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 reputation he earned, and then parked, with his Watergate work done with investigative journalist Carl Bernstein. His new book, out this week, documents what a bunch of double-dealing, data-denying, public-screwing, bungling bums currently inhabit the White House and Defense Department. This article in the 1 October Washington Post is based on that book. (2 October 2006)

Robert Reich: Replacing the Big Three (TomPaine.com) "Detroit's Big Three are shrinking into the Small Three....In a few years more Americans will be working for Japanese automakers than work for American....Wal-Mart now employs more people than does the entire U.S. auto industry. We also have the world's largest and most expensive health care industry and biggest military. Over the last five years, health care and the military have been responsible for almost all the net new jobs created in America. But the real issue isn't the number of jobs. It's their quality, and that's the big problem. Detroit's Big Three paid wages, health and pension benefits that together amounted to about $80 an hour in today's money. The Japanese transplants in America pay half as much. Wal-Mart pays less than a quarter as much. Meanwhile, hospital orderlies and elder-care workers don't come near matching the United Auto Workers at the old Big Three. And military work is just plain dangerous." (1 October 2006)

Chavez ally surges in Ecuadorean race (AP). Evo Morales and Hugo Chávez may be getting another member of their club and George W. Bush might be getting another Southern headache. The front-runner in Ecuador's October 15 presidential election is Rafael Correa, an Quichua-speaking economist with a Ph.D. from University of Illinois, who wants to see Ecuador's people start getting some of the country's oil profits. He disagrees with Chávez on one key point: Chaávez called Bush "the devil" in his U.N. speech last week. That, says, Correa, is an insult to the devil. "The devil is evil, but intelligent. I believe Bush is a tremendously dimwitted president who has done great damage to his country and to the world." Well, there is that. (1 October 2006)

Sean Peter Kirst: Your child overseas: A few thoughts on detainees. Aintcha glad you don't live in a country where foreign students can be scooped up because one of their roommates may or may not be a villain, and then interrogated, waterboarded and otherwise tortured, and, after the prepared confession is signed, sent to prison. Whoops: you now do. Sorry 'bout that. (1 October 2006)

In Pakistan, human rights ignored in the 'war on terror (Amnesty International). George W. Bush doesn't torture. He just has prisoners brutalized a bit and, when it gets to the point of needing real old-fashioned unambiguous torture, he gets international cronies to do the really ugly work. Like Hitler, he works very hard to keep everything he or his staff does legal. If a behavior is doubtful, he gets lapdog Congress to change the law, as happened this week. Or, as documented in this report, he gets other countries to do the really messy work on behalf of the U.S. (30 September 2006)

Senate Approves Detainee Bill Backed by Bush (Washington Post). The Reichstag--whoops--the U.S. Senate, has approved a bill that will permit Bush to order U.S. interrogators to violate the Geneva Conventions abroad and U.S. police to abandon the Bill of Rights at home. Bush says it is necessary to protect der Heimat and to fight the good fight. So what's going to be left at the end? Could bin Laden have imagined a better ally than Dubya? (In the House version, Buffalo's Brian Higgins was one of only 32 Democrats to sign on to this shameful piece of legislation.) (30 September 2006)

Alexander Cockburn: Flying Saucers and the Decline of the Left (CounterPunch). The silly persons who passionately believe that George W. Bush sent a black-suited ninja team one weekend when no one was working in the World Trade Center to plant bombs in buildings' key structural points, timed those bombs to go off shortly after the buildings were hit by two jetliners, then rushed to D.C. where they fired a U.S. missile into the Pentagon while their cronies disappeared a passenger jet and all its occupants, may be performing a useful function—for the Republicans. (26 September 2006)

Bush Disagrees That Iraq War Raises Threat of Terrorism (NY Times). Why are newspapers and tv news programs telling everybody about the National Intelligence Estimate reporting that the war in Iraq has created far more terrorists than it has terminated? According to President Bush, it's not because the report is true and that it therefore shows he has squandered thousands of lives and billions of dollars. The report is not true, he says. How does he know that? The same way he knows reports about global warming are untrue: he doesn't believe it. Then why would they all be talking about it? It's a plot to screw the Republicans in the November elections. This from the boss of an administration that has faked a terrorist threat just before every election for the past four years! (26 September 2006)

Keith Olbermann: A texbook definition of cowardice (MSNBC). Bill Clinton, "sandbagged by a monkey posing as a newscaster, finally lashed back." The monkey was Chris Wallace, his vehicle was that great poisoner of the newswaves, Fox News. And what Bill Clinton was lashing back against was the corruption and failure of the Bush administration, in which every one of the corporate news networks have been complicit. "Mr. Bush," says Olbermann, the only newscaster other than John Stewart with big enough cojones to speak of things as they are, "You did not act to prevent 9/11...You have failed us—then leveraged that failure, to justify a purposeless war in Iraq which will have, all too soon, claimed more American lives than did 9/11. You have failed us anew in Afghanistan. And you have now tried to hide your failures, by blaming your predecessor. And now you explore your failure, to rationalize brazen torture which doesn't work anyway; which only condemns our soldiers to water-boarding; which only humiliates our country further in the world; and which no true American would ever condone, let alone advocate." (26 September 2006)

Andreas W. Daum, Roger Des Forges, Bruce Jackson, Claude Welch: Putting 9/11 in Perspective: Prospects for Peace. One of the many events connected with the September 18-20 visit by the 14th Dalai Lama to University at Buffalo was a faculty symposium organized by UB History professor Roger Des Forges held the morning of the day in which the Dalai Lama gave his major public address in U.B. Stadium. Here are the prepared texts and working notes four members of the symposium used for their talks. (25 September 2006)

Torture Victim Had No Terror Link, Canada Told U.S. (NY Times). Bush says the US only tortures people it knows are members of Al Qaeda or have information about terrorist plots. But the Canadian government had told US officials that Maher Arar had no connections with any terrorist group and was suspected of nothing. The US had him tortured for a year anyway, just in case. When will it be your turn? Or your kids'? (25 September 2006)

A Silence in the Afghan Mountains (LA Times). What happened at Abu Ghraib was nothing compared to the torture and murder described in this detailed investigative report about concealed abuse by U.S. Special Forces in Afghanistan. The abuses seems to have increased after President Bush said that the Geneva Conventions could be ignored. (25 September 2006)

Israel is accused of racism over its war-loss payouts (Telegraph). "The Israeli finance ministry has begun giving handouts to thousands of business owners near the border with Lebanon whose incomes were hit by the 34-day war against Hizbollah.It has designated a 'frontline' zone, up to six miles from the border, within which the owners are to be fully compensated for their losses during the hostilities." But only, says the attorney for Arab Israeli citizens, only if they're Jewish. The Arab Israeli citizens will "receive 40 to 60 percent less money than their Jewish counterparts." (25 September 2006)

Columbian sex strike forces gangsters to sheathe weapons (London Times). "A sex strike organised by the girlfriends of gang members in one of Colombia’s most violent cities to protest against a wave of murders has been hailed as a success by the local security chief. The action became known in the Colombian media as the 'crossed-leg strike' because of the women’s refusal to have sex with their men until they promised to give up violence." Lysistrata lives! (25 September 2006)

Ariel Dorfman: Are We Really So Fearful? (Washington Post). President George W. Bush and Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz and people like them insist that torture is legitimate if it's done by people like themselves, people with good intentions, people whose hearts are pure, people who torture only people they know deserve it. Horseshit, says Argentine author Ariel Dorfman. "Are we so morally sick, so deaf and dumb and blind, that we do not understand this? Are we so fearful, so in love with our own security and steeped in our own pain, that we are really willing to let people be tortured in the name of America? Have we so lost our bearings that we do not realize that each of us could be that hapless Argentine who sat under the Santiago sun, so possessed by the evil done to him that he could not stop shivering?" (24 September 2006)

Bruce Jackson: Chavez's reading, Bush's reading. Most delegates in the UN assembly last week laughed when Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez called Bush the devil and mock-crossed himself, and most of the world's press treated his remark as the turnabout on Bush's frequent demonizing of his perceived opponents it in fact was. But the US press and even Democratic pols refused to grant Chávez a sense of humor. They treated his remarks with grim humorlessness, and came off as a bunch of jingoistic dolts. If they'd listened to what Chávez and Bush actually said at the UN, perhaps they'd have been less quick to wrap themselves in the flag and better able to understand why the delegates marked the end of Bush's speech with a smattering of polite applause and the end of Chaávez's speech with applause that was long, enthusiastic and sincere. (24 September 2006)

Motoko Rich: U.S. Best Seller, Thanks to Rave by Latin Leftist (NY Times). In his UN speech last week, Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez praised Noam Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance. The book immediately shot to the top of the Amazon and BN paperback bestseller lists, whereupon Harvard law professor and torture advocate Alan Dershowitz started criticizing Chomsky's writing style. (24 September 2006)

Bush's achievement: Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terror Threat (NY Times). Journalists and analysts who haven't been doing stenography for the White House have been telling us for three years what the most recent National Intelligence Estimate spelled out for George W. Bush: his invasion of Iraq in pursuit of WMD and terrorists that weren't there have spawned a "a new generation of Islamic radicalism" and an "overall terrorist that has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks." As a result of Bush's polices, "Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe." Has there ever been a less competent US presidency? (24 September 2006)

Uri Avnery: Muhammad's Sword (Gush Shalom). Why did the Pope quote a 14th century Byzantine Emperor he must have known was misquoting the Qur'an? And why have so many Jews who know how Muslims protected Jews during centuries when Christians were slaughtering them, remained silent? "There is no escape from viewing [the Pope's words] against the background of the new Crusade of Bush and his evangelist supporters, with his slogans of 'Islamofascism' and the 'Global War on Terrorism' - when 'terrorism' has become a synonym for Muslims. For Bush's handlers, this is a cynical attempt to justify the domination of the world's oil resources. Not for the first time in history, a religious robe is spread to cover the nakedness of economic interests; not for the first time, a robbers' expedition becomes a Crusade. The speech of the Pope blends into this effort. Who can foretell the dire consequences?" (24 August 2006)

Bolivian President Evo Morales on Latin America, U.S. Foreign Policy and the Role of Indigenous People of Bolivia (Democracy Now!). Video, audio and text transcript of Evo Morales September 22 conversation with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez. Morales was in the U.S. to speak at the U.N. General Assembly. "The indigenous cultures," Morales says, "are cultures of dialogue and life, not cultures of death and war." He wants economic relationships with international partners rather than exploiters. He wants the U.S. to stop bugging Boliva about coca leaf and to extradite two Bolivian criminals currently enjoying sanctuary in the U.S. He says everybody should rachet down the rhetoric, be fair, respectful and open, and should work for peace and honor the earth. No wonder the Bush administration sees him as one more dangerous South American radical. (24 September 2006)

Greg Palast: Hugo Chávez (The Progressive). "You'd think George Bush would get down on his knees and kiss Hugo Chávez's behind. Not only has Chávez delivered cheap oil to the Bronx and other poor communities in the United States. And not only did he offer to bring aid to the victims of Katrina. In my interview with the president of Venezuela on March 28, he made Bush the following astonishing offer: Chávez would drop the price of oil to $50 a barrel, 'not too high, a fair price,' he said, "a third less than the $75 a barrel for oil recently posted on the spot market. That would bring down the price at the pump by about a buck, from $3 to $2 a gallon. But our President has basically told Chávez to take his cheaper oil and stick it up his pipeline." (24 September 2006)

Gaby Wood: The quiet American (Guardian). An interview with David Remnick, the writer/editor who rescued the New Yorker from Tina Brown's Stairmaster. (23 September 2006)

Hugo Chávez's speech at United Nations (WordPress.com). Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez gave a speech about world affairs at the UN on September 20 in which he suggested everybody read Noam Chomsky's "Hegemony or Survival: The Imperialist Strategy of the United States," joked that George Bush was the devil and the lectern still reeked of sulfur left over from Bush's speech there the day before, suggested that the UN redefine itself so it wasn't subject to vetos by the five major victors of WWII, and also suggested that the UN relocate to a country where representative of other countries could come and go without the harassment and blockades imposed by the US. It was, in other words, a smart and witty speech, and that is how most of the world's press reported it. In the US, the speech was reported as the ravings of a commie lunatic, and even Democrats Nancy Pelosi, Charles Rangel and Tom Harkin said it was terrible that this foreigner dared to insult the President of the United States who, in their view, should be immune from criticism by foreigners who don't even address the UN in English. Here's Chávez's speech in its entirety (in English), so you can judge for yourself. (23 September 2006)

George W. Bush at the United Nations (White House). He begins, as always, by invoking September 11, 2001, the defining moment in his notion of American history, then conflates all terrorist attacks everywhere as part of the same Al Qaeda plot. He goes on to insist that Iraq is now free and democratic and things are getting better everywhere in the Middle East except where the terrorists are still running around loose. "Freedom," he says, "by its nature, cannot be imposed--it must be chosen. From Beirut to Baghdad, people are making the choice for freedom." Um: the same Beirut that was just bombed into rubble by US-provided bombs and the same Baghdad where more innocent civilians are slaughtered every month than died in the World Trade Center on 9/11? That Beirut and that Baghdad? When he finished, most of the audience sat on their hands. Here's Bush's speech in its entirety (in English), so you can judge for yourself. (23 September 2006)

The Abuse Can Continue (Washington Post). Bush wanted the Senate to change US law so his administration could violate the Geneva Conventions with inpunity. A few senior Republicans objected--notably former POW John McCain--but once again McCain, under pressure from the White House, shut up and did as he was told. The Senate won't tell Bush he can't detain prisoners without charge, torture them at will, and try them without any legal safeguards, but neither will it put any impediments in his way when he wants to do exactly that. The result? Bush goes on torturing and violating international law and McCain, when he runs against Hillary Clinton, gets to say,. "I'm an advocate for human rights." He'll count on voters having a short memory, especially when it comes to nameless prisoners in windowless jails on foreign soil. Why not? He seems to have forgotten what it was like when he was one of those prisoners himself. (23 September 2006)

Patrick Cockburn: New Terror That Stalks Iraq's Republic of Fear (Independent). Torture in Iraq may be worse now than it was during Saddam Hussein's rule. Why, exactly, did Bush invade that country? Why, exactly, have all those GI's died? Do you remember? Do you care? (23 September 2006)

Deja Vu on Iran? (The Nation). The Bush administration seems gearing up to do it one more time: a bunch of lies about Iran's WMD capability, beating the drums of war, etc. Last time, the corporate print and electronic press (other than Knight Ridder) helped them do it. Will they collaborate once again or will they find enough backbone to act as if their job had more to it than stenography for the White House war machine? (23 September 2006)

Dalai Lama at UB. Links to videos of the Dalai Lama's September 19 address at UB Stadium and other parts of his three-day visit to UB, including the pre-address performance by Philip Glass and Newang Khechog, the Interfaith Service, construction and deconstructive of the sand mandala, and the Conversaiton with the Dalai Lama on Law, Buddhism and Social Change. Click here for WBFO's audio of the Sunday address. (22 September 2006)

Stephanie Zacharek: Zaillian's "All the King's Men" (Salon.com). John Huston famously said he was always willing to do a remake of a story previous filmmakers had failed to bring to life on the screen (his "Maltese Falcon" was the third film version of Dashiell Hammett's novel), but he thought it was foolhardy to do a remake of a film that had been done very well the last time, because you had nowhere to go but down. Zteven Zaillian, whose addled remake of Robert Rossen's 1949 "All the King's Men" was just released, should have taken Huston's advice. (22 September 2006)

Tony Judt: Bush's Useful Idiots: the Strange Death of Liberal America (London Review of Books). "Why have American liberals acquiesced in President Bush's catastrophic foreign policy? Why have they so little to say about Iraq, about Lebanon, or about reports of a planned attack on Iran? Why has the administration's sustained attack on civil liberties and international law aroused so little opposition or anger from those who used to care most about these things? Why, in short, has the liberal intelligentsia of the United States in recent years kept its head safely below the parapet?" (18 September 2006)

Ian Buruma: Review of Frank Rich's The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina (NY Times). Why did all the major news media fail in their coverage of the Bush administration's lies after 9/11? Why did the NY Times and Washington Post publish Administration press releases as if they were news, and unsubstantiated claims from people with obvious political interests as if they were truth? Why did the print and electronic media fall for the Jessica Lynch foolishness and the silly-putty Bush-in-padded-crotch-flight-suit hype? The Times didn't get any of it right in its news pages, but former theater critic Frank Rich was getting it right all along on his weekly op-ed columns, and does it now in his retrospective look at one of the greatest failures of responsibility by press that was free to act responsibly but chose not to. (17 September 2006)

Uri Avnery: Help! Peacemongers! (Gush Shalom). "In the six years of folly between the 1967 and the 1973 wars, Moshe Dayan coined the phrase: 'Better Sharm al-Sheikh (on the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula) without peace than peace without Sharm al-Sheikh!' Such slogans cost the lives of some 2700 Israeli soldiers (and who knows how many Egyptians and Syrians) in the Yom Kippur war. Afterwards we returned Sharm al-Sheikh and all of Sinai and got peace with Egypt. Dayan himself played a role in achieving this peace. How many soldiers and civilians, Israeli and Arab, must die before we finally understand that peace with the Palestinian people and the entire Arab world is immeasurably more important to Israel than trying to hang on to the occupied territories and the settlements?" (17 September 2006)

Spectator: The View from Here: Tom Reynolds and The Dick. Tom Reynolds, Dick Cheney and Halliburton have all been making a lot of money of late. The first two have opposed a modest raise in the minimum wage for the lowest-paid working Americans. Whaddaya think? A pair of fiscally responsible guys or two guys saying "I got mine, Jack, screw you"? (17 September 2006)

Tim Tielman: A grand vision of a restored Richardson Complex (Buffalo News). While the hustlers and scoundrels are beating the bushes trying to make a buck out of downtown slot machines that will drive Buffalo into the ground, there's an opportunity elsewhere in town to do something really useful. But since there's not enough campaign contribution dollars in it to get the attention of anyone in City Hall, will any of those guys take a bit of time to help something really good come about? Maybe if they read Tim Tielman's article they'll take a break from their usual routine and give it a try. (17 September 2006)

The blogosphere's breast debate (Salon.com). Why does law blogger Ann Althouse hate Jessica Valenti's breasts? And why does she keep writing about them? And why does she say her hatred of Jessica Valenti's breasts makes her a better feminist than Valenti? (16 September 2006)

Bush's October 14 "gimme my detention center and torture chamber" press conference (NY Times). A full transcript of Bush's October 14 press conference on his belief that the way to deal with unconstitutional trials and mistreatment of prisoners and kidnapees is by changing the law rather than acting in accordance with US law and the Geneva Convention (16 September 2006)

Diebold voting machines vulnerable to attack (Center for Information Technology Policy). A Princeton University study shows that the Diebold AccuVot-TS voting machines, which some vendors and politicians are presently trying to force on Erie County, are subject to vote manipulation and virus attacks. (16 September 2006)

Diane Christian: Retaliation. Bush, Bin Laden and Olmert each claim they're only retaliating for wrongs done to their people, and each claims God as an active member of his retaliatory team. Each of them quotes, but not one of them takes with any seriousness, their own holy scripture, and all the while their slaughters escalate and the innocent die. (14 September 2006)

Tom Engelhardt: The Real Link Between 9/11 and Iraq (Finally) Revealed (TomDispatch). "The link between 9/11 and Iraq is unfortunately all too real. The Bush administration made it so in the heat of the post-9/11 shock. Think of that link this way: In the immediate wake of 9/11, our President and Vice President hijacked our country, using the low-tech rhetorical equivalents of box cutters and mace; then, with most passengers on board and not quite enough of the spirit of United Flight 93 to spare, after a brief Afghan overflight, they crashed the plane of state directly into Iraq, causing the equivalent of a Katrina that never ends and turning that country -- from Basra in the south to the border of Kurdistan -- into the global equivalent of Ground Zero." (14 September 2006)

Indian gaming legislation fails to make it out of the House (Scripps-Howard). On this one, the Democrats and Republicans agreed: the payoffs were just too big for a lobbyist-run Congress to resist. (14 September 2006)

Neo-Con Favourite Declares World War III (Inter Press/CommonDreams). Newt Gingrich says George Bush is a wuss, that if he were president he'd make war on everybody that pisses him off or isn't propertly respectful to the stars 'n' stripes. His audience at the American Enterprise Institute loved every lunatic word. (14 September 2006)

Bush Tells Group He Sees a 'Third Awakening' (Washington Post). President Bush told a group of conservative journalists that the decades-long battle with terrorists is part of a great religious moment in the US, a "Third Awakening." Didn't Bin Laden say just about the same thing in one of those Al Jazeera tapes? Whaddaya think? Twins, separated at birth? (14 September 2006)

Hizbollah rocket attacks on Israelis 'war crimes' (The Independent). "Amnesty International has accused Lebanon's Hizbollah movement of committing war crimes by deliberately targeting Israeli civilians with its rockets." And Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, under fire for what nearly everyone considers a major Israeli failure, brags, "Half Lebanon is destroyed. Is that a loss?" (14 September 2006)

Rep. John Murtha: My Resolution Calling for Rumsfeld's Immediate Resignation (Huffington Post). The rogues and scoundrels in the House won't let this one get to the floor, but that's no reason not to applaud John Murtha for having the decency to go on record about what a bunch of flops these guys are and what a mess they've made of things. (14 September 2006)

UN Inspectors Dispute Iran Report by House Panel: Paper on Nuclear Arms Called Dishonest (Washington Post). "U.N. inspectors investigating Iran's nuclear program angrily complained to the Bush administration and to a Republican congressman yesterday about a recent House committee report on Iran's capabilities, calling parts of the document 'outrageous and dishonest' and offering evidence to refute its central claims....The IAEA openly clashed with the Bush administration on pre-war assessments of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Relations all but collapsed when the agency revealed that the White House had based some allegations about an Iraqi nuclear program on forged documents. After no such weapons were found in Iraq, the IAEA came under additional criticism for taking a cautious approach on Iran, which the White House says is trying to build nuclear weapons in secret. At one point, the administration orchestrated a campaign to remove the IAEA's director general, Mohamed ElBaradei. It failed, and he won the Nobel Peace Prize last year." (14 September 2006)

Death Toll Soars in Baghdad (LA Times). Nearly 100 Iraqis were murdered in Baghdad yesterday, many of them tortured before they were shot in the head. What, exactly, was it Bush went there to save them from? Now that they're being killed at the rate of one World Trade Center's deaths every month in a single city, have we saved them enough? (14 September 2006)

Bruce Jackson: Andy SanFilippo Can't Count (Artvoice). Buffalo's comptroller says Buffalo's mayor should say yes to anything the Seneca Gaming Corporation has to offer. Buffalo's comptroller can't count. (13 September 2006)

Former Texas Governor Ann Richards Dies at 73 (AP/NYTimes). She had principles, she had a sense of history, she had respect for people and she cared about people. She was eloquent. Since she left office, Texas hasn't had a governor who has come close to her in any of those human qualities. And now she's dead. (13 September 2006)

Keith Olbermann: How dare you, Mr. President (MSNBC/Alternet). A huge amoung of bullshit went out over the airwaves and appeared in the US press yesterday. Keith Olberman (video and full transcript) puts it all in perspective. This is also one of the best commentaries we've seen on the past five years. A sample: "How dare you, Mr. President, after taking cynical advantage of the unanimity and love, and transmuting it into fraudulent war and needless death, after monstrously transforming it into fear and suspicion and turning that fear into the campaign slogan of three elections? How dare you -- or those around you -- ever "spin" 9/11? Just as the terrorists have succeeded -- are still succeeding -- as long as there is no memorial and no construction here at Ground Zero. So, too, have they succeeded, and are still succeeding as long as this government uses 9/11 as a wedge to pit Americans against Americans." Read or watch the whole thing. Nearly everybody else already has. (12 September 2006)

U.B. Forum on Torture. David Levi Strauss, Amy Goodman, Ian Olds and others are taking part in a series of discussions about torture, Sept 15-Nov 15. (11 September 2006)

Jimmy Breslin: In case we all forgot, Americans are still dying in Iraq (Newsday). It's 9/11 weekend and an election year, George W. Bush's favorite season. Jimmy Breslin reminds us of a topic he might not get to cover adequately in his Jack Horner performances this week. (11 September 2006)

Allan Uthman: Anonymnous for Senate (Beast). Somebody you never heard of--Jonathan Tasini--is running against Hillary Clinton in New York's primary this week. She has untold millions (our household got four full-color mailings from her in one day), he's got $200,000. He takes unambiguous stands on the key moral issues of the day; she avoids them like the plague. Which is why, even though Tasini doesn't stand a chance, you should vote for him. Just so you can know you voted for someone who stood for something more than, well, nothing. (11 September 2006)

Situation Called Dire in West Iraq (Washington Post). While Bush visits the WTC site in New York and makes chest-thumping speeches about the grand civilizing work his administration has done in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the chief of intelligence for the Marine Corps in Iraq was announcing that western Iraq is lost, and there is nothing Humpty Dumpty can do to put it back together again. (11 September 2006)

Robert Scheer: Gaping Holes in the 9/11 Narrative (TruthDig). One of the primary reasons for the proliferation of loopy 9/11 conspiracy theories is Bush's refusal to let the public in on the facts of what happened and how it came about. In a culture of secrecy and lies, little wonder that the fantasists have a fine time spinning what-if narratives. (11 September 2006)

9/11: Debunking the Myths (Popular Mechanics). September 11 is to conspiracy theorists what the full moon is to werewolves: they all come out of the woodwork. Popular Mechanics took some of their favorite claims and subjected them to (ugh! bah! foul!) lucid analysis. Time to go back into the woodwork, lads. (11 September 2006)

Cheney on MTP: "If We Had It To Do Over Again, We'd Do Exactly The Same Thing" (Huffington Post). If you were harboring a hope that this 9/11 anniversary might spur the Bush administration to reflection about errors past, forget it. They're proud of what they've accomplished. Und tomorrow the World! (11 September 2006)

Peter Slatin: Vision not Accomplished (Slatin Report). After all the hoopla and speechifying, what's going up at the World Trade Center site is more a monument to "political expediency and commercial aggrandizement" than anything else. (11 September 2006)

Alex Koppelman: The Olbermann Factor (Salon). As the Bush Administration cranks up its biennial 9/11-Election Season media blitz, Salon interviews the one network commentator with the cojones to eloquently and unambiguously call them for the mendacious, incompetent slugs they are. People seem to like what Olbermann is doing: his numbers are surging while Fox's in general and Bill O'Reilly's in particular continue to decline. (11 September 2006)

US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence: Postwar Findings About Iraq's WMD Programs and Links to Terrorism and How they Compare with Prewar Assessments (US Senate). The Senate Intelligence Committee's Phase II report (in pdf format). They redacted the worst of this and chairman Pat Roberts did everything he could to keep them from coming out with anything at all. What they came out with is: Bush lied. Cheney lied. Rumsfeld lied. Wolfowitz lied. Tenet lied. Powell lied. Because of which, untold thousands of Iraqis died. And 3000 Americans died. Time to stop this silly impeachment talk, folks. What we need is Nuremburg redux. (9 September 2006)

Senator Carl Levin: Comments on the Bush Administrations campaign of lies as documented in the Senate Intelligence Committee's Phase II Report (Carl Levin US Senate web site). A full copy of his excellent Sept 8 remarks on the Senate floor about how the Administration lied us into war and disaster. (9 September 2006)

Iraq's Alleged Al-Qaeda Ties Were Disputed Before War (Washington Post). Commentary on the portions of the Senate Intelligence Committee Report released on Sept. 8 (the rest is classified, at least until after the November election, apparently to provide damage control for the Republican congress). During the run-up to war, the Washington Post was one of the newspapers that did stenography for the White House and Pentagon. Time to play catch-up. (9 September 2006)

Free Dr. Rifqa elJa'abri (Women's Organization for Political Prisoners). Why did the Israelis arrest a gynecologist running a center for poor people who could not pay for medical treatment? Why did they place her in administrative detention for six months--no charge, no trial, subject to indefinite extension? (9 September 2006)

Bil'in: another weekend of routine army violence (Occupation Magazine). Israeli troops continue their brutal attacks on peace activists demonstrating in public, as well as any non-demonstrators anywhere near them. (9 September 2006)

Anthony Chase: Theodore Bikel at Canisius (Artvoice). The great actor Theodore Bikel (perhaps best known in recent years for his 2000+ performances as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof) will be in Buffalo September 16 for a concert reading of Hyam Macoby's play The Disputation at Canisius's Montante Cultural Center. (9 September 2006)

Andrea Bocelli, electronic miracle (NY Times). On CD, the Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli sounds terrific. Live, he appeals to audiences that like performers more than listeners who like music, which is a good thing because "Mr. Bocelli is not a very good singer. The tone is rasping, thin and, in general, poorly supported. Even the most modest upward movement thins it even more, signaling what appears to be the onset of strangulation. To his credit, Mr. Bocelli sings mostly in tune. But his phrasing tends toward carelessness and rhythmic jumble, and the little barks and husky vocal expletives that are the mother's milk of Italian tenordom sound faded and unconvincing. The diction is not clear. But this is a music critic speaking, and music critics had no business at Avery Fisher Hall on Wednesday. Mr. Bocelli's every gesture invited warm, resounding approval." (9 September 2006)

Kristen Breitweiser: A Letter to Ann Coulter (Huffington Post). A response from one of the 9/11 widows that motormouth anorexic bitch Ann Coulter has been spreading vicious lies about. Will Coulter read it and think? Why read or think when you can run your mouth on Fox News and sell books to morons who assume if you've been on tv you therefore have something to say, and if, like Ann Coulter, you never stop talking for one second, even to breathe, it must be smart? (7 September 2006)

Daniel Mendelsohn: September 11 at the Movies (New York Review of Books). United 93 and World Trade Center are both well-made films that tell the stories of people who acted with true bravery in the wake of the 9/11 hijackings. And both, therefore, are finally most like ordinary made-for-tv drama that miss or avoid entirely the tragic stories that really need telling. (6 September 2006)

Jazz Legend Charlie Haden on His Life, His Music and His Politics (Democracy Now). The great jazz bassist Charlie Haden talks with Amy Goodman about his music, politics, the first Liberation Music Orchestra (a response to the Vietnam War), getting arrested in Portugal for a song, the second Liberation Music Orchestra (a response to Bush's wars), and more. (6 September 2006)

California casino compacts blocked (Sacramento Bee). California Democrats "blocked new compacts that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger negotiated with five of the state's richest casino tribes, stalling action on more than 22,000 new slot machines until next year. Democratic leaders refused to vote on one bill ratifying the agreements, saying the governor sent details of the compacts too late for proper scrutiny before the end of the legislative session at midnight Thursday. Assembly Democrats defeated a second bill that would have granted a third casino to the Agua Caliente tribe in Palm Springs." If Democrats in New York had demonstrated similar cojones and responsibility when NY Governor Pataki told them to vote on a gambling compact none of them had time to read, Buffalo wouldn't be on the verge of going into an economic sewer today. (6 September 2006)

