Wednesday, 30 June 2004

It's Boston 'E' Party

You bet Cheney got booed while Ronan Tynan sang "God Bless America." Cheney - close to the action for a change - had been down in a box seat next to the Yankee dugout with Rudy Giuliani and Gov. George Pataki. Now Cheney was upstairs in George Steinbrenner's box, and when they put his face on the big screen in the outfield, there was plenty of booing. It was about the only thing that stopped the real cheers for the Yankees at Yankee Stadium as they kept pouring it on against the Red Sox.

Real game story last night? Cheney got booed. Yankees got even with the Red Sox, for one night, and maybe the rest of the way.

With Bridesmaids Back, the Yankees Use Their Help

The New York Times removed the following text from later editions of the above article:

In the seventh inning, during Ronan Tynan's "God Bless America," they booed the sight of Cheney on the right-field video screen.

Tuesday, 29 June 2004

Democrats attack Gates' "charity"

Monday, 28 June 2004

US hands over power in Iraq In Anger, Ordinary Iraqis Are Joining the Insurgency Billions of Revenue from Oil 'Missing'

Sunday, 27 June 2004

June 30th: Bogus End To A Bogus War

On Thursday, more than 100 people were killed in rebel attacks in five cities. On June 17, 41 died in a car bombing. June 16 saw the killing of the security chief of the Iraqi oil fields in Kirkuk. On June 14, 12 died in a car bombing in Baghdad. On June 12 and 13 two assassinations claimed the lives of an education ministry official and the interim deputy foreign minister. And on June 8, 15 died in car bombings in Mosul and Baquba. These are by no means all the killings - just selected atrocities in the daily horror of life in occupied Iraq.

Such overwhelming violence has made the official handover of sovereignty from the occupying powers to Iraq on Wednesday a paper exercise . In theory, Iraq will regain its sovereignty, but in practice nothing will have changed. Zarqawi and his followers will still be killing Iraqi "fifth columnists" and foreign troops, US and British soldiers will still be controlling the day-to-day lives of ordinary people.

Moore Reacts to 'Fahrenheit' Box Office Fahrenheit 9/11 is No. 1 at box office: Michael Moore's controversial Bush-bashing film has strongest opening ever for a documentary.

According to studio estimates issued on Sunday, "Fahrenheit 9/11," in which Moore takes aim at U.S. President George W. Bush, and the war in Iraq, opened at No. 1 after selling about $21.8 million worth of tickets in the United States and Canada since June 25.

All told, the movie's total stands at $21.96 million, because it got a head-start on Wednesday in two Manhattan theaters to help build more media buzz before expanding to a relatively modest 868 theaters two days later. (By contrast, most of the other movies in the top five were playing in more than 2,500 theaters each.)

'Fahrenheit' Is Casting a Wide Net at Theaters

Their tears reflected in the bluish light of the movie screen, many viewers here and elsewhere seemed especially moved by the story of Lila Lipscomb, the mother at the heart of "Fahrenheit 9/11." When Moore first encounters her in Flint, Mich., she speaks with pride of her children's military service, of all the opportunities the armed forces can give them. Then her son was killed in Iraq.

Appearing with Moore at the film's premiere in Washington, Lipscomb received a standing ovation.

"President Bush said he was a president of war," Lipscomb said. "Well, I stand before you tonight as a mother that is now a mother of war. I urge all of America to stop being ignorant. Open your eyes to see. Open your ears to hear. Open your mouth to speak."

Saturday, 26 June 2004

The multibillion robbery the US calls reconstruction

Good news out of Baghdad: the Program Management Office, which oversees the $18.4bn in US reconstruction funds, has finally set a goal it can meet. Sure, electricity is below pre-war levels, the streets are rivers of sewage and more Iraqis have been fired than hired. But now the PMO has contracted the British mercenary firm Aegis to protect its employees from "assassination, kidnapping, injury and" - get this - "embarrassment". I don't know if Aegis will succeed in protecting PMO employees from violent attack, but embarrassment? I'd say mission already accomplished. The people in charge of rebuilding Iraq can't be embarrassed, because, clearly, they have no shame.

Exposed: BP, its pipeline, and an environmental timebomb Potential Nomination of Goss for CIA Draws Fire

WASHINGTON -- A key Democratic senator and senior intelligence officials raised objections Friday to the potential nomination of Rep. Porter J. Goss as director of central intelligence, complicating White House calculations on whether to push the Florida Republican for the job.

