Wednesday, January 05, 2005
South Asia: Observations
* Embarrassing quotes from Colin about our generosity; absolutely pathetic. Again, the governments of Sweden and England contributed $8.40 per citizen. The government of the wealthiest country on earth, the United States of America, originally offered twelve cents per citizen.
* This crisis again exposes the lazy journalism, the "outside-in" approach to "journalism that gives us Colin and other luminaries, but few interviews with the population, many of whom speak English;
* The disaster is not only a p.r. opening for the U.S., but also an opportunity to bolster bases in the region, in particular the base at Utapao, 90 miles south of Bangkok, Thailand, part of our ‘forward positioning’, i.e. establishing bases literally everywhere.
Ethics and the Republicans They re-thought their position.
The sudden reversal came amid growing indications of dissension within the GOP. Just before House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert's office announced that the measures were being dropped, the chairman of the House ethics committee issued an unusual statement denouncing the leadership's plan. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45573-2005Jan3.html
House Republicans suddenly reversed course Monday, deciding to retain a tough standard for lawmaker discipline and reinstating a rule that would force Majority Leader Tom DeLay to step aside if indicted by a Texas grand jury.
The surprise dual decisions were made by Speaker Dennis Hastert and by DeLay - who asked GOP colleagues to undo the extreme act of loyalty they handed him in November. Then, Republicans changed a party rule, so DeLay could have retained his leadership post if indicted by the grand jury in Austin that charged three of the Texas Republican's associates.
When Republicans began their closed-door meeting Monday night, leaders were considering a rules change that would have made it tougher to rebuke a House member for misconduct. The proposal would have required a more specific finding of ethical violations than is now required. http://apnews.myway.com/article/20050104/D87CUL581.html
Krispy Kreme: They may be a better product than Dunkin’, but their business practices recall that of Enron et al.
Amid allegations of padded sales figures, Krispy Kreme on Tuesday restated its earnings for fiscal 2004, sending its shares tumbling more than 17 percent and threatening the once-trendy doughnut maker with a cash and credit crunch. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=1205&e=2&u=/ap/20050104/ap_on_bi_ge/krispy_kreme_restatement&sid=95609882
Faith Based: Ongoing
Other grant recipients are religious, offering social service programs that the government may have deemed too religious to receive money before President Bush took office.
Visitors to TMM Family Services in Tucson, Ariz., which received $25,000 for housing counseling, are greeted by a picture of Jesus and quotes from the Bible.
"We believe that people being connected to the faith of their choice is important to them having a productive life," said Don Strauch, an ordained minister and executive director of the group, which offers a variety of social services. "Just because we take government money doesn't mean we back down on that philosophy."
All told, faith-based organizations were awarded $1.17 billion in 2003. That is about 12 percent of the $14.5 billion spent on social programs that qualify for faith-based grants in five federal departments. White House officials expect the total to grow.
The list of 2003 grant recipients provided to AP is the first detailed tally of the dollars behind this "faith-based initiative."
Elected with strong support of religious conservatives, Bush came to office promising to open government's checkbook to religious groups that provide social services. Often, Bush says, religious groups do a better job serving the poor.
Civil libertarians fear the government will wind up paying for worship, eroding the constitutional separation between church and state. http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=513&u=/ap/20050102/ap_on_go_ot/federal_faith&printer=1
Hatchet Job on Annan and UN Of course it’s a pack of lies. Good piece in The Nation
Listening to the cable pundits, you would never suspect that there is no proof at this point that Annan, or indeed anyone else at the UN, did anything wrong. Charges of corruption against UN official Benon Sevan are suspect at best, given that they come via Ahmad Chalabi, who was also the source of the discredited information about Iraq's illusory weapons, as well as the assurances that Iraqis would greet US and British forces as liberators. Nor is there any evidence that Annan used his influence to give Cotecna, a company that employed his son, the job of monitoring contracts under the oil-for-food program, and no proof that Cotecna did anything illegal or corrupt. Although Annan's son certainly let his father down by not telling him of Cotecna's continuing "non-compete" payments to him, paternal resignations in response to the sins of prodigal sons have not been a great American tradition--certainly not under the Bush dynasty.
There are real questions about Saddam Hussein's oil sales, both inside and outside the oil-for-food program, but all the serious investigations, such as that by the US Government Accountability Office, make it clear that most of the revenue he raised had nothing to do with the UN, and that the UN did nothing without the explicit or implicit support of the United States acting through the Security Council.
