Thursday, December 02, 2004
What’s Happening, Iraq:
Re-americanization: In other words, more troops, rationalized by some as ‘taking advantage of the momentum after the Fallujah victory.’ I got a bridge in Brooklyn…
And, the abuse, known LONG ago: The latest revelation that we are less the civil libertarian than being in the tradition of Chile under Pinochet. We are NOT the world’s good guys, and the world knows it. [Certainly the Canadians know, and expressed their feelings during Bush’s visit.] Where are you, John McCain, who so understand torture in prisons…
A confidential report to Army generals in Iraq in December 2003 warned that members of an elite military and CIA task force were abusing detainees, a finding delivered more than a month before Army investigators received the photographs from Abu Ghraib prison that touched off investigations into prisoner mistreatment.
The report, which was not released publicly and was recently obtained by The Washington Post, concluded that some U.S. arrest and detention practices at the time could "technically" be illegal. It also said coalition fighters could be feeding the Iraqi insurgency by "making gratuitous enemies" as they conducted sweeps netting hundreds of detainees who probably did not belong in prison and holding them for months at a time.
And:
Herrington's report also noted that sweeps pulled in hundreds and even thousands of detainees who had no connection to the war. Abu Ghraib, for example, swelled to several thousand more detainees than it could handle. Herrington wrote that aggressive and indiscriminate tactics by the 4th Infantry Division, rounding up random scores of detainees and "dumping them at the door," was a glaring example. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A23372-2004Nov30?language=printer
Michael Massing’s essay on Iraq, the press and the election
In the end, the war in Iraq did not have the decisive impact on the election that many had expected. In the weeks before the vote there were the massacre of forty-nine Iraqi police trainees; a deadly attack inside the previously impenetrable Green Zone in Baghdad; the refusal by an army unit to carry out a supply mission on the grounds that it was too dangerous; the explosion of several car bombs at a ceremony where soldiers were handing out candy, killing dozens of children; the abduction of contractors, journalists, and aid workers, including the director of the CARE office in Baghdad; the release of a report holding the highest reaches of the Pentagon and the military responsible for the abuses at Abu Ghraib; a report by President Bush's hand-picked investigator confirming that Iraq had long ago lost its ability to produce weapons of mass destruction; and the spread of the insurgency to every corner of the country, bringing reconstruction to a virtual halt. All of this, in the end, counted for less to voters (if the exit polls are to be believed) than such issues as whether homosexuals should be allowed to marry and whether discarded embryos should be used for stem cell research. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17633
U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Knocks Bush Righteous action, though the sad news is in the last sentence of this graf, that this is about to become a Republican body.
Leaders of a divided federal civil-rights watchdog agency accused President Bush of deepening racial divisions, in a parting shot after years of sparring with his administration.
Mary Frances Berry, chairperson of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and Vice Chairperson Cruz Reynoso delivered a 166-page report to the White House harshly criticizing the administration for setting back race relations and failing to promote civil rights in any meaningful way.
But the report is not an official document, because four of the eight commissioners, all of them Republican appointees, voted against adopting it and rejected the charges as politically biased.
Both Berry and Reynoso are due to retire from the commission next month at the end of their six-year terms, giving Bush the chance to appoint their successors and shape a body more supportive of his policies. http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=domesticNews&storyID=6969518
Rumsfeld “Indicted”
Alleging responsibility for war crimes and torture at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, a human rights group has filed a criminal complaint in Germany against US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other top US officials.
The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and Berlin's Republican Lawyers' Association said they and five Iraqi citizens mistreated by US soldiers were seeking a probe by German federal prosecutors of leading US policymakers.
They said they had chosen Germany because of its Code of Crimes Against International Law, introduced in 2002, which grants German courts universal jurisdiction in cases involving war crimes or crimes against humanity.
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,1564,1413907,00.html
World Aids Day: Came and went. Is it true that there are twenty million deaths, 15 million orphans and forty million with HIV, then it’s not over. Makes one more than decry the waste of attention / resources (and lives) with the unnecessary war on Iraq.
Related: Federally funded abstinence-only programs seem to be providing false, misleading or distorted information to students. Kudos to Rep. Henry Waxman’s staff who are on this.
Many American youngsters participating in federally funded abstinence-only programs have been taught over the past three years that abortion can lead to sterility and suicide, that half the gay male teenagers in the United States have tested positive for the AIDS virus, and that touching a person's genitals "can result in pregnancy," a congressional staff analysis has found.
Those and other assertions are examples of the "false, misleading, or distorted information" in the programs' teaching materials, said the analysis, released yesterday, which reviewed the curricula of more than a dozen projects aimed at preventing teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A26623-2004Dec1?language=printer
Gun Stuff
Seems like the Radical Republicans in Congress are intent on making Junior look moderate by comparison… or is this a way for Junior to look good, to be the better (but definitely not “good”) cop.
Congress has eliminated direct financing for a Justice Department program that has been the centerpiece of the Bush administration's efforts to prosecute black-market gun crimes.
The move, which Congressional officials attributed to competing budget priorities, cuts federal grants to local and state law enforcement agencies in investigating and prosecuting crimes committed with guns. It also raises questions about the administration's ability to persuade the Republican-controlled Congress to support its legislative priorities, after Republicans last month blocked an intelligence overhaul backed by the White House.
The administration had sought $45 million for local grants under the gun prosecution program, Project Safe Neighborhoods. That would have represented a sharp increase in grants for a program that President Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft have hailed as a critical way to crack down on gun trafficking and gun-related crimes.
"If you use a gun illegally, you will do hard time," Mr. Bush is quoted as saying on the Web site for the neighborhoods program, www. projectsafeneighborhoods.com.
