OT 07-20 – Moon of Alabama

March 10, 2007

OT 07-20

I like this idea:

TK told the mayor that the problem was not about parking meters and how to use them, it was about people parking their cars all day on the street. "Don’t use parking meters," he told the mayor. "Tell people they can park as long as they want for free, provided they keep their headlights on while the car is parked."

Other weekend news & views …

Posted by b on March 10, 2007 at 06:41 UTC | Permalink

Comments

AIPAC wants no anti-war language: Iran Language Draws Opposition as Democrats Near Agreement on Supplemental

according to CQ some of the same Democrats most vehement about ending the Iraq debacle are resisting denying the President unilateral authority to go to war in Iran. The hypocrisy is astounding. It is worth noting that the AIPAC conference begins in Washington this weekend with thousands of citizen lobbyists being deployed to Capitol Hill to deliver the message that Iran must be dealt with, one way or another.
This battle over the Pelosi language is part of the overall Iran effort

Posted by: b | Mar 10 2007 7:30 utc | 1

No surprises, when the USAPATRIOT Act was enacted, many people saw the potential for abuses. Now we see that abuses have occurred. Still less surprisingly, the public attitudes and statements of many elected officials strongly indicate that this potential for abuse was why they supported it in the first place.

Posted by: Monolycus | Mar 10 2007 7:31 utc | 2

It may appear to the Gentle Reader of daily news and blogs that the current American Administration is a crackpipe crew of armchair admirals who apparently think tactics is a new brand of breath mint.
So what if it’s true? So what if these sad sacks dash to and fro on a daily basis as if in pursuit of a pendulum o’er a pit? There is, in fact, a strategy, put forward relentlessly by the financial backers of these costumed crusaders.
There was always a strategy. The same strategy Con Edison uses when it wants something underneath the sidewalks of New York — rip it up. Rip it up into smaller pieces that can be carted off. It might be nailed down this morning, but it needn’t be nailed down tomorrow.
Returning Iran to America’s orbit was the goal, ever since 1979. Iraq was in our orbit once. America backed Saddam’s Iraq to the hilt, for eight long years, in his war to topple Iran’s regime. Right up until the morning he rolled tanks across the Kuwaiti border to get some cash for his emptied Treasury, Saddam was a fine fellow and a good friend of the American government. He became evil when he crossed the American government.
That’s what evil is — crossing the American government.
Ten years of sanctions didn’t do anything but put Iraq on ice, kill its citizens, and make its military anemic. We invaded Iraq in 2003 in order to turn it into an American police station in the middle of the Middle East.
To use as a launch platform against Iran. We’re still working the same strategy. We’re still building those permanent bases this very day, along with an Embassy compound as large as the Vatican City. That’s right, folks — we are building the biggest, most expensive embassy in world history so that we can leave.
That makes as much sense as our surging forward, four years along, with less by far than we had on the morning we rolled tanks across the Kuwaiti border on behalf of our own emptied Treasury.
The road has been downhill all the way. The economic dominance of the world by America has devolved into raw military dominance, and that has devolved into the final threat in the Pentagon’s bag, which is nuclear weapons. Tactically, it appears to be a total disaster. Strategically, we’re ripping the place up at a terrific rate.
There it is. The strategy has always been to tear up those few sovereign states over there that do not acquiesce to American interests. That’s Iran, Syria and their stubborn, swarthy cousins in southern Lebanon.
Gentle Reader, America will never leave Iraq, because to do so is to cede the Middle East to the rising Shia influences. Neither this Congress, nor any succeeding one, will countenance withdrawal in fact. Only in political theater — never in fact.
America will never leave Iran standing, because to do so will cede the entire Middle East to the rising multi-polar powers of the world, the nations with industries that actually make things, the nations with money in their Treasuries. China, Russia, India, Brazil, and all their industrious cousins of less than lily white complexions.
Nope. There can be only one American victory in all of this, and that is to rip it up, rip it up so no one has a functioning nation over there. Non-states or mini-states based on ethnic rivalries is the strategy.
Rip it up. Tear it down.
Because we’re broke, over here. We can’t stay home, we can’t come home, not without the plunder.

Posted by: Antifa | Mar 10 2007 10:05 utc | 3

amen Antifa
You are so cogent in your words.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Mar 10 2007 10:13 utc | 4

salute

Posted by: annie | Mar 10 2007 10:37 utc | 5

Rip it up. Tear it down.
“It Struck Me Then That We, The American Soldiers, Were The Terrorists”

She was skin and bones, not even 100 lb., not yet a full-grown woman, but something about her seemed powerful and disturbing.
I feared that girl, and I wanted to get away from her as fast as I could, but it was my job to stay right there and make sure she didn’t move. I had my weapon ready. She was wearing a blue nightgown and had a white scarf covering her hair. She had no veil, so I could see her face perfectly. Her eyes were coal black and full of hatred.
In English, she asked me, “Where are you taking my brothers?”
“I don’t know, Miss,” I said.
“Why are you taking them away?”
“I’m afraid I can’t say.”
“When are you bringing them back?”
“Couldn’t tell you that either.”
“Why are you doing this to us?”
I couldn’t answer that.
I hoped she would not raise a fuss. I didn’t want her to start screaming, which could attract the attention of my squad mates. One or two, I feared, would be more than happy to use a rifle butt to knock out her teeth.
I hadn’t been in Iraq more than 24 hours and already I was having strange feelings.
First, I was vulnerable, and I didn’t like it.
Even with all these soldiers and all this equipment, I knew that anywhere, at any time, any Iraqi with a gun, a wall to hide behind, and one decent eye could pick me off faster than a hawk nabs a mouse.
Second, with hardly one foot into the war, I was also uneasy about what we were doing there. Something was amiss.
We hadn’t found anything in this girl’s house, but we had busted it up pretty well in 30 minutes and had taken away her brothers. Inside, another squad was still ransacking the house. I didn’t enjoy being stuck guarding this girl under the carport, in the cool April air before dawn in Ramadi.
Her questions haunted me, and I didn’t like not being able to answer them — even to myself.
Busting into and ransacking homes remained one of my most common duties in Iraq. Before my time was up, I took part in about 200 raids.
We never found weapons or indications of terrorism.
I never found a thing that seemed to justify the terror we inflicted every time we blasted through the door of a civilian home, broke everything in sight, punched and zipcuffed the men, and sent them away.

Americans in Iraq, Israelis in Palestine, Germans in Poland… this cannot go on for much longer.
The Harder They Fall… One And All.
But when we fall will their be an Anglo-American War Crimes Tribunal? If not… wait forty years. It will all happen again.
When the Buddha talks to me of lives repeated I know that he is not talking about the transmigration of souls. He’s talking about the stupidity of “Civilizations” whose mistakes are reborn daily. Whose new-born amnesiac citizens are doomed to the wheel of suffering by the secret, willful ignorance of their predecessors, and the glacial speed of recovery, one, random escape, one life at a time.

Posted by: John Francis Lee | Mar 10 2007 12:41 utc | 6

Alive in Baghdad is a video blog that began when filmmaker Brian Conley visited Iraq in 2005. He has provided several local reporters with video equipment and training to produce weekly posts of first hand accounts from ordinary Iraqis, like this tour of two houses after American raids, or this interview with a Sadr City doctor.
From the last link:
She has a clinic in Sadr City and has worked as a medical doctor for 40 years in Baghdad. She has seen many things, having lived and practiced medicine through three wars and much political turmoil in Iraq.
She discusses the difficulties of travel to her work as well as some of the strange diseases and medical abnormalities that have shown up since the first and second American invasions of Iraq.
Please consider making a donation to support our work, we are in the process of looking for ads and trying to secure additional funding sources, but until now our work continues to be entirely viewer-funded. Please consider making a follow-up if you’ve donated in the past. As we’ve said before, this project is our full-time work, and it costs 2500 dollars per episode. In order to expand our work and provide more detailed and diverse coverage of daily life in Baghdad, your assistance is needed!

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 10 2007 15:25 utc | 7

And the cherry on the top is the rampant malnutrition of children in Iraq.
Everything else I could (maybe!) forgive, but after a decade of economic blockade and rising infant mortality — THIS!
Shame on us all.
If Jesus were really to come back like the fundies say, what would be the judgement on America, the Fortress of Arrogance?

Posted by: Chuck Cliff | Mar 10 2007 16:42 utc | 8

I am reading a book entitled “Corruption and the decline of Rome” It was published in 1988 and the author is Ramsay MacMullen. It is a very fine book that analyses the cession of state power to enterprising individuals. The last two chapters read : “Power for sale” and the “Price of privatizing government”. Towards the end of the book the author quotes a French historian, Piganiol, who said and I translate ” Rome did not die of a tranquil death, she was assassinated” Is this happening to our country at this moment?

Posted by: jlcg | Mar 10 2007 17:00 utc | 9

jlcg – yes.
antifa- great post.

Posted by: fauxreal | Mar 10 2007 17:53 utc | 10

john francis lee, thanks for #6, very powerful. and antifa, once again, tragic but wise words.

Posted by: conchita | Mar 10 2007 19:50 utc | 11

I have to add my thanks too.
Thanks all.

Posted by: beq | Mar 10 2007 20:31 utc | 12

“Is this happening to our country at this moment?”
I would have to say no. We are headed in that direction, and it may happen, but it is still a long way off.

Posted by: Susan | Mar 10 2007 22:43 utc | 13

Picked this link up from eurotrib, thought you might like it.

