Dan Feidt's log on Minnesota, Information Operations, spinstorms and latent contradictions.
While reporting for the Mac Weekly, I located myself in the audience near the "stage entrance" of the campaign rally. Senator Kerry moved down the line, shaking hands and signing things. With a huge crush of people and cameras all around, I asked Kerry if the investigation into intelligence distortions on Iraq should be a criminal matter. We reported his answer in the Mac Weekly story. (not yet online).
Kerry responded: "I have no evidence yet that it should be, but I think that we need a much more rapid and thorough investigation than the administration is currently pursuing. I think that this idea of doing it by 2005 is a complete election gimmick. It ought to be done in a matter of months, and that will determine what ought to be done."
The campaign story was a very tough one for us to write, and the session well into the early morning left me tired for days afterward. It is damn hard to write the Weekly and look sane the next day, as the editors know all too well.
The newspaper is in sweet sweet color on the cover. I'm really happy I snagged a candidate's quote, but I wish that more of what other people said at the rally could have been put in. Unfortunately, the paper a huge crush for space this week.
I have thrown together an ugly iPhoto web gallery of my pictures from when John Edwards came to St. Paul on Saturday. Here is a choice image of Alison giving a w00p w00p sort of expression while Mr. Edwards makes another gesture.
Enjoy the photos. I am really trying to get a pretty photo layout setup like other sites have, but with all the goings on it has been very difficult to get it together.
Kerry is coming to the Macalester campus today! I am going off to report on the event soon, and will be quite busy capturing the story with Mike Barnes tonight. We may have gained some special insider access so I'm hoping for the all-important campaign scoop.
I am now covering the Kerry event on Macalester's campus Wednesday, which, alongside the Edwards rally on Sunday has surprisingly thrown me right into the middle of the national campaign for the first time since my November pilgrimage to Iowa (though the stories of Kellen, Andy and Adam at the Iowa Caucus made it far more colorful--and insightful).
With Dean's sudden deflation, my wandering political spirit stumbled onward yet again. I'm genuinely happy that the Democrats haven't torn themselves to pieces, and evidently Edwards doesn't plan to attack Kerry, or so he told us on Saturday. That in itself is a big step for the Dems.
The gang around here is flocking to Edwards, but I've hemmed and hawed about where I stand altogether. I think his image works great, I think he's making an impressive run that a lot of people said would never even get this far. That's a lot to his credit. There were plenty of Dean backers sporting their colors at the rally, so naturally, I am supposed to gravitiate there. But is Edwards' glossy inexperience ultimately a liability? (Additionally there's an incestuous sort of lawyer love going around among this crew, whether or not they admit it :-)
In the end Kerry seems to be steamrolling all the way down, and what's coming Wednesday will reflect that. Yet the Iowa and Wisconsin campaigns revealed Edwards poll spikes at the very end. Would Minnesota finally be the site where Edwards beats the man on top?
In sum, I am still ambivalent, and heck, since we are conducting entrance polls to the caucuses for Empirical Research Methods, I probably wouldn't even have time to caucus even if I wanted to. At this point, I may be more interested in watching the pretty pieces assemble into one glorious mural than really come down on it either way.
It's a five-w00p event as John Kerry crashes Macalester College this coming Wednesday (Feb 25) at 4:15. He will be at the Field House. For more information email the Macalester Democrats. hurrrah!!!
I have to find some birthday presents for the Chunkies this afternoon, and I'm still struggling to get HongPong.com's photo album software I want. The Edwards slideshow is coming along nicely so far, though. Hopefully later today, and I'll send out some notifications to all who might be interested...
One of the big questions around the war is whether or not the "terror states" of Iran and Syria might be impelled to help Iraqis strike US forces, thusly proving QED for the neo-cons that they are all EvilDoers Waiting to Strike Against Us. TIME reports that it's really a locally-based thing, not foreigners pulling strings. But now comes a Guardian report that Syria and Iran have been helping some groups. (WiC again)
Senior Iraqi intelligence officers believe an Islamic militant group which has claimed responsibility for two suicide bombings in Irbil and a spate of deadly attacks in Baghdad, Falluja and Mosul is receiving significant help from Syria and Iran.The officers, who have been tracking the activities of domestic and foreign jihadists in northern Iraq, claim that members of Jaish Ansar al-Sunna (the army of the supporters of the sayings of the prophet) have been "given shelter by Syrian and Iranian security agencies and have been able to enter Iraq with ease".
The group is suspected of training suicide bombers and deploying them against US forces in Iraq and Iraqis considered to be collaborating with the US-led authorities.
For Iraqis already in, or thinking about joining, one of the Iraqi security forces -- such as the Iraqi Civil Defence Corp (ICDC), the border guards or the police -- the dangers were made all too clear last week. Instead of being viewed by insurgents as people protecting their country, or simply needing a job, Iraqi police or corps members are simply labelled "collaborators", aiding and abetting the US occupation. Over 100 people were killed in Iskanderiya and Baghdad in two car bombings over two days, both targeting Iraqis signing up to join security forces.
.....
Standard operating procedures for troops stationed in Iraq have changed in such a way as to avoid lethal engagements. US soldiers in Iraq have told Al-Ahram Weekly that, for example, if a patrol comes under fire, the usual response is to leave the area rather than counterattack, unless absolutely necessary. As the US makes plans to pull troops out of cities to bases on the edges of urban centres, Iraqi security forces are being trained and deployed at a break-neck pace, often without proper vehicles or communications and security equipment. The goal is to hand over all security positions to the Iraqis, and damn the consequences.Existing resistance activities, like the prison raid in Fallujah, could be an example of the chaos that may erupt this summer. Take the already volatile tensions between the Sunni, Shi'ites and Kurds, and the fact that some of these groups have their own militias -- like the Kurdish peshmergas or the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq's Badr Brigade and Muqtada Al-Sadr's Mahdi Army -- then add some foreign fighters intent on inflaming those tensions and an elections showdown sure to make either Shi'ites or Sunnis very upset: we have the perfect ingredients for a civil war. If that happens, the US seems to be the only force in the country with the capability to keep the peace, but ironically they have not accomplished that even without widespread sectarian violence.
Confronting problems on critical fronts, the CIA recently removed its top officer in Baghdad because of questions about his ability to lead the massive station there, and has closed a number of satellite bases in Afghanistan amid concerns about that country's deteriorating security situation, according to U.S. intelligence sources.The previously undisclosed moves underscore the problems affecting the agency's clandestine service at a time when it is confronting insurgencies and the U.S.-declared war on terrorism, current and former CIA officers say. They said a series of stumbles and operational constraints have hampered the agency's ability to penetrate the insurgency in Iraq, find Osama bin Laden and gain traction against terrorism in the Middle East.
One former officer who maintains close ties to the agency said it was stretched to the limit. "With Afghanistan, the war on terrorism, with Iraq, I think they're just sucking wind," he said.
But the officers also said the latest problems point to a deeper problem with the CIA leadership and culture. Some lamented that an agency once vaunted for its daring and reach now finds itself overstretched and hunkered down in secure zones.
....
Since Sept. 11, 2001, the agency has brought back hundreds of retirees, dubbed "green-badgers" for the color of the identification cards issued to those who return to the fold under contract. The agency has also turned to young officers without any overseas experience.New agency recruits with military backgrounds are being sent to Iraq as soon as they emerge from the CIA training academy in Virginia, said one former agency official. "They don't speak the language, don't know how to recruit," the official said. "It's on-the-job training."
...
The problems [with turnover] also extend to Afghanistan, sources said. One CIA veteran said he recently spoke with an officer who had served as a base chief in Kandahar for 60 days, an unusually brief tenure for such an important assignment.The base in Kandahar is one of five or six the CIA established in Afghanistan after the U.S. invaded the country in 2001, all reporting to the agency's primary station in Kabul, the capital. But a number of those remote bases have been closed in recent months, according to current and former CIA officials.
...
The CIA has struggled to fill high-ranking posts in other countries, sources said. Four former CIA officers with close ties to headquarters said in separate interviews that the agency struggled to fill its top post in Pakistan last year, that at least five candidates turned down the job of station chief in Islamabad before the agency found an officer willing to take it.
It was Mary Vargas, a 44-year-old engineer in Renton, Wash., who carried U.S. therapy culture to its new zenith. Explaining why the war in Iraq was no longer her top election issue, she told the Internet magazine Salon that, "when they didn't find the weapons of mass destruction, I felt I could also focus on other things. I got validated."Yes, that's right: war opposition as self-help. The end goal is not to seek justice for the victims, or punishment for the aggressors, but rather "validation" for the war's critics. Once validated, it is of course time to reach for the talisman of self-help: "closure." In this mindscape, Howard Dean's wild scream was not so much a gaffe as the second of the five stages of grieving: anger. The scream was a moment of uncontrolled release, a catharsis, allowing U.S. liberals to externalize their rage and then move on, transferring their affections to more appropriate candidates.