But in passing a $388 billion spending bill on Nov. 20, Congress erased all the direct money sought for the program. A related program to track and intercept illegal purchases of guns by youngsters, for which the administration sought an additional $106 million, also received nothing in the final spending package, although the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which administers it, received an overall increase of $20 million. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/02/politics/02guns.html?oref=login&pagewanted=print&position=
Rove’s Goals: We’ve heard this before. Let’s keep it in mind
For now, Rove's goals are at once more immediate and more lofty: to design a legislative and philosophical agenda that will lead to further GOP gains, and beyond that to a political dominance that could last for decades, as FDR's New Deal did. The core principles are clear to anyone who listened to a Bush stump speech. They are drawn from a well of conservative (and, in the 19th-century sense, "liberal") dogma: that only free-market democracies respectful of traditional moral values can bring us a planet of fulfilled citizens secure from terror. In fact, Rove's formulation is a new hybrid, willing to use big government in the service of markets and morality. Asked to name Bush's biggest accomplishment thus far, Rove replied in a flash: "His clear-eyed explanation of how to win the war on terrorism. It was the defining moment of our time." In other words, the Architect plans to be fully engaged in formulating foreign policy—and, while he isn't thought of as a leading neocon, his views are squarely within that camp.http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6597631/site/newsweek/
Wal-Mart: Working Conditions
Fine essay in the NY Review of Books by Simon Head
The harshness of the working conditions at Wal-Mart helps to account for the exceptionally high employee turnover at the company. Some 50 percent of Wal-Mart workers employed at the beginning of 2003 had left the company by the end of the year. At the retailer Costco, where employees are better treated, turnover in 2003 was just 24 percent. But Wal-Mart's harshness is not simply a consequence of management's efforts to extract maximum productivity from its workforce at minimum cost. There are also employees and groups of employees that management particularly mistrusts, and these have often been subjected to relentless harassment. Hundreds of employees have testified against Wal-Mart in the many class-action lawsuits brought against the corporation, and their sworn depositions provide a detailed account of what it is like to work at Wal-Mart day by day, even hour by hour. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17647
Frank Rich: This coming Sunday’s article is about:
If Democrats want to run around like fools trying to persuade voters in red America that they are kissing cousins to Billy Graham, Minnie Pearl and Li'l Abner, that's their problem. Pandering, after all, is what politicians do, especially politicians as desperate as the Democrats. But when TV news organizations start repositioning themselves to pander to Nascar dads and "moral values" voters, it's a problem for everyone.
But, I thought this section was of special note.
Kevin Sites, the freelance TV cameraman who caught a marine shooting an apparently unarmed Iraqi prisoner in a mosque, is one such blogger. Mr. Sites is an embedded journalist currently in the employ of NBC News. To NBC's credit, it ran Mr. Sites's mid-November report, on a newscast in which Mr. Williams was then subbing for Mr. Brokaw, and handled it in exemplary fashion. Mr. Sites avoided any snap judgment pending the Marines' own investigation of the shooting, cautioning that a war zone is "rife with uncertainty and confusion." But loud voices in red America, especially on blogs, wanted him silenced anyway. On right-wing sites like freerepublic.com Mr. Sites was branded an "anti-war activist" (which he is not), a traitor and an "enemy combatant." Mr. Sites's own blog, touted by Mr. Williams on the air, was full of messages from the relatives of marines profusely thanking the cameraman for bringing them news of their sons in Iraq. That communal message board has since been shut down because of the death threats by other Americans against Mr. Sites.
The attempt to demonize and censor Mr. Sites simply for doing his job is not an anomaly. Last spring The New York Post smeared Associated Press television cameramen as having "a mutually beneficial relationship with the insurgents in Falluja" simply because their cameras captured the horrific images of the four American contract workers slaughtered there. Well before the National Guard fiasco at CBS, red-state news-hounds tried to discredit Mr. Rather's scoop on the photos of Abu Ghraib as overblown if not treasonous. This hysterical rage at the networks is a testament to their continued power - specifically the power of pictures in each of these cases. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/05/arts/05rich.html?8hpib=&pagewanted=print&position=
Electoral Cheating (?) Bev Harris
The honcho of blackboxvoting.org was apparently invited onto Keith Olbermann’s show but she has refused to appear or to share videotapes that she had allegedly found discarded in Florida. Olbermann warns:
It has been pointed out that Bev Harris was scheduled to be on Countdown back on November 8 but her appearance was cancelled. I haven’t addressed this before, either. But we didn’t cancel on her - we wanted, on that first night raising this touchy subject nobody else had previously covered, to have more mainstream guests. And we wanted her back another night. And since then we’ve wanted her to come back with her video. And she hasn’t.
I don’t know her motivations and I don’t know her bona fides. But I’m afraid at this stage, intentionally or by the simplest of communication failures, she isn’t helping illuminate this issue. And every step that attracts heat but not light is another step towards discrediting the entire process. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240/
-R
Re-americanization: In other words, more troops, rationalized by some as ‘taking advantage of the momentum after the Fallujah victory.’ I got a bridge in Brooklyn…
And, the abuse, known LONG ago: The latest revelation that we are less the civil libertarian than being in the tradition of Chile under Pinochet. We are NOT the world’s good guys, and the world knows it. [Certainly the Canadians know, and expressed their feelings during Bush’s visit.] Where are you, John McCain, who so understand torture in prisons…
A confidential report to Army generals in Iraq in December 2003 warned that members of an elite military and CIA task force were abusing detainees, a finding delivered more than a month before Army investigators received the photographs from Abu Ghraib prison that touched off investigations into prisoner mistreatment.
The report, which was not released publicly and was recently obtained by The Washington Post, concluded that some U.S. arrest and detention practices at the time could "technically" be illegal. It also said coalition fighters could be feeding the Iraqi insurgency by "making gratuitous enemies" as they conducted sweeps netting hundreds of detainees who probably did not belong in prison and holding them for months at a time.
And:
Herrington's report also noted that sweeps pulled in hundreds and even thousands of detainees who had no connection to the war. Abu Ghraib, for example, swelled to several thousand more detainees than it could handle. Herrington wrote that aggressive and indiscriminate tactics by the 4th Infantry Division, rounding up random scores of detainees and "dumping them at the door," was a glaring example. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A23372-2004Nov30?language=printer
Michael Massing’s essay on Iraq, the press and the election
In the end, the war in Iraq did not have the decisive impact on the election that many had expected. In the weeks before the vote there were the massacre of forty-nine Iraqi police trainees; a deadly attack inside the previously impenetrable Green Zone in Baghdad; the refusal by an army unit to carry out a supply mission on the grounds that it was too dangerous; the explosion of several car bombs at a ceremony where soldiers were handing out candy, killing dozens of children; the abduction of contractors, journalists, and aid workers, including the director of the CARE office in Baghdad; the release of a report holding the highest reaches of the Pentagon and the military responsible for the abuses at Abu Ghraib; a report by President Bush's hand-picked investigator confirming that Iraq had long ago lost its ability to produce weapons of mass destruction; and the spread of the insurgency to every corner of the country, bringing reconstruction to a virtual halt. All of this, in the end, counted for less to voters (if the exit polls are to be believed) than such issues as whether homosexuals should be allowed to marry and whether discarded embryos should be used for stem cell research. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17633
U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Knocks Bush Righteous action, though the sad news is in the last sentence of this graf, that this is about to become a Republican body.