Rumsfeld and Top GOP Figures Profited from Privatization of VA Hospital, CIA Contractors
A large global hedge fund, Cerberus Capital Management (dba, Cerberus-Gabriel), is at the center of an emerging Pentagon and CIA contracting scandal that has the attention of three Congressional Committees.
In each case, the companies under investigation have links to prominent GOP figures, including Vice President Dick Cheney, former Vice President Dan Quayle, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and several Republican Congressmen indicted for corruption involving kickbacks from defense contractors. The Republican Congressional Campaign Commitee (RCCC) has also received substantial contributions from conservative fund managers running Cerberus, a virually unregulated $30 billion hedge fund, which owns the second largest bank in Israel.
This scandal involves the mismanagement of VA hospital facilities privatized during the Bush-Cheney Administration, as well as intelligence abuses by private CIA contractors.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/3/10/21556/5045

Posted by: Argh | Mar 11 2007 0:00 utc | 14

damn, argh, you are so right. what an impressive and frightening amount of research and dot connecting. that diary is like the gift that keeps on giving. i’m wading my way through the comments now and they too are worth reading. this ties in directly with jclg’s #9 above regarding privatisation. i am tempted to lift the concluding paragraphs from the diary, but think it is well worth the long read to appreciate the web of fascism as it has been woven.

Posted by: conchita | Mar 11 2007 1:47 utc | 15

from argh’s post: a clickable link
for annie- recent CIA renditions to European nations via a CBC report. did you know that, when the Italian/CIA spying incidents were ongoing, a European Parliament group was investigating these secret renditions in the U.S.? And the Bush junta basically wouldn’t even acknowledge their rightful concerns? I didn’t. It wasn’t on the U.S. news afaik.
I’m sure Uncle must have linked to this at some time in the past, but Bill Moyers’ program The Secret Government from decades ago.

Posted by: fauxreal | Mar 11 2007 3:54 utc | 16

thanks! i saw the secret governments when uncle 9or you) posted it before, but i have yet to see this new program. i will watch it now

Posted by: annie | Mar 11 2007 4:56 utc | 17

Extralegal partisan shenanigans afoot…? Cherchez le Rove.

Presidential advisor Karl Rove and at least one other member of the White House political team were urged by the New Mexico Republican party chairman to fire the state’s U.S. attorney because of dissatisfaction in part with his failure to indict Democrats in a voter fraud investigation in the battleground election state.

In other news… does anything scream covering-our-asses louder than a gag order? I mean, Jesus, Mary and Elvis, after the kinds of scandals we’ve become inured to in the past six years, is there anything a DC madame could possibly divulge that would still actually shock anyone…? Let’s see, soldiers incinerating every man, woman and child in Fallujah didn’t raise any eyebrows, but after the Foley story, we’d better put a tight lid on the ways and means our reps get their rocks off.
What are they afraid we might find out…? That public funds get used to pay for private perks or that holier-than-thou, faith-based fundamentalists are some of the slimiest arsebiscuits in our society? Here’s a flash… we already know that!
Let Palfrey sing like a canary already and the proles will grumble for a week and then fall back asleep. Gag orders just make people use their lurid imaginations.

Posted by: Monolycus | Mar 11 2007 6:38 utc | 18

The still coming mortgage catastrophe:

On March 1, a Wall Street analyst at Bear Stearns wrote an upbeat report on a company that specializes in making mortgages to cash-poor homebuyers. The company, New Century Financial, had already disclosed that a growing number of borrowers were defaulting, and its stock, at around $15, had lost half its value in three weeks.
What happened next seems all too familiar to investors who bought technology stocks in 2000 at the breathless urging of Wall Street analysts. Last week, New Century said it would stop making loans and needed emergency financing to survive. The stock collapsed to $3.21.
…
At the heart of the turmoil is the subprime mortgage market, which developed to give loans to shaky borrowers or to those with little cash to put down as collateral. Some 35 percent of all mortgage securities issued last year were in that category, up from 13 percent in 2003.
…
Loans with 40-year or even 50-year terms were also popular among cash-strapped borrowers seeking low monthly payments. Exceedingly low “teaser” rates that move up rapidly in later years were another feature of the new loans.
The rapid rise in the amount borrowed against a property’s value shows how willing lenders were to stretch. In 2000, according to Banc of America Securities, the average loan to a subprime lender was 48 percent of the value of the underlying property. By 2006, that figure reached 82 percent.
Mortgages requiring little or no documentation became known colloquially as “liar loans.” An April 2006 report by the Mortgage Asset Research Institute, a consulting concern in Reston, Va., analyzed 100 loans in which the borrowers merely stated their incomes, and then looked at documents those borrowers had filed with the I.R.S. The resulting differences were significant: in 90 percent of loans, borrowers overstated their incomes 5 percent or more. But in almost 60 percent of cases, borrowers inflated their incomes by more than half.
…
Nevertheless, some investors wonder whether the rating agencies have the stomach to downgrade these securities because of the selling stampede that would follow. Many mortgage buyers cannot hold securities that are rated below investment grade — insurance companies are an example. So if the securities were downgraded, forced selling would ensue, further pressuring an already beleaguered market.
Another consideration is the profits in mortgage ratings. Some 6.5 percent of Moody’s 2006 revenue was related to the subprime market.
Brian Clarkson, Moody’s co-chief operating officer, denied that the company hesitates to cut ratings. “We made assumptions early on that we were going to have worse performance in subprime mortgages, which is the reason we haven’t seen that many downgrades,” he said. “If we have something that is investment grade that we need to take below investment grade, we will do it.”
Interestingly, accounting conventions in mortgage securities require an investor to mark his holdings to market only when they get downgraded. So investors may be assigning higher values to their positions than they would receive if they had to go into the market and find a buyer. That delays the reckoning, some analysts say.
“There are delayed triggers in many of these investment vehicles and that is delaying the recognition of losses,” Charles Peabody, founder of Portales Partners, an independent research boutique in New York, said. “I do think the unwind is just starting. The moment of truth is not yet here.”

Posted by: b | Mar 11 2007 7:33 utc | 19

Usually politicians pay back to the organizations and lobbies that promote them with favours AFTER they have been elected. Romney has found a way to pay for their promotion BEFORE getting elected.
In Romney’s Bid, His Wallet Opens to the Right

Last December, a foundation controlled by Mr. Romney made contributions of $10,000 to $15,000 to each of three Massachusetts organizations associated with major national conservative groups: the antiabortion Massachusetts Citizens for Life, Massachusetts Citizens for Limited Taxation and the Christian conservative Massachusetts Family Institute.
Mr. Romney and a group of his supporters also contributed a total of about $10,000 to a nonprofit group affiliated with National Review. Over the past two years, he contributed $35,000 to the Federalist Society, an influential network of conservative lawyers. And in December 2005, he contributed $25,000 to the Heritage Foundation, a leading conservative research organization.
The recipients of Mr. Romney’s donations said the money had no influence on them. But some of the groups, notably Citizens for Life and the Family Institute, have turned supportive of Mr. Romney after criticizing him in the past.

Essentially those organizations are now marketing agencies working for Romney …

Posted by: b | Mar 11 2007 7:44 utc | 20

Frank Rich (liberated) Why Libby’s Pardon Is a Slam Dunk

EVEN by Washington’s standards, few debates have been more fatuous or wasted more energy than the frenzied speculation over whether President Bush will or will not pardon Scooter Libby. Of course he will.
…

Posted by: b | Mar 11 2007 8:11 utc | 21

b- Way back when, 70’s there were investment instruments called REIT’s that went bust in a big way. They became discredited as investment instruments, and seemed to vanish.
Then I recall seeing some articles in late 90’s about reconsidering REIT’s, the conclusion being that there were some exceptional circumstances in 70’s and that, properly structured, instruments like REIT’s should be legitimate investment instruments again.
Question: is this related in any way to the subprime mortgage morass now? Were new real estate investment instruments, including subprime mortgage consolidators, constituted in late 90s, due to a renewed legitimacy? Does this have anything to do with the recent shoddy lending practices and the real estate bubble? And who gets to make these arguments, which, I’d assume, help determine what insurance cos and pension funds can invest in?

Posted by: small coke | Mar 11 2007 11:14 utc | 22

@small coke – I’ll try to come up with answers
—
Why does The Times recognize Israel’s ‘right to exist’?

No issue better illustrates Orwell’s point than coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the United States. Consider, for example, the editorial in The Times on Feb. 9 demanding that the Palestinians “recognize Israel” and its “right to exist.” This is a common enough sentiment — even a cliche. Yet many observers (most recently the international lawyer John Whitbeck) have pointed out that this proposition, assiduously propagated by Israel’s advocates and uncritically reiterated by American politicians and journalists, is — at best — utterly nonsensical.
First, the formal diplomatic language of “recognition” is traditionally used by one state with respect to another state. It is literally meaningless for a non-state to “recognize” a state. Moreover, in diplomacy, such recognition is supposed to be mutual. In order to earn its own recognition, Israel would have to simultaneously recognize the state of Palestine. This it steadfastly refuses to do (and for some reason, there are no high-minded newspaper editorials demanding that it do so).
Second, which Israel, precisely, are the Palestinians being asked to “recognize?” Israel has stubbornly refused to declare its own borders. So, territorially speaking, “Israel” is an open-ended concept. Are the Palestinians to recognize the Israel that ends at the lines proposed by the 1947 U.N. Partition Plan? Or the one that extends to the 1949 Armistice Line (the de facto border that resulted from the 1948 war)? Or does Israel include the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which it has occupied in violation of international law for 40 years — and which maps in its school textbooks show as part of “Israel”?
For that matter, why should the Palestinians recognize an Israel that refuses to accept international law, submit to U.N. resolutions or readmit the Palestinians wrongfully expelled from their homes in 1948 and barred from returning ever since?
If none of these questions are easy to answer, why are such demands being made of the Palestinians? And why is nothing demanded of Israel in turn?

