Toyota to pass GM - Deming ora pro nobis!

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News Item - Associated Press: Toyota Motor Corp. on Monday reported its 25th straight month of growth in worldwide production as it closed in on General Motors' position as the world's biggest vehicle maker.(...) Last week, Toyota executives in Japan laid out a production target of 9.42 million vehicles for next year, a 4 percent increase over the 9.04 million vehicles it expects to produce this year and more than the 9.2 million that Detroit-based General Motors Corp. is estimated to have produced this year. GM has not given targets for next year, but has been forced to scale back production after seeing its market share eroded by Toyota and other Asian automakers, which have a reputation for better fuel efficiency.

I can remember so far back that I can remember when a joke circulated that Toyota was going to merge with Chevrolet and make the "Toileta"... How the mighty are humbled, yadda, yadda. The irony is that the success of Japanese manufacturing owes a lot to the man in the picture, W. Edwards Deming, the father of "Japanese quality". When you read his "14 Points" and "Seven Deadly Diseases" it all resonates with the plain, solid, good sense that you would expect from someone born in the deepest, über-American, Sioux City, Iowa. But strangely enough, nothing could be more "foreign" to the contemporary, American, business culture than the pragmatic humanism Deming advocated. Here is a Deming Zen koan to meditate upon, "Everyone must understand the damage and loss to the whole organization from a team that seeks to become a selfish, independent, profit centre." The decline of the United States and its possible recovery are all in the story, thought and works of W. Edwards Deming. DS

"Innovation comes from people who take joy in their work."
W. Edwards Deming

Deming's 14 Points

1. Create constancy of purpose for improvement of products and service.

2. Adopt a new philosophy: we are in a new economic age.

3. Cease dependence upon inspection as a way to achieve quality.

4. End the practice of awarding business based on price tag.

5. Constantly improve the process of planning, production, and service- this system includes people.

6. Institute training on the job.

7. Institute improved supervision (leadership)

8. Drive out fear.

9. Break down barriers between departments.

10. Eliminate slogans/targets asking for increased productivity without providing methods

11. Eliminate numerical quotas.

12. Remove barriers that stand between workers and their pride of workmanship.

13. Institute programs for education and retraining.

14. Put all emphasis in the company to work to accomplish the transformation.

Seven Deadly Diseases

1. Lack of constancy of purpose to plan a marketable product and service to keep the company in business and provide jobs.

2. Emphasis on short-term profits.

3. Personal evaluation appraisal, by whatever name, for people in management, the effects of which are devastating.

4. Mobility of management; job hopping.

5. Use of visible figures for management, with little or no consideration of figures that are unknown or unknowable.

6. Excessive medical costs.

7. Excessive costs of warranty, fueled by lawyers that work on contingency fees.

Another Christmas story

The Holy Family with St Anne, 1628, Rubens, Museo del Prado, Madrid.

David Seaton's News Links

Christmas is a time to be with family and friends, or to think of them and to remember them lovingly if they are very far away or no longer among the living. It is also a time when Christians are urged to wish for 'peace on earth, good will to men' and consequentially obliged to practice the Christian virtues of forgiving and loving their enemies. However, in order to truly love one's friends and to truly forgive and to begin to love one's enemies, it is obviously essential to first begin by being able to distinguish between one's friends and one's enemies. This is not always as easy as it would appear at first glance. Today the relations between Islam and Christianity need, more than ever, to be examined and revised. Westerners ignorance and lack of appreciation of Islam is doubly aggravated by their ignorance of Muslim's traditional knowledge and esteem of Christianity... An esteem born out by the number of Muslims named, "Miriam," (Mary) and "Isa", (Jesus). Tragically, little is known in the West of Islam's affection for the Virgin Mary (Umm Isa) to whom an entire chapter of the Koran is devoted. Karen Armstrong, a former nun and perhaps the English language's most interesting writer on comparative religions, published the article quoted below in The Guardian on Friday. It makes a perfect Christmas meditation in these times of hatred and intolerance. DS

The Muslim prophet born in Bethlehem - Karen Armstrong - Guardian

Abstract: In 632, after five years of fearful warfare, the city of Mecca in the Arabian Hijaz voluntarily opened its gates to the Muslim army. No blood was shed and nobody was forced to convert to Islam, but the Prophet Muhammad ordered the destruction of all idols and icons of the Divine. There were a number of frescoes painted on the inner walls of the Kabah, the ancient granite shrine in the centre of Mecca, and one of them, it is said, depicted Mary and the infant Jesus. Immediately Muhammad covered it reverently with his cloak, ordering all the other pictures to be destroyed except that one. This story may surprise people in the west, who have regarded Islam as the implacable enemy of Christianity ever since the crusades, but it is salutary to recall it during the Christmas season when we are surrounded by similar images of the Virgin and Child. It reminds us that the so-called clash of civilisations was by no means inevitable. For centuries Muslims cherished the figure of Jesus, who is honoured in the Qur'an as one of the greatest of the prophets and, in the formative years of Islam, became a constituent part of the emergent Muslim identity. There are important lessons here for both Christians and Muslims - especially, perhaps, at Christmas. The Qur'an does not believe that Jesus is divine but it devotes more space to the story of his virginal conception and birth than does the New Testament, presenting it as richly symbolic of the birth of the Spirit in all human beings (Qur'an 19:17-29; 21:91). Like the great prophets, Mary receives this Spirit and bears Jesus, who will, in his turn, become an ayah, a revelation of peace, gentleness and compassion to the world.(...) The Muslim devotion to Jesus is a remarkable example of the way in which one tradition can be enriched by another. It cannot be said that Christians returned the compliment. While the Muslims were amassing their Jesus-traditions, Christian scholars in Europe were denouncing Muhammad as a lecher and charlatan, viciously addicted to violence. But today both Muslims and Christians are guilty of this kind of bigotry and often seem eager to see only the worst in each other. The Muslim devotion to Jesus shows that this was not always the case. In the past, before the political dislocations of modernity, Muslims were always able to engage in fruitful and stringent self-criticism. This year, on the birthday of the Prophet Jesus, they might ask themselves how they can revive their long tradition of pluralism and appreciation of other religions. For their part, meditating on the affinity that Muslims once felt for their faith, Christians might look into their own past and consider what they might have done to forfeit this respect.
READ IT ALL