BusinessWeek is carrying a story detailing how much credibility Halliburton has earned this year with all its displays of integrity and good military-industrial citizenship. Oh, wait:
(via Warincontext)
Questions about Halliburton are piling up rapidly -- and they won't go away soon. The Pentagon Inspector General has asked the Defense Criminal Investigative Service to probe allegations by Representatives Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and John Dingell (D-Mich.) that the outfit inflated the price of fuel it supplied in war-torn Iraq.Also under scrutiny: Allegations that Halliburton overcharged for meals at a base in Kuwait and might have wildly overstated estimated costs for food services in Iraq. On Feb. 16, Halliburton announced that it was holding on to subcontractors' bills totaling $174.5 million until the amounts it should bill Uncle Sam are resolved. "We did this to take the issue off the table from a political standpoint," says Wendy Hall, Halliburton's director of public relations in an e-mail.
Separately, Halliburton has acknowledged that employees took $6.3 million in kickbacks from a Kuwaiti subcontractor. And the Justice Dept., Securities & Exchange Commission, and French authorities are probing accusations that a Halliburton joint venture paid $180 million in bribes in connection with a Nigerian natural gas plant in the 1990s -- while Cheney was Halliburton's CEO.
AVOIDING COMPETITIVE BIDS. There's plenty more to come. The General Accounting Office is studying Iraq reconstruction contracts and troop-support services -- two reports in which Halliburton should figure prominently. The first is due out in March. Democrats also want a thorough review of the Pentagon's plan to award monopoly, cost-plus contracts for services in Iraq.
....
Halliburton is feeling the heat from all this and is defending its Iraq activities, which accounted for 40% of its $5.5 billion in fourth-quarter revenue and 30% of its $146 million income. It has denied wrongdoing in its Iraq contracting and has hired outside lawyers, whom it won't identify, to probe the Nigerian payments.
It has been nice enough to watch the Goobernator sweltering in California over the gay marriage issue, but now another bombshell seems to be coming down as people are speculating that the current governor of Texas, Rick Perry, has been caught having an affair with his Secretary of State, who is about as openly gay as you can be in Texas. There is a Buzzflash rumor analysis and a post detailling "trashy unsubstantiated gossip." There is also plenty of information--well, scratch that, let's call it dirty innuendoes--at the aptly named Magnifisyncopathological.
So here's to hoping that those bigshot Texas lovers hop the first plane to San Francisco and consummate their perfectly timed relationship as soon as possible. For Bush's Republican party, love springs eternal...
"Whaaaaatup??"
More of my pictures coming soon. There's some damn good ones!!
The good news is that I have gotten tickets for Cheng diggitay and myself. The Roots and Atmosphere are playing Northrup Auditorium on next Saturday, the 28th. Advance tickets are a relatively steep $30 for non-University students--how weak. They are $20 for Gophers. There would be more information on the Rhymesayers website but it's messed up right now, apparently.
It's the big campaign swing through town as John Edwards visits Carpenter Union Hall, at 700 Olive Street. it's down by the Capitol building, but east of 35-E. Dennis Kucinich will also be in town and down by the U. Is this all we're going to get, as they go after delegates in richer Super Tuesday pastures?
(MAP to the event)
(crossposted to the Kos)
The following is totally beyond normal tastes and unsuitable for kids to see. Yet it reveals something about the reality of war.
I bumped into this immediately when I happened to snoop around the Freepers' site--something I rarely do, I assure you. From the wackySan Antonio Lightning Newspaper comes the big question:
"How Effective Are US Forces? A Unique Look At US Department Of Defense Capabilities"
The video is an MPEG (and crappy realplayer) in which you can see the crosshairs drifting around and hear the pilots trying to spot people on what I assume is an infrared night-vision camera on the lens. Who are these people? Why are they being killed? I don't know but it sure looks real. their point, it seems, is to illustrate how great technology is for keeping our personnel safe.
i also find it really funny that the site is packed with advertisements for local Republican candidates--the militant rightwing mirror of DailyKos. Is it legal to steal helicopter footage and advertise for Republicans???
WARNING: Here, SAL links you to EXTREME video of US kills on hostile forces. We warn you--this is actual DoD video of human kills. We offer this video only as a demonstration of US military superiority--and to illustrate why we should prefer to spend money on technology rather than risk our men and women in uniform. This footage is recorded using FLIR technology.(video without permission)
A big editor at CBSNews.com ripped into Cheney today. I thought it was pretty damn funny. however, it also feature a misstatement about Pentagon schemes...
Sinister. That word keeps cropping up in descriptions of Dick Cheney's public countenance.I don't quite understand how or why this came to pass. But I'm now suspicious that it's a plot. Maybe the image wizards at the White House figured out that in post-9/11 America, having a dark, secretive, powerful sorcerer behind the throne was the perfect tactic to create awe and obedience amongst us Muggles.
After all, Dick Cheney didn't used to be Dr. Strangelove. As a congressman and Defense Secretary, Cheney was actually a pretty fun guy. He was open with the press, relatively spin-free for his peer group and popular for the deadpan wisecracks issued from his famously curled mouth. He was a Republican that Democrats liked. Republicans did too.
....
Is the "undisclosed location" business still necessary? Was it ever? Why does such a careful man, such a team player, persist in making claims about Saddam's Iraq that would be considered "off the reservation" from other players? Why is one of the administration?s most agile advocates kept away from the press? Why is it that he emerges most often for fundraisers, playing right into the paid-for-by-Halliburton image? Maybe that?s the image they want: these are calculating people.
...
The precipitating event, strangely enough, was one of the rare interviews Cheney submitted to, this time with National Public Radio in January. He resurrected two controversial and suspect claims that the administration had abandoned. He said, again, that there was "overwhelming evidence that there was a connection between al Qaeda and the Iraqi government." Meanwhile, Colin Powell had just said he didn?t know of any "smoking gun, concrete evidence" of such a connection. Cheney also claimed that two trailers found after the war provided "conclusive evidence" that Iraq had a biological weapons program. This is in direct opposition to what the CIA?s chief weapons inspector, David Kay, concluded.This was something of tipping point in the "Is Cheney a liability?" indictment. But there is a long list of other counts.
They began with Cheney?s refusal to give Congress and the General Accounting Office a list of who his energy task force had consulted with and heard from. Cheney has consistently said this was a principled battle to preserve executive powers that Congress was eroding; his critics consistently said it was classic stonewalling to conceal the influence of Cheney?s old business colleagues. That lawsuit is headed to the Supreme Court.
....
After the war, in September of 2003, Cheney implied quite strongly that Iraq was involved in 9/11. Bush himself had to clear that one up, declaring the administration "had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved" in those attacks.Also after the war, reporting revealed just how deeply Cheney was involved in assessing, interpreting and editing pre-war intelligence on Iraq, working closely with the Pentagon?s shadow espionage think tank, the Office of Special Programs. [Tsk tsk CBS: let's get it together!]
Now, the criminal investigation of the potentially illegal leak of the name of a CIA employee, and wife of a Bush critic, to columnist Robert Novak is supposedly honing in on some Cheney staffers. [...or Chief of said staff]
And to complete the circle, Cheney is getting walloped for taking Justice Antonin Scalia duck-hunting in Louisiana with some oilmen. Scalia will be hearing the energy task force case. Finally, and perhaps most importantly over at the White House, a CNN/Time poll found that 42 percent thought Cheney should be yanked from the ticket.
Cheney is a full-fledged evildoer to many Democrats and Bush-haters. He is problematic for Republican strategists. But he is deeply supported by many Republicans who see him as the most reliable and influential guardian of the conservative torch. And he is very important to the Hobbesians: generally conservative intellectuals who believe that Democrats, liberals and internationalists profoundly underestimate how dangerous and belligerent the world is, especially the Islamic world today.
I fixed the links on the right-hand side. They're now mostly the same as the old HongPong.com. Now that they're there, I'll go on to make some modifications. I have also been digging up more information on how to modify MovableType in various ways, so that I can have a nice image gallery and improved archive organization, as well as possibly some dynamic RSS (news push) content. It's been quite a week.
