Savarkar portrait unveiled
The Hindu, February 27, 2003.

Amid a raging controversy, the President, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, unveiled a portrait of the Sangh ideologue, V. D. Savarkar, in the Central Hall of Parliament today, ignoring the Opposition's plea to stay away from the function.

The Opposition — with the exception of the former Prime Minister, Chandra Shekhar, and a Janata Dal (S) member — boycotted the function.

A notable absentee was the Deputy Speaker of the Lok Sabha, P. M. Sayeed, who responded to the Congress' call for boycott while the Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairperson, Najma Heptulla, attended the function.

Dr. Kalam — who had been requested by the Opposition to reconsider his decision to attend the function given Savarkar's "dubious role in Indian history" — was ushered into the Central Hall to a song penned by Savarkar.

The National Anthem was not played. Lok Sabha officials explained that it was mandatory only when the President arrived in a ceremonial procession.

As the President unveiled the portrait, BJP and Shiv Sena MPs and their supporters shouted "Swatantryaveer Savarkar Amar Rahe" and kept up the sloganeering right through the brief function. The artist, Chandrakala Kumar Kadam, was introduced to Dr. Kalam, who was then shown the place earmarked for the portrait: right across the alcove which bears the picture of Mahatma Gandhi. The President also released a booklet, `Swatantryaveer Vinayak Damodar Savarkar'.

Though the Opposition did not disrupt the function or stage a protest in front of the Gandhi statue in the precincts of Parliament, as was being suggested by some, an echo of the controversy over the unveiling of the portrait was heard in the Lok Sabha soon after with the BJP member, Yogi Adityanath, accusing the Opposition of insulting the memory of a freedom-fighter. [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 9:23 PM 0 comments

 
Genre: Police Jokes: Quick Wit:

A police officer in a small town stopped a motorist who was speeding down Main Street.
"But officer." the man began, "I can explain,".

"Just be quiet," snapped the officer. "I'm going to let you cool your heels in jail until the chief gets back..."
"But officer, I just wanted to say...."
"And I said to keep quiet! You're going to jail!"

A few hours later the officer looked in on his prisoner and said, "Lucky for you that the chief is at his daughter's wedding. He'll be in a good mood when he gets back."

"Don't count on it," answered the fellow in the cell. "I'm the groom."
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 4:43 PM 0 comments

 
Norman Mailer: Gaining an empire, losing democracy?
Iraq is an excuse
Norman Mailer, Tribune Media Services, February 25, 2003

LOS ANGELES: There is a subtext to what the Bushites are doing as they prepare for war in Iraq. My hypothesis is that President George W. Bush and many conservatives have come to the conclusion that the only way they can save America and get if off its present downslope is to become a regime with a greater military presence and drive toward empire. My fear is that Americans might lose their democracy in the process.

By downslope I'm referring not only to the corporate scandals, the church scandals and the FBI scandals. The country has gone kind of crazy in the eyes of conservatives. Also, kids can't read anymore. Especially for conservatives, the culture has become too sexual.

Iraq is the excuse for moving in an imperial direction. War with Iraq, as they originally conceived it, would be a quick, dramatic step that would enable them to control the Near East as a powerful base - not least because of the oil there, as well as the water supplies from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers - to build a world empire. [...]

Indeed, democracy is the special condition - a condition we will be called upon to defend in the coming years. That will be enormously difficult because the combination of the corporation, the military and the complete investiture of the flag with mass spectator sports has set up a pre-fascistic atmosphere in America already.

Norman Mailer's latest book is "The Spooky Art: Some Thoughts on Writing." This comment was adapted from remarks Feb. 22 to the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities and distributed by Global Viewpoint/Tribune Media Services International.
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 4:41 PM 0 comments

 
The Madness of Empire: The War Party’s militarized strategy will unite the world against us.
Scott McConnell, The American Conservative, February 24, 2003

Recently the novelist John le Carré wrote in the Times of London that the United States has entered a “period of madness” that dwarfs McCarthyism or the Vietnam intervention in intensity.

One generally would not pay much attention to the cynical British spy-tale weaver, never especially friendly to America. But concern about America’s mental health is more broadly in the air, spreading well beyond the usual professional anti-Americans. It is now pervasive in Europe, and growing in Asia, and when Matt Drudge posted le Carré’s piece prominently on his website, it got passed around and talked about here in ways it never would have five years ago. [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 4:36 PM 0 comments

 
On the warpath
Blogs are now so powerful that the media are playing catch up, says Glenn Reynolds, a rightwing commentator and pioneer of the medium
Glenn Reynolds, The Guardian, February 20, 2003

I didn't expect this. When I started my weblog InstaPundit.Com in August 2001, the world was a very different place, and InstaPundit was a very different kind of weblog. I wrote about the greed of the music industry, the importance of allowing stem-cell research, and the ineptitude of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. (OK, not everything has changed.) [...]

Phrases coined in the "blogosphere" - as it is called these days - now percolate out into the real world with amazing rapidity. Scott Ott, who runs a humour weblog called ScrappleFace.com, coined the term "Axis of Weasels" in reference to the Chirac/Schröder alliance. Within a day it was the headline for the New York Post, and it was repeated on CNN, Fox, and, most gratifyingly, in French and German media.

And, as the Daily Telegraph reported, officials at the state department and the White House were chortling over a Chirac caption contest that appeared on another weblog. [...]Traditional media generally aren't fast enough to match this. To use a military term, weblogs are "inside the decision curve" of Big Media. Traditional media are trying to meet this challenge by creating weblogs of their own (the Guardian pioneered this) but for it to really work, someone has to read a lot of email and other weblogs.

James Lileks said it best: "A column is a lecture. A weblog is a conversation." The weblog world is a remarkably open and interesting one - pseudonymous Iraqi blogger "Salam Pax" has met a warm reception from the warbloggers,
--and he's getting his information on how to prepare for war from Israeli weblogs! [...]

------------------------------

Eat a third and drink a third and leave the remaining third of your stomach empty. Then, when you get angry, there will be sufficient room for your rage.
--Babylonian Talmud, tractate Gittin
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 4:32 PM 0 comments

 
Saddam Hussein, Reporter: After Exclusive CBS Interview, Iraqi Leader Quizzed Dan Rather
Howard Kurtz, Washington Post, February 26, 2003When the cameras were turned off after more than an hour and a half, it was Saddam Hussein's turn to interview Dan Rather.

The Iraqi leader led the CBS anchor to the overstuffed leather chairs in his high-ceilinged Baghdad office and "had questions about American public opinion and President Bush," Rather recalled yesterday from the Jordanian desert. "I said, 'Mr. President, you asked me and I will try to answer you. A lot of these answers I don't think you're going to like.' [...]

Rather was surprised when Hussein challenged Bush to a debate, a gambit that was quickly dismissed by the White House. "I wasn't sure he was serious," the anchor explained. "I said to him, 'Mr. President, are you joking about this?' He said no, war is too serious to joke about."

Pressed further, Hussein dismissed the United Nations as a forum for the debate he wants. He said he would be in Baghdad and Bush in Washington, and suggested that Rather could moderate the televised face-off.

"I paused and said -- I'm not proud of this -- 'Mr. President, I have enough troubles already.' He chuckled at that."

The session was scheduled to last 35 to 40 minutes, but Hussein went on nearly three times as long. In one exchange at the round white table with microphones mounted in front of an Iraqi flag, Rather asked: "So you do not intend to destroy these missiles?"

"Which missiles? What do you mean?" said Hussein, who appeared animated and composed. "We have no missiles outside the specifications of the United Nations." He also said he is "ready to dialogue" with Bush out of "my respect for the American public opinion." [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 4:25 PM 0 comments

 
Phil Donahue strikes back at MSNBCDavid Bauder, Associated Press, February 26, 2003

NEW YORK - Phil Donahue struck back at MSNBC on Wednesday for his firing, suggesting the network was too quick to pull the trigger and that it might be trying to "out-fox Fox" with conservative voices.

Donahue's political talk show, a distant third in the cable news ratings in his time slot, was abruptly pulled from the air after Monday's show. The show premiered last July 15.

The legendary talk show host noted that "Donahue's" ratings were better than anything else in struggling MSNBC's prime-time lineup. [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 4:19 PM 0 comments

 
Too Much
Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman, CommonDreams.org, February 26, 2003

For almost two years now, we have covered the Bush White House with astonishment.

We are astonished by the simple fact that this President, with such strong ties to the corporate establishment, has for two years sailed smoothly through our democratic waters, at a time of rising popular discontent, unemployment, corporate scandals, national security disasters, and most recently, gasoline above $2 a gallon.

How does he do it?

First and foremost is the failure of the political opposition.

The Republicans are bought and paid for.

The leadership of the Democratic Party is timid, bought and paid for.

So, with no effective opposition in Washington, the President gets a free ride.

Unless the press puts his feet to the fire. [...]

So, we call ahead every day, and we get cleared in.

Unless the day is like yesterday, when we e-mailed our handler at the White House to get cleared in, are e-mailed back telling us that we were cleared in, but then when we get to the White House, we are told we are not cleared in. Sorry. You'll have to wait until you are cleared in.

Yesterday, Ari Fleischer's press briefing was scheduled at 12:15. Ari starts his press briefing then. We are left waiting at the White House gate until 12:40. We get in. Take a seat, and Ari gets to us, and skips over us.

So, first they ban you.

Then they leave you stewing at the gate.

Then they skip over you. [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 4:17 PM 0 comments

 
Unlikely Activist Takes His Place as Human Shield
At 68, Godfrey Meynell left the comforts of Britain for a cot in a Baghdad power plant to try to avert an attack by his country and the U.S.
by John Daniszewski, Los Angeles Times, February 25, 2003

BAGHDAD -- He is white-haired and slightly bowlegged, but with crystalline blue eyes and a ruddy face that bears the glowing look of a man who feels that -- in the autumn of his life -- he is exactly where he ought to be.

Godfrey Meynell, M.B.E., former British colonial officer in Aden, former high sheriff of Derby, former Home Office civil servant, former independent Green candidate for parliament, a self-described loyalist to church and queen, is spending his days and nights on a cot at the previously bombed South Baghdad Power Plant.

He is a part of the burgeoning movement of "human shields," people who hope their presence will help prevent what they see as an unjust and unnecessary war against Iraq. [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 4:12 PM 0 comments

 
Genre: Business Jokes

Before going to Europe on business, a man drives his Rolls-Royce to a downtown New York City bank and asks for an immediate loan of $5,000. The loan officer, taken aback, requests collateral. "Well then, here are the keys to my Rolls-Royce," the man says.

The loan officer promptly has the car driven into the bank's underground parking for safe keeping and gives the man the $5,000. Two weeks later, the man walks through the bank's doors and asks to settle up his loan and get his car back. "That will be $5,000 in principal, and $15.40 in interest," the loan officer says. The man writes out a check and starts to walk away. "Wait, sir," the loan officer says.

"You are a millionaire. Why in the world would you need to borrow $5,000?" The man smiles, "Where else could I find a safer place to park my Rolls-Royce in Manhattan for two weeks and pay only $15.40?" [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 4:06 PM 0 comments

 
Out of the Wreckage:
By Tearing Up the Global Rulebook, the US is in Fact Undermining Its Own Imperial Rule
George Monbiot, The Guardian, February 25, 2003

The men who run the world are democrats at home and dictators abroad. They came to power by means of national elections which possess, at least, the potential to represent the will of their people. Their citizens can dismiss them without bloodshed, and challenge their policies in the expectation that, if enough people join in, they will be obliged to listen.

Internationally, they rule by brute force. They and the global institutions they run exercise greater economic and political control [...]

... The end of multilateralism would force the US, as it is already beginning to do, to drop this pretence and frankly admit to its imperial designs on the rest of the world. This admission, in turn, forces other nations to seek to resist it. Effective resistance would create the political space in which their citizens could begin to press for a new, more equitable multilateralism.

There are several means of contesting the unilateral power of the US, but perhaps the most immediate and effective one is to accelerate its economic crisis.
Already, strategists in China are suggesting that the yuan should replace the dollar as east Asia's reserve currency. Over the past year, as the Observer revealed on Sunday, the euro has started to challenge the dollar's position as the international means of payment for oil. The dollar's dominance of world trade, particularly the oil market, is all that permits the US Treasury to sustain the nation's massive deficit, as it can print inflation-free money for global circulation. If the global demand for dollars falls, the value of the currency will fall with it, and speculators will shift their assets into euros or yen or even yuan, with the result that the US economy will begin to totter. [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 3:53 PM 0 comments

 
Threats, Promises and Lies
Paul Krugman, New York Times, February 25, 2003

So it seems that Turkey wasn't really haggling about the price, it just wouldn't accept payment by check or credit card. In return for support of an Iraq invasion, Turkey wanted — and got — immediate aid, cash on the barrelhead, rather than mere assurances about future help. You'd almost think President Bush had a credibility problem.

And he does.

The funny thing is that this administration sets great store by credibility. [...]

... In fact, I can't think of anyone other than the hard right and corporate lobbyists who has done a deal with Mr. Bush and not come away feeling betrayed. New York's elected representatives stood side by side with him a few days after Sept. 11 in return for a promise of generous aid. A few months later, as they started to question the administration's commitment, the budget director, Mitch Daniels, accused them of "money-grubbing games." Firefighters and policemen applauded Mr. Bush's promise, more than a year ago, of $3.5 billion for "first responders"; so far, not a penny has been delivered. [...]

Then there's the honesty thing.

Mr. Bush's mendacity on economic matters was obvious even during the 2000 election. But lately it has reached almost pathological levels. Last week Mr. Bush — who has been having a hard time getting reputable economists to endorse his economic plan — claimed an endorsement from the latest Blue Chip survey of business economists. "I don't know what he was citing," declared the puzzled author of that report, which said no such thing. [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 3:44 PM 0 comments

 
Victory Without a War by Robert Kuttner , Boston Globe, February 26, 2003

...Anything other than an easy, costless victory and a clean aftermath will be a political nightmare. As reports from Korea make clear, the Iraq war has not even commenced and the ancillary damage is mounting. While the administration keeps obsessively focused on Iraq and alienating key allies, more serious dangers loom.

If Iraq were not dominating the news, the incipient debacle in Korea would be on the front pages. In case you missed it, Colin Powell was rebuffed on Monday in Seoul, when the Chinese, Australians, and South Koreans flatly rejected administration entreaties to bring multilateral pressure on North Korea to disarm.

Multilaterialism is a two-way street. Bush should appreciate that he can't blow off the Chinese in the UN and then expect them to do his bidding when the United States finds a multilateral cloak convenient.

Instead, Powell was urged to reverse US policy and begin direct talks with the North Koreans. In the meantime, the South Koreans, longtime US allies, are so disgusted with US policy that they are proceeding, over Bush's objections, with their own bilateral entente with the North, weapons of mass destruction of no. [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 3:41 PM 0 comments

 
A Tip on Iraq From Those Who Walked That Road
The French paid dearly for imperial and military hubris. Listen up, U.S.
Robert Scheer, Los Angeles Times, February 25, 2003


Despite this confusing picture then and now, thanks to our enlightened talk-show hosts we all know that there is one nation of pure evil, one nasty country threatening to undermine the world's security with its lies, double-dealing and stubborn defiance, one state that Earth would simply be better off without.

We're talking, of course, about France. Brie eaters. Surly waiters. WWII collaborators. And now, cowardly traitors in the crusade against the New Hitler.

This idiocy is based on a highly selective historical memory, including the fact that the U.S. refused to enter the war against Hitler until after France fell. It also keeps us from being able to listen to a nation that has already been down the road we are traveling.

Imperialism has always been pitched at home as a win-win way to help the world's stricken peoples while helping oneself, and in Paris it was no different. France's colonial wars were waged under the rival banners of Catholicism and the French Revolution; the goal was to civilize the natives. A million Frenchmen gave up the joys of life at the center of Europe to colonize Algeria alone, building schools, churches, hospitals and civic bureaucracies.

Ultimately, however, the price of France's hubris was writ large in the blood of its sons and daughters over painful decades, [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 3:36 PM 0 comments

 
An American is a man with two arms and four wheels.
--A Chinese child

Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.
--Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.
--Gore Vidal (1925 - )
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 6:49 PM 0 comments

 
Norah's night at the Grammys
Bijoy Venugopal, rediff.com, February 24, 2003

"In a time when this world is really weird, I feel really lucky and blessed," Norah Jones gushed breathlessly after sweeping eight awards at the 45th Annual Grammy Awards presented by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, Inc on February 23, 2003, at the Madison Square Gardens, New York.

Jones, 24, won in all her nominated categories. Her debut album Come Away With Me (Blue Note Records) won Album Of The Year as well as two technical awards for its producer and sound engineers.

"She's not good, she's phenomenal," said singer Tony Bennett of Norah Jones before she arrived onstage to perform Don't Know Why. Jones, daughter of sitar maestro Ravi Shankar from a nine-year relationship with American producer-dancer Sue Jones, first met her father when she was eight. [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 5:24 PM 0 comments

 
VHP activists, sadhus march to Parliament
NDTV.com, February 24, 2003

Thousands of Vishwa Hindu Parishad activists and sadhus on Monday marched to Parliament in New Delhi to press for the construction of Ram temple in Ayodhya.

Addressing the agitators on the Parliament Street, Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas chief Ramchandra Das Paramhans said, "We will wait till the court gives its verdict on Ayodhya. But one thing is certain, we will not allow reconstruction of the Babri Masjid dhancha [structure]."

Paramhans said he had hoped that the 'problems of Ayodhya, Kashi and Mathura would be solved' after Atal Bihari Vajpayee became prime minister.

"The temple will be constructed within one-and-a-half years," he said adding that the VHP would conduct a campaign from March 5-25 in Ayodhya and other parts of the country.

Paramhans said Muslim invaders had destroyed 30,000 temples in the country.

He also said that the prime minister was pandering to the 'whims of the minorities in order to cling on to power'.

The VHP was not demanding anybody's land but the birthplace of Lord Ram, he added.

VHP chief Ashok Singhal alleged that the Vajpayee government was godless and called for rooting out secularism from the country. [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 5:22 PM 0 comments

 
Rough-Riding Cowboys in the Holy Ghost Corral
Terence Blacker, Independent.co.uk, February 24, 2003

For someone who did not exactly treat his body like a temple and who spent quite a lot of his adult life behind bars, the country singer Johnny Paycheck had a fine sense of timing. Just as his version of David Allan Coe's great blue-collar anthem "Take This Job and Shove It" caught the mood of industrial rebellion in the mid-1970s, so his death last week provided a tiny, distant echo to the great moral debate thundering across the world from Washington to Rome and London --concerning whether God and moral virtue are on the side of the hawks or the peaceniks. [...]

Right now, it is particularly relevant to bear in mind that not only are we and the Americans divided by a common language but also by a common religion.

Whereas our version of Christianity is cerebral and anxious, the sort of gently anguished world-view that might be articulated by the Archbishop of Canterbury or Prince Charles,
--theirs is full of action and aggression.
It's a tale of the frontier in which Jesus is a Clint Eastwood character – a good guy but one who knows that sometimes you have to kick some serious ass along the path of righteousness.
In America, as a recent polls confirmed, the Son of God is not only among the top 10 personal heroes, but he is only a few places above John Wayne and Michael Jordan.

It should be no surprise that, when President Bush was asked his favorite philosopher, his unhesitating reply was "Jesus Christ".

After all, his biography comes straight out of the country singer's lifestyle manual, from the problems with alcohol, the confusion of his youth, to the fervent, aggressive born-again religious belief cut with an affection for hard-line politics and capital punishment – indeed, Paycheck's song "Pardon Me, I've Got Someone To Kill" could have been the theme tune to Bush's tenure as governor of Texas.

