Pay no attention to the much more important race next door

Many liberal bloggers, including some of my favorites, are thrilled that Holy Joe Lieberman is likely to be defeated in the Connecticut Democratic Party by Ned Lamont. I'll certainly be glad to see the smug pro-war moralizer tossed in the garbage. But Lamont appears to be only a slight improvement, with sort of a Howard Dean approach--he opposes one war (Iraq), but doesn't seem to have any plans to derail the military-industrial complex. He's also right on the AIPAC party line when it comes to Israel. From Counterpunch:

Ned Lamont is safely pro-Israel. The statement on his website leaves no room for doubt. "At this critical time in the Middle East," Lamont says. "I believe that when Israel's security is threatened, the United States must unambiguously stand with our ally to be sure that it is safe and secure. On this principle, Americans are united."

Ned--to you and all politicians who claim we Americans are united in supporting war crimes, I shout a hearty "Go Cheney yourself!" Still, I hope you win, but I sure don't don't expect much.

Meanwhile, in the next state over, a senator just as bad as Lieberman, and a much greater threat to America's future because of her front-runner status for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, is running for re-election against exactly the type of person who should be in the Senate. Jonathan Tasini is a true anti-war liberal, and a Jew willing to speak the truth about Israel:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's Democratic foe Jonathan Tasini says that Israel--where he spent his teenage years--is violating international law and terrorizing civilians in Lebanon and Gaza.

When asked if Israel was acting like a "terrorist state" during an interview with the political blog Room 8, Tasini seemed to respond in the affirmative.

"It has certainly committed many acts of brutality and violations of human rights and torture," said Tasini, an American Jew who lived in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem from 1971 to 1980 with his father, a university professor.

"Terrorism is a very heavily laden word," he added in the interview with Room 8's Gur Tsabar, who is Israeli. "Are your actions in violation of the international norms of the Geneva Convention, and so on? And so I think it's sad to say, but it's clear, yeah."
...
Tasini later told Newsday that his answer was garbled and that he doesn't think Israel is a terrorist state. But he reaffirmed his opposition to its military tactics, a position shared by peace organizations in Israel.

His comments drew an immediate rebuke from Clinton campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson, who labeled his remarks "outrageous, deeply offensive and beyond the pale."

Tasini, who said his father fought "shoulder to shoulder" with assassinated Prime Minister and Clinton family friend Yitzhak Rabin during Israel's fight for independence, accused the senator of political pandering. "For simply pure political reasons, Hillary Clinton will not stand up and say the violence must stop--and that's costing lives," he said. "She's no friend of Israel when she essentially endorses this kind of war."

That's from Newsday, via Dennis Perrin, who knows Tasini personally and writes about his candidacy. Perrin realizes that Tasini doesn't have much hope against Hillary's millions, and doesn't really see much success in Senator Tasini's future should he get elected. Still, for me, derailing the Hillary Express would be service enough.

Oooh! Instant update! I went to Tasini's campaign web site, and here is what he has to say about the Qana massacre:

Let’s get one thing straight: the killing of dozens of children in Qana was an inevitable result of an aggressive aerial bombing campaign. Last week, I tried to warn our political leaders that our country could not stand by idly as Israel launched a massive attack that was sure to cause heavy civilian casualties. I was one of the few candidates for political office who called for an immediate ceasefire and condemned the violence on both sides: the firing of missiles by Hezbollah and the dropping of bombs by Israel. Instead of calling for restraint or a ceasefire, however, my opponent, Hillary Clinton, tried to Swift-boat me, dispatching her political operatives to lie about what I had said.

In a sense, I understand why my opponent has to try to silence the truth. She, and a broad segment of our political leadership, bear responsibility for the deaths of these children. They gave cover for what many rank-and-file Israeli citizens (and some Israeli politicians) are now calling a moral and military debacle. The Bush Administration stood by while a large part of infrastructure of Lebanon was reduced to rubble. Rather than call for restraint, Hillary Clinton stopped just short of declaring "let the bombs fall" with a one-sided statement that only helped fan the flames of violence.

So, I am not backing down. I am repeating what I said before: we must end the violence. Our country must reverse its one-sided policy in the Middle East and push aggressively for a strong, independent, economically viable Palestinian state existing along side a strong, independent, economically vibrant Israel. It is the only solution that will bring peace to the civilians who now live in fear of death raining down from above.

I remind people that my father was a proud fighter in the Israeli underground in 1948 and fought for its founding. Half my family lives in Israel. Indeed, a cousin of mine was killed in 1973 war and my step-grandfather was murdered by a Palestinian, for the simple reason he was a Jew. I know what it is like to sit in a bomb shelter or touch the body of a person killed by war. Has Hillary Clinton or other so-called "friends of Israel," who have cheered for armed conflict and death and destruction, ever spent one night in fear from war or sobbing in sorrow because of the death of a loved one in war? For them, it is all about political calculations, pandering and votes.

Was it worth it? Was it worth it to poison the Lebanese environment with spilled and burning oil, toxic waste flows, piled up garbage that will spread diseases? The death of hundreds of civilians, the flattening of entire towns and a huge portion of southern Beirut, the destruction of hundreds of millions of dollars of civilian infrastructure, and the creation of a two-mile dead zone at the Lebanese border—none of this is going to make my relatives in Israel any safer from Katyusha and Fajr missile attacks in the future. This war has unified the Lebanese and much of the world against Israel, many of whom just a month ago despised Hezbollah—and has done relatively little to weaken the militia’s power and appeal. Real security will come when we finally recognize that Israel’s future is inextricably linked to a just resolution to the Palestinian people’s legitimate demands for safety, security, and self-determination.

