Hurricane Katrina won't go away!

Looks like the ethnic cleansing explanation might not be paranoia:

Forensic engineers have since uncovered design and construction flaws that some say border on criminal negligence.

I already talked about Lieberman

Here it is:

Building a majority party involves creating coalitions within the party, not circular firing squads. That means we all have to compete cleanly within the party primary, then swallow our pride and support the nominee who was chosen by the majority of our fellow Democrats, who are not really our political opponents, much less enemies.

I was talking about Hackett and Senator Schumer there, but it goes for Lieberman, too. It even goes for anyone who loses to a Democrat to their right. We can't afford to fight each other this year. There is too much at stake!

Let's keep focussed on reality

Let's all remember what really happened in the latest terror plot.

Pakistan found out about the plot and notified the British:

Reports from Pakistani intelligence, suggesting the direct involvement of senior Kashmiri militants linked to al-Qaeda, convinced British intelligence that the plot had to be taken seriously. Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorist branch was brought in to the operation last December.

The Bush administration had nothing to do with it..

No, the US administration is too busy in Iraq to do anything about al-Qa'ida.

But how will the latest terror plot play in the US heartland?

We all know that the Republicans and their media will try to paint the Democrats as soft on terror. They've already started by saying that the Democrats have been hijacked by extremists.

Thank God some papers at least report it right:

Democrats contend that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a distraction from the war against al-Qaida. A new CNN poll shows that 60 percent of Americans now oppose the war in Iraq.

And it looks like the American people are finally starting to wake up:

Democrats were favored over Republicans by 46 to 38 percent in an ABC-Washington Post poll early this week when people were asked whom they trusted more to handle the fight against terrorism.

Let's hope they stay awake through election day!

More on the Arab League and Darfur

I've already complained that expecting the Arab League to stop the killing in Darfur is like expecting the Ku Klux Klan to stop the lynching of Blacks in the US. (Yes, there are people, even Black people, who actually expect the Arab League to intervene to stop the killings.)

Now someone else seems to have picked it up:

The message seems clear: the Arab League is not as concerned with the DEPTH of the evil as they are with PERPETRATORS of the evil. Two hundred Arab civilians killed by Israel is a more newsworthy story than 20,000 Africans killed in an Arab League country. Perhaps the urge to be self-critical is unwise and bad for “Arab morale” in this time of asymmetrical warfare, entropy in Iraq and widely rampant anti-Arab sentiments. But further neglect of Darfur will be for the Arab League what Rwanda was for the UN: the grossest moral failing of its existence . . . the beginning of the end.

I don't know if Rwanda was the beginning of the end for the UN. I don't claim to foretell the future. I will reiterate that the Arab League should not be expected to intervene when Arabs kill non-Arabs. That's not why it was created. It was created to support the ethnic interests of Arabs, i.e. to foster Arab nationalism. I don't think it should continue to exist. And anyway, it can't even defend the ethnic interests of Arabs in Lebanon. It is at best impotent, at worst evil. Get rid of it.

And for humanity's sake, someone please fund an adequate African Union force, and if necessary an OIC force, to Darfur.

How to solve the Israel/Palestine problem:

Meteor Blades asked everyone on D-Kos, and my position got a lot of good ratings, more than almost any on the message thread, so I thought I should put it up here too.

1. Palestinians have to recognize that Israel exists. It's not going anywhere. It's not part of the International Elders of Zion Conspiracy. It's people who started out as poor refugees, just like the Palestinians are today. It's not even a European invasion. As much as it is Holocaust refugees, it is the Jewish millets of the Ottoman Empire coming together. If the Palestinians want to blame anyone for that, they can blame their "Arab brothers" the same "brothers" who don't do anything for the Palestinians except say "Let's you and him fight." and "Here are some guns. Please kill our Jews for us. We'd do it ourselves, but we're scared of the big bad Jews."

