Buffalo Report articles and links 2006

Neil MacFarquhar: Defiant Despot for More than 30 Years (NY Times). This NY Times obit is worthy of Suetonius. (30 December 2006)

Norman Finkelstein: Slime Throwing as "Debate": The Dershowitz Treatment (Counterpunch). Jimmy Carter is the latest victim in Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz's jihad against anyone who criticizes Israel for anything its government or citizens do to Palestinians, however vile. Norman Finkelstein—himself a victim of one of Dershowitz's more vicious attacks,has done a better job than anyone else identifying Dershowtiz's lies, misrepresentations, distortions, plagiarism and smearing. Here, he takes Dershowitz on for the Carter smear, and more. (30 December 2006)

Diane Christian: It's rape. "Let's stop using the word war to describe our action in Iraq....'Iraqi Freedom' was not a righteous war but a preemptive attack rationalized on faulty ideas, imaginations, and greed. Better to think of it as rape. We raped Iraq. We began our action with forced, non-consensual penetration and despoilation of that country. Our Vice President publically imagined they wanted us and would welcome us, would love us and our intentions. Guilt followed, and more delusion, and stubborn refusal to admit the action. So stopping the rape, getting out, is where the figure flags. Rather than withdrawing and taking a shower, we've continued the rape and recast the story....No face-saving fiction is credible now. We need to face our face as rapist and despoiler and change it. However well-meaning and heroic we might wish to appear, intentions cannot transform the actions of barbarism and terror. Rape is a love story only for sociopaths." (Christmas Day 2006)

John J. LaFalce on Buffalo casino (Buffalo News). A Buffalo News Q&A with one of the authors of the Federal legislation used to get the Seneca gambling joint into downdown Buffalo. They've got it all wrong, he says: the law doesn't come close to permitting what's now in process, so the Federal judge considering the lawsuit should shut it down. Ignore the almost incoherent question that opens the Q&A: LaFalce comes up with a rational response in spite of it. (24 December 2006)

Tribal immunity rejected in political-funding case (Sacramento Bee). Indian gambling interests have been pouring huge amounts of money into state political campaigns, after which some of them hide their political spending behind sovereignty claims. The California Supreme Court says that won't wash: if they want to buy politicians they have to do it by the same rules applied to all the other big-spending lobbying organizations. (24 December 2006)

Desmond Tutu: Apartheid in the Holy Land (Guardian). The Lobby is ganging up on Jimmy Carter because he dared use the right word for what's going on in Israel: apartheid. Archbishop Desmond Tutu knows apartheid when he sees it and he thinks Jimmy Carter has it right. "People are scared in this [the US], to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful - very powerful. Well, so what? For goodness sake, this is God's world! We live in a moral universe. The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer exists. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, Milosevic, and Idi Amin were all powerful, but in the end they bit the dust. Injustice and oppression will never prevail. Those who are powerful have to remember the litmus test that God gives to the powerful: what is your treatment of the poor, the hungry, the voiceless? And on the basis of that, God passes judgment. " (24 December 2006)

Three days of callousness (Haaretz). An Israeli marksman, against orders, shot and killed a 14-year-old Palestinian girl. The Israeli government refused to allow the father to attend his murdered daughter's funeral on the grounds that he was suspected of having stolen a car. One judge after another used one technicality after the other to keep him locked up until the very end of the mourning period. "It is impossible to attribute the chain of callousness described above to this or that individual or even to this or that institution, but only to point out an ongoing process of brutalization with regard to the Palestinian person: the person who seeks a livelihood, the person in pain over his daughter, killed by our forces' fire, the one for whom even natural human empathy with his mourning is no longer natural to us." (24 December 2006)

Alan Dershowitz; Why won't Carter debate his book? (Boston Globe). The Harvard law professor who helped rationalize the Bush administration's torture policy is throwing a hissy-fit because Jimmy Carter won't help him get on television. And because Carter named Israeli apartheid policies for what they are, Dershowitz (for whom Israel is never in the moral wrong) says Carter is "a bully." One guy against a nation, Dershowitz and the Lobby and he's a bully? Nonsense. The reason Carter won't "debate" Dershowitz on Israel is because any time Dershowitz gets on the subject he tosses out syllogisms (as the untrue first sentence of this article), insults, generalizations, and unsubstantiated accusations. Why would Jimmy Carter want to provide an ideololgue like Dershowitz a forum for dreck like that? Dershowitz needs to read Desmond Tutu. (24 December 2006)

Justice Flows into a Parched California Valley (Washington Post). Remember the water-diversion story in the 1974 Roman Polanski film Chinatown? It happened. And now they're trying to put the water back. The birds are very happy. (24 December 2006)

Oceans Warming and Rising (Interpress/CommonDreams). More evidence of the global phenomenon reality-challenged George W. Bush says needs no attention from the U.S. because he doesn't believe it exists. (24 December 2006)

Iraqi Hopes Dim Through Worst Year of Occupation (InterPress/CommonDreams). In Iraq, the rate of violent death continues to escalate. Baghdad residents have half as many hours of electricity as when Saddam ran the place. Schools are in disarray. Highways are shooting galleries. And Bush's war, endorsed by most of Congress's Republicans and Democrats and even now fully disavowed by only a few of them, has killed more Iraqis than all the allied forces killed in Germany in World War II. (24 December 2006)

Bruce Jackson: Saying "Oh!": John Mohawk 1944-2006. How our friend was wrapped in the garden blanket of earth. (20 December 2006)

White House, Joint Chiefs At Odds on Adding Troops (Washington Post). Insurgent attacks in Iraq are at an all-time high and civilian and military deaths continue to mount. The Bush administration, bereft of ideas, now wants to pour more troops into Iraq to protect the troops already there. The Joint Chiefs unanimously oppose the policy, saying that just gives the anti-American forces more people to blow up. (19 December 2006)

John Graham: Iraq is Vietnam—and You'd Better Believe It (CommonDreams). Bush was drunk during the Vietnam War. Perhaps that's why he doesn't know that we've done this all before, and it worked at just as badly that time as it is going to this time. Or perhaps he does know and he is just as cynical as he seems. "US leaders may decide, as they did 37 years ago, that we must again create a 'decent interval' to mask defeat and that the PR benefits of that interval are worth the cost in lives and money. If they do, however, they should-unlike the Iraq Study Group-not lie to us that such a strategy has any military chance whatsoever of success." (19 December 2006)

Diplomat's Suppressed Document Lays Bare the Lies behind Iraq War (Independent/CommonDreams). The Blair administration failed in its attempt to use the Official Secrets Act to suppress testimony showing the British administration knew there were no WMD in Iraq and that Iraq posed no threat to Britain, and that Blair had reports saying regime change in Iraq would lead to exactly the present mess. (19 December 2006)

Uri Avnery: Back to the Scene of the Crime (Gush Shalom). Here's one more parallel between the Bush and Olmert administrations: "When the Israeli government decided, in the space of a few hours, to start the Second Lebanon War, it did not have any plan. When the Chief-of-Staff urged the cabinet to start the war, he did not submit any plan....A plan is not an optional extra, something nice you can do without. A war without a plan is like a human body without a spinal column. Would anyone think of building a house without a plan? To put up a bridge? To produce a car? To hold a conference? After all, unlike a house, a bridge, a car or a conference, a war is supposed to kill people. Its very essence is killing and destroying. Almost in every case, to initiate a war is a crime. To start such a war without a plan and proper preparation is totally irresponsible - heaping crime upon crime." (19 December 2006)

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Why they deny the Holocaust (LA Times). "On top of nearly constant anti-Semitic propaganda, much of the Muslim world hasn't even heard of it....What's striking about Ahmadinejad's conference is the (silent) acquiescence of mainstream Muslims. I cannot help but wonder: Why is there no counter-conference in Riyadh, Cairo, Lahore, Khartoum or Jakarta condemning Ahmadinejad? Why are the 57 members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference silent on this? Could the answer be as simple as it is horrifying: For generations, the leaders of these so-called Muslim countries have been spoon-feeding their populations a constant diet of propaganda similar to the one that generations of Germans (and other Europeans) were fed — that Jews are vermin and should be dealt with as such? In Europe, the logical conclusion was the Holocaust. If Ahmadinejad has his way, he shall not want for compliant Muslims ready to act on his wish." (19 December 2006)

Testimony Helps Detail CIA's Post-9/11 Reach (Washington Post). More details on how the CIA kidnaps, transports, imprisons and tortures individuals they suspects of something or other. Or, more evidence why when U.S. officials try to take the moral high ground everyone else in the room breaks into the giggles. (19 December 2006)

Former U.S. Detainee in Iraq Recalls Torment (NY Times). If this is the way American guards in Iraq torture American citizens helping the U.S., what do you think they're doing to people who speak Arabic as their first language? (19 December 2006)

John Mohawk,Iroquois Leader and Scholar, Dead at 61 (Democracy Now!). Amy Goodman introduces and presents John Mohawk's comments at the November 18 "Indigenous Peoples' Resistance to Economic Globalization: A Celebration of Victories, Rights and Cultures" teach-in.

