Gaza: One Year Later

As many will have read and heard in the last days the Freedom-like March, Gaza Freedom March, has been barred by the Egyptians from entering Gaza from Egypt.

Meanwhile, things in Gaz are dire, to say the least. Adam Horowitz, writing on that so venerable and must-read site Mondoweiss reports on Gaza one year on from Israel's fierce onslaught on Gaza:

"From Mohammad’s summary of "Failing Gaza":

• Since the assault ended, leaving 15,000 buildings damages and 5,000 completely destroyed, only 41 trucks of construction materials have been allowed to enter Gaza

• Prior to 2007, and average of 70 truckloads of exports left Gaza everyday. For the past two years, that number has been zero.

• Only 35 categories of items are allowed into Gaza. That is, only 35 types of products are allowed in to the 1.5 million prisoners.

• The number of trucks carrying construction materials entering Gaza today is 0.05% of what it was before the blockade. That’s not half a percent-it’s one twentieth of one percent

• 84% of the damage inflicted during the assault was on housing, agriculture and the private sector, putting to bed any illusions that this war did not target the civilian population.

• The damage has left 600,000 tons of rubble strewn across Gaza

• 15,000 homes sustained enough damage displace 100,000 people

• 2,870 homes need major repair and 3,540 need complete rebuilding; in effect, Israel destroyed 291 homes per day during the war

• 52,900 homes sustained minor damages

• 20,000 people remain displaced-some of whom are living in tents in the shadow of the remains of their destroyed homes

• During the war Israel destroyed 700 private businesses

• Prior to the war, the siege had led to 98% of Gaza’s industrial operations becoming idle

• Joblessness in Gaza has now reached 40%

• 120,000 private sector jobs have been lost since the blockade was imposed

• Six months before the war, 70% of Gazan families were surviving on less than one dollar a day

• 17% of Gaza’s farmland was destroyed by Israeli tanks and military vehicles during the war. Four months later Israel announced that it would expand its buffer zone into Gaza even further. Together with the damaged land, the buffer zone has put 46% of Gaza’s agricultural land out of production

• Over 30 kilometers of water networks were damaged or destroyed during the war; 9 kilometers remain damaged

• During the war Israel damaged or destroyed 15 hospitals and 41 primary health clinics

• Israel destroyed 18 schools during the war, and damaged 280 more

• 230 schoolchildren were killed by Israel during the war"

And as if that wasn't bad enough, read on, here, for more devastating stats on what Israel wrought.

Safe travels!

Credit to Mike Keefe, The Denver Post

Announcing the 2009 P.U.-Litzer Prizes

We all know about the annual Pulitzer prizes. Some people are worthy recipients, others questionable.

AlterNet reproduces FAIRS'S own "take" on the annual awards, the P.U.-Litzers. The 2009 list is an interesting one, especially with the benefit of hindsight.

"For 17 years our colleagues Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon have worked with FAIR to present the P.U.-Litzers, a year-end review of some of the stinkiest examples of corporate media malfeasance, spin and just plain outrageousness.

Starting this year, FAIR has the somewhat dubious honor of reviewing the nominees and selecting the winners. It's a dirty job, but someone has to do it. So, without further ado, we present the 2009 P.U.-Litzers."

Read the complete piece, here, but one example:

"--The Remembering Reagan Award WINNER: Joe Klein, Time

Time columnist Joe Klein (12/3/09), not altogether impressed by Obama's announcement of a troop escalation in Afghanistan, wrote that a president "must lead the charge--passionately and, yes, with a touch of anger."

He described the better way to do this:

Ronald Reagan would have done it differently. He would have told a story. It might not have been a true story, but it would have had resonance. He might have found, or created, a grieving spouse--a young investment banker whose wife had died in the World Trade Center--who enlisted immediately after the attacks...and then gave his life, heroically, defending a school for girls in Kandahar. Reagan would have inspired tears, outrage, passion, a rush to recruiting centers across the nation.

Ah, Reagan--now there was a president who could inspire people to fight and die based on lies."

The Iranian regime won't last, says critic

Mohsen Kadivar is considered one of the leading religious critics of the Iranian regime. He spent 18 months in the infamous Ervin prison for his beliefs. In recognition of his efforts to reconcile Islam and democracy, Time magazine called him one the world's most important innovators. Currently, the professor, who carries the religious status of ayatollah, or "sign of god," is teaching for a semester at Duke University in North Carolina.

In a Q & A with Spiegel OnLine International [read it in full here] Kadivar predicts the downfall of the current Iranian regime:

"You are right that the Shiite theocracy in its present form has failed -- a fact that few have expressed as clearly as my teacher in the last few months. Incidentally, when Grand Ayatollah Montazeri had his falling out with Khomeini, three months before the supreme religious leader's death in 1989, he said: This state is so different from the one we dreamed of and worked to create. Still, it is not Islam which has failed, but rather a particular interpretation of Islam. I also want to express that there hasn't been a revolution in Iran yet. The opposition is becoming increasingly clear in the formulation of its objectives and more daring. Still, we need to remain patient. I do not know when, exactly, but I am convinced that the regime will collapse."

Meanwhile, The Atlantic reports on what seems like an increasingly dire situation in Iran:

"Violence and protests in Iran, which have surged repeatedly since the fraud-ridden June 2009 elections, are reaching new heights. The most recent demonstrations has already seen 15 killed and 300 arrested. This unverified, widely-distributed and very graphic video appears to show several prisoners saved from the gallows by protesters. Meanwhile, Iranian forces have arrested top aides to opposition leader Mir-Hussein Moussavi, a 2009 presidential candidate who has come to be the face of the Iranian "green" movement. Moussavi's nephew was recently killed, sparking further unrest.

No one is certain what will happen next or how Iran's leadership, Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, will respond, but analysts are debating where the demonstrations could lead."

Gaza One Year On

Ali Abunimah is the co-founder of The Electric Intifada - and a sober commentator on the Palestinian-Israel conflict. His analysis is usually spot-on.

With the anniversary of Israel's attack on Gaza, writing on Al Jazeera in "Israel resembles a failed State" he records the situation in which Gaza finds itself 12 months on and Israel's standing and situation in all of this:

"One year has passed since the savage Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip, but for the people there time might as well have stood still.

Since Palestinians in Gaza buried their loved ones -- more than 1,400 people, almost 400 of them children -- there has been little healing and virtually no reconstruction.

According to international aid agencies, only 41 trucks of building supplies have been allowed into Gaza during the year.

Promises of billions made at a donors' conference in Egypt last March attended by luminaries of the so-called "international community" and the Middle East peace process industry are unfulfilled, and the Israeli siege, supported by the US, the European Union, Arab states, and tacitly by the Palestinian Authority (PA) in Ramallah, continues.

Amid the endless, horrifying statistics a few stand out: Of Gaza's 640 schools, 18 were completely destroyed and 280 damaged in Israeli attacks. Two-hundred-and-fifty students and 15 teachers were killed.

Of 122 health facilities assessed by the World Health Organization, 48 per cent were damaged or destroyed.

