This has been the fifth attack on a rehabilitaion center in Ciudad Juarez. fib
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Arrest over Mexican drug murders
A senior member of a Mexican drug cartel has been arrested on suspicion of involvement in the murders of 17 people at a rehab centre, reports say.
Jose Rodolfo Escajeda, a suspected hitman and drug smuggler, was held in connection with the murders in the city of Juarez, near the border with Texas.
He has long been on wanted lists held by both the Mexican government and the US Drug Enforcement Administration.
Meanwhile, a state politician and his family were killed in Tabasco state.
The bodies of Jose Francisco Fuentes - a state congressional candidate - his wife and two young sons were found with many bullet wounds at their house in the state capital, Villahermosa, according to state Attorney General Rafael Gonzalez Lastra.
Authorities in the state have in recent days arrested gunmen suspected of working for Mexico's notorious Gulf drug cartel
Turf wars
According to Mexican media reports, Mr Escajeda was arrested by Mexican troops on Friday.
Thought to be a senior figure in the Juarez cartel, he is suspected of involvement in the attack last week in which gunmen stormed into a drug treatment clinic, lined patients up against a wall and killed at least 17 of them.
The BBC's Stephen Gibbs, in Mexico, says the attack shocked even the violence-weary residents of Ciudad Juarez, where there have been an average of 10 murders every day this year.
Juarez is the setting of a vicious turf war, principally between two gangs - the Juarez cartel, and the Sinaloa cartel, which is led by Mexico's most wanted man and reported billionaire, Joaquin Guzman.
The gangs are fighting for control of the local drug market, and smuggling routes into the United States.
About 1,400 people have died in Juarez's drug violence this year.
Thousands of extra police and troops have been deployed in Ciudad Juarez to try to stem the violence.
More than 13,000 people have been killed since the Mexican government ordered the military to take the offensive against the drug gangs in 2006.
Capitalism: A Love Story
(Documentary) An Overture Films release of a Paramount Vantage, Overture Films presentation in association with the Weinstein Co., of a Dog Eat Dog production. (International sales: Paramount Vantage, Los Angeles.) Produced by Michael Moore, Anne Moore. Executive producers, Kathleen Glynn, Bob Weinstein, Harvey Weinstein. Co-producers, Rod Birleson, John Hardesty. Directed, written by Michael Moore. With: Michael Moore, Frank Moore. By LESLIE FELPERIN
By returning to his roots, professional gadfly Michael Moore turns in one of his best films with "Capitalism: A Love Story." Pic’s target is less capitalism qua capitalism than the banking industry, which Moore skewers ruthlessly, explaining last year’s economic meltdown in terms a sixth-grader could understand. That said, there’s still plenty here to annoy right-wingers, as well as those who, however much they agree with Moore’s politics, just can’t stomach his oversimplification, on-the-nose sentimentality and goofball japery. Whether "Capitalism" matches "Fahrenheit 9/11" or underperforms like Sicko" will depend on how much workers of the world are ready to unite behind the message.
Pic reaped mostly ecstatic applause at its first press screening in Venice — no great surprise, given the largely leftist persuasion of film-fest auds, especially in Europe. Still, "Capitalism’s" worldview is resolutely U.S.-centric, apart from the odd approving mention of some foreign nation. Nevertheless, pic is likely to make considerably more offshore, where "socialism" isn’t considered a cuss word, than at home.(...)"
Hitchens writes from my native city in my native country and it is tough not to be proud again. fib
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Leszek Kolakowski, 1927-2009.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, July 20, 2009, at 12:26 PM ET
WROCLAW, Poland—It was distinctly eerie to learn of the death of professor Leszek Kolakowski just 15 minutes before entering a room in which I was to give a short lecture on his influence. But it was also rather inspiring to be in a country that made the passing of a public intellectual into the front-page headline of every national daily paper the following day.
