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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (249521)	9/5/2005 11:13:17 AM
From: combjelly	Respond to of 1574800

"Killed by Contempt" Pretty much sums it up. And it does explain things. Incompetence by design.

To: Road Walker who wrote (249521)	9/5/2005 1:26:49 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574800

Viewpoint: Has Katrina saved US media? By Matt Wells BBC News, Los Angeles As President Bush scurries back to the Gulf Coast, it is clear that this is the greatest challenge to politics-as-usual in America since the fall of Richard Nixon in the 1970s. Then as now, good reporting lies at the heart of what is changing. But unlike Watergate, "Katrinagate" was public service journalism ruthlessly exposing the truth on a live and continuous basis. Instead of secretive "Deep Throat" meetings in car-parks, cameras captured the immediate reality of what was happening at the New Orleans Convention Center, making a mockery of the stalling and excuses being put forward by those in power. Amidst the horror, American broadcast journalism just might have grown its spine back, thanks to Katrina. National politics reporters and anchors here come largely from the same race and class as the people they are supposed to be holding to account. They live in the same suburbs, go to the same parties, and they are in debt to the same huge business interests. Giant corporations own the networks, and Washington politicians rely on them and their executives to fund their re-election campaigns across the 50 states. It is a perfect recipe for a timid and self-censoring journalistic culture that is no match for the masterfully aggressive spin-surgeons of the Bush administration. 'Lies or ignorance' But last week the complacency stopped, and the moral indignation against inadequate government began to flow, from slick anchors who spend most of their time glued to desks in New York and Washington. Images of the military in a US city have shocked many Americans The most spectacular example came last Friday night on Fox News, the cable network that has become the darling of the Republican heartland. This highly successful Murdoch-owned station sets itself up in opposition to the "mainstream liberal media elite". But with the sick and the dying forced to sit in their own excrement behind him in New Orleans, its early-evening anchor Shepard Smith declared civil war against the studio-driven notion that the biggest problem was still stopping the looters. On other networks like NBC, CNN and ABC it was the authority figures, who are so used to an easy ride at press conferences, that felt the full force of reporters finally determined to ditch the deference. As the heads of the Homeland Security department and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) appeared for network interviews, their defensive remarks about where aid was arriving to, and when, were exposed immediately as either downright lies or breath-taking ignorance. And you did not need a degree in journalism to know it either. Just watching TV for the previous few hours would have sufficed. Iraq concern When the back-slapping president told the Fema boss on Friday morning that he was doing "a heck of a job" and spent most of his first live news conference in the stricken area praising all the politicians and chiefs who had failed so clearly, it beggared belief. The president looked affronted when a reporter covering his Mississippi walkabout had the temerity to suggest that having a third of the National Guard from the affected states on duty in Iraq might be a factor. Thousands were forced to wait days for food and shelter It is something I suspect he is going to have to get used to from now on: the list of follow-up questions is too long to ignore or bury. And it is not only on TV and radio where the gloves have come off. The most artful supporter of the administration on the staff of the New York Times, columnist David Brooks, has also had enough. He and others are calling the debacle the "anti 9-11": "The first rule of the social fabric - that in times of crisis you protect the vulnerable - was trampled," he wrote on Sunday. "Leaving the poor in New Orleans was the moral equivalent of leaving the injured on the battlefield." Media emboldened It is way too early to tell whether this really will become "Katrinagate" for President Bush, but how he and his huge retinue of politically-appointed bureaucrats react in the weeks ahead will be decisive. Government has been thrown into disrepute, and many Americans have realised, for the first time, that the collapsed, rotten flood defences of New Orleans are a symbol of failed infrastructure across the nation. Blaming the state and city officials, as the president is already trying to do over Katrina, will not wash. Beyond the immediate challenge of re-housing the evacuees and getting 200,000-plus children into new schools, there will have to be a Katrina Commission, that a newly-emboldened media will scrutinise obsessively. The dithering and incompetence that will be exposed will not spare the commander-in-chief, or the sunny, faith-based propaganda that he was still spouting as he left New Orleans airport last Friday, saying it was all going to turn out fine. People were still trapped, hungry and dying on his watch, less than a mile away. Black America will not forget the government failures, nor will the Gulf Coast region. Tens of thousands of voters whose lives have been so devastated will cast their mid-term ballots in Texas next year - the president's adopted home state. The final word belongs to the historic newspaper at the centre of the hurricane - The New Orleans Times-Picayune. At the weekend, this now-homeless institution published an open letter: "We're angry, Mr President, and we'll be angry long after our beloved city and surrounding parishes have been pumped dry. "Our people deserved rescuing. Many who could have been, were not. That's to the government's shame." news.bbc.co.uk

To: Road Walker who wrote (249521)	9/5/2005 4:08:46 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574800

