When it comes to health care, our right-wingers are just a lot more doctrinaire, less practical, and less humane than many right-wingers elsewhere. Case in point - in an attempt to show the superiority of America’s absurd and inefficient system, Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) decided to diss Ontario. And he got an angry response from Conservative senator Hugh Segal of Kingston, Ontario.
In a blistering statement this week before the Canadian Senate, Mr. Segal took on the U.S. Republican Senate Leader who is leading the charge against government-funded health care in his country.
Senator Mitch McConnell from Kentucky made the mistake of suggesting that the residents of Mr. Segal’s hometown of Kingston, Ont., are provided with health care that is inferior to what is available in the United States.
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“According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the average lifespan in Kentucky is 75.2 years and according to Statistics Canada, that number is 80.4 years in Ontario, 78.3 years in Kingston,” [Segal] told the Canadian Senate after discounting Mr. McConnell’s numbers.
“Furthermore, according to a Fraser Institute study, in 2006, the U.S. spent $6,714 per capita versus $3,678 in Canada.”
Mr. Segal said in a telephone interview yesterday that the statistics indicate that Canadians are actually doing a better job at health care than their southern neighbours.
Mr. Segal is a Conservative, both with a small c and a capital one. He is not a “socialist.” But unlike conservatives in the United States, Canadian cons seem willing to confront access to health care as a serious issue, rather than an opportunity to express their mindless loyalty to the concept of private insurance and their reactionary hatred of anything that resembles single-payer health coverage. And, as Matthew Yglesias points out, the Conservative Party of Canada, in its statement of founding principles, includes the concept that “all Canadians should have reasonable access to quality health care regardless of their ability to pay.”
There have been a number of things about the Obama administration that have been somewhat disappointing thus far. But stories like this one show that there is reason to believe that Obama’s victory in November is resulting in some real, significant changes. In particular, it is important that we now have a president who seems interested in diplomacy as a path to progress in foreign relations. Unlike those of his predecessor, Obama’s first instincts aren’t to engage in sabre-rattling and pre-emtive war. And it is refreshing to have a president who doesn’t think that diplomacy and a desire for peace are signs of weakness. From TPM:
President Barack Obama has decided to return a U.S. ambassador to Syria after a four-year hiatus as talks between the two nations intensify, U.S. media reported Tuesday.
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By returning a senior U.S. envoy to Damascus, Obama is seeking to carve out a far larger role for the United States in the region as he works to rehabilitate U.S. relations with the Islamic world and the Arab Middle East, the newspaper said.
“It’s in our interests to have an ambassador in Syria,” a senior administration official told CNN.
The U.S. Justice Department may drop a legal case aimed at forcing Swiss bank UBS AG <UBSN.VX> <UBS.N> to reveal the names of 52,000 wealthy American clients suspected of offshore tax evasion, the New York Times reported on Tuesday.
I don’t know what other name I could give it. It’s a thing that looks dangerously like a human, a thing that throws parties, that organises orgies and rules a country called Italy. This thing, this illness, this virus threatens to become the cause of the moral death of Verdi’s country. If a deep vomit doesn’t succeed in ejecting it from the consciousness of Italians, the poison will end up corroding the veins and destroying the heart of one of Europe’s richest cultures. The basic values of human coexistence are trampled daily by the viscous feet of the Berlusconi thing; amongst its many talents, it has a funambulesque ability to abuse words, perverting their intention and meaning, as in the case of the People of Freedom, the name given to the party with which the thing took power. I’ve called the thing delinquent and I don’t regret it. For semantic and social reasons that others will be able to explain better than I can, the term delinquent has in Italy a much stronger connotation than it has in any other language spoken in Europe. I use the meaning given to the term by Dante’s language in order to translate clearly and forthrightly what I think about the Berlusconi thing—though it is more than doubtful that Dante ever used the term. In my Portuguese, and according to the dictionaries and the current practice of communication, delinquency means ‘the act of committing crimes, disobeying laws or moral codes’. This definition fits the Berlusconi thing without a wrinkle, without any jarring, to the point that it seems more like a second skin than the clothes that the thing puts on itself. For years and years the Berlusconi thing has been committing crimes of a variable but always demonstrated seriousness. It’s outrageous that it not only disobeys laws, but worse, it invents them to safeguard its public and private interests as politician, businessman and the companion of minors. Where the moral codes are concerned, it’s not even worth talking about it, there is not a person in Italy or the rest of the world that doesn’t know that the Berlusconi thing fell into the most abject of states a long time ago. This is the Italian prime minister, this is the thing that the Italian people have elected twice to serve them as a role model, this is the path to ruin which is dragging along the values of liberty and dignity that suffused Verdi’s music and the political actions of Garibaldi—the ones that, during the struggle for unification in the 18th century, made of Italy a spiritual guide for Europe and for Europeans. This is what the Berlusconi thing wants to throw into the rubbish bin of History. Will the Italians end up allowing this to happen?
To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.
Today, thanks to great achievements, the threat to Iran has been lifted, and no power in the world entertains the notion of taking action against the Iranian nation. Even if someone were to entertain this notion and want to undertake any act of aggression against the nation… he should know that the Iranian nation is ready, and any hand outstretched in order to attack will be cut off.
