:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::

:: 10.24.2005 ::

:: "The CIA Leak Scandal" ::

Bush Won't Comment on Own Comment
The Huffington Post
By David Corn

This morning a White House reporter, while posing Bush a question, noted that his political allies were getting ready to dismiss any indictments as minor cheap-shots and to blast Fitzgerald for being overzealous, and she asked if Bush still stood by the comment he made weeks ago when he said that Fitzgerald had been conducting a "dignified" investigation.

She was referring to Bush's appearance on the Today show on October 11. Here's that exchange:

Matt Lauer: But does it worry you that [the prosecutors] seem to have such an interest in Mr. Rove?

Bush: I'm not going to talk about the case. I've been asked this a lot, my answer is consistent. The special prosecutor is conducting a very serious investigation. He's doing it in a very dignified way, by the way--and we'll see what he says.

This morning, Bush did not take the opportunity to reaffirm his previous statement. Instead, he said, "I'm not going to comment about [the investigation]. I haven't changed my mind on whether I'll be commenting publicly." But Bush had commented publicly on the probe when he praised Fitzgerald for running a "dignified" inquiry. Now he won't publicly comment on his own public comments? Is he building a stonewall out of glass? Bush then quickly changed the subject and, looking at one of the reporters, said, "Fine-looking shades you have there."

posted by me

:: 11:58:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "All The Blame That's Fit To Print" ::

From the CBSNews.com blog

There’s no shortage of schadenfreude being experienced over The New York Times’ problems. Those with one bone or another to pick with Judy Miller, bloggers who chant the mantra of MSM demise and critics of the war in Iraq are just a few who are reveling in the now-very public internal fighting at the paper.

I say good for The Times.

Not praise for the mess they find themselves in, surely. Miller’s pre-war stories about weapons of mass destruction, the paper’s apology for them, not to mention Miller’s still-curious role in the Valerie Plame case are among the things the Times’ has been suffering from for some time, and will continue to haunt them in the foreseeable future. And while Miller’s attorney, Robert Bennett, may be right about old scores being settled, at least we’re seeing a public airing of it all.

The Times’ lengthy reporting on Miller and her involvement with the grand jury, and her own first-person account last week, led to this weekend’s burst of discussion. Not all of it pretty, but out there for everyone to see. What kicked off this round was a memo to the paper’s staff from Executive Editor Bill Keller, who apologized for not taking up the issue of the WMD reporting earlier, writing:

“By waiting a year to own up to our mistakes, we allowed the anger inside and outside the paper to fester. Worse, we fear, we fostered an impression that The Times put a higher premium on protecting its reporters than on coming clean with its readers. If we had lanced the WMD boil earlier, we might have damped any suspicion that THIS time, the paper was putting the defense of a reporter above the duty to its readers.”

Read more here.

ALSO
Colleagues call for removal of New York Times journalist in CIA leak case
Gary Younge in New York
The Guardian

The New York Times continued to implode under the weight of internal criticism yesterday as the public clamour for one its most prominent reporters, Judith Miller, to be removed from her job gained pace.

The row threatens to engulf one of the country's most venerated newspapers in a bitter dispute over its reporting of the Iraq war, its unquestioning defence of an allegedly rogue reporter and its editor's ability to assert his authority over his staff.

AND
Not-So-Friendly Fire
By Howard Kurtz
The Washington Post

Doing the Right Thing
American Journalism Review

FINALLY
Throwing Miller and Libby Overboard is Not Enough
By Arianna Huffington
Yahoo! News

So the New York Times has finally decided to throw Judy Miller overboard. The lambasting that began with Bill Keller's memo and continued with Maureen Dowd's column, has now culminated with Byron Calame's Public Editor column. But everything the Times is now castigating Miller for was well known, or easily knowable, weeks and months ago when the paper was lionizing her as the Joan of Sag Harbor.

Her horrendous coverage of WMD and her all-elbows style of dealing with her colleagues -- which now so offends Times' sensibilities -- were not only tolerated, but encouraged.

You could get whiplash reading the New York Times these days. After all, it was less than a month ago when Judy Miller was released from jail and whisked off by Arthur Sulzberger to the Ritz Carlton for a steak and a martini "served in a gorgeous glass." The paper that was even scooped on covering her release was feting and celebrating her.

