The Osterley Times

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Obama's Victory Speech South Carolina

Part 1:

Part 2:

Saturday, January 26, 2008

Letterman: Barack gives the Top Ten

I can't imagine a British politician doing this. Good on ya, Obama...

Egypt Tries to Plug Border; Gazans Poke New Hole

As the Egyptians ponder what to do about the broken border with Gaza, the New York Times has a piece which interviews some of the Palestinians who managed to get into Egypt for a few brief days.

Muhammad al-Hirakly, 22, said he and his friends had been in El Arish for two days, but could not get past the police to get to Cairo. “We tried to go there, to see the big city and our family there, and also the girls,” he said.

The police ordered local hotels not to take in Palestinians, but residents and mosques provided beds. “We’ve been sleeping in the Rifai Mosque. It’s nice they let us in,” Mr. Hirakly said. He was interviewed in a line to ride the bumper cars at a little amusement park. “We’re angry at the Egyptians, who try to rob us with overpriced stuff,” he said. “But it’s the most fun we’ve had in years.”

Muhammad Abu Samra, 18, came to buy cigarettes to resell and found many friends from Gaza. “Being here makes me feel like I want to see the world, breathe some fresh air,” he said. “I wish they could keep the border open; maybe one day they’ll even let us go to Cairo.” But said he and his friends planned to return to Gaza on Friday night.

Adel al-Mighraky, 54, was returning to the Rafah crossing with his grandson, and thanked Mr. Mubarak for allowing Gazans to enter. “We were like birds in a cage,” he said. Once the door is open, he said, “birds will fly away as fast as they can — this is what we did. But what kind of bird has to go back to its cage after it was freed?”

It was the first time his grandson had left Gaza, Mr. Mighraky said. “We felt free today.”

It's very hard not to be moved when one hears people talk with such wistfulness about freedom. A people who have been under curfew since June for crimes that they personally did not commit.

The Egyptians are in an understandable quandary. Pressured by Israel and the US to reseal the border whilst fully aware that most Egyptians, and many people around the world, strongly disagree with the punishment that is being meted out to the people of Gaza.

The Egyptian forces have fired guns and water cannons into the air in an attempt to control things, but that's as heavy as it's got. The reality is that Egypt don't want to be Gaza's jailers, and they certainly don't want to be Gaza's jailers on Israel's behalf.

So Mubarak finds himself in a dreadful position. A trapped people will do anything to break free and any attempt by Mubarak to force a solution will end in violence, and the last thing Mubarak needs is for his forces to be seen reacting violently towards a group of people who have been dreadfully mistreated.

Mubarak has therefore suggested a solution:

In an interview published Friday, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak called the situation in Gaza unacceptable and called on Israel to lift the blockade and solve the problem.

"They should get things back to normal according to previous agreements and understandings," Mubarak told the weekly Al-Osboa.

I have no doubt in my mind that Olmert, a man who doesn't even bother to pretend that he's not engaging in collective punishment, will dismiss such a notion out of hand. But Mubarak is right. This situation has developed because people kept in a cage have broken out, and it is not for Mubarak to insist that they re-enter that cage.

It is for Olmert to realise that punishing one and a half million people for the crimes of a few is wrong.

Click title for full article.

Friday, January 25, 2008

Why Republicans Will Lose The Presidency In 2008

Clinton’s Campaign Sees Value in Keeping Former President in Attack Mode

There's an article in todays Guardian Comment entitled, "The Madness of King Clinton" which argues that Bill Clinton, far from losing it with his increasingly frequent temper tantrums, is actually playing to the cameras; well aware that, if he appears to lose his temper, that whatever point he wants to make will be instantly propelled to the front of the news agenda.

In a political culture that seems ever more spin-dried and desiccated, the media lust for unguarded moments - or, at least, moments that look that way. And when those moments centre upon a former president whose psychodramas have long fascinated millions of his compatriots, they are prized all the more highly. An outbreak of Clintonian ire can cut through the usual hubbub of campaign noise like a klaxon.

The image of an out-of-control Clinton is so compelling that it also serves as an amplifier for whatever point he is making. Many pundits have suggested, wrongly, that Clinton's most heated remarks are aberrational. In fact, every tantrum so far has occurred whilst sounding a vital campaign talking point - the notion that supporting Obama is a huge gamble, that the young senator's appeal is fundamentally fake, that a Clinton loss in the Nevada caucuses - widely, though incorrectly, predicted at the time the former president reared up in Oakland - should be seen as insignificant.

The sheer spectacle of Clinton's explosions is so over-powering that the media reports that inevitably follow are dominated by what he said and how he said it. Questions about whether his statements are true can get pushed to the sidelines.

When I first read this I was unsure whether or not I agreed with this theory. I agree that outbursts guarantee that his points lead the next news cycle, but was unsure whether Clinton would damage his own brand simply to pull of such a feat.

