Andrew Hansen | March 16

CFR - French President Jacques Chirac's recent announcement that he will not seek a third term (Spiegel) formally cleared the way for a new generation of French candidates to battle it out in next month's polls. Presidential hopefuls for the two-round election (ElectionGuide.org) must face an “anti-elitist wave” and woo a skeptical electorate, 60 percent of whom doubt the ability (AP) of either the left or the right to govern.

Leading the pack is Nicolas Sarkozy, head of the center-right UMP and current interior minister. He advocates a number of economic modernizations: loosening labor laws, eliminating limits on overtime work, reducing public debt, and trimming the ranks of France's army of civil servants. “France has been discouraging initiative and punishing success for the past 25 years,” he wrote in his book, Testimony. His tough immigration policies and indelicate language during the November 2005 riots may hamper his ability (OpenDemocracy) to earn the trust of France's marginalized ethnic communities, largely of African and North African descent, where voter registration is on the rise (WashPost).

more election news with lots of links

Joe Hernick | Information Week | March 16

Why deploy an absolute resource hog of a desktop OS when the trend for custom solutions is toward Web-based applications?

Short, paranoid answer: Because most of us will have no choice, as the vast, bloated hardware-software conspiracy keeps rolling along.

The elephant in the boardroom is that Vista is designed for home users seeking snazzy multimedia features to make their Windows boxes more Mac-like.

But think about it from a functional standpoint: Didn't Windows 95 do pretty much everything your business needed? Interim OS upgrades had easily identifiable payoffs that made migrating worthwhile.

Can we say the same for Vista? According to our readers, not really. As a whole, they say there are no business drivers behind the move to Vista. But sooner or later, we'll be running it anyway. The only question is, when?

We have now learned that the outpatient conditions faced by some of our wounded returning soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center are truly shocking—rodent and roach infested rooms, mold and leaky plumbing, no heat and water, inadequate and unqualified staffing, and seemingly interminable bureaucratic delays in their treatment. But equally stunning is the fact that several high-level officials have actually lost their jobs as a result of this news—despite initial efforts to downplay and discount the reported negligence. After all, considering the Bush administration’s lengthy record of action and inaction worthy of public outrage and condemnation, we might wonder why this particular instance of wrongdoing and mismanagement has drawn such a strong, unified, and seemingly effective response from the American people. From a psychological perspective, one reason is clear: the discoveries at Walter Reed represent a near “perfect storm,” triggering all five core concerns—about vulnerability, injustice, distrust, superiority, and helplessness—that often govern the way we understand the world around us.

by Jonathan Cook
March 14, 2007

Israel's supposedly "defensive" assault on Hezbollah last summer, in which more than 1,000 Lebanese civilians were killed in a massive aerial bombardment that ended with Israel littering the country's south with cluster bombs, was cast in a definitively different light last week by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

His leaked testimony to the Winograd Committee – investigating the government's failures during the month-long attack – suggests that he had been preparing for such a war at least four months before the official casus belli: the capture by Hezbollah of two Israeli soldiers from a border post on July 12, 2006. Lebanon's devastation was apparently designed to teach both Hezbollah and the country's wider public a lesson.

A Journalist Writing Bloody Murder…
And No One Notices

By Tom Engelhardt

Let me see if I've got this straight. Perhaps two years ago, an "informal" meeting of "veterans" of the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal -- holding positions in the Bush administration -- was convened by Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams. Discussed were the "lessons learned" from that labyrinthine, secret, and illegal arms-for-money-for-arms deal involving the Israelis, the Iranians, the Saudis, and the Contras of Nicaragua, among others -- and meant to evade the Boland Amendment, a congressionally passed attempt to outlaw Reagan administration assistance to the anti-communist Contras. In terms of getting around Congress, the Iran-Contra vets concluded, the complex operation had been a success -- and would have worked far better if the CIA and the military had been kept out of the loop and the whole thing had been run out of the Vice President's office.

Jennifer Kho | Red Herring | March 13

Brazil is the king of ethanol, which accounts for 40 percent of the country’s transportation fuel—by far the highest percentage worldwide. The South American country last year said it expected to be energy independent, largely because of the sugarcane-based fuel, by this year.

Now the United States might be getting some of that sweet ethanol after striking a deal with Brazil to boost research and production of ethanol and other biofuels, and to establish common commercialization standards. Some clean energy advocates applauded the deal, but others worried the agreement will make domestic ethanol—and some new technologies—less competitive.

