Geek!

In times of confusion and trial, it's nice to know some things can be relied on, some things don't change. "I am as constant as a northern star," Joni Mitchell has one partner in a stormy love affair say in one of her songs. Yes, indeed, no matter what else, north is north and south is south.

Except, of course, it's not. First, consider the North Star, Polaris. Which hasn't always been the North Star and after a time won't be - that is, until it is again. See, the Earth is tilted on it's axis relative to the plane of its orbit around the Sun. A pretty good thing as far as I'm concerned, since the varying length of days and amount of sunlight that produces over the course of a year is what gives us seasons. No tilt, no seasons. (Yes, the Earth does vary in its distance to the Sun over the course of a year but the variance isn't actually all that much, just a couple of percent. Not enough to produce significant changes.) That axis points at Polaris (within about a degree), so those of us in the Northern Hemisphere have a ready nighttime guide: Find Polaris, face it, and you're facing north.

However, as the Earth spins on that axis (producing day and night), it also wobbles, very slowly in a wide circle, like a spinning top. It's called precession. Which means that over time that axis points to different places in the sky. Not really a concern for us, as it takes about 26,000 years to complete one circle, but it does mean that at the beginning of recorded history Polaris was not nearly as useful for navigation as it became more recently and that there have been times in the past and there will be times in the future when the Earth's axis points at another star (which would mean that one, and not Polaris, would be the North Star) and other times when it points to nothing visible to the naked eye at all.

Yeah, right, big deal. But north is still north, even when there isn't a North Star. If you doubt it, pick up any decent compass.

Well, yeah, except that, as most of us know, the North Pole (latitude 90 degrees north) and the magnetic north pole are not in the same place. In fact, magnetic north is drifting across the Canadian Arctic; right now it's about 82.3 degrees north latitude and 113.4 degrees west longitude, putting it in the Beaufort Sea north of the Queen Elizabeth Islands.

And at some point in the future, magnetic north won't be magnetic north at all. It'll be south.

Earth's magnetic field is thought to be generated deep inside the planet. An inner core of solid iron is surrounded by an outer core of molten iron. They rotate at different rates, and the interaction between the regions creates what scientists call a "hydromagnetic dynamo." It's something like an electric motor, and it generates a magnetic field akin to a giant bar magnet.

The process is not completely understood. In fact, one study suggests the planet's mantle, which surrounds the core, also plays a role.

However it works, the setup has been in place for at least 3 billion of Earth's 4.6 billion years, scientists figure. But the field is shifty, periodically growing stronger and weaker, moving around, and even flipping its polarity entirely.

In the past 15 million years, there have been four reversals every 1 million years, or about one shift each 250,000 years,

says Brad Clement, of Florida International University, leader of a study group on the phenomenon. Since the last flip took place 790,000 years ago, we might seem overdue for another, but there is no regular schedule of flips, so no one can be sure. However, the strength of the magnetic field has been dropping for about 2,000 years; one study even says it has declined 10% in just the last 150 years. That has lead some to speculate another shift is beginning, but, again, there's no way to tell for sure.

It's not really something to worry about too much, though: On average, the flips have taken about 7,000 years to complete. Plenty of time to get used to the idea.

On the other hand,

the dramatic turnarounds occur more quickly nearer the equator than at higher latitudes closer to the poles.

That means folks living during the next reversal - which some scientists speculate might be underway - will see compasses change and behave differently in different locations,

making them essentially useless until things settle down a couple of thousand years later.

Maybe instead of "constant as the North Star" we should use as our cliche the I Ching philosophy that "the only thing that doesn't change is the fact that everything else changes."

Jeopardy!

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is Battle Creek?

JEOPARDY!
Good Dog! for $200

In the early nineteenth century, Barry, a dog of this breed, saved more than forty people in the Swiss Alps.

Making explicit what was implicit

Today's Wall Street Journal has a remarkable article - remarkable, that is, in what it reveals about the thinking of the Shrubberies.

Unfortunately, it's only available online to subscribers to the print edition of the paper, but it has been posted in full here. (I'm a little unsure about putting up that link since I do believe in copyright laws, having been a producer of copyrighted material myself and having seen some of it appropriated without even acknowledgement - but since the truth is I'm not actually sure if the posting of the article is violating any copyrights or not, I decided to go ahead.) In any event, there is enough coverage elsewhere to get the full impact.

Simply put, the article reveals that

Bush administration lawyers contended last year that the president wasn't bound by laws prohibiting torture and that government agents who might torture prisoners at his direction couldn't be prosecuted by the Justice Department.

The report was prepared in March 2003 for Donald Rumpled. Although the Journal says what it saw was a draft, "people familiar with it say there were few substantial changes in legal analysis between the draft and final versions."

[A]t its core is an exceptional argument that because nothing is more important than "obtaining intelligence vital to the protection of untold thousands of American citizens," normal strictures on torture might not apply.

The president, despite domestic and international laws constraining the use of torture, has the authority as commander in chief to approve almost any physical or psychological actions during interrogation, up to and including torture, the report argued.

In a good analysis, Phillip Carter at IntelDump says the report crosses the line from advising how to stay within the law to how to avoid prosecution for breaking the law.

It is, quite literally, a cookbook approach for illegal government conduct. ... I have not seen the text of the memo, but from this report, it does not appear that it advises American personnel to comply with international or domestic law. It merely tells them how to avoid it. That is dangerous legal advice.

But the implications go well beyond evading punishment for illegal interrogations. The sweeping aside of law, tradition, the Constitution, and decency in pursuit of justifying a view of the president as a king rather than an elected official is breathtaking in its scope and audacity.

The working-group report elaborated the Bush administration's view that the president has virtually unlimited power to wage war as he sees fit, and neither Congress, the courts nor international law can interfere. It concluded that neither the president nor anyone following his instructions was bound by the federal Torture Statute....

"In order to respect the president's inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign ... (the prohibition against torture) must be construed as inapplicable to interrogations undertaken pursuant to his commander-in chief authority," the report asserted. ... Citing confidential Justice Department opinions drafted after Sept. 11, 2001, the report advised that the executive branch of the government had "sweeping" powers to act as it sees fit because "national security decisions require the unity in purpose and energy in action that characterize the presidency rather than Congress."

Or, put more bluntly, "national security" not only trumps the law, it trumps democracy itself. Invoke "national security" and not only should all debate stop in search of "unity in purpose" but the law must stand aside as well.

Doubt it? Then consider this:

To protect subordinates should they be charged with torture, the memo advised that Mr. Bush issue a "presidential directive or other writing" that could serve as evidence, since authority to set aside the laws is "inherent in the president."

That's right, they're arguing that presidents have the "inherent" power to simply suspend or ignore laws they don't like, much like Richard Nixon arguing that "when the president does it, it's not illegal." The president is above, beyond, unreachable by, the law.

As Josh Marshall said,

[t]hat claim alone should stop everyone in their tracks and prompt a serious consideration of the safety of the American republic under this president. It is the very definition of a constitutional monarchy, let alone a constitutional republic, that the law is superior to the executive, not the other way around.

The Supreme Court is expected to rule soon on the cases of Jose Padilla and detainees at Gitmo to address the question of the president's authority to hold people as "enemy combatants" without recourse to the courts. We already knew there was a lot riding on those decisions - now it seems that there is even more riding on them than we knew.

Update: From Reuters comes news that the Washington Post reports on Tuesday that it has obtained an earlier memo, from August 2002, in which the Justice Department offered the White House justification for the use of torture against suspected al-Qaeda prisoners.

The memo said if a government employee were to torture a suspect in captivity, "he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al Qaeda terrorist network," the newspaper reported.

The memo also said that arguments centering on "necessity and self-defense could provide justifications that would eliminate any criminal liability" later, according to the Post.

The similiarity of argument indicates to me that the DOJ memo was incorporated into the later document. Which means this wasn't a new thing last year, it was kicking around, under development you could say, for a time.

Oh, and in case you're wondering what brought this up, Reuters also notes that according the the Journal story, the Pentagon report,

compiled by military lawyers, came after commanders at Guantanamo Bay complained in late 2002 that they were not getting enough information from prisoners using conventional methods....

"We're Americans. We don't do that stuff. Well, of course, unless other ways don't work. Then we do. But it's okay if we do, because we're Americans and we don't do that stuff."

Second Update: The New York Times has also gotten hold of the March 2003 memo; its story contains some additional information beyond, and a wider context than, that in the Journal article.

Quick note

Via Josh Marshall, a wonderful Tom Toles cartoon about Ahmed Chalabi. Check it out.