And then I read this over at the New York Times:

The benefits of having Mr. Clinton challenge Mr. Obama so forcefully, over Iraq and Mr. Obama’s record and statements, they say, are worth the trade-offs of potentially overshadowing Mrs. Clinton at times, undermining his reputation as a statesman and raising the question among voters about whether they are putting him in the White House as much as her.
Mr. Clinton is deliberately trying to play bad cop against Mr. Obama, campaign officials say, and is keenly aware that a flash of anger or annoyance will draw even more media and public attention to his arguments.

Perhaps the Clinton camp are simply trying to put a positive spin on Bill's more erratic outburts, but there's a part of me that thinks this theory might actually hold water.

One of the initial reasons Liberals like myself love Bill is because he won. He could take on the Republican attack dog machine and beat it at it's own game.

Since Hillary finished third in the Iowa caucuses Bill has openly started setting the news agenda in any way that he can. And as long as he is in attack mode then Obama is forced to respond rather than having any chance to set the agenda himself.

The other day I thought that Bill might - in an election being fought on the notion of change - be playing the game in a way that made Obama the underdog and gave him the advantage, but now I'm not so sure.

As long as Bill plays the role of attack dog, Hillary can safely ignore Obama and concentrate on attacking Bush. She rises above the fray and acts Presidential.

Such a tactic is simply not open to Obama as neither his wife nor his chief strategist, David Axelrod, are capable of generating anywhere near the kind of heat and light that a former President can generate.

It's ugly. But, with this two-for-the-price-of-one partnership that the Clintons now represent, one has to concede that - rather than simply losing it in his old age - there's a very good chance that Bill Clinton knows exactly what he is doing.

And Obama is on the money when he says he's unsure who he's running against because, like it or not, he's running against both of them.

Click title for article.

American Right Mock Heath Ledger's Death

The American right wing have always struck me as a particularly unhinged group of people but this is a new low even for them. They are now mocking the death of Heath Ledger - and threatening to picket his funeral in some quarters - not because he was gay, which he wasn't, but because he once played a gay man in Brokeback Mountain.

It's beneath contempt...

As I said the other day, I really haven't followed Ledger's career, but the death of anyone at 28 is a bloody tragedy. To turn an event like that into a punchline is simply sick.

UPDATE:

Gibson has "apologised" because "some took my comments as anti-gay and offensive".

Hat Tip to Crooks and Liars.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

What Are They Waiting For?

It's bizarre. Reporters have asked as many questions about UFO's as they have about global warming during this election campaign...

Freedom for Gaza (but for one day only)

The Israeli blockade of Gaza has been going on since last June. Yesterday - no-one knows who but many of us suspect Hamas - someone blew the wall between Gaza and Egypt with seventeen separate explosive charges.

And through they came, thousands of Palestinians searching for household goods, cigarettes and spare car parts which they have been denied for the past seven months.

And, from the reports that I have read, the Egyptians seemed very happy to see them.

And certainly the steel-helmeted Egyptian border guards standing by their armoured personnel carriers seemed pleased enough to see the tens of thousands of Palestinian men, women and children who squeezed between the now flattened eight- metre concrete slabs of wall or scrambled across the furrows in the now uselessly prone and twisted corrugated iron barrier.

One, in camouflage fatigues, surrounded by curious small boys and standing by Rafah-Sinai's Shuhada Mosque, but with no visible weapon and refusing to give his name, said: "Everything is good. We are very happy at what happened." Had his unit received instructions on how to handle the day-long mass Palestinian break-out? "Nobody told us anything," he replied.

This may not have been quite the collapse of the Berlin Wall. But if anyone doubted the impact of a prolonged siege on an imprisoned people, they had the evidence yesterday.

With Gaza City's streets abnormally light of traffic because of the fuel shortages, the cars, vans, cattle trucks, packed with Gazans seeking everyday household wares, crowded the main Salahadin north-south artery of the Gaza Strip clogging the approaches to the border, confident of filling their jerry cans of petrol and diesel after queueing patiently on the other side. "We are going to heaven," shouted one teenager.

Israel have, understandably, complained about the security implications of this, stating that "potentially anyone could enter Gaza" which is, of course, true. However, it still made me smile as it implied that there might be some rush of people eager to enter the world's largest open prison.

No doubt the Israelis will close the holes in the wall soon enough and the blockade will continue, but for one day there was something very endearing about the fact that the Egyptian border patrol - and who would ever have thought that border patrols would show humanity? - turned a blind eye whilst a besieged people enjoyed a day at the shops.

As a Gazan taxi driver put it:

"I don't know who did it," he said cheerfully. "But this is an agreement between two peoples, not between governments."

And there's a great truth to that. Governments might argue about the need to maintain the borders for reasons of security but, that was not the first thing most people thought of when they saw the exodus of people searching for goods.

Anyone capable of empathy, especially here in Britain where most people's parents can still remember war time rationing, imagined what it would be like to be in the Palestinians shoes and wished them well.

It is for that reason, I suspect, that President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt ordered his troops to do nothing. He didn't dare to intervene.

Here's footage of what took place.

Click title for full article.

Kerry denounces 'lies' about Obama

The battle between the Clinton's and Obama is getting nastier and drawing in more people which ultimately can't do the Clinton's any favours.

