Saturday, February 26, 2005
Politicized Social Security Administration. There have been previous examples. Now the deputy commissioner is traveling with Republican congressmen promoting private accounts. A trustee has “signed on” to be ad advisor and spokesman” for a phase-out group. Outrageous, but, again, not surprising. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/25/politics/25social.html?ex=1267074000&en=e9aca6e11955a58a&ei=5090&par
Joe Conason investigates:
Are Bush appointees in the Social Security Administration concocting a similar propaganda effort to promote privatization? Reports last month in the Washington Post and the New York Times suggested that they are quietly doing just that. The newspapers obtained copies of a "national strategic communications plan" and a "communications/marketing tactical plan" prepared by SSA officials. Those documents indicate that the agency will place messages about the system's "solvency" in traditional media, as well as in "outreach" efforts to consumers at "big-box stores" and "farmers markets."
Evidently, the idea is to use the credibility of the Social Security Administration itself to undermine people's confidence in the system…
Exactly what Bush's minions at the SSA have been up to, aside from writing strategy plans, isn't clear yet. To find out, Melanie Sloan of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a liberal public interest group, filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the SSA last month. Sloan asked for "records of any contacts between the agency and outside public affairs firms," notably including any dealings with Ketchum and Fleishman-Hillard -- the Washington P.R. giants recently implicated in the administration's pundit payola and news management scandals. Public records show that the SSA already has entered into a $1.8 million consulting contract with Fleishman-Hillard. http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2005/02/25/propaganda/index.html
USA Today’s Verdict on Bush’s Trip: Thumb’s Down:
• Bush inched closer to joining Great Britain, Germany and France in negotiations with Iran over halting its nuclear program. But there was no agreement on what incentives might be offered to persuade Iran to stop enriching fuel that could be used in nuclear weapons.
• Bush said he wants to work with Germany to share research and develop technology to reduce global warming, an issue of particular concern to Schroeder. But he did not make a specific proposal.
• France became the last of NATO's 26 members to join its effort to train Iraqi troops and will contribute to a trust fund to do so. But Bush did not win acknowledgment from the leaders of Germany, France and Russia, all of whom opposed the war, that the invasion was a wise move or that Iraq is on the path to stability.
• Bush and Putin agreed to disagree on the Russian president's commitment to democracy. Bush said he believes Putin's assurances that "there can be no return to what we used to have."
Putin said he will "take into account" some of Bush's concerns. But he did not promise to ease restrictions on the media and his political opposition.
The protests that accompanied every stop on Bush's five-day trip and interviews with people on the street in Belgium, Germany and Slovakia suggested that many Europeans have not been won over. http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-02-24-bush-analysis_x.htm
Greater Chechnya The conflict goes beyond Chechnya’s borders.
Authorities in Moscow face a 'metastasizing' insurgency as the separatist war spreads across the northern Caucasus region.
The Chechen conflict has seeped beyond its borders into the northern Caucasus region, and Dagestan is one of the new fronts. The bandits, as the Russian authorities call them, are Muslim insurgents who have crossed over from Chechnya or launched battles on their home turf. The police, like those in many areas of Russia now, wear full camouflage and arrive at their house calls in armored vehicles equipped with battle gear.
Increasingly, his army appears to be made up not only of Chechens, but recruits from the republics surrounding it — along with fighters from other Muslim lands. Few of these places are well-known. But if the recent incidents are pinpointed on a map, they trace a line of instability across the entire north Caucasus region — in some ways, Russia's nightmare scenario. http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fg-caucasus26feb26,1,6383759.story?ctrack=2&cset=true
China’s Developing Reach: The regional power goes for more
From Japan southward to Indonesia, companies and governments have come to rely on China as a market for vital exports -- from palm oil to semiconductors -- and a source for the imports that delight local business people .
With stronger economic ties between East Asian countries and China has come a rise in Beijing's political and diplomatic influence, according to a variety of sources in China and the region. Treading softly but casting a big shadow, they say, China has emerged as an active and decisive leader in East Asia, transforming economic and diplomatic relationships across an area long dominated by the United States.
The shift in status, increasingly clear over the past year, has changed the way Chinese officials view their country's international role as well as the way other Asians look to Beijing for cues. In many ways, China has started to act like a traditional big power, tending to its regional interests and pulling smaller neighbors along in its wake. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54610-2005Feb25.html
Canada: Anti-Missile Follow-up Our very mediocre ex-Governor made some inflammatory remarks. Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin voiced his displeasure.
The United States will decide when to fire missiles over Canadian airspace whether Canada likes it or not, says America's ambassador. The blunt warning from Paul Cellucci came minutes after Prime Minister Paul Martin announced yesterday that he will not sign on to the controversial U.S. missile defence program.
"We will deploy. We will defend North America," Cellucci said.
"We simply cannot understand why Canada would, in effect, give up its sovereignty -- its seat at the table -- to decide what to do about a missile that might be coming toward Canada." http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/LondonFreePress/News/2005/02/25/941692-sun.html
British Raise Their Minimum Wage. What’s notable is that in raising theirs to more than 5 pounds this Fall and 5.35 in 2006, they will just about double ours, as that equals $10.22/hour. The U.S. minimum wage is still $5.15/hr. http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=614635
-R
Joe Conason investigates:
Are Bush appointees in the Social Security Administration concocting a similar propaganda effort to promote privatization? Reports last month in the Washington Post and the New York Times suggested that they are quietly doing just that. The newspapers obtained copies of a "national strategic communications plan" and a "communications/marketing tactical plan" prepared by SSA officials. Those documents indicate that the agency will place messages about the system's "solvency" in traditional media, as well as in "outreach" efforts to consumers at "big-box stores" and "farmers markets."
Evidently, the idea is to use the credibility of the Social Security Administration itself to undermine people's confidence in the system…
Exactly what Bush's minions at the SSA have been up to, aside from writing strategy plans, isn't clear yet. To find out, Melanie Sloan of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a liberal public interest group, filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the SSA last month. Sloan asked for "records of any contacts between the agency and outside public affairs firms," notably including any dealings with Ketchum and Fleishman-Hillard -- the Washington P.R. giants recently implicated in the administration's pundit payola and news management scandals. Public records show that the SSA already has entered into a $1.8 million consulting contract with Fleishman-Hillard. http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2005/02/25/propaganda/index.html
USA Today’s Verdict on Bush’s Trip: Thumb’s Down:
• Bush inched closer to joining Great Britain, Germany and France in negotiations with Iran over halting its nuclear program. But there was no agreement on what incentives might be offered to persuade Iran to stop enriching fuel that could be used in nuclear weapons.
• Bush said he wants to work with Germany to share research and develop technology to reduce global warming, an issue of particular concern to Schroeder. But he did not make a specific proposal.
• France became the last of NATO's 26 members to join its effort to train Iraqi troops and will contribute to a trust fund to do so. But Bush did not win acknowledgment from the leaders of Germany, France and Russia, all of whom opposed the war, that the invasion was a wise move or that Iraq is on the path to stability.
• Bush and Putin agreed to disagree on the Russian president's commitment to democracy. Bush said he believes Putin's assurances that "there can be no return to what we used to have."
Putin said he will "take into account" some of Bush's concerns. But he did not promise to ease restrictions on the media and his political opposition.
The protests that accompanied every stop on Bush's five-day trip and interviews with people on the street in Belgium, Germany and Slovakia suggested that many Europeans have not been won over. http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-02-24-bush-analysis_x.htm
Greater Chechnya The conflict goes beyond Chechnya’s borders.
Authorities in Moscow face a 'metastasizing' insurgency as the separatist war spreads across the northern Caucasus region.
The Chechen conflict has seeped beyond its borders into the northern Caucasus region, and Dagestan is one of the new fronts. The bandits, as the Russian authorities call them, are Muslim insurgents who have crossed over from Chechnya or launched battles on their home turf. The police, like those in many areas of Russia now, wear full camouflage and arrive at their house calls in armored vehicles equipped with battle gear.
Increasingly, his army appears to be made up not only of Chechens, but recruits from the republics surrounding it — along with fighters from other Muslim lands. Few of these places are well-known. But if the recent incidents are pinpointed on a map, they trace a line of instability across the entire north Caucasus region — in some ways, Russia's nightmare scenario. http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fg-caucasus26feb26,1,6383759.story?ctrack=2&cset=true
China’s Developing Reach: The regional power goes for more
From Japan southward to Indonesia, companies and governments have come to rely on China as a market for vital exports -- from palm oil to semiconductors -- and a source for the imports that delight local business people .
With stronger economic ties between East Asian countries and China has come a rise in Beijing's political and diplomatic influence, according to a variety of sources in China and the region. Treading softly but casting a big shadow, they say, China has emerged as an active and decisive leader in East Asia, transforming economic and diplomatic relationships across an area long dominated by the United States.
