Khadafy Killing a 'Good Thing' in an Age of 'Good Things'

They killed Khadafy.

By now, everyone knew what there was to know. Deposed Libyan dictator Moammar Khadafy was killed Thursday in his hometown of Sirte after a NATO airstrike busted up a convoy of vehicles, and rebel fighters found the bedraggled tyrant hiding in a drainage pipe. The wounded Khadafy was dragged from the pipe, and, apparently, an 18-year-old rebel fighter saved Libyan taxpayers the cost of a showy show trial.

Khadafy was the poster child among blood-thirsty dictators, and no one beyond the blood-thirsty dictator fan club shed any tears.

Abdel Hakim Belhadj of the Libyan military counsel proclaimed, "we have done a great job to liberate all the country."

The world's leaders chimed in.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said, "The disappearance of Moammar Khadafy is a major step in the struggle led for the last eight months by the Libyan people..."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said, "This day draws a line beneath the Khadafy regime: it is an important day for the Libyans."

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard said, "The death of Moammar Khadafy is an historic moment for the people of Libya."

In the U.S., bickering legislators found themselves grudgingly in agreement.

"The passing of Moammar Khadafy from this earth is definitely not a bad thing," said Democratic Sen. Chris Coons (DE).

"Khadafy being gone is a good thing," said Republican Sen. Roy Blunt (MO).

Even Martha Stewart would likely arrange a couple of doilies around the tyrant's bloodied corpse and pronounce it "a Good Thing."

There was no doubting Khadafy'd been a baaad man, and that he'd been, in the parlance of the Wild Old West, someone who'd "needed killin.'"

And yet, and yet...

They killed Saddam Hussein, and everyone agreed it was a good thing.

They killed Osama bin Laden, and everyone cheered.

They killed Anwar Al-Awlaki, and everyone more of less nodded in assent.

Certainly, some very bad people had gotten their comeuppance of late. Their just desserts. Paid the piper. Had their dogma run over by their karma.

Certainly President Barack Obama had gotten to step repeatedly up to a podium to tell the White House press corp that yet another enemy of freedom, democracy and goodness had bitten the dust.

And yet, and yet...

Of course, this was the way it was supposed to be. Harry killed Lord You-Know-Who. 007 killed Goldfinger. Darth Vader redeemed himself by killing the Emperor. The 47 Ronin acquitted themselves by killing the evil Lord. Countless square-jawed Sheriffs gunned down countless black-hatted villains at innumerable high noons on innumerable dusty Main Streets.

And yet, and yet...

When did civilization devolve to the point where its only victories consisted of killing someone? When had the payoff for all the hope and struggle and toil and sacrifice become reduced to a bullet through someone's brain? When was it that the only tickmarks goodness and decency and democracy dropped into the "Win" column began coming from gunning someone down or blowing someone up?

It wasn't so much that killing Khadafy wasn't the best thing since killing bin Laden, but that it was the only good thing since killing bin Laden. It wasn't so much that killing Khadafy wasn't a good thing, but that killing some bad guy had become the only good thing anybody managed to accomplish in a very, very long while.

Couldn't anybody other than the Avenging Angel please make a play?

Couldn't the Angel of Mercy break a tackle and dance into the end zone for six? Couldn't Charity step to the plate with two outs in the bottom of the ninth and crank a three-run jack to send the fans home happy? Couldn't Kindness sink a three-pointer at the buzzer and draw the foul to put the home team over the top?

Couldn't faith, or hope, or temperance, or diligence, or patience, or humility bend that last-second kick into the back of the net as the play-by-play announcer ecstatically screamed, "Goooooooooooooal?"

While the world celebrated this good thing, it seemed incapable of creating jobs for people who needed them, or nursing the sick and injured, or caring for aging parents and grandparents. While the world did its touchdown dance and spiked the football over yet another bloody corpse, it seemed incapable of cleaning up its rivers and lakes and oceans, or clearing its air, or reversing global climate change, or even agreeing such problems existed.

When the good folks of eighteenth century France set up Dr. Guillotines' amazing slicing, dicing, person-o-matic in the Place de la Revolution and began dragging powdered aristocrats to the National Razor to take a foot off the top, the crowd agreed it was a very good thing. They whacked Louis XVI, and Collenot d'Angremont. They whacked Marie Antoinette. Maximilien Robespierre and the Revolutionary Tribunal figured it was all good and whacked aristos and collaborators and crooks left and right. There seemed to be no end to good things.

And yet, and yet...

Somewhere between the time they whacked Georges Danton and Camille Desmoulins and Robespierre himself; sometime between the rise of an obscure army officer named Napoleon and a genocidal war in Spain; at some point between Austerlitz and a miserable, freezing retreat from Russia and the maelstrom of Waterloo, it ceased being a good thing.

Killing Khadafy was a good thing, everyone agreed. Killing Hussein was a good thing, most everyone agreed. Killing bin Laden was a good thing, most everyone west of Islamabad agreed. Killing Al-Awlaki was a good thing, many people more or less agreed.

Thanks to modern technology, there was no need to trek to a guillotine for a good thing, as good things could be administered remotely. Unmanned drones fired over-the-horizon smart missiles. Snipers blew people up from a mile away. Rockets and RPGs and IEDs all administered someone's idea of a good thing.

There was no end to the number of good things that could be done, and no end to the number of folks who figured they knew a good thing when they saw one.

Someone posted a $75,000 inducement on the internet figuring that murdering Rep. Bobby Schilling (R-IL) was a good thing. Last month, someone, the same or otherwise, offered $100,000 for killing President George W. Bush. Or Donald Rumsfeld. Or Dick Cheney. Or any U.S. Senator, Congressmember, or their family members.

The FBI was investigating similar threats against Obama and other lawmakers. A lot of people seemed to have their own ideas about which things might be good.

It was a time when anger and disenfranchisement had spilled onto the streets of cities and towns around the world. It was a Time for Outrage!, declared revered diplomat and World War II French Resistance fighter Stephane Hessel.

It was a time that threatened to be full of good things.

And everyone knew how regrettable too much of a good thing could be.

GOP Presidential Hopefuls Waver, Waffle, Backtrack and Bluster On Libya Triumph

The best thing about the current GOP presidential hopefuls is when that 3 a.m. call comes, any of them will be able to jump out of bed and whip up a batch of waffles.

Wherever they'd been, whatever they'd been doing, the one thing all the Republican presidential candidates had been certain of was that hapless President Barack Obama had gotten Libya all wrong. Obama hadn't been decisive enough, or had acted too rashly; Obama shouldn't have intervened, or hadn't intervened as quickly or aggressively as he should have.

'Leading from behind,' as one White House aide described Obama's excruciatingly centrist ultra-middle course on Libya, letting France and Britain do all the heavy lifting after the U.S. unleashed an initial barrage of cruise missiles? Ridiculous! Too timid/bold! (Circle one).

Now, the annoying lamestream media was inconveniently splashing onto TV screens around the globe scenes of jubilant Libyans cheering in the streets and tearing down green flags. Now, you could hardly pick up your Blackberry without some wag wagging and tweeting and YouTubing some irritating Libyan liberation meme.

Thus far, the GOP presidential hopefuls' strategy for dealing with all that bothersome Libya brouhaha consisted of mumbling some sort of boilerplate about freedom and hope, while hoping the whole mess would just go away, or at least degenerate into some sort of Biblical Apocalypse.

Now that Moammar Khadafy, billionaire oil magnate and George W. Bush's 'valued ally' in the War on Terra, was reduced to driving around Tripoli backstreets hoping to not get pulled over by the cops, the GOP candidates were reduced to miserable wavering, waffling, backtracking, and blustering. It was tough trying to look presidential while snivelling and muttering. It was tough trying to look like a foreign policy preceptor while pointing over someone's shoulder and shouting, "Hey! Look over there!"

