The U.S. rounded up 390 or so Iraqis in Thuluya, including kids and elderly men, in a raid that killed at least 3 Iraqis (Washington Post). US forces are occupying people's homes in the town, which they suspect is a bed of anti-US activity (referred to merely as pro-Saddam activity, though no evidence of that has been offered). 27 to 70 Iraqi fighters were killed by the U.S. elsewhere in clampdowns by the U.S., some of whom were foreign fighters (Associated Press/SF Chronicle).

Writer and commentator Molly Ivins speculated that the war would be short, but the peace would be "from hell," and I hope she bet money on that.

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One of my friends complained that there are all sorts of allegations published in the press about mass graves which may be victims of Hussein's evil regime, but then raise questions (why were the victims all tidily and properly buried in caskets if they were mass-murdered in secret?) and then fail to follow up with the site turns out to be a cemetary from the Iran-Iraq war.

Finally, 10 bodies have been dug up from a mass grave which witnesses said should contain 115 bodies of deserting soldiers and prisoners. (Washington Post) The witness insist that they saw fresh bodies piled up in the area, where the digging has taken place. The article says this site is the first of its kind, because some of the remains are recent, which is worth noting for my friend right there.

But where are the other 105 bodies? The witnesses have no idea. And then, raising more questions, they have experts saying that all remains turn skeletal in the climate in this area, but then turn around and suggest that people recognized their relatives and claimed the bodies and took off quickly.

I know I work in law and am perhaps more obsessed with evidence standards than many, but it seems ridiculous to me that, if a government wants to try someone as bad as Hussein was reputed to be for war crimes, they 1) can't find enough victims and 2) everyone can find their dead skeletal relatives EXCEPT the investigators. It's just mystifying.

Speaking of avoiding justice, even the head of the U.N. thinks immunity for all U.S. soldiers on peacekeeping missions is a bad idea. (BBC) War crimes are war crimes, right? Don't we all deserve equal justice under the law? The U.S. is so desperate to avoid prosecution at the International Criminal Court, you have to wonder what our fine leaders have planned. The US did get another exemption from prosecution (Washington Post), which makes me wonder what they have in mind.

Aside from avoiding the charges currently pending by Iran. Iran brought suit against the U.S. for supplying WMDs to Iraq for its attacks on Iran, a case that has been stalled for years. Now Iran wants an apology for U.S.' role in helping to set up Al-Quaida (Engineering News Record). They aren't holding their breath. But I'd love to hear Bush's supporters stumble while trying to explain this one away. 'Well, Sadda m is an evil man NOW, but... well... um..."

The U.S. is planning its execution chamber for the prisoners of war at Guantanamo Bay. The rules for the kangaroo courts the U.S. government has laid out have been discussed in the legal papers I read. They suck. I can't even tell you how badly. Defense lawyers won't get any confidential time with their clients and aren't even allowed to see the evidence against their clients. They may not be able to see most of the evidence in trial. And they need a security clearance. And can't investigate. And can't ever talk about what happened. And likely can't ever be paid, which is the least of the problems with the system, but still.

Military tribunals, secrecy, no opportunity for a real defense... Didn't we used to make fun of countries that had such pathetic and unjust systems? Didn't we mock the Soviets for this during the Cold War??

The BBC has provided a new update on the status of Iraq's cultural treasures, investigated by one of its correspondents. The article points out that Hussein's attempts to co-opt history involved imposing Baath party members in the museum administration, making it an attractive target for oppressed citizens who didn't necessarily view the ancient treasures of their people as the ancient treasures of their people. Perhaps the U.S. soldiers, who exchanged fire with Iraqi soldiers who holed up at the museum briefly, saw it the same way: the way the soldiers secured the oil ministry while ignoring the museum workers' pleas for assistance is still unpleasantly inexplicable.

"The claim that 170,000 items were destroyed or looted has long been abandoned, and reduced considerably. Also, many items have been recovered. Museum staff say that only 33 major items, and around 2,100 minor items, are missing, while 15 major items in the galleries were seriously damaged. These include the famous 4,500-year-old-harp from Ur, with its fabulous golden bull's head...."