2. Israel has to recognize that Palestinians exist. Not Arabs, Palestinians. Arabic has been called a dead language that they refuse to bury. Israelis and their apologists have to stop insisting that other Arab countries have to take in refugees the way Germans took in refugees after World War II. Besides the fact that Germans realized that they had brought their problems on themselves, while Palestinians blame others for the situation, Arabs are coming to speak different languages. Arab nationalism is bull[bleep] and even Colonel Qaddafi has come around to realizing it.

3. Obviously that means a two-state solution. Recognizing the need for a Palestinian State is probably the only thing G. W. Bush has gotten right his whole time in office. But he hasn't moved it forward, he's moved it backward. That's why going back to a Democratic administration is necessary to solve this problem. Carter and Clinton moved things forward. Bush balled it all up.

4. Back when Clinton was helping the negotiations they almost got it solved. They had everything divvied up except for one small hill in Jerusalem. The only way I can see out of that is to internationalize the city under religious control. I know many Muslims and Jews think this is just a Christian conspiracy to take over without fighting, because Christians outnumber Muslims and Jews put together. Tough. The Jews and Muslims have, between them, driven out almost all the Christians. The least they could do is let the Christians share in the rule of one city.

That's my two cents, FWIW.

Ah, the white man's burden!

Remember the push to get a UN force into Darfur, where genocide is happening? Notice how long it is taking to agree on that force, and get approval, and coordinate the logistics? Notice how by the time anything is done, at the rate things are moving, that all the non-Arabs in Darfur will be dead?

This news is just in from the Middle East:

Planning for the force is in early stages, but officials said they anticipate it including 10,000 to 20,000 troops led by a contingent from France or Turkey.

That's right, the world body, allegedly dominated by third world governments and their concerns, is once again rushing to stop attacks against white people. In this case they do not even rise to the level of genocide. This is not to argue in favor of Israel's attacks on Lebanon, which I consider disproportionate. It is simply to point out that systematic murder of people from other ethnic groups, genocide, is going on in Africa, while the world dithers. There are plenty of African troops willing to go into Darfur, they just don't have the money. Now watch the "international community" (anyone have any idea who that is? I sure don't) send their money to Lebanon instead.

Dr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, first African Secretary General of the United Nations, put it best:

A genocide in Africa has not received the same attention that genocide in Europe or genocide in Turkey or genocide in other part of the world. There is still this kind of basic discrimination against the African people and the African problems.

Crazier and crazier

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Tuesday once again charged that the Holocaust was a fantasy concocted for the West to take over the Middle East through Israel, and proclaimed that Israel was on the verge of collapse, the news agency ISNA reported.

I wonder what kind of historical research is permitted in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The government is active in publishing copies of The International Jew by Henry Ford and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and distributing them around the world.

Worst president ever?

You gotta read this article by Sean Wilentz in Rolling Stone magazine:

George W. Bush's presidency appears headed for colossal historical disgrace. Barring a cataclysmic event on the order of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, after which the public might rally around the White House once again, there seems to be little the administration can do to avoid being ranked on the lowest tier of U.S. presidents. And that may be the best-case scenario. Many historians are now wondering whether Bush, in fact, will be remembered as the very worst president in all of American history.

From time to time, after hours, I kick back with my colleagues at Princeton to argue idly about which president really was the worst of them all. For years, these perennial debates have largely focused on the same handful of chief executives whom national polls of historians, from across the ideological and political spectrum, routinely cite as the bottom of the presidential barrel. Was the lousiest James Buchanan, who, confronted with Southern secession in 1860, dithered to a degree that, as his most recent biographer has said, probably amounted to disloyalty -- and who handed to his successor, Abraham Lincoln, a nation already torn asunder? Was it Lincoln's successor, Andrew Johnson, who actively sided with former Confederates and undermined Reconstruction? What about the amiably incompetent Warren G. Harding, whose administration was fabulously corrupt? Or, though he has his defenders, Herbert Hoover, who tried some reforms but remained imprisoned in his own outmoded individualist ethic and collapsed under the weight of the stock-market crash of 1929 and the Depression's onset? The younger historians always put in a word for Richard M. Nixon, the only American president forced to resign from office.