The reality is that the current calls for Annan's head are provoked by his opposition to America's pre-emptive war in Iraq. On December 4 the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the hometown newspaper of Senator Norm Coleman, who has called for Annan's resignation, provided perhaps the most succinct explanation of what lies behind the attacks. Describing Coleman's call as a "sordid move," the editorial explained: "For months before the election, the right-wing constellation of blogs and talk radio was alive with incendiary rhetoric about Annan and the oil-for-food scandal.... This is really all about Annan's refusal to toe the Bush line on Iraq and the administration's generally unilateral approach to foreign affairs. The right-wingers hate Annan and saw in the food-for-oil program a possible chink in his armor. They went after it with a venomous fury." http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20050110&s=williams
What’s Happening, Afghanistan. How’s that success doin’? The Taliban has regrouped, Al-Qaeda is recruiting, most of the country is either too dangerous to negotiate or is controlled by local war lords. And, it’s a narco-mafia haven.
Although farmers all over Afghanistan have been turning to poppy cultivation - causing such farming to increase by 60 percent in 2004 - they often remain impoverished, while big profits are being made by the dealers and traffickers, they say. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/02/international/asia/02afghan.html?oref=login
What’s Happening, Iraq: The Resistance- Growing Those who seek out alternatives to the major U.S. media have noticed this.
Iraq's insurgency counts more than 200,000 active fighters and sympathisers, the country's national intelligence chief told AFP, in the bleakest assessment to date of the armed revolt waged by Sunni Muslims.
"I think the resistance is bigger than the US military in Iraq. I think the resistance is more than 200,000 people," Iraqi intelligence service director General Mohamed Abdullah Shahwani said in an interview ahead of the January 30 elections.
Shahwani said the number includes at least 40,000 hardcore fighters but rises to more than 200,000 members counting part-time fighters and volunteers who provide rebels everything from intelligence and logistics to shelter. http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=12332
Funding the Occupation: Fuzzy, Dishonest math:
Congress expects the White House to request as much as $100 billion this year for war and related costs in Iraq and Afghanistan, congressional officials say.
It would be the third and largest Iraq-related budget request from the White House yet, and it could push the war's costs over $200 billion — far above initial White House estimates of $50 billion-$60 billion. So far, the Iraq war has cost about $130 billion, according to the White House's Office of Management and Budget.
War costs complicate President Bush's plans for initiatives such as overhauling Social Security. They also threaten his pledge to halve the record $413 billion federal budget deficit…
But there is growing annoyance with the White House for refusing to treat the cost of the military operations in Iraq — roughly $5 billion a month, according to the House Appropriations Committee — as part of the annual budget.
"There is a feeling among a lot of members that ... this war has become enough of a routine that they should be able to build it into their annual budgeting and not have to come back to us for supplemental funding of that size," said Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., head of the House Appropriations panel that oversees spending on foreign operations.
"The annual budget proposal we've been given by the White House falsely portrays the bottom line," said Rep. John Spratt, D-S.C., senior Democrat on the House Budget Committee. http://usatoday.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=USATODAY.com+-+Congress+expects+%24100+billion+war+request&expire=&urlID=12762604&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.usatoday.com%2Fnews%2Fworld%2Firaq%2F2005-01-03-iraq-costs_x.htm%3FPO
They’re getting annoyed!
Journalistic Justice: Wondered about Robert Novak’s outing of Valerie Plame, whether he’s paid a price?
This topsy-turvy result derives from the still unexplained direction taken in the official investigation into just who leaked CIA operative Valerie Plame's name to the press back in July, 2003. While the reporter who actually blew her cover was unarguably Robert Novak, who refuses to discuss the matter in public, a three-judge federal appellate panel in Washington is currently considering whether or not to uphold sentences of up to 18 months in prison for Judith Miller of The New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine. Their crime? The refusal to disclose the anonymous sources they used in reporting their respective stories; stories they did not even write.
Miller and Cooper are not alone. On December 9th, Jim Taricani, a television reporter in Providence, R.I., was sentenced to six months of house arrest (the judge made a show of telling him only poor health saved him from prison) for refusing to reveal the anonymous source who gave him an F.B.I. videotape of a local official accepting a bribe. According to an AP report of the sentencing, the presiding judge scolded journalists generally for "thinking they have exclusive, unreviewable authority to employ confidential sources." http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=275638
China: Growing Demands of Elderly population The economy may be booming, but some problems loom. Amongst them…
The world’s most populous nation is still growing, with China’s official population expected to hit 1.3 billion tomorrow, despite a quarter-century-old policy of allowing couples to have only one child. The strict rules were intended to put the brakes on growth after Chairman Mao-era exhortations that more children would make China strong. But while they have helped China curb its birth rate from more than 33 per 1,000 population in 1970 to less than eight per 1,000 three decades later, the country faces new demographic challenges over how to support an ageing population. Lou Binbin, of the China Population Information Research Centre, said: "I would say right now we have a 20-25 year golden period to resolve this problem. The numbers of old people haven’t yet reached a serious level. We will have to rely on the speed of our economic development to resolve this problem of old people." http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=10322005
-R
* Embarrassing quotes from Colin about our generosity; absolutely pathetic. Again, the governments of Sweden and England contributed $8.40 per citizen. The government of the wealthiest country on earth, the United States of America, originally offered twelve cents per citizen.