So, here's the rogue's gallery roundup:

• Mitt Romney, who'd been a scathing Obama critic on Libya, mumbled condescending platitudes, and, as any rich guy would, demanded he be handed a payoff. "The world is about to be rid of Moammar Khadafy, the brutal tyrant who terrorized the Libyan people," Romney's statement began with the news in case you'd just crawled out from under a rock. "It is my hope that Libya will now move toward a representative form of government that supports freedom, human rights, and the rule of law. As a first step, I call on this new government to arrest and extradite the mastermind behind the bombing of Pan Am 103, Abdelbaset Mohmed Ali al-Megrahi, so justice can finally be done." Right. Gimme, gimme, gimme. It's all about you, Mitt.
• Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), who'd also been a scathing Obama critic on Libya, stuck to her non-interventionist guns, or non-guns, but congratulated everyone, apparently for ignoring her scheme to look the other way while Khadafy went door to door slaughtering everyone in Benghazi. "I opposed US military involvement in Libya and I am hopeful that our intervention there is about to end. I also hope the progress of events in Libya will ultimately lead to a government that honors the rule of law, respects the people of Libya and their yearning for freedom, and one that will be a good partner to the United States and the international community." Yawn. Enough hopey-changey balderdash to make Sarah Palin puke.
• Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX), gave the blandest, most generic bouquet of all the candidates. Must have brushed off a pre-printed Certificate of Recognition and scribbled "Libya" into the blank space. "The crumbling of Moammar Khadafy's reign, a violent repressive dictatorship with a history of terrorism, is cause for cautious celebration. The lasting impact of events in Libya will depend on ensuring rebel factions form a unified civil government that guarantees personal freedoms, and builds a new relationship with the West where we are allies instead of adversaries." Must have scratched out another country's name before scribbling in "Libya," as Khadafy was Bush's bestest friend forever, not his adversay.
• Jon Huntsman had been against the Libya intervention, and his spokesperson Tim Miller was careful to say, "Gov. Huntsman's view remains that intervention in Libya was a mistake, and not core to our national security interests." However, Huntsman's official statement waffled, "The impending fall of Col. Khadafy is one chapter in the developing story of a nation in turmoil. Khadafy has been a longtime opponent of freedom, and I am hopeful - as the whole world should be - that his defeat is a step towards openness, democracy and human rights for a people who greatly deserve it." Not to mention a people who greatly deserved not having Jon Huntsman as the sitting President of the United States.
• Rick Santorum snivelled, "Ridding the world of the likes of Khadafy is a good thing, but this indecisive President had little to do with this triumph. The stated goal from the very beginning for this administration was to determine whether the U.S. can positively influence the direction of a successor government. As we have seen in Egypt, the euphoria of toppling a dictator does not always result in more security for us and our allies in the region." Actually, the stated goal from the beginning was to keep Khadafy from killing his people, then regime change. First Prize for Most Whiney Response. More to the point, Rick Santorum is running for President?  

Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul and Sarah Palin hadn't made official statements, although Gingrich was for intervention after he was against intervention after he was for intervention; Ron Paul was strictly against intervention, as any libertarian would tell you if a dictator wanted to slaughter his people, oh well; and Sarah Palin was sure Libya made a wonderful canned fruit cocktail (Thank you, Billy Jaye, wherever you are).

If only just one of the GOP presidential hopefuls, instead of wishing Libya a democratic government with freedom and the rule of law and human rights and yadda-yadda, came out and wished Libya would anoint him or her omnipotent Supreme God-Emperor bearing unlimited powers to reign unfettered without let or hindrance so that his or her cronies could run roughshod over enslaved masses to plunder and pillage at will.

But that, of course, was what they wished for America.

What the End Game Looks Like: Jubilant Rebels Roll Into Tripoli

Libya was free.

Fighting still raged in parts of Tripoli Monday, as Moammar Khadafy's last few tanks rumbled out of his Bab al-Azizyah stronghold compound and snipers and artillery fire sent jubilant residents scurrying from the city center streets where they'd been celebrating the rebels' arrival. Rebels fighters battled pockets of Khadafy loyalists around the city, but most analysts agreed: Khadafy was finished.

In Benghazi, the leader of the National Transitional Council, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, told reporters that while Libya still faced many challenges, Moammar Khadafy's reign of terror was over.

Khadafy himself was nowhere to be found.

"We will provide him with a fair trail," Jalil said of the dictator. "But I have no idea how he will defend himself against these crimes that he committed against the Libyan people and the world."

Despite street celebrations upon the arrival of rebel forces Sunday, the military situation in Tripoli remained tenuous. Rebel commanders told Al-Jazeera they controlled 80% of the city, but Khadafy loyalists were still hunkered down in strongholds and snipers made venturing outside dangerous.

"No one can go in or out," a rebel fighter told Al-Jazeera. "Everyone who has an underground basement, the people, women and children, the wounded, have been staying there."

For all those who had wondered, this was what the end game in Libya looked like.

After months of back-and-forth fighting, after finally securing Zawiyah and encircling the capitol on all sides, after weeks of Khadafy's top aides and ministers fleeing to Tunisia and Egypt, after the crack Kamis Brigade retreated toward the city and their base was overrun, the rebel column, supported by NATO attack planes wheeling overhead, streamed into Tripoli Sunday with shocking speed.

Speaking from Martha's Vineyard, MA, where he was on vacation, President Barack Obama announced late Sunday, "There remains a degree of uncertainty, and there are still regime elements who still pose a threat. But, this much is clear: The Khadafy regime is coming to an end, and the future of Libya is in the hands of its people."

"To our friends and allies, the Libyan intervention demonstrates what the international community can achieve when we stand together as one," Obama said. "And the Arab members of our coalition have stepped up and shown what can be achieved when we act together as equal partners."

"Finally, the Libyan people: Your courage and character have been unbreakable in the face of a tyrant," Obama said.

Throughout the Libyan intervention, Obama had been vexed by pacifist liberals who opposed the use of force under any circumstances; by hawks who agitated for a more robust American presence in the fighting; and, most of all, by opportunist Republican obstructionists who opposed any move the President made.

Led by 225 Republicans, Congress refused to authorize U.S. military action in support of the Libya intervention by a 295-70 margin. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) pushed a bill defunding the Libya operation, but the measure was rejected when 89 Republicans deemed it unseemly to abandon their forces and allies France and Britain, and joined with Democrats to defeat it.

Boehner's efforts, however, did gain him a smoochy, smoochy love tome from Khadafy, who thanked him for his aid and comfort. Shockingly, Boehner wasn't lined up against a bullet-pocked wall and given a blindfold and a cigarette for his treachery during a shooting war.

Obama pressed ahead, doggedly supporting France and Britain as the intervention that was supposed to end in weeks carried on for months. "Leading from behind," as one Obama staffer described the President's middle course in the fight against the dictator, became a lightening rod of ridicule and scorn, as hawks demanded direct American airstrikes and boots on the ground, while everyone else demanded America leave Libya to its own devices.

Yet, with America strapped for cash at home, in the end the results made it hard to argue with Obama's excruciatingly centrist middle course. The Politico reported that the Libya intervention cost little more than a billion dollars through mid-summer, an amount the old saw claimed no one would even bother to pick up if it fell on the floor in the Pentagon. American forces flew just 16% of the sorties and sent no ground troops.

Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) issued a statement that said, "we regret that this success was so long in coming due to the failure of the United States to employ the full weight of our airpower."  It was not immediately known how much the duo regretted not expending the billions of additional dollars such an air campaign would have cost, to say nothing of the possible loss of air crews.

At least McCain and Graham were consistent. The Twitterverse was filled with hypocreets.

Rep. Ben Quayle (R-AZ) tweeted, "The fall of the Khadafy regime would be a victory for freedom."

Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL) crowed, "Libyan rebels control Green Square. Let us pray for a peaceful formation of a representative government."

Both had been among the 295 lawmakers who had voted against authorizing the Libyan intervention.

Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) wrote, "Great to see these images of liberated parts of Tripoli. Hopeful that a new free democratic govt will form in Libya." Blunt had been scathing in his criticism of Obama, first denouncing the Libya intervention, then demanding more aggressive involvement.

"Whenever the President of the United States authorizes a military intervention, he must clearly define the goal and mission of our involvement." Blunt wrote on Mar. 28. "Unfortunately, President Obama has failed to meet this criteria..."

By Mar. 31, Blunt wanted to arm the rebels. "If you put planes in the air...to level the playing field, it doesn't hurt to give some advantage to the side you're trying to help."

Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) issued a statement that said, "it is doubtful that U.S. interests would be served by imposing a no-fly zone over Libya."

"We need a broader public discussion about the goals and limits of the U.S. role in the Middle East, especially as it pertains to potential military intervention," Lugar opined, a sudden convert to end-game anxiety.

Rep. Buck McKeon (R-CA), one of the 295 who voted against authorizing the Libya intervention, was another end-game skeptic. He told Fox News the action, "risks entrenching the United States in a humanitarian mission whose scope and duration are not known... and cannot be controlled by us."

"The President should immediately return home and call Congress back into session so that this action can be fully debated," Rep. Candice Miller (R-MI) pontificated. At the time, Khadafy had been threatening to have his troops go house to house through Benghazi murdering the residents.