Ninety per cent of households in Gaza still experience power cuts for 4 to 8 hours per day due to Israeli attacks on the power grid and degradation caused by the blockade.

Forty-six per cent of Gaza's once productive agricultural land is out of use due to Israeli damage to farms and Israeli-declared free fire zones. Gaza's exports of more than 130,000 tonnes per year of tomatoes, flowers, strawberries and other fruit have fallen to zero."

Continue reading here.

Chinese dissident: Lesson for him....and the West

The jailing of leading Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo is shameful and only serves to show what sort of country China remains as a Communist State. But, with the West so much in need of "working" with China - for instance, the US is greatly indebted to, and virtually captive, to the Chinese for helping bail out the American economy - it is virtually powerless to do anything about human rights, or the lack of them, in China.

The NY Times reports:

"The harsh sentence handed down on Friday to Liu Xiaobo, one of China’s most prominent campaigners for democracy and human rights, prompted strong rebukes in the United States and Europe, but it also raised fresh questions over whether the West has much leverage over a government that is increasingly self-assured on the world stage.

By sentencing Mr. Liu to 11 years in prison for subversion, the Chinese government sent a chilling message to advocates of political reform and free speech. Mr. Liu, 53, a former literature professor who helped draft a manifesto last December that demanded open elections and the rule of law, was convicted after a closed two-hour trial on Wednesday in which his lawyers were allowed less than 20 minutes to state his case.

But many experts on Chinese politics said that Mr. Liu’s conviction on vague charges of “incitement to subvert state power” through his writing was also an unmistakable signal to the West that China would not yield to international pressure when it came to human rights. During his visit to China last month, President Obama raised Mr. Liu’s case with President Hu Jintao. Leaders of the European Union have been pressing for his release.

But a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry described such pressure on Tuesday as “gross interference in China’s judicial internal affairs.” The next day, more than two dozen American and European diplomats who sought to observe the trial were barred from the courthouse."

Continue reading here.

Yes, we can ... but so far, Obama hasn't

Illustration: Simon Letch.

"Less than 12 months into his presidency, Barack Obama is confronting an excruciating paradox. He is on the brink of being the first US president to deliver comprehensive reform of America's health-care system, a radical change for which he clearly had a mandate, and yet his popularity with voters has plummeted. He is increasingly regarded with either disappointment or downright distaste by legions of supporters who this time last year were still bathed in the euphoria of "yes we can".

What has gone wrong?

The past 11 months have been marked by Obama's seeming timidity, his vacillation (particularly the very public attenuated policy review process about whether to send more troops to Afghanistan) and his failure to stand up and tell people what it is he wants. (He has never articulated a precise description of the bottom-line requirements of the health-care plan he wants).

In other words, he has failed to lead.

This has surprised and infuriated his friends, has already led to significant defections among media outlets for whom last year he could do or say no wrong and, in what is now Obama's biggest political headache, has given a new-found energy to his opponents."

So begins a perspective of Obama's almost 12 months in office by Anne Summers, writing an op-ed piece in Australia's SMH. It's probably a fair assessment as Obama has so very extensively disappointed so many of not only his fellow-countrymen, but people in many countries around the world.

Xmas cheer....or is there something to cheer?

Credit to R. J. Matson - The NY Observer & Roll Call

How to misremember Andrei Sakharov

Scott Horton, writing on Harper's Magazine, makes a number of points relating to the 20th anniversary of the death of that great Russian Andrei Sakharov:

"The twentieth anniversary of Andrei Sakharov’s death was not forgotten in Russia. But it’s distressing to note how it was remembered. A television special ran on Russian state television celebrating Sakharov’s life—but the Sakharov it celebrated was the father of the hydrogen bomb and a key contributor to the military technology of the former Soviet Union, not the tireless advocate of “peace, progress, and human rights.” Fedor Lukyanov, a prominent foreign affairs journalist, wrote in the daily Gazeta that Sakharov’s ideas about human rights had been “discredited.”

Continue reading here - also for an insight into Russia today and that never-far-away-from-the-news Vladimir Putin.

Travels......

MPS has packed his bags and is travelling.

Don't go away, though, for postings will continue from on the road.

Best wishes to those who celebrate Christmas......

Plants and Animals Race for Survival as Climate Change Creeps Across the Globe

It might be Xmas Day - and celebrated as such in some countries around the world - but there is no celebrating for our planet.

Things are dire! There are no other words for it, whatever the naysayers might claim about climate change and warming.

The Guardian reports on grim things are:

"Global warming creeps across the world at a speed of a quarter of a mile each year, according to a new study that highlights the problems that rising temperatures pose to plants and animals. Species that can tolerate only a narrow range of temperatures will need to move as quickly if they are to survive. Wildlife in lowland tropics, mangroves and desert areas are at greater risk than species in mountainous areas, the study suggests."

How some people celebrate Xmas

Credit to Pat Bagley of The Salt Lake Tribune

No cheer here!....nor in the forseeable future

With Xmas there is supposed to be good cheer. Many would say that the GFC is slowly a thing of the past. But, all is not rosy in the garden. In fact, the prognosis on the economic front going into the new year is quite shaky in many countries around the world.

The Washington Post reports:

"The recession's jobless toll is draining unemployment-compensation funds so fast that according to federal projections, 40 state programs will go broke within two years and need $90 billion in loans to keep issuing the benefit checks.

The shortfalls are putting pressure on governments to either raise taxes or shrink the aid payments."

And:

"Currently, 25 states have run out of unemployment money and have borrowed $24 billion from the federal government to cover the gaps. By 2011, according to Department of Labor estimates, 40 state funds will have been emptied by the jobless tsunami."

In the very same edition of The Washington Post a piece "Ireland's deep budget cuts, an omen for a heavily indebted United States?" makes for sobering reading:

"Like other heavily indebted nations around the world, Ireland is borrowing vast sums from foreign investors to plug its budget deficit. Fearing that the country will buckle under the weight of so much debt, the Irish have an answer: Put the government on a diet.

More than $4 billion in cuts coming into effect after New Year's Day will slash salaries for 400,000 government workers while making painful reductions in benefits for such groups as widows and single mothers to the blind and disabled children. A tax targeting rich Irish nationals living overseas -- dubbed the "Bono Tax" in the Irish press -- will help restock empty coffers at home. Even Prime Minister Brian Cowen, who earns about as much as President Obama, is taking a 20 percent pay cut.

Such drastic steps have put Ireland on the front lines of a global battle against runaway government spending and exploding budget deficits in the wake of the financial crisis. The world's richest nations, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, are more indebted than at any time in at least the past 50 years.

Budget deficits in the world's industrialized nations have more than tripled during the financial crisis. Nations have injected huge amounts into bank bailouts and stimulus packages, even as tax collection has collapsed. With borrowing still soaring, the OECD projects that by 2011, wealthy nations could owe investors more than the value of their gross domestic product."

Iranian President: Noisy.... but not so strong

The news out of Iran is far from encouraging. Protests yes, repressive action to curb any challenges to the regime. There is unrest amongst the populace. And then there is that ever-looming deadline about Iran's nuclear efforts and plans.