The Master speaketh

An AP report for June 6 tells us that speaking in Singapore on Saturday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said

[t]he United States and its allies are winning some battles in the terrorism war, but may be losing the broader struggle against Islamic extremism that is terrorism's source....

The troubling unknown, he said, is whether the extremists - whom he termed "zealots and despots" bent on destroying the global system of nation-states - are turning out newly trained terrorists faster than the United States can capture or kill them.

Ignore for the moment the blatant racism of saying that Islamic extremism is the source of terrorism (as opposed to any other kind of extremism, like, for example, the Christian fundamentalists who justify murdering doctors who perform abortions or the white supremacists who were caught with a chemical poison bomb in December). Now, maybe it's just me, I don't know, but doesn't it make mincemeat of all the TRAITOR Act "protections" and all the other intrusions into our private lives to say there is a continuing supply of new (and therefore unknown) terrorists? And doesn't it at least hint that maybe, just maybe, if all these brand-new terrorists are being generated, there's something, I don't know, wrong with our approach?

Rumplestiltskin also said that the real issue isn't terrorism, which he called "a technique ... a weapon" but the ideology that drives it.

Chances that focusing action on what generates terrorism will be more effective than violating civil rights at home and bombing the hell out of people abroad: 100%

Chances that Donald Rumsfeld or George Bush (or John Kerry) have a flaming clue what that action would consist of: 0%.

Interesting news

The BBC reports today that the US is proposing to South Korea that up to one-third of the 37,000 US troops there be withdrawn, a dramatic reduction. This follows the announcement last month that some 3,600 soldiers would be moved from South Korea to Iraq, the first cut in US troop strength on the peninsula since the end of the Cold War.

The Pentagon says the proposed cut is part of a major realignment of US forces in East Asia that won't affect the security of South Korea, but with North Korea still part of the "axis of evil" and the occasional target of a burst of bellicose rhetoric, it still seems an odd move, especially coming so close on the heels of the earlier announcement about a redeployment to Iraq. That suggests to me that something else may be behind it, something like putting North Korea on the back burner to shore up forces elsewhere. It will be interesting to try to keep track of the 8,000+ soldiers withdrawn who are not part of the contingent already committed to Iraq to see if they follow on a little later. (And there's always Afghanistan, the site of those increasing attacks.)

Adding to my suspicion that there's something other than a strategic realignment at work here, South Korea's President Roh Moo-hyun right at the same time has proposed sending 3,000 ROK troops to Iraq despite growing opposition at home.

I'm hesitant to make firm declarations based on just what's here, but it still seems to me that this indicates two things: One, the threat from North Korea isn't as serious as it's been made out to be. Two, the US is even more desperate for boots on the ground in Iraq than we thought.

Footnote: In reading the transcript of Donald Rumsfeld's speech in Singapore and the Q&A that followed (see above post), I noticed Rumsfeld saying this about North Korea:

North Korea has, by its own statements, indicated, in its behavior, that it is engaged in a variety of things that are considered illegal and antisocial by the civilized countries in the world. They engage in counterfeiting, they engage in terrorist acts, they have been proliferating various WMD technologies and delivery mechanisms. It is a country that operates well outside the norms of normal behavior.

That seems to raise even greater questions about the real reason behind the decision to redeploy troops from South Korea. Rumsfeld stayed with the official line that it won't affect security, but it's hard to imagine a military person looking at a country described as Rumsfeld described North Korea (especially since he also said "assuming their behavior is to continue, their programs, the longer it takes the more dangerous their capabilities presumably would become") talking about removing fully one-third of your forces from the immediate vicinity if there wasn't some other pressing need somewhere else.

I could be wrong, of course, but I'd like to wait and see.

Logic 1, Stupidity 0

This came to me in a rather roundabout way; an item on the blog of the libertarian magazine "Reason" to which TomPaine.com had a link. It's from last Thursday's Washington Post.

A federal law aimed at keeping advertisements critical of national drug policy out of Metro stations and bus shelters illegally chills free speech and cannot stand, a federal judge ruled yesterday.

U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman barred the U.S. government from enforcing a law passed by Congress this year that calls for denying federal transportation money to any transit system that accepts ads promoting the legalization of drugs.

I remember hearing about the requirement when it was passed and thinking it was so outrageous that a suit against it should be a slam dunk. Then I remembered what decade I'm living in and began to wonder.

However, as it turns out it appears the judge didn't have much trouble recognizing it for what it was. He called it

a clear case of "viewpoint discrimination" and noted that Metro displayed the Office of National Drug Control Policy's anti-drug ads when it refused the other ads.

"Congress ... cannot prohibit advertisements supporting legalization of a controlled substance while permitting those that support tougher drug sentences," the judge said. He called the law "an unconstitutional exercise of Congress' broad spending power."

Rep. Ernest Istook (R-OK), the nitwit who sponsored the original amendment to the 2004 appropriations bill, says the issue isn't over.

"I'm confident that ultimately the courts will agree with the long-standing principle that Congress is free to decide what we will or will not fund," Istook said.

Fine. Let's have a few upsets in November and have the Democrats win both Congress and the presidency. Then they can pass a law barring federal aid to any agency, institution, or organization that employs conservative Republicans. Or maybe just bar any federal spending of any kind within the state of Oklahoma.

I'm sure Istook would approve. It was, after all, his idea.

Remembering

A fragile peace in the Democratic Republic of Congo may be hanging by a thread.

One of the "forgotten wars," ethnic conflicts involving not only DR Congo but the nations surrounding it - Rwanda, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Namibia, and Angola - have torn at the country for years. Despite a ceasefire in July 1999 among six states and two rebel groups, bloodshed continued at such a level that by the fall of 2003 it was estimated that

[a]t least 3.3 million people, mostly women, children and the elderly, are estimated to have died because of the conflict, most from disease and starvation [and] more than 2.25 million people have been driven from their homes, many of them beyond the reach of humanitarian agencies

over the previous five years.

A series of pacts and negotiations finally resulted, last December, in the creation of a new army bringing together the rebel forces and local militias under a new interim government.

But an apparent coup attempt in March was followed at the beginning of this month by the seizure of the strategic town of Bukavu in western DR Congo by forces of a renegade general named Laurent Nkunda. UN peacekeepers, there to monitor the ceasefire rather than to be an effective fighting force, lost control of the town, leading to demonstrations outside UN headquarters in the capital of Kinshasa and the burning of UN vehicles in the eastern city of Kisangani by angry crowds.

Tension is running high. Nkunda initially denied his forces were moving toward Bukavu. Then, after taking the town, he agreed to leave it by Friday. He didn't. He then claimed that he had pulled "most" out by Friday, and would take the rest out on Sunday, which, according to late news, it seems he did, calling it "a show of goodwill," but also saying his men had completed their mission. However,

[a] second renegade commander, Col Jules Mutebusi, said his troops would remain in the town, which lies close to the border with Rwanda. The troops would stay in their camps, he said.

"This is our home and there is nowhere else for us to go," he told the Associated Press.

Both Mutebusi and Nkunda were part of the RCD, the largest rebel group in the civil war.

Meanwhile, fighting also broke out in the town of Walikale, 93 miles (150km) west of Bukavu. Initially, it was reported that Nkunda's forces were headed in that direction, but it appears the actual fighting started at the town itself between two factions of the new unified army, with former RCD members forcing out Mai Mai warriors. The Beeb says it's unclear if there is any connection between those former rebels and those who seized Bukavu. I have to admit I'm not sure which would worry me more: A connection, which implies a wider, coordinated effort by Nkunda, or no connection, which implies the spread of fighting by its own logic, without direction and therefore also without control, without a voice that can call it off.

The tribal and ethnic loyalties involved are deep, of long-standing, and for those reasons often will trump any loyalties to a distant, central, still-emerging government whose rule is determined by geography rather than family or bloodline. As some have pointed out, DR Congo is a large country, about as large as Western Europe, and fighting confined to one region may ultimately mean little. But the frustrated attacks on UN vehicles in the east, far from Bukavu, would seem to say that even isolated fighting may have not only a ripple effect but show a quantum effect of what Einstein called "spooky action at a distance," where an effect can just leap instantly from one place to another, seemingly without passing through the space between.

I said about three weeks ago that we should remember that there are places outside of Iraq and issues beyond the size of John Kerry's ad budget. Maybe we could spend a little more time realizing the world does not spin for us alone.

Update: According to the Guardian (UK) for June 4, the protests against the UN were far more extensive and violent than the BBC report indicated.