The shift in status, increasingly clear over the past year, has changed the way Chinese officials view their country's international role as well as the way other Asians look to Beijing for cues. In many ways, China has started to act like a traditional big power, tending to its regional interests and pulling smaller neighbors along in its wake. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54610-2005Feb25.html
Canada: Anti-Missile Follow-up Our very mediocre ex-Governor made some inflammatory remarks. Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin voiced his displeasure.
The United States will decide when to fire missiles over Canadian airspace whether Canada likes it or not, says America's ambassador. The blunt warning from Paul Cellucci came minutes after Prime Minister Paul Martin announced yesterday that he will not sign on to the controversial U.S. missile defence program.
"We will deploy. We will defend North America," Cellucci said.
"We simply cannot understand why Canada would, in effect, give up its sovereignty -- its seat at the table -- to decide what to do about a missile that might be coming toward Canada." http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/LondonFreePress/News/2005/02/25/941692-sun.html
British Raise Their Minimum Wage. What’s notable is that in raising theirs to more than 5 pounds this Fall and 5.35 in 2006, they will just about double ours, as that equals $10.22/hour. The U.S. minimum wage is still $5.15/hr. http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=614635
-R
Friday, February 25, 2005
Gannon: My posts may seem excessive, but this Scandal will matter if we get the info around…and to the right people. Developments:
Some House and Senate Dems have gotten involved in the scandal.
1) Reps. John Conyers (Ranking Member, House Judiciary Committee) and Louise Slaughter (Ranking Member, House Rules Committee) have asked the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to include Jeff Gannon/James Guckert in an investigation of "whether the Administration violated the ban on prepackaged news stories by siphoning print stories to James D. Guckert, also known as "Jeff Gannon."
2) Conyers and Slaughter wrote to US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who is investigating the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame, urging him to subpoena Gannon's daily diary.
3) Joe Biden: Caught him on Bill Maher’s how, calling for a congressional investigation. But, he has refused to sign on to the letter of Dick Durbin, saying that it isn’t a ‘congressional investigation.’ How typical http://americablog.blogspot.com/
Some 2nd tier papers are covering, editorializing. The Atlanta-Journal Constitution is covering it, the Detroit Free Press is editorializing (below) as well as the Tampa Tribune. Hello, Majors… Yet, ABC, CBS, Los Angeles Times, Miami Herald, others have ignored it thus far.
“How is it that an administration that screened thousands of people for attendance at Bush campaign rallies repeatedly let a fake reporter into the sanctorum of the White House pressroom under a false name? Who was running that background check? How could a president who declares that national security is his prime concern be so ill served for nearly two years by his own security detail? and the Atlanta Tribune, but not yet the biggies.”- Detroit Free Press
Our dumb, misinformed public: Still: Harris Poll Gads
The latest Harris Poll conducted following the recent elections in Iraq finds that on many aspects U.S. adults have not changed their basic views about Iraq with one important exception: The number of adults who favor bringing troops home in the next year has increased significantly to its highest level since October 2003 when Harris Interactive® first measured the public’s opinions on this issue.
64 percent believe that Saddam Hussein had strong links to Al Qaeda (up slightly from 62% in November).
61 percent believe that Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, was a serious threat to U.S. security (down slightly from 63% in November).
More surprising perhaps are the large numbers (albeit not majorities) who believe the following claims not made by the president and which virtually no experts believe to be true:
47 percent believe that Saddam Hussein helped plan and support the hijackers who attacked the U.S. on September 11, 2001 (up six percentage points from November).
44 percent actually believe that several of the hijackers who attacked the U.S. on September 11 were Iraqis (up significantly from 37% in November).
36 percent believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the U.S. invaded (down slightly from 38% in November).http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=544
What’s Happening, Iraq: Bombings, of course, and the police, the constant targets, seem to be “completely compromised by the insurgents.” http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0224/p06s01-woiq.html."
Bush Trip: Germans don’t play ball
A Town Hall meeting, said to have been intended as the "main highlight" of Bush's visit to Germany, was dropped from his schedule after German officials were "unwilling to permit a scripted event with questions approved in advance." http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,343281,00.html
Bush met no ordinary Germans, was totally in a bubble, and despite the many smiles, it was hard not to notice that European leaders are “increasingly united against U.S. positions and feel emboldened to go their own way.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48365-2005Feb23.html
Canada says no to Missile Shield:
Paul Martin, the prime minister, has secretly conveyed the decision to Washington despite a personal request from President George W Bush to think again.
The decision was made public yesterday by Pierre Pettigrew, the foreign minister, after months of equivocation.
"After careful consideration of the issue, we have decided that Canada will not participate in the US ballistic missile defence system,'' he told MPs.
The decision would not "in any way" hurt ties with the United States, he said.
The move was especially surprising given Mr Martin's previous backing for the system, which America hopes can be used to shoot down incoming missiles.
His defence minister, Bill Graham, had also expressed his support for the project.
But the prime minister faced strong opposition from his backbenchers amid growing anti-American sentiment and charges that Mr Bush was seeking to militarise space.
The decision is believed to mark the first time in decades that Canada had refused a US request to join a strategic programme to defend the North American continent. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/02/25/wcanada25.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/02/25/i
Scott Ritter: Unreliable? Some on the Left find him wildly inconsistent. One such post, from Siva Vaidhyanathan, questions his predicting the bombing of Iran in June, posted here previously.
Ritter is rather undependable and unstable. The Clinton administration had serious problems with his behavior, even investigating him for espionage. I have never been able to make sense of Ritter. One month he seems brilliant and principled. The next he seems frenetic and vindictive. Ritter was right both in 1998 and 2002 about the lack of weapons in Iraq. But so were a lot of people. Broken clocks and Scott Ritter can be right twice a day. Of course, Ritter had many good sources in Iraq. So it's not surprising that he knows a few things about it. But he never served in Iran. So besides picking up The New Yorker, how would he know stuff? http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3449870/
The Falling Dollar: Tom Friedman. Not a fan, but helpful that he’s on it.
The dollar is falling! The dollar is falling! But the Bush team has basically told the world that unless the markets make the falling dollar into a full-blown New York Stock Exchange crisis and trade war, it is not going to raise taxes, cut spending or reduce oil consumption in ways that could really shrink our budget and trade deficits and reverse the dollar's slide.
This administration is content to let the dollar fall and bet that the global markets will glide the greenback lower in an "orderly" manner…
When a country lives on borrowed time, borrowed money and borrowed energy, it is just begging the markets to discipline it in their own way at their own time. As I said, usually the markets do it in an orderly way - except when they don't. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/24/opinion/24friedman.html?hp
Standards of Journalism Are we surprised that Fox News plays loose with AP dispatches? Have we not descended FAR below this level so as to make this news hardly startling?
Since April 2002, FOX News has consistently doctored Associated Press articles featured on the FOX News website concerning terrorist attacks in the Middle East to conform to Bush administration terminology. Without any editorial notation disclosing that words in the AP articles have been changed, FOX News replaces the terms "suicide bomber" and "suicide bombing" with "homicide bomber" and "homicide bombing" to describe attackers who kill themselves and others with explosives. In at least one case, FOX News actually altered an AP quote from Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) to fit this naming convention, and then revised it to restore the quote without noting either the original alteration or its correction. http://mediamatters.org/items/200502230006
Loose Nukes: Belated policy initiative-increasing security at the Russian nuclear depots
Under the planned agreement, U.S. and Russian officials would accelerate long-delayed security upgrades at Russia's many poorly protected nuclear facilities, jointly develop emergency responses to a nuclear or radiological terrorist attack, and establish a program to replace highly enriched uranium in research reactors around the world to prevent it from being used for weapons, the U.S. officials said.
Although details were still being negotiated last night, the joint statement to be released at the presidential summit in Bratislava, Slovakia, could be used as a counterpoint to the rising tension in U.S.-Russian relations over Putin's crackdown on domestic dissent. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48465-2005Feb23.html
Children Left Behind: Fault-finding the Administration policy:
Concluding a yearlong study on the effectiveness of President Bush's sweeping education law, No Child Left Behind, a bipartisan panel of lawmakers drawn from many states yesterday pronounced it a flawed, convoluted and unconstitutional education reform initiative that had usurped state and local control of public schools.
The report, based on hearings in six cities, praised the law's goal of ending the gap in scholastic achievement between white and minority students. But most of the 77-page report, which the Education Department rebutted yesterday, was devoted to a detailed inventory and discussion of its flaws.
