Magpie

Saturday, June 14, 2003

Keeping the story straight.

skippy points out that reuters is running stories with two different explanations for what caused the same oil pipeline fire in northern Iraq. (The link is bloggered, so scroll down to the post called ' the fog of oil fires.')

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:00 PM | Get permalink

The best government money can buy.

Dubya is hitting the campaign fundraising road this week and, reports the NY Times, he should come back to the White House in two weeks with more than US $20 million in his campaign warchest.

Members of both major parties said Mr. Bush might, in those two weeks, come close to matching the $26 million raised by all nine Democratic candidates during the first three months of the year, the most recent period for which figures are available. At that pace, Mr. Bush seems well on his way to shattering the fund-raising record he himself set in the 2000 race, when he took in $100 million in his fight for the Republican nomination, redefining standards for modern-day presidential fund-raising.

[Free reg. req'd.]

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:10 PM | Get permalink

Canadian same-sex marriages may rock the US, too.

Lesbians and gay men have been quick to take advantage of the overturing of Ontario's law against same-sex marriages. The Toronto Star reports that Toronto city hall issued 89 licences to same-sex couples this past week.

Not all of the couples are Canadian, however:

Dozens of American homosexuals have already called Egale, an Ottawa-based gay-rights groups, to inquire about getting married in Canada. Other Americans have proclaimed those intentions on Internet chat sites, and several have called Ontario municipalities to find out about getting a licence.

On Thursday, Andrew Blair became the first American citizen to register for a same-sex marriage certificate in Niagara Falls, Ont. The St. Louis native lives with his Canadian partner in Ontario.

More Americans will surely follow, said Niagara Falls city clerk Dean Iorfida. "An Ohio man called and said he was coming in July," Iorfida said.

A US legal expert told the Edmonton Journal that Canadian same-sex marriages will cause legal chaos in the States:

Some states will likely recognize same-sex marriages performed in Canada while others won't, said Sondra Harris, an alternative families specialist at the American Bar Association.

"Would it be legal in New York? Probably," said Harris. "Would it be legal in Alabama? Probably not."

A 1996 U.S. federal law called the Defence of Marriage Act says no state is required to allow same-sex marriage. At least 30 states also have laws explicitly forbidding such marriages.

But treaties signed by Canada and the U.S. require each country to recognize weddings legally performed next door.

"It's going to create chaos," Harris said. "But at a certain point, when the chaos becomes unbearable, something happens."

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:05 PM | Get permalink

Uh-oh. This sounds vaguely familar.

Representatives of the US and Pakistan have met with Taliban leaders to try to devise a political settlement to end continuing warfare in Afghanistan. A 'Pakistani jihadi leader' told Asia Times that representatives of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the FBI, and Taliban leaders met recently at a Pakistan air force base near Quetta.

The source told Asia Times Online that four conditions were put to the Taliban before any form of reconciliation can take place that could potentially lead to them having a role in the Kabul government, whose present authority is in essence limited to the capital:

— Mullah Omar must be removed as supreme leader of the Taliban.
— All Pakistani, Arab and other foreign fighters currently engaged in operations against international troops in Afghanistan must be thrown out of the country.
— Any US or allied soldiers held captive must be released.
— Afghans currently living abroad, notably in the United States and England, must be given a part in the government - through being allowed to contest elections - even though many do not even speak their mother tongue, such as Dari or Pashtu.

Apparently, the Taliban refused the first condition point blank, but showed some flexibility on the other terms. As such, this first preliminary contact made little headway. It is not known whether there will be further meetings, but given the fact that the reason for staging the talks in the first place remains unchanged, more contact can be expected.

The channels for the contact have been set up by Taliban who defected when the government collapsed in Kabul, and fled to Pakistan, where they were sheltered in ISI safe houses. Now these defectors, working with Pakistani jihadis who know how to approach the Taliban leadership, are acting as go-betweens.

This crowgirl reminds you that any resemblance to US dealing with fundamentalist forces against the Soviet-backed Afghan regime is entirely coincidental, and that she is certain that the US and Pakistan will keep things from getting out of control, just as they did in the 1980s and 1990s.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:33 PM | Get permalink

Iraq. Blogger. GRRRRR.

Even though the war in Iraq is supposed to be over, US forces there having to mount increasingly large actions to deal with persistent armed resistance by Iraqis. Magpie was wondering if the 'official' explanation for who these Iraqis were has changed over time, so earlier today she collected a slew of statement on the subject from US spokespeople, beginning with Dubya's announcement on May 1 that the war was essentially over.

Unfortunately, Blogger decided to eat the post, and Magpie has not had the time to re-do it. In lieu of that post, we suggest you do some Google and Google News searches and see for yourself how the official line has evolved. Magpie found these search terms particularly productive:

Iraq + fighting + [date]
Iraq + Falluja + fighting
Iraq + resistance + [date]

If you come up with anything particularly interesting, you might want to include it in a comment so that you can share the info with other Magpie readers.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:19 PM | Get permalink

Iran protests continue.

Demonstrations against the Iranian government have continued into their fifth night in Tehran, and there are reports that the unrest has spread to other cities. Protesters are not only angry at conservative clerics, but also at President Mohammed Khatami, who they accuse of betraying the reform cause.

The NY Times reports that one person was killed in demonstrations in Shiraz, and a university dormitory was 'heavily damaged' by fire in Isfahan.

"This is a student movement, not an American movement," some 500 students chanted outside the Tehran University dormitories, according to the Iranian Student News Agency. They were evidently answering accusations made by senior clerics that the demonstrators were stooges aiding an American plot to destabilize the Islamic Republic.

The ISNA report said that at least 50 vigilantes on motorbikes were circling the area yelling "Hezbollah! Hezbollah!" and darting through the heavy traffic to detain anyone who looked suspicious to them.

Vigilantes have often harassed Iranians who oppose the religious authorities, especially those who engage in civil disobedience. They have been harassing and injuring student protesters for several nights running in Tehran. The BBC is reporting that the government has arrested several vigilante leaders:

State-run radio said those detained included some who had entered and damaged a student dormitory - a reference to militants loyal to the country's supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Police have issued a warrant for the arrest of Sa'id Askari, a prominent pro-government vigilante leader who was seen at the demonstrations.

