Tomgram: How to disintegrate a city

Foreign Policy Watch: A biweekly feature of news and opinion pieces from the Israeli and Palestinian press.

Orcinus: Those darn black people

Economist's View: Are any of the candidates serious about financial reform?

The Washington Note: The audacity and hypocrisy of Florida Democrat, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz

OFF THE BEATEN PATH: The False Flag, African American Political Pundit, Bread With Circus, And, yes, I DO take it personally,

Happy Saint Patricks Day! You could celebrate with an Irish seven-course meal, (a six pack and a potato), or this.

Unqualified Offerings: The good news from Iraq has been relocated

Greg Mankiw's Blog: BUSHCO rushes to the aid of reckless rich guys.

Just World News: The plan hatched by Condi Rice and Elliott Abrams to train up a Palestinian 'Contras'-style force under the auspices of Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) has fallen into a significant degree of chaos.

Scott Horton: The gathering storm at the Department of Justice

OFF THE BEATEN PATH: dangerblond, Common Nonsense, Buffalo Wings and Toasted Ravioli, Anderson Brown's Political Blog

For years, the White House has chosen to put the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the backburner. Actually, that’s probably overly generous — the Bush gang has preferred to ignore the problem altogether.

The good news is, the administration is now poised to hold a major Middle East peace conference. The bad news is, no one seems to have any idea who’s coming, when they’ll meet, or what they’ll do.

[N]o conference date has been set. No invitations have been issued. And no one really agrees on what the participants will actually talk about once they arrive at the Naval Academy for the meeting, which is intended to relaunch Bush’s stillborn “road map” plan to create a Palestinian state.

“No one seems to know what is happening,” one senior Arab envoy said last week, speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid appearing out of the loop. “I am completely lost.”

A senior administration official, described by the WaPo as being “deeply involved in the preparations” for the conference, conceded that he or she “can’t connect the dots myself.”

To be sure, brokering Mideast peace is exceedingly difficult. But if the Bush administration could at least maintain the appearance of competence, it might instill a little more confidence.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. This is Steven at The Opinion Mill, and I'll be piloting this daily roundup until Saturday. If you have any suggestions for stops along the way, send them to me at steve[dot]theopinionmill[at]gmail[dot]com.

Now, fasten your seatbelts, please.

Lenin's Tomb has some information on a rebellion against a dictatorship that's not getting nearly as much coverage as the one in Burma.

Xpatriated Texan has some handy ideas for pro-choice bumper stickers for your car.

Mike Shapiro asks if it isn't time for city governments to tell arena-hungry sports teams to take their ball and go find somewhere else to play?

Philip Roth surveys the State of the Union and shows once again why he's America's greatest living writer.

Who's afraid of an oud player? The Salvation Army sure is if he's sponsored by a Palestinian group .

Digby asks: What kind of dolt could equate MoveOn.org with the GOP-linked Freedom's Watch and call them both "outsiders"? Hint: A dolt who writes for the Associated Press.

HOLY CRAP: Thank you, Jesus, for keeping all those troublesome black protesters in line down there in Jena. Now, can you do something about the crackers? Here's some howlers from the Bob Jones University Press textbook on biology. And when Jesus Whooper Janet Folger complains that FreaxNews, CNN and MSNBC ignored ignored the Values Voters Presidential Debate in rfavor of some Iranian guy with a hard to pronounce name, Bing says Cry me a river.

Human Rights Watch:

The US government should account for all the missing detainees once held by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.The 50-page report, "Ghost Prisoner: Two Years in Secret CIA Detention," contains a detailed description of a secret CIA prison from a Palestinian former detainee who was released from custody last year. Human Rights Watch has also sent a public letter to US President George W. Bush requesting information about the fate and whereabouts of the missing detainees.

[..]Human Rights Watch's letter to Bush contained two lists of missing detainees. The first list names 16 people whom Human Rights Watch believes were held in CIA prisons and whose current whereabouts are unknown. The second list names 22 people who may have been held in CIA prisons and whose current whereabouts are unknown.

Human Rights Watch expressed concern about what may have happened to the missing prisoners. One possibility is that the US may have transferred some of them to foreign prisons where they remain under the CIA's effective control.

[..] Another worrying possibility is that prisoners were transferred from CIA custody to places where they may face torture. A serious concern is that some of the missing prisoners might have been returned to their countries of origin, which include Algeria, Egypt, Libya and Syria, where the torture of terrorism suspects is common.

