"Black, Brown, and White"

By: Bernard Chazelle

You heard the uplifting words of Rev. Joseph Lowery:

Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man, and when white will embrace what is right.

The reverend seems to be a fan of Big Bill Broonzy. So am I.

— Bernard Chazelle

Thank You Jeebus

WhiteHouse.Gov

Oh sane evil people, I will never take you for granted again.

—Jonathan Schwarz

Today's Joke

Now that he's confined to a wheelchair, Cheney's transformation into a Supervillain is finally complete.

—Jonathan Schwarz

Free John Barry's Brain!

Via Glenn Greenwald, here's Newsweek's John Barry, explaining why any attempt to hold the Bush administration accountable for its numerous crimes would constitute "vengeance, pure and simple":

[T]urn to Congress—and the core charge that the administration "misled" the legislature and the American public by faking evidence that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. Really? There is ample evidence that Saddam was genuinely believed to have an arsenal by those with access to the intelligence. Why? Because Saddam's closest associates and his army commanders believed it; and told the CIA and its British counterpart, MI6, when, by ingenious and genuinely heroic efforts, those intelligence agencies made contact with them. All this is a matter of public record.

It would be incredible for any reporter to write this. The US was told by the head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service Tahir Jalil Habbush, Iraq's Foreign Minister Naji Sabri, and dozens of relatives of Iraqi WMD scientists that the administration's claims were completely wrong.

But it's truly mind-boggling to hear it from John Barry. It's not just that Barry is one of the better corporate reporters on foreign policy. No, it's much worse: Barry personally broke a giant story immediately before the invasion of Iraq about the U.S. government faking WMD evidence.

In the March 3, 2003 issue of Newsweek, Barry revealed that Saddam's son-in-law Hussein Kamel, after defecting to Jordan in 1995, told the US and UN that Iraq had no remaining WMD. This was the opposite of what Bush, Cheney, Blair and Powell were claiming Kamel had said. According to Barry, Kamel's statements had been "hushed up." (Barry says this was done by the UN, but it clearly happened with the connivance of the US.)

But there's more. After Barry's story came out, Reuters asked Bill Harlow, the CIA spokesman and one of George Tenet's closest aides, to comment. Harlow vociferously attacked Barry, calling his article "incorrect, bogus, wrong, untrue."

Of course, Barry's story was completely accurate. And it was about something the CIA in 2003 knew with 100% certainty—ie, what Hussein Kamel had said in 1995. (This is opposed to, say, whether what Kamel had said was true. It was later learned he'd been completely honest.)

So to sum up: even after having the CIA blatantly lie about his own work, John Barry will angrily defend the government's veracity.

It's genuinely frightening to see what people have to do to keep their jobs at places like Newsweek. Hopefully Barack Obama is about to create some glasnost within the US government, but even if he does, America's news outlets will retain an alarmingly Soviet tinge.

—Jonathan Schwarz

Tzipi Livni Not Interested In My Fascinating Observations

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni was at the National Press Club in Washington, DC on Friday. While there she took questions from members, including Sam Husseini of the Institute for Public Accuracy. Sam asked her a question that included my observation that Israel cited the 1967 blockage of the Straits of Tiran as a justification for the Six Day War.

As you can see in this segment by the Real News, Livni didn't care to address that in any way. However, the NPC did cut Sam's microphone. This section starts at about 6:00:

HUSSEINI: Why did you continue the blockade of Gaza, and you continue the blockade of Gaza. You've stopped several civilian boats from giving aid, the free Gaza boat for example, you cited a blockade as the cause for the 1967 war. When you had a truce with Hamas you continued the blockade of Gaza, a cause for a war by your own definition...On November 4th you killed six Gaza people…Why did you do that, why did you in effect kill the cease fire with a blockade, and on November 4th…

LIVNI (interrupting): The crossings between Israel and Gaza are open for humanitarian needs, and were open for humanitarian needs during the truce before that and even now during the military operation, thank you.

—Jonathan Schwarz

Works The Same Everywhere

This is from William Greider's book One World, Ready or Not:

Marsinah, a twenty-three year-old worker, tried to organize her fellow workers at a watch factory in east Java [in 1993]. She was abducted, raped and murdered. The brutal details of her death had become a national scandal, and though the military itself was implicated in her murder, the Suharto regime anointed Marsinah posthumously as a "worker hero."