Now the Times has clearly turned on the woman its editorial page had painted as a modern-day Rosa Parks. Ridding the Times of Judy is a good start, but the Times' problems are bigger than Ms. Run Amok. In the same way that however hard the White House tries (and as Josh Marshall points out, it's trying very, very hard) to turn Libby into Mr. Run Amok, it will not succeed in pinning it all on Scooter. The crisis at the New York Times is about much more than Judy Miller, and the crisis at the White House is about much more than Scooter Libby.

posted by me

:: 11:31:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "THE LOBBYIST OCCUPATION OF IRAQ" ::

2006 PROJECT CENSORED AWARD WINNER
Project Censored 2006: The News That Didn't Make the News
By Greg Palast

In his article “Adventure Capitalism,” Greg Palast exposes the contents of a secret plan for “imposing a new regime of low taxes on big business, and quick sales of Iraq’s banks and bridges—in fact, ‘ALL state enterprises’—to foreign operators ... especially the oil.” This economy makeover plan, says Palast, “goes boldly where no invasion plan has gone before.”

This highly detailed program, which began years before the tanks rolled, outlines the small print of doing business under occupation. One of the goals is to impose intellectual property laws favorable to multinationals. Palast calls this “history’s first military assault plan appended to a program for toughening the target nation’s copyright laws.”

It also turns out that those of us who may have thought it was all about the oil were mostly right. “The plan makes it clear that—even if we didn’t go in for the oil—we certainly won’t leave without it.”

In an interview with Palast, Grover Norquist, the “capo di capi of the lobbyist army of the right,” makes the plans even more clear when he responds, “The right to trade, property rights, these things are not to be determined by some democratic election.” No, these things were to be determined by the Coalition Provisional Authority, the interim government lead by the U.S.

Before he left his position, CPA administrator Paul Bremer, “the leader of the Coalition Provisional Authority issued exactly 100 orders that remade Iraq in the image of the Economy Plan.” These orders effectively changed Iraqi law.

Read more here.

Here's the original article from TomPaine.com.

ALSO
Download the MP3 of Silence of the Media Lambs featuring Greg, part of Say it LOUD: New Songs for Peace, produced by Pacifica Radio and The Polemic Consortium.

posted by me

:: 7:59:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Fox News Recruits Priest to Advise Bush On Weathering Scandals" ::

From the BRAINDEAD MEDIA dept.
of Think Progress

Don’t think Fox News is worried about the impact that a Rove indictment could have on the Bush White House?

Yesterday, the network actually featured a Roman Catholic priest giving President Bush advice on how to “operate as a leader” in the midst of all the “rumors and scandals that are swirling around the White House.”

Watch in streaming Quicktime

posted by me

:: 12:05:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Think Progress" ::

BREAKING: Bloomberg Reporting That Rove, Libby May Be Subject To Perjury Charges

Below is a Bloomberg article which is reporting that Karl Rove, senior adviser to the President and deputy chief of staff, and Lewis Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Cheney, are being investigated for having lied to a federal grand jury about how they learned the identity of a covert CIA agent, Valerie Plame (Murray Waas at the American Prospect wrote a similar story yesterday).

Rove, Libby Accounts in CIA Case Differ With Those of Reporters

July 22 (Bloomberg) — Two top White House aides have given accounts to a special prosecutor about how reporters first told them the identity of a CIA agent that are at odds with what the reporters have said, according to people familiar with the case.

Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, told special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that he first learned from NBC News reporter Tim Russert of the identity of Central Intelligence Agency operative Valerie Plame, the wife of former ambassador and Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson, one person said. Russert has testified before a federal grand jury that he didn’t tell Libby of Plame’s identity, the person said.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove told Fitzgerald that he first learned the identity of the CIA agent from syndicated columnist Robert Novak, according a person familiar with the matter. Novak, who was first to report Plame’s name and connection to Wilson, has given a somewhat different version to the special prosecutor, the person said.

These discrepancies may be important because Fitzgerald is investigating whether Libby, Rove or other administration officials made false statements during the course of the investigation. The Plame case has its genesis in whether any administration officials violated a 1982 law making it illegal to knowingly reveal the name of a covert intelligence agent.

