Friday February 28, 2003
Russia Warns of Veto
Russia is posturing against the impending Iraq conflict. From the AP:
"Of course, if you use the veto power you should fully understand the responsibilities of it before using it. It can only be used for international peace and stability," Ivanov said. "At the same time Russia will not be in favor of any new resolution which allows the use of military force directly or indirectly to solve the Iraqi issue."
Spain disses Rumsfeld
PRESIDENT BUSH has been told to muzzle Donald Rumsfeld, his provocative Defence Secretary, if he wants to ease European misgivings about war with Iraq.José María Aznar, the Spanish Prime Minister, spoke for many European diplomats and officials, including the British, when he delivered the message while staying at Mr Bush’s Texas ranch last weekend.
“I did tell the President that we need a lot of Powell and not much of Rumsfeld,” said Señor Aznar, referring to Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State. “Ministers of Defence should talk less, shouldn’t they? The more Powell speaks and the less Rumsfeld speaks, that wouldn’t be a bad thing altogether.”
Thursday February 27, 2003
When I look at the new WTC design, here's what I see. Unfortunately, if it wasn't this, it would be some other design just as monstrous. What were they thinking? Is NY a beacon of hope or a beacon for terrorists?
Too much going on the past few days.... will post again soon.
Tuesday February 25, 2003
My daily visit to Eschaton led to an on-air interview with Paul Krugman on NPR today. Definitely worth checking out. (Requires Windows Media Player or Real Player.)
In today's opinion piece at the NYTimes, Paul Krugman echoes my sentiments of a few days ago (here and here):
Mr. Bush's mendacity on economic matters was obvious even during the 2000 election. But lately it has reached almost pathological levels. Last week Mr. Bush — who has been having a hard time getting reputable economists to endorse his economic plan — claimed an endorsement from the latest Blue Chip survey of business economists. "I don't know what he was citing," declared the puzzled author of that report, which said no such thing.What Americans may not fully appreciate is the extent to which similarly unfounded claims have, in the eyes of much of the world, discredited the administration's foreign policy. Whatever the real merits of the case against Iraq, again and again the administration has cited evidence that turns out to be misleading or worthless — "garbage after garbage after garbage," according to one U.N. official.
Despite his decline in the polls, Mr. Bush hasn't fully exhausted his reservoir of trust in this country. People still remember the stirring image of the president standing amid the rubble of the World Trade Center, his arm around a fireman's shoulders — and our ever-deferential, protective media haven't said much about the broken promises that followed. But the rest of the world simply doesn't trust Mr. Bush either to honor his promises or to tell the truth.
It's astounding that just a year and a half after the WTC bombing America has slid so far in world public opinion. And we have no one but our President to blame for this. He and his staff have routinely lied (here and here, and even the firefighters take a jab here) and obfuscated to both the American people and the UN (here) , and they seem genuinely surprised by the world reaction. How could they hate us?
Monday February 24, 2003
I am watching Bush speak to the NGA, and he can't keep his head on straight. "We're cementing to the UN a new resolution." Jesus, this is your President.
Sunday February 23, 2003
If you happened to miss Now on Friday, you can read the transcript of the interview with Sy Hersh, where he details how our forces allowed thousands of Al-Quaeda forces to escape in order to protect the Pakistani intelligence forces who were leading them.
JANE WALLACE: -- you reported that during a key battle our side in that battle had the enemy surrounded. There were a reported perhaps 8,000 enemy forces in there.SY HERSH: Maybe even more. But certainly minimum that many.
JANE WALLACE: It's your story, take it.
SY HERSH: Okay, the cream of the crop of Al Qaeda caught in a town called Konduz which is near ... it's one little village and it's a couple hundred kilometers, 150 miles from the border of Pakistan. And I learned this story frankly-- through very, very clandestine operatives we have in the Delta Force and other very...
We were operating very heavily with a small number of men, three, 400 really in the first days of the war. And suddenly one night when they had everybody cornered in Konduz-- the special forces people were told there was a corridor that they could not fly in. There was a corridor sealed off to-- the United States military sealed off a corridor. And it was nobody could shoot anybody in this little lane that went from Konduz into Pakistan. And that's how I learned about it. I learned about it from a military guy who wanted to fly helicopters and kill people and couldn't do it that day.
