It’s this simple:

It is 9.15 p.m. on Tuesday evening in Yangon, the time of day when the stranglehold of fear settles across the city. The first heavily armed soldiers take position outside the few restaurants that still serve foreigners. Curfew starts at 10 p.m. After that, anyone who is still out on the streets is risking their lives.

The foreigners can’t find a car to take them from the restaurant. Someone goes out to find some sort of transport. Outside, a young man in shabby clothes emerges from the shadows to speak to the foreigners.

“The repression is continuing every night. When there are no more witnesses, they drive through the suburbs at night and kill the people.”

He wants to get his story out, and he does so quickly. If he’s caught, he’ll be imprisoned or killed. He’s from South Okalapa, a huge, terribly poor suburb. Most of the rebel monks were from there. The military junta crushed the rebellion in the city, then went to the source.

Around midnight, the military rolled into town. There’s a special unit of gangsters and ex-cons- for special purposes.

They surrounded a monastery on Weiza Yandar Street. All the roughly 200 monks living there were forced to stand in a row and the security forces beat their heads against a brick wall. When they were all covered in blood and lay moaning on the ground, they were thrown into a truck and taken away. “We are crying for our monks,” said the man, and then he was gone.

The huge monastery in the city is empty and quiet. Several thousand monks are gone. Disappeared.

“We are assuming that the number of victims among the monks and protesters last week goes well into the hundreds,” says one diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Some 800 monks are captive at the infamous Insein Prison. They have no contact with the world.

(I)f the authorities don’t provide international organizations with access to the camps soon, it will be a matter of time before there are further deaths.

The British ambassador hopes condemnation from ASEAN will help. He hopes U.N. efforts will help. He hopes the Chinese will help.

The article in Spiegel Online ends with these chilling words:

Editor’s Note: For security reasons we are not naming our correspondents in Burma.

The blogosphere is frequently full of cries about the creeping fascism of the Bush Administration. There are claims that we are all in imminent danger. There are comparisons to the world’s most brutal regimes. The Bush Administration is a viper’s den of war criminals, imperialists, and End Times theocrats.

You want to talk fascism?

In the past weeks, even the most ardent Democratic partisans have come to condemn Congressional Democrats for their lack of will, in confronting Bush and the Republicans: the war, domestic spying, torture, the absurd MoveOn resolution, the dangerous Iran resolution- we’re all baffled and discouraged and heartbroken, and many of us are just plain pissed off. Those of us who still intend to work for the election of Democrats, next year, find it increasingly difficult to convince those who have been straying that they should remain in the fold. We continue to insist that we need larger Congressional majorities, the executive branch, and if nothing else- and this ought to convince even the most recusant- to prevent four more years of Republican judges. But we cannot pretend that we don’t feel betrayed. We cannot pretend that we are having trouble answering the question: why? We are not using our majority power, and we are not using all the legislative and procedural tools we have available. Why?

Some say the Democrats are willfully complicit- beholden to the same nefarious interests as are the Republicans. I disagree. To me, it all comes back to impeachment. It comes back to the lack of will to make the ultimate and necessary confrontation. It comes from allowing a criminal administration to remain in power, and thus conferring on it a legitimacy that its criminality should have long ago voided. It comes from establishing a precedent and a dynamic that say the Bush Administration can push all boundaries, and the Democrats will not push back. If impeachment is off the table, then every form of criminality is on it!

Let me state, at the outset, that I do think the window for impeachment likely has closed. Barring some new bombshell revelation, there is likely neither the will in Congress to even start proceedings, nor the time for such proceedings to produce fair results. I come neither to praise nor bury impeachment. I come to discuss what I deem to be the consequence of its not having been pursued: a paralysis in the Democrats that renders them incapable of confronting Bush on anything.

If we were lied into the war, then being unwilling to hold the Administration accountable for those lies makes it impossible to accept the necessity of ending what should never have been started. If domestic spying is a Constitutional crime, then being unwilling to hold the Administration accountable for that crime necessitates the further Constitutional outrage of attempting to legislatively make such crimes legal. If torture is a crime against humanity, then being unwilling to hold the Administration accountable for that crime gives it tacit permission to violate pretty much any legal or moral standard. Oversight and subpoenas are irrelevant, because there are no consequences to what is discovered, and subpoenas can be, and are being, ignored. Despite being as unpopular as any “president,” ever, Bush knows he can just thumb his nose at the Democrats, and they will do nothing. They are incapable even of sound and fury.

The new Seymour Hersh article in the New Yorker has both good news and bad news, on the Bush Administration’s warmongering against Iran.

The good news?

I was repeatedly cautioned, in interviews, that the President has yet to issue the “execute order” that would be required for a military operation inside Iran, and such an order may never be issued.

Furthermore, understanding that the American public isn’t buying his demonizing of Iran, Bush has realized that he can’t sell an all-out war. He also seems to understand that Iran really is at least five years from having nuclear weapons capabilities, so there is no imminent threat.

The bad news?

Bush realizes that Iran is the big winner of his Iraq disaster. So, he has to do something. As an average adolescent would, Bush seems to have decided that the best way to reverse the victory he handed Iran, by invading Iraq, is to bomb them.