So, as the Pope, the archbishops, the Prime Minister and the President jostle their way to the high moral ground over the coming weeks, the ghostly voice of Johnny Paycheck, singing about nobody wanting to play rhythm guitar behind Jesus, provides the perfect soundtrack:
"It's hard to get a beat on what's divine/ When everybody's pushing to the head of the line/ I don't think it's working out at all the way He planned."
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 5:15 PM 0 comments

 
Actor George Clooney Frustrated by U.S. War Drive
Reuters, February 23, 2003

BERLIN (Reuters) - American actor George Clooney (news) stepped up his criticism of George W. Bush's administration on Sunday, saying he feared a war against Iraq was inevitable but would ultimately only lead to more violence. ...

Clooney, who in interviews with European newspapers has accused Bush of war-mongering over Iraq, is on a growing list of Hollywood celebrities to speak out against war. Others include Sean Penn, Ed Harris, Dustin Hoffman, Madonna and director Spike Lee .

"You can't beat your enemy anymore through wars; instead you create an entire generation of people revenge-seeking," Clooney said in the ARD television program "Beckmann."

"These days it only matters who's in charge," Clooney said. "Right now that's us -- for a while at least. Our opponents are going to resort to car bombs and suicide attacks because they have no other way to win."

Clooney, 41, said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was making a mistake to think a war against Iraq would be an easy win for the United States.

"I believe he thinks this is a war that can be won, but there is no such thing anymore," said Clooney, who starred in a film about the 1991 Gulf War (news - web sites) "Three Kings" that took a dark look at the war to drive Iraq out of Kuwait. [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 5:06 PM 0 comments

 
Don't mention the U-word
Brendan O'Neill, Spiked-Politics, February 23, 2003

As the transatlantic spat over Iraq continues, one thing has become clear: unilateralism is out.

None of the major powers wants to be seen to be 'going it alone' over the Iraqi crisis. America and Britain are sticking together on the pro-invasion front, and have won the support of Eastern European states in what some are calling 'the new NATO'.

The French/German/Belgian axis is demanding further weapons inspections, claiming to be upholding the principles of the United Nations in its stand against America's rush to militarism. [...]

Even Richard Perle, a leading Pentagon hawk on all matters military, utters the word unilateralism as a poisonous slur these days. At the end of last year, Perle was asked about German politicians' accusations that America is seeking to act unilaterally over Iraq - and far from defending America going it alone, Perle accused Germany of trying selfishly to do its own thing. 'For the German chancellor to say he will have nothing to do with action against Saddam Hussein, even if approved by the United Nations, is unilateralism', said Perle (7).

As for those 'cheese-eating surrender monkeys' (as one US commentator describes the French) - apparently their moral cowardice is only outflanked by their nasty unilateralist tendencies. In response to French claims that America is acting unilaterally over Iraq, US commentators have pointed to the Ivory Coast as an example of 'France's own unilateral action'. According to the Washington Post, 'France's solitary stance in the Ivory Coast jars with its opposition to any unilateral US move on Iraq' (8).

Behind the Bushies' bellicose rhetoric about Iraq, US leaders seem to be ever-more cautious about taking firm unilateral action in international affairs. So instead of telling the UN, France or Germany to get lost, Bush officials have gone back to Europe again and again, in an attempt to shore up multilateral support for launching military strikes against Saddam's regime. [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 5:00 PM 0 comments

 
Bush Faces Increasingly Poor Image Overseas
By Glenn Kessler and Mike Allen, Washington Post, February 24, 2003

The messages from U.S. embassies around the globe have become urgent and disturbing: Many people in the world increasingly think President Bush is a greater threat to world peace than Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

U.S. embassies are the eyes and ears of the U.S. government overseas, and their reports from the field are closely read at the State Department. The antiwar protests by millions of people Feb. 15 in the cities of major U.S. allies underscored a theme that the classified cables by U.S. embassies had been reporting for weeks.

"It is rather astonishing," said a senior U.S. official who has access to the reports. "There is an absence of any recognition that Hussein is the problem." One ambassador, who represents the United States in an allied nation, bluntly cabled that in that country, Bush has become the enemy.[...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 4:49 PM 0 comments

 
Anti-war group tries to enter Raytheon
'U.N. inspectors' arrested: United Neighbors targets missile factory
David Pittman, Tucson Citizen, Feb. 14, 2003

A drizzle fell from the dark sky as about 50 people in yellow hard hats, white lab coats and "U.N." armbands trudged up a two-lane road yesterday afternoon toward the main gate of a missile factory.

But these arms inspectors were in Tucson, not Iraq.
And they were not from the United Nations, but from a peace group calling itself United Neighbors. And the complex they were approaching was not some mustard gas factory in Baghdad, but Raytheon Missile Systems, south of Valencia Road off Old Nogales Highway.

And though the people claimed to have come to Raytheon to interview "scientists and inspect documents and production facilities for evidence of illegal weapons production," the truth is, they were not weapons inspectors at all, but protesters masquerading as such to draw attention from the news media.

They succeeded.
Television cameras whirred, newspaper photographers clicked, and reporters scribbled in notebooks made soggy by the rain.

[...] "We are here to enforce international law," McHenry said as he led the crew toward Raytheon's main gate. "We want to verify that no weapons of mass destruction are here.

[...] "Moeller supports the U.N. inspectors looking for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but he said it is hypocritical of the United States "to demand others stop producing weapons of mass destruction when the U.S. is the biggest producer of such weapons in the world."
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 4:46 PM 0 comments

 
Genre: Men Vs. Women Jokes

It's all in the punctuation:

An English professor wrote the words, "Woman without her man is nothing" on the blackboard and directed his students to punctuate it correctly.

The men wrote: "Woman, without her man, is nothing."

The women wrote: "Woman: Without her, man is nothing."
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 9:03 PM 0 comments

 
Jackson is sweeps' dream-come-true
Greg Braxton, Los Angeles Times, February 13, 2003

Michael Jackson's record sales may no longer be a thriller, but he is becoming ratings gold for networks and news organizations that have flooded the February TV landscape with what seems like an "all Jackson, all the time" tidal wave. [...]

While the networks have been frantic in their scramble for Jackson-related material, the singer has escalated the frenzy with his reported $2-million deal with Fox to show footage his own cameraman shot during the filming of "Living With Michael Jackson."

The Jackson footage was made at the same time that a crew was filming British journalist Martin Bashir's interview with the singer.

The Jackson footage, which includes moments not captured by Bashir's crew, shows the journalist praising Jackson for being a good father, which contradicts Bashir's approach in the finished program. There, Bashir said he became concerned about Jackson's behavior toward his children while in Berlin, where Jackson made news when he dangled his youngest child from the fourth-floor balcony of his hotel room.

The ABC broadcast was seen by 27.1-million viewers and was last week's most watched TV program.

Spokesmen for Jackson and Fox said Wednesday that the network has total editorial control over "Michael Jackson Take 2: The Interview They Wouldn't Show You."

Jackson's spokesman, Stuart Backerman, added that the singer is not an active participant in the program. He said Jackson's representatives turned over about two hours of footage of the Bashir interview, along with an additional three hours of an interview with Debbie Rowe, Jackson's ex-wife and the mother of two of his three children.[...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 11:49 PM 0 comments

 
The Martial Plan
Paul Krugman, New York Times, February 21, 2003

The Marshall Plan was America's finest hour. After World War I, the victors did what victors usually do: they demanded reparations from the vanquished. But after World War II America did something unprecedented: it provided huge amounts of aid, helping both its allies and its defeated enemies rebuild.

... And they are certainly following a very different strategy today.

It's not that the Bush administration is always stingy. In fact, right now it is offering handouts right and left. Most notably, it has offered the Turkish government $26 billion in grants and loans if it ignores popular opposition and supports the war.

Some observers also point out that the administration has turned the regular foreign aid budget into a tool of war diplomacy. Small countries that currently have seats on the U.N. Security Council have suddenly received favorable treatment for aid requests, in an obvious attempt to influence their votes. Cynics say that the "coalition of the willing" President Bush spoke of turns out to be a "coalition of the bought off" instead. [...]

Of course, postwar reconstruction in Europe and Japan wasn't just a matter of money; America can also be proud of the way it built democratic institutions. Alas, the Bush administration's postwar political plans are even more alarming than its economic nonchalance.

Turkey has reportedly been offered the right to occupy much of Iraqi Kurdistan. Yes, that's right: as we move to liberate the Iraqis, our first step may be to deliver people who have been effectively independent since 1991 into the hands of a hated foreign overlord. Moral clarity! [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 5:44 PM 0 comments

 
TV documentary about the US love of firearms makes history
Stuart Jeffries,The Guardian, May 17, 2002

The United States was lampooned yesterday for being not so much the land of the free and the home of the brave but a fearful and gun-crazy nation obsessed with violence, in a powerful film that premiered at Cannes last night.
Bowling for Columbine by the American film-maker Michael Moore, best known in Britain for his satirical series TV Nation and The Awful Truth, is the first documentary to be entered in competition at Cannes for 46 years. Its moving and occasionally funny analysis of gun violence in the US was greeted warmly by critics yesterday.

It is a topical and, for Cannes, explicitly radical political film linking what Moore calls the "paranoid mentality" of Americans who love guns to the violent nature of postwar US foreign policy.

Moore, 48, said that the question he set out to ask was "Are we a nation of gun nuts or just nuts?"
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 5:35 PM 0 comments

 
A Second Resolution is Not Enough
Tariq Ali, The Guardian, February 21, 2003

The UN was created after the defeat of fascism. Its charter prohibits the violation of national sovereignty except in the case of "self- defense". However, the UN was unable to defend the newly independent Congo against Belgian and US intrigue in the 1960s, or to save the life of the Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba. And in 1950 the security council authorized a US war in Korea.

Under the UN banner the western armies deliberately destroyed dams, power stations and the infrastructure of social life in North Korea, plainly in breach of international law. The UN was also unable to stop the war in Vietnam. Its paralysis over the occupation of Palestine has been visible for over three decades.

This inactivity was not restricted to western abuses. The UN was unable to act against the Soviet invasion of Hungary (1956) or the Warsaw Pact's entry into Czechoslovakia (1968). Both Big Powers were allowed to get on with their business in clear breach of the UN charter. [...]

The world has changed so much over the last 20 years that the UN - the current deadlock notwithstanding - has become an anachronism, a permanent fig leaf for new imperial adventures.

Former UN secretary general Boutros Boutros-Ghali was sacked on Madeline Albright's insistence for challenging the imperial will: he had insisted that it was the Rwandan genocide that needed intervention. US interests required a presence in the Balkans. He was replaced by Kofi Annan, a weak placeman, whose sanctimonious speeches may sometimes deceive an innocent British public, but not himself. He knows who calls the shots. [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 5:23 PM 0 comments

 
The View from Cuba: A police state is as a police state does
Joel McNally, Shepherd Express, January 23, 2003

In the distance, we can see the buildings housing more than 600 prisoners in wire-mesh, single-cell cages. None of the detainees has been charged with any crime. But all are being held indefinitely, possibly for the rest of their lives, without any right to a trial or even legal counsel.

We are on Cuban soil, but it is not a Cuban prison camp. It is the notorious Camp X-Ray, operated by the U.S. military at its naval base at Guantanamo Bay. The base is surrounded by more than 70,000 land mines. If you move the viewer to the right of the prison compound, you see the ultimate symbol of U.S. occupation, an 18-hole golf course. [...]

Cuba clearly has made economic progress from the starvation depths of a decade ago, when it lost the financial support of the collapsing Soviet Union. It has entered into joint ventures to develop tourist resorts with Canadian, Italian and Scandinavian companies. It has even begun exploring for oil, which some believe could end the U.S. embargo once and for all.

That has led to a joke Cubans tell about Fidel Castro getting good news and bad news. The good news: "We've discovered oil!" The bad news: "The Yankees are coming.
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 5:13 PM 0 comments

 
In the Mahatma's footsteps
Ashish Magotra in Pietermaritzburg, rediff.com, February 21, 2003

Sachin Tendulkar couldn't make it and the younger lot got into it with Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge on their lips.

That, in a nutshell, explains the Indian World Cup squad's historic train journey from Pietermaritzburg to Pentrich on Friday afternoon.

The very same journey that another Indian -- unaccompanied by the media, unaccompanied by autograph hunters and
unaccompanied by security personnel -- had undertaken 110 years ago. Alone.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

On the night of June 7, 1893, the young Indian barrister had been thrown off a train on this very stretch for refusing to move from a whites-only compartment.

'I was afraid for my very life,' wrote Gandhi later. 'I entered the dark waiting room. There was a white man in the room. I was afraid of him. What was my duty? I asked myself. Should I go back to India, or should I go forward with God as my helper, and face whatever was in store for me? I decided to stay and suffer. My active non-violence began from that date.'

This afternoon the Boys in Blue tried to retrace the historic journey.

As the flash bulbs popped and the autograph hunters thronged the station, there were just two questions in most people's minds.

Would Sourav Ganguly and his boys understand the true value of the occasion? Or would it be just another train journey? [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 5:00 PM 0 comments

 
Sex, donkeys and democracy
Pankaj Upadhyay, rediff.com, February 21, 2003

Shimla: "A sex scandal in Gujarat?" Ashok Ahuja's face looked like he had just had a bite of an aloo parantha stuffed with just salt. "How does it matter to me? How does it matter to anybody in Himachal Pradesh?"

"And Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi? Would he have any impact in Himachal Pradesh?" I ventured further. "Oh! for god's sake. Himachal's own politicians are trouble enough," Ahuja said in an exasperated tone.

Ahuja, who runs a cyber café on the Mall in Shimla and a hotel-restaurant in the suburbs, was born and brought up in this picturesque city. "Till just a couple of decades back we used have uninterrupted power supply after bigger snow falls than what we saw on Tuesday. So are we progressing or regressing?" he asked. "All this talk of sex scandals is just a gimmick. It will not work. There are so many issues, but do the people who get elected have the capacity to even think through them?"

"I have a problem with democracy. If donkeys have a majority, they will elect a donkey. There is no qualification required to become a politician and this is what we get," he said.

I wanted find out why a sex scandal involving Punjab ministers had become an election issue in the state. And also what was Modi doing in a state where minorities -- Sikhs, Muslims, Buddhists and Christians -- comprised less than 5 per cent of the total population. [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 4:57 PM 0 comments

 
Google Deal Ties Company to Weblogs
AmyHarmon, New York Times, February 17, 2003

Google, the operator of the Web's leading search engine, has bought Pyra Labs, the creator of software for publishing Weblogs, a form of hyperlinked online journal that has become an increasingly popular way to distribute and collect information on the Web.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the move was hailed by users of Weblogs, commonly called blogs, as a watershed moment for the fledgling communications medium, sometimes dismissed as too narrowband and self-involved to have a significant cultural impact.

"People will start taking it seriously," said Matthew Haughey, creator of Metafilter, a widely read Weblog, and a former employee of Pyra. "If it's linked to off of Google, you're not going to have to explain what a Weblog is to people anymore." [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 3:13 AM 0 comments

 
The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action.
--Frank Herbert (1920 - 1986)
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 8:19 PM 0 comments

 
US Lobbyist Helped Draft Eastern Europeans' Iraq Statement
Agence France Presse, February 20, 2003

A former Pentagon official helped draft a controversial statement by 10 Central and Eastern European nations this month that supports the United States in its stand-off with Iraq, according to a press report published in Paris.
In an interview,

Bruce Jackson, a former US Defense Department official who heads a Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, said that he was among those who helped initiate the statement supporting the US stance, the daily International Herald Tribune reported.


The joint statement by Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia drew a scathing rebuke from France's President Jacques Chirac at a European Union summit meeting in Brussels Monday.
According to the report, it was the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, Jackson's organization, that helped distribute the text to news agencies. [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 3:55 PM 0 comments

 
US Plan for New Nuclear Arsenal
Julian Borger, The Guardian, February 19, 2003

The Bush administration is planning a secret meeting in August to discuss the construction of a new generation of nuclear weapons, including "mini-nukes", "bunker-busters" and neutron bombs designed to destroy chemical or biological agents, according to a leaked Pentagon document.

The meeting of senior military officials and US nuclear scientists at the Omaha headquarters of the US Strategic Command would also decide whether to restart nuclear testing and how to convince the American public that the new weapons are necessary.

The leaked preparations for the meeting are the clearest sign yet that the administration is determined to overhaul its nuclear arsenal so that it could be used as part of the new "Bush doctrine" of pre-emption, to strike the stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons of rogue states.

Greg Mello, the head of the Los Alamos Study Group, a nuclear watchdog organization that obtained the Pentagon documents, said the meeting would also prepare the ground for a US breakaway from global arms control treaties, and the moratorium on conducting nuclear tests.

"It is impossible to overstate the challenge these plans pose to the comprehensive test ban treaty, the existing nuclear test moratorium, and US compliance with article six of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty," Mr Mello said.

The documents leaked to Mr Mello are the minutes of a meeting in the Pentagon on January 10 this year called by Dale Klein, the assistant to the defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, to prepare the secret conference, planned for "the week of August 4 2003". [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 3:51 PM 0 comments

 
Win Without War“
Commondreams.org, February 19, 2003

Online Campaign Headquarters” Unveiled
Win Without War Announces the Virtual March on Washington on February 26th
Celebrities and Coalition Leaders Call on Opponents of Iraq War to Overwhelm the White House and U.S. Senate By Phoning, Faxing and E-mailing
New TV Ad Featuring Martin Sheen Calls on Public to Participate

WASHINGTON / HOLLYWOOD - February 19 - “Last weekend we marched in the streets, next week we’re taking it to the suites of official Washington,” said former Congressman Tom Andrews, National Director of Win Without War.
“Political leaders need to know we are serious, we are organized and we are growing in strength,” he said. “On February 26th, we will let our fingers do the marching and demand that our voices be heard.”

Martin Sheen, who plays President Jeb Bartlet on the NBC hit series, The West Wing, is featured in a Win Without War TV ad released at the news conference. He called on Americans from every state to participate in the Virtual March on Washington: “Our message to Washington will be clear – "Don’t invade Iraq! We can contain Saddam Hussein without killing innocent people, diverting us from the war on terrorism and putting us all at risk.”

“Our leaders in Washington are out of step with millions of Americans,” said Janeane Garofalo at the LA news conference. “This is clearly a time when we must join together and lead Washington back to its senses,” she said. “The Virtual March on Washington is an opportunity to do just that.”

“The National Council of Churches is calling February 26th ‘A Day of Prayer and Faxing,’ ” said Rev. Brenda Girton-Mitchell, Director of the Washington DC office of the National Council of Churches “We are urging all of our member denominations and congregations to join the march. They can do so without even leaving their homes”, she said.

Organizers of the Virtual March on Washington hope to overwhelm the White House and every member of the US Senate with calls, faxes and e-mails on February 26th. [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 3:47 PM 0 comments

 
Bush's Macho Posturing on Germany
William Pfaff, International Herald Tribune, February 20, 2003

PARIS -- The second Bush administration is devoted to macho posturing with little consideration for the consequences. This could turn the trans-Atlantic confrontation into something for which Washington may eventually be very sorry.

The administration's effort to intimidate Germany and isolate France in the quarrel over military intervention in Iraq backfired on Friday at the UN Security Council and in the anti-war demonstrations of the weekend. Unless the inspectors find a mine shaft packed with drums of anthrax and nerve agents during the next few days, Washington is unlikely to win a mandate to go to war.

This leaves Prime Minister Tony Blair in an extremely difficult situation. He has already dispatched British forces to the war. Without a second UN resolution endorsing intervention, ordering the troops into action would cause a Labour Party revolt. Whether he survives would depend on the war's outcome.

George W. Bush and his more hawkish advisers believed that they could bully the Security Council's members and get what they wanted. They confided to reporters some days ago that objections by the French were already "fixed" and that Paris would fall in line, while the Germans would do what they were told.