‘Twisted’ Intelligence

The CIA requested the inquiry after Novak reported in a July 14, 2003, column that Plame recommended her husband for a 2002 mission to check into reports Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger. Wilson, in a July 6, 2003, article in the New York Times, had said President George W. Bush’s administration “twisted” some of the intelligence on Iraq’s weapons to justify the war.

Robert Luskin, Rove’s attorney, said yesterday that Rove told the grand jury “he had not heard her name before he heard it from Bob Novak.” He declined in an interview to comment on whether Novak’s account of their conversation differed from Rove’s.

There also is a discrepancy between accounts given by Rove and Time magazine reporter Mat Cooper. The White House aide mentioned Wilson’s wife — though not by name — in a July 11, 2003, conversation with Cooper, the reporter said. Rove, 55, says that Cooper called him to talk about welfare reform and the Wilson connection was mentioned later, in passing.

Cooper wrote in Time magazine last week that he told the grand jury he never discussed welfare reform with Rove in that call.

Miller in Jail

One reporter, Judith Miller of the New York Times, has been jailed on contempt of court charges for refusing to testify before the grand jury about her reporting on the Plame case.

Cooper testified only after Time Inc. said it would comply with Fitzgerald’s demands for Cooper’s notes and reporting on the Plame matter, particularly regarding his dealings with Rove.

Libby, 54, didn’t return a phone call seeking comment.

The varying accounts of conversations between Rove, Libby and reporters come as new details emerge about a classified State Department memorandum that’s also at the center of Fitzgerald’s probe.

A memo by the department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research included Plame’s name in a paragraph marked “(S)” for “Secret,” a designation that indicated to anyone who read it that the information was classified, the Washington Post reported yesterday.

State Department Memo

The memo, prepared July 7, 2003, for Secretary of State Colin Powell, is a focus of Fitzgerald’s interest, according to individuals who have testified before the grand jury and attorneys familiar with the case.

The three-page document said that Wilson had been recommended for a CIA-sponsored trip to Africa by his wife, who worked on the CIA’s counter-proliferations desk.

Bush had said in his State of the Union message in January 2003 that Iraq was trying to purchase nuclear materials in Africa. Days after Wilson’s article — in which he said there was no basis to conclude that Iraq was trying to buy nuclear material in Africa and that the administration had exaggerated the evidence — the White House acknowledged that the Africa assertion shouldn’t have been included in the speech.

The memo summarizing the Plame-Wilson connection was provided to Powell as he left with Bush on a five-day trip to Africa. Fitzgerald is exploring whether other White House officials on the trip may have gained access to the memo and shared its contents with officials back in Washington. Rove and Libby didn’t accompany Bush to Africa.

One key to the inquiry is when White House aides knew of Wilson’s connection to Plame and whether they learned about it through this memo or other classified information.

Some Bush allies hope that the Fitzgerald investigation, which dominated the news in Washington for the first part of July, will subside as attention shifts to Bush’s nomination of Judge John Roberts to fill the first vacancy on the Supreme Court in 11 years.

Fitzgerald’s term of service lasts until October, which is also the length of time remaining for the grand jury hearing evidence in the case.

Read and leave comments here.

posted by me

:: 10:51:00 AM [+] ::
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:: Scooter & Co. ::

Possible cover-up a focus in CIA leak case
By Adam Entous, Reuters

WASHINGTON - Prosecutors investigating the outing of a covert CIA operative are focusing on whether top White House aides Karl Rove and Lewis Libby tried to conceal their involvement from investigators, lawyers involved in the case said on Friday.

Rove, President George W. Bush's top political adviser, and Libby, who is chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, are at the center of federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame.

Plame's identity was leaked to the media after her diplomat husband, Joseph Wilson, challenged the Bush administration's prewar intelligence on Iraq.

The lawyers, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said Fitzgerald appears likely to bring charges next week in the nearly two-year leak investigation.

The grand jury, which expires on October 28, convened on Friday, but it was unclear what issues they were working on since the panel appears to have completed hearing from witnesses. Fitzgerald is expected to meet with the grand jury early next week for a possible vote on indictments.

One of the lawyers said prosecutors were likely starting to present their final case to jurors, either for bringing indictments or to explain why there was insufficient evidence to do so.