UN soldiers fired on rioters, killing two people, as violent protests against the international peacekeepers swept the Democratic Republic of Congo yesterday.

Mobs attacked UN compounds across the country, blaming the international mission for failing to stop the capture of an eastern town by renegade fighters.

In the capital, Kinshasa, police fired into the air and volleyed teargas at a massive mob which surged around the UN headquarters in the city centre, hurling rocks and chanting: "The state is dead! We will punish the United Nations ourselves!" ...

Thousands of protesters burned tyres and smashed cars as UN workers huddled inside bases across the sprawling central African country, taking the brunt of Congolese fury at the fall of Bukavu to two rebel commanders.

The Guardian also says that Nkunda's forces further inflaming anger by engaging in looting and rape in Bukavu before pulling out. At least in the short term, this is going to be ugly.

Jeopardy!

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
Who is (Jacques) Chirac?

FINAL JEOPARDY!
Geographic Names

This Michigan city is named for the stream on which an 1820s skirmish occurred between two surveyors and two Indians.

Meanwhile, back at the previous "central front in the war on terror"

The BBC for June 5 reports that

US-led troops are facing an increasing number of attacks from militants in the south of Afghanistan, US officials say. ...

He said Afghan insurgents appeared to be operating from bases within the country, rather than mounting raids from neighbouring Pakistan.

The coalition was also considering boosting its presence in the north, so far considered a relatively safe area.

Such a waste. A waste of lives, of blood, of money, of goodwill, even of time. Yes, yes, yes, the Taliban were (are) a genuinely nasty crew, even though our original declared reason for attacking Afghanistan had nothing to do with them except to force them to surrender bin Laden; Bush even stated "We are not looking to replace one government with another." (Something like Iraq was invaded because of WMDs.) But what have we actually accomplished? I mean really accomplished, other than making life a little freer and safer for those in Kabul at the expense of the safety and lives of those outside it?

I know I quote myself a lot, but I think this fits. On October 19, 2001, in the early stages of the war on Afghanistan, I wrote this to a friend in the UK:

In the wake of the September 11 attacks, I remarked to more than one person that Osama bin Laden had done something that would have seemed impossible just days earlier: He had turned the US into the victim in the eyes of the world, including much of the Muslim world. In that moment, we had become the wronged innocents. Think of the opportunity, the political opening, that provided. We have blown that and big time. Now we're back to being the bullying superpower, stomping around the world, not caring who we step on so long as we get our way. ...

So much we could have done differently, so much we could do differently. And none of it is happening. It's really, really depressing.

It's still true.

Footnote: The BBC also says that five relief workers of Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), including three foreigners, were killed in Afghanistan on Wednesday, leading the group to suspended its operations there. (The first link is to the international group, the second to the US chapter.)

I have trouble understanding the thought process by which it seems to make sense to murder unarmed aid workers whose genuine interest is in helping. And I don't want to hear any crap about they're actually "imposing Western values." That's callous, calculating, claptrap (especially since two of the victims where Afghanis) designed to excuse bloody violence and I won't have it.

I guess the truth is, we're not the only people who substitute symbol for reality.

Goodbye

No, I am not going to eulogize Ronald Reagan. I am not going to join in the chorus of forgiving accolades and inflated claims of enduring glory. I will say that no one, no family, should have to suffer the painful, grinding, heart-rending decline of Alzheimer's and that Nancy Reagan, to her credit, proved to all her genuine devotion to her husband.

But beyond that, no farewells, tearful or otherwise, no musing on "the great communicator," no declarations of grudging respect. This was a man whose politics, whose policies, whose simplistic narrow-mindedness, whose paeans to greed disguised as "responsibility" and selfishness cloaked in "freedom," are things this people, this nation, this world would have been better off without.

This was the man who called Vietnam "a noble cause." A man whose economic policies were so out of whack with reality that at one point I was moved to say that his advisers "will soon be taking back predictions they haven't made yet" and which lead to a string of record-smashing (not just breaking, smashing) budget deficits that tripled the national debt in just eight years and drove the worst recession in 40 years. Whose answer to labor contracts was union-busting. Who slashed aid programs for the poor and blamed them for their own poverty while spinning folk talks and lies about "welfare queens." Who funded dictators and death squads in Central America while declaring the murderous contras "the moral equivalent of the founding fathers." Who ignored AIDS because "maybe the Lord brought down this plague," because "illicit sex is against the Ten Commandments."

He claimed trees were the largest cause of air pollution. He mounted

a sustained attack on the government's civil rights apparatus, opened an assault on affirmative action and social welfare programs, embraced the White racist leaders of then-apartheid South Africa and waged war on a tiny, Black Caribbean nation.

He red-baited peace demonstrations. He sharply increased the danger of nuclear war, supported by a staff that called such a war "a physics problem" and actively pursued the idea of "limited" nuclear war. He opposed the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan by embracing the warlords, including the Taliban.

He strove to turn us against ourselves, to empty us of compassion, to make "I'm all right, Jack" our national motto. He celebrated conspicuous consumption even as the poverty rate increased and the gap between rich and poor, which had been slowly shrinking since the 1950s, ballooned.

Even claims made in his favor are wrong. AP says that

"Ronald Reagan had a higher claim than any other leader to have won the Cold War for liberty and he did it without a shot being fired," former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said Saturday. ...

In foreign affairs, he built the arsenals of war while seeking and achieving arms control agreements with the Soviet Union.

So much wrong in so few words. First, there were many shots fired and many bodies piled in which we had a hand, from El Salvador to Lebanon to Afghanistan. Second, the person who had the most to do with ending the cold war was not Ronald Reagan, but Mikhail Gorbachev, who recognized its insanity and looked for a way out, bringing far more dramatic change to the old USSR than Reagan's "revolution" brought to the US.

As for Reagan "achieving arms control agreements," it's such an absurdity that only someone wholly ignorant of the time (or a boldfaced liar) could have said it. In fact, Reagan did his damnedest to avoid any such agreements and the US had a policy of trying to spend the Soviets into bankruptcy under a foreign policy doctrine that even the New York Times was moved to call "a declaration of technical war." The US was notorious for moving the goal posts, for adding new or changed demands every time an agreement was (or was about to be) reached. Such accords were only reached when political reality made it impossible to avoid them.

And all of this is without even mentioning Contragate

At a counter-inaugural demonstration in January, 1981, after he was first elected, I called Reagan's win "the ultimate victory of style over substance." Subsequent events have proved me wrong; other campaigns since have been won on the basis of images even further removed from practice than was Reagan 1980. (In fact, Reagan 1984 was an example.) But it does remain a watershed in our history, the moment when we as an electorate clearly turned away from making an effort to understand what the hell was going on around us and toward empty-headed wishful thinking where we are now almost casually manipulated into voting against our own interests and desires.

No, no eulogies, no grudging respect, not even admiration for his skills as a politician unless I am also free to express similar admiration for the undoubted skills in their own areas of Willy Sutton, Ken Lay, and Osama bin Laden. The only thing I will grant to him is what I would grant to anyone: I'm glad you're no longer suffering. Goodbye.

The man did say "extinguish"

The man in this case being Sudan vice president Ali Osman Taha, who said in the wake of the tentative peace accord ending a civil war between northern and southern regions of the country that "one of the first fruits of peace will be the extinguishing of the conflict in Darfur."

Perhaps truer than we knew. This from the BBC for June 4:

A catastrophe is now unavoidable in Sudan's Darfur region, the United Nations and aid workers say.

Some 300,000 people will starve, even if emergency aid is delivered immediately, according to the head of the United States aid agency.

Speaking to a donor conference seeking to raise funds for relief for the region, Andrew Natsios, head of USAid, added that without immediate aid, "it could be a million."

To make matters worse, the rainy season is about to start,

and roads will turn to quagmire.

Aid agencies say they will have to resort to air drops to get supplies through - a desperate measure which is rarely very successful. ...

Food and water are scarce, disease is spreading, crops have failed and famine now threatens, the UN officials said.

In some refugee camps, the infant mortality rate is already 25 times the international average.

And amid it all, the violence continues, pitting, in the words of Jan Egeland, the UK's Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, "totally defenseless people ... women and children for the most part," against "grown men with Kalashnikov automatic rifles."

Footnote: The US promised $188 million in aid over 18 months. By comparison, we have devoted roughly $160 billion to Iraq and Afghanistan, most all of it for military action. It's easy to get lost in the mills and bills, so let's put it another way: We have spent 850 times as much on Iraq and Afghanistan as we have pledged - not even committed yet, just promised - to ease the greatest humanitarian catastrophe now facing the world.