Friday, 25 June 2004

Analyzing Fahrenheit 9/11 The muckraker: Off the South Side streets sprang a groundbreaking journalist who has revealed some of America's darkest secrets

"We're living in dark times," he says, gently rubbing his gray-thatched temples.

[...]

The secrets don't show on his face, but when Hersh lets down his guard even a little, the inner life of the inside man seems to leak into the air around him. He is haunted by the as-yet-unpublished photographs of Iraq prison abuses. "You haven't begun to see evil until you've seen some of these pictures that haven't come out," he says.

(The following paragraph did not appear in this story as published but has been restored for online publication.) There are still prisons the public doesn't know about, he says. Secret prisons. "I would guess -- I don't have it pure -- but we're basically in the disappearing business," he tells his U. of C. audience.

[...]

"The fragility of our government is terrifying," he tells his U. of C. audience. A handful of neoconservatives took control of the levers of government "without a peep from the bureaucracy, the Congress, the press," he says. "It was so easy. . . . What is it about us that made us so vulnerable to these people?"

[...]

The photographs of unmuzzled dogs terrifying Abu Ghraib prisoners remind Hersh of the police tactics used on Southern civil rights marchers in the 1960s and Jews in Germany during the 1940s.

"We have seen pictures like that before," Hersh says.

Cheney Dismisses Critic With Obscenity: Clash With Leahy About Halliburton A Tough Iraqi's Strategy

Allawi joined the brutal world of Baathist intelligence as a young man, and there are many stories about his ruthlessness as an operative in Europe during the 1970s.

[...]

Allawi's appeal [sic], and also his liability, is that he will govern Iraq as a strongman.

Judge Sorry for Likening Bush, Hitler

Thursday, 24 June 2004

Call to Action on Electronic Voting

The problems with electronic voting machines are numerous and grave, starting with the fact that the software which runs them is considered "proprietary information" by the companies that make them. In other words, they won't tell anyone what it is, how it works or anything else about the systems, meaning we have no way of knowing if they're clean, reliable or even functional.

That uncomfortable situation was rather dramatically underlined when Walden (Wally) O'Dell, chairman and CEO of Diebold Election Systems and a Bush campaign "Pioneer" (meaning he raised at least $100,000), wrote in a 2003 fund-raising letter that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president." At the time, Diebold was trying to get on Ohio's "favored vendor" list and is now on it. Elections Systems and Software, the country's largest maker of the machines, also has a Republican pedigree.

It's a shame Diebold isn't a big Democratic fund-raiser who said he was committed to delivering Ohio for Kerry, so the Republicans could see how they like that. But I'm sure there are enough Republican conspiracy theorists to contemplate the happy proposition that, while chairmen and CEOs may lean Republican, there are any number of partisan Democrats lurking in engineering departments and liberal moles in software-writing offices.

Justice System Is 'Broken,' Lawyers Say Army fury at Hebron soldiers' brutality exhibition Paying the Price: The Mounting Costs of the Iraq War Iraq War Analysis Paints Grim Picture

WASHINGTON - Unless you own a lot of stock in Halliburton or other big defense, security, or construction companies, chances are the Iraq war has turned out to be a pretty bad investment, both in human lives and taxpayer dollars, according to a new assessment by a progressive Washington-based think tank, the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS).

'Fahrenheit' Sets Single Day Sales Record in NYC

NEW YORK - Director Michael Moore's controversial documentary 'Fahrenheit 9/11' turned on the box office heat in its first day in theaters breaking single-day records at the two New York City theaters where it played.

The movie, which aims a critical eye at President Bush and his prosecution of the war in Iraq, sold $49,000 worth of tickets at the Loew's Village 7 theater, beating the venue's single-day record of $43,435 held by 1997's "Men in Black," according to distributors Lions Gate Films and IFC Films.

At the Lincoln Plaza theater, "Fahrenheit 9/11" took in more than $30,000 to top the $24,013 set by "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" in 2000.

Torture: Bush Reaps What Kennedy Sowed

Wednesday, 23 June 2004

The World's Most Dangerous Terrorist: Who is Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi? And why are so many governments scared to death of him? U.S. Senator Ernest F. Hollings: Why we're in Iraq, part 2

In the war against terrorism, we've given the terrorists a cause and created more terrorism. Even though Saddam is gone, the majority of the Iraqi people want us gone. We have proven ourselves "infidels." With more than 800 GIs killed, 5,000 maimed for life and a cost of $200 billion, come now the generals in command, both Richard Myers and John Abizaid, saying we can't win. Back home the cover of The New Republic magazine asks, "Were We Wrong?"