"(...) Apart from these big-picture analyses, it is important to catalogue all of the differences on a more specific level, as well. For example, yesterday, the Huffington Post took a look at the differences between spending on the "drug war" from 2009 to 2010. Again, the results were minimal (more in the extended entry):
In the 2010 budget, prevention takes a 10.6 percent hit while domestic law enforcement gets a boost of 2.3 percent, with "interdiction" (military and police actions designed to stem the flow of drugs into and about the country) gaining 4.4 percent. On the positive side of the ledger, treatment shows a 4.4 percent increase. And what of the never-ending seesaw battle between supply and demand initiatives? Unfortunately, demand reduction efforts (education, prevention) are down 0.8 percent, while (generally futile) supply reduction initiatives (enforcement, burning or poisoning crops) gets a 2.7 percent bump.
In terms of actual spending figures, here is the breakdown from the Obama administration itself:
Interdiction: $4.004 billion (2010) vs. $3.836 billion (2009) Domestic Law Enforcement: $3.737 billion (2010) vs. $3.654 billion (2009) Drug Treatment: $3.566 billion (2010) vs. $3.416 billion (2009) Drug Prevention: $1.602 billion (2010) vs. $1.791 billion (2009) International Enforcement: $2.160 billion (2010) vs. $2.174 billion (2009)
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California swine flu cases derived from Ohio strains? That's what Sandy at Digital Biology is suggesting from her analyses.......
Did the California H1N1 swine flu come from Ohio? It looks like the California flu strains may have come from Ohio
Brandon Keim on The Language of Horses In a few slender leg bones and fragments of milk-stained pottery, archaeologists recently found evidence of one of the more important developments in human history: the domestication of horses. Unearthed from a windswept plain in Kazakhstan, the remains were about 5500 years old, and suggested that a nomadic people now called the Botai had learned to ride a creature that had captured mankind's imagination thousands of years earlier.
Steele's "Weak Reviews" I'm still trying to fully digest the implications of Specter's Switch, but there was something in one of the Politico articles on the defection that I can't resist commenting on now: In 2001, Republicans still had the House and...
What's Bachmann said now? The crazy lady of Minnesota politics has done it again. In case you don't actually want to see and hear this lunatic, here's what she says: I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine...
Show Me the Pony So, the President gave some sort of speech to a bunch of smart people yesterday (video, transcript), and hearts are a-flutter all over the science blogosphere, as President Obama promises great things for science: We double the budget of key...
A New Look and Feel for My Blog ... but only subtly different. You may have noticed that all of the Science Blogs (or almost all) have changed over to a new template. My understanding is that this is mainly an underlying technical upgrade, and no so much a resurfacing, but you will...
Let's twit!
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The Only Road Is Practice Michael A. Lebowitz
I am certain that, like many people these days, the first thing on your mind is the question of the referendum on reform of the Bolivarian Constitution—what the defeat means and where do we go from here. What I want to talk about today is not on that topic specifically, but it is related. Some people have said lately that they don’t know what the word socialism means. That was certainly a question raised about the proposed reforms. There were people who were determined to generate confusion and fear, and they were asking, what is all this talk about socialism in the constitution? Are we talking about Stalinism? Are we talking about an authoritarian society?
June 2008
The Guerrilla in Colombia: An Interview with Rodrigo Granda, Member of the FARC-EP International Commission Rodrigo Granda interviewed by Jean Batou
Rodrigo Granda is a member of and the leading international spokesperson for the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia-Ejército del Pueblo, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army (FARC–EP). His name gained global prominence in December 2004 when he was kidnapped in Venezuela and handed over to Colombian authorities by a number of Venezuelan National Guard soldiers seeking a reward placed on his head by the Colombian government. At the time of his capture Granda was attending a meeting of the Bolivarian Peoples Movements in Caracas. Granda’s kidnapping in Venezuela at the instigation of the Colombian government created an international dispute between Venezuela and Colombia. He was released in 2007 in response to pressures exerted on the Colombian government by French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
March 2008
Socialist Strategies in Latin America Claudio Katz
The Latin American left is once again discussing the paths to socialism. The correlation of forces has changed through popular action, the crisis of neoliberalism, and U.S. imperialism’s loss of offensive capability. It is no longer relevant to juxtapose a revolutionary political period of the past with a conservative present. The social weakness of the industrial working class does not impede anti-capitalist progress, which depends on the exploited and the oppressed uniting in common struggle.
