Spreading freedom

Most likely you are not wondering what happened to the release of the additional Abu Ghraib torture photos and videos but if you are then follow these links to Kos for an explanation and some sickening descriptions of what they contain. Here and here.

Legal lynching

Keeping religion out of politics is always a good idea. Too bad it’s an idea that may not be realized much longer.

In Iran, where politics and religion are the same, they hung two boys for homosexual acts. Go to this post at Talk Left and follow the links.

Miller blast from the past

For those who missed it or forgot it and for those who think Judy Miller is a journalist here's a link to Ed Said's review of her book:

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=19960812&s=said

From a few paragraphs into the review:

...Writing about any other part of the world, Miller would be considered woefully unqualified. She tells us that she has been involved with the Middle East for twenty-five years, yet she has little knowledge of either Arabic or Persian. It would be impossible to be taken seriously as a reporter or expert on Russia, France, Germany or Latin America, perhaps even China or Japan, without knowing the requisite languages, but for "Islam," linguistic knowledge is unnecessary since what one is dealing with is considered to be a psychological deformation, not a "real" culture or religion.

What of her political and historical information? Each of the ten country chapters (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Sudan) begins with an anecdote and moves immediately to a potted history that reflects not much more than the work of a name-dropping college sophomore. Cobbled up out of various, not always reliable authorities (her pages of footnotes are tainted by her ignorance, whether because she can only cite the sources she already knows she wants in English, or because she quotes only authorities whose views correspond to hers, thereby closing out an entire library by Muslims, Arabs and non-Orientalist scholars), these histories are meant principally to display her command of the material, but actually expose her lamentable prejudices and failures of comprehension. ...

Roberts

Roberts is a great litmus test. Show people one of the photos of Roberts being posted around and if they say “looks like a bigoted, right wing, hypocritical nutcase to me” you know they’ve got their perceptions and politics in correct alignment. If they say “what a fine looking, clean cut man” clam up immediately, excuse yourself and slip out the door.

Cheney/Miller

The more Rovegate unfolds the more it looks like a smaller piece in the puzzle than the more important Cheney/Miller connection. Check out Talk Left's exploration of the winding paths from Cheney/Miller to the headlines the Plame leak may have taken.

It could be that Rove and Novak have concocted a story that will pretty well cover Rove. If Rove is covered it makes perfect sense that Cheney and his hoods are delighted to let him divert attention from Cheney. The real shit storm could be unleashed if Miller ever testifies to what actually occurred. Of course she will not give it up because her story probably goes right to the VP and because her shameful story reveals her to be more Republican operative than journalist.

It's back to Gannon

At the least it’s entertaining that Rove Gate comes all the way around to Judy Miller's fellow journalist and teammate Jeff Gannon. After reading Josh Marshall it becomes easier to understand why Gannon got so much preferential treatment. He could bring house down.

Krugman

If you read only one column a day, or in your life, read today's New York Times column by Paul Krugman.

The gang can't shoot straight

"Bush admin may be responsible for botching effort to thwart London bombing"

One of the great fake auras that cling to Cheney, Bush and the other right wing coup leaders is the myth of competence. This mass delusion is so powerful it withstands every fuck up from drunken stumbles to the disastrous Iraq war. If you are on the right and you scare the shit out of people, wear a suit, have a deep voice, a snarl and grab bag full of lies, people think you know what you’re doing.

It isn’t so. For the details on one fuck up that resulted in the London bombs go to Americablog.com and read the linked post.

These asses will do anything for a little political leverage.

update: Visit Juan Cole for more.

Where's Dick?

We’ve been wondering what Cheney’s role in Rove Gate was and found some of the questions are cleared up here. Questions, of course, that lead to more questions. Could it be that Cheney is the real target of the Fitzgerald investigation?

Cheney is the real power. Bush is an empty suit dancing on a short leash, allowed to shoot off his mouth, strut, bully and act out within the strict confines of a script written elsewhere. The viciousness of the Plame outing suggests both Cheney and Rove and my guess is that the junta is delighted that Rove is getting all the attention and Cheney, so far, is skating.

Check out the link here and above to Talk Left for a masterful assembling of information that points to Cheney’s involvement.

Pa opens a door

If you're considering elective surgery here's something to think about.

