Wednesday, February 18, 2004
Plame II:
We know of the outing of Valerie Plame, CIA agent, by an Administration source. It was characteristic of this group. Witness this report from the AP about a counter-terrorism case in Detroit where the Asst. US Attorney Richard Convertino is suing Ashcroft for “gross mismanagement”.
A federal prosecutor in a major terrorism case in Detroit has taken the rare step of suing Attorney General John Ashcroft, alleging the Justice Department interfered with the case, compromised a confidential informant and exaggerated results in the war on terrorism…
Convertino also accused Justice officials of intentionally divulging the name of one of his confidential terrorism informants (CI) to retaliate against him.
The leak put the informant at grave risk, forced him to flee the United States and "interfered with the ability of the United States to obtain information from the CI about current and future terrorist activities," the suit alleges. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/02/17/terror/main600677.shtml
9/11- The Jersey Widows
They go by several names; they are most persuasive advocates for accountability. They make a clear case for Administration incompetence (on 9/11) and intransigence (since 9/11). If you missed it, you can listen via the link. http://www.theconnection.org/shows/2004/02/20040217_b_main.asp
Jobs:
Economists agree that the economy must produce between 125,000 and 150,000 jobs each month just to keep up with the growing population. Thus, the Bush 4 years needed to create 6 to 7.2 million jobs in that period. Yet, we’re down over 2 million thus far. So, the net loss is 8- 9 million. You’re not going to see that figure in the media, as it’s too discomforting a frame.
The Administration is backing off its expectation of robust job growth for the balance of the year.
Treasury Secretary John W. Snow distanced himself on Tuesday from the Bush administration's official prediction that the nation would add 2.6 million jobs by the end of this year.
That prediction, which is far more optimistic than that of many private sector forecasters, was part of the annual economic report released last week by the White House Council of Economic Advisers and was immediately echoed by Mr. Bush himself. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/18/politics/18JOBS.html?pagewanted=all
Media Concentration: Strange Bedfellows:
A few people may go to this issue after the Janet Jackson show at the Super Bowl. The NY Times’ William Safire remains an ally on this issue. His excellent piece:
If one huge corporation controlled both the production and the dissemination of most of our news and entertainment, couldn't it rule the world?
Can't happen here, you say; America is the land of competition that generates new technology to ensure a diversity of voices. But consider how a supine Congress and a feckless majority of the Federal Communications Commission have been failing to protect our access to a variety of news, views and entertainment.
The media giant known as Viacom-CBS-MTV just showed us how it controls both content and communication of the sexiest Super Bowl. The five other big sisters that now bestride the world are (1) Murdoch-FoxTV-HarperCollins-WeeklyStandard-NewYorkPost-LondonTimes-DirecTV; (2) G.E.-NBC-Universal-Vivendi; (3) Time-Warner-CNN-AOL; (4) Disney-ABC-ESPN; and (5) the biggest cable company, Comcast…
You say the U.S. government would never allow that? The Horatius lollygagging at the bridge is the F.C.C.'s Michael Powell, who never met a merger he didn't like. Cowering next to him is General Roundheels at the Bush Justice Department's Pro-Trust Division, which last year waved through Murdoch's takeover of DirecTV. (Joel Klein, Last of the Trustbusters, now teaches school in New York.)
But what of the Senate, guardian of free speech? There was Powell last week before Chairman John McCain's Commerce Committee, currying favor with cultural conservatives by pretending to be outraged over Janet Jackson's "costume reveal." The F.C.C. chairman, looking stern, pledged "ruthless and rigorous scrutiny" of any Comcast bid to merge Disney-ABC-ESPN into a huge DisCast. Media giants — always willing to agree to cosmetic "restrictions" on their way to amalgamation — chuckled at the notion of a "ruthless Mike."
McCain's plaintive question to Powell — "Where will it all end?" — is too little, too late. This senatorial apostle of deregulation, who last week called the world's attention to the media concentration that helps subvert democracy in Russia, has been blind to the danger of headlong concentration of media power in America. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/16/opinion/16SAFI.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists%2fWilliam%20Safire
Rest-of-the-World, I: Haiti: Fine summary in The Nation (Amy Wilentz)
The Aristide administration, which has been overthrown once already, has been egalitarian in the lives destroyed during its time: Among its dead can be counted the president's former friends and his foes, democrats and supporters of dictatorship. Among the victims have been policemen and prisoners and politicians; rich men and poor, journalists and slum-dwellers, human-rights workers and doctors and businessmen. Almost no sector has been untouched.
