I wonder what Razor would think of these medieval military tactics?

Authorities in Mosul are building a giant ditch around the city in a bid to guard it against car bombs.
Mosul, 400 km north of Baghdad, has recently seen an upsurge in insurgency activity and a hike in roadside and car bombs.
“The construction of the ditch has started. It will be like a security wall around the city to prevent the entry of car bombs and infiltrators,” said Khasro Koran, Mosul’s deputy governor.
The city of nearly two million people will be ringed by moat that will make it impossible for cars and people to enter and leave unless through guarded highways connecting it to the outside world.
Checkpoints and roadblocks will be erected on these highways to monitor movement of people and vehicles, said Koran.
“The ditch will be deep and wide enough to ensure that no vehicle will be able to cross,” Koran added.

Great use of reconstruction funds eh?

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Jun 7 2005 8:14 utc | 3

MOAT, scusi!

Posted by: Noisette | Jun 7 2005 8:28 utc | 5

There is an Airbus / Boing subsidy WTO case coming pitching Europe against the U.S.. This WaPo article comes in handy for the Europeans and for the U.S. taxpayers:
E-Mails Detail Air Force Push for Boeing Deal

For the past three years, the Air Force has described its $30 billion proposal to convert passenger planes into military refueling tankers and lease them from Boeing Co. as an efficient way to obtain aircraft the military urgently needs.
But a very different account of the deal is shown in an August 2002 internal e-mail exchange among four senior Pentagon officials.
“We all know that this is a bailout for Boeing,” Ronald G. Garant, an official of the Pentagon comptroller’s office, said in a message to two others in his office and then-Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Wayne A. Schroeder. “Why don’t we just bite the bullet,” he asked, and handle the acquisition like the procurement of a 1970s-era aircraft — by squeezing the manufacturer to provide a better tanker at a decent cost?
“We didn’t need those aircraft either, but we didn’t screw the taxpayer in the process,” Garant added, referring to widespread sentiment at the Pentagon that the proposed lease of Boeing 767s would cost too much for a plane with serious shortcomings.
…
In the copy of the report obtained by The Washington Post, 45 sections were deleted by the White House counsel’s office to obscure what several sources described as references to White House involvement in the lease negotiations and its interaction with Boeing. The Pentagon separately blacked out 64 names and many e-mails. It also omitted the names of members of Congress, including some who pressured the Pentagon to back the deal.

Posted by: b | Jun 7 2005 8:41 utc | 7

From Watergate to Downing Street — Lying for War.
The only moral alternative today is to be anti-America.

Posted by: Lupin | Jun 7 2005 10:45 utc | 9

@slothrop. How is saying that one must oppose America (and its works) being a quitter?
No compromise, no surrender.
What’s *your* alternative?

Posted by: Anonymous | Jun 7 2005 15:51 utc | 11

It’s a luxury for the expat to demand “anti-americanism” as the only reasonable response to Bush-fascism. Good for you, Lupin. Some of us cannot leave, or prefer, as American citizens, to struggle against this fascism.

Posted by: slothrop | Jun 7 2005 16:05 utc | 13

Then there will be wall gaps and moat gaps, etc.
Maybe the insurgents will build walls too, and we can recreate one of Caesar’s more interesting victories.
I’ll stop now.

Posted by: Spanky Ham | Jun 7 2005 16:16 utc | 15

Lupin is right that Bushie and the rethug machine is full of liars. But I am with slothrop. I am sticking it out aand fight the fascist rethugs. They are really starting to sink themmselves. The polls show US citizens are fed up with the lies. They believe the economy, Iraq, SS and about everything else is on the wrong track under Bushie.
You can only lie to the public so much and send only so many mixed messages and the public will find you out. I am now seeing rethugs voters not even try to defend Bushie. Before the election they defended him tooth and nail, now I hear hardly a peep. Many right wing bloggers are going “what the f—” these guys are nuts. I really think the Schaivo case was the turning point where the public discovered we’re living in wingnut land.
Where am I wrong?

Posted by: jdp | Jun 7 2005 16:45 utc | 17

On December 7, 2001, President Bush issued the Night and Fog Decree.
This decree replaced the unsuccessful administration policy of taking hostages to undermine terrorist/insurgent activities. Suspected insurgents and others would now vanish without a trace into the night and fog.
The Directors of the CIA and FBI issued the following instructions:

“After lengthy consideration, it is the will of the President that the measures taken against those who are guilty of offenses against America or against the occupation forces in occupied areas should be altered. The President is of the opinion that in such cases penal servitude or even a hard labor sentence for life will be regarded as a sign of weakness. An effective and lasting deterrent can be achieved only by the death penalty or by taking measures which will leave the family and the population uncertain as to the fate of the offender. Deportation to Abu Ghraib, Guam, Guantanamo Bay et al and foreign countries under extra-ordinary rendition serves this purpose.”

Secretary of Defence Rumsfeld issued a letter stating:

“Efficient and enduring intimidation can only be achieved either by capital punishment or by measures by which the relatives of the criminals do not know the fate of the criminal. The prisoners are, in future, to be transported to Abu Ghraib, Guam, Guantanamo Bay et al and foreign countries under extra-ordinary rendition secretly, and further treatment of the offenders will take place there; these measures will have a deterrent effect because”-
A. The prisoners will vanish without a trace.
B. No information may be given as to their whereabouts or their fate.”