While looking around at some blogs considered the most well-designed, I see that a little attention to the delicate structure of style sheets can go a long way. Also there are some very well-designed galleries out there. There are news feed type setups. This is a journalist who has been around Iraq some-and evidently uses the same software as me. here is a small community blog of law students. I thought this site had a simple, attractive gallery setup. (Japanese Apple store is very cool)
The site Etherfarm has a very good gallery but also seems pretentious.
(sing along hour: I was wasting awaaaayyy)
There was an amusing exchange on Hardball yesterday which revealed Pat Buchanan's tendencies as an Edwards fan, with regards to the whole jobs and trade issue. I was talking about this last night. Is Buchanan closer to Edwards than Bush?!?! (I found this via fellow panelist Katrina vanden Heuvel's blog)
MATTHEWS: What does Edwards have to campaign for that Kerry doesn?t already buy?BUCHANAN: I think what Edwards is doing?one thing he is doing, he is making himself a positive, great national figure and force in the Democratic Party every week he campaigns. His media coverage is almost uniformly positive.
He has plugged into the No. 1 economic issue in this campaign. That is jobs and the betrayal of the American worker, white collar with outsourcing, blue collar with these deals with China and NAFTA. He has got that issue. I think he only helps himself. The only way he can hurt himself if he gets brutal on Kerry and hurts himself with the party or he runs so long that he starts to look ridiculous.
MATTHEWS: Let me ask the Reverend Jesse Jackson. You were in
(CROSSTALK)
JACKSON: Let me say this.
MATTHEWS: Go ahead. Go ahead.
(CROSSTALK)
JACKSON: ... student activists and Pat Buchanan all support Edwards.
That itself is a broadening of the base.
MATTHEWS: Do you support Edwards?
BUCHANAN: I support Edwards? campaign, yes. I would like to see him do well. I would like to see him go forward with this issue. I would like to see him make it at the convention, because it?s important for the country.
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: Reverend Jackson
(CROSSTALK)
JACKSON: And Pat Buchanan is closer ideologically to John Edwards than he is to George Bush. And that itself again is expanding the base.
MATTHEWS: Is that the case?
BUCHANAN: Well, if you get all?on the jobs issue, yes.
MATTHEWS: How about on Iraq?
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: Actually, Edwards is with him on Iraq.
BUCHANAN: I think what Jerry Brown?what Jerry Brown said is?and they?re not tapping into it, but Jerry Brown is exactly right. The overextension of the American empire all over the world, this idea of permanent war for permanent peace is a tremendous issue which the Democrats could also tap into.
MATTHEWS: Are they ready to?
BUCHANAN: No.
(SNIP)
JACKSON: Well, I would be very impressed with a Kerry?with a Kerry-Edwards ticket.MATTHEWS: Well, that?s a brief statement. That was a Mike Mansfield answer. I don?t know?I don?t know how to respond. Reverend Jackson says it would be a good ticket.
Pat Buchanan, you got your heart?you did?let?s say one last word here for Howard Dean. I loved his goodbye today.
BUCHANAN: I thought he was excellent. Frankly, I think he won a gallant, good, courageous campaign. He stood for his beliefs and his principles. He made some mistakes and some blunders. But I was sad to see him not get?really get the chance he should have gotten because of that crazy concession speech.
MATTHEWS: Do all mavericks get beaten?
JACKSON: If?if Democrats win, over that inauguration will be the halo of Howard Dean.
MATTHEWS: How so?
JACKSON: Because he set the pace. He stood up to Bush when other Democrats were ducking, dodging, trying to be politically correct. He stood up on the issue of the war, tax policy, trade policy. Howard Dean set the race?set the pace for this race.
MATTHEWS: OK. Thank you.
BROWN: A maverick is without honor in his own party.
(LAUGHTER)
MATTHEWS: OK, thank you, Reverend. Adlai Stevenson once said that. Anyway, thank you. No, Gene McCarthy said it about Adlai Stevenson. He also said it?s easier to run for president than to stop.
We've been watching the Wisconsin coverage rolling on into the wee hours. Edwards spiked here. CNN said that most voters who decided late went for Edwards, and the newspaper endorsements played a key role, as they did for Edwards in Iowa. Kerry is steaming on with little standing in his way, and the friendly southern gentleman on his left is digging in on horrible trade policy.
Dean is getting a pretty rough time of it as the mainstream media sees him off. Wisconsin got roughly the same results as Iowa, for much the same reasons. Jobs. The black hole budget. Crunched people. And the tidy warfronts.
Edwards turned upwards in the last days of the race yet again, which inclines me to believe that he'll keep attracting independents--which flooded the polls yesterday for him.
In Wisconsin we have the open primary, which attracts Republicans and independents in scads. Are they voting against the D's in general--just toying with it, taking time on these FRIGID days--or has the rather rapid decline mobilized all those random segments of Wisconsin: Families who have seen industrial plants close, the swift collapse of school funding, and horrible rural health care.
Wisconsin has all kinds of odd roots--the socialist movements and Fightin Bob LaFolette. So it's not going to be the tedious flat political competition. There is no monolith of NASCAR dads floating around. It is people considering their interests. These primaries and caucuses work to call attention to the interests and bombard the Bush administration from all directions.
On the other hand i feel somewhat negligent because I didn't go home to visit how it was unfolding.
Edwards is coming to the Twin Cities on Saturday, they say. But where? Unknown!
The ancient West Bank town of Hebron has been a site of religious violence for quite a while, stretching back well before Israel's creation. But now the chief of an international peacekeeping force, who is now leaving his post, has said that Jewish settlers have systematically been driving Palestinians out of the section of Hebron around where the settlers live. The town has several hundred settlers in the old downtown area and around the holy Tomb of the Patriarchs. Security control in the town was divided between Israelis and Palestinians during the Oslo period. The TIPH--Temporary International Presence in Hebron-- force mainly observes what is going on, but can't intervene. It is a very strange gap in coexistence here--the antithesis of any sort of democracy.
The TIPH chief acknowledged the huge number of suicide bombers from here, but he also observed that the settlers had attacked the international observers hundreds of times. Expect this story to turn up on FOX News right away. This story jumped out at me for its sheer horror...
"The activity of the settlers and the army in the H-2 area of Hebron is creating an irreversible situation. In a sense, cleansing is being carried out. In other words, if the situation continues for another few years, the result will be that no Palestinians will remain there. It is a miracle they have managed to remain there until now."This view of the situation in the Israeli-controlled area of Hebron comes from Jan Kristensen, the former head of the Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH), who completed his one-year term of office last week. Kristensen, 58, is a former lieutenant colonel in the Norwegian army and has also held various positions in UNIFIL (the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon).
H-2, the 4.3 square kilometers of Hebron assigned to Israeli control by the Hebron Agreement, contains all of the city's Jewish settlers. When the intifada began, it had 35,000 Palestinian residents. Kristensen had no exact figures for how many Palestinians have since left but he said, "more and more people are leaving the area and it is effectively being emptied. The settlers' activities, which are aimed at causing the Palestinians to leave, and the army's activities, which impose severe restrictions, create an irreversible reality. Anyone whose economic situation permits him to do so, leaves.
"There are roadblocks in the area all the time. Once there were more than 100 days of continuous curfew, with only brief interruptions. The markets are closed, the roads are closed, and if you're a Palestinian who does not appear on the lists, you can't enter. The settlers go out almost every night and attack those who live near them. They break windows, cause damage and effectively force the Palestinians to leave the area.
"I don't see how this situation can change, and I see no possibility that the IDF will once again open the area and enable the Palestinians in it to lead normal lives. Personally, I don't believe it is possible for normal life to exist in Hebron between the communities, even if there are agreements between the leaders."
TIPH, originally established after Baruch Goldstein murdered 29 Muslim worshipers in Hebron in 1994, is comprised of volunteer observers from six countries - Norway, which runs the operation, Italy, Denmark, Turkey, Sweden and Switzerland. Its annual budget is about $2 million, not including the observers' salaries, which are paid directly by their governments.
The 71 unarmed observers patrol the city under an agreement between Israel, the Palestinians and the other six nations concerned - the UN is not involved. Almost no one in Hebron - not Israelis, Palestinians nor international agencies - believe TIPH has done much good, yet inertia has caused its mandate to be renewed every three months. For its European sponsors, its main value lies in creating a precedent for international observers in the territories. It was fear of such a precedent that made Israel insist that neither the UN nor any other international agency be involved.
Over the last year, TIPH has branched out into humanitarian activity, such as transporting students and teachers to schools during curfews. This has infuriated the settlers, and Kristensen said that settler attacks on TIPH personnel rose 60 percent in July-December 2003 compared to the first half of the year. There have been "many hundreds of incidents," he said, ranging from spitting and cursing through blocked cars to being pelted with eggs and stones.
