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Posted by Harkavy at 10:08 AM, March 27, 2008
Today, Basra. Tomorrow, Baghdad.
The complex civil war in Iraq, unleashed by our ill-advised invasion five years ago and widely predicted before that but ignored by the Bush regime, is heating up as spring heats up the desert country.
And what's happening in Basra right now — Shiite factions fighting one another and fighting U.S.-backed Sunnis — gets right to the heart of the matter: oil.
The battle now is in oil-rich southern Iraq — aside from the continuing suicide bombings in Baghdad and the growing menace of a full-fledged Turkish-Kurdish war in northern Iraq.
What's happening in Basra is just a sign of things to come in Baghdad, if and when the U.S. pulls out. The suicide bombers will drop what they're doing now in Baghdad and take up arms in full-scale war.
Go back almost a year, to April 2007, and you'll see what I mean. In mid-April last year, Baghdad was trying to endure an incredible number of suicide bombings. As an April 18, 2007, BBC story described it:
Television pictures showed a blasted scene littered with blackened and twisted wreckage.
One witness told the Reuters news agency that many of the victims were women and children.
"I saw dozens of dead bodies," the man said. "Some people were burned alive inside minibuses. Nobody could reach them after the explosion.
"There were pieces of flesh all over the place."
Ahmed Hameed, a shopkeeper in the area said: "The street was transformed into a swimming pool of blood."
Beirut's Daily Star reported at the time:
One man waving his arms in the air screamed hysterically: "Where's Maliki? Let him come and see what is happening here."
A year later, where is Prime Minister Nouri Maliki? He's in Basra, where the fight over oil is now taking place. If the Basra situation degenerates, Iraq won't remain a single country. Baghdad and the central provinces don't have the oil; it's only in the northern and southern regions, where war is either raging or imminent.
Dick Cheney got his wish: We're fighting for oil, and all the rest is bullshit.
Keep in mind that Basra is now exploding only after the British handed over control of that southern city to Iraqi forces.
What do you think will happen in Baghdad when we pull out?
Whether Maliki will survive is questionable. He's liable to get blown up while he's in Basra. His chances of survival are about as good as Benazir Bhutto's were.
Even before the 2003 U.S. invasion, the Pentagon was warned by one of its own agencies, the Naval Postgraduate School, of the civil war. Naturally, that went unreported at the time. As I wrote in May 2005:
Back in the summer of 2002, when Bush's handlers were plotting the invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon neocons were warned of the consequences: chaos, a fractured country. All we heard about was the propaganda about "liberation."
In June 2001, James A. Russell, a Persian Gulf expert in the Department of Defense, was assigned by Doug Feith, Don Rumsfeld's undersecretary for policy, to the National Security Affairs Department at the Naval Postgraduate School. Just a guess, but I would imagine that meant that Russell was not part of Feith's inner circle.
Anyway, the Naval Postgrad School, a slice of governmental academe, formed something called the Center for Contemporary Conflict and started pumping out research papers, posting them in an electronic journal, Strategic Insights. They make for interesting, and relatively jargon-free, reading. In June 2002, for instance, Russell produced "Shibboleth Slaying in a Post-Saddam Iraq," a nice little report that charted our options for Iraq while we were already planning to invade it. "As the United States marches inexorably towards regime change in Baghdad," Russell wrote, "the critical issue facing policy makers is determining what happens after Saddam is removed from power."
Russell noted that Iraq is an unnaturally unified country—and he concluded that maybe it shouldn't even stay that way. It won't. And our personnel in Baghdad's supermax embassy will wind up fleeing by helicopters, just as Americans did when they fled Saigon in 1975.
And we'll leave without the oil.
Posted by Harkavy at 11:44 AM, March 19, 2008
White House releases beta version of Iraq 5.0.
After five long years, the United States has finally secured victory in the War on Terror, George W. Bush declared today.
I'm as surprised as you are. This is what the president said this morning at the Pentagon:
"The surge has done more than turn the situation in Iraq around — it has opened the door to a major strategic victory in the broader war on terror."
The announcement comes 5.0 years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq and 4.9 years after Bush declared, "Mission accomplished!"
In this morning's speech, Bush also said:
"In Iraq, we are witnessing the first large-scale Arab uprising against Osama Bin Laden. And the significance of this development cannot be overstated."
The BBC's report on the speech notes:
Meanwhile in Iraq, a female suicide bomber killed six people at a bus station in Balad Ruz in Diyala province, according to Iraqi police.
And near the northern city of Kirkuk, US troops shot dead three Iraqi policemen by mistake, an incident officials described as "a tragic accident, which was sincerely regretted".
Don't let that spoil your celebration.
Posted by Harkavy at 8:34 AM, February 25, 2008
Ralph Nader, the newest entrant in the presidential race, is sure to implode, but not before he wreaks some panic among Democrats. He's our own homegrown suicide bomber of politics.
Suicide bombers elsewhere are exploding, not imploding. Yesterday, on the road from Baghdad to Karbala, one of the schmucks killed a couple of dozen of pilgrims at a rest stop:
A suicide bomber on Sunday attacked a crowd of Shiite pilgrims heading toward the city of Karbala to visit the Shrine of Imam Hussein, killing at least 40 people and wounding at least 100, Iraqi officials said. The American military said that at least 60 people had been wounded.
And in Pakistan, one of Nader's kissing-of-death cousins targeted a cop:
A suicide bomber struck Pakistan's military headquarters in Rawalpindi Monday, killing at least eight people, including the army's top ranking medical officer, military officials said.
Nader, however, is the only suicide bomber who publicly announces his intentions:
Nader announced his candidacy on NBC's Meet the Press, as he did four years ago. He said he is running to draw attention to issues ignored by the major candidates in both parties, citing corporate crime, workers' rights, military spending and foreign policy.
"You take that framework of people feeling locked out, shut out, marginalized and disrespected," he said. "You go from Iraq to Palestine to Israel, from Enron to Wall Street, from Katrina to the bumbling of the Bush administration, to the complicity of the Democrats in not stopping him on the war, stopping him on the tax cuts."
Sounds as if Nader's the one who's feeling locked out, shut out, marginalized, and disrespected.
The latest episode of HBO's The Wire, the best piece of investigative entertainment ever seen on TV, is once again instructive. Detective Jimmy McNulty's "serial killer" — a fake murderer springing only from McNulty's imaginative scam to get more money for police work — warranted an FBI profile. And McNulty himself fits the profile — especially the part about the "killer" feeling superior to everyone else.
Back to reality: For once, the New York Times put perspective in a political story — probably because Adam Nagourney didn't write it:
On Sunday, Mr. Nader officially announced that he would seek the presidency as a third-party candidate one more time — driven in part by his frustration over the efforts to thwart his last run.