Now John Kerry has stepped into the middle of it to condemn - without naming any names - the apparent "swiftboating" of Barack Obama.

"The fight is just heating up. We won't let them steal this election with lies and distortions," he said.
His comments came amid signs of a backlash in the Democratic party, especially among African-Americans, at the way that Hillary and Bill Clinton have taken Obama apart during the past fortnight.
Kerry, a senator from Massachusetts, endorsed Obama last month, despite his long friendship with Bill Clinton. It was an important endorsement, giving heart to other members of Congress who had been dithering about supporting Obama for fear of antagonising the Clinton machine. But it is a big jump for Kerry to go from endorsement to criticism of the former president and his spouse, even if indirectly. He described as "disgusting lies" allegations on the internet about Obama's religion and record of public service.
"I support Barack Obama because he doesn't seek to perfect the politics of Swiftboating - he seeks to end it," he said. "This is personal for me, and for a whole lot of Americans who lived through the 2004 election."

These are incredibly strong words and an indication of just how much the tactics being employed by the Clinton camp are alienating other Democrats.

Meanwhile, Bill Clinton has hit back at claims that he and Hillary have injected race into the Democratic presidential primary in South Carolina and has accused Obama of doing a "hit job" on him.

Scolding a reporter, Mr. Clinton said the Obama campaign was “feeding” the news media to keep issues of race alive, obscuring positive coverage of the presidential campaign here of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

“They know this is what you want to cover,” Mr. Clinton told a CNN reporter in Charleston, in an apparent reference to the Obama campaign.

“Shame on you,” the former president added.

The Clinton camp are running an ad which highlights the very remarks which Obama says the Clinton's are distorting and taking deliberately out of context.

At about the same time, the Clinton campaign began running a radio commercial about Mr. Obama, which replayed Mr. Obama’s words from a recent interview with The Reno Gazette-Journal: “The Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last 10, 15 years.”

“Really?” a voice-over in the Clinton commercial says. “Aren’t those the ideas that got us into the economic mess we’re in today?”

In his interview, Mr. Obama did not specify any particular idea and did not say he supported any of them, though Mrs. Clinton’s commercial strongly implies that he did.

The Obama campaign called Mrs. Clinton’s commercial “dishonest,” and Mr. Obama broadly implied at campaign appearances that the Clintons were misleading voters, though he did not mention the Clintons by name.

Mr. Obama further responded with his own radio advertisement, saying that it was Mrs. Clinton who had frequently sided with the Republicans on issues like the Iraq war and the North American Free Trade Agreement. “She’ll say anything, and change nothing,” the commercial said. “It’s time to turn the page.”

What puzzles me about the way this campaign has turned out is that it never needed to get quite as nasty as it's becoming. And it doesn't seem to me as if this will in any way help the Clintons. Obama is already in the highly unusual position of facing what amounts to two candidates, one of whom is a former President, and any perception that he is being bullied or unfairly misrepresented by the formidable Clinton political apparatus sets up Obama as the underdog facing seasoned ruthless political cynics.

In an election being fought on the issue of change, that kind of thing can only assist Obama.

Click title for full article.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Heath Ledger Dies

I don't know why Heath Ledger's death saddens me, but it does. I paid very little attention to his career and only really knew him through the fact that the tabloids made such a fuss over Brokeback Mountain.

But to die at 28 is simply a bloody tragedy. There are reports that he was suffering from pneumonia at the time of his death.

His family have released a statement:

We, Heath's family, confirm the very tragic, untimely and accidental passing of our dearly loved son, brother and doting father of Matilda, who was found in a peaceful sleep in his New York apartment by his housekeeper at 3:30 p.m. (EST)," his father, Kim, read while accompanied by mother Sally and Ledger's sister, Katie.
"We would like to thank our friends and everyone around the world for their kind wishes at this time.

"Heath has touched so many people on so many different levels during his short life, but few had the pleasure to truly know him.

"He was a down-to-earth, generous, kind-hearted, life-loving and unselfish individual who was an extreme inspiration to many.

"Please now respect our family's need to grieve and come to terms with our loss privately."

Whatever the circumstances that have led to his early demise it is simply tragic that someone so young, with apparently everything to live for, should pass away. 28 years old. It's no age at all...

The Liar in Chief. (Nearly a Thousand Porkies...)

I have never bought into the theory that Bush and others genuinely believed that Saddam was a threat to the United States and that they were only telling us what they believed to be true when they were making their case for intervention.

I think they had decided that they wanted to take out Saddam and that all evidence was regarded as useful or useless based solely on whether it advanced or hindered that cause.

Now a new study by two not-for-profit organisations has found that Bush and his officials told almost one thousand lies regarding Iraq after 9-11.

The Associated Press reports the study, published on the website of the Centre for Public Integrity, concluded the statements “were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanised public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretences”.

According to the study, 935 false statements were issued by the White House in the two years after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
In speeches, briefings and interviews, President Bush and other officials stated “unequivocally” on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had links to al-Qaeda, or had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to get them. “It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to al-Qaeda,” wrote the study’s authors Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith.