Americans are so surprised

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One of my favorite "how dumb Thomas Friedman is" stories, is in fact an anecdote that holds a key to understanding the entire predicament that the USA has gotten itself into. The story concerns a visit Friedman made to a Pakistani madrassa, famous as the alma mater of many of the most illustrious and most fanatical of the Afghan Taliban. Following the Islamic traditions of hospitality, Friedman was received politely and offered refreshment. While they chatted, our Tom and the headmaster or head Iman of the school sipped at bottles of chilled Coca Cola. The Iman roundly and eloquently denounced the policies of the United States in the Muslim world. Friedman than asked him with an air of "gotcha", "If you don't like America's policies, why do you drink Coca Cola?" as if that were an "end of argument" crusher. The Iman calmly replied, "Because Coca Cola is sweet, but America's policies are poisonous." In a sense, the cultural problem that is at the heart of America's present failure is all there in a nutshell in that story. In their heart of hearts, most American's think that everybody, everywhere, wants to be American too... That Hamburgers and Coca Cola are mysteriously transubstantiated into the "body and blood" of the United States of America and in partaking of them, somehow foreigners join in the "mystical body" of the USA and become in some way American too. But, if you like Sushi and eat enough of it, do you develop palpebral folds on your eyes? If you own a Mercedes Benz, are you in danger of invading Poland? Like the Iman pointed out, in reality, people take the USA a la carte, what they like they take and what they don't they don't. The big mistake almost all Americans are making now is to think that they are being attacked, when if fact they are being counterattacked, they have been just too self-absorbed to ever know, or even care what was being done all over the world in their name. And now that the new technologies make it possible, they are surprised that somebody who drinks Coke could explode right next to them. If you imagined Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse with the Internet and prostrated toward Mecca, you might get some idea of what we are looking at. DS

Billmon is back and kicking serious butt

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In case you missed his long awaited return, Billmon, (guru jai, jai, guru maharaj!) is back on line after a well deserved vacation and is still kicking very serious butt. Check out the number he does on Condoleeza (Secretary of State from Hell) Rice. DS

Tidbits: Maybe the simplest explanation is also the most accurate. Maybe Condi is just a cold, heartless bitch -- as morally numb and sociopathic as her office husband. (...) Does Condi understand how many deaths, mutilations and wrecked lives lie behind her "investments" and "birth pangs"? Undoubtedly. Does she care? I don't know. But, from a public diplomacy point of view, it would behoove her to show some sign that she has an emotional connection to the rest of the human race -- or, if she doesn't, to at least pretend that she does. READ IT ALL

Bacevich cuts to the bone

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Professor Andrew Bacevich of Boston University, formerly Colonel Andrew Bacevich, US Army, is one of the most incisive political thinkers in America's intellectual panorama. The world of American think tanks has turned US geopolitical discourse into a massive, over-funded, Swiftian Academy of Lagado, where sunbeams are extracted from cucumbers and a quick journey to the heart of any matter would put a lot of scholars out of work. Bacevich, however, cuts to the bone. His book, "The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War," is an absolute 'must read': an invaluable starting point for any serious discussion about the terrible situation that the US has created for itself. Obviously, without a keystone or linchpin, without finding the axis around which the problem revolves, we will never find our way out of the labyrinth. This article from The International Herald Tribune, which is quoted below, will give you some idea of Professor Bacevich's unerring instinct for constantly locating the center of gravity of these questions. DS
Bush's illusions - International Herald Tribune
Abstract: The world's only superpower no longer acts; instead, it reacts, usually to whatever happens to be the latest bad news out of Baghdad. As events in Iraq slip out of his control, President George W. Bush's strategy for waging his "global war on terror" lies in ruins. He is navigating without a compass. It wasn't supposed to be this way. Recall that for the architects of Operation Iraqi Freedom, taking down Saddam Hussein never qualified as more than a preliminary objective. Baghdad was not Berlin. It was Normandy, the jumping-off point for a much larger enterprise.(...) Skeptics saw the Freedom Agenda as little more than eyewash. The real object of the exercise, they insisted, was to assert U.S. control over the oil-rich Gulf. The aim of the global war on terror was not to share the blessings of liberty but to expand the perimeter of the American empire. Whether the name of the game was liberation or dominion, Iraq was a crucial test case. Iraq's transformation into the first Arab democracy — or (depending on your point of view) its conversion into a compliant protectorate — promised to validate the Bush administration's concept of global war. Victory in Iraq would also affirm key assumptions underlying that concept: that U.S. forces are invincible and unstoppable; that preventive war works; that the concerns of other major powers or the absence of a UN Security Council mandate need not constrain American freedom of action. In short, Iraq constituted step one. Success there would pave the way for the Bush administration to proceed along similar lines to steps two, three and four. The disappointments and frustrations resulting from that first step now leave the entire project in a shambles. If the United States cannot democratize Iraq, then to imagine that democracy will emerge from the barrel of an American gun in Iran, Syria, Egypt or Saudi Arabia is simply fanciful. If U.S. troops cannot pacify Iraq, then only the truly deluded would court a further military showdown that could oblige American forces to pacify Iraq's neighbors as well. The United States already has too much war for too few soldiers.(...) As if tacitly acknowledging that they have spent all their ammunition strategically, Bush and his lieutenants now preoccupy themselves with operational matters that ought to fall within the purview of field commanders.(...) Fighting the Battle of Baghdad does not qualify as presidential business. Devising an effective response to the threat posed by Islamic radicalism does. On that score, however, the most pressing question is this: Does open-ended global war provide the proper framework for formulating that response? Or has global war, based on various illusions about American competence and American power, led to a dead end? READ IT ALL

Empire Death Watch: Iran turns from dollar to euro in oil sales - The Times (London)

David Seaton's News Links
As any true American knows from birth, the US Dollar is the ultimate, visible and tangible manifestation of God's will on earth and his chosen instrument for expressing it... or so we have always believed... if not in thought and word, surely in deed. So, the subtext of this article could be summed up as, "Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin," which Jimmy Cox once rendered into American English in the following manner:

Once I lived a life of a millionaire,
Spent all my money, didn't have any cares.
Took all my friends out for a mighty good time.
Bought bootleg liquor champagne and wine.

Then I began to fall so low,
Lost all my good friends, had nowhere to go.
If I get my hands on a dollar again,
I'll hang on to it 'til that old eagle grins.

'Cause no, no, nobody knows you
When you're down and out.
In your pocket, not one penny,
And as for friends, you don't have any.

When you get back on your feet again,
Everybody wants to be your long lost friend.
I said it straight without any doubt,
Nobody knows you when you're down and out.

"Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out"
Words & Music by Jimmy Cox (1923) - Recorded by Eric Clapton, 1992

Iran turns from dollar to euro in oil sales - The Times
Abstract: Iran is selling more of its oil for payment in euros than dollars as it seeks to shift its foreign currency reserves away from the depreciating currency of its political enemy, the United States.(...) Gholanhossein Nozari, the managing director of National Iranian Oil Company, said that 57 per cent of Iran’s income from oil exports was now received in euros. The move reflects a political desire for less reliance on the dollar, as well as a need to avoid further depreciation in currency reserves. Iran’s dollar holdings are thought to have fallen from 40 per cent of currency reserves to just a third.(...) Iran’s decision to switch currencies extends a trend among big oil exporters moving from the dollar as they seek protection from a continuing slide in the petrocurrency’s value.(...) The dollar’s slide protected non-dollar oil importers from the escalation in the price of fuel early this year. Oil was $63 per barrel at the beginning of January, rose to $74 at the start of July and has fallen back to $63 per barrel this month. However, translated into euros, the rise is less impressive — from €53 a barrel to a peak of €58 before a sharp decline to €48. The fall in the dollar against major currencies has had a dramatic impact on the revenues of oil exporters and has exacerbated the rumbling anti- American feeling in the Gulf. Although Gulf Arab states are predominantly dollar export earners, they mainly purchase in euros and yen, buying food, consumer goods and manufactured products from Europe and the Far East. READ IT ALL

Thomas L. Friedman's sour grapes

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Thomas L. Friedman is normally as cheerful as a chipmunk, a Pollyanna-ish tifoso of globalization, prone to see silver linings in the darkest of clouds. That makes the column he posted in the NYT yesterday rather special. I can't remember ever reading such a bitter, spiteful flow of bile from his pen. Probably he is so bitter because his reputation has foundered on the Iraq war: so totally trashed is Tom that he has become something of a figure of fun. He was an early enthusiast for the invasion and Haaretz grouped him then with Charles Krauthammer as an influential supporter of the war in Iraq. At the time he said,

"The way you get that compliance out of a thug like Saddam is not by tripling the inspectors, but by tripling the threat that if he does not comply he will be faced with a U.N.-approved war."

After no WMD were found he said,

"The stated reason for the war was that Saddam Hussein had developed weapons of mass destruction that posed a long-term threat to America. I never bought this argument… The WMD argument was hyped by George Bush and Tony Blair to try to turn a war of choice into a war of necessity."
AND
"The right reason for this war, as I argued before it started, was to oust Saddam's regime and partner with the Iraqi people to try to implement the Arab Human Development report's prescriptions in the heart of the Arab world. That report said the Arab world is falling off the globe because of a lack of freedom, women's empowerment, and modern education. The right reason for this war was to partner with Arab moderates in a long-term strategy of dehumiliation and redignification."

Finally in August of 2006 he wrote,

"Whether for Bush reasons or Arab reasons, democracy is not emerging in Iraq, and we can’t throw more good lives after good lives"

His scrambling to maintain some reputation as an analyst and pundit led him to series of statements that have come to be known as the "Friedman Unit", a period of six months, where if his suggestions were followed, everything would turn out fine. Here is a sample of Friedman units ripped from Wikipedia:

"The next six months in Iraq... are the most important six months in U.S. foreign policy in a long, long time" November 30, 2003.

"What we're gonna find out... in the next six to nine months is whether we have liberated a country or uncorked a civil war." October 3, 2004.

"I think we're in the end game now.... I think we're in a six-month window here where it's going to become very clear" September 25, 2005.

"I think the next six months really are going to determine whether this country is going to collapse" December 18, 2005.

"I think that we're going to know after six to nine months whether this project has any chance of succeeding" January 23, 2006

"I think we are in the end game. The next six to nine months are going to tell whether we can produce a decent outcome in Iraq." March 2, 2006

"we're going to find out... in the next year to six months - probably sooner - whether a decent outcome is possible" May 11, 2006.

Now he has it really figured out,

"our real choices in Iraq are 10 months or 10 years". December 8, 2006

America being what it is nowadays Friedman will probably continue to win Pulitzer Prizes. But just in case they wake up in the New York Times one morning and reassign him to writing advice for the lovelorn, don't feel too sorry for him, he shall want for naught. Our Tom is married to the daughter of Matthew Bucksbaum, the chairman of the board for General Growth Properties and one of America's richest men... Tom is only dumb when it comes to international politics. Here are some excerpts from his latest column, where he blames the whole Middle East for making him look so stupid. DS
Mideast Rules To Live By - New York Times
Abstract: For a long time, I let my hopes for a decent outcome in Iraq triumph over what I had learned reporting from Lebanon during its civil war. Those hopes vanished last summer. So, I’d like to offer President Bush my updated rules of Middle East reporting, which also apply to diplomacy, in hopes they’ll help him figure out what to do next in Iraq.(...) Anything said to you in English, in private, doesn’t count. In Washington, officials lie in public and tell the truth off the record. In the Mideast, officials say what they really believe in public and tell you what you want to hear in private.(...) If you can’t explain something to Middle Easterners with a conspiracy theory, then don’t try to explain it at all — they won’t believe it.(...) In the Middle East, the extremists go all the way, and the moderates tend to just go away.(...) The most underestimated emotion in Arab politics is humiliation. The Israeli-Arab conflict, for instance, is not just about borders. Israel’s mere existence is a daily humiliation to Muslims, who can’t understand how, if they have the superior religion, Israel can be so powerful. Al Jazeera’s editor, Ahmed Sheikh, said it best when he recently told the Swiss weekly Die Weltwoche: “It gnaws at the people in the Middle East that such a small country as Israel, with only about seven million inhabitants, can defeat the Arab nation with its 350 million. That hurts our collective ego. The Palestinian problem is in the genes of every Arab. The West’s problem is that it does not understand this.”(...) Thus, the Israelis will always win, and the Palestinians will always make sure they never enjoy it. Everything else is just commentary.(...) Our first priority is democracy, but the Arabs’ first priority is “justice.” The oft-warring Arab tribes are all wounded souls, who really have been hurt by colonial powers, by Jewish settlements on Palestinian land, by Arab kings and dictators, and, most of all, by each other in endless tribal wars. For Iraq’s long-abused Shiite majority, democracy is first and foremost a vehicle to get justice. Ditto the Kurds. For the minority Sunnis, democracy in Iraq is a vehicle of injustice. For us, democracy is all about protecting minority rights. For them, democracy is first about consolidating majority rights and getting justice.(...) Whether it is Arab-Israeli peace or democracy in Iraq, you can’t want it more than they do. READ IT ALL (bootleg)

