(Courtesy tabacco.blog-city) I don’t know much about Counterpunch, an American newsletter, or its credibility. However, the two articles I read recently are quite provocative and, alarming, if true. First: The Inexplicable Enrichment of Bush Cronies: The Iraq Money Trail — By EVELYN PRINGLE Second: Income Redistribution in Disguise: Escalating Military Spending —- By ISMAEL HOSSEIN-ZADEH

A guard keeps watch over the al-Shiaaba oil refinery near Basra, in southern Iraq. Photo: AP The Economist Intelligence Unit quotes a study that suggests that Iraq’s oil reserves could be almost as large as those of Saudi Arabia, the world’s leader. But these findings come amid fresh evidence of the monumental difficulty of realising that potential, as bombs in Baghdad left 200 people dead in a...

The scandal and controversy surrounding World Bank President and prominent “neocon” Paul Wolfowitz continues to blossom: The U.S. Defense Department ordered a contractor to hire a World Bank employee and girlfriend of then-Pentagon No. 2 Paul Wolfowitz in 2003 for work related to Iraq, the contractor said on Tuesday. A spokeswoman for Science Applications International Corp., or SAIC, said the Defense...

Christo Komarnitski, Bulgaria

Didn’t they? Early American history was a conservative’s nirvana: It was one long tax revolt. The British imposed taxes on everything from molasses to tea, and Americans smuggled the molasses, tossed the tea into a harbor and reached for their muskets. Thomas Jefferson’s incendiary Declaration of Independence listed King George III’s basest transgressions; prominent among them was that...

Mouthwatering mangoes for macho motorcycles…That sounds like a fair trade, reports Miami Herald. “Indian mangoes will hit U.S. shelves for the first time in 18 years, while Harley Davidson motorcycles will soon be cruising India’s roads, senior Indian and U.S. officials said Friday. ” ‘The good news is that our mangoes are going to America and Harley Davidson is coming here,’...

Christo Komarnitski, Bulgaria

Krishna Guha reports for the Financial Times that “Paul Wolfowitz’s future as president of the World Bank was in jeopardy on Friday after the bank’s board issued a damaging finding of facts on his role in the Shaha Riza affair and pledged to ‘move expeditiously to reach a conclusion on possible actions to take.’ The board said that its ‘consideration of the matter’...

Can it be? Can someone connected with President George Bush possibly be at the center of an untidy controversy or a messy scandal? Add this one to your list of Bush associates involved in controversies and/or scandals (you may be on page two or three already on this list): World Bank president and George W Bush ally Paul Wolfowitz is fighting to save his career after becoming embroiled in a row over pay rises...

And now another gem from TMV’s favorite artist of verse, Michael Silverstein, aka Wall Street Poet: Should we outsource the printing of U.S. hundred dollar bills to North Korea? Heck, why not. They already make almost as many as our own Treasury, the quality of their product is excellent, it would bring them into the world economy in a big way, and think of the printing cost savings for American taxpayers! Making...

WORLD PEACE! Courtesy Shanup Gundecha The successful resolution of the British/Iranian naval hostage crisis once again highlights the need for tactful diplomacy to solve problems that may appear intractable. Whatever the provocation, the concerned parties must talk instead of saber-rattling which seems to have become a favourite pastime of the present residents of the White House. One wonders how long the American...

In a blow to the Bush administration and those who’ve dismissed global warming as just a bunch of ideological gobbledygook, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled against the Bush administration in what is called the first case involving this issue and rebuked it for not doing enough on global warming. The court’s decision was not a whoppingly huge one — but it was a clear slap and rebuke by enough...

The Times (London) has a quite shocking article up, describing that “desperate mothers are being urged to drop their unwanted babies through hatches at hospitals in an effort to halt a spate of infanticides that has shocked Germany.” So far, at least 23 babies have been killed this year. Many of them “beaten to death or strangled by their mothers before being dumped on wasteland and dustbins.” Please...

From the comments on a NOLA post this weekend: In the mean time, half the state is losing their insurance. Mine got canceled this week…because I’d held it for under three years. I could feel wisps of steam starting to waft from my ears when I read that. That’s a reason to cancel someone’s policy???? Is that legal? Evidently, M (the commenter) had merely received her letter before Da Po’...

Can somebody explain to me why, exactly, nationalization has seemingly become The Vehicle for a healthcare system? There are a number of interesting state initiatives under consideration (or in the fledgling stages of implementation), and frankly, that’s about as wide an umbrella as I think can be efficiently managed. I agree that the healthcare crisis is an enormous problem. I’m very interested...

Here is one of the most unlikely management gurus to embark on a tour of American universities. A federal railway minister in India, (who chews beetle nuts in public and uses a spittoon…and was also involved in a graft case), Lalu Prasad Yadav was until a few years ago regarded as a political clown, a man so comical that a chocolate bar had a caricature of him on its packaging, and comedians made careers...

The New York Times points out the craftiness of our legislators in Earmark Lives, but Dares Not Speak Its Name …But Republicans, who dispensed earmarks with relish until they lost control of the committee last November, are accusing the Democrats of larding up the bill to win members’ support. “Welcome Kmart shoppers,â€? said Representative Harold Rogers, Republican of Kentucky. “This...

Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney’s alma mater, is going to move its headquarters to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates: Halliburton, the big energy services company, said today that it would open a corporate headquarters in the United Arab Emirates city of Dubai and move its chairman and chief executive, David J. Lesar, there. The company will maintain its existing corporate office here as well as...

The number of Americans living in severe poverty has expanded dramatically under the Bush administration, with nearly 16 million people now living on an individual income of less than $5,000 (£2,500) a year or a family income of less than $10,000, according to an analysis of 2005 official census data, says The Independent. “The analysis, by the McClatchy group of newspapers, showed that the number of...

An interesting article at The New Libertarian: “The Swedish self image is special. That we are a moral superpower, a higher civilization, richest of them all, have the best welfare and are neutral since we are so good – it lives on” – Johnny Munkhammar in the liberal magazine Liberal Debatt, number 4, 2003 Sweden is in a sense an ideal natural experiment in economic policies. Sweden...

It has not been the happiest of Valentine’s Days in the community where I live. A crippling ice storm would freeze the most passionate lover’s kiss, while word came from Detroit that our Daimler Chrysler assembly plant will shut down after 55 years. The plant, which makes Dodge Durango and Chrysler Aspen SUVs, will remain open until 2009, but will soon cut back to a single shift, eventually leaving...

I’ve expounded at some length before on the state of coinage in America, but will comment again using David Margolick’s intersting NYT op/ed from yesterday as a starting point (I thought it appropriate to wait until today, Lincoln’s birthday, to weigh in). Margolick’s piece begins as quite an interesting brief history of the Lincoln penny, discussing well the great clamor its introduction...