Walking guard duty tonight in Baghdad, a G.I. wonders why he should lose his life when his commander says he can't win and the people back home can't make up their mind. Unfortunately, the peoples of the world haven't changed their minds. They are still against us. Heretofore, the world looked to the United States to do the right thing. No more. The United States has lost its moral authority.

U.S. Drops Effort to Gain Immunity for Its Troops Nobel Prize winners support Kerry

Tuesday, 22 June 2004

CIA: No Iraqi Officer Link in al-Qaida Meeting Mid-East coverage baffles Britons

UK television news coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is confusing viewers and favouring the Israeli position, a new report says.

The study, by the Media Group at Scotland's Glasgow University, found Israelis were quoted more than twice as much as Palestinians in reports.

It said that news programmes did not provide enough information about the conflict's history and origins.

Many viewers were also not even sure who was "occupying" whose territory.

[...]

They found that, in addition to "a preponderance of official Israeli perspectives", US politicians who support Israel were "very strongly featured" in news programmes, appearing more than politicians from any other country and twice as much as those from Britain.

The report takes issue with a tendency in the media to present the problem as "starting" with Palestinian action, while Israelis were seen to be "responding" with actions that were explained and contextualised.

[...]

Researchers also found a strong emphasis on Israeli casualties on the news despite the number of Palestinian deaths being considerably greater.

And the differences in language used by journalists for both sides were also noted.

"Words such as 'atrocity', 'brutal murder', 'mass murder', 'savage cold blooded killing', 'lynching' and 'slaughter' were used about Israeli deaths but not Palestinian," the report said.

"The word 'terrorist' was used to describe Palestinians by journalists but when an Israeli group was reported as trying to bomb a Palestinian school, they were referred to as 'extremists' or 'vigilantes'."

[...]

Many people in Britain think the Palestinians are occupying Israeli territory and not the other way round and some think Palestinians are refugees from Afghanistan, despite extensive media coverage of the conflict.

48 Nobel Prize winners slam Bush, back Kerry

DENVER -- Forty-eight Nobel laureates denounced President Bush on Monday for "compromising our future" when it comes to scientific research and the environment, and said Sen. John Kerry "will restore science to its appropriate place in government and bring it back into the White House."

Truth About Iraq Finally Has Its Pants On Will the 9/11 Commissioners Cave? Bush Loses Advantage in War on Terrorism: Nation Evenly Divided on President, Kerry

Monday, 21 June 2004

India-Pakistan Talks: Hotline to a Higher Nuclear Status? Lawyer Wants Bush on Witness Stand over Iraq Torture Bush Faces Major Test at UN on Exemption from War Crimes Court Audience gasps as judge likens election of Bush to rise of Il Duce

Judge Calabresi, a former dean of Yale Law School, said Mr. Bush has asserted the full prerogatives of his office, despite his lack of a compelling electoral mandate from the public.

"When somebody has come in that way, they sometimes have tried not to exercise much power. In this case, like Mussolini, he has exercised extraordinary power. He has exercised power, claimed power for himself; that has not occurred since Franklin Roosevelt who, after all, was elected big and who did some of the same things with respect to assertions of power in times of crisis that this president is doing," he said.

The 71-year-old judge declared that members of the public should, without regard to their political views, expel Mr. Bush from office in order to cleanse the democratic system.

"That's got nothing to do with the politics of it.It's got to do with the structural reassertion of democracy," Judge Calabresi said.

His remarks were met with rousing applause from the hundreds of lawyers and law students in attendance.

23rd TOP500 List of World's Fastest Supercomputers Released

The 23rd TOP500 list of world's fastest supercomputers was released during the International Supercomputer Conference (ISC2004) in Heidelberg, Germany.

Japan topped the list for the third year in a row with its Earth Simulator supercomputer. According to the Earth Simulator Center's mission statement, the Earth Simulator supercomputer exists "to build a harmonious relationship between the Earth and human beings".

The United States took second and third place with supercomputers used for nuclear weapons.

