Must-reads

1. Iraq. Hopes of peace in Iraq, always slender, have now beome thinner than onionskin, due to the waning influence of Shi'ite moderate leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. For the grim news, read this Telegraph piece. For a grim analysis of the grim news, read emptywheel here.

Do we have any good moves? Nope. The best Bush can do is to pull out and release the beasts of chaos, an outcome which will suit Israel just fine. The Rovian hordes will blame Clinton for the debacle, and 30%-to-50% of the American people will believe 'em. Only the oil-theft factor keeps us in Iraq.

2. Why Mexico Matters. As you probably know, the real winner of the Mexican presidential election, Andres Manuel Lopez-Obrador, has announced his intention to set up a parallel government.

Michael Collins, friend to this blog, has a blockbuster piece on the Mexican vote revolt up on BradBlog. Here are two key grafs:

After examining evidence form the election, Professor James K. Galbraith of the University of Texas concluded his analysis with these findings: (a) Obrador started out 126,000 votes in the hole (to Calderon's even start); (b) this error was never corrected; and (c) at the end of the night "adjustments" were made to make it appear Calderon won. There is an active community of academics in Mexico who are providing analyses demonstrating this absurdity.

This will sound familiar. Calderon's brother-in-law wrote the software program that tabulated and reported votes for the "independent" election institute. The brother-in-law denied this but Mexico's press actually investigates these things and forced him to admit his involvement by producing contracts his company had with the institute.

3. The drug jet. Slap me: I've let an entire week pass without mentioning Daniel Hopsicker's latest piece on that drug-laden Skyway jet -- which, as we've seen, was owned and operated by some rather "spooky" folks here in the states. Read Hopsicker's piece in conjunction with the afore-cited expose by Michael Collins. Turns out the Spanish-language media have uncovered some fascinating news:

The Mexican press is filled with reports of the involvement of a sizeable number of officers in the Federal Preventive Police (PFP), a 7-year old FBI-trained federal police force whose main mission, ironically, is enforcing Mexico’s laws against drug trafficking.

More:

Agents of two Mexican federal law enforcement agencies, the Policía Federal Preventiva (PFP) and of the Federal Agency of Investigación (AFI), reportedly attempted to prevent airport personnel from calling in the military to search the DC9 after it had aroused suspicions.

Despite the obvious signs of his administration's involvement, Mexican President Vicente Fox has made a half-hearted attempt to blame the drug runs on Hugo Chavez and -- of course -- Andres Manuel Lopez-Obrador. Jeez, could these creeps be any more obvious?

4. "This is diabolical!" Such was Dennis Kucinich's reaction when he personally scoped out what Israel has wrought in Lebanon. Expect to see a flurry of hit-pieces denouncing Kucinich as an anti-Semite.

5. Google: A company that listens. Google is developing technology to eavesdrop on the audio obtainable from your PC mic; software will analyze the sounds and -- get this -- direct certain ads to your computer screen based on the type of television and radio programs overheard in your household.

Perhaps they will also try to sell you sex toys based on the way you moan.

Pretty soon the security industry is going to find a way to hijack the Google feed and use it for full on espionage.

Google says that its fingerprinting technology makes it impossible for the company (or anyone else) to eavesdrop on other sounds in the room, such as personal conversations, because the conversion to a fingerprint is made on the PC, and a fingerprint can't be reversed, as it's only an identity.

But we should think that "spyware" might take on an extra meaning if someone less scrupulous decided on a similar piece of software.

Why speak in the future tense? Let's presume that dear old General Hayden beat Google to the punch.

We need a freeware solution -- an onscreen button that will turn the mics off and on. Better still, let's have an "off" switch on the headsets.

We may also want to boycott Google. They're not the only search engine out there, you know.

(Updated note: My ladyfriend insists that this story must be a hoax. Perhaps, but the author's other stories seem serious enough.)

6. Carlin speaks: THE TRUTH.