science news with a liberal dose of bs: 3/7/04

Saturday, March 13, 2004

US Senator: Report on Iraq Intelligence 'Damning'

Not much to chew on here. The report is due out this spring sometime. Perhaps in April.

*********************************************

I just have a couple of words to say about the Spanish bombing and possible links to Islamic militants. I would like to single out al-Qaeda if I may.

I don't know how much of al-Qaeda's 'top people' we have rendered harmless. The president of the U.S. claims it to be two-thirds, but he sometimes has issues with mathematics.

I for one, just want the truth from my leadership. I don't feel that I have been given the most honest answers to my most vexing questions. Don't politicize this. Tell us the truth. We can handle it. All we ask is that we be given a chance.

If this can be proven to be al-Qaeda, so that no one would have a reasonable doubt, I want to know. Likewise, if it cannot be reasonably demonstrated to be al-Qaeda, I want to know. It is the least that our leadership owes to its citizenry.

My thoughts are with the Spanish people this evening.

May you find peace.

"It's the environment, stupid!"

Well, we aren't likely to hear those words for a few U.S. election cycles yet. But it has to be coming. Oh yeah, the point of this post.

European researchers say last summer was the hottest on the continent for at least five centuries.

"When you consider Europe as a whole, it was by far the hottest," said Juerg Luterbacher of the University of Bern, Switzerland.

According to the study, published by this week's Science magazine, European winters are also getting warmer.

Average winter and annual temperatures during the past three decades were the warmest for 500 years, it says.

Mr Luterbacher and his team collected data from all over Europe to analyze the continent's temperature history.

Their information included readings from tree rings and soil cores from the year 1500.

BBC has much more

It's the environment, stupid!

Weird. Reuters now has TWO Kerry-Bush debate articles up. The one that I linked to below, and an amended two page article up now. Here's the latest. And the GOP response:

Steve Schmidt, a spokesman for the Bush campaign dismissed the suggestion, arguing that Kerry is largely responsible for the campaign's tenor.

"After calling Republicans crooks and liars and spending $6.3 million on ads attacking the president, John Kerry is now calling for a civil debate," said Schmidt. He accused Kerry of constantly shifting positions for political gain.

"John Kerry should finish the debate with himself," said Schmidt.

I'll take that as a NO, Steve. The American people need this series of debates. Bush loves to take 'his ideas' directly to the American people.

I may weep :)

2 new Get Your War On panels! Get some!

If you scroll down the page, you'll see yesterday's entry about Richard S. Foster

CAP(Center for American Progress) offers up a chronology of recent White House Intimidations.

For extra credit, use these on your Right of Center friends!

Another in our "The president is not a fact-checker" series:

Earlier today, the Libyan government released Fathi Jahmi. She's a local government official who was imprisoned in 2002 for advocating free speech and democracy," the president said in a speech at the White House on Friday.

The only problem was that, by all other accounts, "she" is in fact "he".

"Definitely male," said Alistair Hodgett, spokesman for the human rights advocacy group Amnesty International, whose representatives tried to see Jahmi in prison during a recent visit to Libya....[snip]

All told, the president made references to more than a dozen other women ranging from his wife, first lady Laura Bush, to last year's Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi of Iran. He also mentioned four men including Secretary of State Colin Powell and Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who were both present....[snip]

Wolfowitz a champion for women's rights? Who knew?

I'm alerting the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. With Bush handling the levers of the nuclear arsenal, we're far closer to midnight than current world events suggests -- not that we've a lack of people acting badly in the world.

I feel safe. I feel safe. I feel sa.......

More obfuscations?

Bush, who as a candidate for president proclaimed:

"If we're an arrogant nation they'll resent us. If we're a humble nation but strong they'll welcome us. Our nation stands alone in the world right now in terms of power. That's why we've got to be humble and yet project strength in a way that promotes freedom."

What will other nations do if we have a hypocritical, multi-tiered foreign policy?

From all appearances, that is what indeed the chosen path of the Bush White House.

Democracy Now! has taken the lead in covering the apparent ouster of Haitian President Jean-Bertand Aristide. It is becoming increasingly clear that both the U.S. and French governments had more than a small hand in fomenting the Haitian coup d'etat.' MSNBC has a bit more.

Today comes news via the Freedom of Information Act(FOIA) that the U.S. has been funding opponents of democratically elected Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez.

From the above article:

Jeremy Bigwood, a Washington-based freelance journalist who obtained the documents, yesterday told The Independent: "This repeats a pattern started in Nicaragua in the election of 1990 when [the US] spent $20 per voter to get rid of [the Sandinista President Daniel] Ortega. It's done in the name of democracy but it's rather hypocritical. Venezuela does have a democratically elected President who won the popular vote which is not the case with the US."

The funding has been made by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) a non-profit agency financed entirely by Congress. It distributes $40m (?22m) a year to various groups in what it says is an effort to strengthen democracy.

But critics of the NED say the organisation routinely meddles in other countries' affairs to support groups that believe in free enterprise, minimal government intervention in the economy and opposition to socialism in any form. In recent years, the NED has channelled funds to the political opponents of the recently ousted Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide at the same time that Washington was blocking loans to his government.

"It the sort of stuff that used to be done by the CIA," said Mr Bigwood. "I am not particularly interested in Mr Chavez - I am interested in what Washington is doing." In Venezuela, the NED channelled the money to three of its four main operational "wings": the international arms of the Republican and Democratic parties - the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs respectively - and the foreign policy wing of the AFL-CIO union, the American Centre for International Labour Solidarity.

As is typical for The Independent, there is much more color at the above link.

Democracy is only rubber-stamped if it happens to be U.S. 'interests' friendly.

These issues can't be cloaked in national defense issues -- save for our dependence on Venezuela's oil reserves -- and if the U.S. still has a functioning democracy, we will get much more color about Aristide's and Chavez's situations. I'm not going to hold my breath, but I am still hopeful.

BREAKING!

Kerry challenges Bush to monthly debates!

Oh, my. This has to be seen as a very weak point for president Bush. He can barely handle Russert softballs.

If he opts to debate Kerry, he loses.

If he opts not to debate Kerry, he loses.

Fresh from Reuters

This could be a defining moment in determining who gets the nod in November. This is turning out to be a lot more fun than I thought it was going to be.

Monthly debates could certainly erase any cash imbalances between the two likely nominees. I think that it would. This has to cause for hand-wringing in the Bush camp.

Kerry will shred Bush faster than an Enron document :)

Stay tuned!

That darn liberal DoD!

Those guys over there reporting the deaths of U.S service personnel.

And how about this from Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt:

Kimmitt said the number of attacks against coalition forces has averaged about 19 daily for the past week, and that insurgent attacks averaged fewer than four daily against Iraqi security forces, and two per day against Iraqi civilians.

Doesn't Kimmitt know that Bush is running his campaign on his success as a 'war president?'

Sheesh, you'd think these guys were more interested in the truth than Bush's election bid.

That darn liberal media. Always giving you the impression that things in Iraq are worse than they are.

Why does General Kimmitt want us to lose the post-war Iraq propaganda campaign?

