George Bush will go to Congress tonight hoping to use his annual State of the Union address to lever his presidency out of its rut after his worst year in office. But even Republicans say it may take more than a speech to salvage the Bush legacy.

The last time a president was this unpopular only a year after re-election, Richard Nixon was in the White House trying to shrug off the Watergate scandal.

Mr Bush's popularity ratings have improved from their all-time lows in the wake of Hurricane Katrina last year, but not by much. They are still bumping along the low 40s, and proving resistant to the rhetorical counter-offensive the White House launched in December.

The president nevertheless insisted he was optimistic yesterday after outlining his speech to his cabinet.

"I can't tell you how upbeat I am about our future, so long as we're willing to lead," he told reporters. "I'm looking forward to speaking to the country. We've got a lot to be proud of."   more »

U.S. concern about the pro-Iranian leanings of the militant Shiite parties that will dominate the next government has grown as the administration presses a campaign to take Iran's nuclear programme to the U.N. Security Council, with the military option "on the table".

A Western diplomat told Associated Press that the United States needed to find "some other allies who will not turn against them if things heat up with Iran".

Even the possibility of a separate peace between the United States and the Sunni insurgency, which is inherent in these negotiations, signals to the Shiites that the United States is no longer wedded to the option of supporting Shiite military and police.

Sunni political party leaders also see U.S. policy as supporting the Sunnis in order to limit the power of the Shiites.

Two major revelations this past week show how far the George W. Bush administration has already shifted its policy toward realignment with Sunni forces to balance the influence of pro-Iranian Shiites in Iraq.

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad revealed in an interview with Washington Post columnist David Ignatius that he has put the future of military assistance to a Shiite-dominated government on the table in the high-stakes U.S. effort to force Shiite party leaders to give up control over key security ministries.   more »

Western Imperialism gives unconditional support of a racist, colonial enclave associated with apartheid, oppression and injustice.

Israeli intransigence and contempt for human rights as reflected in land grabs, arbitrary arrests and torture and the denial of the right of return of millions of Palestinians in the diaspora cannot be ignored any longer.

Instead in solidarity with the Palestinian people whose confidence in HAMAS has been demonstrated at the polls, the issue of Israel's sustainability as an ethnically pure Jewish state made up of foreign emigrants and its continued existence as a nuclear-state in the heart of the Middle East must be a central tenet.

The Bush administration, which views Israel's continued existence as much more than a strategic interest and has been pumping millions of dollars to the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority in order to keep HAMAS in check and out of power, has failed to stifle the free choice of the electorate.

Indeed, this pathetic policy whereby Israeli violations of fundamental human rights and its defiance of international conventions is approved and supported financially will in all likelihood be subjected to new debates - thanks to the people's choice: HAMAS!   more »

If you're looking to understand why discussions between blacks and whites about racism are often so difficult in this country, you need only know this: when the subject is race and racism, whites and blacks are often not talking about the same thing.

To white folks, racism is seen mostly as individual and interpersonal--as with the uttering of a prejudicial remark or bigoted slur.

For blacks, it is that too, but typically more: namely, it is the pattern and practice of policies and social institutions, which have the effect of perpetuating deeply embedded structural inequalities between people on the basis of race.

To blacks, and most folks of color, racism is systemic. To whites, it is purely personal.

These differences in perception make sense, of course. After all, whites have not been the targets of systemic racism in this country, so it is much easier for us to view the matter in personal terms.   more »

Rather than recognise the legitimacy of Hamas as a freely elected representative of the Palestinian people, seize the opportunity created by the result to support the development of good governance in Palestine and search for a means of ending the bloodshed, the US and EU threatened the Palestinian people with collective punishment for exercising their right to choose their parliamentary representatives.

We are being punished simply for resisting oppression and striving for justice. Those who threaten to impose sanctions on our people are the same powers that initiated our suffering and continue to support our oppressors almost unconditionally.

We, the victims, are being penalised while our oppressors are pampered. The US and EU could have used the success of Hamas to open a new chapter in their relations with the Palestinians, the Arabs and the Muslims and to understand better a movement that has so far been seen largely through the eyes of the Zionist occupiers of our land.

Our message to the US and EU governments is this: your attempt to force us to give up our principles or our struggle is in vain. Our people who gave thousands of martyrs, the millions of refugees who have waited for nearly 60 years to return home and our 9,000 political and war prisoners in Israeli jails have not made those sacrifices in order to settle for close to nothing.

Hamas has been elected mainly because of its immovable faith in the inevitability of victory; and Hamas is immune to bribery, intimidation and blackmail.   more »

With great fanfare the other day, Oprah Winfrey asked James Frey a question that mainstream journalists refuse to ask George W. Bush: "Why would you lie?"

Many pundits and news outlets have chortled at the televised unmasking of Frey as a liar. The reverberations have spanned from schlock media to highbrow outlets. On Friday, the PBS "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" devoted an entire segment to what happened.

The New York Times supplemented its page-one coverage with an editorial that concluded "Ms. Winfrey gave the audience, including us, what it was hoping for: a demand to hear the truth."

A key reality of the National Security Agency spying story is: President Bush lied. But routinely missing from media coverage is a demand to hear the truth.

More than two years after he started the NSA's domestic spying without warrants, Bush was unequivocal. During a speech in Buffalo on April 20, 2004, he said:

"Any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires - a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so."   more »

Reassessments of major risks to the Earth, such as the melting of the great land-based ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica, which would raise sea levels disastrously, or the slowing down of the Gulf Stream, which would plunge Britain into a new ice age, show that they may be triggered by temperature rises well within those already predicted for the coming century.

The fresh appraisals indicate that the situation is far more dangerous than that set out in the last report of the main scientific body monitoring global warming, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Animated guide
Find out why the Gulf Stream might slow and how the greenhouse effect works

Rising concentrations of greenhouse gases may have more serious impacts than previously believed, a major new scientific report has said.

The report, published by the UK government, says there is only a small chance of greenhouse gas emissions being kept below "dangerous" levels.   more »

For many years the American media said that “Israel receives $1.8 billion in military aid” or that “Israel receives $1.2 billion in economic aid.”

Both statements were true, but since they were never combined to give us the complete total of annual U.S. aid to Israel, they also were lies—true lies.

Recently Americans have begun to read and hear that “Israel receives $3 billion in annual U.S. foreign aid.” That's true. But it's still a lie.

The problem is that in fiscal 1997 alone, Israel received from a variety of other U.S. federal budgets at least $525.8 million above and beyond its $3 billion from the foreign aid budget, and yet another $2 billion in federal loan guarantees. So the complete total of U.S. grants and loan guarantees to Israel for fiscal 1997 was $5,525,800,000.

One can truthfully blame the mainstream media for never digging out these figures for themselves, because none ever have. They were compiled by the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. But the mainstream media certainly are not alone.   more »

30 JANUARY

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