Right now I am working on a paper about international security, an exploration of various theories such as neo-realism and critical theory critiques of international relations. Here I'm dumping some stories I found which are tied to the issues:
Ariel Sharon's new proposal to "unilaterally" withdraw from much of Gaza with a good chomp of the West Bank in exchange gets a lot of news. The Egyptian Al-Ahram Weekly features Jonathan Cook, saying its another Dead End:
A [PLO] statement issued on Friday ... rejected the "unilateral disengagement" plan. "The plan is a recipe for a takeover of most of the territories of the West Bank," the statement read.Such fears are not an over-reaction. On the heels of Sharon's announcement, the prime minister's office revealed that the plan involved transferring the Gaza evacuees to the West Bank to "consolidate" settlement blocs such as Maale Adumim, east of Jerusalem, Ariel near Nablus, and Gush Etzion south of Bethlehem. Israeli media soon became rife with rumour that Sharon would suggest to the White House that the price of evacuation would be the annexation of several large settlement blocs in the West Bank.
One source in the prime minister's office was quoted in Ma'ariv as saying, "We are putting out feelers, to see what the Americans will agree to."
The damaging effects of Israel withdrawing from Gaza unilaterally -- without a final peace deal establishing a sovereign Palestinian state -- are not hard to predict. Even if the army does pull back, it will simply be withdrawing to a new line around Gaza. The Strip would be effectively besieged, with no Palestinian control over entry or exit... It would be a settler-less occupation, but a continuing occupation nonetheless. That is hardly likely to dampen the flames of anger sweeping through Gaza's refugee camps.
Counter-intuitively, here perhaps lies some of the appeal of a Gaza evacuation for Sharon. The plan is soaking up headlines that should be reminding readers of the corruption scandal ensnaring Sharon. It ... turns the hostile gaze of the world away from the apartheid wall under construction in the West Bank. But watching from the sidelines as Palestinian political factions, along with the population of Gaza, descend into civil war may be the biggest prize of all.
The first signs of where Gaza is heading may have appeared last Thursday when a half-hour gun battle raged outside the headquarters of Razi Jabali, supreme commander of the police in Gaza. Amid rumours of treachery, betrayal and assassination attempts by the Preventive Security Organisation, one policeman was killed and 11 others wounded. Hatem Abdul-Qader, a senior Fatah member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, warned, "A withdrawal based on bad intentions and without coordination with the PA will transform Gaza into a living hell."
South Lebanon became the Hezbollah state, and a similar situation is liable to develop in the Gaza Strip. The point is that Israel is in the process of creating two Palestinian states, one in Gaza and the other in the West Bank. In Gaza, it is conducting its major military campaign against one organization, Hamas; it is proposing to withdraw from that organization's territory, evacuate settlements and demarcate a perfect boundary line with an enemy state. At the end of the process, Gaza is liable to become an entity cut off from the main Palestinian system, the autonomous province of an organization and not a separate section of the Palestinian state.The signs that this is happening are already discernible on the ground. Hamas is presenting Israel's declaration of withdrawal from Gaza as its military and political victory, and not that of the Palestinian Authority or of the organizations associated with Fatah. Islamic Jihad has been shunted aside by Hamas, which is unwilling, for the time being, to incorporate it into one organizational framework... At the moment, Hamas does not consider a hudna (cease-fire) to be a Palestinian interest - meaning a Hamas interest - and its representatives are explaining that the organization is in a state of momentum that must not be broken off by a cease-fire.
The formulations being used by Hamas leaders to describe their "victory" are amazingly like the ones we heard from the heads of Hezbollah after the IDF withdrawal from Lebanon. But that is as far as the resemblance extends. Because even if there is a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, its 1.25 million inhabitants will continue to be under Israeli responsibility. In contrast to South Lebanon, Gaza will have no economic hinterland... The result is liable to be another huge Palestinian diaspora, like the one in Lebanon, but without its civilian infrastructure.
There is no dispute that Israel needs to withdraw from Gaza, and fast; but it also has to find a new landlord for Gaza, just as fast. That can only be the Palestinian Authority, which in the meantime is not enthusiastic about the idea of the unilateral withdrawal. "Gaza and Jericho first" was a good proposal for another period, when an economic infrastructure still existed in the Gaza Strip and Hamas was a limited organization, fighting for its status. For the PA to be able to accept control of Gaza now, it will have to wage a tremendous struggle with Hamas. However, Israel's continued war against Hamas, and the showcase manner in which it is being waged, with the large number of Palestinian casualties it is exacting, is only enhancing the organization's status and will make it even more difficult for the PA to rehabilitate its status in the Gaza Strip.
You, the people of Yesha [Judea, Samaria, Gaza], are leading ... You are responsible for your lives and you must prepare. The government is handing over the settlers to the armed Palestinian gangs ... They have already betrayed Jews to others in the past ... To be a betrayer and an `informer' is part of the spiritual way of life of the left ... This pathological government is collaborating twice: once with a terrorist organization, a second time against Jews ... What haven't we done - we explained, we voted no-confidence numberless times. Nothing helped, they are determined. So the time has come to stop talking, the time has come to act.
Reversing a trend that predicated the fall of the Soviet Union, the U.S. has increased its military budget to more than $400 billion and its intelligence budget to more than $40 billion. Current projections point to a defense budget of more than $500 billion before the end of the decade, with another $50 billion for the intelligence community. Led by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the Department of Defense has moved aggressively to eclipse the State Department as the major locus of U.S. foreign policy, arrogating management of the intelligence community, and abandoning bipartisan policies of arms control and disarmament crafted over the past four decades. Funding cuts have prompted the Department of State to close consulates around the world and assign personnel of the well-funded CIA to diplomatic and consular posts. Though current defense costs represent nearly 20% of Washington?s expenses, less than 1% of the federal budget is devoted to the needs of the State Department.
...
The militarization of the intelligence community has been particularly profound. Nearly 90 % of the $40 billion budget for intelligence activity is allocated to and monitored by the Pentagon, and more than 90 % of all intelligence personnel report to the Pentagon. The Pentagon controls the tasking, collection, and analysis of all satellite photography. Moreover, such key intelligence bodies as the National Security Agency, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (formerly the National Imagery and Mapping Agency), and the National Reconnaissance Office are designated as ?combat support? agencies. This is exactly what President Harry S. Truman was trying to avoid in 1947 when he created the Central Intelligence Agency separate from the Pentagon, and made the CIA director of central intelligence as well.Defense Secretary Rumsfeld has gone further than any other defense secretary to control intelligence collection and analysis. He created the position of undersecretary of defense for intelligence without vetting this move with the Senate intelligence committee. In preparing the case against Iraq, he created the Office of Special Plans, which collected specious intelligence and misused intelligence community collection to justify the war and to create a congressional consensus in favor of war. Rumsfeld?s moves received rubber stamp approval from the Senate Armed Forces Committee, undermining the oversight roles of the Senate and House intelligence committees.
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The doctrinal policies of the Bush administration have helped to make the international arena a more dangerous place. In his commencement address at West Point in June 2002, President Bush endorsed preemptive attacks, and several months later, the White House issued its National Security Strategy, which discarded the policy of détente and containment and endorsed preemptive or preventive military actions against states with which the U.S. is at peace. Ominously, the strategy report warned that the U.S. would ?make no distinction between terrorists and those who knowingly harbor or provide aid to them.? The Pentagon?s Defense Planning Guidance and the Quadrennial Defense Review projected an indefinite future of continuous and worldwide war, endorsed the policy of regime change, and championed preemptive attack as the means for securing peace through international acceptance of U.S. hegemony. The Nuclear Posture Review of 2002 lowered the threshold for using nuclear weapons, and the 2003 defense bill eliminated restrictions on researching low-yield nuclear weapons...
A confidential report prepared by the US-led administration in Iraq says that the attacks by insurgents in the country have escalated sharply, prompting fears of what it terms Iraq's "Balkanisation". The findings emerged after a rocket-propelled grenade attack on the top US general in Iraq, John Abizaid, on Thursday."January has the highest rate of violence since September 2003," the report said. "The violence continues despite the expansion of the Iraqi security services and increased arrests by coalition forces in December and January."
The report makes clear how dependent Iraq's stability is on investment in the country's economy. "A fear of some is the 'Balkanisation' of Iraq if security, economic and infrastructure situations do not improve," it says.
