Consumer Culture

I cannot find words adequate for this story. To add insult, Wal-Mart's concern for her was couched in their desire that she "come back as a shopper." Ugh....

A Karl Rove Production

Starring our President George W. Bush, the latest production features a clandestine fly-in by the president to the bowels of Baghdad. Braving the chaos and violence of Baghdad, from car bombs to rocket attackes, the valiant Bush defies the evil Iraqi terrorists and serves turkey to the American troops. Don't miss this sequel to the awe-inspiring aircraft carrier landing! Coming soon to a theater near you.

Thanksgiving's Shadow Side

I have to say, when I saw this headline, I immediately thought of the poor toilets on Turkey Day. Enjoy.

Clean Up Your Own Mess

The International Red Cross has announced that it will discontinue its food aid to the occupied Palestinian territories. The program was an emergency one begun in mid-2002 after violence escalated between the Palestinians and Israelis. I think this is a good decision on their part. I hope other agencies will follow, at the same time putting pressure on Israel to maintain stability and health in Palestine, as should be its obligation. My only concern is that Israel, content with its wall, will refuse to step in, and other agencies or countries (like the US) will fail to notice it or care. Should that be the case, the Palestinians will suffer unduly.

More on the Memo

Stephen Hayes, the author of the Weekly Standard article, has this commentary in the L.A. Times.

And in their effort to be fair and balanced, the L.A. Times posted this counterpoint commentary by Christopher Scheer, author of The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq.

And William Safire published this article in The Day (A Connecticut Newspaper, I think).

Holy Spam, Batman!

Well this just takes all. Here and I thought the energy and medicare bills were both tilted a bit heavily in favor of commercial interest. But how about this, an anti-spam bill that leaves spammers celebrating! Not only is this bill completely broken and ineffective, but it will also preempt the non-broken anti-spam laws that have been passed in 35 states. Of course this thing passed the House in a landslide and its counterpart flew through the Senate on a 97-nil vote. And how could such a lousy piece of legislation be so popular with congress-people? It has a snappy name, the CAN-SPAM bill, and all congress-people know that a catchy name is the hallmark of quality legislation. Unfortunately they all seem to have misinterpreted the intended meaning of the word "CAN" in that name... Sometimes politics in this country are about enough to make me ill.

God Bless America... Or Else!

Apparently substantial portions of the bill previously known as Patriot II have been inserted into an intelligence funding bill which was passed by both houses of Congress last week. If their goal was to get under the public radar, this bill is apparently the stealth bomber of oppressive legislation. After all the uproar about the Patriot II back when it was first circulated, I can't find a single major media source that is covering this. Wired has it, slashdot grabbed it from there, Asia Times has it, even the AP has a story on it, but it doesn't look like anyone much picked it up, and those that did didn't pay any attention. By tying this crap onto an "intelligence" bill they apparently get a pass by the press to keep everything hush-hush. In any case the feds now have more freedom to collect records on us all while forbidding anyone from whom they acquire those records from letting us know about it. And also the requirements for numerous reports to Congress have been eliminated. More power, less oversight, yeehaw! That sounds like a recipe for a lot of wacky and wild fun times. It's a good thing we know that the FBI always shows such good judgment.

The Ghost of Philip K. Dick Conquers Hollywood

Wired is running a story, covered by slashdot, on the phenomenon of sci-fi author Philip K. Dick's novels and short stories being made into major Hollywood productions. I thought it was a good read, but of course Blade Runner is still my all-time favorite movie. It's really too sad that the David Cronenberg/William Hurt version of Total Recall never got made. That could have been very cool. The article includes the following snipped from a Dick essay:

"We live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups. I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudorealities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives. I distrust their power. It is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing."