Posted by: b | Mar 11 2007 11:23 utc | 23

from Glenn Greenwald, a commenter loses the scales from his eyes…

I have, as some of Glenn’s readers know, been aggressively skeptical of Glenn’s (and others’) contention that the organization called AIPAC is working to instigate a U.S. attack in Iran. Well, they were right and I was wrong. Because I, a passionately anti-war Jew, did not want to believe this to be true, I needed a smoking gun, which came in the form of a Congressional Quarterly item that Glenn brought to my attention. The item stated that AIPAC is actively opposing legislation that would require Bush to get approval from Congress before attacking Iran. CQ is a reputable publication, and I have no grounds for disputing its accuracy. The implications of AIPAC opposing that legislation are unambiguous. I have searched for any possible explanation that would be both benign and plausible, and found none. I have been stubborn, perhaps irrationally so, about this issue, but I like to think I can recognize reality when it shoots me in the face.
This recognition is painful to me. Not the being wrong part (nothing new there), but the big-Jew-organization-trying-to-get-America-to-do-something-evil-and-cosmically-stupid part. That hurts.
BUT… having said all that, I must also say to those who argued with me on this, OK you were right, in the sense of being not completely wrong, but you still can’t prove that you were right for the right reasons, so really I was kind of right, or at least not really wrong, and if I was sort of wrong, that doesn’t mean I have to question any aspect of my worldview or engage in self-examination of any kind, nor does it cast doubt on my basic moral superiority to all of you, and I’m still right about everything else that I think, and it was a such a long time ago and surely we’ve all got better things to than play the blame game, and don’t forget Clinton’s penis, and anyway you’re all a bunch of dirty, Jew-hating hippies. Heh.

Posted by: dan of steele | Mar 11 2007 13:08 utc | 24

The explanation for the muddle that the existence of Israel and Palestine is was implicit in the first lesson at mass last Sunday. In that fragment of Genesis God offers to Abram, after slaughtering some animals and splitting their carcasses, though the pigeons are not split, God promises Abram that he will have descendants as numerous as the stars of the heavens and that the land he stands on will be his and his descendants in perpetuity and then adds a geographic detail: the land promised will extend from the Wady of Egypt to the Great River (Euphrates) It follows that if one has a religious view of these matters the present borders of Israel are provisional and their hoped for position cannot be stated because that would create an enormous political and diplomatic problem. So the matter remains in some kind of limbo, unresolved because God’s word is at work here.

Posted by: jlcg | Mar 11 2007 14:01 utc | 25

It follows that if one has a religious view of these matters the present borders of Israel are provisional and their hoped for position cannot be stated because that would create an enormous political and diplomatic problem. So the matter remains in some kind of limbo, unresolved because God’s word is at work here.

Wow. I’m dumbfounded.
Ok. Religion isn’t all evil, it’s been helpful on some occasions which I can’t seem to remember right now. But to allow religion to enter into the political world at this level… “my god promised this to me and you’re in the way of my god’s promise to me”… is absurd.
Politics cannot deal in the world of the unfalsifiable, in the world of assertions based upon faith. All men are equally capable of “divine” visons of things which require others’ reduction. That just cannot be admitted by civilized people.
This is like a breath of stale air from the Middle Ages.

Posted by: John Francis Lee | Mar 11 2007 14:31 utc | 26

@26
B. wondered how could Palestine recognize Israel if the borders of Israel are indefinite. I gave an explanation based on a text that probably many people think is the will of God. Your opinion may be dfferent but we are dealing here with beliefs and desires of actual acting people. All rhetorical fulminations are vain.

Posted by: jlcg | Mar 11 2007 14:47 utc | 27

@jlcg #25
Interesting theory re Israel’s national boundaries… and it might hold some water in a theocratic state where everybody is simultaneously a soldier and religious scholar.
Most of the secular world, however deeply religious they might try to pass themselves off as being, neither know nor care about the fundamental tenets of their alleged belief system. “Manifest Destiny” didn’t come from anyone’s book of worship, but it was accepted as the word of Almighty Providence in any case.
Not sure which I prefer… injustices based on millennia-old mores or injustices based on an irrational hatred that is made up as you go. I suppose at the end of the day, it doesn’t make any difference.

Posted by: Monolycus | Mar 11 2007 17:05 utc | 28

Superb posts Antifa & JFL. I’d like to send a friend an email w/JFL’s pdf link @ #6. Can someone tell me how to do it – ie link pdf files. thx.

Posted by: jj | Mar 11 2007 19:13 utc | 29

@SmallCoke – Question: is this related in any way to the subprime mortgage morass now? Were new real estate investment instruments, including subprime mortgage consolidators, constituted in late 90s, due to a renewed legitimacy? Does this have anything to do with the recent shoddy lending practices and the real estate bubble? And who gets to make these arguments, which, I’d assume, help determine what insurance cos and pension funds can invest in?
After some thoughts I see a lot of similarities but also differences.
REITs are ownership papers of usually commercial real estate. They had a tax gimmick attached that allows some tax evasion. These papers were heavily marketed and lots of folks did buy them when real estate prices did go up but the commercial real estate market did brake down (remember when the Japanes bought parts of New York and had to leave with HUGE losses?). Of course there was some fraud too. People hurt were those who bought REITs.
The suprime mortgage market is different because people on two sides get hurt.
The lenders, on the urging of the mortgage broker, often lied about their income. The lenders may be criminal liable for this when the shit hits the fan. Plus they will have to pay their whole life to get rid of the debt, if ever.
On the other side people did buy mortgage back securities. Mostly big investors, states (china) and pension funds. These MBSs, especially the sub-prime ones will blow off. The british bank HSBC is already 10 billion(!) in the negative on this business.
The guilty folks here are the rating agencies whose job is to evaluate the quality of MBSs. They did rate them high to get their commission. The packegers and sellers of MBSs also had no reason to be thruthful in their business.
The ultimate guilty folks are Greenspan and the White House. They put the fire to the market to “save the economy”. See here: Greenspan said back in 2002:

Indeed, recent research within the Federal Reserve suggests that many homeowners might have saved tens of thousands of dollars had they held adjustable-rate mortgages rather than fixed-rate mortgages during the past decade….American consumers might benefit if lenders provided greater mortgage product alternatives to the traditional fixed-rate mortgage. To the degree that households are driven by fears of payment shocks but are willing to manage their own interest rate risks, the traditional fixed-rate mortgage may be an expensive method of financing a home.

He promoted adjustable rate mortgages, a deadly poison for any marginal lender.
The argument that pension funds can invest in such bad papers is made on two sides. Wall Street wants to sell the junk, and a lot of pension funds are under water anyhow (underfinanced) and want to make money fast. Pension fund managers get payed based on return rates too. So they will go for the fast and sweet but maybe risky stuff.
Stupidity and greed …

Posted by: b | Mar 11 2007 19:57 utc | 30

Today’s underplayed story seems to be that Halliburton plans to move to Dubai.

Lesar said the move would help the company focus on the Middle
East, as he would lead efforts to increase Halliburton business in
the Eastern Hemisphere.

If you are getting incensed about tax evasion, don’t. They weren’t that great a taxpayer anyway:

The company adamantly denies that its offshore subsidiaries are used to shift income out of the United States. But it’s indisputable that somebody is doing a dandy job of limiting Halliburton’s tax liability. When I asked how much Halliburton paid in federal income taxes last year, a company spokeswoman, Wendy Hall, said, “After foreign tax credit utilization, we paid just over $15 million to the IRS for our 2002 tax liability.”

And you can read about just what Dubai is from none other than Mike Davis at the New Left Review.
Mike Davis’ article is very good, stark, to the point as always. But it feels like reading science fiction. An orbital satellite colony, except it’s here on earth. Or it is like catching a preview of the neo-feudalism that some like to call the new world order.

Posted by: Alamet | Mar 12 2007 1:11 utc | 31

b :
The borrowers, on the urging of the mortgage broker, often lied about their income. The borrowers may be criminal liable for this when the shit hits the fan. Plus they will have to pay their whole life to get rid of the debt, if ever.
You’re copying my style 🙂
jj:
If I right-click on a link in my browser I can “Copy link location”, then paste it into an email or wherever. Makes no difference if it’s a link to an .html file or to a .pdf file

Posted by: John Francis Lee | Mar 12 2007 1:31 utc | 32

In that fragment of Genesis God offers to Abram, after slaughtering some animals and splitting their carcasses, though the pigeons are not split, God promises Abram that he will have descendants as numerous as the stars of the heavens and that the land he stands on will be his and his descendants in perpetuity and then adds a geographic detail: the land promised will extend from the Wady of Egypt to the Great River (Euphrates).
That’s a furiously fulminating snatch of rhetoric, right? Surely it’s the height of vanity, if not of blasphemy, to use poor, defenseless god as the license for imperial conquest.