It said the law's accountability system, which punishes schools whose students fail to improve steadily on standardized tests, undermined school improvement efforts already under way in many states and relied on the wrong indicators. The report said that the law's rules for educating disabled students conflicted with another federal law, and that it presented bureaucratic requirements that failed to recognize the tapestry of educational challenges faced by teachers in the nation's 15,000 school districts. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/24/education/24child.html?pagewanted=print&position
Luntz Playbook. Well, this isn’t surprising either. The Republican strategist-consultant urges his minions to keep the public from looking at the facts by talking terror, avoiding facts, spinning the old lies that have worked. Think Progress digests the 160 pages and spits out some pointers.
In his memo on how to manipulate American perception on the economy, right-wing spinmeister Frank Luntz advises conservatives to “resist the temptation’ to use facts and figures about the economy. (You know, all those pesky statistics about lower wages, unemployment, skyrocketing deficits, etc.) Instead, he advises, you can’t go wrong if you continuosly remind people about the terrorist attacks of 9/11. “This is the context that explains and justifies why we have $500 billion deficits, why the stock market tanked, why unemployment climbed to 6%.”
Oh, yes, he advises preying on the emotions tied to the terrorist attacks to distract Americans from the truth about the economy, writing, “Much of the public anger can be immediately pacified if they are reminded that we would not be in this situation today if 9/11 had not happened.” It’s also an easy way to get President Bush off the hook: Luntz points out that convincing people that the struggling economy is a consequence of 9/11 (as opposed to, say, Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy) will convince people “it is unfair to blame the current political leadership”
Finally, Luntz advises, 9/11 is the perfect way to dodge responsibility for sinking the country in red ink. In a section headed “Without the context of 9-11, you will be blamed for the deficit,” he points out “supporters are inherently turned off to the idea of fiscal irresponsibility.” The best way to counter that fact? “The trick then is to contextualize the deficit inside of 9/11.” http://thinkprogress.org/index.php?p=309
Kansas Prosecutor Investigating Late-Term Abortion Patients. The AG, an anti-abortion activist, is taking his next step.
Attorney General Phill Kline, a Republican who has made fighting abortion a staple of his two years in the post, is demanding the complete medical files of scores of women and girls who had late-term abortions, saying on Thursday that he needs the information to prosecute criminal cases.
Mr. Kline's efforts to obtain records from abortion clinics follows his failed attempt last year to require the state's health workers to report any sexual activity of girls younger than 16, the age of legal consent in Kansas. Health-care providers sued, and a federal judge granted a temporary restraining order. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/25/national/25kansas.html?
Pentagon Aggressivity: They’re trying to send commandos into various countries, by-passing the State Department, part of a two year old battle between the State Department and Pentagon.
The Pentagon is promoting a global counterterrorism plan that would allow Special Operations forces to enter a foreign country to conduct military operations without explicit concurrence from the U.S. ambassador there, administration officials familiar with the plan said.
The plan would weaken the long-standing "chief of mission" authority under which the U.S. ambassador, as the president's top representative in a foreign country, decides whether to grant entry to U.S. government personnel based on political and diplomatic considerations.
The Special Operations missions envisioned in the plan would largely be secret, known to only a handful of officials from the foreign country, if any. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48522-2005Feb23?language=printer
-R
Some House and Senate Dems have gotten involved in the scandal.
1) Reps. John Conyers (Ranking Member, House Judiciary Committee) and Louise Slaughter (Ranking Member, House Rules Committee) have asked the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to include Jeff Gannon/James Guckert in an investigation of "whether the Administration violated the ban on prepackaged news stories by siphoning print stories to James D. Guckert, also known as "Jeff Gannon."
2) Conyers and Slaughter wrote to US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who is investigating the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame, urging him to subpoena Gannon's daily diary.
3) Joe Biden: Caught him on Bill Maher’s how, calling for a congressional investigation. But, he has refused to sign on to the letter of Dick Durbin, saying that it isn’t a ‘congressional investigation.’ How typical http://americablog.blogspot.com/
Some 2nd tier papers are covering, editorializing. The Atlanta-Journal Constitution is covering it, the Detroit Free Press is editorializing (below) as well as the Tampa Tribune. Hello, Majors… Yet, ABC, CBS, Los Angeles Times, Miami Herald, others have ignored it thus far.
“How is it that an administration that screened thousands of people for attendance at Bush campaign rallies repeatedly let a fake reporter into the sanctorum of the White House pressroom under a false name? Who was running that background check? How could a president who declares that national security is his prime concern be so ill served for nearly two years by his own security detail? and the Atlanta Tribune, but not yet the biggies.”- Detroit Free Press
Our dumb, misinformed public: Still: Harris Poll Gads
The latest Harris Poll conducted following the recent elections in Iraq finds that on many aspects U.S. adults have not changed their basic views about Iraq with one important exception: The number of adults who favor bringing troops home in the next year has increased significantly to its highest level since October 2003 when Harris Interactive® first measured the public’s opinions on this issue.
64 percent believe that Saddam Hussein had strong links to Al Qaeda (up slightly from 62% in November).
61 percent believe that Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, was a serious threat to U.S. security (down slightly from 63% in November).
More surprising perhaps are the large numbers (albeit not majorities) who believe the following claims not made by the president and which virtually no experts believe to be true:
47 percent believe that Saddam Hussein helped plan and support the hijackers who attacked the U.S. on September 11, 2001 (up six percentage points from November).
44 percent actually believe that several of the hijackers who attacked the U.S. on September 11 were Iraqis (up significantly from 37% in November).
36 percent believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the U.S. invaded (down slightly from 38% in November).http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=544
What’s Happening, Iraq: Bombings, of course, and the police, the constant targets, seem to be “completely compromised by the insurgents.” http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0224/p06s01-woiq.html."
Bush Trip: Germans don’t play ball
A Town Hall meeting, said to have been intended as the "main highlight" of Bush's visit to Germany, was dropped from his schedule after German officials were "unwilling to permit a scripted event with questions approved in advance." http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,343281,00.html
Bush met no ordinary Germans, was totally in a bubble, and despite the many smiles, it was hard not to notice that European leaders are “increasingly united against U.S. positions and feel emboldened to go their own way.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48365-2005Feb23.html
Canada says no to Missile Shield:
Paul Martin, the prime minister, has secretly conveyed the decision to Washington despite a personal request from President George W Bush to think again.
The decision was made public yesterday by Pierre Pettigrew, the foreign minister, after months of equivocation.
"After careful consideration of the issue, we have decided that Canada will not participate in the US ballistic missile defence system,'' he told MPs.
The decision would not "in any way" hurt ties with the United States, he said.
The move was especially surprising given Mr Martin's previous backing for the system, which America hopes can be used to shoot down incoming missiles.
His defence minister, Bill Graham, had also expressed his support for the project.
But the prime minister faced strong opposition from his backbenchers amid growing anti-American sentiment and charges that Mr Bush was seeking to militarise space.
The decision is believed to mark the first time in decades that Canada had refused a US request to join a strategic programme to defend the North American continent. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/02/25/wcanada25.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/02/25/i
Scott Ritter: Unreliable? Some on the Left find him wildly inconsistent. One such post, from Siva Vaidhyanathan, questions his predicting the bombing of Iran in June, posted here previously.
Ritter is rather undependable and unstable. The Clinton administration had serious problems with his behavior, even investigating him for espionage. I have never been able to make sense of Ritter. One month he seems brilliant and principled. The next he seems frenetic and vindictive. Ritter was right both in 1998 and 2002 about the lack of weapons in Iraq. But so were a lot of people. Broken clocks and Scott Ritter can be right twice a day. Of course, Ritter had many good sources in Iraq. So it's not surprising that he knows a few things about it. But he never served in Iran. So besides picking up The New Yorker, how would he know stuff? http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3449870/
The Falling Dollar: Tom Friedman. Not a fan, but helpful that he’s on it.
The dollar is falling! The dollar is falling! But the Bush team has basically told the world that unless the markets make the falling dollar into a full-blown New York Stock Exchange crisis and trade war, it is not going to raise taxes, cut spending or reduce oil consumption in ways that could really shrink our budget and trade deficits and reverse the dollar's slide.
This administration is content to let the dollar fall and bet that the global markets will glide the greenback lower in an "orderly" manner…
When a country lives on borrowed time, borrowed money and borrowed energy, it is just begging the markets to discipline it in their own way at their own time. As I said, usually the markets do it in an orderly way - except when they don't. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/24/opinion/24friedman.html?hp
Standards of Journalism Are we surprised that Fox News plays loose with AP dispatches? Have we not descended FAR below this level so as to make this news hardly startling?
