Saddam and al-Qaeda
Back in 1999 The Guardian was writing about it. Now Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi states in an interview,

Allawi: No. I believe very strongly that Saddam had relations with al-Qaida. And these relations started in Sudan. We know Saddam had relationships with a lot of terrorists and international terrorism. Now, whether he is directly connected to the September — atrocities or not, I can’t — vouch for this. But definitely I know he has connections with extremism and terrorists.

Patterico pontificates on Iraq.

Jacques, himself, updated x 2
Via EU Referendum, "Isolated in his role of a killjoy, Jacques Chirac remains exasperated". Le Monde's calling Jacques a party-pooper.
Heh.
Update Barcepundit calls the appointment of Durão Barroso as EU president "an overwhelming victory for Bush"
Second update Maria sent this article, Calling Chirac's Charade

(updated) Bad haircut coming up . . .
if Hillary has her say

Headlining an appearance with other Democratic women senators on behalf of Sen. Barbara Boxer, who is up for re-election this year, Hillary Clinton told several hundred supporters – some of whom had ponied up as much as $10,000 to attend – to expect to lose some of the tax cuts passed by President Bush if Democrats win the White House and control of Congress.
"Many of you are well enough off that ... the tax cuts may have helped you," Sen. Clinton said. "We're saying that for America to get back on track, we're probably going to cut that short and not give it to you. We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good."

Move to New Jersey, Hillary, and sing along with McGreevy, who's trying to "take things away" for G-d knows what. I don't see any good -- common or uncommon -- out of this. As Val says, I work damn hard for my money.
Update Dr Sowell asks Low Taxes Do What?

What Reagan’s “tax cuts for the rich” actually cut were the tax rates per dollar of income. Out of rising incomes, the country as a whole—including the rich—paid more total taxes than ever before.

So much for taking things away from us.

The anti-Moore
A friend tells me a new book's come out Michael Moore Is A Big Fat Stupid White Man, and another documentary is in the works, Michael Moore Hates America.
I'm sure MMoore's poisonous narcissism finds all of this very gratifying.
Meanwhile, Arthur lets it rip on "Supersize Me".

UNScam today
Claudia Rosett, in today's WSJ, on how the UN is like The Sopranos

A final word. Watch out for the household staff. They're in something of a flutter right now, trying to keep track of who's investigating whom about what. You may see former Oil for Food chief Benon Sevan wandering the halls, still wondering why he's had so little praise lately for running an Iraq relief program from which no more than $10 billion or so was embezzled by Saddam--or maybe $40 billion, tops. And remember to whisper when in the library, where Mr. Annan's scribes are even now busy crafting the next round of tributes to the U.N. family, though freedom does not figure large in the household lexicon. More typical was Mr. Annan's call on Monday, for "all Iraqis to come together in a spirit of national unity and reconciliation, through a process of open dialogue and consensus-building, to lay down secure foundations for the new Iraq"--a process Mr. Annan somehow manages to imply was already under way under Saddam, until, to the U.N.'s great annoyance, it was interrupted for 15 months by the U.S.-led coalition.

I'm glad Ms Rosett continues writing on this story.

"Let Freedom Reign"
Michael King's done an excellent job with the visuals!

More on Nick & Jacques, part II
Via the Instapundit

CHIRAC LOSES IT IN ISTANBUL, playing right into Bush's hands by isolating himself from both Turkey and Britain.

Jacques told George that EU affairs were none of his business, but Gerhard Says Germany and France Plan to Back Turkey's EU Bid.
Hmm.
Jacques's also clearly preaching to the choir (or so he thinks), saying things like "It's not NATO's mission to intervene in Iraq".
Unfortunately, Nick/Sarko's singing a different tune, (via ¡No Pasarán!), since

France moved to normalize business ties with Iraq on Monday, just hours after the U.S.-led coalition occupying the country announced it had transferred sovereignty to an interim government two days ahead of schedule.
The French Finance Ministry said in a statement that full economic ties with Iraq will be restored immediately following Monday's hand-over of power to the country's interim government . . .
The French statement said Finance Minister Nicolas Sarkozy had promised to normalize ties during a June 22 visit by his Iraqi counterpart, Adel Abdul-Mahdi.

Nick se forger une stature internationale, alright, while Jacques's doing his best to diminish his own.

Poisonous narcissism for the uninformed
The Democratic party lost me years ago, and by embracing Michael Moore they sure aren't trying to win me back.
Moore's been very effective at self-promotion. Amazingly (to me) for such a fat guy, he's Hollywood's #1 Narcissist of the week. His movies are "all about him", and don't bother with substance.
I previously posted on how Hitchens already ripped the film up one side & down the other, and now the movie's at a cinema near you. Everybody has an opinion: from Chris Muir in today's Day By Day,
Ed Koch,

It is not a documentary which seeks to present the facts truthfully. The most significant offense that movie commits is to cheapen the political debate by dehumanizing the President and presenting him as a cartoon.

Gwendolyn Tose'-Rigell, the principal at Emma E. Booker Elementary School ("I don't think anyone could have handled it better," Tose'-Rigell told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune in a story published Wednesday. "What would it have served if he had jumped out of his chair and ran out of the room?" ), that banner carrier of The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, the Chicago Sun Times

In December 1997, a delegation from Afghanistan's ruling and ruthless Taliban visited the United States to meet with an oil and gas company that had extensive dealings in Texas. The company, Unocal, was interested in building a natural gas line through Afghanistan. Moore implies that Bush, who was then governor of Texas, met with the delegation.
But, as Gannett News Service points out, Bush did not meet with the Taliban representatives. What's more, Clinton administration officials did sit down with Taliban officials, and the delegation's visit was made with the Clinton administration's permission.

and Jeff Jarvis (not exactly a Bush supporter)

In Moore's view, you're either with him or against him. Hmmm, who else looks at the world that way?
Yup, Moore is just he mirror image of what he despises. He is the O'Reilly... the Bush of the left.

But it's Andrew Ferguson who hits the bulls-eye:

Will anyone care that the movie, viewed as either art or journalism, is a mess? ``Fahrenheit 9/11'' has a Palme d'Or from the Cannes film festival -- and now the implicit endorsement of the Democratic Party establishment.
This embrace of Moore's crackpottery is great news for Moore, very bad news for Democrats -- just as the GOP's kooky flirtations under Clinton did damage it has yet to recover from.

The Democrats are losers when embracing Moore's poisonous narcissism for the uninformed.

Help James raise funds for diabetes research
Kathleen's nephew James is raising funds for diabetes research. Read about him at The Cake Eater Chronicles. For a direct link to James's team, it's here.

The Film They Don't Want
Maria sent this article,

I'D like to make a doc umentary entitled "What We're Up Against." I'd include the following:
* Scenes from the destruction of the World Trade Center: jets crashing, people jumping from the upper floors, the towers' collapse, the months-long digging through the rubble — and the excruciating body-identification task faced by the medical examiner's office.
* The "beheading videos" — from reporter Daniel Pearl right through to Korean Kim Sun-il.
* The charred and mutilated bodies of four Halliburton workers hanging from a bridge in Fallujah.
* Post terror-bombing scenes from Bali, Madrid, and Istanbul. Ditto for Riyadh, but with additional footage of the recent attack showing the 22 victims whose throats were slit.
* The Saddam Hussein "torture videos," photos of the mass grave sites containing 300,000 Iraqis and photos of Kurdish men, women and children killed by chemical poisoning.
* Footage of the pregnant Israeli woman and her four daughters murdered by two Palestinians who then put an additional bullet in each child's head and one in the abdomen of the mother.
* A "montage" of numerous mullahs and imams whose non-stop spewing of anti-American and anti-Semitic speech incites further hatred and violence.
* Another montage of "joyous Arabs" dancing in the streets after virtually every successful act of terror.
Think I'd win a Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival? Neither do I

Indeed.