The victims were usually arrested in the middle of the night and quickly taken to prisons hundreds or even thousands of miles away for questioning and torture, eventually arriving at the ‘indefinite’ detention camps, if they survived.
Original (unedited) Source found here:

Posted by: Outraged | Jun 7 2005 16:57 utc | 19

Lest anyone think the State Political Police aren’t watching web postings, Prof. Mark Crispin Miller was visited by 3 FBI agents as a result of postings on yahoo! Link

Posted by: jj | Jun 7 2005 18:19 utc | 21

The slothrop/Lupin exchanges (above) have touched on something that has been scraping away at my mind a lot recently and I thought this would be an appropriate forum to raise this issue.
Because I have maintained a very vocal and consistent opposition to the invasion of Iraq, I was recently invited to participate in a planned anti-war demonstration this coming September. When I asked about why they were planning to march on Washington and hold picket signs at this time, I was told that it was because “People have stopped talking about the war”.
After an exchange in an open thread on this site, Alabama pointed out (correctly, in my view) that this, in itself, might not be such a bad thing. Everyone is aware of the war, and if those who supported it are not braying in the streets like bipedal jackasses about what a great thing it is, it could indicate that even erstwhile supporters of American fascism are losing faith in its efficacy. This point was conceded by my friend, but they decided to go ahead with their demonstration anyway because of the principle involved (a principle with which I do not, necessarily, disagree).
My question now is how harmful is this kind of activism and what would be smarter ways of going about it? If the Right (let’s just call them that for simplicity’s sake) are becoming quietly disillusioned, won’t they simply become more firmly entrenched in their positions when the increasingly obvious shortcomings in their political beliefs are pointed out to them by their despised peers on the Left? Won’t well-intentioned demonstrators be more likely to just irritate an open wound and perpetuate these bad decisions than to facilitate genuine thoughtfulness and dialogue?
The American Right has been far more concerned with style than substance, and it has served them well. The American Left, on the other hand, has been tremendously naive in believing that just letting the facts speak for themselves is enough and that the average NASCAR fan will be as outraged by war atrocities, loss of civil liberties and illegal activities as they, themselves, are. What this has done since the 1960’s is allowed the Right to paint activists with the broad strokes of being over-educated, unrealistic, effete malcontents (in the best cases, they are “dirty hippies” en masse). This is the popular consensus, like it or not. Rush Limbaugh, who says absolutely nothing, has a much wider, more consistent and active following than Michael Moore, Al Franken and Ralph Nader put together.
The questions that have been bothering me, and which I will put to this group, are simply: Can activism be done intelligently and effectually? Can dissent be made to be viewed as patriotic? Or, as I am beginning to suspect, can people only be manipulated to act against their own interests or in harmful ways against “others”?

Posted by: Monolycus | Jun 7 2005 18:56 utc | 23

no, monolycus – you need to risk tearing the whole house down.
people are being massacred. people are being tortured. dreams & desires are being bent upon a wheel
silence in face of that is more than complicity it is criminal because it presumes that certain people’s lives are of no merit, let alone their culture, nation & civilisation
that youtr country is not in revolt to that quotidian crimes – that are happening on your own territory – is beyond me – & as outraged & others indicate – the only other historical parallel is that of germany 1933-45

