Caplewood

07:09 am - Bushies aren't any better at capitalism than they are at war

Peter Morici writes in Asia Times:

When George W Bush was inaugurated in 2001, the euro was trading at 94 cents and gold cost $266 an ounce. Now they are trading at $1.52 and $985 an ounce. That is a plain vote of no confidence in the government's economic model, and international investors are fleeing the dollar for the best available substitute - the euro and gold. Why the dollar is cheap

07:07 am - Bushies in Gaza

From Vanity Fair:

After failing to anticipate Hamas’s victory over Fatah in the 2006 Palestinian election, the White House cooked up yet another scandalously covert and self-defeating Middle East debacle: part Iran-contra, part Bay of Pigs. With confidential documents, corroborated by outraged former and current U.S. officials, David Rose reveals how President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Deputy National-Security Adviser Elliott Abrams backed an armed force under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, touching off a bloody civil war in Gaza and leaving Hamas stronger than ever. Gaza Bombshell

ht to Attaturk

UPDATE: Scott Horton comments:

A conservative foreign policy recognizes that even in the best of cases, our powers of prediction are slight, our ability to assess in advance the results of our interventions are poor. This counsels against aggressively wading into the affairs of others with force of arms except when the risk to our own nation is clear. And in this case, we are witnessing a curious pattern of picking allies, the “lesser of two evils” for some imagined incremental benefits. To venture the reputation and treasure of a great nation in such a manner is foolish. But the real evil of this choice lies in the death, destruction and mayhem which were predictable from the outset. The likelihood that the scheme would bear the fruit that its authors imagined was infinitesimal. Whatever you may wish to label this foreign policy, “conservative” it is not. No comment

08:16 pm - The Birmingham News is crap.

We have always known this, but now the national media has taken note. Scott Horton writes: 

The unofficial voice of the Alabama G.O.P. throughout the entire Siegelman affair has been the Birmingham News, which posts the party’s propaganda as if it were newscopy, mixed in with a bit of material that looks like reporting. Harpers

08:22 pm - The 40-year Brit occupation of Iraq

Andrew Sullivan quotes Lawrence of Arabia:

The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiques are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told ... It is a disgrace to our imperial record, and may soon be inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are today not far from a disaster.  Daily Dish

04:33 pm - Voting for Democrats

Howard Zinn writes: 

Would I support one candidate against another? Yes, for two minutes—the amount of time it takes to pull the lever down in the voting booth.

But before and after those two minutes, our time, our energy, should be spent in educating, agitating, organizing our fellow citizens in the workplace, in the neighborhood, in the schools. Our objective should be to build, painstakingly, patiently but energetically, a movement that, when it reaches a certain critical mass, would shake whoever is in the White House, in Congress, into changing national policy on matters of war and social justice.

Let’s remember that even when there is a "better" candidate (yes, better Roosevelt than Hoover, better anyone than George Bush), that difference will not mean anything unless the power of the people asserts itself in ways that the occupant of the White House will find it dangerous to ignore.
[. . .]
The Democratic Party has broken with its historic conservatism, its pandering to the rich, its predilection for war, only when it has encountered rebellion from below, as in the Thirties and the Sixties. We should not expect that a victory at the ballot box in November will even begin to budge the nation from its twin fundamental illnesses: capitalist greed and militarism.*So we need to free ourselves from the election madness engulfing the entire society, including the left.*Yes, two minutes. Before that, and after that, we should be taking direct action against the obstacles to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Election Madness

ht to Avedon Carol at Sideshow

07:39 pm - It's all over baby blue

Tony Karon writes:

The Democrats envisage turning the clock back eight years, restoring post-Cold War American primacy simply by adopting a more sober and consensus-based style. The problem, of course, is that while Bush’s reckless forays into the Middle East have accelerated the decline of America’s strategic influence, there’s little reason to believe that this decline can be reversed either by more of the same, or by a less abrasive tenant in the Oval Office. . . Bush’s catastrophic mistakes have inadvertently revealed the limits of U.S. power, making it abundantly clear to both friend and foe that Washington is no longer in charge.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in the Middle East, where most of the Bush Administration’s exertions have been focused. The U.S. remains mired in Iraq for the foreseeable future, its recent troop surge — utilizing the maximum combat capability currently available to its military – achieving tactical gains but failing to resolve the political conflict that drives the violence there. Other designated bad guys such as Syria, and particularly Iran, have actually grown in strength and influence as a result of an Iraq invasion designed to intimidate them into surrender. Tehran has cocked a snoot at U.S.-led efforts to pressure it over its nuclear program, buoyed both by America’s need for Iranian goodwill in Iraq and also the ascendancy of non-Western players, particularly China and Russia, as economic and geopolitical partners.

