Open thread …
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July 8, 2006
Weekend OT
Comments
Greg Palast in The Guardian about possible Maexican voter fraud:
Mexico and Florida have more in common than heat
Jeb’s winning scrub list was the creation of a private firm, ChoicePoint of Alpharetta, Georgia. Now, it seems, ChoicePoint is back in the voter list business – in Mexico – at the direction of the Bush government. Months ago, I got my hands on a copy of a memo from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, marked “secret”, regarding a contract for “intelligence collection of foreign counter-terrorism investigations”.
Given that the memo was dated September 17 2001, a week after the attack on the World Trade Centre, hunting for terrorists seemed like a heck of a good idea. But oddly, while all 19 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf, the contract was for obtaining the voter files of Venezuela, Brazil … and Mexico.
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As we found in Florida in 2000, my investigations team on the ground in Mexico City this week found voters in poor neighbourhoods, the left’s turf, complaining that their names were “disappeared” from the voter rolls. ChoicePoint can’t know what use the Bush crew makes of its lists. But erased registrations require us to ask, before this vote is certified, was there a purge as there was in Florida?
Notably, ruling party operatives carried registration lists normally in the hands of elections officials only. (In Venezuela in 2004, during the special election to recall President Hugo Chavez, I saw his opponents consulting laptops with voter lists. Were these the purloined FBI files? The Chavez government suspects so but, victorious, won’t press the case.)
There’s more that the Mexico vote has in common with Florida besides the heat. The ruling party’s hand-picked electoral commission counted a mere 402,000 votes more for their candidate, Felipe Calderón, over challenger Andrés Manuel López Obrador. That’s noteworthy in light of the surprise showing of candidate Señor Blank-o (the 827,000 ballots supposedly left “blank”).
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And so it is in Mexico. The Calderón “victory” is based on a gross addition of tabulation sheets. His party, the Pan, and its election officials are refusing López Obrador’s call for a hand recount of each ballot which would be sure to fill in those blanks.
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There’s an echo of the US non-count in the south-of-the-border tally. It’s called “negative drop-off”. In a surprising number of districts in Mexico, the federal electoral commission logged lots of negative drop-off: more votes for lower offices than for president. Did López Obrador supporters, en masse, forget to punch in their choice?
There are signs of Washington’s meddling in its neighbour’s election. The International Republican Institute, an arm of Bush’s party apparatus funded by the US government, admits to providing tactical training for Pan. Did Pan also make use of the purloined citizen files? (US contractor ChoicePoint, its Mexican agents facing arrest for taking the data, denied wrongdoing and vowed to destroy its copies of the lists. But what of Mr Bush’s copy?)
A dangerous power grab in Poland: Twins take top jobs in Polish politics after premier quits
Poland is on course to have identical twin brothers occupying its two most powerful political posts, after tensions inside the ruling right-wing party exploded last night, prompting the resignation of the Prime Minister.
Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz quit unexpectedly, after less than a year as Polish premier, and the dominant Law and Justice Party said that he would be replaced by the party leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski. He is the twin brother of President Lech Kaczynski.
Jaroslaw Kaczynski promised last year that he would not be a candidate for the post of Prime Minister in order to help his twin’s campaign to be elected President. That pledge was given amid fears that such a concentration of power in the hands of one family could undermine faith in Polish democracy.
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Originally from a different, more moderate wing of the party, Mr Marcinkiewicz had won growing popularity in Poland and was taking an increasingly independent stance. In recent months he had been at odds with the Kaczynskis over appointments to various state posts.
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Tensions reached breaking point after Mr Marcinkiewicz appointed an aide as his ally as Finance Minister and held a meeting with the opposition leader, Donald Tusk.
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The statement did not offer any reasons for Mr Marcinkiewicz’s resignation, and the outgoing Prime Minister had made no comment last night. But observers said that Mr Marcinkiewicz had paid the price for defying the Kaczynskis, who had expected him to toe their line.
This is another step to the far-right in Poland. Cathofashism is about the appropriate label for the Kaczynskis’ program.
Last week Kaczynski (the President) skipped a meeting with Merkel and Cirac because the German daily TAZ had a piece on him on their daily satirical “the truth” page and Merkel denied to damn it. Childish bahaviour …
There will be a lot more trouble now between Poland and its neighbours now.
Interesting piece by Patrick Cockburn on how the U.S. military is again at war with the Mehdi army.
Posted by: anna missed | Jul 8 2006 8:25 utc | 3
two refugees from a polish village
Reb Dan’s wagon drew up alongside the cart on which Jekuthiel the watchmaker sat, the tools of his trade piled around him. He looked at the rabbi and smiled sadly.
“Nu, rabbi?” he said.
It was clear that what he meant was: Where is your Lord of the Universe now? Where are His miracles? Where is your faith in Torah and prayer?
“Nu, Jekuthiel,” the rabbi answered. What he was saying was: Where are your worldly remedies? Where is your trust in the gentiles? What have you accomplished by aping Esau?
i.b. singer.
Posted by: citizen k | Jul 8 2006 8:32 utc | 4
Good piece in The Nation: The New American Cold War
Since the early 1990s Washington has simultaneously conducted, under Democrats and Republicans, two fundamentally different policies toward post-Soviet Russia–one decorative and outwardly reassuring, the other real and exceedingly reckless. The decorative policy, which has been taken at face value in the United States, at least until recently, professes to have replaced America’s previous cold war intentions with a generous relationship of “strategic partnership and friendship.” The public image of this approach has featured happy-talk meetings between American and Russian presidents, first “Bill and Boris” (Clinton and Yeltsin), then “George and Vladimir.”
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The real US policy has been very different–a relentless, winner-take-all exploitation of Russia’s post-1991 weakness. Accompanied by broken American promises, condescending lectures and demands for unilateral concessions, it has been even more aggressive and uncompromising than was Washington’s approach to Soviet Communist Russia. Consider its defining elements as they have unfolded–with fulsome support in both American political parties, influential newspapers and policy think tanks–since the early 1990s:
– growing military encirclement of Russia, on and near its borders, by US and NATO bases, which are already ensconced or being planned in at least half the fourteen other former Soviet republics, from the Baltics and Ukraine to Georgia, Azerbaijan and the new states of Central Asia. The result is a US-built reverse iron curtain and the remilitarization of American-Russian relations.