“In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003.” The study found that President Bush alone made 259 false statements – 231 about weapons of mass destruction and 28 about Iraq’s links to al-Qaeda.

The truth was that Bush and his ideologues didn't care whether or not the evidence they were relying on was true or false, they cared about whether it made the case for war or not. As was famously spelled out in the Downing Street memos, "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

In other words, if it aided the case for war it was in and if it didn't it was dismissed.

And, of course, the WMD/terrorist justification was chosen not because of any immediate danger but because - as Paul Wolfowitz admitted:
For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction (as justification for invading Iraq) because it was the one reason everyone could agree on.
And, of course, there were further indications that Bush had always wanted to remove Saddam. According to his former ghost writer:

“He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999,” said author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz. “It was on his mind. He said to me: ‘One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.’ And he said, ‘My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.’ He said, ‘If I have a chance to invade….if I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it. I’m going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I’m going to have a successful presidency.

Indeed, the lengths that little Georgie was prepared to go to in order to get his war were actually extraordinary:

Bush told Blair "that the US was so worried about the failure to find hard evidence against Saddam that it thought of 'flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft planes with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in UN colours'. Mr Bush added: 'If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach [of UN resolutions]'."

Because, of course, Bush felt that starting a war with Saddam would improve his standing as President; indeed, he might never be considered a great President unless he went to war:

According to Herskowitz, George W. Bush’s beliefs on Iraq were based in part on a notion dating back to the Reagan White House – ascribed in part to now-vice president Dick Cheney, Chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee under Reagan. “Start a small war. Pick a country where there is justification you can jump on, go ahead and invade.”

Bush’s circle of pre-election advisers had a fixation on the political capital that British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher collected from the Falklands War. Said Herskowitz: “They were just absolutely blown away, just enthralled by the scenes of the troops coming back, of the boats, people throwing flowers at [Thatcher] and her getting these standing ovations in Parliament and making these magnificent speeches.”
Republicans, Herskowitz said, felt that Jimmy Carter’s political downfall could be attributed largely to his failure to wage a war. He noted that President Reagan and President Bush’s father himself had (besides the narrowly-focused Gulf War I) successfully waged limited wars against tiny opponents – Grenada and Panama – and gained politically.

And, of course, Bush's ignorance of just what he was getting himself into apparently knew no bounds. Pat Buchanan revealed that Bush had told him the Iraq invasion would yield no casualties.

So we shouldn't be surprised at the level of lies that were told to make this war possible. One thousand whoppers.

And Pelosi still says impeachment is off the table? Unbelievable.

UPDATE:

Here's Cheney lying:

Here's an example of Cheney lying about his lying.

Here's Rumsfeld getting caught lying:

Click title for full article.

Bush Attempts to Pardon Himself for War Crimes.

Cafferty says it all when he wonders, "What are we becoming?" At least Nixon waited for Ford to pardon him, Bush is setting out to pardon himself...

Did Canada cave under US Israeli pressure?

The Bush regime have always set out to make reality what they say it is rather than contend with tiresome actuality. However, they are now having some considerable success with this nonsense if this story is any indication of how things work. Now the truth can, apparently, be changed with a single phone call...

Hat tip to The Largest Minority.

Countdown: Bushed!

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

No End In Sight

The scale of the incompetency of the neo-con Iraqi war plans are laid bare in this movie. For the effect they have had on the lives of tens of thousands of people - both Iraqis and American servicemen and women - these ideological lunatics should be jailed.

They have created chaos and called it democracy. Every single person who has argued to defend what they did should hang their heads in shame...

Things Turn Nasty

I, like any liberal, am a huge fan of Bill Clinton. However, I agree with Barack Obama that Clinton has recently been less than honest when discussing comments that Obama has made regarding Ronald Reagan and his criticism of the Iraq war which Bill has referred to as the "biggest fairy tale I've ever seen".

Obama has responded by saying:

"President Clinton went in front of a large group, said that I had claimed that only Republicans had had any good ideas since 1980," Mr Obama said. "And then he added, 'I'm not making this up'. He was making it up and completely mischaracterising my statement."

"He continues to make statements that are not supported by the facts, whether it's about my record of opposition to the war in Iraq or our approach to organising in Las Vegas," Mr Obama complained . "This has become a habit, and one of the things that we're going to have to do is to directly confront Bill Clinton when he's making statements that are not factually accurate."

Here the gloves come off and things get nasty. Hillary defends herself by claiming that she didn't say the things that Obama is upset about when it is obvious to one and all that Bill is operating as her attack dog, saying things so that she doesn't have to.

The poor and the sick suffer as Israel cuts power to Gaza

Following on yesterday's post concerning the collective punishment being imposed on the people of Gaza by the cutting of their power supplies, today's Independent carries an article on the subject that can be read by clicking the title.

In it is a quote by Ehud Olmert:

"As far as I'm concerned, all the residents of Gaza can walk and have no fuel ... because they have a murderous terrorist regime that doesn't allow people in the south of Israel to live in peace."