September 2007
Dual Power in the Venezuelan Revolution George Ciccariello-Maher
Too often, the Bolivarian Revolution currently underway in Venezuela is dismissed by its critics—on the right and left—as a fundamentally statist enterprise. We are told it is, at best, a continuation of the corrupt, bureaucratic status quo or, at worst, a personalistic consolidation of state power in the hands of a single individual at the expense of those “checks and balances” traditionally associated with western liberal democracies. These perspectives are erroneous, since they cannot account for what have emerged as the central planks of the revolutionary process. I will focus on the most significant of these planks: the explosion of communal power.
Our Summer 2007 Issue
Revolt in Latin America
July-August 2007
New Wings for Socialism Michael A. Lebowitz
Seventeen years ago, in 1990, I began an essay with a poem of Bertolt Brecht. It was a poem about a man in Europe in the Middle Ages who put on "things that looked like wings," climbed to the roof of a church, and tried to fly. He crashed, and the bishop who passed by said, "No one will ever fly."
April 2007
Our February 2007 Issue
Brazil Under Lula: An MR Survey
February 2007
Socialism and the Knowledge Economy: Cuban Biotechnology by Agustín Lage Dávila
As authoritatively stated in an editorial in Nature, vol. 436, issue 7049 (July 2005), “Cuba has developed a considerable [scientific] research capability—perhaps more so than any other developing country outside of Southeast Asia.” Cuba has been especially successful in establishing a biotechnology industry that has effectively introduced drugs and vaccines of its own, along with a nascent pharmaceutical industry that has achieved considerable success in exports. Its agriculture and health sectors have been strong beneficiaries of its scientific research. As Nature observed: “It is worth asking how Cuba did it, and what lessons other countries might draw from it.” Indeed, the Cuban case is all the more surprising since it is not only a poor country, but one that has been confronted for decades by a ruthless embargo imposed by the United States, which has been extended to scientific knowledge. Moreover, much of Cuba’s scientific progress has occurred in the decade and a half since the fall of the Soviet Union, which previously had aided it economically and technologically.
December 2006
Prevention and Solidarity: Democratizing Health in Venezuela Claudia Jardim
Halfway up the hill, in a semi-finished, rustic house, a sheet divides the consulting room from the treatment room. Rarely is there a need to identify oneself upon arrival. “How are you Mr. Antonio, has your pressure decreased?” says the fifty-three-year-old Venezuelan nurse Carlota Núñez. Antonio goes in and, little by little, the inhabitants of the neighborhood Las Terrazas de Oropeza Castillo, municipality Sucre, Caracas move through the waiting room.
January 2005
After the Referendum: Venezuela Faces New Challenges Marta Harnecker
With President Hugo Chávez’s victory in the August 15 referendum, the Venezuelan opposition suffered the third great defeat in its struggle to end his government. The unprecedented recall referendum ratified Chávez’s presidency by a margin of two million votes and was declared valid unanimously by the hundreds of international observers who scrutinized it.
November 2004
The Greening of Venezuela David Raby
With all the hullabaloo about Chávez’s alleged authoritarianism, opposition strikes and demonstrations, and a possible recall referendum, you could be forgiven for thinking that nothing constructive is being done in Venezuela and that the nation’s energies are entirely absorbed by political mud-slinging. Indeed, that’s just what the corporate media would like you to think.
Haiti Matters! Charles McCollester
Arriving at the Hotel Oloffson in Port-au-Prince on the eve of the new year, 2004, the bicentennial of Haiti’s independence, tension was thick in the air. Street violence was mounting but still mostly under control. Clashes took place between opposition demonstrators and police or between anti- and pro-Aristide forces. Since the hotel is near the university and its hospital, we witnessed several groups of 100 to 200 anti-Aristide student demonstrators jogging in cadence toward police with signs and banners shouting slogans—A bas Aristide! Down with Aristide! Since my previous trip in June, anti-Aristide slogans had blossomed in some areas of Port-au- Prince, while pro-Aristide graffiti retained its hold in the poorest districts, smaller towns, and rural areas. Our visit to the towns of Fondwa and Jacmel in the south was eventful in the normal Haitian way, but peaceful. Back in the capital, at the end of our five-day trip up-country, cars were being torched, boulders rolled on roads, and gas stations and banks closed in antigovernment actions.
