 Saturday
Friday
Friday
Friday
Friday
Lit Lounge
Enter for complimentary admission to see Power Solo from
Denmark with Band Antenna, Sea That Dried Up, and Chem Trail at Lit Lounge!
Rasputin
Enter to win dinner and drinks for two at Rasputin Restaurant and Cabaret!
DeVotchKa
Enter to win tickets to see DeVotchKa on Tuesday, May 20th at Terminal 5!
United Artists
Enter to win a 90th Anniversary United Artists DVD prize package!
Iron & Silk
Enter to win 5 personal training sessions at Iron & Silk Fitness!
|
Posted by Harkavy at 3:18 PM, May 7, 2008
High-tech horror: Widespread cell-phone violence against women in Iraq and the Congo.
The downside of the 21st century's high-tech age is lower than you can imagine: Cell phones and cell-phone technology are prime culprits in a growing epidemic of rape, beatings, and murder of women in the Congo and Iraq.
A war over "coltan," a crucial ingredient in the manufacture of cell phones and other electronic devices, has helped cause the ongoing tragedy of rape and murder by the millions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The DRC horrors far outstrip even Darfur as a tragedy, as I noted in June 2005.
Go to Seeing is Believing: Handicams, Human Rights and the News, the website of Czech-Canadian Katerina Cizek's documentary film series of that name, to read "Cell Phones Fuel Congo Conflict." . The series explains how the fight over coltan, only one of the treasures in the resources-rich Congo, is directly responsible for much of the savage war in which millions have died and hundreds of thousands, at the very least, have been raped and otherwise brutalized.
Eve Ensler, famous for the Vagina Monologues, is one of the few Westerners to latch onto the rampage against women in the Congo and try to publicize it. Incongruously, her monologue on the violence, gleaned from a trip there, can be found in Glamour. Here's the second paragraph of Ensler's in-your-face August 2007 article:
How do I tell you of girls as young as nine raped by gangs of soldiers, of women whose insides were blown apart by rifle blasts and whose bodies now leak uncontrollable streams of urine and feces?
Meanwhile, in Iraq, cell phones as finished products are prime weapons — in a high-tech fashion — for brutalizing women.
Amanj Khalil, a young journalist for the Institute for War & Peace Reporting, described on May 2 one recent incident in Iraq's northern Kurdish area:
Salma trusted her boyfriend enough to speak freely with him about romance, love and even sex.
But she has paid a high price for her candour. Salma, who asked that her real name be concealed because of the sensitivity of her story, is hiding in a women’s shelter in the northeastern city of Sulaimaniyah, her body battered and bruised.
Her boyfriend recorded their intimate conversations on his phone and passed them onto her family through a friend when she refused to marry him. Salma’s body still bears the scars of her family’s response. The 28-year-old’s hand was fractured during one of the beatings from her brothers, father and uncles.
“They started to beat me without even letting me speak,” she said. “They beat me so severely that I fainted several times."
Salma's just one of many Iraqi women being brutalized in a high-tech way by lower-than-low scumbags.
It's worse in the Congo. Natural disasters, like the cyclone that ravaged Burma, are one thing. Manmade disasters are another. And no manmade disaster is as unnatural as what's going on in the DRC, surely the rape capital of the world.
Here's a grim fact: In the Congo, "vaginal destruction" has become an official term of medical art used by beleaguered doctors and nurses to describe war-related injuries.
Western governments and the mainstream press usually, but not always, ignore the DRC. (Certainly, Western corporations don't ignore it the country's rich natural resources.) So you have to go elsewhere to find out about the situation. Thanks to the Web, the upside of high-tech, you can.
One of the best pieces, and I've referred to it previously, is Sarah J. Coleman's June 2005 article on Beliefnet, "Congo's Conflict: Heart of Darkness." Her lede is worth repeating:
How do you measure the horror in the Democratic Republic of Congo? Add up all of the American deaths in every single war we've fought in since 1776, including World War II and the Civil War (1,540,665). Now add to that the estimated deaths from the recent tsunami (169,752 confirmed dead, 127,294 missing). Next, add to that the estimated death toll in the conflict in Darfur (400,000). Then, add to that the victims of genocide in Rwanda, one of the most horrific slaughters of the 20th century (937,000).
Add all of the deaths together — and you still have a smaller number than the 3.5 million people who have died in the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) since 1998.
The toll's up to an estimated 5 million now — that's the scope of the Holocaust. Read Stephen Lewis's April 12 speech at Ensler's V-Day Celebration in New Orleans.
Lewis really got down to it in September 2007, quoting from "The Shame of War: Sexual Violence Against Women and Girls in Conflict," a March 2007 major report from IRIN, the U.N.'s excellent and free global news service:
“As a result of the systematic and exceptionally violent gang rape of thousands of Congolese women and girls, doctors in the DRC are now classifying vaginal destruction as a crime of combat. Many of the victims suffer from traumatic fistula — tissue tears in the vagina, bladder, and rectum.
Additional long-term medical complications for survivors may include uterine prolapse (the descent of the uterus into the vagina or beyond) and other serious injuries to the reproductive system, such as infertility, or complications associated with miscarriages and self-induced abortions. Rape victims are also at high-risk for sexually transmitted infections.”
I won't apologize for the graphic nature of this, because we need to face the unexpurgated facts.
The Congo violence is the biggest war tragedy, but of course it's far from the only manmade disaster. Among the many battlegrounds of violence against women is Kurdish Iraq. That northern region of Iraq has long been thought to be the most civilized area of the war-torn country (aside from the increasing number of skirmishes between Turkey and the Kurd separatists). But Salma's story is far from unique.
Here's the intrepid reporter Khalil again to give the broader view of cell-phone-induced violence in Iraq:
Mobile phones have become a new threat to young women’s safety in Iraq’s northern region, members of parliament and women’s rights campaigners warn.
Men are using them to take photos and record audio and video clips of women and girls who are breaking social codes by having sexually explicit conversations or intimate relations with their boyfriends. In many cases, the conversations and videos have been widely distributed, damaging women’s reputations and, in doing so, putting their lives at risk.
In 2007, nearly 350 women were the victims of violence in mobile-phone related cases, according to statistics compiled by women’s organisations and the Sulaimaniyah police directorate. In 2006, 170 cases were recorded.
However, experts believe that the actual number of incidents is much higher.
Can you hear me now?
Posted by Harkavy at 8:49 AM, January 18, 2008
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Bush isn't checking his e-mails. Or maybe he is.
White House
Terrier strike on America: Bush and Barney show plenty of drive while on vacation in Crawford.