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Yesterday the Ukraine’s government disintegrates on day one – end of the “Orange revolution” …
No NATO bases there, thanks.
The classic problem here is that as the US expands military bases and intervention, it becomes less and less capable of actually winning a war.
Posted by: citizen k | Jul 8 2006 9:16 utc | 6
This one goes along with the “New Cold War”
Russia’s Signal Stations Is Clear: Cut U.S. Radio
By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, July 7, 2006; Page A01
MOSCOW, July 6 — Russian regulators have forced more than 60 radio stations to stop broadcasting news reports produced by Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, according to radio managers and Russian officials.
The regulators cited license violations and unauthorized changes in programming format. But senior executives at the U.S.-government-funded broadcast services and at the stations blame the Kremlin for the crackdown, which has knocked the reports off stations from St. Petersburg in western Russia to Vladivostok in the Far East.
… “We do not have any problem with Radio Liberty or Voice of America,” said Yevgeny Strelchik, an adviser to the Culture Ministry’s top mass media official. “But if our radio stations change their concept, they should say so, and then the commission will decide whether to approve it or not. They can’t broadcast somebody else’s product without having the license for it. . . . This is the law.”
He also said: “You should ask the general director of Radio Russia how hard it is to get a license to broadcast in the U.S. He tried many times. Their requirements are much stricter.”
Posted by: Owl | Jul 8 2006 9:35 utc | 7
Bribe attempt: U.S. and Russia to Enter Civilian Nuclear Pact
President Bush has decided to permit extensive U.S. civilian nuclear cooperation with Russia for the first time, administration officials said yesterday, reversing decades of bipartisan policy in a move that would be worth billions of dollars to Moscow but could provoke an uproar in Congress.
Bush resisted such a move for years, insisting that Russia first stop building a nuclear power station for Iran near the Persian Gulf. But U.S. officials have shifted their view of Russia’s collaboration with Iran and concluded that President Vladimir Putin has become a more constructive partner in trying to pressure Tehran to give up any aspirations for nuclear weapons.
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In the administration’s view, both sides would benefit. A nuclear cooperation agreement would clear the way for Russia to import and store thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel from U.S.-supplied reactors around the world, a lucrative business so far blocked by Washington. It could be used as an incentive to win more Russian cooperation on Iran. And it would be critical to Bush’s plan to spread civilian nuclear energy to power-hungry countries because Russia would provide a place to send the used radioactive material.
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Bush: “You will get our garbage and a few bucks and do as we say.” Putin (likely): “I don´t think so. Lets keep energy prices high and we will make even more bucks without taking your mess.”
b.,
I wouldn’t be surprised if Russia may have a card up her sleeve. Spent nuclear waste is still highly refined rare earths, the nuclear metals of Uranium I’m sure, and perhaps other heavy metals.
Could this stuff have value at some time in the future? Sadly, as Depleted Uranium (DU) bullets, it could give Russia a bunch of arms sales. Or as another weapon, the old dirty bomb idea.
But perhaps Russia’s scientists believe that there could be a genuine use of this special substance that outweighs its life-threatening radiation danger.
Now that would make a great story.
Posted by: jonku | Jul 8 2006 10:41 utc | 9
When I saw that the EU weighed in on the side of the conservatives in the Mexican election I was curious as to the makeup of that group of observers. Two names pop up immediately, Javier Solana who has been a US puppet for a long time and José Ignacio Salafranca Sanchez-Neyra who is described as a conservative member of the EU parliament.
I was shocked I tell you, shocked that this group would support the candidate favored by the US. Why does the EU hate the Mexicans? What do they have to gain by putting in a right winger who will continue to facilitate the rape and pillaging of Mexico by the nort americanos?
I am sure there is nothing new with all this and has most likely been going on for a long time. I suppose what is different now is that a lot of people all around the world can know about it in real time. I continue to hope against hope that enough people will complain about it to actually force change.
Posted by: dan of steele | Jul 8 2006 11:28 utc | 10
the European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said that, “we are a Europe against populist tendencies.”
Posted by: citizen k | Jul 8 2006 13:15 utc | 11
Dan,
the EU (talking about the federal level, not the sum of countries) is an unaccountable superstructure, which is built so it is bloody hard to find someone responsible for anything. The reason this has not got more press is because the national level is still the strongest.
So I am not surprised. But this will be settled on the streets of Mexico, not in a boardroom in Brussels.
Posted by: A swedish kind of death | Jul 8 2006 13:24 utc | 12
Berlusconi and David Mills to be tried. Mills is quoted in The Independent today as saying that the case will run out of time (only 18 months left on the judicial clock), and that as a result he will never have a chance to prove his innocence!
Posted by: Dismal Science | Jul 8 2006 13:27 utc | 13
this will be settled on the streets of Mexico, not in a boardroom in Brussels
But the Europe against populism is not just some isolated clerks in a dusty room in Brussels.
When Mexico’s export industry sector suffered double blows from 2001 to 2003 — the U.S. economic recession and competition with Asia, especially China, which drew production away from Mexico — another trade bloc proved to be steadfast.
To the northeast of Mexico, across the Atlantic Ocean, the European Union (EU) has steadily increased its investments in plants, equipment and services in Mexico since 1999, when the Mexico-European Union Free Trade Agreement took effect.
Initially, the mutual benefit from the trade accord was slow to materialize. But the two-way relationship is flowing now, with European investments in Mexico totaling nearly $6 billion in 2004, up from $1.15 billion in 1996, according to Mexico’s Secretary of the Economy, or Economia.
The 2004 figure from Europe accounted for more than one-third of the $16.6 billion of direct foreign investment that poured into Mexico in 2004.
Export industries in Mexico get preferential tariff treatment when selling products to the European market. That makes Mexico more attractive to non-European manufacturers setting up production operations in Mexico.
Europe gets an even better deal.
European companies setting up production operations in Mexico can receive preferential tariff treatment to about 20 non-European nations, mainly those in the Americas, including the United States and Canada, with which Mexico has active free trade agreements.