"I would be hesitant to say it's a sign one way or the other," the lawyer said.

Fitzgerald's spokesman declined to comment.

While Fitzgerald could still charge administration officials with knowingly revealing Plame's identity, several lawyers in the case said he was more likely to seek charges for easier-to-prove crimes such as making false statements, obstruction of justice and disclosing classified information. He also may bring a broad conspiracy charge, the lawyers said.

Legal sources said Rove may be in legal jeopardy for initially not telling the grand jury he talked to Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper about Plame. Rove only recalled the conversation after the discovery of an e-mail message he sent to Stephen Hadley, then the deputy national security adviser.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 10:01:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Press release: You Can Bet on President Bush's Approval Rating" ::

PinnacleSports.com Opens Wagering on Gallup Poll Results

WILLEMSTAD, Curacao, Oct. 21 /PRNewswire/ -- On the heels of his
nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court and the Karl Rove controversy
President Bush's approval rating has plummeted to the lowest level of his
presidency. Combined with the situation in Iraq, the hurricanes and
unprecedented gas prices, the latest polls show only 39 percent of U.S. adults
approving of the way George W. Bush is handling his job as Commander in Chief.
With more Americans questioning how he's leading the nation,
PinnacleSports.com today became the first sportsbook in the world to release
betting lines on the approval rating of President George W. Bush on a number
of key issues.

The largest sports betting site on the Internet, PinnacleSports.com has
created betting options on what percent of U.S. citizens will approve of
President Bush's handling of his job, the Iraq situation and the economy,
according to the first Gallup Polls conducted in November and December 2005.

posted be me

:: 12:23:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Lawyer for Saddam Co-Defendant Found Dead" ::

Carlisle Sentinel, PA
By THOMAS WAGNER

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A defense lawyer in Saddam Hussein's mass murder trial has been found dead, his body dumped near a Baghdad mosque with two gunshots to the head, police and a top lawyers union official said Friday.

In other violence, four U.S. service members were killed in two attacks Thursday, the U.S. military said. Three Marines died when a bomb hit their patrol in the village of Nasser wa Salam, 25 miles west of Baghdad, and other American troops clashed with gunmen, killing two insurgents and capturing four, the military said.

An American soldier was killed in the northwestern town of Hit by "indirect fire," a term that usually means a mortar or rocket attack, the military said.

Nineteen Americans have been killed in the past week. The latest deaths brought to 1,992 the number of members of the U.S. military who have died since the beginning of the war in 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

The lawyer, Saadoun Sughaiyer al-Janabi, was abducted from his office by 10 masked gunmen Thursday evening, a day after he attended the first session of the trial, acting as the lawyer of one Saddam's seven co-defendants.

Al-Janabi's body, with two bullet shots to the head, was found hours later on a sidewalk near Fardous Mosque in the eastern neighborhood of Ur, near the site of his office, said police Maj. Falah al-Mohammedawi.

Diaa al-Saadi, senior official in the lawyers syndicate, said al-Janabi's family confirmed to him that he was dead. "This will have grave repercussions. This will hinder lawyers from defending those held for political reasons," al-Saadi warned.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 12:13:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "WHITE HOUSE KNOWS ABOUT INDICTMENTS" ::

Free Market News Network, FL
by staff reports

The Wayne Madsen Report states that the White House is now fully informed about the nature and scope of the indictments handed down by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald this week. He cited a report of Attorney General Albert Gonzalez holding a meeting with Fitzgerald on Wednesday, at which the AG was briefed on the prosecutor's findings, and the Grand Jury was released after brief questions.

Madsen quotes "informed sources in Washington," as saying that Vice President Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, is expected to resign after his indictment, for his role in outing a covert CIA agent, Valerie Plame Wilson, wife of Ambassador Joseph Wilson. He points to the phony terrorist threats in New York City and Baltimore as examples of how "the Bush White House is hopelessly diverting the public's attention away from the inevitability of a major October political scandal involving high level resignations following indictments of key administration officials."