He's not even hiding the fact that collective punishment is the very point of what he is doing.

Click title for full article.

Crash! Biggest fall in shares since September 11

George Bush has been euphemistically referring to it as a "slowdown" in the American economy, but yesterday - as the American markets slept due to a holiday - the rest of the world reacted and it's verdict was damning. The markets clearly feel that a US recession is now inevitable.

In a single session, a massive £84bn was wiped off the value of Britain's biggest companies, as the FTSE 100 index plummeted by 5.5 per cent, closing 323.5 points lower at 5578.2. Last week the index dipped beneath the 6,000 mark for the first time since the credit crunch began in August. It was the eighth consecutive day of losses. Since Christmas Eve, the FTSE has dropped by almost 1,000 points and last night analysts were predicting further falls.

While President George Bush has authorised an economic rescue package to address the US sub-prime crisis, market experts believe the plan has come too late. And no one believes the world's other major economies will remain unscathed as America plunges into an economic downturn. For the world's biggest companies, recession in an export market as vital as the US can only spell trouble.

One senior UK-based trader said: "The fear is palpable as investors are getting more worried about the prospect of a recession in the US. In the current climate any vaguely scary news is pummelling the market." Martin Slaney, head of derivatives at GFT Global Markets, said: "The punches just keep coming. Ambivalence over Bush's rescue plan for the US economy was the trigger of this rout, causing fears of an economic slowdown."

It was literally felt worldwide. Japan's Nikkei index was down almost 4%, while Germany's Dax and France's CAC index both fell by 7%.

In Britain:

Since the start of the year share prices have dropped by 14%, with the near 900-point fall in the FTSE 100 wiping out all the gains of the last 18 months and putting renewed pressure on pension funds. Yesterday's 5.48% fall was the biggest in percentage terms since the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks but less than half as big as the record 12.2% drop in October 1987.

What's interesting here is that, for so long, Bush has been allowed to create his own reality. Success is just around the corner in Iraq, a fantastic job was being done clearing up Katrina etc., etc,. And a mostly compliant US press have simply printed this rubbish as if it was the truth.

Now the worlds markets are reacting to Bush's plans to prevent the US economy from plunging into recession and it is quite obvious that they believe his plan to be too little, too late.

UPDATE:

Fed slashes rates in shock move

The Federal Reserve has cut interest rates to 3.5%, a shock three-quarters of a percentage point reduction.

Fighting to stave off recession in the world's biggest economy, the decision comes after sharp stock market declines on Wall Street and around the globe.

The Fed said incoming information indicated a deepening of the US housing market slump and increased unemployment levels.

One analyst said the Fed was "obviously panicked" by the threat of recession.

"Unfortunately they have no power to reverse what in my opinion is the worst post-war recession," said Michael Metz, chief investment strategist at Oppenheimer in New York.

The last two such surprise cuts were on 17 September 2001, shortly after the attacks of 11 September, and on 3 January 2001, in the wake of the dotcom bust.

The last time the Fed cut rates as much as three-quarters of a percentage point was in August 1982, almost 26 years ago.

"This is huge," said the BBC's business editor Robert Peston.

Related Articles:

America's economic perfect storm.

FUTURE HISTORIANS are likely to look back on the final year of the Bush administration as a moment not unlike 1930, when government dithered while a financial crisis deepened. At every stage of this unfolding crisis, the official response has been too little and too late.
I'm not predicting another Great Depression. Happily, the people who kept insisting that private business could regulate itself did not repeal the entire New Deal. We still have deposit insurance, Social Security, (reduced) bank regulation, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and a Federal Reserve given much stronger powers than in the 1930s.
And we still have a government capable of serious anti-recession spending - if it so chooses. But as the credit crisis deepens, this particular government is still infatuated with free-market fables now thoroughly discredited by events. So we must wait another 13 months before a new government can begin digging out of a needlessly deep hole.
America now faces an economic perfect storm: a weakened financial system, diminished consumer purchasing power, a swooning dollar, and rising inflation. [...]
. . . The eventual recovery will require a repudiation of free-market economics, as bold as the New Deal. But like so much else about the Bush legacy, recovery will be far more agonizing than it had to be.

Click title for full article.

Monday, January 21, 2008

The McLaughlin Group: The Economy Tanking

What effect has the Iraq war had on the American economy?

The panel of Mort Zuckerman, Eleanor Clift, Monica Crowley and Pat Buchanan on this Friday's The McLaughlin Group sat down for a discussion on whether our economy is tanking and whether or not it's in part due to Iraq. Mort Zuckerman paints as gloomy a picture of the economy as we heard the other day from Jim Cramer but he refuses to admit that the occupation in Iraq might have anything to do with the economy tanking now. Zuckerman is also completely dismissive of Ron Paul's arguments about the economy during the ABC GOP debate. Of course Buchanan and Crowley think it's only a minor drag on the economy and Crowley goes so far as to start spouting off about how great the economic growth is there. How's that occupation and genocide going for you Monica? Oh the economy is booming....it's wonderful. Clift and McLaughlin disagree. We do have a real mess on our hands as Zuckerman describes with the sub-prime lending industry and the economic forecast is looking very dreary to put it mildly for the reasons he describes, but I don't understand how anyone can completely separate our irresponsible borrowing and spending on the bottomless pit called Iraq from the state of the economy in general we're facing now. The conservatives answer to our problems of course, lower taxes and cut government spending, code for gut Medicaid and Social Security, but that war spending, no problem.