What WMDs?
Saddam, along with others, was trying to buy uranium, acording to The Financial Times

The FT has now learnt that three European intelligence services were aware of possible illicit trade in uranium from Niger between 1999 and 2001. Human intelligence gathered in Italy and Africa more than three years before the Iraq war had shown Niger officials referring to possible illicit uranium deals with at least five countries, including Iraq.
This intelligence provided clues about plans by Libya and Iran to develop their undeclared nuclear programmes. Niger officials were also discussing sales to North Korea and China of uranium ore or the "yellow cake" refined from it: the raw materials that can be progressively enriched to make nuclear bombs.

(Prior post on the subject: June 26, with links to other posts)

Steyn didn't like it
From his book review,

As things stand, you'd be hard put to devise a more apt personal embodiment of the long holiday from history the U.S. took between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the fall of the World Trade Center. If geopolitics is the Super Bowl, Mr. Clinton is Janet Jackson, complete with wardrobe malfunctions.

Ouch.
Slate has the powerpoint slide show.

Saddam and al-Qaeda
Even the WaPo's carrying the story.

Iraqi interim goverment just sworn in
Read what the Iraqi blogs have to say: Hammorabi and Iraq The Model. Zeyad at Healing Iraq hasn't posted in the past 2 days, but he's worth reading.
Roger's on the money

By the way, I know I have written this before, but I think the use of the term "insurgents" by the media inaccurate and propagandistic in its essence. As far as I know... and correct me if I'm wrong... there has not been one single of these people being anything but fascists, either of the Baathist or Islamist variety. Calling them "insurgents" then cloaks them in the romantic veneer of "freedom fighters."

Fascists is the right word.
Update: Jane at Armies of Liberation declares a day of celebration.

Gratuitous Sunday NYT Book Review insult
Cristina Nehring, realizing that Books Make You a Boring Person, opines,

Books are not the pure good that the festival crowds are sometimes told: you can learn anything from a book -- or nothing. You can learn to be a suicide bomber, a religious fanatic or, indeed, a Bush supporter as easily as you can learn to be tolerant, peace-loving and wise.

Wise enough to equate Bush supporters with suicide bombers and religious fanatics, Cristina?

One of today's NYT's headlines
. . . For Iraqi Girls, Changing Land Narrows Lives made me wonder, just how safe did these girls think they were under Saddam, with Uday and Qusay around? But more to the point, just at the moment I was looking at the paper, I had just watched the last minutes of Elinor Burkett's lecture on CSPAN urging American "conservative women" to apply for money that would start a women's studies department in Baghdad University. As Ms Burkett pointed out, every time fundamentalists take over a society, they start by diminishing women's status to nothing -- the difficult thing is empowering those women again. No question that I raq is in turnmoil and it is a dangerous place; using teen girls as illustration of the danger is almost trivializing the issue.

(An aside: I use the term "conservative women" in quotes since I've met some very radical "conservative women" as of late. But I'll blog on that some other time.)

Still on the subject of Iraq, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees June 15 report on GLobal Refugee Trends (via the Barcepundit) just came out. The NYT's not writing about the results of the study, for that you have to look at an Australian newspaper

But perhaps the most telling sign is what you could call the "refugee indicator" of success. Last week, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Ruud Lubbers, reported that the number of refugees worldwide had dropped to its lowest level in a decade, falling by 18 per cent to just over 17 million.
From the first quarter of last year to the first quarter this year, there was a 25 per cent drop in the number of people seeking political asylum in the developed nations, The Boston Globe reported. That's mostly because people are now less likely to flee Afghanistan and Iraq.
The UNHCR also found 81 per cent fewer Iraqis claimed asylum this year than last year, and is now preparing for the return of more than half a million Iraqis. "Nearly 5 million people ... over the past few years have been able to either go home or to find a new place to rebuild their lives," Lubbers told the BBC. "For them, these dry statistics reflect a special reality: the end of long years in exile and the start of a new life with renewed hope for the future."
More than half a million people also returned to Afghanistan last year, something Lubbers said was "phenomenal [and] underscores the benefits of sustained international attention". International attention as in wiping out the Taliban, and removing Saddam.
Refugees have registered their approval by voting with their feet. But there must be a conspiracy theory to explain it away.

I wonder how many of the returning exiles have been reading what the NYT wants to report.

Bill, abroad
Not Bill and a broad, but Bill abroad, that is. Now that the former POTUS is back in the spotlight, he might want to take advantage of all the publicity and run for president of France,

According to French social scientist Patrick Weil, an expert on French naturalization and immigration, French civil law permits "citizens of states or territories over which France has ever exercised sovereignty or extended a mandate or protectorate" to apply "immediately" for naturalization as a French citizen. Normally you'd have to live in France for five years before applying. But Clinton was born in Arkansas, which was once part of France, and which was then acquired by the United States in the Louisiana Purchase, making it "a state or territory over which France has ever exercised sovereignty or extended a mandate or protectorate" [emphasis added]. . .
"As I wrote in 2001, he would need to move to France and learn French, but he could apply immediately. It would take between one year and 18 months, enough to run for the next election," which is in 2007.

This is a brilliant proposal. Offhand I can think of several advantages:

• The French love him -- in 2001, a national poll was made by a French magazine that said that 53 percent of French citizens would consider a Clinton candidacy favorably
  
• While on one hand there's that pesky 'rich tax", there ways around it, and there's money to be made: The French don't mind a little corruption in their politicians. Case in point: Chirac
  
• After becoming anaturalized French citizen, Bill doesn't even have to give up his American citizenship, avoiding hassles over the wife's political carreer.
  
• Bill can be interviewed on every single TV channel on earth and continue to do Oprah-type weepy confessionals. Think two birds in one shot: promote the book, and run for office
  
• Blaming The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy for every dang thing plays even better "over there"
  
• Jacques may not like it, but Nick (a.k.a. Sarko) might be agreeable to the Prime Minister job
  
• The food's good, and plentiful (but having "interesting and cheap Vietnamese, Algerian, Ethiopian, and West Indian food" all in one day might be too much for past-middle-age tummy). Bill can always jog to a nearby McD's if he's homesick

I say, go for it!

What WMDs?
Via the Barcepundit, Iraqi insurgents seek Saddam's chemical arms

On the chemical munitions, Mr. Deulfer, who replaced David Kay as the head of the Iraq Survey Group earlier this year, said that the group has uncovered 10 to 12 bombs filled with blistering mustard gas or the nerve agent sarin.
"We're not sure how many more are out there that haven't been found, but we've found 10 or 12 sarin and mustard rounds," he said. "I'm reluctant to judge what that means at this point, but there's other aspects of the program which we still have to flush out."

Those who say "there were no WMDs" can't even hide their heads in the sand, considering there's the MiG 25 found in the desert.
And don't forget that UN report, with photos of a ballistic missile site outside Baghdad.
(Prior posts on this subject: June 18, June 5, May 19, May 18, May 17, May 15 links re: nuclear gear found in Europe, the Iraqi Survey Group findings, and weapons found in Syria, and April 27.)

Summer reading
Dr. Thomas Sowell has a list:
Paul Johnson''s A History of the American People, and Modern Times
Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom's America in Black and White
The Federalist
Nikolai Shmelev and Vladimir Popov's The Turning Point
Gurcharan Das's India Unbound
Peter Bauer's Equality, the Third World, and Economic Delusion
Joshua Muravchik's Heaven on Earth
John Stossel's Give Me a Break
and his own's Basic Economics, Applied Economics, and Ethnic America.
The Economist has a review of Dr. Sowell's Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study

Mr Sowell's insight is that regardless of the supposed moral basis for preferential policies, the results are often remarkably similar. Though such policies are supposed to help the poor, their beneficiaries tend to be quite well-off. The truly poor rarely apply to enter university or bid for public-works contracts, and so cannot take advantage of quotas. The better-off quickly learn how to play the system

Last week I finished reading Carlos M. N. Eire's Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy, and highly recommend it. In fact, I even ordered two as gifts for a friend and a relative. Don't miss the author's interview at the end.