While George W. Bush has spent a record amount of time vacationing at his ranch, he hasn't been checking his e-mail. Or maybe his stooges did check it — in the sense of a hockey player checking an opponent by slamming him into the boards and destroying him — and thus prevented that flood of messages from ever seeing the light of day.
The numbers game for America's numbest president are eerie: A report released by watchdog congressman Henry Waxman — judging by his performance, Waxman works 24/7 — reveals that 473 days of White House e-mail are missing. At the same time, Bush is on pace to have spent 499 days on vacation during his two terms. Most of it has been spent hunkering down in his Crawford, Texas, bunker.
The Washington Post's Dan Eggen and Elizabeth Williamson report this morning:
The White House possesses no archived e-mail messages for many of its component offices, including the Executive Office of the President and the Office of the Vice President, for hundreds of days between 2003 and 2005, according to the summary of an internal White House study that was disclosed yesterday by a congressional Democrat.
The 2005 study — whose credibility the White House attacked this week — identified 473 separate days in which no electronic messages were stored for one or more White House offices, said House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.).
Now go back to Julie Mason's story in the August 9, 2007, Houston Post:
President Bush tries to set an example for Americans whenever he can, in terms of physical fitness, faith, optimism and a certain overall moral rectitude. He also sets an excellent example on taking vacation.
Bush left [on August 9] for a weekend in Kennebunkport, Maine, and his family's summer compound, Walker's Point. On Monday, he heads to his Crawford retreat, where he has spent all or part of 418 days of his presidency, according to Mark Knoller, a CBS News White House correspondent and meticulous record-keeper.
Mason's smart story notes Bush's record-breaking non-performance:
The presidential vacation-time record holder is the late Ronald Reagan, who tallied 436 days in his two terms. At 418 days, and with 17 months to go in his presidency, Bush is going to beat that easily.
Even so, this year's August vacation for Bush is a contrast to previous years such as 2005, when he dragged out vacation in Texas to five weeks. That was also the year Bush remained on vacation immediately after Hurricane Katrina hit.
Do the math: Bush had taken 418 days of vacation in his first 6.7 years in office. That works out to 62.4 vacation days a year — a little more than 12 work weeks, which is probably slightly more vacation time than you get. On the other hand, think how much more damage Bush could have done if he hadn't taken so much vacation.
Anyway, multiply 62.4 days a year by eight and you get 499 total days of vacation.
Compare that with the 473 days of e-mail missing. All Bush's handlers have to do to keep pace is destroy 26 more days of e-mails. They can probably handle that.
Posted by Harkavy at 9:19 AM, December 6, 2007
Great news for the war profiteers of Cheney's Halliburton
While you're financing the trillion-dollar Iraq debacle, the execs at Halliburton got some good news today from the United Arab Emirates: The UAE's airline, Emirates, is now offering nonstop service to Houston, Dubai's news service reports.
New York already has three flights daily to Dubai. But why now Houston? Halliburton is moving its headquarters to Dubai. And with that move, huge bundles of taxpayer cash are exiting the U.S.
Now it will be easier for Halliburton's execs to shuttle their money to Dubai.
This great news for Halliburton comes on the heels of its championship performance in the Center for Public Integrity's "Windfalls of War" series. The CPI's Bill Buzenberg compiled a list of the top 100 private contractors in the Iraq and Afghanistan debacles.
KBR, which Halliburton is in the process of spinning off for a huge profit, is by far No. 1 with a bullet. Tallying U.S. government contracts for fiscal years 2004 to 2006, Buzenberg reveals that KBR got $16 billion in contracts.
DynCorp was a rich second at $1.8 billion. Shoot, Blackwater was only 12th, garnering a meager $495 million.
Dick Cheney was getting a salary from Halliburton until last year, and he did well by his company. Halliburton's financial picture was shaky until after 9/11, when the Iraq debacle infused it with these huge bundles of taxpayer money. KBR's success helped its parent finance other operations, and spinning off KBR will profit Halliburton as it sells off its shares of the former subsidiary.
Meanwhile, Halliburton has now planted its big feet where the action is.
And Dubai is just the kind of place that Cheney would like. As I wrote in June, our own State Department has catalogued the UAE's notoriously repressive laws, noting:
"The law permits indefinite routine prolonged incommunicado detention without appeal."
Posted by Harkavy at 9:39 AM, October 24, 2007
The convergence of America's pastimes — religious crackpotism, fast food, and immigration — on America's former pastime
Greeley Tribune Future spiritual godfather of radical Muslims Sayyid Qutb (with Hitlerian mustache) poses in Greeley, Colorado, with college prexy William R. Ross in 1949.
Just wait until the World Series, which opens tonight in Boston, shifts to Denver on Saturday. That's when Jesus and Muhammad — and Sayyid Qutb, the spiritual godfather of Al Qaeda — will join the millions of other viewers.
Colorado's a great setting for what used to be America's pastime. Our country's real manias about fast food, religion, and immigration have strong roots there.
South of Denver lies Colorado Springs, headquarters of Focus on the Family's James Dobson, the godfather of America's religious right-wingers. (See my 1997 story "King James's Version.")
North of Denver is Greeley, the slaughterhouse capital for the fast-food industry. Colorado Rockies owner Charlie Monfort owes his good fortune to his daddy's massive abattoirs in Greeley. The family's cattle feedlots are also the stamping grounds for immigrants brought in to deal with the muck and death. (For inhumane treatment of animals, see this. For inhumane treatment of immigrants who perform this inhumane treatment of animals, see this.)
And in a weird confluence of human and animal slaughter philosophies, Greeley is the town where Sayyid Qutb lived in 1949, where he learned to hate Americans' "immoral" behavior before he returned to the Middle East and became the most influential 20th century thinker for radical schnooks like Osama bin Laden. (See Mike Peters's 2002 Greeley Tribune story "Roots of Terrorism Reach to 1949 Greeley" and Daniel Brogan's 2003 story "Al Qaeda’s Greeley Roots" in the Denver magazine 5280.)
Not that all the strange confluences in Colorado are bad. Northern Colorado is also the home of the amazing Temple Grandin, an ingenious autistic person made famous by Oliver Sacks. Grandin, more attuned to animals than people, revolutionized cattle feedlots by at least making the treatment of cattle more humane before they're slaughtered. Her life story is fascinating — especially the "Squeeze Machine" she invented for herself.
You can't make this shit up — except for Charlie Monfort and his family's cattle feedlots. As Eric Schlosser wrote in Fast Food Nation:
You can smell Greeley, Colorado, long before you can see it. The smell is hard to forget but not easy to describe, a combination of live animals, manure, and dead animals being rendered into dog food. The smell is worst during the summer months, blanketing Greeley day and night like an invisible fog. Many people who live there no longer notice the smell; it recedes into the background, present but not present, like the sound of traffic for New Yorkers. Others can't stop thinking about the smell, even after years; it permeates everything, gives them headaches, makes them nauseous, interferes with their sleep.