No one can argue that Jean-Bertrand Aristide's presidency has been in any way successful other than this: It exists. He was elected in 1990 with enormous hope by an overwhelming majority in a legitimate election--and quickly overthrown by the Haitian Army and its friends. In 1994 he was returned to power through the good will of the Clinton Administration, in the optimistic expectation that he would be able to turn Haiti around. He was not able to do so for a combination of reasons, some political, some personal and most having to do with his inability to conduct a happy relationship either with the Bush Administration or with his own business and intellectual elite. Washington also cut off huge portions of aid, which cannot have helped Aristide's standing. Still, a fatal combination of arrogance and naïveté on his part made Aristide's difficult position much more intractable. Meanwhile, the Haitian opposition has been coddled and pushed toward the depths of intransigence by Aristide's detractors in the US government, in both Haiti and in Washington. By now, with the country well on its way to chaos, many argue that Aristide has exhausted the electorate's patience and must be replaced.
Yet now--as he finally begins to recognize how powerful the opposition has become despite all his political jockeying and playacting--should be the time for all friends of Haiti, especially in the US government, to support Aristide's continuation at the helm: not because he is good but because he is president. http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20040301&s=wilentz
Rest-of-the-World, II- Cyprus
Kudos to Koffi Annan and the Turks/Greeks who have finally addressed this 40 year conflict…proof that the UN can make a difference.
Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders on Friday accepted Secretary General Kofi Annan's plan for ending the decades-long division of Cyprus and pledged to negotiate reunification in time for the island's May 1 entry into the European Union.
The deal between the Greek Cypriot president, Tassos Papadopoulos, and his Turkish Cypriot counterpart, Rauf Denktash, was reached after three days of talks at the United Nations, and brought forth expressions of hope that a solution to one of the world's most intractable conflicts was at hand. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/14/international/europe/14NATI.html
Bush on the Edge?
Have we reached a tipping point? This Administration is built on lies; its Figurehead is a faux cowboy-business failure towel-snapper who relies on memorized talking points; Senior got off easy despite his involvement in the Iran-Contra, October Surprise and other scandals. (Kerry knows plenty about these chapters.) Kevin Phillips’ book vividly captures what an entitled, non-contributing oily family they’ve been. But they won’t leave on their own accord.
The media are showing increasing teeth, witness this unusually biting piece by Richard Cohen in the Washington Post.
But a rereading of the "Meet the Press" transcript suggests that Bush's most critical quality -- certainty -- has oozed from him like helium from a balloon. Here was a man who was continually trying to pump himself up. He used the word "dangerous" over and over again, applying it to Saddam Hussein without ever quite saying why. He repeatedly called the former dictator a "madman," which is to say that he was capable of anything. In fact, though, he was capable of very little and in recent years had attempted almost nothing.
After Bush's "Meet the Press" performance, countless commentators tried to figure out why he had done so poorly. Many of them focused on performance, political artifice -- the part of politics that looks so easy until, as Wes Clark did, you try it for yourself. Yes, Bush did not perform well. But even a brilliant actor needs material.
Others lamented Bush's verbal klutziness. If only he could talk like Tony Blair, one of them sighed. But the reason he cannot talk like Blair is because he doesn't think like Blair. The British prime minister can acknowledge an awkward fact, even a mistake, and keep on going. Bush can only insist that he is right. It doesn't matter that the facts have changed.
This had little to do with speech and a lot to do with thought. Once certainty is snatched from him, he seems in a state of vertigo where he grasps at certain words to steady himself. Dangerous. Madman. But if a madman does not have the weapons you said he did, then he is not dangerous, and if he did not have the weapons then maybe he was not as mad as we thought he was. There is much to ponder here.