He also notes the successful manipulation of the beginning of Saddam Hussein's trial in Iraq, as one more effort "to divert attention from Leakgate," with the postponement of those sessions to the end of November, leaving, as he puts it, "a story waiting on the shelf to be pulled off again when pre-trial hearings may begin in Leakgate." - ST

posted by me

:: 11:59:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "New browser gives taste of Web 2.0" ::

From CNET News.com
By Renai LeMay

A small team of developers in California on Friday launched a cutting-edge Firefox-based Web browser dubbed Flock, which integrates next-generation Web technologies such as RSS content feeds, blogs and bookmark and photo sharing.

The team of developers was spearheaded by Bart Decrem, who is well known in the open-source community due to his involvement in the Mozilla Foundation and his ill-fated start-up Eazel, which from 1999 until its demise in 2001 aimed to bring greater usability features to the Linux desktop.

"Indeed the time is upon us," wrote Flock co-founder Geoffrey Arone on his blog shortly before the release. "We are gearing up to allow public, unrestricted downloads of the Flock browser within the next couple of hours."

"Please note that this is a developer preview and that there are still plenty of bugs, many of which we are aware of."

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 10:11:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "For Iraqis, the big event has begun" ::

International Herald Tribune
By Edward Wong
The New York Times

From the very start of the trial, from the moment Saddam Hussein refused to tell the judge his name, Hiba Raad said she knew that she was watching the same man who had ruled over Iraq for decades with muscular authority.

"He's a hero, he's a tough leader," Raad, an education student at Mustansiriya University, said as she reclined in black pants and a T-shirt on a sofa in her living room. "If he came back, I'm sure he'd provide us with security."

In her home in the Sunni Arab neighborhood of Adhamiya, Raad had just finished watching the opening session of the trial on an Arab network with her parents and sister. They continued staring, transfixed. The grandmother, Samira al-Bayati, shuffled into the room.

"I felt sorry," she said. "I almost cried. Every country in the world has terrorism. All the presidents of this region torture their people. Why, of all the countries, do they come after us?"

So went some of the talk Wednesday afternoon as millions of Iraqis spent hours gazing at the stern, wrinkled visage of the leader they once feared, loathed and lionized. It was nothing less than a national spectacle.

Viewpoints varied widely, some calling it a tawdry display of victor's justice, others a long-awaited, if somewhat unsatisfactory, accounting for sins too numerous to list.

Read more here.

ALSO
Saddam: 'I am still president of Iraq'
Mail & Guardian Online

posted by me

:: 11:33:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Bush accused of staging chat with troops" ::

From The Guardian, UK
By Jamie Wilson in Washington

The White House found itself at the centre of another public relations disaster yesterday after a Pentagon official was seen coaching a group of handpicked US troops before a live teleconference with President George Bush.
In a cringingly wooden exchange the group of soldiers stationed in Saddam Hussein's home town of Tikrit told the president exactly what he wanted to hear - that Iraqis were eager to vote on a new constitution this weekend and the country's fledgling security forces were ready to meet the challenge.

But before Mr Bush entered the room Alison Barber, a senior defence department official, went through a list of topics the president would later ask them about. At her prompting, the soldiers, who were displayed on a large video screen in a room of the Eisenhower Building next to the White House, raised their hands when the topic they were to answer came up.

Democrats dismissed the event as a sham. The Senate minority leader, Harry Reid, said: "The American people and our brave troops deserve better than a photo-op for the president and a pep-rally about Iraq. They deserve a plan. Unfortunately, today's event only served to highlight the fact that the president refuses to engage in a frank conversation about the realities on the ground."

posted by me

:: 11:00:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Police blotter" ::

Patriot Act wins a round
By Declan McCullagh
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

Police blotter" is a weekly report on the intersection of technology and the law. This episode: The U.S. Supreme Court rejects an emergency appeal from a library organization regarding the Patriot Act.

What: A library organization asks the U.S. Supreme Court to grant an emergency appeal to lift a gag order related to the FBI's request for Internet records under the Patriot Act.

When: Decided on Oct. 7 by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who hears emergency appeals from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York.

Outcome: Ginsburg refuses to step in, saying the Second Circuit should handle the case for now.

What happened: When Congress approved the Patriot Act in the frenzied legislative response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the FBI received new powers to send secret National Security Letters (NSLs) that demand business records (view related PDF).