It attributed much of the civilian violence to rising ethnic tensions between Kurds, Shias and Sunnis, noting that several bodies were found in the south "with hands bound and bullet wounds to the head".
I fixed up the bar at right so that you can see posts listed by their categories, as well as the "master archive" page. A lot more could be done to make the individual archives more well-organized. That's in progress.
You can see all the posts dropped into categories. To clarify how all this stuff works, when I make a post entry, I choose the category I'd like it in. A crucial advantage of this software--compared with the old system--is that I can place a single post under multiple categories, like Minnesota and Music or Neo-Cons and Iraq. The problem is that most of my old posts don't have more than one category entered, and the interface to add another category onto a post is quite cumbersome. (So a post referencing Iraq and Neo-Cons might only be listed under Iraq) It would almost be faster to do it by talking to the database directly. Please let me know if you have any suggestions or observations about how I should set up the archives.
This fragment of an old Atmosphere song encapsulates exactly how I felt all through January. In particular, getting "nervous each time my piece passes go" seems a reference to that certain dark January melancholy we get up here.
I open the curtains and listen to the traffic go
But I still get nervous each time my piece passes go
The residue is thick and the memory fails
I still laugh because the path feels a lot like a trail
If I could run through the woods and speed like the light
I'd find the answers to why and be back by tonight
If I could fly through the fog and look down at this rock
I'd figure out how to keep hell off my block
Atmosphere, The River (Sad Clown Bad Dub 2/7)
"I urge everyone to join in and not leave the field of values, defintions, and cultures uncontested. They are certainly not the property of a few Washington offiicials, any more than they are the responsibility of a few Middle Eastern rulers. There is a common field of human undertaking being created and recreated, and no amount of imperial bluster can ever conceal or negate that fact." Al Ahram, August 30, 2003.
From the Edward Said archive.
Right now MSNBC is running these fawning sequences about how burnished and heroic McCain and Bush are. Ugh--between all the Pfizer "An American Company" and Big big Boeing ads that run every hour, every day.
Prof. Juan Cole is trying to start a service to translate great American works to Arabic.
Was Robert Novak personally asked not to name Valerie Plame in his accursed news column?
Clinton's advisor Sidney Blumenthal is pointing out (from the UK) that Kerry can tangle with Bush over issues of war and patriotism.
The Vietnam war gave Nixon the platform for his resurrection. Once he became president, the game of smearing the Democrats was reinvented as he set Vietnam veterans and hard hat, blue-collar workers against war protesters.Next we'll learn that Kerry gave Bill Safire a wedgie back in his Nixon days.In the spring of 1971, a worrisome new political figure emerged to oppose Nixon's Vietnam policy. On April 22, John Kerry, wearing combat fatigues, his silver star, bronze star and three purple hearts, testified before the Senate foreign relations committee.
"How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam?" Kerry asked. "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? This administration has done us the ultimate dishonour. They have attempted to disown us and the sacrifices we made for this country."
According to Nixon's secret White House tapes, a number of fretful meetings were held about how to discredit Kerry. Nixon, the ultimate opportunist, wanted to characterise Kerry as one, too. "Well, he is sort of a phoney, isn't he?" Nixon was recorded as saying. "A racket, sure." "He came back a hawk and became a dove when he saw the political opportunities," Charles Colson, his hatchet man, noted. At which Nixon said: "Well, anyway, keep the faith." Colson then sent Nixon a memo: "Destroy the young demagogue ..."
The day after Kerry's testimony, Nixon held another meeting. His chief of staff, HR Haldeman, said: "He did a superb job on it at foreign relations committee yesterday. A Kennedy-type guy, he looks like a Kennedy, and he talks exactly like a Kennedy."
Afghanistan remains "appalling" for women, still. The story points out Herat, which was the subject of a story in the book I'm reading for Central Asia class, The Great Game. A Victory in the War on Terror.
Though girls and women in Kabul, and some other cities, are free to go to school and have jobs, this is not the case in most parts of the country. In the western province of Herat, the warlord Ismail Khan imposes Taliban-like decrees. Many women have no access to education and are banned from working in foreign NGOs or UN offices, and there are hardly any women in government offices. Women cannot take a taxi or walk unless accompanied by a close male relative. If seen with men who are not close relatives, women can be arrested by the "special police" and forced to undergo a hospital examination to see if they have recently had sexual intercourse. Because of this continued oppression, every month a large number of girls commit suicide - many more than under the Taliban.Will Ariel Sharon help Bush win re-election?Women's rights fare no better in northern and southern Afghanistan, which are under the control of the Northern Alliance. One international NGO worker told Amnesty International: "During the Taliban era, if a woman went to market and showed an inch of flesh she would have been flogged; now she's raped."
Even in Kabul, where thousands of foreign troops are present, Afghan women do not feel safe, and many continue to wear the burka for protection. In some areas where girls' education does exist, parents are afraid to allow their daughters to take advantage of it following the burning down of several girls' schools. Girls have been abducted on the way to school and sexual assaults on children of both sexes are now commonplace, according to Human Rights Watch.
The United States among the ruins of Arab nationalism. The Asia Times carries work from a lot of good reporters.
Fallout from Israel's land chompin wall. The Palestinians are set to get a hearing from the International Court of Justice. It's a pretty horrible project with decidedly evil topology of annexation and cutting point A off from point B, be it agricultural, water resources or access from village to cities with schools and hospitals. Here's much more on that from a feature in the New York Review of Books, featuring a nasty jab at Condi Rice's ignorance.
So hurray! The honeymoon is over! The press is all up about the National Guard shadiness. For updates on emerging stories and how all the documents fit together, consider checking CalPundit and Washington reporter Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo.
Of course the irrepressible paleo beast Pat Buchanan chimes in that Bush has shattered the trust of the American people for wars based on what? What, dammit?! This story is on Antiwar.com, no less! Other websites of information worth checking include War in Context.
What is the ultimate Bush vision for the Middle East, anyway?
A very interesting find this weekend: The Bush Files, a compilation of memos and documents from within the Bush Administration. The website is run by the journalist Ron Suskind, who put together the book with Paul O'Neill, and now are going to publish a huge array of Bush documents. Already some of this stuff has drawn my curiousity. For example, consider this secret memo from the FIRST WEEK of the Bush Administration mentioning about a POST-SADDAM situation. With a little bit of imagination:
Apparently Bush told intrepid and fearless reporter Tim Russert that he really really thought the damn things would turn up. Perhaps it was his inability to see out of the glass case Cheney and his people kept him in. Turns out that we now know the guy who told us about the mobile biological labs was thoroughly discredited already. The Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) put out a "fabricator warning" on the Iraqi army deserter, which apparently wasn't heeded. NY Times, Feb 6.:
Agency Alert about Iraqi not Heeded, Officials Say: An Iraqi military defector identified as unreliable by the Defense Intelligence Agency provided some of the information that went into United States intelligence estimates that Iraq had stockpiles of biological weapons at the time of the American invasion last March, senior government officials said Friday.A classified "fabrication notification" about the defector, a former Iraqi major, was issued by the D.I.A. to other American intelligence agencies in May 2002, but it was then repeatedly overlooked, three senior intelligence officials said. Intelligence agencies use such notifications to alert other agencies to information they consider unreliable because its source is suspected of making up or embellishing information.
Because the warning went unheeded, the officials said, the defector's claims that Iraq had built mobile research laboratories to produce biological weapons were mistakenly included in, among other findings, the National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002, which concluded that Iraq most likely had significant biological stockpiles.
Intelligence officers from the D.I.A. interviewed the defector [and ...] concluded he had no firsthand information and might have been coached by the Iraqi National Congress, the officials said. That group, headed by Ahmad Chalabi, who had close ties to the Pentagon and Vice President Dick Cheney, had introduced the defector to American intelligence, the officials said.
Nevertheless, because of what the officials described as a mistake, the defector was among four sources cited by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell in his presentation to the United Nations Security Council last February as having provided "eyewitness accounts" about mobile biological weapons facilities in Iraq, the officials said. The defector had described mobile biological research laboratories, as distinct from the mobile biological production factories mounted on trailers that were described by other sources.
In a related matter, the intelligence officials acknowledged that the United States still had not been able to interview two other people with access to senior Iraqi officials, and whose claims that Iraq possessed chemical and biological stockpiles were relayed to American officials in September 2002 by two foreign intelligence services.
So we have a direct connection between spoofery and suspected coaching by the INC. And we have evidence that parts of the government knew that this source shouldn't have been passing information into the National Intelligence Estimate, which is supposed to be America's key annual assessment of what's going on. This alone could be worth a grand jury. I am very curious now about the "foreign intelligence services" that have come up a lot in the news lately. It seems that countries like Germany who admitted that Saddam probably had WMD were also being misled.
