The King of Pointland

Haiti

Does anyone remember Haiti? An article in today's New York Times provides an update on its current state of affairs, and some new findings on the role the U.S. played in getting it to where it is today.

Incidentally, reporters Walt Bogdanich and Jenny Nordberg have done a great injustice to Otto J. Reich, the State Department's former assistant secretary of state for Latin American affairs. I will explain. Much of the Times' article centers on complaints from former U.S. Ambassador to Haiti Dean Curran that Stanley Lucas, the International Republican Institute's point man in Haiti, was thwarting official U.S. policy in the run-up to the ouster of Haiti's then-president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. In researching the story, the reporters contacted Reich, the ambassador's supervisor at the time, who denied that Curran had ever brought the matter to his attention:

"He never expressed any problems with Stanley Lucas to me, and I was his boss," Mr. Reich said. Asked why his name showed up on cables as having received Mr. Curran's complaints, and why Mr. Curran's cables detailed discussions with him, Mr. Reich replied: "I have absolutely no recollection of that. I'm not questioning it, I just have no recollection of that."

Why didn't the reporter who interviewed Reich tell him they had the cables before he opened his mouth? It would have saved him the trouble of lying to them.

Plus Ungood

Sometimes you're too sick and/or tired to cook. Last night was one of those times, and, it seemed, an opportunity to introduce Sandra to an authentically rude Israeli falafel experience at Pita Plus. When we arrived, though, the restaurant was dark! It wasn't the Sabbath, or any other holiday. It wasn't late, either. There were no signs posted (or hours, for that matter). What was going on? Perhaps, we reasoned, they had closed for the semester break and would open next week, a few days after the official start of classes.

As it turns out, though, they have gone out of business. That's too bad. They may have been rude (not always, though!), and a little pricey, but for about $6 or $7 dollars you could get a falafel on lafah bread that would keep you full for a day or two.

! להתראות

David Ellis: RIP

David Eillis, a University of Maryland student and DJ at WMUC, died yesterday in a fire in his Knox Box basement apartment.

According to the Post:

The apartment building's owners, who did not respond yesterday to requests for interviews, were cited by the city for not complying with new regulations to enlarge the unit's windows, Brady said. The intent of the regulations is to provide a second exit in the event of a fire, he said.

It's one thing to talk abstractly of the benefits of regulation, but it's important to remember that people's lives sometimes depend on them.

The Split Insurgency

Yesterday's New York Times containes one of the best articles I've seen so far on the Al Qaeda / Non-Al Qaeda divide within the Iraqi insurgency:

Disagreements over Al Qaeda's bloody tactics between local insurgents and Al Qaeda's fighters are as old as the war. Abu Lil, who fought in Taji in October, for example, claimed to have met with Qaeda fighters in late 2003. The militant group had just claimed responsibility for a double car bombing in Baghdad, and insurgents from the 20th Revolutionary Brigade, a nationalist group that Abu Lil belonged to at that time, were angry about the high civilian death toll.

Abu Lil, an elfin man with a cotton scarf tied around his head, talked in detail about the meeting as he sat on a couch in a house in Baghdad. The meeting was held in a farmhouse in Mosul, he said. About 25 men from Al Qaeda attended. Several appeared to be from Pakistan. Some spoke Arabic so poorly that they had to speak through a translator.

The discussion dragged on for seven hours, he said, but did not go well. The local insurgents demanded that the foreigners from Al Qaeda leave Iraq.

"They said, 'Jihad needs its victims,' " Abu Lil said. " 'Iraqis should be willing to pay the price.' "

"We said, 'It's very expensive.' "

The meeting ended abruptly, and Abu Lil and his associates walked out, feeling powerless and angry.

"I wished I had a nuclear bomb to attack them," he said. "We told them, 'You are not Iraqis. Who gave you the power to do this?' "

Elsewhere in the article, though:

American and Iraqi officials believe that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia is largely made up of Iraqis, with its highest leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian. Even so, among Iraqis, the group is still perceived as a largely foreign force.

Read the rest if you have time.

Your Potential, Our Passion (To Quash It) II

In case you missed it, more profit maximizing behavior from Microsoft:

BEIJING, Jan. 5 - Microsoft has shut the blog site of a well-known Chinese blogger who uses its MSN online service in China after he discussed a high-profile newspaper strike that broke out here one week ago.

The decision is the latest in a series of measures in which some of America's biggest technology companies have cooperated with the Chinese authorities to censor Web sites and curb dissent or free speech online as they seek access to China's booming Internet marketplace.

This is nothing new. When China's patriots finally overthrow their government, I hope they remember who helped squash their freedom.

The Silent Menace

Trees are slowly taking over the capital of the American Empire. When will we finally do something about this infestation?

During the last sixty years, Human Beings have not fared as well:

"In May 1941 visitors sat among the columns, waiting for the doors to open. Sixty years later, the columned porch awaits a new generation of visitors." Won't someone visit the columned porch? Please?

