AlterNet: MediaCulture: Media Mangles Iraq Vote: "Then, in Friday's paper, Burns and Filkins noted that one election commision official was 'evasive about the turnout, implying it might end up significantly lower than the initial estimate.' They quoted this official, Safwat Radhid, exclaiming: 'Only God Almighty knows the final turnout now.' They revealed that the announcement of a turnout number, expected to be released this weekend, has been put off for a week, due to the 'complex' tabulation system."

(Via AlterNet.)

IRAQ THE MODEL: " Doubt reigns over the outcome of Syrian elections; Outside observers question legitimacy of Bashar Assad's 99% victory over (now presumed missing) opponent.

Results from Monday's Syrian elections were announced today, with a clear mandate handed to Bashar Assad, with his ruling Ba'ath party sweeping the elections with a staggering 95% of the votes.

However, opposition parties such as the Communist Party and the Liberal Syrian Nationalist Party voiced complaints that their election results of negative 5 and 3 percent respectively were products of an unfair and rigged election process.

The head of the Ba'ath party regional politburo promised to immediately look into allegations of fraud and "resolutely and mercilessly deal with complaints so that they never ever happen again...ever."! "

(Via Iraq The Model.)

No US pullout soon, Iraqi leaders say: "BAGHDAD -- Iraq's interim president and defense minister said yesterday that withdrawing US troops from Iraq is out of the question for the time being, in a stark reminder of the danger posed by the Iraqi insurgency even after Sunday's election."

(Via Boston Globe -- World News.)

Report: Detainee punching on video: "SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- Videotapes of riot squads subduing troublesome terror suspects at the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay show the guards punching some detainees, tying one to a gurney for questioning, and forcing a dozen to strip from the waist down, according to a secret report. One squad was all female, traumatizing some Muslim prisoners."

(Via Boston Globe -- World News.)

Did We Say that UF6 Was From North Korea?: "Yeah, or that Libyan UF6 could be from Pakistan."

...

"Chris Nelson nailed this last night when he pointedly noted that the 'articles reflect Administration efforts to pump up two things: that NK has another option for fissile material production (maybe), and that they are prepared to sell stuff they can produce (again, UF6, not HEU).'"

(Via ArmsControlWonk.com.)

AlterNet: Rights and Liberties: Rice and the New Black Paradigm: "Black history month is upon us, and it already feels like it weighs a ton. I've never entirely embraced the notion of relegating the observance to February – as every black comic has pointed out, it's the shortest month of the year – because it always feels less like a tribute than more segregation, a perennial substitute for permanently incorporating black history into the larger American narrative set forth in textbooks, daily papers and such. But the last decade of black history has been so dubious, so double-edged and so increasingly alien to what I've always thought of as racial and social progress, I'd almost be willing to skip the whole thing in '05. And I'd pass for one reason in particular: Condoleezza Rice."

(Via AlterNet.)

The Online Beat: "But the Senate is no longer a forum for honest debate. So it was always certain that the Republican majority would muster the votes to confirm another of President Bush's Cabinet picks. That they did on Thursday.

But what was remarkable was that six members of what is supposed to be an opposition party joined with the Republicans to rubber stamp a nominee whose unapologetic disregard for the rule of law should have disqualified him from service as a town constable."

(Via The Nation Weblogs.)

Feb 4, 2005: Not Weak and Not Vulnerable: " 'Because a society is measured by how it treats the weak and vulnerable, we must…help people overcome disabilities.'

People with disabilities are not weak, we are not vulnerable, and we do not want to overcome our disabilities. We live productive lives and we deserve a President who understands that and doesn't denigrate us."

(Via DNC: Kicking Ass.)

Divided Senate Confirms Gonzales (washingtonpost.com): "The Senate voted 60 to 36 yesterday to confirm Alberto R. Gonzales as attorney general, but only a handful of Democrats backed him after days of often strident debate over his role in setting controversial interrogation policies for detainees."

(Via Google News.)