“If there was no other reason to run — other than the civil liberties, civil rights issue of ballot access — it’d be worth it,” Mr. Nader said in a telephone interview after announcing his candidacy on “Meet the Press.”
Worth it for whom? Nader's quixotic quests for the presidency are reminiscent of Harold Stassen's. Only no one's laughing, except for the Republicans. If McCain's people are smart, they'll start siphoning campaign funds to Nader. So far, the only campaign contributor to Nader in the past six months appears to be one Patricia Gilmartin of Homewood, Illinois, according to federal campaign records. And, schizophrenically, she also has given money to Barry Obama.
Nader came to fame with his auto exposé, Unsafe at Any Speed. But he just can't seem to take his pedal off the metal. Take it out of first gear, Ralph. Your whining is annoying.
Posted by Harkavy at 7:46 AM, February 11, 2008
Bulked-up right-hander grabs a bat to square off against crafty lefty
It's hard not to get pumped up about Wednesday's hearing on Capitol Hill about the baseball steroids scandal. Go ahead and hoot when California congressman Henry Waxman mispronounces the names of players, but the bespectacled little lefty will likely stand in strong against Roger Clemens's high hard ones.
Last week Clemens toured the grandstand — congressional offices — to glad-hand. Such brazen lobbying hasn't been seen since the last AIPAC national conference and schmoozefest.
Baseball's Mr. (Suspiciously) Big is still making his rounds, rubbing the bellies of various Congress members. Waxman, however, is not the kind to roll over to be petted into submission.
He injected himself into the steroids scandal three years ago, summoning pecs' bad boys in March 2005 for a round of what turned out to be Mark McGwire's most musclebound moment.
Tune in Wednesday when Clemens trudges up the Hill to throw out his first bitch, but while you're at it, see what else Waxman is up to. Go to the California congressman's site, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and you'll see that he's not shirking his other duties.
Remember the Iraq War?
Last Friday, Waxman subpoenaed documents on the colossal Baghdad embassy project. In case you've forgotten, this is what Waxman's panel uncovered last October:
Documents obtained by the Oversight Committee depict widespread defects in fire detection systems, fire service mains, fire sprinklers, fire-proof construction materials, and electrical wiring throughout the Embassy complex. Other documents implicate the Managing Partner of First Kuwaiti, the prime contractor, in an illegal kickback scheme to obtain subcontracts under the Army’s multi-billion logistical support contract.
Telegenic Waxman isn't, and that's too bad, because he's been the most consistent gadfly since the start of the Bush-Cheney regime's reign of error.
He's likely to get more press out of this steroids probe than from the more serious issues he's probed. So use this as an excuse to probe what else Waxman is probing.
Posted by Harkavy at 9:26 AM, February 7, 2008
Hillary desperately shops for gold — and the right brand — after Super Tuesday gives way to Ashes Wednesday.
Now that Barack Obama has caught her, Hillary Clinton is going on a shopping spree for cash — the safe way, from the now-shaky Democratic establishment. It's hubby Bill Clinton who's expected to bring home the groceries from his buddy Ron Burkle, the supermarket billionaire.
Clean up in all aisles, Bill!
Number today as a crossroads in the presidential campaign — actually a crossing of the paths of the campaign and the still-bloody Iraq War, news of which has been pushed back to the grocery ads in your struggling daily papers. The digits are truly lined up:
3,216: Total number of delegates needed for successful nominations (2,025 for Democrats, 1,191 for Republicans).
3,212: Total number of American soldiers killed in action in Iraq as of February 7, 2008.
Just a day or so away from synchronicity. What's your magic number? Anyway, forget about Iraq and focus on the presidential race. Maybe we'll find out that Obama is also leaving a trail of glittering sleaze behind him on the campaign trail, but for now, Hillary has a commanding lead when it comes to that.
So Americans want change? Hillary, for one, hasn't crossed over to a different aisle, despite what prominent newsmongers are omitting from their stories. Check this out and see if it registers: Blinded by celebrity, the Washington Post's Eli Saslow reports today on Hillary's supposed success in California. Actually, Obama did far better than expected in that Democratic-establishment stronghold. Saslow writes about "Clinton's California dream team," starting out with an anecdote about Rob Reiner, one of the Hollywood meatheads supporting her. Getting to the point in a style typical of the supermarket tabloids, Saslow writes:
Reiner was one of those backers Clinton called on, and there were many others — people such as Amy Rao, a Silicon Valley businesswoman adept at fundraising; Antonio Villaraigosa, the dynamic mayor of Los Angeles; and Dolores Huerta, a labor activist beloved in the dusty San Joaquin Valley.
These four Californians were emblematic of the support Clinton received from the entertainment and technology industries and from the state's Latino leaders. In the week before the Super Tuesday contests, they pushed her message from the opulent ballrooms of San Francisco to the Mexican tiendas of East Los Angeles, working 20-hour days to combat Obama's accelerating popularity. But as Reiner watched the two candidates take the stage to a standing ovation, he couldn't help but wonder: Would their work prove powerful enough to stop Obama?
The Post is so often at the head of the daily-paper pack that it's shocking that this article makes no mention of Ron Burkle, the former bag boy who became Bill Clinton's most dependable bag man. For a quick study of Burkle, read Jason Horowitz's "The Complete Ron Burkle," a quick-and-dirty April 2006 rundown in the New York Observer.
More recent is "What’s Hidden in the Latest Numbers," John Heilemann's excellent piece of numerology in New York magazine. Here are a few of Heilemann's numbers from the February 6 piece:
$32 million, $13 million, $5 million, and $20 million. The first of these is how much the Obama campaign raised in January — a staggering figure. The second is how much the Clinton campaign raised that month — a relative pittance. The third is the amount, we learned today, that Hillary personally loaned her campaign in the past couple of weeks. And the fourth is the amount that her husband, Bill, is reported to be due as a payout after severing his ties with Ron Burkle — and which, presumably, will soon be available to pay for TV ads in Texas and Ohio.
It's Obama against the Democratic establishment, so prepare to be inundated by ad after ad after ad. While Bill Clinton gets cash back at the head of the line, you might want to go back to aisle 14 for the Dramamine.
Posted by Harkavy at 9:36 AM, December 4, 2007
NIE report on Iran puts Cheney's quest for a pre-emptive strike on hold.
The Bush-Cheney regime's war drums have fallen silent — at least temporarily — in the wake of the U.S. intelligence analysts' new "estimate" that Iran's nuclear-bomb program really doesn't exist.