Leaders of a divided federal civil-rights watchdog agency accused President Bush of deepening racial divisions, in a parting shot after years of sparring with his administration.
Mary Frances Berry, chairperson of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and Vice Chairperson Cruz Reynoso delivered a 166-page report to the White House harshly criticizing the administration for setting back race relations and failing to promote civil rights in any meaningful way.
But the report is not an official document, because four of the eight commissioners, all of them Republican appointees, voted against adopting it and rejected the charges as politically biased.
Both Berry and Reynoso are due to retire from the commission next month at the end of their six-year terms, giving Bush the chance to appoint their successors and shape a body more supportive of his policies. http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=domesticNews&storyID=6969518
Rumsfeld “Indicted”
Alleging responsibility for war crimes and torture at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, a human rights group has filed a criminal complaint in Germany against US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other top US officials.
The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and Berlin's Republican Lawyers' Association said they and five Iraqi citizens mistreated by US soldiers were seeking a probe by German federal prosecutors of leading US policymakers.
They said they had chosen Germany because of its Code of Crimes Against International Law, introduced in 2002, which grants German courts universal jurisdiction in cases involving war crimes or crimes against humanity.
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,1564,1413907,00.html
World Aids Day: Came and went. Is it true that there are twenty million deaths, 15 million orphans and forty million with HIV, then it’s not over. Makes one more than decry the waste of attention / resources (and lives) with the unnecessary war on Iraq.
Related: Federally funded abstinence-only programs seem to be providing false, misleading or distorted information to students. Kudos to Rep. Henry Waxman’s staff who are on this.
Many American youngsters participating in federally funded abstinence-only programs have been taught over the past three years that abortion can lead to sterility and suicide, that half the gay male teenagers in the United States have tested positive for the AIDS virus, and that touching a person's genitals "can result in pregnancy," a congressional staff analysis has found.
Those and other assertions are examples of the "false, misleading, or distorted information" in the programs' teaching materials, said the analysis, released yesterday, which reviewed the curricula of more than a dozen projects aimed at preventing teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A26623-2004Dec1?language=printer
Gun Stuff
Seems like the Radical Republicans in Congress are intent on making Junior look moderate by comparison… or is this a way for Junior to look good, to be the better (but definitely not “good”) cop.
Congress has eliminated direct financing for a Justice Department program that has been the centerpiece of the Bush administration's efforts to prosecute black-market gun crimes.
The move, which Congressional officials attributed to competing budget priorities, cuts federal grants to local and state law enforcement agencies in investigating and prosecuting crimes committed with guns. It also raises questions about the administration's ability to persuade the Republican-controlled Congress to support its legislative priorities, after Republicans last month blocked an intelligence overhaul backed by the White House.
The administration had sought $45 million for local grants under the gun prosecution program, Project Safe Neighborhoods. That would have represented a sharp increase in grants for a program that President Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft have hailed as a critical way to crack down on gun trafficking and gun-related crimes.
"If you use a gun illegally, you will do hard time," Mr. Bush is quoted as saying on the Web site for the neighborhoods program, www. projectsafeneighborhoods.com.
But in passing a $388 billion spending bill on Nov. 20, Congress erased all the direct money sought for the program. A related program to track and intercept illegal purchases of guns by youngsters, for which the administration sought an additional $106 million, also received nothing in the final spending package, although the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which administers it, received an overall increase of $20 million. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/02/politics/02guns.html?oref=login&pagewanted=print&position=
Rove’s Goals: We’ve heard this before. Let’s keep it in mind
For now, Rove's goals are at once more immediate and more lofty: to design a legislative and philosophical agenda that will lead to further GOP gains, and beyond that to a political dominance that could last for decades, as FDR's New Deal did. The core principles are clear to anyone who listened to a Bush stump speech. They are drawn from a well of conservative (and, in the 19th-century sense, "liberal") dogma: that only free-market democracies respectful of traditional moral values can bring us a planet of fulfilled citizens secure from terror. In fact, Rove's formulation is a new hybrid, willing to use big government in the service of markets and morality. Asked to name Bush's biggest accomplishment thus far, Rove replied in a flash: "His clear-eyed explanation of how to win the war on terrorism. It was the defining moment of our time." In other words, the Architect plans to be fully engaged in formulating foreign policy—and, while he isn't thought of as a leading neocon, his views are squarely within that camp.http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6597631/site/newsweek/
Wal-Mart: Working Conditions
Fine essay in the NY Review of Books by Simon Head
The harshness of the working conditions at Wal-Mart helps to account for the exceptionally high employee turnover at the company. Some 50 percent of Wal-Mart workers employed at the beginning of 2003 had left the company by the end of the year. At the retailer Costco, where employees are better treated, turnover in 2003 was just 24 percent. But Wal-Mart's harshness is not simply a consequence of management's efforts to extract maximum productivity from its workforce at minimum cost. There are also employees and groups of employees that management particularly mistrusts, and these have often been subjected to relentless harassment. Hundreds of employees have testified against Wal-Mart in the many class-action lawsuits brought against the corporation, and their sworn depositions provide a detailed account of what it is like to work at Wal-Mart day by day, even hour by hour. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17647
Frank Rich: This coming Sunday’s article is about:
If Democrats want to run around like fools trying to persuade voters in red America that they are kissing cousins to Billy Graham, Minnie Pearl and Li'l Abner, that's their problem. Pandering, after all, is what politicians do, especially politicians as desperate as the Democrats. But when TV news organizations start repositioning themselves to pander to Nascar dads and "moral values" voters, it's a problem for everyone.
But, I thought this section was of special note.
Kevin Sites, the freelance TV cameraman who caught a marine shooting an apparently unarmed Iraqi prisoner in a mosque, is one such blogger. Mr. Sites is an embedded journalist currently in the employ of NBC News. To NBC's credit, it ran Mr. Sites's mid-November report, on a newscast in which Mr. Williams was then subbing for Mr. Brokaw, and handled it in exemplary fashion. Mr. Sites avoided any snap judgment pending the Marines' own investigation of the shooting, cautioning that a war zone is "rife with uncertainty and confusion." But loud voices in red America, especially on blogs, wanted him silenced anyway. On right-wing sites like freerepublic.com Mr. Sites was branded an "anti-war activist" (which he is not), a traitor and an "enemy combatant." Mr. Sites's own blog, touted by Mr. Williams on the air, was full of messages from the relatives of marines profusely thanking the cameraman for bringing them news of their sons in Iraq. That communal message board has since been shut down because of the death threats by other Americans against Mr. Sites.