The Washington Post reports on how whilst the Iranian President might be loud and forthright that he may not be that strong as he thinks:

"Mahmous Ahmadinejad of Iran says that the government over which he presides is "ten times" stronger than it was a year ago. Therefore, Mr. Ahmadinejad announced Tuesday, the Islamic Republic will defy the Obama administration's year-end deadline for accepting a U.N.-drafted proposal to trade Iran's enriched uranium stockpile for less dangerous nuclear fuel. Iran is "not afraid" of the sanctions that the United States and its allies may have in store, Mr. Ahmadinejad boasted, adding: "If Iran wanted to make a bomb, we would be brave enough to tell you."

Yet Mr. Ahmadinejad may protest too much. Judging by one measure of regime strength -- popular support -- the dictatorship of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which Mr. Ahmadinejad serves, is as weak as ever, if not weaker. Mr. Ahmadinejad delivered his outburst after hundreds of thousands of regime opponents filled the city of Qom to mourn the death of Ayatollah Ali Montazeri, a founder of the Islamic Republic who had more recently turned into a dissenter. The huge, nonviolent crowds, and their chants ("Dictator, this is your last message: The people of Iran are rising!"), proved that there is still plenty of life in the popular movement that Mr. Khamenei and his Revolutionary Guards provoked by engineering Mr. Ahmadinejad's fraudulent reelection in June. Given the horrific extent of the repression against that movement, its continued energy is nothing short of inspiring."

This is what we are fighting for and with?

U.S. Marines training the fledgling Afghan National Army have their seemingly hopeless work cut out for them, with Afghan nationals often more focused on their chai and hashish than the task at hand. Video from The Guardian here.

"I think if they introduced drug testing to the Afghan army we would lose probably three-quarters to maybe 80, 85 percent of the army," says one U.S. soldier".

The image of 2009!

Civilians stand behind the barbed-wire perimeter fence of the Manik Farm refugee camp near Vavuniya, Sri Lanka. (Photograph: David Gray / Reuters)

The photo probably best describes the human crisis which so dominated 2009.

The Guardian explains, in detail, in "Blocking of Aid Worsened 2009 Humanitarian Crises, Group Says - Trapped civilians in Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Sudan cut off from aid deliberately, says Médecins sans Frontières":

"The withholding of government aid to trapped civilians in Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Sudan contributed to the worst humanitarian emergencies of 2009, a medical group said today.

Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) also pointed to a fall in funding for the treatment of diseases such as sleeping sickness and HIV/Aids as part of its annual list of worst humanitarian crises for the past year.

"There is no question that civilians are increasingly victimised in conflicts and further cut off from lifesaving assistance, often deliberately," said Christophe Fournier, the MSF international council president. "In places like Sri Lanka and Yemen, where armed conflicts raged in 2009, aid groups were either blocked from accessing those in need or forced out because they too came under fire. This unacceptable dynamic is becoming the norm."

In Sri Lanka, tens of thousands of civilians were trapped with no aid and limited medical care as government forces battled Tamil Tiger rebels in the spring with aid organisations banned from entering the conflict zone. In some conflicts, hospitals themselves came under fire. In what MSF described as a glaring case of abuse of humanitarian action for military gain, civilians who gathered with their children at MSF vaccination sites in North Kivu, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) came under attack by government forces."

Copenhagen: Naomi Klein's Postscript

Leave it to Naomi Klein to succinctly "explain" in a piece "For Obama, No Opportunity Too Big To Blow" in The Nation what went wrong in Copenhagen and who is to blame:

"Contrary to countless reports, the debacle in Copenhagen was not everyone's fault. It did not happen because human beings are incapable of agreeing, or are inherently self-destructive. Nor was it all was China's fault, or the fault of the hapless UN.

There's plenty of blame to go around, but there was one country that possessed unique power to change the game. It didn't use it. If Barack Obama had come to Copenhagen with a transformative and inspiring commitment to getting the U.S. economy off fossil fuels, all the other major emitters would have stepped up. The EU, Japan, China and India had all indicated that they were willing to increase their levels of commitment, but only if the U.S. took the lead. Instead of leading, Obama arrived with embarrassingly low targets and the heavy emitters of the world took their cue from him.

(The "deal" that was ultimately rammed through was nothing more than a grubby pact between the world's biggest emitters: I'll pretend that you are doing something about climate change if you pretend that I am too. Deal? Deal.)"

The Middle East List for 2009

It seems to have almost become a tradition for newspapers, journals and the media generally to run lists at the end of a calendar year of this or that.

FP [Foreign Policy] is no exception. It has published its Middle East List for 2009. "Interesting" people have made it - but most not surprisingly. They have certainly been instrumental in framing the "news" in the region.

Read the full article, here, but some examples:

"Fan Favorite: Neda Soltan and the Iranian Green Revolutionaries. They may not have won (at least not yet), but the courageous protests which swept Tehran after the fraudulent "victory" of Mahmoud Ahmedenejad captured the world's attention. Neda Soltan became the international symbol of the protests, a focal point for the brave and resourceful -- and seemingly largely uncoordinated -- efforts of thousands upon thousands of ordinary Iranians. It's too early to know whether they will become the Chicago Cubs of the Middle East (lovable losers who bring deep pain every year to their fans after raising their hopes) or the Boston Red Sox (who threw off a similar curse to finally win). But the game will never be the same."

And:

"Defensive Player of the Year: Benjamin Netanyahu. The Israeli Prime Minister's ability to stand up to the United States on the issue of settlements threw American Middle East policy into the trash bin, harmed Obama's credibility across the Middle East and throughout the world, and may have squandered Israel's last chance to achieve a lasting peace with the Palestinians and the Arab world. But he successfully defended his positions, won considerable support from the Israeli public, and for whatever reason paid little to no costs of any kind with the United States."

A reflection of a sorry state of affairs in the US?

Credit to Mike Keefe of The Denver Post

Reporting....sometimes with a high price attached

It is troubling when one reads that reporters - who after all are only doing their job, especially reporting to "us" - are subjected to harassment, and worse - imprisonment.

CPJ [Committee to Protect Journalists] reports on the state of play in 2009:

"Freelancers now make up nearly 45 percent of all journalists jailed worldwide, a dramatic recent increase that reflects the evolution of the global news business, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. In its annual census of imprisoned journalists, CPJ found a total of 136 reporters, editors, and photojournalists behind bars on December 1, an increase of 11 from the 2008 tally. (Read detailed accounts of each imprisoned journalist.) A massive crackdown in Iran, where 23 journalists are now in jail, fueled the worldwide increase.

China continued to be the world’s worst jailer of journalists, a dishonor it has held for 11 consecutive years. Iran, Cuba, Eritrea, and Burma round out the top five jailers from among the 26 nations that imprison journalists. Each nation has persistently placed among the world’s worst in detaining journalists.

At least 60 freelance journalists are behind bars worldwide, nearly double the number from just three years ago. CPJ research shows the number of jailed freelancers has grown along with two trends: The Internet has enabled individual journalists to publish on their own, and some news organizations, watchful of costs, rely increasingly on freelancers rather than staffers for international coverage. Freelance journalists are especially vulnerable to imprisonment because they often do not have the legal and monetary support that news organizations can provide to staffers.