Jose Barreiro: John Mohawk, beloved man of wisdom, passes on (Indian Country Today). "Indian country lost a major luminary with the recent passing of Sotsisowah, the Seneca author and traditionalist known in the broader society as John Mohawk, Ph.D...Many will credit John Mohawk as the major intellectual and strategic force behind the surge of Haudenosaunee activism of the past 30 years. Many more know and respect him for his many expressions on important national and international issues. While he published and lectured widely, Mohawk generously gave much of his intellectual prowess directly to community issues. At moments when traditionalist life was threatened, he worked diligently to establish strategic directions for the longhouse and other traditionalist governments. One remembers many instances in which Mohawk made a huge difference in dangerous moments of interethnic and political conflict. Many are the times when he forsook professional glory or advancement to join the battle lines, where he employed his powerful intellect to save life while always pressing the demand for Native peoples' unique sovereign rights." (17 December 2006)

John Mohawk: Thoughts at the turn of the century (BBC). A 1999 BBC interview (17 December 2006)

The White Corn Project (ProphecyandSurvival.com). Recipes, articles and ordering information for John Mohawk's Iroquois white corn project. (17 December 2006)

John Mohawk: The age of extinctions is upon us (Indian Country Today). "There are many species on the earth which our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will probably never see in the wild and which may fall entirely to extinction: the ivory-billed woodpecker, to be sure; the grizzly bear; and the bluefin tuna. Animals, plants and fish great and small are disappearing - victims of habitat destruction and the biological impact of globalization (which commenced in earnest in 1492), and in the wake of pure human (and corporate) foolishness. America, which puts the dollar before all else, is a serious player in this process: but not the only player. Every industrial and developing country in the world has choices to make, and most are based on priorities that have little to do with promoting the health of the natural world. Humans seem confident that we will be standing at the end, victors in the game of extinction. Then what?" (17 December 2006)

John Mohawk: The Warriors Who Turned to Peace (Yes Magazine). It's easy to start a war or keep one going. But how do you stop? (17 December 2006)

Oren Lyons and John Mohawk: Sovereignty and Common Sense (Akwesasne Notes). " Sovereignty! Sovereignty! We hear the word all the time. It is invoked as though it has magic powers, like 'allakazam!' But behind all the claims and misunderstandings, what about common sense?"A spring 1990 article on the consequences of reservation gambling and tax-exempt sales by Mohawk and his friend and colleague Oren Lyons, Onandaga faith-keeper. (17 December 2006)

Obituaries from the Buffalo News (Elmer Ploetz) and UB Reporter (Pat Donovan)

Mark Sommer: LaFalce says they've got it all wrong with the casino (Buffalo News). Supposedly, the Seneca Nation Settlement Act of 1990 provided the legal hook Governor George Pataki and the Seneca Nation of Indians used to set up the casino that will eat Buffalo. Former Congressman John J. LaFalce says the Act provides no such license, nor was it ever intended to, and using it to create a casino in downtown Buffalo is a deliberate perversion of the law. (12 December 2006)

Simon Schama: One from the heart (Guardian). Grown-up people talk about what a "great poet" Bob Dylan is. Nonsense. Dylan is a good songwriter, often precious, usually safe, he often puts together great bands and he has a lot of great one-liners.The real singer-poet crown goes to Tom Waits, whose lyrics and voice make Bob Dylan look frou-frou. "The raspy ruins of Tom Waits's voice take us into the darker places of the American psyche." (12 December 2006)

George Monbiot; Routine and systematic torture is at the heart of America's war on terror (Guardian). How can you defeat something you say is evil if you embrace its methods? (12 December 2006)

Peter Dreier: Jim Baker's War (American Prospect). "If it weren't for James Baker, we wouldn't be in Iraq in the first place....Baker, who is inevitably described as 'former Secretary of State,' surely does hope that the Iraq Study Group will secure his place in history as a diplomat and statesman who rose above personal loyalty to George W. to construct the widely-cherished 'bipartisan consensus.' But Baker should be remembered primarily for his most significant accomplishment, the shameless and ruthless partisan rescue mission that put George W in the White House, sent almost 3,000 Americans to their graves so far, and embroiled the United States in a costly and unpopular war that will undoubtedly be recorded as one of our nation's most stupid foreign policy blunders." (12 December 2006)

Israel blocks Tutu's UN mission to investigate Gaza killings (Reuters/CommonDreams). Israel refused to permit the UN Human Rights Council team led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tuto to enter Israel to investigate the recent killing of 19 Palestinians by Israelis shells. (12 December 2006)

Uri Avnery: Baker's Cake (Gush Shalom). "A few days after the collapse of the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, I happened to go on a lecture tour in the US. My message was optimistic. I expected some good to come out of the tragedy. I reasoned that the atrocity had exposed the intensity of the hatred for the US that is spreading throughout the world, and especially the Muslim world. It would be logical not only to fight against the mosquitoes, but to drain the swamp. Since the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was one of the breeding grounds of the hatred - if not the main one - the US would make a major effort to achieve peace between the two peoples. That was what cold logic indicated. But this is not what happened. What happened was the very opposite. American policy was not led by cold logic. Instead of drying one swamp, it created a second swamp. Instead of pushing the Israelis and Palestinians towards peace, it invaded Iraq. Not only did the hatred against America not die down, it flared up even higher." But James Baker, says Avnery, may be the first American political figure in years to deal rationally with the Middle East mess. As soon as the Baker-Hamilton report came out The Lobby started badmouthing and dismissing it, but perhaps this time the propaganda machine won't enjoy its usual success. (10 December 2006)

Phyllis Bennis and Erik Leaver: The Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group: Can't Stay the Course, Can't End the War, But We'll Call it Bipartisan. "Overall, the report reflects the steep drop in U.S. and international support for the Bush administration's Iraq policy, and the desperation of U.S. elites to somehow rescue foreign policy and declining U.S. influence and power in the world. It recognizes that the November 2006 elections were about rejecting the war but it does not come close to reflecting what the American people (62%) AND the Iraqi people (80%) actually want: a rapid and complete end to the U.S. occupation and the troops brought home. Instead, it suggests 79 complicated (and in some cases contradictory) carefully calibrated, moderate, 'bi-partisan' (NOT non-partisan) recommendations for changing the 'stay the course' language without really making the course that much different for Iraqis and the majority of U.S. troops." (10 December 2006)

Michael Beebe and Dan Herbeck: Leading a nation against a state (Buffalo News). The new president of the Seneca Nation (who paid voters as much as $1200 each and flew out-of-towners in for the election and had them comped them at the Nation's Niagara Falls casino while they were here) has stonewalled the IRS over millions in unpaid taxes. NY Governor-elect Eliot Spitzer says he's going to collect state taxes on cigarettes and gasoline sold in reservation stores. It promises to be a dilly of a battle. Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown's toothless contract with the Seneca Nation just moved several notches closer to the totally worthless line. (10 December 2006)

Religion for a Captive Audience, Paid For by Taxes (NY Times). The Bush Administration has provided evangelical Christians huge amounts of money to run conversion programs in prisons. Convicts who submit to the discipline receive much better accommodations than those who don't. Jews, Catholics, Muslims and others who don't fit the pattern needn't apply. As if those guys don't have sufficient problems already. (10 December 2006)

Afghanistan war nears 'tipping point' (LA Times). Forty-five months ago, the Bush administration abandoned its search for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and devoted its attention to waging and losing its war of choice in Iraq. Ever since, conditions in Afghanistan have been deteriorating. They are now at a point where the Taliban is back in strength and U.S. may very well turn out to have lost that war too. (9 December 2006)

Oil for Sale: Why the Iraq Study Group is Calling for the Privatization of Iraq's Oil Industry (Democracy Now!). The real reason Bush went into Iraq was to get control of its huge oil reserves. Al Qaeda wasn't there until our military presence made the country fertile ground for their mischief, and Saddam was no threat to any U.S. interest. It was and remains about oil. Which is why one of the key provisions of the Iraq Study Group report has to do with giving U.S. energy corporations a way to control Iraqi oil once the war winds down. That is perhaps no surprise, given the heavy representation in the Group of people with energy corporation interests. What is surprising is the total silence about this gambit in the mainstream press. (9 December 2006)

Bush Dismisses Key Recommendations of Iraq Study Group Report (Democracy Now!). How do you deal with a report the bottom line of which says your foreign policy has been and continues to be a disaster? Dismiss it out of hand, make stupid jokes, and change the subject. (9 December 2006)

Bush living LBJ's lession (McClatchy). Bush's friends are amazed at how little he is bothered by current events in Iraq and the Iraq Study Group report, which detailed his miserable failure in the Middle East. They see that as evidence of his inner strength. More objective observers might see it as evidence of his deepening lunacy. (9 December 2006)

BlackBerry Orphans (Wall Street Journal). The PC let people take the office home, and the laptop let them take it anywhere in the house. The BlackBerry and Treo let them take it anywhere, anytime, which is leading to a reversal in family complaints: where parents once yelled at kids for spending too much time in front of the tv, kids are now complaining about parents spending too much time reading and thumb-typing email when they should be doing attending to the family. (9 December 2006)

Hows Pataki stacked New York's First Appellate Division (NY Times). New York Governor George Pataki has an easy smile and pleasant manner, but when it comes to patronage and cronyism he is arguably the most cynical governor New York has had in decades. (9 December 2006)

Exxon Spends Millions to Cast Doubt on Warming (The Independent/CommonDreams). There are two ways to deal with global warming: (1) find ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, and (2) pretend it isn't happening. President George W. Bush has selected option (2). And Exxon, the world's largest energy company, has not only opted for (2) but is spending a huge amount of money trying to convince responsible organizations to do the same. (9 December 2006)

Kenneth Turan: Another bloodbath, Mel Gibson's "Apocalypto" doesn't miss an impalement or a dismemberment (LA Times). "Despite a genuine talent for taking us to another time and place, a gift that under other circumstances would be worth experiencing, Gibson has made a movie that can be confidently recommended only to viewers who have a concentration camp commandant's tolerance for repugnant savagery. Mountains of hacked up corpses, exit wounds spewing fountains of blood, spears shattering teeth, warriors literally beating each other's brains out, it's all here in living and dying color.... If ever there was a filmmaker congenitally unable to resist shots of severed heads bouncing, bouncing, bouncing down the side of a steep pyramid, this is the man." (9 December 2006)

Near-Total Isolation Sought for Guantanamo (InterPress/Common Dreams). The Bush Administration insists that its endless "war on terror" requires suspension of all rights guaranteed by the US Constitution to any non-citizen it chooses to capture or kidnap and imprison in an offshore fortress. The Republican Congress Bush enjoyed the past few years was happy to give him that authority. Some members of the incoming Congress are hoping to reestablish the rule of law. (9 December 2006)

Jimmy Carter: Speaking frankly about Israel and Palestine (LA Times). Just like anyone else who seriously questions Israel's Palestinian policy and actions, Jimmy Carter is being smeared as a racist and Israel-hater. (9 December 2006)