Bush, though, will ponder not -- not on Iraq and not on taxes. He believes in minimal taxes, and he believes this no matter what the economic or fiscal conditions -- boom, bust, surplus, deficit. There is no play in the man, no notion that in economics, one size cannot fit all. "I believe that the best way to stimulate economic growth is to let people keep more of their own money," he told Russert. It is that simple.
There is something childlike about the "Meet the Press" transcript. The repetition. The simplistic thinking. "Saddam Hussein was a danger to America," the president said repeatedly. But how? He had no missiles that could reach our shores. He had no nuclear weapons program. He did not play ball with terrorist outfits or, for that matter, they with him. "The man was a threat," Bush said. How? How? How?
"He had a weapon," the president insisted. But he didn't, remember? That was the whole point of David Kay's report. Oh, but Hussein was a madman.
The president does not do nuance -- that we know. But the failure to come up with weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is not a nuance. It is a massive reversal of fact, hot turned into cold, tall into short. Bush's inability or refusal to come to grips with the new facts is not the product of a poor performance or an errant tongue, but of a troubling insistence that his beliefs cannot be wrong. That -- nuance be damned -- makes him look like a dope. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46667-2004Feb16?language=printer
US Arabic channel a turn-off From the Guardian (Matthew Craft)
Al Hurra, a new American satellite TV channel aimed at viewers in the Middle East, has been greeted frostily in Cairo, reports Matthew Craft.
The day after the United States unveiled its Arabic-language satellite channel, based in Virginia and beamed across the Arab world, few people in downtown Cairo confessed to tuning in for the inaugural broadcast. Opinions, however, were plentiful.
"You mean the American propaganda channel?" proved the most popular response.
On Saturday, the American answer to Al Jazeera hit the airwaves. Al Hurra, "the free one", began its broadcast at 5pm in Cairo when Mohammad - who asked that his full name not be used - was still busy helping customers in his busy electronics store. The station ran an exclusive interview with President Bush over two days, but Mohammad saw no reason to listen, yet again, to the American point of view. No matter how many times he hears the American line it will not make a difference.
"Why would I watch Bush on television when every day I can read what he says here," he said, pointing to his newspaper. "We know what the American policies are, and we still don't like them." http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,7493,1149373,00.html
-R
We know of the outing of Valerie Plame, CIA agent, by an Administration source. It was characteristic of this group. Witness this report from the AP about a counter-terrorism case in Detroit where the Asst. US Attorney Richard Convertino is suing Ashcroft for “gross mismanagement”.
A federal prosecutor in a major terrorism case in Detroit has taken the rare step of suing Attorney General John Ashcroft, alleging the Justice Department interfered with the case, compromised a confidential informant and exaggerated results in the war on terrorism…
Convertino also accused Justice officials of intentionally divulging the name of one of his confidential terrorism informants (CI) to retaliate against him.
The leak put the informant at grave risk, forced him to flee the United States and "interfered with the ability of the United States to obtain information from the CI about current and future terrorist activities," the suit alleges. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/02/17/terror/main600677.shtml
9/11- The Jersey Widows
They go by several names; they are most persuasive advocates for accountability. They make a clear case for Administration incompetence (on 9/11) and intransigence (since 9/11). If you missed it, you can listen via the link. http://www.theconnection.org/shows/2004/02/20040217_b_main.asp
Jobs:
Economists agree that the economy must produce between 125,000 and 150,000 jobs each month just to keep up with the growing population. Thus, the Bush 4 years needed to create 6 to 7.2 million jobs in that period. Yet, we’re down over 2 million thus far. So, the net loss is 8- 9 million. You’re not going to see that figure in the media, as it’s too discomforting a frame.
The Administration is backing off its expectation of robust job growth for the balance of the year.
Treasury Secretary John W. Snow distanced himself on Tuesday from the Bush administration's official prediction that the nation would add 2.6 million jobs by the end of this year.
That prediction, which is far more optimistic than that of many private sector forecasters, was part of the annual economic report released last week by the White House Council of Economic Advisers and was immediately echoed by Mr. Bush himself. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/18/politics/18JOBS.html?pagewanted=all
Media Concentration: Strange Bedfellows:
A few people may go to this issue after the Janet Jackson show at the Super Bowl. The NY Times’ William Safire remains an ally on this issue. His excellent piece:
If one huge corporation controlled both the production and the dissemination of most of our news and entertainment, couldn't it rule the world?