The money from Greeley's feedlots wafted down to Denver, enabling Charlie Monfort and his family to buy the Rockies and feed campaign contributions to right-wing religious wackos like Rick Santorum and Tom Tancredo.
As for the Rockies' players themselves, Denver Westword's Michael Roberts pleads, "Please, Don't Play the Jesus Card, Rockies."
Today's timid New York Times article reminds the nation that the Rockies are a Christian team by intelligent design: Monfort is born-again, and General Manager Dan O'Dowd is not only a dedicated Christian but purposely recruits other Christians to be his players.
Bob Nightengale (a former colleague of mine years ago at the Arizona Republic) broke that story nationally in a piece last summer for USA Today. The Times's Ben Shpigel begins his story today with a denial by a Jewish Rockie that the team's Christianity is forced down his throat. Shpigel, in a typical Times skin-back, then notes:
The role of religion within the Rockies’ organization first entered the public sphere in May 2006, when an article published in USA Today described the organization as adhering to a "Christian-based code of conduct" and the clubhouse as a place where Bibles were read and men’s magazines, like Maxim or Playboy, were banned.
The article included interviews with several players and front office members, but team players and officials interviewed this week said it unfairly implied that the Rockies were intent on constructing a roster consisting in large part of players with a strong Christian faith. Asked how his own Christian faith affected his decision-making, General Manager Dan O’Dowd acknowledged it came into play, but not in a religious way. He said it guided him to find players with integrity and strong moral values, regardless of their religious preference.
Yeah, right.
In any case, I hope the Rockies slaughter the Red Sox — religious nuts like Qutb and Dobson notwithstanding.
Posted by Harkavy at 8:45 AM, October 17, 2007
Today's scheduled embrace of the Dalai Lama by George W. Bush represents a major change in foreigner policy by the White House.
Bush's new plan: If you meet the Buddha on the road, get a photo-op with him.
That's a shift from the Blackwater philosophy: If you meet an Iraqi on the road, shoot him.
In any case, plagued by a war that his own regime started, the president has chosen to burnish his image by meeting with a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. No, not Al Gore, who looks as if he's won several pizza prizes since Bush's operatives stole the presidency from him in 2000.
This Nobel winner is Tenzin Gyatso, who was proclaimed the Dalai Lama when he was only two years old and ruled Tibet until China ousted him years ago. Gyatso won the 1989 Nobel prize "for his consistent resistance to the use of violence."
Meanwhile, China is pissed, as the L.A. Times notes this morning:
"We solemnly demand that the U.S. cancel the extremely wrong arrangements," Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi told reporters before the meeting. "It seriously violates the norm of international relations and seriously wounded the feelings of the Chinese people and interfered with China's internal affairs."
Too bad that Hunter S. Thompson, the Dalai Lama's deceased twin, isn't around to write about this absurd face-to-face between two spiritual leaders whose approaches to violence are so different.
Will the peace-loving Buddhist leader have any impact on Bush? It's too late for that. The best we can hope for is that, instead of gonzo pol Karl Rove whispering into Bush's ear, "Stick to principle, stick to principle," this Gyatso pol will whisper, "Stay in the moment, stay in the moment."
It would be nice if he also told Bush, "Don't stay in Iraq, don't stay in Iraq."
Posted by Harkavy at 8:42 AM, October 16, 2007
Bad news on the global terror front: Unstable Pakistan will become even more shaky when its former leader (and Musharraf's enemy) returns home this week.
As Benazir Bhutto prepares to return to Pakistan later this week from her Dubai exile and becomes a target of strongman prick Pervez Musharraf's assassins, we can only recall how tragic it was for the U.S. to pull back from that volatile region more than five years ago.
Back in 2002, the Bush-Cheney regime abandoned the full-fledged hunt for Osama bin Laden and duped Congress and the country into invading Iraq.
Pakistan was where it was at. Bin Laden was hiding there and in neighboring Afghanistan. As the Soviets found out, you can't fight rebels in Afghanistan without somehow, some way also fighting them as they scurry across the border into Pakistan, where they have even government support.
Officials of Pakistan's spy agency, the ISI — widely credited with co-opting the Taliban and, along with the Saudis and Reagan administration, arming them — were sympathetic to bin Laden as long as he didn't destabilize their own country.
Recall that Porter Goss and Bob Graham, chairs of the House and Senate Intelligence committees, were having breakfast on the morning of 9/11 with Mahmood Ahmed, the Pakistani ISI official who later turned out to be hijacker Mohammed Atta's bagman. It was also Ahmed who had sent $100,000 to Atta on orders from the guy who later kidnapped Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. You can't make this shit up.
Yes, we left Pakistan in 2002. Big mistake.
We invaded Iraq. Bigger mistake.
We inflamed the Shia-Sunni schism in Iraq, widening everywhere else that ancient rift between Islam's main sects. Take Pakistan. Unlike in Iraq, the Sunnis are the majority. Please remember that most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis, and despotic monarchy Saudi Arabia is ruled by Sunni fanatics.
There has long been sectarian violence in Pakistan — see this October 2004 BBC backgrounder. Add to that the return to the country of Benazir Bhutto, whose daddy, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was Pakistan's prime minister in the '70s before he was executed by the country's military. Later, Benazir Bhutto — nearly a dead ringer for Andrea Martin/Edith Prickley's version of another South Asia strongwoman, Indira Ghandi — became prime minister, and then she was driven from Pakistan amid corruption charges.
Pakistan was a bigger threat to world stability after 9-11 than Iraq was. Yes, Iraq was a bigger threat to Israel and always a danger to Kuwait, but Pakistan's instability was a much more dangerous threat to the U.S., no matter what the Bush regime's propagandists have drummed into our heads.
Now's the perfect time to recall that the hunt by Musharraf and the ISI for bin Laden was half-hearted at best. Our reaction has been to step up arm sales to Musharraf, as I noted in April 2005.
Don't be surprised if that well-armed Pakistan government sends more Lockheed fighter jets swooping down on Bhutto than it sent to look for bin Laden.
Posted by Harkavy at 8:38 AM, October 8, 2007
Lettuce have your huddled masses: Work force becomes truly globalized.
Beset by an immigration war on one front and just plain war on another front, government officials in the U.S. are frantically seeking more illegals for necessary farm work here and longer stays in Baghdad for shanghaied foreigners to build the unnecessary supermax American embassy.