Until that time, NSLs could be sent only when an investigation was directly related to international terrorism. Thanks to Section 505 of the Patriot Act, NSLs now can be used more broadly (view related PDF), and individual FBI agents received the power to issue them.

Recipients are prohibited by law from disclosing that they received an NSL, even to their attorney: "No wire or electronic communication service provider...shall disclose to any person that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has sought or obtained access to information." One court has already ruled such a law is an unlawful gag order.

An unnamed member of the American Library Association received an NSL (view PDF of the NSL) demanding "any and all subscriber information, billing information, and access logs of any person or entity" using a specific Internet Protocol address during a certain time.

In response, the organization filed a lawsuit claiming it had the right to describe its experience to Congress in general terms--without disclosing details of the NSL. A federal district court agreed that the First Amendment permitted such general disclosure, but the Second Circuit didn't.

Ginsburg rejected the library group's request to lift its gag order, saying that the Second Circuit was moving quickly--oral arguments are set for Nov. 2--and that it was premature to intervene. (The Bush administration has urged Congress to keep Section 505 of the Patriot Act and further expand police powers.)

Excerpt from Ginsburg's opinion: "Although the (library organization's) arguments are cogent, I have taken into account several countervailing considerations in declining to vacate the stay kept in place by the Second Circuit pending its disposition of the appeal. I am mindful, first, that interference with an interim order of a court of appeals cannot be justified solely because a circuit justice disagrees about the harm a party may suffer. Respect for the assessment of the court of appeals is especially warranted when that court is proceeding to adjudication on the merits with due expedition."

posted by me

:: 10:39:00 AM [+] ::
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Poll: Groups Unhappy With Bush Performance

From Washington Post
By WILL LESTER
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- Critical elements in President Bush's political coalition have grown less enthusiastic about the job he is doing, an AP-Ipsos poll found. That's a troubling development for a president trying to firm up his base of support.

Evangelical voters, Republican men, Southerners and Protestants have lost some intensity in their support for the president since the beginning of this year.

The White House is already struggling to keep the Republican base from eroding because of Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, hurricane-recovery spending projects, immigration and other issues.

"Politically, this is very serious for the president," said James Thurber, a political scientist at American University. "If the base of his party has lost faith, that could spell trouble for his policy agenda and for the party generally."

Read more here.

Related link:
Ipsos online.

ALSO
BUSH APPROVAL DIPS EVEN FURTHER
Free Market News Network, FL

If the polls are correct, George W. Bush is rapidly becoming one of the least supported Presidents in history. According to an Associated Press/IPSOS poll taken last week, a grand total of 28 percent of America thinks the country is headed in the right direction, while 66 percent think it is not.

A .280 batting average might keep a good fielding shortstop in a major league lineup, it is hardly enough for a president to claim any sort of "mandate" regarding his policies or intentions, Administration critics point out. If two-thirds of his constituents think Bush has lost his way, he's just fortunate that this is his last term.

The article quotes James Thurber, an American University political scientist, as noting that, "This is very serious for the president. If the base of his party has lost faith, that could spell trouble for his policy agenda and for the party generally."

The article also cites the president's job approval rating, now at the lowest level of his presidency (39 percent), and the lowest for any President in several decades.

AND
A presidency unravels before our eyes
Centre Daily Times


posted by me

:: 9:21:00 AM [+] ::
...

:: "Click or Miss" ::

Ig Nobel Inventions
From Wired News
From penguin crap to fake dog testicles, the annual awards ceremony honors the world's wackiest inventors.

posted by me

:: 7:58:00 AM [+] ::
...

:: "Bush said God told him to invade Iraq Arab leaders say" ::

Palestinian officials confirm comments from documentary
From The SF Chronicle
By Matthew Kalman

Jerusalem -- President Bush told two high-ranking Palestinian officials that he had been told by God to invade Afghanistan and Iraq and then create a Palestinian state to bring peace to the Middle East, they recall during a documentary on Middle East peace that airs next week in Britain.

"President Bush said to all of us: 'I'm driven with a mission from God,' " said Nabil Shaath, who was the Palestinian foreign minister at the time of a top-level meeting with Bush in June 2003. Mahmoud Abbas, then Palestinian prime minister and now the Palestinian Authority president, was also present for the conversation with Bush.