“Transferring the United States’ addiction on foreign oil to foreign biofuels doesn’t make sense,” said Tom Buis, president of the U.S. National Farmers Union, in a statement. “This agreement is the wrong step in the wrong direction at the wrong time.”

. . . planning to oust Mushy in Pakistan?

....bonddad? Sean-Paul? Ian? Mauberly? Numerian? Anyone? Bueller?

A Vision of Steady Growth

James Pethokoukis | March 19 issue

U.S News & World Report Concerns about income inequality and slow wage growth have blemished what perhaps has been President Bush's greatest success: presiding over an economic boom that's in its sixth year and has created more than 6 million new jobs during the past three years. It is Edward Lazear's job, as chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, to help keep the good times going and to make sure more Americans participate in them. Luckily, that's kind of his specialty. Before joining the Bush team, he was a labor economist at Stanford University and specialized in how pay structures motivate workers.

. . . on the Diane Rehm Show today. This is essential radio that you will not want to miss. It's an excellent walk through the last 15 years of diplomatic/geopolitical history. I'm trying to get him on the show this week, but don't hold your breath.

. . . has now taken on a life of its own, I see. It started in the blogs, as they say, but it took the participation of the media establishment and mainstream politicians to keep it real. And now, the Democrats seem to have closed the third side of Daou's triangle. Nice to see it work so effortlessly. Wish we could do this more often.

. . . it is Spring Break and Tatiana is out of school. So, my postings around here will be erratic this week. Just an FYI. There is always lots of news in the NewsWire and in the Diaries. Check them both out.

. . . run Fox News have to be either a.) seriously incompetent or are b.) malignant, malicious and nothing more than a propaganda outlet for the GOP.

I'm going with choice B. You?

'Smart' rebels outstrip US

Top American generals make shock admission as Iraq leader pleads with neighbouring countries to seal off their borders

Paul Beaver in Fort Lauderdale and Peter Beaumont
Sunday March 11, 2007
The Observer

The US army is lagging behind Iraq's insurgents tactically in a war that senior officers say is the biggest challenge since Korea 50 years ago.

The gloomy assessment at a conference in America last week came as senior US and Iraqi officials sat down yesterday with officials from Iran, Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia in Baghdad to persuade Iraq's neighbours to help seal its borders against fighters, arms and money flowing in.

From The Oil Drum

Figure 1: Nigerian Militants in a Speedboat

When a fire becomes sufficiently intense, its heat creates a rising column of air so strong that surrounding air is drawn into the void, creating a draft that sustains and intensifies the fire. It becomes a self-sustaining, self-intensifying organism: a firestorm. The violence in Nigeria’s delta region has become a firestorm, and the consequences of this transformation will fundamentally impact that nation’s ability to export oil.

In this month's dead-tree edition of The Atlantic Monthly, Greg Easterbrook has an article, "Global Warming: Who Loses—and Who Wins?" Not (yet, at least) available to non-subscribers online, the article looks at the cloud ("Climate change in the next century (and beyond) could be enormously disruptive, spreading disease and sparking wars.") of global warming and sees the silver lining ("It could also be a windfall for some people, businesses, and nations. A guide to how we all might get along in a warming world.")

. . . someone in Washington gives up power freely, without a fight. Robert Gates, however, seems to be doing just that. As noted by Steve Clemons earlier today and fleshed out by Shane Harris in the National Journal it appears that Robert Gates is going to dismantle the Feith-Cambone-Boykin intelligence operation called the Strategic Support Branch.

Might there be just a little sanity and common sense returning to the Pentagon, however tiny and insignificant?

. . . just seem to go together like white on rice. And no, I'm not talking about the media. At least not yet.

In light of the extensive press coverage given to last week's Conservative Political Action Conference (attended by Cheney, Giuliani, Romney, Brownback, Trancredo, Norquist, DeLay and Coulter, among others), I thought readers might be interested in the video below (click on the play buton to start) entitled Dangerous Ideas: How Conservatives Exploit Our Five Core Concerns. (The video is also available for viewing at http://www.eidelsonconsulting.com/blog/2006/09/how_conservatives_exploit_our.html)

As long as the culture and news media of the United States continues to consider being smart as an aberrant "geeky" thing on par with halitosis, this country is in deep trouble. How would one turn the culture around? Hitting bottom somehow might do it, but it's the long way around. -- Raja March 8, 2007 - 7:37am

Raja asks a very important question. One response is this:

Don't treat intelligence like halitosis.

