Mahler's Prodigal Son

Hard to believe, but the country which prides itself on its free-enterprise - and now paying the price for it! - has evidently seen a fraud which dwarfs even that of Bernard Madoff and his US$50 billion Ponzi scheme. The Independent reports: "In what could turn out to be the greatest fraud in US history, American authorities have started to investigate the alleged role of senior military officers in the misuse of $125bn (£88bn) in a US -directed effort to reconstruct Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The exact sum missing may never be clear, but a report by the US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) suggests it may exceed $50bn, making it an even bigger theft than Bernard Madoff's notorious Ponzi scheme. "I believe the real looting of Iraq after the invasion was by US officials and contractors, and not by people from the slums of Baghdad," said one US businessman active in Iraq since 2003. In one case, auditors working for SIGIR discovered...

Scott Horton writing in Harper's Magazine : "Army Private Brandon Neely served as a prison guard at Guantánamo in the first years the facility was in operation. With the Bush Administration, and thus the threat of retaliation against him, now gone, Neely decided to step forward and tell his story. “The stuff I did and the stuff I saw was just wrong,” he told the Associated Press. Neely describes the arrival of detainees in full sensory-deprivation garb, he details their sexual abuse by medical personnel, torture by other medical personnel, brutal beatings out of frustration, fear, and retribution, the first hunger strike and its causes, torturous shackling, positional torture, interference with religious practices and beliefs, verbal abuse, restriction of recreation, the behavior of mentally ill detainees, an isolation regime that was put in place for child-detainees, and his conversations with prisoners David Hicks and Rhuhel Ahmed. It makes for fascinating reading." Go ...

Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He writes on CounterPunch about the recent elections in Israel and assesses each of the possible Prime Ministers: "I have some good news and some bad news,” the sergeant in the joke tells his men. “The good news is that you are going to change your dirty socks. The bad news is that you are going to exchange them among yourselves.” I am not the only person who is reminded of this old British army joke by the current elections. We are faced by a sorry lot of politicians, some of them documented failures and some completely free of any past achievements. There is no meaningful discussion between them about the issues. Not one of the main contenders offers real solutions to our basic problems. The differences between them are invisible without a magnifying glass. The instinctive reaction: “To hell with the lot of them. Let’s not vote at all!” But that is childish. We cannot afford not to vote, or to vote out of spi...

We all know about America's First Amendment rights of freedom of speech. All good and fine until it is perverted by sleaze-types like radio host Rush Limbaugh - who, for some reason which bears exploration, attracts a very solid following. What is there to say about the depths Limbaugh has sunk? - as reported on truthdig.com : "Leave it to the proto-fascists to find a way to make money off torture, human rights abuses and the degradation of America’s image abroad. Rush Limbaugh has found it acceptable to sell “Club Gitmo” shirts on his Web site, complete with the image of a diving board and swimming pool (water + board, get it?). From RushLimbaugh.com New Club Gitmo slogan/logo with diving board and swimming pool (Water & Board) emblazoned on front and back. Available in Institutional Orange only in sizes: S, M, L, XL, XXL, XXXL & XXXXL!"

BBC News reports on what have thought for quite some time now: "The severity of global warming over the next century will be much worse than previously believed, a leading climate scientist has warned. Professor Chris Field, an author of a 2007 landmark report on climate change, said future temperatures "will be beyond anything" predicted. Prof Field said the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report had underestimated the rate of change. He said warming is likely to cause more environmental damage than forecast. Speaking at the American Science conference in Chicago, Prof Field said fresh data showed greenhouse gas emissions between 2000 and 2007 increased far more rapidly than expected. "We are basically looking now at a future climate that is beyond anything that we've considered seriously in climate policy," he said. Prof Field said the 2007 report, which predicted temperature rises between 1.1C and 6.4C over the next century, seriously u...

What surely be a surprise that the mainstream have such views, USA News reports: "Even as Americans struggle with two wars and an economy in tatters, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds majorities in favor of investigating some of the thorniest unfinished business from the Bush administration: Whether its tactics in the "war on terror" broke the law. Close to two-thirds of those surveyed said there should be investigations into allegations that the Bush team used torture to interrogate terrorism suspects and its program of wiretapping U.S. citizens without getting warrants. Almost four in 10 favor criminal investigations and about a quarter want investigations without criminal charges. One-third said they want nothing to be done. Even more people want action on alleged attempts by the Bush team to use the Justice Department for political purposes. Four in 10 favored a criminal probe, three in 10 an independent panel, and 25% neither. The ACLU and other groups are pressing for...

There is just no stopping Alan Dershowitz - disgrace to the legal profession and even more so that he remains in the Faculty at Harvard Law School - as it is now revealed that he has been directly contacting students [where and how did he get their contact details?] who have been protesting Israel's actions in Gaza [notably at Hampshire College] and intimidating them. Mondoweiss has the lowdown: "Immediately after Hampshire College announced they had divested from the Israeli occupation, there was another story that Professor Alan Dershowitz had made threatening phone calls to students who had worked to pass the divestment. This seemed like an odd story - how would Dershowitz get student's private phone numbers? And while he might be expected to create a media circus out of this, would he really try to harass and intimidate students? Ends up that he would. Below is a written description of the events of the morning of Thursday, February 12, the morning of the divestment ...