Since 1994, when Mexico joined the United States and Canada in the North American Free Trade Agreement, European companies have invested $35 billion in Mexico. About $23 billion of that came after the Mexico-European accord took effect.
In 2004, Spain was the No. 1 European nation investing in Mexico, with 42.5 percent of the European investments, mainly in financial services. The investments have helped shore up Mexico’s shaky banking sector.
The other top European investors in Mexico are Holland, with 32.4 percent in 2004, the United Kingdom (9.7 percent) and Germany (8.3 percent).
link
Billions of euros invested in Mexican banks by Spain and a strong disapproval of populism by Spanish officials serving in the EU! Quelle surprise! I’m so sorry, Mr. Bolivar, but the EU against populism is not in favor of bond slippage in either sense.
Posted by: citizen k | Jul 8 2006 13:48 utc | 14
I think it is safe to say, our “leaders” are psychopathic sexual deviant’s.
Hence, The Buttplugs Of Liberty
After being held for a week in a prison in the mountains of Malawi, Mr. Saidi said, a group of people arrived in a sport utility vehicle: a gray-haired Caucasian woman and five men dressed in black wearing black masks revealing only their eyes.
The Malawians blindfolded him, and his clothes were cut away, he said. He heard someone taking photographs. Then, he said, the blindfold was removed and the agents covered his eyes with cotton and tape, inserted a plug in his anus and put a disposable diaper on him before dressing him. He said they covered his ears, shackled his hands and feet and drove him to an airplane where they put him on the floor.
“It was a long trip, from Saturday night to Sunday morning, ” Mr. Saidi recalled. When the plane landed, he said, he was taken to what he described as a “dark prison” filled with deafening Western music. The lights were rarely turned on.
Men in black arrived, he said, and he remembers one shouting at him through an interpreter: “You are in a place that is out of the world. No one knows where you are, no one is going to defend you.”
He was chained by one hand to the wall in a windowless cell and left with a bucket and a bottle in lieu of a latrine. He remained there for nearly a week, he said, and then was blindfolded and bound again and taken to another prison. “There, they put me in a room, suspended me by my arms and attached my feet to the floor,” he recalled. “They cut off my clothes very fast and took off my blindfold.” An older man, graying at the temples, entered the room with a young woman with shoulder-length blond hair, he said. They spoke English, which Mr. Saidi understands a little, and they interrogated him for two hours through a Moroccan translator. At last, he said, he thought he would learn why he was there, but the questioning only confounded him.
Yet another in the long list of reasons why wingnuts should be probationary citizens in a smothering nanny state. This obsession with kidnapping people, tying them up, forcibly inserting things in their bottoms and diapering them as a prelude to torture should be played out in a safe, therapeutic setting, where they might take turns, avoid harming others, and find whatever sad fulfillment there is in such an activity.
Also see: The use of enemas as interrogation tools and the practice of extraordinary enema renditions
Kind of a sick shitty affair no?
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jul 8 2006 14:00 utc | 15
Uncle:
The man was engaged in buying and selling tires – as such he is an enemy of freedom and needs to be delivered to the Freedom World of Bondage. At the intersection of American Traditional Values and European Humanism, the Marquis de Sade and his personal bond trader are ready to to assist. We have a clash of Civilizations here, for the love of God, montressor.
Posted by: citizen k | Jul 8 2006 14:10 utc | 16
Cole in Salon Israel’s failed-state strategy on “Olmert’s smashing of Gaza reveals his greatest fear: A viable Palestinian government he’d have to negotiate with.”
The actions of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert seem intended to create a failed state in Gaza and the West Bank, thus rendering the Israeli claim that “we have no one to talk to” a self-fulfilling prophecy and allowing Israel to continue with its unilateral, annexationist policies, free of the need to even pretend to negotiate.
This shortsighted “strategy,” which both the United States and, to a slightly lesser degree, the strangely docile Europeans have signed off on, is a recipe for continued hatred, extremism, bloodshed, injustice and festering grievances. Unless Israel and its patron summon the wisdom to take the long view and hammer out an agreement that will give the Palestinians a viable state, rather than simply trying to smash them into submission, the world’s most dangerous conflict will continue to rage, with dangerous consequences for all.
It would be one thing if Olmert, head of Israel’s governing Kadima Party, ordered the Israeli Army (the IDF) to conduct simple, targeted search-and-destroy missions, the logical response to the kidnapping by Palestinian guerrillas of an Israeli soldier or the firing of small homemade rockets from Gaza into nearby Israeli towns. Instead, he has launched a wide-ranging attack on the Gaza Strip, sending tanks and troops over the border, destroying Gaza’s only electricity plant, and firing missiles at militants without regard for innocent civilians in the area. He even ordered Israeli jets to create terrifying sonic booms throughout the night, as if 1.4 million persons, many of them children, were being subjected to the sleep deprivation techniques applied by U.S. interrogators at Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. As Patrick O’Connor has pointed out, Olmert told his cabinet last Sunday that he wanted “no one to be able to sleep tonight in Gaza.”
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Steely Dan* wrote:
When I saw that the EU weighed in on the side of the conservatives in the Mexican election I was curious as to the makeup of that group of observers. Two names pop up immediately, Javier Solana who has been a US puppet for a long time and José Ignacio Salafranca Sanchez-Neyra who is described as a conservative member of the EU parliament. I was shocked I tell you, shocked that this group would support the candidate favored by the US.
Huh. EU servile alignement on the US is done deal now to be gradually made public. Bit by bit. Accompanied by ritual Arab bashing, fear-mongering (first, just foreignors in general, way of life, etc.), and maybe even some more terrarist attacks. Don’t like to refer to own posts, but other clear sign here:
Noirette – Alabama Moon
Besides that, the ‘core’ EU countries, say, France, Germany, Italy (one can describe in different ways) know perfectly well what they are doing and plan at least – at least! – 10 years in advance. The muddle perceived from abroad is much like Bush’s incompetence seen by naive Democrats.
*just affectionate
Posted by: Noirette | Jul 8 2006 19:10 utc | 18
More secret programs? With super-hawk Hoekstra you never know what he is up to.