2,100 "minor" items is still a lot to lose. A loss that was unnecessary, if the ministry of oil hadn't been so darned important to the U.S... And the full collection hasn't been fully recatalogued, so missing items are still being identified.

Targeted thefts of some of the most valuable items support the theory that some of the looting was either professional and/or an inside job.

That so much has been recovered and hidden by the dedicated staff is some of the first good news I've heard. The article talks about the careful planning that the museum staff went through, evaluating what should be hidden because it could be carried, and what should be left because heavy equipment would be needed to steal. The correspondent was even able to inspect the locked (and unlocked) storerooms.

If I were the museum employees in the lawless weeks after the U.S. 'took control' of Baghdad, I'd claim I'd been cleaned out, too, since U.S. soldiers still refused to guard the place. It's a good looter deterrent to claim to have nothing to loot, and was good thinking on the curator's part.

Sadly, Vice President Haji Abdul Qadir of Afghanistan has been killed. (BBC) Remember Afghanistan? Remember how the U.S. solved all their problems by bombing the Taliban out (along with a few wedding parties and farmers and Red Cross warehouses)? Sounds great, doesn't it? So tidy! So successful! Peace just keeps on happen...

It's hard for the Afghans to even get into the news here. They're YESTERDAY's war. Over and done with. A reminder that we're not very good at this superhero business, since we never really save the day -- though we're there with lots of special effects for the fighting scenes.

Afghanistan needs our help. We destabilized their country by removing one terrible regime, put a group of wanna-be-terrible-regimes in a power sharing arrangement, made some promises, and left. We can do better than that!!

Retiring UN weapons inspector Hans Blix is complaining about the U.S.' negative attitude about the UN. (BBC) "According to Mr Blix, as the US build-up for an invasion of Iraq intensified, US administration officials had leaned on his weapons inspectors to use more damning language in their reports on Iraq." Blix also criticized the intelligence provided to him on alleged WMDs, which turned up nothing.

It's interesting that several weapons inspectors have become firm critics of the U.S. As did the last U.N. human rights chief, who also had to deal with the current administration. Hmmmm.

The tiny news item I read some weeks ago about changing the way Americans look at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to win concessions from the Palestinians is apparently in full force. Even NPR has stopped referring to the occupied territories as such. There is no mention of the U.N. resolutions against Israel. The occupied territories are now just "the West Bank" and "the Gaza strip." The word 'illegal' is only applied to certain Israeli settlements not approved by the government, but not those settlements that were.

And, while the UN guaranteed the right of Palestinian return years ago, I'm glad I read it: the media keeps simply implying that the return of refugees is an unreasonable and far-out demand.

What is worse: the manipulation, or the cynical expectation that the manipulation will continue indefinitely?

How did it get to be so late in the evening?? Ah, well, a few short notes.

There are several great items at the always excellent blog This Modern World. Current features include debates over misrepresentations about WMDs, threats from the Bush Administration against Head Start employees who speak about their plight, and a link to an article suggesting that Colin Powell really had difficulty delivering his presentation to the UN with a straight face. Also: a link to the very long Al Franken v. Bill O'Reilly book talk. Which was sort of worth seeing.

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An aside: during Bill O'Reilly's speech before Franken spoke, O'Reilly said that now he REALLY wants WMDs to be found in Iraq. For the Good of the Country. NOT the good of the Bush Administration -- he insists he is not an idealogue. No, he fears the US will lose its credibility if no WMDs are found.

I'm not sure the US HAS enough credibility to lose on this issue: most of the world opposed this war and their governments seemed pretty confident in noting that we likely entered Iraq under false pretenses. But let's say, hypothetically, that there are none. Is it the US that loses credibility, or the Bush Administration? If the Bush Administration, oh say, LIED, wouldn't it be good for the country to learn that, and to act appropriately to impeach? I kept hearing that the Clinton impeachment for lying over oral sex was for the good of the country. Surely lying about intelligence information and dragging our nation into war requires a proportional response. Perhaps impeaching Bush hundreds of times would do it?

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The news in brief: the Washington Post reports that Ashcroft Wants Stronger Patriot Act, because he just can't apply the death penalty to enough people.

Alrighty then.