The attempt to demonize and censor Mr. Sites simply for doing his job is not an anomaly. Last spring The New York Post smeared Associated Press television cameramen as having "a mutually beneficial relationship with the insurgents in Falluja" simply because their cameras captured the horrific images of the four American contract workers slaughtered there. Well before the National Guard fiasco at CBS, red-state news-hounds tried to discredit Mr. Rather's scoop on the photos of Abu Ghraib as overblown if not treasonous. This hysterical rage at the networks is a testament to their continued power - specifically the power of pictures in each of these cases. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/05/arts/05rich.html?8hpib=&pagewanted=print&position=
Electoral Cheating (?) Bev Harris
The honcho of blackboxvoting.org was apparently invited onto Keith Olbermann’s show but she has refused to appear or to share videotapes that she had allegedly found discarded in Florida. Olbermann warns:
It has been pointed out that Bev Harris was scheduled to be on Countdown back on November 8 but her appearance was cancelled. I haven’t addressed this before, either. But we didn’t cancel on her - we wanted, on that first night raising this touchy subject nobody else had previously covered, to have more mainstream guests. And we wanted her back another night. And since then we’ve wanted her to come back with her video. And she hasn’t.
I don’t know her motivations and I don’t know her bona fides. But I’m afraid at this stage, intentionally or by the simplest of communication failures, she isn’t helping illuminate this issue. And every step that attracts heat but not light is another step towards discrediting the entire process. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240/
-R
Tuesday, November 30, 2004
What’s Happening, Iraq: It’s Going Terribly…ever worsening
‘
Tantamount to torture’ and Napalm
The International Committee of the Red Cross has charged in confidential reports to the United States government that the American military has intentionally used psychological and sometimes physical coercion "tantamount to torture" on prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
The finding that the handling of prisoners detained and interrogated at Guantánamo amounted to torture came after a visit by a Red Cross inspection team that spent most of last June in Guantánamo. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/30/politics/30gitmo.html
Napalm was dropped on Fallujah. And its associated gas: US troops are secretly using outlawed napalm gas to wipe out remaining insurgents in and around Fallujah. News that President George W. Bush has sanctioned the use of napalm, a deadly cocktail of polystyrene and jet fuel banned by the United Nations in 1980, will stun governments around the world. http://www.sundaymirror.co.uk/news/
British nervous re Iraqi security:
Disintegrating security in Baghdad was underlined in a sombre warning yesterday from the British embassy against using the airport road or taking a plane out of Iraq.
The embassy says a bomb was discovered on a flight inside Iraq on 22 November. It shows that insurgents have been able to penetrate the stringent security at Baghdad airport. The embassy says its own staff have been advised against taking commercial planes.
The warning is in sharp contrast to more optimistic statements from US military commanders after the capture of Fallujah in which they have spoken of "breaking the back of the insurgency". http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=588095
Iraqi Military “founder”
Iraqi police and national guard forces, whose performance is crucial to securing January elections, are foundering in the face of coordinated efforts to kill and intimidate them and their families, say American officials in the provinces facing the most violent insurgency. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/30/international/middleeast/30police.html?oref=login
Annan in Trouble: The reputation, if not legitimacy of the UN is arguably being undermined, not always by the Right. This is trouble…
The United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, said yesterday that he had not known that his son had continued receiving payments until February of this year from a Swiss inspection company being investigated for suspected fraud and abuses in the oil-for-food program in Iraq. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/30/international/middleeast/30annan.html
Al-Qaeda Threat Exaggerated? I’m not the only one to think this has been hyped from Moment One so as to terrorize and silence the public. Unfortunately, one still has to look overseas to hear how al-Qaeda is a frightening, yet marginal threat. Here’s an excerpt from the introduction to a BBC’s 3-part documentary.
During the three years in which the "war on terror" has been waged, high-profile challenges to its assumptions have been rare. The sheer number of incidents and warnings connected or attributed to the war has left little room, it seems, for heretical thoughts. In this context, the central theme of The Power of Nightmares is riskily counter-intuitive and provocative. Much of the currently perceived threat from international terrorism, the series argues, "is a fantasy that has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians. It is a dark illusion that has spread unquestioned through governments around the world, the security services, and the international media." The series' explanation for this is even bolder: "In an age when all the grand ideas have lost credibility, fear of a phantom enemy is all the politicians have left to maintain their power." http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1327786,00.html
Olbermann on the Electoral Fraud issue:
..the pile of evidence that suggests Ohio did a very lousy job of running an election four weeks ago. “We don’t want to be presumptuous, but these numbers in Butler, Clermont, Warren and Hamilton counties are suspicious.” Jackson refers in part to what several voters’ groups see as the incongruity of an underfunded Democratic candidate for the Ohio Supreme Court, C. Ellen Connally, getting a net 45,000 more votes in Butler County relative to her Republican opponent than Kerry did relative to his. She finished ahead of her party’s presidential nominee by 10,000 net votes or more in five Ohio counties; by 5,000 or more in ten others.
It is not unprecedented for a statewide candidate - especially a popular, well-publicized one - to finish “ahead of the ticket.” But Connally was a retired African-American judge from Cleveland, and Butler County is as about as far away from Cleveland (on the Indiana border, and 40 miles north of Kentucky) as you can get and still be in Ohio. Moreover, The Cleveland Plain Dealer noted that the Republican candidates in the three Supreme Court races raised 40% more in official campaign funds than did Connally and the other Democrats. The Toledo Blade showed that the fund-raising, and thus visibility, was far more lopsided than even the party documents would suggest: “Citizens for a Strong Ohio, a nonprofit arm of the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, raised $3 million to fund TV and radio ads that gave the winners exposure Democrats couldn't match,” the newspaper reported on November 4th.
The fun continues throughout the Buckeye State. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240/
More Recounts: New Mexico and Nevada
Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb and Libertarian candidate Michael Badnarik announced that they are seeking recounts in two more battleground states: New Mexico and Nevada.