Given the probable connection of the vigilantes to conservative sectors of the government, this action has surprised many observers. The NY Times says that students detained some of the vigilantes last night, and found that they were carrying identification from the Revolutionary Guard.

The BBC has been receiving and posting email messages about the demonstrations, which include many first-person accounts.

I have been demonstrating from Tuesday. We talk about this at university. I am very tired with this government and we want freedom like the world in the 21st century. Everybody knows that this government is all liars, and it is just about power and control of wealth. We are cut off from rest of the world, I will not have a job after university. I am a woman and I hate this society, it is abuse of authority. It is very dangerous on the streets, and we are all doing this at risk. When the police, military and Basij open fire, they never care and if you go to prison, you don't know how far they can go. But we have to do this, and so many more people now than ever. It is time for change now.
Nastaran W Iran

On Friday, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch ran a surprisingly good report on the current unrest by their Tehran reporter, Jon Sawyer.

[Parliamentarian Fatemah] Rakei warned that the current moment is highly sensitive and that any intervention by U.S. officials would be counterproductive.

"If America says the reformists are very good, or that the United States would protect us, this is very dangerous, because the conservatives will misuse it - to say that we have secret relations with the American superpower, that we don't want to have Islam, that we would sell our country to someone else," she said.

"Every expression of support for reform by America would just postpone the reforms. If Mr. Bush wants to do something for the people of Iran, let him solve his own problems, not ours."

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:42 PM | Get permalink

Friday, June 13, 2003

Paying the price.

Gideon Samet of Haaretz laments this week's violence in Palestine, pointing out that only the extremists in Israel and Palestine stand to gain from a failure of the latest attempts at peace.

It is important to listen to the mendacious language that has developed among our dissidents. The Palestinians often say awful things, but they are not lies. The most extreme there say outright, over the heads of the people, that they want to inherit the entire land and expel its Israeli inhabitants. Among us, the settlers want only peace and brotherhood. How? On Palestinian lands that the government has supposedly agreed to return. When? Only when the impossible happens and the violence ceases immediately.

Their own violence, which also spreads through the territories, does not count in their eyes; this is a defensive battle. They mean the Palestinian terror. And therefore, tragically, it must be said that any such act of terror serves their desire not to yield a single dunam, not to dismantle any settlement and not to accept anything except their favorite biblical prophesies. [...]

This is a blood alliance between Yesha [the settlements in the occupied territories] and the Israeli politico-military leadership; a revolting collaboration between the extremists of Israel and Palestine. But it is not the collaborators in the top echelons here who will be punished. It is you and your loved ones who will pay the price.

| | Posted by Magpie at 6:19 PM | Get permalink

A day off.

Magpie is playing music with friends, hoping that she and her fiddle are on better terms than they were earlier in the week.

She promises to be back tomorrow.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:52 PM | Get permalink

Thursday, June 12, 2003

Not good news.

The European economy is in worse shape than had been believed, reports the BBC.

"Economic growth in the first half of 2003 is likely to have been weak, very weak, and expectations for annual average growth of this year and 2004 have had to be scaled down," [ECB President Wim] Duisenberg told a European Parliament committee.

The ECB warning comes on the heels of bad economic news from the EU's largest economies. Earlier in the week, both France and Germany reported substantial drops in their industrial output.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:18 PM | Get permalink

Goodnight, David.

Veteran US television journalist David Brinkley has died. He was 82.

The San Francisco Chronicle has an obituary here. The Museum of Broadcast Communications has a bio here.

This crowgirl's first exposure to the news was the Huntley-Brinkley Report on NBC, that her grandmother watched every evening.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:53 AM | Get permalink

The Israel-Palestine situation deteriorates further.

The BBC reports that Hamas says it will bomb Israel into 'rubble.' The threat came within hours of an Israeli missile on Gaza which killed seven people, including a Hamas leader, his wife, and child. It was the third such Israeli strike since a suicide attack on a bus in Jerusalem, killing 17 people.

[The Hamas website] described it [the suicide attack] as "the first in a new series of operations... targeting every Zionist usurping our land".

Promising to "turn the Zionist entity's state into rubble", the group told foreign citizens to leave "immediately to save their lives".

Both the BBC and Reuters report a decision by the Israeli Defense Ministry to have the Army 'to use everything they have' against Hamas.

Israeli army radio has been reporting that the forces are now under orders to "completely wipe out" Hamas.

The radio said everyone from the lowliest member to Sheikh Ahmad Yassin - the crippled spiritual guide of Hamas - was a target. [BBC]

Meanwhile, the US has identified Hamas as the main impediment to Dubya's 'roadmap' to a Palestine-Israel settlement. Washington is urging European and Arab countries to stop funding Hamas and similar militant Palestinian groups.

The UK Guardian has a roundup of editorial responses to the situation, and BBC Monitoring has compiled editorial comment from Mideast newspapers.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:17 AM | Get permalink

Bucking Starbucks.

Indian Country Today reports on how Starbucks is trying to lower the trademark boom on an Indian-run restaurant. The restaurant in question is called HaidaBucks, and it's not located in a trendy area — unless your definition of 'trendy' includes the 1,200 population town of Masset, BC.

Three months ago, the partners who own the HaidaBucks got a letter from Starbucks' attorneys. The lawyers gave HaidaBucks two weeks to drop the 'Bucks' portion of its name, or else face a trademark infringement lawsuit. HaidaBucks has held its ground, and so far Starbucks hasn't taken any legal action.

Innocently the partners, who purchased the land and constructed the building four years ago, created the name because they’re all Haida and the local slang for men is buck. [Darin] Swanson couldn’t have known with whom he was tangling with because before owning the restaurant he never drank coffee and only recently has visited his challenger’s operations.

Not that Swanson has a frequent opportunity to enter a Starbucks. The nearest franchise is a two-hour flight to Vancouver or a trip to Prince George, encompassing a 10-hour drive and a six-hour ferry ride. He wasn’t sure if there was a Starbucks in the Alaskan Panhandle, but if there was, that location too would take a multi-day effort to reach. [...]

