Tue-Apr 29 2003
Mike Hawash Indicted
Update to previous
Post.
"Maher Mofeid Hawash, 39, of Hillsboro, Oregon, was charged in a criminal
complaint with conspiracy to levy war against the United States, conspiracy to
provide material support to al Qaeda and conspiracy to contribute services to
al Qaeda and the Taliban."
Link
Via Metafilter
Sat-Apr 26 2003
Well, this is clear as mud
Here what DoD Secretary Rumsfeld had to say today concerning my
question regarding the status of detained Iragi officials.
"Q: Mr. Secretary, when it comes to the senior regime leaders that have been
captured, such as Tariq Aziz, are they considered prisoners of war? Are they
subject to the protections of the Geneva Convention? Will they be visited by
the Red Cross? Will they be possibly moved to Guantanamo? What's going to
happen to them?
Rumsfeld: Lots of questions. With respect to Guantanamo, the answer is no. We
intend to not take people, regardless of what they're characterized as, from
Iraq or from any other country to Guantanamo Bay at the moment. Could it
change? Possibly. But my preference is not to. And I would guess I'd have a
voice in it, and I would discourage doing that.
I think that it's hard to characterize all of them in the same way. I mean, some
of them may very well be people who were military. Let me --
Q: Well, say, take Tariq Aziz, for example.
Rumsfeld: Well, let me -- some of them are military, and they would be
considered enemy prisoners of war. We were in a war. Some others might have
been in civilian garb, like the Fedayeen Saddam, and the question is, what are
they? And the lawyers will sort all that out.
What we do know is that there are people who in large measure have information
that we need, and we need that information so that we can track down the
weapons of mass destruction in that country. We need that information so that
we can track down the terrorist links between Saddam Hussein's regime and
various terrorist networks. And we need it to track down other people. We need
it to find records so that we can go through this process of
"de-Ba'athification," if there's such a word, trying to eliminate the influence
of the Ba'ath Party in that country. There's lots of very important projects
we've got.
And the first order of business is, in my view, to stop holding the ones we
don't need. And that's why we're working through 200 or 300 a day, trying to
sort them and get rid of them, let them go back home and live their lives if we
don't need them.
Conversely, we -- the ones -- we sort out the high-value ones, and get
interrogation teams working together that information. And clearly, Tariq Aziz
falls in the latter category.
Q: Is he a POW, subject to the protections of the Geneva Conventions?
Rumsfeld: These are lawyers are going to sort through that. Was he in the
military? He always -- every time I was ever with him, he always wore a
camouflage uniform and a pistol on his hip. Does that make him military? I
don't know. He was deputy prime minister; he was, I believe, foreign minister.
But the lawyers will figure that out. I don't have to worry about that stuff.
(Laughter.)
Q: Mr. Secretary, is the U.S. considering possible criminal charges against any
of these Iraqi leaders? And if not, at the conclusion of any conflict, wouldn't
they be subject to release?
Rumsfeld: There are rules that apply to people depending on which basket they're
in. It's true that when a war is over, there is a responsibility to release
people who fit in certain categories but not in others. The lawyers are
currently sorting through the question as to how they want to deal with this.
Do they want to have some sort of a tribunal, should the Iraqi people do it,
should some international organization do it, should the United States do it? I
think probably the latter is not our first choice, but that's going to be
decided at a higher level than this."
What I get out of this: The officials are not under arrest, not charged with
any crime (U.S.,International, or Iraqi), not prisoners of war, not unlawful
combatants-they aren't any of these yet. We have them in custody simply
so we can interrogate them. This is probably legal at least until we declare an
end to hostilities.
Link
Via-Found by my own self
Fri-Apr 25 2003
Israel seeks pipeline for Iraqi oil
"Plans to build a pipeline to siphon oil from newly conquered Iraq to Israel are
being discussed between Washington, Tel Aviv and potential future government
figures in Baghdad."
I'm very interested to hear the reaction of Iraqis to this idea. Somehow I doubt
they've been fully informed yet.