Now, though, George W. Bush is in serious contention for the title of worst ever. In early 2004, an informal survey of 415 historians conducted by the nonpartisan History News Network found that eighty-one percent considered the Bush administration a "failure." Among those who called Bush a success, many gave the president high marks only for his ability to mobilize public support and get Congress to go along with what one historian called the administration's "pursuit of disastrous policies." In fact, roughly one in ten of those who called Bush a success was being facetious, rating him only as the best president since Bill Clinton -- a category in which Bush is the only contestant.

They're not even pretending to look for bin Ladin!

This has been going around the news lately. Here's the New York Times take:

C.I.A. Closes Unit Focused on Capture of bin Laden

WASHINGTON, July 3 — The Central Intelligence Agency has closed a unit that for a decade had the mission of hunting Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants, intelligence officials confirmed Monday.

The official administration spin is that it doesn't mean anything:

Agency officials said that tracking Mr. bin Laden and his deputies remained a high priority, and that the decision to disband the unit was not a sign that the effort had slackened. Instead, the officials said, it reflects a belief that the agency can better deal with high-level threats by focusing on regional trends rather than on specific organizations or individuals.

"The efforts to find Osama bin Laden are as strong as ever," said Jennifer Millerwise Dyck, a C.I.A. spokeswoman. "This is an agile agency, and the decision was made to ensure greater reach and focus."

What does the guy who knows most about it have to say?

Michael Scheuer, a former senior C.I.A. official who was the first head of the unit, said the move reflected a view within the agency that Mr. bin Laden was no longer the threat he once was.

Mr. Scheuer said that view was mistaken.

"This will clearly denigrate our operations against Al Qaeda," he said. "These days at the agency, bin Laden and Al Qaeda appear to be treated merely as first among equals."

So why are they really doing this?

In recent years, the war in Iraq has stretched the resources of the intelligence agencies and the Pentagon, generating new priorities for American officials.

That's right, the War in Iraq is making it impossible to fight the people who really attacked the United States.

Is George Bush really so stunningly incompetent, or doesn't he want to catch the people who attacked us on September 11th?

That's the real question about almost all of the administration's policies. Stupidity and incompetence, or deliberate sabotage of the United States? Was the Hurricane Katrina response just an incredible foulup, or deliberate ethnic cleansing? The list goes on and on and on and on and . . . .

Let me get this straight

The same people in the American administration who hate the UN, who think it is incompetent and worthless and ought to be scrapped or at least totally overhauled, want it to take over the African Union mission in Darfur?WTF?

What did I tell you?

Everybody's entitled to a day in court.

At least in America.

And I don't care what John Yoo says about it.

Japan subsidizing political thugs in the Gambia

Gambia: Donated Japanese Rice Back in Town

GRTS radio has announced the arrival of a consignment of donated Japanese rice at the port of Banjul. The rice has been coming in consignment since 2004. It is donated to The Gambia by Japanese government, through its agency, JICA, Japanese International Cooperation Agency.

Though the donation is meant for alleviating food poverty in the country, most of the rice is sold to Government civil servants and ruling party militants. The rice that use to come in 25 kg bags, will now come 30 kg ones. The rice which is popular with people here, is to be sold at D250 per bag. Proceeds from "the sales will be paid in a special account said to be meant for meeting costs in the agricultural sector.

There is no famine in the Gambia. The money paid by civil servants and "party militants" (the usual euphemism for political thug is "party stalwart" so I am surprised at the forthrightness of the writer) will go to a special account, but they are buying the rice at a subsidized price and can earn more by selling the rice on the market. Japan is subsidizing political thuggery in Africa.