France is accustomed to this treatment, but Germany is not. Germany is a very complex and in some ways mysterious nation (to Anglo-Americans, at least), ..[...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 3:38 PM 0 comments

 
The Age of Innocence
James Carroll, Boston Globe, February 18, 2003

''THIS IS THE patent age of new inventions/ For killing bodies and for saving souls,'' Lord Byron wrote, ''All propagated with the best intentions.'' The lines serve as an epigram for Graham Greene's ''The Quiet American.''

That novel first appeared in 1955, but a filmed version arrived in theaters last week, a timely renewal of its prophetic relevance. Michael Caine's performance as Thomas Fowler, the opium-ridden British journalist who jousts with - and befriends - an American intelligence operative, just received an Oscar nomination. Americans may go to this movie for the superlative acting, but in the ''patent age'' of a coming war, they may find something more.

Graham Greene was a connoisseur not of good and evil, but of innocence and corruption [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 3:28 PM 0 comments

 
Presque Isle, Maine Peace Rally Speech
Commondreams.org, February 18, 2003

[Charlotte Aldebron, 12, attends Cunningham Middle School in Presque Isle, Maine. Comments may be sent to her mom, Jillian Aldebron: aldebron@ainop.com ]

"...But guess what? More than half of Iraq’s 24 million people are children under the age of 15. That’s 12 million kids. Kids like me. Well, I’m almost 13, so some are a little older, and some a lot younger, some boys instead of girls, some with brown hair, not red. But kids who are pretty much like me just the same. So take a look at me—a good long look. Because I am what you should see in your head when you think about bombing Iraq. I am what you are going to destroy. [...]

- posted by ARYABHATT @ 3:25 PM 0 comments

 
We are the people
Madeleine Bunting, The Guardian, February 17, 2003

There will be millions of people who will never forget Saturday February 15 2003. It was an extraordinary combination of the utterly prosaic and the deeply moving: a bursting bladder and the nearest toilets several hours' walk away in Hyde Park, an aching back and blisters, and then the remarkable sight of a heaving mass of people along the Embankment converging with crowds pouring across Waterloo bridge. Everywhere there were astonishing juxtapositions: the body-pierced peaceniks alongside the dignified Pakistani elder with white beard; the homemade placard "The only bush I trust is my own" drawing surreptitious giggles from a group of veiled Muslim women.

This was a day which confounded dozens of assumptions about our age. How much harder it is today than a week ago to speak of the apathy and selfish individualism of consumer society. Saturday brought the entire business of a capital city to a glorious full-stop. Not a car or bus moved in central London, the frenetic activities of shopping and spending halted across a wide swathe of the city; the streets became one vast vibrant civic space for an expression of national solidarity. Furthermore, unlike previous occasions when crowds have gathered, this was not to mark some royal pageantry, but to articulate an unfamiliar British sentiment - one of democratic entitlement: we are the people. [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 4:42 PM 0 comments

 
Saudi Arabia hardens opposition to US war on Iraq
Omar Hasan, Middle East Online, February 18, 2003

Buoyed by worldwide anti-war sentiment, Saudi Arabia, the US key ally in the Gulf, has hardened opposition to a unilateral attack on Iraq, warning that no foreign troops will wage war on Baghdad from the kingdom.

Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal took the Saudi anti-war stance a step forward by declaring Monday that an attack by the United States on Iraq would be seen by many as an act of aggression. [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 4:35 PM 0 comments

 
Genre: Religious Jokes

A minister dies and is waiting in line at the Pearly Gates. Ahead of him is a guy who's dressed in sunglasses, a loud shirt, leather jacket, and jeans.

Saint Peter addresses this guy: "Who are you, so that I may know whether or not to admit you to the Kingdom of Heaven?"
The guy replies: "I'm Joe Cohen, taxi driver, of Noo Yawk City."
St. Peter consults his list. He smiles and says to the taxi driver, "Take this silken robe and golden staff and enter the Kingdom of Heaven."

The taxi driver goes into Heaven with his robe and staff, and it's the minister's turn.
He stands erect and booms out, "I am Joseph Snow, pastor of Calvary Church for the last forty-three years."
St. Peter consults his list. He says to the minister, "Take this cotton robe and wooden staff and enter the Kingdom of Heaven."

"Just a minute," says the minister. "That man was a taxi driver, and he gets a silken robe and golden staff. How can this be?"

""Up here, we work by results," says Saint Peter. While you preached, people slept; while he drove, people prayed."
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 4:14 PM 0 comments

 
Iraqi defence minister 'under house arrest'
Luke Harding, The Guardian, February 18, 2003


Saddam Hussein was last night reported to have placed his defence minister and close relative under house arrest in an extraordinary move apparently designed to prevent a coup.
Iraqi opposition newspapers, citing sources in Baghdad, yesterday claimed that the head of the Iraqi military, Lieutenant-General Sultan Hashim Ahmad al-Jabburi Tai, was now effectively a prisoner in his home in the capital.

The minister's apparent detention, also reported by Cairo-based al-Ahram newspaper, is surprising. He is not only a member of President Saddam's inner circle, but also a close relative by marriage. His daughter is married to Qusay Hussein, the dictator's 36-year-old younger son - considered by many as his heir apparent. [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 4:12 PM 0 comments

 
We Stand Passively Mute
The Guardian , February 18, 2003


Robert Byrd, a US senator, appeals to fellow Americans to reject the administration's 'outrageous, reckless and inexcusable' foreign policy


To contemplate war is to think about the most horrible of human experiences. As this nation stands at the brink of battle, every American must be contemplating the horrors of war.
Yet, this chamber is, for the most part, silent - ominously, dreadfully silent. There is no debate, no discussion, no attempt to lay out for the nation the pros and cons of this particular war.

We stand passively mute in the United States Senate, paralysed by our own uncertainty, seemingly stunned by the sheer turmoil of events. And this is no small conflagration we contemplate. This is no simple attempt to defang a villain. No. This coming battle, if it materialises, represents a turning point in US foreign policy.

This nation is about to embark upon the first test of a revolutionary doctrine applied in an extraordinary way at an unfortunate time. The doctrine of pre-emption - [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 4:10 PM 0 comments

 
Noam Chomsky: MIT professor, writer and activist
The Guardian, February 4, 2003

There's never been a time that I can think of when there's been such massive opposition to a war before it was even started. And the closer you get to the region, the higher the opposition appears to be. In Turkey polls indicated close to 90% opposition, in Europe it's quite substantial.
In the United States the figures you see in polls, however, are quite misleading because since September there's been a drumbeat of propaganda trying to bludgeon people into the belief that not only is Saddam a terrible person but in fact he's going to come after us tomorrow unless we stop him today. And that reaches people.

They have to terrify the population to feel there's some enormous threat to their existence and carry out a miraculous, decisive and rapid victory over this enormous foe and march on to the next one.

Remember the people now running the show in Washington are mostly recycled Reaganites, essentially reliving the script of the 1980s. So one year it was an airbase in Grenada which the Russians were going to use to bomb the US. Nicaragua was "two days marching time from Texas". Nicaragua might conquer us on its way to conquer the hemisphere. A national emergency was called because of the threat posed to national security by Nicaragua. [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 4:04 PM 0 comments

 
Flood of Emotion and Anger That Rose to Wash Away Years of Dismay
Richard Williams, The Guardian, February 17, 2003

Somebody called it a movement. It was not a movement. It was a feeling. A feeling that drove wave after wave of people in a great river which began to flow a few minutes before noon and was still in full flood long after nightfall.

What astonished everyone who marched on Saturday - let's settle on a million, shall we? - was the apparently limitless variety of those with whom they shared the roads of central London. Not just a diversity of banner-bearing interest groups but of individuality, brought into focus by the single underlying feeling that gave this day its resonance.

That feeling was one of a generalized dismay directed squarely at the country's leadership. If you wanted to attempt the impossible task of identifying a typical marcher, you would probably settle for the middle-aged white man who marched past the barricaded end of Downing Street at about 1pm carrying a hand-lettered sign.

What it said, in neat black letters about six inches high, came closest to summarizing the message of the day. "Labour Party member no A128368 against the war," the man had written. [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 4:00 PM 0 comments

 
Bushonomics: One Family's Lifelong Legacy to America's Investment Class
Kevin Phillips, Seattle Times, February 17, 2003

For those who ever believed in it, Washington "compassionate conservatism" just took off its mask. Federal deficits are soaring. State finances are sinking into their biggest crisis since the Great Depression. So, what does the Bush White House propose?

No serious help for the states. Nor is there relief from payroll taxes to encourage job creation. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has rightly remarked on the lack of compassion in the Bush administration's economic stimulus package. Its centerpiece, costing $364 billion of the $674 billion to be spent over 10 years, is to reduce or end taxation of dividends, some 40 percent of which annually goes to the top 1 percent of wealthy Americans. ...

...Like father, like son. In fact, we can go further: Like great-grandfather, like grandfather, like father, like uncles, like siblings, like son. The predominant history of the Bush family for 100 years has been to work in the investment business (sometimes with an oil tilt); interpret the economy through the lens of investment; and tailor economic policies to favor friends, neighbors and relatives in the investment business.

If a president who came out of the widget industry spent all his time trying to promote the widget business, it would be obvious — and it would raise major ethical problems. But the magnitude of the Bushes' investment involvement and bias is too little understood.

Great-grandfather George H. Walker was the president of two major New York investment firms: G.H. Walker & Co. and W.A. Harriman and Co. Grandfather Prescott Bush was the managing partner of Brown Bros., Harriman & Co. Presidential uncles Jonathan and Prescott Jr. have been, respectively, the heads of small investment firms named J. Bush & Co. and Prescott Bush & Co. Prescott Bush Jr. has also been closely involved with Asset Management International Financing and Settlement Ltd.

Presidential brother Marvin runs hedge funds at investment company Winston Partners. Presidential brother Neil started an investment deal in Austin, Texas, and both George H.W. and George W. Bush have been in the kind of oil business that is largely driven by tax shelters and financing from friends and relatives.

Such finance doesn't look out for widows and orphans. [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 3:58 PM 0 comments

 
Who is Your Hero?
Ruth Rosen, San Francisco Chronicle, February 17, 2003

RECENTLY, I asked a class of University of California undergraduates to name their heroes. Ten years earlier, their counterparts had listed the Rev.

Martin Luther King Jr., Robert F. Kennedy, Nelson Mandela, Rosa Parks, Mohandas K. Gandhi and Vaclav Havel. This time, they mostly named celebrities who were famous -- well, for being famous.

Sure, it's a sign of the times, a result of our pervasive celebrity culture.

But we need heroes. Celebrities teach us about glamour and appearance, not how to reach deeply and draw upon inner strengths. [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 3:53 PM 0 comments

 
What Are They Really Up To?
Huck Gutman, DAWN, February 17. 2003

The government of the United States is, sad to say, in the hands of blinkered ideologues. And that is putting it kindly. A less generous interpretation is that a small group of people are determined to serve their own narrow interests, oblivious to the effect their actions may have on either their own nation, or the six billion people with whom they share the globe.

President George Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and presidential adviser Karl Rove have come up with a 'policy' toward Iraq based on a triumvirate of crass motives: oil, sleight-of-hand, re-election. [...]

Within the territorial borders of Iraq lies the second largest petroleum reserve in the world.

Saddam Hussein may have done many things wrong, but in the eyes of President Bush one of his very greatest errors was that he signed contracts with the Russians, the French and the Italians to allow them to extract that petroleum from beneath Iraqi soil.

The Americans and the British, should Saddam remain in power, will see huge profits made - but by other nations, and more particularly by corporations other than the ones headed by the men with whom the president plays golf when he is in Texas.

"Regime change," that neutered term which means deposing Saddam Hussein, also means contract abrogation and renegotiation. [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 3:52 PM 0 comments

 

Zen Poet's Voice of Dissent Heard by Anti-War Literati
Chris McGann, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, February 18, 2003

PORT TOWNSEND -- Sam Hamill, a reclusive former Marine turned Zen Buddhist poet, is an unlikely spokesman for the anti-war poetry movement he started almost by accident.

Hamill triggered a nationwide artistic uprising when he declined a White House invitation to a literary symposium Feb. 12, instead asking fellow poets to write protest poems.

That act of dissent continues to gain momentum, and yesterday Hamill braved a blizzard to join other poets in the limelight of New York City's Lincoln Center for public readings to raise money for anti-war efforts.

Scheduled to share the stage before a packed house with Hamill: former U.S. poet laureates Stanley Kunitz and Robert Pinsky and Pulitzer Prize winners C.K. Williams and Mark Strand, to name a few -- heady company for a man who describes himself as a bookish recluse who spends most of his time "talking with dead Chinese poets."

The New York event, "Poems Not Fit for the White House," and the national movement of nearly 9,000 poets came together after Hamill and several other poets declined to attend the White House symposium on Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson and Langston Hughes. First lady Laura Bush canceled the event [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 3:47 PM 0 comments

 
$26 billion Bribe for Turkey's Support
NathanNewman.org, February 16, 2003

Along with selling out the Kurds, Bush is offering Turkey $6 billion in direct grants and $20 billion in loan guarantees to get that country's backing for war.

Let's be clear what this means-- almost all international support for Bush is probably based on either threats of economic retaliation or promises of help in the future, one reason Bush's support is so concentrated in former East Bloc countries like Bulgaria desperate for foreign aid.

What's so telling is that despite Bush's corruption of foreign aid programs in support of his war aims, he still can't assemble any serious support for his argument beyond Britain's Tony Blair.

Let's just refer to Bush's global support as the Coalition of the Bribed.

Update: Give Turkey credit. They are at least being smart enough to take advantage of their leverage, given Bush's desperate need for support, to demand a decent bribe for their support. The Turkish government has delayed a vote by their parliament until Bush ponies up more money.

If Turkey decides that a promise from Bush is not enough, but demand that Bush push the aid through Congress first, that could confront the White House with a situation they desperately want to avoid-- essentially a new vote in Congress to directly authorize war with Iraq, including part of the looming price tag that his foreign aid promises, the war itself, and occupation will burden the US budget with.

Posted by Nathan at February 16, 2003 10:02 AM
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 3:43 PM 0 comments

 
The whole world is against this war
John Nichols, The Online Beat, February 14, 2003

"The whole world is against this war. Only one person wants it," declared South African teenager Bilqees Gamieldien as she joined a Cape Town antiwar demonstration on a weekend when it did indeed seem that the whole world was dissenting from George W. Bush's push for war with Iraq.

Millions of protesters marched into the streets of cities from Tokyo to Tel Aviv to Toronto and Bush's homestate of Texas to deliver a message expressed by the Rev. Jesse Jackson to a crowd of more than one million in London: "It's not too late to stop this war."

Crowd estimates for demonstrations of the kind being seen this weekend are always a source of controversy, especially when nervous politicians -- like British Prime Minister Tony Blair -- try to convince journalists and the public to dismiss the significance of the protests even before they begin. But, faced with a historic show of dissent, even the constantly spinning Blair had to acknowledge that the cost for his unwavering support of the Bush administration on Iraq is turning out to be "unpopular" in his own land. [...]

The New York demonstration was one of more than 200 planned for this weekend in US cities from Augusta, Maine, to Yakima, Washinbgton, and Wausau, Wisconsin. What was supposed to be a relatively modest Los Angeles demonstration gew so large that television reporters there were reporting breathlessly on the "massive" show of opposition to war. Actors Martin Sheen and Mike Farrell and director Rob Reiner joined a march that filled Hollywood Boulevard from curb to curb for four blocks. Police claimed 30,000 turned out, while organizers said the crowd ultimately swelled to almost 100,000.

Sunday march in San Francisco drew an estimated 250,000, according to estimates reported in the local media, making it one of the largest demonstrations that west coast city has ever seen. "How do you want to spend $1.5 trillion? On our children? Or on war?" Assemblywoman Patricia Wiggins, a Democratic state legislator from Santa Rosa, asked the crowd. The crowd roared for the kids, and against the war. [...]


- posted by ARYABHATT @ 3:41 PM 0 comments

 
Behind the Great Divide
Paul Krugman, The New York Times, February 18, 2003

There has been much speculation why Europe and the U.S. are suddenly at such odds. Is it about culture? About history? But I haven't seen much discussion of an obvious point: We have different views partly because we see different news.

Let's back up. Many Americans now blame France for the chill in U.S.-European relations. There is even talk of boycotting French products.

But France's attitude isn't exceptional. Last Saturday's huge demonstrations confirmed polls that show deep distrust of the Bush administration and skepticism about an Iraq war in all major European nations, whatever position their governments may take. In fact, the biggest demonstrations were in countries whose governments are supporting the Bush administration.

There were big demonstrations in America too. ...

...but the difference between the news reports Americans and Europeans see is a stark demonstration of his point. At least compared with their foreign counterparts, the "liberal" U.S. media are strikingly conservative — and in this case hawkish.

I'm not mainly talking about the print media. There are differences, but the major national newspapers in the U.S. and the U.K. at least seem to be describing the same reality.

Most people, though, get their news from TV — and there the difference is immense. The coverage of Saturday's antiwar rallies was a reminder of the extent to which U.S. cable news, in particular, seems to be reporting about a different planet than the one covered by foreign media.

What would someone watching cable news have seen? On Saturday, news anchors on Fox described the demonstrators in New York as "the usual protesters" or "serial protesters." CNN wasn't quite so dismissive, but on Sunday morning the headline on the network's Web site read "Antiwar rallies delight Iraq," and the accompanying picture showed marchers in Baghdad, not London or New York.

This wasn't at all the way the rest of the world's media reported Saturday's events, [...]

- posted by ARYABHATT @ 3:36 PM 0 comments

 
A nation divided, with no bridges left to build
In Austin, Texas, Robert Fisk sees at first hand the vast gulf between the pro- and anti-war movements in the United States
The Independent, 16 February 2003


The show was over, recorded for one of those nice liberal local American TV cable channels – this time in Texas – where everyone agrees that war is wrong, that George Bush is in the hands of right-wing Christian fundamentalists and pro-Israeli neo- conservatives.

Don Darling, the TV host, had just turned to thank me for my long and flu-laden contribution. Then it happened. Cameraman number two came striding towards us through the studio lights. "I want to thank you, sir, for reminding us that the British had a lot to do with the chaos in the Middle East, " he said. "But I have something else to say."

His voice rose 10 decibels, his bare arms bouncing up and down at his sides, his shaven head struck forward pugnaciously. "Yeah, I wanna tell you that the cause of this problem is the fucking medieval Arabs and their wish to enslave us all – and I tell you that it is because we want to save the Jews from the fucking savage Arabs who want to throw them into the sea that we are about to fuck Saddam." There was a pause as Don Darling looked at the man, aghast. "And that," cameraman number two concluded, "is the fucking truth." [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 3:31 PM 0 comments

 
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
--Galileo Galilei (1564 - 1642)
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 3:21 AM 0 comments

 
Ladies' man who swept UN off its feet
Paul Webster in Paris, The Observer, February 16, 2003

If there can be such a thing as a diplomatic pin-up, then it is Dominque de Villepin, the French Foreign Minister, whose dashing good looks and eloquence earned him rare applause at Friday's dramatic Security Council meeting.
Until his appointment after the right-wing general election win in June, De Villepin, 49, was a man of the shadows, despite being President Jacques Chirac's chief of staff and his most trusted adviser.

A career diplomat who twice served in Washington, De Villepin was often criticised by his own side for mistakes in presidential planning, including the disastrous 1997 parliamentary dissolution. The error forced Chirac into five painful years of 'cohabitation' with the Left, but he brushed aside demands to sack his aide.

Grooming presidential chiefs of staff to become Foreign Ministers is traditional. De Villepin, whose curious, aristocratic middle name is Galouzeau, was preceded by a string of promoted front-line aides, including De Gaulle's Michel Jobert, Giscard's Jean François-Poncet and Mitterrand's Hubert Védrine. Of these, De Villepin, whose studied courtesy, charm and good looks have given him the reputation of a ladies' man, had the best credentials for the job. Chirac gave him the Ministry because of his pro-European record. Apart from being told to accelerate France's role as the European Union's political motor, Chirac also asked him to reform the unwieldy administration at the Quai d'Orsay - the Foreign Ministry - but he has been distracted by Iraq and Ivory Coast's civil war.