Link
Link
Originally Via also not found in nature
Just Wondering
U.S. forces are taking members of Saddam's government into custody. What I want
to know are the legal particulars of just how this works. Are they suspected criminals?
Are they Prisoners of War? If so, what happens after we declare hostilities over? I have
little doubt these are bad people, but the whole concept of the rule of law says the
government has to have a legal justification to detain or imprison people.
Thu-Apr 24 2003
Go Boss, Go
"The Dixie Chicks have taken a big hit lately for exercising their basic right to
express themselves. To me, they're terrific American artists expressing
American values by using their American right to free speech. For them to be
banished wholesale from radio stations, and even entire radio networks, for
speaking out is un-American.
The pressure coming from the government and big business to enforce conformity
of thought concerning the war and politics goes against everything that this
country is about - namely freedom. Right now, we are supposedly fighting to
create freedom in Iraq, at the same time that some are trying to intimidate and
punish people for using that same freedom here at home.
I don't know what happens next, but I do want to add my voice to those who think
that the Dixie Chicks are getting a raw deal, and an un-American one to boot. I
send them my support.
Bruce Springsteen"
Link
Via Cursor.org
Sun-Apr 20 2003
Who'da thunk it?
Thomas Jefferson invented Macaroni and Cheese. That, and other food
origins are available at
"Who Cooked That Up?".
Via gammatron
Who Covered The War Best?
"In covering the war, al-Jazeera was unique in the number of independent
reporting teams distributed throughout the region, some of whom have been
beaten by Kurdish forces, banned by Iraqi government officials, and reprimanded
almost daily by U.S., Iraqi, Kuwaiti, Saudi, Jordanian and other state and
military officials at press conferences. These states recognize the
destabilizing potential of al-Jazeera's brash willingness to ask difficult
questions and give voice to the marginalized majority."
Link
Via Robot Wisdom
IMHO, if you piss off that many people, you must be doing something right.
Neat Stuff
I've just learned through
Ethel the blog that
"Crossing Jordan" now has a
soundtrack CD out. I've mentioned
before how I like the show's cast but wasn't taken with the show. But if they're
using Richard Thompson on network TV I may give it another go.
So where are they, Mr Blair?
"Well, Saddam is now gone. And with him has disappeared any conceivable risk to
those intelligence sources (assuming they ever existed). So just what was this
information on the basis of which Washington and its faithful ally launched an
unprovoked invasion of a ramshackle third world country? A country with a very
nasty regime to be sure, but not a great deal nastier than some other potential
candidates for "liberation" in the Middle East and elsewhere.".....
"But they'd better be found pretty soon. Having rushed into war to suit its own
military and domestic electoral timetable, the Bush administration now has the
nerve to claim that a year may be required to establish the whereabouts of the
WMD - and that it may never do so unless led to them by co-operative Iraqis.
But no longer can London and Washington rely simply on the impossibility for
the former Iraqi regime to prove a negative, that the weapons do not exist. It
is up to the "coalition" of two to provide proof positive that they do.
br>
This pointless war cannot be un-made. But we urgently need to know that the
invasion was not illegal as well. With Britain and the US in full control of
Iraq, a month should suffice. If no "smoking gun" has turned up by then, a full
parliamentary inquiry is essential - into the competence and accountability of
the intelligence services, and into how our Government used them to sell a
mistaken and reckless policy."
Link
Via Technorati
So where are they, Mr Bush?
Fun fact o' the day
Rob Zombie
was a production assistant on Pee-Wee's Playhouse.
Thu-Apr 17 2003
Priorities
"Iraq's scavengers have thieved and destroyed what they have been allowed to
loot and burn by the Americans and a two-hour drive around Baghdad shows
clearly what the US intends to protect. After days of arson and pillage, here's
a short but revealing scorecard. US troops have sat back and allowed mobs to
wreck and then burn the Ministry of Planning, the Ministry of Education, the
Ministry of Irrigation, the Ministry of Trade, the Ministry of Industry, the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of
Information. They did nothing to prevent looters from destroying priceless
treasures of Iraq's history in the Baghdad Archaeological Museum and in the
museum in the northern city of Mosul, or from looting three hospitals.