More on Nick & Jacques
Because it is a weekly magazine, sometimes The Economist is a little behind in the news,

"Six months ago, la chiraquie—the president’s circle—was bent on finding a loyal successor to Mr Chirac, and, above all, on keeping out Nicolas Sarkozy, the ambitious finance minister. Today, fretful for their own survival, former loyalists on the UMP backbenches have begun to desert the president. Roselyne Bachelot, Mr Chirac’s spokesman for the 2002 presidential elections, says the party needs Mr Sarkozy. Alain Madelin, the former pro-market leader, has swung behind him. “Sarkozy’s the best chance we have,” says one UMP backbencher formerly in the Chirac camp. This week Mr Chirac said that he was ready to acquiesce in Mr Sarkozy’s taking over the party."

Just yesterday Le Monde was saying that Jacques wasn't too thrilled about Nick's moves; i.e., Jacques would agree to Nick's presidency of the UMP if Nick leaves the goverment. Today Helen's got the details.
While reading all this, keep in mind that, according to recent surveys, Nick's the most popular politician in France nowadays.

Saddan & Al-Qaeda (and the NY Times), part II
What a difference a week makes – NYT’s front page article this morning: Iraqis, Seeking Foes of Saudis, Contacted bin Laden, File Says

Contacts between Iraqi intelligence agents and Osama bin Laden when he was in Sudan in the mid-1990's were part of a broad effort by Baghdad to work with organizations opposing the Saudi ruling family, according to a newly disclosed document obtained by the Americans in Iraq.
. . .
The document provides evidence of communications between Mr. bin Laden and Iraqi intelligence, similar to that described in the Sept. 11 staff report released last week.
"Bin Laden also explored possible cooperation with Iraq during his time in Sudan, despite his opposition to Hussein's secular regime," the Sept. 11 commission report stated.
The Sudanese government, the commission report added, "arranged for contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda."
"A senior Iraqi intelligence officer reportedly made three visits to Sudan," it said, "finally meeting bin Laden in 1994. Bin Laden is said to have requested space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded."
. . .
The Iraqi document states that Mr. bin Laden's organization in Sudan was called "The Advice and Reform Commission." The Iraqis were cued to make their approach to Mr. bin Laden in 1994 after a Sudanese official visited Uday Hussein, the leader's son, as well as the director of Iraqi intelligence, and indicated that Mr. bin Laden was willing to meet in Sudan.
A former director of operations for Iraqi intelligence Directorate 4 met with Mr. bin Laden on Feb. 19, 1995, the document states.

All fine and good, since, as even I have repeatedly pointed out, the evidence exists. Even the Guardian, (that banner-holder of The Right Wing Conspiracy?) was writing on this back in 1999, and there’s the “small matter” of a grand jury indictment. What is telling in today’s NYT article is the following statement (my highlights),

The new document, which appears to have circulated only since April, was provided to The New York Times several weeks ago, before the commission's report was released. Since obtaining the document, The Times has interviewed several military, intelligence and United States government officials in Washington and Baghdad to determine that the government considered it authentic.

Therefore, the NYT was calling for the President to apologize for stating that Saddam Hussein's government had a long history of ties to Al Qaeda, while the Times was witholding information that corroborated the President’s position.
Just four days ago I was stating that the NYT had completely divested itself of whatever little integrity it had left.
I stand by my words.
(For a more thorough examination of the Times’s text, read what Captain Ed has to say)

On the subject of the NJ deficit bonds, again (with more Bad Hair in the future),
Paul Mulshine points out how the Republicans step into the ring. The Republicans' options are varied. One (that I posted on two days ago, is to sue to have the bond sale declared unconstitutional (the state's constitution requires a balanced budget). Here's another,

Failing that, the Republicans could sink this deal simply by adopting a tactic proposed by Steve Lonegan. . . .
But there's another way to sink this scheme. Lonegan said earlier this week that if elected governor, he would simply refuse to pay these bonds back. If every potential GOP nominee adopted that stance, no one would buy the bonds. The fiction under which these bonds are sold is that they are not obligations of the state but of an independent authority, the Economic Development Authority. Failure to repay them does not constitute a default by the state, the buyers are warned.

Borrowing to pay general operating expenses is a bad idea, no matter what party proposes it. Increasing spending to record highs, and trying to "soak the rich", when added to borrowing, is a sure formula for disaster.

UNScam today
I didn't have a chance yesterday to post Safire's op-ed article, The Great Cash Cow, but I urge you to read it in its entirety,

Well-connected international traders — called "the usual suspects" by low-level U.N. staff, who knew they often fronted for sellers of luxury products — would make their deals, including kickbacks, in Baghdad. Letters of credit, as many as 150 a day, would be issued in New York by the U.N.'s favorite bank, BNP Paribas.

But before the sellers, called "beneficiaries," could be paid (at Saddam's request, in euros, harder to trace than dollars) the bank required a C.O.A., "Confirmation of Arrival," from the U.N.'s contracted inspector, Cotecna of Switzerland.

"The key was Cotecna," says my graveyard source. "Ships were lined up at the port of Umm Qasr, stacks of containers already onshore waiting for inspection. You won't believe the grease being paid. The usual suspects got preferential treatment when the U.N. bosses in New York called the BNP bank to get Cotecna to issue a C.O.A. to release the money."

Safire's not giving up on this story.

Royally annoyed, updated
Via Hispalibertas, here's what Juan Carlos, King of Spain, had to say to demonstrators yelling ""Erregea kanpora!" ('¡Reyes fuera!', 'Out with the King!')
If you wonder if this was photoshopped, here's the video.
Sometimes even the royals get tired of the nonsense.
Update A friend just wrote saying that apparently it was photoshopped. Considering my favorable reaction to the fake photo, I must be projecting what I would consider doing, if I were Queen.
Nah, I wouldn't.

Sarkozy continues to go to it
Helen at EU Referendum's asking What on earth are the French up to?, and, after examining the current contradictions regarding whether there will be (or not) a referendum on the EU Constitution comes up with this assessment on what Sarkozy has in mind,

Contradicting M Chirac publicly, Sarkozy has announced that useful though the Franco-German axis was, it had to be supplemented in the enlarged union. His idea is that the EU should be run by a kind of a coalition of the willing or, at least, the large. Countries with populations of between 40 million and 80 million should form a lose alliance to dominate the politics of the Union. These would be France, Germany, the UK, Spain, Italy and Poland. I think one can safely say that these ideas, when they become public, will find little support in the other 19 countries.

Visitors to this blog that wonder why I report on Nick (who the natives call Sarko), might be pleased to know that the reason is that I see him as the next Al Pacino in the Corleone series normally taking place at the EU. In the meantime, Jacques apparently told Nick that he might have to choose between remaining as cabinet member or becoming president of their party, the UMP.

The Wall Street Journal asks: Why would anyone want to move to the Garden State now?
Yesterday I was talking about the deficit bonds. Today it's the WSJ, in Soaked in New Jersey

Mr. McGreevey is spending so much so fast that he also plans to borrow at least $1.5 billion in addition to the tax increases. It will be the third consecutive year that New Jersey has resorted to debt bonds to cover ongoing operations, and Moody's is now threatening to downgrade the state's credit rating.
None of this will help New Jersey's economy, which has been leading the Northeast's slow recovery. The state's jobless rate is 5.3%, compared with 5.6% nationally and 7.5% in nearby New York. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says New Jersey was responsible for two-thirds of the New York metropolitan area job creation in the 12 months that ended in March.

So I'm not alone in saying "When the state's next budget crisis comes, we predict it won't be only "the rich" who pay."

Chrenkoff's a must!
Good news from Iraq, Part 4, today in Chrenkoff's bog, with details on

1. Iraqi society
   
2. Economy and infrastructure
   
3. Soldiers and Iraqis,and
   
4. Security situation, including local involvement in counter-terror ops

All the news some papers don't see fit to print.

Another candidate endorsement
Township Committee Republican candidate Paul Kapp, featured in today's Town Topics, aims to control municipal spending,

With the Borough about to embark on a tax hike of historic proportions, Mr. Kapp said he does not want to see the effects roll over into the Township through the joint municipal agencies. The two governments, however, have to think in terms of one community, he said.
"If you think too independently, you create bigger problems and you've got to come to a common goal," he said, adding that the goal "comes back to what is best for the community at large."

Mr. Kapp is the right man for Township Committee.