“The days when journalists went off on dangerous assignments knowing they had the full institutional weight of their media organizations behind them are receding into history,” said CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon. “Today, journalists on the front lines are increasingly working independently. The rise of online journalism has opened the door to a new generation of reporters, but it also means they are vulnerable.”

A passionate and earnest plea

Ex-president Jimmy Carter has for years canvassed peace in the Middle East. Since the Gaza War last December-January, he has taken up the cause of the Gazans - many living in dire circumstances. The world hasn't wanted to know.... which will, one day, come back to bite those who have averted their gaze and been so one-eyed in supporting Israel's quite unconscionable and inhumane actions.

In his latest piece "Gaza must be rebuilt now" - this time on Comment is Free in The Guardian - he writes:

"In summary: UN resolutions, Geneva conventions, previous agreements between Israelis and Palestinians, the Arab peace initiative, and official policies of the US and other nations are all being ignored. In the meantime, the demolition of Arab houses, expansion of Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and Palestinian recalcitrance threaten any real prospect for peace.

Of more immediate concern, those under siege in Gaza face another winter of intense personal suffering. I visited Gaza after the devastating January war and observed homeless people huddling in makeshift tents, under plastic sheets, or in caves dug into the debris of their former homes. Despite offers by Palestinian leaders and international agencies to guarantee no use of imported materials for even defensive military purposes, cement, lumber, and panes of glass are not being permitted to pass entry points into Gaza. The US and other nations have accepted this abhorrent situation without forceful corrective action."

It's more than just extra military destined for Afghanistan

Jeremy Scahill has written extensively, and authoritatively, on Afghanistan and the contractors being "employed" there on the American payroll.

In his latest writing, for CounterPunch in "The US Currently Has 189,000 Personnel in Afghanistan - Stunning Statistics About the War That Everyone Should Know", he provides some of the figures, and cost, of all that ever-growing band of contractors:

"In Afghanistan, the Obama administration blows the Bush administration out of the privatized water. According to a memo[PDF] released by McCaskill’s staff,

“From June 2009 to September 2009, there was a 40% increase in Defense Department contractors in Afghanistan. During the same period, the number of armed private security contractors working for the Defense Department in Afghanistan doubled, increasing from approximately 5,000 to more than 10,000.”

At present, there are 104,000 Department of Defense contractors in Afghanistan. According to a report this week from the Congressional Research Service, as a result of the coming surge of 30,000 troops in Afghanistan, there may be up to 56,000 additional contractors deployed. But here is another group of contractors that often goes unmentioned: 3,600 State Department contractors and 14,000 USAID contractors. That means that the current total US force in Afghanistan is approximately 189,000 personnel (68,000 US troops and 121,000 contractors). And remember, that’s right now. And that, according to McCaskill, is a conservative estimate. A year from now, we will likely see more than 220,000 US-funded personnel on the ground in Afghanistan.

The US has spent more than $23 billion on contracts in Afghanistan since 2002. By next year, the number of contractors will have doubled since 2008 when taxpayers funded over $8 billion in Afghanistan-related contracts."

Frank Rich of The NY Tines: Tiger Woods is Person of the Year

Before you either gaffaw or reel back in horror about the nomination of Tiger Woods as Person of the Year by veteran op-ed columnist at The New York Times Frank Rich, read his- very sound and sober - reasoning very for the choice:

"As we say farewell to a dreadful year and decade, this much we can agree upon: The person of the year is not Ben Bernanke, no matter how insistently Time magazine tries to hype him into its pantheon. The Fed chairman was just as big a schnook as every other magical thinker in Washington and on Wall Street who believed that housing prices would go up in perpetuity to support an economy leveraged past the hilt. Unlike most of the others, it was Bernanke’s job to be ahead of the curve. Yet as recently as June of last year he could be found minimizing the possibility of a substantial economic downturn. And now we’re supposed to applaud him for putting his finger in the dike after disaster struck? This is defining American leadership down.

If there’s been a consistent narrative to this year and every other in this decade, it’s that most of us, Bernanke included, have been so easily bamboozled. The men who played us for suckers, whether at Citigroup or Fannie Mae, at the White House or Ted Haggard’s megachurch, are the real movers and shakers of this century’s history so far. That’s why the obvious person of the year is Tiger Woods. His sham beatific image, questioned by almost no one until it collapsed, is nothing if not the farcical reductio ad absurdum of the decade’s flimflams, from the cancerous (the subprime mortgage) to the inane (balloon boy)."

Read on......here

The truths they ignored in Copenhagen

Johann Hari, writing in The Independent, takes a stick to those who attended the UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen for what they chose to ignore:

"So that's it. The world's worst polluters – the people who are drastically altering the climate – gathered here in Copenhagen to announce they were going to carry on cooking, in defiance of all the scientific warnings.

They didn't seal the deal; they sealed the coffin for the world's low-lying islands, its glaciers, its North Pole, and millions of lives.

Those of us who watched this conference with open eyes aren't surprised. Every day, practical, intelligent solutions that would cut our emissions of warming gases have been offered by scientists, developing countries and protesters – and they have been systematically vetoed by the governments of North America and Europe.

It's worth recounting a few of the ideas that were summarily dismissed – because when the world finally resolves to find a real solution, we will have to revive them."

Read on, here, for what Hari lists as the Discarded Ideas [as he describes them] at the Conference - nay, talk fest! And a costly one at that.

Tom Friedman, museum exhibit

Heaven knows why anyone takes notice of Thomas Friedman, columnist in The NY Times and author. So much of what he has written about - and pontificated on - has been discredited.

Glenn Greenwald, lawyer turned blogger and writer, in his latest piece on Salon takes a sharp and definitive scalpel to Friedman:

"Tom Friedman, The New York Times, yesterday:

'A corrosive mind-set has taken hold since 9/11. It says that Arabs and Muslims are only objects, never responsible for anything in their world, and we are the only subjects, responsible for everything that happens in their world. We infantilize them.'

Tom Friedman, over and over and over, for the last two weeks, on Afghanistan:

'I feel like we're like an unemployed couple who just went out and decided to adopt a special needs baby.'

The person who has spent weeks depicting Afghanistan as a "special needs baby" is now lecturing us about the "corrosive mind-set" of "infantilizing" Muslims. And the person who is now inveighing against seeing ourselves as "subjects" and Muslims as "objects" was one of the most vocal cheerleaders for the attack on Iraq on the ground that our invasion would "put Iraq on a more progressive path and stimulate some real change in an Arab world."

The "point" of Friedman's column yesterday is to call for a "civil war" in the Muslim world. Calling for wars is what Tom Friedman does most frequently. Today's not one of those days when I'm willing to wallow in the muck of his "argument," but Daniel Larison's superb response makes that unnecessary. Suffice to say: if I had to identify one fact that would illustrate for historians the rot and destructiveness of American political and media culture in this era, I would point to the fact that the trite, sociopathic, and grotesquely muddled mind of Tom Friedman is widely considered by political and media elites to be deeply Serious, profound and oozing great wisdom."

