Okay...so it's discovered that one of the largest remaining untapped resources, of the most lucrative commodities on the planet, lies beneath an area on earth which is landlocked by surrounding countries who don't like you.

But in order to get that commodity out to market - so that you can profit from harvesting it - you need a major highway or two to the nearest seaport where you can load it on big boats and ship it off to world markets.

Problem is: those aforementioned surrounding countries. Those highways will have to traverse their land and they're not going to just let you do it.

What's a Western capitalist to do!

We are fiddling while "Rome" burns. While Bush and his minions are pretending that the surge is working in Iraq and blowing smoke rings around Iran, the Taliban is growing by leaps and bounds, and the hatred toward the US is growing exponentially.

It looks like we’re still using U.S. Navy warships to assassinate suspected terrorists in Somalia.  The New York Times said, "at least four Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from a Navy ship or submarine off the Somali coast had slammed into a small compound of single-story buildings in Dusa Marreb."

The NYT’s source for that information was an "American military official in Washington, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the operation."  Notice how operations these days are "sensitive" as opposed to "classified" or "secret."  One has to wonder how they arrived at a world like "sensitive" to describe things like cruise missile attacks that kill people.  Then again, so many of these missile strikes kill people other than the people they were intended to kill that yeah, I guess American military officials in Washington might get sensitive about that aspect.  The NYT reported that 10 to 30 people other than the intended target were killed this time, and we can be pretty sure that part of the story is mostly true because the NYT didn’t get it from an anonymous American military official.  

The current debate format--usually two moderators that ask a series of preplanned questions with no specific time limit--is far superior to to the Bush-Kerry or Bush-Gore debates that were timed with colored lights and even more distractions. But obviously we still need a huge change to the current format because it's become very apparent that the news agencies just use the luxury of sponsoring a debate to further its own self-interest. As I was reading the diary about Clinton proposing a Lincoln-Douglas style debate, I realized this is exactly what the Obama campaign should be pushing for with John McCain, and here's why.

[cross-posted at And, yes, I DO take it personally]

this nyt article about afghanistan president hamid karzai's speech yesterday gives me the opportunity to say something i've been wanting to say for the past several weeks...

read the excerpt first...

   President Hamid Karzai strongly criticized the British and American conduct of the war here on Friday, insisting in an interview that his government be given the lead in policy decisions.

   Mr. Karzai said that he wanted American forces to stop arresting suspected Taliban and their sympathizers, and that the continued threat of arrest and past mistreatment were discouraging Taliban from coming forward to lay down their arms.

A major study out of Kansas has now dispelled the myth (lie? charade?  PR scam?  boondoggle?)  that Monsanto has been using for years to promote its GMO crops - that GM crops produce greater yields.  It then slathers that manure ... no, manure is too real and valuable to work as an analogy ... that synthetic crap, with an even more synthetic concern for the world's poor and starving.  And thus evil disguised as goodness, worms its way in where it should never have gotten.

In the ongoing debate for what I hope will be the general election between Senators Obama and McCain, we really have the opportunity to decide between two very different views of the world and what our nation's direction should be. This is going to be a debate to decide all debates on the two almost extremes of the argument. On one side we have something extremely close to what our foreign policy is currently--a policy of preemptive war as a strategy to persuade those we don't agree with to cooperate. On the other side we have a war-as-almost-a-complete-last-resort strategy that focuses on diplomacy and foreign aide as tools to root out the high-risk areas that breed terrorists safe havens. First and most importantly at the center of this debate is Iraq our immediate plans to fix it.

In the wake of Charles Gibson and George Stephanopolous' abominable performance in the ABC Democratic debate Wednesday, I created a list of 10 debate questions John McCain will never be asked.  (The Real McCain author Cliff Schecter subsequently featured my Perrspectives list over at The Huffington Post, AmericaBlog and Crooks and Liars.)