Ice Bubbles Reveal Biggest Rise in CO2 for 800,000 Years (Independent/CommonDreams). Maybe it's time to get religion. The damage we've done to the planet is so great that science, which can describe the mess we're in, may not be able to help us avoid the consequences of it. (6 September 2006)

Gideon Levy: Gaza's darkness (Haaretz). "Gaza has been reoccupied. The world must know this and Israelis must know it, too. It is in its worst condition, ever. Since the abduction of Gilad Shalit, and more so since the outbreak of the Lebanon war, the Israel Defense Forces has been rampaging through Gaza - there's no other word to describe it - killing and demolishing, bombing and shelling, indiscriminately." (5 September 2006)

Frank Rich: Donald Rumsfeld's Dance With the Nazis (NY Times/Truthout). What made Mr. Rumsfeld's speech noteworthy wasn't its toxic effort to impugn the patriotism of administration critics by conflating dissent on Iraq with cut-and-run surrender and incipient treason. That's old news. No, what made Mr. Rumsfeld's performance special was the preview it offered of the ambitious propaganda campaign planned between now and Election Day. An on-the-ropes White House plans to stop at nothing when rewriting its record of defeat (not to be confused with defeatism) in a war that has now lasted longer than America's fight against the actual Nazis in World War II. Here's how brazen Mr. Rumsfeld was when he invoked Hitler's appeasers to score his cheap points: Since Hitler was photographed warmly shaking Neville Chamberlain's hand at Munich in 1938, the only image that comes close to matching it in epochal obsequiousness is the December 1983 photograph of Mr. Rumsfeld himself in Baghdad, warmly shaking the hand of Saddam Hussein in full fascist regalia. Is the defense secretary so self-deluded that he thought no one would remember a picture so easily Googled on the Web? Or worse, is he just too shameless to care?" (4 September 2006)

Spectator: The View from Here. Tom Reynold's campaign ads, whoring for big shots at The Legion and the VFW, and how the Bush administration rewrote history at the Lincoln Memorial and decided the Grand Canyon was only 6,000 years old because it was created by the Biblical Flood. Fiction writers cannot compete. (4 September 2006)

Olbermann Blasts Rumsfeld's Nazi Comments (YouTube). You want to watch this astonishing video. Maybe network news is getting its balls back. Donald Rumsfeld says people who criticize the Bush administration for the mess it has made of the Middle East are like Nazi appeasers leading up to World War II. It's his typical trick of turning reality upside down. It's Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld who have invaded two countries and are now planning to invade a third, who have done everything they could to suspend civil rights, who have endorsed and authorized torture, kidnapping and murder. If there are any parallels to the appeasers around, it's the people who say that maybe they'll get better if we don't name them for the evil creatures they are. MSNBC Keith Olbermann has had enough of that shell game: in this video, he calls Rumsfeld for the war lover and enemy of truth he is, and places the Bush administration in the historical perspective it deserves. And click here for Olbermann's subsequent comment on Rumsfeld's additional slanders. (4 September 2006)

Jay Burney: Buffalo's ethanol plant may do more harm than good (Buffalo News). The plan to put a corn-based ethanol plant in Buffalo may put some of the abandoned grain elevators back to work, but it may also introduce a wide range of local environmental problems. The process of converting corn to ethanol generates huge amounts of toxic byproducts, and corn agriculture is so dependent on oil-derived chemicals that there is little or no net saving in the amount of oil imported from abroad. The only difference is corn farmers make a fortune and the environment is needlessly degraded both where the corn is grown and where the ethanol is made. The proposed Buffalo processing operation might be a rare exception, but the city fathers should check it out first, rather than follow their usual procedure of blaming someone else for the mess later.(4 September 2006)

The NY Times endorses Hillary Clinton (NY Times). She's no profile in courage and she'll never risk political capital for principle, but neither is she a Bush-sucking Joe Lieberman. Whether or not she ought to be president is an argument for another day. For now, says this editorial, she's done well enough as a US senator to keep the job for another term. But how seriously is anyone to take the Times these days? They've still never faced up to their complicity in the start of the Iraq War with Judy Miller's misleading page-one flackwork for the Pentagon, and they've never pushed Schumer of Clinton to move their kneejerk support for any action taken by the Israeli government anywhere. Clinton's got a lock on this nomination, but that's no reason not to vote for Jonathan Tasini in the primary. He is the guy, in this primary election, standing up for principle. (4 September 2006)

Bell's last stab (in Buffalo's back) (Buffalo News). Steve Bell, arguably the most disliked managing editor the Buffalo News ever had (especially after he wrote a for-hire hype book about the WNY economy directly contradicting prize-winning articles by his own reporters) switched jobs a year or so ago with editorial page editor Jerry Goldberg, at which point newsroom morale soared. Now Bell is leaving the News entirely for a job with a local PR firm. For his parting shot at the city, he offers two short pieces, one sniping at politicians who came to editorial board meetings with too many assistants for his taste (none of whom he names--perhaps they might be PR clients down the road), the other offering the worst in a long string of destructive Buffalo News editorial comments about the waterfront and casino situations. (2 September 2006)

Pentagon Releases Grim Report on Iraq (NY Times). Violence in Iraq, says this Pentagon report issued on Friday afternoon before a long weekend, is increasing and US efforts to suppress the insurgency are less and less successful. George W. Bush seems to have accomplished what Saddam Hussein's enemies in Iraq never could: fragmentation of Iraq as we knew it and establishment of a new fundamentalist regime where Saddam's secularist regime ruled. (1 September 2006)

Moralizing Joe Lieberman's secretive wife (Salon.com). Joe Lieberman's wife Hadassah, who works for the PR and lobbying firm Hill & Knowlton, may not be a registered lobbyist, but it's interesting how hard H&K and the Lieberman campaign work to keep anybody from finding out exactly what she does do for her paychecks and what, if any, relationship her work has to do with his fondness for the big pharmaceutical companies. "From his office to his bedroom, Lieberman was totally surrounded by current and former employees of Big Pharma.... Lieberman still looks like a politician wholly owned by one of the nation's most troublesome special interests. And while his campaign may not believe that the moralizing senator should he held accountable for those dubious relationships, the press and the public may think otherwise." (1 September 2006)

Robert E. Whelan: Seneca casino deal not right for City of Buffalo (Buffalo News). Buffalo's highly-respected former comptroller and retired justice of the State Supreme Court tells why the proposed Seneca casino would be disastrous for Buffalo's economy. "We must recognize that this is the wrong deal, at the wrong time, and for the wrong reasons." (1 September 2006)

Phil Fairbanks: Ex-comptroller criticizes SanFillippo on casino (Buffalo News). Buffalo Comptroller Andrew SanFillippo, who owes his job to casino advocate Carl Paladino, recently criticized Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown for not rolling over for the Seneca Gaming Corporation. San Fillippo's predecessor says SanFillippo doesn't know what he's talking about, to which SanFillippo responds with a string of dumb platitudes and cliches. (1 September 2006)

Bush's speech to the American Legion National Convention (White House). Bush has a new alliteration: "terrorists and totalitarians." In this speech he say that all the terrorists in the world are part of the same network and a single movement, the goal of which is destruction of freedom and imposition of a totalitarian ideology. They are evil; we are good; everything they do is bad; everything we do is permitted. Sound familiar? It should. What Leni Riefenstahl is making the documentary this time? (1 September 2006)

Doubt's Grow Over Bush's Syria Policy (CommonDreams/InterPress). Bush's foreign policy has weakened the US economy and made the US less secure than any time since the Cold War. The same inability or unwillingness of the Bush administration to listen to and deal with the concerns of other nations is also making Israel less secure. So whose side are those guys really on? (1 September 2006)

Alarm sounds on US population boom (Boston Globe). The US population is expanding at a rate far in excess of any of the industrialized countries and the growth is concentrating in a region of the country least able to support it. Meanwhile, Americans, with five percent of the world's population, generate five times as much waste as poor countries, use three times as much water per capita than the rest of the world, and consume nearly 25 percent of the world's energy. We're a menace to the planet. (1 September 2006)

Richard Wolin: Foucault the Neohumanist? (Chronicle of Higher Education). "French critics have long pointed to the central paradox of the North American Foucault reception: that a thinker who was so fastidious about hazarding positive political prescriptions, and who viewed affirmations of identity as a trap or as a form of normalization, could be lionized as the progenitor of the 'identity politics' movement of the 1980s and 1990s,a movement that, as Christopher Lasch demonstrated, had abandoned the ends of public commitment in favor of a 'culture of narcissism.' Paras's case for the 'neohumanist' Foucault is persuasive and well documented. One wonders how long it will take Foucault's North American acolytes to reorient themselves in light of Paras's impressive findings. That would mean abandoning the fashionable preoccupation with 'body politics' -- the obsessive concern with a 'different economy of bodies and pleasures' as a mode of transgression -- and, following the later Foucault, according the claims of humanism their due." (26 August 2006)

Rethinking the Fall of Easter Island (American Scientist). Physiologist Jared Diamond has argued that "the people of Easter Island wiped out their forest, drove their plants and animals to extinction, and saw their complex society spiral into chaos and cannibalism." That is to say, the demise of that society caused by its own environmental excess should stand as a lesson for all of this. But Jared and the other scientists who agree with him may have the story all wrong; they may rather be hearing the story they want to hear rather than the one the evidence is trying to tell. (29 August 2006)

The Nexus of Politics and Terror (MSNBC/Verdictum). This is an astonishing and appalling video essay about ten occasions when the Bush administration got into political trouble and responded by announcing major terror threats--all of which turned out to be bogus. The video is slightly over 10 minutes long and takes a while to load. It's worth the wait. (27 August 2006)

Uri Avnery: America's Rottweiler (Gush Shalom). "The US is fighting against Iran, because Iran has a key role in the region where the most important oil reserves in the world are located. Not only does Iran itself sit on huge oil deposits, but through its revolutionary Islamic ideology it also menaces American control over the near-by oil countries. The declining resource oil becomes more and more essential in the modern economy. He who controls the oil controls the world. The US would viciously attack Iran even it were peopled with pigmies devoted to the religion of the Dalai Lama. There is a shocking similarity between George W. Bush and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, The one has personal conversations with Jesus, the other has a line to Allah. But the name of the game is domination." (27 August 2006)

Uri Avnery: Good Morning, Elijahu! (Gush Shalom). Israel's political leadership is being attacked for incompetence because the recent Lebanon war didn't work out at all well. One reason, says longtime peace activist and onetime Irgun hero Uri Avnery, is that the Israeli military got soft and complacent after so many years shooting at people who couldn't shoot back. "It is certainly a luxury to fight against an enemy who cannot defend himself properly. But it is dangerous to get used to it. The navy, for example. For years now it has been sailing along the shores of Gaza and Lebanon, shelling at pleasure, arresting fishermen, checking ships. It never dreamed that the enemy could shoot back. Suddenly it happened - and on live television, too. Hizbullah hit it with a land-to-sea missile. There was no end to the surprise. It was almost considered as Chutzpah. What, an enemy who shoots back? What next?" (26 August 2006)

Michael Wolf: Panic on 43rd Street (Vanity Fair). Is the New York Times going the way of the dodo bird? Are the antics of its publisher, Arthur Sulzberger, hastening the end? What could he possibly have been thinking when he spent $410 mllion to buy About.com? Why did he back, then fire, Judy Miller? Why does he keep talking? When push comes to shove, or, rather, when the money runs out, will he save About.com or the newsroom? Does he know the difference? Does anyone under 50 read the Times anyway? What happens when the over-50 crowd dies out? The blandness of USA Today, the mendacity of Fox News and the hyperactive hype of Wolf Blitzer's Situation Room? (26 August 2006)

France May Ban Public Smoking in January (Bloomberg.com). France, which has a higher percentage of smokers (30%) than any European country except Greece, is set to ban smoking in cafes, restaurants and all other public places, thereby joining, among others, Italy, Sweden, Ireland and the State of California. Can they play M. et Mme. Cool in the cafes without the dangling Galoises? (26 August 2006)

Jonathan Schwarz: Politicians' Middle-Class Delusions (TomPaine.com). Joe Lieberman, who with his lobbyist wife reported $366,084 income last years, describes himself as not "much beyond the middle class." The homophobe Rick Santorum, who may very well get kicked out of the Senate in November, complains about living "paycheck to paycheck" on his $162,100 senatorial salary and the income from five investment condos values between $100,000 and $200,000 each. No wonder these guys are so out of touch with the reality ordinary Americans inhabit every day: they never have to get their shoes dirty going there. (26 August 2006)

Bush Ensured Iran Offer Would Be Rejected (CommonDreams). The last thing the Bush administration wants is straightforward, honest negotations with Iran over the nuclear issue. Quite the contrary: they're doing everything they can to torpedo any progress in order to justify their march to Bush WAar #3. (26 August 2006)

Rep. Harris Condemns Separation of Church, State (Washington Post). Katherine Harris is getting messages directly from God. He's telling her He "did not intend for the United States to be a 'nation of secular laws' and that the separation of church and state is a 'lie we have been told' to keep religious people out of politics." This fruitcake's previous job was as Florida Secretary of State, in which position she was one of the seven people most responsible for the Bush presidency (the other six being the five members of the Supreme Court who gave Bush the Florida vote and Ralph Nader, who reneged on his promise to his senior staff to quit any state race in which votes for him were likely to swing the vote to the Republicans). (26 August 2006)

Katherine Harris interview (Florida Baptist Witness). The interview with Florida Rep. Katharine Harris that prompted the Washington Post article above. She covers much more ground, like why gays don't have civil rights, her certainty that she will be judged pure enough to spend eternity with God in Heaven, her personal opinion that abortion should be denied rape and incest victims, and why only Christians should be elected to public office. (26 August 2006)

W.B. Yeats: The Second Coming. The third and fourth lines of this 1920 poem are quoted, whole or in part, again and again in articles and conversations about the mess the Bush administration has made of the world, the escalating violence in the Middle East, the melting Polar ice, and all the rest. They will surely be evoked by Katherine Harris's imbecilic campaign rhetoric. Here's the entire poem. (26 August 2006)

Saviour of Iraq's antiquities flees to Syria (Guardian). The chaos Bush brought to Iraq continues to spread. "Iraq's most prominent archaeologist has resigned and fled the country, saying the dire security situation, an acute shortage of funds, and the interference of supporters of the radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr had made his position intolerable." He said "Baghdad was now so dangerous that the National Museum, which houses a trove of Sumerian and Babylonian artefacts, had been sealed off by concrete walls to protect it from insurgent attacks and further looting." (26 August 2006)

Musharraf faces bitter clash over rape law reforms (Telegraph). Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf is trying to change Parkistan's rape laws, which "place an almost impossible burden of proof on women by compelling them to produce four 'pious' male witnesses to prove rape or risk being convicted of adultery and face 100 lashes or death by stoning. This law...sets no minimum age for sex with girls, saying only that they should have reached puberty. A powerful militant Muslim lobby regards this code as sacred and based on Koranic texts and sharia law." (26 August 2006)

Islam poses a threat to West say 53% in British poll (Telegraph). "The alleged plot to blow up transatlantic airliners and last year's terrorist attacks on London have made more people fear Islam as a religion, not merely its extremist elements, a poll for The Daily Telegraph has found. A growing number of people fear that the country faces 'a Muslim problem' and more than half of the respondents to the YouGov survey said that Islam posed a threat to Western liberal democracy. That compares with less than a third after the September 11 terrorist attacks on America five years ago." (26 August 2006)

Fasting for casino rights (Sacramento Bee). California's gambling-rich Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians are spending a lot of money in Sacramento making sure the very poor Los Coyotes Band of Cahuilla Indians stays very poor. (26 August 2006)

Michael Kimmelman: Walker Evans. Or Is It? (NY Times). A good friend of Walker Evans' has digitized some of Evans's negatives and is printing them many times larger than Evans ever did or wanted. The new images show details never visible in Evans's 8x10 prints from the same negatives? Are they therefore better prints? Worse prints? Something different entirely, like those photographs of Evans photographs done by an artist not very long ago and signed by her? The art world, both in galleries and museums, is predicated on scarcity. If there's a lot of something, neither the galleries and most of the time the museums have no interest in it. Digital and digitized images are infinitely replicable and (thanks to Photoshop) endlessly manipulable. Is there any there there? (26 August 2006)

Sadr's Militia and the Slaughter in the Street (Washington Post). Members of the Mahdi Army, the militia of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, find all the justification they needs for torture and murder in the Koran, and from their point of view, an accusation is as fatal as a death sentence after a trial before a judge. Accused of being a violent Sunni extremist? Death. Accused of being a Saddamist? Death. Accused of adultery? Death. (25 August 2006)

Juan Cole: Republican Congressional Report on Iran Riddled with Errors (Informed Comment). The House's Republican-dominated Subcommittee on Intelligence, which has assiduously avoided any serious examination of US intelligence policy, has issued a report chastising the intelligence agencies for not providing intelligence that endorses and supports White House Iran policy. The report is a bald-faced political hack-job. Here are the details, along with a link to the report itself. (This url is for Juan Cole's excellent blog, so if it isn't on top when you link to it, scroll down to the entry for Friday, August 25). For more on this as one more example of Bush administration manipulating intelligence to serve political ends, see John Prados, "'Fixing' Iran Intelligence" (TomPaine.com). (25 August 2006)

Why are Hillary Clinton and the progressive left hiding from Jonathan Tasini? (New York Post). Ned Lamont's single-issue campaign campaign against smarmy Joe Lieberman was covered everywhere, and in great detail. So how come the almost total silence not only in the mainstream press but also in the progressive Left about Jonathan Tasini's primary challenge to presidential-candidate-pretending-she's-running-for-Senator Hillary Clinton? Tasini's got great credentials and he's taken the same position on the war as Clinton while Clinton has taken the same go-along-with-George position on the war as Lieberman. How come Clinton refuses to debate him, appear with him, utter his name? The New York Times editorial page says she owes it to New York voters to come out of hiding, but of course she won't. If you want to know more, here's Tasini's website. (25 August 2006)

Tom Bentley: Bound for Glory (BookForum). The author of Story of O, "the most famous erotic novel of the twentieth century," was more interesting, though in a vastly different way, than her astonishing literary creation. (21 August 2006)

Sean Gardiner: Freeze Frame on a Bad Cop (Village Voice). Bill Phillips was one of the two cops who made the reforms in NYPD that came out of the Knapp Commission possible (the other was Frank Serpico). Serpico--immortalized by Al Pacino in the movie bearing his name--is still a hero in hiding. Bill Phillips has spent the past three decades in prison, either doing time for two murders he committed or being punished for having exposed a bunch of bad cops. Which is worse? Which do you do more time for in George Pataki's New York prison system? (21 August 2006)

FBI duty in slaying trial of 4 disputed (Boston Globe). The FBI knew that Henry Tameleo and Louis Greco, both of whom were put on trial, convicted, and kept in prison until they died, were innocent men. The FBI said nothing because it was protecting an informer. The US Justice Department is arguing that the FBI did nothing wrong. If the State of Massachussetts convicted innocent men and kept them in prison until they died, well, that's the problem of Massachussetts, not the FBI, which not only knew they were innocent but also knew who the real murderers were, and never bothered to tell the State of Massachussetts. (Would Efram Zimbalist, Jr. have allowed that?) (21 August 2006)

Uri Avnery: The 155th Victim (Gush Shalom). "The war against the Palestinian people is being waged in order to keep the 'settlement blocs' and annex large parts of the West Bank. The war in the North was waged, in fact, to keep the settlements on the Golan Heights....We have to remove the settlers from there, whatever the cost in wines and mineral water, and give the Golan back to its rightful owners. Ehud Barak almost did so, but, as is his wont, lost his nerve at the last moment. It has to be said aloud: every one of the 154 Israeli dead of Lebanon War II (until the cease-fire) died for the settlers on the Golan Heights." (21 August 2006)

"Make love not war" doesn't work either: Israel's Justice Minister quits over kiss (London Times). The Israeli Justice minister resigned " over allegations that he forcibly kissed a teenage woman soldier during a farewell party at government offices in Tel Aviv on the day the Lebanese war erupted." He said he was sure he would be exonerated. Of what? This is getting very loopy. (21 August 2006)

Deborah Nelson and Nick Turse: A Tortured Past (LA Times). The Bush administration has worked mightily to hide evidence of torture in its secret prisons around the world, and the US military has worked to bury evidence of war crimes in Iraq and to smear soldiers who've tried to bring the atrocities to light. Ugly stuff, but nothing new. Only now, more than 30 years after the fact, we're learning about how those same techniques by mililtary officials who found it easier to bury the truth than correct the evil were used in Vietnam. (21 August 2006)

Michael Schwartz: 7 Facts You Might Not Know about the Iraq War (TomDispatch). "All the centripetal forces in Iraq derive from the American occupation, and might still be sufficiently reduced by an American departure followed by a viable reconstruction program embraced by the key elements inside of Iraq. But if the occupation continues, there will certainly come a point -- perhaps already passed -- when the collapse of government legitimacy, the destruction wrought by the war, and the horror of terrorist violence become self-sustaining. If that point is reached, all parties will enter a new territory with incalculable consequences." (21 August 2006)

Dick Hirsch: Wild Bill Donovan's name shouldn't be erased in Buffalo. Dwight D. Eisenhower said Buffalo's Bill Donovan "was the last hero." He was a Medal of Honor winner, founder of the OSS, and the US Attorney who busted the Saturn Club (of which he was a member) for selling bootleg whiskey in 1923. There's a State office building in Buffalo named for him, which is about to be torn down to make room for a fishing lure and bait shop. The Buffalo airport needs a name, so here's an opportunity to honor one of those rare local political figures who wasn't for sale to the highest bidder. (21 August 2006)

Uri Avnery: From Mania to Depression (Gush Shalom). The Israeli blitzkrieg that was supposed to wipe Hizbollah off the map resulted in 154 dead Israelis (37 of them civilians), at least 1000 dead Lebanese civilians (plus an unknown number of Hizbullah fighters), a million refugees, an invasion army that came home in shame and anger, a nation torn with massive recriminations, and a racist Right claiming--as in Germany after WWI and the US after Vietnam--that the military had been stabbed in the back by chicken-hearted civilians. "Perhaps," writes Uri Avnery, who as a youth fought with the Israeli underground Irgun and who was severely wounded in the 1948 war, and who later founded Israel's most important peace organization, "in the end, it is logic that will win. Logic says: what has thoroughly been demonstrated is that there is no military solution. That is true in the North. That is also true in the South, where we are confronting a whole people that has nothing to lose anymore. The success of the Lebanese guerilla will encourage the Palestinian guerilla. For logic to win, we must be honest with ourselves: pinpoint the failures, investigate their deeper causes, draw the proper conclusions. Some people want to prevent that at any price. President Bush declares vociferously that we have won the war. A glorious victory over the Evil Ones. Like his own victory in Iraq." (18 August 2006)

A Split In the Racist Right (Alternet). The radical right New Century Foundation, and its newletter American Renaissance, have long been happy "denouncing the inferiority of blacks and sounding the alarm about civilization-threatening Muslims." Recently, former Klan leader David Duke and some friends have been working to include Jews (the masterminds, says Duke, of all the world's wars and disorders) in the Foundation's hate list. Some members of the New Century Foundation think that's just fine; some others think that may be one racism too many. (18 August 2006)

Seneca Gaming Corporation's August 14, 2006, 10Q filing with the SEC. In order to borrow the large sums of money they needed to build their Niagara Falls hotel and retire early their very-high-interest first loans, the Seneca Gaming corporation had to agree to regular filings about its operations with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Unlike the press conference statement and Buffalo News "Another Voice" articles by gambling boss Barry Snyder, these reports are under oath, so if they get caught lying in them they're liable for perjury and other charges. The report (in PDF format), therefore, although outwardly dull, is worth careful reading. It was in an earlier SEC report that the SGC revealed that the Buffalo casino was designed primarily to milk a very local market, not a tourist market as SGC spokesmen had repeatedly claimed. Among the interesting items here are the report of revenues (p. 2), which shows the SGC's huge increases in revenues from gambling, food, drink, hotels, retail stores and entertainment over the past year; the statement that even though the City of Buffalo won't give them Fulton street they're still planning on building a casino/hotel/entertainment/retail operation the same size they'd planned earlier (pp. 13-14); a list of pending measures in Congress that might impair SGC's operations (26-27); and, very deep in the report, admission that if the lawsuit in Federal court opposing the proposed Buffalo Creek casino on the grounds that it was authorized in direct contravention of the two applicable Federal laws is successful, "the Nation would be unable to conduct any gaming upon lands acquired pursuant to SNLCSA" (29-30). (18 August 2006)

Judge Orders Halt to NSA Wiretap Program (CommonDreams/Reuters). The Bush Administration has consistently taken as its basic license a proposition that goes something like, "If we're doing it, it's legal." There is a companion proposition: "Anything we do in the war on terror is legal." And a third: "Terror is what we say it is." That has led to confinement of prisoners of war and kidnapees without charge or trial or representation, torture, and spying on Americans without warrants. Comes now U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor to tell the Bush Administration that their propositions do not displace the U.S. Constitution, and the White House is not, on the basis of mere assertion, above the law. The Bush Administration, says Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, is appealing this cruel attack on presidential powers ordained by God in his heaven. (18 August 2006)

Hatch says Demo win could help terrorists (Salt Lake Tribune). It is becoming a major Republican trope: if we follow the position of most Democrats and get out of Iraq, either quickly or slowly, says the terminally oleagenous Senator Orrin Hatch, we are playing into the hands of the terrorists in Iraq. No mention that there were no terrorists in Iraq before George W. Bush & Co. turned the country into a bloody shambles, and no mention that Bush & Co. has taken all the goodwill the US had in most of the world after 9/11 and turned it to contempt and hatred. It's already what the Republicans backing turncoat Joe Lieberman in Connecticut are saying. Look for it to become a major theme of the upcoming election. (18 August 2006)

Months after making headlines, John Murtha's popularity booming (McClatchy). After the marine war hero/Congressman called for pulling US troops out of Iraq, Republicans mounted a Swiftboart Liars' attack on him. Many of his pusillanimous Democratic colleagues ducked for cover, agreeing with him but not willing to take the Republican heat that would follow them standing up and admitting it. But now that John Murtha has become the most popular Democrats of all, some of his colleagues may start thinking that standing up for what they know is true may not be bad politics after all, and that the American public may not be as stupid as many of them prefer to think. (18 August 2006)

Bruce Jackson: Paladino Writes: Epistle to Bruce Jackson (Artvoice). Carl Paladino, who sold the Senecas much of the land on which they hope to set a gambling joint in Buffalo, is the only Buffalo businessman of substance who aggressively supports the casino operation. We asked him why he did that, since he must know what a financial disaster it would be for the city. He answered, in surprising detail. (Note: The word "opposition" in the third paragraph should be "support." Our error. It's just hard to think of any rational informed person supporting this dog of a project unless he's making a bunch of money on it.)(17 August 2006)

Stocks Scandal Spells Doom of Embattled Israeli Army Chief (Agence France Presse). It's starting to smell like the US in Iraq. Israel's military boss thought wiping out the opposition in Lebanon would be a walk through the spring grass. It began with dramatic footage of bombs blowing things up. A huge number of civilians were slaughtered, but they were mostly off-camera. And now the war is on hold, with Israel is no safer than it was before, and, oh, the chief of the military seems to have made a bunch of money selling stock just before he ordered the planes in. (17 August 2006)

Plame lawyer plans to force Cheney, Rove testimony (Reuters). Turnabout is fair play: "A lawyer plans to use a legal precedent that allowed President Bill Clinton to be sued while in office to force Vice President Dick Cheney and presidential adviser Karl Rove to testify in a lawsuit brought by former CIA operative Valerie Plame and her husband." They probably won't get them on anything as salacious as a blowjob in the Oval Office alcove, which is what the whole impeachment fiasco was all about, but maybe they'll turn up something but far more substantial. (17 August 2006)

Ruth Rosen: Oliver Stone, 9/11, and the Big Lie (TomDispatch.com). Oliver Stone's World Trade Center has been getting glowing reviews, but the film has one serious flaw: it reinforces rather than blows a hole in the Big Lie mouthed frequently by George W. Bush now and all the time by Dick Cheney. The Bush-Cheney Big Lie has resulted in the slaughter of far more innocent people than were murdered by al Qaeda in the World Trade Center five years ago. (16 August 2006)

David Staba and Mike Hudson: Thanks for nothing, Byron (Niagara Falls Reporter). Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown went up to Niagara Falls to take part in a photo op for a politician, causing Staba and Hudson to reflect on how infrequently he visiting the Falls when he was their rep in the State Senate. "In much the same way that he cynically used the people of this city like so many stepping stones to become mayor of Buffalo, Brown is now using the people there in jockeying for an even higher office, one that will take him to Washington and away from Western New York altogether. Niagara Falls needs Brown's guidance like it needs another empty factory." (16 August 2006)

Dan Walters: A slippery slope: Are tribes governments or businesses? (Sacramento Bee). "Casino-owning tribes in California are governments that operate like private businesses, thus breaching the wall that has traditionally and properly separated the two. In effect, the tribes are governments when it suits them, and business when it suits them....But if they are governments, how can they claim the right to contribute large sums to the campaigns of politicians?" (16 August 2006)

Immanuel Wallerstein: Five Reasons Why Great Military Powers Lose Wars. President Bush gave a gloating speech this week about how the Israelis trounced Hezbollah in Lebanon, a view that is shared by just about nobody, not even the Israelis. No wonder Iraq is such a mess: the American president is not on speaking terms with reality. Bush just can't imagine how a small guerilla force could have resisted the most powerful military machine in the middle east. If he reads this, he'll know. (16 August 2006)

Andre Glucksmann: The Jerusalem Syndrome (signandsight/Figaro). "On the scales of world opinion," writes the French philosopher Andre Glucksman, "some Muslim corpses are light as a feather, and others weigh tonnes. Two measures, two weights. The daily terrorist attacks on civilians in Baghdad, killing 50 people or more, are checked off in reports under the heading of miscellaneous, while the bomb that took 28 lives in Qana is denounced as a crime against humanity." Who, in the West, pays any attention to the 200,000 dead Muslims in Darfur? Or the thousands of dead in Chechnia? "The Security Council does not hold meeting after meeting, and the Organization of Islamic States piously averts its eyes. From that we may conclude that the world is appalled only when a Muslim is killed by Israelis." (15 August 2006)

Most Americans do not believe in evolution. (NY Times). That's right: more than half of the Americans polled in a 2005 survey said they do not believe in evolution, which places the US second only to Turkey in the triumph of uninformed blind faith over modern science. Are these the same blockheads who believe there were WMD in Iraq? Even if they are, we can't blame this one on Fox News. (15 August 2006)

The last man they expected to have an SS secret: Gunter Grass (London Times). Shortly before his 80th birthday and the publication of a new book, Gunter Grass, the author of The Tin Drum who is famous for his insistence that Germany must acknowledge its Nazi past, decided to admit that, when a teen-ager, he'd served in Hitler's Waffen-SS. (15 August 2006)