I want to guarantee Israel's long-term peace and security, as well as the peace and security of the Palestinians and the Lebanese. We can't ever do so with an approach that mimics the Bush Administration’s imperial, oil-driven Middle East agenda. Last week George Bush sent Condoleeza Rice to the Rome peace conference for one purpose--to single-handedly derail the agreement for a cease-fire. Even by the Bush Administration's already low standards, this was truly an embarrassment and a disgrace. But, we must also reject Hillary Clinton-style politics that allows itself to be held hostage to the blind ideology of the ultra-right-wing fundamentalist settlers and their supporters, who hold too much power.

American Jews such as myself will have to gain the courage to speak out against unjust and ineffectual policies that play into the extremist agenda on both sides. If you want to gain any hope from my experience, it's worth noting that since my first statement last week, we have been deluged with calls and emails; they are running 10-1 in favor of my position, almost all from Jewish Americans. There is hope. We must reject the same old pandering and lies, and turn instead to real, principled leadership, for a just and lasting peace for the children of Israel and Palestine. Let us resolve to make the children of Qana the last innocent people to see their lives end violently and needlessly.

I was going to edit Tasini's post like I do with most things I quote, but I just can't find any paragraphs I want to cut from that. It was hard enough not to include his previous post: More on the Clinton-Wal-Mart Connection.

So, while we get all excited that there might be a slightly improved senator from Connecticut, improving one percent of the Senate, there's a chance next door to elect a real peacenik, and thwart the big-moneyed plans of the other "leading" family in America's ruling class.

To comment on war crimes, the WaPo brings in an expert

Isn't Henry Kissinger dead yet?

Plenty of nuts to go around

You've probably heard some people in this country argue that the US should just "nuke 'em all;" turn the Middle East into a parking lot. There always seem to be people advocating genocide. Before the march on Saturday, one of the most outspoken members of the crowd, after spelling out a long list of Israeli crimes over the years, said to me "You know, the US should just nuke Israel, put a stop to all of this."

I turned and walked away. Fortunately, he was the only one I heard say anything like that--otherwise I wouldn't have joined the march.

I can't say that I'm completely consistent in my positions, or that they matter much, but I'll try to summarize what they are:

• The leadership of Israel is completely wrong to attack Lebanon.
• Israel has never been serious about eliminating terrorist attacks--every time relative peace breaks out, they do something outrageous (like shelling the beach in Gaza) to provoke new attacks.
• All bombing is wrong: suicide, rocket, car, aerial. The Israelis do far more of it than do Hamas or Hezbollah.
  
• The US continually pours gasoline on the fire by arming Israel to the teeth. I'm sure that Iran and other supporters of Hezbollah and Hamas contribute to some degree, but whether or not their targets were able to defend themselves seems to play little role in whether, or how hard, Israel hits them.
• The continued land grab in the West Bank and the ongoing humiliation of the Palestinians have never brought Israel peace, and never will.
• I'm ambivalent about whether Israel has a "right" to exist, but after 58 years accept it as a fact on the ground. (Just as most of us, including Native Americans, accept the existence of the US after 230 years.) I deny that Israel has any right to the extra territory it has grabbed since 1967, or any of the land it grabs now or in the future.
  
• If Israel has a right to exist, then surely Lebanon does too.
  
• More importantly, all of the people of the region: Palestinians, Israelis, Lebanese, and everyone else, have a right to exist.
• Anyone who advocates nuking any place is crazy.
  

Mining Cole

Much-more-famous Ann Arbor blogger Juan Cole has plenty of insights into the various ongoing disasters. Here is a selection from today.
On the Qana massacre:

One hope the Israeli hawks appear to entertain is that they can permanently depopulate strips Lebanon south of the Litani river. Since most Shiites vote Hizbullah and offer political support and cover to it, fewer people means fewer assets for the party-militia. This project would require the total destruction of large numbers of villages and the permanent displacement of their inhabitants north to Beirut.

That is why the massacre at Qana occurred. The Israelis had bombed Qana 80 times. They were destroying all of its buildings. Therefore, of course, they destroyed the building where dozens of children and families were hiding. This tactic is both collective punishment and ethnic cleansing all at once. It is not only a matter, as the Israelis claim, of hitting Hizbullah rocket launchers. They are destroying all of the buildings.

On Ayatollah al-Sistani condemns Israeli aggression and US support for it:

The US punditocracy and ruling elite is fixated on Hizbullah as a "terrorist group" even though the organization hasn't engaged in international terror against American civilians in many years. What they forget about Hizbullah is that it is also a Shiite religious party, and that that is how it is perceived for the most part by Iraqi Shiites. Some 45 percent of Lebanese are probably Shiites.

The other thing to remember is that the United States is now a Shiite Power in part, insofar as it semi-rules a Shiite-majority country, Iraq.

The Associated Press is carrying the story that Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has demanded an immediate ceasefire in Israel's war on Lebanon, in the wake of the Qana massacre:

"Islamic nations will not forgive the entities that hinder a cease-fire," al-Sistani said in a clear reference to the United States.

"It is not possible to stand helpless in front of this Israeli aggression on Lebanon," he added. "If an immediate cease-fire in this Israeli aggression is not imposed, dire consequences will befall the region."

...
Sistani has issued a warning to the United States. He wants Bush to intervene to arrange a ceasefire, i.e. the cessation of Israeli air raids on Lebanon in general.

