The Bush years will most likely be called the “New Dark Age” of energy development. See why in the following video.

Saddam Hussein spoke to his captors about the reasons why he danced around weapons inspectors in the run up to the Iraq War. It further shows the shortsidedness of the Bush policy and its failing to understand how Iraq, sitting on the Sunni-Shia fault line, served as a buffer against a resurgent Iran.

Documents Show Iraqi Dictator’s Fears

By SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON — In a series of interrogations before his execution, Saddam Hussein told an F.B.I. agent that on the eve of the 2003 American invasion, Iraq was trapped between United Nations orders to demonstrate that it had disarmed and a fear that appearing too weak would invite attack from its powerful neighbor and foe, Iran. More

Reza Aslan informs us of the beginning of a strike in Iran which is wrapped in an obscure religious holiday in his latest, “Iran Goes on Strike”. It is a great read.

A massive sandstorm swept into Tehran Monday morning, blanketing the streets in a dark and dreamy haze. The tops of buildings, where, last night, the protest calls of “God is great!” rang out for the 21^st consecutive day, are barely visible. Most of Tehran’s bustling downtown appears abandoned. The air quality is so bad that people say it is difficult to breathe. An eerie calm has descended upon the city. More

The full blown demise of the Republican Party is doing nothing for the betterment of the country. That’s right, you heard it here. The ongoing collapse of the GOP highlights the flaws of a two party system. From a liberal perspective, Obama’s programs have a lot of merit but the absence of viable debate is not good. There are no leaders in the House, the Senate or among those who would be candidates for President in 2012 from the Republican Party who carry any political weight and none of them certainly can’t stand up to Obama. Those who oppose Obama’s agenda are hoping either his own party bogs him down or his policies fail on their own merit. It will not be the Republicans who bring Barack Obama down.

Many believed the bottom for the GOP had been reached with the 2008 election, but events within the party continued to spiral. It wasn’t just your average tawdry tales that has rocked the party. Rather it was decisions made by men within the party who chose to build up their credentials with fonts of morality only to fall way short of their own convictions. Ensign, Sanford and now possibly Palin have caused raised eyebrows from the party’s staunchest allies. (If it isn’t an impending scandal that has caused Palin to step down as Governor, the speech she gave today should be cause enough to end a political career.)

So the question is, who will emerge from the Republican Party to be a worthy adversary of Barack Obama? When some have staked their claim to Limbaugh to be the voice of the party, when the National Chairman is Michael Steele and there is no politician that contends to have any comprehensive answers to the problems that face this country from the conservative side, it is clear the GOP has some serious soul searching and a lot of ground to make up.

The momentum we are seeing in Iran these last few days is fascinating. Does anyone think this could have happened if President Bush was in office? If you remember Bush classified Iran as one of the “Axis of Evil”. This further isolated Iran and helped lead to a little known hard line mayor of Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to be elected President of Iran. Just in this year we have seen Barack Obama refer to the Persian nation as the Islamic Republic of Iran and stress through the campaign and now as President that the US should open up dialogue with Iran. No threats, no bullets, just an open hand. What do we see in the streets of Iran? The seeds of rebellion? Perhaps. Time will tell but what we do know is Iran has a very young population. Sixty percent of the population is under 28 years old, thanks in large degree to the devastating impact of the Iran-Iraq War. Iran is also the most pro-American nation in the Middle East. There are as many as 600,000 people living in Los Angeles of Iranian heritage alone (exiles of the Islamic Revolution) and many of them have family living back in Iran. Many don’t know that after 9/11 the only people to hold vigils for the victims in the Muslim world was Iran.

The disputed election has been covered in great detail in the news but the undercurrent of the scorn is much deeper. Though violence is a terrible thing, the misstep made by the Iranian authorities is a good thing from the West’s point of view. Day by day as the protests have continued the people are breaking down the validity of the current government. Despite the outcome of this crisis, Iran will never be the same. The youthful Iranian people are ready for the old guard to crumble and desire a new relationship with the west and especially the United States and there should be no doubt they see in the new US President an opportunity to change the dynamics of the relationship. The election in Iran, for the first time since the 1979 revolution, did not make the US the boogie man. The protesters in the streets are not shouting “Death to America” they are shouting “Death to the Dictators”.