As Nicole Gaouette of the Los Angeles Times reported yesterday,
With a nationwide farmworker shortage threatening to leave unharvested fruits and vegetables rotting in fields, the Bush administration has begun quietly rewriting federal regulations to eliminate barriers that restrict how foreign laborers can legally be brought into the country.
The effort, urgently underway at the departments of Homeland Security, State and Labor, is meant to rescue farm owners caught in a vise between a complex process to hire legal guest workers and stepped-up enforcement that has reduced the number of illegal planters, pickers and middle managers crossing the border.
Meanwhile in Baghdad, workers from the Philippines and other countries who were shanghaied by U.S.-hired contractors to build the supermax U.S. embassy will probably be roped into staying longer as that project falls behind and its cost soars toward $1 billion. Check out the testimony at intrepid California congressman Henry Waxman's July hearing for details on the shanghai gestures.
Without addressing the issue of the original trickery that landed many of those foreign workers in Baghdad against their will, Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post reported yesterday:
The embassy, which will be the largest U.S. diplomatic mission in the world, was budgeted at $592 million. The core project was supposed to have been completed by last month, but the timetable has slipped so much that the State Department has sought and received permission from the Iraqi government to allow about 2,000 non-Iraqi construction employees to stay in the country until March.
As I wrote on August 8:
Shanghaied to build to the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. Working on the construction site without safety equipment — or even shoes. The story of the alleged kidnapping of Filipino workers who thought they were going to Dubai but instead were flown to Baghdad to help build the $500 million embassy is stunning.
That story was broken by others, including David Phinney of Inter Press Service in June, who noted that contractor First Kuwaiti has reaped $2 billion from U.S. taxpayers for construction of military camps and the embassy. Phinney wrote:
Because of allegations of labour trafficking and other abuses, First Kuwaiti is also being investigated by the U.S. Justice Department, an action precipitated by U.S. citizens claiming that company workers loaded onto planes in Kuwait were handed boarding passes for Dubai before flying directly to Baghdad. The passengers were mostly low-wage Asian migrant labourers earning as little as 250 dollars a month.
Wait a sec. As Phinney also notes, Filipino laborers at the new embassy are making much more than that:
The agreement also lays out salary: 346 dollars a month for eight-hour days, seven days a week, plus 104 dollars a month for mandatory two hours overtime every day.
Pay is marginally better in our fields. Gaouette's Times story mentions almost by the way that "almost three-quarters of farmworkers are thought to be illegal immigrants."
The percentage of people who mow our lawns is probably even higher, but anyway, Gaouette notes that the White House is extremely concerned about this aspect of the free-market economy:
"It is important for the farm sector to have access to labor to stay competitive," said White House spokesman Scott Stanzel. "As the southern border has tightened, some producers have a more difficult time finding a workforce, and that is a factor of what is going on today."
The push to speedily rewrite the regulations is also the Bush administration's attempt to step into a breach left when Congress did not pass an immigration overhaul in June that might have helped American farms.
These are truly salad days for government officials in the U.S. as they quietly chew on these labor-force problems. Gaouette noted:
The administration has pursued the project discreetly. The issue of immigration has generated friction between President Bush and the conservative wing of the Republican Party, which has strongly opposed many of the initiatives that Bush has pursued.
Pursued not for the sake of the workers but of the corporate farms that depend on cheap labor.
Slave work in Baghdad or California — take your pick. Farmworkers don't get health benefits, and the embassy is going to have a full-time psychiatrist for counseling and drugs, so Iraq seems the better bet: At least your boss in Iraq will be medicated.
Posted by Harkavy at 9:32 AM, September 21, 2007
This oily business of dealing with evil foreign leaders.
Cold War, warm feelings: Reagan chats with the Taliban in the White House in 1983.
New York's tabloids and assorted pols came unglued yesterday about the very idea of Iran's crackpot hardliner Mahmoud Ahmedinejad wanting to visit Ground Zero.
Where were they when Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov, whose regime boils people to death, was courted by George W. Bush and Mayor Mike Bloomberg?
Don't let your own blood boil at the thought of a bad guy visiting our sacralized 9/11 site. Condemn it, if you want, but Ahmedinejad was just trying to score political points, as our own pols do all the time at Ground Zero. He got what he wanted: The angry U.S. reaction will play well back home in Tehran, especially with the radical mullahs who really run Iran and like to stir up hatred for the "Great Satan."
Do we even have to say that in international politics, enemies today are pals tomorrow, and vice versa, and that the reasons almost always have to do with greed for money and natural resources?
On the other hand, it would be nice if our press at least reported these events. The Uzbek despot Karimov laid a wreath at Ground Zero in 2002, and there was literally not one word in the U.S. press about it at the time — I'm not talking about criticism or praise but any words at all. Nothing.
So Karimov is not a bad enough guy to get you worked up? Saddam Hussein was brown-nosed by Don Rumsfeld in December 1983. There's no reason to condemn Rumsfeld for that; it was just oil politics — just like the oil politics that Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney played when they seized upon the 9/11 attacks to justify invading Iraq.
After all, when Texas oil execs questioned Cheney in 1998, when he was still at Halliburton, about the physical dangers of pursuing oil in turbulent parts of Asia, the future vice president and de facto commander in chief told them:
"You've got to go where the oil is. I don't worry about it a lot."
Saddam is gone, but we still don't really have Iraq's oil. We do, however, have such evil people as the Taliban to deal with, right? Well, the Taliban were hailed as Afghan freedom fighters by Ronald Reagan during their triumphant visit to the White House on March 21, 1983. Reagan said at the time:
"To watch the courageous Afghan freedom fighters battle modern arsenals with simple hand-held weapons is an inspiration to those who love freedom. Their courage teaches us a great lesson - that there are things in this world worth defending.
"To the Afghan people, I say on behalf of all Americans that we admire your heroism, your devotion to freedom, and your relentless struggle against your oppressors."
That's ancient history, huh? In fact, they were still our pals 14 years later. In late 1997, the Taliban were wined and dined at the homes of Bush's pals, the Houston oil execs, during Dubya's reign as the hangingest governor in U.S. history.
The oil schnooks were buttering up the Taliban for pipelines and other bidness, of course. See Wayne Madsen's "Afghanistan, the Taliban, and the Bush Oil Team" for details.
At least that courting of the Taliban less than 10 years ago was reported at the time. Of the many words in the mainstream press, my favorites are from a December 14, 1997, story by Caroline Lees in the Telegraph (U.K.), in which she describes the Taliban officials' visit to Unocal vice president Martin Miller's palatial Houston home:
After a meal of specially prepared halal meat, rice and Coca-Cola, the hardline fundamentalists — who have banned women from working and girls from going to school — asked Mr Miller about his Christmas tree.