JANE WALLACE: So, we had the enemy surrounded, the special forces guys are helping surround this enemy.
SY HERSH: They're whacking everybody they can whack that looks like a bad guy.
JANE WALLACE: And suddenly they're told to back off--
SY HERSH: From a certain area--
JANE WALLACE: -- and let planes fly out to Pakistan.
SY HERSH: There was about a three or four nights in which I can tell you maybe six, eight, 10, maybe 12 more-- or more heavily weighted-- Pakistani military planes flew out with an estimated-- no less than 2,500 maybe 3,000, maybe mmore [sic]. I've heard as many as four or 5,000. They were not only-- Al Qaeda but they were also-- you see the Pakistani ISI was-- the military advised us [sic] (note - Sy said "advisers" here) to the Taliban and Al Qaeda. There were dozens of senior Pakistani military officers including two generals who flew out.
And I also learned after I wrote this story that maybe even some of Bin Laden's immediate family were flown out on the those evacuations. We allowed them to evacuate. We had an evacuation.
We'll get our war, one bribe at a time.
Things are getting rough for our Rez: he's had to stoop to limiting his contact with governors during the National Governors Association meeting.
With their states' economies in tatters, members of the National Governors Association - who began their four-day winter meeting Saturday - are hoping to win more federal aid to cover soaring costs for health care, homeland security and education.But the governors have been told that most of them won't be able to directly question the president during Monday's White House gathering, according to Nicole Harburger, communications director for the Democratic Governors Association.
...
She said the governors have been told they will be restricted to two questions overall, submitted in writing beforehand.
Our President must have too much on his mind.
Saturday February 22, 2003
Are we surprised?
The Swiss-based ABB on Friday told swissinfo that Rumsfeld was involved with the company in early 2000, when it netted a $200 million (SFr270million) contract with Pyongyang.The ABB contract was to deliver equipment and services for two nuclear power stations at Kumho, on North Korea’s east coast.
Rumsfeld – who is one of the Bush administration’s most strident “hardliners” on North Korea – was a member of ABB’s board between 1990 and February 2001, when he left to take up his current post.
Wolfram Eberhardt, a spokesman for ABB, told swissinfo that Rumsfeld “was at nearly all the board meetings” during his decade-long involvement with the company.
Friday February 21, 2003
Paul Krugman on the administration's short attention span
Paul Krugman's latest opinion piece in the NYTimes is a doozy. Here are two key excerpts:
After all, look at our behavior in Afghanistan. In the beginning, money was no object; victory over the Taliban was as much a matter of bribes to warlords as it was of Special Forces and smart bombs. But President Bush promised that our interest wouldn't end once the war was won; this time we wouldn't forget about Afghanistan, we would stay to help rebuild the country and secure the peace. So how much money for Afghan reconstruction did the administration put in its 2004 budget?None. The Bush team forgot about it. Embarrassed Congressional staff members had to write in $300 million to cover the lapse. You can see why the Turks, in addition to demanding even more money, want guarantees in writing. Administration officials are insulted when the Turks say that a personal assurance from Mr. Bush isn't enough. But the Turks know what happened in Afghanistan, and they also know that fine words about support for New York City, the firefighters and so on didn't translate into actual money once the cameras stopped rolling.
and this:
Turkey has reportedly been offered the right to occupy much of Iraqi Kurdistan. Yes, that's right: as we move to liberate the Iraqis, our first step may be to deliver people who have been effectively independent since 1991 into the hands of a hated foreign overlord. Moral clarity!Meanwhile, outraged Iraqi exiles report that there won't be any equivalent of postwar de-Nazification, in which accomplices of the defeated regime were purged from public life. Instead the Bush administration intends to preserve most of the current regime: Saddam Hussein and a few top officials will be replaced with Americans, but the rest will stay. You don't have to be an Iraq expert to realize that many very nasty people will therefore remain in power — more moral clarity! — and that the U.S. will in effect take responsibility for maintaining the rule of the Sunni minority over the Shiite majority.