Operation Tiger Claw
Bryan Henderson, a senior at The Principality High School tells us how it all started

Operation Tiger Claw was my first attempt at leading a protest against the apathy and leftism running rampant at my school. It all started on Friday, May 14th with a small act of conservative pride. My socialist history teacher was on another kick about how articulate Noam Chomsky was, when I finally reached my limit.

(Note to the uninitiated: the Tiger is the High School's mascot. If you're not familiar with Chomsky, here's his official site, and here's another site that is anti-NC.)
You must read Brian Henderson's entire article. Mr. Henderson did a lot of research and kept his cool, but I am awed by his courage and conviction. As an adult in The Principality, I don't know that I would have had his strength back when I was in High School.

This brave young man's not a conservative, he's as radical as can be!

The Takedown in Telluride
Yesterday I asked, "Other than that, Mr. Hitchens, how did you like the film?" Mr. Hitchens, of course, didn't like the film at all, and challenged Moore,

However, I think we can agree that the film is so flat-out phony that "fact-checking" is beside the point. And as for the scary lawyers—get a life, or maybe see me in court. But I offer this, to Moore and to his rapid response rabble. Any time, Michael my boy. Let's redo Telluride. Any show. Any place. Any platform. Let's see what you're made of.

Dave F, a visitor at Roger L Simon's blog has an excellent idea,

"But an opportunity is being missed here. Hitchens has called Big Boy out in no uncertain terms. So is Moore a coward as well as a bully?
Let all likeminded bloggers start agitating in [t]he right forums for the Takedown in Telluride. It would make GREAT TV."

The gauntlet's been dropped, let the TIT begin!

Saddam & al-Qaeda (and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
Turns out my case of cognotive dissonance is not as bad as one might think. A friend just sent me a link to a post on Oh! That Liberal Media, that discusses one newspaper, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, that either shares the cognotive-dissonance syndrome, or is actually doing its research:

Iraq provided money, weapons, training and safe harbor to al-Qaida and other terror groups. The 9/11 commission concluded that the support Saddam pro-offered wasn't as extensive as Osama bin Laden desired, but it was extensive enough to cause reasonable people to conclude that Iraq's support for terror was a danger to the United States.

Nor should the report of the 9/11 commission -- composed of grandstanders with little background in national security policy -- be considered the last word. The staff appeared to base its finding that there was no collaborative relationship in planning attacks on Americ on the testimony of two senior al-Qaida operatives in U.S. custody. Al-Qaida operatives have been known to lie to infidels

The facts exist. At least there's one newspaper reporting them.

NJ budget woes to be covered by a bond? Think again

The attorney who advises the Legislature has concluded that a proposal by Gov. James E. McGreevey to borrow $1.5 billion or more to help balance the 2005 budget is unconstitutional.

Attorney Michael Porroni believes, like I do, that deficit bonds are an even worse example of fiscal recklessness. As stated in an article in Sunday's paper,if

lawmakers approve the budget by the end of the month, it will mark the third year in a row the McGreevey administration has borrowed money to pay current expenses.
Only California, with the nation's largest deficit, has borrowed more to balance its budget.

As an editorial today points out,

All this borrowing comes in a year when the state is raking in about $700 million more from the income tax than originally expected. That's nearly half the amount to be borrowed, but lawmakers and McGreevey would rather spend it.

While the governor's looking at more debt, further tax increases, and shortchanging the pension system, the New Jersey taxpayer will have the highest combined tax rates in the country. Then our children will contnue to have sky-rocketing tax rates, and ever-increasing debt, too.

UNScam today
Via Friends of Saddam, S'POREAN MAN AT UN DENIES GRAFT AND SEX CHARGES 'They're smearing me with poison pen'

Dumb, cognotive-dissonant, and now Stepford wife, with June 23 update:
I own one of these dresses

Update, June 23 Click on the photo to read what the Women have to say.

Other than that, Mr. Hitchens, how did you like the film?

To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of "dissenting" bravery.

Christopher Hitchens on Slate, Unfairenheit 9/11: The lies of Michael Moore. Let's also not forget that Ray Bradbury's PO'd at Moore.

Germany and Arkansas

Un palabra para Saramago
El premiado con el Nobel de Literatura, José Saramago, quien recién corrió como candidato del Partido Comunista Portugués para el parlamento de la Unión Europea, resulta que desprecia a la democracia. En una teleconferencia originada en Madrid, Saramago habló de su nueva novela, Ensayo sobre la lucidez, e insiste,

En el fondo, el asunto de la democracia es como la vieja historia del rey que va desnudo por las calles. Así va la democracia, pero no desnuda. Si así fuera, a lo mejor valdría la pena mirarle, pero es enferma como va. No estamos conscientes de eso y es impostergable que los ciudadanos se den cuenta para exigir a los políticos que digan la verdad. Lo ideal sería que un gobernante fuera a la televisión y reconociera que el gobierno no manda, que el poder lo tiene el Fondo Monetario Internacional".

O sea, que es un hipócrita.

And here's my translation, in case you wonder,
A word for Saramago
Nobel Prize laureate, José Saramago, who recently ran as Portuguese Communist Party candidate for the EU parliament, actually hates democracy (link to an article in Spanish). Speaking during a teleconference from Madrid, Saramago promoted his most recent novel, Ensayo sobre la lucidez (On Lucidity), and insists,

Deep inside, the thing about democracy is that it's like the story on the emperor's new clothes. That's how democracy is going, only not naked. If it were naked, it might be worth looking at it, but instead, democracy is sick. We're not aware of this, and citizens shouldn't delay in realizing it and demand that the politicians tell the truth. It would be ideal that a governor (ruler) would go on TV and recognize that the government doesn't rule, that all power lies on the International Monetary Fund.

Which means, he's a hypocrite.

Saddam and Al-Qaeda (and the New York Times), updated
Following my Saturday post on the subject, Maria sent the following article, which can also be found at Melanie Phillips's website.

As so often in the coverage of Iraq, those who make the (illogical) claim that there was no such contact and therefore no cause for war saw in this report only what they wanted to see.

They read the words: "We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qa'eda co-operated", and claimed official confirmation that no links had existed. But the report actually says: "We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qa'eda co-operated on attacks upon the United States" - not that they never dealt with each other. On the contrary, it says they did deal with each other, particularly in Sudan.

Then, there's someone else saying, "There are all kinds of ties," he told PBS's "The News Hour" late Wednesday, in comments that establishment journalists have refused to report. "There are all kinds of connections. And it may very well have been that Osama bin Laden or some of his lieutenants met at some time with Saddam Hussein's lieutenants.", and "What we have found is, were there contacts between al-Qaeda and Iraq? Yes. Some of them were shadowy - but they were there." but I guess whatever is inconvenient for the NYTimes doesn't get reported, whether it comes from Lee Hamilton or Tom Kean themselves. Instead, the NYT asked for apologies from the President on June 19, no matter that, as reported in The Weekly Standard,

By the end of the day, 9/11 Commission chairman Tom Kean and vice chairman Lee Hamilton were emphasizing that the commission had never said Iraq-al Qaeda links did not exist. Nor, Hamilton explained, did he "disagree" with Cheney's statement that there were "connections between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's government." The New York Times, having asserted on Thursday that the commission's report "challenges Bush," failed on Friday to report this statement of Hamilton's

It took them until today to actually print some words Kean actually said.

Public apologies are a favorite tool of opressive regimes, since public humiliation and social pressure are highly effective for achieving mind control. By now the Times has shown itself interested in promoting what it wants us to believe, not what is factual. A "whatever news we see fit to print", sporadically showing opposite views in the editorial page (usually by old standbys like Safire).

The New York Times has completely divested itself of whatever little integrity it had left.
Update (thanks to Roger and Allah): In spite of this, one of my neighbors thinks we're all nuts. At least it's not The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.

The "counterproductive" Varela Project
Yesterday David Brooks wrote about how John Kerry considers the Varela Project counterproductive. For those who don't know about it,

The Varela Project happens to be one of the most inspiring democracy movements in the world today. It is being led by a Cuban dissident named Oswaldo Payá, who has spent his life trying to topple Castro's regime. Payá realized early on that the dictatorship would never be overthrown by a direct Bay of Pigs-style military assault, but it could be undermined by a peaceful grass-roots movement of Christian democrats, modeling themselves on Martin Luther King Jr.