The real Person of the Year

It is probably because Time is American-centric that it has chosen Ben Bernanke as its Person of the Year. But is he really?

There is much to be said for David Rothkopf's choice of person of the year - as he explains, here, on his blog on FP:

"While Obama has undoubtedly made the biggest difference on the global stage this year, the most enduring image may be that of the tragic end of Neda. Iran could be the transcendental force in the Middle East, the country that could be the lynchpin to a new era of understanding and progress. No country in the region seems better suited to democracy or a role on the international stage. But it won't be until the voices of its people are heard.

Neda symbolized the promise of those people and revealed the Ahmadinejad regime and the ayatollahs who are the true puppet masters to be the blood-stained enemies of their own country they really are. History is not made by leaders ... as Gandhi knew ... but by the people they follow. Although she is gone, Neda bequeathed the world not only her life but an iconic image of struggle that has the power to inspire -- a power that no nuclear program, no army, no claimed relationship with the almighty can bring to thugs like Ahmadinejad and his fellow authoritarians and dictators worldwide."

America's real priorities - arms or the environment

The point is validly and easily made - as recorded on Democracy Now!:

"Bolivian President Evo Morales recently arrived in Copenhagen for the UN climate summit. In a press conference Wednesday, Morales said, “The budget of the United States is $687 billion for defense. And for climate change, to save life, to save humanity, they only put up $10 billion. This is shameful.”

Copenhagen: Yeah to the protestors

Some 34,000 people are gathered in Copenhagen at the UN Climate Change Conference.

As matters presently stand the signs of anything even remotely productive, let alone worthwhile, coming out of the meeting, seems remote. The politicians seem stricken with one thing or the other to come up with a proposal all can agree on.

In an piece "It's the Protesters Who Offer the Best Hope for Our Planet" in The Independent, Johann Hari reflects on the seemingly impotent politicians and bureaucrats and salutes the protesters - who are attempting to keep the conference participants on track.

"Privately, government negotiators admit there's no way the negotiations will end with the deal scientists say is necessary for our safety. Indeed, it looks possible that this conference won't deepen and broaden the Kyoto framework, but cripple it. Kyoto established a legally binding international framework to measure and reduce emissions. The cuts it required were too small, and the sanctions for breaking it were pitifully weak – but it was a start. Kyoto's current phase expires in 2012, but the treaty's authors believed its architecture would be retained and intensified after that. The developing countries assumed that's what they were here to do. But the US is proposing to simply ditch the Kyoto infrastructure – won over decades of long negotiations – and replace it with an even weaker voluntary deal. In their proposal, every country will announce cuts and stick to them out of the goodness of their hearts. No penalties, no enforcement.

So at the centre of this summit is a proposition stranger than any number of arrested cows or Nasa-quoting hoodies: we're playing Russian roulette with the climate, and our most powerful governments are filling the barrels with extra bullets, one by one.

Yet this conflagration here in Copenhagen is heartbreaking and heartwarming all at once. Our governments are showing their moral bankruptcy – but a genuinely global democratic movement is swelling to make them change course. Mass democratic agitation is the only force that has ever made governments moral before; it will have to do it again.

An army of dedicated campaigners is gathering here, and they are prepared to take real risks to oppose this sham-deal. The protest march on Saturday here must have been the most genuinely global demonstration in history. Under banners saying "There Is No Planet B", "Nature Doesn't Do Bailouts" and "Change the Politics, Not the Climate", there seemed to be people from every nation on earth. Lawrence Muli from Kenya's youth delegation told me: "We are having the worst drought in memory in Kenya. The seasons have changed in ways we don't understand. My family can't grow crops any more, so they are going hungry. I am here to say we won't die quietly."

Read this very worthwhile and insightful piece, in full, here.

And this is what you call justice?

From The Notion on The Nation:

"Donald Gates spent the last 28 years in prison, convicted of a rape and murder he said he didn't commit.

Yesterday, he was released from jail by the same judge who originally sentenced him to 20 years to life, as new DNA evidence pointed to a different man.

Gates is now 58 years old, and for his three lost decades the government gave him some winter clothes, $75, and a bus ticket to Ohio. He had to pay his $35 cab fare to get from jail to the bus station.

The FBI analyst who testified against him was discredited--along with 13 other analysts--by a Justice Department review in 1997 for having "made false reports and performed inaccurate tests," according to the Washington Post. The judge has now ordered a review of every conviction in which this analyst testified.

Given the 1997 review, what the hell took so long?

And how many more men and women sit in jail awaiting DNA testing?

Even worse, how many innocent people have wrongly been put to death because they didn't have the benefit of DNA evidence that might have cleared their names?

There have been 246 post-conviction DNA exonerations in the US--180 since 2000--and 17 of those individuals had served time on death row."

Climate Change: When Politics take over

Sarah Palin is such a cold-eyed skeptic about the Copenhagen summit on climate change that it’s no surprise she would call on President Barack Obama not to attend. After all, Obama might join other leaders in acknowledging that warming is a “global challenge.” He might entertain “opportunities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” He might even explore ways to “participate in carbon-trading markets.”

These quotes are from non other than Sarah Palin herself.

"They’re from an administrative order Palin signed in September 2007, as governor of Alaska, establishing a “sub-Cabinet” of top state officials to develop a strategy for dealing with climate change.

Back then, Palin was governor of a state where “coastal erosion, thawing permafrost, retreating sea ice, record forest fires, and other changes are affecting, and will continue to affect, the lifestyles and livelihoods of Alaskans,” as she wrote. Faced with that reality, she sensibly formed the high-level working group to chart a course of action.

“Climate change is not just an environmental issue,” wrote Palin. “It is also a social, cultural, and economic issue important to all Alaskans.”

Talk about bending in the wind as Palin now takes an opposite tack in order to curry favor with what she doubtlessly sees as her GOP supporters.

Eugene Robinson in The Nation explains all about Palins epiphany.

The beckoning silence: Why half of the world's languages are in serious danger of dying out

Of the 6,500 languages spoken in the world, half are expected to die out by the end of this century. Now, one man is trying to keep those voices alive by reigniting local pride in heritage and identity.

The Independent reports, here.

Court Refuses to Hear Gitmo Torture Case Claiming Detainees Are Not "Persons"

This is somewhat amazing! - but then again, knowing the constitution of the US Supreme Court, perhaps not that surprising after all.

AlterNet publishes the following news release from the Center for Constitutional Rights in piece "Supreme Court Refuses to Hear Gitmo Torture Case Claiming Detainees Are Not 'Persons'"

"Today, the United States Supreme Court refused to review a lower court's dismissal of a case brought by four British former detainees against Donald Rumsfeld and senior military officers for ordering torture and religious abuse at Guantánamo. The British detainees spent more than two years in Guantanamo and were repatriated to the U.K. in 2004.