If this all sounds incredibly callous and shortsighted, that's because it is. But then what did you expect? This administration doesn't worry about long-term consequences — just look at its fiscal policy. It wants its war; there's not the slightest indication that it's interested in the boring, expensive task of building a just and lasting peace.
Wednesday February 19, 2003
Tom Friedman gets around to making the point he should have made months ago. But he was too busy fawning over the administration then.
It is legitimate for Europeans to oppose such a war, but not simply by sticking a thumb in our eye and their heads in the sand. It's also legitimate for the Bush folks to focus the world on Saddam, but two years of their gratuitous bullying has made many people deaf to America's arguments. Too many people today no longer accept America's strength as a good thing. That is a bad thing.
Of course he then goes on to state quite clearly that anyone opposed to Bush is pro-Saddam ("...create a global context where we can confront Saddam without the world applauding for him."). Yeah, Tom, we all secretly want Saddam to continue his despotic rule. Right. When you dial down your own arrogance, Tom, you'll see that there are those of us who simply don't feel confident in the rule of our President, and this lack of confidence gets its support from the hundreds of news items that have been proving that they're utterly shameless liars. Why should I trust them on this war? What single act have they done in preparation for this war that hasn't been undermined by two or three other lies, half-truths, or manipulations?
What about democracy for Iraq? Oh, right. They've changed their minds on that. Don't believe it? You can read more in this editorial from a member of the Iraqi opposition:
The United States is on the verge of committing itself to a post-Saddam plan for a military government in Baghdad with Americans appointed to head Iraqi ministries, and American soldiers to patrol the streets of Iraqi cities.The plan, as dictated to the Iraqi opposition in Ankara last week by a United States-led delegation, further envisages the appointment by the US of an unknown number of Iraqi quislings palatable to the Arab countries of the Gulf and Saudi Arabia as a council of advisers to this military government.
The plan reverses a decade-long moral and financial commitment by the US to the Iraqi opposition, and is guaranteed to turn that opposition from the close ally it has always been during the 1990s into an opponent of the United States on the streets of Baghdad the day after liberation.
Oh, and then there are these words from Ari Fleischer:
"Iraq, unlike Afghanistan, is a rather wealthy country. Iraq has tremendous resources that belong to the Iraqi people. And so there are a variety means that Iraq has to be able to shoulder much of the burden for their own reconstruction, " said White House Spokesman Ari Fleischer
We're going to bomb them and then make them pay to clean up the mess? Is that the kind of war that you want to sign on to, Tom?
And what about the news that the Pentagon wants a new breed of nuclear weapons? What kind of message are we trying to send? That weapons of mass destruction are ok, and even useful, but only for us? Is that a message you endorse?
And what about the fact that the Pentagon hasn't been dealing with aid groups in preparation for the war's aftermath? The article even has this little absurd bit of theater:
He said the administration would have seemed dishonest if it publicly planned for ameliorating the consequences of war while insisting that a decision to wage war had not been taken.
Is that as dishonest as insisting the decision for war has not been made while at the same time sending over 100,000 troops to the region and making plans like "Shock and Awe"?
Frankly, I have no support to give to these liars. Neither to Bush, nor to Hussein. Don't you even try to make the case that my position (and the position of a good majority of the world, judging from latest polls) is tacitly pro-Saddam. I think the onus is on you to explain why we should overlook such mendacity. Give us a bunch of honest leaders, and let them make the case, because this administration no longer has the trust of the world.
Tuesday February 18, 2003
It's about liberating Iraqis? Apparently not
From the Independent.co.uk website, via This Modern World, Kurdish leaders enraged by 'undemocratic' American plan to occupy Iraq. Unsurprising to all but the few who believe anything that comes out of the mouth of any Bush administration official.
The US is abandoning plans to introduce democracy in Iraq after a war to overthrow Saddam Hussein, according to Kurdish leaders who recently met American officials.The Kurds say the decision resulted from pressure from US allies in the Middle East who fear a war will lead to radical political change in the region.
The Kurdish leaders are enraged by an American plan to occupy Iraq but largely retain the government in Baghdad. The only changes would be the replacement of President Saddam and his lieutenants with senior US military officers.
It undercuts the argument by George Bush and Tony Blair that war is justified by the evil nature of the regime in Baghdad.