Posted by Harkavy at 11:59 AM, September 19, 2007
$15 billion of your money up in smoke for under-fire mercenary company, other defense contractors.
While Blackwater's mercenaries beg for mercy for killing a baby and 19 other people in Baghdad on Sunday, they're already working on another lucrative government contract on yet another foreign adventure: the "war on drugs."
In a major new outsourcing deal reported by only a few outlets, including the Army Times, Blackwater will divvy up a $15 billion pot of government gold, along with four huge defense contractors: Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and Arinc.
Blackwater claims to be building remote-control spy airships. Purty darn good for an army based in a little North Carolina town — no, it's Currituck, not Mayberry.
Arinc, a Maryland-based major supplier of airplane surveillance and passenger-counting equipment, is particularly stoked about the deal, which it announced on the sixth anniversary of 9/11:
ARINC already has a wealth of hands-on experience supporting just this type of program. We now expect to play a key role developing and fielding new solutions at the cutting edge of drug interdiction.
Hang on, Arinc, you're getting ahead of yourselves. Here's how GovExec.com's Katherine McIntire Peters describes this other privatized war, which apparently is necessary because, even with the privatized war in Iraq, we still don't have enough troops to conduct all these wars:
The contract, worth up to $15 billion over the next five years, illustrates the extent to which the Defense Department is relying on contractors to perform critical missions while combat forces are stretched thin by operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In response to specific task orders issued under the indefinite delivery indefinite quantity contract, companies will develop and deploy new surveillance technologies, train and equip foreign security forces and provide key administrative, logistical and operational support to Defense and other agencies such as the Drug Enforcement Administration.
According to the work statement provided to bidders, the vast majority of the drive will be conducted overseas.
Blackwater clearly knows how to deal with foreigners. But how does a little ol' company get to share our wealth with such huge defense contractors? No doubt it's got low friends in high places.
It probably didn't hurt the mercenary army that, according to federal campaign records, its top execs gave $1,000 to Tom DeLay's campaign on December 14, 2004. Or that they contributed mostly to other openly God-fearing lawmakers, like Bono pal Rick Santorum, Kansas's Todd Tiahrt, and Indiana's Mike Pence — whose campaign-finance tool is the Principles Exalt a Nation PAC.
Praise the Lord and pass the ammo. Better make that a blunt.
Posted by Harkavy at 9:45 PM, September 11, 2007
Why Uzbekistan is something to think about on this day.
Past offense: Uzbek despot Karimov lays a wreath at Ground Zero in 2002
By this time on the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 horror, you will have seen plenty of images of pols trying to launch themselves from the sacralized Ground Zero — though Rudy Giuliani got scorched on his latest takeoff when some victims' families accused him of exploiting the tragedy now that he's a presidential candidate.
Giuliani, who would never have been a presidential candidate if not for 9/11, was the first pol to exploit Ground Zero, but he's not the last, of course, and he's probably not even the most worrisome. In 2002, Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov used the sacralized 9/11 site as a photo-op — with the blessing of Giuliani's successor, Mike Bloomberg.
Why bring up Karimov's Ground Zero visit five years after the fact? Who cares if a foreign pol desecrated what has become sacred ground? The reason is that Uzbekistan is nothing but an Iran in the making, Karimov is its shah, and we're the dupes who have helped prop him up. All that in a world that's more dangerous than it was six years ago.
Iraq has become a training ground for terrorists since our 2003 invasion. Uzbekistan, which is about as geopolitically strategic (see map below), is liable to become such a training ground for terrorists even without a U.S. invasion.
Our fairly warm relationship with Karimov grew warmer after 9/11, when we enlisted in our "war on terror" this dictator who conducts a war of terror on his own people. Dangerous move by the Bush regime, because the radical Muslims who will probably take over undemocratic Uzbekistan when the aging despot dies or is deposed will also have long memories. They're sure to remember that, under the once-secret "rendition" scheme, we shipped Muslim prisoners to his jails for interrogation. They'll also remember how our government stood by and did nothing during Karimov's notorious Andijan massacre of dissidents in the spring of 2005 and then tried to suppress an independent investigation of the slaughter.
Expect to see those images of Karimov at Ground Zero and cuddling with Bush used eventually as devices to stir up hatred of the U.S.
The Central Asian "republic" is destined to be the next "-stan" to push its way into headlines, and the news will be bad. Am I crazy? Yes. Am I wrong about Uzbekistan? I don't think so. Here's how the mainstream International Crisis Group summed things up late last month:
Uzbekistan remains a serious risk to itself and its region. While 69-year-old President Islam Karimov shows no signs of relinquishing power, despite the end of his legal term of office more than half a year ago, his eventual departure may lead to a violent power struggle.
The economy remains tightly controlled, with regime stalwarts, including the security services and Karimov’s daughter Gulnora, exerting excessive influence, which drives away investors and exacerbates poverty. The human rights situation is grave, and those who seek to flee abroad live in constant danger of attempts to return them forcibly.
While the government cites the "war on terror" to justify many policies, its repression may in fact be creating greater future danger. Efforts at international engagement have been stymied by its refusal to reform and to allow an independent investigation of the May 2005 Andijan uprising. Little can be done presently to influence Tashkent, but it is important to help ordinary Uzbeks as much as possible and to assist the country’s neighbours build their capacity to cope with the instability that is likely to develop when Karimov goes.
If understanding our history with Karimov and Uzbekistan is important, then recalling how we "handled" the shah and Iran is instructive.
Yes, Karimov is following right in the footsteps of Shah Reza Pahlavi. What's worse is that our government is traipsing down the same garden path with Uzbek's dictator as we did with the shah. And our relationship with Karimov and his NSS is similar to our relationship with the shah and his dreaded secret service, SAVAK, which was shaped by the CIA. Alfred McCoy, in A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror, wrote:
There was little public reaction in the United States to revelations about the CIA's ties to the Shah's secret police.
Yet Iran provided an important cautionary tale. By buttressing the shah's rule with riot police and ruthless interrogation, the CIA unwittingly contributed to the rising opposition that eventually toppled his regime. After training his police, Washington underestimated the stigma attached to torture and stood by, confused, while its key Persian Gulf ally lost legitimacy. The lesson was clear: Torture introduced to defend the shah had instead destroyed the shah.
Karimov rules the same way the shah did. We haven't been as close to Karimov as we were to the shah, but our allowing Karimov to use 9/11 as a symbol back in 2002 was cynical: The Bush regime buttered him up as an ally, and Bloomberg was careful not to offend him because of New York's large number of Bukharan Jewish emigres, many of whom supported him.