The Obama administration had asked the court not to hear the case. By refusing to hear the case, the Court let stand an earlier opinion by the D.C. Circuit Court which found that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a statute that applies by its terms to all "persons" did not apply to detainees at Guantanamo, effectively ruling that the detainees are not persons at all for purposes of U.S. law. The lower court also dismissed the detainees' claims under the Alien Tort Statute and the Geneva Conventions, finding defendants immune on the basis that "torture is a foreseeable consequence of the military’s detention of suspected enemy combatants." Finally, the circuit court found that, even if torture and religious abuse were illegal, defendants were immune under the Constitution because they could not have reasonably known that detainees at Guantanamo had any Constitutional rights.

Eric Lewis, a partner in Washington, D.C.’s Baach Robinson & Lewis, lead attorney for the detainees, said, "It is an awful day for the rule of law and common decency when the Supreme Court lets stand such an inhuman decision. The final word on whether these men had a right not to be tortured or a right to practice their religion free from abuse is that they did not. Future prospective torturers can now draw comfort from this decision. The lower court found that torture is all in a days' work for the Secretary of Defense and senior generals. That violates the President's stated policy, our treaty obligations and universal legal norms. Yet the Obama administration, in its rush to protect executive power, lost its moral compass and persuaded the Supreme Court to avoid a central moral challenge. Today our standing in the world has suffered a further great loss."

How newspapers censor the Palestinian side of the story

Let it not be said that there isn't an Israel Lobby and every effort made by the Israelis to slant the "news" in their favor.

Mondoweiss [a blog well worth reading - daily] has the inside running - that is, from a recently published book by Emma Williams "It’s Easier to Reach Heaven Than the End of the Street", on how newspapers, in effect, censor the Palestinian "story" getting out there:

"In London a senior editor admitted he had been "brought to heel" by his management, and financially he couldn’t risk his position by including unacceptable–to management–balance. A radio journalist told me in Jerusalem: "When I do a Palestinian story, my editors are all over me. They tell me I must have an Israeli story to balance it, but when I do an Israeli story, there is no such request." Sometimes the journalists applied the silencing themselves: "That editor’s visit," said a Times correspondent, "was a waste of bloody time. Doing a story on the Palestinians, comes all the way to Israel, and refuses to go to the Occupied Territories. Still did the story though. From Tel Aviv."

One Jerusalem bureau chief was frank. "This is a machine," he said. "It’s not just the individuals, the officials, the influential friends. There are endless arms of the machine. There’s deciding who gets press passes, who gets recognition as a journalist. There’s singling out individuals for criticism. There’s pressure applied to individual journalists: complaints are made, accusations placed with the bureau or the paper back home. The journalist would know that he or she was a target and would have to deal with the pressure of ’surveillance’ without jeopardizing either organization or career. The balance is tipped against the journalist if the organization is not supportive: the pressure and constraints are sometimes bad enough for journalists to resign."

The bureau chief went on, "And there’s the department in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs set up with banks of television screens, to watch, count, time, assess, and report on each one of the networks 24 hours a day, seven days a week." He was matter of fact. "…if they think that you give more airtime to the Palestinian stories than to Israeli ones, or if the way you present the information doesn’t gel with their interpretation and the way they want the information to be seen, then they get on the phone or come and see you and tell you so. And then of course you have to defend yourself."

The Land Mines Obama Won't Touch

Bill Moyers is managing editor and Michael Winship is senior writer of the weekly public affairs program Bill Moyers Journal, which airs on PBS.

They write [as reprinted on CommonDreams] in "The Land Mines Obama Won't Touch" in the light of his Nobel Peace prize:

"After Nobel's death, events turned grim, as if to mock him further. The arms race exploded beyond anything he could have imagined. From the coupling of science and the military came ever more ingenious weapons of destruction that would take even more lives in ever more horrible ways.

One of the most insidious was the land mine, that small, explosive device filled with shrapnel that burns or blinds, maims or kills. Triggered by the touch of a foot or movement or even sound, more often than not it's the innocent who are its victims -- 75 to 80 percent of the time, in fact.

As a weapon, variations of land mines have been around since perhaps as early as the 13th century, but it was not until World War I that the technology was more or less perfected, if that can be said of weapons that mangle and mutilate the human body, and their use became common.

The United States has not actively used land mines since the first Gulf War in 1991, but we still possess some 10-15 million of them, making us the third largest stockpiler in the world, behind China and Russia. Like those two countries, we have refused to sign an international agreement banning the manufacture, stockpiling and use of land mines. Since 1987, 156 other nations have signed it, including every country in NATO. Amongst that 156, more than 40 million mines have been destroyed.

Just days before Obama flew to Oslo to make his Nobel Peace Prize speech, an international summit conference was held in Cartagena, Colombia, to review the progress of the treaty. The United States sent representatives and the State Department says our government has begun a comprehensive review of its current policy.

Last year 5,000 people were killed or wounded by land mines, often placed in the ground years before, during wars long since over. They kill or blow away the limbs of a farmer or child as indiscriminately as they do a soldier. But still we refuse to sign, citing security commitments to our friends and allies, such as South Korea, where a million mines fill the demilitarized zone between it and North Korea.

Twelve years ago, at the time the treaty was first put into place, the Nobel Peace Prize was jointly awarded to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines and Jody Williams, an activist from Vermont who believes that by organizing into a movement, ordinary people can matter. She proved it, despite the stubborn refusal of her own country's government to do the right thing.

Last week, Jody Williams condemned America's continuing refusal to sign the treaty as "a slap in the face to land mine survivors, their families, and affected communities everywhere."

The Nobel Committee said that part of the reason it was giving the Peace Prize to President Obama was for his respect of international law and his efforts at disarmament. And twice in his Nobel lecture, the President spoke of how often more civilians than soldiers die in a war. Then he said this:

"I believe that all nations, strong and weak alike, must adhere to standards that govern the use of force. I, like any head of state, reserve the right to act unilaterally if necessary to defend my nation. Nevertheless, I am convinced that adhering to standards strengthens those who do, and isolates -- and weakens -- those who don't."

And still the land mine treaty goes unsigned by the government he leads. Go figure."

It's one view of things in the world!!!

Rather than slip into the shadows post the Bush Administration leaving office, former VP Cheney just can't help himself on wanting to be heard everywhere. Many would query Cheney's view of what the US is to the world....

"Well, I think most of us believe and most presidents believe and talk about the truly exceptional nature of America. Our history, where we come from, our belief in our Constitutional values and principles. Our advocacy for freedom and democracy and the fact that we’ve provided it for millions of people all over the globe and so unselfishly. There’s never been a nation like the United States of America in world history. And, yet when you have a president that goes around and bows to his host and proceeds to apologize profusely for the United States, I find that deeply disturbing. That says to me there’s a guy who doesn’t fully understand or share that view of American exceptionalism that I think most of us believe in"..

Racism alive and well in Europe

Spiegel OnLine International reports in "New Report Finds Racism Prevalent Across Europe" on a disturbing report by the EU on racism in its member countries:

"For minority groups living in Europe, everyday pursuits like shopping or visiting the doctor are often soured by discrimination. According to a new EU-wide report, racism is deeply entrenched -- and, more worryingly still, often goes unreported.

For many of Europe's ethnic minorities and immigrants, racism and discrimination is a sad fact of day-to-day life, according to a report published on Wednesday by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA).

