Fact-esque

The Kabuki Goes International: Bebe and the Flotilla Investigation

So Chuck Schumer gets points from Glennzilla for at least being honest about the Israeli blockade of Gaza that made the flotilla necessary.

Schumer told his audience that the "Palestinian people still don't believe in the Jewish state, in a two-state solution" and added that "they don't believe in the Torah, in David." As a result,"you have to force them to say Israel is here to stay." It's the Israeli blockade which accomplishes that, he argued. And Schumer is due some credit for being honest enough (unlike most devoted Israel defenders) to admit that a prime purpose of the blockade has nothing to do with keeping arms away from Hamas, but rather, is to economically strangle the people in Gaza -- meaning not Hamas, but the 1.5 million human beings (men, women and children) who live there:

And to me, since the Palestinians in Gaza elected Hamas, while certainly there should be humanitarian aid and people not starving to death, to strangle them economically until they see that's not the way to go, makes sense.

So as long as Israel stops just short of starving them all to death, then what Israel is doing is justified -- just like John Yoo explained that American torture is perfectly legal and permissible just as long as it stops short of causing major organ failure or death (or, as Juan Cole put it, "anything short of 'starving to death', i.e. mass extermination in the camps, is all right as long as it convinces the enemy?"). I think the most repugnant part of Schumer's comments is when he spoke about Gazans as though they were dogs needing to be trained to behave properly: the blockade is justified because it shows the Palestinians living there that "when there's some moderation and cooperation, they can have an economic advancement." Is that -- punish the people of Gaza for the acts of Terrorists -- not the very definition of "collective punishment," which happens to be a war crime under the Geneva Conventions?

Well, that's just dandy. And Jews who have been on the other end of this same justification for thousands of years are OK with it as long as it's aimed at somebody else? Half the Jews in that room - or their parents or grandparents - came to America to escape those who thought just like that about them. Irony Is King. Or should that read Hypocrisy Is King?

The Israeli Flotilla Raid and the Mossad

The Israeli attack on the humanitarian aid flotilla has rightfully scandalized the world but it has also brought out the flocks of rabid pro-Israeli zealots who viciously attack anyone anywhere who dares to suggest that Israel isn't always right about everything all the time. It might be important to understand where the Israeli propaganda they spread is coming from.

Not surprisingly, much of it originates in Israel. What may be surprising is that its specific origin is the LAP - the disinformation section of Mossad, Israel's secret police/CIA.

Gingrich, the Village, and the CIA: Zombies Support a Vampire Over a Corpse

Amanda Terkel (any relation to Studs, one wonders idly?) at Think Progress notes that Gingrich calling for Nancy Pelosi's resignation just because she called the CIA liars is more than a little pot/kettle behaviour. (Via Jane Hamsher at FDL)

Gingrich himself has accused the CIA, among other U.S. intelligence agencies, of misleading Congress and undermining the president. In response to the release of the 2007 Iran National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) — which concluded that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program — Gingrich said that he believed the NIE and its authors were “damaging to our own national security.” He said that the document was “a deliberate attempt to undermine the policies of President Bush by members of his own government by suggesting that Iran no longer poses a serious threat to U.S. national security.”

But there's a much bigger hypocrisy here that neither Terkel nor Hamsher seems to be aware of and I think it's worth taking a moment for a recap.

In the mid-90's Gingrich made a series of speeches at the American Enterprise Institute castigating both the CIA's intelligence-gathering and its analyses of what it gathered. He accused the analysts in particular not just of lying but of forging and hiding evidence that Saddam Hussein was the kingpin of global terrorism. Seymour Hersh (via BuzzFlash):

A Bad Day at Black Rock, Iraq

WARNING: Probably not work-safe language but no violence.