This David-versus-Goliath legal proceedings has attracted worldwide support for HaidaBucks, even from those who don’t know where Masset, British Columbia is. Swanson pulls out a file full of e-mail letters of encouragement and discusses the generosity of checks from strangers including the donation of the Web site by a West Virginia company detailing the sabre-rattling. http://www.haidabuckscafe.com had more than 160,000 hits in the first month, numbers that stagger Swanson.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:03 AM | Get permalink

Disconnecting the world with Dubya.

The ever-excellent Spinsanity has noticed that Dubya has an interesting habit. When he talks about things like the war in Iraq, terrorism, tax cuts, or the economy, he likes to imply that things are connected, even if he can't show that a connection exists.

In two other cases, Bush has even suggested that the war is responsible for the recession itself. On May 2, he claimed that "A recession means the economy has slowed down to the extent where we're losing revenues to the federal Treasury. We got a recession because we went to war." And on May 12 he made a nearly identical statement that "We have got a recession because we went to war." Not only is such a claim false - an official committee at the National Bureau of Economic Research has dated the beginning of the recession to March 2001 - but it also contradicts a series of questionable claims by Bush that the recession started in January 2001. While it is possible that Bush unintentionally misspoke, the implication is the same as the quotes above: the war is responsible for the economic downturn.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:02 AM | Get permalink

S.O.L.

At Alas, a blog, ampersand has a biting cartoon (and some links) about the continuing attempts by American Indians to get the US government to properly account for money and income it holds in trust for them, and the continuing attempts by the government to stall any accounting.

It's only been 100 years or so that Indians have been trying to get this issue dealt with.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:01 AM | Get permalink

Wednesday, June 11, 2003

Lunasa.

You could make an argument that the Irish group Lunasa is one of the best traditional ensembles to ever come out of that country. While their music has been frequently compared to that Bothy Band, the comparison is particularly apt for Lunasa's third album, Merry Sisters of Fate. (The album's closing track, The Wedding Reel/Morning Nightcap/Malbay Shuffle, is one of the most amazing sets of tunes Magpie has ever heard.) Certainly the group's performance in Portland when touring the material on that album gave a hint of what it must have been like when people heard the Bothy Band for the first time back in the 1970s. The instrumental interplay between fiddler Sean Smyth, uillean piper Cillian Vallely, and flute player Kevin Crawford had musicians in the audience literally dropping their jaws.

Lunasa has recorded four albums, with the newest one, Redwood, being just released. Had Redwood followed anything but Merry Sisters, it would be greeted as a masterpiece. As it is, Lunasa have 'merely' maintained the high standard set by the earlier album.

You can listen to all of Redwood in RealAudio on Green Linnet's website. There's a link on this page. You might also want to visit Lunasa's official website, here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:52 PM | Get permalink

The war in Iraq is over.

Isn't it?

American forces are carrying out their largest single military operation in Iraq since the end of major fighting, officials said today, with more than 4,000 soldiers surrounding a 30-square-mile area just north of Baghdad said to harbor Baath Party loyalists planning and carrying out attacks on American troops. [...]

Conversations with soldiers in the area, where the Tigris creates an island of green in a bleak brown desert, suggested that the level of attacks north of Baghdad had been intense.

Soldiers said convoys were routinely fired on in the area at night, with bullets striking the first and last vehicles and rocket propelled grenades whizzing over gunners' heads and between jeeps.

"We are just lucky they are bad shots," said Staff Sgt. John Williams, who was involved in the operation. He said his patrol recently killed 10 armed Iraqis preparing an ambush.

[Free reg. req'd.]

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:26 PM | Get permalink

Happily ever after. Finally.

Michael Leshner and Michael Stark became the first gay couple in Ontario to get married after the province's high court tossed out the ban on same-sex marriages. This makes Ontario the third province in Canada whose high court has ruled unconstitutional the ban on same-sex marriages, following Quebec and British Columbia. The Ontario court's ruling was stronger than those in the other provinces, however, because it ended the same-sex marriage ban immediatley.

The wedding came mere hours after Ontario's Court of Appeal ruled same-sex couples have the right to legally marry in the province, pronouncing Canadian law on traditional marriage unconstitutional, effective immediately.

Leshner, Stark, and other gay and lesbian couples involved in the court battle expressed relief and delight at a giddy news conference in which one lawyer broke into tears as she outlined the court decision and two couples happily announced wedding plans.

"The existing common-law definition of marriage violates the couple's equality rights on the basis of sexual orientation under (the Charter)," the Appeal Court said in a unanimous, 61-page written ruling.

"Exclusion perpetuates the view that same-sex relationships are less worthy of recognition than opposite-sex relationships."

The Appeal Court also declared Ottawa's definition of marriage invalid and demanded it be immediately changed to refer to "two persons" instead of "one man and one woman."

Via rabble.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:17 PM | Get permalink

G'day from the secret police.

Australia's ruling Liberal-National coalition and the opposition Labor Party have apparently cut a deal to pass legislation similar to parts of the Patriot Act in the US. The Sydney Morning Herald reports that new proposals made by the government are expected to get Labor to drop its blocking tactics and allow a vote in the Australian Senate.

Unprecedented powers in the post-September 11 legislation will allow agents to apprehend and question people as young as 16 on the suspicion that they may be involved in, or have knowledge of, a terrorist act.

The laws would hand ASIO the broad detention powers for three years, far beyond the time limit of similar powers held by the FBI in the United States or MI5 in Britain. [...]

The proposal put to the [Labor] Opposition would raise the minimum age of those covered by the bill from 14 to 16. It would also allow detainees immediate access to lawyers of their choice, dropping the provision that some would be denied such access for 48 hours.

The Government has also shifted on interrogation time limits, proposing that suspects be questioned for no more than eight hours at a time, for a total of 24 hours over seven days. [...]

But the proposal will meet strong criticism from the Greens, the Democrats and civil libertarians because it allows people to be detained even if they are not suspected of a crime.

Simeon Beckett, a spokesman for Australian Lawyers for Human Rights, said last night: "No one would welcome a law that allows for a 16-year-old to be arrested and detained when they have not broken the law."

If the new form of the bill is less draconian than the government's original proposal, this crowgirl shudders to think what that must have been like.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:10 PM | Get permalink

Aussies work longer, get paid less, have crappier jobs.

A new study of Australia's workforce has found that the standard 9-to-5 job is disappearing from the Australian scene. These days, only 7 percent of Australian workers are on this 'traditional' work schedule. Instead, more than half of them are working overtime, and of those, most are not beign paid for their overtime hours.

