The Wall Street Journal is reporting what would be maybe the best move, yet, by the Obama Administration:

The White House will shelve Bush administration plans to build a missile-defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic, according to people familiar with the matter, a move likely to cheer Moscow and roil the security debate in Europe.

The U.S. will base its decision on a determination that Iran’s long-range missile program has not progressed as rapidly as previously estimated, reducing the threat to the continental U.S. and major European capitals, according to current and former U.S. officials.

This is a brilliant move, on several levels, the first and foremost being that “missile defense” is an enormously expensive farce that has yet to come close to being a proven technology. Despite billions upon billions poured into the coffers of its various contractors. Beyond that, though, merely attempting to put even an ostensibly advanced weapons system in Central Europe, in nations that were once part of the former Soviet Union’s buffer zone, was seen as a blatant provocation to Russia, thus politically enabling the hard line Putin regime. As explained by the BBC:

The Guardian is reporting very discouraging news, in the lead up to the United Nations Climate Change Conference, in Copenhagen, in December.

Europe has clashed with the US Obama administration over climate change in a potentially damaging split that comes ahead of crucial political negotiations on a new global deal to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

The impasse is said to threaten the goal of limiting global temperature increases to no more than 2 degrees celsius, by 2015. Another Guardian article quotes UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon:

“We are deeply concerned that the negotiation is not making much headway. It is absolutely and crucially important for the leaders to demonstrate their political will, leadership, and to give clear political guidelines to the negotiators. They should be responsible for the future of this entire humanity,” Ban told the Guardian.

Ban, newly returned from a trip to the Arctic, sees action on climate change as his personal legacy as UN chief. He said he hoped the unprecedented size of the climate meeting, the high level of representation and an unconventional format would transform the talks.

“Have you ever seen any such international conference at the level of so many leaders coming at one time and one place? In any summit meeting you have not seen such a highly political, highly motivated meeting. That is where we have to find some political strength.”

But as elucidated in the first Guardian article, the problem is this:

The BBC has the summary:

Arctic temperatures are now higher than at any time in the last 2,000 years, research reveals.

Changes to the Earth’s orbit drove centuries of cooling, but temperatures rose fast in the last 100 years as human greenhouse gas emissions rose.

Scientists took evidence from ice cores, tree rings and lake sediments.

Writing in the journal Science, they say this confirms that the Arctic is very sensitive both to changes in solar heating and to greenhouse warming.

The full article is firewalled at Science, but it’s long enough to allow some significant quotes. The lead author is Darrell S. Kaufman of the School of Earth Sciences and Environmental Sustainability at Northern Arizona University.

Yesterday, I noted that the L.A. Times was reporting that the president was going to follow the advice of General Stanley McChrystal, and escalate the escalation in Afghanistan. Today, the New York Times offers this:

As President Obama prepares to decide whether to send additional troops to Afghanistan, the political climate appears increasingly challenging for him, leaving him in the awkward position of relying on the Republican Party, and not his own, for support.

The simple political narrative of the Afghanistan war – that this was the good war, in which the United States would hunt down the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks – has faded over time, with popular support ebbing, American casualties rising and confidence in the Afghan government declining. In addition, Afghanistan’s disputed election, and the attendant fraud charges that have been lodged against President Hamid Karzai, are contributing further to the erosion of public support.

A CBS News poll released on Tuesday reports that 41 percent of those polled wanted troop levels in Afghanistan decreased, compared with 33 percent in April. Far fewer people – 25 percent – wanted troop levels increased, compared with 39 percent in April. And Mr. Obama’s approval rating for his handling of Afghanistan has dropped eight points since April, to 48 percent.

Congressional Democrats, particularly those on the left, report increasing disenchantment among constituents with the idea of a long and possibly escalating conflict in Afghanistan, especially as the American strategy comes to resemble a long-term nation-building approach rather than a counterterrorism operation.

“I and the American people cannot tolerate more troops without some commitment about when this perceived occupation will end,” Senator Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, said Wednesday in an interview.

Does the president ever listen to his liberal base? Does he ever listen to the public? Who, exactly, is he trying to appease? Why?

It is impossible to understand modern American history, modern American foreign policy, anti-American anger throughout the Middle East and the developing nations, and the roots of anti-American terrorism, without understanding what happened on this date, in 1953. Any understanding of modern Iran has to begin with an understanding of what happened on this date, in 1953. For on August 19, 1953, the little known and not even six year old Central Intelligence Agency overthrew the democratically elected prime minister of Iran, installed a new prime minister of its own choosing, and restored to the throne a recently self-exiled Shah. It wouldn’t be long before the Shah seized total local control of his government and established the brutal Savak to crush all opposition.

Mohammed Mossadegh is not widely remembered in this country, but he was Time Magazine’s Man Of The Year, for 1951. The first Iranian to receive an advanced education from a European university, and a man widely renowned for his blunt honesty and impeccable integrity, Mossadegh was brilliant and disturbingly passionate, capable of verbally eviscerating opponents in political or juridical debates, and just as easily capable of breaking down crying, while giving a speech, or even passing out, while in the middle of tense negotiations. His understanding of national and international law became legendary. He often conducted official business while lying in bed.

