Alex Jamieson was the woman who helped Morgan Spurlock back to health after he ate nothing but McDonald's. Now she wants to detox the world.

If you are one of the millions of people who saw Alex Jamieson's boyfriend Morgan Spurlock scoff his way through a mountain of McDonald's in his film Super Size Me, you probably remember her as "the boring vegan girlfriend".

While Spurlock goofed around and made us laugh, Jamieson was in the background cooking lentils, munching carrot sticks and telling him eating all that junk could kill him.

In fact, she was the only one who didn't seem completely shocked by just how quickly Spurlock's health deteriorated once he started his new regime. Her tone veers between a smug "I told you so" and sincere worry for a loved one.

The day before the McDonald's diet starts, Spurlock sits down to an organic vegan "last supper" of tofu and vegetable filo tart, lovingly made by Jamieson.

By the end of day two, he is throwing his guts up and she is less than cheery. Later on in the film she is telling him she thinks meat is as addictive as heroin.   more »

Assuming the rate of death has proceeded at the same pace since the Lancet study was carried out, Sprey calculates that deaths inflicted to date as a direct result of the Anglo-American invasion and occupation of Iraq could be, at best estimate, 183,000, with an upper 95 per cent confidence boundary of 511,000.

Given the generally smug and heartless reaction accorded the initial Lancet study, no such updated figure is likely to resonate in public discourse, especially when it registers a dramatic increase.

Though the figures quoted by Bush were without a shadow of a doubt a gross underestimate (he couldn't even be bothered to get the number of dead American troops right) 30,000 dead among the people we were allegedly coming to save is still an appalling notion.

The possibility that we have actually helped kill as many as half a million people suggests a war crime of truly twentieth century proportions.

In some countries, denying the fact of mass murder is considered a felony offence, incurring harsh penalties. But then, it all depends on who is being murdered, and by whom.   more »

People here know that I have written on impeachment, both the historical and political reasons for it. People may know that if there were a compass that points at legitimacy, it would point straight at me. Legitimacy is the issue that Democracies must face.

Without the faith by an overwhelming segment of the population in the integrity and legitimacy of the government, there is no government. The Declaration of Independence declares that legitimacy is the issue that Americans set their division from the mother country on.

Within the Democratic Party there is an argument over whether support for impeachment will marginalize the party. It will not, but it has to be handled the right way.

For the time being impeachment is more than a protest, but less than a reality. It is a goal, and it is a statement.

It states to one's fellow Americans and the world that George Bush does not represent an acceptable range of American politics. Instead, he is outside the acceptable cone of executive action.

Impeachment is a sign that we have rejected what he stands for. Even more so when coming in contrast to the impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton on charges which were concocted in what Joe Conanson rightly calls "the hunting of the president".   more »

Russia's presidency of the G8 has certainly started with a bang. Vladimir Putin had barely taken over from Tony Blair on January 1 before he was turning off gas supplies to Ukraine in a row over the price of energy.

But for the west to raise its hands in horror is utter humbug. The implication is that Britain, France and the US never reward friendly countries nor punish those they believe have stepped out of line.

As Paul Robinson noted in last week's Spectator, Egypt is seen as a friend of the west in the Middle East and gets plenty of financial help; Syria is no friend of Washington and receives less generous treatment.

"Putin's policy certainly represents a very crude pursuit of national interest, implemented unilaterally and with little regard for international opinion. But, as such, it is not so very different from the sort of policies pursued by other states, including our own.

"Furthermore, the marketisation of energy policy which it involves is entirely in keeping with the demands that European states have been making of Russia for several years."   more »

Last Tuesday Abramoff, a high-powered corporate lobbyist, pleaded guilty in a federal courtroom in Washington to bribery, fraud and tax evasion.

He has admitted "providing a stream of things of value to public officials" in return for favours, including agreements to back particular laws and put statements in the Congressional Record.

Court papers reveal that this key financier of the Bush administration's high-minded agenda of moral piety is a foul-mouthed, greedy bigot.

In intercepted emails, he refers to his Native American clients - whom he played off against each other for millions of dollars which he then used to pamper politicians - as "morons", "monkeys", "fucking troglodytes" and "losers".

He did the nation's business not through persuasive debate but with golfing trips to Scotland, junkets to the Pacific, corporate boxes at the Superbowl, and expensive meals at fancy restaurants.

So Abramoff is going down. The only question, now that he has agreed to cooperate with investigators, is how many politicians he will take with him and how far up the food chain prosecutors are prepared to follow the money.   more »

The intense wave of killings and bombings that have swept Iraq this week comes as a shock awakening, or hangover, following the unrealistically high expectations and self-congratulations in the administration that surrounded the Dec. 15 parliamentary elections and their immediate aftermath.

The decision of the Sunni Muslim insurgents in central Iraq to largely restrain their forces during the election campaign and the voting period could easily be misconstrued as a weakening of will or loss of morale on their part.

But, as was clear even at the time, it was no such thing. Like the Irish Republican Army of two decades ago, the insurgents had not forsaken the bullet for the ballot box.

Instead, in the manner of sophisticated -- and all too often, successful -- insurgencies throughout the 20th century, they were following a sophisticated strategy of bullets and ballots.

Nor did the ballot box fail them. On the contrary, it was the failure of the dominant "5-5'5" Shiite coalition that now dominates Iraq with U.S. support, backed by its Kurdish allies in the north of the country, to seek to include the Sunnis in political power that played into the hands of the insurgents.   more »

Six legal minds contribute five questions they would ask Supreme Court nominee Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr.

Finality and Fallibility by Leonard A. Leo

Your Beliefs, Your Decisions by Cheryl D. Mills

Secrets Hidden in the Text by Kenji Yoshino

Is America at War? by John Yoo

Back to Bush v. Gore by Scott Turow

A Constitution of Contradictions by Stanley Fish   more »

8 JANUARY

Sex, Teens & Webcams

Maureen Dowd: Bush Joins the Cast of "Has-Beens"

Bush - The Muppet President: Whose Hand's Up His Arse?

Liberating Iraq from American Colonization

Frank Rich: Bush & His Extreme Regime

Iraq War Could Cost Over $2 Trillion

The Iranian 'Left' in Exile: Collaborators with US Imperialism

War, Lies & "Cooking the Books"