The problem is that the intelligence on which this conclusion is based also doesn't exist. This was a political decision by the CIA, not an intelligent analysis based on intelligence.
You won't find that analysis in the major U.S. newspapers. Nor will you find any mention of either Pakistan or Israel, both of which have nuclear weapons. That context is important, because Pakistan is dangerously unstable right now, and any attack on its neighbor Iran could destroy the global oil economy and destabilize the entire planet.
Too far-fetched? Not really. The World Economic Forum analysts' worst-case scenario for the Persian Gulf posits a pre-emptive attack on Iran in 2009, as I noted previously.
West of Tehran, Israeli pols are still pursuing a strike on Iran, and now, with this new NIE report, Israel could well be the Cheney regime's surrogate for such a strike.
Back to the National Intelligence Estimate itself: Even the left-leaning Haaretz recognizes that the report is somewhat ludicrous. Take a look at "Iran Laughing at U.S. Lack of Nuclear Intelligence," Amir Oren's analysis in the Israeli paper. Here's Oren's take this morning:
The noise that was heard last night in Tehran, according to credible reports, was a hearty Persian laugh after looking at the U.S. intelligence service's website. The unclassified document that Director of National Intelligence, Adm. Mike McConnell published, titled "Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities," as a laundered version that faithfully represents the greatest secrets collected by the CIA and the other U.S. intelligence services, can appropriately be called "much evaluation on no intelligence."
The document's eight pages, which include embarrassing instructions on how to differentiate between different yet related terms ("it is possible," "it may be so," "one must not remove from the equation," and "it's reasonable to assume"), enable the ayatollahs' nuclear and operations officials and the heads of the Revolutionary Guards to reach this soothing conclusion — from their point of view: The Americans have no understanding of what is really happening in Iran's nuclear program. They have no solid information, they have no high-level agents and they have nothing more than a mix of guesswork and chatter. The dissemblance and concealment have succeeded, and the real dispute is not between Washington and Tehran, but within the U.S. administration itself. Burned by the White House (and CIA director George Tenet) in the run-up to the unjustified invasion of Iraq, U.S. intelligence analysts are covering their asses this time by admitting that they have no evidence that Iran is currently building bombs.
There's still hope for Dick Cheney and Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Israel) and other war hawks pushing for a pre-emptive strike. As Oren says:
The CIA is so angry with Bush, it seems, that it is ready to go to great lengths in order to help another president. Not Ahmadinejad, God forbid, but the next president in Washington. The result is likely to be the opposite: Higher Iranian militancy along with Bush and Cheney's determination to act — regardless of what the intelligence agencies say.
If you doubt Cheney's determination, go back and read Seymour Hersh's January 2005 New Yorker article, "The Coming Wars."
Posted by Harkavy at 8:53 AM, November 29, 2007
The missing link in the reporting of Bush's Middle East dog-and-pony show
It's understandable if you suddenly feel a bit of warmth about George W. Bush. After all, the New York Times headlines its report this morning on the regime's widely publicized peace talks with Israeli and Palestinians with this:
Bush Promotes Middle East Peace Dialogue
Please. Nowhere in the story, by Steven Lee Myers and Steven Erlanger, is there any mention of the huge credibility problems Bush has in promoting peace in the Middle East. Our actions speak louder than words, of course, but just blindly stab at any past statements about Bush on Israel, and you'll find context that's missing from the Times story. More importantly, Bush has no credibility with Arabs when it comes to promoting peace.
For example, here was Bush speaking at the Naval War College on June 28:
Our success in Iraq must not be measured by the enemy's ability to get a car bombing into the evening news. No matter how good the security, terrorists will always be able to explode a bomb on a crowded street. In places like Israel, terrorists have taken innocent human life for years in similar attacks. The difference is that Israel is a functioning democracy that is not prevented from carrying out its responsibilities. And that's a good indicator of success that we're looking for in Iraq: the rise of a government that can protect its people, deliver basic services for all its citizens, and function as a democracy even amid violence.
Just put yourself in the shoes of a Palestinian living in and around Israel. The last thing Arabs want to hear from Bush is the incessant refrain that Israel is a functioning democracy while Israel is continually building new settlements in the West Bank and is exchanging terrorist attacks with Arabs — not to mention Israel's seemingly permanent economic blockade against the Palestinian Authority.
Or, if you're not a Palestinian, think about how Bush made the aforementioned foolish statement at a Navy school while he and Pentagon have continued to foolishly disregard the analyses of another Navy educational institution, the Naval Postgraduate School, whose Strategic Insights essays predicted before our invasion of Iraq just what is happening now.
Go back to my May 2005 item "Shattered Illusions: Iraq's developing civil war couldn't have surprised the Pentagon" for more on that.
It doesn't help matters that the U.S. press's most unjustifiably prestigious paper continues to leave out important context from its reporting on Bush's latest "peace initiative."
Posted by Harkavy at 8:45 AM, October 17, 2007
Today's scheduled embrace of the Dalai Lama by George W. Bush represents a major change in foreigner policy by the White House.
Bush's new plan: If you meet the Buddha on the road, get a photo-op with him.
That's a shift from the Blackwater philosophy: If you meet an Iraqi on the road, shoot him.
In any case, plagued by a war that his own regime started, the president has chosen to burnish his image by meeting with a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. No, not Al Gore, who looks as if he's won several pizza prizes since Bush's operatives stole the presidency from him in 2000.
This Nobel winner is Tenzin Gyatso, who was proclaimed the Dalai Lama when he was only two years old and ruled Tibet until China ousted him years ago. Gyatso won the 1989 Nobel prize "for his consistent resistance to the use of violence."
Meanwhile, China is pissed, as the L.A. Times notes this morning:
"We solemnly demand that the U.S. cancel the extremely wrong arrangements," Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi told reporters before the meeting. "It seriously violates the norm of international relations and seriously wounded the feelings of the Chinese people and interfered with China's internal affairs."
Too bad that Hunter S. Thompson, the Dalai Lama's deceased twin, isn't around to write about this absurd face-to-face between two spiritual leaders whose approaches to violence are so different.
Will the peace-loving Buddhist leader have any impact on Bush? It's too late for that. The best we can hope for is that, instead of gonzo pol Karl Rove whispering into Bush's ear, "Stick to principle, stick to principle," this Gyatso pol will whisper, "Stay in the moment, stay in the moment."
It would be nice if he also told Bush, "Don't stay in Iraq, don't stay in Iraq."
Posted by Harkavy at 8:42 AM, October 16, 2007
Bad news on the global terror front: Unstable Pakistan will become even more shaky when its former leader (and Musharraf's enemy) returns home this week.