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jun 7 2005 19:06 utc | 25

these people are fools. dangerous fools. who do they think are the iraquis. an article from the sydney morning herald (sorry – a cut & paste)
A brutal death in Baghdad’s gridlock
By Paul McGeough Chief Herald Correspondent in Baghdad
June 8, 2005
Chris Ahmelman … died after being shot at least three times.
In the last terrible minutes of his life, the world Chris Ahmelman and his buddies thought they knew so well collapsed in confusion, chaos and – for three of them – death.
The Australian security contractor was pinned down with seven others near Baghdad International Airport. They did not even know where the insurgency fire was coming from – and they made too many mistakes as skill and instinct deserted them.
Ordinarily, the war in Iraq moves so fast that back-tracking to ask “how?” and “why?” can be difficult. But James Yeager, an American colleague of Ahmelman who survived the attack, has written a chilling seven-page account that is being passed around in Baghdad.
As they set out for the airport from the Edinburgh Risk and Security Management bunker on May 20 it would have been difficult to disguise their convoy – a bullet-proof Mercedes and two soft-skin BMWs. But their 20-plus weapons were out of sight and they hoped their Arab dress would let them blend in among the locals.
However, seeming to be local backfired when they came to a US-manned barrier at the scene of yet another roadside bombing. They looked so local that they risked drawing friendly fire if they attempted to move up to shelter under the American guns.
So they sat in no man’s land, chit-chatting by radio as they willed on the Americans to reopen the road before their cover was blown.
As Yeager explains it, every member of a private security detail has his assigned tasks and his AOR (area of responsibility) which is allocated as though the convoy is at the centre of the clock. Yeager was driving Car 1 and his AOR was 8 to 12 o’clock, roughly the top-left quarter of the dial.
Ahmelman, 34, was the driver of Car 3. With him were Jay Hunt, his rear gunner, whose AOR was 3 to 9 o’clock; and the overall team leader Al Johnson, whose AOR was 12 to 3 o’clock.
But then, as Yeager tells it, Johnson suddenly and quite bizarrely alighted from Car 3, firing bursts from his MP5 submachine-gun into the air. Yeager suggests that, subsequently, Johnson told him he had been trying to warn off Iraqi motorists banking up behind them. But apart from neglecting his own AOR, Johnson had pretty well blown any cover they had left; every Iraqi and any insurgency “dicker” – or lookout – on a nearby slip road, now had to know a Western private security detail was stranded on the highway.
Frightened that the Americans at the bomb site up the road would look in their direction and see what they thought was an Iraqi firing into the air, Yeager decided it was best to whip off his Arab disguise – thereby revealing his identity to the Iraqis around him in the traffic.
They had been directly under a highway overpass, but after 10 minutes they edged the cars forward about 100 metres.
The engines were still running and, in Yeager’s case, Car 1 was in neutral and the emergency brake was on.
Ian Harris, the marksman in Car 2, was the first to notice the small white sedan on a slip road running parallel to the highway and about 75 metres away from it.
Yeager writes: “He asked that someone look at it – Mark (in Car 1) had a telescopic sight. He said it was parked; the sole occupant was talking on the phone; wasn’t paying attention to us, wasn’t a threat. I said aloud: ‘He’s a f—ing dicker!”‘
The shooting erupted in less than five minutes. Yeager writes: “I thought to myself, what the f— is Johno (Johnson, the team leader) shooting at now? [But] then I felt rounds hitting the car and I heard the distinctive supersonic crack of a round as it passed right through the car. It was inches from my face. Stef Surette yelled ‘I’m hit’.”
Yeager says that in the minutes before the attack, the other two in his car – medic and vehicle commander Surette and rear gunner and medic Mark Collen – saw what appeared to be classic insurgency pre-positioning for a drive-by shooting: a big white SUV with tinted windows rolled down the slip-road, did a U-turn and returned to face the security team.
Collen saw the passenger window was down, but he dismissed it as a potential threat as he concentrated on his own AOR. Yeager was becoming exasperated: “There were two other people with AORs in which the attack came from. They were in Cars 2 and 3, and nobody reported anything.”
But then Yeager slipped up himself, which he admits with disarming honesty. Deciding it was time to get out of the area, he hit the accelerator, but the car would not move.
Thinking the engine had taken a hit, he immediately did what he was supposed to do in such circumstances – abandon the vehicle. It was only as he hit the dirt that he remembered: he was not in an automatic. He had put the BMW in neutral and engaged the emergency brake.
Yeager does not use the word panic, but readers might draw their own conclusion. “I moved to the right wheel. I wanted to kill the terrorists but nobody had told me direction, description or distance. If I couldn’t make hits I was sure going to make noise.”
Then Yeager saw that Collen had followed his lead and he too had abandoned Car 1. Yeager decided to become a smaller target by getting right away from the vehicle.
He ran and sprawled on the edge of the median strip, shooting at the houses beyond the slip road but “feeling useless” because he still did not know where the shooting came from.
Sporadic gunfire from Cars 2 and 3 caused him to believe that his other five colleagues were still in this fight against an unseen enemy, but then: “I looked at Car 3 and I saw Jay Hunt [the rear gunner] with blood all over his crotch. I heard him calmly telling [the team leader] Johno: ‘I’m hit in the femoral, buddy’.
“Jay slid towards the front of the car so that Johno could apply first aid from behind the safety of the engine block. I looked at Chris [Ahmelman] – he was still in the driver’s seat, slumped lifelessly towards the door. Car 2 was OK. Stef was out of Car 1. I didn’t realise the extent of his injuries, but he was going down.”
At this stage Yeager says he got no reply when he yelled: “Who are we shooting at?”
They tried to move Car 2 to cover the medic Mark Collen as he treated Stef Surette’s wounds. But unlike Car 1, it was knocked out of action. Yeager, who describes himself as a “12-year cop” without military experience, went to Car 3. “Johno was working frantically on Jay’s injuries – calling for help. He was trying to cover 360 degrees and work on Jay at the same time. Jay was still breathing, but his respirations were becoming laboured.”
It was over in a flash – most of the noise had been their own chaotic response to the carefully placed shots of an insurgency marksman who had long fled the scene.
The Americans arrived and took control of the mop-up, ordering Yeager to retrieve Ahmelman’s body from the white BMW.
“He began to fall out as I opened the door. I caught him, but as I pulled him out, the car started to roll forward – it was going to crush Jay. I had to drop Chris’s body, and run around the opposite side of the car, to get in.
“Chris was wounded through the leg first. But instead of [trying to get away from the cars], he spent the last seconds of his life telling Johno about it [until] he took another round through the throat and another through his head.”
Jay Hunt and Stef Surette died from their injuries in a US combat hospital.