Seymour Hersh: Watching Lebanon: Washington's interests in Israel's war (New Yorker). "Even those who continue to support Israel's war against Hezbollah agree that it is failing to achieve one of its main goals--to rally the Lebanese against Hezbollah. 'Strategic bombing has been a failed military concept for ninety years, and yet air forces all over the world keep on doing it,' John Arquilla, a defense analyst at the Naval Postgraduate School, told me. Arquilla has been campaigning for more than a decade, with growing success, to change the way America fights terrorism. 'The warfare of today is not mass on mass,' he said. 'You have to hunt like a network to defeat a network. Israel focussed on bombing against Hezbollah, and, when that did not work, it became more aggressive on the ground. The definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing and expecting a different result.'" (15 August 2006)

Robert Fisk: As the 6am ceasefire takes effect...the real war begins (The Independent). "The real war in Lebanon begins today. The world may believe - and Israel may believe - that the UN ceasefire due to come into effect at 6am today will mark the beginning of the end of the latest dirty war in Lebanon after up to 1,000 Lebanese civilians and more than 30 Israeli civilians have been killed. But the reality is quite different and will suffer no such self-delusion: the Israeli army, reeling under the Hizbollah's onslaught of the past 24 hours, is now facing the harshest guerrilla war in its history. And it is a war they may well lose." (15 August 2006)

Fraudsters raid old computers for bank details (Telegraph). Old computers, like most electronic gadgets, are classified as toxic waste, so instead of being dumped in landfill they're sold to third-world countries where the hard drives are often mined for data the former owners thought they'd erased. (15 August 2006)

"I didn't like sex at all" (Salon.com). "Martha Gellhorn was a gorgeous, brilliant foreign correspondent once married to Hemingway. But underneath her glamorous exterior, her letters reveal a woman of awe-inspiring rage." (15 August 2006)

Nat Hentoff: Brutal chain of command (Village Voice). "As you read this, the Bush administration is devising ways to persuade Congress to let it weasel out of the Supreme Court's findings in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that George W. Bush has been creating, with regard to his treatment of detainees, a country with no laws." (15 August 2006)

Carole King: Idaho's Off-Road Uproar (LA Times). While the attention of most activists is occupied with the wreck the Bush administration has made of the middle east, Republican venality gallops along almost unnoticed at home. The Central Idaho bill, which has passed in the House and is pending in the Senate, is one of the most cynical land giveaways in years. Considering what the Republican-dominated Congress has given away these past few years, that's saying a lot. (15 August 2006)

Ashcroft getting rich on homeland security contracts (Washington Post). John Ashcroft, the former Missouri senator who was beaten in his last election by a dead man and who was then appointed US Attorney General by G.W. Bush, knows the current homeland security regulations better than anybody, since he presided over their genesis. He left government two years ago for unspecified reasons. Now the reasons are clear: he's using what he learned in government and the contacts he made to help clients of his lobbying firm get a piece of the homeland security money he helped put in place. This is the sanctimonious prude who draped the statue of Justice in the Justice Department hallway because he was offended by her breasts. He should have draped her eyes. (13 August 2006)

Jean Bricmont: The De-Zionization of the American Mind (Counterpunch). The biggest lie about the Israel lobby is that claim that there is no Israel lobby. "Just imagine a pro-French, pro-Chinese or pro-Japanese lobby that would try to significantly influence the US Congress. Certainly, money alone cannot suffice. What protects the Israel lobby is the fact that anyone who would denounce an opponent funded by the Lobby as a quasi-agent of a foreign power would immediately be accused of anti-Semitism. In fact, imagine that Big Business is unhappy with the current U.S. policies (as it well may be) and wants to change them--how could they do it? Any criticism of Lobby influence on U.S. policy would immediately trigger the anti-Zionism-is-anti-Semitism accusation." (13 August 2006)

Bush gleeful about Lieberman loss, British terror arrests (NY Times). Bush's poll numbers are at their lowest level ever and many Republican candidates have been trying to put air between their careers and his. But the defeat of Joe Lieberman by an anti-war Democrat and the arrests in Great Britain and Pakistan of two dozen Muslims accused of a massive terrorist plot, had got Dubya galvanized. He can once again attack the Democrats as peaceniks and portray himself as the man saving the world from the savage hordes abroad. It worked for him since 9/11, until people started to realize that the war in Iraq was lost and his invasion there has accomplished nothing other than increase Iran's power in the region, so why not use the terror-incident-de-jour as an occasion to give it another go? (13 August 2006)

Through the Eyes of the Beholder (Digital Journalist). The most moving photographs from the Israeli/Lebanon/Gaza war, selected and discussed by Marianne Fulton, along with essays on how the pictures came to be made by three of the photographers. Note particularly the images by Tyler Hicks, which are almost unbearable, but which must be seen. (12 August 2006)

Jeff Miers: Ian Gillan in Buffalo (Buffalo News). The great Ian Gillan (long the lead singer for Deep Purple, for a time lead for Black Sabbath, and The Man Himself in the original version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Jesus Christ Superstar) begins the road tour for his new CD/DVD, Gillian's Inn, this coming Wednesday night at the Town Ballroom in balmy downtown Buffalo. His road band includes several stellar Buffalo musicians, among them guitarist Michael Lee Jackson, who is also the tour's musical director. (11 August 2006)

Who's Least Sincere--Politicians, Journalists, or Readers? (CJRDaily). If you watch NewsHour, you've long known that the shifty-eyed David Brooks was a front-man for the Republican right. And now, after his startling declaration on the Chris Matthews Show, you know what contempt he's got for you. (And, if you want to see what the Buffalo News editorial page editors think of you, click here.) (11 August 2006)

Newton Garver: A Genius at Work in the Andes. Bolivian President Evo Morales over and over exhibits subtleties that lay bare the inadequacy of the various trivializing epithets applied to him by outsiders. The forces that would seek to bring him down, both in Bolivia and in the US, are formidable, but thus far, his refusal to define individuals as enemies and his relentless insistence on justice have made the man in the alpaca sweater a surprisingly effective leader. (11 August 2006)

Joel A. Giambra: Senecas' proposed casino is not a sure thing (Buffalo News). On a day when when Buffalo's dumb-as-wood comptroller called a press conference to tell Mayor Byron Brown to roll over for the Senecas because in his epidermal legal opinion an "intention" is the same thing as a binding legal promise in writing, the Erie County Executive explains why both of them should stop trying to make a lousy deal a little less lousy and should instead join the Federal lawsuit designed to save the city from disaster. (11 August 2006)

Cities, States Aren't Waiting for U.S. Action on Climate (Washington Post). Cities and states around the country, frustrated by the way industries have bought Washinton into stasis on global warming and pollution, are taking action on their own. The bought-and-paid-for Bush administration energy policy officials are trying to block some of it, saying the states' action to cut emission of greenhouse gasses interferes with the government's right to do nothing. (11 August 2006)

Israel wants US to speed up delivery of anti-personnel cluster bombs (NY Times). Some US officials want to go slow, since these will surely increase civilian casualties, but it is likely the request will be approved. Previous Israeli use of cluster bombs against Lebanese civilians led to a temporary US embargo on this weapon, lifted by the Reagan administration. (11 August 2006)

Uri Avnery: Who? Me?! (Gush Shalom). The Israeli generals are drunk on blood and they want more. They are now manly-men, no longer going against Palestinians but now engaging in a real invasion of another country with bombs and tanks and artillery and boots on the ground. They want to push on, whatever the cost. "I am going now to say something I did not think I would ever utter, writes Irgun hero and now peace activist Uri Avnery: "It is quite possible that we would not have slid into this foolish war if Ariel Sharon were in charge. Fact: he did not attack Hizbullah after the withdrawal in 2000. One attempt was enough for him. Which proves again that there is nothing so bad that something worse cannot be found." (11 August 2006)

Sidney Blumenthal: Sense and sanctimony (Guardian). "Lieberman was once the most attractive and promising Democrat in his state, his grasp of political realities subtle and sinuous. But he became scornful of disagreement, parading himself as a moral paragon to whom voters should be privileged to pay deference. The elevation of his sanctimony was accompanied by the loss of his political sense." He's been a conservative Republican cat'spaw all along, and now he's promising to do all he can to throw the November election to the Republicans. What a sad whining bum he turned out to be. (11 August 2006)

Retroactive War Crime Protection Proposed (CommonDreams/AP). You're only a war criminal if you've committed a war crime. That's logical enough. How do you make sure no American official is found to be a war criminal for the various violations of human and civil rights frequently employed by the Bush administration? By retroactively changing the law so violations of human and civil rights by the American officials and agents are, by definition, no longer war crimes. (11 August 2006)

Bruce Jackson: The Negotiations End (Artvoice). An interview with Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown and some of his staff in which Brown explains why he decided to go along with the downtown casino project rather than fight it, why the city never studied the impact of a casino on its economy or social structure, and what led to the recent breakdown in negotiations with the Seneca Gaming Corporation when the Senecas' gambling boss Barry Snyder told the city of Buffalo there was no way he would put any of his promises in writing. (10 August 2006)

Spectator: The View from Here: underfunding the military, undertaxing the rich, undermonitoring the pipeline, and Tom Reynolds takes credit for one more thing he didn't do. The beat goes on. (10 August 2006)

Pinned Under the Weight of 9/11 History (NY Times). "In the Sept. 11 of 'World Trade Center,' feeling transcends politics, and the film's astonishingly faithful re-creation of the emotional reality of the day produces a curious kind of nostalgia. It's not that anyone would wish to live through such agony again, but rather that the extraordinary upsurge of fellow feeling that the attacks produced seems precious. And also very distant from the present. Mr. Stone has taken a public tragedy and turned it into something at once genuinely stirring and terribly sad. His film offers both a harrowing return to a singular, disastrous episode in the recent past and a refuge from the ugly, depressing realities of its aftermath." (9 August 2006)

Seymour Hersh: The Iran Plans. If you're not scared yet, you should be; it the recent news hasn't convinced you we're in dire straits, this article from Seymour Hersh, whose reporting on Bush Administration secret war activities has never been proven wrong, should do it for you. The Bush Administration has been increasing its clandestine activities inside Iran and may be readying itself for a major air attack. The consequences, say experts on the region, could be disastrous for the US. But Bush's neocon's are still in denial about their failure in Iraq, they look on the Israeli invasion of Lebanon as progress toward peace and there are, after all, the November elections to think about. "What," said one expert, "are they smoking?" Maybe the same garbage that told them that Iraq would be an easy walk in and an easy walk out.(7 August 2006)

Uri Avnery: Junkies of War (Gush Shalom). Perhaps the creepiest thing about Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, says onetime Irgun hero and current peace activist Uri Avnery, is that he "really believes that this is a successful war. That he is winning. That he has radically changed Israel's situation. That he is building a New Middle East. That he is a historic leader, far superior to Ariel Sharon (who, after all, was beaten in Lebanon and who allowed Hizbullah to build up its arsenal of rockets). That the longer he is allowed to go on with the war, the more his stature in history will grow. Ehud Olmert has obviously cut himself off from reality. He lives in a bubble all by himself. His speeches show that he has a very real problem." (7 August 2006)

Misinformation campaign: Deceit, greed fuel push to legalize slot machines (Columbus Dispatch). Don't you wonder what your townwould be like if it had a daily newspaper editorial page willing to look at an onslaught of gambling money in terms of anything other than how many inches of advertising space the slot machine owners are willing to spend in the newspaper every week? Folks in Columbus, Ohio, have a newspaper like that. It must be nice, having a newspaper like that. (7 August 2006)

Swiftboating Murtha (Boston Globe). Some of the same lying scoundrels and chickenhawks who said John Kerry hadn't earned his Purple Hearts in Vietnam are now going after retired USMC Lt Col. and present Congressman John Murtha. Murtha's crime, which the Swiftboat Swine for Perpetual Mendacity says has erased his stellar military record, is that he has dared to speak the truth about the US failure in Iraq. (7 August 2006)

Robert Fisk: Slaughter in Qana (The Independent). "Fifty-nine dead? Thirty-seven? Twenty-eight? An air strike this time, and the usual lies follow. Ten years ago, Hizbollah were 'hiding' in the UN compound. Untrue. Now, we are supposed to believe that the dead of Qana - today's slaughter - were living in a house which was a storage base for Hizbollah missiles. Another lie - because the dead were all killed in the basement, where they would never be if rockets were piled floor-to-ceiling. Even Israel later abandons this nonsense. I watch Lebanese soldiers stuffing the children's corpses into plastic bags - then I see them pushing the little bodies into carpets because the bags have run out." (7 August 2006)

Sharon Linstedt: Window open for casino talks (Buffalo News). Gosh. But who had a doubt? The current "breakdown" in negotiations between Buffalo and the Seneca Gaming Corporation seems more and more like a pit stop while City Hall figures out a way to put a manly face on their failure to get the Senecas to fulfill a demand to put everything in a binding contract. They should have known the Senecas would never have granted that, either from ten minutes' thought about what such an accession would have meant from the Seneca point of view or a five-minute conversation with former Mayor Tony Masiello, who tried the same thing and also got nowhere. Seneca gambling boss Barry Snyder says Byron Brown should be satisfied with a handshake, "leader to leader." Ho ho ho. Linstedt also quotes Buffalo businessman Carl Paladino, who is by far the most-frequently quoted Buffalo businessman in Buffalo News casino coverage. That is because Paladino is the only Buffalo businessman of substance who is in favor of the casino; everybody else thinks it's a dog. She also quotes Buffalo Common Council President David Franczyk, who owes his job to Paladino and who is smart enough to say what is expected of him. (4 August 2006)

Eric Boehlert: Fox News Continues to Suggest Israel Did Not Bomb Qana (HuffingtonPost). Their commentator Ollie North suggests that Hezbollah did it for p.r. Michelle Malkin says the Qana footage was "manufactured." Host Bill O'Reilly agreed. You can't, as Lily Tomlin says in that wonderful quotation on our masthead, keep up with these guys. (4 August 2006)

Rick Santorum on "Islamic Fascism" at the National Press Club (Foster Friess). A transcript of the July 20 speech in which Pennsylvania's notorious homophobe & zygote-lover Rick Santorum said we weren't fighting a war on terrorism after all. We're fighting a war on "Islamic Fascism." The speech, which was no doubt written by his staff, makes clear that neither Santorum nor his staff has the foggiest idea what fascism was or is. The best part is the Q&A following the speech, which gives you an idea how far Santorum's own command of the language is from the text he just read, sort of like the difference in George W. Bush when he's talking on his own or when he's reading what Karen Hughes wrote for him to say and they rehearsed him really well. Ordinarily, we wouldn't post something this long that is this far off the mark, but you ought to know what the Republic Conference chairman is thinking, such as is. (4 August 2006)

Billy Shore: The Flags of Our Sons (NY Times). The press regularly reports on the trips taken by Condi and Dubya to shored up their failed foreign policy. Here's a report on another kind of trip taken by some other government employees, a kind of trip the White House would prefer go unnoticed and which the press ordinarily ignores. (4 August 2006)

Oceans going acid (LA Times). Because of the increasingly huge amount of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere, the world's oceans are rapidly becoming more acidic,threatening to devastate all forms of aquatic life except algae and bacteria. (3 August 2006)

Bruce Jackson: Is the Buffalo Creek Casino Illegal? (Artvoice). Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown and Seneca gambling boss Barry Snyder are having public hissy-fits over who promised whom what and who is going to deliver what now in the Buffalo casino project. But, say opponents of the casino, there is as more basic question: is the whole project illegal from the ground up? A motion filed in federal district court asks Judge William M. Skretny to decide whether or not there is any reason for the hissy fits and the other carryings-on. (3 August 2006)

Jon Lee Anderson: The Battle for Lebanon (New Yorker). According to a Hezbollah strategist, Hezbollah wanted to get back three Lebanese prisoners the Israelis had been holding for years, so it kidnapped two Israeli soldiers it could use in a trade. Israel responded by bombing civilian targets in Beirut. Hezbollah fired a rocket at Haifa. Then all hell broke loose, killing mostly Lebanese civilians, and most of them women and children. So who comes out ahead in this frenzy of killing? (3 August 2006)

G.I.'s Say Officers Ordered Killing of Young Iraqi Men (NY Times). What, exactly, were those mean, nasty things Saddam did that George W. Bush sent an army overseas to protect Iraqis from? The killers' lawyers said they were just obeying orders. Where did we hear that before? (2 August 2006)

Garrison Keillor: The North Goes South (Salon.com). "Hot enough for me? I thrive on heat, Precious. Heat is my natural element. And seeing you walk around barefoot in that little ole dress is getting me hot and bothered. Never mind the possum. Come here and sweeten up to your papa and then let's go out and shoot some beer cans." (2 August 2006)

Plague of Plastic Chokes the Seas (LA Times). Nowadays, Coleridge's Ancient Mariner wouldn't have to leave the beach to kill the albatross. The world's oceans are covered with plastic trash, killing wildlife everywhere. (2 August 2006)

Diane Christian and Bruce Jackson: Buffalo Film Seminars Fall 2006. Dates and times for the 13th season of the region's longest-running classic film series: Thief of Bagdad (1924, accompanied on electronic piano by the great Philip Carli), King Kong (1933, best of the three versions by far), Mildred Pierce, The Big Sleep, Aparajito , Le Samourai, Chinatown, M*A*S*H, The Day of the Jackal, In the Year of the Pig, Five Easy Pieces, The Man Who Fell to Earth, Do the Right Thing and Prospero's Books. (2 August 2006)

Jesse Jackson: Joe Lieberman still doesn't get it (Chicago Sun-Times/Common Dreams). Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman thinks Ned Lamont, the businessman who is now leading him in the polls, is a mere one-issue candidate, which is further proof that his misunderstands what the Iraq war is really about and how much damage it has done and continues to do to the U.S. (2 August 2006)

Karma Nabulsi: The refugees' fury will be felt for generations to come (Guardian). Israel has failed to understand that it cannot expel a people and call itself the victim; that it cannot conquer its neighbours and treat any and all resistance to that conquest as terrorism; that it cannot arm itself as a regional superpower and annihilate the institutional fabric of two peoples without incurring the fury of their children in the years that follow." (2 August 2006)

Bush's Embrace of Israel Shows Gap With Father (NY Times). George W. Bush's uncritical, unthinking embrace of Israel "represents a generational and philosophical divide between the Bushes, one that is exacerbating the friction that has been building between their camps of advisers and loyalists over foreign policy more generally. As the president continues to stand by Israel in its campaign against Hezbollah -- even after a weekend attack that left many Lebanese civilians dead and provoked international condemnation -- some advisers to the father are expressing deep unease with the Israel policies of the son." (2 August 2006)

Phyllis Bennis:Washington's Latest Middle East War (Common Dreams). "The Israeli war against Lebanon and Palestine, euphemistically depicted as 'self-defense' against Hezbollah and Hamas, is simultaneously an Israeli war for domination, and a regional war to 'remap' the contemporary Middle East. In this context it is as much a US as an Israeli war. The immediate trigger has its roots in the extraordinarily hypocritical US-led boycott and international sanctions against the Palestinians that started after the democratic election of the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority government in January 2006. And beyond the specific trigger, this new war was set in motion by the example presented in Washington's Iraq-centered efforts at militarized regional transformation in the guise of 'democratization.' It must be stated unequivocally that this is a war against civilians -- there is nothing 'collateral' about it. And Israel is responsible for this war." (1 August 2006)

Uri Avnery: In the Gunsight: Syria! or: A Nice Little War (Gush Shalom). In the US, Jews who question Israeli violence are systematically attacked as "self-hating Jews" and anti-Semites. But how to attack and how to silence the many Israelis who ask the same questions, such as Uri Avneri, Irgun hero? How do you ignore their words, their moral outrage? "The leaders that start a war and get stuck in the mud," writes Avnery, "are compelled to fight their way ever deeper into the mud. That is a part of the very essence of war: it is impossible to stop after a failure. Public opinion demands the promised victory. Incompetent generals need to cover up their failure. Military commentators and other armchair strategists demand a massive offensive. Cynical politicians are riding the wave. The government is carried away by the flood that they themselves have let loose." (31 July 2006)

Robert Fisk: How Can We Stand By and Allow This to Go On? (Counterpunch). After killing the children in Qana, Israel announced a stop to the blitzkrieg of Lebanon. But the bombing continued as before. An NPR reporter asked an Israeli general what was the nature of this bombing halt that permitted bombing to continue? The bombing now, the general said, was targeting known Hezbollah sites. What, the reporter asked, were you targeting before? The general went into doubletalk. In this agonizing essay, Robert Fisk, the best Middle East reporter of them all, tells what it was like on the ground when the US-supplied bombs hit, and how Israel is even now blocking UN World Food Program relief convoys from providing civilian aid. (31 July 2006)

Senator Edward M. Kennedy: Roberts and Alito Misled Us (Washington Post). John G. Roberts and Samuel Alito have turned out to be just the kind of activist, partisan ideologues their fiercest opponents predicted they would be. How did they sail through a Senate confirmation process designed to protect the nation from people like them? Because the process has been broken--not by accident, but deliberately. And because the two nominees, coached by the Administration, who came to the US Senate, smiled, and lied their judicial asses off. (31 July 2006)

Matthew Rothschild: Condoleezza Rice: Midwife from Hell (The Progressive). "After being one of the most inept national security advisers in the nation's history, Condoleezza Rice is now earning the same grade as secretary of state. Her description of the conflagration in Lebanon as the 'birthpangs of a new Middle East' was about as callous as it gets, matched only by Bush's remark that the conflict represents 'a moment of opportunity.' The 400 Lebanese who have died, an overwhelming number of them civilian and many of them children, were not feeling any birthpangs. They were feeling deathpangs." (28 July 2006)

Karen Armstrong:Bush's fondness for fundamentalism is courting disaster at home and abroad (Guardian). "Whatever Bush's personal beliefs, the ideology of the Christian right is both familiar and congenial to him....Fundamentalists do not want a humanly constructed peace; many, indeed, regard the UN as the abode of Antichrist. The willingness of the US to turn a blind eye to the suffering of innocent people in Lebanon will certainly fuel the rage of the extremists and lead to further acts of terror. We can only hope that it does not take us all the way to Armageddon." (31 July 2006)

Glenn Greenwald: Echoes of the Nixon era (Salon.com). "With one piece of legislation, Sen. Arlen Specter seeks to expand the Bush administration's radical theory of executive power beyond the wildest dreams of Dick Cheney or even John Yoo. Just when it looked as though some semblance of checks and balances was being restored, Specter -- the Pennsylvania Republican who masqueraded for months as a tenacious opponent of the White House -- offers a bill that would strike an immeasurable blow for the Bush vision of an imperial presidency." (31 July 2006)

Andew Hussey: Last tango in Paris (The Independent). "A place like rue Saint-Denis represents everything that has gone wrong - it is not a place to go and have sex happily, as a person or as a couple. It is now just gangsters and girls who are sex slaves from Eastern Europe and Africa. The myths of the orgies to be found there, that you read in Georges Bataille, may not have been entirely true but they did correspond to some form of reality. Now it is practically impossible to have good sex with strangers in Paris." (31 July 2006)

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein: Reasonable Doubt (NY Times). For the 17th century philosopher Baruch Spinoza, nothing was more poisonous to decent government than the presence of clerics in government, or of a government that impeded scientific inquiry. Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence, was much in his debt. If Spinoza were here now, he'd look at the mess in the Middle East, the religious ideologues in the White House and would throw up his hands, or perhaps just throw up. (30 July 2006)

Men may be banned from daring to bare their chests (Daily Mail). In the US, the hyper-sanctimonious FCC threw a nutsy because Janet Jackson bared most of a tit during a Superbowl halftime. In Great Britain, authorities are throwing a nutsy because men are going around without their t-shirts during the current heat wave. Can't we get together on this? Everybody take the tops off whenever they feel like it, say, and set the pec-boob police working on more threatening crimes against society? (30 July 2006)

34 Youths AMong 56 Dead in Israeli Attack (AP/ABC News). "An Israeli airstrike killed at least 56 people, including at least 34 children, in a southern Lebanese village Sunday, the Lebanese Red Cross said. It was the deadliest attack in 19 days of fighting. Lebanese security officials put the toll at 57 dead. Security officials said the toll rose dramatically after 18 people from two families were found in a single room of the building, where dozens of people had been taking refuge from the fighting." US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice still refuses to call for an end to the Israeli attacks on Lebanese civilians. (30 July 2006)

Audit Finds U.S. Hid Cost of Iraq Projects (NY Times). The Bush administration has found a way to limit the costs of the Iraq war: lie about them. "The State Department agency in charge of $1.4 billion in reconstruction money in Iraq used an accounting shell game to hide ballooning cost overruns on its projects there and knowingly withheld information on schedule delays from Congress, a federal audit released late Friday has found." (30 July 2006)

LA Sheriffs cover up Mel Gibson's drunken anti-Semitic tirade (TMZ.com). When an LA sheriff pulled nutcase actor Mel Gibson over for drunk driving in Malibu, he cursed and threatened the cop, blamed the Jews for all the wars of the world, said he owned Malibu, promised revenge, and, when brought to the police station, carried on about a female officer's breasts. He blamed demon rum for letting the evil Mel get out. The arresting cop's boss took all the nasty stuff out of the arrest report but somebody leaked the copies of the original documents. (30 July 2006)

Philanthropist Soros writes that the Bush camp reminds him of the Nazi regime (LA Times). In his new book, George Soros says that when he 'heard President Bush say, 'Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists,' ' in the wake of 9/11, 'I was reminded of Nazi propaganda. Indeed, the Bush Administration has been able to improve on the techniques used by the Nazi and the Communist propaganda machines by drawing on the innovations of the advertising and marketing industries....You don't have a Karl Marx, you only have a Karl Rove who has been successful in creating a coalition of fundamentalists." (30 July 2006)

UN watchdog rebukes US over rights (Financial Times). "The US was on Friday roundly rebuked by a key United Nations human rights watchdog for violations of international law at home and abroad, especially in connection with its so-called 'war on terror'. The UN human rights committee called on Washington to immediately close all secret detention facilities, halt 'renditions' to countries that practise torture, and give prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, access to the courts to challenge their detention and treatment. It also criticised US asylum and immigration rules as well as aspects of its criminal justice system, including the death penalty, life imprisonment without parole for child offenders, police brutality and ill-treatment in prisons." (30 July 2006)

Eduardo Galeano: How Much Longer? (ZNet). "How much longer will the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier be allowed to justify the kidnapping of Palestinian sovereignty? How much longer will the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers be allowed to justify the kidnapping of the entire nation of Lebanon? For centuries the slaughter of Jews was the favorite sport of Europeans. Auschwitz was the natural culmination of an ancient river of terror, which had flowed across all of Europe. How much longer will Palestinians and other Arabs be made to pay for crimes they didn't commit?" (29 July 2006)

On the Roof of Peru, Omens in the Ice (Washington Post). While the Bush administration continues to deny the fact of global warming and the need for drastic action, glaciers high in the Andes are disappearing rapidly, continuing a twenty-year pattern that threatens the existence of farms and cities below. (29 July 2006)

Thomas Golisano: The Seneca casino not a good deal for Buffalo (Buffalo News) "A downtown casino is a terrible business decision for Buffalo's economy. Based on the Senecas' own projections and government filings, the Buffalo Creek Casino will take in $154 million to $188 million from gamblers, mainly living in Buffalo and surrounding suburbs, in the first year alone. That's money that will not be spent at local businesses. In return, the City of Buffalo would receive only $5 million to $7 million annually in lieu of taxes. What a 'deal'." (29 July 2006)

Robert Greenstein: House leadership invokes 'martial law,' forcing members to vote on key bills without reading them (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities). The House Republican leadership is forcing votes this week on key bills immediately after they come out of committee, denying members of Congress time to read them and the public time to react to them. The bills deal sith such matters as pension legislation, a permanent reduction in the estate tax, minimum wage, and expiring tax provisions. (29 July 2006)

Joyce Wadler: A Defiant Jester, Laughing Best (NY Times). Had we elected this guy president the world would surely be a better place, and the press conferences would be far more substantial. (29 July 2006)

Cindy Sheehan moves to Crawford (Waco Tribune/CommonDreams). Peace activist Cindy Sheehan, mother of a boy who died in George W. Bush's needless war in Iraq, has purchased five acres near Bush's Crawford, Texas, ranch, where she, like he, will hang out and do what needs doing. He'll continue using Crawford to hide from the mess he's made and she'll use Crawford to remind him of the mess he's made. The McLennan County Commissioner is really happy about this because he figures Dubya having his place and Cindy having her place will ease the traffic jams. (29 July 2006)

Dika Newlin, 82, Punk-Rock Schoenberg Expert, Dies (NY Times). The leather outfit and orange hair for her punk rock performance at 80...her first symphonic piece at 11...her memoirs about Arnold Schoenberg: Dika (named for an Amazon in one of Sappho's poems) was a model for us all. (28 July 2006)

Tom Engelhardt: Degrading Behavior: The Middle East and the Barbarism of War from the Air (TomDispatch). "For the Lebanese prime minister what Israel has been doing to his country may be 'barbaric destruction'; but, in our world, air power has long been robbed of its barbarism (suicide air missions excepted). For us, air war involves dumb hits by smart bombs, collateral damage, and surgery that may do in the patient, but it's not barbaric. For that you need to personally cut off a head." (28 July 2006)

Mitch Prothero: The "hiding among civilians" myth (Salon.com). Israel uses Hezbollah's mingling among civilians to justify its blitzkrieg of Lebanon. Even if it true, , it's a lousy justification for killing the innocent, but it's not even true. (28 July 2006)

Suit claims Senecas lack sovereignty for casino site (Buffalo News). The Seneca Nation of Indians has been using the 1990 Seneca National Settlement Act and the 1988 Indian Regulatory Gaming Act to justify the casino it hopes to build in Buffalo. A careful reading of those two acts, says attorney Joseph Finnerty in papers filed in federal court Wednesday, shows they can do just about anything they like with the land they own in downtown Buffalo--except build a casino on it. (28 July 2006)

"They can't build a casino in Buffalo" (Citizens for a Better Buffalo). The full text of the motion for summary judgment in the Buffalo casino case filed in federal court on July 26. The motion notes that federal law permits Indians to run casinos only on sovereign land, and that the land the Seneca Nation of Indians bought in downtown Buffalo is not sovereign land, hence the proposed Buffalo Creek casino would be illegal. If Judge William M. Skretny reads the law the same way Joe Finnerty and the other plaintiffs lawyers do, then it's all over--except for the appeals, which will surely ensue. Click here for the motion's supporting documents. (28 July 2006)

Neil MacFarquhar: Tide of Arab Opinion Turns to Support for Hezbollah (NY Times). How could the Israeli government and the Bush administration have turned Hezbollah, heretofore a major pain in the ass to the Arab world, into heroic freedom fighters? Now this is image management. (28 July 2006)

Peter Doran: Cold, Hard Facts (NY Times). Peter Doran is one of the few scientists of substance whose work has been used to support the arguments of those who don't believe in the fact of global warming. Wrong, he says: global warming is real, and twisting scientific research won't make it go away. (27 July 2006).