The study was conducted by the Australian Council of Trade Unions and Sydney University's Australian Centre for Industrial Relations Research & Training. The findings also include the following:

— Wage inequality has grown ? only the top 40% of income earners had real wage growth throughout the 1990s
— Little more than half the Australian workforce is now employed on a permanent basis
— The net increase in jobs in the 1990s consisted almost entirely of casual and part-time jobs
— The jobs with the largest number of employees in 2001 were sales assistants, secretaries and cleaners.
— One million people are casual workers - by 2010, one in three workers will be casual
— Half of casual workers, who are mostly female, have been in the same job for over a year

This crowgirl notes that the current Liberal government in Australia has been following economic policies much like those followed by Dubya's administration. She's sure it's merely a coincidence that the Australian workforce should start looking so much like the US workforce.

| | Posted by Magpie at 6:53 PM | Get permalink

Floating like a butterfly.

Jake Tapper has an excellent piece in Salon about how US Attorney General John Ashcroft outmaneuvers his critics in the Congress. A good illustration of this, says Tapper, was during the recent Senate hearing on giving more 'anti-terror' powers to the administration.

The hearing was, one Democratic Senate staffer groused this week, "archetypical Ashcroft." The staffer, who asked not to be identified, surmised from his Ashcroft-watching experience that the attorney general "knew he was in for some close questioning by some of the representatives and that a new death penalty for terrorists would likely be in any headline about the hearing." His presentation was therefore "clearly orchestrated to capture the headline and swamp the pent-up frustration by committee members over the Justice Department's lack of cooperation."

That isn't a strictly partisan perception. There are Hill Republicans who -- albeit somewhat more admiringly -- also viewed Ashcroft's testimony as a clever way to outmaneuver their committee. Some note that they have issues not only with the three proposed laws -- a new death penalty isn't likely to deter the suicidal terrorists of al-Qaida -- but also with the fact that Ashcroft didn't present them with copies of the proposed laws, making it difficult to prepare or to comment on the laws before Ashcroft spoke.

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| | Posted by Magpie at 12:31 PM | Get permalink

The vision thing.

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has been visiting 'Old Europe,' and he's making his usual sensitive and carefully thought out comments. The AP reports on Rumsfeld's explanation for why ex-communist countries supported the war while Germany and France opposed it:

"The key, I believe, is that even as they are busy looking inward and rebuilding their economies and societies, they have had the vision to look outward as well, to find ways they can contribute to a more peaceful and secure world," he said.

"It suggests that the distinction between old and new in Europe today is really not a matter of age or size or even geography. It is really a matter of attitude - of the vision that countries bring to the trans-Atlantic relationship."

This crowgirl thinks that the difference between the two groups of European countries is that the shaky economies and political systems of the former communist countries made them far more susceptible than Germany or France to US pressure (whether of the carrot or stick variety). The only vision involved was that of the Washington planners who took advantage of that susceptibility when they were orchestrating the 'Coalition of the Willing.'

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:29 PM | Get permalink

How convenient.

Reuters reports that Iranian nuclear experts visited North Korea ealier this year — at least that's what the right-wing Japanese newspaper says. Citing an unnamed 'Korean peninsula source,' Sankei Shimbun claims that the visit may have been to ask North Korea for advice on handling arms inspectors.

The visits "may have been intended to ask North Korea for know-how on how to act when accepting inspectors," Sankei quoted the source as saying. "Cooperation on nuclear development may also have been discussed," the source added.

Two Iranian experts stayed in North Korea for several days in March for talks with North Korean officials in charge of nuclear development, Sankei said. One expert visited in April and two experts visited in May, the newspaper added.

Sankei said North Korea may receive, or may already have received, funds from Iran, both of which have been branded as part of an "axis of evil" by President Bush along with pre-war Iraq.

Magpie finds both the timing and the sourcing of this story to be suspicious. The Japanese newspaper is asking us to accept strong claims about a connection between the Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs on the basis of a single, unnamed source.

This story reminds Magpie of those Daily Telegraph stories that supposedly revealed connections between the Saddam Hussein government and UK war critics. Since most people don't hear about later corrections and retractions, this sort of story that uses anonymous sources to propogate incendiary misinformation can be quite effective. Magpie suspects that the Iran-N. Korea story will prove just as false as the Daily Telegraph stories, but the damage will be done long before the truth of the matter is known.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:13 AM | Get permalink

Another Baghdad blog.

It's G. in Baghdad.

During the War, specifically on the last week I was arrested by members of the "Special Security Apparatus" because I looked suspicious and I was carrying a back-pack containing a camera a Swiss army knife…..etc, two weeks after that I was arrested by "al-Hussien force" -a vigilante Shia militia in Karbala 150 km to the south of Baghdad. After another week I was arrested by the "Pieshmergha" -the Kurdish militia- this time because I tried to photograph one of their men in the middle of a street in Baghdad.

I think they all red the same -Russian made- instruction manuals of "how to arrest a spy every 20 minutes".

Via Where is Raed?

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:41 AM | Get permalink

Still looking for a job?

Your local Wal-Mart is probably hiring.

In Salina, Kansas, Stan Cox decided to see whether a full-time Wal-Mart worker with two children could support their family on entry-level Wal-Mart wages, currently US $6.25/hr in Salina. Cox assumed that the family would shop at Wal-Mart prices, and that the family car and furniture were paid for (something which is frequently not true for real low-wage families). After paring down the budget to the barest essentials, Cox determined that his hypothetical family would still fall $120 short of paying expenses at the end of each month. And, as Cox points out, the gap between wages and expenses would have been far worse if the family hadn't have qualified for a monthly child-care allowance that Kansas pays to low-income families.

There is a fundamental and inevitable conflict between the interests of corporations, to whom wages are a cost, and most human beings, to whom wages are a means of survival. Nowhere in this society is that conflict better illustrated than at your local Wal-Mart. Most of its employees and most of its customers depend on their paychecks to pay the bills. But to keep its shareholders in the money, the company depends on hyper-consumption.

Wal-Mart could not survive in a town with good public transportation, where families all grow their own vegetables, cut one another's hair, sew their own clothes, and borrow and lend tools. Like all retailers, it has to move vast quantities of merchandise at an ever-increasing pace. It does it, as the sign in the store says, by "Daring to Save You Even More." And to drive prices to rock-bottom, they have to drive down the wages they pay.