The third-party candidates, who already have requested a recount in Ohio, won few votes in both states. But a Cobb spokesman said they were concerned that reports of Election Day problems at the states' polls were being ignored. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20655-2004Nov29.html
James Galbraith on Ohio/Ukraine
But if the Ukraine standard were applied in Ohio -- as it should be -- then the late lamented U.S. election certainly was stolen. In Ohio, the secretary of state in charge of the elections process was co-chairman of the Bush campaign in the state. He obstructed the vote count systematically -- for instance, by demanding that provisional ballots without birth dates on their envelopes be thrown out, even though there is no requirement for that in state law. He also required that provisional ballots be cast in a voter's home precinct, ensuring that there would be no escape from long lines. Republicans fielded thousands of election challengers to Democratic precincts, mainly to try to intimidate black voters and to slow down the voting process. A recount, demanded and paid for by the Green and Libertarian parties, has been stalled in court, so that it won't possibly upset the certification of Ohio's electoral votes. http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/11/30/ukraine_election/print.html
Wal-Mart: Trouble for the merchandizing giant?
The stores are dowdy. The aisles are ugly. There's nothing exciting or different or even colorful at Wal-Mart. It feels almost Soviet in its selection and presentation.
Ouch. The larger issue for Wal-Mart investors and management isn't simply decor. It's existential. Could it be that Wal-Mart has reached the limits of its cheapness? The company's raison d'etre is to function as pass-through between (increasingly foreign) manufacturers and lower- and middle-income consumers. Acting as an agent for its vast customer base, Wal-Mart delivers low prices. But there's a limit to how low the company can go. Wal-Mart's sales didn't grow more rapidly last month in part because it didn't cut prices on promotional items aggressively. At long last, the weaker dollar and higher costs for commodities, raw materials, food, and energy are working their way even into Wal-Mart's ruthlessly efficient supply chain. http://slate.msn.com/id/2110205/
-R
‘
Tantamount to torture’ and Napalm
The International Committee of the Red Cross has charged in confidential reports to the United States government that the American military has intentionally used psychological and sometimes physical coercion "tantamount to torture" on prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
The finding that the handling of prisoners detained and interrogated at Guantánamo amounted to torture came after a visit by a Red Cross inspection team that spent most of last June in Guantánamo. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/30/politics/30gitmo.html
Napalm was dropped on Fallujah. And its associated gas: US troops are secretly using outlawed napalm gas to wipe out remaining insurgents in and around Fallujah. News that President George W. Bush has sanctioned the use of napalm, a deadly cocktail of polystyrene and jet fuel banned by the United Nations in 1980, will stun governments around the world. http://www.sundaymirror.co.uk/news/
British nervous re Iraqi security:
Disintegrating security in Baghdad was underlined in a sombre warning yesterday from the British embassy against using the airport road or taking a plane out of Iraq.
The embassy says a bomb was discovered on a flight inside Iraq on 22 November. It shows that insurgents have been able to penetrate the stringent security at Baghdad airport. The embassy says its own staff have been advised against taking commercial planes.
The warning is in sharp contrast to more optimistic statements from US military commanders after the capture of Fallujah in which they have spoken of "breaking the back of the insurgency". http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=588095
Iraqi Military “founder”
Iraqi police and national guard forces, whose performance is crucial to securing January elections, are foundering in the face of coordinated efforts to kill and intimidate them and their families, say American officials in the provinces facing the most violent insurgency. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/30/international/middleeast/30police.html?oref=login
Annan in Trouble: The reputation, if not legitimacy of the UN is arguably being undermined, not always by the Right. This is trouble…
The United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, said yesterday that he had not known that his son had continued receiving payments until February of this year from a Swiss inspection company being investigated for suspected fraud and abuses in the oil-for-food program in Iraq. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/30/international/middleeast/30annan.html
Al-Qaeda Threat Exaggerated? I’m not the only one to think this has been hyped from Moment One so as to terrorize and silence the public. Unfortunately, one still has to look overseas to hear how al-Qaeda is a frightening, yet marginal threat. Here’s an excerpt from the introduction to a BBC’s 3-part documentary.
During the three years in which the "war on terror" has been waged, high-profile challenges to its assumptions have been rare. The sheer number of incidents and warnings connected or attributed to the war has left little room, it seems, for heretical thoughts. In this context, the central theme of The Power of Nightmares is riskily counter-intuitive and provocative. Much of the currently perceived threat from international terrorism, the series argues, "is a fantasy that has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians. It is a dark illusion that has spread unquestioned through governments around the world, the security services, and the international media." The series' explanation for this is even bolder: "In an age when all the grand ideas have lost credibility, fear of a phantom enemy is all the politicians have left to maintain their power." http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1327786,00.html
Olbermann on the Electoral Fraud issue:
..the pile of evidence that suggests Ohio did a very lousy job of running an election four weeks ago. “We don’t want to be presumptuous, but these numbers in Butler, Clermont, Warren and Hamilton counties are suspicious.” Jackson refers in part to what several voters’ groups see as the incongruity of an underfunded Democratic candidate for the Ohio Supreme Court, C. Ellen Connally, getting a net 45,000 more votes in Butler County relative to her Republican opponent than Kerry did relative to his. She finished ahead of her party’s presidential nominee by 10,000 net votes or more in five Ohio counties; by 5,000 or more in ten others.
It is not unprecedented for a statewide candidate - especially a popular, well-publicized one - to finish “ahead of the ticket.” But Connally was a retired African-American judge from Cleveland, and Butler County is as about as far away from Cleveland (on the Indiana border, and 40 miles north of Kentucky) as you can get and still be in Ohio. Moreover, The Cleveland Plain Dealer noted that the Republican candidates in the three Supreme Court races raised 40% more in official campaign funds than did Connally and the other Democrats. The Toledo Blade showed that the fund-raising, and thus visibility, was far more lopsided than even the party documents would suggest: “Citizens for a Strong Ohio, a nonprofit arm of the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, raised $3 million to fund TV and radio ads that gave the winners exposure Democrats couldn't match,” the newspaper reported on November 4th.
The fun continues throughout the Buckeye State. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240/
More Recounts: New Mexico and Nevada
Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb and Libertarian candidate Michael Badnarik announced that they are seeking recounts in two more battleground states: New Mexico and Nevada.