Norman Finkelstein: The Media Lynching of Jimmy Carter (Counterpunch). The NY Times and Washington Post this week ran stories about Kenneth Stein's "resignation" from the Carter Center; neither newspaper mentioned that Kenneth Stein's only connection with the Center was advisory and that was 20 years ago. He had nothing to resign, but he did make for good copy in the attempt to trivialize Carter's important comments on the mess in Palestine. (9 December 2006)

Tales of the Freewayblogger (freewayblogger). We don't know who Freewayblogger is, or even whether Freewayblogger is male or female. The emails are signed "scarlet p.", which could be a real name or, more likely, a riff on The Scarlet Pimpernel. One thing Freewayblogger surely is, is a one-person anti-war, anti-Bush force of nature. Over the past four years she/he has put more than 3,000 anti-war signs where they would be seen by millions of California drivers. Here are some of Bloggers' comments on how California highways became a publication site. (9 December 2006)

Recommendations of the Iraq Study Group (NY Times). Bush commissioned it, but will he read it? Does he read anything? (7 December 2006)

The Iraq Study Group Report. Full text in pdf format of the report of the group chaired by James A. Baker, III and Lee H. Hamilton. (7 December 2006)

Our deteriorating military (McClatchy/CommonDreams). The US defense establishment is being cannibalized and starved as more and more resources are diverted to the lost war in Iraq. (7 December 2006)

Tom Engelhardt: Biking with Donald Rumsfeld (TomDispatch). Three key (and semi-lunatic) items the mainstream press missed in its fluttering over Rummy's exit "snowflake." (5 December 2006)

Cintra Wilson: Two parts hubris, one part paranoia (Salon.com). The Republican Right is currently touting former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani to run against Hillary Clinton in 2008. They think Rudy's take-charge image from the weeks immediately following 9-11 will make people forget what an arrogant, hubristic, bullying thug he really is. Before 9-11, Rudy's ratings were lower than Bush's are now, and New Yorkers had very good reasons for the low esteem. (5 December 2006)

A Saudi executioner discusses his calling and his craft (MEMRI). An interview with Abdallah Al-Bishi, the Saudi executioner for Mecca, on how he inherited the job, his blades, and what happens when he has to behead or remove the hand and leg of someone he knows well. (5 December 2006)

Richard Dorment: Plane Image: A Brice Marden Retrospective (NY Review of Books). "Think back to early monochromes like Nebraska and you become aware of how far Marden has journeyed over the last forty years, and how fascinating each stage of that journey has been. But we can also see how wrong it would be to think of his art as an art of deletion or reduction. Almost from the beginning he worked not by jettisoning what had gone before but by incorporating Minimalism, Abstract Expressionism, old master painting, and Chinese art and calligraphy into the work at hand. Each of these influences is internalized until it becomes so much a part of Marden's art that eventually it becomes invisible. Then he moves on." This Marden retrospective at MoMA is superb except for one thing: the galleries in which the pictures are displayed show them at a disadvantage. "Since light is so important to Marden, it means that the show, which is beautifully chosen and installed by Gary Garrels, will look even better when it moves in February to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, where the works can be seen at different times of day and therefore in constantly changing light." (4 December 2006)

Bruce Jackson: Brice Marden: four photographs. (5 December 2006). Four photos of the painter Brice Marden, one with Diane Christian, taken in West Shokan, NY, 1995. (5 December 2006)

Lunatics at Charleston (NY Times). When Jose Padilla goes to the dentist, he is masked, shackled hand and foot, made to wear noise-reduction earmuffs, and is surrounded by a platoon of goons wearing face masks and full riot gear. This is obviously a military prison overstaffed by paranoids with far too much time on their hands and far too much money at their disposal. It would be comical were it not so vicious. (4 December 2006)

British probe of ex-spy's death widens (LA Times). The radition murder of former KGB agent Alexander Livinenko could have been scripted by John le Carré. (4 December 2006)

Bush wants courthouse for outside-the-law prison (Syracuse Post-Intelligencer). The Bush administration wants Congress to appropriate $100 million for a courthouse and legal compound at the Guantanamo Bay gulag. It will be used to try prisoners who, if the Bush administration's Military Commissions bill is let stand by the Supreme Court, will have none of the Constitutional protections every other person tried in a U.S. court has enjoyed since the start of the Republic, nor some protections Britain and its colonies provided since Runnymede. Even the Republicans who control Congress for a few more weeks are balking at this one. (4 December 2006)

Carter's frontal attack (LA Times). In his new book, Jimmy Carter says "the central reasons for a stalled peace settlement is Israel's continuing refusal to give back the West Bank lands it occupied after the 1967 war and America's unflinching political support for Israel.... He blasts Israel's construction of a security wall between itself and Palestinians, saying the controversial structure is a brazen land grab by a minority of Israelis — an 'imprisonment wall' that has encircled thousands of Palestinians on the West Bank and has become a form of economic apartheid." (4 December 2006)

Nora Ephron: Bad Manners (Huffington Post). That sanctimonious purse-mouthed twit George Will is throwing a hissy-fit because Senator-elect James Webb wouldn't make nicey-nice with George Bush about the Iraq war in which thousands of Iraqis and Americans are being slaughtered and mutilated every month. Up yours, George. (1 December 2006)

Phyllis Bennis: United Nations v. United States (TomPaine.com). "The last time the U.N. played its Charter-mandated role of working to stop “the scourge of war” was in the run-up to the 2003 U.S. war on Iraq, when the Security Council refused to endorse the invasion, the General Assembly condemned it, and eventually the secretary general called it illegal. The U.N. then was part of the massive mobilization in which “the world said no to war.” It wasn’t enough, ultimately, to prevent the invasion, but it did deny the Bush administration what it so desperately sought: international legitimacy. It’s not too late for the United Nations to reclaim that role." (1 December 2006)

Buffalo Film Seminars spring 2007 schedule. Our 14th series consists of audience favorites from the 182 films we've screened and discussed in the past seven years.

Diane McWhorter: The N-Word (Slate). There's not a lot of daylight between Hitler's 1933 "Law to Remedy the Distress of the People and the Reich" and Bush's 2006 "Military Commissions Act." So why is any reference to the Nazitime taboo in US mass media? If the midterm election is about nothing more than Bush's failure to win a war he shouldn't have started, then what have we learned from all those needless deaths? (1 December 2006)

Nat Hentoff: What the Democrats Must Do (Village Voice). The Military Commissions Act of 2006 gives immunity to everyone in the Bush administration, the CIA and any other government organization guilty of torture or or arranging to have prisoners tortured by other nations. It also includes provisions to keep such atrocities hidden from the public. Senators Pat Leahy and Christopher Dodd are working on bills to reverse some of that. What about the rest of the Democrats? Now that they're in power, will they behave like Republicans only in blue or will they stand up for justice? What about New York senator Chuck Schumer, now third in the Senate hierarchy? "The loquacious Schumer has been indifferent to the administration's war on the Constitution and on our laws and treaties. Time for him to pay attention." (30 November 2006)

Jeff Cohen: CNN's Dangerous Blowhard (TomPaine.com). And you thought the worst thing about CNN was Wolf Blitzer's voice. "Turn on CNN Headline News—a supposed 'news' channel—on weekday nights and you’ll be subjected to the lectures of a loudmouthed, factually-challenged, occasionally funny know-it-all whose shtick is that he’s 'just a regular American schmoe.' His name is Glenn Beck, a smiley-toothed monologist and proselytizer who is a recovering alcoholic, talk-radio host, convert to Mormonism and self-described 'rodeo clown.' His crude rants would be easy to ignore, except that CNN—part of the Time Warner conglomerate—has chosen to give Beck a primetime platform which he uses day after day to cheer on a confrontation with Iran. (Imagine what an informed foreign policy critic could do with such a nightly forum.)" (30 November 2006)

'London's bridge is falling down' (London Times). Most Americans have opinions about why George W. Bush abandoned the search for Osama bin Laden and instead focused U.S. military efforts on the unjustified invasion of Iraq: he's the dumbest president we've ever had, he's a religious and political ideologue, he doesn't read, he listens to Cheney and other representatives of big oil. Things like that. But what about Tony Blair? Why did he ignore British opinion and history to follow Bush into disaster? What's his excuse? (1 December 2006)

UN Mine Group: Israeli Forces Laid Mines in Lebanon During Summer War (AP/Common Dreams). Land mines are the war gift that keeps on giving. Years after your troops have pulled back they continue killing and mutilating farmers, children, goats—any living thing talking a walk in the place you've deliberately made deadly. Lebanon has asked Israel for maps of the minefields. They've gotten no reply. Why not? (30 November 2006)

U.S. Prison Population Sets Record (Washington Post). 7 million people—one of every 32 U.S. adults—was locked up, on probation or on parole last December 31. Lunatic drug penalties account for a large part of that prison archipelago, but not all of it. So are we a maniacally criminal nation or a maniacally imprisoning nation? Either way, something is vastly screwed up. (1 December 2006)

High Court Divided on Warming (San Francisco Chronicle/Common Dreams). Bush appointee John Roberts asks why we should reduce our greenhouse gas emissions if China isn't doing the same. Scalia wants to know when the world will end. Breyer says we should act responsibly and realistically before it's too late for political posturing or academic hypothesizing. Business as usual at The Court. (1 December 2006)

Dan Froomkin: It's a Civil War, Stupid (Washington Post). Bush remains in deep denial, still saying we'll see this through, but the major news networks are backing off their usual stenography and calling the Iraq civil war we precipitated what it really is: the Iraq civil war that we precipitated. Even NCB's Matt Lauer has finally caught up with John Stewart of the Comedy Channel's "Daily Show" on this one.(1 December 2006)

Robert Fisk: Like Hitler and Brezhnev, Bush is in denial (The Independent). "More than half a million deaths, an army trapped in the largest military debacle since Vietnam, a Middle East policy already buried in the sands of Mesopotamia - and still George W Bush is in denial. How does he do it? How does he persuade himself - as he apparently did in Amman yesterday - that the United States will stay in Iraq 'until the job is complete'?....Even Hitler must chuckle at this bloodbath, he who claimed in April 1945 that Germany would still win the Second World War, boasting that his enemy, Roosevelt, had died - much as Bush boasted of Zarqawi's killing - while demanding to know when General Wenck's mythical army would rescue the people of Berlin. How many "Wencks" are going to be summoned from the 82nd Airborne or the Marine Corps to save Bush from Iraq in the coming weeks?" (1 December 2006)