Bruce Jackson: Of course they can stop the casino (Artvoice). Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown and three members of the Common Council say the Seneca gambling joint in the heart of town is inevitable, so the only smart option is to get on their knees and beg for a slightly bigger cut of the slot machine drop. Nonsense! The casino, which will wreck Buffalo's economy, can be stopped by the Mayor and Council, if they'll just stand up for the city and do their jobs. Here's how they can do it. (Casino Chronicles #15) (27 July 2006)

Jonathan Miller: Twist on a Famous Formula: A Severed Hand in a Topless Dancer's Jar (NY Times). Most reporters we know go their whole career without the opportunity to write a story like this one. (27 July 2006)

The Cuban Situation (Washington Post). "Melissa Mitchell wants to be a doctor to tend to the poor. But the Howard University undergrad was too poor herself to attend med school. That's when Cuba's maximum leader offered a helping hand." And now the Bush administration thinks Melissa is very very very naughty because it is, they say, better not to be a doctor than to accept a free medical education from that scoundrel Fidel. (26 July 2006)

Travel to U.S. neighbors soon will require passports (Duluth News/Tribune). The Bush administration is expanding its cultural isolationism policy by making travel by Americans to friendly neighboring countries more difficult. (26 July 2006)

Robert Johnson's guitar (The Independent). Someone says he's got the guitar of maximum mysterious bluesman Robert Johnson (did he really sell his soul to the devil at a crossroads? if not, who really bought it and where it is now?) and it's for sale. If you've got $6 million to spare you can buy a piece of the legend, or become one more foolish player in the ever-expanding Robert Johnson story. (26 July 2006)

David Cole: Why the Court Said No (New York Review of Books). "The administration claims that the President's role as commander in chief of the armed forces grants him exclusive authority to select "the means and methods of engaging the enemy." And it has interpreted that power in turn to permit the President to take actions many consider illegal....The Bush doctrine views the rule of law as our enemy, and claims it is allied with terrorism....In fact, both the strength and security of the nation in the struggle with terrorists rest on adherence to the rule of law, including international law, because only such adherence provides the legitimacy we need if we are to win back the world's respect. Hamdan suggests that at least one branch of the United States government understands this. (26 July 2006)

Layoffs at IRS will halve audits of wealthy estates (International Herald Tribune/NY Times). Bush wanted to get rid of the estate tax on the very rich. Even his Republican congress balked at that. So he's taking the back door to the same end: "The U.S. government is moving to eliminate the jobs of nearly half of the lawyers at the Internal Revenue Service who audit the tax returns of some of the wealthiest Americans, specifically those who are subject to gift and estate taxes when they transfer parts of their fortunes to their children and others. (26 July 2006)

David Sirota: Oh Man, Oman (TomPaine). "Calling the Oman pact a 'free' trade agreement is a deceptive misnomer. It is free only of provisions that would protect ordinary citizens, while it is chock full of ultra-protectionist measures designed to expand the profits of the corporations whose lobbyists wrote the bill." (26 July 2006)

Tony Judt: The country that wouldn't grow up (Haaretz). "By the age of 58 a country - like a man - should have achieved a certain maturity. After nearly six decades of existence we know, for good and for bad, who we are, what we have done and how we appear to others, warts and all. We acknowledge, however reluctantly and privately, our mistakes and our shortcomings. And though we still harbor the occasional illusion about ourselves and our prospects, we are wise enough to recognize that these are indeed for the most part just that: illusions. In short, we are adults. But the State of Israel remains curiously (and among Western-style democracies, uniquely) immature. The social transformations of the country - and its many economic achievements - have not brought the political wisdom that usually accompanies age. Seen from the outside, Israel still comports itself like an adolescent....Like many adolescents Israel is convinced - and makes a point of aggressively and repeatedly asserting - that it can do as it wishes, that its actions carry no consequences and that it is immortal." (26 July 2006)

Samuel G. Friedman: Why Israelis believe they're right (Salon.com). Most Israelis are not Arab-hating war-lovers and neither are they right-wing ideologues on a mission from God, like the bellicose neocons driving US foreign policy. So why do they back the relentless bombing of civilian targets in Lebanon? Here's one explanation. (26 July 2006)

Jonathan Cook: Five Myths That Sanction Israel's War Crimes (CommonDreams). It's not easy rationalizing killing of 400 civilians and turning half a million of them into refugees in a week to retaliate for the capture of two soldiers on a border control. But that doesn't stop crackpots like David Horowitz from giving it a try, or talk show hosts like Laura Ingram from providing such crackpots a forum. (26 July 2006)

Mideast Violence May Raise Odds of US Attack (CommonDreams). Feel safer because Bush is backing the Israeli bombing of civilian targets in Lebanon? Don't. (26 July 2006)

Eric Lotke: GOP Protection Racket (TomPaine.com). "The party that brought us the War on Drugs and the War on Crime had now adapted the tune for the War on Terror. Cowboy-booted conservatives constantly tell us how much danger we're in and how much we need them to keep us safe. Meanwhile, they ignore real risks, distort facts, alienate our friends and stir up hornets nests all over the world. Iraq has now become a breeding ground for terrorists. The U.S. has never been so despised and terrorist incidents are up worldwide. But that's okay; or at least it's good for Republicans. They run the protection racket. They have mastered the art of scaring people into spending money. It worked for crime. The question is how much damage will be done before we call their bluff." (26 July 2006)

Stacy Schiff: Know It All (New Yorker). Wikipedia recently posted its millionth entry, which means it now has about eight times as many entries as Encyclopedia Britannica. It is surely more democratic (anyone can contribute) and far less expensive (free to anyone with an internet connection). But is the price of all that democracy and access diminished reliability? Does Wikipedia tell the truth? Is it anything more than a pixellated vanity press? (26 July 2006)

Antonia Zerbisias: Media self-censorship hides truth (Tortonto Star). You're not seeing much of the real civilian gore in Lebanon. The media--mainstream and much of the web--doesn't want to take the heat of showing you what it really looks like. So even though the reporters covering this war aren't embedded and therefore controlled, as were the reporters covering the US invasion of Iraq, it comes across as a war in which buildings and vehicles, but hardly ever people, are ripped to shreds. (26 July 2006)

From Planning to Warfare to Occupation, How Iraq Went Wrong (NY Times). "The title of this devastating new book about the American war in Iraq says it all: 'Fiasco.' That is the judgment that Thomas E. Ricks, senior Pentagon correspondent for The Washington Post, passes on the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq and its management of the war and the occupation. And he serves up his portrait of that war as a misguided exercise in hubris, incompetence and folly with a wealth of detail and evidence that is both staggeringly vivid and persuasive." (25 July 2006)

The dumbest US senator keeps on keeping on (tulsaworld). U.S. Senator Jim Inhove believes that global warming is "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." He compares it to Third Reich propaganda. Unfortunately his state is suffering record high triple-digit temperatures, so voters are questioning his ability to reality-test. About time. When asked why, if global warming is a lie, polar bear populations are dropping and glaciers are melting, Inhove responds that polar bear populations are really increasing and glaciers are getting higher, and that the scientists just can't count as well as he. Ah, yes, of course, indeed... This moron gets to vote on international treaties, Federal judges, and various laws having to do with life and death. (25 July 2006)

Dick Hirsch: Failing Buffalo. Buffalo has long been failed by business leaders who refused to use their power to provide leadership to the city, and it has been betrayed by lazy and incompetent mayors and city councils that have permitted construction projects that have done the city incalculable harm. The current Council and Mayor Byron Brown are poised to do the worst harm of any of them. (24 July 2006)

Outsourced porn gives more bang for its buck (London Times). T-shirts and sneakers aren't the only products peddled on the American market but made far more cheaply abroad. (24 July 2006)

Bush administration dismantles the Civil Rights section of the Justice Department (Boston Globe). Instead of hiring lawyers with civil rights credentials, the Bush administration has been giving the career jobs in the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Departments to lawyers with strong conservative credentials but little civil rights experience. (24 July 2006)

Robert Fisk: The Empire Leaves Beirut to Burn (CommonDreams/Seattle Post-Intelligencer). "I lived here through 15 years of civil war that took 150,000 lives, and two Israeli invasions and years of Israeli bombardments that cost the lives of a further 20,000 of its people. I have seen them armless, legless, headless, knifed, bombed and splashed across the walls of houses. Yet they are a fine, educated, moral people whose generosity amazes every foreigner, whose gentleness puts any Westerner to shame, and whose suffering we almost always ignore..... Across the Mediterranean, two helicopters from the USS Iwo Jima could be seen, heading through the mist and smoke toward the U.S. embassy bunker complex at Awkar to evacuate more citizens of the American Empire. There was not a word from that same empire to help the people lying in the park, to offer them food or medical aid. Across them all has spread a dark gray smoke that works its way through the entire city, the fires of oil terminals and burning buildings turning into a cocktail of sulphurous air that moves below our doors and through our windows. I smell it when I wake. Half the people of Beirut are coughing in this filth, breathing their own destruction as they contemplate their dead." (25 July 2006)

Fleeing Family Ends Up in Path of Israeli Missile (NY Times). They wanted to get the kids out of harm's way, so they piled into the family Mazda minivan with the kids and headed for a safer place. Within minutes, a rocket from an Israeli helicopter took the van out, killing three and wounding twelve. (24 July 2006)

British split with Bush as Israeli tanks roll in (Guardian). "Britain dramatically broke ranks with George Bush last night over the Lebanon crisis, publicly criticising Israel's military tactics and urging America to 'understand' the price being paid by ordinary Lebanese civilians. The remarks, made in Beirut by the Foreign Office minister, Kim Howells, were the first public criticism by this country of Israel's military campaign, and placed it at odds with Washington's strong support." (24 July 2006)

ABA objects to Bush's "signing statements" (NY Times). Bush's "signing statements" (little papers his lawyers prepare when he signs bills saying Bush reserves the right to ignore the law) flout the Constitution and undermine the rule of law, says a non-partisan 11-member panel of the American Bar Association. If Bush doesn't like a law (e.g. those prohibiting torture and domestic spying) , the panel says, he can veto it; the "signing statements" deny Congress the opportunity to override a veto. (24 July 2006)

Soldiers' Words May Test PBS Language Rules (NY Times). The zipped-up sanctimonious bastards running the FCC have so intimidated PBS that producers have been instructed not only to bleep out any words that might titilate or offend any idiot anywhere, but also so pixillate the speaker's lips in case said idiot might be capable of lipreading. (22 July 2006)

Europe: Global Warming, Not Just Heat Wave (IPS). It was 102 degrees fahrenheit in Paris and Berlin Thursday, a record for both cities. Similar records are being set all over Europe. George Bush's faith-based denial of the effects of greenhouse gases notwithstanding, European scientists have no doubt that this is global warming, not a summer fluke--which means things are going to get worse. (22 July 2006)

The Hillionaire: Hillary's money machine (New York Observer). There's virtually no chance Hillary Clinton won't be reelected Senator this November. So why has she raised $22 million in a campaign against opponents who've raised only $1.4 million? Right you are: because the 2006 New York senatorial election is just a watering hole on the way to the 2008 US presidential election. (22 July 2006)

Arianna Huffington: A Different Kind of Three-Way: Bill and Hillary Triangulate on Lieberman (Huffington Post). Why is Bill Clinton going to Connecticut to campaign for Bush-sucking war-lover Joe Lieberman when there real Democrats out there who could use his help this election season? The same reason he went to Kennebunkport and had a sleepover with George Senior. Plus he wants to help Hillary get some distance from the Iraq war, on which she has come up nearly as much a stinker as Joe Lieberman. (21 July 2006)

Peter Dreier, Regina Freer, Robert Gottlieb and Mark Vallianatos: Movement Mayor: Can Antonio Villaraigosa Change Los Angeles (Dissent). "In the early 1900s, New York City was a cauldron of seething problems--poverty, slums, child labor, epidemics, sweatshops and ethnic conflict. Out of that turmoil, activists created a progressive movement, forging a coalition of immigrants, unionists, muckraking journalists, settlement house workers, middle-class suffragists, socialists, and upper-class philanthropists. They fought successfully for workplace, tenement, and public health reforms. Although they spoke many languages, the movement found its voice through organizers, clergy, and sympathetic politicians. Their victories provided the intellectual and policy foundations of the New Deal three decades later. At the start of the twenty-first century, Los Angeles faces many similar challenges and opportunities. Villaraigosa and his allies hope to demonstrate that a polyglot city like L.A. can be well managed and serve as a laboratory of progressive policy reform. If they succeed, they may be laying the groundwork for the next New Deal." (21 July 2006)

Joan Chittister, OSB: A letter from the family: the human family (National Catholic Reporter). The war lovers are at it, and every last one of them has an exquisite rationale that justifies the rockets, roadside bombs aerial bombs, and bullets. All of which conveniently leaves out their victims. The war lovers are interviewed on all the news shows. Here's a letter from one of those who do not usually get a voice in the officious parcelling out of other people's miserable deaths. (21 July 2006)

Steve Siegel: The Odds Against (Artvoice). Any Buffalo businessperson or politician who supports the downtown casino after reading this devastating assessment of the killer blow the casino would strike against the city should cash it in and move to some village for the easily befuddled. The bizarre comments by some Buffalo ginmill and restaurant owners following the article were presumably made before they read it or after they read it but were too dazzled by pixie dust to understand it. (21 July 2006)

Bruce Jackson: Don't Give Up the Street (Artvoice). The Seneca Gaming Corporation wants two blocks of Fulton Street. They say if they get it they'll do wonderful things for Buffalo; if they don't they'll just build an ugly casino. Byron Brown is hot to do their bidding. Don't believe the casino line and don't let Brown fold so easily: those two blocks will cost Buffalo many times the price the gambling operation is willing to pay to get it. (21 July 2006)

Indian Tribes Seek Labor Laws Exemption (Newsday). Indian casinos are exempt from state taxes and state labor and environmental safety laws. Now they want their employees removed from federal protection as well. (21 July 2006)

HHS Secretary's Fund Gave Little to Charity (Washington Post). "Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt and his relatives have claimed millions of dollars in tax deductions through a type of charitable foundation they created that until recently paid out very little in actual charity, tax records show. Instead, much of the foundation's money has been invested or lent to the family's business interests and real estate holdings, or contributed to the Leavitt family genealogical society." (21 July 2006)

Robert Fisk in Beirut: Israeli Assault on Lebanon Inflicting "Mass Punishment on a Whole People" (Democracy Now!). The best international reporter on the mess in the Middle East talks with Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman about the Israeli attack on Lebanon, and much more. (21 July 2006)

Attacks Qualify as War Crimes, Officials Say (NY Times). Israel says it is bombing civilian targets in Lebanon to protect its borders. The US Congress Thursday voted approval of that action. Not everyone agrees. "The United Nations' top human rights official said Wednesday that the killing and maiming of civilians under attack in Lebanon, Israel and Gaza and the West Bank could constitute war crimes. The scale of killings in the region, and their predictability, could engage the personal criminal responsibility of those involved, particularly those in a position of command and control,; said Louise Arbour, the high commissioner for human rights." (21 July 2006)

Steve Connor: Earth Faces 'Catastrophic Loss of Species' (The Independent/CommonDreams). "Life on earth is facing a major crisis with thousands of species threatened with imminent extinction - a global emergency demanding urgent action. This is the view of 19 of the world's most eminent biodiversity specialists, who have called on governments to establish a political framework to save the planet. The planet is losing species faster than at any time since 65 million years ago, when the earth was hit by an enormous asteroid that wiped out thousands of animals and plants, including the dinosaurs. Scientists estimate that the current rate at which species are becoming extinct is between 100 and 1,000 times greater than the normal 'background' extinction rate - and say this is all due to human activity." (21 July 2006)

A strange case of murder (London Times). "George W. Bush has wielded his first presidential veto in what amounts to a scandalous act of executive irresponsibility. His pledge to block proposals to lift federal funding restrictions on embryonic stem cell research has been compared by his own senators to the actions of those who scoffed at electricity....This veto is flawed even on its own shabby terms. It should appall anyone at risk from cancer, Alzheimer's or paralysis. In other words, all of us." (21 July 2006)

Bush finds stem cells more worthy of life than GIs and Iraqis (NY Times). U.S. President George W. Bush, surrounded by photo-op adults holding babies born of in vitro fertilization, issued his first veto. It blocked Federally-funded stem cell research. He said stem cells were live human beings and therefore had to be protected from harm by the might of the U.S. government. Bush said nothing about Iraqis and GIs slaughted since the US invasion of Iraq. Those stem cells cried out to him, as the dead Iraqis and GIs did not. Even Senate majority leader Bill Frist (who from a distance decided that the brain-dead Terri Schiavo was alive and vibrant) said Bush was in Neanderthal country with this one. But Bush, a man of principle, refused to be moved by mere data. It's sort of like when Hans Blix told him there were no WMD in Iraq. (20 July 2006)

Uri Avnery: The Real Aim (Gush Shalom). "The real aim is to change the regime in Lebanon and to install a puppet government. That was the aim of Ariel Sharon's invasion of Lebanon in 1982. It failed. But Sharon and his pupils in the military and political leadership have never given up on it. As in 1982, the present operation, too, was planned and is being carried out in full coordination with the US. As then, there is no doubt that it is coordinated with a part of the Lebanese elite. That's the main thing. Everything else is noise and propaganda." (17 July 2006)

Michael Scherer: War hero vs. faux cowboy (Salon.com). Republicans are confident that their phony-cowboy draft-avoiding George Allen, Virginia's incumbent senator, will beat war hero, Democrat Jim Webb in the November election. They're using the same resources they used successfully in the last presidential election: a candidate who likes to put on other people's costumes, tons and tons of money and the consultant who set up the Swift Boat smear campaign against Kerry. "It is a sign of our current political era that one of the most exciting Democratic Senate candidates this year is running on the legacy of Ronald Reagan. It is even more telling that he is trailing behind a Republican opponent who is lifting George W. Bush's country bumpkin act. But if the past is prologue, the Virginia Senate race will not turn on a sober analysis of the issues. It will be an all-out war, filled with the dirty tricks and nasty attacks." (17 July 2006)

Michael Beebe: Senecas dodge federal taxes on casino payouts (Buffalo News). More Alice in Wonderland economics from the Seneca Gaming Commission. This time they're saying they owe no federal taxes because what looks like $75 million in payouts is really only $28. Oh; okay. These are the guys Buffalo mayor Byron Brown is counting on to save the city? Count the silver. (17 July 2006)

Bruce Jackson: Folly redux: explaining Byron Brown's failure. Maybe the reason Byron Brown is so wrong about the proposed Buffalo casino has nothing to do with payoffs past or present. Maybe the reason he is committed to a project that can do nothing but harm the city that elected him mayor has to do with a far more fundamental problem, one described and analyzed by historian Barbara Tuchman 20 years ago in The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam. (17 July 2006)

The Instant When Everything Changed (NY Times). George W. Bush created the current terrorist war in Iraq, where 70% of the dead are civilians. Here are heartbreaking photographs of some of the victims, photographs you will never see on Fox, Newshour or CNN. (17 July 2006)

The Real Agenda (NY Times). After quitting the bottle, 9/11 was the best thing that ever happened to George W. Bush. It gave him a mission in life: accumulating presidential power while pretending to be what he proudly designates as "a wartime president." Time and again he has let American interests go by the wayside in favor or increasing White House power. "To a disturbing degree, the horror of 9/11 became an excuse to take up this cause behind the shield of Americans' deep insecurity. The results have been devastating. Americans' civil liberties have been trampled. The nation's image as a champion of human rights has been gravely harmed. Prisoners have been abused, tortured and even killed at the prisons we know about, while other prisons operate in secret. American agents 'disappear' people, some entirely innocent, and send them off to torture chambers in distant lands. Hundreds of innocent men have been jailed at Guantanamo Bay without charges or rudimentary rights. And Congress has shirked its duty to correct this out of fear of being painted as pro-terrorist at election time." (17 July 2006)

Mitchell Prothero: Lebanon pays for Hezbollah's sins (Salon.com). Israel knows that the Lebanese government can't control Hezbollah. But you have to punish somebody, right? And if you can't find the enemy soldiers, well, you do what you can. Like 4 a.m. Thursday morning when Israeli warplanes bombed the home of Sayeed Adel Akkash, a Shiite cleric probably associated with Hezbollah. The bomb flattened the home and killed Akkash, his wife and their 10 children, leaving only three bodies identifiable as such and a surprisingly small pile of body parts." (15 July 2006)

Chris Hedges: Mutually Assured Destruction in the Middle East (truthdig). "Israel's air, land and sea blockade of Lebanon," writes Hedges, former NY Times Middle East bureau chief, "which includes jet fighter strikes against the airport in Beirut, presages a new era in the Middle East, one in which the center has collapsed and Muslim and Jewish extremists, capable only of the language of violence, determine the parameters of existence. These strikes, like the suicide bombings carried out by Islamic militants in Iraq or Israel, expose the Ahab-like self-immolation that now inflects the region. And unless it is halted soon, unless those fueling these conflicts learn to speak another language, unless they break free from an indulgence in collective necrophilia, the Middle East will slip into a death spiral." (15 July 2006)

US plans $210 million jet fuel sale to Israel (Age). "The jet fuel will be consumed while (Israel's) aircraft (are) in use to keep peace and security in the region," said the Defense Department's memorandum to Congress. (15 July 2006)

MIT star accused by 11 colleagues (Boston Globe). Harvard's not the only Cambridge university with gender problems: eleven female MIT professors have accused a powerful male MIT researcher of using intimidation to convince "a brilliant young scientist" not to accept an MIT job offer. Nobel laureate Susumu Tonegawa, they say, told the job candidate that "he would not mentor, interact, or collaborate with her if she took the job and that members of his research group would not work with her." (15 July 2006)

Faculty critiques Harvard turf wars (Boston Globe). Meanwhile, further down Massachusetts Avenue, some thoughtful Harvard faculty members are addressing broader implications of the turf problem responsible for the MIT mess. (Universities like University at Buffalo ordinarily follow Harvard's lead in almost everything, but this time UB is way out in front. UB's two-year-old 2020 reconceptualization process is an attempt to end the anachronistic and stultifying turf issues the Harvard faculty identifies in the instant report.) (15 July 2006)

Missouri's killing dilemma (NY Times). The state of Missouri wants to kill people but a court has said it can only kill people if a board-certified anesthesiologist is in charge. The court said the dyslexic doctor who was doing Missouri's killing couldn't do it any more because he was improvising each time, and state-sponsored killing warranted more formality than that. But none of the other anesthesiologists in the state seem to want to kill anybody. What to do, what to do? (15 July 2006)

FBI plans new Net-tapping push (News.com). Only an idiot assumes email is private. The things are infinitely replicable. Employers have long had the right to look at employees' email accounts on the company or institutional server. Now the FBI wants that kind of access to everyone all the time. "The FBI has drafted sweeping legislation that would require Internet service providers to create wiretapping hubs for police surveillance and force makers of networking geat to build in backdoors for eavesdropping." (15 July 2006)

State seizes more private property in Niagara Falls so casino can expand (Buffalo News). More private business is killed off in Niagara Falls to benfit gambling interests: "The state seized a privately held outdoor splash park and parking lot Thursday for the Seneca Gaming Corp., expanding the nation's downtown holdings. With the handover of the deed, 17 acres next to the Seneca Niagara Casino & Hotel are officially sovereign land now - off the tax rolls of the county, city and school district. A corporation spokesman said the water park will not reopen and the land will be used to expand the Seneca gambling resort." (14 July 2006)

Ruth Rosen: The Hidden War on Women in Iraq (TomDispatch). "In the early 1970s, American feminists redefined rape and argued that it was an act driven not by sexual lust, but by a desire to exercise power over another person. Rape, they argued, was an act of terrorism that kept all women from claiming their right to public space. That is precisely what has happened to Iraqi women since the American invasion of Iraq. Sexual terrorism coupled with religious zealotry has stolen their right to claim their place in public life. This, then, is a hidden part of the unnecessary suffering loosed by the reckless invasion of Iraq. Amid the daily explosions and gunfire that make the papers is a wave of sexual terrorism, whose exact dimensions we have no way of knowing, and that no one here notices, unleashed by the Bush administration in the name of exporting 'democracy' and fighting 'the war on terror.'" (14 July 2006)

Wayne S. Smith: New Cuba Commission Report: Formula for Continued Failure (Center for International Policy). In May 2004, Colin Powell signed the Bush Administration's Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba report. The document was full of misinformation about Cuba and plans for disrupting Cuban life. It recommended, among other things, the harsh restrictions on family and educational visits and exchanges now in effect. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has just produced a second edition, and it is more misinformed, mendacious and destructive than the first. Wayne Smith, a former state department official who knows more about Cuba and Cuban-American relations than anyone now in government, comments on the report. (14 July 2006)

Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba: Reports to the President. The 2004 and 2006 reports presenting disinformation about Cuba and plans for destabilizing its government. It is difficult knowing who, exactly, these reports are written for. Elsewhere in the world they are seen as U.S. propaganda, which they are. In Cuba, they're counterproductive: they are so mendacious they have increased support for, rather than opposition to, the Castro regime. So, basically, they seem just to be State Department lies prepared for domestic consumption. (14 July 2006)

New Klimt in Town: The Face That Set the Market Buzzing (NY Times). The Nazis hated Jews but they adored their art and jewelry collections and their houses. Families of the victims are still having bitter court battles to regain the property that was stolen from them so long ago. The Austrian government recently agreed to let go one part of the loot, and as a result an astonishing portrait has a new home in New York (14 July 2006)

Joan Chittister, O.S.B. : Oh, please: this is not 'defense' (National Catholic Reporter). "For the sake, we are told, of one kidnapped soldier to begin with and now for the sake of two more at the time of this writing, Gaza is being pounded. Civilians are being killed. Electric and water are gone. And, in the latest show of force, Lebanon is also being pummelled, apparently for tolerating the Hezbollah, a radical Shi'ite group dedicated to the destruction of Israel and now lobbing its own bombs into Israel territory.... Why is the president of the United States saying that 'Israel has a right to defend itself' when there is nothing about the present irrational response that can in any way be called 'defense.' Whatever you think about the viability of war as a moral strategy, this is not, by any of the rules of war, defense. It is mayhem. Is it anti-semitic to want human beings to act humanely?" (14 July 2006)

Building bridges; Icon of feminism across the Seine (The Independent). "From the distance, the newest bridge to grace the river Seine looks like a brassiere which has been flung on the floor. Alternatively, it looks like the bones of a graceful forearm, reaching across the river. The bridge is called the Pont Simone de Beauvoir, after the feminist novelist and philosopher. It is, perhaps, appropriate that it looks like a discarded bra or an outstretched woman's arm. Paris can now claim the world's first feminist bridge." Here are some photos of the bridge. (Bastille Day 2006)

Voting Rights Act Extensions Pass House Despite GOP Infighting (Washington Post). You'd think this one would be a gimme, but it wasn't. Some Republicans fought hard and long to kill the most important piece of legislation to come out of the Civil Rights Movement. (14 July 2006)

Tobacco Will Kill 1 Billion This Century, Officials Say (Common Dreams/AP). That is a tenfold increase over cancer deaths in the 20ths century. Why isn't selling Marlboros a felony? (14 July 2006)

Ken Lay's funeral (CNN). Former President George H.W. Bush represented the Bush family at Ken Lay's funeral in Houston last week. He got to hear "the Reverend Dr. Bill Lawson compare Lay with civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and Jesus Christ, and [say] his name would eventually be cleared." Amen. (14 July 2006)

Harvard faces donor backlash (Financial Times). "The wealthiest college in the world with an endowment of more than $26bn -- is facing donor backlash in the wake of Lawrence Summers' resignation as president." David Rockefeller has put a $75 million gift on hold and Larry Ellison cancelled a $115 million gift. (14 July 2006)

Henry Meyers: Still Staying the Course (Lincoln County Weekly) President Bush has given another speech at another military based saying we should "stay the course" to justify the 2500 American and countless other deaths he has caused in Iraq. Why? So we can have more dead bodies to stay the course for? So Dexter Filkins can continue filing stories with lines like this: "The Government Center in the middle of this devastated town resembles a fortress on the wild edge of some frontier: it is sandbagged, barricaded, full of men ready to shoot, surrounded by rubble and enemies eager to get inside. The American marines here live eight to a room, rarely shower for lack of running water and defecate in bags that are taken outside and burned. The threat of snipers is ever present; the marines start running the moment they step outside....The Iraqi government exists here in little more than name. ... The governor of the province ... goes to work here under an American military escort. ... [M]any of the province's senior officials deserted him after the kidnapping and beheading of his secretary in May. The previous governor was assassinated, as was the chairman of the provincial council ... in April."? (14 July 2006)

Bush's July 4th speech at Fort Bragg (White House). Hard to tell if the text or the photo of grinning Bush posing with the combat GI statue is more absurd. Harder still--reading these words Bush said to young men and women some of whom will soon die for his foolishness--not to think of Wilfred Owen's poem, "Dulce et Decorum est." (14 July 2006)

Critics see a political motive in Internet gambling bill (Scripps-Howard). The House passed a ban on web-based gambling using credit cards. Republicans tout it as part of this season's moral package; critics see it as a way to snoop on and get control of the Internet. (14 July 2006)

The scum-sucking dogs at the Wall Street Journal editorial page vs. the butt-kissing lackeys at the NY Times newsroom (Providence Journal). First Amendment? What First Amendment? (14 July 2006)

Shelly's fantastic prank (TLS). A 20-page Shelley pamphlet with a 172-line poem no one has seen since 1811 has turned up. It's about a journalist who was imprisoned because he told the truth about a British military disaster. (14 July 2006)

First Folio sells for Â£2.8 million (London Times). One of the two copies known to be in private hands of what scholars say is the most important book in English sold at auction this week for a good bit over its 20 shilling cover price. (14 July 2006)

Looney Tunes at Homeland Security (NY Times). Want to know why Tennessee and Indiana got huge increases in antiterrorism funding and New York got a huge cut? Because the officials at Homeland Security decided the Sweetwater Flea Market, 50 miles out of Knoxville, and Amish County Popcorn in Berne, Indiana, were at greater risk than New York subways, say, or the Stock Exchange. Your tax dollars at work. (14 July 2006)

Rep. John P. Murtha: What the Iraq War is Costing Us (Counterpunch). $8 billion a month. $2 billion a week. $267 million a day. $11 million an hour. That's theoretical, just numbers. Here are real life questions about what George W. Bush's war of choice in Iraq has cost you: Do the schools in your town have enough money? Are the potholes fixed? Is your healthcare adequate? Are the libraries buying any new books? Are the veterans in your family getting decent healthcare? Are the poor kids in your town getting food? Are the poisons in the dumps in your neighborhood being cleaned up? Are you one bit more secure than you were four years ago? (14 July 2006)

David Marchese: Cool Jews; We've gone from badasses Lou Reed and James Caan to jackasses Adam Sandler and Ben Stiller. Where are the hip male Jews (Salon.com). "Strangely, Jewish women have never been better represented. Rachel Weisz, Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson, Amanda Peet, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Selma Blair. That's an impressive group of women; smart and sexy, never playing to type. The guys? Not so much. With the possible exception of Jon Stewart, today's big-money machers play neurotics, buffoons and neurotic buffoons. I demand a Jewish cowboy! Wait, Maggie's brother Jake played one in 'Brokeback Mountain.' I demand a straight Jewish cowboy!" (10 July 2006)