Of course, the wages Wal-Mart pays in Kansas seem princely when compared with those paid by many of its suppliers around the world. Try going to your local Supercenter with the monthly paycheck of a Bangladeshi factory worker who makes shirts for Wal-Mart. You won't make it to the end of Aisle 1.

Here in America, the government implicitly recognizes the insufficiency of Wal-Mart wages. Our cashier's family would be eligible for an Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) of $4,140 in 2002. That would close the gap between the cashier's wage and bare survival, and provide enough additional income to lift the family just above the poverty line.

For more on Wal-Mart's activities, check out Wal-Mart Watch and Wal-Mart vs. Women.

Via AlterNet.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:07 AM | Get permalink

Another tale from the twilight zone.

Submitted for your consideration, this post from the Road to Surfdom.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:06 AM | Get permalink

As if the Patriot Act weren't bad enough.

Newhouse News Service reports that the Democratic and Republican parties are compiling huge databases of personal information on US voters.

National party computers today keep track of where you live, your phone number and e-mail address, whether you vote, your willingness or refusal to make political contributions, your interests, ethnic background, reading habits and church attendance. Some files contain hints about your sexual preferences, whether own a gun, and your views on abortion and other issues.

The Democrats call their system "Demzilla." Republicans call theirs "Voter Vault." Advocates of privacy call it Orwellian.

Civil liberties activists, who used to worry mostly about the FBI, the CIA and lately the Department of Homeland Security snooping into citizens' private lives, now see the political parties as a threat -- and not just to privacy, but to the democratic process.

Unbound by the constraints that often apply to law enforcement agencies, the parties are segmenting citizens into psychographic databases according to individual attitudes, behaviors and beliefs -- all the better to target them for communications by mail, phone or direct contact to extract money and votes.

Via Follow Me Here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:04 AM | Get permalink

Breaking the record.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates the Dubya and the Republicans will deliver a US $400 billion deficit to the nation this year. This breaks the old record of US $290 billion set by the first Bush in 1992, and is a striking comparison to the four successive budget surpluses in the second Clinton administration.

This crowgirl is amazed that anyone can continue to support Dubya's economic policies.

Via Daily Kos.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:03 AM | Get permalink

More bucks for more nukes.

The US Senate has voted to provide billions of dollars of loan guarantees to the nuclear power industry. The author of the bill says it will jump-start the nuclear industry. Critics say that taxpayers may get stuck with a US $14 billion to $16 billion tab if the nuclear industry defaults on the loans. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that there is at least a 50 percent chance of that happening.

No new nuclear power plants have been approved in the US since 1979.

[Free reg. req'd.]

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:02 AM | Get permalink

'There are bastards who spread things around ...'

With only a few weeks to go until he steps down as the UN's chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix let loose with some barbs in an interview with the UK Guardian.

Mr Blix, who retires in three weeks' time, accused:

– The Bush administration of leaning on his inspectors to produce more damning language in their reports;

– "Some elements" of the Pentagon of being behind a smear campaign against him; and

– Washington of regarding the UN as an "alien power" which they hoped would sink into the East river.

Asked if he believed he had been the target of a deliberate smear campaign he said: "Yes, I probably was at a lower level."

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:01 AM | Get permalink

Tuesday, June 10, 2003

Israel and Palestine are not morally equivalent.

There's a very well-reasoned case for that proposition being made over at Pedantry.

Magpie won't even give you an excerpt. You should go read the whole thing. Even if you disagree, there's a lot to think on.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:54 PM | Get permalink

Meanwhile, in Hampshire, UK.

The King's Blog continues to be on the cutting edge of environmental journalism. It reports on the sighting of the rare tower mustard plant in the Kingsley area.

It is not known to have ever had any significant culinary or medical use anywhere within its wide European range, though it is known to the Cheyenne of North America as a cure for the common cold.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:44 PM | Get permalink

Saying one thing, doing another, hoping nobody notices.

Just over two years ago, Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont left the Republican party to sit in the Senate as an independent. On the anniversary of that decision, he gave a speech at the National Press Club in Washington, in which he looked at where Dubya and the Republicans have gone in the time since he left the party.

The events of the past two years have only heightened my concern over the president's veer to the right, and the poisoning of our democratic process of government.

The promises of candidate Bush, who pledged to bring a new tone to Washington and packaged himself as a compassionate conservative, are unmet. On issue after issue the Bush administration is not what it claims to be. Since coming into office, the president has dragged the Republican Party into short-sighted positions that maximize short-term gain while neglecting the long-term needs of families and the nation.

Pundits asked after last November's election: will the president over-reach with his Republican majorities in the House and Senate? Well, President Bush hasn't just over-reached, he has set a new standard for extreme partisan politics that on many occasions has been supported by the Republican-controlled Congress.

In place of thoughtful policy we now have superficial and cynical sound-bites. Instead of confronting pressing national problems, our president lands airplanes while Rome burns.

Via TomPaine.com.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:51 PM | Get permalink

Crow eaten here.

During the last week of May, Magpie ran into a story about the possible creation of a 'death camp' at the US base at Guantanamo, Cuba. Guantanamo, you'll recall is where the suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda prisoners from the Afghan war are being detained. We were a bit leery of the story at the time, and said so in our post:

While it's not impossible that the death camp story is true, Magpie finds the lack of independent corroboration (outside the Courier-Mail story) and coverage in other media outlets is more typical of a rumor. If any reader can point to more sources on this story, please use the comment link to let Magpie know.

Well, another souce on that story has turned up, and it's a rather authoritative one: the BBC. They're reporting about the preparations for military tribunals at Guantanamo.

Pentagon rules for the tribunals permit death sentences to be passed and the construction of a death chamber at the camp is among options being considered.

But defence officials stress that everything remains on the drawing board until orders are issued by the president.

"We have a number of plans that we work for short-term and long-term strategies but that's all they are - plans," camp commander Major-General Geoffrey Miller told the Associated Press news agency.

So Magpie yields to the Beeb, and admits that there was more to the earlier report about Guantanamo than it appeared at the time. This is one time, however, when Magpie thinks the world would be better had she been right.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:41 PM | Get permalink

Clear Channel purchases FCC.