Now, as it turns out, this Sunday's guest on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopolous is none other than Arizona Senator and Republican presidential nominee John McCain.

I have been urging more Mandarin and study abroad programs in Oregon's public schools and universities since the summer of 2006. This is part of that effort. It was originally posted on BlueOregonhere.

The movie "Lions for Lamb" (seehere) directed by Robert Redford and starring Robert Redford, Meryl Streep, and Tom Cruise, is just out on DVD. It’s a political thriller about the war in Afghanistan, but the dialogues raise many issues. Rent it, see it.

In the middle of the movie there is a scene which slips in a profound proposal for US education. Because I am now developing similar legislation, several component proposals for a high school study abroad program, I found the scene riveting.  Let us in Oregon take the movie proposal seriously. Let us not mandate it, nor limit it to the Junior year, as in the movie, but let us see what parts we could make as options for our students.

For those who didn’t see dday’s excellent diary about the very unimportant Government Accountability Office report out today, well, it is a doozy.

The title itself should bring back memories of the infamous August 2001 PDB titled "bin Laden determined to strike inside the US", as this one is titled The United States Lacks Comprehensive Plan to Destroy the Terrorist Threat and Close the Safe Haven in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas".

The first paragraph lays it all out with the following reiteration of what we have known for quite some time already:

GAO found broad agreement, as documented in the National Intelligence Estimate, State and embassy documents, as well as Defense officials in Pakistan, that al Qaeda had regenerated its ability to attack the United States and had succeeded in establishing a safe haven in Pakistan’s FATA.

This could be a good topic for a future debate, in a bizarro America where such things are more important than someone's pastor.

Here is the title of a report from the General Accountability Office on combating terrorism released today:

The United States Lacks a Comprehensive Plan to Destroy the Terrorist Threat and Close the Safe Haven in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

That is not some line buried in the report. That is the title. Wow.

But wait, there's more!

I just saw Dan Abrams and his guests skewering Obama for making reference to his experiences in Pakistan during a college trip in the context of a discussion regarding foreign policy credentials.  Abrams had a cute little riff about whether or not he could point to his own college/party trip to Greece to beef up his diplomatic credentials.

Much was made (and rightly so) about Gen. Petraeus's and Amb. Crocker's admission that al-Qaeda’s main base of operation and greatest threat come from Pakistan/Afghanistan - not Iraq.

Of course, that was stating the obvious known all along.

Cross-posted from

What can wine tell us about the world? Plenty, it turns out.  It is one of civilization's oldest products.  At one time it was a necessity, when food was served rotten and water was where you washed and evacuated.  Now it is enjoying a resurgence.  It is an agricultural product, and a unique one.  You see, vineyards have kept records of temperature, yield, and ripeness-dates for centuries, giving us incredibly precise records that tell us reams about the global environment. It is also a luxury item, particularly at the top end.  As such, its sale and purchase can tell us volumes about the global economy.

Today we look at wine, ethanol, and biofuels, and their effect on hunger and the economy.

Last night, Bill Moyers rebroadcast a 2002 show in which he talked about famine relief efforts after the US invasion of that country. The show followed Dominic McSorley, an employee for Concern Worldwide, an international relief agency which brings food to some of the most impoverished areas of the world. 20 years of fighting there, cumulating in the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, has turned that country into one of the world's wastelands as well as one of the poorest countries of the world.

Few Americans know as much about the history of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda within Afghanistan and Pakistan as Steve Coll.  A few years ago Coll won a Pulitzer Prize for his book Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001.  He's just published a new book, The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century.  Yesterday on NPR's Fresh Air with Terri Gross, he speculated on something that if it happens would not only have a big effect on US efforts to combat terrorism, but on the U.S. Presidential race as well:

Coll: It's more likely now, in the next year or two, that [bin Laden will] finally be captured or killed than at any time since late 2001.  I say this not because American efforts to find him have improved; I don't think they have.  But the situation in Pakistan has changed dramatically in the last six or eight months.  He's now a much more unpopular figure than he was even a year ago.  And also, the new government has a different set of motivations to find him in comparison to the government of President Musharraf.  

