Progresssive breakfast club headlines 12/13/08 56

 

Progressive breakfast club headlines 12/13/08   DAMN YOU, DABBAGH, WHY DID YOU HAVE TO GO AND SAY THAT?  Iraqi PM Nouri al Maliki "sold" Iraqi Parliament on the Status of Forces Agreement with the U.S. which that body approved by assurances that (absent a new agreement) all U.S. forces in Iraq would by out by 2011.  Iraqi's spokesman in D.C. Ali al Dabbagh, rattles officials in Baghdad by saying that Iraq might very likely be needing U.S. presence in the country for another 10 years.  With a referendum on SOFA coming up early next year, hopes for its passage dim after the Dabbagh remark. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/57707.html   AFRI-COM: A COMMAND IN SEARCH OF A MISSION.  A New York Times reporter files his report "live" from a "remote" corner of  West Africa, Mali, where American Green Berets in this country and 9 surrounding ones are engaged  in a multi-country exercise to help Mali and other countries to stave off a supposedly growing Islamic militancy in these countries, on the rationale that the U.S. avoids fighting Al Qaeda in America by opposing it in Africa. The State Department's A.I.D. program kicks in by setting up radio towers for the transmission of anti-terrorist "information" and another program to encourage Muslim teachers to avoid promoting jihad as well as job training for young Muslim men and small business opportunites for Muslim women.  A Green Beret colonel admits about the program that  "This is crawl, walk, run, and right now, we're still in the crawl phase."  http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/13/world/africa/13mali.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&th&emc=th   SOME ARAB COUNTRIES SEE DEPLOYMENT OF FOREIGN ANTI-PIRACY NAVIES OFF THE  COAST OF SOMALIA AS A TROJAN HORSE THREATENING ARAB NATIONAL SECURITY.  At a Cairo meeting, countries in the Red Sea area plan their own anti-piracy measures, while concern is expressed that U.S., Indian and other foreign vessels operating in the area may be there as a pretext to assert foreign dominance over Arab affairs. http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=44897   BARACK OBAMA'S AIDES "MISSPEAK" ABOUT HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH ROD BLAGOJEVICH.  David Axelrod first said that Obama had spoken with the Illinois Governor about a replacement for himself as U.S. Senator.  Rahm Emanuel first said that he and Obama, along with David Wilhelm, were the principle architects of Blagojevich's successful campaign for Governor in 2002.  Both Axelrod and Emanuel later say they "misspoke" in making these statements.  http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/12/questions-arise.html   SOME FOLKS IN THE PALM BEACH FL COUNTRY CLUB NOT VERY HAPPY TODAY.  Wall Street invester Bernard Madoff, a part-time ($9.3 million mansion) resident of Palm Beach, is arrested on charges that he conducted a Ponzi scheme that may have lost as much as $50 billion for his unfortunate investers, including many wealthy fellow members of the PBCC. As one Club member says:  "Everyone is in shock." They're embarrassed. They don't want to believe they got taken."http://www.palmbeachpost.com/localnews/content/local_news/epaper/2008/12/12/1212madoff.html   Quote of the day:  "What we're really up against here is a vicious, rabid laissez faire corporate capitalism that yields more riches for the rich international robber barons that worship money and don't give one fat F... about ordinary human life and the life of the planet itself. It's all based on TAKING. "Oh, there's oil under that Ecuadorean tribal village. Well, they don't matter."..."Oh, what's wrong with cutting off the tops of mountains and dumping the debris in the river and streams? The coal miners will have work and can feed their families. View? What view? Wildlife? Well, they're just animals." "Oh, huge, new gold deposits were found recently in the Congo. ... Gee, wonder why it's erupting over there and people are killing each other again. Look at all those weapons those rebels and the government has too. Where'd they come from? Gee."  Comment posted 6:22 A.M. 12/13/08 on a Common Dreams article by Rose Ann De Moro advocating that Obama and Daschle make single-payer insurance the cornerstone of their "health reform" program, expressing this pessimism about passage under prevailing political culture.  http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/12/12-1