Feb 3, 2005: Like apples and oranges: "It's wrong for the President to hold up one part of a three-part retirement plan and say 'this is what Social Security should be,' when in reality Social Security is what allows federal employees to take the risks associated with the TSP in the first place. And while he may have painted it as 'voluntary,' the benefit cut needed to fund the $2 trillion needed to switch is not. With George Bush's Social Security plan, privatizing your account may be voluntary, but you're paying for it no matter what"

(Via DNC: Kicking Ass.)

AlterNet: The State Of George W. Bush: "Bush's approval ratings have been low, but in the aftermath of the Iraqi elections, he approached this speech as a conquering hero - a vindicated hero. There was, of course, no mention of Iraq's (nonexistent) weapons of mass destruction. No recognition that America's standing in the world has fallen to an all-time low. No acknowledgment that the administration had failed to plan adequately for the post-invasion period. Bush has not a bashful bone. For him, the Iraqi election was a signal (from God?): full steam ahead. He did not shy away from the freedom-is-our-mission rhetoric of his inaugural speech, which was widely criticized for being cynically unrealistic. "

(Via AlterNet.)

AlterNet: A Battle Progressives Can Win: "In tackling Social Security, Bush has set a much more difficult goal than anything he attempted in his first four years. His tax cuts were heavily skewed to the rich and his Medicare prescription-drug plan gave a bonanza to the HMOs and drug industry, but any senator or representative who voted for them could tell voters, 'I got you a tax cut,' or 'I got you a new drug benefit.' A Bush plan that cuts Social Security benefits in order to finance risky speculation in the stock market %u2013 while adding $2 trillion to the national debt over 10 years %u2013 would require a much more tortured explanation by any senator or representative foolhardy enough to vote for it.

The whole effort to block Bush will stand or fall on massive public education. That's because the more people learn about privatization, the worse it looks. In Bush's first term, Republicans were solidly united behind their president while Democrats were divided. Now, congressional Republicans are worried and splintered, uncertain whether walking the privatization plank will violate their conservative principles or undermine their chances for re-election. And so far, Democrats are pretty unified."

(Via AlterNet.)

Defense Tech: SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL: "But the sight of so many Iraqis risking their lives to vote yesterday, that was beyond inspirational. And I have to give the President and his team credit here. They had the collective stones to stick with these elections -- even when seizures of violence made the plan look like fantasy. And they had foresight to predict the electrifying power of the ballot in Iraq -- no matter how confused, how rushed, or how scary the election may have been.

In Iraqis, the White House saw a group who couldn't wait to grab control of their lives, after so many years without leverage at all. The President's people were right. And, as a result, something beautiful happened on Sunday."

(Via a DefenseTech.)

WhirledView: North Korea Sold Uranium Hexafluoride to Libya? The Evidence: "If the uranium hexafluoride was made from uranium recovered from reprocessing, then the U-234 signal would be scrambled by enrichment for use in reactor fuel or by nuclear processes in the reactor. So comparing U-234 with natural samples would make no sense, particularly if no North Korean samples were available. For the U-234 test to work, the uranium would have to be natural, not processed through a reactor.

The implications of the two are different, too. No enrichment apparatus is necessary to produce uranium hexafluoride from uranium ore, just a chemical processing plant. Plutonium traces in the uranium hexafluoride imply (as the Washington Post says) that North Korea has done reprocessing and may have done enrichment to produce the reactor fuel.

Another possibility for the origin of the uranium hexafluoride is that it could have come from the Soviet Union some long time ago. Soviet uranium processing usually combined ores and concentrates from many geographic sources, so the U-234 test would be less diagnostic and might well not fit any natural samples."

(Via ArmsControlWonk.com.)

IRAQ THE MODEL: " I strongly believe that terrorists are cowards but the cowardice you're going to see in this story is just exceptional.
The suicide attack that was performed on an election center in one of Baghdad's districts (Baghdad Al-Jadeedah) last Sunday was performed using a kidnapped 'Down Syndrome' patient.
Eye witnesses said (and I'm quoting one of my colleagues; a dentist who lives there) 'the poor victim was so scared when ordered to walk to the searching point and began to walk back to the terrorists. In response the criminals pressed the button and blew up the poor victim almost half way between their position and the voting center's entrance'."

(Via Iraq The Model.)