September 2004
Cuba: The Next Forty-Five Years? István Mészáros
This year Cuba will be celebrating the forty-fifth anniversary of its victorious revolution: a great historic achievement. And when we bear in mind that the Cuban revolution—the long sustained action of a nation of just eleven million people—survived for forty-five years against all odds, successfully confronting the declared enmity, the U.S.-dictated international political encirclement and economic blockade, as well as the ever renewed attempts to subvert and overthrow the post-revolutionary order by the world’s most preponderant economic and military power, even this simple fact puts forcefully into relief the magnitude and the lasting significance of the ongoing Cuban intervention in the historical process of our time. We are all contemporaries to an achievement whose reverberations reach well beyond the confines of the tendentiously propagandized “American Hemisphere,” offering its hopeful message to the rest of the world.
January 2004
U.S. Offensive in Latin America: Coups, Retreats, and Radicalization JAMES PETRAS
The worldwide U.S. military-political offensive is manifest in multiple contexts in Latin America. The U.S. offensive aims to prop up decaying client regimes, destabilize independent regimes, pressure the center-left to move to the right, and destroy or isolate the burgeoning popular movements challenging the U.S. empire and its clients. We will discuss the particular forms of the U.S. offensive in each country, and then explore the specific and general reasons for the offensive in contemporary Latin America. In the concluding section we will discuss the political alternatives in the context of the U.S. offensive.
May 2002
The Argentine Crisis JOSEPH HALEVI
Historically, monetary crises have been related to hyperinflation, from which Argentina has often suffered. Hyperinflation is generally viewed as a calamity leading to the destruction of the capitalist monetary system of circulation. In the present Argentine crisis, however, there has been a complete implosion of economic and monetary relations due to hyperdeflation. This is the strangulation of the economy by the requirement to pay an unsustainable debt.
April 2002
Argentina: An Alternative Proposal to Overcome the Crisis LUIS BECERRA, ET AL.
“There is no alternative” has always been wishful thinking at best, at worst a deliberate lie, on the part of the ruling powers. From out of the ruins to which neoliberalism has brought Argentina, its onetime much-heralded model of success, now come the unsilenced voices of radical economists. We present here an English translation of a proposed alternative solution to the Argentine crisis. The proposal was set out on January 24, 2002, by Argentine economists as a starting point for discussion within the emerging popular movement.—The Editors
The Unemployed Workers Movement in Argentina JAMES PETRAS
Latin America has witnessed three waves of overlapping and interrelated social movements over the last twenty-five years. The first wave, roughly from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s, was largely composed of what were called “the new social movements.” They included human rights, ecology, feminist, and ethnic movements as well as Non-Government Organizations (NGOs). Their leadership was largely lower middle class professionals, and their policies and strategies revolved around challenging the military and civilian authoritarian regimes of the time.
January 2002
All material © copyright 2009 by Month
David Muhammad, New America Media
Four Oakland Police Department officers killed, another shot, and a young assailant dead. This is tragic and unfortunate. Period.
I begin this way to make sure that this message is not lost as I also explain how so many others in Oakland saw this story. I received a barrage of phone calls, text messages and e-mails shortly after the initial shooting of two officers, and the messages kept pouring in after three more officers were shot and the suspect killed. Every one of the people I spoke with, young and old, all merged this tragic incident with the killing of Oscar Grant on New Year's Day by a BART police officer.
It is quite possible that Lovelle Mixon had no thoughts of Oscar Grant. Lovelle was a parolee out from prison for assault with a deadly weapon. He had apparently violated his parole, and a warrant for his arrest was issued. Maybe he just didn't want to go back to prison. But in the minds of many Oaklanders, the two horrific shootings - that of Oscar Grant and that of five Oakland officers - were connected.
After the announcement of the death of the fourth officer, I received one very disturbing text message from a young man who was incensed by the Oscar Grant murder: "Us: 4 - Them: 1."