Ally Told Bush Spying Projects Might Be Illegal
In a sharply worded letter to President Bush in May, an important Congressional ally charged that the administration might have violated the law by failing to inform Congress of some secret intelligence programs and risked losing Republican support on national security matters.
The letter from Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, did not specify the intelligence activities that he believed had been hidden from Congress.
But Mr. Hoekstra, who was briefed on and supported the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program and the Treasury Department’s tracking of international banking transactions, clearly was referring to programs that have not been publicly revealed.
Besides that, the ‘core’ EU countries, say, France, Germany, Italy (one can describe in different ways) know perfectly well what they are doing and plan at least – at least! – 10 years in advance.
still more evidence why the thesis of global capitalist class domination is salient.
Posted by: slothrop | Jul 8 2006 19:35 utc | 20
Official Airforce News says: Highly modified C-130 ready for war on terrorism
The highly modified C-130, the first of a dozen such modified aircraft, will replace combat losses experienced over time by special operations aviators. Four MC-130H aircraft and one MC-130P have been lost in the war on terrorism.
Does anybody remember reports of five (5) C-130 going down??? I have noticed one (1) report a while back.
Training Marines How Not to Kill
“Over the last 12 months or so we killed about 1000 Iraqis at blocking positions and checkpoints,” the captain told the grunts. “About 60 — six zero — we could demonstrate that, yeah, he was a bad guy. He was an insurgent. Six zero out of about 1000. So all we’re doing — if we don’t communicate what we want them to do, all we’re doing is creating more enemies.”
This one is for Hannah, re. 9/11:
Richard Grove, transcript, Meria Heller show – a bit hard to follow but well worth the read – :
Grove
Grove’s very recently set up site, polluted by all kinds of popular stuff, a newsy, folksy atmosphere, current memes … no comment on that for now.
8th Estate
Posted by: Noirette | Jul 8 2006 19:49 utc | 23
Although you say the Grove story was for HKOL I read it and was at first surprised and then the longer I read the more disgusted I got. This is obviously misinformation and not even very well done. Good grief, Dyncorp is smuggling women for prostitution and making snuff films, what is the margin in that and why bother if you have already successfully stolen billions?
If this knucklehead knew these things that he is saying for a fact he would have long ago suffered a heart attack or had some kind of domestic accident.
big time smoke and mirrors, one of the commenters hit it right on the head though, he said that in this kind of disinformation the truth can be stuck right in the middle of all the false charges. It is up to us to separate the wheat from the chaff……and there is a lot of chaff here.
Posted by: dan of steele | Jul 8 2006 21:18 utc | 24
r’giap and others may be interested in the following…
Soma:
An Anarchist Therapy
From Susan over at Easy Bake Coven: With difficulty walking, and half-blinded from torture by the Brazilian military dictatorship, 79 year-old Roberto Freire continues to develop somatherapy, completing his life’s work. Incorporating the ideas of Wilhelm Reich, the politics of anarchism, and the culture of capoeira angola, Soma is used by therapists organized in anarchist collectives to fight the psychological effects of authoritarianism. Nick Cooper…
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jul 8 2006 22:11 utc | 25
Take a quick look at Bernhard’s training marines how not to kill link, where the appalling statistic openly acknowledged by the marine’s hierachy that of the approx 1000 Iraqi people killed by marines in the past 12 months, only 60 looked like that may be bad guys (ie freedom fighters) the other 940 were just people going about their lives.
From that a thought occurred, one thing that stuck out like the proverbial; A memory of what so many of these ’20 year old kids’ as the article describes them, joined the marine corps for.
Copious TV lefty and vox pop interviews with the ‘kids’ on why it is they joined the marines, one answer always predominates. “I thought that it would help me obtain a career in law enforcement afterwards”.
Amerikans need to think about that because the predominant theme of the article is contained in this part toward the end:
“. . .In an awkward chat with a group of Marines outside the city of Hit a few months ago, an English student named Omar offered one explanation for Iraqi drivers’ failure to stop.
“Let me tell you, there is a big difference between the cars in America and here,” Omar told the grunts. “Most of the car here do not have any brake. There is no brake in the car. It is very ancient car.”
“They gotta do something,” a young grunt replied. “We just can’t let a car come up on us like that.”
“In this situation we are still the victim,” Omar said softly, to no one in particular. . .
. . . The corporal told the men to give the driver the benefit of the doubt, even if his vehicle passes the first three barriers of their four-layered security cordon. Yell louder, make more hand signals, pump more warning shots into the ground. But if and when the vehicle crosses the trigger line, do what you must.
“For whatever reason it turns out to be a carload of woman and children or whatever, ” the corporal assured the grunts, “you’re still gonna be justified because we don’t know why they came through. We have four zones set up. They came through all of them. We tried everything we could do to stop ’em. We did what we had to do. That’s the most important thing to take away from this class.”
No they will be taught to unlearn the actual techniques of the marine corp to be replaced by LAPD or NYPD or Coffeeville Sheriff’s dept methodology, but the attitude will remain.
The attitude that will allow you do the best according to the rules but if you end up wasting a house full of poor people in LA, Kansas, or New York because they didn’t know the rules, thems the breaks. Well maybe that was the old rules anyway because in Iraq many of the citizens getting ‘smoked’ (love the terminology anything to avoid saying men women and children getting blown apart by large calibre or high velocity weapons until bits of them are flung around like so much ground beef) many of the citizens aren’t poor they are middle class or even rich and influential (with the wrong influences of course) humans.
So these 20 year old kids (when kids are 15 and “we” rape and set fire to them, they are adults, even though “our” 20 year old pulling the trigger is a kid), when these kids come home to become “Law Enforcement” officials, the new super dooper upgraded with sauce on the top militarised police sorry “Law Enforcement Agency” will enjoy the benefit of having a squad of automatons that will kill and maim to order, but have been sufficiently indoctrinated to go home to the secure police suburb (a la Israel where ‘law enforcement’ doesn’t live out there with the people they have their own supermarkets schools and hospitals in gated communities) and enjoy supper with the wife and kids.
If amerikans won’t stop this shit for the sake of Iraqis, perhaps they will stop it for the sake of themselves and their kids.