"Conquerors always call themselves liberators," said Sami Abdul-Rahman, deputy prime minister of the Kurdish administration, in a reference to Mr Bush's speech last week in which he said US troops were going to liberate Iraq.
And here's a quote from former NATO commander Wesley Clark, who appeared on Meet the Press on Sunday:
"We are at a turning point in America's history. We are about to embark on an operation that is going to put us in a colonial position in the Middle East following Britain."
Monday February 17, 2003
Only a lack of evidence that compels protesters?
How many people buy the idea that the protesters turned out en masse this weekend because Bush has not presented enough evidence to convince them that a war is necessary?
How many of you went to the rallies and gave that excuse to one person or another? Did you really mean it? Or were you really thinking that the reason you are protesting this war is that you feel that a) Bush is as illegitimate as they come b) he's as ignorant as a mossy stump, and/or c) you don't feel that he should be making any more choices about life and death, because he is simply incapable of thinking rationally?
I think that what we saw Saturday is the world standing up to Mr. Bush and saying "We refuse to accept your rule any longer." How else can you explain such a mass uprising of dissent only two years after 9-11? Would any other President in the same position have generated such animosity in such a short period of time?
Sure, Americans have a lot of other excuses that they can use: He's not focusing on Al-Quaeda, he's not focusing on Fatherland Security, he's not focusing on the economy. I can't think of any other administration that wouldn't have been able to deal with these issues and retain the support of the majority of Americans. Since around the time of Karen Hughes' departure, the Bush administration has been like a rabid dog unchained. Bush's bellicosity had to be tempered just enough to get a UN resolution passed; after that he hasn't been able to stay level-headed enough to convince the rest of the world. Every pronouncement rings hollow, and there's a reason for that. It's not that the argument is completely unconvincing; there is certainly enough information floating around that if someone wanted to justify disarming Hussein by some military action, they could probably do so. The Bush administration no longer has the ability to make the case. They can convince Berlusconi, but they've lost the Italian people. (Berlusconi himself isn't fooling many people anymore!) They can convince Tony Blair, but they lost the support of British people. The only countries that he can convince are ones that have either horse-traded their support for financial aid or ones that feel that they will be able to do so in the future (probably at the expense of their less-than-willing neighbors).
The Bush administration has failed to lead. They failed because they weren't able to present a cogent and moral argument for action that was compelling enough for the people of the world to see beyond their own interests. And they failed because their ulterior motives were too transparent. Countries opposed knew that the Bush administration needed the war, and that's why their hand has been so successful. The rest know the power of standing in line behind the guy with the most guns and money. If only they knew the extent of our economic problems!
Yet all we know is that the war is coming anyway, and we should face facts. We're facing an administration that's started its downward slide towards defeat. They're hemorraging public opinion, and they need to do something to stop the bleeding. Now it gets scary. Because we've seen what they're capable of doing to get power. Wait 'til you see what they do to keep power.
Note: After finishing this piece, I came across this article at the Washington Post. Here's a quote:
Experts and diplomats said international backing for a strike on Iraq remains weak. Some smaller countries have signaled support not because they believe in attacking Iraq, but because they want loans, business deals and a chance to join Western institutions. Other allies are swallowing hard and joining the campaign in part because they fear the administration is willing to shred long-standing international institutions to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
Friday February 14, 2003
More on the Republican Election Scandal
Josh Marshall has the latest update on the Republican election scandal.
Key excerpt:
Earlier this week we reported that Allen Raymond and his telemarketing firm GOP Marketplace were being investigated by state and federal authorities for sabotaging Democratic phone-banks last election morning in New Hampshire.We further pointed out that Raymond is the Executive Director of the Republican Leadership Council (RLC) and that organization has, on its Board, eight United States senators: Senator Robert Bennett, Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Senator Susan Collins, Senator Pete V. Domenici, Senator Jon L. Kyl, Senator Frank H. Murkowski, Senator Olympia Snowe, and Senator Arlen Specter.
Well, now it turns out that at exactly the same time GOP Marketplace was shutting down the Dems' phone operation, the RLC was paying GOP Marketplace to do work for them too.
According to politicalmoneyline.com, the RLC "indicated in its Section 527 IRS report (signed by Raymond) it paid GOP Marketplace (Raymond’s firm) $28,983.62 on 11/4/02 for 'Phone bank.'"