Friday, March 12, 2004

Wanna lose your job at the White House? All you have to do is speak the truth¹. This is especially true when it comes to the mathematics associated with White House policy. You'd think that the MBA...no wait, sorry, he's a war president now..would want all the best information available to lawmakers as they mull over bills.

Unfortunately, this is only the case when the case when the pendulum swings in favor of White House. I guess there is a reason for the secrecy. Crooked? Liars? You make the call.

No, wait, that's not the White House, that's the GOP attack machine. Which is the White House these days.

Crooked? Liars? You make the call.

U.S. democracy is lying next to Enron documents. At the bottom of the shredder.

1. Richard S. Foster -- the man on the hot seat -- told colleagues that his minders would fire him if he revealed numbers relating to the higher estimate to lawmakers. He didn't, hence wasn't fired.

As always, read the story!

I lend Tony Blair a Helping Hand

Dear Tony,

I found a product that may assist your intelligence services in the future. No, it's not a new decoder ring, or even an invisible ink pen. It's a product that may save you from future embarrassment and/or censure.

The product is available through U.S. company iParadigms LLC, and could save you billions of pounds, and many lives.

What I offer you today is a digital plagiarism detection service. Given your intelligence services embarrassing exposure by Dr. Glen Rangwala concerning copying and pasting information off the public internet as a pretext to the Iraq War, you may even save thousands of lives in the process.

I think we can agree that 10 Downing could use a little help to insure that you are getting the best and latest in intelligence information. Using a ten year old American doctoral student's dissertation is very bad politics, and it hands your critics a formidable weapon. That is never much fun.

It isn't known that if without the dossier, whether or not the U.S. could have gained public support for the war. Your own citizens are very much opposed to the whole affair I'm told.

Given real intelligence work, you might not be in the politically calamitous situation in which you find yourself.

I'm sending similar dispatches to the MI6, Sec. Powell, U.S. President Bush(his will be a pop-up book) Sec. Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Sec. Paul Wolfowitz.

Very Truly Yours,

Todd

(Yes, I know the entry is goofy, but the bit about digital plagiarism detection is worth a pop over to Editor & Publisher to have a look. I expect to see this utilized more widely, and if it scales well, come with a lower cost to the user)

From the Annenberg National Election Survey comes news that undecided voters, by a 2-1 margin, feel it was inappropriate for President Bush's re-election campaign to use images from the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in a television commercial, according to a poll released Friday.

Among those who have not yet decided who they will support in the November presidential election, or say they could change their minds, 52 percent thought the ad was inappropriate while 27 percent said it was appropriate.

This is on the AP wire, and if I find an oline link, I'll post it.

Yeah, I'm at work.

I was just looking at the U.S. Department of Labor's weekly benefits claim report.

Market mavens watch the moving average rather than the week to week volatility that is influenced by factors from holidays to weather.

The hard number is 341,000 newly jobless -- that is the number of people that actually filed for unemployment.

The more closely watched four week moving average stands at roughly 346,000. A decline of 6,750..a neglible number.

The other big data set that is surely causing hand-wringing amongst our sitting president is that the number of those continuing to receive unemployment benefits fell a mere 41,000, while the four week moving average stands at 3.09 million, a decline of 12,250.

The numbers are kind of dumb. They don't tell us a great deal, in and of themselves. It's the trend that's important, and the trend is that while layoffs are abating in pace, hiring isn't taking place. So, the snapshot is of a labor market that is stagnant.

Again, as noted here in many previous articles, the numbers are far below White House predictions(wishful thinking?).

The other bit of economic data is that The University of Michigan's Index of Consumer Sentiment fell slightly to 94.1 from February's level of 94.4 It's a subscription-only report, but Reuters has the goods.

I've been watching these cycles for a couple of decades -- I'm not that old, just naturally curious -- and this recovery is very different.

The lack of substantial job creation this late into a recovery cycle is uncharted(no pun intended) territory for me. This recovery is in slight danger of reversing. It's not just that large numbers of jobs aren't being created, it's also that those being created show sign of wage deflation.

This raises an unusual specter. Not only are people concerned about their present job situation, but they must also be thinking about the prospect of taking a wage cut upon re-entering the work force.

This where the interplay between numbers and psychology comes into play, and I'm not qualified to make meaningful declarations about this issue.

After tax refund spending is over, a clearer picture may emerge.

Dang, I better go do something :)

"The president is not a fact-checker" -- unnamed White House Official

Of course the president named above is W.

Source for quote scroll down to: 'The president is not a fact checker'

Amazingly enough, you'll find the quote in a small series of paragraphs.

Oh, and if you haven't signed up for a WaPo 'membership' you can just C & P the address into Google. Hit search and click on the link. Google referrals are A-Okay.

It is just not George's day. He had another photo-op ruined by....those crazy facts.

Thursday, March 11, 2004

Bush's Pants on Fire!

I have a great deal of respect for two reporters at WaPo. Walter Pincus and Dana Milbank. Neither folded on the Iraq untelligence issue. In fact, both were named in a very elite group of reporters singled out for praise by the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland, in their now widely known critique of the press corps regarding Iraq Intelligence -- WMD specifically.

Today -- actually it's in tomorrow's edition of the WaPo -- they set the record straight about Kerry's 'weak on defense' attack by Bush. Here's a bit:

President Bush, in his first major assault on Sen. John F. Kerry's legislative record, said this week that his Democratic opponent proposed a $1.5 billion cut in the intelligence budget, a proposal that would "gut the intelligence services," and one that had no co-sponsors because it was "deeply irresponsible."

In terms of accuracy, the parry by the president is about half right. Bush is correct that Kerry on Sept. 29, 1995, proposed a five-year, $1.5 billion cut to the intelligence budget. But Bush appears to be wrong when he said the proposed Kerry cut -- about 1 percent of the overall intelligence budget for those years -- would have "gutted" intelligence. In fact, the Republican-led Congress that year approved legislation that resulted in $3.8 billion being cut over five years from the budget of the National Reconnaissance Office -- the same program Kerry said he was targeting.

The $1.5 billion cut Kerry proposed represented about the same amount Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), then chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, told the Senate that same day he wanted cut from the intelligence spending bill based on unspent, secret funds that had been accumulated by one intelligence agency "without informing the Pentagon, CIA or Congress." The NRO, which designs, builds and operates spy satellites, had accumulated that amount of excess funds.

Bush's charge that Kerry's broader defense spending reduction bill had no co-sponsors is true, but not because it was seen as irresponsible, as the president suggested. Although Kerry's measure was never taken up, Specter's plan to reduce the NRO's funds, which Kerry co-sponsored with Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.), did become law as part of a House-Senate package endorsed by the GOP leadership.

In his campaign speech Monday, Bush said that in 1995, "two years after the [first] attack on the World Trade Center, my opponent introduced a bill to cut the overall intelligence budget by one-and-a-half billion dollars. His bill was so deeply irresponsible that he didn't have a single co-sponsor in the United States Senate. Once again, Senator Kerry is trying to have it both ways. He's for good intelligence, yet he was willing to gut the intelligence services. And that is no way to lead a nation in a time of war."

Bush repeated the charge in New York last night, saying, "Intelligence spending is necessary, not wasteful."