As Benazir Bhutto prepares to return to Pakistan later this week from her Dubai exile and becomes a target of strongman prick Pervez Musharraf's assassins, we can only recall how tragic it was for the U.S. to pull back from that volatile region more than five years ago.
Back in 2002, the Bush-Cheney regime abandoned the full-fledged hunt for Osama bin Laden and duped Congress and the country into invading Iraq.
Pakistan was where it was at. Bin Laden was hiding there and in neighboring Afghanistan. As the Soviets found out, you can't fight rebels in Afghanistan without somehow, some way also fighting them as they scurry across the border into Pakistan, where they have even government support.
Officials of Pakistan's spy agency, the ISI — widely credited with co-opting the Taliban and, along with the Saudis and Reagan administration, arming them — were sympathetic to bin Laden as long as he didn't destabilize their own country.
Recall that Porter Goss and Bob Graham, chairs of the House and Senate Intelligence committees, were having breakfast on the morning of 9/11 with Mahmood Ahmed, the Pakistani ISI official who later turned out to be hijacker Mohammed Atta's bagman. It was also Ahmed who had sent $100,000 to Atta on orders from the guy who later kidnapped Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. You can't make this shit up.
Yes, we left Pakistan in 2002. Big mistake.
We invaded Iraq. Bigger mistake.
We inflamed the Shia-Sunni schism in Iraq, widening everywhere else that ancient rift between Islam's main sects. Take Pakistan. Unlike in Iraq, the Sunnis are the majority. Please remember that most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis, and despotic monarchy Saudi Arabia is ruled by Sunni fanatics.
There has long been sectarian violence in Pakistan — see this October 2004 BBC backgrounder. Add to that the return to the country of Benazir Bhutto, whose daddy, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was Pakistan's prime minister in the '70s before he was executed by the country's military. Later, Benazir Bhutto — nearly a dead ringer for Andrea Martin/Edith Prickley's version of another South Asia strongwoman, Indira Ghandi — became prime minister, and then she was driven from Pakistan amid corruption charges.
Pakistan was a bigger threat to world stability after 9-11 than Iraq was. Yes, Iraq was a bigger threat to Israel and always a danger to Kuwait, but Pakistan's instability was a much more dangerous threat to the U.S., no matter what the Bush regime's propagandists have drummed into our heads.
Now's the perfect time to recall that the hunt by Musharraf and the ISI for bin Laden was half-hearted at best. Our reaction has been to step up arm sales to Musharraf, as I noted in April 2005.
Don't be surprised if that well-armed Pakistan government sends more Lockheed fighter jets swooping down on Bhutto than it sent to look for bin Laden.
Posted by Harkavy at 8:38 AM, October 8, 2007
Lettuce have your huddled masses: Work force becomes truly globalized.
Beset by an immigration war on one front and just plain war on another front, government officials in the U.S. are frantically seeking more illegals for necessary farm work here and longer stays in Baghdad for shanghaied foreigners to build the unnecessary supermax American embassy.
As Nicole Gaouette of the Los Angeles Times reported yesterday,
With a nationwide farmworker shortage threatening to leave unharvested fruits and vegetables rotting in fields, the Bush administration has begun quietly rewriting federal regulations to eliminate barriers that restrict how foreign laborers can legally be brought into the country.
The effort, urgently underway at the departments of Homeland Security, State and Labor, is meant to rescue farm owners caught in a vise between a complex process to hire legal guest workers and stepped-up enforcement that has reduced the number of illegal planters, pickers and middle managers crossing the border.
Meanwhile in Baghdad, workers from the Philippines and other countries who were shanghaied by U.S.-hired contractors to build the supermax U.S. embassy will probably be roped into staying longer as that project falls behind and its cost soars toward $1 billion. Check out the testimony at intrepid California congressman Henry Waxman's July hearing for details on the shanghai gestures.
Without addressing the issue of the original trickery that landed many of those foreign workers in Baghdad against their will, Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post reported yesterday:
The embassy, which will be the largest U.S. diplomatic mission in the world, was budgeted at $592 million. The core project was supposed to have been completed by last month, but the timetable has slipped so much that the State Department has sought and received permission from the Iraqi government to allow about 2,000 non-Iraqi construction employees to stay in the country until March.
As I wrote on August 8:
Shanghaied to build to the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. Working on the construction site without safety equipment — or even shoes. The story of the alleged kidnapping of Filipino workers who thought they were going to Dubai but instead were flown to Baghdad to help build the $500 million embassy is stunning.
That story was broken by others, including David Phinney of Inter Press Service in June, who noted that contractor First Kuwaiti has reaped $2 billion from U.S. taxpayers for construction of military camps and the embassy. Phinney wrote:
Because of allegations of labour trafficking and other abuses, First Kuwaiti is also being investigated by the U.S. Justice Department, an action precipitated by U.S. citizens claiming that company workers loaded onto planes in Kuwait were handed boarding passes for Dubai before flying directly to Baghdad. The passengers were mostly low-wage Asian migrant labourers earning as little as 250 dollars a month.
Wait a sec. As Phinney also notes, Filipino laborers at the new embassy are making much more than that:
The agreement also lays out salary: 346 dollars a month for eight-hour days, seven days a week, plus 104 dollars a month for mandatory two hours overtime every day.
Pay is marginally better in our fields. Gaouette's Times story mentions almost by the way that "almost three-quarters of farmworkers are thought to be illegal immigrants."
The percentage of people who mow our lawns is probably even higher, but anyway, Gaouette notes that the White House is extremely concerned about this aspect of the free-market economy:
"It is important for the farm sector to have access to labor to stay competitive," said White House spokesman Scott Stanzel. "As the southern border has tightened, some producers have a more difficult time finding a workforce, and that is a factor of what is going on today."
The push to speedily rewrite the regulations is also the Bush administration's attempt to step into a breach left when Congress did not pass an immigration overhaul in June that might have helped American farms.
These are truly salad days for government officials in the U.S. as they quietly chew on these labor-force problems. Gaouette noted:
The administration has pursued the project discreetly. The issue of immigration has generated friction between President Bush and the conservative wing of the Republican Party, which has strongly opposed many of the initiatives that Bush has pursued.
Pursued not for the sake of the workers but of the corporate farms that depend on cheap labor.
Slave work in Baghdad or California — take your pick. Farmworkers don't get health benefits, and the embassy is going to have a full-time psychiatrist for counseling and drugs, so Iraq seems the better bet: At least your boss in Iraq will be medicated.
Posted by Harkavy at 9:15 AM, September 27, 2007
Rehnquist is dead, but his spirit lives. The Supreme Court and Rove's man at the FEC pump life into "voter fraud" scheme.