Muslim American Society: "Davis, 27, admitted to stomping on the fingers and toes of a group of seven bound and hooded inmates during an episode of late-night abuse in November 2003. Other guards then undressed the prisoners and stacked them into a naked human pyramid, the news agency reports."

...

"Davis argues he and other guards roughed up prisoners at the behest of intelligence officials who wanted to extract information from the prisoners, reports Reuters.

'Basically, when the intelligence personnel, when they bring them down there, anyone that comes in there with intelligence value, they want to interrogate them and they would ask you to loosen them up,' Davis told ABC News last year."

(Via Google News.)

Boston.com / News / World / Asia / Report: N. Korea may have sold uranium: "U.S. intelligence agencies and government scientists have come up with strong evidence that North Korea sold processed uranium to Libya, apparently to assist the North African country in nuclear weapons development, an administration official said Wednesday."

...

"'It means the North Koreans have built a facility to process uranium,' Leonard S. Specter, the deputy director of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute in California, told the Times. 'And it raises the disturbing prospect that they've now made enough of it to feel comfortable selling some.'"

(Via Google News.)

Iraq Dispatches: What They're Not Telling You About the "Election": "The IECI spokesman said his previous figure of 72% was "only guessing" and "was just an estimate," which was based on "very rough, word-of mouth estimates gathered informally from the field. It will take some time for the IECI to issue accurate figures on turnout."

Referencing both figures, Ayar then added, "Percentages and numbers come only after counting and will be announced when it's over ... It's too soon to say that those were the official numbers."

But this isn't the most important misrepresentation the mainstream media committed.

What they also didn't tell you was that of those who voted, whether they be 35% or even 60% of registered voters, were not voting in support of an ongoing US occupation of their country.

In fact, they were voting for precisely the opposite reason. Every Iraqi I have spoken with who voted explained that they believe the National Assembly which will be formed soon will signal an end to the occupation.

And they expect the call for a withdrawing of foreign forces in their country to come sooner rather than later."

(Via Alternet.)

Top News Article | Reuters.com: "BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Leading Sunni clerics declared on Wednesday any government emerging from Iraq's historic election would lack legitimacy because many people had boycotted a poll they said was tainted by a U.S.-led occupation.

Iraqis defied militants' threats and flocked to the polls on Sunday in the Shi'ite south and Kurdish north, but many in the central Sunni Arab heartland -- where the 22-month-old anti-American insurgency is strongest -- stayed home.

While the Bush administration insisted the election was conducted fairly and world leaders heaped praise on Iraqi voters, Iraq's Muslim Clerics' Association railed against the country's first multi-party ballot in half a decade.

'These elections lack legitimacy because a large segment of different sects, parties and currents ... boycotted,' the Sunni religious group said in a statement as the vote count proceeded.

'This means the coming national assembly and government that will emerge will not possess the legitimacy to enable them to draft the constitution or sign security or economic agreements.'

A sense of alienation among minority Sunni Arabs, who formed the backbone of Saddam Hussein's ruling class, poses a major challenge to Iraq's new leadership, which is certain to be dominated by members of the long-oppressed Shi'ite majority."

(Via Google News.)

Moderates and Radicals by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.: "A radical says: get the troops out of Iraq now! The implicit message is: the state cannot be trusted, the troops are causing trouble rather than helping, the US never should have invaded, and almost everything you hear from the government about this war is a lie.

A moderate reformer says: yes, get the troops out, but not yet. The implicit message is: we can trust the state to make the right judgment about when to leave, for now the troops are performing a service of some value, the invasion has done some good and we should complete the job, and the state is right that it is a source of some degree of order and justice in Iraq."

(Via Lew Rockwell.)

Feb 1, 2005: Catch-22: "In today's New York Times, Paul Krugman nails the fundamental Catch-22 of the Republican Social Security privatization scheme.

In a nutshell, when privatization advocates talk about the benefits of their plans, they assume extremely rosy economic growth for the next 75 years. Unrealistically rosy growth. But if their daydreams come true, then the 'crisis' they claim Social Security is in disappears, too — the economic growth is more than enough to cover the modest problems the trust fund faces down the road.