Happy Martin Luther King Day!

—Jonathan Schwarz

This Week, On America's Next Top Asshole

New York Times, "The Richest of the Rich, Proud of a New Gilded Age," July 15, 2007:

Kenneth C. Griffin, who received more than $1 billion last year as chairman of a hedge fund, the Citadel Investment Group, declared: "The money is a byproduct of a passionate endeavor"...

Mr. Griffin maintained that he has created wealth not just for himself but for many others. "We have helped to create real social value in the U.S. economy," he said. "We have invested money in countless companies over the years and they have helped countless people."

The new tycoons oppose raising taxes on their fortunes...

"The income distribution has to stand," Mr. Griffin said, adding that by trying to alter it with a more progressive income tax, "you end up in problematic circumstances. In the current world, there will be people who will move from one tax area to another. I am proud to be an American. But if the tax became too high, as a matter of principle I would not be working this hard."

New York Times, "Hedge Funds, Unhinged," January 18, 2009

Griffin, who built the Citadel Investment Group into one of the largest hedge funds in the world, has seen the value of his funds plunge by roughly $10 billion, one of the biggest amounts lost in the hedge fund carnage last year.

He was down 55 percent while the average fund was down 18 percent.

Yes, it certainly would be a gigantic societal tragedy if Ken stopped working so hard to create wealth.

And of course:

Kenneth C. Griffin, chief executive officer of Citadel Investment Group in Chicago, has collected more than $50,000 for Mr. Obama. But Mr. Griffin, whose $1.5 billion in income in 2007 made him one of the country’s highest-paid hedge-fund executives, has given generously over the years to Republicans as well, and he recently helped to hold a fund-raiser for Mr. McCain.

—Jonathan Schwarz

Peace Just In Time

By: John Caruso

My prediction of a "January surprise" is coming right along:

Israel's security Cabinet convened a meeting tonight, and officials said they expected a decision to halt its 3-week-old offensive in the Gaza Strip but to keep the army there while Egypt mediates a long-term cease-fire deal with Hamas.

"We believe that our military campaign has achieved its goals and that we are now in a situation where we can cease our military operations against Hamas," Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said.

So as I expected, Israel is going to pull back from full-on Guernica levels of mayhem to a less obtrusive Jack the Ripper style before Obama is inaugurated, thus helping him avoid the embarrassment of openly backing mass murder on his first day in office—as the Israelis were helpful enough to say outright:

Officials in Israel also said they wanted to stop the fighting before Barack Obama is sworn in as president Tuesday to avoid clouding a historic day for the Jewish state's main ally and creating friction with the new U.S. administration.

Any other predictions, you ask?  One word: plastics.

— John Caruso

Can't Wait Until Ms. Rice Is Off My TV

Here's Ms. Rice, delivering more standard embarrassing crap from the foreign policy crap factory:

[T]he flaws and disappointing actions within the UN are rooted in its potential to serve as an engine for progress....It is why efforts to pass Security Council resolutions on abuses in places from Zimbabwe to Burma occasion such fierce debate, and don't always succeed. It is also why many try to use the UN to willfully and unfairly condemn our ally Israel. When effective and principled UN action is blocked, our frustration naturally grows, but that should only cause us to redouble our efforts to ensure that the United Nations lives up to its founding principles.

As in the past, there will be occasions in the future when deadlocks cannot be broken, and the United States and its partners and allies will nonetheless have to act.

That sounds exactly like Condoleezza Rice. But in fact it's Susan Rice, in her confirmation hearing to be the new U.S. Ambassador to the UN.

As I've said before: I'd long believed that black women named Rice who are willing to be appalling hacks to rise to the top of the foreign policy establishment are a precious national resource. However, I thought we faced serious supply constraints. Clearly I was wrong.

—Jonathan Schwarz

Someone Get George A Waiver

George W. Bush, age 61, to U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, March 12, 2008:

"I must say, I'm a little envious...If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed...It must be exciting for you...in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You're really making history, and thanks."

George W. Bush, age 62, in farewell address, January 15, 2009:

"We see America’s character in Bill Krissoff, a surgeon from California. His son Nathan, a Marine, gave his life in Iraq. When I met Dr. Krissoff and his family, he delivered some surprising news: He told me he wanted to join the Navy Medical Corps in honor of his son. This good man was 60 years old - 18 years above the age limit. But his petition for a waiver was granted, and for the past year he has trained in battlefield medicine. Lieutenant Commander Krissoff could not be here tonight, because he will soon deploy to Iraq, where he will help save America’s wounded warriors and uphold the legacy of his fallen son."