Bush has failed to exorcise Hizballah and Syrian influence from Lebanon, and his efforts to marginalize Hamas in Palestinian politics have also clearly floundered. These and other failures have demonstrated even to longtime U.S. allies in the region such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia that Washington currently has neither the muscle nor the vision to secure their common interests, prompting both to rebuff U.S. policies they deem dysfunctional, such as the efforts to isolate Iran and Hamas. Honey I shrank the superpower

07:33 am - The other road to serfdom

Alabama's most astute political commentator writes:

The philosophical mission of the Bush/Cheney regime is to set aside the constraints of constitutional checks and balances in favor of concentrating authority in a "unitary executive"---what the Founding Fathers might have called a "king." From illegal signing statements to unjustified invasions, George Bush and his minions have acted in disregard, if not outright defiance, of the rule of national and international law and have done so with impunity.
[ . . .]
[T]hese people mean to create a living legacy, to leave behind an authoritarian regime operating according to their repressive principles and for their benefit long after they’ve gone; a military-financial complex against which ordinary citizens would be powerless to resist. Courtney Haden in the Birmingham Weekly

08:48 am - The unarmed road of flight

Patrick Cockburn shows what the Bushies and their Democratic collaborators have done to one Iraqi family:

He [Bassim] was living there [the Jihad neighborhood of Baghdad] in the summer of 2006 with his wife Maha, 38, and his children Sarah, 13, Noor, eight, and Sama, three, when Shia militiamen took over Jihad when Shia militiamen took over Jihad. . . . Bassim fled to Syria with his family and, when he returned to Jihad three months later, he found pictures of Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia nationalist cleric who heads the Mehdi Army, pasted to the gate of his house.

Neighbors told Bassim to get out as fast as he could before the Mehdi Army militiamen came back and killed him. He drove with his family to his father-in-law's house in the tough Sunni district of al-Khadra, where he and his wife and three children were to live in future in a single small room. He did not dare go back to his old home, but he heard about it in the summer of 2007 from a friendly Shia neighbour who said it had been taken over by militiamen. "They accused me," says Bassim, "of being a high-rank officer in the former intelligence service and because of that they got a permit [from al-Sadr's office] to take it over." 
[. . . ]
The permanent loss of his home, his only possession of any value apart from his car, was a terrible blow to Bassim and his wife. "I have nothing else to lose aside from my house," he wrote to me in a sad letter in the autumn of 2007, "and because of what happened I had a heart attack. I worked as a taxi driver for a few days, but I couldn't do it any longer because of the dangerous situation and I had no other way of earning a living. Finally, I sold my car and my wife's few gold things and I will try to go to Sweden even if I have to go illegally." 
[. . .]
I had originally hoped that his plan to travel illegally to Sweden was a fantasy he would never try to realize, but everything he had said in his letter turned out to be true. He had sold his car, his wife's gold jewellery and some furniture for $6,500 and borrowed $1,500 from his sister and the same amount from friends. Of this, $6,900 was paid to Abu Mohammed, an Iraqi in Sweden, who provided Bassim and a friend called Ibrahim with Lithuanian passports (these turned out to be genuine, but one of Bassim's many fears over the next three months was that his passport was a fake and he would be thrown in jail). The two men went first to Damascus and then, instructed over the phone by Abu Mohammed in Sweden, they flew to Malaysia.

This would seem to be the wrong direction, but Malaysia has the great advantage of being one of the few countries to give Iraqis entry visas at the airport. Bassim and Ibrahim took rooms at the cheapest hotel they could find in Kuala Lumpur.

They were then told by Abu Mohammed to get a plane to Cambodia and take a bus to Vietnam. Though their money was fast dwindling, they did so. Somehow, still speaking only Arabic, they made their way from Phnom Penh to Ho Chi Minh City. The plan was to get a ticket to Sweden by way of France (Bassim now thinks that this was a mistake and it would have been better to travel first to Lithuania, posing as citizens returning home, but this would have left the two Iraqis with the problem of explaining to officials there why they did not speak Lithuanian).