Here's a charming sample from the article:

Ashcroft acknowledged that authorities had subjected some illegal immigrants detained after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon to harsh jail conditions for long periods of time before the FBI cleared them of links to terrorism. That was a central finding of the critical report issued Monday by the Justice Department's inspector general, Glenn A. Fine....

[This relates to the 762 foreign nationals taken into custody.] While none has been publicly charged with terrorism, they spent an average of 80 days in jail before the FBI completed its investigation, and many went weeks before being charged with immigration violations or seeing attorneys. About515 were eventually deported.

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The BBC reports that there is a not-so-secret September 2002 Pentagon intelligence report [which] concluded that there was "no reliable information" that Iraq had biological or chemical weapons. A few searches on the BBC or Guardian sites will bring you a lot more of the same. TMW also cites Australian articles wherein Aussie intelligence claimed to know the allegations were false.

Hooo boy.

Also of note: the US still doesn't want UN nuclear inspectors to interact with people in Tuwaitha , where a nuclear facility was left unguarded by the US, and radioactive containers were looted for food and water storage by locals. The U.S. says it is responsible for people's health, yet there has been no announcement that it has taken on this responsibility through action.

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Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector who the Bush Administration does not want back in Iraq, had some interesting things to say to the BBC in this article:

Blix has noted that US intelligence on weapons sites, which his inspection team followed up on and came up empty handed. "I thought - my God, if this is the best intelligence they have and we find nothing, what about the rest?"

According to the BBC, the U.S. is using heavy metal 'music' and American children's songs to break the will of their captives in Iraq. Among the music selected to demoralize the captives: Barney, the big purple dinosaur's songs, plus Metallica.

I ask you: how must it feel to know that your songs are being used to browbeat prisoners of war? How must it feel to hear the repeat playing of yours songs day and night described at torture by Amnesty International?

I fear the inevitable Metallica interview that will follow.

The SF Chronicle's World Views column is great today, as it so often is. It covers both the pressure that Blair is under to explain why all intelligence used to justify the war against Iraq was completely wrong, and then touches on the G8 protests, with unfavorable comments and some amusing accusations that the residents of Geneva loved the feeling of importance that huge demonstrations gave their community.

I can't say I trust the reports about the G8 "riots," however. Since last October, I have regularly attended peaceful anti-war protests in the city center made up of more than a hundred thousand of people, plus smaller protests in local neighborhoods. And after each protest, I have reviewed the media coverage of the protest I just attended.

It was as if the reporters were reporting on a completely different event. Television coverage was especially bizarre: the evening news would feature a reporter standing in a public square that I had left more than 8 hours before, as if there was something there to see. The reporter would then relate a story about violence that had occurred in an area some significant distance from the protest, hours after the protest had ended. The reporter would then say that the protest had been marred by this distant, time-separated violence.

I was waiting for a report saying that the tides were responsible for a pet drowning in an inland bathtub as the next story.

I have seen images and videos of police attacking peaceful, seated protesters. The only video of that which has ever made the news was the police-made video of officers swapping pepper spray into kids eyes with Q-tips, which is being used against the police in court. My local paper printed some good photos of police attacking peaceful demonstrators when the U.S. attacked Iraq this year, but it was something of an exception to the local press' police of reporting political demonstrations primarily as obstacles to the commute.

So while I'm sure there are violent folk among the demonstrators at the G-8, I'm convinced of that fact primarily because I've read editorials by demonstrators who are there, bemoaning way violent protesters and violent police always seem to feed from each other.

So the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, which regulates popular media, has relaxed restrictions on media monopolies, which will likely resort in more national megacorporations controlling more local media outlets.

Here in the U.S. corporate media represents its own interests so thoroughly under the guise of free press, that most people can't even tell that their coverage is self-serving. News stories promoting the latest movie MUST just be a service, and not free advertising for a sibling company. Business news must be of general interest to workers, while labor news... Well, perhaps there just isn't any? Celebrity gossip must be important, or it wouldn't be replacing world news, would it?

Ouch ouch ouch.

