For starters, a couple of apologies.

Yes, our February issue is coming out five days late, and our daily weblog has been inactive for nearly a week. This is because your hard-working editor (yours truly) has been down with the flu. (At first I thought it was an ultra-virulent genetically-modified strain of SARS, but I was just being bionoid.)

Mike Ferner writes for Voices for Creative Nonviolence, Feb. 6:

From Alaska to Washington, D.C. yesterday, peace activists escalated their tactics and occupied Congressional offices, demanding elected officials vote against George Bush’s request of $93,000,000,000 to extend the war.

We have already noted rampant conspiracy theories in the fluctuating oil prices. We'll here's more grist for the mill. From NBC News, Jan. 26:

Oil traders and others believe that the Saudi decision to let the price of oil tumble has more to do with Iran than economics.

Samir Adil, president of the Iraq Freedom Congress, reports on the progress of the new popular Safety Force, Jan. 18:

Samir Adil meets with the IFC Safety Force

Accompanied by Raid Salih, head of the Safety Force in Baghdad, Samir Adil met with members of the Safety Force to evaluate and discuss the latest period. The new Bush strategy and its implications for on the ground, and priorities for the Safety Force also were on the agenda.

On the same day as the "Soldiers of Heaven" battle in Najaf—and eclipsed from the headlines by it... From The Scotsman, Jan. 5:

7 pupils killed as schools in Iraq are targeted

SEVEN children died and 30 were wounded in Iraq yesterday when one school came under mortar fire and another was hit by a suicide bomb blast.

Last year we noted US plans for new military bases on the Black Sea coast of Romania and Bulgaria. Now a Jan. 28 report in Scotland's Sunday Herald indicates these bases could be used to launch air-strikes on Iran:

President Bush is preparing to attack Iran's nuclear facilities before the end of April and the US Air Force's new bases in Bulgaria and Romania would be used as back-up in the onslaught, according to an official report from Sofia.

Francis Boyle has had some good stuff to say in recent years, but he now seems to be losing it. He is going way overboard here, but this is the stuff that the relentlessly annoying Alex Jones laps up. Yes, Bush wanted Saddam dead, as we have argued. But we do not believe the Bushites orchestrated the unseemly orgy at his execution, which has only inflamed the sectarian slaughter that is making Iraq ungovernable for the occupation. What started as a divide-and-rule strategy has now taken on a life of its own and is working against the interests of its own authors. On a related point, the neocons are no longer strictly in control (as we have also argued), and whatever the neocons are, they are not "neo-nazis." Boyle has in the past pointed to legitimate and frightening parallels between the neocons and the Nazis—most obviously in their hubristic visions of remaking the world and their fetish for aggressive war. But a part of the neocons' hubris is that they think they are spreading democracy. Hitler and the real Nazis had complete contempt for democracy. Failure to grapple with this critical difference—engaging in a sloppy neocon/neo-nazi conflation—will only get us into trouble in several critical areas. First, it will get us dismissed as wingnuts. Second, we'll miss the boat on how the neocons and their allies appeal (or attempt to appeal) to dissidents in places like Iran, Syria and Lebanon who legitimately hunger for democracy. Finally, it will blind us to the threat of real neo-Nazis—which is a particularly ironic and insidious threat given Alex Jones' ongoing embrace of the xenophobe right. From Alex Jones' InfoWars.net, Jan. 5:

Do we laugh or do we cry? From Inter-Press Service, Jan. 29:

Resolving the conflicts in Somalia and Darfur will extend well beyond the two-day African Union (AU) summit, according to academics and civil society activists.