What could he do if he were ignored? Sistani could call massive anti-US and anti-Israel demonstrations. Given Iraq's profound political instability, this development could be extremely dangerous. US troops in Baghdad and elsewhere are planning offensives against Shiite paramilitary groups, so tensions are likely to rise in the Shiite areas anyway. But big demonstrations could easily boil over into actual attacks on US and British troops. Both depend heavily on fuel that is transported through the Shiite south. Were the Shiites actively to turn on the US for its wholehearted support of continued Israeli air raids, the US military could be cut off from fuel and supplies. The British only have around 8,000 troops in Iraq, and they would be in profound danger if Iraq's Shiites became militantly anti-occupation.

Since the Israeli treatment of Arabs is an issue on which Sunnis and Shiites agree, there is also a possibility that Sistani could finally get some respect from the Sunni community if he led such a compaign. That development would be more dangerous to the continued US military presence in Iraq than any other I can think of.

Meanwhile, in Bush Quagmire II

The mayhem continues:

Gunmen in military uniforms kidnapped dozens of people in an upscale, mostly Shiite Baghdad neighborhood Monday, and shooting and bombings across the country killed at least 19 people, including four Iraqi soldiers.

The kidnapping was carried out by gunmen in military fatigues who drove to the main shopping area of Karradah in 15 vehicles and split into two groups. One went into a mobile phone shop and the other into the office next door of the Iraqi-American Chamber of Commerce, said police Lt. Thair Mahmoud.

They kidnapped 15 staff and customers from the shop and 11 from the chamber, he said. All were believed to be Iraqis. No other details were available.

The way out

The Progressive interviews Gore Vidal:

Q: Today the United States is fighting two wars, one in Afghanistan and one in Iraq, and is now threatening to launch a third one on Iran. What is it going to take to stop the Bush onslaught?

Vidal: Economic collapse. We are too deeply in debt. We can't service the debt, or so my financial friends tell me, that's paying the interest on the Treasury bonds, particularly to the foreign countries that have been financing us. I think the Chinese will say the hell with you and pull their money out of the United States. That's the end of our wars.

That's pretty much what I've been thinking for the last couple of years. As bad as economic collapse is likely to be, the future looks even bleaker if the current economic order continues much longer.

Other quotes from Vidal:

Q: Bush's ratings have been at personal lows. Cheney has had an 18 percent approval rating.

Vidal: Well, he deserves it.

Q: Yet the wars go on. It's almost as if the people don't matter.

Vidal: The people don't matter to this gang. They pay no attention. They think in totalitarian terms. They've got the troops. They've got the army. They've got Congress. They've got the judiciary. Why should they worry? Let the chattering classes chatter. Bush is a thug. I think there is something really wrong with him.
...
Q: Talk about the role of the opposition party, the Democrats.

Vidal: It isn't an opposition party. I have been saying for the last thousand years that the United States has only one party--the property party. It's the party of big corporations, the party of money. It has two right wings; one is Democrat and the other is Republican.

Condi expresses her concern about the Qana massacre to Israel

"Thirty-seven dead children? That IS impressive, Mr. Prime Minister!"


"And you, Mr. Defense Minister--you've been a bad boy, haven't you?"

Once again, Kofi and I have to ask--"What the %#*&$ is the matter with you, woman??"

Today's protest in Ann Arbor

Pretty good turnout with little advance notice.

All the world is Baghdad; all the world is Lebanon

Members of the Louisiana National Guard search an abandoned apartment complex in New Orleans, July 8, 2006. They are some of the 300 troops who arrived to help keep order a few days after the city's worst act of criminal violence since Hurricane Katrina--the shooting deaths of five teenagers on June 17. The Guard patrols Eastern New Orleans, the Lakefront and the Ninth Ward, where miles of empty buildings offer fertile grounds to looters, squatters and those looking for a hide-out. This allows police to turn their full attention to populated areas, especially those where killings blamed on turf wars, drug disputes or revenge have bloodied the streets. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Five people were shot to death last night and early this morning in New Orleans.

From Jeff Danziger.

From Lebanese cartoonist Stavro.

Who's pushing who into the sea now?

I went downtown after work and joined in the daily protest against the various wars. My friend Gloria gave me a card with that graphic on it (more or less--the card said "2005"). On the back of the card was this quote from Ariel Sharon, speaking to Winston Churchill's grandson in 1973:

We'll make a pastrami sandwich out of them. We'll insert a strip of Jewish settlements in between the Palestinians, and then another strip of Jewish settlements right across the West Bank, so that in twenty-five years' time, neither the United Nations nor the United States, nobody, will be able to tear it apart.

Many want to view the Israel-Palestine situation as the refusal of the Palestinians and their supporters to recognize Israel's right to exist. To be sure, there are many in both groups who feel that way. But for decades now, Palestinian and Arab leaders have agreed to accomodation with Israel--Sadat, Arafat, Abbas. They have been willing to live with the pre-1967 borders, and even negotiate beyond that. But Israel has continued, without pause, taking more--especially the most valuable land with access to water. Last year's supposed "land for peace" stunt in Gaza was accompanied by yet further grabs in the West Bank and Jerusalem--and basically turned Gaza into a free-fire zone. Sharon's statement has been Israeli policy pretty much since he said it, and they used Camp David and Oslo only to further that purpose, with no intention of abiding by the provisions they didn't like.

Protest in Ann Arbor tomorrow

In my set of photos of demonstrations around the world, I left out a country--Israel:


It is also interesting to read that Dana Olmert, daughter of the Israeli prime minister, is a long-time refuser and peace activist.

This just in--Ann Arbor locals can join the protest tomorrow!