Yet this doesn't even merit a slot in the crawl at the bottom of CNN's screen.
Bush Administration Forgets about Afghanistan in Budget
No money for Afghanistan. There was, conveniently, no money in the Bush budget for Afghanistan. Not a cent. Congress added $300 million when they voted for Bush's insane 2003 budget:
One mantra from the Bush administration since it launched its military campaign in Afghanistan 16 months ago has been that the US will not walk away from the Afghan people.President Bush has even suggested a Marshall plan for the country, and the Afghan leader, Hamid Karzai, will visit Washington later this month.
Washington has pledged not to forget Afghanistan
But in its budget proposals for 2003, the White House did not explicitly ask for any money to aid humanitarian and reconstruction costs in the impoverished country.
At what point does a Bush "priority" cease to be a priority? Apparently complete neglect isn't enough.
Thursday February 13, 2003
Also at MediaWhores, how to use duct tape to protect yourself from terrorists.
Just read this at MediaWhoresOnline, and decided to share it with you. MWO had a contest to celebrate the Bush family's love of poetry and free speech. Here's one of the submissions:
Fraud and unelected cheater, Drunken fratboy, useless eater Nation's shame, a clown, a chump, A mean and vicious little hump. Stupid, vapid and incurious, Turning all our allies furious With your hubris and your smirk. God Almighty, you're a jerk! Evil bastards go to jail
Unless you're Georgie, then it's Yale.
You drank and led the cheering squad,
But only later found a God:
A God who puts America First,
A God who favors all the worst,
A God who wants to put the screws
To Dem'crats, blacks and gays and Jews.Did not misunderestimate
The awful power of the state.
Executed Karla Tucker,
Vicious, cruel little fucker.
Tax the poor to feed the rich.
You don't like it? That's a bitch.
Cheat to win, then live in style;
Enrich your Poppy through Carlyle.But watch your back, you dirty creep
Keep one eye open when you sleep.
Remember what befell your Dad
Riding high, then oh, so sad
The reeking flower of his class
Until Bill Clinton kicked his ass.
Oh-four is nigh, you little twit,
You're toast, you preening sack of shit.Philip L. Goldsmith
Wednesday February 12, 2003
450 economists come out opposed to the Bush tax cut plan. Visit epinet.org to see the statement opposing the tax cuts, and the NYTimes ads (8 1/2 x 11 and 13 x 21). Thanks to Andrew S. for this news.
When anyone says that the Korean crisis is "Clinton's fault", show them this article at The Hill by Josh Marshall. BTW - the Chris Nelson mentioned in the quote below ain't me. I'm too woefully underpaid to have anything other than this cheap-ass blog.
The truth first surfaced on Jan. 7 of this year in The Nelson Report, a daily newsletter that is the bible of D.C.’s Asia policy hands. Unnamed Clinton administration officials told Editor Chris Nelson that they had found out about the North Korean effort in 1999 and 2000. And they briefed incoming Bush administration officials about it in January 2001. (A week after Nelson’s story appeared, another high-ranking Clinton administration official confirmed the essence of the story to me.)A steady stream of evidence rapidly confirmed the Clintonites’ account. Even an unclassified version of a CIA report covering the second half of 2001 had noted that North Korea “had been seeking centrifuge-related materials in large quantities to support a uranium enrichment program. It also obtained equipment suitable for use in uranium feed and withdrawal systems.”
Then, two weeks ago, The Washington Post revealed that in November 2001 intelligence analysts from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory sent the White House a highly classified report concluding that the North Koreans had actually begun constructing a uranium enrichment plant. The report was hand-delivered to senior administration officials. But according to a Livermore official quoted in the Post, “no one focused on it because of 9-11.” It was only in June 2002 that yet another report provided what the administration now calls conclusive evidence about the North Korean program.
Tuesday February 11, 2003
Between Iraq and a hard place. Well worth watching (requires RealPlayer). Saw this first at Ian Hickson's weblog.
As a bonus, you get to understand what Churchill meant by "a lively terror."