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jun 7 2005 19:23 utc | 27

@rememberinggiap
I am not arguing about the monstrosity of what my government is doing to people the world over (including its own citizens, per the cases of José Padilla or the actions of an American Gestapo that jj and Outraged have just described). I am also not making an argument to turn a blind eye to it all.
My questions are about efficacy and not engaging in the selfsame destructive behaviours to which I am opposed. I am sorry, but “fighting fire with fire” is too hypocritical a stand for me to take. I oppose inhumanity, and I will not come close to correcting inhumanity by behaving inhumanely.
If we want to use the 1933-1945 Deutschland model of how things are playing out, what use is joining Die Weiße Rose? As noble and well-intentioned as they were… they died (!) and the sum total of their actions to halt or redress what went on was nil. Actually, in one sense, their public executions contributed to the Nazi war effort since it served to cow and intimidate others who were might wish to speak or act against things. If you wanted to make an argument that they were “criminally complicit” with the Nazis by allowing themselves to be killed by them, there is room to do so and unfocused opposition lends itself to that interpretation.
remembereringgiap, we have the same fundamental goals. We are in agreement that what is going on can only be described as an atrocity. But your response is indicative of what I was describing in my earlier post. I could be offended by your suggestion that I am “complicit and criminal” by not racing off half-cocked, but that would merely further divide people who should be pursuing a common goal.
Let me establish something: I am extremely poor. I have nothing to protect and no reason to wish to preserve my own life or liberty… even the notion of being tortured in a far-flung gulag does not hold a great deal of terror for me. But I will not throw away either life or liberty simply to make a statement if that statement will make no difference (or worse, be counterproductive to my cause).
I am not saying that nothing should be done. I am saying that whatever is done should be efficacious and ethically consistent. Grabbing a pitchfork and a torch and storming the palace in St. Petersburg in 1917 seemed like a great idea to a Bolshevik reactionary… and only paved the way for the atrocities of Stalin.
We are intelligent people, surely we can find an intelligent solution?

Posted by: Monolycus | Jun 7 2005 19:55 utc | 29

Is this back to the future?
Student Expectations

Posted by: Fran | Jun 7 2005 20:22 utc | 31

Thanks Juannie – nice graphs indeed.

Posted by: b | Jun 7 2005 20:47 utc | 33

A Sunni Arab politician claimed Tuesday that two insurgent groups were willing to negotiate with the Shiite-led government, a disclosure that comes after reports that the government had opened indirect channels to some insurgents. Ayham Al-Samarie, a former Cabinet minister, told The Associated Press the two groups make up 50 percent of the Sunni-dominated insurgency.
Sunni Resitance Winning

Posted by: Friendly Fire | Jun 7 2005 21:12 utc | 35

@biklett – what could compensate for those imports would be exports on that theme from the movie industry. Unfortunatly U.S. movies in this genre, while plenty, are a. boring and b. racist – so no luck here.

Posted by: b | Jun 7 2005 21:19 utc | 37

fran
the bob jonesuniversity link enough to gie me the willies
i’m certainly going to have hitcockian dreams tonight featuring bob jones & several members of the music & prelaw faculties
roaming their site is like being on acid

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jun 7 2005 21:35 utc | 39

@ Friendly Fire
A very weak article indeed … I would’nt read too much into it …
@b
There are a variety of indicators that at least some of the more blatant inter-ethnic, inter-faith civilian only attacks, particularly Shia mosques may well be Black Ops to encourage division, strife and internecine conflict for the reasons you state … and also as it bolsters the motivation of the Iraqi Police and Army units now being methodically deployed outside thier communities, i.e. Shia troops in Sunni locales and vice versa, not to mention Kurds (Peshmerga) … divide & rule has certainly been a strategy in such circumstances around the globe since the days of the OSS and the British Empire before that …

Posted by: Outraged | Jun 7 2005 21:47 utc | 41

Here’s To You Mrs. Robinson

Posted by: Spanky Ham | Jun 7 2005 22:45 utc | 43

Monolycus,
I basically agree with Debs but would like to add another thing. It is the total of actions that matters most, and that is something that is hardly ever controlable in a movement of any significant size. Demonstrations on the streets can in combination with a well informed good speaker at the water cooler cause the desired effect. Or not.
I think there might be a sort of “middle of the road – fair and balanced logic” working here. If someone fairly republican-leaning has seen a anti-war demonstration he (lets say it is a man) does now have a face on what anti-war people look like and he constructs a quick response to the slogans (“well how would you like to have been bombed by Saddam”). Then when alabama turns up with encyklopedical knowledge in the right moment alabama might be perceived as middle of the road from the lack of actually being in said road. Ok, mixed metaphors.
The thing is I have both been perceived as extremist and the pragmatic middle-of-the-road person and from my experience it has not depended on my position on any absolute scale, but on the existence or lack of existence of a more extreme alternative. And my experience is that when you find yourself in the extreme position you might as well run with it, propose your loftiest visions, throw fact-based insults at your enemies (“of course you think that it is well consistent with your power-grabbing past is it not?”), look strange and perhaps hammer your shoe in the table. As it is people will not rally around your position anyway so you can just as well create more room for your closest allies to be percieved as middle-of-the-road. I know I am always grateful when someone else moves the goalposts to my side. Important thing when you are not the extreme person is of course never to backstab your allies but keep a position of “well even if I do not support the immediate hanging of president Bush, though I understand why someone who has lost a family member in Iraq might. And how about those downing street memos?”.
In conclusion, I think demonstrations are generally good as they might move the goalposts to the left even though the decision of where to put your power at work always must be based on a case-by-case basis. And the strategy of moving the goalposts described above is of course one that has been used very efficiently by the american right.