The third-party candidates, who already have requested a recount in Ohio, won few votes in both states. But a Cobb spokesman said they were concerned that reports of Election Day problems at the states' polls were being ignored. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20655-2004Nov29.html
James Galbraith on Ohio/Ukraine
But if the Ukraine standard were applied in Ohio -- as it should be -- then the late lamented U.S. election certainly was stolen. In Ohio, the secretary of state in charge of the elections process was co-chairman of the Bush campaign in the state. He obstructed the vote count systematically -- for instance, by demanding that provisional ballots without birth dates on their envelopes be thrown out, even though there is no requirement for that in state law. He also required that provisional ballots be cast in a voter's home precinct, ensuring that there would be no escape from long lines. Republicans fielded thousands of election challengers to Democratic precincts, mainly to try to intimidate black voters and to slow down the voting process. A recount, demanded and paid for by the Green and Libertarian parties, has been stalled in court, so that it won't possibly upset the certification of Ohio's electoral votes. http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/11/30/ukraine_election/print.html
Wal-Mart: Trouble for the merchandizing giant?
The stores are dowdy. The aisles are ugly. There's nothing exciting or different or even colorful at Wal-Mart. It feels almost Soviet in its selection and presentation.
Ouch. The larger issue for Wal-Mart investors and management isn't simply decor. It's existential. Could it be that Wal-Mart has reached the limits of its cheapness? The company's raison d'etre is to function as pass-through between (increasingly foreign) manufacturers and lower- and middle-income consumers. Acting as an agent for its vast customer base, Wal-Mart delivers low prices. But there's a limit to how low the company can go. Wal-Mart's sales didn't grow more rapidly last month in part because it didn't cut prices on promotional items aggressively. At long last, the weaker dollar and higher costs for commodities, raw materials, food, and energy are working their way even into Wal-Mart's ruthlessly efficient supply chain. http://slate.msn.com/id/2110205/
-R
Sunday, November 28, 2004
Offstage, beforehand, Rove and Bush had had their library tours. According to two eyewitnesses, Rove had shown keen interest in everything he saw, and asked questions, including about costs, obviously thinking about a future George W Bush library and legacy. "You're not such a scary guy," joked his guide. "Yes, I am," Rove replied. Walking away, he muttered deliberately and loudly: "I change constitutions, I put churches in schools ..."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1358966,00.html
What’s Happening, Iraq: More talk of postponing the elections. Why? Security. People are getting killed in the previously secure Green Zone [in Baghdad]. http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq.html?oref=login
Call-ups of Vets Continue- WWII and Korean vets, beware…
A 53-year-old Vietnam veteran from western Pennsylvania has been called up for active service with the U.S. military in the Iraq war, The Tribune Review of Greensburg, Pennsylvania reported on Wednesday.
Paul Dunlap, a sergeant in the Army National Guard, will join an armored division next month as a telecommunications specialist in Kuwait, and expects to be there for at least a year, the newspaper reported.
Dunlap, who has not been in combat since serving as a 19-year-old Marine in Vietnam, could not be reached for comment. He will leave behind his wife Mary, four children and three grandchildren.
"I don't think any of them want me to go," Dunlap told the paper. "I'm thinking it's a long time since I've been in war." http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1895&e=2&u=/nm/20041124/us_nm/iraq_usa_old_dc
Elsewhere in Pennsylvania (York):
In 1992, Tonya Stewart left the Army after serving 13 years in uniform, believing her service to her country was over.
Now, 12 years later, she's been recalled to active duty.
"I leave for an 18-month tour of duty in two weeks," the 43-year-old Hellam Township resident said. "And that's about all I really know."
Stewart, visiting her sister's family for Thanksgiving dinner along with her boyfriend and 9-year-old daughter, said she had received letters and phone calls from the military since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 warning her that she may be recalled. http://ydr.com/story/war/50585/
China, from Japan’s viewpoint. They too are concerned about China’s economic power, in this case the plight of Japanese specialty steel producers. For those with a sense of history, rivalry about raw / industrial materials was the precipitant for the war with Japan, 1941-45.
Think Japan's manufacturers are all rejoicing at China's hypergrowth?
Speak to executives at Daido Steel Co. The mood is a little more somber.
In October, the Nagoya-based maker of special steel products was forced to cut output of some products used in casting molds for auto and electronics parts due to a shortage of rare metals essential to its manufacturing lines.
Be assured, Daido's procurers are fighting tooth and nail for raw materials.
But rare metals are hard to come by, due mainly to huge demand from Chinese factories. Global prices have soared since the latter half of last year.
On five separate occasions this year, the Japanese government has been forced to dip into its own reserves of nickel, manganese and other rare metals to meet the shortfall in the international market.
China may be booming, but it is also burning-burning resources, that is, and at a prodigious rate. In so doing, prices of key manufacturing materials, steel and crude oil among them, have risen to record levels. http://www.asahi.com/english/business/TKY200411230110.html
Economics: Concern re the Dollar. If there is a consensus, it’s that trouble is ‘not quite here yet, but is around the corner.’
Investors and market analysts are increasingly worried that the last big source of support for the American dollar - heavy buying by foreign central banks - is fading.
The anxiety was on full display Friday, when the dollar abruptly slid to a record low against the euro after a report suggesting that the Chinese central bank might start to reduce its holdings in the American currency.
America's current account deficit, the broadest measure of its indebtedness to other countries, is on track to exceed $600 billion next year, about 6 percent of its gross domestic product. The United States needs to attract about $2 billion a day to keep its spending at current levels. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/27/business/27dollar.html?oref=login
Social Security Privatization: Moving Ahead? The MBA President’s solution? Do more borrowing. Sorry, kids.
The White House and Republicans in Congress are all but certain to embrace large-scale government borrowing to help finance President Bush's plan to create personal investment accounts in Social Security, according to administration officials, members of Congress and independent analysts.
The White House says it has made no decisions about how to pay for establishing the accounts, and among Republicans on Capitol Hill there are divergent opinions about how much borrowing would be prudent at a time when the government is running large budget deficits. Many Democrats say that the costs associated with setting up personal accounts just make Social Security's financial problems worse, and that the United States can scarcely afford to add to its rapidly growing national debt. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/28/politics/28secure.html?oref=login
Republicans Look Ahead
Mr. Mehlman acknowledged that maintaining that grass-roots enthusiasm will be a major challenge as Republicans look ahead to the midterm elections in 2006 and the presidential race in 2008. "How do we keep folks motivated?" he said. "Look, is the 2006 election a challenge? Absolutely. Historically, it's a difficult election for the president's party" in the sixth year of his term. But he insisted that Mr. Bush's agenda for tort reform, tax simplification and the partial privatization of Social Security will attract even more voters to the Republican Party, which already controls the White House, the House of Representatives, the Senate and a majority of the governorships, including in the four most-populated states. http://insider.washingtontimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20041124-120639-3098r
What's Happening, Britain:
Blair Impeachment: At least they use the word.