Today, as global geopolitics is shaken to its core by events in Iran, I turned on cable news this morning, and saw endless ads for a Larry King Jonas Brothers “interview”, Morning Joe yukking it up discussing Kuwaiti massage therapists, a video of a tomato throwing contest on CNN, talk radio blowhard Bill Bennett…and occasionally a phone call from Christiane Amanpour in Tehran. I can’t even bring myself to turn on the network morning programs, I might vomit.
I’m not sure where Andrew Sullivan got this graph; it isn’t clear from his post. It purports to track the official vote tallies during six counting announcements. And you’d have to say that there is an unmistakably stable ratio involved in the data.
There are widespread reports and accusations of fraud. Some suggest a military coup.
It has become apparent that lawlessness and secrecy were the order of the day during the GWB administration. But this story, via Glen Greenwald, does not reflect well on the Obama DOJ, either. The story revolves around Binyam Mohamed, who was tortured and held in Guantanamo for six years, and America’s attempt to keep evidence from coming to light in Britain. Greenwald:
In February, Obama’s DOJ demanded dismissal of Mohamed’s lawsuit against the company which helped “render” him to be tortured on the ground that national security would be harmed if the lawsuit continued. Then, after a British High Court ruled that there was credible evidence that Mohamed was subjected to brutal torture and was entitled to obtain evidence in the possession of the British government which detailed the CIA’s treatment of Mohamed, and after a formal police inquiry began into allegations that British agents collaborated in his torture, the British government cited threats from the U.S. government that it would no longer engage in intelligence-sharing with Britain — i.e., it would no longer pass on information about terrorist threats aimed at British citizens — if the British court disclosed the facts of Mohamed’s torture.
As a result of the American threats, the British High Court ruled that it would keep crucial evidence of Mohamed’s torture under wraps. And, according to Greenwald, the new administration appears to be helping to cover up the crimes of the old one:
In the aftermath of that ruling, there was some dispute about whether the Obama administration had really issued this threat to Britain or whether it was merely a residual threat from the Bush administration. But in the wake of a recent motion by Mohamed’s lawyer to the British court for re-consideration of its ruling, in response to which the British government submitted the written threats from the Obama administration, there can now be no doubt not only that Obama made these threats to Britain, but did so in a remarkably extreme and heavy-handed manner.
The outbreak of swine flu should be renamed “Mexican” influenza in deference to Muslim and Jewish sensitivities over pork, according to an Israeli health official.
Deputy Health Minister Yakov Litzman said the reference to pigs is offensive to both religions and “we should call this Mexican flu and not swine flu,” he told a news conference Monday at a hospital in central Israel.
The more I think about this, the more insane it seems. I mean, what the hell is the logic behind a statement like this?
This is the best I can come up with:
1) Observant Jews think pigs are unclean. The virus comes from a pig and invades their clean and G-dly bodies. But calling it “Mexican” flu makes this problem disappear. WTF?
2) The fact that pigs exist is an affront to Jews. In deference to their “sensitivities,” the word swine must never be spoken. You do not talk about pig club. WTF?
3) State of Israel seeks to forge binding friendship with Muslims over mutual hatred of pigs, pig viruses, and Mexicans. WTF?
4) Using nomenclature that reveals the origin of a pathogen is a conspiracy against Jews. WTF?
Five members of Congress were arrested in Washington today for protesting genocide and crimes against humanity in Darfur. From the Boston Globe:
After a brief series of speeches in front of the Sudanese embassy, [the five] members of Congress stood quietly and refused to move to the other side of yellow police tape — a deliberate act they knew would get them arrested. After giving the small group of demonstrators three chances to move, police approached the lawmakers and activists and bound their wrists loosely behind their backs with plastic restraints.
The group included James McGovern of Massachusetts, John Lewis of Georgia, Donna Edwards of Maryland, Lynn Woolsey of California, and Keith Ellison of Minnesota.
“I don’t want to be here in 2012, calling on the Sudanese government to stop the killing,” McGovern said. “We need to care. We need to act. Every life is of equal value.”
Noted TV jackass and supporter of discredited economic theories Larry Kudlow recently took objection to what he saw as a “Boyz N the Hood handshake” between President Obama and Hugo Chavez:
Gone, for the most part, are nighttime curfews, religious extremists and prowling kidnappers. So, inevitably, some people are turning to illicit pleasures, or at least slightly dubious ones.
Nightclubs have reopened, and in many of them, prostitutes troll for clients. Liquor stores, once shut down by fundamentalist militiamen, have proliferated; on one block of busy Saddoun Street, there are more than 10 of them.
Abu Nawas Park, previously deserted for fear of suicide bombers seeking vulnerable crowds, has now become a place for assignations between young people so inclined. It is not that there are hiding places in the park, where trees are pretty sparse; the couples just pretend they cannot be seen, and passers-by go along with the pretense.
It is a long way from Sodom and Gomorrah, but perhaps part way back to the old Baghdad. The Baathists who ruled here from the 1960s until the American invasion in 2003 were secular, and more than a little sinful. Baghdad under Saddam Hussein was a pretty lively place, with street cafes open until 2 or 3 a.m., and prostitutes plying their trade even in the bowling alley of Al Rashid Hotel.