Posted by: John Francis Lee | Mar 12 2007 1:42 utc | 33

b- Thanks for the explanation.
Sounds like, besides simple irresponsible financial management, it requires actors at every level lying and deaf overseers, to achieve such a mess as today’s
Re pension fund investing, I thought that it was limited legally by a “reasonable man” clause. If so, the trick then is how to define what investments a “reasonable man” would make, and what are unreasonable/ forbidden.
I wonder if this standard has been moving as finance invents new, more audacious, more obscurant instruments. Like Enron’s creative financing.
Seems like investors mostly folllow the old banking principal these days: if most other banks are investing, it can be considered a “reasonable” investment, regardless of what sane analysis might suggest. If the investments go bad, it was obviously unforeseeable, because most other banks made the same investment. Do they do their own analysis at all?
Maverick bankers seem to be the only ones who are held accountable. If they do not follow the flock, then they must account to shareholders either for less competitive earnings or for bad investments, and could be considered legally culpable for either. If their unorthodox investments pay well, then, and only then, are they beyond legal and career jeopardy.
This banking principal, and the short term orientation of financial performance measures are the only explanation I can surmise to explain the lemming-like behavior of large investors from bubble to bubble. Plus maybe too much cash chasing meaningless, high-yield financial ends, rather than long term, productive enterprises.
There has to be something deeply structural that creates such a rogue economy. It is, obviously, where market capitalism heads every time it shakes off or eludes restraints. Yet there have been times and places when enough mitigating law or social circumstance has held it in check and harnessed it as a relatively creative engine of jobs and goods.
Can anyone suggest a good investigation and analysis of the shifts back and forth between the different manifestations of markets and market economies?

Posted by: small coke | Mar 12 2007 3:04 utc | 34

Rawstory art. on Halliburton move less helpful than this one:
Texas – Halliburton, the oil services company formerly headed by Vice-President Dick Cheney, is moving its headquarters from Texas to Dubai to reduce its US tax burden.
The company said it hoped the move to the United Arab Emirates would help it expand its business in the Middle East.
Business analysts say the real reason is the huge reduction in taxes it will have to pay. link
2 thghts:
1) So if citizens say “Hell No”, as well we should; Predators will just push the DC535, formerly know as US Congress back when it was concerned w/the welfare of the American People, into eliminating Corporate Taxes altogether, rather than just outlawing the move as they should – as say a threat to National Security.
2) Could they also be moving ‘cuz they’ve plundered as much as there was to Steal from xUSA, so it’s time to move to area they haven’t yet eaten alive?
There is so much to touch on regarding the dollar this month, I hardly know where to start. Regardless of where I begin, the news is not good and affects all of us.

First on our list is China. They have now announced that they are refusing to accept American Corporations purchasing into their stock market any longer as they did in the past. China also said that they are no longer going to be purchasing our securities as they have in the past, including bonds and T-bills. China’s decisions and subsequent announcements at the beginning of the week has sent a panic across the World’s markets.

Additionally, OPEC met recently and they have also stated they will be diversifying into other currencies instead of just the American dollar. They will now begin accepting other currencies and limit the trade of oil via the American dollar.

March 21st 2007 will be one of the most significant dates this month. Iran has outlawed the American dollar and will put anyone in jail that uses it in their country after that date. They have the ominous notoriety of being the first nation in the world to do such a thing. The real issue in Iran is NOT nuclear, but rather the decision to not use the American dollar for trade and the sale of oil. On the heels of Iran’s decision, North Korea has followed suit and also outlawed the use of the American dollar in their country. Finally, Malaysia the next day did the same thing.

…
Last week a friend of mine told me they called their bank president in Vancouver, BC and he agreed with everything I have been saying about the dollar. What amazed me the most was her comment that he told her his bank is currently making preparations for the crash of the American dollar!

link

Posted by: jj | Mar 12 2007 8:26 utc | 35

For those who think it was Mom’n’Pop style operations that engaged in risky loans rather than the Wall St. Predators, guess again. Here’s the story of a guy who worked for one of these outfits to earn enough to get the hell outta Dodge. link (Scroll down to 9/4/06)
That’s what happens when banks have zippo responsibility for the mortgages they write. I think there was also a political agenda here – destroy pensions, steal Americans blind so they can work for peanuts or starve…

Posted by: jj | Mar 12 2007 9:12 utc | 36

This one might cause you to pause for a brief moment the next time some political huckster mouths platitudes about the rule of law.

Posted by: DM | Mar 12 2007 10:24 utc | 37

jj:
Halliburton to move HQ to Dubai

“Halliburton chairman, president and chief executive officer Dave Lesar will move to Dubai to lead the company’s efforts in growing Halliburton’s business in the Eastern hemisphere, an important market for the global oil and gas industry,” the company said in a press release.

I think he’s moving to avoid future prosecution for his criminal war profiteering. He’s probably been tasked with setting up a place for Dick to live as well.
There are going to be more and more chief executives of “American” multinationals on the lam in the future.

Posted by: John Francis Lee | Mar 12 2007 11:14 utc | 38

Israeli banks with the help of politicians robbing holocaust surveivers:
New formula could cut payments to Holocaust survivors, heirs

In a decision that might cut payments to Holocaust survivors, a panel of experts has determined that the estimated value of bank accounts in Israel of victims of the Holocaust has been revised to only about NIS 400 million, rather than nearly NIS 1 billion.
…
The new estimate of the real value of the deposits is based on a formula chosen by the panel of experts. Had the committee adopted the formula proposed by committee member Yehuda Barlev, an accountant, the estimated value of the dormant accounts would have reached the NIS 1 billion mark.
The committee’s decision to adopt the formula it chose theoretically saved the state and the banks hundreds of millions of shekels in payments to heirs of the original account-holders, needy Holocaust survivors and Holocaust memorial institutions. Committee Chairman Prof. Yakir Plessner told Haaretz that the formula was chosen with professional considerations only in mind, and denied that any vested interests affected the decision.
An examination by Haaretz raised several questions with regard to the committee’s conduct. In addition to Orgler’s appointment to Hapoalim’s board, it turns out that Plessner was giving confidential protocols from the panel’s sessions to attorney Ram Caspi, who represents Bank Leumi, without the knowledge of the other panel members. Plessner said Monday that he did so because he believed in good faith that the forum’s sessions came under the Freedom of Information Law. In another questionable move, Plessner appointed an aide to the director general of the Finance Ministry to the sensitive position of committee secretary, in violation of laws regulating conflict of interest.

Posted by: b | Mar 12 2007 11:19 utc | 39

I came across some pictures from the Italian edition of Vogue that are really disturbing. I showed them to my colleagues at work and they agree that they could never be published in the USA.
If you don’t have tons of bandwidth don’t click as the pictures are very big.

Posted by: dan of steele | Mar 12 2007 16:38 utc | 40

dan of steele – This is going to make me buy a dress? The comments are as disturbing than the photos.

Posted by: beq | Mar 12 2007 16:54 utc | 41

…as the photos.

Posted by: beq | Mar 12 2007 16:55 utc | 42

beq- yes, the comments were sick. Vapid stupid fashionistas are no different than trailer trash who watch WWF… only the price tags on their stupidity differ.
Heroine chic and now rapist fascist chic. oh why oh why can’t I be so avant garde?

Posted by: fauxreal | Mar 12 2007 17:08 utc | 43

a tante maime recipe

Posted by: r’giap | Mar 12 2007 18:01 utc | 44

(being) an israeli (ambassador)
AP
JERUSALEM — Israel has recalled its ambassador to El Salvador after he was found naked, bound and drunk, according to Israeli media reports confirmed Monday by a government spokeswoman.
The longtime diplomat, Tsuriel Raphael, has been removed from his post and the Foreign Ministry has begun searching for a replacement, said ministry spokeswoman Zehavit Ben-Hillel.
Two weeks ago, El Salvador police found Raphael in the yard of his residence, tied up, gagged with a ball and drunk, Israeli media reported. He was wearing sex bondage equipment, the media said. After he was untied, Raphael told police he was the ambassador of Israel, the reports said.
Ben-Hillel said the reports were accurate and that Raphael has been recalled, although he did not break any laws.
“We’re talking about behavior that is unbecoming of a diplomat,” she said.
The ambassador did not file a police complaint in the incident, she said.
Raphael had served for six months as the ambassador in El Salvador and for several years at different missions around the world, she said.
The embarrassing affair was one of several involving Israeli diplomats in recent years. In 2000, Israel’s ambassador to France died of cardiac arrest in a Paris hotel under circumstances the Foreign Ministry refused to publicize. Media reports said he was with a woman who was not his wife at the time.
Last year, Israel replaced its ambassador to Australia, Naftali Tamir, after he said Israel and Australia are “like sisters” because both are located in Asia and their peoples don’t have the Asian characteristics of “yellow skin and slanted eyes.”
In 2005, Israel canceled the appointment of a diplomat to Australia after it was discovered that he published pictures of nude Brazilian women on the Internet while on a mission in Brazil.

Posted by: r’giap | Mar 12 2007 18:44 utc | 45

heavens! israel is going to have to purge the submissives from the foreign minstry.

Posted by: annie | Mar 12 2007 18:59 utc | 46

“Tell people they can park as long as they want for free, provided they keep their headlights on while the car is parked.”
won’t work in my town, thw SUVbots will just leave the engine running so the battery stays charged even w/the lights on. I saw one last year sitting in a parking lot with the engine
running at high idle for minute after minute. the affluent young driver was chatting on the cell phone with the window open. it was a very hot day. shouting to be heard over the engine he said, “Yeah, sorry about the noise, I have the engine running to keep the air conditioning on so the groceries don’t warm up while I wait for XXX to run her errand.”
Tales from Pompeii.