I was born and raised in Oakland. I grew up, like most of my friends, with a fair dose of fear, distrust and animosity toward the police. I was a teenager in 1988 when NWA released its controversial hit, "F- the Police." One night that same year, I was hanging out with a very large group of friends and fellow junior high school students. There were about 25 of us standing on the corner when, unbeknown to me, four of the guys tried to take the car of a couple who had pulled up in a nearby parking lot. Now, I participated in my fair share of delinquent acts as a juvenile, but this crime I wanted no part in. I walked off with my cousin.
While walking home, a police car pulled up alongside of us - I immediately ran off. I sprinted through several backyards, jumping over fences and leaping over bushes. I ran right into a waiting cop on the other side of a fence. It was pitch black, in the back of an apartment complex, and I had angered the pursuing officers. I stopped and put my hands up - I anticipated being badly beaten.
The officer slammed me onto a bed of rocks, busting open my lip. He stepped on my neck with his boot, and when his partner arrived, he stomped on my back. And though that was clearly excessive force, when I was then picked up, handcuffed and led to the car, I was astonished that it ended there. The officers took me to the couple who had almost been carjacked, and when they said I was not involved, I was let go. (Ironically, one of the handcuffs wouldn't come off, so the officers took me to the fire department to have it cut off before they drove me home).
I had many friends who were not nearly as fortunate as I. Oakland is a town long known for the animosity between citizens and police. Such strained relations gave birth to what the city is best known for in many parts of the country - the Black Panther Party. And it was that spirit of the Panthers that had so many people I spoke with connecting what Lovelle Mixon did to Oscar Grant.
Many in Oakland are still furious that three months after Johannes Mehserle killed Grant, he has not been convicted and sent to prison. The death of four police officers, who seemed to have been honorable servants of public safety, has the potential to fuel more disdain among cops for the black community. This will, of course, create greater distrust of police within the community. It can become like the deadly gang rivalries that these same officers try to stop.
A leading cause of street violence is the lack of trust between the community and law enforcement. The tension in Oakland since the murder of Oscar Grant had amassed into a powder keg, and it ignited. Whether Mixon lit it intentionally we may never know, but it was lit. And now, before it gets even worse, a deliberate, public, sincere healing is needed in Oakland.
Oakland native David Muhammad now co-directs the juvenile detention system in Washington, D.C., as chief of committed services, Department of Youth and Rehabilitative Services.
This article appeared on page H - 3 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Libertarian Party motto: "Smaller Government, Less Taxes, More Freedom"
"Lower Taxes" ..."working families struggle to pay their taxes" www.lp.org/issues/taxes
Libertarian Party: How Can We Cut Taxes?
... politicians spend millions to subsidize tobacco farmers...
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Goes After Farm Subsidies President-elect Obama gave an example of one piece of wasteful government spending: farm subsidies.Obama cited a GAO report that said from 2003 to 2006, "millionaire farmers" got $49 million in farm subsidies despite earning more than the $2.5 million cutoff in annual income. "If it's true," Obama said, "it's a prime example of waste."
"More Freedom"
Libertarian Party: Freedom of Speech, Against Censorship"We defend the rights of individuals to unrestricted freedom of speech, freedom of the press and the right of individuals to dissent from government itself....We oppose any abridgment of the freedom of speech through government censorship, regulation or control of communications media."
http://www.lp.org/issues/freedom-of-speech
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Freedom of Speech, Against Censorship
President Obama is committed to creating the most open and accessible administration in American history. To send questions, comments, concerns, or well-wishes to the President or his staff, please go to website: http://www.WhiteHouse.gov/Contact/
"Removing the troops from Iraq"
"Immigration" http://www.lp.org/issues/immigration
Libertarian Party: "For those workers already in the United States illegally, we can avoid "amnesty" and still offer a pathway out of the underground economy. Newly legalized workers can be assessed fines and back taxes and serve probation befitting the misdemeanor they've committed. They can be required to take their place at the back of the line should they eventually apply for permanent residency."
President Obama: http://www.whitehouse.gov/agenda/immigration/
Learn more about the ACLU’s ongoing efforts to document, expose and end government wrongdoing. Help support this important work.
© ACLU, 125 Broad Street, 18th Floor, New York, NY 10004
By W. David Gardner
InformationWeek
March 3, 2009 04:54 PM
One of Washington's worst-kept secrets -- that Julius Genachowski would be the next Federal Communications Commission chairman -- ended Tuesday when President Barack Obama formally nominated Genachowski for the position.
