I’ve written about the real War on Christmas- in Iraq. Well, the New York Times has this, today, from Baghdad:

Inside the beige church guarded by the men with the AK-47s, a choir sang Christmas songs in Arabic. An old woman in black closed her eyes while a girl in a cherry-red dress, with tights and shoes to match, craned her neck toward rows of empty pews near the back.

“Last year it was full,” said Yusef Hanna, a parishioner. “So many people have left – gone up north, or out of the country.”

In a safe neighborhood, in the midst of the relative calm of the current relative downturn in violence, this is still less than a Merry Christmas.

Iraq’s Christians have fared poorly since the fall of Saddam Hussein, with their houses or businesses frequently attacked. Some priests estimate that as much as two-thirds of the community, or about one million people, have fled, making Sacred Heart typical. Though a handful have recently returned from abroad, only 120 people attended Mass on Monday night, down from 400 two years ago.

But, of course, that was in a safe neighborhood. Elsewhere, the violence continues, irrespective of religion or season. The Washington Post reports:

Gunmen stopped a minibus driving north of Baghdad on Monday and abducted 13 Iraqi civilians inside, Iraqi police reported. The mass kidnapping was a renewed tactic that has grown increasingly rare as violence has ebbed in Iraq.

An ominous sign?

(more)

In a separate development Monday south of Baghdad, hundreds of people in Babil province staged a protest over the appointment of a new police chief for Hilla, the provincial capital. The demonstrators think the new chief, Maj. Gen. Fadhil Radam Kadim al-Sultani, is affiliated with the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a leading Shiite political party, whose militia, the Badr Organization, is involved in a power struggle in southern Iraq with another pervasive militia, the Mahdi Army.

More ominous? After all, as the New York Times already reported, earlier this month:

Mr. Sadr was able to pull his militias back in large part because his community of poor Shiites was no longer under attack by Sunni militants. But if the broader Sunni population is not integrated into the new Shiite-dominated power structure, it is likely that the old divisions will rapidly resurface as the United States reduces its troop levels. If that happens, extremist Sunnis will renew their assaults on Shiites and Mr. Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia will respond in kind.

The Post continues:

Protesters set up tents along the road to the governor’s office in Hilla, chanted denunciations of Sultani and held signs calling for appointment of an independent police chief, said Capt. Muthanna Ahmed, a spokesman for the Babil police.

Officials close to Moqtada al-Sadr, leader of the Mahdi Army, called Sultani’s appointment illegal.

This, more than anything, is what we need keep an eye on. If al-Sadr calls off the truce, when the six months end, early next year, the situation in Iraq could change. For the worse. Quickly. And it doesn’t sound like he’s happy, right now.

The Post also had this Christmas news:

Also Monday, a car bomb exploded near the Green Zone in central Baghdad, killing two people and wounding at least five, according to Iraqi police. The bomb detonated near the office of the governor of Baghdad province.

And Agence France-Presse had this:

Two suicide bombings killed 29 people in Iraq on Tuesday, including 25 who died when a bomber slammed his vehicle into a truck carrying gas cylinders at an Iraqi army checkpoint near Baiji.

And this:

Shortly after the Baiji bombing, a suicide bomber blew himself up in the midst of a funeral procession in the city of Baquba, north of Baghdad, killing four people from a similar group fighting Al-Qaeda, police and medics said.

An AFP correspondent on the scene reported that among those killed was Haj Farhan al-Baharzawi, the provincial head of the Brigades of 20th Revolution, a former Sunni insurgent group turned ally of the US military.

Oh, about that funeral procession:

Baquba police Lieutenant Colonel Najim al-Sumaidaie said the funeral procession was marking the death of two members of the Brigades of 20th Revolution who were killed on Monday by the US military.

Overall, the BBC reports that there is more optimism in Baghdad than there was a year ago. For whatever that’s worth. As Thomas Ricks of the Washington Post, and author of Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, explained, in an online chat recounted on the Editor & Publisher website:

Well, things are going better. I just got back from Baghdad last week, and it was clear that violence has decreased. But it hasn’t gone away. It is only back down to the 2005 level — which to my mind is kind of like moving from the eighth circle of hell to the fifth.

I interviewed dozens of officers and none were willing to say we are winning. What they were saying is that at least now, we are not losing. But to a man, they were enormously frustrated by what they see as the foot-dragging of the Baghdad government.

