here's what [UK Prime Minister] Tony Blair said (as he responded to a question asking whether he would continue to serve as prime minister in a third Labour term in government): "There is a big job of work to do - my appetite for doing it is undiminished." And here's what the BBC reported in its lede: "Mr Blair, who said his appetite for power remained 'undiminished'...." And not to let a good distortion go, the website then links to the story thusly: "Tony Blair sidesteps questions on the David Kelly affair - but says his appetite for power is 'undiminished'."Note: The BBC tends to "sanitize" its content on the web when it starts getting flack about the bias so this may not be there by the time you read it.
From ANDREW MILNER: So we hand out bylines to proven plagiarists and fabulists, tell anyone who criticizes this that they're "completely lacking a sense of humor" and then scratch our heads wondering why 90 percent of the public hold our profession in utter contempt. Maybe respect from the masses begins with a little professional self-respect. From JOHN CALLAHAN: Letter after letter talking about the Esquire/Glass/Blair deal, and only a single letter -- one lousy letter -- about Reuters' hatchet job on Deanna Wrenn's Jessica Lynch story? Let me get this straight: Reuters takes a local piece about a young woman and soldier returning home, turns it into a not-so-subtle anti-administration screed that one first amendment expert called "politically incendiary" (and the expert, UCLA Law Professor Eugene Volokh, was being charitable -- you really have to read this piece to believe it), and Karen Heyman is the only one with anything to say?
For several years, Puerto Rican protesters demanded that the U.S. Navy leave the island of Vieques. Groups staged violent protests outside the main gate of "Camp Garcia," saying they were sick and tired of the live-fire bombing exercises. The violence resulted in the gates of the base being torn down. Several U.S. troops and police dogs were injured in the demonstrations. In response to the years of protest, former President Clinton agreed to stop Navy exercises there. Congress and President Bush ratified the deal and live-fire exercises were halted last May. But with its mission muzzled after 60 years, the Navy has decided to pull out of Puerto Rico completely. That means the largest employer on the island, the Roosevelt Roads Naval Station, is now slated for closure that could come as early as October.
Shame on the Secret Service. This week, it investigated renowned editorial cartoonist Michael Ramirez like he was some left-wing homeless crackpot who had sent President Bush an anthrax-laced death threat -- all because Ramirez drew a provocative cartoon that was clearly intended to defend the president. Meanwhile, the Secret Service can't even keep a loony-tunes stowaway from conning his way onto a White House press charter plane in Africa or prevent a known wacko named the "Handshake Man" from slipping past security and personally delivering an unscreened letter to Bush at a public event in Washington, D.C. […] Insight Magazine investigative reporter John Berlau has reported on far more serious security breakdowns involving the White House's computerized access-control system operated by the Secret Service. And U.S. News and World Report recently charged that the service maintains "inadequate oversight" in disciplining misconduct. "Holdovers at the agency still are more interested in suppressing internal criticism than in fixing security problems," Berlau notes.This illustrates the issue I have with the Patriot. Act. It would be one thing if this kind of heavy handed enforcement actually improved security, but as far as I can tell it doesn't.
For four days, Palestinian Afif Barghouti told friends, family, and journalists that he had been detained by Israeli soldiers at the Qalandiyah checkpoint, blindfolded and bound, and severely beaten for 30 hours. Photographs of his wounds were prominently displayed in Palestinian media as evidence of Israeli brutality. Part of the story was true; he was beaten and tortured. But the ones who beat him weren’t IDF soldiers. They belonged to the Palestinian security services. p(qq). What really happened, he said, was that on Saturday, Palestinians he recognized as working for the Palestinian security services had seized him, held him for almost two days and beaten him. He said that they suspected him of being an Israeli collaborator, to which he responded: "I don't work with the Israelis and I don't work with the Palestinians."