More:

What really is going on in the Gambia?

from the New York Times:

U.S. Suspends Development Aid to Gambia

By CELIA W. DUGGER
Published: June 17, 2006

The Millennium Challenge Corporation, an American aid agency that provides large grants to well-governed poor countries, suspended Gambia's eligibility, citing a sharp deterioration in press freedom, political rights and anti-corruption efforts. As elections near, the government has barred opposition parties from holding public gatherings and has arrested opposition leaders, according to Freedom House, a research group the aid agency relies on for country evaluations.

Think about that. There are some regimes even the Bush administration won't subsidize but that Japan's Liberal Democrat administration will. What are they getting for their money? A vote on the International Whaling Commission? A contract for Toyota? Support for their permanent UN Security Council Seat?

Here's another story about it:

Gambia: Japan Gives 3814 Tons of Rice to Gambia

The Daily Observer (Banjul) May 24, 2006
Alhagie Jobe

The Japanese government, through the Japanese Food Aid Programme for The Gambia, yesterday handed over 3814 tons of rice to the government of the Gambia at a ceremony held at the Gambia Ports Authority warehouse in Banjul.

The Japanese Food Aid Programme aims at ensuring food self-sufficiency which is a key factor for socio-economic development. It also aims at helping Gambians to satisfy their basic needs and improve their living conditions.

The provision of this rice is the result of a grant agreement amounting to 180 million Yen amounting to D450 million between the two countries signed on 25 April 2005 within the framework of a food aid program, which is one of the priority fields of the Japanese cooperation in The Gambia.

Handing over the rice, Mr Hisanobu Hasama, Consular at the Japanese embassy, representing the Japanese Ambassador to The Gambia, said the 3814 tons of rice are offered to The Gambia in order to meet the basic needs of the Gambian people. He said being aware of the difficulties faced by the Gambia government in ensuring food self-sufficiency in the country, the Japanese government has been extending food aid in a regular manner for the purpose of improving the living conditions of the Gambian populations.

Mr Hasama said the government of the Gambia can realise socio-economic projects by utilising the counterpart fund which would be constituted by the Gambian authorities. He expressed hope that the project of the provision of agricultural support service approved by the government of Japan last year shall give the maximum of benefit to the Gambian population.

Mr Hasama then reconfirmed that this food Aid programme is a symbol of solidarity and friendship between the two countries noting that the government of Japan is willing to support as much as possible The Gambia's self-reliance efforts aimed at meeting socio-economic and sustainable development. He expressed hoped that the food aid will promote and strengthen the excellent relations already existing between the two countries and called on the authorities to make sure that the rice is distributed as soon as possible.

In receiving the rice on behalf of the Gambia Government, Yankuba Touray, secretary of state for Agriculture, said the latest gift is the third time that the government and people of Japan are giving such aid under the Kennedy Round (KR) programme, to The Gambia. He said the assistance is welcome owing to the fact that rice is the staple food of this country and always in high demand. He said as agreed with the Japanese government, proceeds from the sale of the rice will be lodged in a seperate account at the Central Bank of The Gambia meant exclusively for counterpart funds for KR 2004 which he said will be seperated from the account of KR 2003.

SoS Touray added that as agreed with the government of Japan, bank statements will be submitted regularly to the government of Japan for confirmation of the deposits of funds in the Central Bank of The Gambia noting that proposals for the utilisation of the counterpart fund have been approved by the embassy of Japan in Dakar and proceeds for the sale of consignments of rice will be utilised for funding the country's ongoing agricultural improvement programmes.

SoS Touray thanked the Government and Japan for the assistance which he said will help the Gambia address the issue of food security at the household level "but concomitantly will allow The Gambia to mitigate the key constraints facing the agricultural sector through the implementation of our agricultural improvement programme." He assured the Japanese government that the rice will reach all Gambian households and the proceeds of the monetisation process will be utilised soley for the intended purpose.

The ceremony was chaired by Badara Loum, permanent secretary at the department of state for Agriculture.