I can’t understand what all the delay and prevarication is about. It’s not going to get any easier you know. The longer that amerikans leave this evil to fester it is only going to get harder and more bloody to get rid of it.
Posted by: Anonymous | Jul 8 2006 23:34 utc | 26
cheers Senor $cam. Incidentally since I haven’t said it lately, please keep those excellent links which serve as our insight into the ugly maw of the beast, coming.
Posted by: Anonymous | Jul 9 2006 1:59 utc | 28
The “liberated” NYT Frank Rich column: All the News That’s Fit to Bully
TWO weeks and counting, and the editor of The New York Times still has not been sentenced to the gas chamber. What a bummer for one California radio talk-show host, Melanie Morgan, who pronounced The Times guilty of treason and expressly endorsed that punishment. She and the rest of the get-the-press lynch mob are growing restless, wondering why newspapers haven’t been prosecuted under the Espionage Act. “If Bush believes what he is saying,” taunted Pat Buchanan, “why does he not do his duty as the chief law enforcement officer of the United States?”
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The administration has a more insidious game plan instead: it has manufactured and milked this controversy to reboot its intimidation of the press, hoping journalists will pull punches in an election year. There are momentous stories far more worrisome to the White House than the less-than-shocking Swift program, whether in the chaos of Anbar Province or the ruins of New Orleans. If the press muzzles itself, its under-the-radar self-censorship will be far more valuable than a Nixonesque frontal assault that ends up as a 24/7 hurricane veering toward the Supreme Court.
Will this plan work? It did after 9/11. The chilling words articulated at the get-go by Ari Fleischer (Americans must “watch what they say”) carried over to the run-up to the Iraq war, when the administration’s W.M.D. claims went unchallenged by most news organizations.
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The trouble is we have plenty to worry about. For all the airy talk about the First Amendment, civil liberties and Thomas Jefferson in the debate over the Swift story and the National Security Agency surveillance story before it, there’s an urgent practical matter at stake, too. Now more than ever, after years of false reports of missions accomplished, the voters need to do what Congress has failed to do and hold those who mismanage America’s ever-expanding war accountable for their performance in real time.
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We can believe instead, if we choose to, that all is well and that the press shouldn’t question our government’s account of how it is winning the war brilliantly at every turn. (The former C.I.A. analytical chief, Jami Miscik, decodes this game in “The One Percent Doctrine”: the administration tells “only half the story, the part that makes us look good,” and keeps the other half classified.) We can believe that reporters, rather than terrorists, are the villains. We can debate whether traitorous editors should be sent to gas chambers or merely tarred and feathered.
Or we can hope that the press will rise to the occasion and bring Americans more news we can use, not less, at a perilous time when every piece of information counts.
Israel Launches Strikes After Rebuffing Ceasefire
Israel launched rapid-fire air strikes against Palestinian targets across the Gaza Strip on Sunday after rebuffing a proposed ceasefire by Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas.
Israel is threatening to expand its offensive unless militants release Corporal Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier abducted in a cross-border raid on June 25, and halt rocket fire on Israeli cities.
At least three militants were injured in an early morning air strike near the Karni commercial crossing between Gaza and Israel, Palestinian medics and police said.
Israel also bombed a key bridge in northern Gaza, despite an appeal from the United Nations to stop targeting the strip’s fragile infrastructure.
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Israel killed seven Palestinians, including a 6-year-old girl and a policeman, on Saturday, Palestinian witnesses said.
About 50 Palestinians and one Israeli soldier have been killed so far in the offensive, launched on June 28 to pile pressure on the Hamas-led Palestinian government, already on the brink of financial collapse from a Western aid embargo, to help free Shalit.
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“We will soon begin operations in other places,” Israeli Military Southern Command Chief Yoav Galant told Israeli media. ”I see no reason to stop the offensive as long as they are holding our soldier.”
Galant said the Israeli offensive, criticized by the European Union and United Nations, had no time limit and that troops were prepared to continue it for “a month, two months and more if needed.”
Contender Alleges Mexico Vote Was Rigged
Downtown Mexico City swelled Saturday with the accumulated frustration and rage of the poor, who were stoked into a sign-waving, fist-pumping frenzy by new fraud allegations that failed populist candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador hopes will overturn the results of Mexico’s presidential election.
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López Obrador’s approach pairs legal maneuvers with mass public pressure. On Saturday, he gave a mega-display of street power, drawing an estimated 280,000 people into the city center on a humid, drizzly afternoon, according to a Mexico City government estimate.
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López Obrador also told the crowd that he was organizing a march to the capital Wednesday from all over Mexico, including states hundreds of miles distant.
“This is, and will continue to be, a peaceful movement,” he said. Seconds later, he announced another mass rally, this one for July 16, at which the crowd raucously yelled back: “What time?”
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López Obrador wants a vote-by-vote count, which would require opening sealed vote packets from more than 130,000 polling stations. Electoral commission officials have sided with Calderón’s strategists, who argue that the law does not allow for the packets to be opened unless tally sheets attached to the packets appear to have been altered. López Obrador said that only 2,600 vote packets were opened Tuesday and Wednesday during a marathon official count, which shrank Calderón’s lead from 400,000 votes after a preliminary vote to 230,000.
What a stupid excuse by the election comission. A recount will be the only way to avaoid a civil war over this.
After López Obrador left the stage Saturday, the crowd lingered. Someone started singing the national anthem, and countless voices joined in its rallying cry: “Mexicans, to the shout of war!”
Some folks DO learn from U.S. history and through U.S. culture 🙂
The Little Tramp’s Classic Labor Lesson
In his classic 1936 film, “Modern Times,” Charlie Chaplin has to work so fast tightening bolts in a steel factory that he finally goes crazy. In a memorable scene that has become a metaphor for labor exploitation, the Little Tramp is run through the factory’s enormous gears.
For President Hugo Chavez’s socialist government, the film is more than just entertainment: It’s become a teaching tool. Since January, in a bid to expose the evils of “savage capitalism,” the Labor Ministry has shown the Chaplin film to thousands of workers in places such as this rundown industrial suburb of Caracas.
Nuclear armed long range missile test. Call the UN security council!!!