The Americans have, though, put hundreds of troops inside two Iraqi ministries
that remain untouched and untouchable because tanks and armoured personnel
carriers and Humvees have been placed inside and outside both institutions. And
which ministries proved to be so important for the Americans? Why, the Ministry
of Interior, of course with its vast wealth of intelligence information on
Iraq and the Ministry of Oil. The archives and files of Iraq's most valuable
asset its oilfields and, even more important, its massive reserves are safe
and sound, sealed off from the mobs and looters, and safe to be shared, as
Washington almost certainly intends, with American oil companies."
Link
Lifted wholesale from Booknotes
"When the interviewer pointed out that Iraqi museum officials claimed that they
had asked the U.S. military to protect the museum, and that the military had
refused, Rumsfeld responded: "Oh, my goodness. Look, I have no idea."
Looting, he concluded "isn't something that someone allows or doesn't allow.
It's something that happens."" Link
Also via Booknotes
Dear Secretary Rumsfeld: Bite me.
Hulk hate baseball
Not only do the friggin' Mariners screw up traffic and traffic radio,
they've gone and pre-empted one of the last Buffys. God forbid somebody
misses like the 6th game in the season-it's sooooooo vital to their record.
KSTW has a nice anonymous feedback form-if you're half as
cheesed off as I am, give them piece of your mind.
A followup to my earlier
post about the Mariners screwing up KOMO's traffic reports: The pregame show
is an hour, the postgame show is 1 1/2 hours. That's two and a half hours
of just yakking about baseball on top of whatever ungodly long time the actual
game lasts. I understand the concept of "bread and circuses" but where the heck
is the bread?
Tue-Apr 15 2003
State-Level Super-DMCAs
"Under existing law, those who have legitimately purchased communication services
(e.g., cable TV, satellite, or broadband Internet services) are free to connect
whatever they like to the wires they pay for, so long as they do not violate
any otherwise applicable law. So, for example, you are free to connect a new
TV, PC, VCR or TiVo to a cable television connection that you pay for.
Similarly, you are free to connect a Wi-Fi wireless access point to your DSL
line in order to share your broadband connection among several computers in
your house. This freedom has encouraged technology vendors to compete and
innovate in response to the demands of consumers.
The proposed super-DMCA statutes reverse this traditional rule. Under these
statutes, you would not be entitled to connect anything to your cable,
satellite, or DSL line without the express permission of your service provider.
The model MPAA bill accomplishes this by making it a crime to possess a device
to "receive ... transmit, [or] re-transmit" any communication service without
the "express authorization" of the communication service provider. The various
pending state bills include similar language.
This provision would make you a criminal for simply connecting a TV, PC, TiVo or
VCR (all of which can "receive" communication services) to the cable TV line in
your living room without your cable company's permission. It could also make
you a criminal for connecting a Wi-Fi wireless gateway (which can "retransmit"
Internet traffic) to your DSL or cable modem line without the permission of
your ISP. The shift proposed by these bills is radical: all technology that is
not expressly permitted becomes forbidden. This would give communication
service providers unprecedented control over the home entertainment and the
technology marketplace. For example, your broadband ISP could force you to use
only certain brands of computers, or force you to pay extra if you wanted to
connect more than one computer to your DSL line. Cable and satellite TV
services could forbid you from using a TiVo, or could charge you extra to
connect a VCR to your TV." Emphasis Mine
Link
Via Boing Boing
Wrestling Match Name of the Day
"No Rope Barbwire Explosive Electrified Land Mine Double Hell Death Match."
Mon-Apr 14 2003
The Lie of Liberation
"Ah, but still the celebratory chants come. We have freed Iraq from its brutal
dictator, one who was zero threat to our monster superpower country! And we did
so by mutilating and killing countless thousands of Iraqi people, often
ruthlessly , soldiers and citizens, women and children, so many bodies the
local hospitals stopped counting, thousands more than were ever killed in 9/11,
though there remains absolutely no connection between this war and 9/11, none
whatsoever! Yay! Don't you feel proud?
