Shut up! Just shut up!

Ending the ceasefire?

And making the casualties go up?

BAGHDAD —

Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr will call on his fighters to maintain a cease-fire against American troops but may lift the order if a planned Iraq-U.S. security agreement lacks a timetable for the withdrawal of American forces, a spokesman said Thursday.

The statement by Sheik Salah al-Obeidi comes as al-Sadr plans to reveal details of a formula to reorganize his Mahdi Army militia by separating it into an unarmed cultural organization and elite fighting cells.

The announcement is expected during weekly Islamic prayer services on Friday.

Several cease-fires by al-Sadr have been key to a sharp decline in violence over the past year, but American officials still consider his militiamen a threat and have backed the Iraqi military in operations to try to oust them from their power bases in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq.

And here:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called off a mass demonstration set for Wednesday in Baghdad and threatened to formally end the seven-month cease-fire of his Mehdi Army militia.

In fighting Tuesday in al-Sadr's Baghdad stronghold of Sadr City, 12 people were killed and 27 wounded. At least 48 people have been killed and 176 wounded since Sunday, an Interior Ministry official said.

Eight of the 11 U.S. troops killed in Iraq on Sunday and Monday died in fighting in Baghdad.

Four U.S. soldiers were killed Monday in the capital, the U.S. military said.

One soldier was killed by a roadside bomb, two by a rocket-propelled grenade and one by small-arms fire after a roadside bomb detonated near his vehicle during a patrol in eastern Baghdad, the U.S. military said.

The deaths bring the U.S. death toll in the Iraq war to 4,024, including eight civilian Defense Department contractors.

[snip]

U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker, speaking Tuesday afternoon to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in Washington, said that "U.S. forces will remain in Iraq beyond December 31, 2008." At that time, he said, the U.N. resolution that allows U.S. troops to operate in Iraq will expire and be replaced by a status of forces agreement, commonly called a SOFA, requested by the Iraqis.

Crocker said it would cover the "basic authorizations and protections" to allow troops to continue operations but will not specify troop levels or establish permanent bases.

"We anticipate that it will expressly forswear them ... and it will not tie the hands of the next administration," he said.

Crocker also said Congress will be "kept fully informed," but he has previously made clear that the administration sees no role for Congress in the agreement's final approval.

Off topic but interesting are the article's number of deaths cited because this is what I get on the Iraq Casualties site:

U.S. Confirmed Deaths
Reported Deaths: 4134
Confirmed Deaths: 4134
Pending Confirmation: 0
DoD Confirmation List

And that's not even listing the defense contractors' deaths.

So what will the Bush administration do?

Bomb Iran probably.

Echoes of WWII still can be heard

Neo-nazis rising up to create fear and chaos:

"Right-wing extremism is part of everyday life and only attracts attention when the crimes are especially horrific," says Wolfgang Thierse, the Social Democrat vice-president of the lower house of the German parliament, the Bundestag.

The statistics are alarming. In 2007, the number of reported arson attacks committed by right-wing extremists climbed to 24 from 18 in the previous year. The targets are foreigners, including immigrants' mosques, cars and cafés.

"These are crimes that pose a threat to public safety and that could lead to people getting killed," warns Heinz Fromm, president of Germany's domestic intelligence service. The upward trend (more...) seems to be continuing this year. The numbers in March were higher than they had been in years. Throughout Germany, the police documented a total of 1,311 right-wing extremist and racist crimes, an increase of 458 over the year-earlier month. The incidents included 72 acts of violence, the government said in response to an inquiry from the Left Party vice president of the Bundestag, Petra Pau.

New Trend of "Anarchist Nationalists"

Intelligence agents have identified a new, right-wing extremist phenomenon: so-called anarchist nationalists who are "significantly more likely to commit acts of violence against political rivals and the police." After the May riots in Hamburg, the police are keenly aware of the threat posed by this new group of extremist thugs. In Hamburg, they joined in the fray wearing the same black outfits and showing a similar level of aggression as leftist anarchists. It took a massive police effort to prevent the situation from spinning out of control. What happened in Hamburg, says Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, a Christian Democrat, attests to a "new quality."

And talk about ticking time-bombs:

Barely a week goes by in Germany without wartime bombs and weapons being found during construction work.

On Monday, much of the city of Potsdam near Berlin was brought to a standstill after an unexploded 250 kilogram British bomb was found at the site where a tram bridge is being built.

Some 3,000 people were evacuated from nearby homes and a hotel, and the main train station was closed along with key streets and tram lines.

The detonator was still live and the bomb could easily have gone off when it was accidentally touched, a spokeswoman for the city said. A bomb disposal expert gingerly unscrewed the detonator and the all clear was given nine hours after it was found.

Even kids find them:

A 10-year-old boy in the German city of Kassel is lucky to be alive after playing with a new "toy" that turned out to be a high-explosive shell from World War II.

[snip]

Gossens said that in the state of Hesse alone, 230 tons of World War II-era weapons and munitions were found in 2007 -- over 60 years after the end of the war.

Not to activate Godwin's Law, but how many unexploded bunker busters and cluster bombs will be in Iraq for decades to come? (I'm not even addressing the depleted uranium that we've released into the Iraqi environment to poison all forms of life for centuries.)