White House spokesman Trent Duffy referred questions about Monday's speech to the Bush-Cheney campaign because "it was a campaign speech." Terry Holt, spokesman for the campaign, said he will look into the origins of the speech because he did not know about the situation in 1995. But, he said, "The president was using one very appropriate example of Kerry's lack of commitment to the intelligence community."

On Sept. 29, 1995, Kerry introduced S. 1290, the "Responsible Deficit Reduction Act of 1995." On page 5 of the 16-page bill, Kerry proposed to "Reduce the Intelligence budget by $300 million in each of fiscal years 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, and 2000." The item was one of 17 cuts Kerry proposed from the Defense budget, including a phaseout of two Army light divisions and ending production of Trident D5 submarine-launched ballistic missiles. The bill also proposed 17 non-defense cuts, including ending the international space station and reducing federal support for agriculture research and various changes to government purchasing.

Much more at link

I think it bears stating here, that the total amount of cuts agreed to by the Senate was $3.8 billion dollars. Those damn weak on defense Senate Republicans!

It's good to know that there are still journalists with integrity out there, getting to the truth, rather than parroting sound bites.

I wonder if Bush knows this. Probably not. Not yet. I suspect he will very soon. If Specter and Shelby both wanted similar cuts -- and in fact were, along with Kerry, co-sponsors of the bill which later became law -- uncurious George has a tough row to hoe.

I think if Pincus and Milbank did the math, they'd find Bush's assertions about Kerry are nominal :)

What a sorry lot we've governing us. Why ever does the term laughingstock spring to mind?

I understand that the unprincipled one has launched some sort of attack as against Kerry.

According to Reuters:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush's re-election team rolled out its first attack ads on Thursday claiming that Democratic challenger John Kerry would raise taxes by at least $900 billion and would have sought U.N. approval before "defending America."

The Bush campaign also announced it would continue running at least one commercial using images from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks despite criticism from some victims' families. The campaign insisted the World Trade Center spots were "effective."

The second, more aggressive wave of Bush television ads begin airing at a time when his approval ratings are hovering near the lowest levels of his presidency. He is behind Kerry in some polls. But Bush's advisers said voters were beginning to follow the race more closely and that the campaign decided now was the time to strike.

Bush's first negative ad, which will begin airing on Friday in up to 18 battleground states, says Kerry would "raise taxes by at least $900 billion" in his first 100 days in office.

Oh yeah. Attacking Iraq was defending America. Maybe defending OUR OIL under their sand. Maybe.

Why the Bush team continues to bring up 9/11 is very clear. Bush cannot run on the issues. He's not even a one trick pony. I guess when you have nothing to offer, you resort to attacking your opponent and playing pretend. "I'm a war president." Sure, George. Sure you are.

Let's have some fun with numbers, shall we? Let's say Kerry raises taxes by $900 billion over ten years.

Now, let's look at Bush's spending spree.

Iraq $500 billion

DoD $402 billion in ONE year.

Two items. $902 billion dollars.

I wonder how much Bush's increased energy costs have actually cost? Hundreds of billions of dollars I'd wager.

Somebody is going to say it soon.

Voiceover:

"9/11, the most colossal intelligence failure in American history happened while Bush was reading a book about goats. When told of the unfolding tragedy, the President didn't look the least bit shocked.

"Just what did the 'war president' do?

"He continued reading while other aircraft, thought to be hijacked were on there way towards their destinations.

"Why did our President not call up fighter jets to intercept them?

"Only President Bush knows. And he's not talking. Your President doesn't think that the American people deserve to know the truth about what happened that day. He was forced into appointing a commission to investigate the intelligence failures around 9/11. He has dodged their questions, and attempts to this day, to withhold information vital to getting at the truth about 9/11.

"Please, Mr. President, let the American people know."'

End voiceover

I really do think it's going to get that ugly.

This country is a pitiful representative of democratic ideals. I live close to Canada. What do you think, eh? :)

It doesn't appear that anyone wants to even hazard a guess as to the financial cost of the ill-considered Iraq War Redux.

Private and congressional analysts have done a number of studies and projections of possible costs:

Daniel Goure of the conservative Lexington Institute said he expects troop levels to drop gradually over five years to a half or a third of the present deployment -- meaning 30,000 to 50,000 US troops could remain in Iraq through 2009.

The Congressional Budget Office a few months ago estimated the cost to occupy Iraq through 2013 at up to $200 billion, depending on troop levels.

Casualties could rise at least to 1,000, according to a recent report by Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a frequent Pentagon adviser. "One thousand or more dead in Iraq is hardly Vietnam," Cordesman said. "But it must be justified and explained, and explained honestly."

Well, Larry Lindsey was pretty much booted out as Bush's Chief Economic Advisor for his $200 billion dollar pre-war estimate.

I'd say Lindsey was wrong.

I am certainly not an economist, but if you look at the whole picture of our Iraq Adventure, you have to take into account the higher energy prices that were(are?) a direct result of our invasion of Iraq. As Alan Greenspan would say: "Heightened geo-political risk." You'd be eyeing the proposed OPEC cuts with a skeptical eye as well.

Would OPEC be more or less willing to cut production in the aftermath of a highly unpopular war?

You certainly can't rule it out as a factor.

You add the whole mess up(carry the 2) and I will not be surprised at all if, in the final analysis that Iraq and it's fallout will cost $500 billion dollars.

How much are human lives worth? Truly disheartening.

Let's not make this mistake again.

Greenspan:

"In all likelihood, employment will begin to increase more quickly before long as output continues to expand."

"I am fairly well convinced that employment is about to pick up -- I should be more explicit -- new hires are going to be picking up reasonably quickly if this economic growth rate continues."

"We have reason to be confident that new jobs will displace old jobs as they always have, but America's job turnover process will never be without pain for those caught on the downside of creative destruction."

"Attempting merely to preserve the comfortable features of the present, rather than reaching for new levels of prosperity, is a sure path to stagnation."

"Over the long sweep of American generations and waves of economic change, we simply have not experienced a net drain of jobs to advancing technology or to other nations."

"Although in recent years the proportion of our labor force made up of those with at least some college education has continued to grow, we appear, nonetheless, to be graduating too few skilled workers to address the apparent imbalance between the supply of such workers and the burgeoning demand for them."

"We are falling behind by any measure in our secondary schools."

Regarding Medicare

"We have to make some choices. All the choices are negative. It's not fair to those who will retire in the next generation to promise more than society can afford."

Well, Greenspan was pretty somber about the labor market. If you read all of his remarks, he sees a glass slightly full, but in danger of tipping over.

I don't buy the Medicare arguement. Yes, it's more of an issue than it was four years ago, but repealing Bush's tax cuts to the top few percentage of wage earners, and reining in military spending would go a long way toward steadying the fiscal ship of state.

It goes without saying that Iraqi style excursions must be shelved. Forever.

I too, am troubled by the lack of post-secondary education in the States. We are not even treading water here. We are going under.

Deficit spending is a bad idea in the best of times. As recent history has taught us, things can, and do turn around with remarkable speed.

I've filed Greenspan's remarks. I'll read them with much more focus later this eveining.

Oh, the irony. Look, you're either for free trade, or you're not. Or, maybe restrictions where they benefit you.