More on the Republican phone-bank scandal in New Hampshire
Steve Kornacki, a reporter from the new frontline of investigative reporting (the local media), has provided more information on the growing scandal involving the GOP telemarketing firm "GOP Marketplace." You'll recall that GOP Marketplace is under investigation in New Hampshire for mass-calling Democratic get-out-the-vote phone banks on the day of the election last year, blocking lines and preventing people from setting up rides to voting booths. Now it turns out that the head or the group, Allen Raymond, is potentially associated with another phone-bank scandal in New Jersey.
As Josh Marshall asks at Talking Points Memo, "Tell me again why this story doesn't have legs?"
What remains?
Paul Krugman addresses the Bush administration's lack of accountability, something that I have been railing about in this space since its beginning. Mr. Krugman states:
But more broadly, they may have noticed something that is becoming apparent to more and more people here: the Bush administration's consistent unwillingness to take responsibility for solving difficult problems. When the going gets tough, it seems, Mr. Bush changes the subject.
And whenever he is called to accept some form of responsiblity for his actions, his mouthpiece Ari Fleischer and his adjuncts (the media) start their "Blame Clinton" chanting, and soon America is back in its trance and the administration can continue its rapacious behavior.
It seems that the only opposition to this administration is coming from left blogs and sites such as Buzzflash, MediaWhoresOnline and Smirking Chimp: the only places in the US where people can find out information that might run counter to the Bush/media line. But is this a valid information delivery system, where opposition in any form (whether it springs from philosophy or simply a desire for veracity) is relegated to a position completely out of the mainstream? What can be said for our country when the only way to uncover truth is to ignore the people with the most sway over the information that the public is exposed to?
Has anyone yet heard a mainstream media account of the Patriot Act II? A mainstream accounting of Chuck Hagel's conflicts of interest involving his investment in a company that provides vote tallying machines in his state? Of the Republican dirty-tricks campaign in New Hampshire during the last election that might evolve into a federal investigation?
It's as if these and other stories, of direct interest to the American people and the robustness of their democracy, are falling into a black hole from which no light nor sound ever escapes. Occasionally a few drops of radiation leak out and the news has a brief life in leftie-blogland, but these rays seem too weak to be noticed by the rest of the country.
Are we just spinning our wheels, with no hope of ever gaining traction? What hope is there for honesty in American public discourse?
Monday February 10, 2003
Victoria Clarke, Pentagon spokeswoman, is hearing the voice of the people on CSPAN as this is written. She's participating in a town hall meeting regarding Iraq, and the public is giving her an earful.
Sunday February 09, 2003
Brad DeLong doesn't understand why the administration would purposfully bankrupt the government. Just ask Grover Norquist. From the Christian Science Monitor:
When he says his tax-cut enthusiasm is the result of a revelation he had at the tender age of 14, it sounds believable. "I thought, how come if we're right, the voters keep electing these socialists at the local level? I thought the reason Republicans didn't do better was they needed some kind of branding, like Coca-Cola. Something easy for the voters to understand. Lower taxes are that brand."This is something Reagan understood, he says, and it helped modernize and grow the Republican Party. That's one of the reasons Norquist has made it his mission to get one major thing named after Reagan in each state and one small thing in each of the nation's 3,067 counties.
Our government is in the hands of the out-of-control marketing wing of an all-GOP corporation.
"Have a tax-cut and a smile."
Has anyone seen or heard mention of the Patriot Act II draft legislation in any major media news outlet?
Friday February 07, 2003
Time to pull out the orange alert wardrobe!
I was thinking that it was about time for another terror alert. When in doubt, turn up the heat on America's simmering fear of the rest of the world.
For the last handful of you that thought that the Republicans actually believed in Democracy, there's evidence of another stifle-the-vote campaign:
Manchester police have alerted the U.S. Justice Department to an Election Day operation allegedly ordered by a Republican telemarketing dealer that jammed get-out-the-vote phone banks operated by the city’s firefighters union and the state Democratic Party.Lt. Fred Roach of the city’s detective bureau said this week Idaho-based telemarketing firm Milo Enterprises was hired by GOP Marketplace of Alexandria, Va., to make repeated hang-up calls to a group of New Hampshire phone banks on Nov. 5.