An apology to anyone who may have checked in within the last couple of hours. I had the article on which I intended to comment here and then absently-mindedly posted it instead of saving it as a draft. So if that's what you found, that's why.

GIGO

I haven't had much - anything, really - to say about the new government in Iraq. As a very general rule, I try to let slip topics that are being widely discussed elsewhere, as this most certainly was, unless I think I have something real to add. But as the first effects of that process are being felt in the negotiations over a new UN Security Council resolution endorsing the US presence in Iraq and the interim government, a few comments are in order.

The first and most important is that the word "new" in that first sentence should have quotation marks around it. The form may be new, but in substance there is little "new" to be found. It is, in fact, pretty much just the US-approved Iraqi Governing Council under a new name with a few offices shifted around. Josh Marshall summed it up nicely a few days ago.

Now that some of the dust has settled, we can see one thing pretty clearly: the IGC basically hijacked the process. The IGC essentially reconstituted as a caretaker government. The new President, Sheikh Ghazi al-Yawar, was the current president of the IGC. Hoshiyar Zebari, who was the foreign minister in the IGC, is now the foreign minister under the interim government. Allawi was a member of and choice of the IGC, etc. And so on down the list.

Well, not entirely an IGC hijacking, but certainly an inside deal, as the New York Times has noted:

People close to [United Nations special] envoy [Lakhdar Brahimi] say the choices, especially that of the prime minister, Iyad Allawi, were essentially negotiated between the United States and the Iraqi Governing Council, which the occupation authorities put together last year.

Brahimi, who was supposed to be the point person in nominating people for positions in the interim government,

had originally hoped to form a government of technocrats - people not associated with the main political parties which dominate the Governing Council,

as the BBC put it. Instead, he was pushed aside and basically ignored by both the IGC, whose members wanted to maintain their own power, and the US, busy with employing "heavy-handed methods ... to ensure that the next government was not hostile to American policies in Iraq" in a process a UN diplomat quoted by the New York Times called "a charade."

(So widely was that pressure applied that the US even put up a fuss over the strictly ceremonial post of president because the Council's favored candidate had sometimes been critical of the US occupation.)

This was even as the pathetic Colin Powerless

insisted that the decision on who will lead Iraq after the handover of power rests with the United Nations.

In fact, Brahimi was left with no greater role than offering after-the-fact approval in a sorry attempt to at least look like he was involved - which is probably why, just two days after the members of the "new" government were named, his representative, Ahmad Fawzi, announced

Brahimi had left Iraq for good and would take no further part in its political transition. ...

Brahimi ... was adamant he would not take on any new role in Iraq.

Demonstrating just how thoroughly Brahimi's role was degraded, the BBC also reports that

Chief US administrator in Iraq Paul Bremer attended Friday's session of the Governing Council and congratulated Mr Allawi on his nomination, AP news agency reported.

The UN says Mr Brahimi was not even in the room when Mr Allawi was named by the IGC.

Before he left, Brahimi indirectly acknowledged the strong US role in the selection, describing L. Paul Bremer as "the dictator or Iraq."

He has the money. He has the signature. Nothing happens without his agreement in this country,

he told reporters. Fawzi said the comment was in jest, but added

he didn't say Bremer acts like a dictator, but the fact is Iraq is occupied and Bremer holds the reins of power, command of the security forces and the purse strings.

He is the only man who issues decrees and he's unelected. What do you call that?

So what does this mean for Iraq? For one thing, the continuation of government lacking in legitimacy in the eyes of the people, most of who can be expected to see this simply as a continuation of the IGC (because essentially, it is), this time headed by a man more connected with US and British intelligence than with Iraq. For that very same reason, the interim government is likely to be seen as an American government and any failings, shortcomings, or abuses will be laid at Washington's doorstep. That is, the "new" government cannot count on having any more popular support - and thus on facing any less popular resistance - than the old one.

On a particular point: Much to the relief of Washington, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani offered what AP called a "tacit endorsement" of the interim regime, but rather than it being any kind of endorsement it would better be said that he declined to oppose it. Instead, he urged it to lobby the Security Council for a resolution declaring full sovereignty that would erase "all traces" of the occupation. He also said that the new government

lacks the "legitimacy of elections" and does not represent "in an acceptable manner all segments of Iraqi society and political forces.

"Nevertheless, it is hoped that this government will prove its efficiency and integrity and show resolve to carry out the enormous tasks that rest on its shoulders," al-Sistani said in a statement...

"The new government should get a clear resolution from the U.N. Security Council restoring sovereignty to Iraqis - a full and complete sovereignty in all its political, economic, military and security forms and endeavor to erase all traces of the occupation," al-Sistani's statement said. ...

Al-Sistani said the new government cannot win popular support unless it proves "through practical and clear steps" that it is sincerely trying to achieve those goals.

The draft resolution before the Security Council falls considerably short of that and considering how much negotiating has gone on just to get the US and the UK to proclaim Iraq's control over its own armed forces and its right to ask the occupying troops to leave, the chances that any redrafted resolution would do better are very slim.

I suspect that Sistani, whose political skills seem to be repeatedly underestimated, knows that. By laying out doubts about the new government's legitimacy while suggesting ways it could establish it, he's left himself plenty of room to maneuver in either direction. Sistani, no doubt fully aware of his influence, is cautious in how he uses it, which is to his credit but also to his benefit. To mix a metaphor, his star, temporarily eclipsed by Moqtada al-Sadr's nova, is again in the ascendancy. To really mangle the metaphor, the US (and the re-formed IGC) had better hope it keeps shining on them.

Footnote: Oh my I must be getting on. I completely forgot to mention that there is one real change in the government: Ahmed Chalabi and his cohorts are nowhere to be seen. How do you think that was engineered?

It's just as well for him, though, since according to the BBC in October, 2002, he "discounted the possibility he will take a role in any future government." So he should be relieved and happy now.

I also intended to make the snarky remark that the one advantage of a new old - or is that old new - government is that it resolves the concern about the interim government's lack of legislative authority, since these folks are unlikely to want to go around overruling what they themselves did.

Jeopardy!

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is claustrophobic?

DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
From "C" to Shining "C" for $2000

He was twice prime minister or France before he was elected president in 1995.

Take it for what it's worth

Doug Thompson, publisher of the online journal "Capitol Hill Blue," writes on June 4 that

President George W. Bush's increasingly erratic behavior and wide mood swings has the halls of the West Wing buzzing lately as aides privately express growing concern over their leader’s state of mind.

In meetings with top aides and administration officials, the President goes from quoting the Bible in one breath to obscene tantrums against the media, Democrats and others that he classifies as "enemies of the state."

Worried White House aides paint a portrait of a man on the edge, increasingly wary of those who disagree with him and paranoid of a public that no longer trusts his policies in Iraq or at home.

"It reminds me of the Nixon days," says a longtime GOP political consultant with contacts in the White House. "Everybody is an enemy; everybody is out to get him. That's the mood over there."

Now, personally, I'm taking this with some salt, I'm just not sure if it should be a grain or a pound. Capitol Hill Blue's website declares "Because nobody's life, liberty or property is safe while Congress is in session," a standard slogan of the libertarian right, and its own FAQs indicate that the stories as often as not are ones that couldn't get published elsewhere (perhaps for being inadequately sourced?), written by reporters who celebrate their absolute cynicism and a commitment to the notion that everybody but everybody in government is a no-good thieving liar. So I do wonder how much of this is just a case of making too much out of too little.

In fact, I regard Thompson as in the Drudge category, one who is rather too willing to accept rumor as fact. And I find it curious that in his own online bio he makes no reference to the time he spent as a staffer in Ronald Reagan's White House.

Some people would say that background makes his assertions more credible. Me, the whole thing makes me reach for the salt shaker.

But read the whole thing anyway. Just in case.

The beginning of the blame game?

CNN reports the The Big Dick Cheney has been "interviewed" by investigators looking into the outing of Valerie Plame after her husband, Joseph Wilson, after the latter revealed the "Niger-Iraq uranium connection" to be bogus. Towards the bottom of the article it says

senior members of the White House communications and political operations discussed how the administration should respond, administration sources tell CNN.

But these sources have characterized the conversations as routine - comparable to daily discussions about how to respond to administration critics in Congress or the political arena, and they have insisted there was no White House-sanctioned plan to leak the identity of Wilson's wife as retaliation for his criticism.