Let's embrace la dolce vita (Telegraph). Of course the Italians won and the British didn't. How could it be otherwise? Compare the diets. Compare the lifestyles. The length of lunch. Consider longevity (Italian men 10 years more than the Brits, women 14). Consider Sophia Loren, posing for the Pirelli calendar at 71. (10 July 2006)

Ani DiFranco: Braving the Storms (AlterNet). Ani DiFranco talks about her new record (Reprieve), the Katrina disaster, politics, performing on stage, and preserving what's left of Buffalo. (10 July 2006)

At war with the Joyce estate (Globe and Mail). James Joyce's grandson and heir Stephen, who makes a great deal of money every year from royalties on Joyce's work, seems to have taken on the mission of making life difficult for Joyce scholars. He has destroyed original correspondence, blocked public readings and prevented access to key documents. He insists he's just doing what his grandfather would have wanted; the scholars say he's just being perverse. For years, the Joyce scholars tried to make nice with Stephen. That didn't work, so lately some of them have gotten as aggessive as their antagonist. (10 July 2006)

David Staba: What Does Bioinformatics Mean? To an Ailing Industrial Region, the Answer Is Jobs (NY Times). While the Buffalo News pimps for the gambling industry and its low wage jobs (see next item), UB's Center of Excellence In Bioinformatics and Life Sciences is bringing jobs of real substance and will do work that really matters. (10 July 2006)

Buffalo News: If the price is right, shut up and say you like it (Buffalo News). Another Buffalo News editorial trying to convince people that a downtown casino is a good idea. The rationale this time seems to be that if Albany buys Rep. Brian Higgin's suggestion that Buffalo get a bigger slice of the slot drop all will be well, no matter that the casino will drive local businesses into bankruptcy, encourage cigarette smoking (as the happy slot player in the News's accompanying photography), and discourage new businesses from locating in Buffalo. Why would they publish trash like this? Maybe the same reason the editorial page editor wrote a for-pay book for a bunch of Pataki supporters insisting that the region's economy is doing very very well, no matter what the stories on the region's economy by the paper's prize-winning reporters say. (10 July 2006)

The republic of deceit (London Times). "When an anonymous letter-writer exposed corruption in France's defence industry, a sinister drama unfolded, involving the Russian mafia and a chain of unexplained violent deaths. And the trail leads all the way to Chirac himself." (10 July 2006)

Old-time religion going liberal? (Boston Globe). From the beginning of his presidency, George W. Bush has restricted his few public appearances to safe audiences: military bases, military academies, right-wing think tanks, and Christian evangelical colleges. But some of the Christian evangelical colleges aren't behaving as Bush thinks they ought: instead of confining themselves to applauding his stands against abortion, stem-cell research and same-sex marriage, they're protesting Bush's gratuitous war in Iraq, US torture prisons, and poverty. What kind of Christianity is that? Not George W. Bush's, that's for sure. (10 July 2006)

$2 Million Payment to Former Lobbyist Raises Eyebrows (Washington Post). Even in Washington, where just about everyone is on some form of take, Jeffrey S. Shockey's $2 million severance check from his former lobbying firm when he entered government "service" as deputy chief of staff of the House Appropriations Committee. (10 July 2006)

Terminator wants to export convicts (Sacramento Bee). Instead of trying to figure out why California has locked up more people than many nations, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is attempting to deal with the state's prison overcrowding problem by sending inmates to other states and cutting back on toilet flushes and drinking water for the convicts who remain. (10 July 2006)

Spectator: The View from Here. White House war crimes, Homeland Security incompetence, Ann Coulter's expanding vita (add "plagiarist"), and Rush's wienie. (7 July 2006)

Roe versus Reality--Abortion and Women's Health (New England Journal of Medicine). If Roe v. Wade is overturned--a real possibility with the present Supreme Court--poor women will pay a deadly price, and the religious right is more than willing to let them pay it. (7 July 2006)

David Zirin and John Cox: French Soccer and the Future of Europe (Edge of Sports). French ultra-right winger Jean-Marie Le Pen is in a funk because the French football team everyone else in the country is in love with (because they defeated Spain and Brazil to make it to the final game against Italy) is multiethnic. Le Pen just doesn't like those people of color being called "French." "It is paradoxical that a victory by France, a country with as grisly a colonial past as any European power, could be a cause for celebration by immigrants and fighters for social justice. But as last year's 'suburb' riots and mass youth demonstrations have shown, there is a battle over the future of French politics and by extension, the future of Europe. Anti- Arab and Moslem sentiment is by no means monopolized by Le Pen and his cronies on the far right. Whether or not they defeat Italy for the title, the astonishing success of France's multi-ethnic team presents another vision for the future of the continent." (7 July 2006)

Daniel Gilbert: If only gay sex caused global warming (LA Times). The danger to life as we know it posed by global warming is several orders of magnitude greater than the dangers posed by all the world's terrorists keeping themselves busy for a decade. Yet the Bush administration, and many others in positions of power, ignore global warming and focus most of their attention on the possibility of terrorist attacks and the terrors of gay marriage and flag-burning. Why? It's not just that they're greedy and block-headed, though there is that. Here's the rest of it. (7 July 2006)

Geoff Kelly: The Buffalo News Pimps the Casino (Artvoice). More and more, the Buffalo News drifts to full-bore stenography. On July 3, the News ran an article by Sharon Linstedt about a survey purporting to prove that the Seneca gambling joint in downtown Buffalo had wide public support. That would be good news indeed for the Seneca Gaming Corporation were it not for the troublesome fact that the survey was a ringer. It was what people in the industry call a "push poll," one in which the questions are written to get a desired outcome. Linstedt knew this because she had seen the questions, but she ignored that information and just worked from the SGC handout. Artvoice editor Geoff Kelly read the survey questionaire, which clearly showed that the numbers on the Seneca Gaming Corporation handout that the Buffalo News published were just more hype, like those mendacious radio and tv ads they ran in the month before the bogus survey was done. It's obvious why SGC would do that: they're hot to suck more money out of the local community than they now are in the two casinos they already have. Greed is easy enough to understand. But why would the Buffalo News publish trash like this? Usually, they keep this kind of misdirection and misinformation on the editorial page. (6 July 2006)

Jimmy Carter: Our Nation Needs Fewer Secrets (Common Dreams/Miami Herald). The Bush Administration and the Wall Street Journal editorial page have been portraying the New York Times as a corporate Benedict Arnold because the Times ran a detailed article on how the US was using the never-ending borderless war on terrorism to justify a program of combing international money records for information on, well, just about everybody. The Buffalo News ran an editorial cartoon depicting Osama Bin Laden in full battle gear with the Times logo tatooed on his arm. Nonsense. We need more articles like that, more newspapers doing what the Times did, more daylight in the rooms these guys prefer to keep shuttered 24/7. More important, says Jimmy Carter, we need to just get rid of all those secrets nobody (except people with something to hide) needs in the first place. (6 July 2006)

Consultant Breached FBI'S Computers (Washington Post). Not only does the FBI have a computer system less sophisticated and less organized than a junior college, but the system is also more vulnerable: A government consultant, using computer programs easily found on the Internet, managed to crack the FBI's classified computer system and gain the passwords of 38,000 employees, including that of FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III. The break-ins...gave the consultant access to records in the Witness Protection Program and details on counterespionage activity." (6 July 2006)

An innocent is executed (For Wayne Journal Gazette). Antonin Scalia, generally regarded as the most arrogant and cynical of the nine sitting justices of the Supreme Court, describes himself as a strict constructionist, someone who wouldn't tinker with the the Founders' Constitutional intentions. And so he is, except when he feels like going in another direction. He justifies his consistent support of the death penalty on the fact that a majority of American seem to like it. And, he says, because the safeguards are such that innocents are never put to death, only the guility. Which shows he is not troubled by facts, either. (6 July 2006)

We Shall Overcome: An Hour with Legendary Folk Singer & Activist Pete Seeger (Democracy Now!). On July 3, Democracy Now! broadcast Amy Goodman's 2004 interview with Pete Seeger. The whole hour is terrific. Our favorite line is Pete on why it's worthwhile to keep on keepin' on: "Little things lead to bigger things. That's what seeds are all about." Here's a page with links to a transcript, streaming video and audio versions of the show. Happy Fourth of July.

Walt Whitman: Song of Myself. The White House and Pentagon are populated by bloodthirsty Constitution-hating fanatics. Law professors at Harvard and Berkeley insist that torture is a virtuous act if it is done by people as virtuous as themselves. The Republic is in trouble, folks! Time to take a break from the lunacy and rhetoric and hypocritical flag-waving to relax with someone who loved people, who loved his country, and who really believed democracy was a good thing. (3 July 2006)

Seymour M. Hersh: Last Stand (New Yorker). Bush, Cheney and Rumsfelt are hot to start a new war in Iran. The Pentagon is telling them they're nuts: an air war won't be effective and there is no hard evidence that Iran has a nuclear weapons program anyway. Hah! say Rummy, Dick and Dubya: that's just what you guys said before we bombed and invaded Iraq! (3 July 2006)

Alan Dershowitz: Should we fight terror with torture? (The Independent). In what is perhaps his most tortured rationale in favor of torture yet, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz explains that if good guys like us torture people we suspect are bad guys, the people at fault for the torture aren't the guys with the truncheons, electric wires and skin peelers, but rather the poor bastards getting the raps on the head, the electricity through their genitals or their skin peeled off. It's Torquemada redux! (3 July 2006)

War-lover Lieberman may run as independent (NY Times). Consistent with his pouty if-I-can't-have-it-you-won't-either history,Connecticut senator Joseph Lieberman, one of George W. Bush's most enthusiastic backers on the Iraq war, says that if he is defeated in the Democratic primary next month he will run as an independent, a move almost certain to throw his Senate seat to Republicans. (3 July 2006)

Drenching the airwaves with distorted info pays off, Seneca survey shows (Buffalo News). After spending a fortune drenching Buffalo's airwaves with ads telling huge lies about the proposed downtown casino, the Seneca Gaming Corporation hired a pollster to find out if the ads worked. Guess what? In the absence of any counter-ad campaign, the public turns out to have been bamboozled. If they can buy that kind of confusion and city hall with the money they've got to play with now, what will happen once they're sucking a fortune out of Buffalo's economy as well? Consistent with the newspaper's pro-casino posture, this Buffalo News story about the poll doesn't mention the key that it was what people in the industry call a "push poll"--one in which the questions are stacked to get a predetermined result. Respondents were asked "How would you feel about the casino if you knew that it would create 1000 new jobs?" and "How would you feel about the casino if you knew it would bring $5-7 million to the city of Buffalo." There were no questions about the inevitable detrimental effects of the casino. Of course the results were favorable. Zogby was paid to deliver that result, and did. What's the Buffalo News's excuse for covering up the real nature of the survey? (3 July 2006)

Andrew Sullivan: The Founding Fathers save America's soul (Times of London). "The president is not an old-style monarch, empowered in wartime to make up rules as he goes along to defend his subjects. He is not the law. He must obey the law, as all citizens must. And in a series of actions and decisions after 9/11, President George W Bush in effect broke the law, violated his oath of office and pushed the limits of his power beyond the permissible." (3 July 2006)

Uri Avnery: Agatha in the Rain (Gush Shalom). "The connection between the 'kidnapped soldier' and the operation exists only in the realm of propaganda. The same goes for the second pretext: that the aim is to put an end to the launching of Qassam rockets at the town of Sderot....But the Qassams, too, are not the real cause of the 'Summer Rains' operation. Its character shows that it has a much wider aim: to destroy the elected Palestinian government (Israeli propaganda's 'Hamas Government') and bring the Palestinian population to its knees. This is supposed to make it possible for the Israeli government to carry out the 'Convergence' plan, annexing major parts of the West Bank to Israel and preventing the establishment of a viable Palestinian state. A clear aim, which the operation is designed to attain by simple means: breaking the Palestinian population by the liquidation of its leadership, destruction of its infrastructure and cutting off of food supplies, medicines, electricity, water and sanitary services - not to mention employment. The message to the Palestinians: if you want to put an end to your suffering, remove the government you have elected. Can this succeed? Exactly like the the success of the British operation. 'Agatha' achieved the very opposite." (3 July 2006)

Adam Liptak: The Court Enters the War, Loudly (NY Times). Berkeley law professor John C. Yoo, the Bush administration's Alfred Rosenberg, is throwing a hissy-fit because the Supreme Court says presidential whim doesn't trump the Constitution. Boalt is going to spend a long time living this turkey appointment down. (2 July 2006)

Brian Higgins as casino pimp (Buffalo News). Some people thought the reason Republican-in-Democrat-drag Congressman Brian Higgins has been silent on the downtown casino issue was because he wanted people to forget that he was one of the obedient assemblymen who voted for the Pataki-Seneca compact that made it possible. Now it appears he's really involved in the sorry affair: he's attempting to broker a deal that would funnel some slot machine profits directly to Buffalo's cultural organizations. He says it's because he supports the arts. More likely, he's helping the Seneca Gaming Corporation make sure the cultural leadership doesn't join the casino opposition. (2 July 2006)

Bruce L. Fisher: Gambling, smoking and more--for the arts? "If I were mayor of Buffalo and looking to buy favor from the cultural community," writes Fisher, the Deputy Erie County Executive, "why stop at taking the dough from people who lose dough at the slot machine joint coming our way? There's real money in asbestos, too; maybe we should give Bolivia, or Chad, or Uzbekistan a piece of Buffalo in which they can avoid our state's toxic-waste regulations and store some PCBs and benzene and nuclear fuel rods -- just so long as they kick back to the Darwin Martin House and the Historical Society. Or how about we decide to give some independent country a 9-acre parcel in which we let the tobacco companies do whatever they want, and let somebody run night clubs and saloons that are the only places in town where drinkers get to smoke? Oops. We already did that." (2 July 2006)

John Lewis on the Voting Act renewal (Atlanta Progressive News). The Atlanta Congressman discusses Republican opposition to renewal of the Voting Rights Act (2 July 2006)

Stephen T. Banko: All I know of war, all I've heard of peace. "Nor does a day pass when I don't wonder how we came to a place in America where peace is unpatriotic. I have seen the face of war and I have held the hands of dying comrades. I have killed and I have bled and I know beyond doubt that now, rather than lead a million men to war, I would rather die alone --for peace." Remarks from New York's most decorated Vietnam War veteran at the June 16 "Peace Has No Borders" event in Buffalo. (30 June 2006)

Cahal Milmo: 'Environmental insanity' to drink bottled water when it tastes as good from the tap (The Independent). Even though the UK has the safest and purest water in the world, Brits are spending two billion pounds a year on bottled water. It's pretty much the same in the US. Bottled water that is, in most cases no better than tap water, is not only expensive but it is alos environmentally destructive. So, other than giving you something to do with your hands, why do you buy that crap? (30 June 2006)

Jerry Zremski: Former vets with GOP ties boost war effort in blogs (Buffalo News). How do you tell the difference between government propaganda and a war-lover with a laptop? Maybe by checking what the writer was doing just before he started offering newspapers articles about how well Bush's war is going, which is just what Buffalo News report Jerry Zremski did. (30 June 2006)

Tim Grieve: Why the Rove story mattered (Salon.com). A month or so ago Truthout.com published a piece saying it had reliable inside information that Karl Rove had been indicted. Even though everyone involved, including the special prosecutor, has now said the story was untrue, Truthout.com has yet to admit that it presented wish-fulfilling rumor as fact. Tim Grieve, Salon.com's top political reporter, explains why Salon.com questioned the Truthout story from the beginning and why Truthout's failure matters to web readers. "As DailyKos' Markos Moulitsas Zuniga said Tuesday in a warning about quoting 'crap internet sources' simply because they 'write what you want to hear,' the liberal blogs should aim to be 'the reality-based community, not the 'make up your own reality' community.'"(30 June 2006)

Dave Saldana: Orwell was an optimist (UE RankFile). You are not paranoid. No matter how worried you are that the government is listening to your phone calls or tracking your internet use, you are not paranoid. Hell, you ain't half as worried as you ought to be....Today's thought police wear wingtips and propagandize with bland reassurances and contradictory denials: 'We didn't do anything, and we only did it to protect you.' If 1984 were written today, Big Brother would be laughed off as the work of an unimaginative hack. (30 June 2006)

David Swanson: The Iraq War as Trophy Photo (TomDispatch). The Bushite hacks at the FCC went berserk because Janet Jackson flashed a tit at a Superbowl. Here's the real obscenity, and it should be broadcast on every tv station and published in every newspaper and newsmagazine. (30 June 2006)

D.T. Max: The Injustice Collector (New Yorker). Is James Joyce's grandson suppressing scholarship? He says that if his grandfather saw what the scholars were up to he'd die laughing. (30 June 2006)

Linda Greenhouse: Justices, 5-3, Broadly Reject Bush Plan to Try Detainees (NY Times). "The Supreme Court on Thursday repudiated the Bush administration's plan to put Guantanamo detainees on trial before military commissions, ruling broadly that the commissions were unauthorized by federal statute and violated international law." (30 June 2006)

Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, et al. (US Supreme Court). The 29 June decision (in pdf format) telling the Bush administration they can't continue violating U.S. an international law just because the law doesn't let them treat people they don't like the way they'd like to treat them. (29 June 2006)

June 13-14 is Cinegael Buffalo, three days of films and discussions about Beckett, Joyce, and other things Irish. Click here for the full schedule. And on June 16 come out for Peace Has No Borders. Cindy Sheehan, Steve Banko and a lot of other good folks will be gathering in a major peace demonstration at the Peace Bridge Friday June 16. Click on the link for details about where, when, the organizations involved, how you can get the terrific poster Michael Morgulis designed for the event, and more.

Bruce Jackson: What the EPA inspectors in Buffalo didn't see. Erie County Executive Joel Giambra did what Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown didn't do but should have: he told the EPA about the Seneca Gaming Corporation's studies showing the grain elevators they're taking down are covered with 54,000 square feet of 4-14% asbestos, a goodly portion of which is going into the air only a block from a densely populated neighborhood. By the time the EPA inspectors got to Buffalo Sunday afternoon, the wrecking crew had pulled their machinery off the street and swept up the debris, so they didn't see the worst of it. Here's a slideshow of photos over the past ten days showing the takedown and the garbage floating off into Buffalo's air. (12 June 2006)

Buffalo Creek Asbestos Survey. A 904kb PDF of the document commissioned by the Seneca Gaming Corporation (a copy of which Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown's attorneys had but which the mayor's staff would not admit to having until Joel Giambra made it public) indicating that the H-O Oats grain elevator was coated with 54,000 square feet of 4-14% asbestos-bearing material. (12 June 2006)

Tribes look far afield for casino sites (Sacramento Bee). Indian casinos are big money, not just for the tribes, but also for developers and politicians. So they're a lot of shuffling around trying to create imaginary reservations on which casinos can be built. Generally, the Department of the Interior turns a blind eye to the games being played, and finally some members of Congress are starting to ask why. (12 June 2006)

California's Crisis In Prison Systems A Threat to Public: Longer Sentences and Less Emphasis On Rehabilitation Create Problems (Washington Post). "This is what conditions are like at one of California's best prisons, the California Rehabilitation Center: Built to hold 1,800 inmates, it now bulges with more than 4,700 and is under nearly constant lockdown to prevent fights. Portions of the buildings, which date to the 1920s, are so antiquated that the electricity is shut off during rainstorms so the prisoners aren't electrocuted. The facility's once-vaunted drug rehab program has a three-month-long waiting list, and the prison is short 75 guards. It is even worse throughout the rest of California's 32 other prisons, which make up the second-largest system in the nation after the federal Bureau of Prisons. Despite a vow from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) to cut the prison population, it has surged in recent months to more than 173,000, the worst overcrowding in the country, costing taxpayers more than $8 billion a year. More of those inmates return to prison because the state has the nation's highest recidivism rate." (11 June 2006)

Diane Christian: Zarqawi's Face. "We are invited to stare at Zarqawi's dead head for standard warrior and political reasons. Like the medieval heads atop the pikes to warn of the punishment for treason (Thomas More), or the 200 Philistine foreskins David used to buy the king's daughter, or the scalps or genitals or ears in the notched belts of conquerors, the enemy body is a bounty harvested by the victors who win by killing. Be they the king's good servants, the fearless and untamed warriors, the men or women without restraint, they're the living, the enemy is dead. The message is we win. The message is a lie." (10 June 2006)

Nir Rosen: The Life and Death of Abu Musab al Zarqawi (truthdig). Commentary from one of the only Western journalists to have reported from inside the Iraqi insurgency. He concludes: "More will come to replace Zarqawi and avenge his death. Iraq's Shias will be blamed for Zarqawi's death, and Shias in the region --perhaps even in Saudi Arabia, or in Lebanon, where sectarian tensions are rising--will find themselves targets of violence. Expect a new group, calling itself the Zarqawi Brigades (or battalions, or army), to claim responsibility for some major attacks on Shia targets. Far from putting an end to the Iraqi insurgency, Zarqawi's death will most likely prolong it." (10 June 2006)

Robert Fisk: Zarqawi's End is Not a Famous Victory (Counterpunch). "So, it's another "mission accomplished". The man immortalised by the Americans as the most dangerous terrorist since the last most dangerous terrorist, is killed--by the Americans. A Jordanian corner-boy who could not even lock and load a machine gun is blown up by the US Air Force--and Messrs Bush and Blair see fit to boast of his demise. To this have our leaders descended." (10 June 2006)

Bush's trademark bravado banished (Newsday). No more flight suit with padded crotch and huge banners screaming "Mission Accomplished." Bush is trying a new approach to being Supreme Leader: "Wearing a gray suit, white shirt and blue tie, a much more somber Bush told reporters that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had been killed. He never once cracked his trademark half-smile - his critics call it a smirk - and he pointedly did not say things would be better now in Iraq." (10 June 2006)

Tom Robbins: Dem Party Animals (Village Voice). It was business as usual for the Democrats at the party's state convention: no complexity, no dissent, and not even talk of reform. Everything was focused on anointing Hilary and Spitzer and keeping power exactly where it has been, is, and will be. (10 June 2006)

Middle East Wars Flare Up At Yale (Jewish Week). Yale's sociology and history departments voted to hire University of Michigan professor Juan Cole, a top Middle East scholar, but Yale's tenure committee, in a rare move, blocked the appointment. The primary reason seems not to have been his scholarship, but rather his criticism of Israel's West Bank policies in his blog, "Informed Comment." That produced an organized campaign--successful, as it turned out--to ruin his appointment. (8 June 2006)

Mark Benjamin: "You want to shoot them" (Salon.com). "Convinced that kids were spying on them, sick of seeing buddies blown apart, the Marines accused of the Haditha massacre cracked." (8 June 2006)

Bruce Jackson: Greed and the demolition of the H-O Oats elevator (Artvoice). "Barry Snyder and his Seneca gambling operation made two huge PR moves in Buffalo last week, both of them designed to shore up the Seneca Gaming Corporation's claim that a Buffalo casino is a done deal and that all opposition is, therefore, pointless. One of the moves, aided and abetted by Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown, was based on in-your-face bullying; the other, aided and abetted by the Buffalo News, on not-very-subtle extortion." (Casino Chronicles #12) (8 June 2006)

Robert B. Reich: Estate Tax Pyramid Scheme (TomPaine.com). Some of the richest families in America aren't investing in business. They're investing in politicans they're counting on to protect their access to billions of dollars earned by dead people. (8 June 2006)

Craig Unger: The War They Wanted, The Lies They Needed (Vanity Fair). "The Bush administration invaded Iraq claiming Saddam Hussein had tried to buy yellowcake uranium in Niger. As much of Washington knew, and the world soon learned, the charge was false. Worse, it appears to have been the cornerstone of a highly successful 'black propaganda' campaign with links to the White House." (8 June 2006)

Lifesaving kits in short supply (Newsday). Why should the families of GIs in Iraq be the people responsible for providing clotting bandages to prevent bleeding deaths? (8 June 2006)

Data Theft Affected Most in Military (Washington Post). The computer stolen from the home of a VA analyst last month contained identity-theft-class information of nearly 80 percent of the men and women now on active duty, as well as about 25 million vets. In the wrong hands, this data could cause astonishing mischief. The owners of the wrong hands are no doubt looking for the missing computer as diligently as is the FBI. (8 June 2006)

Specter accuses Cheney of interfering with surveillance investigation (Knight-Ridder). Vice President Cheney has been working very hard to make sure that the Senate Judiciary Committee's investigation into illegal use of private phone records by the Bush administration comes up empty. (8 June 2006)

Cheney: Our office is above the law (New Standard). "Thickening the haze of secrecy surrounding the executive branch, the Office of Vice President Dick Cheney has declared itself exempt from a yearly requirement to report how it uses its power to classify secret information." Why aren't the conservatives going nuts? Or is it that there aren't any sane conservatives left? (7 June 2006)

Why the FBI is after the Anderson Papers (Chronicle of Higher Education). The FBI has been trying to get its hands on the papers of the late journalist Jack Anderson. Senate testimony this week finally revealed why: a man once imprisoned for child sodomy who has a history of mental illness and fabricating stories told them to. This has to be true; nobody can make this stuff up. (7 June 2006)

Stephen T. Banko: The Other Side of the Gun. "The unit involved at Haditha was on its third deployment to Iraq....This war is remotely detonated, lethal, and anonymous. All that is left are those civilians you see every day. If the enemy has no face, you see him in every face. All the propaganda says you are helping the civilians. All the cheerleading says democracy is at hand. All the casualty counts are telling a different story....Haditha is not excusable but it is sadly predictable." (7 June 2006)

Tom Engelhardt: Collateral Damage. The Real Meaning of Haditha. (TomDispatch). "Our President, in March 2003, just couldn't resist opening the Pandora's Box of Iraq. Since then, from that box has emerged every horror with which we are now familiar. Unlike in Greek myth, however, at the bottom of the box wasn't Hope, but another H-word: Haditha." (7 June 2006)

Violent Baghdad deaths top 6,000 (BBC). More people are being killed in Baghdad every month: in January it was 1068, in may it was 1398. What, exactly, was it the Americans went there for? (7 June 2006)

Tim Rutten: Under fire in Iraq, at home (LA Times). More journalists have been killed covering the Iraq War than were killed covering World War II, Vietnam or Korea. (7 June 2006)

French state and national railway guilty of collusion in deporting Jews (Guardian). "In a historic judgment, the French state and the state railway company SNCF were found guilty yesterday of colluding in the deportation of Jews during the second world war and ordered to pay compensation to the family of two victims." (7 June 2006)

From logistics to turning a blind eye: Europe's role in terror abductions (Guardian). The Bush administration is dragging down everyone it touches: "The UK stands accused of not only allowing the use of British airspace and airports, but of providing information that was used during the torture of one suspect. The report adds that there is strong evidence to suspect two European states, Poland and Romania, of permitting the CIA to operate secret prisons on their soil, despite official denials." (7 June 2006)

Eugene Robinson: Distracter in Chief (Washington Post). With so many critical problems on the table why is Bush wasting time with an anti-gay amendment that won't pass anyway? "What uncharted realm lies beyond brazen cynicism? A wasteland of utter shamelessness, perhaps? A vast Sahara of desperation, where principle goes to die? Someday George W. Bush and the Republican right will be able to tell us all about this barren terra incognita, assuming they ever find their way home. The Decider's decision to whip up a phony crisis over same-sex marriage -- Values under attack! Run for your lives! -- is such a transparent ploy that even conservatives are scratching their heads, wondering if this is the best Karl Rove could come up with. Bush might as well open his next presidential address by giving himself a new title: The Distracter." (7 June 2007)

Ian Gibson: Continuing the US vendetta against Cuba (Guardian). "Cuba is the only country in Latin America that does not receive assistance from international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which are supposed to contribute to the development of third world countries. It is also the only nation on the continent with whom the EU has not signed a cooperation agreement. Yet social advances continue, underpinned by moderate but consistent economic growth." Cuba has higher literacy and life expectancy and lower infant mortality rates than the US. In response to which, the US is pressuring the EU to do as much harm to the Cuban economy as possible. (7 June 2006)

Seneca claim to Island rebuffed (Buffalo News). The Supreme Court refused to overturn U.S. District Court Judge Richard J. Arcara's 2002 ruling that the Senecas had never lived on Grand Island and had negotiated away whatever rights they may have had to it before 1815. (See Buffalo report entries for 4 June for more on this.) (6 June 2006)

Energetic Seneca casino design (Buffalo News). One more Buffalo News editorial sucking up to the Senca Gaming Corporation. The editorial goes gaga over the Senecas' preliminary casino design, says a casino is bad for Buffalo, but at least this design will provide a place for children to play while the casino kills the city's economy. Nothing like taking a firm stand. (6 June 2006)

Lieberman faces showdown over Iraq (Reuters). Ole Mush-mouth, Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman, long an uncritical Bush supporter on the Iraq war and many other issues, and in many ways the most Republican senator on the Democratic side of the aisle, is in a primary fight that may cost him his job. He holds out the promise that if he loses he might run as an independent, splitting the vote and throwing the seat to the Republicans. What a piece of work. (6 June 2006)

Elizabeth Drew: Power Grab (New York Review of Books). "During the presidency of George W. Bush, the White House has made an unprecedented reach for power. It has systematically attempted to defy, control, or threaten the institutions that could challenge it: Congress, the courts, and the press. It has attempted to upset the balance of power among the three branches of government provided for in the Constitution; but its most aggressive and consistent assaults have been against the legislative branch: Bush has time and again said that he feels free to carry out a law as he sees fit, not as Congress wrote it. Through secrecy and contemptuous treatment of Congress, the Bush White House has made the executive branch less accountable than at any time in modern American history. And because of the complaisance of Congress, it has largely succeeded in its efforts." (5 June 2006)

Diane Christian: Negatives. The US, says President Bush, doesn't torture, because only bad people torture and the US is good. Therefore, people who say the US tortures just don't understand us. No, George: twisting the language doesn't upend reality. "The problem is not erroneous perception; it's the actual facts. We are torturers?like Saddam, like terrorists. We were and are." (4 June 2006)

Bruce Jackson: Why Haditha Happened. Administration damage control specialists have taken to the talk shows, saying that Haditha is the result of inadequate training, which they are going to fix by making sure our GIs have better training. Nonsense. Haditha happened for the same reason My Lai and Abu Ghraib happened: all three are direct, perhaps inevitable, consequences of US policy and governmental ethics and values. (4 June 2006)

Bruce Fisher: "It ain't Seneca land." The front page of the Buffalo News for 4 June 2006 featured an article by Michael Beebe, "For Senecas, return to Buffalo Creek helps right an old wrong," the gist of which seemed to be that since the Buffalo Creek area was aboriginal Seneca land, it was only reasonable that they should establish there a tax-exempt casino that would drain Buffalo's economy. The problem, argues Deputy Erie County Executive Bruce Fisher, is that Beebe's article is predicated on a fundamental error of fact: Buffalo Creek was never aboriginal Seneca territory. (4 June 2006)

Bush Re-enters Gay Marriage Fight (Washington Post). The war in Iraq gets bloodier and bloodier, the economy is teetering on the edge of disintegration, and after the astonishing outpouring of world fellowship for the US after 9/11 the Bush administration has made the US the most hated nation in the world. Moreover, the President's poll numbers keep dropping, even among the idiotically faithful, and Fox News has begun to ask some questions. How is Bush coping with all this? Going after same-sex marriage. That homophobe zygote-hugging senator from Tennesse is all atwitter over it. (4 June 2006)