Judge to release wrongfully convicted man (Chicago Sun Times). DNA evidence has exonerated a man who has spent 12 years in an Illinois prison for a crime done by someone else. At his trial, the Chicago police lab analyst said there wasn't enough evidence for a DNA test. The same analyst figures in several other wrongful convictions. How many more people are serving time for somebody else's crime? How many have been executed for somebody else's crime? (30 November 2006)

Bruce Jackson: Israel and Us: An interview with Phyllis Bennis (Artvoice). The first part of a two-part interview with Phyllis Bennis, a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies and a widely respected expert on the politics of the Middle East. (29 November 2006)

Why is the Washington Post smearing Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez? (FAIR). "Are the Washington Post's editorial pages entitled to not just their own opinions, but also their own facts? This seems to be the case with the paper's commentary on Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, where editors and columnists have shown a disturbing pattern of inaccuracy and unaccountability." Leading their assault is columnist Charles Krauthammer, with phoney anti-Semitism charges. (29 November 2006)

British Muslim tells of torture in Pakistan as US officials stood by (Guardian). Torture is good for getting people to say what you want them to say. But what about the truth? Do torturers care about the truth? Or do they care only for the moment when some poor sonofabitch, guilty or not, says, "Yes, yes, yes, I did it. Will you stop now?" What use to the rest of us is a confession gained in such fashion? (29 November 2006)

Julian Bond: Mental illness in black face (Charlotte Observer). Everybody agrees about three things in the Munford murder case: Guy Tobias LeGrande did the killing, he is psychotic, and he was hired by Tommy Munford to kill his wife. Munford, who is white, is serving a parolable prison sentence; the white man who helped him plan and set up the murder wasn't charged. LeGrande, who is black, is about to be executed. What's wrong with this picture? (27 November 2006)

Death in the streets: What George W. Bush brought to Iraq (London Times). "In Saddam's time I never saw a friend killed in front of my eyes. I never saw neighbours driven out of their homes just for their sect. And I never saw entire families being slaughted and killed." (27 November 2006)

Glenn Coln: Putting no land in trust for Oneidas costs CNY millions (Syracuse Post-Standard). Here's why Buffalo's city government, the US Department of the Interior, Governor George Pataki and the Seneca Gaming Corporation all worked so diligently to prevent a full environmental impact study of the effects of a downtown casino: the facts come out. (27 November 2006)

Matt Welch: Do we need another T.R.? (LA Times). "Sifting through McCain's four bestselling books and nearly three decades of work on Capitol Hill, a distinct approach toward governance begins to emerge. And it's one that the electorate ought to be particularly worried about right now. McCain, it turns out, wants to restore your faith in the U.S. government by any means necessary, even if that requires thousands of more military deaths, national service for civilians and federal micromanaging of innumerable private transactions. He'll kick down the doors of boardroom and bedroom, mixing Democrats' nanny-state regulations with the GOP's red-meat paternalism in a dangerous brew of government activism. And he's trying to accomplish this, in part, for reasons of self-realization." (27 November 2006)

Carl Hiaasen: Public backlash ruined Murdoch/Simpson show (Miami Herald). Some trash is even too much for the Fox network and its audience to swallow without barfing it up. Now if they'd only extrapolate.... (27 November 2006)

Howard Zinn on The Uses of History and the War on Terrorism (Democracy Now!). "When you know history, you know that governments lie, as I.F. Stone said. Governments lie all the time. Well, not just the American government. It’s just in the nature of governments. Well, they have to lie. I mean, governments in general do not represent the people of the societies that they govern. And since they don't represent the people and since they act against the interest of the people, the only way they can hold power is if they lie to the people. If they told people the truth, they wouldn't last very long. So history can help in understanding deception and being skeptical and not rushing to embrace whatever the government tells you." (27 November 2006)

Jimmy Breslin: Eyewitness to a horror still fresh (Newsday). Emilio Estevez's film Bobby reminds Jimmy Breslin what he saw and thought in the Ambassador Hotel kitchen the night Bobby Kennedy was shot. (27 November 2006)

Lawrence O'Donnell: Rangel is Right (Huffington Post/Common Dreams). Congressman Charles Rangel says if the US is going to wage wars of choice it should populate the ranks with draftees, so the kids getting killed and mutilated aren't primarily kids who have no other economic options. Congress would never have rubber-stamped Bush's war demands if the members had had to go home to face furious voters saying, "Why did you vote to murder my child?" (26 November 2006)

Rise of creationism in UK schools (Guardian). The 'intelligent design' sciencephobes have attacked Great Britain and the heads of some schools have let their mind-fogging drivel slip into some classes. But the government of the UK, unlike the government of the US, recognizes 'intelligent design' for the very unintelligent religious proselytizing it really is, and generally moves quickly to stamp out local outbreaks. (26 November 2006)

U.S. toughens passport rules for air travel (Buffalo News). The US border continues to thicken. Starting January 23, air travelers entering the US from Canada, Mexico, and Bermuda will need a passport to get past the Homeland Security inspectors. Birth certificates and drivers' licenses will no longer be acceptable for identification. (22 November 2006)

An Ideologue for Hire Gets New Alliance (NY Times). Connecticut's unbearable Joe Liberman hired a mouthpiece who at various times was Trotskyite, Zionist, Reaganite, chief lobbyist for the Christian Coalition. Marshall Wittman also worked for John McCain, the Heritage Foundation and the Hudson Institute. "To say that Wittmann defies classification is like saying Paris Hilton defies modesty. But in his peripatetic soul, he is a Washington Original, a man without a political country going to work for a senator without a political party."According to Tim Grieve, Wittmann's blog, "Bull Moose," is "known around the liberal blogosphere as 'the Bullshit Moose.'' (22 November 2006)

Pace of Global Warming Causes Alarm (AP/Common Dreams). It devolution rather than evolution time: animal species are dying out at an accellerating rate due to global warming. (22 November 2006)

Robert Fisk: Civil war in Lebanon (The Independent). Israel's savaging of Lebanon in retaliation for Hizbollah's killing of two Israeli soldiers increased, rather than decreased Hizbollah's power in Lebanon. With the murder this week of industry minister Pierre Gemayel and new US dependence on Syria for help extricating itself from its disastrous war in Iraq, Lebanon may be on the brink of civil war. (22 November 2006)

Robert Altman, Iconoclastic Director, Dies at 81 (NY Times). He made Nashville, MASH, The Long Goodbye, Short Cuts, Gosford Park and many more, and he told everybody it was okay to talk at the same time. HBO's hit "Deadwood" is a pale takeoff on his 1971 anti-Western Western, McCabe and Mrs. Miller. (21 November 2006)

Israeli Map Say West Bank Posts Sit on Arab Land (NY Times). How puzzling, say the Israelis. That's what we've been saying for years, say the Palestinians. Let us tell you how to define theft, says everybody else. (21 November 2006)

Seymour Hersh: The Next Act (New Yorker). One major consequence of the Bush administration's Middle East policy has been the emergence of Iran as the region's primary political power. Now that they've lost Congress, will Bush and Cheney start trying to engage Iran rationally or will they pursue the same policy that created the current messes in Iraq and Afghanistan? Or, as one CIA official put it, will Bush "continue to choose Cheney over his father?" (20 November 2006)

Mohegan Sun Plans New Hotel and Casino (NY Times). The Indian gambling resort in Connecticut is planning a $740 million expansion. They're adding a 1,000-room hotel, another casino and expanded food and retail operations. The toothless contract Buffalo mayor Byron Brown recently entered with the Seneca gambling operation opens the door for the same kind of operation here. The only difference is, Mohegan Sun is in a rural area, and the casino Brown is helping bring to town will be displacing scores of local entertainment, food and hotel operations. (20 November 2006)

Ali Abunimah: South African seen as model for Palestine (Middle East Times). For far too long now, Israel has taken Apartheid South Africa as its moral and political model. It's time for Israel to look at the South Africa that emerged from those years of evil oppression and hatred. (19 November 2006)

Embittered Insiders Turn Against Bush (Washington Post). Like the proverbial rats deserting the sinking ship, one neocon after another is pointing a finger at Bush and Cheney for the disaster in the Middle East. The latest is Kenneth Adelman who, like the others, seems to have trouble remembering that Bush and Cheney were executing the design Adelman, Perele and the rest of that group devised for world domination by the U.S. Empire. Late Sunday, former Secretary of State and recent White House closet adviser Henry A. Kissinger joined the fleeing rats. (19 November 2006)

Black lawmakers will have unprecedented clout in new Congress (McClatchy). The 110th Congress will have 42 African-American representatives and one senator; 4 of the black House members will chair committees and 17 will chair subcommittees. There is not a single Republican African-American in either house of Congress. (19 November 2006)

Edward Luce: Congress set to take a new view of global warming (Financial Times). "Nowhere is the shift of control in last week's US elections more dramatic than in the influential Senate environment committee. For the last four years, James Inhofe, the outgoing Republican chairman, has blocked any attempts to address global warming, describing man-made climate change as the greatest 'hoax' ever practised on the American people. In contrast, his successor, Senator Barbara Boxer, a Democrat from California, said this week tackling global warming would be her top priority. 'The only thing James Inhofe and Barbara Boxer have in common is that they are human beings,' said Anna Aurilio, director of the Washington Public Interest Research Group, an advocacy outfit." (19 November 2006)ADVERTISEMENT

Barack Obama and David Remnick: Testing the Waters (New Yorker online). John Kerry was made of wood in 2004 and he'll still be made of wood in 2006; Hillary Clinton is working so hard at being a safe and proper candidate she's coming across as inflexible and canned. Perhaps Barack Obama doesn't stand a chance against the big money juggernauts already in motion, but he is the only one out there who is the least bit interesting and who gives any significant sign of life. Here's a transcript of a 46-minute interview with him conducted by New Yorker editor David Remnick at the American Magazine Conference in Phoenix, Arizona" plus a link to an audio recording of their encounter. (18 November 2006)

