...not as "daily" as the name suggests...
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| The Daily Oh Really ...not as "daily" as the name suggests... |
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Saturday, April 05, 2003 The elephant stomping very quietly on the... Reported in the Australian: The US has coerced Nauru, through a series of secret deals since the Bali bombing, to outlaw offshore banks, ending one of the most notorious safe havens for terrorist funds. The US also has won permission from Nauru to set up a listening post to eavesdrop on neighbouring countries in the South Pacific, as well as a pledge from the tiny island nation not to haul Americans in front of the International Criminal Court. (...snip...) This little-known front in the war on terror, revealed exclusively today in The Weekend Australian, has severely strained relations between the US and Nauruan leaders, who accuse Washington of effectively colonising their island. "The CIA has cornered the President and we have not had much choice to do what we've done," former Nauruan president Rene Harris says. (...snip...) Now some Nauran leaders are concerned the US may not come through on promises they believed were set in stone. Despite the island state quietly passing laws late last week to end offshore banking, the US State Department said this week it was "not currently developing" any package of financial assistance for Nauru. However, a State Department spokesman welcomed Nauru's decision to abolish offshore banking, which he said "removes a significant vulnerability to exploitation of Nauru by transnational organised criminals, as well as terrorists". The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Canberra yesterday also welcomed Nauru's reforms. (...snip...) Documents obtained by The Weekend Australian, and independently verified over the past week, show the US resorted to threats to force Nauru to stymie terrorist groups by cleaning up its banking system. posted by Jojo | 10:56 AM Hawks at the hellmouth "We're on the advance. Our destination is Baghdad, and we will accept nothing less than complete and final victory." From the Australian online. The hellmouth: are we there yet? Friday, April 04, 2003 A pearl from Perle So glad Richard Perle has now resigned from his position with George W's administration. Here's a gem: "This is total war. We are fighting a variety of enemies. There are lots of them out there ... If we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely, and we don't try to piece together clever diplomacy but just wage a total war, our children will sing great songs about us years from now." Bush adviser, Richard Perle posted by Jojo | 12:42 PM Anti- Michael Moore piece by Australia journalist Gerard Henderson's piece in the SMH on Tuesday about Michael Moore accuses anyone in the west, critical of the war, of being "alienated" and "self-hating". The twin of one Damien managed to get a letter in the SMH about it. Here is the piece and Drew's letter. posted by Jojo | 12:38 PM Illogical reasoning for war in Iraq Sent to me by one Damien: "Illogical reasoning of a war against Iraq" by PETER FREUNDLICH, a freelance journalist in New York, March 13, 2003. All right, let me see if I understand the logic of this correctly. We are going to ignore the United Nations in order to make clear to Saddam Hussein that the United Nations cannot be ignored. We're going to wage war to preserve the UN's ability to avert war . The paramount principle is that the UN's word must be taken seriously, and if we have to subvert its word to guarantee that it is, then by gum, we will. Peace is too important not to take up arms to defend. Am I getting this right? Further, if the only way to bring democracy to Iraq is to vitiate the democracy of the Security Council, then we are honor-bound to do that too, because democracy, as we define it, is too important to be stopped by a little thing like democracy as they define it. Also, in dealing with a man who brooks no dissension at home, we cannot afford dissension among ourselves. We must speak with one voice against Saddam Hussein's failure to allow opposing voices to be heard. We are sending our gathered might to the Persian Gulf to make the point that might does not make right, as Saddam Hussein seems to think it does. And we are twisting the arms of the opposition until it agrees to let us oust a regime that twists the arms of the opposition. We cannot leave in power a dictator who ignores his own people. And if our people, and people elsewhere in the world, fail to understand that, then we have no choice but to ignore them. Listen. Don't misunderstand. I think it is a good thing that the members of the Bush administration seem to have been reading Lewis Carroll. I only wish someone had pointed out that "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" are meditations on paradox and puzzle and illogic and on the strangeness of things, not templates for foreign policy. It is amusing for the Mad Hatter to say something like, `We must make war on him because he is a threat to peace,' but not amusing for someone who actually commands an army to say that. As a collector of laughable arguments, I'd be enjoying all this were it not for the fact that I know--we all know--that lives are going to be lost in what amounts to a freak, circular reasoning accident. posted by Jojo | 12:35 PM Thursday, April 03, 2003 Compare and contrast: Arundhati Roy vs Miranda Devine From Arundhati Roy's article in the Guardian (full article here): On the steel torsos of their missiles, adolescent American soldiers scrawl colourful messages in childish handwriting: For Saddam, from the Fat Boy Posse. A building goes down. A marketplace. A home. A girl who loves a boy. A child who only ever wanted to play with his older brother's marbles. On March 21, the day after American and British troops began their illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, an "embedded" CNN