“Everything is going back to its natural way,” said Ahmed Assadee, a screenwriter who works on a soap opera.
Men gather in cafes to smoke a hookah and gamble on dice and domino games. On weekends, the Mustansiriya Coffee Shop’s back room is crammed with low bleachers set up around a clandestine cockfighting ring. On one recent day, the 100 or so spectators were raucous while watching the bloody spectacle, but they placed their bets discreetly.
The American captain of a cargo ship held hostage by pirates jumped overboard from the lifeboat where he was being held, and U.S. Navy SEALs shot and killed three of his four captors, according to a senior U.S. official with knowledge of the situation.
How does fascism develop out of (or return to) a democratic state? Look no further than Italy. Last week we followed Berlusconi’s adventures at the G20 (and we didn’t even get to his antics at the NATO meeting in Germany). Predictably, the Italian press has been all over these gaffes, rightly noting how silly Berlusconi looks and how damaging such behavior is to Italian national interests. His response?
Italy’s prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, has made an ominous threat to the Italian press of “direct and tough” reprisals after unflattering reports of a number of diplomatic gaffes he committed at the round of summits in Britain, France and Germany.
Berlusconi berated journalists for their coverage after he skipped an official Nato photo and kept the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, waiting at the end of a red carpet while he finished a conversation on his mobile phone.
Last week, Italian and foreign newspapers had a field day when the eccentric billionaire appeared to irritate the Queen by shouting out to Barack Obama during a photo call (though Buckingham Palace later denied any ill feeling).
It is the first time Berlusconi, who controls most of Italy’s television networks, has made such intimidating noises about the press. The professional body representing Italian journalists said his comments were of “unprecedented gravity”.
Berlusconi’s remarks come amid mounting concern among opposition politicians over his apparent impatience with democratic constraints. Already this year he has clashed with the president, Giorgio Napolitano, over an attempt to override the judiciary, and with the speaker of the chamber of deputies, his ally, Gianfranco Fini, over his government’s use of decrees to sidestep parliamentary debate.
Speaking to reporters in Prague late on Saturday, Berlusconi said the Italian press had “no other aim than that of saying the prime minister has committed faux pas or gaffes”. In fact, he said: “I am here to represent Italy precisely because there is no one else [to do so], and out of a sense of responsibility.”
After accusing journalists of “defaming me and misinforming readers”, he added: “I don’t want to go as far as to talk about direct and tough actions in respect of certain newspapers and press personalities. But, frankly, I’m tempted.”
His government has already passed a bill handing down jail time for journalists who release portions of wiretapped conversations used in criminal investigations. As I have previously written, this was in response to the embarrassing transcripts of his own backroom dealings that were leaked last year.
But lest you think that this reflects a principled stand for privacy rights in Italy, it is my sad duty to inform you that Italy ranks first in the world in electronic surveillance of its citizens. As Berlusconi famously argued during one of his many corruption trials, that before the law, some people are more equal than others.
But let us continue:
The Italian press may be vulnerable to pressure from Berlusconi, below, on three fronts:
• Because of an 1987 amendment to an Italian law passed six years earlier, many smaller daily newspapers receive subsidies from the state that were originally intended for party organs. A television investigation three years ago found that between them, the papers received an annual €667m (£607m).
• One of Italy’s four national dailies, Il Giornale, is owned by Berlusconi’s brother, Paolo.
• The subtlest, but most serious, threat would be of pressure on media proprietors. The global recession has increased the government’s already considerable presence in Italy’s economy and handed Berlusconi vast powers of patronage over the industrialists and financiers who own Italy’s other main dailies.
Benito Mussolini was a journalist turned authoritarian politician. So was his brother. Uh-oh.
So, let’s make a Fascist pie shall we? Ingredients: Tough-talking anti-establishment blowhard. Check. Wild promises to restore the country to its former glory. Check. Restriction of civil liberties. Check. Oppressive control of national media. Almost there.
Mamma mia, let’s pop this sucker in the oven, I’m getting hungry!
President Barack Obama will outline in a major speech on Sunday a blueprint for ridding the world of nuclear weapons that calls for the United States to reduce its reliance on history’s deadliest arms and lead a new international effort to prevent terrorists from acquiring them.
The plan would reverse the former Bush administration’s policy that made nuclear weapons a central pillar of U.S. security policy by preserving an arsenal of thousands of warheads, expanding the targets against which they could be used and embracing the development of new weapons.
Under Obama’s proposals, the United States also would return to its previous policy of negotiating complex international arms agreements, an approach that the former Bush administration viewed as being too cumbersome and restricting of U.S power.
You all know that I can’t pass up a good Berlusconi sighting. In this episode we find our hero making smooth moves at the G20, trying to work his magic on Obama, even as he continues to blame the U.S. for Italy’s economic problems and say stupid shit.
Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s flamboyant Prime Minister, found himself on Italian front pages today – but more for his gaffe in offending the Queen at the G20 “family photograph” than his performance at the summit itself.
At the end of the G20 photo call yesterday Mr Berlusconi shouted out to the US President: “Mr Obamaaaa! This is Mister Berlusconi!”. The Queen then turned to the gathered leaders and said: “What is it? Why does he have to shout?”