For West Bank, It's a Highway to Frustration (NY Times). Israel has been supplementing its Apartheid Wall with increased checkpoints and road barriers in the West Bank so now Palestinians are not only blocked from entering Israel, but they're impeded going from one Palestinian area to another. (18 November 2006)

The sexiest man living! (Salon.com). So who, after George Clooney, who is so obvious they left him off the list, do you think made the cut? Numero Uno is that guy from South Carolina who can't even pronounce his last name correctly. He is followed by Borat's alter ego. And on from there. (17 November 2006)

Norman Solomon: The New Media Offensive to Prolong the Iraq War (Counterpunch). Why is the New York Times working so hard to keep us at war in Iraq? (17 November 2006)

Gloria La Riva: Anti-Castro Terrorist Gets Only 4 Years (Counterpunch). The judge almost fell to weeping when he sentenced Santiago Alvarez to 4 years in prison for his part in a terrorist plot that would have murdered hundreds of tourists in Havana. If he'd been a Muslim he'd never have seen daylight again. Or if he'd been pro- rather than anti-Castro. Consdier the Cuban Five—all of whom were sentenced to 15 years to double life for trying to prevent Alvarez and his cronies from large-scale political slaughter. When a judge ruled they'd been denied even an approximation of a fair trial in Miami, the Bush administration fought successfully to have that ruling overturned. (17 November 2006)

Gary Wolf: The Church of the Non-Believers (Wired). Atheism isn't dead; it's just lonely. (17 November 2006)

Tribal casinos bet against politicians who backed unions (Sacramento Bee). New York isn't the only place where Indian gambling interests are using casino profits to buy local legislators. Soon you won't even have to go to the polls: just belly up to a slot machine and they'll take care of the rest for you. (17 November 2006)

Jimmy Breslin: Lying about ship of state (Newsday). "Once, after staying in Iraq too long and losing thousands and thousands of Britain's young, Winston Churchill said, 'Iraq is an ungrateful volcano.' There is no reason to expect that Bush knows these words because he is openly a non-reader. Certainly he doesn't try to read or want to talk about a casualty list of all those who died because he lied. It's bad enough he can't get words together on many things without trying to talk about dead bodies. It leaves him without much to do. He just sits, in all this ugliness, the most ugliness in our times, and wonders how this blood got all over his hands." (17 November 2006)

"Iraq in Fragments": A Glimpse of Life Under Occupation (InterPress/CommonDreams). "The most honoured film about the Iraq war is opening at theaters across the United States this month....What sets "Iraq in Fragments" apart from the mass of other journalism on Iraq is that it does not confront the issue of the war directly. U.S. soldiers are on the periphery of the film, as are Iraqi politicians, Ba'athist insurgents and al Qaeda terrorists. Instead, viewers are treated to a view inside Iraqi culture and daily life under occupation. It is cinematographically beautiful, taking viewers into places as diverse as schools, barber shops, auto shops, mosques, markets and train stations.... "Iraq in Fragments" is a film that could not be made today. The security situation throughout the country has deteriorated to such an extent that it is no longer possible to follow regular people with a camera in tow. Virtually every foreign journalist in Iraq left in Iraq is embedded with the U.S. military." (17 November 2006)

Slime meets sleaze: the Fox-tv promo for the OJ freakshow (Fox.com). O.J. Simpson hypes his new book, which details how he would have murdered his wife if he had murdered his wife which a jury, in the most-bungled major prosecution ever to hit the soap slot, wasn't convinced beyond a reasonable doubt he had done, putting them in a teensy-weensy American minority. The same guy owns the book publishing firm and Fox, so this interview of OJ by his editor (a former National Enquirer staffer) will be up to that network's usual standard of dreck you not only couldn't make up, but wouldn't, no matter what you'd been smoking. (16 November 2006)

Flying into the Shadows (Washington Post). A review of Stephen Grey's Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program. How useful is the Bush administrations torture regime? "Former secretary of state Colin Powell's February 2003 case to the United Nations for going to war with Iraq was built partly on intelligence gathered from a senior al-Qaeda military trainer named Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi. Rendered to Egypt by the United States, al-Libi confessed under torture that al-Qaeda operatives had been sent to Saddam Hussein's Iraq to learn more about chemical and biological weapons. Al-Libi later recanted his confession. He had just been trying to make the pain stop." (16 November 2006)

Bruce Jackson: Buffalo's Control Board Ducks for Cover (Artvoice). The Buffalo Fiscal Stability Authority met last week to decide whether Byron Brown's decision to sell Fulton Street to the Seneca gambling operation was good or bad for the city. When it came time to vote, they just hid, saying they didn't have the right to look at a deal the mayor was so hot to consumate. County Executive Joel Giambra kept saying there were huge fiscal issues with long term consequences involved and the control board had the responsibility to consider them. His fellow board members, one and all and in perfect good humor (except for Mayor Brown, who seemed snippy), ignored everything he said. (16 November 2006)

What's real in "Borat" (Salon.com). Was that rodeo for real? How about the village? Or the turds at dinner? How about Pamela Anderson's jiggly run through the parking lot? (16 November 2006)

Tom L. Freudenheim: Shuffled Off in Buffalo (Wall Street Journal). Buffalo's Albright-Knox Art Gallery has decided to peddle some of its older holdings in order to get money with which, presumably, it will buy new stuff. The managers of the Gallery say it is a museum dedicated to very modern art, so it doesn't need older art and shouldn't waste storage or wall space dealing with it. Maybe, maybe not. (16 November 2006)

War crimes probe sought for Rumsfeld (AP/Yahoo). "Lawyers for inmates of Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo Bay asked German prosecutors Tuesday to open a war crimes investigation of outgoing Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other U.S. officials for their alleged roles in abuse at the detention centers. Although the lawyers who filed the lawsuit acknowledged while there was little chance of seeing Rumsfeld in a German jail, the point was simply to increase the pressure on top brass they say are culpable. German federal prosecutors said they would examine the case." (15 November 2006)

Bush's death tally (Iraq Coalition Casualty Count). The most accurate and up-to-date listings of military and civilian deaths and in Bush's Iraq and Afghanistan wars, with links to all the major death count reports. At the present killing rate, U.S. Iraq fatalities will pass 9/11 fatalities in early January. No one knows when Iraqi fatalities reached that mark. Long, long ago. (15 November 2006)

Lawrence Ferlinghetti: A free-speech landmark—50th anniverary of 'Howl' (San Franciso Chronicle). There was a time when poetry was considered so dangerous the full force of the criminal justice system came jack-booting in to shut it up. Not now. Is that because the jackboots have gotten lyrical or because the poets have gotten peripheral? (14 November 2006)

Carl Paladino and Michael Powers on the Fulton Street deal (Artvoice). Video of Buffalo developer Carl Paladino talking about how the Byron Brown administration screwed up the Buffalo Casino, followed by attorney Michael Powers saying Paladino has it all wrong, after which Powers praises Byron Brown for having signed on to the deal Powers himself brokered. It's all wonderful, unless you read the agreement that Powers brokered and Brown signed, which, contra Powers' praise of his own work in this interview, got the city nothing it hadn't had before and cost the city a great deal of what it had all along. The Seneca gambling operation made out quite well. What did Powers, who doesn't even live in Buffalo, get out of it? He claimed in a recent public Common Council session that he was doing it all pro bono. But pro bono means only "for the good of." The phrase needs an object. The full phrase in legal parlance is "pro bono publico": for the public good. In the Buffalo casino situation, the "public" part maybe got lost. (14 November 2006)

Alan Wolfe: Free Speech, Israel, and Jewish Illiberalism (Chronicle of Higher Education). How much power have the Thought Police achieved when a major scholar like Tony Judt is locked out one hour before a scheduled talk on "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" by the Polish Consulate in New York? (14 November 2006)

Grading Wikipedia (Chronicle of Higher Education). Wikipedia, the free on-line encyclopedia to which anyone with information, and some people with disinformation, can contribute, is one of the most frequently consulted websites. Is it sharing information or pooling ignorance? (14 November 2006)

Uri Avnery: In One Word: MASSACRE! (Gush Shalom)."The first revolutionary act is to call things by their true names, Rosa Luxemburg said. So how to call what happened in Beit Hanoun? 'Accident' said a pretty anchorwoman on one of the TV news programs. 'Tragedy', said her lovely colleague on another channel. A third one, no less attractive, wavered between 'event', 'mistake" and 'incident'. It was indeed an accident, a tragedy, an event and an incident. But most of all it was a massacre. M-a-s-s-a-c-r-e." (12 November 2006)

Elizabeth Holtzman: Breathing the 'I' word (San Francisco Chronicle). The Republicans gleefully impeached Bill Clinton because he wouldn't 'fess up about a blowjob. Will the Democrats have the decency to play turnabout? If they go after both of them—Bush and Cheney—then Pelosi becomes president, right? (12 November 2006)

Canadian universities hiding work from snoopy Americans (Globe and Mail). Canadian universities are abandoning American web servers because they don't want Patriot Act-enabled snoops poking around in their databases. (12 November 2006)

Startling findings in Tillman probe (AP). More and more is being learned about how Pat Tillman was killed by friendly fire—three of the four shooters were having eye problems when they killed him, for example. One question they're not asking: how many GIs killed by friendly fire in Iraq and Afghanistan just weren't famous or important enough for anybody to bother looking at at all? (12 November 2006)

Democrats may use probes to force policy shifts (Boston Globe). Bush has been talking up the virtues of cooperation and conversation, two subjects that never landed behind his beady eyes when the Republicans controlled both houses of Congress. The new Congress's power of investigations may have something to do with that sudden sensitivity. (12 November 2006)

Bruce Jackson: Dancing with Paladino (Artvoice). The only Buffalo businessman of stature who has publicly backed a downtown Seneca casino says why he loathes the downtown casino Buffalo might be actually be getting, Mayor Byron Brown's deal with the Seneca gambling operation that would help that casino get up and running, and the one reporter who has for five years said this was a stupid, dysfunctional and corrupt deal. (9 November 2006)