Europe, whose citizens once fled in droves in favor of a more promising future elsewhere, has gradually emerged as a magnet for immigrants. But the experience of its ethnic minorities and newcomers is often far from rosy, according to the new survey. Among a raft of sobering facts, it found that on average, every second Roma and more than a third of the Sub-Saharan African interviewees were discriminated against on the basis of their ethnicity at least once over the past year.

Strikingly, they also found that among those facing discrimination in the last 12 months, some 82 percent did not report their experience to authorities, often because of doubts about local police.

The EU-wide study is the first of its kind, having collected the opinions of 23,500 people from various ethnic minorities and immigrant groups across the EU's 27 member states in 2008. To pin down the extent of the problem, it used a range of questions probing discrimination in various spheres of everyday life, including work or job hunting, looking for accomodation, health care and social services, schools and shops, as well as experiences like trying to open a bank account or obtain a loan."

War and Peace....literally - and not by Tolstoy!

Credit to Mike Luckovich

Lights and Rights

The message is loud and clear!

What is "interesting" is how the first day of the Jewish festival of Hanukah and International Rights day was marked - well, at least by some - in Israel.

CommonDreams reports:

"Happy first night of Hannukah and International Human Rights Day, which thousands of Israelis marked for the first time by marching in Tel Aviv. Protesting the erosion of democracy in Israel, the march drew Arab rights' advocates, feminists, environmentalists, migrant workers and gay and lesbian activists."

They will breach the latest wall

When will the Americans, and others, learn? Walls, and restrictions on people, will be breached in one way or another.

Ann Wright, is a retired US Army Reserve Colonel and a former U.S. diplomat who resigned in March, 2003 in opposition to the war on Iraq. She served in as a US diplomat in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia.

She writes in "Making an American 'Impenetrable Underground Wall' the Laughing Stock of the World—Leave It to the People of Gaza" on CommonDreams:

"No doubt at the instigation of the Israeli government, the Obama administration has authorized the United States Army Corps of Engineers to design a vertical underground wall under the border between Egypt and Gaza.

"In March, 2009 the United States provided the government of Egypt with $32 million in March, 2009 for electronic surveillance and other security devices to prevent the movement of food, merchandise and weapons into Gaza. Now details are emerging about an underground steel wall that wil be 6-7 miles long and extend 55 feet straight down into the desert sand.

The steel wall will be made of super-strength steel put together in a jigsaw puzzle fashion. It will be bomb proof and can not be cut or melted. It will be "impenetrable," and reportedly will take 18 months to construct.

The steel wall is intended to cut the tunnels that go between Gaza and Egypt."

And:

"I have been to Gaza 3 times this year following the 22-day Israeli military attack on Gaza that killed 1,440, wounded 5,000, left 50,000 homeless and destroyed much of the infrastructure of Gaza. The disproportionate use of force and targeting of the civilian population by the Israeli military is considered by international law and human rights experts as as violations of the Geneva conventions.

When our governments participate in illegal actions, it is up to the citizens of the world to take action. On December 31, 2009, 1,400 international citizens from 42 countries will march in Gaza with 50,000 Gazans in the Gaza Freedom March to end the siege of Gaza. They will take back to their countries the stories of spirit and survival of the pople of Gaza and will return home committed to force their governments to stop these inhuman actions against the people of Gaza.

Just as American smart bombs in Afghanistan and Iraq have not conquered the spirit of Aghans and Iraqis, America's underground walls in Gaza will never conquer the courage of those who are fighting for the survival of their families.

One more time, the American government and the Obama administration has been an active participant in the continued inhumane treatment of the people of Gaza and should be held accountable, along with Israel and Egypt for violations of human rights of the people of Gaza."

How well-infomed will she, and you, be?

The Washington Post has just appointed a new Bureau Chief to its Jerusalem office. Nothing too significant about that - except the credentials of the appointee, her background and lingual skills, or rather, lack of them.

Politico reports:

"Zacharia has worked in Jerusalem with Jerusalem Report and Reuters, and in Washington as a correspondent over the past 10 years with the Jerusalem Post, New Republic, and Bloomberg"

And, more importantly:

"Janine is as comfortable in the Middle East as she is in Washington, having begun her career in Jerusalem as a correspondent for the Jerusalem Report and Reuters. She speaks fluent Hebrew and has some knowledge of Arabic."

How well-informed can this correspondent be? - and you the reader for that matter? - when this correspondent's perspective of what is happening in the Middle East is learned from her position in Jerusalem, reading Hebrew, and barely able to read or understand anything written or spoken in Arabic.

3 deaths at Gitmo raise chilling questions

Scott Horton, writing in Harper's Magazine, again reveals "news" which rarely attracts the MSM:

"On June 10, 2006, the Pentagon announced that three prisoners held at Guantánamo’s Camp Delta had committed suicide. But senior Bush Administration officials quickly went one step further: violating the normal rules of decorum, they unleashed intense verbal abuse against the deceased. Prison commander Rear Admiral Harry Harris said, “This was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetric warfare committed against us.” Senior Bush State Department official Colleen Graffy called the deaths “a good PR move” and “a tactic to further the jihadi cause.” An investigation was prepared by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service that backed up these claims, but it was only released in fragmentary form months later. Were these aggressive comments and an almost incomprehensible NCIS report intentionally obscuring very different facts?

Now an exhaustive study by faculty and students at New Jersey’s Seton Hall University—the eleventh in their authoritative series—takes aim at the NCIS report and concludes that it’s little more than a “cover up.” Professor Mark Denbeaux, who directed the effort, told me in an interview that it was “Gitmo meets Lord of the Flies.” The NCIS report itself showed flagrant violations of Guantánamo’s own operating procedures and presented facts that are impossible to reconcile with its conclusions that the deaths were “suicides” resulting from a “conspiracy” among the three prisoners—one of whom was about to be released and return home. Read the full report here (PDF), and my summary of it and my interview with Denbeaux at the Huffington Post."

Be afraid!....of Palin's followers

If these are Palin's ardent followers then heaven help us all....as they display their utter ignorance of just about everything.

Some "military intelligence!"

From CommonDreams [and believe it's true!]:

"During an inquiry into Britain's role in the Iraq war, a British MP said an Iraqi taxi driver was the source of the bogus claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. This guy may or may not have overheard something about missiles in the back of his cab - two years earlier. This was the evidence for going to war. Surreal."

Alice in Wonderland alive and well

"Leave it to the State Department to soft-pedal religious extremism in the Middle East. Oh not in, say, Iran or Saudi Arabia. In the most recent edition of the department’s annual Report on International Religious Freedom, both are designated “Countries of Particular Concern,” members of a select group chastised for their extreme intolerance. Which is as it should be.

But where is State’s acknowledgement of the happenings – from the absurd to the inhumane – in another, nearby country, where religious chauvinism has reached depths equaling those among any of its neighbors? I’m talking, of course, about the State of Israel – a place unfit, it seems, for any “particular concern” from Hillary & Co.

