From an article in Wednesday's Guardian, columnist Jonathan Freedland offers a different perspective on Obama and the Middle East, beginning with this nice opening metaphor:

It's lucky Barack Obama has people to carry his bags these days, because when he arrived in Israel last night he brought with him a whole lot of baggage.

Jump the fold with me to read more.

Yes, The Guardian, the British newspaper.
Here in New Mexico we're kind of used to being overlooked.  On national weathermaps the closes cities indicated are always Phoenix and Denver.  Think back to the old Bugs Bunny cartoons:  Albuquerque is usually a catchphrase meaning "the middle of nowhere."

I feel as if I have stepped into the pages of Great Expectations and everyone has become Magwitch, transported to Australia in shackles aboard some vessel designed for the purpose of housing and transporting criminals at sea.  But of course that was the 19th Century...and earlier.  That's not now.  Right?  And then, along comes today's Guardian report.  And I am left with one reaction:

We have bloody prison ships?  Prison ships?  

Ask, the diarist who broke this story here, wondered if we should be surprised.  The bulk of this diary was constructed as a response to Ask's query.  I wanted to move it to a diary of its own because...well, because I tend to write gentle, thoughtful, peaceful, poignant diaries, and every once in a while it just feels good to let out some of the emotion that eight years of these evil jackasses has welled up in me.

We've already been exposed to so much evil; Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, torture, renditions. The news of secret prison ships is therefore not much of a surprise - we have come to expect this kind of travesty from this administration.

Tomorrow's Guardian:

US accused of holding terror suspects on prison ships

The egregiously unconstitutional "unitary executive" theory for the vice president is apparently alive and well.

In response to congressional requests for Vice President Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff David Addington's testimony in the approval of enhanced interrogation tactics at Guantanamo Bay, Cheney’s attorney, Karen Wheelbarger claimed today that the U.S. Congress -- a coequal branch of government, powers given to them by the U.S. Constitution – lacks the authority to investigate his conduct in office.

Any investigation of the vice president’s office, according to Ms. Wheelbarger is...

"... not within the [congressional] committee's power of inquiry".

I guess after all this time; with all that’s transpired over the past seven years, I shouldn’t be at all surprised by this dubious development, and in fact, British arms dealers selling their wares to Iran doesn’t really surprise me at all. What does surprise me is that U.S. arms dealers aren’t involved as well.

British investigators have recently identified a number of national arms dealers trading with Tehran. The investigations have sounded alarms with various government officials, who along with the Bush regime fear the arms deals are also fueling Iran’s supposed nuclear arms program.

At least seven Britons have defied the latest [3rd] round of sanctions imposed by the United Nations on exporting arms, supplying Iranian entities such as the air force and the elite Republican Guard Corps. The Brits in question have also reportedly sold parts that would enhance Iran’s controversial nuclear program. Investigators argue that it is the generous riches being offered by Iran, not any shared ideology that is seducing the dealers.

Money, money money.

That's the frontpage lead right now on the UK Guardian's website (by the look of things they've largely lifted the story from the Washington Times).

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/...

Not a very long piece, but it does contain one powerful quote -

"Africans and Europeans came here and founded this country together - Europeans by choice and Africans in chains," Rice told the Washington Times. "That's not a very pretty reality of our founding."

Beyond the fallacious reasoning that led to the Bush regime’s disastrous decision to preemptively invade Iraq, to me -- the reckless, irreverent way they’ve destroyed the country -- and allowed its very history to be lost and pillaged, should in itself be a war crime.

It’s safe to say that Iraq is one of the largest world heritage sites on the planet; a rare storehouse of art and archeology. Throughout history, Iraq has laid claim to some of the oldest relics ever discovered; from some of the world’s oldest cities, and is often referred to as the "cradle of civilization."

But, new aerial images taken by a commercial satellite imaging company have revealed for the first time the extent of the harm done to archeological sites in southern Iraq since the initial invasion by the U.S. military and its coalition partners in March 2003. The images were captured by Digital Globe Corporation (DGC) and examined by archaeologist Elizabeth Stone @ Stony Brook University in New York.

Note: Links to news accounts of Bush’s 2006 South American land grab follow this story.

Ok, we all know the story: for obscure reasons, George W. Bush buys nearly 100,000 acres of land in Paraguay. But, is it true? And, if it is, does the soon-to-be former POTUS plan to retire in the impoverished but natural resource-rich, South American country?

Whether it’s true or not, there are some upsides for Bush in moving to Paraguay.

• I hear the weather’s pretty good.
• Comparably, land is much cheaper in South America.
• Paraguay has no extradition treaty with the United States, definitely an incentive for someone trying to run away from accountability. (which we all know is our frat-boy-in-chief’s modus operandi)
• Bush does speak at least enough Spanish to effectively fake it south of the border.

But, is it indeed true?

Well, if the following news story is any indication -- when Bush finally does say adios to the American people -- he’ll indeed be saying saludo to the Paraguayans.