The White House has denied any sanctioned effort to reveal that Wilson's wife was a CIA operative, and also has said that Cheney's chief of staff Lewis Libby and top Bush political operative Karl Rove have individually told senior White House officials they had no role in the leak.

I couldn't help but note the repeated insistence on the word "sanctioned." There was no "sanctioned" effort. Not that there was no effort, but no "sanctioned" effort.

I suspect that the White House is laying the groundwork for throwing some perhaps yet to be determined low-level staffers to the wolves, some "rogue elements" or "bad apples" who are to blame. No, wait, that's not right, these are still White House staffers, they'd think, not grunts in Iraq, and that would hit a little too close to home. "Misguided individuals" with "understandable but misguided zeal" to "protect the president" from "partisan attacks." That's more like it.

Meanwhile, Shrub and the Shrubberies can posture grandly about how they would never "sanction" such a thing.

Something else I couldn't help but do was picture Marlon Brando as Don Corleone, stroking his chin after being told at a meeting of his capos that "this Wilson guy" had become a "problem," and saying that he couldn't "sanction" a hit on Wilson's family.

Sover- Sovereign- Could you spell that, please?

The closer we get to June 30, the weirder the definition of "full" becomes.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell has insisted that US forces in Iraq will remain under American control after the 30 June handover of sovereignty. ...

Asked if the new government could veto a US operation, Mr Powell told a news conference with Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel: "Obviously, we would take into account whatever they might say at a political and military level."

But he said that ultimately, "US forces remain under US command and will do what is necessary to protect themselves,"

reported the BBC on May 26. A few days later, Powell repeated the assertion, according to Reuters.

"There could be a situation where we have to act and there may be a disagreement, and we have to act to protect ourselves or to accomplish a mission," Powell told the Dubai-based Middle East Broadcasting Center in an interview aired last on Wednesday,

while at the same time insisting the interim Iraqi government would be "fully sovereign." (Emphasis added.)

Indeed, as the June 2 New York Times notes,

according to a second draft of an American and British resolution for the United Nations Security Council on Iraqi sovereignty, circulated among Council members on Tuesday night, the United States security mandate would extend to December 2005,

a time, by the current timetable, months after a constitution had been approved and a permanent government put in place.

Fully sovereign - but unable to control the actions of 160,000 foreign troops on its soil, troops that remain free to "accomplish missions" of their own choosing. Liars.

There's more. The Times goes on to say that

[c]onfusion over sovereignty extends beyond military matters to questions of legal immunity for Americans, accounting practices, treatment of prisoners and oversight of government ministries.

Americans in the military and in private business now enjoy immunity from criminal prosecution and liability in Iraq. But some lawyers say the issue will have to be renegotiated once sovereignty is restored.

In addition, American officials say from 110 to 160 American advisers will be layered through Iraq's ministries, in some cases on contracts signed by the occupation, extending into the period after June 30.

Another serious and possibly bigger issue is the status of laws passed by the now-dissolved Iraqi Governing Council.

[L]imits on the new government's powers are laid down in a transitional law passed by the Governing Council in March.

This mandates the government to organise elections to be held by January and run day-to-day affairs, but not to pass new laws or alter the transitional law itself,

says Reuters on June 3. While most attention has focused on those laws' provisions for minority religious and cultural rights, they also include - more, I expect, to the interest of the White House - privatization of all industries other than oil, strict limits on taxation, barring of restrictions on foreign investments, and freedom from liability for those investors.

Meanwhile, AP said on Friday,

[t]he latest draft [Security Council] resolution - the third in less than two weeks - also spelled out the limits on the new government's activities, barring it from taking "any actions affecting Iraq's destiny" beyond the seven months it will be in power.

You can count on the US to maintain that the signing of any long-term contracts that might possibly in some way however small to be of benefit to the Iraqis rather than the transnational corporations setting their hooks on the land is such an "action."

Update: In the latest draft of the proposed Security Council resolution, the US and the UK have made the concession that the interim government will be able to have "coalition" forces leave Iraq if it so desires. Previous versions would have expressed the Council's "readiness" to end the US mandate before its expiration in early 2006; this one says the Council "will terminate" that mandate if the "sovereign government of Iraq" asks it to.

But since this comes after a fawning speech by new prime minister Iyad Allawi - accurately described by AP as "a longtime exile with close ties to the CIA and State Department but with little popular support in Iraq" - in which he said withdrawal of US-led troops would be a "major disaster," I can't think it means much.

Jeopardy!

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is chic?

DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
From "C" to Shining "C" for $1200

You probably avoid elevators if you're this type of person who fears being in a closed space.

...and drink up!

The Energy Department wants the authority to decide how to handle millions of gallons of radioactive waste generated in the course of making nuclear weapons, the New York Times says on June 1.

The DOE says it can cut significant time and money off the cleanup if it left the waste in aging steel tanks and covered those with a grout. Unfortunately for the department, that's illegal: A 1982 federal law requires deep burial, as a US District Court in Idaho ruled last year.

So what does the DOE do? Just what you'd expect: It wants to change the rules.

At the behest of the pollution-lovers, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) introduced an amendment to the military authorization bill to give the DOE the authority to do what it now can't: decide how much of the waste can be left permanently in the tanks.

The method, however, is inadequate.

At the Savannah River Site, near Aiken, S.C., the Energy Department has already grouted two tanks. Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, who has been studying environmental problems at Savannah River since the 1980's, said in a statement: "There is no experience with grout that can allow containment projections of this magnitude. On the contrary, experience with grout so far has been unsatisfactory."

He said that if 10 percent of the strontium-90, a prominent radioactive material in the tanks, was left behind and the tanks were grouted, leakage could not rise more than one part in 100,000 per year for a century, or underground water supplies would be contaminated above the current federal drinking water standards.

But what do they care? They probably drink imported spring water, anyway.

Footnote One: The DOE is putting on its "wounded innocent" face, arguing how upset it is that because the deep-burial site in Yucca Mountain in Nevada is at best years away from being ready, the federal court ruling has left it unable to proceed with any cleanup.

Liars. There's nothing to prevent them from using grout or some other method to improve the safety of the existing containers while Yucca Mountain is prepared; indeed, if they offered this as a temporary measure to reduce the risk of contamination until then, they likely would have had no opposition. But this was proposed as an alternative to deep burial, one that would have saved bucks by increasing the long-term risk, deferring the bill past a time they would have to pay it.

Footnote Two: Senator James M. Inhofe (R-OK) said the amendment would allow the Energy Department "to pursue the best plan to dispose of this nuclear material," calling it "safe" and "well-thought-out."

Inhofe is not only the scumbag who said he was "outraged by the outrage" over Abu Ghraib, he's also the jerk who at an international conference on climate change declared the Kyoto protocol to be "inconsistent with freedom" and said "I'm becoming more and more convinced ... that global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people and the world." I'll leave it to you to decide is his environmental counsel is one on which we should rely.

Breathe deep...

One sentence from the New York Times for May 31 says it all with regard to the state of the air at many national parks.

On many summer mornings, the air above the asphalt in Philadelphia, New York or Washington is healthier than the air around Clingman's Dome [in Great Smoky Mountains National Park], where ridges rise to 6,643 feet.

The problem is a combination of air pollution, haze, and ozone. The Bush administration's solution is all smoke and mirrors.

In 1977, Congress passed a law to reduce haze in national parks with the goal of clean air by 2064,

and a Clinton-era version of the regulation set up a decade-by-decade schedule for improvements. No park was to be left in the haze. The new strategy, [environmentalists] argue, compromises that basic goal by allowing trading of pollution credits and averaging of air quality improvements among various parks.

Putting that bluntly, as long as some places improve, others can get worse while the pollution-lovers brag about all the "progress" they've made in "cleaning the air."

[John] Stanton[, a lawyer with Clear the Air,] said Congress has said that each park "is such a special place that it must be cleared up." He added, "Congress didn't say the E.P.A. can pick and choose, or let the market decide."

But picking and choosing, apparently, is exactly what the White House wants to do, while at the same time offering power plants a 14-year exemption from the haze rule if they comply with a different set of rules about interstate drift of pollutants, rules that unlike the haze rules do not require the use of best available technology in improving older plants.

The EPA says this is both tough and practical, arguing that there is "significant overlap" between the sources of emissions controlled by the two proposals.

I say it's like telling drivers they can go though stop signs if they agree to stop at red lights.

Footnote: The TVA must have hired out-of-work PR agents from the tobacco industry.