What you're about to watch is at best frustrating and at worst tragic. It is a US soldier taking out his frustrations with the Middle East: indirection, multiple loyalties, and a reluctance to fight for a foreign aggressor. It is more or less what a lot of us said was going to happen before the illegal invasion of Iraq, so it's not a surprise. But that sargeant doesn't know it and it's driving him crazy. It ain't gonna do you much good, either. (Via Thomas at newsrack)

This is not the only model, of course. Thomas Ricks at Foreign Policy points to a completely different way of motivating troops.

The problem is, of course, that there's a lot more of the first than there is of the second. US troops' frustration level is no doubt extremely high, as the first vid shows, but they are in an impossible situation, clearing the same roads, the same areas, every single day, fighting the same insurgents, some of whom probably were standing in front of him. It is a No-Win Situation of the deadliest.

The answer is obvious. We never should have been there in the first place. It's way past time to get out.

A Not Insignificant Bit of Trivia: The top vid has been on YouTube, Thomas says, since January. Are you wondering why you haven't seen it before now?

Triumph of Gaza

Not much I can say about this except that as you watch you might want to remember that these are the people making our Middle East policy.

A Victory Lap Without a Victory, How Bushian

The Emperor is going out in style - the same blind, self-backpatting style he started with. This weekend he snuck into Iraq to declare, "The war is not over...[but]...it is decisively on it's way to being won." An Iraqi threw shoes at his head. (video)

On an Iraq trip shrouded in secrecy and marred by dissent, President George W. Bush on Sunday hailed progress in the war that defines his presidency and got a size-10 reminder of his unpopularity when a man hurled two shoes at him during a news conference.

"This is the end!" shouted the protester, later identified as Muntadar al-Zeidi, a correspondent for Al-Baghdadia television, an Iraqi-owned station based in Cairo, Egypt.

Bush ducked both shoes as they whizzed past his head and landed with a thud against the wall behind him.

***

In Iraqi culture, throwing shoes at someone is a sign of contempt.

Mr al-Zeidi was immediately airlifted to a special CIA camp in Turkmenistan for re-education. Meanwhile "[a]t least 55 people were killed Thursday in a suicide bombing in a restaurant near Kirkuk."

This is by actual count the 113th time that Bush has declared victory since the invasion five years ago. One of these days I suppose (hope) it will be true.

But not today.

Bush Empire Swallows Pakistan

The Emperor, having lost his obedient Pakistani satrap, the man who protected him from the necessity of acknowledging that Pakistan is now a US colony, has been forced to acknowledge that Pakistan is no longer an independent nation by assuming power to do whatever he likes within its borders. That's not the message of this news story, as you'll see, but that's what it really means.

President Bush secretly approved orders in July that for the first time allow American Special Operations forces to carry out ground assaults inside Pakistan without the prior approval of the Pakistani government, according to senior American officials.

The classified orders signal a watershed for the Bush administration after nearly seven years of trying to work with Pakistan to combat the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and after months of high-level stalemate about how to challenge the militants’ increasingly secure base in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

American officials say that they will notify Pakistan when they conduct limited ground attacks like the Special Operations raid last Wednesday in a Pakistani village near the Afghanistan border, but that they will not ask for its permission.

“The situation in the tribal areas is not tolerable,” said a senior American official who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on condition of anonymity because of the delicate nature of the missions. “We have to be more assertive. Orders have been issued.”

(emphasis added)

This unilateral violation of another nation's sovereign power to make decisions about what a foreigner, ally or not, will be allowed to do on its own soil is typical of the Bush/Cheney arrogance of the last 8 years. "We're the Big Dog. What are you gonna do about it?"

Can you imagine what would happen if the US allowed, say, Canada to hunt down Canadian criminals in America and then had Prime Minister Harper declare that he didn't have to get permission to blow up Duluth if he thought his quarry was hiding there but would make a courtesy call later to let Bush know what he had done? Wouldn't the American Right make some sort of, I dunno, objection?

War Powers Redux

Bush has just given the Democrats a major gift. The trouble is that they are madly spineless and too afraid to use it or even recognize it for what it is.

What is it, one wonders? A re-affirmation of his war powers.

