LISTEN AS GORE VIDAL SEEKS TO IMPEACH
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/downloads/vidal.mp3

WHAT IS A CIVIL WAR?
SAM GARDINER ON INFO WAR
SEATTLE MEDIA REFORM RESOLUTION

I started my workday yesterday with an urgent call from CNN Headline News from the rightwing Glenn Beck Show. They were doing a segment on deceptive marketing of toys to kids—a staple of holiday journalism. When the booker finally reached me, we had a lively conversation about an issue that has been around for 40 years. I said that I felt that the TV networks were culpable in the problem.

She thought I was articulate and would make a good guest until she didn’t. I was “great” until I was cancelled. No surprise. I didn’t tell her that I used to run an interview show on CNN and had to approve what the bookers dredged for. Maybe someone recognized my name over there. Who knows? Clearly they didn’t want to talk about the complicity of television in the various odious practices that still continue.

Being booked and unbooked seems to be a constant in my life, but before I had a chance to feel sorry for myself, the CBC in Canada called to have me on a news show dealing with the issue of the controversy over the use of the term Civil War in Iraq. Unlike CNN which seemed to treating a consumer issue in a superficial way, the CBC wanted to hear a critical take on the great “civil war debate.” They sent a car, and there I was back in “the chair, ” for a live remote at a building in Manhattan that boasts of having 28 surveillance cameras in operation. With spy cameras like that, the US might have averted some of their security problems.

I am not sure what we are seeing is a civil war. It is a war, but hardly civil in that two sides duke it out. As I tried to argue, many civil wars involve secessionist movements like we had in the US or Nigeria experienced. The Sunnis and Shia of Iraq are not trying to secede even as they kill each other and even if some of the Kurds are. They are engaged in a violent struggle for power with many splits on each side. All seem to agree that the US presence makes matters worse and is contributing to the chaos if not actually inciting it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/26/AR2006092601721.html>

The news media is, however, beginning to use the term over the objections of the Administration, perhaps to finally signal that it will no longer carry the White House’s media water. Reuters reports:

“Over White House objections, The New York Times and other U.S. news outlets have adopted the term “civil war” for the fighting in Iraq, reflecting a growing consensus that sectarian violence has engulfed the country.”

U.S. officials’ reluctance to use the words “civil war” is more than a semantic difference. The phrase carries a political dimension as well because it could further weaken Americans’ support for a war that has already helped remove Bush’s Republican Party from control of Congress

http://articles.news.aol.com/news/_a/president-resists-civil-war-terminology/20061128160009990004?ncid=NWS00010000000001

The CBC anchor Sarika Sehgal was well informed and followed up brilliantly. She is not only stunning but well informed and competent. Very impressive. It’s too bad that CBC is not seen in most American cities.

BROKEN RECORD

Meanwhile. President Bush today recycled his belief that the war in Iraq is all the terrorists doing and once again blamed Al Qaeda. “Victory” remains his objective. The Times today reports he has lost confidence in the Iraqi prime minister and that no one there heeds what the US says anymore.

US

Here’s Maureen Dowd’s take after hearing Bush’s NSC chief Hadley try to explain away the violence:

“Mr. Hadley bluntly mused about Mr. Malaki: “His intentions seem good when he talks with Americans, and sensitive reporting suggests he is trying to stand up to the Shi’a hierarchy and force positive change. But the reality on the streets of Baghdad suggests Maliki is either ignorant of what is going on, misrepresenting his intentions, or that his capabilities are not yet sufficient to turn his good intentions into action.”

It’s bad enough to say that about the Iraqi puppet. But what about when the same is true of the American president?

Defeat Confirmed by the Marine Corps

The U.S. military is no longer able to defeat a bloody insurgency in western Iraq or counter al-Qaeda’s rising popularity there, according to newly disclosed details from a classified Marine Corps intelligence report that set off debate in recent months about the military’s mission in Anbar province.