Certainly, the Report reports on Israel. But to avoid grouping the Jewish State with Iran, Saudi Arabia, and similarly intolerant countries, its authors resort to language one can only describe as Carrollian, leading readers through a looking glass in which words, as Humpty Dumpty would have it, mean anything they choose them to mean, nothing more and nothing less.

So while a reality-based Israeli reporter, writing in Ha’aretz, can say that “Israel dismally fails the requirements of a tolerant pluralistic society,” the State Department authors mean for us to believe something else entirely. Forget “dismal.” According to them, the behavior of Israeli Jews towards the Palestinians – Christian and Muslim – has merely “strained” the relationship between the two.

It’s an interesting locution, given that, just three years ago, then-Prime Minister Olmert told a beaming Congress that his “people” had an “eternal and historic right” to all of Palestine."

So begins a more than "interesting" piece "Through the State Department Looking Glass" by Kevin Mink on CounterPunch. Mink makes good his criticism with some remarkable [no, perhaps not!] examples of Israel "in action".

Damaged goods...in a real bunker!

Credit to Daryl Cage on MSNBC.com

Afghanistan: The wider and real toll

Obama has decreed another 30,000 troops being sent to Afghanistan. Other countries are also committing to sending more personnel of one description or another.

Being involved in war obviously carries risks with it - serious injury and even possible death. There are also much wider ramifications, as this op-ed piece "A Fearful Price" by Bob Herbert in The NY Times reveals:

"There was an article in The Times on Monday about a new study showing that the eight years of warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan were taking an emotional toll on the children of service members and that the difficulties increased the longer parents were deployed.

There is no way that the findings of this study should be a surprise to anyone. It just confirms that the children of those being sent into combat are among that tiny percentage of the population that is unfairly shouldering the entire burden of these wars.

The idea that fewer than 1 percent of Americans are being called on to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq and that we’re sending them into combat again and again and again — for three tours, four tours, five tours, six tours — is obscene. All decent people should object.

We already knew that in addition to the many thousands who have been killed or physically wounded, hundreds of thousands have returned with very serious psychological wounds: deep depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and so on. Other problems are also widespread: alcohol and drug abuse, family strife, homelessness."

UN warns of rising tensions as refugees flood into cities

"From the slums of Kabul to the shanties of Damascus, more than half of the world's refugees are now scraping by on tiny strips of land in increasingly overcrowded, overburdened cities.

Rather than living in rows of neatly pegged white canvas UN tents set up in fields as the public might imagine it, aid officials have revealed that more than 50 per cent of the planet's 10.5 million refugees are now battling to get by in urban areas. Cities also contain more than 20 million internal refugees and displaced people.

"We need to abandon the outmoded image that most refugees live in sprawling camps of tents," said Antonio Guterres, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. "What we are witnessing is that more and more refugees live in cities. The rights of refugees travel with them wherever they flee and they are entitled to the same protection and services in cities and towns that they have traditionally received in camps."

The Independent reports on a problem the world simply can't ignore - let alone sweep under the carpet.

A Letter [with the real facts] from Kabul

Michael Shank is the communications director for US Congressman Michael Honda.

Writing in The Nation, he portrays what is really going on in Kabul - and not air-brushed as governments and media have. As Obama commits another 30,000 military to Afghanistan, the Shank's piece makes for sober reading.

"Returning to Washington this week, after a whirlwind tour in Afghanistan, I am dizzy, not from delight but from the overwhelming disconnect between rhetoric stateside and reality Asia-side. Thankfully, my boss, Congressman Michael Honda, chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus's Afghanistan Taskforce, is trying to penetrate this rhetoric and advocate that reality. But it is not an easy job, especially in a town where sound bites often usurp sound analysis. This week, as I drafted talking points for the Congressman in preparation for an interview with the Wall Street Journal, I stumbled, not on words but on emotion. What I had just experienced in Afghanistan was so far afield from the Washington majority thought that I found the moment simultaneously disabling and empowering--both of which stem from feeling like a lone voice on a complex conflict. This returner's culture shock was not a result of neophyte glo-betrotting as I've worked in conflict zones throughout the Middle East and Asia; it stemmed from a deep disappointment with how Washington is disconnected from the reality on the ground."

Calling the shots in Washington...from Israel

"There is an amazing story in Ha'aretz today on the "pro-Israel" litmus test that determines who is permitted to serve in the United States government. Here's the sort of lede you're not likely to read in the New York Times or Washington Post:

• "Every appointee to the American government must endure a thorough background check by the American Jewish community."
• In the case of Obama's government in particular, every criticism against Israel made by a potential government appointee has become a catalyst for debate about whether appointing "another leftist" offers proof that Obama does not truly support Israel."

Truly amazing, this piece by Stephen Walt - taking up on a piece in Haaretz - writing his blog on FP.

One Voice .......almost everywhere

In an unprecedented consensus, 56 newspapers in 45 countries around the world are publishing one front-page editorial on the urgent need to address climate change now.

"The politicians in Copenhagen have the power to shape history's judgment on this generation: one that saw a challenge and rose to it, or one so stupid that we saw calamity coming but did nothing to avert it."

Not all countries have seen the editorial published. Australia is one of them.

For those interested in the one-voice editorial, newmatilda has published it, here.

What is good for the goose.....!

Credit to Pat Bagley of the Salt Lake Tribune, Utah

The man who smuggled himself into Auschwitz

When millions would have done anything to get out, one remarkable British soldier smuggled himself into Auschwitz to witness the horror so he could tell others the truth.

Believable? Yes, as this report on BBC Magazine shows.

Damnable Dick Cheney

James Fallow, writing on The Atlantic Monthly, makes out a justified case against former VP, Dick Cheney:

"The former vice president, Dick Cheney, has brought dishonor to himself, his office, and his country. I am not aware of another former President or Vice President behaving as despicably as Cheney has done in the ten months since leaving power, most recently but not exclusively with his comments to Politico about Obama's decisions on Afghanistan. (Aaron Burr might win the title, for killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel, but Burr was a sitting Vice President at the time.) Cheney has acted as if utterly unconcerned with the welfare of his country, its armed forces, or the people now trying to make difficult decisions. He has put narrow score-settling interest far, far above national interest."

Read the full piece here.

Why they hate the US: How many Muslims has the US killed?

Stephen Walt, writing his blog on FP:

"Tom Friedman had an especially fatuous column in Sunday's New York Times, which is saying something given his well-established capacity for smug self-assurance. According to Friedman, the big challenge we face in the Arab and Islamic world is "the Narrative" -- his patronizing term for Muslim views about America's supposedly negative role in the region. If Muslims weren't so irrational, he thinks, they would recognize that "U.S. foreign policy has been largely dedicated to rescuing Muslims or trying to help free them from tyranny." He concedes that we made a few mistakes here and there (such as at Abu Ghraib), but the real problem is all those anti-American fairy tales that Muslims tell each other to avoid taking responsibility for their own actions."

And:

"Here's my back-of-the-envelope analysis, based on estimates deliberately chosen to favor the United States. Specifically, I have taken the low estimates of Muslim fatalities, along with much more reliable figures for U.S. deaths."

S