Tucked deep into a recent proposal from the Bush administration is a provision that has received almost no public attention, yet in many ways captures one of President Bush’s defining legacies: an affirmation that the United States is still at war with Al Qaeda.

Seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Bush’s advisers assert that many Americans may have forgotten that. So they want Congress to say so and “acknowledge again and explicitly that this nation remains engaged in an armed conflict with Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated organizations, who have already proclaimed themselves at war with us and who are dedicated to the slaughter of Americans.”

The language, part of a proposal for hearing legal appeals from detainees at the United States naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, goes beyond political symbolism. Echoing a measure that Congress passed just days after the Sept. 11 attacks, it carries significant legal and public policy implications for Mr. Bush, and potentially his successor, to claim the imprimatur of Congress to use the tools of war, including detention, interrogation and surveillance, against the enemy, legal and political analysts say.

Some lawmakers are concerned that the administration’s effort to declare anew a war footing is an 11th-hour maneuver to re-establish its broad interpretation of the president’s wartime powers, even in the face of challenges from the Supreme Court and Congress.

What's the one thing (short of ending the war altogether) that the Democratic Congress could do to convince people, finally, that they represent something different and that "things are gonna change"?

Never Mind Kansas, What's Happened to America?

Following a decision by Pakistan's ruling coalition to impeach Gen Pervez Musharraf, the General has decided to step down.

Faced with mounting pressure from former political allies and dwindling support from his international backers, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, once a top U.S. ally, is expected to resign in the next few days, according to Pakistani officials.

A week after leaders of the ruling coalition said they planned to impeach Musharraf, the capital was abuzz with speculation that he would step down before formal impeachment charges are filed in Parliament on Monday. Musharraf, who seized power in a military coup nine years ago, has survived at least two assassination attempts. But his opponents said Thursday that he was unlikely to withstand the current challenge to his presidency.

Astounding. This so-called "backward" country has just rid itself of a dictator and we can't get an overgrown frat-brat off our backs. What's happened to us?

(There are serious aspects to this, like for instance how Musharraf's pretense as a major Bush "ally" was a contributing factor in his pull-down, but I'm on vacation and don't care.)

Corpo's Use Middle East Addresses to Frustrate Employees' Rights

There's a standard corporate dodge encouraged by the Bush Administration that lets corpo's avoid paying taxes, duck any laibilities from poisoning the air or water, and stop unions from getting a foothold in their plants: register your headquarters in another country even though the offices are in the US (that's what the Panama trade deal was all about - the Democrats passed it, btw). Well, American corporations, thanks to a couple of Iraq-war profiteer-related legal decisions, have discovered a brand new use for the Foreign Registration Scam - short-circuiting their workers' rights as employees.

When William Christopher Hyser abruptly lost his job as a police trainer in Iraq - and his $16,000 bonus - he was so angry that he wanted to sue DynCorp, the Virginia-based defense contractor that hired him.

But when he called the company's complaint line, he was told that if he wanted to file a lawsuit, he had to do it in the United Arab Emirates. Like nearly 1,000 other American police trainers in Iraq, Hyser wasn't on the official DynCorp payroll - he was employed by a wholly-owned subsidiary set up in a tax-free-zone Dubai, a business-friendly citystate where labor unions are banned.

"I was so frustrated," said the former Maryland state trooper. "It just blew me away."

DynCorp, one of the largest US defense contractors in Iraq, is one of a small but growing number of US companies that mandate the use of courts in the Middle East to resolve disputes with their American employees. The practice frequently serves to block employees' lawsuits, legal specialists say, because few are able to navigate a still-developing foreign legal system in a distant land.

"The company has put up a hurdle that is probably insurmountable, or is just not going to be worth it to fight," said Richard Posthuma, an international labor specialist at the University of Texas, El Paso.

It's a simple - and apparently legal - scam. By assigning your headquarters officially to a country that doesn't recognize workers' rights, your workers won't have any.