Hearts and minds

If your country were being destroyed, would you blame the people defending you, or those doing the attacking? Ask the Lebanese. From the Christian Science Monitor, via Billmon:

The stakes are high for Hizbullah, but it seems it can count on an unprecedented swell of public support that cuts across sectarian lines.According to a poll released by the Beirut Center for Research and Information, 87 percent of Lebanese support Hizbullah's fight with Israel, a rise of 29 percent on a similar poll conducted in February. More striking, however, is the level of support for Hizbullah's resistance from non-Shiite communities. Eighty percent of Christians polled supported Hizbullah along with 80 percent of Druze and 89 percent of Sunnis.

Lebanese no longer blame Hizbullah for sparking the war by kidnapping the Israeli soldiers, but Israel and the US instead.

The latest poll by the Beirut Center found that 8 percent of Lebanese feel the US supports Lebanon, down from 38 percent in January.

"This support for Hizbullah is by default. It's due to US and Israeli actions," says Saad-Ghorayeb, whose father, Abdo, conducted the poll.

A great speech

What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children, not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women, not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.
...
Today the expenditure of billions of dollars every year of weapons acquired for the purpose of making sure we never need to use them is essential to keeping the peace. But surely the acquisition of such idle stockpiles -- which can only destroy and never create -- is not the only, much less the most efficient, means of assuring peace. I speak of peace, therefore, as the necessary rational end of rational men. I realize that the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war and frequently the words of the pursuer fall on deaf ears. But we have no more urgent task.
...
I am not referring to the absolute, infinite concept of universal peace and good will of which some fantasies and fanatics dream. I do not deny the value of hopes and dreams but we merely invite discouragement and incredulity by making that our only and immediate goal.

Let us focus instead on a more practical, more attainable peace -- based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions, on a series of concrete actions and effective agreements which are in the interest of all concerned. There is no single, simple key to this peace, no grand or magic formula to be adopted by one or two powers. Genuine peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts. It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation. For peace is a process -- a way of solving problems.

With such a peace, there will still be quarrels and conflicting interests, as there are within families and nations. World peace, like community peace, does not require that each man love his neighbor; it requires only that they live together in mutual tolerance, submitting their disputes to a just and peaceful settlement. And history teaches us that enmities between nations, as between individuals, do not last forever. However our likes and dislikes may seem, the tide of time and events will often bring surprising changes in the relations between nations and neighbors.

So let us persevere. Peace need not be impracticable, and war need not be inevitable. By defining our goal more clearly, by making it seem more manageable and less remote, we can help all peoples to see it, to draw hope from it, and to move irresistibly toward it.
...
Meanwhile, we seek to strengthen the United Nations, to help solve its financial problems, to make it a more effective instrument for peace, to develop it into a genuine world security system -- a system capable of resolving disputes on the basis of law, of insuring the security of the large and the small, and of creating conditions under which arms can finally be abolished.
...
For there can be no doubt that, if all nations could refrain from interfering in the self determination of others, the peace would be much more assured.
...
The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war. We do not want a war. We do not now expect a war... We shall ... do our part to build a world of peace where the weak are safe and the strong are just. We are not helpless before that task or hopeless of its success. Confident and unafraid, we labor on, not toward a strategy of annihilation but toward a strategy of peace.

Tragically, the man who delivered that speech was gunned down in the streets of Dallas a few months later. For a few short months, the US had a president who had a different, saner vision of the world. James Carroll's book House of War tells of JFK's journey from ardent cold warrior to the man who gave that incredible speech at American University in June 1963. Kennedy ran in 1960 against Nixon accusing the Eisenhower-Nixon administration of allowing a dangerous "missile gap" to develop with the Soviets. As Carroll points out, there was a "missile gap" -- hugely in the favor of the US, something Kennedy apparently didn't know until he'd been in office for a few months. His first two years were no peaceniks' picnic, either. He signed off on the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion, and then was involved in two huge crises which nearly led to nuclear war: the Berlin crisis of 1961 and the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. These events profoundly affected him, as the man with the button, causing him to realize that the fears on both sides, American and Soviet, were propelling the arms race, turning those fears into self-fulfilling prophecies. The American University speech reached out to Khrushchev and the Soviets, and was broadcast throughout the Soviet Union in its entirety. Nuclear tensions dropped substantially because of the speech, which led to the partial test ban treaty--a first step towards arms control.

Imagine that--a president who actually learns in office! Or is even capable of it.

Puffed Rice

Condiliar apparently thinks her time is valuable:

Rice, who was attending a regional security conference in Malaysia on Friday, had said earlier that she was "willing and ready" to return to the region to work for a sustainable peace agreement.

"I do think it is important that groundwork be laid so I can make the most of whatever time I can spend there," she said at a news conference Friday.

"The Middle East isn't the only part of the world I have to piss off in this job," she didn't add.

Meanwhile, Israel continues to lay the groundwork...








... while around the world people express their appreciation for Condi's work so far.


Bangladesh


Pakistan


India


Indonesia


Russia


Turkey


The West Bank, Palestine


And, of course, Iraq

And what was Condi doing while Beirut burned and the world screamed in protest?

I wonder--did she buy those boots during her Katrina shopping spree?

Even with that outfit, she's still less of an embarrassment, in Indonesia at least, than her predecessor:

From Doonesbury.

From Ted Rall.

Have I mentioned that I hate Bush?

As Israel continues to destroy Lebanon, the moron wants to go after Iran.

"Now is the time to address the root cause of the problem and the root cause of the problem is terrorist groups trying to stop the advance of democracy," he said. "Our objective is to make sure that those who use terrorist tactics are not rewarded."

Terrorist tactics like cluster bombs, ten-to-one reprisals, and deliberately killing unarmed UN observers?