New war staring us right in the face

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The man in the picture here is Aluf Benn, the diplomatic correspondent of the highly respected Israeli newspaper, Haaretz. The article quoted below is published in the English edition of Haaretz, thus it is available for the whole world to read. It goes without saying that anything Aluf Benn publishes in his newspaper has passed several filters. Three of them come instantly to mind. First: the brains, knowledge and professional experience to pass the selection process for such an important post. Second: the editorial policy of the paper. Third: the general consensus of his colleagues and community as to what is responsible discourse. Conclusion: Aluf Benn is a sensible, reputed professional, not some nut spouting off on an electronic street corner. Read in this light, the following article by Mr. Benn is literally terrifying. DS
Four reasons for ranting - Haaretz
Abstract: The ideal scenario, from Israel's point of view, would be an American military attack that would destroy Iran's nuclear facilities and remove the threat. "We have to get the United States to carry out what it promised to do, and to create the proper international climate," explains a senior official. It is not clear what President Bush told Olmert in private talks that had him leaving Bush's office feeling so satisfied. We can only presume that Olmert is depending on Bush's religious faith and obstinacy, which will lead him to attack Iran, even in light of American public opposition to military adventures in the Middle East. When will that happen? The head of the Mossad spoke this week about an Iranian nuclear bomb in another three years. This leaves a year for diplomacy and sanctions, and moves H-hour for a military attack to 2008, if Iran continues its nuclear development. The timing is right politically. It will be Bush's last year in the White House, and he will be busy bequeathing his "legacy." It is a known fact that U.S. election years have always been years of dramatic moves in relations with Israel, from Harry S. Truman's recognition of the Jewish state to Bill Clinton's Camp David summit, to the "Bush letter" that recognized the settlements and the separation fence.(...) Former prime minister Ariel Sharon used to deny that Israel was planning to attack Iran on its own. Olmert prefers to hint at a military option. That's good for spurring the "world" into action, but it is also good for preparing Israeli public opinion for a complex conflict that is liable to continue for years. The experts disagree as to whether Israel has the ability to paralyze the Iranian project if it strikes it at critical points. It is clear that Israel would have to receive American approval for such an operation, and would prefer receiving it from Bush, who is friendly to Israel, rather than gambling on his successor. That is why even for this alternative 2008 will be the critical year.(...) Olmert wants to remain in the Golan, refuses to talk to Syrian President Bashar Assad and uses Bush's opposition as an excuse: Israel needs Bush to fight Iran, and we must not annoy him by babbling nonsense about peace with Syria. READ IT ALL

Uncle Hamas Cares for Palestinians - Der Spiegel

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When you read an article like this one about Hamas in the above suspicion, German news magazine of reference, Der Spiegel, you realize that Bush, Blair, the "moderate" Arabs and the Israelis are in plain speech just "pissing into the wind". Simply put, faith and sacrifice on this level cannot be defeated by anything but prosperity and easy money. Certainly killing and starving people of this rectitude and courage will only make them stronger and braver in their faith. I think that as soon as the US fails in Iraq, and that will be soon enough, the Islamists will sweep all before them in the Middle East like a wind. Then we will see how long this probity lasts, when the faithful finally get all that oil money to spend. DS
Abstract: At first glance Hamas, a party that looks after the poor with its money and charity, appears to be playing a well-known tune on the instrument of populism. On the other hand, every major international aid organization is singing the Islamist group's praises when it comes to the quality of its work. "In the International Crisis Group's 2003 report, the most important American NGOs gave perfect marks to Hamas's work; they couldn't have achieved a better result," says Helga Baumgarten, a lecturer at Birzeit University in Ramallah. Baumgarten believes that the success of the party, which emerged from the radical Muslim Brotherhood in 1987, is based on two factors: the highly professional work of the group's welfare agencies and Hamas's oft-cited integrity. "In fact, all studies have concluded that Hamas operates without a trace of corruption," says Baumgarten. "This has enabled it to gain the respect of the population over the years." Nevertheless, Hamas is no moderate party. It sees itself as the spearhead of Palestinian resistance against the Israeli occupation. Following its surprising election victory in January, the organization refused to renounce armed conflict or to recognize Israel. Its repeated use of suicide bombings against Israeli citizens since its founding has also contributed to Hamas being classified as a terrorist organization in the West -- despite its day-to-day charitable activities. But it is difficult to say whether Hamas deliberately uses its charitable work to generate sympathy within the population. "Social commitment is not a means to an end; I would not interpret this merely as exploitation," says Baumgarten. And even if it were, parties the world over operate no differently.(...) At first the wheelchair-bound Yassin, who founded Hamas in 1987 and was killed in a targeted Israeli missile attack in 2004, managed the organization's funds from the living room of his modest house a few streets away. Today the center has evolved into a giant charitable institution in Gaza, operating 16 kindergartens, 30 Koran schools, and providing thousands of families with money, food and clothing. The center also pays child support for 5,000 orphans.(...) Nidal Shabana, the center's director, currently manages an annual budget of about $1 million. Despite his prominent position, Shabana remains a modest man, although a hint of pride for his work trickles through when he talks about the Islamic ping-pong team that recently won the Gaza championships under his tutelage. "Modesty and honesty are principles that are especially valued in Islam," he says. When asked his opinion about the growing strength of Islamist parties in the Arab world -- a phenomenon viewed with great concern in the West -- Shabana becomes circumspect. The behavior of Islamic leaders happens to be exemplary, he says, adding that their hands are clean. In a roundabout way, Shabana is saying that he considers the political leaders in neighboring Arab states to be corrupt and morally weak. Since the 1970s, the failure of authoritarian regimes in the Arab world -- dominated by ruling families intent on lining their own pocketbooks and bloated, inefficient bureaucracies -- has led to Islamist groups filling a social and political vacuum in the Palestinian Territories, Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan. The fact that Hamas hasn't received recognition as the sole governing party in the Palestinian Territories is by no means just a local quirk. Resistance to Hezbollah's quest for power up the road in Beirut is similar. These religious fundamentalist organizations are a threat to the region's established regimes; it's not just Israel and its Western allies that are interested in keeping the Islamists in check. READ IT ALL

Iran outfoxes Israel, Blair and Bush

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Today, Tony Blair is calling on "moderate" Arab (read Sunni) Muslim states to form an "alliance of moderation" to counter Iran's growing influence. Blair, who will soon be out of power, may have his eye as firmly fixed on his future lecture fees as on any plausible "peace plan". His anti-Iran alliance is certainly another dog that won't hunt. Blair's idea is to isolate Shiite Iran from its Sunni neighbors. By chance this is more or less Al Qaeda's program too. Ahmadinejad's maneuvering is calculated to avoid such isolation. None of the Sunni regimes has anything like Iran's democratic legitimacy (Ahmadinejad just lost a local election: dictators don't ever lose elections) and the "Arab street" of the "moderate" Sunni regimes is restless. Ahmadinejad's stunts like the Jew-baiting "Holocaust Conference" and Iran's support of Hezbollah resistance to Israel's invasion of Lebanon and Hamas's stoicism in Gaza, all of which Muslims seem to find thrilling and heroic, are an effective insurance policy against just the sort of alliance that Blair is proposing. The Sunni Arab Street would only see their rulers as dropping their trousers one more time for the "Jews and Crusaders". The way tempers are rising this could easily cost them their jobs and even their and their families lives. Also Ahmadinejad by his provocations has forced Israel into a historic error that may cost them the whole "atomic" game itself. By publicly admitting that Israel has the atomic bomb, following US Secretary of Defense Robert Gate's similar revelation, Israeli PM Olmert has cut the legal ground and the international legitimacy out from underneath the planned UN sanctions of Iran. If the Tehran "Holocaust Conference" was planned in order to provoke the Israelis into some stupid mistake, it has been successful beyond its wildest dreams. "I would suggest that all those who want to talk about the issue, for God's sake and for the sake of Israel's security, stop it," said the Israeli Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben Eliezer. The doomsday climate thickens as Bush seems to have his 'mind" set on one last "grand offensive" in Iraq, which military experts fear may, in true Stalingrad fashion, be the definitive disaster. DS

"You the man!", so says Time Magazine

Uncle Sam says, "Take charge. No 'leader' can do it for you!"