India successfully tests its longest-range missile
India on Sunday test-fired its longest-range nuclear-capable ballistic missile, the Agni III, which can hit targets deep within China, a senior defense ministry official said.
The missile, whose name means fire, has a range of more than 3,000 km, and was launched from Wheeler island off the coast of the eastern state of Orissa, the official, who did not wish to be named, told Reuters.
The test was successful, he added.
The Observer’s (Guardian) editors have been drinking the cool aid on Afghanistan
Winning in Afghanistan means telling home truths
The battle in Afghanistan is one that must not be lost. It is a fight to stop the country becoming a base for international terrorism, to show that democracy can be built in one of the most inhospitable countries in the world, to sustain the battered credibility of the entire international community.
…
Afghanistan is not Iraq. Westerners were welcomed into the country five years ago and the international coalition still has much support. In many parts of the country, significant improvements, especially in women’s education, are evident.
…
It will need much more money, much more political attention, many more troops than anyone has previously admitted. Having a coalition that is truly international – not just composed of Americans and Europeans – will help. So, too, will addressing regional issues that currently destabilise Afghanistan. However, enough men on the ground backed by sufficient aid and an effective diplomatic effort, can achieve much.
…
But the West’s political leaders must be explicit about what is at stake and what is needed. They must win popular support at home. This will be particularly vital if the effort needs to be sustained, maybe over decades. Yet, only recently, the Americans halved their aid budget and cut troop deployment. It hardly indicates long-term serious intent.
…
Losing in Afghanistan would cost all of us very dear.
Who “welcomed” westerners in Afghanistan five years ago ??? On cannot win in Afghanistan. Several have tried as the Brits should remeber and all have failed.
In the London Times Jeremy Clarkson continues to smear the U.S. I can´t help it I find it amusing satirical. What a bloak.
Arrested just for looking weird
So far we’ve looked at the problem in America of power without responsibility. Step out of the loop, do something unusual and you’ll encounter a wall of low-paid, low-intellect workers whose sole job is to prevent their bosses from being sued. As a result, you never hear anyone say: “Oh I’m sure it’ll be all right.”
…
The main problem I suspect is a complete lack of knowledge about the world. I asked people in the streets of Vegas to name two European countries. The very first woman I spoke to said: “Oh yes. What’s that one with kangaroos?”
Then you’ve got New Orleans, which, nearly a year after Katrina, is still utterly smashed and ruined. Now I’m sorry but insects can build shelter on their own. Birds can build nests without a state handout. So why are the people of Louisiana sitting around waiting for someone else to do the repairs?
I tried to help out. I tried to give a car I’d been using to a Christian mission. But I was threatened with legal action because the car in question was a 91 and not the 98 that had allegedly been promised. A very angry woman accused me of “misrepresentation”.
…
But it’s the idiocracy that really gets me down. The constant coaxing you have to do to get anything done. “No” is the default setting whether you want to change lanes on a motorway or get a drink on a Sunday. It’s like trying to negotiate with a donkey. Once, I urged a cop in Pensacola, Florida, to use his common sense and let me load a van in the no loading zone, since the airport was shut and it would make no difference. “Sir,” he said, “you don’t need common sense when you’ve got laws.”
That, I think, probably says it all.
Posted by: anna missed | Jul 9 2006 8:50 utc | 36
Author Mario Vargas Llosa: I’m ashamed to be Israel’s friend
Internationally acclaimed author and former Peruvian presidential candidate, Mario Vargas Llosa, over the weekend slammed Israel’s “out of proportion” operation in the Gaza Strip, saying he was ashamed of being Israel’s friend.
The Jerusalem Prize recipient rebuked Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s administration at a Madrid convention organized by the International Freedom Fund, a South American research fund headed by Vargas Llosa and based out of Argentina.
“Israel had become a powerful and arrogant country, and it is the role of its friends to be highly critical of its policies,” Vargas Llosa said.
…
“Undoubtedly the abduction of the soldier is an unacceptable move, and the firing of Qassam rockets proves that there are radicals on both sides, but the Israeli response is out of proportion. Paradoxically, the extremists on both sides have a shared agenda and its purpose is to prevent any chance for negotiations and mutual concessions.”
annie,
a nice end to my day
b,
you better not watch that
te-he
Posted by: anna missed | Jul 9 2006 9:15 utc | 40
annie
[shudder]
it will take a while for me to forgive you for that. gawd! he even had dachshunds in the video.
Posted by: dan of steele | Jul 9 2006 9:26 utc | 41
Recommended
Gideon Levi Who started?
Israel is causing electricity blackouts, laying sieges, bombing and shelling, assassinating and imprisoning, killing and wounding civilians, including children and babies, in horrifying numbers, but “they started.”
They are also “breaking the rules” laid down by Israel: We are allowed to bomb anything we want and they are not allowed to launch Qassams. When they fire a Qassam at Ashkelon, that’s an “escalation of the conflict,” and when we bomb a university and a school, it’s perfectly alright. Why? Because they started. That’s why the majority thinks that all the justice is on our side. Like in a schoolyard fight, the argument about who started is Israel’s winning moral argument to justify every injustice.
…
Gaza is still a prison and its inhabitants are still doomed to live in poverty and oppression. Israel closes them off from the sea, the air and land, except for a limited safety valve at the Rafah crossing. They cannot visit their relatives in the West Bank or look for work in Israel, upon which the Gazan economy has been dependent for some 40 years. Sometimes goods can be transported, sometimes not. Gaza has no chance of escaping its poverty under these conditions. Nobody will invest in it, nobody can develop it, nobody can feel free in it. Israel left the cage, threw away the keys and left the residents to their bitter fate. Now, less than a year after the disengagement, it is going back, with violence and force.
What could otherwise have been expected? That Israel would unilaterally withdraw, brutally and outrageously ignoring the Palestinians and their needs, and that they would silently bear their bitter fate and would not continue to fight for their liberty, livelihood and dignity? We promised a safe passage to the West Bank and didn’t keep the promise. We promised to free prisoners and didn’t keep the promise. We supported democratic elections and then boycotted the legally elected leadership, confiscating funds that belong to it, and declaring war on it. We could have withdrawn from Gaza through negotiations and coordination, while strengthening the existing Palestinian leadership, but we refused to do so. And now, we complain about “a lack of leadership?” We did everything we could to undermine their society and leadership, making sure as much as possible that the disengagement would not be a new chapter in our relationship with the neighboring nation, and now we are amazed by the violence and hatred that we sowed with our own hands.