After Obama won the presidential election, Genachowski was an immediate odds-on favorite for the FCC position given his background that is steeped in technology and that included a stint as legal counsel to ex-FCC chairman Reed Hundt.
The new chairman-designate also has close ties to Obama. They were undergraduates at Columbia University at the same time and became friends later at Harvard Law School, where Obama blossomed as a top student and began to show the political savvy that later would carry him all the way to the White House.
Genachowski is something of a double threat, having held important positions in official Washington and in business as well. Before the FCC, Genachowski clerked for Supreme Court Justice David Souter and, earlier, for Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, who was retired at the time.
Genachowski has solid liberal credentials and his appointment was hailed by Gigi B. Sohn, president and co-founder of Public Knowledge, a prominent Washington public interest group. She said, "I am certain that he will seek to restore public confidence in an agency that has had a long history of opaqueness, industry capture, and a lack of data-driven policymaking."
Noting that she has known Genachowski for 15 years, Sohn cited Genachowski's familiarity and comfort level in both government affairs and business.
On the business side, Genachowski held senior executive positions at IAC/InterActiveCorp, joining the firm shortly after CEO Barry Diller founded it. Genachowski has also been a board member ofExpedia (NSDQ: EXPE), Hotels.com, Hotwire, TripAdvisor, Ticketmaster, and Ask.com. In addition, he has also been a principal in venture capital firms Rock Creek Ventures and LaunchBox Digital.
Drug wars near and far
Sunday, March 1, 2009
"For us, the only action we have is to maintain pressure against the drug traffickers and act against their crops, harvests, labs, goods and continue this frontal fight."
Colombia Vice President Francisco Santos, on the need for Colombia to receive foreign aid to continue its war on drugs.
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"It's high time to replace an ineffective strategy with more humane and efficient drug policies."
Written by former Presidents Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil, César Gaviria of Colombia, and Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico, suggesting abandoning the war on drugs and focusing on prevention and education.
"I think the outcome would be very healthy for California and California's economy."
Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, about his proposed legislation to legalize and tax marijuana.
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"The last thing our society needs is yet more legal intoxicants."
John Lovell, who represents the California Peace Officers' Association, California Police Chiefs Association and California Narcotic Officers' Association, and opposes Ammiano's bill.
"We need to stop the prosecutions, bring the prisoners home, and begin working to eliminate the conflict between state and federal medical marijuana laws."
Steph Sherer, executive director of Americans for Safe Access, the nation's largest medical cannabis advocacy organization.
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http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/03/01/IN7S1648B2.DTL
This article appeared on page H - 4 of the San Francisco Chronicle
(...)
"
Potential clashes
The BBC's Middle East correspondent Tim Franks says the relationship between the US and Israel may become a little less warm than it was under the Bush administration.
American diplomacy may sound a new tone with stronger condemnation of Israeli settlement building in the West Bank, as well as greater pragmatism in dealing with the reality of Hamas's control of the Gaza Strip, he adds.
During Mrs Clinton's visit, Israeli warplanes bombed smuggling tunnels on the border between Gaza and Egypt, injuring six people according to Palestinian medical sources.
On Monday, a rocket was fired from the Gaza Strip at the city of Ashkelon. There were no reports of injury or damage.
Also on Monday, the Israeli government lodged an official complaint with the United Nations about the continued rocket fire from Gaza.
"The government of Israel will continue to safeguard its citizens and will do everything in its power to ensure that the situation in the south will not go back to what it was before December 2008," the letter read.
"Israel will not endure and will respond in kind to attacks against its citizens."
The Israeli military says 130 rockets and mortars have been fired from Gaza since each side adopted unilateral ceasefires in January.
Israel has launched a series of bombing raids on alleged arms smuggling operations and has kept tight curbs on the entry of goods into the heavily-populated coastal strip.
This article is long and pedantic. But when we are through we shall be even more entititled to forgetting him, and Cheney. (I did not say "forgiving"). fib
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Summary: In recent weeks, the media have repeatedly indulged President Bush and Vice President Cheney through various interview stops on their Bush legacy tour, utterly failing to push back against statements that were demonstrably false or highly disputable. Media Matters has reviewed interviews given by Bush and Cheney since the November 4 election and has identified numerous instances in which interviewers have failed to challenge false or debatable statements; these failures span a variety of issues, including Hurricane Katrina, prewar Iraq intelligence, national security, and the economy."