De Villepin's triumph at the UN has obscured criticism from his own side over his handling of the Ivory Coast affair, in which he oversaw a hasty peace deal that has since been rejected. But Chirac, who treats foreign policy as his personal preserve, congratulated him on his UN performance, sealing a close partnership that is set to guide French diplomacy at least until the end of the President's second term in 2007.
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 3:18 AM 0 comments

 
US to punish German 'treachery'
Peter Beaumont, David Roseand Paul Beaver, The Observer, February 16, 2003

America is to punish Germany for leading international opposition to a war against Iraq. The US will withdraw all its troops and bases from there and end military and industrial co-operation between the two countries - moves that could cost the Germans billions of euros.
The plan - discussed by Pentagon officials and military chiefs last week on the orders of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld - is designed 'to harm' the German economy to make an example of the country for what US hawks see as Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's 'treachery'.

The hawks believe that making an example of Germany will force other countries heavily dependent on US trade to think twice about standing up to America in future.

This follows weeks of increasingly angry exchanges between Rumsfeld and Germany, in which at one point he taunted Germany and France for being an irrelevant part of 'old Europe'.

Now Rumsfeld has decided to go further by unilaterally imposing the Pentagon's sanctions on a country already in the throes of economic problems. [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 3:17 AM 0 comments

 
Cheese-eating monkeys and Gallic merde
Nicole Mowbray, The Observer, February 16, 2003

The ill-tempered insults that have characterised the war-peace debate in the past few weeks began in earnest with US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's sneer at 'old Europe', a remark which angered the French and Germans.

Roselyne Bachelot, the French Environment Minister, said Rumsfeld was talking 'Cambronne's word'. Cambronne was a French general who, when fatally wounded at Waterloo, said simply, 'Merde'. Joschka Fischer, the German Foreign Minister, said Rumsfeld should 'cool' down.

With calculated insouciance, Ari Fleischer, President George W. Bush's spokesman, said France and Germany had the 'prerogative, if they choose, to be on the sideline', making clear that US forces would go ahead in any event.

'The game is over,' President Bush told Iraq on Thursday. 'It's not a game, and it's not over,' Jean-Pierre Raffarin, the French Prime Minister, shot back yesterday.

Hostile television networks and editorial writers are competing to come up with the wittiest anti-Franco bile. Phrases coined include 'cheese-eating surrender monkeys' and 'axis of weasel' for the French-German alliance. The co-host of CNN's Crossfire programme declared to audience cheers on Thursday night: 'Let's beat up the French.' [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 3:15 AM 0 comments

 
Marching facts and figures Dorota Nosowicz,The Observer, February 16, 2003

Yesterday's LONDON march drew more than a million people, compared with the 1968 Grosvenor Square demonstration against the Vietnam War, above, attended by 50,000-plus.
· More than 4,500 police were on duty yesterday.

· Eleven political parties, including Greenpeace, the Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru and the SNP, supported the march.

· Brian Haw, a carpenter from Redditch, Worcs, has been camping outside the Commons since June 2001, in a one-man peace protest. Only five MPs have crossed the road to see him.

· More than 1,000 coaches, twice the number laid on for last October's Countryside March, brought protesters yesterday.

· Famous people who marched: Jesse Jackson, Bianca Jagger, Harold Pinter, Mo Mowlam, Kate Moss.
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 3:09 AM 0 comments

 
People power takes to the world's streets
Paul Harris, John Aglionby in Jakarta, Hannah Cleaver in Berlin and Sophie Arie in Rome,The Observer, February 16, 2003

It started in New Zealand as 10,000 people marched through Auckland and Wellington, then swept over Asia, Africa and Europe. By last night protesters were also on the move in North and South America as a day of protest not seen since the era of the Vietnam War swept the world.
Millions marched through more than 300 cities in over 60 countries. Their banners displayed common sentiments of blaming America, Britain and the oil industry for planning war. Some protests were huge, with more than a million people turning out in London and Rome.

Hundreds of thousands joined in marches in 20 French cities, with the biggest crowd marching to the Place de la Bastille in Paris. In Toulouse, marchers walked in the cold winter sunshine under banners reading, 'No blood in the oil', and 'No to war for petrol'.

Tens of thousands also gathered in Berlin, including a former British soldier. Martin Bentley, 47, bearer of the Military Medal for bravery, was with his two daughters aged nine and 14. Bentley, who served in the British Army for 17 years, seeing action in Cyprus, the Falklands and Northern Ireland, said: 'I am not against military intervention where it is justified, but there is no reason for this at all.'

In Italy organisers said more than a million people marched through Rome. Rainbow-coloured peace flags hung from the walls of the Colosseum. [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 3:06 AM 0 comments

 
>>> The dissident news-commentary Website, Yellow Times, was suddenly shut down by its hosting service during the first week of February 2003.

The host claimed that Yellow Times was using up too many resources, yet when YT offered to pay for more service, the host refused. Making the claim even more ridiculous is the fact that YT is 100% text. No streaming audio or video, not even any jpegs. To say that an all-text site is using up too much bandwidth and other resources is nutty. It is almost certainly yet another (temporary) casualty of the War on Dissent.

The people of YT are moving quickly to get their site back online. In the meantime, they've asked that The Memory Hole publish this important new article regarding the latest alleged tape from Osama bin Laden and the media's suspect reporting on it.

Misleading the PublicBy Firas Al-Atraqchi, YellowTimes.org Columnist (Canada)

On Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell dropped a bombshell at a Congressional hearing on Iraq and revealed that he had a transcript of an "upcoming" audio message from Osama bin Laden that betrays the links between bin Laden and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

However, the White House may have put its foot in its mouth this time around.

Upon careful scrutiny of the audio message from bin Laden (and broadcast at 3pm EST on the Arabic News Network Al-Jazeerah), it appears the Bush administration may have been so desperate to pin anything on Saddam and bin Laden that they did not wait to actually hear the contents of the message, nor provide adequate and reliable translation. [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 2:52 AM 0 comments

 
Millions show this is a war that no one wants
INDEPENDENT Leader, 16 February 2003

In London and in cities around the world the message yesterday was clear: "Don't attack Iraq". The extraordinary marches, attracting millions across Europe in protest at a possible war, represented the views of a broad range of voters across the political spectrum, views that have been largely unheard until now.Finally, before it is too late, the voters are having their say. In the past the Prime Minister has paid an obsessive attention to focus groups and opinion polls. Now he should listen to the marchers, unmediated voices expressing thoughtful opposition to an unprovoked attack on Iraq, raising many of the points argued by The Independent on Sunday over the past few months. If Tony Blair goes to war now he risks alienating the country and tearing apart his own party.

The Prime Minister's persistence in the face of widespread opposition can be seen as an example of brave leadership. Sometimes it is braver to stand back and think again. [...]

The propaganda for war produced by the British and US governments has been laughably amateurish. The attempts by Messrs Bush and Blair to link Iraq with al-Qa'ida have not been convincing. So far the senior UN weapons inspector, Hans Blix, has not come across weapons of mass destruction. Even if he does, The Independent on Sunday would not support war.

The key question in relation to weapons of mass destruction is whether Saddam would use them in the certain knowledge that such an act would provoke a war that would destroy him. We believe that deterrence still works [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 2:47 AM 0 comments

 
Genre: Miscellaneous Jokes

Three buddies die in a car crash, and they find themselves at the pearly gates.

They are all asked, "When you are in your casket and friends and
family are mourning upon you, what would you like to hear them say
about you?

The first guy says, "I would like to hear them say that I was the
greates doctor of my time, and a great family man."

The second guy says, "I would like to hear that I was a wonderful
husband and school teacher who made a huge difference in our
children of tomorrow."

The last guy replies,
"I would like to hear them say... LOOK!!! HE'S MOVING!!!!!"
---------------------------------

"Armageddon Is Long Overdue"
Inside the Bush White House
Lee Waters, Counterpunch, February 11, 2003

LEAKED WHITE HOUSE TRANSCRIPT, February, 2003

PRESIDENT BUSH: Let's get going, Gentlemen. I don't like what's going on.

VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: Calm down, George. Things are under control.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Well, I don't think so. What's with that damn United Nations? China. France. Germany. Who the hell do they think they are?

KARL ROVE: Don't worry, sir. We've got answers for all of them.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Just nuke 'em, dammit. I want a war. God tells me we have to have a war. And they're standing in the way. The economy's tanking. Gas is going up. And Armageddon is long overdue.

KARL ROVE: Well, I'm not sure Colin's speech really did the trick. Polls here went up, of course. But he kindof laid an egg in the rest of the world.

VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: The homeland comes first, Karl. I love how not a single talk show or TV commentator raised the least question about anything Colin said. And, of course, the polls fell right in line, even Oprah's. I was mighty impressed.

KARL ROVE: We've got every one of those networks in our pocket now. And thanks to Colin's boy Michael promoting the free market over at the FCC, it's going to stay that way for a long long time. This nonsense about diversity in the media, it's over. Every media outlet in the US will soon be owned by one of our corporations, and we're getting the polls pretty well rigged now, too.

PRESIDENT BUSH: What about that Phil Donahue guy? How come his hair is white? I hear he's raising some questions.

KARL ROVE: Not for long, Mr. President. We've sabotaged his ratings. And he's wimped out anyway. Nobody can stay awake watching him. Why these liberals still believe in balance is beyond me. Now he's just another liberal snooze....SECRETARY RIDGE: Yes, sir. But I'm afraid he's not alone. These peace marches have been getting pretty big.

KARL ROVE: Well, you don't see anybody covering them, do you? I can tell you they had 500,000 in DC and 250 in San Francisco. But the newspapers said 50,000 or less and gave them no coverage. Not even the New York Times. NPR devoted more time to the Queen's pants.

ATTORNEY-GENERAL ASHCROFT: National Public Radio is a nest of terrorists.

KARL ROVE: You can use that as your operative phrase, John, and arrest them all whenever you want. But NPR is a bunch of gutless wimps. Britt Hume, Fox, Russert, those are the attack dogs we love.

VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: You even got Bob Woodward licking George's feet, Karl. Damn I gotta love you for that. What'd you do, give him some deep throat?

PRESIDENT BUSH, VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY, KARL ROVE: Loud, prolonged laughter.

KARL ROVE: And that was a nice job you did at the astronauts' funeral, George. Your graveside manner has really improved.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Well I've got you to thank for that, Karl. Showing me those tapes of President Reagan and the Challenger was a really good idea. [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 11:59 PM 0 comments

 
He'll Be Remembered as an Asshole
Peaceniks Win War!
Ben Tripp, Counterpunch, February 14, 2003

Hey, gang! We won, if you don't mind Pyrrhic victories. ...

Right now it doesn't look like they've lost. They'll have their war on Iraq; they will rain bombs down on that godforsaken patch of petroleum-soaked dirt and before you know it instead of the Iraqi population being 50% children, it will be 20% children, because kids can't run as fast as adults. After a few days of hand-to-hand combat through the streets of once-legendary Baghdad it will all be over. ...

... what really matters to a guy like George is that he should someday join the pantheon of Great Americans whose marble busts inhabit the halls of our nation's capitol. He's got all the power and money he could ever misuse in a thousand lifetimes. What he needs now is to be honored by posterity. This is where he loses and we win.

...He will not be remembered as a brave warrior, a noble patriot, a statesman, a father to his country, a son of God, or even a well-meaning delusional psychotic. He will be remembered as an asshole- and that's exactly how it will read in the history textbooks, although they'll spell it a**hole so as to avoid mantling the kiddies' cheeks with blushes.

In the future, assuming we can still hope for one, George XLIII's reign will be derided, scorned, mocked, and other words to that effect. jeered and disparaged at the very least, maybe even subject to opprobrium. We-- the unlikely alliance acting against his lunatic regime, we Liberals and Conservatives, Libertarians and Progressives and Pentagon generals and disenfranchised veterans, mothers, fathers, mimes, entomologists, podiatrists and transsexuals, all sons and daughters of a government that has turned its back on the principles upon which we were nurtured from cradle to shallow grave-- we will bask in the hallowed light of kind remembrance, not George. A fat lot of good it will do us, but there we are. I didn't say victory would be sweet. ...

Another first: George will be remembered for reversing the outcome of both the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement. He will be remembered for mixing Church and State: his invisible cloud superhero and your tax dollars, together at last. He will be remembered for nose-diving the economy from a great height. For record deficits and massive bureaucratic expansion- he'll knock Reagan off the charts. For 50 bankrupt states. He will be remembered for turning his back on treaties. For insulting great nations. For calling the leader of Russia 'Pooty Poot'. For oppressing the weak and unleashing the mighty upon them. For eviscerating the Bill of Rights, and for secret detentions. For ignoring the desperate environmental crisis which grips the globe like a gut-spasming case of Montezuma's Revenge.

- posted by ARYABHATT @ 11:16 PM 0 comments

 
This is war
Don McCullin,The Guardian, February 14, 2003

The US-led attack on Iraq in 1991 was one of the worst-reported conflicts in history. A system of media management kept the violent deaths of some 40,000 people out of the public view. War photographer Don McCullin explains the crucial role photojournalists have in recording events

Sitting here in a cottage in Somerset, I should perhaps be enjoying the birdsong and the soft rolling hills. I'm not, because I live on a military flight path, and instead of the birds I hear the engine noise of dive-bombing aircraft flown by pilots who are readying themselves for a war in Iraq. C-130 transport planes are streaming into the air force base at Brize Norton, and the flapping sound of Chinook helicopters keeps putting me back in Vietnam. OK, I think, any moment now the doors are going to open and I'll jump out and run across those rice fields.

If you are a decent human being, war is going to offend you because it has no purpose other than to satisfy someone's desire for power and profit. And it is the little people who suffer. At the first whiff of trouble, the rich and the informed get into their Mercedes-Benzes and off-road vehicles and leave. The poor people, the very last of the dregs of society, can't escape. They get the bill. [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 9:35 PM 0 comments

 
London's Daily Mirror has a Valentine's Day message to Tony Blair and George Bush.
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 9:32 PM 0 comments

 
False Alarm?
By Brian Ross, Len Tepper and Jill Rackmill,


Feb. 13 — A key piece of the information leading to recent terror alerts was fabricated, according to two senior law enforcement officials in Washington and New York.
The officials said that a claim made by a captured al Qaeda member that Washington, New York or Florida would be hit by a "dirty bomb" sometime this week had proven to be a product of his imagination. ...

"This piece of that puzzle turns out to be fabricated and therefore the reason for a lot of the alarm, particularly in Washington this week, has been dissipated after they found out that this information was not true," said Vince Cannistraro, former CIA counter-terrorism chief and ABCNEWS consultant.

It was only after the threat level was elevated to orange — meaning high — last week, that the informant was subjected to a polygraph test by the FBI, officials told ABCNEWS.

"This person did not pass," said Cannistraro.

According to officials, the FBI and the CIA are pointing fingers at each other. An FBI spokesperson told ABCNEWS today he was "not familiar with the scenario," but did not think it was accurate.

Despite the fabricated report, there are no plans to change the threat level. Officials said other intelligence has been validated and that the high level of precautions is fully warranted.

New Yorkers Taking Police Presence in Stride

In New York, police are out in force in the subways, at train stations and airports and at the bridge and tunnel crossings into the city with radiation detectors and gas masks. In a press conference this afternoon, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said 16,000 law enforcement officials trained to combat terrorism were deployed in the city. Air patrols have also returned to New York. [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 9:30 PM 0 comments

 
Politicians are Out of Step with the People
War is Pretty Much Inevitable - But That Doesn't Mean Protest is Pointless, Either in the Short or Long Term
Natasha Walter, Independent.co.uk, February14, 2003

It was only a few weeks ago that commentators were shaking their heads over the almost invisible nature of the resistance to war. How things have changed. At the moment, we can only guess at the size of tomorrow's protests, but anecdotal evidence is talking big. ...

More unusual protests, such as delegations to Iraq, have been helping to raise awareness of particular issues, such as the plight of civilians.
And more confrontational protests have also begun, and will develop further with the beginning of the war. The tolerance for direct action has been growing over the last few years, and already more than 4,000 people in Britain (including myself) have signed a pledge to support civil disobedience, such as blocking roads, when the war begins.

But right now, a straightforward show of people out marching makes a very straightforward point very well: that the politicians are out of step with the people. In Britain, recent polls symbolize a crisis of legitimacy for our Government that, come tomorrow, it will have to work hard to dismiss. The march represents the people; the Government does not. According to a midweek BBC poll, the march represents about 90 per cent of the people in Britain (unless the UN gets behind war) and the Government represents about 10 per cent.

Because of this massive public support, even its opposers are finding it hard to marginalize the march. As we all know, peace marchers in the Sixties were a hippie rabble, and those in the Eighties were scruffy dykes; but who do we have here? Since even Daily Telegraph commentators are saying that they and their friends will be there, it could be anyone.

Even people who believe that war may ultimately be necessary, depending on how things go with the weapon inspections, will still go on the march to put the case that more time is needed right now. The few journalists who are totally against the march are trying to tell us that it will be dominated by old-style Trotskyites or new-style anti-Semites, but that is pretty weedy scaremongering. [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 9:18 PM 0 comments

 
'Iraq: The World Speaks'
NPR News and BBC Present Global Call-In Program on Iraq

On the air and online: Sat., Feb. 15 - 1pm ET/10am PT

E-mail your questions about the Iraq issue to iraq@npr.org.

As debate over the threat of U.S. military action against Iraq takes on a more urgent tone, NPR News joins with BBC World Service to present a live, two-hour, call-in program to discuss the issues surrounding Iraq. The joint production, Iraq: The World Speaks, will be hosted by NPR's Neal Conan, host of NPR's Talk of the Nation, and Robin Lustig, host of the BBC's Talking Point.

Iraq: The World Speaks will provide an opportunity for voices on all sides of the issue to be heard, in a town-hall format, .[...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 9:07 PM 0 comments

 
What About the Death Toll?
Derrick Z. Jackson, Boston Globe, February 14, 2003

BETH OSBORNE DAPONTE is concerned that the White House has not told Americans how it will avoid massive deaths to civilians in an invasion of Iraq. Her concern should be alarming. Daponte was the woman who a decade ago was nearly fired by the government for her estimates on the Iraqi civilian death toll in the first Gulf War. ''Right now, it's just like it was in 1991,'' Daponte said by telephone. ''People were sold on the idea of clean war.''

Daponte showed how dirty the first war really was. She was an analyst in the Census Bureau's international division, whose normal job is to estimate the populations of other nations. Up until then, the senior President Bush, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, and the Pentagon refused to make any public estimates of the Iraqi dead.

Daponte, a Middle East analyst, was assigned to come up with an estimate. She estimated that a total of 158,000 Iraqis were killed, with only 40,000 of them being soldiers in battle. The far greater death toll came afterward; Daponte estimated that 70,000 Iraqis died through easily preventable diseases that were suddenly made lingering and lethal by the bombing by the United States and its allies of water and power supplies, sewage systems, and roads.[...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 8:58 PM 0 comments

 
Exposing Bush and His "Techniques of Deceit"
Dennis Hans, Scoop.co.nz, 10 February 2003

President George W. Bush and his foreign-policy team have systematically and knowingly deceived the American people in order to gain support for an unprovoked attack on Iraq.

Before I catalog the Bush administration’s “Techniques of Deceit,” let me acknowledge that no U.N. resolution requires the president to be honest with the American people. The fine print of Resolution 1441 imposes no obligation to treat Americans as citizens to be informed rather than suckers to be conned. He may mislead, distort, suppress, exaggerate and lie to his heart’s content without violating a single sentence in 1441.