Britain is faced with the imminent collapse of the famous "45 minutes" to weapons readiness claim which Blair put out before the war. It was compelling, and really undergirded whatever support the war could muster on the Isle. Yet it turns out that this too was provided by a shady exile, as well. The excellent UK source The Independent reports:
The "reliable source" who provided MI6 with the information that Iraq could deploy chemical and biological weapons within 45 minutes was an Iraqi exile who had left the country several years previously, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. That fact alone should have prevented the intelligence being used in the Government's September 2002 dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.The 45-minute claim, repeated four times in the dossier, is at the centre of the dispute over Britain's case for war in Iraq. An IoS investigation has established at the highest level that the "reliable source" obtained the information at second hand from a serving officer in the Iraqi army, with the rank either of full colonel or brigadier....
Said to have "military knowledge", the source maintained contacts with serving officers in Saddam Hussein's armed forces. But the fact that he was not in Iraq meant that the information he provided, especially on such an important point as whether Saddam had active plans to use chemical and biological weapons, did not meet normal standards for assessing intelligence, especially as it was unsupported by documentary evidence. There was no definite information on whether chemical or biological warheads were with front-line units, which would have made it feasible that they could be used within 45 minutes, or back in secure bases which would make it impossible.
The fact that the information was "single source", and was included in the dossier at a late stage, first emerged after the BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan reported what he had been told by the weapons scientist David Kelly...
Not until the inquiry did the public learn that the original information passed on by the Iraqi exile referred only to battlefield weapons. "It related to munitions, which we had interpreted to mean battlefield mortar shells or small calibre weaponry, quite different from missiles," John Scarlett, the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee and author of the dossier, told Lord Hutton.
Evidence at the inquiry showed that Mr Scarlett never used the word "munitions" in drafts of the dossier, allowing the claim to become inflated to one of WMD... The fate of the officer who provided the information remains a mystery. There are rumours that he is dead or missing.
Scott McDonald of Reuters reports today:
Opium output hit a record high in Afghanistan in 2003, with another increase expected this year in the war-torn country that does not have any other real exports, a conference was told on Sunday.Two years after the ruling Taliban were ousted from power by a U.S.-led coalition, opium production has skyrocketed as farmers in lawless provinces crank up output, threatening efforts to strengthen the government and establish a proper economy.
Karzai has banned opium cultivation and trafficking and set up the Counter-Narcotic Directorate, but with the country and international donors still scrambling to build an infrastructure after two decades of violence, opium output has climbed again.
UNODC estimates that Afghan opium production last year hit 3,600 tons, up six percent over the previous year, and said that surveys of farmers show a further increase is likely this year.
Afghan output accounts for two-thirds of world opium production, and officials have voiced concern because it is spreading to areas in the country where it has not been grown before. UNODC has estimated that the output could be worth $2.3 billion, compared to Afghanistan's official exports of $40 million to its neighbour Pakistan.
The good news is that last night I finally set some time aside to extract all the postings from the old HongPong.com and drop them into this new system, MovableType.
For those interested in the technicalities of it, I had the whole Scoop database as a giant XML file, with all the headlines, dates and encoded HTML. I needed to figure out how to use a technology called XLST to convert the XML into HTML, and from there copy it into MovableType. That took a while, but it worked. I also added some plug-ins, including the much-needed photo album plugins.
The old junker computer still isn't working and I think I'll have to ditch it.
So now all the old postings from the HongPong.com of yore are available. Coming soon, the huge library of protest photos and other such images. Also, I may have to fish out the older Thwart.net archives and add those, too. Soon there will be category listings on the right hand side, and some richer images.
To look at the HongPong.com archives, use the links at right.
A top story in the St. Paul Pioneer Press today described how Senator Dayton believes he was "lied to" by administration officials in briefings. (Dayton is fairly popular now) Dayton is on the Armed Services Cmte. I think it's high time that our often quiet senator stepped up and called them on it. Is it more a crime to lie to the people in the SotU or directly to senators in top secret committee meetings?
Saddam Hussein was seeking nuclear weapons, Dayton said he was told, and might be only a year away from having a nuclear bomb. And Saddam, already loaded with biological and chemical weapons, continued to plot with al-Qaida terrorists, Dayton, D-Minn., said he was informed.
"I think the American people were misinformed by assertions on the links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida, and the state of the nuclear weapons program ? that Iraq had, or was about to obtain, an active nuclear bomb," Dayton said. "I felt lied to, I felt the American people were lied to, in both of those regards."...
From Dayton's viewpoint, the problem wasn't just raw intelligence data he heard during small meetings at the White House and in secure rooms in the U.S. Capitol. He's troubled by how the administration touted the most alarming scraps and rumors, he said, in an effort to sell the war -- and how he believes a false urgency was used in partisan ways to help the Republican cause.
Repeatedly in the fall of 2002, Dayton said, he heard intelligence professionals give measured, fragmented and sometimes speculative intelligence. But then, "Two or three days later, people (in the Bush administration) were representing that information (in public speeches) different than how it was presented to me.... They'd take something where the intelligence was making a qualified statement, and they'd make an unqualified assertion," Dayton said. Doubts about the information and contradictory data rarely surfaced during his dozen or so Iraq briefings with the Bush administration, Dayton said. In briefings of senators, few lawmakers got the opportunity to ask more than a question or two. Dayton said that limited opportunities to challenge the administration. "It was never suggested to us in any meaningful way that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction at all. ? That was presented as a given," Dayton said.
The world is in some sort of upheaval right now, so here are some stories around different issues. First, here is a mugshot of someone called "Fat Tony," strongly reminiscent of the Simpsons' mafioso. Very important.
There is news that the Muslims who are managing the construction of a mosque on Jerusalem's Temple Mount site are not taking adequate steps to protect the history of the site. This concerns me since the site is one of the most critical intersections of spiritual beliefs in the world, the traditional site of the Jewish temple and Mohammed's ascension to Heaven.
Archaeologist: Waqf endangering remains of Second Temple: Mazar said the images showed large stones endowed with architectural elements unique to the Second Temple period. "[They show] beautiful grapevines," she said.I have heard this same dark problem from different people. It is very disturbing to imagine what would happen if there was a "temple incident," since it could possibly cause everyone to flip out and end religious tolerance as we know it."There is no doubt that these are motifs from the Second Temple period. It is the different elements of the decoration that show this, combined with the style of the artistic work."An Israeli archaeologist has charged that Muslim authorities are excavating a disputed holy site in Jerusalem in a way that endangers the remains of the Second Temple.
An Israeli photographer took photographs that were released yesterday that show stone blocks with a unique design linked to the Second Temple, which was destroyed in 70 C.E. Hebrew University archaeologist Eilat Mazar charged that the presence of the blocks in the middle of a Muslim construction project shows that the Waqf, the Islamic Trust, is ignoring the site's importance in Jewish history.
"There is no archaeological supervision [of the work] and no plan or survey to see what the real condition of the Temple Mount is", she said. "The Temple Mount is neglected, and it's just a matter of time before it collapses," she warned.
Ariel Sharon is now proposing to rip out the Gaza Strip settlements as part of a unilateral separation, which would also theoretically involve closing some settlements in parts of the West Bank, while solidifying others. It would be positive to see Gaza without the oppressive troubles of the settlements, but Sharon has been angling to grab the West Bank all along. I have a feeling that he is merely putting this out there to divert attention from a rapidly growing bribery scandal. It seems clear that his hands are dirty in that, and this wouldn't be the first time he's made such a ruckus to save his own skin. Aluf Benn in Haaretz is covering this closely:
It is doubtful that he has changed his strategic outlook. He is apprehensive about a withdrawal to the Green Line, which enjoys strong international support, but in his opinion is dangerous for Israel. This is why he has until now shunned any significant negotiations. Now, with the pressure turned up, he is proposing a deal: "moving" isolated settlements and strengthening Israel's hold on other regions.Sharon is prepared to pay with the evacuation of Gaza for American consent to Israel's continued control over a large part of the West Bank. That is why he instructed his national security advisor, Giora Eiland, to chart security lines that Israel could hold for years, "until there is a partner."
Sharon has been kicking around these ideas for a long time, each time under a different name. Once it was the plan for massive settlement of the West Bank (1977), another time it was "annexation as per the Allon Plan" (1988), then the "enclaves map" (1994), the long-term interim agreement (1999), the temporary Palestinian state (2001), the "fence route" (2003), and now the "disengagement with American backing" (2004). The common denominator of all of these plans is Israeli control over the "security regions" of the Jordan Rift and Western Samaria, and closing the Palestinians into enclaves in the hilly areas.
