In a 2003 speech to the National Endowment for Democracy President Bush said "With the steady leadership of President Karzai, the people of Afghanistan are building a modern and peaceful government."  Since then, he has often mentioned democracy in Afghanistan as an example of success in the war on terror.  In America, most people no longer talk much about Afghanistan, as if they, too, think that we have "won" there.

In the midst of the battle to bring freedom and democracy to Iraq, the US military and government have often made mention of the new freedom of Iraqis to have cell phones, internet access and other indicia of modern day freedom to communicate.  For example, Ambassador David A. Gross, the "U.S. Coordinator for International Communications and Information Policy" said, in remarks made in March, 2005, that:
"Mobile phones, the Internet, and satellite TV and radio among other technologies can have a powerful impact in weakening repression, shaping how people relate to their governments, and sometimes even providing the means for organizing and sustaining movements for political change.....It is no mere coincidence, then, that we have seen in Iraq a great expansion in the number of cell phone and Internet users. Cell phone service was nearly non-existent under Saddam Hussein's brutally repressive regime. Today, there are about 1,600,000 cell phone subscribers in Iraq. Pre-war, there was limited Internet service with approximately 3,000 Internet and 8,000 e-mail only accounts. As of earlier this month, there are more than 130,000 active subscribers and a large number of unregulated users of Internet cafes."

Which makes it all the more heinous that the military has apparently begun to "crack down" on both soldiers and soldiers' families who want to communicate via the net.

Our much esteemed president has barraged the airwaves with claims that the horror of 9/11 made his domestic warrantless spying program absolutely essential.

Ignoring for the moment the fact that its "essentialness" says absolutely nothing about why the government doesn't want to be bothered getting a warrant, how would he explain the fact that the NSA commenced a domestic spying program (spying on its own employees and their contacts among the journalism and congressional worlds) before 9/11?

That's Wayne Madsen's claim in Alternative Press Review.

I feel like gloating. Gloat. Gloat. Gloat.

Okay, this from The New York Times, of all places....

The organization Focus on the Family (FOTF), led by James Dobson, is a major political player on the religious right.  I was reading info on Dobson, ended up doing some research on him and FOTF, and came across this headline on the web site of the Canadian branch of the group:
"37% of teens surveyed are waiting until they get married to have sex."  This info was attributed to a 2003 study from The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation called "Virginity and the First Time".

That astounded me.  37% of teens surveyed "are waiting" until they get married to have sex sounded way out of line from what I see, hear, and believe.  So I took the drastic step that Focus on the Family expects its followers to never take:  I looked up the study myself.

Here's my own prediction for the coming new year: How about more people than last year heading to court?

Upon emerging from the constitutional convention which formed the basis for our government, Ben Franklin was supposedly asked by a woman outside the hall, "Mr. Franklin, what kind of government have you given us?" To which Franklin replied, "A Republic, madam, if you can keep it."

If you can keep it.  A sage answer.  Neil Young knows that "rust never sleeps."  Franklin knew that corruption doesn't, either.

Although the U.S. media didn't pick up on this until yesterday, foreign news sources started reporting it on Thursday--borrowing a card from the U.S. political deck, the Iraqi government apparently waited until after the recent elections there to raise the price of oil, gas and other fuels.  Actually, they just cut the subsidies that kept the prices low, and they did it because an agreement with the International Monetary Fund required it as a condition of an agreement to forgive loans to Iraq.

Readers in America know what that means, and they know which segment of society really takes a hit when something as basic as fuel prices go through the roof.

Making matters worse, according to an AP report dated today is that "In Baghdad, hundreds of cars lined up at gas stations as word spread that Iraq's largest oil refinery shut down two weeks ago because of threats of insurgent attacks."

The result so far?  Massive gas lines, some violence, and, according to the Washington Post, the return of Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Chalabi as oil minister.

Time to say good-by to 2005.  Not soon enough for my taste.  My parting observation on 2005 (all of the 21st century, so far, actually) is that if today looked any more like yesterday, it would probably be tomorrow.

Or, as a schizophrenic supposedly once actually said to some doctors:
"If I should return while I'm out, please keep me here until I get back."

Why do I have the feeling that the leaders of my country would find that a perfectly ordinary sentence?

Anyway, keeping up with end-of-year traditions, I did a survey of news items dated 12/31, just to see how representative today's news is of the year as a whole. Pretty representative, I'd say.

Here are 11 selected items, all but one dated today, to ease the slide from 2005 to 2006.

In the US, just after WWII, there was a consensus that we really were all in it together.  Policies favoring the rich at the expense of the poor were mostly put on hold, at least for a while.  An American middle class grew up out of nothing, with union wages providing many blue collar workers a decent living, their own home, and the chance to send their kids to college.

In Afghanistan, after the war with the Soviet Union, the reign of the Taliban, and the ensuing war that ended with Northern Alliance victory with the help of America, there was almost nothing left.  No upper class, no middle class.

Now, from a Washington Post story it kind of looks like we're both working toward the middle of the gap between us, which in this case, unfortunately means creating sizable upper classes, but with no middle class in sight.

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