Harold Pinter and author Iain Banks are to join MPs at Westminster to call for Tony Blair's impeachment over Iraq.
Twenty-three members have signed a Commons motion calling for the prime minister to be thrown from office.
They say he misled Parliament over the case for invading Iraq and want a probe by MPs to examine his conduct in relation to the war.
But the impeachment bid is widely expected to fail and probably will not even be debated in the Commons. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/4037375.stm
British Thwart Terrorism: Phony News Item? This was a one day lead item, then it disappeared. Now, doubt is expressed- out of the spotlight- that a plot ever existed.
Peter Hain, the Leader of the Commons, has denied media reports that the security services foiled a plot by al-Qa'ida to fly planes into the skyscrapers at London's Canary Wharf.
The reports by the Daily Mail and ITV News came on the eve of the Queen's Speech on Tuesday and were seen as an attempt by the Government to justify the "safety and security" measures dominating its legislative programme.
In a pre-recorded interview for Channel 4's Morgan & Platell programme tonight, Mr Hain said: "If there was a specific threat to Canary Wharf or anywhere else, we would have said so ... That leak, if it was a leak, did not come from a government minister or as far as I know a government source."
Asked if there have been any specific threats against Britain since the 11 September terror attacks, he said: "I don't know of a specific threat. But what I do know is that the intelligence services ... have constant intelligence on al-Qa'ida-type cells in Britain." http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=587261
Democrats’ Pulse. At least Pelosi steps up, now and then.
The AP reported that Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi refused to allow a pro forma vote to fix the Republican's income tax snooping provision. In reality, Pelosi is keeping the issue alive for a couple more weeks. Her money quote:
The assault on taxpayer privacy was not a simple mistake, and Democrats will not let Republicans sweep it under the rug. http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/T/TAX_RETURN_DISCLOSURE?SITE=1010WINS&SECTION=POLITICS&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
Judicial Fights: Republicans Prepare
Senate Republicans, boldly confident after their Nov. 2 electoral success, are preparing to end months of frustrating delays over President Bush's judicial picks by hitting Democrats with Republican's ultimate legislative weapon.But the Republican threat to neuter long-cherished filibuster rules by steamrolling Democrats is risky — so potentially destructive that Capitol Hill calls it the "nuclear option." Democratic retaliation would be swift and long-lasting, raising the prospect of escalating clashes in a body that prides itself on gentility and cool judgment.Even so, Republican leaders are signaling their intent to go nuclear in word and deed."We're going to use every tool we possibly can," said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., who also unveiled a kinder, gentler phrase for the potential rules change: the "constitutional option.""Republicans are loaded for bear, spoiling for a confrontation with Senate Democrats on judicial appointments," said Norm Ornstein, an expert on Congress for the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute. "For a lot of conservatives, this has really become an issue that leaves them passionate."Democrats, with a new leader after the election defeat of Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., have yet to form a filibuster strategy for the 109th Congress, which convenes in January. But early indications show continued passion for blocking nominees considered too conservative, including Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen.
http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041128/NEWS/411280356/1002/NEWS01
Plame Investigation: We await. Apparently, the issue remains whether the Bushies leaked Plame’s identity before or after the Novak article. If the latter, then it goes away, if the former, then there’s a case…for treason. At least, it’s still happening…
A federal prosecutor investigating whether administration officials illegally leaked the name of an undercover CIA operative has directed considerable effort at learning how widely the operative's identity was disseminated to reporters before it was published last year by columnist Robert D. Novak, according to people with knowledge of the case.
Special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald is trying to pinpoint precisely when and from whom several journalists learned that Joseph C. Wilson IV, an outspoken critic of the administration, was sent on an Iraq-related intelligence mission after a recommendation by his wife, Valerie Plame, a covert CIA employee. Plame's name first appeared in a July 14, 2003, column by Novak. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13258-2004Nov25.html
-R
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1358966,00.html
What’s Happening, Iraq: More talk of postponing the elections. Why? Security. People are getting killed in the previously secure Green Zone [in Baghdad]. http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq.html?oref=login
Call-ups of Vets Continue- WWII and Korean vets, beware…
A 53-year-old Vietnam veteran from western Pennsylvania has been called up for active service with the U.S. military in the Iraq war, The Tribune Review of Greensburg, Pennsylvania reported on Wednesday.
Paul Dunlap, a sergeant in the Army National Guard, will join an armored division next month as a telecommunications specialist in Kuwait, and expects to be there for at least a year, the newspaper reported.
Dunlap, who has not been in combat since serving as a 19-year-old Marine in Vietnam, could not be reached for comment. He will leave behind his wife Mary, four children and three grandchildren.
"I don't think any of them want me to go," Dunlap told the paper. "I'm thinking it's a long time since I've been in war." http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1895&e=2&u=/nm/20041124/us_nm/iraq_usa_old_dc
Elsewhere in Pennsylvania (York):
In 1992, Tonya Stewart left the Army after serving 13 years in uniform, believing her service to her country was over.
Now, 12 years later, she's been recalled to active duty.
"I leave for an 18-month tour of duty in two weeks," the 43-year-old Hellam Township resident said. "And that's about all I really know."
Stewart, visiting her sister's family for Thanksgiving dinner along with her boyfriend and 9-year-old daughter, said she had received letters and phone calls from the military since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 warning her that she may be recalled. http://ydr.com/story/war/50585/
China, from Japan’s viewpoint. They too are concerned about China’s economic power, in this case the plight of Japanese specialty steel producers. For those with a sense of history, rivalry about raw / industrial materials was the precipitant for the war with Japan, 1941-45.
Think Japan's manufacturers are all rejoicing at China's hypergrowth?
Speak to executives at Daido Steel Co. The mood is a little more somber.
In October, the Nagoya-based maker of special steel products was forced to cut output of some products used in casting molds for auto and electronics parts due to a shortage of rare metals essential to its manufacturing lines.
Be assured, Daido's procurers are fighting tooth and nail for raw materials.