More than 11,600 patients contracted infections during hospital stays in Pennsylvania last year _ and nearly 1,800 of them died, according to a new report by a state agency that tracks health care trends.

Pennsylvania is one of at least a half-dozen states that require hospitals to report information on infections, and it is the first state to publicize its findings....

Since hospitals are not anxious to report this information unless required to do so and apparently the states are even less likely to release the information, we could use more requirements. It's the kind of information you like to have when picking a hospital.

Congratulations to Pennsylvania.

"The Big Lie About Valerie Plame"

Here's an informative article on Valerie Plame and the damage done to her.

The misinformation being spread in the media about the Plame affair is alarming and damaging to the longterm security interests of the United States. Republicans' talking points are trying to savage Joe Wilson and, by implication, his wife, Valerie Plame as liars. That is the truly big lie.

For starters, Valerie Plame was an undercover operations officer until outed in the press by Robert Novak. Novak's column was not an isolated attack. It was in fact part of a coordinated, orchestrated smear that we now know includes at least Karl Rove.

Valerie Plame was a classmate of mine from the day she started with the CIA. ....

via Atrios

The script

Raw Story has posted a document with the Republican "talking points" on Rove/Plame.

Mostly they say it's a Democratic Party smear campaign.

Who cares what you think

Rove is not going anywhere.

Most likely they will throw out a few face covering lies for consumption by the faithful and then stonewall it to the end.

Remember: "who cares what you think?" That early incident clearly defined what their attitude toward us, the law, congress and any opposition and gave us a very accurate preview of what we were in for in the years to come.

They are gangsters and will respond only to force, not truth, reason, law, and especially not public opinion.

Cold Winter

If a minor tropical storm can raise the price to record highs, imagine what a real disaster would do, a serious terrorist attack on refineries, for example, or who knows what.

CNN Money

Oil surged to a record high above $61 a barrel Wednesday as a tropical storm in the Gulf of Mexico fanned worries about refiners' ability to bolster fuel supplies ahead of next winter....

The energy crisis is going to get nasty I think more quickly than we can imagine. When things begin to break down the rate of break down always seems to accelerate. The most memorable examples that occurred in my lifetime were the collapses of Vietnam and of the Soviet Union.

Update:

Record oil prices may increase to $80 a barrel this year, options contracts on the New York Mercantile Exchange show. Investors are speculating OPEC won't produce enough oil to compensate for any disruption to supplies.

From Bloomberg via Atrios

$100 a barrel anyone?

Birds of a feather

Once they get elected to the ruling class, most Democrats in Congress are more comfortable with their Republican colleagues than they are with their constituents, excluding, of course, rich contributors.

From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution via Kos

...Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean is trying to get voters to hold the Republican Party responsible for the "culture of corruption" he sees in Washington, but Dean is getting virtually no help from fellow Democrats in the House of Representatives....

...House Democrats are victims of "a kind of mindset that too often creeps in in Washington —to get along, go along," Bell said in a telephone interview from his law office in Houston. "There's not a more adversarial act you can take in the House than an ethics complaint, and some people just don't have the stomach for it."...

So, which is it? Are the Democrats more worried about being exposed as thieves themselves? Are they more concerned about protecting their Republican buddies from too much scrutiny?

Probably both and a desire for stability. Since our congressional Democrats are in such a comfortable spot the last thing they want to do is rock the boat. Things are good, they say to each other, let's leave them that way and go play golf.

Leaving the coop

From the NYT

An outbreak of bird flu among migratory waterfowl in China suggests the disease -- which could trigger a dangerous flu among people -- may be poised to spread to India, Australia, New Zealand and eventually Europe, scientists warn.

If the migrating birds carry the H5N1 flu virus beyond its current stronghold in southeast Asia, it could devastate poultry farms and raise the risk of a deadly flu pandemic in people, experts said....

...If a bird flu virus infects a person who also carries a human flu virus, the result could be a hybrid bug that passes easily from person to person. ''That's the spark that sets off the forest fire of a global pandemic, and that's what everyone is worried about,'' said flu expert Dr. William Schaffner of Vanderbilt University....

Lucky strike

Brother-in-law died Thursday afternoon. He was 51 and the cause was lung cancer. He shared custody of his 16 year old daughter. His 80 year old mother lived with him.