A snapshot of current American electoral politics is one of the ugliest pictures of the year, now that the increasingly conservative Supreme Court has decided to hear a major voter-fraud/national photo ID case before next year's elections.
The GOP-engineered presidential-vote debacle in 2000 has developed into what may become a major scandal involving the use of photo IDs, which the GOP has been trying to engineer in time for next year.
"Voter fraud" — a purported invasion of polling places by illegitimate voters — is the battle cry of Republican officials hoping to stem turnout by likely Democratic voters in battleground states.
And "voter fraud" is right: The requirement that voters present photo IDs is their scheme, and Hans von Spakovsky is their standard-bearer at the Federal Election Commission. That uncomfortable sensation felt by small-d democrats is their cherished poll being shoved up a place where the sun don't shine.
Who said Karl Rove left the building? Coupled with the appointment of Michael Mukasey to oversee the Justice Department and its Civil Rights Division, the GOP is setting itself up well for '08, fighting a winnable war against U.S. voters while it fights an impossible war overseas. Rove's fingerprints are all over this, whether or not he's still using his White House keyboard.
Iraq has left the Republicans flaccid, but their "voter fraud" canard and accompanying strategy threaten to give the GOP yet another election.
Shades of Bill Rehnquist! Before he was chief justice of the U.S., Rehnquist personally blocked black people from voting in Phoenix in 1964, using "voter fraud" as his excuse. I wrote about that in September 2005 ("Rehnquist Death Gives Bush Chance to Deepen American Crisis"), recalling Dennis Roddy's riveting column in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that itself recalled Rehnquist's totalitarian behavior in Arizona as a GOP operative.
Rehnquist died in September 2005, but that didn't help because John Roberts, who favors corporate citizens over human citizens, took his place. An event that may turn out to be equally vital to the GOP occurred three months later, when Bush made a recess appointment to the FEC of von Spakovsky, a former Republican county chairman in Georgia. Before his FEC appointment, von Spakovsky was the chief civil-rights violator in the Justice Department's civil-rights division, leading the move to suppress minority and poor voters.
Von Spakovsky is up for confirmation to another FEC term. And the Roberts Supreme Court announced yesterday that it will hear the issue involving national photo IDs and voting — just in time for next year's election. This is dangerous, because it will likely bollix up '08 voting in key states.
There's plenty to read on this topic. From Paul Kiel at Talking Points Memo this past June:
A group of former voting rights attorneys in the Division put it most succinctly in a letter to Sen. [ Dianne] Feinstein … urging rejection of his nomination: von Spakovsky was "the point person for undermining the Civil Rights Division's mandate to protect voting rights." Von Spakovsky reported to [the division's Bradley] Schlozman, and the two worked together to purge voters from the rolls, ensure that voter ID laws were approved with no fuss, and punish lawyers who did not toe the line. Kiel refers to a 2004 piece by Jeffrey Toobin in the New Yorker whose headline says it all: "Poll Position: Is the Justice Department poised to stop voter fraud — or to keep voters from voting?"
See Lou Dubose's 2006 account of how von Spakovsky collaborated with Rove to scheme Tom Delay's crooked redistricting in Texas earlier this century. More to the current point, Dubose noted at the time:
The White House human resources shop found [von Spakovsky] on a county board overseeing elections in Atlanta and appointed him director of the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice.
He had additional voting rights experience that qualified him for his DOJ job. He had served on the board of the Voting Integrity Project, a regional franchise in the Republican Party’s national voter-suppression ancillary operation.
In 2000, while von Spakovsky was on the board of Voting Integrity, the group worked to cleanse Florida voting roles of African-American "felons." Unfortunately, their felons list included the names of thousands of innocent people.
Dahlia Lithwick's piece two days ago in Slate is also vital for understanding the back story on von Spakovsky.
Legal beagles can parse Bob Bauer's analysis yesterday of the politics swirling around the vote case the Supreme Court has now agreed to hear.
For a very recent story hinting at the bad smell emanating from the Justice Department, see "The Stooge," by David Martin of Kansas City's The Pitch.
As for following this issue, though, nothing beats wonk lawyer Rick Hasen's Election Law site, though Hasen is perhaps too hopeful that the high court will protect the rights of voters.
As I've pointed out before, in a September 2004 piece about dubious electronic-voting machines, Hasen is always a captivating and current legal-news live wire.
Those who can't live without the New York Times can learn some things from an April 12 story, "In 5-Year Effort, Scant Evidence of Voter Fraud," co-bylined by Ian Urbina, whose copy I used to have the pleasure of editing.
But you must keep clicking on the excellent McClatchy home page (formerly the Knight-Ridder D.C. Bureau), and definitely read Greg Gordon's story last April, "Administration pursued aggressive legal effort to restrict voter turnout." Gordon noted:
For six years, the Bush administration, aided by Justice Department political appointees, has pursued an aggressive legal effort to restrict voter turnout in key battleground states in ways that favor Republican political candidates.
The administration intensified its efforts last year as President Bush's popularity and Republican support eroded heading into a midterm battle for control of Congress, which the Democrats won.
Facing nationwide voter registration drives by Democratic-leaning groups, the administration alleged widespread election fraud and endorsed proposals for tougher state and federal voter identification laws. Presidential political adviser Karl Rove alluded to the strategy in April 2006 when he railed about voter fraud in a speech to the Republican National Lawyers Association.
Next year those of you who can vote might want to vote early and vote often.
Posted by Harkavy at 11:41 AM, September 26, 2007
Kids of all religions learning a lot about rocketry.
Civics 101: One of the Qassam rockets that didn't explode is displayed in the town hall of Sderot, along with photos of residents killed by Qassams that did explode. Does it really matter if I tell you whether it's a Jewish or Arab town?
You don't have to be a rocket scientist to know that the Israeli-Palestinian death dance marathon staged by adults is more than annoying to children on both sides.
In schools themselves, the ones that are open, it's like the science fair from hell: The kids are learning immediate lessons in rocket-building and rocket avoidance. After school, the favorite music is rock — the pop of the ones being thrown by Palestinian kids, the house rock of walls inside Gaza homes being pummeled into rubble by Israeli soldiers.
 It's a little different in Iraq's schools, where recess is going on and on — millions of people have fled their homes, and those who haven't find it too risky to venture outdoors. Want good grades? Forget the apple. Threaten to kill your teacher or kidnap his son.
Take a break from all the stories about nutcase Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaking at Columbia. Protest against him — that's your right — but who the hell cares? That's a circus. But the freaky sideshows are in the Middle East, where the age of rock is going to cause permanent damage to kids for generations to come, creating anger and fear on all sides that will be easily stirred up into religious fear. In effect, chapters of Future Terrorists of Arabia are popping up all over.
