Oil prices hit new record highs, crossing $70 a barrel in Asian trading, as Hurricane Katrina threatened the Gulf of Mexico region and Bush urged residents of New Orleans to comply with a general evacuation order. A state of emergency has been declared for Louisiana and Mississippi. (AFX, Aug. 28) Chevron and Exxon have both shut offshore oil and gas production and evacuated staff, and the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port closed its pipeline to refineries. (Bloomberg, Aug. 28)

Violence continues to escalate in Haiti, with the world paying very little note. In a grim irony, the latest massacre—carried out with the complicity of police forces—took place at a football match organized to promote peace. UN "peacekeeping" forces are also implicated in recent attacks on civilians. Amidst the bloodshed, peasants rallied last week, protesting that a "neoliberal" economic model is being imposed that will further entrench the majority in poverty.

Henry Kissinger, a key architect of the US war in Vietnam told CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer" Aug. 28 that he has "a very uneasy feeling" that some of the same factors that damaged support for the war in the 1960s are re-emerging in the two-year-old war in Iraq. "For me, the tragedy of Vietnam was the divisions that occurred in the United States that made it, in the end, impossible to achieve an outcome that was compatible with the sacrifices that had been made," said the former secretary of state (and noted war criminal).

From Iraq scholar Juan Cole's Informed Comment website. While we share Prof. Cole's concern about civil war in Iraq, we question whether the US troop presence is forestalling or hastening it...

Monday, August 22, 2005

Ten Things Congress Could Demand from Bush on Iraq

The Washington Post notes that the Democratic Party is deeply divided between those who want US troops out now and those who fear the consequences and think it best to stay the course. The article might as well have noted that the Republicans are also divided on Iraq policy.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is investigating allegations that several Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deportation agents assaulted and tortured Nigerian detainee Daso Abibo at the ICE office in Oklahoma City on June 14, 2004. FBI spokesperson Gary Johnson confirmed that the agency is investigating the case but declined to discuss further details. According to Associated Press, the regional ICE office in Dallas has issued a written statement saying the alleged assault is being investigated by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of the Inspector General.

Abibo is married to a US citizen but was ordered deported after an asylum plea failed. ICE tried to deport him on May 19, 2004, but the Nigerian consulate refused to issue travel documents. Back at the ICE office in Oklahoma City on June 14, Abibo was attacked after he told an officer he would not sign a deportation-related document or place his fingerprint on it without first consulting his attorney. "In a flash, five, maybe six officers attacked me," Abibo wrote in a letter from Oklahoma County Jail following the assault. "My legs were in shackles," he stated. "One officer grabbed my neck from the back with his hand pressing it. Another officer was holding tight on my ears, twisting and pulling hard on them as if to pull them off my head... One officer was twisting my left hand, while another was busy knocking on my Achilles heel's tendon. It was a nightmare. It was so painful, I asked them to shoot me...dead so they could get what they want."

On Aug. 13, New Mexico governor Bill Richardson declared a state of emergency for counties along the Mexico border. Governor Janet Napolitano did the same for Arizona on Aug. 15. The states of emergency allow the two governors to spend nearly $1.5 million each to hire more police, buy vehicles and otherwise shore up law enforcement in the counties most affected by the illegal entry of migrants. Both governors had complained for months about federal inattention to the border situation; in an Aug. 11 letter Napolitano told DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff that federal officials had been responding with "bewildering resistance" to her state's offers to help with joint efforts confronting human trafficking.

It will certainly be an edifying sight. Instead of Israeli military bulldozers destroying modest Palestinian homes to make way for garish and profligate suburban-style Jewish settlements, it'll be the other way 'round. In the Gaza Strip, the world will witness a small counter-vortex to the general downward spiral of the planet into what some have called Global Apartheid.

You can add your very own John Hancock to this following bit of levity at PetitionOnline. So far they have 726, which seems pretty insufficient for something so self-evident, so we thought we'd help spread the word:

To: President of the United States of America

A PETITION DECLARING PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH TO BE A HORSE'S ASS

WHEREAS, George W. Bush's ill-conceived war on Iraq is an irresponsible, destructive and unnecessary means of enforcing the spirit and letter of United Nations Resolution 1441, and;