Can't happen here, you say; America is the land of competition that generates new technology to ensure a diversity of voices. But consider how a supine Congress and a feckless majority of the Federal Communications Commission have been failing to protect our access to a variety of news, views and entertainment.
The media giant known as Viacom-CBS-MTV just showed us how it controls both content and communication of the sexiest Super Bowl. The five other big sisters that now bestride the world are (1) Murdoch-FoxTV-HarperCollins-WeeklyStandard-NewYorkPost-LondonTimes-DirecTV; (2) G.E.-NBC-Universal-Vivendi; (3) Time-Warner-CNN-AOL; (4) Disney-ABC-ESPN; and (5) the biggest cable company, Comcast…
You say the U.S. government would never allow that? The Horatius lollygagging at the bridge is the F.C.C.'s Michael Powell, who never met a merger he didn't like. Cowering next to him is General Roundheels at the Bush Justice Department's Pro-Trust Division, which last year waved through Murdoch's takeover of DirecTV. (Joel Klein, Last of the Trustbusters, now teaches school in New York.)
But what of the Senate, guardian of free speech? There was Powell last week before Chairman John McCain's Commerce Committee, currying favor with cultural conservatives by pretending to be outraged over Janet Jackson's "costume reveal." The F.C.C. chairman, looking stern, pledged "ruthless and rigorous scrutiny" of any Comcast bid to merge Disney-ABC-ESPN into a huge DisCast. Media giants — always willing to agree to cosmetic "restrictions" on their way to amalgamation — chuckled at the notion of a "ruthless Mike."
McCain's plaintive question to Powell — "Where will it all end?" — is too little, too late. This senatorial apostle of deregulation, who last week called the world's attention to the media concentration that helps subvert democracy in Russia, has been blind to the danger of headlong concentration of media power in America. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/16/opinion/16SAFI.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists%2fWilliam%20Safire
Rest-of-the-World, I: Haiti: Fine summary in The Nation (Amy Wilentz)
The Aristide administration, which has been overthrown once already, has been egalitarian in the lives destroyed during its time: Among its dead can be counted the president's former friends and his foes, democrats and supporters of dictatorship. Among the victims have been policemen and prisoners and politicians; rich men and poor, journalists and slum-dwellers, human-rights workers and doctors and businessmen. Almost no sector has been untouched.
No one can argue that Jean-Bertrand Aristide's presidency has been in any way successful other than this: It exists. He was elected in 1990 with enormous hope by an overwhelming majority in a legitimate election--and quickly overthrown by the Haitian Army and its friends. In 1994 he was returned to power through the good will of the Clinton Administration, in the optimistic expectation that he would be able to turn Haiti around. He was not able to do so for a combination of reasons, some political, some personal and most having to do with his inability to conduct a happy relationship either with the Bush Administration or with his own business and intellectual elite. Washington also cut off huge portions of aid, which cannot have helped Aristide's standing. Still, a fatal combination of arrogance and naïveté on his part made Aristide's difficult position much more intractable. Meanwhile, the Haitian opposition has been coddled and pushed toward the depths of intransigence by Aristide's detractors in the US government, in both Haiti and in Washington. By now, with the country well on its way to chaos, many argue that Aristide has exhausted the electorate's patience and must be replaced.
Yet now--as he finally begins to recognize how powerful the opposition has become despite all his political jockeying and playacting--should be the time for all friends of Haiti, especially in the US government, to support Aristide's continuation at the helm: not because he is good but because he is president. http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20040301&s=wilentz
Rest-of-the-World, II- Cyprus
Kudos to Koffi Annan and the Turks/Greeks who have finally addressed this 40 year conflict…proof that the UN can make a difference.
Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders on Friday accepted Secretary General Kofi Annan's plan for ending the decades-long division of Cyprus and pledged to negotiate reunification in time for the island's May 1 entry into the European Union.
The deal between the Greek Cypriot president, Tassos Papadopoulos, and his Turkish Cypriot counterpart, Rauf Denktash, was reached after three days of talks at the United Nations, and brought forth expressions of hope that a solution to one of the world's most intractable conflicts was at hand. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/14/international/europe/14NATI.html
Bush on the Edge?