Tom Engelhardt: Outlaw Empire Meets the Wave: 5 Questions for Our Future (TomDispatch). We haven't deposed the guys who used 9/11 as an excuse to drag us into this bloody mess, but we have made it more difficult for them to keep on doing it. They've killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, they're accountable for more American deaths than the 9/11 terrorists, they've shifted billions of dollars from everyone else to the very rich, and they're still making speeches about how we've got to band together to win what they say is a war of aggression against America by strangers. So now that they've lost Congress, what will the Democrats do? Anything? Can they? Do they want to? (9 November 2006)

Garrison Keillor: A Hint of Possibility in the Air (Chicago Tribune/Common Dreams). "So now we have thrown some rascals out and left some rascals in power and sent some new folks to Washington to learn the art of rascality, and what in the end, after all the hoopla, will really change? Or will the town drunk continue to run the municipal liquor store?" (9 November 2006)

Bye-bye Rummy (White House). Transcript and video of President Bush's 8 September press conference announcing his dismissal of Donald Rumsfeld and appointing of Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense. Bush begins with a lie: "We face brutal enemies who despise our freedom and want to destroy our way of life. These enemies attacked our country on September the 11th, 2001; they fight us in Afghanistan and Iraq." The people we are at war with in Iraq are not the people who attacked us on 9/11, and the 9/11 attackers didn't do it because they "despise our freedom and want to destroy our way of life." That is the kind of simplistic racist jingoism that got us into this failed war and that resulted in the the Republicans' loss of both houses of Congress. At the end of the press conference, Rumsfeld says that this is a war that is "little understood, unfamiliar...not well-understood, it is complex for people to understand." Which is to say, the American public wasn't smart enough to understand what he was doing. Oh yes they were. Which is why they voted the way they did in Tuesday's election, which is what prompted Bush to fire him. (9 November 2006)

The Neocons bite the hand they kissed, or was it some other body part? (Vanity Fair). Richard Perle, Kenneth Adelman and others in the neocon intelligentsia, such as it is, which provided much of the theoretical framework for Bush's wars, have turned against their Maxium Leader. (9 November 2006)

David Olive: End of the Neo-Cons (Toronto Star). Have they run their course? Their only accomplishment was to reduce American power and respect. And to get a lot of people who were minding their own business killed, maimed and mutilated. Will they go to hell? (7 November 2006)

Indian Tribes Seek Labor Law Exemption (NY Times). Indian-run casinos are exempt from state taxation and labor and environmental laws. Should they be exempt from federal labor laws as well? A "casino-rich Southern California Indian tribe" argues that they should. (7 November 2006)

Baghdad Burning: On Saddam's death sentence (Riverbendblog). "I’m more than a little worried. This is Bush’s final card. The elections came and went and a group of extremists and thieves were put into power (no, no- I meant in Baghdad, not Washington). The constitution which seems to have drowned in the river of Iraqi blood since its elections has been forgotten. It is only dug up when one of the Puppets wants to break apart the country. Reconstruction is an aspiration from another lifetime: I swear we no longer want buildings and bridges, security and an undivided Iraq are more than enough. Things must be deteriorating beyond imagination if Bush needs to use the ‘Execute the Dictator’ card." (7 November 2006)

Andrew Sullivan: What's at stake is saving the US from the incompetent, reckless fanatics now in control (London Times). "It is difficult to look into the future when you are going through what America is going through. All I can say about the atmosphere in the United States right now is that it feels as if the country is about to vomit. The nausea is there; the vote is imminent; and the purge necessary. And yet it hasn’t happened yet. Americans are still staring at the porcelain." (7 November 2006)

Nelson Mandela: While poverty persists, there is no freedom (Guardian). "Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice. It is the protection of fundamental human rights. Everyone everywhere has the right to live with dignity, free from fear and oppression, free from hunger and thirst, and free to express themselves and associate at will....While poverty persists, there is no true freedom." (7 November 2006)

C.I.A. Wants Prison Tactics Secret (NY Times). The CIA says us torture techniques should be kept secret so potential torturees can't practice resissting them. Or is it so you and I won't know what they're doing in our name? (7 November 2006)

Bruce Jackson: Olmsted's Delaware Park oak. Three photographs. Trees all over Buffalo and its suburbs were killed or severely damaged during the unseasonal October 12-13 storm that dumped a foot of wet snow on broadleaf trees before they had their normal seasonal defoliation. Delaware Park, one of the three Buffalo parks designed by Federick Law Olmsted, was particularly hard-hit. Crews have been sawing off dangerously cracked limbs and hauling out brush for ten days now. The great oak that stands alone in the park's meadow seemed to have been hit with an almost-surgical strike. It is less broad and less high than it was, and the shorn branches and limbs circle the great tree almost as if they had been arranged as a necklace. But the tree itself seems healthy and it should come back next spring with its usual vigor. Here are three photographs of how it looks now.

Bruce L. Fisher: The control board gets hard. Erie County's Deputy Executive sent this memo to county department heads in response to the November 3 announcement by the Erie County Fiscal Stability Authority that it was moving from an "advisory" to a "control" role. (6 November 2006)

Michael Schwartz: The Couch Potato's Guide to Election Night (TomDispatch). Here's what to watch Tuesday night, and what to worry about Wednesday morning. (5 November 2006)

Newton Garver: Progress in Bolivia. Evo Morales works his way through one economic, social and political problem after the other. Despite many internal and external challenges, his popularity remains high and he continues making unexpected progress in Bolivia. (4 November 2006)

Murray Levine: North Korea's Nuclear Bomb. The Bush Administration's reaction to North Korea's nuclear program and the possibility of such a program in Iran is grounded neither in historical reality or common sense. Here is an alternative policy grounded in both. The Bush Administration has never shown much interest in either, but someday they'll be gone and the next team might be willing to go back to diplomacy and let up on the suicidal macho. (4 November 2006)

Uri Avnery: Ehud von Olmert (Gush-shalom). "The only leader in the history of Israel who can accurately be defined as a fascist was Meir Kahane. He did not grow up in this country but was an import from the US. He was and remained alien in appearance and style, and failed to impress the general public." But now that Ehud Olmert has given the racist Avigdor Liberman a top position in his government, Israel may be getting a taste of the real thing. (4 November 2006)

Uri Avnery: Loveable Man (Gush Shalom). Is Israel at the end of its Weimar Republic phase? What now? "In its original German form—Lieberman—the name means 'lovable man'. It is hard to imagine a name less appropriate for the new Deputy Prime Minister of Israel. He is not lovable, neither in his personality nor in his views - and that is the understatement of the year. His personal lovability can be judged by the fact that he was once arrested for beating up a boy who had quarrelled with his son. This week, the arrival of Lieberman at the center of the political system marks the start of a new chapter in the annals of the State of Israel." (4 November 2006)

Army Times: "Time for Rumsfeld to go" (SF Chronicle). Full text of "An editorial scheduled to appear on Monday in Army Times, Air Force Times, Navy Times and Marine Corps Times, calls for the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld." (4 November 2006)

Lawrence Levine (1933-2006) and Clifford Geertz (1926-2006) (Berkeley and Institute for Advanced Studies). The historian Larry Levine and the cultural anthropologist Clifford Geertz, both of whose work and influence ranged far beyond those vague terms of field, died last week. (4 November 2006)

Scientists Say White House Muzzled Climate Research (AP/CommonDreams). The Bush White House does not believe in global warming. How, then, should the federal government deal with scientific studies documenting the increasing global warming problem? By censoring the studies and stifling the research. Two federal agencies are no trying to decide if the Bushies acted criminally as well as stupidly. (4 November 2006)

"There has never been an American army as violent and murderous as the one in Iraq (McGill Daily). Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh describes American soldiers slaughtering soccer teams because they'd been told that insurgents would be the people running after a roadside bombing incident, and says that one reason George W. Bush is impervious to criticism is he likens himself to Winston Churchill–a great world leader whose true stature will be fully appreciated only in years to come. (4 November 2006)

Bruce Jackson: His Majesty's Dog at Kew (Artvoice). How the Buffalo Common Council ignored and failed just about everybody except the Seneca gambling industry. (3 November 2006)

Bruce Jackson: Normalizing Torture (Counterpunch). Alan Dershowitz, John Woo and George W. Bush have rationalized America as a nation that tortures legally. (3 November 2006)

Alan Dershowitz v. Bruce Jackson on Torture (Counterpunch). Dershowitz responds to Jackson, saying he never said what he said. Jackson counter-responds to Dershowitz, saying of course you did. Hissy-fit. (3 November 2006)

The Michael J. Fox stem cell video (hcdi.net). Rush Limbaugh says he's faking it for political advantage. How do you spell "swine" in Limbaugh-country? (3 November 2006)

Inside the torture chambers of Grozny (Telegraph). For starters, on the first of the 83 days in a torture prison maintained by the Russians, they cut off Alavdi Sadykov's ear. Remember when Bush said he'd looked into Putin's soul and they therefore understood and could work with one another? More and more we're learning what he saw, and how much Bush identified with it. (21 October 2006)

Scott Wilson: Israeli War Plan Had No Exit Strategy (Washington Post). Before Israeli aircraft bombed Beirut, Israeli intelligence told Olmert's government that the whole operation would achieve neither of the government's two primary goals—release of two captured Israeli soldiers or reduction in Hezbollah attacks on Israel. The government went ahead with the bombing campaign anyway. It ended 31 days later, with no change in the situation, but a great deal of death and destruction left behind. The government never had an exit plan. Sound familiar? (21 October 2006)

Driver Guilty of Felony in Market Crash (LA Times). Three years ago George Weller lost control of his car near a Santa Monica street market. He killed 10 people and inujured 60 others. A jury has convicted him of felony manslaughter. The 89-year-old Weller, who was too ill to attend the trial of the sentencing, faces up to 18 years in prison. Click here for a contemporary account of the event. (21 October 2006)