After Camp David, Sharon added settlement in the Western Negev to the map, to create an obstacle to a territorial exchange. The settlements in Gaza were intended to break up Palestinian territorial contiguity, but it seems that in Sharon's view, that role is now over.
Sharon is trying to follow in the footsteps of Menachem Begin, who conceded Sinai so that Israel could stay in the West Bank; Ehud Barak, who left Lebanon in order to perpetuate Israel's control of the Golan; and Shimon Peres, who championed "Gaza First" and a deferral of a solution in the West Bank and Jerusalem. All of them enjoyed success in the short term, but left diplomatic time bombs for their successors.
A similar problem is inherent in the Sharon plan, which leaves a vacuum on the Palestinian side and a lot of open questions. Will a "Hamastan" arise in Gaza on the ruins of the Palestinian Authority?... Will George Bush buy the Sharon proposals? Will he agree to expansion of the settlements that are not evacuated? Will he demand that Israel give up the "eastern fence"?
It's probably a good idea to look at this NY Times Mag feature about the rise of the Shiites, and what it means for Iraq's future.
Iran has entered a profound political crisis as the theocratic "Guardian" guys have banned many moderate people from running for Parliament. It's a dramatic situation, and now the Iranians are asking Iraq's leading cleric, Sistani, for help in regaining their democratic rights! Talk about crossed wires.
A little bit about the elections: In Iowa there is an electronic market where people can bet on who they think the nominee will be. Dean's chart is pretty sad-looking. It appears the market-driven system didn't give us too much advance warning of his implosion!
Weapons of Mass Destruction: still an Error 404. This post on Billmon rounds up much of the situation. But wait, a Guardian report adds details about the Office of Special Plans:
On virtually every single important claim made by the Bush administration in its case for war, there was serious dissension. Discordant views - not from individual analysts but from several intelligence agencies as a whole - were kept from the public as momentum was built for a congressional vote on the war resolution.Now an Israeli MK tells us that Israel knew that Iraq had no WMD before the war. This is very important news!!!!Precisely because of the qualms the administration encountered, it created a rogue intelligence operation, the Office of Special Plans, located within the Pentagon and under the control of neo-conservatives. The OSP roamed outside the ordinary inter-agency process, stamping its approval on stories from Iraqi exiles that the other agencies dismissed as lacking credibility, and feeding them to the president....
Never before had any senior White House official physically intruded into CIA's Langley headquarters to argue with mid-level managers and analysts about unfinished work. But twice vice president Cheney and Lewis Libby, his chief of staff, came to offer their opinions. According to Patrick Lang: "They looked disapproving, questioned the reports and left an impression of what you're supposed to do. They would say: 'you haven't looked at the evidence'. The answer would be, those reports [from Iraqi exiles] aren't valid. The analysts would be told, you should look at this again'. Finally, people gave up. You learn not to contradict them."
....senior intelligence officers were kept in the dark about the OSP. "I didn't know about its existence," said Thielman. "They were cherry picking intelligence and packaging it for Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld to take to the president. That's the kind of rogue operation that peer review is intended to prevent."
A prominent Israeli MP said yesterday that his country's intelligence services knew claims that Saddam Hussein was capable of swiftly launching weapons of mass destruction were wrong but withheld the information from Washington."It was known in Israel that the story that weapons of mass destruction could be activated in 45 minutes was an old wives' tale," Yossi Sarid, a member of the foreign affairs and defence committee which is investigating the quality of Israeli intelligence on Iraq, told the Associated Press yesterday. "Israel didn't want to spoil President Bush's scenario, and it should have," he said.
On Sunday, the former UN weapons inspector, Scott Ritter, told Y-Net, an Israeli newswire, that the Israeli intelligence services reached the conclusion years ago that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction. "In the end, if the Israeli intelligence knew that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction, so the CIA knew it and thus British intelligence too," he said.
Lewis Libby, Cheney's chief of staff and a serious neo-con, has been named as the target of agents investigating the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity. Crucial. I did hypothesize a while ago that he might have been one of them, because he seems foul, corrupt and powerful. Hooray that I guessed right. But were they channeling the spoofed intel??
I did get on the 5 PM news on Channel 5, remarking how the old theatre had a lot of charm and makes my front yard smell like popcorn 4 times a day.
Since I was already taking pictures (and there are plenty of them) of the movie premiere out there--like a slice of Hollywood coming right to the Danview.
The nice Kare 11 anchor smiled for me but its a little blurry.
The young guys who work at the theater changed the signs over from the "premiere" setup (below) to the new "Miracle/Mystic River" lineup. Lost in Translation has been pulled.
This was the anchor from Duluth. He said funny stuff when he was warming up.
Alison said that her SA--which is the closest, 3 long blocks away, did an absolutely huge amount of business while the premiere blocked off the street for hours tonight.
Her quest for Diet Pepsi sales growth continues. Product has been flying off the shelf and friends have been floozing up the St. Thomas boys to encourage Pepsi! Pepsi! Pepsi!Every employee at the SA in the district that improves Diet Pepsi and Pepsi sale will get an XBox console! We feel this is worth investing in. If you think it would be a good idea to have an XBox at this house, please purchase lots of Pepsi from the SA on Grand and Cleveland. Thank you.
Here is a digital photo of the Daily Show tonight. I'm sorry, Jon, but this is just excellent. The man is out to get 'em. The sequence about the media's new "Teat Offensive," something to top all controversies, as a Fox guy put it. Well, its all a bunch of nonsense... My hat's off to the show for bringing us the one thing which corporate media struggles with: irony.
So I was walking back from lunch and there was a Channel 5 TV crew in front of the theatre. Apparently the new Disney movie about the 1980 USA Hockey team is premiering at the Grandview tonight!!!! This is very exciting. They interviewed me and I said some silly shit about living next door to the theatre. So tune into channel 5... Hollywooood!!!! Ok, perhaps they won't play my clip. It is exciting nonetheless.
Apparently there will be some stars, but not Kurt Russell. Do MN paparazzi exist? (The man from Channel 5 is actually videotaping me, in this picture. Do you see him behind the door?)
There is a very exciting article from Mother Jones detailing the many exciting intrigues concerning the neo-conservatives, the Pentagon and the rest of the mess.
How fitting that the investigation into the intelligence failure cracked open today. As Jon Stewart put it tonight, "Conspiracy theorists, start your websites!!!" Ahh, Jon...
The Lie Factory:Until now, the story of how the Bush administration produced its wildly exaggerated estimates of the threat posed by Iraq has never been revealed in full. But, for the first time, a detailed investigation by Mother Jones, based on dozens of interviews-some on the record, some with officials who insisted on anonymity-exposes the workings of a secret Pentagon intelligence unit and of the Defense Department's war-planning task force, the Office of Special Plans. It's the story of a close-knit team of ideologues who spent a decade or more hammering out plans for an attack on Iraq and who used the events of September 11, 2001, to set it into motion.The reports, virtually all false, of Iraqi weapons and terrorism ties emanated from an apparatus that began to gestate almost as soon as the Bush administration took power. In the very first meeting of the Bush national-security team, one day after President Bush took the oath of office in January 2001, the issue of invading Iraq was raised, according to one of the participants in the meeting-and officials all the way down the line started to get the message, long before 9/11. Indeed, the Bush team at the Pentagon hadn't even been formally installed before Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of Defense, and Douglas J. Feith, undersecretary of Defense for policy, began putting together what would become the vanguard for regime change in Iraq.
The Bush Administration will probably attempt to dump all the blame for the WMD fiasco on the CIA. As many are saying, this move is highly ironic. Every evidence is that Doug Feith and his Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon made an end run around the CIA and the DIA, cherry-picked intelligence, and funneled it to Cheney, who then manipulated Bush with it. (W. admits to not reading the newspapers, so he is at the mercy of his close advisers for information, for all the world like an illiterate medieval king with crafty ministers!)To make George Tenet take the fall for all this, when his analysts were relatively careful in their assessments, and to let Feith and Cheney off the hook, would be the height of injustice. Ironically, Feith leaked some of the most damaging evidence against him to the The Weekly Standard...
Yes, we are gearing up for another full season of good things at HongPong.com. Later I'll have to look at how this all correlates.
Josh Marshall points out that Bush is in a February slump and goes on to score a double play with lots of information about Bush's mysterious AWOL time.