Posted by: A swedish kind of death | Jun 7 2005 23:53 utc | 45

World military spending nears Cold War peak

Tue Jun 7, 2005 12:25 PM ET
By Peter Starck
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – Massive U.S. spending on the war on terrorism pushed global military expenditure above $1 trillion in 2004, the sixth successive year the total has risen, a leading research institute said on Tuesday.
World military expenditure rose 5 percent to $1.04 trillion, still 6 percent below a Cold War peak in 1987-88, but up sharply since 1998, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said in its latest yearbook.
“World military spending…is again approaching its level at the height of the Cold War,” the think tank said. ”
“The major determinant of the world trend in military expenditure is the change in the United States.”
U.S. military spending accounted for nearly half the global figure, rising 12 percent last year to $455 billion, the Swedish government-funded institute said.
That was more than the combined total of the 32 next most powerful nations, SIPRI said. The figure was set to rise still further to $502 billion in 2010 …

Posted by: Outraged | Jun 8 2005 0:49 utc | 47

b wrote:
The U.S. government needs an Iraq divided into bantustans to be able pressure for control of the resources.
It’s more fundamental than that. If that was there only concern, there was no reason to go to war because SH caved at the last minute & said he’d agree to anything they wanted.
If you read Brzezkinski’s “Grand Chessboard” & Perkins’ “Confessions of an Economic HitMan”, you ‘ll discover the following. Brz states that the Empire Cannot Allow any regional Powers. Since Iraq is the only large state in ME that has both Fresh Water & plenty of Oil it has to be broken up to prevent that from happening once and for all.
(It’s no accident that xUS elites have waged a specific war on Iraq’s Fresh Water Supplies since ’91 w/Clinton specifically refusing to allow in any of the chlorine etc. they needed to restore it. (Gee, let’s put a Democrat back in the WH & then things’ll be so much better!!) )
From Perkins’ we discover that another reason that xUS elites were in favor of destroying Iraq – war, hell, that’s much too civilized a term for what they’re doing – is because SH refused to follow the Saudis example – in the deal Perkins devised – in funneling his oil profits back to US bankers to be used by US firms for rebuilding the country. He and &other ME Tyrants had to be taught a lesson about what happens when you do not do that.
Oil is just the start…from Naomi Klein in discussion w/Amy Goodman on “Democracy Now” we learn that xUS elites had been largely shut out of ME markets…but from this deliberate wreckage of Irq – the infrastructure, the water, the industry, the land – other tyrants got the message & have been far more compliant signing everything over to the elites of the Predator Nation – er, I mean signing “free trade agreements”.
If it causes or can be used as an excuse to jack up oil prices, so much the better.
I keep wonering what the lesson is for the poor bastards still living in xUSA?? Is there any reason to think they’ll be any less savage at home?? Of course, American citizens are nothing if not docile.

Posted by: jj | Jun 8 2005 1:53 utc | 49

Since ‘they’ now control most of the message, how do we even get to get the message into their sensory realm?
Act locally, think globally. Meetings…staying below the radar. Expect nothing from Elite Propaganda apparatus, which includes most blogs, at least insofar as it concerns what issues to focus on.
I just saw a recommendation on another thread that people read this summer Roth’s “Plot Against America” in addition to Lewis’ “It can’t happen here”. Has anyone read Roth? Recommended? Anyone interested in a summer reading thread – who’s reading what, what should be consider reading??

Posted by: jj | Jun 8 2005 2:14 utc | 51

Liers: Bush Aide Softened Greenhouse Gas Links to Global Warming

A White House official who once led the oil industry’s fight against limits on greenhouse gases has repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that play down links between such emissions and global warming, according to internal documents.
In handwritten notes on drafts of several reports issued in 2002 and 2003, the official, Philip A. Cooney, removed or adjusted descriptions of climate research that government scientists and their supervisors, including some senior Bush administration officials, had already approved. In many cases, the changes appeared in the final reports.
The dozens of changes, while sometimes as subtle as the insertion of the phrase “significant and fundamental” before the word “uncertainties,” tend to produce an air of doubt about findings that most climate experts say are robust.
Mr. Cooney is chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the office that helps devise and promote administration policies on environmental issues.
Before going to the White House in 2001, he was the “climate team leader” and a lobbyist at the American Petroleum Institute, the largest trade group representing the interests of the oil industry. A lawyer with a bachelor’s degree in economics, he has no scientific training.