So if compliance with 1441 is all that matters to you, read no further. Turn on the TV and tune in Brokaw, Rather, Jennings, Blitzer or Lehrer, to name five of the journalistic imposters who control what you hear and see, who seem psychologically incapable of conceiving of Bush as a liar, and who wouldn’t have the guts to call him one even if they reached that conclusion.

But if you are an American citizen who believes in the bedrock democratic principle of “the informed consent of the governed,” read on.

Why lie?

The president and many of his top advisers have wanted to invade and overthrow the government of Saddam Hussein for a long time. But they knew they couldn’t sell such a war against Iraq to a majority of Americans and a majority in both houses of Congress if they acknowledged just how pitifully weak and unthreatening Iraq really is. If, however, the administration could portray Iraq as an imminent, mortal threat to the United States — and even a shadowy accomplice in the terrorist attacks of 9-11 — then a majority of the population might come to see an invasion of Iraq not as unprovoked U.S. aggression but as a wholly justified response to what Iraq did to us. [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 8:55 PM 0 comments

 
Britain and US still need to win five UN votes
Security council Pro-war countries plan intensive lobbying of waverers to back second resolution
Ewen MacAskill, February 14, 2003,The Guardian

The US and Britain would fail to secure a majority for a United Nations resolution authorising war against Iraq if the vote was to be held today, according to a Guardian survey of security council members.
Only four countries - Britain, the US, Bulgaria and Spain - would vote in favour. The remainder of the 15-member council would either vote against or abstain.

Nine votes are required to secure a resolution. Success also requires that none of the five permanent members - the US, Britain, France, Russia or China - exercises its veto.

The US and Britain expressed confidence yesterday that they can turn the security council around through intensive lobbying at the UN headquarters in New York.

But over the last week the anti-war mood in the security council has hardened.

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, threatened to use his veto. He told the French press: "If it is necessary, we will use our veto, but I do not think it is helpful to get into debate about this at the moment." [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 8:44 PM 0 comments

 
10 million join world protest rallies
From Africa to Antarctica, people prepare to march for peace
John Vidal, The Guardian, February 13, 2003

Up to 10 million people on five continents are expected to demonstrate against the probable war in Iraq on Saturday, in some of the largest peace marches ever known.

Yesterday, up to 400 cities in 60 countries, from Antarctica to Pacific islands, confirmed that peace rallies, vigils and marches would take place. Of all major countries, only China is absent from the growing list which includes more than 300 cities in Europe and north America, 50 in Asia and Latin America, 10 in Africa and 20 in Australia and Oceania.

Many countries will witness the largest demonstrations against war they have ever seen. The majority will be small but 500,000 people are expected in London and Barcelona, and more than 100,000 in Rome, Paris, Berlin and other European capitals. In the US, organisers were yesterday anticipating 200,000 marching in New York if permission is given. A further 100,000 are expected to march in 140 other American cities.

What is extraordinary, say the organisers, is the depth and breadth of opposition that the US and Britain are meeting across the world before a war has even started.
"This is unprecedented. Demonstrations only got this large againstthe Vietnam war at the height of the conflict, years after it started," said a spokesman for Answer, a coalition of US peace groups which helped organise a march of 200,000 people last month in Washington. [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 2:10 AM 0 comments

 
In bin Laden's Mind, a Good Start on Goals
James P. Pinkerton, Newsday.com, February 13, 2003

My plan is working well. When I, Osama bin Laden, ordered the blessed events of Sept. 11, I hoped to provoke an apocalyptic conflict between the faithful and the infidels. And not only is that happening, but also the Americans and Europeans are breaking up their alliance.

Indeed, the Americans are so desperate to destroy Iraq - a country that had nothing to do with the righteous destruction of the World Trade Center - that they don't care if they antagonize the major countries of all Eurasia. Happy is the man who watches his enemies fight each other.

My audiotape, released Tuesday, has sealed the fate of that socialist apostate, Saddam Hussein. I see Colin Powell on CNN saying it proves a "nexus" between my al-Qaida and his Iraq. Hah. As I said on that tape, the only connection between me and my enemies is my swordpoint hitting their neck.

The Americans have never understood that it has always been my dream to rid the Muslim Ummah - our world - of those secular Arabs who strut around like colonialist colonels in their epaulets and berets, men who preen like women, like peacocks. Such evildoers are obstacles to Islamic purity, to a return to the blessed days of the Caliphate, when mosque and state were united in holiness. Now, thanks to the Americans, those red infidels will be gone, buried under smart bombs. Who says the Great Satan can't be made to do God's work? [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 2:06 AM 0 comments

 
The Aga Khan: A near myth
Simon O'Hagan, The Independent, 13 October 2002

Nobody likes to be rejected, but when you are a billionaire spiritual leader unused to having people stand in your way, the consequences tend to be dramatic. Such is the case with the Aga Khan, who for the second time in 13 years has reacted to a perceived slight by turning his back on Britain and looking elsewhere for a welcome.

There is a clear parallel between what happened last week when the Aga Khan lost out in his attempt to set up a London centre for his Islamic art collection and an episode in 1989 when he became embroiled in a bitter dispute with the Jockey Club after two of his horses failed dope tests. Not a man to shrug off such experiences, the Aga Khan has announced that his priceless collection of paintings and artefacts – which he planned to house on a site owned by King's College, part of London University, until it refused to sell to him – will now find a home in Toronto, just as on the earlier occasion he took all his horses out of Britain in protest, and only recently returned them. [...]

...he is doted on by some 15 million Ismaili Muslims worldwide who are also understood to be one of the main sources of his incalculable wealth. You could spend a long time trying to reconcile all these roles.

Even those well versed in global hierarchies have difficulty explaining exactly who the Aga Khan is, the significance of his status, or how he manages to straddle both religious and secular worlds with such apparent ease. Comparisons have been made with the Dalai Lama, the head of Tibetan Buddhism, and with the Pope. But at the other extreme, the name evoked is George Soros, the man whose financial instincts help to shape entire economies. [...]

Free of obligations to any nation, the Aga Khan is in a unique position to foster peace through diplomacy. But the ventures he makes into such territory are necessarily cautious, for fear of being caught up in raw politics. A behind-the-scenes role he played in the aftermath of the Gulf War drew criticism that he was too compliant in his dealings with Saddam Hussein.
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 5:28 PM 0 comments

 
Sneers From Across the Atlantic
Anti-Americanism Moves to W. Europe's Political Mainstream
Glenn Frankel, Washington Post, February 11, 2003

LONDON--It can be emotional, spontaneous and contradictory. It has no leader, no platform and no ideology. It varies from country to country in its roots and its manifestations. It doesn't even have an accepted name: Those most strongly identified with it indignantly deny they advocate or practice it.

Still, anti-Americanism, West European-style, is widespread, rising and migrating from its traditional home among left-wing intellectuals, academics and cafe society to the political mainstream, according to analysts, critics and public opinion polls. Countries such as France, Germany and Britain, which for more than five decades have been the closest allies of the United States, are beginning to drift away, propelled by a popular wave of concern, alarm and resentment. The immediate focus might be U.S. policy toward Iraq, but the larger emerging theme is an abiding sense of fear and loathing of American power, policies and motives. [...]

Even in Britain, the most cherished American ally, Prime Minister Tony Blair felt compelled to defend his support for the United States before a hostile TV audience this past week. Participants derided him as "Vice President" and "the member [of Parliament] from north Texas," dismissed Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's presentation to the U.N. Security Council as "absolutely laughable" and equated President Bush with the Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein.

Scenes of anti-American fervor have become a regular feature of the political landscape. At a recent antiwar rally at Ruskin College in Oxford, England, a packed audience cheered as Ken Nichols O'Keefe, a former U.S. Marine, described the United States as "the most despicable and criminal nation in the world." The recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where the elite met to ponder global issues, morphed into a six-day critique of the Bush administration. [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 6:13 PM 0 comments

 
The Wimps of War
Paul Krugman, New York Times, February 11, 2003

George W. Bush's admirers often describe his stand against Saddam Hussein as "Churchillian." Yet his speeches about Iraq — and for that matter about everything else — have been notably lacking in promises of blood, toil, tears and sweat. Has there ever before been a leader who combined so much martial rhetoric with so few calls for sacrifice?

Or to put it a bit differently: Is Mr. Bush, for all his tough talk, unwilling to admit that going to war involves some hard choices? Unfortunately, that would be all too consistent with his governing style. And though you don't hear much about it in the U.S. media, a lack of faith in Mr. Bush's staying power — a fear that he will wimp out in the aftermath of war, that he won't do what is needed to rebuild Iraq — is a large factor in the growing rift between Europe and the United States.

Why might Europeans not trust Mr. Bush to follow through after an Iraq war? One answer is that they've been mightily unimpressed with his follow-through in Afghanistan. Another is that they've noticed that promises the Bush administration makes when it needs military allies tend to become inoperative once the shooting stops — just ask General Musharraf about Pakistan's textile exports. [...]

In the days ahead, as the diplomatic confrontation between the Bush administration and the Europeans escalates, remember this: Viewed from the outside, Mr. Bush's America does not look like a regime whose promises you can trust.
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 5:52 PM 0 comments

 
Internet brings together Americans against war
Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles, The Guardian, February 11, 2003

This Saturday hundreds of thousands of Americans will be protesting in the streets against the possibility of war in Iraq and bombarding politicians with their views.
One of the key organisations coordinating the protests is the brainchild of two Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who saw the internet as a way of channeling political protest.
MoveOn was started in 1998 by Joan Blades and Wes Boyd, two software entrepreneurs who .[...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 5:46 PM 0 comments

 
The Widening Atlantic
The Guardian (Leader), February 11, 2003

Iraq split points to far deeper divisions

Amid talk of Nato's imminent disintegration, transatlantic trench warfare and the UN's collapse into League of Nations oblivion, it is vital to stay focused on the issue from which these disputes directly stem: US plans to wage war on Iraq.

During George Bush's two years in office, tensions over US unilateralism and the UN's collective authority, Nato's changing role, and diverging US and EU priorities - on issues such as climate change and Palestine - have been readily apparent. But it is Iraq that has crystallised them and brought them into the open.

Recent public recriminations and yesterday's Nato row over Turkey show how broadly damaging and divisive the Iraq issue is. This makes it even more important, not least for Britain, to agree an Iraq policy that most, if not all, can support.

This requires, first and foremost, some political candour. It is now plain that Mr Bush and Tony Blair have largely failed to persuade Europe, the Arab world (and many Americans) that there is no alternative to the early use of pre-emptive force.

It is evident that the objection of France, Germany, Russia and China to a premature aborting of UN inspections is but the tip, to use Hans Blix's metaphor, of an iceberg of popular opposition.

It is condescending to imply, as Mr Blair seems to, that people have not understood what is at stake. They do.

Nor is it convincing to suggest that other national leaders fail to appreciate the threat of terrorism and proliferation. In decrying a cure more dangerous than the disease, they are in part responding to informed public opinion in a way Mr Bush and Mr Blair have failed to do so far. The latter's "we know best" approach damages our democracy. It also makes a unified, workable policy more difficult to obtain.

Nato splits are hardly a new phenomenon. Likewise, the alliance's usefulness has been in doubt since the end of the cold war.

But US criticism after Kosovo, its sidelining of Nato after September 11, particularly in Afghanistan, and Bush officials' often crude disdain for European capabilities and willpower have imposed unnecessary strains. [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 8:39 PM 0 comments

 
Why the U.S. fears Europe W
William Pfaff, International Herald Tribune, February 11, 2003

Despite Secretary of State Colin Powell's brief appearance center-stage last Wednesday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was the Bush administration's star of the week, seeking the political destruction of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and regime change in Germany.
.
This seems the real current priority of the Bush administration and its more ardent supporters in the press. Germany seems to Washington the vulnerable member of the resistance by "old Europe" to the Bush administration's Iraq policy. France is regarded as a hopeless case.
.
President George W. Bush can hardly have been surprised that Schröder made opposition to an Iraq war part of his campaign platform in the parliamentary election last September: Bush, too, is a killer politician who knows a winning issue and how to use it. But he is shocked that Schröder has stuck with his promise to the electorate. The U.S. administration and its supporters believe that the precedent the chancellor set by running on an anti-American issue must not be allowed to stand. He must be humiliated as an example to others.[...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 8:21 PM 0 comments

 
Old Europe v new US

Putin supports everyone, but for how long?
Yelena Suponina, Pyotr Rozvalin and Yuri Shpakov, The Guardian, February 11, 2003

Russia has a complex choice. The nebulous suggestion that Moscow will support the German-French plan, if it is approved by the security council, no longer holds good. The question of which draft will the security council vote for now depends primarily on the specific position opted for by Russia.

On one side are France and Germany with whose anti-war opinion Russia can more easily identify. On the other there is Britain and, most importantly, the US, the superpower with which the Kremlin would very much like to be on good terms.

The French considered the publication of a joint project with the Germans to be premature. The Elysee Palace wanted first to hammer out the details of old Europe's new initiative with Russia. And the visit of President Vladimir Putin, first to Berlin on Sunday and Paris on Monday, proved to be very timely. In an interview on French TV, Putin made a sharp, but simultaneously vague, statement supporting everyone at once.

"The United Nations charter has nothing that would allow the UN security council to take decisions on changing the political regime in this or that country, whether or not we like that regime," the president said. At the same time, "Russia shares the position of our American partners which is that we must do everything to ensure full Iraqi cooperation with UN inspectors. The difference of approach lies in this: we believe the problem can and must be solved by peaceful political and diplomatic means."

While the Americans are mocking "old Europe" (the implication being that it is decrepit), Paris and Berlin speak squeamishly about the concepts of a "new world" and "new Europe". The French automatically think of the Americans as the new rich, "the new Yankees" and they obviously see the newly minted eastern European allies as devious servants anxious for a handout. [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 8:12 PM 0 comments

 
Powell doesn't know who he is up against
Jason Burke, Sunday The Observer,February 9, 2003

The US focus on al-Qaeda ignores the many hues of Islamic militants - and underplays the danger of men such as al-Zarqawi

For three days we drove across Afghanistan. Overhead American planes laced the wintry sky with vapour trails. Around us the 'Jihad International' was falling apart. In Jalalabad we watched fighters from the Pakistani Harkat ul Mujahideen group captured. In Gardez we saw Taliban soldiers rounded up. The bombers above us were on their way to pound the northern cities where militants from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan were holding out against American and Afghan soldiers.
To understand who they were, and what they were doing in Afghanistan, is to understand why US Secretary of State Colin Powell's rhetoric last week was rooted in a fundamental misconception of the nature of modern Islamic terrorism. Powell linked Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an experienced and committed Jordanian militant, with both Osama bin Laden and Baghdad. To grasp the truth about al-Zarqawi, and thus the truth about contemporary Muslim militancy, a major revision of the conventional wisdom is needed. Powell, like many strategists, seems to think he is fighting a war against a single enemy or an identifiable group. He is not. He is fighting a war against a political religion. [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 8:09 PM 0 comments

 
A million to say no to Blair on Iraq
Torcuil Crichton, Stephen Naysmith and James Cusick in London, Sunday Herald, February 9, 2003

Anti-war demo will be UK's largest ever protest

TONY Blair will face the largest political demonstrations in British history with an expected turnout of 750,000 on Saturday, potentially the eve of a declaration of war on Iraq.
With the United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan warning yesterday that US unilateral action is not acceptable, organisers of anti-war rallies in London and Glasgow maintained the massive marches could 'finish Blair as a political force'.

Downing Street, however, is still confident that a second UN resolution on Iraq will be delivered and public opinion will eventually swing behind the government.

'Even the police, who are notoriously conservative, admit that this will be the largest gathering of people in London since VE Day in 1945,' said Andrew Burgen, of the Stop The War Coalition..[...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 7:58 PM 0 comments

 
Poets' Basement: Handleman, Smith and Engel

by SYDNEY BERNARD SMITH

in the dim & distant eighties
well before the last hurrah,
the wicked people of Iran
had ditched their saintly Shah.

with forty million fervent
Shia Muslims on the boil
the West preferred the Sunnis
to be managing the oil.

& Rumsfeld came to Baghdad
in nineteen-eighty-three:
"would you hing of standing up to
Ayatollah Khomeini;

"this letter from our President
tells all there is to say.
Ronnie & the Pentagon
will back you all the way.

"all the arms & money
that you could ever need,
& patriotic principle,
& where that fails, there's greed."

they cosseted, supplied him
they armed him to the teeth,
lauded & hero-worshipped him;
they stoked his self-belief.

the CIA approved him
a golden boy was Saddam;
they gave him a list of lefties
& straightaway he shot'em.

he wanted something nuclear -
"right here! inside the gate?"
(it stayed; UN inspectors found it,
nineteen ninety-eight.)

"we know you don't mean any harm,
- though if perchance you did
be sure we'd come & get you
& screw down your little lid.

"you'd like to use a chemical?
we wouldn't make a fuss -
this gink is fighting on our side
he's just like one of us!

"what's he doing that's out of place?
we'd really like to know -
didn't we use agent orange
not so very long ago?"

they didn't throw their hands up,
they didn't roll their eyes,
they didn't point a finger
at "evil undisguised."

they didn't turn their face away
they never mentioned guilt -
& they didn't just encourage him
they backed him to the hilt.

Sydney Bernard Smith lives in Dundalk, Ireland and can be reached through his website.
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 8:18 AM 0 comments

 
Bernard Weiner: The Columbia and 9/11 Tragedies
Counterpunch, February 8, 2003

There is a direct connection between the Columbia shuttle disaster, the U.S. reaction to the Twin Towers/Pentagon attacks, and the coming war with Iraq: the arrogance of power.
The Bush Administration believes it has a lock on all wisdom, it knows what is best for us Americans, and for everyone else in the world -- because, as Bush told us in his State of the Union address, America acts in the world under God's divine protection, and he, Bush, is the representative of the nation and thus, we are led to believe, operates under God's aegis as well.
Given this arrogant, we-know-it-all attitude, there was no reason, then, for Bush and his subordinates to listen to the technical experts who warned early last year (1), and even as recent as last August (2) about the disaster-in-the-making for the Space Shuttle and its crews unless certain procedures and processes were fixed. These NASA experts were ignored by Bush and his advisors (2), and removed from their positions (1).
And, given this same arrogant tone, there is no reason to listen to the millions of Americans, and to most of our allies abroad, who tell Bush and his war-bent cronies that attacking Iraq at this moment, more or less unilaterally with no international coalition at our side, is the height of folly, and will bring ruin and chaos ..[...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 8:14 AM 0 comments

 
Anthony Gancarski: Pakistan on the Brink?
Counterpunch, February 8, 2003

Fans of the Terror War will be sad to note that US efforts in Central Asia have suffered yet another setback. Pakistan's DAWN reports that President Musharraf traveled this week to Moscow to curry the favor of President Putin in what Pakistani government officials termed a "new stage" of the countries' diplomatic relations. Musharraf's intentions are obvious: to indicate his government's willingness to deal with Moscow at least as favorably as current client state India has historically. What may be less obvious to some is what the strengthening of ties between the two countries says about US efforts in the Afghan conflict.


- posted by ARYABHATT @ 8:01 AM 0 comments

 
As I get older, I've learned to listen to people rather than accuse them of things.
--Po Bronson, quoted in Publishers Weekly
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 7:17 PM 0 comments

 
UK war dossier a sham, say experts
British 'intelligence' lifted from academic articles

Michael White and Brian Whitaker, The Guardian, February 7, 2003

Downing Street was last night plunged into acute international embarrassment after it emerged that large parts of the British government's latest dossier on Iraq - allegedly based on "intelligence material" - were taken from published academic articles, some of them several years old.

Amid charges of "scandalous" plagiarism on the night when Tony Blair attempted to rally support for the US-led campaign against Saddam Hussein, Whitehall's dismay was compounded by the knowledge that the disputed document was singled out for praise by the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, in his speech to the UN security council on Wednesday. [...]