[Cross-Posted at Library Grape.]
As to the Bush administration's illegal excesses over the last eight years, there are a few salient options: (1) let bygones be bygones; (2) sic prosecutors after the lawbreakers; or (3) form up a South Africa-style Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
I am starting to lean toward option three. It would have the benefit of partially muting the "Witch hunt!" wing of the naysayers and, above all else, have the power to bring to light all of the illegal things that have been done in our name over the last eight years.
Here's where the action comes in. Representative John Conyers has introduced legislation to create a Truth Commission:
There is established the National Commission on Presidential War Powers and Civil Liberties (hereinafter in this Act referred to as the "Commission") to investigate the broad range of policies of the Administration of President George W. Bush that were undertaken under claims of unreviewable war powers, including detention by the United States Armed Forces and the intelligence community, the use by the United States Armed Forces or the intelligence community of enhanced interrogation techniques or interrogation techniques not authorized by the Uniform Code of Military Justice, "ghosting" or other policies intended to conceal the fact that an individual has been captured or detained, extraordinary rendition, domestic warrantless electronic surveillance, and other policies that the Commission may determine to be relevant to its investigation (hereinafter in this Act referred to as "the activities").
To date, Conyers' bill has only received 12 co-sponsors. We need to get the word out to Congress that Conyers' bill is important and has our support. If you have a few minutes, please write or call your Congressperson today to express your support for the Conyers bill: H.R. 104.
Please call your representatives in Congress today in support of a new legislative proposal for peace in Gaza:
http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/CenterDoug/gGxFQy/commentary#comments
It is very very important! Exercise your electoral power and give real voice to the humanitarian will of us Americans.
Our new SOS may well be well informed of the will of the American people and our determination to obtain a peaceful coexistence of all the peoples in that region. This just peace is possible and necessary. No need to recall Bible now for historical evidence to the contrary. There has been peaceful life in that region as well. Let's learn from peace, not war.
As an American I want Israel to be an ally that the World respects. The sooner this new terrible war is over the better for Israel's reputation and standing. This war has been based on some error of judgment among politicians striving for power, it was well calculated but in all counts is a loss for everybody. Hear both sides of the conflict, which is not the aim of the MSMs (Main Stream Media). How does this War help Israel's safety in the long run?
Please call! This peace is really in your hands and your voice.
Thank you. fib
The recent editorial by George Will should serve as a shot across the bow for those of us who have been wondering how the Republican Party will try to sell itself in the future, and it makes some valid points. Anyone who has followed the news sometime in the past few decades knows that liability judgments in this country can get out of control.
What George Will doesn't need to say is that in the past few years, with substantial political control, the Republicans have appeared to put themselves into the lead in trying to do something about it. Left to their own devices, the Republicans will say that liability is driving health care costs out of control and making American business uncompetitive, and that only their party has the common sense and anti-government rebelliousness to bring it under control. For this reason it is crucial that Democrats get out ahead of this issue.
Let's start by pointing out that the prevalent Republican idea of capping damages at a fixed dollar amount is really aimed at helping large organizations and wealthy people. It doesn't improve the way in which the damages and the theory of liability is determined. If someone slips on your steps or takes exception to something you said in a town meeting, a $500,000 cap on noneconomic damages isn't going to help you.
Besides which, some of the worst routine injustices involve economic damages - especially, wild theories of lost pay. A person is fired by a school and two years later the taxpayers are told they need to pay two years' back salary for work never done. Or a group of lunatics takes down the World Trade Center and while the theory of liability is that "you can't put a price on life", it immediately proceeds to do so - provided that the price on life is different for different people according to guesswork about what they might have made in salary. I think that in general it can't be justice to assess full compensatory payment to people for work not done. Instead we should recognize the reality of noneconomic damages - real pain and suffering and death - and we should not be shy to set statuatory values on them that are the same for all people, rich and poor. The rich can afford extra life insurance. We should not compensate for "lost wages" except for the reasonably expected length of the temporary disruption in a person's life from a wrongful dismissal, or the lingering marginal effect of a blacklist.
