CORNEL WEST FROM THE LEFT FORUM

“What does it really mean to be a leftist in the early part of the 21st century?…It means to have a certain kind of temperament, to make certain kinds of political and ethical choices, and to exercise certain analytical focuses in targeting on the catastrophic and the monstrous, the scandalous, the traumatic, that are often hidden and concealed in the deodorized and manicured discourses of the mainstream.

That’s what it means to be a leftist. So let’s just be clear about it.”

WAR IN IRAQ TURNS FIVE
HOME FORECLOSURES WILL IMPACT MILLIONS
THE MUSIC BIZ IN THE AGE OF MEDIA GIANTS

Where were you when the war started four years ago? I remember where I was. I was in my living room, watching TV and using that tool of media analysis, the remote control, to scour the channels and report on how TV News was selling this whole misadventure to us.

I sensed that that this war had major media component—and would later write two books and make a film (WMD) about it. Remember how it started before its started with an attempted assassination by cruise missile of Saddam, then the most demonized man in the world. 50 Cruise missiles costing over $50 million were dispatched to off him. It didn’t work although many civilians were killed. That was the first big bust of a war that has turned into a much bigger one.

Later that March I wrote under the subhead Onward Christian Soldiers::

“I have committed to pray for you, your family, your staff and our troops during this time of uncertainty and tumult. May God’s peace be your guide,” says the pledge, according to a journalist embedded with coalition forces. The pamphlet, produced by a group called In Touch Ministries, offers a daily prayer to be made for the US president, a born-again Christian who likes to invoke his God in speeches. ”

I’ll bet Christian Broadcasting is reporting heavily on this angle of the story. Actually, The New York Times did mention yesterday that the war itself was hatched with evangelic passion. “The foregone decision to go to war was made in a formal way, by a president conscious of the history of the moment, in the Situation Room on the morning of March 19. With his closest advisers surrounding him, Mr. Bush spoke to General Franks and the other commanders in the field by videoconference and asked each if they had everything they needed to win. Then the president gave the order, an administration official said, concluding with “may God bless the troops.”

“May God bless America,” General Franks replied, as Mr. Powell, the chairman of the joint chiefs during the first gulf war, reached out and lightly touched the president’s hand, said a senior administration official who recounted the scene, “because he’s been on the battlefield before.”

WHAT THEY KNEW AND FORGOT THEY KNEW

Frank Rich recapped some of the highlights (lowlights?) of what was being said then in his weekly column, also noting:

In the broad sweep of history, four years is a nanosecond, but in America, where memories are congenitally short, it’s an eternity. That’s why a revisionist history of the White House’s rush to war, much of it written by its initial cheerleaders, has already taken hold. In this exonerating fictionalization of the story, nearly every politician and pundit in Washington was duped by the same “bad intelligence” before the war, and few imagined that the administration would so botch the invasion’s aftermath or that the occupation would go on so long. “If only I had known then what I know now …” has been the persistent refrain of the war supporters who subsequently disowned the fiasco.

THAT WAS THEN, THIS IS NOW

In New York Sunday, another anti-war march, this time to the UN:

NEW YORK, N.Y. (AP) — Hundreds of protesters calling for the end of funding for the Iraq war or the immediate return of U.S. troops marched Sunday and converged on a park near the United Nations headquarters.

Union members, representatives of Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow-PUSH Coalition, war veterans and others joined the demonstration, one of several staged during the weekend across the country to mark the fourth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

The crowd of a few hundred protesters grew as the procession, which stretched for several blocks, moved on.

Actor Tim Robbins, among the speakers at the rally, organized by the New York chapter of United for Peace and Justice, told the crowd that getting Congress to cut off funds for the war “would be a good way” to get the troops home.

SATURDAY’S MARCH AS REPORTED IN CHINA

The Chinese news agency reports: “WASHINGTON, March 17 (Xinhua) — Thousands of protesters marched from Washington D.C. to the steps of Pentagon on the other side of the Potomac River Saturday, to mark the 4th anniversary of the Iraq war, which falls on March 20.

Protesters were carrying such signs that read “U.S. Out of Iraq Now” and “Stop Iraq War, No Iran War, Impeach,” “Bring Our TroopsHome”, “Stop Occupation in Iraq” and so on.”

And so on, the NY Times put a debate about the Vietnam/Iraq parallels between two Senators on Page one. The march, as is its custom, was relegated to page 23 with no front page mention although two reporters did cover speeches and interview some activists. This is another sign of the newspaper of record’s contempt for protests and social movements and preference for reporting on every wince and burp by people in “power.” A Times chart on the Violence of the war ignores the killing of Iraqis by the US forces. OMITS IT!

BBC: Roadside bombs and sectarian tension herald the fourth anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq..7 More US soldiers killed in Bagdad….US General upbeat, says surge is surging.

BBC: PRESS IN MIDLE EAST BLASTS BUSH POLICY

There is outrage at the conditions on the ground, with one paper asking “is the daily discovery of bodies the freedom President Bush says Iraqis are living in?”
There is also widespread disbelief at President Bush’s continued assertion that the ousting of Saddam Hussein has made the world a safer place.

