Bush’s SOTU projected by Froomkin:

"A leader with an obligation to lead at a time that requires leadership …"

Living in a different timezone and with a historically reduced urge for a Führer, I´ll be sound asleep when Bush tries to sell his reality of a state of the union.

I guess I will miss just as much as last year, when the whitehouse marketed these talking points:

President Bush laid out ambitious goals for the future, behind which all Americans can unite, and urged the Nation to move forward with the work that needs to be done this year:

1. Growing Our Economy and Renewing Great Institutions
2. Saving Social Security for America ‘s Future Generations
3. Protecting America ‘s Families and Promoting Compassion Across the Nation
4. Making America Safer with Decisive Action to Win the War on Terror and Spread Freedom

Well, they didn´t had those links when they put it up, but then, it always was only their reality.

Nam June Paik

—

It seems to me that true homeland security ought to be more about providing health care for every citizen and less about reshuffling bureaucratic agencies and undermining our civil liberties.

True homeland security should be about protection of liberties. True homeland security should be about protection of pension assets for retired people.

Genuine homeland security should also be about gun control, protecting Americans against domestic hate crimes, and getting serious about reducing the pollution of our air and water.

And homeland security should mean feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, and making sure there is quality education for every child and jobs at a decent wage for everyone who wants and needs one. That’s how we make our country safe and secure for all citizens.

The chief economist of Morgan Stanley, Stephen Roach, is criticizing globalization. From the World Economic Forum in Davos:

The win-win endorsement of globalization — that the development of poor countries is a huge plus for rich, developed countries — was first coined in Davos.  There have been anti-globalization protests associated with this event for years.  But this year is different.  The debate has moved from the outside to the inside.  Serious challenges to globalization are now being openly aired in the rooms and corridors of Davos’s fabled Congress Centre.

The reasons behind this shift are not hard to fathom.   One of the “wins” in the win-win of globalization has failed to materialize.  Job creation and real wages in the mature, industrialized economies have seriously lagged historical norms.  It is now commonplace for recoveries in the developed world to be either jobless, or wageless — or both.  That this shortfall has occurred in the midst of accelerating globalization and surging global trade is all the more disconcerting.

As its critics have feared, globalization has advantages for the capital side of the economy, but the labor side is losing. The race to the bottom is clearly visible in the job markets.

The economic model for globalization has serious flaws. Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage does promise advantages for all the trading partners.  But it is a theory with idealized assumptions and based on a static model.

The dynamics and time lags which occur in real economic exchanges have serious side-effects and the process to reach the promised advantages can be decades long.

The boondoggle of "more jobs through open trade" looks real – in theory. But when people lose their job and have to wait 20 years for a better job to be created, that advantage are hard to explain to them.

Good to hear that this surprise has finally reached the theorists and policy makers who are in charge here.

Now, the people have to keep up the pressure for a better regulated and controlled trade process.

Trade is good and has benefits. But to let it run wild without at least retaining the social wins of the last centuries is pure corporatism. This has to stop.

News & views by and for anyone …

As commentator b real points out, reports of hostage taking by U.S. military in Iraq are incomplete. They fail to point out that these acts are illegal under U.S. and international laws.

Imprisoning relatives of assumed insurgents for the sole purpose of catching those assumed insurgents started in July 2003 and is continuing into 2006.

In January 2004 Human Rights Watch wrote a letter to Rumsfeld:

We are writing you with regard to several incidents in Iraq involving actions by United States forces that appear to violate the 1949 Geneva Conventions. […] In two of these incidents, U.S. forces also reportedly detained close relatives of a person that the U.S. was attempting to apprehend. In these cases the individuals detained were themselves not suspected of responsibility for any wrongdoing.

ACLU has released U.S. military documents, 1, 2 (both PDFs), obtained through FOIA requests and court orders. These documents refer to obvious U.S. hostage taking in 2004.

Yesterday Reuters and Associated Press reported on the ACLU documents. The AP report does not even mention any question of legality. With regards to law, the Reuters piece only includes a cite of one of the documents,

A June 10, 2004, memo written by the DIA employee, labeled as "secret," referred to "violations of the Geneva Convention.",

but does not elaborate.

Knight Ridder, which seams to have done the only original reporting so far, writes:

BAGHDAD, Iraq – The U.S. Army has been detaining Iraqi women to help track down husbands or fathers who are suspected terrorists, according to documents released Friday and a Knight Ridder interview with a female detainee who was released Thursday after four months in prison.

[…]

The Iraqi woman told Knight Ridder on Friday that she and eight other female detainees in her cell had often talked among themselves. She discovered that all of them were being held because U.S. officials had suspected their male relatives of having ties to terrorism.

So according to this witness, the hostage taking is ongoing. There are either no orders to follow the law, or such orders are ignored. But even Knight Ridder fails to mention these illegalities.

Hostage taking is a clear violation of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War especially of:

Article 3 (1): Persons taking no active part in the hostilities […], shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, […].