Posted by: DeAnander | Mar 13 2007 0:20 utc | 47

baudrillard was the best of the barbarians
he & other comrades (mostly french but also including people like jameson & said) brought the whole rotten cadaver of philosophy down to the gutter where it belongs. they like jean luc godard – finally brought democracy – a real democracy(not a relatavism) to the certitudes that collapsed all around the world in the mighty battle of kursk & in the pits full of jews in ukraine & in the concentration(death & work)camps where many millions of beautiful people were turned to dust & ash
they responded to this world with the darkness that is required – many of them suffered the price of the thinking – althusser, poulantzes being only the most obvious examples – but it can also be read in the tortured tracts of foucault, levinas or virrillio
their tears created a method through which to see the fundamental nature of this slaughterhouse & how this slaughterhous is built on the enslavement of men – for the great distance all these thinkers made away from marx – they never left the basic tenets – the basic reasons for the collapse of the human condition
they taught us the gravity of our situation but perhaps it was only baudrillard who taught us the stupidity of it – the endless stupidity of it – relentlessly he attacked with all his force the vulgarity that passes for social relations until he himself became vulgar
i once shared a property here – a commune if you will – with my translator – where baudrillard lived – & i would see him often walking & like any thinking person his eyes were haunted – like that of the others who lived there & who constituted the best elements of the post war generation whether they were architects, psychiatrists writers or masons
all my life i have had the great gift of being surrounded by people a great deal older than myself who taught directly or by their exemplarity & it has been a special gift & also a burden because once you have been through that – certituded go wherever they go – normally the endless circles of self
& whether it was a marlowe, a cervantes or a dante – we need to be told & explained the darker truths of our nature – for it is only through that that real resistance can be constituted
what can have not been clear to that generation, perhaps not even to baudrillard – is how the cultural condition would wither away entirely & so too breath – that the stuttered sentences people would speak especially statesemn – would be of an unspeakable crudeness
perhaps harvard can teach you how to howl & stanford how to scream but the last thing education has been able to do is to create thinkers & that is just as the strauss, the schmitts & the heideggers wanted it to be. they & all their golems that fuck this world up in this ot that administration in this or that policy with their impoverished solipsistic scribbling that passes for politics in a world where there is none except thos articulated by mao tse tung – political power grows out the barrel of a gun
that is & remains one of the terrible truths
in these carvings we try to make on a site like our own i see real attempts at communication – i am not an obvious example – hatred has harvested too much in me to possess the distance that is required to live in this world, civilly
i don’t know if people remember that beautiful martin ritt film, ‘hud’ – but the best of us become like him – incapable of living normally with other people because while blindness is a cure for some – the rottenness of this world has to be confronted & that is why in american literature i have great great respect for a dresier or a dos passos or an agee – because they do not lie about that rottenness
a close reader of their works would have been able to tell exactly what kind of diseased empire the united states would become & our ignorance of those works – make us unskilled to become real resistants
but to try to breath honourably in our age has become a real work & like the polish poet sd it takes more strength & talent to live one day decently than to write a thousand books
but i am thankfull for the books of baudrillard that are on these shelves i regard while writing this
this is a poor meditation of the thing i want to say on the death of that thinker but tonight it will have to suffice

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Mar 13 2007 1:39 utc | 48

r’giap : another name I never heard. Thanks.
dofs: if I had found those pictures at random I’d have thought they were just more kinky soft-core porn. But they’re selling clothes, eh? I couldn’t read the “storyline”, the print was too small and obstructed.
So what are they selling? How to remain fashionable while being victimized. The world of the pigs, the unhip, is getting a little worse than usual… perfect opportunity to define your own defiance with your next purchase. You’re not a pig. You’re a victim. So hip! But so moany are hip. You are hip and rich, to be able to afford whatever these rags cost. And of course money is its own justification. Like the beatific smile of the Buddha. In short, more of the same. Stonger stomachs in Italy is all.

Posted by: John Francis Lee | Mar 13 2007 2:55 utc | 49

Thank you R’giap, for #48. And a touching meditation it is. I started to say, very touching monologue or soliloquy, however, both these words mean you are speaking alone, and you certainly do not speak alone here. Your words are powerful and passionate and you are heard.At least from this bar stool.
For me, the ultimate French philosopher of the pomo era. (I’ll go…
1968-now.) More daring than Derrida, less comprehensible than Lyotard.
I felt the same when my favorite author, Robert Anton Wilson recently died.
These guys, and others like them spun my head around, in a good way.
However, for all the circumambient peripherilizationalized oh-so
French pomo writing, Philip K. Dick was Da Man. (<----ironic pun quasi intended.) PKD makes me FEEL all the stuff Baudrillard theorized about. Together what a ride. We all live in a Simulacra that faded in slowly and we're hopelessly mired in it, may as well enjoy it eh?

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 13 2007 3:07 utc | 50

among my favs of baudriullard is his book america in which the philosopher drives through the states in an old impala convertible. i recall his description of a television left on in a vacant motel room in the nevada desert. he could find in moments like that decisive exposition of humanity having made itself redundant by its own technology, the sum of all experiences reproduced and exhibited to no one, forever. always a gnawing loneliness in much of his writing, which can’t be read w/out laughing out loud. sort of a mad union of bill hicks and m. mcluhan. they don’t make em like that anymore.

Posted by: slothrop | Mar 13 2007 4:20 utc | 51

Dems Abandon War Authority Provision
Imagine my utter (lack of ) shock.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 13 2007 6:05 utc | 52

What you don’t clarify in yr. post above Uncle is that they backed off demanding that Bu$hCo get authorization from DC535 before attacking IRAN…might harm Israel donchaknow – ie. AIPAC had their meeting last wkend in where else but DC…
Meanwhile did anyone think donkey party might do something about Halliburton moving to DoBuy?
According to papers filed with the SEC, in the fourth quarter of 2006 George Soros purchased nearly 2 million shares of Halliburton. The Halliburton shares reportedly went for an average purchase price of $31.30 a share. That puts Soros’ total investment in Halliburton at around $62.6 million, or about 2 percent of his total portfolio.link
Was he instrumental in the decision? He, after all, has no loyalty to America, only to making out like a bandit. He makes Buffett look downright moral. It’s even more amusing that HClinton squawked about it today & Soros recently switched from backing her to Obomination….

Posted by: jj | Mar 13 2007 7:22 utc | 53

For a long while I speculated about U.S. troops in Iraq using drugs – even though it is strongly forbidded and there hsould be none available – but of course there are:
War and Liquor a Perilous Mix for U.S. Troops

Alcohol, strictly forbidden by the American military in Iraq and Afghanistan, is involved in a growing number of crimes committed by troops deployed to those countries. Alcohol- and drug-related charges were involved in more than a third of all Army criminal prosecutions of soldiers in the two war zones — 240 of the 665 cases resulting in convictions, according to records obtained by The New York Times through a Freedom of Information Act request.
Seventy-three of those 240 cases involve some of the most serious crimes committed, including murder, rape, armed robbery and assault. Sex crimes accounted for 12 of the convictions.
The 240 cases involved a roughly equal number of drug and alcohol offenses, although alcohol-related crimes have increased each year since 2004.
Despite the military’s ban on all alcoholic beverages — and strict Islamic prohibitions against drinking and drug use — liquor is cheap and ever easier to find for soldiers looking to self-medicate the effects of combat stress, depression or the frustrations of extended deployments, said military defense lawyers, commanders and doctors who treat soldiers’ emotional problems.
…
While average rates of alcohol consumption in the Navy and Air Force have steadily declined since 1980, the year the military’s health survey began, they have significantly increased in the Army and Marine Corps and exceed civilian rates, the Pentagon study showed. For the first time since 1985, more than a quarter of all Army members surveyed said they regularly drink heavily, defined as having five or more drinks at one sitting.

Still nothing about a heroin problem. I bet there is one. The stuff from Afghanistan will make it into the FOBs and the bigger bases …

Posted by: b | Mar 13 2007 9:33 utc | 54

Chomsky on the new oil laws in Iraq, Latin America, India, and Africa.

Posted by: anna missed | Mar 13 2007 9:59 utc | 55

@ jj
oddly enough Ms Berkely may have her own agenda for wanting to strip the most minimal of all safegaurds against yet another illegal and immoral war, this time with Iran.
Eventually, all Jews will have to pay for this treasonous behavior by congress critters owned and paid for by AIPAC.
At this point I don’t think I will have much sympathy for them when it does happen.

Posted by: dan of steele | Mar 13 2007 10:07 utc | 56

b,
In VN there (little known fact) was this thing called “obesital”, a liquid deitary speed (for all the fat Vietnamese!) that ran rapant on our FOB, of course, along with all the other stuff. Just sayin’ watch for local pharmaceuticals to skirt the regulations. After VN they’re probably keeping a sharp eye out for smack.