Gross: So even though the new government is less friendly with the Bush administration than Musharraf was, you think the new government is going to do a better job of going after Al Qaeda and Bin Laden.

Coll: They have better motives to do so.  The United States got itself in to a strange situation with Musharraf, in which the structure of its aid to the Pakistan government essentially incented the government not to find Bin Laden because if they found him they had reason to fear that the US would end this flow of more than $10 billion that it was providing directly to the army.  The democratic government came to power arguing to Washington that constitutional democracy was a better counterterrorism strategy than reliance on an authoritarian military leader.  So, I think they understand, if they can deliver Osama, they're not going to be punished for it, rather they're going to be rewarded.  So, for the first time, you have somebody in the Pakistani government who has motivation to find him.  And at the same time, the population in which he's hiding has turned more hostile to him, so the possibility of someone dropping a dime on him is much greater now than it was a couple of years ago.

Before she was assassinated, Benazir Bhutto had broken through the relative silence among Pakistani elites about Islamic extremism, and had spoken bluntly about the need to confront the extremists.  The Musharraf regime, according to almost all observers, was severely compromised by it's thick ties, via the intelligence services, with extremists in the tribal areas on the border of Afghanistan.  In the recent elections, a coalition led by Bhutto's party prevailed over Musharraf's coalition.  The new government bitterly opposes Musharraf, and is hostile to the Bush administration, which it believes has supported anti-democratic forces in Pakistan, which subsequently fostered a rise in extremism which helped Al Qaeda.  

For it's own survival and the survival of a secular Pakistan, the new government will work much harder than Musharraf's to capture bin Laden.  They surely also have paid close attention to Barack Obama's much more aggressive position toward Pakistan and doing whatever is necessary to capture Bin Laden.  As Coll argued, the motivations for capturing him have changed, and will change even more should Obama become president.  

But what happens if Pakistan captures Bin Laden prior to our election in November?  Surely Bush will claim credit and try to use the opportunity to boost the chances of John McCain to continue Bush's third term.  Will the American press recognize that capturing bin Laden would probably have far more to do with the new government in Pakistan?  Would the US media make it clear that the utter failure of US policy toward Pakistan helped breed turmoil within Pakistan, which in turn finally led to the election of a government that is both hostile to the political interests of the Bush administration while simultaneously acting in a manner that's in the security interests of the United States?  

If the new government of Pakistan succeeds in capturing Osama bin Laden, will the US media help Americans recognize that for the last seven years, much of what's been done by the Bush administration and it's Republican enablers--including John McCain--has actually undermined the security interests of the United States?  

I wouldn't hold your breath expecting it to happen.

"’If you allow me to live just a few years in the second half of the twentieth century, I will be happy.’" Now that's a strange statement to make, because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land. Confusion all around. That's a strange statement. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars."
         Martin Luther King Jr., "I’ve Been to the Mountaintop," April 3, 1968

"If we truly want a legacy of peace for our children, we need to understand that this is a war that will ultimately be won with books, not with bombs."
         Greg Mortenson, "He Fights Terror with Books"] April 6, 2003

"Your President Bush has done a wonderful job of uniting one billion Muslims against America for the next two hundred years."
         Brigadier General  Bashir Baz, on the U.S. invasion of Iraq

The McCain Doctrine is severely damaging morale among our troops in Iraq:

Before putting a bullet through his head,  Westhusing had been deeply disturbed by abuses carried out by American contractors in Iraq, including allegations that they had witnessed or even participated in the murder of Iraqis.   His suicide note included claims that his two commanders tolerated a mission based on "corruption, human right abuses and liars." One of those commanders: the future leader of the "surge" campaign in Iraq, Gen.  Petraeus.