The Nobel prize-winning president of East Timor, Jose Ramos-Horta, is in critical condition, breathing on a ventilator.  Timorese Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao survived an attempted coup against him and Ramos-Horta. Ramos-Horta was shot in the back of the head and the stomach...  Now Gusmao has declared a 48 hour state of emergency.

Rebel leader Major Alfredo Reinado and another insurgent are dead.

Breaking news on BBC and CNN - Jose Ramos Horta, president of East Timor and Nobel laureate, has been shot in his own home. The attacker, a disgruntled soldier by the name of Reinado, has been killed by guards. Ramos-Horta's latest condition is unknown. Reinado was involved in military unrest in 2006 and, as recently as November, had threatened the government.

Today saw the death of former Indonesian dictator Suharto. The press notes his brutality:

Former Indonesian President Suharto, the U.S. Cold War ally who led one of the 20th century's most brutal dictatorships over 32 years that saw up to a million political opponents killed, died Sunday.
...
Suharto was vilified by historians, rights groups and his critics as one of the world's most brutal rulers and was accused of overseeing a graft-ridden reign.

It gives me no pleasure to report this.  Sen. Clinton has some serious questions to answer.

Investigative journalist Greg Palast has posted a deeply disturbing article here.  He documents Hillary Clinton's apparent long-term links with energy company Entergy.

Palast is known for meticulous research and letting the chips fall where they may.  He ends his article with the question whether Entergy's "investment in Hillary's jail-bird partner" [Hubbell] is continuing to pay dividends:

Code Pink and New York environmentalists have been pulling out their hair over Senator Clinton’s backing of the operation of the creaky old Indian Point nuclear plant just above - and within irradiating distance of - New York City. The owner of the Indian Point nuke? Hillary’s old buck buddies, Entergy.

Am I saying Hillary would arrange for a payoff to keep witnesses silent, to poison US foreign policy for the profit of corporate cronies, to vote in Washington loaded down with conflicts of interest? I would never say so. Even if the evidence will.

Join me for more below.

With the ghost of Richard Nixon permeating D.C. again, its interesting to see Henry Kissinger back in the news again

For a very brief interlude in the early part of the 1970s we were made aware of what we were as a nation and a people.  The mask of civility was dropped, and what lay beneath that deceptive gauze was the ungloved fist of power: carpet bombing in Cambodia, Kissinger's rabid and bloodied Vietnam era policies, and Richard Nixon's clammy visage, declaiming with vehemence in inverse proportion to the truth: "I am not a criminal"

He was exactly that, of course, and worse, but Gerald Ford forgave Nixon that small veniality of ignoring our constitution. Word is, it 'healed' our nation...

Ford is now being lauded as a fair minded and even handed President and even some liberal quarters are giving him the benefit of the doubt. This is understandable as a kind of human defect: we tend to want to say the best about an individual at their passing, yet with Presidents it's important to enumerate the good as well as the bad because the historical record is being made --especially in our fine nation where an historical sense lasts usually no more than fifteen minutes. Thus it is with some regret that I bring up, amid all the cloying, hagiographic nonsense surrounding our golf loving, football playing bud, the fact that he was responsible for the slaughter of approximately 200,000 individuals--none of whom he probably even knew. But responsible, none the less.

   Actually America's system of imperialism and conquest, the Pentagon system, has essentially failed as a result of the activities of the private sector capitalists. For example, under the system of globalization if one wants to have a successful furniture company, one could close down factories in Pennsylvania, putting American workers out of jobs, and ship the wood to China to be processed and shipped back. The finished product would essentially be being bought from China at a cheaper price than employing American laborer. This kind of practice would run up the US trade deficit immensely (and economists are scratching their heads trying to salvage America's economy), but it would turn huge profits for the shareholders and thus the wealthy investor class, 1% Americans own around 50% of the stock, and in the process destroy the American economy and the middle class, causing devastating human consequences for American working-class families, like yours.

At last week's DemocracyFest here in San Diego, Kenneth Brady screened a couple of scenes from his new movie, The Time is Now.  Today I finally had a chance to see it in its entirety.  My review is below the fold.

The Bush administration can breathe a sigh of relief: at the end of this year Kofi Annan, the Secretary General of the United Nations, will be gone.

But who will succeed him?

There are numerous candidates being talked about, most from Asia since it's "Asia's turn", some from Eastern Europe. Then there's a campaign to get a woman the official top job in the world.

Here is yet another example, one even implicating Jimmy Carter of all people, of truth that doesn't 'fit' into our 'land of the free and home of the brave' national image or make its way into our history books.

However one defines it (and it has received more explanations than the Bush Administrations's rationales for the Iraq invasion, United States national security always takes precedence over the innocent lives of civilians--even nuns. When you decide to support Pinochet's genocide, casting your lot later with Saddam Hussein becomes an easy-to-tread path.

And people wonder why the residents of some countries do not trust, or worse, revile the United States?