Meanwhile, thousands of people are protesting the G8 meeting in Evian, France, but today's Yahoo news photos are primarily devoted to the Miss Universe pageant. Let's see, which will have a bigger influence on my life: global trade or Miss U? Yahoo believes it's Miss U. And their main news page doesn't mention the protests at all, but does have a photo of lifestyle maven Martha Stewart and speculation about her upcoming indictment.

Go figure.

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In a short news summary where the G8 was mentioned in part of a larger article about a massive international poll on attitudes toward the U.S. and other topics, there was a quick comment: "Kohut said the anti-globalization forces that have protested in America and overseas don't seem to be making inroads. He said the survey found there is 'great acceptance of a connected world with most people saying trade and growing business ties are good for them and their countries.'"

I was completely taken aback by this statement, because their questions apparently had NOTHING to do with what anti-globalization protests are about. Not that we'd know, since the mainstream media refuses to report on anything more than broken windows and spray paint whenever there is a protest against any establishment institutions. But let me try to make a short summary of MY understanding of why the G8 is being protested.

-exploitation of the poor for sweatshop labor.
-exportation of jobs overseas to avoid paying decent wages.
-environmental obligation dodging.
-corruption.
-a lack of human and humane services in developing AND developed nations.
-violence toward labor organizers.
-back breaking debt for developing nations.
-privatization of public resources against the public's will.
-censorship of views that favor public services, environmental stewardship, and fairness.
-censorship of protests.
-violence toward peaceful protesters, both of the exploited and exploiter nations.

I thought I'd mention this, since you likely won't hear this anywhere mainstream. (The Indymedia G8 site is good for many viewpoints, especially if you are multilingual. I recommend it, and UK Indymedia highly.)

Blair's presentation of Iraq's alleged WMD evidence is being probed in England, while manipulation of alleged WMD intelligence is being investigated in the U.S.. BBC articles are questioning the legitimacy of WMD claims more directly than in the past.

It's great that the BBC is asking these questions, because it's a big white elephant in the middle of the room that the U.S. press appears afraid to remark upon.

According to the Washington Post, Iraqis aren't pleased with the U.S.' plans to skip forming an interim government in favor of an advisory council. Bremer, the U.S. Occupation Authority head, says "We think it's important for the Iraqi people to be seen to be involved in some very important decisions that are going to have to be made in the weeks and months ahead, and we have felt the best way to get that forward quickly is to broaden our consultations, to step up the pace of our consultations, and to arrive at a decision about the political council rather quickly." The article then goes on to say that, since the U.S. was given the authority to run Iraq, they don't really need to make good on their promise about setting up a democratic government yet.

Oh-oh.

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Chirac makes it clear that he hasn't changed his mind about Bush's attack on Iraq."We consider that all military action not endorsed by the international community, through, in particular, the Security Council, was both illegitimate and illegal, is illegitimate and illegal. And we have not changed our view on that," according to the BBC.

The archives should be back to normal now. More tomorrow.

My archives are going to be invisible for a few minutes - don't be alarmed. (Or at least, more alarmed than I am.)

The G8 summit begins Sunday in the spa town of Evian on Lake Geneva. The BBC reports on the extreme, defensive, unsightly militarization of the area for security concerns and to prevent the 100,000 expected protesters from disrupting the meeting in this article.

Associated with this article are two external links: one to the official G8 meeting site, and the other a trilingual logistics and planning page for the international protesters!

I LOVE the Internet!

The occupation is not going as smoothly as the Bush Administration hoped. US soldiers are facing increasing hostility, says the NY Times. After suffering an attack, U.S. soldiers conducted forced house searches, which comprised female modesty and outraged local men, leading to widespread rioting and the burning of local municipal buildings. Ooops.

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Also an oops: a British soldier took some film to his local developer in Staffordshire which may depict him and his fellows abusing Iraqi prisoners of war. If the photos are real (and not staged by bored soldiers at home for amusement), this clever fellow has provided the evidence of his crimes.

When are people going to learn to document their crimes with Polaroids? Sheesh!

I'm still preoccupied with American paranoia. It's pathetic. If the Denver, Colorado police department labeled Quakers and other peace organizations as "criminal extremists" and compiled illegal dossiers on their peaceful activities after September 11th, something is severly out of whack in their heads.