* This crisis again exposes the lazy journalism, the "outside-in" approach to "journalism that gives us Colin and other luminaries, but few interviews with the population, many of whom speak English;
* The disaster is not only a p.r. opening for the U.S., but also an opportunity to bolster bases in the region, in particular the base at Utapao, 90 miles south of Bangkok, Thailand, part of our ‘forward positioning’, i.e. establishing bases literally everywhere.
Ethics and the Republicans They re-thought their position.
The sudden reversal came amid growing indications of dissension within the GOP. Just before House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert's office announced that the measures were being dropped, the chairman of the House ethics committee issued an unusual statement denouncing the leadership's plan. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45573-2005Jan3.html
House Republicans suddenly reversed course Monday, deciding to retain a tough standard for lawmaker discipline and reinstating a rule that would force Majority Leader Tom DeLay to step aside if indicted by a Texas grand jury.
The surprise dual decisions were made by Speaker Dennis Hastert and by DeLay - who asked GOP colleagues to undo the extreme act of loyalty they handed him in November. Then, Republicans changed a party rule, so DeLay could have retained his leadership post if indicted by the grand jury in Austin that charged three of the Texas Republican's associates.
When Republicans began their closed-door meeting Monday night, leaders were considering a rules change that would have made it tougher to rebuke a House member for misconduct. The proposal would have required a more specific finding of ethical violations than is now required. http://apnews.myway.com/article/20050104/D87CUL581.html
Krispy Kreme: They may be a better product than Dunkin’, but their business practices recall that of Enron et al.
Amid allegations of padded sales figures, Krispy Kreme on Tuesday restated its earnings for fiscal 2004, sending its shares tumbling more than 17 percent and threatening the once-trendy doughnut maker with a cash and credit crunch. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=1205&e=2&u=/ap/20050104/ap_on_bi_ge/krispy_kreme_restatement&sid=95609882
Faith Based: Ongoing
Other grant recipients are religious, offering social service programs that the government may have deemed too religious to receive money before President Bush took office.
Visitors to TMM Family Services in Tucson, Ariz., which received $25,000 for housing counseling, are greeted by a picture of Jesus and quotes from the Bible.
"We believe that people being connected to the faith of their choice is important to them having a productive life," said Don Strauch, an ordained minister and executive director of the group, which offers a variety of social services. "Just because we take government money doesn't mean we back down on that philosophy."
All told, faith-based organizations were awarded $1.17 billion in 2003. That is about 12 percent of the $14.5 billion spent on social programs that qualify for faith-based grants in five federal departments. White House officials expect the total to grow.
The list of 2003 grant recipients provided to AP is the first detailed tally of the dollars behind this "faith-based initiative."
Elected with strong support of religious conservatives, Bush came to office promising to open government's checkbook to religious groups that provide social services. Often, Bush says, religious groups do a better job serving the poor.
Civil libertarians fear the government will wind up paying for worship, eroding the constitutional separation between church and state. http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=513&u=/ap/20050102/ap_on_go_ot/federal_faith&printer=1
Hatchet Job on Annan and UN Of course it’s a pack of lies. Good piece in The Nation
Listening to the cable pundits, you would never suspect that there is no proof at this point that Annan, or indeed anyone else at the UN, did anything wrong. Charges of corruption against UN official Benon Sevan are suspect at best, given that they come via Ahmad Chalabi, who was also the source of the discredited information about Iraq's illusory weapons, as well as the assurances that Iraqis would greet US and British forces as liberators. Nor is there any evidence that Annan used his influence to give Cotecna, a company that employed his son, the job of monitoring contracts under the oil-for-food program, and no proof that Cotecna did anything illegal or corrupt. Although Annan's son certainly let his father down by not telling him of Cotecna's continuing "non-compete" payments to him, paternal resignations in response to the sins of prodigal sons have not been a great American tradition--certainly not under the Bush dynasty.
There are real questions about Saddam Hussein's oil sales, both inside and outside the oil-for-food program, but all the serious investigations, such as that by the US Government Accountability Office, make it clear that most of the revenue he raised had nothing to do with the UN, and that the UN did nothing without the explicit or implicit support of the United States acting through the Security Council.
