It's Friday

It's raining.

I seem to be in a permanent funk these days.

U.N. envoy: Gaza situation 'explosive'

Months of contacts to bring the current Hamas-led government and President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party into a national unity government have broken down over Hamas' refusal to accept international demands to recognize Israel, renounce violence and endorse past peace accords.

Why would they want to do anything anyone asks of them?

"The combination of near total closure of the Gaza Strip, non-payment of public sector salaries, absence of basic law and order, declining service delivery, continued military strikes by air and land, and the lack of any apparent political horizon is a truly explosive one _ as potentially dangerous for Israel as it is currently dangerous for Palestinians," de Soto said.

I wouldn't cooperate. What does it get the Gazan's, the Palestinians, to recognized Israel's right to exsist when it's all too clear that they do exsist and want you, citizens of the Gaza Ghetto, to no longer exsist? Renouce violence while being bombed? Hm. Endorse past peace accords which have done so very much to help you have a better, more peaceful, quality of life?

Seriously, what's the point? Where's the incentive for the people of Gaza to capitulate?

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Apparently North Korea is gonna play nice and not set off any more bombs.

I can't help but wonder at what China said to North Korea to make them promise this.

North Korea 'promises not to conduct further tests':

While Beijing has historically been reluctant to pressurise Pyongyang, in sending a special envoy to meet with Mr Kim, the Chinese sent an unusually blunt warning.

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Shia Fighters seize Iraqi city which the Brits returned to Iraq in August.

It's October 20 and the US has lost 74 troops (possibly more) in just 20 days.

Really wanna be depressed? Read Professor Cole's blog in which, amoungst other devastating data, he reports:

31 Percent Increase in Iraq Poverty

60 Percent Unemployment

30 Bodies Found in Baghdad



* 5.6 million Iraqis living below the poverty line. (At a population of 27 million, this is about 21% or 1/5 of the inhabitants!)

*40 percent of this number "is living in absolute and desperate deteriorated conditions." This is 2.2 million persons in the direst poverty, and 8.4 percent of the country's population-- nearly 1 in 10!

*"this level of poverty is a 35 percent increase over the level before 2003. . ."

*"Local officials and NGOs put the unemployment rate countrywide to be more than 60 percent." (The Brookings Institution recently put it at 30 percent and said that the rate has been declining. What world do they live in.)

*"the price of basic necessities in Iraq has skyrocketed over the past year."

* "A report by NGO Coordination Committee in Iraq (NCCI) suggests a 70 percent rate of inflation from July 2005 to July 2006."

*"When prices are increasing and people do not get more money, poverty is also increasing," said Cedric Turlan, information officer for the NCCI.


The End of Maliki?: Will a Coup Unravel Iraq?, by Robert Dreyfuss:

A coup d'état in Iraq would put a period - or rather an exclamation point - at the end of the Bush administration's bungled experiment with democracy there. And it would open an entirely new phase in that country's post-2003 national nightmare. Would it result in the creation of a Saddam-like strongman to rule Iraq with a heavy hand? Or would it force the warring parties (Sunni insurgents, Iranian-backed Shiite militias, and Kurdish warlords) to intensify the bloody civil war that is tearing Iraq apart? No one knows.

Heck of a job Bushie.

NATO's, in Afghanistan, doing well too.

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Time to Go! Inside the Worst Congress Ever, by Matt Taibbi:

Step Two: Work as Little as Possible - And Screw Up Whatever You Do

It's Thursday evening, September 28th, and the Senate is putting the finishing touches on the Military Commissions Act of 2006, colloquially known as the "torture bill." It's a law even Stalin would admire, one that throws habeas corpus in the trash, legalizes a vast array of savage interrogation techniques and generally turns the president of the United States into a kind of turbocharged Yoruba witch doctor, with nearly unlimited snatching powers. The bill is a fall-from-Eden moment in American history, a potentially disastrous step toward authoritarianism - but what is most disturbing about it, beyond the fact that it's happening, is that the senators are hurrying to get it done.

and

In the Sixties and Seventies, Congress met an average of 162 days a year. In the Eighties and Nineties, the average went down to 139 days. This year, the second session of the 109th Congress will set the all-time record for fewest days worked by a US Congress: ninety-three. That means that House members will collect their $165,000 paychecks for only three months of actual work.

What this means is that the current Congress will not only beat but shatter the record for laziness set by the notorious "Do-Nothing" Congress of 1948, which met for a combined 252 days between the House and the Senate. This Congress - the Do-Even-Less Congress - met for 218 days, just over half a year, between the House and the Senate combined.

The whole article is just fantastic and worth reading. When you're finished, follow the link there, or here for Rolling Stone's list of the 10 worst Congressmen.

It gave me a lift to an otherwise dreary day.