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According to Time Magazine, all us Internet users are the "Person of the Year." You have to wonder why Time Warner of all people is celebrating the loss of their gatekeeper function, but still, they could be right. The 20th century opened with many outsized, revolutionary personalities like Einstein, Picasso and Lenin, who, in the space of only a few years, changed the way the world looked and the way it looked at itself.

Now, at the beginning of the 21rst century, either humans of the Einstein, Picasso and Lenin mold don't exist any more or, as is more probable, they are simply not needed and not called forth. Today, we have Kleenex-like, disposable, "celebrities" to satisfy our need to worship "great men".

On the contrary, this seems to be an era where, for the first time in history, intelligent, mass opinion can be formed and set into motion without the benefit and shepherding of the "great and the good"; those who have manipulated humanity to their benefit since records have been kept of our affairs. We have just seen a clear example in the Iraq disaster: the most serious and defining crisis of our time, where as Strobe Talbot tells us in the Financial Times, "The US faces in Iraq what could be the most consequential foreign-policy debacle in its history".

At this decisive moment most of America's so called "leaders" either voted or lobbied for the war. And as for the "gatekeepers", the great media groups captained by America's newspaper of reference, the New York Times, actively promoted it. At the very same time, in an unprecedented popular movement, millions of people in America and around the world demonstrated against the war and organized to oppose it and haven't ceased organizing, blogging and agitating online against it since the very day it began. Obviously if the "people" had been listened to, an unprecedented disaster could have been averted.

The insight would be, that after decades of nearly universal literacy and public education, the general public with the new technologies at its command, is perfectly able to decide the major issues of the day more correctly than its "leaders," who instead of stewarding the general welfare are for the most part responding to the cocktail of special interest groups whose large contributions finance their campaigns. What we have just lived through in the first years of the new century seems to bear out the theories of "deliberative democracy", Which in Wikipedia's article on the subject is defined as,

"Any system of political decisions based on some tradeoff of consensus decision making and representative democracy. In contrast to the traditional economics-based theory of democracy, which emphasizes voting as the central institution in democracy, deliberative democracy theorists argue that legitimate lawmaking can only arise from the public deliberation of the citizenry."

I seem to remember that somewhere Noam Chomsky said that if Americans studied public affairs with the attention and sophisticated powers of analysis that they expend on baseball statistics, it would change the world. Perhaps we are looking at the beginning of that now. Substitute "soccer" for "baseball" and it could apply to the rest of the world.

The only major US politician that seems to have acted decisively on this insight is Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic Party. Dean (or someone very near him) seems to have read and understood the Hardt and Negri concept of the "Multitude" (no mean feat as the authors can't write their way out of a paper bag). This "multitude" (Hardt-Negri's definition) "is our era's new political class, a fungible mass of political force, which in contrast to the 'proletariat' or working-class, is 'a collection of singularities" who discover what they have in common, but without fusing into some sort of sovereign unity'.

Howard Dean, alone among mainstream politicians, seems to understand the potential of opening political life to this "multitude" by giving them the chance to take their own political fate directly into their hands.

If this sounds a little esoteric to you, consider this simple arithmetic: there are an estimated 40,000,000 Americans without any health coverage... if each of them donated only 50 cents through the Internet to the Democratic Party's "war chest," that would make $20,000,000. By thus short-circuiting of the traditional "big wallet," special interest contributors, the realistic possibility for a new, high-tech populism opens.

The moral of the story? Before they figure out how to shut the Internet down, let us hurry and change the world. DS

You -- Yes, You -- Are TIME's Person of the Year

Abstract: Web 2.0 is a massive social experiment, and like any experiment worth trying, it could fail. There's no road map for how an organism that's not a bacterium lives and works together on this planet in numbers in excess of 6 billion. But 2006 gave us some ideas. This is an opportunity to build a new kind of international understanding, not politician to politician, great man to great man, but citizen to citizen, person to person. It's a chance for people to look at a computer screen and really, genuinely wonder who's out there looking back at them. Go on. Tell us you're not just a little bit curious. READ IT ALL

Soro's initiative

David Seaton's News Links

In today's climate of geopolitical disaster, which if American history is any guide, is soon to turn to a hysterical, "who lost the Middle East?", witch-hunt it is very, very important for the "man in the street" to be able to distinguish between a "Jewish conspiracy" and a "conspiracy in which a lot of Jewish people just happen to have been involved, which in no way represents the greater Jewish community's views". George Soro's initiative is intelligent, sensitive, useful and long, long overdue. DS
The other Israel lobby - Salon
Abstract: Eighty-seven percent of (American Jews) voted Democratic in the recent midterms -- the highest number since 1994 -- belying the oft-repeated claim that the Bush administration's staunch support for Israel would move the traditionally Democratic Jewish vote toward the Republicans. The fact is that most American Jews, and many other American supporters of Israel, do not see eye-to-eye on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the most hawkish, knee-jerk Israel supporters in the U.S. government -- even if their presumed leadership, represented by AIPAC, often appears to do so. Moreover, AIPAC's influence in Washington may soon begin to decline, as a powerful new alliance of left-leaning friends of Israel has begun to emerge, with the express aim of reshaping U.S. strategy on the region's most intractable problem. If the Bush administration decides to seriously reevaluate its strategy in the Middle East in the wake of the Iraq Study Group's recent report -- and among its recommendations is prioritizing a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- it will have to deal with a minefield of interest groups. That will surely include AIPAC, a juggernaut that the New York Times has called the "most important organization affecting America's relationship with Israel."(...) The AIPAC insider said that he believes the "Soros Initiative" is little more than a fundraising drive to raise money for some impoverished organizations that "have to define themselves in opposition to something." In fact, say those involved, a contentious issue in the discussions is exactly how much the new organization would allow itself to be seen as being in direct opposition to AIPAC. At least four of the players involved have told me that they intend to be an "alternative," but not an "opposition." Still, one of those present at the early meetings said that he sees his organization as "the anti-AIPAC." Levy, meanwhile, said simply that if "there are differences in policy, those will be expressed in one group advocating one thing and another advocating another thing." This would at least be an improvement, he said, over the past, when Israeli leaders who honestly sought to make peace "pulled their hair out because of the lack of support from the Jewish community in the United States." READ IT ALL

