07 May 2003

A330 over Europe Ive posted a lovely picture in the PhotoBlog. It's of an Airbus A330, flying at 32,000 feet. It's a big file though, so if you are on dialup its a wait - but worth it. 11:32:40 PM    Click here to add to the [] comments Bush's political use of war images is shameless Paul Krugman in the Tribune today denounces Bush's 'Top Gun' speech from the USS Abraham Lincoln and asks: Why no real investigation into September 11th? I haven't read Krugman in a while, but this is a brilliant article. Mind you, it was funny. At first the White House claimed that the dramatic tail-hook landing was necessary because the carrier was too far out at sea to use a helicopter. In fact the ship was so close to shore that, according to The Associated Press, administration officials "acknowledged positioning the massive ship to provide the best TV angle for Bush's speech, with the sea as his background instead of the San Diego coastline." I watched the speech live here on BBC News 24, I really didn't know whether to laugh or cry. The spectacle of it was laughable, as the UK journalist rightly realised, but the attitude of Bush is worse than it was on Sep 13 at the United Nations. A U.S.-based British journalist told me that he and his colleagues had laughed through the whole scene. If Tony Blair had tried such a stunt, he said, the press would have demanded to know how many hospital beds could have been provided for the cost of the jet fuel. Krugman rightly points out the separation that must be made between the military side of a State, and the political side. To mix the two is extremely dangerous. Krugman goes on: And who will ask why, if the administration is so proud of its response to Sept. 11, it has gone to such lengths to prevent a thorough, independent inquiry into what actually happened? (An independent study commission wasn't created until after the 2002 mid-term election, and it has been given little time and a ludicrously tiny budget.) This amazes me. Why so little progress? 9:54:23 PM    Click here to add to the [] comments That is a racist slur Jonathan Freedland is ever so slightly angry about Jewish conspiracy theories flying around. In today's Guardian he explains why. Tam Dalyell's outburst to Vanity Fair - in which he suggested Tony Blair was unduly influenced by a Jewish cabal - has not been ignored. American journalists covering the Dalyell story say the same comments would be a career-ender in Washington - much as Republican Trent Lott's expression of nostalgic sympathy for racial segregation recently cost him his place at the helm of the US Senate. Admittedly Dalyell does not hold leadership rank in Labour, but it seems Britain's intolerance for intolerance is not quite as advanced as America's. As it happens, George Bush's cabinet is the first in decades not to include a single Jewish member. The result is that those bent on sniffing out Jewish influence have to go to the second, third and fourth rungs of the administration to find it. Among the neocons the heavyweights are not Jewish: they are Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. So it pays to be clear, when one hears casual references to "the tiny group of men who surround the president", who they are and who they are not. Worthwhile, too, to realise that the umbrella labels don't always fit: superhawk Wolfowitz, for example, seems to harbour some un-Sharonite views. I think I agree here with Freedland. Jewish conpiracy theories are not only illogical, they are outright stupid. I came across more anti-semitism in the States than I had ever imagined could exist. I have yet to come across any in Britain. But talk of a Jewish conspiracy is just nonsense to me. What is not non-sense is a similarily coined phrase - the neo-con cabal in the White House. It does not matter whether someone is a Jew, Muslim, Christian - I don't really mind. Whether you like it or not, the top guys in the Bush administration are right wing, neo conservatives - that is the nature of Republicanism, and the US public knew exactly what they were doing when they voted them in. So what do I expect to find in a Republican administration? Exactly what I have always seen - a neocon cabal. I'm more worried that many of the people in the administration are going to gain financially from the war, and no one seems to bat an eyelid. 9:26:36 PM    Click here to add to the [] comments Missing in action: the truth about Iraqi arms Nicholas Kristof is back in the Herald Tribune today. This week he is writing on the subject of those weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The what? Weapons of mass destruction, remember, the reason we had that war a few weeks back. The war that split the international community, the war millions protested against. Weapons of mass destruction... Kristof, in his usual style, deals with this issue authoritavely. And he is cutting. There are indications that the US government souped up intelligence, leaned on spooks to change their conclusions and concealed contrary information to deceive people in America and around the world. Souped up? Concealment? Deception? Surely not, from the greatest democracy on earth? And Kristof does not stop there. Consider the now-disproved claims by Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger so it could build nuclear weapons. As Seymour Hersh noted in The New Yorker, the claims were based on documents that had been forged so amateurishly that they should never have been taken seriously. Did Colin Powell knowingly lie to the Security Council of the United Nations? Would he deceive the American public? I would say not given his autobiography, but who knows, perhaps he was deceived himself. Perhaps as a trade off he will get the prisoners in Guantanamo released. "The intelligence that our officials were given regarding weapons of mass destruction was either defective or manipulated," said Senator Jeff Bingaman   Are the American not just a tiny bit angry about this? Is the US media asleep besides Mr. Kristof? Should not the US public be looking for people's heads on plates?   Kristof sums up.   Something is again rotten in the state of Spookdom.   Sadly, it seems, he is right. 8:55:00 PM    Click here to add to the [] comments

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