—Jonathan Schwarz

CIA Chief: Obama and Clinton Lying About Iranian Nuclear Program

Well, CIA director Michael Hayden didn't say that in so many words. But today he did indirectly confirm that, in clear contradiction to recent statements by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, American intelligence has not concluded Iran currently has a nuclear weapons program:

Shifting to Iran, Hayden said that country steadily is producing low-enriched uranium and soon will have enough to create highly enriched uranium - the fuel for a nuclear warhead. The CIA does not have clear intelligence saying that a decision has been made, but the agency is aware of the amount of uranium Iran has produced so far.

Agency officials presume that Iran is seriously considering using its uranium stocks to make nuclear weapons because of its willingness to endure the economic pain of penalties for refusing to agree to international safeguards.

"I'm amazed Iran is willing to run the costs they are running if they are not trying to keep the option open for a nuclear weapon," Hayden said.

In other words, nothing has changed from the most recent National Intelligence Estimate on Iran issued in December, 2007:

We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program; we also assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Tehran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons.

Here's Obama last Sunday:

OBAMA: Iran is going to be one of our biggest challenges and as I said during the campaign we have a situation in which not only is Iran exporting terrorism through Hamas, through Hezbollah but they are pursuing a nuclear weapon that could potentially trigger a nuclear arms race.

And Clinton on Tuesday:

CLINTON: As we focus on Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan, we must also actively pursue a strategy of smart power in the Middle East that...that effectively challenges Iran to end its nuclear weapons program...

BONUS: Note that, according to Hayden, US intelligence is making assumptions about Iran based on exactly the same reasoning that was proven false regarding Iraq. Here's one of many, many examples of this, from Kenneth Adelman in February, 2003:

Iraq’s huge oil reserves prove two key points. First, just how desperately Saddam clings to his nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs. His refusal to scrap them 12 years ago, as he pledged, cost Iraq more than $100 billion in lost oil revenue, perhaps as much as $200 billion. That’s a lot to forgo for a WMD arsenal. But it’s WMD that Saddam values most. No price his people pay is too high for his personal ambitions.

—Jonathan Schwarz

"A Scene From Dante's Inferno"

By: John Caruso

A Norwegian doctor who's been working in Gaza describes the abattoir Israel has created:

DR. MADS GILBERT: The condition in Shifa Hospital and in the other hospitals in Gaza is horrifying. I’ve been to Gaza for the last ten years, in and out, teaching and training people in the medical field. I’ve never seen anything like this. I mean, all windows in the Shifa Hospital are out, due to the bombing of the mosque across the street. They have very unstable electricity. They lack supplies, disposables, surgical equipment, trolleys, beds even. They have a fantastic staff, who are working heroically to save their patients, but we have been doing surgery with, almost regularly, two patients in each OR, on the wall, on the floor, in the corridors. The lifts are barely working. The ICU had to triple its capacity with makeshift ICUs.

It is really, truly a scene from Dante’s Inferno. It is these loads of patients coming in. We had 120, 130 patients coming a day, children, women. And I would say approximately 90 percent—I repeat, 90 percent—of the killed and injured that we have seen are civilians. Up ’til yesterday, 971 people have been killed; of them, one of three is a child below eighteen. 4,500 injuries, as of yesterday at 4:00; among them, every second is a woman or a child. So this is really targeting civilian Palestinian population.

And I recently happened across this article in Ha'aretz:

Senior Hamas officials in Gaza are hiding out in a "bunker" built by Israel, intelligence officials suspect: Many are believed to be in the basements of the Shifa Hospital complex in Gaza City, which was refurbished during Israel's occupation of the Gaza Strip. [...]

During a cabinet meeting a week ago, Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin said senior Hamas officials found refuge in the hospital basement because they know Israel would not target it, due to the patients in the upper floors.