According to the New York Times, our amigos in Spain seem interested in things like justice and rule of law:
A Spanish court has taken the first steps toward opening a criminal investigation into allegations that six former high-level Bush administration officials violated international law by providing the legal framework to justify the torture of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, an official close to the case said. The case, against former Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and others, was sent to the prosecutor’s office for review by Baltasar Garzón, the crusading investigative judge who ordered the arrest of the former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. The official said that it was “highly probable” that the case would go forward and that it could lead to arrest warrants.
So much for the ol’ “World-Wide Web.” In keeping with a long-standing tradition of censorship, the government of the People’s Republic of China has blocked access to youtube.
Google said Tuesday that its YouTube video-sharing Web site had been blocked in China.
Google said it did not know why the site had been blocked, but a report by the official Xinhua news agency of China on Tuesday said that supporters of the Dalai Lama had fabricated a video that appeared to show Chinese police officers brutally beating Tibetans after riots last year in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital.
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“The instant speculation is that YouTube is being blocked because the Tibetan government in exile released a particular video,” said Xiao Qiang, adjunct professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, and editor of China Digital Times, a news Web site that chronicles political and economic changes in China.
Mr. Xiao said that the blocking of YouTube fit with what appeared to be an effort by China to step up its censorship of the Internet in recent months. Mr. Xiao said he was not surprised that YouTube was a target. It also hosts videos about the Tiananmen Square protests and many other subjects that Chinese authorities find objectionable.
On the bright side, Chinese President and Communist Party General Secretary Hu Jintao has apparently not blocked access to Brylcreem.
Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former chief of staff, has written what he calls “Some Truths about Guantanamo Bay.” Parts of the piece maybe somewhat self-serving, as he gives credit to Powell and Richard Armitage for trying to curb some of the abuses (and there is some indication, of course, that Powell and Armitage were at times among the more sensible voices inside the administration). But it is worth a read. And Wilkerson was in a position to know many of the details of the most sordid dealings of the Bush administration. Excerpts:
Simply stated, no meaningful attempt at discrimination was made in-country by competent officials, civilian or military, as to who we were transporting to Cuba for detention and interrogation.
This was a factor of having too few troops in the combat zone, of the troops and civilians who were there having too few people trained and skilled in such vetting, and of the incredible pressure coming down from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and others to “just get the bastards to the interrogators”.
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[Another point] largely unreported is that several in the U.S. leadership became aware of this lack of proper vetting very early on and, thus, of the reality that many of the detainees were innocent of any substantial wrongdoing, had little intelligence value, and should be immediately released.
But to have admitted this reality would have been a black mark on their leadership from virtually day one of the so-called Global War on Terror and these leaders already had black marks enough: the dead in a field in Pennsylvania, in the ashes of the Pentagon, and in the ruins of the World Trade Towers. They were not about to admit to their further errors at Guantanamo Bay. Better to claim that everyone there was a hardcore terrorist, was of enduring intelligence value, and would return to jihad if released. I am very sorry to say that I believe there were uniformed military who aided and abetted these falsehoods, even at the highest levels of our armed forces.
The evidence is too overwhelming, and it is of far too serious a nature to ignore. And if we don’t hold our elected officals accountable for their actions, we don’t have rule of law, and we have no international credibility.
The International Committee of the Red Cross concluded in a secret report that the Bush administration’s treatment of al-Qaeda captives “constituted torture,” a finding that strongly implied that CIA interrogation methods violated international law, according to newly published excerpts from the long-concealed 2007 document.
The report, an account alleging physical and psychological brutality inside CIA “black site” prisons, also states that some U.S. practices amounted to “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.” Such maltreatment of detainees is expressly prohibited by the Geneva Conventions.
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Many of the details of alleged mistreatment at CIA prisons had been reported previously, but the ICRC report is the most authoritative account and the first to use the word “torture” in a legal context.
If you want to bring this up with your senators, click here for their contact information.
For millions of undernourished North Koreans, the notion of eating at a restaurant belongs strictly to the world of fantasy. And so there is only the grimmest humour in the news that, for the country’s ruling elite, Pyongyang’s dining options just got a little more impressive: the country now has its first-ever pizzeria. [. . .]
Those dining at the restaurant are reportedly treated to pizza and pasta made with wheat flour, butter and cheese flown in from Italy. They are also presumably reaping the benefits of a years-long effort by Kim Jong-il to bring the perfect pizza to his famine-plagued totalitarian state.
In the late 1990s, he summoned a team of Italian pizza chefs to Pyongyang to instruct army officers. One of the chefs, Ermanno Furlanis, later recounted how the Italians underwent x-rays, brain scans and urine and blood sampling on arrival, before being sequestered in a marble palace. One of the officers Furlanis was training asked him to specify the precise distance at which olives should be spaced on a pizza, he recalled.
The land of the West Bank is, of course, disputed. Israel occupies it, and the Palestinians want it for a future state. But more and more of it is gone — quarried by Israeli companies and sold for building materials, a practice that is the focus of a new legal challenge.