Since April 2002, FOX News has consistently doctored Associated Press articles featured on the FOX News website concerning terrorist attacks in the Middle East to conform to Bush administration terminology. Without any editorial notation disclosing that words in the AP articles have been changed, FOX News replaces the terms "suicide bomber" and "suicide bombing" with "homicide bomber" and "homicide bombing" to describe attackers who kill themselves and others with explosives. In at least one case, FOX News actually altered an AP quote from Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) to fit this naming convention, and then revised it to restore the quote without noting either the original alteration or its correction. http://mediamatters.org/items/200502230006
Loose Nukes: Belated policy initiative-increasing security at the Russian nuclear depots
Under the planned agreement, U.S. and Russian officials would accelerate long-delayed security upgrades at Russia's many poorly protected nuclear facilities, jointly develop emergency responses to a nuclear or radiological terrorist attack, and establish a program to replace highly enriched uranium in research reactors around the world to prevent it from being used for weapons, the U.S. officials said.
Although details were still being negotiated last night, the joint statement to be released at the presidential summit in Bratislava, Slovakia, could be used as a counterpoint to the rising tension in U.S.-Russian relations over Putin's crackdown on domestic dissent. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48465-2005Feb23.html
Children Left Behind: Fault-finding the Administration policy:
Concluding a yearlong study on the effectiveness of President Bush's sweeping education law, No Child Left Behind, a bipartisan panel of lawmakers drawn from many states yesterday pronounced it a flawed, convoluted and unconstitutional education reform initiative that had usurped state and local control of public schools.
The report, based on hearings in six cities, praised the law's goal of ending the gap in scholastic achievement between white and minority students. But most of the 77-page report, which the Education Department rebutted yesterday, was devoted to a detailed inventory and discussion of its flaws.
It said the law's accountability system, which punishes schools whose students fail to improve steadily on standardized tests, undermined school improvement efforts already under way in many states and relied on the wrong indicators. The report said that the law's rules for educating disabled students conflicted with another federal law, and that it presented bureaucratic requirements that failed to recognize the tapestry of educational challenges faced by teachers in the nation's 15,000 school districts. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/24/education/24child.html?pagewanted=print&position
Luntz Playbook. Well, this isn’t surprising either. The Republican strategist-consultant urges his minions to keep the public from looking at the facts by talking terror, avoiding facts, spinning the old lies that have worked. Think Progress digests the 160 pages and spits out some pointers.
In his memo on how to manipulate American perception on the economy, right-wing spinmeister Frank Luntz advises conservatives to “resist the temptation’ to use facts and figures about the economy. (You know, all those pesky statistics about lower wages, unemployment, skyrocketing deficits, etc.) Instead, he advises, you can’t go wrong if you continuosly remind people about the terrorist attacks of 9/11. “This is the context that explains and justifies why we have $500 billion deficits, why the stock market tanked, why unemployment climbed to 6%.”
Oh, yes, he advises preying on the emotions tied to the terrorist attacks to distract Americans from the truth about the economy, writing, “Much of the public anger can be immediately pacified if they are reminded that we would not be in this situation today if 9/11 had not happened.” It’s also an easy way to get President Bush off the hook: Luntz points out that convincing people that the struggling economy is a consequence of 9/11 (as opposed to, say, Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy) will convince people “it is unfair to blame the current political leadership”
Finally, Luntz advises, 9/11 is the perfect way to dodge responsibility for sinking the country in red ink. In a section headed “Without the context of 9-11, you will be blamed for the deficit,” he points out “supporters are inherently turned off to the idea of fiscal irresponsibility.” The best way to counter that fact? “The trick then is to contextualize the deficit inside of 9/11.” http://thinkprogress.org/index.php?p=309
Kansas Prosecutor Investigating Late-Term Abortion Patients. The AG, an anti-abortion activist, is taking his next step.
Attorney General Phill Kline, a Republican who has made fighting abortion a staple of his two years in the post, is demanding the complete medical files of scores of women and girls who had late-term abortions, saying on Thursday that he needs the information to prosecute criminal cases.
Mr. Kline's efforts to obtain records from abortion clinics follows his failed attempt last year to require the state's health workers to report any sexual activity of girls younger than 16, the age of legal consent in Kansas. Health-care providers sued, and a federal judge granted a temporary restraining order. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/25/national/25kansas.html?
Pentagon Aggressivity: They’re trying to send commandos into various countries, by-passing the State Department, part of a two year old battle between the State Department and Pentagon.
The Pentagon is promoting a global counterterrorism plan that would allow Special Operations forces to enter a foreign country to conduct military operations without explicit concurrence from the U.S. ambassador there, administration officials familiar with the plan said.
The plan would weaken the long-standing "chief of mission" authority under which the U.S. ambassador, as the president's top representative in a foreign country, decides whether to grant entry to U.S. government personnel based on political and diplomatic considerations.
The Special Operations missions envisioned in the plan would largely be secret, known to only a handful of officials from the foreign country, if any. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48522-2005Feb23?language=printer
-R
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
"I am the one who speaks for the spirit of freedom and decency in you" -- unlike "these flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid rich kids like George Bush ... who ... speak for all that is cruel and stupid and vicious in the American character." –Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear
Propaganda (cont.)
"We continue to discover biological and chemical weapons and facilities to make them inside Iraq." ----Chris Cox, (R-California), introducing Dick Cheney at the conservative conference in D.C. last week. No one flinched, apparently…unsurprisingly. He was talking about sarin and ricin, but still… http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/02/19/cpac/index.html
What’s Happening, Afghanistan: The UN Development report found the country to be in miserable shape.
“Our team found the overwhelming majority of people hold a sense of pessimism and fear that reconstruction is bypassing them,'' said Daud Saba, one of the report's authors.
The report was also critical of the U.S.-led military engagement in Afghanistan, saying it helped produce a climate of ``fear, intimidation, terror and lawlessness'' and neglected the longer-term threat to security posed by inequality and injustice.
It also described reconstruction projects sponsored by the U.S. military as ``inadequate and dangerous,'' echoing concern from some relief groups that they have blurred the lines between soldiers and civilians, and made aid workers into militant targets. http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghan-Development.html?
What’s Happening, Iraq: So Ibrahim Jafari is the name to know, the likely prime minister. He’s from a religious (Dawa) party which has historically been close to Iran. The Kurds and the Allawi types will seek to limit his powers. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-fg-shiites23feb23,0,2966698.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Meanwhile, fear not for old Pentagon pal Ahmad Chalabi who might have been soothed by an offer to make him the new Finance Minister. http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0222/p06s02-woiq.html
Social Security: “It could be many years before the conditions are such that a radical reform of Social Security is possible; But then, as Lenin well knew, to be a successful revolutionary, one must also be patient and consistently plan for real reform."- Stuart Butler, Peter Germanis, Heritage Foundation analysts, 1983
I was just talking with a reader as to my informing my students as to the Right’s (led by the CATO Institute and Heritage Foundation) 20-year effort to dismantle Social Security, via privatization. Tuesday’s WaPost:
Cato's privatization effort was aimed from the start not just at dismantling Social Security but also at making major inroads against what it considered an overweening central government. "Social Security," said David Boaz, Cato's executive vice president, "is the linchpin of the welfare state." http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42525-2005Feb21?language=printer
Krugman: He warns that however faltering the initial SS push is, it could pass in a different atmosphere, a mere sideshow in the next ‘war on terror’ “crisis”. Makes sense, as personal accounts ARE a national security issue, yes? And:
My point is that Mr. Bush's critics are falling unnecessarily into a trap if they focus only on domestic policies and allow Mr. Bush to keep his undeserved reputation as someone who keeps Americans safe. National security policy should not be a refuge to which Mr. Bush can flee when his domestic agenda falls apart. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/22/opinion/22krugman.html?hp
Taxes The Right considers whether it would be worth it to up some taxes in exchange for trashing Social Security.
But some conservative activists say they would be willing to accept a tax increase in return for achieving such longtime conservative aims as overhauling Social Security, which was established under President Franklin Roosevelt. "If you can take 10 steps forward in exchange for three steps back, that's not unreasonable," says Dan Mitchell, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, which generally favors lower taxes to encourage economic growth. http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB110903245754660411,00.html?mod=politics%5Fprimary%5Fhs
Oil and Dollars: Yes, the price of oil has gone up and down, but the real concern is the second half of this sentence. May such happen very slowly.
U.S. stocks sank on Tuesday as oil prices jumped above $51 a barrel and the dollar slid on concerns that other central banks would follow South Korea’s lead in diversifying reserves out of U.S. assets. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=580&ncid=580&e=1&u=/nm/20050222/bs_nm/markets_stocks_dc
Bush Visit: The media dutifully supply the images of rapprochement- the smiles (Bush’s, not Chirac’s), the jokes, etc. But, as William Pfaff observes, there will not be a full reconciliation:
His trip will fail because he and his administration do not understand what really divides most continental European governments from the US today. At the same time, Europeans are mostly unwilling to confront these issues, because of the trouble with Washington they imply. But, unacknowledged or not, they count.
