have suffered their deadliest month since the fall of Saddam Hussein, illustrating the rise in violence in the country. Yesterday's announcement by the interior ministry gives the lie to suggestions that better intelligence and more arrests had reduced the insurgents' capability to strike. Random searches have made little impact on insurgent activities
Officials reported that at least 220 police officers and soldiers were killed in May, mainly by suicide bombings. The figure does not include potential recruits killed while queuing up to join the forces, a favoured target. "This figure does not even include those killed in the last two or three days," a senior police officer said. March was the previous deadliest month, with 200 security personnel killed. Nearly 500 civilians were killed in the past month and US forces also suffered badly with 77 military deaths, the highest toll since January. However, an Iraqi defence ministry spokesman said that the insurgency had also suffered, with more than 260 fighters killed during May.

1 June 2005

Bush, Cheney Attack Amnesty International
by Jim Lobe
Antiwar.com, 1 June 2005
...Amnesty [Internationa], however, has stood its ground. "At Guantanamo, the U.S. has operated an isolated prison camp in which people are confined arbitrarily, held virtually incommunicado, without charge, trial, or access to due process. Not a single Guantanamo detainee has had the legality of their detention reviewed by a court," despite a Supreme Court ruling last year that provided grounds to do so.
"Guantanamo is only the visible part of the story. Evidence continues to mount that the U.S. operates a network of detention centers where people are held in secret or outside any proper legal framework – from Afghanistan to Iraq and beyond," it added, noting that Bush had failed to respond to these "long-standing concerns."
"It is worth also worth noting," stressed Schulz, "that this administration never finds it 'absurd' when we criticize Cuba or China, or when we condemned the violations in Iraq under Saddam Hussein."
Bush's and Cheney's insistence that the detainees themselves concocted the reported abuses also drew criticism.
"You really don't have to look further than the Pentagon's own reports," said Elisa Massimino, Washington director of Human Rights First, formerly the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights. "There's ample substantiation of serious abuses," she said, adding that the administration's "ostrich approach" was "dangerous. The problems are there, and they're going to continue to pose a risk to U.S. lives and policy until they're dealt with."
HRW's Brody echoed that view. "What is sad is that this effort at damage control may work in the U.S.," he said, "but unless the administration addresses the real issues of concern – torture, rendition, disappearances, systematic humiliation of Muslim prisoners – then the U.S. image in the world will continue to erode."

Military Finds Itself in Twilight Zone
by Jim Lobe
Antiwar.com, 1 June 2005
On the day that U.S. citizens honored the nation's war dead, the U.S. armed forces found themselves in a twilight zone somewhere between glory and hell.
On the one hand, the U.S. soldier has rarely ridden as high in terms of public image; no politician of stature – neither Democrat nor Republican, neither conservative nor liberal – dares to say anything negative about the conduct or integrity of those in uniform. Even antiwar forces affirm their admiration for the professional military, blaming scandals such as torture and detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib prison and elsewhere on civilian bosses. The military has become "the apotheosis of all that is great and good about contemporary America," writes Boston University professor Andrew Bacevich, a retired Army colonel, in his new book, The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War.
On the other hand, the Army and Marines find themselves in the middle of by far their worst recruitment crisis since the military draft was ended in the waning days of the Vietnam War – so bad, in fact, that recruiters who have been told to lower basic eligibility requirements and offer unprecedented financial and other inducements for young men and women to join are still unable to fill their quotas. "Army recruiting is in a death spiral," retired Army Lt. Col. Charles Krohn, who was forced out of the service for publicly noting the severity of the problem as an Army spokesman, recently told right-wing Chicago Sun-Times columnist Robert Novak, while his former boss, the top Army recruitment officer, told the New York Times that no relief was in sight. ..."The military part of [the defense secretary's office] has been politicized," Gen. Jay Garner, the Pentagon's original choice to run Iraq, told the Sun. "If [officers] disagree, they are ostracized and their reputations are ruined."