Karimov himself is pretty cynical: In his own nation, he generally tolerates Jews and even protects them, because the Bukharan Jews have lived there for a thousand years and pose no threat to his power. But he harshly represses Christians — and even the Muslims who make up nearly 90 percent of the California-sized country of 27 million people.
As I pointed out a couple of years ago, New York's Jewish Week described the strange embrace of Karimov by the city's Bukharan Jews:
Most of the estimated 40,000-strong Bukharan Jews living in the New York area appear to be maintaining their community’s longstanding support for Islam Karimov, the beleaguered president of their native Uzbekistan, despite international media reports that Karimov’s army responded to an uprising and prison break by firing on protesters and killing 500 or more people, including innocent civilians.
That support comes with a caution, though.
The United States, several prominent Bukharan leaders said, should stand by Karimov in this crisis for fear that Islamists might take over the country and persecute the estimated 30,000 to 50,000 Jews remaining there. But these leaders contend that Karimov must change course and allow more democracy and economic liberalization.
George W. Bush's relationship with Karimov isn't quite as old as Karimov's relationship with Uzbek Jews. Bush's dealings with Karimov date back to 1997, when Dubya was still the hangingest governor in U.S. history: Enron's Ken Lay, Bush's biggest campaign contributor, wanted to make a deal with Uzbekistan so Lay instructed Dubya to meet with one of Karimov's minions to grease the skids.
By 2002, the Bush regime wanted to curry favor with Karimov because Uzbekistan borders on Afghanistan. When Karimov visited the States, he got the royal treatment. At Ground Zero, the dictator looked like the religious type, right? I mean, he laid a wreath and even signed his name on a memorial wall.
Bloomberg gave Karimov freer rein in New York City than he gave the 500,000 Americans protesting at the Republican National Convention in 2004. And in December 2005, Bloomberg blasted a New York transit strike as "morally reprehensible." But it was OK for the mayor to roll out the red carpet three years earlier for a morally reprehensible dictator.
Anyway, by the time of the 2002 visit, Karimov was already known as a harsh despot, and Bloomberg tried to keep the news pretty quiet that he was schlepping a dictator around town. You couldn't find on the mayor's website the photos of him and Karimov in the mayor's office or of Karimov at Ground Zero. But the pix were trumpeted on the Uzbekistan government site.
Five years after his visit to Ground Zero, Karimov is surely nearing the end of his 20-year reign — one sign is that there's more and more repression in Uzbekistan.
Forum 18, an Oslo-based religious-freedom group that snoops on repressive regimes around the world, noted just the other day that Karimov and his secret police, the National Security Service, have stepped up their spying on religious communities. Forum 18's Felix Corley wrote on September 5:
Members of a variety of religious communities have told Forum 18 News Service of hidden microphones in places of worship, the presence of NSS agents during worship and the recruitment of spies within communities. … "Two secret police officers sit in each church across the country — but not just churches, they are there in mosques and in other places of worship," one Protestant who preferred not to be identified for fear of reprisals told Forum 18 News Service.
But the NSS has also stepped up its covert spying on and within religious communities of all faiths in recent years as the climate in the country has grown more repressive. Few religious leaders are prepared to talk to outsiders about such spying, fearing reprisals if they do so.
It's one thing for a predominantly Muslim country to spy on Christians or for a predominantly Christian nation to spy on Muslims — that happens in many places. But Karimov is playing with fire, just as the shah did in Iran, because he's hassling Muslims in a Muslim country. Forum 18's Corley noted:
The NSS keeps a very close eye on imams and future imams. The independent news website Uznews.net reported on 1 February that the NSS keeps the Islamic University in Tashkent under close scrutiny. The university was opened with great ceremony by President Islam Karimov in April 1999 and is the flagship educational institution for Muslim students, some of whom go on to become imams.
Uznews said that students complain that the authorities regard them with mistrust. They know that each one is being closely monitored by the NSS. One first-year student was quoted by Uznews as reporting that as soon as they join the university, all students without exception face meetings with NSS officers. "During the meetings, you are given to understand that from now on we are under the constant surveillance of this service," the student reported, "and they have to approve all the steps we take in advance."
Students that are too pious, too devoted to their studies or who question any aspects of the teaching they are being given are regarded with the most suspicion and face "serious problems". Those who questioned the teachers' approach, citing the hadiths (oral traditions attributed to the Muslim prophet Muhammed), faced pressure not only from senior university officials but from NSS officers, Uznews reported.
Uznews notes that this NSS surveillance and intimidation leaves students as "frightened shadows" who have received only a superficial Islamic education.
Karimov's day of reckoning with his country's Muslim radicals is approaching. And it won't help Americans worried about the spread of terrorists that our government is supporting him till the bitter end.
Posted by Harkavy at 6:19 AM, September 4, 2007
Troops still there.
George W. Bush's unannounced, but not surprising, visit to Iraq on Labor Day was the kiss of death to Iraq Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
If you're Maliki, it's one thing for Philip Zelikow to work behind the scenes to oust you; it's another thing altogether to have the word get out that Bush took you aside and told you, "You're my friend."
That little tale with which Bush regaled the press corps afterwards should make Maliki even more popular with his countrymen.
As Beirut's Daily Star opines this morning:
Bush made a surprise visit to Iraq on Monday, but neither he nor visitors from any other foreign capital can make up for weak leadership in Baghdad. Washington has expected too much of its Iraqi partners in many respects, but it has also tied their hands on many issues over which they should have been turned loose. Maliki needs more of this brand of American "support" like he needs a proverbial hole in the head.
The only way Maliki can survive is if he's seen as strong, independent, decisive. A visit from Bush is not what he needs. U.S. papers fell right in line by treating this trip seriously. But as the Star notes:
[Maliki] can only improve his authority and legitimacy if his actions are manifestly aimed at dealing with realities on the ground in Iraq and the wider Middle East, not the ebbs and flows of America's electoral comedies or the shortsighted tribalism that inspires some of his allies and their sponsors.
By the way, you see that Bush landed in Anbar province, not in Baghdad. Those days of of surprise visits to Baghdad are over. Too dangerous.
But meeting officials and troops 100 miles of Baghdad works just as well. Newspaper headlines are blaring, "Bush Hails Anbar Gains."
Posted by Harkavy at 5:18 PM, August 29, 2007
Zipping his lip: "I'm not gay," says Craig.
Idaho senator Larry Craig hasn't come out of the closet yet but this just in: He's now gone from three key committees — Veterans Affairs, the Appropriations Subcommittee on the Interior, and Energy's Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests.
All this because he temporarily served on a two-man public bathroom committee.