On Tuesday we noted that Reuters had published an anti-American screed about the Jessica Lynch story: p(qq). Jessica Lynch, the wounded Army private whose ordeal in Iraq was hyped into a media fiction of U.S. heroism, was set for an emotional homecoming on Tuesday in a rural West Virginia community bristling with flags, yellow ribbons and TV news trucks. But when the 20-year-old supply clerk arrives by Blackhawk helicopter to the embrace of family and friends, media critics say the TV cameras will not show the return of an injured soldier so much as a reality-TV drama co-produced by U.S. government propaganda and credulous reporters. It turns out even the byline was a lie. Reuters attributed the story to Deanna Wrenn, who we later learned is a reporter for the Daily Mail, an afternoon paper in Charleston, W.Va. Out of curiosity, we went to the Daily Mail's Web site and read Wrenn's account of Pfc. Lynch's homecoming. It reads nothing at all like the Reuters piece: p(qq). Jessica Lynch looked and sounded great, residents and visitors said after she rode through town on a Mustang convertible. But many wanted to get a longer glimpse of the 20-year-old Army private they consider a hero. "She looked absolutely beautiful," said Angie Kinder, who came from Huntington with her two girls, Grace, 4, and Caroline, 1. "I expected her to look worse." The piece continues in this vein, without a hint of Reuterian anti-Americanism. In a column in today's Daily Mail, which the paper generously permitted us to reprint, Deanna Wrenn explains what happened.Here we can see Reuters demonstrating that it is just following orders from Big Media [source]:
"It no longer matters in America whether something is true or false" said John MacArthur, the publisher of Harper's magazine.
Incredible. What, did Uday owe you guys money or something? Was Qusay really that much of an asset to the world? Don't they even deserve the sneering sendoff that Strom Thurmond got? I mean gee, Thurmond was no angel, that much is true, but AFAIK he never fed anyone alive into an industrial plastic shredder and sat around to watch and enjoy the screams. Whatever.
The U.S. acted illegally when its soldiers attacked and killed Uday and Qusay Hussein, a leading Democratic congressman complained on Tuesday, before mocking the military maneuver that succeeded in eliminating the brutal duo. "We have a law on the books that the United States should not be assassinating anybody," Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-NY, told Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes." […] When an incredulous Sean Hannity expressed dismay at Rangel's comments, the Harlem Democrat shot back, "How can you get so much satisfaction that two bums have been killed? We got bums all over the world and some in the United States."
KING: President, maybe I can get an area where you may disagree. Do you join, President Clinton, your fellow Democrats, in complaining about the portion of the State of the Union address that dealt with nuclear weaponry in Africa? CLINTON: Well, I have a little different take on it, I think, than either side. First of all, the White House said -- Mr. Fleischer said -- that on balance they probably shouldn't have put that comment in the speech. What happened, often happens. There was a disagreement between British intelligence and American intelligence. The president said it was British intelligence that said it. And then they said, well, maybe they shouldn't have put it in. Let me tell you what I know. When I left office, there was a substantial amount of biological and chemical material unaccounted for. That is, at the end of the first Gulf War, we knew what he had. We knew what was destroyed in all the inspection processes and that was a lot. And then we bombed with the British for four days in 1998. We might have gotten it all; we might have gotten half of it; we might have gotten none of it. But we didn't know. So I thought it was prudent for the president to go to the U.N. and for the U.N. to say you got to let these inspectors in, and this time if you don't cooperate the penalty could be regime change, not just continued sanctions. I mean, we're all more sensitive to any possible stocks of chemical and biological weapons. So there's a difference between British -- British intelligence still maintains that they think the nuclear story was true. I don't know what was true, what was false. I thought the White House did the right thing in just saying, Well, we probably shouldn't have said that. And I think we ought to focus on where we are and what the right thing to do for Iraq is now. That's what I think. […] KING: What do you do, Mr. President, with what's put in front of you? CLINTON: Well, here's what happens: every day the president gets a daily brief from the CIA. And then, if it's some important issue -- and believe me, you know, anything having to do with chemical, biological or nuclear weapons became much more important to everybody in the White House after September the 11 -- then they probably told the president, certainly Condoleezza Rice, that this is what the British intelligence thought. They maybe have a difference of opinion, but on balance, they decided they should leave that line in the speech. I think the main thing I want to say to you is, people can quarrel with whether we should have more troops in Afghanistan or internationalize Iraq or whatever, but it is incontestable that on the day I left office, there were unaccounted for stocks… … of biological and chemical weapons. We might have destroyed them in '98. We tried to, but we sure as heck didn't know it because we never got to go back in there… And what I think -- again, I would say the most important thing is we should focus on what's the best way to build Iraq as a democracy? How is the president going to do that and deal with continuing problems in Afghanistan and North Korea? We should be pulling for America on this. We should be pulling for the people of Iraq. We can have honest disagreements about where we go from here, and we have space now to discuss that in what I hope will be a nonpartisan and open way. But this State of the Union deal they decided to use the British intelligence. The president said it was British intelligence. Then they said on balance they shouldn't have done it. You know, everybody makes mistakes when they are president. I mean, you can't make as many calls as you have to make without messing up once in awhile. The thing we ought to be focused on is what is the right thing to do now. That's what I think.