"We have seen uprisings across the Middle East...and in many instances, atrocities have been committed," Miller, another 295er, said. "One must now ask where this administration draws the line."

All of which was quite understandable considering the hostilities were being directed at a billionaire oil magnate who was George W. Bush's 'valued ally' in his 'War on Terra.' To say nothing of the smoochy love tomes the dictator sent Boehner.

Besides, Republicans doubtless didn't know what an end game looked like, as they never finished either of the two open-ended wars Bush started. Perhaps Republicans considered shovelling unlimited taxpayer dollars into Halliburton Corp. coffers ad infinitum an end game in and of itself.

In Tripoli, the end game included a maniacal tyrant MIA, his forces penned into last-stand enclaves, and jubilant rebels celebrating in Green Square. It included a city of 700,000, Benghazi, spared a genocidal massacre. It included cities and towns liberated from the yoke of a bloodthirsty dictator.

"An ocean divides us, but we are joined in the basic human longing for freedom, for justice, and for dignity," Obama said to Libyans. "Your revolution is your own, and your sacrifices have been extraordinary. Now, the Libya you deserve is within your reach."

Tar Sands Oil Pipeline Promises Profit for Moguls, Perils for Everyone Else

For mile after mile, the ancient boreal forests of Alberta and British Columbia formed a lush emerald empire of evergreens and wildlife that, dotted with lakes and traced by rivers, stretched over hills and mountains from horizon to horizon. Elusive woodland caribou, called the grey ghosts of the forest, foraged on lichen that had taken a hundred years to grow amidst the ancient woods. Black bear and lynx hunted among the pines. 40% of North American migratory birds, thousands upon thousands of mallard, blue-wing teal, northern shoveller and black duck, nested and bred in the boreal forest.

The boreal forest, with its thick, lush carpet of moss and peat and composted vegetation, was the world's largest above-ground carbon sequestration system, storing countless tons of organic carbon.

Like a vicious black cancer, huge expanses of devastated wasteland gouged at the boreal forest, churned earth stripped bare of trees, of brush, of grass, of hundred-year-old lichen. That no living thing could exist in the scarred wasteland tearing into the ancient old growth boreal was starkly obvious. To call it moonscape only sanitized the toxic tailings ponds and horrific cancer clusters in the small downstream communities.

The oil moguls had come, and had ripped the earth asunder to scrape from it the thick, sludgy muck called tar sand.

The primeval boreal forest was being ripped open to get at the Athabascan oil sands, 173 billion barrels of oil, worth some $15 trillion. Republicans and oil moguls were orgasmic with the prospect of destroying a priceless wilderness and lining their pockets with wealth beyond imagining.

The only problem was how to get that 173 billion barrels of oil to the international markets, and to get that $15 trillion into their pockets.

Thus, while Republicans in Congress balked and blustered at any suggestion of addressing the $2 trillion of infrastructure repairs America desperately needed, they rabidly pursued one particular $7 billion infrastructure project: TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline.

The Keystone XL would wind 1,661 miles from Hardisty, Alberta, Canada, right through the heart of the American Mountain West, across or under 1,900 rivers, streams and reservoirs, across the Sand Hills of Nebraska, through the Ogallala Aquifer, to Port Arthur, Texas.

Congressional Republicans pushed through a bill demanding the Keystone XL be granted Presidential approval before environmental impact studies could be completed. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, at first supportive of the pipeline, backed off when apprised of safety concerns. As TransCanada was a foreign corporation, and the pipeline an international affair, Clinton and the US State Department was in the thick of it.

Pipeline skeptics and environmental activists planned two weeks of civil disobedience in Washington, D.C. beginning August 20 to raise Keystone XL awareness.

Protest organizer Bill McKibben said he hoped it would be "the biggest civil disobedience protest in the environmental movement for many, many years."

While Republicans thumped their chests and howled about securing a 'domestic' oil source for America, the raw tar sands oil slated for Port Arthur's refineries wasn't necessarily meant for domestic consumption.

"This oil is not for domestic consumption," Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) said aghast. "This oil is for foreign export. It has very little to do with domestic oil supply, or might have very little to do with domestic oil supply."

"If we do not tap this valuable resource, the Chinese or other countries will," Bill Flores (R-TX) whined, his eyes doubtless glazing over at the thought of thrusting 15 trillion dollar bills into some stripper's g-string.

The US Energy Department revealed existing pipelines had enough capacity to double the amount of oil the United States was importing from Canada. An existing Keystone pipeline, without the racy-sounding XL suffix, ran from Canada and terminated in Oklahoma.

The primary attraction of the Keystone XL was its terminus at the refineries of Port Arthur, on the Gulf of Mexico, with its ready access to the sea lanes that could carry refined product to international markets.

The primary problem of the Keystone XL was that the 1,661 miles of its 36-inch pipe was designed to carry ordinary processed oil products much thinner than the gooey muck that was raw tar sands oil. The raw tar sands oil would have to be forced through the pipeline at much higher pressure than regular oil, and posed special safety challenges.

TransCanada claimed potential for accidental spills would be limited to just 11 over the 50-year lifespan of the pipeline, but TransCanada's existing pipeline accomplished 12 spills in just one year.

While most Americans were riveted by the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico last summer, a four-foot rupture in Canada-based Enbridge, Inc.'s pipeline dumped a million gallons of toxic sludge into Michigan's Kalamazoo River, devastating riparian habitat.

"I am deeply concerned about the effects of the oil spill near Marshall, including the environmental impact, and the disruption to residents and businesses," said Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI). "It is also deeply worrisome that the oil from the spill has made its way into the Kalamazoo River."

Enbridge's spill went unchecked for 12 hours, because of particular uncertainties associated with transporting raw tar sands oil. Raw tar sands oil mixed with toxic additives that helped it move through pipelines, called dilbit, or diluted bitumen, tended to form bubbles of a natural gas-like substance that can cause the flow to get stuck. The prescription for dealing with these gas-bubble 'column separations' was to pump more gas down the line. But, if the pipeline had actually burst, pumping more gas into the line made the resulting spill worse.

Which was what happened in Michigan. A flow interruption diagnosed as a column separation had actually been a pipeline rupture. 12 hours elapsed before the spill was stopped.

The Keystone XL would carry 910,000 barrels of dilbit a day across 1,700 miles, under the Missouri River, across the heart of Nebraska wheat fields, and through the Ogallala Aquifer, a 174,000 square mile natural freshwater reservoir that provided drinking water for 2 million people and irrigation for 20% of America's agriculture.

Conservative Nebraska farmers and progressive environmental activists were alarmed at the prospect of more than 300 million barrels of dilbit traversing the nation's spine every year, destined to become refined petroleum product slated for sale to the highest international bidder.

The bill House Republicans pushed through in July requiring the Obama Administration to make a decision on the Keystone XL was largely symbolic, as it had little chance of surviving in the Senate.

"If we're going to rush through the environmental permitting process for a project that has questionable benefits for our nation, we ought to at least acknowledge the risk," said Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT).

"Some environmental extremists are against the project," said Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX), apparently barely able to hear himself think over '$15 trillion!' screaming in his brain. "They are against every type of energy that comes from below the ground!"

Senate Democrats sent Clinton a letter calling on the State Department to review the Keystone XL project in light of leaks on TransCanada's existing pipelines and recent spills in the Mountain West.

The Obama Administration said it would decide the Keystone XL's fate by the end of the year.

In Canada's boreal forest, the caribou called the grey ghost nibbled its hundred-year-old lichen, billowing condensation from its nostrils into the chill morning air, another waft of carbon dioxide to be absorbed by towering woods that had done so since time immemorial.

London Riots Spread, Engulf Nation

London was burning.

So, Prime Minister David Cameron threw 16,000 police on the streets of London and locked down the capitol.

The violence spread across the rest of the country.

Manchester burned. Birmingham burned. Liverpool burned. Towns in Kent suffered smashed windows and looting. A police station in Nottingham was firebombed. It was not immediately known whether the sheriff had been there.

What began with the fatal police shooting of 29-year-old Mark Duggan Thursday in Tottenham, north of London, escalated into a nationwide outpouring of pent-up frustration with a faltering economy, draconian service cuts, and an isolating disenfranchisement that disconnected a teeming underclass from the nation in which it lived.

"I was one of these kids but it's bloody hard for them," said one witness in Hackney. "There's nothing to do at all. University fees have gone up. Education costs money. And there's no jobs. This is them sending out a message."

What witnesses saw on the streets was more complex than the characterization that black youths enraged by the Duggan shooting were rioting. The rioters were for the most part young, and many were black, but many were also Asian and white. There were young men and young women. And some were not so young. 