In the check-in queue at the airport in Vietnam on January 5 this year, Bassim was desperately worried he would be detected. He had staked all his remaining money and his family's future on getting to Sweden. In fact, he and Ibrahim had little chance of being allowed on to the plane. Too many Iraqis, claiming to be citizens of small East European states, had tried this route before. Suspicious Vietnamese immigration officials took them to an investigation room where Bassim felt ill and asked for a glass of water, which was refused. He and Ibrahim continued to protest that they were Lithuanian citizens and demanded to be taken to the Lithuanian embassy, knowing full well that Lithuania is unrepresented in Vietnam.

It was all in vain. The officials guessed that they were Iraqis. They sent Bassim and Ibrahim back to Cambodia. Half-starved because he did not like the local food--"I was used to Iraqi bread," he recalled later--and with his money almost gone, Bassim made his way back to Kuala Lumpur by the end of January. He last saw his friend Ibrahim heading for Indonesia in a small boat.

Abu Mohammed in Sweden became elusive and, when finally contacted by phone after six days, admitted that "for Iraqis, all the ways from Asia to Sweden are shut". He did not offer to return Bassim's $6,900. Demoralized, and hearing that many Iraqi refugees trying to get to Europe through Indonesia simply disappeared, Bassim used his last few dollars to fly to Damascus and took a shared taxi across the desert to Baghdad. "The journey took three months but it felt like 10 years," he said. "I have lost everything." Flight

07:28 am - Melissa gets cover art

08:37 pm - A US deal between the US and Iran?

 George Friedman argues that we are seeing the results of secret negotiations between the US and Iran:

Casualties in Iraq have declined — not only U.S. military casualties but also civilian casualties. The civil war between Sunni and Shia has declined dramatically, although it did not disappear. Sunnis and Shia both were able to actively project force into more distant areas, so the decline did not simply take place because neighborhoods became more homogeneous, nor did it take place because of the addition of 30,000 troops. Though the United States created a psychological shift, even if it uses its troops more effectively, Washington cannot impose its will on the population. A change in tactics or an increase of troops to 150,000 cannot control a country of 25 million bent on civil war.

The decline in intracommunal violence is attributable to two facts. The first is the alliance between the United States and Sunni leaders against al Qaeda, which limited the jihadists’ ability to strike at the Shia. The second is the decision by the Iranians to control the actions of Iranian-dominated militias. 
[. . .]
If the prime Iranian threat against the United States was civil war in Iraq, the prime American threat against Iran was an air campaign against Iranian infrastructure. Such a campaign was publicly justified by the U.S. claim that Iran was developing nuclear weapons. With the Iranians having removed the threat of overwhelming civil war in Iraq, the United States responded by removing the threat of an air campaign. The publication of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) stating that Iran does not have a nuclear program at present effectively signaled the Iranians that there would be no campaign. 
[. . .]
The Iranians reduced Shiite violence. The United States reduced the threat of airstrikes. Beyond the rhetoric

06:34 pm - There's antiwar movements and then there's antiwar movements

Eli at left i on the news has problems with the Rolling Stone piece I blogged yesterday:

The article mentions exactly one "antiwar" group, Americans Against the Escalation in Iraq, preposterously described as "the leader of the anti-war lobby." The "anti-war" part is completely preposterous; how can you be "anti-war" when you are just opposed to "escalation"? The "lobby" part isn't really preposterous, because that's exactly what this group is, as opposed to a "movement" which is how it is also described (e.g., in the sentence quoted in the first paragraph above). Indeed, here's how the group describes itself on its website:

Americans Against Escalation in Iraq is a major, multi-million dollar national campaign to oppose the President's proposal to escalate the war in Iraq by sending more than 20,000 additional troops into the violent civil war between Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias.*Not a "movement," just a "multi-million dollar campaign." 

There is a link on the page labeled "support our cause." Does it tell you to join the organization, demonstrate against the war, even write a letter to your Congressperson? No, it tells you to "visit our online store." This is the "antiwar" "movement" that Taibbi thinks the Democrats have taken over.