The [California] state's budget crisis took a surreal turn Monday after a frank discussion by a group of Democrats on the budget and its impact on their re- election was accidentally broadcast throughout legislative and reporters' offices. Members of the Assembly Democrats' progressive caucus were heard making candid, if not intemperate, statements such as one by Los Angeles Assemblyman Fabian Nunez that they may want to "precipitate a crisis" over the budget this year. That might persuade voters to lower the two-thirds vote threshold needed to pass a spending plan, he reasoned.
According to Newsweek, a congressional joint intelligence inquiry has concluded that Saudi Arabia was deeply implicated in the attacks of September 11. A close associate of the al-Qa'eda hijackers, Omar al-Bayoumi, is alleged to have been working as a Saudi agent, operating from the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles. The Bush administration has censored an entire section from the report, detailing the Saudi role in the events leading up to the attacks. These suppressed passages are said to explain how Saudi diplomats provided financial and logistical support for the terrorists.Sucking up or playing for time? Something to keep an eye on.
Years ago, [Al- Quds University president Sari] Nusseibeh was beaten up at Bir Zeit University for promoting dialogue with Israelis. Last year, he was dismissed as the PLO's representative in Jerusalem after he publicly questioned whether demanding the right of return was either logical or feasible.Such a paradise the Palestinian Authority will build once the oppressive Israelis are gone!
the chairwoman in charge of proceedings is a Libyan, Najat al-Hajjajia. […] one of her first actions at the beginning of the year was to use the platform to launch a political speech against the US over Iraq. […] Reporters Without Borders said of al-Hajjajia: "Censorship, arbitrary detention, jailings, disappearances, torture; at last the UN has appointed someone who knows what she’s talking about." […] the Commission barred the non-governmental body, Reporters Without Borders, from attending its meetings as a punishment for criticising Libya’s record on human rights. Also on the commission is Cuba, which recently summarily executed three ferry hijackers and sentenced 75 political activists and journalists to prison terms of between six and 28 years for "anti-state" activities. The US likened Cuba’s election to the commission to putting Al Capone "in charge of bank security". "Cuba does not deserve a seat on the Human Rights Commission. Cuba deserves to be investigated by the Human Rights Commission," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer.I can't believe the US actually spoke up like that. Powell must have been out of town.
In the early 1970s, Scheer joined the Red Sun Rising commune which was devoted to "armed struggle" and the teachings of *Kim Il-Sung*. In the three decades that followed, he rose to influence at the L.A. Times (in part through his marriage to Narda Zacchino, one of the Times' top editors), became a friend of *Barbra Streisand, Jane Fonda and Warren Beatty* […] Indeed in June 2000, Scheer crowed jubilantly about *Kim Jong Il*'s declaration that he would work toward the peaceful reunification of North and South Korea.What a set of friends!
Fertility rates across Europe are now so low that the continent's population is likely to drop markedly over the next 50 years. […] Combine a shrinking population with rising life expectancy, and the economic and political consequences are alarming. In Europe there are currently 35 people of pensionable age for every 100 people of working age. By 2050, on present demographic trends, there will be 75 pensioners for every 100 workers; in Spain and Italy the ratio of pensioners to workers is projected to be one-to-one. Since pensions in Germany, France and Italy are paid out of current tax revenue, the obvious implication is that taxes will have to soar to fund the pretty generous pensions that Europeans have got used to. The cost is already stretching government finances. Deutsche Bank calculates that average earners in Germany are already paying around 29% of their wages into the state pension pot, while the figure in Italy is close to 33%. […] the EU, the report gloomily concludes, faces a “slow but inexorable ‘exit from history' ”.