A J-j-j-joke?

National Palestine Radio

From time to time one hears Israel's right-wing supporters refer to National Public Radio as "National Palestinian Radio" or "National Palestine Radio," in protest of NPR's alleged pro-Palestinian bias. For The New Republic editor-in-chief Martin Peretz, Ariel Sharon's recent stroke provides the latest opportunity to trot out the slur:

Here's how the Associated Press reported Middle East coverage of the grave stroke affecting Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon: "A politician and general widely despised among Arabs, Sharon received straightforward news coverage in most Arab papers and television services." And, from what I could gather, that's exactly the way it was. But straightforward is not how National Public Radio (NPR), sometimes called National Palestine Radio, covered the latest news from Israel. Ken Tomlinson was not wrong on this point at least. (He wasn't wrong on others either.) NPR's Jerusalem correspondent, the relentless Linda Gradstein--relentless in her animus to Israel, that is--had two guests speaking about Sharon. One was Hanan Ashrawi, the shrill and very marginal Christian Arab English professor from Ramallah, who spoke as if Sharon and his successor, Ehud Olmert, had not radically shifted Israeli policies about the territories. And, instead of what one might think would have been from the "other side," at least in elementary fairness, NPR presented the misanthropic left-wing Israeli novelist David Grossman sputtering the bile that only a very few still feel for Sharon in Israel. Grossman is a very isolated man in his own country. The great Israeli center--from the Labor left to the Likud center--had no representation on Gradstein's program. But it rarely does. Of course, haughty NPR doesn't deign to respond to its critics. But you can read what its critics say: www.camera.org. Often quite devastating.

To be fair, I can see how some might be outraged by such one-sided reporting. At the very least, Linda Gradstein had an obligation to present competing points of view if she intended to include opinion in her story. This interview, with two guests critical of Sharon, is hardly the kind of balanced coverage NPR listeners deserve. And I would be outraged, too, if it weren't for one important detail: Gradstein's biased story does not exist.

Peretz's attack on NPR combines fiction with omission. Here is my posted comment (minus the extraneous apostrophes):

Mr. Peretz,

You don't cite the NPR program that featured the Linda Gradstein piece. Last evening's (1-4-06) All Things Considered contains one Linda Gradstein piece [1], with no Ashrawi or Grossman interview, as well as a Steve Inskeep interview with Jersalem Post editor-in-chief David Horovitz. [2]

This morning's (1-5-06) Morning Edition features five items on Sharon: a short (41 second) news item [3]; a Steve Inskeep interview with David Grossman [4]; a Linda Gradstein piece with quotes from deputy prime minsiter Ehud Olmert, justice minister Tzipi Livni, deputy Palestinian prime minister Nabil Shath (quoted indirectly), and Palestinian legistlator Hanan Ashrawi [5]; a Steve Inskeep interview with "Shibley Telhami, professor for peace and development at the University of Maryland, and Hirsh Goodman, political columnist for The Jerusalem Report" [6]; and a Steve Inskeep interview with "Gerald Steinberg, professor of political studies at Bar Ilan University" [7].

-David Eisner

[1] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5126775
[2] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5127745
[3] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5127929
[4] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5127935
[5] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5127953
[6] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5127956
[7] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5128109

Will Mr. Peretz deign to respond? I doubt it.

All Over Again

At the end of his article in today's Washington Post, Walter Pincus provides some interesting historical perspective on the warrantless domestic surveillance scandal:

Today's controversy over the domestic NSA intercepts echoes events of more than three decades ago. Beginning in the late 1960s, the NSA was asked initially by the Johnson White House and later by the Army, the Secret Service, and the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs to intercept messages to or from the United States. Members of Congress were not informed of the program, code-named Minaret in one phase.

The initial purpose was to "help determine the existence of foreign influence" on "civil disturbances occurring throughout the nation," threats to the president and other issues, Gen. Lew Allen Jr., then director of NSA, told a Select Senate Committee headed by then-Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) in 1975.

Allen, in comments similar to recent Bush administration statements, said collecting communications involving American citizens was approved legally, by two attorneys general. He also said that the Minaret intercepts discovered "a major foreign terrorist act planned in a large city" and prevented "an assassination attempt on a prominent U.S. figure abroad."

Overall, Allen said that 1,200 Americans citizens' calls were intercepted over six years, and that about 1,900 reports were issued in three areas of terrorism. As the Church hearings later showed, the Army expanded the NSA collection and had units around the country gather names and license plates of those attending antiwar rallies and demonstrations. That, in turn, led to creation of files on these individuals within Army intelligence units. At one point a Senate Judiciary subcommittee showed the Army had amassed about 18,000 names. In response, Congress in 1978 passed the Foreign Intelligence Security Act, which limited NSA interception of calls from overseas to U.S. citizens or those involving American citizens traveling abroad.

Read the rest of the article to see some of the current parallels.