Sino semis stimulate Stateside sweating.....well, that's not really the headline, but it makes for fun word play :)

From the LA Times:

China's Chip Designs Concern U.S.

Restrictive taxes and technical standards may elicit a formal protest of trade rule violations.
By Tyler Marshall and Evelyn Iritani
Times Staff Writers

March 11, 2004

SHANGHAI -- China's drive to become a leading global supplier of semiconductors within a decade is rapidly propelling that nation up the technology ladder -- and creating new trade tensions with the United States.

U.S. high-tech industry executives contend that China has an arsenal of unfair tactics at its disposal, including complicated, China-only technical standards that are in the works and a tax they say discriminates against foreign chip makers.

At the urging of U.S. producers, the Bush administration is considering filing its first complaint against China with the World Trade Organization, arguing that the tax violates world trade rules. Nicholas Lardy, a China specialist at the Institute for International Economics in Washington, called the tax "a fairly straightforward" WTO violation having "great economic significance" to the United States.

The unbalanced trade across the Pacific has been a thorn in the bilateral relationship. Expanding imports from China contributed to a record U.S. trade deficit of $43.1 billion in January, according to data released Wednesday by the Commerce Department. Overall U.S. imports were down slightly to $132.1 billion, but exports also declined to $89.05 billion despite the weaker dollar, which makes U.S. products cheaper overseas. The U.S. trade deficit with China widened to $11.5 billion in January, a 6.6% gain.

As further evidence of the growing tensions, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Commerce Secretary Don Evans and U.S. Trade Representative Robert B. Zoellick took the unusual step of sending a letter this month to Chinese Vice Premiers Wu Yi and Zeng Peiyan urging Beijing to repeal a proposed encryption standard for wireless communications products set to take effect June 1. The U.S. officials said the new security standard violated world trade rules.

Industry leader Intel Corp. said Wednesday that it had warned customers that it would quit shipping its wireless chips to China in May because it could not comply with the proposed new standard. Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy said the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company had determined that it could not find a way to comply without compromising the quality of its products.

"These are both very serious issues that need to be resolved quickly," said Patrick Powers, director of China operations for the U.S.-China Business Council, referring to the tax and wireless standard. The stakes in the dispute are high.

Link to entire story

This is my area of expertise. As a gate-oxide process engineer, I feel that this is an area where I can assist the reader. First of all, this isn't really news. It's been discussed for a long time by lackeys in the field. Including your humble author. Intel is blowing some smoke here.

Sure there is a cost involved in making things, be it autos to (something clever starting with "Z") if you aren't already making them to that standard. I should note here that as noted in the article, these are technical standards, not quality issues.

If China wants to opt for a different standard for Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11) then it's almost their sovereign right. China's Wired Authentication and Privacy Infrastructure (WAPI) specification was created by the government with several Chinese vendors. Non-Chinese companies must partner with one of these 24 vendors to make any Wi-Fi products used in the People's Republic. The WAPI intellectual property is controlled by these vendors.

This is admittedly, a stinky way of conducting business, but all the driver's are in China's favor. I bet that some U.S. companies are going to -- at least for the near term -- see this as an opportunity, rather than a barrier. If Intel's out, and China is adopting a new standard, then there will be firms likely moving in to fill the void.

Intel is of course screaming the loudest, because while they are, by far the largest global supplier of semis, China is doing two simultaneous things that are really quite rare in the field. Not only are they increasing the 'barriers to entry cost' by opting for a different standard, they are also ramping production at an alarming rate.

For a player like Intel, the largest supplier of semis to China, these are both serious issues. Intel has had a near monopoly on PC processors for over twenty years. When everything was built around Intel's standards', well, you heard nary a word.

Anything that the U.S. does to impede the Chinese ramp-up of semiconductor manufacturing is -- in the long run -- a likely negative for the U.S.

We can still sell China highly sophisticated lithography and tooling equipment. That situation won't last forever. In the U.S. it can cost in excess of several billion dollars to build a large die(now 300mm) wafer fab. Most of that is spent in capital equipment costs -- those very expensive tools I mentioned above.

One U.S. company, Applied Materials, is the largest semiconductor equipment manufacturer in the world. So, it's not an entirely gloom and doom story by any stretch.

The scariest part for the U.S. giants in the semi industry is the fact that China is not only the fasting growing consumer of semis, but is also the fastest growing manufacturing base. Admittedly, the Chinese started from a relatively small semi manufacturing base. But then, so did everyone else.

I think the trend is clear. Instead of a disruptive technology displacing the Intels of the West, at least over the intermediate term, it's going to be downward pricing pressure that is going to be troubling.

This is a very vexing issue. The U.S. and Chinese economies are inexorably linked. We need each other to make us both strong. Semis are one of the few things we ship to China en masse. That they wish to do things 'in-house' is no shock to anyone in the industry.

I suspect that after all the blustering is over, there won't be much of an issue. Unless Bush thinks he get some traction from this issue prior to the election. Then the dynamics of what transpires are anyone's guess.

I think that we need to view this is a watershed moment in the semicon industry. The tap is open, and there isn't likely anyone to shut it off.

After yesterday's posting blitz, I was going to wait until I got home to update. However, some things can't wait.

Ann Coulter is worse than filth. I didn't read her column..just the excerpts in the Yahoo! article.

WASHINGTON, March 10 /U.S. Newswire/ -- A prominent national Islamic civil rights and advocacy group today called on major media outlets to end their association with a controversial conservative pundit who recently suggested that Muslims "smell bad." The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said syndicated columnist Ann Coulter, who frequently appears as a guest on cable news programs, made that Islamophobic remark in a recent commentary on Mel Gibson's new film "The Passion of the Christ."

Coulter wrote: "Being nice to people is, in fact, one of the incidental tenets of Christianity (as opposed to other religions whose tenets are more along the lines of 'kill everyone who doesn't smell bad and doesn't answer to the name Mohammed'). She also referred to: "(The Prophet) Muhammad's many specific instructions to kill non-believers whenever possible."

Hard to know what to say. She's not worth the use of expletives. With any reason(rather than hope) at all, Ms. Coulter's days as a pundit are over.

Wednesday, March 10, 2004

Bush Supports Jobs Outsourcing Because Job Outsourcing Supports Bush

Courtesy of MoveOn.org's Misleader.org

TOP OUTSOURCER: American Express

Contributions directly to the President Bush: $39,000

Soft Money contributions to the Republican Party: $422,405

TOP OUTSOURCER: Bechtel

Contributions directly to President Bush: $10,300

Soft Money contributions to the Republican Party: $465,150

TOP OUTSOURCER: Convergys

Contributions directly to President Bush: $7,500

Soft Money contributions to the Republican Party: $5000

TOP OUTSOURCER: Dell Computer

Hard Money to Bush: $40,250

Soft Money contributions to the Republican Party: $793,550

TOP OUTSOURCER: Delphi Automotive

Contributions directly to President Bush: $10,950

TOP OUTSOURCER: Fidelity

Contributions directly to President Bush: $164,908

Soft Money contributions to the Republican Party: $574,270

TOP OUTSOURCER: Ford

Contributions directly to President Bush: $76,200

Soft Money contributions to the Republican Party: $268,257

TOP OUTSOURCER: General Electric

Contributions directly to President Bush: $49,125

Soft Money contributions to the Republican Party: $756,987

TOP OUTSOURCER: Hewlett Packard

Contributions directly to President Bush: $6,200

Soft Money contributions to the Republican Party: 29,000

TOP OUTSOURCER: HSBC

Soft Money contributions to the Republican Party: $4,240

TOP OUTSOURCER: McKinsey & Co

Contributions directly to President Bush: $19,500

Soft Money contributions to the Republican Party: $102,500

TOP OUTSOURCER: Sallie Mae

Contributions directly to President Bush: $19,250

Soft Money contributions to the Republican Party: $261,000

**********************************************

These links use the: target="_blank" attribute. They will simply open in a new window. :)

Wow. I am really missing the good stuff today. As I was reading the various articles that retired U.S. Air Force, Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski has archived at Lew Rockwell(see earlier post from today) I completely miss the she has dropped a bombshell(no pun intended) at Salon.