Snubbing Segolene - Newslinks Hillary Watch

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If you are trying to locate Hillary Clinton on the political map, this news may help. In Europe Segolene Royal is considered center-left and there are those who fear she may be another Tony Blair, (center-right posing as center-left). But Segolene is too hot for Hillary. Stay tuned. DS
Clinton and Royal - Sharing ambitions not handshakes? - Reuters
Abstract: One is French. One is American. Both may become the first female presidents of their country. But will Segolene Royal and Hillary Rodham Clinton support or snub each other in their battle? Speculation about the power women's relationship rose in France after a newspaper said Royal had postponed a U.S. trip planned for this month because Clinton did not want to see her. Socialist regional leader Royal, 53, a relative political newcomer with little foreign policy experience, has made little secret of the fact she would like to meet Clinton to bolster her international credentials. But after gaffes by Royal on a trip to the Middle East, the Democratic Senator from New York, who is believed to be eyeing a White House bid in 2008, was less than enthusiastic about being seen together with the French candidate, Le Parisien daily said at the weekend, quoting a Clinton adviser. "Hillary, whose candidature is far from assured, is very vigilant and cannot afford the slightest false move," it quoted the adviser as saying. "She does not want to be associated with Royal's recent comments. It wouldn't be good for her image." A spokesman for Royal said her trip, which was announced last month, had been postponed for scheduling reasons, declining to give further details. Philippe Reines, a spokesman for Clinton, said in Washington that: "There was never a meeting planned or scheduled." READ IT ALL

Pot is America's biggest cash crop

David Seaton's News Links

My grandfather was an Iowa farmer and the reality of farming is in my DNA. Long on food, short on cash. When I first heard the economics of modern American cannabis, I imagined him driving his Model-T into town one Saturday, doing his shopping and while drinking a cup of coffee having the following dialog with a neighbor.

Neighbor: 'Lo Frank
Granddad: 'Lo.
N: Hows things?
GD: Can't complain.
N: 'You heard about this maryjeewanna stuff them hippies smoke.
GD: Nope. Not very much. Nothing good.
N: City fellow came around here the other day and told me all about it. Seemed like a nice fellow. Interesting conversation.
GD: Yeah?
N: Yup. Fellow said it grows like a weed, don't even need to water 'em. Thousand dollars cash, per plant, in the field, no taxes. He'll take all you can grow, cash in your hand, give y' the seed free. Y' hide ten of 'em in the middle of 20 acres of corn, nobody but you'd know where they were. Thousand dollars a plant'd, pay the mortgage on my place. Damn.
GD: (Gulp).

I don't know what my grandfather would have finally done, but I'm sure he would have lost some sleep wrestling with his conscience... Family to feed, bank loans to pay back. Farming in Iowa, farming in Afghanistan or Colombia... Farming is farming. DS
Pot is called biggest cash crop - Los Angeles Times Abstract: For years, activists in the marijuana legalization movement have claimed that cannabis is America's biggest cash crop. Now they're citing government statistics to prove it. A report released today by a marijuana public policy analyst contends that the market value of pot produced in the U.S. exceeds $35 billion — far more than the crop value of such heartland staples as corn, soybeans and hay, which are the top three legal cash crops. California is responsible for more than a third of the cannabis harvest, with an estimated production of $13.8 billion that exceeds the value of the state's grapes, vegetables and hay combined — and marijuana is the top cash crop in a dozen states, the report states. The report estimates that marijuana production has increased tenfold in the past quarter century despite an exhaustive anti-drug effort by law enforcement. READ IT ALL

Middle East: getting worse and just beginning

David Seaton's News Links

Tony Blair is making his umpteenth trip to the Middle East, joining this endless stream of "leaders" who appear deus ex machina to be photographed shaking hands with the local "leaders" and recorded making encouraging noises. It reminds me of hospital visits to a dying relative who keeps getting thinner and thinner, while everyone gets more and more cheerful and 'positive'. It might be better if all these "leaders" were silent for awhile and everyone meditated on the size and intractable complexity of the tragedy that has been set in motion. The only way this universal pustulence, born in cupidity and greed, will ever begin to heal is if the United States and the former colonial powers, France, Turkey and Britain, all begin by admitting their failure and assume their responsibility for it... Confession, penitence and restitution. DS
Ending illusions - Leader - Guardian
Abstract: It speaks volumes about the dire state of the Middle East that a foreign head of government visiting Iraq dare not stray beyond the heavily fortified "green zone" in central Baghdad and that the entire Gaza Strip - the centre of the region's latest escalating crisis - is now strictly out of bounds on security grounds. Tony Blair's pledge that British troops will stay in Iraq "until the job is done" had an unreal air as he stood by Nuri al-Maliki yesterday with the disastrous mayhem of daily life - mass kidnappings, bombings and shootings - continuing unabated, with "terrorists fighting democracy" in Mr Blair's words. Flying on to Jerusalem, the prime minister took with him another unshakeable belief - that he can help find a way out of the deadly impasse in which Palestinians and Israelis are so dangerously trapped. Mr Blair is right to want to help. The world's most intractable conflict is too volatile to be left alone even if few Arabs believe he is qualified to act as an honest broker. Not only is he George Bush's sole significant ally in Iraq but he also delayed attempts to secure a ceasefire as Israel went on the offensive in Lebanon during the summer war against Hizbullah. The phrase "perfidious Albion" may have gone out of fashion, but the sentiment is alive and well. And the phrase "kick-start" beloved of Whitehall briefings about reviving the peace process seems spectacularly inappropriate - in the sense that kicking a corpse can achieve little. READ IT ALL

Grand strategies or delusions of grandeur

David Seaton's News Links

There is an interesting article in today's Washington Post by Professor Daniel W. Drezner of Tufts University where he outlines a series of "grand strategies" proposed by foreign policy analysts who he postulates as possible successors to George F. Kennan, the State Department analyst whose oft misinterpreted, but seminal article, "The Sources of Soviet Conduct" in the July 1947 issue of Foreign Affairs, was the foundational document of the US policy of "containment." On reading the article Drezner will take you on a quick tour of a series of well argued ideas for how the US should conduct itself in foreign affairs. Drezner's "original sin" is having the hubris to compare today's America with the America of the late 40s and early 50s when America's cold war strategies were formed and to believe that America, instead of being driven by events, in fact continues to have the power to actually decide what path it will finally take. George Will quoting author Bill Bryson in the November 26th Washington Post, describes the America of the 50s:

"In 1951, when the average American ate 50 percent more than the average European, Americans(...) controlled two-thirds of the world's productive capacity, owned 80 percent of the world's electrical goods, and produced more than 40 percent of its electricity, 60 percent of its oil and 66 percent of its steel. America's 5 percent of the world's population had more wealth than the other 95 percent, and Americans made almost all of what they consumed: 99.93 percent of new cars sold in this country in 1954 were U.S. brands. By the end of the '50s, GM was a bigger economic entity than Belgium, and Los Angeles had more cars than did Asia."