Here in Springfield, Mrs. Lovejoy would say, "Ohhh, won't somebody please think of the children!" (Listen to her here.)
She's right, and these are a few of the stories — underreported in the U.S. or not reported at all — that explain why:
• Shell shock: Seven Qassams, crude but effective Palestinian-made rockets, blast the Israeli town of Sderot in early September:
On 3 September, the second day of the school year, a projectile fired from the Gaza Strip landed near a day care centre for toddlers in the Israeli town of Sderot. Parents in the town promptly met and decided to take their children out of all schools in the town from 5 September. …
Several children with mental disorders were in a school bus along with 12 toddlers from the day care centre when the rocket landed nearby. They were taken to hospital suffering from shock, medical officials said.
Altogether, seven rockets, dubbed locally Qassams after the version made famous by the Hamas movement's military wing, landed in Sderot on 3 September.
The Islamic Jihad took responsibility, saying they were a "gift" for the new school year. …
Sima Ohaiyon, a resident of Sderot and mother of three, walked her four-year-old daughter Osher, which means "happiness" in Hebrew, to her new school on 4 September, a day after a rocket fired from Gaza landed outside a day care centre for toddlers.
"It's not an easy time in Sderot. There are too many rockets falling. • Human shields: Israeli soldiers storm a West Bank refugee camp, blasting through the interior walls of homes and reportedly using Palestinians as shields:
Residents of the Ein Beit Alma refugee camp began to pick up the pieces after an intense Israeli military incursion last week left dozens homeless, and many very frightened, especially children. …
[A tactic] known as "through walls" was used. Soldiers go through neighbours' homes, destroying joint walls, to reach targets without being exposed in the narrow streets. …
Several people said the soldiers used three locals as human shields, a practice deemed illegal by Israel's High Court. The Israeli military said it was "not aware of any such incident". …
"The effects of these military operations at such close quarters have an incalculable impact on the well-being of the young," said Christopher Gunness from UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.
The agency runs psycho-social programmes and has counsellors at its two camp schools.
"The children are not studying now, they are frightened. They go to school and draw, colour and read stories," said Samia Abu Salah, whose children attend UNRWA schools and are taking part in a programme which tries to help the children express their feelings.
• "Fighting Israel is Islamic duty": Palestinian kids are being taught that fighting Israel is a holy task, and Israeli kids are being taught that there is no West Bank, that Israel has dominion over all of ancient Israel. Palestinian maps and schoolbooks are nuts, and those in Israel border on the insane:
A map depicting Israeli and Palestinian territories as "Palestine," is found in a new Palestinian school book, according to Palestinian Media Watch, [which adds,] "Maps of the region likewise teach children to visualise a world without Israel, as Israel does not exist on any map and its area is marked as 'Palestine.'" …
Israeli schoolbooks have also proved controversial. … A map depicting Palestinian and Israeli territories as "Israel" as found in Israeli school book Welcome to Israel. … Last year, Israeli education minister Yuli Tamir revealed that maps in some Israeli textbooks showed land Israel conquered in the 1967 war — the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights — as part of Israel even though they are deemed occupied territory under international law.
Much of the world believes the Green Line — the pre-1967 ceasefire line between Israel and Jordan, which controlled the West Bank — should be the basis for an international border between Israel and the West Bank section of a future Palestinian state.
New Palestinian 12th grade textbooks published last December deny Israel's existence and teach 11-year-olds that the Palestinian struggle is part of an overall war between Muslims and their enemies, according to a Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) report entitled "From nationalist battle to religious conflict". …
"The books don't allow for a Palestinian child to accept Israel as a neighbour. When you define the conflict as a religious war you are no longer fighting for your own national identity or territory but for Islamic destiny. You have to accept either Islam or Israel," said Itamar Marcus, PMW's director.
"I would be happy if the books talked about a national struggle to get as many rights as possible. But to package it as an everlasting war is to generate years of conflict. It's child abuse against their own kids," he said.
Some 926 Palestinian children and 118 Israeli children have been killed in violence since 2000, according to NGO Remember These Children, which monitors the number of minors killed on both sides. • Hostile entities: After years of Arab countries continually refusing to call Israel anything other than "the Zionist entity," Israel is now labeling Gaza a "hostile entity" and is further strangling its residents:
An Israeli cabinet decision on 19 September, which declared the Gaza Strip a "hostile entity" and which would allow the state to cut fuel and electricity supplies to the enclave, has been immediately condemned by aid and human rights organisations. …
Currently, only food and medical supplies are generally allowed in and all exports are banned. Construction materials are blocked, while it took several weeks and international pressure to allow paper for printing school books to arrive.
Movement of civilians is also already severely limited, and Gaza's Rafah Crossing to Egypt, has been closed since June. Further restrictions would likely ban even limited access to Israel.
Israel's Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said the decision is in line with international law and "it's not going to affect the humanitarian needs of the population in the Gaza Strip."
However, Oxfam International disagreed.
"Reducing the fuel supplies to a bare minimum [will] only increase the suffering of one and a half million people in Gaza, and constitutes collective punishment," said Jeremy Hobbs, the group's executive director, adding it would be "immoral and contrary to the Geneva Conventions".
Cutting power, legal experts said, would not distinguish between civilians and militants.
Israel maintains it has very limited responsibility for the Gaza Strip since its 2005 redeployment of troops and settlers from the territory. Amnesty International, however, believes the Jewish state, is "ultimately responsible for ensuring the welfare of the … Palestinians who live in the Gaza Strip", since it "retains effective control" over the area.
The Israeli human rights group Gisha said the decision was "dangerous, because operating rooms, emergency services, sewage pumps and water wells cannot run without electricity". • Recess in Iraq: Iraqi parents are running on empty. School attendance is sharply down because of an outbreak of ditching — that's residents flinging themselves into ditches to avoid be killed by explosions or soldiers:
"We are trying to encourage families to take their children to school as there has been a continuous decrease in attendance in the past four years and this has seriously affected pupils' performance," Leila Abdallah, a senior official at the Ministry of Education, said.
"We have enhanced policing at the school gates of most schools but families are still scared to send their children to school. This might seriously affect their future," she added. "I don't blame them for trying to protect their children but we have to start changing the actual situation of violence by teaching pupils how to build a better Iraq."
Parents have also been irked by poor examinations results in the past academic year.
According to Leila, there has been a 54 percent increase in exam failure rates compared to previous years. She said many students had not sat the last exams as they had been forced by violence to flee their homes for safer areas.
Also, few schools have offered extra preparatory classes to students who have to repeat their exams because teachers are too afraid to leave their homes.