Bush vs. Cuba: The Quiet War Guild: Bush Should Be Tried For Role In Torture Call To Action: Register Voters at Fahrenheit 9/11

Sunday, 20 June 2004

The story TV news won't tell

In my judgment as a journalist and Middle East specialist, the broadcasters' language favours the occupying soldiers over the occupied Arabs, depicting the latter, essentially, as alien tribes threatening the survival of Israel, rather than vice versa. The struggle between Israel and the Palestinians is shown, most especially on mainstream bulletins, as a battle between two 'forces', possessed equally of right and wrong and responsibility. It is the tyranny of spurious equivalence.

Cheney in firing line over Nigerian bribery claims

A British lawyer is emerging as a key witness in a $180 million bribery investigation that could lead to the indictment of US vice president Dick Cheney.

US bombers kill 22 in Falluja raid

AN AMERICAN F-16 jet fired missiles into a residential area in the flashpoint Sunni city of Fallujah yesterday, killing at least 22 members of one extended family.

The Iraqi who sold his life to the Americans

A muscular man in his mid-thirties, Waleed was the cousin of an Iraqi who helped The Observer earlier this year by giving directions to the scene of a terrorist attack.

Now Waleed is dead; gunned down in the street as he took his car to be repaired because he was unmasked as a spy for the Americans.

Friday, 18 June 2004

The Torturer-in-Chief

The teflon that has enveloped George W. Bush is chipping off. Arriving in office with the promise of a "humble" foreign policy, Bush was sitting pretty at the beginning of his term. But George's honeymoon has turned sour.

Thursday, 17 June 2004

"In A World of Shit"

A remarkable briefing yesterday at the Middle East Institute by Ahmed S. Hashim, a Naval War College professor just returned from Iraq, painted in broad outlines the potentially catastrophic situation that the Bush administration faces in Iraq the next few months. With polls showing that just two percent of Iraqis view the United States as "liberators," Hashim's report was sobering indeed. Making it clear that he was speaking only for himself, and not for any U.S. government body, Hashim said, "We went into Iraq with ideological lenses." U.S. war planners avoided thinking about the worst that could happen, he said. "If you start with a rosy scenario and work backward, you're in a world of shit. And that's where we are."

Oil chief: my fears for planet

Wednesday, 16 June 2004

Alarm Sounded on Global Warming: Researchers Say Dangers Must Be Addressed Immediately Kennedy Sidesteps Impeachment Endorsement Report to reveal US day of chaos

The independent commission investigating the September 11 attacks has found that the Pentagon's domestic air-defence command was disastrously unprepared for a big terrorist attack on US soil and was slow and confused in its response to the hijackings, according to officials who have read a draft of the commission's findings.

Tuesday, 15 June 2004

World's Land Turning to Desert at Alarming Speed, United Nations Warns Climate Change Experts Despair Over US Attitude Poll of Iraqis Reveals Anger Toward US John Stauber: Kerry/McCain Anyone?

In our new book, Banana Republicans, Sheldon Rampton and I analyze how the far right first took over first the Republican party and now all branches of the federal government through decades of discipline, strategic funding, political organizing, coalition-building and a passionate far-right pro-business vision. For the first time since 1932 Republicans control all branches of the federal government and for the first time since 1952 they dominate at the state government level. Republicans have planted the myth of the liberal media firmly in the public mind, while moving mainstream news coverage to the right. They have created their own media -- right wing talk radio and Fox News -- and made it the most important opinion shaping force in the United States.

Spying in America: How the Pentagon is Overcoming Privacy Laws to Conduct Spy Operations At Home

Remembering Reagan

Cartoon depicting oil companies, mercenaries, U.S. Army, and war profiteers as vultures picking at Iraq carcass.

Thursday, 10 June 2004

On foreign policy, Bush follows the Reagan model: some of the same neocon ideologues have worked for both presidents Jeffrey D. Sachs: Barbarous Thinking Comes Easily

One consequence of the Iraq war is to expose (once again) the false divide between ''civilized'' and ''barbarous'' nations. The United States seems as capable of barbarism as anyone else, as the abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison make clear.

There seem to be two common characteristics for a country to descend into barbarism. The first is the relentless human tendency to classify the world as ''us'' versus ''them,'' and then to reduce ''them'' to sub-human status. Such classifications probably evolved because they strengthened the cohesion of the ''in'' group.

[...]

American reactions to the Abu Ghraib torture scenes, followed by the beheading of the American hostage Nicholas Berg, show clearly the route to barbarism in a supposedly civilized country. In May The New York Times polled readers in a city in the U.S. heartland, Oswego, Ill. One retired businessman said, ''Let's kill them all. Let's wipe them off the face of the Earth.'' A Nazi leader would not have said it differently.