Kevin Tillman: After Pat's Birthday (Truthdig). Kevin Tillman and his brotherPat joined the Army in 2002. Pat was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan, an incident the army tried unsuccessfully to cover up. Kevin, who was discharged in 2005, writes about the lies told by the Bush administration and the thousands of lives squandered by them. And he has some advice about what we might do to take our country back from elected terrorists. (20 October 2006)

We've lost battle for Baghdad, US admits (Guardian). More Americans are being killed in Iraq than ever. More Iraqis are being killed in Iraq than ever. So what was it all about, anyway? Are you safer than you were three years ago? Are the Iraqis? Was it worth all that money that could have gone to health care, roads, education, levees in New Orleans, mental health for politicians? All those deaths? (20 October 2006)

Elaine Cassel: The Cases of Lynne Stewart, Clive Stafford Smith, and Navy JAG Lawyer Charles Swift: Government Retaliation Against Attorneys for Terrorism Suspects (FindLaw). "The meta-message in the Stewart verdict and sentence, taken in the context of the government's tendency to frame the most far-fetched set of facts as terrorism and the sweeping powers given the President under the Military Commissions Act, is that people who stand up for their own rights and the rights of others face not open and transparent prosecution in federal court--like Stewart--but arrest, trial, and imprisonment by the President of the United States." (20 October 2006)

Anna Politkovskaya: "We'll Call You a Terrorist" (TomPaine.com). "Anna Politkovskaya was murdered on Saturday, October 7. She was a fearless journalist in a country where a free press is fast disappearing. She was a fierce critic of Russia's actions in Chechnya, which Russian President Vladimir Putin has justified as a front of George Bush's 'war on terror.' Twelve journalists have been slain in 'contract-style' killings since Putin came to power, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. This is the last article she was working on, which ran today in her newspaper, Novaya Gazeta." (19 October 2006)

Battles brewing on torture, detainees (Boston Globe). Look at this photo of the slick-haired fatcats grinning over Bush's shoulder as he signs into law a bill that validates the torture and other horrors his administration has been doing in secret the past three years. The Constitution says the government shouldn't administer cruel and inhuman punishment. Bush says those oldtime guys didn't understand what he understands. A lapdog Congress has voted in favor of Bush. What's the Supreme Court gonna do? How will Scalia and his pack twist "constructionism" to validate torture? Do you have a doubt that they will? (19 October 2006)

Curran Warf, MD: Slandering Sound Science (Counterpunch). "Last week the medical journal The Lancet released an epidemiological study concluding that 655,000 Iraqis died from war-related injury and disease from March 2003 to July 2006. This shockingly high figure has drawn attacks from the Bush administration and right-wing pundits." Thus far, the Bush administration has been able to find not a single scientist of note willing to dispute the Johns Hopkins study on which the Lancet article was based. Instead it has relied on mouthpieces with no expertise whatsoever and Bush himself, using his usual rationale for dismissing solid scientific studies: "I don't believe it." It's called "faith-based reality." Would you trust a stockbroker, surgeon or airline pilot who rejected data on those grounds? So? (19 October 2006)

Carl Paladino: On the Casino (Artvoice). Satori comes to even the most befogged if you wait long enough. Buffalo developer Carl Paladino has for years been the only Buffalo businessman of note to back the downtown Seneca casino. Such foolishness would, ordinarily, be of no moment, but former Mayor Anthony Masiello notoriously did Paladino's bidding, as do several members of the city's Common Council, so the guy has had influence. Paladino now seems to have finally read the documents all the other businesspeople in town have been groaning over for two years and he has realized that the casino/entertainment/shopping/hotel complex the Senecas plan to put in the heart of town will drain the life out of a downtown barely off life-support. Paladino still thinks a casino is a good idea, but only if it offers nothing but slots, poker tables and roulette wheels. Who knows, a little more reading and perhaps he'll understand the stupidity of that as well. (19 October 2006)

Arborgeddon (Artvoice). Photos of and comments on Buffalo's October surprise. (19 October 2006)

Bruce Jackson: A report from Buffalo: Thundersnow. What happened when natural things got out of order. (18 October 2006)

Bruce Jackson: images of Buffalo's thundersnow. A radio reporter coined the term "thundersnow" to describe the bizarre electrical storm and blizzard that dumped two feet of snow on the region last Thursday and Friday. The snow came before the trees had dropped their autumn leaves, which resulted in such massive weight that 90% of the trees in the city were damaged or destroyed. Here are photos, the first of early evening at the beginning of the storm when the trees are bowing gracefully, then later as the limbs started to crack, then a day and two days after that, when the snow had mostly gone and the wreckage was everywhere. (Click on the right arrow in the lower right corner to start the slideshow.) (16 October 2006)

Lawyer Gets Prison Term in Terrorism Case (NY Times). Civil rights attorney Lynne Stewart was sentenced to 28 months in Federal prison today, a major triumph in the Bush administration war against civil rights in America. On one side, they're claiming the right to define individuals as outside the protection of the U.S. Constitution and the Geneva Convention, and on the other they're attacking the attorneys who represent those who do manage to get a day in court. The Pentagon recently sent a military attorney who had successfully represented a Guantanamo kidnappee into a forced resignation, and in this case they used the Justice system to punish one of the country's better-known civil rights lawyers. At some point, perhaps they'll get to you. (16 October 2006)

Norman Salsitz, 86, Author Who Survived the Holocaust, Dies (NY Times). He saw his father murdered by Nazis, who then put him into a slave labor batallion. He escaped and fought with the Polish partisans until he had to kill several of them who were about to murder some Polish Jews. He and his wife (who saved Krakow's historic buildings from German explosives) wrote a terrific book about leading double, and sometimes triple, lives: Against All Odds. (16 October 2006)

Lies, damn lies (London Times). "This is a story of total government malfunction. Since the government is the most powerful on earth, it is terrifying. The first two volumes of veteran journalist Bob Woodward’s post-9/11 trilogy, Bush at War and Plan of Attack, recounted how America came to invade Iraq, basically because its leaders wanted to. The final volume takes us through the post-invasion occupation. For those deluded into accepting American (and British) propaganda on this subject, it makes miserable reading." (16 October 2006)

The Buffalo News sells out Buffalo one more time (Buffalo News). Because of the Friday the 13th snowstorm and the fact that the News's minimal website was down most of the weekend, few Buffalo News subscribers saw this October 14 editorial, which is a good thing, because it is wrong or mendacious in almost every regard. It could have been written by a flack from the Seneca Gaming Corporation, and perhaps was. The deal Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown cut with Seneca gambling boss Barry Snyder got Buffalo nothing more than the sale price of two city blocks and an increased chance of seeing the city go further into insolvency. So why, when Buffalo News owner Warren Buffett fights to keep casino gambling out of Nebraska, does the Buffalo News editorial board twist the facts to squeeze tax-exempt casino gambling into Buffalo? (15 October 2006)

Uri Avnery: The Great Experiment. "Is it possible to force a whole people to submit to foreign occupation by starving it? That is, certainly, an interesting question. So interesting, indeed, that the governments of Israel and the United States, in close cooperation with Europe, are now engaged in a rigorous scientific experiment in order to obtain a definitive answer. The laboratory for the experiment is the Gaza Strip, and the guinea pigs are the million and a quarter Palestinians living there." (15 October 2006)

Displease a Lobbyist, Get Fired (LA Times). The shocking part of this story isn't that White House officials would fire an honest State Department official at the bidding of a lobbyist like Jack Abramoff. It is, rather, how little such a career-ending act costs the bad guys. (15 October 2006)

Adam Kontras: Let's Bomb Iran! Wait for the music! Thank you, Beach Boys. (15 OCTOBER 2006)

U.S. Forces Blamed in Death of British Journalist (LA Times). U.S. troops, says a British grand jury, machine-gunned an ambulance in which British newsman Terry Lloyd was being taken to a hospital for a non-fatal wound he'd suffered a short time earlier. The Pentagon says no U.S. troops are guilty of anything in the incident, not because they didn't fire the bullet that killed him, but rather because the U.S. doesn't do things like that intentionally. This is the same a priori defense President George W. Bush uses to contest documented cases of U.S. interrogators and jailers torturing of military prisoners and kidnappees: 'It didn't happen because we're good people and good people don't do things like that." Yeah. But look at that guy over there, the one with the hood and the bruises.... (14 October 2006).

ITN man shot dead by US troops was killed unlawfully, says coroner (Telegraph). Here is a report of the same story as in the LA Times article above that appeared in a British newspaper. The Brits aren't so nicey-nicey neutral about it, and they mention a few key facts the LA Times version omits, such as the refusal of the Pentagon to help out in the investigation at all and its deletion of 15 minutes of key footage from films of the deadly encounter. (14 October 2006)

Snowstorm Blankets Buffalo, Killing at Least 3 (NY Times). The politicians couldn't spend enough time before the newscameras Friday talking about something for which, finally, they had no responsibility and couldn't be held accountable. Most didn't have much to say (other than that they're making sure everything that can be done by someone else is being done by someone else and it sure was a bad storm), but they said it over and over again and seemed really sincere. Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown had the most camera face time, but Republican Congressman Tom Reynolds doubled up by being on camera during his own statements and hovering over Brown's shoulder for many of Brown's. He was later replaced by Democrat Congressman Brian Higgins, who did the same thing. Brown didn't have to talk about how he sold the city out a few days earlier on the Seneca casino issue, Reynolds didn't have to talk about how he was being clobbered in the polls by a rich businessman who hates international trade agreements and doesn't have any friends who hustle Congressional pages, Higgins didn't have to talk about why he is George Bush's favorite Democrat war-lover, and Governor George Pataki didn't have to talk about anything other than the weather and a state of emergency he hopes someone else will pay for. For politicians on the way out or in embarrassing positions, it rarely gets any better than that.(14 October 2006)

Diary of a sex slave (Salon.com). San Francisco is all atwitter over a four-part Chronicle series on sex trafficking. Now what? Should they make it legal and tax it? Send the shock troops in there and rescue the girls lured and kidnaped from far and wide? Write more articles? (14 October 2006)