Hat tip to Crooks and Liars.

Gaza plunged into darkness as Israeli fuel blockade takes effect

Collective punishment is a crime. And yet, how else can one describe Israel's decision to cut off fuel supplies to Gaza's only power plant plunging parts of Gaza into darkness?

Nor are the Israelis even hiding the reasons for what they are doing:

Israeli officials said the policy was directly linked to the rocket attacks. "If they stop the rockets today, everything would go back to normal," said Arye Mekel, a foreign ministry spokesman.

The vast majority of the people of Gaza have nothing to do with rocket attacks on Israel and to punish them for an act that they have not committed is illegal. And yet, as usual, the west and the US will remain silent whilst the people of Gaza's existence is made even more unbearable, if that were even possible.

Human rights groups have issued protests, but they will be routinely ignored as they always are whilst blackouts in Gaza continue for up to twelve hours a day.

From Damascus, Khaled Mashaal, the exiled leader of Hamas, appealed to Arab leaders and his rival, Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, to forget their differences and help the Gazans: "All Arab leaders, exercise real pressure to stop this Zionist crime ... Take up your role and responsibility. We are not asking you to wage a military war against Israel ... but just stand with us in pride and honour."
Mashaal said he had been in contact with some Arab countries, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, to see if they would pressure Israel. He had asked Egypt to provide fuel for the Gaza plant.

Ha'aretz are reporting that even Israeli officials are saying that the effects of the power cuts are worse than they expected with Hamas claiming that five patients have died because of power cuts in hospitals.

Israel continue to lay the blame for what is happening at the door of the people who fire the rockets into Israel, and whilst one can see the logic of this argument, it was to counter just such logic that collective punishment was deemed a crime.

I'm sure the IRA might possibly have set off a few less bombs, and certainly enjoyed less popularity at home, had the British government employed similar tactics in Northern Ireland; but the effect of the policy and whether or not it is effective is hardly the point here.

It is wrong for governments to collectively punish people for crimes that they did not commit and Israel, like the British government with internment and some of their other disastrous policies in Northern Ireland, do themselves no favours when they resort to such tactics.

Indeed, it could be argued that such policies, far from harming the terrorist's cause, actually radicalises the civilian population.

However, as I say, whether it does or does not is hardly the point; the point is that Israel's behaviour is illegal. And it should be condemned.

Click title for full article.

Sunday, January 20, 2008

Tom Ridge: Waterboarding Is Torture

Tom Ridge, the first ever secretary of the Homeland Security Department, has said what is obvious to the rest of the world - even if some Republicans find it hard to get their head around it - waterboarding is torture.

It's hard to think of anything that has done more to damage the US's standing in the world in recent years - even including horrors like Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib - than the sight of some Republicans indulging in immoral semantic discussions about whether drowning someone might or might not be considered torture.

So it's very welcome to hear a former member of this corrupt administration speak in such clear terms against a practice that few us, before the Bush government, could ever have imagined Americans not only practicing, but in some cases publicly defending.

"There's just no doubt in my mind - under any set of rules - waterboarding is torture," Tom Ridge said Friday in an interview with the Associated Press.

"And I believe, unlike others in the administration, that waterboarding was, is - and will always be - torture. That's a simple statement."

What's astonishes me here isn't that he actually said it, but that so few Republicans have found it in themselves to condemn such a foul practice.

In fairness McCain and a few others have also spoken out against this barbaric practice, especially when confronting Giuliani over his ludicrous claims that it would depend on how waterboarding was done and by whom before he could state whether or not this constituted torture:

“All I can say is that it was used in the Spanish Inquisition, it was used in Pol Pot’s genocide in Cambodia, and there are reports that it is being used against Buddhist monks today,” Mr. McCain, who spent more than five years in a North Vietnamese prison camp, said in a telephone interview.

Of presidential candidates like Mr. Giuliani, who say that they are unsure whether waterboarding is torture, Mr. McCain said: “They should know what it is. It is not a complicated procedure. It is torture.”

However, the few willing to publicly decry this practice remain the exception that proves the rule.

Most Republicans seem to have fallen behind the party line that the US must be willing to engage in any action in order to fight terrorists, apparently believing that when one's civilisation is under threat that one must immediately abandon the beliefs that previously defined that civilisation.

Indeed, Republican supporters like Bill O'Reilly have gone much further than expressing confusion over whether or not waterboarding is torture and have started arguing that it should be used because it works.

O'Reilly then characterized waterboarding as " putting a little water on their face". He challenged Bogart with, " You'd rather have people die than give the President the latitude.."

So you see, for some Republicans like O'Reilly, those who oppose waterboarding are actually aiding in the deaths of innocents.