…
Gaza is in serious trouble, ruled by death, horror and daily difficulties, far from the eyes and hearts of Israelis. We are only shown the Qassams. We only see the Qassams. The West Bank is still under the boot of occupation, the settlements are flourishing, and every limply extended hand for an agreement, including that of Ismail Haniyeh, is immediately rejected. And after all this, if someone still has second thoughts, the winning answer is promptly delivered: “They started.” They started and justice is on our side, while the fact is that they did not start and justice is not with us.
dan , how can you say that? what about those angels heh?
anna missed,so glad you appreciated my choice for a nightcap 😉 thanks for the link to cole, i found this..
LAtimes , just goes from bad to worse.
Police Abuses in Iraq Detailed
Brutality and corruption are rampant in Iraq’s police force, with abuses including the rape of female prisoners, the release of terrorism suspects in exchange for bribes, assassinations of police officers and participation in insurgent bombings, according to confidential Iraqi government documents detailing more than 400 police corruption investigations.
A recent assessment by State Department police training contractors echoes the investigative documents, concluding that strong paramilitary and insurgent influences within the force and endemic corruption have undermined public confidence in the government.
Officers also have beaten prisoners to death, been involved in kidnapping rings, sold thousands of stolen and forged Iraqi passports and passed along vital information to insurgents, the Iraqi documents allege.
The investigative documents are the latest in a string of disturbing revelations of abuse and corruption by Iraq’s Interior Ministry, a Cabinet-level agency that employs 268,610 police, immigration, facilities security and dignitary protection officers.
After the discovery in November of a secret Interior Ministry detention facility in Baghdad operated by police intelligence officials affiliated with a Shiite Muslim militia, U.S. officials declared 2006 “the year of the police.” They vowed a renewed effort to expand and professionalize Iraq’s civilian officer corps.
President Bush has said that the training of a competent Iraqi police force is linked to the timing of an eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops and a key element in the war in Iraq.
But U.S. officials say the renegade force in the ministry’s intelligence service that ran the bunker in Baghdad’s Jadiriya neighborhood continues to operate out of the Interior Ministry building’s seventh floor. A senior U.S. military official in Iraq, who spoke on condition of anonymity in an interview last month, confirmed that one of the leaders of the renegade group, Mahmoud Waeli, is the “minister of intelligence for the Badr Corps” Shiite militia and a main recruiter of paramilitary elements for Interior Ministry police forces.
The challenges facing Bolani, a Shiite engineer who has no policing experience and entered politics for the first time after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, are highlighted in a recent assessment by police trainers hired by the State Department. According to the report, corruption in the Interior Ministry has hampered its effectiveness and its credibility with Iraqis.
The report increased tensions between the Pentagon, which runs the police training program, and the State Department, which has been pushing to expand its limited training role in Iraq, said a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The report strikes contradictory tones, saying that the Interior Ministry continues to improve and that its forces are on track to take over civil security from U.S. and Iraqi military elements by the end of the year, while outlining shocking problems with corruption and abuse.
“The document basically shows that Interior Ministry management has failed,” the U.S. official said. “The document didn’t directly address U.S. policy failures, but I guess it does show that too.”
ya think?
Posted by: annie | Jul 9 2006 9:48 utc | 43
Form annies link above:
U.S. officials say they have known about Interior Ministry abuses for years but have done little to thwart them, choosing instead to push Iraqi leaders to solve their own problems.
“The military had been at the bunker prior to the raid in November,” said the U.S. official, referring to the Jadiriya facility. “But they said nothing.”
…
“They sit up there on the 11th floor of the ministry building and don’t talk to the Iraqis,” the official said of U.S. police trainers assigned to the Interior Ministry headquarters tower. “They say they do policy and [that] it’s up to the Iraqis — well, they’re just doing nothing. The MOI is the most broken ministry in Iraq.”
“I Was a Mouthpiece for the American Military”
Many embedded reporters have managed to do fine work from Iraq, but there are significant obstacles for even the best and most determined journalists. I recently spoke with a former senior TV producer for Reuters who worked in Iraq between 2003 and 2004. The producer, who asked that she not be identified by name, arrived in Tikrit soon after the capture of Saddam Hussein on December 13, 2003, and was embedded with American troops for 45 days. She told me that, over the years, she has worked closely with the French army, NATO troops in the Balkans, and UN peacekeepers in covering war and conflict, but she said had never faced the sorts of restrictions imposed by the Pentagon on journalists in Iraq. “I was,” she said, “a mouthpiece for the American military.”
…
The producer said that it was impossible to pursue stories frowned upon by the military—for example, on how the local population viewed the occupation and American troops—because she was not permitted to leave the base on her own. The height of absurdity came when the Tikrit compound came under serious attack one evening and the producer was asked by the Reuters bureau in Baghdad to phone in a report on the situation. “We couldn’t find out anything [from the U.S. military],” she said, so Reuters had to cover the fighting from Baghdad, despite having a TV producer and reporter on the ground at the compound in Tikrit.
…
She and the other journalists stationed at the base in Tikrit grew cynical about their work and came to believe that they were being used. “Other reporters in Iraq,” she said, “especially local Iraqis [working for Western outlets], were able to get both sides of the story, but we were getting only one side.” During her 45 days in Tikrit, she told me, she didn’t file a single story critical of the American project in Iraq. “There was no balance,” she said. “What we were doing wasn’t real journalism.”
The American soldiers accused of raping an Iraqi girl and then murdering her and her family may have provoked an insurgent revenge plot in which two of their comrades were abducted and beheaded last month, it has been claimed.
…
residents of the neighbouring town of Mahmoudiyah have told The Sunday Telegraph that their kidnap was carried out to avenge the attack on a local girl Abeer Qassim Hamza, 15, and her family. They claim that insurgents have vowed to kidnap and kill another eight American troops to exact a 10-to-one revenge for the rape and murder of the girl.