“Israel is transferring natural resources from the West Bank for Israeli benefit, and this is absolutely prohibited not only under international law but according to Israeli Supreme Court rulings,” said Michael Sfard, lawyer for the Israeli rights group Yesh Din, which is bringing the case to the high court next week. “This is an illegal transfer of land in the most literal of senses.”
The video below is from Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ appearance yesterday on Meet the Press. He is responding to David Gregory’s question about the differences in style between Bush and Obama. And Gates is doing his best to be diplomatic and positive.
Here’s a new energy program that combines alternative fuels, a re-use/recycle ethic, and the British love of roast beef. With help from the Low Carbon Innovation Centre at the University of East Anglia, the people of Reepham have found a new way to, er, “beef up” their heating fuel:
Of course, that’s as long as the animals were already being slaughtered for food. In that case, the fuel created by rendering beef tallow and pig lard is relatively low-carbon in comparison to traditional heating oil, or even crop fuels. In many ways, heating buildings with cow juice is similar to using cooking oil to drive a diesel car.
This plan isn’t universally applicable or desirable, of course, but it could be a lower-carbon alternative for cattle-raising areas. So, if your town has a lot of cows, burning them could be a good way to “meat” your energy needs. That way, you won’t have to “cow tow” to the big oil companies. Because we all have a “steak” in the environment.
While in America, Daschle, Geithner and Killifer have gotten dinged for not paying their taxes, Italy offers a sense of perspective:
A Milan court on Tuesday handed down a ruling that would send the political establishments of many countries into a tailspin. It found the British lawyer David Mills guilty of taking $600,000 in exchange for lying to protect the Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi.
In Italy, the ruling did not even lead the evening news.
That honor went to Mr. Berlusconi’s main political rival, Walter Veltroni, who stepped down on Tuesday after his party’s solid defeat on Monday in the election for governor of Sardinia, where the Democratic Party incumbent lost to the son of Mr. Berlusconi’s tax lawyer. So the story of the day was not of corruption but of Mr. Berlusconi’s ever-expanding grip on power in Italy.
Indeed, Mr. Berlusconi was a co-defendant until last year, when he pushed through Parliament a law granting top officials, notably him, immunity from prosecution while in office.
Yet in the topsy-turvy logic of Italian politics, the ruling seemed less a defeat for Mr. Mills than still another victory for Mr. Berlusconi, who in 15 years of dominating Italian political life has managed to turn every legal setback into political capital.
One supposes that this is what Cheney had in mind when pushing for a full pardon of Scooter Libby in January. Cheney and Berlusconi. What’s the difference? One of them has a sense of humor:
Most Italians can barely keep Mr. Berlusconi’s many legal cases straight. It seems he barely can, either.
“I’m the universal record-holder for the number of trials in the entire history of man — and also of other creatures who live on other planets,” he said last year.
It may not make major headlines, but President Obama’s overture to the leadership of Turkey may be of crucial importance to the future prospects for peace and security in Iraq:
U.S. President Barack Obama has told Turkish President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan he hoped to strengthen ties with their country and expressed support for Turkey’s growing relationship with Iraq, the White House said Monday.
Obama spoke to the two men by phone earlier in the day.
“In both calls, the leaders discussed a number of current issues, including U.S. support for the growing Turkish-Iraqi relationship, the importance of cooperation in Middle East peace efforts, and the U.S. review on Afghanistan and Pakistan policy,” the White House said in a statement.
Turkey has repeatedly attacked hideouts of Kurdish separatists in the northern mountainous region of Iraq [italics added].
The actions of the Turkish government may play a major role in determining Iraq’s fate if the Obama administration follows through with its plan to remove U.S. forces by the summer of 2010. The looming possibility of an independent Kurdistan, combined with Turkey’s strident opposition to such Kurdish independence makes for a potentially explosive situation. Thomas Ricks sees Turkey’s potential role as a part of a possible doomsday scenario following U.S. withdrawal:
I think you’d have a full-out civil war, bloodier than you have now, and I think you would see regional intervention [if there's a full departure of US troops from Iraq]. Iran is already there in spades, I think Syria would be there. You’d probably wind up with a civil war, a regional war fought on the streets of Baghdad between Shiite bodies and Saudi Arabian money. Up in the north, you’d probably have Turkey intervene against the Kurds.
Ricks’ assessment here may be overly pessimistic. But this sort of disaster could be the outcome of Bush’s Big Adventure. And if this isn’t troubling enough, the Turkish/Kurdish situation is especially worrying because of an additional X factor - Turkey is a member of N.A.T.O. If the Turks end up at war with Kurdish forces, Kurdish attacks on Turkish soil could lead to a real mess if the Turks invoke Article V - the common defense provision in the North Atlantic Treaty.
If there aren’t yet enough reasons to be worried about global climate change, the Economist forecasts the scramble for shipping routes and natural resources that will accompany retreating sea ice:
The most troubling part of the video: “Even more potentially valuable than shipping routes are the oil and gas deposits thought to lie [under the retreating Arctic ice]…the United States Geological Survey published some pretty big estimates.” Because of the unique geographical position of the Arctic, surrounded as it is by six nations who can make competing drilling claims, the retreating ice could cause some serious and worrying international disputes.
