Low Earth Orbit

Guardian stays a step above the NY Times

The Guardian has retracted and apologized for its distortion of comments by Paul Wolfowitz. The Guardian had originally reported that Wolfowitz "admitted" that the US had invaded Iraq because of its oil. In fact, Wolfowitz had pointed out something I had commented on earlier: that sanctions won't work against Iraq because of Iraq's oil, in contrast to North Korea where it has no easily extracted commodities to sell.

Iraqi museum looting story completes collapse

Almost all of the priceless items feared stolen from the Baghdad Museum when it was ransacked by looters have been found safe in a secret vault, the U.S.-led administration for Iraq said on Saturday.

  –[source, source]

Sixth Republic Watch

Some flooding of the zone about the troubles in France.

• Some initial reports from France
• I weigh in.
• USS Cluess publishes a long letter from France on the root causes. This one I found particularly interesting. It claims that there are two basic problems in France. The first is that the trade unions constitute effectively a fourth, unelected branch of government. The other is that a set of basic attitudes make it very difficult to correct the first problem (I touched on this in the comments in the previous item, before I read this post). For details see the post but the headlines are
  • Detachment from macro-economic reality
  • Capitalists vs. Workers
  • State Worship
  • Lack of trust
• Claire Berlinsky offers a view from Paris.
• A French patriot tries to stand against the tide.
• An on-site observer says “France is out of order”.
• The intersection of a state monopoly on education and free speech in France.