We also should focus on abolishing theories that demand people to treat one another like fools, or to be responsible for preventing one another from acting stupidly. We should demand that victims shoulder the full risk of interacting with the natural environment when they are outside, and that they can't hold building and business owners to blame who have complied with all the vast number of building codes and ordinances that might be relevant to a risky situation. Even if it is a good idea to demand that employers insure workers against injuries suffered on the job without the employer violating any laws or standards, it surely would be far more efficient to mandate this through good medical coverage than by arguing each case in court.
I may well have committed errors of judment in the above discussion - even in theory, it will by no means easy to truly fix America's liability system rather than just using caps and date limits to keep it corraled. It will probably require many separate, detailed pieces of legislation that could easily be corrupted by special interests. But if the Democrats can do it then they will make a saner, more efficient America, and as reward they will be ready to win one of the ideological battlegrounds of the next election.
"There is one president at a time."
That is the mantra from the Obama transition team whenever it is confronted with an issue on which it would rather not comment.
It annoys senior Democrats like Representative Barney Frank, who said "that seriously overstates the number of presidents we have".
And Mr Obama's refusal to make any substantive comment on the situation in Gaza has also threatened to lose him support in the Arab world.
But the US constitution makes it pretty clear who is in charge at the moment and until 20 January, that person is George W Bush.
Power vacuum
Mr Obama does not have the legal authority to back his words with actions; he does not have an administration in place and he risks complicating what has otherwise been a smooth transition process if he decides to take on the presidential mantle before he is sworn in.
Yet it is not quite as simple as that, of course.
There is a power vacuum in Washington at the moment - as there always is in the waning weeks of any administration.
But so profound is this one that the Obama team decided to raise the president-elect's profile in the weeks after his election.
He reassured financial markets that he was working behind the scenes on a far-reaching economic stimulus package.
When Mr Obama arrived in Washington, his first appointment was with the House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, because as he said "the business of the people cannot wait".
He has made statements on the economy, the carmakers' bail-out, and the attacks in Mumbai - so why so little on Gaza?
Well, with the exception of Mumbai, he has spoken only about domestic issues - seen as fair game for an incoming president.
The attacks in India were far more clear-cut than the turmoil in Gaza.
They were an unusual event which presented no lingering policy issues and required no continuing diplomacy.
And that is key.
Mr Obama has reiterated that it is President Bush who is responsible for American diplomacy.
"When it comes to foreign affairs it is particularly important to adhere to the principle of one president at a time," he said.
"There are delicate negotiations taking place right now and we can't have two voices coming out of the United States when you have so much at stake."
Changing landscape
Gaza is a political minefield for Mr Obama.
If he makes a statement that suggests he would pursue a different Middle East policy from that of the Bush team, it would pull the rug from under the current administration's diplomatic efforts in the region.
It would also cost him Republican goodwill at home if he were to undermine President Bush in that way.
If he issues a statement which puts him in lock step with the Bush team's approach, then he loses flexibility when the issue arrives in his in-tray in two weeks time.
Whatever he says now will be regarded as policy, but the political landscape in the Middle East could be quite different when he is sworn in.
It may be that events on the ground create overwhelming pressure on Mr Obama to make a more substantive statement.
If so, he will have to weigh up the diplomatic and political damage done by saying little, against the damage done by saying something which will inevitably be condemned by one of the players in the region - and could come back to haunt him.
In fact, nothing he has said on the Middle East in the past has been significantly out of step with President Bush's policies.
Visiting the Israeli town of Sderot in July, he suggested that he too would respond if rockets were being fired at his house.
He has also spoken about the problem of negotiating with Hamas when it is "not representative of a nation state, does not recognise [Israel's] right to exist, has consistently used terror as a weapon and is deeply influenced by other countries".
However, he has always been careful to avoid definitive statements which lock him into a particular course of action.
All recent presidents have made some kind of policy shift in their efforts to find peace in the Middle East - President Bush was the first to call openly for a two-state solution, for example.
But there is very little political advantage for Barack Obama in revealing his hand before he sits at the table for real.
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