STUDY GROUP A FRAUD

Andrew Bacevich’s writes about the Iraq Study Group in the Christian Science Monitor:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1128/p08s02

WHY ANTI-WAR CRITICS ARE WRONG

An Argument for Staying the Course….
http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=112806G

Pepe Escobar: Bury my heart in the Green Zone

Everyone is guilty in the ongoing Iraq tragedy. The US-trained new Iraqi army is infiltrated by militias, by death squads and even by al-Qaeda in Iraq. The SCIRI, Da’wa and the Kurds are only worried about their own interests, not the interests of Iraq as a nation. And the US - always hiding under the dubious mantra of “Iraqi democracy” - totally evades its responsibility in provoking the appalling chaos in the first place.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15

THE COMMUNICATIONS SIDE OF THIS CRISIS

Sam Gardner, a retired Air Force Colonel assess the information warfare now underway;

From the data and from what I’ve heard from reporters, the Administration blocked discussions of Iran from about the second week of October until the end of the election. That decision is clearly reflected in volume measurement. It is also clear that we are back into Iran messaging.

Equally interesting, the leadership in Israel stayed “off the air” on Iran and did not emerge until Olmert’s visit to the US just after the elections.

Since the elections, we are seeing a fairly consistent theme. We’ve heard it before, but we are now seeing a consistency that would suggest a decision on theme. The DNI said it in his testimony on the Hill before Thanksgiving. Iran is becoming more deeply responsible for the violence in Iraq. Abizaid said it on 60 Minutes on Sunday. Iran is causing some of the violence in Iraq. The UK Defense Minister said it yesterday. Iran is part of a larger Middle East problem. There was a leak to the press yesterday from an “intelligence official” that Hezbullah (Iran’s proxy) was training some of Moktada al-Sadr’s militia. Even a Saudi official hit on the theme yesterday.

If the problems of Iraq are caused by Iran that diffuses the talk-to-Iran dimension of the Baker-Hamilton report. This could also be a continuation of the building an argument for a military operation against Iran. It certainly bears watching.

BUSH LOSES A BIG ONE

Judge strikes down Bush on terror groups - Yahoo! News
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061129/ap_on_re_us/terrorist_designation

Former Prosecutor Imagines Bush’s Judgment Day

William Fisher writes:

”The scene is a U.S. federal grand jury room. There, impaneled ordinary citizens listen intently as a veteran federal prosecutor asks them to return an indictment unique in U.S. history.

The charge is conspiracy to defraud the United States. And the defendants are President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard Cheney, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and former Secretary of State Colin Powell.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1128-02.htm>

THE NEW BOSS—LIKE THE OLD B OSS

How Robert Gates: A Cold War Bombthrower Becomes A Iraq War Saviour. Robert Parry of Consortium News explains:
http://www.alternet.org/story/44814/

Diane McWhorter: UNMENTIONABLE LESSONS OF 2006 ELECTION
http://www.slate.com/id/2154567/

VIVA DAVID WALKER

NYT: GAO Chief Sends Long Wish List to the New Congress

If the next Congress follows through on Democratic leadership promises to conduct aggressive oversight of the government, a to-do list will be waiting, courtesy of Comptroller General David M. Walker, the head of the Government Accountability Office.

For the first time, Walker has sent congressional leaders a letter pointing to areas where he thinks oversight is needed. His list, drawn from years of research by the watchdog agency, is intended to give Congress “a jump-start on your planning,” he said.

“We cannot afford to continue business as usual in Washington, given our current deficit and growing long-term fiscal challenges,” Walker said in the letter, sent this month.

In addition, Walker wrote, most of the government’s policies and programs “are based on conditions that existed decades ago,” suggesting that it is time for “a fundamental review, reprioritization and re-engineering of the base of government.”

ECO CRISIS

Mystery: How Wealth Creates Poverty in the World

Michael Parenti writes:

There is a “mystery” we must explain: How is it that as corporate investments and foreign aid and international loans to poor countries have increased dramatically throughout the world over the last half century, so has poverty? The number of people living in poverty is growing at a faster rate than the world’s population. What do we make of this?

http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2006-09/28parenti.cfm

DEBT WATCH

PR WATCH: In a stunning act of consumerism, Black Friday shoppers spent a record $360.15 per household over the course of this past weekend. Up 18.9% from last year, many financial experts are surprised to see consumers spending more than ever despite the recent housing market slowdown.

“Nearly every current financial trend is telling us to slow down our spending,” said Addison Wiggin, author of Empire of Debt. “But we are clearly bent on living beyond our means.” Few could disagree … a recent Federal Reserve study showed that consumer debt now exceeds $2.36 trillion.”

Debt-Proof Your Holidays

by Mary Hunt
http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0312963904/simplepleasuresp/

SAY “BAH HUMBUG!” TO HOLIDAY DEBT
http://debtguru.com/

Book list for frugality and simple living
http://hometown.aol.com/DSimple/books.html