Tom Feran | Columbus, OH | March 17

PD - Fifteen or 20 years ago, John Muel ler thought about writing a musical version of the bitingly comic Cold War satire "Dr. Strangelove." It would have combined two of his big interests, as a political scientist -- he holds the Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies at Ohio State University -- and as a recognized authority on dance who counts the scripts for two produced musicals among his credits.

Someone beat him to the stage with "Strangelove," but Mueller might find material for another musical in GWOT, pronounced Jee-watt, short for the Global War on Terror.

Mueller blames "fear-mongering bordering on hysteria" by politicians, bureaucrats, security businesses and the media, all of whom have vested interest in exaggerating threats. This, he says, is exactly what al-Qaida wants, quoting Osama bin Laden saying, "What we're trying to do is spend the U.S. into bankruptcy" and "America is full of fear -- thank God for that."

Sydney Blumenthal | Salon | March 15

The Bush administration's first instinct was to shield Karl Rove from scrutiny when Congress began inquiring about the unusual firings of eight U.S. attorneys. Among the replacements, the proposed new U.S. attorney for Arkansas happened to be one of Rove's most devoted underlings, his head of opposition research, Tim Griffin, who boasted during the 2000 presidential election about the effectiveness of the negative campaign against Al Gore: "We make the bullets!" Griffin also posted a sign in his department at Bush headquarters: "Rain hell on Al!" A letter written by the Department of Justice in late February informed Congress: "The department is not aware of Karl Rove playing any role in the decision to appoint Mr. Griffin." Despite this categorical disavowal, a sheaf of internal Justice Department e-mails released this week to Congress under subpoena revealed Kyle Sampson, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff, writing in mid-December 2006, "I know getting him appointed was important to Harriet, Karl, etc." Harriet, of course, was Harriet Miers, then the White House legal counsel.

grab a bowl of popcorn and read the rest

Moderate believers give cover to religious fanatics -- and are every bit as delusional.

Los Angeles Times, Sam Harris, March 15

Pete Stark, a California Democrat, appears to be the first congressman in U.S. history to acknowledge that he doesn't believe in God. In a country in which 83% of the population thinks that the Bible is the literal or "inspired" word of the creator of the universe, this took political courage.

Antonia Juhasz | March 13

New York Times - TODAY more than three-quarters of the world’s oil is owned and controlled by governments. It wasn’t always this way.

Until about 35 years ago, the world’s oil was largely in the hands of seven corporations based in the United States and Europe. Those seven have since merged into four: ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and BP. They are among the world’s largest and most powerful financial empires. But ever since they lost their exclusive control of the oil to the governments, the companies have been trying to get it back.

Iraq’s oil reserves — thought to be the second largest in the world — have always been high on the corporate wish list. In 1998, Kenneth Derr, then chief executive of Chevron, told a San Francisco audience, “Iraq possesses huge reserves of oil and gas — reserves I’d love Chevron to have access to.

Mr. Joshua Marshall sees the forest through the trees regarding U.S. Attorney Carol Lam, the now-fired prosecutor of incarcerated U.S. Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham:

"What people tend to overlook is that for most White House's a US attorney involved in such a politically charged and ground-breaking corruption probe would have been untouchable, even if she'd run her office like a madhouse and was offering free twinkies to every illegal who made it across the border. Indeed, when you view the whole context you see that the idea she was fired for immigration enforcement is just laughable on its face. No decision about her tenure could be made without the main issue being that investigation."

The biggest transfer of cash in history took place from May 2003 to June 2004 when the U.S. Federal Reserve of New York shipped $12 billion in bills of various denominations to war-torn Iraq. Over the course of one year, a fleet of C-130s carried, from New York to Baghdad, 484 pallets weighing a total of 363 tonnes and holding 281 million banknotes. This is not an advertisement for a new board game but the summary of a memorandum prepared for a meeting of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, chaired by Rep. Henry Waxman, which is examining the "reconstruction" of Iraq under Paul Bremer.