In other words, their 'solution' only works if the 'problem' disappears."

(Via DNC: Kicking Ass.)

HB2784, Restricting Access to Abortion, Advances in House: "Please contact both your Senator and your Delegate today to voice opposition to HB2784, which would further restrict access to safe and legal reproductive health care for Virginia women."

...

"Fairfax Delegate Vivian Watts says there are dozens of other procedures done at doctors' offices that are as invasive as abortions. She says the intention of the bill, "is to significantly reduce the number of abortions by making them extremely expensive." A final House vote is expected Tuesday."

(Via Democracy for Virginia.)

HB1660: Plated Haters Win in House: "After all, what 'traditional marriage' are these people supporting? The 'traditional marriage' in Virginia under which, until 1967, interracial marriage was illegal?  In that context, celebrating 'traditional marriage' in Virginia is actually quite offensive.  It's only 'modern marriage' in Virginia that begins to approach basic fairness for all Virginians.

It was less than 50 years ago that Virginia police broke into the home of Virginia newlyweds Richard and Mildred Loving, a 'white' husband and 'Negro' bride.  They were arrested, charged under Virginia's anti-miscegenation laws, and sentenced to one year in prison.  The trial judge suspended that sentence on the condition that the newlywed Lovings not return to Virginia for 25 years. They moved to DC, and later challenged their convictions in a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court.  In the 1967 Supreme Court unanimous ruling in Loving v. Virginia that declared Virginia's anti-miscegenation laws unconstitutional, Chief Justice Warren wrote:

The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men."

(Via Democracy for Virginia.)

AlterNet: Losing Feith: "The departure by mid-2005 of the number-three man at the Defense Department, announced by the Pentagon last week, marks the latest hint that President George W. Bush is moving foreign policy in a more centrist direction.

Combined with several other personnel shifts, as well as a concerted effort to reassure the public and U.S. allies abroad that the recent messianic inaugural address did not portend any dramatic new foreign-policy departures, the resignation of Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith suggests that the administration is deliberately shedding its sharper and more-radical edges."

Let's hope, no, let's pray.

(Via AlterNet.)

Bloomberg.com: U.S.: "``It would be far easier for the government to prosecute the war on terrorism if it could imprison all suspected `enemy combatants' at Guantanamo Bay without having to acknowledge and respect any constitutional rights of detainees,'' Green wrote. That, she said, would violate ``the most basic fundamental rights for which the people of this country have fought and died for well over 200 years.''"

Well said.

(Via Google News.)

CNN.com - Freedom of what? - Jan 31, 2005: "The way many high school students see it, government censorship of newspapers may not be a bad thing, and flag burning is hardly protected free speech."

...

"Only half of the students said newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories."

(Via /.)

IraqWar: Vote For Food: "It is well known all over Iraq now that if you didn't go to vote, the government will cut your monthly food rations. EVERYONE is talking about this, and EVERYONE believes it too!!! and this is one of the main reasons of why millions of poor and destroyed Iraqis were dragged out of their homes today and sent to election centers in the middle of explosions and bullets. They don't give a damn about elections, they want food. Millions of Iraqis don't have the possibility of testing whether this rumor is true or false, this is about surviving. They are ready to put their lives in danger to go get their monthly food rations."

...

"The 'Iraqi government' is announcing confusing and wrong numbers to the public. Instead of announcing the ratio of Voters to the Eligible Voters, the numbers announced are the ratio of the Voters to the Registered Voters!!!!

For example, the number of Iraqis that registered their names in Jordan are less than 20% of the eligible voters living in Jordan, so when 90% of the registered voters go to vote, it means that less than 18% of the total number voted... 90% is not the real number that should be announced to people!!!!! "

(Via IraqWar.)

Neocon=Traitor: "The resignation of Douglas Feith is the first good news to come out of the Bush administration since the election. Everything else was scripted long ago: the appointment of obedient henchmen (and henchwomen) to key positions, budget deficits mounting as steadily as the death toll in Iraq, messianic ravings about freedom, which (if taken literally) would justify endless war—perpetual slavery for perpetual liberty, to paraphrase Harry Elmer Barnes.