This, of course, is in addition to the potential for massive environmental damage. Quite fitting, isn’t it? The burning of fossil fuels creates global warming, which causes the retreat of sea ice, thus making available more fossil fuels…which will be burned…this adding to…global warming. And maybe a war or two.
P.S. - this story, if it works out as forecasted, is yet another example of the myth of market economics - that the market always works out for the best. In this case, the market incentives (saving money and making profits through new shipping lanes and access to gas and oil) all favor the continuation of global warming. In brief, the market dynamic here says that global warming is good. And then the activities that result from the environmental crisis (shipping, drilling, burning oil) will compound the problem. Beware of false prophets and false profits!
As he exits the blood-stained stage of his presidency, George W. Bush has plenty to feel guilty about. Warrantless wiretapping, Guantanamo, Katrina, extraordinary rendition, Abu Ghraib, and the politicizing of the Justice Department are just some of the lowlights of this disastrous administration that will follow Bush for his remaining days.
But Bush’s taking the nation to war under false pretenses should always be remembered as one of the great crimes ever committed by an American. And now, in his final press conference and his farewell address, Bush appears part Willy Loman, part Lady Macbeth.
He’s a sad figure, a unimpressive man who has fallen from low heights, and is now struggling with his downfall. Bush’s pathetic attempt to defend his record conjures up images of Willy Loman. Like Loman’s, Bush’s is that most sickening sort of tragedy - a tragedy without prior greatness.
But while I imgaine Dick Cheney sleeps soundly every night despite his villainy, Bush seems to show signs of the guilt he keeps buried deep inside. The look on his face as he uttered these words seems to suggest a glimmer of recognition - some part of our misbegotten leader that knows the true nature of his administration’s dark deeds:
I have often spoken to you about good and evil, and this has made some uncomfortable. But good and evil are present in this world and between the two, there can be no compromise. Murdering the innocent to advance an ideology is wrong every time, everywhere.
The irony of those words is beyond my ability to describe. I imagine Bush, like Lady Macbeth, sleepwalking through the White House, unable to wash away the profound and horrifying guilt.
And in his waking hours, what words must keep running through his mind?
Murdering the innocent to advance an ideology is wrong every time, everywhere…Murdering the innocent to advance an ideology is wrong every time, everywhere…Murdering the innocent to advance an ideology is wrong every time, everywhere…
We recently reported on the absurd irony of the Bush DOJ’s prosecution of Charles “Chuckie” Taylor for acts of torture committed in Liberia. Since then, the irony has become a little bit thicker.
Taylor was born in Massachusetts but moved to Liberia in 1997 when his father, a nefarious former warlord, was elected president. Once there, “Chuckie” served his father’s regime by heading the Liberian Anti-Terrorist Unit — an organization known as the “Demon Forces” that essentially protected the Taylor regime from its internal enemies. The appropriately named Demon Forces frequently tortured their victims with a variety of methods including hot irons, hot wax, knives, and electric shocks — behavior that clearly runs counter to Article One of the UN Convention Against Torture.
As we reported earlier, Taylor is being prosecuted under a US law — an extraterritorial statute that allows the prosecution of citizens of any country within US courts for acts of torture committed anywhere on the globe. Taylor’s prosecution is the first one under this law since its passage in 1994.
The perverse irony emerging from this situation is that we have the Bush Department of Justice prosecuting a man for acts of torture committed in a foreign country. This is, after all, the very same DOJ that issued a series of secret opinions declaring, essentially, that torture really wasn’t torture so long as the president orders it and then continued to perform “harsh interrogations” on individuals in a variety of facilities strung across the globe. (The whole unbelievable backstory on this secret legal maneuvering may be read in the excellent reporting of NY Times reporters Shane, Johnston, and Risen in an article entitled “Secret U.S. Endorsement of Severe Interrogations.”) These secret judgments allowed the DOJ to publicly state that the United States found torture “abhorrent” while privately authorizing and continuing the very same behavior that existed before their outrageous torture memos were leaked to the press.
All that would be bad enough as it is. But now, in a move that renders impotent all currently available metrics for the measurement of chutzpah, the Bush DOJ has decided that they have the standing to try and convict others for torture.
Yesterday they succeeded. Charles Taylor, Jr. was sentenced to 97 years in prison by a federal judge in Miami.
And while I’m sure he deserved it, many others here do as well.
As W (finally) prepares to leave us over the coming weeks, there will undoubtedly be any number of shills, power-worshippers, and assorted other loons who will remind us of all of the “good” things that he accomplished during the past 8 years. We’ll see plenty of these kinds of statements: “Whatever you think of Bush’s (fill in the blank), you have to give him credit for (fill in the blank).” Matthew Yglesias tips us off to one such statement - a particularly moronic one from Aaron Friedberg at Foreign Policy’s “Shadow Government” blog. Long story short: Friedberg congratulates Bush for realizing that it would be, er, a bad thing if terrorists got their hands on nuclear or biological weapons. As is often the case, Yglesias is the voice of reason, and deftly (and somewhat humorously) points out the idiocy of Friedberg’s assertion:
That’s a pretty said claim if you ask me. Yes, it’s true that George W. Bush was correct to say that terrorists armed with nuclear weapons would be dangerous. But this is like congratulating him for knowing how to tie his shoes. Nobody disputes this point. The novel idea Bush brought to the table about this subject was his decision to prevent al-Qaeda from getting a nuclear weapon by invading a country that had neither a nuclear weapons program nor operational ties to al-Qaeda. This is like saying that whatever you think of Herbert Hoover’s economic policies, at least he correctly ascertained that a return to prosperity would be desirable.