"God would tell me, 'George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan.' And I did, and then God would tell me, 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq ...' And I did. And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, 'Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East.' And by God I'm gonna do it," Shaath quotes the president as saying in the three-part series.

Read more here.

ALSO
Bush: God told me to invade Iraq
Independent

White House denies Bush God claims
Guardian Unlimited

posted by me

:: 9:51:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "In another blow to George Bush's authority ..." ::

Senate bans degrading treatment of detainees
Guardian Unlimited
By Jamie Wilson in Washington

In another blow to George Bush's authority, Senate Republicans have defied the White House and voted to impose new restrictions on the way the US military handles terrorism suspects.

Amid growing concern at the treatment of detainees in Guantánamo Bay, Iraq and Afghanistan, the Republican-controlled Senate voted 90-9 on Wednesday to back an amendment to prohibit the use of "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" against anyone in US government custody, regardless of where they are held. The proposal would require all service members to follow written, uniform rules when they detain and question terrorism suspects. But the measures will not cover techniques used by the CIA.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 9:21:00 AM [+] ::
...

:: Yawn... ::

Transcript: Bush Discusses War on Terrorism
FDCH E-Media
via The Washington Post

President Bush, speaking at the National Endowment for Democracy Thursday, said that the United States and its allies have disrupted 10 al Qaeda plots since Sept. 11, 2001, including three plots to attack inside the United States. Here is a transcript of Bush's remarks.

posted by me

:: 12:51:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Spychips Sees an RFID Conspiracy" ::

From Wired News
A new book by privacy advocates makes the case that corporations and government agencies are in collusion to put tiny radio transmitters on nearly everything we buy. Companies deny it. By Mark Baard

ALSO from Wired News

This Laser Trick's a Quantum Leap

Gamma-Ray Burst Mystery Unraveled

posted by me

:: 3:51:00 PM [+] ::
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:: The Ivins Factor ::

Ten Stories the Mainstream Media Missed
By Molly Ivins

Project Censored offers a list of stories ignored by the dailies.

What we need in this country -- along with a disaster relief agency -- is a Media Accountability Day. One precious day out of the entire year when everyone in the news media stops reporting on what's wrong with everyone else and devotes a complete 24-hour news cycle to looking at our own failures. How's that for a great idea?

My colleagues, of course, are persuaded that every day is Pick on the Media Day. Every day, the right wing accuses us of liberal bias and the liberals accuse us of right-wing or corporate bias -- so who needs more of this?

I have long been persuaded that the news media collectively will be sent to hell not for our sins of commission, but our sins of omission. The real scandal in the media is not bias, it is laziness. Laziness and bad news judgment. Our failure is what we miss, what we fail to cover, what we let slip by, what we don't give enough attention to -- because, after all, we have to cover Jennifer and Brad, and Scott and Laci, and Whosit who disappeared in Aruba without whom the world can scarce carry on.

Happily, the perfect news peg, as we say in the biz, for Media Accountability Day already exists -- it's Project Censored's annual release of the 10 biggest stories ignored or under-covered by mainstream media. Project Censored is based at Sonoma State University, with both faculty and students involved in its preparation.

Of course, the stories are not actually "censored" by any authority, but they do not receive enough attention to enter the public's consciousness, usually because corporate media tend to underreport stories about corporate misdeeds and government abuses.

The No. 1 pick by Project Censored this year should more than make the media the blink -- it is a much-needed deep whiff of ammonia smelling salts for the comatose: Bush Administration Moves to Eliminate Open Government.

Gene Roberts, a great news editor, says we tend to miss the stories that seep and creep, the ones whose effects are cumulative, not abrupt.

This administration has drastically changed the rules on Freedom of Information Act requests; has changed laws that restrict public access to federal records, mostly by expanding the national security classification; operates in secret under the Patriot Act; and consistently refuses to provide information to Congress and the Government Accountability Office. The cumulative total effect is horrifying.

No. 2: Iraq Coverage -- faulted for failure to report the results of the two battles for Fallujah and the civilian death toll. The civilian death toll story is hard to get -- accurate numbers nowhere -- but the humanitarian disaster in Fallujah comes with impeccable sources.

No. 3: Distorted Election Coverage. Faulting the study that caused most of the corporate media to dismiss the discrepancy between exit polls and the vote tally; and the still-contentious question of whether the vote in Ohio needed closer examination.