But on Channel 4 News last night it was revealed that four of the report's 19 pages had been copied - with only minor editing and a few insertions - from the internet version of an article by Ibrahim al-Marashi which appeared in the Middle East Review of International Affairs last September [...]

What Whitehall may not grasp is the horror with which unacknowledged borrowing of material - the crime of plagiarism - is regarded in American academic and media circles, [...]But Glen Rangwala, a lecturer in politics at Cambridge University, told Channel 4: "I found it quite startling when I realised that I'd read most of it before."

The content of six more pages relies heavily on articles by Sean Boyne and Ken Gause that appeared in Jane's Intelligence Review in 1997 and last November. None of these sources is acknowledged.

The document, as posted on Downing Street's website at the end of January, also acci dentally named four Whitehall officials who had worked on it: P Hamill, J Pratt, A Blackshaw and M Khan. It was reposted on February 3 with the first three names deleted.

"Apart from passing this off as the work of its intelligence services," Dr Rangwala said, "it indicates that the UK really does not have any independent sources of information on Iraq's internal policies. It just draws upon publicly available data."

Evidence of an electronic cut-and-paste operation by Whitehall officials can be found in the way the dossier preserves textual quirks from its original sources. One sentence in Dr Marashi's article includes a misplaced comma in referring to Iraq's head of military intelligence during the 1991 Gulf war. The same sentence in Downing Street's report contains the same misplaced comma.

A Downing Street spokesman declined to say why the report's public sources had not been acknowledged.[...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 7:10 PM 0 comments

 
Journalists are under fire for telling the truth
Robert Fisk, December 18, 2002

First it was Roger Ailes, the chairman of the Fox News Channel, who advised the US President to take the "harshest measures possible" against those who attacked America on 11 September, 2001.

Let us forget, for a moment, that Fox News's Jerusalem bureau chief is Uri Dan, a friend of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and the author of the preface of the new edition of Sharon's autobiography, which includes a revolting account of the Sabra and Chatila massacre of 1,700 Palestinian civilians and Sharon's innocence in this slaughter. Then Ted Koppel, one of America's leading news anchormen, announced that it may be a journalist's duty not to reveal events until the military want them revealed in a new war against Iraq.

Can we go any further in journalistic cowardice? Oh yes, we can. ABC television announced, a little while ago, that it knew all about the killing of four al-Qa'ida members by an unmanned "Predator" plane in Yemen but delayed broadcasting the news for four days "at the request of the Pentagon." So now at least we know for whom ABC works.

I will tell you. Journalists are being attacked for telling the truth, for trying to tell it how it is. American journalists especially.

I urge them to read a remarkable new book published by the New York University Press and edited by John Collins and Ross Glover. It's called Collateral Language and is, in its own words, intended to expose "the tyranny of political rhetoric". Its chapter titles – "Anthrax", "Cowardice", "Evil", "Freedom", Fundamentalism", "Justice", "Terrorism", Vital Interests" and – my favourite – "The War on..." (fill in the missing country) tell it all.

Meanwhile, rest assured, the journalists are getting onside, to tell you the story the government wants you to hear.
------------------------------

See also: Tyranny of words and war
Antonia Zerbisias, Toronto Star, February 6, 2003

- posted by ARYABHATT @ 7:06 PM 0 comments

 
In Defense of a UN Protest: Group sues to get permit
Patricia Hurtado, Long Island, NY Newsday, February 6, 2003

A coalition of local and national organizations opposed to a United States invasion of Iraq sued the city yesterday for denying it a permit to march past the United Nations en masse next week.

The lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan sought a declaration from the court that the city's action violated the First Amendment and for an order permitting a parade of between 50,000 and 100,000 people. The Feb. 15 event would begin across from the United Nations and proceed to Central Park for a rally.

"When we're in times of crisis, it's all the more important that we zealously safeguard our rights, and there's nothing more basic than the right to march, to protest," said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, which is representing the groups.

The suit is the first of its kind against the administration of Mayor Michael Bloomberg. During the administration of his predecessor, Rudolph Giuliani, scores of individuals and groups successfully sued the city in state and federal courts for seeking to abridge their freedom of speech or assembly.

Federal Judge Barbara Jones has scheduled a hearing for tomorrow on the anti-war rally. [...]

----------------------------------
'Madness of George Dubya' a UK Hit
CNN.com, February 5, 2003

LONDON, England (Reuters) -- British theatre-goers are flocking to a new farce which mocks U.S. President George W. Bush as a pyjama-wearing buffoon cuddling a teddy-bear while his crazed military chiefs order nuclear strikes on Iraq.

"The Madness of George Dubya" -- which mercilessly satirises British Prime Minister Tony Blair as well as Bush -- has proved such a success at a fringe theatre in London that it is moving to a larger venue next week for an extended run.

"As war comes closer, the mood among audiences has changed," actor Nicholas Burns, who plays Blair, said after a performance this week. "The audience is actually laughing more, but the tension behind their laughs has grown. People are scared."

The play, whose title picks up on the Texan pronunciation of Bush's middle initial, is the only overtly anti-war play written in Britain during the Iraq standoff.

It comes, however, against a backdrop of increasing disquiet among UK intellectuals and artists about London's support for Washington's hawkish position towards Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Many have been writing poems and open letters or attending anti-war events [...]
-----------------------------

"It's the mother of all Flash games. [Click on link to play]:
Gulf War 2 (aka World War 2.5)

This is a projection of the most likely outcome of a new war in the Gulf. I [idleworm.com] used sophisticated temporal algorithms and historical semiotic analysis to achieve an accuracy rating of 99.999%.
---------------------
COMMENT (on above game): Toppling Saddam Hussein in the war simulation game "Gulf War 2" is the easy part. Coping with what comes next is more difficult.

In "Gulf War 2", players assume the role of President Bush in the online game, receiving regular briefings from caricatures of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.

The game starts with Baghdad's quick fall, but then proceeds to an Iraqi anthrax attack on Israel, a retaliatory nuclear strike, revolt in Saudi Arabia, and a Kurdish coup in northern Iraq. Once Saddam Hussein's body is found, players are asked to select one of three look-alike successors, who soon requires military backing to fend off an anxious Iran.

Dermot O'Connor, a 33 year old computer animator who moved to California from Ireland 3 years ago created the game in November. As Dermot says "This is a projection of the most likely outcome of a new war in the Gulf".

The game appears interactive but leads players down a set path, designed by O'Connor to highlight the risks of war. "There is only one deliberate outcome. It didn't make sense to give people the idea that they could avoid the worst," he said in an interview.

So far, over 20,000 people play the game every day. Dermot recently posted this on his web site...
I've been getting a LOT of emails lately, and the majority are overwhelmingly positive. Some of the "critics" just don't seem to get it however. Out of the 12 messages in my "negative" folder, 2 are literate, 1 is written in a strange version of the english language, 8 are childish to varying degrees, and one is from a psycopath. Infantile Ad Hominem attacks are common. Sounds like the republican party to me.

[News source: Reuters]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 9:37 PM 0 comments

 
Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.
--Elbert Hubbard (1856 - 1915)
---------------------------------

Genre: Bar & Drinking Jokes

There was a man sitting at a bar, and he looks over at the gentleman sitting next to him and says,
"Hey, you look familiar.Are you from around here?" The man answers, "Yeah, I live down the street."

"No kidding?" says the first man, "Well, so do I. And hey, you look about my age. Where did you go to high school?"

"Oh I went to Francis Lewis over on Utopia. Graduated in '66.
How 'bout you?"

"Get out. I went to Francis Lewis. And I graduated in '66, too." "Where'd you go to college?"
"Beloit, in Wisconsin."

"No way! I went to Beloit too. What dorm?"

"Kevin Sullivan dorm."

"Sullivan? You're not going to believe this . . ."

Joe the bartender walks over, and the first guy says, "Joe, you won't believe it in a million years. This guy went to the same high school as me, graduated the same year I did, and went to the same college. We were even in the same dorm. Isn't that amazing?"

Joe looks at them both and says, "Yeah, that's just plain amazing."

A third man comes in and says, "Hey Joe. What's new?" Joe says, "Not much. The Johnson twins are drunk again."
-----------------------------------

Inside the mind of Saddam Hussein
Lorraine Passchier, CTV News, January 3, 2003

The ultimate fate of Saddam Hussein, the world's most notorious control freak, may ultimately be decided by U.S. President George W. Bush, the son of an old foe.

Both men's biographies and narratives are the stuff of mythology, but the conflict between these two men -- and their countries -- is seen by many experts as almost tribal, on some levels. [...]

... The Iraqi president was born in 1937 in the small village of al-Awja just outside Takrit. Hussein's own father either died or abandoned the family. His stepfather repeatedly beat him, and forced the young boy to work on the small family farm.

There were no close bonds, no one he could count on, and no one he could trust. Spurned on by a desire to become literate, Hussein ran away when he was 10 to live with his uncle Khayrallah Tulfah.

His uncle, a firebrand who spent five years in jail for his nationalistic leanings, introduced Hussein to a new world. The young man was soon steeped in Arab history and his uncle's tales. Chosen heroes were drawn from the far past: Saladin (famous for having recaptured Jerusalem from the Crusaders in the 12th century) and Nebuchadnezzar
(considered the most powerful of all the Babylonian kings, whose army made a similar conquest of Jerusalem in B.C. 598).

Hussein gravitated into politics as a teen and joined the socialist Baath party at 19. Three years later, he participated in the 1959 assassination attempt against Iraqi Prime Minister Abudul Karim Kassim. Even though he was shot during the botched assassination, Hussein was not deterred.

In 1968, Hussein was part of the revolt that brought the Baath party to power under General Ahmed Hassan Bakr. He assumed the post of vice president and built a network of secret police to root out and murder dozens of government officials suspected of disloyalty. Eleven years later in 1979, Hussein moved into the top spot when he toppled Bakr.

A brutal life in politics: When his country was at war with Iran in the 1980s, he asked his cabinet ministers to give their advice. His Harvard-trained minister of health suggested that Hussein should temporarily step aside until peace was restored. Hussein reportedly thanked him and then ordered his arrest.

When his wife begged for his return, her husband's body was chopped into small pieces and delivered to her in a canvas bag. That was in 1982 and few inside his inner circle have challenged him since. [...]

The narcissistic borders of Hussein's world are legendary. A 600-page hand-lettered copy of the Koran on display in a Baghdad museum was written with Hussein's blood, which was donated a pint at a time. He plastered the streets with massive portraits of himself when he ousted Bakr.

The six-week Gulf War left his country in ruins. Sewage systems and telephone lines were out, electrical grids were down, and Hussein found himself in an underground bunker. He emerged from the ruins convince he had won the war.

When his old foe, the senior George Bush, lost the 1992 presidential election, Hussein stood on the palace balcony and fired his gun in celebration. [...]

Hussein usually begins his days by swimming laps. At six foot two, he remains an imposing figure although he now walks with a limp. Dye keeps his hair jet black and his former lover says he enhanced their sexual encounters with Viagra. In recent years, he has replaced his military uniforms with well-cut suits.

Like Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, he has spent most of his political life sleeping in a different location each night. He drinks warm milk with honey, eats plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables, and prefers fish to meat. But details of his living habits have failed to crack the code that dictates his thought process. [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 8:30 PM 0 comments

 
THE BASEBALL PRESIDENCY: The Making of George W. Bush
Tony Castro, Inside Houston, 2001

“Baseball,” Bush said in an interview during the presidential campaign, “has been a part of my life since before I can remember. It is a pursuit for optimists. To come to the park every day, you have to believe you can win.”

Perhaps it is the optimism built on baseball that, in part, explains how Bush became president, surprising critics who said he wasn’t smart enough, defeating a Democratic candidate who had been bred for the presidency, confounding journalists who almost universally opposed him in the sanctity of their own private voting booths. How else is this second Bush presidency to be explained? Had it been not enough Clinton in Al Gore’s campaign or too much Clinton hijinks in the public consciousness? How had Bush done what few thought he could do? And if this marks the end of what the historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. once called the "imperial presidency," as Washington pundits are saying, what will the Bush years be called?

Call it perhaps the Baseball Presidency. What Bush himself might say is that it just goes to show how far the America of soccer moms and hip-hop sports culture mentality has strayed from its traditional national pastime. The America that Bush grew up in ­ and the America that brought major league baseball to Houston and built the Astrodome ­ remains an America with an undying game that has been slowly reclaiming its place as a cultural expression of the national character. As cultural historian Jacques Barzun once observed about the country and baseball: “Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball.”
Perhaps part of understanding Bush is understanding baseball — that the game has the image of stability and conservatism, that it is individualistic but still emphasizes teamwork, that it is anti-intellectual but cannot be won through sheer brute force or strength or emotion but through cleverness, thought, guile, and technical mastery of small details. [...]

More importantly, during this period, Bush gained an intangible quality from his family’s competitive nature and from having to overcome his limited physical talent to acquit himself as a Little Leaguer.

“The blind drive to win is a hallmark of the Bush family clan,” says Gail Sheehy, who wrote the controversial profile on Bush for the October 2000 Vanity Fair, claiming he suffered from undiagnosed dyslexia. “One thing that G.W.’s childhood friends told me repeatedly was that he has to win, he absolutely has to win and if he thinks he’s going to lose, he will change the rules or extend the play. Or if it really is bad he’ll take his bat and ball and go home. So I had very little doubt that he would win this election in the end, no matter how long he had to play it out.” [...]

------------------------------------

Tales of the Tyrant
Mark Bowden, The Atlantic Monthly (Online), May 2002

What does Saddam Hussein see in himself that no one else in the world seems to see? The answer is perhaps best revealed by the intimate details of the Iraqi leader's daily life

The tyrant must steal sleep. He must vary the locations and times. He never sleeps in his palaces. He moves from secret bed to secret bed. Sleep and a fixed routine are among the few luxuries denied him. It is too dangerous to be predictable, and whenever he shuts his eyes, the nation drifts. His iron grip slackens. Plots congeal in the shadows. For those hours he must trust someone, and nothing is more dangerous to the tyrant than trust.

Saddam Hussein, the Anointed One, Glorious Leader, Direct Descendant of the Prophet, President of Iraq, Chairman of its Revolutionary Command Council, field marshal of its armies, doctor of its laws, and Great Uncle to all its peoples, rises at about three in the morning. He sleeps only four or five hours a night. When he rises, he swims. All his palaces and homes have pools. Water is a symbol of wealth and power in a desert country like Iraq, and Saddam splashes it everywhere—fountains and pools, indoor streams and waterfalls. It is a theme in all his buildings. His pools are tended scrupulously and tested hourly, more to keep the temperature and the chlorine and pH levels comfortable than to detect some poison that might attack him through his pores, eyes, mouth, nose, ears, penis, or anus—although that worry is always there too.

He has a bad back, a slipped disk, and swimming helps. It also keeps him trim and fit. This satisfies his vanity, which is epic, but fitness is critical for other reasons. He is now sixty-five, an old man, but because his power is grounded in fear, not affection, he cannot be seen to age. The tyrant cannot afford to become stooped, frail, and gray. Weakness invites challenge, coup d'état. One can imagine Saddam urging himself through a fixed number of laps each morning, pushing to exceed the number he swam the previous year, as if time could be undone by effort and will. Death is an enemy he cannot defeat—only, perhaps, delay. So he works. He also dissembles. He dyes his gray hair black and avoids using his reading glasses in public. When he is to give a speech, his aides print it out in huge letters, just a few lines per page. Because his back problem forces him to walk with a slight limp, he avoids being seen or filmed walking more than a few steps.

He is long-limbed, with big, strong hands. In Iraq the size of a man still matters, and Saddam is impressive. At six feet two he towers over his shorter, plumper aides. He lacks natural grace but has acquired a certain elegance of manner, the way a country boy learns to match the right tie with the right suit. His weight fluctuates between about 210 and 220 pounds, but in his custom-tailored suits the girth isn't always easy to see. His paunch shows when he takes off his suit coat. Those who watch him carefully know he has a tendency to lose weight in times of crisis and to gain it rapidly when things are going well.

Fresh food is flown in for him twice a week—lobster, shrimp, and fish, lots of lean meat, plenty of dairy products. The shipments are sent first to his nuclear scientists, who x-ray them and test them for radiation and poison. The food is then prepared for him by European-trained chefs, who work under the supervision of al Himaya, Saddam's personal bodyguards. Each of his more than twenty palaces is fully staffed, and three meals a day are cooked for him at every one; security demands that palaces from which he is absent perform an elaborate pantomime each day, as if he were in residence. Saddam tries to regulate his diet, allotting servings and portions the way he counts out the laps in his pools. For a big man he usually eats little, picking at his meals, often leaving half the food on his plate. Sometimes he eats dinner at restaurants in Baghdad, and when he does, his security staff invades the kitchen, demanding that the pots and pans, dishware, and utensils be well scrubbed, but otherwise interfering little. Saddam appreciates the culinary arts. He prefers fish to meat, and eats a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables. He likes wine with his meals, though he is hardly an oenophile; his wine of choice is Mateus rosé. But even though he indulges only in moderation, he is careful not to let anyone outside his most trusted circle of family and aides see him drinking. Alcohol is forbidden by Islam, and in public Saddam is a dutiful son of the faith.

He has a tattoo on his right hand, three dark-blue dots in a line near the wrist. These are given to village children when they are only five or six years old, a sign of their rural, tribal roots. Girls are often marked on their chins, forehead, or cheeks (as was Saddam's mother). For those who, like Saddam, move to the cities and come up in life, the tattoos are a sign of humble origin, and some later have them removed, or fade them with bleach until they almost disappear. Saddam's have faded, but apparently just from age; although he claims descent from the prophet Muhammad, he has never disguised his humble birth.

The President-for-life spends long hours every day in his office—whichever office he and his security minders select. He meets with his ministers and generals, solicits their opinions, and keeps his own counsel. [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 8:20 PM 0 comments

 
Bush Watch: Headlines
Bush Watch, 2.9. 2001

How Bush's Language Problems and Short Attention Span Would Affect Us
A reporter recently used Texas public information laws to obtain 900 pages of George W. Bush's governor's schedules and correspondence and discovered "a governor who works short hours and spends little time studying specific issues or working on executive matters. The schedules show that Mr. Bush typically had his first office meeting about 9 a.m., took two hours of "private time" at lunch for a run, and then wrapped up his last meeting by about 5 p.m. A large portion of the officially scheduled meetings were "photo opportunities," interviews with reporters, or meetings with school groups or other ceremonial occasions. Relatively little of the day was devoted to hard-core examination of the issues." NYT reporter Nicholas D. Kristof goes on to note that the schedules were taken from one of Bush's busiest periods as governor, 1997, a year in which the Texas Legislature met.

Since Bush has often told the nation to look at his Texas record to determine what kind of president he would be, one wonders how he would function under the extreme pressures and very long days common to the presidency. Bush is unwilling to put a label on his language and attention problems, which appear to be the reason for his short days in the governor's office. However, his friends and business acquaintances have commented on these problems.

Doug Hannah, a friend since childhood, has found that the attention problem runs in the family: "They have an attention span of about an hour." When he and George were boys, he remembers, "Mr. Bush would pick us up to take us to the movies and leave after an hour and 20 minutes.... At ball games George would sometimes want to leave in the fifth inning." "Even today," writes Gail Sheehy in the October Vanity Fair, "nothing engages Bush's attention for more than an hour, an hour max—more like 10 or 15 minutes. His workday as governor of Texas is "two hard half-days," as his chief of staff, Clay Johnson, describes it. He puts in the hours from 8 to 11:30 A.M., breaking it up with a series of 15-minute meetings, sometimes 10-minute meetings, but rarely is there a 30-minute meeting, says Johnson. At 11:30 he's "outtahere." He tries everything possible to have at least two hours of what he calls private time in the middle of the day to go over to the University of Texas track or run a hard three to five miles on a concrete path at a pace of 7.5 minutes a mile, then relax and return to the office at 1:30, where he'll play some video golf or computer solitaire until about three, and then it's back to the second "hard half-day" until 5:30."