This one came to Magpie via a mailing list.

WASHINGTON (AP)-- The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced today that it has agreed to be acquired by Clear Channel Communications (CCU) of San Antonio, Texas.

In announcing the deal, FCC Chairman Michael Powell said "This transaction will greatly expedite the demise of the antiquated concept of local ownership of media outlets. Critics of deals such as this need to understand that Clear Channel embodies all that is good and decent in the broadcast industry. Anyone that believes otherwise clearly isn't listening to the news."

In a statement issued today, Clear Channel CEO Lowry Mays said "This acquisition is a perfect strategic fit for Clear Channel. The FCC has been a wonderful business partner for the past several years, and has carried out our directions with great enthusiasm. We are proud to welcome the FCC into the Clear Channel family of companies."

Although terms of the deal were not immediately available, It is said that the acquisition will include all components, operating units and assets of the FCC, except for its soul, which was sold in a prior transaction to Satan, Inc. in 1996.

Clear Channel, which owns broadcast facilities, shopping malls, billboard advertising, and concert promotion units all across North America, has been on an acquisition binge for the past several years, and has recently broadened the scope of its acquisitions to include government entities.

In a recent deal, CCU purchased a 50% interest in the U.S. Congress, and is reportedly close to striking a deal to purchase The White House.

Clear Channel's Stock stood at $42.09 at the close of Monday's trading, up $1.39, or 3.42%.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:09 PM | Get permalink

Does living in Dubya's US have you down?

You should go here and read about what one man has been able to do, single-handed, in a country where civil liberties are few and far between.

Uncompromising, nonconformist, tireless, vigilant-there aren't many people around anymore like Abdel Mohsen Hammouda. For nearly half a century now, the eccentric legal activist has been suing the government on issues big and small, from his termination from his job for political reasons in the 1950s, to the state's refusal to allow public meetings and demonstrations. On 2 April, Hammouda obtained a precedent-setting decision from the Administrative Court, already considered a landmark ruling by many legalists. The court not only affirmed the constitutional right of all Egyptians to march peacefully to express their views, but required the police to protect demonstrators from those who would do them harm. Hammouda's been arrested and detained by Egypt's last three presidents, nearly evicted from his spacious Zamalek apartment, and kicked out twice from the ranks of engineers in the syndicate. But none rival the loss of his young son Basel, cut down in his prime as a result of torture. After "the bitter years" between his son's injury and death, Hammouda sued and won the first ever case in Egyptian history that proved torture was the cause of death.

Via Body & Soul and Counterspin.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:03 AM | Get permalink

Supposed link between Saddam and al-Qaeda gets even more tenuous.

The NY Times reports that two high-ranking al-Qaeda leaders in US custody told the CIA that Iraq and al-Qaeda did not work together. Their statements add ammunition to critics who charge that Washingon 'cherry-picked' intelligence reports, using the ones that supported a war against Iraq and ignoring the ones that didn't.

Abu Zubaydah, a Qaeda planner and recruiter until his capture in March 2002, told his questioners last year that the idea of working with Mr. Hussein's government had been discussed among Qaeda leaders, but that Osama bin Laden had rejected such proposals, according to an official who has read the Central Intelligence Agency's classified report on the interrogation.

In his debriefing, Mr. Zubaydah said Mr. bin Laden had vetoed the idea because he did not want to be beholden to Mr. Hussein, the official said.

Separately, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the Qaeda chief of operations until his capture on March 1 in Pakistan, has also told interrogators that the group did not work with Mr. Hussein, officials said.

[Free reg. req'd. for NY Times]

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:01 AM | Get permalink

Monday, June 9, 2003

It's about power, stupid.

An LA Times column by Neal Gabler suggests Dubya's administration isn't choosing its political tactics according to what works best or easiest in achieving its policy goals. Instead, these tactics are designed to permanently get rid of any effective Democratic opposition.

It has been said of Bush that he intends to finish the Reagan revolution by embedding conservatism so deeply into the governmental fabric that it will take generations to undo it. What he is really finishing, though, is not the Reagan revolution but the Clinton wars, which had far less to do with ideology than with politics. As Rove has engineered it, this is about power, pure and simple. It is about guaranteeing electoral results.

That is why, one suspects, Bush elicits such deep antagonism from the left — deeper perhaps than any political figure since Nixon, even though he is personally genial and charming. At some level, maybe only subliminally, liberals know what the president and Rove are up to and fear that they will succeed in dismantling an effective two-party system. The left knows that Rove and company aren't keen on debating issues, negotiating, compromising and horse-trading, the usual means of getting things done politically. On the contrary: The administration is intent on foreclosing them.

Via Cursor.

[Free reg. req'd.]

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:30 PM | Get permalink

A nasty business.

Magpie doesn't post much about blogging or bloggers. And we especially don't post about feuds and bad behavior among bloggers, especially bloggers of the left. Such posts seem self-indulgent and insular, and lord knows we don't need more squabbling among leftists. This post is going to be an exception to our usual practice.

What bloggers grandly term the 'blogosphere' is, in reality, a rather small world. Most weblogs don't enjoy a high readership, and even those at the pinnacle of the blogosphere have audiences that pale next to the media in even a fairly small city. Having spent many years in community and public radio, we realize that Magpie is read by a fraction of the number of people we reached when we were behind a microphone.

One of the problems about little worlds or communities -- whether virtual or 'real' -- is that they tend to have a lot of jealousy, feuds and jockeying for position. The blogosphere is no exception to that rule.

A few days ago, Magpie noted with regret that MB at Wampum would not be blogging any more. Wampum was one of our favorite blogs, and we acknowledged the quality of MBs work by linking to her frequently. Today, we were surprised to see a new post at Wampum, in which MB talked about the reason she stopped blogging. We read the post, and followed the various links to other blogs — Magpie suggests that you do the same before continuing with this post. And then we read up on Asperger's, because we really didn't know enough about it. (Many good sources of information turn up near the top of a Google search on the term.)