It has come to this. Our president is so ridiculous, so inept, so intellectually barren that we have to congratulate him for realizing something that everyone over eight years old also realizes.
TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) - Joe The Plumber is putting down his wrenches and picking up a reporter’s notebook.
The Ohio man who became a household name during the presidential campaign says he is heading to Israel as a war correspondent for the conservative Web site pjtv.com.
Samuel J. Wurzelbacher (WUR’-zuhl-bah-kur) says he’ll spend 10 days covering the fighting.
He tells WNWO-TV in Toledo that he wants to let Israel’s “‘Average Joes’ share their story.”
I really hope Joe accidentally runs into Ehud Olmert and finds time to jawbone about Israel’s communist national heath care system that steals shekels from the pockets of hardworking Israelis.
At the Guardian, Michael Tomasky has published his list of “the 19 worst Americans of 2008.” (Damn - it has got to be hard to narrow it down to 19, don’t you think?) Here are a few of the highlights:
19 ED Hill. Ms Hill is the Fox News anchor who referred to Barack and Michelle Obama’s on-stage fist bump in early June as a “terrorist fist jab”. I guess she’s well familiar with the various and sundry ways in which couples express intimacy - she’s been married three times herself. Fox announced in November that it wasn’t renewing her contract.
18 Don Blankenship. Who? He’s the head of a huge coal-mining company that is an industry leader, if one must put it that way, in so-called mountain-top removal mining. It’s a hideous practice that destroys mountains and communities, and Blankenship is its poster child. Our supreme court has agreed to hear a case in which Blankenship financed the election of a state judge who, in a $50m lawsuit, ruled for Blankenship’s company. Google Caperton v Massey, read more about Massey, and tell me if this fellow shouldn’t perhaps be even higher.
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11 David Addington. Dick Cheney’s top aide told Congress in June that he didn’t even know what the unitary executive theory of presidential power was. This would be rather like Lavrenti Beria insisting that Lubyanka prison was actually a hotel.
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5 Michele Bachmann. Of the many memorable moments the campaign produced, I will never forget watching this Minnesota congresswoman say on national TV in October that Obama “may have anti-American views” and endorse the idea of a media investigation of all members of Congress to determine whether their views were sufficiently pro-American. The single most appalling political statement of the year.
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3 George Bush. There were years when he would have been higher - 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007. I’ll give him a slight pass for 2001, what with the attacks and all that. In those previous years, he stole an election, started an unnecessary war, lied about it, approved torture, let a great US city drown and so on. This year he merely presided over the bankruptcy of the global economy. Twenty days and counting.
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The top two are a powerful combination of baffling incompetence on the one hand, and profound thievery on the other - Sarah Palin and Bernard Madoff.
I would suggest one addition to Tomasky’s list: Mitt Romney. I realize that he suspended his campaign rather early in 2008, thus sparing us from a full year of his hair and his bullshit. But his campaign, as long as it lasted, was grotesque. Is there a less sincere or more disingenuous person on the planet? He could not even tell the truth about his days as a great white (varmint) hunter. He took the political flip-flop to new levels. Case in point: gay marraige. When he ran for senate in 1994, he promised the Log Cabin Republicans that he’d be a better friend to the gay community than Ted Kennedy. But when he had to court the troglodyte right in the presidential primary, he got all homophobic-er than thou on us. And he just spouted nonsense, and was seldom called on it. He told us that he wanted to defend “traditional marriage,” because he agreed with “three thousand years of recorded history,” in which marriage was always the same - one man and one woman. “Marriage is not an ‘evolving paradigm,’” he told us. Always the same.
Dude. His great-grandfather had five wives. His great-great grandfather had twelve wives.
So which “traditional” marriage does he want to defend? Traditional plural marriage? Traditional arranged marriage? The kind of traditional marriage where all property and political rights revert to the husband alone? Or the tradition in which people of different races can’t marry each other? (Thank goodness for “evolving paradigms,” no?)
Romney would have to be wildly historically illiterate to believe the things he was saying. And I don’t think he is that stupid. And he would also have to be totally unaware of his own family history to believe those things, too. So I guess he was, as usual, just being his regular old dishonest self.
Sorry. I guess I used this post as an excuse to rant about Mitt Romney one last time. Man, I hate what he just said. Always.
On the fourth day of Israeli attacks on Gaza where over 350 Palestinians have been killed, the president has chosen to remain on vacation in Crawford.
At yesterday’s press briefing, Deputy Press Secretary Gordon Johndroe explained what was on the president’s schedule for the day:
Q: What is the President doing today?
MR. JOHNDROE: What is the President doing today? After his phone call with Abdullah and his intelligence briefing, he went to his office to work on paperwork and a variety of things. And I expect he’ll probably ride his bicycle today and spend time with Mrs. Bush. And we’ll — I expect he’ll also probably receive updates on the ongoing situation in the Middle East, as well.
