Salon.com News | Army bars Israelis from West Bank areas: "March 19, 2005  |  JERUSALEM -- The army is barring Israeli citizens from moving to four West Bank settlements slated for evacuation later this year, military officials said Saturday, following a similar ban on relocating to the Gaza Strip.

The move is the army's latest step to counter settler resistance to the government's plan to withdraw from Gaza and four isolated settlements in the northern West Bank. The plan, scheduled to begin in late July, would uproot roughly 9,000 Jewish settlers from their homes."

...

"Sharon has said there is no future for the Jewish residents of Gaza, where 8,200 settlers live in tightly guarded enclaves amid 1.3 million Palestinians."

(Via Salon.)

Salon.com News | Clinton adviser critiques Kerry campaign: "March 18, 2005  |  Albany, N.Y. -- A top adviser to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton thinks fellow Democrat John Kerry 'ran what was basically an inconsistent campaign' for president last year, according to a published report.

Clinton and Kerry are considered potential rivals for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.

The Kerry campaign had 'a different message every two or three weeks,' Ann Lewis, director of communications for Clinton's political action committee, said in Friday's issue of the Forward, a Jewish weekly published in New York City.

Jenny Backus, a Kerry political aide, said after reading the story: 'Kerry and Clinton are very close. They're working together on lots of good bills. He's doing a big fund-raiser for her in Boston. He headlined a big fund-raiser for her in D.C.'"

(Via Salon.)

RED HERRING | The Silicon Subcontinent: "BANGALORE – In July of next year, India’s first merchant chip foundry will open its doors, and begin mass producing semiconductors for a domestic consumer market. Located 18 kilometers south of Hyderabad, near that city’s new international airport, in the Rajiv Gandhi NanoTech Park, the new foundry signals a major shift in India—from a workhorse for other countries to an innovator for its own market."

(Via Technocrat.)

Bolton Iraq Wankery: "You’ve likely noticed that the office of Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA) released a letter describing State Department efforts to ‘conceal unclassified information about the role of John Bolton … in the creation of a [December 2002] fact sheet distributed to the United Nations that falsely claimed Iraq had sought uranium from Niger.’

That fact sheet, by the way, was the first public mention about this attempted uranium transaction."

(Via ArmsControlWonk.com.)

ARMY SNAPS UP JAMMERS: "For at least six months, military types have been talking up how great Warlock radio frequency jammers have been at stopping roadside bombs in Iraq -- and how few U.S. troops actually had the gagdets. But the Army is getting wise. Back in December, they beefed up the $4.7 million Warlock budget by $42 million. Yesterday, Army vice chief of staff Gen. Richard Cody announced that the Army is 'buying over 8,000 electronic jammers,' according to the AFP."

(Via Defense Tech.)

The New York Times > Washington > Senate Budget Shows Signs of G.O.P. Strain With Bush: "WASHINGTON, March 18 - In its last-minute flurry of votes before approving a budget Thursday night, the Senate added $5.4 billion in education spending for 2006 - just one more sign, members of both parties said on Friday, that President Bush could not get all he wanted on Capitol Hill despite the strengthened Republican majority.

Mr. Bush had sought to impose strict spending restraints on lawmakers, and the weeklong budget debate was a test of his strength on Capitol Hill. The $2.57 trillion Senate budget resolution, which differs sharply from the budget passed by the House, gave Mr. Bush much of what he asked for: tax cut extensions, a provision allowing oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, cuts in farm subsidies and reductions in the growth of some entitlement programs.

But on some key votes, enough Senate Republicans joined Democrats to defy the president."

(Via NY Times.)

Salon.com Politics: "On a party-line vote, the House Judiciary Committee rejected Rep. John Conyers' resolution that would have required the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security to provide Congress documents regarding 'security investigations and background checks relating to granting access to the White House of James D. Guckert (also known as Jeff Gannon).'"

(Via Salon.)

AlterNet: War on Iraq: The Democracy Lie: "President Bush and his supporters are taking credit for spreading freedom across the Middle East. But where changes are genuinely occurring they have nothing to do with the U.S. invasion of Iraq."

...

"Has Bush's direct pressure produced results, outside Iraq—where it has produced something close to a failed state? His partisans point to the Libyan renunciation of its nuclear weapons program and of terrorism. Yet Libya, hurt by economic sanctions, had been pursuing a rapprochement for years. Nor has Gadhafi moved Libya toward democracy.

Washington has put enormous pressure on Iran and Syria since the fall of Saddam, with little obvious effect. Since the United States invaded Iraq, the Iranian regime has actually become less open, clamping down on a dispirited reform movement and excluding thousands of candidates from running in parliamentary elections. The Baath in Syria shows no sign of ceasing to operate as a one-party regime."