John Shipp, the authority's vice president of environmental policy and planning, said that the T.V.A. plant emissions are not necessarily a source of park haze.

"You can't say any particular source contributes some percentage to haze or ozone in any particular place," he said.

Can't you just hear echoes of tobacco executives saying you can't blame smoking for cancer because it's impossible to say what caused any particular case?

Passing thought prompted by the preceding

White House officials have insisted that the "abuses" ("torture," being, it seems, the treatment that dare not speak its name) at Abu Ghraib were the work of a few bad apples.

Isn't it just amazing, truly a coincidence worthy of Ripley, that in the entire structure of the US armed forces, that handful of no-goodniks all wound up in the same place?

Been there, done that

According to an unpublished US Army report from last November,

[h]undreds of Iraqi prisoners were held in Abu Ghraib prison for long periods even though there was no evidence that they posed a security threat to US forces....

[Major-General Donald] Ryder, the army's provost marshal, reported that some Iraqis had been held for months for nothing more than expressing "displeasure or ill will" towards the US occupying forces.

The report, obtained by the New York Times, was submitted to Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez, the senior American commander in Iraq.

This comes as no surprise; after all, the scathing report by the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) included the statement that observers were told by US intelligence that 70-90 percent of Iraqi detainees were arrested by mistake. And, the Times story makes clear, one a detainee was labeled a "security risk" it was very hard to get that changed.

In one incident described in detail by the senior Army officer, an aggressive roundup in September brought 57 Iraqis into custody. But a review by military intelligence officers at Abu Ghraib determined that only two had intelligence value and that the rest should be freed.

An American general at the headquarters in Baghdad overruled that decision, and dictated that all 57 Iraqis be kept in custody.

In addition, the officer said, early judgments about who was a security prisoner were often made in haste and in error. "But once they were tagged as security detainees, it was very hard to get them released," said the officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of concern over retribution from superiors.

It also should be no surprise to longtime readers here, as I referred to several instances of people being arrested simply for being insufficiently enthusiastic about the occupation back on November 21.

Footnote: There is no link to the report on the ICRC website because, as the group points out, it was supposed to be confidential. However, it has acknowledged that "it is our report."

Jeopardy!

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is the Korean War?

DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
From "C" to Shining "C" for $400

This word for stylish or elegant can describe an outfit or a restaurant.

Blows against the empire

AP reports on June 3 that a draft report by a review panel established by the Miami-Dade (Florida)County Commission has accused police of "unrestrained and disproportionate use of force" against protestors whose civil rights were trampled during demonstrations against an international trade conference last November.

While offering the usual assurances that "the vast majority" of Miami-Dade County officers acted "in a professional manner under trying circumstances," the draft

offered "heartfelt apologies to the visitors who came to our city to peaceably voice their concerns, but who were met with closed fists instead of open arms."

The city's deployment of massive force against peaceful demonstrations became known as "the Miami model" and some saw even it as a "model for homeland defense." But in the words of Jorge Reynardus, the panel' chair, the report is

a comment on what we saw overall. And some of what we saw is shocking and deplorable.

The panel, unfortunately, has no power to act, but it can make recommendations about future policy.

The problem I see with these sorts of panels, welcome as this report is, is that they are always, if you will, after the fact, that is, always about reading the past and not about affecting the future. Abuses, violence, violations of rights, it's done and done and then we have reports laying out what was done and done and yet except under the most unusual and extreme circumstances there are no consequences to the guilty. Police departments are, rather, admonished to be more careful, more respectful, to not do it again, they gripe and complain that they're being treated unfairly and the investigators "don't understand that we risk our lives every day," a few policies supposedly get changed - and when the next time it happens all over again, we have more commissions, more reports, and more no consequences.

If it's actually going to change, there must be consequences. But as long as the guilty officers walk free, as long as the police chief and mayor remain at their posts, there are no consequences. And no consequences, ultimately, means no change.

The police, for their part, had no comment; undoubtedly they're checking with their PR experts first.

You should have read the fine print

"Stop-loss" is originally a term referring to a kind of instruction to a broker regarding an investment. If the value of a stock fell to a certain point below the purchase price, the broker was to sell it off, thus preventing further loss to the investor.

But right now, it's best-known meaning is a military one.

Washington (AP, June 2) - The Army will prevent soldiers in units set to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan from leaving the service at the end of their terms, a top general said Wednesday.

The announcement, an expansion of an Army program called "stop-loss," means that thousands of soldiers who had expected to retire or otherwise leave the military will have to stay on for the duration of their deployment to those combat zones.

The expansion affects units that are 90 days away or less from deploying, said Lt. Gen. Frank L. "Buster" Hagenbeck, the Army's deputy chief of staff for personnel.

Since such deployments can be for as long as a year, that means some soldiers will be kept in uniform for as long as 15 months after their supposed end of service.

The argument that it's intended to "keep units together as they deploy" is fooling no one; the real reason is that between Iraq and Afghanistan, the military has a total of about 150,000 combat troops in the field and the Pentagon is finding it hard to keep up the numbers. Allowing for rotations of units in and out of theater has stretched forces enough that 3,600 US troops are being redeployed from South Korea to Iraq - that's about 1/3 of the US force in Korea.

Some voices are calling the program contrary to the idea of an all-volunteer army and a "backdoor draft." For example,

[i]n an opinion piece in Wednesday's New York Times, Andrew Exum, a former Army captain who served under Hagenbeck in the 10th Mountain Division in Afghanistan, called the treatment of soldiers under stop-loss programs "shameful." ...

"[L]ike draftees, they have been conscripted to meet the additional needs in Iraq."

(Does that mean if they were draftees this would be okay?)

There's no reason to be surprised at this development, actually, and little basis to complain. "Military necessity" is used to trump all other considerations, just like it always has. Besides, our only president has made direct links between World War II ("the good war") and the "war on terrorism." Well, in WW2, soldiers were regarded as being "in for the duration," that is, until the war was over or they were disabled or killed. So what's the beef here? Don't you know there's a war on?

There's only one solution here, and it's not a stop-loss program and it's not a renewed draft.

It's set the damn date and get the hell out.

As if we didn't know

CBS News has obtained tapes of Enron energy traders laughing and gloating among themselves over the California energy crisis that they created and then profited from by manipulating supplies and prices in the wake of California's deregulation of its energy market. They even celebrated when a massive forest fire shut down a transmission line into the state, cutting supplies and raising prices still further. "Burn, baby, burn. That's a beautiful thing," a trader is heard to say.

The tapes, from Enron's West Coast trading desk, also confirm what CBS reported years ago: that in secret deals with power producers, traders deliberately drove up prices by ordering power plants shut down.

"If you took down the steamer, how long would it take to get it back up?" an Enron worker is heard saying.

"Oh, it's not something you want to just be turning on and off every hour. Let's put it that way," another says.

"Well, why don't you just go ahead and shut her down."

The traders are clearly heard taking what can be most politely described as perverse glee in the rolling blackouts, crushing utility bills, and economic disruption they caused - and knew they were causing - as Enron "steals money from California ... to the tune of a million bucks or two a day," as one estimated.

One trader is heard on tapes obtained by CBS News saying, "Just cut 'em off. They're so fucked. They should just bring back fucking horses and carriages, fucking lamps, fucking kerosene lamps."

And when describing his reaction when a business owner complained about high energy prices, another trader is heard on tape saying, "I just looked at him. I said, 'Move.' (laughter) The guy was like horrified. I go, 'Look, don't take it the wrong way. Move. It isn't getting fixed anytime soon."

(The CBS story printed it as "f----d" and "f-----g." I filled in the blanks.)

The CBS report ends by noting that "the only top company official who has never been charged with any crime" is Ken "Kenny Boy, uh, I mean who?" Lay.

Footnote: The estimable Tom Tomorrow at This Modern World had a link to this story, at the end of which he said

[o]kay, John Kerry - that one has just been delivered to you gift wrapped with a lovely bow.

Well, here's what I think Kerry will do with the story:

Zilch.

Nothing. Nil. Nada. Zippo. Bupkis.

People, get a clue. Corporate America is not a force John Kerry wants to attack, it's a force he wants to be friends with. He has gone out of his way to reassure the corporatist types of the DLC and elsewhere that he is not a "redistributionist Democrat" and that they can feel safe and comfortable with a Kerry presidency. Based on his own campaign's website, his economic policy is little more than standard bromides about "protecting the middle class" (through tax cuts), "creating jobs" (through corporate tax cuts), and "unleash[ing] the productive potential of America's economy," lathered with a little populist rhetoric about "making corporate America live by America's values" which, it turns out, means nothing beyond enforcing existing law. You would be hard pressed to find anything that indicates that corporations need any additional controls.