Magpie has never met MB — all we've done is exchanged a few emails. But the contact we have had, coupled with MB's writing on Wampum, has put MB very high in Magpie's estimation. From where we sit, it looks like MB's response to the vendetta that MacDiva (of Mac-a-ron-nies and Silver Rights) has apparently carried on against Natasha (of The Watch) is more than justified, and is a far more temperate and level-headed response than Magpie would have made in a similar situation. We hope that other bloggers listen hard to what MB says about prejudice in the blogosphere, and that those directly involved in the nasty business that MB points to listen really hard. We especially hope that MacDiva listens — she's done far too much good work in the blogosphere to have that work sink from view under the weight of bad behavior and prejudice.

Our biggest personal regret in all of this is that it led MB to walk away from Wampum. Blogging tends to be (like a lot of things these days) overwhelmingly white, male, and right-wing. MB's voice as am American Indian woman was like the proverbial breath of fresh air. Her ability to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable has been singular, and Magpie suspects that bloggers besides herself have come to rely on Wampum for solid analysis of economic news.

We hope that MB decides just to take a break, and that the Wampum lodge is set up again soon. The rest of us need her and Wampum badly.

Lastly, Magpie should have said something in support of Natasha before now. We hope she will accept our apology for not doing so.

More: We see that ampersand has posted on this topic over at Alas, a Blog. It's a short post, but very much to the point.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:48 PM | Get permalink

It's 10 pm. Do you know where the US military is?

David Isenberg does.

Contrary to much of the recent news coverage about Pentagon pronouncements on the US seeking to reduce its presence in Saudi Arabia, the fact of the matter is that when one looks at the big picture, the US has a huge military presence in the region. And it is not going anywhere. Considering the rhetoric that has come out in the past month from the neoconservative camp and administration officials about their unhappiness with countries such as Syria and Iran, the US military ability to reach out and touch someone must be taken very seriously.

From Asia Times.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:07 PM | Get permalink

The new US media ownership rules.

James Surowiecki has some well considered things to say about them in the current New Yorker magazine:

The media giants’ incestuous relationships bring to mind the economy of South Korea, which was dominated by giant conglomerates until the late nineteen-nineties, when it had a meltdown. The conglomerates, or chaebol, were notoriously inefficient, dedicated to empire building rather than to profitability. Their sheer size and their connections to the government (and to each other) insulated them from competition and discouraged upstarts. That’s why, in the wake of Korea’s economic crisis, the advice from Western policymakers was clear: reform the chaebol and let a hundred flowers bloom. Perhaps we should tend our own garden, too.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:02 PM | Get permalink

'Drug-free neighborhood' laws are unconstitutional.

Laws that forbid people arrested or convicted of drug crimes from entering designated high-crime neighborhoods are in trouble. Without comment, the US Supreme Court turned aside Cincinnati's appeal of a decision that invalidated a law barring certain groups of people from the 'Over the Rhine' neighborhood. Under the law, anyone arrested for for a drug offense was barred for 90 days, and anyone convicted an offense was barred for a year.

Two people barred by the law sued, claiming that their constitutional rights of movement and freedom of association were violated by the Cincinnati law. Lower courts (inlcuding the Ohio Supreme Court) agreed, and the US Supreme Court's action today lets those earlier decisions stand.

[Patricia] Johnson was arrested in 1998, but never indicted, on a marijuana trafficking offense. As a result, she was barred for 90 days from entering the neighborhood where one of her children and five of her grandchildren lived.

[Michael] Au France, a homeless man, was convicted on various drug-related crimes, and was barred for approximately four years. As a result, he could not visit his attorney's office or seek shelter from social service organizations in the neighborhood.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:28 PM | Get permalink

Dubya ignores the real WMD question.

The main quote, from a story in the LA Times:

"Iraq had a weapons program. Intelligence throughout the decade showed they had a weapons program. I am absolutely convinced, with time, we'll find out that they did have a weapons program."

Of course, the question that's haunting Dubya's administration (and Tony Blair's government in the UK) isn't whether Iraq had a weapons program at some point in time. It's whether Iraq had banned weapons at the time that the US and UK were making the case for war.

[Free reg. req'd.]

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:25 PM | Get permalink

Saving the salmon and a culture.

The Hoopa people of northern California are not one of the California tribes that have gotten richer from running casinos. Stuck up in the thinly populated northwest corner of the state, the Hoopas are too far from the cities to make a go at gambling. They do some lumbering, but the tribe's traditional industry is salmon fishing. Hoopa traditions say that the salmon once ran so thick that you could cross the river on their backs. Since the mid-1950s, however, federal water diversions have taken up to 90 percent of the Trinity's flow, and the Hoopa salmon fishery has almost disappeared.

The LA Times looks at the Hoopa's efforts to save the river and their salmon-based traditional culture.

The U.S. government tried to uproot the Hoopa in 1865, then again in 1890, tribal leaders say. The Hoopa resisted, preferring starvation and death to forced removal, said Clifford Lyle Marshall, who once taught law at UCLA but returned to Hoopa and became tribe chairman. "We feel an obligation to protect and respect this land of our ancestors."

The slow draining of the river sneaked up in a way the U.S. cavalry never could.

Lawmakers offered soothing assurances as Congress sealed the deal in 1955 to dam the Trinity and dig massive tunnels to siphon away most of the river. Rep. Clair Engle, the local Democratic congressman, vowed that not one bucketful needed for the Trinity would be shipped to the Central Valley.

But the diversions increased and the river dwindled. The Hoopa joined with environmentalists to wage one of California's most protracted water wars.

Federal authorities finally admitted in the early 1980s that dams and diversions had caused trouble. But studies to determine how to fix the problems dragged on for years.

Finally, a restoration plan that would increase the river flow and cut diversions to farmers won approval in December 2000, the last weeks of the Clinton administration. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt arrived in a canoe for the riverbank ceremony.

[Free reg. req'd.]

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:22 PM | Get permalink

Sunday, June 8, 2003

No 'regime change' needed, thank you.

Writing in the International Herald Tribune, Iranian-American journalist Cameron Kamran points out the many pitfalls in the road to 'regime change' in Iran — a course advocated by many in Dubya's government. Iranians have not forgotten how the US engineered the overthrow of an elected government led by Mohammed Mossadeq in 1953, which brought on 25 years of authoritarianism under Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. Kamran suggests that the Iranian people will not welcome US intervention with open arms, no matter how much they might oppose the current Islamic republic's leadership.