(T)here has been a significant increase in the tempo of attack planning. In mid-August, senior officials told reporters that the Administration intended to declare Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps a foreign terrorist organization. And two former senior officials of the C.I.A. told me that, by late summer, the agency had increased the size and the authority of the Iranian Operations Group.

Three points:

From the Associated Press:

Iran’s parliament on Saturday approved a nonbinding resolution labeling the CIA and the U.S. Army “terrorist organizations,” in apparent response to a Senate resolution seeking to give a similar designation to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The hard-line dominated parliament cited U.S. involvement in dropping nuclear bombs in Japan in World War II, using depleted uranium munitions in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq, supporting the killings of Palestinians by Israel, bombing and killing Iraqi civilians, and torturing terror suspects in prisons.

“The aggressor U.S. Army and the Central Intelligence Agency are terrorists and also nurture terror,” said a statement by the 215 lawmakers who signed the resolution at an open session of the Iranian parliament. The session was broadcast live on state-run radio.

The juvenility of our two national legislatures would be funny- if millions of people’s lives weren’t potentially threatened.

As many of you know, three members of the netroots community are running for Congress. We all talk the talk. They’re daring to walk the walk. All face uphill battles, but with a little luck, lots of hard work, and your help, all three can win.

We’re coming to the end of the quarter, for filing campaign contributions. A late rush is always helpful, not only for the obvious reasons, but for the buzz it creates. They can all also use volunteers and cyber-volunteers. Please do what you can, and do it by Sunday. Thanks!

Here are some diaries about our three candidates, plus links to their campaign webpages, ActBlue pages, and volunteer sign-up pages:

Jerry Northington for Congress- DE-AL

His Daily Kos page: possum

My introductory diary: (DE-AL) Kossack Jerry Northington (possum) for Congress!

We’re used to politicians who posture and spin, and whose every move is meticulously calculated. How often do we see politicians who think and write like Jerry Northington? He’s a warrior for peace, a teacher and healer, a scientist with the soul of a poet. We don’t often have the chance to send such a person to Congress. We now do.

Jerry’s announcement diary: possum for Congress

The issue on which my campaign is based is the war. As a Vietnam veteran I know from firsthand experience what war can do to the troops and to civilians. We must end this war and end it as soon as possible. So many other issues are not being addressed in this country today. The monies being squandered on a failing Iraq occupation need to be redirected. In addition we must work to see our freedoms restored. We have lost so much in the past six long years. If we fail to begin soon to change direction we may lose all in the end.

Volunteer!

Contribute, through ActBlue!

(and two more, below the fold…)

Spiegel Online has a powerful and terrifying interview with legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, the man who won a Pulitzer Prize for breaking the story of the My Lai massacre and cover-up, and more recently broke the story about the atrocities at Abu Ghraib prison. The interview covers a lot of ground, so let’s just look at some key parts, and then you must go read it!

On Iran:

(I)t’s been underestimated how much the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) knows. If you follow what (IAEA head Mohamed) ElBaradei and the various reports have been saying, the Iranians have claimed to be enriching uranium to higher than a 4 percent purity, which is the amount you need to run a peaceful nuclear reactor. But the IAEA’s best guess is that they are at 3.67 percent or something. The Iranians are not even doing what they claim to be doing. The IAEA has been saying all along that they’ve been making progress but basically, Iran is nowhere. Of course the US and Israel are going to say you have to look at the worst case scenario, but there isn’t enough evidence to justify a bombing raid.

As Hersh explains- and I love this phrasing:

We have this wonderful capacity in America to Hitlerize people. We had Hitler, and since Hitler we’ve had about 20 of them.

Yes- Godwin is a staple of American political life. Hersh points to Kruschev, Mao, Stalin, and Gadhafi, and now Ahmadinejad. Of course, we’re now on friendly terms with the apparent ex-Hitler, Gadhafi- if a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, Bush need not worry, because he appears to have no mind at all. 

Hersh also points out that Ahmadinejad is not actually in control, in Iran, so whatever rhetorical blather he blithers is not necessarily related to actual Iranian policies.

And then, there are these comforting words, about the real intent, behind Bush’s warmongering:

Sep 27th, 2007 | Washington, DC (BFD) In their continuing quest to demonstrate their ineptitude and irrelevance, Democrats in Congress today announced their intention to propose a resolution resolutely condemning tooth decay.

“It’s the least we could do,” said one anonymous Democratic staffer, “literally the least.”

Aides to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid would not comment, but assured our reporters that the Democratic leadership would be meeting with representatives of the sugar and dentistry lobbies, to ensure precise wording that would offend no one.

Before we all lose it over the Senate’s asinine Iran resolution, I thought we should all take deep breaths and calm down! The Senate did not authorize military action against Iran! The most dangerous wording in the Lieberman-Kyl resolution was removed before the vote!