Even when he talks tough about changing the tax system that favors corporations that maintain overseas bank accounts, he does it in the context of arguing that the resulting increase in revenue can be used to cut the overall corporate tax rate.

It's one thing to say "Enron" as sort of a generic term for corporate misdeeds, it's quite another to go after them directly and explicitly in a way that takes on the very ideas of "the free market" (Wasn't that, when you come right down to it, what California was?) and "deregulation," which was, after all and despite our persistent amnesia about it, what allowed for the debacle in the first place.

So I expect John Kerry to do absolutely nothing with this news.

Go ahead John, shoot me down. I'd be delighted.

Footnote to the footnote: In fairness - sometimes I hate being fair, it can really screw up a developing rant - actually enforcing the law would be a change for the better, if it actually were to happen. (A big "if," admittedly.) And Kerry does support an increase in the minimum wage, a standard Democratic Party position, and, more importantly, indexing it to inflation, which is generally anathema to Big Business. How important that is depends on how big an increase he's looking for and on what measure on inflation to which he would index it, but still, it's something.

Anytime now, they'll expect us to salivate at the sound of a bell

This is an AP wire service story from the morning of June 2.

San Antonio - Two propane-delivery trucks were stolen from a gas company over the holiday weekend, raising fears of what could happen if terrorists got hold of the explosive fuel.

Police Chief Albert Ortiz said Tuesday that his department does not suspect that terrorism was behind the thefts. But officials said that since Sept. 11, such a possibility cannot be ignored.

"Four years ago, we probably would not be too concerned about this," San Antonio FBI agent Patrick Patterson said Wednesday on NBC's "Today." "It would be a major theft and handled like any other criminal investigation. Because of the nature of the day, we are very, very concerned about the whereabouts of these two trucks."

One of the tankers carried about 3,000 gallons of propane, while the other held 2,600 gallons, police said. The trucks were taken from a parking lot owned by Ferrellgas and have the company logo on them.

Another FBI spokesman, Rene Salinas, said the market for propane in Mexico is strong and that the thieves could have been filling an order, mirroring a similar theft about nine months ago. A nationwide alert has been posted and law enforcement officials in Mexico also have been contacted, he said.

"We don't want to alarm anyone," Salinas said. "But we do want people to be on the lookout."

Also under investigation is the weekend theft of 15 gas canisters from an ambulance supply company.

"We think it is just a coincidence at this point," said Ortiz, who appeared at a Tuesday news conference.

He said five of the stolen canisters were empty, but others contained nitrous oxide, carbon dioxide and oxygen.

Patterson said the theft of the canisters was unusual and they could be used for improvised explosive devices.

So be afraid. Except, well, don't, it's okay. Probably. But be afraid anyway, just in case. Even though it's okay. Although maybe it's not.

Oh, and something else happened. But it has nothing to do with the first something. Except maybe it does. But it's nothing to be afraid of, except if it is. So don't not be unafraid when you shouldn't. Maybe.

Footnote: The trucks were reported found Wednesday afternoon. Latest news as this is written says police can't say if the propane fuel was still in the trucks or not.

Wisdom from an unexpected source

In a piece published in the Washington Post on June 1, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf writes

[w]e need to understand that the root cause of extremism and militancy lies in political injustice, denial and deprivation. Political injustice to a nation or a people, when combined with stark poverty and illiteracy, makes for an explosive mix. It produces an acute sense of hopelessness and powerlessness. A nation suffering from these lethal ills is easily available for the propagation of militancy and the perpetration of extremist, terrorist acts. It is cannon fodder in a war of terrorism.

General Musharraf is a man whose own commitment to democracy and justice is certainly questionable at best, but here I think he is spot on and saying something that desperately needs saying.

January 5, 2002, in the aftermath of 9/11, I wrote this:

The fact is, terrorism can't be stopped unless it is understood - any more than you can cure a disease without knowing the cause. Terrorism is born of desperation-driven fanaticism, a desperation that can't be separated from the social and economic conditions in which such as al-Qaeda can take root and grow, conditions - it must be said bluntly - which we as a nation are complicit in maintaining for our own selfish benefit.

Together, all this means three things:

One, unless we are prepared to wipe out entire peoples, our "war against terrorism" will not succeed. It will only produce more anger, more hatred, more suicide bombers; the more so as it spreads to more poor nations.

Two, patient police work of effective investigation and intelligence has done and will do more to oppose terrorism than all our bombing sorties combined. ...

Three and most importantly, our best targets for "attack" in this "extended campaign" are not the actual terrorists (who likely number no more than a few thousand) but the tens of thousands, the millions, of denigrated, degraded, and denied people among who they recruit and from who they draw their strength. Our best weapons are bread and butter, not bombs; our best tactic reconstruction, not retaliation; our best strategy justice, not jingoism. The best way for us to fight terrorism is to ensure that the dispossessed have a genuine stake in the world and don't see us as grasping bullies - and the best way to no longer be seen as a grasping bully is to stop being one

I still think so.

Footnote: Musharraf's entire piece, in which he calls on

the Muslim world to shun militancy and extremism and adopt the path of socioeconomic uplift ... [and] the West, and the United States in particular, to seek to resolve all political disputes with justice and to aid in the socioeconomic betterment of the deprived Muslim world,

is worth reading.

Jeopardy!

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is the Spanish-American War?

JEOPARDY!
America at War for $1000

The fiftieth anniversay of this Asian conflict often called "The Forgotten War" was observed nationally July 27, 2000.

The revolving door of return

Once again, the troops are arriving in Haiti, this time a cobbled-together UN force to take over from the US-led force that nailed down the overthrow of Jean Betrand Aristide. Once again, the talk is of "long-term commitment," of "restoring democracy," of disarming violent factions.

And once again the fact is that it is set up to fail.

Port-au-Prince - UN peacekeepers are returning to Haiti once again, but with many of the problems that plagued their last mission here - uncertainty about troop numbers and funding, a hazy mandate and no commitment to long-term aid. ...

Bright flags of about two dozen participating nations dot empty barracks at the airport but only samples of the blue UN hats and berets have arrived ahead of a Tuesday handover.

It was still unclear Monday even where the mission's headquarters would be, said Adama Guindo, a UN representative heading the mission until a permanent one is appointed.

So reports the Toronto Globe & Mail for June 1, which goes on to say that the UN mission

will again try to keep a tentative peace in the divided country, and again train an ill-equipped and understaffed police force, as well as work on development projects.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has asked member nations to make a long-term commitment to transform Haiti - which has suffered more than 30 coups in 200 years - into "a functioning democracy." But only a fraction of the $35-million (U.S.) he requested has arrived and the mission mandated by the U.N. Security Council remains at six months.

And the commitment to actually putting a stop to the violence that continues to oppress the many in favor of the few remains at the level of words, not actions.

Ex-soldiers are among leaders of several rebel factions that joined forces this year to oust Aristide again. Some boast that they carry the guns that never were taken from them nearly 10 years ago.

There was no difference this time round. The Americans did little about disarmament.

The question must be asked: Who does that mismatch of rhetoric and reality benefit?

Footnote Noted in Passing: From the BBC for May 31:

Ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide has arrived in South Africa, ending a two-and-a-half-month exile in Jamaica.

He said South Africa would be his "temporary home" until he can return to his country, Haiti.

The BBC's Victoria Phenethi in South Africa says that Mr Aristide was given a red-carpet treatment by President Thabo Mbeki and other officials.

Last time he was booted by the reactionaries, I had some hope that he would return, as eventually he did, after being politically eviscerated by the US and before being economically undermined by elites at home and abroad. This time, I think he's gone for good. They know better than to take another chance on him, knowing he will not roll over, at least not easily.

There is no question but that Aristide could have done better, that he could have made compromises he refused to make, that he failed to maintain the ideals he set for himself and others - that he was not an entirely innocent victim. But there is also no question that he was far more sinned against that sinning, far more, if you will, victim than executioner.

Just askin'

Georgie the Bush has insisted he had nothing to do with picking Ghazi Mashal Ajil al-Yawir as president, or Iyad Allawi as prime minister, of Iraq.

"I had no role. I mean, occasionally somebody said: 'This person may be interested' or that, but I had no role in picking - zero."

Well, yeah, okay, maybe. But did Wolfowitz? Did Feith? Did Cheney? Did Bremer?