(Via AlterNet.)

Daily Kos :: Political Analysis and other daily rants on the state of the nation.: "Today, my heart is heavy.  By just two votes, we came up short in our effort to prevent oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, home to over 150 wildlife species.

 

I offer my heartfelt thanks to the thousands of you who joined with me and signed my petition to Senate Republican Leader Bill Frist, demonstrating our strong opposition to this disastrous policy.

In the end, over 90% of Senate Democrats voted to stop this madness -- we just didn't have the votes to overcome the Republican majority in the Senate."

...

"I'm planning to organize a consumer boycott of any oil company that decides to drill in this pristine Alaskan wilderness area.  If, through our pocketbooks, we can convince these companies to do the right thing, we can still save the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from the destruction that would be wrought by the oil drilling rigs.  I know lorax and many of you have already been talking about this -- and I think it's a great idea."

(Via Night Light.)

Wolfowitz reaches out to Bono: "George W. Bush's nomination of Paul Wolfowitz to lead the World Bank has critics concerned that the neo-con architect of the Iraq war will use the World Bank as just another weapon in the war on terrorism. But Wolfowitz is showing that he knows a thing or two about diplomacy, too: In the last two days, he has checked in with numerous foreign officials, the leaders of international development agencies -- and Bono.

According to a Reuters report, Wolfowitz initiated two long telephone conversations with the U2 front-man, who may have been a contender for the job Wolfowitz is getting. With Europe and much of the developing world less than enthusiastic about Wolfowitz' nomination, the deputy secretary of defense knows that a good word from Bono might ease his way."

(Via Salon.)

Woman Claims Army Violates Combat Rules : "WASHINGTON - The Pentagon is denying it is in violation of its own rules concerning the possible deployment of women in direct ground combat units.

An activist who is against women serving in combat roles in the U.S. military has sent the Pentagon a detailed letter asking for an investigation into what she says are moves in which the armed forces get around stated rules by moving women in and out of certain units, the Washington Times reported Monday."

(Via Military.com.)

Pentagon Has Far-Reaching Defense Spacecraft in Works: "The Pentagon is working to develop a suborbital space capsule within the next five years that would be launched from the United States and could deliver conventional weapons anywhere in the world within two hours, defense officials said.

This year, the Falcon program will test a launcher for its Common Aero Vehicle (CAV), an unmanned maneuverable spacecraft that would travel at five times the speed of sound and could carry 1,000 pounds of munitions, intelligence sensors or other payloads. Among the system's strengths is that commanders could order a CAV -- an unpowered glide vehicle -- not to release its payload if they decided not to follow through with an attack."

(Via GlobalSecurity.org.)

Arak - Iran Special Weapons Facilities: "A comparison with the analogus Plutonium Production Reactor at Khushab, in Paksitan, reveals similar design elements, including the circular reactor containment vessel, nearby reactor cooling plant, and exhaust gas stack."

(Via GlobalSecurity.org.)

Bush, Berlusconi Discuss Italy's Troop Withdrawal from Iraq: "President Bush says Italy's decision to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq is not a blow to the international coalition supporting the formation of a new government in Baghdad. VOA White House Correspondent Scott Stearns reports, Italy is the latest member of that coalition to announce plans to start bringing soldiers home."

(Via GlobalSecurity.org.)

Night Light: rise of the sexcons: "Several years ago I left a screening of ‘Black Hawk Down’ with two male friends. One of them look around him as the other patrons left the theater. ‘All men,’ he said. ‘It’s like a porn theater.’ It’s true, and it’s significant. Whether it’s Jeff Gannon on hotmilitarystuds.com, Rush Limbaugh calling the Abu Ghraib photos  ‘good old American pornography,’ or right-wingers joking about LynndieEngland, the pornogrification of war is endemic. Glorifying violence is no longer enough – now it’s being sexualized.  It’s conservatism as sexual deviance. Welcome to the world of the sexcons."

(Via Salon.)

Defense Tech: LASER HUMMER IN IRAQ: "In 2003, the Army sent ZEUS, a Humvee armed with a 10kw solid-state laser, to Afghanistan, to blast mines and other explosives left over from years of war. In the six months ZEUS spent there, the laser-hummer zapped over 200 pieces of unexploded ordnance, according to the Army, 'at one point setting a record for ordnance disposal by negating 51 pieces in less than 100 minutes.'

Now, ZEUS 'is being forward deployed' again, Army Space and Missile Defense Command Lt. Gen. Larry Dodgen tells Defense Daily."

(Via a DefenseTech.)