It is true Mousavi is not much different than Ahmadinejad but the protest movement in Iran is much larger than both men. It is a bit premature but if the protests result in a liberal revolution and Iran goes from being an enemy to an ally of the West you can thank mismanagement by the Iranian government, repression of Islamic theocratic rule and the change in tactics by a new US President. The next two days may be crucial. Tomorrow the opposition crowds could be significant as Mousavi has announced a “day of mourning” which was a tactic used by those during the Islamic Revolution to gather unlawfully. Who is going to assault mourners? And Friday, the Islamic Sabbath, is believed to be the largest protest gathering thus far. We will all be watching…and hoping.

Iran’s Latest Protests Are Seen as the Toughest to Stop: NY Times

Iranian protesters’ slogans target Khamenei as the real enemy: Guardian UK

What’s behind Iran’s power struggle: CS Monitor

President Obama is giving the speech tomorrow that President Bush should have given on October 11, 2001. Though he won’t alter events on the ground in the Middle East immediately, Obama will cause the minds of many Muslims to shift. America chose to deal with terrorism by blindly flailing with a sharpened spear and in the process wounding many innocents. President Obama understands the Islamic World. Because he has a unique background, the President will be able to say things that his predecessors could not.

The most pressing issue in the Muslim World involves the Holy Land. The Israeli-Palestinian issue, however, is both a serious issue and a chimera in the region. There is no historical doubt that the Palestinians have been wronged in almost every occasion since 1919. Their ancestral homeland has been whittled away from them through peace treaty, League of Nations treaty, British hegemony, United Nations treaty, Jordanian hegemony and finally Israeli aggression. Their recent historical plight is a tragic consequence at being so near land which is of such religious relevance and being unable to defend itself due to poor and fractious leadership. But Palestine’s tragedy is also deeply rooted in the internal politics of her Arab brothers. Palestine’s condition also serves the interest of the despotic leaders who sit on Arab thrones. The images of Arabs being bloodied by Jewish guns, shells and bombs draws the attention away from the ills of the region’s Arab governments. It is a means of redirecting the rage. It serves another purpose also. Not only does it focus Arab passions away from their own failed governments but it also focuses the West’s attention away from the abysmal human rights violations being perpetrated from Arab capitals. America has simply created a new scene into the Middle Eastern production. The spotlights seem to shift these days between Gaza, The West Bank, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Corrupt Middle Eastern governments now have many outlets to direct the attention of their unhappy populace. Instead of spending lavishly within their petroleum empires, could not the rich oil states redirect significant resources into Palestine and lift out of poverty and destitution the 7.5 million Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip? If the Arabs were truly concerned about their oppressed brothers in Palestine, this would have been done long ago. Look at how the wealthy Jews in the West have assisted the zionist cause in Israel. Wouldn’t it make sense for the Muslims to do the same for their brethren in Palestine?

I am sure President Obama will bring the failures of the Arab World to light in his speech tomorrow. He will state the fact that America has not always made the best decisions but the Muslim World cannot blame all the ills of the world on Jews and America. Islamic terrorism is being cultivated in the dictatorial petrie dishes in the Middle East (albeit warmed under the light of Zionism and American malfeasance). President Obama has rightly begun to push back on Israel by stating they should freeze construction on West Bank settlements. This stance against Israel has not been greeted warmly by many Congressmen on both sides of the aisle. The Jewish lobby is strong in the halls of Congress. Prior to Obama’s visit with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, 76 out of the 100 Senators sent a message to the President advising him to mind the risks to Israel over any Middle East peace accords. President Obama is not just saying what is right, he is doing what is right. It will now be up to Israel, the Arab States and, most of all, the Muslim people now to respond in kind.

You get the feeling this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Iraq. So much for loyalty to country.

CS Monitor

By Tim Sebastian

May 1, 2009

Washington – This story began – as so many do – with a lunch.

While attending a conference in 2004 in the tiny Gulf state of Qatar, I was invited to break bread with the ruler, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, and his wife, Sheikha Mozah. As a bewildering array of courses came and went, the royal couple talked of their vision for reform and openness and asked me if I had any suggestions.