Posted by: anna missed | Mar 13 2007 10:16 utc | 57

While some UN mission that never has been in Dafur is bashing the Sudanese government for all evil, the LA Times looks at the real troublemakers: Rebels pose a new threat to Darfur’s displaced

Now anxiety and desperation are growing among the 120,000 people crammed inside this camp in the southern part of Sudan’s western region of Darfur.
The misery is depressingly common in this region torn by war, but the prime culprits are new: Darfur’s rebels.
Until now, the bulk of the suffering in Darfur involved attacks by Arab nomad militias, known as janjaweed, allegedly backed by the Sudanese government.
But the attacks against aid groups and the African Union soldiers came not from the janjaweed or government troops, officials say, but from factions of the Sudanese Liberation Army, or SLA, the rebel group formed in 2003 to defend Darfur’s tribes against assault. Once viewed by many here as freedom fighters, the rebels over the last year have fractured into more than a dozen feuding factions.
…
More than 200,000 people have died in Darfur since 2003, mostly of disease and hunger in the early years of the fighting. An additional 2.5 million residents have been displaced.
…
Cameron Hume, the U.S. charge d’affaires in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, said factionalization of rebel groups was a growing cause of crime and bloodshed in Darfur.
“Most of the violence now against the [aid groups] is by the rebels or by the non-government-backed forces, though that doesn’t exonerate the government,” he said.
Many accuse the Arab-dominated Sudanese government of encouraging the rebel split by pursuing a “divide-and-rule” strategy, bribing some of the groups while bombing others.
In May, the government signed a peace agreement with one SLA faction led by rebel leader Minni Minnawi, who received a plum government job in exchange. Other rebel commanders rejected the deal, leading to further splits, power struggles and aggressive behavior.
“They’re like a lot of warlords,” said a security official for one aid organization who spoke on condition of anonymity.
In the past, rebel fighters resupplied their arms and vehicles by attacking government forces. With a decrease in direct clashes between rebels and the government, experts say, rebels are now attacking aid groups to resupply.
…
In the attacks in Gereida against the aid workers and the African Union soldiers, witnesses said they recognized SLA soldiers among the gunmen, according to AU officials.
“We know it was the SLA,” said Capt. Kris Amadeco Anogo, operations officer for the African Union peacekeepers in Gereida. “You can’t trust them.” He said an AU vehicle carrying four soldiers on a routine patrol was stopped by SLA gunmen on foot. One soldier was injured and another escaped unharmed. But the attackers seized the truck with the two additional soldiers still inside. The peacekeepers’ bodies were later discovered nearby.
…

Posted by: b | Mar 13 2007 12:56 utc | 58

dos :
Eventually, all Jews will have to pay for this treasonous behavior by congress critters owned and paid for by AIPAC.
And eventually all of us Americans will have to pay for the war crimes committed by our government. Say what you will, the buck stops with the American people. In cases like the present rampage, which will be compared to the rampage of the Third Reich by historians, we just must do “what it takes” to stop the murder and madness. And we haven’t done that.
I have lots of sympathy for the individuals involved. Americans, Israelis, Iraqis, Iranians, Afghans… we aren’t the first to have given ourselves up to violence. It’s the history of our human race.
We Americans and Israelis at least cannot escape taking responsibility for the actions of “our” governments.
We could stop them even now.

Posted by: John Francis Lee | Mar 13 2007 13:18 utc | 59

In case this has not already been posted here, a great and timely NYT Op-Ed from Antonia Juhasz. I am posting it in full because it’s so excellent.
Whose Oil Is It Anyway?

TODAY more than three-quarters of the world’s oil is owned and controlled by governments. It wasn’t always this way.
Until about 35 years ago, the world’s oil was largely in the hands of seven corporations based in the United States and Europe. Those seven have since merged into four: ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and BP. They are among the world’s largest and most powerful financial empires. But ever since they lost their exclusive control of the oil to the governments, the companies have been trying to get it back.
Iraq’s oil reserves — thought to be the second largest in the world — have always been high on the corporate wish list. In 1998, Kenneth Derr, then chief executive of Chevron, told a San Francisco audience, “Iraq possesses huge reserves of oil and gas — reserves I’d love Chevron to have access to.”
A new oil law set to go before the Iraqi Parliament this month would, if passed, go a long way toward helping the oil companies achieve their goal. The Iraq hydrocarbon law would take the majority of Iraq’s oil out of the exclusive hands of the Iraqi government and open it to international oil companies for a generation or more.
In March 2001, the National Energy Policy Development Group (better known as Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force), which included executives of America’s largest energy companies, recommended that the United States government support initiatives by Middle Eastern countries “to open up areas of their energy sectors to foreign investment.” One invasion and a great deal of political engineering by the Bush administration later, this is exactly what the proposed Iraq oil law would achieve. It does so to the benefit of the companies, but to the great detriment of Iraq’s economy, democracy and sovereignty.
Since the invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration has been aggressive in shepherding the oil law toward passage. It is one of the president’s benchmarks for the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a fact that Mr. Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Gen. William Casey, Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and other administration officials are publicly emphasizing with increasing urgency.
The administration has highlighted the law’s revenue sharing plan, under which the central government would distribute oil revenues throughout the nation on a per capita basis. But the benefits of this excellent proposal are radically undercut by the law’s many other provisions — these allow much (if not most) of Iraq’s oil revenues to flow out of the country and into the pockets of international oil companies.
The law would transform Iraq’s oil industry from a nationalized model closed to American oil companies except for limited (although highly lucrative) marketing contracts, into a commercial industry, all-but-privatized, that is fully open to all international oil companies.
The Iraq National Oil Company would have exclusive control of just 17 of Iraq’s 80 known oil fields, leaving two-thirds of known — and all of its as yet undiscovered — fields open to foreign control.
The foreign companies would not have to invest their earnings in the Iraqi economy, partner with Iraqi companies, hire Iraqi workers or share new technologies. They could even ride out Iraq’s current “instability” by signing contracts now, while the Iraqi government is at its weakest, and then wait at least two years before even setting foot in the country. The vast majority of Iraq’s oil would then be left underground for at least two years rather than being used for the country’s economic development.
The international oil companies could also be offered some of the most corporate-friendly contracts in the world, including what are called production sharing agreements. These agreements are the oil industry’s preferred model, but are roundly rejected by all the top oil producing countries in the Middle East because they grant long-term contracts (20 to 35 years in the case of Iraq’s draft law) and greater control, ownership and profits to the companies than other models. In fact, they are used for only approximately 12 percent of the world’s oil.
Iraq’s neighbors Iran, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia maintain nationalized oil systems and have outlawed foreign control over oil development. They all hire international oil companies as contractors to provide specific services as needed, for a limited duration, and without giving the foreign company any direct interest in the oil produced.
Iraqis may very well choose to use the expertise and experience of international oil companies. They are most likely to do so in a manner that best serves their own needs if they are freed from the tremendous external pressure being exercised by the Bush administration, the oil corporations — and the presence of 140,000 members of the American military.
Iraq’s five trade union federations, representing hundreds of thousands of workers, released a statement opposing the law and rejecting “the handing of control over oil to foreign companies, which would undermine the sovereignty of the state and the dignity of the Iraqi people.” They ask for more time, less pressure and a chance at the democracy they have been promised.

Posted by: Bea | Mar 13 2007 15:01 utc | 60

No argument from me for us US citizens being responsible for what is happening. What irks me is that many people have put in a lot of effort to shine light on the criminal acts of the republicans and get some of them voted out. Democrats ran on an antiwar platform and won a majority of seats in the House and Senate. Everything seemed to be working as it should and then some extraordinarily powerful organization representing a foreign country is able to upset everything the democrats worked for.
this I find very disappointing and I do see signs that some US Jews are upset as well as evidenced by a comment I pasted here yesterday from one of Glenn Greewald’s regulars. Some Jews had commented in the beginning of the Iraq invasion they were concerned with getting smeared by the Neocon movement. They will, make no doubt about it. Malooga explained why they persist anyway and that is something that will take a long time to change.
I suppose we shouldn’t worry too much though, they are a people who are known to have a good head for business. It will all probably work out quite well for them in the end.

Posted by: dan of steele | Mar 13 2007 15:11 utc | 61

Eventually, all Jews will have to pay for this treasonous behavior by congress critters owned and paid for by AIPAC.
At this point I don’t think I will have much sympathy for them when it does happen.
while i think it is clear aipac does far more harm to the state of israel in the long run i think it is fair to say all of us will pay the price, all americans , not just jews. to think that every jew is somehow responsible is no more credible than thinking every person is ultimately responsible for the actions of their government or the representatives of their government and i just can’t go down that road, tho clearly we do all pay a price morally we do not pay the same price, as the poor always suffer the consequences more.
as for not feeling sympathy “for them”, really, i think you may want to rethink the implications of that statement. the majority, virtually all of the jews i personally know are appauled at the israels current foreign policies. you can no more make all jews responsible for the neocon’s genocidal policies than you can make all americans responsible!
this kind of thinking is too close to anti semite speak for my taste.
unless i missed something upthread that somehow qualifies this statement. but i really can’t imagine anything qualifying “all jews” as candidates for lack of sympathy. i have a hell of a lot of sympathy for people having to live w/the consequences of dangerous zionist zealots!

Posted by: annie | Mar 13 2007 15:19 utc | 62

Thank-you annie, couldn’t have said it better.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 13 2007 15:25 utc | 63

i should have said dangerous zionist zealots and their weakkneed lackeys in congress. i don’t think all those congress critters are zionist zealots, they are just too cowardly to stand up to them. its the money and friggin pressure and face it, you don’t tow the line your out of a job. it pisses me off so much money can play the part it does in being elected.
when you consider the percentage of jews in our population it is completely disportionate to the influence of aipac! and given that the views of zionist do not by any means represent the majority of jews here in america it even makes it more absurd. i would imagine there are far more evangelicals that conform to aipac simply by the percentage of their numbers in society. maybe i’m wrong about the percentage of jews who here who are zionist, but i sure don’t know any and i don’t live in a cave. even if half the jews in america are zionist, this is a very small percentage of americans. aipac is not representing jews, they are representing neocons, rightwing republicans primarily! what the hell are they doing invading the democratic party?? i wish those spinless dems would stand up to them!!

Posted by: annie | Mar 13 2007 15:35 utc | 64

there seems to be an eruption of “denialist” global warming views in the zeitgeist recently. like many people, as a non-climatologist/atmospheric physicist, I rely on the consensus of experts to reveal what is most truthful about climate. and now i’m bloody confused. this nyt artical moderates the debate. but now i’m more confused. the 70 minute channel 4 ditty The Great Global Warming Swindle (available on bittorrent) adds even more confusion.
can somebody tell me how to think about global warming, once and for all?

