Is the end of the world imminent? Have we run out of oil? Prior to 9/11 what dealings did the United States have with Iraq? Did the Bush administration deliberately allow the 9/11 terrorist attacks to happen?
If U.S. Justice Department head John Ashcroft stopped flying commercial aircraft two months before 9/11, and several employees at the Pentagon cancelled their flight plans the night of September 10, citing ‘security concerns’, how is it that the first reaction of President Bush to the destruction of the World Trade Center was “there’s one terrible pilot.”
Conspiracies abound. How near is the truth?
Mike Ward, a regular contributor to Pop Matters (the newest link, under A&E) suggests answers to each of the questions above, in the process linking to any number of economists, new urbanists and future theorists.

Now that the television network upfronts are complete, VanRamblings resumes regular posting.
From the Washington Post, this morning, the backstory to the release of new photos, and a disturbing new video of Iraqi prisoner abuse.
The latest allegations are contained in statements taken from 13 detainees shortly after a soldier reported the incidents to military investigators in mid-January. The detainees said they were beaten and repeatedly sexually humiliated by American soldiers working on the night shift at Tier 1A in Abu Ghraib during the holy month of Ramadan, according to copies of the statements obtained by The Washington Post.

Some of the detainees described being abused as punishment or discipline after they were caught fighting … Many provided graphic details of how they were sexually humiliated and assaulted, threatened with rape, and forced to masturbate in front of female soldiers … “After that, they took us to our cells, took the mattresses out and dropped water on the floor and they made us sleep on our stomachs on the floor with the bags on our head and they took pictures of everything.”

U.S. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, said there’d be more photos, and video, of Iraqi prisoner abuse. Obviously, he’s known of the existence of these images for months, and had done nothing to prevent the continued breach, by the U.S., of the provisions of the Geneva Convention.

What is the relationship between the Iraq prison scandal, and the impulses that drive all of us, for good or bad, including those that have driven President Geroge W. Bush? In a Newsweek magazine story, reporter Brian Braiker interviews Michael Milburn, a psychologist at the University of Massachusetts, for an answer to that question.
Co-author of The Politics of Denial, Dr. Milburn explores factors determinant in forming political attitudes, the role of emotion in public opinion, and the effects of the mass media on political attitudes and social behaviour. When discussing President Bush’s formative experiences, Milburn offers …

Bush is really fascinating. There was a televised interview with Barbara Bush during the [2000] campaign. She was talking about her son and relating this one incident where he had come home drunk and his father was walking out to talk to him. W was saying, “OK Dad, right now, let’s do it.” Clearly there’s a tremendous amount of anger there. Not that this explains everything that’s going on, but it’s clearly, to me, a factor in his “I’m gonna get the guy who threatened my dad but I’m also going to show my dad that I can do stuff that he couldn’t do [attitude]”.

Anger and resentment appear to be playing an increasingly important role in politics. To what degree is the political process in the United States determined by unresolved negative emotions (such as fear, anger and helplessness) that remain from punitive parenting, and by the politicians and conservative religious leaders who exploit those emotions?

In the latest edition of The New Yorker, due on newstands tomorrow, journalist Seymour M. Hersh, who wrote this ground-breaking article on the Iraqi prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, does it again with his new article on a secret programme approved by the Pentagon that encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners.
Bloomberg.com, in a story titled U.S. Denies Rumsfeld Approved Iraq Interrogations, quotes a statement from U.S. Department of Defense spokesman Lawrence DiRita …

“No responsible official of the Department of Defense approved any program that could conceivably have been intended to result in such abuses as witnessed in the recent photos and videos.”

Meanwhile, the Iraqi detainees released Friday from the Abu Ghraib prison are urging the issuance of an international arrest warrant for U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his trial over their abuse.