It's not just that Bush begins to lose focus earlier than most administrators in high pressure jobs, but his language breaks down and he sometimes becomes incomprehensible. When reporters began writing about his language difficulties after the New Hampshire primaries, excuses were made by both Bush spinners and sympathetic reporters that he only made his language gaffes late in the day. Then it was late in the day and early in the morning. After that it was late in the day, early in the morning, and when under pressure. Then Bush began to schmooze with reporters on his plane and we were given stories that he didn't sleep well on the road and missed the comfort of his Austin bed. All of these explanations are true, but they don't really get to the heart of the matter. Bush appears to be incapable of working long, hard, pressure-filled days, the kind of days common to the presidency, without suffering a loss of attention and an inability to clearly communicate. Can we afford a president who works a six hour day and devotes little of those hours to "studying specific issues or working on executive matters"? Bush may want to do more, but his language and attention problems appear to prevent him from doing more. --Politex, 10/17/00

"George W. doesn't seem to be getting his usual ample hours of sleep. Though not doing much of substance, he has to be awake much longer than he is used to, and his few unscripted remarks have been often testy." --Chicago Sun Times, 2/6/01.

"As the presidential campaign began early in 1999, Bush opted to stay home in Texas until later in the year. As a candidate, much was written about his fondness for days off, light schedules and a traveling pillow. So what's Bush doing as president? "I'll answer some questions and I'm gonna head home and take a nap." That's what Bush said Sunday before addressing a retreat for Democratic House members in western Pennsylvania. The remark confirmed a common stereotype about Bush, particularly in comparison to his peripatetic predecessor. Compared to the omnipresent Clinton, Bush prefers the serenity within the White House walls. Since his inauguration, he has had five events fully open to the press. Clinton often held three or four in a week. Bush's staff has demurred on the question of a news conference. Where Clinton was effusive, Bush is contained. A weary Clinton spent six hours shaking hands with hordes of visitors, some uninvited, at a White House open house after his inauguration. Bush appeared only briefly at his open house with a carefully selected group of visitors. --WP, 2/9/01
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 8:09 PM 0 comments

 
Why Hussein sees history on his side
Scott Peterson,The Christian Science Monitor, February 6, 2003 (edition)

AMMAN, JORDAN – Gambling yet again with his rule, his life, and the fate of one of the most powerful nations in the Middle East, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein appears unfazed by the rising pressure brought to bear by the United States.

Almost nightly on Iraqi television Mr. Hussein calmly waves a Cuban cigar, exhorts his generals to prepare for war, and denies the existence of weapons of mass destruction.
Hussein is an inveterate survivor. [...]

[...] Born dirt-poor and unwanted in a Tikrit backwater village, Hussein was able to violently claw his way out of an abused childhood to the top of the ruling Baath Party.

He has survived numerous coup and assassination attempts, a devastating war with Iran in the 1980s, and then took on the US and UN in the 1991 Gulf War. He further survived a widespread, postwar rebellion, followed by more than a decade of sanctions that have impoverished his oil-rich nation.

"We may look at [the current US build-up] and say they odds are really long, and Saddam's answer would be: 'I've been doing this all my life,' says Mr. Krepinevich.

In his first television interview since 1990, which aired on the BBC Tuesday, Hussein said that Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction nor any link to Al Qaeda.

The CIA assessed last fall, in fact, that Iraq posed little threat if unprovoked.
But the agency determined that any conflict that sought regime change was likely to result in Hussein's use of any remaining chemical or biological weapons against US forces and Israel.

Hussein is "not a martyr," and "has this funny kind of optimism," says Jerrold Post, a political psychologist and former US government analyst at George Washington University, who has focused on profiling Hussein for some 15 years.

A formative moment was the 1991 war, which was widely cast in the West as a decisive defeat for Iraq. For Hussein, surviving meant a coveted international role. Palestinians cheered from rooftops as Iraqi Scud missiles struck the Israeli capital; an Arab leader was standing up to the US and its close Jewish ally.

"He was filled with dreams of glory, to follow in the path of Saladin and liberate Jerusalem from the Crusaders ... to be a hero of the Arab world," says Mr. Post. "This was an explosion of narcissism for him. [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 7:20 PM 0 comments

 
-------------------------------


Confronting the Empire
Noam Chomsky, ZNet Foreign Policy, February 01, 2003

We are meeting at a moment of world history that is in many ways unique – a moment that is ominous, but also full of hope.

The most powerful state in history has proclaimed, loud and clear, that it intends to rule the world by force, the dimension in which it reigns supreme.
Apart from the conventional bow to noble intentions that is the standard (hence meaningless) accompaniment of coercion, its leaders are committed to pursuit of their “imperial ambition,” as it is frankly described in the leading journal of the foreign policy establishment – critically, an important matter.
They have also declared that they will tolerate no competitors, now or in the future. They evidently believe that the means of violence in their hands are so extraordinary that they can dismiss with contempt anyone who stands in their way.

There is good reason to believe that the war with Iraq is intended, in part, to teach the world some lessons about what lies ahead when the empire decides to strike a blow -- though “war” is hardly the proper term, given the array of forces. ....

....Even before the Bush administration began beating the war drums about Iraq, there were plenty of warnings that its adventurism was going to lead to proliferation of WMD, as well as terror, simply as a deterrent.

Right now, Washington is teaching the world a very ugly and dangerous lesson: if you want to defend yourself from us, you had better mimic North Korea and pose a credible military threat, including WMD.

Otherwise we will demolish you in pursuit of the new “grand strategy” that has caused shudders not only among the usual victims, and in “old Europe,” but right at the heart of the US foreign policy elite, who recognize that “commitment of the US to active military confrontation for decisive national advantage will leave the world more dangerous and the US less secure” – again, quoting respected figures in elite journals.

Evidently, the likely increase of terror and proliferation of WMD is of limited concern to planners in Washington, in the context of their real priorities. Without too much difficulty, one can think of reasons why this might be the case, not very attractive ones. ... (more)

-------------------------------------------------------

N Korea threatens US with first strike
Pyongyang asserts right to pre-emptive attack as tensions rise over American build-up
Jonathan Watts, The Guardian, February 6, 2003

Pyongyang: North Korea is entitled to launch a pre-emptive strike against the US rather than wait until the American military have finished with Iraq, the North's foreign ministry told the Guardian yesterday.

Warning that the current nuclear crisis is worse than that in 1994, when the peninsula stood on the brink of oblivion, a ministry spokesman called on Britain to use its influence with Washington to avert war.

"The United States says that after Iraq, we are next", said the deputy director Ri Pyong-gap, "but we have our own countermeasures. Pre-emptive attacks are not the exclusive right of the US." [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 7:13 PM 0 comments

 
Robert Fisk: Don't mention the war in Afghanistan
The near collapse of peace in this savage land is a narrative erased from the mind of Americans
Robert Fisk, The Independent, 05 February 2003

There's one sure bet about the statement to be made to the UN Security Council today by the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell – or by General Colin Powell as he has now been mysteriously reassigned by the American press: he won't be talking about Afghanistan [...]So let's break through the curtain for a while and peer into the fastness of the land that both President Bush and Prime Minister Blair promised not to forget. Hands up those who know that al-Qa'ida has a radio station operating inside Afghanistan which calls for a holy war against America? It's true. Hands up again anyone who can guess how many of the daily weapons caches discovered by US troops in the country have been brought into Afghanistan since America's "successful" war? Answer: up to 25 per cent.

Have any US troops retreated from their positions along the Afghan-Pakistan border? None, you may say. And you would be wrong. At least five positions, according to Pakistani sources on the other side of the frontier, only one of which has been admitted by US forces. On 11 December, US troops abandoned their military outpost at Lwara after nightly rocket attacks which destroyed several American military vehicles. Their Afghan allies were driven out only days later and al-Qa'ida fighters then stormed the US compound and burnt it to the ground.

It's a sign of just how seriously America's mission in Afghanistan is collapsing that the majestically conservative Wall Street Journal – normally a beacon of imperial and Israeli policy in the Middle East and South-west Asia – has devoted a long and intriguing article to the American retreat, though of course that's not what the paper calls it. [...]

------------------------------------

Get Up, Stand Up
Robert Jensen, ZNet, February 3, 2003

Last week at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, I talked with dozens of people from around the world. I learned a lot about the struggles for justice in their countries, but the most important lesson I brought home was about my own country.

The question I thought people at the Forum would ask me is, "Why does the U.S. government follow such brutal policies of economic and military domination around the world?" I thought they would want me to explain the United States to them. But they didn't -- because, I came to realize, they already knew the answer to the question.

The question that people in Porto Alegre did ask me was simple: What are people of conscience in the United States -- what am I -- doing to stop the U.S. government, especially in its mad drive to war in Iraq?

Those of us organizing in the United States are in a strange situation. Our task is to work to educate the people of our own privileged and affluent culture about what the rest of the world already knows: The United States is an empire,
and -- as has been the case throughout history -- empires are a threat to peace and life and justice in the world. There is no such thing as a benevolent empire. ....

.... There is much work to be done on many fronts.
One thing we can all do is come out on Saturday, Feb. 15, --when people in New York City, Austin and around the world will rally to oppose the U.S. drive to war.
Information is available at http://www.unitedforpeace.org/
.... (more)
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 7:10 PM 0 comments

 
Rumor travels faster, but it don't stay put as long as truth.
--Will Rogers (1879 - 1935),
['Politics Getting Ready to Jell,' The Illiterate Digest, 1924]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 9:55 PM 0 comments

 
Powell raises the banner for war but the world remains divided
Julian Borger in Washington, The Guardian, February 6, 2003

Colin Powell yesterday used satellite photographs, tapes of intercepted conversations and newly opened CIA files to make the United States case against Iraq in a determined attempt to win over international opinion.
However, the presentation appeared to do little to heal the deep rifts in the UN security council. America and Britain claimed the evidence proved Iraq was in "material breach" of its UN obligations, justifying "serious consequences". France and Russia said that the evidence only strengthened the case for further inspections. Iraq rejected the presentation as a fraud.

Facing Iraq's UN representative and surrounded by foreign ministers from the 15 members of the security council, the US secretary of state took well over 70 minutes to make the multi-media presentation in the most climactic showdown in the UN chamber since the cold war. [...]

In Baghdad, Iraqi officials dismissed the tapes, satellite pictures and defector evidence as a collection of "stunts, special effects and unknown sources".

Iraq's UN representative, Mohammed al-Douri, called the presentation a fraud "utterly unrelated to the truth".

The UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, insisted yesterday "war is not inevitable", but he urged Saddam Hussein to offer better cooperation with the chief UN weapons inspector when the teams revisit Iraq this weekend.

Until the inspectors present another report next Friday, the security council deadlock on Iraq is set to continue.

Mr Powell also alleged yesterday that a senior al-Qaida leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, had gone to Baghdad in May 2002 for medical treatment, and that during that time "nearly two dozen extremists converged on Baghdad and established a base of operations there.

"These al-Qaida affiliates, based in Baghdad now coordinate the movement of people money and supplies into and throughout Iraq for [Zarqawi's] network, and they've now been operating freely in the capital for more than eight months," Mr Powell said.

He added that the network, made up of 116 operatives, included the "ricin plotters" arrested in Britain. [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 9:49 PM 0 comments

 
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | All too human failings of 'human intelligence'
Jeevan Vasagar,The Guardian, February 6, 2003

Colin Powell repeatedly vaunted the value of "human intelligence" in his briefing, describing some of America's sources as "people who have risked their lives to let the world know what Saddam Hussein is really up to".
He catalogued three kinds of source providing human intelligence, known as 'humint' in spy-speak; he quoted "numerous sources" apparently on the ground in Iraq, as well as praising a string of defectors.

Mr Powell also referred to information drawn in interrogation from detainees including a "senior al-Qaida terrorist". But there is concern that defectors and detainees can be highly unreliable. [...]

In his statement, Mr Powell appeared to make reference to one high-profile Iraqi defector, Khidir Hamza, who has become highly controversial. [...]

Dr Hamza, who defected in 1994, was a senior administrator on Iraq's nuclear weapons programme. He has been accused of making claims about programmes of which he had no direct knowledge.

David Albright, a former nuclear inspector, told the Observer last year: "[Hamza's] book is full of technical inaccuracies and there is no doubt he exaggerated his importance."

Mr Powell also talked about at least two detainees, one of whom has claimed that Iraq had offered chemical or biological weapons training for "two al-Qaida associates".

But, as a Guardian investigation revealed last month, the US is condoning the use of torture on prisoners held after September 11, raising doubts about the value of their confessions.

In a letter sent this week to Mr Powell, the director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, warned that allegations about the use of torture were discrediting the US.

There is also concern that al-Qaida detainees may be eager to see America going to war with a Muslim country.

Mr Cirincione said: "When al-Qaida attacked us on September 11, they didn't just want to kill a lot of people, they wanted to provoke the US into a response they thought would ignite a war between the Islamic world and the west. The Bush administration may be about to give them that war."

- posted by ARYABHATT @ 9:45 PM 0 comments

 
Almost Spot On: The British Critique of American Newspapers, by Christopher Deliso
Christopher Deliso in Kumanovo, Antiwar.com, February 5, 2003

As the war on Iraq draws ever closer, the vital issue of media coverage is becoming increasingly significant. The pace and pitch of the war will, after all, be partially shaped by its reception in the press.
Although the War Party in Washington has powerful weapons of PR and spin, in the end coverage will be produced by real live journalists, and their somewhat less animate editors.
The majority of our readers, I suspect, take their information from the English-language media – chiefly, the American and British networks, newspapers and websites.
To some extent, as knowledgeable individuals such as Daniel Ellsberg attest, the British are currently doing a better job in regards to Iraq. But when it comes to their perception of the American media, the Brits have tossed their darts just left of the center.


A recent article by the Guardian's Matthew Engel bemoans the state of American newspapers today. Engel dismisses them as timid, formulaic, and saccharine, as not only bland but as also lacking in vocation. [...]

Much of the outrage is indeed aimed at Bush, whose colloquial speaking style and Texas accent don't go over well here. A cartoon in last Sunday's Observer newspaper depicted him as the Lone Ranger and Blair as Tonto. When Blair expresses doubts about the Iraq campaign, Bush replies: "Shut up, Tonto, and cover my back."

"Bush is a gift for anti-American cartoonists," Timothy Garton Ash, director of the European Studies Center at St. Antony's College at Oxford University, said. "If Bill Clinton were still in the White House, I suspect it'd be a very different story."

Yikes! This, it seems, is how the British have fooled themselves. By putting all of the blame on Bush himself, they have ignored all of the known and unknown individuals behind the scenes, the officials who were at least equally (if not more) involved in calling the shots. [...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 9:28 PM 0 comments

 
Powell Without Picasso
Maureen Dowd, New York Times, February 5, 2003

WASHINGTON -- When Colin Powell goes to the United Nations today to make his case for war with Saddam, the U.N. plans to throw a blue cover over Picasso's antiwar masterpiece, "Guernica."
Too much of a mixed message, diplomats say. As final preparations for the secretary's presentation were being made last night, a U.N. spokesman explained, "Tomorrow it will be covered and we will put the Security Council flags in front of it."
Mr. Powell can't very well seduce the world into bombing Iraq surrounded on camera by shrieking and mutilated women, men, children, bulls and horses. [...]

- posted by ARYABHATT @ 9:22 PM 0 comments

 
Perpetual War for Perpetual WarJames Ostrowski, Strike The Root

War is a good thing. Wars solve problems. Wars improve society. This is what we are taught and told to believe. The Civil War, World War I, World War II. These were the good wars and the Presidents who fought them, and finagled to fight them in the first place, are the great ones. Those who think that wars are not a good thing and should not be fought except after the most extreme provocations and under the most extreme moral strictures, are considered to be crazy, nuts, oddballs, crackpots, cowards, and traitors. That’s the background for a bemused look at the phony war in Iraq and the phonies’ non-war in Korea . [...]

More force is always the answer. (What’s the question?) So the U. S. will go to war again over Iraq (maybe). It’s because Saddam has weapons of mass destruction and may want to use them. That’s the official reason. The actual reasons are oil, Israel and imperialism. How does little old me know this? [...]



- posted by ARYABHATT @ 9:18 PM 0 comments

 
Genre: Antartian Jokes

An Antartian named Babbette finds herself in dire trouble.
Her business has gone bust and she's in serious financial trouble. She's so desperate that she decides to ask God for help. She begins to pray... "God, please help me. I've lost my business and if I don't get some money, I'm going to lose my house as well. Please let me win the lotto."

Lotto night comes and somebody else wins it. Babbette again prays..."God, please let me win the lotto! I've lost my business, my house and I'm going to lose my car as well."

Lotto night comes and Babbette still has no luck.
Once again, she prays..."My God, why have you forsaken me?? I've lost my business, my house and my car. My children are starving. I don't often ask you for help and I have always been a good servant to you. PLEASE just let me win the lotto this one time so I can get my life back in order."

Suddenly there is a blinding flash of light as the heavens open and Babbette is confronted by the voice of God Himself: "Babbette, meet Me halfway on this. Buy a ticket."
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 8:22 AM 0 comments

 
A satirist is a man who discovers unpleasant things about himself and then says them about other people.
--Peter McArthur
-----------------------------------

LINK to full article--Saddam's bodyguard reveals secret arsenal
by Gordon Thomas – GLOBE-INTEL, January 27, 2003

-----------------------------

[Comment on article from rense.com:This is a fantastic report with many revealing statements. However, it is at this point that this "report" loses any and all credibility:]

"Israeli intelligence sources have hinted that part of the deal with Mahmoud was to smuggle out his family from Iraq. Mossad have done this before. At the start of Saddam's reign of terror they persuaded an Iraqi pilot to fly his Russian (?) Mirage to Israel - after Mossad had spirited his wife and children there."
--------------------------------

Comments from FreeRepublic.com
To: Riley

Yeah, I noticed the "Russian Mirage", too. Considering that Iraq has or had both French and Soviet warplanes, the mistake seems honest enough.

24 posted on 01/28/2003 10:46 AM PST by Charles Martel
----------

To: ex-Texan

The weapons include motorised underwater mines capable of creeping along the sea bed and then surfacing beneath a battleship or carrier.

Each mine is filled with chemicals that upon explosion can envelop the ship in a deadly cloud of poison.

The documents show that the mines and other weapons of mass destruction have been secretly developed at sites the UN inspectors have also not visited.

These are:

Al-Qaqa's State Establishment. Sixty miles south of Baghdad, it has produced what the documents describe as "self-detonating precise guided missiles".

Blah..blah..blah...blah...blah.....

I don't believe a word of this crap. Iraq may have chemical and biological weapons, but they don't have a delivery system any more complicated than an aerosol can, much less an automated submarine that is going to creep up under an aircraft carrier and "envelop the ship in a deadly cloud of poison."

15 posted on 01/28/2003 10:37 AM PST by Freeper 007
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]
-------------------------------------------------------

From Rense.com, we have another comment on this article from an Israeli reader:
From Nadir Martello
1-29-3

Hi Jeff,

I would like to make a comment to this story, 'Saddam's Bodyguard Reveals Secret Arsenal.' It is a very good story, but too good to be true.

Who is this Gordon Thomas any way? Does he work for the Mossad himself, or what? Who is going to believe this report? The fact that George Bush wants a war with Iraq, whether it possesses weapons of mass-destruction or not, is totally irrelevant; Bush will have his way - sorry, Israeli-Mossad's way.

Shalom
Nadir Martello
--------------------------------

This Guardian LINK has photographs of the Iraqi 'Inner Circle',

Saddam Hussein's inner circle
Guardian Unlimited, Gallery, September 18, 2003

Qusay
President's younger son, 36. Heir apparent and a trusted confidant. He has wide-ranging powers over Iraq's military apparatus, including the Republican Guard, intelligence and internal security.