"I've seen Turkish boys. I've seen Asian boys. I've seen grown white men," said Jay Kast, an East Ham youth worker who had witnessed three nights of rioting. "They're all out taking part," he said. "They're disconnected from the community and they just don't care."

Multi-ethnic areas of London, Bristol, Liverpool and Birmingham exploded in rioting and flames. The mobs were organically coordinating themselves with Blackberries and cell phones.

"Hampstead, bruv. Let's go rob Hampstead," one said.

"Kilburn. It's happening in Kilburn and Holloway," said another, consulting his Blackberry.

The riots have also been characterized as being non-political, but a riot didn't need to voice arcane parliamentary demands to make them political. The rioting itself demonstrated political failure. The rioting itself was an act of the body politic. The government's response to the rioting was a political response.

The riots were the result of many political decisions over many years that shaped the society the rioting sprang from. A society decided to disenfranchise its youth and its poor and its marginalized communities, and decided to criminalize the reactions of those disenfranchised youth and poor and marginalized communities.

"When you have police officers jumping out of vans, calling 18-year-olds bitches and niggers; I'm a youth worker, I see it all over," said one witness. "That's what's happening. They are thinking, 'who the fuck are you?' And so it starts."

The riots might be rampant thuggery or hooliganism, but it has clearly risen from some breakdown in the society's order. Large demonstrations had protested Britain's austerity measures and service cuts for months. Polite placard waving and rhythmic chanting weren't the only responses a government throwing its people under the bus might expect. Organic violent uprisings, regardless of whether they articulated political demands, have been a common enough response throughout history. The riot itself was the articulation of something gone terribly wrong.

England was still near enough to freedom that frustration and anger could foment an uprising that implied disappointment of expectation.

Mark Duggan was shot and killed when officers from the Metropolitan police's Operation Trident, a special violent crime unit tasked to black communities, and Special Crimes Directorate 11, the Met's intelligence unit, along with officers from CO19, a special armed unit, stopped the vehicle Duggan had been riding in near the Tottenham Hale tube station to arrest him. The Independent Police Complaints Commission announced Tuesday that Duggan had a loaded firearm in his possession, but concluded he had not fired at police. Duggan was shot once in the chest and once in the arm, and pronounced dead at the scene.

The shooting triggered a series of riots that escalated in scope daily, culminating in the widespread destruction splashed across televisions around the world. A huge Sony distribution center near Enfield was burned to the ground, after looters reportedly ran off with goods. Shops, restaurants, hair salons, and homes were attacked, vandalized and looted. Cars and buses were burned on the streets.

Gang bangers get gunned down by cops in America all the time, and no one protests. American cops gun down young people of color in the streets, in front of their homes, on train station platforms seemingly every week, and people act as though they're too numb to care.

But in England, a poor and disenfranchised underclass had taken the streets in cities and towns across the land. In England, despite the poverty, the service cuts, and the disenfranchisement of communities finding it harder and harder to access a better world, people were still impassioned enough to act out.

In London, there was still outrage. In England, there was still fury at the unfairness of a system that coddled the rich and dispossessed the poor. In England, the rioters might be black, or white, or Asian, or Middle Eastern, but it was the English tradition of civil disobedience that had won out. The violence was a condemnable tragedy for homeowners and shopkeepers and commuters and parents and a great nation. But, at least in England, there was still a will to fight.

FBI On Jude Law Phone Hacking; Execs Say James Murdoch Knew Hacking Was Widespread

Sherlock Holmes might not be on the News Corporation phone hacking case yet, but his assistant Dr. Watson is.

The Federal Bureau of Investigations will be contacting British actor Jude Law, star of Sherlock Holmes and Alfie, in response to his lawsuit that reporters for now-defunct News of the World hacked his cellular telephone and intercepted voicemail messages he had been exchanging with his assistant Ben Jackson while they both were at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport in 2003, officials told the BBC Friday.

Law claims News of the World's September 7, 2003 story about his brief stay in New York was based on information gleaned from his voicemails. If true, even if the hackers had been sitting in London and the phone's voicemail box had been in England, the messages would first have gone to a U.S. cell site, over U.S. phone lines, through a U.S. Mobile Telephone Switching Office, and into a U.S. long distance trunk line before getting anywhere.

All of which makes messages allegedly exchanged between a couple of Brits, hacked by other Brits, and written up in a British tabloid a very, very U.S. problem. Aliens attack U.S. communications system. Dr. Watson, meet Mulder and Scully.

Law's allegations are the first claims of News Corp phone hacking on U.S. soil. If the FBI finds evidence supporting Law's allegations, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, a U.S. corporation, could face charges for violating American wiretapping and privacy laws right here in the good 'ol US of A. Book him, Danno.

The Federal Communications Commission frowns upon cons holding FCC broadcast licenses. News Corp, aside from owning shuttered News of the World, owns Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and a whole panoply of other media and communications enterprises.

Law and Jackson stayed briefly in New York while the actor was en route to Canada to film I Heart Huckabees. News of the World published a detailed account of Law's arrival at JFK and his stay at the Carlyle Hotel, including his room number and room service tab. Law claims News of the World could only have learned some of the things written in the article from his voicemails.

The FBI and US Justice Department are also looking into alleged News Corp hacking of 9/11 terrorist attack victims, and possible violations of the 1977 Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, an anti-bribery law.

Meanwhile, in London, Murdoch's son, News Corp deputy chief operating officer James Murdoch, was coming under further scrutiny as two former News Corp executives contradicted the younger Murdoch's Monday testimony before a Parliamentary committee that he'd had no knowledge that phone hacking had extended beyond rogue reporter Clive Goodman.

Watson, Mulder, meet the "For Neville" Email.

Seems an English ex-footballer (that's soccer player, for all us Yanks), Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers Association, was getting a six-figure phone-hacking settlement from the News of the World. In May, 2008, News of the World parent News International's then-legal manager Tom Crone got a stack of papers from Taylor's lawyers marked "Amended Particulars for Claim," which included the description of a document seized by police during a raid on News of the World gumshoe Glenn Mulclaire, who'd been arrested with then-presumed "rogue" reporter Clive Goodman for phone hacking. With what must surely have been a sinking feeling in his gut, Crone read:

"By email dated 29th June 2005, Mr. Ross Hindley emailed Mr. Mulclaire a transcript of the aforesaid 15 messages from the claimant's mobile phone voicemail and 17 messages left by the claimant on Ms. Armstrong's mobile phone voicemail. The transcript is titled 'Transcript for Neville' and the document attached to the email was called 'Transcript for Neville.' It is inferred from the references to Neville that the transcript was provided to, or was intended to be provided to Neville Thurlbeck. Mr. Thurlbeck was at all material times employed by NGN as the News of the World's chief reporter."

Meaning, of course, that neither News of the World reporter Ross Hindley or News of the World chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck were either "rogue" gumshoe Glenn Mulcaire or "rogue" reporter Clive Goodman. Cha-ching. High and deep to center field, and it's outta here. Caught red-handed in the cookie jar with a smoking gun. That's gotta hurt.

And, the original "For Neville" email had been sitting quietly in Scotland Yard's basement among the 11,000 documents Met boss Sir Paul Stephenson, busily enjoying $20,000 worth of spa treatments at posh Champney's courtesy of News Corp, and his Number Two, John Yates, had disdained rummaging through when they'd dropped the case back in the day. Gordon Taylor's lawyers hadn't dropped the case, and had gotten their hands on the "For Neville" email from the cops under a court order.

Sir Paul resigned as Commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police Sunday. Yates resigned Monday. 

Now comes the good part. Crone, heart no doubt in his throat, walked down the hall to see his new boss and tell him the other side had the high-and-deep, cha-ching, cookie jar-smoking gun, that's-gotta-hurt email and its list of painstakingly transcribed voicemail messages. The new chief executive of News International, who'd been on the job for five months, and hadn't been around when the original proverbial had hit the fan the previous year, was none other than James Murdoch.

Who'd sat in front of lawmakers Monday and had told everyone he'd never, ever, pever, jever heard of anyone other than Goodman and Mulclaire hacking messages before.

Crone and former News of the World editor Colin Myler told a Parliamentary committee Friday they had told James Murdoch about the high-and-deep, cha-ching, et cetera email before Murdoch fils approved a big-money settlement for Taylor that was twice as much as what outside council for News International had advised. And no one ever heard of the "For Neville" email again. Until now. That's gotta hurt.