Posted by: b | Jun 8 2005 6:34 utc | 53

Hmm

[Senator] Biden criticized the administration for failing to take up a European offer to help train mid-level Iraqi military officers, a group whose absence is considered a crucial weakness in the Baghdad government’s fighting force. Biden said that Atlantic alliance nations could assist in such training and that French President Jacques Chirac had told him he had received no response to an offer to train 1,500 such officers.
“I am perplexed as to the resistance of the civilians within the Defense Department — and I guess, other places — to engage in this kind of concerted effort to train an officer corps,” Biden said.

Bush Nominee for Top Envoy Unveils Plan

Posted by: b | Jun 8 2005 7:53 utc | 55

Jerome will undoubtedly know about
this item which starts out with the eye-popping

India has expressed interest in participating in the proposed gas pipelines from Turkmenistan, Iran and Qatar ‘not as alternative options to each other but for multiplying gas supplies’, a senior [Pakistani] government official said on Tuesday.

and I hope he’ll help us separate the hype from the economic realities. What was especially surprising (beyond what seems to be the cozy rapprochement emerging on the sub-continent) is the mention of a Qatari sourced gas-pipeline.
The same site offers another tidbit, which becomes a veritable “blast from the past” after a Google search reveals the boss of Attock to be none other than Ghaith Pharaon of BCCI infamy. I know nothing about what’s going on in this bit of “privatization”, but the old adage about a leopard not changing its spots keeps running through my mind.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Jun 8 2005 10:00 utc | 57

INTERESTING POLL NUMBERS ON BUSH

Posted by: Spanky Ham | Jun 8 2005 12:21 utc | 59

That was me above.

Posted by: Lupin | Jun 8 2005 14:43 utc | 61

Pendulum?

Many parents and teachers are completely perplexed by their children’s xenophobic tendencies. These are fathers and mothers who came of age in the 1960s, who provided their children with a liberal upbringing, and whose greatest fear was that their kids might be taking drugs. They have been completely taken by surprise by the right-wing sentiments of German young people. Take, for example, a mother from Bremen who moved to the country with her husband and three children a few years ago. “Everything is wonderful here,” she thought at the time. Two-and-a-half years later, when the woman threw her son out of the house, his parting words were “Heil Hitler!”

Posted by: beq | Jun 8 2005 15:42 utc | 63

USS Liberty Veteran’s Association Announces War Crime Report Filed Against Israel

WASHINGTON, DC – Friday, June 10 at 1:00 pm, Hotel Washington, 515 15th.St NW, Washington Room 11th floor (hit R for roof in elevator), Moe Shafer, board member of the USS Liberty Veterans Association and Rear Admiral Merlin Staring, USN, Ret., Former Judge Advocate General of the Navy who was involved with the initial Court of Inquiry investigating the attack in 1967 will present details of the “Report of War Crimes” brief filed on behalf of the USS Liberty Veteran’s Association concerning the 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty.
The “Report” was filed with by James R. Gotcher, General Legal Counsel, USS – LVA, with the Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon on June 8, the 38th anniversary of the attack on the USS Liberty. For a complete copy of the brief go to for a PDF version of the Report, or for an HTML version of the Report.
By establishing prima facie evidence that Israel committed war crimes the Secretary of Defense under existing Dept. Of Defense directives is obligated to initiate an inquiry into the commission of war crimes, an investigation that should have been carried out 38 years ago…

Posted by: Outraged | Jun 8 2005 16:02 utc | 65

William C. Rhoden, The New York Times, November 29, 1997, on the great Grambling head football coach Eddie Robinson (excerpt):

One afternoon, not far from that stadium, Robinson and I spoke during an interview about many issues. Somehow the subject turned to the United States flag and patriotism. The flag had not always seemed relevant to me, I said; the anthem music didn’t always seem to speak to me. Robinson, ever so subtly shifted from interviewee to mentor.
“It took me a long time to believe that it was as much my flag as anyone else’s,” he said. “Once upon a time I was invisible. When they talked about coaches and talked about other schools, they never talked about me or about Grambling. Sometime during the 1960’s, I decided that I was going to be Eddie Robinson, the American, not Eddie Robinson who spoke in terms of ‘them’ and ‘us.’ ”
He continued: “I sat Eddie Robinson down and talked to him — about things as they are and how things worked. I realized that I’d been offering excuses: ‘This will go to this person, this will go to that person.’ At some point you have to put it in your mind that it’s as much yours as anyone else’s, provided you pay the price. When I first started coaching, my state dictated to me where I had to go. I hold no grudges, and I don’t have a chip on my shoulder. You can’t unring a bell.
“I played as long as I could play, whenever I could play and as hard as I could play. How else can you judge me, except for what I accomplish?”

I try to pay the price, though not as costly for me as it was for Robinson.
The ideal, rgiap: not just anyone can be french, but anyone can be american.