I have to wonder why this was leaked.  Are they trying to lay the groundwork for a move against Gaza's hospitals?  I'd like to think that actually bombing Shifa is beyond even the Israelis, though I'd never be foolish enough to overestimate them.  But one thing I know from my own experience is that the IDF will kidnap the wounded from hospitals—even going so far as to remove patients from live operating theaters.  I stayed overnight with other activists in Hebron's Al-Ahlia hospital in 2002 because the IDF had surrounded it with tanks the night before, searching for wounded Palestinians and abducting a doctor (who was taken away in a tank, ridden around Hebron, and finally released).  We slept uneasily on stretchers, stationed on various floors, ready to go at a moment's notice to do whatever we could—witness, if nothing else—should the Israelis come again in the night.

As we're seeing again in Gaza, helping the wounded is one of the quickest ways to become the next casualty.  One doctor we saw in Al-Ahlia was also a patient; he'd been shot in the side while trying to help two injured men in town, and was still delirious from the pain and medications.  We joined a funeral march for nine people who'd been killed in the previous day and met a paramedic who said three of the dead were his cousins, who'd been killed while trying to go out and help a man who'd been shot in front of their home.  An older man who'd lost two of his sons was there, crying and falling to the ground, and people were helping him to an ambulance.

Another man we saw in the hospital had been beaten down with rifle butts by Israeli soldiers.  His 2-and-a-half-year-old daughter ran away and was run over by an Israeli jeep, breaking her leg.  The man's brother had been shot in the head by the Israelis two years before.

That's just a small fraction of what I saw and heard.  Do you begin to get some idea of what it's like to be a Palestinian?  There wasn't a single person I met in the West Bank or Gaza who didn't have experiences just like this (going back decades), of beatings, humiliation, imprisonment, torture, shootings, family and friends killed and maimed by the Israelis.  Not one.  Can you imagine what it means to live an entire lifetime like this?

"A scene from Dante's Inferno" today in Gaza, but over the years Israel has played out the entire book.  And all of this—so many human lives disfigured and destroyed—for nothing more than its grasping territorial ambitions.

UPDATE: Oh good god:

In some of the most intense ground combat of the 20-day-old assault on Gaza, Israeli tanks powered into the southern suburb of Tel el Howa clashing with Palestinian militants firing rockets.

The tanks advanced under a barrage of artillery and mortar fire that struck the al Quds, al Fata and al Wafa hospitals.

There were unconfirmed reports that Shifa, Gaza City's biggest hospital, was on fire after being struck by Israeli shells.

— John Caruso

Ho-Hum, Our Entire Political Class Caught Lying About Incredibly Important Matters Of Life And Death Again

As we know from reading America's fine newspapers, Ehud Barak made Yasser Arafat an incredibly "generous offer" at Camp David in 2000. Arafat turned it down because he had always been negotiating in bad faith. Then Arafat launched the second intifada to try to destroy Israel. At this point Israel had no choice but to defend itself, as it had no partner for peace. And so on until today.

Or...that's all complete bullshit:

[T]he conception that left room solely for unilateral moves and a policy of brute force did not originate with Sharon. Since the failure of the Camp David summit in July 2000, when Ehud Barak adopted the "no partner" theory, the [Israeli Military Intelligence] research unit, then under Amos Gilad, supported describing Israel's response to the intifada as a "war of no choice," a war preplanned by Arafat for ideological reasons...

The 2008 internal investigation [of Israeli Military Intelligence] contradicts this view. On August 29, 2000, shortly after the Camp David summit, the research unit stated in its situation appraisal that Arafat continued to prefer the negotiations as the way to advance his strategic goals, and he was convinced that violence would not help his cause at that stage. On August 30 the unit advised that Arafat was restraining the crisis and continued to adhere to the Oslo process. In an unprecedented step he also issued instructions to prepare public opinion to accept an agreement that would include compromises. On September 19 the MI suggested that in the coming period the Palestinians would not try to challenge bluntly the validity of the interim agreements, as they wished to play out the negotiations.

On September 27, 2000, when Prime Minister Barak allowed Sharon to visit the Temple Mount, the research unit urgently submitted an "intelligence compendium" in which it warned that in light of the religious and political sensitivity of the site, "violent confrontations are liable to develop with our forces." Three days later the intelligence researchers stated: "Arafat is not interested in an all-out confrontation, which is liable to pull the ground from under him." A 2004 investigation of "Ebb and Tide" (the official name for the operation to quell the second intifada), conducted by MI's Palestinian desk, found unequivocally that the second intifada erupted as a "popular protest" because people wanted to let off steam and vent the anger that accumulated due to the failure of negotiations and the inability to extract political achievements from Israel...