As a young man, Payá founded a magazine called People of God, but it was shut down. He criticized the Soviet Union and was thrown into a work camp. He was given a chance to escape Cuba, but refused.

Then in the mid-1990's, he and other dissidents exploited a loophole in the Cuban Constitution that allows ordinary citizens to propose legislation if they can gather 10,000 signatures on a petition. They began a petition drive to call for a national plebiscite on five basic human rights: free speech, free elections, freedom to worship, freedom to start businesses, and the freeing of political prisoners.

This drive, the Varela Project, quickly amassed the 10,000 signatures, and more. Jimmy Carter lauded the project on Cuban television. The European Union gave Payá its Sakharov Prize for human rights.

Then came Castro's crackdown. Though it didn't dare touch Payá, the regime arrested 75 other dissidents and sentenced each of them to up to 28 years in jail. This week Payá issued a desperate call for international attention and solidarity because the hunt for dissidents continues.

John Kerry's view? As he told Oppenheimer, the Varela Project "has gotten a lot of people in trouble . . . and it brought down the hammer in a way that I think wound up being counterproductive."

Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel, Aung San Suu Kyi, and Oswaldo Payá, "counterproductive" all.

Vargas Llosa's websites
My three favorite writers of all time are -- in alphabetical order -- Guy de Maupassant, Anthony Trollope, and Mario Vargas Llosa (lucky for me Dr. Vargas is still alive!). Several years ago I had the distinct honor of attending a series of lectures at The University and found that he's an extraordinary teacher, with great depth of knowledge and very supportive of his students. A while ago I had done a google search and found nothing, so imagine my surprise when I found three very interesting sites (all in Spanish),

1. Pagina oficial Mario Vargas Llosa at Clubcultura
   
2. Mario Vargas Llosa
   
3. Instituto Cultural Iberoamericano Mario Vargas Llosa (Icimavall)

Great man, great writer.

Turning NJ into a battleground state
Paul Mulshine wants someone who can make his vote count, and reminds us,

The people of New Jersey almost invariably vote Republican when the party puts up good candidates. The Democrats were shut out here every year from 1968 through 1988. Gerald Ford carried the state. Ronald Reagan used to laugh his way through New Jersey, piling up a 20-point margin in 1984. Even George Bush the Elder won the state his first time out.

Hmm . . . I wonder if anyone out there is listening?

This just in
Turkey Accepts Iraqi Kurd Self - Rule: Kurdish Leader

Jacques, himself, again, but with the new Constitution
EU Referendum has a link to the document, and detailed summaries.

Kathleen's posting on Chirac's doings to get the EU constitution he wants. Kathleen says, I do believe if the monarchy was still around, Jacques would throw a coup, usurp the King and take over for himself. In Jacques's case, Nicholas Sarkozy's throwing a coup (slowly and steadily, over the past several months). Early this year he openly challenged Chirac in his own party, the UMP. Just this week NS gathered UMP members of the National Assembly, fed them lunch, asked for their support for his presidency of the party to replace Chirac crony Juppé (who can't hold office for the next 10 years because he's been convicted by the courts for acting as Chirac's frontman from back in the days when JC was mayor of Paris), and bussed them back to the National Assembly. In his spare time between negotiations on price controls on consumer goods and possible privatization of the electrical utilities, Nick (the natives call him Sarko) has been doing some international networking during his Washington (visited Condoleezza and Colin) and London (Gordon Brown) trips last month.

The NYTimes tells us that, "Despite last-minute lobbying from Pope John Paul II and a last-ditch appeal from Poland, a reference to Europe's Christian traditions didn't make it into the text". Dora Amador, in an op-ed in El Nuevo Herald (in Spanish) looks at the EU's religious roots (my translation):

The European Union's flag is inspired on the book of the Apocalypse: "1 A great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars". (Revelation, 12, 1). It was after meditating on this image that Arsene Heitz, a Catholic Belgian artist, was inspired for the design of the current EU flag, back in the 1950s.

Ms Amador also reminds us that the flag was officially adopted on December 8, 1955, feast of the Immaculate Conception, and that all the founding fathers of the EU were Catholic: Jean Monnet, Robert Schuman, Alcide De Gasperi and Konrad Adenauer.

But back to Jacques, who Attacks Britain (Blair doesn't want higher corporate taxes and unions running amok), Eurosoc speculates that maybe Chirac doesn't want the constitutional treaty to succeed:

France is the EU, Chirac believes: The possibility of being removed from this prime position by such ungrateful and disrespectful pygmies horrifies him.

Perhaps he has concluded that he might be better off without Europe's dissidents. France is nostalgic for its leading role when the EU had only six members: Perhaps winding the clock back on European policy - as with national economic policy - is the only option left for Chirac.

Or maybe he'll come back and taunt them a second time?

Saddam & al-Qaeda, updated (a long post)
The editorial in the WSJ yesterday brings home several of the points that are being discussed in the blogosphere, namely,

1. the actual commission findings
   
2. Tenet's letter
   
3. Atta's Prague meeting
   
4. the 1998 indictment against binLaden, which states,
   

   "In addition, al Qaeda reached an understanding with the Government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq"

plus other details on the links between al-Qaeda and Iran.

The Weekly Standard has an article by Stephen B Hayes, which

• states "On August 27, 1998, Uday Hussein's state-run newspaper, Babel, proclaimed bin Laden an "Arab and Islamic hero." Jabir Salim, an Iraqi intelligence agent stationed in Prague who defected in 1998, reported to British intelligence that he had received instructions from Baghdad, and $150,000, to recruit an Islamic militant to attack the broadcast headquarters of Radio Free Iraq in the Czech capital. And virtually no one disputes that Saddam offered bin Laden safe haven in Iraq in late 1998 or early 1999", receiving medical treatment.
  
• questions "The 9/11 Commission staff statement also states that "two senior bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between al Qaeda and Iraq." Leaving aside the fact that this claim plainly contradicts the ties between Iraq and al Qaeda cited in the same paragraph, why are these bin Laden associates deemed credible?"
  
• and asks "But how can the 9/11 Commission staffers dismiss any potential Iraqi involvement in the 9/11 attacks without even a mention of Ahmed Hikmat Shakir?"

I almost never agree with Bill O'Reilly, but he raised a valid point last evening,

The smoking gun is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (search), an Al Qaeda leader who found his way to Baghdad after being severely wounded fighting against American forces in Afghanistan.
Zarqawi arrived in Iraq in May of 2002 and had surgery in an Iraqi hospital, run by -- are you ready -- Uday Hussein. I believe that might be a tie, but there's more. . .
. . .Zarqawi wound up back in Iraq after the assassination of Foley and met up with the Ansar al-Islam group, which operated in Northern Iraq and is affiliated with Al Qaeda.

Zarqawi is now believed to be in Fallujah. Power Line has more on the subject (via Biased BBC).
Update: The New York Times asks Show us the proof, to which Richard Miniterlists the following (my highlights)

* Abdul Rahman Yasin, a member of the al Qaeda cell that detonated the 1993 World Trade Center bomb, fled to Iraq. U.S. forces recently discovered a cache of documents in Tikrit, Saddam's hometown, that show that Iraq gave Yasin both a home and a salary.

* Bin Laden met eight times with officers of Iraq's Special Security Organization, a secret police agency run by Saddam's son Qusay, and with Saddam's external intelligence service, according to intelligence made public by Secretary of State Colin Powell, at the United Nations Security Council on Feb. 6, 2003.

* Bin Laden met the director of the Iraqi mukhabarat in 1996 in Khartoum, according to Powell.

* An al Qaeda operative now held by the U.S. confessed that in the mid '90s, bin Laden had forged an agreement with Saddam's men to cease all terrorist activities against the Iraqi dictator.