Here’s an excerpt from Bill’s NYT column, which heaps praise on Dick Cheney for - get ready for this - his honesty and sense of justice.
You gotta love Dick Cheney.
O.K., O.K. … you don’t have to. But consider this exchange with Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday”:
WALLACE: Did you really tell Senator Leahy, bleep yourself?
CHENEY: I did.
WALLACE: Any qualms, or second thoughts, or embarrassment?
CHENEY: No, I thought he merited it at the time. (Laughter.) And we’ve since, I think, patched over that wound and we’re civil to one another now.
No spin. No doubletalk. A cogent defense of his action — and one that shows a well-considered sense of justice. (“I thought he merited it.”) Indeed, if justice is seeking to give each his due, one might say that Dick Cheney aspires to being a just man. And a thoughtful one, because he knows that justice is sometimes too harsh, and should be tempered by civility.
Now Cheney isn’t, I’m afraid, always wise. For example, he’s still a defender of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. He even told Wallace he disagreed with the decision to fire Rumsfeld: “I was a Rumsfeld man … I thought he did a good job for us.”
Unless I’m gravely mistaken, Kristol is giving Dick Cheney credit for admitting something that everyone already knows he did. Furthermore, he’s giving Dick Cheney credit for admitting something entirely minor. And finally (and this is the best bit!), he seems to privilege Cheney’s admitting that he did something minor that everyone already knows he did over not admitting that his views on major Defense Department policies under the Bush Administration are absurd.
Let’s examine this. Kristol appears to be telling us that Dick was wrong-doodly-ong on policy that cost thousands of lives. He supported, and supports, a Defense Secretary who orchestrated a calamatous failure in Iraq - literally a matter of life and death (mostly f*cking death!) But he’s telling us not to worry about that, because Dick is willing to admit that he cursed out Pat Leahy. Which we already knew anway.
George W. Bush is all about “freedom,” and “democracy,” right?
Also - he’s all about this:
He’ll invade your country and destroy it under false pretenses. He will show little if any concern whatsoever for the civilian dead and wounded in your country. In fact, his forces will use cluster bombs - considered barbaric by much of the world - which will ensure heavier civilian casualties in your country. He and his administration will authorize the use of torture in your country. Then, when he comes to visit your country, and you throw your shoes at him in disgust, he’ll crack jokes while he listens to you being beaten nearby. Audibly beaten.
The Iraqi journalist, Muntader al-Zaidi, 28, a correspondent for Al Baghdadia, an independent Iraqi television station, stood up about 12 feet from Mr. Bush and shouted in Arabic: “This is a gift from the Iraqis; this is the farewell kiss, you dog!” He then threw a shoe at Mr. Bush, who ducked and narrowly avoided it
As stunned security agents and guards, officials and journalists watched, Mr. Zaidi then threw his other shoe, shouting in Arabic, “This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq!” That shoe also narrowly missed Mr. Bush as Prime Minister Maliki stuck a hand in front of the president’s face to help shield him.
Mr. Maliki’s security agents jumped on the man, wrestled him to the floor and hustled him out of the room. They kicked him and beat him until “he was crying like a woman,” said Mohammed Taher, a reporter for Afaq, a television station owned by the Dawa Party, which is led by Mr. Maliki. Mr. Zaidi was then detained on unspecified charges.
Other Iraqi journalists in the front row apologized to Mr. Bush, who was uninjured and tried to brush off the incident by making a joke. “All I can report is it is a size 10,” he said, continuing to take questions and noting the apologies. He also called the incident a sign of democracy, saying, “That’s what people do in a free society, draw attention to themselves,” as the man’s screaming could be heard outside [bold added].
Compared to the brutality of the Iraq War itself, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and extraordinary rendition, this incident is of course relatively minor (unless you happen to be the guy being beaten - then it is quite major).
But it is also a perfectly fitting way for George W. Bush to end his disgraceful presidency.
WHILE A MAN WAS BEING BEATEN IN HIS PRESENCE, BUSH WAS CRACKING JOKES AND EXPLAINING DEMOCRACY TO EVERYONE.
WASHINGTON - A bipartisan Senate report released yesterday says that former Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other top Bush administration officials are directly responsible for abuses of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and charges that decisions by those officials led to serious offenses against prisoners in Iraq and elsewhere.
The Senate Armed Services Committee report accuses Rumsfeld and his deputies of being the principal architects of the plan to use harsh interrogation techniques on captured fighters and terrorism suspects, rejecting the Bush administration’s contention that the policies originated lower down the command chain.
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The report, released by Senators Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, and Republican John McCain of Arizona, and based on a nearly two-year investigation, said that both the policies and resulting controversies tarnished the reputation of the United States and undermined national security. “Those efforts damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority,” it said [bold added].
The report further asserts that high-level officials not only initiated harsh interrogation techniques [read: torture], but that they “redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality.” It still appears unclear whether any high-level Bush administration officials will be held accountable for their actions.
A symptom of the problem: I am looking at cnn.com and foxnews.com right now. And I can’t find this story.