The U.S. Air Force's senior officer, Gen. John Jumper, stated U.S. warplanes would remain in Iraq to fight resistance forces and protect the American-installed regime "more or less indefinitely." Jumper's bombshell went largely unnoticed due to Hurricane Katrina. Gen. Jumper let the cat out of the bag. While President George Bush hints at eventual troop withdrawals, the Pentagon is busy building four major, permanent air bases in Iraq that will require heavy infantry protection. *************************************************** Sun, September 4, 2005 U.S. the new Saddam** By ERIC MARGOLIS The most important news from Iraq last week was not the much ballyhooed constitutional pact by Shias and Kurds, nor the tragic stampede deaths of nearly 1,000 pilgrims in Baghdad. The U.S. Air Force's senior officer, Gen. John Jumper, stated U.S. warplanes would remain in Iraq to fight resistance forces and protect the American-installed regime "more or less indefinitely." Jumper's bombshell went largely unnoticed due to Hurricane Katrina. Gen. Jumper let the cat out of the bag. While President George Bush hints at eventual troop withdrawals, the Pentagon is busy building four major, permanent air bases in Iraq that will require heavy infantry protection. Jumper's revelation confirms what this column has long said: The Pentagon plans to copy Imperial Britain's method of ruling oil-rich Iraq. In the 1920s, the British cobbled together Iraq from three disparate Ottoman provinces to control newly-found oil fields in Kurdistan and along the Iranian border. London installed a puppet king and built an army of sepoy (native) troops to keep order and put down minor uprisings. Government minister Winston Churchill authorized use of poisonous mustard gas against Kurdish tribesmen in Iraq and Pushtuns in Afghanistan (today's Taliban). The RAF crushed all revolts. It seems this is what Jumper has in mind. Mobile U.S. ground intervention forces will remain at the four major "Fort Apache" bases guarding Iraq's major oil fields. These bases will be "ceded" to the U.S. by a compliant Iraqi regime. The U.S. Air Force will police the Pax Americana with its precision-guided munitions and armed drones. The USAF has developed an extremely effective new technique of wide area control. Small numbers of strike aircraft are kept in the air around the clock. When U.S. ground forces come under attack or foes are sighted, these aircraft deliver precision-guided bombs. This tactic has led Iraqi resistance fighters to favour roadside bombs over ambushes against U.S. convoys. The USAF uses the same combat air patrol tactic in Afghanistan, with even more success. The U.S. is also developing three major air bases in Pakistan, and others across Central Asia, to support its plans to dominate the region's oil and gas reserves. While the USAF is settling into West Asia, the mess in Iraq continues to worsen. Last week's so-called "constitutional deal" was the long-predicted, U.S.-crafted pact between Shias and Kurds, essentially giving them Iraq's oil and virtual independence. The proposed constitution assures American big business access to Iraq's oil riches and markets. The furious but powerless Sunnis were left in the lurch. Sunnis will at least have the chance to vote on it in a Oct. 15 referendum, but many fear it will be rigged. The U.S. reportedly offered the 15 Sunni delegates $5 million each to vote for the constitution -- but was turned down. No mention was made that a U.S.-guided constitution for Iraq would violate the Geneva Conventions. Chinese Taoists say you become what you hate. In a zesty irony, the U.S. now finds itself in a similar position as demonized Saddam Hussein. Saddam had to use his Sunni-dominated army to hold Iraq together by fighting Kurdish and Shia rebels. His brutal police jailed tens of thousands and routinely used torture. Today, Iraq's new ruler, the U.S., is battling Sunni insurgents, ("al-Qaida terrorists," in the latest Pentagon doublespeak), rebuilding Saddam's dreaded secret police, holding 15,000 prisoners and torturing captives, as the Abu Ghraib outrage showed. Much of the Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama National Guard were in Iraq last week week instead of at home. Meanwhile, the Kurds are de facto independent, the Shia are playing footsie with Iran, and large parts of Iraq resemble the storm-ravaged U.S. Gulf Coast -- or vice versa. torontosun.com

To: Road Walker who wrote (249521)	9/8/2005 3:00:15 PM
From: paret	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1574800

Paul Krugman: (a) Deliberate Liar? or (b) Incompetent?

To: Road Walker who wrote (249521)	9/8/2005 3:01:38 PM
From: paret	Respond to of 1574800

Fact-checking at the Times remains an unpracticed art, leaving people like Krugman free to fabricate “the news.” How fact-free and fact-resistant are the regular contributors on the op-ed page of the most prominent newspaper in America? Read Powerline’s dissection of Paul Krugman’s claim that the U.S.S. Bataan, though stationed in the Gulf and ready to come to the victims’ assistance, remained an unused resource during the disaster, because, Krugman avers, of the “lethal ineptitude” of federal officials. Powerline simply went to Google and got the facts, accessible to anyone with an Internet connection and ten minutes to spare, on the Bataan’s very substantial involvement in Gulf disaster relief.