The FBI blew repeated chances to uncover the 9-11 plot because it failed to aggressively investigate evidence of Al Qaeda's presence in the United States, especially in the San Diego area, where two of the hijackers were living with one of the bureau's own informants, according to the congressional report set for release this week.
Four Spanish journalists and peace activists were beaten Sunday by gunmen belonging to Abdullah Shridi’s Esbat al-Nour. Eyewitnesses at Sidon’s Ain al-Hilweh camp said the four journalists proceeded into the camp wearing peace T-shirts and raising a banner for peace. Upon reaching the Safsaf area, where Shridi and his group operate, the journalists were intercepted and beaten severely. Witnesses said their shirts and banner were shredded and their cameras destroyed.
Personally, I want it all: semi-automatics and Brie, guns and butter - and all the other dairy products that big-government federal regulation has destroyed the taste of. The French may be surrender monkeys on the battlefield, but they don't throw their hands up and flee in terror just 'cause the Camembert's a bit ripe. It's the Americans who insist, oh, no, the only way to deal with this sliver of Roquefort is to set up a rigorous ongoing inspections regime. […] each French town has its own distinctive cheese. In America, the laws on semi-automatics and sodomy change every few miles, but 260 million people are subject to a ruthlessly enforced, centralised one-size-fits-all cheese regime. Americans are cheese-surrendering eating monkeys.
The downfall of Saddam Hussein has led to a shortage of funds for terrorists and has also created a power vacuum among terrorist organizations in general and Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement in particular, reports intelligence newsletter Geostrategy-Direct. This power vacuum has been most strongly felt in southern Lebanon. Palestinian sources said all of the Iraqi-financed Palestinian organizations have suspended public activities, such as rallies and marches. Iraq had been directly funding such groups as the Arab Liberation Front, the Palestine Liberation Front and the Arab Socialist Party.Interesting how the fall of the Ba'ath in Iraq has distracted us from the war with the Caliphascists. It's because, as we can see from this article, there were no links between the Ba'ath and terrorist organizations.
The Nevada Supreme Court has (1) ordered the Legislature to enact a budget, and (2) suspended the operation of the two-thirds majority requirement. That's right, the two-thirds majority requirement is right there in the Nevada ConstitutionI agree that there is no federal remedy for this, because
If the citizens don't stand up to defend their powers, then, yes, those powers will eventually be lost.
Problems were identified at Eurostat [statistics arm of the Commision] by trade unions in 1997, by internal Commission audits in 1999 and 2000 and by Paul van Buitenen, a whistleblower, in 2001, but [Eurostat director] Mr Solbes said he knew nothing about the scale of the problems until he read newspaper reports in May 2003. He said: "I can't be blamed or asked to take responsibility for something I didn't know about."Jeebus, if he were a Yank he'd never use such a simplismé line like that. Why not argue about the meaning of the word "know"?
In Ohio, Iraq Questions Shake Even Some of Bush's FaithfulThe money paragraph:
In conversations here with nearly three dozen voters, the vast majority said they generally like President Bush and believe he is doing a good job. Many people said they remained convinced that Iraq posed a threat, even though no chemical or biological weapons have been found. And there was a broad consensus that the result of the war -- the ousting of a brutal dictator -- was good for Iraq as well as the United StatesGosh, that's sure some shaken faith!
[…] a Human Rights Watch official challenged the [Iraq Governing] council’s plan saying it would put former victims of Saddam and his regime in the position of judging their tormentors and might not result in justice. Hania Mufti, London director of Human Rights Watch, said the Iraqi court system was ill-equipped to deal with the task of trying such crimes and said international legal experts should be part of the process. “Saddam’s victims should not be overseers of the justice system. It should be independent of both the former regime and its victims,” Mufti said.This is just a bit different than the view of the post-Apartheid South AFrica or post-Communist trials in Eastern Europe. [source, source, source]
Moves to formally consign the EU's stability and growth pact to the dustbin gathered pace yesterday as French president Jacques Chirac called for it to be suspended, brushing aside the rigid spending code established by treaty law to ensure the long-term survival of monetary union. […] France is already facing censure for its defiant breach of the spending rules. The French deficit was 3.1pc in 2002 and is almost certain to be over 3.5pc this year, and yet M Chirac has vowed to press ahead with tax cuts and costly plans to build a new aircraft carrier battle group and nuclear submarines.