Iran’s monarchy had had a long, turbulent history, with the corrupt and incompetent Qajar regime being forced to democratize by the 1906-1911 Constitutional Revolution, but that effectively came to an end when the Qajars were toppled in the early 1920s, by a British-backed military officer named Reza Khan. In 1925, Reza Khan became Reza Shah Pahlavi, and soon turned the Iranian parliament, or Majlis, into a rubberstamp. Most people don’t understand this, but the final Shah of Iran was heir to a dynasty that had lasted exactly two generations, himself included. Reza Khan’s rule was secular but brutal, and he often clashed with the clergy and just as often eliminated his chief political rivals. But Iran’s monarchy long had been but a compliant puppet of the British, who had controlled much of the Middle East, which had not yet become important because of oil, but was important as gateway to India, the British Empire’s Crown Jewel, which the Russian Empire long had coveted. But in the early Twentieth Century, oil had become important, and the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company controlled Iran’s oil production, creating a sprawling and horrifying slum to house the Iranian workers, with a parallel, segregated country club community for the British executives and managers. Iran was so taken for granted, and the British oil company’s profits were so staggering, that AIOC actually paid more in taxes to its home government than to Iran for the right to steal its oil. During World War II, Reza Shah wanted to remain neutral, so the old rivals Britain and Russia, now allied against Germany, invaded and occupied. In 1941, the Shah was forced to abdicate, and was replaced by his young son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

The opening of this article in the Los Angeles Times seems promising. Almost exciting!

Reporting from Washington — U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. is poised to appoint a criminal prosecutor to investigate alleged CIA abuses committed during the interrogation of terrorism suspects, current and former U.S. government officials said.

Wow! Could it be the breakthrough for which we’ve been hoping?

A senior Justice Department official said that Holder envisioned an inquiry that would be narrow in scope, focusing on “whether people went beyond the techniques that were authorized” in Bush administration memos that liberally interpreted anti-torture laws.

Remind anyone of the Abu Ghraib investigation? Focusing on the lower ranking officials- making them the fall guys and gals- while allowing the people actually responsible to go free? Because this isn’t just a question of what the CIA officers did, this is a question of whether they were authorized by top level government officials to commit war crimes. Like by the president. And the vice president. And the secretary of defense. And the national security advisor. And the White House counsel, who became the attorney general. And the director of the CIA. And others.

Make no mistake: the techniques that were authorized were war crimes. They also were war crimes. And war crimes. And as someone once said:

I believe that waterboarding was torture.

Which would be a war crime. But as the Times article continues:

Obama and Holder have both said that they believe waterboarding constitutes torture. But an investigation would pose thorny political problems for the administration, and probably draw criticism over questions of fairness.

“An investigation that focuses only on low-ranking operators would be, I think, worse than doing nothing at all,” said Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch.

Worse than doing nothing at all. Think about it.

Lucerne is somewhere close to paradise. In the 14th Century, it helped lead central Switzerland to independence from the Hapsburgs. Today, with good reason, it is a popular tourist destination.  

Behind the town is the 7000 foot Pilatus.

As she so often does, digby makes a great catch. The health care debate is being partially highjacked by a major right wing donor, who also just happens to be a former health care industry executive. And the corporate media are helping him along.

The article comes from Mother Jones:

You’ve probably seen the ads. Ominous voice-overs warn you about how health care reform “could put a bureaucrat in charge of your medical decisions, not you.” A massive bulldozer with “government-run insurance plan” written on the side crushes your health care “choices.” Canadians and Britons relay horror stories of their experiences dealing with health care in those nightmarish socialist dystopias.

The ads are the product of a multimillion-dollar ad campaign designed to derail health care reform-especially what’s been dubbed the “public option,” which would set up a government-run plan to compete with private insurers. The man behind this ad blitz is the person who might be Public Option Enemy No. 1: one-time hospital executive and longtime Republican donor Richard Scott.

Back in March, Scott spent $5 million of his own money to set up a nonprofit called Conservatives for Patients’ Rights. The group aims to be the command center for the right’s fight against Democratic reform efforts. With the major interest groups-including hospital companies, pharmaceutical companies, and doctors-that have opposed reform in the past holding their fire this year in order to have a seat at the legislative table, Scott’s group has filled the anti-reform void. According to an estimate reported by the Associated Press, around $15 million has already been spent on ads favoring the Democrats’ plan, and  $4 million has been spent to oppose it. Much of that $4 million has come from Scott and CPR, and he’s claimed his group will spend as much as $20 million.

Of course, as the article points out, and as is true “Harry and Louise” style, Scott’s group doesn’t say it opposes health care reform. Of course not. It does want reform, it’s just a matter of the details. Of course, when you get into the details of the details, it’s really about derailing real reform. And the ad is, according to Media Matters, simple based on lies.

Amsterdam means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, but to me it is the city of Rembrandt van Rijn. More on that, but first the modern city.

Monaco

Monaco is a tiny independent nation, tucked into the southern French coast. Its national defense is the responsibility of France, but it is a constitutional monarchy, ruled by the Grimaldi family since 1297, and a full member of the United Nations. The vast majority of its population is wealthy foreigners, who live there because it is a tax haven. Its chief industry is tourism, and its botanic gardens and casino are world famous.

We stopped in for just a couple hours, on a drive from Torino to Nice, and the gardens already were closed.

(Photo-intensive after the jump…

Near the town of Nimes, and built either in the last century BCE or the first century CE, the aqueduct and bridge known as the Pont du Gard may be the best remaining example of the genius that was Roman engineering.