And after derailing any and all attempts at a ceasefire, while rushing more fuel and bombs to Israel, aWol has the gall to respond like this to the latest Zawahiri rant:

"I'm not surprised people who use terrorist tactics would start speaking out," the president said. "Here's a fellow who is in a remote region of the world putting out statements basically encouraging people to use terrorist tactics to kill innocent people to achieve their political objectives. And the United States of America stands strong against Mr. Zawahri and his types."

Nearly five years after 9/11, aWol still doesn't know where Zawahiri or bin Laden are, but chances are that they're a lot less "remote" from Lebanon than W is in Washington (or Crawford, where I'm sure he'll be heading soon).

And don't miss Billmon's post about what's happening to Israel--and I don't mean from the rockets.

Out-Landis

AP is reporting that Tour de France winner Floyd Landis apparently flunked a drug test, pending the testing of a backup sample. I haven't paid much attention to the Tour, but these two paragraphs caught my eye:

Arlene Landis, his mother, said Thursday that she wouldn't blame her son if he was taking medication to treat the pain in his injured hip, but "if it's something worse than that, then he doesn't deserve to win."

"I didn't talk to him since that hit the fan, but I'm keeping things even keel until I know what the facts are," she told The Associated Press in a phone interview from her home in Farmersville, Pennsylvania. "I know that this is a temptation to every rider but I'm not going to jump to conclusions ... It disappoints me."

Jeez--a mother with that much faith in her son might drive him to use drugs or something.

Quote du jour

"George Bush is a 'Wheel of Fortune' President in a 'Jeopardy' world." -- Will Durst, via Past Peak, who has lots of good Bush jokes.

Like a soap opera, but with more death

Billmon:

The ultimate result, of course, is a truly insane combination of bed partners, with the Iraqi prime minister giving a stemwinder of a speech against Zionist aggression in Baghdad one day, and then flying off to Washington the next day to vow enternal vigilance against terrorism in front of the most pro-Israel body on the planet -- the U.S. Congress. Meanwhile, Iranian-backed guerrillas are killing Israeli soldiers in Lebanon while an Iranian-backed government in Iraq sends its troops out on patrols with the U.S. military, which is speeding bunker buster bombs to the Israeli military so it can go kill more Iranian-backed guerrillas.

From Rob Rogers.

From Christo Komarnitski.

From Doonesbury.

From Tom Toles.

From Tony Auth.

Can we PLEASE have a third party now???

What a jackass:

Democratic Party chairman
Howard Dean on Wednesday called Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki an "anti-Semite" for failing to denounce Hezbollah for its attacks against Israel.
...
"The Iraqi prime minister is an anti-Semite," the Democratic leader told a gathering of business leaders in Florida. "We don't need to spend $200 and $300 and $500 billion bringing democracy to Iraq to turn it over to people who believe that Israel doesn't have a right to defend itself and who refuse to condemn Hezbollah."

Almost two years ago, I cited a Kerry supporter in Ohio, quoted by Ted Rall, with having the worst reason ever for opposing the war in Iraq: "We shouldn't be over there building them back up because they didn't build our towers back up." I think Dr. Dean may have just trumped that. As Rall said about the Ohio voter, Dean "is wrong on so many levels that it makes my brain hurt." I hate to have to spell it out, but it is probably important to do so.

First off, the anti-Semite charge is as absurd as it is ubiquitous. Opposing Israel's policies is not anti-Semitism, any more than Dean's criticism of Bush's policies is anti-Christian. Bad policies should be criticized, and all policies should be questioned. Those who do the questioning are not necessarily racist. Many of the most vocal critics of Israeli policy are Jews--certainly in this town! Of course, they get called "anti-Semites" as well.

Next, Dr. Dean puts together a sentence that would be Bushian in its logic if its structure weren't so complicated--so I'll call it Ricean: "We don't need to spend $200 and $300 and $500 billion bringing democracy to Iraq to turn it over to people who believe that Israel doesn't have a right to defend itself and who refuse to condemn Hezbollah." First, he seems to be buying the nonsense that bringing democracy to Iraq was the reason for the war, and then immediately contradicts that very notion by saying that we turned it over to Maliki (rather than him being elected by the purple-finger crowd). Second, he suggests as obvious that Israel's destruction of Lebanon has anything to do with defending itself. And third, his idea that the leaders of other countries have to say this or condemn that at his command couldn't be more Ricean.

Of course, the most troubling thing is that the so-called leader of the so-called opposition uses his most heated rhetoric to defend the honor of the country--Israel.

Dr. Dean, hear my scream: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

For diplomacy, maybe you need a diplomat

And whatever Condiliar is, she ain't no diplomat. Tony Karon in Time gives Condi and the neonuts some advice. Excerpt:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice faced a thankless, all but impossible task in trying to sell the Arab world on the U.S. policy of delaying a cease-fire so that the Israeli military can continue its anti-Hizballah campaign. But her case was hardly helped when she explained that the violence that has already killed more than 400 Lebanese and turned more than a half million into refugees represents the "birth pangs of a new Middle East." Phrases like that--and her rejection of the call for an immediate cease-fire on the grounds that "whatever we do, we have to be certain that we're pushing forward to the new Middle East, not going back to the old Middle East"--carry a revolutionary ring that scares the hell out of America's allies in the region. It was revolutionaries like Lenin and Mao, after all, who rationalized violence and suffering as the wages of progress, in the way a doctor might rationalize surgery--painful, bloody, even risking the life of the patient, but ultimately necessary. Social engineering is not surgery, however, and its victims find little comfort in the homilies of its authors.