But rare metals are hard to come by, due mainly to huge demand from Chinese factories. Global prices have soared since the latter half of last year.
On five separate occasions this year, the Japanese government has been forced to dip into its own reserves of nickel, manganese and other rare metals to meet the shortfall in the international market.
China may be booming, but it is also burning-burning resources, that is, and at a prodigious rate. In so doing, prices of key manufacturing materials, steel and crude oil among them, have risen to record levels. http://www.asahi.com/english/business/TKY200411230110.html
Economics: Concern re the Dollar. If there is a consensus, it’s that trouble is ‘not quite here yet, but is around the corner.’
Investors and market analysts are increasingly worried that the last big source of support for the American dollar - heavy buying by foreign central banks - is fading.
The anxiety was on full display Friday, when the dollar abruptly slid to a record low against the euro after a report suggesting that the Chinese central bank might start to reduce its holdings in the American currency.
America's current account deficit, the broadest measure of its indebtedness to other countries, is on track to exceed $600 billion next year, about 6 percent of its gross domestic product. The United States needs to attract about $2 billion a day to keep its spending at current levels. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/27/business/27dollar.html?oref=login
Social Security Privatization: Moving Ahead? The MBA President’s solution? Do more borrowing. Sorry, kids.
The White House and Republicans in Congress are all but certain to embrace large-scale government borrowing to help finance President Bush's plan to create personal investment accounts in Social Security, according to administration officials, members of Congress and independent analysts.
The White House says it has made no decisions about how to pay for establishing the accounts, and among Republicans on Capitol Hill there are divergent opinions about how much borrowing would be prudent at a time when the government is running large budget deficits. Many Democrats say that the costs associated with setting up personal accounts just make Social Security's financial problems worse, and that the United States can scarcely afford to add to its rapidly growing national debt. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/28/politics/28secure.html?oref=login
Republicans Look Ahead
Mr. Mehlman acknowledged that maintaining that grass-roots enthusiasm will be a major challenge as Republicans look ahead to the midterm elections in 2006 and the presidential race in 2008. "How do we keep folks motivated?" he said. "Look, is the 2006 election a challenge? Absolutely. Historically, it's a difficult election for the president's party" in the sixth year of his term. But he insisted that Mr. Bush's agenda for tort reform, tax simplification and the partial privatization of Social Security will attract even more voters to the Republican Party, which already controls the White House, the House of Representatives, the Senate and a majority of the governorships, including in the four most-populated states. http://insider.washingtontimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20041124-120639-3098r
What's Happening, Britain:
Blair Impeachment: At least they use the word.
Harold Pinter and author Iain Banks are to join MPs at Westminster to call for Tony Blair's impeachment over Iraq.
Twenty-three members have signed a Commons motion calling for the prime minister to be thrown from office.
They say he misled Parliament over the case for invading Iraq and want a probe by MPs to examine his conduct in relation to the war.
But the impeachment bid is widely expected to fail and probably will not even be debated in the Commons. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/4037375.stm
British Thwart Terrorism: Phony News Item? This was a one day lead item, then it disappeared. Now, doubt is expressed- out of the spotlight- that a plot ever existed.
Peter Hain, the Leader of the Commons, has denied media reports that the security services foiled a plot by al-Qa'ida to fly planes into the skyscrapers at London's Canary Wharf.
The reports by the Daily Mail and ITV News came on the eve of the Queen's Speech on Tuesday and were seen as an attempt by the Government to justify the "safety and security" measures dominating its legislative programme.
In a pre-recorded interview for Channel 4's Morgan & Platell programme tonight, Mr Hain said: "If there was a specific threat to Canary Wharf or anywhere else, we would have said so ... That leak, if it was a leak, did not come from a government minister or as far as I know a government source."
Asked if there have been any specific threats against Britain since the 11 September terror attacks, he said: "I don't know of a specific threat. But what I do know is that the intelligence services ... have constant intelligence on al-Qa'ida-type cells in Britain." http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=587261
Democrats’ Pulse. At least Pelosi steps up, now and then.
The AP reported that Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi refused to allow a pro forma vote to fix the Republican's income tax snooping provision. In reality, Pelosi is keeping the issue alive for a couple more weeks. Her money quote:
The assault on taxpayer privacy was not a simple mistake, and Democrats will not let Republicans sweep it under the rug. http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/T/TAX_RETURN_DISCLOSURE?SITE=1010WINS&SECTION=POLITICS&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
Judicial Fights: Republicans Prepare
Senate Republicans, boldly confident after their Nov. 2 electoral success, are preparing to end months of frustrating delays over President Bush's judicial picks by hitting Democrats with Republican's ultimate legislative weapon.But the Republican threat to neuter long-cherished filibuster rules by steamrolling Democrats is risky — so potentially destructive that Capitol Hill calls it the "nuclear option." Democratic retaliation would be swift and long-lasting, raising the prospect of escalating clashes in a body that prides itself on gentility and cool judgment.Even so, Republican leaders are signaling their intent to go nuclear in word and deed."We're going to use every tool we possibly can," said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., who also unveiled a kinder, gentler phrase for the potential rules change: the "constitutional option.""Republicans are loaded for bear, spoiling for a confrontation with Senate Democrats on judicial appointments," said Norm Ornstein, an expert on Congress for the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute. "For a lot of conservatives, this has really become an issue that leaves them passionate."Democrats, with a new leader after the election defeat of Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., have yet to form a filibuster strategy for the 109th Congress, which convenes in January. But early indications show continued passion for blocking nominees considered too conservative, including Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen.
http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041128/NEWS/411280356/1002/NEWS01
Plame Investigation: We await. Apparently, the issue remains whether the Bushies leaked Plame’s identity before or after the Novak article. If the latter, then it goes away, if the former, then there’s a case…for treason. At least, it’s still happening…
A federal prosecutor investigating whether administration officials illegally leaked the name of an undercover CIA operative has directed considerable effort at learning how widely the operative's identity was disseminated to reporters before it was published last year by columnist Robert D. Novak, according to people with knowledge of the case.
Special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald is trying to pinpoint precisely when and from whom several journalists learned that Joseph C. Wilson IV, an outspoken critic of the administration, was sent on an Iraq-related intelligence mission after a recommendation by his wife, Valerie Plame, a covert CIA employee. Plame's name first appeared in a July 14, 2003, column by Novak. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13258-2004Nov25.html
-R