And the meat of the BBC report is this:

One of the main stated objectives of the US troop surge was to clear a space for the Iraqi politicians to enact nation-building legislation and pursue national reconciliation as the cornerstone of the New Iraq.

But virtually none of the key pieces of required legislation has yet been passed by a fractious Iraqi parliament which has been wracked by factional disputes.

There is still no shared and agreed vision of Iraq’s future. Kurds and some Shias want a loose, federal arrangement, while Sunnis and some others want a stronger, more centralised state.

The hoped for grass-roots bottom-to-top progress has not shown conclusive results. More importantly:

Despite the progress in the security arena, the story is far from over. The casualty figures are down, but people are still being killed every day.

While things have improved greatly in Baghdad, inter-Shia power struggles in the south of the country remain intense, and insurgent activity continues strong around Mosul and Kirkuk in the north.

And, of course, there’s also that continuing little problem between Turkey and the Kurds. Reuters is reporting another Turkish bombing run into northern Iraq. The New York Times has the official U.S. response:

American military officials in Iraq said Monday that they had no operational reports that Turkey bombed northern Iraq on Sunday, contrary to Kurdish claims of Turkish airstrikes that day.

The officials said that while Turkey did not seek American consent for its raids on separatist Kurdish rebels, there was an understanding that it would notify the American Embassy in Ankara before attacking. And in this case, that did not happen.

Which returns to the point: if we need the Kurds’s help to stabilize and unify Iraq, and we’re approving Turkish attacks on the Kurds, what are the odds of our helping create a stabilized and unified Iraq? Looking across the broad swathe of today’s reports, draw your own conclusions.

“I am dying, doctor.  What should be done?”

“Get better parents next time.”

Most everyone here has probably read of the “dying woman,” Kathy Stengl, who is confronting presidential candidates.  The following is just one account:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/…

[Mike Huckabee] greeted her. She told him of her diagnosis and a need to redirect health care spending.

“Actually, that’s what I did in Arkansas,” Huckabee said. “We started moving our whole state system toward prevention.”

Stangl asked what he would do as president to change the national health care system.

Huckabee responded that it must start with federal programs like Medicare and Medicaid.

The preacher did a bit better than Dr. Ron Paul might have done but not much.  If Lymphangioleiomyomatosis (Lam) is a genetic disease, as suspected, the only prevention would be preventing the birth of those with the defect.  Since Huckabee is a right-to-lifer, one might shudder at his proposal for prevention.

An FDA commissioner on a good morning can kill more people than a Saddam Hussein or George Bush can kill in a lifetime.  It is not generally recognized the power these fine folk have. Some of the worst of the lot, like David Kessler, are heroes to the Naderites, who are joined in an unholy alliance with Big Pharma to keep revolutionary new drugs off the market.  The Naderites would keep the ghastly clinical trials going indefinitely to be really, really sure new drugs are safe enough.  Big Pharma has the resources to conduct very large trials required of new drugs with minimal, or even no advantage, over currently marketed drugs.   Small biotechs with truly revolutionary drug platforms scrap for a tiny share of funds and must additionally overcome the troglodytes at the FDA, who like the familiar and comfortable best.  

Once retarded children were considered the ideal candidates for medical experimentation.  Prisoners were a handy resource since there were obvious ways of gaining consent.  Today volunteers are treated much better but the healthy volunteers in this country for testing a new drug for safety are said to be mainly college students, who presumably need the money bad.  Increasingly trials are conducted in underdeveloped countries where the rules are laxer.  

Jenner’s smallpox vaccine was tried first on a young boy who was then exposed to smallpox to see if the boy would contract the disease. I asked the CEO if the FDA had approved exposing volunteers for an initial clinical trial of a malaria prophylactic to malaria.  The FDA had.  For the record, the malaria variety was said to be mild and easily cured but the Hippocratic Oath doesn’t seem to stand well in this case. Beats the heck out of Jenner’s method I suppose.

Karyl Stengl is said to be one of 500 diagnosed cases of LAM but the American Lung Association thinks there may be at least a quarter of a million cases.

Once upon a time, this country was busily engaged in fighting disease.  Today the country is rather engaged mostly in other wars and concerned mostly about saving money with minimum care for the ill.  After all, everybody has to die of something.