Posted by: slothrop | Jun 8 2005 17:02 utc | 67

“Spyware on the White House website? “
I guess we shouldn’t be surprised.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jun 8 2005 18:13 utc | 69

Revealed: how oil giant influenced Bush

President’s George Bush’s decision not to sign the United States up to the Kyoto global warming treaty was partly a result of pressure from ExxonMobil, the world’s most powerful oil company, and other industries, according to US State Department papers seen by the Guardian.
…
In briefing papers given before meetings to the US under-secretary of state, Paula Dobriansky, between 2001 and 2004, the administration is found thanking Exxon executives for the company’s “active involvement” in helping to determine climate change policy, and also seeking its advice on what climate change policies the company might find acceptable.
…

Posted by: b | Jun 8 2005 18:28 utc | 71

Not Iran in but Syria?
Policy on Syria Moves Toward Regime Change

In the wake of Lebanon’s first elections following Syrian withdrawal, American policy toward the world’s remaining Ba’athist government is approaching support for regime change.
President Bush’s top foreign policy advisers met last week to discuss the government of Bashar al-Assad, mulling, according to two administration officials briefed later, a tougher policy that would allow American forces or encourage Iraqi soldiers to pursue terrorists that escape to Syria from Iraq for safe haven.
At the State Department, the Bureau of Near East Affairs and the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor have asked Congress for explicit legal authority to fund liberal opposition parties inside Syria through regional initiatives that have hitherto focused on reforming American allies such as Jordan and Egypt, two administration officials told The New York Sun.

Posted by: b | Jun 8 2005 18:47 utc | 73

Well b,
An ampibious assault ship, the Saipan, left Hampton Roads last week for the eastern Med.
Ship is capable of carrying 2300 Marines, and enough choppers to deploy them fairly rapidly.
Who knows what these lunatics will try.

Posted by: FlashHarry | Jun 8 2005 19:02 utc | 75

THE SAIPAN

Posted by: FlashHarry | Jun 8 2005 19:15 utc | 77

Other significant deployments last week, I think, from San Diego and Hampton Roads but I can’t find the links now. USS Nimetz group left San Diego though.

Posted by: beq | Jun 8 2005 19:42 utc | 79

Monolycus: Can activism be done intelligently and effectually? Can dissent be made to be viewed as patriotic?
Yes. I like to think.
But not within the conventional frame of demonstrating etc.
People do these things because they know they are allowed; provide emotional relief. Then they all go home and say We Did Our Bit aren’t the Bosses vile. Do BBQ in the garden and self-glorify. Beer. Cutie kids scamper about.
What is needed, amongst other things, is hard hitting actions (non violent) of a spectacular type, with full TV crews in attendance (ah, there’s the rub..) But they do need material…
Occupying all the toilets in Chicago airport. Or NY. A classic. Easy, all it takes is a sandwich and a book.
Buying up all the tickets for a famous Opera show and disrupting it. Classic again.
I have other suggestions ..not now. Free wheeling contest here, why not?
If my mind goes in this direction it is because I think there is nevertheless a tiny wedge to be exploited vis a vis the Media. They by nature are keen on cultural action and American creativity. It is in their ‘genes.’
The problem is, would anyone be willing? Would a group of even 50 Us citizens dare ??

Posted by: Noisette | Jun 8 2005 20:04 utc | 81

Can I say, Outraged, how wonderful it is to see you back in such rare form?
Now I know we all helplessly hope for the day when we will be solely in the plowshares business, but until then, a military leadership class is a sad necessity. Unfortunately, we don’t have the one we ought to have, as the late David Hackworth so often and eloquently pointed out. If you didn’t read the article B linked to above, I second his recommendation: Critics: Pentagon in Blinders
On a related subject, Karen Kwiatkowski nails it again:

In the May 13th Wall Street Journal op-ed, Eliot Cohen shares his dismay that Columbia University has joined a long list of colleges and universities that will no longer host the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) on their campuses.
…Cohen exhibits a certain intellectualized belligerence toward the rest of the world, a trait he shares with another Bushian character, John Bolton.
…Cohen appears to hold fast to a reactionary assumption that somehow ROTC offers academic military learning, or that the modern American military has somehow been improved by liberal educations.
If I were an ROTC or military leadership dilettante – as Cohen is – I might make the same faulty assumptions.
But as a product of four years of ROTC in the late 1970s and early 1980s at two different universities, I can vouch for the fact that little meaningful information is gained through the process, relating either to American military history or to the proper role of an American military officer in society and government.
Far more frightening is my observation, after over twenty years of service as an officer, that a lively academic curiosity and a serious understanding of American strategic and military history often serves as a handicap for the achievement of higher rank, at least at the flag officer level.
People like General Richard Myers, General Peter Pace, General John Abizaid and his predecessor General Tommy Franks come to mind. These current military leaders seem to have attended nothing more than the school of never asking questions, or perhaps the community college of refusing to engage in the rigorous checking of facts and data. These “military leaders” share a marked lack of intellectual curiosity of the past, present or future, beyond the dim-witted but comfortable world of the U.S. military-industrial complex.
…Perhaps Eliot Cohen and I are in agreement after all. Perhaps, he and I would both would prefer to see far wiser and reflective military senior leadership. Perhaps, he and I would both prefer that our military leadership complete a prestigious classical education and embrace American and European cultural and philosophic traditions. Perhaps, he and I both desire a military cadre more in tune with the historical foundations of the 21st century, and thus be more qualified to face modern complexities in world affairs and national security.
Sadly, I am afraid that is not what Cohen believes. In fact, it appears that his real beef is that popular and prestigious universities are pushing back from the lockstep militaristic domestic and international policies that Cohen holds so dear.
…Eliot Cohen has confused patriotism and political correctness, and accuses Columbia University of the latter. Yet when the evidence is examined, the opposite conclusion shines as the correct one. Cohen’s logic is not only outlandish, it is Fatherlandish.