Arab leaders, moreover, have learned to be suspicious of Rice's revolutionary ambitions--just a year ago, she spoke of spreading "creative chaos" in the region. Iraq, after all, is Exhibit A of the Bush Administration's "New Middle East," and it's a bloody mess that is growing worse by the day. Now, for Act 2, the Arabs are being told to sit quietly while Israel tears Lebanon apart, after months of watching it slowly throttle Gaza through a U.S.-backed economic blockade, and then bomb it for weeks on end. Hardly surprising that the Arabs--from the U.S.-backed autocrats to the beleaguered liberal democrats and the rising Islamists--see little to cheer in the Bush Administration's "new Middle East."

The whole article is good.

Fox News anchor starts to get it

Here is William Kristol, editor of the bible of neo-cons, "Weekly Standard", on Fox News Sunday, July 16:

"Look, our coddling of Iran ... over the last six to nine months has emboldened them. I mean, is Iran behaving like a timid regime that's very worried about the U.S.? Or is Iran behaving recklessly and in a foolhardy way? ... Israel is fighting four of our five enemies in the Middle East, in a sense. Iran, Syria, sponsors of terror; Hezbollah and Hamas. ... This is an opportunity to begin to reverse the unfortunate direction of the last six to nine months and get the terrorists and the jihadists back on the defensive."

Host Juan Williams replied: "Well, it just seems to me that you want ... you just want war, war, war, and you want us in more war. You wanted us in Iraq. Now you want us in Iran. Now you want us to get into the Middle East ... you're saying, why doesn't the United States take this hard, unforgiving line? Well, the hard and unforgiving line has been [tried], we don't talk to anybody. We don't talk to Hamas. We don't talk to Hezbollah. We're not going to talk to Iran. Where has it gotten us, Bill?"

That's from a great article on the Middle East by William Blum. Elsewhere in the article, Blum explains:

In a conflict between a thousand-pound gorilla and a mouse, it's the gorilla which has to make concessions in order for the two sides to progress to the next level. What can the Palestinians offer in the way of concession? Israel would reply to that question: "No violent attacks of any kind." But that would still leave the status quo ante bellum -- a life of unmitigated misery for the Palestinian people forced upon them by Israel. Peace without justice.

Isolated

Check out this graphic.

It's always bizarre when one of our neonuts talks about how Iran or North Korea are isolating themselves from the rest of the world.

The world calls for a ceasefire; the US pushes for a continuefiring.

The release of the diplomats' prepared statement was delayed by almost two hours by wrangling over its contents. The key sticking point was the phrase concerning a ceasefire, according to two European diplomats who were in the room.

Most of the officials in the room were seeking, at the very least, a phrase that said the group would "work towards an immediate ceasefire," one of the diplomats said. But Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice refused, and won, he said.

"She insisted it say 'work immediately to bring a ceasefire,' not 'work to bring an immediate ceasefire,'" the diplomat said. He said that the group argued about that for more than 30 minutes before ceding the point to the United States.

That's why she's secretary of state and you're not.

AIPAC Democrats

Juan Cole writes about how certain members of Congress (D's-Israel) were boycotting the speech by Iraqi PM Maliki (Dawa-Hell), because he refused to condemn Hezbollah for Israel's massive terror bombing of Lebanon. Cole explains that Maliki was, and is, practically a member of Hezbollah himself:

My understanding is that Nuri al-Maliki was the bureau chief of the Dawa cell in Damascus in the 1980s. He must have been closely involved with the Iraqi Dawa in Beirut, which in turn was intimately involved in Hizbullah. I am not saying he himself did anything wrong. I don't know what he was doing in specific, other than trying to overthrow Saddam, which was heroic. But, did they (the AIPAC Dems) really think he was going to condemn Hizbullah and take Israel's side?

And if he did, do they think that the Shiite religious parties that backed him would let him stay in office (they are the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the Islamic Dawa, and the Sadr Movement of Muqtada al-Sadr)?

Via Jean in Slovenia, who adds some excellent comments of her own.

The buck stops here

This probably wasn't shown live on CNN--

A man walks past the statue of President Harry S. Truman toppled during an anti-war demonstration against the Israeli bombing of Lebanon, in Athens, July 25, 2006. (John Kolesidis/Reuters)

Meanwhile, in Gaza

The slaughter continues.

John Bolton getting inspiration from Picasso's "Guernica."

"Many, many, many times again," said Bolton.

But you are a sitting duck

"Don't shoot! I'm not a lawyer!"

Just wondering...

What the %#*&$ is the matter with you, woman??

No hanging out for Saddam

Headline: Saddam prefers firing squad to gallows

How about you, George?

Another day, another occupation

The Israelis say they will hold onto a strip of southern Lebanon until their army is replaced by an international force. As an inducement to join such a force, the Israelis killed four unarmed UN observers in an observation post.

The United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, in Rome for talks on the Middle East scheduled to start Wednesday, issued a statement saying that he was "shocked and deeply distressed by the apparently deliberate targeting" of the United Nations post by the Israeli military. He said the post, at Khiam, was clearly marked, and called on the Israeli government to conduct a full investigation.

I'm sure they'll get right on that, Kofi.

Repealing the estate tax

Congress wouldn't do it, so aWol is just firing the people at the IRS who enforce it:

The federal government is moving to eliminate the jobs of nearly half of the lawyers at the Internal Revenue Service who audit tax returns of some of the wealthiest Americans, specifically those who are subject to gift and estate taxes when they transfer parts of their fortunes to their children and others.

The administration plans to cut the jobs of 157 of the agency’s 345 estate tax lawyers, plus 17 support personnel, in less than 70 days. Kevin Brown, an I.R.S. deputy commissioner, confirmed the cuts after The New York Times was given internal documents by people inside the I.R.S. who oppose them.