Thanks to Noirette for the link.
I’m at a slow connection and will look at it,
weigh dan of steele’s reaction, and comment later (tomorrow).
Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Jul 9 2006 17:14 utc | 49
NYT titles Million in Spain Hear Pope Praise Traditional Family
They forget to add. “Nobody cares”.
Never ending…
Hoekstra: Bush Hiding More Unchecked Spy Programs
Here’s the NYTimes article C&L refers to
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jul 10 2006 3:15 utc | 52
uncle, larry johnson’s take on the hoekstra letter:
Today’s news from Eric Lichtblau and Scott Shane that the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Peter Hoekstra, sent a nasty gram to the White House complaining of being kept in the dark on intelligence matters is significant, but misleading. It is significant because Hoekstra is staunch defender of the Bush Administration and yet is now willing to insist that his committee must be briefed on intel operations. So far, so good. What the reporters missed is the underlying message in Hoekstra’s letter–that the Bush Administration is being too soft on the intel community, particularly the CIA, and that the CIA is a rogue political actor.
Posted by: conchita | Jul 10 2006 3:30 utc | 54
Defense contractor appears in multiple corruption investigations Can anyone connect the dots?
thanks conchita
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jul 10 2006 3:35 utc | 55
thanks, b real, i was in mexico at a zocalo after the last election. it was a phenomenon i have never experienced in the u.s. been having a lot of thoughts about that experience this past week and have considered sending them to bernhard if i can get them organized on “paper.”
Posted by: conchita | Jul 10 2006 3:37 utc | 56
in response to clarksons article in the london times (#35)he’s got it about right,my parents live in palmdale and i spent most of my evacuation time in biloxi.unlike new orleans which just has a special feel to it,both places are shake and bake.the one saving grace (the old plantation houses)have all been washed away.
Posted by: onzaga | Jul 10 2006 3:50 utc | 57
Now that I’ve had a chance to look at the Groves link from
#23, dan of steele’s comments, and the comments appended to
the Groves material itself, I find myself in agreement with the critics, who tend to substantiate their objections. Some already available material, some “new” but highly dubious stuff, and a major ego trip for Groves. It will take
a much better and collaborative effort to overcome the “prevailing wisdom”. Until such time as a multiply sourced and collectively validated counter legend has been hammered out, deliberate disinformation and megalomaniacal paranoia will continue to muddy the waters. Groves is by no means the only case in which the second possiblity may be scented. It’s a great pity that the official conspiracy theory is strengthened by such flawed expositions, which cast doubt even
on more substantial efforts.
Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Jul 10 2006 11:07 utc | 58
I didn’t go into a point by point rebuttal of Mr Grove and hopefully did not come across as being dismissive and arrogantly so. His story stinks and my bullshit sensors went off. I am very disappointed with these pretenders as they do a great deal of harm without knowing it.
The second link (eighth estate I think) was to the controlled demolition theory and I really did not spend much time there. It is clear to me that the towers were “pulled” and as I mentioned earlier it was a wise thing to do. This provides a chink in the armor because if people focused in on this with a laser beam you could really upset the 9-11 commission’s findings by calling them out on an obvious and easily provable lie.
getting wrapped around the axle with credit card companies and sex slave trade is counter productive.
Posted by: dan of steele | Jul 10 2006 12:46 utc | 59
after having thought about this a little more I come to believe the reason for the coverup of the demolition of the three towers in the WTC is mere cowardice from those responsible for giving the order. They simply do not want to be bothered with wrongful death lawsuits (from the families of the victims who may have still been alive when the towers were pulled) and have to listen to all the Monday morning quarterbacks droning on forever on how they would have done it differently.
At the end of the day we know that the decision was made and probably not lightly, people died and their families have been compensated. Is it really something to get spun up about?
Sometimes it is just better to tell people a good story rather than make them grapple with hard, cold reality. They can guess or suspect all they want but they can always go back to their comfort zone if need be. I do realise this is a neocon/neolib POV and I do not subscribe to it…I am merely trying to make sense of the findings of the commission.
Posted by: dan of steele | Jul 11 2006 8:31 utc | 60
Hi, Dan.
Just a small wake-up call, my wife and I worked in downtown Manhattan, however she had training sessions scheduled for the afternoon shift, and I had worked very late the night before, so we both were asleep at 9 am rather than at work that morning.
We spent the day in disaster mode, taking turns on the phone locating and communicating between my two colleagues who both travelled through the World Trade Center Path Train station that morning, their spouses, and my wife’s colleagues who were reporting from, and stuck in buildings mere blocks away from the collapsed skyscrapers.
This was a serious day and people we know lost their lives and loved ones.
At this point I am 5 years beyond that day but I still check the Debka.com website first thing each morning, it is a creature of Israeli propaganda but, like drudgereport.com, a good source for war news. And war news is what I needed each morning after September 11, 2001 to see if there were hints of danger that might warn us off of going in to work that day.
Not to mention the anthrax. So I’m a reasonable guy and I’ve learned to be a bit more calm about the whole thing, but this was and is scary shit.
It happens each day in Palestine, Afghanistan and Iraq. I feel I’m straying off-topic but I want to respond to your thought that it may not be something worth getting “spun up about.”
Dan, I think it is worth being spun up about, mostly because if it isn’t, what is? Sons and daughters killing in the ME, being killed, that is too.
But this one is close to home for me and mine. They bombed my New York and it will never be the same.
Posted by: jonku | Jul 11 2006 8:56 utc | 61
please forgive me jonku for being clumsy. I do understand that losing friends and family is painful and I do not want to belittle that.
I was referring to the decision to “pull” the three towers. Since most of us really can’t know what was happening there and there is little chance that we will find out given the level of secrecy in our present government, I said get spun up because it is about all we can do. Maybe it was the best decision…I don’t know.
I remain convinced the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania was shot down too. I think that may have been the correct decision as well based on information available at the time.
I hope I never to have to make a decision to kill in order to save lives….knowing that hesitation could cost even more. it can’t be easy.
as Mr Spock used to say on Startrek, “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few”. but he was a freakin’ Vulcan and had no time for emotions.
Posted by: dan of steele | Jul 11 2006 11:47 utc | 62