As I wondered about this, I noticed billboards at the bus stop for home alarm systems, suggesting that right at this moment, someone is breaking into your home. Next to it was an add for anti-bacterial detergent, implying that germs on your clothes could hurt you. S reported that the last time he had the TV on, a newscaster was ranting about a threat of catching Lyme Disease if you step outside of your house.

Perhaps Michael Moore's theory about the media fanning the flames of hysteria here are correct.

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Iran is rather annoyed at Bush's rhetoric campaign against them. The BBC quotes the Ayatollah Khamenei: ""We have to do this and that so they will remove us from the axis of evil. What kind of talk is this? Who do they think they are?"

While the U.S. media will undoubtedly lapse back into their, "why do they hate us?" blather, it appears that Time Magazine has an answer in an article called The Oily Americans - Why the world doesn't trust the U.S. about petroleum: A history of meddling. I had known that the U.S. overthrew the government of Iran, though that has never really been admitted. I had read inferences that this was because of the U.S.' previous penchant for anti-communist hysteria. That worked for me. But this article sheds some additional light: Mohammed Mossadegh nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. in part because it wouldn't give Iran even 50% of its revenues from extracting Iranian oil. The U.S. and Britain then tag teamed Iran, instituting an oil boycott, and then things got weird:

The CIA's fingerprints were everywhere. Operatives paid off Iranian newspaper editors to print pro-Shah and anti-Mossadegh stories. They produced their own stories and editorial cartoons and published fabricated interviews. They secured the cooperation of the Iranian military. They spread antigovernment rumors. They prepared phony documents to show secret agreements between Mossadegh and the local Communist Party. They masqueraded as communists, threatened conservative Muslim clerics and even staged a sham fire-bombing of the home of a religious leader. They incited rioters to set fire to a pro-Mossadegh newspaper...

And then the U.S. got Britain's control over Iran's oil back for them, shared some with American oil companies, and got really angry when the Iranians threw out the puppet government and took their oil back.

All those complaints about how undeveloped Iran is may have SOMETHING to do with the prohibition of our government against doing business with Iran, as punishment for throwing off its foreign oil exporters.

Oil. Why didn't I even think of it before...

The same article also has some choice words about Afghanistan, and the perception of oil issues. It's an interesting read.

Very spooky quote of the day:

Most of the rights that you enjoy go way beyond what the Constitution requires.
-Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, March 2003, Cleveland

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I wish more of the June 2 issue of The Nation was available on line. Eric Foner has an excellent short piece called "Dare Call It Treason," pointing out that every war in American history with the exception of World War II inspired significant dissent (yes, including the American Revolution), and each time the government and those who elect themselves its agents vehemently attempted to suppress protest. Foner also notes that history, while always used as a tool, suddenly becomes a partisan weapon, with war promoters citing favorable historical allegiances and parallels to support their position, while cursing anyone who finds unfavorable parallels. (The author caught hell for pointing out that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor would be justified under Bush's pre-emptive strike doctrine. Oops. Darn that history!)

Also very worthy of a read is Alisa Solomon's "The Big Chill," a catalogue of attacks on dissent and free speech in the post-September 11th, 'only traitors question their government' climate in the U.S. The very spooky quote above comes from her piece. The catalogue is alarming, when seen all in once place: isolated incidents seem less like freak occurrences, and more like the predictable side effects of a society living in a profound insecurity.

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It seems to me that the U.S. has a long history of rampant paranoia during times of crisis and opportunity. Salem Witch Hunts. McCarthyism. Xenophobia. Homophobia. Preoccupation with "the Fall" caused by eating from the Tree of Knowledge. (Favorite bumper sticker on this topic: "Eve was framed.") Fear of change in anything other than consumer products.

How can Americans be less afraid? If ignorance is bliss, we're a very HAPPY people. But still paranoid. Still dragging minorities to their deaths, still murdering people perceived to be gay by men afraid of other men's allure, still mad at France for helping to liberate us from the British yet not wanting to be JUST LIKE US. Afraid to learn other languages. Convinced that the world has nothing to offer that we don't already know. Convinced that we only do good in the outside world, and pretending not to hear any reports to the contrary.