In reality, of course, there is a story, as there is in almost every election year, of activists being subsumed into support for the Democratic Party and suspending or reducing independent activity. But you won't find that story in this article, in which mentions of actual antiwar organizations like ANSWER, United for Peace and Justice, Not in Our Name, Iraq Veterans Against the War, etc., do not rate a single mention. more

ht to Avedon Carol at Sideshow

11:43 am - We used to call this co-option

 
Americans against Escalation in Iraq is a dummy antiwar organization created by Democratic Party insiders. Matt Taibbi writes in Rolling Stone:

Rather than use the vast power they had to end the war, Democrats devoted their energy to making sure that "anti-war activism" became synonymous with "electing Democrats." [. . .] This supposedly grass-roots "anti-war coalition" met regularly on K Street, the very capital of top-down Beltway politics. At the forefront of the groups are Thomas Matzzie and Brad Woodhouse of Americans Against the Escalation in Iraq, the leader of the anti-war lobby. Along with other K Street crusaders, the two have received iconic treatment from The Washington Post and The New York Times, both of which depicted the anti-war warriors as young idealist-progressives in shirtsleeves, riding a mirthful spirit into political combat — changing the world is fun!
[. . .]
But what exactly are these young idealists campaigning for? At its most recent meeting, the group eerily echoed the Reid-Pelosi "squeezed for time" mantra: Retreat from any attempt to end the war and focus on electing Democrats. "There was a lot of agreement that we can draw distinctions between anti-war Democrats and pro-war Republicans," a spokeswoman for Americans Against the Escalation in Iraq announced. [. . .] What the Post and the Times failed to note is that much of the anti-war group's leadership hails from a consulting firm called Hildebrand Tewes — whose partners, Steve Hildebrand and Paul Tewes, served as staffers for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC). In addition, these anti-war leaders continue to consult for many of the same U.S. senators whom they need to pressure in order to end the war. Chicken Doves

06:39 pm

And Mark Stein is a Republican:

The real story of the night, when you look at their rallies and their turn-out numbers, is that the Dems have two strong candidates either of whom could lead a united party to victory. Forget the gaseous platitudes: in Dem terms, their choice on Super Duper Tuesday was deciding which candidate was Super Duper and which was merely Super. Over on the GOP side, it was a choice between Weak & Divisive or Weaker & Unacceptable. Doesn't bode well for November. The Corner

ht to Andrew Sullivan
 

07:43 pm - Swiftboating McCain

The wingnut blogs are going after McCain as best they can.  Pam Geller at AtlasShrugs claims that, while McCain's cellmates thought he was being tortured, he was really banging hookers in Hanoi:
 
According to T, they reveal that McCain had made an "accommodation" with his captors, and in exchange, T's father saw that he was provided with an apartment in Hanoi and the services of two prostitutes. Upon returning to his prison cell, he would say he had been held in solitary confinement. That may be why so many of his fellow prisoners said later they saw so little of him at Hoa Loa. AtlasShrugs again

04:23 pm - Re yesterday's post

Ann Coulter wants to bomb the New York Times, forcibly convert Muslims to Christianity, and lock liberals up in Guantanamo. She calls Bill Clinton and John Edwards "faggots". But let her attack John McCain and the folks at Bamapachyderm.com finally understand she has a personality disorder.

09:01 pm - Republican transvestite opposes McCain

 

ht to Amanda W.

07:54 pm - Israel, America, and 9-11

Daniel Levy writes:

By the beginning of the new millennium, many Israelis began to understand the absurdity of viewing the occupation [of Gaza and the West Bank] as simply a war on Palestinian terror. They understood the urgent need to address legitimate Palestinian grievances. Then along came an angry post-9/11 America, with a stunningly simplistic and misguided framing of the war on terror. This framing is a mistake in whose shadow we all continue to live. Dark truths about the Israeli occupation

06:57 pm - Iraqi refugees

We owe these people.  Big time.

06:38 pm - A peace activist rates the Democrats

 Linda H writes:

Hillary Clinton. 

Pro -- It would be a step forward for our country to have a woman president, for equality reasons. She has a lot of experience in government. She has a much larger vocabulary than Bush -- but who doesn't. (I do like the great women/men in my city who are supporting Clinton. These people are involved, thoughtful and worthy of much respect. So it is a disappointment that I won’t be able to vote for them as delegates on the ballot.)