Molly Ivins: The day the Constitution died: June 8, 2004: Ashcroft's coronation of George W. Bush Leaked Torture Memo: Full Text

Wednesday, 9 June 2004

New Report Documents Extensive U.S. War Crimes In Iraq: Purported "Transfer of Sovereignty" Condemned as Farce, Despite UN Resolution Controversial Commando Wins Iraq Contract The Secret Service comes calling after a St. Louisan pens a message wishing bin Laden would eliminate Bush

According to Aziz, the agents told him they'd singled out his e-mail because he'd used the words "Bush" and "bin Laden" in the same sentence. It's a fairly Orwellian explanation, hinting at a bevy of federal computers whose sole task is to scrutinize e-mail word placement.

But according to the American Civil Liberties Union's Christopher Calabrese, federal law enforcement really does have that capability. "It's definitely possible for his e-mail to be intercepted," says Calabrese. "But they would have to be looking ahead of time."

In other words, for Secret Service agents to wiretap Aziz's e-mail account, they had to have been tipped off. And according to Calabrese, there are a variety of surveillance programs that might pluck him from obscurity, most notably the new Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange (MATRIX).

First developed by the Seisint Corporation in Boca Raton, Florida, MATRIX scours multiple databases looking for so-called information fingerprints. By cross-referencing an individual's various "fingerprints," MATRIX can measure the likelihood that a given person is, or could be, a terrorist.

According to documents recently obtained by the ACLU, Seisint compiled a list of 120,000 people identified as "High Terrorist Factors" (HTF). The company then donated the list to several federal law enforcement agencies, among them the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Secret Service. It is difficult to determine what, if anything, was done with this information, though in a 2003 slide show Seisint claimed its list had led to "several arrests within one week" and "scores of other arrests using the HTF."

Center for Constitutional Rights obtains internal Pentagon report outlining framework for use of torture

CCR has posted the controversial Pentagon "Working Group Report on Detainee Interrogations in the Global War on Terrorism: Assessment of Legal, Historical, Policy and Operational Considerations" on its website. The report is further proof of the Bush administration's disregard for the Constitution and civil liberties and shows there was planning at high levels of government to abuse and torture detainees.

Tuesday, 8 June 2004

Ronald Reagan: Still the Teflon President? The press often forgets history when notable leaders die. Who knows that Bill Clinton had higher approval ratings than Reagan?

The death of Ronald Reagan has become yet another reminder that news organizations often turn sentimental at the death of a former leader, no matter what legacy he or she leaves behind.

300,000 Deaths Foretold

THE EARLY PREPARATION for the genocide in Darfur, Sudan's vast western province, played out behind a veil of ignorance: Almost no foreign aid workers operated in the region, and the world failed to realize what was happening. Stage two of the genocide, the one we are now in, is more acutely shameful: A succession of reports from relief agencies, human rights groups and journalists informs us that hundreds of thousands of people are likely to perish, yet outsiders still cannot muster the will to save them. Unless that changes, we are fated to live through the genocide's third stage. There will be speeches, commissions of inquiry and sundry retrospectives, just as there were after Cambodia and Rwanda. Never again, we will be told.

Memo Offered Justification for Use of Torture: Justice Dept. Gave Advice in 2002

In August 2002, the Justice Department advised the White House that torturing al Qaeda terrorists in captivity abroad "may be justified," and that international laws against torture "may be unconstitutional if applied to interrogations" conducted in President Bush's war on terrorism, according to a newly obtained memo.

Monday, 7 June 2004

Pentagon Report Set Framework For Use of Torture

Bush administration lawyers contended last year that the president wasn't bound by laws prohibiting torture and that government agents who might torture prisoners at his direction couldn't be prosecuted by the Justice Department.

The advice was part of a classified report on interrogation methods prepared for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld after commanders at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, complained in late 2002 that with conventional methods they weren't getting enough information from prisoners.

The report outlined U.S. laws and international treaties forbidding torture, and why those restrictions might be overcome by national-security considerations or legal technicalities. In a March 6, 2003, draft of the report reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, passages were deleted as was an attachment listing specific interrogation techniques and whether Mr. Rumsfeld himself or other officials must grant permission before they could be used. The complete draft document was classified "secret" by Mr. Rumsfeld and scheduled for declassification in 2013.

Rating Reagan: A Bogus Legacy

The U.S. news media's reaction to Ronald Reagan's death is putting on display what has happened to American public debate in the years since Reagan's political rise in the late 1970s: a near-total collapse of serious analytical thinking at the national level.

