State of Nature

This ceasefire is beginning to look more like a reloading session.

Laura Rozen notes that:

Despite the ceasefire, Israel intends to kill Nasrallah. Israeli commander: “... In the long run, if we see Hezbollah rearming itself and running southern Lebanon, I believe the next round is coming.”

Larry Johnson:
Israel kidnaps elected official: The Palestinian's Deputy Prime Minister, Nasser Al Shaer was kidnapped by the Israeli army on Saturday, after hiding since the start of Israel’s Palestine offensive in June. He was seized in a raid at his home in the West Bank town on Ramallah.

Israel breaches ceasefire: UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called Israel’s latest attack on Lebanon a violation of the UN backed truce that ended the 34-day war. "The secretary-general is deeply concerned about a violation by the Israeli side of the cessation of hostilities as laid out in Security Council resolution 1701," a spokesman for Annan said in a statement posted on the United Nations Web site...

Israel had better stop listening to the NeoCons. Empire is no way to run a democracy, as people are increasingly concluding here. You've got to have the consent of the governed. If you don't, it's no Republic, and no Democracy either.

The discomfiture of the NeoCons and their contempt for democracy is showing both here and in the Middle East.

Far better for them a Corporate State, even when it's less efficient, as evidenced by the Reptilican idea to shift many duties of the Internal Revenue Service over to private collection agencies- even if it ends up costing the government a lot more money.

...Within two weeks, the I.R.S. will turn over data on 12,500 taxpayers — each of whom owes $25,000 or less in back taxes — to three collection agencies. Larger debtors will continue to be pursued by I.R.S. officers.

The move, an initiative of the Bush administration, represents the first step in a broader plan to outsource the collection of smaller tax debts to private companies over time. Although I.R.S. officials acknowledge that this will be much more expensive than doing it internally, they say that Congress has forced their hand by refusing to let them hire more revenue officers, who could pull in a lot of easy-to-collect money.

The private debt collection program is expected to bring in $1.4 billion over 10 years, with the collection agencies keeping about $330 million of that, or 22 to 24 cents on the dollar.

By hiring more revenue officers, the I.R.S. could collect more than $9 billion each year and spend only $296 million — or about three cents on the dollar — to do so, Charles O. Rossotti, the computer systems entrepreneur who was commissioner from 1997 to 2002, told Congress four years ago...

David Sirota:

...Usually, the establishment hides its hatred for democracy in vague rhetoric. But now, scared for their relevance and angry that their elitist sensibilities are being offended by ordinary voters, their loathing is all out in the open. Pundits and politicians in Washington are publicly telling American voters that we do not matter, and that they believe we should not matter...

What's Law or Democracy compared to the Divine Right of Corporate Rule?

It's for our own good, we're told.