Craig's hometown TV station KTVB.com just reported Craig's ouster from the committees. Ouch. He won't be cruising around Boise anytime soon. And he didn't volunteer to leave those posts. In fact, Craig didn't even make the announcement, as the Boise TV channel reports:
The announcement came in a statement from Republican leaders Senators Mitch McConnell, Trent Lott, Jon Kyl, Kay Bailey Hutchison, John Ensign.
"Senator Larry Craig has agreed to comply with Leadership's request … This is not a decision we take lightly but we believe this is in the best interest of the Senate until this situation is resolved by the Ethics Committee."
An ethics inquiry? That's what I can't understand. If the police report from Minneapolis is true, Craig followed perfectly the ethics of cruising, according to yesterday's ABC News story "Secret Signals: How Gay Men Cruise for Sex". Take a look at the police report, and then read the "Secret Signals" story and tell me that Craig, with all that toe-tapping and hand-signalling, wasn't following the ethics of cruising.
 We don't know what tune the formerly gay-bashing Craig will be singing as this saga unfolds, but he and the aforementioned Lott sure made some sweet music together at one point, especially when John Ashcroft was hanging around D.C. Those three and Jim Jeffords were once known as the barbershop quartet The Singing Senators (that's Craig, sandwiched between Lott and Ashcroft, forming a perfect "O" with his mouth).
Ashcroft's penchant for singing started to piss people off when he moved from the convivial old boys' club of the Senate to the halls of the Justice Department in his job as AG. As Glenn Weiser noted in Metroland in August 2002:
The staunchly fundamentalist Ashcroft had already been holding morning prayer meetings at Justice, but has now found a new venue — and a captive audience — there for his musical ambitions. Staffers arriving for work are receiving printouts with the lyrics to his songs so they can take part in the daily singalongs. And lest no one be left out, Spanish speakers have even been pressed into service to translate the words.
Ashcroft's latest effort, the country-flavored "The Eagle Soars," starts out like this:
"Oh she's far to young to die/You can see it in her eye/She's not yet begun to fly."
Sour notes are being heard in the choir, though. One worker, when asked by the BBC why she wasn't thrilled about singing "The Eagle Soars," put it bluntly. "Have you heard the song? It really sucks." And some employees hate it so much they won't sing it at all.
Ashcroft's now gone from D.C., and Craig's days as a "singing senator" are clearly over. The self-proclaimed God-fearing Craig had better devote himself to silent prayer, or whatever else he does on his knees.
Posted by Harkavy at 9:18 AM, August 16, 2007
In what the GOP hopes will be a boost for next year's elections, General David Petraeus has broadly hinted in the wake of the worst massacre of the war that the U.S. will be able to start withdrawing troops from Iraq next summer.
 What spin. Petraeus has always been used for such purposes. Early in the war, he took a spin over Iraq (right) with Katherine Harris, the Florida secretary of state who ensured George W. Bush's 2000 election. Years later, he can spin by himself. Yes, the guy is trying to bring good news, but is that what he should be doing? No, we need information that may be hard to hear, instead of information that he thinks his bosses want to hear.
Like Colin Powell at the U.N. in early 2003, Petraeus is being a good and loyal soldier. After the war, Petraeus will no doubt tell it like it was. Who can wait that long?
Unfortunately, the story in today's Times (U.K.), a morsel of good news for the White House and the frantic legacy-building of Bush's handlers, hints that master builder Karl Rove hasn't left the building yet.
But hundreds of Iraqis have left this mortal coil, as the Times (U.S.) reports:
The toll in a horrific quadruple bombing in an area of mud and stone houses in the remote northern desert on Tuesday evening reached at least 250 dead and 350 wounded, several local officials said Wednesday, making it the deadliest coordinated attack since the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
The New York Times story simply included a statement from Petraeus condemning the bombings. The Times (U.K.) story went deeper, putting Petraeus's broad hint in the context of Tuesday evening's horror:
The US general overseeing President Bush's surge strategy in Iraq said last night that he would recommend troop reductions by next summer, but cautioned against a significant withdrawal.
General David Petraeus, in comments that appeared to lay the ground for his pivotal report to the US Congress next month, said that the US footprint in Iraq would have to be "a good bit smaller by next summer". But he also signalled that the surge would continue into next year, and gave warning against a quick or hefty withdrawal that could surrender "the gains we have fought so hard to achieve".
General Petraeus said that the "horrific and indiscriminate attacks" on the Yazidi community in northwestern Iraq on Tuesday night were the work of al-Qaeda fighters. The bombings occurred near the Syrian border, and US officials charge the Damascus regime has not done enough to police the frontier against infiltration by foreign fighters who dominate al-Qaeda. Those bomb attacks would bolster his argument, General Petraeus said, against drawing down the 30,000 additional US troops that have made up the surge too quickly. "We know that the surge has to come to an end, there's no question about that. I think everyone understands that by about a year or so from now we've got to be a good bit smaller than we are right now".
Petraeus praises the involvement of Sunnis in the battle against terrorists. But for a more objective appraisal — and details beyond Petraeus's pap — read the Institute for War and Peace Reporting's package on "Security in Iraq," which I mentioned in an earlier post. Those stories make clear that this is a Sunni vs. Shia civil war. Throw in the Kurds, assorted holy wars, mix with oil from southern Iraq, and you've got an explosive mixture—and fires that won't go out.
The question is when we're going to get out. Petraeus's latest hint of pullouts is nothing more than al-yada-yada-yada to placate the American public.
Posted by Harkavy at 11:45 AM, August 15, 2007
Harkavy/White House
Endangered species: Karl Rove shares a photo-op embrace with the Bushes yesterday before heading to Texas to shoot some animals with his shotgun, which I've graciously placed in his hand.
Karl Rove's not really changing jobs. Instead of mowing down doves from the White House with his BlackBerry, he'll be killing doves in the Texas countryside with his $2,073 Beretta Silver Pigeon II Over-and-Under 20-gauge shotgun.
The gun (shown above) was a gift, according to Rove's 2005 financial disclosure report, from a small group of people including lobbyist Katharine Armstrong, owner of the property on which Dick Cheney blasted one of his own cronies in early 2006.
The gun-totin' Rove got his start in national politics by devising "Generation of Peace" bumper stickers for Richard Nixon in the 1972 campaign — in the middle of the Vietnam debacle. He still believes in peace, sort of. Now that he's out of the White House, you won't see him pack up his shotgun and head to Iraq.
No, he's going to Texas, where the animals are unarmed.
To get the full flavor of Rove's blood lust, go back to his February 17, 2005, speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference. The speech was covered, but the transcript is no longer freely available. I did, however, save a copy of it. Introduced by National Rifle Association chief Wayne LaPierre, Rove told the crowd:
It is great to be introduced by Wayne. He has done so much to protect the constitutional rights of the American people for so long, and he is a great man.