The Bush administration has passed measures that reduce the number of Americans who are subject to the estate tax--which opponents refer to as the "death tax"--but has failed in its efforts to eliminate the tax entirely. Mr. Brown said in a telephone interview Friday that he had ordered the staff cuts because far fewer people were obliged to pay estate taxes under President Bush’s legislation.

But six I.R.S. estate tax lawyers whose jobs are likely to be eliminated said in interviews that the cuts were just the latest moves behind the scenes at the I.R.S. to shield people with political connections and complex tax-avoidance devices from thorough audits.

Sharyn Phillips, a veteran I.R.S. estate tax lawyer in Manhattan, called the cuts a "back-door way for the Bush administration to achieve what it cannot get from Congress, which is repeal of the estate tax."

Put the bottle down, and run away

Larry Lack writes about The Bottled Water Madness, and a new book on the subject by Canada's Polaris Institute.

The bottled water industry is a prime example of why P.T. Barnum, not Adam Smith, should be anointed as capitalism's patron saint. Aside from its usefulness in remote areas during disasters and emergencies, bottled water is an entirely needless affectation. The fears about the safety of public water supplies that its purveyors play on are exaggerated nonsense. But the enormous global bottled water industry built on these false fears undercuts public water, disfigures landscapes and exposes trusting bottled water consumers to serious health risks.
...
Approximately one fourth of all bottled water and as much as 40 per cent of that sold in North America is simply municipal tap water run through filters and treated with minerals or other additives. The rest of the bottled water found in stores is pumped from groundwater aquifers many of which have been severely depleted by these water "takings."

Safety testing of bottled water is seldom required or done, but published studies indicate that heavy metals and other toxic chemicals as well as health threatening bacteria are found with surprising frequency in bottled water which, ironically, is marketed based on claims of "purity". Both chemical and bacterial contaminations tend to increase when water is stored in sealed bottles for long periods of time.
...
Bottled water is responsible for an enormous increase in world production of plastic bottles. Surging sales of bottled water coincided with and may help account for a 56 per cent increase in U.S. plastic resin manufacture in the U.S.A. between 1995 and 2001 (from 32 million tons to over 50 million tons annually). Consuming critical supplies of petroleum and natural gas, plastic bottle factories create and release toxic wastes, including benzine, xylene, and oxides of ethylene into the environment. Toxic and carcinogenic constituents of plastic bottles, such as the phthalates that are used to make some containers flexible, can contaminate their contents during transportation or storage.

Pop!

Realtors: Home sales now a 'buyer's market'. What's left of the American economy has been running on borrowed time and, especially, borrowed money. That's about to change.

Finally, some good news

The WTO "free trade" talks have collapsed. Anything that derails this attempt at institutionalized theft is good news. Read what Global Exchange has to say about the WTO.

No biggie--we already knew about it

Non-existent nuclear-weapons programs in countries sitting on our oil? Axis of evil, cause for war. A big, ongoing, admitted program in an unstable country that, with one bullet, could be run by Osama bin Laden? Oh--we've know about that all along.

The Bush administration acknowledged yesterday that it had long known about Pakistan's plans to build a large plutonium-production reactor, but it said the White House was working to dissuade Pakistan from using the plant to expand its nuclear arsenal.
...
The reactor, which reportedly will be capable of producing enough plutonium for as many as 50 bombs each year, was brought to light on Sunday by independent analysts who spotted the partially completed plant in commercial-satellite photos. Snow said the administration had "known of these plans for some time."

And how is the White House working to dissuade Pakistan? By illegally helping Pakistan's long-time enemy, India, develop its nuclear program.

The neocon approach seems to be simply to arm the rest of world sufficiently so they can destroy each other, retaining American military superiority to wipe out the last one standing. Two days ago, Billmon quoted the Daily Telegraph:

White House aides have said they consider the Lebanon crisis to be a "leadership moment" for Mr Bush and an opportunity to proceed with his post-September 11 plan to reshape the Middle East by building Sunni Arab opposition to Shi'a terrorism. Yesterday Mr Bush cited the role of Iran and Syria in providing help to Hezbollah. (emphasis added)

As Billmon points out, the biggest, baddest Sunni opposition to Shi'a terrorism (and Shi'a anything) was Saddam Hussein's Iraq. And that the government we have now installed in Iraq is dominated by Shiites, some of whom are certainly involved in the terrorism now ripping apart what's left of Iraq. Back in the 1980's, the US supported both sides in the Iran-Iraq war. We still do. More correctly, we still oppose both sides.

You wonder--if the Soviets had won the Cold War, at least to the same degree we claim to have done, would they now be playing off Catholics against Protestants, perhaps arming South America until it had nearly beat the crap out of North America? Would the Soviets then, concerned that those southern Catholics were getting too strong, have switched sides, re-arming us so we could kick some Catholic booty (both abroad and at home)? And would the Soviets claim to have been trying to stop Catholic terrorism all along?

Probably. Orwell knew of what he wrote. Power corrupts. Superpowers are supercorrupted absolutely.

That ten-to-one casualty ratio? No accident.

From the Jerusalem Post, via Billmon:

A high-ranking IAF officer caused a storm on Monday in an off-record briefing during which he told reporters that IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz had ordered the military to destroy 10 buildings in Beirut in retaliation to every Katyusha rocket strike on Haifa.

The officer said that the equation was created by Halutz and that every rocket strike on Haifa would be answered by IAF missile strikes on 10 12-story buildings in the Beirut neighborhood of Dahiya, a Hizbullah stronghold. Since the beginning of Operation Change of Direction, launched on July 12 following the abduction of two soldiers during a Hizbullah cross-border attack, over 80 buildings in the neighborhood have been destroyed.

And now, the weather

From Steve Greenberg.


From John Sherffius.


From Bill Day.