Thank you, Lauren A!

I have been trying to focus on Iraq issues -- almost to the exclusion of everything else -- and I missed this.

This is a MUST READ. No, not like all my other 'must reads.' I really mean it this time. If you can throw Salon a few coins, that would be even better.

Quote du Jour:

"They(the Bush Administration) have taken us much farther down the road toward an intrusive, Big Brother-style government -- toward the dangers prophesied by George Orwell in his book '1984' -- than anyone ever thought would be possible in the United States of America." -- Al Gore 03/09/2004

Tort Reform -- a GOP primer

The Grey Lady reports:

The largest campaign opens on Wednesday, paid with $5 million in unlimited donations that political parties can no longer collect. Republicans say the tactic is an illegal way to support Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, contending that it violates campaign finance laws.

Stepping in to help Mr. Kerry's campaign offset what has been Mr. Bush's 10-to-1 fund-raising advantage, these groups are part of a handful of committees that some critics call a "shadow" political party.

The groups, two of which say they already have a total of $70 million in pledges, have moved to set up expansive voter drives while at the same time fighting the president on television using issues like jobs, the deficit and health care policy.

The advertising campaign beginning on Wednesday goes so far as to hit the president with a broadside, saying that "George Bush's priorities are eroding the American dream." This campaign, run by Harold M. Ickes, the former deputy White House chief of staff for President Bill Clinton, comes just days after Mr. Bush went on the air with his own $11 million ad campaign.

It also comes as President Bush has begun leading an orchestrated barrage of Republican criticism of Mr. Kerry intended to undercut him and define him as a waffler who is weak on security issues. The attacks are coming from an array of Republican elected officials and are to be amplified by an imminent sweep of hard-hitting television advertisements.

Mr. Kerry's advisers say they welcome harsh critiques of the president being broadcast by Democrats. But there is concern that because federal rules forbid the campaign or the Democratic Party to coordinate with these groups, the independent advertising could at times run counter to Mr. Kerry's own themes. "If their first flight of TV ads goes up and they are terrible and off-message, that would be a problem," a Kerry adviser said. "But it's a problem we can't do anything about."

On Tuesday night, Mr. Bush's campaign lawyers said they had filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission saying some of these commercials are illegal because they effectively oppose Mr. Bush, and were paid for with unlimited or "soft money" donations, which they say is a violation of campaign finance laws. They are calling for an investigation into Mr. Ickes's group, the Media Fund. "This is a blatant violation," said Tom Josefiak, Mr. Bush's general counsel.

Mr. Ickes calls those accusations baseless, saying: "Politically, we are trying to really highlight, underscore and push into sharp focus the policies of the Republicans. That may have a certain effect on the Bush or the Kerry campaign, but we are not involved in electing or defeating people. We are raising issues."

The debate over what these groups can legally do dates back to last year. Republicans in Congress have investigated them while other Republicans have appealed to the Federal Election Commission. But when it issued an advisory opinion last month, the commission put off any final decision until later this year, and its members have a full range of alternatives before them.

Several Republican officials said they would be watching closely for illegal coordination between the Kerry campaign and these groups. Officials with the groups said in interviews that they were keeping their distance from the Kerry campaign, and that they were by no means working in coordination with it.

"Everyone here is abiding by the prohibition against coordination with the campaign or party committees," said Jim Jordan, who was forced out as Mr. Kerry's campaign manager in the fall and who is now a consultant to Mr. Ickes's Media Fund.

Hey, I thought the GOP was for tort reform -- to 'eliminate frivolous lawsuits.'

I'd say that this is pretty frivolous. Let all voices be heard. Is the GOP afraid? I thought they used fear as tool. I guess, like fire, a tool is only a tool if you can control it. The amounts of money that are going to be spent between now and 2 November are staggering. As Greg Palast so aptly put it: The Best Democracy Money Can Buy

Read the NYT article. It's got more depth than the similar article of yesterday. More animated as well.

Let the games begin!

Okay. I'll make a prediction. Dr. Howard 'Nothing to Lose' Dean is going to call Bush on Kerry's 'weak on terrah' bs. He's going to state that "John Kerry wasn't the sitting president when the worst intelligence failure in American history occurred."

Everyone knows it's the perfect rejoinder to Bush's asinine assertions, but no one will say it. Not yet.

More Polls.

MSNBC Presidential

Poor Lou Dobbs.

WTF ?!?!

Here's how the poll reads:

"Do you believe illegal immigration and population growth are related to environmental concerns?"

Okay. I'm not certain what the nexus is between illegal immigation and population growth are, but hey, it's not my poll. Wee-ird.

I think it should be clear to anyone that in an occupied country, it matters not to the indigenous population how the occupiers view themselves. It is of primary importance to the occupying force that they know how they are viewed by the locals.

(neocons need not read further)

An illustration:

Iraqis question whether the US has an agenda to fuel sectarian violence in the war-ravaged country.

US officials have charged that Islam is at war with itself in the wake of the of the fatal suicide bombings in Kadhimiya district in Baghdad and the holy city of Karbala, which together claimed more than 271 civilians, mostly religious pilgrims commemorating Ashoura. According to Iranian press reports, up to 50 Iranian pilgrims were among the dead.

Much more at link

I have not heard anything of the sort that the author is claiming. I have read things on the manner of, 'the bomber's are trying to effect a schism between sects', but nothing to suggest that the author's view is consistent with what we are hearing from all quarters.

Of course what I, or you believe isn't relevant, is it? It is what the Iraqis believe that matters. Read the article. It is illuminating. Of course, you should always be skeptical. I am. But the author raises views that aren't widely disseminated here in the states. If nothing else, it shows how different individuals can look at the same statements and texts and draw entirely different conclusions.

Strange Bedfellows Pt. II

Kerry-Dean

They did meet today as we reported yesterday.

Hint: Use of the word "liar" is now part of the official U.S. presidential election campaign lexicon :)

Strange Bedfellows

Kerry-McCain?

WaPo reports:

In Washington, meanwhile, Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican who ran against Bush in the 2000 GOP primaries, said he would consider running for vice president on the Democratic ticket in the unlikely event that Kerry, his "close friend" and fellow Vietnam War veteran, offered him the slot.