In a November 2003 document, Lavie wrote: "In General Staff think-team discussions, headed by the chief of the strategic division and with senior representatives of General Staff bodies, it was understood that defining Arafat and the PA as 'terrorist elements' was the directive of the political echelon, even if it did not declare this explicitly and did dictate this to the army."

He emphasized that while any government policy vis-a-vis the Palestinians was legitimate, the research unit's oral backing for government policy was faulty both professionally and ethically, and noted that the unit's written analyses were presenting completely different assessments...Lavie described this as "biasing intelligence research and adjusting it for the leadership." No less.

Of course, anyone paying any attention knew all this was true eight years ago.

It's also interesting, though not surprising, that Israel's intelligence services work exactly like the ones here—ie, they just tell the politicians whatever the politicians want.

Or as Henry Kissinger put it in his 1995 book Diplomacy:

What political leaders decide, intelligence services tend to seek to justify. Popular literature and films often depict the opposite--policymakers as the helpless tools of intelligence experts. In the real world, intelligence assessments more often follow than guide policy decisions.

Anyway—good work, America's elites! You've once again gotten thousands of people killed with your lies, with thousands more waiting for the scythe in the on deck circle!

—Jonathan Schwarz

Educating Thomas Friedman

As Glenn Greenwald points out, Thomas Friedman endorsed terrorism yesterday in his New York Times column:

Israel’s counterstrategy [in 2006] was to use its Air Force to pummel Hezbollah and, while not directly targeting the Lebanese civilians with whom Hezbollah was intertwined, to inflict substantial property damage and collateral casualties on Lebanon at large. It was not pretty, but it was logical. Israel basically said that when dealing with a nonstate actor, Hezbollah, nested among civilians, the only long-term source of deterrence was to exact enough pain on the civilians — the families and employers of the militants — to restrain Hezbollah in the future...

In Gaza, I still can’t tell if Israel is trying to eradicate Hamas or trying to educate Hamas, by inflicting a heavy death toll on Hamas militants and heavy pain on the Gaza population...If it is out to educate Hamas, Israel may have achieved its aims.

That's an interesting theory about using massive force to "educate" people. I wonder how well it worked on Thomas Friedman himself after the 9/11 attacks? His immediate reaction to the "heavy pain" inflicted on New York City's population was to try to restrain America's nationalistic right wing, right?

Tim Russert Show, CNBC
October 13, 2001

THOMAS FRIEDMAN: So it's time we got tough. It's time that we looked people in the eye. It's time that the terrorists were the ones who are always afraid, always looking over their shoulder, and to create that, you do have to fight a different kind of war. I was a critic of Rumsfeld before, but there's one thing...that I do like about Rumsfeld. He's just a little bit crazy, OK? He's just a little bit crazy, and in this kind of war, they always count on being able to out-crazy us.

Huh. Well, I'm sure it will work differently on the filthy wogs, given that they're subhuman.

—Jonathan Schwarz

Guess Who Else Wants to Nuke the Holy Land

By: Bernard Chazelle

What's the difference between Avigdor Lieberman and David Duke? Answer: The latter has never had a cabinet position. The head of the "Israel Is Our Home" party, a perfect fit for a former nightclub bouncer from Moldavia, said in a speech at Bar-Ilan University:

"We must continue to fight Hamas just like the United States did with the Japanese in World War II."

Interesting choice of words. So if the neocons are right, then Avigdor Lieberman and Mahmud Ahmadinejad agree! Well, they differ by about 10 miles.

PS: Lieberman is the guy who suggested drowning Palestinian prisoners in the Dead Sea. (Probably an old Moldavian joke.) I hope that doesn't give Mahmud any ideas.

— Bernard Chazelle

Meet Alan Grayson

You may remember Alan Grayson from his campaign commercial about Iraq corruption, one so angry and well-executed that you could hardly believe it came from a Democrat. He won the seat in Florida's eighth district, and now he's actually in Congress, actually asking the screamingly obvious questions about the bailout.

Here's video of Grayson yesterday querying Donald Kohn, the Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve, about who the hell they've given $1.2 trillion to. And Kohn REFUSES TO ANSWER. Matt Stoller, who's now a senior policy advisor to Grayson, has more, including a request for suggestions on where to take things next.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict Grayson will not be swallowed up by the Horrible Borg. He's certainly worth admiring right now (uh, mostly).

—Jonathan Schwarz