A bit old but still much worth noting

"Joy and relief" was the response to the signing of a deal that hopefully will lead to the end of a vicious civil war that has gone on for over 20 years and left two million dead in Sudan, said the BBC for May 27.

There were scenes of jubilation at the signing in Naivasha, Kenya, late on Wednesday evening as last-minute delays were overcome after two years of discussions. ...

The deal involved protocols on power-sharing and the administration of three disputed areas in central Sudan. ...

The framework brings together the mainly Muslim Arab government of the north with the black African Christian and animist rebels of the south.

The heart of the pact is that the south will be autonomous for six years, including with its own monetary system, with a vote on independence at the end of that time. Meanwhile, the north will continue to be ruled under Sharia law, a strict interpretation of Islamic law.

Toward that end, agreements have been reached on distribution of government jobs, the sharing of oil revenues, and security arrangements involving the respective armies. Supposedly, all that remains to put and end to the bloodshed are procedural details.

But it's said that every dark cloud has a silver lining. If that's so, does it also imply that every silver cloud has a dark lining? For in this case, hope has a dark side and it's name is Darfur. Yes, that Darfur, the one the executive director of Amnesty International called the case human rights violations most in need of being addressed.

Darfur, in the western part of the country, has been the target of a vicious campaign of "ethnic-based murder, rape and forcible displacement of civilians," carried out by government forces and its allied Arab militias known as "Janjaweed." One million people have been driven from their homes.

Those charges by Human Rights Watch, made in an April report, are echoed by a UN report of May 7, which found "appalling" conditions amid a "reign of terror."

One aid worker in Kailek described what happened there as the "politics of starvation". ...

Members of the UN team were said to be "visibly shaken" by circumstances in the town.

The fear among some is that the peace settlement between north and south will allow the government to shift military forces and resources against Darfur. Ominously, Sudan vice president Ali Osman Taha told a rally celebrating the peace accord that

[o]ne of the first fruits of peace will be the extinguishing of the conflict in Darfur....

We will begin tomorrow to focus our efforts, to turn over the page of war in Darfur as the page of conflict and killing was turned over in the south.

While some may take comfort in his linking of moves to peace between north and south with Darfur, I find it hard to find such solace in the words of someone who in the present situation uses the word "extinguish."

Jeopardy!

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is a doughboy?

JEOPARDY!
America at War for $600

As a result of this war, America gained the islands of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.

The fat lady ain't sung quite yet

I suppose it ain't over until it's actually over.

Hong Kong, May 30 (New York Times) - Thousands of demonstrators marched here on Sunday afternoon to mark the coming 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown and to protest the growing restrictions on this territory's democratic development. It was the first rally in what promises to be a politically turbulent summer.

Under leaden skies and in tropical humidity, the crowd marched from a palm-fringed park to the main government offices, carrying black banners and a black coffin representing the deaths of students in Beijing on June 4, 1989. Organizers estimated the crowd at 5,600 people, while the police said "more than 3,000" had taken part.

At the end of March, I noted that in the words of one activist, "a gloom is settling over the city" as Chinese officials began to crack down on signs of dissent. That gloom deepened recently with the sudden resignations and departures of three radio talk show hosts who had been advocates of democracy, who, the Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor contends, were targeted by threats encouraged by Chinese officials.

However, despite rumors of troubles,

the march proceeded peacefully down broad avenues lined with onlookers.

There are still great and increasing difficulties facing democracy advocates in Hong Kong (and even more on the mainland), not the least of which is a law under which organizers of a demonstration can be held personally liable for any damage that occurs during its course, making the expense of taking out large liability policies a financially-burdensome necessity, one which so far has prevented planning for a rally intended for July 1, the anniversary of the transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong from the UK to China.

But apparently, despite all, the movement is carrying on as best as it can. All power to them.

It ain't just us

The practice of the WHS* to punish anyone who crosses them is not limited to such as Paul O'Neill and Richard Clarke. It extends internationally as well.

In the wake of the failure of the April vote on a proposal for the "reunification" of Cyprus (the word is put in quotes deliberately) - a proposal the US supported - comes this from the Greek daily Kathimerini for May 27:

The news that Washington is planning measures to help the Turkish Cypriots break out of their isolation and to upgrade US relations with their breakaway state have provoked concern in Athens and Nicosia. At the same time, they are waiting for UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's report to the Security Council, which has already been written by his special envoy for Cyprus, Alvaro de Soto, and is said to include criticism of Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos [who opposed the plan].

The UN plan would have continued the existence of two separate parts of Cyprus, one Greek, one Turkish, in a confederation united by a weak central government. For Greek Cypriots, who have seen the northern one-third of the island occupied by Turkish troops for decades, that simply wasn't good enough.

In the runup to the vote, the US pledged $400 million in support of the UN plan for reunification, but only if the plan was approved, adding it would not leave Turkish Cypriots "out in the cold" in the event the plan fell through.

At the time, the message to Greek Cypriots seemed clear enough: Do it our way or you're screwed. They didn't. Now it seems it will be time for the screwing to begin.

*White House Sociopaths

Footnote: It actually doesn't mean a damn thing, really, and it counts all the Jeopardy! posts and the like, but I just realized via Blogspot's Dashboard that this is post number 1,000. Like I said, it doesn't mean anything, but as the late great Stephen Jay Gould noted, we do like those round numbers, don't we?

Fourth down

I've thought over and over about this and it still makes no sense to me at all. None at all. From the Christian Science Monitor for May 25:

Washington - The US Supreme Court has handed an important victory to law-enforcement officials, ruling that police don't need a warrant to search a car when the person they've arrested was recently in the car.

The 7-to-2 decision, announced Monday, is a setback to civil libertarians who see it as further erosion of Fourth Amendment privacy rights whenever Americans take to the nation's roads and highways.

I mentioned this case about two months ago. It involves one Marcus Thornton, who was approached by a suspicious police officer after Thornton had parked at a shopping center and gotten out of his car. He was discovered to have cocaine and was arrested. The officer then searched his car, found a gun under the seat, and added a weapons charge. The latter, based on the warrantless search, was what was at issue in the case.

The opinion expands a bright-line constitutional rule governing when police are allowed to conduct a warrantless search of a motor vehicle after arresting the driver. The high court said that such warrantless searches are justified whenever the arrestee was a recent occupant and still in the vicinity of the car.

"Once an officer determines that there is probable cause to make an arrest, it is reasonable to allow officers to ensure their safety and to preserve evidence by searching the entire passenger compartment," writes Chief Justice William Rehnquist for the majority.

Dammit, just how in hell is their safety threatened by something in, just how is it possible for evidence to be lost from, a car over there when the suspect is under arrest over here? This is beyond absurd and does not stand up to the most basic logical examination. These aren't reasons, they are excuses, justifications, and vapid ones at that, for allowing police increasingly to make our streets, our highways, our cars, a "No Fourth Amendment Zone."

If you want to know just how inane this is, consider that the issue at hand was a so-called "bright line rule" as to when such a search was constitutional. Previous decisions have held that if "contact was initiated" while the driver is still in the car, it becomes the "immediate vicinity" of an arrest, which can be searched. Now we have a supposedly "bright line" rule that uses terms like "recently," "vicinity," and "reasonable."

That sort of line only looks bright to some real dim bulbs.

Another small victory in the struggle

Ruling in San Francisco on a suit brought by Planned Parenthood, Federal District Court Judge Phyllis Hamilton earlier today threw out the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act as unconstitutional, saying it "poses an undue burden on a woman's right to choose an abortion."

The law, signed in November, banned a procedure called intact dilation and extraction, in which the fetus is partially removed from the womb and its skull punctured. With its typical eye to deceptive rhetoric, opponents insist on calling it "partial-birth abortion." But of course there is no "birth" in any meaningful sense of the term; it is rather, as doctors will point out, a different means of removing the fetus.

Opponents also argue that the procedure is cruel because of the pain the fetus supposedly suffers in the course of the procedure. But there is no evidence the fetus feels pain; in fact, since the brain is the last part to fully develop, it's at most unlikely. The judge, however, refused to get bogged down in that debate, ruling that because of the primacy of the right to choose, it's legally "irrelevant" whether a fetus feels pain or not.

Neither did she put up with a government lawyer's argument that it "blurs the line of abortion and infanticide," calling that "grossly misleading and inaccurate."

The decision affects some 900 Planned Parenthood clinics across the country. The case is one of three suits brought against the law; the others, in New York and Nebraska, are expected to be ruled on soon. No matter the outcomes, the matter is likely to be dropped in the lap of the Supreme Court.