In a study to be released next month by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and provided exclusively to The Jerusalem Post, Palestinian sources confirm that at least 34 Palestinian armed terrorists were killed fighting in the battle for the Jenin Refugee Camp. The total number of Palestinian causalities in the battle was 52, a sharp contrast from the claims of Palestinian propaganda professionals who have openly stated that thousands had died. [...] The study reveals that for the first time that Palestinian terror organizations saw themselves as "armed combatants" and not as civilians who died in a deadly massacre. The 35 page study, which is based on primary sources, clearly illustrates that Fatah, Islamic Jihad and Hamas prepared themselves thoroughly with automatic weapons, grenades, anti-tank missiles and explosives and perceived the confrontation with IDF troops as nothing less than a "military to military battle." The study refutes claims by PA leaders at the time that IDF forces were attacking innocent civilians and that the only Palestinians who had perished in the battle of Jenin were innocent, unarmed Palestinian men, women and children. [...] In addition the research indicates that Fatah, Islamic Jihad and Hamas had created a joint bomb making facility in Jenin which produced over two tons of explosives. The JCPA paper states that civilians were intentionally used as human shields and that both women and children were deployed by Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad to divert IDF troops into ambushes and booby-trapped areas. The Jenin Refugee Camp was prepared as a "reinforced fortress" where nearly 200 Palestinian terrorists had gathered for the battle, the JCPA research states.I have to agree with Yourish that this story will be buried while the myth of a "massacre" goes on.
Edmonds, a Turkish-American, was hired by the FBI soon after Sept. 11 and given top-secret security clearance to translate some of the reams of documents seized by FBI agent […] Edmonds says that to her amazement, from the day she started the job, she was told repeatedly by one of her supervisors that there was no urgency - that she should take longer to translate documents so that the department would appear overworked and understaffed. That way, it would receive a larger budget for the next year.Yes, the FBI took the 11 Sep attacks as an opportunity for _serious_ budget increases. I feel so much better.
The UN has refused to arrest a Zimbabwean police officer accused of torture who is currently working for it in Kosovo as a member of an international training team. The UN was informed in early June that the alleged torturer, Detective Inspector Henry Dowa, was working for it in Prizren, Kosovo, but it declined to take any action.[…] [The accused] has been named by several Zimbabwean torture victims as having directed and carried out beatings with fists, boots and pickaxe handles, and as having administered electric shocks to the point of convulsions, at Harare central police station throughout 2002 and in early 2003. The charges have been backed up by medical examinations which confirm injuries consistent with torture.
Worse, [Howell] Raines would not let facts get in the way of a story he had ordered up or a point he decided to make. "Howell wanted a thought inserted high in one of my stories," says a metro reporter. "The only problem was, it wasn't true. Mind you, this was on my beat, a beat he didn't really know about. I said to the editor who was the message-bearer that it wasn't true, and it didn't belong in the story, period. A while later he came back to me and said, 'Well, you're right, but Howell wants it anyway.' It became clear that the editor had not fully conveyed my arguments to Howell, because he was afraid to. I said, 'F-\-- that \-- I'll tell him myself.' And he literally seized my arm and said, 'You don't want to do that.' And ultimately the editor-intermediary and I compromised on a version of what Howell wanted that was just vague enough not to mean much, but still close enough to a falsehood to make me very uncomfortable."
President Jacques Chirac negotiated a secret deal to protect Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb general accused of Europe's worst atrocities since the Second World War, according to evidence submitted to the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague. M Chirac allegedly agreed to sabotage the extradition of Gen Mladic to face genocide charges for his role in the planned extermination of Bosnian Muslims, including the massacre of 7,000 men and boys in the UN safe haven of Srebrenica in July 1995.Is there _any_ genocidal maniac who _hasn't_ been aided by France?
Not much Big-Media attention for the Iranian protests: […] (Inside [the BBC website], there's a story on how the Iranian press has "reluctantly complied" with the Mullarchy's demands to downplay the story. What's everybody else's excuse?) […] Question: If there were protests against the United States of this size in Iraq, would they get bigger play? If the United States repressed them with equivalent violence and "disappeared" the leaders, would it get more attention? Some questions answer themselves.