Oh, and, in the good ol' US of A, Senator Frank Lautenberger (D-NJ) Wednesday asked the FBI to take another gander at a complaint he'd made to then-US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in 2005 that News America Marketing, a subsidiary of News Corp, had hacked into the computers of FLOORgraphics, Inc., of Princeton, New Jersey, one of Sen. Lautenberger's constituents.

Lautenberger hadn't heard back on that case, and he was wondering what was going on with it. Them. News Corp. Murdoch. Gonzales. The Bush Administration.

Book him, Danno.

Murdoch Misses Being Pied, But Cameron Ties Tighten, Police Bribes "Obvious"

Clearly, the British get to have so much more fun than Americans do, as News Corporation mogul Rupert Murdoch narrowly missed being pied by a merry prankster, and further revelations tied Prime Minister David Cameron ever closer to disgraced and now-defunct News of the World. Meanwhile, a rowdy crowd gathered outside hearing site Portcullis House, singing loud choruses of rock band Queen's Another One Bites the Dust.

England was jolly as ever as another day came and went in the News Corp phone hacking scandal. All that, and universal Public Health.

Rupert Murdoch and his son James were being grilled by lawmakers in a small meeting room when British comedian Johnnie Marbles tweeted his Twitter warning, "it is a far better thing i do now than i have ever done before #splat."

Marbles approached Murdoch and tried to pie him in the face, but Murdoch's nimble wife Wendi sprang from behind her husband and clocked the would-be avenger. Most of the shaving cream missed the mogul. Bobbies hustled Marbles away, who looked like he'd gotten the worst of the splatter himself.

When the lawmakers' questioning resumed, Conservative Member Louise Mensch asked Murdoch whether he had ever considered resigning.

"No," Murdoch replied. "Because I feel that people that I trusted let me down, I think that they behaved disgracefully," and added, "Frankly, I am the best person to clean this up." It wasn't immediately clear whether he meant News Corp, or the shaving cream on his sleeve.

Murdochs Rupert and James naturally claimed they knew nothing of the phone hacking and police bribery scandals that have rocked Jolly Olde.

"These actions do not live up to the standards that our company aspires to everywhere around the world," James Murdoch told lawmakers, in an astonishing reference to the company that owned Fox News in the United States and the News of the World and the Sun tabloids in England.

 "I employ 53,000 people around the world who are proud, ethical, distinguished people," Rupert Murdoch said under oath, apparently omitting any number of U.S. Republican politicians, American Tea Party zealots, and talking heads.

Whether British Prime Minister David Cameron might be considered one of those 53,000 proud, ethical, et cetera, et ceteras was becoming a bigger question for Her Majesty's subjects, as new information revealed closer ties between the PM and Murdoch's empire. Turns out Neil Wallis, the former deputy editor at News of the World who'd gotten himself arrested for the phone hacking scandal last week, worked as an advisor to Cameron's Conservative Party in the run-up to the general election. Wallis joined former Cameron press secretary Andy Coulson and Cameron pal Rebekah Brooks as News of the World or News Corp jailbirds with ties to Cameron.

Wallis apparently spent a week doing some pro bono helping out of the Conservatives. Very thrifty. A party spokesperson said, "it has been drawn to our attention that he may have provided Andy Coulson with some informal advice on a voluntary basis before the election. We are currently finding out the exact nature of the advice."  Maybe just pointing out to Andy which fork to use with the fish.

Meanwhile, ex-Scotland Yard boss Sir Paul Stephenson and his sidekick John Yates - who'd resigned Sunday and Monday, respectively - were telling lawmakers Cameron chief of staff Ed Llewellyn had been keen on shielding the PM from information about the scandal.

And while the cops - sorry, ex-cops - were busy telling tales out of school, Lord Macdonald, the very upstanding former head of the Crown Prosecution Service, was telling the home affairs select committee that he'd been shocked by what he'd discovered last month when News Corp lawyers asked him to take a gander at some News of the World emails and tell them what he thought.

Lord Macdonald said it took him only "three to five minutes" to find "blindingly obvious" evidence of bribes to police officials.

"The material I saw was so blindingly obvious that trying to argue that it should not be given to the police would have been a hard task," the ex-prosecutor-in-chief told the committee. "It was evidence of serious criminal offenses."

The ten or so emails Lord Macdonald handed over to Metropolitan Police assistant commissioner Cressida Dick formed the basis for Operation Elveden, the ongoing police bribery probe.

All of which leaves the Yanks over in the Colonies pining to get in on the fun. At the moment, certain analysts were still saying News Corp wasn't going to get its FCC licenses pulled.

"If alleged bribery and phone tapping are confined to the U.K., we believe the likelihood of U.S. broadcast licenses being revoked or not renewed is very low," analysts Rebecca Arbrogast and David Kaut of Stifel Nicolaus, an investment firm, soothed clients.

Unfortunately for News Corp, that was before even a single rock had been turned over, and even a single slimy, crawly, disgusting multi-legged abomination had been revealed. "It would be a grave problem if the company is found in the United States to have committed a massive coverup of misconduct or questionable links with law enforcement that is emerging in the U.K.," Arbrogast and Kaut advised.

You're kidding right? Murdoch just about invented the Tea Party.

Crank up Queen. "And another one bites the dust..." 

British News Corp Whistle-Blower Found Dead

In a fantastically convenient turn of events for Rupert Murdoch, the whistle-blower who'd claimed now-defunct News of the World editor and former British government spokesperson Andy Coulson knew all about the phone hackings roiling the United Kingdom was found dead Monday in his home in Watford, near London, England.

In a statement, police said, "The death is currently being treated as unexplained, but not thought to be suspicious," without specifying how they figured a death wasn't suspicious even though it hadn't been explained yet. Maybe it was a technical thing, like when an injured football player is listed as "questionable" instead of "doubtful." Maybe they meant anybody who messed with Murdoch should just expect to wake up dead.

To be fair, the police had quite a lot of bangers and mash piled on their plate Monday, as back at the Yard, Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner John Yates was in the middle of resigning over the News Corporation phone hacking flap. He was following in the cubicle-clearing footsteps of his boss, Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson, who'd resigned Sunday. All that, and Sherlock Holmes was no where to be found.

The dead man, Sean Hoare, was the former Sun and News of the World reporter who'd been telling anyone in earshot that Andy Coulson, his former boss and later Prime Minister David Cameron's press secretary, knew his minions were hacking into folks' voicemails.

Hoare told the BBC Coulson had been "well aware" of the hacking, and that "to deny it is a lie. Simply a lie."

Regarding rummaging through all those celebrity voicemails, he'd told The New York Times that Coulson "actively encouraged me to do it."

The Hertfordshire police statement said, "At 10:40 am today (Monday, July 18), police were called to Langley Road, Watford, following the concerns for the welfare of a man who lives at an address on that street," in its thoroughly British way. "Upon police and ambulance arrival at a property, the body of a man was found. The man was pronounced dead at the scene shortly after." Spot of bad luck, that.

Well, Hoare was a bit of a drinker and snorted coke and all that.

"He made no secret of his massive ingestion of drugs," said fellow journalist Nick Davis of the Guardian. "He told me how he used to start the day with a 'rock star's breakfast' - a line of cocaine and a Jack Daniels."

It was not immediately known whether Murdoch ever said, "Will no one rid me of this turbulent cokehead?"

Hoare had contradicted Coulson's declaration that he'd, "never condoned the use of phone hacking, and nor do I have any recollection of incidences where phone hacking took place." Coulson has since been arrested, released on bail, and told not to leave town.

Sunday, News Corp honcho Rebekah Brooks, another Cameron pal, became the tenth person arrested in the scandal, giving the British PM the unsavory distinction of having as many jailbird cronies as some cheap third-world dictators.

In the United States, News Corp owns Fox News and The Wall Street Journal, and actively supports the Tea Party.

Hoare had also been telling everyone that News of the World was getting the local PD, aka Scotland Yard, to "ping" the whereabouts of celebs and pols. Hoare told the Guardian that reporters just had to go to their editors and ask for someone's whereabouts.

"Within 15 to 30 minutes, someone on the news desk would come back and say, 'Right, that's where they are.'" Hoare said.

The police have the ability to surreptitiously signal a cellular phone, and triangulate its location in relation to nearby cell sites. The practice supposedly required case-by-case authorization and was restricted to high-priority cases, such as to pinpoint the whereabouts of an Al Qaeda terrorist running around with a dirty bomb, not to pinpoint the whereabouts of Angelina Jolie running around with dirty underwear. She's got a wonderbra! Get her!