Air America, Home of Liberal Talk, Files for Bankruptcy Protection (NY Times). After denying rumors of financial meltdown for the past month, the only lefty voice in the radio talkasphere otherwise dominated by right-wing idelologues has filed for Chapter 11 protection. (14 October 2006)

Eugene Robinson: Counting The Iraqi Dead (Washington Post). Bush seems to be pulling his Iraq body count out of a hat. He dismisses the Johns Hopkins/Lancet study calculating the number of Iraqis dead as a result of his bad choices because he doesn't like the number. That's not good enough. (14 October 2006)

Gilbert Burnham, Riyadh Lafta, Shannon Doocy, Les Roberts: Morality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: a cross-sectional cluster sample survey (The Lancet). George W. Bush's war of choice in Iraq has resulted in something between 392,379 and 942,636 civilian deaths that would not have otherwise occurred. The number of deaths continues to escalate. George W. Bush says the study is nonsense. His evidence? Well, he just doesn't believe it, he says. Perhaps it's just one more of those bits of scientific hokum, along with global warming and evolution. Read the study and decide for yourself. (12 October 2006)

Byron Brown's bupkis agreement with the Seneca Gaming Corporation. Some time after the October 12 issue of Artvoice hit the newsstands, the one with the article saying Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown's casino agreement with the Seneca Gaming Corporation delivered nothing to the City of Buffalo but did it real harm instead, Mayor Brown's office released copies of the agreement (which it had previously refused to show to the press or deliver to attorneys who filed FOIL actions to see it) to the City Clerk and the Common Council. The agreement has more qualifiers, more this-passage-means-nothing words than we would have thought any lawyer would have dared put into print. It also has a preface that is fluff and flutter, also signifying nothing. It is impossible, at this point, to determine if the people responsible for this document are profoundly cynical and stupid or if they think the public is profoundly cynical and stupid, or both. In any case, here's the agreement, for what it's worth, which is bupkis (for more on which, see the item immediately below this one). (13 October 2006)

Bruce Jackson: Byron Brown's Bupkis (Artvoice). "After a great deal of huffing, puffing, posturing and press-conferencing, Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown has cut a deal with the Seneca Gaming Corporation for the sale of a two-block segment of Fulton Street that gets the City of Buffalo nothing it didn’t have before all the huffing, puffing, posturing and press-conferencing. Nothing. Bupkis. The only difference is Byron Brown got to make a lot of speeches about the casino issue last week and to pretend he was giving the casino issue serious thought....In all of this, Brown never addressed the key issue: the casino itself, which would, should it ever be built, deal the city a blow at least as crippling as the departure of the region’s major manufacturing operations in the 1970s. Indeed, this whole show was a distraction from that key issue. What do the frills matter when you’re getting shot in the heart?" (11 October 2006)

Jimmy Carter: Solving the Korean Stalemate, One Step at a Time (NY Times). How the Bush administration pushed the North Koreans into their current nuclear policy, and how a sane US administration might deal with where we are now. Doncha wish we had one? (12 October 2006)

Robert Fisk: The Age of Terror—a landmark report (The Independent). "And so on we go with the Middle East tragedy, telling the world that things are getting better when they are getting worse, that democracy is flourishing when it is swamped in blood, that freedom is not without "birth pangs" when the midwife is killing the baby.... It's always been my view that the people of this part of the Earth would like some of our democracy. They would like a few packets of human rights off our supermarket shelves. They want freedom. But they want another kind of freedom - freedom from us. And this we do not intend to give them. Which is why our Middle East presence is heading into further darkness. Which is why I sit on my balcony and wonder where the next explosion is going to be. For, be sure, it will happen. Bin Laden doesn't matter any more, alive or dead. Because, like nuclear scientists, he has invented the bomb. You can arrest all of the world's nuclear scientists but the bomb has been made. Bin Laden created al-Qa'ida amid the matchwood of the Middle East. It exists. His presence is no longer necessary." (12 October 2006)

Spectator: The View from Here. Hastert's responsibility, the muddled enemy, the short-changed grunts. (12 October 2006)

Michael Patrick MacDonald: Revisiting Southie's culture of death (Boston Globe). Martin Scorsese's new film—The Departed, starring Jack Nicholson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Martin Sheen and Mark Wahlberg–is the best work any of them have done for years, and it is brilliantly edited by one of the best editors in the business, Thelma Schoonmaker. It has, moreover, disturbing connections with the real world. (12 October 2006)

Iraqi Dead May Total 600,000 Study Says (NY Times). In addition to the thousands of American GIs killed and mutilated, George W. Bush's war of choice has killed 600,000 Iraqis. And more are dying every day. How many Iraqs did Saddam kill a year? Has Dubya caught up yet? (11 October 2006)

Why Weldon is sinking (Salon.com). Suburban Philadelphia Congressman Carl Weldon seems likely to lose his bid for an 11th trip to Congress, in large part because of his unwavering enthusiasm for the Iraq war. Buffalo's Tom Reynolds now trails in all the polls, with the war being the key factor in what seems a likely end to his Congressional career. After Democrats take the House back, maybe it will be time to start paying attention to Republicans who dress in Democrat drag because it plays better in their hometowns, like South Buffalo's Brian Higgins. But this season Democrat Bushies like Higgins are getting a pass and it's the Republican war-lovers like Weldon who are most likely to be called to account. (9 October 2006)

Lawmaker Saw Foley Messages In 2000 (Washington Post). The Foley affair is about abuse of power, not sex; gayness is a distraction. The problem isn't that Foley was gay and pretended he wasn't, but rather that he used the power of his position to lean on people without power. It's no different than priests using their position to come on to altarboys or professors (of whatever gender and whatever preference) who use their position to come on to students. And people who know that their colleagues are engaging in such misbehavior and maintain silence about it aren't good pals; they're complicit in the problem. (9 October 2006)

Foley's and Reynolds' angels (Salon.com). Why did a Long Island family give Florida Congressman Mark Foley and upstate New York Congressman Tom Reynolds $156,000? (6 October 2006)

Byron Brown folds (Buffalo News). After two months' pretending he was going to protect Buffalo's interests in the face of the Seneca Gaming Corporation's big bucks, Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown folded his hand and gave them what they wanted. There's an agreement in which Brown says he got what he was holding out for, but thus far they're not showing it to anybody. What is it they tell you about people who say "Trust me"? (6 October 2006)

Cuba Embargo's Boomerang Effect (CommonDreams/InterPress). For decades the U.S. has maintained a strict economic embargo against Cuba, the purpose of which has been to make daily life so miserable for Cubans they would turn against Fidel Castro. The blockade has indeed caused a lot of unnecessary suffering to ordinary citizens, but Fidel is as revered as ever, perhaps even more so because of the relentless U.S. hatred. And now it turns out that the White House blockade may be causing a huge loss to U.S. citizens as well. (6 October 2006)

Rumsfeld, Ashcroft received warning of al Qaida attack before 9/11 (McClatchy). A week after then National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was briefed on the threat (she claims no memory or record of this documented meeting), Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and Attorney General Ashcroft were given the same information. None of them, apparently, did a thing about it. Not until September 12, 2001. (6 October 2006)

Attacks in Baghdad Kill 13 U.S. Soldiers in 3 Days (Washington Post). Bush says his war is going well and Democrats are just a bunch of softies. Maybe he should spend less time fretting about who's hard and who's soft and do some counting instead. U.S. forces in Baghdad just had their deadliest three days since the war began. Bush runs his mouth and the boys and girls die in ever increasing numbers. It's Vietnam all over again—and Bush even has Nixon's Dr. Strangelove, Henry Kissinger, telling him how to do it. (6 October 2006)

Uri Avnery: Lunch in Damascus. How do you convince a right-wing Israeli taxi driver that peace is a good idea? Invite him to lunch. (6 October 2006)

Joel A. Giambra: "Preying on the poor and screwing small business isn't economic development." Buffalo's mayor Byron Brown has cut a deal with the Seneca Gaming Corporation. A few bucks will move back and forth but, basically, the deal with let Brown look like he's doing something manly in the short run and will cripple Buffalo in the long run. County Executive Joel A. Giambra says that's a lousy economy. (6 October 2006)

Spectator: The View from Here. What the scoundrels Bush, Hastert and Reynolds are up to and how some Iraq vets are trying to get Republicans to face the truth. Lotsaluck, guys. (6 October 2006)

Iraq's universities and schools near collapse s teachers and pupils flee (Guardian). Academics are assassination targets, schools have become more and more dangerous and the quality of life for Iraqis trying to stay out of the way of religious fanatics and Bush's war continues to deteriorate. (6 October 2006)

Spectator: The View from Here. On the hypocrites Mark Foley (brave fighter against exploiters of children!), Tom Reynolds (intrepid fighter against other people's investments!) and Brian Higgins (fearless supporter of Bush's legislation to permit more torture and fewer civil rights!). (3 October 2006)

Paul Krugman: Things Fall Apart (truthout/NY Times). Even though the Republican Congress (and 32 Democrat fellow-travelers, including Brian Higgins) just rubber-stamped a White House bill that would have been perfectly at home in the early days of the Hitlertime, their Thousand Year Reich may already be coming apart. (3 October 2006)

Niall Ferguson: Why Churchill Opposed Torture (LA Times). "The British leader understood what President Bush does not: When it comes to prisoners of war, what goes around comes around." (3 October 2006)

John Prados: Kissinger's "Salted Peanuts" and the Iraq War (National Security Archive). In his new book, State of Denial, Bob Woodward reports that Nixon secretary of state Henry Kissinger has been a secret consultant to Bush on war policy. Kissinger gave Bush a 1969 memo he wrote for Nixon arguing against withdrawing troops from Vietnam on the grounds that a withdrawal would be like "salted peanuts" to the American public–they'd just want more. And they would have been right: Nixon and Kissinger took four more years getting out of Vietnam, getting more American GIs killed in the process than had been killed in the LBJ years. The recommendation was wrong then and it's wrong now; that was a pointless and stupid war and so is this one.

Bob Woodward: Secret Reports Dispute White House Optimism (Washington Post). After his two recent books doing shameful stenographic service for the Bush administration, the Washington Post reporter is trying to get up off his knees in an attempt to reclaim a piece of the reputati