"We have been friends for years," McCain said on ABC's "Good Morning America" in an interview that focused mostly on the use of illegal steroids in sports, the subject of a Senate hearing today. "Obviously I would entertain it." But he said the Democrats would "have to be taking some steroids, I think," to want someone with his conservative views on the ticket with the liberal Massachusetts senator.

LMAO! This would absolutely freak the Bush campaign out. I am not making this up. link to WaPo

In keeping with the Iraqi intelligence failure theme, I offer you Ray McGovern

Ray McGovern: Well, two things on that. First, the proof is in the pudding. Read what we've written. Well before the war started, we were saying that there certainly weren't enough weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to warrant a war, that there weren't any weapons there that were even a threat to other countries in the region. Second, believe it or not, 85 percent of the material one needs to analyze these crucial problems is available publicly. This has always been the case. With the incredible amount of information available on the Internet, I can by ten o'clock in the morning, be morally certain that I have 80 to 90 percent of the information that's available on a given subject.

I spent 27 years analyzing top officials and their pronouncements, and the media that they control, or the media that was existing in their countries at the time. So media analysis, which is a sub-discipline of political science, is something that one picks up very quickly. The more so when one works on areas like the old Soviet Union or China. So, it's a piece of cake to sit down and look at what Condoleeza[sic] Rice said, and what Colin Powell said.

This is a case in point. On February 24, 2001, Colin Powell said, "Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction. Containment has worked. The sanctions have worked. It poses neither a strategic threat, nor a threat to countries within its own region." Rice said pretty much the same thing in July of 2001. What happened?

What happened, indeed?

I've been using Powell and Rice's own words to illustrate that both A and B cannot be true. When David Kay said in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee that "Nearly everybody got it wrong" in reference to Iraq's WMD programs, one has to ask just who Mr. Kay asked?

I should have made an entry about this yesterday. The Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland and the University of Maryland have issued a report on what most any critical thinker knows. That is, that the U.S big media utterly failed in their watchdog duty in the run-up to, and during the Iraq war redux.

Particularly stinging is this conclusion:

Many stories stenographically reported the incumbent administration's perspectives on WMD, giving too little critical examination of the way officials framed the events, issues, threats and policy options.

Ouch! And this:

"The American political system is in the early stages of contending with an unwelcome but ultimately unavoidable problem. The United States initiated war against Iraq on the basis of an inaccurate representation of the scope and immediacy of the threat posed, and it did so without international authority. That has prejudiced the legitimacy of the occupation, thereby undermining the single most important ingredient of successful reconstruction." -- John Steinbruner

More here

All I can say is that I wasn't part of this adoption of the "incumbent administration's perspectives on WMD." Once Iraq declared that they had no prohibited weapons, I waited -- and am still waiting -- for the U.S. to provide hard evidence that they did. After Glen Rangwala dropped the bombshell on the British plariarized dossier, I became a true skeptic. I remain so to this day. Not just about Iraq intel, but about everything this administration says -- or doesn't say.

Bush in Ohio

Higher productivity also presents us a challenge, and here's the challenge: Many companies fill new orders and expand operations without needing to hire new workers. Because we're a productive work force, the economy can expand, and in some cases, they don't need to add additional workers to meet that expansion, to meet the additional demand. Manufacturing output, for instance, increased sixfold between 1950 and 2000 -- a sixfold increase. Yet, because of high productivity, all this manufacturing is done by about the same number of workers. And because of the new technologies throughout the economy, another challenge is the fact we've got to make sure people have got the skills necessary to become productive workers.

Well, I guess we now why the economy isn't creating jobs this far into a recovery. So, what about the rosy job growth forecasts? More on that later.

In Ohio, you know firsthand the effects of economic change. Manufacturers are more productive, so they aren't creating as many jobs as they used to. Ohio's unemployment rate is higher than the national average; manufacturing communities like Youngstown and Cleveland have been hit especially hard. I understand that. I know there are workers here concerned about their jobs going overseas. I share that concern. I know they're wondering whether they'll ever be able to find new skills necessary to fill the new jobs of the 21st century. I understand that. There are those with good jobs who worry about their health care and their retirement benefits. There are a lot of moms and dads who wonder whether or not their child will be able to find a job in the community in which they were raised. There are legitimate concerns amongst people here in Ohio and elsewhere around the country.

I agree, they are legitimate concerns. How do we address them, now that we have finally acknowledged that the vaunted "Bush Economy" isn't shaping up to all that different from that under another U.S. president with a shared last name?

And one reason why there's concern is because, as the economists say, this is a time of transition, it's a time of change. And if you're one going through transition, it's not an easy experience. But then we have a responsibility to help. We have a responsibility to help with more than just unemployment insurance. We have a responsibility in government to create an environment that increases more jobs and helps people find the skills to fill those jobs. That's a responsibility that we must do in government.

"As the economists say?" Hey, aren't you the MBA president?

You can use the link at the top to rifle through the speech. He offers no plan to decrease the flood of jobs overseas, and goes on about how bad rolling back the Bush tax cuts will be(I agree with Kerry, that rolling back the cuts for people maikng in excess of $200K per year is a good thing). Blah. It's pretty much canned GOP™. Nothing new.

There lots of errors of fact as to why companies (mainly Japanese) moved their production stateside. It was not because we can do a better job at assembly -- a large portion of assembly is robotic, and robots don't get paid -- it was due to sidestep import tariffs.

Almost comically, Bush uses tort reform as a way to prevent jobs from going overseas..I'm not kidding. I wish that I was.

Bush does not outline anything remotely like a plan to stem the tide of jobs outsourcing. He really cannot. He's a free trader. I too, agree with most free trade policy. Slightly later in the speech, he warns on protectionism, etc., and I agree. If I knew the answer to job growth in the U.S. I would not be posting to a weblog.

Being in the semicon industry, I can tell you with a high level of certainty that the trend toward outsourcing is here to stay. Barring some draconian "fortress America" trade policy, it's not only now, it's the future.

I'll say that overall, it seems by reading the text, that this was an above average speech by Bush. That's not a very high bar to hurdle. He stuck to the party line, and that's all he can do at this juncture.

If Bush is going to warrant consideration for election(not RE-election, as we had that awful Florida business) he has to give people a reason to vote for him. He offers up the same old stale lines time and again. That's not only unlikely to bore his audiences to death, it's a good bet that they'll see what the other guy has to offer.

I've talked to many 'dyed in the wool' Republicans, and they are looking for something new. A woman told me today that "I've never voted for a Democrat, but I'm not voting for Bush."

Me being the socially challenged individual that I am, couldn't help but ask her if she was going to vote in November. To which she replied, "Oh, yes. I'm voting for Kerry."

Does anyone know if Mike Leavitt(head of the EPA) was grilled by Congress today over Bush's proposed $600 million dollar budget cut to the EPA in 2005?

That's over 7% of their entire budget.

I need a transcript. I looked at C-Span..nada. At least as of posting time.

That's so F#$%& irresponsible.

I have just started reading the absolutely fascinating story of retired U.S. Air Force, Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski. The linked article is just a small part of her story. There is an archive of her online articles at Lew Rockwell

Her latest piece -- published just today -- is sort of a "Seussian" piece on our two likely presidential candidates.