• "Either you give us good marks or you will die": If Iraqi kids do somehow manage to reach college, they're practically assured of high grades because professors are scared to death:
Hassan Khalid Hayderi, 54, is a professor of mathematics at Basra University, 550 km south of the capital, Baghdad. He and his family are leaving Iraq as soon as his brother finds him a job in Jordan because he has received death threats from students demanding easy exams and better marks.
"After 20 years as professor of mathematics in Basra and Baghdad, I have decided to leave my job and the country. Teachers in Iraq have been targeted since the US-led invasion in 2003, but from February last year our situation has worsened because of threats from inside our classrooms.
"Students started demanding easier exams and if they don’t pass the year, it might mean your death. Either you give good marks or you are going to be killed.
"When I leave my home every morning to go to the university, I fear a bullet is going to rip through my head or chest. I constantly find notes with demands of good marks or sometimes shorter lessons from students on my desk.
"Lessons that used to last for one hour are given nowadays in half-an-hour to meet such requests.
"Two of my colleagues have been killed in the past months for refusing to cater to such requests. Sometimes even fathers come after you asking for good marks for their sons. Once I refused to listen to one of them and the result was the kidnapping of my 23-year-old son, Abdel-Kader. He was released after I let a student — who scored very badly in exams — pass the year."
Posted by Harkavy at 9:26 AM, September 25, 2007
Sotheby's to sell a raggedy-ass copy next month in New York City. Habeas corpus not included.
 With the Lieberman-Kyl Amendment's momentous move toward a pre-emptive strike on Iran, now's as good a time as any to sell off the Magna Carta. As everyone can see, George W. Bush has poked enough holes in it to reduce its value.
In our era of take no prisoners, but if you do, hold them unlawfully at Abu Ghraib, Gitmo and various torture chambers around the world — new AG Michael Mukasey is bound to agree and, more importantly, he'll be much more effective at running that game on us than Alberto Gonzales was. So it makes sense to peddle this piece of civil-liberties paper to the highest bidder.
In December, Sotheby's plans to do just that in New York City. The privately owned copy, dated 1297, is expected to fetch $20 million to $30 million — undercoating included. But after the past seven years of the Bush-Cheney regime's erosion of the ancient document's key provision on habeas corpus, the question is whether it's worth the vellum it's scrawled on.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's appearance in New York City coincides perfectly with the attempt by war hawks Joe Lieberman and Jon Kyl to push us into a pre-emptive strike on Iran. Rapping the Iranian ruler's knuckles was so easy that it was bound to stir up the populace and take their minds off the tragedy in Iraq.
The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh wrote years ago about the current administration's thirst for Persian blood, and various Israeli officials have beat those drums too.
That's all we need: another war to produce more prisoners whose rights of habeas corpus we can deny.
Posted by Harkavy at 9:32 AM, September 21, 2007
This oily business of dealing with evil foreign leaders.
Cold War, warm feelings: Reagan chats with the Taliban in the White House in 1983.
New York's tabloids and assorted pols came unglued yesterday about the very idea of Iran's crackpot hardliner Mahmoud Ahmedinejad wanting to visit Ground Zero.
Where were they when Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov, whose regime boils people to death, was courted by George W. Bush and Mayor Mike Bloomberg?
Don't let your own blood boil at the thought of a bad guy visiting our sacralized 9/11 site. Condemn it, if you want, but Ahmedinejad was just trying to score political points, as our own pols do all the time at Ground Zero. He got what he wanted: The angry U.S. reaction will play well back home in Tehran, especially with the radical mullahs who really run Iran and like to stir up hatred for the "Great Satan."
Do we even have to say that in international politics, enemies today are pals tomorrow, and vice versa, and that the reasons almost always have to do with greed for money and natural resources?
On the other hand, it would be nice if our press at least reported these events. The Uzbek despot Karimov laid a wreath at Ground Zero in 2002, and there was literally not one word in the U.S. press about it at the time — I'm not talking about criticism or praise but any words at all. Nothing.
So Karimov is not a bad enough guy to get you worked up? Saddam Hussein was brown-nosed by Don Rumsfeld in December 1983. There's no reason to condemn Rumsfeld for that; it was just oil politics — just like the oil politics that Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney played when they seized upon the 9/11 attacks to justify invading Iraq.
After all, when Texas oil execs questioned Cheney in 1998, when he was still at Halliburton, about the physical dangers of pursuing oil in turbulent parts of Asia, the future vice president and de facto commander in chief told them:
"You've got to go where the oil is. I don't worry about it a lot."
Saddam is gone, but we still don't really have Iraq's oil. We do, however, have such evil people as the Taliban to deal with, right? Well, the Taliban were hailed as Afghan freedom fighters by Ronald Reagan during their triumphant visit to the White House on March 21, 1983. Reagan said at the time:
"To watch the courageous Afghan freedom fighters battle modern arsenals with simple hand-held weapons is an inspiration to those who love freedom. Their courage teaches us a great lesson - that there are things in this world worth defending.
"To the Afghan people, I say on behalf of all Americans that we admire your heroism, your devotion to freedom, and your relentless struggle against your oppressors."
That's ancient history, huh? In fact, they were still our pals 14 years later. In late 1997, the Taliban were wined and dined at the homes of Bush's pals, the Houston oil execs, during Dubya's reign as the hangingest governor in U.S. history.
The oil schnooks were buttering up the Taliban for pipelines and other bidness, of course. See Wayne Madsen's "Afghanistan, the Taliban, and the Bush Oil Team" for details.
At least that courting of the Taliban less than 10 years ago was reported at the time. Of the many words in the mainstream press, my favorites are from a December 14, 1997, story by Caroline Lees in the Telegraph (U.K.), in which she describes the Taliban officials' visit to Unocal vice president Martin Miller's palatial Houston home:
After a meal of specially prepared halal meat, rice and Coca-Cola, the hardline fundamentalists — who have banned women from working and girls from going to school — asked Mr Miller about his Christmas tree.
Posted by Harkavy at 7:52 AM, September 20, 2007
While we're being run out of Iraq, we're running out of money and heading for a recession.
 The world has started foreclosure proceedings on the U.S. It's finally happening, much to the detriment of your children and their children.
Bad news out of Saudi Arabia: The archaic but wealthy kingdom is so scared of our imminent recession that it's abandoning our shaky dollar.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the Telegraph (U.K.) explains this morning:
Saudi Arabia has refused to cut interest rates in lockstep with the US Federal Reserve for the first time, signalling that the oil-rich Gulf kingdom is preparing to break the dollar currency peg in a move that risks setting off a stampede out of the dollar across the Middle East.