correspondent interviewed an American soldier. "I wanna get in there and get my nose dirty," Private AJ said. "I wanna take revenge for 9/11." To be fair to the correspondent, even though he was "embedded" he did sort of weakly suggest that so far there was no real evidence that linked the Iraqi government to the September 11 attacks. Private AJ stuck his teenage tongue out all the way down to the end of his chin. "Yeah, well that stuff's way over my head," he said. Miranda Devine re-classifies some people as cockroaches... Wednesday, April 02, 2003 The changing nature of propaganda Interesting article on CounterPunch on the changing nature of propaganda as evidenced in this strange new wired world we live in. posted by Jojo | 1:56 PM "A war in search of a war aim" This article states one of my main objections to the war: the purported justifications for the war keep changing as the coalition goes along. So just how real were they in the first place; how real will they ever be? posted by Jojo | 1:54 PM Quotes that speak for themselves NSW Premier Bob Carr speaking about schoolkid peace protesters, who are planning to go ahead with a demo today despite the organisers not being given a permit (reported in The Australian newspaper, Wed 2 April 2003, p 4): they haven't got a right to run a demonstration; given their performance last time Australian foreign Minister Alexander Downer explaining that Australian companies should win a healthy share of the work to rebuild Iraq after the war (reported in The Australian newspaper, Wed 2 April 2003, p 4): Tuesday, April 01, 2003 Fudging and faking: some dodgy print and TV reporting on the war exposed ABC's Media Watch TV program has exposed some misleading reporting, including photos of Australian troops posing before the war being misrepresented as photos of the troops in action on certain days during the war; and current affairs reporter pretending to drive more than 100 km to get to the Iraq border actually only travelled 10 metres (stayed inside Kuwait and used fake footage)! posted by Jojo | 1:00 PM The news today oh boy I did not blog yesterday, and did not browse the news. Was that one day off, enough to re-sensitise me, or is today's news truly as shocking and awful as I feel it is? Celebrated news correspondent Peter Arnett, famed for his coverage of the Vietnam War and the first Gulf war, has been sacked by NBC after he suggested on Iraqi television that the US war plan had failed.
US troops killed seven Iraqi women and children at a checkpoint today when their van would not stop as ordered, a US military official said.
US military Central Command warned that the US was prepared to pay a "very high price" in terms of casualties to capture Baghdad and oust Saddam Hussein. posted by Jojo | 8:41 AMSunday, March 30, 2003 "Rumsfield ignored Pentagon advice on Iraq" The Washington Post has reported on a story which will be appearing in next week's New Yorker. The Post's story is a major headline on Matt Drudge right now; I was originally pointed to the Drudge link by the Agonist. Got all that? Right. It's probably a big story then considering the daisy chain of pointers. And the real story for me is that there must be a major leak at the Pentagon. Obviously. Anyway, here's the essence... A senior Pentagon planner has told the New Yorker that Donald Rumsfield repeatedly ignored advice from the Pentagon, including commander General Tommy Franks, that far more resources - including ground troops - would be needed in Iraq. Rumsfield insisted at least six times that numbers be cut sharply - that the war could be done on the cheap because the precision bombing would be so effective - and he got his way. The troops must be having a bad scary time: the Pentagon official is quoted as saying "they've got no resources" ... and a former intelligence officer has reportedly said that the war is now a stalement; that the Tomahawk cruise missiles are about to run out, that aircraft carriers are running out of precision guided bombs, and that maintenance work is badly needed on many tanks and other equipment. So is the war on pause yet? Update: here's a link to another story about this, via Tom Tomorrow. posted by Jojo | 5:45 PM American free speech news Fox News has now been criticised for going too far with its pro-war bias, after it blatantly ridiculed protesters at the March 27 "die-ins" in Manhatten. The Fox News ticker on the company headquarters displayed such messages as "Attention protesters: the Michael Moore Fan Club meets Thursday at a phone booth at Sixth Avenue and 50th Street" - together with the Fox corporate logo. Fox has already come under much criticism for the lack of objectivity in its war coverage so far, in that it has been simply delivering the US government's line, rather than attempting to report events as they actually happen. However, some media experts claim that Fox's actions on March 27 go even further, in that they completely disregard the right of Americans to free speech (and I would add, to independently formed beliefs). NewJersey.com reports that a spokesperson for Fox denied knowledge of the messages and was subsequently unavailable for comment. posted by Jojo | 12:52 PM Iraqi suicide bomber labelled "terrorist" Sadly, four US soldiers have been killed by an Iraqi officer in a suicide bombing. At a Pentagon news conference Saturday, Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said: "We're very concerned about it. It looks and feels like terrorism". (for full quote see this story at the Washington Post). These deaths, and the fact that Iraq has resorted to this, is bad news - really bad, whichever way you view this war - but surely it's not "terrorism" as the US military has labelled it? A journalist/ analyst on TV channel TCN 9's war coverage, made the point that suicide bombings are the sign of a weak enemy not a terrorist enemy. It's the last possible act of desperation after all. |
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