With a hat tip to the reality-based Talking Points Memo, the National Security Advisors blog explains it thusly:

According to a staffer in Senator Lieberman’s office, due to objections from some colleagues, Lieberman and Kyl removed these two quoted sections regarding use of military force.  The remaining items, which the Senate did approve today, are pretty tame by comparison (though Senate moderates Biden, Hagel, Lugar, and Webb voted against it.  The revised amendment implies that the U.S. military should plan a future force structure in Iraq to help contain Iran; states that it is a vital interest of the U.S. to prevent Iran from creating a Hezbollah-like proxy army in Iraq; and recommends that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards be put on the Executive branch’s list of specially designated global terrorists.

The quoted sections that were deleted from the resolution? The Carpetbagger Report explains:

To be sure, the revised version is preferable to the original. Two offending paragraphs, in particular, were omitted entirely, including the notion that “it should be the policy of the United States to combat, contain, and roll back the violent activities and destabilizing influence inside Iraq of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, its foreign facilitators such as Lebanese Hezbollah, and its indigenous Iraqi proxies.”

Indeed, the original resolution also included language that the Senate would “support the prudent and calibrated use of all instruments of United States national power in Iraq, including diplomatic, economic, intelligence, and military instruments,” as part of our drive to “combat” Iran’s “destabilizing influence.”

Was it still a terrible resolution? Of course. Did it indicate Congress now backs a war with Iran? Not only is the answer no, but the National Security Advisors blog makes the point that the Democrats had already, twice this year, acted in ways that could be considered as supporting the use of force against Iran. In other words, by forcing the removal of the most inflammatory language from this resolution, the Democrats could be read as now being less supportive of using force against Iran! Or maybe not. We’ve all been doing way too much tea-leave reading, and far too little focusing on the facts.

The war will end, some day. We tend to forget that. Neither our military nor our economy can sustain this abomination forever. So, it’s really just a question of when. It’s a question of how many more people will be killed, or have their lives destroyed, before the inevitable and inexorable finally comes to pass. Nothing else really matters, anymore. It’s about lives. There is no rationale. It’s just senseless death and destruction. And when it’s all over, the shattered and the scarred will never have a reason why.

We’re waiting for the heroes who will end this war. Many people are trying to end it, but a small handful will succeed. They will have the right strategy, at the right time, and suddenly the war will be over. Even until the last shot has been fired, it will seem that an end will never happen, that it is impossible; but it is not impossible, and it will happen. We will wonder that it was so obvious. We will wonder that no one before was able to get it done. We will wonder why it took so long. We will receive no answers.

There have been many heroes, in the cause of peace. Cindy Sheehan gave opposition to the war a diginified human face. Numerous veterans and veterans’ organizations give it their courage and sacrifice. Many Congressional Democrats have spent many sleepless nights trying to build the coalitions that, thus far, have failed to coalesce. They have done so even while being berated and derided by many who have no idea how hard they are working, behind the scenes. All of these efforts are noble. All of these efforts are sincere. None of these efforts has yet had the right strategy or the right political muscle to succeed.

The war cannot be won. Even its most ardent supporters no longer seem capable of even explaining what exactly victory would mean. And it just goes on and on. Death. Destruction. Murder. Mass murder- a war without cause or justification is nothing else. Those who started the war are responsible for every single death. For every single life that has been irrecovably damaged. For every tear that has fallen.

If history is a guide, those responsible for this war will never be held accountable- unless there is the sort of deity in which they claim to believe. If there is, they will discover that eternity is a very long time. But what matters most, now, is neither justice nor retribution. What matters most is that the war end. It must end. It will end. So, it ought to end as soon as possible. There is literally no reason for it not to.

If these words find their way to any federal officials, or to any who work for federal officials, I hope they will pause and think. I hope they will realize that it’s actually very simple. Someone needs to end this war. Those who do will be among the greatest heroes of our time. Those who will are out there, somewhere, right now. We’re waiting to find out who they are.

Three recent news accounts reveal the reality and complexity of the looming global disaster. Anyone who has studied human evolution knows that we’re a resilient species, but we’re going to be put to the test.

Bad.

The Associated Press had this little story:

Arctic ice has shrunk to the lowest level on record, new satellite images show, raising the possibility that the Northwest Passage that eluded famous explorers will become an open shipping lane.

At face value, that sounds kind of cool. Take a cruise from Alaska to Europe. Or from Alaska to New England, via the Beaufort Sea.

Except that this could make for some brand new military tensions. As the University of British Columbia’s Liu Institute explains:

With the ice disappearing, the currents and narrow channels pose less of an impediment to navigation: an experienced sailor could now take a large tanker through the straits during the late summer and early autumn. Governments are gradually waking up to this new reality. In 2001, a report prepared for the US Navy predicted that, ‘within five to ten years, the Northwest Passage will be open to non-ice-strengthened vessels for at least one month each summer.’ A briefing given to the Canadian defence minister, Gordon O’Connor, in February 2006 was confident that ‘the Northwest Passage could be open to more regular navigation by 2015’ if ‘the current rate of ice thinning continues’.

And as CNN and the BBC explain, the valuable natural resources under the Arctic are already causing disputes.

But even more dangerous than any of that is what this means for the rest of the world. The melting of the ice up north means rising sea levels. Everywhere. More on that, below.