When they are swept from power at the next election they will be puzzled as to why they are viewed with such revulsion. They really don't get it.

So Ridge's condemnation is to welcomed, especially as it seems to highlight the silence from so many others who ought to know better.

“Qui tacet consentire vidétur.” Silence equals consent.

Click title for full article.

FOX Attacks! "Non-Existent" Veterans

BILL MOYERS JOURNAL: Clinton, Obama, King and Johnson

Clinton Back in Pole Position

And the pendulum swings back towards Hillary.

Hillary Clinton today reclaimed her position as the Democratic frontrunner in the race for the White House, defeating Barack Obama in the Nevada caucuses in a campaign marked by divisiveness and bullish tactics.

The victory for Clinton - her second in the early primary states after New Hampshire - also established her popularity over Obama among Latino voters. The win gives her a crucial advantage going into Super Tuesday on February 5, when California and other western states with large Latino communities hold their primaries.

Click title for full article.

Saturday, January 19, 2008

Mike Huckabee compares homosexuality to bestiality.

Israeli reaction to Bush's Middle East visit

Kristol seeks to rally the troops.

Here in Europe, press coverage of the Republican party's fight to choose a presidential candidate has never really got anyone excited. Perhaps it's the feeling that whoever wins the Democratic nomination is almost guaranteed - after eight failed years of neo-conservatism - to walk into the White House.

There's certainly no-one in the race who gets my blood boiling, with even Giuliani - the only candidate with the chance of doing so - simply promising more of the same failed policies and stances which have led the US into her current dead end street, which leads me to suppose that - even if he wins the nomination - the stances he will have to adopt in order to do so almost guarantee that he will lose in any national poll.

It is with this in mind, and with Conservative commentators criticism of the candidates ringing in his ears, that William Kristol has decided to issue his rallying call to the Conservative troops in an article entitled, "Waiting for Reagan".

The Conservative love affair with Ronald Reagan has always puzzled me, but lets leave that aside.

The dearth of candidates to genuinely excite the Conservative base is something that Kristol seeks to gloss over, reminding his readers that many great Presidents did not always appear to have greatness within them before they entered high office:

So the conservative commentariat should take a deep breath, be a bit less judgmental about these individuals--and realize that there is not likely to be a second Reagan. They could also learn from liberalism's history. Liberalism was the most successful American political movement of the first two-thirds of the 20th century. Its three iconic presidents were Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and John Kennedy. All advanced the liberal cause while in office. None was a standard-bearer for liberalism before becoming president--though each was inclined in a more or less progressive direction.

What it means to be a serious, successful, and mature political movement is to take men like these--one might say to take advantage of men like these--in order to advance one's principles and cause.

So conservatives might think of John McCain as our potential TR, Mike Huckabee as our potential FDR, and Mitt Romney as our potential JFK. Support the one you prefer. But don't work yourself into a frenzy against the others.

It really says something about the quality of the candidates on offer that Kristol is reduced to making such ludicrous comparisons, however, he saves the very best till last with his offer of what to do should the Republicans be unable to choose which of these turkeys it would like to enjoy at Christmas.

Let the best man emerge from a challenging primary process. And if there is no clear-cut winner, then the delegates at the GOP convention can turn on the fifth ballot to an obvious fallback compromise candidate, one who would be just fine with conservatives--Dick Cheney!

Dear God, they really are scraping the barrel when their fallback compromise candidate - and the one that Kristol assures us would be "just fine with conservatives" - is a man with a popularity rating of 18%.

They are in even more trouble than I thought they were.

Click title for Kristol's article.

Friday, January 18, 2008

What change means to each candidate - Olbermann

Where is John Edwards in the media coverage?

Good for John Edwards...

Canada puts United States on torture list with Syria & Iran

Keith's guest sums it up perfectly when he says that this semantic argument about what constitutes torture is actually over in Europe. We call it what it is. It is torture. And now Canada, one of the US's oldest allies, has put the US on it's list of country's where it's citizens - if detained - might experience torture.

Sicko

I watched Sicko last night and, once again, found myself simply staggered at the American health system. The whole notion of running a health system based on the profits of insurance companies rather than the well being of patients strikes me as unbelievably dumb.

With the costs of operations being so high it seems obvious that, in any system run for profit, the temptation will always be to cut corners, and that - in the same way as insurance companies attempt to refuse claims when your house is burgled - that this same logic will eventually be applied to your health care. Turning down a claim is a way of maximizing profits and will eventually become too tempting to resist.

And, whenever I read Republicans attempting to defend this insane system, it always seems to come down to why should they pay for poor people's treatment. As if turning one's back on the poor and infirm is actually some kind of higher moral purpose.

Not that this health care comes cheaply. Americans currently spend more on health care than any other country on Earth.

And yet:

The World Health Organization's ratings of health care system performance among 191 member nations, published in 2000, ranked Canada 30th and the U.S. 37th, and the overall health of Canadians 35th and Americans 72nd.

Right wingers have somehow managed to stigmatize national health systems as "socialised medicine", as if attaching the word socialism to anything immediately renders it useless.