In late 2001, I was completely mystified by two things. The first was that people and the press asked repeatedly, 'why do people elsewhere in the world hate us?' The second was, whenever this question was answered, every single possible answer was shot down vehemently. It went something like this:


Q. How can anyone not like Americans?
A. Well, that was that time that we overthrew someone's government, and killed all their young people with death squads.
Q. You beast! How could you say that we did such a thing!!
A. Because we did? Over and over?
Q. You are a very sick person. We can do no wrong.
A. That belief isn't helping, either.
Q. Help, police!

This was about as productive as the corporate press' conversation with itself:

Press: How could anyone dislike Americans? We are perfect in every way. There is nothing in history that demonstrates otherwise. Obviously, anyone who dislikes us is completely insane and warped with evil. Unlike all others, WE truly are God's chosen people, and so everything we do is fine. Rest assured that all is well. Please resume shopping, and support our efforts to pass tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy. Thank you and good night.

There's a sort of cultural isolationism that I think feeds this fear: the U.S. against the world. Inexplicably, a caller on the radio who was promoting the war against Iraq claimed that others in the world could not understand American motivations, because they had never suffered anything like the September 11th attacks!!!!!!!!!! She had apparently either never heard of the nearly constant terrorism that exists elsewhere in the world (even to white people in Northern Ireland!), or simply thought it was of a very low quality and not worthy of her sympathy.

You have to wonder how she could rationalize that. Did everyone else in the world who had suffered violence deserve it? Is our collective graps on others' lives so slim that we think the world should work that way?

Innocent lives should NEVER be taken for any reason. But they are, every day. Each loss is a sad one. Each loss is a life, not a lesser or greater life, a lesser or greater tragedy because some is or isn't a citizen of the U.S. There has to be a way to teach people to see others as human, and not as Others. Progress has been made in this area before, and further progress should be possible. But how?

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Robert Scheer's piece on Private Lynch's faked rescue, now entitled Saving Private Lynch: Take 2, is now available at the Nation website.

Also a very worthy read by Scheer: The WMD Follies, on the lie that led us to war with Iraq, and the "long-held hawkish Republican dream of a 'winnable nuclear war...' In such a scenario, nukes can be preemptively used against a much weaker enemy--millions of dead civilians, widespread environmental devastation and centuries of political blowback be damned."

Today's opinion page (A29) of my local paper has a piece by Robert Scheer on the staging of Pvt. Lynch's rescue, based on a report that was posted last week by the BBC. The brave woman, who I had read in US press reports had exhausted all her ammunition in a firefight that killed all of her colleagues, was stabbed and shot, and was abused at the hospital -- wasn't.

She has no bullet or stab wounds; she was wounded in a vehicular accident; the hospital informant who claimed she was being abused has a job for former Republican Rep. Bob Livingston and a book contract with a company owned by Fox's owner; and the hospital had tried to return Lynch to the U.S., but had been attacked by U.S. forces when approaching a checkpoint, and so had been unable to do so.

Scheer's editorial isn't appearing on the electronic version of the paper yet, so I've summarized it above, but last week's source article from the BBC still is. It is called, Saving Private Lynch story 'flawed', by John Kampfner. Excerpts:

"I examined her, I saw she had a broken arm, a broken thigh and a dislocated ankle," said Dr Harith a-Houssona, who looked after her....

"There was no [sign of] shooting, no bullet inside her body, no stab wound - only road traffic accident. They want to distort the picture. I don't know why they think there is some benefit in saying she has a bullet injury."

Witnesses told us that the special forces knew that the Iraqi military had fled a day before they swooped on the hospital.

"We were surprised. Why do this? There was no military, there were no soldiers in the hospital," said Dr Anmar Uday, who worked at the hospital.

"It was like a Hollywood film. They cried 'go, go, go', with guns and blanks without bullets, blanks and the sound of explosions. They made a show for the American attack on the hospital - action movies like Sylvester Stallone or Jackie Chan."

Well, golly. And to think my only doubts about the original tale of the poor girl related to a conflict between two U.S. sources, one of whom insisted she had been shot, the other stabbed. I couldn't figure out why they didn't know which, but now that U.S. doctors have confirmed it was neither, the discrepancy makes more sense.