The Dollar Drama

Also on CSM today, the latest installment of the ever-gripping dollar drama. In today's episode a number of experts propose that now may be an "optimal time to achieve the inevitable dollar correction". If so, hopefully he means sometime before next fall. :)

Watching Over Us

CSM's daily update today rounds up a lot of good coverage of all the creepy tricks the feds are up to. I don't understand how we can still give power to government agencies, without narrowly defining it, under the assumption that they will never use it in any way other than it was intended by Congress. Haven't we had ample proof by now that this doesn't work? Have we not figured out yet that if there is room for power to be abused it is simply a matter of when, not whether, that abuse will occur? Is that not the entire reason why our founders insisted that we have a government of laws not of men? I guess naming a bill some bit of jingoistic nationalist pap exempts it from any rational scrutiny.

re: Washington Post on Leaks

The column missed what I'd regard as the more obvious explanation:

4. Access. This administration has been famously aggressive and combative in limiting press access. Now they decide to leak, but only leak to a conservative news outlet who, as far as I can tell, has refused to share the actual memo with anyone. The major mainstream news sources have to be pissed. Particularly as the material seems to be of questionable value and appears to be a cynical political ploy rather than a disclosure of critical new material. I imagine they see the scenario as a) this administration has treated us like shit from day 1, b) they leaked this material to some pissant conservative advocacy magazine who won't share it, c) the memo appears to contain no new information and is only leaked to pump the old info back into the forefront of public attention (ie propaganda). Result: they bury the story and send a note to the White House saying next time you want us to propagandize for you, cut us in on the scoop, you wankers.

Washington Post on Leaks

The Post in this article (posted today) wonders why mainstream media has not carried the Memo story and concludes it must be one of three possibilities:
1) Mainstream reporters are sulking about having been beat.
2) The stories aren't all that great.
3) The establishment press reacts differently when conservatives break stories, assume it's part of the vast right-wing conspiracy and try to knock down the allegations.

"Low self-esteem 'shrinks brain'"

According to this BBC story.

Thanks, Dave Barry.

Our free trade hypocrisy

With all the promotion of free trade by the Bush administration, I am continually amazed by how protectionist it is. The EU, supported by the recent WTO ruling against American steel tariffs, is threatening sanctions of its own on politically sensitive American products unless those tariffs are repealed. The Bush administration is taking time to think things over, as if the WTO ruling were ambiguous. Ironically, the steel tariffs, while perhaps saving a few steel worker jobs, have hurt American consumers of steel with higher prices.

As if that weren't enough, the administration has announced that it will impose quotas on the imports of certain Chinese textiles and clothing. This is technically legal under the WTO agreement with China (I can't find the specific text, but I believe that the US can impose product specific quotas on hyper-increasing imports for 12 years - aren't we sneaky?) . Strangely, these quotas are likely to do little for the virtually nonexistent textile manufacturing industry in the US. Will someone tell me what this administration means by free trade?

Re: Did you get that memo?

With all my efforts to chronicle the news (or paucity thereof in the mainstream press) regarding the memo, I have yet to offer much in the way of my take on the whole matter. It appears to me that this was deliberately released by the administration--or at least some segment of it--that was concerned a number of Bush supporters were losing faith in the Iraq effort. I am deeply concerned that this has estabished a trend of releasing highly sensitive information that benefits the administration and harms its opponents. And I am surprised that the immediate rebuke by the Department of Defense has not received attention from the mainstream media, and I am surprised that only a few journalists have risen to the task of addressing the substantive points raised in the Weekly Standard piece.

I would wager that few other media sources have actually obtained a copy of the memo (this seems to be the case with the Newsweek journalists who tried to address the points that were raised in the "Case Closed" story but had no knowledge of the remaining points of the memo). This story is essential to understand what the state of the evidence was at the time Bush asserted to the American public and the rest of the world that Saddam must be overthrown. And the public (particularly those whose eyes and ears are affixed to the Murdoch sources) must be accurately informed. The coverage by the websites that openly speak with the conservative voice have provided only half-truths (at best) regarding this memo and the surrounding circumstances and someone must deliver the rest. I doubt our pint-sized blog can serve this role--if only there were others with a louder voice who could take up this issue.

Did you get that memo?