But the facts speak for themselves. Leaving aside the obvious horror stories that Moore managed to uncover, the simple fact is that - despite spending more than any other nation - the overall health of Americans is ranked 72nd in the world.

In a country that can put men on the moon that fact alone should render the current system unacceptable.

BA plane 'lost power' before crash landing at Heathrow

It's so rare to come across anything that could be construed as a good news story that I spent all of yesterday waiting for the report that would cast this one in a bad light... But so far it hasn't come.

Hundreds of passengers had a narrow escape when a British Airways aircraft crash-landed at Heathrow yesterday, missing the runway by 150 metres and only just clearing the airport's perimeter fence.

The pilot had reportedly lost all power on his approach. Witnesses described the aircraft banking sharply to the left as it made its approach, missing the tops of houses by less than 100m.

Several witnesses described how the aircraft "belly-flopped" and slid along the grass as its undercarriage came off. In gusty but far from extreme weather conditions, the aircraft's wheels sank deep into the soft, wet grass and were wrenched off the main body.

One unidentified airport worker told BBC News that the pilot said he lost all power and had been forced to glide the plane into land.

The pilot had to react so quickly that there wasn't even enough time to warn passengers to brace themselves. One passenger on last night's news said that it was a bumpy landing but that he wasn't aware that he was in a crash landing until after he got out the plane and noticed that there was no undercarriage.

Another person interviewed said that the pilot should be given "a medal as big as a frying pan". It's an image that made me smile. And it's not often that the news makes me do that.

Click title for full article.

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Bush in Middle East: Who is isolating whom?

Mike Huckabee Wants a Faith-Based Constitution

There are times when I am simply gobsmacked....

Steve Bell on that Middle East Tour

Resignation of hardliners leaves Israel coalition in disarray

Olmert's position in Israel has just got more difficult with the news that Avigdor Lieberman, the right wing lunatic he invited to join his coalition, has resigned in protest over Olmert's decision to hold peace talks with the Palestinians over "core issues".

It's an extraordinary move by Lieberman as no-one really supposes that Bush is going to put Olmert under the slightest pressure to make concessions on the core issues, so one can only suppose that Lieberman objects even to the idea of negotiation itself.

He has made it very clear that he is opposed to the entire notion of "land for peace":

The Moldovan-born leader, whose main base is among the million immigrants from the former Soviet Union, and who has frequently been accused of anti-Arab racism by his critics, said that he was against the concept of "land for peace". He added: "If we pull back to the 1967 borders, everyone should ask himself, what will happen the following day? Will the terror stop? Nothing will change."

As I say, I find Lieberman's stance confusing as it presupposes a willingness on the part of Olmert to make concessions that I simply see no indication of.

Indeed, without pressure from Bush, it is unlikely that this peace initiative will go anywhere and Bush's entire visit to the Middle East appears more concerned with drumming up support for an attack on Iran than on actually making any sort of constructive progress towards peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

And Olmert has made clear that he has no intention of complying with UN resolution 242.

Mr Olmert, the Prime Minister, has in fact made it clear that he is seeking a deal significantly modifying the 1967 borders, under which the largest West Bank settlements will remain in Israel.

So, unless Abbas is a complete idiot, these peace talks are going nowhere; which makes Lieberman's departure simply odd.

Why walk out when there is no chance of the thing that you fear ever happening?

Click title for full article.

Related Articles:

A Spectacular Mess.

Does the United States have a policy in the Middle East? Anyone following President Bush's current visit to the region could be forgiven for thinking that the answer is no.

Tags: Israel, Palestine, Olmert, Liberman, Abbas

Sunday, December 30, 2007

Diplomats expelled 'at behest of the US'

Mervyn Patterson and Michael Semple, the two UN diplomats dismissed from Afghanistan for making contact with the Taliban, were sent home after the US made complaints about them to the Afghan government.

But according to a senior Afghan intelligence source, American officials had been unhappy about meetings between the men and high-level Taliban commanders in the volatile Helmand province.

The source claimed that the US alerted Afghan authorities after learning that the diplomats were providing direct financial and other support - including mobile phone cards - to the Taliban commanders, in the hope of persuading them to swap sides.

"This warning came from the Americans," he said. "They were not happy with the support being provided to the Taliban. They gave the information to our intelligence services, who ordered the arrests."

A government source in Kabul said there were close links between Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security (NDS) and the US Central Intelligence Agency, adding:

"The Afghan government would never have acted alone to expel officials of such a senior level. This was information that was given to the NDS by the Americans.

Gordon Brown now discovers what it means to try to implement a policy which Washington are not in total agreement with.

Britain's "special relationship" with the US is only special as long as Britain is following the Bush doctrine.

Click title for full article.

Saturday, December 29, 2007

John Bolton on the Bhutto Murder

The US Pakistan policy is falling apart. John Bolton obviously thinks it's all going to Hell, but he still thinks that there is no option for the US other than to place their money on Musharraf.

And he still appears to think that the function of any Pakistan leader is to implement Western policies... and sees no link between that and the assassinations themselves.