And what, exactly, have we the American people won? What are the spoils of our
victory? Let's look: A gutted U.S. economy, a record budget deficit, decimated
civil liberties (the GOP now wants to make the draconian USA Patriot Act
permanent ), one of the most secretive and ruthless and warmongering
administrations in 50 years and the outright derision and bitter resentment of
much of the civilized world, of nearly every one of our former allies.
Oh, and a bonus: the horrific, irrevocable reputation that we are now a
power-mad rogue superpower that will attack anyone, for any reason, on the
hollowest of bogus pretenses. Righteous!"
Link
Via Random Walks
I Like Quotes
"We are accustomed to think of ourselves as an emancipated people; we say we
are democratic, liberty-loving, free of prejudice and hatred. This is the
melting pot, the seal of a great human experiment. Beautiful words, full of
noble, idealistic sentiment. Actually we are a vulgar, pushing mob whose
passions are easily mobilized by demagogues, newspaper men, religious quacks,
agitators and such like. To call this a society of free peoples is blasphemous.
What have we to offer the world beside the superabundant loot which we
recklessly plunder from the earth under the maniacal delusion that this insane
activity represents progress and enlightenment? The land of opportunity has
become the land of senseless sweat and struggle. The goal of all of our
striving has long been forgotten. We no longer wish to succor the oppressed and
homeless... The world meanwhile looks to us with a desperation such as it has
never known before." Henry Miller, The Air-Conditioned Nightmare.
Via Geegaw.com
Sun-Apr 13 2003
A partial list of potential future wars
"Even within the Middle East and South Asia, Iraq is far from being the only
country to develop weapons of mass destruction (nor is it the only country to
use them). According to Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East,
a 2002 report by Anthony H. Cordesman, Senior Fellow at the
Center for Strategic and International Studies in
Washington <www.csis.org>, Middle Eastern and South Asian countries
with weapons of mass destruction, other than Iraq, include: Egypt (chemical),
Iran (chemical, biological, developing nuclear), Israel (chemical, biological,
nuclear), Libya (chemical), Syria (chemical, biological), Pakistan (chemical,
biological, nuclear) and India (chemical, biological, nuclear). In addition to
Iraq, Egypt, Iran, and Libya have all reportedly used chemical weapons against
neighboring countries."
Via Monthly Review
Sat-Apr 12 2003
Measure twice. cut once
I find all the reports of the differences between Bush and Blair's idea
of the role of the U.N. in a post-war Iraq puzzling. Didn't anyone think
to bring up what Britain and the U.S. were going to do once they'd defeated
the Iraqi military before the invasion? Blair agreed to invade and
occupy Iraq with us without knowing what the exit strategy was?
I was wondering...
If and when Dubya loses (or fails to steal) the next presidential election,
can I do some looting? I promise to lay off the arson.
Tue-Apr 08 2003
Teeny Tiny
Miniature fake food for doll houses.
Link
Tue-Apr 01 2003
I feel so much more secure
"Mike is a U.S. citizen, is held without being charged with any crime;
Mike is being held in solitary confinement, with limited access to his
lawyers and wife, and no access to his children;
Mike is being held as a material witness, but he has not been interrogated
by the federal authorities;
Mike has been a U.S. citizen and resident for 14 years. He is an
Arab-American. His wife Lisa was born and raised in Roseburg, OR, and
stepchild and children were born and raised in the Hillboro, OR, where they
live;
The warrants and subpoenas in Mike's case are all secret, sealed by the
court at the U.S. government's request;
Mike has a job, a home, a family, and deep roots in his community.
Historically, "material witness" arrests were solely for grand-jury or trial
witnesses who were either a "flight risk" or represented a "danger" to the
community. The U.S. has held other middle-eastern men for as long as 15
months without charge as "material witnesses""
Link
Via Metafilter
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