Posted by: slothrop | Mar 13 2007 16:44 utc | 65

it’s already 76 degrees f here at noontime. normal max temp for this date between 1971-2000 was 54. may 13th was when the normal max over that same period turned to 76, so we are two months ahead of where we used to be. impossible to deny that it’s getting hot in here…

Posted by: b real | Mar 13 2007 17:11 utc | 66

honestly, i don’t know what to make of the gw arguments.
i guess i’ll just stick w/ the indisputable cars suck/pollution sucks view and let the experts find vindication of their lifestyles in the troposphere and in the ice-core samples.

Posted by: slothrop | Mar 13 2007 17:33 utc | 67

Slothrop @67
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to identify which info sources are legitimate and which are bar talk. I suggest that one starts their education with the IPCC framework as a base.
Just as there is a very small proportion of the jewish population that promotes Zion, there are only a very small (very, Very small) number of legitimate scientists who pooh-pooh Global Warming linked to man’s activities. There are a lot of silly magazine articles about the subject, but few are of serious scholastic quality. There are also many ideologues on the extreme right (in my opinion/experience) who deny warming and human activity links.
I teach physical geography, which includes studies of the atmosphere………
By the way, generating electricity by burning coal is by FAR the biggest source of greenhouse gases.
Good luck in your self-education.

Posted by: Jake | Mar 13 2007 17:58 utc | 68

monbiot helps a little.
thanks jake.

Posted by: slothrop | Mar 13 2007 18:02 utc | 69

incremental changes

Posted by: annie | Mar 13 2007 18:56 utc | 70

there is an interview w/sidel edmonds on this diary along w/the phone #’s and email of conyers and waxman wrt contacting them about hearings. i received positive responses from both their offices w/encouragement , that they had been receiving more calls that were having an impact.
it’s an important interview. hearings

Edmonds: The best thing they can do, and the time to do it is right now because we just released this petition, they were just served last week with this petition signed by 15,000 people and signed by 30 organizations, is for all your listeners to call Congressman Waxman’s office, both the committee’s office and his personal office, and demand – send letters, call, because calling is effective, send letters and emails, and say ‘We want you to come out publicly and commit to his hearing, and have this public hearing take place’ because they listen.

demand a public hearing
waxman
conyers (202) 225-5126
John.Conyers@mail.house.gov

Posted by: annie | Mar 13 2007 20:36 utc | 71

as usual I stepped in it. charges of antisemitism fly and I should say I am sorry and slink away. well, I don’t intend to.
If all americans or at least US citizens are to share guilt for the invasion of Iraq and all the other atrocities that are committed in our name I find it fair that jews share responsibility for the actions of their organizations such as AIPAC. Of all the anti war jews you know Annie, do any of them send money to Israel? Do they denounce AIPAC? From what I see and read, the only anti-Zionists you will find or read are in Israel.
to say that since there is a tiny percentage of Jewish people in the US they can’t have any real power is not realistic. There are only a few guards in a prison that holds several hundred or more prisoners with the ratio of guards to prisoners of maybe one to 50 or so. Does that mean the guards have no power?
gimme a freakin break. republicans are scum, democrats are weak kneed wimps, all politicians are crooks but jews are special and no one can say anything derogatory about them. Is that the way it has to be? Oh…..

Posted by: dan of steele | Mar 13 2007 21:40 utc | 72

to say that since there is a tiny percentage of Jewish people in the US they can’t have any real power is not realistic.
i think you totally misunderstood me! here is what i said
when you consider the percentage of jews in our population it is completely disproportionate to the influence of aipac!
i fixed my atrocious spelling so that is not an exact quote 😉
Do they denounce AIPAC
my friends? of course they do!! i think it has been a while since you visited the states. or the blue states.
but jews are special and no one can say anything derogatory about them.
you just can’t lump them all into one category politically. take these guys for example.
heavens, the most progressive jews are anti zionist. get real, chomsky isn’t an aberration in the jewish community, not for his politics anyway.
check out the other israel lobby
jews against the occupation
If all americans or at least US citizens are to share guilt for the invasion of Iraq and all the other atrocities that are committed in our name I find it fair that jews share responsibility for the actions of their organizations such as AIPAC.
so, all americans can share the guilt but all jews should share responsibility?
isn’t that a double standard? here is what i said
to think that every jew is somehow responsible is no more credible than thinking every person is ultimately responsible for the actions of their government
really, can you be totally responsible for something that is out of your power to control?
From what I see and read, the only anti-Zionists you will find or read are in Israel.
lol, you need to get out more dan.
listen, i know you are pissed at aipac, we all are. but you need to examine your instinct to direct that anger at all jews. the jewish population is as varied as ours. blaming all jews for the neocons and zionism is as inappropriate as blaming all americans for the gop.
you know i have given this a lot of thought because aipac was at the forefront of this reidentification of anti semitism to mean anti zionist. they can’t stand it when you use this term. this is the catch all w/having a state or country that is based on a religion.
damn, where’s malooga, he is much better at explaining this!
i think anti semitism is a tricky concept as is racism. neither are limited to people who are “against” a group of people. it is more an ability to designate or attribute characteristics to an entire group of people that exist only for certain members. the way i use the term zionist, i am referring to a political position, it assumes a state of mind. when you attribute a state of mind collectively to an entire group defined by their ethnicity i think it qualifies as a form of racism. jews, unlike other peoples, have a word defining a unique racism that specifically applies only to them..anti semite..
republicans are scum, democrats are weak kneed wimps, all politicians are crooks but jews are special and no one can say anything derogatory about them.
the big difference here dan is that people choose their political affiliation, it is not the way they came out of the womb.

Posted by: annie | Mar 13 2007 23:56 utc | 73

@JFL: Nice to see you back. Hadn’t seen you in here since the coup. Any news on that?

Posted by: PeeDee | Mar 14 2007 1:47 utc | 74

annie, I just look at the names of the people who are out there forming public opinion whether they be writers, journalists, corporate bigwigs, or congresscritters. Nearly everyone having a certain type of surname is repeating the same lies and advancing the same neocon policy, this is obvious to anyone who wants to look. Chomsky is the one person who opened my eyes to all this crap a long time ago when I watched, with my mouth hanging open, an interview of him on Slovenian TV. I would rank him with Machiavelli and Orwell. rather than being shocked by the words of these scribes, the elite use them as a “how to” guide. but I digress.
for every independent site you can find I can show you ten very mainstream sites that toe the line such as the group called pajamas media all the way to one of the most disgusting places imaginable, LGF. and this is all in the enlightened blogosphere. There is nothing on corporate media that is critical of Israel, ever. Anyone who dares point out the obvious is immediately labeled a nazi or kook or what usually happens, banished and shunned from the world of teevee.
I agree that I should get out more but I can assure you that I am not some bitter old guy writing hate and shaking my fist at the world. I do talk to a lot of people and find that most really don’t know about this stuff and furthermore don’t really give a crap either. most just repeat what is written on the side of the barn or remember hearing their parents read what was written on the side of barn, themselves having given up reading for video games, and live their lives without worrying at all about what is going to happen tomorrow. I envy them, ignorance is indeed bliss.
when you attribute a state of mind collectively to an entire group defined by their ethnicity i think it qualifies as a form of racism.
I simply do not agree. Gypsies are special, Mormons are special, Protestants are special. All groups of people have been hated and slaughtered by other groups of people. Just as public opinion has been steered toward hating and fearing all things Arab and/or Muslim now, that same public opinion has been used to the detriment of the groups I mentioned earlier as well as others such as Germans, Japanese, Russians, North Koreans, Vietnamese, and Mexicans. This has very little or nothing to do with race. In cases like what is happening in Palestine it is silly to say it is about race as they are semites on both sides of the separation fence.
It is not my habit to blame everyone for the actions of a few even though I am sure I do from time to time when I shake my head at “women” or “today’s MTV crowd”. But in this case, I am seeing a whole group of creative, intelligent, successful people willfully acting like lemmings running down to the sea. The few that are still standing at the top of the hill saying “heh, wait just a damn minute!” like Glenn Greenwald, are inaudible over the sound of the stampede.
/rant

Posted by: dan of steele | Mar 14 2007 2:52 utc | 75

Rgaip: ”…in these carvings we try to make on a site like our own i see real attempts at communication – i am not an obvious example – hatred has harvested too much in me to possess the distance that is required to live in this world, civilly.”
I think we all fight these seeds of hatred. I applaud you for turning this hatred into sympathy for the oppressed. I actually see love, not hatred, in your posts.
I seclude myself from civilization now for much of the same reasons, fearing my thoughts may yield utterances that are too insulting to others, thoughts that are too different from the mainstream thinking. And I do this with guilt of inactions when action and interaction with those around me would be nobler. As for just a simple example, a few years back, I quit attending our local Catholic Church, after being denied a request to temporarily use some of the facilities for special needs children for a couple of months. The pastor told me that the Church buildings and facilities were only for “members” of the parish to use. I responded quickly and angrily, saying clearly to the pastor “If Jesus were here now, he would burn this place down.” I walked out of the room and never returned to that parish. One doesn’t need to be a rocket scientist to understand what “Love Thy Neighbor” means. I actually have more in common with those needy children, children that others may call “slow” and “backwards”, than I do with those who lead of our society. But yet, would it not have been better if I stayed as a member of the parish? Maybe with repeated and gentle efforts I could have convinced this pastor of a hypocrisy unfitting for a church?
Rgaip: ”… to try to breath honourably in our age has become a real work & like the polish poet sd it takes more strength & talent to live one day decently than to write a thousand books.”
Those are wise words and well worth remembering. This brings to mind a similar thought expressed on a sign in front of a small church here in my rural County. The little sign reads: “Become the one you want others to be.” Such a task seems to become more difficult every day. If time permits, perhaps a journal posting of my experiences from just yesterday would illustrate the tolerance that I mustered to endure the day. It is amazing I am still sane. And yesterday was not all that terribly unusual or bad. Oh well, on second thought it was pretty bad, and some other time I may bore our Moon Bar patrons. But probably each of us could expound on the experiences of just one day, and look at how we acted and reacted to personal events. Perhaps even more important are our inactions whether from fear, laziness or whatever. Each of us would have an interesting and meaningful story.
Thank you, rgiap. This bar patron also appreciates your thoughts and emotions, maybe even more than you realize.