I urge the cuirous reader to delve into Ms. Kwiatkowski's story and perspective with gusto. It's a story and a viewpoint both entertaining and enlightening, while being deadly serious. A tough thing to pull off, but the gifted Ms. Kwiatkowski accomplishes it with aplomb.

Three quick items.

I really don't know what the sitution in Zimbabwe is, or the nexus between that and this story from Guinea I have a reasonable guess, but until I find out more, it'll remain my secret.

*******************************************

The AP wire is reporting that Bush will be talking about "jobs and economic policy" today in a speech in Ohio..now that should be interesting. (sorry, no link)

*******************************************

Kerry and Dean are reportedly scheduled to meet today to discuss strategy, and an expected endorsement to follow if things go well.

*******************************************

That's all for now. I need to go and look busy. :)

I just got emailed by the American Family Association.

Topic: Presidential poll :)

Go!

Tuesday, March 09, 2004

Somerby lays the smackdown on David Brooks. He accurately refers to Brooks as the NYT's "emptiest columnist." Heh. Somerby Rocks.

Monday, March 08, 2004

If you come to this site, it's highly likely that you've heard that Kerry claims to have been told by foreign leaders that regime change is needed in Washington.

In the linked to piece by Rupert Cornwell reporting for The Independent, there is this bit of analysis:

His remark, at a fundraiser, drew a mocking response from the White House, where officials pointed out that "US voters, not foreign leaders, decide who becomes President." But it shows how foreign policy - usually a low ranking election issue here - may be front and centre of the battle this time around.

Mr Kerry named no names when he addressed a fundraiser in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. But said: "I've met foreign leaders who can't go out and say this publicly but, boy, they look at you and say, 'you've got to win this, you've got to beat this guy, we need a new policy.'"

I think it's MORE than merely foreign policy. I would say that it's more likely to be global policy. The world needs a progressive policy on the usual foreign policy matters to be sure, but there is now the looming specter of global climate change -- that no seriously considered climatologist seems to refute.

Economies, terrorism, and you can fill in blanks with all of your pet issues, but the one remaining issue -- where the U.S. should be playing a real leadership role -- is the environment. It's the one issue that transcends a presidential term, or a human lifetime, yet it is only now being taken seriously as the biggest, most dangerous, 'elephant in the room.'

I honestly don't believe that Bush has the intellectual acumen to lead on the environment -- even if it was on his radar screen. A radical policy is probably necessary, but unlikely to be undertaken by any serious politico. But we must begin to change our habits and our thinking about the environment. Global climate change is the one issue that if we don't, as a species, deal with it, it will deal with us. Think I'm a doomsayer? Blame the Pentagon. Those tree huggers put me up to this. ;)

I was up in the morning with the TV blarin'
brush my teeth sittin' watchin' the news
All the beaches were closed the ocean was a Red Sea
but there was no one there to part in two
There was no fresh salad because there's hypos in the cabbage
Staten Island disappeared at noon
And they say the midwest is in great distress
and NASA blew up the moon

The ozone layer has no ozone anymore
and you're gonna leave me for the guy next door
I'm Sick of You
I'm Sick of You

They arrested the Mayor for an illegal favor
sold the Empire State to Japan
And Oliver North married William Secord
and gave birth to a little Teheran
And the Ayatollah bought a nuclear warship
if he dies he wants to go out in style
And there's nothing to eat that don't carry the stink
of some human waste dumped in the Nile

We one thing is certainly true
no one here knows what to do
And I'm Sick of You
I'm Sick of You

The radio said there were 400 dead
in some small town in Arkansas
Some whacked out trucker drove into a nuclear reactor
and killed everybody he saw
Now he's on Morton Downey and he's glowing and shining
doctors say this is a medical advance
They say the bad makes the good and there's something to be learned
in every human experience

Well I know one thing that really is true
this here's a zoo and the keeper ain't you
And I'm sick of it
I'm Sick of You

They ordained the Trumps and then he got the mumps
and died being treated at Mt. Sinal
And my best friend Bill died from a poison pill
some wired doctor prescribed for stress
My arms and legs are shrunk the food all has lumps
they discovered some animal no one's ever seen
It was an inside trader eating a rubber tire
after running over Rudy Giuliani

They say the President's dead but no one can find his head
it's been missing now for weeks
But no one noticed it he had seemed so fit
and I'm Sick of it

I'm Sick of You
I'm so Sick of You, bye, bye, bye

Bye, bye, bye

***********************************************

Hard to improve on Lou Reed's take. What was true in '89 holds true today.

But now we have blogs.

And things are worse.

Happy International Women's Day

Keep fighting the good fight!

I'm with you, sisters!

In a show of just how brazen the Bush campaign is, they are calling Kerry weak on terror due to a vote in 1995.

The Kerry camp volleys back, stating: The cut was part of what Kerry called a "budget-buster bill" to strip $90 billion from the budget and end 40 programs that he said were "pointless, wasteful, antiquated or just plain silly."

We here at pure bs note the obvious fact that 9/11 took place under Bush's watch.

I don't know what was in the bill, but I do know who was President on 11 09 2001..and it wasn't John Kerry. This seems like a minefield for Bush.

You'd think that Bush would want no mention of 9/11. He's got a serious issue there. But he brings up the terror issue every chance he gets.

I play poker at times, and to keep your opponent guessing, you sometimes have to play your hand no matter how much you're bluffing. Bush is a single issue candidate. He has to play this hand.

Arab Times Online is reporting that Hans Blix, in his most strongly worded statement to date, claims that Bush and Blair well, exaggerated the case for war. Knowingly.

Blix says it was "probable that the governments were conscious that they were exaggerating the risks they saw in order to get the political support they would not otherwise have had." In an interview from Stockholm, Blix highlighted the now discredited British claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction that could be deployed within 45 minutes.

"They must have had a half-conscious idea that this was perhaps a bit of exaggeration ... The aim of it I think was to create an impression in the reader that they were faced with something very ominous," he said by telephone. "If they had been more critical of the evidence they saw, I think that they should have put some question marks rather than the exclamation marks that they did," he said. [snip]

"I am not suggesting that Blair and Bush spoke in bad faith, but I am suggesting that it would not have taken much critical thinking on their own part or the part of their close advisers to prevent statements that misled the public," he writes. "It is understood and accepted that governments must simplify complex international matters in explaining them to the public in democratic states. "However they are not vendors of merchandise but leaders of whom some sincerity should be asked when they exercise their responsibility for war and peace in the world."[snip]

More at link

Note: I found the site terribly slow to load as of posting time which is U.S. Eastern.

While Washington gushes over the newly minted Iraq interim Constitution: An Iraqi Writes

An excerpt:

They say: Iraq rebuilding programs? Where are these things? How long that we have to wait? A decade? A century? Just let us know. If you think that the process of Iraq rebuilding is going on, you are absolutely wrong! They are only sucking Iraqi oil with no refund.

When I look to the situation as a whole searching for a single thing done after the invasion, I can barely find one or two things. Do you know that we are still suffering from power failures more than 16 hours daily! In pre-invasion time we had only 8 hours cuts. Even when we had power failure, Baghdad wasn’t suffering like that. So people there in Baghdad are not adapted for these long hours of power failure (unlike them, we have our own generators which can help us a little bit).