To this end the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons: […] (b) taking of hostages

Article 31:
No physical or moral coercion shall be exercised against protected persons, in particular to obtain information from them or from third parties.

Article 33: No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. ..

Article 34: The taking of hostages is prohibited.

Under US Code Title 18 § 2441 specifically any breach of GC Article 3 is defined as a War Crime.

The LA Times, Washington Post and the New York Times only carry the above mentioned news agency reports with no crime mentioned.

Of the major bloggers only Andrew Sullivan and Laura Rozen mention the illegality.

So where is the outrage? Why do the media fail to point out the obvious? Why is this a non-story?

Hamas, the islamist Palestinian group, has won a majority of seats in yesterday’s election. The ruling Fatah has declared defeat and Prime Minister Ahmed Curia and his cabinet resigned.

Only 6% of a quarter million Palestinians in east Jerusalem could get to vote. But despite (or because of?) these illegal Israeli restrictions and an undercover U.S. funded Fatah campaign, the voters preferred a disciplined, social responsible, religious movement over a corrupt and chaotic secular party.

Like Uri Avnery I believe this to be a positive development for the Palestinians, the Israeli and the wider Middle East.

Let me explain:

Cont. reading: Hamas Win Makes Peace Possible

by Malloga Malooga (lifted from a comment)

Yeah, it seems they are gearing up for impeachment again. But I’m
extremely worried about a sinister turn of events. Let me explain.

When Clinton was impeached, it was a huge media circus. The
impeachment would not and could not have happened without the
complicity of the media to create an issue out of a non-issue ("from
whole cloth") and reinflate the deceitful shroud every day. The right
wingnuts were also behind it. Some might say to stymie any progressive
agenda Clinton might care to enact; others may argue to cover up the
right wing agenda he was actually enacting.

Cont. reading: Impeachment Worries

News & views …

Joel Stein had this commentary in yesterday Los Angeles Times.

He speaks of "Warriors and wusses" and why he does not support the troops:

But I’m not for the war. And being against the war and saying you support the troops is one of the wussiest positions the pacifists have ever taken — and they’re wussy by definition. It’s as if the one lesson they took away from Vietnam wasn’t to avoid foreign conflicts with no pressing national interest but to remember to throw a parade afterward.

Liberal blogger Steve Gilliard doesn´t agree and wants to throw a parade. Atrios gives Stein his "Wanker of the Day" award.

Bring on the parades. If our military rank and file have been betrayed by their civilian leadership they deserve our respect doubly.

Both are wrong and Stein is right.

Cont. reading: Atrios Wanks

"The U.S. will bomb Iran because Iran attempts to start an oil bourse."

That is meme flying around the blogsphere and in some comments here. It is wrong.

The meme is constructed around this thesis:

"The value of the U.S. Dollar would go down, if oil would be traded in exchange for other currencies."

Thereby, this construct says, it would seriously harm the U.S. and the U.S. preempts this with war.

Two distinct different transactions and economic calculation are mashed in this argument. 

Cont. reading: The Iran Bourse Meme

Steve Clemons has some frightening notes on the Iran developments:

Cont. reading: Iran: Why And Why Now?

News and views …

In late 2004 Jérôme and I made some gloomy predictions about the U.S. economy, stocks and the dollar. The markets did not follow through. I lost a bunch of money betting on a lower dollar, though not as much as Buffett did (a cool billion).

Buffett still sticks to his dollar bet. So do I. 

Cont. reading: Sometimes It Just Takes A While

When a white whale visited Bonn in 1966 (scroll down to synopsis) a huge public discussion broke out about capturing or killing it.

The animal, defying all attempts to catch it,  made it back some 250 miles through the river to the open sea on its own mind.

Blair Corp. did catch the whale in London today but it died on the makeshift transport.

The whale struggled with the effects of being out of the water as it was ferried toward the Thames Estuary, officials said.

Sad.

by Noisette (lifted from this comment)

People like Binny have an existence which is 90% media. The poster boy terrorist. You lend your name and your image for a cause, and work for the best or highest bidder – CIA, Saudi, your own business, etc. You move forward, hope you are doing the best.

Cont. reading: Binny

Saturday & Sunday …

defined from without (detail)
by anna missed

paint on wood, 12"x12"
2004-5
full size (100kb)

The NSA activities are supported by the President’s well-recognized inherent constitutional authority as Commander in Chief and sole organ for the Nation in foreign affairs
Legal Authorities Supporting the Activities of the National Security Agency Described by the President; (PDF); Jan. 19, 2006

A while ago Billmon speculated that taxpayer money is converted into funds for the Republicans through Pentagon propaganda contracts and the Lincoln group.

This would be a variation of the tax funded campaigns other countries have established.

So far nothing turned up with Lincoln. But all of the Republican K-street project is a tax money converter. Companies get pressed to fill Republican campaign funds and are rewarded with benefits which, in one way or another, hurt the taxpayers.

But it a very ineffective converting method and a waste of taxes.

Cont. reading: Tax Funded Campaigns