Internet security flaw

LAS VEGAS (AP) - A newly discovered flaw in the Internet's core infrastructure not only permits hackers to force people to visit Web sites they didn't want to, it also allows them to intercept e-mail messages, the researcher who discovered the bug said Wednesday.

Considering the silent nature of the attack and the sensitive nature of a lot of electronic correspondence, the potential for damage from this second security flaw is high. But there's no evidence yet that this method of targeting e-mail has been used in a successful attack.

Dan Kaminsky of Seattle-based security consultant IOActive Inc. exposed a giant vulnerability in the Internet's design that, in one case, allowed hackers to reroute some computer users in Texas to a fake Google.com site loaded with automated advertisement-clicking programs, a scam to generate profits for the hackers from those clicks.

The flaw wasn't in the site itself, it was in the back-end machines responsible for guiding computers to that site.

The vulnerability Kaminsky found is especially insidious because it allows criminals to tamper with machines whose reliability and trustworthiness is critical for the Internet to function properly.

Kaminsky, who spoke Wednesday at the Black Hat hacker conference in Las Vegas, has given few details publicly about the vulnerability he found in the Domain Name System (DNS), a network of servers used to connect computers to Web sites.

A date that will live in infamy

August 6th, 2001.



(Photoshop a Tengrain special).

Today marks seven years since the day President Bush received a President’s Daily Brief entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.”

Wasn't enough to cover his ass....

The truth about war is never romantic.

In November 2004, Stefan Zaklin, a photographer then working for the European Pressphoto Agency, was embedded with a United States Army company. Mr. Zaklin photographed this soldier, who was shot and killed in Falluja, in a house used as a base by insurgents. The photograph ran in several European publications, and Mr. Zaklin was immediately banned from working with the unit.

George W. Bush March 14, 08 (Speaking about Afghanistan):

I must say, I'm a little envious. If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed. It must be exciting for you … in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You're really making history, and thanks.

This is what John McCain wants to continue:



It's so romantic!

Pot? Meet Kettle.

Bush to Urge China to Improve Human Rights

BANGKOK — On the eve of the Olympic Games in Beijing, President Bush said that he had “deep concerns” about basic freedoms in China and criticized the detention of dissidents and believers, even as he praised the extraordinary gains China has made since he first visited more than three decades ago, according to remarks released by the White House on Wednesday.

Uh, Georgie? We have deep concerns here at home about the detention of dissidents of the war and believers of the Constitution. Are you listening?

Sign the petition

Petition Text:
TO:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy
House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers
House Select Oversight Panel Chairman Rush Holt

During the height of the fear generated by the anthrax attacks of 2001, ABC News repeatedly reported that the Anthrax used in the attacks could be linked to Saddam Hussein. We now know these claims to be false, but at the time they played a key role in fanning the flames of mounting tension with Iraq, and ABC refuses to identify who fed them those fabricated reports.

Beyond that disturbing episode, there are numerous questions that remain unresolved with regard to the anthrax attacks. Even leading members of Congress charged with oversight of the FBI -- including Sen. Pat Leahy, Rep. Rush Holt and former Sen. Tom Daschle -- have repeatedly complained that they have been "stonewalled" in their attempt to obtain basic information. In light of the magnitude of the anthrax attacks, it is imperative that Americans be convinced that all facts relevant to these attacks have been divulged.

Only an investigative body endowed with full Subpoena power -- whether that be a specially-constituted Senate-House Committee of the type that investigated the Iran-contra scandal, or an independent Commission of the type that investigated the 9/11 attacks -- would be sufficient for ensuring that all facts are divulged.

Rep. Holt, as Chair of the Select Intelligence Oversight Panel, recently said that he supports this proposal, and as Americans who insist that facts surrounding the anthrax attacks and the subsequent investigation be fully disclosed, we urge you to support such a proposal and promptly commence a real investigation.

Glenn Greenwald
Jane Hamsher
Accountability Now

Glenn Greenwald's posts and updates on Ivins and the FBI's incompetence shows that the whole affair is completely unreliable and full of holes. We need an investigation.

Even if Obama becomes president

Things will not really change unless we demand it. Fascinating video from the NetRoots Nation meeting in July.

If you have an hour and a half, listen as if your Constitution and your country depend on it, because they do.

(side note, after the speakers are through, there are odd silences. The mic did not pick up people asking questions.)

On Saturday, July 19th 2008, at the NetRoots Nation conference in Austin, Texas, Jen Nessel (CCR) moderated a panel of speakers including Vince Warren (CCR), Jameel Jaffer (ACLU), Jeremy Scahill (DemocracyNow), and Dahlia Lithwick (Slate.com) who spoke and answered questions about Constitutional Rights.

Considering the fact that the Bush administration has worked systematically over the last seven years to violate U.S. and international law, and that legal advocates and journalists have uncovered the facts and identified those responsible, this panel explored what accountability should now look like. Additionally they discussed what the courts and the next administration must do in its first 100 days to make things right.

The response to the Obama tire gauge silliness

Mark Adams of American Street does us proud...