This stuff is really complicated, and I'm oversimplifying, and many rich schnooks are the ones making the decisions. (Read this good overview of Wall Street's subprime greed by David Ignatius in Beirut's Daily Star.)
The fact is that, no matter how much money the hedge funds and private-equity people are raking in, a recession looms in the U.S. The rest of the planet is a coalition of the unwilling to be dragged down with us.
This attack by the Saudis on our economy may prove to be more damaging to the U.S. in the long run than the mostly Saudi hijackers' attack on the World Trade Center, which, though horrible and deadly, was an attack on only the symbol of our economy. There was no justification for the 9/11 attack. But this economic attack is justified, because of the greedy schmucks and costly war that have helped send our economy spinning out of control.
Here's the rub: Our rich are getting richer, but foreign investors and governments own most of our debt. As the dollar collapses, they are pulling their money out — can't a brother get a dime?! World investors are looking elsewhere; many have a yen for Japan's strong economy.
We're Number Something-Other-Than-1!
Just one example of how relatively poor we are and how this crisis has been building for a long time: In April, Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal demanded that Citigroup make "Draconian" cuts in its budget, and 17,000 people lost their jobs. Who cares what some Saudi prince says? Well, he's the huge bank's biggest individual shareholder.
Here's more from the Telegraph on the recent move by Saudi royals:
As a close ally of the US, Riyadh has so far tried to stick to the peg [of the dollar], but the link is now destabilising its own economy.
The Fed's dramatic half point cut to 4.75 percent yesterday has already caused a plunge in the world dollar index to a fifteen-year low, touching with the weakest level ever against the mighty euro at just under $1.40.
There is now a growing danger that global investors will start to shun the US bond markets. The latest US government data on foreign holdings released this week show a collapse in purchases of US bonds from $97 billion to just $19 billion in July, with outright net sales of US Treasuries.
The danger is that this could now accelerate as the yield gap between the United States and the rest of the world narrows rapidly, leaving America starved of foreign capital flows needed to cover its current account deficit — expected to reach $850 billion this year, or 6.5 percent of GDP.
Our money woes are killing us:
[Hans Redeker, currency chief at BNP Paribas] said foreign investors have been gradually pulling out of the long-term US debt markets, leaving the dollar dependent on short-term funding. Foreigners have funded 25 percent to 30 percent of America's credit and short-term paper markets over the last two years.
"They were willing to provide the money when rates were paying nicely, but why bear the risk in these dramatically changed circumstances? We think that a fall in dollar to $1.50 against the euro is not out of the question at all by the first quarter of 2008," he said.
"This is nothing like the situation in 1998 when the crisis was in Asia, but the US was booming. This time the US itself is the problem," he said.
Are the Democrats really sure they want to take over the White House? They will inherit an economy heading south and an unwinnable, tragic war.
We can't afford to keep fighting in Iraq, but we can't afford not to as long as we can't get some sort of international alliance to help calm things down over there.
Mercenaries like Blackwater may have to do all the fighting for us, but we won't be able to pay for them. As for our own soldiers: When we finally bring them home, there may be a full-blown recession and no jobs for them.
This is all tied to our mortgage-market crisis, which is caused by our money men playing dangerous games with the dough you homeowners send to the bank every month.
Here's even more from the Telegraph that warns of an even deeper crisis with the mortgage mess:
Jim Rogers, the commodity king and former partner of George Soros, said the Federal Reserve was playing with fire by cutting rates so aggressively at a time when the dollar was already under pressure.
The risk is that flight from US bonds could push up the long-term yields that form the base price of credit for most mortgages, thus driving the property market into even deeper crisis.
"If Ben Bernanke starts running those printing presses even faster than he's already doing, we are going to have a serious recession. The dollar's going to collapse, the bond market's going to collapse. There's going to be a lot of problems," he said.
The Federal Reserve, however, clearly calculates the risk of a sudden downturn is now so great that the it outweighs dangers of a dollar slide.
Former Fed chief Alan Greenspan said this week that house prices may fall by "double digits" as the subprime crisis bites harder, prompting households to cut back sharply on spending.
That's easy for him to say. He's got a new book to peddle.
Posted by Harkavy at 2:49 PM, September 19, 2007
Still secret: Corruption in the White House.
Over at Secrecy News, the indefatigable Steven Aftergood has posted a heretofore secret study of Iraqi government corruption.
Even though the Nation's David Corn already wrote about the study, I can't say it would be much of a surprise anyway: The investigating agency, the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, knows a lot about corruption.
Anyway, the report notes:
The Prime Minister’s Office has demonstrated an open hostility to the concept of an independent agency to investigate or prosecute corruption cases.
Sounds like the White House. U.S. congressmen and various public-interest groups got nowhere when they tried to probe Dick Cheney's "energy task force" early in the Bush regime.
And the White House has continually tried to call a halt to the excellent investigative work by Stuart Bowen on corruption in Iraq.
It took a British NGO, Christian Aid, to break the news a few years ago that Jerry Bremer, the Barney Fife of Baghdad, couldn't explain why $9 billion in Iraqi oil revenue was missing.
Besides that oil-for-slush scandal, we're still waiting to see those millions of White House e-mails the regime is withholding that relate to various scandals. Then there are the missing-weapons scandal and the various KBR scandals — you get the picture.
In any case, this new report on corruption inside Iraq's puppet government is still worth reading. It turns out that we really have planted a seed of our own form of democracy over there.
Posted by Harkavy at 11:59 AM, September 19, 2007
$15 billion of your money up in smoke for under-fire mercenary company, other defense contractors.
While Blackwater's mercenaries beg for mercy for killing a baby and 19 other people in Baghdad on Sunday, they're already working on another lucrative government contract on yet another foreign adventure: the "war on drugs."
In a major new outsourcing deal reported by only a few outlets, including the Army Times, Blackwater will divvy up a $15 billion pot of government gold, along with four huge defense contractors: Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and Arinc.
Blackwater claims to be building remote-control spy airships. Purty darn good for an army based in a little North Carolina town — no, it's Currituck, not Mayberry.
Arinc, a Maryland-based major supplier of airplane surveillance and passenger-counting equipment, is particularly stoked about the deal, which it announced on the sixth anniversary of 9/11:
ARINC already has a wealth of hands-on experience supporting just this type of program. We now expect to play a key role developing and fielding new solutions at the cutting edge of drug interdiction.
Hang on, Arinc, you're getting ahead of yourselves. Here's how GovExec.com's Katherine McIntire Peters describes this other privatized war, which apparently is necessary because, even with the privatized war in Iraq, we still don't have enough troops to conduct all these wars:
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