The brouhaha that police allegedly received News Corp bribes and gave News Corp inside info and generally cozied up to Murdoch's minions led to Stephenson's and Yates' resignation. That and some piddly stuff like Stephenson accepting from News Corp about $20 grand worth of spa treatments at posh Champney's and Yates conveniently ignoring 11,000 pages worth of hacking-related files piled up in Scotland Yard's basement.

In 2009, Yates refused to look into the phone hacking mess, saying there wasn't any evidence worth looking into.

"I'm not going to go down and look at bin bags," the British equivalent of dumpster-diving, said Yates. Never mind the dumpster was actually neatly stacked evidence boxes containing those 11,000 documents.

Now, it was Yates and Stephenson who'd been consigned to the dust bins. That's British for garbage cans.

And poor Sean Hoare was a-mouldering in his unexplained yet somehow unsuspicious grave.

Now, the US Justice Department and the FBI have started poking around Rupert Murdoch's empire.

It was not immediately known whether Murdoch has said, "Will no one rid me of this turbulent Justice Department probe?" but Tea Party loyalist Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) said Monday, "We're going to find out if the Tea Party's still there in force in the next few weeks on this debt limit because we're trying to recruit Americans right now..."

Unless the US government raises its debt ceiling by Aug. 2, it will no longer be able to fund operations, send out Social Security checks, pay off obligations, or run Justice Department investigations.

With so many eager Murdoch Tea Party minions champing at the bit to prove their worth to their Lord, one has to hope that the federal government won't wake up dead Aug. 3.

House GOP's Reply to Smoochie Khadafy: We'll Cut Libya Action Funds

The smoochie, smoochie love tome Libyan dictator Moammar Khadafy sent House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) has apparently set the Republican leader's heart all aflutter. Boehner and his moon-faced cohort in the House GOP caucus are falling over each other to protect their hunky beau from nasty President Barack Obama's evil campaign to to be mean and horrid to him. Boehner announced the House might vote this week to cut off funding America's role in NATO's Libya intervention.

"Congress has the power of the purse!" Boehner crowed, apparently fussing over which handbag matched his shoes. Boehner last week said the President had failed miserably answering the 21-question essay test Boehner had sent him demanding an explanation of the motives, costs, and legality of why everyone was being so awful to Boehner's dreamy hunk o,' hunk o' burning love.

Sunday marked 90 days since NATO began enforcing the U.N.-mandated no-fly zone over Libya, and America's involvement in the air campaign against Khadafy's forces. House Republicans have ostensibly been tussling over application of the 1973 War Powers Act, which arguably required that the President obtain a Congressional thumbs-up for continued hostilities, although most of the GOP reps seemed only to care about wiping Obama's eye.

Hearing of Boehner and the Republican's diligent efforts to obstruct Obama, Khadafy sent Congressional leaders and the White House a smoochie, smoochie love letter gushing, "I want to express my sincere gratitude for your thoughtful discussion of the issues," and that he was, "counting on the United States Congress to its continued investigation of  military activities of NATO and its allies to confirm what we believe is a clear violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973."

Boehner, swaying to bird song, whined, "The White House says there are no hostilities taking place, yet we've got drone attacks under way!" Sounding alarmingly like a thirteen year old girl pursuing a forbidden love, Boehner stamped his feet, "Part of the mission is to drop bombs on Khadafy's compound!" Awful, awful bombs!

It was not immediately known whether Boehner then screamed that he hated President Obama, and flung himself on his bed to cry his eyes out.

Fellow Republican Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was appalled. He told ABC's This Week, "If we had not intervened, Khadafy was at the gates of Benghazi. He said he was going to go house to house to kill everyone. That's a city of 700,000 people. What would we be saying now if we had allowed for that to happen?"

It was not known whether Boehner kicked and screamed, "I don't care! I love him! I love him!" and buried his face in a pillow, sobbing.

McCain's pal Lindsey Graham (R-SC) stepped up and announced sternly that he would have, "no part of any effort to defund" the Libya operation. "Congress should shut up and not empower Khadafy."

It was not known whether Boehner howled, "You always take his side!" and cried inconsolably while House Republicans stroked his head and glared at Graham.

Boehner had said disgraced Twitter exhibitionist Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) should go for showing women pictures of his wee-wee, but was apparently intent on shielding dreamboat Moammar, whose only crimes involved killing countless thousands, subjugating his country, and blowing Pan Am Flight 103 out of the sky over Lockerbie, Scotland.

After all, Khadafy was a billionaire oil mogul, and George W. Bush's valued ally in the War on Terror. Or Terra, as Bush always said, making much more sense grammatically. 

Graham and McCain have taken Republican presidential hopefuls to task for the field's dovish posture. On Afghanistan, Graham compared Mitt Romney to Jimmy Carter, the GOP equivalent of a third-grader saying a classmate's father was a member of the LGBTG community.

"We cannot move into an isolationist party," McCain railed. "We cannot repeat the lessons of the 1930s, when the United States of America stood by while bad things happened in the world."

On foreign policy matters, neither McCain or Graham appeared to back fellow Republicans' automatic opposition to Obama's actions. Many Republicans, especially from the Tea Party wing, have suddenly turned uncharacteristically dovish in the name of fiscal restraint, although none have countenanced meaningful revenue reform to deal with their supposed concerns over debt and deficit spending.

"So, the Congress of the United States should pass a resolution," McCain said.  "And, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and I have the resolution that's ready to go, that would comply with the War Powers Act."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) stated he backed Obama on Libya, and that the War Powers Act did not apply to the US's limited role in the NATO operation. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) concurred, as did Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a Republican whose day job had been running the vaguely-monikered defense contractor Science Applications International Corporation. SAIC is the nation's ninth largest defense contractor, employing 44,000, and was a notable player among interventionist neo-cons in the run-up to the Iraq war.

It was not known whether Boehner locked himself into his room, screamed he hated everyone, and said he and Moammer were going to get married.

GOP's Right Wing Extremists Pose Clear and Present Danger to World

An enraged mob of more than one thousand ordinary Afghans stormed a UN compound in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan, killing at least twenty members of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan Friday. The rioting was in response to a band of racist Florida evangelical supremacists who made a public display of burning a Koran March 20.

UN Dispatch reported that the crowd that attacked the UN compound, in what it described as an area of Afghanistan deemed peaceful enough to have been turned over to Afghan security forces, were not Taliban insurgents or Al Qaeda operatives, but ordinary townsfolk who had been riled up at Friday prayers by news of hate merchant Terry Jones and his coven of publicity-obsessed spiritual defectives' Koran burning.

Terry Jones, head of the so-called Dove World Outreach Center, had insinuated himself into national headlines by threatening to burn Korans on September 11, 2010. Mollified by fawning attention from the likes of US Defense Secretary Richard Gates and US network television, Jones announced in ostentatious style that his tiny group of moral incompetents would magnanimously forgo Koran burning in the interest of world peace.

As Jones jonesed for more TV attention, he decided to go ahead with burning Korans, and staged a bizarre mock trial in which a Koran was "condemned" and executed by burning. As a result, twenty people are dead, and Jones is basking in the limelight of media attention. It is not known whether Jones and his group mistake their narcissistic media lust for religious fervor, or whether their self-serving piety is a sham.

The angry mob that overran the UN compound hadn't even been armed at the outset, but acquired weapons from UN guards they overpowered during the rioting. Five Nepalese guards and civilians from Norway, Sweden and Romania were among those killed, along with at least four of the rioters.

American white supremacists and right-wing extremists are delighted, as they hold the United Nations in deep disdain. They would cheer the failure of the UN Afghanistan mission, as they would cheer the dissolution of the body. This extremist view is not merely the crazed fantasy of a small group of psychotics, but is a core value of the Republican Party, including Republican John Bolton, George W. Bush's infamous choice to be the US Ambassador to the UN.

For folks out there unfamiliar with US law, freedom of speech is nearly unrestricted, but there are limits, the most prominent being speech that poses a "clear and present danger."  The classic example of posing a clear and present danger is shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater that is not actually on fire. Speech intended to incite a riot is likewise not protected by the First Amendment right to free speech.

Jones and his little tribe of narcissists obviously acted to create a clear and present danger, and should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. This will likely not occur, as religious extremists like Jones are an important constituency for the Republican Party, and the Republican Party, with their plutocrat masters, are overlords of America. While President Barack Obama, a Democrat, denounced the violence in Afghanistan, he didn't utter a single word sanctioning hate monger Jones.

Obama and his Democratic Party are acting as mere place-keepers for the Republicans, acceding to every Republican whim, from crippling budget strangulation to the complete abdication of environmental stewardship. It is hate extremists like Jones who are coddled, as they are the GOP's front-line thugs enforcing the plutocrats' reign over their formerly democratic fiefdom.