There is in the Guardian tonight dated Feb 28,2008 an article about a book The Three Trillion Dollar War  being released in the U.K. today written by Nobel Prize Winning Economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard Professor at the Kennedy School Linda Bilmes. She is the one who gave the report to Congress on the fact that taking care of the wounded soldiers alone from the Iraq war would be one trillion dollars.  It seems as if they got more "curioser" and after being accused of being to "outlandish" in her estimates of the "true cost". Below is excerpts of the article  but you need to go to the link and read the entire piece, it is well worth the time.

A good article from across the pond on US labor reform and why there isn't a strong labor movement stateside:

The reasons for the absence of a party of labour are many and varied, and are conventionally seen in terms of five factors.

First, the American version of the work ethic known as the American dream and "the land of opportunity" of owning your own home, car and the like through individual hard work under the free market stresses individualism rather than collectivism, and neoliberalism and not welfare state-ism.

Second, the impact of widespread immigration since the inception of the US has led to racial and religious divisions among workers.

Third, rampant anti-communism has been used to smear labour unions as "reds under the bed".

Fourth, American nationalism in the form of imperialism and "we're No 1" has detracted from recognition of native class divides.

Lastly, the exceptional strength of employers, unfettered by the state, has led to victimisation and violence against leftwing political activists.
Labours US Catch-22

The UK's Guardian is running a piece,  "US journalists ignore Sunday Times scoop on FBI nuclear scandal," criticizing the US media for not picking up on the latest revelations by their competitor, the UK's Times, in the case of former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds.

The author of the piece is the Guardian's media commentator, Roy Greenslade, a Professor of Journalism and former Managing Editor of the Times. He writes:

It looks to me as though the Sunday Times has landed a genuine world exclusive that should surely have been broken ages ago by US-based reporters.

I agree entirely. Consider what any journalist in the US has known, or should have known, for years.

At least the progressive Brits do, as a raft of Guardian articles show.

Follow me over the fold for their lead article by Gary Younge who reflects on how Obama has transformed Democratic Party politics.

Of course, we Americans wouldn’t know about this not so recent development because the media in this country has come to the overwhelming conclusion that the so-called "surge" is indeed working, and whatever evidence comes out to the contrary is simply naysayer nonsense.

The surge is working in at least one capacity; it’s provided cover for the Bush regime’s continued troop presence in a place where no presence at all is warranted. That is, unless keeping troops in Iraq is solely for holding the Iraq people hostage until they feel desperate enough to sign their futures away for the next thirty-years or so.

Although the Bush regime would never admit it, if there’s one thing they didn’t count on when planning the Iraqi invasion back in 2000, (in part at Cheney’s secret energy policy meeting) it’s the fact that the Iraqi people weren’t and to this day are still not willing to play the neocon’s board game of oil expropriation and neocon hegemony.

Hillary Clinton would launch a policy review as president with an eye towards giving up some of the executive powers accumulated by George Bush, she told Guardian America in an interview yesterday.

That is encouraging news.

The New York senator and frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination also accuses the Bush administration's broad brush approach to terrorism of making it harder to understand "what it is we were up against", and expresses concerns about the attitude of the president's nominee for attorney general to interrogation and "expansive" executive power.

Another quote, one that is sweet music to our ears and, undoubtly, a dirge for the Neocons: "I'm going to have to review everything they've done".

Follow me, if you will, over the bump

I knew there was something suspicious about this. The timing alone was enough to raise the hackles of anyone believing that climate change is one of the most important issues facing Planet Earth in 21st Century. Well, my intuition was correct. The British High-Court ruling is bogus.

A British High Court ruling last week against showing former Vice President Al Gore’s landmark film "An Inconvenient Truth" in secondary schools without "guidance notes to balance its claims" was welcomed by climate change skeptics and big business polluters alike. It was, however, a major blow to subscribers of Mr. Gore’s urgent message all around the world.

The Kent, England School Governor Stewart Dimmock’s purported high-profile, "David and Goliath" battle against the state, argued that the British government was ‘brainwashing’ pupils.

During the summer, the Bush regime touted their success in paying off bribing Sunni tribal chiefs to coalesce and defeat al-Qaeda. Although, success is tentative in that venture, the insurgents are succeeding in another way; a brand, shiny new coalition of resistance to the U.S. military.

Apparently, taking a cue from the U.S. military and putting their own special spin on it, six major Sunni insurgent groups took an unexpected step towards exactly what American forces don’t need; a political unification with an express purpose of fighting the occupiers.

With his face hidden, a spokesman for the brand new alliance made the announcement on a recent video broadcast through al-Jazeera. He described the alliance as, "the political council of the Iraqi resistance."

Friday's edition of the Guardian reviews a new book by Melissa Farley titled, "Prostitution and Trafficking in Nevada: Making the Connections", about her two year investigation into Nevada's legal brothels.

During a two-year investigation, the author, Melissa Farley, visited eight legal brothels in Nevada, interviewing 45 women and a number of brothel owners. Far from enjoying better conditions than those who work illegally, the prostitutes she spoke to are often subject to slave-like conditions.
Described as "pussy penitentiaries" by one interviewee, the brothels tend to be in the middle of nowhere, out of sight of ordinary Nevadans. (Brothels are officially allowed only in counties with populations of fewer than 400,000, so prostitution remains an illegal - though vast - trade in conurbations such as Las Vegas.) The brothel prostitutes often live in prison-like conditions, locked in or forbidden to leave.