Farhad Manjoo: Was the 2004 election stolen? No. (Salon.com). Robert F. Kennedy's recent Rolling Stone article saying the Republicans stole the Ohio vote from Kerry in the 2000 election is causing a big stir in some parts of the blogosphere. That would be great, if Kennedy had his facts right and if he presented fairly all of the facts he does have. But he seems to have done neither. (4 June 2006)

Blix Say U.S. Impedes Efforts to Curb A-Arms (CommonDreams/NY Times). According to the former chief UN nuclear arms inspector, the Bush administration's unwillingness to work and play well with others is making the world ever more dangerous. (4 June 2006)

Bruce Jackson: The Nine Biggest Lies About the Proposed Buffalo Creek Casino (Artvoice). A few days ago the Buffalo News published a letter from developer Carl Paladino that consisted of one lie after another about the proposed Seneca gambling joint in downtown Buffalo. The letter is not unlike the massive disinformation campaign the Seneca Gaming Corporation unleashed on all Buffalo television and most Buffalo radio stations last month. What's so scary about the truth that has those guys spending so much time, effort and money trying to hide it? (1 June 2006)

Lindsay Waters: The Lure of the List (Chronicle of Higher Education). The most prestigious journal of literary criticism (Critical Inquiry) has published a list of the top literary critics and theorists. Und zo? (1 June 2006)

Probe Into Iraq Deaths Finds False Reports (Washington Post). What more and more seems to be the murder of 24 Iraqi men, women and children by pissed-off Marines is on the way to becoming this war's My Lai. (1 June 2006)

Rick Santorum doesn't live here anymore (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette). It turns out that the homophobic senator from Pennsylvania has been operating under a phony address. We always knew there was something queer about that guy. (1 June 2006)

Justices Set Limits on Public Employees Speech Rights (NY Times). One more whack at the First Amendment by Bush's anti-truth squad: You can say whatever you like, so long as it doesn't make any of your bosses uncomfortable. (28 May 2006)

Peace Has No Borders. Cindy Sheehan, Steve Banko and a lot of other good folks will be gathering in a major peace demonstration at the Peace Bridge Friday June 16. Here are the details about where, when, the organizations involved, how you can get the terrific poster Michael Morgulis designed for the event, and more. (28 May 2006)

Steve Banko: A Memorial Day letter. Stephen T. Banko is New York's most-decorated veteran of the conflict in Southeast Asia. He saw close friends die and sustained serious wounds. In this letter to several friends he offers a necessary corrective to some of the flag-waving speechifying going on this weekend. (28 May 2006)

John Carroll: Keep the flag out of Molly Ivins brain (San Franciso Chronicle). For the Bush administration it's not leaking when you blow the cover of a covert CIA agent to ruin her husband's credibility. It's only leaking when someone tells a reporter about major government mistakes, corruption and perversion. The Bush administration would like the press to just go away, but absent that it would like to intimidate or manipulate it into being docile and obedient. "The government is waging war on the press for the reasons that entities usually wage war -- it wants to claim our territory. It wants to plant a flag in Molly Ivins' brain. And, by God, we're not going to let that happen." (28 May 2006)

UB finally has 2020 vision (Buffalo News). Except for some gratuitous asides directed at the back of former UB president William Greiner, here's a strong editorial on the value of a major educational institution in a city like Buffalo. If the editorial page would look at the impending disaster of the parasitic downtown casino with the same energy, someone might even say they were doing more than flack work and puffery. (28 May 2006)

Harold Meyerson: For Neocons, the Irony of Iraq (Washington Post). n the beginning, neoconservatism was a movement of onetime liberals enraged at the wave of violence and disorder that overtook the cities in the 1960s. Riots convulsed urban America in that stormy decade, crime rates soared, student radicals seized campuses. How could anyone see all this, the first generation of neocons inquired, and still remain a liberal?" This is, of course, just what the Neocons' war has accomplished in Iraq. "The war, and the failure to establish order that led to the barbarism that's driving Iraqis away, can't be laid solely on the neocons' doorstep, of course. These second-generation neos needed a trio of arrogant, onetime CEOs -- Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld -- to actualize their vision. But actualize it they did, and the ideologues whose forebears once argued that the drugged-out Bronx was a monument to liberal folly have now made blood-drenched and depopulating Baghdad the monument to their own neocon obsessions." (28 May 2006)

Sean Peter Kirst: Land claim winners' lack of grace a disgrace (Syracuse Post-Standard). While Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown and his helper Rich Tobe were secretly helping the Seneca Gaming Corporation screw the city of Buffalo this past month, New York courts and officials elsewhere in the state were publicly screwing the Iroquois. Does this mean New York is balanced or that it is completely out of whack? (28 May 2006)

Peter Dreier: Why Mines Deaths Are Up (The Nation). It's not just in the Middle East that people are dying because of Bush administration carelessness and avarice. "Mine workers have faced increasingly unsafe conditions because of rollbacks of health and safety regulations, the appointment of former mining industry executives to federal mine safety agencies and the slashing of the budget and staff for safety inspection." (28 May 2006)

VA Knew Early About Data Theft (Washington Post). But they sat on it for 13 days. Protecting the vets or protecting their jobs? Clearly they failed at the first. Hopefully they also failed at the second. (28 May 2006)

Spectator: The View from Here. If the Democrats can get their heads out of wherever they've put them, they've got a great issue this year: repetitive Republican incompetence. The latest is identity theft at the VA, political blackmail at HUD, and four dead French soldiers reminding us about the war Bush forgot. (28 May 2006)

Joan Vennochi: Short-timer at the anchor (Boston Globe). ABC dumped Elizabeth Vargas as evening news anchor because she got pregnant. What century is ABC News reporting on? (25 May 2006)

"Global warming kills" (Salon.com). All about "An Inconvenient Truth," Al Gore's film responding to the Bush administration's continuing state of denial about global warming. (25 MAy 2006)

Seymour M. Hersh: Listening In (New Yorker). Of course the Bush administration has been listening to your telephone calls illegally. And of course General Michael Hayden, Bush's nominee to head the CIA, had to lie his ass off for the Senators who wanted him to do just that so they could rubber-stamp Bush's nomination. (24 May 2006)

Uri Avnery: Who's guilty? The victim, of course (Gush Shalom). "This is an Israeli tradition, which has unfortunately also been accepted by the international media: the Israeli security forces always 'react' to the violence of the other side. But, curiously enough, the killed and wounded are mostly on the other side. ...In matters concerning the army and police, the news in all the media, without exception, from Maariv to Haaretz, from Channel 1 to Channel 10, is indistinguishable from government propaganda. (with honorable exceptions in opinion columns and the op-ed pages.) The chances of the victims getting fair coverage are close to nil. After all, the victims are always to blame." (23 May 2006)

Marc Ash: Information Sharing on the Rove Indictment Story (TruthOut). The Big Story on the web the past two weeks has been the TruthOut report of Karl Rove's indictment. Thus far, everyone involved (Rove, Rove's attorneys, White House flacks, the Special Counsel's office, etc.) has either refused to comment or has said the story is untrue. Here's an update from TruthOut: they stand by their story, saying that not only has there been a sealed indictment of Rove, but that Rove may be in the process of turning into a witness, giving them Cheney to save his own skin. The print press spends a lot of ink trying to trivialize web-based news and commentary sites (take a look at the Washington Post smearjob response to this story by Howard Kurtz: "The claim that President Bush's top political strategist had been indicted in the CIA leak investigation was written by a journalist who has battled drug addiction and mental illness and been convicted of grand larceny."). If TruthOut's story turns out to be right, if the web has in fact scooped the print press by weeks on this key story of White House corruption, that monolog will have to be rewritten. If it turns out that TruthOut got it wrong, TruthOut and all the web sites that broadcast its report (this one included) will have some serious apologizing and rethinking to do. (23 May 2006)

Michael Massing: The Storm over the Israel Lobby (NY Review of Books). "The nasty campaign waged against John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt has itself provided an excellent example of the bullying tactics used by the lobby and its supporters. The wide attention their argument has received shows that, in this case, those efforts have not entirely succeeded. Despite its many flaws, their essay has performed a very useful service in forcing into the open a subject that has for too long remained taboo." (22 May 2006)

Bruce Jackson: Remembering Creeley (Artvoice). A September 2001 conversation about poetry, painting and music with the late poet Robert Creeley. (19 May 2006)

U.N. Panel Back Closing Prison at Guant?namo (NY Times). The U.N. wants the U.S. to stop torturing and terrorizing prisoners. It wants the U.S. to stop killing prisoners. It wants the U.S. to stop holding people without any legal safeguards. It wants the U.S. to shut the prison it uses in Cuba to keep prisoners it is holding illegally away from U.S. courts. It wants, in sum, the U.S. to behave as if it were a law-abiding, human rights-respecting nation. Fat chance. (19 May 2006)

Larry Gross: Abe Rosenthal's Reign of Homophobia at The New York Times (TruthDig). Former NY Times Executive Editor Abe Rosenthal, who died May 10, was a journalistic hero for the way he stood up to the Nixon White House in the matter of the Pentagon Papers in 1971. He was also a raging homophobe, who kept the word "gay" out of the paper and blocked publication of stories about the AIDS epidemic at a time when such stories were desperately needed. (17 May 2006)

David Barber: The Legend of 'Howl' (Boston Globe). Allen Ginsberg's poem is 50 years old. According to the legend, it changed the voice of American poetry and no poem since has matched the fame of its first line, "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked." The poem indeed had its own voice, but also resonated with the voices and rhythms of Ginsberg's two primary teachers, William Blake and Walt Whitman, which is perhaps one reason it continues to be such a damned fine poem. (17 May 2006)

US to abandon one of its torture techniques (Knight-Ridder). The US has told the U.N. Committee Against Torture that it will prohibit "waterboarding" by its interrogators, which means its interrogators have to stop doing it now. In saying this, the US doesn't admit its interrogrators ever did any such thing. As the late comedian Lenny Bruce used to point out, "you don't need a law saying 'Don't do it to the baa-baa and others' unless people are doing it to the baa-baa and others." (17 May 2006)

Dutch strip citizenship from Ayaan Hirsi Ali (Der Spiegel). "Dutch Minister of Immigration and Integration Rita Verdonk says she withdrew Ayaan Hirsi Ali's citizenship because the native Somali lied on her 1997 application for Dutch citizenship." Most other people in the Netherlands say it's because Verdonk is a nutcase power-freak. Either way, expelling the activist writer and parliament member is a huge embarrassment for the Dutch government. (17 May 2006)

Federal Source to ABC News: We Know Who You're Calling (ABC News). As a rule, when journalists come up with a story about illegal or incompetent behavior by government agencies, the agencies' reaction is to spend more agency money finding the bastard who talked than fixing the problem. With the US government's heightened phone-snooping ability, ABC news investigative reporter Brian Ross discovered, that task of finding and killing the messinger is easier than ever before.

Robert Creeley at 80. This Sunday would have been the poet Robert Creeley's 80th birthday. A lot of his Buffalo friends are going to celebrate it even if Bob can't join them. There will be poetry readings, music, food, drink, screenings, things to look at and more Saturday evening from 7-12+ at The Church on Delaware and Sunday afternoon from 2-4 at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. Amiri Baraka, Joanne Kyger, Tom Raworth, Carl Dennis, Bill Sylvester and others will read poems, David Felder will premiere a new composition based on Creeley's words and voice, other folks will do other things and everybody will carry on as they see fit. Here, in MS Word format, is the pretty-much complete list of participants, performers, contributors and organizers. (16 May 2006)

Iraq War Images Uncensored (AfterDowningStreet.Org). Don't look at this if you've got a weak stomach. This is what the Iraq War really looks like, the images you are never shown on network tv or in any American newspaper. If you'd seen images like this three years ago this stupid war would be long over, and we'd probably have a different president. For Bush, the war in Iraq is patriotic words. These gruesome images tell a different story. (16 May 2006)

Bruce Jackson: The H-O Oats grain elevator and the Seneca wrecking ball: two photographs. The Seneca Gaming Corporation, which wants to set up a gambling joint in downtown Buffalo, is poised to wreck another structure on the site they purchased from Buffalo developer Carl Paladino and other sellers. Here are two photographs of what they'd like to destroy this time. (16 May 2006)

much the Supreme Court screwed you: here's Al Gore as the president you could have had (SNL). Al Gore opened Saturday Night Live with one of the great ironic/couldda-been-realistic performances ever on network tv. You never saw it in real life because that scoundrel Dubya and his cronies were so busy driving America into the sewer. Speculating about might-have-beens is a useless enterprise, of course. Except for this time. Take a look. (15 May 2006)

Warren Buffett: Casinos are bad economics (casinowatch.org). Warren Buffett owns the Buffalo News, the editorial columns of which have again and again told Buffalonians to accept the Seneca casino imposed on the city by Governor George Pataki, no matter how much harm that casino does to the city. But when the possibility of a casino arose in Buffett's home state of Nebraska he vigorously opposed it. Here's what he had to say about the casino he didn't want in his neighborhood, but which his editorial writers at the Buffalo News are urging Buffalonians to accept in theirs. (15 May 2006)

Molly Ivins: The Best Little Whorehouse in Washington (Truthdig). "I don?t care what anyone smoked 20 years ago, I approve of those who boogie till they puke, and I don?t care who anyone in politics is screwing in private, as long as they?re not screwing the public. On other hand, if you expect me to pass up a scandal involving poker, hookers and the Watergate building with crooked defense contractors and the No. 3 guy at the CIA, named Dusty Foggo (Dusty Foggo?! Be still my heart), you expect too much. Any journalist who claims Hookergate is not a legitimate scandal is dead?has been for some time and needs to be unplugged. In addition to sex, drugs and rock ?n? roll, Hookergate is rife with public-interest questions, misfeasance, malfeasance and non-feasance, and many splendid moral points for the children." (15 May 2006)

At Falwell's University, McCain Defends Iraq War (NY Times). John McCain has always been a political whore but he's never been close enough to a presidential run to get this naked about it. He's now sucking up to Jerry Falwell. (13 May 2006)

Prosecutor in C.I.A. Leak Case Points to Notes by Cheney (NY Times). The one thing scoundrels fear more than anything else is an honest man. It looks more and more like Bush & Co. really screwed up in appointing Patrick Fitzgerald special prosecutor in the Valerie Plame outing case. He seems to be one, and unlike almost anyone in the White House, Fitzgerald seems interested in the truth. (13 May 2006)

Jason Leopold: Karl Rove Indicted on Charges of Perjury, Lying to Investigators (Truthout). "Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald spent more than half a day Friday at the offices of Patton Boggs, the law firm representing Karl Rove. During the course of that meeting, Fitzgerald served attorneys for former Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove with an indictment charging the embattled White House official with perjury and lying to investigators related to his role in the CIA leak case, and instructed one of the attorneys to tell Rove that he has 24 hours to get his affairs in order, high level sources with direct knowledge of the meeting said Saturday morning." (13 May 2006)

Ray McGovern: My Encounter with Rumsfeld (CounterPunch). With only a few exceptions, the mainstream ignored former CIA analyst Ray McGovern's encounter with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld last week (scroll down to our entries for May 5 for the Democracy Now! coverage and a bit of video from ABC News). McGovern didn't actually call Rumsfeld a liar, but Rumsfeld clearly showed that is exactly what he is. Here's McGovern's take on the event. (9 May 2006)

John Mearsheimer & Stephen Walt: The Israel Lobby (London Review of Books). Any doubts about the existence of an "Israel Lobby" should have been dissipated by the widespread savaging of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt after the Kennedy School of Government and the London Review of Books published their recent study of the Israel Lobby. Here, they respond to some of the most egregious attacks on their work, especially the deceptive and misleading screed by Harvard Law School torture advocate and Israel apologist Alan Dershowitz.. "Although we are not surprised by the hostility directed at us, we are still disappointed that more attention has not been paid to the substance of the piece. The fact remains that the United States is in deep trouble in the Middle East, and it will not be able to develop effective policies if it is impossible to have a civilised discussion about the role of Israel in American foreign policy." (8 May 2006)

Files uncover Nazis' trail of death (Boston Globe). The Nazis were sticklers for detail, and there are millions of them in the Nazi archives at Bad Arolsen. They noted, for example, the man who died of "collapse of the heart, loss of blood circulation, fractured limbs," and the name of every one of the 300 prisoners killed with a Genickschuss, a single shot at the base of the skull, to celebrate Der Feuhrer's birthday on April 20, 1942. For decades, Holocaust survivors have been trying to get the German government to give the world a chance to look at the records in Bad Arolsen but the Germans found one excuse after another to restrict access. Recent publicity forced them to open the doors, and the grim secrets are finally being made public. (8 May 2006)

Philip French: The KO blow from RKO (The Observer). The second volume of Simon Callow's magisterial biography of Orson Welles, Orson Welles: Hello Americans, which has just been published, is a fit companion for volume one, The Road to Xanadu, published 11 years ago. (8 May 2006)

Ice-capped roof of world turns to desert (The Independent). "Global warming is rapidly melting the ice-bound roof of the world, and turning it into desert, leading scientists have revealed." (8 May 2006)

Senecas to Niagara Falls development officials: Get lost (Buffalo News). While Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown steadfastly refuses to ask any questions of a Seneca casino's impact on the city's economy (how much did Byron get from construction unions in his recent campaign?) and Councilmember Brian Davis offers kissass resolutions that might as well have been written in the Seneca Gaming Corporation PR office, the Senecas' Niagara Falls casino bosses show what kind of treatment Buffalo officials can expect once their Buffalo casino is built: contempt and scorn. (5 May 2006)

The Slow Rot at Supermax (LA Times). The Abu Ghraib scandal showed that the US is as good at managing an old fashioned torture prison as any third-world dictator. The Federal penitentiary at Florence, Colorado, shows that the US is right up there in modern, high-tech, brain- and soul-rotting technology as well. They can turn you to mush without ever swinging a billy club or making you form feces-smeared human pyramids. And at Florence, nobody takes any pictures to show anyone anything. (5 May 2006)

C.I.A. Director Porter Goss Resigns (NY Times). CIA director Porter Goss was pushed out after only 18 months on the job, not long after Bush's recent appointment of John D. Negroponte to the new job of national intelligence director, which was followed by Negroponte's being given the CIA director's seat at security meetings. (5 May 2006)

Retired CIA Analyst Ray McGovern Takes on Rumsfeld Over Justification for Iraq Invasion (Democracy Now!). Protestors who interrupted Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's speech in Atlanta Thursday were dragged from the building by security thugs. One tried to do the same to former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, who was simply asking a question about Rumsfeld's lies from a microphone. McGovern, who had bought a ticket, refused to budge, and Rumsfeld had to tell the thugs to back off. Here's a transcript of the exchange between McGovern and the increasingly-flustered Rummy, and Amy Goodman's interview with McGovern about it the following day, along with links to mp3 and streaming videos of the whole thing. (5 May 2006)

t of "The Sopranos": the powerful mob boss forces legitimate business to give a piece of everything to his family. Only this one is real: Seneca gambling boss Barry Snyder at the Seneca Niagara Casino has forced companies dealing with the Casino to funnel millions of dollars to his son's common-law wife. Is Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown asking what similar scams do they have planned for their Buffalo Creek operation? Is Byron Brown asking any questions at all? (4 May 2006)

Six out of 10 young Americans cannot find Iraq on a map (The Independent). "Six out of 10 Americans aged 18 to 24 cannot locate the country. Two-thirds do not know that the October 2005 earthquake that killed 70,000 people struck in Pakistan. Indeed, more than 40 per cent cannot locate Pakistan in Asia....One-third of those questions were not able to find Louisiana on a map of the US." Another recent survey showed a vast majority of the troops in Iraq believe Saddam Hussein had WMD and was involved in the 9/11 plot. So the poor bastards destined to be killed or mutilated in George W. Bush's folly not only don't know why, they don't even know where. (4 May 2006)

Report blames top U.S. officials for alleged torture of detainees (Knight-Ridder). "Torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees by U.S. forces is widespread and, in many cases, sanctioned by top government officials, Amnesty International charged Wednesday" (4 May 2006)

Jury Decides Against Execution for Moussaoui (NY Times). The Bush administration spent a fortune trying to turn the idiot Zacarias Moussaoui into the Highjacker-We-Got-And-Executed, even though there never was any evidence connecting him with the 9/11 attacks. Moussaoui was happy to cooperate because he was desperate to become a martyr and he could only do that if the Bush administration got a jury to help them kill him. The jury wouldn't go for it: they refused to go to Bush's lynching party. (3 May 2006)

Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondents Dinner: full transcript (Daily Kos). There are only three daily tv news journalists worth watching any more: Amy Goodman on "Democracy Now," John Stewart on Comedy Central's "Daily Show," Stephen Colbert on Comedy Central's "Colbert Report." Colbert is right about everything, only you have to change all the signs: everything Colbert says is right is wrong and everything he says is wrong is right. He's perfect, as long as you know the code. A few days ago, he got to tell the White House Correspondents what they should have been thinking about the Warmaker-in-Chief. If you go to the Democracy Now site you can download mp3 audio or streaming video of his astonishing performance. (1 May 2006)

Robert J. McCarthy:Spitzer, Faso air views on casino (Buffalo News). The leading Democrat and Republican contenders for NY governor both find problems with the proposed Seneca gambling casino in Buffalo and one of them says hat if elected he'd look to reoopen the issue. To that, Buffalo news reporter Robert McCarthy gratuitously and incorrectly comments, "While neither candidate, if elected governor, could substantially change the state's agreeement with the Senecas to allow a casino in Buffalo..." You'd expect to find nonsense like that in a bad editorial, not in a news article. In fact, a governor could insist that everyone involved obey the law and carry out the environmental impact studies, which have thus far been studiously avoided by everyone involved. Shedding daylight on the impact of this operation would substantially change everything. Even the fence-straddling Byron Brown would have to admit it's a stinker in all regards. (30 April 2006)

Neil Young's Living With War (Neilyoung.com). Neil Young's new album of songs about Bush and his wars is all online. Just click on the url and then don't click on anything else and it will play in its entirety. Didactic, but good stuff. And it's free. (30 April 2006)

Bush challenges hundreds of laws (Boston Globe). "President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution. Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, 'whistle-blower' protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research. Legal scholars say the scope and aggression of Bush's assertions that he can bypass laws represent a concerted effort to expand his power at the expense of Congress, upsetting the balance between the branches of government. (30 April 2006)

Adam Liptak: In Leak Cases, New Pressure on Journalists (NY Times). In its relentless fight to keep the American people from knowing the truth, the Bush administration is moving to use espionage laws to punish reporters who publish up information the administration doesn't want the public to know. (30 April 2006)

Tough Primary Race Confronts Lieberman (Washington Post). Here's one to watch: a Connecticut blueblood is challenging Joe Lieberman in the state's Democratic primary. Many Connecticut Democrats would like to dump Lieberman for his uncritical endorsement of Bush's war policy and his support of Republicans wanting to intervene in the Terri Schiavo right-to-die case. Others just can't stand his voice, which has grown more mushy as he has drifted to the right. (30 April 2006)

John Kenneth Galbraith, 97, Dies; Economist Held a Mirror to Society (NY Times). "John Kenneth Galbraith, the iconoclastic economist, teacher and diplomat and an unapologetically liberal member of the political and academic establishment that he needled in prolific writings for more than half a century, died yesterday at a hospital in Cambridge, Mass. He was 97." Kennedy, Johnson and even Nixon took him seriously, as well they should have; these current idiots wouldn't let someone of his competence through the gates. Click here for the Boston Globe obituary. (30 April 2006)

Sibling rivalry jeopardized Moroun's grip (Windsor Star). Detroit shipping mogul Matty Maroun, who owns the Ambassador Bridge linking Detroit and Windsor, wants to build a privately-owned bridge that would compete with the Peace Bridge for truck traffic. He made much of his money by driving his sisters out of the business started by his father. Here's how he did it, along with a survey of his current holdings. (28 April 2006)

Spectator: The View from Here: gas prices, ethanol scam, Rove on the loose, Erie County confusion. With gas heading toward $4 a gallon, maybe it's time to revisit Dick Cheney's secret White House meetings with oil executives to set Bush administration energy policy. Maybe policy wasn't the only thing fixed in those secret meetings... And what about the Great Ethanol Scam, which does nothing to decrease America's oil addiction but pours billions into the coffers of Archer Daniels Midland? ...Rove has been reassigned not to make the White House more efficient but to make sure the House doesn't go Democrat. Thus far, the Republicans have successfully blocked every possible investigation into White House failure and Constitutional violation. A Democratic Congress wouldn't be so blind to the Bush administrations failures and abuses....The Erie County charter review committee recommends hiring a professional county manager (which is a good idea) but keeping the present county executive (which would make the county manager's job impossible. (28 April 2006)

Joan Chittister, OSB: Gone are the days when war was between armies (National Catholic Reporter). The woman in the airport has a son who has no buttocks. He lost an eye and an arm as well. "But he can stand now," she said, "That's all that counts." And for what? " Two whole societies have been grievously wounded by a war that did not need to be....From where I stand, so-called 'pre-emptive war' in a day of 'strategic' nuclear weapons is simply madness masking as governance. That 'doctrine' is heresy and it must go -- not simply to protect the integrity of other nations but to preserve our own, as well." (28 April 2006)

Jeff Miers: On a wing and a prayer (Buffalo News). Deep Purple's Ian Gillan has a terrific new CD/DVD, most of it recorded in Buffalo with Buffalo musicians. (28 April 2006)

Mark Fiore: Genocide on the March! (Village Voice). "You too can help by doing absolutely nothing." After you've watched the animation, click here for information on the Genocide Intervention Network (28 April 2006)

Bruce Jackson: The Common Council and the Seneca Creek Casino Hype (Artvoice). Buffalo's mayor and Common Council members have the power to stop the planned Buffalo Creek gambling casino. Will they do it? How have Tom Golisano's public stand against the casino, the Buffalo News articles showing the failure of the Niagara Falls casino to stimulate development and the drain the Niagara Falls casino has been on the regional economy, and this series of articles in Artvoice influenced their thinking? Are they thinking at all? Do they read anything at all? We asked them and here's what they said. (Casino Chronicles #10). (27 April 2006)

Adam Kirsch: The Music of Self-Justification (New York Sun). Philip Roth has a new novel, "Everyman." "If this Everyman is no Mickey Sabbath, masturbating demonically on his mistress's grave, he is also not quite the homme moyen sensuel that Mr. Roth clearly wants him to be. Rather, he comes across as the distilled essence of all of Mr. Roth's protagonists: bright, ferociously articulate, self-obsessed, maddened by lust, ensnared by family, endlessly pleading his case before the world.The family resemblance to Portnoy and Zuckerman and Kepesh is inescapable, especially when even this quiet man - who insists that 'most people ... would have thought of him as square' - falls into a sexual obsession of a very Rothian kind.The hero ruins his second marriage, by far his happiest, out of overpowering lust for a young Danish model, and his odes to her body ('that little hole and what she liked him to do with it') have the unmistakable accent of Mr. Roth's transgressive eroticism." (27 April 2006)

Daniel Swift: Fallen god of small things: Norman Mailer (Financial Times). "Norman Mailer is self-consciously at the centre of his own literary world. Reading him is an intimate experience; as if you were there in his imagination. The play of his language, the thrill of ideas crawling through syntax on to the page are the reward for time spent in Mailer?s company and the raucous fluidity of his mind. But his dizzying self-reference comes at a cost, and that cost may perhaps be given a name: the big empty. His new book is the consequence of a lifetime spent working at being Norman Mailer. It has all the egocentric bravura that we have come to expect of him, but without the tight grasp of the tiny that made him important in the first place. It is the shell of his own identity." (27 April 2006)

Street for Black Panther dropped (Chicago Sun-Times). A Chicago alderman abandoned her attempt to have a street named for Fred Hampton, the Black Panther murdered in his bed by Chicago Police in 1969. Members of the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police objected, saying that Hampton was a person who had advocated anti-police violence. He talked; they killed; they win. (27 April 2006)

John Dickerson: Shooting an Elephant: Why Republicans are screwed (Slate). "It isn't easy being a Republican these days, either. Bush's approval rating is at an all-time low, gas prices are near an all-time high, and Iraq continues to burn. Voters have an even lower opinion of the GOP-controlled Congress. Ideological disputes within the party make it hard for believers to pick sides, and incompetence at the top makes it difficult to follow through on the agenda items Republicans do agree on, like reducing the deficit. Bad news from Iraq and any number of scandals tied to the GOP erupt regularly. A month ago, the Republican political class was merely worried. Now its members are talking about avoiding catastrophic losses.'" (27 April 2006)

US to free 141 of its Guantanamo torture victims (LA Times). The Pentagon is cutting loose a third of the prisoners it has held and tortured at Guantanamo for four years because they pose no threat to US security and, presumably, never did. They join 250 other victims who have been released since the US set up the camp in Cuba in an attempt to keep it beyond the reach of the US courts. Thus far, "only 10 of the 490 alleged 'enemy combatants' urrently detained at the facility have been charged; none has been charged with a capital offense." (26 April 2006)

Steve Siegel: Local business will be hurt by a casino (Buffalo News). A Niagara University professor of hospitality management says the proposed Buffalo Creek casino spells death for a lot of Buffalo's businesses and says instead of bringing jobs to the community it will just displace good jobs with lousy jobs. Why aren't Buffalo's mayor and Comon Council even asking the kinds of questions proposed in this cogent article? (26 April 2006)

Fox News's Snow to Become New White House Press Secretary (Washington Post). It's the perfect marriage: a commentator from the news channel that put out the most misinformation on Iraq and which remains as unsullied by facts as the most rabid talk show (e.g., when Cheney was roundly booed at a recent public appearance Fox edited out the boos) is now the White House mouthpiece. (26 April 2006)

Jane Jacobs, Social Critic Who Redefined and Championed Cities, Is Dead at 89 (NY Times). "Jane Jacobs, the writer and thinker who brought penetrating eyes and ingenious insight to the sidewalk ballet of her own Greenwich Village street and came up with a book that challenged and changed the way people view cities, died yesterday in Toronto, where she moved in 1968. She was 89." (26 April 2006)

Arthur Schlesinger Jr.: Bush's Thousand Days (Washington Post). "Observers describe Bush as 'messianic' in his conviction that he is fulfilling the divine purpose. But, as Lincoln observed in his second inaugural address, 'The Almighty has His own purposes.' There stretch ahead for Bush a thousand days of his own. He might use them to start the third Bush war: the Afghan war (justified), the Iraq war (based on fantasy, deception and self-deception), the Iran war (also fantasy, deception and self-deception). There is no more dangerous thing for a democracy than a foreign policy based on presidential preventive war." (24 April 2006)

No Saugerties Casino! Buffalo isn't the only community in which residents are opposing a gambling operation imposed by the Governor's office. The same fight is going on in Saugerties, where the mayor and village board, the supervisor and the town board, and the county legislature have all voted unanimously in opposition. They've been joined by the Conservative, Democratic and Republican parties, the Saugerties Council of Churches, and all 14 candidates in the November 2005 local election. (24 April 2006)