By embracing its present Muslim-bashing identity, Dove World, once primarily an anti-homosexual cadre,  found the fawning media stardom that many celebrity-obsessed Americans crave. Jones, who calls himself a pastor, will no doubt be able to expand his tiny base of twenty or thirty sycophants as a result of his media stardom. His original stab at fame garnered him a round of appearances on the network TV talk shows, and he will certainly be back on the A-list for a while. As his star inevitably dims, he will inevitably be inspired to carry out ever more horrific and grotesque demonstrations to rope in the media attention he, with his blow-dried hair and brushed muttonchop beard, so obviously lusts after. Every racist and evangelical supremacist will be emboldened to make his or her bid to star on Good Morning America and the Today Show.

It is an unconscionable tragedy that the lives and mission of earnest international aide workers are mere chattel to the GOP media circus that elevates gangs of back woods Neanderthals to stars of global statecraft.

Allied Endgame Clear for Unique Libya

As NATO officially took over operational control for enforcing the United Nations' Libyan no-fly zone, Americans have seen much hand-wringing over what the endgame in Libya might look like.  Across the American political spectrum, there's been much anguish expressed over implementing the no-fly zone. From conservatives who've vowed to ruin Barack Obama's Presidency by opposing any action he takes, to earnest non-violence liberals appalled at any use of force, nervous talk has arisen over "quagmires" and Constitutional authority.

Libya has been, from the outset, unique. The universally-despised tyrant Moammar Khadafy had openly announced his intent to roll columns of tanks and troops into Benghazi with taunting threats that he would show "no mercy, no pity," and that his forces would go "house by house, room by room" and "find you in your closets." It was this taunt, more than anything else, that prompted the United Nations to action.

As the first week of airstrikes comes to a close, many are concerned when the Allied action would end.  Would the Allies send in ground troops?  Will there be a quagmire?

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said Thursday that the international military intervention would last days or weeks, but not months, and that no ground troops would be deployed.

Again, Libya's unique situation makes Juppe's comments possible and practical.  Khadafy's regime is isolated, and Libya is embargoed.  There is no Ho Chi Minh trail of supplies and war materials sustaining Khadafy's forces. There are no spare parts coming in to rebuild battered tanks and armored vehicles. There are no truckloads of ammunition coming in to replenish the rounds he's fired into Zawiyah and Brega. Khadafy has no indigenous war industry to make spare turbines for his jet fighters, or spare gun barrels for his artillery.

Thus, Juppe knows that every tank his Rafale fighters destroys is destroyed for good. When news cameras reveal a desert littered with burned-out armored vehicles, those vehicles are lost to Khadafy for the duration.  Likewise for every tank that mangles its treads, and every artillery piece that blows its breach. 

Juppe can say the Allied campaign would be limited in duration because, by completely owning the airspace over Libya, Allied forces can pound Khadafy's air, armor and artillery assets with impunity, and, in relatively short order, deny the dictator the military supremacy those assets had given him.

It was Khadafy's airplanes, tanks and artillery that enabled him to oppress his people and slaughter those who dared to oppose him. Without his air force, his armor and his artillery, Khadafy is just another gang-banger with some thugs armed with Kalashnikovs.  As the Allied air assault degrades Khadafy's military assets, they degrade the dictator's ability to impose his will over the land.

The Allied endgame is clear. Since Khadafy is an international pariah who isn't getting resupplied by America, or Europe, or China or Russia, and since he doesn't have a domestic arms industry that can keep his military operating on its own, Khadafy had a come-as-you-are military, with a finite number of the heavy weapons that had kept him in power. The Allied endgame comes when Khadafy's advantage in jet planes, tanks and artillery has been neutralized.

At that point, the rebels who have risen against him will have to take matters into their own hands to shape their nation's future for themselves. It is certainly possible that they will be unable to dislodge Khadafy, although the Allies' destruction of the dictator's armor and artillery will certainly cause those less committed to Khadafy to turn against him or to simply flee. Given a level playing field in terms of war materials, the rebels, as the popular movement, should gain the upper hand through sheer superiority of numbers. 

It is certainly possible that Libya might descend into a protracted civil war between Ghadafy, the rebels, and/or factions among the rebels. That is something the Libyans must work out among themselves.

That is when the rest of the world must stand aside and let the Libyans work out what their new nation is going to look like, even if that new nation isn't what someone outside of Libya might want. Whether the process is neat and orderly with conferences and plebiscites, or bloody and messy with unspeakable violence by all sides, once the Allies have levelled the playing field for the Libyans, everyone will just have to step aside and let the Libyans play on that field.

US Liberals, Conservatives Struggle to Find Positions on Libya

As Britain prepared to host an international conference in London on Tuesday to consider the next steps in the implementation of the Libyan no-fly zone, ambassadors from NATO nations met for the third day in Brussels to hammer out NATO's role in carrying out the UN mandates.

Britain and the United States have suggested that NATO lead the mission, while the French have suggested an international body including the Arab League, African nations, and concerned European nations should bear the political leadership while NATO maintains technical command-and-control role.

The fractious cogitations over Libya has seen the Arab League call for the no-fly zone, then balk at its implementation; NATO member Turkey balk at intervention, then agree to send warships; NATO member Germany withdraw its Med fleet from NATO command; and Italy and Norway opt for NATO control.

The Libya debate is no less contentious inside the Washington Beltway, with some politicians staking out familiar territory, while others find themselves on unfamiliar ground with peculiar bedmates.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) was the most vocal critic of the Libyan intervention among the liberal camp, questioning whether President Barack Obama's action to implement the no-fly zone was an impeachable offense.  Kucinich is at least consistent in his anti-war stances, having called for George W. Bush and Dick Cheney to be impeached for starting the Iraq War.  Likewise, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) was the only member of the House to vote against the Iraq War, and stood against the  no-fly zone here. You probably wouldn't have gotten Ghandi to go along with airstrikes either, not to imply that either Kucinich or Lee are good enough to carry the Mahatma's loincloth.

On the Republican side of the aisle, Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama has come out against the no-fly zone. Senator Richard Lugar, ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee likewise stood against it.

The House Progressive Caucus struggled to find a position on the Libyan no-fly zone. Its 75 members discussed whether Libya might be a quagmire, whether to block funding for the action, whether the President acted Constitutionally, or whether to simply express skepticism.  In the end, all that came out was a tepid statement signed by just four caucus members, with Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), and Mike Honda (D-CA) joining Lee. Their statement read, in part:

"There is a serious humanitarian crisis in Libya, and Gaddafi’s reckless, indiscriminate use of force on his own people in response to grassroots calls for change is unacceptable. But there are serious consequences for rushing to war with a limited understanding of the situation..."

Ghadafy's actions, apparently, were "unacceptable," except that were acceptable. The statement goes on to say the US shouldn't "sidestep" diplomacy and humanitarian efforts, as though no one had thought to invite Ghadafy to discuss the matter over tea and cakes.

The "bomb-them-into-the-Stone-Age" camp included neo-con pundit William Kristol, who urged committing ground troops. John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Marco Rubio (R-FL) were early supporters of the no-fly zone.

Former House Speaker and sometime 2012 Presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich was for the no-fly zone, then against it. He, like many Republicans, was apparently caught flat-footed by President Obama's tough stance against Ghadafy. Perhaps he anticipated the President would be soft on intervention, and called for the no-fly zone so he could be opposed to Obama. He has now switched his position and achieved his goal.

So, you have a situation where conservative Ron Paul (R-TX) and liberal Dennis Kucinich are questioning the Constitutionality of the action, while John Kerry (D-MA), best known for protesting the Vietnam War, and Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), are joining John McCain and Lindsey Graham in supporting the President.

Charles Schumer (D-NY) for, Jim Webb (D-VA) against.

It's all probably very healthy for democracy. 

Nonetheless, what we have is a blood-thirsty tyrant who, unlike some other bloodthirsty tyrants, is nearly universally despised, threatening to massacre his own people who have risen against him. He has rolled tanks and artillery and scrambled ground-attack jets to pound virtually unarmed civilians. Rarely has there been so clear-cut a division between good and evil, between what is right and what is wrong. Even the Russians and the Chinese abstained on the UN resolution, when the buttons on their Security Council desks are permanently hard-wired to "Veto."

If the Spanish Civil War had occurred today, would there be earnest young partisans flocking to join the rebellion?  Would the Marquis De Lafayette be flaunting his government to sail in support of the American rebels? Or would the Rwanda genocide be the model for the day?