Islamist controls access to Bush!

By JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Wanted: Face time with President Bush or top adviser Karl Rove. Suggested donation: $100,000. The middleman: lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Blunt e-mails that connect money and access in Washington show that prominent Republican activist Grover Norquist facilitated some administration contacts for Abramoff's clients while the lobbyist simultaneously solicited those clients for large donations to Norquist's tax-exempt group.

That's right, Islamist Grover Norquist, an avowed enemy of the US government, controls access to President Bush.

No wonder Bush won't go after his family friend, Bin Ladin.

Why Karl Rove isn't being indicted

Didn't he out a CIA agent? Isn't that a federal offense? Not if the president says he authorized declassification of her identity, which, after loud mouthing about how he was going after anyone who leaked the identity in question to "take care" of them, he now claims he did, maybe retroactively. (Doesn't he have to sign and date anything about that?)

So the prosecution can't prove it was illegal for the president's hatchet man to reveal the identity of a US secret operative for political reasons. Does that make it right? Does that mean the public shouldn't be outraged about this?

Why is the media spin all about how the White House is now exonerated because nothing illegal was done, or at least nothing illegal could be proven. As Cicero noted about another threat to another Republic:

O tempora! O mores!

The Cole appointment at Yale

Remember all those right wingers who insist they are for intellectual freedom in the Universities? How they insist that they are only fighting for equal time for conservatives who are discriminated against by a cabal of liberals in academia?

Well, guess what? These same right wing guardians of academic freedom are now all rejoicing about a liberal being turned down for a job he was accepted for by the department that wanted to hire him. That's right, they are bragging about having a qualified professor denied a job that the departments involved agreed he was qualified for. Here's the story from "Inside Higher Education":

A joint appointment in history and sociology had already been approved at the departmental levels. But on Friday, the blog Power Line reported that a senior appointments committee at Yale has overruled those votes,

In other words, historians and sociologists recognized that Cole was the best qualified for the post, but senior administrators, subjected to pressure from anti-intellectual right wing extremists, over-ruled their own faculty members.

So much for the right as defenders of academic freedom.

Zarqawi in al-Akhira

Yes, he's in the afterlife. I am much relieved, and I can't help but be happy about it.

US Military Statement on Zarqawi's Death

You can argue, and I would agree, that without our invading Iraq he might never have joined his group to al-Qa'ida. You can argue that he would have stayed bottled up in some isolated, irrelevant corner of Iraq. And again, I would agree with you. You can even argue, and again I would agree with you, that it would have been better to have captured him instead of just wiping him out with air attacks. But come on, who could NOT be happy, or at least relieved, that the guy is out of the action. Hey, I'm happy.

Now we have to see what effect this will have on the war in Iraq.

People friendly forces?

from the Beeb:

The Nato commander in Afghanistan has pledged to use new tactics to win over the support of disenchanted Afghans.

"Lt Gen David Richards said Nato soldiers would be a "people-friendly force" when they take over security in the south from US forces in July.

So why don't they just get bin Ladin and leave?

Or is that too easy?

another Bush anti-terror fiasco?

Has the feckless Bush administration been meddling in Somalia?

from Somali Net:

Powerful warlords got together last February and announced a new self-appointed ant-terror group called Alliance of Anti-Terror and Peace Restoration. They held a press conference the next day and told the world they are in business of hunting Al-Qaeda members who were suspected of hiding in Mogadishu. This new union surprised almost everyone who is keen to Somalia’s political landscape since these men were at each other’s throat for so long.

So where did this new alliance of warlords come from?

Many analysts agreed that either the Pentagon or the CIA recruited and financed Mogadishu warlords to fight a proxy war against Al-Qaeda or its sympathizers. Unlike US involvement in Somalia in early 1990s, Mogadishu warlords will do the dirty job of hunting US wanted men for a bounty price. The warlords and the US government agreed there are Al-Qaeda affiliates operating out of Mogadishu and unverified but widely believed reports say the US and Ethiopia are heavily involved in the war.