No. 4: Surveillance Society Quietly Moves In. It's another seep 'n' creep story, where the cumulative effect should send us all shrieking into the streets -- the Patriot Act, the quiet resurrection of the MATRIX program, the REAL ID Act, which passed without debate as an amendment to an emergency spending bill funding troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.

No. 5: United States Uses Tsunami to Military Advantage in Southeast Asia. Oops. Ugh.

No. 6: The Real Oil for Food Scam. The oil-for-food story was rotten with political motives from the beginning -- the right used it to belabor the United Nations. The part that got little attention here was the extent to which we, the United States, were part of the scam. Harper's magazine deserves credit for its December 2004 story, "The UN is Us: Exposing Saddam Hussein's Silent Partner."

No. 7: Journalists Face Unprecedented Dangers to Life and Livelihood. That a lot of journalists are getting killed in Iraq is indisputable. I work with the Committee to Protect Journalists and am by no means persuaded we are targeted by anyone other than terrorists. However, Project Censored honors stories about military policies that could improve the situation of those journalists who risk their lives.

No. 8: Iraqi Farmers Threatened by Bremer's Mandates. It's part of the untold story of the disastrous effort to make Iraq into a neo-con's free-market dream. Order 81 issued by Paul Bremer "made it illegal for Iraqi farmers to reuse seeds harvested from new varieties registered under the law." Iraqi farmers were forced away from traditional methods to a system of patented seeds, where they can't grow crops without paying a licensing fee to an American corporation.

No. 9: Iran's New Oil Trade System Challenges U.S. Currency. The effects of Iran's switching from dollars to Euros in oil trading.

No. 10: Mountaintop Removal Threatens Ecosystem and Economy. A classic case of a story not unreported but underreported -- a practice so environmentally irresponsible it makes your hair hurt to think about it.

Most journalists manage to find a quibble or two with Project Censored's list every year, but mostly we just stand there and nod, yep, missed that one, and that one and ...

But here's a wonderful fact about daily journalism -- we don't ever have to get it all right, because we get a new chance every day.

Molly Ivins writes about politics, Texas and other bizarre happenings.

posted by me

:: 8:23:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Role of Rove, Libby in CIA Leak Is Clearer" ::

Bush and Cheney Aides' Testimony Contradicts Earlier White House Statement
From The Washington Post
By Jim VandeHei and Walter Pincus

As the CIA leak investigation heads toward its expected conclusion this month, it has become increasingly clear that two of the most powerful men in the Bush administration were more involved in the unmasking of operative Valerie Plame than the White House originally indicated.

With New York Times reporter Judith Miller's release from jail Thursday and testimony Friday before a federal grand jury, the role of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, came into clearer focus. Libby, a central figure in the probe since its earliest days and the vice president's main counselor, discussed Plame with at least two reporters but testified that he never mentioned her name or her covert status at the CIA, according to lawyers in the case.

His story is similar to that of Karl Rove, President Bush's top political adviser. Rove, who was not an initial focus of the investigation, testified that he, too, talked with two reporters about Plame but never supplied her name or CIA role.

Their testimony seems to contradict what the White House was saying a few months after Plame's CIA job became public.

In October 2003, White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters that he personally asked Libby and Rove whether they were involved, "so I could come back to you and say they were not involved." Asked if that was a categorical denial of their involvement, he said, "That is correct."

What remains a central mystery in the case is whether special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has accumulated evidence during his two-year investigation that any crime was committed. His investigation has White House aides and congressional Republicans on edge as they await Fitzgerald's announcement of an indictment or the conclusion of the probe with no charges. The grand jury is scheduled to expire Oct. 28, and lawyers in the case expect Fitzgerald to signal his intentions as early as this week.

Fitzgerald is investigating whether anyone illegally disclosed Plame's name or undercover CIA job in retaliation against her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV. In the summer of 2003, Wilson, a former diplomat, accused the White House of using "twisted" intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq.

Read more here.

ALSO
No heroine's welcome for reporter who spent her summer in jail
Independent, UK

Questions and Answers on CIA Leak Case
Guardian Unlimited

posted by me

:: 10:59:00 AM [+] ::
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