Union and Democratic officials said the phone jam, broken by Verizon after two hours, lasted long enough to hurt their efforts to reach people who needed rides to the polls. Union president William Clayton said many intended contacts with potential riders, especially seniors, were not made, and, “I know a lot of them got shut out” of voting.
Fight Back Against Killer Astroturf
Thursday February 06, 2003
Be sure to check out the results of Wolf Blitzer's latest poll!
There's so much absurd news, I don't even know where to start.
How about this? An intelligence dossier on Iraq released by Downing Street and touted by Colin Powell at the UN was plagiarised from at least 3 sources, including a paper written by a graduate student at Cambridge. The article has a sample of the text from the dossier and an original source. It also shows how the text was doctored to appear more menacing.
Number 10 says the Mukhabarat - the main intelligence agency - is "spying on foreign embassies in Iraq".The original reads: "monitoring foreign embassies in Iraq."
And the provocative role of "supporting terrorist organisations in hostile regimes" has a weaker, political context in the original: "aiding opposition groups in hostile regimes."
Outstanding!
Blake Ross reveals the administration's "smoking gun."
Wednesday February 05, 2003
More on Chuck Hagel's Conflicts of Interest
[Be sure to read yesterday's initial post on Chuck Hagel and ES&S.]
Best of the Blogs has some interesting new information on the burgeoning election scandal in Nebraska.
First, a quick recap. It was revealed recently that Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel has a financial stake in the company ES&S, which provided the machines that tallied 85% of the votes in the last Nebraska senatorial election.
It turns out that the majority stake in ES&S is owned by "Howard F. Ahmanson and the Ahmanson Foundation, heirs to the Home Savings of America fortune." Quoting from BotB:
Howard Ahmanson has long been associated with Christian Reconstruction, a radical faction of the Religious Right that seeks to replace American democracy with a theocracy based on biblical law and under the "dominion" of Christians. For years, the Orange County, California multimillionaire served on the board of the Chalcedon Foundation, the lunatic Right's think tank. He has channeled millions from his family's fortune to a variety of causes designed to discredit and defeat Darwin's evolution theory. He currently is a member of ultra-right Council for National Policy.Christian Reconstructionists have been instrumental in getting at least 24 conservatives into the California legislature; launching prop. 209, California's successful anti-affirmative action law; financing Prop. 22, California's effort to ban gay marriages; and financing the Chalcedon Institute, which reportedly believes in the death penalty for homosexuality and other "sins."
Let me draw a picture here: about 60 percent (and growing) of the computerized ballots cast in elections in the United States now pass through machines whose software is owned, designed and controlled by people who are soul brothers of the Taliban.
Bill O'Reilly Out of Control
Head over to This Modern World (the website of cartoonist Tom Tomorrow) to read the transcript of an interview that Bill O'Reilly did with Jeremy Glick, a signatory of the Not In Our Name ad whose father died in the 9/11 attacks. Small exerpt:
O'REILLY: That's a bunch of crap. I've done more for the 9/11 families by their own admission -- I've done more for them than you will ever hope to do.GLICK: OK.
O'REILLY: So you keep your mouth shut when you sit here exploiting those people.
GLICK: Well, you're not representing me. You're not representing me.
O'REILLY: And I'd never represent you. You know why?
GLICK: Why?
O'REILLY: Because you have a warped view of this world and a warped view of this country.
GLICK: Well, explain that. Let me give you an example of a parallel...
O'REILLY: No, I'm not going to debate this with you, all right.
Tuesday February 04, 2003
Chuck Hagel, Conflicts of Interest, and the Republicans' Eternal Vote Scandal
Will the Republican vote scandal never end? Now we find out that Chuck Hagel, who won by landslides in his last two elections in Nebraska, is actually a part-owner in the company ES&S whose electronic voting machines tallied 85% of the votes in those elections. This is a fact that Mr. Hagel failed to reveal in his annual financial disclosure reports.
Mr. Hagel's inability to disclose this information over the course of the past 7 years has come down to the parsing of the words "publicly available." His staff claims that the McCarthy Group Inc, which handles for Senator Hagel the fund that is invested in ES&S, is not in fact publicly traded, and therefore exempt from disclosure. This assertion has been questioned by disclosure law experts.