Or, treat the lack of intelligence the way we treat halitosis.

Or here's another concept.

Treating intelligence like a disease is the way American society has treated all young girls in the United States since the country's inception.

. . . pens a letter to Bob Gates and Condi Rice. Tell me more about that nonexistent NorK HEU program please.

This post is a reaction to this AP article found at the Huffington Post:

In it, Bill Gates accurately states that there are massive problems with our educational system. We are falling behind in math and science:

"A federal study released last month showed about a third of high schoolers fail to take a standard-level curriculum, which is defined as including at least four credits of English and three credits each of social studies, math and science."

The "solution" currently moving through Congress (and which Gates may or may not agree with--the article wasn't clear):

"Legislation moving through the Senate, backed by Democratic and Republican leaders, seeks to get more people to become math and science teachers and would improve training for them. The bill also seeks to get more highly trained teachers in poor schools and would offer grants to states to better align their teaching with what kids should know to succeed at a job or in college."

This sounds all well and good. More training, more teachers, and more standardized curricula that prepare students for jobs and/or college. Sounds like they have it all under control... until you realize that this same prescription has been pushed for decades as a way to fix our schools. And our schools have, on average, not improved.

More after the jump. (More on the same topic here.)

. . . with the Israeli "art students" seen celebrating after the first plane hit on 9/11? No? Well, some people in the FBI and CIA still do:

In public statements, both the Israeli government and the FBI have denied that the Urban Moving Systems men were involved in an intelligence operation in the United States. "No evidence recovered suggested any of these Israelis had prior knowledge of the 9/11 attack, and these Israelis are not suspected of working for Mossad", FBI spokesman Jim Margolin told me. (The Israeli embassy did not respond to questions for this article.) According to the source at ABC News, FBI investigators chafed at the denials from their higher-ups. "There is a lot of frustration inside the bureau about this case", the source told me. "They feel the higher echelons torpedoed the investigation into the Israeli New Jersey cell. Leads were not fully investigated". Among those lost leads was the figure of Dominik Suter, whom the U.S. authorities apparently never attempted to contact. Intelligence expert and author James Bamford told me there was similar frustration within the CIA: "People I've talked to at the CIA were outraged at what was going on. They thought it was outrageous that there hadn't been a real investigation, that the facts were hanging out there without any conclusion"....

The former CIA counterterrorism officer told me: "There was no question but that [the order to close down the investigation] came from the White House. It was immediately assumed at CIA headquarters that this basically was going to be a cover-up so that the Israelis would not be implicated in any way in 9/11. Bear in mind that this was a political issue, not a law enforcement or intelligence issue. If somebody says we don't want the Israelis implicated in this ­- we know that they've been spying the hell out of us, we know that they possibly had information in advance of the attacks, but this would be a political nightmare to deal with."

More at Counterpunch.

. . . is popping up on more radars every day. Today it's at Steve Clemons' site, give it a read.

Update: Wapo: Former Iranian Defense Official Talks to Western Intelligence

Much more in the comments and at minute 13:37 of tonight's radio show.

There is no value in being stupid. Illiteracy bears no dividends. Then why does America worship illiteracy and cringe from intelligence like a barefoot maiden attacked by a sadistic field mouse?

Bill Gates, whose charitable foundation has given away more than $3 billion since 1999 for educational programs and scholarships, noted that about 30 percent of U.S. ninth-graders fail to graduate on time. "As a nation, we should start with this goal: Every child in the United States graduating from high school," he said.

A federal study released last month showed about a third of high schoolers fail to take a standard-level curriculum, which is defined as including at least four credits of English and three credits each of social studies, math and science.

"We simply cannot sustain an economy based on innovation unless our citizens are educated in math, science and engineering," Gates said.

As long as the culture and news media of the United States continues to consider being smart as an aberrant "geeky" thing on par with halitosis, this country is in deep trouble.

This country celebrates non-intelligent people who deliberately choose to not be intelligent. Hence, Dear Leader.

. . . on giving my laptop an automatic weapon, Lord knows in all my travels it's been treated pretty shabbily. It might have a vengeance complex.