The Failed Compromise by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.: "Republican pundits are busy separating themselves from what is stacking up to be the biggest calamity of the second Bush term: Social Security privatization. By calamity, I mean in a political sense: vast capital expended with no payoff for the regime. The result is less trust among the American people for those who pushed the reform. Just as Clinton's medical-reform scheme was said to be the source of the Democrats' undoing in 1994, Democrats now hope they can turn the Bush Social-Security failure to some kind of political advantage."

(Via Lew Rockwell.)

LewRockwell.com Blog: The Right-Wing Mystique: "Consider this utterly ridiculous statement from a recent article: '‘It is a problem when leading Democrats publicly recruit candidates who do not share the core values of the party,' Democratic consultant Kate Michelman, the former head of the abortion rights group NARAL, said Thursday. 'I don’t think you ever win in the long term by sacrificing core principles. The right wing has never done that.’'

I would agree that an ideological movement always loses by compromising, and that is what has happened to the American Right that once preached individualism and weak government. "

(Via LewRockwell.com Blog.)

The New York Times | U.S. Military Says 26 Inmate Deaths May Be Homicide: "WASHINGTON, March 15 - At least 26 prisoners have died in American custody in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002 in what Army and Navy investigators have concluded or suspect were acts of criminal homicide, according to military officials.

The number of confirmed or suspected cases is much higher than any accounting the military has previously reported"

(Via NY Times.)

LewRockwell.com Blog: A Preacher Who Actually Believes the Bible: "In my upcoming LRC article, 'Charles Spurgeon on Christian War Fever,' there is a tremendous quote by the English Baptist minister Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892) that I think is worth highlighting:

'Put up thy sword into thy sheath, for hath not he said, 'Thou shalt not kill,' and he meant not that it was a sin to kill one but a glory to kill a million, but he meant that bloodshed on the smallest or largest scale was sinful.'"

(Via LewRockwell.com Blog.)

The New York Times | Anthrax Scare Is Attributed to a Testing Error: "WASHINGTON, March 15 - Health officials believe that a mix-up of samples in a Defense Department contractor's laboratory was behind an anthrax scare Monday and Tuesday that rattled the stock market, set the White House on alert, shut three post offices in the Washington area and led to more than 800 people being offered antibiotics.

A senior military official said in a conference call with reporters Tuesday night that 'quality control problems' at the contractor's laboratory appeared to have caused the bioterrorism false alarm."

(Via NY Times.)

How Come It's Still 1984? by Vin Suprynowicz: "Why are the Democrats – the party of my youth – so widely dismissed as pathetic poseurs these days?

Let's see. George W. Bush makes a big speech about how America promotes democracy throughout the world. How do the Democrats respond? By pointing out that our Founding Fathers purposely set us up with a Republic, while strongly warning against direct 'democracy' as nothing but 'mob rule,' likely to vote the constitutional rights of minorities out of existence at the first opportunity?

Of course not."

(Via LewRockwell.com Blog.)

The Nation | What Would the Public Do?: "In a fascinating new study released last week, the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) explained Bush's budget to a representative sample group of respondents and asked what they'd do differently. The results should be a wake up call to elected officials on Capitol Hill.

'The most dramatic changes were deep cuts in defense spending, a significant relocation toward deficit reduction, and increases in spending on education, job training, reducing reliance on oil, and veterans,' the study found. 'These changes were favored by both Republicans and Democrats.'"

(Via The Nation Weblogs.)

Salon.com News | Running on empty: "March 15, 2005  |  Four years ago, the analysts at John S. Herold Inc. were the first to call bullshit on Enron. On Feb. 21, 2001, three Herold analysts issued a report that said Enron's profit margins were shriveling, the company had too few hard assets, and its stock price was way too high. Less than ten months later, Enron filed for bankruptcy."

...

"Herold's work shows that the best minds in the energy industry are accepting the reality that the globe is reaching (or has already reached) the limit of its own ability to produce ever increasing amounts of oil."

(Via Salon.)

Iran Wankery: "Persuading other countries to take the courageous ‘Iranian nukes bad’ stance does not a diplomatic triumph make. And who, exactly, was on the ‘Bombs for Tehran’ bandwagon that W so successfully derailed?"

(Via ArmsControlWonk.com.)

Iran Wankery: "Persuading other countries to take the courageous ‘Iranian nukes bad’ stance does not a diplomatic triumph make. And who, exactly, was on the ‘Bombs for Tehran’ bandwagon that W so successfully derailed?"

(Via ArmsControlWonk.com.)

Salon.com News | Post office reopens after anthrax attacks: "The New Jersey post office that handled anthrax-laced letters reopened Monday morning, nearly 3 1/2 years after the deadly mailings that further heightened the nation's fears in the weeks after the Sept. 11 terror attacks."

...

"In all, the anthrax attacks killed four people across the country and sickened 17. There were five confirmed anthrax infections and two suspected cases in New Jersey, but no fatalities. Investigators have not determined who was responsible for the attacks."