Con – In my opinion, one of the greatest strikes against her is that she’s the pick of the influential centrist organization called the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). I understand that this is basically a group that fronts corporate interests within the Democratic Party at the national level. So, if you want a Republicanized Democrat, she's your best bet. No one can miss the fact that she’s running based on her husband's record ... and Bill Clinton was the best Republican president we ever had. He brought us NAFTA (loss of jobs and added influx of undocumented immigrants), media consolidation (clearing the way for the likes of Clear Channel and FOX news), and misguided welfare reform. The person he put in charge of fixing healthcare (Hillary) wasn't able to make progress because she wasn’t willing to stand up to the insurance and drug companies. I think others have a longer list of issues, but these are the major ones we're feeling today. Then, there's the Iraq war which she voted to authorize and has supported all along. In the last few weeks, she's actually changed her story about bringing troops home ... but no reasonable person can believe her at this point. She voted to extend the Patriot Act. She's the major recipient of campaign money from the military industry; they know who is likely to keep them in business. Clinton has also received the most money from the healthcare industry -- again, they fund their friends.  So, I wouldn't expect any changes in economic policy to be much different from the Bush administration – where the rich get richer, and the middle/lower income Americans can, well, go jump.  Oh and, can you imagine how the rest of the world would be laughing at our "democracy" with 28 consecutive years of the Bush/Clinton regime?

John Edwards.

Pro --  He has apologized for voting to authorize the Iraq war and says he would bring our troops home within the first year of his presidency. However, since he’s not in Congress at this time, he can’t show that he means that by votes or sponsoring bills in the House. It’s good that he doesn’t take PAC money. His healthcare plan is supposedly the best (of the top three candidates, at the moment) to get us from a free market (gone wild!) to a universal single-payer system, eventually. However, if he would go ahead and endorse John Conyers’ HR676 “Healthcare for All”, then we’d get somewhere. I say, walk in with your dream plan then negotiate from there. I do like his hard stance on ending corporate influence in politics – that is the key to our country’s woes. (We need publicly financed campaigns at all levels of government – so we can get the special interest money out.) Edwards is against free trade agreements like NAFTA, and is for fair trade that includes worker rights. Since his run for vice president in 2004, he helped establish a poverty center at the University of North Carolina. Another plus in my book is that Ralph Nader supports Edwards.

Con – In recent years, he worked for the hedge fund industry and raked in big bucks (salary and campaign contributions) from these fund owners who are not paying their fair share of taxes. At a presidential debate a few months ago, he and Clinton were caught (on microphone) talking about getting rid of the “lesser candidates” for future debates – that’s not how you do democracy. And, character is what you do when you think no one is looking/listening. Like the other candidates, his healthcare plan does not go far enough … it’s closer than the others, but not there yet. Kucinich (whose opinion I respect) advised his Iowa caucus participants to choose Obama over Edwards.

Barack Obama. 

Pro -- I was very happy to see Obama win the Iowa caucuses. Who would have thought that a state with 95% white population would have chosen him? People who finally see the person over the person’s race, that's who. We've come a long way, America! (I think this will shake up Alabama politics too; our African American politicos must look at things differently now.) Obama is a great speaker -- someone I can be proud of when representing my country here and around the world. He has been against the war and was before it started -- but has voted to continue funding it since then. Argh!. Given a candidate with my views on the issues, I would like to vote for an African American or Hispanic or other non-white person – because they have been marginalized for so long in this country. However, does voting for someone because of their race make me a racist? (For those who don’t know, I’m a middle-aged white woman.) He is at least addressing healthcare, but his plan won’t fix the major problems. However, I just read that Obama said yesterday (Jan. 24, 2008) that he would support a single-payer system if starting from scratch. I find that encouraging!  Kucinich asked his supporters to vote for Obama in the second round of votes in the Iowa caucus… his reasoning was his concern over John Edwards’ relationship with hedge funds (Edwards has taken lots of campaign money from them, and worked for them.) So, Kucinich’s choice of Obama was basically anti-Edwards.

Con – As a Senator, he is still voting to fund the war, even though he has spoken out against the war. Unfortunately, he also voted to renew the Patriot Act. I'm concerned about the campaign money he has taken ... he's second behind Clinton in receiving healthcare industry dollars. However, he does not take PAC money. That comes from individuals who happen to work in the healthcare industry and have to report who their employer is when they fill out contribution form – at least that is how he has explained it on the campaign trail. His healthcare plan does not go far enough – it won’t get rid of the undue influence/cost of the insurance and drug companies. He has supported legislation that looks very pro-corporation – for example, one bill he supported makes it hard for people to file class action suits against manufacturers who produce products that end up being health hazards. I can't figure out his stance on trade ... he seems to be on both sides of the issue. For example, he voted against CAFTA but for U.S.-Oman FTA.

02:46 pm

 The smearing of Obama continues in the right wing of the blogosphere.