The reality is that the current calls for Annan's head are provoked by his opposition to America's pre-emptive war in Iraq. On December 4 the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the hometown newspaper of Senator Norm Coleman, who has called for Annan's resignation, provided perhaps the most succinct explanation of what lies behind the attacks. Describing Coleman's call as a "sordid move," the editorial explained: "For months before the election, the right-wing constellation of blogs and talk radio was alive with incendiary rhetoric about Annan and the oil-for-food scandal.... This is really all about Annan's refusal to toe the Bush line on Iraq and the administration's generally unilateral approach to foreign affairs. The right-wingers hate Annan and saw in the food-for-oil program a possible chink in his armor. They went after it with a venomous fury." http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20050110&s=williams
What’s Happening, Afghanistan. How’s that success doin’? The Taliban has regrouped, Al-Qaeda is recruiting, most of the country is either too dangerous to negotiate or is controlled by local war lords. And, it’s a narco-mafia haven.
Although farmers all over Afghanistan have been turning to poppy cultivation - causing such farming to increase by 60 percent in 2004 - they often remain impoverished, while big profits are being made by the dealers and traffickers, they say. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/02/international/asia/02afghan.html?oref=login
What’s Happening, Iraq: The Resistance- Growing Those who seek out alternatives to the major U.S. media have noticed this.
Iraq's insurgency counts more than 200,000 active fighters and sympathisers, the country's national intelligence chief told AFP, in the bleakest assessment to date of the armed revolt waged by Sunni Muslims.
"I think the resistance is bigger than the US military in Iraq. I think the resistance is more than 200,000 people," Iraqi intelligence service director General Mohamed Abdullah Shahwani said in an interview ahead of the January 30 elections.
Shahwani said the number includes at least 40,000 hardcore fighters but rises to more than 200,000 members counting part-time fighters and volunteers who provide rebels everything from intelligence and logistics to shelter. http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=12332
Funding the Occupation: Fuzzy, Dishonest math:
Congress expects the White House to request as much as $100 billion this year for war and related costs in Iraq and Afghanistan, congressional officials say.
It would be the third and largest Iraq-related budget request from the White House yet, and it could push the war's costs over $200 billion — far above initial White House estimates of $50 billion-$60 billion. So far, the Iraq war has cost about $130 billion, according to the White House's Office of Management and Budget.
War costs complicate President Bush's plans for initiatives such as overhauling Social Security. They also threaten his pledge to halve the record $413 billion federal budget deficit…
But there is growing annoyance with the White House for refusing to treat the cost of the military operations in Iraq — roughly $5 billion a month, according to the House Appropriations Committee — as part of the annual budget.
"There is a feeling among a lot of members that ... this war has become enough of a routine that they should be able to build it into their annual budgeting and not have to come back to us for supplemental funding of that size," said Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., head of the House Appropriations panel that oversees spending on foreign operations.
"The annual budget proposal we've been given by the White House falsely portrays the bottom line," said Rep. John Spratt, D-S.C., senior Democrat on the House Budget Committee. http://usatoday.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=USATODAY.com+-+Congress+expects+%24100+billion+war+request&expire=&urlID=12762604&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.usatoday.com%2Fnews%2Fworld%2Firaq%2F2005-01-03-iraq-costs_x.htm%3FPO
They’re getting annoyed!
Journalistic Justice: Wondered about Robert Novak’s outing of Valerie Plame, whether he’s paid a price?
This topsy-turvy result derives from the still unexplained direction taken in the official investigation into just who leaked CIA operative Valerie Plame's name to the press back in July, 2003. While the reporter who actually blew her cover was unarguably Robert Novak, who refuses to discuss the matter in public, a three-judge federal appellate panel in Washington is currently considering whether or not to uphold sentences of up to 18 months in prison for Judith Miller of The New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine. Their crime? The refusal to disclose the anonymous sources they used in reporting their respective stories; stories they did not even write.
Miller and Cooper are not alone. On December 9th, Jim Taricani, a television reporter in Providence, R.I., was sentenced to six months of house arrest (the judge made a show of telling him only poor health saved him from prison) for refusing to reveal the anonymous source who gave him an F.B.I. videotape of a local official accepting a bribe. According to an AP report of the sentencing, the presiding judge scolded journalists generally for "thinking they have exclusive, unreviewable authority to employ confidential sources." http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=275638
China: Growing Demands of Elderly population The economy may be booming, but some problems loom. Amongst them…
The world’s most populous nation is still growing, with China’s official population expected to hit 1.3 billion tomorrow, despite a quarter-century-old policy of allowing couples to have only one child. The strict rules were intended to put the brakes on growth after Chairman Mao-era exhortations that more children would make China strong. But while they have helped China curb its birth rate from more than 33 per 1,000 population in 1970 to less than eight per 1,000 three decades later, the country faces new demographic challenges over how to support an ageing population. Lou Binbin, of the China Population Information Research Centre, said: "I would say right now we have a 20-25 year golden period to resolve this problem. The numbers of old people haven’t yet reached a serious level. We will have to rely on the speed of our economic development to resolve this problem of old people." http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=10322005
-R