From Vic Harville.

From David Horsey.

From Steve Kelley.

From Pat Bagley.

From Mark Cohen.

From Larry Wright.

From Slowpoke.

From Tom Toles.

From Jeff Danziger.

This is CNN

The conflict has left more than 400 people dead on both sides of the Lebanese-Israeli border.

-- CNN. The article doesn't bother to explain that 90% of the dead are in Lebanon. You have to go to the fifth paragraph of the article with the fair and balanced title Hezbollah rockets strike northern Israel: Israel bombs 'terror capital' in southern Lebanon to get a more accurate accounting:

At least 39 people have died--17 civilians and 22 soldiers--and at least 370 people have been wounded, primarily civilians, in Israel, according to the Israel Defense Forces. In Lebanon, at least 386 people, mostly civilians, have been killed, and more than 1,100 wounded, Lebanese security officials said Tuesday.

Deja vu all over again

Time magazine cover, August 16, 1982

It was as resistance to this assault 24 years ago that Hezbollah was born.

Bullseye

Israel continues to carefully target its attacks.


Israeli PM Olmert admires some bombs in transit from the US to Lebanon.

Stealing the caption from WIIIAI:

"What are these people smiling about???"

Purple finger of death

From the Independent:

"Iraq as a political project is finished," a senior government official was quoted as saying, adding: "The parties have moved to plan B." He said that the Shia, Sunni and Kurdish parties were now looking at ways to divide Iraq between them and to decide the future of Baghdad, where there is a mixed population. "There is serious talk of Baghdad being divided into [Shia] east and [Sunni] west," he said.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will spend the next two days meeting with aWol and other government officials. As dreadful as that is likely to be for him, I'm guessing he won't be in any hurry to go home. According to the White House, Maliki is bringing several of his ministers with him--including the oil minister (big surprise there). Can you say "government in exile?" I knew that you could.

The Independent is rather cynical about Maliki's visit:

The switch of American and British media attention to Lebanon and away from the rapidly deteriorating situation in Baghdad is much to the political benefit of Mr Blair and Mr Bush.

"Maliki's trip to Washington is all part of the US domestic agenda to put a good face on things for November," a European diplomat in Baghdad was quoted as saying.

I'm not so sure that the attention Israel-Lebanon is getting will really work for aWol. I mean, how long can the president be obviously working solely for the benefit of another country before people start to notice? Yeah, I know, but I'm looking for hope anywhere I can find it. Then again, won't Maliki's visit force attention back to the Mess-o-potamia? In truth, anywhere you look in Bush World it's a disaster. I watched the NBC News tonight--even they were having trouble polishing these turds.

Sound familiar?

Jihad is carried out almost entirely by young men and the Islamic oil nations have a vast supply of young men with no other job opportunities except service in Jihad. Their despair at the prospects of their societies must be great, and easily converted into aggressive rage. Plus, they are given huge inducements to believe that this employment is a holy mission, and fabulous promises of deferred pay in the form of early retirement to paradise and the consort of lusty virgins. As Peak Oil becomes more of a reality in the Middle East, I think these societies will only act crazier.

-- That's James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency, who writes frequently and coherently about the insanity of America's car-crazed culture. Unfortunately, Kunstler likes to play neocon when it comes to foreign policy, as his pro-Israel rant showed last week. But read the paragraph above, replacing "Jihad" with "The Global War On Terror," and "early retirement to paradise and the consort of lusty virgins" with "a college education and the undying respect of their countrymen," and the statement becomes much more true. (Actually, I haven't checked the military's recruiting methods lately--maybe they are promising lusty virgins now.)

Of course, Kunstler is improperly conflating the struggles of Hamas and Hezbollah against the constant aggression of Israel with the more general "war of civilizations" jihad of al Qaeda, which is more similar to our own "few, proud" and "armies of one"--young men (and women) responding to rhetoric of bloodthirsty "patriotism" and "duty" rather than the constant, direct, in-your-face death and humiliation the Palestinians have experienced for decades.

Kunstler also tries to conflate Lebanon and Palestine with the "Islamic oil nations". Neither is an oil nation, and Lebanon isn't even all that Islamic.

Jet Fuel? Check. Bombs? Check. Medical Equipment? Yeah, why not.

After rushing jet fuel to Israel, and restocking her with bombs, Washington is going to send some humanitarian aid to Lebanon.

"God Welcomes His Victims" -- church sign on the Simpsons after a hurricane.

W supports the troops, but WILL NOT answer their questions

What a cretin. AWol met with some troops recently returned from Iraq on Friday. Excerpts (emphasis added):

...this country supports you and admires you, and appreciates your dedication.
...
I want to thank you all for your service.
...your sacrifice has meant a lot. Congratulations for stepping up and volunteering and being a part of history. Thanks for giving me a chance to visit and have a little lunch with you. God bless you all.

From the official White House transcript, aWol apparently only "addressed" one question from these people he so admires and appreciates:

Q Mr. President, what do you hope Secretary Rice accomplishes on her trip to the Middle East, sir?

THE PRESIDENT: I'm going to talk to her tomorrow when I -- Sunday, when I get back to the White House. We're going to have a good visit.

Q What do you hope she accomplishes, sir?

THE PRESIDENT: I said I would talk to her tomorrow.

Now that's appreciation! It amazes me that the White House press office would even put this sample of W's snottiness on the web site. And then there's this:

I want our troops to understand that not only does the country support them, but we'll--we'll win. It's in our national interests that we win. And we will. We've got some powerful, powerful weapons on our side.

Yikes. Does anyone else get the feeling that when Bush finally finishes "democratizing" the Middle East that there will be about 100 "vote