ALI AL-TU’AIMAT IN QATAR’S AL-WATAN

Bush says, as if he is speaking to aliens, that the US and the world are now safer – but did not the US war on Iraq and its occupation increase the levels of violence and terrorism in the world and especially in Iraq? Is the daily discovery of bodies in Iraqi streets the freedom Bush says Iraqis are living in? Is the killing and death that have grown until they have become a beast the same freedom that Iraqis are living in? How can the two pictures, killing and cruelty, freedom and security, be confused?

UMAR JAFTALI IN SYRIA’S TISHRINTISHRI

Iraq, three years after the war, is nearing the spectre of civil war and US plans have made conditions for Iraqis more difficult than at any time before the invasion. Americans have begun to uncover the game played by their administration and its involvement in the Iraqi quagmire… Despite all this, President Bush still thinks that he did the right thing… Tragedy has struck and its repercussions confirm the opposite of what Bush and his administration are saying.

MUHAMMAD NAJI IMARAH IN JORDAN’S AL-RA’Y

The stated aims of the war in Iraq disappeared after the first hours of the occupation and barbaric invasion. It is no longer a secret that the toppling of Saddam Hussein and the Baath regime, the destruction of the Iraqi state, the shattering of its institutions and the ending of the Iraqi army’s existence were only for Iraqi oil and the investments of giant US corporations.

Bush still thinks that the decision to go to war was correct despite the fact that its justifications have fallen apart after the fabrications about weapons of mass destruction became apparent… He is also still repeating that the US has become safer without Saddam Hussein and that more than 25 million Iraqis were not living in freedom, as if the world is stupid and short-sighted enough to believe that.

Blogger Anwaar Hussein writes from Dubai

This 18th of March, 2007 it will be the 4th anniversary of Iraq’s brutal occupation by American forces and also the 4th birthday of ‘free Iraq’. The only things that have changed are the advanced dates, the even more advanced brutality of the nature of occupation and the addition of some gutless democrats to the cheerleaders on the Capitol Hill.

The bloodletting goes on as America continues to cling to Iraq’s throat like the bulldog named ‘Cherokee’ in Jack London’s ‘White fang’. And like him again, America inches its teeth ever closer to that unfortunate nation’s jugular with each spasmodic jerk of the dying Iraq.

True Confessions? The Amazing Tale of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed

By Anthony D’Amato

The sweeping Guantanamo “confessions” of al Qaeda leader Khalid Shaikh Mohammed
rival the scope of those made in the Stalinist purge trials of the 1930s, and should
equally prompt us to question the legal process in which they were made…

BBC: Zimbabwe bars opposition members from going to South Africa, with one beaten up days after a brutal crackdown.

WAR AT HOME

Cragg Hines in the Houston Chronicle

Meanwhile, back at the White House, if Team Bush wasn’t feeling besieged enough from the internecine mutterings on Capitol Hill, then came the week’s end and the latest National Review glowering out from the in-box. On the cover: a glum, sort of clueless Bush in baseball togs beside the main headline, “Can’t Anyone Here Play This Game?” Good question.

Among the subheads on the front of the conservative biweekly:
•”The Roots of Bush’s Competence Problem”
•”The Mess at the Justice Department”

Think Progress
White House Effort To ‘Gum To Death’ U.S. Attorney Process Moving Forward As Planned

THE LA TIMES REPORTS: WALL STREET “BOUNCING BACK” BUT FOR WHOM?

Danger signs for the economy
Canada.com – Hamilton,Ontario,Canada
”This in turn would force households who have borrowed extensively to cut spending instead of rolling over their debt through refinancing, credit card …

NEXT MAJOR ECONOMIC WORRY: AN EARNINGS SLOW-DOWN (In plain English, the growth of unemployment, pay cuts, and getting a raise when hell freezes over):

WHY THE SUBPRIME BUST WILL SPREAD(Part I):

DEBT ON TOP OF DEBT ON TOP OF MORE DEBT AND A FEW ELITE GETTING RICH OFF IT:

Lawmakers Aim to Curb Loan Abuses… their homes to foreclosures that could have been avoided … high rate of foreclosures should be an alarm bell … .. Association said that foreclosures had surged to a record …

March 14, 2007 – By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS (NYT) – Business – NewsBad Loans Put Wall St. in a Swoon… for sale as foreclosures end in auctions, driving …

BUSINESS

China’s Central Bank Raises Rate

The People’s Bank of China hopes the increase will control a surge in bank lending and investment and prevent consumer prices from rising.

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CLINTON ADMIN CREATED “RENDITIONS”

According to (former CIA Terror Chief Michael) Scheuer, many “renditions” – the abduction of a terrorist suspect overseas who is often then given to a “friendly” nation such as Egypt which will use torture to extract information on behalf of the USA – were carried out under the Clinton administration. It was under President Clinton that the CIA first devised the rendition process as a means of dealing with the threat from bin Laden’s network. Such operations were “approved by lawyers in the National Security Agency and the Department of Justice”, says Scheuer.