Uri Avnery: Who's the dog? Who's the tail? A recent Kennedy School white paper on the Israeli Lobby produced a vitriolic storm of retaliation. "At the basis of the phenomenon lies the uncanny similarity between the two national-religious stories, the American myth and the Israeli. In both, pioneers persecuted for their religion reached the shores of the Promised Land. They were forced to defend themselves against the 'savage' natives, who were out to destroy them. They redeemed the land, made the desert bloom, created, with God's help, a flourishing, democratic and moral society. Both societies live in a state of denial and unconscious guilt feelings - over there because of the genocide committed against the Native Americans and the horrifying slavery of the blacks, here because of the uprooting of half the Palestinian people and the oppression of the other half. Both here and there, people believe in an eternal war between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness. Anyhow, the American-Israeli symbiosis is unique and far too complex a phenomenon to be described as a simple conspiracy. I am sure that the two professors did not mean to do so. The dog wags the tail and the tail wags the dog. They wag each other." (24 April 2006)

Jean Baudrillard: The Pyres of Autumn (New Left Review). "The French exception is no more, the ?French model? collapsing before our eyes. But the French can reassure themselves that it is not just theirs but the whole Western model which is disintegrating; and not just under external assault?acts of terrorism, Africans storming the barbed wire at Melilla?but also from within. The first conclusion to be drawn from the autumn riots annuls all pious official homilies. A society which is itself disintegrating has no chance of integrating its immigrants, who are at once the products and savage analysts of its decay. The harsh reality is that the rest of us, too, are faced with a crisis of identity and disinheritance; the fissures of the banlieues are merely symptoms of the dissociation of a society at odds with itself." (24 April 2006)

Ted Gioia: The FBI vs. Alan Lomax (LA Times). Because of an casual remark an anonymous informant said he overheard, the FBI kept close tabs on folklorist Alan Lomax for 40 years. The file runs several hundred pages and is chockful of speculation and trivia. "An FBI report dated July 23, 1943, describes Lomax as possessing 'an erratic, artistic temperament' and a 'bohemian attitude.' It says: 'He has a tendency to neglect his work over a period of time and then just before a deadline he produces excellent results?. He has no sense of money values, handling his own and Government property in a neglectful manner. Neighborhood investigation shows him to be a peculiar individual in that he is only interested in folk lore music, being very temperamental and ornery.' The file quotes one informant who said that 'Lomax was a very peculiar individual, that he seemed to be very absent-minded and that he paid practically no attention to his personal appearance.' This same source adds that he suspected Lomax's peculiarity and poor grooming habits came from associating with the hillbillies who provided him with folk tunes." Your tax dollars at work. (24 April 2006)

Michael Beebe: Seneca 'fronts' pay off for a few (Buffalo News). Finally we learn why Mickey Brown was forced out of Seneca Niagara Casino: he wanted to run it honestly and that didn't play in Barry Snyder's rakeoff economy. (24 April 2006)

Peter Slatin: Freedom Less Than Zero (Slatin Report). The reconstruction at Ground Zero is indeed turning out to be a monument?to the ego of New York Gov. George Pataki. "
Along with its general sour taste, there are many things to dislike about this latest version of the Ground Zero plan. Two elements stand particularly large. The first, and the closer it comes to reality the more it bears repeating, is Freedom Tower itself. If all goes as currently set forth, construction will begin in earnest on this building within a month. When completed, it will rise as a stark counterpoint to the new 7 World Trade Center, which is arguably architect David M. Childs' finest building. As much as the shimmering No. 7 lights up the northern edge of Ground Zero, Freedom Tower will occlude its piece of sky, standing not as a beacon but looming like an unfortunate headstone on the jagged horizon of Lower Manhattan." (24 April 2006)

Inspectors Find More Torture at Iraqi Jails (Washington Post). What, exactly, were the nasty things Saddam's jailors did that we went in to stop in Bush Rationale for the War #13? (24 April 2006)

Is this the new mistress of French politics? (London Times). As French Premiere Dominique de Villepin and Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy get one thing wrong after another, S?gol?ne Royal's chances of becoming France's first woman president get better and better. (24 April 2006)

Bill Moyers: A Time for Heresy (TomPaine.com) This is the heresy of our time ? to wrestle with the gods who guard the boundaries of this great nation?s promise, and to confront the medicine men in the woods, twirling their bullroarers to keep us in fear and trembling. For the greatest heretic of all is Jesus of Nazareth, who drove the money changers from the temple in Jerusalem as we must now drive the money changers from the temples of democracy." (24 April 2006)

Jerry Zremski: How much land is enough (Buffalo News). Remember when Seneca Gaming Corporation Barry Snyder said the nine acres they'd bought in downtown Buffalo was all they wanted for their gambling operation and got all huffy when anyone questioned his word? It turns out that not long before he made that statement the Seneca Nation Tribal Council passed a resolution setting out the tribe's "Buffalo footprint," the downtown land it might really try to acquire. A map shows it moving over to the waterfront from the present site and all the way over to Main street, including HSBC arena. (21 April 2006)

F.D.A. Dismisses Medical Benefit From Marijuana (NY Times). In case you had any doubts about whether or not the FDA was now completely a political organization: it has just declared there are no medical benefits from medical marijuana use. Its own federal studies show otherwise, but they're not going to slavishly follow mere facts. (21 April 2006)

Bogus corruption inquiry engulfs French government (The Independent). This reads like one of those novels you buy at the last minute from one of those turning racks at the airport newsstand. Two French investigating judges have had their agents raid the offices of the French equivalents of CIA and the Pentagon. More raids are coming. They're trying to find out if the phony plot to discredit French interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy, the "Clearstream affair," was engineered by French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin. (21 April 2006)

Nat Hentoff : Mutiny at the Supreme Court (Village Voice). If President Bush thought his two appointments to the Supreme Court gave his imperial presedency a free hand to violate the Constitution he's got another think coming. Samuel Alito may have crawled into bed with the rationalizer-in-chief Antonin Scalia and his shadow Clarence Thomas, but Chief Justice John Roberts seems actually to have read the Constitution and taken it seriously. (2`1 April 2006)

Joel Giambra: Petition to join the anti-casino lawsuit. Erie County Executive Joel Giambra has filed a petition to intervene in the state lawsuit attempting to force New York State to obey its own environmental law in regard to the proposed Seneca Creek casino. Here is a summary of the petition by Deputy County Executive Bruce L. Fisher with a link to a Word file of the full petition (21 April 2006)

Diane Christian: Human Sacrifice. Bush's and the militants' sanctimonious slaughter in Iraq has increased hostility in much of the civilized world to those who claim the god-given right to kill. "How does Abraham differ from the schizophrenic who hears a voice saying to kill the baby, from the dictator/leader who sends troops to conquer enemies, from the priest who believes blood must be offered to the sun to keep the world alive, from the militant who believes terror is the tool to compel social comity?" (20 April 2006)

Belinda Lanks: The Incredible Shrinking City (Metropolismag.com). Buffalo's mayors and common council, confronted with declining population and tax base, have been casting about for a magic bullet that would solve all the city's ills: the Adelphia bubble, the BassPro store that never quite materializes, the self-cannibalizing Seneca Creek casino. Youngstown, Ohio, suggests that there are saner ways to deal with this kind of urban crisis."When the mills shut down in the 1970s and '80s, the smokestacks and foundries that symbolized steel belt manufacturing cities gave way to factory shells and rust. First unemployed, workers then began to move away for good. Unlike former steel powerhouses, such as Pittsburgh and Allentown, that have tried to attract new industry and grow their way back to prosperity, Youngstown, Ohio, is hitching its future to a strategy of creative shrinkage." (20 April 2006)

Sean Wilentz: The Worst President in History? One of America's leading historians assesses George W. Bush (Rolling Stone). "George W. Bush's presidency appears headed for colossal historical disgrace. Barring a cataclysmic event on the order of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, after which the public might rally around the White House once again, there seems to be little the administration can do to avoid being ranked on the lowest tier of U.S. presidents. And that may be the best-case scenario. Many historians are now wondering whether Bush, in fact, will be remembered as the very worst president in all of American history." (20 April 2006)

Snyder puts onus on leaders of Buffalo (Buffalo News). Seneca Gaming Corporation president Barry Snyder held a rambling press conference in Niagara Falls yesterday in which he blamed Buffalo officials for what appears to be a rapidly disintegrating relationship between SGC and Buffalo and Erie County officials. When asked about the SGC's 10K report to the Securities and Exchange Commission, which contracted his previous public statements, he said he was going to rewrite the report. He also said, "A filing is a filing. It's just a piece of paper." And so is a contract. Just a piece of paper. And his word? Just words. (20 April 2006)

Bruce Jackson: Why Doesn't the Buffalo News Editorial Page Tell the Truth? (Artvoice). Do Buffalo News editorial writers read what Buffalo News reporters write about casinos and the damage they do in places like this? If they do, how can publisher Stan Lipsey explain the discrepancy between the fact part of the paper and the opinion part of the paper? If they don't, why doesn't Lipsey tell them they ought to? He's paying for both teams; they might as well learn to listen to one another, or, at least, the opinion part ought to learn to pay attention to the fact part. As things stand, editorial page editor Stephen Bell is publishing one misleading "the Buffalo Creek casino is a done-deal" editorial after another, when nothing could be further from the truth. (20 April 2006)

Malcolm Gladwell: Here's Why (New Yorker). Why do we do what we do. Because we have reasons. Fewer than you think. (20 April 2006)

Bob Wing: Ruin, Rubble and Race: Lessons on the Centennial of the Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906. Developers used the 1906 San Francisco disaster as a convenient way to get rid of the city's poor Chinese population and to make a lot of money on the rebuilding process. While it was going on, many of the displaced Chinese were herded into prison-like compounds away from town. Sound familiar? "Disasters not only reveal hidden inequalities but also grossly aggravate the existing power imbalances between rich and poor, between white and non-white. The power elite has usually planned ahead for disaster, suffers less and recovers faster from the shock. They have lawyers, bankers and politicians, ready to fight for their interests. For most of us, the most vital response to natural disasters--before, during and after the event--is organizing our communities and workplaces to survive, rebuild and fight for our interests against the predators in our midst. In areas susceptible to disaster, it is critical to integrate disaster planning into our day to day organizing against gentrification and for social justice. For example, in the Bay Area we should include planning for the next big earthquake in the ongoing struggle against the gentrification of the Bay View, West Oakland and other poor communities in the region. And of course the fight in the Gulf region is still at fever pitch. It is crucial to support the fight to prevent the transformation of New Orleans from a largely black working class city into a gentrified theme park featuring jazz, creole food and gambling." 19 April 2006)

Germany Agrees to Open Holocaust Archive (NY Times). What a difference a bit of bad publicity makes. The previous item has been superceded: "Germany agreed Tuesday to allow access to a vast trove of information on what happened to more than 17 million people who were executed, forced to labor for the Nazi war machine or otherwise brutalized during the Holocaust. The German government announced at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum here that it was dropping its decades-long resistance to opening the archives kept in the town of Bad Arolsen. The files, which make up one of the largest Holocaust archives in the world, are more than 15 miles long and hold up to 50 million documents, some seized by the Allies as they liberated concentration camps." (19 April 2006)

Tensions Rise in Long Feud Over Access to Nazi Archive (Washington Post). One of the largest collections of WWII historial documents is off-limits to nearly everybody. In theory, it is controlled by an international commission, but the German and Italian governments say free access to the collection would violate the privacy rights of the victims of the German and Italian governments during the war. Sixty-one years after the war ended and they're fretting about privacy rights? No: they're worried about lawsuits. (18 April 2006)

Carl Bernstein: Senate Hearings on Bush, Now (Vanity Fair) "After Nixon's resignation, it was often said that the system had worked. Confronted by an aberrant president, the checks and balances on the executive by the legislative and judicial branches of government, and by a free press, had functioned as the founders had envisioned. The system has thus far failed during the presidency of George W. Bush?at incalculable cost in human lives, to the American political system, to undertaking an intelligent and effective war against terror, and to the standing of the United States in parts of the world where it previously had been held in the highest regard. There was understandable reluctance in the Congress to begin a serious investigation of the Nixon presidency. Then there came a time when it was unavoidable. That time in the Bush presidency has arrived." (18 April 2006)

Derrick Z. Jackson: Robbery, not reconstruction, in Iraq (Boston Globe). American companies have been robbing the Iraqis blind, and because the Bush administration insisted that Iraqi law exempt them from prosecution, there's not a thing the victims can do about it. (18 April 2006)

Steve Martin: The New Page Six (New Yorker). The NY Post's hot gossip Page 6 turned up as bribe central. Steve Martin does a full disclosure version, with adoring strokes for TomDelay, Charlize Theron, Paris Hilton, and Angela Jolie's baby. (17 April 2006)

Phil Fairbanks: Hidden costs of gambling (Buffalo News). The second part of Fairbanks' excellent report on the real costs of the Niagara Falls casino and legalized gambling in general. If the Buffalo News' editorial writers read the front part of the paper, maybe they'd stop writing those wimpy roll-over-and-play-dead editorials telling Buffalonians that the casino is a "done deal" (it isn't) and that they should hope for a bigger slice of the pie from Albany (it'll never happen; anyway, the pie is poisoned). (17 April 2006)

David Staba: A Casino Project That Was Once Lauded is Now Drawing Criticism (NY Times). When NY Governor George Pataki cut his three-casino deal with the Seneca Nation all the pols in sight, including current Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown, applauded. Now it's looking more and more like a loser for everyone but the Senecas. Brown is waffling, the governor is saying nothing about it, and the Seneca's gambling boss is making threats. Class act, folks. (17 April 2006)

Phil Fairbanks: Casino promises?still waiting (Buffalo News). Part 1 of a two-part series. When Governor Pataki announced his three-casino deal with the Senecas he promised huge development for the stricken city of Niagara Falls and the struggling city of Buffalo. Niagara Falls has had its casino for nearly three years now. It took in $306 million last year, most of it from local gamblers. There has been no spinoff development. Next year's financial report will show a bigger decline in NF's non-casino income because the few local hotels now getting business from casino customers will lose it to the casino's new hotel. Local restaurants are folding, incapable of competing with a huge operation that pays no sales or occupancy taxes. Niagara Falls' share of the slot machine drop--expected to be $13 million this year--isn't a fraction of the local money lost in the casino itself. The only positive seems to be is jobs, but nobody outside the casino is sure how many there really are and how many non-casino jobs they've displaced. All studies of urban casinos show an immediate spike in jobs, than an overall decline as casino jobs displace a greater number of non-casino jobs. This problem would be far worse in Buffalo than Niagara Falls. (16 April 2006)

Matthew Rothschild: The Human Costs of Bombing in Iran (The Progressive). The got all huffy, but finally neither George Bush nor Scott McClellan denied Seymour Hersh's resport that the Bush administration is considering using tactical nuclear weapons in war against Iran. "The number of deaths could exceed a million, and the number of people with increased cancer risks could exceed 10 million." The US "would be violating the Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty, which prohibits nations that possess nuclear weapons from dropping them on nations that don't." Who thinks for a moment that Bush, who gets his marching orders from God and Dick Cheney, gives a hoot? The Geneva Convention prohibits torturing prisoners of war and the US Constitution requires a charge before, not years after, detention, and neither of those seems to have influenced any Oval Office decisions. (16 April 2006)

Village Voice Shakeup: Top Investigative Journalist Fired, Prize-Winning Writers Resign Following Merger with New Times Media (Democracy Now!). For years the weekly Village Voice has been known for some of the best investigative journalism in the business. They merged with New Times Media earlier this year, and shortly after, the chain's owner established himself as the Voice's managing editor and began cutting back on investigative journalism and squelching any criticism of the Bush administration. Lately, the paper has been hemorraging its top reporters, some fired by the new owner, some by resignation. Amy Goodman talks with several of them and with one who stayed. (16 April 2006)

David Corn: 2008 Looking Like 1968 (TomPaine.com). Hillary Clinton is doing everything but changing her name and wearing a wig to keep from expressing an opinion on the Iraq War. "She is for the status quo?as long as it doesn't last too long. That's not much of a position?and certainly not an act of inspiring leadership." If she attacks the war, the Republicans will accuse her of not having any balls (she might consider owning up to that fact and moving on); if she doesn't, anti-war Democrats will call her a Bush toady or Republican in Democrat drag. Meanwhile, Russ Feingold is calling things as he sees them and more and more Democrats are listening. He may not have enough of a base to stop the Hillary freight train, but he can keep it from being handed to her on a platter. (16 April 2006)

Cheney and Rumsfeld outsourcing terror (rawstory). "The Pentagon is bypassing official US intelligence channels and turning to a dangerous and unruly cast of characters in order to create strife in Iran in preparation for any possible attack, former and current intelligence officials say." Condi opposed the operation but was overruled. (16 April 2006)

Robert Scheer: Now Powell Tells Us (truthdig.com). Former Secretary of State Colin Powell admits "that he and his department?s top experts never believed that Iraq posed an imminent nuclear threat, but that the president followed the misleading advice of Vice President Dick Cheney and the CIA in making the claim. Now he tells us." (16 April 2006)

Molly Ivins: White House Whopper Becomes Instant Classic (truthdig.com). "Personally, I think this is a really good time not to keep up. The more you try, the less sense it makes, although getting us used to having it all make no sense at all may be an extremely sneaky Karl Rove ploy to justify the war in Iraq. Hard to say." (16 April 2006)

US on par with Nazi Germany, says RAF officer in Iraq trial (Guardian). An RAF doctor refused to serve in Iraq because the war was an "imperial invasion and occupation," which he believed comprised "active aggression and systematically applied war crimes, serious violations of international law." The prosecutor said "that soldiers could not be expected to read and understand numerous books on international law," which is to say, they should just shut up and follow orders. That excuse was offered, without much success, at several Nuremburg trials in 1946. (16 April 2006)

William Sloane Coffin on Bill Moyers' NOW (PBS). It's important to remind yourself, when the news media spend most of their time and space on Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and other sanctimonious killers-by-proxy, that there are people of authentic principle and decency in this world. William Sloane Coffin, who died last week at the age of 82, was one. Here's a Bill Moyers conversation with Coffin taped in March 2004, along with several worthwhile links. (15 April 2006)

Berlusconi Suffers Setback Over Recount (NY Times). Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi claimed the 82,850 contested ballots in last week's Italian election entitled him to a recount, but it turns out that there are only 5,266 of them, not enough to undo Romano Prodi's triumph. Belusconi, true to form, is refusing to give up, saying he'll force the government to a standstill if they don't award him the election he lost at the polls. He controls nearly all of Italy's newspapers and tv stations, so he can make a lot of noise. One reason he may be fighting so hard: there were some criminal charges a few years ago that were put into a drawer because the Italian courts said they didn't have the power to try a sitting prime minister. A successor might open that drawer. (15 April 2006)

Donn Esmonde: Folks finally catching on to casino myths. (Buffalo News). "The $7 million annual payout to the city is a poor return for mostly local folks dropping $150 million at the casino," writes Buffalo News columnist Donn Esmonde. "And casino jobs come at the cost of existing ones, as money spent at a casino isn't spent at malls, ballparks and businesses. Add it up, and it doesn't compute. The last thing this city needs is another hole in its sink. A Buffalo casino helps the Senecas, who pocket most of the profits. It helps Albany, which gets a slice of the slot machine take. It hurts Buffalo, which gives more than it gets. It is nice that more folks are catching on. You can't play us for suckers if we're not at the table." Wouldn't it be nice if the folks who write those roll-over-play-dead editorials at the News read Esmonde's columns? Wouldn't it be better if Esmonde wrote the editorials? (15 April 2006)

Derrick Z. Jackson: Empty boasts on weapons labs (Boston Globe). More and more evidence is coming out that the Bush administration cooked the data and lied their collective asses off to march us to war in Iraq. So why do Democrats Clinton and Lieberman still back them up? The White House is now calling newspapers that publish evidence of the deceptions "reckless." If that's "reckless," what is lying your way to slaughter? (15 April 2006)

Bruce Jackson: Tom Golisano vs. The Casino (Artvoice). Talk to the head of any major Buffalo corporation, educational or arts institution and they'll tell you city hall's pursuit of the proposed Seneca casino in the heart of town is civic suicide. But because of fear, distaste for conflict or dislike of being in the public eye, not one of them has been willing to take a public stand on the issue. Until now, that is: Tom Golisano, the billionaire owner of the Buffalo Sabres and longtime critic of the New York State Lottery, called a press conference to announce his opposition. In this exclusive interview he explains his reasons for going public and tells what he plans to do now. (13 April 2006)

Bruce Jackson: Byron Brown Discovers the Senecas' 10-K (Artvoice). "If you want an indicator of the impact and significance of Tom Golisano?s Tuesday afternoon press conference in which he announced his strong opposition to a casino in downtown Buffalo, you need look no further than the press release issued that evening by the office of Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown. Brown has, for the past two years, done everything a human being in public life could do to keep from taking a position on the casino issue. He has adopted the posture of someone just going along with an engine put in place by his predecessor, Anthony Masiello. He has, so far as anyone knows, done no investigation of his own about whether a downtown casino would be good or bad for Buffalo. He?s just gone along and made no waves." And now he says he has some questions. He hasn't seen the light, but at least there's some movement. (11 April 2006)

Geoff Kelly: "Joel Giambra: We're Going to Court" (Artvoice). "On Wednesday morning, April 12, Erie County Executive Joel Giambra held a press conference to pronounce his own position on a downtown Buffalo casino. He also outlined the course of action he expected the county to take in opposition to such a casino....Giambra?s remarks came on the heels of Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown?s press release on Tuesday night, which itself came on the heels of Tom Golisano?s press conference on Tuesday afternoon. It?s worth noting, however, that Giambra officials alerted the media that the county executive would be making some such statement as far back as Friday. April 7. Brown?s statement came apparently out of the blue." (11 April 2006)

Matthew Spina: Golisano opposes casino (Buffalo News). The Buffalo News coverage of Tom Golisano's April 11 press conference announcing his opposition to the Buffalo Creek Casino. Consistent with its tradition of presenting both sides of any argument, the News includes a long statement from someone in Albany who says spending at a casino is no different from any other spending. Their "expert" apparently didn't know that the Senecas' casinos are tax exempt and free of environmental controls, which is one of the reasons the Niagara Falls casino has driven so many local businesses into oblivion. The phrase is "fair and balanced" guys, not "ignorant and wrong." (11 April 2006)

Matthew Spina and Brian Meyer: Casino talks marked by divisiveness (Buffalo News). A Seneca Gaming Corporation official threatened to put a few slot machines in a trailer and call it a casino if city officials don't give them everything they want. Some members of the Common Council find the threat of creating a cheap eyesore blackmail. Another SGC official says the first official didn't really mean it; he was just giving an example of something. Meanwhile, oppposition to the downtown casino continues to grow. (11 April 2006)

Citizens for Better Buffalo. Website of the organization that has been organizing the lawsuits in state and federal court seeking to force everyone involved in the proposed Buffalo Creek casino to start obeying state and federal environmental law. The site contains information on the lawsuit, links, how to contribute to the legal effort, etc. (11 April 2006)

Citizens Against Casino Gambling in Erie County. Website of the organization that has worked to keep a casino out of Erie County since Governor Pataki announced the deal he'd cut with the Seneca Nation three years ago: reports, studies, links, etc. (11 April 2006)

Carl Hiaasen: Expect little from changes at Interior Dept. (Miami Herald). "Good riddance to Gale Norton, the worst Interior secretary in modern history. Somewhere the ghost of Teddy Roosevelt is breathing a sigh of relief. After five years as a shameless shill for the gas, mining and logging industries, Norton is hightailing it back to her home state of Colorado to scrape the stink of the Jack Abramoff scandal from her hiking boots. As her replacement, President Bush has chosen Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne, whose loyalties to special interests are as naked as Norton's. No other Western governor received a higher percentage of campaign donations from the heavy extraction industries than did Kempthorne during his last campaign. His outspoken criticism of the Endangered Species Act makes him, in the president's eye, an ideal steward of the nation's 390 national parks and 545 wildlife refuges." (11 April 2006)

John Farmer: Right Trial, Wrong Defendant (NY Times). "Zacarias Moussaoui is no Hermann Göring. He's barely Colonel Klink. Through a perverse confluence, Mr. Moussaoui's interest in becoming something in death that he never was in life — important — has combined with the government's interest in executing someone for the 9/11 attacks. The likely result is an odd form of assisted suicide, in which Mr. Moussaoui will claim martyrdom as he is executed, and the United States will claim that the rule of law has been vindicated by bringing a terrorist to justice for 9/11. Neither claim will be justified. Right penalty. Wrong terrorist." (11 April 2006)

Robert Parry: Did Bush Lie to Fitzgerald? (ConsortiumNews). Bill Clinton was impeached not because he got his joint copped in the Oval Office corridor but because he didn't tell the special prosecutor that it had happened. That, folks, was really what all that foolishness was about. So what is going to happen with George W. Bush, who has for more than two years maintained that he knew nothing about who blew the cover of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame? It now turns out George W. Bush blew Valerie Plame's cover. Which blowjob is worse--the one Bill Clinton got and didn't tell the special prosecutor about or the one George W. Bush gave and didn't tell anyone about? (11 April 2006)

Christians sue for right to be bigots (LA Times). "The Christian Legal Society, an association of judges and lawyers, has formed a national group to challenge tolerance policies in federal court. Several nonprofit law firms — backed by major ministries such as Focus on the Family and Campus Crusade for Christ — already take on such cases for free. The legal argument is straightforward: Policies intended to protect gays and lesbians from discrimination end up discriminating against conservative Christians." As will policies intended to protect Jews, Muslims, people of color, and who knows what else--people who limp? (11 April 2006)

Cleaning up Israel's porn and religious sites (YNet). Ultra-orthodox hackers have erased Israeli porn sites and replaced them with pictures of the Lubavitcher rebbe, while hackers of another persuasion have gotten into the ultra-orthodox website and replaced its contents with anti-censorship and anti-religious items. Fair and balanced? Shalom. (11 April 2006)

Matthew Spina: Seneca plan for casino aims locally. SEC filing contrasts 'world class' billing (Buffalo News). A Buffalo News reporter expands on last week's Artvoice article on the 10K form the Seneca Gaming Corporation filed with the SEC. Seneca spokesmen had described the proposed Buffalo casino as a tourist draw; the SEC statement says it is designed to take money out of the local economy., ("If you go to that page," writes Joel Rose, co-chair of Citizens Against Casino Gambling in Erie County, "you'll be subjected to a Seneca Niagara Casino ad, as well as Google ads promoting gambling, even including some that claim to offer 'guides' to beat the slots. So to the Buffalo News: congratulations on a fine article, and shame on you for hosting inappropriate advertising, some of which is clearly fraudulent. Somebody ought to tell your right hand what your left hand is doing.") (9 September)

Joel Giambra: It's time for Erie County to become a plaintiff in the anti-casino lawsuits. Erie County Executive Joel Giambra, commenting on the discrepancy in the Seneca Gaming Corporation 10K and its public statements, is asking the Erie County Legislature to become plaintiffs in Citizens for Better Buffalo's anti-casino lawsuits in state and federal court. Is he serious or is he just trying to undo the perception that, since his county budget meltdown, he is politically toxic? (9 April 2006)

Joel Rose: Contacting Buffalo's public officials. Want to tell Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown, or your representative on the Common Council how opposed you are to a casino in downtown Buffalo? CACGEC's Joel Rose has put together a convenient list with their contact information. (9 April 2006)

Seymour M. Hersh: The Iran Plans (New Yorker). "The Bush Administration, while publicly advocating diplomacy in order to stop Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon, has increased clandestine activities inside Iran and intensified planning for a possible major air attack. Current and former American military and intelligence officials said that Air Force planning groups are drawing up lists of targets, and teams of American combat troops have been ordered into Iran, under cover, to collect targeting data and to establish contact with anti-government ethnic-minority groups. The officials say that President Bush is determined to deny the Iranian regime the opportunity to begin a pilot program, planned for this spring, to enrich uranium." A former defense official who was told that Bush believes a sustained bombing campaign will lead to uprisings that would overthrow the religious leadership, said, "What are they smoking?" (8 April 2006)

Bill Moyers: A Culture of Corruption. Let's Save Our Democracy by Getting Money Out of Politics (Washington Spectator). "Money is choking our democracy to death. Our elections are bought out from under us and our public officials are doing the bidding of mercenaries. So powerful is the hold of wealth on politics that we cannot say America is working for all Americans. The majority may support such broad social goals as affordable medical coverage for all, decent wages for working people, safe working conditions, a secure retirement, and clean air and water, but there is no government of, by, and for the people' to deliver on those aspirations. Our system of privately financed campaigns has shut regular people out of any meaningful participation in democracy....Congress belongs to the highest bidder." (8 April 2006)

Alan Dershowitz: Debunking the Newest--and Oldest--Jewish Conspiracy: A Reply to the Mearsheimer-Walt "Working Paper" (Kennedy School). The Harvard law professor who argues that torture is okay so long as it is done by good people for good reasons argues a recent Kennedy School of Government working paper about the influence in the US of the Israel Lobby. There is no Israel Lobby, says Dershowitz in his 45-page response. "If these charges sound familiar, it is because...they can be found on the websites of extremists of the hard right, like David Duke, and the hard left, like Alexander Cockburn. The appear daily in the Arab and Muslim press. They are contemporary variations on old themes such as those proumlgated in the notorious czarist forgerty, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, in the Nazi and America First literature of the 1930's and early '40s, and in the propaganda pamphlets of the Soviet Union." Guilt by association doesn't get more comprehensive than that. The study was also challenged, with far less heat and much more briefly, by David Gergen, "An Unfair Attack" (U.S. News and World Report) (8 April 2006)

John Prados: Libby Sings (TomPaine.com). George W. Bush has run the most secretive government in American history. His operatives have classified documents long in the public domain, attacking the Freedom of Information Act, refusing to provide Congress documents it needs--all in the name of national security. Now--with Scooter Libby's revelation that Bush ordered leaking of highly classified information to smear an official who blew the lid off the Administration's phony Niger yellowcake uranium story--we learn that the game is really protect-Bush's-ass. We're shocked! Shocked! (8 April 2006)

Patrick J. Fitzgerald: Government's Response to Defendant's Third Motion to Compel Discovery (US Department of Justice). One of the smoking-gun sections in this response by the special prosecutor to Scooter Libby's discovery fishing expedition occurs on p. 23-26, where we learn that Vice President Cheney told Libby that President Bush had authorized him to release top secret information from a National Intelligence Estimate and that only the three of them knew about this. (8 April 2006)

Scott McClellan's 29 September 2003 press briefing (White House). In which the hapless press secretary replies to the question, "Has the President tried to find out who outed the CIA agent?" with: "The President expects everyone in his administration to adhere to the highest standards of conduct. No one here would do such a thing" and "The president believes leaking classified information is a very serious matter." Indeed.(8 April 2006)

Sidney Blumenthal: The tethered goat strategy. Amid an internal crisis of credibility, Condoleezza Rice has washed her hands of her department (Guardian). US diplomats on the ground in Iraq report a steadily degenerating situation, with more violence being committed by more people, many of them trained by the US to maintain the peace. "Last month there were eight times as many assassinations committed by Shia militias as terrorist murders by Sunni insurgents." Condi Rice has developed a perfect technique for dealing with these informed reports: she ignores them and reassigns the traitors who let facts get in the way of P.R. (8 April 2006)