Hedy Weinberg | March 10

Tennessean - We are, after all, for the first time in the history of a liberty-loving nation, creating a national identification card … with all the ramifications of that. … Real ID was stuffed into the supplemental appropriations bill for Hurricane Katrina and the troops in Iraq, so of course, we had to vote for the bill, but we had no chance to amend it — no debate, no hearing, and no consideration of other alternatives, And now we impose on the states an $11 billion unfunded mandate. … I would say we wouldn't be doing our job if we didn't stop and think about what we've done."

Sen. Lamar Alexander's recent comments about the Real ID Act echo the widespread bipartisan resistance to this new law.

Bennett Lincoff | The Register | March 9

Consumers and webcasters are outraged at the license fees that the Copyright Royalty Board (the CRB) has determined will be charged under the webcasting statutory license in the United States. Everyone except spokespeople for the record labels expect that these fees will drive nearly all independent webcasters out of business.

Bennett Lincoff portraitBut inhibiting the growth of webcasting was the goal from the outset, with passage of the anti-webcasting provisions of the DMCA. The impossibly burdensome music use reporting requirements and now these grossly unreasonably statutory license fees are part and parcel of the over all effort to put an end to webcasting.

By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writer 39 minutes ago

SAO PAULO, Brazil -
President Bush on Friday denied charges that the United States under his leadership has ignored Latin America's poverty and problems.
(Advertisement)

"That may be what people say but it's certainly not what the facts bear out," Bush said. "We care about our neighborhood a lot."

Bush's eighth trip to the region was widely viewed locally as a counter to efforts by the president's nemesis, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, to use his vast oil wealth to court allies. After Brazil, Bush goes to Uruguay, Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico.

By JUAN CARLOS LLORCA, Associated Press Writer Fri Mar 9, 12:20 AM ET GUATEMALA CITY - Mayan priests will purify a sacred archaeological site to eliminate "bad spirits" after
President Bush visits next week, an official with close ties to the group said Thursday.

"That a person like (Bush), with the persecution of our migrant brothers in the United States, with the wars he has provoked, is going to walk in our sacred lands, is an offense for the Mayan people and their culture," Juan Tiney, the director of a Mayan nongovernmental organization with close ties to Mayan religious and political leaders, said Thursday.

Washington's escalation of threats against Iran is driven by a determination to secure control of the region's energy resources

The Guardian (comment is free), Noam Chomsky, March 9

In the energy-rich Middle East, only two countries have failed to subordinate themselves to Washington's basic demands: Iran and Syria. Accordingly both are enemies, Iran by far the more important. As was the norm during the cold war, resort to violence is regularly justified as a reaction to the malign influence of the main enemy, often on the flimsiest of pretexts. Unsurprisingly, as Bush sends more troops to Iraq, tales surface of Iranian interference in the internal affairs of Iraq - a country otherwise free from any foreign interference - on the tacit assumption that Washington rules the world.

When the verdict came down in Scooter Libby's perjury case I was glad to see that Patrick Fitzgerald had managed to convince eleven peers that Libby lied to the FBI and a grand jury. Less encouraging was the post-verdict commentary of some jurors that they felt sorry for the lying, justice-obstructing bastard. After all, Libby wasn't simply the "fall guy" for Rove, Cheney and Bush. Libby was protecting his own ass, too. These people have committed titanic acts of treason against the United States of America, so their asses are all at ultimate risk.

In recent years, our government has slowly started reaching into what has until now been issues of states rights. They are putting us into a political strangle hold. The newest example is the Executive branch firing the US attorneys that they don't agree with. But this is only one of the multitude of things they are doing to split the masses into certain groups and put a financial noose around our necks, and the necks of generations yet unborn.