Then, just one day after the bloodiest day (for Americans, that is) in Iraq, the Pentagon announces the resignation of Douglas Feith, the intelligence genius who linked Saddam with Al Quaeda and misled General Franks, the American foreign policy expert who has spent much of his active career advising and shilling for the Likud Party, the patriot who was accused of giving secrets to a foreign power (guess which one?) and whose subordinate is now under investigation for the same treason."

(Via Hard Right!.)

Jan 27, 2005: Taking away workers' rights: "The changes to the Department of Homeland Security civil service system announced yesterday by the Bush administration is the culmination of the 2002 battle over the creation of the department. Republicans removed civil service protections guaranteed under law to federal employees, questioning Democrats' patriotism when we fought to protect those workers' rights.

Now that those rights have been officially stripped from DHS employees, the Bush administration has his sights set on the rest of the workers in the federal government.

The White House will propose legislation within a month to allow all agencies to restructure their personnel systems in a similar way, said Clay Johnson III, deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget."

(Via DNC: Kicking Ass.)

Independent Media Center | www.indymedia.org | ((( i ))): "Police have brutally detained 28 peaceful human rights protestors in the Polish city of Krakow today (Wed 26.01.2005). Claims of human rights abuses against the prisoners include: throwing people into water despite the sub-freezing temperatures; kicking people in the genitals, pulling their hair (dreadlocks) in order to exert pain, throwing two women to the ground and putting their knees on the women's backs despite no violence from the side of the protestors.

It appears that the 28 people detained will all be prosecuted for having insulted Putin, under legislation which makes it illegal to offend a foreign head of state present on Polish territory."

(Via IndyMedia.)

AlterNet: War on Iraq: Poll Party: "Unlike Baghdad and other points north, where voting was plagued by violence and the doubts of Sunni Arabs about their position in society, turnout here appears to have been massive, close to 80 percent, according to preliminary estimates. Families poured out into the blockaded and peaceful streets and many proudly displayed their stained fingers - ink was used to prevent voting twice - to passersby."

(Via AlterNet.)

IRAQ THE MODEL: "The first thing we saw this morning on our way to the voting center was a convoy of the Iraqi army vehicles patrolling the street, the soldiers were cheering the people marching towards their voting centers then one of the soldiers chanted 'vote for Allawi' less than a hundred meters, the convoy stopped and the captain in charge yelled at the soldier who did that and said:

'You're a member of the military institution and you have absolutely no right to support any political entity or interfere with the people's choice. This is Iraq's army, not Allawi's'.

This was a good sign indeed and the young officer's statement was met by applause from the people on the street. The streets were completely empty except for the Iraqi and the coalition forces ' patrols, and of course kids seizing the chance to play soccer!"

(Via Iraq The Model.)

AlterNet: Rights and Liberties: The Inquisition Strikes Back: "It's hard to say which is more disgusting, the descriptions of the torture or the bone-chilling analyses of how the president of the United States gave himself the powers of an absolute military dictator. Under Military Order No. 1, which the president issued without congressional authority on November 13, 2001, George W. Bush has ordered people captured or detained from all over the world, flown to Guantánamo and tortured in a lawless zone where, the White House asserts, prisoners have no rights of any kind at all and can be kept forever at his pleasure. Despite the at-best marginal intervention of the American courts so far, there is no civilian judicial review, no due process of any kind."

...

"Some prisoners were captured in battle; many others were picked up in random sweeps for no reason at all except being in the wrong place at the wrong time. As usual in these kinds of operations, some were turned in as a result of petty revenge or as an excuse to steal their property. When asked in court to explain the criteria for detention, the government had no answer. There were no criteria, it appears. 'The government even made the ridiculous argument before the Supreme Court that the prisoners get to tell their side of the story, by being interrogated,' Ratner reports.

Ratner notes that 134 of the 147 prisoners later released from Guantánamo were guilty of absolutely nothing. Only thirteen were sent on to jail. He believes it is possible that a substantial majority of the Guantánamo prisoners had nothing to do with any kind of terrorism."

(Via AlterNet.)