You may also not know this. Wayne has a caring, generous, compassionate heart. He invited me originally to speak tomorrow, and I said — I accepted. And then I had something come up, and I called him up and I said, "I've got an important seminar that I need to go to; is there any chance that I could speak on Thursday?"
And he said, "Sure, what's the seminar you're going to?"
And I said, "It's a seminar on the practical application of essential protections of the Bill of Rights and their impact on the happiness of organized family activity."
He said, "You're taking your boy hunting, isn't that right?"
I said, "Yes, sir, I am."
So tomorrow I'll be in Kennedy County, Texas, hunting the wily South Texas quail with my 20-gauge over-and-under Silver Pigeon Beretta. I'd invite you to join me but there aren't enough birds for the two of us.
God, the guy just loves the Constitution, doesn't he?
Rove's forced exit from the White House — don't think for a minute that it was anything but that — is so mordantly funny that it even evoked a sense of humor from the hardliners at PETA.
As the Washington Post's Mary Ann Akers reports this morning, PETA president Ingrid Newkirk fired off a letter to Rove after learning that he planned to go dove hunting over the Labor Day weekend. Akers tells the rest of the story:
"Dear Mr. Rove," began the letter from President Ingrid E. Newkirk. "From your frequent hunting trips to your bizarre little rap at the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association dinner ("I like to go home, get a drink, and tear the tops off of small animals"), it is clear that you lack the ability to empathize with other living beings. You consistently prove that you care less about animal welfare than Alberto Gonzales cares about habeas corpus."
And if that isn't enough to make you think Ingrid needs to spend some time in anger management, wait 'til you hear the rest.
Newkirk notes that the first thing Rove plans to do upon leaving the White House at the end of his month is "go dove hunting, i.e., kill little birds who are the international symbol of peace. You will leave politics to spend more time with your family only to destroy the families of other species."
Her last line could well set off alarm bells at the Secret Service: "I have just one suggestion: Please take Dick Cheney along on your hunting trips." And plenty of beer and bourbon.
Posted by Harkavy at 7:03 AM, August 13, 2007
Bush's Rasputin gives two weeks' notice, will flee to Texas.
The hands holding this "Generation of Peace" bumper sticker are Karl Rove's. He's being interviewed by Dan Rather in 1972 while working for Richard Nixon's re-election in the midst of an unpopular war.
Karl Rove is leaving George W. Bush's White House. The president's Edgar Bergen tells the Wall Street Journal in an interview published this morning, quoted by the New York Times:
"I just think it’s time. There's always something that can keep you here, and as much as I'd like to be here, I've got to do this for the sake of my family."
Yeah, these people are always leaving for the "sake" of their families. This is for Rove's own sake, judging by the 24th, 25th, and 26th paragraphs of an April 20 Washington Post story, "Senators Chastise Gonzales at Hearing," which starts out like this:
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales came under withering attack from members of his own party yesterday over the dismissals of eight U.S. attorneys, facing the first resignation demand from a Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and doubts from others about his candor and his ability to lead the Justice Department.
Way down in the story are the three paragraphs crucial to understanding the gripes of wrath that are causing Rove to hitch up the wagons for a westward trek:
Gonzales said he made the final decision to approve the firings but took the recommendations of his assistants without closely reviewing their reasons for dismissing each prosecutor. He said his former chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson, was in charge of the details and updated him only occasionally on his progress. The attorney general said he made a mistake by not being more closely involved in the process.
Gonzales confirmed statements by Sampson that presidential adviser Karl Rove passed along GOP complaints to Gonzales last fall about the alleged lack of aggressiveness by [David C. Iglesias of New Mexico] and two other U.S. attorneys in prosecuting voter fraud. Gonzales said he passed on the complaints to Sampson, who at some point in the same time period placed Iglesias on the firing list.
The attorney general said he could not remember a similar conversation on Oct. 11 with Bush, who has publicly confirmed the discussion.
Rove says "there's always something that keeps you here," referring to D.C. In this case, it's the flood of requests that he come to Capitol Hill to answer questions about the U.S. attorney firings.
Moving to Texas will make serving him with subpoenas more difficult. Don't think for a minute that he'll stop doing at least some of Bush's thinking.
But Rove's usefulness to Dick Cheney's Bush regime is really over. He miraculously brought the regime a second term, but he couldn't pull off the 2006 mid-term elections, and the big problem is the Iraq war.
Thirty-five years ago, when he was a College Republicans operative being interviewed by Dan Rather, Rove proudly showed off his "Generation of Peace" bumper sticker brainstorm while working for Richard Nixon's re-election.
Shades of 2004, when Rove helped the Bush regime pull off a miracle.
But Iraq is too much of a debacle, and the time for bumper stickers is past. The only thing Rove could do in this war would be to don a uniform, fly to Baghdead, and lead a surge. That's unlikely.
Posted by Harkavy at 7:36 AM, July 11, 2007
Submitted too late for the Weddings/Engagements section of the New York Times:
Mr. bin Laden's Son Marries Briton
Soul patch: Mrs. Felix-Browne and Mr. bin Laden met while horseback riding at the Great Pyramid in Egypt.
Jane Felix-Browne, a British grandmother and local political official, was married recently to Omar Ossama bin Laden, a son of Osama bin Laden, parts unknown, and one of his concubines.
The bride, 51, is a parish councillor in Moulton, Cheshire, and is a keen rider and scuba diver. She has worked at various jobs, including restoring houses and aircraft. Her father-in-law also has an avid interest in damaged aircraft.
The bridegroom, 27, who spells his middle name differently from his father's name and prefers to be known as "Omar," did not enter his father's branch of the family business. He works as a scrap dealer in Jedda, Saudi Arabia, and enjoys horseback riding.
The bridegroom's father is an international terrorist believed responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. The couple was not registered for gifts, but the FBI considers the elder Mr. bin Laden armed and dangerous and the U.S. State Department's Rewards For Justice Program is offering a reward of up to $25 million for information leading directly to his apprehension or conviction in connection with various attacks on the rest of the world.
The elder Mr. bin Laden, who was vigorously sought in Afghanistan and Pakistan until U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney re-routed the Global War on Terror (GWOT) to Iraq, was believed to be unable to attend the couple's marriage ceremonies in Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
The bride, who has been married five previous times and has three sons and five grandchildren, will continue to use the name Zaina Mohammad and live in England. The bridegroom is at home in Saudi Arabia while awaiting a visa from British officials.
Posted by Harkavy at 10:47 AM, May 2, 2007
| |