Since the 1980's, we have been told of the looming crisis in the Social Security System. Nothing was done to it until the 1990's, and what was done then amounted to a no more than a single drop of water in the ocean. And during the past 6 years, it has been purposefully put in even greater risk of failure. With the tax cuts of the past few years, we are all but guaranteed its demise.

Dollars, Not Sense

From the site:
The costs to the taxpayer of contract mismanagement are enormous, but they are often hidden from public view. There is no existing database available to the public that systematically tracks the extent of waste, fraud, and abuse in federal contracts. The Dollars, Not Sense database is an effort to remedy this deficiency.

Timothy Garton Ash | Aswan | March 8

The Mubarak regime is heading for a succession crisis. By trying to strangle Egypt's Islamists, it has strengthened them

The Guardian - In front of the towering golden sandstone entrance to the temple of Edfu stands an imposing granite statue of a falcon, some 12ft tall, representing Horus, a premier league Egyptian god. Sculpted into his chest is a small figure of one of the Greek rulers of Egypt at the time when the temple was built. To buttress his political legitimacy, the alien neo-pharaoh had not merely wrapped himself in the flag but carved himself into the stone of a powerful god. The rulers of Egypt have been playing this game for thousands of years - and they are at it again today.

By David Swanson of Tomdispatch.com

The shortest route to ending the Iraq war (and preventing additional wars) is almost certainly through Congress. Influencing the White House directly is unimaginable, and stopping the war through the courts unlikely. Clearly, Congress is the way to go. But what specifically can Congress do?

originally posted on March 6, 2007 - 4:12pm ~eds

My old friend Wes is walking the last mile of his life. Age, lung cancer, a broken back and now pneumonia have left him pretty near death. I get by a couple of days a week to visit but there's not much to talk about. That's an odd feeling because we always had healthy and spirited discussions about everything from religion to politics and all subjects in between. We never really agreed about anything...well there is one thing and that one thing is this Bush war in Iraq.

Wes was a Marine, to be exact, a member of the United States Marine Corps. As an eighteen year old he got wet on the beaches of Iwo Jima, Saipan and several other unfriendly islands during WWII, and came home, much to his surprise, without a wound, well not a wound anyone could see, but one he would carry up to the present.

The other day, prior to the media frenzy over the death of Anna Nicole Smith, I dropped by to visit and as I entered the room I saw that he was crying...big tears rolling down his face. I asked him what was wrong, a question that I immediately knew was kinda dumb, I mean the guy is dying. He pointed to the TV which was looping video of young Marines in some city in Iraq kicking in doors and tearing up civilian homes. Women and children, frightened into silence stood by as these young Marines tore their homes apart and arrested their men. In a barely audible voice he said, "What have they done to my Corps? What have they done?"

I had no idea what to say, I just picked up the remote and surfed until I came upon a rerun of Sanford & Son. We sat in silence for an hour and I left. Later that day they took him by ambulance to the hospital. What have they done to his Corps?

When Congress Checks Out

Norman J. Ornstein and Thomas E. Mann | Foreign Affairs | November/December

Summary: Over the past six years, Congress' oversight of the executive branch on foreign and national security policy has virtually collapsed. Compounding the problem, the Bush administration has aggressively asserted executive prerogatives -- sometimes with dire consequences. The oversight problem must be fixed, ideally as part of a more fundamental effort to restore the balance between the two branches.

[link here]

[Comment: Near as I can tell this isn't behind the subscriber wall (if I've not managed to logout and it is, my apologies). ~ JPD]

by Sarah Rich
March 6, 2007

One of our running themes at Worldchanging is the importance of knowing the backstory of the things we use and buy. There's no better incentive to be a responsible consumer than seeing previously invisible (and frequently unsavory) aspects of our commodities. At Doors of Perception, we met a participant who has applied design thinking to backstories. Within the context of this year's food theme, Arlene Birt has begun designing communications campaigns for edible products; specifically, she has dragged the lifespan of a chocolate bar into transparency, from unharvested cacao bean to first delicious bite, by designing an easy-to-decipher graphic label for the interior of a chocolate bar wrapper. She summarizes her project, Background Stories, like this:

Leonard S. Rubenstein | WaPo | March 5

In war, health workers are often heroes and often victims. Though the Geneva Conventions are supposed to protect them as they fulfill their ethical duty to provide care to wounded combatants without regard to affiliation -- what is known as medical neutrality -- they frequently become targets by attending to the enemies of one side or another.