BTW nothing at all has saved more lives and expense than effective vaccines.  It is far more expensive and time-consuming to get a vaccine through clinical trials than drugs.

It would be best if you stay healthy and avoid burdening your country and its budget.  We are already having to print an awful lot of new money.

Merry Christmas.

Best,  Terry

X-posted at Kos

Genia over at SistersTalk did some very interesting research on the candidates in regards to the topic of Domestic Abuse.  And I thought to myself…why is this the first time someone raised the issue?  Why did it take a blogger to pull this into the light?  Was it the Corporate Media’s fault?  Was it our fault?  Did we all turn our backs on this issue?

Then I thought about how difficult it was to raise cash recently for Pretty Bird Woman House when compared to other fundraising drives…

…yes many of us stepped up, donated, offered assistance, and continue to assist, but so many more of us did not even give the matter a second thought.  Is domestic abuse now the accepted norm?

Has the fact that our government is doing it’s best to absolve itself from all responsibility regarding acts of torture, warped the majority of us to an uncaring state concerned merely with ourselves?

John Edwards was the only candidate to address Domestic Abuse in America on his website.

I’ll say that again…John Edwards was the only candidate to address Domestic Abuse in America on his website.

If you care about Domestic Abuse and if you think it should be included as a concern in the upcoming election I urge you to recommend this diary.  Not for me, but for Genia, she deserves a hell of a lot of credit and should get some traffic as a result of this being in the recommended list.  I also urge you to assist in the PBWH Fundraiser because it appears there aren’t all that many of us who give a damn about women’s rights.

“Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home!” – Charles Dickens

Peace and Love,

Mike and Joanna

Well I should probably be writing some deep and profound analysis of the political situation here in New Hampshire now that I’ve had 24 hours to marinate in the WMUR media blitz and have my heirloom copy of the Concord Monitor’s anti-endorsement of Romney, but instead I’d like to share with you the good news that my niece and nephew are not as hopelessly warped politically by growing up in this particular era as many of my activist brother’s contemporaries were.

It was a source of extreme frustration to me to see so many of that generation buy into the Reagan myth.  As far as I was concerned Reagan was a traitor who openly defied Congress and sold arms to our enemies in order to finance an illegal war.  Even HW correctly called his economic policies voodoo.  Communicator?  Announcer of Noonan crafted platitudes.

It chaps my ass even today to hear his worshipers talk about that dark period of misrule as some kind of golden age.

When I look around at the Villagers, media, government, consultant and lobbyist, I wonder what kind of emotional emptiness leads them to let this brain damaged drooling zombie act as a substitute father for their Electra complex lust to shut off their minds and let daddy take care of it.

Those who benefit from the crime I can understand.  Greed is good.  But if all you want to do is abandon responsibility for your own desire to be beaten and abused I recommend lobotomy, because it causes less harm to those around you.

My niece and nephew are not fooled by this sad excuse thank goodness.  My nephew shared the story of how his employer threw an Army recruiter out on his ass and two Marines who happened to see it called him over and said- “Kid, whatever you do, don’t join.”

His mom and I greeted this anecdote with some relief, since we had our fears and he is of an age, but listening to him and his sister critique the drone of the dodos seeking to perpetuate the current horror actually gave me some hope for the future.

In keeping with the dd policy of being able to post any damn thing…and because I’m spending the night snuggled on the sofa with hot chocolate and Dickens…and don’t really care how horribly unsophisticated of me it might be, to post this passage entire…from the original Christmas Carol…

“Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask,” said Scrooge, looking intently at the Spirit’s robe, “but I see something strange, and not belonging to yourself, protruding

from your skirts. Is it a foot or a claw?”

“It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it,” was the Spirit’s sorrowful reply. “Look here.”

From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children; wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment.

“Oh, Man! look here. Look, look, down here!” exclaimed the Ghost.

They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shriveled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any

grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.

Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie

of such enormous magnitude.

“Spirit! are they yours?” Scrooge could say no more.

“They are Man’s,” said the Spirit, looking down upon them. “And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!” cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. “Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And bide the end!”

“Have they no refuge or resource?” cried Scrooge.

“Are there no prisons?” said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. “Are there no workhouses?”

The bell struck twelve.