It was the start of a journey, now entering its sixth year, that led to the formation of the first global free speech forum in the Middle East – The Doha Debates – and last month to a highly controversial session in Washington.

My suggestion to Qatar’s ruler was to stage a series of town hall debates in the country, get people arguing without fear of censorship or repercussions and tackle the hottest political topics in the Arab and Islamic worlds. The key condition was that my team would retain full editorial independence – with no interference of any kind from the state.

More

Under the Bush administration you could just feel the shifting of wealth into the pockets of the wealthy. It started from the very beginning with Bush’s tax cut in 2001. This tax measure lopped off taxes primarily on the very wealthy and the result was an exponential increase in the amount of wealth at the very top of the economic spectrum. The middle class was being squeezed. Despite the wealth being funneled upward, businesses were reducing pensions and raises. Workers’ wages were not running parallel with the increase in inflation. The costs of health care were skyrocketing. The recent economic downturn was simply the heaviest strike from a succession of blows exacerbated by a failed right wing economic policy. In so many ways the 2000s were the faux Gilded Age.

The original Gilded Age occurred in the last half of the 19th century and was fueled by the Second Industrial Revolution. The Gilded Age saw America surge past the great powers of Europe in industrial might. But there were many victims. Child labor, women workers, and new immigrants from Europe’s underbelly and East Asia offered a cheap workforce. Labor laws favored the employers. Sixty hour weeks were not uncommon in factories that held all the brutalities the late 1800s had to offer. This was the era of the Robber Barons of industry. Huge icons of American business ran monopolies in steel, railroads, coal, oil and finance. Wealth, then too, was top heavy. The rich lived in opulence and the poor masses lived in tenements in America’s urban centers or eked out a living on farms. The Gilded Age was known for its corruption, both governmental and private.

The ills of the Gilded Age brought about a period of progressivism. The most famous of the political progressives was the Republican Teddy Roosevelt. Known as the “trust buster” Roosevelt inaugurated a period of fairness to the industrial sector. TR was also famous for his stance on conservation at a time when America’s forests were disappearing at an alarming rate and animals such as the bison were being hunted to near extinction. These progressives that were changing their world during the infancy of the 20th century were considered the pioneers of modern liberalism.

The current age is seeing a similar shift to the left. Government is again taking on the ills of the private sector. Only this time the weight of the nation’s (some would say the world’s) economy is in the balance. You would think by listening to the chorus being trumpeted from the right that what ails America is socialism. What ails America is the overextension of the capitalist powers that be. From delving out loans to those who could not afford them to issuing credit cards to risky users (with every incentive by the companies to snare the consumers in debt). The trading in commodities which created artificial bubbles and subsequent bursts became the name of the game; the last and greatest bubble and burst being the housing market.

  For eight years the nation’s infrastructure was sacrificed by President Bush due to his attention to necessary (Afghanistan) and fallacious (Iraq) wars. The government, as a whole, allowed the private capitalist system and the public sector to go unchecked. (see AIG, Citi Group, Bernard Madoff, no bid contracts, Freddy Mac and Fanny Mae, etc…) What is a president to do under such an environment? Barack Obama is a progressive. The right wing may not like his attempt to usher in a period of government intervention but this is what he ran on and this is what he is doing. Letting the banking system collapse or turning one’s back on the car companies would seem wise in the short run but disastrous to the economy in the long run. (Let’s not forget President Bush and the Republicans passed a bill that offered a sizable tax deduction to companies that bought the biggest SUVs and trucks on the market. Not exactly a strategy that helped the long term business plan of the auto makers.) President Obama’s budget contained measures intended to right the wrongs of eight years of neglect, from providing incentives for energy alternatives to giving the middle class a significant tax deduction for their kids’ college education. There is no doubt the cost of this is painful but we are simply paying for the neglect and errors of laissez faire economics. The lesson here is if you don’t want full scale progressivism, sprinkle in a little oversight on your free market capitalism.

I’m not a big fan of fringe blowhards on either side but I have to say it would be a “get your popcorn” moment to see a liberal torture Sean Hannity.