In any case the committee rules that would provide for such an exemption were altered after a meeting between Hagel's chief of staff Lou Ann Linehan and Robert Walker, new head of the Senate Ethics Committee -- apparently altered in a way that provides some cover for the Senator.
Unfortunately Mr. Hagel can't claim ignorance in this matter, for he was in fact chairman of ES&S back in the early 90's when it was called AIS. He was also president of McCarthy & Co, the financial advisory group. Michael McCarthy was his campaign treasurer in both elections. And Kevin McCarthy, Michael's son, is part of Hagel's press team.
This is not simply a matter of disclosure. This is a matter of serious conflicts of interest that have not been exposed nor questioned in any way. (And don't forget to throw in the spectre of election rigging and national scandal.) Why exactly does this not warrant space in the NYTimes or a debate on CNN?
You can read more about this tawdry business in a new article at Smirking Chimp by Thom Hartmann. Thom also talks with Charlie Matulka, Hagel's opponent in the last election. He tried to get a hand recount of the votes, but was told by the state of Nebraska that the only machines that are certified to tally the votes are those made by ES&S, because a newly passed law prohibits government-employed election workers from looking at the ballots.
Here's a little heads-up to that myopic sunofabitch who thinks that the Bush administration is really moving towards a drug policy of prevention instead of incarceration.
Monday February 03, 2003
A must-read: David Neiwert on the "Boy-god Bush." The article holds a number of links that are also worth checking out, including the "Who cares what you think?" story.
There's an interesting article on Web Services at CNet, specifically the ones being employed by Amazon and Google to allow developers to access their databases of information. Not surprisingly, the one major sticking point of the whole operation seems to be server overload:
The move has actually been burdensome to Google, overloading its servers on particular queries at times, and could take away traffic from the company's Web site.
Sound familiar to anyone? Remember years ago when everyone wanted AOL to open up their instant messenger protocol so Microsoft and Yahoo and anyone else could access their userbase and seamlessly integrate into their systems? I doubt I was the only one to realize what kind of strain this would put on AOL's systems, with no added benefit to them (Microsoft's Messenger wouldn't run AOL's ads in its own buddy list window). It's one thing to be a centralized clearing house for information, and entirely another to allow blanket access to your raw data to every Tom, Dick and Harry. Will web services actually be profit-makers or money pits? Internal web services have the ability to ease the cost of integration of existing systems, I'll grant that. But I think in the end the results will be mixed with external web services that allow public access. The benefits of allowing external Web sites to deep-link into your own site -- bypassing the entire site structure -- are obvious. But it's a whole different ballgame when you allow people to bypass your entire site and access only the raw data they're interested in, while you sit in your offices upgrading and maintaining your servers to handle the increasing load and seeing nary a penny of direct profit from your work.
Will web services retreat into the background like Java? Will they be a saving grace for Java itself? Or will they actually find use beyond cost-saving?
Here's the way one guy justifies external web services:
"In a way, Amazon and Google are outsourcing their user interface development, with the developers working for free," said Alex Shapiro, chief technology officer of TouchGraph, a developer of Web applications. "In exchange for letting others easily access their data, these companies perpetuate their brand, spread good vibrations through the developer community, and allow others to experiment with all kinds of innovative solutions without taking on any risk. In turn, the developer gets to act as the portal to Google's/Amazon's data, thereby benefiting through the advertisement for whatever tangential services that they offer."
Sounds a hell of a lot like the "synergy" that was to bind and lift up AOL and Time Warner. I hope web services can come to depend on something other than these "good vibrations"!
Saturday February 01, 2003
Tim Dunlop at Stand Down notes that the Iraqi arms declaration that was turned over on December 7 2002 was diverted by the US before being turned over to the Security Council, and that the final document was relieved of 8,000 pages that, according to the German newspaper Die Tageszeitung detail the US companies and government agencies that were involved in building the Iraq war machine. He also notes that this violates Clause 10 of Resolution 1441, which Bush is using as the catalyst in his war push.
You can read more about the document alteration at the Baltimore Chronicle, who points out that the issue is as much the missing 8,000 pages as it is the missing reporting on this event.
Two British newspapers covered this: the Independent and The Guardian.