Abed Hamid Mahmoud
Saddam Hussein's personal secretary, who comes from his home town, Tikrit

Ali Hassan al-Majid
The president's cousin is known as 'chemical Ali' for his involvement in atrocities against the Kurds.A leading participant in the 1996 family massacre after President Saddam's son-in-law, Hussein Kamil, defected to Jordan, betrayed Iraq's weapons secrets, and then returned to Baghdad.

Ezzat Ibrahim
Deputy chairman of the revolutionary command council, close to Saddam Hussein

Tariq AzizDeputy prime minister, has survived as an adviser for more than 20 years. Mr Aziz was born to a Christian family in 1936. Some attribute his survival to hsi lack of a power base in Iraq, which means he presents no threat to President Saddam.

Taha Yassin RamadanHawkish vice-president, one of Saddam Hussein's key foreign policy advisers

Naji Sabri
Foreign minister and a key member of President Saddam's inner circle

- posted by ARYABHATT @ 8:10 PM 0 comments

 
Waiting & Watching
John Liechty, Common Dreams.org, November 25, 2002

George Orwell said that political language is “designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable,
and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

There’s been enough pure wind flying around of late that more people than ever assume that what we are told as truth has been twisted to suit the teller.

..... As for the true motive behind America’s latest hankering for war,
one may choose from:

A) Oil; B) Imperialist ambition; C) Outright arrogance; D) Downright ignorance; E) A passion to spread Democracy; F) A passion to spread a smokescreen over domestic troubles; G) To generate revenue; H) To Make the World a Better Place; I) To trigger Armageddon (Oh Rapture!) J) To free the Iraqi people (who we have nothing against); K) To remind everybody that “one man isn’t all that important”, (so long as his name’s not Saddam Hussein); L) To please a cabal of hawks; M) Because Inaction Is Not An Option; N) Because it’s winter, invasion season in the Gulf; O) To take further comfort in the impression that we are Doing Something; P) To Finish the Job; Q) Because we can’t back out now; R) It’s what Jesus would have done; S) Because Saddam allegedly tried to assassinate a US president; T) Because he Used Gas Against His Own People; U) Because he’s been Stiffing The World; V) Because he chairs an Axis of Evil; W) Because if you insist on carrying a hammer, everything looks like a nail; X) Just ‘Cuz; Y) To show Europe who’s boss; Z) Oh… and Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Is it one of the above? All of the Above? None of the Above? Six of the Above?
Take your pick.On its way down to meet the public, the plain truth is shaved into an array of possibilities that leaves people wondering what, why and who to believe. Little wonder so many opt to jump on whatever slant suits their personal agenda, or simply say to hell with it. What to believe? – Nothing. Who? – Nobody. Why? – Precisely.

For all the discussion and debate on Iraq, the war drums have not missed a beat. The message the world frequently receives, whether inadvertent or intended, is: “We do as we please, we don’t care what you think, and we’re pleased to announce that there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it.”

In his dismay at the passage of the Fugitive Slave Bill, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: “There are always texts and thoughts and arguments.
But it is the genius of the man which decides whether he will stand for might or right.”

..... People around the world are watching as Washington champs at the bit to get troops across the Iraqi border. Pure wind takes on the appearance of solidity – there has been no end of texts and thoughts and arguments. Perhaps the plain truth will squeeze free one day.

Meanwhile, the world watches, waiting to see if the genius of America is essentially about might or about right.
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 8:09 PM 0 comments

 
War Plan Calls for Precision Bombing Wave to Break Iraqi Army
Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker, New York Times, February 2, 2003

WASHINGTON, Feb. 1 — The Pentagon's war plan for Iraq calls for unleashing 3,000 precision-guided bombs and missiles in the first 48 hours of the opening air campaign, an effort intended to stagger and isolate the Iraqi military and quickly pave the way for a ground attack to topple a government in shock.

The initial bombardment would use 10 times the number of precision-guided weapons fired in the first two days of the Persian Gulf war of 1991, and the targets would be air defenses, political and military headquarters, communications facilities and suspected chemical and biological delivery systems, military and other Pentagon officials say.

.... In the opening hours of the air campaign, Navy and Air Force jets, including B-2 stealth bombers, each carrying 16 one-ton satellite-guided bombs, and B-1 bombers, each carrying 24, would attack a range of targets from military command posts to air defense stations.

The Air Force has already stockpiled 6,700 satellite-guided bombs, called Joint Direct Attack Munitions, in the gulf region, as well as more than 3,000 laser-guided bombs, Air Force officials said.

Only 9 percent of the weapons dropped in the 1991 gulf war were precision-guided; this time, the figure would be well in excess of 75 percent, allowing more effective bombing with fewer total aircraft, officials say.

Air power advocates warn that unforeseen events could complicate the air campaign. Unseasonably bad weather forced allied pilots to cancel scores of bombing raids early in the 1991 gulf war, and the air campaign in Kosovo in 1999 took longer than planners projected, both because of weather and Yugoslav resilience.

Unlike the 39 days of bombing that preceded the 1991 ground war, this air campaign could be over in less than a week, military officials predicted. "But we will emphasize flexibility and agility," one senior military officer said, adding that the timetable could be accelerated or prolonged depending on the Iraqi reaction.

While there is military utility in starting the ground offensive almost simultaneously with the air campaign, the decision is also in keeping with the Bush administration's broad information campaign to undermine the Iraqi government: the order for large numbers of American ground troops to move quickly into combat would demonstrate the seriousness of the offensive to the Iraqi military and public and show President Bush's determination to topple Mr. Hussein, officials say. .... (more)
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 7:51 PM 0 comments

 
Waiting For The Missiles In Baghdad
Norman Solomon, ZNet, February 3, 2003

BAGHDAD -- Picture yourself as an American reporter here in the Iraqi capital.
You're based in one of the fraying rooms at the Al Rashid, the large hotel where most Western journalists stay.

.... By now, even the most optimistic souls can't quite believe their own denial. Nothing is certain, but one specter is close: The missiles are coming. Probably within a few weeks.

Fear is in the air. And a sense of doom has fallen over the city like a smothering blanket. But there's little time to dwell on, or even acknowledge, such emotions. Staying busy seems to push back the dread.

There's no telling whether your 10-day visa will be renewed. You want to stay on, filing stories destined for front pages. You'd have an up-close look at a turning point of history. But during the later stages of the Pentagon's assault, there's no telling what might happen to you.

Day by day, as the probability of war nears certainty, you realize that you're getting a small taste of the insecurity that Iraqi people have been facing for a long time.

And despite all the claims of reportorial "objectivity," it's hard to deny that many deep stories aren't getting much coverage.

You might do a story about the escalating fears among Iraqi children. Many of them are now exhibiting signs of acute anxiety. You realize that the youngsters, along with older Iraqis, are experiencing a form of terror. Yet the U.S. government is supposed to be opposing terrorism, not inflicting it. ....

Are American media outlets really conveying the humanity of the people in the line of fire?

There's not much time to focus on such questions. You wrap up the story for tomorrow's editions, slip the floppy disk out of your laptop and ride an elevator down to the first floor. Walking past the no-alcohol bar, you stride into the little Internet shop that caters to foreign journalists. The proprietor, a young man named Firas Behnam, smiles and waves from a desk.

Minutes later, you're clicking a "send" button, and your story is on its way to the newsroom back home. You breathe a sigh of relief and glance over at a British newspaper reporter checking his e-mail.

You remember hearing him talk about covering the Gulf War a dozen years ago: During forays to take a look at bomb damage, he'd recalled, the Iraqi people he met did not express any hostility toward him. You tried to imagine the shoe on the other foot. If Iraq's air force were bombing American cities, how would Iraqi visitors be treated? .... (more)
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 7:45 PM 0 comments

 
Iraqi Islamist denies link with Baghdad
Richard Norton-Taylor, The Guardian, February 3, 2003

The leader of the Islamist group cited by the US as evidence that Saddam Hussein is supporting al-Qaida yesterday denied he had any links with the Iraqi dictator.
Mullah Krekar, leader of Ansar al-Islam, said that far from promoting links with the Iraqi regime, he wanted to see the end of it.

"I am against Saddam Hussein. I want [Iraq] to change into an Islamic regime", he said in a telephone interview with the Guardian.

Whitehall sources with access to intelligence yesterday also denied claims by President Bush and Tony Blair of links between President Saddam and al-Qaida. Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, said last week there was evidence of links between Baghdad and al-Qaida.

.... Mr Krekar said his group, which controls villages near the border with Iran had about 700 Kurdish members.

They are fighting the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.

The group is believed to harbour about 120 al-Qaida supporters who fled from Afghanistan.

"Baghdad's writ genuinely does not run there," said a senior Whitehall source.

US and British intelligence agencies also believe the group has links with Chechen rebels and is trying to make chemical weapons.

Mr Krekar denied this, adding that he had "no contacts" with Islamists in Britain.

He was speaking from Norway where he lives after spending four months in a jail in Holland.

Mr Krekar was detained there in September after arriving on a flight from Iran because Jordan had asked for his extradition, accusing him of drug trafficking. He was released for lack of evidence. His lawyer, Victor Kope, suggested yesterday that Mr Krekar had been detained because of US pressure.
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 7:37 PM 0 comments

 
Year of the Goat Welcomes Chinese

PakNews.com: As the lunar calendar turns tonight, it hails Chinese New Year - the Year of the Goat. We join with everyone in welcoming Chinese New Year and sending our warm greetings of Happy New Year to worlds 1.5 billion Chinese.

China and Chinese people have been a long and traditional friends of Pakistan. Much of Pakistan's industrial progress is due to the long Sino-Pakistan friendship. Pakistan-China friendship has become an icon of selfless friendship for betterment of two nations.

To our Chinese friends... we wish you a very Happy New Year
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 7:29 PM 0 comments

 
Pakistanis In US Start Seeking Asylum In Canada
PakNews.com, February 3, 2003

ISLAMABAD,(PNS) - Since the inception of registration process of nationals of several countries including Pakistanis in USA, a large number of Pakistanis have started shifting to Canada to seek asylum.

The Canadian newspaper warned the number of immigrants could increase manifold by the end of this month when last date for the registration with INS will end, reported VOA.

There are speculations in Canada that after the US announcement that immigrants belong to some specific countries should compulsorily get them registered with INS, a large number of Pakistanis will be shifted to Canada in the end of this month.

The North American and Pakistani newspapers have already reported that hundreds of Pakistanis have crossed the US borders and reached Canada. .... (more)
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A racist rant too far? Police investigate Taki the playboy pundit
By Sholto Byrnes, The Independent, co.uk, February 1, 2003

Taki and The Spectator, for which he writes the "High Life" column, are being investigated by Scotland Yard over an article he wrote in the magazine's 11 January edition

Even by Taki's standards the piece was extraordinarily offensive. Under the headline "Thoughts on Thuggery" he wrote: "Oh boy, was Enoch – God rest his soul – ever right! Now there's a man who was tough on the causes of crime long before the crime had been Blaired." ....

.... Such casual racism is the stock-in-trade of Taki, who is known mainly by his first name. In 1997 he described Puerto Ricans in New York as "a bunch of semi-savages ... fat, squat, ugly, dusky, dirty." In 2001 he called himself a "soi-disant anti-Semite" and has also referred to Kenya as "bongo-bongo land".

Repulsive though such comments are, they are what pass for humour in the Eurotrash plutocratic circles in which Taki mixes. His world skis at Gstaad, goes to the Ascot races – a crowd of "society" figures who are slowly departing for the great gambling tables of the hereafter.

Married to Princess Alexandra Schoenburg, Taki inherited a fortune from his father John and divides his time between a $5m house in New York's Upper East Side and Gstaad, where he recently crashed his car.

.... His strict treatment at the hands of the local police is what prompted his musings on crime problems in Britain.

His friends and acquaintances are the characters that fill his friend Nigel Dempster's pages. The Daily Mail gossip columnist refers to Taki as the "Greek sportsman", a description he has earned through his past participation in the Davis Cup and captaining of the Greek karate team.

He was close to Gianni Agnelli. His friendship with the Fiat magnate lasted 45 years until his recent death. "K", the Aga Khan, was a friend and he boasts an on-off friendship with Mohamed al-Fayed, English aristocrats, obscure European royalty and any pretty girl who chances across his path.

He is famously libidinous and is happy to call himself a "playboy".

His interest in right-wing politics comes from his father, and he is proud of the fact that not much thought has gone into his views. "Why make up your own mind when someone else can make up your mind for you?" he has asked.

Along with the Duke of Devonshire and the Earl of Portsmouth he was one of the backers of Neil Hamilton's failed libel bid against Mr Fayed, although he was not best pleased when he later found himself being pursued for Mr Fayed's costs.

Taki is happy to admit, as readers of his Spectator column know, to taking a line so right-wing it borders on the fascist. When building a new house he declared that he would name it "Palazzo Pinochet", after the Chilean dictator. General Franco is another of his heroes .... (more)


- posted by ARYABHATT @ 7:22 PM 0 comments

 
Turkey moves troops near Iraq border
NDTV.com, February 3, 2003

(Istanbul):The Turkish military on Sunday began moving troops in western Turkey to its border with Iraq, strengthening its security force along the rugged border area ahead of a possible US war against Iraq.

Turkey has said that in case of war it will likely move troops into neighboring northern Iraq to prevent any flow of refugees into Turkey.

Observers believe however, that the real aim of the mission would be to prevent the creation of a Kurdish state in northern Iraq in the aftermath of a war. .... (more)
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 7:18 PM 0 comments

 
The US is ignoring an important lesson from history - that an empire cannot survive on brute force alone
Madeleine Bunting, The Guardian, February 3, 2003

There are plenty of things to keep Tony Blair awake at night these days, as his grey, haggard features after last week's diplo-marathon indicated. In his nightmares of the Pentagon cooking up new hare-brained schemes and dirty bombs on the underground, a new anxiety must have begun to niggle - those domestic commentators who have started being so horribly nice to him. He's a "great statesman" now, one of the "greatest prime ministers"; it's when things are getting really bad - you're dying, for instance - that people start being this nice.

It is easy to criticise Blair's foreign policy. It's very easy to see that going to war with Iraq is at best unwise, at worst crazily dangerous; it has little justification, it sets a dangerous precedent and has no clear objective. What is far less easy and a deeply dispiriting task is to consider how the European centre-left responds to the new world order that this crisis starkly reveals. American imperialism used to be a fiction of the far-left imagination, now it is an uncomfortable fact of life.

How is the centre-left to accommodate the US's newly aggressive imperialist mission emboldened by a 9/11 licence from its electorate? Afghanistan was simply the starter, Iraq an antipasto in what could turn out to be one of those interminable feasts - course after course until a pot-bellied US reels punch drunk from the table.

With US imperialism openly discussed on both sides of the Atlantic, the debate centres on three critical questions: will the empire corrupt and/or bankrupt the republic; by what administrative techniques should it exercise power; and is it basically benign? The first prompts one of those defining moments in a nation's understanding of itself
- what is the US will for imperial power, and what price is it prepared to pay in living standards and civil liberties?
Guantanamo Bay, the debate over the use of torture, and growing government spending deficits are a foretaste of what lies ahead.
But the key unknown is, can a consumer culture support empire? .... (more)

- posted by ARYABHATT @ 7:16 PM 0 comments

 
Saddam's Arab 'brothers' desert Iraq
Eric Margolis, Toronto Sun, February 2, 2003

Never has the old maxim "hang together or be hanged separately" been more fitting than for the Arab states now quailing before U.S. President George W. Bush's evangelical crusade against Iraq.

The Arab world's startling weakness and subservience to the West has never been more evident than in its open or discreet co-operation with Bush's plans to invade "brother" Iraq. Though 99.99% of Arabs bitterly oppose an American-British attack on Iraq, their authoritarian regimes, which rely on the U.S. for protection from their own people and their neighbours, are quietly digging Iraq's grave. ....(more)
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 7:10 PM 0 comments

 
Ten Q&A On Antiwar Organizing
Michael Albert and Stephen R Shalom, ZNet, October 24, 2002

Q: How does our dissent affect government policy?

Your actions do not educate the government. It is not that we open their eyes to moral precepts they had missed, or to world relations they were blind to.
Their morals are not changed by our actions, but remain unswervingly self-centered, profit-oriented, and power-driven. And they see the same world that we do; it is just that they like the implications we reject.
The result of our activism is not the reeducation or moral uplift of elites, Rather, dissent creates a new context in which elite calculations change. .... (more)
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 6:55 PM 0 comments

 
Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.
--Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)

------------------------------

SC intervenes in Wanchoo murder case
Zaffar Iqbal and Aradhana Sharma, NDTV.com, February 2, 2003

The Supreme Court today, in a landmark judgement, overturned the controversial ruling of a TADA court, which had acquitted three militants accused in the murder of well-known Kashmiri Pandit H N Wanchoo.

Wanchoo, a human rights activist, was killed on 5 December 1992 after being kidnapped, from his house in Jawahar Nagar in uptown Srinagar, by three armed gunmen belonging to the Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen. ... (more)

------------------------
Karnal grieves for Kalpana
NDTV.com, February 2, 2003 (Karnal):

In a spontaneous outpouring of grief, hundreds of people today flocked to the school where Columbia astronaut Kalpana Chawla had studied to mourn her death.

They participated in a prayer meeting at Tagore Bal Niketan school to pay tributes to Kalpana, a source of pride for them ... (more)
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 5:55 PM 0 comments

 
The Brains Behind Bush's War
Todd S. Purdum, New York Times, February 1, 2003

WASHINGTON, Jan. 31 — Any history of the Bush administration's march toward war with Iraq will have to take account of long years of determined advocacy by a circle of defense policy intellectuals whose view that Saddam Hussein can no longer be tolerated or contained is now ascendant.

Like the national security experts who were the intellectual architects of the Vietnam War, men like McGeorge Bundy, Walt W. Rostow and others branded "The Best and the Brightest" in David Halberstam's ironic phrase, these theorists seem certain to be remembered, for better or worse, among the authors of the most salient evolution of American foreign policy since the end of the cold war: the pre-emptive attack.

At the center of this group are longtime Iraq hawks, Republicans like Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz; Richard Perle, a former Reagan administration defense official who now heads the Defense Policy Board, the Pentagon's advisory panel; and William Kristol, who was chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle and now edits the conservative Weekly Standard.

.... "The Vietnam War was not the brainchild of three or four people," said Mr. Kagan, whose new book "Of Paradise and Power: America vs. Europe in the New World Order," has just been published by Knopf. "It was a product of a whole way of thinking about the world. It was, for better or worse, the logical consequence of the policy of containment. And the breadth and depth of support for American policy in Vietnam, certainly in the elite intellectual class, was enormous: journalists, government, policy. Let's not suggest that this was somehow just the Bundys or Walt Rostow. This was national consensus."

One difference in the current debate over Iraq is that intellectual consensus is not so widespread. Indeed, as Michael O'Hanlon, a defense policy expert at the liberal-leaning Brookings Institution, noted, "If you look at nongovernmental experts on Iraq or use of force, what is striking is that pure academics are almost uniformly against the war, but people who have been in government or Washington think tanks tend to be, on average, more supportive." .... (more)

.... The drive was often led by a group called the Project for the New American Century, which was started in 1997 by Mr. Kristol and others to promote robust American engagement in the world. In 1998, the group urged Mr. Clinton to adopt a "full complement" of diplomatic and military measures to remove Mr. Hussein, in a letter signed by Mr. Wolfowitz, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and others who now hold senior administration jobs.

.... All the same, Mr. Kristol acknowledged in a telephone interview: "I do lie awake at night, worrying. Something could go wrong. Chemical weapons could be used against American troops. A biological weapon could be set off in an American city. I would still argue, I think, that this is a necessary thing to do. But having had some tiny role, I do feel some responsibility. I do."
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 5:54 PM 0 comments