And then there is the idiot David Brooks, praising the Illuminati's wisdom and blaming the CIA:
When it comes to understanding the world's thugs and menaces, I'd trust the first 40 names in James Carville's P.D.A. faster than I'd trust a conference-load of game theorists or risk-assessment officers. I'd trust politicians, who, whatever their faults, have finely tuned antennae for the flow of events. I'd trust Mafia bosses, studio heads and anybody who has read a Dostoyevsky novel during the past five years.Most of all, I'd trust individuals over organizations. Individuals can use intuition, experience and a feel for the landscape of reality. When you read an individual's essay, you know you're reading one person's best guess, not a falsely authoritative scientific finding.
Even more CIA guys piling onto the Bush Administration.
The primaries are so much fun!! Dean has all but washed out now, sadly. Oh well. Joe Trippi has been slurped up by MSNBC, and I'm lookin forward to seeing him and Buchanan get crazy. More tomorrow!
Note that the snow almost entirely swallows the bus stop bench:
I am fixing someone's iBook right now, which seems to have serious directory corruption. Toast is having a horrible time making a boot CD image to burn. Ugh--this is such annoying garbage. Finally it is working now.... but wait there's more!
I still have to get the network card in the old junker working, I have dubbed the machine "Tarfin" for reasons that a select few of you would know. God I hate how PC hardware works, must be why I avoid the damn things.
Also I am trying to help the Mac Weekly get some sharper headline fonts and maybe something new for the very tired masthead. I'll also try to help them upgrade to new page layout software. These are some of the miscellaneous tasks of the week.
There have been a lot of problems accessing the crucial E Reserves through the library website, off campus. This is such an important system. Now I can't get Chapter 3 of our missing research textbooks, which makes the homework altogether much worse.
I was thinking today about the problem of moving parts in electronics, in this weather. I have micro-hard drives in my iPod, my parents' digital camera, as well as the portable FireWire drive I got for Christmas. All these things need to hover over their disc surfaces at a distance of only a few zillionths of an inch. When I take the iPod outside and it sits in my pocket, it gets colder on the outside pretty quickly, but the inside would stay warmer. Is it inevitable that the heat differences will cause a hard disc platter or arm to bend, and catastrophically collide with the drive surface? The same problem with the digital camera, which has a IBM MicroDrive. The weather is so extreme here, I fear damage is certain with these dramatic swings in temperature.
Nonetheless I couldn't help but take some pictures of all the snow that piled up outside today:
Suddenly there is news that Halliburton may have been taking kickbacks and other shady dealings in the process of feeding American troops in Iraq and Kuwait.
Halliburton may have overcharged more than $16 million for meals at a U.S. military base in Kuwait last year, according to a published report.A story in the online edition of the Wall Street Journal early Monday cited Pentagon investigators auditing the company's work as saying they were extending the audit of Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root food services to include more than 50 other dining facilities in Kuwait and Iraq.
In January, Halliburton acknowledged it may have over billed for contract work ranging from laundry service to oil-field reconstruction in Iraq and credited the U.S. government for $6.3 million in case an investigation confirmed the overcharges....
Cheney knows what Napoleon meant when he said that an army marches on its stomach. The state will privilege those who feed the soldiers. There isn't much oversight, or even law, outside the Pentagon inspectors (reporting to Likudnik/Pentagon comptroller Dov Zakheim, most likely).
At this point we have to ask more fundamental questions about the structure of the military-industrial complex, and how tasks are delegated in its management. Why, exactly, does control of the Kuwaiti mess halls need to pass through Halliburton's hands on the way to shady Kuwaitis? Why doesn't an Army agency contract the Kuwaitis directly? Halliburton, here, is clearly a parasitic middleman with no productive role whatsoever.
The idea that one private company should profit from supervising the planning of military bases suggests that the company's management would tend to generate a groupthink mindset in sync with military expansionists. Once you've gotten one war rolling, it's a worse temptation than heroin to play the game again. The guaranteed profit incentive has been fully swallowed up by the machinery. The machinery really, really likes it.
The question simply put, is "How much can one private corporation be trusted to do?" The same exact pattern was replicated in Iraq Two-point-Oh when Bechtel received the power to control Iraq's services. This sort of stuff should have been run from American Ministerial offices--cloned from the former Iraq's complex bureaucracy and streamlined for easy Iraqi takeover. Instead, key activities concerning the total reconstruction are slid around, and Bechtel's friends play three-card monte with our taxpayers' repair funds.
The whole system is designed to be opaque, and to defy Congressional, international, and even Iraqi monitoring. The chains of command in this monstrous conglomeration of carpet baggers and creepy ex-mil cheerleaders are intentionally tangled to help them run the racket.
The real catch is that it's hard to line up these subcontractors for very long, because it's so dangerous they can't get insurance, and they can't be guaranteed to keep their contracts under the upcoming Iraqi government. This corporate makeup effectively renders the occupation structurally hostile to Iraqi unions. (Unfortunately the Socialists point out that Iraq has an amazingly rich history of labor organization and resistance)
Privatization, where every corp gets a bite of Iraqi public assets, is an idiotic scheme too. Arab state sector economies are all huge, since their employment is puffed up by state oil revenue. That's how Arabs reward their citizens: comfortably secure state jobs. Administered from giant bureaucracies such as that which "accidentally" got trashed in Baghdad's most easily defended area.
We are dealing with very bad people who have their own designs for bureaucratic management. The Israeli settlement project, too, is a death bureaucracy. Within the rules of its own sprawling, hopelessly catastrophic legal-religious-nationalist technical process of generating points on a map (altogether, the Israeli legal process of legitimizing "illegal" settlements, alongside the long-term urbanization plans and tax incentives ensnaring innocent Israelis), Israel will plan itself into complete incoherency. (not to speak of the Palestinian experience under this "civil administration")
The key connection is that there are too many circuits already programmed into the the U.S.'s military-industrial machine which materially, legally and financially, support the Israeli occupation process and the thoroughly corrupt administration of Iraq. The right-wing think-tanks and all those weapons contractors friendly to Israel (such as Boeing Israel run by a former ambassador) will continue to suppress facing the horrible contradictions in U.S. policy towards the Arab people as a whole. One American financial backer of radical settler groups also showers money upon the American Enterprise Institute, for example. Then there's Pentagon Undersecretary Douglas Feith, who has used his legal skills to argue the legitimacy of the Israeli system, and of course his former law partner Marc Zell is a leading Israeli settler (involved in arranging corporate contracts in Iraq, praise God!). These are very bad and troublesome circuits, and people will go a long ways to avoid thinking about them.
Stepping back here I see a bureaucracy of Israeli settlements expanding under its own peculiar catalysts, a rather hastily torched public Arab bureaucracy down in Baghdad, and MilCorps in Virginia rendering the management of ever more American government functions private, and hence at least a little more dictatorial. The great Iraqi state army offices vanished in a puff of Chalabism. Bechtel inserted its own layer over the heart of Iraqi activity. Their eyes turned upon the glittering invisible prize, the great material prize of history, all the power within the Iraqi oil reserves. The problem is that for the both the corporate warriors and the local mujahideen, the lure of this power seems to be their downfall.
This is what you get when you don't pay attention to who is feeding and housing the soldiers.
It's Julie Kim's birthday tomorrow. Happy Birthday Julie Kim!!!!! w00p w00p!!!
Katie approves of the exciting MovableType website engine. Yes.
"The persistent belief that opponents of war should not study national security is like trying to find a cure for cancer by refusing to study medicine while allowing research on the disease to be conducted solely by tobacco companies."
Stephen Walt, The Renaissance of Security Studies
I got a cheap CompUSA PCI Ethernet card for the potential server. Unfortunately, there is some kind of hellish problem which prevents the card from getting an IRQ number correctly. This is not my area of expertise and it is God damned annoying. I've got 14 days to get it working, before the card would have to be returned. It seems to be an issue with BIOS settings, a problem particularly since the BIOS is 8 years old. I may have to get a BIOS upgrade or something. Perhaps what I need is a PC guru...
It seems that Comcast Internet access throughout the neighborhood has been made quite flaky by the snowstorms last night. Andy over at Shadow Falls tells us that theirs is messed up too. (still flurries coming down) The Internet keeps coming up and down. Damn, this is annoying!!!!
Something has gone wrong with our water heater this morning. Alison took a very cold shower. It's leaking in the basement, which has been very cold lately. The heater is extremely old, from about 1986 if I recall. Water heaters have a lifespan of about 10 years, and the upstairs neighbors' heater just died a couple weeks ago. So much for a hot shower before the Super Bowl. >:-(