First is the definition of the crisis. Few Europeans believe either in the global 'war on terror' or the 'war against tyranny', as Washington describes them.
American claims about the threat of terrorism seem grossly exaggerated, and the American reaction disproportionate and even hysterical. Three thousand were killed in the Twin Towers, but most advanced societies have already had, or still have, their own wars with 'terrorism' sustaining losses proportionately as severe: the British with the IRA, Italians and Germans with their Red Brigades, the Spanish with the Basque separatist Eta, and so on. It has been a condition of modern political existence.
The American-led invasion of Iraq is widely regarded in Europe as irrelevant to the reality of terrorism, overwrought in scale and destruction, and perverse in effect, vastly deepening hostility between the Western powers and Muslim society. To most Democrats as well as Republicans, September 11 was the defining event of the age, after which 'nothing could be the same'. Their imperviousness to any notion that this might not be so astonishes many abroad. Many European believe it is not the world that has changed, but the United States.
The second cause of transatlantic disagreement is the American claim to global domination, and its hostility to Europe's acquiring political or military power commensurate with European economic power. http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/opinion/2005/February/opinion_February42.xml§ion=opinio n
I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who gagged when hearing Bush say, "We must always remind Russia, however, that our alliance stands for a free press, a vital opposition, the sharing of power, and the rule of law."
Gannon: Dems Act! A flurry of activity is what’s needed…to further activate the media.
The Senate Democratic leadership is privately circulating a letter calling for other senators to join a call for an investigation into discredited White House reporter Jeff Gannon….
The letter, issued from Minority Whip Richard Durbin (D-IL), calls on President Bush to “order a full inquiry” into how a “fake” journalist working for a “sham” news organization got access to the president. http://rawstory.com/news/2005/index.php?p=117
Anyone so disposed should email/write/call Kennedy and Kerry and tell them to sign on.
Counterpunch’s Justin Raimondo on Gannon’s purpose
Who planted Gannon in the White House press pool, and gave him all that access – and to what purpose? Clearly part of the scheme was to lob softball questions at a beleaguered White House press secretary facing a barrage of pointed questions about the war and the Bush administration's many scandals. However, the idea was also to debunk and distract attention away from the questions that were beginning to be raised not only about the Plame matter, but also about the series of outright fabrications that represented a great deal of this administration's case for going to war. That case had been made by influential neocons now facing scrutiny from Congress and the Justice Department, and Gannon served as their personal pitbull, going after Wilson and other debunkers of the neocons' war myth. http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=4879
-R
Propaganda (cont.)
"We continue to discover biological and chemical weapons and facilities to make them inside Iraq." ----Chris Cox, (R-California), introducing Dick Cheney at the conservative conference in D.C. last week. No one flinched, apparently…unsurprisingly. He was talking about sarin and ricin, but still… http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/02/19/cpac/index.html
What’s Happening, Afghanistan: The UN Development report found the country to be in miserable shape.
“Our team found the overwhelming majority of people hold a sense of pessimism and fear that reconstruction is bypassing them,'' said Daud Saba, one of the report's authors.
The report was also critical of the U.S.-led military engagement in Afghanistan, saying it helped produce a climate of ``fear, intimidation, terror and lawlessness'' and neglected the longer-term threat to security posed by inequality and injustice.
It also described reconstruction projects sponsored by the U.S. military as ``inadequate and dangerous,'' echoing concern from some relief groups that they have blurred the lines between soldiers and civilians, and made aid workers into militant targets. http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghan-Development.html?
What’s Happening, Iraq: So Ibrahim Jafari is the name to know, the likely prime minister. He’s from a religious (Dawa) party which has historically been close to Iran. The Kurds and the Allawi types will seek to limit his powers. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-fg-shiites23feb23,0,2966698.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Meanwhile, fear not for old Pentagon pal Ahmad Chalabi who might have been soothed by an offer to make him the new Finance Minister. http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0222/p06s02-woiq.html
Social Security: “It could be many years before the conditions are such that a radical reform of Social Security is possible; But then, as Lenin well knew, to be a successful revolutionary, one must also be patient and consistently plan for real reform."- Stuart Butler, Peter Germanis, Heritage Foundation analysts, 1983
I was just talking with a reader as to my informing my students as to the Right’s (led by the CATO Institute and Heritage Foundation) 20-year effort to dismantle Social Security, via privatization. Tuesday’s WaPost:
Cato's privatization effort was aimed from the start not just at dismantling Social Security but also at making major inroads against what it considered an overweening central government. "Social Security," said David Boaz, Cato's executive vice president, "is the linchpin of the welfare state." http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42525-2005Feb21?language=printer
Krugman: He warns that however faltering the initial SS push is, it could pass in a different atmosphere, a mere sideshow in the next ‘war on terror’ “crisis”. Makes sense, as personal accounts ARE a national security issue, yes? And:
My point is that Mr. Bush's critics are falling unnecessarily into a trap if they focus only on domestic policies and allow Mr. Bush to keep his undeserved reputation as someone who keeps Americans safe. National security policy should not be a refuge to which Mr. Bush can flee when his domestic agenda falls apart. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/22/opinion/22krugman.html?hp
Taxes The Right considers whether it would be worth it to up some taxes in exchange for trashing Social Security.
But some conservative activists say they would be willing to accept a tax increase in return for achieving such longtime conservative aims as overhauling Social Security, which was established under President Franklin Roosevelt. "If you can take 10 steps forward in exchange for three steps back, that's not unreasonable," says Dan Mitchell, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, which generally favors lower taxes to encourage economic growth. http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB110903245754660411,00.html?mod=politics%5Fprimary%5Fhs
Oil and Dollars: Yes, the price of oil has gone up and down, but the real concern is the second half of this sentence. May such happen very slowly.
U.S. stocks sank on Tuesday as oil prices jumped above $51 a barrel and the dollar slid on concerns that other central banks would follow South Korea’s lead in diversifying reserves out of U.S. assets. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=580&ncid=580&e=1&u=/nm/20050222/bs_nm/markets_stocks_dc
Bush Visit: The media dutifully supply the images of rapprochement- the smiles (Bush’s, not Chirac’s), the jokes, etc. But, as William Pfaff observes, there will not be a full reconciliation:
His trip will fail because he and his administration do not understand what really divides most continental European governments from the US today. At the same time, Europeans are mostly unwilling to confront these issues, because of the trouble with Washington they imply. But, unacknowledged or not, they count.
First is the definition of the crisis. Few Europeans believe either in the global 'war on terror' or the 'war against tyranny', as Washington describes them.
American claims about the threat of terrorism seem grossly exaggerated, and the American reaction disproportionate and even hysterical. Three thousand were killed in the Twin Towers, but most advanced societies have already had, or still have, their own wars with 'terrorism' sustaining losses proportionately as severe: the British with the IRA, Italians and Germans with their Red Brigades, the Spanish with the Basque separatist Eta, and so on. It has been a condition of modern political existence.
The American-led invasion of Iraq is widely regarded in Europe as irrelevant to the reality of terrorism, overwrought in scale and destruction, and perverse in effect, vastly deepening hostility between the Western powers and Muslim society. To most Democrats as well as Republicans, September 11 was the defining event of the age, after which 'nothing could be the same'. Their imperviousness to any notion that this might not be so astonishes many abroad. Many European believe it is not the world that has changed, but the United States.
The second cause of transatlantic disagreement is the American claim to global domination, and its hostility to Europe's acquiring political or military power commensurate with European economic power. http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/opinion/2005/February/opinion_February42.xml§ion=opinio n
I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who gagged when hearing Bush say, "We must always remind Russia, however, that our alliance stands for a free press, a vital opposition, the sharing of power, and the rule of law."
Gannon: Dems Act! A flurry of activity is what’s needed…to further activate the media.
The Senate Democratic leadership is privately circulating a letter calling for other senators to join a call for an investigation into discredited White House reporter Jeff Gannon….
The letter, issued from Minority Whip Richard Durbin (D-IL), calls on President Bush to “order a full inquiry” into how a “fake” journalist working for a “sham” news organization got access to the president. http://rawstory.com/news/2005/index.php?p=117
Anyone so disposed should email/write/call Kennedy and Kerry and tell them to sign on.