Iranians are more nationalistic than Iraqis and less divided along ethnic and religious lines. Moreover, they have a long history, stretching back to the Tobacco Revolt of 1890, of uniting to oppose foreign intervention. We must remember the Iranian revolution was waged by a coalition of opposition groups united not by religious devotion but by their intense opposition to the autocracy of the shah.

Iranians today are the most pro-American populace in the Middle East, but the United States would sacrifice that goodwill if it formed an explicit relationship with the shah's son at a time when Iranians look to America as a beacon of future democracy, not a source of despotism from the past.

Via The Eyeranian.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:23 PM | Get permalink

Guns in Iraq.

They're apparently staying in the hands of Iraqis, reports Reuters, in spite of attempts to reduce the number of weapons that have become available since the fall of the Saddam Hussein government. These weapons have helped fuel the violence and lawlessness that have become characteristic of the post-Saddam period.

US authorities in Baghdad say that there's been a 'light' response to the first week of a gun amnesty. Iraqis have until June 14 to hand in any weapon bigger than a Kalashnikov assault rifle.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:53 PM | Get permalink

Blah, blah, blah (continued).

Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice hit the weekend news show circuit, saying that US intelligence estimates of Iraq's WMDs were accurate.

"We have no doubt whatsoever that over the last several years, they have retained such weapons or retained the capability to start up production of such weapons," Powell said on CNN's Late Edition.

"We also know they are masters of deceit and masters of hiding these things, and so a little patience is required," he said. Powell called it "really somewhat outrageous on the part of some critics to say that this was all bogus." [...]

Rice, on ABC's This Week, said the national intelligence estimate in October -- which the DIA signed -- said Iraq likely had as much as 100 to 500 metric tons of chemical agents.

Several times Rice said critics were using "revisionist history" to question whether Iraq had banned weapons.

If this crowgirl was the suspicious sort, she might think that Powell and Rice were attacking the motives and methods of their critics as a way to avoid having to make any substantive response to charges that US intelligence on Iraq was 'massaged.'

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:46 PM | Get permalink

The first UK intelligence dossier was a fraud, too.

Last September, the UK government released an intelligence dossier showing the threat represented by Saddam Hussein's growing military capabilities. While the information in that dossier was said at the time to represent the conclusions of UK intelligence, Scotland on Sunday reports that it was based on information available on the Internet. According to the story, the bulk of the dossier's content can be traced to 'unclassified CIA documents, Pentagon press releases and the published reports of American think-tanks.'

Given that the UK government had already decided to admit that its second dossier was plagiarized, these new revelations won't help Tony Blair fend of his growing number of critics in Parliament and elsewhere.

A highlight of Blair’s dossier was a map showing the range of Saddam’s missiles "capable of reaching a number of countries in the region, including Cyprus, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Israel".

The diagram, on page 31 of Blair’s dossier, is virtually identical to that which appears on page 41 of a Pentagon briefing released in January 2001 by William Cohen, the US Defence Secretary under President Clinton.

Entitled "Proliferation: Threat and Response" It outlines the range of the Al Samoud, Al Hussein and Al Abbas missiles in a format identical to that used by No 10.

Cohen’s document contains more information presented in the Blair dossier as the conclusions of British intelligence. The most striking example is the development of the drone aircraft.

"We know from intelligence that Iraq has attempted to modify the L-29 jet trainer to allow it to become an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) which is potentially capable of delivering chemical and biological agents," the Blair report said.

This intelligence, however, was reported by Cohen 20 months earlier.

"Iraq has continued to work on its UAV programme, which involves converting L-29 trainer jets," his report said. "These modified and refurbished L-29s may be intended for the delivery of chemical or biological agents."

Acceleration of Saddam’s ballistic missile programme was also billed by the Downing Street dossier as a reason why Saddam posed a current threat. Again, this was presented as a conclusion from British intelligence.

But this step change was reported by the CIA in its bi-annual statement to Congress covering the second half of 2000 and was openly sourced to a televised military parade in December 1999 at which Saddam displayed military equipment he was not expected to have.

At the time, the CIA said Iraq’s new longer missile range "may now be receiving a higher priority, and development of the Ababil-100 [missile] - two of such airframes and TELs [Transporter-Erector-Launchers] were paraded on December 31 - and possibly longer-range systems may be moving ahead rapidly."

A series of arresting, one-line comments from the Blair dossier are also mirrored in old CIA reports.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:03 AM | Get permalink

Sacrifice play.

The UK Observer reports that the UK government is going to admit that there were fundamental flaws in a dossier used by Tony Blair to support his case for the Iraq invasion.

The dossier in question was released last February just ahead of Dubya and Blair's 'war summit.' At the time, critics pointed out that the dossier was not new intelligence (as Blair claimed) but mainly paraphrases of a 13-year old Phd thesis. The UK government is not, however, admitting any problems with the dossier released last September, which some say was 'massaged' to support the need for intervention in Iraq.

Officials hope that admitting errors over the second dossier will strengthen their case on the first dossier, published last September which has been the subject of allegations that it was 'sexed up' to make a stronger case for war.

Although officials will admit that there are some 'serious questions' about claims in the first dossier that Saddam was trying to procure nuclear material from Niger - the claims were based on crudely forged documents - they will say that Number 10 relied on security analysis.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:02 AM | Get permalink

US makes more friends in Iraq.

The Washington Post reports that the US occupation government is tossing aside Ahmed Chalabi and other former exiles who were supposed to lead a new Iraqi government.

Magpie suggests that the meat of the story is in these paragraphs:

The decision not to hand over power to the former opposition leaders through a hastily formed transitional government, which U.S. officials here [in Baghdad] said was made by the White House, means the United States will occupy Iraq much longer than initially planned, acting as the ultimate authority for governing the country until a new constitution is authored, national elections held and a new government installed. One senior U.S. official here predicted that process could last two years or more.

"The idea that some in Washington had -- that we would come in here, set up the ministries, turn it all over to the seven and get out of Dodge in a few months -- was unrealistic," the official said.

"We gave them a chance," the official said. "We bankrolled some of them. But they just couldn't get their act together. It was amateur hour."

This crowgirl is entirely too polite to point out that many critics of the war warned that Chalabi and company lacked the credibilty and skills needed to run the country.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:01 AM | Get permalink