LA Times has more. This story has come out in little drips since the beginning. I suspect that when or if the full story is ever known, the truth will be more horrifying than we can imagine. I was discussing this with a friend from Peru yesterday. The thing that we must remember is that the information is tightly controlled here, but in other parts of the world, they hear of the practices and as he reminded me, it's hard to disinguish exactly who the bad guy is in Bush's war.

Now you know why Bush requires a signed loyalty oath to attend one of his speeches. Can you imagine this happening here?

International Herald Tribune: Tony Blair received a tense farewell Tuesday in his last speech as prime minister to the annual gathering of Britain's labor unions.More than a dozen activists walked out as he began speaking to protest his pro-business stance and aggressive foreign policy. Many others booed and hissed as he mentioned controversial topics like Iraq.

[..] He was heckled repeatedly during his 30-minute speech on economic globalization and grilled on employment issues during a combative question-and-answer session afterward.

[..] About 20 demonstrators stood at the start of the speech holding placards that said "Go Now!" Others booed as Blair was introduced and more than a dozen walked out - followed by TV cameras - as he began.

The prime minister jokingly thanked the delegates "for that fine introduction - more or less."

Some of the roughly 1,000 who remained in the hall shouted and heckled when Blair mentioned Iraq, Afghanistan, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and his overhaul of Britain's public services, all issues on which he has angered many Labour Party stalwarts. Read on...

I always get a big kick out of watching Blair in the raucous House of Commons sessions on C-Span. Wouldn't it be great if we had a similar situation here in the US, where Bush would have to face other elected officials publicly and respond to them off the cuff?

Watch Bush tap dance around the first question to him today regarding Hamas winning big in the election. WTF did he mean by calling it a "wake up call to the leadership?" What does it say about the job Condi Rice has been doing over there.
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Froomkin:

President Bush this morning faced a conundrum: How to reconcile all his soaring rhetoric about democracy with the democratic election victory of a radical Islamic group he has labeled as a terrorist organization?

The answer: Spin that conundrum away The words "terrorist organization" never came out of Bush's mouth in his hastily-called news conference, just hours after it became clear that Hamas won a huge upset victory in the Palestinian elections.

Slate has more: All the President's Dodges

The father of a Palestinian boy shot dead by Israeli soldiers said Monday he believes his son's spirit is alive in "every Israeli" after donating the boy's organs to Israelis waiting for transplants...read on"

God Told Me

President George W. Bush allegedly told Palestinian ministers that God had told him to invade Afghanistan and Iraq - and create a Palestinian State, the BBC will report in a program slotted to run Oct. 17...read on

I'm not feeling too good today, but this story opened my eyes.

On Anderson Cooper 8/16:

COOPER: You were also quoted as saying, "My son joined the Army to protect America, not Israel. If you get America out of Iraq and Israel out of Palestine, and you'll stop the terrorism." How responsible do you believe Israel is for the amount of terrorism in the world?

SHEEHAN: I didn't say that.

COOPER: You didn't say that? OK.

SHEEHAN: I didn't say that my son died for Israel. I've never said that. I saw somebody wrote that, and it wasn't my words. Those aren't even words that I would say.

I do believe that the Palestinian issue is a hot issue that needs to be solved, and it needs to be more fair and equitable, but I never said my son died for Israel.

COOPER: OK, I'm glad I asked you that. Because, as you know, there's tons of stuff floating around on the Internet on sites of all political persuasions, so I'm glad we had the opportunity to clear that up.

SHEEHAN: And thank you, because those are not my words. It doesn't even sound like me saying that.

COOPER: Well, today, we've received numerous e-mails from viewers who saw that, and said, "Well, she lied. We read online that ABC News confirmed she sent them a letter saying exactly that."

So we contacted ABC News today about it. They said they had received a letter on behalf of Cindy back in March. They said took it seriously enough that they responded to it, but so far they cannot find the actual e-mail, they say. They say they're trying to find it, they're investigating.

Bottom line, ABC News right now does not seem to be confirming this is what Cindy Sheehan wrote to them, so stay tuned. We'll continue to follow.

Cindy also just posted on the Huffington Post about this issue and several others regarding the right wing attacks on her. Camp Casey, Day 11