The United States has always stood up for the protection of health workers in war, condemning violations of medical neutrality. And until now, it has offered asylum to doctors, nurses and other health workers forced to flee their home countries after they complied with their obligations to treat any and all wounded. But in another instance of the corrosion of human rights that has been the hallmark of this administration since Sept. 11, 2001 -- including torture, secret detention and denial of due process -- the Department of Homeland Security is contesting asylum requests by health workers whose lives are at risk for having provided assistance to wounded members of rebel groups.

You know, sometimes its hard to figure out where people get their ideas from, especially the ones that seem so ludicrous or irrational.

I've got something of a lighter workload today so I thought I'd take you on a journey through where some of it comes from. It's neither an exhaustive look nor a complete one, but it's a taste.

I thought that looking at a Civics textbook currently in use would be a good start. Just through pure random Google results (i.e. it was on the first page), I'll start with this one by Holt, Rinehart and Winston entitled "CIVICS" with the subtitle of "Social Studies".

The oil economy will soon be dead, though exactly when “soon” will happen is rather subjective. Barring extraordinary circumstances, it won’t happen tomorrow or the next day. It won’t happen in the next decade. But it will end within my lifetime and be replaced by something else—-most likely some combination of renewables and perhaps a bit of nuclear power. The energy market may also change, with most power generation falling into the hands of individuals or collectives with solar panels and wind turbines who will sell their unused capacity back to the grid at a profit. This will all require significant restructuring of our social and cultural arrangements—-something I hope is happening right now as we speak via blogs, cell phones, mySpace, and the internet in general.

Hi,

This is my first personal diary post at the Agonist and my first general internet “article” ever. I’ve commented on various forums and blogs for years now and even played around with a blog of my own for about one week, but I never set aside the time to write even semi-consistently. Now that I think about it, I probably just lacked a purpose for my writing. Well, I think I have found one.

I intend to start a diary with observations on what it’s like to live where I live (a red state), do what I do (a “red industry”), and meet the people I meet (an interesting mix). Unfortunately, that last part will be pretty limited and is the reason that I’ve decided to jot down this first entry. Most of my “friends” and contacts in the area are from work or my fiance’s grad school and my interactions with them outside those environments are almost nil. The only political, social, etc. conversations I can have are with my fiancé, and we agree with each other on practically everything. So, I suppose writing here will help me get things off my chest. Call it therapy. I will expand the scope of my writings to various topics. I have some ideas, but I’m not telling yet.

Simon Tisdall
Wednesday February 28, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

An elite team of officers advising US commander General David Petraeus in Baghdad has concluded the US has six months to win the war in Iraq - or face a Vietnam-style collapse in political and public support that could force the military into a hasty retreat.

The officers - combat veterans who are leading experts in counter-insurgency - are charged with implementing the "new way forward" strategy announced by president George Bush on January 10. The plan includes a controversial "surge" of 21,500 additional American troops to establish security in the Iraqi capital and Anbar province.

There is no difference between global warming deniers and evolution deniers. If only because they are usually the same people. Like the Rev. Jerry Falwell, for instance.

As a matter of introduction, I won all of my school's science fairs in middle school, junior high school and high school. Being very crappy at calculus, I majored in English in college rather than physics.

It disturbs me greatly when science is abused; when I observe scientific illiteracy run rampant in the United States; and when I watch large corporations manipulate people due to their scientific illiteracy.

If you wish to study the phenomenon of scientific illiteracy up close, talk to someone who declares themself a global warming "skeptic" or "denier."