* In October 2000, another Iraqi intelligence operative, Salah Suleiman, was arrested by Pakistani authorities. Suleiman was shuttling between Iraqi intelligence and Ayman al Zawahiri, al Qaeda's No. 2.

* Spanish investigators have uncovered documents seized from Yusuf Galan — who is charged by a Spanish court with being "directly involved with the preparation and planning" of the Sept. 11 attacks — that show the terrorist was invited to a party at the Iraqi embassy in Madrid. The invitation used his "al Qaeda nom de guerre."

* An Iraqi defector to Turkey, known by his cover name as "Abu Mohammed," told the Sunday Times of London that he saw bin Laden's fighters in Iraq in 1997. At the time, Mohammed was a colonel in Saddam's Fedayeen. He described an encounter at Salman Pak, the training facility southeast of Baghdad, where militants trained to hijack planes with knives — on a full-size Boeing 707.

* In 1998, Abbas al-Janabi, a longtime aide to Saddam's son Uday, defected to the West. At the time, he repeatedly told reporters that there was a direct connection between Iraq and al Qaeda.

* The Sunday Times found a Saddam loyalist in a Kurdish prison who claims to have been Dr. Zawahiri's bodyguard during his 1992 visit with Saddam in Baghdad. Dr. Zawahiri was a close associate of bin Laden at the time.

* Following the defeat of the Taliban, almost two dozen bin Laden associates "converged on Baghdad and established a base of operations there," Powell told the United Nations in February 2003. From their Baghdad base, the secretary said, they supervised the movement of men, materiel and money for al Qaeda's global network.

* Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi oversaw an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan. Wounded, he sought medical treatment in Baghdad in May 2002. When he recovered, he restarted a training camp in northern Iraq. Zarqawi's Iraq cell was later tied to the October 2002 murder of Lawrence Foley, a U.S. Agency for International Development official. The captured assassin confessed that he received orders and funds from Zarqawi's cell in Iraq.

* Documents found among the debris of the Iraqi Intelligence Center show that Baghdad funded the Allied Democratic Forces, a Ugandan terror group led by an Islamist cleric linked to bin Laden. According to a London's Daily Telegraph, the organization offered to recruit "youth to train for the jihad" at a "headquarters for international holy warrior network" in Baghdad.

* CIA Director George Tenet told the Senate Intelligence Committee: "Iraq has in the past provided training in document-forgery and bomb-making to al Qaeda. It also provided training in poisons and gasses to two al Qaeda associates; one of these [al Qaeda] associates characterized the relationship as successful. . . . This information is based on a solid foundation of intelligence. It comes to us from credible and reliable sources. Much of it is corroborated by multiple sources."

Must it all come down to partisan politics?

As you may or may not already be aware, members of the Watcher's Council hold a vote every week on what they consider to be the most link-worthy pieces of writing around... per the Watcher's instructions, I am submitting one of my own posts for consideration in the upcoming nominations process.

Here is the most recent winning council post, here is the most recent winning non-council post, here is the list of results for the latest vote, and here is the initial posting of all the nominees that were voted on.

Put off by Bubba
Roger and Kathleen can't stand the guy. I can't stand him, his wife, or their daughter, either.

What WMDs?
And now for a quick, 2-question pop quiz:
A) "There is much evidence that from 1999 to 2002 Iraq procured materials, equipments and components for use in its missile programmes". This is a statement presented at

1. GWB's daily briefing, circa January 2003
   
2. The CIA, late in December, 2002
   
3. The United Nations Security Council report, dated May 28, 2004.

B) The statement quoted on question A above was made by

1. VP Dick Cheney complaining about the New York Times on June 17, 2004
   
2. John Kerry while having a nightmare sometime in 2003
   
3. United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commision (UNMOVIC) acting executive chairman Demetrius Perricos in May 2004

Answers A)3Seventeenth Quarterly Report on the activities of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commision, 28 May 2004. B) 3

"The United Nations has determined that Saddam Hussein shipped weapons of mass destruction components as well as medium-range ballistic missiles before, during and after the U.S.-led war against Iraq in 2003", from an article at the World Tribune

The briefing contained satellite photographs that demonstrated the speed with which Saddam dismantled his missile and WMD sites before and during the war. Council members were shown photographs of a ballistic missile site outside Baghdad in May 2003, and then saw a satellite image of the same location in February 2004, in which facilities had disappeared.

Granted, the World Tribune might not be the most reliable of sources, which is why I have the link to the actual UN report, and also this article from the NYTimes

Demetrius Perricos, acting head of United Nations inspectors office, tells Security Council that equipment and material that could have been used to produce banned weapons and long-range missiles have been emptied from Iraqi sites since war started and shipped abroad; says many of items bear tags placed on them by UN inspectors as suspect dual-use materials; cites discovery of engines from banned missile in scrap yards in Netherlands and Jordan

an entire Google search, and this article in the Herald Sun,

The UN team also discovered some processing equipment with UN tags - which show it was being monitored - including chemical reactors, heat exchangers, and a solid propellant mixer bowl to make missile fuel, he said. It also discovered "a large number of other processing equipment without tags, in very good condition." The UN inspectors in Jordan were told that "brand new material like stainless steel and special alloy sheets" was being sent out of Iraq, he said. At today's closed council meeting, UN diplomats said many members expressed concern about items missile engines and other material that had been monitored by UN inspectors ending up in foreign scrap yards including Algeria, Brazil, Germany, France, Chile, Spain, Russia and China.

There's even a version in Spanish
You might not find it on CNN, but Junk Yard Blog, The Spoons Experience and Hispalibertas are paying attention.

The permanent bad haircut
This blog's motto is "In The Principality, the taxpayer gets a bad haircut". That bad haircut will never grow out as long as the administrators continue running things by issuing more public debt in order to pay for routine maintenance items.

Here are the headlines: Township introduces $3.7M bond for repairs: Committee approves money for road, sewer upgrades, which is much more accurate than the misleading Township Earmarks $2.2 Million for Roads.

There is no "earmarked" money in the budget; in fact, since there was no provision in the budget for road repairs, sewer upgrades, park maintenance and other public works, the Township resorts to increased public debt in order to pay for these items.

And pay for them we will, again and again.

Chew on this one Michael Moore, and an update
From the MERRILL LYNCH AND CAPGEMINI REPORT SHARP INCREASES IN WEALTHY NORTH AMERICAN AND ASIAN INVESTORS: WORLD WEALTH REPORT SHOWS WORLD-WIDE WEALTH OF HNWIs ROSE 7.7% - REBOUND TO PRE-RECESSION LEVELS "The ranks of HNWIs in the United States stood at 2,270,000 at the end of 2003".

Those who have read Moore's book (and I use the word book loosely) Dude, Where's My Country?, might remember Moore saying in his Horatio Alger chapter that the Working Class Guy can't dream of becoming rich, because it's not going to happen, it's one in a million

The population of the USA is 293,595,034.

That means 1 person out of 125 people is a HNWI -- High Net Worth Individual, a.k.a., millionaire, dude.
Update, June 18
The Guardian says "According to Screen International, the UAE-based distributor Front Row Entertainment has been contacted by organisations related to the Hezbollah in Lebanon with offers of help".

Yes, but will he belong in the 9/11 Commission?
No question: Paul Krugman is the worst former Enron adviser in history, and other gems in Opinion Journal, but first, today's top story:
The NY Times reports that the 9-11 Commission says "there did not appear to have been a "collaborative relationship" between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein", despite evidence of repeated contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda in the 90's.

¶Terrorist training camps run by Al Qaeda were "apparently quite good" and "the camps created a climate in which trainees and other personnel were free to think creatively about ways to commit mass murder."

¶While there is no credible evidence of collaboration between Mr. bin Laden's network and Iraq, there is extensive evidence of ties between Al Qaeda and the fundamentalist Islamic leaders of Iran, including possible collaboration in the 1996 bombing of an apartment building in Saudi Arabia in which 19 Americans were killed.

How about this?