Counterpunch’s Justin Raimondo on Gannon’s purpose
Who planted Gannon in the White House press pool, and gave him all that access – and to what purpose? Clearly part of the scheme was to lob softball questions at a beleaguered White House press secretary facing a barrage of pointed questions about the war and the Bush administration's many scandals. However, the idea was also to debunk and distract attention away from the questions that were beginning to be raised not only about the Plame matter, but also about the series of outright fabrications that represented a great deal of this administration's case for going to war. That case had been made by influential neocons now facing scrutiny from Congress and the Justice Department, and Gannon served as their personal pitbull, going after Wilson and other debunkers of the neocons' war myth. http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=4879
-R
Monday, February 21, 2005
Social Security: Removing the Opposition: Art Linkletter’s group rolls out the big guns ($). AARP, the precious ally when the nutty Medicare ‘reform’ was passed, is now the enemy
The lobbying group, USA Next, which has poured millions of dollars into Republican policy battles, now says it plans to spend as much as $10 million on commercials and other tactics assailing AARP, the powerhouse lobby opposing the private investment accounts at the center of Mr. Bush's plan.
"They are the boulder in the middle of the highway to personal savings accounts," said Charlie Jarvis, president of USA Next and former deputy under secretary of the interior in the Reagan and first Bush administrations. "We will be the dynamite that removes them." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/21/politics/21social.html?ex=1266642000&en=10cae866093ed1f2&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland
To view their ad, click the following (very Right web site) and look to the right…of course. http://www.spectator.org/
What’s Happening, Middle East: Ultra brief summary: Potent mixed bag; Israelis ending the “punitive policy of destroying Palestinian homes after a recommendation by a military panel”, [but it will not halt large-scale demolitions such as those that have taken place in Gaza.] http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/31DEB982-65B7-43B1-906F-FCB0A8E5C179.htm
But, many bombings, many deaths. in Iraq. And, apparently the Iraqi resistance/insurgents have attained new levels of coordination in their sabotage campaign on Baghdad’s fuel supply and infrastructure with the intent of creating shortages…and discontent. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/21/international/middleeast/21sabotage.html?hp&ex=1109048400&en=42d988dc64929643&ei=5094&partner=homepage
In turn, this has led to a further slowing of reconstruction in favor of more $ (1 billion) for security. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-fg-cuts21feb21,0,3116082.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Finally, Time claims a scoop, that the U.S. military is negotiating with the insurgency’s leaders.
The secret meeting is taking place in the bowels of a facility in Baghdad, a cavernous, heavily guarded building in the U.S.-controlled green zone. The Iraqi negotiator, a middle-aged former member of Saddam Hussein's regime and the senior representative of the self-described nationalist insurgency, sits on one side of the table. He is here to talk to two members of the U.S. military. One of them, an officer, takes notes during the meeting. The other, dressed in civilian clothes, listens as the Iraqi outlines a list of demands the U.S. must satisfy before the insurgents stop fighting. The parties trade boilerplate complaints: the U.S. officer presses the Iraqi for names of other insurgent leaders; the Iraqi says the newly elected Shi'a-dominated government is being controlled by Iran. The discussion does not go beyond generalities, but both sides know what's behind the coded language.
The Iraqi's very presence conveys a message: Members of the insurgency are open to negotiating an end to their struggle with the U.S. "We are ready," he says before leaving, "to work with you." http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1029862,00.html
Ongoing torture evidence: The examples just keep on coming…
An Iraqi whose corpse was photographed with grinning U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib died under CIA interrogation while in a position condemned by human rights groups as torture — suspended by his wrists, with his hands cuffed behind his back, according to reports reviewed by The Associated Press.
The death of the prisoner, Manadel al-Jamadi, became known last year when the Abu Ghraib prison scandal broke. The U.S. military said back then that the death had been ruled a homicide. But the exact circumstances under which the man died were not disclosed at the time.
The prisoner died in a position known as "Palestinian hanging," the documents reviewed by The AP show. It is unclear whether that position was approved by the Bush administration for use in CIA interrogations. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=19&u=/ap/20050218/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/iraqi_prisoner_s_death
But, as to the hopeful- Palestinian-Israeli progress- the Israeli cabinet voted to approve Sharon’s planned eviction of settlers in Gaza.
More good ‘news’: Sy Hersh honored (AP)
Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker won his fifth George Polk Award for his accounts of prisoner abuse in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, making him the most-honored individual in the history of the awards. Reporters from The New York Times took three of the 2004 awards, and The Associated Press was a double winner.
Scott Ritter: We’ll attack Iran; the Iraqi elections were ‘manipulated’
On Iran, Ritter said that President George W. Bush has received and signed off on orders for an aerial attack on Iran planned for June 2005. Its purported goal is the destruction of Iran’s alleged program to develop nuclear weapons, but Ritter said neoconservatives in the administration also expected that the attack would set in motion a chain of events leading to regime change in the oil-rich nation of 70 million -- a possibility Ritter regards with the greatest skepticism.
The former Marine also said that the Jan. 30 elections, which George W. Bush has called "a turning point in the history of Iraq, a milestone in the advance of freedom," were not so free after all. Ritter said that U.S. authorities in Iraq had manipulated the results in order to reduce the percentage of the vote received by the United Iraqi Alliance from 56% to 48%.
Asked by UFPPC's Ted Nation about this shocker, Ritter said an official involved in the manipulation was the source, and that this would soon be reported by a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist in a major metropolitan magazine -- an obvious allusion to New Yorker reporter Seymour M. Hersh…
Scott Ritter said that although the peace movement failed to stop the war in Iraq, it had a chance to stop the expansion of the war to other nations like Iran and Syria. He held up the specter of a day when the Iraq war might be remembered as a relatively minor event that preceded an even greater conflagration. http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/2295/2/
Alternative News? Unclear if this is real or …?
Entire US column reported wiped out in ambush near Iranian border.
A US military column was completely wiped out in fierce fighting with Resistance forces according to the Mafkarat al-Islam correspondent in the town of al-Mundhiriyah, near the Iranian border, east of Ba‘qubah.
The correspondent, who was at the scene of the battle, wrote that a US column made up of eight vehicles came under Iraqi Resistance attack in the Jalabiyah area, known as the at-Tilal or hilly area, at 10pm Friday night. The Resistance fighters holed up in strongholds in the hills unleashed a sweeping attack on the US column, using missiles, pipe rockets, bazookas, and land mines that they had planted in the path of the American forces before their arrival.
Four US tanks, three Humvees, and one armored vehicle were destroyed in the fighting that lasted two hours, the correspondent reported. He said that US dead were in excess of 60 men. An adjutant commander of the Iraqi border guards confirmed that the entire US column was wiped out.
The correspondent wrote that the smell of blood and burning flesh pervaded the smoldering wreckage of the US vehicles and all the other remains of the large column.
US helicopters arrived on the scene 20 minutes after the battle and began revenge attacks on the local people. The US aircraft rocketed four houses, killing 19 Iraqi civilians, including 11 women and children, according to the account of al-Mundhiriyah General Hospital. http://www.the7thfire.com/Iraq_War/resistance_report/feb_19_2005.htm
Gannongate The Right is desperately (and, as always, consistently), asserting that it’s all about liberals targeting someone’s personal life. The WaPost notes, however, that this story has ‘legs’:
The story of the phony White House reporter who called himself Jeff Gannon just gets curiouser and curiouser every day -- and shows no sign of abating.
Quite the contrary, in fact. After only occasionally burbling out of the realm of bloggers and media watchers over the past few weeks, the story exploded onto network television last night.
And after a few days in which the chatter was fixated on the salacious associations that bloggers uncovered between James D. Guckert (Gannon's real name) and gay escort Web sites, the focus is back on a serious public policy question: Why was a non-journalist asking slanted non-questions welcomed into the White House Briefing room?
Here's Brian Williams, introducing the story to about 10-million-plus people last night on the NBC Nightly News:
"It is the talk of Washington these days. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/politics/administration/whbriefing/
Minneapolis Star Tribune editorial. Good summary, for the uninitiated
So the question becomes, just how did this character get White House press credentials, despite supposed post-Sept. 11 security requirements? Bruce Bartlett, a conservative columnist who worked in the Reagan and first Bush administrations, says that "if Gannon was using an alias, the White House staff had to be involved in maintaining his cover." In other words, the White House wanted him at those briefings and wanted him to ask his softball questions, most likely to divert attention when legitimate reporters were getting too pushy.
This is part of a pattern by Bush's minions to construct a phony reality in news coverage. Consider:
• To promote Bush's Medicare prescription bill, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) paid for phony "newscasts" that were distributed to television stations nationwide.
• Columnist Armstrong Williams was paid $240,000 by the Department of Education to promote Bush's No Child Left Behind Act.
• Columnists Michael McManus and Maggie Gallagher were paid to "advise HHS on the Bush administration's marriage policies."
• Every Bush "town hall" forum during last fall's campaign was carefully limited to supporters who would ask fawning questions. No demonstrators -- indeed, no one wearing an offensive lapel pin -- were allowed in.