Obviously anyone who still sees American power in these terms, or the role of America that flowed from that power in these terms today is delusional. You only need to compare the Marshall Plan with the pitiful effort in Afghanistan to get an idea of the slide. The world has changed a lot since the 50s or even the 70s as Christian Reiermann wrote in Der Speigel apropos the falling value of the dollar,

"The perils of a currency crash are not nearly as great as they were in the days of the dollar's absolute dominance 30 or 40 years ago. Globalization has led to the development of a number of growth centers in the world economy which share the burden of turbulence. Gone are the days when an American finance minister could boast: "The dollar is our currency, but it's your problem."

This quote, as well as any, describes the general situation. What about military power? Isn't the US the unchallenged hegemon? Certainly nobody is crazy enough to think of invading the USA, the question for everybody else is rather if the United State is going to invade them. French demographer Emmanuel Todd describes recent US power projection in Grenada, Panama and Kosovo as "theatrical micromilitarism", a strategy that neocon Michael Ladeen describes as, "Every now and then America needs to pick up some shitty little country and throw it against the wall just to show that it can". Obviously Iraq has proved that the all volunteer Army simply doesn't have the numbers to occupy and control a large, hostile country after it has been "thrown against the wall." To change that would mean a return to the draft would be necessary, with US draftees and "draftettes" playing the role of Israeli soldiers on the West Bank all over the Middle East and beyond... For a "generation. Never say never, but a return to the draft doesn't really look very likely. That leaves air power. America is unchallenged in the air, right? Again the problem America's possible adversaries face is not having to invade US air space, but to prevent the USA from invading theirs. In the case of Iran, one of the most significant, but little discussed, developments has been Russia's delivery of the Tor antiaircraft system, to quote the Israeli DEBKAfile,

"a weapon widely regarded as the most advanced of its kind in the world. Some Iranian and Russian air defense experts say its full deployment at Iran’s nuclear installations will make them virtually invulnerable to American or Israeli attack in the foreseeable future."

Also little noticed, if Google searches are any yardstick, is the Russian development of the Triumf anti-aircraft system, said to be the most advanced in the world. The Federation of American Scientist, FAS describes Trumf as,

"intended to detect and destroy airborne targets at a distance of up to 400 km (2- 2.5 times greater than the previous S-300PMU system). The Triumf system includes radars capable of detecting low-signature targets. And the anti-missile capability of the system has been increased to the limits established by the ABM Treaty demarcation agreements -- it can intercept targets with velocities of up to 4.8 km/sec, corresponding to a ballistic missile range of 3,500 km."

Then, of course there are China's advances in "passive radar" research and then even the invisible "stealth" technology that allows the USAF to bomb invulnerably around the world would be neutralized. "Theatrical micromilitarism" as a strategy of dominance would be finished. The United States would be as invulnerable to military attack by land sea or air as it always has, but would no longer be invulnerable or nearly invulnerable when attacking. At this point the American people might ask themselves, as many are doing already, the reason for spending so much of the US budget on "Full Spectrum Dominance" when some 40million of its citizens are without health insurance and the old-age pension system is said to be in danger of bankruptcy. DS

A Christmas story - #1

David Seaton's News Links

I couldn't risk your missing it. More than a tip of the hat, this is reprint ripped off directly from megablogger, "Lawrence of Cyberia's" post, complete with a fantastic drawing by "Mr Fish" of Harpers Magazine and this wonderful quote by my favorite American politician, Dennis Kucinich, who, because he speaks nothing but good sense and has lousy hair, is considered a hopeless nut. DS

While it is natural and appropriate for Americans to first focus upon the deaths of American service members in Iraq, it's astounding to consider that for every service member killed, 200 Iraq civilians have been killed....

What are the short-term and long-term implications of this massive number of deaths to Iraqi civil society? Will the millions of Iraqi children who have lost a parent ever forgive our country for igniting this violence? How do we make peace with the generations of Iraqis severely harmed by this unnecessary war of choice?

-- Rep. Dennis Kucinich, Congressional Hearing on Civilian Casualties in Iraq, 11 Dec 2006. (via Informed Comment).

What if terrorists destroy Washington? - Los Angeles Times

David Seaton's News Links

Americans love to frighten themselves, anything will serve for this purpose: cholesterol, spinach, Armageddon..you name it. This enjoyment of being worried sick about anything and everything is a famous, American national trait; like French women eating all they want and staying thin. So there is a tendency to discount American hysteria. But, in the case presented in the article quoted below, its author, Yale professor, Bruce Ackerman, is really on to something. Wiping out the US political class at one blow would be so devastating, would so surely lead to a military coup d'etat, that if Osama doesn't ever try it than HE is just another American neurosis. DS

Abstract: The news media, politicians and observers are scrambling to speculate on how Sen. Tim Johnson's (D-S.D.) medical emergency might change the composition of the Senate. But if the health of just 1% of one-half of one of the federal government's three branches can cause this much concern, what might happen in a real emergency? Specifically, imagine how the United States would react — or not — if terrorists succeeded in destroying Washington and, with it, all or most of the government. Chillingly, the Senate, which generated so much speculation this week, is actually in a better position to resume functioning than the other branches.(...) This isn't true of the House or the presidency. Under present House rules enacted in 2005, a tiny number of survivors could exercise power for months, even if they were formerly from the minority party. Moreover, their newly elected speaker could succeed to the presidency if an attack took both the president and vice president. Worse yet, the constitutional status of the speaker-turned-president would be problematic. The Constitution says a majority of each house "shall constitute a quorum to do business." It is a fair question whether the existing House rules, granting a rump the power to legislate after a terrorist attack, conform to this requirement. Under ordinary circumstances, we'd leave a question like that to the courts, but what if the Supreme Court were also swept away? Under existing law, the president has the power to give justices recess appointments that expire at the end of the congressional session. The acting president could well be in a position to pack the very court that would judge his or her own status. READ IT ALL