(Via Salon.)

MSNBC - Bottom Dollar : "If you've been following closely, you know that the dollar has been declining steadily against many foreign currencies. From recent highs—reached in mid-2001 or early 2002—the dollar has dropped 38 percent against the euro, 23 percent against the yen and 25 percent against the Canadian dollar. And most economists expect the slide to continue. By the year-end, the euro may rise to $1.45 from $1.34 and the yen to 97 from 104 (that's 97 yen to the dollar), says economist Nariman Behravesh of Global Insight. But, of course, you probably haven't been following closely. For most Americans, the subject of the dollar—its value on foreign-exchange markets—is a yawner. A depreciating dollar makes foreign vacations more expensive, puts pressure on the prices of imported cars and shoes and (the good part) improves the global competitiveness of U.S. manufacturers. Normally, these matters aren't high on our 'must know' list. But now is not normal."

(Via MSNBC.)

AlterNet: MediaCulture: Free Speech Impediment: "This Sunday's episode of ABC's Boston Legal focusing on censorship was itself censored, purged of all references to Fox and Bill O'Reilly. And nobody's talking."

...

"original script first:

Chelina: If you had to watch the news, Mrs. Piper, which network would you go to?
Catherine (simply): Fox, of course.
Chelina: Can you tell us why?
Catherine: Well. For starters, we’re winning the war on Fox. The economy’s better there. And Brit Hume. Sometimes I close my eyes and…go to him.

And now, the censored version:

Chelina: If you had to watch the news, Mrs. Piper, which network would you go to?
Catherine (simply): I don’t know. I’d probably seek out the station where we’re most likely to be winning the war. Where I can find a better economy. Maybe some weapons of mass destruction."

(Via AlterNet.)

Missing the Point on Iran: "Note to SecState Rice:

Making token gestures to support the EU3-Iran negotiations, is only a really, really, weak beginning of a coherent Iran policy.

Look, Iran is being asked to do something that’s not legally required, (i.e. give up its fuel cycle), so we have to provide serious incentives. I don’t think the WTO and aircraft parts incentives are going to cut it. Iranian officials, as well as experts who have recently spoken with said officials, seem to agree."

(Via ArmsControlWonk.com.)

Defense Tech: TOUGHEST. DRONE. EVER.: "The ROBART III is the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center's prototype for a mechanical rent-a-cop replacement -- designed to detect intruders, and pop 'em with a 'pneumatically powered six-barrel Gatling-style weapon that fires simulated tranquilizer darts or rubber bullets.'"

It's ok, I was thinking it too.

(Via a DefenseTech.)

The New York Times | As Clinton Wins G.O.P. Friends, Her Rivals' Task Toughens: "The intimate gathering at a private home in Corning, N.Y., was pretty typical for an upstate fund-raiser featuring Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton: dozens of donors clustered in the terrace, listening to her speak, as they sipped wine and nibbled on hors d'oeuvres.

But one thing made the event unusual: The host was a prominent Republican businessman whose brother Amo Houghton was the popular nine-term Republican congressman from the area who, it turns out, gives Mrs. Clinton, a Democrat, an 'A-plus' for the job she is doing."

(Via NY Times.)

Defense Tech: TOUGHEST. DRONE. EVER.: "The ROBART III is the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center's prototype for a mechanical rent-a-cop replacement -- designed to detect intruders, and pop 'em with a 'pneumatically powered six-barrel Gatling-style weapon that fires simulated tranquilizer darts or rubber bullets.'"

It's ok, I was thinking it too.

(Via a DefenseTech.)

The New York Times | Army Details Scale of Abuse of Prisoners in an Afghan Jail: "WASHINGTON, March 11 - Two Afghan prisoners who died in American custody in Afghanistan in December 2002 were chained to the ceiling, kicked and beaten by American soldiers in sustained assaults that caused their deaths, according to Army criminal investigative reports that have not yet been made public."

(Via NY Times.)

AlterNet: MediaCulture: The White House Fakes It: "Continued violence in Iraq, a struggling economy, an unpopular plan to privatize Social Security, homeland security left underfunded while the rich get giant tax cuts ... what's a White House to do when the news about its policies isn't favorable? Fake it."

I believe this is it.

(Via AlterNet.)

The New York Times | Orlando Mayor Is Indicted in Absentee Ballot Case: "ORLANDO, Fla., March 11 - Mayor Buddy Dyer turned himself in on Friday to face a felony charge of paying someone to collect absentee ballots before his election in a tight race last year. Gov. Jeb Bush swiftly suspended Mr. Dyer, as required by Florida law, in a case that has roiled this city for months and even caused a brief firestorm in the presidential election."

(Via NY Times.)