• The Bush Pentagon launched an Office of Strategic Influence to provide "news" to foreign media. When it became known, it was shut down in embarrassment.
The pattern is clear: This administration will do pretty much anything to shape reality to fit its agenda. http://www.startribune.com/stories/1519/5247250.html
Then, there’s the notion that Gannon knew of the beginning of the Iraq war before any other media folk. Questions raised include:
1. Assuming this news producer is telling the truth, and I have no reason to believe they are not, how did Gannon get access to such highly classified information as to when the US was going to bomb Iraq?
2. Even if Gannon were part of a press gaggle that was told embargoed information about the war by the White House, this producer alleges that Gannon would have broken any such embargo, which is a security risk to the operation, and more generally shows that concerns about Gannon's White House access posing a risk to national security might now be warranted.
3. How would someone on a day pass, who hadn't gotten the requisite 3-4 month FBI background check that other full-time White House employees get, get access to such highly classified information? Certainly the White House didn't include someone with simply a day pass in the highly-classified pre-briefing about details of the war (assuming such a briefing even occurred)? If the White House did a briefing and Gannon were included, this would mean ANYONE could walk in off the street, say they're a reporter, and provided by they don't have a criminal record, the White House will simply tell them at what hour we're launching a major attack? And if there was no briefing for reporters, then how did Gannon allegedly find out? http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/02/breaking-news-gannon-reportedly-knew.html
That said, it is, as Hendrik Hertzberg observes, likely to go nowhere- Gannongate is more likely to be “nothinggate”.
… because nothing is what is likely to come of it. What all the memorable scandals of the past thirty years—real and fake alike, from Watergate to the Clinton impeachment—have had in common is that the opposition party controlled at least one house of Congress, which gave it the power to hold hearings and issue subpoenas. If Bush ends up having an easier time of it in his second term than any of his two-term predecessors since F.D.R., it won’t be because the scandals aren’t there. It’ll be because the tools to excavate them are under lock and key. http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/index.ssf?050228ta_talk_hertzberg
Protesting the Invasion/Occupation: New Energy?
On Feb. 15, 2003, as millions of people worldwide took to the streets to protest the imminent U.S. invasion of Iraq, Marine Lance Cpl. Michael Hoffman was in Kuwait, awaiting deployment to Baghdad.
Two years later, Hoffman, 25, is a civilian on the lecture circuit, introducing himself as an Iraq Veteran Against the War. On March 19, when war opponents plan to converge near Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, N.C., to mark the date of the invasion, Hoffman, who co-founded the Iraq veterans group, will be one of the lead speakers.
"I disagreed with the war before I went over," said Hoffman, the son of a steelworker from Allentown, Pa. "But now, I can talk about the reality of war -- what it's really like, the lack of support the troops have, the civilians being killed. The biggest problem with Iraq right now is the occupation."
Along with Gold Star Families for Peace, which is made up of people who have lost loved ones in Iraq, Iraq Veterans Against the War holds a powerful claim among peace groups as ones who can speak from experience about the consequences of the war. Together, they will be front and center among the scores of peace groups that are hoping to keep the war -- and its repercussions -- in the public consciousness.
Peace groups have been relatively quiet in recent months, especially after President Bush's reelection. But antiwar leaders say they are on the verge of reemerging. Leaders of dozens of peace groups plan to meet in St. Louis this weekend to plot strategies for a new push against the war, from ad campaigns to long-term, grass-roots organizing. They plan to use March 19 and 20, the anniversary weekend of the war's start, as the beginning of an all-out effort to convince the public that the best course for Americans and Iraqis is for the war to end and the troops to come home.http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32902-2005Feb17?language=printer
Dean and the Democrats: a ‘Counterpunch’ from Joshua Frank
Howard Dean's new post has been hailed by many as a huge feat for the progressive wing of the Democratic Party (yeah, what "progressive" wing?). But it is no feat. Not only is Howard Dean a centrist in the most disgusting Clintonesque sense of the term, but his victory this past weekend to head the DNC is also a shot in the head of his passionate supporters. He has sold them out, while taking on the roll of insider, where his new symbolic post within the party will do little more to challenge Democratic policy, than, say, MoveOn's irritating phone calls to Congress.
We should have seen it coming. Right after Joe Trippi left Dean's presidential campaign last year, the good doctor moved quickly to replace him with DC insider Roy Neel. Neel, who talked Al Gore out of actively contesting the 2000 election, was a long-time telecom lobbyist who employed his status with the Clinton Administration to maneuver the atrocious Telecommunications Act through Congress in 1996 -- was perhaps the greatest corporate handout of the Clinton years. http://www.counterpunch.com/frank02172005.html
-R
The lobbying group, USA Next, which has poured millions of dollars into Republican policy battles, now says it plans to spend as much as $10 million on commercials and other tactics assailing AARP, the powerhouse lobby opposing the private investment accounts at the center of Mr. Bush's plan.
"They are the boulder in the middle of the highway to personal savings accounts," said Charlie Jarvis, president of USA Next and former deputy under secretary of the interior in the Reagan and first Bush administrations. "We will be the dynamite that removes them." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/21/politics/21social.html?ex=1266642000&en=10cae866093ed1f2&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland
To view their ad, click the following (very Right web site) and look to the right…of course. http://www.spectator.org/
What’s Happening, Middle East: Ultra brief summary: Potent mixed bag; Israelis ending the “punitive policy of destroying Palestinian homes after a recommendation by a military panel”, [but it will not halt large-scale demolitions such as those that have taken place in Gaza.] http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/31DEB982-65B7-43B1-906F-FCB0A8E5C179.htm
But, many bombings, many deaths. in Iraq. And, apparently the Iraqi resistance/insurgents have attained new levels of coordination in their sabotage campaign on Baghdad’s fuel supply and infrastructure with the intent of creating shortages…and discontent. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/21/international/middleeast/21sabotage.html?hp&ex=1109048400&en=42d988dc64929643&ei=5094&partner=homepage
In turn, this has led to a further slowing of reconstruction in favor of more $ (1 billion) for security. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-fg-cuts21feb21,0,3116082.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Finally, Time claims a scoop, that the U.S. military is negotiating with the insurgency’s leaders.
The secret meeting is taking place in the bowels of a facility in Baghdad, a cavernous, heavily guarded building in the U.S.-controlled green zone. The Iraqi negotiator, a middle-aged former member of Saddam Hussein's regime and the senior representative of the self-described nationalist insurgency, sits on one side of the table. He is here to talk to two members of the U.S. military. One of them, an officer, takes notes during the meeting. The other, dressed in civilian clothes, listens as the Iraqi outlines a list of demands the U.S. must satisfy before the insurgents stop fighting. The parties trade boilerplate complaints: the U.S. officer presses the Iraqi for names of other insurgent leaders; the Iraqi says the newly elected Shi'a-dominated government is being controlled by Iran. The discussion does not go beyond generalities, but both sides know what's behind the coded language.
The Iraqi's very presence conveys a message: Members of the insurgency are open to negotiating an end to their struggle with the U.S. "We are ready," he says before leaving, "to work with you." http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1029862,00.html
Ongoing torture evidence: The examples just keep on coming…
An Iraqi whose corpse was photographed with grinning U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib died under CIA interrogation while in a position condemned by human rights groups as torture — suspended by his wrists, with his hands cuffed behind his back, according to reports reviewed by The Associated Press.
The death of the prisoner, Manadel al-Jamadi, became known last year when the Abu Ghraib prison scandal broke. The U.S. military said back then that the death had been ruled a homicide. But the exact circumstances under which the man died were not disclosed at the time.
The prisoner died in a position known as "Palestinian hanging," the documents reviewed by The AP show. It is unclear whether that position was approved by the Bush administration for use in CIA interrogations. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=19&u=/ap/20050218/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/iraqi_prisoner_s_death
But, as to the hopeful- Palestinian-Israeli progress- the Israeli cabinet voted to approve Sharon’s planned eviction of settlers in Gaza.
More good ‘news’: Sy Hersh honored (AP)
Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker won his fifth George Polk Award for his accounts of prisoner abuse in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, making him the most-honored individual in the history of the awards. Reporters from The New York Times took three of the 2004 awards, and The Associated Press was a double winner.
Scott Ritter: We’ll attack Iran; the Iraqi elections were ‘manipulated’
On Iran, Ritter said that President George W. Bush has received and signed off on orders for an aerial attack on Iran planned for June 2005. Its purported goal is the destruction of Iran’s alleged program to develop nuclear weapons, but Ritter said neoconservatives in the administration also expected that the attack would set in motion a chain of events leading to regime change in the oil-rich nation of 70 million -- a possibility Ritter regards with the greatest skepticism.