Tenet has never backed away from these assessments. Senator Mark Dayton, a Democrat from Minnesota, challenged him on the Iraq-al Qaeda connection in an exchange before the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 9, 2004. Tenet reiterated his judgment that there had been numerous "contacts" between Iraq and al Qaeda, and that in the days before the war the Iraqi regime had provided "training and safe haven" to al Qaeda associates, including Abu Musab al Zarqawi. What the U.S. intelligence community could not claim was that the Iraqi regime had "command and control" over al Qaeda terrorists. Still, said Tenet, "it was inconceivable to me that Zarqawi and two dozen [Egyptian Islamic Jihad] operatives could be operating in Baghdad without Iraq knowing

Czech intelligence stands by its report on the meeting between Atta and an Iraqi agent. Barcepundit realizes that the Commission's reaching their conclussions about "no credible evidence" based on testimony by "Two Ben Laden associates" that "have adamantly denied that any ties existed between al Qaeda and Iraq".

But the report will be quoted; even The Guardian (hardly a member of the vast right-wing-conspiracy-crowd) is talking about the report.
Instapundit has a good number of points on the subject, including a link to Tacitus's

Note that we don't know that Ba'athist Iraq actively rejected the proposal -- there's simply no evidence of followup. Which should tell us three things: First, that all those claiming that the "secular" and religious fanatics of the Muslim world would never consider working together are now definitively shown wrong. Actually, they were before, as any observer of the Palestinian and Iraqi guerrilla movements would have noted: so let's just call this a nail in that coffin. Second, that the idea that knocking out the aforementioned "secular" autocracies of the region does not deprive our Islamist enemies of props, refuges and allies just suffered a serious blow. Which, again, those of us arguing that the social pathologies of the region constitute a unified whole already knew. Third, that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. It's something that I doubt most of those reveling in schadenfreude over this news will bother to acknowledge.

Chrenkoff points out that, while the commission's report "cited a photograph taken by a bank surveillance camera in Virginia showing Mr. Atta withdrawing money on April 4, 2001, a few days before the supposed Prague meeting on April 9, and records showing his cell phone was used on April 6, 9, 10 and 11 in Florida" as evidence that Atta didn't make the Prague meeting,

There are a few small problems with that:
1) how is Atta's withdrawing money from an ATM on April 4 the evidence that he was still in the US five days later, on April 9?
2) the phone records show his cell phone was used in Florida - unfortunately they don't show who actually used the phone. When he withdrew money on April 4, Atta was traveling with his roommate, Marwan Al-Shehhi. How can authorities be sure that Atta didn't leave his cell phone with Al-Shehhi or another associate?

My guess is that the Commission's waiting for a video of Saddam flying one of the planes into the WTC -- as long as Saddam didn't leave his cell phone at home with Baghdad Bob.

Meanwhile, the media's not talking about the video from the days when Saddam Hussein's thugs ruled Abu Ghraib prison.
Update: Iraq & al Qaeda: The 9/11 Commission raises more questions than it answers

First, it cannot be true both that the Sudanese arranged contacts between Iraq and bin Laden and that no "ties existed between al Qaeda and Iraq." If the first proposition is so, then the "[t]wo senior Bin Laden associates" who are the sources of the second are either lying or misinformed.

Roger's also asking questions.

UNScam today
Claudia Rosett point out that,

In other words, having gone so far as to discover that Secretariat staff don't trust the top management and are afraid to speak out for fear of reprisals, Mr. Annan's response will be to convene a group of top managers and invite staff members to speak out. At some point they'll probably issue another report, and then everyone can do it all again.
. . . The problem with the Secretariat isn't "tone" at the top. It's accountability at the top, and secrecy throughout. Perhaps a leader with the character of a Churchill or a Reagan would be willing to address that failing directly--and put his job on the line to push for change. Mr. Annan prefers to issue reports.

Someone needs to help this institution, and it's not a consulting team hired by the same institution, nor is it a batch of investigators operating under terms defined by the U.N., nor is it a grand gathering of staff members being urged to risk reprisals by telling tales of earlier reprisals. A better place to start is the proposal by Sen. John Ensign that the U.S. withhold part of the U.N.'s budget until the institution comes clean on Oil for Food. Better yet would be to tackle the system that engendered Oil for Food. To do that would probably require setting up a competing international institution, based on openness and accountability--and give the U.N. a run for its money. For now, I'm working around to the belief that in the matter of reforming the U.N., the only thing worse than having the U.N. ignore a problem is to have the U.N. investigate it.

Friends of Saddam has a link to Watching the UN's watchdog, that suggests the UN's anticorruption department itself is corrupt.
The NYTimes is a little slow on the uptake, considering I'd blogged on this subject already. Even the NewsHour's talking about the scam (via CakeEater).
The way Koffi sees it, We had no mandate to stop oil smuggling. To which Kathleen asks, "Maybe because the Oil For Food Program was your bright idea in the first place?"

In search of Bloomsdays past and present
IN THE HEART OF THE HIBERNIAN METROPOLIS
Today, June 16 2004, is the centennial of Bloomsday, the day Leopold Bloom wondered around Dublin in James Joyce's Ulysses. Joyce set his entire novel on June 16, 1904 -- the day of his first date with Nora Barnacle, the woman who later became his wife. While the Irish are celebrating for five months, in a festival lasting from 1 April 2004 to 31 August 2004, purists are in Dublin today.

Celebrations are also organized in 40 other countries, from Italy, Switzerland and France to South Korea, but the German newspaper taz (not this Taz) took it one step further and reworked itself into a version of the novel.

THE WEARER OF THE CROWN
"Mr. Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls."

WITH UNFEIGNED REGRET IT IS WE ANNOUNCE THE DISSOLUTION OF A MOST RESPECTED DUBLIN BURG
Leopold Bloom's community has changed:

Since the last time I was in Dublin -- eight years ago -- a miracle has occurred in the tiny Jewish community: it has grown. In the last decade, the population, which peaked shortly after World War II at around 5,000, rose from a low of 1,000 or so to a healthier 1,790. But this miracle, in the nature of miracles everywhere perhaps, is actually an illusion. Ireland's buoyant economy has brought a floating, temporary population of foreign workers into the country, including several hundred Israelis working in information technology. But among those with deep roots in Ireland, like the Handelmans, gray heads predominate, and the children are still leaving.
This situation is not unusual, as Jews are vanishing all over Europe, down in total population from almost four million in 1946 to two and a half million now, their ranks diminished by a combination of emigration, intermarriage and low birthrate. Ireland looks as if it might be the first of the Western European countries to lose its Jewish community altogether. This would be a unique loss. It is always risky to sketch national and ethnic characteristics, given the magnetic pull of the stereotype, but there is something undeniably distinct about the Irish-Jewish community. It is a singular pleasure to hear Yiddish mashed into an English sentence with an Irish accent -like the way my Aunt Pearl rolls her tongue around fa'ribel (''grudge'')

LINKS WITH BYGONE DAYS OF YORE
In the New York Times Sunday Books Review article Bloomsday, Bloody Bloomsday, John Banville has memories of past Bloomsdays, his, and other writers':

Bloomsday (a term Joyce himself did not employ) was invented in 1954, the 50th anniversary, when the novelist Flann O'Brien and the writer and magazine editor John Ryan organized what was to be a daylong pilgrimage along the ''Ulysses'' route.

The pilgrimage ended early, and very much like an Irish wake.

SAD
Also in the Banville article, Jorge Luis Borges is the protagonist in a scene out of a Borgesian short story,

Cronin was the instigator of another Bloomsday event in 1982, when writers from around the world were invited to Dublin to celebrate Joyce's own centenary. Among the many notable artists who came was -- yes -- Borges, who by then was in his 80's and totally blind. He was collected from the airport by a couple of volunteer meeters-and-greeters, who deposited him in his suite at the Shelbourne Hotel and went off to do more meeting and greeting. When they returned, late in the day, Borges was still in his room, and in fact had not left during the intervening hours. What was he to have done, Borges asked, since he did not know the city or anyone in it? Ever since, when I hear talk of Bloomsday celebrations, that, I am afraid, is the image that springs immediately to mind: an old, blind writer, one of the greatest of his age, sitting alone in a hotel room overlooking an unseen St. Stephen's Green

In tribute to Ulysses, and with apologies to James Joyce, from The Bad Hair Blog. Headlines shamelessly stolen from Chapter 7, Aeolus, pp 96-123, First Vintage Books Edition, 1986.