Have we reached a tipping point? This Administration is built on lies; its Figurehead is a faux cowboy-business failure towel-snapper who relies on memorized talking points; Senior got off easy despite his involvement in the Iran-Contra, October Surprise and other scandals. (Kerry knows plenty about these chapters.) Kevin Phillips’ book vividly captures what an entitled, non-contributing oily family they’ve been. But they won’t leave on their own accord.
The media are showing increasing teeth, witness this unusually biting piece by Richard Cohen in the Washington Post.
But a rereading of the "Meet the Press" transcript suggests that Bush's most critical quality -- certainty -- has oozed from him like helium from a balloon. Here was a man who was continually trying to pump himself up. He used the word "dangerous" over and over again, applying it to Saddam Hussein without ever quite saying why. He repeatedly called the former dictator a "madman," which is to say that he was capable of anything. In fact, though, he was capable of very little and in recent years had attempted almost nothing.
After Bush's "Meet the Press" performance, countless commentators tried to figure out why he had done so poorly. Many of them focused on performance, political artifice -- the part of politics that looks so easy until, as Wes Clark did, you try it for yourself. Yes, Bush did not perform well. But even a brilliant actor needs material.
Others lamented Bush's verbal klutziness. If only he could talk like Tony Blair, one of them sighed. But the reason he cannot talk like Blair is because he doesn't think like Blair. The British prime minister can acknowledge an awkward fact, even a mistake, and keep on going. Bush can only insist that he is right. It doesn't matter that the facts have changed.
This had little to do with speech and a lot to do with thought. Once certainty is snatched from him, he seems in a state of vertigo where he grasps at certain words to steady himself. Dangerous. Madman. But if a madman does not have the weapons you said he did, then he is not dangerous, and if he did not have the weapons then maybe he was not as mad as we thought he was. There is much to ponder here.
Bush, though, will ponder not -- not on Iraq and not on taxes. He believes in minimal taxes, and he believes this no matter what the economic or fiscal conditions -- boom, bust, surplus, deficit. There is no play in the man, no notion that in economics, one size cannot fit all. "I believe that the best way to stimulate economic growth is to let people keep more of their own money," he told Russert. It is that simple.
There is something childlike about the "Meet the Press" transcript. The repetition. The simplistic thinking. "Saddam Hussein was a danger to America," the president said repeatedly. But how? He had no missiles that could reach our shores. He had no nuclear weapons program. He did not play ball with terrorist outfits or, for that matter, they with him. "The man was a threat," Bush said. How? How? How?
"He had a weapon," the president insisted. But he didn't, remember? That was the whole point of David Kay's report. Oh, but Hussein was a madman.
The president does not do nuance -- that we know. But the failure to come up with weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is not a nuance. It is a massive reversal of fact, hot turned into cold, tall into short. Bush's inability or refusal to come to grips with the new facts is not the product of a poor performance or an errant tongue, but of a troubling insistence that his beliefs cannot be wrong. That -- nuance be damned -- makes him look like a dope. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46667-2004Feb16?language=printer
US Arabic channel a turn-off From the Guardian (Matthew Craft)
Al Hurra, a new American satellite TV channel aimed at viewers in the Middle East, has been greeted frostily in Cairo, reports Matthew Craft.
The day after the United States unveiled its Arabic-language satellite channel, based in Virginia and beamed across the Arab world, few people in downtown Cairo confessed to tuning in for the inaugural broadcast. Opinions, however, were plentiful.
"You mean the American propaganda channel?" proved the most popular response.
On Saturday, the American answer to Al Jazeera hit the airwaves. Al Hurra, "the free one", began its broadcast at 5pm in Cairo when Mohammad - who asked that his full name not be used - was still busy helping customers in his busy electronics store. The station ran an exclusive interview with President Bush over two days, but Mohammad saw no reason to listen, yet again, to the American point of view. No matter how many times he hears the American line it will not make a difference.
"Why would I watch Bush on television when every day I can read what he says here," he said, pointing to his newspaper. "We know what the American policies are, and we still don't like them." http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,7493,1149373,00.html
-R