The former Marine also said that the Jan. 30 elections, which George W. Bush has called "a turning point in the history of Iraq, a milestone in the advance of freedom," were not so free after all. Ritter said that U.S. authorities in Iraq had manipulated the results in order to reduce the percentage of the vote received by the United Iraqi Alliance from 56% to 48%.
Asked by UFPPC's Ted Nation about this shocker, Ritter said an official involved in the manipulation was the source, and that this would soon be reported by a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist in a major metropolitan magazine -- an obvious allusion to New Yorker reporter Seymour M. Hersh…
Scott Ritter said that although the peace movement failed to stop the war in Iraq, it had a chance to stop the expansion of the war to other nations like Iran and Syria. He held up the specter of a day when the Iraq war might be remembered as a relatively minor event that preceded an even greater conflagration. http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/2295/2/
Alternative News? Unclear if this is real or …?
Entire US column reported wiped out in ambush near Iranian border.
A US military column was completely wiped out in fierce fighting with Resistance forces according to the Mafkarat al-Islam correspondent in the town of al-Mundhiriyah, near the Iranian border, east of Ba‘qubah.
The correspondent, who was at the scene of the battle, wrote that a US column made up of eight vehicles came under Iraqi Resistance attack in the Jalabiyah area, known as the at-Tilal or hilly area, at 10pm Friday night. The Resistance fighters holed up in strongholds in the hills unleashed a sweeping attack on the US column, using missiles, pipe rockets, bazookas, and land mines that they had planted in the path of the American forces before their arrival.
Four US tanks, three Humvees, and one armored vehicle were destroyed in the fighting that lasted two hours, the correspondent reported. He said that US dead were in excess of 60 men. An adjutant commander of the Iraqi border guards confirmed that the entire US column was wiped out.
The correspondent wrote that the smell of blood and burning flesh pervaded the smoldering wreckage of the US vehicles and all the other remains of the large column.
US helicopters arrived on the scene 20 minutes after the battle and began revenge attacks on the local people. The US aircraft rocketed four houses, killing 19 Iraqi civilians, including 11 women and children, according to the account of al-Mundhiriyah General Hospital. http://www.the7thfire.com/Iraq_War/resistance_report/feb_19_2005.htm
Gannongate The Right is desperately (and, as always, consistently), asserting that it’s all about liberals targeting someone’s personal life. The WaPost notes, however, that this story has ‘legs’:
The story of the phony White House reporter who called himself Jeff Gannon just gets curiouser and curiouser every day -- and shows no sign of abating.
Quite the contrary, in fact. After only occasionally burbling out of the realm of bloggers and media watchers over the past few weeks, the story exploded onto network television last night.
And after a few days in which the chatter was fixated on the salacious associations that bloggers uncovered between James D. Guckert (Gannon's real name) and gay escort Web sites, the focus is back on a serious public policy question: Why was a non-journalist asking slanted non-questions welcomed into the White House Briefing room?
Here's Brian Williams, introducing the story to about 10-million-plus people last night on the NBC Nightly News:
"It is the talk of Washington these days. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/politics/administration/whbriefing/
Minneapolis Star Tribune editorial. Good summary, for the uninitiated
So the question becomes, just how did this character get White House press credentials, despite supposed post-Sept. 11 security requirements? Bruce Bartlett, a conservative columnist who worked in the Reagan and first Bush administrations, says that "if Gannon was using an alias, the White House staff had to be involved in maintaining his cover." In other words, the White House wanted him at those briefings and wanted him to ask his softball questions, most likely to divert attention when legitimate reporters were getting too pushy.
This is part of a pattern by Bush's minions to construct a phony reality in news coverage. Consider:
• To promote Bush's Medicare prescription bill, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) paid for phony "newscasts" that were distributed to television stations nationwide.
• Columnist Armstrong Williams was paid $240,000 by the Department of Education to promote Bush's No Child Left Behind Act.
• Columnists Michael McManus and Maggie Gallagher were paid to "advise HHS on the Bush administration's marriage policies."
• Every Bush "town hall" forum during last fall's campaign was carefully limited to supporters who would ask fawning questions. No demonstrators -- indeed, no one wearing an offensive lapel pin -- were allowed in.
• The Bush Pentagon launched an Office of Strategic Influence to provide "news" to foreign media. When it became known, it was shut down in embarrassment.
The pattern is clear: This administration will do pretty much anything to shape reality to fit its agenda. http://www.startribune.com/stories/1519/5247250.html
Then, there’s the notion that Gannon knew of the beginning of the Iraq war before any other media folk. Questions raised include:
1. Assuming this news producer is telling the truth, and I have no reason to believe they are not, how did Gannon get access to such highly classified information as to when the US was going to bomb Iraq?
2. Even if Gannon were part of a press gaggle that was told embargoed information about the war by the White House, this producer alleges that Gannon would have broken any such embargo, which is a security risk to the operation, and more generally shows that concerns about Gannon's White House access posing a risk to national security might now be warranted.
3. How would someone on a day pass, who hadn't gotten the requisite 3-4 month FBI background check that other full-time White House employees get, get access to such highly classified information? Certainly the White House didn't include someone with simply a day pass in the highly-classified pre-briefing about details of the war (assuming such a briefing even occurred)? If the White House did a briefing and Gannon were included, this would mean ANYONE could walk in off the street, say they're a reporter, and provided by they don't have a criminal record, the White House will simply tell them at what hour we're launching a major attack? And if there was no briefing for reporters, then how did Gannon allegedly find out? http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/02/breaking-news-gannon-reportedly-knew.html
That said, it is, as Hendrik Hertzberg observes, likely to go nowhere- Gannongate is more likely to be “nothinggate”.
… because nothing is what is likely to come of it. What all the memorable scandals of the past thirty years—real and fake alike, from Watergate to the Clinton impeachment—have had in common is that the opposition party controlled at least one house of Congress, which gave it the power to hold hearings and issue subpoenas. If Bush ends up having an easier time of it in his second term than any of his two-term predecessors since F.D.R., it won’t be because the scandals aren’t there. It’ll be because the tools to excavate them are under lock and key. http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/index.ssf?050228ta_talk_hertzberg
Protesting the Invasion/Occupation: New Energy?
On Feb. 15, 2003, as millions of people worldwide took to the streets to protest the imminent U.S. invasion of Iraq, Marine Lance Cpl. Michael Hoffman was in Kuwait, awaiting deployment to Baghdad.
Two years later, Hoffman, 25, is a civilian on the lecture circuit, introducing himself as an Iraq Veteran Against the War. On March 19, when war opponents plan to converge near Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, N.C., to mark the date of the invasion, Hoffman, who co-founded the Iraq veterans group, will be one of the lead speakers.
"I disagreed with the war before I went over," said Hoffman, the son of a steelworker from Allentown, Pa. "But now, I can talk about the reality of war -- what it's really like, the lack of support the troops have, the civilians being killed. The biggest problem with Iraq right now is the occupation."
Along with Gold Star Families for Peace, which is made up of people who have lost loved ones in Iraq, Iraq Veterans Against the War holds a powerful claim among peace groups as ones who can speak from experience about the consequences of the war. Together, they will be front and center among the scores of peace groups that are hoping to keep the war -- and its repercussions -- in the public consciousness.
Peace groups have been relatively quiet in recent months, especially after President Bush's reelection. But antiwar leaders say they are on the verge of reemerging. Leaders of dozens of peace groups plan to meet in St. Louis this weekend to plot strategies for a new push against the war, from ad campaigns to long-term, grass-roots organizing. They plan to use March 19 and 20, the anniversary weekend of the war's start, as the beginning of an all-out effort to convince the public that the best course for Americans and Iraqis is for the war to end and the troops to come home.http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32902-2005Feb17?language=printer
Dean and the Democrats: a ‘Counterpunch’ from Joshua Frank
Howard Dean's new post has been hailed by many as a huge feat for the progressive wing of the Democratic Party (yeah, what "progressive" wing?). But it is no feat. Not only is Howard Dean a centrist in the most disgusting Clintonesque sense of the term, but his victory this past weekend to head the DNC is also a shot in the head of his passionate supporters. He has sold them out, while taking on the roll of insider, where his new symbolic post within the party will do little more to challenge Democratic policy, than, say, MoveOn's irritating phone calls to Congress.
We should have seen it coming. Right after Joe Trippi left Dean's presidential campaign last year, the good doctor moved quickly to replace him with DC insider Roy Neel. Neel, who talked Al Gore out of actively contesting the 2000 election, was a long-time telecom lobbyist who employed his status with the Clinton Administration to maneuver the atrocious Telecommunications Act through Congress in 1996 -- was perhaps the greatest corporate handout of the Clinton years. http://www.counterpunch.com/frank02172005.html
-R