Upon finally checking in to BWJ (yes, I've been delinquent lately), I was surprised to notice all this talk/news about Feith's memo. Interestingly, the Wall Street Journal (which I read almost daily) hasn't even mentioned this story to my knowledge. Indeed, a search of the site brought up nothing regarding this story. Apparently this story, as many of the commentators note, wasn't relevant or important enough to merit time or space in some of the major press. I noticed that Fox News failed to mention that the Wall Street Journal didn't carry this story as well. Looks like a Murdoch special to me.

Addendum: Should anyone wish to revisit the Bush administration's case for war more thoroughly, I recommend FP's informative and interactive Between the Lines analysis of Bush's 10-7-02 speech making the case for war. They are apparently updating it as more information/evidence becomes available.

Fox News: War Support Slightly Up

You're all going to love this. In this article, Fox News claims:

Short-Term Memo-ry?

Over the weekend, the Weekly Standard published a "top secret U.S. government" memo detailing more than a decade of intelligence indicating an operating relationship between Al Qaeda and Iraq. The Pentagon has since confirmed the memo's authenticity, but it has been almost entirely overlooked by major media.

USA Today has completely ignored it. The New York Times has yet to mention it on its news pages, though a column today mentions it. And The Washington Post got around to mentioning it on Sunday, dismissingly in the sixth paragraph of a much broader story.

Now let's look at a few of those statements a little closer:
The Pentagon has since confirmed the memo's authenticity, but it has been almost entirely overlooked by major media.

Here's what the DOD statement on Nov 15 said, in part:
News reports that the Defense Department recently confirmed new information with respect to contacts between al Qaeda and Iraq in a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee are inaccurate.
* * *
The items listed in the classified annex were either raw reports or products of the CIA, the National Security Agency or, in one case, the Defense Intelligence Agency. The provision of the classified annex to the Intelligence Committee was cleared by other agencies and done with the permission of the intelligence community. The selection of the documents was made by DoD to respond to the committee’s question. The classified annex was not an analysis of the substantive issue of the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda, and it drew no conclusions.

Individuals who leak or purport to leak classified information are doing serious harm to national security; such activity is deplorable and may be illegal.

And what about the Washington Post? I found articles mentioning the memo here, here, here and here--and this op-ed here.

Weekly Standard's Latest

Here is the Weekly Standard reply to Newsweek's article responding to the Weekly Standard article on the Feith Memo.

Apparently, the Weekly Standard had not included a complete description of all the "data points" in the memo, for when the Newsweek reporters observed that "The Pentagon memo pointedly omits any reference to the interrogations of a host of other high-level al Qaeda and Iraqi detainees--including such notables as Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Abu Zubaida, and Hijazi himself," Stephen Hayes replied with "bullet-point 39," summarizing an interview with none other than Hijazi himself. Hayes continued, "either Isikoff and Hosenball have not seen the memo or they misreport its contents."

Hayes concludes:

It is, of course, possible that the information in the Feith memo is "cherry-picked" intelligence. It's also possible that some of the bullet points listed won't check out on further analysis. But Feith isn't alone in his conclusion that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden had a relationship. CIA Director George Tenet said more than a year ago that his agency had "solid reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda going back a decade," that the CIA had "credible information" about discussions between Iraq and al Qaeda on "safe haven and reciprocal nonaggression" and "solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of al Qaeda members, including some that have been in Baghdad," and "credible reporting" that "Iraq has provided training to al Qaeda members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs."

How Not To Stage an Occupation

CSM has an interesting article where they discuss Iraq with former Soviet personnel involved with their invasion of Afghanistan. Some of it is obvious, other parts very insightful.

NYTimes weighs in on Memo

See here. The article doesn't really add much but an anonymous Pentagon official who was quoted as follows:

"If you don't understand how intelligence works, you could look at this memo and say, `Aha, there was an operational connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda,' " a Pentagon official said Wednesday. "But intelligence is about sorting what is credible from what isn't, and I think the best judgment about Iraq and Al Qaeda is that the jury is still out."

The article also observes that the memo and the Weekly Standard have revitalized the claim about Atta in the Czech Republic that has already been widely discredited. But see this Slate article from yesterday the 19th that attempts to bolster the Atta in Czech claim.