Across the U.S. television dial and in major American newspapers, the commentary is fawning almost in a Pravda-like way, far beyond the normal reticence against speaking ill of the dead. Left-of-center commentators compete with conservatives to hail Reagan's supposedly genial style and his alleged role in 'winning the Cold War.' The Washington Post's front-page headline -- "Ronald Reagan Dies" -- was in giant type more fitting the Moon Landing.

Sunday, 6 June 2004

Cheney faces grilling over leak as Bush election hopes slump PM 'delusional' over Iraq WMD, says inspector

Tony Blair was branded 'delusional' yesterday over his continued insistence that weapons of mass destruction might still be found in Iraq. The charge was made by the man who headed the hunt.

Following claims by the Prime Minister on Friday that the search might still turn up illegal weapons in Iraq, David Kay, who led the Iraq Survey Group after the invasion, insisted that the weapons did not exist, and called on Blair to apologise for being wrong.

Saturday, 5 June 2004

INTERVIEW: Charles Kupchan, Professor of International Relations at Georgetown University

Bush goes to Europe at the same time transatlantic relations have reached possibly their lowest level since the Second World War. My feeling is that the war in Iraq was probably the worst time. Then there was a period of patching up during the months that followed the war. Europeans and Americans tried to step back, to distance themselves from the precipice.

However, these last few months, there has been a new estrangement. The occupation of Iraq has been a disaster and the country remains on the point of disintegration. The Bush government does not seem to have a real plan. Then, there was the scandal of prisoner torture. This affair has dried up whatever sympathy there may have been for the war in Europe. After three trips to Europe in the course of the last month, I think that what had been anti-Bush feeling is approaching anti-Americanism and I see no desire to do Bush the least favor. He's going to have a hard month.

Marjorie Cohn: Giving Iraqis What Is Rightly Theirs - Sovereignty

Friday, 4 June 2004

Bush's Erratic Behavior Worries White House Aides

President George W. Bush's increasingly erratic behavior and wide mood swings has the halls of the West Wing buzzing lately as aides privately express growing concern over their leader's state of mind.

In meetings with top aides and administration officials, the President goes from quoting the Bible in one breath to obscene tantrums against the media, Democrats and others that he classifies as "enemies of the state."

Wednesday, 2 June 2004

It Happened Here First: Exporting America's Most Notorious Prison Officials to Abu Ghraib

One man ran a prison system in Utah where a 29-year-old schizophrenic died after he was stripped naked and strapped to a restraining chair for 16 hours.

Another man ran the system in Arizona where 14 women were raped, sodomized or assaulted by prison guards.

Another ran Connecticut's prison system where at least two people died after being severely beaten.

All of the men who ran these prison systems were forced out by lawsuits or political controversy. But rather than being sent to prison themselves, these men were sent to Iraq by the US government to set up the prisons there. Actually, one prison - Abu Ghraib.

Tuesday, 1 June 2004

Details Emerge on Stint by Chalabi Niece at 'NY Times'

NEW YORK During the five months that Iraqi exile leader Ahmad Chalabi's niece, Sarah Khalil, worked for The New York Times in 2003, the reporter who hired her, Patrick Tyler, published nine pieces that mentioned her now-disgraced uncle, according to an article published today by The New Yorker. During this time, she also personally helped Chalabi get across the border from Kuwait into southern Iraq.

The Manipulator Concerns Rise Over Chemicals as Targets

WASHINGTON -- Homeland Security watchdogs call them "prepositioned weapons of mass destruction" for terrorists: huge tanks of concentrated deadly gases that the chemical industry stores near densely populated areas and that railroads bring through cities en route to somewhere else.

[...]

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group, both industries heavily back the Republican Party. In the two election cycles since the Sept. 11 attacks, the railroad industry has given $9.5 million to political campaigns -- 77 percent of it to Republicans. The chemical manufacturing industry has given $11 million -- 78 percent of it to Republicans.

Wealth distribution pie chart
Growing Wealth Gap Rates an 'Orange Alert': 'Inequality Matters' Conference Puts Nations on Alert

Thursday is when the Inequality Matters conference begins in New York City to discuss the biggest wealth and income gap -- and its consequences on society -- since the Hoover Administration. The Congressional Budget Office says the income gap in the United States is now the widest in 75 years.

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Last modified: Sun May 9 18:42:33 CDT 2004