On Slavery
New York Times:

The United States on Monday accused 10 nations (Bangladesh, Burma, Cuba, Ecuador, Equatorial Guinea, Guyana, North Korea, Sierra Leone, Sudan and Venezuela), . . . of not doing enough to stop the trafficking of thousands of people forced into servitude or the sex trade every year.

El Herald:

''Tenemos información de que en áreas de la frontera, se trafica venezolanos hacia minas en Guyana para ser explotados sexualmente, o son secuestrados por las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia y usados como soldados'', manifiesta el informe. (My translation: "We have information that in border areas, Venezuelans are trafficked to mines in Guyana for sexual exploitation, or are kidnapped by the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces and used as soldiers")

Según Powell, se habla ``de mujeres y niñas de 6 años de edad que son explotadas sexualmente, de hombres obligados a trabajos forzados, de menores contrabandeados como niños soldados''(In the NYT article, ``We're talking about women and girls as young as 6 years old trafficked into commercial sexual exploitation, men trafficked into forced labor, children trafficked as child soldiers,'')

UNScam today
Roger L. Simon, Friends of Saddam, Safire, and Claudia Rosett are on the story.

Friends of Saddam has a link to a Telegraph article on Michael Soussan, a program co-ordinator for the Oil-For-Food program from 1997 until 2000, when he resigned, who recently testified before a US congressional panel investigating the scandal, one of several probes under way in Washington, New York and Baghdad.

The UN recently claimed it "learned of the 10 per cent kickback scheme only after the end of major combat operations" in 2003.

A lie, said Mr Soussan, recalling the hapless Swedish company that called in 2000, seeking UN help after being asked to pay kickbacks. The Swedes' plea was quickly lost in red tape and inter-office turf wars. After a "Kafka-esque" flurry of internal memos, the Swedes were told to complain to their own government.

It did not help that, inside the Security Council, France, Russia and China openly opposed sanctions, threatening doom for any UN official tempted to blow the whistle on Saddam's cheating.

"Most high level UN employees need to be on good terms with key countries in the Security Council if they want to have a career."

And where is the MainStreamMedia? Silent.

Beeb-ed off
Back during the days of the OJ Simpson trial I bought myself a short-wave radio so I could feed my news habit without having to hear about OJ's crime. Back then, of course I wasn't visiting the 'Net, plus I remembered fondly my uncle's love of the BBC and the Proms, and, thanks to technology, I could listen to the BBC without any problems (albeit only in the evening) or antennae maneuvers. The BBC, however, has "evolved", and their formerly straight-news broadcasts are peppered with editorial comments, omissions, and misapropos (for example, they never, ever call anyone a terrorist, they are activists, insurgents, militants, whatever).

BBC-America TV newscasts are as bad -- I remember the morning when they dedicated an entire broadcast to Baghdad Bob's press conference, who repeatedly told us the Americans were not in Baghdad, while at that very same moment other (American) networks had embedded reporters broadcasting live from Baghdad airport. But I'll blog on that another day. There are a number of blogs that are on BBC-bias watch, among them Biased BBC, Samizdata, and The Daily Ablution (the Ablution's also on The Guardian watch).

Now the Beeb is actually censoring people, not only from their country but from overseas, like John Gibson, who spoke ill of them during his commentary on Fox News Channel. BuzzMachine has the details (via Andrew Sullivan). You can read the official Ofcom report, too.

As BuzzMachine put it, "But here's a government agency (OfCom) defending a government network (BBC). How do you spell conflict of interest?". I also wonder if there is an issue of jurisdiction -- OfCom's making a ruling on a commentary made during a broadcast coming from another country.

As for the old short wave radio, it broke, and I haven't replaced it.

Flag Day

Thanks to Richard for reminding me!

On slavery
Solomonia has a detailed report on last Wednesday's demonstration held by The American Anti-Slavery Group apropos Kofi Annan's Harvard visit. Solomon explains,

tens of thousands of black Africans have been carried off into literal slavery by Arab militias in the North.

Yes, real, old-style slavery that's been "out-of-style" in America since 1865.

And just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, there's a new crisis afoot. The government in Khartoum has now started supporting Arab-Muslim militias in the West of the country (the "Janjaweed") against the black-Africans (this time fellow Muslims) in that region. An estimated 30,000 civilians have been murdered in that region since February of last year, and more than a million have been made refugees. Government-supported militias have used gang-rape as a weapon, mutilated their victims and taken slaves as prizes.
. . .
On the other end of the spectrum are folks who do believe in the existence of an international community with the UN as an important and indispensable representative. The issue of the Sudan speaks to them because they truly desire that the UN fulfill its mission and do the right thing. They want to shame Kofi into either harnessing the force of his personality and thereby gain a bit of moral authority to attack this issue, and in turn hoping to shame the body into action...or resign.

Read the whole article and the links. It's worth your time.
Now, where is the MSM??

EUro-elections

“Anti-EU parties are expected to pick up seats, not just in the UK but in Poland and the Czech Republic along with maybe Denmark and Sweden.” So says the BBC World Service, for once describing the parties in question accurately instead of daubing the slogan “anti-European” all over them.

In the European elections the biggest winner appears to be the UK Independence Party (UKIP), who also supported the war but who, in any case, is associated in the electorate’s mind with one policy only: they are calling for British withdrawal from the EU.

Chrenkoff and EU Referendum report on the results.

From The Economist's clear-thinking people, updated
The Economist got the cover right. Of course they couldn't just leave well alone and inserted in the cover story the usual left-handed compliments the MSM tacks on to Reagan, "Oddly enough, he had what it took. He was, most clear-thinking people clearly saw, not the right man for the job". Most clear-thinking people who voted for him? or who didn't? or who helped him beat communism so their countries could live in freedom? The next paragraph tells us "He was bound. . . to be a bit of a bumbler" since "He disliked, and sometimes dodged, painful arguments with awkward colleagues. He could fail to notice murky things going on behind his back". One of the smartest people I've ever met taught me as a young child that intelligent people choose their fights -- maybe the President was one of those people.

Then they got the man wrong in the obit, by constantly contradicting themselves: "The performance was all", yet "Behind all that lay a surprising toughness"; "his more fantastic schemes, such as Star Wars, were also linked by his detractors to his ability to live in unreal worlds", but all the while, "As a self-taught politician, he had come to know what was right and what was wrong". Makes sense to the guy that wrote the article, I guess. Seems that I probably don't qualify as "clear-thinking people" since the article as a whole doesn't make much sense to me.

As a long-term subscriber I've observed that The Economist has been self-contradicting in their opinion pages (the reporting seems OK so far) for the past year or so. Have they changed editors? Or is the op-ed staff slowly being replaced by clear-thinking people?
Update Is Peggy Noonan "clear-thinking people"?

UNScam today
Via the Barcepundit, France's investigating payments of commisions on the sale of CASA Spanish transport planes. The subject of the investigation, Patrick Maugein (former French Minister of Defense) and crony of Chirac, has greatly benefited from Saddam's largesse, as explained in Le Monde, The Wall Street Journal

Patrick Maugein, a close friend of Jacques Chirac and head of Soco International oil company, says his dealings were all within "the framework of the oil-for-food program and there was nothing illegal about it."

and ABC News,

According to the document, France was the second-largest beneficiary, with tens of millions of barrels awarded to Patrick Maugein, a close political associate and financial backer of French President Jacques Chirac.

Maugein, individually and through companies connected to him, received contracts for some 36 million barrels. Chirac's office said it was unaware of Maugein's deals, which Maugein told ABCNEWS are perfectly legal

As the Barcepundit says, Maugein and other close friends of Chirac son algo así como una garde du corps empresarial para encubrir los oscuros asuntos económicos del presidente francés; como sabéis, sólo su cargo le inmuniza temporalmente ante la justicia (my translation) "are like a large group of corporate bodyguards that cover-up the French president's shady businesses; as you know, only his (Chirac's) current position temporarily protects him from being brought to justice".