The endgame is murky, and intervention puts Allied troops in jeopardy.  However, the endgames are always unknowable, and anyone who thinks day-to-day peacetime military operations are without hazard should consider strapping 60,000 pounds of thrust onto his backside and trying some touch-and-go's. The one thing that's certain is that, when French jets blasted Khadafy's columns as they were poised to overrun Benghazi, the townfolk cheered.

Did GOP Racists Slow US Response to Libyan Crisis?

In real life, rarely does the cavalry appear over the horizon at the last moment to save the besieged townfolks. 

In Benghazi, the cavalry did come in the nick of time, but instead of John Wayne leading the charge, it was Gerard Depardieu.  With Moammar Ghadafy's armoured columns poised to strike the city, his lead forces already reported to be executing probing attacks on its western edge, French Rafale and Mirage fighters streaked over the horizon.  They pounded Ghadafy's column, leaving charred hulks of tanks and armored vehicles as his soldiers fled.

British and American ships launched more than one hundred cruise missiles against Khadafy's air defense net, and British and American aircraft joined in destroying the regime's radars and anti-aircraft missile sites.

But it was the French air force that saved the day for the residents of Benghazi, the city of 700,000 that was the heart of Libya's anti-Ghadafy uprising. "This is all France," a rebel fighter told a reporter from Reuters as they surveyed a field outside Benghazi littered with the smoking wreckage that had been Ghadafy's army.

A first world air force had obliterated a third world army.  The soldiers who had survived had fled, reportedly in stolen civilian vehicles. There had been no contest.  The workaday tanks and pickups with machine guns bolted onto their beds were fully capable of inflicting unmitigated death and misery on virtually unarmed civilians, but were no match for highly trained pilots in NATO aircraft launching precision munitions and cluster bombs.

Ghadafy's air defense net had been no match for cruise missiles capable of hitting a city bus from 600 miles away, or American B-2 bombers invisible to their radars.

No losses were reported among the Allied forces participating in the largest airstrike since the opening days of the Iraq War eight years ago.

This one-sided smack-down of a crazed and blood-thirsty tyrant was the impossibly perilous gambit US Defense Secretary Robert Gates and his supporters had stubbornly refused to countenance. Gates, a Republican and former board member of the neo-con Iraq War think tank Science Applications International Corporation, had warned against imposing a no-fly zone over Libya in testimony before the US Congress, and had stuck by his position throughout the course of the delicate negotiations conducted by French and British leaders to build consensus for the action.

Gates was a key player in launching George W. Bush's Iraq War, and SAIC was front-and-center promoting the fictions about Saddam Hussiens' purported stockpile of chemical and biological weapons and his relationship with Al Qaeda.  Gates and SAIC declared that Khadafy was an important ally in the Bush Administration's War on Terror, the ongoing debacle that has become superseded by more recent and relevant crises throughout the Middle East.

To what extent Khadafy's role as Terror War ally impeded American support for the Libyan no-fly zone cannot be determined. Elements within President Barack Obama's administration were clearly concerned how others among America's allies would react to the US turning against one who had been so named.

It is also impossible to determine to what extent support for Khadafy among rank-and-file Republican voters impacted the long road to the French cavalry charge at Benghazi. Many white supremacists, an important constituency for Republicans, support Khadafy, as he is seen as a bulwark against immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa reaching Europe and the West.

As amazing as it may seem to many, American white supremacists included groups that saw a crazed tyrant who would slaughter his own people as a bona fide compatriot.  As Allied warplanes turned back Khadafy's loyalist column from massacring a major city's population, American white supremacists decried the intervention and denounced its success. 

Republican lawmakers, such as Senator Richard Lugar, joined Gates in sounding ominous warnings about the perils of implementing the Libyan no-fly zone. Both Lugar and the white separatist Council of Conservative Citizens expounded on the theme that US military action would require a Congressional declaration of war.

Some Republicans called for swift action against the Libyan tyrant, notably Senator John McCain, a Navy Vietnam veteran, ex-POW, and his party's candidate for President in the 2008 elections. McCain, a self-styled maverick, had recently hewed closer to the party line, but was among the few Republicans who advocated a no-fly zone.

Allied air incursions over Libya continued, as the French air force settled into enforcing the no-fly zone and actively sought signs of aggression by Khadafy's forces. In Benghazi, rebel forces regrouped and set out once again to rid themselves of the tyrant who had ruled their country for four decades. In a region where the United States could use all the street cred it could lay its hands on, it was the French who got to ride into the sunset as the townfolk cheered.

No-Fly Zone Vote May Be Too Late To Help Libyan Uprising

After weeks of intense diplomatic effort by France and Britain, the United Nations Security Council approved a Libyan no-fly zone and authorized the use of any force necessary short of invasion to halt Libyan dictator Moammar Khadafy's armored blitz through the eastern half of his country.

However, as Khadafy's forces have moved to within striking distance of Benghazi, the anti-Khadafy movement's last and most pivotal stronghold, any relief for the nascent popular uprising may come too late to save the rebels.

It has certainly come too late for the anti-Khadafy uprising in Zawiyah, Ras Lanuf, El Agheila, and Ajebadia. Those cities and towns have already been overrun by Khadafy's tanks and mercenary thugs, and the people in those places are even now suffering terrible reprisals beyond the scrutiny of the world's media.

Once Khadafy's tanks and columns of troops enter Benghazi, it will be impossible to root them out with air strikes. The time to act was a two weeks ago, when Khadafy's forces were in disarray, and a comprehensive air campaign to destroy Libya's air defense radars and surface-to-air launchers, crater airbase runways and destroy the largely anti-insurgency air armada on the ground, along with judicious strikes against military barracks and tank depots, would have finished the dictator.  The time to act was one week ago, when Khadafy's army was stretched out across the Libyan desert, providing a target-rich environment ideal for destruction from above.  The time to act was a day ago, when Khadafy's tank formations were lined up in staging areas preparing to take the last pockets of resistance before Benghazi.

By dawn March 18, Khadafy's tanks might already be in Benghazi, and air strikes aimed at his forces then would only result in death, horror and misery for the wretched civilians the UN claims it to wants to protect.

The United States isn't shy about rushing into conflict on behalf of oil moguls or Halliburton, but when it comes to defending popular movements against tyrants, the Arsenal of Democracy hems and haws and mutters about measured responses and non-intervention.  Despite the cries of the Libyan people, the resolve of the usually fractious Arab nations, the diplomacy of the French and our special relationship with Britain, the US had dragged its heels.

Republican US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, late of the board of the pro-Iraq War think tank Science Applications International Corporation, was prominently front-and-center denigrating any possibility of a no-fly zone against Khadafy, and decrying any US involvement in such an endeavor.  Gates failed to mention that US air power was uniquely suited to the exact mission he painted as impossibly perilous.  American air power possessed sophisticated electronic warfare and anti-radar systems designed specifically to punch through any air defense in the world, let alone the rag-tag forces Khadafy could muster. Khadafy had no air superiority fighters to speak of, especially after the loss of half his Mirages to defectors.  His radars and anti-air defenses were not the top tier defenses American and NATO strategic and tactical forces were built to punch holes through. The vast majority of Khadfay's air force was, typically for a dictator, comprised of smaller single engine jets and helicopters designed to bomb and strafe civilians.

Gates and his SAIC neo-cons were the primary architects of George Bush's War on Terror, and counted Khadafy as an important ally.  There is no way of knowing whether and how much Gates' previous relationship with Khadafy impeded any move to act against the tyrant. An obvious schism over intervention in Libya split the Obama Administration, with the President and the State Department on one side, and Gates and his supporters on the other. 

Just as the US rushed to war in Iraq, the US was slow to respond in Bosnia, and never responded at all in Rwanda or Burma.  The infamous "pinprick" air strikes against Serbian positions in Bosnia did nothing to prevent the horrific Bosnian genocide, and the eventual American deployment there came only after the mass graves were filled.  

Vital American Interests still means opportunities and profits for transnational corporations, so when it comes to wielding the Arsenal of Democracy's might, a no-bid $4 billion-a-month contract for Halliburton, or preserving the bottom line for Kuwaiti oil moguls still trumps the hopes and lives of ordinary people in places like Zawiyah, or Srebrenica, or even Madison, Wisconsin.

The UN has made its move against Khadafy. Russia and China, always loathe to take action against dictators, deigned to abstain. However, with just a little more foot-dragging from the world's democracies, ordinary people in Libya who dared to dream of a future free from tyranny will be lost, and a blood-thirsty madman who happens to be an oil billionaire will have won the day