Imperial shelf life: paying the cost to be the boss

David Seaton's News Links

The window of American imperialism, militarism and hegemony is closing for the simplest of reasons. After the Second World War the returning American soldiers fathered many children. This phenomenon was known as the "war baby boom" and its children have come to be know as the "boomers". This massive generation whose consumer habits have driven the US economy since they were teenagers will, thanks to that frantic consumption, soon reach retirement age practically without savings. If defense spending continues as at present or, as will probably be the case, rises and Bush's tax cuts for the super rich are maintained, there will be no money for pensions and health care for the doddering (but voting) boomers. At that point something will have to give. As another name for the boomers is the "ME generation", it is very easy to imagine their passive enthusiasm for living in abject poverty in order to finance America's military hegemony. DS
E.J. Dionne Jr: A War Bush Wouldn't Pay For - Washington Post
Abstract: Until recently President Bush's refusal to scale back any of his tax cuts was discussed as the question of shared sacrifice: How could we ask so much from a courageous group of Americans fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan but not ask even the wealthiest of their fellow citizens to part with a few extra dollars to support an endeavor supposedly central to our nation's security? On the contrary, even after we committed to war in Iraq, the administration pushed for yet more tax cuts in dividends and capital gains. Now we know that the decision to put the war on a credit card is not simply a moral question. The administration's failure to acknowledge the real costs of the war -- and to pay them -- has put it in a corner. The president's options in Iraq are severely constrained because our military is too small for the foreign policy he is pursuing. Sending more troops would place even more excruciating burdens on members of our armed forces and their families. And the brass fears that an extended new commitment could, quite simply, break the Army. Yet, instead of building up our military for a long engagement and levying the taxes to pay for such an enterprise, the administration kept issuing merry reports of progress in Iraq. Right through Election Day this year, the president continued to condemn anyone who dared suggest that maybe, just maybe, we should raise taxes to pay for this war.(...) By my back-of-the-envelope calculations, since 2001 we've offered $2 in tax cuts for every $1 we have spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And conservatives wonder why we have deficits. At least the libertarians, who are against both high taxes and an interventionist foreign policy, have their philosophical story (and their numbers) straight. It has always been true that the administration and its allies couldn't have it both ways. Their illogic has finally caught up with them. They claimed to be against big government so they could justify big tax cuts. But they were also for a big, activist foreign policy, especially after Sept. 11, 2001, which required a big military, and -- sorry to break it to you, guys -- a big military is a big part of big government. They were not willing to pay for a large enough military, and so now we, and especially our armed forces, are paying for their deficit in logic and courage. READ IT ALL

Ahmadinejad: why does he do it?

David Seaton's News Links
Why did Ahmadinejad organize the Holocaust "conference"? The short answer is because he can and to prove that he can and that nobody can do anything about it. The United States is tied in a knot in Iraq, if it attacks Iran, the beleaguered US army could be cut off from its supply lines and a blocking of the Persian Gulf would mean that America's entire position in the Middle East could collapse in a matter of days and with it... perhaps the world economy. Russia is supplying Iran with advanced antiaircraft missiles that would make that attack itself very costly and Russia and China will not hear of stiff UN sanctions. Why the Holocaust? The Holocaust is the greatest of all western taboos. To relativise its horror is to be struck dead by lightining on the spot. Ahmadinejad, like most Muslims, believes that the United States government is run by "the Jews". By flagrantly breaking the greatest of all western taboos he is rubbing the United State's nose in its own mess. This is what it means to be defeated. Ahmadinejad is clearly sending a message to the "west". The message is, "y'all can kiss my ass". Message received. DS

Tony Blair unmasked

David Seaton's News Links
Here is a picture of Tony Blair. It was taken shortly after his being the first serving British prime minister in England's long history to be questioned by the police in connection with a criminal inquiry into corruption. It is a picture of the real Tony Blair, the one who lied his and another's people into a bloody, useless war. As many that have died or been maimed is this man a criminal. This is the face of the Tony Blair that Steve Bell of the Guardian has been drawing for years, but this face, with its mask off hadn't been photographed so nakedly yet. Photographed with all its authoritarian arrogance and cruelty written clearly on it... and so, too, is a touch of fear. Mad, bad and dangerous to know. Bush's poodle? Or Bush's rottweiler? DS

Senator Tim Johnson: how history is made... "all for the want of a nail"

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When Muslims say, "I'll see you tomorrow", they always add, "inshalla" and Spanish Catholics add, "si Díos quiere" to "hasta mañana". Both mean, "with God's permission." Bobby Burns famously said, ""The Best Laid Plans O' Mice and Men Gang Aft Aglay." Cut it any way you want, man proposes and God disposes. This is how history is written. A tiny blood vessel bursts and...

"For want of a nail the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe the horse was lost. For want of a horse the rider was lost. For want of a rider the battle was lost. For want of a battle the kingdom was lost. And all for the want of a nail." DS

Jonah Goldberg wants a Pinochet for Iraq. Yecch.

David Seaton's News Links

Jonah Goldberg, syndicated neocon pundit, today recommends Augusto Pinochet for dictator of Iraq. Pinochet has only one outstanding qualification for the job: he is dead. Since the neocons, a vindictive, vengeful lot, were not received by the Iraqi people with "rice and sweets" as they expected, it has come to this. Pure hate. During Pinochet's reign of terror, many Chilean refugees came to Spain, I knew some and heard their stories. I find Goldberg's article too nauseating to quote, but I'll give you the (yechh) link. DS

Barack Obama: too much, too soon... much too soon

David Seaton's News Links

Barack Obama says all the right things. I even believe he believes what he says; in other words he seems to be a real liberal and not a "brown Blair". It also appears that he has got the brains and even the "world view" necessary to be fabulous President of the United States... but not yet. Just like in boxing, in government, bringing along a hot, young prospect too quickly can ruin them. If elected in 2008 he would become president having even less administrative experience in government then George W. Bush did in the year 2000. Bush, after all, had been the governor of complex, major state. It would be better for Obama to finish his term in the US Senate, which establishes his voting record on all the major national issues and then get elected governor of Illinois and to run that complex state, with its mixture of urban and rural problems and huge budget successfully for two terms. Then Obamamania would not be some self-indulgent, American, "feel good" fad, but a serious, transformational political movement. He might actually make a great president. Running him now would be like taking the young Muhammad Ali straight from his gold medal win in the 1960 Rome Olympics and feeding him directly to Sonny Liston. George Will, an extraordinarily intelligent, well read, paleo-conservative pundit, who opposes everything Obama stands for and has everything to fear if he succeeds, is urging him to run. Obviously Will finds Obama a liberal nightmare and wants him to fail and to disappear. That should be a clear enough signal. DS

Phil Weiss over at New York Observer has some very perceptive things to say about the 'Obama fever', which I've taken the liberty to underline:

"The Obama boom is the American way of turning the corner. The hero-worship Barack Obama experienced in N.H. and the endless references to JFK are, as the senator said, not about him, they're about us. It's a spiritual reclamation. Americans like to think of themselves as idealists, yet our country has been dragged in the moral mud for years by this filthy war. The neocons can talk forever about the necessity to knock off Middle East heads of state as a sniper takes out a hostage-taker (Perle & Frum); but Americans don't like to think of themselves as the authors of assassination, devastation, disease, emigration, etc. They want to think of the world in more hopeful ways. That's what Obama is all about, reimagining the U.S. as a country that embraces progress and idealism. More power to him. READ IT ALL

Litvinenko meets Sherlock Holmes - Chapter 3

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The great detective and his faithful Doctor Watson are helping the Archangel Gabriel solve the Litvinenko case for Gabriel's mystified "employer", when we join them...

The great detective peers at the screen of his celestial computer and cries out, "By Jove Watson, this is fine work indeed, I believe this fellow Epstein in Slate Magazine is finally getting close to the heart of the Litvinenko matter". Watson and Gabriel, startled, jump from their chairs, "Gad, Holmes, do you really thinks so? Dash it, I can't find the piece you mention, I'm afraid I'm useless with these modern toys." Holmes sighs and replies, "There's a good chap Watson, here is the link."