Taiwan’s opposition Nationalist Party won an overwhelming victory in island-wide municipal elections Saturday, putting it in position to push its agenda of reunification with China during the 2008 presidential campaign.

This is, to put it mildly, earth-shaking news. Or, at least, it will shake Asia. Factor this in with the post below, and it appears Bush foreign policy is failing miserably - and that’s good news for the planet. Countries should have the right of self-determination, free from US foreign policy machinations. It appears Taiwan and Venezuela are doing just that, determining what they want to do and where they want to go.

No Comments »

Parties allied to President Hugo Chavez say they have won all 167 seats in the country’s parliament, after elections boycotted by the opposition.

No Comments »

Private security contractors have been involved in scores of shootings in Iraq, but none have been prosecuted despite findings in at least one fatal case that the men had not followed proper procedures, according to interviews and documents obtained by The Times.

Let’s call them what they are, mercenaries. Thugs with guns available to the highest bidder.

Instead, security contractors suspected of reckless behavior are sent home, sometimes with the knowledge of U.S. officials, raising questions about accountability and stirring fierce resentment among Iraqis.

The contractors function in a legal gray area. Under an order issued by the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority that administered Iraq until June 2004, contractors suspected of wrongdoing are to be prosecuted in their home countries.

Well isn’t that a cosy little arrangement. A hired gun murders an innocent Iraqi  and Iraq can’t prosecuted - and the chances of prosecution once returned to the States are slim and none.

The Defense Department has denied a Times request to provide the names of the private security contractors in the reports and has yet to release an untold number of additional reports. The Times has filed a federal lawsuit seeking the release of all such reports and security company identities.

Good. I bet the awarding of contracts is a rat’s nest of corruption and kickbacks too.

4 Comments »

From the Sunday L.A. Times 

Governor, let Tookie live

He’s a murderer. He should die.

Our real heroes don’t kill black kids

A pootbutt’s scary life in outer space L.A.

A stupid waste

It’s foolish to execute a man who represents a real opportunity to break the cycle of gang violence.

That’s my view too. It’s like Alcoholics Anonymous. Sometimes the only person who can drag someone back from the brink of destruction is someone who’s been there. Why? They speak the language, they know the territory. They can connect when no one else can. A gangbanger won’t listen to a middle-aged Anglo telling them the gang life can destroy their life. But they will listen when the founder of the Crips says it.
 
If Tookie’s sentence is commuted, lives will be saved.

1 Comment »

CIA operated 400-plus secret flights in Germany: report  

The German government reportedly has a list of at least 437 flights operated by the US Central Intelligence Agency in German airspace.

These would be plane flights carrying prisoners to be deposited in East European prisons and elsewhere presumably to be tortured and abused by other than US citizens so Dubya et al can pretend they aren’t involved. Sickening, eh?

The US response?

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will inflame the transatlantic row over America’s alleged torture of terror suspects in secret jails by telling Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and other European officials to ‘back off’.

And if Germany refuses to back off, Condi, what will you do, have Der Spiegel bombed? Scream that it’s permissible for the US to torture but not for anyone else, and that since the US supports freedom and openess that criticism of the US will not be tolerated? Well, I’m thinking hardly anyone except Blair believes a word the US says any more, especially when they do morally indefensible things like defend their right to torture. 

Blair Watch has more, especially on how European governments oppose the flights while the British government, as usual, is being Bush’s poodle. 

From the BBC

CIA ‘running secret terror jails’

The CIA is running a network of secret prison facilities around the world to hold high-profile terror suspects, according to a US newspaper report.

Such prisons are, or have been, located in Eastern Europe, Afghanistan and Thailand, the Washington Post claims.

No Comments »

A key U.S. Senator says the military bought advertisements in Iraqi newspapers to promote the U.S.-led coalition’s work in Iraq, but that some had been published without the disclaimer that they had been funded by the military.

So THAT’s what happened. The US military wasn’t doing something tacky like buying stories in Iraq newspapers, they were buying *advertisements*, But (slapping forehead) someone forgot to print that in the newspaper.

This ranks up there with "The dog ate my homework" and "It was a bookkeeping error" in the annals of silly excuses no one believes.

No Comments »

The plot is over the top and ever-expanding. The cast of characters is so convoluted you’ll need a map, a calculator and a wall chart to keep up.

Lobbyists. Indian tribes. Casinos. Religious conservatives. Antitax crusaders. Tens of millions of dollars. Dubiously timed legislative actions. Speculation about widespread political corruption. Suspect charities and incriminating e-mails. Tentacles to the White House and the campaign coffers of more than 100 former and current members of Congress. Cameos in the Pacific, West Africa, Scotland and Israel. The mob and a gangland murder in South Florida. A congressional investigation led by a senator with an eye on the presidency. And teams of federal prosecutors going after the goods.

It is a real-life intrigue known as the Jack Abramoff affair.

This story is getting huge traction now, with more and more coverage every day. Much as the craven and complicit in Congress would like to bury it, they no longer can. The whole country is watching. I wonder, who will be the first to start singing to save themselves, and how many members of Congress will eventually be indicted? Quite a few, from what I’ve been reading. Good. The corruption is widespread and engulfs both parties.

No Comments »

It’s public and irrevocable now. The podfathers, Adam Curry and Dave Winer, have seriously gone their separate ways. The split at root may have been over money, but the stress lines have been there for months. It was compunded by Winer wanting podcasting to stay completely uncommercial and Curry  jumping in and starting podcasting businesses. Plus, as always, personalities can get in the way.

My take: Judging from watching Winer at Gnomedex 5.0,  he’s a brilliant programmer and conceptualizer and might well be  difficult to work with. And Curry has never said he wasn’t looking to make money from podcasting, in fact he’s been quite upfront about it.

IMO, The split was inevitable and had been coming for months.

As a sidebar to this kerfuffle, Curry recently edited his entry the podcasting entry on Wikipedia as he thought it was biased. Some said, wow, he’s so vain. Well, maybe not. I track some political entries on Wikipedia, and when obvious ax-to-grind biases appear, I try to reverse them. Wikipedia is meant to be unbiased and factual. Sometimes the entries are anything but. The communal editing process does eventually eliminate much of this, but I’ve seen more than a few serious editorial slants in supposedly unbiased Wikipedia entries.

Update: a comment here suggests Curry did slant it his way. This still highlights the Wikipedia problem, that open publishing with no internal controls can lead to slanting the articles - which will make a good topic for a future post.  

Tags: Adam Curry Dave Winer

1 Comment »