Bush Authorized Secrets' Release, Libby Testified. Prosecutor Says Disclosures on Iraq Were Aimed at War Critic (Washington Post). It's "we have met the enemy and they are us" time in the White House. Remember when Bush said he was going to find out who leaked the identity of a covert CIA agent? He did. He looked in the mirror. So, you sanctimonious hypocrites in Congress, when does any of this perversion of office and abuse of power rise to the seriousness of the Bill's blowjob by the xerox machine? (Well, impeachment may not be such a good idea: if Bush were convicted, Cheney would become president; if Cheney were convicted too, Dennis Hastert would become president. Ugh.) (7 April 2006)

"The War is Bad for the Economy." Interview with Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz (Der Spiegel). Bush I almost made a profit in Gulf War I: he got the allies to pay full price for used equipment. built up the US military, and was in and out like a frat boy in a whorehouse. Bush II is squandering between $1 trillion and $2 trillion, and he's still in there. (7 April 2006)

Bruno stalls FOIL bill (Albany Times Union). Why would Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno block legislation that would strengthen New York's Freedom of Information Law? (Yes, that is a rhetorical question.) (7 April 2006)

Bruce Jackson: The Real Villains (Artvoice). The Seneca Gaming Corporation wants to build a casino in downtown Buffalo, the net effect of which will be a huge drop in local employment, local tax revenue, and local discretionary income going to the area's theaters, restaurants, bars, athletic teams, charities, and educational institutions. But the people most responsible for the harm about to be done to Buffalo have nothing to do with the Seneca Gaming Corporation. They are far more domestic: you maybe voted for one and are sending weekly checks to the other. (6 April 2006)

Steve Coll: Deluded (New Yorker). "The President and the members of his war cabinet now routinely wave at the horizon and speak about the long arc of history’s judgment—many years or decades must pass, they suggest, before the overthrow of Saddam and its impact on the Middle East can be properly evaluated. This is not only an evasion; it is bad historiography. Particularly in free societies, botched or unnecessary military invasions are almost always recognized as mistakes by the public and the professional military soon after they happen, and are rarely vindicated by time. This was true of the Boer War, Suez, and the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and it will be true of Iraq. At best, when enough time has passed, and the human toll is not so palpable, we may come to think of the invasion, and its tragicomedy of missing weapons, as just another imperial folly, the way we now remember the Spanish-American War or the doomed British invasions of Afghanistan. But that will take a very long time, and it will never pass as vindication." (6 April 2006)

Noam Chomsky on War Crimes in Iraq (TomDispatch). An except from Chomsky's new book, Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy. (5 April 2006)

Buffalo's gets great talk-radio. Finally an alternative to the bible-thumping hate mongers of mid-dial. Go to the far left end of the dial for WHLD 1270, which airs Democracy Now, Air America and good local conversations. (5 April 2006)

Sex tourism thriving in Bible Belt (Rawstory). Because of a kink in the US criminal law, an adult is eligible for more prison time for having sex with a minor in Thailand than Atlanta. That is just one of the reasons the underage sex-for-money trade is flourishing in Atlanta. (5 April 2006)

Revealed: the plight of prisoners caught up in US rendition (The Independent). What do you think the US State Department would have said back in the old Cold War days if they heard about the dirty commies scooping people off the street in one country, shipping them in unmarked planes to prisons in which they would be tortured, permitted no contact with family or lawyers, held for years with no charge? How about if Fidel Castro or Hugo Chávez did it now? But of course Castro isn't doing that now and neither is Hugo Chávez. Only George Bush, America's Bible-thumping president is doing it. In the name of democracy and God. Are you scared yet? (5 April 2006)

A Klimt comes home (Washington Post). Sixty-eight years after it was looted by the Nazis, Gustav Klimt's most famous painting--the gold-wrapped Adele Bloch-Bauer--has rejoined the family. The Austrian government is not happy. Awwwww. (5 April 2006)

Chávez, Seeking Foreign Allies, Spends Billions (NY Times). The US has spent billions starving Cuba, all to prevent Fidel Castro from having political influence in Central and South America. But Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has got his own billions, and short of having him murdered or defining Venezuela as a terrorist nation and starting another stupid war, there is nothing the Bush administration can do to shut him up or slow him down. (5 April 2006)

Ian Gillan and friends (w/MLJ) at the Royal Albert Hall. Buffalo lawyer Michael L. Jackson leads a double life. Or maybe it's Buffalo rocker Michael Lee Jackson who leads the double life. One of them performed at London's Royal Albert Hall Friday with Deep Purple's Ian Gillan and Roger Glover, along with some other musicians, in "Ian Gillan and Friends," part of Roger Daltry's annual week-long charity event for the Children's Cancer Trust. Here are four photos from the concert. (2 April 2006)

Let state pay for casino roads (Buffalo News). Why, when Buffalo is about to get savaged by outsiders one more time, is the Buffalo News editorial page incapable of saying anything other than "Will one of you guys please adjust the pillow"? This time, in response to the Senecas' request that the city spent $6.6 million it doesn't have on a casino it doesn't need, the News says Albany should pay for the unnecessary roadwork. No, dummy: nobody should pay. There shouldn't be any new roads. There shouldn't be any casino. (1 April 2006)

Brendan Bernhard: The Fallaci Code (LA Weekly). Is the West so bedazzled by a few terrorists that it is missing, and losing, the real Muslim war? Yes, says Oriana Fallaci, in her new book, The Force of Reason (1 April 2006).

Rice Faces Cancellations and Catcalls on British Visit (NY Times). British foreign secretary Jack Straw invited his friend and counterpart Condi Rice to a soccer match; the team rescheduled the game. Then Condi wanted to meet Paul McCartney; he refused to meet her. So she went to McCartney's school--where the students greeted her dressed in black t-shirts that said "No torture. No compromise." Then Straw took her to another school, where they shouted nasties at her through megaphones. Condi reported that she was enjoying her visit. (1 April 2006)

US professors accused of being liars and bigots over essay on pro-Israeli lobby (Guardian). The dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and a political science professor at University of Chicago published an article describing of the Israel lobby's influence over American foreign policy. They were immediately attacked by Harvard torture-advocate, Alan Dershowitz and the snitch Christopher Hitchens. (1 April 2006)

Robert Scheer: An old story--scapegoat immigrants (San Francisco Chronicle). "There is no immigration crisis -- other than the one created by a small but vocal stripe of opportunist politicians, media demagogues and freelance xenophobes. So it has always been throughout the history of this country when anti-immigrant hysteria periodically reigns during low ebbs in our national sense of security and vision." (1 April 2006)

Derrick Z. Jackson: A madness for war (Boston Globe). The web spun by Bush has now cost the lives of 2,300 US soldiers, another 200 British and coalition soldiers, and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians. Iraq is closer to civil war than stability. Three years later, it is the United States that is not disarming, with Bush admitting last week that our troops will be needed there past his presidency. We took out a madman with madness. At a minimum, there should be hearings, with Bush under oath. With any more details like this, the next step is impeachment." (1 April 2006)

Joseph Cirincione: Fool Me Twice (Foreign Policy). Is the Bush administration tooling up for another war? The last one saved Bush's presidency and sent billions of dollars to Halliburton and other favored corporations, so who knows what benefits they might think they'd reap by lying us into another unnecessary war. (1 April 2006)

Long-Awaited Medical Study Questions the Power of Prayer (NY Times). If anything, the study shows, prayer can make things worse because patients expect things that aren't going to happen and they get depressed when they don't. We're looking forward to the analysis of this one on Monday's Comedy Central "Daily Show." (31 March 2006)

Bruce Jackson: Barry E. Snyder Goes Showbiz (Artvoice). The chairman of the board of the Seneca Gaming Corporation threw a hissy-fit when the Buffalo Common Council asked him to put one of his promises in writing. He said that request insulted both him and the Seneca Nation. Then he told a big fat lie. (30 March 2006)

Murray Levine: The Domino Theory. "The Vietnam domino theory was clearly wrong. Some claim our commitment in the Vietnam war “saved” Southeast Asia, but those countries developed non-communist governments and market economies as a result of internal social, historical and economic forces, without our military intervention. Even Communist Vietnam has moved toward economic, if not social liberalization. One thought I had was whether Southeast Asia would look any different today if we hadn’t fought the Vietnam war with a loss of 50,000 of our military, a loss of national unity, and a loss of untold Vietnamese lives. I also wonder about the Bush administration domino theory of democratization. The failure of the domino theory in Southeast Asia should at least make us skeptical that democratization in Iraq as a result of military intervention will result in a flowering of democracy in the Middle East." (28 March 2006)

Marion Meade: Estate of Mind: Dorothy Parker willed her copyright to the Martin Luther King and NAACP, both of them hated by her executor, Lillian Hellman (BookForum). If you're interested in 20th century American literature or the history of selfishness and bitchery, you'll love this piece. "The saga of Dottie and Lilly may be sad, but it's almost comical, too. Probably the first to smile about it would be Parker herself. She always imagined the hereafter as paradise, a sort of luxury hotel with hot and cold running dogs. Little did she imagine that settling permanently would require a Homeric journey of twenty-one years. More galling, her real-life coda—afterlife in a tin can—doomed her to spend fifteen of those years hanging around Wall Street, the symbol of everything she hated, followed by eternal rest in Baltimore, another place not to her taste, a short distance from a parking lot (Parker didn't drive). One of her oh-let's-kill-ourselves verses (aptly titled 'Coda') concludes with the polite request: 'Kindly direct me to hell.' She should have been a lot more careful about what she asked for. (28 March 2006)

Bush Was Set on Path to War, British Memo Says (NY Times). Another British memo has surfaced giving evidence that the presence or absence of Iraqi WMD had nothing to do with Bush's decision go go to war, and that Bush and Blair didn't care what position the UN took on their planned invasion--they were going to do it anyway. The memo indicates that Bush and Blair expected a quick victory, and says that "Mr. Bush predicted that it was 'unlikely there would be internecine warfaree between the different religious and ethnic groups. Mr. Blair agreed with that assessment." And how many people have died and will die because of their careless and arrogant miscalculation? (28 March 2006)

James Wolcott: Worse Than a Fool (Jameswolcott.com/Vanity Fair). "There are so many reasons that Bush's name should be dragged through the dust of his post-presidency for the harm and disgrace his administration has inflicted, and so impeachable offenses for which he would prosecuted today if we had a Congress worthy of the Founders. His malign indifference to Peak Oil and global warming may be the greatest of his crimes, because it will lead to the misery and deaths of untold millions of people, animals, and natural resources. (28 March 2006)

Andrew Cohen: Talking Himself to Death (CBS News). Zacarias Moussaoui is using the Federal courts to make of himself something he never was in life: a dead 9/11 martyr. "Only in America would a guy like this get a trial like this. Only in America would prosecutors have come to court with such weak evidence and needed the defendant to bail them out. And only in the warped mind of a terrorist would it be a point of visible pride to voluntarily align oneself with some of the worst criminals the world has seen in a long, long time. Moussaoui did that today, mocking his own defense and perhaps the truth, and now it's up to his judge and jury to absorb the shock of what he said, and how he said it, so that he gets what the facts and law say he deserves — whatever that turns out to be." (28 March 2006)

James Carroll: Rumsfeld and the big picture (Boston Globe). "How did the impulse to demonize the enemy in Moscow paralyze American strategic and political thinking? This psychological imprisonment was so complete that the demonizing mindset carried over into the new century, when dreaded 'communism' was replaced by 'terrorism.' George W. Bush did not invent this myopia. Iraq shows how self-destructive were the responses of Americans and their government to the crisis of Sept. 11, 2001. They were not new, but flowed along a channel through which powerful currents had been running for 60 years. The point of history's bigger picture, however, is to see that, as human choices shaped this terrible outcome, human choices can change it." (28 March 2006)

Martin Jacques: Imperial overreach is accelerating the global decline of America (Guardian). The Bush administration stands guilty of an extraordinary act of imperial overreach which has left the US more internationally isolated than ever before, seriously stretched financially, and guilty of neglect in east Asia and elsewhere. Iraq was supposed to signal the US's new global might: in fact, it may well prove to be a harbinger of its decline. And that decline could be far more precipitous than anyone has previously reckoned. Once the bubble of US power has been pricked, in a global context already tilting in other directions, it could deflate rather more quickly than has been imagined." (28 March 2006)

NOAA accused of hiding truth about global warming (Scripps-Howard). According to an MIT climate researchers, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is issuing reports based on White House policy rather than facts. Government policy holds that the increase in hurricane frequency and severity is mere coincidence and has nothing to do with global warming. Scientists who agree with that are allowed to talk to the press; those who disagree are muzzled. (28 March 2006)

Scalia gives the finger to critics (UPI). A Boston Herald asked Supreme Court Justice Scalia, who was coming out of mass, if he got questions about his impartiality on church-state issues. "You know what I say to those people?" Scalia said. Then he flipped the bird. (28 March 2006)

Michelle Breidenbach: NY Power Authority passing out $1 million a year to pet projects (Syracuse Post-Standard). "The New York Power Authority gives away millions of public dollars to charities that have nothing to do with the government office's directive to turn waterfalls into electricity. The state operation has given out $1 million a year to its executives' pet causes: soccer teams, symphonies, jazz festivals, fireworks and national organizations for the prevention of problems from diabetes to child abduction. The authority spent $25,000 this year for two members of Congress and their staffs to ski, skate, toboggan and act like Olympians with at least a dozen lobbyists for three days in January in Lake Placid." Breidenbach has two other articles in this excellent series: Congressmen, staff, lobbyists share a winter weekend on public's dime and Meet Your Free-Spending and Freewheeling, NYPA. (28 March 2006)

Pataki and cronies deal out $1.7 billion in secret pork (Rochester Globe & Chronicle). "Gov. George Pataki and state lawmakers have pushed the state $1.7billion further into debt by borrowing money to pay for projects like Little League fields and parking lots in affluent communities through a secret, politically driven system, according to a new report. The grants, doled out between 1997 and 2005, have benefited professional sports teams, corporations, local governments, universities, churches, libraries and youth sports teams." (28 March 2006)

Nicholas Lemann: Fear Factor (New Yorker). Bill O'Reilly is a liar, a bully, and, if he believes any of the hyperbolic drivel he yells night after night, he is also nuts. And after ten years on the job, he is the most popular host on cable news. Other than giving your dumbest friends a show they can watch and feel smug about and helping the rich owners of Fox get richer, the only good thing about O'Reilly is he provides the basis for Stephen Colbert's magnificent parody on Comedy Central. (22 March 2006)

Spectator: Where is the outrage? (Chapter 26). Why was it okay for Gerry Adams to lunch with Dubya but not to visit Buffalo? Why are the Dems so pusillanimous? Why did the FBI refuse to investigate Moussaoui? Why can't FBI agent in NYC do email? Why didn't the French and Germans tell everybody that they knew Bush was going to war on the basis of bogus intelligence? Spectator is pissed off. What about you? What are you gonna do about it? (22 March 2006)

Derrick Z. Jackson: Bush follows Johnson's logic (Boston Globe). When the American war in Vietnam was going to hell, Lyndon Johnson offered up some rural elections in a desperate attempt to convince the public that the American military effort was succeeding. Now George W. Bush is doing the same thing, offering up a vote in the Nineveh city of Tal Afar as proof of his war's success while ignoring the desolation and growing civil war everywhere else in Iraq, the country he destroyed. (22 March 2006)

Molly Ivins: Sign Me Up for the Pentagon Democracy Plan (truthdig). "Good news: The Bush people have put out a new 'strategy.' The bad news it's the same as the old one.... I do like the idea of supporting democracy, however, and think we should try it--especially here in the U.S. of A." (22 March 2006)

Frank Rich: 'The Secret Way to War' (New York Review of Books). "The number of Americans who believe that the President and his administration intentionally 'misled the American public before the war' has steadily grown with each passing week since the revelation of the Downing Street memo. The press has since caught up with the public and is belatedly filling in every chapter in this duplicitous narrative that it can. But, as was also the case in his early commentaries for The New York Review on the documents delineating America's road to the practice of torture in Abu Ghraib and beyond, Mark Danner was among the first to separate the threads of reality from the Alice-in-Wonderland fantasies the American government and its well-oiled propaganda machinery would have us believe." (22 March 2006)

Grants Flow to Bush Allies on Social Issues (Washington Post). If your organization opposes abortion and birth control, and if you can prove or at least pretend God told you to do it, the Bush administration will give you a lot of money. We're you're shocked! shocked! (22 March 2006)

The oil is going, the oil is going! (Salon.com). Unless you're a subsistence farmer, just about everything you eat, wear and buy is dependent in small or large part on fossil fuel. Of which there is less and less and less and less. (22 March 2006)

Diane Christian: License to Lie. A Zogby poll says 85% of American soldiers in Iraq believe Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9/11 attacks. If their Secretary of Defense weren't allowed to lie to them about such matters, would they remain so willing to die or be maimed? Dante saw deceit as the worst sin of all, with good reason. (20 March 2006)

Art Buchwald: The End. Or Maybe Not. He's dying. Death is a subject about which a great many people have a great many questions. Buchwald has decided which one we really should be asking. (20 March 2006)

Robert Fisk: The Farcical End of the American Dream (Independent/CommonDreams). So who failed us worse--the politicians who lied or weaseled out, or the mainstream print and TV press, which just weaseled out? (20 March 2006)

'Flake factor' plagues Harris Senate campaign (Miami Herald). Katherine Harris, without whose help George Bush wouldn't have been able to steal the 2000 election, says she's pouring $10 million of her own money into her crumbling Senate campaign. It needs the boost, given that some of her closest supporters have recently been convicted of bribery and such. Harris says she didn't know she was surrounded by crooks and scoundreals, "meaning," says the Herald's Carl Hiaasen, "she's either a dunce, or she's lying." (20 March 2006)

Peter Slatin: Towering Failure (Slatin Report). The proposed Freedom Tower at the World Trade Center site is a monument to political ambition, greed and lousy design, nothing more. "From the start, the governor has mistakenly and cynically seized upon this tragedy as a foundation on which to build a political legacy and platform for his future. He has tried to manipulate the rebuilding process to his advantage by promoting development of an ugly, unwelcome and unneeded building with a Disneyfied name while simultaneously quashing a program to disseminate ideas and dialogue that would have actually given substance to the same name. Mr. Pataki's forays to Iowa and New Hampshire while Ground Zero continued its downward spiral are a singular emblem of how he has managed to combine a lack of leadership with grandiose dreams, all leading to nothing." (19 March 2006)

William Greider: A Peculiar Politician (CommonDreams/Nation). "Senator Russ Feingold is an embarrassment to the US Senate, which makes him an authentic hero of the Republic. The Wisconsin senator gets up and says out loud what half of the country is thinking and talks about every day. This President broke the law and lied about it; he trashed the Constitution and hides himself in the flag. Feingold asks: Shouldn't the Senate say something about this, at least express our disapproval? He introduces a resolution of censure and calls for debate. Well, that tore it in the august chamber of lawmakers. Democrats scurried away like scared rats. And Republicans chortled at the thought. You want to censure our warrior President, the guy who defends us every day against terrorist attacks? Let's have a vote right now, the Republican leader demanded. Yuk, yuk." (19 March 2006)

Molly Ivins: The 'Long War?' Oh, Goodie (Boulder Daily Camera/Common Dreams). "So far, no good. After three years, tens of thousands of lives and $200 billion, we have achieved chaos. As Rep. John Murtha put it, "The only people who want us in Iraq are Iran and al-Qaida." Since the revisionist myth that we went to war to promote democracy keeps seeping into rational discussion, it is worth reminding ourselves that there never were any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq....n top of everything else, Rumsfeld is now circulating a grand strategy for the Long War written by Newt Gingrich. Am I the only person covering politics who ever noticed that Newt Gingrich is actually a nincompoop? When Newt bestrode the political world like a colossus (Time magazine's Man of the Year in 1995), many people took him seriously — but he was a fool then, too. The Republicans were so thrilled to have someone on their side who had ideas, they never seemed to notice Newt's were drivel." (19 March 2006)

Linda Colley: The star-spangled fantasyland of the fake and home of the bogus (Guardian). Lately, top US politicians work very hard to prove they're not girly-men, but it's all bogus: Cheney's bird-hunting expedition was with a pack of fatcats targeting farm-bred birds released in front of their guns; Bush had himself photographed on the deck of a carrier in a padded-crotch flight suit. In the 2004 election, Bush's flacks worked very hard to portray real war hero John Kerry as a sissy and war-evaders Bush and Cheney as warriors. It's all silliness, of course, but American voters seem to like or even need it. So what is Hillary going to offer in 2008? (19 March 2006)

Russ Baker: Bush's Incompetent Criminals (TomPaine.com). The recently-arrested Claude Allen, "gained conservative credentials by denying a low-income rape victim Medicaid funds for an abortion. Such a record apparently endeared him to the incoming Bush team, and in 2001, he was appointed to the No. 2 post at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. There he promoted abstinence-only AIDS-prevention programs. By 2003, despite slim legal credentials, Bush proposed Allen for a seat on the federal appeals court, though Democrats blocked his nomination. Apparently, Allen had once remarked that an opponent of his boss, Jesse Helms, was connected to 'queers.' Explaining himself at his confirmation hearings, he told senators that by 'queers' he meant people who were 'odd, out of the ordinary.' In 2005, he was brought to the White House." (19 March 2006)

California's new execution protocol released (Sacramento Bee). Because they couldn't get some doctors to help them put a man to death recently, the State of California found itself in the embarrassing position of having a man all trussed up and ready to kill but no official hit man ready to do the job. So they've revised their procedures in the hope things will work better next time. (19 March 2006)

The California execution protocol (US District Court document). How California kills: who does what to whom when, from the moment the warden receives the execution order to the disposal of the body. But it's a redacted version: there are some things the State of California insisted must be kept secret from anyone not involved in the killing process. What? Why? (19 March 2006)

Nat Hentoff: The Torture Judge (Village Voice). According to Federal judge David Trager, there is nothing wrong with the US government scooping up a Canadian citizen merely changing planes in a US airport on his way home, shipping him abroad to be imprisoned and tortured for a year, never charging him with anything, and denying him any legal rights the entire time and forever after. According to Judge Trager, Bush administration officials are not subject to laws prohibiting illegal torture and detention of innocent civilians. What country's flag is tacked to the wall over his bench? (17 March 2006)

Warren Bennis and Hallum Movius: Why Harvard is so hard to lead (Chronicle of Higher Education). The best essay yet on what went wrong at Harvard and the implications of that fiasco for everyone else in higher education. The NY Times op-ed editor turned this down in favor of an epidermal piece grounded in schadenfreude on the same subject by Camille Paglia. (17 March 2006)

Tom Harkin: Why I Fully Support Bush Censure (Truthout/US Senate). "We have a President who likes to break things. He has broken the federal budget, running up $3 trillion in new debt. He has broken the Geneva Conventions, giving the green light to torture. He has repeatedly broken promises – and broken faith – with the American people. And now, worst of all, he has broken the law. In brazen violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), he ordered the National Security Agency to conduct warrantless wiretaps of American citizens. And, despite getting caught red-handed, he refuses to stop." (17 March 2006)

Garrison Keillor: Day of reckoning for the Current Occupant (Chicago Tribune). "The Republican Revolution has gone the way of all flesh. It took over Congress and the White House, horns blew, church bells rang, sailors kissed each other, and what happened? The Republicans led us into a reckless foreign war and steered the economy toward receivership and wielded power as if there were no rules. Democrats are accused of having no new ideas, but Republicans are making some of the old ideas look awfully good, such as constitutional checks and balances, fiscal responsibility, and the notion of realism in foreign affairs and taking actions that serve the national interest. What one might call 'conservatism.'" (17 March 2006)

Robert Dreyfuss: Civil War is Here (TomPaine.com). "President Bush, whose happy-talk PR offensive on Iraq is in the midst of yet another spurt, suggests that Iraqis 'looked into the abyss' and decided that they’d rather avoid civil war. In fact, however, Iraqis are deep inside the abyss, looking out." (17 March 2006)

MI5, Camp Delta, and the story that shames Britain (Independent). "Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil el-Banna are among eight British residents who remain prisoners at the U.S. Naval Air Station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. They are jailed because British officials rendered them into the hands of the CIA in Africa, a fact that may explain why the British government refuses to intercede on their behalf. Bisher and Jamil have been wrongfully imprisoned now for more than three years. This is the story of their betrayal by the British government and their appalling treatment at the hands of the CIA and the U.S. military." (17 March 2006)

Margaret Kimberly: Civil War in America (Black Commentator). You think the South Dakota anti-abortion statute is cruel and repressive and insensitive to women in need? Not at all. Republican State Senator Bill Napoli says there is a circumstance when he thought abortion justifiable: "A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life." And you thought these guys were just a bunch of unimaginative, fruitcake Nazis in High Plains drag. Nonsense: they've got very vivids imaginations. (17 March 2006)

Ruth Bader Ginsberg: The Johannesburg Lecture (Constitutional Court of South Africa). Conservatives in Congress are attacking the US Supreme Court for referring in opinions to opinions reached by courts elsewhere in the world; US judges, they say, should rely on US courts, not foreigners. Nonsense, says Justice Ginsberg: our world is no longer so parochial or isolated that any of us can afford to ignore informed opinion anywhere. This excellent speech is particularly noteworthy for the last paragraph, in which Justice Ginsberg quotes a recent statement by Israel's Chief Justice on the illegality of governmental torture,. no matter what the perceived or even real threat. (17 March 2006)

We're bombing Samarra--but why? (BBC). The US is just carried out its largest bombing campaign in Iraq since Mission Accomplished three years ago and is now carring out a major land operation there. But the insurgents they sought to knock off seem to have left the area before the bombing started and other that scooping up two-score "suspects" the only thing they've captured are some "shells, explosives and military uniforms." (17 March 2006)

Sean Kirst: Downstate gubernatorial candidates need Upstate focus (Syracuse Post-Standard). It's been 86 years since New York had a governor from the west of Albany. Maybe one reason this region is such a mess is the rarity with which the governor's office bothers to look in this direction. Here are a bunch of key questions reporter Sean Kirst could put to the current crop of Downstate candidates for governor, if they would take the time to talk to him, which they won't. (15 March 2006)

The Abu Ghraib Files (Salon.com). 279 photographs and 19 videos the US Army and the Bush administration fought like hell to keep the world from seeing. It's clear why. (15 March 2006)

Diane Christian: Sharon's stroke. Does Pat Robertson know something you don't? How do you know when the voice in your head is God, the Satan, or just a voice in your head? Does death mean anything or is it just a big drag? (14 March 2006)

Senator Russ Feingold: Remarks introducing a resolution to censure President George W. Bush (US Senate). If Bush is guilty of the offenses Feingold claims, this should have been a resolution to impeach rather than censure. It wouldn't have made any difference: Bill Frist and the Senate Republican bow-and-scrape team, and the Democrat war-lovers & Patriot Act supporters like Clinton, aren't going to let it go anywhere anyway. (14 March 2006)

Anti-Semitism seen rising among France's Muslims (Boston Globe). "In the bleak housing project where a young Jew named Ilan Halimi was held captive and tortured before being dumped in a vacant lot to die, there's scant sympathy for the victim. 'It's too bad this happened, because we immigrants are always blamed,' said Ibrahim Ag Ahmalou, a lanky man of West African heritage who shares his girlfriend's apartment in the project. 'But Jews have all the money and power. Everyone knows this and resents them. That's why they have these problems.' Last week there were three more attacks on Jews by Arab and African immigrants in suburban Paris, according to police. None of the latest victims was seriously injured, but the attacks heightened the nervousness of French Jews. There is alarm that the antipathy of French Muslims toward Jews, long based on opposition to Israel, is reverting to the even more sinister prejudices that once pervaded Europe, making Jews the scapegoats for all social ills." (14 March 2006)

Arianna Huffington: Now the little guy is the true pit bull of journalism (Guardian). I am frequently asked if the rise of the blogosphere is the death knell for Big Media. My answer is that Big Media isn't dead; it's critically ill but will actually be saved by the transfusion of passion and immediacy of the blogging revolution. Blogging and the new media are transforming the way news and information are disseminated, as evidenced by the number of traditional media outlets, like this one, dipping their collective toe into the blog pond....Bloggers share their work, argue with each other and add to a story dialectically. It's why the blogosphere is now the most vital news source in America." (14 March 2006)

FBI documents raise new questions about the extent of surveillance (Knight-Ridder). It's the sixties all over again and you may not be paranoid after all. The FBI is infiltrating everything that moves and if you think there's somebody watching you, tapping you're phone, writing down what you say at environmentalist or peace or animal rights meetings, well, may b probably right. (14 March 2006)

NYCLU Seeks FBI Files on NY Political Groups and Activists (NYCLU). The New York Civil Liberties Union is trying to find out exactly how much spying the FBI doing on people engaging in peaceful and legal political and religious activity in New York. (14 March 2006)

Helen Thomas: Lap dogs of the press (The Nation). It's not just the Bush administration's lies that got us to this sorry pass. It's also the lazy and obsequious complicity of the New York Times, Washington Post and rest of the mainstream press. What good is the First Amendment if newspapers don't bother to utilize it? (13 March 2006)

Jerry Zremski: Indian casinos raising concerns (Buffalo News). Local opposition to off-reservation Indian casinos is spreading across the country. In most places, the opposition is successful because local government insists on the legally required impact studies to force the Indians to show their in-town casino won't do more harm than good. The situation is a little different in Buffalo where the previous and present mayor have done everything they could do to keep the law from being followed or the facts from coming out. People say that current mayor Byron Brown hasn't been bought off; it's just that he doesn't want to get the Indians mad at him because he's hoping that if a casino does get built they'll decide to give Buffalo lots more money than they are legally required to give. Isn't that imaginative? (12 March 2006)

Jane Mayer: A Deadly Interrogation (New Yorker). A CIA interrogator tortured a prisoner to death. At first they tried to hide it, then they tried to blame it on the Navy SEALS who had brought him into Abu Ghraib. When that unraveled they said it doesn't really matter because the White House says stuff like that isn't really torture because we're Americans and Americans don't do things like that unless it's really necessary. The Justice Department seems poised to--well, to do nothing because Attorney General Alberton Gonzales and his top staff were the people who prepared the White House position papers saying it's not torture if we're doing it. (12 March 2006)

For Muslim Who Says Violence Destroys Islam, Violent Threats (NY Times). Dr. Wafa Sultan says what many Muslims believe but are afraid to say: the real enemies of Islam are those who are pushing Islam back into the middle ages and reject education and collaboration in favor of murder and suicide. They'll probably murder her for having said that. (11 March 2006)

Molly Ivins: Enough of the D.C. Dems (Progressive/Information Clearinghouse). "Mah fellow progressives, now is the time for all good men and women to come to the aid of the party. I don’t know about you, but I have had it with the D.C. Democrats, had it with the DLC Democrats, had it with every calculating, equivocating, triangulating, straddling, hair-splitting son of a bitch up there, and t