Pitt's blog now has audio! Check out the Truth Out Overview with Will Pitt. (truthout.org)

Committee to Protect Bloggers announces its first campaign: Free Arash and Mojtaba. This is a campaign to free dissidents in Iraq and elsewhere who have been imprisoned for blogging about their situation. While the campaign is about 'bloggers' specifically, the concerns are human rights and freedom of speech - blogging is just a tool for speech, not the focus of this campaign.

Must read item of the day: as the U.S. media maintains its sunny outlook on the future of Iraq - perhaps because, regardless of who won, the corporate tax rate is permanently capped at 15 percent? - things are going to hell for moderates, secularists, and women who live there. Go read this at Riverbend's blog: Baghdad Burning: Groceries and Election Results. (riverbendblog.blogspot.com, 02/18/05).

Having recently read Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, Riverbend's conversation and worries on what it's like for women in Iran, with the men saying it's not so bad, is especially creepy.

A nice, long explanation about how the Sunnis may not benefit from even the tiny consolation of a constitutional veto: Informed Comment's Guest Editorial by Andrew Arato points out that the alleged protection for Sunnis, the right to veto the constitution put forth by the people elected in the election they boycotted or couldn't get to, isn't guaranteed. This is a little long, but good, as everything on Dr. Cole's website is.

Also of interest, from his summary of Chalabi's recent interview, this quote:

“The agreement will deal with the right or how those U.S. forces detainees Iraqis. There are thousands of Iraqis now detained by U.S. forces. We don't know why. We don't know how. And we don't know under what legal structure they are being detained. I believe that this process should be an Iraqi process.”

Chalabi is a spooky guy, with a lot of ambition, and some undemocratic tendencies. (Cole accurately describes him elsewhere as a "corrupt expatriate financier and Iranian asset.") I'm surprised that even he is concerned about the U.S.' mass arrests, but it's worth noting.

Actually, there are so many informative things to read at juancole.com that you should just go, now, and read until your brain is full. He reports on the low turnout, the dubious assertions by the western press that various elected Iraqis are secular even though they espouse fundamentalist views publicly, etc.

Elections In Iraq: I like how the U.S. press, despite the fact that turnout wasn't very good, now pretend that everything is fine in Iraq because they had an election.

I mean, only 2% of Sunnis turned out in some areas, but that's FINE! (Fine for whom?) And now we can pretend that, even if the U.S. government pre-approved who could run in the election, that everyone will accept the results - even all those Sunnis who didn't vote - and all is legitimate now.

I have no idea why they think that. An optimistic guess would be that they think it will go over simply because fundamentalist-led, anti-occupation parties won seats far and away beyond the puppet government's. Yet, whenever someone is quoted about how great it is, the person quoted is never an Iraqi. So it comes across as a bit... off.

For those of you, like me, who need a short recap, the BBC FAQ about the election is here: BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | Q&A: Iraqi election (bbc.co.uk, 02/13/05).

Remember Afghanistan? That other country we invaded? Want to know how they're doing? Read this: UN warns of fresh Afghan chaos (bbc.co.uk, 02/21/05). The answer: things are extremely bad, getting worse, and may pose a threat to its neighbors.

It makes you think other nations might think twice before accepting U.S. "help."