It was once said that the difference between America and the USSR was that we had a military-industrial complex, but they were a military-industrial complex. This line is another that the Bush-neocon-fascists are busy blurring. Except that we are heading toward a military-industrial theocracy.

Posted by: OkieByAccident | Jun 8 2005 20:42 utc | 83

@ OkieByAccident
Its a priviledge to participate in the community of the MoA.
Despair, depression, loss of hope/faith, personal circumstance and declining health now combine to limit my ability and motivation to contribute in some small way … a long emotive, rage filled, ranting series of posts of passionate, indignant horror is kept at bay by possibly some remaining semblance of rational thought or objectivity …
If only we were not accursed to live in interesting times …

Posted by: Outraged | Jun 8 2005 21:06 utc | 85

@Outraged,
I hope this community, in some small way, can contribute to helping keep you grounded and with at least a bit of hope. It does that for me, I know… and your contributions to this community have not been (and are not now) small.
Objectivity is overrated (if even possible). Passion is necessary. Rationality has proved useful, I’ll admit. :^)

Posted by: OkieByAccident | Jun 8 2005 21:31 utc | 87

citizen
(you seem to refuse to see in the ideological apparatus – the specificity of this empire – both in detail & in its history. it seems to me your way of hoping this passes. that we will return to normal
i do not see any such return)
was intended for comrade slothrop.
citizen, it would seem you & i are in agreement on a number of issues & your last post citizen reminded me a little of that poem by blake – everythting that lives is holy – a profound & simple thought from an extremely complex man who deeply understood his time
slothrop, i do not need to cite barthes for what is an obviouslly observable fact. european countries wear their sins. the poorest of them absorb practically the symbolic order of that history. of that shame
you have a good head, slothrop & sometimes a good ear but sometimes i wonder where is that heart that can see the connection between the human heart & gramsci. that can see the direct line between the cost of thinking & the work of althusser. that this work . that this history is human, profoundly human
that for thought to really work, properly even a kojeve or a hegel it must be grounded in the lineaments of desire of the heart & be informed by that heart, without sentiment, without nostalgia
i repeat julius & ethel rosenberg were greater americans than the dulles brothers
& i am not hindered by your lockery slothrop in relation to looking into they eyes of fellow citizen – often those eyes are the clearest path to their hearts in a way even jean hippolyte would have understood
when from thinking, or from the work of thinking, of scholarly life you have built a fortress then you have disgonoured that thinking – because as marx made clear in his thesis from feueurbach, “the educator needs to be educated”

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jun 8 2005 22:10 utc | 89

whan people here argue about republican/democrats – it is as if it mattered – more & more it seems as if from another planet
same here. this team was put into office in 2000 b/c they were the players deemed necessary for the project we see unfolding in every direction. that the reality of no true opposition existing when we leaped over the rubicon, or in most every transgression since 2000, could still escape such a mass of seemingly intelligent people only exacerbates the predicament. i hold hope that the solution will come from w/i these borders, yes, but not from the system itself.

Posted by: b real | Jun 9 2005 3:31 utc | 91

Put very well indeed, Monoylcus. Time has a role to play here–or at least an openness, on our parts, to the learning process and the instructional process (different names for our conversations with folks that we trust and respect). They take time, these processes–but sometimes they also give it back.

Posted by: alabama | Jun 9 2005 6:44 utc | 93

and then left the a country in a fragmented state from which it hasn’t recovered.
fragmented state? what sort of state was India before the pommies?
“Tell me do you think that it’s a coincidence our much vaunted welfare state got abolished once maori and pacifica people became the bulk of the welfare recipients?”
Over-emotive and not quite reality based.
Shades of r-giap.
(signed) – a half drunk fascist.

Posted by: DM | Jun 9 2005 9:52 utc | 95

Re: EROEI
Oil and food: A new security challenge
The US food system uses over 10 quadrillion Btu (10,551 quadrillion Joules) of energy each year, as much as France’s total annual energy consumption. Growing food accounts for only one-fifth of this. The other four-fifths is used to move, process, package, sell, and store food after it leaves the farm. Some 28% of energy used in agriculture goes to fertilizer manufacturing, 7% goes to irrigation, and 34% is consumed as diesel and gasoline by farm vehicles used to plant, till, and harvest crops. The rest goes to pesticide production, grain drying, and facility operations.
The past half-century has witnessed a tripling in world grain production – from 631 million tons in 1950 to 2,029 million tons in 2004. While 80% of the increase is due to population growth raising demand, the remainder can be attributed to more people eating higher up the food chain, increasing per capita grain consumption by 24%. New grain demand has been met primarily by raising land productivity through higher yielding crop varieties in conjunction with more oil-intensive mechanization, irrigation, and fertilizer use, rather than by expanding cropland.

Posted by: Juannie | Jun 9 2005 18:49 utc | 97