(Cross posted at Kos)

As a liberal Jew (which most of us are!), nothing infuriates me more than the hijacking of “Jewish Opinion” by the organized, powerful Jewish Groups like AIPAC, the ADL, etc. American Jews suffer guilt by association because people like Podhoretz, Crystal, Goldberg et al., ad nauseum are perceived as speaking  for us when quite the contrary is the case.

Eric Alterman does a great job of summarizing this problem in a piece at The Nation, Bad for the Jews..  As he puts it:

“Rather, it’s that they think like enlightened liberals yet allow belligerent right-wingers and neocons who frequently demonize, distort and denounce their values to speak for them in the US political arena.

(More below, if you should only be so inclined.)

Eric describes the overwhelming (most likely more than any other ethnic group) Jewish opinion against the war/neocon program:

According to the American Jewish Committee’s 2007 survey of American Jewry, released December 11, a majority of Jews in this country oppose virtually every aspect of the Bush Administration/neocon agenda. Not only do they disapprove of the Administration’s handling of its “campaign against terrorism” (59-31 percent), they believe by a 67-to-27 margin that we should never have invaded Iraq. They are unimpressed by the “surge”–68 percent say it has either made no difference or made things worse, and by a 57-to-35 percent majority they oppose an attack on Iran, even if it was undertaken “to prevent [Iran] from developing nuclear weapons.”

Jews are also impressively sensible when it comes to Israel/Palestine, all things considered. Though barely more than a third think peace is likely anytime soon, and more than 80 percent believe the goal of the Muslim states is to destroy Israel, a 46-to-43 percent plurality continues to support the creation of a Palestinian state.

He concludes:

It’s long past time, however, for the mainstream media to recognize just how out of touch they are with the values of the American Jewish mainstream

The problem as I see it is that there is no counterbalancing organized group to oppose the AIPACs, and break through to not only the mainstream media, but more importantly, the Congress that is cowed, e.g., into voting for Kyl/Lieberman.  

The main reason for this may be that while the Neocon Jews are clear and unanimous, there is no comparable unity on the center and the left.  The Tikkun/Lerner faction is probably too far in the other direction for most Jews, and thus far, there’s no wide support for another alternative.

Anyway, Gut Yontif to all of our Christian brethren here.  We may be of different faiths, but most of us are dangerous secular progressives at heart.

(8 pm – promoted by ek hornbeck)

The Right Before Christmas Twas the day before Christmas And all through the news The networks were vying To peddle their views The Secular Media Pretending to care Broadcast their services Over the air CNN’s query for Me and for you Was what would Lord Jesus Himself really do MSNBC Wants to share with us all The party from Radio City Music Hall But one network more Than the others declares Its devotion to Christianity’s prayers From 24 hours Its schedule was sliced To give almost half To the glory of Christ Which compels one to wonder Regarding Fox News T’would be better to hail The net as Fox Pews

Brought to you by… News Corpse The Internet’s Chronicle Of Media Decay.

On this holiday eve, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the programming served up by the big three cable news networks. Not surprisingly, they all offered specials related to Christmas. It is, of course, entirely appropriate to produce programs that will be of interest to such a prominent percentage of TV consumers on a day of great national significance. But it was nonetheless a little jarring to discover the extent of Fox News’ sermonizing.

Christian content consumed nearly half (11 hours) of the 24 hour period pre-Christmas. The programs included an airing of “Miracles: Facts, Fictions, and Faith,” two airings of “One Nation Under God” hosted by Newt Gingrich, three airings of “The Birth of Jesus,” and five airings of “The Rick Warren Christmas Special.”

Despite the declaration of victory issued by General Bill O’Reilly, the War on Christmas is still raging and Fox doesn’t appear ready to stand down. After all, both Rupert Murdoch and the White House sent out “holiday” greetings this year. So as an extra measure of security, Fox is implementing its own surge strategy by scheduling nine straight hours of Gen. O’Reilly himself on Christmas day. Who better to spend the Lord’s birthday with than the man who proclaimed that:

“Every company in America should be on its knees thanking Jesus for being born. Without Christmas, most American businesses would be far less profitable.”

Now that’s Christmas spirit! I wasn’t even aware that companies had knees. But it is uplifting to know that Jesus was born to increase profit margins. Never mind those moneychangers in the temple.