Posted by: Rick | Mar 14 2007 3:10 utc | 76

slothrop,
Jake’s take is worthy of serious consideration and research if one has questions as to the legitimacy of the global climate change data and evaluations.
A quick way to get a take on what is legit and what is bar talk is to do a quick search on the authors. Not to make ad hominem attacks but I have yet to find one anti-gw article who’s author isn’t associated with vested interests who profit from sustained abuse to the atmosphere and environment.
I’ve been reading science and nature for the last 16 years and watching it all unfold (it’s part of my bread and butter). The science is sound and the data is overwhelming in indicating a anthropogenically induced forcing on the world’s climate system. Not necessarily global warming, although that is the direction of the forcing, but undoubtably climate change. Part of the data confirms this in quantifying the occurrences and severity of extreme weather events. What b real is experiencing is real.

Posted by: Juannie | Mar 14 2007 3:11 utc | 77

Being a Zionist doesn’t imply that you support any of the radical right-wing policies currently being promulgated in its name. Domestically, I wish Walt, Mearsheimer, or whoever, would write a book outlining how it happened that the radical right commandeered am. policy toward israel, although most Jews are liberal.
That said, I think there are even more powerful ec. reasons for this bullshit, as Antifa notes on the other thread. So, an interesting question is why Jews are letting themselves take the hit for it. Power is best exercised behind the scenes. They have a public relations system from Hell – to go along w/their insane political programs, so I guess it all fits together 🙁

Posted by: jj | Mar 14 2007 3:54 utc | 78

Anyone who dares point out the obvious is immediately labeled a nazi or kook or what usually happens, banished and shunned from the world of teevee.
you didn’t mention the worst offender of this group, the self hating jew.

Posted by: annie | Mar 14 2007 3:55 utc | 79

thanx juannie.
seriously, gw is something too vast…I rely on some kind of consensus view to form an opinion, which was complicated by the channel 4 thingy.

Posted by: slothrop | Mar 14 2007 4:30 utc | 80

THE HANDWRITING ON THE WALL (my bold)
Al-Maliki tells aides U.S. benchmark deadline is June 30 or his ouster possible;
The Associated PressPublished: March 13, 2007
…………….

BAGHDAD: Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki fears the Americans will withdraw support for his government — effectively ousting him — if parliament does not pass a draft oil law by the end of June, close associates of the Iraqi leader told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
The legislature has not even taken up the draft measure for a fair distribution of the nation’s oil wealth — only one of several U.S. benchmarks that are now seen by al-Maliki, a hardline Shiite, as key to continued American support for his troubled government.
Beyond that, the al-Maliki associates told AP, American officials have informed the prime minister they want an Iraqi government in place by year’s end that would be acceptable to Iraq’s Sunni Arab neighbors, particularly Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt.
“They have said it must be secular and inclusive,” one al-Maliki associate said.
To that end, al-Maliki made an unannounced visit Tuesday to Ramadi, the Sunni insurgent stronghold, to meet with tribal leaders, the provincial governor and security chiefs in a bid to signal his willingness for reconciliation to end the bitter and bloody sectarian war that has riven Iraq for more than a year.
For its part, the U.S. military is speaking with great optimism about its efforts to turn Sunnis in volatile Anbar province away from the insurgency and its al-Qaida in Iraq allies.
Compounding al-Maliki’s fears about a withdrawal of American support were visits to Saudi Arabia by two key political figures in an admitted bid to win support for a major Iraqi political realignment. Saudi Arabia is a major U.S. ally and oil supplier.
Former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a Shiite, arrived in the Saudi capital Tuesday. Masoud Barzani, leader of Iraq’s largely autonomous Kurdish region, flew in a day earlier. Most Kurds are Sunni Muslims.
“Allawi is there to enlist support for a new political front that rises above sectarian structures now in place,” the former prime minister’s spokesman Izzat al-Shahbandar told AP.
Barzani spokesman Abdul-Khaleq Zanganah said the two had met in Kurdistan before traveling to Saudi Arabia for talks on forming a “national front to take over for the political bloc now supporting al-Maliki.”
It appears certain that the United States was informed about the Allawi and Barzani opening to the Saudis, who are deeply concerned that al-Maliki could become a puppet of Iran, the Shiite theocracy on Iraq’s eastern border. Tehran is seen as a threat to stability among the long-standing Sunni regimes throughout most of the Arab world and deeply at odds with the United States over Iran’s nuclear program and policy toward Israel.
Washington has been reported to be working more closely with Sunni Arab governments to encourage them to take a greater role in Iraq, particularly in reining in the Sunni insurgency that has killed thousands of U.S. soldiers and tens of thousands more Iraqi Shiites.
Washington was believed to be trying to win support for its mission in Iraq among the country’s Arab neighbors by assuring a greater future role for the Sunni minority that ran the country until the U.S. invasion ousted Saddam Hussein.
One al-Maliki confidant said the Americans in Baghdad had voiced displeasure with the prime minister’s government even though he has managed so far to blunt major resistance from the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia, to the joint U.S.-Iraqi security operation in the capital and its environs. The militia is the military wing of the political organization run by anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose political backing secured the premiership for al-Maliki.
“They have said they are frustrated that he has done nothing to oust the Sadrists, that the oil law has not moved forward, that there is no genuine effort on reconciliation and no movement on new regional elections,” said the official on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.
Passage of the oil law, which seeks a fair distribution of revenues among all Iraq’s sectarian and ethnic groups, has become a major issue for the United States, which had initially counted on financing Iraq’s post-invasion reconstruction with oil revenues.
But the decrepit oil infrastructure and violence have left the country producing oil at about the same levels as before the war, at best, and those figures are well below production before the first Gulf War which resulted in U.N. sanctions against the Iraqi oil industry.
The major Sunni bloc in parliament along with Allawi loyalists in the Shiite bloc are openly opposed the draft oil measure as drafted. Al-Maliki also has lost the backing of the Shiite Fadila Party, and independent Shiite members are split on the bill.
The al-Maliki associates said U.S. officials, who they would not name, had told the prime minister that President Bush was committed to the current government but that continued White House support depended on positive action on all the benchmarks — especially the oil law and sectarian reconciliation — by the close of this parliamentary session on June 30.
“Al-Maliki is committed to meeting the deadline because he is convinced he would not survive in power without U.S. support,” one of the associates said.
But standing in the way of forward movement is a recalcitrant Cabinet which al-Maliki has promised to reshuffle by the end of this week. So far, however, he is at loggerheads with the political groupings in parliament which are threatening to withdraw their support for the prime minister if he does not allow the blocs to name replacements for Cabinet positions.
The impasse amounts effectively to a threat to bring down the government if it does what the Americans reportedly are telling al-Maliki he must do to win continued U.S. backing.

Posted by: anna missed | Mar 14 2007 7:12 utc | 81

Settlers build on private Palestinian land: report

A third of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are built on private Palestinian land, an anti-settlement group said in a report on Wednesday.
The left-wing group Peace Now said 32.4 percent of the land held by Jewish settlements in the West Bank was privately owned by Palestinians.
An earlier report by the same group estimated the figure at 40 percent.
Peace Now said it based its new findings on the database of Israel’s military-run Civil Administration in the West Bank.
The Civil Administration said in response: “We were disappointed to see that despite the clarifications made by the Civil Administration … the most recent report is still inaccurate in many places, thus misrepresenting the reality concerning the status of the settlements.”
The Civil Administration disputed the way Peace Now defined the boundaries of many settlements.
Israel has long maintained that Jewish settlements, which are illegal under international law, were built on “state lands,” or areas not registered in anyone’s name, and that no private property was being seized for settlement building.
Peace Now said last month that Israel was building more than 3,000 homes in Jewish settlements in the West Bank, and that while the number of settlements did not grow in 2006, their population had increased over the year by 5 percent.

Posted by: b | Mar 14 2007 8:05 utc | 82

anna missed, i first read that article in the africa/middle herald tribune and posted it on an iraqi site and got a negative reaction from the gov trolls, something about ‘didn’t i predict a maliki oust for dec 06 last fall’ or some such. maybe they keep maliki on a friedman unit chin..
anyho..wsj just published this one extra paragraph along w/the AP version about an hr ago
“U.S. State Department spokesman Tom Casey denied the administration would withdraw support. “The notion that we have in any way, shape or form threatened to bring down his government over this law is simply untrue,” he said in Washington.”
who says you bring down the government when you switch puppets?
meanwhile..
i wonder what sort of oil law allawi would approve of and if this is a bait and switch.
It is an open secret that the US has pushed heavily for the Iraqi oil and gas law in its current form, which the current government has endorsed. If the speculation is true that the US is interested in a new Allawi-led government, it may find that its interests clash yet again with the government of Iraq.

Posted by: annie | Mar 14 2007 14:29 utc | 83

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