The plant where he worked for 26 years closed a while ago (three of my wife’s five brothers lost long held jobs through plant closings) and he finally found a job as a laborer at a defense contractor installation near here. He collapsed at work in March, refused to go home and finished the day. On the weekend he went to the ER (he did not have a regular doctor) and X-rays revealed the cancers. He opted for treatment, deteriorated over the next months but was lucid to the final hours, until great pain led to large amounts of morphine.

He may have noticed symptoms early enough to be more effectively treated, but he repressed the awareness. As time passed he likely thought he had waited too long and did not want to face the consequences. Maybe he secretly hoped that if he didn’t look at the problem it would go away. Whisky helped him avoid the issue. He smoked to the end.

Theirs and ours

From the BBC, via Gilliard.

Iranian officials on a visit to Belgium have upset their hosts by trying to ban alcohol from the lunch table and refusing to shake women's hands.
Belgium's parliament speaker, Herman De Croo, decided to cancel a lunch rather than hosting a meal with no wine.

Strict Islamic teaching instructs Muslims to avoid looking at alcohol, as well as to avoid drinking it.

Belgian Senate president Anne-Marie Lizin later cancelled talks with the visitors over the handshake issue.
From the BBC

"We tried to find a solution, but they held fast to their position of not wanting to shake her hand," spokesman Patrick Peremans said.

The Senate said the meeting with the 12-strong delegation had been called off because of the "continued refusal" of Ms Lizin's counterpart to shake her hand.

From The American Prospect's Tapped, via Atrios

Larry Diamond, a former senior adviser to the coalition government in Iraq and a current fellow at the Hoover Institution, lays out where America went wrong in Iraq in a piece in today's San Jose Mercury News:

....One young political appointee (a 24-year-old Ivy League graduate) argued that Iraq should not enshrine judicial review in its constitution because it might lead to the legalization of abortion....

No matter what the religion fundamentalists are all nut bags.

Train wreck 2 (avalanche)

From Juan Cole "Guest Opinion:Iraq Avalanche Unstoppable"

"The Iraq Avalanche Cannot be Stopped"

by Alan Richards

University of California Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz, CA
June 24, 2005

...There is a way, however, in which I am troubled by what I perceive as a tacit assumption--a very American assumption,--underlying most of the discussion. It seems to me that even "pessimists" are actually "optimists": they assume that there exists in Iraq and the Gulf some "solution", some course of action which can actually lead to an outcome other than widespread, prolonged violence, with devastating economic, political, and social consequences.

I regret to say that I think this is wrong. There is no "solution" to this mess; it is sometimes not possible to "fix" things which have been broken. I can see no course of action which will prevent widespread violence, regional social upheaval, and economic hammering administered by oil price shocks. This is why so many of us opposed the invasion of Iraq so strenuously in the first place! We thought that it would unleash irreversible adverse consequences for (conventionally defined) US interests in the region. I am very sorry to say that I still think we were right. ...

There is much more and this post, unsettling as it is, is worth following the link to Juan Cole's site and the few minutes it takes to read it.

The post ends with this paragraph:

So let me close where I began: I think it is delusional to imagine that there exists a "solution" to the mess in Iraq. From this perspective, the folly of Bush, Cheney and Company in invading Iraq is even worse than most informed observers of the region already think. Starting an avalanche is certainly criminal. It does not follow, however, that such a phenomenon can be stopped once it has begun.

Delusional to imagine there is a solution to the mess in Iraq and it is delusional to imagine there will be an easy way out of the consequences of our stupid reliance on oil. Rather than leading to a stable, imperial control of what oil remains in the ground, which is lot of the Bushista agenda, our actions in Iraq put our sources in greater jeopardy. Withdrawal from this addiction will not be pretty.

Train wreck

The railroad bridge is out. You see the bridge. You see the train rushing headlong toward disaster. You know the people on the train have no idea what’s ahead. If they do, maybe they think the engineer is so masterful he will make a miracle. They don’t know there is no masterful engineer; a crazed monkey is at the controls and it is already too late.

I didn’t watch the speech. But I am watching the train wreck. It is happening in slow motion but it is happening. It takes a long time to stop a train.

I plan to heat with wood and because I am old I plan to die before the process of foreclosure catches up.