People there are also suffering from loss of security and robbing, much more than we suffer. They are now buying generators, and trying not to get out of their houses after 8:00 pm, in an effort to cope with these situations. They may be able to get through this, but we all need to know, when this is going to end? Is it going to last just like Saddam's time?

I visited the Convention Center there in Baghdad, and it is in what they call ‘The Green Zone.’ Inside this zone, life is really green! You can find anything you want, in other words, the Americans have built their own paradise in the middle of the hell. Can’t they make whole Baghdad a green zone? Safe not just for them, but for Iraqis also? Can’t the strongest country in the world fight against a bunch of gangsters and looters? Nobody knows.

Things are getting worse for the average Iraqi. That is the opinion of U.N. and NGOs.

While Baghdad burns, Bush fiddles.

This isn't likely to be picked up by our 'watchdog media.'

Top Iraqi Nuclear Scientist Wants Probe

The father of Iraq's nuclear bomb program, speaking publicly for the first time since U.S. forces occupied Baghdad, called Monday for a U.N. probe of what nuclear inspectors knew before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and denied Saddam Hussein had tried to restart his atomic program.

Jafar Dhia Jafar said U.N. inspectors had "reached total conviction" that Iraq was free of nuclear weapons before the U.S.-led invasion yet failed to convey that frankly to the Security Council because of pressure from the United States.

Before and after the U.S.-led invasion last March, U.S. officials have insisted Saddam was developing a nuclear weapons program. Chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix and his nuclear counterpart Mohamed ElBaradei, however, say their teams found no evidence of any weapons of mass destruction or programs to build them in Iraq.

"Reports of the United Nations to the Security Council should have been clear and courageous," Jafar said. "I believe the United Nations should also investigate ... the facts that were known before the war and why they (nuclear inspectors) did not declare them to the Security Council."[snip]

"Saddam Hussein issued orders in July 1991 for the destruction of all banned weapons, in addition to the systems to produce them. It was carried out by the Special Republican Guard forces," they wrote.

"We can confirm with absolute certainty that Iraq no longer possessed any weapons of mass destruction after its unilateral destruction of all its components in the summer of 1991, and did not resume any such activity because it no longer had the foundations to resume such activity."

Three days before the invasion last March, Vice President Dick Cheney said Iraq was "trying once again to produce nuclear weapons," even though ElBaradei said his inspectors had found no evidence of that.

After the war, U.S. inspectors also found no signs of a revived program. Still, David Kay, the chief U.S. inspector who resigned in January, contended last October he had found "evidence of Saddam's continued ambition to acquire nuclear weapons." That evidence has not been made public.

In their paper, the scientists wrote: "The United States and Britain were not content with the United Nations' reluctance to tell the truth ... so they fabricated lies about Iraq resuming its nuclear activity."[snip]

Link to whole story

It'll be interesting to see if this gets any attention from the press. Here's the 'smoking gun.' Unfortunately, it's pointed in the wrong direction for the Bush Administration.

Treasury Secretary Snow -- Fresh off the Wire:

12:29pm 03/08/04 SNOW: FED HAS NOT OVERREACTED, HAS BEEN 'DISCIPLINED'

12:26pm 03/08/04 SNOW: UNDERLYING CONDITIONS IN U.S. ECONOMY 'SOUND'

12:18pm 03/08/04 SNOW: MAKING TAX CUTS PERMANENT IS KEY TO ECONOMY

12:17pm 03/08/04 SNOW SAYS HE IS A 'DEFICIT HAWK'

12:16pm 03/08/04 SNOW REPEATS VOW TO CUT U.S. DEFICIT IN HALF IN 5 YEARS

I'm from Missouri, John. Show me.

Deficit hawk? Maybe 'hawk' has a new definition in this Administration. Ya gotta be kiddin' me.

Anyone want to take a bet that halving the deficit whilst making Bush's tax cuts permanent is 'doable?'

The tax cuts are the largest contributor to the deficit.

Dear Mr. Snow,

Please resign now.

Love,

Todd

The Iraqi interim Consititution was signed into law today. But the day is not all sunshine in Iraq. Al-Sistani, Iraq's most influential cleric is quoted by Reuters in a statement as saying:

"This (law) places obstacles to arriving at a permanent constitution for the country that preserves its unity and the rights of its people, in all their ethnicities and sects.

Any law prepared for the transitional period will not have legitimacy until it is approved by the elected national assembly."

Link

Bremer looks less than sanguine in this picture taken during the signing ceremony.

In Mosul, attackers killed one IGC member, and wounded another just hours before the Constutution was signed.

Democracy can be a messy process.

Requires Quicktime :)

Sunday, March 07, 2004

From the branch of the U.S. Gov't. that brought you the $640 toilet seat, comes news that the cheeseparing bunch at the DoD have wrested reconstruction funding in Iraq from the State Department.

It's good to see that the fiscally conservative Pentagon is going to writing checks to the equally frugal Bechtel Corporation. Also along for the ride are Uncle Dick's favorite charity Halliburton, and perenial DoD favorite Fluor Corporation. I feel so very good that our money is being stretched as far as possible by these wonderful institutions.

I have to go wave a flag.

Afghanistan

"The use of these tactics has resulted in avoidable civilian deaths and injuries, and in individual cases may amount to violations of international humanitarian law."

HRW acknowledges that the Americans are opposed by armed groups which pay little heed to humanitarian law or human rights.

"But the activities of these groups are no excuse for US violations. Abuses by one party to a conflict, no matter how egregious, do not justify violations by the other side."

The report cites complaints collected by a UN official of "cowboy-like" tactics against people "who generally turn out to be law-abiding citizens". They include blowing doors open with grenades rather than knocking.

Soldiers kill people. They don't make very good cops. Of course, if the military dealt with these issues...nevermind.

Not on CNN: Nile states hold 'crisis talks'

The talks - held under the auspices of the Nile Basin Initiative - come amid growing regional tensions over the world's longest river.

Egypt is reported to have said it would regard any attempt to alter the Nile status as an act of war.

A 1929 treaty said no work would be done on the river that would reduce the volume of water reaching Egypt.

The Nile is vitally important to the survival of 160 million people who share the basin in which it flows, but to Egypt the river is a matter of life and death, as the country has almost no other source of water.

But the 1929 treaty - signed between Britain and Egypt - is now being questioned.

These are the real issues that are going to come to dominate politics and conflict in the future. The U.S. hasn't shown any form of leadership on environmental issues. Or, if we have, it has been one of exceedingly poor planetary stewardship.

This is another 'red flag' issue.

Yes, I'm well aware that labeling John Kerry as 'the most liberal member of the Senate' is far more important than wrestling with the future health of our planet.

Damned shame.

Need a fresh look at U.S. public debt? Sure you do.

Bush's Spider Hole

Good, easily digested material to use on your supply-sider friends.

Kerry Accuses Bush of "stonewalling" separate inquiries into the events leading up to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists attacks, as well as into the intelligence that suggested Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Scott Stanzel, Bush campaign spokesman responded by saying, "No sah-uh-uh."

Well, that's not an entirely accurate but he repeated the party line about "unprecedented access" which is a steaming load of bison fecal matter.

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