Headlines - Monday

 

I'll be gone for a few days, talk amongst yourselves.

 

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Did You Know? is a video collection of a bunch of interesting statistics, like the fact that 694,000 songs are illegally downloaded every five minutes.

 

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Happy Year of the Tiger

 

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U.S. Apologizes for Killing 12 Afghan Civilians;

"Stuff Happens," Says General McChrystal

 

NATO is us

 

MARJAH, Afghanistan — Two U.S. rockets slammed into a home Sunday outside the southern Taliban stronghold of Marjah, killing 12 civilians after Afghanistan's president appealed to NATO to take care in its campaign to seize the town. 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/14/nato-rockets-miss-target_n_461831.html

 

Breakdown of NATO troops:

• NATO - ISAF (85.795)^[1]
  •  United States (47,085)
  •  United Kingdom (10,000+)
  •  Germany (4,415)
  •  France (3,750)
  •  Italy (3,150)
  •  Canada (2,830)
  •  Poland (1,955)
  •  Netherlands (1,950)
  •  Australia (1,550)
  •  Spain (1,070)
  •  Denmark (750)
  • 33 other countries

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Joe the Plumber goes off on McCain, says he 'screwed up my life'

 

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Back in Iraq ...

 

While the airwaves are full of the latest faux victory-in-Afghanistan scheme (complete with the usual "regrets" that in some minds absolve US forces of responsibility for yet more civilian casualties), Iraq is off the American radar except for some self congratulatory claims that we are "responsibly ending the war in Iraq."

How's this for responsible?

Along with the reports of the recent raid mentioned in this Al Jazeera video:

At least 10 civilians have reportedly been killed and many more injured in a clash between joint Iraqi-US forces and anti-government fighters in Iraq's Maysan province near the Iranian border, authorities say.

we also have the decision by General Ray Odierno last fall to include the Peshmerga in a joint US Iraqi force in Kirkuk, granting legitimacy to this irregular force widely believed to be deeply involved in the ethnic cleansing of Christians and other minorities in the region for more than a year. These joint patrols are being used more intensively now – without the approval of a number of local Arab and Turkmen leaders who insist on "participation with equal share of Kirkuk components … Arab, Kurds, Turkmen, Cheldeans and Assyrians."  This preference by Odierno for a nonrepresentative force plays out as Kurdish leaders attempt to consolidate control of additional territory in opposition to a centralized national government.

These same Peshmerga have been involved in recent attempts to block the activities of politicians supportive of the central government rather than Kurdish autonomy:

http://firedoglake.com/2010/02/14/back-in-iraq-ethnic-cleansing-and-more-civilians-killed/

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From John Byrne at Raw Story: top five insurers post 56% profit gains in 2009

 

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Civil rights are "quaint" and the Constitution is just "a piece of paper" until it's white Christian guys who are being denied.

... The very same people who have been demanding for years that Muslims be imprisoned for life, tortured and killed with no trials or charges of any kind suddenly become extremely sensitive to the nuances of due process and humane detention conditions -- they start sounding like Amnesty International civil liberties extremists -- the minute it's a Christian, rather than a Muslim, who is subjected to such treatment ...

It's amazing how quickly the conservatives grasp the concept of "nuance" when they have to.

 

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Cheney confesses to a war crime by saying, "I was a big supporter of waterboarding"

 

"The reason I've been outspoken is because there were some things being said, especially after we left office, about prosecuting CIA personnel that had carried out our counterterrorism policy or disbarring lawyers in the Justice Department who had -- had helped us put those policies together, and I was deeply offended by that, and I thought it was important that some senior person in the administration stand up and defend those people who'd done what we asked them to do."

So now you have the most recent vice-president of the United States admitting to a war crime, and NOTHING is going to be done about it by his successor.

And THAT is going to be the biggest failing of Barack Obama.

 

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Free legal tip

 

If you are in Haitian jail for suspicion of child trafficking, it is a really good idea if your legal team does not include some clown who is wanted in two countries as a suspect in a sex trafficking ring.

 

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"It's OK to lick me when it's just the two of us, Ma,

but please don't do it when I'm with my friends."

 

 

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An unfortunate juxtaposition:

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Liz Cheney speaks!

Liz Cheney, THE MOST IMPORTANT DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE FOR NEAR EASTERN AFFAIRS in our nation's history was on the talkies today (for unknown or unknowable reasons, she keeps getting invited back) and she told a lie so big, bold, and so stunning it deserves the full pull-quote treatment:

As Attorney General (Michael) Mukasey has pointed out recently, when we prosecuted and successfully convicted people after the '93 World Trade Center bombing, after the East African bombing, what it got us was 9/11 and 3,000 dead Americans.

This continues to support my theory that what the Cheney's and the other dead-enders fear most is that if their torture-induced confessions cannot be introduced as evidence, that it will lead to the repudiation of their entire methodology for intelligence, and may in fact bring about an indictment of Blam-Blam and the other war criminals.

And make no mistake: Chimpy and Blam-Blam are war criminals. If we had any sort of leaders in Congress (Hello, Nancy Pelosi) who believed in the rule of law, Chimpy and Co. would have been brought up on War Crime charges and indicted by now.

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Winter weather failed to deter insurgents from stepping up roadside bomb attacks in Afghanistan, as both blasts and casualties among U.S. and allied troops in January more than doubled from a year earlier, Pentagon data show.

Coalition troops found 727 bombs in January compared with 276 in the same month of 2009. Blasts killed 32 U.S. and allied troops and wounded 137 others, compared with 14 deaths and 64 injuries in January 2009, according to the data. These bombs are the top killer of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/2010-02-14-ieds-afghanistan_N.htm

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E. coli fears spark 4.9 million pound meat recall! And veal patties too!

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Where are the populists?

The current war between the haves and the have nots is of course,  nothing new.  It's been going on since the founding of the republic itself.  In fact, the only reason for our form of a "Capitalist Republic" as is being defined for us by the current nobility in the first place is to allow the few to benefit at the expense of the many.  http://www.theygaveusarepublic.com/diary/4915/where-are-the-populists

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Yesterday on Press the Meat, Rep. Aaron Schock (R-IL) had an unfortunate run-in with the facts of the Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab case, courtesy of MSNBC's Rachel Maddow.