So I just listened to a BBC World News Service radio report on Iran and the student movement (Julian Marshal was the anchor that hour). It focused on how much better things are in Iran since the revolution, on reformers in the Iranian parliament, and the emphasis was on the young people just wanting change to go faster than was reasonable. They did mention some arrests, but the focus was on how much freer everyone is in Iran these days. From the BBC report, one would have *absolutely no understanding of the reasons* behind the protests, except that they're ungrateful that progress isn't going faster than it is (but how things have improved! - great emphasis was placed on a split between the young people who just don't get it and the older people who were around in the early days of the revolution and understand just how good things are in Iran now). *Completely* unmentioned were the Mullahs (or Ayatollahs); on the BBC website's Middle East page the only stories on Iran are ones pertaining to the "positive" talks between the IAEA and Iran on its nuclear program, mourning the death of the twins, and one on a movement leader who's been released. Absolutely nothing mentioning threatened massacre by the government that shut down protests planned for today. And one wonders why Europeans might have a different viewpoint on the Middle East than we do. Well, opinions are shaped by the information one has - or doesn't have
*Big Mac attacks L'attac* In response to the ongoing strikes by its catering staff, school bosses at Robespierre secondary school in Epinay-sur-Seine ordered in Macdonalds. The strikers, rather than getting the support of their hungry charges, found themselves trying to block the delivery with the help of teachers, but failed. The children got their _Royale avec Fromage_. The strike collapsed. Reports suggest however that the pupils are calling for more strikes.
*Open skies: Uproar as Nobel prize winner arrested in Paris scuffle* Two British MEPs were arrested recently following a scrap with French police. Ulster MEP and Peace Prize winner John Hume and UK Tory MEP Edward McMillan-Scott were trying to get to Strasbourg on Air France. Big mistake. Told that the flights were full, again, and they would have to fly via another EU airport , again they attempted a shimmy through security - with dire consequences. Both MEPs were arrested by les Flics and banged up. Cue uproar in the EU plenary as member after member denounced the French State carrier and vowed never to support the Strasbourg home of Parliament again.
While Britain and the EU can afford to fritter their days away in trivia, the UN bears the great weight of the world on its broad shoulders. This week, it decided to get tough with Cambodian strongman Hun Sen. Not because he scuppered the UN's plans for Khmer Rouge genocide trials, or because he deposed his co-prime minister, Prince Ranariddh, and tore up the UN-backed political settlement in Phnom Penh. No, as AFP reported, Hun Sen was "told by the United Nations he was the biggest smoker among world leaders".[source, source]
Student Steve Hinkle's crimes, explicitly detailed at the hearing he was forced to endure, were (a) being white, (b) blond, (c) blue-eyed, and (d) publicizing an appearance by a _conservative_ black author, Mason Weaver.The other money quote is
Authorities at Cal Poly say it was not the content of Hinkle's flier, but rather his very presence that was "disruptive."Apparently not all ethnicities are welcome in a multi-cultural center.
But by any standard of measurement, they're simply wrong. George W. Bush's GOP is the party of the little guy. A new study by the Center for Responsive Politics found that in the last election cycle, people who gave less than $200 to politicians or parties gave 64 percent of their money to Republicans. Just 35 percent went to Democrats. On the other hand, the Center found that people who gave $1 million or more gave 92 percent to Democrats - and a whopping eight percent to Republicans.