Looks like the Bush administration can't figure out what's going on anywhere, but if you scream "TERRORIST!" You can get a lot of money and guns from them.

And of course they still can't find bin Ladin.

O'Reilly lies to smear US troops

I am not making this up, as Dave Barry would say. It's too outrageous to make up. No one would believe that Bill O'Reilly of Fox News would lie to smear American troops and whitewash Nazis, but he did. He lied and smeared the US military while exonerating the Nazi SS of atrocities. It's so outrageous even I wouldn't believe it without solid evidence.

Here's the video in Quicktime.

Here it is in Windows Media.

Here's the audio.

Here's the transcript.

O'Reilly: "in Malmedy, as you know, US forces captured SS forces who had their hands in the air, and they were unarmed, and they shot them down."

Untrue. That was Nazi SS troops who killed unarmed US prisoners. Confederate troops did the same thing to US troops at the infamous Fort Pillow Massacre, but US troops who do things like that are supposed to be punished for it.

Here are the facts, from Wikipedia, from History.Net, and one with photographs.

This massacre, this Nazi atrocity, is too well known for anyone to doubt it, much less to attribute it to Americans.

Problem is, O'Reilly is a Nazi who thinks he's an American. He's just very confused. Just like anyone who thinks they are getting real information from Faux News, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, or any of the other right wing liers.

Unfortunately, you can't legally libel the dead. They can't sue. But everyone should make this as public as possible. O'Reilly has no shame, but maybe pressure can be put on Fox News to replace him. This is outrageous, even by the standards of Fox.

Clinton last freely, democratically elected US president?

From Rolling Stone

something deeply troubling had taken place in 2004. Nearly half of the 6 million American voters living abroad never received their ballots -- or received them too late to vote -- after the Pentagon unaccountably shut down a state-of-the-art Web site used to file overseas registrations. A consulting firm called Sproul & Associates, which was hired by the Republican National Committee to register voters in six battleground states, was discovered shredding Democratic registrations. In New Mexico, which was decided by 5,988 votes, malfunctioning machines mysteriously failed to properly register a presidential vote on more than 20,000 ballots. Nationwide, according to the federal commission charged with implementing election reforms, as many as 1 million ballots were spoiled by faulty voting equipment -- roughly one for every 100 cast.

The reports were especially disturbing in Ohio, the critical battleground state that clinched Bush's victory in the electoral college. Officials there purged tens of thousands of eligible voters from the rolls, neglected to process registration cards generated by Democratic voter drives, shortchanged Democratic precincts when they allocated voting machines and illegally derailed a recount that could have given Kerry the presidency. A precinct in an evangelical church in Miami County recorded an impossibly high turnout of ninety-eight percent, while a polling place in inner-city Cleveland recorded an equally impossible turnout of only seven percent. In Warren County, GOP election officials even invented a nonexistent terrorist threat to bar the media from monitoring the official vote count.

What goes around comes around, I guess. They have pulled this stuff in too many Latin American countries, especially in Central America, and justified it to themselves so often that they have really come to believe that they were doing what was right. Old time political machines did this locally, and just did it for the money. Of course the Republicans, at least the rich ones at the top, are ripping off the US treasury like crazy, but the guys on the bottom really are blinded by Faux News and Ann Coulter screaming that liberals are traitors. What makes it really sad is not just the way the Republicans have been mortgaging the country to the Red Chinese to get money to buy votes with (they call it "tax cuts", but it's not a tax cut when the government is this far in the red). What's really sad is the way they let bin Ladin get away by shifting most of the troops to Iraq. Was it incompetence or deliberate? I don't know. Was the response to Katrina incompetence or deliberate ethnic cleansing? You tell me.

There better be an investigation of this administration. I know we won't have one until after this fall's Congressional elections, if then. If the Democrats don't win it will be a good sign that those elections were fixed to. What to do then?