In response to another European Directive, the supine government of Her Majesty, will later today impose Workers Councils upon all companies employing 150 workers, or more. In 2008, the same regulations will apply to all companies with 50 workers, or more. […] Employers will be obliged to consult these councils on any change of company ownership, or on any change in the numbers of staff employed by the companyThe devil is in the details of course, but it certainly sounds like another attempt to regulate away the looming pension crash in Europe. But he who will not risk cannot win and the effort to preserve a status quo that's failed is unlikely to be a long term success. It's more likely that hope has been lost among the EUlite and they're just partying until the ship goes down.[source, source]
The United States on Sunday released 11 Turkish special forces detained in northern Iraq […] In Friday's raid, troops from the 173rd Airborne took the Turkish special forces and others into custody over an alleged plot to harm Iraqi civilian officials in the north, an official in U.S. President George W. Bush's administration said Sunday. The daily Hurriyet said the raid aimed to foil a Turkish plot to kill an unnamed senior Iraqi Kurdish official in Kirkuk, but Gul has denied any Turkish plot.There seems to be a lot of resentment over this in Turkey, but I suspect that the American street might resent assassinations of Kurdish officials in Iraq, as the Kurds have been of far more aid to us than Turkey. It almost makes one think that Turkey _wants_ an independent Kurdistan, because the best way to guarantee that is to continue to mess with the US occupation of Iraq. [source, source]
Our original Constitution divided the powers of the government and put restrictions on those powers, in a Bill of Rights, and in the retention by the states of much of their sovereign power. […] Why did Congress cede its powers? For the most basic of reasons: survival. Decisions on war, peace, race, religion, morality, culture and gender, divide us deeply and emotionally. These are issues where one vote could cost scores of congressmen their seats. Why not turn them over to justices, appointed for life, who never face the voters and who relish remaking our society according to their own vision and beliefs? "Conservatives and liberals fight like cats and dogs and disagree on almost everything," writes Quirk, "but, oddly, agree the Court should have the authoritative role the unwritten constitution provides for. They just disagree on who should control the Court." Why do conservatives and liberals agree that the court should decide such issues? Because both "share an abiding fear and distrust of American majority culture."The one nit is that I think the conservative and liberal politicians fear _accountability_ more than the culture at large.
"France is not yet on the road to heaven, only in purgatory, since we still have Socialists," Mr. Raffarin [the Prime Minister of France] said during a meeting of European center-right leaders and politicians.
First up is a report on a trade pact with Pakistan. The complaints are (paraphrasing Kaus) # President Bush is giving away too much # Bush is giving away too little # Bush is hitting the right balance but for the wrong reasons # Bush is doing the right thing for the right reasons but not for the reasons his trade officials cited. Bush's trade policy contains multitudes, apparently. Next Kaus hits a Daniel Altman lead story on June unemployment statistics. Among other things, Altman uses the adjective "only" for a rise of 251,000 jobs while avoiding it for an increase of 30,000 jobless. Altman also buries the fact that the jobless rate increased not because of job loss but because more people entered the labor force than there were jobs created. Completing the trifecta is an article headlined "Ashcroft Aide Under New Scrutiny". It turns out, of course, that the aide is a Clinton appointee (and therefore not hired by Ashcroft) and the "scrutiny" is press coverage because the aide wrote a critical report of the Justice Department's treatment of Caliphascist War detainees.
In this latest action TransAfrica's president and other prominent black Americans from Africa Action, an advocacy group here; Howard University; and church and labor unions wrote a public letter to Mr. Mugabe, assailing what they described as the "increasing intolerant, repressive and violent policies of your government."[…]
Angry critics have sent e-mail messages to those who signed the letter, saying in one instance that they "do not represent African-Americans." On a left-leaning radio station in New York City, WBAI-FM, several people have called to complain. "Whatever black Africans in Zimbabwe decide to do," said a caller who identified herself as Missy from Queens, "I think black Africans here, we should join them."
EU proposals to make companies responsible for proving the safety of the chemicals they produce or use. [emphasis added]As my [source] points out, this means that end of semiconductor manufacturing, among other things. One might also wonder what will it do to agricultural? Most fertilizers aren't very safe, nor are the herbicides and insecticides. Apparently the goal is to turn Europe into a retirement park. Normally one would worry about paying the upkeep but the new EU Constitution deals with that by making that a constitutional right. Problem solved!
"I have always thought that people should be allowed to go about their business themselves," Bloomberg said at a news conference. "I don't know why any of these platforms should deal with issues like that."If you believe Bloomberg when he says he thinks "people should be allowed to go about their business themselves," try walking into a gay bar in the city and lighting a cigarette.
Hundreds of thousands of dissatisfied Hong Kong citizens took to the streets yesterday in a demonstration against proposed anti-subversion laws that turned into an unambiguous rebuke for the government's performance. […][source]The new legislation is likely to be passed by the Beijing-friendly legislature next Wednesday. Article 23 refers to the section under the basic law that calls on Hong Kong to enact laws for the territory's security. Citizens groups, lawyers, international chambers of commerce and others fear the bill is too restrictive, giving the government power to ban organisations deemed unfriendly to China or Hong Kong and allowing police sweeping search powers